Today we'll evaluate China Automobile New Retail (Holdings) Limited (HKG:526) to determine whether it could have potential as an investment idea. Specifically, we'll consider its Return On Capital Employed (ROCE), since that will give us an insight into how efficiently the business can generate profits from the capital it requires.

First up, we'll look at what ROCE is and how we calculate it. Second, we'll look at its ROCE compared to similar companies. And finally, we'll look at how its current liabilities are impacting its ROCE.

What is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?

ROCE is a measure of a company's yearly pre-tax profit (its return), relative to the capital employed in the business. Generally speaking a higher ROCE is better. In brief, it is a useful tool, but it is not without drawbacks. Author Edwin Whiting says to be careful when comparing the ROCE of different businesses, since 'No two businesses are exactly alike.

So, How Do We Calculate ROCE?

The formula for calculating the return on capital employed is:

Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT)  (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)

Or for China Automobile New Retail (Holdings):

0.072 = CN297m  (CN8.3b - CN4.2b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2019.)

So, China Automobile New Retail (Holdings) has an ROCE of 7.2%.

See our latest analysis for China Automobile New Retail (Holdings)

Does China Automobile New Retail (Holdings) Have A Good ROCE?

ROCE is commonly used for comparing the performance of similar businesses. In this analysis, China Automobile New Retail (Holdings)'s ROCE appears meaningfully below the 10% average reported by the Consumer Durables industry. This performance could be negative if sustained, as it suggests the business may underperform its industry. Aside from the industry comparison, China Automobile New Retail (Holdings)'s ROCE is mediocre in absolute terms, considering the risk of investing in stocks versus the safety of a bank account. Investors may wish to consider higher-performing investments.

Story continues

China Automobile New Retail (Holdings) reported an ROCE of 7.2% -- better than 3 years ago, when the company didn't make a profit. This makes us wonder if the company is improving. You can see in the image below how China Automobile New Retail (Holdings)'s ROCE compares to its industry. Click to see more on past growth.

SEHK:526 Past Revenue and Net Income, January 6th 2020

When considering this metric, keep in mind that it is backwards looking, and not necessarily predictive. Companies in cyclical industries can be difficult to understand using ROCE, as returns typically look high during boom times, and low during busts. This is because ROCE only looks at one year, instead of considering returns across a whole cycle. If China Automobile New Retail (Holdings) is cyclical, it could make sense to check out this free graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What Are Current Liabilities, And How Do They Affect China Automobile New Retail (Holdings)'s ROCE?

Current liabilities include invoices, such as supplier payments, short-term debt, or a tax bill, that need to be paid within 12 months. The ROCE equation subtracts current liabilities from capital employed, so a company with a lot of current liabilities appears to have less capital employed, and a higher ROCE than otherwise. To check the impact of this, we calculate if a company has high current liabilities relative to its total assets.

China Automobile New Retail (Holdings) has total assets of CN8.3b and current liabilities of CN4.2b. As a result, its current liabilities are equal to approximately 50% of its total assets. China Automobile New Retail (Holdings) has a fairly high level of current liabilities, meaningfully impacting its ROCE.

The Bottom Line On China Automobile New Retail (Holdings)'s ROCE

Notably, it also has a mediocre ROCE, which to my mind is not an appealing combination. You might be able to find a better investment than China Automobile New Retail (Holdings). If you want a selection of possible winners, check out this free list of interesting companies that trade on a P/E below 20 (but have proven they can grow earnings).

There are plenty of other companies that have insiders buying up shares. You probably do not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Most celebs leave their Golden Globes prep up to the imagination. But not Busy Philipps. She documented the entire process on her Instagram story.

After touching down from her family vacay in Mexico last night, she immediately began prepping for the Globes and, of course, filming the whole thing. She started with a trip to her her colorist for a quick touch-upwhich involved holding a salon puppy in her lap. Goals. Then, she headed to celeb esthetician Joanna Czech for a facial.

But the truly refreshing content came this morning when Philipps filmed herself starting the morning with a cup of coffee and confessed, "So, the Golden Globes are today, here's the deal: I didn't sleep great. The world seems very upsetting, but I don't know. It's nice to be able to celebrate friends that do amazing work and use their platforms for amazing things and that's my best friend and I really hope that she wins today." Philipps is referring to friend Michelle Williams, who's nominated for Best Limited Series/TV Movie Actress for her role in "Fosse/Verdon."

The candid admission was followed by a video of the actress looking less-than-pleased at an 8:30 a.m. workout class. "Now I'm sweaty and I have to do my fitting," she announced. That's right, the Dawson's Creek star had a final dress fitting a mere five hours before she was due on the carpet. According to the 'gram, her post-fitting activities included a manicure while sporting a sheet mask, and a quick lunch while getting her hair, makeup and pedicure done.

She finished off the story announcing "look what I finally got," in reference to Megababe's Bust Dust, a powder designed to stop boob sweat. A woman after our own hearts.

RELATED: All the Must-See Looks from the 2020 Golden Globes Red Carpet
A drunk driver ploughed into pedestrians in an Italian Alpine village on Sunday, killing six German tourists and injuring 11 other people, authorities said. The accident happened at around 1:15 am (0015 GMT) in the village of Lutago near the Austrian border in an area popular with skiers. A group of German tourists had just got off a shuttle bus as they returned to their hotel from an evening at a nightclub when the car slammed into them at high speed -- throwing some of them dozens of metres. Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in a statement expressed his "most sincere" condolences to the "families of the young German tourists", wishing those injured a swift recovery. "I cry with those who have lost their children, their brothers and sisters, their friends, in the night," German Chancellor Angela Merkel added on Twitter. Six Germans were killed, a fire service official in Lutago told AFP. Eleven other people were injured -- two of whom were seriously hurt and flown by helicopter to a hospital in the Austrian city of Innsbruck. They were fighting for their lives, according to the prosecutor's office in nearby Bolzano. The local head of Italy's paramilitary carabinieri police force told AFP that the driver, a 27-year-old local resident, had been charged with murder and put in hospital under police guard. The prosecutor's office said the driver had between 1.9 and 2.0 grams of alcohol per litre in his blood, about four times the maximum allowed level. He could face a prison sentence of up to 18 years, it added. "I had just dropped the youths off when I saw the car coming at a crazy speed," the bus driver told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. "I flashed my headlights in vain to tell the driver to slow down. A few seconds later I saw these poor kids flying through the air in my rear-view mirror." - 'A terrible scene' - Roughly 160 emergency workers went to help out after the accident and a field hospital was set up at the side of the road. "A terrible scene, people on the ground, cries and pain, a tragedy - we don't have the words," a hotel receptionist told Corriere della Sera. "We have asked several times for a radar on this road as drivers speed up as soon as they leave Lutago and here, one kilometre from the centre, they go at 100 kilometres per hour." "The New Year has begun with a tragedy," South Tyrol governor Arno Kompatscher told reporters. South Tyrol is a largely German-speaking province afforded a high degree of autonomy from Rome, known in particular for the Dolomites mountain chain. German officials said the country's consulate in Milan was in close contact with the local authorities and staff were helping the people affected. Lutago, in the picturesque Aurina valley, is popular with tourists who ski at Klausberg and Speikboden. The village of about 800 residents is the location for a popular Italian television series "Un Passo dal Cielo" ("One Step from Heaven"). Last week, three Germans -- a woman and two girls, one aged seven -- were killed in an avalanche in South Tyrol. Two of the injured who were in a very serious condition were flown by helicopter to a hospital in Innsbruck in Austria
A Svengali is a person who controls anothers mind, usually with sinister intent, based on the 1891 gothic-horror novel Trilby, by George du Maurier. A century later, in the 1950s and 60s, the CIA actually dabbled and experimented in mind control under the codename MKUltra.

The concept appears frequently in popular culture. Jason Bourne, a Robert Ludlum character, was programed by MKUltra. So too, allegedly, was Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

Today the master of mind control, also known as the very stable Svengali genius is none other than President Donald Trump. Simply by tweeting or eating a scoop of ice cream during a military strike, he can turn normally sane members of Congress and journalists into raving lunatics.

As a politician, especially one running for a second term as president with the election less than a year away, Trumps life is a perpetual campaign.

How convenient for the incumbent president to use mind control on his political opponents to constantly campaign, not for themselves or their issues, but inadvertently for the president. It seems each inane utterance by the left creates another Trump voter or campaign contributor.

Whats more remarkable is that this modern-day Svengali is a political novice, a brash and at times crude real estate developer from New York City, where the only recent magic trick was their most famous prison detainee, under constant guard, on suicide precautions, somehow managing to kill himself. I dont think even Houdini could pull off a trick like that.

The most recent example of the very stable Svengalis mind control is his killing of Iranian terrorist mastermind General Qasem Soleimani and his sidekick Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

Who knew an American president killing a terrorist could work as a form of mind control? This meme, making the rounds on the internet, says it all.

When President Obama ordered the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, he was hailed as a hero. Even though Joe Biden cant remember if he advised for or against that raid. Or where he was at the time. Or where he is today.

Even Trumps recent killing of al-Baghdadi drew a neutral response from Democrats and the media. After all, why make a fuss since at the time they had the Ukraine phone call as the latest bombshell to take down Trump.

Now they have nothing, just a bogus partisan impeachment vote that is more like a joke without a punch line. They couldnt let the Soleimani raid go without outrage. Yet in their outrage, Svengali Trump tricked them into defending Iran and terrorism.

The Washington Post referred to Soleimani as Irans most revered military leader. Sort of like a General MacArthur or Patton I suppose. Except they werent terrorists.

A few months ago, the Washington Post had similar praise for another terrorist butcher, al-Baghdadi, calling him an austere religious scholar. Sure, and Adolph Hitler was a promising Austrian artist.

Democrat candidates also had their hair on fire over an American missile visiting Soleimani. Spartacus Cory Booker moaned, We have a president has had a failure in his Iranian policy, who has had no larger strategic plan, and has made that region less stable and less safe."

Mayor Pete complained, But there are serious questions about how this decision was made and whether we are prepared for the consequences. This must not be the start of another endless war. No, endless wars were the legacies of our last two presidents. Trump campaigned against endless wars and will keep this campaign promise as he has many others.

Crazy Bernie whined, "Trump's dangerous escalation brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars. He had no comment on how many more trillions of dollars his Medicare-for-all scheme would cost.

Marianne Williamson, who I didnt even know is still a presidential candidate, offered, It's about smart versus stupid use of military power. Whats her vision of smart? Scented candles and Gregorian chants?

Tulsi Gabbard, who as a military veteran should know better, called Trumps killing of Soleimani an act of war. No, the act of war was Iran killing an American and attacking a US embassy, sovereign US territory. Svengali Trump cause Gabbard to make a fool of herself.

Who knew the Democrats were so circumspect over Trump killing a terrorist, yet they all cheered when Obama did the same? Mind control.

Then Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer had a conniption over Congress not being briefed or consulted, neither the leadership nor the Gang of Eight.

Yet through mind control, Trump made Congressional leaders do an about face. Congress didnt seem to mind Obamas lethal drone strikes. This included killing of innocents and a US citizen. Obama ordered 563 drone strikes compared to 57 under Bush.

Democrats didnt fuss about not being briefed before those 500 plus drone strikes, yet now they piss and moan, standing up for due process for terrorists. Magical.

Not mentioned is the loose lips sink ships rationale for saying nothing to Congress until after the mission. Adam Schiff would have excused himself mid-briefing to leak to CNN, who would then broadcast the plans to the world, including Iran.

Such media leaks did occur, perhaps not via Congress but instead via deep state bureaucrats who leaked to the New York Times that the evidence for an imminent attack on American interests was razor thin. Imagine the story line if Trump did nothing and Americans were subsequently killed.

Aside from Iran, Svengali Trump manipulated Pelosi into defending MS-13 gang members, calling them Gods children. Magical how Pelosi is now on record defending decapitation, dismemberment, or ripping a heart out of a victims body as the acts of angels.

There is much else Trump has tricked the Democrats into defending. From unaffordable schemes costing tens of trillions of dollars such as Medicare-for-all or the Green New Deal, to full term abortion, including abortion rights for men calling themselves women.

Hollywood isnt left out of mind control either. Rose McGowan, apparently an actress, one I never heard of, tweeted an apology to the people of Iran for Trump taking out the revered butcher. Once again, Trump made Hollywood criticize America and take the side of terrorists.

The lefts outrage is predictable and so instructive coming into a major election. Svengali Trump is making the Democrats and media beclown themselves taking positions 180 degrees from those of four years ago when a Democrat was in the White House.

Iran and Americas left dont know who they are dealing with. As Democrats and the media defend Iran, President Trump doubled down tweeting,

Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!

Lets play a game called Mullahs in a box. If they dont retaliate, they lose face at home. If they do retaliate, they will be annihilated. Lose-lose. This is a game Trump likes to play with his foes, like House Democrats on impeachment.

If Democrats want to continue to defend Iran, have at it. The campaign commercials are writing themselves. Isnt mind control grand?

Brian C Joondeph, MD, is a Denver based physician, freelance writer and occasional radio talk show host whose pieces have appeared in American Thinker, Daily Caller, and other publications. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and QuodVerum.
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Harvey Weinstein was charged Monday with a pair of alleged sexual assaults in Los Angeles, hours after the frail-looking former Hollywood tycoon slid his walker into a Manhattan courtroom for the kickoff of his criminal trial there.

Weinstein  visibly aged since his May 2018 arrest in New York  was in court with his five attorneys for a final conference before jury selection formally begins his long-awaited trial for rape, criminal sex act and predatory sexual assault.

It is unclear whether the charges on the West Coast will affect plans to proceed with jury pre-screening in Manhattan Supreme Court on Tuesday morning. Hundreds of prospective panel members are expected to file into Justice James Burkes courtroom for an initial round of dismissals.

At Monday mornings conference, Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala made a request for the jury to be sequestered in the event Los Angeles or another jurisdiction brings charges once the trial starts.

The request was denied  before Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey made public that she would announce charges at 11 a.m. on the West Coast.

We believe the evidence will show that the defendant used his power and influence to gain access to his victims and then commit violent crimes against them, Lacey said. I want to commend the victims who have come forward and bravely recounted what happened to them. It is my hope that all victims of sexual violence find strength and healing as they move forward.

Aidala told Burke he didnt know of any concrete charging plans elsewhere in the pipeline. But recent news reports suggested that the probe in Los Angeles was picking up steam.

Dozens of women have accused the 67-year-old former producer of sex crimes or sexual harassment since the #MeToo movement was launched in late 2017.

Aidala said the worst thing that can happen is for Weinsteins trial in New York to be interrupted after several weeks and suggested such a development after jury selection could lead to a mistrial.

He argued that Weinstein wanted to avoid that at all costs.

Hes not looking for a mistrial. Hes looking for a conclusion to this, Aidala said.

Prosecutor Joan Illuzzi-Orbon objected to the request to have the jury sequestered.

Weinstein is currently out on $2-million bail put up by local bondsman Ira Judelson  who has also required him to wear an ankle bracelet. He is not allowed to leave the area.

It is likely that Los Angeles authorities would issue a warrant to begin an extradition process. Authorities there could strike a deal with prosecutors in New York that would set up a timeline for his transfer there.

Weinstein is on trial in Manhattan for allegedly raping a woman in 2013; she has not been publicly identified. The charges also include an allegation of a forced encounter with former production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006.

He faces a minimum of 10 years in prison on the top count, predatory sexual assault, which requires a pattern of sex crimes. To meet the burden, prosecutors expect to call actress Annabella Sciorra, 59, who has accused Weinstein of sexually assaulting her in her Manhattan apartment in 1993.

A lengthy jury selection process is expected and testimony will not begin for at least two weeks.

Three additional women, including one who will say she was raped in 2005, are expected to be called as supporting witnesses but are not formally part of the charges.
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Sydney hospitality billionaire Justin Hemmes has donated $500,000 to the NSW Rural Fire Service, the latest in a string of wealthy business figures opening their wallets as fires ravage the country.

Mr Hemmes, whose Merivale empire owns popular bars including the Ivy, the Newport and the Coogee Pavilion, has been on the states fire-affected South Coast where he owns a home near Jervis Bay.

Merivale boss Justin Hemmes has donated $500,000 to the RFS.

The RFS water bombers and helicopters come in, and it was like angels of the sky, Mr Hemmes told the Herald.

These guys are heroes ... they were working at least 12 hour shifts protecting us and protecting these communities and without them it would have been even more catastrophic than it is.
Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa on Monday assured leaders of Valmiki community that his government will take necessary action on their demand for increasing the Scheduled Tribes reservation quotafrom the existing 3 per cent to 7.5 per cent in jobs and education.

The government has no intentions of delaying it and was committed to the progress of the Valmiki community, he said adding it would consider their demand after looking into Justice Nagamohan Das Commissions report on the matter.

Officials in the Chief Minister's Office said Yediyurappa told a delegation of Valmiki community leaders that he will ask all the departments concerned to give required data and information to the commission, which has been given six months time as requested.

The delegation led by Sri Jagadguru Valmiki Prasannananda Swami of Rajanahalli Valmiki Gurupeetha, along with Health Minister Sriramulu, Congress leader Satish Jarkiholi, BJP's Ramesh Jarkiholi among others met him.

He assured the delegation that the government will examine and take necessary action as soon as the commission submits its report and the panel would also be requested to expedite its work.

The government had constituted the commission to explore ways in which the demand for increasing SC/ST reservation in education and employment can be met.

Any move to increase the reservation, will exceed the 50 per cent ceiling set by the Supreme Court.

Valmiki community leaders had recently threatened to relaunch their agitation if their demand for increase in reservation was not accepted.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, the Swamiji said they gave a memorandum and have full belief that the chief minister will fulfill the demand.

Sriramulu said the Chief Minister assured to look into their request based on population figures.

In response to a question, the Swamiji said there was a wish that one Deputy Chief Minister (DCM) post should be given to the community representative in the Yediyurappa government. However, this was not discussed with the Chief Minister in the meeting on Monday, he added.

Sections in the community are pushing names of Sriramulu and newly elected BJP MLA from Gokak Ramesh Jarkiholi for the post. There are already three DCMs in the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-07 06:52:11|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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DUBLIN, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The Irish government published on Monday a draft bill proposing to ban the sale of fossil fuel cars in the country by 2030.

The proposal was contained in the Draft General Scheme of the Climate Action (Amendment) Bill 2019 published by the Irish Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment on its website.

The department also proposes in the draft bill to stop the granting of National Car Tests on all fossil fuel cars from 2045, which means all fossil fuel cars will be banned from use on Irish roads by then.

The proposed legislation regarding fossil fuel cars is part of the government's efforts to achieve its target of net zero carbon emissions in the country by 2050.

Announcing the draft bill, Irish Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment Richard Bruton said: "We must act now and leave a better, healthier, more sustainable Ireland for future generations."
StowTown Records recently added a well-known artist to their roster. The Steeles, comprised of Jeff and Sherry Steele and their son Brad, have worked as independent artists for the last several years. While their church commitments keep them close to home in Alabama, The Steeles have continued to write and perform music that has consistently charted on The Singing News Top 40 charts.



They feel the time is right for them to reconnect with fans and the industry by being a part of a record label, and StowTown Records is thrilled to be their new home. For co-owner and producer Wayne Haun, it feels like they are just picking up where they left off. "I worked with The Steeles 25 years ago. Most gospel music fans know our rich history together. It's been at least 10 years since I last got to work with them and this just feels like going back home. Not much has changed - except Brad has grown up to be a powerhouse musician and songwriter in his own rite!"



Jeff and Sherry are happy to be working with their friend Wayne Haun and the team at StowTown. Jeff shares, "It's been a long time since we were in the studio for a label and quite frankly I had said it would never happen again." Sherry continues "Wayne has been family to The Steeles for 25 years. We just never allowed that door to close. We feel like it's God's timing, and we are excited."



The Steeles' first StowTown project will release in Spring 2020, and the first single to release to radio later this month.

ABOUT STOWTOWN RECORDS:

StowTown Records was founded in 2011 by Ernie Haase and Wayne Haun and then expanded in 2014 with the addition of partners Landon Beene and Nate Goble. With each person bringing their individual expertise, StowTown has become a powerhouse independent Gospel Music label. As the creative home for many of today's top artists, the StowTown family of artists includes Ernie Haase & Signature Sound, Doug Anderson, Charles Billingsley, The Browns, Cana's Voice, Tiffany Coburn, The Collingsworth Family, The Erwins, TaRanda Greene, The Guardians, Trey Ivey, The Little Roy & Lizzy Show, Tim Lovelace, Jody McBrayer, Devin McGlamery, The Perrys, Southern Raised, The Steeles, The Taylors and Triumphant Quartet. Distributed worldwide through Provident/Sony Distribution, StowTown Records has garnered industry attention with multiple GMA Dove Awards and chart-topping releases from their highly respected roster of artists.



LINK:

www.stowtownrecords.com/

Tags : the steeles the steeles news StowTown Records
On the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the trial of 24 suspected jihadists linked to the massacre that killed 12 people at the satirical weekly has opened in Paris. Only five of the suspects are expected to appear in the dock, with most presumed dead in Iraq or Syria.

Known as the "Sevran network", the suspects allegedly became radicalised at a clandestine mosque in the Paris suburb of Sevran.

The 20 men and four women, of French, Moroccan, Mauritanian and Algerian nationality, converted to jihadist ideology through mentors at the Sevran mosque, some swayed by the declaration of the self-proclaimed "caliphate by the Islamic State (IS) armed group in June 2014.

They are believed to have provided logistical support to Said and Cherif Kouachi, the al Qaeda-linked brothers who carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack.

The trial is also linked to the Jewish supermarket assault outside Paris, two days after Charlie Hebdo, in which a jihadist gunman killed four people.

Among the absent defendants are the Belhoucine brothers. Mohamed, the elder, has been identified as the mentor of Amedy Couilbaly, who carried out the Hyper Cacher attack.

Quentin Roy, reportedly killed in Syria in 2016, is also on the docket. His parents were informed he had died in January 2016. They are expected to speak at the trial as witnesses on Tuesday. Roy will be represented in absentia by a lawyer at the hearing.

The defendants were aged between 20-30 years when they left France, just before the January 2015 attacks. Most are believed to have been killed in bombings or suicide attacks while fighting for IS group.

The court requisitions are scheduled for Thursday 16 January, with the verdicts slated for Friday 17 January.
LAFAYETTE, La., Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LHC Group, Inc. (LHCG) announced today that it has finalized joint venture (JV) purchase and expansion agreements with partners in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana  all effective as of January 1, 2020. These transactions represent annualized revenue of approximately $23.8 million.



Texas

DFW Home Health  a separate legal entity jointly owned by partners LHC Group, Texas Health Resources, and North Texas Health Facilities Management, Inc., a subsidiary of Methodist Health System  has completed purchase of a home health provider serving patients and families in Arlington, Texas.

The partnership has been in operation since 2012. This acquisition expands the partnerships footprint to four locations across the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex  joining sister locations in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Denton. LHC Group expects approximately $2.4 million in annualized revenue from this transaction. The agency name will change to DFW Home Health Arlington. It will continue to operate from its current location in Arlington.

Arkansas

LHC Group and JV partner LifePoint Health finalized a purchase agreement adding two additional locations  a home health provider and a hospice provider  in Bryant, Ark., that are associated with LifePoints Saline Memorial Hospital.

LHC Group expects approximately $5.4 million in annualized revenue from this transaction. The Bryant, Ark., home health and hospice providers will operate under the names Saline Memorial Home Health and Saline Memorial Hospice, respectively.

LHC Group and LifePoint Health formed their JV partnership in 2017 to share ownership and governance of LifePoint's home health agencies and hospices as well as select LHC Group agencies located near LifePoint facilities. Since it was established, the LHC Group-LifePoint partnership has grown to include 49 home health and hospice locations across 10 states.

Louisiana

LHC Group and Ochsner Health System have purchased five Egan Home Health and Hospice provider locations across South Louisiana as part of their existing JV partnership, operating as Southeast Louisiana HomeCare.

Story continues

LHC Group expects approximately $16 million in annualized revenue from this transaction. LHC Group and Ochsner have been home health joint venture partners since 2009.

LHC Group and its JV partners will continue to work with current referral sources and patients to ensure there is no interruption in the continuity of care.

LHC Group helps its hospital partners provide patients with solutions for recovery in the comfort of home, helping prevent costly and avoidable hospital readmissions. Working together, they enhance home health services, facilitate better coordination of care delivery, and seamlessly transition patients from the hospital to the recovery setting.

Healthcare JV partnerships are a key component in helping patients manage their conditions and receive efficient and effective care. LHC Group and its partners deliver a level of in-home healthcare service that is recognized industry-wide for consistent quality.

LHC Group is a leading national provider of in-home healthcare services and the JV partner of choice for 350 hospitals across the United States.

About LHC Group, Inc.

LHC Group, Inc. is a national provider of in-home healthcare services and innovations, providing high-quality and affordable healthcare services to patients in the privacy and comfort of the home or place of residence. LHC Groups services cover a wide range of healthcare needs for patients and families dealing with illness, injury, or chronic conditions. The companys 32,000 employees deliver home health, hospice, home and community based services, and facility-based care in 35 states and the District of Columbia  reaching 60 percent of the U.S. population aged 65 and older. LHC Group is the preferred in-home healthcare partner for 350 leading hospitals around the country. In 2019, the company was named to the inaugural Forbes list of Americas Best-in-State Employers.

Forward-looking Statements

Certain statements and information in this press release may be deemed to contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements may include, but are not limited to, statements relating to our objectives, plans and strategies, and all statements, other than statements of historical facts, that address activities, events or developments that we intend, expect, project, believe or anticipate will or may occur in the future. These statements are often characterized by terminology such as believe, hope, may, anticipate, should, intend, plan, will, expect, estimate, project, positioned, strategy and similar expressions, and are based on assumptions and assessments made by LHC Groups management in light of their experience and their perception of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors they believe to be appropriate. Any forward-looking statements in this press release are made as of the date hereof, and LHC Group undertakes no duty to update or revise any such statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Important factors that could cause actual results, developments, and business decisions to differ materially from forward-looking statements are described in LHC Groups most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, including the sections entitled Risk Factors, as well LHC Groups current reports on Form 8-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Contacts:

LHCG Investor Relations

Eric Elliott

(337) 233-1307

Eric.Elliott@LHCgroup.com

LHCG Media Relations

Mark Willis

(337) 769-0673

Mark.Willis@LHCgroup.com


For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.

Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.





to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.





Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.





View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.

Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.






By James M. Dorsey





The killing of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani proves the United States has perfected the art of strengthening Iranian hard-liners fueled by an apparently ingrained American misreading of Iranian politics and strategy sustained over decades.



It also suggests that the Trump administration has walked into a trap in which spiraling tension between the U.S. and Iran is likely to be played out on Iranian rather than U.S. terms.



Iran last year moved away from its initial strategic patience response to the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 international agreement that curbed the Islamic republic's nuclear program and the imposition of harsh economic sanctions to a strategy of gradual escalation.



Iran is banking on the assumption that taking the U.S. to the brink of yet another Middle Eastern war will ultimately persuade the Trump administration to return to the negotiating table. It is a high-risk gamble that so far has produced results.



The recent killing of an American contractor on an Iraqi military base constituted Iran's latest chess move.



It sparked a U.S. military strike against an Iranian-backed militia, the subsequent killing of Soleimani and the leader of the militia, Abdul Mahdi al-Muhandis, and the targeting of a militia convoy.



The Iranian move led to the siege of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq that evoked images of the humiliating 1975 evacuation of the U.S. mission in Saigon toward the end of the Vietnam War and the 444-day occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.



It also has put at risk the future of U.S. forces in Iraq, 17 years after they toppled Saddam Hussein. Iraq's parliament is about to discuss moves to remove foreign forces from the country.



"A humiliating departure for the U.S. from Iraq now seems inevitable," said International Crisis Group Iran expert Ali Vaez.



Pro-Iranian militias are counting on the fact that they are Iraqis with close ties to the Iraqi security establishment, which they expect will exclude them from the moves that would primarily target the U.S.



Iraq's influential Shiite leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has so far limited himself to calling for restraint in the wake of Soleimani's killing. But Al-Sistani could prove to be the player who definitively sways the pendulum.



"How long before Ayatollah Sistani issues a fatwa (religious opinion) asking U.S. troops to leave?" Vaez asked.



In a similarly humbling development, Iraq, long a primary venue for an ongoing U.S.-Iranian proxy war, has become in the wake of Soleimani's death a no-go zone for Americans, with the Trump administration urging U.S. citizens to leave immediately to avoid becoming targets.



Earlier, an attack in September on two key Saudi oil facilities, widely believed to have been instigated by Iran, coupled with U.S. president Donald Trump's hesitant response to the assault and the earlier downing of a U.S. drone by Iran, persuaded Saudi Arabia to tone down its rhetoric and explore ways of reducing tension with Iran.



The specter of a Saudi-Iranian rapprochement was put on hold with the eruption in recent months of anti-government protests in Lebanon and Iraq that threatened to throw a monkey wrench into Iran's strategy of exerting regional influence through proxies.



While it is likely to remain on hold amid the escalating tension, it has not been taken off the table.



Earlier, the United Arab Emirates reached out to Iran after the Islamic republic was believed to have instigated attacks on tankers off the Emirati coast.



The "sequence of events shows that, thus far, the Iranian strategy of calculated counter-escalation is working  By escalating on its own, Iran forced a number of key players to change their cost-benefit calculus," said Eldar Mamedov, an adviser to the social democrats in the European parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee.



While that may be a positive development in and of itself, it also means that regional U.S. allies, with the exception of Israel that wholeheartedly endorsed the killing of Soleimani, are likely to be more circumspect in their support of the U.S. amid escalating tensions.



Already, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have called for restraint in the wake of Soleimani's death.



Soleimani's killing has widened the opening for a tit-for-tat war in which Iran has the advantage of being a master of asymmetric warfare and at playing in grey areas.



Amid massive speculation about how it will respond to the killing, Iran is likely to take its time and strike out of left field, potentially prompting an American response that again risks playing into Iranian hands.



"The Iranians will definitely respond, but not in a way that triggers an all-out war, which they know they would lose," said Iran expert Dina Esfandiary.



In a further indication of U.S. misreading of the tea leaves, the killing of Soleimani threatens to amount to a gift of God for Iranian hard-liners who are now expected to win next month's parliamentary election in Iran.



A hard-line victory would spotlight the United States' repeated scoring of an own goal by adopting policies that undermine its own long-standing aim of persuading Iran to moderate its policies and tone down its revolutionary rhetoric.



Rather than provide incentives, as with the 2015 nuclear accord, U.S. policy has more often than not reinforced perceptions in Tehran that the United States' real goal was regime change.



Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton reinforced those perceptions in response to Soleimani's killing: "Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran," he tweeted.



U.S. policy prompted Iran to adopt a defense and security policy that compensated for the Islamic republic's intrinsic weakness by emphasizing the very things the U.S. has long wanted to see change. These include Iran's successful use of proxies across the Middle East.



At the bottom line, the strengthening of Iranian hard-liners not only undermines U.S. policy goals but also risks putting the U.S. in difficult, if not impossible and at times humiliating positions, and sucking it into a conflict for which it is ill-equipped.



Political anthropologist Negar Razavi said, "The U.S. foreign policy establishment has collectively created a culture of expert impunity when it comes to Iran, which has contributed in no small part to the unstable and dangerous policy conditions we see under Trump today."





Dr. James M. Dorsey (jmd@jmdonline.org) is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore's Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg's Institute of Fan Culture.


In the summer of 1964, three men who were helping blacks register to vote in Mississippi were brutally murdered.

James Chaney of Meridian, Miss., and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner from New York were working on the Freedom Summer Campaign for civil rights. They had met with the congregation of a black church that had been torched.

On June 29, 1964, the FBI began distributing these pictures of civil rights workers, from left, Michael Schwerner, 24, of New York, James Chaney, 21, from Mississippi, and Andrew Goodman, 20, of New York, who disappeared near Philadelphia, Miss., June 21, 1964. The three civil rights workers, part of the "Freedom Summer" program, were abducted, killed and buried in an earthen dam in rural Neshoba County. (AP Photo/FBI)AP

After they left, they were arrested. Chaney was charged with speeding. All three were put in jail.

After they were released, they were never seen again.

The men were abducted, shot to death and buried.

Flanked by public defender Chris Collins, left, reputed Ku Klux Klan member Edgar Ray Killen listens as Neshoba County District Attorney Mark Duncan, right, reads the indictment charging Killen with murder in the slayings of three civil rights workers more than 40 years ago, during his appearance in circuit court, Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, in Philadelphia, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio Solis)AP

More than 40 years after the crime, Edgar Ray Killen was arrested on June 6, 2005, and charged with murder in their deaths.

Killen was accused of planning the murders of the men as a member of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

Killen was found guilty of three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005  the 41st anniversary of the murders - and sentenced to 60 years in prison. He died in prison on Jan. 11, 2018.

FILE - This June 24, 1964 file photo shows the burned station wagon of three missing civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, in a swampy area near Philadelphia, Miss. The bodies of the men were found later in an earthen dam. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizer Larry Rubin wrote in an article for a student magazine back at Antioch College in Ohio, "What courage it takes to attempt to register!" wrote Rubin, "Your name is printed in the local paper. You can probably count on being fired or losing your sharecrop. Many who attempted to register have been beaten, or have had their house burned. Some have been killed." (AP Photo/Jack Thornell, File)AP

The disappearance of the three men was investigated by the FBI. Their vehicle was found smoldering from a fire. While searching for the men, investigators found the remains of eight black men. The bodies of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were found in August. The FBI continued investigating but local officials did not pursue the case.

This is a 1964 photo of Edgar Ray Killen. (AP Photo)ASSOCIATED PRESS

In December 1964, 21 men were charged with violating the civil rights of the three victims.

In January, 18 of those charged were indicted. The judge also dismissed many of the charges, which later were reinstated. The trial started in February 1967. Seven defendants were found guilty. In three cases, the jurors could not reach a verdict. Killen walked free. None of those convicted ever served more than six years in prison.

In 1999, the case was reopened and in 2005 Killen was charged with murder.

Neshoba County Sheriff Deputy Cecil Price holds a copy of the Meridian Star as he awaits the verdict in the murder trial of three civil rights workers in Meridian, Miss., Oct. 19, 1967. Price was convicted on conspiracy charges along with six other defendants. At left is Edgar Ray Killen, one of 18 defendants whose case ended in mistrial. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell)ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Health chiefs have warned of the importance of vaccinations after Call the Midwife featured an episode about an outbreak of diphtheria.

The BBC1 drama returned to screens last night with a harrowing story in which nurses battled to control the contagious disease.

Health bosses said it must serve as a vital reminder to parents about jabs  and warned that rising complacency and falling uptake of the diphtheria vaccination means it could stage a resurgence.

Call the Midwife has returned with an episode about an outbreak of diphtheria, leading health chiefs to warn about the importance of vaccinations

Diphtheria is a potentially deadly and highly contagious bacterial infection that leads to a thick white coating at the back of the throat, and can cause pus-filled blisters on the skin.

Before mass immunisation was introduced in England in 1942, diphtheria infected around 60,000 children a year, killing 4,000.

Latest NHS figures show that uptake of the diphtheria booster vaccination, given before children start school, has fallen from 89 per cent to 85 per cent in the past six years.

Dr Vanessa Saliba, of Public Health England, said: 'Thanks to vaccination, diphtheria is now rare in this country  but we cannot be complacent. Uptake of the full diphtheria vaccine course has fallen slightly over recent years.

Before mass immunisation was introduced in England in 1942, diphtheria infected around 60,000 children a year, killing 4,000 (stock image)

'It's vitally important that parents ensure their children are fully protected against this highly contagious and potentially fatal infection by taking up the vaccine on time when it is offered.'

Last night's Call the Midwife episode, set in 1965, showed the devastating impact of a diphtheria outbreak at a homeless shelter in Poplar, east London.

Three-week waits for GP Millions of patients are forced to wait more than three weeks to see their GP, NHS figures show. Between August and November, 11.3 million waited three weeks or longer after booking an appointment. It comes after Boris Johnson pledged to solve the GP crisis that has seen doctors slash hours or quit over growing pressure. The PM said in July: 'My job is to make sure you don't have to wait three weeks to see your GP.' However, in October 3.3 million patients waited more than 21 days to see a GP  the highest figure on record, The Sunday Times reported. Overall, four in ten patients receive a same-day appointment with their GP. Advertisement

It follows a pregnant mother-of-one whose son, Terry, collapses after contracting the infection while she is in hospital giving birth.

Dr Turner, played by Stephen McGann, expresses alarm at the news that 'medieval' diphtheria is making a comeback after the success of the vaccination programme.

He says: 'I can't quite believe what I'm seeing here, or maybe I don't want to.' During the programme Nurse Crane, played by Linda Bassett, also lectures the midwives on the importance of vaccinations.

The Daily Mail launched its Give Children Their Jabs campaign in October after an alarming NHS report revealed falling uptake of all ten childhood vaccines.

In 2018, there were 11 diphtheria cases and no deaths in England. However, between 2014 and 2018 there was an average of six cases per year with no deaths.
Chinese President Xi Jinping lauded Kiribati on Monday for "standing on the right side of history" during his first meeting with the Pacific island nation's leader since it severed ties with Taiwan.

Kiribati switched allegiances to Communist Party-ruled China in September, leaving Taiwan with just 15 allies as Beijing has steadily siphoned them off through billions of dollars in aid since Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2016.

Tsai is favored to win a second term in this Saturday's election, an outcome that would likely intensify China's economic, diplomatic and military pressure over her refusal to accept its insistence that Taiwan is a part of China.

Since her election, China has increasingly sought to isolate Taiwan diplomatically while ramping up its threat to use force to annex the self-governing island republic.

Speaking to Xi, Kiribati President Taneti Maamau reaffirmed his administration's commitment to the One China principle and expressed his deepest respect for the Chinese government's sovereignty.

According to China's official Xinhua Agency, Xi praised Maamau's strategic vision and political boldness, as demonstrated by his standing on the right side of history.

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and wants the island to reunite with the mainland, from which it split during a civil war in 1949.

Beijing resents Tsai for rejecting its precondition for dialogue that both belong to a single China. It has flown military aircraft near the island and pared back Taiwan-bound tourism to add pressure on her government.

Taiwan has responded by seeking to purchase arms from the U.S., including advanced fighter jets. Despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties, U.S. law requires Washington to ensure Taiwan has the means to defend itself.

Last month, less than two weeks before this weekend's presidential and legislative elections, Taiwan's legislature passed a law aimed at blocking political interference from China.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The argument made by Memon is that ahead of 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the equation could change as Pawar takes the top post.

The idea has been floated by Nationalist Congress Party MP Majid Memon who, in a tweet on Monday, said: "The move to muster support for Shri Sharad Pawar to be next Rashtrapati may yield positive results and will bring all non BJP forces closer by 2022.

"It will also turn the tide against BJP to be defeated in 2024 Lok Sabha polls," he said in his tweet.

Pawar, who enjoys support across political lines, now also has support of the Shiv Sena. Sources say NCP could be testing waters before the final plunge.

The Congress, which is with Pawar but not much confident about him, may be forced to support his candidature if all the opposition parties come in support of the NCP supremo.

Pawar has good rapport with the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress and the DMK as well.

He can also muster support from the Janata Dal-United and the Rashtriya Janata Dal also.

It is also likely that by 2022, the situation in the assemblies will change and many states can see new political forces emerging.

The new election for the President will be in 2022, and the BJP has many potential candidate including current Vice President M Venkiah Naidu.
The royal family surely has piles of portraits of them through the years under Queen Elizabeth II's leadership. However, the latest one is undoubtedly the most special yet.

Each year, the British Monarchy offers a what-so-called The Queen's Christmas Message (or The King's Christmas Message if the reigning monarch is a male) through television or radio airing. King George V started this tradition in 1932, and Queen Elizabeth II has been delivering a Christmas message since 1952.

Last Christmas 2019, Queen Elizabeth II successfully carried out her speech as she surrounded herself with selected photographs of her and the royal family. Some of the portraits since are a picture of Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, on the 50th anniversary of his induction as Prince of Wales; a family portrait of Prince William and Kate Middleton with their three children; a snap of Prince Philip from her private collection; and a black and white picture of King George VI in 1944.

Royal commentators said that the photos featured were chosen to represent the direct line of succession. Now, as they welcomed a new decade both as a monarchy and a family, Queen Elizabeth II spearheaded another photoshoot to capture the best photograph ever taken under her reign yet.

2020 Four Generations' Portrait

To officially mark the new decade, Buckingham Palace released the newest portrait of the Queen with Prince Charles, Prince William and six-year-old Prince George.

According to the palace, the photograph was taken by photographer Ranald Mackechnie on Dec. 18 in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace. It was publicly shared on Jan. 3, 2020.

However, it was not the first time Queen Elizabeth II posed for a picture together with her successors.

The first-ever portrait of the four was released in April 2016 in line with the celebration of the 90th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II and was used by Royal Mail on its commemorative postage stamps.

The same photographer, Mackechnie, appeared in an interview with CNN in 2016 and told them that the Queen and her successors were "very relaxed."

"The royal family were easier than my family to shoot, I have to tell you," Mackechnie went on.

The Best Photograph of The Royal Family

Despite being the second one, the new image of the four is considered the best as it is the first official photograph of the royal family's monarch and the successors since 1894.

More than a century ago, the royal palace released a photo of Queen Victoria and her successors -- King Edward VII, King George V, and the then-future King Edward VIII.

It was the first portrait that showed the four generations of the monarchy and was taken as one of the official Christening Photographs of Prince Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David (a.k.a King Edward VIII).

Moreover, what made the new image the most memorable was the fact that the royal palace chose to gather the four to welcome the new year and new decade for the first time. The Buckingham Palace is never a fan of exclusive royal portraits, and the heirs to the throne usually stand for a photograph with their families.

In addition, body language expert Judi James added more reason to consider the portrait as the best royal family photo out there.

Talking with express.co.uk, she analyzed it and revealed that the way Queen Elizabeth II showed her dominance for the first time in a photograph with Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince George.

The 2016 photo showed Queen Elizabeth II sitting next to Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge. This time, however, Her Majesty chose to stand in the newest portrait.

"Standing rather than sitting in deference to her years she is placed in a forward position that shows she is still the strong, protective and dominant figure in the family and her wide smile and upright posture suggest she is going nowhere in terms of retirement," Ms. James explained.

Meanwhile, the current heir to the throne Prince Charles moved backward, suggesting that the Queen will truly hold on to her position for life, regardless of her age.
Open Orphan, a Europe-focused pharma services company specialising in rare disease and so-called orphan drugs, has signed a contract with a German-based research-driven pharmaceutical company.

Open Orphan said the contract guarantees significant annual income, with work under the deal to commence this month.

This contract will see Venn Life Sciences, part of Open Orphan, build upon its existing relationship with the German company with a new three year consultancy for Pharmacokinetic (PK) analysis.

Pharmacokinetics is a branch of pharmacology that is dedicated to determining the fate of substances administered to the human body, and PK models help pharmaceutical companies to decide upon dosage and potential adverse effects in new drugs under development.

The deal represents an extension of the relationship between the two firms, continuing the work currently undertaken by Venn providing support in clinical trial data analysis, as well as earlier stage projects.

Cathal Friel, chief executive of Open Orphan, said: "This new contract is further evidence of Open Orphan delivering against one of its key objectives, transforming Venn by transitioning from ad-hoc short-term contracts to long-term contracts with high quality customers thereby delivering secured recurring revenues for the business.

Last month Open Orphan and UK-based Hvivo agreed the terms of a merger.
Above, Sir Christopher Hohn (Credit: Institutional Investor/YouTube)

By Jeff Patch, RealClearInvestigations

January 6, 2020

A global organization called Extinction Rebellion has rapidly risen to become the most disruptive environmental movement on earth. Since its founding in 2018, the collective, abbreviated as XR, has organized an escalating series of anarchical protests across the globe to halt mass extinction and minimize the risk of social collapse.

The American arm of Extinction Rebellion, or XR, agitates for "rebellion against the U.S. government for its criminal inaction on the ecological crisis. XR's top disclosed financial backer is British billionaire Sir Christopher Hohn, top photo. Above, a costumed XR protester in London in October.

In June, New York police arrested 66 members of the group who were demonstrating outside the New York Times building. In September, the collective claimed that 2,000 of its volunteers seized 22 intersections in Washington, D.C., and police arrested 32 in the ensuing gridlock.

A few high-profile Americansincluding Rory Kennedy and Aileen Gettyhave disclosed their financial support for the group, whose U.S.-based organization claims dozens of affiliates nationwide agitating for rebellion against the U.S. government for its criminal inaction on the ecological crisis.

But XRs largest disclosed individual donor to date is a reclusive British billionaire, Sir Christopher Hohn. Humanity is aggressively destroying the world with climate change and there is an urgent need for us all to wake up to this fact, he told The Telegraph recently in confirming his support for the group.

Critics have called XR a cult, citing co-founder Gail Bradbrooks admission that a bender on psychedelic drugs inspired her epiphany that humanity is at the brink of extinction. Undeterred, Hohn said he had donated 50,000 (about $65,000) to XR personally and a separate 150,000 (roughly $196,000) through the Childrens Investment Fund Foundation, a hybrid charity/hedge fund he founded and operates.

An XR protester arrested outside the New York Times building in June.

Amid wide alarm about foreign meddling in American politics, Hohns support for an organization advocating an uprising against the U.S. government has drawn little notice. Yet court filings and tax records show that he is a billion-dollar non-plastic straw stirring a global network of climate policy influence. He thus illustrates the reach of politically driven philanthropy and the potential of wealthy foreigners to sidestep U.S. lobbying laws by using complex financial arrangements to pursue both civic and self-interested goals. A notable distinction of Hohns operation is its apparent investment hedges in both green businesses and fossil fuels that the anticipated green economy aims to replace.

Even though air travel is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, Hohns fund has major positions in the airplane manufacturer Airbus and in two Spanish companies  Ferrovial and Aena -- which own Londons Heathrow Airport and the London Luton Airport, respectively.

Extinction Rebellion has targeted airports and train stations for protests in recent months.

When she and Hohn divorced, Jamie Cooper, who now runs Big Win Philanthropy , was awarded $531 million -- the largest such settlement in British history. It opened a window onto the hedge fund billionaire's finances.

A self-made billionaire, Hohns personal fortune is now estimated at more than $3.1 billion. Born in a London suburb in 1966, the son of a Jamaican emigre mechanic and a legal secretary graduated from Southampton University in England, then earned an MBA at Harvard before going to work for the American hedge fund manager Richard Perry in 1996.

Hohn left Perry Capital in 2003 to start his own hedge fund, The Childrens Investment Fund Management Ltd. -- or TCI as it is known -- which designated a portion of fees and profits to the similarly named foundation, run by his wife at the time, Jamie Cooper-Hohn. When their marriage ended in 2014, a judge ordered Hohn to pay Jamie Cooper $531 million, the largest divorce settlement in British history, opening a window on Hohns finances.

By then, his hedge fund had donated a reported $4.5 billion to the foundation for a wide range of organizations working to improve health and safety of children in the developing world.

Its mission shifted in the last decade, when the foundation also donated out more than $440 million in energy and climate change-related grants. It has directed at least $16 million in recent years to groups advocating U.S. climate change litigation targeting traditional energy firms, according to an analysis of grants and other charitable records.

XR financial backer Hohn has big investments in commercial aviation, even though the group opposes it vociferously. Above, an XR protester sprawls atop a British Airways plane at London's City Airport in October.

In 2018, the foundation contributed $7 million to climate litigation efforts of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Climate Integrity, to initiate, coordinate and support ground-breaking cases in multiple countries. The center and its parent organization, the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, lobbied elected officials in multiple U.S. cities to bring lawsuits against energy companies for causing climate change, according to the Florida Record.

Representatives for XR, Hohn and his affiliated entities declined comment for this article.

The hedge fund manager also has donated millions of dollars of his own money to other global and U.S.-based environmental groups actively opposed to fossil fuels. Last year, Hohn pledged to contribute another $500 million during the next five years.

But his continued investments in industries reliant on fossil fuels have drawn howls of hypocrisy from climate activists. British media disclosed in in October that Hohn has a 630 million stake ($824 million) in Spanish infrastructure conglomerate Ferrovial, which owns London Heathrow airport. XR protesters in Britain recently glued themselves to planes and attempted to shut down a nearby airport, London City.

Environmentalist billionaire Hohn has made big investments in fossil fuels, such as coal in India. Above, a carrier at a coal depot in Gauhati.

In fact, Hohn built his wealth in large part by exploiting fossil fuels and natural resources, investments that appear at odds with his foundations mission to usher an urgent global transition to a zero-carbon society. As late as 2012, nearly half of the assets under management in TCIa total of about $4 billionwere invested in utilities, mainly fossil fuel producers.

In 2012, TCI acquired a 1% stake, worth about $414 million, in Coal India Ltd., an Indian state-controlled mining and refinery company. The firm produces more than 80% of Indias coal. TCI acquired the stake via two subsidiaries based in tax sheltersTCI Cyprus Holdings and Ireland-based Talos Capital. Irelands corporate tax rate is 12.5%, compared with 19% in the U.K.

TCI sued the Indian government and Coal India later that year, alleging that its pricing cost the company almost $19 billion. Records show that as recently as 2014, Hohns fund was still invested in Coal India.

TCI managed more than $30 billion in assets as of Nov. 30, making it among the worlds largest activist hedge funds. And despite Hohns political engagement, his fund is opaque, with at least nine different subsidiaries, such as TCI Fund Holdings Ltd. and TCI Advisory Services LLP.

Connecticut-based GameChange Capital LLC, incorporated by the foundation in Delaware in 2011, is a private equity firm focused almost solely on acquiring positions in renewable energy firms.

Hohn also owns the unregulated, Cayman Islands-based Childrens Investment Fund Management Ltd. That entity is the parent hedge fund of TCI, according to international regulatory disclosures.

A few high-profile Americansincluding documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy , above, and Aileen Getty have disclosed their financial support for the uprising-minded collective.

Among left-leaning billionaires, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer are enjoying wide public attention due to their big-spending presidential campaigns. But Hohn, a foreigner unknown to most Americans, arguably exercises comparable if not more influence on U.S. energy and environmental policy through his hedge fund, XR and other advocacy groups.

Complicating things further, Hohns operation, though rarely in the headlines, is deeply entwined with progressive philanthropy in America. The New York-based Rockefeller Foundation, which reported $4.3 billion in assets in 2017 and has given millions to environmental causes, maintained a stake worth $156.5 million in one of Hohns hedge funds, according to its 2017 IRS filing, up from its $118.8 million stake in 2015.

Hohns funds are at the vanguard of activist institutional investors pressuring companies to adopt progressive policy goals. So-called ESG-focused investing (environmental, social, and governance) grew 38% from 2016 to 2018, amounting to $12 trillion of the $46.6 trillion in assets under management in the U.S., according to the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment. That figure is now at roughly $20 trillion.

Hohns efforts to influence U.S. laws, politics, and the economy raise deeper questions about the power of global billionaires  specifically whether his American-focused lobbying and public relations campaigns violate the Lobbying Disclosure Act and the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Neither Hohn, his funds nor the Center for Climate Integritys executive director, Richard Wiles, registered as a foreign agent under FARA.

Critics have called XR a cult, citing an admission by co-founder Gail Bradbrook, above, that a bender on psychedelic drugs inspired her epiphany that humanity is at the brink of extinction.

A law often honored in the breach but revived by Special Counsel Robert Mueller to secure convictions during his Russia investigation, FARA requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in the United States to disclose their activities to influence public policy and politics. The obligation to register under FARA is triggeredwhether or not a would-be agent is paidwhen a person or entity acts as an agent of a foreign principal, including foreign governments, political parties, citizens of another country based outside the United States or any company incorporated under the laws of a foreign country. Regulated activities include direct lobbying and public relations efforts, but FARA covers broader activities meant to influence public opinionacademic research, grassroots engagement and organizing protests.

If a foreign entity is trying to influence American policy, we ought to know about it, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement to RealClearInvestigations that did not specifically address Hohn.

Recent public letters from TCI pressured executives at top companies where it holds minority stakes to implement full de-carbonisation of economies (net zero emissions) by 2050. The recipients included Googles parent company Alphabet Inc., Anthem Inc., Charter Communications, Microsoft Corp., Union Pacific Railroad and Univar Solutionsamong others.

Some analysts call such efforts by activist investors, including some pension funds, a way to impose policies too unpopular to be passed through legislation and not in shareholders interest.

Im very skeptical of the notion that [Hohns strategy] is shareholder value-driven, said James R. Copland, director of legal policy at the libertarian Manhattan Institute, whose Proxy Monitor researches ESG shareholder proposals. Theyll argue that theres a long-term value, but if hedge funds think they have the right answer on this stuff, then raise a bunch of capital for it and place bets to say that the market is mis-valuing this.
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ZURICH-SCHLIEREN, SWITZERLAND / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2020 / Molecular Partners AG (SIX:MOLN), a clinical-stage biotech company pioneering the use of DARPin therapeutics to treat serious diseases, today announced that it will present at the 38th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference on Thursday, January 16, 2020 at 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time (12:00 PM Eastern Time; 6:00 PM CET). The presentation, followed by a Q&A session, will be hosted by Dr. Patrick Amstutz, CEO of Molecular Partners.Audio webcastThe presentation will be webcast live. A copy of the presentation handout as well as a replay of the webcast will be made available on the company's website http://www.molecularpartners.com under the Investors section. The replay will be available for 30 days following the presentation.Financial CalendarFebruary 6, 2020Publication of Full-year Results 2019 (unaudited)April 29, 2020Annual General MeetingAbout the DARPin DifferenceDARPin therapeutics are a new class of protein therapeutics opening an extra dimension of multi-specificity and multi-functionality. DARPin candidates can engage more than five targets, offering potential benefits over those offered by conventional monoclonal antibodies or other currently available protein therapeutics. The DARPin technology is a fast and cost-effective drug discovery engine, producing drug candidates with ideal properties for development and very high production yields.With their low immunogenicity and long half-life in the bloodstream and the eye, DARPin therapeutics have the potential to advance modern medicine and significantly improve the treatment of serious diseases, including cancer and sight-threatening disorders. Molecular Partners is partnering with Allergan to advance clinical programs in ophthalmology and is advancing a proprietary pipeline of DARPin drug candidates in oncology and immuno-oncology. The most advanced global product candidate in partnership with Allergan is abicipar, a molecule for which phase 3 data have been filed to the respective regulators in both the US and in Europe. Several DARPin molecules for various ophthalmic indications are also in preclinical development. The most advanced DARPin therapeutic candidate wholly owned by Molecular Partners, MP0250, is in phase 2 clinical development for the treatment of hematological tumors, and has been granted Orphan Drug Designation by the FDA's Office of Orphan Products Development (OOPD). MP0274 is currently in phase 1. The company's lead immuno-oncology product candidate MP0310 is a FAP x 4-1BB multi-DARPin therapeutic candidate designed to locally activate immune cells in the tumor by binding to FAP on tumor stromal cells (localizer) and co-stimulating T cells via 4-1BB (immune modulator). Molecular Partners has closed a collaboration agreement with Amgen for the exclusive clinical development and commercialization of MP0310. The molecule has entered in phase 1 of clinical development in H2 2019. Molecular Partners is also advancing a growing preclinical and research pipeline in immuno-oncology that features its "I/O toolbox" and additional development programs such as novel therapeutic designs to target peptide-MHC complexes. DARPin is a registered trademark owned by Molecular Partners AG.About Molecular Partners AGMolecular Partners AG is a clinical-stage biotech company that is developing a new class of therapies known as DARPin therapeutics. The company continues to attract talented individuals who share the passion to develop breakthrough medicines for serious diseases. Molecular Partners has compounds in various stages of clinical and preclinical development and several more in the research stage, with a current focus on oncology and immuno-oncology. The company establishes research and development partnerships with leading pharmaceutical companies and is backed by established biotech investors.For more information regarding Molecular Partners AG, go to: www.molecularpartners.com For further details, please contact:Seth Lewis, SVP IR, Comms, & StrategyTel: +1 781 420 2361Lisa Raffensperger, International Medialisa@ tenbridgecommunications.com Tel: +1 617 903 8783Thomas Schneckenburger, IR & MediaTel: +41 44 755 5728DisclaimerThis communication does not constitute an offer or invitation to subscribe for or purchase any securities of Molecular Partners AG. This publication may contain certain forward-looking statements and assessments or intentions concerning the company and its business. Such statements involve certain risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of the company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such statements. Readers should therefore not place reliance on these statements, particularly not in connection with any contract or investment decision. The company disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, assessments or intentions.SOURCE: Molecular Partners AG
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Imperial Capital, LLC (Imperial Capital), today announced that it has hired Ray Rivers as a Managing Director in its Stamford, CT Office. Mr. Rivers will work closely with Imperials Sales & Trading Group to trade special situations including post-reorganization equities for institutional investors.

Ray is a senior veteran in our industry and brings a wealth of knowledge in special situations trading, said Tim Sullivan, Managing Director and Head of US Credit. "As our Sales and Trading group continues to grow, we are excited to bring his level of expertise to the team.

Mr. Rivers joins Imperial Capital with over 30 years of industry experience trading both equity and fixed income securities. Most recently Mr. Rivers was with Gabelli and Company. Prior to Gabelli, Mr. Rivers held senior positions at Cantor Securities, R.W. Pressprich, CRT Capital Group, and Bear Stearns. A native of Louisiana, Mr. Rivers earned a BS in Finance from Louisiana State University.

About Imperial Capital, LLC

Imperial Capital, LLC is a full-service investment bank offering a uniquely integrated platform of comprehensive services to institutional investors and middle market companies. We offer sophisticated sales and trading services to institutional investors and a wide range of investment banking advisory, capital markets and restructuring services to middle market corporate clients. Paired with our proprietary research and sales & trading desk analysis, we provide investment analysis across an issuer's capital structure, including bank loans, debt securities, the hybrid/bank capital marketplace (through our ELP Framework), post-reorganization equities, special situations claims and listed and unlisted equities. Our comprehensive and integrated service platform, expertise across the global capital structure, and deep industry sector knowledge enable us to provide clients with research driven ideas, superior advisory services, and trade execution. We are quick to identify opportunities under any market conditions and we have a proven track record of offering creative, proprietary solutions to our clients. Imperial Capital, LLC has three principal businesses: Investment Banking, Institutional Sales & Trading and Institutional Research. More information about Imperial Capital, LLC can be found at www.imperialcapital.com .

For more information regarding Imperial Capital, please contact:

Mark Martis

+1 310 246 3674

mmartis@imperialcapital.com

About Imperial Capital (International), LLP

Imperial Capital International, founded in 2011, is an affiliate of Imperial Capital, LLC with an office in central London. Complementing Imperial Capitals existing corporate credit sales and trading franchise, Imperial Capital International expanded the Imperial Capital franchise into the EEA. The company focuses on the entire credit spectrum and takes a full capital structure research approach to supplement sales and trading services to its European institutional clients.
Charged with murder of 53-year-old man who died from stab wound to the chest

A teenager has appeared in court accused of murdering a man whose 'dismembered' body was discovered at an address in south-west London.

The 17-year-old boy, from the Earl's Court area in central London, who cannot be named for legal reasons, spoke only to confirm his name and address at the short first appearance at Wimbledon Magistrates' Court today.

The court heard the remains of a 53-year-old man were discovered on Friday after a missing persons search, which began on December 1.

A teenager has appeared in court accused of murdering a man whose 'dismembered' body was discovered at an address in south-west London

The investigation led police to a property on Nowell Road in Barnes, in the Richmond borough.

The victim, who was named in court documents as William Algar, was 'found dismembered' at a property on Nowell Road, the court was told.

Earlier on Monday, the Metropolitan Police said a post-mortem examination at Kingston mortuary revealed the cause of death was a stab wound to the chest.

The court heard the remains of a 53-year-old man were discovered on Friday after a missing persons search, which began on December 1

The remains have yet to be formally identified, the Met added.

The teenage suspect has been remanded in custody and will next appear at the Old Bailey on Wednesday.

Scotland Yard have appealed for anyone with information to come forward.
Shot in the face, disfigured and left with just one eye, a dog fondly known as a 'beloved, goofy, trucker-snoring weirdo' has finally found a home.

Watson was just a puppy when he was found injured and bleeding by strangers in Mackay - with two bullet wounds to his tiny body, his face and leg.

After being saved by a local vet, undergoing countless surgeries and 419 days in the care of the RSPCA veterinary hospital in Brisbane, Watson was ready for adoption.

Watson (pictured) was shot in the face and leg before being left for dead near Mackay

Watson only needed one eye and canine charm to convince new mother-and-daughter owners Lauren and Tracey he was the fur baby for them.

'He followed Lauren as she walked, rubbing against the cage for pats and all the attention he could possibly get,' an RSPCA spokesman said.

The pair fell in love with Watson's somersaults and water-loving sprints, returning the next day to take him home.

The mother and daughter had only recently lost their last rescue dog to cancer at the age of 13.

After surviving countless surgeries to repair his eye and leg Watson (pictured) was nursed back to happiness and health by RSPCA staff before being put up for adoption

After spending time mourning for their old pet mother and daughter were ready to give a new dog a home.

'It was three months into their search when Watson picked Lauren and his forever home,' a statement from the RSPCA read.

'After almost an hour long meet'n'greet Watson, with his somersaulting and water-loving sprints, had left an impression on Lauren and Tracey.

'But they were level headed about the decision and wanted to check with their vet before rushing into a life-long commitment.'
The National Disaster Response Force will see its tableau, depicting its humanitarian efforts during catastrophes such as cyclones and floods, rolling down the Rajpath for the first time this Republic Day Parade.

The force was raised in 2006 for specific tasks of relief and rescue during natural and man-made disasters or similar life-threatening situations.

NDRF Director General (DG) S N Pradhan told PTI that it will be the first time that a tableau of the force will roll down the Rajpath here during the Republic Day Parade on January 26.

"It is going to be a comprehensive view of the work that NDRF does. It will depict the experience that the NDRF has earned over the years.

"The tableau will also showcase the capacity that the force has acquired in launching an effective rescue and relief operation, be it floods, cyclone, the CBRN challenge and the rescue in collapsed structures," the DG said.

CBRN stands for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats.

Personnel of the force in their distinct blue uniforms and orange jackets will also be present on the moving float.

The NDRF has 12 operational battalions at present.

These are located in Assam, West Bengal, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, NCR (Ghaziabad), Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh apart from multiple regional response centres in various cities.

According to the latest data, NDRF, which functions under the command of the Union home ministry, has rescued over 1.15 lakh people and evacuated over 5.8 lakh stranded persons during various operations within the country and abroad.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Australians are reeling from the hundreds of devastating fires sweeping through parts of the country. Since October, the wildfires have scorched millions of acres of land and destroyed more than a thousand homes. At least 24 people have died. With people displaced and wildlife populations gutted, here are ways to help.

Organizations that are helping

Australian Red Cross

The Australian Red Cross is accepting donations to its Disaster Relief and Recovery Fund, which has helped to send 1,285 staff members and volunteers to communities affected by the fires and to provide support to displaced people sheltering in more than 69 evacuation and recovery centers. The Red Cross also provides emergency grants to help people cover their immediate needs.

There are other ways to help if you cannot donate money. The Red Cross says clothing and household goods can be given to Red Cross-affiliated shops, or suggests holding garage sales or fund-raising events. Volunteering roles are also possible. After training, volunteers are deployed to fill emergency roles.

GIVIT

GIVIT is an Australian organization that matches donated goods with items that are specifically requested by victims of the fires. People have asked for things like car batteries, fence posts and gas pumps.
President Donald Trump speaks during an

Associated Press

President Donald Trump claimed on Sunday that his tweets now count as official notification to Congress about the US military's plans to attack Iran.

There is no basis for Trump's claim, because tweets do not constitute official congressional notification.

The debate over executive authority vs. legislative power in wartime reignited on Friday after the Trump administration announced the president had ordered an airstrike that killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran's most powerful military figure.

Since then, Trump has thrown gasoline on the fire by threatening to attack Iranian cultural sites if Iran retaliates  a move that could constitute a war crime.

Iran on Sunday responded by officially withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which substantially raises the possibility that the rogue regime will acquire a nuclear weapon.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump claimed on Sunday that his tweets now count as official notification to Congress about any US military plans to attack Iran.

"These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner," the president tweeted. "Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!"

Tweets do not constitute official notifications.

And while the president is not legally mandated to consult with Congress when a military action is deemed an emergency, only Congress has the constitutional authority to declare war. Previous presidents have also almost always consulted with a tight group of congressional leaders known as the Gang of 8 on issues of national security.

Related: Columbia Law School Professor Explains Impeachment

The debate over executive authority vs. legislative power in wartime reignited on Friday after the Trump administration announced, after the fact, that the president had ordered an airstrike that killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran's most powerful military figure and the second most powerful person in the Iranian government and political establishment.

Story continues

Soleimani was a revered figure in the rogue regime, and Trump was accused of committing an "act of war" against Iran by ordering his assassination, which raised immediate questions about how  and to what extent  Iran would retaliate.

It also drew swift backlash from congressional Democrats, who said they weren't consulted or notified ahead of time about the drone strike.

Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia announced shortly after that Congress should vote on a War Powers Resolution, which would require Trump to get Congressional authorization before taking addition military action against Iran. His announcement was endorsed by several other congressional Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

Trump, for his part, said he carried out the strike in order to "stop a war," not start one. But his actions seem to be at odds with his rhetoric, since veteran national-security and foreign-policy experts said the president's move was perhaps the most serious escalation in an already tense relationship between Iran and the US in years.

Trump threw gasoline on the fire on Saturday when he tweeted that "if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have ... targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD."

Deliberately targeting cultural sites or cultural heritage sites could constitute a war crime.

Because of Trump's inflammatory comments and Soleimani's death, Iran vowed revenge and could respond in any number of ways, including by attacking oil fields, launching a cyberwar, kidnapping and executing Americans in the Middle East, and even working toward acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Indeed, Iran announced on Sunday that it is officially withdrawing from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal.

The deal, which was negotiated by the Obama administration, had been crumbling ever since Trump withdrew the US from it in May 2018. Trump's decision to pull the US from the nuclear deal is widely viewed as the catalyst for a series of escalatory events that raised fears of a potential war.

Iran complied with the JCPOA for roughly a year after Trump pulled the US from it, but began withdrawing from the agreement as Trump carried out a "maximum pressure campaign" that included throttling Iran with harsh economic sanctions.

John Haltiwanger contributed to this report.

Business Insider
The events following the killing of General Soleimani should serve to show this cannot last: India might not have the luxury of sitting in the stands as the next West Asia crisis plays out.

Looking out at the world from his lavish office in Caracas, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso, founder of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, had watched nations transfigured by the unimaginable wealth their oil had brought. Yet, that afternoon in 1976, as he spoke to the scholar Terry Lynn Karl, Perez Alfonso seemed strangely pessimistic. Ten years from now, he told her, 20 years from now, you will see, oil will bring us ruin. We are drowning, he concluded, in the Devils excrement.

Five decades, almost, since that speech, the times coming for Indias fateful reckoning that grim prophecy. As West Asia lurches into a period of protracted instability, the world is also entering a phase where the United States will not necessarily be available to contain and mitigate the consequences. In the future, India might have to pay the price for the devils excrement in blood, not just dollars.

Iranian general Qasem Soleimanis assassination, on Friday, isnt just significant for what it is, but its wider geopolitical meaning. For decades, the United States held back from such actions, concerned at their potential to destabilise West Asia, and with it, the worlds energy security. President Donald Trump, though has proved willing to take that risk.

To understand just how significant this development is, one has to travel back the closing years of World War II when the global oil order was established. Persian oil, president Franklin D Roosevelt said to a British diplomat in 1944, is yours. We share the oil of Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, its ours. The devils excrement brought untold wealth to West Asia and North Africa, but it also meant endless war. For two generations, the United States engineered coups and civil wars to ensured it ruled by proxy.

From the 1970s, when the OPEC cartel sent crude oil prices hurtling up, the need to project power in West Asia became even more pressing. In 1970, crude oil sold at around $20 a barrel, at todays prices. In 1979, prices touched over $120. In addition, there was a series of geopolitical shocks: the revolution in Iran and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. All of these posed threats to the Strait of Hormuz, through which Persian Gulf oil reached the world.

In 1980, president Jimmy Carter laid down a thick red line to protect the US most vital interest. Let our position be absolutely clear, he said, an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.

The United States has gone to war directly in the region 18 times since 1980, seeking to keep sources and shipping routes secure. Hudson Institute scholar Arthur Herman, in a seminal 2014 paper, noted that keeping the regions shipping lanes, including the Strait of Hormuz, open to tanker traffic costs the Pentagon, on average, $50 billion a year  a service that earns us the undying enmity of populations in that region.

Princeton Universitys Roger Stern has estimated that the US oil mission cost it $6.8 trillion from 1976 to 2007. On an annual basis, he noted, the Persian Gulf mission now costs about as much as did the Cold War.

Then, in 2014, the shale revolution in the United States became the worlds largest oil producerahead of Saudi Arabia. That year, the tanker BW Zambesi carried a cargo of 400,000 tonnes from Galveston in Texas to South Koreareversing a decades-long ban on exports. The availability of shale was great news for Prime Minister Narendra Modiprices plummeted from over $100 per barrel in mid-2014 to under $50.

Herman notes: Iran saw its former stranglehold over Europes oil supply collapse as the US tumbling demand for imported oil allowed Europe to buy what it needed from other sources, and at relatively low prices."

Indias economy, too, floated on a sea of cheap oilbut there was a hidden cost no-one saw, just then. The United States no longer had an existential dependence on West Asias oil, which inexorably changed its priorities. Though the United States still maintains significant troops numbers across West Asia, especially in Kuwait and Qatarpositioned to defend Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf monarchiestheyre there to protect its allies, not the global energy commons.

For generations of United States presidents, ensuring Persian Gulf oilfields and shipping routes remained opened was an existential imperative. For President Trump, and his successors, that isnt, and wont, be so.

Ever since the late 1990s, as the Indian economy began to grow sharply, New Delhi has been aware of the need for strategic influence to protect its interests in West Asia. The ambition crystallised, in 2016, when Modi stood with Irans Hassan Rouhani and Afghanistans Ashraf Ghani to announce the creation of a trade corridor stretching from the Indian-built port of Chabahar, that he argued would alter the course of history.

The years that have followed, though, have provided an unhappy education in geopolitical reality. Faced with United States sanctions, India had to suspend oil imports from Iran in Mayinfuriating Tehran, and placing the future of this keystone project in question. That isnt the only problem: theres growing reason to fear India might have invested not in a goldmine, but a sink-hole.

Following, 9/11, optimism grew on tapping Afghanistans mineral resources, leading India to see Chabahar as a hub for access not just to Afghanistans economy but the central Asia states. New Delhi also saw Chabahar as a means of offering India a strategic toehold in Iran, which has been flooded with billions of dollars of Chinese investments in highways, railways and power plants.

Efforts to establish a stable government in Afghanistan, though, went nowhereand, in the cold light of day, it became clear some of the assumptions underpinning Chabahars role as a transit hub were questionable.

Prime Minister Modi, in 2016, argued routing cargo from India to Europe overland through Chabahar could bring down the cost and time of the cargo trade to Europe by about 50 per cent. From the experience of Chinese trains to Europe, though, it became clear this might not be true. Though trains took as little as 15 days to travel from Europe to China, half the time taken by the sea, oceanic cargo cost only a third as muchand companies proved unwilling to pay the higher costs.

In 2014, a study by the Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations of India tested the land routes to Europe and Central Asia through Irans Bandar Abbas. It costs $3,132, and took 33 days, to shepherd a 20-foot container from Mumbai to Baku in Azerbaijanmore expensive, and not much faster, than sending cargo through Rotterdam, in Holland.

The bottom line is this: for all the effort and cash, India has ended up stuck between the competing ambitions of Iran and Saudi Arabia, unable to either significantly influence events or insulate itself from their outcomes. Chabahar was a reasonable, win-win template for diplomacyin a part of the world where theres no great market for either of these virtues.

It isnt as if Indias foreign policy establishment is unaware of the fraught world it inhabits. An Iran-Saudi Arabia war, or an Islamist-led uprising against the kingdom, or protracted civil strife in Gulf Cooperation Council states, are all remote possibilitiesbut not so remote that India, dependent as it is on oil and expatriate revenues, can afford to imagine they dont exist. The thing is, New Delhi just doesnt have the resources and tools it needs to protect its own interests.

Fearing blowback, New Delhi has been hesitant to involve itself even in multinational interventions in West Asia, as the war against the Islamic Stateeven in a humanitarian role. Even as Beijing has moved to cultivate military partnerships in Iran, and Moscow in Syria, New Delhi haswisely or otherwisestood on the sidelines.

In 2009, then army chief General Deepak Kapoor had initiated a discussion between army commanders on out-of-theatre deployment capacities and expeditionary warfarebut the discussions have gone nowhere. And in spite of the humiliating experience of being without either intelligence or political resources through the Iraq expatriates hostage crisis, there have been no significant efforts to build capacities.

The events following the killing of General Soleimani should serve to show this cant last: India might not have the luxury of sitting in the stands as the next West Asia crisis plays out. The real price for cheap oil is bloodand it might just have to be paid.
Zarif: Iran to continue full cooperation with IAEA

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Jan 6, IRNA -- Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif referred to Iran's final remedial step under the JCPOA, saying Iran will continue its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"As 5th & final REMEDIAL step under paragraph 36 of JCPOA, there will no longer be any restriction on number of centrifuges," Zarif wrote on his Twitter account.

He added: "This step is within JCPOA & all 5 steps are reversible upon EFFECTIVE implementation of reciprocal obligations."

"Iran's full cooperation w/IAEA will continue," he noted.

Iranian cabinet in a statement on Sunday announced the country's decision to take the final step to reduce commitments to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The cabinet said Iran will observe no restrictions in operational areas, including enrichment capacities, enrichment percentage, the volume of enriched material as well as research.

The cabinet further stated in its statement that as the fifth step to reduce its commitments, Iran will abandon the last key restriction in the operation field put up in the JCPOA literally "the limitations in the number of centrifuges".

Thus, it added, Iran's nuclear program will not face any kind of restrictions in such areas and will go on solely according to the country's technical needs.

However, the cabinet stressed, Iran will continue cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as before.

Iran is ready to go back to its JCPOA commitments once the sanctions are removed and the country gets benefits from the nuclear deal, the cabinet announced.

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EU powers plan emergency meeting after Iran says scrapping limits on enriching uranium, following killing of Soleimani.

The substance of the Iran nuclear deal is slowly disappearing and European powers will decide in the coming days whether to launch a dispute resolution process over Tehrans latest violations, according to the French foreign minister.

Iran said on Sunday that it would scrap limits on enriching uranium, taking a further step back from the 2015 agreement with six major powers.

Its decision followed the assassination of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in a US drone attack, a move which heightened already heated tensions between Washington and Tehran after US President Donald Trump pulled out the nuclear deal last year and imposed punishing sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

The latest decisions mean that the Iranians can now enrich uranium without any constraints, with the quantities they want, in the areas they want, and with the number of centrifuges they want, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told BFM TV on Monday.

The repeated violations leave us today asking about the long-term validity of this [nuclear] accord. We are considering launching the dispute mechanism resolution  we will make a decision in the coming days.

Launching a dispute resolution process could eventually lead to renewed UN sanctions on Tehran.

Le Drian, whose country has led efforts to defuse tensions between Iran and the United States, said both powers needed to return to the negotiating table, but warned Iran against carrying out responses that could escalate the situation.

We arent at war, but if we dont mobilise to reduce tensions then the risk of war is there, he said. There is always room for diplomacy.

Asked whether the US strike that killed Soleimani was a political act by US President Donald Trump  who ordered the attack  to distract from domestic problems, Le Drian said the Iranian commander was not a choir boy, was on the US and European Union terrorism lists and had been mandated by Irans supreme leader to carry out destabilising acts in the Middle East.

The European Unions 28 foreign ministers are expected to hold an emergency meeting on Friday.

We must be ready to react to Irans breaches of the nuclear deal, a European diplomat told Reuters News Agency.

Asked whether this could mean triggering a mechanism that could result in international sanctions being reimposed on Tehran, the envoy said: It is increasingly likely, but not yet decided. Friday will be key.

Two other diplomats said France, the UK and Germany could make the decision before Friday.

Asked whether the mechanism would be triggered, one of the diplomats said: Not later than Friday, but, yes.
A quick glance at your phones weather app might have you thinking that Portland is in for a two-day blizzard next week. Not so fast, forecasters say.

A screenshot of the iPhone weather app shows snow in the forecast for Jan. 14 and 15.Kale Williams/The Oregonian

While there was at least one weather model showing low-elevation snow for the region coming Jan. 14 and 15, its much too early to start planning for winter weather in the metro area, said Rebecca Muessle, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

It will depend on several different factors, she said. And we dont have the confidence with just one model showing snow.

That doesnt mean the region will be spared from inclement weather between now and then. Rain is expected to stick around Portland for the rest of the week, with only a few breaks between storms and snow will likely be measured in feet vs. inches over the next week across the Cascades, the weather service said.

As for early next week, Muessle said a large trough of cold air was expected to push into the central U.S. and into Oregon east of the Cascades. Whether that will turn into snow down to the valley floor depends on whether that cold air makes it to Portland and if it carries any precipitation with it. Weather apps on smartphones typically pull their forecasts from just one weather model, which is why yours may be calling for snow.

Snow cant be completely ruled out, but the weather service, which has human experts evaluating up to 30 different weather models, is not currently including it in its forecast.

We stress that people should use a trusted source for their weather, one with real people looking at models, Muessle said, not just a computer generating it.

-- Kale Williams

kwilliams@oregonian.com

503-294-4048

@sfkale

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Teenagers Lamees Shaath and Euan Gepp from Newtownabbey at a demonstration in Cornmarket in Belfast city centre on Saturday to raise awareness of the mental health crisis in Northern Ireland

The deputy leader of the SDLP has called for an urgent plan to address Northern Ireland's spiralling mental health crisis.

Nichola Mallon said that a mental health action plan must be a priority for a new Assembly and Executive as more and more young people face despair.

The North Belfast MLA said that all parties are concerned and should come together to drive forward a strategy that will make a difference to the lives of people struggling with mental health or addiction issues.

Her comments come following a devastating few weeks over the Christmas and New Year period for a number of grief-stricken families across Northern Ireland who are now facing 2020 without a loved one.

On December 30 last year, former barman from Ballymena Christian Grey (29) passed away just hours after posting a heartbreaking description of his mental health battle on Facebook.

The former Ballymena Academy and Cambridge House Grammar School pupil would have turned 30 on New Year's Eve.

Just three days ago, 11-year-old Cillian Draine from north Belfast, who was a P7 pupil at St Therese of Lisieux on the Antrim Road, died suddenly. He is due to be laid to rest tomorrow.

"This has been a harrowing week for too many families with so many young lives lost," Mrs Mallon said.

"Condolences and words of comfort aren't enough. We have to be honest, admit that there is a mental health crisis affecting a new generation and come together with a determination to do something about it.

"It's clear to me that a Mental Health Action Plan needs to be an urgent priority for a new Assembly and Executive. We are failing far too many vulnerable young people.

"I will make this a personal political priority and I know that people in all parties will make a similar commitment. It's time to take action on the mental health crisis."

Mental health campaigners rallied on Saturday to call for politicians to restore Stormont and tackle the growing crisis. The Strike For Mental Health at Cornmarket, Belfast, was organised by lobby group Pure Mental and attended by over 70 people.

If you or someone you know is in distress or despair, call Lifeline on 0808 808 8000. You will receive immediate support on the phone and follow-up support if necessary
The 17-year-old arrested following a bomb threat Dec. 18 at Stevens Point Area Senior High was formally charged Monday.

Keenan Alderman is facing multiple charges, including terrorist threats, bomb scare, and bail jumping.

According to court documents, Alderman used a burner phone to call in a bomb threat at SPASH. Police used an application that allowed them to send a message to the number that called the school. They traced the number to a local Burger King where they found Alderman and two other students.

Alderman told police he had no intentions of harming anyone and made the threat in order to get a day off of school. He remains in jail on a $25,000 cash bond. Hell be back in court Jan. 21st.
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The Local Enterprise Office Naas will host a ' Start your own Business' course at two venues in Co Kildare over the coming weeks.

The course is aimed at businesses in and around the Blueway, and will teach the skills and knowledge to set up a tourism business which would be viable on a Waterways programme.

There will be two courses in Kildare, one in Rathangan, starting Tuesday 21 January, and one in Athy, beginning on February 20. Courses will run over eight nights, three hours per night with a maximum of 18 participants.

Deputy Fiona O'Loughlin encouraged anyone thinking of a new business in 2020 to attend the course.

Five million euro was recently secured under the Rural Regeneration Scheme to proceed with development of the 46km Blueway through South Kildare and parts of Laois. This will bring huge economic benefits to Rathangan, Lowtown, Milltown, Monasterevin and Athy said Deputy O'Loughlin.

Topics covered will include business plans, self-assessment, sales planning, accounts, taxation, employees, legal structures and websites / social media. Participants will learn how to source and apply for funding, and find their way around the red tape involved in setting up a business, like Health & Safety and insurance.

Its expected that the development will benefit the local economy upwards of 2.5m per annum when completed. Ninety jobs will be created in the construction phase with another 130 direct and indirect jobs in tourism. This looks like a really well-run and thought out course, covering all eventualities for a new business start-up, concluded Deputy OLoughlin. I would encourage anyone thinking of a new business in 2020 to attend the course.

Please contact the LEO on 045 980 838 for more details on participating.

Also happening in January is a stakeholder consultation evening run by the Kildare Tourist Board in the Riverbank Arts Centre on Tuesday 14 January 2020 from 6.30-9pm. Refreshments will be served at 6.30pm with the meeting starting at 7pm sharp. All are most welcome. RSVP by 11 January 2020 to events@intokildare.ie
The Kano State Police Command has arrested a 30-year-old housewife, Hauwa Lawal, for allegedly pushing her co-wife, Zuwaira Sani, 35, and her 18-month-old son into a well.

The Police Public Relations Officer, Abdullahi Haruna, confirmed the arrest in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Kano.

Mr Haruna said the police received a report on Friday that Ms Lawal of Rurum village of Rano Local Government Area of Kano, had pushed her co-wife and baby into a well.

The suspect had a misunderstanding with the victim. In the process, they started fighting in the house. The suspect pushed her rival along with her 18-month-old son, Mustafa Gambo, whom she was backing, into a well situated in their house.

He said the Commissioner of Police in the state, Habu Sani-Ahmadu, ordered the tracking down and arrest of the fleeing suspect within 24 hours.

Operation Puff-Adder, swung into action and arrested the suspect on Saturday at about 1.17 am.

The victims were removed from the well and were rushed to Rano Hospital where Sani was confirmed dead, while her son is alive and has been discharged from the hospital. The suspect confessed to the crime, the spokesperson said.

He said the case has been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department for investigation.

Once investigation is completed, the suspect would be charged to court, Mr Haruna said.

(NAN)
Left-leaning students unions staged a protest on the Punjabi University campus here on Monday against the violence that broke out at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday evening.

The protesters gathered outside the main library and carried out a march. University security personnel and policemen were deployed on the campus to maintain law and order.

Representatives of Punjab Students Union (PSU), All India Students Federation (AISF), Punjab Radical Students Union (PRSU), Democratic Students Union, Students Federation of India (SFI) and PSU (Lalkar), along with research scholars association, addressed the gathering.

The assault on JNU students was an organised act. Our voices cannot be suppressed like this. We would unite and come out stronger to fight such attacks, said Rashpinder Singh, an activist of PRSU.

Later, the students gathered at Nehru park near main bus stand and joined the protest organised by democratic teachers front and other associations of members of civil society.

Punjabi University teachers union besides former member of parliament (MP) Dr Dharamvira Gandhi and incumbent MP Preneet Kaur also condemned the assault on JNU students.

Similar protest was witnessed in Sangrur with members of PSU, PRSU and some human-rights outfits taking to streets to express solidarity with JNU students.

The protesters burnt effigies and raised slogans against the BJP and RSS while demanding arrest of the accused.

JNU is playing the role of opposition in the country and goons are targeting the students of this prestigious institute to suppress their voice. The government is continuously attacking JNU using different tactics such as hiking fee and implicating its students in false cases, said Gurwinder Singh, a state committee member of the PRSU.

The activists of PSU also held a rally at Akal Degree College, Mastuana Sahib, and demanded strict action against the ABVP, which they claimed had plotted the Sunday attack.
A city-bound IndiGo plane from Bengaluru made a priority landing at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport here on Monday due to a cabin pressurisation issue, a source said.

The plane landed safely at 8.29 pm, the source added.

Later, IndiGo, in a statement said its Bengaluru-Mumbai plane was accorded priority landing due to an "air system indication caution" mid-air and that the aircraft was grounded for inspection.

The airline, however, did not share the number of passengers on board the aircraft.

"IndiGo A320 VT-ITA 6E-6449 operating Bangalore-Mumbai had an air-system indication caution during flight. The pilot followed the laid down procedure which required him to prioritise the landing at Mumbai," it said.

The aircraft was being inspected by the maintenance team, the airline added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The word "unprecedented" is often used when discussing the nastier political tactics of President Donald Trump. And in many cases, that's a perfectly apt word.

But if you think there has never been anyone as reckless, transgressive, lowdown and cruel as Trump in modern American politics, you need to see "McCarthy," an outstanding, two-hour, prime-time PBS documentary on Joseph McCarthy, the infamous Republican senator from Wisconsin, airing Monday at 9 p.m. ET on PBS as part of public television's venerable "American Experience" franchise.

Based in part on a deeply-researched and richly-textured 1983 biography, "A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy," by historian David M. Oshinsky," and focusing on the years 1950 to '54 in McCarthy's Senate career, this is not a documentary that overtly has anything at all to do with Trump. But debuting in today's Trump-saturated America, the parallels are impossible to ignore. So too, is the physical link of Roy Cohn moving from McCarthy's chief counsel during his infamous Senate hearings to personal attorney and mentor to Trump in later years.

Commentary: How Trump finally turned Republicans against McCarthyism But in a perverse way, the charges of "McCarthyism" by Democrats reflect a crucial concession by Republicans after seven decades of denial: McCarthyism was, in fact, a massive, unpardonable assault on freedom, fairness and the rule of law. And strange as it may seem, we owe that new consensus to Trump.

Start with all the talk from Trump and some of his allies about conspiracies, with one of the latest being the incredible claim that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that meddled in our 2016 presidential election.

Unprecedented? For a president of the United States, yes.

But been there, done that for McCarthy almost 70 years ago in language even bigger and more over-the-top than Trump's, as indicated by the title of Oshinsky's book, "A Conspiracy So Immense." The phrase comes from a 1951 McCarthy speech in the Senate in which he says: "How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men."

The junior senator from Wisconsin was explaining the Communist takeover of China and expansion throughout parts of Eastern Europe as the result of what he alleged was a conspiracy that extended deep into the American government. And who were those Americans who "shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men?"

Dean Acheson, then secretary of state, was one. Army Gen. George Marshall, chief of staff to two Democratic presidents, and Secretary of Defense in 1951, was another. The Marshall Plan, which provided U.S. aid to a devastated Europe after World War II, was named after him.

Commentary: Yes, Trump is undignified. Demagogues like him have to be. President Donald Trump's crude performance last Saturday at an annual gathering of conservatives - he physically embraced the American flag,ca

McCarthy stopped short of calling Democratic President Harry Truman a conspirator working with the Communists to undermine America. The president was merely a dupe looking the other way and going along with all the deep-state perfidy, in McCarthy's fevered analysis.

If you think "fevered" is too strong or loaded a word, wait until you see McCarthy in the documentary when he is in high dudgeon talking about Communists as skunks and rats.

And how about those faked images and words that President Trump champions in social media like the wrestling meme he re-tweeted that shows him body slamming someone with a CNN logo for a face?

Using the technology of their day, McCarthy's team used the same kind of manipulated images to attack opponents.

McCarthy was not up for re-election in 1950, but Maryland senator Millard Tydings was. Like Trump, McCarthy held grudges big time and tried to personally destroy those he held them against. One of the people against whom he held a major grudge, according to Oshinsky's book, was Tydings for the role the Democrat played on a Senate subcommittee that investigated McCarthy's tactics.

McCarthy campaigned against Tydings in Maryland in 1950 accusing the Maryland senator of "protecting Communists for political reasons." On the eve of the election, McCarthy's staff circulated a composite photo intended to make it look as if Tydings and Earl Browder, one-time chair of the Communist Party USA, were in a "friendly conversation."

Tydings lost the election, and McCarthy was seen as playing a significant role in that, a perception that only enhanced his power.

Oshinsky, a professor of history at NYU, is featured prominently in the documentary, along with a half dozen other historians with similar levels of political and cultural knowledge.

Among those caught up in McCarthy's accusations was Owen Lattimore, a Johns Hopkins University professor and State Department adviser on China who was among nine people accused by McCarthy of being a Soviet spy.

McCarthy is shown on film describing Lattimore as "the architect of our Far Eastern policy, a policy that has so far sold into Communist slavery 400 million people." Donald A. Ritchie, historian emeritus of the U.S. Senate, tempers that claim by describing Lattimore as a left-leaning China specialist who, "wanted the United States essentially to support the Communist takeover and recognize China."

Lattimore, who was in Afghanistan at the time of the attack against him, called the charges pure moonshine and McCarthy a "madman" for lobbing them.

"Is Lattimore arrogant? Yes," author Oshinsky says. "Is Lattimore a traitor? Absurd. Is McCarthy getting traction for all of that? Unbelievably."

From the Editor: The 'paranoid style' is never out of style In his classic essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics, historian Richard Hofstadter has a phrase that brings me up short every time I

From the image of Oshinsky talking about McCarthy getting traction, the screen fills with a 1950 newsreel showing McCarthy sitting at a desk piled high with envelopes. He's going through the mail that has him "snowed under" with comments on Lattimore, according to the announcer, who says the situation is building to a showdown when Lattimore returns from Afghanistan to face a Senate hearing.

Lattimore's arrival back in this country is recounted for the documentary by his son, David Lattimore, against a rich tapestry of newsreel footage and evocative still photographs of the massively covered event.

"My mother and I went to what is now JFK (airport)," David Lattimore says. "And it was a strange, underground, almost sort of Dante-esque setting with a long corridor that he was going to have to come down running the gauntlet of, who knows, a hundred reporters and photographers with their big ... cameras and flashbulbs."

A montage of still photographs humanizes the family and speaks volumes about what it felt like to be on the wrong end of McCarthy's reckless cruelty.

"McCarthy became a demagogue by preying on people's fears and turning Americans against each other," writer and director Sharon Grimberg says in PBS press materials. "It's a story about the fragility of democracy and how someone in power can pervert democracy. And it's about being willing to challenge a bully and stand up for our sense of decency as Americans."

"McCarthy" is an effort PBS can be proud of. It meets the highest hopes that the most enlightened founders of public broadcasting had for the medium: to provide context to events based on facts and verified images. It is exactly

David Zurawik has been TV/media critic at The Baltimore Sun since 1989.
A Nigerian army officer on an official break for medical treatment has carried out a stabbing rampage that left at least two people killed and several others injured.

Olodi Blessed, a private from the 401 Engineer Construction Regiment in Osun State, killed a neighbour and a fellow soldier when he suddenly unleashed violence at the barracks on January 2.

His wife and four others, including a lance corporal, were wounded in the attack and now undergoing treatment in critical conditions at the hospital, according to military sources briefed on the development.

A woman, who was preliminarily identified as Mrs Iyabo, and a corporal were the two people confirmed dead in the attack. Their remains are at the morgue of the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital.

The wounded lance corporal was amongst those who tried to disarm Mr Blessed, sources said.

Mr Blessed used a jack knife to carry out the attack at about 9:00 p.m., PREMIUM TIMES learnt.

He was later detained after he was arrested by a team of colleagues led by a lieutenant.

Military sources told PREMIUM TIMES the troubled soldier was on a medical leave from the 17 Field Engineer Regiment operating from the counter-terrorism frontlines in Nigerias North-east.

He had recently attended a course at the Nigerian Army School of Military Engineers, Makurdi, before returning to the 401 Regiment in Oke-Gada, Ede.

A report on the tragedy had been filed to appropriate military departments and formations, according to sources.

A spokesperson for the Nigerian Army 2 Division in Ibadan, which oversees Mr Blesseds unit, did not answer calls seeking comment between Sunday night and Monday morning.

Rising Fear

Although there was no immediate medical conclusion on what triggered Mr Blesseds action or his motive, the level of violence he spontaneously unleashed has reignited fears of mental anxieties amongst service members and their family.

Thousands of Nigerian soldiers have been deployed to the Nigerias North-east since an insurgency broke out there in 2009.

There have been concerns that some of the soldiers could suffer severe damages to their mental health due to existing deployment policy.

Some officers sent to the frontlines could remain there for three to four years without being relieved.

The military has consistently denied that its deployment policy could be detrimental to the mental wellbeing of troops.

Dozens of Nigerian service members have taken their lives, and often alongside those of others, since Boko Haram war reached its highs in 2013.

The military has also seen an upsurge of soldiers embarking on a shooting or stabbing rampages in recent years. Many of the attacks were carried out by either soldiers still on the frontlines or those who recently secured a break.

In November 2017, a soldier opened fire on his colleagues in Chibok, Borno State, killing a captain.

In June 2018, another soldier receiving treatment for mental illness at the military hospital in Maiduguri, flipped a rifle towards own stomach and fatally pulled the trigger.

He had been on a protracted deployment for active combat before being sent to the facility after showing signs of mental health crisis, PREMIUM TIMES learnt at the time.
Ryan Pownall, left, a former Philadelphia police officer, and District Attorney Larry Krasner, right, who decided to charge Pownall with murder over an on-duty shooting that killed David Jones after a traffic stop in North Philadelphia in 2017. Read more

The murder trial of former Philadelphia Police Officer Ryan Pownall, which had been scheduled to begin Monday, has been delayed indefinitely as the District Attorneys Office continues to challenge the states use-of-force law for police  a key issue in determining whether Pownalls on-duty shooting in 2017 was a crime.

Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott on Monday agreed to postpone the trial until an appeals court weighs in on a request by the District Attorneys Office to alter jury instructions about when officers are legally permitted to use deadly force on the job. McDermott did not set a new trial date, and prosecutors and Pownalls defense attorneys did not say how long they believed the pretrial legal sparring might take.

At issue is the law governing when police are justified in using deadly force. The District Attorneys Office said in a motion last month that it believes the current statute is unconstitutional because it allows officers to fire their guns in order to prevent the escape of a fleeing felon.

In her motion, Assistant District Attorney Tracy Tripp asked McDermott to alter the way she instructs jurors about the law. McDermott declined to do so, writing in an opinion that she had no authority to summarily rewrite portions of a criminal statute.

Pownalls attorneys have argued that the current stance by prosecutors is an acknowledgment that their case is not supported by existing law.

One of Pownalls lawyers, Fortunato Perri Jr., said after Mondays hearing that the District Attorneys Office had chosen to ignore the law when charging Pownall and is now seeking to change it to have a better chance to win at trial. The defense has maintained that Pownalls actions were legally justified.

Pownall is accused of shooting David Jones during a traffic stop in North Philadelphia in June 2017. Police have said that he and Jones struggled over a gun in Jones waistband, and that Pownall fired after Jones dropped the gun and began running away. Pownall was fired over the shooting in September 2017.

District Attorney Larry Krasner charged Pownall a year later, the first time in two decades that a city cop had been prosecuted over an on-duty shooting. Krasner had been outspoken as a candidate about the lack of such cases brought by his predecessors.

Prosecutors have appealed McDermotts ruling about modifying the jury instructions in the case. Perri and Tripp each said they were not certain how long it might take Superior Court to make a decision.

Tripp also declined to say Monday what the District Attorneys Office would do if the appeals court declines her request.

McDermott allowed Pownall on Monday to be taken off house arrest while awaiting trial on third-degree murder and related counts.
For the second time in six months, Leslie Parsley is burying a son lost to gun violence.

Kapri Taylor, 28, of Salem was one of two men shot and killed at Salem Motor Lodge on Thursday night.

No arrests have been made.

Investigators believe the shooting was related to an incident the night before at the motor lodge in which gunshots were exchanged between two groups.

When she learned Taylor had been killed, Parsley was still mourning the loss of another son, 19-year-old Jireh S. Douglas, who was shot outside of a home on Sinnickson Street in July. No arrests have been made in that case.

Parsley said she is devastated by the losses.

No mother should have to keep burying her children, she said.

Police officers responded to the motor lodge just after 8 p.m. Thursday for a report of shots fired and found Isa Hallman, 28, of Salem, suffering from gunshot wounds in room 23. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Taylor and a 25-year-old Salem man were driven to Salem Medical Center by private car. Taylor was pronounced dead at the hospital and the third victim was transported to Cooper University Hospital. He was expected to recover.

The men were fired on as they ran up a flight of exterior stairs to room 23, authorities previously said. The gunshots came from behind a fence line adjacent to the motor lodge. Shots were also fired from room 23 and two guns were recovered from that room, authorities said.

Officials have not said those struck by gunfire were actively involved in the shootout.

Police search for clues Friday morning following a shooting at Salem Motor Lodge that killed two men and wounded a third.

Investigators believe this incident stemmed from another shooting on New Years Day at the motor lodge in which 15 shots were exchanged through the door of another room around 5:45 p.m. One person was treated for a hand wound in that incident and another suffered a graze wound, but refused treatment. No one was arrested.

Police say the incidents seem to involve a dispute between two groups of Salem-area residents, though its not clear what sparked the violence.

Parsley is angry over violence in Salem and said patrols should have been increased after Wednesdays shooting at the motor lodge.

Maybe that could have been prevented, she said, her voice rising in anger. I blame them for my sons death. ... We want justice. This is utterly ridiculous. I feel like Im in Iraq. Nobody is safe in this community. We need more patrols. I never see a cop on foot anymore.

Salem Police Chief John Pelura III said his department beefed up patrols following the Wednesday shooting and is receiving assistance from New Jersey State Police and the Salem County Prosecutors Office following Thursdays killings.

Patrols have been increased around Salem, he said.

Authorities have expressed concern that the feud could lead to additional violence.

Police hope someone will speak up about what happened to start the bloodshed.

The biggest issue were having is a lack of cooperation from the public, from anyone involved, as far as what may have precipitated this, Pelura said.

As the investigation continues, two families are planning funerals.

Taylor and Hallman were best friends, Parsley said.

She recalled Taylor as a devoted father of a 10-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son.

Kapri was a very family oriented father. He was a father figure for his brothers and sisters. He helped out with mentoring them and making sure they were on the right track.

Parsley also recalled how supportive he was when Douglas was killed. He was there for me during the passing of his brother, she said.

Douglas was shot in front of Taylors residence, she said.

Kapri was just minutes away from his house when he got the call. He was able to go to the scene and stayed there with Jireh at the scene.

Douglas girlfriend will soon give birth to his child and Taylor was helping the family prepare for a March baby shower, Parsley said.

He was just making preparations and plans with me for his brothers girlfriend. Now he wont be able to meet Jirehs child, she said. This is just so upsetting and disheartening to us. We just took a huge loss.

A GoFundMe campaign has been created in Taylors memory.

Anyone with information about the motor lodge shooting is asked to contact Det. Walt Christy at 856-935-0033 or Sgt. Ryan Donelson at 609-839-7615.

Salem Board of Education President Yuenge Groce, left, presents Kapri Taylor with his diploma during Salem High School's 135th Annual Commencement ceremony in 2010.South Jersey Times

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattGraySJT. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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A convicted robber has been jailed for at least 30 years for stabbing a young man to death after he was lured into a "honey trap" on Snapchat.

Ayodeji Azeez, 22, from Dagenham, was targeted in November 2018 after posting a picture of his new BMW car on social media.

A 17-year-old girl, who was spared jail, had ensnared him on Snapchat under the orders of Kevin Lusala, 23, known as Krimbo, and arranged to meet him in Anerley, south London.

She gave the innocent victim a hug before pointing him towards a car park, where Lusala and another robber were waiting to ambush him.

Kevin Lusala has been jailed / Met Police

She told jurors: "I got into the car and hugged him. I knew he was about to be robbed.

"I felt sorry for him but I had no feelings for him. I just did not want to be there when it was happening."

Lusala then stabbed Mr Azeez 16 times with a large knife, causing him to fall into the road, where he died.

Mr Azeez fell into the road in Anerley where he died / Nigel Howard

Chaise Gray, 24, then stole Mr Azeez's car, but abandoned it a few streets away, jurors heard.

Lusala, who went by Krimbo and Krimz on social media, claimed a mystery man called "Drago", who had gold teeth and tattoos, was the actual murderer.

But Lusala was found guilty of murder and conspiracy to rob by an Old Bailey jury.

The father-of-one, was joined by his co-defendants, all from south-east London, at the Old Bailey to be sentenced by Judge Mark Dennis QC.

Lusala had several convictions dating back to when he was 14, including for robbery and possessing a 10cm long knife, the court heard.

He was handed a life sentence with a minimum term of 30 years in jail for murder and 12 years for the plot to rob Mr Azeez, to run concurrently.

The girl had admitted being part of the robbery plot and Gray was found guilty of the same charge.

Gray swore as he was jailed for 10 years, while the 17-year-old girl wept as she was handed a three-year youth rehabilitation order.

The two men were attempting to steal Mr Azeez's BMW, which they abandoned a few streets away / NIGEL HOWARD 

Judge Dennis said. "This had been a planned ambush with the deceased being lured from his home in Dagenham with the expectation of meeting a female.

"This was a truly shocking and cruel attack carried out in broad daylight in a residential area."

Mr Azeez had worked as a driver for Amazon alongside studying media at Metropolitan University, his mother Toyin Adeigbe said.

She said: "No parent should ever have to bury their child and definitely not lose him to such a cold-blooded murderer."
New Delhi:

A day after the assault on students and teachers of Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), senior warden of varsitys Sabarmati Hostel announced his resignation on Tuesday in a letter addressed to the Dean of Students' Welfare. "Hereby, I am informing you that I am resigning from the past of senior warden/wardenship Sabarmati hostel because we tried but cant provide the security to hostel," the letter reads.

Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged properties on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police. At least 34 people, including JNU Students Union (JNUSU) president Aishe Ghosh, were injured in the violence.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the RSS-affiliated ABVP blamed each other for the violence.

Earlier, Union Home Minister talked to Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal and requested him to call representatives from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) for discussions. The home minister spoke to the LG and requested him to initiate discussions with representatives from the JNU, an official said.

On Sunday, Home Ministers office tweeted, Union Home minister has spoken to Delhi police commissioner over JNU violence and instructed him to take necessary action. The noble minister has also ordered an inquiry to be carried out by a joint CP-level officer and asked for a report as soon as possible, it said.

The Ministry of Home Affairs also sought a report from the Delhi Police about the situation prevailing in the prestigious institution and the steps taken to restore peace.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Senator Cynthia Villar

Senator Cynthia Villar said that government agencies can provide alternative livelihood and job opportunities to Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) affected by the Kuwait deployment ban.

The DOLE (Department of Labor and Employment), DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) and DA (Department of Agriculture) can look into alternative livelihood and local employment opportunities for workers affected by the deployment ban to Kuwait so that they no longer feel compelled to leave the country for the Middle East as domestic workers, she said.

Villar also suggests scaling down the deployment of domestic workers to the Middle East until a more effective monitoring system is established.

Because this is a business, recruitment agencies will accept job orders for domestic workers that may already be beyond their capacity to monitor, she said.

The senator also condemns the senseless killing of another OFW, Jeanelyn Villavende, in Kuwait.

She also hopes for an investigation which includes the alleged failure of both the local licensed agency and its foreign counterpart to closely monitor the working and living conditions of Villavende.AAC

The post Villar on Kuwait deployment ban: DOLE, DTI, DA can provide alternative jobs appeared first on UNTV News.
Tens of thousands of mourners have accompanied a casket carrying the remains of the General Qassem Soleimani through two major Iranian cities.

It came as part of a grand funeral procession for the commander killed by an American drone strike amid soaring tensions between Iran and the US.

President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb 52 sites in Iran if it retaliates by attacking Americans.

The US Embassy in Saudi Arabia separately warned Americans of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks.

Meanwhile, Iran vowed to take an even-greater step away from its unravelling nuclear deal with world powers as a response to General Soleimanis death.

The leader of Lebanons Hezbollah group said on Sunday that Americas military in the Middle East region  including US bases, warships and soldiers  are fair targets following the killing of Irans top general.

Hassan Nasrallah said evicting US military forces from the region is now a priority.

The suicide attackers who forced the Americans to leave from our region in the past are still here and their numbers have increased, Nasrallah said in a televised speech.

The US drone strike killing General Soleimani in Iraq Friday escalated the crisis between Tehran and Washington after months of trading attacks and threats that put the wider Middle East on edge.

The conflict is rooted in Trump pulling out of Irans nuclear accord.

Iraqs parliament voted on Sunday to expel the US military from the country.

The resolution specifically called for an end to an agreement in which Washington sent troops to Iraq more than four years ago to help in the fight against the Islamic State group.

The US has some 5,000 troops deployed in different parts of Iraq.

Iran Soleimani

The funeral procession (Alireza Mohammadi/AP)

After thousands in Baghdad on Saturday mourned General Soleimani and others killed in the strike, authorities flew the generals body to the south-western Iranian city of Ahvaz.

Story continues

An honour guard stood by early on Sunday as mourners carried the flag-draped coffins of General Soleimani and other Guard members off the Tarmac.

The caskets then moved slowly through streets choked with mourners wearing black, beating their chests and carrying posters with General Soleimanis portrait.

Demonstrators also carried red Shiite flags, which traditionally both symbolise the spilled blood of someone unjustly killed and call for their deaths to be avenged.

Officials brought General Soleimanis body to Ahvaz, a city that was a focus of fighting during the bloody 1980-88 war between Iraq and Iran, in which he slowly grew to prominence.

After that war, General Soleimani joined the Guards newly formed Quds, or Jersualem, Force, an expeditionary force that works with Iranian proxy forces in countries like Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Authorities then took General Soleimanis body to Mashhad.

His remains will go to Tehran and Qom on Monday for public mourning processions, followed by his hometown of Kerman for burial on Tuesday.

This marks the first time Iran honoured a single man with a multi-city ceremony.

General Soleimani will lie in state at Tehrans Musalla mosque on Monday.

It is unclear how or when Iran may respond but any retaliation is likely to come after three days of mourning declared in both Iran and Iraq.

Iranian officials planned to meet on Sunday night to discuss taking a fifth step away from its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, one that could be even greater than planned, Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi told journalists.
A masked man armed with a knife has stolen a box of beer from an off licence in Warrenpoint.

It happened on Church Street in the town shortly after 6pm on Sunday.

The man demanded money from a staff member, which he was refused before making off in the direction of Seaview.

The man was described as being aged in his 20s and was wearing a black top with white hood and a black hat under the hood. He also wore black track bottoms, black trainers and had a scarf covering his face.

Detectives have asked for anyone who saw a man matching this description or anyone with information to contact them at Ardmore station on 101 quoting reference number 1290 05/01/20.

Alternatively, information can also be provided anonymously to the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg openly criticized Donald Trump on Monday for playing 'checkers' with Iran instead of '3-D chess,' questioning the president's decision to kill the Islamist nation's top general Qassem Soleimani last week.

Soleimani led Iran's Quds Force, the country's top military wing tied to deadly terrorism across the Middle East including attacks on U.S. troops.

'There is no question that Soleimani had American blood on his hands and that he was a bad actor in the region,' Buttigieg said on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' program. 'But if there is anything that we have learned in the last 20 years about the Middle East, it's that taking out a bad guy is not necessarily a good idea.'

Buttigieg is one of only two Democratic White House hopeful with military experience. The other, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, has staked out a dovish position aimed at ending 'endless wars.'

The former Indiana mayor has tried to stake out a cerebral position that regards the Trump administration as short-sighted, impulsive and ruled by emotion.

Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg said Monday on MSNBC that Donald Trump is playing 'checkers' in Iran instead of '3-D chess' and failed to think through the consequences of killing Iranian terror leader Gen. Qassem Soleimani

Soleimani led the Quds Force, Iran's military service branch most aggressively engaged in global terrorism

'What we've seen here is no evidence that there's been proper consultation with Congress and, more importantly and more dangerously, no evidence that they've really thought about the consequences,' Buttigieg said Monday.

He claimed killing Soleimani has decreased the likelihood 'that Iran's nuclear ambitions can be controlled' and suggested the White House had failed to anticipate the Iraq parliament's desire to evict the U.S. from its territory.

'If they were thinking about this in terms of the 3-D chess that it is, and not checkers, we've not seen evidence of why they felt that this was the only, or best, decision,' he said.

Trump spent the weekend rattling sabers, insisting that Iranian cultural sites are fair game for the U.S. military and dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so could constitute a war crime under international law.

The president also warned Iraq that he would levy punishing sanctions if it expelled American troops in retaliation for the U.S. airstrike, which occurred in Baghdad.

President Donald Trump gave the order to launch a drone strike on Soleimani and has since been dealing with fallout from every corner

"There is no question that Soleimani had American blood on his hands & that he was a bad actor in the region. But if there is anything that we have learned in the last 20 years about the Middle East, it's that taking out a bad guy is not necessarily a good idea."--@PeteButtigieg pic.twitter.com/0lBhQ1LXTx  Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) January 6, 2020

A supporter of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah wears the words 'powerful revenge' on her hand, ahead of the leader's televised speech in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 following the U.S. airstrike in Iraq that killed Soleimani

Congress is engaging too, following its holiday recess. On Monday, two top Senate Democrats called on Trump to immediately declassify the administration's reasoning for the strike on Soleimani, saying there is 'no legitimate justification' for keeping the information from the public.

And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said late Sunday the House would introduce and vote this week on a war powers resolution to limit the president's military actions regarding Iran.

In a letter to House Democrats, Pelosi called the airstrike 'provocative and disproportionate' and said it had 'endangered our servicemembers, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran.' A similar resolution was introduced in the Senate but is far less likely to succeed.

Congress, which has the sole power to declare war, has complained that Trump did not provide advance notice of his airstrike on Soleimani in Baghdad. Trump did meet the 48-hour deadline required by the War Powers Act to notify Congress after the deadly drone strike, though the document was classified and no public version was released.

The administration is expected to brief lawmakers on its actions this week.

Buttigieg is running in fourth place in averages of presidential primary polls, attracting the support of about 7.7 per cent of Democratic voters

In their letter to Trump, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and the Senate Foreign Relation Committee's Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey said the White House's classified notification sent to Congress late Saturday under the War Powers Act was insufficient and inappropriate.

'It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner, they wrote. 'An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society.' They asked that the notification be declassified 'in full.'

Pelosi said the notification 'raises more questions than it answers. This document prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner and justification of the Administration's decision to engage in hostilities against Iran.'

Iran has vowed to retaliate for Trump's targeted killing of Soleimani. It has sparked outrage in the Middle East, including in Iraq, where more than 5,000 American troops are still on the ground 17 years after the U.S. invasion. Iraq's parliament voted Sunday in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for the expulsion of the American forces.

Coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and others who were killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike were carried on a truck surrounded by mourners during a funeral procession in the city of Mashhad, Iran on Sunday

A supporters of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or the MEK, an Iranian exile group, danced in Washington on Sunday as others held signs and flags during a show of support for the U.S. airstrike

Trump first raised the prospect of targeting Iranian cultural sites Saturday in a tweet. Speaking with reporters Sunday as he flew back to Washington from his holiday in Florida, he refused to back down, despite international prohibitions.

'They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way,' Trump said.

On Iraq, Trump said the U.S. wouldn't leave Iraq without being paid for its military investments there over the yearsthen said if the troops do have to withdraw, he would hit Baghdad with economic penalties.

'We will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame,' he said. 'If there's any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.'

He added: 'We're not leaving until they pay us back for it.'

The administration has scrambled to contend with the backlash to the killing of Soleimani, which marked a stark escalation in tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. military may well strike more Iranian leaders if the Islamic Republic retaliates. He tip-toed around questions about Trump's threat to attack Iranian cultural sites, a military action that likely would be illegal under the laws of armed conflict and the U.N. charter.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump exited Air Force One on Sunday upon their return to Washington following a 16-day holiday break in Florida

Pompeo defended the targeted killing of Soleimani, saying the administration would have been 'culpably negligent' in its duty to protect the United States if it had not killed him.

He did not provide evidence for his previous claims that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on Americans. Instead of arguing that an attack had been imminent, Pompeo said it was inevitable.

Trump's threat to attack cultural sites, rattled some administration officials. One U.S. national security official said the president had caught many in the administration off guard and prompted internal calls for others in the government to clarify the matter. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly to the issue, said clarification was necessary to affirm that the U.S. military would not intentionally commit war crimes.

Oona Hathaway, an international law professor at Yale and a former national security law official in the Defense Department's legal office, said Trump's threat amounted to 'a pretty clear promise of commission of a war crime.'

The president's threats to Iran did little to quell Tehran's furor over the death of Soleimani. Iranian state television reported that the country would no longer abide by any limits of the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with the United States and other world powers. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018 and stepped up economic sanctions on Tehran, actions that accelerated a cycle of hostilities leading to the last week's killing.

Schumer said he worried that 'the actions the president took will get us into what he calls another endless war in the Middle East. He promised we wouldn't have that.'

Schumer said Trump lacks the authority to engage militarily with Iran and Congress needs a new war powers resolution 'to be a check on this president.' To which Pompeo said: 'We have all the authority we need to do what we've done to date.'

Trump made clear Sunday that he saw little reason to give Congress advanced warning if he orders the military to carry out further actions against Iran.

'These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner,' he wrote on Twitter. 'Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!'

In response, the House Foreign Affairs Committee tweeted: 'This Media Post will serve as a reminder that war powers reside in the Congress under the United States Constitution. And that you should read the War Powers Act. And that you're not a dictator.'

Some Democrats running to challenge Trump in November questioned whether he had a long-term plan for the Mideast.

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Trump was ill-prepared for the repercussions of the strike on Soleimani and had alienated allies by not alerting them of the plans.
A 52-year-old man charged with the murder of a Perth woman who went missing last year is being questioned over the brutal death of young Geelong woman Annette Steward almost three decades ago.

The man, who was arrested on Sunday as part of a joint operation between Victoria Police and Western Australia Police, was charged with killing Perth woman Dianne Barrett after her remains were found in bushland at the weekend.

Annette Steward, who was killed in Geelong West in 1992.

The 59-year-old woman went missing last May and police say the accused man and victim had lived close to each other, but it is unclear if they knew each other.

Victoria Police revealed on Monday that the same man is being interviewed by homicide squad detectives over the cold-case murder of mother-of-two Annette Steward in Geelong West in 1992.
Iran,Bangladesh companies to participate

Bhubaneswar, Jan 06 (UNI) As many as 20 companies from Iran and ten companies from Bangladesh, in addition to the companies from across the country are scheduled to participate in the Odisha MSME International Trade Fair commencing here from January 8 to 12 next.

Odisha Minister for MSME Dibya Shankar Mishra told newsmen here that while the companies from Iran would showcase their products on IT, Engineering, Agriculture and Food Processing sectors, the Bangladesh companies would focus on handloom and textiles.

The trade fair is being organized by the MSME department in collaboration with the NSIC, New Delhi and Union MSME Development Commissioner.
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 6, 2020) - Getchell Gold Corp. (CSE: GTCH) ("Getchell " or the "Company") announces it has increased the size of its previously announced private placement. Pursuant to the offering, the Company may now issue up to 10,000,000 units (each a "Unit") at a price of $0.10 per Unit, with an over-allotment option of up to an additional 6,500,000 Units, for gross proceeds of up to $1,650,000 (the "Offering"). Each Unit will consist of one common share and one warrant. Each warrant will entitle the holder to acquire one additional common share at a price of $0.14 per share for a period of two years from the date of closing. At the Company's option, the exercise of the warrants issued under the private placement can be accelerated if the closing price of the Company's common shares trade above $0.25 for 10 consecutive days. If the Company elects to accelerate the exercise of warrants, the warrant holders will have 30 days to exercise their warrants after receiving notice from the Company via distribution of a news release. The Company has completed the first tranche of the Offering comprised of 10,008,333 Units for gross proceeds of $1,000,833 (news release dated December 23, 2019). The Company is proceeding with the second tranche of the Offering.

The Company may pay finder's fees in connection with the offering. The use of proceeds of the Offering are unchanged and described in the Company's news releases dated November 5, 2019 and December 23, 2019.

All securities issued pursuant to the private placement are subject to statutory hold periods in accordance with applicable securities laws. This news release does not constitute an offer of securities for sale in the United States. The securities being offered have not been, nor will they be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and such securities may not be offered or sold within the United States absent United States registration or an applicable exemption from United States registration requirements.

For further information please visit the Company's website at www.getchellgold.com or contact the Company at info@getchellgold.com.

William Wagener, Chairman & CEO

+1 303 517 8764



The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed this press release and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. Not for distribution to U.S. news wire services or dissemination in the United States.

Certain information contained herein constitutes "forward-looking information" under Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the private placement and the completion thereof and the use of proceeds. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "will" or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "will" occur. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, including: the receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals, use of proceeds from the financing, capital expenditures and other costs, and financing and additional capital requirements. Although management of Getchell have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. The Company will not update any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information that are incorporated by reference herein, except as required by applicable securities laws.

Not for distribution to United States Newswire Services or for dissemination in the United States.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/51180
.                  .     ,    ...
JERUSALEM  Irans dramatic announcement that it no longer intends to honor its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers could soon revive debate in Israel over a possible military strike on Iranian targets.

While Israel has kept a low profile since the U.S. killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani last Friday, it will be difficult to remain on the sidelines if Iran follows through on its pledge to step away from the nuclear accord. Israel, a fierce critic of the agreement, accuses Iran of trying to develop a nuclear weapon and has repeatedly said it will not allow that to happen, even if a risky military strike is required.

Israel is widely believed to possess its own arsenal of nuclear warheads, but neither confirms nor denies it.

The U.S.-led nuclear deal, which restricted Irans atomic activities in exchange for relief from sanctions, put any talk of Israeli military action into deep freeze. But that all changed Sunday when Iran, protesting Soleimanis killing, said it would no longer honor the limits on uranium enrichment and other nuclear research spelled out in the deal.

Iran denies it is seeking a nuclear bomb and says its activities are for peaceful purposes only.

Israeli officials had no immediate response to the Iranian announcement, although last month, with the nuclear accord already unraveling, Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Israel remained ready to take military action as a last resort to prevent Iran from developing an atomic bomb.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reportedly meeting with his inner Security Cabinet on Monday to discuss the latest developments.

Yoel Guzansky, an analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank, said the Iranian announcement puts the region in a delicate moment.

On one hand, he noted that Iran is only talking about its intention to abandon the deal and has not taken any action.

Theyre still cautious, said Guzansky, a former adviser on Iranian affairs in the prime ministers office.

On the other hand, he said that a failure by the U.S. and other world powers to spell out their red lines risks encouraging Iran to press forward and potentially put it on a collision course with Israel.

Where is the U.S.? Where are the Chinese, the Russians, the Europeans? Their voices are not being heard, he said. Without spelling out their limits, he said Iran could move very close, much closer to a bomb in the coming year.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has said that Israel came close to attacking Iran in the early 2010s while he was defense minister, but ultimately backed down. Such a move would risk not only the pilots and troops sent on a difficult mission in a far-off land. It also could unleash a war that could quickly engulf the region.

Israel has long considered Iran its greatest enemy, with suspicions about Irans nuclear intentions at the top of its concerns.

While Netanyahu put out a brief statement praising President Trump for ordering the air strike, Israel has otherwise remained quiet, apparently in fear of escalating an already volatile situation.

Josef Federman is an Associated Press writer.
GREENE, N.Y.  The New York State Police are investigating a fatal one-car crash in the town of Greene in Chenango County.

Troopers were called to a crash on Route 12 at 9:42 a.m. Monday, where they say a driver was traveling northbound, crossed into the southbound lane, went off the road and rolled the vehicle over before it caught fire.

Police have not yet determined what caused the driver to cross into the southbound lane.

The name of the driver has not been released while police work to locate and notify next of kin.
Donald Trump has doubled down on his claim that it would be acceptable for American forces to retaliate against any attack by Tehran by targeting Iranian cultural sites, an act which some experts believe would constitute a war crime under US and international law.

On Saturday, Mr Trump responded to Iranian promises of retaliation for his ordering of the targeted killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani with a tweet threatening to attack 52 separate targets, including some "at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture".

While Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used a series of Sunday morning television appearances to claim that Mr Trump "didnt say hed go after a cultural site," the president reiterated his desire to do just that Sunday evening while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One.

After inviting reporters to his cabin while flying back to Washington from a two-week holiday in Florida, Mr Trump opined that it would be unfair for US forces to not be permitted to target Iranian cultural sites because of the tactics used by many of the insurgent groups the US has fought since it invaded Iraq in 2003.

"Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way," Mr Trump said as he sat behind the desk in his airborne office.

But under both international and American law, there are many experts who insist it does work that way.

Prohibitions against destruction of cultural heritage sites in international date back to the 1907 Hague Convention, which required parties to an armed conflict to take all necessary steps" for the protection of buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected".

Additionally, Protocol I of the 1949 Geneva Convention is clear in its prohibition of "any acts of hostility directed against the historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples". The US is a party to both of those treaties.

Jill Goldenziel, an international law professor at Marine Corps University, tweeted: "Attacking cultural sites is a war crime unless theyre being used for military purposes."

The US has also has been a party to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict since 2009, which provides for further prohibitions against destruction of cultural artefacts and sites during war or occupation.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

Although the US helped draft the treaty and initially signed it in 1954, Cold War-era concerns kept it from being submitted to the senate for ratification until 1999, when then-president Bill Clinton did so at the unanimous recommendation of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ironically, the impetus for the senate's final ratification of the treaty in September 2008 was a wave of public attention following the looting of Iraq's museums after the 2003 US invasion.

It is unlikely that US forces would obey an order to target cultural sites within Iran, since following such an order would go against clear instructions in the US Defence Department's Law of War Manual, which states that "cultural property, the areas immediately surrounding it, and appliances in use for its protection should be safeguarded and respected".

But since he first entered politics in 2015, Mr Trump has often derided the very idea of war crimes as a manifestation of political correctness. He has often suggested that the CIA's enhanced interrogation program - widely condemned - should be restarted, and he has suggested that killing Islamic State fighters' family members would be an effective anti-terrorism strategy.

Mr Trump has also been an advocate for American soldiers accused of war crimes, and in November pardoned three US service members who were either convicted of war crimes charges or were awaiting trial.

One such service member, retired Navy Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher, was spotted at the president's Mar-a-Lago club last month, where he reportedly thanked Mr Trump for his support. Mr Gallagher has offered to campaign for Mr Trump's re-election.
The National Museum of Civil War Medicine, a quirky and fascinating repository of battlefield medical artifacts including skull saws and rusty scalpels, is amputating the Confederate flag from its logo.

Naturally, the Internet has opinions.

"Leave it alone," someone wrote on Twitter. "It is a shame you are so weak you cannot stand up for what you KNOW is right."

On Reddit, a commenter wrote, "Wow, so a museum dedicated to preserving a part of history that is the civil war, is too scared to educate people about the entirety of the civil war because they're afraid of offending some people that don't even like this country."

Not exactly, say officials with the Frederick, Maryland, museum.

Though the move comes amid a wave of controversy over the Confederate flag and monuments to Southern war heroes, David Price, the museum's executive director, said dropping both flags - Union and Confederate - had nothing to do with politics.

Rather, the decision was part of a year-long effort to rebrand the museum after some recent expansions.

"It's a little too complicated for social media," Price said in an interview. "But this is not about erasing history."

The museum opened in 1996 in Frederick, a town on the edge of Western Maryland whose churches, businesses and homes became hospitals during the war. It is housed in the Carty Building.

"Richard Burr, the most dastardly embalmer of the Civil War, operated out of the building," the museum says on its website, "sometimes embalming the dead in the building's front windows so passersby could watch."

(Embalming is no longer practiced in the building, which is welcome news to the trendy restaurants that have opened up nearby in the city's thriving downtown.)

In 2005, an expansion of sorts began. In partnership with the National Park Service, the Museum of Civil War Medicine took over operation of the Pry House Field Hospital Museum, a home that became a hospital during the Battle of Antietam.

Six years ago, the museum took over another property: the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum in downtown Washington.

To Price, his museum's logo - the two flags separated by the Rod of Asclepius, a symbol of the Greek god of medicine and healing - no longer represented the broader story of the museum's three outposts.

With grant money, Price hired the Invictus, a Pennsylvania marketing firm, to come up with a new logo. The company began with an online survey. Jeff Beck, the firm's owner, knew the Confederate flag would be "the elephant in the room," so he and Price decided to tackle the issue head-on.

"To state the obvious, our logo incorporates the Confederate battle flag," the survey introduction said. "The feelings that flag generates have changed over the past 20 years. Therefore, it is appropriate for us to study our brand identity, to confirm it represents our story and encompasses all of our locations."

The survey asked whether either flag should be in the logo. The responses, both in the survey and about the survey, were heated.

Steve Berryman, who runs the Confederate Monuments Protection Society, a local Facebook group, told the Frederick News-Post that the museum was embarking on a "gutless move" that "shouldn't be a public decision."

Still, the museum pushed ahead, dropping both flags. The new logo, to be revealed Jan. 15, is composed of a shield, the Caduceus medical symbol and three stars to represent the museum's three locations. The colors are blue, gray and red, a nod to both sides in the war.

Price acknowledged that dropping the Confederate flag could be viewed as a response to political pressure, especially after Destination DC, Washington's tourism bureau, declined to run a museum ad containing the logo in 2016.

"But there was really no pressure from any anybody to eliminate that flag," Price said. "The pressure was that we have a logo that doesn't reflect the organization right now, because we've grown from one to three. That's it."

And just because the Confederate flag is being dropped from the museum's logo, Price emphasized that images of the flag will continue to be displayed on the museum's properties - in exhibits and on souvenirs.

"This is not about banning the Confederate flag from our museum," Price said. "It has been around this museum since its inception. It's part of our history."
Oil has surged above $70 a barrel amid escalating tensions in the Middle East following the assassination of one of the Islamic Republics most powerful generals.

Futures jumped by another 3pc on Monday as the United States State Department warned of a heightened risk of attacks near military bases and energy facilities in Saudi Arabia.

Prices got another boost as President Donald Trump repeated threats of reprisal should Iran do anything and vowed heavy sanctions against Iraq if American troops are forced to exit OPECs second-biggest producer.

Oil was last this high when Saudi production facilities were attacked in September, knocking out about 5pc of worldwide output.

Brent futures rose as much as 3.1pc, or $2.14, to $70.74 on ICE Futures Europe and were at $70.20 at 05:41 a.m. in London.

The contract surged 3.6pc on Friday.

West Texas Intermediate advanced 2pc to $64.29 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
[January 06, 2020] Global Electronic Musical Instruments Market 2020-2024 | Increasing Demand for Customized Electronic Musical Instruments to Boost Growth | Technavio

The electronic musical instruments market size is poised to grow at a CAGR of almost 3% during the period 2020-2024, according to the latest market research report by Technavio. Request a free sample report This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005074/en/ Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled global electronic musical instruments market 2020-2024. (Graphic: Business Wire) The participation of students in extracurricular activities helps reduce stress, improve productivity, and enhance confidence levels. Thus, several schools, colleges, and universities are including extracurricular activities and add-on courses, in music, into their curricula. Universities and academic institutions such as the University of Cambridge, Princeton University, and Harvard University offer music learning sessions and courses, apart from academics. Over the years, there has been a significant increase in the number of school enrollments globally, which is also contributing to the increasing participation of extracurricular activities, including music. This will have a positive impact on the electronic instruments market growth during the forecast period. To learn more about the global trends impacting the future of market research, download free sample: https://www.technavio.com/talk-to-us?report=IRTNTR40716 As per Technavio, the increasing demand for customized electronic musical instruments willhave a positive impact on the market and contribute to its growth significantly over the forecast period. This research report also analyzes other important trends and market drivers that will affect market growth over 2020-2024.



Electronic Musical Instruments Market: Increasing Demand for Customized Electronic Musical Instruments Customization of electronic musical instruments, such as electronic guitars and pianos, is an emerging trend in the market. Leading market players offer customized products that are visually appealing and of high quality. The extent of customization can vary from the color of electronic musical instruments to their style. For instance, C. F. Martin & Co. Inc. offers customization of guitars, which allows customers to select from premium exotic and traditional hardwood options; design their own inlays; and customize the shape, style, and design of guitar necks.

"Other factors such as the continuous development of new products, and the rise in availability of music synthesizer clones will have a significant impact on the growth of the electronic musical instruments market value during the forecast period," says a senior analyst at Technavio. Register for a free trial today and gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Electronic Musical Instruments Market: Segmentation Analysis This market research report segments the electronic musical instruments market by geography (APAC, Europe, MEA, North America, and South America) and product (electric pianos and keyboards, string instruments, drums and percussion instruments, and others). The North American region led the market in 2019, followed by Europe, APAC, South America, and MEA respectively. However, during the forecast period, the APAC region is expected to register the highest incremental growth due to factors such as the rising adoption of musical instruments by people in developing countries, increase in disposable income, rapid urbanization, and improvement in living standard. Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report, such as the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more. Request a free sample report Some of the key topics covered in the report include: Market Landscape Market ecosystem

Market characteristics

Market segmentation analysis Market Sizing Market definition

Market size and forecast Five Forces Analysis Market Segmentation Geographical Segmentation Regional comparison

Key leading countries Market Drivers Market Challenges Market Trends Vendor Landscape Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Competitive scenario 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 17,000 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 [email protected]. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005074/en/

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Ambassador John Bolton, Donald Trump's ex-national security adviser and a central figure in the impeachment case against his former boss, has said he will testify before the Senate if it votes to subpoena him.

"Since my testimony is once again at issue, I have had to resolve the serious competing issues as best I could, based on careful consideration and study. I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify," Mr Bolton said in a statement posted to the website of his political action committee.

Mr Bolton had pledged to abide by the result of a court case brought by his former deputy, Dr Charles Kupperman. Dr Kupperman sought to have a federal judge determine whether he would be required to testify in the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry into whether Mr Trump violated his oath of office by withholding $391 million in military aid to Ukraine, in order to force that country's president to announce investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and a debunked conspiracy theory which posits that Ukraine  not Russia  interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

But the former White House aide noted that the judge, Richard Leon, had "in a carefully reasoned opinion", found Dr Kuppermans case to be moot because the House had completed its inquiry, "and therefore did not reach the separation-of-powers issues".

During the House inquiry, one of Mr Bolton's deputies, Dr Fiona Hill, testified that Mr Bolton was alarmed by the idea that military aid or a White House meeting between Mr Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky would be linked to the announcement of investigations.

Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Show all 26 1 /26 Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Donald Trump Accused of abusing his office by pressing the Ukrainian president in a July phone call to help dig up dirt on Joe Biden, who may be his Democratic rival in the 2020 election. He also believes that Hillary Clintons deleted emails - a key factor in the 2016 election - may be in Ukraine, although it is not clear why. EPA Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal The Whistleblower Believed to be a CIA agent who spent time at the White House, his complaint was largely based on second and third-hand accounts from worried White House staff. Although this is not unusual for such complaints, Trump and his supporters have seized on it to imply that his information is not reliable. Expected to give evidence to Congress voluntarily and in secret. Getty Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal The Second Whistleblower The lawyer for the first intelligence whistleblower is also representing a second whistleblower regarding the President's actions. Attorney Mark Zaid said that he and other lawyers on his team are now representing the second person, who is said to work in the intelligence community and has first-hand knowledge that supports claims made by the first whistleblower and has spoken to the intelligence community's inspector general. The second whistleblower has not yet filed their own complaint, but does not need to to be considered an official whistleblower. Getty Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Rudy Giuliani Former mayor of New York, whose management of the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001 won him worldwide praise. As Trumps personal attorney he has been trying to find compromising material about the presidents enemies in Ukraine in what some have termed a shadow foreign policy. In a series of eccentric TV appearances he has claimed that the US state department asked him to get involved. Giuliani insists that he is fighting corruption on Trumps behalf and has called himself a hero. AP Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Volodymyr Zelensky The newly elected Ukrainian president - a former comic actor best known for playing a man who becomes president by accident - is seen frantically agreeing with Trump in the partial transcript of their July phone call released by the White House. With a Russian-backed insurgency in the east of his country, and the Crimea region seized by Vladimir Putin in 2014, Zelensky will have been eager to please his American counterpart, who had suspended vital military aid before their phone conversation. He says there was no pressure on him from Trump to do him the favour he was asked for. Zelensky appeared at an awkward press conference with Trump in New York during the United Nations general assembly, looking particularly uncomfortable when the American suggested he take part in talks with Putin. AFP/Getty Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Mike Pence The vice-president was not on the controversial July call to the Ukrainian president but did get a read-out later. However, Trump announced that Pence had had one or two phone conversations of a similar nature, dragging him into the crisis. Pence himself denies any knowledge of any wrongdoing and has insisted that there is no issue with Trumps actions. It has been speculated that Trump involved Pence as an insurance policy - if both are removed from power the presidency would go to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, something no Republican would allow. AP Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Rick Perry Trump reportedly told a meeting of Republicans that he made the controversial call to the Ukrainian president at the urging of his own energy secretary, Rick Perry, and that he didnt even want to. The president apparently said that Perry wanted him to talk about liquefied natural gas - although there is no mention of it in the partial transcript of the phone call released by the White House. It is thought that Perry will step down from his role at the end of the year. Getty Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Joe Biden The former vice-president is one of the frontrunners to win the Democratic nomination, which would make him Trumps opponent in the 2020 election. Trump says that Biden pressured Ukraine to sack a prosecutor who was investigating an energy company that Bidens son Hunter was on the board of, refusing to release US aid until this was done. However, pressure to fire the prosecutor came on a wide front from western countries. It is also believed that the investigation into the company, Burisma, had long been dormant. Reuters Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Hunter Biden Joe Bidens son has been accused of corruption by the president because of his business dealings in Ukraine and China. However, Trump has yet to produce any evidence of corruption and Bidens lawyer insists he has done nothing wrong. AP Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal William Barr The attorney-general, who proved his loyalty to Trump with his handling of the Mueller report, was mentioned in the Ukraine call as someone president Volodymyr Zelensky should talk to about following up Trumps preoccupations with the Bidens and the Clinton emails. Nancy Pelosi has accused Barr of being part of a cover-up of a cover-up. AP Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Mike Pompeo The secretary of state initially implied he knew little about the Ukraine phone call - but it later emerged that he was listening in at the time. He has since suggested that asking foreign leaders for favours is simply how international politics works. Gordon Sondland testified that Pompeo was "in the loop" and knew what was happening in Ukraine. Pompeo has been criticised for not standing up for diplomats under his command when they were publicly criticised by the president. AFP via Getty Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Nancy Pelosi The Democratic Speaker of the House had long resisted calls from within her own party to back a formal impeachment process against the president, apparently fearing a backlash from voters. On September 24, amid reports of the Ukraine call and the day before the White House released a partial transcript of it, she relented and announced an inquiry, saying: The president must be held accountable. No one is above the law. Getty Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Adam Schiff Democratic chairman of the House intelligence committee, one of the three committees leading the inquiry. He was criticized by Republicans for giving what he called a parody of the Ukraine phone call during a hearing, with Trump and others saying he had been pretending that his damning characterisation was a verbatim reading of the phone call. He has also been criticised for claiming that his committee had had no contact with the whistleblower, only for it to emerge that the intelligence agent had contacted a staff member on the committee for guidance before filing the complaint. The Washington Post awarded Schiff a four Pinocchios rating, its worst rating for a dishonest statement. Reuters Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman Florida-based businessmen and Republican donors Lev Parnas (pictured with Rudy Giuliani) and Igor Fruman were arrested on suspicion of campaign finance violations at Dulles International Airport near Washington DC on 9 October. Separately the Associated Press has reported that they were both involved in efforts to replace the management of Ukraine's gas company, Naftogaz, with new bosses who would steer lucrative contracts towards companies controlled by Trump allies. There is no suggestion of any criminal activity in these efforts. Reuters Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal William Taylor The most senior US diplomat in Ukraine and the former ambassador there. As one of the first two witnesses in the public impeachment hearings, Taylor dropped an early bombshell by revealing that one of his staff  later identified as diplomat David Holmes  overheard a phone conversation in which Donald Trump could be heard asking about investigations the very day after asking the Ukrainian president to investigate his political enemies. Taylor expressed his concern at reported plans to withhold US aid in return for political smears against Trumps opponents, saying: It's one thing to try to leverage a meeting in the White House. It's another thing, I thought, to leverage security assistance -- security assistance to a country at war, dependent on both the security assistance and the demonstration of support." Getty Images Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal George Kent A state department official who appeared alongside William Taylor wearing a bow tie that was later mocked by the president. He accused Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trumps personal lawyer, of leading a campaign of lies against Marie Yovanovitch, who was forced out of her job as US ambassador to Ukraine for apparently standing in the way of efforts to smear Democrats. Getty Images Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Marie Yovanovitch One of the most striking witnesses to give evidence at the public hearings, the former US ambassador to Ukraine received a rare round of applause as she left the committee room after testifying. Canadian-born Yovanovitch was attacked on Twitter by Donald Trump while she was actually testifying, giving Democrats the chance to ask her to respond. She said she found the attack very intimidating. Trump had already threatened her in his 25 July phone call to the Ukrainian president saying: Shes going to go through some things. Yovanovitch said she was shocked, appalled and devastated by the threat and by the way she was forced out of her job without explanation. REUTERS Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Alexander Vindman A decorated Iraq War veteran and an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, Lt Col Vindman began his evidence with an eye-catching statement about the freedoms America afforded him and his family to speak truth to power without fear of punishment. One of the few witnesses to have actually listened to Trumps 25 July call with the Ukrainian president, he said he found the conversation so inappropriate that he was compelled to report it to the White House counsel. Trump later mocked him for wearing his military uniform and insisting on being addressed by his rank. Getty Images Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Jennifer Williams A state department official acting as a Russia expert for vice-president Mike Pence, Ms Williams also listened in on the 25 July phone call. She testified that she found it unusual because it focused on domestic politics in terms of Trump asking a foreign leader to investigate his political opponents. Getty Images Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Kurt Volker The former special envoy to Ukraine was one of the few people giving evidence who was on the Republican witness list although what he had to say may not have been too helpful to their cause. He dismissed the idea that Joe Biden had done anything corrupt, a theory spun without evidence by the president and his allies. He said that he thought the US should be supporting Ukraines reforms and that the scheme to find dirt on Democrats did not serve the national interest. Getty Images Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Tim Morrison An expert on the National Security Council and another witness on the Republican list. He testified that he did not think the president had done anything illegal but admitted that he feared it would create a political storm if it became public. He said he believed the moving the record of the controversial 25 July phone call to a top security server had been an innocent mistake. Getty Images Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Gordon Sondland In explosive testimony, one of the men at the centre of the scandal got right to the point in his opening testimony: Was there a quid pro quo? Yes, said the US ambassador to the EU who was a prime mover in efforts in Ukraine to link the release of military aid with investigations into the presidents political opponents. He said that everyone knew what was going on, implicating vice-president Mike Pence and secretary of state Mike Pompeo. The effect of his evidence is perhaps best illustrated by the reaction of Mr Trump who went from calling Sondland a great American a few weeks earlier to claiming that he barely knew him. AP Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Laura Cooper A Pentagon official, Cooper said Ukrainian officials knew that US aid was being withheld before it became public knowledge in August  undermining a Republican argument that there cant have been a quid pro quo between aid and investigations if the Ukrainians didnt know that aid was being withheld. Getty Images Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal David Hale The third most senior official at the state department. Hale testified about the treatment of Marie Yovanovitch and the smear campaign that culminated in her being recalled from her posting as US ambassador to Ukraine. He said: I believe that she should have been able to stay at post and continue to do the outstanding work. EPA Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal Fiona Hill Arguably the most confident and self-possessed of the witnesses in the public hearings phase, the Durham-born former NSC Russia expert began by warning Republicans not to keep repeating Kremlin-backed conspiracy theories. In a distinctive northeastern English accent, Dr Hill went on to describe how she had argued with Gordon Sondland about his interference in Ukraine matters until she realised that while she and her colleagues were focused on national security, Sondland was being involved in a domestic political errand. She said: I did say to him, Ambassador Sondland, Gordon, this is going to blow up. And here we are. AP Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal David Holmes The Ukraine-based diplomat described being in a restaurant in Kiev with Gordon Sondland while the latter phoned Donald Trump. Holmes said he could hear the president on the other end of the line  because his voice was so loud and distinctive and because Sondland had to hold the phone away from his ear  asking about the investigations and whether the Ukrainian president would cooperate. REUTERS

According to Dr Hill, Mr Bolton told her that he was not involved in the arrangement, which he described as a "drug deal" being "cooked up" by White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and the president's personal attorney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The House voted to approve two articles of impeachment against Mr Trump last month, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not yet transmitted those articles to the Senate because of concerns that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would not conduct a fair trial.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has called for the Senate to call several witness -- including Mr Bolton -- at the president's trial, but so far Mr McConnell has not been willing to guarantee any such thing.

In a statement, Mr Schumer called Mr Bolton's willingness to testify a reflection of continuing "momentum for uncovering the truth" in the Senate's eventual trial of Mr Trump and said that any Republican senators who opposed a subpoena for the ex-Trump aide or his papers "would be participating in a cover-up" in light of statements from Mr Bolton's lawyers acknowledging that he has relevant information to share.

"John Bolton correctly acknowledged that he needs to comply with a Senate subpoena to compel his testimony, if issued. It is now up to four Senate Republicans to support bringing in Mr Bolton, and the other three witnesses, as well as the key documents we have requested to ensure all the evidence is presented at the onset of a Senate trial," Mr Schumer said.
Reform USAID energy aid policies now! By Paul Driessen and David Wojick

Apparently unable to grasp the cruel irony, USAID Commissioner Mark Green boasts that electricity enables access to refrigeration to store fish, milk and vaccines. Electricity brightens the night and helps schoolchildren study. Electricity allows businesses to stay open later and makes communities safer. Abundant, reliable, affordable electricity absolutely does all of this, as developed countries prove daily. Expensive, intermittent power does none of these things. Unpredictable, on-and-off power cruelly promises refrigeration, heat, light, factories, businesses, jobs, modern schools and hospitals, better living standards, longer and healthier lives  then takes them all away, for hours, days or weeks at a time. Right now, the average Sub-Saharan African enjoys the blessings of modern electricity 1 hour a day, 8 hours a week, 411 hours a year  at totally unpredictable times, for a few minutes, hours or days at a stretch. Under Mr. Green, the US Agency for International Development would improve this horrific situation by ensuring electricity maybe 25-30% of the year: 7 hours a day, 50 hours a week, 2,628 hours (110 days) a year, still at totally unpredictable times, thanks to wind turbines and solar panels. Thats because the USAID wont support real energy. Its Deep State Obama era policies should have been deep-sixed the day President Trump took office. Instead, three years later, they still impose cruel and unusual punishment for Africas crime of being the last continent to modernize with 24/7 electricity. USAID runs a program with the promising, grandstanding name Power Africa. It began six years into the Obama presidency. And yet, five years later, it has delivered less than 3,500 megawatts (MW) of new generating capacity. Total installed US summertime electricity generation capacity is 314 times that: 1.1 million MW, to support less than one-third as many people as live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Even worse, this minuscule improvement includes no coal-fired and no nuclear power. Its mostly wind, solar and natural gas electricity generation, plus a tiny bit of geothermal and even a bit of heavy oil power generation  even though this still dark lights-free continent has enormous coal deposits. In fact, some 60% of Power Africa financial aid goes to relatively wealthy Nigeria and South Africa, not the numerous really poor countries  and countries receiving funds for wind and solar are not getting money for gas-fired power. Many countries get no energy aid at all; each of the others receives only a little. Its all because USAIDs flagship energy program is centered around and obsessed with low-emission economic development. Emissions in this context of course mean plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide or CO2, the trace gas (0.04% or 400 ppm of Earths atmosphere) that makes life on Planet Earth possible. So even under President Trump, USAID remains locked into the notion that manmade CO2 is the primary or sole factor in climate change, and any climate or weather fluctuations will be catastrophic. Indeed, USAID brags, climate change plays a central role throughout the entire agencys development efforts and throughout its partnerships with other federal agencies and multiple developing countries. USAID claims its programs help countries achieve self-reliance while pursuing clean economic growth and resilient development. Thats complete, self-serving, carbon-colonialist garbage. First, there is nothing clean, green, renewable or sustainable about wind and solar (or battery) energy. Wind and solar require 200 times more raw materials per megawatt than fossil or nuclear energy  and electrifying Africa, the USA or the world with wind and solar would require the biggest expansion of metals, minerals and limestone mining in human history. To end their intermittency, youd need billions of expensive 100-kWh battery packs, still more mining  and vastly more child labor and slave labor. Moreover, economies powered by insufficient, intermittent electricity cannot possibly be resilient. USAIDs lights on slogan is just as phony. Solar provides zero electricity at night and powers society maybe 30% of the time year-round. A 600-MW coal-fired power plant generates 600 MW pretty much around the clock; 600 MW of solar capacity provides maybe 200 MW of power in bits and pieces, amid clouds, rains and nighttime. Battery backup for cities or countries is prohibitively expensive. Wind is even worse. It typically takes sustained winds over 30 mph to generate full power, which rarely happens in most of Africa. Yet Power Africa boasts almost 2,500 MW of highly intermittent wind farms. USAID programs to bring electricity to people for the first time means all Africans will get is intermittent electricity. This is cruel and unfair  a stupid, callous, eco-imperialist way to spend billions of aid dollars. USAIDs anti-fossil-fuel, anti-development, anti-people policies are cloaked in lofty virtue-signaling language. Greenwashing PR guides and justifies policy. The agency claims it shares its world-class knowledge, data and tools to help countries predict, prepare for and adapt to climate change and lay the foundations for sustainable growth powered by clean, reliable energy and healthy landscapes. These claims fail every factual and humanitarian test. They may make Deep State, UN, IPCC, World Bank and EU technocrats  and their environmentalist allies  happy. But they will keep Africa mired in poverty, disease, misery, despair and needlessly early death for generations. USAIDs Low Emission Development Strategies do not forge partnerships with poor countries. They impose partnerships that provide inadequate funding for insufficient supplies of intermittent energy  while doing nothing to mitigate climate changes that are no different, more frequent or more intense from what Africa (and the world) have faced numerous times throughout history. And most of the aid money ends up in the bank accounts of ruling elites and wind and solar manufacturers. The lives of impoverished families improve little, and only at the margins. The electricity that the USAID, World Bank, EU banks and even Africa Development Bank (AfDB) so grudgingly finance cannot possibly support modern homes, hospitals, businesses, factories, communities and nations. These climate-centric, anti-development policies force African nations to turn increasingly to Chinese banks and mining companies, accept the onerous preconditions often attached to their contracts, and live with the horrific conditions that exist in their mines and processing plants. America, Europe, Canada and Australia  and their laws, regulations and operating standards  will be relegated to the sidelines. As to assertions that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have replaced the Sun and other powerful natural forces that actually govern Earths climate and weather: with China, India and dozens of other countries building new coal and gas generating plants every week, and driving millions more cars and trucks every year, USAIDs low emission policies and strategies will make no difference. Africas families and communities are not threatened by fossil-fuel-induced climate or weather that differs little from what they have confronted and survived numerous times throughout history. They are threatened by climate alarmist policies that keep them impoverished and energy-deprived  with few prospects for ever enjoying the living standards, health and longevity they dream of  and deserve. Its time to reform or end USAIDs inhumane policies. The agency should finance coal, gas and nuclear electricity projects in destitute African countries, insist on state-of-the-art controls for real pollution, but drop all CO2 emission rules. This would transform economies and save lives. If Africas own banks and governments would finance coal, gas and nuclear power, they too would create jobs, growth and revenue. President Trump should demand this via an executive order  and withhold US funding from the World Bank, AfDB and other anti-development banks until they also support coal, gas and nuclear power. He would stand tall as a true world leader on energy, climate change, prosperity and human health  a leader who finally terminated the global financial aid communitys deadly carbon-colonialist policies. Support for abundant, reliable, affordable electricity is good policy not just for the United States, Europe, Asia and other industrialized and developing regions  but for the poorest continent on Earth. This policy change would be the best New Years present Africas desperate people ever received. Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change and economic development. David Wojick is an independent analyst specializing in science, logic and humanitarian principles in public policy. Home
He's on holiday with his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones to celebrate their 19th wedding anniversary.

And Michael Douglas looked in high spirits as he cosied up to his two children with the actress; Dylan, 19, and Carys, 16, on their fourth day in Istanbul, Turkey.

Dylan and Carys, who joined their parents on their intercontinental excursion, which included a trip to Africa, grinned beside the Hollywood legend during a trip to the Grand Bazaar on Monday.

Family fun: Michael Douglas looked in high spirits as he cosied up to his two children with Catherine Zeta-Jones; Dylan, 19, and Carys, 16, on their fourth day in Istanbul, Turkey

Michael, 75, donned a black jacket and cream chinos as he placed an arm around his daughter.

His son Dylan was similarly attired, wearing a brown jacket and black chinos. The family were greeted by dreary weather in the city, as Dylan's jacket was speckled in marks from the raindrops.

Carys kept warm in a fur-lined leather jacket and stylish red leather trousers as she joined her family on a wander around Istanbul.

Damp: Dylan and Carys, who joined their parents on their intercontinental excursion, which included a trip to Africa, escaped the rain with a trip to the Grand Bazaar on Monday

Their guides carried umbrellas and wore plastic ponchos to ward off the threatening rain.

Along with ensuring the entire family immersed themselves in the variety of diverse cultures, Catherine, 50, has gone out of her way to document their time away on her Instagram page.

Prior to entering Istanbul, they explored the East African island of Zanzibar.

Anniversary trip: Catherine missed out on the Bazaar, after she posted an Instagram caption revealed she was on her way home on Friday (pictured on their wedding day in 2000)

Family fun: Michael, 75, donned a black jacket and cream chinos as he explored the stalls with his family

But Catherine missed out on the trip to the Bazaar, after she posted an Instagram caption revealed she was on her way home on Friday.

She said: 'On the plane home and thinking hard about what my New Years Resolution will be this year!'

Their daughter Carys previously revealed she was bullied in school over her father's age.

She told Town and Country: 'People would be like "Your grandpa's here to pick you up".'

Rain: His son Dylan was similarly attired, wearing a brown jacket and black chinos. The family were greeted by dreary weather in the city, as Dylan's jacket was speckled in raindrops

Dreary: Their guides carried umbrellas and wore plastic ponchos to ward off the threatening rain storm

Fashion-forward: Carys kept warm in a fur-lined leather jacket and stylish red leather trousers as she joined her family on a wander around Istanbul

The third generation of showbiz royalty added: 'When I was younger I didn't like the idea of having this name attached to me, this kind of "Douglas dynasty" stuff.

'I think what bothers me the most is that people think I don't work hard for it, that I don't need to work hard for it. That anything I do gets handed to me.

'When, honestly, I feel like it's the opposite. I feel I need to constantly prove myself to peoplethat I am not just my parents' daughter.'

Carys spent her early years in sunny Bermuda, a paradise far removed from the madness of Hollywood, believing her father was a pancake maker, not a movie star.

She said: 'My parents do a really good job of reality-checking me and being like, "Look around you. The life you have is extraordinary,''.

Innocence: Carys spent her early years in sunny Bermuda, a paradise far removed from the madness of Hollywood, believing her father was a pancake maker, not a movie star

Catherine said: 'On the plane home and thinking hard about what my New Years Resolution will be this year!'
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One of the major issues stipulated in the amended Securities Law which takes effect on July 1, 2020 is the establishment of the Vietnam Stock Exchange.

The National Assembly on November 26 ratified the amended Securities Law, in which the functions and tasks of the Hanoi and HCM City Stock Exchanges have been redefined.



Analysts commented that the new law paves the way for the upgrading of the Vietnams stock market and helps consolidate investors confidence.



The transactions of bonds and derivatives securities will be implemented at the Hanoi Stock Exchange, while stock transactions will be made at the HCM City Stock Exchange. In the future, there will be only one trading index system, or the VN Index.



The merging of the two stock exchanges, Hanoi and HCMC, cannot be implemented at this moment. The two exchanges need to operate separately for the time being and upgrade their capability. When there are good conditions, the Prime Minister will make a decision on merging the two exchanges.

The merging of the two stock exchanges, Hanoi and HCMC, cannot be implemented at this moment. The two exchanges need to operate separately for the time being and upgrade their capability.

The Vietnam Stock Exchange, once established, will be a 100 percent state-owned limited company. In the current conditions of the market, this mode is necessary.



According to the National Assemblys Economics Committee Vu Hong Thanh, the government will build a plan to equitize the Vietnam Stock Exchange after 2023. When the conditions become favorable, there will be no need for the State to continue to hold 100 percent of capital at the stock exchange.



Some experts commented that the decision not to merge the two exchanges at this moment shows the cautiousness of the government.



Meanwhile, financiers, investors and listed companies said they dont expect too many changes with the market though the amended Securities Law has been ratified. The news about putting all shares into trading on one bourse (except UpCom) has been discussed for a long time, but no headway has been made.



From now to mid-2020, when the amended Securities Law takes effect, the Ministry of Finance will have seven months to compile decrees and circulars that guide the implementation of the law.



At present, the HCM City Stock Exchange makes up 93 percent of total capitalization value of the Vietnams stock market. Meanwhile, half of the daily trading value of the Hanoi Stock Exchange depends on ACB stock.



Thoi Bao Kinh Te Sai Gon commented that the existence of the Hanoi Stock Exchange doesnt have much significance to the finance market, while it costs securities and fund management companies a lot of money. Besides, the state also has to spend money to manage the bourse.



Companies tend to choose the HCMC Stock Exchange, not the Hanoi bourse, to list their shares. Many companies have left the Hanoi Stock Exchange for the HCM City bourse.

Kim Chi

Funds seek profits after stock market officially upgrades Some active funds are pouring money into the Vietnams stock market in anticipation of the market upgrading and are planning to withdraw the money to make a profit when the upgrading is announced.
Today we'll take a closer look at Altria Group, Inc. (NYSE:MO) from a dividend investor's perspective. Owning a strong business and reinvesting the dividends is widely seen as an attractive way of growing your wealth. If you are hoping to live on the income from dividends, it's important to be a lot more stringent with your investments than the average punter.

With Altria Group yielding 6.8% and having paid a dividend for over 10 years, many investors likely find the company quite interesting. We'd guess that plenty of investors have purchased it for the income. The company also bought back stock equivalent to around 0.8% of market capitalisation this year. When buying stocks for their dividends, you should always run through the checks below, to see if the dividend looks sustainable.

Explore this interactive chart for our latest analysis on Altria Group!

NYSE:MO Historical Dividend Yield, January 6th 2020

Payout ratios

Dividends are usually paid out of company earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. Comparing dividend payments to a company's net profit after tax is a simple way of reality-checking whether a dividend is sustainable. Looking at the data, we can see that 345% of Altria Group's profits were paid out as dividends in the last 12 months. Unless there are extenuating circumstances, from the perspective of an investor who hopes to own the company for many years, a payout ratio of above 100% is definitely a concern.

In addition to comparing dividends against profits, we should inspect whether the company generated enough cash to pay its dividend. Altria Group paid out 88% of its cash flow last year. This may be sustainable but it does not leave much of a buffer for unexpected circumstances. It's good to see that while Altria Group's dividends were not covered by profits, at least they are affordable from a cash perspective. If executives were to continue paying more in dividends than the company reported in profits, we'd view this as a warning sign. Very few companies are able to sustainably pay dividends larger than their reported earnings.

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Is Altria Group's Balance Sheet Risky?

As Altria Group's dividend was not well covered by earnings, we need to check its balance sheet for signs of financial distress. A quick check of its financial situation can be done with two ratios: net debt divided by EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation), and net interest cover. Net debt to EBITDA is a measure of a company's total debt. Net interest cover measures the ability to meet interest payments. Essentially we check that a) the company does not have too much debt, and b) that it can afford to pay the interest. With net debt of 2.44 times its EBITDA, Altria Group's debt burden is within a normal range for most listed companies.

Net interest cover can be calculated by dividing earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) by the company's net interest expense. Net interest cover of 10.08 times its interest expense appears reasonable for Altria Group, although we're conscious that even high interest cover doesn't make a company bulletproof.

We update our data on Altria Group every 24 hours, so you can always get our latest analysis of its financial health, here.

Dividend Volatility

Before buying a stock for its income, we want to see if the dividends have been stable in the past, and if the company has a track record of maintaining its dividend. Altria Group has been paying dividends for a long time, but for the purpose of this analysis, we only examine the past 10 years of payments. The dividend has been stable over the past 10 years, which is great. We think this could suggest some resilience to the business and its dividends. During the past ten-year period, the first annual payment was US$1.28 in 2010, compared to US$3.36 last year. Dividends per share have grown at approximately 10% per year over this time.

With rapid dividend growth and no notable cuts to the dividend over a lengthy period of time, we think this company has a lot going for it.

Dividend Growth Potential

While dividend payments have been relatively reliable, it would also be nice if earnings per share (EPS) were growing, as this is essential to maintaining the dividend's purchasing power over the long term. Over the past five years, it looks as though Altria Group's EPS have declined at around 16% a year. A sharp decline in earnings per share is not great from from a dividend perspective, as even conservative payout ratios can come under pressure if earnings fall far enough.

Conclusion

Dividend investors should always want to know if a) a company's dividends are affordable, b) if there is a track record of consistent payments, and c) if the dividend is capable of growing. We're not keen on the fact that Altria Group paid out such a high percentage of its income, although its cashflow is in better shape. Moreover, earnings have been shrinking. While the dividends have been fairly steady, we'd wonder for how much longer this will be sustainable if earnings continue to decline. Overall, Altria Group falls short in several key areas here. Unless the investor has strong grounds for an alternative conclusion, we find it hard to get interested in a dividend stock with these characteristics.

Given that earnings are not growing, the dividend does not look nearly so attractive. Very few businesses see earnings consistently shrink year after year in perpetuity though, and so it might be worth seeing what the 13 analysts we track are forecasting for the future.

Looking for more high-yielding dividend ideas? Try our curated list of dividend stocks with a yield above 3%.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Starting at age 13, Eleana Lukes was used in a family-run, multi-state prostitution operation . At age 19, her testimony in federal court helped bring the operation down in a landmark human trafficking case.

Lukes joins Bukola Oriola as Minnesota human trafficking survivors scheduled to speak at a human trafficking awareness event Saturday at Assisi Heights Spirituality Center.

For nearly two decades, a Minneapolis-based prostitution organization victimized dozens of young women and teens in an operation that reached 24 states and Ontario.

Lukes doesnt like speaking in public.

"I feel like Im the worst public speaker ever," she said.

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However, two things happened after the human trafficking ring was broken that Lukes hopes she can change by talking about her experiences.

First, neighbors next to the Minneapolis home where many of the teens were kept said they noticed odd activity there but said nothing.

Then, after Lukes testimony helped bring ring leaders to justice, she found herself with no future plans and no support. She ended up with legal problems of her own and even served some time in prison.

Lukes said she wants people to be aware that human trafficking can happen anywhere. Second, she wants to make sure survivors get the support they need.

"I have to use my story and my life to help people still trapped in that life," she said.

Today, Lukes is on the cusp of a second masters degree and becoming a licensed alcohol and drug counselor in Minnesota.

If you want to learn about Oriolas experience as a human trafficking survivor, she suggests you read the book she published in 2016, "Imprisoned: The Travails of a Trafficked Victim."

Oriola isnt interested in entertaining people. When she speaks publicly about human trafficking, she uses her experiences to bolster her main messages  how to spot signs of human trafficking and how to help survivors.

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She tells survivors to brace themselves.

"If you think people are going to be nice, youre living on another planet," she said.

If Oriola knows there are human trafficking victims or survivors in the room where shes speaking, she will open up about her own experience.

"Thats when Im speaking from the heart," she said. "When Im speaking from the heart, I dont lecture."

Oriola also wants to help survivors find support.

"I want to help them build resiliency, and I want to help them know they have something to offer society," she said.

Oriola would know. She currently serves as a member of the United States Advisory Council on Human Trafficking. Last month, she addressed the United Nations on the topic.

Oriola is an award-winning Nigerian journalist who came to work in the U.S. in 2005. She later married a U.S. citizen, who then collected the entirety of her pay and controlled her personal relationships and threatened to call police on her if she tried to do anything outside his control or without his permission.

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Ironically, when he did call the police on her one day, she began her journey toward freedom. However, it wasnt the responding police officers who caught on to her situation. A health care professional, whom police referred her to, understood her situation and directed her to help, she said.

Oriola said she wants to help people like police responding to calls better recognize signs of human trafficking and be prepared to help. Often, human trafficking subjects arent aware of their situation, either. Oriola said she wasnt at the time.

"It took a long time to wrap my head around it," she said. A long time and therapy, she added.

"I could have called the police on several occasions, but I didnt because I didnt know," she said.

That can prevent victims from coming forward, as much as fear. The reaction they often get can also be a deterrent for seeking help.

The event begins at 8:30 a.m. at Assisi Heights Auditorium. The event is free, but registration is required.

When: 8:30 a.m., Saturday

Where: Assisi Heights Auditorium

How much: Free, but registration is required.
Irans announcement  that its nuclear program will have no limitations in production, including enrichment capacity  was among the biggest consequences so far in the chaotic aftermath of the killing in Baghdad of the commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the countrys de facto No. 2 official.

Iran said it would return to the nuclear limits if American sanctions  which President Trump imposed on the country after withdrawing the U.S. from the nuclear deal in 2018  were lifted. But amid widespread anger and mourning in Iran, Tehran is widely expected to hit back at American interests, and Mr. Trump has said the U.S. could strike sites in Iran if the country retaliates.

Responses: American allies in the Middle East, fearing they may pay a price for the killing of General Suleimani, have largely kept quiet about it. And the European Unions foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has invited the Iranian foreign minister to Brussels for talks.

Whats next: Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi of Iraq is expected to sign a bill, approved by Parliament on Sunday, that would expel U.S. troops from the country. And a U.S.-led coalition says its ending its yearslong mission of attacking the Islamic State and training local forces in Syria and Iraq.

Analysis: Our chief White House correspondent writes that the fallout from the killing will test whether Mr. Trumps critics  who have long argued that he was too erratic to face moments of crisis  were correct.
As a national security advisor under former President Obama, Rep. Andy Kim spent years tracking the Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, the most dangerous person in the Middle East.

He may be even more dangerous now that hes dead. We know that Iran will retaliate, after the Trump administration took him out in a drone strike. Any American casualty could push us into a full-blown war.

Already, we are seeing our anti-nuclear efforts derailed, our standing in Iraq weakened and the fight against ISIS undermined  and what if drone attacks like this spread to other foreign leaders?

Kim, D-3rd Dist., a member of the House Armed Services committee, spoke to the Star-Ledger editorial board about the potential fallout. Below is a transcript, edited for clarity.

Q. Would you call Soleimani a terrorist?

A. Well, look at the actions he took  he has a lot of American blood on his hands. Regardless of what we call him, he is somebody who has brutalized American troops, our diplomats and our civilians. What matters is what you do.

Q. He killed hundreds of Americans by giving advanced roadside bombs with the capability to penetrate armored vehicles to militias fighting our troops in Iraq. Would you call that terrorism, given that civilians were not targeted?

A. The roadside bombs had such lethality. Molten hot metal would shoot out at 2,000 meters a second, six times the speed of sound. These were definitely weapons meant to cause as much damage as possible. Im not an attorney, but Ive certainly seen a lot of Americans die because of these.

Q. Soleimani was commander of Quds Force in Iran. Tell us about that group, and how he used it.

A. The Quds Force operates far and wide. They are in some ways special operations forces, in other ways embedded at all levels of society, both in Iran and outside. They have strong presences throughout the Middle East  in particular, theyve tried to create a land bridge (used to send munitions from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon.)

But they also have positions all over the world. I have concerns about Hezbollah and Quds Force in South America, Africa, Southeast Asia and elsewhere. This is a wide network that was under Qassem Soleimanis control.

Q. How would you describe his responsibility for attacks launched by Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist group by the United States?

A. He provides weaponry and financial assistance to Hezbollah and to Shia militia groups in Iraq. They all operate with a certain amount of semi-autonomous control, but Soleimani has a lot of influence over them. He has been feeding these groups weapons and other ways to strike at us.

Q. How would you compare him to Osama bin Laden?

A. Theyre two people who have dedicated their lives to trying to murder other people. They see violence as their mode of power, as a currency by which to operate, to promote their own agendas.

Q. Now that weve used a drone to assassinate a leading government figure, will we see more of that? Could U.S. officials be in danger? How about our allies?

A. Certainly there are a lot of concerns about drone usage, especially for targeted attacks. When I worked on the counter-ISIS fight, air attacks were part of the arsenal we used. The technology is becoming more and more available to others, and that should be of high concern to us.

Q. Is the Trump administration expecting Iran to respond or back down?

A. I think theyre expecting Iran to respond. We should all expect that. How it will manifest, were not quite sure. Iran often engages in asymmetric warfare. We could see targeted attempts at killings or kidnappings in Iraq, Lebanon or anywhere around the world. They also have cybersecurity capabilities. We need to be prepared for it all.

Q. Iran said it will abandon the nuclear arms treaty and proceed with efforts to build bombs. How serious is that threat?

A. Its a very serious threat. That would certainly be a game changer in how we or other countries are able to interact with Iran. We see this already with North Korea. I find it frustrating that this strike has essentially closed the door for diplomacy. Whats left on the table are all ranges of nightmarish options.

Q. Whats the risk that the United States or Israel will bomb nuclear sites? Could that spark a full-out war?

A. If there were a direct attack on Iranian soil, that certainly would be an escalation. I dont know exactly how they would respond. They do know theyre going up against the strongest military force on the planet, and as a result, will probably target us in ways that give them some comparative advantages.

Q. The House is expected to vote this week on a resolution that would curtail the presidents ability to strike Iran without Congressional approval. Will that make us more or less safe?

A. Its a step to reassert our constitutional duties to be able to declare war. This administration has not been steadfast in terms of recognizing that they do not have current authorities for an offensive war against Iran. They tried to use the self-defense argument, from what I could tell, to justify this most recent killing. If they want to do something more, they certainly need to recognize that they cannot do so without approval from Congress.

Q. What will this do to our fight against ISIS?

A. It appears to have essentially halted our fight against ISIS. Our forces in Iraq are now focused on protecting our bases and personnel out there, because of the heightened threat. And beyond that, the Iraqi council and representatives voted to expel U.S. forces from Iraq.

If that happens, it would basically end all of our efforts in Iraq and in Syria, because our remaining forces in Syria depend on transit through Iraq. Our departure will likely spur the rest of coalition nations to remove their personnel and forces as well.

We could really see the unraveling of the counter-ISIS mission in the heart of their designated caliphate. ISIS has a mission to re-establish territorial gains in the coming years. This just gives them a second chance to be able to do so.

Q. Do you think this strike will succeed in modifying Irans behavior?

A. So far, its emboldened the hardliners. Its turned a lot of people who might have been critical of Soleimani into people who see him now as a martyr. It has made it much more difficult to imagine a diplomatic engagement with them to stop nuclear pursuits. I cant imagine this is the outcome that the Trump administration was expecting.

Q. Could it modify Irans behavior in ways we like?

A. At this point, I cant see that. It seems to have only emboldened them.

Q. We dont see anything youre citing that indicates this might have been a good idea. Would you say that this strike was a mistake?

A. When the Bush and Obama administrations assessed whether or not to strike Soleimani, they chose not to, because of their calculations of risk. Im hoping to get more information about why the Trump administration made this decision.

But I think it puts us at greater risk. As a former national security official, I always measured decisions on whether it makes Americans more safe. And right now, this does not feel like something that at all makes us more safe.

Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
SHENANDOAH, Iowa - Last month, Sen. Cory Booker warned that not making the December debate would be disastrous for his underdog presidential campaign, stretching his already limited resources to the brink and robbing him of crucial airtime just as many Democrats are deciding whom to support.

His urgent plea wasn't enough. Booker, D-N.J., failed to qualify for the Dec. 19 debate because of low poll numbers. He seems likely to miss the next debate, scheduled for Jan. 14 in Des Moines, too.

Even so, he is trudging along as several other candidates, including Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Julian Castro, have bowed out. It's not because he's seen a spike in the polls, or a sudden influx of money. Rather, Booker's campaign seems buoyed by the unusually large crowd of undecided voters, along with some die-hard supporters unconcerned about electability.

In tiny Shenandoah, a deeply rural farming community in southwestern Iowa where the landscape is dotted with Trump flags, about 150 people turned out to hear Booker speak on New Year's Day, packing so tightly into a small restaurant that some attendees were forced to peer through windows to catch a glimpse of the New Jersey senator.

It was one of three overflow events Booker held Wednesday across rural Iowa, in areas where Democrats tend to be more conservative.

"We have momentum," Booker declared during a stop in Creston, Iowa. "I feel it. . . . We are going to surprise people."

The crowds did not seem bothered that the candidate was registering 3% support among likely caucusgoers in a Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa poll from November, one of the last major polls conducted in the state. And they didn't seem to care that he probably won't make the January debate.

"I don't think it matters," said Scott Carpenter, an Iowa City mental health advocate who decided to formally endorse Booker last month with his wife Leslie, after it appeared he would not make the December debate. "What matters in Iowa is relationships, your organization, your endorsements. . . . Those are the people who influence other people to go out and stand for you on a cold February night."

The couple said they had personally urged Booker and his team to try to gain buzz in a different way: by booking bigger venues in hopes of attracting larger crowds that might match those turning out to see candidates like Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who has commanded audiences across the state numbering about 1,000 or more in recent weeks.

"It's time to go big," Leslie Carpenter said. "We know he can, and I think he will."

Booker has a steep climb. The same four candidates - Buttigieg, former vice president Joe Biden and Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. - have been locked at the top of the polls here for months. While Booker's team was hoping for a boost after Harris's exit last month, a CBS News/YouGov poll of Iowa Democrats released Sunday found Booker with 2% support among registered Iowa Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.

While Booker raised $6.6 million in the last three months of 2019 - his best fundraising quarter yet - he lags far behind his competitors. If he can't gain some ground in Iowa, it's unlikely that he'll have the support or resources to continue running.

That doesn't seem to trouble Booker's supporters.

In Iowa, a state where Booker has invested heavily and that is widely regarded as make-or-break for his campaign, the senator has rolled out more than three dozen new endorsements since mid-December, including unexpected support from state and local elected officials and prominent activists who said they were moved to endorse when he was shut out of the debate.

Last month, after he criticized the lack of racial diversity on the debate stage, Booker raised enough money - including $1.7 million in a single day - to begin airing a 60-second biographical television ad in the state's two major media markets, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.

And though his crowds are smaller than those of some Democratic rivals, he is able to draw an audience. More than 300 people turned out for a pair of house parties near Des Moines on New Year's Eve. About 30% of those who attended signed cards committing to support Booker at the Feb. 3 caucuses.

At his events last week, where Booker's soaring and emotional stump speech led some attendees to burst into tears, many voters said they were still considering Booker.

Among those who gathered to hear him speak in Shenandoah was Howard Hart, a Page County farmer who said he had all but decided to caucus for Biden, but had recently started to weigh other candidates just in case. He was impressed with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who visited here last month, and he liked Booker, too, with some reservations.

"I think very highly of him, and if I were to see support coalescing around him . . . I might do so also," Hart said. "But he just doesn't seem to be doing terribly well in polling."

Booker readily acknowledged that he trails his rivals in fundraising and polls. In every appearance in recent days, Booker has sought to inspire his audience to look beyond those metrics, citing previous candidates such as Jimmy Carter, John F. Kerry and Barack Obama, who he said emerged from low polling numbers to claim victory in Iowa.

"Don't listen to the national polls. Listen to your heart, your gut, your spirit," Booker said in Creston, his voice choked with emotion. "Caucus for me. I need you."
A new crew of firefighters from the United States is heading to Australia to work alongside fire experts from Canada, as state and federal authorities field growing offers of help from abroad.

The response from Canadians volunteering to fight fires has been so strong that authorities have had to tell them Australia has specific regulations for firefighters and to try helping in other ways.

Local firefighters battle a fire at Mangrove Mountain in NSW on January 5. Australia has also called in overseas firefighters and experts to battle the mammoth blazes here. Credit:Wolter Peeters

New Zealand, Singapore and Papua New Guinea have all offered military support and French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday he had called Prime Minister Scott Morrison to offer operational assistance.

"I express our solidarity with the Australian people in the face of wildfires that are currently ravaging their country," Mr Macron said on Twitter, joining world leaders including the British royal family. "I called Scott Morrison this morning to offer immediate French operational assistance to fight fires, protect affected population and preserve biodiversity."
/ Norwalk Police Department

NORWALK  An 18-year-old New Haven man threatened to harm his former boss with a hammer, according to police.

Police said it was Antonio Pantalones second day on the job at an East Avenue business when his boss approached him about his on-site behavior on Dec. 5.
" " Paul Revere's engraving, which was used as propaganda after the Boston Massacre, shows a line of red-coated soldiers firing on a contingent of unarmed colonists. Library of Congress

In the cold, early weeks of 1770, the city of Boston was an absolute tinderbox. British soldiers and others loyal to the crown jockeyed with angry colonists who chafed under the taxes levied by England and talked openly of starting a new nation. Tensions escalated. Sides were chosen. Soldiers sent word home that the entire thing could blow at any minute.

And on a wintry night in March of that year, it did.

The Boston Massacre didn't, in the strictest of terms, start the American Revolution. That was still a few years and one Tea Party away. But the tragic events of March 5, 1770, cemented the notion that the relationship between England and its colonies was irretrievably broken, convincing many colonists that freedom from English rule was the only way forward.

You can still visit the site of the Boston Massacre today, at the intersection of Devonshire and State (formerly King) streets in downtown Boston, at the foot of the Old State House. New England schoolkids take regular pilgrimages to the area as part of their curriculum. Tourists stream by on their walks down the Freedom Trail.

But the story of the Boston Massacre  what rabble-rouser Paul Revere called the "Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street" in an engraving made just weeks after the event  is not as simple as it's often told.

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Boston Was a Powder Keg

"The Boston Massacre," says Katie Drescher, the gallery supervisor and senior educator at the Bostonian Society and the Old State House, "was something like 10 years in the making. This didn't happen out of nowhere. There was so much happening."

To understand that night, you have to get a feel for the tensions between those loyal to England and those who were tired of it. You have to understand what the residents of Boston and their families, some of them going back more than 100 years to the city's founding, had been through; smallpox outbreaks, a huge earthquake in 1755, a "great fire" in 1760.

Shopkeepers were refusing to pay taxes imposed under the Stamp Act in 1765 and the Townshend Acts two years later. The whole idea of "no taxation without representation" was taking hold. Colonists were not represented in England's Parliament, and many felt their rights as Englishmen were being stripped away. Throughout the colonies, a resistance grew.

The British sent more soldiers to Boston  redcoats, "lobster backs"  to restore order and enforce the law. Scuffles ensued. Protests broke out. And then, 11 days before the incident in front of the Old State House (the seat of Royal Government and the Massachusetts Assembly), an 11-year-old boy was killed by a British customs service employee who fired into an unruly crowd on the North End of Boston.

Hundreds of people, maybe more than 1,000, attended the boy's funeral. An angry Boston was ripe for something bad to happen. And that's how things stood on the night of March 5.

"It wasn't a surprising event," Drescher says of the Boston Massacre. "I think it was a pretty inevitable thing."

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What Happened That Night

For one of the most well-known, well-researched incidents of Boston's pre-Revolutionary War Era, it's still unclear as to exactly what triggered the Boston Massacre.

"One of the big things about the Boston Massacre is that we still don't really know why those soldiers fired into the crowd, what really happened to cause that first shot to be fired," Drescher says. "We have an understanding that a soldier fired into the crowd, and it kind of causes a chain reaction, the other soldiers fired. But what was his motive? Was it accidental? Of course, the soldiers all said they were defending themselves against the crowd. But what was that moment that causes this man to fire? Was he hit with something? Does he trip and fall  someone said he slips on ice and falls down and his musket fires? There are trial records, but there isn't one, general consensus."

This much we do know: An angry mob, hundreds strong, faced off against some soldiers in front of the Custom House, near the Old State House on State Street. From Capt. Thomas Preston's deposition at the ensuing trial:

I saw the people in great commotion, and heard them use the most cruel and horrid threats against the troops. In a few minutes after I reached the guard, about 100 people passed it and went toward the custom house where the king's money is lodged. They immediately surrounded the sentry posted there, and with clubs and other weapons threatened to execute their vengeance on him.

Preston ordered several men and an officer to back up the sentry, but things only got worse. Some in the crowd had clubs, including fugitive slave-turned sailor Crispus Attucks, who is said to have been leading the angry mob. Others reportedly threw snowballs, rocks, chunks of coal or shells. In the confusion, a soldier  often identified as private Hugh Montgomery  was struck by someone in the mob (some say it was Attucks who struck him). Montgomery reportedly rose from the blow and fired, killing Attucks. Others followed. More from Preston:

On my asking the soldiers why they fired without orders, they said they heard the word fire and supposed it came from me. This might be the case as many of the mob called out fire, fire, but I assured the men that I gave no such order; that my words were, don't fire, stop your firing. In short, it was scarcely possible for the soldiers to know who said fire, or don't fire, or stop your firing.

This, too, we know for sure: Five men in the crowd died, including Attucks, who eventually became known as the first martyr of the American Revolution. Preston, eight British soldiers and four civilians were arrested and charged with the deaths. In October 1770, they faced trial. Preston was acquitted, as were six of his soldiers and the four civilians. Two soldiers were convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

The defense team was led by John Adams  who eventually became the second president of the United States  in an effort that he later described as "one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country."

Still, the "Bloody Massacre" proved to be a rallying point for those looking for independence from Britain, made so in large part by Revere's propagandist engraving that shows a tightly formed line of red-coated soldiers firing on a well-dressed contingent of unarmed colonists.

"Most of the misconceptions about the Boston Massacre come from Paul Revere's image, which I think was the intent of the image in the 1770s," Drescher says. "He wanted people to think that's what happened. And it has hung around for hundreds of years. People still see it and say, 'Oh, yeah, I know what happened.'"

" " In a separate engraving of the Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks is shown being fired upon and killed. He is remembered in history as the first martyr of the American Revolution. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

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The Boston Massacre Today

At least once a year, a re-enactment of the night of March 5, 1770, takes place on the spot of the Boston Massacre. A six-minute multimedia exhibit in one of the Old State House's second-floor antechambers is held six times a day. A marker, made of 13 sections of cobblestone, with a cobblestone in the center emblazoned with a star, is laid in the street near the site where the five men were shot.

Local students, beginning around the third grade, are told a watered-down version of the Boston Massacre. Tour guides regularly regale tourists with stories of one of the most infamous events in the history of the history-rich city.

"It's snowing pretty good outside right now, and there's people out there, so ...," Drescher, a native of the Boston area, says on a recent early December afternoon. "It doesn't matter what kind of weather. Every single day people are out there taking a picture."

Now That's Interesting Paul Revere wasn't the only colonist who used the "Bloody Massacre" to rally people against the Crown. Samuel Adams argued that Bostonians should arm themselves against the British. And John Hancock, in an oration four years after the Massacre, stirred the crowd with this: "Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny. Is the present system, which the British administration have adopted for the government of the Colonies, a righteous government  or is it tyranny?"

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Originally Published: Jan 6, 2020
GRANTS, N.M.  A Texas-based company wont resume operations at an inactive uranium mine and instead plans to begin an estimated 16 months of closure activity to reclaim the site in western New Mexico, officials said.

State officials on Friday confirmed Hobson, Texas-based Rio Grande Resource Corp. provided formal notice in early December of its plan to close the Mount Taylor Mine near Grants, the Gallup Independent reported.

Bill Brancard, general counsel of the state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, said company officials previously told state officials that the price of uranium meant Rio Grande couldnt justify anticipated capital spending to resume mining.

The mine and its 286-acre (1-square-kilometer) site has been on standby status since 1999, but a permit revision approved by the state in 2017 allowed to go active again. The permit revision also required the company to notify the Mining and Minerals Division of the department 30 days before performing any closeout or reclamation activities at the site.

A plan filed with the state details how the company will relcaim the site.

Grants Mayor Martin Modey Hicks worked at the Mount Taylor site and said nine people were laid off Monday. He called the closing a death blow to Grants and Milan.

Environmental groups have been fighting the states previously decision to allow uranium to be extracted again from the mine, and environmental activists hailed the closing announcement.

Staff Attorney Eric Jantz of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center said the mine wasnt viable economically or sustainable environmentally.

Were looking forward to a thorough reclamation of this mine that people have been living beside for so many decades, Jantz said.

Laura Watchempino, a member of the Multicultural Alliance and the Laguna-Acoma Coalition for a Safe Environment, said that closur is heartening news for this very sacred and unique landscape.

The mine operated from 1980 to 1982 and from 1985 to 1990, before the New Mexico Mining Act came into effect.

The mines previous owner, Chevron Resources, sold it to Rio Grande Resources in 1991.

Grants was once called the uranium capital of the world. Millions of tons of uranium were mined from the region that includes Navajo Nation, which is still reeling from the decades that the federal government allowed the mining on and around its reservation.

Between the late 1940s and the mid-1980s, about 4 million tons (3.6 million metric tons) of uranium were extracted from mines on the reservation.

At the time, uranium was mined to produce nuclear weapons for World War II and the Cold War.

The ore was removed via conventional underground mining, a practice that allowed uranium to seep into the land and water in the surrounding area.

Rio Grande Resources is affiliated with San Diego-based General Atomics.
The United States on Monday warned its citizens in Israel and Palestinian territories to be vigilant, citing the risk of rocket fire days after a U.S. drone strike killed an Iranian military commander in Baghdad.

The alert issued on the websites of the U.S. State Department and the U.S. embassy in Israel did not specifically mention the killing of Qassem Soleimani but referred to heightened tensions in the Middle East.

Israel has not issued a similar warning to its own citizens, though Army Radio reported the military had been put on alert.

The U.S. message said it "strongly encourages U.S. citizens to remain vigilant and take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness, as security incidents, including rocket fire, often take place without warning."

It said Israel's "red alert" siren system may be activated in the event of "mortar or rocket fire". Such attacks have been launched against Israel periodically from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, where the Islamic Jihad group is backed by Iran.

Israel is also concerned about possible retaliation for Soleimani's death by other Iranian proxies and allies in the region, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas.

But aside from a one-day closure of a ski resort in the occupied Golan Heights on the Syrian frontier after Friday's attack on Soleimani, there has been no sign of any disruption of normal life in Israel.

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Commissioner Jim Fisher is asking that the Butte-Silver Bow Council of Commissioners hire "a legal firm experienced in environmental law" to advise the council on the Butte Hill consent decree.

His request will be on Wednesday's council agenda and could be forwarded to next week's agenda for a full discussion.

The commissioners must vote on whether to authorize Chief Executive Dave Palmer to sign the consent decree draft. Without his signature, the decree cannot be filed in federal court and take effect.

After a dozen years of secret negotiations, Superfund negotiators  including Atlantic Richfield, Butte-Silver Bow, the state of Montana and the Environmental Protection Agency  have reached agreement on the decree, which would set out a detailed plan for the environmental cleanup. Both Atlantic Richfield and the county are "PRPs"  potentially responsible parties  but Atlantic Richfield will bear the primary financial burden of the cleanup.

Because the county needs to sign off, the council vote can make an enormous difference. If commissioners do not approve, new negotiations could take place. EPA could also arbitrarily promulgate a cleanup plan by unilateral order.

"I think it is in the best interest" of the commissioners to get "an independent review," Fisher said in his request, adding, "This might be the greatest decision this community will ever face."

Asked about his request on Monday, Fisher said, "Well, it's really about whether we have a system of checks and balances."

Fisher says he does not have either a specific law firm in mind or a cost estimate, but "before I go do a bunch of research," he wants to get a sense of how other commissioners feel about it.

In his request, Fisher pointed out that the decree "will be in excess of 1,000 pages" and will be very complex. "I ask how can we as part-time commissioners review this document in a very short period of time? Will we have the knowledge or expertise to ask or answer any or many of the questions that our community needs to know?

"You can bet that Arco/BP, the EPA and the state of Montana didn't rush into this agreement without getting the best advice money can buy," Fisher pointed out. "We deserve the same for our community."

A message seeking comment on Fisher's suggestion was left for Palmer.

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I have an eight-hour job. How do I deal with that? Truong said. For a while, I would just go to work at 8, come home for an hour to have lunch with her and put her to bed, go back to work again and come home at 4. But it was killing me because who knows what she will do from 12 to 4 p.m.
The Holiday Guru is always on call to answer your questions.

This week's topics include travel to Australia, ship voyages to St Helena and trips to Jamaica.

Q. My husband and I are due to visit Sydney in March. With the bushfires and the poor air quality, should we look for an alternative?

Christine Willcocks, via email.

The Guru says it is best to wait and see before cancelling any trips to Sydney due to the bushfires and poor air quality

A. Best to wait and see  and consult the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's travel advice (gov.uk). It is currently urging British visitors to follow advice of local authorities.

It would be a shame to cancel a trip to the beautiful city so far in advance.

Q. I've heard about new flights to St Helena, but is there still a journey by ship that you can take?

Margaret Smith, Maida Vale, London.

A. Yes, there is. The MV Helena, primarily a cargo ship, has recently introduced four passenger berths.

The journey from Cape Town to the island where Napoleon was exiled takes seven days and the price with food is 900 return (sthelenashipping.com).

Or, flights to St Helena from either Johannesburg or Cape Town are from about 900 return, taking about six hours (flyairlink.com).

Q. We would love to book an all-inclusive holiday in Jamaica and embrace 'reggae' by visiting Bob Marley's home and listening to the music. Any tips?

Babar Coughlan, Paignton, Devon.

The Bob Marley Museum is in Kingston, the capital of Jamaica, pictured, at the house where he lived and recorded music until his death in 1981

A. The main Bob Marley attractions are 60 miles apart. His birthplace and final resting place are in Nine Mile, in the Parish of St Ann, set amid gorgeous mountains, where his mausoleum can be found and exhibits include guitars and photographs.

Meanwhile, the Bob Marley Museum is in Kingston, the capital, at the house where he lived and recorded music until his death in 1981.

Stay at Moon Palace all-inclusive hotel in Ocho Rios, about an hour's drive to Kingston which promotes itself as offering 'the pulse of reggae' from 2,500 for a week for two (jamaica.moonpalace.com).

WE'RE HERE TO HELP

For advice, send your questions to holidayplanner@dailymail.co.uk or write to Daily Mail Travel, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT. Please include your contact details.
What if you get stuck on the highway in a storm? Here are some tips
The US Assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani

I condemn the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that resulted in the death of a US contractor. I also condemn the impulsive response by the Trump administration of assassinating top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. And I reject the statement issued claiming that our actions were defensive and meant to de-escalate the situation.

The cultures, people and civilizations of the Middle East are centuries, even millennia old, and their ties to the land are even older. Their conflicts are exacerbated by shame, and their peace is negotiated and kept in part through honor. So when a nation a mere two and a half centuries old, whose culture is based on neither honor nor shame and whose society is dominated by consumerism; a nation who colonized and ethnically cleansed the lands they now occupy but has never been held accountable nor expressed any shame for its actions.

When that nation claims moral superiority over civilizations more than ten times their senior, there is indignation. And when that nation lords their military might, there is resistance. And when that nation attempts regime change, there is terrorism. And when that nation turns to terror and war crimes itself though torture, drone strikes, assassinations and threats to destroy historic and cultural landmarks (sacred sites), many may feel that there is only one response remaining.

Mark Charles, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and an Independent candidate for president in 2020, addresses the Frank LaMere Native American Presidential Forum in Sioux City, Iowa, on August 20, 2019. Photo: Ho-Chunk Inc

When President Trump publicly threatened (on Twitter) the historic and cultural sacred sites of Iran as military targets, he not only spoke like a war criminal, but he spoke like a person who has no relatives - no kinship, no ties to the sacredness of land nor to the story of any people.

When you have no relatives, not only do you have no honor, but you have no ability to feel shame. And I fear that Iran may feel that the only remaining response they have to such a president, and a nation, is war.

To be clear, the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani was not defensive nor was it an act of de-escalation, and for the Trump Administration to claim otherwise is either a blatant lie or unimaginable naivete.

The foreign policies of the United States need changing. The history of our country is rooted in colonialism, enslavement and terror, but we narrate our history through the mythological lens of exceptionalism. This is why I am the only candidate willing to call the action our government took, what is apparent to the entire world, an assassination.

Political assassinations are immoral. Political assassinations are illegal. Political assassinations are the actions of lawless terror states. And because our nation has never learned to acknowledge who we were, we are now incapable of being honest with what we have become.

The assassination of Qassem Soleimani is not the first time a United States President has escalated tensions to the brink of war in the Middle East in a vain effort to shore up political support and distract from political tensions at home. Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama all benefited politically from their willingness to engage militarily in the Middle East. And, if nothing changes, President Trump will not be the last.

The United States of America needs an honest national dialogue regarding our own history. A conversation on par with the truth and reconciliation commissions that took place in South Africa, Rwanda and Canada. Because reconciliation implies a previous harmony, I would call ours Truth and Conciliation. And it is becoming glaringly obvious that we need one sooner rather than later. Not just for our own sake, but for the sake of the entire global community.

Mark Charles is a dual citizen of the United States and the Navajo Nation. He is running as an Independent candidate for the office of President of the United States (2020). Mark is calling for the creation of a Common Memory through a national Truth and Conciliation Commission. The theme of his campaign is to build a nation where We the People truly means #AllThePeople . His first book,  Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery  (IVP with co-author Soong-Chan Rah) was published on November 5, 2019.

Join the Conversation
The last time I saw David Bellantonio was a few years ago, when he was working an oven in my sisters kitchen on a sweltering summers day in Sydney, Australia, deftly rolling out his homemade dough and custom-making pizzas.

These past few months, Bellantonio has been facing down another kind of furnace, one emanating from the worst inferno he has seen in his 32 years as a firefighter.

Volunteer firefighter Dave Bellantonio sits in the door seat of an Army Blackhawk flying over the mountain range between Port Macquarie and Taree as the forest fires in Australia continue to rage. Supplied photo

Hardly any of the horrors of the burning land Down Under need to be recounted. At least 25 humans dead, 480 million animals wiped out, 2,000 homes perished in fires equivalent to the size of Nova Scotia blazing across Australia. But these figures that have caught international attention dont adequately capture the fear and uncertainty on the ground, the children jumping into lakes, the firefighters doubling and trebling their efforts and residents living in a perpetual state of heightened alarm.

In popular Canadian imagination, Australia is an identical twin, down to the colonial violence that marks its birth. Its just warmer and more vibrant.

So many Canadians volunteered to go fight the fires themselves that the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre which is co-ordinating the Canadian response had to intervene.

While Australia does use volunteer firefighters, these firefighters are familiar with and trained to specific standards relative to firefighting in Australian conditions, a note on its website says. It requests that people not overload the Australian state fire services by contacting them directly.

I, too, have personal stakes in the catastrophe. The smoke there chokes me here. My sister and brother live in Sydney. For my young nieces, breathing the worlds worst air right now, climate change isnt some intangible peril of the future but an omnipresent danger whose status is constantly updated on fire services apps, one that demands a preparedness to flee at a moments notice.

We havent seen blue skies in three months, my brother told me. The sun has been a hazy orange since September.

Suburban Sydneysiders are the fortunate ones that have escaped  so far  the ravages of coastal green belts and the combustible eucalyptus treed-Blue Mountains nearby.

There was that one night when my brother awoke to find the house filled with smoke. Theyd already swept the dried leaves off the roof gutters. But the danger of flying embers on extremely dry wood is real. Despite Level 1 water restrictions (with Level 6 the most severe), he and a few neighbours sprayed the roof that day. How does one decide between letting the house burn and saving water?

Bellantonio is a senior deputy captain of a fire fighters brigade. At the state level, he is also a member of an aviation rescue crew. Like most Australian firefighters hes a volunteer. He has lost count of the number of fires he has fought.

Many, many, many, he said. Some are small events, other large. A year without major fires or floods works out to three or four weeks of volunteering. This year he estimates its already been two or three months. Bellantonio is self-employed, which means no work no money. He thinks hes out of pocket 20 grand easily. But there are thousands of firefighters like me, he said.

As a small population living in a very large country it is essential for all of us to pull together and help each other out.

A month ago, he said, he was in an aircraft flying up the coast from Sydney to the mid-north. All the way up the visibility was so bad we could barely fly. It was just smoke. When you look at the grounds as far as the eye can see, its just fire.

Next year, there will be nothing left to burn, he added.

The dryness that made Australia a tinder box much like California and the Brazilian rainforest has come following a prolonged drought that experts blame on climate change caused by emissions of heat-trapping gases. Another reason they are spreading so devastatingly is poor land management.

There is no doubt traditional ways and methods of burning were far superior to what were doing these days, Bellantonio said.

These fires are the consequence of failing to heed to warnings from First Nations all around this country, failure to indigenize land management and implement it with control of the First Nations that can read country, writes Natalie Cromb, a Gamilaraay woman, author and activist from Sydney in IndigenousX.

Last year, Indigenous cultural burning was reintroduced in the state of Victoria for the first time in almost 200 years, something brought back in after consultations with Indigenous peoples in North America.

However, the best strategies in Australia might come to naught in the face of the countrys dangerous leader. Vacationing in Hawaii while the fires raged on was possibly the most innocuous of Prime Minister Scott Morrisons decisions.

Australia is the worlds largest exporter of coal and natural gas. Like the Liberals here who claim to support an environmental agenda while promoting oil extraction, political parties there speak from both sides of their mouths, but with coal mining. There is even a bipartisan group named  wait for it  Parliamentary Friends of Australian Coal Exports.

Morrison, who just last month was seeking to outlaw protests by environmentalists, embodies politicians who are not accountable to land, even to their much-vaunted private property. The prime ministers support of coal and war on climate activists despite the fires decimating his countrypeople, left wing or right, shows that when it comes to power, these politicians are not even accountable to the people that vote for them.
At least 12 injured as presidents supporters attack protesters fearing a third term in the office.

Thousands took to the streets in Guinea in a new anti-government protest on Monday, with partisan violence injuring at least 12 people.

The West African country has been hit by rolling protests since mid-October over concerns President Alpha Conde plans to stay in office for a third term.

On Monday, tens of thousands marched from the suburbs of the capital, Conakry, to the city centre.

Wearing the red colour of the opposition, protesters carried placards reading: No to a new constitution and No to a third mandate for Alpha Conde.

Conde, 81, announced a new draft constitution last month which critics fear he will use to pursue a third term.

Major opposition figures, including former prime ministers Cellou Dalein Diallo and Sidya Toure, protested in Conakry on Monday.

Abdourahmane Sanoh, the coordinator of National Front for the Defence of the Constitution (FNDC), an alliance of opposition groups behind the protests, said there were plans to increase the number of rallies from January 13.

I ask that the all Guinean people be ready from January 13, he said.

About 20 people have died since the protests began, according to the AFP news agency, and one security officer has also been killed.

Demonstrations also took part in regional cities such as Labe, Pita, Dalaba, Mamou and Boke, witnesses told the AFP.

But the protests turned violent in the Conde stronghold of Kankan in the east of the country, as the presidents supporters attacked protesters.

At least 12 people were injured, seven of them badly, said a security official in Conakry, who declined to be named. A medical official confirmed the figure.

Cheick Mohamed Kaba, an MP from the opposition Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea party (UFDG), said pro-Conde people vandalised, ransacked and pillaged property belonging to ethnic Fulani people.

The majority of UFDG supporters are Fulani, Guineas largest ethnic group.

Condes Rally of the Guinean People party draws most of its support from the countrys second-largest ethnic group, the Malinke.

The violence comes after the political opposition said it would prevent legislative elections  planned for February 16  from taking place, citing irregularities in the electoral roll.

Conde is a former opposition figure himself who was jailed under Guineas previous authoritarian regimes.

He became the countrys first democratically elected president in 2010 before winning re-election in 2015. Under the present constitution, presidents are limited to two terms in office.

Despite initial hopes of a new political dawn in the country, critics say his rule has become increasingly authoritarian.
The JNU administration appealed to the students not to leave the campus and assured that steps would be taken to normalise the situation.

New Delhi: A day after masked goons armed with iron rods and sticks went on a rampage in the JNU campus, hundreds of students and teachers on Monday held peaceful protests in the varsity demanding action against those involved in the violence.

The JNU administration appealed to the students not to leave the campus and assured that steps would be taken to normalise the situation.

An uneasy calm prevailed in the university where heavy police deployment had been made to prevent any untoward incident. The authorities only allowed students with valid ID cards inside the campus. However, these measures did not assuage the concerns of students over their safety.

Though an FIR was registered in connection with Sundays violence, no arrests were effected until late Monday night.

A fact-finding committee under Jt. CP (West) Shalini Singh has been set up to look into all these aspects, Delhi police PRO Mandeep Singh Randhawa said.

Fearing more attacks, some students even left the campus for their respective residences.

It is learnt that the wardens of the Sabarmati Hostel resigned on moral grounds for their failure in providing security to the hostel residents.

Sources close to wardens Ramavtar Meena and Prakash Chandra Sahoo, however, alleged that a group of students cornered them when they reached the hostel and accused them of not providing security. There are reports that some students forcefully made the wardens sign their resignation papers.

JNUSU (Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union) president Aishe Ghosh, who was badly injured in the violence, alleged it was an organised attack.

For the past 4-5 days, some RSS-affiliated professors were promoting violence to break our movement. Are we wrong to ask for safety from JNU and the Delhi Police? Ms Ghosh said, adding that the attackers were both from the campus and outside.

Narrating the horrifying incident, witnesses alleged that masked people entered the premises when a meeting was being held by the JNUTA (Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers Association) on the issue of violence in the campus and assaulted students and professors. They also barged into three hostels.

Students staged peaceful marches to register their protest against the violence in the JNU campus with the hashtag SOSJNU.

Shreya Ghosh, a resident of Shipra Hostel, asked how could the goons enter the campus with rods and sticks.

The attack could not have happened without the connivance of the administration and the police, she said. She claimed she had to hide in Sabarmati Hostel after the masked men chased her and some other people. Some of the protesting students at JNU were seen humming poems.
Disturbing details have emerged in the case of a Michigan man who allegedly killed his Grindr date, police say.

Kevin Bacon, 25, was reported missing when he didnt show up for breakfast with his family on Christmas Day, WJBK reported.

It wasnt long before his car was found outside Family Dollar in Clayton Township with his wallet, phone and clothes inside, according to Michigan Live.

The day before, Bacon  a hairstylist  had told a friend he was meeting up with a man hed met on the dating app Grindr, Michigan Live reported. Later that evening, Bacon texted his friend that he was having fun and would be out for a while, according to the outlet

Kevin Bacon, 25, was reported missing after he didnt return home from a Grindr date, Michigan police say.

Early on Dec. 28, police found Bacons body in 50-year-old Mark Latunskis Morrice-area home, WJBK reported. He was arrested and charged with open murder and mutilation of a human body.

Now, more details have emerged.

According to court documents, police found Bacon hanging naked from the rafters by his ankles in Latunskis house, WJBK reported.

Mark Latunski, 50, is charged with open murder and mutilation of a human body, Michigan police say.

Police said Latunski confessed to killing Bacon by stabbing him in the back then slicing his throat, also telling police hed cut off Bacons testicles with a knife before eating them, court records say, according to WILX.

The month before, police responded to Latunskis home after a man, 29, was seen running from Latunskis home with blood on his face wearing only a leather kilt, according to the outlet.

The man didnt press charges and following an investigation, police determined no crime had been committed, WILX reported.

Latunski is expected back in court on Jan. 8, Michigan Live reported.

Actor Kevin Bacon, who shares first and last names with the victim, took to Instagram to express his condolences when news broke of the victims death last week.

For obvious reasons Im thinking this morning about the friends and family of this young person Kevin Bacon, the Footloose actor shared along with a photo of the victim. His life was taken from him much too soon. His love was hair dressing. I bet he would have done a great job on this mess on my head. RIP KB.

Story continues

The victims loved ones also painted the Flint Rock in Flint, Mich., to honor Bacon, WEYI reported. The rock now features a rendering of Bacons face over a rainbow backdrop along with messages from loved ones, according to the outlet.
Iraq has limited the movement of ground and air forces of the international coalition in the country as part of the preparation of a mechanism for the withdrawal of foreign troops. Al Mawazin reported that.

"The Iraqi authorities have prepared a mechanism for the withdrawal of American troops from the country. The functions of the forces of the international coalition will be limited only to the advisory role, the supply of weapons and training (of Iraqi troops, - ed.), And its armed forces will leave," the report said.

As we reported, the President of the Philippines ordered the military to evacuate thousands of Philippine workers in Iraq and Iran. They will be evacuated by vessels and planes.
MEXICO CITY - More than 61,000 people have disappeared in Mexico, authorities announced Monday, sharply raising their estimate of those who have vanished in more than a decade of extreme violence by and among organized-crime groups.

The government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador released the new figure after an exhaustive analysis of data from state prosecutors. Previously, authorities had estimated the number of victims at 40,000. While a few cases date to the 1960s, the vast majority have been reported since 2006, when Mexico launched an all-out offensive targeting organized-crime groups.

Karla Quintana, head of Mexico's National Search Commission, which coordinates the effort to find the missing, said at least 61,637 people had been reported disappeared and not been found - what she called "data of horror." The actual number is thought to be even higher, since many cases are never reported.

The numbers confirm that Mexico is suffering one of the worst crises of "the disappeared" in Latin American history.

In the 1970s and 1980s, forced disappearances in the region became a global human rights concern, as governments systematically detained and killed opponents - most suspected of involvement in leftist insurgencies.

Around 40,000 people went missing in Guatemala's 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996. An estimated 30,000 disappeared during Argentina's "dirty war," which lasted from 1976 to 1983.

Unlike those countries, though, Mexico has not been at war - at least, not officially. And while militaries were behind most of the Cold War disappearances, narcotraffickers and other criminals are the likely culprits in the majority of the Mexican cases. Authorities suspect many of them worked with corrupt police and politicians.

The announcement highlights the toll of more than a decade of extraordinary violence in Mexico, which shows no sign of abating. Last year, homicides through November topped 31,000, a record. In some regions, organized-crime groups openly battle police and soldiers.

But the updated figure also indicates how Lopez Obrador's leftist government, which took over in December 2018, has placed more priority on the issue of the disappeared, after years of official indifference. The U.N. high commissioner for human rights has praised the National Search Commission, even as it has warned that Mexico faces "enormous challenges" in other areas.

The announcement "is a step toward needed recognition of true scope of conflict," tweeted Falko Ernst, senior Mexico analyst for the International Crisis Group. However, he wrote, "what is being done to curb conflict" and keep the numbers from rising further "is still unclear."

The National Search Commission set up a team in the spring that pored over records from state prosecutors' offices to update the national registry of the disappeared, officials said. The previous official estimate was released in April 2018.

The announcement comes at a sensitive time for Lopez Obrador. He has been widely accused of lacking an effective strategy to combat rising violence. The government's weakness was exposed in October when Sinaloa cartel gunmen swarmed into the city of Culiacan, forcing authorities to release the son of drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, shortly after his arrest.

That was followed weeks later by the brutal murder of three women and six children with dual U.S.-Mexican nationality from a breakaway Mormon community. They lived in an area dominated by drug cartels in the northern state of Sonora.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

President Donald Trump has pressured Mexico to confront drug-trafficking groups more aggressively, volunteering to send U.S. troops and warning that he could designate the cartels as terrorist groups. Mexico has rejected any American military deployment.

Analysts cite various motives for such forced disappearances. In some cases, they say, criminals want to hide the evidence of murders, to avoid prosecution. In others, they want to sow terror. Earlier this decade, parts of Mexico turned into virtual extermination camps, with hundreds of bodies of the "disappeared" incinerated in oil drums or dissolved in acid.

But organized-crime groups aren't the only culprits. In some cases, people have been disappeared by the military or the police. In one of Mexico's most infamous cases, 43 students were detained near the southern city of Iguala in 2014. They were never seen again. Witnesses last spotted them getting into municipal police trucks.

An initial investigation concluded that the police had turned the students over to local drug dealers, who killed them, in the mistaken belief that they were rivals. That probe has been discredited, and Lopez Obrador has opened a new one.

Alejandro Encinas, Mexico's undersecretary for human rights, said that authorities logged the highest number of unresolved disappearances in 2017, with more than 7,000 cases, and that there was a decline in 2018 and 2019. But officials continue to find plastic bags containing body parts, many from recent killings, dumped in wells or abandoned buildings.

Groups of mothers nationwide have taken the lead in trying to find the remains of their missing children or husbands. In the past year, the government has encouraged the formation of state commissions to help in the search. Quintana said 3,631 clandestine graves have been discovered since 2006.
NEWTOWN >> The Council Rock School Board on Jan. 6 announced that it has granted Superintendent Dr. Robert Fraser a temporary leave from his duties as administrative head of the school district. In the interim, the board has appointed assistant superintendent for teaching and learning Dr. Susan Elliott as substitute Superintendent. The Board looks forward to Dr. Fraser's return to the district...
City Attorney Phil Noblett on Monday said Volkswagen is now fully in compliance with state reporting requirements dealing with state grants for the assembly plant at Enterprise South Industrial Park.

The state Economic Development Department on Nov. 26 informed VW by letter, saying certain reports required from VW relating to state grants had not been submitted.

The letter said the reports must be submitted within 30 days or Volkswagen could face "repayment obligations."

Attorney Noblett told members of the city Industrial Development Board that he followed up with the attorney for Volkswagen. He said on Dec. 18 he was advised by the state that VW was in full compliance.

Volkswagen has received over $800 million in grants from federal, state and local governments in connection with its plant at the Enterprise South Industrial Park at Tyner.

This is the letter sent to VW:

Director Volkswagen Group of America Chattanooga Operations, LLC: Notice Letter

Dear Ian Leavy: This letter is to inform you that the following reports are past due under the terms of that certain FastTrack Economic Development Program Memorandum of Understanding dated July 14, 2014, by and between the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, the Industrial Development Board of the City of Chattanooga, and Volkswagen Group of America Chattanooga Operations, LLC (Accountability Agreement): revised Interim Performance Reports and supplemental documentation.

Baseline Reports are due on or before the 60th day following the Accountability Agreements Effective Date. Performance Reports are due on or before the 60th day following each anniversary of the Accountability Agreements Start Date. Volkswagen Group of America Chattanooga Operations, LLC must submit the reports listed above with all supporting documentation to ECD within 30 days of receipt of this letter.

Please send the reports and supporting documentation to ECD.Legal@tn.gov and include Volkswagen Group of America Chattanooga Operations, LLC in the subject line. Failure to submit complete and accurate revised reports within 30 days of receipt of this letter may result in repayment obligations under the Accountability Agreement.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact me at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Garrett Guillory Director of Contracts
GRAND RAPIDS, MI  Big plans are in motion for one Southeast Side Grand Rapids neighborhood.

After months of planning, the nonprofit community development group Amplify GR is asking city officials to approve a request to build new apartments, townhomes, an early childhood center, retail space, a community center and park within an aging 9-acre stretch of the Boston Square neighborhood.

Supporters say the project aims to breathe new life into a neighborhood that hasnt seen the same level of investment that has transformed other parts of Grand Rapids. It also, supporters say, represents a plan that has incorporated feedback from neighborhood residents who emphasized the need for affordable housing, early childhood education and neighborhood green space.

Often developers come in and just do what they want to do without regard for the people who want to stay, said Joan Huyser-Honig, who has lived in the Boston Square area for more than 30 years and serves on Amplifys neighborhood advisory committee. I feel like this plan is really paying attention to the people who want to stay.

Amplifys request goes before the Grand Rapids Planning Commission for approval on Thursday.

Its plans call for the construction of 22 townhomes and seven buildings containing 215 apartments and commercial space intended for a bank, grocery store and food hall, as well as office or commercial space for neighborhood entrepreneurs. Portions of the residential units would be income restricted, and some would be geared toward senior citizens and families.

The development is bordered to the east and west by Fuller and Kalamazoo avenues, and to the north and south by Adams and Ramona streets. Six rental houses and five commercial buildings, including the Modern Hardware store, would be demolished to make room for the new structures, officials say. Modern Hardware would remain in business and relocate to a new building in the development.

If you are reading this in your Facebook app, use this link to view the entire gallery of photos.

If Amplifys development plans are approved, some construction could begin later this year. But the entire 9-acre project could take as long as a decade to complete, said Jon Ippel, executive director of Amplify GR.

The first element of the project to be undertaken would be the renovation of the former Living Word Christian Center building, 1534 Kalamazoo Ave SE. Plans call for the building to be expanded to house an early childhood education center and community center. Its expected to open in fall 2021.

The plans mark the first large-scale development put forth by Amplify GR, a nonprofit created by the Doug and Maria DeVos Foundation and the Cheri DeVos Foundation with the goal of supporting community redevelopment in the Boston Square, Cottage Grove and Madison Square neighborhoods.

Brinshore Development is serving as Amplifys development partner for the project, and Grand Rapids-based Rockford Construction Co. is the construction company, Ippel said.

Amplifys founders, starting in 2015, spent an estimated $10 million on at least 32 blighted and underused properties in the three Southeast Side neighborhoods. The development going before the planning commission for approval represents a portion of the property Amplify owns in the neighborhoods.

The nonprofits mission has drawn applause but has also been marked by suspicion. Some residents worry that future development in the area could cause rental prices to increase and displace low-income residents.

A lot of less than middle class people live right now in these neighborhoods, said Steve McClain, a rental property owner whose office is in the Boston Square neighborhood. They arent college educated, so theyre not going to be able to afford rents that exceed $1,000.

Ippel said the new housing planned for the development is designed to reflect the existing income diversity of the Boston Square neighborhood. About two-thirds of the units will be preserved as workforce housing, he said.

We do not have a specific breakdown yet, but we are committed to multiple levels of affordability even within the units classified as affordable, he said. Whether a family is dependent on the salary of a school assistant, a teacher or a principal, there would be affordable units for each salary.

Amplify GR introduced itself to the Grand Rapids community in 2017, hosting several town hall meetings, where leaders outlined the organization's goals and mission of creating more jobs, better schools and better housing through its investments in the neighborhood.

The organization, at the time, was met by a suspicious and restive crowd who expressed concern that the development would raise rents and property values, and lead to gentrification and displacement of poor residents. Following that pushback, Amplify cancelled its remaining town hall meetings and began conducting neighborhood outreach in a smaller-scale settings.

The nonprofit has since been working to bolster its relationship with the community. It has launched a program, Neighborhood Strong, that funds home repairs for neighborhood residents, and provided $600,000 to the Inner City Christian Federation for a program that aims to increase home ownership among low- to moderate-income residents.

Ippel said Amplify GR crafted its 9-acre development proposal with significant input. He said over 250 residents attended at least one of three community meetings, held in August, September and October. Residents were invited to participate through invitations, mailers and event advertisements.

This has been a collaborative process, Ippel said. Its been a partnership with other organizations like Oakdale Neighbors, the Boston Square Neighborhood Association. This is not really an Amplify project. This has really been an attempt to synthesize what the desires of this community are and align that investment in a way that uplifts and holds that value.

In addition to Cheri and Maria DeVos, Amplifys nine-member board includes Bing Goei of Eastern Floral, Kenyatta Brame of Cascade Engineering and Father Jose Quintana, of Shrine of St. Francis Xavier & Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, according to Amplifys website.

Rev. Kenneth Hoskins, a longtime resident and executive director of Oakdale Neighbors, a Christian community development organization based in the neighborhood, said Amplify has done a good job listening to residents and incorporating that feedback into its plans. He said the early childhood education center is one example.

I dont have any concerns, he said of the project. I just want to make sure that whats already taken place continues, and that means the community involvement. I dont see that being lessened.

While Amplifys vision for the area calls for the demolition of six rental homes, Ippel emphasized that far more housing is being added than is being lost.

There would never be forced displacement, he said.
Islamabad [Pakistan], Jan 6 (ANI): Pakistan would neither let its soil be used against any other state nor become part of any regional conflict, country's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said amid heightened tensions in the Middle East following the US action against Iran.



In telephonic conversations with the Foreign Ministers of Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Turkey on Sunday, Qureshi reiterated Pakistan's readiness to continue to play a role in preventing further escalation and maintaining regional peace and stability.

As per an official statement by Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there was a wide-ranging exchange of views between Qureshi and the four Foreign Ministers -- Iran's Javad Zarif, Saudi Arabia's Faisal Bin Farhan Al Saud, UAE's Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and Turkey's Mevlut Cavusoglu -- on "the unfolding situation in the region".

"Highlighting Pakistan's deep concern over the recent developments, the Foreign Minister underscored the imperative of avoidance of conflict, exercise of maximum restraint, and de-escalation of tensions," the statement read.

Qureshi renewed the call to all concerned parties to abide by the UN Charter and principles of international law to settle differences through peaceful means.

Tensions in the Middle East has flared following a US airstrike near the Baghdad international airport last week that killed Iran's elite Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, among others. (ANI)


Harvey Weinstein arrives at court in New York for the first day of his trial on sexual assault offences: AP

Harvey Weinstein, the former Hollywood titan whose alleged pattern of abuse launched a reckoning of powerful men, has appeared in a New York courtroom to face sexual assault charges that could see him jailed for up to 25 years.

He faces criminal charges stemming from two different allegations: one that he raped a woman in 2013 in a New York hotel room, and another that he performed a forcible sex act on a different woman in 2006.

In the first case, he has been charged with predatory sexual assault, rape in the first degree and rape in the third degree. The alleged victim has not been publicly identified.

The second charge is of predatory sexual assault and performing a criminal sexual act in the first degree, relating to an alleged assault on another woman, Mimi Haleyi, at his New York apartment in 2006.

The 67-year-old has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

More than 80 women have accused the once-powerful producer of sexual assault following bombshell reporting that galvanised the #MeToo movement, powered by women's stories to hold men accountable for sexual assault, harassment and abuse.

The criminal trial begins more than two years after Pulitzer-winning investigative reports in The New Yorker and The New York Times exposed three decades of abuse and Hollywood's culture of coercion and exploitation.

It was eerily quiet as Mr Weinstein made his way up the stairs into the New York State Supreme Court, again using a walking frame as he had at a previous bail hearing.

Protesters and womens rights advocates gathered outside the building on Manhattans Centre Street, but there was little sound  no booing, no slogans as the former producer stepped out of his vehicle and up the steps with the aid of a walker.

Actor Rosanna Arquette, whos expected to testify during the trial, waved a group of protestors over to huddle before his arrival.

Protesters outside the trial of Harvey Weinstein in New York (Clemence Michallon / The Independent)

At a press conference outside the court, Ms Arquette said: "We aren't going anywhere ... Time's up on sexual harassment in all workplaces, time's up on blaming survivors, time's up on empty apologies without consequence,s and time's up on the pervasive culture of silence that has enabled abusers like Weinstein."

Story continues

Jury selection in his criminal trial is expected to take up to two weeks, followed by an eight-week trial, presided over by Judge James Burke.

State prosecutors must prove Mr Weinstein has a history of sex crimes against multiple victims to land the predatory sexual assault charges, though prosecutors have not yet revealed evidence or a list of witnesses expected to testify at trial.

But court documents reveal that several key witnesses will testify to Mr Weinstein's "prior bad acts" to illustrate the depth of the producer's alleged abuse history.

Those witnesses include The Sopranos actress Annabella Sciorra, who has accused Mr Weinstein of assaulting her in the early 1990s. Judge Burke had previously determined that those charges fall outside the statute of limitations, though prosecutors could rely on her testimony to point to Mr Weinstein's pattern of abuse.

Last month, Mr Weinstein and the board of his now-bankrupt studio reportedly had tentatively reached a $25m global settlement with dozens of his alleged victims, though the settlement does not include any admission of wrongdoing. The payout is part of a $47m settlement that closes out the company's financial obligations.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles District Attorney is weighing several potential cases against Mr Weinstein, and the Metropolitan Police in London also have received a dozen assault allegations.

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A new study from researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego has documented a successful recovery effort among Nassau Grouper populations in the Cayman Islands thanks to an approach involving government agencies, academic researchers, and nonprofit organizations.

The study, published January 6, 2020 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used a two-pronged approach including tagging and video census data for monitoring and counting Nassau Grouper populations in an effort to more accurately estimate annual numbers of fish in the population and thus provide insight into the effects of ongoing conservation efforts. While many governments have enacted regional or seasonal fishing closures in an attempt to allow recovery of overfished stocks of aggregating reef fishes, this is one of the first studies to provide evidence that these measures can be successful.

"Normally, Nassau Grouper are relatively solitary, and tend to be hard to catch," said Lynn Waterhouse, a former PhD student in the Semmens Lab at Scripps Oceanography and research biologist at the John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. "But at spawning, they come together en masse to form annual spawning aggregations, where historically tens of thousands of fish come together to reproduce, so they're very easy for fishermen to catch."

Due to overfishing during spawning, the species has suffered region-wide stock collapse. By the 1980s large aggregations had all but disappeared from the Caribbean region. Of the remaining aggregations, few contained more than 1,000 individuals and the species is currently listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

In 2001, an aggregation of around 7,000 Nassau Grouper was discovered near Little Cayman, the smallest of the three islands located south of Cuba in the Caribbean Sea. In 2003, the subsequent rapid overfishing of the aggregation drove the Cayman Islands Government to enact aggressive management policies by banning fishing at aggregation sites during the spawning season. Through the Grouper Moon Project, the Cayman Islands Department of Environment (CI-DOE) partnered with a citizen conservation group called Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF) and scientists from Scripps Oceanography and Oregon State University to develop a monitoring strategy for the remaining Cayman Island aggregations.

"We developed a unique approach for monitoring these populations over the course of nearly two decades," said senior author Brice Semmens, an associate professor and ecologist at Scripps Oceanography. "This included a combination of using mark and recapture tagging techniques to track the proportion of tagged fish and video transects to count fish across the aggregation."

The researchers faced a number of obstacles, including funding challenges and particularly difficult monitoring conditions - the Nassau Grouper has the unfortunate habit of aggregating at inconvenient and often dangerous locations along the reef shelf edge, making it difficult for divers to easily observe and tag the aggregation. But with the support of the CI-DOE, the team has been able to maintain their monitoring efforts for over 15 years.

Importantly, the researchers did not just track the number of fish in the aggregation - they worked together with the CI-DOE and local communities to share results and discuss next steps. After reviewing the data being collected by the Grouper Moon Project, in 2016 the government initiated an even more progressive fishing policy, banning all fishing of Nassau Grouper during the winter spawning season along with limits on the number and size of fish that can be kept.

As a result, the team was astonished at how quickly the Nassau Grouper population recovered - over the last 10 years the aggregation on Little Cayman had nearly tripled in size, going from around 1,200 fish in 2009 to over 7,000 in 2018. This growth was due, at least in part, to a rapid increase in the addition of new, younger fish to the aggregation.

"This really demonstrates the power of this collaborative approach to conservation," said co-author Christy Pattengill-Semmens, REEF's director of science. "We were able to monitor the population and provide information to support management as the data came in, allowing the Cayman government to respond rapidly with policy changes.

"These efforts have been successful because of the strength of the partnerships among the government, academic research groups, and nonprofits," she added. "CI-DOE also has a long history of working with fishing communities in the islands."

The team also emphasized that these results show that patience is key.

"Due to the way these fish breed and the timing and location of spawning events, it can take several generations before the right ocean conditions ultimately facilitate young grouper joining an aggregation," said Pattengill-Semmens. "This means that communities and governments may need to implement protection strategies over the course of years or even decades to meet their management targets."

"This is an ideal approach for conservation," said Semmens. "Just doing the science isn't enough. You need to partner with groups and governments capable of turning science into conservation decisions that support the local community."

###

Additional co-authors include Scott A. Heppell of Oregon State University; Phillippe Bush and Bradley C. Johnson of the Cayman Islands Government Department of Environment; and Croy McCoy of the Cayman Islands Government Department of Environment and Bangor University.

This research was funded in part by the Lenfest Ocean Program, the Disney Conservation Fund, the NOAA International Coral Reef Conservation Program (Grant NA04NOS4630287), P. Hillenbrand, the J. Edward Mahoney Foundation, the Sea Grant and NMFS fellowship NA13OAR4170110 E/PD-11 and the PEO Scholar Award.
At a time where many of us may be feeling the effects of over-indulgence, five of our top writers speak candidly about their relationship with drink...

I am the child of a mixed marriage. My mother doesn't drink at all, and never has; my father drank like most Irishmen of his generation: in a way that seems excessive now, but was within the bounds of 'normal' back then.

My mother may not have drunk alcohol, but she was tolerant of drink. She encouraged it in others. Even in us, when we were relatively young. A half-glass of wine with Sunday lunch was very much the thing from the time I was about 14 onwards. I remember a gin and tonic on Christmas morning after Mass when I was 15.

The theory was that this kind of drinking would act as an inoculation, protect me from the bad kind: bottles of cheap, sticky, sweet stuff bought on the sly and consumed in bus shelters and round the back of the school disco.

The inoculation didn't work. I drank the civilised glass of wine at home, and a bottle of Martini Bianco on the bus on the way to the school disco. I was 14 and yes, I was That Girl. The one reeling through the car park at picking-up time, so blindingly and blatantly paralytic that the women who ratted me out to my mother told me, years and years later, "I really felt I couldn't not".

That was it for me and booze for quite a long time. I got to UCD with a very modest habit indeed - a gap year spent in Florence, Italy, taught me that 'nice' girls didn't drink. They had a small glass of wine, then went for an ice cream.

In UCD, though, nice girls did drink. Fun ones did, anyway. And so I drank. Those were the wild years. There were quite a lot of them. I drank, merrily, through college and much of my 20s. I got more discerning - no more Martini Bianco, and I've never been a fan of beer (it's a volume-versus-alcohol thing: so much, for so little). Instead I drank wine; whiskey; gin; Bloody Marys; frozen vodka (neat, never with mixers); brandy in balloon glasses.

Everything, back then, came with booze. Nights out, obviously, but everything else, too. A lovely mountain walk? Finish with a whiskey by the fire of some thatched pub. A trip to Tesco? Break it up with a quick G&T en route. Bad hangover? Brunch, and Bloody Marys. Hot chocolate? Add a dash of rum. Under the weather? Have a hot port. Not sure if you even want a drink? Try a brandy and ginger ale.

I drank through fun times and terrible times. I drowned many sorrows and toasted many successes. I went to work with hangovers; I turned up late and theatrically 'dying' to weddings, christenings, family lunches. A bad hangover was pretty much my favourite accessory, along with smudged eyeliner and boasts of, "I only got three hours sleep".

And yet, it was only every temporary, all this posturing with Pinot Grigio.

Because as strong, stronger even, than my father's example of excess, was my mother's abstention. It waited in the wings, dormant for many years, while I ran my course with the other version. And then, somewhere around age 27, it stepped forward and took over, neatly and completely. I began to drink less. A lot less. The hangovers, by then, had become a problem. I was sick of missing out on so many days because I was exhausted. I had a job I loved and wanted to do well, and I began to realise how incompatible that was with being constantly in recovery from a night out.

I stopped going out in the way I had been. I stopped drinking in the way I had been. But, I carried on with the 'civilised' couple of glasses of wine every night, for ages. Getting pregnant, when I was 29, put an end to that, and somehow, it never picked up again. First, I was pregnant, then breastfeeding, then pregnant again, more breastfeeding; pregnant for the third time. By the time I stopped breastfeeding the last, I no longer had the habit of drinking at all. It had become something purely social, and, with an intermittent social life thanks to small kids, weeks would go by without a drop.

I didn't miss it. Not at all. In fact, I confess that I became secretly quite judgey about other people's drinking habits. For a while, I contemplated giving up entirely. Except it didn't seem worth it when there was so little left to renounce. And there were occasions when I remembered what fun it could be. The odd Margarita, a shot of ice-cold vodka, or glass of Champagne.

And, always, the knowledge that, in times of trouble, a glass of good red wine was the most reliable weapon in my armoury. At the end of a bad day, something stressful or traumatic, when I felt unhappy, agitated, out of sorts with myself or, as a reward for something difficult, done well (a 10k run, say; or a tricky bit of public speaking that I had been nervous about), a glass of wine was my way to celebrate, and recalibrate.

I didn't abuse the system - this was emergency-only stuff; one glass, rarely two - but it was wonderful to know it was there; that I had a fail-safe, should I need one.

About a year ago, I began to contemplate a time when I might begin to drink more. Not lots more, obviously, but a little. The children are older; I no longer have to get up with them at night or early in the morning. I am not, generally, as exhausted as I was back in the days when I did have to do those things. I have more (a little more) free time. Perhaps, I thought, I'll be like the late Queen Mother, and settle down to a dry martini every day at 4pm?

Probably, I never would have actually done so - puritanical habits die hard - but it was a pleasant piece of contemplation. And then, last Christmas, my body played a truly unexpected and sly trick on me.

The first time it happened, I thought I was having a heart attack. The second time, I decided it must be a panic attack. How else to explain the sudden, horrible racing, thumping, bumping of my heart, so loud I thought I could hear it outside my body? It happened when I went to bed, or at least that's when I noticed it. I had to sit back up and turn on the light. I put a hand to my chest, wondering at what point I'd better call an ambulance. Thump, bump, crash, thud. It is one of the most unpleasant experiences I've had. It subsided, eventually, after keeping me awake for hours, and I dismissed it as 'whatever.' And then it happened again. Very soon, a pattern emerged, and alcohol was the culprit.

So just exactly at the moment when I was contemplating a renewed and deepened relationship with alcohol, it has abandoned me. Now, instead of having a soothing, soporific effect, a single glass of wine acts like a line of speed. It is wildly stimulating, giving me a burst of energy that is great at the time, but, when my heart is still racing three or four hours later, making it impossible to sleep, the benefits do not seem that compelling.

It's hardly a bereavement, I get that. In fact, frankly, it's probably a good thing - the jury seems less 'out' on the health effects of alcohol than it used to be, with mounting evidence that it is not A Really Good Thing for any of us - also, I have one teenager and two soon-to-be teens in the house; perhaps it's a good moment for the generational abstemious role-model to make an appearance. And yet, I'm sorry. Sorry that one of life's great reliables has been taken from me. Discombobulated, that one of my certainties has been overturned (after all, if that can happen, what the hell else is waiting?). And a tiny bit bereft. Maybe it will come back around. Maybe I'll get to be the Queen Mother after all, sometime in my 60s. But right now, it is not so much that I have foresworn alcohol, as it has foresworn me. It has dumped me unceremoniously, and even though I wasn't that attached to the relationship, I wasn't ready to let go completely.

Alcohol was a friend with benefits, never a soulmate. But still.

Niamh Horan:

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The very first encounter I had with alcohol came through a friend I used to go out clubbing with. She was absolutely beautiful. Platinum-blonde hair, big brown saucers for eyes, and a body like an old-fashioned Coke bottle.

The boys loved her; the girls purred close to soak up whatever social currency she emanated, and I quickly discovered that she was the best wing-woman I could ever ask for.

On Friday nights, we would sit in front of her mirror, slowly building our physical armour. We would steam our hair into poker-straight lines, and I would watch as my friend smeared blood-red rouge on her bee-stung lips - long before lip injections were invented.

After our physical transformation, I was ready for the bar. But my friend needed a little extra. She told me she couldn't walk into the place without having a drink first.

She turned every head once she stepped through those doors - but it didn't matter what came next or what anyone said. Or how good they tried to make her feel. It was something on the inside.

And so it sat on her vanity table, the glass of Dutch courage. As vital a part of her make-up routine as the brushes and perfume.

It was my first inkling of the power of alcohol. But it would be years until I realised it wasn't the problem in this situation. It was the 'solution'. My friend's real problem was fear. The drink was just what she used to cope.

My own long journey started on my 18th birthday. I didn't drink until then because of a pledge I took for my Confirmation. That night, I raised a glass of Champagne with my parents, and for the first time in my life, I felt like an adult.

From there, it was pubs at weekends, followed by a nightclub until 3am. Tia Maria and milk tasted like a chocolate milkshake, and it was just something to keep my hands busy. My main attention was focused on boys and dancing. Drink was something that helped the process along. It gave me a nice buzz, but never really took over in a way that I had to have it there.

Looking back now, I think staying sober during my teenage years - until I was 18, at least - saved me from a lot, in what is a particularly vulnerable time for most people (one-in-four Irish teenagers report having their first drink at 13). I didn't know it then, but I had so many little insecurities that the mix of spirits and self-doubt would have been more lethal than any concoction I could have found behind a bar.

And if I am being honest, those feelings never really went away.

Gradually over the years, I realised I was using drink every so often to ward off uncomfortable feelings - just like my friend.

On a date, a glass of wine could give me confidence, or ease me a little better into conversation.

After a busy week, I could use it over dinner with a friend to destress.

There were many blow-outs in my 20s. Like the time I was the only one who dressed up as a prostitute for a 'pirates and prostitutes' house party (when I turned up, everyone else was some version of Long John Silver) and so I proceeded to do the most instinctive thing I knew at the time to deal with the social awkwardness: drink straight rum at a speed that would have made Blackbeard proud.

Perhaps it's for my own good that I don't remember the rest.

By the time cocaine flooded the scene - and it is back with a vengeance - I was done with wanting to get out of my head.

I started drinking less and, by default, that meant me being around people who were drinking more. Hearing the drivel that is spouted after more drink than people can handle has been consumed, was a reality check.

How many times that had been me.

And I saw how cocaine makes things worse. The greatest unofficial PR stunt ever pulled is the perpetuation of the myth that it keeps you sober. Over a few hours, it turns people into motormouths, speaking the same nonsense as those who are drunk - except their monologues are speeded up. By the night's end, they sound like they're speaking in tongues.

But back to booze - when it came down to it, I didn't want to overdo it any more. And for me, 'overdoing' it simply meant drinking too much and for the wrong reasons.

It wasn't until my 30s that I met someone who gave me good advice for managing alcohol.

She said: "Check your motive."

I began to watch how I was feeling before reaching for a glass of wine.

I realised there is a difference between the drink you have because you enjoy the taste, or because it makes a good accompaniment to a meal, and the drink you pick up to still your nerves. And it's a very fine line in between.

It turned out that the 'right' kind of drink only came around once every few weeks at most. And on those occasions, one or two glasses over the course of an evening would suffice.

These days, I now look for the right reason to drink and the right context.

Here's what I learned did not fall under that heading: the glass of wine on my own in front of the TV; drinking on an empty stomach; drinking too quickly; drinking if I was in any way not in good form; drinking without having water to pace myself; and, most importantly for me, drinking - like my friend once did - for Dutch courage, or to numb out any feelings underneath.

In facing all the wrong ways I used to drink, I can now more thoroughly enjoy the good moments to have a glass of something nice.

Not to sound like a budding Jancis Robinson - my wine knowledge is incredibly sparse - but I also found in my 30s that learning about wines, or at least hanging out with people who could show me a thing or two about a good region and pairing, helped me appreciate drinking more for pleasure than anything else.

And still, when I close my eyes and think about the nicest glass I've ever had, I can't tell you the year or region. But I can still feel the sun shining on my face, the sea salt in my hair, what music was playing, the bikini I was wearing, and exactly who I was with.

I've learned that alcohol taken in the right way is like good background music. It is the backdrop to a nice evening; a subtle presence rather than an overbearing one. It helps set a positive vibe. But good company and real connection should always be the main event. Even if you are sitting in silence, enjoying the moment. Without that in mind, it doesn't matter what label is on the bottle or how much you take to make up for what's going on inside; you're drowning out what could have been a good memory with poison.

We don't have to be addicted to something to want to change our behaviour around it.

Human beings - as frail as we are - have a tendency to misuse anything that can temporarily make us feel better.

I think when we talk about 'unhealthy drinking' we typically take the definition to the extreme.

But what I found is that the truth is usually a lot subtler than that.

Stefanie Preissner

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I wake up. My eyes are stuck together with the glue from false eyelashes, sleep, and probably tears. The pillowcase looks like a child has learned graffiti. My hand is stamped with ink from three different nightclubs, and there's an unchewed kebab in my mouth. I lean out of the bed and spit it out, noticing that I clearly did the same thing last night. The small movement of leaning out of the bed has poked the bear - the bear being a hangover. I will not recover from this for three days.

I'm chuffed with myself for waking up in my own bed because my standards for what constitutes a good, safe night of drinking have plummeted so low that I can achieve them by simply waking up at home alone.

This is what weekends used to look like when I drank alcohol. It wasn't that everyone else was up at 6am on a Sunday, jogging through the park before sitting down to brunch. Some of my friends were in a similar state. Half-humans wrapped in duvets scattered across Dublin, united by the telltale wrist stamp that was often the only memory of where the night had taken us.

If we had all managed to not lose our phones, the texts would start in the afternoon. The hive mind of the group would piece together the night, until we came to the last person's blackout, and the story would disappear in a flurry of laughing-crying-face emojis.

The laughing-crying face was perfect for how I felt about that time. I laughed about it at the time, but I was desperately unhappy. Nothing about the nights was enjoyable. My feet were sore, my bank account was depleted, my friendships were bruised and my self-respect was the price I paid for entry to the club.

We're taught from very young that drinking is cool, fun, and what you have to do to be social as an adult. It takes effort on your part to learn for yourself that it's not. The difficult part about identifying that I drank too much was that I was hanging out with other people who were also drinking too much - that was a form of preservation for the behaviour. When everyone is doing something, it's hard to identify it as dysfunctional.

For the first few years, I even had my friends to go through the hangovers with. We were like people who get closer by experiencing trauma together. We'd hole up in someone's bed, order a week's wages' worth of carbohydrates, and deconstruct the night in gentle tones so as not to trigger headaches or worse. We live in a world that offers bottomless cocktails at brunch, and happy hour and ladies' nights. We drink to 'unwind' and to 'relax' - this is the way alcohol has been marketed to us. It's nearly impossible to call out binge-drinking when it's part of our cultural identity. There are too many people benefitting from it for anyone to put their hand up and call last orders.

I cannot tell you enough how much I do not miss those nights. And yet, when I tell people I don't drink any more, and that I don't go clubbing, they tilt their head at me and search for a reason.

Am I pregnant? Am I on antibiotics? Am I an alcoholic?

They'd down a triple whiskey before they'll accept my triple 'no'.

Irish people will do anything to protect their relationship with drink. We defend it, we laugh off criminal behaviour as 'the crack'. We call people 'dry balls' or 'dry shites' if they try to highlight the dysfunction of drinking until your amygdala shuts off and you have no impulse control. Falling over, starting fights, losing your memory, losing your belongings, getting sick or wetting yourself are not normal side effects of normal drinking.

And yet every time I say I don't drink, people need to label me to distance my conclusion of my drinking from theirs. I wasn't drinking in the morning. I wasn't drinking on my own. I wasn't hiding empty bottles around my house. I wasn't even drinking every week, not to mind every day. But I still noticed the impact alcohol was having on my life, and have seen the benefits of giving it up. I was sober curious.

I've ruined pillows, clothes, carpets and other people's handbags. I've spent the cost of a sun holiday in a single night. I've taken copious painkillers to make Sunday hangovers bearable. I've learned that there is nothing casual about casually drinking more than five pints in a night.

Five pints! I hear you scoff. That's the issue. Irish people seem to feel proud of how much they can drink. There's a social currency when someone can 'hold their drink' and not be seen as 'a lightweight'.

Look, if the statistics about how many young women are presenting to doctors with liver damage or any of the other awful health statistics aren't enough to convince you, then an article in a Sunday paper won't either. Many of you might even be reading this with a hangover. It's no bubbles out of my sparkling water what you do with your life - I just wanted to share for anyone who might find it helpful that there is a brilliant life on the other side of Scotch. If you're sober curious, there are many of us out here.

It's not all sunshine and sparkling water on this side, though. It's tough to be sober in a world that wants you drunk. Sober people are threatened by you. People want to label you alcoholic, pregnant or contagious. The worst part of being sober though, is being around drunk people. They think they're hilarious.

In fact, they are loud, smelly, tedious, and repetitive beyond tolerability. I don't attend most events where people get drunk now, because seeing people you want to like getting drunk makes it impossible. I'd have to be drunk to tolerate those events, and I don't want to be drunk, so I opt out. It means that there are things I would like to attend, but the cost to me is too much.

Sometimes I miss the ease with which I could achieve oblivion with alcohol. Sitting next to annoying people at parties or events is much easier when you can get sloshed. Dealing with grief, sadness or anger is all much less effort with alcohol, but that kind of avoidance has never served me, really. I drank because I could. I drank because everyone else was. I drank because I was uncomfortable in myself and in the company I was with. I drank because I thought there was nothing else to do. I drank because I thought people liked me better drunk. And maybe they did.

Being sober hasn't fixed those insecurities. It's a slow process, but at least now, I act, I remember everything I say to people, I behave intentionally, and if people want me at an event, I can be sure they want me for me, and I won't ruin any special occasions for anyone. Because, while I found drinking 'relaxing', it was not relaxing for anyone around me who was sober enough to notice.

Just give it some thought. For lots of you, it won't be a problem at all. But for others, those of you who have ever woken up and not known where you are, or who have singled out one type of alcohol and sworn off it, those of you who've told yourself you're not drinking on a night and not been able to follow through on the commitment - maybe now's the time to make a change. Not drinking for a while wouldn't be a problem for someone who wasn't dependent on it.

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Drink was another of those things, like women and rugby, that I didn't get in the same way other boys did. At the start, I took it reluctantly, as a kind of medicine that made teenage discos bearable. But that was its sole purpose. I never once drank at home. I found the taste nauseating. I wanted something sweet and carbonated - I'm the target market you can thank for alcopops being invented in the mid 1990s. They got me through many a slow set.

Alcohol didn't seem to have the same effect on me that it had on other people. It didn't make me particularly disinhibited, and I didn't feel like it really relaxed me - I never understood why someone who got a shock would be given a glass of whiskey. It was just something you piled into yourself to get through a big social event - something to blame whatever you did on; a kind of exemption clause that everyone signed up to.

I had a particular horror of people who kept going through their hangovers. Even when I was 21, I was constitutionally unable for hair of the dog. Bloody Marys are my kryptonite. Boozy lads' holidays terrified me. In my student years, I also thought alcohol was quite an old-fashioned thing to be obsessed with. You're Irish and love your gargle - so original.

While girls and rugby remained mysterious, in my 20s, I slowly began to see what all the fuss was about regarding drink. I'd love to say it was a wine-appreciation course or my maturing palate, but I think it might have been the headiness of my first free bar at work that kickstarted me. It whetted my appetite for cheap cocktails, and I threw myself into weeknight drinking with gusto.

Anyone in their first few years of work can still tell you where all the student nights happen, and I learned that if people are out on a Tuesday, you know they mean business. I was able then for a backbreaking schedule of rounds and the dreadful whiff that suddenly became apparent after the smoking ban. And I was able for the other consequences of drinking: lost coats, lost phones, lost dignity - nothing bothered me. My liver, in those years, could shrug off four pints like it was dust on a lapel.

Mostly, it could. There were some hangovers that live in memory. I can still remember whimpering myself awake after a particularly devastating free bar, my legs hurt (something to do with circulation, according to Google) and my shirt was covered in blood from where I'd hit myself off the sides of the dancefloor.

The late, great AA Gill once wrote that drinkers have "degrees of wakening"; mine always involved 30 minutes of staring at the ceiling in intense self-pity, compiling an endless inventory of all the wrongs I'd done. The worst was when I had to travel home on the same day, feeling vulnerable, and not able for daylight or Ryanair. I'd arrive back into Dublin feeling certain there should be a 21-gun salute and a flag over my coffin.

But the pain always felt worth it. Drinking was a kind of mental holiday, a kind of parentheses to break up the endless run-on sentence of life. Nuala O'Faolain wrote about that "magical moment", when you and those around you have had a few drinks, and the chat is flowing and hasn't curdled into belligerence or sentimentality. That is what I was always aiming for.

But as my friends and I aged, this kind of pleasure-seeking faded. It became more and more difficult to round up people to go drinking with. Staying in became the new going out, and, selfishly, people began having children. Formerly reliable wingmen became tedious evangelists for sobriety. Everyone kept boasting about how much better they felt, how much more relaxed; how all those years, it was just booze holding us back.

Somehow, I never believed a word of this. Former alcoholics get way too much airtime in this country. They only know one way, but the majority of people manage to self-medicate with it just fine. Drink, in my life and in many others', makes things better, not worse. There is nothing like that first, triumphant sip of wine on a Friday night. It's a symphony and a hug all together. It's also a social lubricant like no other - it is only polite to drink before meeting people, as it puts you in a mood in which they will be better able to bear you. The very odd time, even drinking a bit too much is ok. It bespeaks someone who can let their hair down and who hasn't totally become their body's bitch. Ten years late, I've just finished watching Mad Men, and they're drinking all day in it - and it's glorious. We're sad little mice by comparison, with our green teas and flat whites.

And so, rather than becoming another boring middle aged quasi-teetotaller, I've instead got more precise with my dosing. I'm careful to listen to my body when it says it needs a drink, but I never go full Barney Gumble, and, however tempting it is, I won't waste that nice, convivial buzz of drinking on people I don't otherwise like. I know my limits: there is a right number of drinks you can get away with on holidays before you'll be dragging through the next day - for me, that hovers between three and four. If I'm tempted to swill more down me, I tell myself to love it just enough to only do it so much.

I interviewed TD Kate O'Connell last year and, sticking to coffee, she told me, tongue in cheek, "If I'm going to go for a drink, I prefer to go for six. My hangover time is precious. Sometimes I just have to play dead". She was joking, but dead right. Having one drink, as is offered in various hipster barbers around Dublin now, is like having one crisp, or one painkiller. It's just not worth your while. Even children shouldn't get in the way of letting loose once in a while. A hangover pass - being properly considerate of Daddy's sore head - is one of the most precious gifts that one parent can give another. And hangover recovery time is indeed precious. At a certain age, one learns the pleasure of wallowing. With a nicely drizzly day, a constant supply of tea and a suitably weepy movie, the 'day after the night before' can actually be one of the best bits.

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Poor booze, whatever good-time shine it once had is rapidly waning - it's basically the new fags. Once considered a cool and fun distraction from the monotony and stresses of everyday life, it's now close to being your embarrassing aunt, slumped over, locked, at a family occasion, her pashmina covered in stains she picked up from rolling across the top of the buffet on her way to the toilet.

Being a lush is no longer the cool rock-and-roll move it once was. Fine, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's remember the benefits to the baby, the social and personal perks of the lovely, drunk, blurry baby.

Now, before anyone comes for me with their tales of alcohol-induced horror, loss of jobs, marriage, homes, eyes, etc, I get that. I've friends who gave up alcohol because they are/were alcoholics and could no longer face the hell of it; they hated themselves and they got help, and now live significantly better lives. This is not about them.

I've other mates who gave it up because they didn't like how it impacted their lives: they don't like being hung-over; they've got kids now, etc. I've other friends who gave it up for no real reason at all, they just made a conscious decision to be way less crack. (Jokes! Don't @ me.) For the record, I thoroughly enjoy hanging out with my sober mates and the fact that they can ferry us around town in their vehicles is an absolute joy.

Me? I abuse alcohol; let's face it, anyone who drinks, abuses it. I use it to amplify my feelings, dilute my feelings, mask my feelings, feel my feelings. It's one of the most addictive drugs on the planet, and it's legal! You can go to the pub and shoot up with your mates all day! You can take your mother to a restaurant and they'll show you a menu of food options, followed by a list of their finest bottles of drug, and you'll choose a bottle of drug that claims it goes really well with fish, then you taste-test the drug to see if it's corked, even though you've no real understanding of why you're doing that, because it's a screw-top bottled drug, but you say, "Yes, yes, very lemony", but really, you don't care - it could be Toilet Duck, you just want the magic juice in the glass so you can relax into chewing some decent social fat with your mother.

We can shoot up all evening if we like, chatting, confiding, bonding like gum on a rug, and then we will go home and eat 12 Penguin bars. A perfect evening, because say what you want about booze, but there is no greater social lubricant, nothing brings people together like alcohol (and trauma).

I grew up in a fairly standard Irish home. It was the 1980s, so naturally my dad was busy brewing his own beer in the hot press, and my mom kept a box of wine on top of the fridge that she'd pump wine out of with a similar gusto that I'd seen them do with the water pumps in the Trocaire ads.

My mother would like you, the reader, to know that this wine pumping was not an everyday occurrence, and she's right, I would never have classed my parents as big boozers; it was occasion juice. Drink meant happiness; new babies; Communions; sport; Christmas.

I've no bad memories of alcohol - there were no big fights, no slamming doors; all they did was laugh, sing and spill things. I'm lucky in that sense, I know that.

My first drink was, of course, a dolly mixture: a cocktail of whatever the hell spirits and alcoholic syrupy gloop you could sneak out of your parents' drinks cabinet before they get back from the big shop in Roches. Topping up the bottles with water, just in case it was that very night they'd decide to take a long, slow, tour of their drinks cabinet and realise that you were not, in fact, on your way to Sinead's house to watch Dirty Dancing, but you now spent your weekends getting pissed in fields and circling the plug hole of a teenage pregnancy.

One time I couldn't find a bottle to pour the booze into, so I arrived into my local field with a holy water bottle full of social clout and sexual mystique. When the whole of South Dublin's water supply got cut off and my mother was in a panic that we'd all die of dehydration, I was faced with a serious moral conundrum: should I tell her that her drinks cabinet is actually a mini oasis? That she's actually sitting on about nine litres of perfectly good, uncontaminated H2O? Nah, she's not cool enough to understand my double life as a Southside field gangster, and I ain't no grass.

I know the benefits to a booze-free life. I hear the chat, especially from writers - their mind is razor-sharp; their eyes shine like torches; they can see into the future; they get up at 2am,and they've written a novel by 5am. All wonderful perks, of course, but I have other priorities. Steroid-level productivity is admirable, but drinking wine with my friends is one of my favourite things to do. Comics spend so much time on our own, so I live for those face-to-face conversations; they water my soul.

I love swapping stories and listening and pouring and connecting and drinking it all in. The wine emoji is the universal symbol for 'Buckle up pal, we're about to go deep'. We bring all the info we've collected that week and dump it out on the kitchen table and sift through it and dissect it, and I love it; it fuels my stand-up, I make a living off it. I make no apologies for it; the incessant swapping of social intelligence is what has kept humans alive up until now; back in ye ol' yore times, how the hell were you supposed to know that Lord Biscuit of Naas was actually riddled with syphilis, if people like me were not passing that information on to each other over ale in the local tavern? We're saving lives.

Yes, alcohol affects productivity, but it also aids it. I'm under no illusions, I know its dangers, but I appreciate its powers. Our minds jump around constantly. Most of our day is spent time travelling, we're remembering things that have happened in the past, imagining things that could happen in the future; it's like a constant, painless, cerebral electrocution.

Alcohol slows all that down for me, and while I appreciate the mind when it's busy, I also appreciate the lulls. Booze is a crutch, and I thoroughly enjoy leaning on it. I don't drink to the point where I'm ruining lives, streaking through christenings and dissolving my innards. Not yet, anyway; if that happens, I'll re-assess. I drink because I thoroughly enjoy it and the connection it brings with it, the social ease; I know I can up my game with a coffee, or I can skew my mind with a Pinot. I like skewing my mind - it has resulted in some of the best nights I've ever had, and the best friends I've ever made, and also some of the funniest stuff I've ever written (although to be fair, that's subjective, so that should not be included).

Alcohol is falling out of favour for lots of reasons, but a big one is because when you drink, you're not completely in control of yourself, and we fetishise self-control. I get it, but personally, I like losing control. Life is stressful. We're wound up so tight, the pressure of it all takes its toll; we're taking in more information in one day than our ancestors took in in a lifetime. Half the time, I think I'm on the brink of short-circuiting. Alcohol is a release, and I'm all about releases.

Performing shoots your adrenaline through the roof. I love knowing I can head home that night and loosen the knot in my brain with a huge wine - it's like mental lubricant. I can feel my mind and my soul exhale.

Sometimes shame is really helpful. Shame stopped me smoking - that, and the images on the box telling me my mouth would eventually look like an anus; so vanity, but mostly shame. I wonder will alcohol be the same? Will we be shamed into sobriety? Maybe if my fag prediction is correct, our children will be completely amazed at the fact that you could once have booze indoors at a wedding or on an aeroplane. I really hope not - being alive can be hard, and a vice is a wonderful thing!

Maybe my own opinion will change, or maybe I'm deluded and in 10 years' time, I will be writing to you from a rehabilitation centre in California. Who knows, but for now, I drink.




OGDEN, Utah, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TAB Bank is pleased to announce it has received a Best Factoring Companies award from Factoring Club for 2020. Every year, Factoring Club selects the top factoring companies in the industry based on contract terms, customer service, and company leadership.



We are very excited to receive this recognition as being one of the best lenders in the factoring marketplace today. Receiving this award is a great honor and speaks to the efficiency of our processes, structure, and speed. But more importantly it speaks to the quality of the people on our team and the excellent service and support they give to our clients every day, commented Curtis Sutherland, Senior Vice President at TAB Bank.

About TAB Bank

Founded in 1998, TAB Bank was originally established to provide financial products and services to the trucking industry. Today, TAB Bank offers custom working capital solutions to commercial businesses from many industries. These solutions are provided in all stages of business life cycles during any economic conditions. TAB Bank does this through Asset Based Loans, Accounts Receivable Financing, Factoring, Lines of Credit, and Equipment Finance. TABs lending options can also be combined with a full suite of business banking solutions and Treasury Management Services.

About Factoring Club

FactoringClub.com is a premier online resource for customers to find the best factoring company to meet their needs. Factoring Club allows businesses to filter by criteria that is most important to them (industry, location, terms, features, cost, and service). They rate the factoring companies listed on their site based on the information provided to them by each factoring company. The Club Rating is a composite score from 1 to 5 that is calculated based on standard contract terms.
Jozef Dudek, a 2-year-old boy from Buena Park, Calif., died in May 2017 when a three-drawer Malm dresser in his bedroom fell on him after he was put down for an afternoon nap, according to a lawyer for the family. Read more

The parents of a California toddler crushed to death last year by an Ikea dresser have filed suit against the retailer, claiming the company knew for years that its dressers were unstable but neglected to redesign them.

The dresser that fell onto 2-year-old Jozef Dudek was from the company's popular Malm line and part of a historic recall of Ikea dressers in 2016.

"Ikea clearly was familiar with a stability issue with its products for years and took no effective measures to deal with it," said attorney Alan Feldman, who is representing the family.

Ikea, which has its U.S. headquarters in Conshohocken, last year settled for $50 million three similar suits filed by parents whose children died beneath tipped dressers. Among them was 2-year-old Curren Collas of West Chester, who died in 2014.

Feldman, of Philadelphia's Feldman Shepherd law firm, said he and Ikea's lawyers had not discussed a settlement in regard to Jozef's death.

Jozef was found pinned between the drawers of a three-drawer dresser in his Buena Park bedroom after being put down for an afternoon nap in May 2017. He is the eighth child known to have died when an unsecured Ikea dresser toppled forward. His death came after the recall of 29 million of the company's bureaus, among the largest recalls in the history of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

At the time of the recall, Ikea acknowledged that many of its dressers were potentially dangerous if not attached to the wall. The dressers did not meet the furniture industry's voluntary safety standard meant to ensure they remain upright under the weight of a climbing child even when not tethered.

In the suit, filed Monday in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, the parents said they had received no notice of the recall, even though Ikea had their contact information through its customer loyalty program.

An Ikea spokesperson on Thursday said the company would not comment on pending litigation. A spokesperson previously said of Jozef's death that the dresser in his room had not been attached to the wall, and encouraged consumers to use anchors included with its products.

As part of the recall, Ikea offered consumers full refunds in most cases and took scores of its dressers off the market, redesigning them to meet the industry safety standard.

That has not satisfied some safety advocates, who said Ikea for years resisted a recall and then, after agreeing to one, did not do enough to promote it. Nancy Cowles, executive director of the Chicago nonprofit Kids in Danger, said Ikea quickly pivoted from talking about the recall to promoting a more general tip-over public awareness campaign. U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D., Ill.) lobbed a similar complaint against the company in a 2016 letter, saying she was "underwhelmed" by Ikea's actions.

Ikea on Thursday said it has done extensive outreach for the recall, including online and television advertising and emails to 13 million consumers. The company said it has recalled more than one million dressers.

(Monthly progress reports filed by the company with federal regulators and obtained by the Inquirer and Daily News through a public records request showed about 882,500 dressers had been repaired or returned by January 2017. But the recall numbers were redacted from subsequent progress reports released by the agency in response to records requests.)

Cowles said millions of recalled dressers remain in American homes.

"They are landmines out there," she said. "Maybe you've never stepped on it yet. But it doesn't mean it's not right there and dangerous."
For the more than 36,000 college students in Worcester, the Massachusetts Port Authority is trying to ease their travel in and out of the city.

For those out-of-state commuters or even for students looking to travel out of Worcester for spring break, Massport is giving away six pairs of roundtrip airfare.

The promotion began Monday and continues through April. Its divided into two segments. The first runs through Feb. 13 when three winners will be selected. The second half begins on Feb. 17 and runs through April 23 when Massport will announce another three winners.

The three airlines flying out of Worcester - JetBlue Airways, American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines - coordinated with Massport for the contest.

The promotion is open to all part-time and full-time undergraduate and graduate students currently enrolled at Assumption College, Becker College, Clark University, the College of the Holy Cross, the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences, Quinsigamond Community College, UMass Medical School, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Worcester State University. The contest is only open to U.S. residents that are at least 18 years old.

Worcester Regional Airport is conveniently located close to several colleges and universities in Worcester, Worcester Regional Airport Director Andy Davis said in a statement. We encourage the Worcester college community to fly Worcester, whether theyre planning for Spring Break or summer vacation or looking to study abroad. We are an affordable option to travel with nonstop flights to New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Orlando, and Ft. Lauderdale and connections to over 120 destinations around the world.

Students interested in the promotion can enter here: FlyWorcesterSweeps.com.
Grammy Award-winning rapper, Cardi B, on Monday asked her Nigerian Twitter fans to help her decide a new name between Chioma B and Cadijat.

The rapper was given a Nigerian name, Chioma B, during her first visit to Nigeria in December 2019.

Cadijat, on the other hand, is the name being suggested by her Nigerian Muslim fans.

Lets settle this ones and for all CHIOMA B Or Cadijat, the rapper wrote on Twitter Monday.

Cardi Bs tweet has set Nigerian Twittersphere abuzz.

Nigerians have already begun suggesting their preferred names and their reasons.

The rapper who boasts a loyal fan base in Nigeria has revealed that she is toying with the idea of filing for Nigerian citizenship.

She has also said that she wants her husband, Offset, to join her in relocating to Nigeria.

The rapper on Monday shared a photoshopped photo of Offset dressed in the Nigerian traditional Agbada with the caption, Convince him to move with me.

The couple who are both in their twenties are worth over $50 million, according to online reports and have four number one hits on Billboards Hot 100 chart.

Background

Cardi Bs decision is believed to have been triggered by the U.S. President, Donald Trumps decision to order the assassination on Friday of Iranian military commander, Qasem Soleimani.

In a Tweet, the rapper described Mr. Trumps move as the dumbest, stressing that he is putting Americans lives in danger.

She said it prompted her decision to file for Nigerian citizenship and added that she was choosing her tribe in reference to Nigerian tribes.

Meanwhile, the chairman of Nigerias diaspora commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, on Saturday responded to Cardis announcement.

On Twitter, Abike wrote As one in charge of the Diaspora for Nigeria, We cant wait to receive you again.

Our doors are open, sister. And you need to talk a walk through the Door of Return in Badagry. Its an indescribable experience.

Cardi B, who clearly had the time of her life during her stay in Lagos, has kept in touch with her Nigerian fans upon returning to the U.S.

READ ALSO:

During her stay in Nigeria, Cardi B visited a popular Lagos strip club, an orphanage home and shut down the popular Ebeano Supermarket in Lekki when she paid for the items the customers bought.

Check out some Twitter responses below:

Convince him to move with me pic.twitter.com/faeAVMHQBe  iamcardib (@iamcardib) January 6, 2020

https://twitter.com/iamcardib/status/1213169715759026176?s=20
A large fire has ripped through the iconic music venue Koko in Camden, north London.

Dozens of firefighters were battling the blaze at the historic building, which had been closed for refurbishment, on Monday night.

Dramatic footage showed flames tearing through the roof.

London Fire Brigade (LFB) said crews were working hard to save the rest of the building near Mornington Crescent station.

Camden: Koko fire - In pictures 1 /21 Camden: Koko fire - In pictures Dave Benett Dave Benett Dave Benett Dave Benett Lucy Young Lucy Young Dave Benett Lucy Young Dave Benett Lucy Young Dave Benett Lucy Young Lucy Young Lucy Young PA Barney Davis

It warned people to stay away from the area as firefighters fought to bring the blaze under control.

In a tweet, LFB said: "Weve got eight fire engines & around 60 firefighters tackling a visible blaze on #Camden High Street. Please avoid the area if possible."

And in a later update it added: "We were called at 20:56 to a fire at a #Camden nightclub under refurbishment. 30% of the roof is alight. Firefighters working hard to save the rest of the building. Please avoid the area if possible."

London Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted on Tuesday morning: "London's firefighters have been working tirelessly overnight to tackle a fire at #Koko in #Camden.

"Their quick response to get the fire under control meant the fire was contained to the roof of the building.

"To all firefighters and @LondonFire staff involved: thank you."

Shops near to the scene have been evacuated as the flames are fought.

Koko was forced to close last year for a major refurbishment. It is scheduled to open in around April of this year.

The venue has hosted acts including Madonna, Ed Sheeran and Prince.

DJ Tony Blackburn tweeted: "I've only just heard about this. This is terrible news particularly as it was going through a refurbishment and we were hoping to hold our next BBC Radio London Soul Night Out there when it opens.

"Let's hope nobody has been hurt in the fire at KoKo it's such a great venue."

Sir Keir Starmer, Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras, tweeted: "Awful news in Camden tonight."

Conservative councillor for Hampstead Oliver Cooper tweeted that he was "devastated by the potential loss of such a huge part of Camdens culture".

Others said it was "so sad" to witness the blaze.

Another Twitter user wrote: "The London music scene doesnt need any more heartbreaking permanent closures."

Kentish Town ward councillor Georgia Gould wrote: "Heartbreaking watching the Camden Palace / Koko up in flames this evening, a building that holds so many memories and means so much to us in Camden."

The venue was in the middle of a 40 million redevelopment.

It is set to have updated performance areas, restaurants and shops in the renovated complex.
Joy Ranch reopens under new ownership

Joy Ranch near Watertown has reopened under new ownership.
Harry Nuriev, founder of Crosby Studios, has just designed a couch that perfectly embodies the philosophy out with the old, in with the new. To create his bold statement piece, he collected old Balenciaga clothing items and stuffed them into an entirely new creation: a transparent vinyl couch.

A colorful couch made from scrapped Balenciaga garments, designed by Harry Nuriev.

Crosby Studios is a creative agency that works on a wide variety of projects, including fashion collaborations, graphic designs, and interior design for hospitality and residential spaces. In fact, this isnt even the first time that Crosby Studios has created a product like the Balenciaga-stuffed sofa. Their website also features some furniture that celebrates sneaker culture, including a transparent armchair filled with Nikes.

Nuriev and Balenciaga first unveiled the couch at Design Miami 2019, a yearly fair that aims to provide both designers and consumers with commercial opportunities and serve as a platform for cultural and artistic collaboration.

A colorful couch made from scrapped Balenciaga garments, designed by Harry Nuriev.

The sofas daring aesthetic is supposed to be both visually and mentally stimulating, though Nuriev hopes hopes it can also inspire customers to be more aware of the negative impact consumerism has on the planet. While the design is reminiscent of a large, overstuffed sofa you might expect to see in an average family home, this couch has a lot more going for it. The materials are much more unique, mostly sourced from damaged or otherwise unsellable garments and off-cuts from obsolete stocks of Balenciaga clothing, according to MR magazine. The final effect is a couch with a bold and mixed pattern of all conceivable colors.

While the materials that went into making it would normally not be suitable for any other means, Nuriev has repurposed them into what the fair calls environmentally conscious design, giving generations of garments and other materials another life. And while it may be a think piece first and foremost, the furniture is still functional, even including a pillow and recliner if you want to get a bit more comfortable.

Story continues

A colorful couch made from scrapped Balenciaga garments, designed by Harry Nuriev.

The eco-friendly sentiment here is appreciated, but Nuriev is not the first to bring this concept to life. Companies such as Tradesy, The RealReal, and Poshmark also attempt to give clothing multiple lifetimes by reselling old pieces so they can be enjoyed by several new owners for decades to come.

Earlier this year, Balenciaga also launched an environmentally-friendly clothing line. The companys goal with that collection was to practice sustainable fashion and bring awareness to threatened species and the need for conservation. Even better, the company put their money where their mouth was, donating all proceeds from the collection to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

A colorful couch made from scrapped Balenciaga garments, designed by Harry Nuriev.

Attitudes toward sustainability, conservation, and eco-friendly design may vary, but seeing retail giants like Harry Nuriev and Balenciaga moving in the right direction is massively encouraging. Recognizing the responsibility designers have in protecting the environment is a necessary step forward for the whole planet.
Nollywood actor Deyemi Okanlawon and his wife are today celebrating their 7th wedding anniversary.

The excited actor has since taken to his IG page to share beautiful photos of himself with his wife alongside sweet love notes.

Read Also: Actor Deyemi Okanlawon & wife welcome their second child, a baby boy (photos)

The father of two wrote;

Year 7 vs Year 1 as you can see her fineness has rubbed off on me and Ive gotten better at this gebying of iyawo tin! #weddinganniversary

We just had an argument and I decided to bring it here for you guys to settle. Please be honest whos finer? Behind every successful woman is a husband whos happy to do and co! True or false? 
Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday launched a scathing attack on Congress over its stand against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and accused Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi of misleading the minorities.

He also asserted that Aam Aadmi Party and Congress were the parties responsible for the riots which broke out.

Addressing a gathering in Delhi, Shah said, AAP and Congress, especially Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, are misleading the minorities of the country. Nobodys citizenship will be revoked under CAA, it is an Act to give citizenship. These parties are responsible for the riots which broke out, he said.

Shah also tore into the Arvind Kejriwal led Delhi government, blaming the Chief Minister of not allowing the implementation of Central government schemes in the national capital.

The AAP government in Delhi has caused the most harm to the poor of Delhi. Kejriwal ji just for his political interests is not allowing Ayushman Bharat scheme to be implemented. People have now seen through you Kejriwal ji, AAP was wiped out in MCD and Lok Sabha polls, BJP chief Shah said.

Without mentioning any particular incident or protest, Shah also accused Delhi Chief Minister of not giving sanction to the police to prosecute the students who raised anti-India slogans.

Students who raised anti-India slogans should be put behind the bars or not? But Kejriwal is not giving sanction to Police to prosecute them, Shah told the gathering.

He made these statements while addressing the The Delhi CycleWalk inauguration event in Delhi.

Union Minister Hardeep Puri and New Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi were also present at the event.
P eople can be fearful about the impact of robots in the future  particularly when experiential robotics companies like Boston Dynamics release videos of their creations pulling trucks and doing parkour. But theres a lot of work going on to investigate the benefits of these intelligent machines.

Take Agility for instance. The robotics company, which was spun out of Oregon State University in 2015, has announced that its two-legged robot, Digit, is officially on sale. Created in part thanks to a research project with the car manufacturer Ford Motor, Digit can lift 40-pound packages (about 18kg) and could be used to deliver parcels in the future.

Agilitys first robot, Cassie, was launched in mid-2017 as a bipedal robot which could walk around. Digit has been built upon the work Agility did with Cassie, adding an upper torso, new sensors, two arms and additional advanced computing so it can pick up objects and move around.

In particular, Ford has been testing how the robot could work with self-driving vehicles in the future. A video released last July shows Digit stepping out of the back of a van to deliver a parcel to someones door, navigating obstructions in the way such as a discarded scooter and steps. Fords CTO Ken Washington said this navigates the last 50-feet problem in the delivery process, which refers to the steps from a van to someones front door.

Using a robot such as Digit could make deliveries efficient and more affordable, said Washington.

But its not just delivering your late-night Amazon orders where Digit could be useful. The robot could also be put to work inside warehouses too. Boston Dynamics has also created robots suited for warehouse use, including Handle, a mobile manipulation robot which can move boxes,

The news about the next steps for Digit was announced yesterday at the start of CES, the consumer tech conference in Las Vegas. Robots are often the stars of the show and this year looks to be no different. As well as Digit, other robots on show included BellaBot, a robot cat designed to carry plates of food to restaurant customers; Rollbot, which delivers toilet paper on demand to bathrooms; and an updated version of the Lovot companion robot which provides comfort and companionship to people living alone.
NEW YORK  Four years after President Trump pushed the rules of politics over a cliff to win the Republican presidential nomination and ultimately the White House, Democrats will go through their own version of the same test.

In less than a month, Democratic voters will begin the formal process of sifting through a historically large field of candidates. The options include progressives who have inspired energy  and strong opposition  by rejecting traditional party politics and pushing for fundamental changes to Americas political, social and economic systems. Voters could pick the oldest nominee in the partys history  or the youngest.

The battle for the White House will unfold amid a great political realignment that is disrupting decades-long political alliances and further dividing America by education, gender and race. That means the election likely will serve as a referendum not only on the candidates, but also the country and its definition of the American presidency.

Some of Trumps most influential allies say he is ready and willing to make 2020 the nastiest presidential contest in living memory.

Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser who has long fanned the flames of Trumps scorched-earth politics, indicated that Trump would lean more aggressively into populism and nationalism over the coming year. And he offered a warning to Democrats who have engaged in a largely polite nomination fight so far: The pillow fight is almost over.

This will be one for the ages. Youre going to get full Trump at max speed, Bannon said.

The urgent question of which Democrat will ultimately challenge Trump will take months to resolve. The winnowing process formally begins with Iowas Feb. 3 caucus and ends at the partys mid-July national convention after every state and U.S. territory holds its own primary contest.

The candidates represent the ideological diversity of an evolving Democratic Party that is teetering on the edge of its own civil war, united if only by overwhelming disdain for Trump.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, 77, and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, at 37 the youngest candidate, represent the partys moderate wing, favoring a more cautious shift leftward on core issues like health care, education and immigration. On the other side, Elizabeth Warren, a 70-year-old progressive Massachusetts senator, and Sanders, at 78 the oldest and a self-described democratic socialist, are fighting for transformational changes including a shift to a single-payer health care system.

Each faction is convinced that the other will trigger the very thing they fear most: Trumps re-election.

Steve Peoples is an Associated Press writer.
Joaquin Phoenix , winner of Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama for "Joker" poses in the press room during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 05, 2020 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Joaquin Phoenix picked up the gong for Best Actor in a Drama for Joker at the Golden Globes last night where he gave an eye-raising acceptance speech.

He dropped more than one F-bomb as he won the award for his portrayal of Arthur Fleck in the villain's origin story film, forcing broadcaster NBC to bleep out the expletives.

We all know theres no f***ing competition between us," the Academy Award winner said of his fellow nominees. "Im your f***ing student. I cant believe the beautiful mesmerising, unique work that youve all done this year, but I really do feel honoured to be mentioned with you.

Read more: Ricky Gervais targets Prince Andrew, Apple and Cats in scathing Golden Globes monologue

Finishing as he started, Phoenix went on: Contrary to popular belief, I dont want to rock the boat, but the boat is f***ing rocked.

Warner Bros - Joaquin Phoenix as Joker.

Amid the swearing at the ceremony, the actor also took time out to praise the Golden Globes for switching to a plant-based meal for attendees.

The vegan star thanked the Hollywood Foreign Press for recognising and acknowledging the link between animal agriculture and climate change".

Photo by: gotpap/STAR MAX/IPx 2019 6/2/19 Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara at The National Animal Rights Day Demostration in Los Angeles, CA.

"Its a very bold move, making tonight plant-based, he shared.

Phoenix's triumph wasn't the only win for Joker as it also scooped the Best Original Score prize.

It had received a nod in the Best Motion Picture category for drama, but lost out to Sam Mendes' 1917.

Sam Mendes poses in the press room with the awards for best director, motion picture and best motion picture drama for "1917" at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

It was a big night for the filmmaker who also won the Best Director award which Jokers Todd Phillips had also been in the running for.

One picture walking away from the night empty-handed was The Irishman which didn't win anything despite being nominated for five awards.

The most nominated picture, Marriage Story, also failed to win big as it won in one category out of six as Laura Dern was named Best Supporting Actress.
(TNS)  Columbia County is on the shortlist for receiving updated and new audio and video recording equipment, to fill gaps as a statewide shortage of court reporters shows no signs of abating.Circuit Court Judge Andrew Voigt said the state is working to place new video and audio recording systems in almost all courtrooms across the state within the next two to three years, to provide uniformity in systems. The recording systems will also be used to address the rising shortage of court reporters, as a large number are set to retire, with very few new reporters entering the field to replace them.There is a very significant percentage of court reporters in the state of Wisconsin eligible to retire in the next five years, dramatically more than are graduating from court reporting schools in Wisconsin, said Voigt. There is no conceivable way that the graduates could fill all of what will be open spaces.Columbia County has two of four courtrooms with audio and video recording systems. The state will update those two and install recording systems in the other two courtrooms, as one of the first counties in the state to receive the system, Voigt said.The state will provide the equipment and the technology. Because the county owns the courthouse, it will be responsible for wiring or rewiring the courtrooms for installation, said David Drews, Management Information Services director.Drews told the countys Human Resources Committee Friday that he has received a quote for the work of about $16,000.The state will be responsible for storing the files that are recorded in courtrooms and making them available.Voigt said these systems will likely not be extensively used in the near future as there is still enough court reporters working in the county.This is a response to (an expected shortage of court reporters), because we as a court system dont ever want to be in a position where we cant hold court because we are missing personnel, he said.While the system is meant to fill gaps in the absence of a court reporter, it will not eliminate the need for someone to operate the computer system used to record, and create transcripts from the recordings nor will it eliminate all court reporter positions throughout the state.Voigt said this person will likely be a state employee, with similar duties to a court reporter, such as ensuring the recording equipment is operating properly, the recording is clear and understandable and creating a transcript of the recording.The county was not aware of the associated costs of this system, meaning the money needed to wire the courtrooms is not accounted for in the 2020 budget, but is needed by the time the state is ready to install the equipment which Voigt says will likely be late February or early March.Theres so many unknowns with this, but we dont have a choice, by statute they can order us to do this, said County Board Chairman Vern Gove. We dont know what this is going to be, but it could be a big amount.
The combined export value of main agricultural products was estimated at 18.5 billion USD in 2019, down 5.3 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.



Meanwhile, export earnings from fishery products were up 2.7 percent to 8.63 billion USD, and that of main forestry products up 19.2 percent to 11.2 billion USD.

As a result, total export value of

agri-forestry-fishery products

in 2019 came to 41.3 billion USD, an increase of 3.2 percent from 2018.

The main export markets of Vietnams agri-forestry-

fishery products

during the year were China and Hong Kong (27.8 percent), the US (21.9 percent), the European Union (11.4 percent), ASEAN (9.8 percent) and Japan (8.7 percent).

Rice export in 2019 showed a 3.9 percent increase in volume to 6.34 million tonnes but value was down 9.7 percent to 2.79 billion USD.

Earnings from vegetable and fruit also reduced by 1.9 percent to 3.74 billion USD.

The same situation was seen in the export of coffee, with a reduction of 15.2 percent in volume to 1.59 million tonnes and a 22.4 percent decrease in value to 2.75 billion USD.

Similarly, the export of pepper bean suffered from a 5.7 percent decrease in value to 715 million USD despite an increase of 23.4 percent in volume, due to declining export prices.

However, goods signs were seen in overseas shipments of cassava and cassava products, which went up 3.2 percent to 2.5 million tonnes, bringing in 973 million USD, a rise of 1.6 percent, despite lower export prices.

Tea export also recorded a 6.8 percent rise in volume to 136,000 tonnes and a 13.5 percent increase in value to 235 million USD thanks to higher export prices.

Meanwhile, total import value of agri-forestry-fishery products declined by 1.6 percent to 30.9 billion USD in 2019, resulting in a trade surplus of 10.4 billion USD. VNA

Vietnam wood exports poised to hit US$12 billion mark ahead in 2020 Vietnams wood exports are predicted to reach US$12 billion during the course of 2020 following the wood processing industrys great success during 2019, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
On Thursday, the Trump administration announced that it would ban the sale of pre-filled flavored e-cigarette cartridges nationwide  which is both a terrible idea and a perfect example of what happens when government officials insist on legislating what they dont understand.

Yes: I myself vape, and thats part of the reason why this news upsets me. Whats more, as a vaper who has tried open tank systems  which the administration exempts from the ban  I find absolutely no solace in this fact, as I know from experience how fiddling with these sorts of systems often inevitably results in your hands and furniture and purses and life getting completely soaked with nicotine liquid.

My personal use, however, is far from the only reason that I am upset about this ban. In fact, the main reason Im opposed to it is that it may, quite frankly, kill people.

See, President Trump insists that the purpose behind the ban is to protect our families, but the truth is, anyone who is informed on the facts of the issue would understand how it will only have a negative impact.

In case you yourself arent informed, here are some of those facts.

First of all, the narrative that we are in the midst of an epidemic of young kids getting addicted to vaping is patently false. Although many of them may have tried it, Julie Gunlocks analysis of CDC data finds that only approximately 5.7 percent of teenagers  including 18- and 19-year-old adults  are actually addicted.

Another misconception is that vaping nicotine is deadly, and perhaps even worse than smoking. This also couldnt be further from the truth. In fact, experts agree that it is, at least for adults, much safer than smoking traditional combustible cigarettes. A Public Health England study, for example, estimated that it was 95 percent safer.

Many people, of course, argue this point by referring to the illnesses and deaths that were attributed to vaping throughout the United States in 2019. This, too, represents a simple misunderstanding of the facts. According to the CDC, the vast majority of the illnesses and deaths were due to THC vaping products  particularly those that had been obtained on the black market  containing Vitamin E acetate. In fact, when I spoke with Carrie Wade (the director of harm-reduction policy at the R Street Institute, who also has an educational background in neuroscience and pharmacology), she told me that it would surprise her if any of the illnesses or deaths were due to nicotine. She said that she believed that people who admitted only to vaping nicotine might simply be hesitant to admit that they had been using a marijuana product as well, especially if they were teens  because, due to the difference in the chemical properties of nicotine from those of THC, she doesnt see a need for the problematic type of chemical to be in a nicotine product at all.

Story continues

The concerns that vaping might be some sort of gateway to smoking combustible cigarettes, even if vaping products are still available, are equally unfounded. According to the National Youth Tobacco Survey, although there has been a rise in youth e-cigarette use, the exact same data also shows that the rate of teenagers smoking traditional combustible cigarettes has continued to fall  which wouldnt be the case if the vaping-leads-to-smoking theory held any water. In fact, in a Wall Street Journal piece about how Britains vaping policy is much smarter than that of the United States, Matt Ridley notes that less than 1% of vapers are people who have never smoked, and there is little sign of young people taking it up faster than they would have taken up smoking.

Without the availability of vaping products, however, this could easily change  and thats more than just my opinion. In fact, in May, San Franciscos chief economist predicted that the citys ban on e-cigarettes would not impact its economy because he expected that people who had been vaping would simply return to smoking and spend their money on traditional (more dangerous) cigarettes instead.

In short: Reducing the availability and appeal of vaping products may be presented as a public-health win, but the facts show that it will actually be a net negative. Anyone with any actual knowledge of the issue understands that, which brings me to my larger point: the problem with people in our government calling for legislation on things that they, quite obviously, know nothing about.

This is, of course, hardly the first time we have seen people in our government ban, or aim to ban, things that they clearly dont adequately understand. Ive seen this repeatedly, for example, when Democrats talk about guns. (Such as Senator Diane Feinstein talking about AR-15s. Or Representative Carolyn Maloney calling for a ban on massacre machine gun magazines, despite the fact that machine guns have been banned since 1986. Or President Obama claiming that the Sandy Hook shooting was committed with a fully automatic weapon, when it was really committed with a semi-automatic one, or perhaps his comment that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.)

Be it nicotine or arms, the bottom line is: When our government passes laws based on the emotional whims of media and public hysteria rather than statistical fact, the American people lose. The truth is, we shouldnt have to give up, or even water down, our Second Amendment rights because someone who, say, thinks the AR in AR-15 stands for assault rifle says that we should. Similarly, we shouldnt have to give up our rights as adults to make decisions about our health because of someone who thinks that children are dropping like flies because of mango-flavored Juul pods.

I understand that doing your own research takes effort, and that separating media hysteria from fact can be tedious. If you dont want to take the time to learn, though, you shouldnt be using whatever time you saved to legislate on something that you arent even qualified to discuss intelligently.

The freedoms that we have in this country are what make it such a special place, and thats exactly why we must be concerned about them being taken away. Im not, of course, saying that the government shouldnt have any power. Of course it should, but it also should not be able to take away our rights without good reason  and misguided, misunderstood hysteria stemming from a lack of factual knowledge must not be allowed to qualify as such.

More from National Review
'Vaikuntha Dwara' darshanam at Lord Venkateswara temple will be held only for two days, on January 6 and 7, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) Trust Board Chairman YV Subbareddy said on Sunday.

"Vaikuntha Dwara darshanam will be made available for two days only, on Monday and Tuesday. January 6 and 7, on the eve of Vaikuntha Ekadasi," Subbareddy said at a press conference.

READ | Devotees Offer Prayers At Golden Temple On Guru Gobind's Birth Anniversary

Subbareddy also added that the board had decided to give a 'Laddu prasadam' to the devotees at the temple. "One Ladoo prasadam will be provided free of cost to every pilgrim visiting the hill temple. Pilgrims who wish to have more Ladoos can purchase them at Rs 50 for each piece," he said.

The TTD board of trustees had held a high-level committee meeting with the TTD Additional Executive Officer as a convener with a religious bent of mind to hold consultations with renowned spiritual leaders over the issue of extending the Vaikunta Dwara darshanam for ten days.

Thereafter, TTD board held a press conference and said that the board has decided to continue the existing tradition in its true spirit for this year, confining it to two days. The emergency meeting was called following the Andhra Pradesh High Court's directives to make a decision about extending the darshan process to 10 days. The HC had issued directives to TTD trust board after a PIL was filed concerning the same.

READ | Maha: Shirdi Sai Temple Earns Rs 17.42 Cr In 11 Days

'Kalasam' Of TN Temple Stolen

The 'gopura kalasam' - inverted pot-like metal object atop the tower, of Kothanda Ramar temple, was allegedly stolen on Friday, police said. They suspect that the kalasam could have been stolen and smuggled to Sri Lanka.

Gopura Kalasam is sold in various countries, including Malaysia and Singapore for its antique, mystic qualities and transcendental powers to bring prosperity and wealth.

"It fetches a very high price ranging from Rs 10 lakh to one crore," an official of the idol wing said. "The 'hundial' of the temple was stolen about a few months ago," they said. "An investigation is on," they added.

READ | 133 Hindu Pilgrims From Pakistan Visit Jagannath Temple

WATCH | Hindu Pilgrims Cross Over To Pakistan To Pay Obeisance At Katas Raj Temple

(With inputs from ANI)
German police shot dead a Turkish man who sought to attack officers with a knife on January 5 in the city of Gelsenkirchen. The man was reportedly holding a knife behind his back when he struck a patrol car with an object with the motive to assault officers standing by the vehicle.

According to media reports, police warned the attacker but his refusal to stop forced a 23-year-old policeman to open fire at him which eventually lead to his death. Rumours were afloat that the man shouted Allah hu Akbar during the attack but the police spokesperson rejected such claims.

Attack near Checkpoint Charlie

On December 30, an individual opened fire in a shop near Berlins Checkpoint Charlie ahead of the New Year celebrations. According to a local newspaper, the Friedrichstrasse and Kochstrasse intersection near Checkpoint Charlie were cordoned off for police operation.

Berlin Police took to Twitter to inform that an unknown suspect fired several shots in a shop, assuming that it was an attempted robbery in Friedrichstrae, a major culture and shopping street in central Berlin. Police further stated that the situation is under control but didnt reveal if there has been any casualty.

Read: Three Americans Killed In Militant Attack On US Base In Kenya

Checkpoint Charlie is a major tourist destination, a symbol of Cold War that divided western bloc of capitalist countries from the communist east led by the Soviet Union. Recently, the city administration reached a consensus on the redevelopment plan, clearing the path for a drastic facelift. It will be transformed into a public square with a cold war museum and residential block.

Read: Kerala CM Condemns Nazi-style Attack On JNU, Calls It Result Of 'intolerance'

Senator for Urban Development and Housing, Katrin Lompscher, said that the development appropriate to the particular place could be initiated with broad public participation. She added that the blocking of change has been replaced by binding public planning goals.

Once the development plan has been established, it is planned to hold competitions for the construction area, in particular for the design of the planned museum, said the city government in a statement.

Read: Attack On The JNU Students By Masked Miscreants 'state-sponsored Mayhem': Congress

Read: JNU Violence: Owaisi Blames Centre; Says "Cruel Attack Meant To "punish" Students'

(With inputs from agencies)
One of the core rules of comedy is that there are some things that are no joking matter. The most obvious example is that one should never joke about "bombs" when in an airport.

Even if the joke is funny, the subject is too serious, and the consequences are too great for airport security ever to assume that the speaker is "just joking." Perhaps it's time to add a new comedy principle to the list: one should never joke about accepting money to assassinate the president.

It all started during Qassem Soleimani's funeral, when one of the eulogists proposed that Iranians put together an $80-million bounty on Donald Trump:

The eulogist at the funeral procession of prominent Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in Iran put an 80-million-dollar prize on US President Donald Trump's head on live state TV. "We are 80 million Iranians, if each one of us puts aside one American dollar, we will have 80 million American dollars, and we will reward anyone who brings us [Trump]'s head with that amount," he said, addressing a large crowd in Iran's north-eastern city of Mashhad.

Various websites quickly picked up the story but framed it as an official offer from the Iranian state rather than a rhetorical suggestion. On the fringe Left, Occupy Democrats, for example, said, "Iranian state TV has announced that it has placed an $80 million bounty on the president's head."

Britain's Mirror, a more mainstream outlet, also reported the story as an official Iranian offer:

An $80 million bounty has been placed on Donald Trump's head in Iran in the wake of General Qasem Soleimani's assassination.

During the televised funeral, official state broadcasters said one US dollar would be tabled for every Iranian in the country, with the cash going to whoever killed the US President.

For many, this was an unpleasant reminder about the Ayatollah Khomeini's totalitarian response to The Satanic Verses, by Muslim British-Indian author Salman Rushdie. Deeming the book blasphemous, Khomeini in 1989 issued a worldwide fatwa against Rushdie, offering a bounty for the novelist's death. Rushdie was forced into hiding and then lived for years under police protection.

For others, though, what seemed like an $80-million promise was an opportunity to vent their continuing fury that President Trump occupies the White House. So it was that, within a short time of hearing that there might be money on the table, actor George Lopez used his Instagram account to accept:

Someone apparently made Lopez aware that there are some subjects that are criminal, rather than funny, for Lopez has since deleted his Instagram post in favor of an "I support the military" post:

The so-called joke was consistent with Lopez's stale shtick since Trump was elected, one that sees him oozing contempt for Trump and his supporters. Breitbart summarizes:

When George Lopez is not threatening to assassinate the president, he is apparently getting into altercations with Trump supporters, instead. Such was the case in November of 2018, when police charged Lopez with misdemeanor battery over an altercation involving "MAGA jokes" and "pro-Trump comments" at a Hooters restaurant, which was caught on tape. In June of last year, the actor demanded that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deport Trump's children, falsely suggesting that as the offspring of legal immigrants they qualified as "anchor babies." In 2017, The Smurfs actor called on President Trump to "deport police." "You wanna make the streets safer deport the police," said Lopez. While gallivanting around Los Angeles with friends a few summers ago, the Balls of Fury actor pretended to "pee" on President Trump's Hollywood Star by placing a water bottle near his crotch and pouring the contents onto the plaque while grimacing.

Meanwhile, when it comes to assassinating the president, Ann Althouse noted that, wittingly or not, the Washington Post has been soliciting its readers for ideas on how to make assassination a reality. After blogging about an incoherent article in which the Washington Post promised that Iran would retaliate only to end by saying the equivalent of "or not," Althouse added this thought:

Does the Washington Post seem to be encouraging Americans to brainstorm about how Iran can hurt us? Whether that was the idea or not, the top-rated comment over there is: "Trump Hotels. Very soft targets, and if they are heavily protected, no one will stay in them. A threat to the hotel chain would work wonders."

It's to be hoped that the Secret Service, which surely has been getting a workout since Trump became president, pays attention to these threats. Trump currently has the best police protection America can offer, but the fact remains that a lot of people now believe there is a price on his head, giving an incentive to every anti-Trump crackpot, religious fanatic, and hate-filled comic to act.
BEER-SHEVA, Israel, January 6, 2020 -- Children with autism have more significant sleep difficulties caused by shallower brain waves than typically developing children, according to researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). The study was reported in Sleep, the premier journal in the field.

"For the first time, we found that children with more serious sleep issues showed brain activity that indicated more shallow and superficial sleep," says BGU Prof. Ilan Dinstein," head of the National Autism Research Center of Israel and a member of BGU's Department of Psychology.

"We also found a clear relationship between the severity of sleep disturbances as reported by the parents and the reduction in sleep depth. It appears that children with autism, and especially those whose parents reported serious sleep issues, do not tire themselves out enough during the day, do not develop enough pressure to sleep and do not sleep as deeply."

Previous studies have shown that 40% to 80% of children on the autism spectrum have some form of sleep disturbances - trouble falling asleep, frequently awakening during the night and rising early - which create severe challenges for the children and their families. Determining the causes that create these sleep disturbances is a first critical step in finding out how to mitigate them.

The research team, led by Prof. Dinstein, examined the brain activity of 29 children with autism and 23 children without. Their brain activity was recorded as they slept during an entire night in the Sleep Lab at Soroka University Medical Center, managed by Prof. Ariel Tarasiuk.

Normal sleep starts with periods of deep sleep that are characterized by high amplitude slow brain waves. However, the recordings revealed that the brain waves of children with autism are, on average, 25% weaker (shallower) than those of typically developing children, indicating that they have trouble entering deep sleep -- the most critical aspect of achieving a restful and rejuvenating sleep experience.

Now that the team has identified the potential physiology underlying these sleep difficulties, BGU researchers are planning follow-up studies to determine how to generate deeper sleep and larger brain waves. This could include increasing daytime physical activity, behavioral therapies and pharmacological alternatives, such as medical cannabis.

###

The research was supported by the Simmons Foundation Autism Research Initiative.

American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (AABGU) plays a vital role in sustaining David Ben-Gurion's vision: creating a world-class institution of education and research in the Israeli desert, nurturing the Negev community and sharing the University's expertise locally and around the globe. As Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) turns 50 in 2020, AABGU imagines a future that goes beyond the walls of academia. It is a future where BGU invents a new world and inspires a vision for a stronger Israel and its next generation of leaders. Together with supporters, AABGU will help the University foster excellence in teaching, research and outreach to the communities of the Negev for the next 50 years and beyond. Visit vision.aabgu.org to learn more. AABGU, headquartered in Manhattan, has nine regional offices throughout the United States. For more information visit http://www.aabgu.org.
Graham Suggests Changing Senate Rules to Start Impeachment Trial Without Articles

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) suggested changing Senate rules to allow President Donald Trumps impeachment trial to start without the two articles of impeachment being sent by the House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) continues to hold onto the articlesan unprecedented move that has brought the process to a standstill and prompted debate among legal scholars and calls of obstruction from Republicans.

Graham said he would give the House a week to act before pushing to have the Senates rules changed.

If we dont get the articles this week, then we need to take matters in our own hands and change the rules, deem them to be delivered to the Senate so we can start the trial, invite the House over to participate if they would like, if they dont come, dismiss the case and get on with governing the country, Graham told Fox News.

The South Carolina Republican, considered one of Trumps key allies in the Senate, said he wants the trial to be done by the end of January, adding that the rule changes could come in days, not weeks if the articles are held in the House, which voted on Dec. 18 to impeach Trump mostly along party lines. A few Democrats broke with their party to vote against one or more articles, while one voted present. All Republicans voted against the articles.

Graham, when he served in the House, was one of the 13 Republican managers during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s.

The current strategy employed by Democrats, Graham argued, is potentially harmful to the executive branchs power as well as the future of the presidency itself. Pelosi hasnt said when Democrats would transmit the articles to the upper chamber.

In the days after the vote to impeach Trump, Pelosi said her caucus needs to see how the Senate will react before sending over the articlesobstruction of Congress and abuse of powerand House managers during the Senate trial. The Democrat-ruled House needs a simple majority to impeach a president while the Senate, which has a 53-Republican majority, needs a 67-vote supermajority to remove a president.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has argued that several current and former White House officials, including acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former Trump adviser John Bolton, should testify during the next phase. However, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has rejected Schumers request.

During the Fox interview, Graham provided a glimpse of the Republican majoritys strategy on how they would like the trial to proceed.

Well use the Clinton model, where you take the record established in the House, let the House managers appointed by Pelosi make the argument, let the president make his argument why the two articles are flawed, and then well decide whether we want witnesses. But this should be done in a couple of weeks, he said.
To help parents exercise their choices, and to raise awareness of the importance of opportunity in K-12 education, National School Choice Week 2020 will feature a record-breaking 51,300 independently-planned events and activities across the country.

These community-based events include school fairs, parent activities at schools, open houses, homeschool information sessions, and more. Events are independently planned by schools, homeschool groups, community organizations, and individuals.

School choice -- the process of parents actively choosing traditional public schools, public charter schools, public magnet schools, private schools, online schools, or homeschooling for their children -- is more common than ever before. According to recent data, one third of American families actively choose the schools their children attend.

"Every child is unique, and parents want their children to learn and succeed in schools that inspire and motivate them," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "During National School Choice Week, we invite all Americans to learn more about school choice and to join us in shining a positive spotlight on effective education options for children."

This January will mark the tenth anniversary of National School Choice Week, which began in 2011 with 150 events held around the country. The week is nonpartisan and nonpolitical, and does not seek to promote the passage or defeat of legislation.

More information and resources for journalists covering the Week can be found at schoolchoiceweek.com. More information for families can be found at schoolchoiceguide.com.

SOURCE National School Choice Week

Related Links

http://www.schoolchoiceweek.com


BEIJING, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi exchanged views and coordinated stances with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a phone call late Saturday over the escalating tensions in the Gulf region.

They also discussed bilateral cooperation at the United Nations (UN) Security Council.

Wang said that China pays high attention to the intensification of U.S.-Iran conflict, opposes the abuse of force in international relations, and holds that military adventures are unacceptable.

China insists that all parties should earnestly abide by the principles of the UN Charter and the basic norms of international relations, Wang said, adding that Iraq's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity should be respected, and that peace and stability in the Middle East and the Gulf region should be maintained.

Noting that China and Russia, both permanent members of the UN Security Council, bear important responsibilities for world peace and security, Wang said the two countries should strengthen strategic communication, join hands to uphold international law, as well as fairness and justice, and play a responsible role in properly handling the current situation in the Middle East.

For his part, Lavrov said that Russia shares the same position with China, adding that the U.S. actions are illegal and should be condemned.

Russia opposes gross trampling upon any other country's sovereignty, especially via unilateral military moves, Lavrov said.

He said that Russia is willing to stay in close coordination with China and play a constructive role in preventing the escalation of regional tensions.

Wang and Lavrov also discussed the latest developments of hotspot issues such as Libya and Syria, and agreed to maintain close communication over safeguarding global strategic stability.
United Nations, Jan 7 : While the Security Council is deadlocked on the killing of Iranian Major General Qassim Soleimani and its aftermath, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the world is facing the highest level of tensions in this century fuelled by "unpredicted decisions" by nations.

"This cauldron of tensions is leading more and more countries to take unpredicted decisions with unpredictable consequences and a profound risk of miscalculation," Guterres said in a statement on Monday.

"Geopolitical tensions are at their highest level this century. And this turbulence is escalating," he said with a warning: "We are living in dangerous times." Guterres, who said that he was in touch with leaders around the world about the situation, had a straightforward message: "Stop escalation. Exercise maximum restraint. Re-start dialogue. Renew international cooperation." He avoided naming any country in his statement when he spoke of "unpredicted decisions" with "profound risk of miscalculations." It could apply to the US, which set off the turmoil in the sensitive Gulf and Middle East regions by the attack near the Baghdad airport last week that killed Soleimani, who was the head of the Quds Force of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

And also to Iran, which has threatened retaliation and has announced it would further move along with its nuclear processes that it had stopped in accordance with multi-national deal made in 2015.

US had withdrawn from the deal.

Guterres said, "Even nuclear non-proliferation can no longer be taken for granted." Militias affiliated with the Quds Force started the current round of confrontation when they attacked a base in Iraq killing a US contractor and President Donald Trump blamed Soleimani for it.

The US State Department said that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to Guterres and expressed his appreciation for his diplomatic efforts.

The Security Council that met Monday morning could not agree on even a statement on Soleimani's killing or the attack on the United States embassy in Baghdad because of the veto threats from permanent members ranged on either side.

The US mission to the UN said the Security Council's silence on the attack on its Baghdad embassy last week was because permanent members Russia and China would not allow it "to issue the most basic of statements underscoring the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises." It said, this "once again calls the Council's credibility into question. Such expressions of support should not be controversial or warrant courage." Permanent Representatives Zhang Jun of China and Vasily Nebenzi of Russia told reporters that their countries had wanted a more comprehensive statement about all the developments in the region and not just on the embassy attack.

Zhang called the situation "dangerous" in the region and said that Beijing urges the US to not "abuse" the use of force.

Speaking separately, Nebenzia said that Moscow condemned the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad, but it wanted the Council to also deal with the broader issues surrounding it like the violation of territorial integrity of nations and the killing of Soleimani.

Guterres, who painted a gloomy picture of the world at start of a new decade, said, "Everywhere we see many people frustrated and angry. We see increased social unrest and growing extremism, nationalism and radicalization, with a dangerous advance of terrorism in several areas of the world, notably in Africa." He said that the world faced dangers from "technological conflicts that fracture world markets," widening inequalities and climate change.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)
MACKINAC COUNTY, MI  A 77-year-old Michigan man was killed when his snowmobile struck a tree in Mackinac County.

WLUC-TV reports that Norman James Bass, of Goodrich, missed a turn on an unfamiliar snowmobile before hitting the tree. He was taken to Helen Newberry Joy Hospital where he later died from his injuries.

The crash occurred approximately a quarter mile west of Borgstrom Road in Hudson Township on Jan. 1. Alcohol and speed are not believed to be factors in the crash, the TV station reported.

The Mackinac County Sheriffs Office was assisted at the scene by the Hendricks Township Fire Department, Hudson Township Fire Department and Luce County EMS.
Delirium (sudden confusion or a rapid change in mental state) remains a serious challenge for our health care system. Delirium affects 15 to 26 percent of hospitalized older adults and can be particularly problematic because those experiencing the condition may interfere with medical care or directly harm themselves or others. Besides behavioral therapy and physical restraints, antipsychotic medicines are among the few therapeutic options healthcare providers can use to ease delirium and protect patients and caregivers--but antipsychotics also come with risks of their own.

To learn more about the effect of antipsychotic medicines on older hospitalized patients, a research team created a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. This study included information from hospitalized patients at a large academic medical center in Boston.

The researchers looked specifically at death or non-fatal cardiopulmonary arrest (heart attack) during hospitalization.

The researchers learned that adults taking "first-generation" or "typical" antipsychotic medications (medicines first developed around the 1950s) were significantly more likely to experience death or cardiopulmonary arrest, compared to people who did not take those drugs. Taking "atypical" or "second-generation" antipsychotics (so named because they were developed later) raised the risk for death or cardiopulmonary arrest only for people aged 65 or older.

In the past, other studies have suggested that typical antipsychotic medications could cause sudden death, and that atypical antipsychotics could raise peoples' risks for falls, pneumonia and death. What's more, another large study also suggested that both types of antipsychotic medicines posed a risk for fatal heart attacks.

Despite these known risks, atypical antipsychotics are often prescribed for people in the hospital. One recent study of patients at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston found that antipsychotics were prescribed for nine percent of all adults who were hospitalized for non-psychiatric causes. Another large recent study found that using antipsychotics to prevent or treat delirium did not lower the risk for death, did not lessen the severity of delirium or shorten its duration, and did not shorten the time people spent in the intensive care unit (ICU) or their hospital length of stay.

"Delirium is common in older hospitalized patients and difficult to treat, but antipsychotic medications should be used with caution regardless of age," said the authors.

###

This summary is from "Antipsychotics and the Risk of Mortality or Cardiopulmonary Arrest in Hospitalized Adults.)" It appears online ahead of print in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The study authors are Matthew Basciotta, MD; Wenxiao Zhou, MS; Long Ngo, PhD; Michael Donnino, MD; Edward R. Marcantonio, MD, MSc; and Shoshana J. Herzig, MD, MPH.

About the Health in Aging Foundation

This research summary was developed as a public education tool by the Health in Aging Foundation. The Foundation is a national non-profit established in 1999 by the American Geriatrics Society to bring the knowledge and expertise of geriatrics healthcare professionals to the public. We are committed to ensuring that people are empowered to advocate for high-quality care by providing them with trustworthy information and reliable resources. Last year, we reached nearly 1 million people with our resources through HealthinAging.org. We also help nurture current and future geriatrics leaders by supporting opportunities to attend educational events and increase exposure to principles of excellence on caring for older adults. For more information or to support the Foundation's work, visit http://www.HealthinAgingFoundation.org.

About the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society

Included in more than 9,000 library collections around the world, the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS) highlights emerging insights on principles of aging, approaches to older patients, geriatric syndromes, geriatric psychiatry, and geriatric diseases and disorders. First published in 1953, JAGS is now one of the oldest and most impactful publications on gerontology and geriatrics, according to ISI Journal Citation Reports. Visit wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/JGS for more details.

About the American Geriatrics Society

Founded in 1942, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) is a nationwide, not-for-profit society of geriatrics healthcare professionals that has--for 75 years--worked to improve the health, independence, and quality of life of older people. Its nearly 6,000 members include geriatricians, geriatric nurses, social workers, family practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, and internists. The Society provides leadership to healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the public by implementing and advocating for programs in patient care, research, professional and public education, and public policy. For more information, visit AmericanGeriatrics.org.
Photo: David Williams for New York Magazine

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The corridors of Capitol Hill are a marbled monotony, with Oxford heels clacking around corners indistinguishable from one another, white walls, oaken doors, and a steady rhythm of rectangular congressional nameplates.

Except for one. At the very end of a hallway in Cannon Office Building is an explosion of affirmation cribbed onto thousands of Post-it notes, a neon-green-and-pastel-pink flower bursting outward. Go there at the right time, Hill aides say, and you can see groups of people, usually women, often young, weeping at the sight of it.

I love you from Maine! Keep on with your fierce, informed queen of a self!, wrote Mikala from Bangor on a pink Post-it. AOC! Seeing you is seeing me! I live in Michigan, but you are my representative. Adelante!, says one on white signed (with a heart) from Kristen on August 1. Dear AOC. Continue to scare old white men, adds another.

They go on and on and on, these paeans to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 30-year-old freshman member of Congress from Queens and the Bronx, who, in the year since she was sworn in as the youngest woman elected to the House of Representatives in the bodys 230-year history, has emerged as perhaps the most significant political figure in the Democratic Party in the age of Trump. She was recently ranked the fourth-most-tweeted-about politician in the world, beating out every Democrat running for president. Its not that there is already a childrens book about her, The ABCs of AOC. Its that there is already a comic-book series about her, a young-adult biography of her, a wall calendar of her, a book of her quotes, a collection of essays about her, and even, this holiday season, a Christmas sweater with her face on it.

Ocasio-Cortezs staff didnt know what to do with the Post-its when they first started appearing after she was inaugurated in January 2019. It seemed possible they broke a House rule  and if not an official violation, it was a practice that, at the least, would mark her as different from the rest of the incoming class. Staff took the first batch and framed them in her office, but the notes kept coming. If anyone writes something negative or nasty, one of the myriad devotees who make the pilgrimage takes the errant note down before it can spoil the mood.

December 11, 2019 | Thousands of Post-it notes from fans cover the door of her office in the Capitol. Photo: Courtesy David Freedlander

Its weird, Ocasio-Cortez said when we spoke inside the Capitol Building one afternoon in mid-December as impeachment hearings consumed Washington. Because I know I am also one of the most hated people in America.

As the rest of the world has changed, Congress remains a place of traditions. Even the chaos merchants  the Ted Cruzes and Rand Pauls and tricornered tea-party Republican congressmen  still end up playing by the rules as laid out by the leadership. Ocasio-Cortez, at least so far, has not. She is at once a movement politician and a cultural phenomenon, someone equally at home on CSPAN and Desus & Mero. She isnt especially interested in compromising with those who dont share her values, and isnt afraid to be the lone no vote, as she was last January, when she was the only Democrat to vote against funding the government because it meant continuing to fund ICE. Twelve months later, it is clear she isnt trying very hard to amass power in Congress. Her heroes are Bernie Sanders, who withstood party pressure decade after decade in the Senate, and Howard Thurman, a mentor of Martin Luther King Jr.s who believed in merging the spiritual and political.

People come here, and they have served in state legislatures or they may have been executives for health-insurance or fossil-fuel companies or lobbyist groups or PACs, and theyre part of this whole club, she said. She was dressed in all black  blazer, blouse, pants, and boots, looking more like someone about to cruise out of the last shot of a movie on a motorcycle than someone skipping out on a House Financial Services Committee meeting. What is it like to show up to Congress with a beginners mind? You just fundamentally do things differently.

The Democratic congressional majority, she told me, is too acquiescent to the demands of its members in so-called red-to-blue districts  those moderates who flipped Republican seats and gave Pelosi the gavel. For so long, when I first got in, people were like, Oh, are you going to basically be a tea party of the left? And what people dont realize is that there is a tea party of the left, but its on the right edges, the most conservative parts of the Democratic Party. So the Democratic Party has a role to play in this problem, and its like were not allowed to talk about it. Were not allowed to talk about anything wrong the Democratic Party does, she said. I think I have created more room for dissent, and were learning to stretch our wings a little bit on the left.

Ocasio-Cortez isnt the first politician to become a cultural sensation, but she may be the first to do so at the very beginning of her career, when she is occupying the lowest rung of political power. Her main project going forward may be this: harnessing her immense star power and the legion of young lefties who see her as their avatar, not just to push the Democratic Party away from an obsession with its most moderate members but also to make the stuff of government, like congressional committee hearings and neighborhood town halls, into must-see TV. She said the Congressional Progressive Caucus should start kicking people out if they stray too far from the party line. Other caucuses within the Democratic Party in Congress require applications, Ocasio-Cortez pointed out. But they let anybody who the cat dragged in call themselves a progressive. Theres no standard, she said.

The same goes for the party as a whole: Democrats can be too big of a tent.

It is comments like that that kept Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the Democratic Party from reaching any kind of meaningful detente. I asked her what she thought her role would be as a member of Congress during, for instance, a Joe Biden presidency. Oh God, she said with a groan. In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.

Photo: David Williams for New York Magazine

Four days before Ocasio-Cortez won her primary in one of the biggest congressional upsets in at least a generation, I stood with her on a street corner in Queens, across from a bodega, underneath the 7 train, and not far from the housing project where she had been canvassing. Long-shot candidates for Congress tend to sound the same. They have a compelling bio, can lay out a theory of why they should win and how the entrenched incumbent has been absent or ignored community voices or kowtowed to the powers in Washington, but they often crumple under sustained questioning and have fantastic views of how politics works.

Ocasio-Cortez was different. She was a bartender who had come up through a network of post-2016 millennial activist groups and been recruited to run by the progressive PAC Brand New Congress 18 months earlier. As she went door-to-door, talking to voters, her answers came in mic-drop paragraphs. She saw politics as a rigged system that preserved the careers of those in power at the expense of the poor and working class. Her face that June was ubiquitous in the neighborhood, the result of her army of volunteers blitzing the district with palm cards and posters. Her time in the service industry seemed to make her an unusually empathetic listener. For the most part, here was someone who looked like her districts voters, who spoke their language, who had come to ask for their support.

Congressman Joe Crowleys polling had him up by more than 30 points. The weekend before the election, when typically campaigns go all-out with volunteers and visibility, Ocasio-Cortez skipped town  not something somebody who hopes to win an election does. She went to the border, where news was just emerging that the Trump administration was locking up migrant children and separating them from their parents. The visuals of the candidate, dressed in all white, pleading with border guards through a fence to remember their humanity, were striking. Two mornings later, Ocasio-Cortez woke up anonymous for the last morning in her life.

I realized this was going to be a tattoo-on-my-face kind of situation, she said. I cant go outside anymore. I miss being able to go out to dinner. I miss anonymity. I have to send my boyfriend out to get groceries. There has been a shift in chores.

If she was a hero on the streets of New York and online, in Congress, it was very, very chilly coming in, she said. Joe Crowley was an old-school Irish pol who slapped backs and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for his peers. He was a conventional Democrat and congressman, and his replacement had tarred him as hopelessly compromised (for raising money from corporations and pharmaceutical interests); as a creature of Washington who lacked vision, courage, and a moral core. Would she do the same to her colleagues?

The fears of what Ocasio-Cortez would mean were present even before she was sworn in, when she swung by a sit-in in Speaker Pelosis office for the environmentalist group Sunrise Movement; she wanted the soon-to-be Speaker to push for a Green New Deal. Other members of the Squad  the group she created with Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib when she posted an Instagram of them together on orientation day  were supposed to join her but begged off, and even Ocasio-Cortezs staff were on the phone with allies moments before, wondering if it was a good idea.

I was terrified, she told me. She doesnt regret it  though it set the stage for a very complicated year with Pelosi. I learned a lot about how fear shapes the decisions of elected officials: I know this could be bad, and this could make someone mad, and I dont know exactly how they would drop the hammer on me or what hammers would be dropped. It felt like the right thing to do, and when you say that people think its a form of naivete and that its childish, but I dont think it was.

Ocasio-Cortez backed Pelosi for Speaker, but the two continued to battle publicly. It wasnt just that they disagreed about policy: Pelosi thinks in terms of votes, of what any member can bring to the table and who they can bring with them. Preserving the Democratic majority means protecting the partys most vulnerable members, those in places where people still like Donald Trump and the Democrat may have won by just a few hundred votes in the midterm  exactly the group that Ocasio-Cortez thinks the party doesnt need.

That the freshman didnt have a meaningful coalition behind her and had alienated some natural allies didnt seem to give her pause. The Congressional Black Caucus, in particular, was put off by her association with Justice Democrats, the young campaign operatives  co-founded by Ocasio-Cortezs then chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti  who powered her win and have made it their mission to replace the Democratic Partys moderates with a younger and more liberal group of lawmakers. Black lawmakers believed (not entirely incorrectly) that this meant the group was coming for some of them. In the press, CBC members accused Justice Democrats of being privileged gentrifiers with little respect for what it had taken them to gain political power.

The conflict came to a head in the summer of 2019, when Chakrabarti accused moderate members of the caucus on Twitter of acting like segregationist Democrats of the civil-rights era. Democratic leadership pounced online, suggesting that Chakrabarti was a racist for singling out lawmakers of color. After Donald Trump jumped into the fray (of course), Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez had a closed-door meeting. Chakrabarti left soon after, as did another top aide, Corbin Trent, who had been with Ocasio-Cortez since the campaign. Pelosi has never spoken in public about what was said at the meeting; Ocasio-Cortez told me that the two staffers had planned to leave anyway. (They did not go far from her orbit, Chakrabarti to the progressive think tank New Consensus and Trent to her 2020 campaign.)

The fracas forced Ocasio-Cortez to ask, What does this movement look like, and what is my role in it?

What was frustrating was getting singled out over and over again over a series of interviews by the Democratic leadership, Ocasio-Cortez told me. She said that her colleagues consider her an unseen force in every primary this cycle, when in fact she has made endorsements in just two races. Meanwhile, it is the moderates who have put up more challengers to liberal incumbents than the other way around. As a consequence of my victory, many people are inspired to run for office, and in a body where 70 percent of the seats are safe red or safe blue, that de facto means a lot more primaries. A lot of members think Im like a Koch brother.

House leadership sees the past summer as having been a turning point and believes that Ocasio-Cortez is now sufficiently chastened. Shes showed up for the job she was elected to do  coming prepared to committee meetings and hearings (like when she cornered Mark Zuckerberg on running misleading ads on Facebook), sponsoring 15 pieces of legislation (most notably the Green New Deal), and missing only two of 701 roll-call votes. I spoke with dozens of House and New York City governmental officials, some of whom disagree with her politics and have reason to dislike her personally, and they all said that she shows up to meetings unusually attentive, taking notes and asking detailed questions and writing personal follow-up emails. That even in House caucus meetings, as members call one another Congressman this or Congresswoman that but casually call her Alexandria, she gets to know her ideological enemies home lives and interests.

There are people here who are never going to like her, never going to trust her, who are always going to be worried that she is going to turn her people against them, says one House aide. But you cant say she isnt making an effort. I think people are surprised at how not-strident she comes off.

Still, even Democrats who are supportive of Ocasio-Cortezs political project wonder how much enthusiasm there will be for it during an election year. It is one thing to reform a party out of power; it is another when the party is trying to unify for the most consequential election year in memory. Dissident factions could prove deadly to Democratic efforts to retake the White House. Should the party succeed, even with (very optimistically) a slight majority in the Senate, the chances of getting anything passed could easily get bogged down in partisan infighting.

No one gets all of his or her way, Congressman Gregory Meeks, Crowleys replacement as head of the Queens Democratic Party, told me recently. You have to learn quickly; otherwise, you will be in the minority and you will be as relevant as that windowpane. Do you want to be able to just talk a lot or do you want to be able to do something? If you are a hard no in Congress, eventually people will stop asking for your vote. You dont need to be negotiated with because everyone already knows the answer, and  most of the time  this means your voice is marginalized.

Ocasio-Cortezs opponents in the Democratic Party want this to be her fate. This is how it works here: You negotiate a concession in exchange for a vote. But you have to have the votes and you have to be willing to negotiate, says one House aide friendly to Ocasio-Cortez. She says she is an organizer, but you have to be willing to organize in the caucus as well as outside it.

Opponents point to the fact that early in her tenure, rather than using her prodigious public influence to push for a climate bill that had 71 co-sponsors and would have kept the country in the Paris climate accords, she unveiled the Green New Deal. A draft of the resolution was mistakenly released early, and critics jumped on vague language in it to accuse the new congresswoman of wanting to ban beef and air travel and to give free money to people who dont work.

But it is still the biggest achievement of her term, a rebuke to the idea that leverage is the only power in town. The Green New Deal, for all its vagueness  it was a resolution and a statement of principles and not a piece of legislation  set up a new tentpole in the debate. More than a hundred Democrats signed on as co-sponsors, including a handful of moderates whom House progressives have been trying to push left for years, as did every major contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, including Joe Biden.

The most ambitious climate plans were a carbon tax here or a biodiesel thing there. There were no climate bills that were a solution on the scale of the problem. I couldnt take all of this and say, Lets get a 10 percent subsidy on electric vehicles,  Ocasio-Cortez said. These very small incremental plans are a form of denialism.

Ocasio-Cortez prepares for a town hall to discuss her Green New Deal for Public Housing Act on December 14. Photo: David Williams for New York Magazine

Late last month, Politico reported that some political operators are already speculating that Ocasio-Cortez will run for president in 2024 or 2028, and it has been a topic of conversation among her advisers as well. After decennial redistricting in 2020, Ocasio-Cortez could find herself drawn into the district of a neighboring member of Congress, where the young agitators odds would suffer. People close to her discussed a possible run for mayor of New York in 2021 but decided against it; a statewide run, probably for the Senate, is likelier. That would mean challenging Chuck Schumer in 2022 or Kirsten Gillibrand in 2024.

She and her advisers are aware of her almost unprecedented situation: a wildly popular woman of color with the confidence of Pete Buttigieg, if not his demographic advantages. If she ran for president, they say, she would run to win, not to carry the banner of her brand on behalf of the progressive movement and come in second.

Ocasio-Cortez told me how much she admires Bernie Sanders. (She was, by her own estimation, a scrub on his 2016 campaign, going door-to-door in the South Bronx.) Year after year, he was willing to be the lone vote on issues that mattered to him, withstanding the pressures to play along with the rest of the team on health care, on taxes, on wages. Eventually, the party caught up to him. Every senator running for president except Amy Klobuchar has signed on to his Medicare for All bill. The party is debating a wealth tax, something floated by Ocasio-Cortez on 60 Minutes last year and now pushed by both Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

It is clear there is a shift happening in American politics, one that favors Ocasio-Cortezs long-term prospects. Trumps demagogic populism is a part of it, and so is the fact that Americans ages 18 to 24 are more favorably inclined toward socialism than capitalism, that 80 percent of young people think the federal government should address climate change, that over 70 percent say the wealthy should pay higher taxes, and that some of the highest percentages ever recorded call their politics far left or liberal. Post-millennials are majority nonwhite in 13 states and in nearly 40 percent of the nations largest metro areas; they are close to majority nonwhite nationwide. Sanders leads by large margins among the young, but also fares better than almost any Democrat against Donald Trump  proof, perhaps, of millennials desire for someone liberal and the heartlands desire for different political ideas.

And Ocasio-Cortez is all of these things: Latina, liberal, authentic, fluent in social media and popular culture. Outspoken lefties have come and gone before, but often they were like Bernie or, before him, Ralph Nader: rumpled, grouchy, hectoring. For leftists, politics used to be something to avoid, a corrupting drag on the purity of activism. Ocasio-Cortez has changed that.

You hear that trope all the time. I am a workhorse; I am not a show horse. But what I think people dont understand is that educating the public is a part of this job. The most effective public servants are part of our culture. They are just as fluidly part of the conversation as Lizzo or as this movie that you saw, she said. A few days after our interview, at a middle school in Woodside, Ocasio-Cortez hosted her 12th town hall of the year, one for every month, not including the dozens she has attended that were hosted by others. She points to these town halls, along with directing $500 million in federal grants to her district, as examples of what shes done for her constituents this year. She had attended a breakfast with Bronx veterans in the morning, SantaCon was raging outside, it was cold and miserable, and her boyfriend, Riley Roberts, was waiting in the wings. But she had to be on. At her town halls, fans, who line up for hours for selfies, often present her with shrines theyve made to her: paintings of her, T-shirts, family keepsakes. At the one in December, when they finally reached the front of the selfie line, some of her fans just started cheering: Yea! Yea! Yeaaaaa! The congresswoman gamely tried to keep up.

What Makes a Viral AOC Moment? (clockwise from top) June 12, 2019: Her candor at House Oversight Committee hearings made international headlines. | June 27, 2018: The image of November 13, 2018: While still a representative-elect, sitting in at Pelosis office spotlighted intra-party conflict. Photo: T.J. Kirkpatrick/The New York Times/Redux; Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times/Redux; Courtesy CNN. (clockwise from top)Her candor at House Oversight Committee hearings made international headlines. |The image of a stunned Ocasio-Cortez at her victory party came to symbolize the blue wave. |While still a representative-elect, sitting in at Pelosis office spotlighted intra-party conflict. What Makes a Viral AOC Moment? (clockwise from top) June 12, 2019: Her candor at House Oversight Committee hearings made international headlines. | J... more What Makes a Viral AOC Moment? (clockwise from top) June 12, 2019: Her candor at House Oversight Committee hearings made international headlines. | June 27, 2018: The image of November 13, 2018: While still a representative-elect, sitting in at Pelosis office spotlighted intra-party conflict. Photo: T.J. Kirkpatrick/The New York Times/Redux; Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times/Redux; Courtesy CNN. (clockwise from top)Her candor at House Oversight Committee hearings made international headlines. |The image of a stunned Ocasio-Cortez at her victory party came to symbolize the blue wave. |While still a representative-elect, sitting in at Pelosis office spotlighted intra-party conflict.

This is part of her project, too. If people are paying attention, she figures, they will be on her side. Politics should be pop because it should be consumable and accessible to everyday people, she said. I think thats what populism is about.

Her vision extends beyond Congress. After the election, two of her top campaign aides founded a program called Movement School designed to teach the next generation of campaign operatives what they learned from pulling off the upset of the decade. About 70 people have gone through the ten-week training camp, and they are spread out all over the country  a standing army of dedicated campaign staff that will only grow in the years ahead.

Ocasio-Cortez is still in regular contact with leaders of the Democratic Socialists of America, and she has quiet dinners with the volunteers who worked on her campaign, the people who called her Alex until they were told, after the election, that it would be better if they stuck to Alexandria  dinners in which they promise to not Instagram anything with her. So far, no one has.

That whole crew will be put to use before long. The reelection bid has already attracted a dozen challengers, including a conservative Democrat pastor, a city councilman close to the Bronx machine. Her team  hyperaware of not taking primary challenges for granted  is preparing to use the race to build out her presence on the ground, talking to voters about her vision of a political revolution, and convincing those who may be skeptical why having a political supernova as their representative is actually useful. There has been no public or private polling on the race, but according to her campaign, Ocasio-Cortez is expected to have raised $5.3 million in 2019 alone, and shes influential locally. Her endorsement nearly propelled a left-wing neophyte named Tiffany Caban into the office of Queens District Attorney (she ended up losing to a favorite of the county party by 55 votes), and local electeds have rushed to bask in her celebrity. Her opponents will tag her with having killed jobs by torpedoing the Amazon deal, and argue that shes more consumed with her own celebrity than the needs of her district; her campaign will counter that, say, her effort to abolish ICE is central in a district where half the population was born in another country. She is setting up a campaign office that will be used as a space for political education, a kind of TED Talks for activists  program running between now and November.

Everyone in the House is just constantly thinking about self-preservation, and we dont get nice things because people are constantly thinking in electoral terms. The way we change that is through political education. I had this conversation with Bernie, she said. Heres this guy in a then-Republican state, a quite conservative state, and he wins by a handful of votes to become mayor of Burlington. And by the time he becomes senator, Vermont is crazy-blue. And a lot of that has to do with his time there. And I said, So howd you do this? And he said that he and different grassroots movements in Vermont spent decades doing political education. And they took on the long-term project of turning a red state blue.

As political analysis goes, this is a bit specious. Vermont turned blue thanks to a number of sociological and demographic factors greater than any single politician. But its also the kind of downfield vision more likely to be expressed by people who work in political organizing than inside the government. It explains a lot about how she acts in Congress. By the time Ocasio-Cortez is as old as Bernie is now, the year will be 2067. The Democratic Party may have immediate needs, but she wants the movement to think in longer time frames.

Republicans have focused on that long-term project for a very long period of time. Democrats dont. We think if something is red, it stays red. But you know what? I think if a state like Tennessee or West Virginia can go from blue to red in our lifetime, I think it can go back, she told me. Justice Democrats are taking aim at another dozen or so incumbents this cycle; if a few more get in, she could build a bloc. Thats a kind of project that a lot of people think is a waste of time, but I dont think it is, she said.

This whole primary, she went on, referring to the one Biden and Bernie are in, is going to be about the soul of the Democratic Party. I think its a referendum on whether we think everything was fine before Trump. People who live in a lot of privilege, who think of public programs as charity, they often think there was nothing wrong before Trump. They think Hillary was the problem. But its much deeper than that. And so, on the eve of a primary contest that will train everyones attention on the project of unseating the president, Ocasio-Cortez is keeping her focus closer, betting that a purer, bolder Democratic Party is the one this country wants, and can afford.

*This article appears in the January 6, 2020, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!
ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan, Jan. 6

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Turkmen Minister of Finance and Economy Batyr Bazarov will participate in the meeting of the Turkmenistan-Hungary intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation to be held on January 20-21 in Budapest, Trend reports referring to Business-Turkmenistan agency.

More than ten representatives of the Turkmen Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs will attend the event.

The businessmen involved in agriculture, textile industry, agriculture, bread baking and poultry keeping will discuss the spheres of cooperation with Hungarian partners, the message said.

Hungary is interested in increasing import of chemical products, oil and gas processing products from Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan is learning from Hungarian experience in improvement of irrigation systems and water resources management, the report said.

Turkmenistan and Hungary signed an intergovernmental convention on the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of tax evasion in respect of taxes on income and capital in June 2016.

The diplomatic relations between the countries were established in 1992.
A sex worker who raised $500k for bushfires says she's been 'targeted' by Instagram. Photo: Twitter/lilearthangelk.

A sex worker who sells nude photos of herself online has had her Instagram account deleted after raising half a million dollars for the Australian bushfire crisis.

Kaylen Ward, a Los Angeles, California-based influencer and online sex worker, decided to do her bit to help the tragedy thats claimed the lives of 21 people, destroyed 2,500 homes and wiped out half a billion animals so far.

I was seeing all the posts on Twitter about the Australian fires and I was really concerned there wasn't a lot of media coverage and not a lot of people donating, the 20-year-old told BuzzFeed News.

Kaylen, who tweets under the handle @lilearthangelk and now calls herself The Naked Philanthropist in her bio, came up with a unique way to encourage her 100k Twitter followers to donate their hard-earned cash.

Kaylen has raised USD$500k for Aussie bushfires. Photo: Twitter/lilearthangelk.

She pledged to send a nude photo of herself to every person who donated USD$10 to various charities that were listed in a screenshot she uploaded, along with a rather racy snap of herself.

Im sending nudes to every person who donates at least $10 to any one of these fundraisers for the wildfires in Australia, she tweeted on Saturday.

The sex worker pledged a nude photo for every $10 donated. Photo: Twitter/lilearthangelk.

Every $10 you donate = one nude picture from me to your DM. You must send me confirmation that you donated. Please RT #AustraliaOnFire #AustraliaFires, she wrote.

Lo and behold, the money came rolling in and as of the time of publishing, Kaylen had raised USD$500k and counting.

I was expecting to raise maybe $1,000 but the tweet blew up, she told Buzzfeed.

Within 24 hours, however, Kaylen says her Instagram account had been deactivated because shed violated their guidelines, even though she says she didnt post about her fundraiser on the platform.

Sex worker who raised $500k for bushfires has social media deleted. Photo: Twitter/lilearthangelk.

According to Kaylens latest update on Twitter, her account has yet to be reactivated and she feels shes being targeted by the platform.

Im being targeted [sic] by Instagram and theyre not giving me my accounts back, she wrote.

Instagram has since been flooded with fake accounts claiming to be Kaylen, prompting her to ask her Twitter followers to report any imposters.

Story continues

Adding to the drama, Kaylen says that shes been disowned by her family and shunned by a love interest.

Photo: Twitter/lilearthangelk.

She has, however, been showered in praise online, with many congratulating her for going above and beyond the efforts of Australias government and Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Literally doing more for Australia than their own prime minister! That is a crazy sum of money to make so quickly! wrote one.

Saving the world, one nude at a time. Just beautiful, said another.

Not all heroes wear capes, some wear nothing at all, one joked.

Sex worker who raised $500k for bushfires has social media deleted. Photo: Twitter/lilearthangelk.

Sex worker who raised $500k for bushfires has social media deleted. Photo: Twitter/lilearthangelk.

Sex worker who raised $500k for bushfires has social media deleted. Photo: Twitter/lilearthangelk.

Yahoo Lifestyle has reached out to Kaylen for comment.

Got a story tip or just want to get in touch? Email us at lifestyle.tips@verizonmedia.com

Want more lifestyle and celebrity news? Follow Yahoo Lifestyle on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Two people have been rushed to hospital after they were struck by lightning in Sydney on Monday.

A 71-year-old woman was struck out the front of her home in Arcadia, in the city's north just after 5pm.

She reportedly heard a tree fall down in her front yard, and was hit by a bolt to the chest when she went outside to investigate.

Just 10 minutes later a 29-year-old surfer was also struck by lightning on the northern beaches.

He was believed to be paddling in the water at Dee Why beach when he was hit.

A 29-year-old surfer was struck by lightning while he was in the water at Dee Why beach

Emergency services were on the scene in Arcadia whera 71-year-old woman was struck by lightning

The man was given CPR by a passerby until emergency services arrived to rush him to Royal North Shore Hospital.

Four NSW Ambulance crews attended the woman's home, before a CareFlight helicopter airlifted her to hospital.

Both patients are in a critical condition, 7News reported.

NSW Ambulance Duty Operations Manager Carolyn Parish described the proximity of the incidents as 'extraordinary'.

'This is the first time I have ever come across two lightning strikes within 10 minutes - it's terrifying,' Ms Parish said.

'Paramedics had to work quickly at the scene  they want to get in there and do whatever needs to be done to save a life, often putting their own safety as risk.'

A passerby performed CPR before emergency services arrived and rushed the man to hospital

She explained reactions to being struck by lightning can vary significantly, but the most common response is for the body to go into cardiac arrest.

'We really need the public to take extra safety in these extraordinary fire conditions that are driving lightning strikes across the state.'

The extreme weather has contributed to a power outage currently impacting parts of the northern beaches.

Ausgrid confirmed customers from Freshwater through to Dee Why and Manly lost power.

More to come.

She was treated at the scene before a Careflight helicopter arrived to rush her to hospital
The Government wants to double the number of charging points for electric cars across the country this year, Energy Minister Richard Bruton has said.

The scheme, which the minister noted is priority legislation for the Government in the new Dail term, includes details on the development of carbon budgets and a ban on the sale of fossil fuel cars by 2030.

In effect, from 2030 it will not be possible to register any new car which runs on fossil fuel and the bill aims to stop the granting of NCTs from 2045 for such cars.

Mr Bruton (pictured) also said the plan to cut emissions would also have an impact on the aviation industry, but said certain exemptions could be argued for at European level given Ireland's heavy reliance on the sector as an island nation.

It is clear the biggest impact of the Climate Action (Amendment) Bill will be on the transport, agriculture, housing and energy sectors, which are most responsible for rising Irish CO2 emissions.

Ireland has committed to reducing such emissions under the Paris Agreement.

As part of the plan, Government departments and their associated agencies which fail to deliver on climate commitments will be punished with reduced budgets.

Launching the draft general scheme of the Bill, Mr Bruton said it is priority legislation for the Government in the coming Dail term and said he is confident it can pass, despite the increased talk of a snap General Election in February.

It is my ambition to have the Climate Bill enacted before an election, he said.

The bill provides for five-year carbon budgets and that will be decided by government, after a submission from a strengthened Climate Action Council. So the Climate Action Council will set the desirable level of carbon budgets and government will effectively respond to that.

Key 2020 targets for emissions and adopting of renewable energy are going to be missed and will result in substantial cost penalties from this year.

Mr Bruton said the bill allows for the Oireachtas to have a large say in the setting of carbon budgets.

The Oireachtas is in a very strong position in relation to the setting of climate budgets and that would require rethinking by government, he said.

However, Mr Bruton's bill was subject to severe criticism from the Opposition who said it is imperative that the Climate Action Bill 2019 is not allowed to cripple the rural economy.

The Government 'has missed all of the targets so far to date'

Roscommon independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice was critical of the Governments intention to push ahead with these plans despite other potential measures seemingly being ignored.

We cannot allow this Government to force through legislation which will cripple the rural economy. In relation to the ban on the sale of fossil fuel cars by 2030, representatives of Mazda have noted that an electric vehicle with a battery over 35.5kWh in size would not be as efficient as a comparably-sized diesel vehicle, even after the battery is replaced after 100,000 miles, he added.

Sinn Fein's David Cullinane dismissed the bill as being high on rhetoric but low on specific detail.

Again, we have a minister talking about setting targets on climate action when the government has missed all of the targets so far to date, he said.

Mr Cullinane also was sceptical about Mr Bruton's pledge to involve the Opposition more.

"He's also said he's going to consult more with the Oireachtas and give it more of a role. And I think that's laughable when you consider this government's approach to opposition bills up to now. They have failed to implement most of them. we have dozens of them sitting with money messages, he said.
Mourners burn flags of the U.S. and Israel during a funeral ceremony for Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and his comrades, who were killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike on Friday, at the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) square in Tehran, Iran, Monday. AP-Yonhap



By Jung Da-min



Korea is facing a dilemma over whether to participate in the U.S.-led naval coalition in the Strait of Hormuz, as tensions in the Middle East escalate in the wake of U.S. military action last week that killed General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran's Quds Force, and Iran's consequent vows for "harsh revenge."



Seoul has been considering participating in the maritime mission as a means to strengthen alliance with the U.S. and as a bargaining chip in the defense cost-sharing negotiations with Washington. But the surging tension is raising concerns that the participation would endanger Seoul's relations with Tehran and threaten the safety of Korean residents in the Middle East.



The Ministry of National Defense said on Monday the government is reviewing all possible ways to protect South Korean nationals in the Middle East, but added there is no finalized plan on the possible participation in the U.S.-led coalition in the region.



"The government is closely watching the situations in the Middle East, including the one between the U.S. and Iran. We will closely coordinate with the international community to promptly react to contingencies that could threaten the security of our people," ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo said during a press briefing.



"Our stance in the Hormuz maritime security initiative is in the same context. We are reviewing various plans to contribute to the protection of our ships and people but there are no finalized plans yet."




A major search is underway for a man who attempted to bundle a woman in her 60s into the boot of a car near Phoenix Park on Monday morning.

The woman, married and a mother of adult children, had driven a short distance from her north Dublin home to Blackhorse Avenue to go for a walk in the park just before 7.30am.

It is thought that because it was still dark, the woman decided against going into the park and turned back.

She passed a parked car on the way. The boot was open and a man tried to bundle her into it.

In the struggle, the man was unable to put her in the boot and then tried to drag her into the car itself, but again was unable to do so.

It is thought he decided to leave when a car pulled up.

The attacker, described as being in his 20s, of strong build and under 6ft in height, drove off in his car, described as a silver family saloon.

It is thought that the woman banged her head against a wall when the attacker threw her away as he abandoned the abduction.

The woman is said to be traumatised by the incident.

It is understood gardai are operating on information and are seeking to track the car's movements and gather more specifics on it.

A statement issued by Garda HQ said officers are investigating an assault and attempted abduction of a woman in the Martin's Grove/Blackhorse Avenue area of Dublin 7 at around 7.30am on Monday.

The female, aged in her 60s, was approached by a male who attempted to force her into the boot of a car," it said.

"The female managed to flee the scene and the car drove away via Blackhorse Avenue towards Dublin city centre. The car, described as a silver family saloon, may have turned left and driven onto the Navan Road.

It said the suspect was believed to be wearing a white T-shirt and dark trousers.

The statement said gardai wish to speak to any person who was in the vicinity of Blackhorse Avenue on January 6 between 6am and 8am, or anyone who may have information about this incident.

They are appealing to road users who were driving in the Blackhorse Avenue area, who may have camera footage.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Blanchardstown Garda Station on 01 666 7000, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111 or any Garda station.
Amol Agrawal

In the beginning of this century, if someone had told me that 20 years from now, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will face an existential crisis, I would have laughed it off. How can such an international institution and that too dealing with trade, which is one of the pillars of economics, face an existential crisis?

Moreover, in the early 2000s, the WTO was at the centre of the world economy with highly charged trade negotiations between member economies. But back then, I was naive. I have learnt over the years that the history of economics goes in circles and what was once in demand may not remain so in future.

In 1944, a host of experts and government officials congregated in Bretton Woods, a town in Hampshire, US. The talks were spearheaded by none other than John Maynard Keynes. The focus was on taking measures to resurrect the global economy from the destruction of two world wars and ensure future wars do not happen.

Three institutional gaps were identified. First was financing reconstruction which led to the World Bank -- originally called the Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Second was fostering international cooperation from the financial side, which led to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The third was fostering international cooperation from the trade side which is the focus of this article.

To promote trade, Keynes advocated establishing an International Trade Organisation (ITO). The original ITO charter was broader and apart from world trade included rules on employment, commodity agreements, restrictive business practices, international investment, and services. This required discussions and negotiations both with internal polity and governments of other countries. The ITO was to be ratified in 1947 in Havana.

Meanwhile, 1945 onwards, 15 countries had agreed to foster international trade cooperation and initial negotiations affected $10 billion of trade. They did not want to repeat the mistake of protectionism of the 1930s which became one of the major factors of the Second World War. The group expanded to 23 countries by October 30, 1947, and it agreed to be part of the agreement named as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

In the Havana conference, the ITO charter could not go through as the US Congress did not agree to the trade deal. The GATT signatories were visionary and had anticipated that the ITO might not be ratified and as a result, the GATT became the major instrument for world trade for nearly 50 years (1948-94). India became one of the earliest members of the GATT by signing on July 8, 1948.

The GATT agreements were achieved by trade rounds (See Table). These rounds involved negotiations with signatory countries over lowering tariffs and then gradually expanding to other areas such as anti-dumping measures, non-tariff measures and so on.

The GATT was based on a plurilateral approach, voluntary in nature, which is obviously a limitation as members can back out at will. The approach also takes a long time, given the voluntary nature. Thus, from the Uruguay Round onwards, the members started moving towards a multilateral approach in which all members are party to the agreement. Multilateral system also means one does not have to negotiate with multiple partners and an agreement applies to all with some reservations.

The Uruguay round eventually led to the WTO. The organisation structure of the WTO is different from the IMF and the World Bank. The WTO is run by all the member governments (164 as of July 2016) where decisions are taken via various councils and committees. The smaller economies have an equal say in matters as bigger countries. In the IMF and the WB, power is delegated to a board of directors and is basically a power equation between the US and Europe, with Europe dominating the IMF and the US dominating the WB.

The WTO taking the spirit of the GATT forward agrees to all trade developments via negotiations, which is no small task. The GATT covered goods whereas the WTO includes services and intellectual property rights. The organisation is headed by a Ministerial Conference (MC) which meets at least once every two years to take the trade negotiations forward. There have been 12 such MCs, with next slated in Kazakhstan in June 2020. The most significant moment for the WTO was China becoming a member in 2001. There were worries over Chinas conduct in international trade, but those worries were unfounded.

In 2008 crisis, things suddenly changed for the WTO. In fact, the fortunes of the IMF and the WTO reversed, with former rising and the latter falling. Despite a sharp decline in world trade and trade finance, the WTO has mostly been sidelined. The multilateral trade agreements were based on the global cooperation/consensus, but the 2008 crisis turned the tide. The high inequality and weak recovery has led to rise of economic nationalism and populism in developed countries of all places.

The multilateralism has given way to bilateralism and regional trade agreements, negating years of progress. Shang-Jin Wei and Xinding Yu in a piece pointed out how WTOs Dispute Settlement system, which was one of its biggest successes, is being killed as judges have not been appointed. Once again, the US has been a spoilsport in much of these negotiations.

In 2019, the IMF completed its 75 years. IMF historian Atish Ghosh wrote a fascinating piece bringing Keynes to visit IMF headquarters. Ghosh wrote how Keynes would be surprised by changes in the world economy, particularly transition from fixed exchange rates to flexible exchange rates and proud that the IMF has adapted to the changes and remains relevant -- though some may not agree.

What would Keynes say of the WTO? He would be surprised that it took so long for the WTO to deliver, but still happy to note of the progress world economies have made under the GATT/WTO umbrella. He might show concern that post 2008 crisis, the world has increasingly turned protectionist. Some historians make references to how todays times are similar to the end of the World War-I (1919), which would really worry Keynes (WW-3 was trending on Twitter recently). Keynes would say that it is exactly for such times that he had suggested creation of the ITO and unhappy that just in these times, the WTO has been sidelined!

Keynes would remind the current world polity to be aware of the fateful history and work in all possible ways to ensure this history is neither repeated nor rhymed.
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Jae Evans, President and Chief Executive Officer of Isabella Bank Corporation announced the appointment of Ms. Vicki Rupp to the Board, effective November 2019.

Ms. Rupp retired in 2016 from Dow Chemical Company after a successful thirty-five year career in various positions, including her final position of Corporate Director Business Services. Her Dow Chemical experience included specialty research & development, environmental, health and safety, global corporate service management, mergers & acquisition implementation, and organizational management. Ms. Rupp owns her own consulting company, Vicki Rupp Consulting, for companies seeking operational improvements.

"I am excited to have Ms. Rupp join our Board of Directors. Her professional experience and knowledge of the Great Lakes Bay Region will be beneficial to both our board and our bank," stated Evans.

In addition, Ms. Rupp serves on the Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU) Foundation board and SVSU board of control as vice chair. Ms. Rupp serves her community as a member of the executive committee of United Way, STEM volunteer, and DOW/SVSU Affinity Network Leader. She resides in the Saginaw community.

Isabella Bank Corporation (OTCQX: ISBA) is the parent holding company of Isabella Bank, a state chartered bank headquartered in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Isabella Bank was established in 1903 and has been committed to serving the local banking needs of its customers and communities for 116 years. The Bank offers personal and commercial lending and deposit products, as well as investment, trust and estate planning services. The Bank has 30 banking locations throughout seven Mid-Michigan counties: Clare, Gratiot, Isabella, Mecosta, Midland, Montcalm, and Saginaw. The Corporation has been recognized on the Detroit Free Press list of "Top Workplaces" for five years.

For more information about Isabella Bank Corporation, visit the Investors link at www.isabellabank.com. Isabella Bank Corporation common stock is quoted on the OTCQX tier of the OTC Markets Group, Inc.'s electronic quotation system (www.otcmarkets.com) under the symbol "ISBA." The Corporation's market maker is Boenning & Scattergood, Inc. ( www.boenninginc.com ) and its investor relations firm is Renmark Financial Communications, Inc. ( www.renmarkfinancial.com ).

SOURCE Isabella Bank Corporation

Related Links

http://www.isabellabank.com


Out on Twitter, New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi ignited a controversy by announcing that she'd heard from her Deep State sources within the Trump administration that the pretext for the U.S. strike on Iranian terrorist chieftain Qassem Soleimani was pretty flimsy:

1. Ive had a chance to check in with sources, including two US officials who had intelligence briefings after the strike on Suleimani. Here is what Ive learned. According to them, the evidence suggesting there was to be an imminent attack on American targets is razor thin.  Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) January 4, 2020

Seems she couldn't wait to get that "scoop" into the paying subscription part of the Times, so out it flew on freebird Twitter. Maybe it didn't even measure up to the Times' fact-checking standards. The foreign desk is quite possibly tougher than the political desk.

Or maybe it was because the real point of her post was to throw out an editorial comment and get something viral going. She's got 384,000 followers.

17. Before I go back to the pool let me just say the obvious: No ones trying to downplay Suleimanis crimes. The question is why now? His whereabouts have been known before. His resume of killing-by-proxy is not a secret. Hard to decouple his killing from the impeachment saga.  Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) January 4, 2020

Wag the dog, right? Same as Bill Clinton did back when he had some impeachment problems? That one's been blowing around for a while now, and she seems to like it. Her 17-part story-length tweet sequence seems to be all about wanting to "prove" it, actually. Callimachi claims to be an "ex-refugee" on her Twitter feed. A search shows that she was originally from Romania but raised in the states. Clinton's real wag-the-dog war happened in that region in the 1990s, so it's possible it was some defining event for her.

Two premises here: that Soleimani's killing means that war with Ira is inevitable, which is the line the left is putting out, and Trump is doing it to whip up the masses to save him from impeachment.

Enter Richard Grenell, President Trump's ambassador to Germany and probably the most effective and commonsensical voice on all foreign policy. This man has Trump's ear:

If they exist, you should never listen to your anonymous sources again. They dont know. https://t.co/GvC9reSQPz  Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) January 4, 2020

Seriously, who would really know, other than Grenell? He probably knew all kinds of classified things on why Soleimani needed to be taken out. And the little #NeverTrump pipsqueaks were likely too low-level and cut out of the loop. Grenell schooled another one here:

The Pentagon doesnt do this. This is completely fake. https://t.co/jk8n5AweAT  Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) January 5, 2020

For good measure, he gave Ben Rhodes a smack-down, too.

Pompeo is right. You thought a charm offense on Iran would work - and it didnt. Even countries that support your JCPOA admit this now. https://t.co/J0cxsbisto  Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) January 6, 2020

Bottom line: Neither of Callimachi's premises is correct. They are just the doings of the Deep State, trying to undermind President Trump. GatewayPundit has more here.

When you've got Grenell telling you your anonymous sources are junk, it leaves just one conclusion: they are junk. The New York Times has gotten schooled.

Image credit: Twitter screen shot.
The ChannelPro Network has named Joanna Sobran, president and CEO of MXOtech in Chicago, as the inaugural winner of its Peer of the Year award.

Each month during the calendar year, ChannelPro invites a successful MSP, value-added reseller, or solution provider to share his or her story in the Peer to Peer feature that runs in the digital and print issues of ChannelPro-SMB magazine. The column provides actionable advice on topics such as growing a business, improving operations and service delivery, developing new lines of business, hiring and retention, building sales and marketing strategies, and creating and nurturing corporate culture.

All 12 stories in 2019 were considered for ChannelPros inaugural Peer of the Year award by the publications editors, who selected the one they believe readers could learn the most from and immediately apply to their own business. Sobrans story outlines the hiring and retention process she uses, which has helped grow her IT managed services business to more than $5 million.

Joannas story details a recruitment and hiring process she developed that honors the firms core values and embraces diversity and inclusion, says Rich Freeman, executive editor of The ChannelPro Network. Hiring and retention remain top challenges for IT business owners who face a tight labor market as well as a skills gap. Joanna shares sound and creative strategies that have helped her grow MXOtech, and which readers could adapt for their own businesses.

(Read the story here https://www.channelpronetwork.com/article/hiring-take-your-business-higher)

Sobran, who came from Poland as a child with her parents, founded MXOtech, a 100% woman-owned business, in 2005. She began her career in the healthcare industry working for two successful women entrepreneurs and later moved into IT recruiting, combining her healthcare and technology business expertise. Her knowledge of these two practice areas, along with her business development and recruiting skills, became the foundation on which she built her own successful company.

My favorite part of owning a business is matching people with their dream job, watching them make an impact, and building a great company together, Sobran says. Through our training program, we have changed the lives of individuals from underserved communities and foreign countries so they can do what they love while providing for their families. This is why I get up every day excited to continue our journey.

MXOtech has been recognized as one of the nations fastest-growing outsourced IT companies by Inc. Magazines Inc. 5000 list. MXOtech healthcare applications have also been nominated for Innovation Awards and adopted by Fortune 1000 companies. Most recently, the Womens Business Development Center in Chicago presented Sobran with the Deborah Sawyer Rising Star Award. Visit http://www.mxotech.com

The ChannelPro Network is honored that Joanna chose to share her story with our readers, and we are pleased to present her with our first-ever Peer of the Year award, says Michael Siggins, president and publisher of The ChannelPro Network. The competition was fierce, as all of our Peer to Peer stories last year were compelling sources of insight and inspiration for our readers.

For 2020, ChannelPro will be expanding the Peer of the Year selection process to include nominees from the ChannelPro audience of readers and vendors as well as from our 12 Peer to Peer stories featured throughout the year. Interested parties can send nominations to: peer2peer@channelpronetwork.com.

About the ChannelPro Network

The ChannelPro Network provides targeted business and technology information for the IT channel. Via ChannelPro-SMB magazine, live and online events, and our online properties, the network delivers expert opinion, analysis, news, product reviews, and advice vital to a resellers business success. Perspectives from VARs, vendors, distributors, and analysts are spotlighted daily. No other media company focuses on the small and midsize marketplace like The ChannelPro Network. Learn more at http://www.channelpronetwork.com.
Families are still homeless, divided and displaced and 18 isolated communities remain cut off a week after fires tore through East Gippsland.

Many communities are without power or water and have limited food as 27 fires ravage the state with local businesses fearing that the worst is yet to come.

Shan and Rob Hutchings haven't seen their children for a week Credit:Luis Entique Ascui

Shan and Rob Hutchings have not seen their four children since they were evacuated from their home in Sarsfield, near Bairnsdale, on December 30.

Three of their children have special needs and the couple said their family has been torn apart.
Iran has been gradually backing down from a promise made in the 2015 deal since U.S. President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Iran. The European signatories -- Britain, France, and Germany -- have been urging Iran not to pull out.

But the Sunday statement did not make any explicit threats that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon -- something Iran has always denied it wants to do. Its statement said Iran will still cooperate with the International Atomic Agency.

"Iran's nuclear program will have no limitations in production including enrichment capacity and percentage and number of enriched uranium and research and expansion," a government statement said Sunday. The move comes two days after a U.S. missile strike in Baghdad killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, leading to threats of Iranian revenge.

Iran says it is no longer limiting the number of centrifuges used to enrich uranium-- a virtual abandonment of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is staunchly defending the drone attack outside Baghdad International Airport that killed Soleimani. But Pompeo has so far refuse to publicly share the evidence backing the administration's claim that Soleimani was planning imminent attacks on U.S. forces and officials in the Middle East.

Pompeo said that letting Soleimani "continue plotting and planning his terror campaign" was a bigger risk than the drone strike posed. Pompeo several times declined to reveal evidence of the threat the U.S. believed that Soleimani posed. "There are simply things we cannot make public," Pompeo told Fox News. "You've got to protect the sources providing the intelligence."

On CNN, Pompeo said U.S. officials would continue to disclose information about the drone attack, but only "consistent with protecting our sources and methods and importantly our capacity to continue to understand what's going on in presenting threats. You don't want to risk that intelligence."

Trump said Friday "We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war... the Iranian regime's aggression in the region, including the use of proxy fighters to destabilize its neighbors must end and it must end now."

Trump claimed Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, Iraqis and Iranians, saying the longtime Iranian general "made the death of innocent people his sick passion" while helping to run a terror network that reached across the Middle East to Europe and the Americas.

Many Republican lawmakers back Trumps order to kill Soleimani. Democrats say there is no doubt Soleimani was rotten and a killer. But they say Trump's action increases the threat of a U.S.-Iran war. Sen. Chris Van Hollen told Fox, "We're now headed very close to the precipice of war," adding "you just can't go around and kill" world figures the U.S. opposes. "The president is not entitled to take us to war" without congressional authorization.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed "severe revenge" against the killing of Soleimani. His top military adviser, Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan, told CNN, "The response for sure will be military and against military sites."

Also Sunday, Iraq filed an official complaint with the United Nations secretary-general and the Security Council over the missile strike on Soleimani which was carried out on Iraqi soil.

The foreign ministry called the attack "a dangerous breach of Iraqi sovereignty and of the terms of the U.S. presence in Iraq." It is asking the Security Council to condemn the action. Also Sunday, at least two Katyusha rockets struck near the U.S. embassy inside Baghdad's green zone, home to many foreign embassies. There are no reports of any casualties or damage.

An Iranian-backed mob of protesters breached the security perimeters surrounding the embassy last week, breaking into a visitor's reception area and burning a security post.
MOSCOW, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Sheremetyevo International Airport is the most punctual major airport in the world, according to OAG, the British aviation research company that has analyzed aviation since 1929.

OAG compared Sheremetyevo with other airports serving in the Mega Airports category, those handling more than 30 million seats per year on regular departures. Flights at Sheremetyevo arrived and departed on time at a rate of 87% in 2019.

This was the first year Sheremetyevo Airport led the OAG punctuality rating in the new Mega Airports category. It was the most punctual airport in the world in the Major Airports categoryairports with an annual volume of 20 to 30 million departing passengersin 2018.

The Chairman of the Board of Directors for MASH JSC, Alexander Ponomarenko, said, "We are especially pleased that leading international experts rated the punctuality of Sheremetyevo Airport so highly. We are constantly improving the quality of service for passengers arriving in and departing from Sheremetyevo. This recognition is direct evidence of the effectiveness of our work in this area."

Sheremetyevo Airport is the busiest airport in Russia. In 2019, its passenger flow reached a record high of 49.7 million, an increase of 11% compared to 2018.

Sheremetyevo Airport achieved its strong performance in punctuality largely due to the effective cooperation among the airport, airlines and air traffic control authorities. Sheremetyevo was the first airport in Russia to develop and implement a joint decision-making system with airlines (A-CDM), using its own innovative production database, called Synchron. The A-CDM system can significantly reduce aircraft taxiing time and save airlines hundreds of thousands of tons of jet fuel annually.

Sheremetyevo International Airport is one of the TOP-10 airport hubs in Europe and the largest Russian airport in terms of passenger and freight traffic. At the end of 2018, the airport served 45.8 million passengers, 14.3% more than in 2017. At the end of 2018, Sheremetyevo was rated best in quality of service among airports in Europe with a passenger flow of more than 40 million a year by the ASQ ACI program and was cited as one of the best airports in the world by the International Council of Airports. The British company Stasher rated it as the best airport in the world. It holds the highest 5-star rating by Skytrax.

SOURCE Sheremetyevo International Airport
Two years later, the budget still needed cutting. The union leadership predictably chose layoffs and restoring the five-day week for the others. But the workers said, "Wait a minute." They weren't asked. The union put the matter before the rank and file, which voted 71 percent to 29 percent to stay on four days with less pay.

What happened? As de Graaf observed, "Workers were now saying things like, 'Now I go fishing on Fridays.'" (Only a few, mainly men, used the freed-up day to take on outside work.)

The female employees tended to like the four-day week more than the men, according to de Graaf. They would tell him, "Well, now what I do is the kids are in school on Fridays, so I do various chores on Friday, and then I have the whole weekend off."

Amador County workers enjoyed the added advantage of all having the same day off, so they had friends to go fishing with. That's the thinking in Europe, where nearly everyone gets vacation time during the same weeks of August. Europeans realized that people want time off when friends and family do.
Trump Administration Attempted to Block Iraqi Parliament Vote on Expelling Foreign Troops - Report

Sputnik News

04:46 06.01.2020

On Sunday, the Iraqi parliament voted in favor of expelling all foreign military troops from the territories of Iraq following the killing of Iranian top military commander Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a senior member of Iraq's Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces, by a US drone strike in Baghdad.

The Trump administration attempted to thwart the efforts of the Iraqi parliament to expel foreign military forces from the country in the wake of the killing of a top Iranian military commander and an Iraqi militia leader by US forces inside Iraqi territories, Axios reported on Sunday, citing two unnamed US officials and an Iraqi official.

The three officials told Axios that the Trump administration tried to convince the Iraqi government to block its parliament from passing the resolution, which will force the US military out of Iraq. One US official reportedly said that the exit of US troops from the country would "be catastrophic for Iraq".

"It's our concern that Iraq would take a short-term decision that would have catastrophic long-term implications for the country and its security. But it's also what would happen to them financially if they allowed Iran to take advantage of their economy to such an extent that they would fall under the sanctions that are on Iran," the official reportedly said. "We don't want to see that. We're trying very hard to work to have that not happen."

Axios also cited an unnamed senior Iraqi official who claimed that many Kurdish and Sunni members of the Iraqi parliament, who are supporting the US presence in Iraq, did not attend the parliament vote on expelling all foreign military forces, including US-led international coalition, from Iraqi territories.

"This is a temporary victory for the parties which are pro-Iranian, but it's also a clear message from the Sunnis and from the Kurds [who didn't vote] and from some Iraqi Shia, for the Americans to tell them we want you to stay in Iraq," the Iraqi official said, according to the website.

Earlier in the day, the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution to end the presence of foreign troops in Iraq, following a US airstrike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds force of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Abu Mahdi Muhandis, a senior member of Iraq's Iranian-backed Shia Popular Mobilization Forces, on Friday.

A Sputnik

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Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has sought the caste composition in each of Uttar Pradeshs 403 assembly constituencies as her party seeks to reach out to the Dalits, Other Backward Class (OBCs) and Muslims ahead of the 2022 assembly polls in the state, Congress functionaries aware of the developments said.

The outreach has been planned based on an assessment that the three sections are disillusioned with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) because of their subdued opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which has triggered protests across the country, and the proposed pan-India National Register of Citizens (NRC), they added.

The Dalits account for 21% of UPs population and have been the BSPs main support base. The SP is primarily seen as the party of OBC Yadavs and Muslims.

Priyanka Gandhi has emerged as the Congresss face in its opposition to the CAA and the NRC. She has met the families of the protestors killed in the violence during protests in Uttar Pradesh.

At least 21 people died in Uttar Pradesh in the violence on December 20 and 21 as protests against the CAA and NRC spread to other parts of the country. The protests first erupted in the Northeast, especially in Assam, where residents fear the CAA could result in a fresh influx of outsiders, after Parliament passed it on December 11.

The CAA seeks to fast-track citizenship for non-Muslim refugees, who have entered India from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh before 2015. Opponents of the CAA say the law is unconstitutional as it links faith to citizenship in a secular country and is discriminatory because it leaves out the Muslims. They point out that the CAA, if combined with a pan-India NRC, could result in the expulsion or detention of Muslims unable to provide the documentation required for the exercise.

An exercise to identify undocumented immigrants in Assam led to the exclusion of over 1.9 million people from the NRC in Assam last year.

Uttar Pradesh Congress leaders, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the outreach has rattled BSP chief Mayawati, who has attacked their partys top leadership. As per the functionaries, Priyanka Gandhi has also sought a report on the impact of the Congresss alliance with the SP in 2017 UPs assembly polls.

The Congress registered its worst-ever performance in the 2017 elections and bagged just seven seats. The failure of the two parties to transfer their votes to each other has been identified as the reason for their dismal performance.

The BJP returned to power in UP in 2017. It continued its dominance in the state and won seven out of the 11 assembly seats to which by-polls were held in October. Priyanka Gandhi, who is a Congress general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, has kept her focus on the state, which sends 80 lawmakers to the 543-member Lok Sabha.

She has raised the issues related to UP and attacked chief minister Yogi Adityanath and his government over the law and order situation, especially the alleged increase in the rape cases, and police excesses during the CAA protests. The Congress, the functionaries feels it is the right time to build a campaign against the Yogi government even as it managed to win just one Lok Sabha seat in UP in last summers national polls.

Congress is a political party, Priyanka Ji is its leader. Of course, they can launch any outreach programme. But, its better that she first reaches out to her party cadre which is disillusioned with the party itself. She has not lent an ear to nearly a dozen party seniors who had been requesting an audience. Instead, the party expelled them. Voters are now waiting to elections to oust BJP and make Akhilesh Yadav the chief minister again, said a Samajwadi Party leader.

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Specialty insurer Chaucer announced the appointment of Chance Gilliland as head of U.S. Property Insurance, Mel Smart as head of International Property Facultative and Michael Johnston as deputy class underwriter, International Property Binders.

As Head of U.S. Property Insurance, Gilliland will assume with responsibility for developing a portfolio through a core group of U.S. partner agents.Gilliland was previously with Chubb where he worked for close to a decade writing U.S. property binder business in London and the U.S.

As head of International Property Facultative, Smart will have responsibility for growing the international direct and facultative property business. She was previously senior international property underwriter at Brit Global Specialty.

Johnston, as deputy class underwriter, will work with Harry Woolf, class underwriter, to grow Chaucers international property binders account. For the past 10 years, Johnston has been with Liberty Specialty Markets.

Chaucers parent company is China Re, a leading reinsurer in China.

Topics USA Property
05.01.2020 LISTEN

We still have a long way to go in supporting and spreading the education on female reproductive health and menstrual hygiene.

Thus, the founder of Speciallady Awareness Foundation, Elizabeth Amoaa will be visiting Ghana with her team again as part of her ongoing campaign towards the awareness on women reproductive health issues.

Although, many agencies have been tackling these issues, there seems to be quiet a large amount of people who still miss the education on these unspoken topics. Therefore, many women and young girls suffer in silence amidst derogatory comments from uneducated friends, family and society.

Her mission is to be the Voice of the Voiceless, so she uses her story as a motivational tool to encourage her audience to seek the necessary medical care and support.

She will be joined by a famous Ghanaian Actor named Kweku Elliott, to visit communities, schools and hospitals. They will be visiting Wiamoase in Ashanti Region, Adumasa in the Eastern Region and Amasaman in Greater Accra Region.

The team will be joining Wiamoase Diaspora Group (WDG) for their Homecoming in April 2020, where they will launch their grande Library Project during the Easter period.

The Wiamoase citizens in the diaspora have decided to build this library and conference hall to boost education and create an environment for learning. One of their mission is to help the next generation with a solid foundation towards their educational aspirations.

In 2017, a thirty two seats ultra modern toilet facility was commissioned by Wiamoase Disapora Group. Also, they donated an ambulance, offered free health screening to thousands of elderly people and children as well as free national health insurance cards.

During Speciallady visit in April 2020, she intends to donate sanitary towels, medical supplies, toys, clothing, children storybooks and health books worth thousands of pounds.

Despite her extensive yearly donations in communities and educational institutions, she educates her audience on gynaecological conditions and their management.

Additionally, this tour will be supported by KayaToursGhana, ICANN Brand Event Innovation, JSA Associates, Lexta Ghana (Yazz Products) and Koodoo.
Syracuse, N.Y. -- We are all too well aware that Central New York is among the cloudiest places in America, especially during the winter, but 2020 so far has been especially cruel.

Since the new year dawned last Wednesday, Syracuse has had about two hours of sun. Theres very little in the forecast over the next week, too, so any vitamin D production will require use of a tanning bed.

We looked back over the National Weather Services official hourly readings at Hancock International Airport since the new year rang in. Of the 131 readings so far, 128 of them, or 98%, showed the sky was covered with clouds or that it was raining, misting, snowing or just plain foggy.

Observers at the airport jotted down just three fair readings, which indicate mostly clear skies. One of those readings came at 11 p.m. on New Years Day, leaving just two daylight hours with any real sun. Those came just after lunch time last Thursday.

We also took a peek at the weather services hourly forecast, which extends out for six days, and regret to inform you theres not much hope of sun there, either. In fact, at no point from now until 10 a.m. Sunday is the sky expected to be mostly clear. The best bet is Tuesday morning, when about 56% of the sky is expected to be obscured by clouds.

That doesnt mean we wont see the sun at all. Its likely to poke through the clouds off and on over the next few days, but its not likely to be visible for long.

By the weekend, when a storm bringing heavy rain or snow is expected, the already low odds of sun sink to zero.

The suns absence this time of year comes as little surprise in Upstate New York, one of the cloudiest areas of the country. For that we can thank our location downwind of the Great Lakes, which can bring lake effect snow or rain, and lots of clouds.

The lakes during the cool season, from September to March, produce so many more clouds," Scott Steiger, a meteorology professor at SUNY Oswego, told us a few years ago.

In Syracuse, the cloudiest Upstate city, we see sunshine just 44% of the time the sun is over the horizon, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. Thats just slightly cloudier than Seattle, which gets 45% of available sunshine. Buffalo and Binghamton get 47% of available sunshine, and Rochester gets 48%. The sunniest  and we use the term loosely  major Upstate city is Albany, with 50%.

Below is the log of the Syracuse readings since New Years Day, starting with the most recent observation. The weather service records conditions at 54 minutes after every hour.
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Lost among impeachment and Trumps threats to Iran is a growing chorus calling for the resignation of Attorney General William Barr.

Sarah Jones said on Politcus News:

On December 19th, several Democratic members of Congress felt compelled to call on Barr to resign due to his undermining of the very department he leads. Congressman Hank Johnson (GA-04), a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham demanding they resign for acting as mouthpieces for Donald Trump rather than public servants bound to the rule of law. 

Mr. Barr, your course of conduct makes clear your allegiance is to Donald Trump over the Department of Justice and American people that you serve. You are unfit to hold the position of Attorney General and your dedication to eroding public trust in our legal systems represents the antithesis of what a Justice Department official should be. Mr. Durham is equally as complicit in this mission and together your actions demonstrate that neither of you possesses the integrity necessary to serve in the Department of Justice.

For these reasons, we demand your immediate resignation as Attorney General and that of U.S. Attorney Durham.

We all know that Trump officials are immune to shame, but a letter like this is highly unusual and could be seen as a warning shot coming from the Democrats as it is.

In October, Democrats called for Barr to recuse himself from anything Ukraine.

Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii tweeted Attorney General Barrs name was mentioned several times in @realDonaldTrumps infamous telephone call with the Ukrainian President. Since hes been acting as the Presidents lawyer, not the peoples lawyer, Bill Barr must recuse himself from anything regarding Ukraine.

Video:

While the nation is consumed with both impeachment and Trumps wag the dog response to being impeached, there is a growing movement to get rid of an attorney general who has corrupted the Department of Justice and turned into a personal legal firm for Donald Trump.
Americas space agency is nearing completion of a vehicle that will search for evidence of past life on Mars. It is too cold and dry for life to exist on the surface of Mars today. But scientists hope the rover will find evidence of life that once lived on the planet.

The rover will make the trip to the red planet later this year, and start preparing for NASAs mission to send humans into deep space.

NASA recently showed off its Mars 2020 rover. It has four wheels and is about the size of a car. The rover will be sent to Floridas Kennedy Space Center in three parts. It will be put together there. The vehicles official name will be chosen soon.

Launch is set for July. The following February, the rover will land in the 250-meter-deep Jezero Crater  a dry lake bed that is bigger than New Yorks Manhattan. Billions of years ago, it was a deep lake, but as the climate changed there, it dried up. Scientists believe that the crater holds many sediments in great conditionsome may be 3.5 billion years old. They hope the rover will find fossilsremains of plants or animals that once lived on Mars.

The trick, though, is that were looking for trace levels of chemicals from billions of years ago on Mars, Mars 2020 deputy project manager Matt Wallace told Reuters. The rover will collect up to 30 samples, or small amounts, of soil. NASA plans to have them picked up and returned to Earth by a future spacecraft.

Mars 2020 research will also be very important for future human missions to the red planet. It is carrying equipment that can turn carbon dioxide, which is everywhere on Mars, into oxygen for breathing.

If successful, Mars 2020 will mark NASAs fifth Martian rover to carry out a soft landing. Important lessons were learned from the most recent Curiosity rover, which landed on the planets surface in 2012. It continues to move and work on the Martian surface southeast of the Jezero Crater.

The former Soviet Union is the only other country to land a rover on Mars. But it did not deploy. China and Japan have attempted to send orbiters around Mars. India and Europes space agency have successfully sent an orbiter to the planet.

Im Anne Ball.

Rollo Ross wrote this story for Reuters. Anne Ball adapted the story for Learning English. Kelly J. Kelly was the editor.

What do you think of this story? Write to us in the comments section below.

____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

mission  n. a task or a job that someone is giving to do

sediment  n. material like stones and sand that is carried into water by water or wind

trace  n. something, like an object, which shows that someone, or something, was in a particular place
Chennai, Jan 6 : Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit on Monday said there has been a diminution in the overall flow of central funds to the state.

"Contrary to the impression that the 14th Finance Commission's recommendations increased the gross flow of resources from the Centre to the States, in reality, there has been a reduction in the gross transfers from the Centre to States," Purohit said in the Governor's customary New Year address to the Assembly.

"Moreover, Tamil Nadu has faced a more severe adverse impact due to the horizontal distribution formula of the 14th Finance Commission," he added.

The Governor said the state is eagerly awaiting the recommendations of the 15th Finance Commission and hopes for a fair and equitable distribution of resources, rewarding efficiency and performance.

Purohit said the state this year has so far received Rs 7,096 crore as goods and services tax (GST) compensation, as well as Central government grants of Rs 17,957.31 crore.

According to him, here are some outstanding issues relating to release of dues to the state by the Central government.

He said in the first year of GST implementation in 2017-18, the Central government, instead of distributing 50 per cent of the unallocated Integrated GST (IGST) in proportion to State GST (SGST) collection in various states, the Centre incorrectly appropriated the entire unallocated portion of IGST to the tune of Rs 88,344.22 crore to the Consolidated Fund of India and distributed 42 per cent of this to the states as per the 14th Finance Commission's devolution formula.

"This resulted in a net loss of Rs 4,073 crore to Tamil Nadu and we are insisting on the immediate release of this amount due to our State. Due to our efforts, this issue has been referred to a Group of Ministers by the GST Council and we seek an early favourable decision," Purohit said.

Citing the second India-China Informal Summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping last year, he said the state government has sent a proposal for Rs 563.50 crore for tourism development of Mahabalipuram.

Purohit also urged the Central government to upgrade the Gandhigram Rural Institute near Madurai as a Centre of Eminence for Rural Development and Gandhian Philosophy.

On the agricultural front, Purohit said owing to favourable monsoon, the area sown has increased by seven lakh acres and a bountiful food grain production of 115 lakh metric tonnes is expected.
T hree men have been arrested in Kenya after they tried to force their way into a British Army training camp.

The incident comes on the same day al-Shabab extremists attacked a military base and killed three US military personnel.

An internal police report seen by the Associated Press said three terrorist suspects were arrested on Sunday after trying to enter the British Army training unit in Laikipia county.

The UK Government was not immediately available for comment.

Around the same time, the al-Shabab assault occurred on the US base in Lamu county.

The attack at the Manda Bay airfield lasted several hours and destroyed a number of US aircraft and vehicles.

The airfield is adjacent to Camp Simba, a key Kenyan military base used by US counter-terror forces.

Kenyas military spokesman Paul Njuguna said on Monday that no Kenyans died in the attack.
Several hundred people, most of them collegians and youth, assembled at Mumbai's Hutatma Chowk on Monday afternoon to protest against the violence in Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Violence had broken out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, after which the police conducted a flag march.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured.

At Hutatma Chowk, police maintained a strong presence and were seen asking protesters to not spill onto the massive junction that leads to important areas like Mantralaya, Cuffe Parade, Colaba, Churchgate and Marine Drive in south Mumbai.

Protesters were carrying placards and shouting slogans condemning the violence they claim was perpetrated by the RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and other outfits linked to the ruling BJP.

One of them said the gathering at Hutatma Chowk would move towards Gateway of India, less than a kilometre away, where protests against the violence have been going on since midnight.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Eric Chewning, chief of staff to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, is stepping down at the end of the month, the latest in a series of high-profile civilians to leave the Pentagon.

He'll be replaced by Jen Stewart, the top Republican staffer on the House Armed Services Committee and a former top adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, according to a statement from Pentagon spokeswoman Alyssa Farah.

Chewning, a former Army intelligence officer and combat veteran, has managed the day-to-day operations of the Office of the Secretary of Defense through a historic number of leadership changes, working for four Pentagon chiefs.

He joined the Pentagon in 2017 as deputy assistant secretary for industrial policy from McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm where he specialized in the aerospace industry.

Then-acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan tapped Chewning as his chief of staff in January 2019 after the departure of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Chewning continued to serve in that role when then-Navy Secretary Richard Spencer stepped in temporarily as acting Pentagon chief while Esper, who was serving as Army secretary, awaited confirmation from the Senate. Chewning then stayed on when Esper took over in July.

"Im grateful for Eric's professionalism, judgment, and leadership over the last seven months as I moved into the Secretary of Defense role," Esper said in a statement Monday. "In an incredibly demanding job, Eric has been a source of calm and tireless work. We wish him all the best upon his return to the private sector."

Farah confirmed that Chewning will take a new job in the private sector. But she did not offer additional details, including the reason for the departure or any specifics about Chewning's professional plans.

Chewning was featured in a recently released trove of unredacted emails that show Pentagon officials' concerns with the legality of White House moves this summer to hold up military assistance to Ukraine, an issue at the center of President Donald Trump's impeachment.

Story continues

In the emails reported by Just Security, Chewning in late August relayed to acting Pentagon comptroller Elaine McCusker questions from defense contractor L3Harris Technologies about the status of the Ukraine funding. McCusker criticized the Office of Management and Budget for saying the freeze wouldn't prevent the aid from being fully spent.

Chewning later wrote that a memo to OMB, which warned that the Ukraine aid was in danger of not being fully spent by the end of the fiscal year, will have to wait until after a September meeting between Vice President Mike Pence and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Poland.

"We expect the issue to get resolved then," he wrote to McCusker. "If not, I think we need to send the letter."

His departure comes after a string of senior officials left the Pentagon last month or announced they were stepping down, including the director of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the acting undersecretary for personnel and readiness, the principal deputy undersecretary for intelligence, and the assistant secretary for Asian and Pacific security affairs.

Chewning's replacement, Stewart, has identified a personal interest in cybersecurity issues and in making the Pentagon more efficient. The move marks a major personnel step for Esper as he comes up on his six-month mark in the top job.

Esper said Stewart's expertise will be crucial as the Pentagon steps ups its preparations for the growing threats posed by great powers Russia and China.

I have known Jen for years and Im excited to bring her into the Department, he said. Her deep expertise on national security issues will be a great addition to our team as we continue implementing the National Defense Strategy.

Stewart has strong ties on Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon.

She has led the Republican staff on the House Armed Services Committee under Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) since 2017, including when he served as chairman before the Democratic takeover of the House, playing a role in his efforts to boost defense spending.

She was the national security adviser to then-House Speakers Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and John Boehner (R-Ohio).

She is also a familiar face inside the Pentagon, where she was a senior adviser to then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford.

If her own comments in recent years are any guide, she is likely to take a major interest in her new role in ensuring that the bureaucracy is more in sync in honing key capabilities, especially in cyberspace.

"My personal interest, which will not surprise you, [is] cybersecurity," she told POLITICO in an interview when she took over as HASC staff director.

She also said at the time that she is interested in "helping to lay the groundwork for a very professional, responsible conversation about how we talk about staying ahead of Russia and China."

"Were not calling them our enemies," she added, "but theyre emergent competitors who want to be peer competitors, and if we never want to get into a fair fight we have a lot of work in front of us."

Esper, in his statement Monday, telegraphed more personnel announcements to come as he builds out his leadership team.

"The Department continues to bring in high quality personnel into leadership positions." he said. "This week three new Senate-confirmed appointees will be sworn in, while three nominees await Senate action, and additional nominations are expected in coming weeks. Also this week, four new senior [senior executive service] appointees will be sworn in, joining approximately a dozen senior SES leaders brought into the Department in the last few months of 2019."

Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.
Alex Trebek has a message of support for Congressman John Lewis as both fight pancreatic cancer.

Were starting a new year, and lets see if we cant both complete the year as pancreatic cancer survivors, Trebek said when asked what he would tell Lewis. He noted they're the same age, 79.

The Georgia Democrat, Alabama native and veteran civil rights leader announced his diagnosis of advanced cancer in late December. In his his announcement, Lewis made clear that he has no plans to step aside and said, "I have a fighting chance.''

Trebek made his illness public last March and has shared his progress and setbacks.

The Jeopardy! host struck a resolute but realistic tone in discussing the disease, including the toll it took during last months taping of a prime-time special, Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time, with top contestants Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter and James Holzhauer, The contest begins airing Tuesday on ABC.

Trebek recalled mentioning to a series producer that he was struggling a bit on stage, but was assured that nobody noticed.

I said, Well, I noticed, said the typically precise host, who has been part of Jeopardy! since 1984.

Trebek has had good days and bad while undergoing treatment, but his on-camera performance doesn't falter, said Jennings, who first competed on the show 15 years ago.

The chemo is rough, but he can always just turn it on," Jennings said. "The music came on, the lights came on, he would just stride out there and nail that show like nobody else. It was exciting to see him doing so well and taking that diagnosis so bravely. To me, hes the last of that kind of old-school broadcasters, and its such a pleasure to watch.

Rutter, who first played on Jeopardy! nearly 20 years ago, said word of Trebek's illness hit him like a ton of bricks.

He occasionally drops into the Los Angeles-area studio to watch tapings and marvels at the host's perseverance.

Every time I go back, he's better than he was last time. Even with cancer, he's still held up to that standard, which is just absolutely amazing," Rutter said.

Such praise and attention can make Trebek uncomfortable.

I dont want to get too mushy. I got mushy when young Dhruv (contestant Dhruv Gaur) wrote his final Jeopardy! response, We love you Alex! 'That caught me by surprise, brought me to the edge of tears, he said of the moment that aired during Novembers Tournament of Champions.

Its humbling to realize there are so many people out there who care enough about you to want to pray for you every day, who want to send you their best wishes," he said. But Trebek said he never loses sight of the shows real attraction.

I tell people all the time, Hey, folks, the shows not about me, its about the material and the contestants. Those are the two main items. And if they shine, if the material plays well, if the contestants do well, people will enjoy the show. If they enjoy the show, probably some of that enjoyment will rub off on their views of me, and theyll like me too, he said, modestly.

But he expressed confidence that it will thrive with someone new.

No matter whos hosting it, Jeopardy! will go on. Its a quality program and its put together by very bright people. And when I move on, that doesnt matter,  he said. Its the best kind of reality television, so it will endure."
Shark Tank Buys Every Man Needs

Take the Bait - Snatch Up These 'Shark Tank' Gadgets

The AskMen editorial team thoroughly researches & reviews the best gear, services and staples for life. AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service.

Whether or not you regularly watch Shark Tank, youre probably familiar with many of the products the show made famous. Inventions such as the Squatty Potty, Bombas and Scrub Daddy are now ubiquitous  not to mention valued at millions of dollars  but there are many other just-as-great pitched items you might not be so familiar with (there have been close to 1,000 brands featured on the show, after all).

RELATED: AskMen's Gear of the Year

Heres a look at some seriously cool "Shark Tank" buys to upgrade your everyday life.

Cut Board Pro

After New York firefighter and chef, Keith Young, passed away due to health complications caused by 9/11 cleanup, his three children vowed to make their fathers dream come true by pitching his innovative cutting board on Shark Tank. But theres more than just a touching story here.

This product is truly fantastic, which explains why, in a rare move, all of the Sharks came together to make a deal with the Young family. The board is eco-friendly, reversible and it comes with a detachable tray that hangs over a counter's edge, so that it's easy to separate prepped ingredients from food scraps. Its also durable, easy-to-clean and part of the proceeds go to help firemen who fell ill after 9/11.

$69.95 at WilliamsSonoma.com

Ring 2

When entrepreneur Jamie Siminoff first went into the tank in 2013 with his idea for a video doorbell, he didnt leave with an offer in hand, but things didnt stay sour for the entrepreneur for long. Five years later, the company sold for more than $1 billion. In the half-decade since his appearance on the show (he has since appeared as a guest Shark), Ring has continued to innovate and they recently released the Ring Video Doorbell 2.

The second-generation product has a removable and rechargeable battery, up to 1080p HD video, infrared night vision, two-way audio and motion detection (meaning users can speak to visitors from anywhere in the world via the free Ring app), built-in motion sensors that trigger instant mobile alerts, and Ring 2 can connect to existing wired doorbells.

$199 at Amazon.com

Frywall

Heres another buy that will ease your clean-up. Frywall is a silicone splatter guard that will keep oil and sauces from spritzing all over your stovetop. It's dishwasher safe, can withstand sustained temperatures of up to 450F, rolls up for easy storage, and comes in three sizes to fit a variety of pans.

Prices vary at Frywall.com

Butter Cloth Men's Dress Shirts

Created by immigrant entrepreneur Danh Tran, Robert Herjavec has said that Butter Cloth, a mens dress shirt brand, is one of his personal favorite investments. In fact, after a deal was struck with Herjavec, Butter Cloth created a business casual collection inspired by him.

So what sets Butter Cloth apart from other mens clothing companies? The Vietnam-born Danh has spent decades in the design industry, which ultimately led him to create his line of shirts made from a unique blend of 100 percent long fiber cotton that perfectly mix fashion with function. Stretchy and breathable, they look like dress shirts, but feel like T-shirts. Butter Cloth now has a wide range of colors, patterns and styles to choose from.

Prices vary at Buttercloth.com

Terra-Core

Whether or not getting fitter was one of your 2020 resolutions, odds are youd take the opportunity to lose fat and gain muscle, and thats just what Terra-Core facilitates. Its basically a fancier, more versatile Bosu ball that combines tools for weight, cardio and functional training for all levels.

One side is a rubber dome, meaning youll engage added core strength when performing exercises like squats, while the other is flat and has handles and sidebars so you can comfortably do things like push-ups and burpees. A whopping four Sharks made offers, but ultimately Lori Greiner sealed the deal.

$199 at TerraCoreFitness.com

Wurkin Stiffs Magnetic Collar Stays

This is one of those Shark Tank items that you see and think, "Why didn't I think of that?" Whether you rock a collared shirt on the daily or only for special occasions, you'll know the struggle of maintaining a sleek stiff collar. Wurkin Stiffs set out to change that with these simple yet effective magnetic bands that slip right under a collar and keep it from going limp.

$40 at Amazon.com

EverlyWell

Do you suspect that you have a food sensitivity or too many heavy metals in your body? Or maybe you feel as though youre suffering from a vitamin D deficiency or an inflammation issue? You can test for all these and more via EverlyWell, which sells at-home lab testing kits.

Dozens of custom panels are available and test results (provided within days) are easy to read and understand, and said to be as accurate as the ones youd receive from your doctors office. All of the results come from certified lab facilities and are reviewed by board-certified physicians. If thats not enough to convince you to bypass the waiting room at the doc's office, Lori Greiner believed in founder Julia Cheek so much that she invested $1 million in the company.

Find out more at EverlyWell.com

TaDah Foods

When youre looking for a burrito break, head to the frozen foods aisle and look for TaDah Foods. All the Sharks agreed that the on-trend, plant-based East Mediterranean brands products taste amazing. While the Sharks looked as though they were chowing down on burritos, they were actually enjoying Falafel Wraps  a blend of chickpeas, herbs, spices and hummus, available in flavors like Feta Salsa and Sweet and Spicy Harissa.

TaDah also makes Falafel Poppers, which are basically falafel fritters with a creamy dip in the center. If you want proof that these are worth considering for your next meal  founder John Sorial went into the tank asking for $300,000 and left with a $500,000 investment.

Find out more at TaDahFoods.com

Hair Ties for Guys

Rocking a man bun or a ponytail? It's about time you got into Hair Ties for Guys. Created by two long-haired dudes who were tired of shopping in the women's hair aisle, this brand creates hair ties that are not only durable and snug against the hair, but they don't leave creases either.

$12 at Amazon.com

Plop Star

You might be familiar with Poo-Pourri, a popular smell-masking toilet spray made of essential oils and other natural compounds, that works by coating the surface of the water to hold in bad odors. Plop Star takes this idea to the next level with added convenience. The brand makes individually packaged tablets that you simply toss in the toilet prior to your performance (their words, not ours!) so you can rock the bowl with confidence.

The packages are compact, so you can easily slip one into your wallet for when youre at work, at your significant others apartment, or anywhere else you might not want to leave the bathroom with a stench. The catch? Despite not inking a deal with one of the Sharks, Plop Star blew through their inventory several times over since appearing on the show and the product is now back-ordered through the spring.

Find out more at PlopStar.com

Table87

Frozen pizza doesnt tend to taste great, and if you live in a city like New York or Chicago theres very little reason to opt for it. Table 87 is an exception to the rule. It has been nearly five years since Tom Cucco appeared on "Shark Tank" and made a deal with Lori Greiner to take his coal oven pizzas to the masses and his company, Table 87, is deservingly more popular than ever.

Not only does this pizza come sold by the slice (Hello, portion control) but you get coal oven taste without an actual coal oven  and it only takes minutes. The vacuum seal packaging also means it takes up very little space in the freezer.

$4.99 at FreshDirect.com

Beard King

Whether youre shaving or trimming youll undoubtedly end up with hair all over your countertop and/or sink. That is, until you put on this bib designed to catch hair clippings  and yes, it looks as ridiculous as you think. Its a small price to pay, however, to avoid the nuisance of cleaning up facial hair. Even though the deal with Lori Grenier fell through after the show aired, Beard King still has reportedly gone on to sell millions of dollars worth of product.

$23.99 at Amazon.com

Supply

Weve been taught to believe the more blades the better, but Supply is dispelling that myth with their single blade razors, designed with aerospace-grade engineering to prevent ingrown hairs and irritation. The brands founders scored a deal with Robert Herjavec and their booming business now includes an ever-growing assortment of razors, shaving cream, after-shave, and a variety of accessories such as trays and marble tumblers.

Prices vary at Supply.co

Bug Bite Thing

We can all agree that bug bites are a nuisance wed love to live without, so it makes sense that Bug Bite Thing received a lot of offers from the Sharks. Unlike most bug fighters, this one doesnt come with a noxious smell or cumbersome application process, rather it works by removing the saliva that is left beneath the skin's surface after a bite to eliminate itching and swelling. It works like a suction tool in a quick, easy and totally painless way.

$9.95 at Amazon.com

Budsies Selfie Dolls

When you cant be there to cuddle with your gf at night, surprise her with a Budsies selfie plush toy. Its one of those ridiculously cute gifts no one can forget. Basically you upload an image of yourself and add in any design details (think your favorite sports team T-shirt or holding an engagement ring) and the dolls will be custom designed in a matter of weeks.

For new parents, you can also turn your childrens drawings into plush toys  or even have a plush toy made that looks like your pet! While founder Alex Furmansky didnt walk away with a deal his company has gone on to produce more than 80,000 custom plush toys.

Find out more at Budsies.com

You Might Also Dig:

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By Finian Cunningham

January 05, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - Americas lawless arrogance has gone too far with the assassination of Irans top military commander. The deadly airstrike against General Qasem Soleimani was carried out on the order of President Donald Trump.

Several other senior Iranian military officials were also killed in the US missile attack on Iraqs international airport in the capital Baghdad, including a top Iraqi militia leader.

Iranian politicians called it an act of terrorism and vowed harsh revenge. Meanwhile, the Iraqi prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, condemned the US violation of his countrys sovereignty. Other Iraqi leaders are demanding the immediate expulsion of US forces from the country, where they number about 5,000 troops.

Trump taunted by tweeting the American flag after the news of the assassination emerged on Friday, and he later declared that the Iranian general should have been taken out years ago because he allegedly was responsible for the deaths of thousands of US troops, according to Trump.

Certainly, Soleimani was considered an enemy by the US. He organised effective military resistance to American imperialist designs in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere across the Middle East. For such strategising, the 62-year-old Iran-Iraq War veteran was revered, not just in his own nation, but across the region.

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For Trump to order the killing of such a revered public figure of a state which the US is not officially at war with is a brazen violation of international law. There can be no justification for this act of murder, despite the Trump administrations lurid claims.

Qasem Soleimani, as leader of the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was seen by the Iranian nation as second only in importance to Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran.

What Trump has done is not just order a barbarous act of violence, it is a reckless act of war.

To order the murder of senior foreign officials by presidential decree without any pretence of lawfulness is to set a new low bar for US state roguery.

Many people in the Middle East, as well as around the world and among the USs own population are rightly anxious about the consequences.

Trump is tempting to unleash an all-out war with Iran that will potentially drag several countries into a world war.

For several decades now, the US has acted as if it were above the law.

Countless illegal wars and invasions against foreign countries, leading to the deaths of millions of people, are now climaxing in the form of a so-called president and ruling clique which shows absolute disregard for even legal niceties. American lawlessness is now rampant and shameless in its arrogance.

Whether Iran retaliates this week, next week or in the coming months is perhaps besides the point. US aggression and its sense of impunity has taken the world into an extremely dangerous situation where international law is evidently redundant. Washington is behaving as a full-on tyranny that does what it pleases. War, sanctions, killings, bullying all done with a frightening delusion of self-righteousness.

Arguably, nothing on this scale of state criminality has been seen since the Third Reich.

The murder of General Qasem Soleimani this week rattled US financial markets from the repercussions of possible war. We can just imagine how the American and world economy will implode if Iranian ballistic missiles send a few US warships to the bottom of the Persian Gulf.

This article was originally published by " Sputnik " -
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 21:07:18|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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ALGIERS, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Prime Minister of Libya's UN-recognized Government of National Accord Fayez al-Sarraj is in Algeria on Monday to discuss developments in Libya, the presidency said in a statement.

Heading a high-level delegation, the Libyan official is due to meet with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune "to discuss the developments in Libya and ways to overcome these hard circumstances."

Algeria vowed to make every effort, except military intervention, to restore peace and security in Libya, while encouraging UN-backed political process.
I ranian general Qasem Soleimani's coffin was reportedly placed across a row of four economy seats on a passenger plane as it travelled to Tehran.

Soleimani, who was head of Tehran's elite Quds Force, was targeted in a drone strike at Baghdad's international airport on Friday.

In a video posted on Twitter, passengers watch a tribute film as coffins bearing the faces of Soleimani and pro-Iran militia chief Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis - who was also killed in the attack - lie across rows of seats.

On Sunday, Soleimani's coffin was paraded through the streets of Mashhad, considered a conservative stronghold, as hundreds of thousands of mourners paid their respects.

The coffin was then flown to Tehran where today it was prayed over by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran's Supreme Leader weeps at the funeral of Qassem Soleimani

It comes as Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his French and German counterparts, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, called for all sides to work towards an urgent easing of tensions in the Persian Gulf.

The three leaders released a statement saying while they were concerned by the "negative" role Iran has played in the region there was now "an urgent need for de-escalation".

Around 400 UK troops are stationed in Iraq in the fight against IS, while the US has 5,200, prompting fears of a withdrawal that could cripple the battle against the terror group.

Qasem Soleimani funeral in Iran 1 /24 Qasem Soleimani funeral in Iran An Iranian man reacts during a gathering to mourn General Qasem Soleimani VIA REUTERS Mourners wave flags as they gather during the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani AFP via Getty Images Mourners gather during the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (image), Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani and eight others in the Iraqi central city of Karbala AFP via Getty Images Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" today as they mourned an Iranian commander and others killed in a US drone attack AFP via Getty Images Mourners gather in the Iraqi central city of Karbala AFP via Getty Images Mourners take part in the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani AFP via Getty Images Iranians gather to mourn General Qasem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, who was killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran VIA REUTERS A mourner holds up a picture AFP via Getty Images Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" today as they mourned an Iranian commander and others killed in a US drone attack AFP via Getty Images Mourners chant slogans against the U.S. during the funeral of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani, AP Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the US airstrike near Baghdad's airport AP Mourners carry the coffins of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani AP Mourners carry the coffin of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis AFP via Getty Images People attend a funeral procession for Iranian Major-General Qasem Soleiman VIA REUTERS An aerial view shows mourners attending a funeral ceremony for Gen. Qasem Soleimani AP Qassem Soleimani and his comrades who were killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike, are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners AP Mourners carry the coffins of Iran's top general Qasem Soleiman AP Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad's airport AP

After speaking to the US President on Sunday, Mr Johnson broke his silence to say the UK "will not lament" the death of the leader who he said was "a threat to all our interests".

The PM urged de-escalation from all sides, saying that calls for reprisals "will simply lead to more violence in the region and they are in no one's interest" after the killing in Baghdad on Friday.

Mourners carrying caskets of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani (R) and Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (L) at Tehran University in Tehran / Getty Images

But a short while later, Mr Trump threatened to retaliate "perhaps in a disproportionate manner" if Iran strikes a US citizen or target.
The futures going to be brighter, he continued. We just have to make sure people arent afraid to stand up and do what they know is right. The last thing anybody should ever have to do is be afraid to be who they are. And that extends far beyond the Jewish community. People have got to be loud and proud about who they are, and be allies to those that need it.
If you tuned out from the Trump-Iran fiasco over the weekend, welcome to Mondays rude awakening. There havent been any new attacks since last week, but there are manifold threats from Iran that theyre coming after U.S. military personnel, which was echoed by Hezbollah in Lebanon and led to posturing like this from Trump:

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2020

In case there was any doubt as to who had won the hearts in minds in Iraq, their parliament voted to expel U.S. troops, and huge amounts of Iranis flooded the streets of Tehran for the funeral of Qasem Soleimani, where the people chanted Down with the U.S. and cheered wildly when his daughter Zeinab said that the families of U.S. soldiers will spend their days waiting for the death of their children.

Somehow, though, none of this is quite as disturbing as what's happening on the home front, where two stories from the weekend continued to chip away at the notion that there was even a speck of integrity in our leaders. We shouldn't be surprised that one of the appalling stories comes from our borderthough in this case it's the Canadian border. Per the NYT:

Dozens of Iranians and Iranian-Americans were held for hours at Washington State's border with Canada over the weekend as the Department of Homeland Security ramped up security at border ports after Iran threatened to retaliate against the United States for the strike that killed its top military leader.

More than 60 of the travelers, many returning from work trips or vacations, were trying to come home to the United States on Saturday when agents at the Peace Arch Border Crossing in Blaine, Wash., held them for additional questioning about their political views and allegiances, according to advocacy groups and accounts from travelers.

While most of the travelers were allowed back into the U.S., advocates told the Times that some were denied entry. Even some of those who made it through were questioned for up to 10 hours. One woman, who had two children ages 5 and 7 with her, had to leave the room to cry so she wouldn't scare them. The CBP denied that the secondary screenings were due to Iranian heritage, but the facts on the ground clearly stated otherwise.

The second story, which had less of a human toll (for now), is discouraging for other reasons. While ranting on Twitter about attacks and counter-attacks, Trump let this gem drop:

....targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2020

He later backed it up on Air Force One:

Aboard Air Force One on his way back from his holiday trip to Florida, Mr. Trump reiterated to reporters the spirit of a Twitter post on Saturday, when he said the United States government had identified 52 sites for retaliation against Iran if there were a response to Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimanis death. Some, he tweeted, were of cultural significance.

Such a move could be considered a war crime under international laws, but Mr. Trump said Sunday that he was undeterred.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people, the president said. And were not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesnt work that way.

Which removes any doubtTrump and the U.S. military are considering destroying cultural sites as part and parcel of their strategy with Iran. Theres no good reason for this, beyond petty cruelty and the desire to inflict psychological harm on the Iranian people. Its exactly the kind of thing the Nazis did, and its both pointless and disgraceful. It can only have been dreamed up by people who dont really care for culture or history, any more than they care for human life. These are the people we put in power, and we reap the whirlwind for that every day.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Amid the ongoing protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the Jamia Millia Islamia campus reopened on Monday for the semester exams and the students started arriving at the campus.

The number of students is still small as they are worried about their safety after the violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday.

As of now, only bona fide students with ID cards are being allowed in the campus.

A student said they are planning to boycott the exams as the protest is still going on.

Students gathered at Gate no 7 as the protest against the CAA entered the 25th day. Showing solidarity with the JNU students, the students raised slogans against the RSS' affiliate student wing the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). They shouted: "JNU tum sangarsh karo hum tumhare sath hai and ABVP murdabad." Sajid, a student of Jamia, said: "The government wants that nobody should study because if the people get educated they will not become their pawns." The kind of violence perpetrated by the ABVP in JNU is to crush the dissenting voice of the students against the government, said another student.
The event, whose purview covered everything from jewellery, fashion and art, did not disappoint the roughly 10,000 buyers from 36 countries and regions. The strong attendance of local delegates was a nod to the robustness of the Chinese luxury market, which global management consulting firm McKinsey and Company forecasts will see "nearly double" in spending between now and 2025.

"The fair had something for everyone, for consumers and traders alike," said Mr Teddy Tan, Event Director - China Jewellery Fairs, Informa Markets.

Tan orchestrated the successful restructuring of the fair, transforming it from a jewellery-focused exhibition to one that is a "melting pot" of jewellery and fashion-related sectors such as clothing, handbags, leather, cosmetics, home furnishings, and artworks.

"This fusion may sound quite peculiar to some but it actually makes sense because at their core is a common regard for beauty," said Mr Tan.

According to the McKinsey report, roughly 70 percent of Chinese luxury consumers will be doing their luxury spending overseas as "a result of an increasing affinity for outbound travel." But it is worth nothing that over time, that ratio may shift in favour of domestic spending as a result of moves to cut luxury import taxes.

This rosy forecast bodes well for the fair's nearly 300 exhibiting companies from 17 countries and regions. "Our exhibitors are playing the long game. Their presence at Jewellery Seasons China right now is an opportunity to build long-term relationships and entrench their names in the customers' minds," Mr Tan said.

One of them, LJ West Diamonds Inc, believes it is at the right place in championing fancy coloured diamonds. "Over the last couple of years, we realized that people really started understanding natural coloured diamonds, about pink diamonds, blue diamonds. These are the stones they're looking at as investment pieces. I'm really looking forward to exploring this market here," said Ashwani Upadhyay, sales specialist.

Buyers came from a wide cross-section of the marketplace--from the experienced "old-hand" in the luxury market to the novice yet deep-pocketed post-80s and post-90s consumer, the exhibitors observed.

Learning & Networking Opportunities

A series of fun and educational activities kept buyers busy throughout the four-day period. In between business transactions, many found the time to enjoy the many features that have become much-awaited highlights for delegates.

Here are some of them:

Designer Talks  Two large-scale interactive activities, wherein designers had conversations about jewellery with the audience, saw robust attendance. The exhibition gathered many masters in the industry: 70 local and overseas jewellery designers including Kelly Xie , Tsai An Ho , Stella Huang , Sun Chin , Leo Lin , Miller Chen , Yuki Ding , Alex Wong , and Li Li . The artists/jewellers showed their individuality through their inspiring creations.

, , , , , , , , and . The artists/jewellers showed their individuality through their inspiring creations. Advancement in technology is helping lab-grown diamonds secure a place in the jewellery market, thanks to the rising trend in ethical shopping. Swarovsk i, f amous for precision-cutting technology, underscored the growing importance of lab-grown diamonds at a knowledge seminar at Jewellery Seasons China. The Austrian company offered insights into its latest brand of lab-grown diamonds, its journey to lead the industry development of ultra-high technology, and inspiring new interpretations for this emerging gemstone s . It highlighted how lab-grown diamonds and mined diamonds can co-exist and gives consumer s a wider choice. Swarovski was joined by seven other lab-diamond manufacturers and suppliers at the fair.

The 4928 Oriental Aesthetic Space brought unique works with classical elegance to Jewellery Seasons China. The 441-sqm "sanctuary" within the hectic event offered participants the chance to unwind and recharge while admiring various art forms in Chinese traditional culture. Among the artisans featured were veteran tea farmer Yu Ting Chen , who performed a tea ceremony, and Chinese fashion designer Sun Xuefei , who's known for her unique creations c ombining embroidery with ink painting. Buyers witnessed the Chinese art of jewellery making called Dian Cui , which combines traditional metal workmanship with feather crafts.

, who performed a tea ceremony, and Chinese fashion designer , who's known for her unique creations ombining embroidery with ink painting. Buyers witnessed the Chinese art of jewellery making called , which combines traditional metal workmanship with feather crafts. Jewellery Seasons China unveiled its first collaboration with leading Chinese apps Meituan Dianping and Douyin. Meituan Dianping is a leading player in multi-channel marketing popular with millions of Chinese consumers looking for a seamless shopping experience. Douyin is behind the short video app known internationally as TikTok. The two platforms hosted two impressive forums, titled "Evolution Theory of Marketing" and "How to Attract More Offline Customers with Online Operations ," from which the audience learned marketing strategies in the digital space.

," from which the audience learned marketing strategies in the digital space. In order to better connect and communicate with consumers, Jewellery Seasons China brought different themes from life, including art, environmental protection and parent-child relationship, to jewellery industry through many onsite activities. The Art and Jewellery Forum invited esteemed designers and artists to talk about the beauty and new trends in fashion jewellery, providing the audience with more new propositions about high-quality life. The Environmental Friendly Jewellery Activities explored the "aesthetics of waste", inspiring participants to make their own fashion items from materials that earlier would have been deemed worthless. The 2019 HUAME Children's Jewellery Design Competition celebrated creativity, innovation and excellence in jewellery design, in which children's artwork served as inspiration for jewellery designs. Winners were feted at an awarding ceremony at the fair.

"All the special events equally drew big crowds. It tells us that the changes we've incorporated over the past year or so are on the right track and are very much appreciated," said Mr Tan.

Jewellery Seasons China 2020 will continue next year, hopefully bringing a more creative and insightful fair with more players from crossover sectors involved.

Informa Markets Global Jewellery Events Calendar 2019-2020

Exhibitions Dates Venue Mainland China China International Gold, Jewellery & Gem Fair  Shenzhen 14  17 March 2020 Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Center China International Gold, Jewellery & Gem Fair  Shanghai November 2020 Shanghai Hong Kong Region



SEASONS | Spring - Fashion Jewellery & Accessories Fair 3 - 6 March 2020 Asia World-Expo - Hong Kong June Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair 25  28 June 2020 Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre SEASONS | Autumn - Fashion Jewellery & Accessories Fair 13  16 September 2019 Asia World-Expo - Hong Kong September Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair 13  19 September 2019 Asia World-Expo - Hong Kong Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre Taiwan Region Taiwan Jewellery & Gem Fair 11  14 December 2019 Taipei World Trade Center Japan Japan Jewellery Fair 14  16 October 2020 Tokyo Big Sight Exhibition Center India Chennai Jewellery & Gem Fair 20  22 March 2020 Chennai Trade Centre Hyderabad Jewellery, Pearl & Gem Fair 12  14 June 2020 HICC, Novotel - Hyderabad Delhi Jewellery & Gem Fair 26  28 September 2020 Pragati Maidan - Delhi Kolkata Jewellery & Gem Fair 2020 JW Marriot Hotel - Kolkata Middle East Jewellery Arabia Bahrain 17  21 November 2020 The Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre Turkey Istanbul Jewelry Show I 19  22 March 2020 CNR Expo Center - Istanbul Istanbul Jewelry Show II 8  11 October 2020 CNR Expo Center - Istanbul



For exhibiting, please contact: Sales Department, Jewellery Fairs, Informa Markets Tel: (86) 20 8666 0158 Fax: (86) 20 8667 7120 E-mail: [email protected] For visiting, please contact: Visitor Promotion Department, Jewellery Fairs, Informa Markets Tel: (86) 20 8667 2808 Fax: (86) 20 8667 7120 E-mail: [email protected] www.shanghaijewelleryfair.com



Notes to Editors:

Jewellery Seasons China is organised by Informa Markets, a division of Informa plc. Informa Markets creates platforms for industries and specialist markets to trade, innovate and grow. Our portfolio is comprised of more than 550 international B2B events and brands in markets including Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals, Infrastructure, Construction & Real Estate, Fashion & Apparel, Hospitality, Food & Beverage, and Health & Nutrition, among others. We provide customers and partners around the globe with opportunities to engage, experience and do business through face-to-face exhibitions, specialist digital content and actionable data solutions. As the world's leading exhibitions organiser, we bring a diverse range of specialist markets to life, unlocking opportunities and helping them to thrive 365 days of the year. For more information, please visit www.informamarkets.com.

Appendix: 15th China International Gold, Jewellery & Gem Fair  Shanghai Fair Statistics

Breakdown of Total Visitors

Number of visitors from Mainland China 7970 98% Number of visitors from overseas, Hong Kong and Taiwan regions 125 2% Total number of visitors 8095 100%

Breakdown of Total Visits (including revisits)

Number of visits from Mainland China 10151 98% Number of visits from overseas, Hong Kong and Taiwan regions 185 2% Total number of visits 10336 100%

Visitors came from 31 countries and regions

1 Mainland China 12 Sri Lanka 23 Poland 2 Afghanistan 13 Thailand 24 Serbia 3 Taiwan Region 14 Vietnam 25 Switzerland 4 Hong Kong Region 15 Armenia 26 Brazil 5 India 16 Israel 27 USA 6 Japan 17 United Arab Emirates 28 Australia 7 Macau Region 18 Angola 29 New Caledonia 8 Malaysia 19 Tanzania 30 New Zealand 9 Myanmar 20 Albania 31 Papua New Guinea 10 Pakistan 21 France



11 South Korea 22 Germany





Mainland China visitors came from 30 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities

1 Shanghai 12 Anhui 23 Tibet 2 Jiangsu 13 Shanxi 24 Guizhou 3 Zhejiang 14 Sichuan 25 Guangxi 4 Guangdong 15 Shaanxi 26 Xinjiang 5 Beijing 16 Fujian 27 Gansu 6 Liaoning 17 Hunan 28 Hainan 7 Tianjin 18 Yunnan 29 Ningxia 8 Henan 19 Heilongjiang 30 Qingha 9 Jiangxi 20 Jilin



10 Hubei 21 Chongqing



11 Shandong 22 Hebei





Breakdown of Exhibitors (by country and region)

No. Country/ Region No. of Exhibitor(s) 1 Australia 1 2 Poland 3 3 Russia 1 4 Korea 9 5 Canada 1 6 U.S.A 1 7 Peru 1 8 Myanmar 1 9 Japan 1 10 Sri Lanka 9 11 Thailand 1 12 Singapore 1 13 Italy 1 14 Macau (China) 1 15 Taiwan (China) 3 16 Hong Kong (China) 11 17 Mainland China 261 Grand Total: 307

SOURCE Informa Markets - Guangzhou
Calls for revenge grow louder as hundreds of thousands of people gather in Iranian capital to pay respects to Soleimani.

Funeral processions to honour Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian military commander who was assassinated last week in an air raid by the United States in Baghdad, are underway in Iran.

Soleimani, the head of Irans elite Quds Force, was killed along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraqs Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi), an Iran-backed umbrella organisation comprising several militias. Several other people were also killed in Fridays attack.

The move by the US has drawn condemnation from international leaders and officials who fear that tensions in the region could escalate drastically. Irans Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei warned that a harsh retaliation is waiting.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites very hard if Iran attacked US citizens or assets.

Here are the latest updates:

Monday, January 6

Iraq calls on UN to condemn US raid that killed Soleimani

Iraqs United Nations Ambassador Mohammed Hussein Bahr Aluloom called on the UN Security Council to condemn the US raid that killed Soleimani and the PMF leader.

He urged the council in a letter on Monday to hold accountable those who have committed such violations.

Bahr Aluloom also called on the Security Council to ensure that Iraq is not dragged into international and regional crises, and to prevent the law of the jungle from prevailing.

The US is almost certain to veto any Security Council action sought by Iraq against the Trump administration.

A US official told Reuters news agency that Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had been denied a visa to attend a UN Security Council meeting on Thursday [File: Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters]

US denies Irans Zarif a visa to attend UN meeting  US official

The US has denied a visa to Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif that would have allowed him to attend a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York on Thursday, according to a US official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

UN chief warns global tensions at highest this century

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned of the risk of any miscalculation amid global tensions at their highest level this century.

The UN chief says the tensions are leading more and more countries to take unpredicted decisions with unpredictable consequences.

He did not mention any countries by name.

The New Year has begun with our world in turmoil. My message is clear: Stop escalation. Exercise maximum restraint. Re-start dialogue. Renew international cooperation. Let us not forget the terrible human suffering caused by war. It is our common duty to avoid it. pic.twitter.com/iB1pOu8fia  Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) January 6, 2020

Esper: US military will not break law of war

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper suggested that the US military would not violate the laws of armed conflict by striking Iranian cultural sites, a move threatened by Trump.

Asked whether he was willing to target cultural sites, Esper told Pentagon reporters: We will follow the laws of armed conflict.

Pressed on whether he would then not target such sites, because that would be a war crime, Esper said: Thats the laws of armed conflict.

Pence to lay out Iran policy in speech: report

US Vice President Mike Pence will give a speech laying out the governments policy on Iran, a White House official said.

Pence will make the remarks at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies National Security Summit in Washington, and is expected to focus on differences between the Iranian people and their government, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

US Vice President Mike Pence speaking to US troops at a military facility at Erbil International Airport in Iraq [File: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters]

Saudi deputy defence minister meets Pompeo

Saudi Arabias Deputy Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, said in a tweet that he met US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and discussed events in the region, along with efforts to maintain regional and international peace and stability.

I had the pleasure of meeting @SecPompeo. We discussed recent events in the region, and efforts to maintain regional and international peace and stability. pic.twitter.com/wLsbCZal3D  Khalid bin Salman    (@kbsalsaud) January 6, 2020

Its a Kerfuffle

The US wanted to explain to the Iraqi military that there had been increased movement of aircraft, including transporting forces between bases in Iraq and also moving them into Iraq from Kuwait, US Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told a group of reporters.

It (the draft letter) was sent over to some key Iraqi military guys in order to get things coordinated for air movements, etc. Then it went from that guys hands to another guys hands and then it went to your hands. Now, its a kerfuffle, Milley said.

Milley said the unsigned draft document was sent around to get input from Iraqi officials, the kind of thing he said he does regularly.

I send drafts all over Washington, DC, that arent signed to get peoples input and feedback, Milley said.

The long and short of it is: Its an honest mistake by people trying to do the right things in highly dynamic situations, etc. It should not have been sent.

Top US general: Letter to Iraq was a poorly worded draft

A top US general told reporters that a letter from the US military to Iraq that created impressions of an imminent US withdrawal was instead a poorly worded draft document meant to only underscore increased movement of forces.

Poorly worded, implies withdrawal. Thats not whats happening, US Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a group of reporters, stressing there was no withdrawal being planned.

US defence secretary: US military has no plans to leave Iraq

The US has no plans to pull out militarily from Iraq, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told Pentagon reporters, following reports by Reuters and other media of a US military letter about a withdrawal.

Theres been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq, Esper said, when asked about the letter, adding there had also been no plans issued to prepare to leave.

I dont know what that letter is  Were trying to find out where thats coming from, what that is. But theres been no decision made to leave Iraq. Period.

Esper added the US was still committed to countering ISIL in Iraq, alongside Americas allies and partners.

McConnell urges lawmakers to wait for facts

US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said US legislators should wait for the facts before criticising Donald Trumps decision.

We can and we should learn more about the intelligence and thinking that led to this operation and the plan to defend American personnel and interests in the wake of it, McConnell said at the US Capitol after legislators returned from winter break.

Unfortunately, in this toxic political environment, some of our colleagues rushed to blame our own government before even knowing the facts. Rushed to split hairs about intelligence before being briefed on it.

Senator Mitch McConnell hugs US President Donald Trump at a Keep America Great Rally in Lexington, Kentucky [File: Yuri Gripas/Reuters]

Kuwait foreign minister affirms importance of de-escalation

Kuwaits foreign minister Sheikh Ahmad Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah received a phone call from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Kuwaits state news agency (KUNA) said.

KUNA reported that the leaders discussed the latest developments in the region and affirmed the importance of de-escalation and dealing with these developments in a spirit of wisdom and self-restraint in order to achieve its security and stability.

US-led coalition tells Iraq it is preparing to move out

The head of the US militarys Task Force Iraq, Brigadier General William Seely, sent a letter to the head of Iraqs joint operations command, Reuters and the AFP reported.

The letter said troops would be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement.

The letter reportedly added: We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure.

A US defence official and an Iraqi defence official confirmed the letter was real and had been delivered, the AFP reported.

Read more here.

Rouhani warns Trump: Never threaten Iran

Irans President Hassan Rouhani warned his US counterpart Donald Trump to never threaten the Iranian nation after Trump issued a US strike list of 52 targets in the Islamic Republic.

Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290. #IR655 Never threaten the Iranian nation, Rouhani tweeted, referring to 290 lives lost in July 1988 when a US warship shot down passenger plane Iran Air 655 in the Gulf.

Trump warned Saturday that Washington had lined up 52 targets in Iran if it attacked US personnel or assets in retaliation for a US drone strike in Baghdad that killed Irans top commander Qassem Soleimani.

He said 52 represented the number of Americans held hostage at the US embassy in Tehran for more than a year starting in late 1979.

NATO stands with US after Soleimani assassination, warns Iran

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg briefs media after a meeting in Brussels of the alliances ambassadors over the security situation in the Middle East [Francois Lenoir/Reuters]

All members of the Atlantic alliance stood behind the US in the Middle East after it briefed NATO on its drone strike that killed Soleimani, NATOs secretary-general said.

Speaking after a rare NATO meeting on Iran and Iraq in which the US briefed its allies about last Fridays drone strike, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also called for a de-escalation of tensions, echoing the statements of some European leaders.

Read more here.





EU foreign ministers to hold emergency Iran talks

EU foreign ministers will hold emergency talks on the Iran crisis on Friday, diplomats told the AFP news agency.

Josep Borrell, the EUs high representative for foreign affairs, tweeted that the 2015 nuclear deal, which has been teetering on the brink of collapse since President Trump withdrew support, was now more important than ever.

Borrell will lead a meeting of foreign ministers at 13:00 GMT on Friday, three diplomats said. The ministers are slated to discuss the fallout from the Soleimani killing and the future of the nuclear deal.

UNESCO: US signed treaties not to harm cultural heritage

The ancient city of Persepolis is a major draw for tourists [Delbars/Getty Images]

UN cultural body UNESCO reminded the US it has signed treaties committing to not harming cultural heritage in the event of armed conflict, after President Donald Trump threatened to target Iranian cultural sites.

UNESCO director general Audrey Azoulay said at a meeting with the Iranian ambassador to the organisation that both Tehran and Washington had signed a 1972 convention obliging states not to undertake any deliberate measures which might damage directly or indirectly the cultural and natural heritage of other states.

Read more here.

Iran FM: End of US presence in West Asia has begun

Irans foreign minister reiterated his countrys stance that the US military should be expelled from the Middle East.

Mohammad Javad Zarif urged US President Donald Trump to distance himself from his advisers who seek confrontation with Iran.

Do you still want to listen to the clowns advising you on our region? he wrote on his Twitter page. And do you still imagine you can break the will of this great nation?

Have you EVER seen such a sea of humanity in your life, @realdonaldtrump? Do you still want to listen to the clowns advising you on our region? And do you still imagine you can break the will of this great nation & its people? End of malign US presence in West Asia has begun. pic.twitter.com/5WzYM9OBuQ  Javad Zarif (@JZarif) January 6, 2020

UK and Iraqi PMs agree on need to de-escalate regional tensions

Britains Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed with Iraqs Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi on the need to de-escalate tensions in the region when they spoke by phone on Monday, according to a UK statement.

The leaders discussed the need to de-escalate tensions in the region following the death of Qassem Soleimani and agreed to work together to find a diplomatic way forward, a statement from Johnsons office said.

The Prime Minister underlined the UKs unwavering commitment to Iraqs stability and sovereignty and emphasised the importance of the continued fight against the shared threat from Daesh, the statement said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIL.

Saudi Arabia appeals for calm

Saudi Arabias foreign minister said the kingdom did not want to see further escalation of tensions in the region at a very dangerous moment.





We are very keen that the situation in the region doesnt escalate any further. Its certainly a very dangerous moment and we have to be conscious of the risks and dangers not just to the region but to wider global security, Prince Faisal bin Farhan told a news briefing in Riyadh.

We hope that all actors take all the steps necessary to prevent any further escalation and any provocation.

Iraqi leaders receive condolences

Iraqs top leadership gathered to receive condolences for Iraqi paramilitary commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis who was killed along with Soleimani on Friday.

Outgoing Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi thanked all the mourners who attended the condolences at his office in Baghdad, calling al-Muhandis a heroic leader with a pure soul.

NATO to review Iraq mission

NATOs ruling committee will meet on Monday to discuss the future of the organisations training mission in Iraq.

The North Atlantic Council will address the situation in the region, a NATO official said, according to the AFP news agency.

The secretary-general decided to convene the meeting of NATO ambassadors following consultations with allies.

Ambassadors from the 29 allies will gather in Brussels at 3pm (14:00 GMT), with Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg expected to brief journalists afterwards.

UK alarmed by nuclear deal announcement

Irans announcement that it will abandon limitations on enriching uranium is concerning and Britain is urgently speaking to parties about the next steps to take, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

The spokesman also said there were international conventions in place to prevent the destruction of cultural heritage after Trump threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites, including targets important to Iranian culture, if Tehran attacks US citizens or assets.

Pakistan does not want to be part of regional conflict

Pakistans foreign minister said his country will not let its soil be used against any other state and that Islamabad will not be part of any regional conflict.

Shah Mahmood Qureshis comments followed his contacts with the foreign ministers of Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Turkey. He called for restraint and de-escalation as tensions rise over the US killing of Soleimani.

Qureshi in a Twitter post on Monday added that Pakistans position was very clear in standing for peace and stability and that violence must be avoided.

Pakistan has been a key ally of the US in its war on terror since the September 11 attacks. It is also closely allied with Saudi Arabia but tries to maintain a diplomatic balancing act between Riyadh and Tehran.

Merkel, Putin to discuss Middle East crisis in Moscow

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Russia on January 11 to discuss the Middle East crisis with President Vladimir Putin, the Russian leaders press service said.

The Kremlin said Merkel will head to Russia at Putins invitation and that the two leaders also plan to discuss the situation in Syria.

France: Middle East tensions could reinvigorate ISIL

Frances finance minister said that currenty tensions in the region could affect global economic growth and reinvigorate ISIL.

You must always ask who is served by and who profits from this instability, Bruno Le Maire told France-Inter radio. The instability in the Middle East today benefits only one organisation: The Islamic State group, he said referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS.

Le Maire added that the [instability] will increase the terrorist threat over France and Europe.

Mourners flood the streets as Khamenei leads funeral prayers

Hundreds of thousands of people turned out in the capital to pay their final respects to Soleimani, as the multi-city ceremony for the slain commander continued in Iran.

Irans Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei led prayers at the Tehran funeral, weeping at one point during the traditional Muslim prayers for the dead.

Read more here.

Mourners at the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) Square in Tehran [Ebrahim Noroozi/AP]

Hamas chief attends funeral

Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, in an address to Iranian mourners in Tehran described Soleimani as the martyr of Jerusalem.

Haniyeh vowed that Palestinian groups will walk Soleimanis way to confront the Zionist project and the American influence.

Haniyehs visit to Iran comes after Egypt allowed him to travel for his first regional tour since his 2017 election into the Hamas leadership on the condition that he not visit Iran, according to Arab and Israeli media reports.

In pictures: Tears, cries of vengeance as Tehran bids farewell to Soleimani

A sea of men wearing black and women in black chadors waited for the arrival of Soleimanis remains, as loudspeakers blared mourning hymns throughout central Tehran.

A traffic jam formed in the intersections leading to the unfinished grand mosque, named after the late Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, where Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei led the prayers for Soleimani.

Soleimanis remains will be brought to his hometown of Kerman on Tuesday for final rites before his burial.

Go here to view pictures from the funeral procession in Tehran

NATO ambassadors to meet on Iran crisis: Official

NATO ambassadors will meet at the alliances headquarters in Brussels on Monday amid mounting tensions following the killing of Soleimani.

The North Atlantic Council will address the situation in the region, a NATO official was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

The secretary general decided to convene the meeting of NATO ambassadors following consultations with allies.





Germanys Maas: Sanctions threat against Iraq not very helpful

Germanys foreign minister said threatening Iraq with sanctions is not very helpful after US President Donald Trump warned that Baghdad could be hit by sanctions like theyve never seen before if US forces were forced to leave.

I dont think it works to convince Iraq with threats but with arguments, Heiko Maas told Deutschlandfunk public radio.

He added that Germany, Britain and France would discuss the Iran nuclear deal on Monday and would react this week to Tehrans recent announcement that it would further roll back its commitments to the 2015 landmark agreement.

We will definitely talk to Iran again. What has been announced is, however, not consistent with the agreement, Maas said.

[The situation] has not got easier, and this could be the first step to the end of this agreement, which would be a big loss so we will weigh this up very, very responsibly now.

China criticises US interventionism, urges restraint

China criticised the US for aggravating tensions in the Middle East through its military interventionism over the standoff between Washington and Tehran and urged all parties to exercise restraint to ensure peace and stability.

Power politics are neither popular nor sustainable, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a daily briefing. The USs risky military behaviour in recent days goes against the basic norms of international relations.

We call on the US not to abuse its force, and appeal to relevant parties to exercise restraint to avoid the situation worsening, he said, adding that China is highly concerned about the standoff between Iran and the US.

South Africas ANC party condemns US strike

South Africas ruling African National Congress party condemned the US airstrike that killed Irans Soleimani as an act of international terrorism.

The statement appeared in a Facebook post over the weekend and was issued by party secretary-general Ace Magashule.

South Africas foreign ministry released a more measured statement on Friday supporting Iraqs sovereignty and calling for dialogue and calm.

In its statement, the former liberation movement, once led by Nelson Mandela, called the raw aggression an attack on Irans sovereignty and it called for maximum restraint.

Soleimanis killing poses serious risk for peace: Turkey

Turkeys Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the killing of Soleimani is a serious risk for peace in the region.

We will work with other countries to reduce tensions between the US and Iran, Cavusoglu told reporters at the Directorate for EU affairs in the capital Ankara.

US and Israel face dark day: Soleimanis daughter

Zeinab Soleimani, daughter of the slain general, told crowds at her fathers funeral procession in Tehran that the US and Israel faced a dark day for his death.

Crazy Trump, dont think that everything is over with my fathers martyrdom, she said in an address broadcast on state television.

New Quds Force chief says he aims to remove US from region

Brigadier General Esmail Qaani, the new commander of the Quds Force, said he aimed to expel the US from the region in the wake of Soleimanis killing.

We promise to continue martyr Soleimanis path with the same force  and the only compensation for us would be to remove America from the region, Qaani was quoted as saying by state radio.

Sunday, January 5

House to vote on resolution to limit Trumps war prerogatives: Pelosi

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House will introduce and vote on a war powers resolution this week to limit President Trumps military actions regarding Iran.

This resolution is similar to the resolution introduced by Senator Tim Kaine in the Senate, Pelosi said in a statement late on Sunday.

It reasserts Congresss long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further congressional action is taken, the administrations military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days.

Trump reiterates threat against Iran cultural sites

Trump insisted on Sunday that Iranian cultural sites were fair game for the US military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so would constitute a war crime under international law.

The president first raised the prospect of targeting Iranian cultural sites in a tweet on Saturday where he said the US had 52 targets in its sights.

Speaking to reporters as he returned to Washington, DC, from a holiday in Florida, he repeated the threat.

Theyre allowed to kill our people, Trump said. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way.

Trump threatens Iraq sanctions after legislators call on US troops to leave

Trump threatened sanctions against Baghdad on Sunday after Iraqs parliament called on US troops to leave the country.

Speaking on Air Force One, Trump said if Iraq asked US forces to leave and it was not done on a friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.

He also said Iraq would have to pay for the cost of an airbase the US has helped develop in the country.

We have a very extraordinarily expensive airbase thats there, he said. It cost billions of dollars to build, long before my time. Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it.

Nader Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, told Al Jazeera Trumps comments were cause for concern.

This is someone who is completely surrounded by war hawks, is driven by his ego and is in a re-election campaign, Hashemi said. I think hes calculating that this type of tough rhetoric plays well with his domestic base.

France, UK, Germany: Iran must refrain from violence and respect nuclear deal

France, Germany and the United Kingdom called on Iran to refrain from any violent action and respect arrangements laid out in the JCPOA 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

The three countries also highlighted the importance of de-escalating tensions in Iraq and Iran, and reaffirmed their determination to fight the ISIL (ISIS) group.

We reaffirm our commitment to continuing the fight against Islamic State, which remains a priority. It is essential that we keep the coalition, in this regard. We call on the Iraqi authorities to continue to supply the necessary support to the coalition, the three said in a statement.

We are ready to continue talks with all parties in order to contribute to de-escalating tensions and re-establishing stability in the region.

The office of French President Emmanuel Macron said he was expected to hold talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the coming days.

Read earlier updates here.
The 77th Golden Globes were meant to be a coronation for Netflix. Instead, a pair of big-screen epics took top honours Sunday, as Sam Mendes technically dazzling World War I tale 1917 won best picture, drama, and Quentin Tarantinos radiant Los Angeles fable Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood won best film, comedy or musical.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 5/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ricky Gervais arrives at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

The 77th Golden Globes were meant to be a coronation for Netflix. Instead, a pair of big-screen epics took top honours Sunday, as Sam Mendes technically dazzling World War I tale 1917 won best picture, drama, and Quentin Tarantinos radiant Los Angeles fable Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood won best film, comedy or musical.

The wins for 1917 were a surprise, besting such favourites as Noah Baumbachs Marriage Story, the leading nominee with six nods, and Martin Scorseses The Irishman. Both are acclaimed Netflix releases but collectively took home just one award, for Laura Derns supporting performance as a divorce attorney in Marriage Story. The Irishman was shut out.

1917 also won best director for Mendes. The film was made in sinuous long takes, giving the impression that the movie unfolds in one lengthy shot.

I hope this means that people will turn up and see this on the big screen, the way it was intended, said Mendes, whose film expands nationwide Friday.

Though set around the 1969 Manson murders Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood was classified a comedy and had an easier path to victory than the more competitive drama category. Brad Pitt won for best supporting actor, his first acting Globe since winning in 1996 for 12 Monkeys, padding his front-runner status for the Oscars. Tarantino also won best screenplay.

Greta Gerwig, left, and Noah Baumbach arrive at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

I wanted to bring my mom, but I couldn't because any woman I stand next to they say I am dating so itd just be awkward, Pitt said.

Ricky Gervais, hosting the NBC-telecast ceremony for the fifth time, began the evening with an expletive-laden plea against hypocrisy, telling winners to stick to thanking their agent and their god. But throughout the night, winners seized their moment to speak about current events including the wildfires in Australia, rising tensions with Iran, womens rights and the importance of LGBT trailblazers.

Patricia Arquette, a winner for her performance in Hulu's The Act, referenced the United States' targeted killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, saying history wouldn't remember the day for the Globes but will see a country on the brink of war. She urged all to vote in November's presidential election.

Lorene Scafaria arrives at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Gervais opened the show by stating that Netflix had taken over Hollywood. given its commanding 34 nominations coming into the Globes. This show should just be me coming out going: Well done, Netflix. You win everything tonight," he said.

As it turned out, he was wrong. Netflix won only two awards: Dern's win plus one for Olivia Colman's performance in The Crown. It was a definite hiccup for the streaming service, which is aiming for its first best-picture win at the Academy Awards next month.

Instead, the awards were widely spread out among traditional Hollywood studios, indie labels like A24, cable heavyweights like HBO and relative newcomers like Hulu.

Portia de Rossi, left, and Ellen DeGeneres arrive at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Renee Zelleweger ("Judy") took home best actress in a drama, her fourth Globe. But, as always at the Globes, there were surprises. Taron Egerton, a regular presence on the awards circuit this year, won best actor in a comedy or musical for his Elton John in Rocketman"  an honour many had pegged for Eddie Murphy ("Dolemite Is My Name").

Awkwafina, the star of the hit indie family drama The Farewell, became the first woman of Asian descent to win best actress in a comedy or musical. If anything, if I fall upon hard times, I can sell this, said Awkwafina, holding the award.

Egyptian-American actor Ramy Youssef won best actor in a comedy series for his Hulu show Ramy." (Taking Gervais' advice, he said Allahu akbar.) But the winners were otherwise largely white, something the Globes have been criticized for.

Billy Porter arrives at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Michelle Williams, who won best actress in a limited series for Fosse/Verdon," stood up for women's reproductive rights in her acceptance speech.

When it's time to vote, please do so in your self interest, Williams said. It's what men have been doing for years, which is why the world looks so much like them.

Best actor has been this year's most competitive category, with nominees including Adam Driver ("Marriage Story") and Antonio Banderas ("Pain and Glory"). But Joaquin Phoenix won for his loose-limbed performance in the divisive but hugely popular Joker. Phoenix gave a rambling speech that began with crediting the HFPA with the vegan meal served at the ceremony.

Margot Robbie arrives at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Dern's best supporting actress award for her performance as a divorce attorney in Marriage Story, was her fifth Globe. Her win denied Jennifer Lopez, the Hustlers star, her first major acting award.

Best actor in a limited series went to Russell Crowe for the Showtime series The Loudest Voice. He wasn't in attendance because of raging wildfires in his native Australia.

Make no mistake, the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate-changed based, Crowe said in a statement read by presenters Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon.

Olivia Colman arrives at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Phoebe Waller-Bridge followed up her Emmy haul by winning best comedy series and best actress in a comedy series. She thanked former President Barack Obama for putting Fleabag on his best-of-2019 list. With a grin, she added: As some of you may know, he's always been on mine.

HBO had a big night. Chornobyl" won best limited series and for Stellan Skarsgard's performance. The second season of Succession" bested Netflix's The Crown and Apple TV Plus' first Globe nominee, The Morning Show. Brian Cox, the Rupert Murdoch-like patriarch of Succession, also won best actor in a drama series.

Best foreign language film went to Bong Joon Ho's Parasite, the Cannes Palme d'Or winning sensation from South Korea. Despite being an organization of foreign journalists, the HFPA doesnt include foreign films in its top categories, thus ruling out Parasite," a likely best picture nominee at next month's Oscars.

Jennifer Lopez arrives at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Once you overcome the inch-tall-barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films, Bong said, speaking through a translator.

Tom Hanks, also a nominee for his supporting turn as Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, received the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award. The Carol Burnett Award, a similar honorary award given for television accomplishment, went to Ellen DeGeneres. She was movingly introduced by Kate McKinnon who said DeGeneres' example guided her in her own coming out.

The only thing that made it less scary was seeing Ellen on TV, said McKinnon.

Cate Blanchett arrives at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Hanks' speech had its own emotional moment when he caught sight of his wife and four children at a table near the stage and choked up.

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A man is blessed with the family's sitting down front like that, Hanks said.

Elton John and Bernie Taupin won the evening's most heavyweight battle, besting Beyonce and Taylor Swift. Their I'm Gonna Love Me Again" won best song. It's the first time I've ever won an award with him, Elton said of his song-writing partner. Ever.

This image released by NBC shows Ramy Youssef accepting the award for best actor in a TV series, comedy or musical for "Ramy" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020. (Paul Drinkwater/NBC via AP)

The roughly 90 voting members of the HFPA have traditionally had little in common with the nearly 9,000 industry professionals that make up the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The HFPA is known for calculatingly packing its show with as much star power as possible, occasionally rewarding even the likes of The Tourist and Burlesque.

Sunday's show may have added to that history with an unexpected award for Missing Link for best animated feature film over films like Toy Story 4 and Frozen 2. No one was more surprised than its director, Chris Butler. I'm flabbergasted," he said.

But the Globes could be unusually influential this year. The condensed time frame of this years award season (the Oscars are Feb. 9) brings the Globes and the Academy Awards closer. Balloting for Oscar nominations began Thursday. Voters were sure to be watching.

One thing they couldn't see much of: female filmmakers. Only men were nominated for best director and none of the 10 films up for best picture was directed by a woman. Times Up, the activist group that debuted at the black-clad 2018 Globes, called the omission unacceptable."
TORRINGTON  The union representing 80 city and Department of Public Works employees siad it is questioning the fitness of the citys labor relations director to hold his position.

Council 4 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, is alleging that Mark Dumas, Torringtons director of personnel and labor relations, has behaved in bad faith by delaying implementation of collective bargaining agreements, refusing to settle grievances and forcing the union to file Municipal Prohibited Practice (MPP) complaints against the city on behalf of Local 2212, according to a statement.

Dumas did not respond to calls or an email seeking comment.

Mayor Elinor Carbone said she cant discuss the personnel issue.

Good labor relations is the backbone of the every organization, including municipalities. My expectation for honesty, respect and fairness is greater than most, Carbone said. The confidence that we place in our employees and they place in us is essential to a positive work environment. While I am not at liberty to discuss personnel matters, I can assure you that I am not taking these concerns lightly.

But Council 4 Director of Collective Bargaining Kevin Murphy said Dumass alleged unwillingness to settle problems or act in good faith should concern city leaders. The employees of Torrington work in town hall, as support and professional people, Murphy said. We also have the department of public works, parks and recreation and the Water Pollution Control Authority.

Council 4 also represents the citys police union, which is under a separate contract. The police union has also had issues with Mark Dumas, but they are not part of this complaint, Murphy said.

In the first unfair labor practice complaint, filed Nov. 6, 2019, Council 4 alleged the city unnecessarily and capriciously delayed the drafting, execution, and implementation of the ratified collective bargaining agreements for the Department of Public Works and City Hall bargaining units of Local 2212, according to the complaint.

In the second complaint, filed Nov. 8, 2019, Council 4 similarly alleged the city unnecessarily and capriciously delayed payment for extra duties given to and already performed by a Local 2212 bargaining unit member. The city has done this by bargaining in bad faith, specifically including, but not limited to, surface bargaining, according to the complaint.

We negotiate and discuss the employees medical benefits, wages, pension plans ... so this isnt just about money, Murphy said. Its about the way things are being handled.

Everything was negotiated (for a new contract) with the city, and at the end of it we came to an agreement on all aspects, Murphy said. By law, once thats done, the agreement is put into a legal contract, in a reasonable period of time. Contract negotiations were held in April 2019, and its now January 2020. And its still not done.

The State Labor Board held an informal hearing into the first complaint over contract implementation on Dec. 6, 2019 in Torrington.

We have had meetings, and we gave extensions to the city to get the contract done, Murphy said. And its still not done.

Murphy said he believes Dumas is not the right person to handle contract negotiations at all.

On paper, people might have the right qualifications on their resume, but you have to take those alleged qualifications and put them into action, he said. I think hes in over his head, and he cant handle it. He should not be the one in charge of labor relations.

The thing is, most of our (union members) live in Torrington and they shouldnt be treated like that, Murphy said. They come to work every day, and do their jobs for the city. They keep the city running. To be disrespected ... its wrong....
Kolkata, Jan 6 : The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday accused the leftist students of Jadavpur University of vandalising one of its offices and burning the party flag.

The incident happened around Sunday-Monday midnight when the JU students had taken out a procession condemning the violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

"These black sheep Leftist students went on rampage at our party office on Sulekha crossing and burnt down the party flag," said BJP leader Anupam Hazra.

He announced that a protest rally will be taken out from Bagha Jatin crossing on Monday evening and conclude at Jadavour police station where the BJP would submit a deputation seeking arrest of those who perpetrated the violence targeting the party office.

Senior BJP leaders would take part in the rally.
Dec. 23

At 1:32 a.m., Corporal D. Clawson was traveling west toward the 5700 block of Bissonnet Street and attempted to make contact with two subjects for walking in the street. During the attempted contact, the defendants fled on foot and one was later captured. The defendant was subsequently charged with misdemeanor evading. The second subject fled and was not located.

At 12:26 a.m., Officer Schwausch observed a vehicle traveling on a public roadway without a front license plate and expired registration in the 5200 block of Beech Street. Both the driver and passenger gave false information when identifying themselves. After the driver was identified, he was found to have numerous felony warrants out of multiple parishes in Louisiana. The driver and passenger were charged with fail to identify and transported to the Bellaire Jail without incident.

Dec. 24

At 12:20 p.m., Officer D Rocha was dispatched to a burglary of a motor vehicle in the 5100 block of Valerie Street. Upon arrival Ofc Rocha made contact with the owner of the vehicle. Victim / resident stated about 2 a.m. Dec. 23 an unknown suspect made entry into his vehicle and removed items.

Dec. 26

At 3:49 p.m., Officer Barrientos was dispatched to 5106 Bissonnet St. in reference to a shoplifting. Reportee advised a male suspect was seen taking multiple items off the shelf and exited all points of sale without any attempt to pay for the items. Ofc. Norman located the suspect and placed him in custody.

At 6:49 p.m., Officer D. Norman was dispatched to an auto theft in the 4900 block of Linden Street. Officer Norman made contact with the reportee who advised he was delivering a pizza to the above listed location when an unknown subject entered his vehicle and drove off.

Dec. 28

At 3:06 a.m., Officer Schwausch observed a vehicle with a fictitious TXLP disregard a traffic control device in the 5400 block of IH 610 northbound. Officer Schwausch conducted a traffic stop on this vehicle and further investigation found the driver to be driving while intoxicated. The driver was charged with driving while intoxicated and transported to the Bellaire Jail without incident.

At 9:21 a.m., Officer Liccketto was dispatched to 5106 Bissonnet Street at H.E.B. in reference to a shoplifter. Officer Liccketto was able to find the suspect as they were leaving the parking lot and placed the suspect in custody for theft. The suspect was transported to the Bellaire Police Department for booking and processing without incident.

Dec. 30

At 12:35 a.m., Officer Schwausch was patrolling the 5900 block of IH610 SB when he observed a vehicle fail to signal lane change, fail to maintain a single lane, and swerving inside its lane. Officer Schwausch initiated a traffic stop and made contact with the operator of the vehicle. Further investigation found the driver to be driving while intoxicated. The driver was charged with driving while intoxicated 3rd and transported to the Bellaire Jail without incident.

At 7:33 a.m., Officer Baylis was dispatched to the Walgreens Pharmacy, 5002 Bellaire Blvd., in reference to a shoplifting call. Officer Baylis was able to locate the Suspect in the 5000 block of Bellaire Blvd with the stolen items. The Suspect was arrested for theft. Officer Baylis completed the report.
By Express News Service

VISAKHAPATNAM: Union Minister of State for Power RK Singh on Sunday said States were bound to implement Central laws and Acts enacted by Parliament as per the Constitution. Speaking to mediapersons here, the Union Minister said if States dont implement the Acts passed by Parliament, it amounts to violation of the Constitution.

Replying to a query on the stand taken by Kerala, West Bengal and some other States on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Singh said the State Assembly resolutions have no relevance, adding that they can only express their views.

All the States have to follow Central laws. The President of India will take action against the States if they failed to implement the CAA, he said and added that citizenship was a Central subject and not a State one.

Singh said the CAA was aimed at giving citizenship and not taking away citizenship. However, some parties, particularly the Congress, were inciting people against the Act to gain political mileage, he alleged.

Under the Act, citizenship will be given to minorities who fled Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan due to religious persecution by the governments there. There is no truth in misinformation campaign unleashed by some parties that the CAA will take away their citizenship, he clarified.

Singh said Muslims who were nine per cent in India at the time of partition were 15 per cent now. At the same time in Pakistan percentage of minorities has come down from 19.8 per cent to 1.6 per cent, he claimed and sought to know what happened to a large number of minorities in the neighbouring country.

It is our duty to protect those who fled Pakistan. They were Indians before partition. They did not cross the border for economic gains, but for shelter, he said and added that if citizenship was given to such people it will not harm anyone.

If any leader makes any statement inciting violence or speaks against the law, action will taken against them, if charges are proved, the Union minister warned.

Replying to a query, he said all our neighbours are Muslim countries and there were no instances of Muslims running away due to religious persecution in these countries. There is no specific data on Shias and Ahmadis who fled Pakistan due to persecution, the union minister said.
Magellan Health, Inc. MGLN has been witnessing downward earnings estimate revisions, of late. The Zacks Consensus Estimate of $4.70 for 2020 has moved down by 2.1% over the past 60 days. This indicates that analysts are bearish on the stock.

So, what could be the reason for this pessimistic stance? The companys revenues declined 2.1% year over year in the first nine months of 2019. This year-over-year decline in the top line can be attributed to pressure in Pharmacy Benefit Management business (PBM), which suffered from health plan contract loss due to an acquisition.

The company is also suffering from pressure in its Behavioral and Specialty Healthcare business, primarily due to higher than anticipated demand for behavioral inpatient services.

For 2019, the company expects total revenues of $7 billion to $7.2 billion, implying year-over-year decline of 3% (calculated at the mid-point).

Further, the company expects cost of care pressure in its behavioral and specialty health business and severance charges related to its operational improvement initiatives to weigh on 2019 earnings.

The companys return on equity (ROE) undermines its growth potential. Its trailing 12-month ROE of 3.2% compares unfavorably with the industrys average of 18.6%, suggesting its inefficiency in using shareholders funds.

Though this Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) stock has performed well in 2019 and increased 26.7%, outperforming the industrys growth of 20.5% and Zacks S&P 500 Composites rally of 25.6%, the above mentioned concerns are likely to have hurt investors sentiments to some extent. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Other industry players like Humana Inc. HUM, UnitedHealth Group Inc. UNH and Anthem Inc. ANTM rose 31.9%, 20.6% and 18.6%, respectively, during the same time frame.

Nevertheless, managements continued execution of cost-of-care initiatives for Magellan Complete Care Virginia and other healthcare contracts, rate increases in its healthcare business in excess of care trend and net business growth should alleviate much of the earnings pressure in 2020. We expect more clarity on this front during the fourth-quarter earnings call.

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At least some of the people injured in an early morning Pennsylvania Turnpike crash in Westmoreland County, which killed five, have been treated and released from one area hospital.

Others remain in the care of medical professionals at Forbes Hospital, where Mark Rubino  its president  held a news conference to give an update on the 11 patients that were earlier transported there.

Forbes was one of three hospitals to receive patients after more than 60 people were injured in the crash about 3:33 a.m. near the Turnpikes mile marker 86.1 in Mount Pleasant Township.

There, a bus filled with passengers was traveling downhill, when its driver was unable to negotiate a turn and hit an embankment, state police have said. The bus was carrying passengers from New Jersey to Cincinnati, police said.

About 60 patients have been transported to three area hospitals in Westmoreland County due to multi-vehicle crash on @PA_Turnpike at milepost 86 westbound. Coroner has confirmed five fatalities. An 86-mile stretch of Turnpike still closed from New Stanton to Breezewood exits.  Carl DeFebo (@cdefebo) January 5, 2020

After striking the embankment, the bus rolled and was then struck by three tractor-trailers and a passenger vehicle, police said.

Late Sunday afternoon, Rubino spoke to reporters at a news conference to talk about hospital staffs response to the mass casualty event," which left some with serious injuries and others with minor abrasions and fractures. The conference was recorded and posted by Pittsburghs KDKA-TV.

The life-saving effort, Rubino said, began on the highway.

Over approximately an hour, the first responders did amazing work by having to extract multiple patients, many of which were severely injured, and transport them to multiple hospitals, he said.

Of the 11 who arrived at Forbes, five had already been treated and discharged, four were under hospital care and two were undergoing surgery at the time of the new conference, said Rubino, who also is a medical doctor.

Luckily, we had no fatalities here; everyone is stable, he said.

Because of the high volume of patients, the hospitals on-call staff had to be deployed, meaning doctors and surgeons were called out of bed in the early morning hours, he said.

Among the patients, the youngest was 15 and the oldest was 67, said Rubino, who described many of them as students and adolescents.

Some of them, he said, did not speak English.

We brought in, actually, some nurses that speak Spanish, and that was really taken care of pretty quickly, Rubino said.

All of the injured people transported to Forbes were from inside of the bus, Rubino said. He was unaware of the condition of those in the other vehicles.

Of those transported to Frobes, Rubino said there were spine injuries, a brain bleed and abdominal injuries in addition to lesser injuries.

The westbound detour has been lifted. There are no longer any detours, the entire #PATurnpike is open.  Pennsylvania Turnpike (@PA_Turnpike) January 5, 2020

The people coming in were not only physically injured, but they were traumatized, he said, explaining social workers and mental health professionals also were called in.

When the bus rolled, those inside were contaminated with diesel fuel, Rubino said, explaining many of them arrived at the hospital without their personal belongings. They lost their luggage, phones and purses in many cases, he said.

Luckily, hospital staff was able to provide clean clothing to each of them, Rubino said. They also had to work quickly to put the patients back in touch with their families, he said.

No one is from here. Everyone is really from another city," Rubino said, adding that some of the patients who had been discharged were still waiting at the hospital until they could find transportation home.

None of them wanted to get back on a bus, needless to say, he said.

And additional 28 patients were taken to Frick Hospital and 18 were taken to Somerset Hospital, according to state police.

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ISTANBUL - Hundreds of thousands of Iranian mourners marched through Tehran on Monday for the funeral of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a massive display of grief and solidarity after the country's most powerful military commander was killed in a U.S. drone strike last week.

The funeral in Tehran, marked by calls for revenge, underscored the emotions unleashed by President Donald Trump's decision to kill Soleimani in a Baghdad airstrike. The ceremony rivaled the one held after the passing of the Islamic republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989, analysts said.

The consequences of the strike have rippled across the region and Europe, where leaders urged restraint amid the spiraling conflict.

In Iraq, where 5,000 American troops are stationed to help fight the Islamic State, the targeted killing put the U.S. mission at risk. Iraqi lawmakers have urged their government to swiftly expel foreign forces, prompting Trump to threaten Iraq with sanctions.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi met with U.S. Ambassador Matthew Tueller in Baghdad on Monday to "stress the seriousness of the current situation and its possible repercussions," a statement from his office said. "Iraq is making all possible efforts to prevent a slide into open war," Abdul Mahdi said.

Chevron, a U.S.-based multinational oil company, said Monday that it was pulling expatriate staff and contractors out of northern Iraq "as a precautionary measure." Several U.S. embassies in the region - including in Bahrain, Israel, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia - issued security alerts advising American citizens of potential attacks and heightened unrest.

In Tehran, where the government made public transportation free Monday, Iranians filled boulevards in the city center as they trudged alongside Soleimani's flag-draped coffin to the iconic Freedom Square.

"No compromise, no surrender, in the battle against America!" they chanted.

Other mourners implored Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to avenge the commander's death.

Khamenei, who observers said rarely presides over the funerals of senior officials, openly wept as he prayed over Soleimani's body in the capital. He was flanked by President Hassan Rouhani; Soleimani's successor, Brig. Gen. Ismail Qaani; and other key security and political figures.

"We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with the help of God," Qaani said in an interview with Iranian state television.

The bespectacled commander, who served as Soleimani's deputy, was appointed as the head of the powerful Quds Force, the expeditionary wing of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tasked with spreading the country's influence abroad.

"In return for his martyrdom, we aim at getting rid of America from the region," Qaani said of his predecessor.

Soleimani was a talismanic figure and an engineer of Iran's project of building loyal proxy forces across the Middle East, from Iraq to Lebanon to Syria and Yemen.

Analysts said the large crowds at Soleimani's funeral in part reflected government coercion but were also an organic testament to the general's popularity as "a patriotic hero . . . who safeguarded Iran's national security and protected Iran from the threat of the Islamic State," said Ali Fathollah-Nejad, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar.

Iran's government, he said, has "mastered the art of creating images that are destined for domestic consumption but more so for foreign consumption to display popular support for the regime."

Soleimani was also portrayed "as someone who empowered Iran and elevated Iranian power in the region," Fathollah-Nejad said, adding that the general was seen in Iran as someone who avoided corruption.

Even as some Iranians pushed for retaliation against the United States, a joint statement from Britain, France and Germany called on Iran to refrain from "further violent action."

European nations have been reluctant to publicly condemn the United States for Soleimani's killing, focusing instead on Iran, which they view as a core threat to their security interests.

Germany's foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said in an interview with German public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk that Trump's threats to impose sanctions on Iraq were "not very helpful at this point."

The international community, he said, "has invested a lot, not only militarily but also in terms of support for stabilization." Those efforts, Maas said, were at risk "of being lost if the situation continues to develop this way."

Of particular concern to Europe, however, was Iran's decision Sunday to suspend its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, including caps on uranium enrichment, advanced centrifuges and other activities.

Trump withdrew from the deal, which curbed Iran's atomic-energy activities in exchange for widespread sanctions relief, in 2018 and reimposed harsh sanctions on a wide range of economic activity, including Iranian oil exports, banking transactions, and the civil aviation and automotive sectors.

Iran said Sunday that it would continue to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog tasked with monitoring and inspecting Iran's nuclear program. If U.S. sanctions were lifted, the government said, it would return to its obligations under the accord.

European diplomats took that as a sign that Tehran is still interested in extracting concessions rather than walking away from the deal altogether.

Diplomats said that the foreign ministers of European Union member nations would hold an emergency meeting in Brussels on Friday to discuss how to respond to the crisis, including whether Europe will start a process that could lead to the eventual reimposition of sanctions on Iran. Triggering that process would lead to months of negotiations.

"The risk of European sanctions is low," Henry Rome, an Iran analyst at the political-risk firm Eurasia Group, said in a briefing note.

"Iran's nuclear announcements [Sunday] were relatively mild," he said. And they "will also reduce pressure on European countries to trigger the nuclear deal's dispute resolution mechanism."

"Iran has decided to violate much of its uranium commitments, although it is taking a cautious approach," Rome said, adding that Iran appears to be continuing its commitments to the plutonium- and inspections-related parts of the deal.

- - -

Dadouch reported from Beirut and Birnbaum from Brussels. The Washington Post's Liz Sly in Beirut and Paul Schemm in Dubai contributed to this report.
The past few days have seen fans hit out at the Kardashian/Jenner brood for their seemingly lack of care regarding the horrific Australian bushfires.

But Kim Kardashian put a stop to it on Sunday evening when she hit back at a hater on Twitter.

The 39-year-old replied to a now deleted Tweet who claimed the brood had not donated a dime.

Scroll down for video

Not having it: Kim Kardashian hit out at a hater on Twitter on Sunday evening after they accused her and her family of not donating to the Australian fires

'Nothing gets me more heated than to see the Kardashains/Jenners talk about climate change/wildfires & not donate even a penny,' the user had written, tagging the entire family.

Kim responded: 'Nothing gets me more heated than to see people think they know what we donated to and to think we have to publicize everything.'

And while many went on to praise Kim for her clapback, others called her response hypocritical for continuing to wear fur and ride private jets.

Not impressed: And while many went on to praise Kim for her clapback, others called her response hypocritical for continuing to wear fur and ride private jets

One wrote: 'You publicize everything else tho AND STILL WEAR FUR...AND TAKE PRIVATE JETS...wild.'

Another Tweeted: 'a girl selling her nudes online has almost made 17k to help with the australian fires and the kardashians only been tweeting emojis do ya'll see why im angry.'

It comes after Kim's initial Tweet on January 2 read: 'Climate change is real,' with a broken heart and globe emoji.

Short and sweet: It comes after Kim's initial fire tweet on January 2 read: 'Climate change is real,' with a broken heart and globe emoji

Sister sister! And sister Khloe Kardashian, 35, took to her defense on Monday morning as well, first retweeting her sister's post before adding her own thoughts on the matter; seen in December 2019

She also retweeted some articles and Tweets about the devastation.

And sister Khloe, 35, took to her defense on Monday morning as well, first retweeting her sister's post before adding her own thoughts on the matter.

'Modern King James Version Therefore when you do your merciful deeds, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may have glory from men. Truly I say to you, They have their reward,' she began.

Behind closed doors: Khloe's final Tweet read: 'Good deeds should be done with intention and not for attention'

'We often bring attention to causes and ways you can donate. Its our job to bring awareness to situations so we all can help as a human race. We Frequently post/speak about organizations/websites where we can all help save our planet.'

Khloe's final Tweet read: 'Good deeds should be done with intention and not for attention. We are all blessed to be able to bless others even if it is in the slightest way. But we do not need to be boastful about that. Be boastful in regards to teaching others how they may be able to help as well.'

It comes after their younger half-sister, Kylie Jenner, was called out on Saturday for being 'so disconnected' after she shared a photo of her $1450 Louis Vuitton slippers after sharing a photo of a koala rescued from the fires.

'Hypocritical': It comes after their younger half-sister, Kylie Jenner, was called out on Saturday for being 'so disconnected' after she shared a photo of her $1450 Louis Vuitton slippers after sharing a photo of a koala rescued from the fires

'So disconnected': Fans were quick to call Kylie out for the two posts

The billionaire had written: 'this breaks my heart,' on the photo from the rescue mission.

One wrote: 'seeing kylie jenner post about the koalas being killed by the fires in australia followed by a picture of her wearing mink sandals on her instagram story really made me realize the extent to which the kardashian familys stupidity reaches.'

Another Tweeted: 'likeee... kylie jenner posting a boohoo about dying koalas then straight after posing in her real fur shoes. how would you like someone to come and skin you alive sis.'

Keeping out of it! The brood's other sisters, Kourtney Kardashian (middle) and Kendall Jenner (second from left) have remained quiet, merely sharing one article regarding the fires on Twitter

Repost: Kourtney posted an article and added: 'Half a billion animals have died in the fires,' with a crying face

The trio's other sister's Kourtney Kardashian and Kendall Jenner have each retweeted one link online.

Kendall also retweeted Kim's Tweet.

So far, the Australian bushfires have killed 26 people, destroyed more than 2,000 homes and tore through more than four million hectares of land.

An estimated half a billion animals have already been wiped out in the blazes, which have been burning through much of the east coast of Australia since October.

The fires are expected to continue to burn for another two months.
Moyagh Murdock, the current CEO of the Road Safety Authority, is to step down from her role and take up a new job as head of the insurance industry lobby group Insurance Ireland this spring.

Ms Murdock, who has been at the helm of the States road safety advocacy body since 2014, will leave her post at the end of March, it was announced today.

As CEO, Ms Murdock will take over Insurance Ireland at a difficult time. The European Commission is investigating the body in relation to possible breach of EU competition rules. There is also pressure on the wider insurance industry over high costs for business and consumers and the Central Bank has a probe underway to look at so called dual pricing of insurance, which is seen as punitive for loyal customers.

In a statement, RSA chairperson Liz ODonnell, confirmed that Ms Murdock will take up her new job at the end of March 2020. Shell take over from Kevin Thompson who has left Insurance Ireland to join RSA Ireland Insurance.

Before joining the RSA in 2014, Moyagh Murdock was chief operating officer for Bus Eireann. She previously worked at Bombardier, Team Aer Lingus and Caterpillar and is graduate of Queen's University Belfast and Dublin City University.

Liz ODonnell said the RSA board are disappointed to lose Moyagh and will now commence the formal process to select a new CEO.

The President of Insurance Ireland Ann Kelleher said Moyagh was selected following a very competitive selection process and demonstrated an enthusiasm and vision for the sector focused on its various stakeholders.

Meanwhile, Ms ODonnell, former Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and a Progressive Democrats TD, said Ms Murdock had made an important contribution to the organisation over the past six years.

Since becoming its Chief Executive in 2014, Moyagh steered the RSA through a period in which has seen road deaths reduce by 25pc, she said in a statement.

In particular, her advocacy and work with Government and other key stakeholders in leading the implementation of the Government Road Safety Strategy as well her support for the introduction of various policy and legislative changes that have taken place during her tenure, have helped ensure Irelands road safety performance is now second in the EU.

As CEO of the RSA, she has guided the RSA through a period of organisational restructuring and modernising of services through the use of technology such as online driver licences, Commercial Vehicle Road Worthiness CVROI, as well as improving driver test wait times to their lowest levels ever.

President of Insurance Ireland Ann Kelleher said Ms Murdock will bring a fresh perspective to her role in Insurance Ireland, with a particular focus on the Irish consumer.

"Moyagh was selected following a very competitive selection process and demonstrated an enthusiasm and vision for the sector focused on its various stakeholders."

Ms Murdock acknowledged that this is a challenging time for consumers and insurance providers.

"I look forward to engaging with stakeholders and to working collaboratively with them to ensure we implement changes which will provide a stable and well underpinned sector which delivers effectively for all of its customers, she told RTE.
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MegumaGold Corp. (CSE: NSAU, OTC: NSAUF, FWB: 2CM2) (MegumaGold or the Company) Is pleased to announce that it has now received all remaining soil geochemistry results for sampling completed during 2019 at its 6,230 hectare Touquoy West Project in Nova Scotia.

MegumaGold President Theo Van der Linde stated, Receipt of the final soil geochemistry results for the Touquoy West Project survey grid has resulted in definition of a third large exploration target area along the interpreted trend of the Meguma anticlinal fold corridor that hosts the St. Barbara Ltd. Touquoy Gold Mine as well as other gold deposits. Were very pleased to see these large arsenic and gold anomalies taking shape and believe there is similarity of the grade and size of these large arsenic and gold anomalies to the adjacent mine. The significance of arsenic in the surrounding rocks and soils of many of the major deposits in Nova Scotia is well documented and we now have three such anomalies on an anticlinal corridor which has the proven ability to host multiple large, low cost gold deposits.

The most recent soil geochemistry results apply primarily to the east and northeast areas of the approximately 70 line kilometer survey grid area (Figure 1 and Figure 2 below).

Figure 1 is available at:

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6841118e-1a05-49bb-a902-7730e596f561

Soil arsenic results define an anomaly in the eastern area that measures approximately 1 km in east-west extent and 0.1 to 1.0 km in north-south extent. Anomalous gold values occur locally within this larger arsenic zone and in one instance show line to line continuity of 600 m. The new anomalous trend remains open to both northeast and southwest at present.

The association of arsenic and gold values in the newly defined anomaly is similar to that described in earlier Company disclosure related to soil geochemistry anomalies located approximately 1 km and 3.5 km to the west and southwest on the same grid (see MegumaGold press releases dated November 20th, 2019 and November 29th, 2019; also Figure 2 below).

Figure 2 is available at:

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/05a748a3-fc5d-4366-a30d-7dd9325b39a3

The three main arsenic  gold anomalies referred to above and illustrated in Figure 2 parallel the interpreted northeast trend of the Moose River anticlinal fold corridor and are developed in areas either directly overlying, or to the south of, the interpreted main fold hinge zone. This fold corridor structural association is interpreted by the Company to have similarities to that of the Touquoy Gold Mine deposit, located within the same anticlinal corridor approximately 2.5 km northeast of the new anomaly described above (Figure 1 and Figure 2). As reported previously, the western-most anomaly on the Touquoy West Project survey grid remains open onto the adjacent Genius Metals Inc. property to the west that was optioned recently by MegumaGold (see Figure 2 and MegumaGold press release dated December 9th, 2019).

Soil samples across the entire survey grid were collected at 50 m intervals along survey lines nominally spaced at 100 m intervals. Gold values returned for the 2019 program that define anomalous trends are generally similar in magnitude to b horizon soil sample gold values returned from historic surveying by Seabright Exploration Ltd. (Seabright, 1988) on what is now the adjacent St. Barbara property.

Review and Qualified Person

This press release has been reviewed and approved by Regan Isenor, Chief Executive Officer of MegumaGold Corp. Michael Cullen, P. Geo., of Mercator Geological Services Ltd., an Independent Qualified Person as defined under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved references to historic and current exploration information included in this press release.

Technical Notes

B-horizon soil samples were submitted to Eastern Analytical Ltd. (Eastern) in Springdale NL for preparation and analysis. After drying and sieving, a 30 gram fine pulp split was analyzed for gold using fire assay methods and atomic absorption finish (FA-AA). A second fine pulp split was prepared for multi-element analysis by Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) methods after four acid digestion. MegumaGolds Quality Assurance and Quality Control protocol for the soil samples included systematic analysis of certified reference materials, blank samples and duplicate pulp splits. Eastern is a fully accredited commercial analytical services firm registered to ISO 1725 standards for gold and multi-element analysis procedures.

References

Seabright, 1988: Report NS AR ME 1988 -115; NS Department of Mines and Energy Assessment Report by Seabright Exploration Inc., 1869p.

About MegumaGold Corp.

MegumaGold is a Canadian junior gold exploration company engaged in the business of acquiring, exploring and developing natural resource properties. During 2018, the Company centered its exploration focus on the developing Meguma Supergroup gold play of Nova Scotia. As a result, the Company has assembled a strategically-positioned land position of 107,114 hectares within this promising geological domain.

For more information please contact

Mr. Regan Isenor, Chief Executive Officer

902-233-4381

info@megumagold.com

www.megumagold.com

Forward-Looking Statements

All statements in this presentation, other than statements of historical fact, are "forward-looking information" with respect to MegumaGold within the meaning of applicable securities laws including, without limitation economic estimates and any statements related to estimated mining costs. MegumaGold provides forward-looking statements for the purpose of conveying information about current expectations and plans relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. By its nature, this information is subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that may be general or specific and which give rise to the possibility that expectations, forecasts, predictions, projections or conclusions will not prove to be accurate, that assumptions may not be correct and that objectives, strategic goals and priorities will not be achieved. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to exploration findings, results and recommendations, as well as those risks and uncertainties identified and reported in MegumaGolds public filings under its SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Although MegumaGold has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. MegumaGold disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise unless required by law.

Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
American rapper, Cardi B has taken to Twitter to urge Nigerians to convince her husband, Offset to move to Nigeria with her.

The tweet comes after the 27-year-old rapper reacted to Donald Trumps order that led to the killing of an Iranian military leader, General Qasem Soleimani.

The news of his death sparked outrage as the countrys supreme leader, Ali Khamenei promised harsh vengeance on America.

Reacting, the US rapper said she will be filing for Nigerian citizenship, against the fears that Americans will henceforth be unsafe in the world.
The Supreme Court on Monday fixed March 17 for final hearing on the appeals filed by Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi against the Delhi High Court order allowing re-assessment of their income tax for 2011-12 in connection with the National Herald case.

The top court noted that the proceedings are pending before Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) and it would like to wait till March 17 for the outcome.

A bench of justices D Y Chandrachud and Hrishikesh Roy said that it is listing the matter for final disposal on March 17 as it has been apprised by the petitioners that proceedings are pending before the ITAT.

At the outset, senior advocate P Chidambaram, appearing for Sonia Gandhi and others, said that ITAT has delivered a verdict on the issue but has not dealt with at least six issues.

He said that they have moved the ITAT seeking adjudication of six other issues and the next hearing is scheduled to be held on February 28.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for Income Tax department, said that the top court had last year, while asking the petitioners to approach ITAT, said that irrespective of proceedings before the tribunal, this court will go on.

He said that November 15 order of ITAT had said that the petitioners were not doing any business.

The top court said that the final orders of ITAT may have a bearing on the case before apex court and therefore it would like to see the outcome of proceedings before the tribunal.

The bench, however, clarified that even if the tribunal does not give its finding on pending issues till March 17, then too it would proceed with hearing of the cases before it.

On November 15, last year, the ITAT had ruled that the withdrawal of income tax exemption to Young Indian, an entity controlled by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, her family and others, by the tax department is correct and it cannot be called a charitable organisation.

On April 23 last year, the top court had granted liberty to Gandhis and others to approach Delhi ITAT for expeditious hearing of pending appeal challenging the retrospective cancellation of registration granted to Young Indian under the I-T Act.

The Gandhis and senior Congress leader Oscar Fernandes have challenged in the apex court the Delhi High Court's September 10, 2018 verdict which dismissed their plea against the re-assessment of their tax for 2011-12.

The IT department had contended before the apex court that the proceedings pending before the ITAT were different from the appeals before the apex court.

On January 8 last year, the I-T department had informed the apex court that an assessment order (AO) with respect to tax of Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi for 2011-12 in connection with the National Herald case has been passed but has not been given effect.

The tax matter is related to the National Herald case in which other Congress leaders are also facing criminal proceedings.

On December 4, 2018, the apex court had allowed I-T department to re-assess the tax of the top Congress leaders. It had, however, restrained the department from "giving effect" to its order.

The I-T probe against the Congress leaders has arisen from the investigation into a private criminal complaint filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy before a trial court here in connection with the National Herald case, in which the trio is out on bail.

Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were granted bail in the case by the trial court on December 19, 2015.

A tax evasion petition (TEP) was also addressed to the finance minister by Swamy.

In the complaint before the trial court, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and others have been accused of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by paying just Rs 50 lakh, through which Young Indian (YI) had obtained the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore that Associated Journals Ltd (AJL) owed to the Congress party.

The Congress leaders have denied the allegations.

It was alleged that YI, which was incorporated in November 2010 with a capital of Rs 50 lakh, had acquired almost all the shareholding of AJL, which was running the National Herald newspaper.

The I-T department had said the shares Rahul Gandhi has in YI would lead him to have an income of Rs 154 crore and not about Rs 68 lakh, as was assessed earlier.

It has already issued a demand notice for Rs 249.15 crore to YI for the assessment year 2011-12.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
"Azaadi" (freedom) remained the war cry for thousands of anti-citizenship law protestors who continued their demonstration on Monday at Delhi's Shaheen Bagh and outside Jamia Millia Islamia.

In the evening, around 1,500 to 2,000 protestors were on the ground at each of the two sites which have been protest venues for more than three weeks now.

Local residents and students stayed put at both the venues, chanting slogans like "Azaadi", "Inquilab Zindabad" and poems of revolution, as they also condemned the attack on JNU students and teachers on Sunday by masked goons.

Among the thousands outside Jamia's gate no. 7 was Mohammad Shuaib, a physically-challenged student who had come from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh.

"My sister studies here. I have come here to join the ongoing protests against the CAA and NRC," Shuaib told PTI



Asked if he found it difficult to join the protest because of his disability, the 23-year-old student said, "For us, this (the protest) is no less than India's fight for freedom in 1947. We'll continue our fight till the government does not realise its mistake."



At Shaheen Bagh, a 17-year-old Delhi University student stood holding a placard that urged the government to repeal the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed India-wide National Register of Citizens (NRC).

"This is the third time that I have come to Shaheen Bagh to join the protestors. I don't know why the government is not listening to the people who have been sitting here day and night for three weeks," the BA student said, wishing not to be identified.

"The law is discriminatory and changes the Constitution in a way the citizens have never wished for," the political science and history student told PTI.

Some members of the Communist Gadar Party of India (CGPI) were also present at the protest site in Shaheen Bagh holding banners against the CAA and the NRC and criticising "state-sponsored terror".

Thousands of people, including women and children, are protesting outside Jamia Millia Islamia and nearby Shaheen Bagh to oppose the CAA and the NRC.

Besides Delhi, protests have been witnessed across the country over the contentious law and have led to clashes at several places including Uttar Pradesh, where more than 20 people have died.

According to the amended law, members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan till December 31, 2014 and facing religious persecution there will not be treated as illegal immigrants but given Indian citizenship. The law excludes Muslims.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Powerful Moments of Your Lives, Distilled

We invite teachers to share their triumphs and frustrations, the hilarious or absurd moments of their lives, in no more than 100 words.

For more Tiny Teaching Stories, click here .

To submit your own story, click here .

My Voice Is Terrible

It was my first year at a new school, and when I thought I had exhausted every ounce of myself, I lost my voice.

I wrote on the board:

Hi. My voice is terrible, please read the additional instructions for today.

(I grabbed some copies before the bell rang.)

I return to find:

*One student holding the door open and welcoming each student in, and giving a compliment, because you do that for us.

*The word terrible replaced with wonderful and a number of other positive comments.

*All students asking to do my job.

Students notice us; EVERYTHING SPEAKS.

Kirby Schmidt

Grades 7-12 agriscience

Deer River, Minn.

I Go to a School That Teaches You to Read

Quan arrived at my 1st grade classroom daily with his fast-food breakfast and sat in the back. As tall as a middle schooler, and as street-smart as an adult, he came to us recognizing only one word: his name.

I tried dozens of reading strategies with him over a few months, including writing songs and jump-roping to the alphabet. When I met his mother to discuss Quans educational path, she said hed stepped off a bus in his neighborhood recently, and the children asked where hed been. He proudly responded, I go to a school that teaches you to read.

Kathryn Starke

K-5 literacy

Richmond, Va.

Now I Knew Who It Was

Her wink gave her away. For three weeks, Id started class with a poem, selected to demonstrate the power of language.

I invited my students to share their own or others poems. Few did. But someone was leaving poems taped to my door, each mysteriously signed, Student of 2020. Clipped from magazines, found online, or in books, each poem spoke to herand to usabout the many ways words can soar or sing when shared.

We didnt use them for evaluation or outcomes, but for the love of words. And now I knew who it was leaving me poems.

Glen Young

12th grade English

Petoskey, Mich.

Apologizing for the Bullies

Teachers CAN survive and thrive after an awful first year. I wasnt anonymous in the small Nebraska town where I began teaching, so students could easily make harassing phone calls, steal things from my mailbox, and vandalize my car. I didnt get enough support from my overwhelmed first-year principal, but I should have reached out to other people, too.

A year ago, as I was planning to retire, a student from that first year sent me a Facebook message apologizing for the bullies in the school. Im glad I didnt let that awful first year drive me from the profession.

Barbara Gottschalk

K-5 English as a Second Language

Troy, Mich.

Ouch

Im outside walking around on recess duty and two little girls I dont know come up and give me a hug.

Girl 1: Mr. Gerber, give me knuckles.

We fist bump.

Girl 1: You look like my Grandpa Murray.

Me: He must be really handsome.

Girl 1: No, hes just really old.

Girl 2: You dont look like my Grandpa Smith, but hes really old, too.

OUCH.

Larry Gerber

5th grade

Cody, Wyo.

About This Project

Teachers lives are packed with powerful moments: moments of triumph, frustration, absurdity, joy, revelation, and hilarity. We want to hear about them. Submit your Tiny Teaching Story, in no more than 100 words, here .
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 07:00:59|Editor: Wang Yamei

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PRAGUE, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said on Sunday that Europe should urge both the United States and Iran not to escalate current hostility.

He said this after an official luncheon with President Milos Zeman.

"I have also discussed foreign affairs with the President. We agreed that Europe should urge both the United States and Iran not to escalate the situation, that we should be more involved as Europeans," Babis said.

Babis's comment comes in the wake of the killing of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad Friday by the United States. Tensions quickly arose as Tehran warned of retaliation.

Also on Sunday, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said during a moderated cross-party political debate that the killing of Soleimani had created a "very serious situation", and currently there is a need for a greater European contribution to preventing an escalation, beyond "words and discussion".
A Galveston County woman has filed a $1 million lawsuit against the ride-hailing company Uber Technologies alleging her driver sexually assaulted her on the way home from a night out drinking in Houston in early 2018.

The lawsuit, filed on Dec. 16, 2019, in Harris County, accuses Uber and driver David Lane, a Houston resident, of sexual assault, negligence and various other counts.

On Jan. 5, 2018, the woman and a male friend requested an Uber ride after a night out drinking in Houston, according to court documents. After the friend exited Lane's car to pick up some fast food, Lane allegedly drove off with the woman still in the vehicle and pulled into an abandoned parking lot where he made non-consensual sexual contact and assaulted her, according to court documents.

Once the friend exited the fast-food restaurant and realized the woman was gone, he made repeated attempts to contact Lane but was unsuccessful, the suit contends. After Lane released the woman, she and her friend went to Houston Police to report the sexual assault the next day, court records show.

The lawsuit accuses Uber of negligence and failing to properly hire, train and supervise its drivers; failing to conduct appropriate background checks on drivers and failing to enforce effective safety policies for screening drivers, among other counts.

Lane's criminal history dates as far back as 1999. Most recently, he was convicted of tampering with a government record in 2005. He was also found guilty of theft and drug possession in 2002 and 1998, respectively.

RELATED: Uber reports more than 3,000 sexual assaults on 2018 rides

The woman's lawyer, Michelle Tuegel of Simpson Tuegel Law Firm, said she and her co-counsel Lauren Lewis are hopeful criminal charges will be filed against Lane but said their repeated requests to the Harris County District Attorney's Office and the Houston Police Department have not been met.

"She [the woman] wants people to know who he [Lane] is so he can't do this to other people," Tuegel said. "And [she requests] that Uber changes its policies so this does not happen to other women in this position."

Just ten days before the lawsuit was filed, Uber released its first-ever safety report divulging the number of reported sexual assaults by its drivers. According to the report, Uber received 5,981 allegations of serious sexual assault in the U.S. over the course of 2017 and 2018. More than 3,000 of those sexual assaults were reported during 2018 alone, according to the Associated Press.

Uber declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: Get your Houston breaking news alerts delivered to your Inbox

Rebecca Hennes covers community news. Read her on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | rebecca.hennes@chron.com
High street food chain Pret A Manger has appeared in court after a student had a severe allergic from unknowingly eating sesame in a sandwich.

It comes ahead of a new law that is due to take effect next year in the wake of the death of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who died after she consumed a sandwich from Pret A Manger on a flight to Nice, France in 2016.

Today the firm pleaded not guilty at Bristol Crown Court to one charge of selling food not of the substance demanded, contrary to section 14 of the Food Safety Act 1990.

The court heard the charge related to an incident in which a customer suffered a severe reaction to sesame in a curried chickpea and mango sandwich.

The High Street food chain (stock image above) today pleaded not guilty as Bristol Crown Court

Natasha Ednan-Laperouse (above) died after eating a Pret Baguette and a new law in her honour is due to come into force by summer 2021

Kate Brunner QC, prosecuting, said: The customer was a student called Isobel Colnaghi, who bought a sandwich under the impression that it did not contain sesame, to which she was extremely allergic.

She checked the shelf ingredients and asked a member of staff. She subsequently ate that sandwich and suffered a severe reaction.

Ms Brunner alleged that the presence of sesame in the sandwich was not properly identified by the food chain.

The court heard the charge related to an incident in which a customer suffered a severe reaction to sesame in a curried chickpea and mango sandwich (above)

Jonathan Laidlaw QC, representing Pret A Manger, confirmed that the firm was pleading not guilty to the charge against it.

Judge Julian Lambert listed the case for a trial, expected to last up to four weeks, on November 2.

Natasha's Law is due to come into force by summer 2021 and will require all food businesses to include full ingredients on packaged foods.

The Department for Environment Food and Rural affairs will implement the legislation across England and Northern Ireland.

The case regarding student Isobel Colnaghi isn't the first time the food retailer has been to court.

In November last year Bath and North East Somerset Council launched legal action against Pret and supplier Planet Coconut.

Celia Marsh fell ill during a post-Christmas meal with her family in the branch of Pret in Bath, Somerset in 2017 and later died in hospital after eating a contaminated wrap

Celia Marsh fell ill during a post-Christmas meal with her family in the branch of Pret in Bath, Somerset in 2017.

The 42-year-old dental nurse died in hospital after allegedly eating what she believed to be a dairy-free 'super-veg rainbow flatbread'.

But it contained a dairy-free yoghurt, which was later found to be contaminated with traces of milk protein that sparked a fatal reaction.
Multiple protests organised in Patiala choked the vehicular movement as many key roads were gridlocked on Monday. The major protests including a state-level protest by the contractual employees of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) and other protest by District Congress Committee against attack at Nankana Sahib Gurdwara, left commuters hassled by causing frequent traffic snarls.

Despite police officials making elaborate arrangements to streamline vehicular movement in city, the traffic came to a virtual standstill on the main roads of the Royal City. Police found it a herculean task to smoothen the traffic flow.

Long traffic congestions were witnessed on Patiala-Sirhind road near Gurdwara Dukhniwaran Sahib, Bhupindra road, Leela Bhawan Chowk, Children Memorial Chowk, Fountain Chowk, Chhoti Baradari, Mall road and lower Mall road.

Though traffic police tried to divert traffic flow through link roads but this turned out to be a failure for locals moving in and out of Patiala as they had to wait for several hours to reach their destinations.

When police and the district administration knew about these protest, why didnt they make adequate arrangements, many commuters complained.

Parminder Singh, a commuter stuck in traffic, said, the district administration claimed to have imposed Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) in city, which prohibits an assembly of more than four persons, but it does not seem to have been executed on grounds level.

Even the ambulances were seen struck in traffic jams on Monday, he said.

Nankana Sahib row: Cong protests against Pak

The District Congress Committee, led by Patiala member Parliament (MP) Preneet Kaur, staged a protest against the unruly scenes at Nankana Sahib in Pakistan, in the city on Monday.

The protesting Congress workers raised anti-Pakistan slogans and burnt an effigy of Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan near Fountain Chowk.

Terming the Nankana Sahib incident as unfortunate, Preneet said that they demand that the Pakistani government should ensure security of Sikhs and other minority communities residing in the neighbouring country.

The Pakistani government should take punitive action against the perpetrators. Moreover, the Indian government should take up the issue strongly and build diplomatic pressure on Pakistan for safety of the Sikh community and its shrines there, Preneet said.

PSPCL contractual employees hold statewide protests

The contractual employees of the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) held state-level protests outside the PSPCL headquarters on Mall road in Patiala on Monday.

The employees, under the banners of several employee unions, from across state gathered at the headquarters with their children and other family members and raised slogans against the power corporation for not regularising their services.

Addressing the gathering, Jagroop Singh, general secretary of Technical Services Union, said that both the state government and the PSPCL management are hell-bent on promoting privatisation in working of the power corporation.

The PSPCL has already threatened the livelihood of employees by shutting down public thermal plants. Moreover, instead of regularising the services of contractual employees, the PSPCL is hiring employees through outsourced companies, he said.

The speakers claimed that the PSPCL contractual workers have not been paid according to equal pay, equal work basis and their salaries have not been revised since January, 2016.
Tokyo stocks price went down as the trade of the year began on Monday morning amidst the rising tension between the U.S. and Iran.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index fell 418.86 points or 1.77 per cent, at 23,237.76 in the first one hour of the trade.

Akira Kiyota, Chief Executive Officer of Japan Exchange Group, expressed his caution over the tension in the Middle East as a risk factor for financial market.

Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso who joined the opening ceremony did not make any reference on the situation in the Middle East.

Tokyo Stock Market traditionally starts the trade of the year with bell tolling and hand clapping wishing for a good trading year.
About 800 bus drivers in Auckland, New Zealands largest city, carried out partial strike action last month against low wages and poor working conditions, including long hours and split shifts. Bus drivers are among the lowest paid workers in Auckland, which has some of the least affordable rents in the world. On working days which can span 14 hours, they often earn below $17.70 an hour, the legal minimum wage.

FIRST Union and Tramways Union members at NZ Bus, the citys largest bus operator, took action after rejecting a pay offer amounting to an extra 44 cents an hour. The proposed rise, of about 2 percent, was well below the increase in the cost of living. On December 7, the company suspended 100 drivers for refusing to take fares from passengers. Hundreds of drivers marched through Queen Street on December 9 protesting the lockout. For four days, as many as half the citys bus services were cancelled.

The drivers action followed two years of escalating strikes in New Zealand, including by tens of thousands of nurses, doctors and teachers. This is part of an international resurgence of class struggle, as workers seek to fight back against the austerity imposed by governments and corporations over the past 10 years.

In every case, however, the main obstacle to a sustained, unified fight is the trade union bureaucracy. The unions do not represent workers; they are pro-capitalist organisations, working with employers and politicians to shut down strikes and divide the working class.

The bus unions called off industrial action on December 13, after the Labour Party-run Auckland Council passed a motion asking the council-owned agency Auckland Transport, which contracts services from NZ Bus, to work with the company and the relevant unions to find a solution to end the current dispute.

FIRST Union described the motion, which was written with union input, as an important win. In fact, it was a manoeuvre designed to shut down the strike and send drivers back to work having won nothing. A union spokesperson told the media: Theres no point in the public, our drivers, or the company suffering [from an ongoing strike]. Negotiations with NZ Bus are continuing behind closed doors.

Stuff noted that Auckland Mayor Phil Goff, who backed the resolution after previously refusing to intervene in the dispute, can deliver his part... without necessarily committing the council or its agency, to anything on the funding front. Goff merely agreed to write to the Labour Party-led government requesting an expedited review of the Public Transport Operating Model (PTOM) so that a fair and equitable resolution is reached around drivers' wages and working conditions on a national level.

Asked by Stuff whether the solution was to simply hire more drivers and increase pay, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said this would be expensive. He evasively declared it was tough logistically and practically to think of a solution and stated that the government wanted to work with the industry.

The PTOM review has already been underway for more than nine months. The Labour Party has ditched its 2017 election promise to improve pay for bus drivers. It has done nothing to change the system in which private companies bid for council transport contracts by engaging in a race to the bottom on wages and conditions.

After shutting down the strike, FIRST Union sought to divert attention from its role in defending the company by rounding on migrant workers for supposedly undermining wages. On December 16, spokesman Jared Abbott criticised the government for allowing NZ Bus to bring in foreigners if their current workforce arent willing to work for those rates.

Abbott claimed the union was motivated by concern about migrant workers being exploited. People on insecure work visas depend heavily on their employer and risk deportation if they lose their job. The Ardern government has shifted more migrants onto these visas while making it harder to gain permanent residency.

Exploitation of migrants is certainly rampant, but the trade unions response is the thoroughly reactionary demand for them to be blocked from entering the country. The exploitative conditions faced by all sections of transport workers, moreover, are the direct result of the cost-cutting agenda imposed for decades by the unions themselves.

NZ Bus recruited 28 drivers from the Philippines last year, 16 in Auckland and 12 in Wellington. According to Radio NZ, three more visa applications, supported by NZ Bus, are currently being assessed by Immigration NZ. If the union bureaucracy had its way, these would be denied and presumably those migrants already working for NZ Bus would be sent back to their impoverished home countries.

FIRST Unions statements are particularly provocative given that the transport industry employs large numbers of immigrants, while more than a quarter of New Zealands population was born overseas. The union aims to sow divisions among workers and thus prevent any fight against the bus companies, Auckland Council and the government.

FIRST Union has repeatedly lobbied to prevent workers entering the country. In 2018 it successfully opposed an application by bus company Ritchies to recruit 110 migrant workers from the Philippines, Tonga, Samoa and Fiji. The unions Graham McKean told Newshub, bringing bus drivers in to take over the work that New Zealanders should be doing is wrong.

Similarly, in 2018 the Unite union applauded a Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment decision to ban Burger King from hiring migrant workers for a year.

Some of the foulest anti-immigrant propaganda appears on the Daily Blog, which is supported by Unite, the Rail and Maritime Transport Union and the Dairy Workers Union. On January 3 editor Martyn Bradbury called for voting rights to be stripped from permanent residents (i.e. recent immigrants) and demanded that Australians be prevented from moving to New Zealand to escape catastrophic fires caused by climate change.

The Labour-led government is likewise seeking to divert anger over rising social inequality by whipping up xenophobia. Minister for Regional Development Shane Jonesa member of the racist NZ First Party which plays a major role in the governmentrecently expressed anxiety about NZs low birth rates and legions of Indian immigrants queue-jumping and clogging up our social services. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern did not denounce Jones repulsive statements, which echoed the fascist views of the Christchurch terrorist.

Workers must reject the nationalist poison of the unions and the Ardern government and demand the right for working people to live and work anywhere in the world, with all the rights of citizens. To wage a real fight, transport workers must be armed with a socialist and internationalist program. Billions of dollars should be redirected from the super-rich to provide decent public transport services with well-paid staff.

The reactionary politics of the unions demonstrates the need for new organisations: rank-and-file committees, controlled by the workers themselves and politically independent of Labour and every capitalist party. Such organisations must fight to unite workers throughout New Zealandnative-born and immigrantswith workers in Australia, Asia and the Pacific against the capitalist system that exploits them all.
KALAMAZOO, MI -- The Cooper Township man who sent two police departments on a chase this summer has been sentenced to 1 1/2 years in prison.

Robert Brockman Jr., 53, was sentenced by Kalamazoo County Circuit Judge Gary Giguere on Monday, Jan. 6, to a minimum of 1 1/2 years in prison and a maximum of 15 years.

Brockman had previously pleaded guilty, on Dec. 4, to one count of second-degree fleeing and eluding and one count of malicious destruction of police property as a habitual offender. Brockman was also found guilty of fleeing and eluding police in 2005.

Brockman has served 159 days in Kalamazoo County Jail since leading police on a 13-mile chase in July, at points reaching speeds in excess of 90 mph. He will serve the remainder of his sentence in prison.

[Brockman] is not interested in following the law, so its back to Michigan Department of Corrections, Giguere said Monday.

As part of a settlement agreement, Brockman had a second fleeing and eluding charge dismissed, Kalamazoo County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Scott Brower told MLive in an email.

In court Monday, Kalamazoo County Assistant Prosecutor Jeff Williams said Brockman endangered a lot of people and serving time behind bars would be the best option to protect society and himself.

On July 31, Brockman was first spotted by Michigan State Police driving the wrong way down Lake Street, near the intersection with the I-94 Business Loop in Kalamazoo Township, MSP Trooper Mark Fletcher testified during an Aug. 20 preliminary hearing.

Brockman was spotted a couple hours later driving in Comstock Township around 10 p.m., Kalamazoo County Sheriffs Deputy Michael Stradel testified.

The deputy testified that Brockman avoided spike strips twice by going into ditches and driving around them, and was boxed in by multiple patrol cars when his car finally came to a stop near the intersection of D Avenue and 28th Street in Richland Township.

Dashcam footage provided the sheriffs office shows Brockman rammed into four cruisers in an apparent attempt to get away. At the time, Stradel was standing behind his cruiser with his gun pointed at Brockmans vehicle, telling him to stop.

When Brockman continued, Stradel fired his gun, aiming it just to the left of Brockmans vehicle. Brockman nor his vehicle were hit.

It is only through the good fortune of many parties that no one was seriously injured, Williams said. "And the only damage was to Kalamazoo Sheriff Department vehicles.

Giguere waived court fees in the case, but said Brockman is still held responsible for paying $5,886.06 in property damage resulting from his actions.

During the sentencing, Brockman told Giguere he was sorry, adding he did not understand what was going on during the chase because he had taken new medication.

Previously, Brockman told Kalamazoo County District Judge Anne Blatchford at his Aug. 2 arraignment he was just trying to get his dog home.
This article is for investors who would like to improve their understanding of price to earnings ratios (P/E ratios). We'll look at China Everbright Greentech Limited's (HKG:1257) P/E ratio and reflect on what it tells us about the company's share price. China Everbright Greentech has a price to earnings ratio of 5.92, based on the last twelve months. That corresponds to an earnings yield of approximately 16.9%.

See our latest analysis for China Everbright Greentech

How Do You Calculate A P/E Ratio?

The formula for price to earnings is:

Price to Earnings Ratio = Share Price  Earnings per Share (EPS)

Or for China Everbright Greentech:

P/E of 5.92 = HK$4.28  HK$0.72 (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2019.)

Is A High Price-to-Earnings Ratio Good?

A higher P/E ratio implies that investors pay a higher price for the earning power of the business. That isn't necessarily good or bad, but a high P/E implies relatively high expectations of what a company can achieve in the future.

How Does China Everbright Greentech's P/E Ratio Compare To Its Peers?

The P/E ratio indicates whether the market has higher or lower expectations of a company. We can see in the image below that the average P/E (8.5) for companies in the renewable energy industry is higher than China Everbright Greentech's P/E.

SEHK:1257 Price Estimation Relative to Market, January 6th 2020

This suggests that market participants think China Everbright Greentech will underperform other companies in its industry. Since the market seems unimpressed with China Everbright Greentech, it's quite possible it could surprise on the upside. It is arguably worth checking if insiders are buying shares, because that might imply they believe the stock is undervalued.

How Growth Rates Impact P/E Ratios

Generally speaking the rate of earnings growth has a profound impact on a company's P/E multiple. That's because companies that grow earnings per share quickly will rapidly increase the 'E' in the equation. And in that case, the P/E ratio itself will drop rather quickly. So while a stock may look expensive based on past earnings, it could be cheap based on future earnings.

Story continues

China Everbright Greentech increased earnings per share by a whopping 31% last year.

Remember: P/E Ratios Don't Consider The Balance Sheet

One drawback of using a P/E ratio is that it considers market capitalization, but not the balance sheet. Thus, the metric does not reflect cash or debt held by the company. In theory, a company can lower its future P/E ratio by using cash or debt to invest in growth.

While growth expenditure doesn't always pay off, the point is that it is a good option to have; but one that the P/E ratio ignores.

Is Debt Impacting China Everbright Greentech's P/E?

China Everbright Greentech's net debt is 75% of its market cap. This is a reasonably significant level of debt -- all else being equal you'd expect a much lower P/E than if it had net cash.

The Bottom Line On China Everbright Greentech's P/E Ratio

China Everbright Greentech's P/E is 5.9 which is below average (10.7) in the HK market. While the EPS growth last year was strong, the significant debt levels reduce the number of options available to management. The low P/E ratio suggests current market expectations are muted, implying these levels of growth will not continue.

Investors should be looking to buy stocks that the market is wrong about. As value investor Benjamin Graham famously said, 'In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine. So this free visualization of the analyst consensus on future earnings could help you make the right decision about whether to buy, sell, or hold.

But note: China Everbright Greentech may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with strong recent earnings growth (and a P/E ratio below 20).

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Tributes have been paid to a young farmer who died just days before Christmas in a farm accident.

Nathan Atkinson tragically died on a farm in Lowick Bridge near Ulverston on Thursday 19 December.

According to local paper NWE Mail, it is believed the 28-year-old was killed after a large hay bale had fallen on top of him.

Authorities were alerted at 3.45pm that day to a report of a man trapped on a farm.

Unfortunately, Mr Atkinson was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident.

Cumbria County Councillor for High Furness Matt Brereton described the tragedy as a tragic loss of life.

He said: This goes to show how dangerous farming life can be.

Often the nature of farming can be long hours, working alone, working at height which comes with its dangers.

I want to express my thanks to the emergency services as well as offer my sincere condolences to the family.

It follows the tragic death of a 14-year-old girl, who died on a farm in Northern Ireland last November.

Figures show 39 people lost their lives on UK farms in one year alone, making agriculture the deadliest industry.

Of those killed during 2018/19, 32 were agricultural workers and 7 were members of the public, including two children.
(CNN)  The Irwin family is continuing Steve Irwin's legacy of rescuing and saving wildlife in danger.

Bindi Irwin, Steve's daughter, and the rest of the Irwin family have rescued and treated over 90,000 animals, many of which were injured in Australia's recent devastating wildfires.

Ollie, an orphaned platypus, was patient number 90,000 at the Wildlife Hospital, Bindi's brother, Robert Irwin, said on Instagram.

"With so many devastating fires within Australia, my heart breaks for the people and wildlife who have lost so much," Bindi said in an Instagram post on Thursday.

The 21-year-old confirmed that the Australia Zoo, which is owned and operated by the Irwin family, and their conservation properties are not endangered by fires

The zoo's Wildlife Hospital has been "busier than ever," Bindi said in the caption of the photo which shows her smiling in front of a picture of Steve and his mother holding a crocodile.

"My parents dedicated our Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital to my beautiful grandmother. We will continue to honour her by being Wildlife Warriors and saving as many lives as we can," Bindi said.

The environmental activist and conservationist shared another post on Saturday picturing Blossom the possum who died after being rescued from the bushfires burning in Queensland despite the hospital "working so hard to save her life."

Steve Irwin, the TV presenter known as the "Crocodile Hunter," died in 2006 after being stung by a stingray in a marine accident off Australia's north coast.

Blossom is just one of the many animals who have been killed in Australia's fires. Almost a third of koalas in Australia's New South Wales region may have been killed in deadly bushfires, which have been burning out of control

Three fires combined on Saturday to form a single blaze bigger than the New York borough of Manhattan, as Australian firefighters battle what has been predicted to be the most catastrophic day yet in an already devastating bushfire season.

At least 24 people have died in Australia wildfires and in the state of New South Wales alone, more than 1,300 houses have been destroyed.

This story was first published on CNN.com 'The Irwin family has saved over 90,000 animals, including many injured in the Australia wildfires'
A U.S. Army armored vehicle flies an American flag as it provides security escort for a convoy in this file photo from 2011.

The Pentagon on Monday said that a U.S. general's letter informing Iraq's Defense Ministry that U.S.-led coalition troops would leave Iraq "was a mistake," and American Defense officials insisted that the troops would remain there.

"That letter is a draft, it was a mistake, it was unsigned, it should never have been released," Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley told reporters hours after reports about the letter ostensibly written by Marine Brig. Gen. William Seely were published by the Reuters and AFP wire services.

"Poorly worded, implies withdrawal," Milley said.

"That is not what's happening," he continued.

The general's comments came after the top U.S. Defense official appeared to be confused about the letter Monday. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told reporters earlier, "We are repositioning forces throughout the region, No. 1."

"Beyond that with regard to the letter, which I've read once, I can't tell you the veracity of that letter," Esper said. "That letter is inconsistent of where we are right now."

"There has been no decision whatsoever to leave," he said.

The letter to Iraq's Defense Ministry came to light a day after Iraq's parliament voted to expel all foreign forces from the country.

Neither Esper nor Milley would clarify how the letter was made public, or who directed it to be drafted.

Neither Seely nor Pentagon spokesmen responded to questions about the letter's origin.
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By Express News Service

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Union Minister Kiren Rijiju has termed the anti-CAA resolution passed by the Kerala Assembly a political gimmick though he admitted that the Centre failed to convince the Muslim community that the act was not discriminatory.

In Kerala, LDF and UDF are two faces of a coin. Only Parliament can make an amendment or law for citizenship. But they passed a resolution, which is basically a political gimmick, he said.

ALSO READ: Kerala Assembly passes resolution against Citizenship Amendment Act

Addressing a gathering at the Press Club hall here on Sunday evening, the minister said his just-concluded campaign in the state to dispel misinformation on the CAA was fruitful.

It is our duty to reach out to people who are not yet convinced. This act is not discriminatory, he said.

The minister said his governments primary focus would be to gain the confidence of the Muslim community who are misguided by some political parties. They want to create rift between BJP and Muslims, he said.

The minister said that his government will remove the apprehensions by disseminating right information. We will do more to gain their confidence, he said.

The minister said the feeling that BJP did not do enough to get the confidence of Muslim community was partially because of the malicious campaign by the Congress and Communist parties.

He claimed the Congress did not show interest in the welfare of Muslims though they were a vote bank for them.

A political party ruled India for 50 years and Muslims are still backward. The BJP does not view them as just a vote bank. We want to strengthen them, he said.
By Delana Isles

PNP 2020 hopeful and owner of Jaca TCI said he will be suing Premier Sharlene Cartwright Robinson for alleged false statements she made about his company to the press.





The issue surrounds the recently commissioned Bottle Creek Clinic in North Caicos, which was in the making for a number of years, and why it took so long for construction to be completed.





In the December 20-27 issue of The Sun newspaper, solicited comments from the premier revealed that she held Musgrove and his company, which was contracted for the project, solely responsible for the delay.





But the PNP Electoral District Four representative has a completely different take on what occurred, has taken umbrage at the accusation, and now intends to sue for reputational damage.





"It is with a heavy heart that I inform you all that the accusations made against me and my company, Jaca TCI Ltd by the premier in the December 20-27 issue, volume 15  No. 50 of the Sun Newspaper, are completely and utterly incorrect.





"Unfortunately, I can only say that either your team did not advise you of the facts or you have intentionally released false information, Musgrove wrote in a press statement released on

December 20 via his partys Facebook page.





"It gives me no pleasure in bringing to light the factual events which occurred during the Bottle Creek Clinic project, but it is imperative that the people of Bottle Creek and the entire Turks and Caicos Islands know the truth.





"Madam premier, you stated: The Bottle Creek Clinic was a fight from (the time) we got elected.





"Im confused about this statement. I can provide numerous emails to the contrary.





He stated that in fact several government departments can attest to all the emails he sent requesting to begin the project.





"The Honorable Derek Taylors intervention was done at the request of my colleague Jeff Lee on behalf of Jaca TCI Ltd.





"Madam premier, the budget for the Bottle Creek Clinic was $1.8 million. My initial bid came in a little over that, I was asked to come within the budget and to do value engineering and show savings on the project.





"I then came in with a price of a little over $1.5 million. Recommencement of work after negotiations was $68,000, which led to me creating savings of over $140,000.





"The Bottle Creek Clinic came in below budget and still as a state of the art clinic for the people of Bottle Creek.





Musgrove stated that based on the comments made by the premier to the newspaper - in which she is quoted as stating the price of the project had in fact doubled - she must be confused with another project.





"I think you are confusing this project with the promenade, where you and your team had to shuffle figures around to find monies near or around the amount of $900,000.





"Madam premier please explain to the people of North and Middle Caicos and the entire Turks and Caicos Islands, why that project had doubled. One can only assume why.





He further clarified that the ditch he is being accused of not digging, was outside his scope of work, and outside the scope of the bid.





"This ditch was something FortisTCI asked for which would allow them to upgrade per their masterplan for that area.





"Your EMS Department asked for quotes from a few persons. I ended up with it two weeks ago.





"You also mention that the temporary power had to be sourced. Madam premier, two days before your so call opening of the Bottle Creek Clinic, to save face for my friend Ralph Higgs, not you, I personally went and turn on that power in my name.





Musgrove said he went out of his way in this area because "twin island people are their brothers keepers and "what affects Ralph affects me and the entire community of North and Middle Caicos.





He thereby called on the premier to tell the truth surrounding the project, as he claimed everything contained in the article was lies.





"In an effort to clear my name, my company name and receive a public apology, I have decided to take this matter to court, where everything, all factual details will come out. As all information presented by you in that article is false, Musgrove stated.




The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal on Monday dismissed the Registrar of Companies' petition seeking modification of the judgement in the Tata-Mistry case and said its ruling had not cast any aspersions on the RoC.

"There is no ground to amend judgement dated December 18, 2019," a two-member NCLAT bench said.

On December 18, the tribunal ruled reinstating Cyrus Mistry as the Executive Chairman of Tata Group and also termed conversion of Tata Sons from a public company to a private one by the RoC as "illegal".

Tata Sons, Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have separately moved the Supreme Court against the NCLAT order.

In its plea, RoC -- under the corporate affairs ministry -- had sought to be impleaded as a party in the two petitions and deletion of words "illegal" and "with the help of the RoC" used by the NCLAT in its 172-page judgement.

In its plea, RoC, which functions under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, had sought to be impleaded as a party in the two petitions and deletion of words "illegal" and "with the help of the RoC" used by the NCLAT in its 172-page-long judgement.

The tribunal had termed the appointment of N Chandrasekaran, as 'illegal' following the October 2016 sacking of Mistry as Tata Sons' executive chairman. It had also directed the RoC to reverse Tata Sons' status from a 'private company' to a 'public company'.

In its urgent application, which was mentioned on December 23, just five days after the NCLAT's December 18, judgement, RoC Mumbai had asked the appellate tribunal "to carry out requisite amendments" in Para 186 and 187 (iv) of its judgement "to correctly reflect the conduct of the RoC, Mumbai as not being illegal and being as per the provisions of the Companies Act".

Besides, it had also urged "to delete the aspersions made regarding any hurried help accorded by the RoC Mumbai to Tata Sons, except what was statutorily required" in para 181 of the order.

In the order, the appellate tribunal had quashed the conversion of Tata Sons - the principal holding company and promoter of Tata firms - into a private company from a public firm and had termed it as "illegal".

The tribunal had said that the action taken by the RoC to allow the firm to become a private company was against the provisions of the Companies Act, 2013 and 'prejudicial' and 'oppressive' to the minority member (Mistry Camp).

"The Company (Tata Sons) shall be recorded as 'Public Company'. The RoC will make corrections in its record showing the Company as 'Public Company'," the NCLAT had said.

Contesting the observations, RoC Mumbai asked the NCLAT to "delete the aspersion made regarding any hurried help accorded by RoC Mumbai to Tata Sons except what was statutorily required by RoC Mumbai".

The RoC also said it has acted in "bonafide manner" in converting the status of Tata Sons as "there was no stay granted by this appellate tribunal on the operation of the judgement dated July 9, 2018 of Mumbai, NCLT at the time when this intimation was filed by Tata Sons Ltd".

In its petition, the RoC had asked "to carry out the requisite amendment in paragraphs ... of the judgement dated December 18, 2019 to correctly reflect the conduct of RoC Mumbai as not being illegal and being as per the provisions of the Companies Act along with the rules".

Months after Mistry was sacked, Tata Sons had received its shareholders' nod in September 2017, to convert itself into a private limited company from a public limited company, thereby absolving it of the need to take shareholder consent in taking crucial decisions, which could be passed with just the board's approval.

Tata Sons Ltd was initially a 'Private Company' but after insertion of Section 43A (1A) in the Companies Act, 1956 on the basis of average annual turnover, it assumed the character of a deemed 'Public Company' with effect from February 1, 1975, the order said.

Meanwhile, Cyrus Mistry on Sunday ruled out pursuing chairmanship of Tata Sons or any other executive positions at group entities but asserted that he is interested in a board seat at the holding company.

Ruling out taking up any position at the group or any group entities, Mistry in a late Sunday evening public statement said that he is "walking the talk" to uphold corporate governance, and this is not a quest for position or power and he "will not be pursuing the executive chairmanship of Tata Sons, or directorship of TCS, Tata Teleservices or Tata Industries".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Iraq's top leaders were receiving condolences Monday for Iraqi Shiite militia leaders killed along with top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, in a US airstrike last week.

The gathering in Baghdad comes a day after parliament voted in a favour of a bill requesting the withdrawal of US troops from the country.

The non-binding vote to end the presence of 5,200 American troops, which still requires the approval of the Iraqi government, highlighted the sharp deterioration in relations between Washington and Baghdad in recent weeks, amid soaring tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

President Donald Trump promptly warned Iraq that he would levy punishing sanctions if the Iraqi government expelled American troops.

Outgoing Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi thanked all the mourners who attended the condolences at the prime minister's office in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone Monday, and extolled an Iraqi militia commander killed in Friday's airstrike as a hero.

Iraqis were unanimously outraged by the U.S. attack, which in addition to killing Soleimani killed senior militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and several others.

Al-Muhandis was the deputy commander of the Popular Mobilisation Forces, an Iraqi umbrella group of mostly Shiite paramilitaries loyal to Iran, and a senior militia commander during the war against the Islamic State group.

Outgoing Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi thanked all the mourners who attended the condolences and called al-Muhandis a heroic leader with a pure soul. American forces withdrew from Iraq in 2011 but returned in 2014 at the invitation of the Baghdad government to help battle IS after it seized vast areas in the north and west of the country, including Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul. A U.S.-led coalition provided crucial air support as Iraqi forces, including Iran-backed militias, regrouped and drove IS out in a costly three-year campaign.

A pullout of US troops could cripple the fight against Islamic State militants and allow them to make a comeback. Militants affiliated with IS routinely carry out attacks in northern and western Iraq, hiding out in rugged desert and mountainous areas. Iraqi forces rely on the U.S. for logistics and weapons in pursuing them.

An American withdrawal could also enable Iran to deepen its influence in Iraq, which like Iran is a majority Shiite country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gary Glitter arrives at a court in central London for child molestation on February 5, 2015. Photo by AFP/Leon Neal.

A Vietnamese woman molested by disgraced British pop star Gary Glitter aged 10 is filing for compensation.

Diem, now 25, lives with her mother in the Mekong Delta.

Her case is led by Preda Foundation, a Philippines-based human rights organization that supports victims of abuse and exploitation.

"10-year-old Diem underwent untold trauma at the hands of British pedophile Gary Glitter, and because of phobia, has failed to marry," Shay Cullen, president of Preda Foundation, said.

In 2005, her aunt brought Diem to a seaside villa in southern beach town Vung Tau where Glitter, then 61, repeatedly abused her.

Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, from London, sold more than 20 million records, achieved fame in the 70s and 80s. The success made him a millionaire, in addition to the money he earned from selling the rights to his back catalogue.

Glitter's depraved targeting of minors in Vietnam was hardly his first offense.

He first served time in 1999 for storing images of child abuse. After his two-month U.K. jail spell, he visited Spain and Cuba, where he fathered a son. Glitter was booted out of Cambodia in 2003 and moved to Vung Tau in 2005.

In November the same year, the paedo was confronted by a British journalist, leading to a police investigation into his activities. He spent several days in hiding before being arrested.

Diem provided evidence at his trial in Vietnam the following year, leading to Glitter being jailed for three years for molesting her and another 12-year-old girl.

He is serving a 16-year jail term handed in Britain in 2015 for sexually abusing three young girls between 1975 and 1980.

Diem now works at a hair dresser and beauty parlor where she earns $65 a month.

Diem's case is currently in the preliminary stages, with the law firm Preda tasked with procedures busy collating the necessary documentation and evidence, including the court decision convicting Glitter in Vietnam.

Diem will give her testimony via video link.

The judge handling the case will review the testimony, and based on the evidence and the extent of harm done to Diem, will determine the amount of compensation.

Cullen said Diem holds no doubts about filing the claim. "She is an empowered young woman and has the self-confidence to state her case. She has that Vietnamese fighting spirit that demands justice," he said.

Diem, through the help of a British journalist, agreed to work with Preda to file the claim after the High Court of Justice in London ruled last year convicted pedophile Douglas Slade pay 127,000 ($166,177) to five boys he had abused in the Philippines for years.

The boys' claim for compensation was spearheaded by the foundation.
- On Sunday, January 5, morning al-Shabaab militants attacked US-Kenya naval base in Lamu

- The terrorists were repulsed when they attempted to breach security at Manda Airstrip

- Four militants were killed and five suspects have since been arrested and are in custody

- The US government says three of their soldiers were killed and two others wounded

- Six contractor-operated civilian aircraft were damaged to some degree

United States of America has confirmed one service member and two Department of Defence contractors were killed at Manda Airstrip in Lamu county in the dawn attack by al-Shabaab militants.

Two others were left nursing injuries and six contractor-operated civilian aircraft were damaged to some degree on the morning of Sunday, January 5.

READ ALSO: Hofu yatanda baada ya mbwa koko na paka kuvamia hospitali

Smoke that came from the airstrip during the early Sunday morning attack. Photo: Daily Nation

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Mombasa pastor stabs wife, takes own life during church service

In a statement issued by commander of the US-Africa command, General Stephen Townsend, the wounded are in stable condition.

"During an attack by al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida group in East Africa, earlier today, one (1) U.S. service member and two (2) Department of Defense contractors were killed at a Kenya Defense Force military base in Manda Bay, Kenya,

In addition, two (2) Department of Defense members were wounded. The wounded Americans are currently in stable condition and being evacuated," read the statement.

Photo showing when the terrorists attacked the naval base in Manda. Photo: Daily Nation

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Ex CJ Willy Mutunga's teasing response to Khalwale leaves netizens in stitches

Townsend disclosed the US was determined to defeat the terror group which has already claimed responsibility of the attack.

"Alongside our African and international partners, we will pursue those responsible for this attack and al-Shabaab who seeks to harm Americans and US interests. We remain committed to preventing al-Shabaab from maintaining a safe haven to plan deadly attacks against the US homeland, East African and international partners," he stated.

The statement further disclosed the attackers had tried to access the base through the perimeter fence but were repulsed by both US and KDF soldiers in the attack that involved indirect and small arms fire.

READ ALSO: Police in Nairobi on high alert as US-Iran tension escalate

An earlier statement issued on Sunday by KDF indicated five terrorists were killed during the attack and five other suspects have since been arrested and are helping with investigations.

"Following a military operation, 5 bodies of neutralised terrorists were recovered. Search for more is on-going. One PKM gun, 4 RPG launchers, 4 AK 47 rifles, 1 hand grenade and assorted ammunition were captured," said KDF.

The Somali-based militia group claimed responsibility saying their militants managed to enter the Camp Simba military base and took control of part of it.

However, KDF dismissed the claims and clarified the terrorists were repulsed when they attempted to breach security at the airstrip, killing four of their members dead.

"This morning at around 5:30am, an attempt was made to breach security at Manda Airstrip. The attempted breach was successfully repulsed. Four terrorists bodies have so far been found. The airstrip is safe," said KDF.

The attack forced Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) to cancel all flights into the airport before lifting up the ban later in the evening after restoring normalcy at the facility.

Do you have a groundbreaking story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690. Contact Tuko.co.ke instantly.

Source: TUKO.co.ke
California legislators on Monday introduced a bill that would ban the sale of flavored tobacco products in brick-and-mortar stores  including menthol cigarettes and the flavored e-cigarettes that experts say are to blame for the rise in youth vaping.

Senate Bill 793, co-authored by state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, is nearly identical to a measure Hill introduced last year that was withdrawn after amendments were added that would have exempted flavored hookah and flavored tobacco patented before 2000  changes the bills proponents said would have gutted its intentions.

If successful, the newly reintroduced bill would make California the second state after Massachusetts to prohibit the sale of flavored tobacco. Massachusetts ban was signed into law in November and takes effect in June.

Californias ban would apply to many more tobacco products than the federal Food and Drug Administrations recently announced partial ban on flavored e-cigarettes. The FDAs ban applies to e-cigarettes only and, within that category, exempts some types of flavored e-cigarettes. It does not apply to menthol cigarettes.

Californias bill would outlaw the sale of all flavored cigarettes and e-cigarettes (as well as cigars, cigarillos and other types of tobacco), including menthol cigarettes. Menthol masks the harsh taste of cigarettes.

Stores that violate the proposed California ban would have to pay $250 per violation, though it is unclear if that would mean a $250 penalty per product sold or per transaction. The ban would not apply to online sales of tobacco products which, if the seller is not headquartered in California, are considered interstate commerce and harder to regulate at the state level.

Flavored tobacco products are the gateway to nicotine addiction, Hill said in a statement. The tastes and aromas of candy, fruit and other popular flavors insidiously entice children, teens and others into unhealthy and potentially life-threatening habits. Thats why (the bill) is aimed at getting this death bait off store shelves: No flavored tobacco products, no exceptions, regardless of the device, the delivery system, or the product.

The measure is co-authored by 29 other legislators including Democratic state Sens. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, Steve Glazer of Orinda and Richard Pan of Sacramento, and sponsored by the American Lung Association, American Heart Association and the anti-tobacco group Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids. It is backed by Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, who previously gave her support to San Francisco legislation suspending the sale of e-cigarettes in the city.

E-cigarettes contain nicotine and are considered tobacco products. Restricting or banning flavored e-cigarettes, such as the popular mango and cucumber-flavored Juul pods, has become the focus of efforts by federal, state and local officials grappling to combat rising rates of teen vaping. (Juul, which is headquartered in San Francisco, has already stopped selling all flavors in the U.S. except menthol.) Federal data show that 5 million U.S. high school and middle school students vaped in 2019, a significant increase from 3.6 million in 2018, and that sweet and fruity flavors are popular among youth.

Many adult cigarette smokers say e-cigarettes, which researchers believe are less harmful than regular cigarettes, have helped them cut down on regular cigarettes  making the debate over restricting flavored vapes one that pits the potential benefits to adults against the potential harm to children who have never smoked before.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

The Vapor Technology Association, an industry group, was critical of the proposed legislation, saying flavor bans dont work and will drive smokers back to combustible cigarettes and create a black market for flavored products.

We know a flavor ban is simply the wrong policy, Tony Abboud, the groups executive director, said in a statement. VTA remains committed to working with California legislators on effective regulation and real solutions.

Dozens of California cities and counties have in the past few years banned the sale of flavored tobacco, and the FDA last week outlawed the sale of many flavored e-cigarettes. San Francisco, Livermore and Richmond have gone a step further, prohibiting the sale of all e-cigarettes, regardless of flavor. A few California cities recently passed, or are considering unconventional local laws imposing administrative fines on minors who vape.

Gov. Gavin Newsom in September announced an executive order seeking stricter enforcement against the sale of illicit nicotine and cannabis vaping products and a $20 million marketing campaign to educate youth and parents about the risks of vaping.

Catherine Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Cat_Ho
New Delhi, Jan 6 : The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday said it has permitted category-I banks to offer foreign exchange prices to users at all times, out of their Indian books, either by a domestic sales team or through their overseas branches.

Dealers hailed the move as a step in the right direction to help traders hedge their bets on the domestic front.

"Transactions beyond onshore market hours. Transactions with persons resident outside India, through their foreign branches and subsidiaries may also be undertaken beyond onshore market hours," the RBI said in a release.

The central bank said the decision came as it accepted the recommendation of the task force on the offshore rupee market.
Commodity markets are on red alert over escalating tensions in the Middle East with gold hitting a seven-year high and oil prices rising to $70 per barrel.

The spot gold price surged 1.8 per cent to $1,579.72, its highest since April 2013. Bullion prices have risen as gold is often seen as a safe-haven investment during times of political and financial uncertainty.

Benjamin Lu, an analyst at Phillip Futures said: 'The geopolitics is taking centre-stage.

The killing of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani has prompted concerns about oil supply

'The Iran-U.S. tensions have escalated to a boiling point, that's what has been pushing gold prices up.'

Lu added: 'If it (gold) breaks the key resistance level of $1,585, it would lead to the key psychological level of $1,600.'

The surge in oil prices started immediately after the killing of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani prompted fears the United States could soon be embroiled in a war with Iran.

Brent crude has now topped $70 a barrel for the first time since September 2019, making gains of up to 7 per cent since Soleimani's death.

The price rises reflect concerns that a new Middle Eastern conflict could disrupt oil supplies.

The region accounts for nearly half of the world's oil production, while a fifth of the world's oil shipments pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage between Iran and the Gulf States.

On Sunday President Trump threatened to impose sanctions on Iraq, the second largest producer among the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, if US troops were forced to withdraw from the country.

Trump also said that the United States will retaliate against Iran if Tehran were to strike back after the killing.

ING analysts said in a briefing: 'The big uncertainty now for markets is how Iran will respond to this attack.'

'While clearly, the latest developments put U.S. assets in the region at risk, it also increases the risk of disruptions to oil supply in the Middle East, be it through the Iranians disrupting Strait of Hormuz oil flows, or through attacking energy infrastructure of U.S. allies in the region.'

Silver also rose gaining 1.9 per cent to reach $18.38 an ounce, after touching a more than three month high at $18.50.
Company Provides Customized Learning Paths Developed by AI-Powered Online Platform for Enterprises, Colleges and Universities

ANN ARBOR, MI / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2020 / Amesite Inc., (the "Company") an artificial intelligence software company providing fully-managed, customized, online learning ecosystems for the enterprise and higher education markets, today announced that it has closed an oversubscribed $5.5 million financing round to certain accredited investors. The Company has raised a total of $11 million in funding from private financings since its founding in 2017.

As the Company continues to grow its portfolio of artificial intelligence software products designed to improve learning, the net proceeds from the financing will be used to support sales and marketing efforts across its growing customer base and support company operations.

"To ensure employees have the in-demand skills they need to succeed in the future of work, and students and teachers have access to up-to-the minute learning materials, we are committed to investing in our machine learning and artificial intelligence-powered platform," said Dr. Ann Marie Sastry, chief executive officer, Amesite Inc. "Our most recent financing will be instrumental in helping us support our growing customer base of enterprises and higher education institutions, while bolstering our continued software innovation efforts and growth into new markets."

Laidlaw & Company (U.K.) Ltd. acted as the exclusive placement agent for the offering. Laidlaw's Head of Capital Markets, Jim Ahern, commented, "Laidlaw is excited to be partnering with Amesite, who bring world class innovation and expertise that is needed to unlock the tremendous value of applying machine learning and artificial intelligence to learning environments. We look forward to our journey ahead with them."

Amesite's online learning solutions for enterprises, colleges, universities, faculty and students utilize artificial intelligence technologies, including machine learning and natural language processing, to deliver cost effective, cloud-based digital versions of courses that greatly enhance and improve the learning experience of students. Amesite's online platform includes customized user messaging and tracking as well as seamless integration of updated topics and materials into traditional course curriculum, creating a more meaningful experience for both students and instructors alike.

The securities sold in Amesite's private financing have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or state securities laws and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") or an applicable exemption from registration requirements. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction.

About Amesite Inc.

Amesite is a high-tech artificial intelligence software company offering a cloud-based platform for learning products to be cost-effectively and conveniently delivered to learners online, in business, higher education and K12. Amesite uses artificial intelligence technologies to provide customized environments for learners, and easier-to-manage interfaces for instructors. For more information, visit https://amesite.com/.

Forward Looking Statements

This communication contains forward-looking statements concerning the Company, the Company's planned online machine learning platform, the Company's business plans, any future commercialization of the Company's online learning solutions, potential customers, business objectives and other matters. Forward-looking statements generally include statements that are predictive in nature and depend upon or refer to future events or conditions, and include words such as "may," "will," "should," "would," "expect," "plan," "believe," "intend," "look forward," and other similar expressions among others. Statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on current beliefs and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results could differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. Risks facing the Company and its planned platform are set forth in the Company's filings with the SEC. Except as required by applicable law, the Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement, or to make any other forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Media Contact:

Matthew Pennacchio

(212) 691-2800

pennacchio@sunshinesachs.com

SOURCE: Amesite, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/572127/Amesite-Inc-Raises-55-Million-in-Oversubscribed-Financing-Round
I knew Randy as a friend and a tireless businessman, said Edwardsville Mayor Hal Patton. He was heavily involved in our Downtown Edwardsville revitalization, but more importantly, his investments were secondary to his philanthropy.

We are struggling to get our heads around this sickening and senseless murder, Patton said.

In 2019, Goris firm, formerly Gori Julian & Associates, donated $1 million to his alma mater, St. Louis University. Gori earned his bachelors degree from SLU in 1995 and a law degree from SLU Law in 1998. The donation prompted the institution to rename a lobby of its downtown law school the Gori Julian Grand Lobby.

Friends say Gori loomed large as a figure in the Metro East legal community.

His death was a total shock, said Troy Walton of Walton Telken Injury Attorneys. Walton knew Gori both professionally and as a friend, and said the impact on both the legal community and the local Madison County community is devastating.
Put this down if you will to the grump of a watcher of long-ago Idaho legislative sessions  the arrival of a new decade tends to put exclamation points on the passage of time  but in some ways the Idaho Legislature functioned better in years, in decades, past.

And some of that has to do with the environment in which the work is done.

Im comparing the legislature of today with that of three or four decades ago, but leaving out (for purposes here) the specific people or parties involved. Consider instead how they worked, and especially the access people had to those legislators.

There have been advances. Technology has helped. It allows for better presentations and better communications, and the ability of people around the state (and beyond) to observe, in real time, whats going on, and even allows legislators to hear from people at remote locations (an effort that has been launched relatively recently and may be expanded). The statehouse renovation of some years ago has resulted in larger and more attractive quarters, and much of the open access to the building that was a long-time hallmark of the old way happily has been preserved.

But any visitor to the legislature who showed up in 1980 and then in 2020 might be shocked by the diminished level of access to legislators. There was a further-back time when access (especially by lobbyists, once known to stand right behind curtains that ringed the chambers) may have been too great. In 1980, most Idaho legislators did not have offices, and many of them worked at their desks on the Senate and House floor. Legislative offices were located nearby, and lawmakers who used them often were easy to find there.

Yes, those quarters were cramped and, really, even in 1980 werent adequate to needs. But today, the more common reality is that legislators either appear in meetings on the floor or in committees, and then appear to vanish  often into offices located floors away, and difficult to find if youre not familiar with the building. Obviously they can talk to whoever they want to talk to, but unless youre staff or a friend or ally you may never bump into them. Like too many of us, more than in decades past, they often live and work in a bubble.

All this is what came to my mind in watching the latest rounds of the long-running squabble between the leaders of the Idaho House and state Treasurer Julie Ellsworth over the office space on the first floor of the Statehouse, which long has been occupied by the treasurers office: The legislature wants the space for additional offices, and the treasurers office doesnt want to move. A court hearing on the dispute is set for Tuesday.

Last week a group called Priorities Over Private Offices (the origins and membership of the group have been unclear) announced itself and blasted the legislative move and the estimated millions in spending for the renovation.

Its arguments included, Idahoans do not want to waste $10.5 million of taxpayer dollars on offices that will be used three months a year. Idahoans do not want the historic original offices within the Idaho Capitol destroyed to make room for new offices to have private meetings with lobbyists. The publics business should be conducted in public; not in closed door meetings with lobbyists.

Looking ahead, as the state grows so will its legislative (and other state) operations, and so will office space. That may be close to inevitable.

But legislators should be careful, maybe more careful than they have been up to now, that they do not shut themselves off from the public  from people who want to see them, as opposed to people they want to see.

Remembering back to the years around 1980, I can recall many an occasion when the course of legislation, and the views of a legislator, changed because of unexpected or even chance encounters. Those seem to be happening less. The legislature convening this week might do well to keep some of those long-time trends, and the problems as well as the solutions of better working space, in mind.

Randy Stapilus is a former Idaho newspaper reporter and editor and blogs at www.ridenbaugh.com. He can be reached at stapilus@ridenbaugh.com.

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A fire has broken out in scrub on Truman Lane in Mount Maunganui.

The fire has been caused by arcing of the power lines, says Fire and Emergency New Zealand northern communications shift manager Mau Barbara.

He says the fire is about 5m by 10m and is in scrub across the road from the transfer station.

It doesnt look like its much at all so theyll have it under control pretty quickly.

There are two fire appliances in attendance and the power company is not required on the scene, he says.

Trains can proceed as normal.

A caller to the 0800 SUNLIVE news hotline says they called 111 about the fire.

She says she was driving along Truman Lane, near the dump, with her windows down when she heard a spark.

It was coming from the powerlines opposite the transfer station.

It set the grass below on fire and it spread quickly.

A guy in a ute stopped and tried to put it out with a small fire extinguisher, but didnt quite get it. Two guys from the transfer station then came out with slightly bigger fire extinguishers.

She says the area that caught on fire is a vacant lot with lots of tall, dry grass.

She also mentioned that the traffic lights along Sandhurst are currently out, which she believes is because of the powerlines sparking.

There are currently 263 properties in the area without power, according to the Powerco website.

At the scene?

Call 0800SUNLIVE or email photos to newsroom@thesun.co.nz
The Vancouver Resource Investment Conference (VRIC), one of the largest of its kind, will be celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2020.

This milestone year for VRIC will see the event host over 60 keynote speakers, 350 exhibiting companies, and 9,000 investors, bringing together a host of experts from the mineral exploration, metals, oil and gas, and renewable energy sectors.

An exclusive event for any and all stakeholders in the metals industry, VRIC has delivered vital insights into the precious metals and mining sectors. This year's speaker list will feature renowned leaders of the metals industry such as Peter Schiff, Lukas Lundin, Rick Rule, Frank Holmes, and Ross Beatty.

Once again, Kitco News will be moderating the Ultimate Gold Panel, a lively discussion on the future of the gold space, hosted by anchor Daniela Cambone. Follow Kitco News from January 19-20, 2020, as we interview the giants and market movers of the industry.

Attend Kitco's keynote at VRIC: three unsung metals poised to break out

The commodity space is cyclical, so what are some of the most out-of-favor metals, and what are the factors that are going to drive them higher?

Mining editor Michael McCrae will give a presentation this Sunday at the Vancovuer Resource Investment Conference. The talk will explore some factors that will set up some currently moribund metals for strong performance in the long term. Emphasis is on metals off the beaten track, stories that investors may not have considered.



TALK TITLE: Overlooked and Unloved: Three Metals That Are Poised For A Comeback

WHERE: Vancouver Resource Investment Conference, Workshop #2, Vancouver Convention Centre West, Vancouver, B.C.

WHEN: 1 p.m., Sunday, January 19, 2020

WHO: Michael McCrae, Mining Audience and Data Intelligence Manager at Kitco

Optimize your digital marketing efforts in 2020

Want to understand how to market your company effectively and efficiently?

Attend Kitco Media's marketing workshop for exploration and development companies in the resource sector. Four expert panelists will be gathered to share their insights: Rita Bennett from Great Bear Resources, Dylan Berg from Digital257 Technologies Inc., James McClelland from TSX Media and a Kitco marketing specialist.

Some topics that will be covered are devising a compelling story to tell, understanding the components of a marketing campaign, and learing how to target and reach investors.

Talk will include a complimentary breakfast. Attendees will also be entered to win a mining content billboard with a three-month run, a US$6,600 value.



TITLE: Kitco Media Marketing Workshop

LOCATION: Room #113, Vancouver Convention Centre West, Vancouver, B.C.

DATE: Monday, January 20, 2020

TIME: 8 a.m. to 8:40 a.m.

To attend email Carlos Madruga at cmadruga@kitco.com. Hurry, space is limited.

Brought to you by Great Bear Resources

Send in all your questions at newsfeedback@kitco.com. Follow us @KitcoNewsNOW for real-time updates!

Daniela Cambone is the Editor-in-Chief for Kitco News, covering global markets, economic news and commodities, including oil, silver and copper with a primary focus on gold. She is based in New York City. Her work is simultaneously featured and covered on Jim Cramer's TheStreet.com.

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The next leader of the Ontario Liberals will be elected by delegates chosen by up to 37,831 members.

Thats how many people paid $20 to join the party that governed the province for almost 15 years before being toppled by Premier Doug Fords Progressive Conservatives in 2018.

While the membership cut-off to join the Liberals was Dec. 2, the party waited until Monday to reveal how many people had signed up.

I am so pleased to welcome so many new members into our party at this crucial moment in our history, party president Brian Johns said in a statement.

It is a wonderful endorsement of our brand and our values to have so many new members join our ranks, said Johns.

There are six candidates vying for the Liberal leadership: MPPs Michael Coteau and Mitzie Hunter; former minister Steven Del Duca; ex-candidates Kate Graham and Alvin Tedjo; and Ottawa lawyer Brenda Hollingsworth.

Ontarians want strong, responsible leadership and they know that each of the candidates running to lead our party and our province are capable of providing that leadership, said Johns.

Party members will elect the delegates to the March 7 leadership convention at meetings around the province on Feb. 8 and Feb. 9.

Sixteen delegates will chosen in each of Ontarios 124 ridings. In addition to those 1,984 delegates, 13 university campus clubs will each choose eight delegates and there are 10 Ontario Womens Liberal Commission delegates.

As well, some 400 ex-officio members are eligible to be delegates. This includes current and former Liberal MPPs, the 79 federal Grit MPs from Ontario, and riding association presidents.

While around 2,500 delegates could cast ballots, its expected fewer than 1,800 will show up at the March 7 convention in Mississauga.

Del Duca, the former Vaughan-Woodbridge MPP whose campaign sold 14,173 memberships, is the front-runner in the contest.

Coteau (Don Valley East), also a former minister in premier Kathleen Wynnes government, sold 8,500 memberships.

Hunter (Scarborough Guildwood), another former cabinet minister, sold 2,000 memberships.

Tedjo, who finished third in Oakville-Burlington North in the 2018 election, sold about 1,000 new memberships.

Hollingsworth did not turn in any new memberships.

Graham, a third-place candidate in London North Centre in the 2018 election, has not disclosed her sales tally.

The six Liberal hopefuls will next debate Sunday in Sudbury. They will then take to the stage in Ottawa on Jan. 20, at the Cornell community centre in Markham on Feb. 1, at TVO on Feb. 19, and the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto on Feb. 24.

Whoever wins in March has their work cut out for them.

The Liberals currently hold five seats in the 124-member legislature, well below the threshold of 12 MPPs for official party standing, though they are expected to win byelections Ford will soon call in vacant Grit seats in Ottawa-Vanier and Orleans.

They still have a hefty debt to clear from the 2018 campaign and will need to find scores of new candidates to run in the 2022 election.

But the most recent public opinion polls suggest the leaderless Grits are at least in a statistical tie with Fords Tories and ahead of Andrea Horwaths New Democrats.

Correction  Jan. 6. 2020: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly referred to Alvin Tedjo as the runner-up in Oakville-Burlington North in the 2018 election.

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Every name on the BrandBucket marketplace is exclusively listed with BrandBucket. That means that all of our sellers are very responsive, making for quick domain transfers.

A dedicated BrandBucket agent will manage your domain transfer from beginning to end, ensuring a secure and easy transaction. They will manage the receipt of the domain into one of BrandBuckets secure registrar accounts and then complete the transfer to you.

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After we receive the payment and verify it, we will reach out via email to confirm which registrar you want the domain transferred to. We also provide a link to our tracking system, where you can communicate with us, check on the status of your transfer, view your invoice, and download your logo files.

In most cases, if a domain is moved between accounts at a single registrar, the transfer is quick and usually completes within 48 hours. If a domain changes registrars (in other words, you would like to move it away from where it is currently registered), the transfer is slower. The total transfer time can then be anywhere from 48 hours to 7 days.

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The Election Commission (EC) on Monday (January 6) announced that the election for 70-member Delhi Assembly will take place in single-phase on February 8, 2020. The counting of votes will take place on February 11, announced Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora.

The notification will be issued on January 14, 2020 and the last date of nomination is January 21, 2020. The scrutiny of nomination will take place on January 22. The last date for withdrawal of nominations will be January 24.

Addressing a press conference, CEC Arora said that 90,000 policemen will be deployed to ensure that the polling process is held smoothly across Delhi. Arora also told the media that the additional secretary will handle any additional deployment of officials on poll duty. The announcement of the election schedule means that Model Code of Conduct will come into effect in Delhi immediately.

The CEC also informed the media that consultation was held with three secretaries before finalising the election schedule. He added that the EC officials also held meeting with Delhi Police officials and other officials on December 26 to check preparedness for the upcoming polls.

According to the CEC, total electors in the final electoral roll of Delhi are 1,46,92,136 and polling will held at 13,750 polling stations. The term of the current Delhi Assembly ends on February 22 and a new House has to be constituted before that.

Live TV

In the 2015 Delhi assembly election, Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had performed superbly to win 67 out of the total 70 seats at stake. The BJP had won only three seats, while the Congress had failed to open its account.

Delhi's ruling party AAP as well as BJP and Congress have already begun door-to-door canvassing ahead of the announcement of dates for the assembly election.

Earlier on Monday, Union Home Minister and BJP working Amit Shah targeted Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Congress for failing to work for the development of Delhi.

Highlighting the move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to regularise unauthorised colonies in Delhi, Shah slammed Kejriwal for fooling the residents of the city and not keeping the promises made by his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). "I want to reassure the residents of unauthorised colonies of Delhi that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will help them in getting their own houses replacing the slums. A pilot project has started and 20,000 slums will give way to houses soon," asserted Shah.
Akima today announced that a joint venture between Lockwood Hills, an Akima company, and DTSV has been awarded a contract to provide Visa support services (VSS) to the Department of States Bureau of Consular Affairs. The joint venture, named LDRM, will provide management, logistical, and administrative support for the processing and adjudication of visa applications. The contract has a potential 5-year period of performance and a total contract value of $388 million if all options are exercised.

The processing of U.S. visas for foreign citizens to travel to the United States is a critical mission of the Department of State, said Don Laney, General Manager of Lockwood Hills. We are excited to leverage our experience providing document review and processing services, as well as managing large-scale support services staff, to support this mission and while maintaining operational excellence.

The VSS work will take place primarily at the National Visa Center in Portsmouth, New Hampshire as well as the Kentucky Consular Center in Williamsburg, Kentucky. LDRM staff will provide support for the processing of visa applications that lead to permanent residence, as well as shorter-term visas for tourism, business, research, and temporary work.

The LDRM team is purpose-built for the visa support work required by the Bureau of Consular Affairs, said J. William David, DTSV President and CEO. We are already working hard to get operations underway, with a focus on ensuring a smooth and well-coordinated transition.

About LDRM

LDRM is a joint venture of Lockwood Hills, an Akima company, and DTSV. LDRM specializes in background investigation support, records management, business automation and optimization, and administrative support. For more information visit http://www.ldrmllc.com.

About Lockwood Hills

Lockwood Hills provides critical mission support services for federal civilian and military operations. With proven expertise in administrative services, aviation services, logistics services, and protective services, Lockwood Hills can conquer the operational challenges of any federal mission  from remote installations stateside to secure locations overseas. To learn more about Lockwood Hills, visit http://www.lockwoodhills.com.

About Akima

Akima is a global enterprise with more than 7,500 employees, delivering agile solutions to the federal government in the core areas of aviation, construction, facilities and logistics, IT and mission support, protective services and detention management, and systems engineering. As a subsidiary of NANA, an Alaska Native Corporation owned by more than 14,300 Inupiat shareholders, Akimas core mission is to enable superior outcomes for our customers missions while simultaneously creating a long-lived asset for NANA consistent with our Inupiat values. In 2019, Washington Technology ranked Akima #38 amongst the top 100 government contractors. To learn more about Akima, visit http://www.akima.com.
(Newser)  The "Naked Philanthropist" will be sending out a lot of nude photos after she says she raised $700,000 for victims of Australia's bushfires. Los Angeles model Kaylen Ward urged Twitter followers Friday to donate to groups such as the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Victoria Country Fire Authority, and Red Cross, with a vow that confirmation of "every $10 you donate = one nude picture from me to your DM." The 20-year-old, who already sells nude pics online, was soon flooded with responses. "I was expecting to raise maybe $1,000, but the tweet blew up," she tells BuzzFeed. In another tweet, she estimated $700,000 had been raised by Sunday. "Not all heroes wear capes, some wear nothing at all," one user wrote, per the New Zealand Herald, which put the funds raised closer to $500,000. Another said Ward was "literally doing more for Australia than their own prime minister."

story continues below

Ward understands more than most what it's like to flee a deadly fire, having escaped to a houseboat for days in the summer of 2018 amid the Carr Fire in California. "I got to see firsthand how many people were affected," she tells BuzzFeed, which notes some of her neighbors lost homes. With the "devastating" Australia fires, "I was really concerned there wasn't a lot of media coverage and not a lot of people donating." But the fundraiser means Ward is now suffering herself. After noting that "my family disowned me, and the guy I like won't talk to me," Ward suggested Monday people were illegally sharing her pics. "You guys have made the internet such a dark place for me," wrote the model, whose Instagram account was also deactivated. "Think about how the s--- you do affects me. Now think about millions of people doing things to me all at once," she added. "Leave me ALONE." (Read more nude photos stories.)
Karur Vysya Bank slumped 5.27% to Rs 56.6 after the bank's chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director (MD) P R Seshadri resigned, citing personal reasons.

The bank informed stock exchanges on Monday that Seshadri will continue to function till the end of this financial year 2019-20.

On standalone basis, Karur Vysya Bank reported a 24.4% decline in net profit to Rs 63.33 crore on a 11.2% rise in total income to Rs 1815.24 crore in Q2 September 2019 over Q2 September 2018.

Karur Vysya Bank is a privately held Indian bank, headquartered in Karur in Tamil Nadu. The bank operates in four business segments: treasury operations, corporate/ wholesale banking operations, retail banking operations and other banking operations.

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A new 24-hour cable news channel aimed at an African American audience has once again delayed its launch - this time until Black History Month.

The Black News Channel, a new venture co-founded by former Republican Congressman JC Watts, was originally scheduled to go on the air on November 15.

The network then announced that it pushed back its launch date to January 6.

But now the channel is expected to be beamed into 70 million homes across the country starting on February 10.

Black History Month is an appropriate time to launch the Black News Channel, Bob Brillante, co-founder and CEO for BNC, announced in a press release last week.

We are committed to make sure that when our viewers tune in they are witness to a quality viewing experience.

A new 24-hour cable news channel aimed at an African American audience, which is being launched by co-founders JC Watts (left) and Bob Brillante (right), has pushed back its premiere date to February 10

The Black News Channel was originally scheduled to go on the air in November, but it has twice changed its launch date

BNC said it wanted to wait with its premiere so that it could reach a wider and younger audience that gets its news from digital platforms including live streaming and mobile apps.

In announcing the first delay back in November, Watts told USA Today that the network wanted to attract millennial viewers, 98 per cent of whom have cell phones.

More than two-thirds of millennials use their mobile devices as their primary source of news.

Watts said BNC has already reached distribution deals with media giants like Comcast, Charter, and Dish Network.

Our technicians, crew and launch partners are working overtime to make sure that the additional pieces are in place to provide our African American audience with the programming that tells more of our story in a way that is not provided by current news outlets, Watts said.

We will make history together as we launch February 10, 2020 to more than 70 million homes and devices.

BNC will be based out of Tallahassee, Florida.

Watts and Brillante, a longtime television executive, had initially planned to launch a media venture tailored to an African American audience more than a decade ago, but the recession of 2008 forced them to put off those plans.

The new venture will feature a lineup of award-winning journalists, including Laverne McGee (above)

Theres 200-plus stations, but there's nowhere you can get your remote and say, I want to find something that is culturally specific to the African American community, Watts said.

Thats not just in terms of current affairs, but that is wellness.

You wont find any network today that talks about sickle cell (disease) and diabetes as it relates to the black community.

The news channel announced its prime-time news anchors, including Fred Hickman, the former CNN host.

Hickman has most recently been seen on the airwaves in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The network will also feature two Emmy Award-winning journalists - Laverne McGee and Anthony Amey.

Watts is expected to host his own documentary-style show in which he travels across the country and interviews African Americans about their concerns.
Although the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, the United States military kept a large standing force deployed around the world as World War II gave way to the Cold War. Presidents, invoking their role as commander in chief, had directed those forces to launch or escalate wars, including in Korea and Vietnam.

One part says presidents may only introduce forces into hostilities after Congress has authorized using force or if the nation has been attacked. No subsequent president has respected that narrow list of when he may unilaterally dispatch forces into combat.

Another part requires presidents to consult with Congress before deploying troops into actual or imminent hostilities. Most presidents have obeyed this, but Mr. Trump did not before ordering the Suleimani strike.

Yet another part  important here  says if a president deploys combat troops without authorization, the deployment must end after 60 days unless lawmakers approve it in the interim. It also empowers Congress to direct the president to terminate the operation before that deadline.

What are Democrats trying to do?

They are trying to use the War Powers Resolution to block a war with Iran.

Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, has already proposed a joint resolution to do so, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Sunday that the House would act this week on a similar measure. The House versions sponsor will be Representative Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan and a former C.I.A. and Pentagon analyst specializing in Shiite militias.
Irvine, Calif. -- Young people's view of their family's social status was more strongly associated with their mental health and readiness for future education and work than how much money, education or occupational prestige their parents have, according to new research led by the University of California, Irvine. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that by age 18, youths who rated their family as having a higher place in society had fewer difficulties negotiating the transition to adulthood, independent of the objective position of the family.

"The amount of financial resources children have access to is one of the most reliable predictors of their health and life chances," said Candice Odgers, UCI professor of psychological science and senior author of the report. "But these findings show that how young people see their family's place in a hierarchical system also matters. Their perceptions of social status were an equally good, and often stronger, indicator of how well they were going to do with respect to mental health and social outcomes."

Researchers followed 2,232 same-sex twins born in England and Wales in 1994-95 who were part of the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study based at King's College London. Adolescents assessed their family's social ranking at ages 12 and 18. By late adolescence, these beliefs signaled how well the teen was doing, independent of the family's access to financial resources, healthcare, adequate nutrition and educational opportunities. This pattern was not seen at age 12.

Study findings also showed that despite growing up in the same family, the twins' views were not always identical. By age 18, the twin who rated the family's standing as higher was less likely to be convicted of a crime; was more often educated, employed or in training; and had fewer mental health problems than his or her sibling.

"Testing how young people's perceptions related to well-being among twins provided a rare opportunity to control for poverty status as well as environmental and genetic factors shared by children within the same family," said Joshua Rivenbark, an M.D./Ph.D. student at Duke University and the study's lead author. "Siblings grew up with equal access to objective resources, but many differed in where they placed their family on the social ladder - which then signaled how well each twin was doing."

Researchers did not discover evidence that youths' opinions of where their family was ranked were robustly associated with measures of physical health or cognitive functioning. These were more strongly linked with objective markers of family income and social status.

"We want to emphasize caution in interpreting our findings, given that adolescents' experiences of being convicted or suffering from mental health problems may also influence their views of where their family stands in society," Rivenbark said. "Studies that experimentally manipulate how young people see their social position would be needed to sort out cause from effect."

"Targeting adolescents' views of where they stand in society alone will never fully combat larger inequalities" Odgers added "But as the gap between the rich and the rest grows creative solutions focusing on both societal and individual factors are needed to help young people to overcome unprecedented obstacles to social mobility and move their way up the social ladder."

###

Contributors to the study also included researchers from King's College London and Pennsylvania State University. The E-Risk Study was funded by the Medical Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council, National Institute of Child and Human Development, Jacobs Foundation, British Academy, and the Nuffield Foundation.

After the PNAS article publishes, the study will be available at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1820845116

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 222 degree programs. It's located in one of the world's safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County's second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit http://www.uci.edu.

Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists.
The Dusun Resort, where Nora Quoirin was staying when she disappeared last August, has confirmed its legal team is looking into a civil case filed on behalf of the teenager's parents.

Meabh Josephine and Sebastien Marie Philippe Quoirin have filed the civil case against Helen Marion Todd, the operator of the Malaysian resort.

Nora, along with her parents and two siblings, had been staying at The Dusun before her disappearance and subsequent death.

The Quoirins in their claim said Todd failed to keep the premises safe and secure, did not install and maintain a CCTV system in the premises and also did not maintain the ledge of a window in the room where the family stayed.

Filed on their behalf by lawyer Sankara Nair, it amounts to special damages of 152,707.90 ringgit (33,355), general damages assessed by the court, damages for bereavement of 30,000 ringgit (6,552), and others.

The director of The Dusun, Haanim Bamadhaj, confirmed it had received confirmation of the civil suit and would issue an official statement in the coming days.

"Yes we are aware and we had received it earlier. However, I am so sorry I can't divulge details on when we received it," she told a local newspaper.

She said the resort's legal team is looking into the matter.

"We will issue an official statement on the matter once we get the clearance from the legal team," she said.

She added that despite the heated debate surrounding the case, the management of the resort was grateful to have support from its guests.

"We appreciate every message and kind words. However, we hope that everyone will be patient," she said.

The case is due to take place at Seremban Sessions Court on January 21, in front of Judge Rahimah Binti Rahim.

Nora disappeared from the resort on August 4 last year after checking into the property with her two siblings a day earlier, but she was not found in the room the following morning, and a window that could only be opened from the inside was found open.

The remains of the 15-year-old were found 10 days after she went missing.

A post-mortem conducted by Malaysian officials on the teenager found that she had died of internal bleeding, which was probably caused by hunger and stress.

But in December, Mr and Mrs Quoirin said that they still believed there was a "criminal element" to their daughter's death.
An Ontario business is raising money to help an African-American man stabbed on December 21 in what police called a racially motivated attack inside a fast-food restaurant.

The Idaho State Journal newspaper reported that Mackeys Steakhouse & Pub has helped raise nearly $4,000 to help Hughes with medical bills.

The Ontario Police Department said Ronnell Hughes, 48, had been seeking a job at an Arbys Restaurant inside the Pilot Truck Stop when he was abruptly stabbed without provocation. Police said Arbys employees came to his rescue and subdued the attacker.

Police arrested Nolan Strauss, a 26-year-old white man from Nebraska. Authorities said Strauss, a driver for May Trucking Co., will likely face charges including attempted murder, assault and committing a bias crime.

The Idaho paper reported that Hughes started working at Mackeys one day before the attack. When steakhouse owner Angie Grove learned of the crime, she told the paper she wanted to do something to show that her community doesnt tolerate hate.

I just think its our personal responsibility, if there is something you can reach out and do in your own community, no matter how big or small it doesnt matter, she told the paper.

Mackeys held a silent auction that raised $900 and donated a percentage of their sales to the help Hughes. That raised $1,800. Cash donations brought in another $1,200.

A GoFundMe account has also been set up to help Hughes.

--Tom Hallman Jr.; thallman@oregonian.com; 503 221-8224; @thallmanjr

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Members of various students and youth organisations staged a demonstration at the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) here on Monday evening to denounce the violence at the JNU campus in New Delhi.

Maharashtra Minister and Congress leader Vishwajeet Kadam also took part in the protest.

Holding placards and shouting slogans, the agitators took part in the protests and condemned the attack on the JNU students and teachers.

Violence broke out inside the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) president Aishe Ghosh, were injured. The Left-backed JNUSU and the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) have blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.

The protest lasted for more than three hours on the varsity campus and saw participation of students, members from various organizations, citizens and some of the JNU alumni.

Agitating students also recited Faiz Ahmed Faiz's poem 'Hum Dekhenge', which was recently at the centre of a row at the IIT Kanpur.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Donald Trump has suffered a stinging rebuke over his actions towards Iran from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which took to Twitter to remind the president: Youre not a dictator.

The panel, chaired by New York Democrat Eliot Engel, was responding to one of Mr Trumps own tweets in which he warned Tehran against taking violent retribution against America in response to the killing of influential general Qassem Soleimani in a US air strike near Baghdad International Airport on Friday.

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any US person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner, the president wrote on Sunday evening. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!

Parodying his aggressive legalese, the House committee responded: This Media Post will serve as a reminder that war powers reside in the Congress under the United States Constitution. And that you should read the War Powers Act. And that youre not a dictator.

The act alluded to in the reprimand refers to a resolution introduced in 1973 in the wake of the Korean and Vietnam wars requiring any US president to actively seek the consent of Congress before launching the military into armed conflict.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

While Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution recognises the president as the commander-in-chief of the army and navy, Article I, Section 8 leaves the responsibility for actually declaring war in the hands of elected representatives, therein ensuring the separation of powers.

Mr Trump signed off on the assassination of Soleimani  in an attack that also killed four members of the Popular Mobilization Forces including Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis  from his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago early in the new year, declining to inform Congress or other world leaders who can expect to suffer the consequences should Iran retaliate as it has threatened to do.

The president was similarly criticised in October for failing to brief House speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff  two members of Washingtons gang of eight  ahead of the operation to kill Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

He has also repeatedly made the worrying and mistaken claim that Article II of the Constitution gives him the right to do whatever I want as president, notably during an address to conservative student activists at a Turning Point USA summit in July last year.

Chairman Engel used his own Twitter account to add his voice to the chorus of condemnation against Mr Trumps recklessness, stating: The American people dont want war with Iran, and neither do I. We need to send a clear message to the White House: dont plunge this country into an ill-conceived war against Iran.

In the Middle East, Iranians have taken to the streets en masse to mourn the generals death while the countrys technology minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi has labelled Mr Trump: A terrorist in a suit.
The Centre on Monday approved the release of Rs 5,908.56 crore to seven states, including Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Assam, as assistance for the damage caused due to various calamities last year.

The Home Ministry, in a statement, said the decision was taken at a meeting of a high-level committee (HLC), chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

The HLC approved additional central assistance of Rs 5908.56 crore to seven states from the Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) of which Rs 616.63 crore will be given to Assam, Rs 284.93 crore to Himachal Pradesh, Rs 1869.85 crore to Karnataka, Rs 1749.73 crore to Madhya Pradesh, Rs 956.93 crore to Maharashtra, Rs 63.32 to Tripura and Rs 367.17 crore to Uttar Pradesh for or landslides or cloudburst during the 2019 southwest monsoon, the statement said.

Earlier, the central government has released an interim financial assistance of Rs 3,200 crore to four states -- Rs 1,200 crore to Karnataka, Rs 1,000 crore to Madhya Pradesh, Rs 600 crore to Maharashtra and Rs 400 crore to Bihar.

During 2019-20, the government has released Rs 8,068.33 crore to 27 states as central share from the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF).

The central government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been providing full support to states by providing timely logistics and financial resources to supplement efforts of the state governments to deal with the situation effectively in the wake of natural calamities, the statement said.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was present in the meeting, along with senior officers of the ministries of Home Affairs, Finance, Agriculture and NITI Aayog.
Students at a Hong Kong university where riot police fired hundreds of rounds of tear gas and were met with petrol bombs hurled across makeshift barricades in November, returned to class on after police made dozens more arrests during a protest at the weekend.



Students returned to the Shatin campus of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) for the first time after the authorities ended the last semester early following the campus battle, which saw police fire some 1,000 rounds of tear gas in an assault on the main campus.



While the majority of damage to campus facilities had been repaired, including widespread protest graffiti, a Goddess of Democracy statue remained near the college entrance, bearing a banner with the words "Five demands, not one less."



Workers were still resurfacing the No. 2 bridge, where the conflict between police and protesters had been most fierce, and debris from the siege including spent tear gas canisters, umbrellas and gas mask filters remained strewn around a nearby grassy slope, the Apple Daily newspaper reported.



"Several CUHK school buses damaged during the conflict are still parked in the campus, looking like a school bus cemetery," the paper reported.



Security was tight, with newly installed checkpoints requiring a current student ID card to get in, university president Rocky Tuan announced in an open letter to students.



"For security reasons, access to the University remains restricted and controlled for the time being," Tuan said. "I must ask for your patience and understanding in allowing time for the campus to ease back to its former state of diversity and vibrancy."



Luo Huining, the new head of the Chinese liaison office in Hong Kong, speaks briefly with the media in Hong Kong on Jan. 6, 2020. AFP 'Negligible' levels of chemicals

Tuan said the authorities had taken soil, air and water samples and tested them for harmful materials, "including dioxins and cyanide," in a reference to widespread public health concerns over the effects of lingering tear gas residue on public health.



"All test results have been received, and I am pleased to report that the levels of the harmful chemicals tested are all negligible and do not pose danger to human health," he wrote.



As the city began its eighth month of protests, Beijing replaced its envoy to Hong Kong with an official who reminded the city's seven million people that its most powerful supporter was "the motherland."



"Over the last six months, Hong Kong's situation has been worrying," Luo Huining said as he took over the directorship of Beijing's Central Liaison Office in Hong Kong.



"I sincerely wish Hong Kong and Hong Kong compatriots well," said Luo, who replaces Wang Zhimin, who had only been in post for a couple of years.



Luo's arrival coincided with renewed clashes between between police and protesters in Sheung Shui district on following a protest over the sheer number of cross-border shoppers from neighboring mainland Chinese cities who use the city as a source for trusted brands in essential household goods, including infant formula milk.



Brands made in China have been hit by a string of public health scandals including the tainted milk scandal that left unknown numbers of babies and toddlers affected by melamine added to the powder to resemble protein.



"Parallel traders" also take advantage of duty-free goods -- especially medicines and medical supplies -- bought in bulk under Hong Kong's separate status as a free port, lugging them back across the border to sell.



Parallel trading

Parallel trading has affected local communities by spawning large numbers of similar shops and large-scale facilities to cater to mainland shoppers who pile into neighborhoods in buses, prompting growing tensions with local residents.



Some 10,000 people took to the streets of Sheung Shui on , with the majority dispersing at the end of the march, before police launched a baton charge at the remainder with no apparent provocation.



More than a million people took to the streets of Hong Kong on New Year's Day in a resounding reminder to the city authorities that the past six months of pro-democracy protests will continue into 2020.



Protesters continue to call on the administration of chief executive Carrie Lam to meet all five demands of the protest movement, which include full democracy and an independent inquiry into police violence against protesters.



While Lam has formally withdrawn widely hated plans to change Hong Kong's extradition laws, she and her officials have repeatedly ruled out meeting the other four demands.



Rights groups have criticized the Hong Kong authorities for fueling violence with excessive force in their treatment of protesters, as well as limiting and prevent legitimate and non-violent protest and assembly since the anti-extradition movement took off in early June.



There are growing calls from rights groups, pro-democracy politicians and overseas officials for an independent public inquiry into police violence and abuse of power.



Campaigners have demanded that police make public the provenance and chemical composition of the tear gas they use, to enable medical practitioners to formulate treatment plans accordingly. But police have refused, saying that doing so could compromise their operations.



They also have called on police to refrain from using disproportionate and deadly force, but police have repeatedly reviewed their own tactics and found them to be "appropriate."



Hong Kong police have arrested nearly 6,000 people since the anti-extradition movement broadened into a city-wide pro-democracy movement in early June, with hundreds of rioting and public order prosecutions currently in the pipeline.



The bodies of a number of young people have been found in the sea in recent months, amid speculation that a growing number of missing persons have been "disappeared," possibly to mainland China, since protests began.



Reported by RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Photo: The Canadian Press Harvey Weinstein arrives for a pre-trial hearing in New York.

UPDATE: 11:20 a.m.

Harvey Weinstein has been indicted on new sex crime charges in Los Angeles, just as his trial on separate rape and sexual assault charges in New York was poised to get underway, prosecutors announced Monday.

The Hollywood mogul has been charged with raping one woman and sexually assaulting another in separate incidents over a two-day period in 2013, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a news release.

We believe the evidence will show that the defendant used his power and influence to gain access to his victims and then commit violent crimes against them, Lacey said in a statement. I want to commend the victims who have come forward and bravely recounted what happened to them. It is my hope that all victims of sexual violence find strength and healing as they move forward.

Weinstein allegedly raped a woman in a hotel room on Feb. 18, 2013, after he pushed his way inside her room, prosecutors said. The next night, he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel suite. That woman is expected to testify at Weinstein's trial in New York.

Weinstein faces up to 28 years in state prison if he is convicted of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery by restraint. His arraignment has not yet been scheduled and prosecutors will recommend $5 million bail.

The Manhattan district attorney's office declined to comment on the new charges.

ORIGINAL: 8 a.m.

Harvey Weinstein and several of the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct converged Monday at the New York City courthouse, where a judge and his lawyers were handling the final preparations for his high-stakes trial on charges of rape and assault.

Weinstein, 67, entered the building leaning on a walker following a recent back surgery, sporting a dark suit and disheveled hair. When asked outside the courtroom how his back felt, Weinstein responded with a thin smile and a so-so gesture with his hand.

Across the street, actresses and other women who say they were sexually harassed or assaulted by Weinstein dismissed him as a villain undeserving of anyone's pity.

He looked cowardly. He wouldnt look at us. He wouldnt make eye contact, said Sarah Ann Masse, a performer and writer who said Weinstein once sexually harassed her in his underwear during a job interview. "This trial is a cultural reckoning regardless of its legal outcome," she said.

Jury selection in the trial is expected to start Tuesday, more than two years since the allegations first came to widespread public attention and catalyzed the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein faces allegations that he raped one woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and performed a forcible sex act on a different woman in 2006.

He has pleaded not guilty and says any sexual activity was consensual. If he's convicted of the most serious charges against him, two counts of predatory sexual assault, Weinstein faces a mandatory life sentence.

The judge hasnt said how many other accusers will be allowed to testify.
Anti-war activist protest in front of the White House in Washington, DC, on January 4, 2020. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images

Beijing is urging calm as geopolitical tensions escalate in the Middle East, a region that China depends on heavily for oil. On Saturday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi "took a telephone call" from Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, according to an English-language statement on the Chinese Foreign Ministry website. The comments followed news late last week that Iran's top commander, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad. "China opposes the use of force in international relations," Yi said, according to the online posting. "Military means will lead nowhere. Maximum pressure won't work either. China urges the U.S. to seek resolutions through dialogue instead of abusing force." "China will continue to uphold an objective and just position and play a constructive role in safeguarding peace and security in the Gulf region of the Middle East, Yi added.

If the US and Iran engage in war, it would do more harm than good to China. Global Times editorial

The call came days after Zarif met Yi in Beijing on Dec. 31, the Iranian minister's fourth visit to China for that year, according to China's Foreign Ministry website. Iranian leaders have vowed to retaliate against the U.S. During Saturday's call, Zarif said he "hopes China can play an important role in preventing escalation of regional tensions," according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry statement. "If the US and Iran engage in war, it would do more harm than good to China," China's state-owned tabloid Global Times said in an English-language editorial published on Sunday. "If there is serious chaos in the Middle East, the US would indeed be more stuck in the region and distracted," the article added. "But Chinese purchases of oil from the Middle East lead the world by volume, which means China is far more dependent on the region's oil than the US. China also has large investments in Iran, Iraq and many other Middle Eastern countries already linked to China's economic interests."
U.S. conflict with Iran: What you need to read

Heres what you need to know to understand what this moment means in U.S.-Iran relations.

What happened: President Trump ordered a drone strike near the Baghdad airport, killing Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, Irans most powerful military commander and leader of its special-operations forces abroad.

Who was Soleimani: As the leader of the Revolutionary Guard Corps elite Quds Force, Soleimani was key in supporting and coordinating with Irans allies across the region, especially in Iraq. Soleimanis influence was imprinted on various Shiite militias that fought U.S. troops.

How we got here: Tensions had been escalating between Iran and the United States since Trump pulled out of an Obama-era nuclear deal, and they spiked shortly before the airstrike. The strikes that killed Soleimani were carried out after the death of a U.S. contractor in a rocket attack against a military base in Kirkuk, Iraq, that the United States blamed on Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia.

What happens next: Iran responded to Soleimanis death by launching missile strikes at two bases hosting U.S. forces in Iraq. No casualties were reported. In an address to the nation, Trump announced that new sanctions will be imposed on Tehran.

Ask a question: What do you want to know about the strike and its aftermath? Submit a question or read previous Q&As with Post reporters.
T he first working Monday back after the Christmas break is wryly dubbed 'Divorce Day' by lawyers who typically see a spike in couples considering divorce.

Divorce Day this year falls on Monday, January 6 when solicitors across the country will expect to be fielding more enquiries from couples unhappy in their marriage.

Experts say the stress of trying to create the perfect Christmas, along with money troubles after the festive break, are the main reasons why married couples decide to split at this time of year.

New research from Richard Nelson solicitors has found that searches for 'I want a divorce' rose by 230 per cent in the first week of January 2020 compared to December 2019.

Relationship charity Relate also says it receives a peak in calls in January, as tensions come to a head over Christmas and families are pushed to boiling point.

What is Divorce Day?

Divorce Day is on Monday, January 7 / AFP/Getty Images

'Divorce Day' is a term used by lawyers and law firms to typically describe the time of year when they receive a surge of new enquiries from couples about divorce.

The day is on the first Monday of the year when you're back at work, when bank balances are low and tensions are high.

Amicable says more relationships break down in January than any other month and that on Divorce Day, internet searches about divorce and divorce enquiries peak.

What is the divorce rate in the UK?

The latest divorce figures, released last year, revealed the divorce rate for heterosexual couples in the UK dropped dramatically in 2018 with 90,871 divorces of heterosexual couples in England and Wales compared with 101,669 divorces in 2017.

According to the Office for National Statistics, there were 7.5 divorces of opposite sex couples per 1,000 married men and women in 2018, representing the lowest rates since 1971 and a 10.6 per cent decrease since 2017.

Experts said this could be down to the fact that fewer couples are choosing to get married.

While divorce rates for same-sex couples increased by more than a quarter from 2017 to 2018 - rising from 338 in 2017 to 428 in 2018 - Nicola Haines of the ONS has previously said this was 'not surprising' since marriages of same-sex couples have only been possible in England and Wales since March 2014.

Previous ONS figures for 2017 found the divorce rate was highest for men aged 45-49 and women aged 40-44, which Relate relationship counsellor Gurpreet Singh suggested was because couples had reached the stage in their life when "all the distractions have finished".

He told the Standard: "You reach that stage of life when you have the money, the children have left home and you don't know if it is the person you want to spend your days with.

"The relationship is now just the two of you and this is why people end up in arguments."

People are waiting until they are older before they get divorced / Gades Photography/Unsplash

What is the most common reason for divorce?

According to the ONS figures, unreasonable behaviour was cited as the most common reason for both heterosexual and same-sex divorce.

Around 46.3 per cent of couple petitioned on these grounds in opposite-sex marriages, while 76.2 per cent of same-sex couples divorced for this reason.

Why do so many people file for divorce in January?

Mr Singh said: "Any post-holiday break, when you get a period of intense time with each other, you start to wonder if you belong together.

"Anxieties come up and you get time to think and evaluate, and you come up wanting to work things out. People have different views and they end up in arguments."

Not only does January fall after a holiday period, but Christmas is also a stressful time, which Mr Singh said can make trivial comments escalate into arguments.

He said: "Your argument might start with the dishes before escalating to 'you never listen to me'. All you need is a trigger for it to escalate.

"You end up evaluating when you have a bit more time to yourself. Most of the time you're taking care of things rather than wondering what's next in your life."

How to avoid a relationship breakdown over Christmas

Relate has issued a seven-point list to help you avoid any fallouts over the festive break, including cutting back on alcohol, sharing the workload and making time for yourself and your partner.
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via CryptoCurrencyWire  From Jan. 20-24, 2020, LATOKEN will host the Blockchain Economic Forum (BEF) in Davos, Switzerland. During this eighth annual BEF event, two of the five forum days will be dedicated to panel discussions, with 40+ high-level speakers presenting, such as government officials, startup founders and fintech/capital markets executives.



Scheduled speakers include:

Christopher Giancarlo (commissioner of CFTC, 2017-2019).

Mamuka Bakhtadze, (13th Prime Minister (2018-2019), Minister of Finance (2017-2018)) of Georgia.

Ali Tamaseb, Partner at Data Collective (DCVC) ($2B AUM).

Erik Berglof (director of the LSE Institute of Global Affairs).

Matthew Le Merle, Managing Partner at Blockchain Coinvestors, Chairman Europe at Securitize.

Henri Arslanian (chairman of Hong Kongs FinTech Association).

Neil Fillary (CEO of Shuttle Fund).

Jeremy O'Brien (CEO of PsiQuantum).

Speakers will participate in panel discussions covering the following topics: Money 2025, The Venture Capital and Hedge Funds 2025, Security Token Offering Markets and Governance and Monetary policy for a Decentralized Financial System.

Evening networking receptions will take place on three of the forum days, with 20+ VC/crypto funds and family offices in attendance, such as Vontobel ($112B AUM), Blackford Capital ($12B), Advent Capital ($31B), Bamboo Capital Partners ($209M AUM), Da Vinci Capital ($400M), Softline Venture Partners ($300M), AmaZix Capital, etc. The sum of the total assets under management for the funds and institutional investors expected to attend exceeds $150 billion.

Vicente Fox (former president of Mexico), Rosen Plevneliev (former president of Bulgaria), Tim Draper, Nouriel Roubini (NYU professor), Joe Oliver (former Canadian minister of finance), Laura Tyson (former director of the U.S. Presidents National Economic Council), Gary Gensler (CFTC chairman under President Obama) and many others have spoken previously at LATOKEN forums.

Register and apply for sponsorship of BEF in Davos at the following link: http://bef.latoken.com/davos2020?utm_source=cnw

About LATOKEN

LATOKEN is the largest IEO market and top digital assets exchange, pioneering security token markets. LATOKEN launched one of the fastest ERC20 decentralized exchanges, LADEX, and is building LACHAIN for the security tokens market and HFT DEX.

Entrepreneurs looking for funding will benefit from LATOKEN IEO Launchpad, which is recognized as the No. 1 IEO provider by ICObench. Since 2017, LATOKEN has connected 140+ startups with 500,000+ platform users and 1 million+ visitors per month. Traders on LATOKEN get access to 350+ digital assets, with the opportunity to connect using RESTful or WebSocket APIs.

For more information, please visit https://www.latoken.com .
With the oil companies yet to reflect the effects of the third tranche of Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Law on their products, another round of price adjustment by the pump will be conducted this week.

In their respective advisories, Pilipinas Shell and Cleanfuel announced the second price hike to welcome the year 2020.

According to Shell, they will be increasing diesel prices by Php.40 per liter and Php. 30 per liter on kerosene.

However will cutting down gasoline prices by P.10 per liter by the pump. The price adjustments shall be effective starting January 7, 6AM.

Cleanfuel are also implementing similar price adjustment on fuel products but on a latter date: Wednesday, January 8, shortly after midnight.

Other companies are expected to follow suit.

The price movement is Cleanfuels second movement for the year after it seemingly deferred the adjustment made by the oil firms on December 31, 2019.

Cleanfuel raised the prices last January 1, at 12:01am of diesel by Php +0.50/L and Gasoline +0.85/L, the same amount made by competitor in December 31, 2019.

Also read:

The post Oil Firms Raise Pump Prices before Third Tranche of TRAIN Law Implementation appeared first on Carmudi Philippines.
S Kumaresan By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: The lobbying for Rajya Sabha seats have begun in AIADMK and DMK camps as elections for six seats are expected to be held in March.

Of the six members whose terms would end in April, four belong to AIADMK and one belong to a CPM member who was elected with the support of AIADMK.

Despite only one DMK members term ending by April, due to the partys increased strength in Assembly following the bypolls last year, DMK can now send three members to the Rajya Sabha. AIADMK will be able to send three.

In both DMK and AIADMK camps, it is said that at least one member from minority communities will be given a ticket.

A DMK source told Express, Our party advocate NR Elango is expected to get ticket this time. In the last Rajya Sabha election, he filed the nomination as a precaution if in case MDMK leader Vaikos nomination got rejected. But Vaikos nomination was accepted. So it is expected that Elango will be considered this time.

Also, since last time a ticket was given to a member from the Christian community, this time it is expected that the DMK leadership may consider a Muslim community member for the candidature. The party also wants to strengthen its base in the west regions, where AIADMK has outperformed DMK consistently.

In the AIADMK camp, demands from allies to accommodate them have emerged. A senior leader from Tamil Manila Congress (Moopanar) told Express, During the seat-sharing talks for Lok Sabha, we were told that we will be given a ticket in Rajya Sabha polls in 2020.

A former AIADMK leader said, Following the support we extended for Triple Talaq and CAA legislations, our party lost confidence among the minorities. Hence, most probably the party will offer a Rajya Sabha ticket to a Muslim candidate.

Rajya Sabha members, whose term come to an end in April, are S Muthukaruppan, R Sasikala Pushpa, AK Selvaraj and Vijila Sathyananth from AIADMK, TK Rengarajan from CPM and Tiruchy N Siva from DMK.
ST. LOUIS, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Graybar, a leading distributor of electrical, communications and data networking products and provider of related supply chain management and logistics services, today announced the launch of the Graybar Construction Trades Scholarship.

"Skilled workers are vital to the long-term success of the construction industry," said Graybar Chairman, President and CEO Kathy Mazzarella. "Because of labor shortages, many of our customers are struggling to keep up with demand, which ultimately impacts the entire supply chain."

High school students who plan to enroll in a community college or trade school upon graduation are eligible to apply for Graybar's need-based, renewable scholarship. Students must intend to complete an associate degree, a pre-apprenticeship or an apprenticeship in the construction trades, such as electrical, HVAC, plumbing, pipefitting or welding. The scholarship is administered by the St. Louis Community Foundation and applications will be accepted through April 15, 2020.

"Through this scholarship program, our goal is to increase awareness of careers in the construction trades," said Mazzarella. "We also want to remove barriers for young people with financial needs so they have the opportunity to pursue these careers."

For more information about the Graybar Construction Trades Scholarship, as well as resources to share with students, visit www.poweringtrades.com.

Graybar, a Fortune 500 corporation and one of the largest employee-owned companies in North America, is a leader in the distribution of high quality electrical, communications and data networking products, and specializes in related supply chain management and logistics services. Through its network of nearly 290 North American distribution facilities, it stocks and sells products from thousands of manufacturers, helping its customers power, network and secure their facilities with speed, intelligence and efficiency. For more information, visit www.graybar.com or call 1-800-GRAYBAR.

Media Contact:

Tim Sommer

(314) 578-7672

[email protected]

Alex Vietor

(314) 578-5108

[email protected]

SOURCE Graybar

Related Links

www.graybar.com


At least 56 mourners have been killed in a stampede, causing the burial of Iran's top military commander to be postponed, Iran's state television has reported.

More than a million people were on the streets for the funeral procession of Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US airstrike near Baghdad airport on Friday.

The stampede in the general's hometown of Kerman has also left 213 people injured. He was due to be buried in a "martyrs' cemetery" today.

It is not now clear when Major General Soleimani's burial will now take place.

As mourners gathered in Kerman, the semi-official Fars news agency reported that a top Iranian security official said Tehran is considering 13 "revenge scenarios" following the drone strike on the general.

Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, said: "The Americans should know that until now 13 revenge scenarios have been discussed in the council and even if there is consensus on the weakest scenario carrying it out can be a historic nightmare for the Americans."

Meanwhile, a senior Iranian official has said the country is "ready to come back to full compliance" in the nuclear agreement it has with a group of world powers.

Deputy foreign minister Abbas Araqchi did not provide any information on possible conditions.

Although Donald Trump has defended the US attack, the fury generated by Maj Gen Soleimani's death in both Iran and Iraq has led to the US-led coalition scaling back its operations in Baghdad.

American soldiers are set to be "repositioned" after Iraq's parliament called for all 5,000 US troops to leave the country - and a letter seen by Reuters suggests the US will move its forces over the "coming days and weeks".

However, US Defence Secretary Mark Esper said there had been "no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq".

Sky News correspondent Mark Stone said: "We understand around 1,100 forces in the green zone in Baghdad will be thinned out by a half or so.

Story continues

"Some will be relocated within in Iraq, others in Kuwait.

"The plan we're told is that at some stage they will come back. The rest of the coalition forces in Iraq will remain."

Reuters says the letter is from William H Seely III, the American commander of Task Force Iraq, and that it has been independently verified.

Top US general Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also sought to play down the letter, saying it was poorly worded and incorrectly implied withdrawal, when it was only meant to draw attention to increased troop movements.

Canada has confirmed it will temporarily move some troops from Iraq to Kuwait for safety reasons. Germany is also moving some troops out.

The leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guard has threatened to "set ablaze" places supported by the US over the killing of Maj Gen Soleimani.

He said Maj Gen Soleimani represented an even greater threat to Iran's enemies as a martyr, including to the country's longtime regional enemy Israel.

Mr Salami said: "We will take revenge. We will set ablaze where they like."

His words drew cries of "death to Israel".

Mr Salami's vow mirrored the demands of top Iranian officials such as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as supporters across the Islamic Republic, who are demanding retaliation against the US for the killing.

Britain has reduced staff at its embassies in Iran and Iraq to a minimum level as a precaution, Sky News understands.

US embassies in France, Algeria, Morocco, and also in some sub-Saharan African nations, have told staff they could be at risk. Sweden has joined the list of countries telling its citizens not to travel to Iraq, outside of the Kurdish region.

Police said millions of people lined the streets of the Iranian capital Tehran as Maj Gen Soleimani's coffin was paraded through the city on Monday.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wept during prayers for the general - and the commander's daughter warned that the US and Israel faced a "dark day".

:: Listen to the Daily podcast on Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , Spotify , Spreaker

The outpouring of grief was an unprecedented honour for a man was regarded by many as the second-most powerful person in Iran .

He led the Quds unit of Iran's revolutionary guard and was responsible for expanding the country's influence in the Middle East - mainly through linked Shia militias.

The US blames him for the killing of American troops in Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before his death on Friday.

President Donald Trump ordered last week's strike on the general after the death of an American contractor in Iraq.

Mr Trump has hit back at Iran's vow of "severe revenge" by warning that the US military has identified 52 Iranian sites, including some of cultural significance.
By John Burton





Last month, the Seoul-based U.N. Green Climate Fund (GCF) agreed to provide North Korea with $752,090 in funding to help the country deal with climate change.



With North Korea suffering from declining agricultural production as a result of climate change, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has been appointed to help lead the initiative in cooperation with North Korea's Ministry of Land and Environment Protection.



In making its request for the funds, Pyongyang acknowledged that it lacked coordination among government agencies in formulating national climate change adaptation plans. The program is meant to improve expertise in North Korea to "better understand climate change" and "options for low emission" strategies by educating officials in several ministries, including agriculture, power and fisheries.



North Korea realizes that it is facing a climate change problem, exemplified by rising temperatures, changes in seasonal agricultural growing patterns, and severe weather conditions, including droughts and typhoons. This demands action to develop resilient agricultural methods to withstand climate change and improve food security.



Due to its low level of energy production, North Korea itself contributes relatively little to the growth in global greenhouse emissions that are causing climate change. North Korea ranks near the bottom globally in terms of per-capita emissions. Moreover, about half of the country's energy comes from hydropower, a clean energy source, although the rest is mainly provided by coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels.



But rising energy consumption and increased reliance on coal has meant that North Korea's CO2 emissions have nearly doubled since 2000 and are expected to grow by another 50 percent by 2030, according to GCF proposal.



The problems North Korea is experiencing due to climate change are also due to the fact that it sits next to much bigger producers of greenhouse gas emissions. China is the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter. Although China is turning to solar energy, wind power and hydro to counter climate change, it is still the source of yellow dust in the winter months that results in high levels of air pollution across the Korean peninsula.



Meanwhile, South Korea is struggling in its efforts to reduce per-capita carbon emissions and promote renewable energy since it continues to rely on coal-fired plants as it phases out nuclear power.



The expected launch of the GCF-backed project in North Korea in March 2020 provides an opportunity to promote regional cooperation in tackling climate change in Northeast Asia. The goal should be to make North Korea a model of low-emission and climate-resistant development. In the process it could help promote peace on the Korean peninsula, while contributing to a healthier planet.



Pyongyang's willingness to engage with U.N. climate and environmental programs, including signing the Paris climate agreement, is viewed as one way to help break its economic isolation as it seeks technology and financial support from potential international donors for renewable energy projects.



North Korea has several advantages to aid becoming a green economy based on renewables. One is that it already relies on hydropower for a considerable share of its energy production. Although North Korea's energy production from renewables in terms of megawatts was only about a third of that of South Korea in 2018, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency, that is an extraordinary high amount considering that North Korea's economy is much smaller than South Korea's.



Paradoxically, North Korea's economic backwardness is another advantage. It does not yet have an extensive fossil fuel-based infrastructure. That makes it easier to turn to renewables to power future growth if the planning is right.



North Korea has eagerly embraced the idea of incorporating solar and wind power as part of a new energy infrastructure since it also fits in with its Juche ideology of self-sufficiency. Sanctions cannot be applied to the sun or the wind. Rodong Sinmun, the leading state newspaper, has cited wind power as an "energy source with the greatest development potential" which "does neither runs out nor destroys the natural environment."



North Koreans are being encouraged to use solar panels in households to power electric appliances, including space heaters, with a corresponding fall in felling trees for firewood to warm their homes. This promises to limit deforestation; a major contributor to climate change.



But U.N. sanctions are making it difficult to pursue a renewable energy strategy. Sanctions have banned imports of solar panels since 2017, while supplies of copper wire and other basic materials needed for wind generators have also been affected.



Trump could help break the stalemate in talks on North Korea's denuclearization by offering to suspend sanctions on these items. It is in the world's interest for North Korea to reduce its carbon emissions and pursue a renewable energy strategy. It would be a win-win move. Call it North Korea's Green New Deal.





John Burton (johnburtonft@yahoo.com), a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and consultant.


New Delhi :

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) on Monday accused vice chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar of 'perpetrating violence' in the university and demanded his resignation. The student union said that he used all means to ensure that students and teachers faced 'violence'. It also alleged that outsiders were brought in with sticks and rods to 'perpetrate violence'.

"This Vice Chancellor is a cowardly vice chancellor who introduces illegal policies through the backdoor, runs away from questions of students or teachers and then manufactures a situation to demonise JNU," the JNUSU said in a statement.

"For nearly seventy days now, the students of JNU have been fighting a courageous battle to save their university from the clutches of privatisation and greed. The VC is adamant that by sending a message that a fee hike has happened in JNU, he can prove that accessible education is not possible," it added.

"The violence that happened is the result of the desperation and frustration of the VC and his cronies. But the chronology of events that unfolded today is a shameful episode for the Delhi Police who gave a safe passage to ABVP goons imported from outside," the JNUSU alleged.

Meanwhile, the vice chancellor has appealed to all students to maintain peace, saying top priority of varsity is to protect the academic interests of students. "Would like to appeal to all students to maintain peace. The University stands by all students to facilitate their pursuit of academic activities. We will ensure that their winter semester registration will take place without any hindrance," he said in a statement.

"The top priority of the University is to protect the academic interests of our students," Kumar said.

Earlier, Delhi Police PRO MS Randhawa held a late-night meeting with a delegation of students and teachers after violence broke out at the university in the national capital. Following the violence, the administration called in the police which conducted a flag march.

The delegation comprising students and teachers from JNU, Jamia and Delhi University submitted an application to the Delhi Police PRO with four demands, including urgent medical assistance to injured students and arrest of the accused behind the violence.

"The police have assured us that they will look into the matter and our demands," president Federation of Central University Teachers associations Rajib Ray said. The students demanded that the police leave the JNU campus.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the ABVP blamed each other for the violence. The students' union alleged that its members, including Ghosh, were injured in stone-pelting by ABVP members.

With PTI Inputs
NCLAT, on 18 December, had directed to reinstate Cyrus Mistry as the executive chairman of the $110-billion Tata group

New Delhi: The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Monday dismissed the petition filed by the Registrar of Companies (RoC) and refused to modify its judgement passed in the Tata-Mistry matter.

NCLAT turns down ROC's plea seeking amendment of Dec 18 judgment. NCLAT holds that ROC plea is uncalled for as its Dec 18 order casts no aspersions on ROC. Alert: ROC had sought to amend order as judgment had held that ROC helped Tata Sons convert from public to a pvt co pic.twitter.com/HRNxBDpE0P  CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) January 6, 2020

A two-member bench headed by Chairman Justice S J Mukhopadhaya dismissed the plea filed by RoC. NCLAT further said that its 18 December 2019 judgement has no aspersions cast against it.

"There is no ground to amend judgement dated December 18, 2019," said NCLAT.

NCLAT, on 18 December, had directed to reinstate Cyrus Mistry as the executive chairman of the $110-billion Tata group.

Tata Sons, Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have separately moved the Supreme Court against the NCLAT order.

In its plea, RoC, which functions under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, had sought to be impleaded as a party in the two petitions and deletion of words "illegal" and "with the help of the RoC" used by the NCLAT in its 172-page-long judgement.

The tribunal had termed the appointment of N Chandrasekaran, as 'illegal' following the October 2016 sacking of Mistry as Tata Sons' executive chairman. It had also directed the RoC to reverse Tata Sons' status from a 'private company' to a 'public company'.

In its urgent application, which was mentioned on 23 December, just five days after the NCLAT's 18 December, judgement, RoC Mumbai had asked the appellate tribunal "to carry out requisite amendments" in Para 186 and 187 (iv) of its judgement "to correctly reflect the conduct of the RoC, Mumbai as not being illegal and being as per the provisions of the Companies Act".

Besides, it had also urged "to delete the aspersions made regarding any hurried help accorded by the RoC Mumbai to Tata Sons, except what was statutorily required" in para 181 of the order.

In the order, the appellate tribunal had quashed the conversion of Tata Sonsthe principal holding company and promoter of Tata firmsinto a private company from a public firm and had termed it as "illegal".

The tribunal had said that the action taken by the RoC to allow the firm to become a private company was against the provisions of the Companies Act, 2013 and 'prejudicial' and 'oppressive' to the minority member (Mistry Camp).

"The Company (Tata Sons) shall be recorded as 'Public Company'. The RoC will make corrections in its record showing the Company as 'Public Company'," the NCLAT had said.

Contesting the observations, RoC Mumbai asked the NCLAT to "delete the aspersion made regarding any hurried help accorded by RoC Mumbai to Tata Sons except what was statutorily required by RoC Mumbai".

The RoC also said it has acted in 'bonafide manner' in converting the status of Tata Sons as "there was no stay granted by this appellate tribunal on the operation of the judgement dated 9 July 2018 of Mumbai, NCLT at the time when this intimation was filed by Tata Sons Ltd".

In its petition, the RoC had asked "to carry out the requisite amendment in paragraphs ... of the judgement dated December 18, 2019 to correctly reflect the conduct of RoC Mumbai as not being illegal and being as per the provisions of the Companies Act along with the rules".

Months after Mistry was sacked, Tata Sons had received its shareholders' nod in September 2017, to convert itself into a private limited company from a public limited company, thereby absolving it of the need to take shareholder consent in taking crucial decisions, which could be passed with just the board's approval.

Tata Sons Ltd was initially a 'Private Company' but after insertion of Section 43A (1A) in the Companies Act, 1956 on the basis of average annual turnover, it assumed the character of a deemed 'Public Company' with effect from February 1, 1975, the order said.

Meanwhile, Cyrus Mistry on Sunday ruled out pursuing chairmanship of Tata Sons or any other executive positions at group entities but asserted that he is interested in a board seat at the holding company.

Ruling out taking up any position at the group or any group entities, Mistry in a late Sunday evening public statement said that he is "walking the talk" to uphold corporate governance, and this is not a quest for position or power and he "will not be pursuing the executive chairmanship of Tata Sons, or directorship of TCS, Tata Teleservices or Tata Industries".
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she believes that in any other country she and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden 'would not be in the same party' as she talks fame and missing her anonymity.

In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Ocasio-Cortez recalled how her life changed forever when she came out victorious over 10-year incumbent Joe Crowley for New York's 14th congressional district at the age of 28, making her the youngest woman ever elected to Congress in 2018.

Ocasio-Cortez said when she found out she had won she 'realized this was going to be a tattoo-on-my-face kind of situation'.

'I can't go outside anymore. I miss being able to go out to dinner. I miss anonymity. I have to send my boyfriend out to get groceries. There has been a shift in chores,' she said.

At the time of her election, Ocasio-Cortez spoke about her hopes of going to Washington 'with an entire caucus of newly elected progressives' who aren't beholden to corporate donors and are willing to shake things up.

In a recent interview Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recalled how her life changed forever when she came out victorious over 10-year incumbent Joe Crowley for New York's 14th congressional district at the age of 28, making her the youngest woman ever elected to Congress in 2018

Ocasio-Cortex (pictured with her boyfriend, Riley Roberts) said when she found out she had won she 'realized this was going to be a tattoo-on-my-face kind of situation'. She added: 'I can't go outside anymore. I miss anonymity. I have to send my boyfriend out to get groceries'

Since her election, Ocasio-Cortez (right) and three other elected officials have shaken up Washington. Most people know them as 'The Squad': Rashida Tlaib (left), Ilhan Omar (center), and Ayanna Pressley (second from right)

'I'm hoping that more candidates like me are victorious in their primaries and I hope that we can focus on getting money out of politics and championing the social economic and racial justice and rights of all working-class Americans,' she said at the time.

And her hopes actually did come true.

Since her election, Ocasio-Cortez and three other elected officials have shaken up Washington. Most people know them as 'The Squad': Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.

In February 2019, Ocasio-Crotez introduced the Green New Deal alongside Sen Ed Markey, Massachusetts Democrat.

The 14-page resolution calls for a complete overhaul of the US infrastructure system to meet a new, environmentally friendly standard including retrofitting all existing buildings and implementing a high-speed rail.

It also calls for sweeping economic and social justice reforms, including 'Medicare For All' and a federal jobs guarantee.

Several economists and labor groups have pushed back against the Green New Deal for being unrealistic and ultimately unattainable, citing the lack of specificity as the one of biggest problems surrounding the proposals.

Ocasio-Cortez also spoke about how 'weird' the fame has become for.

More recently, Ocasio-Cortez publicly announced her support for Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders (pictured together in December 2019), to run as the party's candidate against President Donald Trump this year

But when asked what she thought her role would be as a member of Congress under a Biden presidency, Ocasio-Cortez said: 'Oh God. In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are'

She recalled how she started receiving Post-it notes on her office door in the Capitol in January 2019.

Some were kind and others not so much, some talked about how she has inspired others to lead and some did the exact opposite.

In response to those notes, Ocasio-Cortez said: 'I know I am also one of the most hated people in America.'

More recently, Ocasio-Cortez publicly announced her support for Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, to run as the party's candidate against President Donald Trump this year.

She's even spoken at some of his rallies.

Ocasio-Cortez told NY Magazine: 'Everyone in the House is just constantly thinking about self-preservation, and we dont get nice things because people are constantly thinking in electoral terms. The way we change that is through political education. I had this conversation with Bernie.'

'Heres this guy in a then-Republican state, a quite conservative state, and he wins by a handful of votes to become mayor of Burlington. And by the time he becomes senator, Vermont is crazy-blue. And a lot of that has to do with his time there. And I said, "So howd you do this?"

'And he said that he and different grassroots movements in Vermont spent decades doing political education. And they took on the long-term project of turning a red state blue,' she added.

But recent poll numbers puts Sanders right behind Biden. Sanders is polling at 19 per cent while Biden is polling at 27 per cent.

When asked what she thought her role would be as a member of Congress under a Biden presidency, Ocasio-Cortez said: 'Oh God.'

'In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are,' she said.
George Elliott Clarkes talk at the University of Regina was supposed to be about the murdered and missing Indigenous women of Canada, and poets who wrote about them. But his original refusal to say he wouldnt read a poem by Stephen Brown, a convicted murderer of an Indigenous woman, and Clarkes friend, caused enough controversy that he eventually canceled entirely.  Globe and Mail (Canada)
Nearly 25 crore people are likely to take part in an All-India strike on January 8 to protest against the Modi government's "anti-people" policies. Ten central trade unions (CTUs) announced the participation on Monday.

"We expect participation of not less than 25 crore of working people in the forthcoming National General Strike on January 8, 2020, to be followed by many more actions seeking reversal of the anti-worker, anti-people, anti-national policies of the Government," the 10 CTUs said in a joint statement as cited by PTI.

"The Ministry of Labour has failed to assure on any of the demands of workers which called a meeting on January 2, 2020. The attitude of the government is that of contempt towards labour as we construe from its policies and actions," the statement added.

Also Read: Bank strike on January 8: ATMs, branch services likely to take a hit

Trade unions INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF, UTUC along with various sectoral independent federations and associations had adopted a declaration in September last to go on a nationwide strike on January 8, 2020.

About 60 organisations of students and elected office bearers of some universities have also decided to join the strike with an agenda to raise voice against increased fee structure and commercialization of education, it said.

The trade unions condemned the JNU violence and similar incidents in other university campuses and expressed their solidarity with students and teachers all over India.

Also Read: Bharat Bandh for next 2 days: Farmers join 10 trade unions to protest against Modi govt policies

"As many as 12 airports are already sold out to private hands, 100 per cent sale of Air India is already decided, the decision to sell BPCL taken, BSNL-MTNL merger announced and 93,600 telecom workers already thrown out of jobs under the garb of VRS (voluntary retirement scheme)," it added.

The unions are also against privatisation in railways, corporatisation of 49 defence production units and forced merger of banks.

The joint platform of more than 175 farmers and agricultural workers unions will extend its support to workers' demands and observe January 8 as Gramin Bharat Bandh along with their charter of demands, they added.

Also Read: Trade body CAIT observes Bharat Bandh today in solidarity with families of Pulwama martyrs

(With PTI inputs.)
A man squabbled with his fiancee about car issues before he fatally shot her in the chest at his northwest Houston apartment complex, days after proposing, according to details released late Saturday in a probable cause hearing.

Kendrick Akins, 39, is accused of shooting and killing his 33-year-old fiancee, identified by family members as Dominic Jefferson, last Friday outside an apartment in the 5500 block of Holley View Drive.

Akins reportedly turned himself into authorities Saturday, and he has since been charged with murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. His bond was set at $150,000 for the murder charge, and $75,000 for the aggravated assault charge.

Akins has since asked a magistrate to be placed in protective custody because he fears retaliation from the victims family members, some of whom are in the jail, according to a public defender representing Akins during Saturdays hearing.

The (victim) has brothers in jail, and I guess there have been Facebook posts indicating that once he hits the floor, they plan on attacking him, the public defender said. Hes just asking the court to take that into consideration.

Akins proposed to the woman on New Years Eve. According to earlier reports in the Houston Chronicle, Jeffersons sister broadcast the engagement via Facebook Live. The sister has since expressed her confusion publicly.

He just proposed to her in front of the whole world, the woman told reporters on the scene. I want to know why. Why would you do this? You say you loved her.

Around the time of the shooting, Jefferson was with an unidentified woman outside Akins apartment. They intended to take Jeffersons car to pick up the womans boyfriend from work. The car wouldnt start, and Akins walked outside asking about the problem, prosecutors said. Jefferson reportedly yelled dont touch my car, and an argument ensued.

At one point, Akins reached for his gun. Witnesses heard Jefferson said Go ahead, shoot me. Akins then pointed the pistol at her chest and fired once, prosecutors said.

A man in a neighboring apartment complex said he heard the argument and the fatal shot. He ran outside and hopped a fence to check on the people involved, prosecutors said.

On the scene, the man spoke to a witness before he encountered Akins, who screamed at the man before firing at least one shot in his direction, prosecutors said. The neighbor dove into nearby bushes and played dead, hoping the gunman would flee.

Akins then grabbed his fiancees cellphone and ran away, prosecutors said.

Akins has faced two previous felony convictions in Harris County, one in 2008 for aggravated assault and another in 2015 for felon in possession of a weapon.

julian.gill@chron.com
A coalition of law firms representing more than 1,500 men who say they were sexually abused as children in scouting filed a lawsuit on behalf of eight of their clients Monday in what is believed to be the first federal complaint of its kind against one of the nations oldest organizations for youth.

The attorneys, who have formed a coalition of member firms called Abused In Scouting, represent what they say is the largest group of former Boy Scouts alleging abuse in the United States and spoke to Hearst Televisions National Investigative Unit in a nationwide television exclusive.

The complaint accuses the Boy Scouts of America of rampant sexual abuse at the hands of BSA scoutmasters and other scout leaders and efforts to cover up the extensive evidence in its files documenting that abuse.

BSA created, maintained, and promoted programs that attracted pedophiles by the tens of thousands and gave these predators unsupervised access, and therefore opportunities, to prey on boys who had been entrusted to BSAs custody and care, the lawsuit alleges. BSAs programs were tailor-made for pedophiles to forge trusting relationships with boys of their desired age ranges, to exploit their positions of authority and control over the boys to commit horrific acts of sexual abuse, and to discourage boys from reporting that abuse by enforcing BSAs core values of obedience and loyalty to scout leaders.

In a statement, the Boy Scouts, while not responding to this lawsuit specifically, wrote that it is outraged that there have been times when individuals took advantage of our program to abuse innocent children and that one incident of abuse is one too many.

It added, We believe victims and remove individuals based on only allegations of inappropriate behavior.

Law Firm Database Alleges Abuse Spanning Generations

According to an extensive database of the 1,500 individuals represented by the law firms and given to the National Investigative Unit ahead of the lawsuits filing for analysis, the ages of the boys at the time of the alleged incidents ranged from five to 19, all of whom who say they suffered varying degrees of abuse from 1945 to as recently as last year.

The allegations of sexual abuse and assault span troop numbers, states, decades, and generations, the review found.

Most of the individuals in the database provided have not filed a complaint in court due to the expiration of the statute of limitations in their states.

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One of those who accuse a former Scout troop leader of abuse is Rick, who rose to become an Eagle Scout  the most prestigious rank  in northern Florida and who is now identified in Mondays complaint as a John Doe plaintiff. The National Investigative Unit is not reporting his last name because of his anonymity in the filing and at his request.

I do feel the pain

Rick said he was abused while on Scouting trips and activities for about three years while part of a church-based troop.



He said he absolutely trusted his accused abuser and claims other scout leaders failed to stop or prevent the repeated incidents of sexual assault.



Now 38, Rick said in his first-ever interview about his allegations that even a quarter-century later, I do feel the pain because while what happened to me was wrong and absolutely not OK, I am confident in my mind with 100 percent certainty that much worse happened to many others, which breaks my heart for them.



Tip of a much, much larger iceberg

In the same interview, Ricks attorney, Aitan D. Goelman, warned the allegations presented in the complaint Monday are the tip of a much, much larger iceberg.

Asked whether he thinks the Boy Scouts of America knew about allegations of sexual abuse in its ranks years ago, Goelman answered, Oh, there's no question that they did They've known about it for generations.

I think that the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that the Boy Scouts knew about the extent to which they were really a magnet for child predators, Goelman alleged.

The case filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is number 1:20-cv-00017.

Goelman said more plaintiffs could be added to the lawsuit or more complaints could eventually be filed in the District of Columbia jurisdiction with additional names from the law firms database of 1,500 men.

Several states have recently passed into law legislation that opens a limited window for those old claims, such as New York, which had such a period open Aug. 14, and California, whose legal window opened Jan. 1.

One of those windows is also currently open in the District of Columbia, where Congress chartered the Boy Scouts, an organization that says it currently has more than 2.4 million youth participants. Because of that century-old charter, Goelman and his legal team believe such suits can still be brought in the nations capital, regardless of where the original abuse may have occurred  or when.

The attorneys decided to file now on behalf of nine plaintiffs listed as John Does 1-9 amid speculation the BSA may be preparing to declare bankruptcy. If the organization were to file for bankruptcy, the lawyers say it would be much harder to bring new litigation while the group is under court protection.

Boy Scouts Apologize

A spokesman for the Boy Scouts of America sent the National Investigative Unit a statement it has used when responding to such cases in the past several months, although it did not address the latest lawsuit specifically.

The statement reads, in part: "First and foremost, we care deeply about all victims of child abuse and sincerely apologize to anyone who was harmed during their time in Scouting. We are outraged that there have been times when individuals took advantage of our program to abuse innocent children."



It points readers to a webpage listing youth safety and protection policies, along with a phone and email 24/7 Scouts First Helpline it has now established: 1-844-726-8871 or scouts1st@scouting.org.

The statement added: We steadfastly believe that one incident of abuse is one too many and we are continually improving all of our policies to prevent abuse. This is precisely why we fully support and advocate for the creation of a national registry overseen by a governmental entity, similar to the national sex offender registry, of those who are suspected of child abuse or inappropriate behavior with a child, thus allowing all youth-serving organizations to share and access such information. We call upon Congress and other youth- serving organizations to support this initiative.

Hundreds of Lawsuits Filed Against Trusted Organizations

Organizations entrusted with the well-being of youth  both secular and religious  have been hit with hundreds of lawsuits alleging past sexual abuse in states where statute of limitations deadlines have recently been waived.

In a recent four-part investigative series, Silent No More, the National Investigative Unit reported on one of the first lawsuits to be filed under New Yorks current window for claims, one of at least dozens of allegations of sexual abuse and decades-long cover-ups in the Jehovahs Witnesses religious organization. In a court filing, the organization denies the allegations in the lawsuit that was the subject of the National Investigative Unit story on Aug. 14, 2019.

Since New Yorks Child Victims Act window opened nearly five months ago, 1,333 lawsuits have been filed, according to the New York state Court of Administration.



Mark Albert is the chief national investigative correspondent for the Hearst Television National Investigative Unit, based in Washington D.C. Travis Sherwin and April Chunko contributed to this report.



Know of abuse, fraud, waste, or other stories of national importance? Send investigative tips, information, and documents to the National Investigative Unit at investigate@hearst.com.
Thomas G. Ondrof was named Aramark's chief financial officer in January 2020. Read more

Aramark announced on Monday that Thomas G. Ondrof will join the Philadelphia food- and uniform-services giant as chief financial officer, effective Tuesday.

Ondrof, who has a business connection to Aramarks new chief executive, John J. Zillmer, replaces Steve Bramlage, who will remain as an adviser until April 3. It is common for a new CEO to bring in a new CFO.

Ondrof spent a large chunk of his career at Aramark rival Compass Group North America, where his jobs included chief development officer, chief strategy officer, and CFO. More recently, starting in October 2016, Ondrof was CFO at Performance Food Group, a distributor. He left Performance last month, Aramark said.

Zillmer was on Performances board from 2015 until October, when he started as CEO of Aramark.

Bramlage oversaw Aramarks finances during last years employee-bonus fiasco, which contributed to the abrupt retirement of former CEO Eric Foss in August. Under Foss leadership, Aramark decided not to pay 2018 bonuses to thousands of front-line managers, saying company-wide profits were too low, but the managers werent told that was a factor in their individual bonus plans until after the year in question was over.

Bramlage and other top executives, including Foss, still got their annual incentive payouts despite the profit shortfall because the company met precisely the minimum threshold for executive bonus payouts.

In November, Aramark reached a $21 million preliminary agreement to settle two proposed employee class-action lawsuits over the bonuses.

At $44.08, Aramark shares were up nearly 2% on Monday.
Whenever lawmakers try to make sense of our states longest-running tragicomedy, New Jersey Transit, the first person they usually summon is a former divorce attorney from Scotch Plains who has a singular talent for blending soft words with hard arguments.

Janna Chernetz, Deputy Director for the non-profit Tri-State Transportation Campaign, told the Senate Select Committee what it needed to hear last month: NJ Transit has lost its way, she said, and every year they fail to establish dedicated funding for the agencys annual operating budget and formulate a master plan for state transportation, it falls further behind.

This is why Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg is adamant about seating Chernetz on the NJT board: She is a truth-teller with a decade of transportation policy experience. So Dave DAlessandro of the Star-Ledger Editorial Board asked Chernetz to widen the aperture on the countrys third-largest transit system in an interview last week.

Q. What grade should we apply to Gov. Murphy two years into his stewardship of NJ Transit?

Chernetz: We are halfway through, so theres time to improve and deliver on the promises. But look, it is true that the decline of the agency did not happen overnight or in one administration. Certainly, the Christie Administration did nothing to pull it from the trajectory it was on. Its not going to be quickly brought back to the agency that commuters deserve. But there are fundamental changes needed to facilitate the reforms that were promised by the administration.

Q. Your testimony before the select committee can be distilled to this point: If lawmakers dont give NJ Transit a stable funding source for operations, its just spinning its wheels.

Chernetz: Dedicated operating funding and a strong board. Nothing can happen without them.

Q. Why is a dedicated funding source necessary?

Chernetz: Because NJ Transits operations are subject to the annual political budget process, and you see how that plays out: yo-yoing direct state subsidies, raids of the Clean Energy Fund and Turnpike revenues annually, and they rob a half-billion from the capital budget, which should be reserved for other projects. Funding for operations needs to be dedicated and from multiple sources, and even that doesnt get us all the way there. The state cannot rely on a direct state subsidy from the general fund, the history of the direct state subsidies shows its a volatile source  down to $33 million under Christie, up under Murphy. You just dont want to put all your revenue sources in one basket. Its like diversifying your portfolio. You want the agency to do that as well.

Q. Tri-State suggests we have to find new revenue streams. What should those look like?

Chernetz: When you underfund an agency, the CEO looks for efficiencies, as he or she should always do. But in order to be more sound financial standing, you must have adequate funding along with those efficiencies. So weve talked about finding sources besides fare box revenue  retail, marketing, and other revenues that come from the state. Almost 50 percent of NJ Transits revenue comes from passenger fares  far more than any other comparable agency, which are in the 23 to 38 percent range. That puts a lot of pressure on passenger revenues: when the agency is strapped for cash, the passengers are shaken down with fare increases.

Q. So NJT is always forced to transfer about 20 percent of its capital budget to operations just to keep trains moving. What kind of upgrades are left undone when a railroad does that?

Chernetz: Wed know better if NJ Transit had a strategic plan. Remember the audit from a year ago, it found that to be the one of the agencys great failures  how to invest, over what terms. The state doesnt have a grander vision, a plan to see how assets work together within the state  whether its road improvements, or mass transit improvements  and how that feeds into the regional network. Instead, it relies on spot fixes, and overlooks how an investment plays into the larger picture, such as Gateway, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and other projects. As commuting patterns change, as work habits change, as communities grow, all these things must be considered. But thats only part of the answer. There are resiliency issues, an obvious need for redundancy with cross-Hudson service, a need to expand light rail, and large areas of Jersey, especially South Jersey, remain transit deserts. With hefty transfers from capital to operating, youre tying the hands of the agency and limiting it to barely maintaining what it has. And we havent even addressed climate policy and greening the infrastructure, by electrifying the buses.

Q. Should cap-to-ops transfers be prohibited?

Chernetz: No, its not necessarily a bad thing. Its allowed by the federal government for preventive maintenance. The problem is how much they transfer. It started off modestly in the 1990s, but it has ballooned to hundreds of millions annually. To date, over $10 billion has been transferred.

Q. Think about the capital projects that $10 billion could have built.

Chernetz: New tunnels under the Hudson, Hudson-Bergen Light Rail that actually goes to Bergen, the list goes on. The CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) publicly acknowledged concerns about their over-reliance on capital transfers to fill budget gaps and have since weaned off the practice and they were barely transferring one tenth of what Transit transfers. New Jersey doesnt even bat an eye at transferring $460 million each year.

Q. The FTA reported last week that NJ Transit has the worst trains in the country based on breakdowns, and its buses are 7th worst. Is that also a function of raiding capital to pay for operations?

Chernetz: Yes. But there are endless repercussions to underfunding, such as the inability to retain and attract top talent, engineers and conductors, or match salaries paid by LIRR and MTA. When you put all of that together, you have an agency that is decaying.

Q. Another problem at NJT is that the board has consisted of just four members of the governors cabinet for a year, even though the reform law called for 13 to be seated by last March. How do you run an agency without board oversight?

Chernetz: You cant. Again, NJ Transit is an outlier. The reform law signed a year ago this week called for diverse expertise that would contribute to Transits ability to thrive. Someone in real estate development, for example, could help drive policy to bring in revenue from its own property  its some of the most lucrative property in the state. Lets capitalize on that through value capture. And lets appoint riders to the board  who knows the service better?

Q. Were the governors board nominees qualified?

Chernetz: There doesnt seem to be agreement between the Legislature and the governor that they bring the necessary expertise and background.

Q. You are mentioned as Sen. Weinbergs choice nominee, but some fear you would be too challenging to executive management. Isnt that the point?

Chernetz: The point is to be honest. Im non-partisan, I dont follow a political ideology, I look for whats in the best interest of riders, the states economic growth, and the quality of life. Thats a voice I would provide if I was to be appointed, and Id welcome the opportunity to do that.

Q. The board last week voted to bond $500 million to replace 29 locomotives and hundreds of diesel buses. How would you have voted on that one?

Chernetz: Unfortunately, thats what Transit has to do. This is funding for the rolling stock and buses approved under the existing fleet acquisition plan. Whats the choice? If you dont approve that, you dont have buses you need to move people. Its a consequence of the underfunding.

Q. Tri-State calls for NJT buses to be 100 percent electric by 2040. How is this affordable when they currently price out at $750,000 apiece?

Chernetz: They cost more up front than $500,000 diesels, but the maintenance is far less expensive. Its also about climate: Transportation is the leading contributor to greenhouse emissions, and those diesels contribute to high asthma rates among children and create a lethal environment for Transit employees. Sixty agencies have committed to convert to all-electric. Its going to happen. Its not just about swapping out diesels; its about using capital dollars to build infrastructure. Transit needs to partner with utilities and others to plan for and fund depots and power. This is where a transit master plan would be helpful.
Five Malian soldiers were killed Monday in a roadside bomb attack, a government spokesperson said, in the latest violence to hit the West African countrys volatile central region.

The troops were travelling in the region of Alatona, near the border with Mauritania, when their convoy hit a homemade bomb and then came under fire.

Mali has been struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency that erupted in the north in 2012, and which has claimed thousands of military and civilian lives since.

More than 140 Malian soldiers died in jihadist attacks between September and December.

A Malian army refuelling truck that had left the town of Diabaly in the centre of the country hit the bomb early on Monday morning, said a non-commissioned officer who was sent in to reinforce the area.

Militants, who were travelling on motorbikes and in cars, also fired on the soldiers.

There were deaths on our side and on the side of the assailants, the officer, who requested to remain anonymous, told AFP.

The reinforcements came in time and we recovered our (dead) bodies and the wounded, the officer said, adding that he was unaware of the total number of victims.

Four vehicles were destroyed in the ambush, according to government spokesperson Yaya Sangare.

Despite some 4,500 French troops in the Sahel region, plus a 13,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Mali, the conflict has engulfed the centre of the country and spread to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Hiding homemade bombs under well-travelled roads is a frequent means of attack used by jihadists. Otherwise known as improvised explosive devices, they kill and maim scores of victims every year in Mali.

The UN said in October that 110 civilians in Mali had died in roadside bomb attacks during the first six months of 2019.

(AFP)
Samkele Maseko's allegation against Kanthan Pillay unsettles Sanef

The South African National Editors' Forum (Sanef) said it is troubled by Samkele Maseko's allegation of eNCA's Kanthan Pillay censoring stories in the newsroom.



Maseko, a former senior eNCA journalist, claims Pillay was responsible for censoring comments made by Bongani Bongo about public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan.



The NPO stated that it will write to eNCA management to request a meeting and to seek clarity on Pillay's position. It also welcomes the fact that Maseko has agreed to approach judge Kathleen Satchwell and the Media Ethics and Credibility Inquiry to discuss further issues.



Sanef says it believes media freedom is a critical part of a healthy and functional democracy and should be fiercely protected by all South Africans.
Painted a desert tan, the 2-ton Stewart & Stevenson truck transported cargo and soldiers for the Armys 101st Airborne Division. The military called it an LMTV M1078.

Now the truck is painted bright red, and a volunteer fire department on the Atascosa-Bexar county line calls it Heavy Brush 202 Alpha.

The Defense Department gave the truck to the Texas A&M Forest Service, which distributes excess military equipment to volunteer fire departments in rural parts of the state.

The Ata-Bexar County Line Volunteer Fire Department already had a similar unit from the 1960s or 1970s. That truck has a stick shift and somewhat resembles a vehicle from the movie and TV series M*A*S*H, said the departments chief medical officer, William Lay.

The newer vehicle, built in 1994, has an automatic transmission and can spray fire-smothering foam.

I was ecstatic just that we were able to back up the unit we already have, Lay said.

I was ecstatic for the foam, Capt. Jesse Garcia said.

The Ata-Bexar department is using the new truck to fight brush fires. With 22 volunteer firefighters, the department covers more than 12 square miles in southern Bexar and northern Atascosa counties and responds when needed to other calls in either county. The area is in the midst of its winter brush fire season, and low humidity has heightened the fire risk, Lay said.

The suspension and tire pressure on the new truck can be adjusted to drive in the areas sandy soil, and its better than a pickup for negotiating dips in the terrain and thick mesquite. It carries a 500-gallon water tank, which firefighters can refill from a tanker or hydrant before maneuvering the truck into hard-to-reach areas.

Since it went into operation four months ago, the truck has responded to several calls, including a South Bexar County fire spanning a few acres that other departments had trouble reaching.

In preparation for New Years Eve, the Ata-Bexar department burned brush to create a fire safe zone along U.S. 281, where fireworks companies set up shop just south of San Antonio. (Fireworks are prohibited within city limits.) The firefighters used the new truck to put out their own blaze, Capt. Robert Rodriguez said.

The Texas A&M Forest Service offered the truck to the Ata-Bexar department a year ago. The department secured a state grant for the $18,000 water tank. It took about eight months for Darley, an Illinois-based fire protection company, to build that slip-on tank. The volunteer firefighters installed it.

The military surplus program requires fire departments to paint the trucks a nonmilitary color. Volunteer firefighters with experience in auto body work did the job. Local businesses donated the paint and primer. Other volunteer firefighters with expertise in electronics installed the lights and siren.

A couple of the firefighters are military veterans who drove similar trucks in Iraq or Afghanistan, Lay said. They taught the rest of the department how to drive and maintain the new truck.

The excess military vehicles are a common sight in rural Texas fire departments, Lay said. But to outsiders, theyre strange. Lay remembered a man from Michigan saying, You call these firetrucks?

The sight can be especially jarring for a certain group of people.

Theyre surprised to see it if theyve been in the military, Lay said.

Alia Malik covers several school districts and the University of Texas at San Antonio in the Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | amalik@express-news.net | Twitter: @AliaAtSAEN
A jilted lover killed a 21-year-old woman by slitting her throat before killing himself at Karakkonam, a nearby suburb on Monday, police said.

The incident occurred when the woman, Ashika, was at home and her parents, both daily wage earners, were away for their routine work.

The accused, 21-year-old Anu, who lived in a nearby house, barged into Ashika's house and slit her throat before ending his life in a similar manner, police said quoting local people and neighbours.

When neigbours rushed to the house hearing the woman's screams, the two were found lying in a pool of blood.

"As informed by the local people, we rushed to the spot and took both of them to the nearby Karakkonam Medical College. But, the woman was declared brought dead.

Doctors asked us to rush the man to Thiruvananthapuram Medical College, where he died later," a police official said.

The official said both were in love with each other, but had parted ways.

The woman had lodged a complaint last year stating that the man was stalking her, based on which he and his parents had been summoned to the station and the issue had been sorted out, he said.

Police said they were clueless on what triggered the sudden provocation that led to the tragedy, the official added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister on Monday appealed for calm after a "very dangerous" escalation following the killing of a top Iranian general in a US drone strike.

Prince Faisal bin Farhan's appeal came as the US warned that Saudi Arabia faced a "heightened risk" of missile and drone attacks after Tehran vowed to avenge last week's assassination of Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad.

"It's certainly a very dangerous moment," Prince Faisal told reporters in Riyadh.

"We hope that all actors take all the steps necessary to prevent any further escalation and provocation."

Prince Faisal spoke after a meeting of foreign ministers of Arab and African coastal states, including Egypt, Yemen and Djibouti, aimed at enhancing regional security, Saudi state media reported.

The killing of Soleimani, seen as the second most powerful man in Iran, is the most dramatic escalation yet in spiralling tensions between Washington and Tehran, prompting fears of a major conflict in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both allies of Washington, are vulnerable to Iranian counter strikes.

A string of attacks on Gulf oil tankers last year that were blamed on Iran, despite its denials, has raised tensions.

Strikes against Saudi oil installations in September also led Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to adopt a more conciliatory approach aimed at avoiding confrontation with Tehran.

Saudi King Salman emphasised the need for measures to defuse tensions in a phone call at the weekend with Iraqi President Barham Saleh.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has instructed Prince Khalid bin Salman, the deputy defence minister, to travel to Washington and London to urge restraint, the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported this week.

Prince Khalid will meet White House and US defence officials, the paper said, citing unnamed sources.

The US embassy in Riyadh has warned its citizens that military bases and energy facilities, particularly in the kingdom's oil-rich Eastern Province and areas near the Yemeni border, are vulnerable to missile and drone attacks.

Yemen's pro-Iran Houthi rebels, locked in a five-year conflict with a Saudi-led military coalition, have also called for swift reprisals for Soleimani's killing.

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Civic Engagement in the U.S.

Can Better Reykjavik Work Here?

The world of online discourse was vastly different one decade ago. This was before foreign election meddling, before social media execs were questioned by Congress, and before fighting with cantankerous uncles became an online trope. The world was perhaps more naive, with a wide-eyed belief in some circles that Internet forums would amplify the voiceless within democracy.This was the world in which Robert Bjarnason and his collaborators lived. Based in Iceland, Bjarnason and his team developed a platform in 2010 for digital democracy. It was called Shadow Parliament, and its aim was simply to connect Icelands people with its governmental leadership. The platform launched one morning that year, with a comments section for debate. By evening, two users were locked in a deeply personal argument.We just looked at each other and thought, this is not going to be too much fun, Bjarnason recalled recently. We had just created one more platform for people to argue on.Sure, the engagement level was quite high, bringing furious users back to the site repeatedly to launch vitriol, but Shadow Parliament was not fostering the helpful discourse for which it was designed. So, developers scrapped it, pulling from the wreckage lessons to inform future work.Bjarnason and team, officially a nonprofit called Citizens Foundation, worked for roughly a year, and, eventually, a new platform called Better Reykjavik was born. Better Reykjavik had key differences, chief among them a new debate system with simple tweaks: Citizens must list arguments for and against ideas, and instead of replying to each other directly, they can only down-vote things with which they disagree. This is a design that essentially forces users to create standalone points, rather than volley combative responses at one another, threaded in the fashion of Facebook or Twitter.With this framing of it, Bjarnason said, were not asking people to write the first comment they think of. Were actually asking people to evaluate the idea.One tradeoff is that fury has proven itself to be an incredible driver of traffic, and the site loses that. But what the platform sacrifices in irate engagement, it gains in thoughtful debate. Its essentially trading anger clicks for coherent discourse, and its seen tremendous success within Iceland  where some municipalities report 20 percent citizen usage  as well as throughout the international community, primarily in Europe. All told, Citizens Foundation has now built like-minded projects in 20 countries. And now, it is starting to build platforms for communities in the U.S.So far, Citizens Foundation has a nascent collaboration with New Jersey. It is supporting work led by the New York City-based academic research entity The Governance Lab (GovLab), bringing a Better Reykjavik-esque platform to state employees. There is optimism for a similar project aimed at the public next year.Still, the question looms: Will Americans  who find themselves torn by unprecedented polarization in 2020  embrace an online digital democracy system that prizes rationality over team sport rhetoric? A look at current digital engagement efforts across the U.S. offers some valuable insights.Creating platforms for digital democracy is almost a cottage industry in the U.S., one that has grown rapidly in recent years as tech has accelerated and concerns about the health of the republic have grown in the wake of election meddling and online misinformation campaigns.Yet, no one platform has become the dominant place for local, county and state government agencies seeking to offer citizens easy and productive ways to participate in the governance of their communities. One major success story, however, is the town of Gilbert, Ariz. The work there is led by Dana Berchman, the towns charismatic chief digital officer, who has private-sector media experience with massive entities such as MTV.With a small department and a budget no larger than any strapped local government, Berchmans efforts have drawn large segments of Gilberts population to engage with government online. Berchman said residents are interested in participating with government, even if busy schedules and lack of knowledge about how to do so make it difficult.Theres this misconception that people dont care, Berchman said, and that they wont participate. No, they do care, you just dont make it easy for them to participate.The key is meeting them where they spend their time  which for many is online. To that end, Berchman has had much success engaging residents of Gilbert with the neighborhood social networking platform Nextdoor, which requires verification that residents actually live in the communities they are voicing opinions about. In other words, that uncle who always sails in with a hot take about your Facebook posts couldnt do that unless he lived right next to you. Thats one way to reduce the threat of personal attacks and unproductive debates, while at the same time giving elected officials real data at a low cost from verified constituents. Gilbert, for example, recently crowdsourced a public consensus about laws pertaining to the e-scooters that are laying siege to U.S. communities nationwide.The challenge, however, is creating a culture in which people are as enthusiastic about using a digital democracy platform as they are about scrolling through Facebook.One idea that has proven useful for this in the U.S. is building online platforms with specific, results-oriented missions. These are projects that reel residents into participatory online spaces by asking them to help solve problems they care about, ultimately keeping them coming back by showing them the actual results of their contributions.This has certainly been the case in Flint, Mich., where the local government has long struggled with a rash of blighted buildings. Within the last decade, work on a master plan there found that blighted buildings were often a problem for private businesses and communities alike. In fact, the plan found that roughly 60 percent of blighted buildings there were owned by entities outside of the public sector, said Suzanne Wilcox, Flints director of planning and development.In response, the city created the Flint Property Portal, which gives residents a place to easily report information about blighted properties in their neighborhoods. With this portal, which is accessible via both a website and mobile app, people who live in Flint can send messages about blighted properties to the local government, creating useful data. They can then track the data to see how the government is responding to it.In 2019, the Flint Property Portal received Cities of Services Engaged Cities Award, an international citizen engagement accolade. At the time of the award in October, officials noted that more than 189,000 informational messages about blight had been sent to the city from its residents, leading to a $60 million blight elimination grant from the federal government that has so far helped demolish more than 4,000 structures.Moreover, Wilcox said the portal has inspired many who use it to continue engaging with their local government, as well as to collaborate with neighbors on taking personal responsibility for other blighted lots. Basically, rather than fighting about the political reasons the town has become blighted, this results-oriented work has created an actionable channel for making real, lasting change. No matter how eloquently worded, no social media retort is capable of that.These types of success stories seem to be limited in the U.S., however, as compared to broader commensurate efforts such as Better Reykjavik in Europe.Mauricio Garcia is the deputy director of Cities of Service, which bestows the Engaged Cities awards. Garcia has followed international citizen engagement efforts for the past four years and noted a clear increase in the work both abroad and in the U.S.Just over the last couple of years here, youve seen a lot more investment in dollars as well as in political and social capital, Garcia said, pointing to Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Knight Foundation as vital supporters of the work domestically.Garcia agreed that many citizen engagement efforts in the U.S. have more specific asks than the broad workings of projects in Iceland, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. He also noted that Better Reykjavik is one of a growing number of these platforms, pointing to a company called Bang the Table, as well as to a municipal project in New York City. Garcia said that the domestic and international work has become complementary.Were ahead in some ways and theyre ahead in others, Garcia said, and were learning from each other.Bjarnason, for his part, also noted that the seemingly insurmountable divides in modern American politics are not unique to this country, with his homeland of Iceland as well as other European nations facing similar climates. The key, he reiterated, is keeping the focus on useful ways to help.Its a simple thing to show people that a little bit of transparency and a little bit of participation dramatically decreases divisions between people, Bjarnason said, especially if its happening at the state or local level.In fact, New Jersey has already used the Better Reykjavik platform to support an internal innovation challenge. Citizens Foundation has also set up an American nonprofit group called Citizens Foundation America, which is being led by Oregon-based Joshua Lanthier-Welch as it works to bring the platform to more of this country.Nobody involved is terribly concerned that American divisions or culture will mitigate the impact of the work, if public outreach is done in an effective way that introduces users to the full potential of the platform.People see technology as having undermined democracy, said Lanthier-Welch, and we have to show them that the same technology can be used to build it back up.
An Indonesian student described as Britain's most prolific rapist was jailed for life on Monday for a catalogue of sex offences on unsuspecting men he drugged and assaulted. Manchester Crown Court in northwest England was told Reynhard Sinaga may have attacked as many as 195 men, luring them into his flat with the offer of a place to stay or alcohol. Judge Suzanne Goddard described the 36-year-old from Indonesia's Jambi province as "an evil sexual predator" who preyed on drunken young men on nights out. He is thought to have used sedatives to render his victims unconscious before filming the attacks. Most knew nothing about the assaults. He was caught only when one victim woke up. "One of your victims described you as a monster," Goddard said. "The scale and enormity of your offending confirms this as an accurate description." She recommended he serve at least 30 years behind bars. Sinaga was convicted of 159 offences, including 136 rapes and eight attempted rapes, at four separate trials, according to the Crown Prosecution Service. The first trial began in June 2018. The last ended last December. None could be reported until restrictions imposed to avoid prejudicing juries were lifted on Monday. The CPS said Sinaga was suspected of attacking "scores" more men since he moved to Britain in 2007, calling him "the worst-known sex offender in the country's history". The deputy chief crown prosecutor for northwest England, Ian Rushton, said: "Reynhard Sinaga is the most prolific rapist in British legal history." -- 'Playing dead ' -- "His extreme sense of sexual entitlement almost defies belief and he would no doubt still be adding to his staggering tally had he not been caught. "Sinaga's unthreatening demeanour duped these young men -- many of whom thanked him for his kindness in offering them a place to stay -- into thinking this monster was a Good Samaritan. "But once back at his flat he used victims as objects purely for his own gratification -- then appears to have derived further twisted pleasure from re-watching his films in court and putting victims through the trauma of giving evidence." Sinaga, a slightly built, young-looking doctorate student, had claimed his mainly heterosexual victims were acting out his sexual fantasy to play dead during intercourse. But four trial juries rejected his defence and a character testimony from a local church he had attended in Manchester. He was arrested in 2017 after the victim who woke up managed to snatch his mobile phone and took it to police. The CPS said detectives discovered 3.29 terabytes of graphic material of the sexual assaults equivalent to 250 DVDs or 300,000 photos. One of the assaults lasted for eight hours.
Fishing vessels taking part in the search for the missing fisherman off Hook Lighthouse in Co Wexford. Picture: Steve Humphreys

Air and sea searches have continued off the Wexford Coast this morning for a fisherman missing since Saturday night.

Willie Whelan, who is in his 40s, was fishing off Hook Head with another man, Joe Sinnott (65), who was winched from the sea and rushed to hospital but who died later.

The tragedy has hit the close-knit communities of Kilmore Quay, Dunmore East and the surrounding villages and townlands.

There were fears poor weather conditions would hamper the search operation today but despite very unfavourable conditions, a number of RNLI boats and Irish Coast Guard Helicopter Rescue 117 were deployed this morning.

Expand Close Father-of-four Joe Sinnott was out fishing for scallops when his boat sank / Facebook

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The Irish Naval vessel, the LE Ciara, was also redeployed off the coastline from 6am to act as on-scene coordinator.

Two RNLI lifeboats from Dunmore East and Kilmore Quay were deployed shortly after 9am, with conditions described as very, very poor with sea swells of up to six metres.

However conditions have since calmed in the last hour and searches are expected to continue throughout the afternoon.

Naval Service crews, including a navy dive team, are on standby to assist in the search operation but have not yet been officially requested while weather conditions are also unfavourable for dive crews to operate in at present.

A massive search operation began when the Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) from the 12-metre fishing boat Alize automatically alerted Coast Guard personnel at around 10.30pm on Saturday.

This beacon operates when it is submerged in water, and could indicate that the boat sank quickly, giving the two-man crew no time to radio for help.

They had been fishing for scallops six miles south of Hook Head.

Mr Sinnott, a father of four and grandfather of nine, was from the Seaview area of Kilmore Quay.

Neighbours and friends yesterday gathered at the house he shared with his wife Mary to comfort her and the Sinnott family on their loss.

"We really don't know what happened. It's too early to tell. The first we knew was around 11pm after the signal from the boat was received by the Coast Guard in Dublin who then in turn contacted the owner," said Mr Sinnott's son, Michael.

"It's hard to believe. He was so many years at sea, and the man who was with him too, so whatever happened wasn't down to a lack of experience."

"He was a hard worker. They were scallop fishing, which would have been a 24-hour trip with a two-man crew.

"The boat was in good condition."

After being taken from the sea Mr Sinnott was transferred to University Hospital in Waterford but later died.

His funeral will take place on Wednesday.

The family of Mr Whelan was also being comforted by neighbours and friends as they awaited news.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar expressed his condolences to those affected, saying: "As the search continues, our thoughts are with the family and friends of the missing fisherman, and those of his bereaved colleague."

He also thanked the Coast Guard staff and volunteers for their ongoing efforts.

"This morning I spoke to the Director of the Irish Coast Guard, Eugene Clonan, on behalf of the Irish Government to thank him and his teams for their role in this search, in exceptionally difficult circumstances off the Wexford coast.

"As a former Minister for Transport, I am very conscious of the brave service provided by the Coast Guards staff and volunteers right around our coastline. I also acknowledged the vital assistance of the RNLI, the Civil Defence and other volunteers in this search and throughout the year.

"The Defence Forces is also providing assistance in this search, with the LE Ciara acting as a co-ordinating vessel. In my role as Minister for Defence, I assured Mr Clonan that the Defence Forces will be available to provide further assistance if required," Mr Varadkar said.

Wexford Fianna Fail councillor Michael Whelan said Mr Whelan had only married five months ago.

"The family are distraught," he told Independent.ie.

"I spoke with his father at Hook Head and he said he saw him out fishing and had expected him to be back in just an hour-and-a-half.

"The family are just holding out hope for a rescue or recovery."

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Search conditions yesterday were difficult, with a strong wind blowing onshore and visibility hampered by rain.

Conditions changed dramatically within minutes, and as the light in Hook Head lighthouse was switched on at around 4.30pm and darkness fell, visibility was very poor.

Members of the Coast Guard gathered at the lighthouse, and a rescue helicopter swept back and forth across the choppy seas.

Lifeboats and fishing vessels could also be seen searching.

The search was called off due to fading light and unfavourable weather conditions shortly after 4.30pm.

Irish Coast Guard helicopters 116 and 117 returned to land.

And the RNLI lifeboats from Kilmore Quay, Fethard, and Dunmore East returned to their bases.

Many local fishing vessels were also involved in the search which was being co-ordinated by the LE Ciara off Hook Head.

Some items from the stricken boat have been spotted in the water and recovered.

The trawler, a scallop fishing vessel, was said to be in good condition and working in good sea conditions when it sank.

The boat is a steel-hulled vessel built in the UK in 1989.

Defence Minister Paul Kehoe said the sinking of the trawler was "a hugely tragic incident that has shocked the local community".
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In 2017, I listened to the testimony of an American Christian John Hendry IV at the College Station Chinese Church in Texas (the predecessor of the College Station Chinese Bible Church). The title of his sermon was the title of this article: " Journey to China from Texas and beyond over 130 years ago ." He talked about the missionary trip of his great-grandfather John L. Hendry Sr. to China in 1888. I was not only deeply moved by the Hendrys faithful service to the Lord Jesus, but also intrigued by the history involved, and I want to record this story. After numerous email communications with John, several face-to-face conversations, reading a few books written by his relatives, and checking the information on the Internet, I finally wrote this article.

Before telling John Hendrys story let me briefly introduce the history of missionaries in China. The earliest recorded Christian missionary in China was Alpen Abraham, a Syrian, who traveled to Chang'an in the Tang dynasty in AD 635. Christianity was known as Nestorianism back then in China. The legend is that the apostle Thomas first spread the gospel to India and China. Other famous missionaries include Matteo Ricci in the Ming Dynasty, Johann Adam Schall von Bell in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Ferdinand Verbiest in the early Qing Dynasty, and Robert Morrison and James Hudson Taylor in the late Qing Dynasty.

Matteo Ricci is a Catholic Jesuit missionary and a scholar from Italy. He went to China in 1584 and brought the world map and Euclid's "Geometry Original", he was the first person to introduce science to the Chinese.

The German-born Johann Adam Schall von Bell went to China in 1619. He was the teacher of two emperors of Shunzhi and Kangxi. He adopted the strategy of using science for his mission work by introducing astronomy to China and revising the lunar calendar.

(Johann Adam Schall von Bell and Emperor Shunzhi)

Belgian Ferdinand Verbiest went to China in 1658. He was the scientific enlightenment teacher of Emperor Kangxi. He was one of the most influential missionaries to China in the early Qing Dynasty. He served as the head of the Ministry of Industry.

British Robert Morrison was the first Protestant missionary to mainland China. He went to China in 1807 and published the Chinese version of the Bible for the first time.

(Morrison leading Chinese believers to translate the Bible into Chinese.)

James Hudson Taylor, The British founder of the China Inland Mission, went to China in 1853. Many people may know his famous quote, which has touched the hearts of countless Chinese people: "If I had a thousand pounds China should have itif I had a thousand lives, China should have them. No! Not China, but Christ. Can we do too much for Him? Can we do enough for such a precious Savior?"

Perhaps not everyone knows: James Hudson Taylor was firmly opposed to the opium trade to China.

In addition to these well-known missionaries, there are thousands of missionaries who were the unsung heroes. Each of them had their own unique experience, many of which were even thrilling. John L. Hendry Sr. was one of them.

In 1888, the Methodist Episcopal Church based in Nashville, TN sent John Hendry Sr. to China. Three weeks after his wedding, he and his wife Alice took a ship on their journey to China. At that time, China was still in an era when women bound their feet and men had their long braids. The Qing government closed the country to the outside world. It is obsessed with the identity of the son of the heavenly king in the central kingdom, and expects all nations to come to worship them. Two Opium Wars made the Qing government realize the reality. The Qing emperor was not willing to admit defeat; to him signing the many unfair treaties was just a way to fool the Westerners. The ordinary Chinese people were both fearful and angry with the Westerners. To go to China on a missionary trip under the circumstances required great courage and dedication. John L. Hendry Sr. and his wife first went to Suzhou to study Chinese for three years. After that, they went to Nanjing for two years and then lived in Tianjin for a few years. John L. Hendry Sr. went to Huzhou, Zhejiang Province in 1890, where he preached for more than 20 years. The number of local Christians increased from zero to 6,000. He spent some time in Shanghai as well [1].

(John and Alice Hendry and other missionaries and their families traveling by boat.)

The Boxer Rebellion in 1900 started with attacking the weakest westerners, missionaries and their families. Christians call it "the Murder of Christians by the Boxers". The Qing government wanted to use the Boxer Rebellion to counter the westerners. Sometimes the government itself joined in the massacre. As a result, the Allied Forces attacked and took the capital. The Qing government had to sign a humiliating treaty again. The indemnity was the equivalent of five times the total GDP of China at that time.

According to the Hendrys family genealogy [1]: During the Boxer Rebellion, a brave telegraph operator changed the order of the Empress Dowager Cixi from kill foreigners to protect foreigners. And the precious time he created allowed Hendrys family to flee to the Shanghai Concession. The telegrapher was later executed.

They also had to escape from China during the war with Japan. One of these events was reported by a local newspaper.

It can be seen from this newspaper that Chinese church members also gave a banner to send them off. The two years-old baby in the photo could even speak Chinese. Of course, with a Chinese nanny and Chinese children to play with, he could probably speak authentic Chinese (possibly with a Jiangsu-Zhejiang accent).

It is from this banner that I found the Chinese name of John L. Hendry: , not my original guess of . Before I knew this, I used missionaries, , Huzhou and other keywords on Baidu search, and found nothing. After switching to the right name , several items popped up. The descendants of John Hendry may not be sure about where he actually preached. After searching online, I found that Hendry also established churches in Wuzhen in 1890, Shengze in 1899, Tunxi in 1900, Wuxing Island in 1901, and the church in Taihu in 1903 [3]. Before and after the Boxer Rebellion, it was his busiest time. He had the courage to work hard under the dangerous circumstance, which is admirable.

At the end of the 19th century, cameras were still a luxury item in China, but they have become more popular in the West. From Hendry Sr. to his son, Hendry Jr., a lot of precious photos were taken. Unfortunately, some of them have no explanations of where and when they were taken, and one can only guess.

In 1904, a family portrait for the Hendrys was taken in GuangHui House in Shanghai. The first one on the left was John Hendry Jr.

This looks like twin towers. If you look carefully, they are three towers. A friend of mine saw this picture and pointed out that this was the triple towers of Jiaxing. The towers in the photo were built in the Tang Dynasty, but were tore down during the Cultural Revolution. They were rebuilt years later.

This was the Great Wall. But it is not clear which section it was.

In 1900, there were still no automobiles in Shanghai (the first automobile appeared in Shanghai three years later). Rickshaws were the main means of transportation.

This was the Bund.

This was Naking Road, it looked horrible!

This was the racecourse, which is said to have been changed to the Peoples Park. During the Boxer Uprising, Hendry Sr. saw the allied forces gathered here before they went north to attack Peking.

This was East Changzhi Rd. in Shanghai, looked somewhat glamorous.

(A local Chinese Christian)

These photos were probably taken in the water town of Suzhou or Huzhou.

The single-hole bridge was a bridge over a canal in Huzhou, Zhejiang (Photo taken in 1919).

The raingear was an unusual thing for Americans. When I was a child, I often saw farmers wearing these raingears in the fields to do farm work. I also saw the kind of boats with the top when I was a child.

These were some unknown streets in unknown cities. (A friend of mine pointed out the middle one in the top row was taken in Shaoxing.)

From the book written by Johns family members, Zhejiang Moganshan was the place where they often went to vacation. Unfortunately, I cannot match the photos.

John L. Hendry Jr. was born in China and educated in the United States. This photo was probably taken when he was in middle school. He was no doubt a very handsome young man!

After graduating from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, John joined the British army. In 1919, he married his wife, Lutie (They met at Southwestern University), in Huzhou, China.

(Lutie)

After the marriage, they had three girls and one boy. After the birth of her son John L. Hendry III, Lucy unfortunately died of postpartum complications. John L. Hendry Jr. had to raise four children by himself. This must have been a difficult time for him. (Readers should have guessed that John L. Hendry IV, who came to the College Station Chinese Church, is the son of John L. Hendry III.)

A few years later, John L. Hendry Jr. met a young woman, Lois, from Illinois on a missionary trip to China. They fell in love and got married in China. The bride had both American and Chinese style wedding photos. She looked so happy!

Finally John L. Hendry Jr. had a warm and loving family again!

During the First World War, John L. Hendry Jr. took 400 laborers from China to France to dig trenches for the Allied Force. This was a photo of laborers waiting to board a ship at the Huangpu River dock.

This is an apartment building that John L. Hendry Jr. built in 1930, called Houston Court. It was the first building in Shanghai with an elevator. It is still there today.

Shanghai American School was the place where the children of these missionaries went to school [4].

During World War II, John L. Hendry Jr. served with the Red Cross.

John L. Hendry Jr. s first wife, Lutie, wrote many letters to her parents. Among them, one of her many "anecdotes" was about a Chinese family inviting them to have dinner. They served dishes like shark's fin, pigeon egg with fried mushrooms, duck's paw, bamboo (should be bamboo shoots not bamboo, translation was definitely wrong), turtle, eels, etc., sounded definitely like a delicious dinner to most of us Chinese, but it was shocking to an American woman at that time. She struggled with her chopsticks during the entire dinner. Another story: after the Chinese died, they would not be buried. Sometimes it would take half a year, after a fortuneteller giving the permission for burial. The coffin was placed at home. (I don't know if I should believe it, wait for so long? Wouldnt the body stink?) Of course, in the early 1900s women with small feet of a few inches long were always shocking to westerners.

John L. Hendry Jr. s second wife, Lois, wrote a book in the mid-1980s about her missionary work in China in the 1920s [2]. The missionaries took in many abandoned or mistreated girls. The girl in this photo (left side) was 12 years old. Her alcoholic mistress abused her. Every time the mistress was drunk, she would use a cigarette butt to burn the girl. Due to the lack of food, the poor girl had a very skinny face and was referred to as the "monkey girl" by the judge. A few months after arriving at the church, she became a happy and healthy girl (on the right side of the photo).

This story reminds me of a saying I learned in elementary school (A well-known communist propaganda): the old society (meaning before the communists took over China) turned people into ghosts, and the new society (meaning after the communists took over China) turns ghosts into people. It is so appropriate if the words new society were replaced by church!

The church took in many such abandoned or mistreated girls. This photo shows the smiling freshmen girls, they seemed so happy!

These girls learned Chinese, English, and studied the Bible. They were well educated and became the potential brides sought after by many local single men. The men would first write to the church, and according to the information they provided, the Chinese staff in the church would match the most suitable ones for them. Then there was a date, in fact, it was to meet each other once. Lois detailed this match-making process in her book. When the man and woman met, the woman lowered her head deeply and only looked at the ground. Both sides agreed to marriage after the meeting. The other girls asked her, you didn't even look at his face, how did you know he is a good man? She replied: I looked at his feet and knew that he was a good person. Such a thing was undoubtedly unimaginable to a young American girl. Lois was also deeply attracted to Chinese weddings.

A group of Chinese girls in the church washing their clothes in laughter.

At that time, the missionaries in China strongly opposed women's foot-binding, encouraged women to be educated, and contributed to the women's liberation movement.

The Hendrys bought some souvenirs from China. There was an exhibition at Southwestern University in Texas a few years ago where these souvenirs were on display. These were bought with their own money, unlike some art pieces robbed by the Allied Forces. In a way, these souvenirs have contributed to the preservation of Chinese culture. In China, most of these things were burned during Culture Revolution.

There was an interesting story recorded in the genealogy book of the Hendrys [1]. In Nanjing, John L. Hendry Sr. bought a piece of land from a young Chinese and prepared to build a church on this land. This was around the time of the Boxer Uprising. The young man was obviously under a lot of pressure from his relatives and local people for selling this land. He almost committed suicide under the pressure. The next day he came back and pleaded to cancel the deal. The church understood his situation and promised to cancel the land deal in order to ease the relationship with the local people. Later, local people were moved and donated a piece of land to the church.

I found an article [5] published in the "Zhejiang Social Science" in the process of checking historical data on the Internet. The author of the article discusses a dispute involving a church that took place in Huzhou in the early 1900s. It was the so-called Case of Zhejiang Huzhou gentry vs the church (1902-1908). The accused was the missionary T. A. Hearn, but the name of John Hendry also appeared in the case. The story goes like this:

The church wanted to buy a piece of land to build a church and a hospital. The local officials could not find out who the land belonged to, so according to the Chinese law an announcement was made that if no one claimed the land within a few months, the government would sell it to the church. No one claimed within the expiration deadline, so the church bought the land from the government and started the construction. This caught the attention of the local gentry. At that time, this kind of conflict was likely to start a vicious cycle of killing, destroying the church - negotiating - gunboats - indemnity and punishment. However, according to this article, this matter was finally resolved peacefully through the mediation of the US court in China. With the church concessions, the parties reached an out-of-court settlement agreement. This was the only peaceful resolution of such conflicts at that time. Later, a believer Shen Langxi donated one acre of land and a house to the church. This case attracted the attention of all of China at the time and was a well-covered story in various newspapers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong.

Maybe these are two versions of the same story, maybe they are two different stories. In any case, in all fairness, there was nothing wrong with what the church did. They bought a piece of land in full accordance with Chinese laws and regulations, and they had already started construction. It is not reasonable to enforce the original landlords expired claim. Under such circumstances, the church would rather take the financial loss and return the land in consideration of its relationship with the local people. This contradicts some of the official information I saw, which claimed that the church relied on the foreigners' gunboat, and retaliated severely after the failure of the Boxer Rebellion, and bullied the non-believers. According to my understanding, it is unlikely that church would do such things, it is incompatible with the teachings of the Bible.

On the People's Web, there is an article [6] about the Murder of Christians by the Boxers. The author refers to the Chinese-French School of the French Catholic Bishop Fan Guoliang, who provided more than 50 translators for the French Expeditionary Force. He concluded that: "Some missionaries killed in the Boxer Uprising really deserved to die". This statement has a logical problem: even if there was a translation service provided by the missionaries, it was after the killing of the missionaries (the expeditionary army was there after the missionaries were killed). It doesnt make sense!

In any case, if the prosecution were the only one allowed to present and the defense was not allowed to speak, then a lawsuit would have only one predictable result.

John L. Hendry Sr.s church in Huzhou also cultivated two famous Chinese theologians: Zhao Ziwei and Wang Zhixin. Looking at their ages, they were probably baptized by John L. Hendry Sr. The church's contribution to Huzhou also includes education and Western medicine. Several church schools and a hospital were built by the church. To date, many doctors and nurses in Huzhou are Christians. During the Cultural Revolution, believers still insisted on worshipping and Bible study at home.

(Todays Huzhou Christian Church)

The ending of the case of Zhejiang Huzhou gentry vs the church is very interesting. The author of the Zhejiang Social Science article visited the land of dispution (An article with the same content was posted by the same author on the Internet using a different title Beating the Christian Church in Court with obvious anti-Christian bias). He found that the building that was built by the church after the settlement was still in use today - the No. 3 Building of Huzhou First People's Hospital, where people flowed, bustling, and the word 1905 was engraved on the threshold; Everything that the local gentry won back in the early 1900s was annihilated." This ending is truly unbelievable!

The last photo: In 1997, John L. Hendry III, his children and their spouses took a group photo at the Great Wall of China in Badaling.

When John L. Hendry IV delivered his sermon at the College Station Chinese Church, he quoted a Bible passage (This was the verse that motivated his grandmother, Lois, to go to China):

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit--fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. (John 15:16)

References

Beverly B. Fiske, Hendry.Sedgwick.Sutcliffe.Baldwin: A Family History, 2009. Lois Sells Hendry, Footsteps, 1985.  (1848-1939), , 2016. Deke Erh and 86 Shanghai American School Students and Teachers 1937-1949, ed. Deke Erh, Old China Hand Press, 2011. , , 20153. , , ()

http://www.peopledaily.com.cn/GB/channel1/10/20000929/255421.html
GHENT, Belgium  The NTGent theater here was out of step with its surroundings last weekend. As the bustling, family-friendly Christmas market of this handsome port city was still going strong, with craft and jewelry stalls half framing the theaters doors, inside a somber audience gathered for a new stage production about a familys collective suicide.

Under the circumstances, the bleak subject matter could easily have felt gratuitous. Yet that sense of detachment from the world is at the heart of the play, Milo Raus Familie, which links suicide to a sense of contemporary hopelessness.

The production was inspired by the story of a family of four, the Demeesters, who killed themselves in Calais, France, in 2007. Rau, a Swiss-born theater director who has been at the helm of NTGent since 2018, enlisted another real family to imagine what might have happened on their last night: the married couple An Miller and Filip Peeters, who are stage and TV actors, and their daughters, Leonce and Louisa.

Most directors would probably draw the line at asking amateur teenage actors to simulate their own suicide, but Rau loves an ethical minefield. Last year, he made work in a former war zone in Iraq and cast former migrant workers in a cinematic retelling of the life of Jesus in Italy.
Put on your brightly coloured skivvies and jump into the Big Red Car: the original line-up of the Wiggles has announced a rare reunion gig, in aid of bushfire relief.

The Wiggles revealed on Monday that they would get together for an over-18s show to take place in Sydney next week.

The original line-up of the Wiggles (from left): Anthony Field, Greg Page, Murray Cook and Jeff Fatt

"Were getting the band back together ... to raise some much-needed funds to assist with those affected by the bushfires in Australia," the Wiggles said in a Facebook post.

"ALL proceeds from the show (tickets and merchandise sales) will be going to the Australian Red Cross and [wildlife rescue organisation] WIRES."
Crime Branch to investigate: Police

A day after the violence ensued in Delhi's JNU campus, Delhi Police PRO MS Randhawa, on Monday, briefed the media saying that the Crime branch will be investigating the incident. He stated that the police received a call at 5 PM about a scuffle between students and they responded immediately. The scuffle which was on the JNU registration had been ongoing for the past few days, he added. Narrating the sequence of events, he said that the Delhi police which could be deployed only in the Admin block could not enter the area of the scuffle which was mainly in the hostels.

"Yesterday around 5 PM, Delhi police received a call that there is a scuffle between JNU students. Delhi police responded at the same time. An FIR has been registered in this case. The crime branch will investigate the case," he said.

Moreover, he revealed that JNU administration allowed them to enter the campus after 7:30 PM and conducted a flag march, taking the situation under control. He added, " CCTV footage is being collected and Crime Branch will investigate headed by a DCP rank who has already found vital clues. 34 were injured and have been discharged from the hospital. Delhi police have constituted a fact-finding committee under the chairmanship of the Joint CP (Western range) Shalini Singh."
Courtney Herron's shattered father has opened up on his unimaginable loss eight months after her body was found in a Melbourne park.

John Herron said his family will be forever broken after the 25-year-old was found dead in Royal Park in Parkville in May.

'Words really can't describe how bad it is,' Mr Herron told The Herald Sun. 'There's nothing to describe it. There's always this feeling. A feeling of that we'll never see her again. It's the ever-present pain.'

John Herron (pictured with his daughter Courtney) has spoken up on her horrific death in Melbourne last year

Courtney Herron was found dead in Royal Park in Parkville in May with 'horrendous' injuries

Ms Herron was found by dog walkers in the park, with injuries described by police as 'horrendous.'

She had been couch surfing and sleeping rough while struggling with drug and mental health issues at the time of her death.

Homeless man Henry Hammond has pleaded not guilty to Ms Herron's murder, and will appear in the Supreme Court in Melbourne on Tuesday.

Homeless man Henry Hammond pleaded not guilty to Ms Herron's murder and will face the Supreme Court in Melbourne on Tuesday

Mr Herron is gearing up to come face-to-face with his daughter's accused killer, but knows that no matter what the outcome is, he won't get her back.

'I know that Courtney would want to see justice done on what happened to her,' Mr Herron said. '(But) whatever may happen (in court), it just doesn't bring her back. It's like a wound that we have the dressing ripped off every time.'

Mr Herron said he hopes his daughter's death isn't in vain.

'First of all, to preserve the memory of Courtney  and I'm sure Courtney would like that message to be resonated,' he said.

'She died unnecessarily. She had the world at her feet.'
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ALIGARH/MUMBAI: A large number of students from various colleges in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal are protesting against the violence that broke out in the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi on Sunday in which several students and teachers were injured.

According to reports, students in Mumbai gathered at the Gateway of India on the intervening night of Sunday and Monday to protest against the JNU incident. The students assembled at the Gateway of India, read poems and held candles and mobiles with flashes on to symbolise their protest against the brutality on students in JNU.

Placards with "We stand with JNU", "Stop attacks on students" written on them were also seen. Earlier, a few students of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay had also expressed solidarity with JNU students by carrying out a march.

The students carried placards with "IIT Bombay stands with JNU", "Save JNU", "Down with Gundaraj", among other slogans, written on them.Students of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune similarly held a protest against the violence in JNU.

Live TV

Meanwhile, in Delhi also students have continued their protest outside the main gate of JNU, AIIMS Trauma Centre and the Delhi Police Headquarters at ITO against the attack on students and professors.

Students of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) on Monday carried out a candle march to show solidarity with the JJNU students after the Sunday's violence.

The students lit candles and carried banners to express their solidarity with the JNU students who were injured during the violence on campus.

Students carried posters with "AMU stands in solidarity with JNU" written on them and raised slogans of "JNU Zindabad", "AMU Zindabad", and "Down with ABVP" during the course of the march. Similar protests were reported from Bihar capital Patna where students of Patna University gathered in large numbers and condemned the violence in JNU campus.

Similarly in Kolkata, students of the Jadavpur University also carried out a march to express their solidarity with the JNU community.

More than 18 students have been taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered the JNU and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods.

Politicians, cutting across party lines, had condemned the attack on students which had taken place in JNU on Sunday. They had urged the administration to take nab the culprits and take strict action against those found guilty.

(With Agency inputs)
California's oldest weekly newspaper, which once featured the writing of Mark Twain, has been saved.

A California man is taking over the Downieville-based Mountain Messenger, covering school board meetings, federal land use and other issues in rural Sierra and Plumas counties northeast of Sacramento.

Carl Butz, 71, said he canceled plans for a multi-month trek across Europe and Asia to step into the role of editor-publisher, beginning Jan. 20.

"I've been a widower for three years and this is a new chapter in my life," said Butz, who lives in an off-the-grid cabin in Downieville. "What am I going to do? Go on another trip around the world? Instead, I'm doing something good for the community, and I feel good about it."

Established in 1853, the Mountain Messenger publishes every Thursday with a circulation of about 2,400. Mark Twain famously wrote a handful of stories for the publication under his real name, Sam Clemens, while hiding out from the law.

"He'd accepted a challenge to a duel in Virginia City, and the State of Nevada had just outlawed dueling and so the governor said, 'Look I can hold this warrant for 24 hours, but you got to get out of here,'" said Don Russell, 70, the current publisher who is retiring.

Russell said he has tracked down two of Twain's old stories in the archives and said, "They were very short, one column by three or four inches. They were not particularly entertaining."

ALSO: 161-year-old Martinez News-Gazette to end publishing

After 30 years of doing everything from selling ads to reporting stories, Russell is ready to step down. He has spent the past year trying to find a new publisher and said in recent years covering expenses has been challenging. His salary last year was $3,000.

"We found a pigeon to carry it on!" Russell said. "I'm very happy about it. He is now on the porch talking to the L.A. Times. He and I had been talking about it for a long time. I had pretty well talked him out of it. This is a losing business. But he's an old-timer, and well-connected to the community, related to half the county. It's a very easy and casual hand-off. The paper is in good hands."

A retired independent software consultant, Butz plans to do some writing and editing and will be recruiting new writers. The region is popular for outdoor recreation and he hopes to increase coverage on mountain bike and snowmobile trails and campground availability.

The paper currently doesn't have an online presence and he may explore making a digital version available, but he has no plans to turn off the presses.

"I got all these papers from the 1800s. They're wonderful to be reading now," he said. "Nobody is going to be doing that 100 years from now with the digital stuff. I'm not a Luddite but I think there are some things we shouldn't lose. The printed word being one of them."

Amy Graff is a digital editor with SFGATE. Email her at agraff@sfgate.com.
A protester in his early 30s, who asked only to be identified as Jero, poses for photo at a Presbyterian Church in Taipei, Taiwan on Dec. 23, 2019. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

Taiwan Election is Make or Break for Fleeing Hong Kong Protesters

TAIPEIA small but growing number of Hong Kong protesters who fled to Taiwan for safety over the past few months fear an opposition victory in the islands election this week will put them in peril and force them to leave.

The mostly young men and women who came to Taiwan after taking part in increasingly violent protests in support of democracy in Hong Kong have no legal way to gain permanent asylum, but President Tsai Ing-wens broadly sympathetic government has allowed about 60 of them to temporarily extend their stay.

Some of those protesters fear that support will vanish if the Jan. 11 election is won by Han Kuo-yu, the presidential candidate for Taiwans Kuomintang opposition party, which favors close ties with China.

If Han Kuo-yu is elected, I will buy a flight ticket and flee to another country right away, a protester in his early 30s who asked only to be identified as Jero told Reuters.

Jero said he flew to Taiwan on a tourist visa days after he took part in the storming of Hong Kongs Legislative Council on July 1 fearing he could be charged with rioting, which carries a maximum prison term of 10 years.

He now lives in a small studio in Taipei funded by a network of local activists supporting the protesters.

The issue of Hong Kong has played a large role in Taiwans election campaign. Tsai has vowed to defend the islands sovereignty and has rejected Chinas suggestion of a one country, two systems political formula, saying it has failed in Hong Kong.

Taiwans President Tsai Ing-wen visits the 6th Army Command, ahead of Lunar New Year, in Taoyuan, Taiwan on Jan. 25, 2019. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

Han, who says he wants to forge strong ties with Beijing and met with Hong Kongs embattled leader Carrie Lam and senior Chinese officials last year, has accused Tsai of using the Hong Kong protests to whip up fears of China for electoral gain.

Both Tsai and Han have voiced support for Hong Kong protesters. But the prospect of a Han presidency is more concerning to the protesters.

Hong Kong people are fighting against the Chinese Communist Party, but how could we convince ourselves that the Kuomintang is also against the Communist Party? said a protester called Roger, whose tourist visa has been extended twice since his arrival in Taiwan in July.

Jacob Lin, a Taipei-based lawyer who is part of a team that has been offering legal assistance to protesters seeking residency in Taiwan since mid-summer, said many protesters are worried about a change of political control.

If the ruling party is replaced, the treatment for protesters may be quite different, he said, referring to Tsais Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Responding to protesters concerns about a Han victory, Han spokeswoman Anne Wang urged Hong Kong protesters not to be used by the DPP for electoral gain.

I hope they have a true understanding of Mr. Hans insistence on the value of democracy and freedom, she said. Hes solely against provocation, conflict and war, but hes in full support of Hong Kongs democracy and freedom.

(Kuomintang partys presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu speaks to his supporters at an election rally in Tainan, Taiwan, on Jan. 4, 2019. (Ann Wang/Reuters)

Protective Umbrella

Taiwans government has helped close to 60 protesters who are seeking shelter on the island for political reasons since the protests started about six months ago, a senior government official with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The official, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, said Taiwan has been offering assistance on an individual basis to protesters, discreetly allowing them to extend tourist visas multiple times or facilitating applications for student or work visas.

Taiwans government will not deport those who had made it there, the official said.

If we dont help Hong Kong when they are in trouble, who is going to help Taiwan when we are in trouble? he said.

Taiwans Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement that it will appropriately handle individual cases in accordance with existing laws, without elaborating.

Tired of waiting around, some are taking direct action to help the protesters restart their lives in Taiwan.

Hong Kong-based rights lawyer Daniel Wong is leading an initiative to set up at least 10 companies from a laundry service to a restaurant in Taiwan to give protesters much-needed residency via work visas.

Wong said the plan, dubbed project protective umbrella, will be funded by a group of anonymous supporters in Taiwan and Hong Kong, many of whom are lawyers, doctors and other professionals.

We are going to help our own kids, he said. Hong Kong people are not refugees.

Huang Chun-sheng, a pastor at a Presbyterian Church in Taipei which has received more than 100 protesters said he will set up a foundation for Hongkongers in Taiwan to coordinate funding support for those needing shelters.

He said a few of those protesters had since returned to Hong Kong in the belief that they would likely not be charged there.

Shopping for daily necessities in Taipei, a protester in her 20s who identified herself as Tiffany sounded caution on the coming vote, and urged Taiwanese to vote for Tsai, who she says can protect the islands freedoms.

I hope to study and find a job in Taiwan, she said. I hope Taiwanese can cherish the votes in their hands.

By Felice Wu and Yimou Lee
TOKYO  Japans justice minister vowed Monday to strengthen border departure checks and review bail conditions after Nissans former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, fled the country despite the stringent surveillance imposed as a condition of his release.

Masako Mori told reporters at a news conference the ministry has already acted to prevent a recurrence but declined to give details. Speaking a week after Ghosn showed up in Lebanon, due to the New Year holidays in Japan, she defended the judicial system that he fled, insisting he would not get a fair hearing.

She was asked about reports that Ghosn had hidden in a box and that baggage checks at a regional airport might have been insufficient.

Ghosn, who was chairman of Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi at the time of his arrest, skipped bail while awaiting trial on various financial misconduct allegations and later said from Lebanon that he did it to escape injustice.

The Wall Street Journal said among those involved in the escape plan was a former Green Beret, Michael L. Taylor, who has previously rescued hostages. It said Monday, citing unnamed sources, that the team that spirited Ghosn out of the country made numerous trips to Japan to scout out possible escape routes. It settled on Osakas airport, whose cargo X-ray scanners were not big enough to handle the man-sized concert equipment box apparently used to get him aboard a private flight.

Mori declined to say who might be held responsible for such a high-profile, illegal flight, stressing it was still under investigation.

She denounced his escape as an unjustifiable crime.

Japans justice system allows investigating the facts while it ensures the individual basic human rights at the same time, Mori told reporters at the ministry. It is set with appropriate procedures and it is operated appropriately.

Referring to human rights advocates descriptions of the legal system as hostage justice, Mori said, We are aware of the criticisms.

She acknowledged that a review of the judicial system,including consideration of using electronic tethers for monitoring suspects out of bail, was taking Ghosns case into account.

Arrested first in November 2018, Ghosn is charged with under-reporting his future compensation and breach of trust in diverting Nissan money for his personal gain. He insists he is innocent.

Critics say Japans system is too slow and is inhumane. Ghosn was banned from meeting with his wife while out on bail. Preparing for his trial has taken more than a year, and a date has not been set. He was detained, twice, for a total of 130 days before he was released on bail a second time.

Mori said each nation has its own judicial system and arrests are rarer in Japan than in other countries, suggesting arrests are made only when the authorities are fairly confident they have a case.

Simple comparisons are misleading, she said.

French authorities are also investigating Ghosn and the automakers. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Monday that he was surprised by Ghosns escape and wants a broader investigation into 11 million euros ($12.3 million) in questionable expenses at the Netherlands-based headquarters of the alliance between Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors under Ghosns watch.

Le Maire wouldnt say where Ghosn should be prosecuted, but said that as Renaults biggest single shareholder, the French government wants to ensure the struggling automaker prospers again.

When you are an individual subject to laws, you dont escape justice. And Carlos Ghosn is an individual like any other, Le Maire said Monday on France-Inter radio. He should answer before the justice system.

Ghosns legal team say they did not know about his escape plan. Takashi Takano, one of his lawyers, said he felt sad and betrayed that Ghosn didnt try to prove his innocence in court. He also said he understood how Ghosn might have lost hope not only with the prosecutors but with the entire Japanese judicial system.

Yuichi Kaido, another lawyer, said he was troubled by public support for denying bail to all foreign suspects. He said in an online statement he feared Japan might react to international criticism of its legal system by becoming more insular and rigid in its views.

Once an auto industry superstar, while out on bail Ghosn was living in a home in an upscale part of Tokyo under strict surveillance as part of the conditions for his release. That raises questions about how he left undetected.

Many details of that escape are unclear. Security cameras at his home operated 24 hours a day, but the footage only had to be submitted to the court on a monthly basis, according to lawyers documents detailing Ghosns bail conditions.

The Turkish airline company MNG Jet said two of its planes were used illegally, first to fly him from Osaka, Japan, to Istanbul, and then on to Beirut, where he arrived on Jan. 30.

Lebanon has said he entered legally with a French passport. He has not been seen since, but has promised to speak to reporters on Wednesday.

Ghosns bail has been revoked, and Interpol has issued a wanted notice. Japan does not have an extradition treaty with Lebanon, but Mori left open the possibility Japan could seek Ghosns return.

But such a return so far appears unlikely, and Japans options are limited.

Mori stressed that any retaliatory action, such as economic sanctions, must be decided on very carefully. She would not say if Japan has contacted the U.S. or France for help.

It is indeed possible to ask for extradition of criminals based on the principle of reciprocity, she said, replying to a question about Lebanon.

But, upon doing that, we need to carefully study whether it is possible to guarantee this principle of reciprocity and their internal justice system.

___

Follow Yuri Kageyama at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union on Monday accused the vice-chancellor of "perpetrating violence" in the university.

Accusing Vice-Chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar of behaving like a "mobster", the said he used all means to ensure that students and teachers faced "violence".

It also alleged that outsiders were brought in with lathis and rods to "perpetrate violence".

"This Vice Chancellor is a cowardly vice-chancellor who introduces illegal policies through the backdoor, runs away from questions of students or teachers and then manufactures a situation to demonise JNU," the charged.

For nearly 70 days now, students of have been on a strike against a hostel fee hike.

"The violence that happened is the result of the desperation and frustration of the VC and his cronies.

"But the chronology of events that unfolded today is a shameful episode for the Delhi Police who gave a safe passage to ABVP goons imported from outside," the alleged.

It demanded that the vice-chancellor tender his resignation or be removed by the HRD Ministry.
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D-42 Purple Martin Flamed Myrtle

The D-42 Purple Martin Flamed Myrtle is the fourth instrument in the Purple Martin Series. The "Purple Martin" theme is inspired by a native bird of Pennsylvania, where Martin Guitar's headquarters and factory are located. Limited to 100 instruments, this head-turning model includes 42-style pearl inlay throughout and highly decorative inlay on the fingerboard and pickguard of the purple martin bird and mountain laurel flowers, the state flower of Pennsylvania. It is a full-gloss guitar with a heavy bearclaw Engelmann spruce top with a deep purple burst and stunning flamed myrtle back and sides. Each model includes a label signed by C. F. Martin & Company Chairman and CEO Chris Martin. The D-42 Purple Martin is strung with Martin Authentic Acoustic Lifespan 2.0 strings. List price $14,999.

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The Martin 000C12-16E Nylon 12-fret guitar is ideal for any classical guitarist looking to take their playing to the next level. This Auditorium-style, six-string guitar features a Sitka spruce gloss top and satin-finished mahogany back and sides for bright treble response and plenty of volume. It comes equipped with Fishman Matrix VT Enhance electronics and is strung with Martin Magnifico premium classical strings. List price $2,499.

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Naviswiss, an independent medical technology company specialized in miniaturized surgical navigation is entering the Japanese market. It has won regulatory approval for its smart hip navigation which gives orthopedic surgeons additional safety when implanting artificial hip joints.

This regulatory approval is an important milestone. It enables Naviswiss to access the Japanese market through already established strong Japanese business partners. First surgeries in Japan are foreseen in the next months.

Naviswiss is already marketed in Europe, Australia and Israel.

About Naviswiss:

Naviswiss provides miniaturized surgical navigation for orthopedic surgeons to accurately implant artificial joints while using minimal space, time and additional efforts. The navigated Total Hip Replacement THR application is image-free and provides the surgeon with accurate information on cup alignment, leg length and offset. The THR application is open for all implant manufacturers and supports all surgical approaches.
League City Police Department

A League City Police Department detective was arrested for allegedly driving while intoxicated with his daughter inside his car, police say.

Scott Aldridge, who has been with the department since 2003, was driving along Hobbs Road near League City Parkway around 6:30 p.m. Friday when someone called 911 to report his driving, police said. Officers spotted Aldridge in the 200 block of Hobbs Road and determined he was intoxicated, according to League City police.
Saudi Arabia Slams Turkish Parliament's Decision to Allow Sending Troops to Libya

Sputnik News

04:37 05.01.2020

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Saudi Arabia condemns the Turkish parliament's decision to authorize sending troops to Libya, saying that the move violates UN Security Council resolutions concerning Libya and curbs efforts to settle the crisis in the conflict-torn country, the state-run SPA news agency reported, citing the Saudi Foreign Ministry, on Sunday.

The Turkish legislature adopted the decision on Thursday. It followed a request by the Libyan western-based UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) for support against the offensive actions of the rival eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA).

SPA reported that Riyadh expressed its rejection of the Turkish lawmakers' decision and slammed Ankara for escalating the situation in Libya.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry, cited by the outlet, said that the parliament's authorization of troops deployment to Libya was also contrary to the declaration adopted by the Arab League during its emergency meeting on Libya, which was held on 31 December. The declaration warned against the deployment of foreign forces to Libya, noting that it might lead to the facilitated transfer of extremist foreign fighters across the region.

The ministry added that the Turkish parliament's move, which had provoked an escalation in Libya, jeopardized Arab security and regional stability.

The GNA's decision to ask Turkey for military support followed the decision of LNA commander Khalifa Haftar to engage in a "decisive battle" in his offensive to capture Tripoli, the seat of the GNA, which has been underway since April.

Earlier this week, Haftar called for general mobilization and resistance against foreign troops.

A Sputnik

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In Sunday's episode of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, she finally made up with Eva Marcille after a feud that lasted nearly a year.

And one day later, NeNe Leakes was seen arriving to Good Morning America in New York City.

The 52-year-old star rocked ripped denim with a fringed sweater and a bright cover up, adding a large Fendi handbag and YSL heels.

Beaming beauty: NeNe Leakes was seen arriving to Good Morning America in New York City on Monday morning

The reality star rocked loose jeans that featured large tears with a cropped hemline, showcasing her chic black logo YSL strappy heels.

NeNe donned a statement white fringed sweater with a red, black and silver coat on top.

The beauty carried a large Fendi logo handbag with a furry accent; she sported a large diamond ring on her finger to round out her look.

NeNe styled her platinum blonde hair sleek and straight around her grazing her shoulders.

Strike a pose: The 52-year-old star rocked ripped denim with a fringed sweater and a bright cover up, adding a large Fendi handbag and YSL heels

So pretty: The reality star rocked loose jeans that featured large tears with a cropped hemline, showcasing her chic black logo YSL strappy heels

She finished off her look with shimmery eye shadow beneath defined brows, adding nude lipstick.

During Sunday's episode of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, Nene and Eva finally made up after feuding for nearly a year.

They made peace on a cast trip to Toronto's Caribbean Carnival with NeNe yearning for the 'sisterhood' they once shared.

During Sunday's episode of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, Nene and Eva Marcille (pictured) finally made up after feuding for nearly a year.

Eva, 35, had called out NeNe during the RHOA reunion for having worn a mike during what she thought was a private discussion and NeNe was dismissive.

NeNe changed her tune in Toronto telling Eva: 'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I apologize for that. And I hope you can understand where I'm coming from, too.'

Everyone applauded as they hugged.

It was a somewhat promising sign that things might be turning around for NeNe, who'd been battling with much of the cast.

NeNe, however, couldn't refrain from taking another dig at castmate Porsha Williams, 38, who she also hoped to mend fences with after a falling out.

NeNe and Porsha had been at war since NeNe texted the new mom that she was a 'big piggy with the busted shape,' which Porsha then Tweeted with the hashtag #FatShamingANewMomShameOnYou.

Moving forward: Eva, 35, had called out NeNe during the RHOA reunion for having worn a mike during what she thought was s private discussion and NeNe was dismissive. NeNe changed her tune in Toronto telling Eva: 'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I apologize for that. And I hope you can understand where I'm coming from, too'
The presidency on Monday replied popular cleric, Tunde Bakare, who advised President Muhammadu Buhari to pick his successor for the 2023 presidential election.

President Buharis spokesperson, Femi Adesina, said the president though interested in who would succeed him, will not pick a successor.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how Mr Bakare on Sunday advised the president to put in place a succession system, saying leaders in countries like China, Singapore and South Africa put in place such succession plans.

We must also learn from Nelson Mandela who stepped aside after one term, but not without positioning the likes of Thabo Mbeki and Cyril Ramaphosa, Mr Bakare, the Senior Pastor of Latter Rain Assembly said.

Therefore, even as we build institutions of democratic governance, a key responsibility that history has bestowed on President Muhammadu Buhari at this turning point in our journey to nationhood is to institutionalise systems of accurate succession that will build and sustain the Nigeria we desire. This is a task that must be done.

In his response on Monday, while appearing on a Channels Television programme, Mr Adesina said that like anyone in a position of authority, Mr Buhari has an exit plan.

By May 2023 God willing he would have finished his second term as president, he would not have stood for another term and he will be exiting. So, he has that at the back of his mind.

READ ALSO:

Pastor Bakare said he should be interested in who succeeds him, yes Im sure the president will be interested in who succeeds him but he will not manipulate the process, to pick a successor.

The president will not pick a successor. We know him, he is not somebody like that. Will he be interested in the process? Yes, he will. He will ensure that there is a free, fair and credible election; that nobody will come to use money and resources to bamboozle his way into the leadership of the country. It will not happen. The president will ensure free, fair and credible process; but to handpick a successor? No, he will not do that.

Mr Adesina emphasised that Mr Buhari would not hand Nigeria over to those who will take her back or hand Nigeria over to looters once again.

No, that will not happen, he said.

Mr Adesina also spoke on Mr Buharis commitment to reforming Nigerias electoral law and whether he would act early enough to ensure the reforms.

One thing that is clear is that the president will do whatever is needful before the next set of general elections. Early enough is relative but the president will do whatever is needful, he said.

Mr Bakares statement is coming about a week after he paid Mr Buhari a visit, and he has, at different fora, postured himself as a potential successor to President Buhari.

The cleric who himself was the running mate of then-candidate Muhammadu Buhari in the 2011 presidential elections, last year said there was a divine arrangement for him to become Nigerias president when Mr Buharis tenure ends in 2023.
Steel is among products which often face tax evasion investigations. - File Photo

2019 saw increasing applications of trade defence instruments by a number of countries and regions around the world. The US-China trade war had not been showing signs of cooling down, which contributes to nations adopting protectionism.

The ministry said that Viet Nam was heavily affected by the trend due to its economic openness.

Statistics showed that as of the end of December 2019, there were 20 investigations of tax evasion initiated by foreign countries on Vietnamese export goods, or 12.6 per cent of the total number of cases for trade defence measures on Vietnamese export products.

Most of the tax evasion investigations were initiated by the US, the European Union and Turkey.

The ministry forecast that the trend of initiating tax-evasion investigations on Vietnamese export goods would increase, especially when Viet Nam starts to implement the EU-Viet Nam Free Trade Agreement, thanks to which many products from Viet Nam would enjoy zero tax rates.

Many products are shipped to Viet Nam before being exported to other countries to enjoy preferential tax rates, the ministry said.

Thus, firms must strictly comply with regulations related to origin of goods as well as developing a modern origin tracing system to meet requirements of foreign markets.

The ministry also urged firms to closely watch the market and report to the management agencies any unusual developments, to prevent any negative effects on local production.

In addition, firms should be cautious in investing in expanding production to prevent rapid rises in output, which would force firms to increase exports to certain markets as this might lead to investigations, the ministry said.

The US Department of Commerce in mid-December issued a final order slapping duties of up to 456 per cent on steel products produced in the Republic of Korea (RoK) and Taiwan, shipped to Viet Nam for minor processing then exported to the US.
Kota, Jan 6 : The sorry state of affairs at Kota's JK Lon hospital, where more than 110 children died in over a month, may be due to irregularities but no one cared to look into them.

The tussle between former hospital superintendent H.L. Meena and Head of Department (HOD) paediatrician Amritlal Bairwa, who was removed on Sunday, was known to one and all. Both of them preferred tossing the ball into each other's court which left the infants at the mercy of God in the hospital, said hospital employees.

While Bairwa acted like guest of honour who rarely visited the hospital, Meena never looked into the poor state of affairs of hospital's life saving equipment, they said further.

The critical patients which included new born infants were left to the mercy of medical trainees as seniors maintained a distance from the wards. Even the trainees spent most of their duty time talking on phones. When the parents approached nurses, they were scolded for no reasons and were even asked to check if drip and oxygen is being supplied to kids smoothly.

Padma, one of the mothers of the deceased boy who was just five month old, said, "There were no visiting doctors and no one to listen to my pain when my son was suffering breathing troubles in the emergency ward of the hospital." "When I called the staff, they scolded me and asked me to check if oxygen was being supplied smoothly," she said, expressing her inability to do the same. "How could I know how to check the smooth supply of oxygen when I am a mother of an ailing son who is unaware of technical things, she said.

Hospital superintendent Suresh Dulara, meanwhile, confirmed that irregularities were reported in the hospital. "Yes, there was lack of coordination between Meena and Bairwa which brought the hospital to the messy condition." Complaints against Meena were many and therefore he was removed at first go, said another employee of the hospital.

When asked why no one looked into the dysfunctional life saving equipment in hospital despite Rs 6 crore fund lying unused, Dulara said, "I can't go into the past and quote reasons for why these funds were not used." Will you be able to spend the fund which is being infused by NGOs, MLAs and MPs, he said that the hospital will use these funds for its betterment, however, there are certain government norms which need to be followed. "We are bound by the norms which are too many. These norms need to be simplified," he said further.

More than 110 kids died in Kota's JK hospital in 35 days due to hypothermia, a medical emergency that occurs when the body temperature falls below 95 degrees F (35 degrees C). The normal body temperature is 98.6 degrees F (37 degrees C).

A hospital official said there were many equipment which wanted just a small piece of wire costing around Rs 2 to start functioning, but there was no one to look into the issue as the heads of the concerned department were busy fulfilling their self seeking goals.

The war of commission simply delayed important and urgent tasks while the kids were dying.

None of the companies were assigned the task to fix the equipment which kept lying, unused.

Dulara said he can't say what went wrong earlier, however, he said he has signed comprehensive annual maintenance contract (CAMC) with firms under which the equipment will be fixed in every three months.

I have signed CAMC for warmers, ventilators, nebulisors, and pulometers and other equipment too due to which there should not be any further challenge of technical non-performance of these equipment, he said.
WESTPORT  A 33-year-old woman sustained serious injuries after being stabbed repeatedly by a man in Westport Monday afternoon, police said.

Ellis Tibere, 18, of Guilford, was charged with criminal attempt at murder, first-degree assault and possession of a deadly weapon after the incident, police said.

Police said the woman, a Greenwich resident, was stabbed by a man with a knife in the parking lot of New Beauty Wellness on Post Road East around 1 p.m. Monday.

The man, later identified as Tibere, fled the scene in a vehicle, then was pulled over on the Sherwood Island Connector a short time later.

Statements obtained allege that Tibere opened the door to the victims vehicle as she was parked in the lot and seated inside of it awaiting an appointment. Tibere was reportedly wearing a mask and brandishing a knife when he opened the door, police said in a Monday night release. The victim attempted to kick the suspect in self-defense at which time he inflicted multiple stab wounds to her leg. Based on interviews conducted with Tibere, it appears the victim and location were chosen at random.

The woman, who suffered multiple stab wounds, was transported to Norwalk Hospital for treatment and is now in stable condition, police said.

Tibere confessed to his involvement in the incident, police said in the release.

He was held in lieu of a $1 million bond and scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Norwalk on Jan. 7 or Jan. 16, police said.

Police continued to investigate the incident Monday night, according to the department.
Irans huge oil industry is less of a deterrent than it used to be. Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Oil-supply shocks are still bad for the U.S. economy. But theyre not as bad as they used to be, and that change has major implications for American foreign policy. We no longer face as strong imperatives as we once did to intervene in the Middle East in ways that protect the flow of oil. But, as we saw with last weeks air strike that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, we also have more freedom to intervene in ways that may interfere with the flow of oil.

A key economic feature of the 1970s was oil-driven recessions: Turmoil and embargoes in the Middle East led to restricted supplies of gasoline and rising prices at American gas pumps. Spending on energy went from less that 8 percent of the U.S. economy in 1970 to more than 13 percent in the early 1980s, and the need to pay more for gas meant less room to pay for anything else.

Spiking oil prices were key factor in the 1970s stagflation, where prices rose but economic output performed poorly. The need to ensure reliable supplies of petroleum at stable prices has been a key driver of our foreign policy in the Middle East for decades. But there have been three big changes since the 1970s that have made the Middle Eastern oil trade less economically important for us than it used to be.

First, energy spending is a much lower share of the economy than it used to be. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, spending on energy made up 5.8 percent of the U.S. economy in 2017, less than half of what it was in the early 1980s. With energy spending making up less of the economy (and therefore less of household budgets), an increase in energy prices tends to be less painful to consumers than it might been in the past.

Second, the U.S. has become a much larger producer of oil and gas. U.S. oil production has risen dramatically, from 5 million barrels a day in 2008 to 13 million barrels and rising at the end of last year. After decades as a major net importer of petroleum products, our imports and exports are now approximately in balance. Because of this, disruptions in the global oil supply chain have less effect on gasoline-pump prices in the U.S. The effects are not reduced to zero  we are not truly energy independent, because oil prices continue to be set on a global market  but our increased production, and our flexibility to further increase production when global prices rise, means we are not as captive to the global oil market as we used to be. And this is likely to continue to improve: The rise of renewable energy, improved gas mileage, and electric vehicles are likely to further insulate our economy from oil shocks going forward.

Third, the expansion of our oil-and-gas sector means more Americans than before actually stand to gain from rising energy prices, either because they work in the oil-and-gas industry or because they work in industries that serve that industry. Of course, there are other industries that are significantly harmed by higher gas prices (like transportation), but the closer-to-offsetting gains and losses mean higher gas prices put less of a drag on the whole economy than they used to.

This is an important economic story, but it also has important international-relations effects, for better and worse, that we are seeing play out in the world this month. Less dependence on oil imports means less reason for war for oil, and more broadly less reason to aim our Middle East policies at ensuring stable oil supplies. Our reduced energy dependence should produce opportunities, for example, to back away from our awkward alliance with Saudi Arabia, because we dont need the Saudis as much as we used to.

But the flip side of that story is that American policy-makers are now more free to take actions in the Middle East that might tend to disrupt the oil supply. In a more 1970s-style oil environment, President Trump might have been reluctant to upend the Middle East with a strike like the one that killed Soleimani for fear of what a military escalation in the region could do to the oil trade, gasoline prices, and his reelection prospects. An American economy more insulated from oil-price shocks gives him more room to escalate  and could surprisingly be a reason that the U.S. gets sucked farther into Mideast fighting, rather than serving as an opportunity to disengage.
Chief Executive Officer, Hadley Ford, to provide company update and outlook on Tuesday, January 14 at 3 p.m.

NEW YORK, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - iAnthus Capital Holdings, Inc. ("iAnthus" or the "Company") (CSE: IAN) (OTCQX: ITHUF), which owns, operates, and partners with best-in-class regulated cannabis operations across the United States, is pleased to announce its participation at the 2020 ICR Conference in Orlando, Fla., January 13-15.

During the conference, Hadley Ford, CEO of iAnthus, will provide an update on the Company's current operations and outlook for 2020. The iAnthus presentation will take place on Tuesday, January 14, at 3 p.m. ET. The Company will also be hosting one-on-one meetings and breakout sessions over the course of the three-day conference.

The presentation will be available via webcast. To register for the webcast, please visit http://wsw.com/webcast/icr6/ithuf/ . The webcast will also be available on the investor page of the Company's website for 90 days following the presentation.

The ICR Conference is one of the largest investment conferences of the year featuring presentations by more than 200 public and private companies, with attendance by institutional investors, private equity professionals, equity research analysts and select media, approximating 2,500 in total. To learn more about ICR, visit https://icrconference.com/.

About iAnthus Capital Holdings, Inc.

iAnthus Capital Holdings, Inc. owns and operates best-in-class licensed cannabis cultivation, processing and dispensary facilities throughout the United States, providing investors diversified exposure to the U.S. regulated cannabis industry. Founded by entrepreneurs with decades of experience in operations, investment banking, corporate finance, law and health care services, iAnthus provides a unique combination of capital and hands-on operating and management expertise. iAnthus currently has operations in 11 states, including 29 dispensaries (FL-11, AZ-4, MA-1, MD-3, NY-2, CO-1, VT-1 and NM-6 where iAnthus has minority ownership). For more information, visit www.iAnthus.com.

Forward Looking Statements

Statements in this news release that are forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in iAnthus' periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. When used in this news release, words such as "will, could, plan, estimate, expect, intend, may, potential, believe, should, our vision" and similar expressions, are forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements including dispensary locations, facility build-outs, and other statements of fact.

Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release. iAnthus disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise such information, except as required by applicable law, and iAnthus does not assume any liability for disclosure relating to any other company mentioned herein.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this news release.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to sell any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available.

SOURCE iAnthus Capital Holdings, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.ianthuscapital.com/


One of Donald Trump's closest advisers has claimed, without evidence, that Iranian cultural sites which would be protected under US and international law could also be military targets.

While speaking with reporters at the White House on Monday morning, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway was asked about Mr Trump's threat to retaliate against any Iranian attack on US assets by attacking 52 identified targets, "some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture".

The president reiterated his threat on Sunday, telling reporters: "Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way,"

Ms Conway replied that she thinks Iran "has many military sites, strategic sites, that you may cite that are also cultural sites".

She offered no evidence to back up her assertion, and when pressed further on her suggestion that Iran's government is somehow camouflaging military assets within cultural sites, she denied making any such statement.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

The US is a party to both the 1907 Hague Convention and the 1949 Geneva Convention, which prohibits attacking "historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples". The 1996 War Crimes Act defines a war crime as a grave violation of either treaty, and the US Defence Department Law of War Manual clearly states that "cultural property, the areas immediately surrounding it, and appliances in use for its protection should be safeguarded and respected".

When asked if President Trump was aware of the prohibitions against attacking cultural sites in American law and Defence Department policy, Ms Conway referred reporters to a statement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the US would "behave lawfully" in any military action against Iran and claimed that she would not respond to hypotheticals when it was pointed out to her that Mr Trump had contradicted Mr Pompeo hours after he made the statement she had just cited.

Kellyanne Conway speaking to reporters about the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani (EPA)

Multiple legal experts have said Mr Trump's threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites would be a war crime if carried out.

Recommended Trump urged to declassify justification for Soleimani killing

Since he first entered politics in 2015, Mr Trump has often derided the very idea of war crimes as a manifestation of political correctness. He has often suggested that the CIA's enhanced interrogation program - widely condemned - should be restarted, and he has suggested that killing Islamic State fighters' family members would be an effective anti-terrorism strategy.

Mr Trump has also been an advocate for American soldiers accused of war crimes, and in November pardoned three US service members who were either convicted of war crimes charges or were awaiting trial.

When confronted with Mr Trump's pardons of accused and convicted war criminals and pressed further on whether Mr Trump believes that war crimes "are a thing", Ms Conway responded that she did not know how to answer the question.
HARRISBURG  If you cant bring the people to the dairy farm, why not bring the dairy farm to the people?

Thats the theory behind the Calving Corner at the 104th Pennsylvania Farm Show. Located in the Northeast Hall in the heart of the Dairy Destination, the area includes two pens, each holding two pregnant cows, and bleachers with seating for 600 people who want to see a cow give birth.

With only 2% of Pennsylvanians working as farmers and most people becoming increasingly removed from farms, Miriam Kelly Miller said the project teaches people how their milk is produced.

The public enjoys seeing cows be cows, said Miriam Kelly Miller, Pennsylvania Dairymens Association Calving Corner project manager. People dont understand milk production so this teaches them about it.

The Calving Corner, now in its third year, is part of the Farm Shows Dairy Destination of calving, information about milk nutrition, interactive displays and a dairy princess presence.

Four dairy farms participate, each bringing four pregnant cows for two days of the eight-day show: Meadow Spring Farm of Lititz, Saturday and Sunday; Meadow Wood Farms of Lebanon, Monday and Tuesday; Franklin View Farms of Washington Boro, Wednesday and Thursday; and Yippee! Farms of Mount Joy, Friday and Saturday.

Miller said that since the Farm Show opened on Saturday, four calves have been born to Holsteins owned by Meadow Spring Farm of Lititz. The calves rested in a separate pen.

On Monday, three pregnant Holsteins and a pregnant Jersey paced around in their stalls as visitors looked at them and watched constantly playing video presentations about the dairy industry. They also asked questions.

Some people say they didnt know a cow has to give birth in order to give milk, she said. Many ask about the gestation in a cow and are surprised its nine months. They also ask when the births will occur, but we can only guess.

Although the majority of cows dont need help giving birth, veterinarians are available on site. During the first two days of the Farm Show, a calf was born upside down and backward, and a veterinarian had to assist.

The owner named that calf Swope because hes an Eagles fan, Miller said.

Six interns, four from Penn State, one from Delaware Valley University and one from Cobleskill in New York, assist at the Calving Corner by taking care of the animals, maintaining the pens, feeding the calves and answering questions from the public. They also help feed nutrient-rich colostrum to the newborns to help their immune systems.

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The ACA said that it had received information about corrupt dealings between some accountants and Tax Authority chief Abdel-Azeem

Related Egypt arrests head of Egyptian Tax Authority over bribery charges

Egypt's Administrative Control Authority (ACA) issued a statement on Sunday about the latest updates concerning the case of Egyptian Tax Authority chief Abdel-Azeem Hussein, who was caught red-handed on Friday receiving a bribe from accountants who were cooperating with the ACA.

The ACA said that it had received information about corrupt dealings between some accountants and Abdel-Azeem, who abused his authority to lower taxes for financier agents in exchange for material and in-kind bribes.

Several meetings between the concerned parties were recorded after the required legal permission was obtained from Prosecutor-General Hamada El-Sawy, the ACA added.

The ACA said that the defendants pleaded guilty after they were confronted with evidence and were remanded by the supreme state security prosecution.

The ACA called on all individuals, companies, entities, and accountants who deal with Egyptian Tax Authority to provide valid information in their tax returns.

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Underscoring the company's commitment to reducing wildfire risk, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E or the Utility) has reached a crucial milestone in its 2020 General Rate Case (GRC), which funds a series of important additional safety investments to help protect the 16 million people PG&E serves.

In a settlement agreement with the Public Advocates Office of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), The Utility Reform Network, Coalition of California Utility Employees, Office of the Safety Advocate of the CPUC, National Diversity Coalition, Center for Accessible Technology, Small Business Utility Advocates, and California City-County Street Light Association, the parties agree that the CPUC should approve funding for PG&E's ongoing wildfire prevention efforts, risk monitoring, emergency response, increased vegetation management, hardening of PG&E's electric system, and other new and enhanced safety measures to further reduce wildfire risk. The GRC settlement agreement also includes funding for electric and gas distribution safety and reliability and power generation.

The settlement was filed today with the CPUC.

"These efforts support PG&E's most important responsibility, which is the safety of our customers and the communities we serve," said PG&E Utility CEO and President Andy Vesey. "This agreement furthers our commitment to deliver safe and reliable energy to our customers including making our system more resilient to the growing threat of wildfires."

Among the important wildfire safety investments in the GRC are the following components of PG&E's Community Wildfire Safety Program:

Installing stronger and more resilient poles and covered power lines in the highest fire-threat areas;

Increasing ongoing work to keep power lines clear of branches from an estimated 120 million trees with the potential to grow or fall into overhead power lines, including annual vegetation inspection of approximately 81,000 miles of high-voltage electric distribution lines;

Implementing SmartMeter technology to more quickly identify and respond to fallen power lines;

Expanding the network of weather stations to enhance weather forecasting and modeling by adding 1,300 new weather stations in high fire-risk areas by 2022; and

Installing nearly 600 new high-definition cameras in high fire-threat areas, increasing coverage across these areas to more than 90 percent.

The settlement agreement also calls for further investing in technologies and strategies that minimize the impacts of Public Safety Power Shutoffs, among the tools PG&E uses to reduce the risks of wildfire.

While the GRC will help fund a series of important safety investments, it will not fund potential claims resulting from the 2017 and 2018 Northern California wildfires. It also will not fund any PG&E Corporation or Utility officer compensation.

Customer Bills

If the CPUC approves the settlement agreement, the average monthly bill for a typical residential electric and gas customer would increase by $5.69 a month, or 3.4 percent. This includes $4.90 for electric and $0.79 for gas service. The resulting rate change would occur in 2020 following the CPUC's decision and revise rates through 2022.

"PG&E's commitment is to keep customer bills as low as possible while meeting our responsibilities to safely serve our customers, even as our changing climate presents significant new challenges and risks," Vesey said.

Next Steps

The settlement agreement will be reviewed by the assigned administrative law judges, and other parties will have an opportunity to provide comments before a final CPUC decision is issued in 2020.

Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward-looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that are not historical facts, including statements about the beliefs, expectations, estimates, future plans and strategies of PG&E Corporation and the Utility. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions, which management believes are reasonable, and on information currently available to management, but are necessarily subject to various risks and uncertainties. In addition to the risk that these assumptions prove to be inaccurate, factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements include factors disclosed in PG&E Corporation and the Utility's joint Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018, their joint Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, 2019, June 30, 2019 and September 30, 2019, and their subsequent reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additional factors include, but are not limited to, those associated with the voluntary cases commenced by each of PG&E Corporation and the Utility under Chapter 11 on January 29, 2019. PG&E Corporation and the Utility undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether due to new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by law.

About PG&E

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric energy company in the United States. Based in San Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of the nation's cleanest energy to 16 million people in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit www.pge.com/ and http://www.pge.com/about/newsroom/.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: Civil rights activist Irom Sharmila, who took part in the Burqa & Bindi protest held against CAA, NRC, and NPR, at Town Hall, criticised the Central government for taking one-sided decisions neglecting the opinion of the citizens, on Sunday.

It appears that the government is carrying out one-sided administration without the participation of people. Leaders who are running the government have no vision for the country and are taking decisions which the citizens are strongly opposing.

She said India is the nation of nations and it has become so because of its unity in diversity.

Many citizens have suddenly started to feel neglected. The government has failed to understand the sentiments of people. Earlier, there were efforts to impose Hindi and now they have come up with NRC, Sharmila said.

Speaking about the police excesses during protests against NRC, Sharmila, who had brought her twins to the protest, added that the citizens should protest with persistence and patience until the central government withdraws the controversial Act.

Most of the protesters, including men, were seen with bindis in the protest and said that the government was trying to divide the unity of people by passing unnecessary Acts like CAA.

Two other protests against CAA and NRC were held in the city on Sunday. A blood donation camp was organised as a protest against the Act, near Jal Bhavan on Bannerghatta Road, while Engineers against CAA and NRC was held at Town Hall in the afternoon.

At the engineers protest, the agitators were seen holding placards such as Man Of Destroying India (MODI) and I have a release tomorrow and I am here protesting against NRC/CAA. I hope my manager sees this.

A hip hop protest that was planned at HSR Layout did not take place due to permission issues.
Turkey started deploying troops in support of the UN-backed government in Tripoli under attack from renegade general Khalifa Haftar openly backed by UAE and Egypt.

The deployment of Turkish soldiers has been announced on Sunday by president Erdogan in an interview saying the measure aims to ensure the stability of the internationally-recognized government of National Accord, GNA, under attack by a warlord.

Our soldiers duty there is co-ordination. They will develop the operation center there. Our soldiers are gradually going right now, President Erdogan told the CNN Turk TV channel.

Escalating Proxy War

Turkish troops on Libyan ground signal a dangerous turn in the proxy war that has engulfed the oil-rich North African state.

There will be an operation center, there will be a Turkish lieutenant-general leading and they will be managing the situation over there, Erdogan said without offering details on the scale of the deployment.

Analysts already warned that Turkey might have sent Syrian militias who have spearheaded three previous Turkish operations in their home country as manpower.

On the other Hand, Haftar, whose forces control much of the country is backed by regional rivals of the Turks, the UAE and Egypt who supplied him with drones and other weapons.

President Donald Trump of the US last week warned Erdogan that foreign interference is complicating the situation in Libya.

In a sign of the worsening situation, at least 30 people were killed and 33 wounded, many of them military cadets, in a missile strike this weekend on a military academy in Tripoli.

Turkeys Interest in Eastern Mediterranean

The Turkish overt intervention in Libya comes amid disagreements with a number of eastern Mediterranean countries over demarcation of sea borders.

Turkey sees in its military presence in Libya a means to reassert its power after it recently found itself pitted against an emerging coalition of old and new adversaries across the East Mediterranean, mainly Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, and Israel. Ankara is alarmed by the rate at which they have come together in strategic cooperation, including joint diplomatic, energy, and military initiatives.

Egypt opened talks with Greece to delineate their maritime economic areas. They then held a three-way summit in November 2014 to promote a deal for supplying natural gas to Egypt from undersea fields off the coast of Cyprus. Cairo also hosted the inaugural meeting of the East Mediterranean Gas Forum earlier this year, notably excluding Turkey.

Ankaras agreement with Tripoli in November was forged in part to counter such cooperation. The accord established a virtual maritime axis between Dalaman on Turkeys southwest coast and Darnah on Libyas northeast coast. For Turkey, drawing this line will allow it to cut into the emerging Cypriot-Egyptian-Greek-Israeli maritime bloc, while simultaneously pushing back against Egypt and the UAEs pressure on the Tripoli government.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Honor the Gift, a national patient-centered coalition made up of 26 of the leading kidney and transplant organizations across the country, applauds the House of Representatives on the bipartisan introduction of legislation that would extend Medicare coverage of immunosuppressive medications for kidney transplant recipients.

The Comprehensive Immunosuppressive Drug Coverage for Kidney Transplant Patients Actintroduced today in the House by Reps. Ron Kind (R-WI) and Michael Burgess, M.D. (R-TX)would allow kidney transplant recipients to maintain Medicare Part B coverage for immunosuppressive medications beyond the current 3-year limit, extending coverage for the lifetime of the transplanted kidney. Members of the Honor the Gift coalition have advocated for this much-needed change for almost twenty years and are pleased to see renewed efforts to address the issue in Congress.

"As a kidney transplant recipient who just passed Medicare's three-year cut off, I am encouraged by the bipartisan support of this legislation and am grateful this issue is finally receiving the attention it deserves," said Monica Fox, Manager of Outreach and Government Relations for the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois, a patient advocate for Honor the Gift, and a kidney transplant recipient. "Under the current Medicare policy, some kidney transplant recipients are forced to choose between paying for their immunosuppressive medications or meeting their basic needs. If the government can prevent that from happening and save money while they're at it, voting yes on this legislation is a no brainer."

According to a recent analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Medicare would save an estimated $300 million over 10 years by extending this anti-rejection medication coverage. HHS Sec. Alex Azar himself said, "Extending coverage of the immunosuppressant drugs could help patients avert dialysis in the future, supporting transplantation, which of course is a better health outcome at a lower cost."

"The current Medicare reimbursement system for kidney patients' post-transplant care makes no sense morally or financially and I'm thrilled so many members of Congress are working hard to see that it's changed," said Dr. Matthew Cooper, director of Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation at the MedStar Georgetown Transplant Institute (MGTI) and a Professor of Surgery at Georgetown University School of Medicine. "Since we've also received support from the Administration, we're more hopeful now than ever that we can finally get this legislation passed and do right by kidney recipients and their donors."

Amending Medicare's current policy not only would save the system money, but it would help protect the lives of kidney transplant patients as well. 68% of kidney transplant programs in the United States have reported deaths and organ transplant losses due to patients' inability to pay for their anti-rejection medications. In 2015 alone, 375 Medicare patients needlessly lost their transplanted kidney due to lack of immunosuppressive medication coverage.

"Kidney transplant patients have been suffering from Medicare's lack of long-term immunosuppressive medication coverage for far too long," said Jim Gleason, President of Transplant Recipients International Organization (TRIO). "Ensuring these patients' medications are covered beyond just today's 36 months will provide much needed relief to thousands of families across the country. We are grateful for those in Congress who are working to finally ensure this legislation makes it to the President's desk."

Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-WA), Donald McEachin (D-VA) and Jason Smith (R-MO), joined Kind and Burgess as original cosponsors of the legislation. Leaders in the Senate are expected to introduce a similar bill later this year. Kidney transplant recipients, donors and advocates can contact their members of Congress and express their support for the legislation by visiting the Honor the Gift's website and utilizing its digital advocacy tool.

Learn more about Honor the Gifts' efforts to extend Medicare coverage of immunosuppressive medications for kidney transplant patients at HonorTheGift.org.

About Honor the Gift

Honor the Gift is a national patient-centered campaign focused on extending Medicare coverage of immunosuppressive medication for kidney transplant recipients beyond the current three-year limit. The campaign is powered by a coalition of stakeholder groups from around the country dedicated to protecting kidney transplant patients and honoring the gift of kidney donation by providing civic engagement tools and resources. For more information, visit HonorTheGift.org.

Media Contact

Alex Dinkel

CURA Strategies

303-868-3084

[email protected]

SOURCE Honor the Gift

Related Links

https://honorthegift.org


[January 06, 2020] Sherpany Announces a Major Upgrade for its Meeting Management Software With an Improved and Simplified User Experience

ZURICH, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Sherpany is kick-starting the new decade with the major release of Sherpany 4 and is showing again that their focus is on being a customer and user-oriented company. Similar to previous updates, the Swiss provider is offering their solution simultaneously as native applications for iOS, Windows, and Android including a fully-featured browser application. The most recent upgrade is the result of intense user-research and interviews with their customers to offer the most leading-edge platform to manage meetings for boards and leadership teams. With the new release, Sherpany underlines their claim to "get time back" with their simplified user interface that is easy to use for all users. Sherpany 4 pays special attention to users with a high amount of meetings in the enhanced meeting overview. What's more; as more and more leadership teams are adopting the application, Sherpany has decided to drop the term 'Boardroom' from their software title, and it's just Sherpany now. The meeting management software offers a rich feature-set to manage meetings with workflows according to he customer's processes. The complete offering includes modern agenda setting, task management, circular resolutions, a minutes module and communication possibilities. In short, it's a complete toolset to help you prepare, manage and have more efficient meetings.



Sherpany 4 is built on the proven to be robust and modern SaaS infrastructure. The solution is ISO 27001 and ISAE 3000 certified, compliant with GDPR and FINMA regulations, and not affected by the US CLOUD Act. Customers can ensure maximum protection of sensitive information and save up to 40% in meeting preparation time through the creation of streamlined processes. About Sherpany

Sherpany was founded in 2011 with a vision to create a world where every meeting counts. Today, the company is the European market leader for agile meeting management software and helps over 5500 business leaders increase the productivity of their meetings. The privately owned and award-winning company employs over 100 people in six offices across Europe. Learn more about agile meeting management here: www.sherpany.com Contact:

Mathias Brenner

+41445158950

[email protected] View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sherpany-announces-a-major-upgrade-for-its-meeting-management-software-with-an-improved-and-simplified-user-experience-300980837.html SOURCE Sherpany

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Union Home Minister on Monday talked to Delhi Lieutenant Governor and requested him to call representatives from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) for discussions, officials said.

The telephonic conversation between the home minister and the LG came a day after masked men indulged in violence on the campus.

"The home minister spoke to the LG and requested him to initiate discussions with representatives from the JNU," an official said.

Yesterday, the home minster had spoken to Delhi Police chief Amulya Patnaik and ordered an inquiry into the incident.

The Home Ministry has sought a report from the Delhi Police.

Violence broke out in on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

At least 28 people, including Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos prevailed on the campus for nearly two hours.
Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], Jan 6 (ANI): The Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of Gujarat in a joint operation with the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) here on Monday nabbed five Pakistani nationals and seized 35 kg heroin from their possession.



"ATS Gujarat had got credible information that an illegal consignment of narcotic drugs, Heroin, is going to be smuggled in Gujarat through Coast. BP Rojiya, ACP ATS passed this information to Senior Officers of ATS. The information further revealed that the consignment is being sent in Pakistani fishing boat from Pakistan," read an official statement.

On receiving the information a joint operation was initiated between the Indian Coast Guard and ATS.

A continuous search operation was undertaken near the location during which a suspicious Pakistani boat was identified in Indian waters. In the search operation, 35 packets of contraband heroin were revealed from Pakistani boat JamJam.

The approximate weight of confiscated contraband is 35 Kg valuing Rs 175 crores in the international market. The interrogation of the apprehended accused persons is in progress jointly by all agencies.

The accused have been identified as Anees Isa Bhatti (30), Ismail Mohammed Kachchi (50), Ashhraf Usman Kutchhi (42), Kareem Abdulla Kutchhi (37) and Abubakar Ashraf Sumra (55). (ANI)


Jonathan Ananda By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Stories of economic slowdowns are usually told in terms of cold, clinical statistics; in graph after graph of squiggly lines and staid bar charts. But, these do little justice to what a slowdown actually means for the millions who live through it: lost jobs, tightened belts, wiped out savings and mounting anxiety. The year 2019 has been one for such stories. Automobile sales growth hit a two-decade low, industrial output contracted for successive months, revenue collections tanked and factories laid off thousands.

One of those who lost their livelihoods to a tanking economy is R Nageswara, the sole breadwinner of a family raising two children and nursing a feeble grandparent. I used to earn Rs 15,000-18,000 a month. But, I lost my job as the owner was finding it hard to run his business, he says.

For many of Chennais small auto component manufacturers, like the one Nageswara worked in, the auto sector slowdown has been costly. And little opportunity remains for alternative sources of employment. I am looking for a job, but the industry is in such a bad shape that nobody is hiring. I have no savings also, the father of two says.

Nageswara is just one among thousands who have seen their livelihoods snatched away by a tanking economy. The worst affected are labourers, says A Soundararajan, Tamil Nadu state president of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU). Over the last few months, over 1 lakh labourers in and around Chennai have lost their jobs, he says.

Private economic research firm CMIE estimates that 7.6 per cent of Indias populace was unemployed as on December 23, 2019, with urban unemployment at 9.32 per cent. The fallout has not been limited to only the most vulnerable. S Ananda, a highly paid IT professional, was also laid off recently. I have taken a Rs 25 lakh housing loan, I dont know how I will repay it, he worries. I have managed for now by borrowing from friends and family, but I dont know when I will get a new job. Every company is on a cost-cutting spree.

For small business owners, the last few quarters have been a period of struggle. My business (small transporter) has been severely impacted It has forced me to sell half of my commercial vehicles, says Manish Kumar from West Bengal.

Sometimes, our fleet of vehicles has remained unused for weeks. We havent experienced this kind of a dull phase We are technically not even able to pay EMIs, he adds. Kumar points out that he has already asked his drivers to look for alternative employment and if the situation does not improve, he will have to start looking for alternative businesses.

ALSO READ: Corporates pin hope on 2020 Budget to revive economy

SK Mandal, an auto spare parts wholesaler in Delhi says he needs at least Rs 20-30 lakh in working capital to run his business; however, with retailers unable to pay him back for the goods he has shipped, he is not able to pay back his bankers the previous working capital loans. I am paying in driblets to avoid them using the debt recovery tribunal against me. Bad loans run up by Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) have increased by 20.7 per cent in the second quarter of this year.

People who have been affected, and those who fear they are next in line, are not happy with the governments handling of the situation. They came to power with extremely benign conditions, yet rather than build on it, just as the economy was starting to grow, (PM) Modi introduced demonetisation and a badly designed Goods and Services Tax, says Nikhil, a systems engineer at TCS.

A few with experience walking the corridors of power say much of the slowdown is caused by fear in the industry. Fast-track clearances, by effectively reviving the Project Monitoring Group that was set up a few years ago and simplify processes. There are other fiscal and monetary measures required to generate demand, says Anil Swarup, former school education secretary in the Government of Maharashtra and founder chairman, Nexus for Good. But, the first step would be to accept the state of affairs and not blame everything on external factors.

(Inputs from Binita Jaiswal, Pradeep Pandey, Bismah Malik and Arshad Khan)


Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navys Combined Fleet, was the Harvard-educated, poker-playing mastermind of the December 7, 1941, attack.

That Saturday afternoon the Opium Denthe smoky, sweltering, ramshackle command bunker at Henderson Field, on Guadalcanalwas packed with Navy and Marine brass hats. Lowly flyboys Captain Thomas Lanphier Jr. and Major John W. Mitchell, commanding officer of the U.S. Army Air Forces 339th Fighter Squadron, arrived last, but were treated like guests of honor. Mitchell was handed a teletyped radio message marked Top Secret: a flight schedule for an inspection tour by Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.

Whos Yamamoto? Mitchell asked.

Lanphier just said, Pearl Harbor.

Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navys Combined Fleet, was the Harvard-educated, poker-playing mastermind of the December 7, 1941, attack. Navy code-breakers had intercepted Japanese radio traffic indicating that the admiral, known for his fanatical punctuality, would fly over Bougainville Island early the next morning, April 18, 1943coincidentally the first anniversary of the Doolittle Raid. The newly appointed air commander in the Solomons, Rear Adm. Marc A. Mitscher, who had captained the carrier Hornet on the Doolittle mission, now saw the chance for another long-range surprise attack, this time with the 339ths Lockheed P-38G Lightning fighters.

Were going to get this bird, the Navy planners told Mitchell and Lanphier. We mean for you to nail him if you have to ram him in the air. But hell be taking off more than 635 miles away from here, and only good long-range flying will intercept him. Major Mitchell, that means Lightnings.

At almost that very moment, Yamamoto was dining with Lt. Gen. Hotoshi Imamura, Japanese army commander at Rabaul. Imamura had narrowly escaped being shot down over Bougainville two months earlier, and he and others urged Yamamoto to cancel his tour. But the admirals chief of staff, Vice Adm. Matome Ugaki, who would join Yamamoto on the trip, deemed it crucial for morale. Having already announced his plans, Yamamoto said, Even if it were dangerous, I could not turn back now.



In a photo taken just a week before his death, Yamamoto (in white) inspects Japanese pilots at Rabaul, New Britain. (National Archives) In a photo taken just a week before his death, Yamamoto (in white) inspects Japanese pilots at Rabaul, New Britain. (National Archives)

The Americans were depending on it. Yamamotos supposed to be coming to Bougainville tomorrow morning, Mitchell briefed his pilots. We figure hell land at 9:45. Were going to jump him there, to the west, 10 minutes before that. It meant circling more than 400 miles around the Solomons in radio silence to avoid enemy contact, navigating by dead reckoning over the ocean and flying at sea level to duck radar. Even with extra-capacity drop tanks, the Lightnings would have only five to 10 minutes in the target zone. Mitchell privately figured their chances of even seeing Yamamoto were about 1,000-to-1, and that was before Kahili, the Japanese base on Bougainville, potentially launched its 75 Zeros at the Americans. With just a dozen or so Lightnings to fly cover, it seemed like a suicide mission.

At 0710 hours Mitchell led the cover flight takeoff in Mitchs Squitch. Lanphierbrash, ambitious and, with several victories, a Silver Star and a Distinguished Flying Cross, one of the 339ths hottest pilotsled the shooter flight in Phoebe. His wingman, soft-spoken Oregonian Lieutenant Rex Barber, had earned his own Silver Star for penetrating a screen of Zeros to down a bomber in their midst. Since Barbers usual mount, Diablo, was out of commission, he instead was piloting Miss Virginia. Flying backup were 1st Lts. Besby Holmes, a Pearl Harbor veteran whod moved up to Henderson even before Mitchell, and Ray Hine, an experienced pilot who was on his first combat mission in a P-38. Neither had flown with Lanphier or Barber before. Holmes couldnt believe his luck.

At Rabaul, Yamamoto was for once almost late for takeoff. Accompanied by several aides, and wearing a plain green service uniform as a show of unity with the troops, the admiral boarded a Mitsubishi G4M1 Betty, No. 323 of the 705th Air Group. Ugaki and his staff boarded No. 326, so rapidly that the two admirals had no time for farewells. Taking off on schedule at 0600 Tokyo time, by which the Japanese military operated (0800 at Henderson), the bombers climbed to 6,500 feet. Zeros of the 204th Air Group flew escort, 1,500 feet above and behind, in two formations of three planes each. Among the escort pilots were Petty Officers 1st Class (Aviation) Shoichi Sugita, who would become one of Japans top aces, and Kenji Yanagiya, a 100-mission veteran who felt deeply honored to be taking part. Bearing southeast, the bombers flew in echelon, with Yamamotos slightly ahead on the right. Ugaki, who was recovering from a bout of dengue fever, soon dozed off.

Meanwhile, in the sunny greenhouse cockpit of Mitchs Squitch, lulled by the engine drone and the glassy-smooth sea speeding just beneath the planes nose, Mitchell was trying not to doze. Constantly checking his GI wristwatch and specially mounted Navy compass, at 0820 he fixed their position at slightly more than 180 miles west of Henderson. He then waved his wings to signal a turn. Twenty-seven minutes on course 290 degrees. Thirty-eight minutes on course 305 degrees. At 0925, less than 20 miles off Bougainville, they made their final turn to the northeast, under cover of a low-level haze.



Among those gathered in front of one of the 339th Squadrons P-38s are (from right) 1st Lt. Rex Barber, Major John Mitchell, Thirteenth Air Force commander Maj. Gen. Nathan Twinning and Captain Thomas Lanphier Jr. (National Archives) Among those gathered in front of one of the 339th Squadrons P-38s are (from right) 1st Lt. Rex Barber, Major John Mitchell, Thirteenth Air Force commander Maj. Gen. Nathan Twinning and Captain Thomas Lanphier Jr. (National Archives)

High to the northwest, the Japanese had clear skies. We could see transport ships with escort destroyers steaming on the blue water below, Yanagiya recalled. On ahead of us, we could see [Kahili] air baseat the southeast end of Bougainville Island. The formation began to descend on approach.

As the Americans neared the island, they had begun to climb. At 2,000 feet they cleared the translucent mist to see the 7,500-foot peaks of Bougainvilles Crown Prince Range and the crescent of Empress Augusta Baybut no aircraft. Mitchell checked his watch: 0934. They were a minute ahead of schedule. Yamamoto ought to be about three miles to their port quarter

At that moment cover-flight section leader Lieutenant Doug Canning, reputed to have the sharpest eyes in the squadron, called out, Bogeys! Eleven oclock high!

Mitchell hadnt expected two bombers; the shooters would have to get both. Leading the cover flight upward, he radioed Lanphier: All right, Tom. Go get him. Hes your meat.

It was obvious that we were late to spot [the Americans], Yanagiya later recalled. The P-38s had dropped their extra fuel tanks and were already zooming up to engage our two bombers. To save weight, the Zeros carried no radios, but when his flight leader waggled his wings and dived to the attack, Yanagiya said, we wingmen all accelerated and swooped into the first group of P-38s.

Holmes drop tanks had hung up. Trying to shake them off, he pulled away to the west, and his wingman Hine went with him. Only Lanphier peeled up into Yanagiyas flight3-to-1, head-onspraying the Zeros with fire and breaking up their attack. Separated, Yanagiya later reported, We repelled the first group of P-38s, while another P-38 engaged aft of the bombers.

That was Rex Barber. Unlike Hine, he hadnt stuck with his flight leader. Using the seconds Lanphier had given him, he went after the bombers, which had dived for the deck. As they passed across his nose, he banked hard starboard to get behind them, and for a few seconds his upraised left wing blocked the enemy planes from his view.

Ugakis crew had seen the Lightnings split up. He later reported, We made a quick turn of over 90 degrees to evade them, seaward, through their attack. Miss Virginia flashed overhead. When Barber rolled out of his bank, he had one bomber in front of him. He started working it over with his nose-mounted 20mm cannon and four .50-caliber machine guns.

Phoebe had reached the top of its half-loop. Hanging inverted, Lanphier saw to his right the second three Zeros chasing Barbers Lightning, and, out in front of them all, a lone Betty fleeing across the treetops. From there he reported diving back down and banking around for one desperate, extreme-range, almost right-angle burst. Even he was surprised to see the Bettys right engine light up.

Ugakis plane had made two more evasive turns before he spotted Yamamotos G4M, already ablaze and sinking. He would recall thinking, Oh! Everything was over now!

Firing all the while, Miss Virginia had closed to less than 100 feet as debris, smoke and finally flames streamed off the bomber. Then the Betty abruptly snap-rolled left and down. Barber dodged its upraised right wing and, looking back, saw smoke billowing up from the jungle. Lanphier also saw the Bettys wing go uphe would report it had torn offand a gout of flame as the bomber went in. Shaking Zeros off his tail, he radioed: I got a bomber. Verify him for me, Mitch. Hes burning. Barber, characteristically, didnt say a word during the whole fight.

Holmes had shed his drop tanks in time to see the stricken Betty go down. Clearing each others tails of Zeros, he, Hine and Barber chased the remaining G4M out over the water. Grieving to see nothing but smoke where Yamamotos aircraft had been, Ugaki could only hold on as the Lightnings raked his plane with gunfire. The Betty struck the sea off Moila Point at full speed. Only Ugaki and two crewmen survived.

Mission accomplished, Mitchell called. Everybody, get your ass home. The P-38s headed for Guadalcanal in ones and twos. Barber, Holmes and Hine lost each other. Escorted by Canning, Holmes made it to a forward base in the Russell Islands with just four gallons of gas to spare. Last seen trailing vapor from his right engine, Ray Hine never returned. Lanphier and Barber put down at Henderson before noon, Phoebe with two bullet holes in its tail, Miss Virginia with more than 100 scattered over its airframe.



From left: Lanphier, Lt. Besby Holmes and Barber, three of the four "killer flight" pilots, pose for a photo on the day after the mission. The fourth pilot, Lt. Raymond Hine, did not return and was never found. (National Archives) From left: Lanphier, Lt. Besby Holmes and Barber, three of the four "killer flight" pilots, pose for a photo on the day after the mission. The fourth pilot, Lt. Raymond Hine, did not return and was never found. (National Archives)

Lanphier laid immediate claim to Yamamoto, touching off a dispute with Barber that would tear their friendship apart and last almost to this day. [For more on this debate, read the companion story Who Got Yamamoto? in our May 2013 issue.] For the time being, however, all was forgotten. Mitscher radioed headquarters, April 18th seems to be our day, and the pilots launched into a bender that continued into the night, uninterrupted even by a bombing attack. A correspondent hunched in a nearby foxhole wrote, This is the noisiest raid I know, not so much from the bombs and ack-ack but from officers who started singing early in the evening and are still out in the moonlight singing like a bunch of high school kids after a ball game.

Though the Americans claimed four Zeros downed, all six Japanese fighters returned to Rabaul, claiming at least three P-38 kills. Sugita had put a burst into a wingman covering a leader with unshed tanks: Hine. And Yanagiya, following the Americans, shot up a vapor-streaming, straggling Lightning (also Hine), but didnt see it go down.

Yanagiya was sent home in June, after F4F Wildcats shot off his right hand over the Russell Islands. He would survive the war, credited with eight victories. The other Zero pilots, including Sugita, all died in combat. Hours after Emperor Hirohito announced the final Japanese surrender in 1945, Ugaki strapped on a sword given him by Yamamoto and disappeared on a kamikaze flight.

The Bougainville jungle was so thick, and Yamamotos crash site so remote, that Japanese search planes could only circle overhead, vainly seeking any sign of survivors. A rescue party finally hacked through to the downed Betty the next day. The admirals body was found near the wreckage, belted upright in his seat and still holding his sword, leading some to believe he survived the crash and might have been saved. More likely his body was arranged by another dying victim, in a demonstration of the reverence his countrymen felt toward him. Tokyo did not admit his loss until May 21. Yamamoto was awarded the Order of the Chrysanthemum (1st Class), the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords by Germany and, in June, was given a state funeral.

Medals of Honor for Mitchell and the four shooters were downgraded to Navy Crosses when the press got wind of their story, threatening to reveal the secret of the broken Japanese code. That in no way diminishes their feat of planning, navigation, timing and sheer audacity.

In all of American history, the only equivalent is the operation that killed al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden. Yamamoto was no different from any officer caught in a snipers crosshairsin uniform, on a combat mission, a legitimate military target. Today, when the enemy rarely wears a uniform, the debate centers on targeting terrorist leaders with remote-controlled drones. Few remember that the precedent was set 70 years ago, over the jungles of Bougainville.

Frequent contributor Don Hollway thanks Aviation History Contributing Editor C.V. Glines and Yamamoto mission veteran Doug Canning for their contributions to this article. Further reading: Attack on Yamamoto, by Carroll V. Glines; Get Yamamoto, by Burke Davis; and Lightning Strike: The Secret Mission to Kill Admiral Yamamoto and Avenge Pearl Harbor, by Don Davis. For additional photos and video, see donhollway.com/yamamoto.

This feature originally appeared in the May 2013 issue of Aviation History magazine. Click here to subscribe!
Tony Abbott has arrived at the Rural Fire Service in south coast of New South Wales, as he prepares for another day of battling blazes.

The former prime minister was seen dressed in a yellow RFS jumpsuit as he made his way into the staging centre in Nowra, early Tuesday morning.

Mr Abbott, who has been a volunteer firefighter for 20 years, has been praised for his firefighting efforts in the media in recent weeks, as Australia battles its worst bushfire season in years.

But the modest politician appeared to shrug off the attention when approached by a Today Show reporter.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott was seen dressed in a yellow RFS jumpsuit as he made his way into the staging centre in Nowra, early Tuesday morning

He was seen greeting army reserve members troops who have been deployed to the worst fire-stricken areas in the country

When asked if he was there to lend a helping hand, he replied: 'Nah, nah, just along with 70,000 volunteers that's all.'

Cameras followed Mr Abbott as he entered the RFS centre, where thousands of other volunteers have convened to help battle bushfires.

He was seen greeting army reserve members troops who have been deployed to the worst fire-stricken areas in the country.

'So ScoMo's troops have arrived, well done! Good on you fellas,' Mr Abbott said, referring to the prime minister's decision to deploy 3,000 members ADF soldiers to fire grounds over the weekend.

Despite losing his seat in the 2019 Federal Election, Australians have heaped praised on Mr Abbott for his efforts to fight fires, while Scott Morrison has been heavily criticised for his handling of the crisis.

Mr Morrison said at the height of the crisis that he didn't 'hold the hose' after he came under fire for his apparent inaction over the fires.

Newly-returned Today show host Karl Stefanovic commended Mr Abbott, saying his work exemplifies how the country has come together during a time of tragedy and crisis.

'He truly loves it, he loves being part of a team. He's one of just a team out there and he loves fighting fires,' he said on Tuesday.

'I don't think I've ever seen, for a long, long time, the country come together and certain people have lifted and led, without really wanting acknowledgement for it.'

Mr Abbott was PM when the so-called carbon tax aimed at tackling Australia's greenhouse emissions was scrapped and he has long been cast as a climate change sceptic.

Newly-returned Today show host Karl Stefanovic commended the former PM saying his work exemplifies how the country has come together during a time of tragedy and crisis

Prime Minister Scott Morrison (second from right) outraged Australians in late December when he secretly jetted off to Hawaii for a family holiday at the height of the national disaster

In late December, Mr Abbott was pictured at the Bargo BP service station wearing the yellow uniform of his Davidson squadron before battling the Green Wattle Creek fire.

He took a few snaps with fans and the photos quickly went viral on social media.

The next day he helped put out a spot fire and then volunteered for a last-minute emergency relief crew.

Mr Abbott also completed three five-day deployments in northern NSW between September and November, along with others all over the state.

Tony Abbott (right) donned a breathing apparatus and oxygen tank in 45C heat on Monday

Mr Abbott also completed three five-day deployments in northern NSW between September and November, along with others all over the state. Pictured: fighting fires in Balmoral in December

As other blazes flared up around Sydney last month, Mr Abbott spent up to 10 days on the front line.

On Monday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison pledged to spend whatever amount necessary to get Australians 'back on their feet' after announcing a $2 billion relief package on Monday.

There have been 24 deaths this bushfire season and more than 1,600 homes have been lost, with almost six million hectares across Australia having been burnt, which is about the size of the Republic of Ireland.

Two people remain unaccounted for in NSW where there has already been 19 fatalities, and Victoria and South Australia have reported two and three deaths respectively.

There are still 15 'Watch and act' warnings' in Victoria and emergency supplies are being flown into the state's 18 cut-off communities.
"We look forward to working with HireStrategys customers and providing the same level of personal attention, high-quality services and solutions, along with the broader array of offerings for which Addison Group is known.

Addison Group, a professional services firm specializing in consulting, staffing and executive search, announced today its full integration of HireStrategy, a full-service professional staffing agency providing contract, direct hire and executive search solutions in various industries.

Acquired by Addison Group in 2014, HireStrategy has worked closely with Addison Group over the past five years to take advantage of combined expertise and offer well-rounded solutions to customers. The decision to integrate HireStrategy completely into the Addison Group organization allows for further growth through expanded resources, services and solutions. Former HireStrategy customers will have access to additional talent resources and digital marketing staffing services from Addison Group, including finance, accounting, and technology consulting services for more complex or transformational engagements.

The decision to fully integrate HireStrategy into the Addison Group organization was a natural move after years of a strong collaborative relationship with their team, said Thomas Moran, CEO of Addison Group. This integration will undoubtedly benefit our clients, employees and business overall. We look forward to working with HireStrategys customers and providing the same level of personal attention, high-quality services and solutions, along with the broader array of offerings for which Addison Group is known.

Under the integration, the HireStrategy brand will officially retire, with all of its existing business relationships and activities continuing under the Addison Group name. Former HireStrategy president Chris Vennitti will continue to lead the integrated teams in Washington D.C., Reston, Va. and Rockville, Md., furthering Addison Groups strategy to broaden its national service offerings.

We are excited to enter this next chapter with Addison Group as it continues to expand its national footprint, said Vennitti. Weve truly worked hand-in-hand since being acquired in 2014 and the transition has been seamless. We will continue to provide high-quality service from our fantastic teams in Washington D.C., Virginia and Maryland under the Addison Group name.

The integration marks continued growth and progress for Addison Group as it enters the new year. In 2019, Addison Group received industry recognition for its company culture and leadership. For the fourth year in a row, the organizations Tulsa office was named a Top Workplace by The Oklahoman, which recognizes companies based solely on surveys about the workplace completed by their employees. Additionally, Stephanie Wernick-Barker, president of Mondo, an Addison Group company and leading IT, tech and digital marketing staffing agency, was awarded silver in the Female Executive of the Year  Business Services category at the 2019 Stevie Awards. The Stevie Awards for Women in Business honor women executives, entrepreneurs, employees, and the companies they run  worldwide.

To learn more about Addison Group, please visit addisongroup.com.

About Addison Group

Addison Group is a professional services firm offering industry-leading expertise with a national reach and a localized touch. Specializing in Information Technology, Finance & Accounting, Healthcare, Administration, Human Resources, and Engineering, Addison Group offers a full suite of professional services, including consulting, staffing and recruiting, and executive search through its network of companies and dozens of offices throughout the United States. Founded in 1999, Addison has been repeatedly recognized by the media as one of the fastest growing private companies in the United States as well as a top workplace and a Best of Staffing Company by Inavero. Learn more at addisongroup.com.
Students on Monday staged protests on campuses across the country against the violence in New Delhis premier Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday night that left at least 30 people injured and provoked outrage. No incident of violence was reported during the protests.

In Uttar Pradesh, hundreds of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) students took out a Tiranga, or tricolour march, on the university campus in solidarity with JNU. Members of the AMU Teachers Association also joined the march to condemn the violence on the JNU campus, where masked assailants attacked students with sticks and rods.

Former AMU Students Union vice-president Hamza Sufiyan blamed the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), for the attack on JNU students. They must be booked. The government is booking people for protesting... it must lodge cases against the people who have gone inside a university campus and beaten up students and vandalised the premises, he said.

The ABVP held counter rallies on several campuses and blamed Leftist students for the violence in JNU. It claimed that the ABVP activists were also targeted.

Protests were also reported from the Banaras Hindu University and the Allahabad University, the two other central universities in Uttar Pradesh.

Lucknow University vice chancellor AK Rai said there was no law and order problem on the varsity campus even as he refused to comment on the mob attack on the JNU campus.

Students from West Bengals Jadavpur University (JU) and the Presidency University (PU) belonging to the Left-wing organisations and ruling Trinamool Congress took out a torch rally and blocked a road in Kolkata soon after the mob attack on Sunday night. A protest was staged outside the PU on Monday.

Let the ABVP stoop as low as it can but it would not be able to defeat us. All the ABVP members are goons. They earlier proved it in the JU and now at the JNU. Students will put up a united fight against these fascist hooligans, said Debraj Debnath, a Students Federation of India (SFI) leader from the Jadavpur University.

SFI is the students wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Rabindra Bharati University vice-chancellor Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury called the attack on the JNU campus dreadful. I know no words to condemn this repugnant act. This is unimaginable in a civilised country. How could masked outsiders enter the girls hostel and what were the security staff doing? Chaudhury asked. The JU and Calcutta University teachers associations issued separate statements condemning the attack.

In Guwahati, students of the Gauhati University, the Cotton University, and other institutes gathered at the citys Nehru Park for a protest rally. The police remained mute spectators to the violence. It seems the goons had indirect support from the government. We fear such incidents could get repeated in other universities, said Moon Talukdar, the general secretary of the Post-graduate Students Union of the Gauhati University.

The attack on JNU students and teachers was perpetrated by those in power in Delhi with the intention of curbing protests there. It could be an attempt to give a different direction to the protests happening elsewhere with regards to the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, said Pranjal Kalita, former general secretary of the Cotton University Students Union. In Tripura, the Left-wing student bodies held protests at separate places.

In Kerala, the functioning of many educational institutions was disrupted due to the SFIs strike call in protest against the mob attack. The SFI has asked students to boycott classes to protest against saffron goon attacks on the premier university. In Bihar, the Patna University Students Union president Manish Kumar led a sit-in on campus soon after midnight. The violence against the JNU students and teachers is shameful. The RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] is behind it and the organisation needs to be banned, Kumar said.

Patna University vice-chancellor Rash Bihari Prasad Singh said that the situation was under control. We are keeping a close watch. So far, there has been no untoward incident reported from anywhere, he said.

Protests were held in all major educational institutes in Bengaluru, including the Indian Institute of Science and the Bangalore University. Nawaz Mohammed Khan, a student at Bengalurus RC College, said they gathered on Sunday night for a protest and some of them were detained briefly. Another RC College student, Elizabeth David, said, Our protests would continue till action is taken against ABVP.

Protests were also reported from university campuses in Raipur, Chandigarh, Ranchi, Goa, Gwalior, and Chennai.
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Thailand has opened its first full-time cannabis clinics, which will offer traditional remedies based on the drug.

The two new centres in Bangkok will also offer alternative cannabis-based medicine, which has been legal in the country since 2018.

Hundreds of people  including many cancer patients  received free oil at a new flagship clinic based at the Ministry of Public Health in a suburb of the capital.

The initial cannabis-based medicine handed out will be used to treat migraines, insomnia, neck pain, muscle stiffness and nausea.

Thailand, which has a tradition of using the drug to relieve pain and fatigue, plans to open 70 more cannabis clinics across the country, according to the public health minister.

Where is cannabis legal in the US? Show all 11 1 /11 Where is cannabis legal in the US? Where is cannabis legal in the US? Alaska Recreational cannabis use was made legal in Alaska in 2014 Getty Where is cannabis legal in the US? Washington Washington was among the first states to legalise cannabis in 2012 Getty Where is cannabis legal in the US? Michigan Recreational cannabis use was made legal in Michigan in 2018 Getty Where is cannabis legal in the US? Massachusetts Recreational cannabis use was made legal in Massachusetts in 2016 Getty Where is cannabis legal in the US? Colorado Colorado was among the first states to legalise cannabis in 2012 Getty Where is cannabis legal in the US? Vermont Since January 2018 it has been legal to posses up to one ounce and two cannabis plants in Vermont. Commercial sales are not legal Getty Where is cannabis legal in the US? California Recreational cannabis use was made legal in California in 2018 Getty Where is cannabis legal in the US? Illinois Recreational cannabis use was made legal in Illinois in 2019 Getty Images Where is cannabis legal in the US? Oregon It was made legal in Oregon to possess up to one ounce of cannabis in 2014 Getty Where is cannabis legal in the US? Maine Recreational cannabis use was made legal in Maine in 2016 Getty Where is cannabis legal in the US? Nevada Recreational cannabis use was made legal in Nevada in 2016 Getty

Anutin Charnvirakul said the clinic at his department is a pilot as Thailand cannot produce enough doctors with expertise in cannabis.

Around 25 cannabis clinics attached to hospitals already exist but are only open part-time due to a lack of specialised staff.

The southeast Asian country, previously known for its harsh anti-drug laws, legalised medical cannabis and research towards the end of 2018 in a drive to boost the countrys income from agriculture.

Cannabis production, cultivation and sale has been limited to licensed Thai producers for the next four years to protect the domestic industry.

Currently, only hospitals and research facilities are allowed to apply for cannabis production and extraction licenses, but the government is reviewing regulations to enable Thai businesses to apply for permits.

The largest producer of medical cannabis is currently the health ministry's Government Pharmaceutical Organisation.

Last November, the NHS was given the green light to use two medicines derived from the drug which are used to treat severe childhood epilepsy and complications from multiple sclerosis.

It marked the first time any cannabis-based treatment had been approved for routine use by the NHS.

Additional reporting by agencies
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday condemned the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New in Delhi and said "Nazi- style attacks" on students and teachers inside the campus was an attempt to create unrest and violence in the country.

Vijayan said the attack on students is an "appalling display of intolerance running amok" and asked the Sangh Parivar forces to end its "diabolical plan" to silence the universities with bloodshed.

"Those who attempted the Nazi-style onslaught on students and teachers of JNU was trying to create unrest and violence in the country... The attackers assumed the character of a terrorist group and reached the campus with deadly weapons," Vijayan said in a Facebook post.

He said the report that the ABVP activists attempted to stop the ambulance carrying the injured students union president, showed the extent of their plan to create a riot.

"Sangh Parivar must end this diabolical plan to silence the universities with bloodshed. Remember, those students are speaking for all," he added.

Violence broke out at the JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours.

Eyewitnesses alleged the attackers entered the JNU premises when a meeting was being held by JNU Teachers' Association on the issue of violence on campus and assaulted students and professors.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bombay High Court on Monday rapped the Navi Mumbai civic body for failing to take steps to protect mangroves there and referred to the environmental crisis being faced by Australia due to massive bushfires.

A division bench of Justices S C Dharmadhikari and R I Chagla was hearing a petition filed by NGO Save Mangroves and Navi Mumbai Existence claiming the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation and the city's planning authority City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) were permitting cutting of mangroves for development projects without proper application of mind.

The petitioner claimed CIDCO, Revenue authorities and NMMC had caused major damage to mangroves and by granting development permissions in various sectors of Navi Mumbai.

It claimed authorities failed to declare coastal land densely covered with mangroves as forest land and had marked the same as development zone.

The land has been divided into plots and marked for construction of commercial and residential buildings, it said.

"One of such various projects is the proposed site for NMMC headquarters near Sector-15A of CBD-Belapur," the plea said.

The court on Monday after hearing brief arguments said NMMC had failed to protect mangroves in the area.

"Look at what is happening in Australia....the fire is because of absence of mangroves. Here, we have mangroves but you (civic authority) are not doing anything to protect them," the court said.

The court said it would pass appropriate orders in the petition later.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump threatened "major retaliation" Sunday if Iran avenges the killing of a key military commander and he warned of massive economic sanctions against ally Iraq if the country expels US troops based there. The twin threats came as Iran announced it was further reducing compliance with a tattered international nuclear accord, ending limitations on numbers of centrifuges used to enrich uranium. The latest blow to the accord, which was meant to ensure Iran did not develop a nuclear weapon under cover of its nuclear industry, deepened the regional crisis set off by Friday's killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. Trump ordered a US drone to fire a missile at Soleimani, one of the most influential people in Iran's government, when he was near the Iraqi capital's international airport. Angry, black-clad mourners thronged the streets of Iran's second city Mashhad on Sunday to pay last respects to the remains of Soleimani and chant "death to America." Trump bluntly warned Iran against taking vengeance, repeating his insistence that US bombing targets could include Iran's cultural heritage sites. Critics say that would qualify as a war crime under international law. "If they do anything there will be major retaliation," Trump told reporters on Air Force One, as he flew back to Washington -- and a looming Senate impeachment trial -- from vacation in Florida. Trump had already threatened bombing of 52 unspecified targets in Iran if Tehran attacks US troops and interests in the region. In his latest comments, he was adamant that targets could include places of cultural significance in a country boasting an ancient heritage and two dozen UNESCO-listed sites. "Theyre allowed to kill our people," a defiant Trump said. "They're allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn't work that way." - Iraq tensions also soar - The situation in neighboring Iraq, a US ally, also deteriorated, with the future of some 5,200 American soldiers there in doubt. Many Iraqis have expressed outrage over the killing of Soleimani, who masterminded deep Iranian influence in the country. A top Iraqi military figure Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was killed in the same US strike. In Baghdad, unidentified attackers launched a pair of rockets Sunday, hitting near the US embassy in the high-security Green Zone for the second night in a row. That was just hours after Iraq's foreign ministry summoned the American ambassador over the drone strike. And Iraq's parliament voted to request the government end an agreement with a US-led international coalition to fight the hardline Islamist group IS in the region. If the government agreed, that would effectively require the departure of US soldiers supporting the local troops in the anti-IS fight. Caretaker prime minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, who called the US drone strike a "political assassination," indicated he would back the troops' ouster. He said the choices were immediate expulsion or withdrawal under a timeframe. Trump told reporters that a forced departure of US troops would prompt sanctions even worse than those already imposed, to devastating effect, on Iran's economy. "If they do ask us to leave -- if we dont do it in a very friendly basis -- we will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before," Trump said. "Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame." Trump said the main US base in Iraq was "very extraordinarily expensive." "We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," he said. Earlier, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sounded a softer note, saying "the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there to fight the counterterror campaign." - Threats and revenge calls - Soleimani was one of Iran's most popular public figures, seen as a hero of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. He was also the key figure behind Iran's effective network of proxy militias and alliances across a region where Iran is in often deadly rivalry with US allies Israel and Saudi Arabia. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed "severe revenge." What that will look like is the subject of heated speculation in the Pentagon and the White House. Analysts say Iran may be limited in its room for maneuver if it wants to avoid full war with the far more powerful United States. But a former head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards threatened on Sunday to turn the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv "to dust" if the US attacks targets in Iran. And Khamenei's military adviser, Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan, told CNN that Iran's response to the assassination "for sure will be military and against military sites." The crisis comes as Trump is embroiled in his own domestic political turmoil. He was impeached by the House of Representatives for abuse of office and obstruction of Congress. The Senate, where his Republican party has a commanding majority, is wrangling over when and how a trial will take place, as the clock ticks down on the November presidential elections. burs-sms/bgs
Paramedics have handled a spike in calls for help from Victorians suffering the effects of poor air quality, as smoke from bushfires blankets Melbourne and drifts as far as South America.

Ambulance Victoria said 51 per cent more people needed help for breathing problems than normal on Monday, with a rush of calls overnight after air quality in Melbourne dropped to "very poor". Calls related to breathing problems were up by about a third by 2.30pm on Tuesday.

"Breathing problems calls increased from an average of 187 per day to 282 on Monday, with a spike in the evening," said acting director of emergency management Justin Dunlop.

Smoke from the War Memorial to the city on Monday. Credit:Jason South

"Most of that increase was in Melbourne where there's a bigger population. Many of those we were called to were taken to hospital."
Many celebrities have come out and condemned the attacks on Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University students and professors by masked assailants on Sunday night. Anil Kapoor and Aditya Roy Kapur too expressed shock over the incident, at the trailer launch of their film Malang. Anil stated that he could not sleep all night thinking about what is happening.

Reacting to the violence perpetrated on JNU students and faculty, Anil said, "It has to be condemned. It was quite sad and quite shocking. What I saw was very disturbing. In fact, main poori raat soya nahi yeh soch soch ke ki what is happening. (In fact, I did not sleep all night because I was thinking about what is happening.) It has to be condemned. Violence se kuch hone wala nahi hai. Jinhone yeh kiya, they should be punished, absolutely. (Nothing will come out of violence. Those who are responsible for this should be punished.)"

Agreeing with Anil, Aditya said, "There's no place for that kind of violence in our country. The perpetrators have to be brought to task, definitely."

On Sunday night, Swara Bhaskar made an emotional appeal to cops to control the mob situation in the university. Swara was teary-eyed as she stated that both her parents reside on campus and are professors at the university.

Urgent appeal!!!! To all Delhiites PLS gather in large numbers outside the Main Gate of JNU campus on Baba Gangnath Marg.. to pressure the govt. & #DelhiPolice to stop the rampage by alleged ABVP masked goons on JNU campus. PLS PLS share to everyone in Delhi! 9pm on 5th. Jan pic.twitter.com/IXgvvazoSn  Swara Bhasker (@ReallySwara) January 5, 2020

Kriti Sanon took to Twitter to express horror as she wrote, "It breaks my heart to see what happened at JNU! What's going on in India is horrifying!! Students & teachers being beaten up & terrorized by masked cowards!! The constant blame game!Stooping so low for political agendas!Violence is NEVER a solution! How have we become so inhuman?" (sic).

It breaks my heart to see what happened at JNU! Whats going on in India is horrifying!! Students & teachers being beaten up & terrorized by masked cowards!! The constant blame game!Stooping so low for political agendas!Violence is NEVER a solution! How have we become so inhuman?  Kriti Sanon (@kritisanon) January 6, 2020

Riteish Deshmukh tweeted,"Why do you need to cover your face? Because you know you are doing something wrong, illegal & punishable. There is no honour in this-Its horrific to see the visuals of students & teachers brutally attacked by masked goons inside JNU-Such violence cannot & should not be tolerated," (sic).

Why do you need to cover your face? Because you know you are doing something wrong, illegal & punishable. There is no honour in this-Its horrific to see the visuals of students & teachers brutally attacked by masked goons inside JNU-Such violence cannot & should not be tolerated  Riteish Deshmukh (@Riteishd) January 5, 2020

Dia Mirza tweeted, "How long will this be allowed to continue? How long will you turn a blind eye? How long will the defenceless be attacked in the name of politics or religion? Enough is enough. @DelhiPolice," (sic).

How long will this be allowed to continue? How long will you turn a blind eye? How long will the defenceless be attacked in the name of politics or religion? Enough is enough. @DelhiPolice  Dia Mirza (@deespeak) January 5, 2020

ALSO READ: Teary-eyed Swara Bhaskar Appeals To Cops To Stop Violence At JNU; B-town Celebs Condemn Attack


Protesters demonstrate outside the US Embassy in Nine Elms, London (Gareth Fuller/PA)

Downing Street has sought to distance itself from Donald Trumps threat that Iranian cultural sites could be targeted amid heightening tensions in the Persian Gulf.

The US president has refused to back down after raising the prospect of targeting such sites over the weekend, following his decision to assassinate the Iranian military chief Qassem Soleimani.

Number 10 pointed to laws preventing the destruction of cultural heritage when asked if Boris Johnson supported Mr Trumps comments.

There are international conventions in place that prevent the destruction of cultural heritage, the Prime Ministers official spokesman told a Westminster briefing.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab reiterated the message, telling reporters: We have been very clear that cultural sites are protected under international law and we would expect that to be respected.

It came after Mr Johnson, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel issued a joint statement calling on all sides to work towards an urgent easing of tensions in the region.

The European leaders said that while they were concerned by the negative role Iran has played in the region  including through forces directed by Gen Soleimani  there was now an urgent need for de-escalation.

Downing Street insisted Britains security partnership with the US remained very close despite Mr Trump not informing the UK of its plans to assassinate the general  adding that the UK is in regular dialogue at every level.

Mr Johnson spoke to the Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi on Monday morning, and there will be a meeting of the National Security Council on Tuesday.

A Number 10 spokeswoman said the two leaders discussed the need to de-escalate tensions in the region following the death of Qassem Soleimani and agreed to work together to find a diplomatic way forward.

The Prime Minister underlined the UKs unwavering commitment to Iraqs stability and sovereignty and emphasised the importance of the continued fight against the shared threat from Daesh, they added.

Ministers are urging the Iraqi government to allow foreign troops to remain in the country to fight against the threat posed by so-called Islamic State, despite its parliament calling for their expulsion.

And the British Government is urgently speaking to partners about next steps after Irans extremely concerning announcement that it will abandon the limits in the unravelling nuclear deal on fuel enrichment, its uranium stockpile and research activities.

Expand Close British forces in the Middle East (PA Graphics) Press Association Images / Facebook

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Around 400 UK troops are stationed in Iraq in the fight against IS, while the US has 5,200, prompting fears of a withdrawal that could cripple the battle against the terror group.

Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg announced on Monday afternoon that the alliances forces have suspended training in Iraq.

Mr Johnson assembled key ministers  including Mr Raab and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace  as well as senior officials including the Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill to discuss the crisis.

Mr Raab said: Clearly our first priority is to make sure that UK nationals, citizens, shipping, diplomatic missions and military personnel are safe.

Weve changed our travel advice, we are going to be reinforcing in due course the Royal Navy protection for shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

Mr Raab  who spoke to his Iranian counterpart Mohammed Javad Zarif on Monday  said the UK was stressing the importance of de-escalating the tensions and finding a diplomatic way through this crisis in talks with world leaders and foreign ministers.

But he echoed Mr Johnsons view that the UK would not lament Gen Soleimanis death.

General Soleimani was a regional threat, he had a track record, that was his job description, Mr Raab said. I dont think we will  as the Prime Minister said  lament his passing.

Elsewhere, The Times quoted an unnamed senior commander in the elite Quds Force, which Gen Soleimani commanded, as warning British soldiers could be fatally attacked as collateral.

Our forces will retaliate and target US troops in (the) Middle East without any concern about killing its allies, including UK troops, as this has turned in to a fully-fledged war with much collateral damage expected, the commander said.

As the Ambassador and high representative of my country in the UK, I strongly condemn the vicious lie and provocative news by #Times today. I will ask the concerned UK authorities to take swift action to stop such malicious false propaganda in this very sensitive time. pic.twitter.com/LVMPUJH79s  Hamid Baeidinejad (@baeidinejad) January 6, 2020

Irans ambassador to the UK, Hamid Baeidinejad, dismissed the report as malicious false propaganda.

He tweeted: As the Ambassador and high representative of my country in the UK, I strongly condemn the vicious lie and provocative news by #Times today.

I will ask the concerned UK authorities to take swift action to stop such malicious false propaganda in this very sensitive time.
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WASHINGTON (AP)  President Donald Trump insists that Iranian cultural sites are fair game for the U.S. military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so could constitute a war crime under international law. He also warned Iraq that he would levy punishing sanctions if it expelled American troops in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed a top Iranian official.

Two top Senate Democrats are calling on the Republican president to immediately declassify the administrations reasoning for the strike on the Iranian official, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, saying there is no legitimate justification for keeping the information from the public.

In a letter Monday to Trump, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and the Senate Foreign Relation Committees Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey said the White Houses classified notification sent to Congress late Saturday under the War Powers Act was insufficient and inappropriate.

It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner, they wrote. An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society.

They asked that the notification be declassified in full.

Congress has registered unease with Trumps decision to strike in Iraq without advance notice to lawmakers and then to send the notification, which is required under the War Powers Act, as entirely classified.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the over the weekend the highly unusual classified notification raises more questions than it answers. This document prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner and justification of the Administrations decision to engage in hostilities against Iran.

Trumps comments Sunday came amid escalating tensions in the Middle East following the killing of Soleimani, the head of Irans elite Quds force. Iran has vowed to retaliate, and Iraqs parliament responded by voting Sunday to oust U.S. troops based in the country.

Trump first raised the prospect of targeting Iranian cultural sites Saturday in a tweet. Speaking with reporters Sunday as he flew back to Washington from his holiday stay in Florida, he doubled down, despite international prohibitions.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, Trump said.

The targeted killing of Soleimani sparked outrage in the Middle East, including in Iraq, where more than 5,000 American troops are still on the ground 17 years after the U.S. invasion. Iraqs parliament voted Sunday in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for the expulsion of the American forces.

Trump said the U.S. wouldnt leave without being paid for its military investments in Iraq over the years  then said if the troops do have to withdraw, he would hit Baghdad with economic penalties.

We will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, he said. If theres any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.

He added: Were not leaving until they pay us back for it.

The administration has scrambled to contend with the backlash to the killing of Soleimani. Though he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, the targeted American strike marked a stark escalation in tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. military may well strike more Iranian leaders if the Islamic Republic retaliates. He tip-toed around questions about Trumps threat to attack Iranian cultural sites, a military action that likely would be illegal under the laws of armed conflict and the U.N. charter.

Pompeo said only that any U.S. military strikes inside Iran would be legal.

We'll behave inside the system, Pompeo said. We always have and we always will.

Trumps warnings rattled some administration officials. One U.S. national security official said the president had caught many in the administration off guard and prompted internal calls for others in the government, including Pompeo, to clarify the matter. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly to the issue, said clarification was necessary to affirm that the U.S. military would not intentionally commit war crimes.

Oona Hathaway, an international law professor at Yale and a former national security law official in the Defense Department's legal office, said Trumps threat amounted to a pretty clear promise of commission of a war crime.

The presidents threats to Iran did little to quell Tehrans furor over the death of Soleimani. Iranian state television reported that the country would no longer abide by any limits of the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with the United States and other world powers. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018 and stepped up economic sanctions on Tehran, actions that accelerated a cycle of hostilities leading to the last weeks killing.

The administration also pushed back Sunday on questions about the legality of the strike on Soleimani. Pompeo said the administration would have been culpably negligent in its duty to protect the United States if it had not killed him. He did not provide evidence for his previous claims that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on Americans. Instead of arguing that an attack had been imminent, he said it was inevitable.

"We watched him continue to actively build out for what was going to be a significant attack  thats what we believed  and we made the right decision, he said, adding later: We continue to prepare for whatever it is the Iranian regime may put in front of us within the next 10 minutes, within the next 10 days, and within the next 10 weeks.

Congressional Democrats were skeptical.

I really worry that the actions the president took will get us into what he calls another endless war in the Middle East. He promised we wouldn't have that, Schumer said.

Schumer said Trump lacks the authority to engage militarily with Iran and Congress needs a new war powers resolution to be a check on this president. To which Pompeo said: We have all the authority we need to do what weve done to date.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said the administration violated the Constitution by not consulting with Congress in advance.

Congressional staffs got their first briefings from the administration on Friday, and members were expected to be briefed this week.

But Trump made clear Sunday that he saw little reason to give Congress advanced warning if he orders the military to carry out further actions against Iran.

Democrats in Congress have complained that Trumps order to kill Soleimani took place without first consulting with or informing top lawmakers, noting that Congress still holds sole power to declare war. Trump did meet the 48-hour deadline required by the War Powers Act to notify Congress of the deadly drone strike, though the document provided Saturday was entirely classified and no public version was released.

Moving swiftly to rebuke Trump for not consulting with Congress, Pelosi said late Sunday the House would introduce and vote this week on a war powers resolution to limit the presidents military actions regarding Iran. In a letter to House Democrats, Pelosi called the airstrike provocative and disproportionate and said it had endangered our servicemembers, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran. A similar resolution was introduced in the Senate.

Some of the Democrats running to challenge Trump in November questioned whether he had a long-term plan for the Mideast.

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Trump was ill-prepared for the repercussions of the strike on Soleimani and had alienated allies by not alerting them of the plans. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said, When you're dealing with the Middle East, you need to think about the next and the next and the next move. This is not checkers.

Pompeo appeared on ABCs This Week," CNNs State of the Union, NBCs Meet the Press,' CBS Face the Nation,'' Fox News Sunday" and Fox News Channels Sunday Morning Futures. Schumer was on ABC, Warner was on NBC and Buttigieg was on CNN.
T he company behind plans to build Britains biggest theme park has made total losses of more than 50 million before even applying for planning permission, it has emerged.

The 3.5 billion movie themed London Resort is due to be built on a 535-acre former landfill site between Gravesend and Dartford. It is expected to create an estimated 33,000 jobs in the north Kent area and will also be home to a theatre, water park, nightclubs and more than 3,500 hotel rooms operated by InterContinental Hotels Group.

Accounts for the year-ending 31 December 2018 show that London Resort Company Holdings generated no revenue and made a pre-tax loss of 1.7m, down from 8.9m the previous year. It brings the company's total losses to 54.8m since it began trading in 2011.

When the park was announced the following year, the developers, who are backed by Kuwaiti tycoon Abdullah Al-Humaidi, said they hoped it would premiere in 2018. It has had a roller coaster ride since then due to the breakdown of an agreement with Hollywood movie studio Paramount which the park was originally due to be named after.

The deal fell through in 2017 leading to the developers partnering with ITV instead. However, in true Tinseltown fashion, Paramount came back for a sequel and signed a new agreement with the park in June last year. It is now expected to open in 2024 and could feature rides based on Paramount classics like Mission: Impossible, Star Trek and even The Italian Job.

The accounts show that in 2018 the company repaid 8.1m of loans to other businesses in Al-Humaidis Kuwaiti European Holding group leaving it with 24.4m outstanding and net liabilities of 26m. They add that the company is reliant on its ultimate parent undertaking, Kuwaiti European Holding Company (KSC) which has committed to financing it until at least the end of 2020.
Cotton Closes Black on Monday Barchart - 32 minutes ago Cotton futures were off their high at the closing bell on Monday, but were still 10 to 40 points in the black. New crop cotton also bounced on Monday, ending the session 40 to 76 points firmer. The Seam... CTH22 : 115.22s (+0.09%) CTK22 : 113.07s (+0.17%) CTZ21 : 111.55s (+0.25%)

Wheat Markets Close Mixed Barchart - 32 minutes ago Mondays wheat market ended with winter wheat gains to HRS weakness. Spring wheat futures ended the session a nickel to 9 cents in the red. March MPLS wheat has posted losses in 9 in the last 11 sessions... ZWH22 : 762-0s (+0.46%) ZWPAES.CM : 7.2051 (+0.47%) KEH22 : 778-2s (+0.42%) KEPAWS.CM : 7.5951 (+0.45%) MWH22 : 914-2s (-0.97%)

Corn Weakens out of Weekend Barchart - 32 minutes ago Mondays corn trading session left prices 5 1/2 to 7 cents weaker. May futures were able to hold above the $6 mark, while Marcha and July closed less than a penny under. New crop futures were fractionally... ZCH22 : 599-6s (-1.15%) ZCPAUS.CM : 5.8670 (-1.13%) ZCK22 : 601-2s (-1.07%) ZCZ21 : 588-6s (+0.77%) ZCPZ21US.CM : 5.7930 (-0.49%)

US Mint begins shipping quarters honoring Maya Angelou AP - 38 minutes ago WASHINGTON (AP)  The United States Mint said Monday it has begun shipping quarters featuring the image of poet Maya Angelou, the first coins in its American Women Quarters Program. $SPX : 4,670.29 (-0.14%) $DOWI : 36,068.87 (-0.45%) $IUXX : 15,614.43 (+0.14%)

Chart of the Day: KLA-Tencor - A Tech Stock Still Worth Looking At Barchart - 43 minutes ago I wanted to find out if there were still any tech stocks that were worth buying so I screened the NASDAQ 100 Index stock for the highest Weighted Alpha and technical buy signals and found one. My Barchart... KLAC : 418.73 (+0.44%)

Shootin' the Bull Swift Trading Company - Mon Jan 10, 3:08PM CST Cattle were soft starting the week off. I am unsure why, but some of the excuses today have been employment issues related to Covid, and the varying stance on what to do about it.

Crude Closes Lower as the Dollar Strengthens and Stocks Slump Barchart - Mon Jan 10, 2:11PM CST February WTI crude oil (CLG22 ) on Monday closed down -0.67 (-0.85%), and February RBOB gasoline (RBG22 ) closed down -2.35 (-1.02%). WTI crude oil and RBOB gasoline prices on Monday posted moderate losses.... CLG22 : 78.43 (+0.26%) RBG22 : 2.2785 (+0.14%)

Nat-Gas Prices Climb as Frigid Cold Grips the Northeast Barchart - Mon Jan 10, 2:10PM CST February Nymex natural gas (NGG22 ) on Monday closed up by +0.163 (+4.16%). Natural gas prices on Monday rallied to a 2-week nearest-futures high and closed sharply higher. Nat-gas prices jumped Monday... NGH22 : 3.868 (+0.89%)
Good Morning America

The Biden administration's plan to send 500 million at-home tests to Americans for free is an historic undertaking, but one that will take weeks or months to fully execute, recently released contracts and interviews with seven test manufacturers suggest. Contracts for the first two batches of tests were announced on Friday, one for 13.3 million kits from a health technology company and another for an undisclosed amount from a distribution company in Virginia that had extras on hand -- all to be distributed in an effort to reduce the massive testing shortage in the U.S. Tests won't be available to be ordered through a government website until later this month, the official said, meaning it's unlikely the average American will get free tests delivered in time for the January peak of omicron cases predicted by most models.
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)

Police with the University of California San Francisco say a 22-year-old man who had been with a 13-year-old Mendocino County girl found Sunday afternoon after being missing for two days has been arrested and taken into custody.

The girl, from Fort Bragg, was found Sunday evening at the San Francisco Ferry Building on the Embarcadero. A statement late Sunday night from UCSF said the girl was in the company of the 22-year-old man, who was taken into custody Sunday night by officers with the San Francisco and UCSF police departments.

The girl has been safely reunited with her family, the UCSF statement said.

She was first reported missing about 3:30 p.m. Friday near the University of California San Francisco campus off Third Street in San Francisco's Mission Bay neighborhood. An family member's Facebook page said the girl's family members were at the UCSF Madison Clinic for Pediatric Diabetes in Mission Bay Friday for treatment of a family member recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

The girl was found with the help of local citizens who had seen her photograph. Photos of the girl were spread widely on social media and in the news media. And Cold Case Mendocino, a Mendocino County group that bills itself as "citizen investigators," posted on its web site Saturday that its members spoke with a witness who said the girl may have met up with a man when she was in San Francisco.

A UCSF spokeswoman said Sunday night that, given the ongoing police investigation and because a minor is at its focus, the university declined further comment on the arrest. "We will provide additional information as soon as we are able to do so," spokeswoman Lorna Fernandes said in the statement.

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Escalating tensions between the US and Iran have prompted a price surge price for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, according to market analysts.

Bitcoin has risen in value by around $600 since the US assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani on 3 January, taking its price above $7,500 and bucking a downward trend that began before Christmas.

The cryptocurrency is notoriously volatile, making it difficult to attribute one single factor to major market movements, however geopolitical uncertainty is often cited as a contributing factor to price increases.

Bitcoin, the worlds largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, jumped 5 per cent as news of the strikes broke around the world on Friday, said Nigel Green, chief executive of financial consultancy firm deVere Group.

Simultaneously, the price of gold  known as the ultimate safe-haven asset  also moved higher. The latest bitcoin price increase underscores a mounting consensus that bitcoin is becoming a flight-to-safety asset.

Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Satoshi Nakamoto creates the first bitcoin block in 2009 On 3 January, 2009, the genesis block of bitcoin appeared. It came less than a year after the pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto detailed the cryptocurrency in a paper titled 'Bitcoin: A peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System' Reuters Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin is used as a currency for the first time On 22 May, 2010, the first ever real-world bitcoin transaction took place. Lazlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins  the equivalent of $90 million at today's prices Lazlo Hanyecz Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Silk Road opens for business Bitcoin soon gained notoriety for its use on the dark web. The Silk Road marketplace, established in 2011, was the first of hundreds of sites to offer illegal drugs and services in exchange for bitcoin Screenshot Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures The first bitcoin ATM appears On 29 October, 2013, the first ever bitcoin ATM was installed in a coffee shop in Vancouver, Canada. The machine allowed people to exchange bitcoins for cash Reuters Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures The fall of MtGox The world's biggest bitcoin exchange, MtGox, filed for bankruptcy in February 2014 after losing almost 750,000 of its customers bitcoins. At the time, this was around 7 per cent of all bitcoins and the market inevitably crashed Getty Images Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Would the real Satoshi Nakamoto please stand up In 2015, Australian police raided the home of Craig Wright after the entrepreneur claimed he was Satoshi Nakamoto. He later rescinded the claim Getty Images Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin's big split On 1 August, 2017, an unresolvable dispute within the bitcoin community saw the network split. The fork of bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology spawned a new cryptocurrency: Bitcoin cash Reuters Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin's price sky rockets Towards the end of 2017, the price of bitcoin surged to almost $20,000. This represented a 1,300 per cent increase from its price at the start of the year Reuters Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures What goes up... Bitcoin price crashes spectacularly, losing half of its value in a matter of days Getty Images Bitcoin's volatile history in pictures Bitcoin plunges The cryptocurrency eventually bottoms out below $4,000 in 2019 before slowly rebuilding momentum to outperform more traditional assets Getty Images

A similar trend happened in August, when global stocks were rocked and China's yuan was devalued due to the ongoing trade war between the US and China.

When traditional markets are unsettled, investors typically look to non-sovereign assets and currencies like gold and bitcoin in order to safeguard their wealth.

The latest price increase shows no signs of slowing down, with near hour-on-hour rises over the last three days for bitcoin. Since the targeted killing of Soleimani, tensions between the US and Iran have also continued to grow, with Donald Trump threatening to launch attacks on cultural sites if Iran retaliates.

Other alternative cryptocurrencies, or altcoins, have also experienced significant price movements, including ripple (XRP) and bitcoin cash. Around $20 billion in value was added across all cryptocurrencies.

"Even with the very real political risks, which has been pushing main market investors to safe haven assets, altcoins are maintaining price," said Macus Swanepoel, CEO of London-based cryptocurrency exchange Luno.

"Most investors will be keeping an eye on the US/ Iran situation."
When the Mallacoota grey morning sky turned red then black from bushfires, I wonder if doomsday artists had New Year's Eve 2019 on their minds.

Red flames like giant devils tongues lapped up the trees around us, thunder from the fires own weather system boomed and crashed, winds threw flames to the side, above and beyond, koalas shrieked as they burnt alive in their habitat.

Mallacoota in eastern Victoria, the morning thousands sought refuge on the beach from surrounding fires. Credit:Mary O'Malley

We have come to this tiny East Gippsland village where my husband grew up, to spend the Christmas break with our son and six of his friends on our new bush block. We had a caravan, tent, tables and chairs and our little dog Oki ready for days of swimming and celebration.

Instead, after a town meeting on December 30, we are told to move immediately. We find ourselves towing the van to the foreshore of Mallacoota lake where we spend the night of December 30 lying on the ground next to a fire truck, ready to dive into the water to save ourselves.
"Nothing will ever be as before", predicted Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo after two gunmen massacred cartoonists at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris five years ago. The attack on the weekly -- with its long history of mocking Islam and other religions -- was the first in a series of assaults that have claimed more than 250 lives since January 7, 2015, mostly at the hands of young French-born jihadists. It sent shockwaves through France, exposing divisions in the multicultural modern Republic and sparking an intense debate about Muslim integration and press freedom. The Kouachi brothers who killed 12 people in their strike on Charlie Hebdo claimed to be avenging the magazine's publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed deemed offensive by many Muslims. "We avenged the Prophet Mohammed. We killed Charlie Hebdo!", they shouted triumphantly as they ran through the streets. Within three days, the death toll in the rampage of the al-Qaeda-affiliated siblings and accomplice Amedy Coulibaly had risen to 17, including four people at a kosher supermarket and three police officers. - 'I am Charlie' - The Kouachis failed in their bid to "kill" Charlie Hebdo; despite losing its top talent the magazine remained afloat thanks to an outpouring of solidarity. "I wanted the paper to continue to exist. For me it couldn't just stop like that because of what happened," said Pierrick Juin, a cartoonist who joined the magazine just months after the attack. This week the magazine published a defiant anniversary issue remembering the attack and also denouncing what it said was a new kind of politically correct censorship by those who "believe themselves to be the kings of the world behind their keyboard and smartphone." But the attacks did expose deep divisions in France: even a nationwide minute of silence observed by four million people under the slogan "Je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie) could not project a nation united in mourning. Students at around 200 schools, many of them in neighbourhoods with big immigrant populations, boycotted the tribute, accusing Charlie Hebdo of Muslim-baiting. Then prime minister Manuel Valls drew widespread criticism by linking the rise of extremism to France's "geographical, social and ethnic apartheid". President Emmanuel Macron reprised the theme during his 2017 election campaign. But despite his talk of ending the "house arrest" of young people trapped in high-rise suburban housing projects, the breeding grounds of several of the jihadists who have attacked France since 2015, their conditions remain largely unchanged. A major Odoxa survey in November showed a majority of residents in housing projects still feeling abandoned by the state and discriminated against by employers. - 'Loss of innocence' - The three days of attacks in January 2015 culminated in a deadly hostage-taking by Coulibaly at the Jewish supermarket, confirming fears that French Jews had become a top target for homegrown Islamist radicals. Coming three years after an Islamist gunman shot dead a teacher and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse, the attack compounded the feeling that "everywhere, at any time, we were a target," France's chief rabbi Haim Korsia told AFP. For Korsia it marked "a sort of loss of innocence" in the 500,000-strong French Jewish community, Europe's largest, which had until then seen the biggest threat as being from the far right. Jewish emigration to Israel hit a peak in 2014-15, years which also saw an exodus from the multi-ethnic French suburbs where Jews of north African origin had lived alongside Muslims for decades. As the year wore on the attacks grew broader in scope, randomly targeting French people in November 2015, when Islamic State bombers and gunmen slaughtered 130 people in Paris. But although departures for Israel have since declined, anti-Semitism is still on the rise, as the desecration of more than 100 graves at a Jewish cemetery in Alsace showed last month. - Soldiers in the streets - In the aftermath of the January 2015 attacks, then president Francois Hollande sent troops into the streets to guard vulnerable sites and patrol tourist hotspots. Over the past five years, troops from the Sentinelle anti-terrorism operation have become part of the landscape in French cities. The military presence was stepped up after the bloodshed of November 2015 and remains at a high level, with around 10,000 troops deployed. France remains on its second-highest alert level, with sporadic attacks by individuals accused of having become radicalised continuing to claim lives. In the latest deadly incident, a 22-year-old convert to Islam with psychological problems went on a stabbing rampage in a park near Paris on January 3, killing one man and injuring two women.
United States House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on January 5 that the House will introduce and vote on a War Powers Resolution to limit the military actions by US President Donald Trump on Iran. This move comes in the wake of dramatic escalation between US-Iran tensions after Trump directed air-raid killed Iran's Revolutionary Guard Commander Qassem Soleimani along with other military personnel on January 3. The airstrike according to Pelosi was without an Authorisation for use of military force against Iran and was taken in the absence of consultation of the Congress.

According to the official website, This week, the House will introduce and vote on a War Powers Resolution to limit the Presidents military actions regarding Iran. This resolution is similar to the resolution introduced by Senator Tim Kaine in the Senate. It reasserts Congresss long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administrations military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days.

Read - Tokyo Markets Down At Start Of Trading Year Amidst US-Iran Tension

Criticism against Trump administration

The wild move by Trump has not only generated threats of retaliation from Iran, but top US officials have also criticised his 'unprecedented move'. In the immediate statement after the airstrike, Pelosi had said that even though the highest priority of American leaders is to protect the lives and interests of Americans, the 'provocative and disproportionate actions' can put the lives of American service members at risk.

Pelosi said, Tonights airstrike risks provoking further dangerous escalation of violence. America  and the world  cannot afford to have tensions escalate to the point of no return.

Read - Trump Returns From Florida Amid Iran Tension

The former Vice President of US and 2020 Presidential candidate, Joe Biden called the tensions as 'crisis of Trump's own making'. Biden further called the US President as 'erratic and incompetent'. Biden feels that Soleimani 'deserved' to be brought to justice for his crimes against the American troops. However, having said that he also called it a 'hugely escalatory move' in an 'already dangerous region'. While leading the current field polls, Biden believes that Trump 'tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox' and he owes an explanation to the American people because 'Iran will surely respond'.

This is a crisis of Donald Trumps own making. He claimed pulling out of the Iran deal would deter Iranian aggression and result in a better deal. He has failed on both counts.



He is the most erratic and incompetent commander in chief weve ever had. https://t.co/wHhWJA1Zhm  Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 5, 2020

Just two days after Soleimani was killed by the US, Iran officially announced on January 5 its exit from the 2015 Nuclear Accord. The Nuclear deal was signed by Tehran with the P5+1 nations during the leadership of former US President Barack Obama. However, Iran's breaching of the deal comes at the time when Iran has indicated towards 'harsh retaliation' against US as a response to Washington's unprecedented airstrike.

Read - Iran General Replacing Soleimani Vows Revenge For US Killing

Read - Iran Ex-Guards Chief Vows To Turn Tel Aviv 'to Dust'
The new director of the Co Cork arts centre brings continental experience to the role, writes Ellie OByrne.

January is the time for New Year, new you, but Miguel Amado may have even more reasons than most to have ambitious plans for what 2020 will bring.

The Portuguese visual arts curator, having served as director of Cork Printmakers for 15 months, is due to take up a new position as director of Cobhs Sirius Arts Centre at the end of January, all within a year and a half of moving to Ireland. It was a move that came about, he explains, because his partner was offered a job at UCC.

When my partner moved to Cork, I had been working in England and she had been working in Barcelona and our son was about to start primary school, Amado says.

So I decided Id move to Ireland, without really having a job lined up.

As former senior curator at Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art in England, Amado is approaching his tenure at Sirius with a strong ethos and ambitions to further the work of outgoing director Miranda Driscoll.

I believe we have to be both radically local, supporting the local community of artists and public to really fight against this global idea of the art world, and simultaneously strongly and truly cosmopolitan, says Amado, who has also curated the visual arts programme for 2020 at the Triskel in Cork.

Originally from Portugals second city of Porto,Amado curated the Portuguese pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale.

Artist Joana Vasconcelos Trafaria Praiaconsisted of a Lisbon river ferry, decorated on the outside with traditional blue and white tiles, in which visitors could take a tour of the Venice lagoon, a nod to the commonalities of seafaring nations.

Cobhs own rich maritime history as Queenstown, one of the British empires important ports in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but also as the scene of the mass exodus of 2.5 million Irish people who fled hunger and deprivation between 1848 and 1850, means the Sirius centre is uniquely positioned to develop the local-yet-cosmopolitan connections he wants to forge, Amado says.

Being a foreigner in Ireland, my knowledge of the social history is not deep, but Im more interested in social history than in art history. Im very interested in developing aprogramme that speaks to history and delves into a sense of place.

In Middlesborough, Amado developed the idea of the useful museum, which is, he explains, a restoration of the role of museums and galleries in community life.

The civic mission was at the core when museums emerged in the 19th century, he says.

We want to go back to that. Audiences dont have to just be receivers of information, they can help shape the content of the museum.

Being more political, and working with local community groups and artists from marginalised backgrounds, who are not part of the mainstream, are cornerstones of making Sirius a useful centre, he says.

Sirius needs to be a vibrant place thats open to everyone and speaks about topics that are relevant today.

There are challenges ahead. As a visual arts curator, Amado doesnt have much experience of programming multi-disciplinary venues like Sirius, whose musical programme has been impressive in recent years.

But even here, hes keen to get stuck in:

Artists in Ireland are, in my view, still operating very much within their niche. I want to show theatre in the gallery, visual art in the theatre, to challenge niches and having a broader way of working.

Amados outsiders view of Irelands arts scene mirrors much of what domestic artists and curators already say.

In Ireland, Amado says, the resources are really scarce, from public funding and from private philanthropy. Particularly when Ireland tries to position itself up against the main cultural forces of the world, one of which is the UK, right next door.

Artists in Ireland need support in terms of their career development. They need good opportunities to present their work and develop their work and to circulate nationally and internationally.

So what does the new arrival have up his sleeve for 2020? So far, apart from mentioning that Sirius will host artists from Peru and Brazil, hes playing his cards close to his chest.

It all sounds very abstract but if we speak to each other in two months, I can give a clearer idea of the practitioners I will work with and what the public can expect, he says.

For info on the programme at Siriusin Cobh, see siriusartscentre.ie.
BLUFFTON, Ind., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Pretzels, Inc. ("Pretzels" or the "Company"), a leading manufacturer of pretzels and extruded snack products, announced today that Ku Han has joined the Company as Chief Operating Officer (COO). As COO, Mr. Han will have overall responsibility for the Company's growing operational footprint, including oversight of manufacturing, quality, and product management. Mr. Han will work closely with Paul Schaum, who was appointed as Chief Technology Officer.

Greg Pearson, Chief Executive Officer of Pretzels, said, "Ku joins our team during an exciting time. His experience in food manufacturing will further strengthen our executive leadership team and aligns well with our business strategy, as we continue to expand our facilities and enhance our capabilities. Ku has the operational expertise and proven track record to lead Pretzels' daily operations and exceed our customers' needs."

Mr. Han joins a growing leadership team at Pretzels that is currently expanding its existing Plymouth facility by over 120,000 square feet. Pretzels has expanded its team recently, with key hires including CEO Greg Pearson (formerly VP/GM of the Pasta Business Unit at Conagra Foods/TreeHouse Foods), VP of Sales Mike Kaczynski (formerly Head of US Sales at Evans Food Group), VP of Marketing and Innovation Tim Jax (formerly GM at TreeHouse Foods), and Director of R&D Carey Hoffman (formerly Associate Director of New Product Development at Hershey), as well as independent Board members Mark Zurcher (formerly CEO of Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP) and Rod Troni (formerly Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer at Snyder's-Lance, Inc.). The Plymouth expansion and new team members will complement Pretzels' current operations and product development expertise.

Ku Han's Bio

Mr. Han brings nearly 30 years of operational and manufacturing experience to his new role at Pretzels. Most recently, he served as the Vice President of Operations for Craftmark Bakery, a supplier of frozen bakery products to foodservice and in-store bakery customers. Before joining Craftmark Bakery, Mr. Han served as the Vice President of Operations for Lassonde Pappas, a private brand supplier of cranberry sauces and beverages. Prior to joining Lassonde Pappas, Mr. Han held various operations and manufacturing positions with Target, PepsiCo, and Bee Gee Shrimp Company. Mr. Han earned a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

ABOUT PRETZELS, INC.

Founded in 1978, Pretzels, Inc. is a leading manufacturer of pretzels and extruded snack products. Based in Bluffton, Indiana with an additional facility in Plymouth, Indiana, the Company manufactures and distributes traditional, peanut butter filled, flavored, seasonal, and gluten-free pretzels, as well as extruded snack products, to a diverse, blue-chip customer base that includes leading grocers and national brands.

Learn more at www.pretzels-inc.com

Media Contact:

Daniel Yunger

Kekst CNC

(212) 5214800

SOURCE Pretzels, Inc.
Brexit has taken a welcome back seat over the past few weeks, but now that we're back to business as usual, some of the concerns of the last two years will once again rear their ugly heads.

The farming sector is still facing into an uncertain relationship with the UK, which has been a primary trading partner for many producers.

At present, Britain takes a quarter of all our dairy exports, and UK businesses pay around 1bn annually for Irish dairy products. The reliance on that market is particularly acute for the cheese sector.

The UK takes around half of Ireland's cheese exports, providing a vital outlet for a large and valuable slice of our total dairy output.

Cheddar is the main cheese exported to the UK, and there is little demand for this cheese in other parts of Europe.

Whatever way Brexit plays out, there is now an acknowledgement that the relying on the cheddar business brings with it too many risks, given the political uncertainty in its main market.

So there has been a scramble to diversify, not to new markets as demand would be limited outside of our nearest neighbour, but into production of other types of cheese. For example, West Cork cheese producer Carbery, known for its Dubliner brand, is investing 78m as it diversifies from cheddar into mozzarella.

And a joint venture between Dairygold Co-operative Society Ltd and Norwegian dairy subsidiary TINE Ireland Ltd will produce Jarlsberg cheese, also from Cork.

However, late last year, it emerged that Glanbia was coming up against opposition from environmentalists regarding a planned new plant for the production of a continental cheese. It is a joint venture between Glanbia Ireland and Dutch dairy group Royal A-Ware.

Such opposition is not unusual in the development of plants and production facilities.

However, Friends of the Earth and An Taisce are asking questions about intensification of the dairy sector, and the implications for greenhouse emissions.

Glanbia Ireland says the milk is already being processed, and that it will produce a sustainable and nutritious dairy product at the Kilkenny site.

The matter is now with An Bord Pleanala and while the new Glanbia plant may well get the go-ahead, we can expect a great focus on the impact of dairy on the environment in the year and decade ahead.

It has been easy to be sceptical in recent years when companies such as Diageo and Heineken made noise about the launch of a new low or non-alcohol beer.

At a time when the mood music around alcohol consumption had been shifting, it seemed like good corporate policy to provide alternatives for people who did not wish to consume alcohol on specific occasions.

As the smooth marketing messages said, some consumers might want to enjoy the fun of an evening out, blending in within a pub setting, while keeping a clear head for the next morning.

Whether real customers would feel the same way was another matter entirely.

However, this Christmas, there certainly seemed to be more non-alcoholic beers in the mix, bearing out numbers from the Irish Brewers Association which suggested that sales of low and non-alcoholic beer were up 60pc in 2018.

The Financial Times reported last week that UK sales of alcohol in some categories were waning, with sparkling wine sales down for the first time since 2012.

Perhaps more worryingly for the Irish drinks sector is an apparent slowdown in growth of gin consumption.

Gin grew in the UK by 4pc in October 2019, compared with growth of 30pc in the same period in 2018.

Gin production has exploded in Ireland in recent years, partly due to the fact that emerging distilleries can produce it as they wait a minimum three years for their spirits to be legally called whiskey. At last count, there were more than 50 Irish gins.

It is positive that gin is still in growth. But now the bubble has apparently burst, it will be an increasingly competitive market, which will test the marketing skills and distribution abilities of newcomers and established labels alike.
Frustration as survey shows again people do not feel as safe as they should in Wrexham as reality is Wrexham is a very safe place to be

This article is old - Published: Monday, Jan 6th, 2020

Members of the public are being asked again to put forward their views on their perceptions of safety in Wrexham, as the results of a previous survey have been published.

The Community Safety Partnership (CSP) is currently carrying out a survey on how safe residents who live in the county borough feel in their area and also while visiting the town centre.

North Wales Police, Wrexham Council, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, North Wales Fire and Rescue Service and the National Probation Service, HMP Berwyn and Wales Community Rehabilitation Company are all members of the CSP.

The survey, which is carried out annually, is undertaken to find out about feelings of safety in Wrexham and the issues that have an impact on this, in order to help us decide on the priorities for our local community safety plan. Last years survey found that high-visibility policing and action to tackle anti-social behaviour were the two most popular responses.

74% said they had witnessed drunken behaviour and 74% referred to witnessing drug related activities.

A high number of open responses throughout the survey also referred to the visible vulnerable in the town.

In response to the results of last years survey, Chief Executive Ian Bancroft, said: Its really encouraging that the survey indicated that most people feel safe in their homes and neighbourhoods.

45% of people said they felt a bit unsafe in the town centre during daytime, with the unsafe/very unsafe score rising by nearly 10% year on year. That figure for night time is down slightly year on year, with 77% people scoring town a bit unsafe / very unsafe but 2% better than last survey. Respondents under the age of 18 were more likely to feel Very unsafe in the town centre after dark (61%) compared to other age groups (average of 46%).

Mr Bancroft said , However, its frustrating that people maybe dont feel as safe as they should in the town centre because the reality is that Wrexham is a very safe place to be.

High visibility policing and action to tackle anti social behaviour ranked vastly higher than other suggestions on what people felt would make them feel safer both at home and in the town centre. High visibility policing was the most popular answer in 81% of wards. It was also the most popular answer for those age 71 and over (61%), compared to just 14% for those aged 18 or under.

This years survey is now available online for residents to take part in and have their say on their own views of safety in Wrexham.

Questions for participants include how they would rate their fear of crime in Wrexham compared to other UK towns and what has influenced their decision. This could include personal experience, national or local media coverage, experiences of friends and family, word of mouth or comments seen shared on social media.

There is also the chance to comment on any issues that members of the public may have seen or experienced within a two mile radius of their homes. Options include antisocial behaviour, drug taking, fly-tipping, vandalism, graffiti or underage drinking.

The final questions focus on the town centre specifically  including how safe you feel when visiting during both day and night, the reasons you may not have visited and why.

Participants are then asked to select one option that they feel would make them feel safer when visiting the town.

In 2018 we detailed the results of a previous similar survey, as such data is used by various organisations to inform them as they make decisions on your behalf.

You can take part in the survey on the YourVoiceWrexham website until January 31st.
A new docuseries presented by former "60 Minutes" journalist Lara Logan is now available on FOX Nation.



The series streaming on the online subscription service is called "Lara Logan has no Agenda" and consists of 16 investigative episodes focused on four key subjects: crisis at the border, media bias, socialism and veterans.



In the first episode entitled "Cartel Nation," Logan begins her analysis of the border crisis by tracing the transformation of the two most powerful drug cartels in Mexico. Her extensive contacts in law enforcement allowed her a firsthand look inside the tactics that the cartels use to acquire and maintain power. She visits the Texas border town of Roma to explore how cartels operate on both sides of the Rio Grande.

MORE SAN ANTONIO TV NEWS: Texas Hill Country resident, former '60 Minutes' correspondent Lara Logan joins FOX Nation



She also ventures to the Mexican city of Cuilacan, the heart of the Sinaloa Cartel, where she meets with a cartel sicario for an unvarnished look at the viewpoint from the other side.

Logan is no stranger to coverage from dangerous territory. In 2002, she reported from the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq, among numerous other regions of conflict throughout the world, including Mogadishu, Somalia and Tahrir Square in Cairo during the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubaraks government.



She says covering the border for this new series was fascinating to her and a natural fit.



"I had just spent three months on special assignments for somebody else on the border and I was really astonished by what I found, what I learned when I was covering that. It's really fascinating to me," Logan told MySA. "It's probably one of the most significant borders in the world in terms of the flow of money and people. I think a vast majority of human trafficking victims come over that border. The Mexican cartels themselves control the global trade of narcotics. So, any story you do, you want to go to the heart and center of it. The center of everything that happens at the border is in Mexico."



Logan said traveling to Mexico was frightening, but she was determined for the project.



"You're going up against the cartels who control the border and are among the most sophisticated and ruthless people on earth as well as wealthy and powerful," she said. "I never underestimate anyone. The same way you stay alive in a war zone is the same way you stay alive in a place like Mexico. And perhaps more terrifying is the fact that more than 90 percent of crimes in Mexico go not only unresolved but uninvestigated."

When she travels to dangerous locations on assignment, she thinks about her three children back at home.



"Now, I have small children so when it's just me, I'm used to that. When it's not just me, it feels kind of selfish," she said.

MORE SAN ANTONIO TV NEWS: San Antonio news reporter makes jump to top 10 TV market



Logan lives in Fredericksburg with her husband and children, Ashley, Lola and Joe.

The former "60 Minutes" journalist has also overcome adversity in her career and personal life.



In 2011 while reporting on the revolution in Egypt, Logan was brutally sexually assaulted by a mob of protestors. A year later, after recovering from the attack, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She received a lumpectomy and six weeks of radiation. Despite these experiences, Logan never gave up on living her life.



"When you get gang-raped and beaten to death, I'm not going to pretend that you get up the next day and say you're OK," Logan said. "Of course it's a process and I learned overtime that my misunderstanding of recovery was you have to go back to who you were. You have to prove to everybody that you were your old self and you hadn't changed. For me that was a false standard because you always change. Everything that happens to you changes you, good or bad. So recovery for me doesn't mean I have to prove to everyone that I'm the same. I can learn to live with this and I can be OK with that."



For this award-winning reporter, quitting journalism was never an option.



"This is what I was born to do. It's like breathing for me. I never question it," she said.



Candice.Garcia@express-news.net | Twitter @_candicegarcia
The visit is scheduled to take place on January 11

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will pay a working visit to the Russian Federation on January 11 at the invitation of President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin. This was reported on the website of the Kremlins press service.

The sides will discuss the situation in Syria, Libya and the escalation of tensions in the Middle East, which flared up after the death of Iranian General Qasem Suleimani in Baghdad as a result of an airstrike executed by US troops.

Merkel and Putin will also discuss the situation in Donbas, the implementation of Minsk agreements and the Normandy Summit arrangements, which took place on December 9, 2019, in Paris.

As we reported earlier, today, the NATO Council will convene for an extraordinary meeting in view of the escalating situation in Iraq. The decision was made by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Interfax reported, citing NATO official in Brussels.

"The North Atlantic Council will examine the situation in the region (in the Middle East  ed.) on Monday, January 6, 2020," a NATO official said.

According to him, Stoltenbergs decision to hold a meeting of the Council was made after consulting with allies.
A stag party reveller was so drunk when he got off a plane at Dublin Airport that he was arrested for his own safety.

Laurence Cummins (49), who was "having trouble walking" through the terminal after flying home from Poland, went on to give the investigating garda an incorrect address when he was questioned.

Judge Conal Gibbons fined him 300, saying it was un- acceptable to be that drunk in an airport, and it "behoves us all to behave ourselves" while there.

Cummins, an out-of-work tiler and father-of-two from Summerhill Parade, Dublin 1, pleaded guilty to public intoxication and failing to give gardai his correct address.

Gda Dylan Moloney told Dublin District Court he was called to Terminal 1 at 9.15pm last October 27.

It was reported that a man was intoxicated, and Gda Moloney met Cummins, who had a strong smell of intoxicating liquor on his breath.

"His speech was slurred and he was having trouble walking as well. He was off-balance," the garda said.

After arresting him, he demanded the accused's name and address. Cummins provided an old address he was no longer living at, the officer said.

Firearms

The accused had convictions going back to 1981, but the most recent was in 2010, for possession of firearms in suspicious circumstances.

Cummins had been on his way home from a stag party in Poland and "alcohol played a big part in these offences", defence solicitor Niamh Mc- Kernan said.

Cummins had a document with his old address on it.

He had consumed a lot of alcohol and "in his intoxicated state" handed the inaccurate ID to the garda.

He called Ballymun Garda Station the next day to apologise and try to rectify his mistake, Ms McKernan said.

Gda Moloney said Cummins had not been difficult or aggressive, "just very drunk", and was a danger "more so to himself than anything else".

The accused had 200 in court to offer to charity, but Judge Gibbons said he did not think this was appropriate.

The airport was a place with large numbers of people of all ages, and it was unacceptable to be drunk to that extent in that location, he added.

There was a public interest in maintaining "good order and decorum" in places such as airports, the judge said.

"It behoves us all to behave ourselves at the airport," he added.
World's leading smartphone-maker Samsung has announced to launch the company's first flagship mobile of 2020 next month.

Samsung is hosting the Galaxy Unpacked 2020 edition event in San Francisco at 11:00 am PST on February 11. Going by the launch pattern of the past years, the company will most probably unveil a brand new iteration of the Galaxy S.

However, a wild theory circulating in the tech circle says Samsung may skip the Galaxy S11 naming order and jump directly to S20 so that there is parity with the current year 2020.

Even the short 15-seconds teaser video gives out an intriguing vibe that Samsung has something new up its sleeves. One thing is sure, there will be more than one devices making their debut early next month.

Must read | Samsung Galaxy Note10+ review: Gorgeous & versatile

Samsung invitation reads--"On February 11, Samsung Electronics will unveil new, innovative devices that will shape the next decade of mobile experiences."

Samsung Galaxy S11 or S20: What we know so far

As per the latest reports, Samsung is planning to launch Galaxy S in three models-- top-end S11 Plus (6.9-inch), a standard S11 (6.7-inch) and a low-key S11e (6.4-inch).

Like the previous S10 series, the first two high-end variants are expected to come with Quad HD+ Super AMOLED, but with much improved 120Hz display refresh rate.

On the other hand, the S11e is said to sport a full HD+ super AMOLED screen with a normal 60Hz display refresh rate.

As far as the front-panel design is concerned, all three Galaxy S11 series phones are expected to come with near-zero bezel on right and left sides. While the top and the bottom chin will be significantly slim compared to the predecessor.

One minor change is that the S11 and the S11 Plus may come with the dual front camera and the S11e with a single lens. All the phones will have a punch-hole design so that there is no wastage of space on the screen. Also, they will support face unlock feature

Furthermore, Samsung's new phones are said to come equipped with Qualcomm 3D Sonic Max fingerprint sensor at the base of the display.

Under-the-hood, Samsung will ship with Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, which is said to be on par with Apple's A13 Bionic chipset seen in the iPhone 11 series.

Read more | Apple iPhone 11 Pro: Ultimate camera champion

The Samsung new phones will run Android 10-based One UI 2 OS and are expected to house LPDDR5 series RAM for buttery smooth operation. It is said to be 20-percent faster and 30-percent power-efficient over the predecessor, which comes with the LPDDR4 series RAM.

As far as the imaging hardware is concerned, the S11 Plus and the standard S11 are expected to come with quad-camera module-- 108MP primary sensor with ultra-wide, 48MP with dedicated periscope zoom lens-- with LED flash for 5X optical zoom, another 48MP telephoto lens and ToF (Time-of-Flight) sensor for the enhanced bokeh blur effect. It will also come with improved night mode and more.

On the other hand, low-end S11e may come with a 64MP primary sensor instead of 108MP on the back and rest is likely to be the same as the other two models. Front camera details of the Galaxy S11 series are yet to be ascertained.

As far as the battery is concerned, the S11 Plus is expected to have 5,000mAh cell, whereas the S11 and the S11e are tipped come with 4,500mAh and 3,100mAh capacities, respectively.

Check out Samsung Galaxy Unpacked Event 2020 teaser:

Get the latest news on new launches, gadget reviews, apps, cyber security and more on personal technology only on DH Tech.
Fitch Solutions on Monday said that the centre's proposed carbon tax waiver on coal may pose substantial downside risks to India's renewable sector growth.

In a bid to alleviate significant debt levels in the power industry, India has proposed to waive carbon taxes on coal (Rs 400 rupees/tonne), it said.

This comes at a time where aggressive bidding and rapid fall in tariff prices in country's renewable power auctions have squeezed profit margins for project developers and threatened the economic feasibility of the project pipeline in the renewables sector.

The proposed carbon tax waiver on coal will "weigh on renewables growth," Fitch Solutions said, adding that the carbon tax waiver was likely to make coal-fired power cheaper, increasing the use of coal.

It expects coal to continue dominating India's power sector, making up a share of slightly under 70 per cent of the total power generation mix by 2029, with non-hydro renewables at 15.6 per cent.

"We stress that the continued push for lower tariffs in the tender process have already resulted in the undersubscription and cancellation of a few auctions across FY'18 and FY'19," it said.

Most notably, Tamil Nadu, one of India's largest renewable energy states, has decided to cease wind and solar auctions for the time being due to undersubscription in the previous two.

Coal-powered projects had faced some headwinds in recent years, noted by multiple project cancellations and stiff competition from non-hydro renewable sources, as the cost of renewables in India has fallen below that of coal and gas.
(Alliance News) - The following is a summary of top news stories Monday.







COMPANIES







Oil major BP has set up a subsidiary to create five businesses aimed at tackling the challenge of providing more energy with fewer carbon dioxide emissions by 2025, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. Launchpad, which sits alongside BP's venture capital unit, will focus on building large companies able to run alongside existing hydrocarbon divisions and specialise in digital and low-carbon technologies. "We are trying to build unicorns in the energy business", said Stephen Cook, managing partner of Launchpad and chief commercial officer for BP's technology division.







AstraZeneca reported regulatory progress for two of its programmes. Lokelma has been approved in China for the treatment of hyperkalaemia and Farxiga granted a priority review by the US Food & Drug Administration. Lokelma is already approved in the US, EU and Canada, and is currently going through a separate regulatory review in Japan, with a decision expected in the first half of 2020. In the US, the Food & Drug Administration had accepted a supplemental new drug application for AstraZeneca's Farxiga, and also granted the product a priority review for reducing the risk of death in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction.







Supermarket Aldi sold 55 million mince pies over a boozy Christmas which saw British shoppers spend record amounts at the German chain. UK sales in the four weeks to December 24 topped GBP1 billion for the first time in the company's history, and marked a 7.9% rise on the same period in 2018, Aldi revealed. As well as mince pies, Britons also bought 22 million pigs in blankets, and more than two million Christmas puddings. Alcohol sales in particular helped boost the supermarket's top line. Shoppers bought 9.2% more beer compared with last Christmas, and sales of Aldi's Champagne and Prosecco rose by 14%.







MARKETS







London shares were sharply lower amid intensifying tensions between the US and Iran. BP and Royal Dutch Shell were among a handful of blue-chip risers as oil hit its highest level since May overnight. Meanwhile, Gold was priced its highest since 2013 as the demand for safe haven assets increased. Wall Street was set for a lower open with major stock indices pointed down 0.6% to 0.7%.







FTSE 100: down 1.1% at 7,542.44

FTSE 250: down 1.2% at 21,735.42

AIM ALL-SHARE: down 0.5% at 959.55

GBP: up at USD1.3165 (USD1.3092)

EUR: up at USD1.1195 (USD1.1177)

GOLD: up at USD1,576.10 per ounce (USD1,549.40)

OIL (Brent): up at USD69.44 a barrel (USD68.11)

(changes since previous London equities close)







ECONOMICS AND GENERAL







Hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets of the capital Tehran to honour Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian general whose death in a US drone strike has stoked fears of a new war in the Middle East. Millions of Iranians are expected to take part in nationwide events honouring Soleimani in the lead up to his burial in his home town of Kerman on Tuesday. Early Monday morning a prayer to the dead was held at the University of Tehran, with thousands present. The ceremony was broadcast live on almost all television channels in the country. The targeted killing of 62-year-old Soleimani ordered by US President Donald Trump saw the Islamic republic vow "severe revenge" before Tehran also took a further step back from the already tattered 2015 nuclear accord with world powers.







UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to assemble key ministers to discuss the spiralling crisis in the Middle East after the US's assassination of Iran's top military leader. The prime minister is also likely to continue high-stakes diplomatic discussions with world leaders on Monday over the drone strike on Soleimani. After speaking to Trump on Sunday, Johnson broke his silence to say the UK "will not lament" the death of the leader who he said was "a threat to all our interests". The PM urged de-escalation from all sides, saying that calls for reprisals "will simply lead to more violence in the region and they are in no one's interest".







The UK Labour party's ruling National Executive Committee is to decide on the campaign timetable and other key elements for the election of Jeremy Corbyn's successor. Other factors that could potentially affect the outcome, such as who is eligible to vote, will also be ruled on during the meeting expected to be attended by the outgoing leader in London on Monday.







The UK services sector showed signs of stabilising in December, according to data from IHS Markit. The IHS Markit-Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply services purchasing managers' index rose to 50.0 in December from 49.3 in November. This marked stabilisation in the sector, with the latest reading bang on the no-change mark of 50 and above the earlier flash estimate of 49.0. The services sector was helped by a return to improving order books, with the sharpest rise in new work recorded since July.







The eurozone economy was close to stagnation at the end of 2019, IHS Markit said, with services outperforming manufacturing. The eurozone services purchasing managers' index improved to 52.8 in December, from 51.9 in November. The December score was revised upwards from the flash reading of 52.4. This means the composite PMI for December, which includes manufacturing, came in at 50.9 from 50.6 in November, with the December flash figure 50.6. Last week, IHS Markit reported a manufacturing PMI of 46.3 from 46.9, meaning the contraction of the sector had worsened in December.







Germany's services sector ended 2019 on a positive note. The services PMI came in at 52.9 points in December, improving from 51.7 in November. This is the best reading since August, though is below the 54.0 average for 2019. IHS Markit said there was a first increase in new business since August, while employment rose. Business confidence was at its best since April. This helped the composite PMI to return to growth, reaching 50.2 in December from 49.4 in November, despite manufacturing in December doing poorly. Last week, Germany's manufacturing PMI came in at 43.7 in December from 44.1 in November, meaning manufacturing remained deep in contraction.







China's services sector reported a reasonable rise in new work in December, data from Caixin showed. The Chinese December services purchasing managers' index was 52.5, from 53.5 in November. This means the services sector remains in expansion, though the rate of growth has eased. "The total amount of new business received by Chinese companies rose solidly at the end of the year, despite the rate of expansion slipping to a four-month low," said Caixin.







Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Iranians attend the funeral ceremony of Qasem Soleimani, the late Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General and commander of the Quds Forces, in the city of Tehran, Iran, 06 January 2020. Soleimanil was killed in a targeted US airstrike on 03 January 2020, in Baghdad, Iraq.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) announced on Monday (January 6) that it is prepared to deploy its air and naval assets once the government orders the evacuation of Filipinos in the Middle East.

AFP Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Felimon Santos Jr. said they have already laid out their contingency plan to President Rodrigo Duterte.

The indicators will be determined. Pag-uusapan namin ng national government (we will discuss it with the national government) the go signal is from them especially with the DFA with all the inputs, he said.

Among the air and naval assets available include the C-130s as well as new frigates that are able to travel to the Middle East.

The AFP chief of staff added they are still improving their plans due to the possibility that tension might spread in neighboring countries of Iran.

We are improving our plans not only on Iran and Iraq but the whole Middle East. We dont know; it might spread to other countries, especially if you know the history of the war. It might spread to Israel. There are probabilities like that, he said.

Meanwhile, the AFP is monitoring a possible retaliatory act of Iran in countries allied with the United States (US).

It is also monitoring local terrorist groups who might sympathize with the Iranian militia.

Siyempre mayroong sympathetic, either by race or by ideology, so the PNP [Philippine National Police] is profiling possible threats, possible groups who may take advantage or who might share sympathies (Of course, there will be those sympathetic, either by race or by ideology, so the PNP is profiling possible threats, possible groups who may take advantage or who might share sympathies). So our intelligence monitoring will be continuous up until medyo luminaw na iyong problema doon sa Middle East (until the problem in the Middle East clears up), Santos said.

Tensions between the U.S and Iran rose following the death of Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani on January 3 after the US launched an airstrike on an airport in Baghdad, Iraq.

Story continues

President Rodrigo Duterte called for an emergency meeting in Malacanang on Sunday (January 5).

This is to determine the possible effects of the rising tension on thousands of Filipinos in the Middle East especially in Iran and Iraq.AAC (with reports from Dante Amento)

The post AFP ready to deploy if govt orders evacuation of Filipinos in Middle East appeared first on UNTV News.
Islamabad, Jan 6 : Police in Pakistan's Punjab province on Monday arrested a key suspect who was involved in the attack on the Nankana Sahib Gurdwara carried out by a Muslim mob, trapping Sikh devotees inside the shrine.

District Police Officer Ismailur Rehman said that suspect Imran projected personal dispute as a religious issue and used it to deliver hate speech, The Express Tribune said in a report.

The suspect also posted the religious slur on social media after which the local administration took action on Prime Minister Imran Khan's directive and arrested Imran, who was leading the protest on January 3 in the birthplace of Guru Nanak, the first Sikh Guru.

The suspect has been charged with desecration of a holy place, terrorism and other serious accounts.

Videos circulated on social media showed the mob, led by the family of a man who had abducted and forcibly converted a Sikh girl Jagjit Kaur, raised communal and hateful slogans against the minority community and pelted stones at the shrine.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speaks on the Senate floor at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 3, 2020. (Senate TV via AP)

McConnell: Senate Should Stick With Clinton Precedent for Impeachment Trial

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Monday that the Senate impeachment trial should stick with the precedent established during the impeachment trial of then-President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s.

McConnell, speaking from the Senate floor, warned that the Senate shouldnt deviate from a unanimous bipartisan precedent set in the 1999 trial of President Clinton and write new rules for President Trump.

The Senate does not just bob along on the currents of every news cycle, McConnell said.

McConnells comments come as he and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) remained intransigent in their negotiations on how to conduct the trial. Its not clear when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will transmit the two articles of impeachment, which accuse President Donald Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, to the Senate.

The Senate has a unanimous bipartisan precedent for when to handle mid-trial questions such as witnessesin the middle of the trial, McConnell stated on Monday. That was good enough for President Clinton, so it ought to be good enough for President Trump. Fair is fair.

Schumer has made public comments about wanting to call in witnesses, including current White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney.

The New York Democrat again made the call for witnesses on Monday after former White House adviser John Bolton stated that he is willing to testify in the trial if he is called to the stand. It is now up to four Senate Republicans to join Democrats in voting on rules for the trial, he wrote.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) makes remarks a day after the Midterm Elections, in which the Senate Republicans retained their majority and the House saw Democrats sweep into control, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 7, 2018. (Mike Theiler/Reuters)

Those four Republican senators can join us, Schumer also told ABCs This Week on Sunday. We have the ability to require votes on the four witnesses we have asked for, whether theres an agreement or not. We have the ability to ask for the documents. And I hope, pray, and believe theres a decent chance that four Republicans will join us.

As to who those four Republicans might be, its not yet clear. Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have publicly broken with Trump on several issues. However, there is a possibility that several Democratic senators will join Republicans.

Last week, McConnell told his fellow senators that he believes the two articles will be heading to the Senate soon despite the current impasse.
This year is shaping up to be a white-knuckle ride for the supermarkets. Tesco, Sainsburys and Morrisons will reveal this week how their trading went over Christmas.

Its not likely to be happy reading.

There will also be trading figures from M&S, in its first Christmas since being expelled from the FTSE 100. A changing of the guard at the top of the grocers is under way.

Dave Lewis, the man who orchestrated Tesco's turn-around is stepping down later this year

Dave Lewis, the man who saved Tesco from oblivion when it ran up a 6.4 billion loss five years ago, is stepping down and will be replaced by Ken Murphy, a low-profile executive from the Boots chemist chain.

Morrisons recently promoted its finance boss, Trevor Strain, to chief operating officer, positioning him to take over from top man David Potts, who has led the recovery at the Bradford-based grocer.

At Sainsburys, Mike Coupes position has been weakened by the failure of his planned merger with Asda last year.

The succession may be complicated by the fact one of the leading contenders to take over, Argos boss John Rogers, left to join advertising giant WPP.

But whoever is in charge by this time next year will be facing enormous, and seemingly intractable, strategic challenges.

Sainsbury had hoped that the 14bn merger with Asda would give it the buying power to push down prices at the tills and enable it to better compete with the German discounters, Aldi and Lidl. The competition authorities had other ideas.

Now Asdas American owner Walmart is considering a London stock market float of its UK business.

Sainsburys is left without any obvious plan. Its shares have fallen 11pc in the past 12 months and new chairman Martin Scicluna will want to see rapid improvement.

Dramatic cost-cutting is on the agenda but it will take more than that. Sainsburys really needs to convince investors that it has a future on the High Street with a compelling story about how it can grow, not how it can manage decline.

Similarly, Morrisons strategy is: Fix, rebuild and grow.

It has achieved the first two under Potts, who orchestrated a recovery after being hired in 2015, but its share price has been flat over the past year.

As for Tesco, its shares are up by a third in 2019, but over ten years it is down around 40pc, despite the turnaround under Lewis who took it from enormous losses to 1bn plus profits.

The question, however, is whether there is much more improvement to be had when Murphy takes over.

And lets not forget poor old M&S, which has endured an absolute annus horribilis.

It is showing some signs of growth in its food business but the big test will be the success of its joint venture in online groceries with Ocado, a stock market star.

M&S chairman Archie Norman  the latest in a long line to have tried to revive the much-loved business  has made a bold move with the Ocado tie-up, but one that has been greeted with scepticism.

Britains food retailers are in for another tough year.

They have to manage Brexit and its effects on supply chains at a time when many families purse strings are still tight.

They have to work out what on earth they are going to do about the competition from Aldi and Lidl.

Several years ago, one former supermarket chief dismissed the German duo, saying discounters never made very big inroads into the UK market. He should now be eating his words.

And we havent even mentioned Amazon. If the US giant makes a big play for British grocery shoppers, all bets will be off.
DUBAI: Iran`s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wept while leading mourners in prayer for the funeral on Monday of slain military commander Qassem Soleimani, whose death in a US drone strike has caused a huge outpouring of national grief.

Iranians poured on to the streets of the capital Tehran to bid farewell to the commander of the Quds Force, the unit in charge of foreign operations of Iran`s Revolutionary Guards.

State media said they numbered in the millions. The scale of the crowds, shown on television clogging major streets, was the biggest since the 1989 funeral for the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the revolution that set Iran on its political collision course with Washington.

The supreme leader`s voice cracked with emotion as he said prayers, forcing him to pause. Crowds chanted "Death to America". One poster held by a mourner read: "It is our right to seek a harsh revenge," echoing comments by Iranian military and political leaders.

Many Iranians considered Soleimani, a decorated veteran of the eight-year war with Iraq, a national hero, particularly for mobilising Shi`ite Muslim groups in neighbouring Iraq to help crush the militant Sunni forces of Islamic State.

The death of the general, widely seen as the second most powerful figure in Iran after Khamenei, has prompted a rare public display of unity at home after deadly anti-government protests in November and before parliamentary elections in February.

It has also drawn some allies abroad closer to Iran. "The martyrdom of Soleimani is for sure a turning point for the establishment, at home and abroad. His death, at least for now, has united Iran," a former senior pro-reform Iranian official told Reuters.

The coffins of Soleimani and the Iraqi militia leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was also killed in Friday`s attack, were draped in their national flags and passed from hand to hand across the heads of mourners in central Tehran.

The funeral ceremonies will culminate with Soleimani`s burial in his home city of Kerman, in southern Iran.

SHOW OF SUPPORT

Traditionally, Muslims are buried swiftly after their death, often the same day. But Soleimani`s body has first been taken to cities in Iraq, where Iran has vied with the Washington for influence since the 2003 U.S. invasion, before being carried around Iran.

Crowds have crammed the streets in each of the cities, a welcome show of support for the authorities in Iran, whose economy has been crippled by new U.S. sanctions imposed after Washington quit a nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers.

US President Donald Trump has said the US military had drawn up a list of 52 targets, the same number of US Embassy hostages held for 444 days after the Iranian revolution, that he said would be hit if Americans or US assets were attacked.

Trump said the targets included cultural sites, comments that have drawn criticism from his US political opponents.

"America and Zionism should know that my father`s martyrdom will lead to awakening ... in the resistance front and bring about a dark day for them and flatten their homes," Zeinab Soleimani, the commander`s daughter, told mourners.

Iran usually refers to Israel as the Zionist state and describes regional countries and other forces opposed to Israel and the United States as a "resistance" front.

"Crazy Trump, don`t think that everything is over with my father`s martyrdom," she said in the televised address.

Iran`s allies in the region also gathered for the funeral. Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, told the ceremony: "Resistance against the Zionist project on the land of Palestine will not stop, and resistance against the American dominance will not be broken."

Haniyeh was on his first trip to Iran since becoming leader of the group in 2017. Iranian commanders have issued a range of threats since the U.S. strike at Baghdad airport, without being specific.

"Even killing Trump is not a sufficient vengeance, and the only thing that can pay for the blood of martyr Soleimani is completely expelling America from the region," Revolutionary Guards Aerospace Force chief Amirali Hajizadeh said.

The Iraqi parliament backed a recommendation on Sunday by the prime minister for all foreign troops to be ordered out of Iraq after Soleimani`s death united rival Iraqi Shi`ite leaders, even those opposed to Iranian influence.

"Trump will see the result of this adventurism in the region," Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said, citing the Iraqi vote. Tehran has often said it would choose the time and place of any retaliation in past standoffs with Washington.
Weve been hearing in the media for months now that Australia is being ravaged by bushfires, but its pretty hard to comprehend just how much of the country is really at risk.

Australia is the sixth biggest country, and its really not that much smaller than the United States.

Australia is made up of 7,741,220 square kilometers, while the US is made up of 9,833,517.

So how much of Australia is burning? 15 million acres have been devastated so far, and 24 lives have been lost.

Anthony Hearsey is a photographer who made a compilation of NASA images to demonstrate just how bad the Australian fires really are.

The 3D visualization Anthony made uses NASAs FIRM maps (Fire Information for Resource Management System) to make it clear what parts of Australia have been affected by the fires as of January 5th, 2020.

Imgur; pictured above is Anthonys map of Australia and the bushfires

Scale is a little exaggerated due to the renders glow, but generally true to the info from the NASA website. Also note that NOT all the areas are still burning, and this is a compilation, Anthony shared on the Imgur post.

Anthonys image definitely helps to put this all in perspective. Sadly, the bushfires are far from stopping, even though thousands of Australian firefighters have been working non-stop for months to combat the blazes.

The United States, New Zealand, and Canada have even sent more firefighters to Australia to assist.

Bre is a female millennial go getter residing in New York. One part entrepreneur, one part geek, she obtained her degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology.

She has held some exciting roles in both fashion as a designer working for brands like Victorias Secret and Henri Bendel, as well as in ad tech working for publishers like Ziff Davis.

Today she operates Chip Chick Media which reaches millions of women each month.

Bre is passionate about teaching women how to build a business and be an entrepreneur, in addition to keeping her readers informed of the latest technology trends and exciting products to improve their lifestyles.

You can send Bre a message here.
[January 06, 2020] Cooks and Hungry Neighbors Call on LA Board of Supervisors to Opt-In to AB 626

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Home cooks and consumers throughout Los Angeles county have been calling on their county supervisors to opt-in to AB 626, the California Homemade Food Act, which was signed into state law on September 18th, 2018 and took effect January 1st, 2019. Although the bill passed in the California state legislature, it is up to each county in California to adopt the law. After over a year of passing at the state level, Los Angeles county has yet to adopt the legislation and make this opportunity available to its residents. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health began rolling out the AB 626 opt-in in December 2018, by hosting a public information session focusing on the new legislation, during which they distributed a summary of what the new permitting process would look like. However, the roll out was halted in 2019 waiting for AB 377, a 'clean-up' bill to AB 626, which was passed on October 7th, 2019. The process for adopting AB 626 and bringing permitted home kitchen operations to Los Angeles county has been slow, at best, leaving eager home cooks and hungry neighbors in limbo. Riverside county is the first and only county thus far to opt-in to AB 626. Riverside launched its MEHKO (Micro Enterprise Home Kitchen Operations) permitting program in May of 2019, and has granted 28 MEHKO permits o date. There are, however, lessons to be learned from the Riverside roll out. First off, the permitting fee is extremely high, at $651 annually, and unaffordable to many folks wanting to take advantage of this economic opportunity. In an October 2019 email from a Riverside HomeCook applicant to DishDivvy, a leading online platform for HomeCooks, the applicant informed DishDivvy staff, "Unfortunately, I can't afford to get the permit right now do you provide help with that matter?"



In a letter to County Supervisor Hilda Solis, Nate Cash, a Los Angeles home cook eager to take advantage of AB 626, said, "I also urge you to make sure the permit fee for home cooks in LA county is affordable, so that people like me can afford to take advantage of this new opportunity." The rollout of AB 626 in LA county is important not only to home cooks looking for income opportunities, but also to our communities, who are looking for healthier local dining options. In a letter to County Supervisor Kathryn Barger's office, Glendale resident Sara Zahed said, "My mom was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis several years ago, and due to the progression of the disease, she is unable to cook for herself  so many of the simple daily tasks we take for granted, such as cooking, have become extremely difficult and challenging obstacles for her." AB 626 would provide LA communities access to nearby, local cooks who can help provide more accessible, healthier meals via a safe, permitted program. On a similar note, Hermosa Beach resident and long-time non-profit leader Jay Allen wrote to Supervisor Janice Hanh, "Having access to locally-prepared homemade food would be a huge benefit to the visually-impaired community, as it would empower them to have better choices when it comes to convenient food options."

AB 626 and AB 377 passed in state legislature, with overwhelming bi-partisan support. "The fact of the matter is the sale of homemade food has been happening in our communities for years, and with the advent of online tools and social media, it's becoming more prevalent on tech platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp. It is in the county's best interest to provide a pathway towards legalization, in order to create a safe and permitted environment for home kitchen operations and consumers alike," said Elen Asatryan, Chief Policy Consultant for DishDivvy. Homemade food is a large part of Los Angeles food culture, and so many entrepreneurs have gotten their start from their home kitchens. Residents are in support of this new economy in their communities, and Los Angeles county supervisors are called on to take action, to help folks in underrepresented groups, largely women and minorities, gain access into the highly competitive commercial food space. About DishDivvy

DishDivvy is a food tech company located in Los Angeles, that connects HomeCooks with Hungry Neighbors. Through its innovative technology, DishDivvy empowers HomeCooks to leverage their culinary skillset, coupled with the resource of their home kitchen, to share delicious homemade meals with their community. By tapping into locally prepared homemade food, DishDivvy is helping communities eat better in a sustainable and wholesome way. Learn more at https://www.dishdivvy.com. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cooks-and-hungry-neighbors-call-on-la-board-of-supervisors-to-opt-in-to-ab-626-300981402.html SOURCE DishDivvy

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The Global Insurance Symposium announced Friday that registration and sponsorship opportunities are open to the public. The event, to be held April 21-23 in Des Moines, Iowa, will bring together approximately 700 insurance and technology leaders from around the world. The symposium will provide a venue for the insurance industry to address issues impacting the marketplace, with a primary focus on technology, policy and innovation.

Those who register before February 29 will receive early bird general admission tickets for $495. After February 29, general admission tickets start at $595. Sponsors will receive a limited number of conference tickets, and additional tickets at a discounted rate.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 15:17:38|Editor: mingmei

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BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Over 600 foreign-funded companies settled in Beijing's Central Business District (CBD) in 2019, bringing the total number of foreign companies in the area to over 10,000.

A total of 550 foreign-funded companies including 88 multinationals have set up headquarters in the area.

Statistics indicated that foreign companies contributed over 40 percent in total tax income from January to November of last year in the CBD, located in Beijing's Chaoyang District.

In the first three quarters of 2019, the GDP of Beijing's CBD reached nearly 240 billion yuan (around 34.4 billion U.S. dollars), with a year-on-year growth of 7 percent.

Surrounded by foreign embassies, press and international organizations, Beijing's CBD has formed an all-round developing pattern, which coordinates global finance, high-end businesses and the media industry.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AMMO, Inc. (OTCQB: POWW) (AMMO or the Company), a premier American ammunition and munition components manufacturer and technology leader, has announced its first seven-figure international export sale with a partner in South Asia.



The total order is expected to amount in the seven-figures and AMMO has already entered into the first export purchase orders. AMMO and its partner anticipate the order will be followed by sizeable supplemental orders to proceed throughout 2020 and potentially beyond. The purchase orders scheduled to be fulfilled in the first quarter of 2020 call for ammunition casings ranging from 50BMG to 5.56.

It was important for our South Asia partner to see for themselves our world-class manufacturing facility in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, said AMMO President of Global Sales & Marketing Mark Hanish. During their meeting with our key team members, they felt confident in our capabilities as a trusted partner to serve their regions military, law enforcement and commercial markets.

AMMO CEO Fred Wagenhals confirmed: The strength of our U.S.-based manufacturing operations in both Wisconsin and Arizona, coupled with the burgeoning need for products such as those being offered by our overseas partner, well-positions AMMO to make significant export inroads within critical military, law enforcement and commercial markets over the next 12-24 months. We are excited the global markets are beginning to recognize the best-in-class ammunition and munition components AMMO manufactures.

About AMMO, Inc.

AMMO was founded in 2016 with a vision to change, innovate and invigorate the complacent munitions industry. The Company designs and manufactures products for a variety of markets, including law enforcement, military, hunting, sport shooting and self-defense. AMMO promotes branded munitions, including its patented STREAK Visual Ammunition, /stelTH/ subsonic munitions, O.W.L. Technologies, and Night OPS (One Precise Shot)  a lead-free frangible tactical line of munitions for self-defense. The Companys corporate offices are headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona. Manufacturing operations are based in both northern Arizona and Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Jagemann Munition Components is a wholly-owned AMMO subsidiary based in Wisconsin, and is an industry leading brass casing designer and manufacturer supporting the global ammunition industry. For more information please visit: www.ammoinc.com .

Forward Looking Statements

This document contains certain forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements for purposes of federal and state securities laws, including, but not limited to, any projections of earnings, revenue or other financial items; any statements of the plans, strategies, goals and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning proposed new products and services or developments thereof; any statements regarding future economic conditions or performance; any statements or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing.

Forward looking statements may include the words may, could, estimate, intend, continue, believe, expect or anticipate or other similar words, or the negative thereof. These forward-looking statements present our estimates and assumptions only as of the date of this report. Accordingly, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the dates on which they are made. We do not undertake to update forward-looking statements to reflect the impact of circumstances or events that arise after the dates they are made. You should, however, consult further disclosures and risk factors we include in Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and Reports filed on Form 8-K.

In our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, references to AMMO, Inc., AMMO, the Company, we, us, our and similar terms refer to AMMO, Inc. and its wholly owned operating subsidiaries The Enlight Group (d/b/a Jagemann Munition Components), SNI, LLC and Ammo Technologies, Inc.

Investor Contact:

Cody Slach

Gateway Investor Relations

Phone: (949) 574-3860

POWW@gatewayir.com
The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) administration has condemned the incident of violence that took place in the varsity campus in which several students and professors were attacked with sticks and rods and property vandalised by masked people. The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) Secretary has called the Registrar, Proctor and Rector of the JNU to his office on Monday. "It is unfortunate that violence took place in JNU campus this evening. The administration strongly condemns any form of violence on the campus. The JNU administration feels great pain&anguish for the students who have sustained injuries in the violence," read an official statement.

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The incident that took place on Sunday evening left many injured and an AIIMS official said that 18 people from JNU were brought to the hospital's Trauma Centre with head injuries and abrasions among other injuries. Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) President Aishe Ghosh, General Secretary Satish Chandra was among the people injured. "I have been brutally beaten up by masked people. I don`t know who they were," Ghosh was quoted as saying by ANI.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah ordered the Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik to take all necessary action to control the situation in the campus. He also ordered an inquiry. The Joint Commissioner of Police Western Range, Delhi Police, Shalini Singh will investigate the JNU incident after the order from the Home Ministry.

The Delhi Police Public Relations Officer (PRO), MS Randhawa, held a meeting with students and teachers of the JNU at the Police Headquarters at ITO on Monday where the students handed over a set of demands to the official, according to ANI. The letter, containing the set of demands, addressed to the Commissioner of Police (CP) urged him to assure "urgent medical assistance to the injured students", "arrest of all goons involved in the attack", "rescue of the students who are stuck both inside and outside the campus" and to ensure normalcy in the campus. A student delegation was also allowed to visit AIIMS Trauma Centre where those injured in JNU campus violence are admitted.

The Delhi police conducted a flag march in the campus on the intervening night of Sunday and Monday to ensure there are no more fringe elements in the campus. Four outsiders were nabbed from the JNU`s North Gate in connection with the brutal violence and were questioned. The four, caught while fleeing the campus, were taken to Vasant Kunj police station for interrogation.

Political leaders across party lines also condemned the attack on students and urged the police to take action against the perpetrators. The Bharatiya Janata Party said, "We strongly condemn the violence on JNU campus. This is a desperate attempt by forces of anarchy, who are determined to use students as cannon fodder, create unrest to shore up their shrinking political footprint. Universities should remain places of learning and education.:

Communist Party of India (CPI) (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury on Monday said that police assured actions against the perpetrators of violence in the JNU campus after meeting Randhawa on Monday. "The police has said that they will gather the evidence and assured us that they will take action against the perpetrators of violence in JNU. They are going to file an FIR in this regard," Yechury told ANI here. Yechury held talks with the Randhawa at the Delhi police headquarters. The senior CPI (M) leader added that two fact-finding teams will go to the university and AIIMS Trauma Centre to gather evidence regarding the violence.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, both JNU alumni, on Sunday condemned the violence. "Horrifying images from JNU- the place I know and remember was one for fierce debates and opinions but never violence. I unequivocally condemn the events of today. This government, regardless of what has been said the past few weeks, wants universities to be safe spaces for all students," Sitharaman, who did her MPhil from JNU, said in a tweet.

Jaishankar, who has an MA in Political Science and an MPhil and PhD in International Relations from JNU, also took to Twitter to express his reaction. "Have seen pictures of what is happening in JNU. Condemn the violence unequivocally. This is completely against the tradition and culture of the university," he tweeted.

Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who reached the All India Institute of Medical Sciences to meet the injured JNU students. CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, also a former JNUSU leader, also condemned the violence, and the party`s student wing, the Students Federation of India, called for a nationwide protest on Monday. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also said he was shocked by the violence.

Jamia students reached the Delhi Police HQ at ITO to protest, while the Jadavpur University Teachers` Association called upon all sections of society to condemn the "heinous act".
LOS ANGELES and SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- VetsinTech, the leading national nonprofit dedicated to advancing career opportunities for veterans in the tech industry, today announced "Student VetsinTech" (SVIT). VetsinTech's new program will begin setting up on-campus SVIT ambassadors in all key VetsinTech chapters across the United States. The goal of the national program is to demystify technology and spotlight the numerous employment opportunities available in the robust technology industry.

VetsinTech

"One of our key initiatives is to educate the thousands of young veterans transitioning into the civilian workforce. After meeting firsthand with hundreds of student veterans, it's clear they do not understand the opportunities available in the tech industry and beyond. Educating student veterans about what skills are needed and helping them successfully navigate and land a promising tech job is a key mission of our Student VetsinTech program," stated Katherine Webster, Founder and CEO of VetsinTech.

"SJSU is thrilled to be one of the first campuses to have a Student VetsinTech ambassador in place to educate our students about VetsinTech programs and opportunities in tech," stated Maggie Morales, Director of Veterans Resource Center at San Jose State University.

Each year, approximately 250,000 veterans return from active military duty. Upon their transition, veterans seek meaningful career opportunities where they can thrive, applying their superior training, skills, experience, and leadership. However, 80% of veterans embark on this new journey without a job or a defined career path.

"VetsinTech serves as a vital bridge to support our current and returning heroes with re-integration services, connecting them to the vibrant national technology ecosystem. We're excited to launch Student VetsinTech, so we can begin making a substantial, long-term career impact on our student veterans, enhancing their quality of life for them and their loved ones," added Katherine Webster.

VetsinTech is a sponsor of and exhibitor at SVA NatCon, participating in the conference's planned Partner Night with its own "VIT Rockin Party" and supporting the conference's honors banquet.

About VetsinTech

Based in San Francisco, with more than 30,000 vets strong and 15 chapters across the country, VetsinTech is the leading national non-profit devoted 100% to springboarding veterans into tech careers. VetsinTech harnesses the national technology ecosystem to benefit veterans returning from active military duty and who want to apply their extraordinary training, skills, and experience to a new career in technology. VetsinTech is comprised of technology industry leaders and former service members who support our veterans through tech-focused education, employment, and entrepreneurship. For more information, interested parties can visit www.vetsintech.co .

Press Contact:

Carmen Hughes

Ignite X

[email protected]

650.453.8553

SOURCE VetsinTech

Related Links

https://vetsintech.co


Iranian-Canadians in B.C. are watching with concern what the fallout will be for their friends, family, and the world after the U.S. assassination of a top Iranian general.

The U.S. Department of Defence confirmed that President Donald Trump ordered an airstrike near Baghdad's airport on Friday to target Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

The 62-year-old general had been responsible for fighters backing Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in that country's ongoing conflict, and for the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq. Trump ordered the killing because he said Soleimani had been planning attacks on U.S. diplomats and service members.

Some fear the fallout over the assassination could trigger wider war.

According to census data from 2016, there are more than 200,000 people living in Canada with Iranian origins. Many escaped their home country's authoritarian rule and associated human rights issues.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been in power since 1989 in Iran, which last year celebrated the 40th anniversary of the revolution that ushered in an Islamic regime.

Siamand Zandi left Tehran as a political refugee in 1984 and went to France. In 2002 he moved to Toronto and since 2006 has called Port Moody, B.C., home. He says he doesn't condone violence, but isn't sad about Soleimani's assassination.

"To be honest, I was happy," he said about hearing the news. "One of the known terrorists of the world is out of action now."

Still, he says he is concerned about what the killing will mean for his fellow Iranians in his home country who are living under U.S. sanctions, which target financial assets and oil exports. In November, thousands of people protested a hike in fuel prices in the country.

"Iran is a very rich country, but the people are really, really poor," said Zandi.

Jon Hernandez/CBC

Fred Soofi came to Canada in 1974 at the age of 22 and flourished in the restaurant business. He now lives in Coquitlam, B.C., and hasn't been back to Iran in more than 30 years over fears for his safety.

Story continues

"It worries me," he said about further instability in the country. "I'm worried about retaliation."

Zandi and Soofi want Canada to put pressure on Iran to improve the lives of Iranians. Both want a new regime in Iran so that a new generation might flourish rather than live in fear and under poor conditions.

'Diplomacy is how you avoid war'

Tehran has vowed retaliation against the U.S. There is a move to have U.S. forces leave Iraq and, on Sunday, Iran said it would no longer abide by any of the limits of a 2015 nuclear deal, abandoning key provisions that block Tehran from having enough material to build an atomic weapon.

Michael Byers, who studies international relations at the University of British Columbia, said he is doubtful the conflict will escalate into a shooting war, as the U.S. has superior resources. However, he said Trump's actions have created what he described as a dangerous situation in the Middle East.

He said Canada has a role in helping to de-escalate tensions.

"Escalation would harm everyone and therefore we do have to pull back and reinitiate diplomacy," he said. "Diplomacy is how you avoid war. Donald Trump is not a very good diplomat, but some people have to try."

On Friday, Canada's foreign affairs minister called on all sides to exercise restraint.
In a setback to embattled liquor baron Vijay Mallya, the Supreme Court has said he can't use pendency of his plea in the SC to stall insolvency proceedings initiated against him in the United Kingdom. Mallya had approached the SC on June 27, seeking a stay on the confiscation of properties owned by him and his relatives in India.

A bench, headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde, passed the order after the Centre told the SC bench that Mallya used pendency of his plea to stall the UK court from delivering the verdict in insolvency proceedings.

A UK court last month had reserved its judgement on a plea by a consortium of Indian public sector banks led by State Bank of India (SBI), seeking a bankruptcy order against Mallya as part of efforts to recoup around 1.145 billion pounds in unpaid loans.

After hearing arguments from both sides, Judge Michael Briggs reserved his judgment in the insolvency division of the High Court. The plea was filed by the banks last year, about lending involving Mallya's now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines.

Mallya remains on bail pending the UK High Court appeal hearing in the extradition proceedings brought by India about fraud and money laundering charges amounting to Rs 9,000 crore.

He had been arrested on an extradition warrant back in April 2017 and has been fighting his extradition in the UK courts since then. He was granted permission to appeal against his extradition order, which is scheduled in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for February.

With PTI inputs

Also read: Vijay Mallya offers again to pay back entire debt to banks

Also read: Huge relief for Vijay Mallya as London HC allows appeal against his extradition

Alsor read: Indian banks seek bankruptcy order against Vijay Mallya; UK court reserves judgment
IMAGE: Shattered glass of doors are seen at the Sabarmati Hostel following the Sunday's violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi, on Monday. Photograph: Atul Yadav/PTI Photo

The Jawaharlal Nehru University has extended the date for the semester registration process till Sunday since the servers have not been restored yet.

In a statement, Registrar Pramod Kumar said a few 'miscreants' had severely damaged the information and communication service (CIS) systems of the university 'as part of their continuing agitation'.

"This has caused complete failure of the main power supply of CIS Data Centre, severe damage to Optic fibers cables, and power cables of all racks," he said.

"The JNU cloud and other information and communication systems are completely shut down."

Intranet, wired and wireless, systems are not operational in the campus, Kumar said, adding the registration process for winter semester 2020 had completely stopped since the afternoon of Saturday.

All efforts have been made to repair the system and restore the damaged equipment and data by the administration, he said.

"This is to inform all the students that registration process will remain open until January 12 without any late fee for registration," he said.

The university will make every effort to facilitate the registration of every student, the official said, while urging all students to participate in the winter semester registration as soon as the CIS Data Centre is made functional.

The registration process had commenced last Wednesday and ended on Sunday.

The students' union had called for a registration boycott in protest against the hostel fee hike.

Edited by Utkarsh Mishra
TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Liquidity Capital, the providers of unlimited unsecured, non-recourse, no dilution growth capital, announced today their $12.5M trajectory-based funding agreement with Resident, the direct-to-consumer e-commerce retailtech startup that owns and operates a house of consumer furnishing brands including: Nectar, DreamCloud, Level, Awara, Wovenly, Bundle and 1771 Living. Resident plans to use the investment to further capitalize on its position as North America's fastest growing e-commerce retailer and increase growth into additional home products.

Liquidity Capital offers tech startups and SaaS providers a one-of-a-kind funding alternative, enabling them to double down on their hyper-growth without giving up equity. Their trajectory-based financing model allows Liquidity Capital to work with startups side-by-side, taking on all financial risk. Powered by machine learning algorithms which forecast the future business trends of its investments, Liquidity Capital is the only provider of unlimited non-secured loans in the industry.

"We are thrilled to be investing in Resident," said Liquidity Capital Co-Founder and CEO, Ron Daniel. "Seeing as Resident is the fastest growing e-commerce retailer in North America, this investment strengthens our investment portfolio greatly. We are happy to be doubling down on e-commerce, pairing Resident with our investment in Le Tote, a leader in e-commerce fashion retail. We're excited to watch the continued hyper-growth of Resident and give then any support needed along the way."

Direct-to-consumer brands are disrupting the established retail market, leading to a shift in the relationship between brands and consumers. Currently operating in San Francisco, New York City and Tel Aviv, Resident provides consumers with better choices when it comes to everyday home products offering unparalleled standards for quality, style, and value. Beginning as an online retailer for high-quality, affordable memory foam mattresses, Resident continues to grow their direct-to-consumer sales, expanding their range to rugs, couches, chairs and bean bags for homes everywhere.

"We have been extremely impressed with the Liquidity Capital team from our very first meeting with them" said Resident's Co-CEO, Ran Reske. "Ron Daniel clearly understands all the ups and downs an entrepreneur goes through, as he has already experienced this journey himself. The fact that they have been entrepreneurs was very important to us in choosing a capital partner. In addition, the new approach of non-dilutive capital for a fast-growing business like ours is the perfect solution and made this transaction a no-brainer for us. We look forward to working with Liquidity Capital as we continue to scale our business."

Liquidity Capital funds tech startups and SaaS providers that demonstrate over $5M in ARR and 30% year-over- year growth, with an average ticket size of $10M-$30M. Founded by serial entrepreneurs and with offices in New York, Miami and Tel Aviv, Liquidity Capital is backed by Mitsubishi UFJ Fund Services and is part of Meitav Dash Ltd., the leading Israeli institutional investment house. Liquidity Capital has already committed over $200M of growth capital in 2019 and plans to fund over $500M in the US market for 2020. Notable investments made by Liquidity Capital include Le Tote, Infinidat, ezbob, and Sweet Inn.

About Liquidity Capital:

Liquidity Capital offers unlimited unsecured, non-recourse, no dilution growth capital funding to growth stage startups. Liquidity Capital's revenue-based financing model is designed to help fast-growing startup entrepreneurs succeed without giving up company equity. Developed by a group of tech entrepreneurs, mathematicians and a leading group of financial experts, Liquidity Capital was founded in 2017 by Ron Daniel, Oron Maymon, and Yaron Sela, and is backed by Meitav Dash Investments Ltd. and Mitsubishi UFJ Fund Services. Liquidity Capital is based in Tel Aviv with offices in New York City and Miami.

About Resident:

At Resident, we are relentless in our passion to provide consumers better choices when it comes to everyday home products. From mattresses and bedding and bath essentials to rugs and furniture for every room in the house, each of our brands have unparalleled standards for quality, style and value. Offering the best-ever trial periods and warranties, our direct-to-consumer house of brands include: Nectar, DreamCloud, Level, Awara, Wovenly, Bundle and 1771 Living. The company, which is headquartered in California with offices in New York City, London and Tel Aviv, initially launched in 2017 with Nectar, the fastest growing e-commerce brand in North America.

Media Contact:

Eric Wolkstein

[email protected]

+1-347-471-2363

SOURCE Liquidity Capital
T he US defence secretary has denied claims that the US is planning to pull troops from Iraq amid mounting tensions with Iran.

A leaked letter had suggested that US-led coalition fighting against Islamic State would withdraw.

A push led by pro-Iran factions to oust US troops from Iraq had followed the US airstrike that killed a top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

However, defence secretary Mark Esper said: "There's been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq."

Mark Esper rejected suggestions troops would withdraw from Iraq / AFP via Getty Images

It comes as the UK began reducing staff at its embassies in Iran and Iraq to a minimum level amid security concerns and as Boris Johnson prepared to chair a National Security Council meeting amid the growing crisis.

Details of a letter said to be sent from United States Marine Corps Brigadier General William H Seely III, the commanding general of Task Force Iraq said forces would be leaving Iraq.

The letter seen by Reuters said: "Sir, in deference to the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq, and as requested by the Iraqi Parliament and the Prime Minister, CJTF-OIR will be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement."

The authenticity of the letter, which was addressed to the Iraqi defence ministry's Combined Joint Operations Baghdad, was confirmed to Reuters independently by an Iraqi military source.

Donald Trump has threatened Iran in the midst of a major dispute between the nations / AFP via Getty Images

"We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure," it said.

The letter said: "During this time, there will be an increase in helicopter travel in and around the International Zone (IZ) of Baghdad."

Iran's demand for US forces to withdraw from the region gained traction on Sunday when Iraq's parliament passed a resolution calling for all foreign troops to leave the country.

Soleimani, centre, was killed in a US airstrike / EPA

Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Abdel Abdul Mahdi told the US ambassador to Baghdad on Monday that both nations needed to implement the resolution. However, no timeline was given.

Iraq has officially condemned the US airstrike that killed Iran's top military commander as a "flagrant violation" of the terms of the American forces' presence in the country.

In a letter to the UN Security Council, Iraq's UN ambassador Mohammed Hussein Bahr Aluloom called on the council to condemn the US airstrike and "assassination" that killed Soleimani and a senior Iraqi militia commander.

He said the airstrike was "a dangerous escalation that might ignite a devastating war in Iraq, the region and the world", and urged the council to hold accountable "those who have committed such violations".

Bahr Aluloom also called on the council to ensure Iraq is not "dragged into international and regional crises" and to prevent "the law of the jungle" from prevailing.

However any security council action sought by Iraq against the Trump administration is virtually certain to be vetoed by the US.

Elsewhere, Britain has reduced staff at its embassies in Iran and Iraq to a minimum level amid escalating tensions on the Persian Gulf.

The withdrawal of the diplomats is a precautionary step rather than based on specific intelligence of a threat, according to Sky News.

Ambassadors Rob Macaire in Tehran and Stephen Hickey in Baghdad will remain in place, the news site reported.

The Foreign Office said its embassies in Baghdad and Tehran remained open but declined to comment on operational detail.
The Punjab Government on Monday decided to build a 7 megawatt (MW) waste to energy plant at Simgauli village in Mohali district, an official statement said.

Chief Minister Amarinder Singh gave the go-ahead for the project of building the plant in over 50 acre area under the Build Own Operate (BOO) model, it said.

The project will be completed within the next two years and the waste to energy plant would generate power from 600 tonnes per day (TPD) waste collected from Mohali and Patiala, the statement said.

Singh chaired a meeting here and also gave approval for an MoU between the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and Municipal Corporation Mohali, the nodal agency for executing the project, it said.

The chief minister said the project would contribute to the implementation of the State Action Plan on Climate Change (SAPCC) and also the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.

He said the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) had always posed a major challenge to urban local bodies but with this project, it could now be effectively used as a source of renewable energy.

He pointed out that MSW had not been harnessed systematically on a significant scale and hoped that the project would pave the way for more such initiatives.

During the meeting, General Manager, Waste to Energy, NTPC, Amit Kulshreshtha apprised the chief minister that the new state-of-the-art plant, complying with the latest environmental norms, would be installed as a pilot project in the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A New York school district has announced it will begin using controversial facial recognition software for school safety purposes, over the strenuous objections of civil liberties advocates.

Beginning this month, the Lockport School District, near the Canadian border, will become one of the first school systems in the country to try out facial recognition software. The district will use Aegis software, created by a Canadian-based company, to alert district officials if someone on a flagged list of individuals showed up at one of the districts eight schools. The software can also detect ten different types of guns.

The districts path to using the software wasnt a smooth one. In fact, earlier this year, the New York State Education Department required Lockport to hit the pause button on the implementation of the system . The state relented when Lockport revised its policy to make it clear that no student data will be created or stored in its data security system, an NYSED official said. And the state recommended that the district consult with its local attorney to ensure that all other applicable laws and regulations are met and that the civil rights of all individuals are also protected.

The district makes this distinction clear in a message to parents on its website .

The system identifies individuals only if they are stored in a database in an identified category which include sex offenders, staff who have been suspended and/or are on administrative leave, anyone prohibited from entry to district property by court order ... or anyone believed to pose a threat based on credible information presented to the district by Law enforcement or will be reported to law enforcement by the district. AEGIS will not include students in any category for any reason, in compliance with a request made by the New York State Education Department."

The message also explained the districts argument for installing the system, saying it will function as an additional security measure in all buildings.

However, that does not assure the New York Civil Liberties Union, which has written a letter to the state asking that it rescind its approval of the system.

NYSED should not allow Lockports students, teachers, and community members to be test subjects for inaccurate and invasive technology, the organization wrote. And in a blog post , the Civil Liberties Union argued that, children as young as 5-years-old will have their faces scanned wherever they go. Their images will be captured by a system that is error-prone, discriminatory, and puts students safety at risk.

NYCLU officials dont buy the districts reassurance that the technology wont store student data. Thats not how facial scanning technology works, they argue. They say it will be stored for at least 60 days, so that it can be compared to faces the district has asked the technology to flag. And during that time, the student facial data could be hacked, NYCLU officials argue. Whats more, they say, facial recognition software has difficulty recognizing women, people of color, and young peoplewhich makes it particularly problematic in a K-12 school environment.



In fact, the city of San Francisco recently banned the use of the technology .

The NYCLUs blog post urges readers to support a bill that will be introduced in the next state legislative session, which would ban the use of the technology in schools.

Image: Getty
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended his leadership and his governments record on climate change Sunday as milder temperatures brought hope of a respite from wildfires that have ravaged three states, claiming 24 lives and destroying almost 2,000 homes.

Morrison has faced widespread criticism for taking a family vacation in Hawaii at the start of the wildfire crisis, his sometimes distracted approach as it has escalated and his slowness in deploying resources.

He was heckled last week when he visited a township in New South Wales in which houses had been destroyed and which was home to one of three volunteer firefighters who have died in the crisis so far.

On Saturday Morrison announced that, for the first time in Australian history, 3,000 army, navy and air force reservists will be thrown into the battle against the fires. He also committed $14 million to leasing fire-fighting aircraft from overseas.

But those decisions attracted complaints that he had taken too long to act as fires have burned through millions of hectares (acres) in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, an area twice the size of Maryland.

Not the time for blame

Morrison told a news conference Sunday it was not the time for blame.

There has been a lot of blame being thrown around, Morrison said. And now is the time to focus on the response that is being made. ... Blame doesnt help anybody at this time and over-analysis of these things is not a productive exercise.

Morrison has been chided for past remarks that appear to minimize the link between climate change and Australias escalating threats of drought and wildfires.

There is no dispute in this country about the issue of climate change globally and its effect on global weather patterns and that includes how it impacts in Australia, he said.

I have to correct the record here. I have seen a number of people suggest that somehow the government does not make this connection. The government has always made this connection and that has never been in dispute.

Story continues

Cooler temperatures and lighter winds on Sunday brought some relief to threatened communities, a day after thousands were forced to flee as flames reachedthe suburban fringes of Sydney.

Thousands of firefighters fought to contain the blazes but many continued to burn out of control, threatening to wipe out rural townships and causing almost incalculable damage to property and wildlife.

As dawn broke over a blackened landscape Sunday, a picture emerged of disaster of unprecedented scale. The Rural Fire Service said 150 fires were active in the state, 64 of them uncontrolled.

Its not something we have experienced before, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

The latest fatality occurred at Batlow in New South Wales, where a 47-year-old man died Saturday night while defending the home of a friend from encroaching fires. New South Wales police said the man was found unconscious in a vehicle and could not be revived.

'Hearbroken' by tragic deaths

Earlier Saturday, a father and son who were battling flames for two days died on a highway on Kangaroo Island, off South Australia state. Authorities identified them as Dick Lang, a 78-year-old acclaimed bush pilot and outback safari operator, and his 43-year-old son, Clayton. Their family said their losses left them heartbroken and reeling from this double tragedy.

Lang, known as 'Desert Dick', led tours for travelers throughout Australia and other countries.

The deadly wildfires, which have been raging since September, have already burned about 5 million hectares (12.35 million acres) of land. Thats more than any one year in the U.S. since Harry Truman was president.

The early and devastating start to Australias summer wildfires has also been catastrophic for the countrys wildlife, likely killing nearly 500 million birds, reptiles and mammals in New South Wales alone, Sydney University ecologist Chris Dickman told the Sydney Morning Herald. Frogs, bats and insects are excluded from his estimate, making the toll on animals much greater.

Morrisons handling of the deployment of reservists also came in for criticism Sunday. Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons, who is leading the fight in New South Wales, said he learned of the deployment through media reports.

It is fair to say it was disappointing and some surprise to hear about these things through public announcements in the middle of what was one of our worst days this season with the second-highest number of concurrent emergency warning fires ever in the history of New South Wales, he said.

Morrison was also forced to defend a video posted on social media Saturday, which promoted the deployment of reservists and the governments response to the wildfires.

The non-partisan Australia Defence Association said the video breached rules around political advertising.

Party-political advertising milking ADF (Australian Defence Force) support to civil agencies fighting bushfires is a clear breach of the non-partisanship convention applying to both the ADF and ministers/MPs, the association said.

In a tweet, Morrison said the video message simply communicates the governments policy decisions and the actions the government is undertaking to the public.

Meanwhile, Australias capital Canberra was enveloped in a smoky haze Sunday and air quality at midday was measured at 10 times the usual hazardous limit.

In New Zealand the skies above Auckland were tinged orange by smoke from the bushfires and police were inundated with calls from anxious residents.

(AP)
A roofing company in Snohomish, Wash. is facing large fines from the state for multiple worker safety hazards and their violations at three different jobsites.

After receiving calls from concerned neighbors, the Department of Labor & Industries opened inspections into Allways Roofing in connection with work at three homes in Woodinville and Arlington.

L&I investigators found multiple serious hazards at each location. As a result, L&I cited Allways for several violations and fined the company $374,400.

Fall protection, unsafe ladder use and other safety violations

In Woodinville, L&I cited Allways for three willful violations.

Five workers, including a foreman, were working on a steep-pitched roof without proper fall protection; workers were using a 24-foot extension ladder without extending it to a proper height above the roofline; and the employer did not have a fall protection plan onsite and workers were not trained on the plan. Those, plus four other serious violations and one repeat-general violation, add up to $191,700 in penalties.

For the Arlington worksites, L&I cited Allways for three willful violations, two serious and one repeat-general, for essentially the same hazards found in Woodinville. Those violations add up to $182,700 in penalties.

L&I has cited Allways Roofing seven other times in Washington since 2012. Those citations included 11 repeat-serious and eight serious violations for hazardous conditions. In those cases, Allways was fined $112,000.

In 2018, 15 Washington workers died from falls. Six of those were from ladders; all but one were from elevation, such as from a roof. More construction workers die from falls each year than workers in any other industry. Many more workers are seriously injured from falls annually, according to L&I.

A serious violation exists in a workplace if there is a substantial probability that worker death or serious physical harm could result from a hazardous condition. A willful violation can be issued when L&I has evidence of plain indifference, a substitution of judgment or intentional disregard of a hazard or rule  essentially meaning the employer knew of the hazard and intentionally put workers at risk anyway.

The company is now in the Severe Violator Program due to its inspection history. Among other things, that means the company can be subject to more inspections until it can demonstrate its ability to follow these rules and keep its workers safe.

Allways Roofing has 15 days to appeal. Penalty money paid as a result of a citation is placed in the workers compensation supplemental pension fund, helping injured workers and families of those who have died on the job.

Topics Washington
Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs, Crimean deputy Natalya Poklonskaya criticized Kyivs "crazy idea" to install a monument to the leader of Ukrainian nationalists Stepan Bandera on the border with Russia, offering an alternative that, on the contrary, would become a symbol of restoring good neighborly relations between the countries.

She emphasized that such initiatives are not supported by ordinary Ukrainians.

"Instead of installing a monument to nationalists and pseudo-heroes on the Russian-Ukrainian border, the Orthodox chapel of the Nativity of Christ should be erected as a symbol of the new life, love, prosperity and good neighborly relations between our countries," RIA Novosti quotes Poklonskaya as saying.
More Australians will contract a deadly dust-related disease in 2020 if the federal government waits to act on recommendations it received last year, a Brisbane lawyer warns.

Roger Singh from Shine Lawyers has watched his clients fade to "skin and bones" from silicosis, an irreversible lung disease caused by inhalation of silica dust.

Anthony White suffered debilitating silicosis symptoms but insisted on standing up for more to be done about the issue. Credit:Shine Lawyers/Supplied

Gold Coast stonemason Anthony White, who was a client of Mr Singh's, died from the disease last March and his brother Shane Parata was diagnosed with silicosis a few days later.

Another client remains on 24-hour oxygen and is deteriorating by the day.
One noisy feature of the post-Christmas business scene in the 1980s and '90s was the elaborate publication of holiday brochures by the raft of tour operators who were around at the time.

Before the internet allowed people to be their own tour operator, the public was inundated every January with offers from organisations like Budget Travel, Joe Walsh Tours and Thompson Tours and many more, to book their summer holidays, hopefully at a discount.

As a business model, the idea of getting partial payment for a service at least six months in advance was splendid. But it also helped nurture the habit that has helped build holiday empires in Spain and other Mediterranean countries, one of which we are looking at today - Spanish hotel group Melia International.

It hasn't been all sunshine and sangria for Spanish and Mediterranean tourism with recessions, terrorist outrages, political unrest and corporate collapses (latest being Thomas Cook) making for an uncomfortable mix.

The arrival of disruptors like Airbnb has been no help either. The Melia share price has suffered in the midst of that uncertainty but it has also seen the benefit of interesting geographical diversification.

Melia has its origins in the mass tourism boom of the 1960s; it saw explosive growth in the 1980s first in mainland Spain and then further afield. Today the company is the third largest hotel group in Europe, operates in 44 countries, employs 46,000 people, owns/manages 390 hotels and resorts in Europe, Asia the Americas and Africa. It has been a listed company on the Spanish Stock Exchange since the 1990s and valued today at 1.8bn.

Target markets are both business and leisure and like most hotel groups it caters for all tastes from 3-star to premium brand. The group has a number of brands including Sol Melia used mainly in tourist destinations.

Its main business brands are Melia and Tryp, the latter focused on large cities. The premium brands are Pardisus and Gran Melia, the most luxurious. Three-quarters of its property portfolio are "asset light" or leased properties.

The asset-light (or managed) business model is where Melia manages third-party properties for a fee and it accounts for one-third of group earnings. Only 14pc of its properties are owned by Melia and almost one-third is leased.

The group's portfolio of hotels in the Mediterranean, Spain and Europe accounts for 60pc of its total.

The Mediterranean region is Melia's largest with 84 managed hotels and 26,000 bedrooms.

Last year it faced many challenges. The good weather in Northern Europe as well as recovery in other destinations like Turkey and Egypt resulted in a decline in demand. Its European portfolio of 77 hotels posted positive results including a rise in revenue per available room.

The group's hotels in its main markets of London, Paris and Rome had positive results with the exception of the German market which was 'challenging'. In general Melia's urban and premium hotels in Spain had a positive year; Barcelona the exception. The Spanish resorts were hit by the slowdown in international tourism.

The Melia group revenues last year were 2.2bn, up 40pc in the last seven years.

Thirty percent of its revenue is generated via the internet. Since late 2016 investors in Melia have not been happy, as shares have declined, including a 30pc drop this year. Today they trade at 8, just above its yearly low - a long way from 20 before the financial crisis.

Even though the group has added 70 hotels in the last five years, the share price fall is disappointing given the group has moved to the less volatile premium end of the market, diversified to growth markets in Latin America and Asia and concentrated on managing hotels rather than owning them.

However with tight profit margins I wouldn't be rushing to buy the shares.
SOFIA, Bulgaria - Thousands of Orthodox Christian worshippers plunged into the icy waters of rivers and lakes across Bulgaria on Monday to retrieve crucifixes tossed by priests in Epiphany ceremonies commemorating the baptism of Jesus Christ.

By tradition, the person who retrieves the wooden cross will be freed from evil spirits and will be healthy throughout the year. After the cross is fished out, the priest sprinkles believers with water using a bunch of basil.

The religious holiday of Epiphany is also celebrated in some Western Christian churches as Three Kings Day, which marks the visit of the Magi, or three wise men, to the baby Jesus, and closes out the Christmas season.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis urged the faithful to reject the god of money as well as consumerism, pleasure, success and self. In his Epiphany homily Monday in St. Peters Basilica, Francis encouraged people to focus on serving others, not themselves.

He urged the faithful to concentrate on the essentials by getting rid of what he calls useless things and addictions that numb hearts and confuse minds. Francis said believers should aid those suffering on lifes margins, saying Jesus is present in those people.

In Milan, city officials served a hotel lunch to 200 homeless people to mark the day.

In the sleepy mountain city of Kalofer in central Bulgaria, dozens of men dressed in traditional white embroidered shirts waded into the icy Tundzha River on Monday waving national flags and singing folk songs.

Led by the towns mayor, inspired by bass drums and bagpipes and fortified by homemade plum brandy, they performed a slow mazhko horo, or mens dance, stomping on the rocky riverbed.

Braving sub-zero temperatures, the men danced for nearly half an hour, up to their waists in the freezing water, pushing away chunks of ice floating on the river.

The town of Kalofer has applied to the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO for this traditional ritual to be inscribed as part of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

In Istanbul, more than a dozen Orthodox men jumped into the frigid waters of the Golden Horn amid heavy rains in a ceremony led by Patriarch Bartholomew I.

Nikolaos Solis from Agrinio in Greece retrieved the wooden cross, the fourth time he has done so. Another Greek man lost consciousness and had to be pulled out of the frigid water and taken to an ambulance.

The Patriarchate in Istanbul is considered the heart of the Orthodox world and dates back to the Byzantine Empire, which collapsed when the Muslim Ottomans conquered the city in 1453.

Epiphany marks the end of the 12 days of Christmas, but not all Orthodox Christian churches celebrate it on the same day.

While the Orthodox Christian churches in Greece, Bulgaria and Romania celebrate the feast on Jan. 6, Orthodox Churches in Russia, Ukraine and Serbia follow the Julian calendar, according to which Epiphany is celebrated on Jan. 19, as their Christmas falls on Jan. 7.

___

Frances DEmilio in Rome and Zeynep Bilginsoy in Istanbul contributed
Police are still searching for the body of an Australian diver who is believed to have been killed by a great white shark while scuba diving on Sunday.

Gary Johnson was attacked soon after getting into the water as his partner Karen Milligan watched in horror from a nearby boat off Esperance on the south coast of Western Australia at around noon local time.

Ms Milligan put out a mayday alert before Glenn Quinlivan, who was on his boat at the time, raced to the scene.

We found a couple of flippers and a wetsuit sleeve in the water, basically that was about it, he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Nothing we could see. No shark.

Ms Milligan is understood to have been taken to hospital to be treated for shock, according to the Times.

On Monday she wrote in a statement on Facebook: "Gary was my rock. He was a kind, gentle, strong man. He only ever saw the best in people. He will be so truly missed by me, by his family and his friends and the world will be a poorer place without this most beautiful man.

"He and I were at home in and on the ocean. We would go out diving in our boat whenever we could, most weekends.

"We were always aware of the risks, and often told each other that if we were attacked by a shark, that would just be unlucky. We were completely against shark culling, and I still am.

"We have watched with dismay the reduction of fish stocks over the years. We believed that if fish stocks were better protected, then the risk to people in the water would be reduced. Garys vision was to have a Marine Park in the Esperance area."

Public report white shark sighted 09:39hrs 05/01, Cull Island, Esperance  Surf Life Saving WA (@SLSWA) January 5, 2020

Esperance is located about 720 kilometers (447 miles) southeast of Perth, and is a popular spot for diving. (Getty)

The attack happened hours after a reported shark sighting in the area.

A tweet by Surf Life Saving WA posted at 5:08am said: "Public report white shark sighted 09:39hrs 05/01, Cull Island, Esperance."

Story continues

Shire of Esperance councillor Shelley Payne said Sunday's news was "devastating", according to WAtoday.

Payne, who has previously campaigned for better shark awareness among tourists and the local community, said: "It's something that the community is really struggling with.

She said that those who visited and lived in Esperance should check online about shark sightings, such as Sharksmart, and wanted clearer signage near the entrance warning people of the potential dangers.

Local politician Ian Mickel said: "We have thousands of people having a good time on the water and to get a fatal shark attack... it's a major concern.

Fisheries advise water users to take additional caution following a shark bite incident in the Cull Island area, near Esperance. See more:https://t.co/5SGdkHEwrT  Surf Life Saving WA (@SLSWA) January 5, 2020

Esperance is located about 720km (447 miles) southeast of Perth, and is a popular spot for diving.

Johnson's death marks the second fatal attack in the area in the past three years.

In 2017, 17-year old Laeticia Brouwer was fatally injured when surfing with her father a few kilometers from Esperance.

And in 2014, one man lost his left arm and right hand in a shark attack.
There might still be a peaceful way out of the crisis with Iranthe leaders of Britain, France, Germany, and the United Nations, as well as such quite hawkish prominent Americans as retired Gen. David Petraeus and former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, are urging diplomatic overtures from both sidesbut President Donald Trump isnt likely to go that route for two reasons. First, he isnt keen on diplomacy. Second, even if he suddenly were, no one around him is very fit for the task.

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Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have no desire to de-escalate the crisis, nor would anyone in Tehran trust them as emissaries, given their overt advocacy of Iranian regime change. Other senior officials lack the experience for this sort of thing. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper comes to the job as a former aerospace lobbyist, not as a policy denizen. National security adviser Robert OBrien is a former hostage negotiator (though that could be a useful credential if this crisis escalates much further).

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There are a few midlevel specialists who could play a role in either formulating or executing a diplomatic approach. Most notable is James Jeffrey, special envoy on engaging Syria and fighting ISIS; though Trump has diminished U.S. leverage on both issues, Jeffrey has also been deputy national security adviser as well as ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, in the Bush and Obama administrations. He is widely viewed as hawkish but pragmatic, and he knows the region.

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What would a diplomatic solution look like? First, and perhaps above all, it would involve a reembracing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, including a gradual lifting of economic sanctions, perhaps in exchange for Irans cessation of attacks on U.S. targets in the region.

No one in Trumps entourage would play this sort of switcheroo on the boss.

This may seem to be a nonstarter, given Trumps frequent condemnation of that dealsigned by President Barack Obama and five other world leadersas the worst accord in U.S. history. However, it is a safe bet that Trump has never read a single paragraph of this 159-page document. Clever insiders could change the title, and tell the president that its a revised accord with many new provisions in our favor.

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They could also argueand Trump could, in turn, proclaim to his basethat the context changes everything: They could say the Iranians know that this president, unlike the previous one, will take strong action if Iran cheats, so it was a bad deal under Obama, a good deal under Trump. If its true, as Trump once said, that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his base would still vote for him, it might also be true that he could endorse the Iran nuclear deal with no drop-off of support. Its good because Trump says its good.

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The catch to all this, of course, is that no one in Trumps entourage would play this sort of switcheroo on the boss. And, without such trickery, Trump would never succumb to any arrangement that involved endorsing Obamas deal. When Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018, all of his senior officials at the time urged him not to. None of them trusted Iran, but they all thought the deal was better than no deal; his defense secretary, retired Gen. Jim Mattis, who particularly loathed the Iranian regime, called its verification provisions as airtight as those of any treaty hed ever read. Trumps hatred for the deal was entirely egotistical: Congress required the president to attest, every few months, that Iran was abiding by the deal, and though Iran continued to abide, Trump could not bear to keep endorsing Barack Obamas signal diplomatic achievement. It really is that simple.

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There might be other diplomatic approaches: a gradual lifting of sanctionsparticularly sanctions against other countries doing business with Iranin exchange for Irans cessation of violent activities, without any explicit mention of the nuclear deal. This would probably have to be done in secret, through a mutually trusted third party, as neither Trump nor Irans supreme leader can politically afford to be seen as displaying weakness at this moment of challenge. Are both leaders, equally stubborn, up to such a deal?

Less likely settlements have occurred. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis was resolved when President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed on a secret trade: Khrushchev would pull Soviet missiles out of Cuba; then, six months later, without comment, Kennedy would pull U.S. missiles out of Turkey. The deal went through. Its worth noting, though, that when Khrushchev proposed this deal on the last day of the crisis, all of Kennedys adviserscivilian and militaryfirmly opposed it, arguing that it would wreck NATO, alienate the Turks, send a signal of weakness. They all advocated the Joint Chiefs plan to start bombing the missiles in Cuba two days laterand then to launch a ground invasion of Cuba five days after that. No one knew, until decades later, that 40,000 Russian soldiers were hiding on the islands of Cuba to stave off a potential American invasion. If Kennedys advisers had had their way, the United States would have been at war with the Soviet Union.

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We do not know what the Iranians are plotting as retaliation to Trumps assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Neither do we know what Trump and his aides are plotting as a response to Irans next move. If part of that response really is an attack on Iranian cultural targets, as Trump warns, then we will have no active allies anywhere in the world. (We have few enough now.)

Many observers are saying that, surely, the Iranians wont dare launch an attack on American interestsor, surely, Trump wouldnt really hit cultural targets. But many unlikely things have happened in recent times, so manysome of them so outrageousthat its hard to gauge probabilities any longer.

One thing is certain: The tensions in the Middle East and elsewhere are far too stressful, and the main leaders in this faceoff are far too rigid and too prone to miscalculation, to let this crisis go on much longer. Its time for a lot of players who dont usually cooperatein Congress, in the United Nations, in the Middle East, in whatever forums that might muster any influence whatsoeverto step up and say, stop.
A civil case has been filed on behalf of Nora Quoirin's parents against the resort where they were staying in Malaysia when she disappeared last August.

Nora, along with her parents and two siblings, was staying at the Dusun resort before she went missing and was found dead 10 days later.
Employees are seen working on the final assembly of ASML's TWINSCAN NXE:3400B semiconductor lithography tool with its panels removed, in Veldhoven, Netherlands, on April 4, 2019. (Bart van Overbeeke Fotografie/ASML/Handout via Reuters)

Trump Administration Pressed Dutch Hard to Cancel China Chip-Equipment Sale: Sources

WASHINGTON/AMSTERDAM/SAN FRANCISCOThe Trump administration mounted an extensive campaign to block the sale of Dutch chip manufacturing technology to China, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lobbying the Netherlands government and White House officials sharing a classified intelligence report with the countrys Prime Minister, people familiar with the effort told Reuters.

The high-level push, which has not previously been reported, demonstrates the importance the White House places on preventing China from getting hold of a machine required to make the worlds fastest microprocessors. It also shows the challenges facing the U.S. governments largely unilateral efforts to stem the flow of advanced technology to China.

The U.S. campaign began in 2018, after the Dutch government gave semiconductor equipment company ASML, the global leader in a critical chip-making process known as lithography, a license to sell its most advanced machine to a Chinese customer, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Over the following months, U.S officials examined whether they could block the sale outright and held at least four rounds of talks with Dutch officials, three sources told Reuters.

The effort culminated in the White House on July 18 when Deputy National Security Advisor Charles Kupperman raised the issue with Dutch officials during the visit of Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who was given an intelligence report on the potential repercussions of China acquiring ASMLs technology, according to a former U.S. government official familiar with the matter.

The pressure appears to have worked. Shortly after the White House visit, the Dutch government decided not to renew ASMLs export license, and the $150 million machine has not been shipped.

Ilse van Oevering, a spokeswoman for Ruttes office, declined to comment, saying the government cannot discuss individual licensing cases.

The White House declined to comment. Kupperman did not reply to a request for comment.

The delayed shipment was first reported on Nov. 6 by the Nikkei Asian Review, but details of the U.S. pressure campaign have not previously been disclosed. ASML said it is still awaiting approval of a new license request and declined further comment.

ASML has never publicly disclosed the identity of the Chinese customer, but Nikkei and others have reported that it is Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), Chinas biggest chip-making specialist. SMIC did not reply to a request for a comment.

The optical light path inside ASMLs TWINSCAN NXE:3400B semiconductor lithography tool is seen in this file photo. (ASML/Handout via Reuters)

Security Interest

The ASML machine uses extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light beams, generated by lasers and focused by giant mirrors, to lay out extraordinarily narrow circuits on slabs of silicon known as wafers. That in turn makes it possible to create faster and more powerful microprocessors, memory chips and other advanced components, which are critical for consumer electronics and military applications alike.

Only a few companies, including Americas Intel Corp, South Koreas Samsung Electronics and Taiwans TSMC, are currently capable of manufacturing the most sophisticated chips. But China has made catching up to those companies in chip-making technology a key national priority and is investing tens of billions of dollars in the effort.

That drive has run head-on into the Trump administrations efforts to block the flow of sensitive technology to China on national security grounds. Companies selling U.S.-made goods are now barred from shipping them to blacklisted Chinese firms including telecoms giant Huawei Technologies and surveillance vendor Hikvision without a special license.

The U.S. government can also deny licenses to firms that want to sell goods made with U.S. technology to any Chinese company, not just those on the export blacklist. But blocking companies like ASML that manufacture overseas is much more difficult.

Under current regulations, the United States can require a license for many high-tech products shipped to China from other countries if U.S.-made components make up more than 25 percent of the value. The U.S. Department of Commerce conducted an audit of ASMLs EUV machine, two sources told Reuters, but found it did not meet the 25 percent threshold, according to one of the people.

The U.S. Department of Commerce is now considering lowering the 25 percent threshold in some cases, Reuters reported in November.

With no way to block the sale directly, the Trump administration pressed its Dutch ally to consider the security issues. Lithography equipment falls under the purview of an international agreement known as the Wassenaar Arrangement, which coordinates export restrictions of so-called dual-use technology that has commercial and military applications.

U.S. Department of Defense officials met their Dutch counterparts several times to discuss the security risks of the sale, two sources told Reuters. Meetings took place at the Netherlands embassy in Washington in late 2018 and January 2019, two separate sources said.

Pompeo urged Rutte himself to block the sale, despite commercial pressures to let ASML proceed, during a visit to the Netherlands last June, three sources said.

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo delivers a speech eyed by mayor of The Hague Pauline Krikke and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte during the opening reception of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) at The Hague City Hallin 2019. The summit brings together some 2,000 entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers and other participants from around the world in the World Forum. (Lex van Lieshout/AFP via Getty Images)

With a market value of more than 110 billion euros, ASML has grown to dominate the lithography market over the last two decades and is the pride of Dutch industry.

Our ask is that our allies and our partners and friends dont do anything that would endanger our shared security interest, Pompeo told reporters in The Hague on June 3. He did not mention chip equipment specifically.

The U.S. Department of State did not reply to a request for comment.

Six weeks later, during his visit to the White House, Rutte was given a copy of the intelligence report. Reuters could not determine whether U.S. President Donald Trump mentioned the ASML deal to Rutte during the White House meeting.

ASMLs export license expired unused on June 30, 2019, and no new license was granted in the following eight-week period during which a renewal request would normally be considered, according to a public database of licenses published by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Netherlands Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Irene Gerritsen said the Dutch government has sovereign discretion to grant licenses of dual-use technology and would not comment on specific cases.

With or without the EUV license, ASML expects its Chinese sales to increase in 2020 as it continues to ship earlier-generation equipment.

By Alexandra Alper, Toby Sterling and Stephen Nellis
In an interview granted to the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) on the occasion of the 90th founding anniversary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (February 3) and the Lunar New Year, General Secretary and President Trong said the Partys sound leadership was the decisive factor in the countrys revolution.

The Party has been tested and continuously grown to deserve its role and mission of leading the revolution, as well as peoples confidence, he said.

Over the past nine decades, thanks to the Partys leadership, Vietnams position and strength have been enhanced, and many international organisations have lauded the countrys developed economy and culture, and stable economic and social situation, along with its bright prospects.

Vietnam had never stood in such a high position before, the leader stressed, adding that Vietnam has emerged to become a middle-income nation where living standards have continuously improved.

Commending Vietnams performance in external affairs and international integration, and economic, trade and investment cooperation, he said the country has joined international organisations and multilateral economic cooperation institutions, and played an important role in the region and the world.

Regarding the upcoming all-level Party congresses ahead of the 13th National Party Congress, and major political tasks in 2020, he said the National Party Congress will review the 2016-2021 tenure, the 2011-2020 socio-economic development strategy, the 10-year implementation of the platform on national construction in the period of transition to socialism, and the 35-year reform process.

At the same time, the congress will plan orientations for 2021-2026, with visions towards 2030 when the Party will celebrate its centennial anniversary, and 2045 when the 100th National Day will be celebrated.

He emphasised the need for thorough preparations for the congress in terms of both documents and personnel, saying the building of political reports is of special significance.

Assessments must be objective and comprehensive, and must point out achievements as well as limitations and their causes, and lessons drawn, he said.

The leader affirmed the identification of targets, missions and solutions for the upcoming tenure must be made in accordance with the Partys ideas and reality.

Laying stress on the significance of personnel work at the 13th National Party Congress, he reiterated that it is necessary to promote solidarity and improve personnel planning at Party committees at all levels to select qualified personnel.

With political determination from the Party and Government in the fight against corruption, he said that corruption cases and violations of Party regulations have been detected and handled, while loopholes in personnel work have been gradually closed.

The Politburo and Secretariat have issued and carried out many resolutions and directives to promote Party building and rectification, and prevent corruption and degradation, while the National Assembly and Government have penned and implemented various legal documents to complete mechanisms in economy and society to stave off corruption.

He described tackling corruption as a long-term, complicated fight that needs patience and determination, asking relevant ministries and sectors to accelerate investigations and the settlement of key corruption cases that have caused serious economic consequences, along with the recovery of stolen assets.

In his message, he called on all people and Vietnamese expatriates to promote patriotism, self-reliance, desire and enthusiasm for a country of peace, independence and prosperity.

He expressed his hope that international friends will continue to support Vietnams national construction and safeguarding, for peace, progress and happiness of Vietnamese people and people around the world.
The Danish royal family looked in high spirits as they posed for a family photocall in Switzerland today.

Crown Prince Frederik, 51, joined Australian-born wife Princess Mary, 47, and their children Prince Christian, 14, Princess Isabella, 12, and twins Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine, eight, for a picturesque morning in the Swiss moutains.

Prince Christian, Princess Isabella, Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine begin a 12-week spring term on Monday, at the Lemania-Verbier International School in Switzerland.

The children usually attend the Tranegardsskolen school in Gentofte, Denmark, and are attending the boarding school for three months in Bagnes, Switzerland, to give them a more international experience - with Mary staying with them, while Frederik will visit when his schedule allows.

Crown Prince Frederik, 51, joined Australian-born wife Princess Mary, 47, and their children Prince Christian, 14, Princess Isabella, 12, and twins Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine, eight, for a picturesque morning in the Swiss moutains

The Danish royal family looked in high spirits as they posed for a family photocall in Switzerland today (seen Princes Mary, Princess Josephine, Princess Isabella)

And today Princess Mary wrapped up in a grey two tier coat and jeans, teaming the outfit with brown boots and wearing her brown hair loose.

Meanwhile Prince Frederik looked casual in a ski jacket and black trousers, as he stood proudly by his children's side.

Princes Christian and Vincent wore grey school trousers, Sorel snow boots and a blue school jacket, while Princesses Isabella and Josephine opted for the school's grey skirt and trousers with a beanie hat.

Standing against the picturesque backdrop of the snow-covered mountains, the family certainly kicked off the new year in style.

Prince Christian, Princess Isabella, Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine begin a 12-week school break on Monday, at the Lemania-Verbier International School in Switzerland

Prince Frederik looked casual in a ski jacket and black trousers, as he stood proudly by his children's side

The photocall comes after Austrialian-born Mary penned a heartfelt letter to Australia's Prime Minister amid the bushfire crisis, offering her condolences to families who have lost their homes and loved ones.

The future Queen, who was born and raised in Hobart, Tasmania, said that the time of 'great hardship' in her home country has left her and husband Prince Frederik feeling deeply sympathetic.

As millions of people around the world follow the news from afar, Princess Mary said she felt 'proud of my Australian heritage' to see so many of her countrymen coming together.

Princess Mary wrapped up in a grey two tier coat and jeans, teaming the outfit with brown boots and wearing her brown hair loose

The family were flooded with questions from the local media as they stood in the picturesque setting

Princes Christian and Vincent wore grey school trousers, Sorel snow boots and a blue school jacket, while Princesses Isabella and Josephine opted for the school's grey skirt and trousers with a beanie hat

The love story between Princess Mary and Prince Frederick has been well documented; the couple met in a Sydney bar and Mary, born in Tasmania, moved to the northern hemisphere to be with Frederik.

In December, in a candid interview with Australian Women's Weekly, the Crown Princess revealed that moving to the other side of the world was difficult.

She said: 'I did experience a feeling of loneliness - short-term - when I first moved to Denmark,' she told the magazine.

'Moving to Denmark was a huge change in my life - a new culture, new language, new friends, and another way of life.' 'So, I see it as quite natural that at times I felt quite alone or a little bit like I was on the outside looking in.'

Princes Christian and Vincent wore grey school trousers, Sorel snow boots and a blue school jacket, while Princesses Isabella and Josephine opted for the school's grey skirt and trousers with a beanie hat

Standing against the picturesque backdrop of the snow-covered mountains, the family certainly kicked off the new year in style
According to Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, once the Ghana Card registration process by the National Identification Authority (NIA) is completed by June 2020, there will be no need to spend money to compile a new EC voters register.

After this register is done this year we will no longer have any argument about voters register anymore because the National ID will become our voters' register and nobody will have to register for voters card," Dr. Bawumia emphasized.

He was speaking at this years Ahmadiyya Conference at Pomadze, held in the Central region.

Dr. Bawumia further noted that the database of the National Identification Authority (NIA) will be the system where Electoral Commission (EC) extracts all eligible electorates for all elections.

When it is time for voting, EC can just extract everybody who is above 18 from the national ID database for them to go and vote [in that coming years elections], Dr. Bawumia stated.

The Ghana Card is a national identification card that was launched by the government through NIA in 2017. The card is for citizens, both resident, and non-resident, and legally and permanently resident foreign nationals.

It has a lifespan of 10 years after which it will be renewed at a fee.

Addressing participants, the Vice President further revealed that the government in the first quarter of 2020 will launch an online platform known as Ghana.gov.

This platform, he says will reduce human interference on how services are provided and also be a means to curb corruption in the country.

In the first quarter, we will begin with a launch of what we call the Ghana.gov platform. It is a portal where we going to put all government services. So if you need a service whether electricity, pay tax, get a permit, you no longer have to go to that particular office.

You can apply for it at Ghana.gov online, pay your fee and you will receive your particular permit.

---MyJoyOnline
Two Michigan Democrats who flipped Republican districts are sitting on a strong cash advantage at the start of 2020.

U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, raised more than $1.27 million in the final three months of 2019, the largest fundraising haul of her reelection campaign. The fundraising period started after Slotkin voiced her support for opening a House impeachment inquiry and continued after Slotkin told constituents she would vote to impeach President Donald Trump at a raucous town hall in Rochester.

U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Rochester Hills, raised more than $550,000 in the final fundraising quarter of 2019, according to her campaign. Stevens also supported the House effort to investigate and impeach Trump.

Republicans place both freshmen congresswoman near the top of their list of seats to reclaim in 2020. Trump won Michigans 8th and 11th congressional districts in 2016, leaving the state Republican Party confident that voters in the politically divided districts will reject Slotkin and Stevens over their support for impeachment.

The Trump administration slammed Stevens and Slotkin in statements released by the White House before the president visited Michigan for a campaign rally in Battle Creek last month.

Slotkins campaign touted the end of 2019 fundraising haul as evidence of strong support for her in the 8th District. She enters the new year with more than $2.8 million in cash on hand, nearly twice as much of what her predecessor, Republican Mike Bishop, held at this point in 2018.

Democrats, Independents and Republicans across our district are looking for leaders in Washington who will fight for the issues that have a direct impact on peoples lives, like bringing down the price of healthcare and prescription drugs. I am proud to have their support," Slotkin said in a statement Monday.

Slotkin celebrated the House passage of H.R. 3, a bill to lower prescription drug prices, in the days after the December impeachment vote. Reducing the cost of health care was Slotkins top campaign promises in 2018.

Several health care advocacy organizations are highlighting Slotkins support for the bill, which is unlikely to pass in the Republican-led U.S. Senate, in advertisnig campaigns that began running in late 2019.

Patients For Affordable Drugs Now launched a new digital ad campaign Monday, the same day Slotkin announced her fourth-quarter fundraising numbers. Executive Director Ben Wakana said similar ads are also being run in the district of two Republicans who supported H.R. 3, and are not meant to defend Slotkin after her controversial impeachment vote.

We want to support members of Congress who, I use the phrase stick their neck out there, who do the right thing, who stand up to pharma," Wakana said. We want to make sure that people in her district know that she is fighting to lower drug prices.

Protect Our Care, a left-leaning healthcare advocacy organization, has been running digital ads thanking Slotkin and Stevens for supporting H.R. 3 since December. The organization is a registered trade name of Sixteen Thirty Fund, a well-funded left-leaning dark money network funneled nearly $9 million to Michigan activist causes in 2018.

House Majority Forward is another political nonprofit running digital ads to support the two congresswomen in recent months. The nonprofit is an affiliate of House Majority PAC, Democrats main super PAC concentrated on House races in 2020.

Meanwhile, Slotkins support for impeachment inspired a large slate of Republicans to oppose her.

Five Republicans are vying for their partys nomination, including Marine Corps veteran Alan Hoover, auto dealership manager Mike Detmer, former Trump administration official and news anchor Paul Junge, East Lansing lawyer Kristina Lyke and State Board of Education member Nikki Snyder. None have posted fundraising totals for 2019 yet.

Slotkin won a tight race against Bishop, ousting him by a 3.8 percentage point margin. Stevens won by 6.6 points in 2018, claiming a seat that was also controlled by Republicans previously.

In the 11th District, Stevens has more than $2 million cash-on-hand for her reelection campaign. Stevens campaign touted her $2.5 million 2019 fundraising haul as the highest off-year fundraising total for a Democrat in Michigans 11th District.

I am so grateful for the incredible outpouring of grassroots support we have received so far this year, Stevens said in a statement. Im going to keep fighting for families across Michigans 11th District by working across the aisle to lower the cost of prescription drugs, create more economic opportunity, invest in our crumbling infrastructure, and support Michigans manufacturing economy.

Five Republicans have also lined up to challenge Stevens in 2020: Northville businessman Frank Acosta, former 11th District representative Kerry Bentivolio, attorney Eric Esshaki, Scott Keller and Whittney Williams, a formerly undocumented immigrant.

None of the candidates have announced fourth-quarter fundraising totals yet. Bentivolio raised $53,675 as of the end of the third quarter while Williams raised $44,454, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Read more on MLive:

Killing of Iranian general draws mixed reactions from Michigan members of Congress

Trump defiantly campaigns in Michigan while being impeached

Slotkin faces heated Trump supporters after backing impeachment

White House blasts Slotkin for backing articles of impeachment

Democrats push for Justin Amash to prosecute impeachment in Senate

Stevens, Dingell join House Democrats committed to impeach Trump
A sea of black-clad Iranians on Monday mourned the top commander killed in last week's US drone strike that inflamed tensions across the Middle East as NATO ambassadors met to discuss the spiralling crisis.

Iranians clutching anti-American signs and portraits of their hero Qasem Soleimani massed as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei presided over the emotional service for the slain head of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force.

The targeted killing of 62-year-old Soleimani ordered by US President Donald Trump saw the Islamic republic vow "severe revenge" before Tehran also took a further step back from the already tattered 2015 nuclear accord with world powers.

In an escalating war of words that has heightened international concern and rattled financial markets, Trump threatened yet more "major retaliation" if Tehran hits back, including strikes on Iranian cultural sites.

Iraq's parliament has meanwhile demanded the government expel the 5,200 American troops stationed in the country in response to the drone attack in Baghdad which also killed top Iraqi military figure Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

Trump has warned a forced departure of US troops would prompt sanctions against Iraq that would "make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame".

NATO ambassadors were to hold an extraordinary meeting to "address the situation in the region," said the alliance, which has been forced to suspend its training mission in Iraq.

Ambassadors from the 29 allies were gathering at their Brussels headquarters with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expected to brief journalists afterwards.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan -- whose US-allied country is seen vulnerable to Iranian counter strikes -- also appealed for calm after a "very dangerous" escalation.

Germany joined France and Britain in urging Iran to refrain from taking "further violent actions or support for them", or from steps that further weaken the 2015 nuclear deal.

"It is crucial now to de-escalate," German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a joint statement Sunday.

The EU's diplomatic chief Josep Borrell said he "deeply regrets" Iran's latest step back from the nuclear deal.

The agreement had offered Tehran relief from sanctions in return for curbs to prevent it acquiring nuclear weapons -- but Trump's withdrawal from it in 2018 dramatically weakened the agreement.

Despite its latest step Sunday, Iran insisted it will continue to fully cooperate with the UN agency overseeing its atomic programme. The European leaders also pleaded with all parties to not jeopardise the ongoing battle against the Islamic State jihadist group, which has lost its self-proclaimed "caliphate" but whose militants remain active.

Amid the geopolitical tensions in the oil-rich region, crude prices surged and most equities tumbled while the safe-haven commodity gold hit a more than six-year high.

The raw emotions sparked by the US killing of Soleimani were on full display in Tehran, where mourners formed a sea of black, dotted with red Shiite flags and white signs, in what state television said was a "several million-strong" turnout.

"The last time I remember such a crowd was at Ayatollah Khomeini's funeral 30 years ago," said Maziar Khosravi, former head of the political department of the reformist daily Shargh.

As they marched down a main artery of the Iranian capital, the mourners chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel".

Khamenei appeared to cry as he prayed over the flag-draped coffins containing the remains of Soleimani and five other "martyrs" killed in the strike.

He was flanked by President Hassan Rouhani and other top political and military figures as well as Soleimani's son and the slain general's replacement as Quds commander, Esmail Qaani.

"We must give a crushing response," a 61-year-old named Afkhami told AFP. "We must target whatever military base they have in the region." Soleimani's daughter Zeinab and the leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Ismail Haniya, also delivered emotional speeches.

Zeinab said: "Stupid Trump -- a symbol of stupidity and a toy in the hand of Zionism -- don't think that with the martyrdom of my father everything is over." The procession later made its way to Tehran's vast Azadi Square, before Soleimani's remains were flown to the holy city of Qom for a ceremony.

Soleimani was one of Iran's most popular public figures, seen as a hero of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

He will be laid to rest in his hometown Kerman on Tuesday, in a martyrs' cemetery next to a war veteran he used to fight alongside with.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By UNI

MOSCOW: The US House of Representatives will this week vote on a resolution to restrict US President Donald Trump's military actions with regard to Iran, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said, in the wake of a fresh crisis in Tehran-Washington relations, caused by the killing of an Iranian military commander by a US airstrike in Iraq.

"This week, the House will introduce and vote on a War Powers Resolution to limit the President's military actions regarding Iran. This resolution is similar to the resolution introduced by Senator Tim Kaine in the Senate. It reasserts Congress's long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administration's military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days," Pelosi said in a statement.



ALSO READ: General Soleimani should have been killed years ago as he plotted to kill Americans: Donald Trump

Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Abu Mahdi Muhandis, a senior member of Iraq's Iranian-backed Shia Popular Mobilization Forces, was killed by the US airstrike in Baghdad on Friday.

The White House has not notified lawmakers of the airstrike in advance but filed a formal notification on Saturday.

Pelosi has been a critic of the strike. The House speaker said it provoked more questions than it answered.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-07 06:46:11|Editor: ZX

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ATHENS, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Greece witnessed 74,482 refugee and migrant arrivals in 2019, significantly higher than the figure of 50,508 registered in 2018, according to a weekly report from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) published on Monday.

What's more, a week into the new year, an increased influx was recorded on the Aegean Sea islands, despite the adverse weather conditions.

From Dec. 30 to Jan. 5, a total of 1,091 people arrived on the Aegean islands, up from the 819 arrivals in the previous week, and more than twice the 393 figure registered in the same period last year.

Some 41,100 refugees and migrants reside currently on the Aegean islands, which received the bulk of arrivals in 2019, as in previous years.

The overwhelming majority (59,457) last year crossed the Aegean Sea and most reached Lesvos island, according to UNHCR statistics last updated on Dec. 31, 2019.

Another 14,891 people crossed into Greece from Turkey through the land border in the north.

More than one million refugees and migrants have landed in Greece from Turkey since 2015. Most continued their journey to other European countries until the closure of the Balkan route borders in the winter of 2016.

After a steep decline in the first months following the agreement between the European Union (EU) and Turkey in the spring of 2016, which aimed to stem the refugee-migrant influx into Europe, numbers of arrivals are again picking up.

Despite measures introduced by the Greek government, the situation in the reception centers on the Aegean Sea islands remains problematic.

People are crammed into overcrowded identification centers, as asylum assessment procedures take time and other EU countries are reluctant to host adequate numbers of refugees.

Tensions and tragic incidents are not rare. A 31-year-old man was found hanged inside the detention center at Moria camp on Lesvos island, according to Greek media on Monday. The center reportedly hosts migrants and refugees who are most likely to be denied asylum and are to be returned to Turkey under the 2016 agreement.

Police are investigating into the incident.

According to data provided by the Greek government on Jan. 2, currently there are 18,806 asylum seekers crammed in Moria.
Robots have become common in warehouses across America.

Warehouses are centers where products are stored and organized before they are sent to buyers.

Manufacturers of robots say the machines can do the most repetitive and difficult jobs. But critics warn that they are also creating new forms of stress and even injuries.

Working with robots

Amanda Taillons job is to enter a robot-only area to fix problems in one of Amazons warehouses in the state of Connecticut. Sometimes she has to pick up a fallen toy or ease a traffic jam.

She uses a belt that works like a superheros force field. It can command the nearest robots to stop and the others to slow down or change their paths.

They weigh a lot, she said of the robots.

Criticisms of robots and AI

Critics say that this kind of human-machine cooperation has its problems. They say that keeping up with the pace of the new technology is hurting human workers health and morale.

Beth Gutelius studies urban economic development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has spoken with warehouse operators around the U.S.

She said human burnout is a problem in warehouses where robotics and artificial intelligence, or AI software are being used. She said that is because the robots add more work and increase the pressure on workers to speed up their performance.

Recently, reporters investigated injury rates at Amazon warehouses. They found that robotic warehouses reported more injuries than those without the machines.

Reporters with the Center for Investigative Reportings website Reveal studied records from 28 Amazon warehouses in 16 states. They found that the rate of serious injuries was more than two times the warehousing industry average.

Amazon, however, says that it is misleading to compare its rate with other companies. That is because the company says it has an aggressive stance on recording injuries no matter how big or small.

The Reveal report also found a connection between robots and safety problems, such as in Tracy, California. There, the serious injury rate nearly quadrupled in the four years after robots were introduced.

Amazon has not released information on how its safety record at robot-powered warehouses compares to those without. But company officials believe that Amazon workers are able to deal with the new technology.

Benefits of using robots

Companies say they cannot quickly fulfill buyers demands for packages without fast-moving pods, robots and other forms of automation.

The increased use of robots and AI is changing warehouse work in a way that the head of Amazon Robotics says can extend human capability. The idea is that robots can help people to do what they are best at: problem solving.

Tye Brady is Amazon Robotics chief technologist. He said having people and robots work together permits the company to offer lower prices. Brady said worker safety remains very important.

But Gutelius, the University of Illinois researcher, said that the hope for easy human-machine operations is not a reality. It sounds quite lovely, but I rarely hear from a workers perspective that thats what it feels like, she said.

Large growth in warehouse robots

Amazon has more than 200,000 drives, or robotic vehicles, that move goods through its warehouses around the U.S. That is two times the number it had in 2018.

Much of the growth in warehouse robotics came in 2012 when Amazon bought Kiva Systems. Afterwards, Kiva Systems became Amazon Robotics. For seven years, the company has been designing and building Amazons robots.

Amazons move to buy Kiva influenced its competitors, said Jim Liefer. He is chief of the San Francisco company, Kindred AI. It makes an AI robotic arm used by companies such as The Gap clothing store.

Melonee Wise is chief of California-based Fetch Robotics. The company sells robotic carts. She credits Amazon with causing the industry to develop new technologies.

But she said Amazons system forces workers to do un-ergonomic moves such as reaching up very high or down low.

They have robots that live in cages, she said. Our robots are designed to work safely around people.

Getting used to working with robots

Taillon, the Amazon employee you met at the beginning of this report, said that she has gotten used to working with robots.

She described how she felt when first working with them.

When youre out there, and you can hear them moving around, but you cant see them, its like, Where are they going to come from?, she said. Its a little nerve-racking at first.

Im Jill Robbins.

And Im John Russell.

Matt OBrien reported on this story for the Associated Press. John Russell adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

repetitive  n. having parts, actions, etc., that are repeated many times in a way that is boring or unpleasant

pace  n. the speed at which something happens

morale  n. the feelings of enthusiasm and loyalty that a person or group has about a task or job

burnout  n. the condition of someone who has become very physically and emotionally tired after doing a difficult job for a long time

stance  n. a publicly stated opinion  usually singular

quadruple  v. to become four times bigger in value or number

automation  n. running or operating (something, such as a factory or system) by using machines, computers, etc., instead of people to do the work

perspective  n. a way of thinking about and understanding something (such as a particular issue or life in general)

artificial intelligence  n. the power of a machine to copy intelligent human behavior

ergonomic  n. the parts or qualities of something's design that make it easy or safe to use

nerve-racking  adj. causing a person to feel very nervous

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A child molestation suspect has been extradited to California from Mexico, the FBI said Monday.

Jose Cruz Naranjo Silva, 77, was arrested and charged in 2006 with committing a lewd or lascivious act with a child under the age of 14. He fled while on bail in Sacramento County, the FBI said.

Prosecutors say its too soon to know if he has an attorney.

The FBI obtained a federal warrant for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution two years later, and the Mexican government located and arrested Silva in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, in August.

FBI agents escorted Silva from Mexico to the Sacramento County Jail on Friday.

His extradition was paid for by the U.S. Project Welcome Home, which provides funds to transport federal fugitives to the United States.
Cannabis users should be wary of the hidden dangers when using edibles, top doctors have warned.

Tea, cakes, chocolate and sweets infused with the drug are commonly viewed as a safer alternative to smoking or vaping.

But they can render users unconscious, make them sick or trigger paranoia if taken alongside alcohol, sleeping pills or opioids, health experts say.

The warning was issued by doctors in Canada weeks after the country legalised cannabis edibles, allowing shops to stock the products on their shelves.

Ingested marijuana takes four or more hours to give users a 'high', but the effects are more intense and can last up to eight hours.

This is far slower than smoked or vaped cannabis, which normally takes effect within a matter of minutes.

Users who still feel sober hours after consuming edibles may be tempted to take more because they think they don't work, doctors from the University of Toronto say.

Cookies infused with cannabis are commonly viewed as a safer alternative to smoking or vaping. But they can cause a host of unpleasant side effects if taken alongside alcohol, sleeping pills or opioids, health bosses say (stock)

This increases the risk of taking more than they can handle and having an unpleasant experience.

Dr Jasleen Grewal and Lawrence Loh warned 'cannabis naive' people were at risk in a commentary in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

They urged users to keep products out of reach of children and pets because many edibles look like candy and other appetising food and drink.

Other vulnerable groups include adolescents.

The 2019 National Cannabis Survey revealed they falsely believe cannabis edibles have positive effects on sleep, mood and anxiety.

This actually is opposite to what is seen in evidence, according to the health experts.

Writing in the journal, the authors said: 'Physicians should routinely question patients who ask about cannabis about their use or intended use of edible cannabis products so that they can counsel these patients regarding child safety, potential for accidental overconsumption and delayed effects, and potential for interactions with other substances such as alcohol, benzodiazepines, sleeping aids and opioids.'

New regulations in Canada mean there can only be a maximum of 10mg of THC - the psychoactive compound in marijuana - per serving.

Despite this, individuals responses to different products may vary and overdosing may still occur, the doctors say.

THC-based edibles are not legal in the UK. But foods infused with CBD  another compound in the cannabis plant  are.
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Unidentified assailants attacked the Maadan area in the northern Raqqa countryside, using knives to kill 14 people reports Enab Baladi.

Fourteen people were slaughtered with knives at the hands of unidentified assailants in the Maadan area in the northern Raqqa countryside, which is under the control of Syrian regime forces and allied militias.

Local networks, including the Euphrates Post, said on Sunday, that 14 people were discovered slaughtered with knives at the hands of unknown assailants while they had been herding sheep in the Maadan area in the Raqqa countryside.

No group has claimed the incident yet, but people close to the victims said on Facebook, that the Islamic State had attacked the area.

Parts of Raqqa province are under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) while regime forces control the Maadan and Tabqa areas in the northern Raqqa countryside. The regime has not commented on the incident so far.

Seven civilians from the al-Naimi tribe were previously killed at the hands of fighters said to have been from the Syrian regime when they raided the village of Dibsi Afnan in the southern Tabqa countryside with the aim of committing armed robbery in August, according to the local news networks including Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently.

The network said at the time that a group of 20 fighters in military uniform from the Syrian regime forces had raided the Sheikh Jassem al-Naimi village and executed seven civilians from the village when they tried to defend themselves, after they handcuffed them. The fighters then stole sheep and other possessions such as cars and gold and wheat.

Syrian regime forces carried out major advances in the southern Raqqa countryside in 2017 at the expense of the Islamic State, which had controlled the province since 2014, and had it as its main stronghold until it was recaptured by the SDF in 2017 with backing by the International Coalition.

This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
N ATO expressed support for the US after being briefed on the nation's drone strike which killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.

The Atlantic alliances secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg called for a de-escalation in the crisis in the Middle East, as it insisted Iran "refrain from further violence and provocations".

It comes as Iran mourned general Soleimani in a large ceremony, in which the country's supreme leader wept by the former general's casket, while tensions with the US rose.

Speaking after an emergency meeting of NATO ambassadors in Brussels this afternoon Mr Stoltenberg distanced the alliance from Fridays US air strike but reserved criticism solely for Tehran.

He told a press conference: This is a US decision, it is not a decision taken by either the global coalition or Nato, but all allies are concerned about Irans destabilising activities in the region.

He added: We are united in condemning Iran's support of a variety of different terrorist groups.

Qasem Soleimani funeral in Iran 1 /24 Qasem Soleimani funeral in Iran An Iranian man reacts during a gathering to mourn General Qasem Soleimani VIA REUTERS Mourners wave flags as they gather during the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani AFP via Getty Images Mourners gather during the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (image), Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani and eight others in the Iraqi central city of Karbala AFP via Getty Images Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" today as they mourned an Iranian commander and others killed in a US drone attack AFP via Getty Images Mourners gather in the Iraqi central city of Karbala AFP via Getty Images Mourners take part in the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani AFP via Getty Images Iranians gather to mourn General Qasem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, who was killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran VIA REUTERS A mourner holds up a picture AFP via Getty Images Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" today as they mourned an Iranian commander and others killed in a US drone attack AFP via Getty Images Mourners chant slogans against the U.S. during the funeral of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani, AP Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the US airstrike near Baghdad's airport AP Mourners carry the coffins of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani AP Mourners carry the coffin of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis AFP via Getty Images People attend a funeral procession for Iranian Major-General Qasem Soleiman VIA REUTERS An aerial view shows mourners attending a funeral ceremony for Gen. Qasem Soleimani AP Qassem Soleimani and his comrades who were killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike, are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners AP Mourners carry the coffins of Iran's top general Qasem Soleiman AP Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad's airport AP

At the meeting today, allies called for restraint and de-escalation. A new conflict would be in no one's interest. So Iran must refrain from further violence and provocations.

The meeting, which took place on a day of huge outpouring of national grief for Soleimani in Iran, centred mainly on NATO's decision to suspend its training mission in Iraq, after an Iraqi parliamentary resolution called on foreign troops to leave.

The developments came amid growing hostilities between the US and Iran, with President Trump threatening to hit the country harder than they have ever been hit before.

Iranian protesters burn US flags in rally 1 /56 Iranian protesters burn US flags in rally Anti-US effigy during a rally outside the former US embassy AFP via Getty Images Effigies and banners during a rally outside the former US embassy AFP via Getty Images Iranian cleric takes pictures of anti-US banners AFP via Getty Images Iranian protesters pose for a selfie with another dressed as US president Donald Trump AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images Iranian protesters hold placards with anti-US slogans AFP via Getty Images Demonstrators hold anti-U.S. placards in Arabic AP Iranian woman holds the flag of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement (Back) during a rally AFP via Getty Images Iranian women display religious symbols written on the palms of their hands AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images Demonstrators hold anti-U.S. banners and a torn makeshift U.S. flag upside down AP Demonstrators chant slogans as they set fire to a makeshift British flag AP Thousands of Iranian protesters wave national flags during a demonstration outside the former US embassy in the Iranian capital Tehran AFP via Getty Images Iranian protesters set US flags on fire AFP via Getty Images Schoolgirls hold the national flags along with anti-U.S. placards in the annual rally AP Iranian protesters set a US flag on fire during a rally outside the former US embassy AFP via Getty Images Iranian protesters set a US flag on fire during a rally outside the former US embassy AFP via Getty Images With anti-American slogans and effigies mocking US President Donald Trump AFP via Getty Images An Iranian woman holds a cardboard cutout representing a member of the Islamic State (IS) group in chains AFP via Getty Images An Iranian man walks past a new mural painted on the walls of the former US embassy AFP via Getty Images AP AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images Actors wear hats colored in the flags of the United States, Israel, and Britain imprisoned in a cage during the anti-U.S AP AP An Iranian man aims a dart at a picture of US president Donald Trump AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images Iranian women pose for a selfie around an anti-US banner during a rally outside the former US embassy AFP via Getty Images Placard mocking US president donald Trump AFP via Getty Images In this Nov. 8, 1979, protesters chant outside the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran. Forty years ago on Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian students overran guards to take over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, starting a 444-day hostage crisis that transfixed America AP 1979 - demonstrators burn an American flag atop the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, AP Nov. 27, 1979 file photo, demonstrators, including oil tank drivers with their vehicles AP 1979 - Iranians gather before the entrance of the U.S. Embassy compound in Tehran AP In this Dec. 12, 1979, a new sign appears at the U.S. Embassy compound warning that "Iran will bury you." AP 1979- an armed Iranian student patrols the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, AP 1979 - One of the hostages held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran AP 1979 - Iranian students display their weapons during a news conference in Tehran AP 1979 - Iranian child holds a photo showing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini AP April 26, 1980 file photo, an undamaged helicopter sits on the ground behind the charred remains of a second U.S. helicopter in the Iranian desert of Dasht-E-Kavir, April 26, 1980. The site, about 300 air miles from Tehran, was where the United States rescue effort for those held hostage in Tehran was abandoned, and where a U.S. helicopter and transport aircraft collided. AP In this Nov. 5, 1979, a crowd of Iranian women wearing the traditional chador join an anti-U.S. protest in Tehran, Iran. AP 1979 - A mass of Iranian protestors is held back from the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran. AP

He said the US had identified 52 Iranian targets, including high-value cultural sites.

Tehran responded by comparing Mr Trump to Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler and warned that attacks against cultural sites would represent a war crime.

The United Nations' cultural agency agreed with this latter point, calling on both governments to remember that cultural sites are not targets.

UNESCO's director-general, Audrey Azoulay, reminded the US and Iran that they have ratified treaties protecting cultural sites during war.

Iran's Supreme Leader weeps at the funeral of Qassem Soleimani

Targeting cultural sites is a war crime under the 1954 Hague Convention for the protection of cultural sites.

Iran is home to two dozen UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the ancient ruins of Persepolis, the grand mosque of Isfahan, and the Golestan Palace in Tehran, where the last shah to rule Iran was crowned in 1967.

Downing has sought to distance itself from Mr Trumps threat that Iranian cultural sites could be targeted.

There are international conventions in place that prevent the destruction of cultural heritage, the Prime Ministers official spokesman told a Westminster briefing.

Coffins of Gen. Soleimani and others killed in a US drone strike are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners during a funeral procession in Tehran / AP

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab reiterated the message, telling reporters: We have been very clear that cultural sites are protected under international law and we would expect that to be respected.

Irans supreme leader Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wept over the caskets of General Soleimani, and others slain in the US air strike, at a ceremony in Tehran earlier today.

In a rare display of emotion from the typically reserved and measured supreme leader of Iran, Mr Khamenei wept while praying: "Oh Allah, they are in need of your mercy, and you are exalted above punishing your servants."

His cries joined the wails of mourners who flooded the streets of the capital demanding retaliation against America for slaying their top military commander.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned: "Geopolitical tensions are at their highest level this century".

Addressing press at the UN Security Council, he urged leaders to stop escalating tensions, exercise maximum restraint and re-start dialogue.

Without naming any speicific countries, Mr Guterres said: "This cauldron of tensions is leading more and more countries to take unpredicted decisions with unpredictable consequences and a profound risk of miscalculation."
T he new Labour Party leader will be revealed on April 4, the party confirmed today.

Labours ruling body has agreed on timetable for the partys leadership race, with MPs - Clive Lewis, Lisa Nandy, Jess Phillips, Sir Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry - so far entering the running to succeed Jeremy Corbyn.

The National Executive body met on Monday, the day before Parliament returns from its Christmas recess, to decide the rules and length of the contest and who can vote in it.

A Labour Party spokeswoman said: Our National Executive Committee has agreed the timetable and process for the leadership and deputy leadership elections. The ballot will run from February 21 to April 2, with the results announced on Saturday April 4.

TODO: define component type apester

We are by far the largest political party in the UK with well over half a million members. We want as many of our members and supporters to take part, so it has been designed to be open, fair and democratic.

Nominations will open from MPs and MEPs on Tuesday, January 7, and will close on January 13.

A YouGov poll of Labour members last week gave Sir Keir, the UKs shadow Brexit secretary, a strong lead over his nearest rival Rebecca Long-Bailey.

Shadow business secretary Ms Long-Bailey is expected to announce her candidature shortly.

Ms Phillips and Sir Keir have said the party must learn the lessons of the partys devastating December election defeat and why many Labour seats in the Midlands and the North of England were lost to the Tories.

Who will replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader? 1 /4 Who will replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader? Rebecca Long-Bailey Getty Images Lisa Nandy REUTERS Keir Starmer PA

Ms Phillips also identified the manifesto - which pledged to bring rail, mail, water and energy into public ownership and extend the role of the state into new areas - as one of Labour's weak points.

Both Ms Phillips and Ms Nandy have said the party must work on being relevant to voters.

"People have to feel a connection with us again. People have to feel we are on their side, Ms Phillips said.

Ms Nandy added: "People said to us, 'It's all very well promising free broadband but can you sort out the buses?' and that was the more pressing issue in their lives. It's not about whether you're radical or not it's about whether you're relevant."
The brother of two missing children has pleaded for their mother to 'do the right thing' and return home.

Lori Vallow, who is believed to be a member of a doomsday cult, is currently on the run from police with her new husband Chad Daybell, both of whom are persons of interest in the disappearance of her children - Joshua 'JJ' Vallow, seven, and Tylee Ryan, 17 - as well as the deaths of both of their previous spouses.

Lori's other son, Colby Ryan, delivered a message to his mother on Sunday in a seven-minute YouTube video, urging her to come out of hiding.

'It's time to do the right thing,' he said through tears. 'I just ask you to please just listen to what I have to say.

'I can't tell you how hurt and frustrated and confused I am about what's going on.

'I can't even fathom that this is happening to our family. I really, really want to see Tylee and JJ. I really want this to be over.'

The FBI conducted a search of the Daybells' home in Salem, Idaho, last week to search for evidence linked to the children's disappearance and the October death of Chad's previous wife Tammy.

Authorities confirmed on Monday that they had seized cellphones, laptops, journals and medications from the home. Those items have been submitted for forensic tests.

Colby Ryan recorded a YouTube video in which he begged his fugitive mother Lori Vallow to come home and cooperate with investigators searching for her other two children

Lori is currently on the run from police with her new husband Chad Daybell, both of whom are persons of interest in the disappearance of her children. The pair are believed to be members of a dangerous religious cult obsessed with the end of times

Tylee Ryan, 17, (left) and Joshua 'JJ' Vallow, seven, (right) have not been seen or heard from since September. Police in Rexburg, Idaho, only realized they were missing two days before Thanksgiving when they were asked to conduct a welfare check by relatives

The FBI conducted a search of the Daybells' home in Salem, Idaho, last week to search for evidence linked to the children's disappearance and the October death of Chad's previous wife

Authorities confirmed on Monday that they had seized cellphones, laptops, journals and medications from the home

The search for Tylee and JJ, who have not been seen since September, began in November when police tried to do a welfare check ordered by concerned relatives.

Idaho authorities say Chad and Lori have repeatedly lied about where their children are - initially saying the boy was in Arizona - and aren't cooperating with the investigation.

The couple had disappeared from their home when police returned with additional questions and search warrants.

No charges have been filed against Chad or Lori in Idaho or Arizona but they are considered persons of interest in the children's disappearance.

The couple have also been linked to three deaths over the past six months.

Lori's estranged husband Charles Vallow was shot dead by her brother, Alex Cox, after they got in an argument in July. Authorities initially determined that Cox acted in self-defense but reopened the investigation last month amid the search for Tylee and JJ.

Chad's then-wife Tammy, 49, died on October 19 at the couple's home in Salem.

The cause of death was initially ruled as natural but is now in dispute after authorities exhumed her body on December 10.

The following day, Cox died of mysterious circumstances, which are now under investigation.

Lori and Chad married just two weeks after Tammy died.

Family members have said the mother changed drastically after meeting Chad about 18 months ago and joining the doomsday cult he is a member of.

Lori's estranged husband Charles Vallow (pictured together) was shot dead by her brother, Alex Cox, after they got in an argument in July. Authorities initially determined that Cox acted in self-defense but reopened the investigation last month amid the search for Tylee and JJ

Chad's then-wife Tammy (pictured together) died on October 19 at the couple's home in Salem. The cause of death was initially ruled as natural but is now in dispute after authorities exhumed her body on December 10

In his emotional YouTube video, Colby told his mother: 'I'm so hurt by all of this.

'I can't even explain to you how much this affects so many different people. I'm not sure if you know that or where you're at, what you're doing.'

Colby said he is worried about Tylee and JJ and urged his mother to at the very least show someone that they're alive and well via FaceTime.

'I want you to end this. I want you to end it for everybody, for the kids, for yourself, for all of us. This can end,' he said.

'Please, from me, from the person that I've been closest to my whole life.'

In his emotional YouTube video, Colby said he is worried about Tylee and JJ (pictured) and urged his mother to at the very least show someone that they're alive and well via FaceTime
In the end, he wasnt. Paul is buried in Florida, where he died of a brain tumor in 1976 at age 54. His VA doctors told the family the tumor might have been the result of beatings hed sustained at Stalag X-C, where Paul was imprisoned after being captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge.
The mounting tension in West Asia following the assassination of Irans Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, an immensely popular figure in his country, by the US is cause for concern for the international community. It is rapidly reaching a flashpoint.

It is a highly volatile situation from which a full-scale war might develop. Looked at objectively, the US is squarely responsible for the conflict and its escalation in the region. It is legitimate to ask why there are US troops in the region and no Iranian or Iraqi soldiers in the US soil to understand who is violating the ...
By PTI

NEW DELHI: The HRD Ministry on Monday called an urgent meeting with the JNU administration, including the vice-chancellor, over the violence that took place on the campus the previous day, officials said.

The ministry had on Sunday sought an immediate report from JNU Registrar Pramod Kumar after the violence broke out and students and teachers were attacked.

There was heavy deployment of police on Monday outside the Shashtri Bhawan here which houses the HRD Ministry.

"A detailed report has been sent to the HRD Ministry about the sequence of events. The top administration officials are at the Ministry to provide all details leading to present situation," JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar told PTI.

Violence broke out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.

Many were admitted to All India Institute of Medical Sciences here with injuries and discharged on Monday.

JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh suffered a head injury.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the ABVP blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.

Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' had urged JNU students to maintain the dignity of the university and peace on the campus.
Tom Watson today blamed police for his decision to back convicted child abuse fantasist Carl Beech and denied he was an 'irresponsible politician' who helped spread his lies and smear his famous victims.

Labour's former deputy leader has insisted it wasn't his job to say if Beech's claims were 'true or not' and claimed his campaigning had also helped genuine child abuse victims.

Mr Watson, who is promoting his new weightloss book, was grilled about the scandal on Good Morning Britain by Piers Morgan and then by Kay Burley on Sky News where he asked if he felt guilty for helping 'trash' the reputations of those falsely accused by liar Carl Beech, nicknamed 'Nick' by detectives.

He famously called former home secretary Leon Brittan 'evil' based on Beech's cooked-up claims, but asked critics to look at the 'wider picture'.

Pointing the finger at the Met, he said: 'I did my very best - I was influenced by the police. The police asked me to reassure potential victims that they would be believed.

'I feel very, very sorry [for those smeared by Beech] but in my defence a number of very serious and predatory child abusers went to jail because of the instances raised during that inquiry. I ask people to look at the wider picture'.

Tom Watson defended his conduct in a series of TV interviews today and insisted it was the police who encouraged him to publicly back 'Nick' and later called Lord Brittan 'evil'

Mr Watson was asked by Piers Morgan whether he felt guilty about his involvement in the scandal - he said that he had done some good by speaking out but also made mistakes

The Met spent a fortune working with 'Nick', real name Carl Beech, who was later jailed for 18 years for a web of lies

But he added: 'I am very sorry, I'm very sorry on many levels. I did get too close to the whole child abuse inquiry'.

Beech was jailed for 18 years for falsely accusing household names including Lord Brittan, war hero Lord Bramall, ex-PM Ted Heath and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor of being part of a murderous paedophile ring who ritually abused him.

The Met spent 2.5million looking into Beech's allegations that he had been sadistically raped in the 1970s and 1980s and even held a press conference where an officer described the allegations as 'credible and true' without properly testing the evidence.

Operation Midland has been branded 'the worst police investigation in history by critics, including Mr Proctor.

Today Mr Watson said Scotland Yard's intervention that led to his backing of Beech and his own incorrect assertion that Leon Brittan was an 'evil' paedophile.

He said: 'By the time I'd done that the police had done a press conference and said they believed him'.

He added: 'I've never named Leon Brittan under privilege except after he died - never in Parliament'.

Lady Proctor (pictured with her husband) has never accepted Watson's apology, which the former MP said he accepts

Lord Bramall (pictured left) and Tory MP Harvey Proctor were falsely accused by Carl Beech in an operation which cost the Met 2.5m - Mr Watson said he felt 'very sorry' for their ordeals but denied he was responsible in any way

Carl Beech's victims Lord Bramall Edwin Bramall joined the Army in 1943 and stormed the beaches of Normandy as a 2nd Lieutenant. He fought until the end of the war and was awarded a Military Cross. He rose steadily through the ranks and became a general in 1972. From 1979-82 he was Chief of the General staff, head of the Army, and from 1982-85 he was Chief of the Defence Staff, head of Britain's armed forces. Sir Michael Hanley Michael Hanley was the head of MI5 from 1972-1978 after serving in the Army in the Second World War. He died in 2001. Sir Maurice Oldfield Maurice Oldfield was the head of MI6 from 1973-1978. He served in Egypt, Singapore and Washington. He died in 1981. Lord Brittan Leon Brittan became a Conservative MP in 1974 and was appointed Margaret Thatcher's Home Secretary in 1983. He was appointed a commissioner at the EU in 1989 and served until 1999. He was made a Lord in 2000 and was vice chairman of UBS AG investment bank. He died in 2015 under a cloud of suspicion. Ted Heath Was prime minister from 1970 to 1974, and a Conservative MP from 1950 to 2001. He died aged 87 in 2003. Harvey Proctor Harvey Proctor was a Tory MP from 1979-1987. In 1986 a newspaper reported that he had sexual relationships with men under 21, which was then the age of consent for homosexual relationships. He resigned and started a shirt company. Greville Janner Greville Janner was a Labour MP from 1970 until 1997, when he became a Lord. He died in 2015 before the investigation into Nick's claims was dropped Advertisement

Mr Watson was accused of 'whipping up a moral panic' using Beech's false claims and Lord Brittan's widow has never accepted his apology.

He said today: 'I did get too close to the whole child abuse inquiry. The emotional turmoil obviously clouds your judgement. I'm on public record, and I said very early on, it wasn't my job to say whether it's true or not. And I said he [Beech] is either a hoaxer or the real deal. You would never imagine that a person would behave like that'.

Kay Burley asked about those who were damaged by false claims, he said: 'Yeah, in this one case [Brittan] - to imagine that another human being would create such a cruel and elaborate hoax, which damages the lives of innocent people and undermines real victims of child abuse - you don't image that people would behave like that.

'Maybe that's one of the lessons of Carl Beech - but the thing with Carl Beech is that we also lose sight of what has been brought out of the [wider] inquiry'.

A senior police officer should be quizzed by MPs over the investigation of a baseless rape claim against Leon Brittan, a former top detective said last week.

Paul Settle said James Vaughan, chief constable of Dorset Police, must be questioned by the home affairs committee over his support of senior Scotland Yard officers accused of hounding the terminally ill Tory peer to his grave.

In a controversial review of the case, Mr Vaughan backed the Yard's decision to interview the former home secretary under caution about sex claims previously dismissed by prosecutors.

The rape accusations against Lord Brittan were made by a mentally ill Labour activist with a history of making bogus allegations. As a detective chief inspector in the Met, Mr Settle spent several months investigating her claims in 2013 before concluding there was no evidence that the offence of rape had been 'made out'.

He ruled there was no need to interview Lord Brittan and shut down the probe, codenamed Operation Vincente.

But after former deputy Labour leader Tom Watson intervened on behalf of the accuser in 2014, Met chiefs hurriedly reopened the inquiry and called the gravely ill peer on his mobile phone as he lay in his hospital bed to demand he be interviewed under caution.

Under pressure from the MP, officers continued investigating Lord Brittan even after he died of cancer aged 75 in January 2015.

In October 2015, the home affairs committee criticised the Met's treatment of Lord Brittan and praised Mr Settle, who gave evidence before it, for his conduct in the case. He told MPs he had been sidelined by superiors after speaking out in defence of the peer and said he was the victim of a 'witch-hunt'.

Now, on the fifth anniversary of Lord Brittan's death, the scandal of the bogus rape claims that dogged his last months has been reignited amid questions over the findings of Mr Vaughan's review in 2016.

The recent publication of a previously suppressed report into the case by ex-High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques has raised serious questions about the chief constable's findings.

Sir Richard, who praised Mr Settle's decision to close the inquiry without interviewing the Tory peer, said in his report published in October: 'I do not agree with significant parts of the Dorset review I do not consider that interviewing Lord Brittan could conceivably have advanced the investigation.'

Sir Richard also backed the suggestion that the offence of rape had not been 'made out'. He added that the 'prolonged extension' of the inquiry into Lord Brittan was 'unjustifiable' and 'most unfair' to the late peer's family.
Since hard cider splashed onto the scene some years ago, cideries and breweries have infinitely grown. Theyre producing more complex and interesting brews that are a far cry from the sweet drink some might still think of. While there are tons to visit, Bold Rock Cider just might be your next stop with good reason. And with a new cidery opening up this past October, there are more opportunities to visit where their cider is born.

Nestled in Henderson CountyMills River to be exactBold Rock is often overlooked. Though its closer to Hendersonville, the brewery is less than an hour outside of Asheville and is an easy change of scenery for an escape from the citys traffic. Cider might be a relatively new by-product of apples for Henderson County, but the crop has a longstanding history here. In fact, they produce enough apples each year that both Mrs. Smith pies and Gerber use local farms to find the best apples for their pies and baby food.

Just a 15-minute drive from Mills River, Hendersonville is home to one huge apple celebration each year. The North Carolina Apple Festival is held there each Labor Day weekend to welcome in the start of the harvest season, but the farms have groves that can be harvested throughout the fall. Stalls fill the streets, and apples in all forms are sold, from juice and cider to fritters and pies. There are kids games, music and hayrides too. After the annual kickoff, visit Bold Rock for more adult fun.

October rings in North Carolinas peak fall foliage, though a visit around Thanksgiving is also a treatand a break from the family. Tours and tastings are given daily between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m., and later to 8 p.m. on the weekend. Relax on the patio or find a seat indoors as you sip one of their award-winning ciders with beautiful views of the surrounding landscape. For an introductory tasting, order the Flagship Flight, which will give you a try of four basic ciders.

Mills River isnt the only home of Bold Rock, of course. Headquartered in Nellysville, Va., it has two other locations in Old Dominion, in Charlottesville and Crozet. And if you cant make it to one of their cideries, you can find their products up and down the east coast, from Pennsylvania to Georgia. If you want a crisp taste of the fall, no matter what season it is, Mills River or Bold Rocks other locations might be worth a weekend trip.



Molly Harris is a freelance journalist. You can often find her on the highway somewhere between Florida and North Carolina or taking life slow in Europe.
ABVP activists and students of OU stage a protest against outsiders who were involved in staging protest inside the OU campus on Monday. (DC)

Hyderabad: Soon after left-wing students and women activists gathered at Osmania University to protest in solidarity with Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students that were attacked by a masked mob, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) also entered OUs Arts College and burned an effigy of communists for attacking JNU students. Police also showed up.

Separately, there were protests at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU) in solidarity with the JNU students.

Various student organisations from the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) and women activists also joined the peaceful protests.

JNU paradise turned into hell

While they assembled, ABVP students reached the spot and condemned the entry of outsiders. The ABVP also made a representation to the vice chancellor questioning why people from other universities were entering the campus.

D. Naresh from the Dalit Students Union (DSU) said they postponed the protest in the evening. As students we have the responsibility to protect knowledge centres like universities and we condemn the attack on students, he said. We want the culprits to be punished as soon as possible.

When contacted OU police officials said there were small groups of students protesting but the ABVP objected because of some outsiders. However no clash happened, police said.

The ABVP said that outsiders were not allowed on campus for politicisation of issues. G. Jeevan Kumar, ABVP state general secretary, condemned the alleged attack on innocent ABVP students in JNU.

UoH students addressed a gathering at velivada, the south shopping complex of the varsity, and condemned the brutal attack on JNU students.

MANUU Professors said the university, earlier a paradise had now become hell due to goondaism. Teaching and Non-Teaching staff of MANUU protested in solidarity with the students and teaching staff of JNU. Students also protested.

Addressing the protesters, Prof. Mohammed Shahid expressed shame on such incidents, said these were happening because we maintain silence. Police used force against the students in Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University as it had an apprehension that there were goons, but police were silent spectators when goons vandalised the university, he said. We are silent even when the Constitution is in jeopardy. The universities in the country are being targeted because they propagate patriotism, prompting thought to stand against injustice. Students have stood up to safeguard constitutional values and to resist anti-constitutional acts.

Dr Feroz Alam, former general secretary of the MANUU Teachers Association, said JNU was targeted as it is where the voice of dissent is raised against government policies that are against the interest of the nation, students, teachers and employees. JNU students were protesting against a fee hike. The mentality behind increasing the fees was to check children from poor families from getting admission in that premier institution, he said. The government is wasting huge amounts on statues, but not ready to spend on students.

Students also took out a rally against the JNU incident and demanded immediate action against the culprits, who attacked in a planned manner, severely injuring the students union president. They termed it a terror attack.
EU leaders have urged restraint on all sides over the volatile situation with Iran, as Nato ambassadors met in Brussels. In a phone call to US President Donald Trump, France's Emmanuel Macron expressed "total support" with its allies, while urging Iran to avoid destabilising action, as Tehran announced its fifth step back from the 2015 nuclear deal.

President Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime minister Boris Johnson agreed to cooperate towards reducing tensions in the Middle East after an US drone strike killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq on Friday.

It is crucial now to de-escalate. We call on all the players involved to show utmost restraint and responsibility. The cycle of violence in Irak must stop, the three leaders said in a joint statement published on Sunday.

They called on Iran to refrain from further violent action or proliferation, and urge Iran to reverse all measures inconsistent with the JCPOA (nuclear deal).

On Sunday evening, Iran announced its fifth step back from the deal, saying it will forgo a "limit on the number of centrifuges" while stressing it would continue cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iran will no longer abide by any of the restrictions imposed by the 2015 nuclear agreement, particularly its capacity for enrichment, the level of enrichment or the stock of enriched material.

French diplomatic efforts

French Foreign Affairs minister; Jean-Yves Le Drian spoke with Iraq's Prime minister, Adel Abdel-Mahdi on Sunday, stressing the importance preserving the coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

Following a telephone conversation with US President Trump, Macron expressed his total support towards its allies within the US-coalition, namely in the context of recent attacks by armed groups against premises of the Global Coalition against IS in Iraq.

Le Drian also spoke with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, at the week-end. China is among the countries signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal. Both China and France expressed a common goal towards appeasing tensions and calling on Iran not to violate the Vienna accord. Le Drian and Wang Yi also agreed on the need to preserving the sovereignty of Iraq.

No lament, says Boris

The UK's Boris Johnson said Britain will not lament the death of Qassem Soleimani, blaming him for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and western personnel.

Johnson added that calls for retaliation would lead to more violence in the region.

UK's Foreign Affairs minister, Dominic Raab, earlier backed the Trump administration's right to self-defence in carrying out the airstrike against Soleimani at Baghdad airport last Friday. Pompeo has accused European allies of not being helpful enough after the assassination.

Raab is to meet US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, in Wasgington on Thursday 9 January.
A Michigan man accused of murder and cannibalism reportedly suspended his alleged victim from a ceiling by his ankles and stabbed him twice before slitting his throat and cutting off his testicles to eat them, court documents show.

The body of 25-year-old Kevin Bacon was found inside the Bennington Township home of murder suspect Mark Latunski, 50, on December 28, four days after he was last seen alive.

Bacon's roommate, Michelle Myer, told police she last saw him alive on the evening of December 24 as he was leaving their home to meet up with a man he'd met on the mobile dating app, Grindr, before completely vanishing.

The man he was venturing off to meet, it would later be revealed, was Latunksi - and new court documents obtained by Michigan Live reveal the horrifying fate awaiting the 25-year-old hairstylist when he stepped inside the suspect's home.

Mark Latunski (left), 50, admitted to killing Kevin Bacon (right), 25, by stabbing him in the back and slitting his throat late Christmas Eve or early Christmas morning. He later cut off his testicles and ate them

Michigan State Police received a call for assistance from Clayton Township Police Department to conduct a welfare check for Bacon inside Latunksi's home on December 28, after receiving a tip he may be inside.

Officers then conducted an interview with the 50-year-old, who agreed to let them carry out a search of the home after reportedly admitting to killing Bacon by stabbing him in the back and slitting his throat late Christmas Eve or early Christmas morning.

Bacon was found dead hanging upside down from the ceiling naked, where he had been suspended with rope tied around his ankles for nearly four days.

Latunski then reportedly admitted to officers he has also used the murder weapon to to cut off Bacon's testicals and later ate them, police testimony shows.

Latunski has been charged with one count of open murder and one count of mutilation of a human body. He's been in custody ever since police found Bacon's body at his home.

Bacon was found dead hanging upside from the ceiling naked, where he had been suspended with rope tied around his ankles for nearly four days

Bacon's roommate, Michelle Myer, told police she last saw him alive on the evening of December 24 as he was leaving their home to meet up with a man he'd met on the mobile dating app, Grindr, before completely vanishing. The man he was venturing off to meet, it would later be revealed, was Latunksi

Divorce, custody and criminal records also reveal an extensive history of complaints about Latunski's health.

He was known to have stopped taking the medication prescribed to treat his various mental health illnesses, according to records from the 66th District and 35th Circuit courts.

A motion filed by his ex-wife Emily Latunski to suspend visitation rights to his children on August 22 says the suspect had previously been diagnosed with major depression, paranoid schizophrenia and traits of a personality disorder in 2010 and 2012.

'[Mark Latunski] has a history of mental illness and has been hospitalized in the Owosso Mental Stress unit ... [and] has a history of going off his medication,' the motion states.

Latunski's husband of three years, Jamie Arnold, told M-Live he wasn't aware of his ex-partner's mental illnesses until July, when he was arrested for failing to pay child support.

'To my knowledge, I couldn't force him to see a therapist or take medication,' Arnold said. 'Never in a million years did I think he'd be capable of doing such a horrendous crime.'

Arnold said he left Latunski in September and no longer lived at the home where Bacon was discovered.

'In hindsight, it's easy to sit back and speculate but at the time you're going through it there are emotions and feelings involved. You don't want to think that the person you fell in love with is some crazy homicidal maniac,' Arnold said.

'I pray that God is there for Kevin Bacon's family in their time of need and that He helps us all get through this, one day at a time.'

A motion filed by his ex-wife Emily Latunski to suspend visitation rights to his children on August 22 says Latunski had previously been diagnosed with major depression, paranoid schizophrenia and traits of a personality disorder in 2010 and 2012

Bacon, a student at University of Michigan-Flint and a hairstylist, was described as a 'compassionate, caring and loving' individual by roomate and friend of nearly two decades Michelle Meyers.

'Kevin was a colorful, vibrant being both inside and out. He did what he wanted to, when he wanted to, and let very little hold him back,' she said. 'I really could not have asked for a better friend. I was incredibly lucky to call him my friend.'

Bacon was reported missing by his dad Karl on December 25 after he missing the family's annual Christmas breakfast.

Police soon found Kevin Bacon's car at a Family Dollar in Clayton Township, later discovering his phone, wallet and some clothes inside the vehicle.

Medical examiners have not yet confirmed his specific time of death. His funeral was held on Friday at Sharp Funeral Homes, Miller Road Chapel at 8138 Miller Road in Swartz Creek, followed by a candlelight vigil.

Actor Kevin Bacon has paid a touching tribute to the Michigan man of the same name on Instagram earlier this week.

'For obvious reasons I'm thinking this morning about the friends and Family of this young person Kevin Bacon,' the actor wrote.

'His life was taken from him much too soon. His love was hairdressing. I bet he would have done a great job on this mess on my head. RIP KB.'

Bacon, a student at University of Michigan-Flint and a hairstylist, was described as a 'compassionate, caring and loving' individual by roomate and friend of nearly two decades Michelle Meyers

Footloose actor Kevin Bacon wrote Monday: 'For obvious reasons I'm thinking this morning about the friends and Family of this young person Kevin Bacon'

The victim's father Karl Bacon said Saturday of naming his son Kevin: 'I wanted the same initials, but I didn't want Karl Jr. so that made sense.

'The other Kevin Bacon wasn't quite as famous as he is now.'

Actor Bacon's post has been liked more than 15,000 times on Instagram.

Latunski appeared last Monday via video in 66th District Court in Corunna on murder and mutilation of a body charges.

He was being held without bond and was appointed an attorney. His preliminary examination is scheduled on January 8, followed by a January 14 pretrial hearing.
New Delhi:

A massive fire broke out in Kamathipura area of central Mumbai on Monday. Four fire tenders were rushed to the spot. According to officials, it was a level three fire. Eight persons were injured in the fire. The rescue operation is still underway. No one is trapped in the commercial building, latest reports say. The fire broke out in crowded China building of Nagpada area in Kamathipura. 11 water tankers have been deployed to douse the fire. The first distress call was received at 9:16 am. Those injured have been taken to one Nair Hospital in the vicinity, media reports said. "The fire was confined to electric wiring, electric installations, household articles, a leather godown on first floor and a cloth godown on ground floor of the commercial structure spread in an area about 2,500 sq ft," chief fire officer PS Rahangdale was quoted as saying by PTI.
Seasoned IT executive brings extensive technology transformation experience to drive strategic growth and systems excellence

Austin, Texas, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CLEAResult, a leader in designing and implementing technology-enabled energy efficiency and demand response programs for utilities, today announced Divakar Jandhyala as the companys new Chief Technology Officer. Jandhyala will assume duties from Sheila Daly, who has been the interim leader of the IT organization since May 2019.

Jandhyala has more than 20 years of experience leading technology organizations across multiple industries including high tech, e-commerce, manufacturing and consulting. He has proven experience leading organizations through technology transformation and is passionate about helping companies realize their potential with innovative technology strategies.

Technology will continue to be an essential component of our strategy from a product and solutions standpoint, as well as from an enterprise perspective, said Scott Boose, CLEAResult CEO. Our ability to scale and grow the business depends on having access to the tools and resources necessary to do our jobs well. Im confident that Divakars tremendous technical knowledge and proven experience combined with his people-focused leadership style make him an excellent fit for this role.

Jandhyala joins CLEAResult from American Achievement Corporation where he was CIO/CTO for eight years leading global IT and operations across the United States, Canada, Mexico, India and Poland. Jandhyala also serves as an Executive Board Member for GroupFIO, a provider of open source ERP and CRM applications, and he regularly advises and consults with the incubator companies at The University of Texas.

CLEAResult is an indispensable part of the energy efficiency and demand response journey for many of the world's leading utility clients, said Jandhyala. I am very honored to join this world-class team and look forward to helping CLEAResult leverage the power of technology to extend its market leadership. 

Story continues

About CLEAResult

CLEAResult is the largest provider of energy efficiency and demand response solutions in North America. Through proven demand side management strategies tailored to clients unique needs, CLEAResult combines the strength of our energy experts and innovative technology to help over 250 utilities change the way people use energy. CLEAResult is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and has over 2,500 employees in more than 60 cities across the U.S. and Canada. CLEAResult is a portfolio company of the private equity firm TPG and The Rise Fund, a global impact fund led by TPG. For more information, visit clearesult.com.

Alison Smith

Edelman for CLEAResult

(512) 770-8031

Alison.Smith@edelman.com


Ten central trade unions on Monday said around 25 crore people will participate in a nationwide strike on January 8 to protest against the governments anti-people policies.

Trade unions INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF, UTUC along with various sectoral independent federations and associations had adopted a declaration in September last to go on a nationwide strike on January 8, 2020.

We expect participation of not less than 25 crore of working people in the forthcoming National General Strike on January 8, 2020, to be followed by many more actions seeking reversal of the anti-worker, anti-people, anti-national policies of the Government.

The Ministry of Labour has failed to assure on any of the demands of workers which called a meeting on January 2, 2020. The attitude of the government is that of contempt towards labour as we construe from its policies and actions, the 10 central trade unions (CTUs) said in a joint statement.

About 60 organisations of students and elected office bearers of some universities have also decided to join the strike with an agenda to raise voice against increased fee structure and commercialization of education, it said.

The trade unions condemned the JNU violence and similar incidents in other university campuses and expressed their solidarity with students and teachers all over India.

The unions also expressed displeasure over no Indian Labour Conference being held since July 2015, codification of labour laws and privatisation of PSUs.

As many as 12 airports are already sold out to private hands, 100 per cent sale of Air India is already decided, decision to sell BPCL taken, BSNL-MTNL merger announced and 93,600 telecom workers already thrown out of jobs under the garb of VRS (voluntary retirement scheme), it added.

The unions are also against privatisation in railways, corporatisation of 49 defence production units and forced merger of banks.

Joint platform of more than 175 farmers and agricultural workers unions will extend its support to workers demands and observe January 8 as Gramin Bharat Bandh along with their charter of demands, they added.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Top industrialists Anand Mahindra, Harsh Mariwala and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw have condemned violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday night, saying such acts cannot be tolerated and the perpetrators must be hunted down swiftly.

Speaking up against the violence, Marico Ltd Chairman Harsh Mariwala tweeted, "Coming from the land of non-violence, it's unbecoming of us to witness and encourage these acts of violence. Extremely hurt seeing last evening's news".

ALSO READ: What triggered the latest JNU clashes?

Expressing similar views, in a tweet late last evening Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra said, "It doesn't matter what your politics are. It doesn't matter what your ideology is. It doesn't matter what your faith is. If you're an Indian, you cannot tolerate armed, lawless goons. Those who invaded JNU tonight must be traced & hunted down swiftly & given no quarter." Likewise, reacting to a video of an injured student who claimed she was beaten up, Biocon CMD Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw tweeted, "This is unpardonable. Violence cannot be condoned".

Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as a group of masked people armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.

RPG Enterprises Chairman drew parallels between India and Australia, saying India is caught in "religious bushfires".

ALSO READ: I was specifically targeted, says JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh

"Hearing me pray for Australia, for its people, for its 500 million animals that have died since the #bushfires, my little one asked why are you not praying for India where there are religious bushfires lit all over the country and students being attacked mercilessly?" Goenka wrote on his Twitter handle.

Rajan Anandan, former head of Google India, who now is associated with venture capital fund Sequoia, also retweeted Mahindra's tweet.

Many sustained injuries and were admitted to AIIMS Trauma Centre here. They were discharged on Monday. JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh suffered a head injury.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the ABVP blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.
Legal historian Wim Decock of the KU Leuven recently published a study of the economic thought of the Flemish Jesuit Leonardus Lessius (15541623). Last week the National Catholic Register posted an interview with Decock about his book and Lessiuss contribution to economics. Lessius was one of a host of significant early modern authors who addressed the economic realities of the burgeoning European market economies. These early modern authors, despite recovery efforts by Decock and other scholars, continue to be overlooked in both the histories of economics and ethics. The interview contains much food for thought, but I highlight two more general points here.

First, Decock argues that the early modern era was one in which personal prosperity and wealth was not seen as necessarily in conflict with solidarity and the pursuit of the common good. Lessius and others saw that commercial pursuits and profits could (and, in many cases, did) promote a communitys prosperity. The great growth of European merchant centers, such as Antwerp, were examples of this. Says Decock, At this time, there was no contradiction between a businessman who was seeking his own interest and the interest of a community. Such an opposition is very modern.

Second, Decock reminds us that the famous thesis of Max Weber regarding the Protestant (and largely Puritan) origins of capitalism does not provide a complete picture of the origins of the modern market economy. Decocks book has an entire chapter addressing the shortcomings of Webers thesis. In the interview he notes that the so-called Protestant work ethic was actually Christian self-discipline, which was already very present in the medieval world. Weber himself noted the deeper reality without acknowledging its function prior to the Protestant Reformation. At this point, we might also challenge Decocks statement that Martin Luther was totally hostile to capitalism. Luthers view of market economies was more complex, and perhaps not always consistent, but Luther did have a very positive view of work and vocation. The fact that Weber largely ignored Luther and later positive Lutheran contributions to economic thought indicates another weakness in Webers thesis, which fixated almost exclusively on seventeenth-century Puritans.

Decocks comments about Lessiuss specific contributions are well worth reading, and I hope his book (currently in French) will be published in English soon. In the meantime, English readers can consult Decocks introduction to Lessiuss economic thought, along with translations of selected passages from Lessius, in the short primer published by CLP Academic. Readers interested in the recovery of early modern sources in the disciplines of economics, ethics, and law may be interested in the series that I co-edit with Wim Decock, also published by CLP Academic.
In a spot of bad news for the smokers of Borneo (or good news for their lungs, depending on how you look at it), the Sarawak state Customs Department seized 1,172,000 contraband cigarettes from various brands over the weekend following a tip-off.

Officers stormed an unnumbered lot along Siburans Jalan Penrissen, and discovered the contraband inside with nearly RM800,000 (US$200,000) worth of unpaid duties and taxes on them.

The total value of the seizure was set at RM655,887 (US$159,720).

A statement from Customs officials said they believed the stock, which did not have tax stamp stickers, was slated to be distributed to shops in the local market.

Illicit cigarette seizures are not uncommon in the East Malaysian state, with police describing Sarawak as a big and lucrative market for contraband smokes.

In previous seizures, the majority of the confiscated goods came from Vietnam, China, Thailand, and Indonesia.

This article, Hold onto Your Butts: One million contraband cigarettes seized in Sarawak Customs raid, originally appeared on Coconuts, Asia's leading alternative media company. Want more Coconuts? Sign up for our newsletters!
Olivia Newton-John has taken to Instagram to beg her fans to donate to animal charities amid Australia's bushfire crisis.

The 71-year-old shared a number of links to charity organisations alongside a passionate caption.

It read: 'It breaks my heart to see what is happening in my beloved Australia. You can all help the animals and the Aussies by sending donations to the @australiazoo and the @redcrossau.'

'It breaks my heart to see what is happening in my beloved Australia': Olivia Newton-John (pictured) begged her fans to donate to animal charities via an Instagram post on Monday

The well-known animal lover concluded the post with: 'Thank you - every dollar helps!!! Love and light, Olivia'.

Australia Zoo, run by the Irwin family, has helped an amazing 90,000 animals caught in the fires.

Bindi Iwrin, 21, shared an emotional message about the bushfires to Instagram last week.

Help: The 71-year-old shared links to charity organisations alongside a passionate caption

It read: 'It breaks my heart to see what is happening in my beloved Australia. You can all help the animals and the Aussies by sending donations to the @australiazoo and the @redcrossau.' Pictured with daughter Chloe Lattanzi

The conservationist, who is engaged to former professional wakeboarder Chandler Powell, 23, said that the wildlife hospital is 'busier than ever' amid the bushfires.

'Our Wildlife Hospital is busier than ever though, having officially treated over 90,000 patients,' she continued.

'My parents dedicated our Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital to my beautiful grandmother [Lyn]. We will continue to honour her by being Wildlife Warriors and saving as many lives as we can.'

Saviours: Australia Zoo, run by the Irwin family, has helped an amazing 90,000 animals caught in the fires. Pictured: Robert Irwin

Helpers: Bindi Iwrin, 21, (pictured) shared an emotional message about the bushfires to Instagram last week. 'Our Wildlife Hospital is busier than ever though, having officially treated over 90,000 patients,' she said

It comes after news that ecologists fear the bushfires may cause several species to become extinct.

Sydney University Ecology Professor Chris Dickman said 480 million animals had been killed in New South Wales alone including mammals, birds and reptiles.

That number does not include insects, bats or frogs that are essential to the health of an ecosystem.

The continent contains 244 species of wildlife found nowhere else.

Dark days: It comes after news that ecologists fear the bushfires may cause several species to become extinct

Awful: 'The true loss of animal life is likely to be much higher than 480 million,' Professor Dickman said on Friday

If you'd like to donate to the Australian Red Cross Disaster Relief, click here.

To donate to the St Vincent de Paul Society appeal for bushfire victims, click here.

For donations to Victoria's Country Fire Authority click here and here for the NSW Rural Fire Service.

To donate to Foodbank click here and here for the World Wildlife Fund.
Shares in state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco plumbed new lows on Monday Photo: AP Photo/Amr Nabil/file photo

Shares in Saudi Aramco have fallen to their lowest level since the state-owned oil giants historic $25.6bn flotation last month, as traders assessed the implications of the US killing of Irans most prominent military general.

A decline of more than 1% on Monday means that shares in the company are now down by more than 10% from the highs they reached in the days after they began trading.

At 34.50 riyals, the shares remain above the 32 riyal (6.5) flotation price. But the declines mean that the company is now valued well below the $2tn (1.5tn) figure long desired by crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

READ MORE: London Stock Exchange denies it was hit by cyber attack

The US killing of Qassem Soleimani, a high-ranking Iranian general, has prompted a wave of backlash, and investors now fear that his death could draw the region into broader conflict.

Iran has vowed severe revenge and has said it will settle a score with the US, while Soleimanis replacement has pledged to remove the US from the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia is both a key ally of the US and a major rival of Iran  two facts that have sparked fears that the countrys oil infrastructure could be targeted by Iran.

READ MORE: Oil and gold spike on Trump and Iran tension escalation

In September, Iran is thought to have struck Saudi Aramco infrastructure in a drone strike, something that severely dented output from the country.

Oil prices jumped by more than 15% in the aftermath of that attack, but the gains were swiftly erased.

President Donald Trump has threatened severe sanctions, and warned that he is prepared to strike more than 50 sites in a disproportionate manner if Iran retaliates.

Thousands of Iranians took to the streets to mourn Soleimanis death on Sunday.

While the price of oil continues to climb amid concerns about the stability of supply from the region, Saudi Aramco shares are reasonably insulated from the conflict  many of them are held by government institutions and regional investors, who are less likely to sell.
Cyrus Mistry

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Monday dismissed the petition filed by the Registrar of Companies (RoC) and refused to modify its judgement passed in the Tata-Mistry matter.

A two member bench headed by Chairman Justice S J Mukhopadhaya dismissed the plea filed by RoC. NCLAT further said that its December 18, 2019 judgement has no aspersions cast against it.

"There is no ground to amend judgement dated December 18, 2019," said NCLAT.

NCLAT, on December 18, had directed to reinstate Cyrus Mistry as the executive chairman of the USD 110-billion Tata group.

Tata Sons has moved Supreme Court last week against NCLAT's December 18 order.
New Delhi:

As Jamia Milia Islamia reopened on Monday after its winter break, students were seen streaming into the campus in large numbers primarily to take a look at their classrooms, library and departments, which had come under police assault on December 15 when protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) turned violent.

I first need to take a look at the condition of my department, said Aquib Javed (25), a student of MA Sociology. I also need to go to the library to resume my studies since the examinations are approaching. Our entire academic schedule has been disrupted by this incident, Javed said.

Following the clash between students and police, the university had postponed its semester examinations. The examinations are scheduled to resume from January 9.

The university has technically opened today but no classes will be held before the examinations are over. The teaching staff has to be here to mark their attendance but students need not come. I am sure more students will start coming in once the examinations begin, said a professor of the university requesting anonymity.

At the university gates, the guards kept a strict eye on who was entering and refused to let in anyone who did not carry a university identity card.

A majority of the university students, though, were at the campus, primarily to be part of the protest and hunger strike against the CAA and the police brutality outside gate number 7.

Rizwanu Khan (20), a third-year student of History (hons) said, I am here mainly to be part of the protest. However, since the campus has been opened after so long, we are very happy to be able to roam around inside as well.

The protestors outside gate number 7 condemned the attack on JNU students on Sunday evening.

At Shaheen Bagh as well, which has been at the centre of protests against the CAA and police excesses against Jamia students, the JNU issue was raised. We are yet to recover from the shock caused by the incident at Jamia and now the violence at JNU has caused us more pain, said Gulbano Hazrat Khan (51) at a press conference on the incident at JNU. The violent attack on JNU students has given more strength to this protest, she added.
On Friday, in the immediate aftermath of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani's targeted killing, I asked a few questions: Just how much planning has the Trump administration done for the aftermath? Does a decapitation strategy work on a state actor? What are the limits of escalation?

Seventy-two hours later, there are some preliminary answers to these questions, and they are less than comforting.

The Washington Post, Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Politico and New York Times have all reported on the Trump administration's decision-making process. They all basically say the same thing: President Donald Trump surprised large portions of his national security team with this move. According to the Times story, in listing possible responses to escalating tensions in Iraq, the Pentagon had included "killing Soleimani" as the radical option to make the other choices more palatable. When Trump took the most extreme option at the urging of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others, "top Pentagon officials were stunned."

Unsurprisingly, this means that U.S. preparations for any possible Iranian response are a bit tardy. The AP story notes: "The deliberations and Trump's final decision came quickly enough that in the hours before the attack Thursday night (early Friday in Baghdad), contingency plans for a potential Iranian response were still being finalized."

Pompeo has been grumbling about the lack of European support for the Soleimani strike. This might be because, according to my Post colleagues, "Pompeo expected European leaders to champion the U.S. strike publicly even though they were never consulted on the decision." To put this as gently as possible: If Pompeo actually expected that response, then his expectations about other reactions to this strike are probably off-base as well.

Writing in the New York Times, Michael Doran argues that Soleimani's "departure will make Iran much weaker." I wish I was as sanguine. Iran has already announced Soleimani's replacement as Maj. Gen. Ismail Qaani. According to Haaretz, Qaani has "long been in a position of power in the organization." Brookings senior fellow and Iran expert Suzanne Maloney writes in PostEverything that, as I had feared, Soleimani was not irreplaceable: "Soleimani was a creature of the well-developed bureaucracy of Iran's security establishment, one that has weathered numerous losses of its commanders on the battlefield since the earliest days of the revolution."

In April, the Washington Institute considered what a post-Soleimani world might look like. According to Michael Knights, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, which Soleimani commanded, would take a hit in its prestige but not a fatal one. He also notes: "In terms of information operations, killing Soleimani could be a success of epochal importance - but only if it is followed up with more-measured policies that show Washington's ability to pause, reflect on shared interests with foreign partners, and let the dust settle."

Speaking of dust settling, it is when we contemplate the dust settling and the limits of escalation that things seem even more disconcerting. On the one hand, folks like Shadi Hamid argue that the risk of a conventional war seems overblown. He may well be right given the "OMG WWIII" vibe that one picks up on social media at times. Still, in the days since Soleimani was killed, we've seen:

The State Department urge all Americans in Iraq to leave the country.

The United States and its coalition partners suspend its operations in the region against the Islamic State.

Iraq's parliament vote in favor of U.S. troops leaving despite Trump administration efforts to forestall the vote.

Oil prices spike.

Iran announce its complete departure from the 2015 nuclear deal.

Iranian officials suggest that Israeli cities could be targets in response to the attack.

Call me skittish, but none of this makes me feel any safer. Nor does Trump's reaction to Hezbollah and Iranian statements that U.S. military will be the target of any Iranian retaliation. Trump threatened by tweet to strike at 52 Iranian targets if that happened, including cultural heritage sites, in a "disproportionate manner." That would be a violation of international law, and CNN's Jim Sciutto reports that there is "widespread opposition" to the move within this administration. That has not stopped Trump from doubling down on the idea, however. The U.S. position on this is less than clear to longtime U.S. foreign policy observers; imagine the Iranians trying to decipher this signal.

The best-case scenario is that Trump's bluster and Iran's weakness translate into no retaliation serious enough for Trump to lose his temper again. The worst-case scenario is the repeated misinterpretation by U.S. and Iranian policymakers of the other side's red lines.

In her column, Maloney notes: "Tehran has historically absorbed major blows and setbacks without immediately yielding to the temptation to strike back in indiscriminate or reckless style - instead choosing to nurture resentments and bide its time."

It will therefore be unsurprising if nothing huge happens in the next few months or even longer. Maybe the regime will collapse during that spell. I hope so, because the alternatives are extremely worrisome.

- - -

Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
A SHIPPING company faces trial accused of breaking health and safety laws following the death of a father-of-two after a workplace accident at Dublin Port.

James Byrne, who was in his late 30s and from Lucan in Co. Dublin, was rushed to the Mater Hospital after an incident on June 6, 2018.

He was later pronounced dead and an investigation was carried out by the Health and Safety Authority.

The Doyle Shipping Group Unlimited, otherwise known as the Doyle Shipping Group, with an address at Ocean Pier, Alexandra Road, Dublin 1, was served with a summons alleging a number of health and safety failings.

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The firm is a leading shipping and logistics company providing a range of marine services.

The case was listed before Judge Anthony Halpin at Dublin District Court today.

The Director of Public Prosecutions directed trial on indictment meaning it will be dealt with in the Circuit Court. Judge Halpin adjourned the case for six weeks for the preparation of a book of evidence.

The firm, which has not yet indicated how it will plead, faced five charges under Section 77 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act.

It has been accused of failing to conduct work activities, specifically the dismantling of a steel hopper at the McKearns Yard, at Ocean Pier, in a way to ensure the safety of employees, which necessitated that an employee worked in a danger zone at the base of stanchions which allegedly had no support in place to prevent them toppling in an uncontrolled manner.

The firm also faced a charge for failing to provide systems of work that were planned, performed, maintained and revised to be, so far as reasonably practicable, without risk.

It was alleged that as a consequence, the firms employee James Byrne suffered personal injury and died.

The fifth charge was for failing to identify hazards associated with the dismantling work, failing to assess the risks presented, or to be in possession of a written risk assessment.
The UK is trading a Rolls Royce for a second-hand saloon by leaving the EU , European Commissioner Phil Hogan says.

Mr Hogan, the EUs trade chief, has set down conditions the British side will have to meet to strike a Brexit trade deal.

The Commissioner said leaving the single market will have major consequences for the UK.

This move still baffles me because the full consequences of that decision are still not understood in the United Kingdom.

Why would they trade a Rolls Royce, which would be very familiar to the UK, for a second-hand saloon, he said.

Addressing Irelands Ambassadors who are gathered in Dublin for their annual new years conference, Mr Hogan said any new trade agreement will require firm and fair rules.

Prime Minister Johnson said he wants a best in class free trade agreement. And from our side in the EU, as Michelle Barnier has pointed out, best in class means a trade agreement that is not just about economic and financial gains, zero tariffs zero quotas but is also an agreement which is the interest of our people, their environment, respect for the rights and respectful of their quality of life.

So, we will therefore require solid guarantees of a level playing field in relation to state aid, labour laws, environmental protections and taxation arrangements. None of us is under any illusion about how difficult this part of the negotiations will be, he said.

Mr Hogan said new European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will soon be meeting Mr Johnson.

However, he remains dismissive of the British deadline of this summer for the conclusion of the talks.

Mr Hogan said the future trade agreement would be a major issue for the current and next government.

He declined to speculate on the timing of the general election.

I expect the electorate will be conscious, whatever government formation will arise from an Irish general election, Id suspect all parties will have similar objectives to have a good relationship with the EU, he said.

The Commissioner said it would be helpful if the Northern Assembly was back up and running.

Mr Hogan said Ireland must remain unified with the EU. He said the Government and diplomats now needed to agree with other countries, where previously there would have been differences.

He encouraged a policy of maximum flexibility without selling your soul.
Much of the discussion in the aftermath of the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani last week has focused on the legality of the attack: whether or not his death was carried out by assassination or targeted killing.

Administration officials have chosen the latter, following the war-on-terror playbook. They consider the strike a targeted killing, elaborating that it was justifiable as an act of self-defense. General Suleimani, officials say, was actively plotting a big action that would have cost hundreds of lives, thus posing an imminent threat. Others, such as Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have rightly rejected the term targeted killing and called it an assassination, implicitly raising a question about the legality as well as the wisdom of the strike.

The distinction is important as a matter of policy and strategy, as well as one of law. In 1975, the Church Committee, a select Senate committee, launched an investigation into the activities of the United States intelligence agencies, spurred on by reports of covert assassination attempts on foreign leaders, among them failed attempts against Patrice Lumumba of Congo and Fidel Castro of Cuba. The committee found that assassination was incompatible with American principle, international order, and morality. Its final report recommended a ban on assassination in the absence of war and except in cases of imminent danger. Though no such law was passed by Congress, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order in 1976 banning political assassination.

Since that executive order, some presidents have claimed the authority to circumvent the ban when they deemed it necessary. Ronald Reagan, reportedly claiming to act in good faith and within the context of an approved operation, launched a failed attack on the Lebanese cleric Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. The Clinton administration, in considering plans for targeting Osama bin Laden, determined it would be an act of self-defense, and therefore not an assassination.
An exhibit featuring a Confederate battle flag  despite being the center of a community debate for almost two years  opened quietly on Sunday with no push-back and little criticism from Lynchburg residents.

Five Forks Battle Flag: A Community Perspective features a battle flag used by the 11th Virginia Infantry Regiment during the Battle of Five Forks near Petersburg on April 1, 1865. The regiment was organized in Lynchburg in May 1861 with members from the counties of Campbell, Botetourt, Montgomery, Fauquier, Culpeper and Rockbridge, according to the National Parks Service Civil War database.

The flag was restored with money raised by members of the Lynchburg Home Guard Civil War Reenactors. The group raised $12,000 over a decade to preserve the flag, which is owned by the American Civil War Museum and stored in its Richmond archives.

Lynchburg Home Guard President Kevin Shroyer, who spearheaded the restoration of the flag, said he is pleased to see the flag in Lynchburg.

We started this effort 10 years ago so its been a long time coming, Shroyer said. To see this finally come to fruition is great. This flag is part of our citys history.

Lynchburg Home Guard member Tom Eastman said the group hopes people viewing the exhibit will focus on the historical connection the flag has to Lynchburg instead of the perceived connection it has with white supremacist organizations.

The flag here today it is a square flag, which is a battle flag carried by the regiment into the fight, Eastman said. The rectangular flag most people associate with various hate groups didnt come about until many years after the Civil War ended.

Eastman added the exhibit also features the Medal of Honor awarded to Union officer William Wirt Winegar, who captured the flag during the battle. The group tracked down one of Winegars descendants to get the medal for the exhibit.

During the Civil War, if you captured the enemys flag you automatically were awarded the medal of honor, Eastman said. It was that big of a deal. We wanted to display that aspect of this battle as well and really bring it full circle to show many different perspectives.

Lynchburg Museum System director Ted Delaney said Sundays opening followed almost two years of discussions, surveys, focus groups and meetings about the potential controversy of publicly displaying a Confederate icon.

We know that some people have mixed feelings about seeing a Confederate flag being displayed, Delaney said. I can see how it would be a problem if its flying on a public courthouse or at a school filled with children. We wanted to address the history of the flag and place it in its historical context because this is a museum.

Lynchburg resident Bryant Sanders, who came to the museum Sunday, said the exhibit focused on history and not ideology.

I know there have been some concerns going back and forth about this for a while and I think the museum put a lot of thought into this, Sanders said.

Lynchburg resident Bettye Chambers agreed.

I think every word in this exhibit was carefully thought out, Chambers said. They were very cautious and considerate with how they presented and worded everything.

The exhibit also includes an opportunity for visitors to comment by filling out cards about the exhibit. The cards are collected by staff and become part of the exhibit by being placed on a wall to provide visitors with the various perspectives of others in the community.

Comments on display Sunday showed mixed reactions to the exhibits content.

The exhibit is informative, vivid and exciting, one comment card read. I loved learning about the history of this flag and what happened to it during and after the war.

Sterilized history, another comment card read. No mention of the KKK! How on earth can you exclude the Klan from this narrative.

Delaney said the feedback provided is an important part of the exhibit.

This provides people with a way to share their thoughts or perspectives and share them, Delaney said. By displaying them together, we start forming this dialogue within the community. It also lets people be open about how they feel about this exhibit because people sometimes are reluctant to tell you how they feel about something. This provides people a way to communicate how this made them feel.

The exhibit will be on display at the museum at 901 Court St. through Jan. 31. The museum is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays.
ABC/Image Group LADua Lipa's sophomore album Future Nostalgia is one of the most anticipated pop releases of the year. There's no release date for it yet, but so far, we've heard two songs from it: the title track and the first single, "Don't Start Now." While Dua says the message of "Don't Start Now" may be similar to some of her past songs, the new album as a whole is "quite different."

"It's about moving on and not really caring what anybody thinks and being happy in the position that you're in and just finding confidence that," Dua tells ABC Audio about "Don't Start Now."

"It's an empowering song. I feel like that's a common theme in the music that I make!" she laughs. "Although I feel like this time around, on this album, it's quite different from the first record, and it's quite nostalgic and touches on different genres."

"It's got more of a theme running through it, and feels more cohesive than the first record," she adds.

So far, Dua says fans have been telling her how much they like "Don't Start Now" -- especially the empowering message.

"It's kind of more like that, which is really nice," she laughs. "You know, just the response has been so amazing and everybody has been so lovely online. So I'm really grateful."

Dua will kick off a European tour in April; so far, no U.S. dates have been announced.

Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.






Isa Funtua, an associate of President Muhammadu Buhari, says he is not a member of any cabal but a cabal myself. Funtua, who hai...





Isa Funtua, an associate of President Muhammadu Buhari, says he is not a member of any cabal but a cabal myself.





Funtua, who hails from Katsina like the president, is among those whom critics of the Buhari administration refer to as the cabal.





At various times, Aisha, wife of the president, has said her husbands government had been hijacked by some of his associates.





In an outburst in December, the wife of the president accused Garba Shehu, presidential spokesman, of not being loyal to her husband but to others who have no stake in the compact that the president signed with Nigerians on May 29, 2015 and 2019.





When he appeared on The Morning Show, a programme on Arise Television, on Saturday, Funtua said it is an insult to say Buhari is running his government through a group of people.





Funtua accused people of using the term cabal in a derogatory manner, saying the president is free to have people he trusts around him.





Im not a member of any cabal, Im cabal myself, he said.





What is cabal? In short I think it means kitchen cabinet, people that you trust. People you believe will not deceive you, that they can do things in the interest of the country.





Nigerians are using it in a derogatory term not in the real meaning of it. Take dictionary, what is the real meaning of cabal?




A booklet circulated by the BJP aimed at clarifying doubts around the Citizenship Amendment Bill sparked a political firestorm on Monday after the Bengali version of the booklet underlined that it would shield people of the six religions - Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis - when the nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC) is rolled out.

The 23-page booklet that was released by the Bengal BJP on Sunday has also declared that the government will implement the NRC project next. However, the partys 30-page Hindi booklet on CAA, published by Kamal Sandesh from New Delhi and meant for distribution all over India, does not mention NRC.

The Bengali booklet is mostly a translation of the Hindi publication, except for the additional reference to NRC.

After the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), no Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Christian or Parsi will find their name in the D-voter (doubtful voters) list. The Hindus and Sikhs have their homelands secured, reads the final sentence of the Bengali booklet, which was released by Union minister Babul Supriyo on Sunday.

Dilip Ghosh, chief of the BJPs West Bengal unit said this was a promise that had been made to the people of Bengal.

We had promised the people of Bengal that we will clear the state of the infiltrators and we cannot go back on our promise. Whatever political controversy, of whatever magnitude the opposition may try to create, we cannot compromise on the question of national security, Ghosh said.

The Bengal BJPs effort to link the amended citizenship law that fast-tracks citizenship to religious minorities from three Muslim-majority countries - Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh - runs contrary to the BJP leaderships latest effort to project the change in citizenship law and the NRC project as two standalone exercises.

The Bengal BJPs booklet triggered angry reactions from rival parties, right from the states ruling Trinamool Congress to the opposition Left parties and the Congress.

This booklet exposes the sinister game that the BJP is playing with the people, especially those in Bengal. Why is NRC mentioned in the Bengali booklet only and not in the one being distributed nationally? BJP has proved itself to be anti-Bengali, said Tapas Roy, the senior Trinamool Congress leader and the junior minister for parliamentary affairs.

The prime minister is contradicting the union home minister Amit Shah and BJPs state unit chief is contradicting the prime minister. BJP lies exposed, said Sujan Chakraborty, leader of the Left in the state Assembly.

Congress state unit president Somen Mitra said that prime minister Narendra Modi should explain if he is speaking the truth or the BJPs state unit.

In the last page of the Bengali booklet, a question reads, Is NRC coming next? How necessary is this? Wont Hindus, too, have to land in jails in case of an NRC, just like in Assam? The answer says, Yes, NRC comes next. At least thats the intention of the Union government.

We must make it clear that no Hindu in Assam landed in detention centres because of NRC. The Hindus who are allegedly in detention camps had landed there much before due to the Foreigners Act. The Foreigners Act was created by Congress and the NRC was implemented under orders from and supervision of the Supreme Court. The Assam government, on the other hand, has decided to move the apex court against that NRC. Those detained in camps would hopefully get released soon due to CAA, the booklet read.

It is heard that there are two crore infiltrators living in West Bengal and Assam. It is necessary that they are turned into D-voters and driven away, the booklet said.
Ottawas bills for dealing with natural disasters neared half a billion dollars in two of the last three years amid a warning to Canadians that this country was one of the worst affected by climate change in 2018.

Data from Public Safety Canada lists the average annual bill for disaster assistance at $430 million over the last three years. That includes $485.8 million in 2016-17, $494.9 million in 2017-18 and $309.5 million in 2018-19.

In the five years before that, the federal governments average annual disaster clean-up bills were $360 million, which was three times the average costs in the five years before that.

The disaster-assistance program helps provinces when the costs of major events like floods and forest fires exceed a predetermined amount based on a provinces population. An estimated $5.4 billion has been sent out under the program since its inception in 1970.

Almost one-quarter of that  $1.3 billion  was in just the last three years.

Spring flooding and major rainstorms accounted for 80 per cent of the weather events that qualified for disaster funding in the last three years. Most of the remaining events were wildfires. There was one ice storm in the mix.

Provincial governments have six months to request funding under the Disaster Financial Assistance program but it can take years for a request to be fulfilled. Two damaging rainstorms in Saskatchewan in June 2012 did not get final cabinet approval for disaster funding assistance for four years, until June 2016.

Others can take just a few months, with the B.C. wildfires in summer 2017 receiving approval for a $175-million assistance payment before the end of that year.

Last spring, Environment and Climate Change Canada issued a report on Canadas changing climate that warned Canada is warming twice as fast as the global average.

A warmer climate will intensify some weather extremes in the future, the report said. Extreme hot temperatures will become more frequent and more intense. This will increase the severity of heat waves, and contribute to increased drought and wildfire risks.

It went on to say more intense rainfalls will increase the risk of major floods in large cities.

In December, the European political lobby group Germanwatch issued its annual Climate Risk Index, listing Canada ninth among the countries most affected by climate change in 2018.

The authors of that report say Canadians should see that ranking as a warning sign that they are at risk of either frequent events or rare, but extraordinary, catastrophes.

The report pointed to:

the hottest summer on record in Atlantic Canada;

the third-hottest across parts of southern Ontario and Quebec, including a Quebec heat wave that killed 93 people; and

the worst wildfire season ever in British Columbia, which came after major spring flooding in that province forced 4,000 people from their homes.

All told 103 deaths and nearly $3 billion in absolute losses were attributed to extreme weather in Canada in 2018. The Insurance Bureau of Canada reported $1.9 billion in insured losses due to weather in 2018.

Ottawas bill for disasters climbs higher if it includes funding for the Canadian Red Cross to help in emergencies, and spending by the military to assist. In 2018, Ottawa gave the Red Cross $38 million to help with the B.C. wildfires, and last spring $2.5 million was given to the organization for emergency services provided to victims of flooding across the country.

In 2016, Ottawa gave the Red Cross $104 million after it promised to match donations Canadians made individually to the organization for its work helping those affected by the Fort McMurray, Alta., wildfire that forced an evacuation of the entire city.

The military spent $17.5 million in the last three fiscal years for Operation Lentus, its ongoing domestic natural-disaster response program.

The Department of National Defence notes in its financial documents that planning for the costs of Operation Lentus is difficult because it is impossible to foresee natural disasters.
The Delhi High Court on Monday sought stands of the Ministry of Information Technology and Twitter on a plea by a senior advocate for directions to the Centre to frame guidelines for censorship on as per provisions of the Constitution.

On a plea by senior lawyer Sanjay Hegde, who also sought restoration of his Twitter account, Justice Navin Chawla issued notices to the ministry and the giant and listed the matter for further hearing on February 11.

Hegde moved the court after his Twitter account was permanently suspended by the on November 5, 2019, allegedly for re-tweeting two posts.

Appearing for Hegde, senior advocate Jaideep Gupta, in a brief hearing, cited various judgements, arguing for the maintainability of the petition.

As an interim relief, he also sought a direction to Twitter that the data of his client's account must not be deleted.

Central government standing counsel Kirtiman Singh, appearing for the ministry, submitted that guidelines were already in place on the point of censorship on social media.

In his plea, filed through advocate Pranjal Kishore, Hegde asked if large multi- corporations, like Twitter, are not amenable to the constitutional scrutiny for their actions.

According to his petition, the first of the two posts re-tweeted by him, was of Kavita Krishnan, the secretary of All India Progressive Women's Association (AIPWA) and a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPI-ML) Politburo. She had posted Gorakh Pandey's poem 'Unko phaansi de do' on her Twitter profile.

Hegde had re-tweeted and shared Krishnan's post with the caption 'Hang Him', an English translation of the poem's title, the petition said.

The second post was a picture of August Landmesser which Hegde was using as his profile header/cover photo for over a year, it said.

It said, "The photograph in question was taken on June 13, 1936 and shows a large gathering of workers at the Blohm Voss shipyard in Hamburg. Almost everyone in the image has raised his arm in the Nazi salute. The only exception is Landmesser, who stands behind the crowd, with his arms crossed over his chest."



The petition stated that Hegde's account was suspended purportedly for the use of the two posts whose original tweeters have faced no action.

The plea contended that suspension of the senior lawyer's Twitter account "is illegal, arbitrary and contrary to the Respondent No.2's (Twitter) own terms of use and rules" and also violates his right to freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under the Constitution.

"The arbitrariness of Respondent No.2's conduct is clear from the fact that while the petitioner's account was suspended for sharing a post/tweet by another user, no action has been taken against the user who wrote the original tweet. The same continues to be in public domain," it said, adding that no action has been taken against those who had subsequently, shared the poem and photograph on their twitter profiles.

The petition said before coming to court, Hegde had followed the internal appeals procedure of Twitter, but his appeal was rejected.

He had also served a legal notice on the social media platform, but no response was received to the same, it said.
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Boeing Co is reviewing a wiring issue that could potentially spark a short circuit on the 737 MAX causing the aircraft to crash.

An internal audit in December ordered up by the Federal Aviation Administration after two fatal flights has found that two wiring bundles, if placed too closely together, could short circuit leading to tail control problems on Boeing's 737 MAX, and possibly lead to a crash if pilots don't know how to respond correctly.

Boeing is still looking at whether the short circuit would actually happen in flight, and if so, would need to separate the wiring on about 800 MAX jets that already have been built.

Potential tail problems could result from placing two wiring bundles too closely together, says a new audit of Boeing's 737 MAX

The wiring concern could lead to a crash if pilots don't know how to respond correctly, says the US jet manufacturer

Boeing has had to ground its best-selling MAX since last year following two deadly crashes, impacting airlines like American, United and Southwest (pictured)

Such a fix would be relatively simple, Boeing says, reports the New York Times.

Boeing told DailyMail.com that it was 'working closely with the FAA and other regulators on a robust and thorough certification process to ensure a safe and compliant design,' of the aircraft, which was connected to two deadly crashes that grounded the jet around the world last year.

The spokesman confirmed to DailyMail.com that it had 'identified this issue as part of that rigorous process', and added 'we are working with the FAA to perform the appropriate analysis'.

An FAA spokesperson also told DailyMail.com that the agency and Boeing are 'analyzing certain findings from a recent review of the proposed modifications to the Boeing 737 MAX.

'As part of its continuing oversight, the agency will ensure that all safety related issues identified during this process are addressed before the aircraft is approved for return to passenger service.'

The wiring issue could push back the return of the MAX into service.

American, United and Southwest airlines had to cancel flights for the holidays, including over Christmas and into the new year, because the FAA has not yet given safety approval to the MAX.

The model was grounded following two deadly crashes that happened only five months apart.

The first disaster happened in October 2018 in Indonesia, when a MAX flying as Lion Air flight JT 610 fell into the Java Sea 15 minutes after taking off from Jakarta.

All 189 aboard the plane died, including 180 Indonesians, one Italian and one Indian.

The second crash occurred in March when Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302, which also was a MAX jet, took off from Bole International Airport in the Ethiopian capital and crashed.

Shoes found during the search for victims from the ill-fated Lion Air flight JT 610 are collected at the Jakarta International Container Terminal in Jakarta on October 31, 2018

Indonesian first responders examine debris of the ill-fated Lion Air flight JT 610 in Jakarta

Investigators with the US National Transportation and Safety Board examine debris from Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 at the site of the crash

Investigators and recovery workers inspect a second engine recovered from a crater at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash

Reuters has reported previously the FAA is not likely to approve the plane until at least February.

Boeing, which has moved forward with factory-finished orders for its best-selling MAX, has had to keep the jets sitting on the ground awaiting delivery.

It now plans to halt production of the aircraft this month while awaiting the proper regulatory approvals, creating a ripple effect that is expected to impact suppliers across the country, as well as add to concerns President Donald Trump has expressed.

It doesn't help that federal regulators have flagged the latest wiring concern as potentially 'catastrophic.'

It is possible other protections like shielding, insulation and circuit breakers could prevent the short circuit, a company official said.

The company tells the Times that eve if it needs to fix the wiring issue, it would only take one or two hours per plane to separate the wiring bundles with an clamp.

Meanwhile, Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg was sacked in December after repeatedly failing to contain the fallout from the crashes that tarnished its reputation with airlines and regulators.

FIRED: Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg was sacked in December after repeatedly failing to contain the fallout from the crashes that tarnished its reputation with airlines and regulators

The crisis has cost Boeing $9 billion, and has hurt suppliers and airlines like American, United and Southwest.

Delta, which has more than 900 aircraft, relies heavily on planes made by Boeing competitor Airbus, which it inherited after merging with the former Northwest Airlines.

Delta flew more than 5 million passengers over Thanksgiving, which was up 2.5 percent from 2018.

Ed Bastion, CEO of the world's second largest airline by fleet size after American, said Delta never planned never ordered the MAX, 'and we do not plan to.'

Separately, US and European regulators are expected to return to Iowa this week to review a software documentation audit of the MAX that was not completed last year, officials said Sunday, Reuters reports.

FAA and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency are scheduled to meet in Seattle this week and then return to Rockwell Collins facility in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, next weekend to review the audit.
Since September 2019, the Australian continent has been playing victim to raging wildfires.

According to CNBC, so far, 12.35 million acres of land has been burned destroying more than 1400 homes and taking the death toll up to 23. Even worse is the plight of Australia's endangered species and protected wildlife. Shockingly, half a billion animals have been reported dead.

Image credit: Reuters.



As the world sits heartbroken and watches in horror, most people are wondering what they can do to help. For residents and those who can't fly to Australia, we've listed all the ways in which you can help and create a difference.



Image credit: Reuters.

1. Sign a petition that urges the Australian government to declare a national emergency.

A petition on Change.org is asking residents and people across the world to sign it in order to get President Scott Morrisson to declare a national emergency and unleash a real movement against climate change and put these wildfires to end. That can only happen when everyone from the privileged to those most affected come together and help.

2. Get active on social media.

It's only going to get worse. Let's hope this smoke is the catalyst for more nation-wide climate protests.



This government will do nothing until the people make their voices impossible to ignore. https://t.co/8ioThQEqnq  Katie Horneshaw (@KatieElatey) December 20, 2019

Sadly, politicians continue to deny the very existence of climate change. Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison has been accused of downplaying the bushfires, and, in turn, the real impact of climate change. His policies aren't being questioned for not being environmentally-conscious either. Now is the time to speak up and get Australia's government to listen.

3. Plant more and more trees.

Image credit: Reuters.

If residents of Delhi can spend Rs 1000 crores on alcohol, we can spare a few rupees and donate to tree planting organisations. Trees are literally the only thing that can reduce carbon and that's the need of the hour. For planting a tree in Australia, you can donate through Euresca and those who want a tree planted in their name in India can find more information here.

4. Donate to protect firefighters.

Image credit: Reuters.

As firefighters have been the first response team for curbing the fire, many have lost their lives or have hurt themselves severely. Donating to the NSFW Rural Service directly via their website will help immensely.

5. Help save Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park.

Image credit: Reuters.

This wildlife park suffered large scale destruction and is now in dire need of funds for renovation, funds that will also help provide proper medical treatment to animals including injured koalas. You can donate or choose to volunteer directly via their website.

6. Ship food, medicines, and other important supplies to Australia.

Image credit: Reuters.

A lot of people have been evacuated from nearby towns and they are now seeking help. If you can ship a box of emergency supplies to organisations like Make It Rain, you will truly be making a difference in a lot of people's lives.

7. Volunteer if you are nearby.

Image credit: Reuters.

Make volunteering cool for yourself, your friends and family; go out and do good.

8. Encourage people to welcome those who are displaced.

Image credit: Pexels.

If you have friends and family in Australia, please encourage them to list an available bedroom in their house for those who are displaced. A service like Find A Bed has enabled 5500 people to find shelter.

9. Help rebuild people's lives.

A large number of Australian residents have been displaced due to the raging wildfires. How you can help is by donating to St. Vincent de Paul Society that is accepting donations on behalf of evacuees. Rs 500 is enough to feed a family of four right now.
Thailand on Monday opened its first full-time clinics prescribing cannabis oil for medical treatment. Around 400 hundred patients, many of them with cancer, received the oil for free at a flagship clinic at the Ministry of Public Health in Nonthaburi. It's another step in the government's legalizing and promoting the licensed medical marijuana products to relieve symptoms of a range of conditions.

For 57-year-old Chamroen Nakurai, who was diagnosed with lymph node cancer two years ago, it's an important day.

Cannabis oil helps lessen the side effects of chemotherapy but she's only been able to get it through illegal underground suppliers. Until now.

"The treatment isn't widely available and the cost is quite high if you visit underground clinics, but this service is free and anyone can access it," she said.

Around 25 similar clinics already operate, since the legislature agreed to amend the country's drug laws, in 2018.

But this one  and another in Bangkok  are the first ones to run full-time. The aim eventually is to open them nationwide, provided results prove that they are effective.

Initially the oil is being used in four forms, for the treatment of conditions such as migraines, insomnia, nausea, numbness and pain.

"Marijuana could be an answer," said Dr. Prasert Mongkolsiri, the director of a public hospital, who helped advise patients on Monday.

"At least the patients' quality of life is improved. At least it can lessen the side effects of the modern chemical-based medicines that they've been taking for 10 or 20 years."

Thailand, well-known for its harsh anti-drug laws, is now eyeing cannabis' economic potential and has established its own production facilities.

A report last year by Prohibition Partners, who claim to be the leading authority on the subject, said Asia's medical cannabis market would be worth around $5.8 billion (USD) by 2024.

The chief architect of this new policy drive - Public Health Minister Anutin Chanvirakul  toured the clinic on Monday and spoke of the benefits regulation would bring to patients' safety.

"Once we have brought it up above ground it will be under certain regulations so we can assure the safety for all patients who consume this cannabis oil extract," he said.

For the time being patients will receive the cannabis oil free, though officials say it is likely that'll change in the future.
Could Cats, dead on arrival with critics and mass audiences, ascend to the Heaviside Layer to be reborn as a stoner classic? Theres talk that the movie could be the next Rocky Horror Picture Show, a cult film from 1975 that still inspires audiences to dress up as the characters and yell at the screen. On Twitter, someone posted video of an audience member in a cat suit dancing along to the credits. Some theaters, like the Alamo Drafthouse, are hosting rowdy screenings of Cats where people  many in various states of inebriation  are encouraged to yell at the screen. Other screenings not explicitly designated as rowdy are becoming communal experiences nonetheless  or, perhaps, mass trauma events.
A mother has lopped off her long locks in order to raise money for research into Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

Laura McCorriston's decision to cut off her hair has raised almost 1,700, and is the family's latest fundraiser for Laura's 10-year-old son Callum.

In February 2011 Callum, who's in P6 at Termoncanice Primary School, Limavady, was diagnosed with DMD, a life-limiting, muscle-wasting illness for which there is currently no cure.

'Team Callum' is made up of Laura (38), a full-time carer, her credit controller husband Paul (35), their daughter Caitlin and Callum himself, as well as their extended family and friends in the Limavady area.

It has been raising awareness and funds for the charity Muscular Dystrophy UK and Laura said they have raised around 35,000 since 'Team Callum' was set up, with skydives, abseils and holding events such as fun days and raffles.

Laura explained that "it was very hard to take on board" when she was told by their paediatrician that Callum had been diagnosed with a spontaneous mutation of Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

"He was about 19 months old and he wasn't walking or attempting to walk," she said.

"I wasn't overly concerned but the health visitor said she wanted to refer him for physio to try and strengthen his legs.

"After a couple of months he was referred to a paediatrician who got some bloods taken, and then the paediatrician called to ask to come out to the house to speak to us, so we knew then that there was something badly wrong."

The paediatrician visited the family home to explain the diagnosis and, thanks to "a fantastic family support network" they're getting on with life.

Callum now undergoes physiotherapy twice a day and is taking the steroid Deflazacort.

He also takes Translarna medication after his mum spearheaded a campaign to make sure it was approved for use in Northern Ireland.

"Callum fitted the criteria for Translarna - the first ever treatment for Duchenne - which is mutation dependant and only works for 13% of the boys," Laura said.

"Thankfully, it happened to be the mutation that Callum has so, after a long fight he got access to that when the NHS decided to fund it and he's been on that treatment for three years."

DMD is a muscle-wasting disease and between the ages of 10 and 12 boys may lose the ability to walk completely and become wheelchair-dependant.

In later teenage years breathing and the heart can be affected and life expectancy for boys with DMD is in the 20s.

Laura said Callum, who is "still mobile and active", has a wheelchair for long distances "to get around at school".

She added: "Callum is starting to realise that he's not like other children.

"But he doesn't know the prognosis and I intend to keep it like that for as long as possible."

To cope with the illness, Laura said the family "just threw ourselves into fundraising because basically that was all we could do".

Cutting off her hair was, nevertheless, a scary step.

Last October Laura said she "set up a fundraising page without telling my husband or children so that I couldn't back out.

"We've done so much fundraising in the past but this was different," she explained.

"But it's only hair. It'll grow back."

"Callum's muscles won't grow back, but my hair will," she added.
Army reservists will dig mass graves for more than 100,000 sheep and cattle killed in the bushfires to stave off a potential biosecurity emergency.

Emergency Management Minister David Littleproud said disposing of dead livestock was an urgent task.

'We will be trying to take pre-emptive steps today with state agencies around making sure the disposal of the livestock is done quickly - there is a biosecurity risk there,' Mr Littleproud said.

'We have to think about our native species that have been decimated by the fires, too, in terms of our recovery.'

Agriculture Minister Bridget McKenzie has offered 100 vets to bushfire-affected states to assess and euthanise thousands of injured livestock.

Senator McKenzie fears the bushfire crisis could devastate the national herd, with animals dying from heat stress and smoke inhalation.

Army reservists will dig mass graves for sheep and cattle killed in the bushfires to stave off a potential biosecurity emergency

Senator McKenzie fears the bushfire crisis could devastate the national herd, with animals dying from heat stress and smoke inhalation

Defence personnel will be sent into fire grounds once it is safe to dig pits and bury dead stock.

'Bearing in mind, though, it's about getting access to those still live fire grounds,' Senator McKenzie told the ABC.

'Where it's safe to do so we need to be getting in within a week, ideally, to really be dealing with the carcasses in an appropriate way.'

The National Farmers' Federation estimates thousands of sheep and cattle have been killed in the bushfires.

The livestock toll is expected to climb after fires tore through southern NSW over the weekend, with dozens of dead livestock seen lining the road into Batlow.

Fodder and water is being distributed to surviving livestock herds on blackened paddocks, while fencing and other farm infrastructure is repaired.

Fodder and water is being distributed to surviving livestock herds on blackened paddocks, while fencing and other farm infrastructure is repaired.

Water stocks contaminated by ash are also being investigated.

Senator McKenzie paid tribute to farmers dealing with sick and dying stock while fighting the ongoing fires.

'We're looking at very stretched, superhuman efforts here by our agriculture sector,' she said.

Steve Shipton had to shoot an injured cattle on his farm in Coolagolite (pictured)

Farming organisations have also asked for fodder and water, but bringing hay into communities could increase the fire danger.

The federal government has committed $2 billion over two years to a national bushfire recovery fund.

The fund will support local governments, farmers and primary producers, and deliver mental health supports.

Scott Morrison has pledged to commit 'everything that is needed and more' to the recovery effort.

'If more is needed and the cost is higher, then more will be provided,' the prime minister told reporters.

Carcasses litter the land in Australia, as the Prime minister has promised $2 Billion towards recovery

The states will not be asked to match the federal government's funding.

The recovery fund will be administered by a new agency headed by former Australian Federal Police boss Andrew Colvin.

The prime minister said his government was not focused on the financial cost.

'The surplus is no focus for me,' Mr Morrison said.

'What matters to me is the human cost and meeting whatever cost we need to meet.'

Reconstructing bridges, roads and critical infrastructure destroyed by the blazes is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The prime minister is considering launching a royal commission into the bushfires, an idea which opposition leader Anthony Albanese is open to.

'We're going to have to have a comprehensive inquiry that goes to the full suite of measures,' Mr Albanese told Sky News.

'How we manage our national parks, the long-term impact of climate change, this is not business-as-usual.'

Agriculture Minister Bridget McKenzie has offered 100 vets to bushfire-affected states to assess and euthanise thousands of injured livestock
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The laundry detergents market is expected to witness high growth in future, due to increasing e-commerce platforms across the globe. Moreover, growing usage of laundry services in the emerging economies is expected to aid the growth of laundry detergents market.

Based on product type, the global laundry detergents market has been segmented into bars, powder, liquid, pods, and others. The liquid segment accounted for the maximum market share in 2017 and is expected to grow at a higher rate during the forecast period due its increasing usage in residential and commercial sectors such as hospitality industry, laundry services, textile industry, and others. Residential sector includes its usage in household cleaning.

Laundry Detergents Market Key Players:

Some of the key players in the global laundry detergents market are Unilever (UK), The Procter & Gamble Company (US), RSPL Group (India), Henkel AG & Company, KGaA (Germany), Church & Dwight Co., Inc. (US), Nirma Limited (India), Lion Corporation (Japan), Kao Corporation (Japan), and Method Products, pbc.(US).

Laundry Detergents Market Segment:

The global laundry detergents market has been segregated, by distribution channel, into store-based and non-store based. The store-based segment has been further segregated into supermarkets and hypermarkets, convenience store, and others. The store-based segment is expected to generate higher revenue, with the supermarkets and hypermarkets sub-segment being the largest due to the strong and widespread network of stores. The non-store-based segment is expected to register the higher CAGR during the assessment period owing to technological advancements in the e-commerce industry and growing consumer preference for online retailing.

Access Report Details @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/laundry-detergents-market-6949

Laundry Detergents Market Regional Analysis:

The global laundry detergents market has been segmented on the basis of region, into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Rest of the World.

North America is expected to dominate the global laundry detergents market owing to the rising number of e-commerce platforms is expected to be the major driving factor for product growth, particularly among the working-class owing to the convenience and easy accessibility. The e-commerce platform, in the US and Canada is largely acquired by companies such as Target, Amazon, and Walgreen. These companies offer wide range of products, which in turn attracts more consumers. Hence, it is expected to drive the laundry detergents market in coming years

Asia-Pacific laundry detergents market are expected to grow at a rapid pace due to the increasing population in the countries and consumption of laundry detergents in the regions. Europe is also expected to project a significant market share owing to the increasing disposable income of consumers in the countries, have led consumers opt for different products. Furthermore, hectic schedule of consumers in the countries have led to adoption of products which are easy and continent to use. Hence, this is expected to drive the growth of laundry detergents market.

About Market Research Future:

At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.

MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.
Unions will meet French officials hoping to alter or halt plans to reform pension schemes and raise the retirement age.

A crucial week of negotiations between trade unions and government officials has begun in France amid nationwide protests and transport strikes against plans to overhaul the pension system.

A compromise has never been so close, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told France Inter radio on Monday, with talks between the prime minister and workers representatives set to resume on Tuesday.

Frances President Emmanuel Macron held a Cabinet meeting on Monday ahead of the talks, and the government is not inflexible, Le Maire said, suggesting there is room for negotiation including on the financing of the pension system.

Several unions have called for nationwide protests on Thursday and Saturday, while the hard-left CGT union also called for workers to disrupt the countrys oil depots and refineries later this week.

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The national rail company, SNCF, said train traffic was improving across the country on Monday, with eight out of 10 high-speed trains running.

Yet the Paris Metro was still severely disrupted, with most lines open only for a limited amount of time and several stations closed.

In his televised New Years address, Macron vowed to carry out the overhaul of the pension system, but called on his government to find a quick compromise with unions.

Macron wants to unify Frances 42 different pension schemes, some of which grant early retirement, into a single one. Plans include raising the eligibility age for full pensions from 62 to 64, the most vocally criticised measure.

The strike pits Macron, a 42-year-old former investment banker who took office in 2017 on a promise of opening up Frances highly regulated economy, against powerful unions who say he is set on dismantling worker protections.

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Macron says the new system will be fairer and financially sustainable, but unions fear it will make people work longer for lower pensions. Recent polls show a majority of French people support the protest movement.

Frances trade unions have spearheaded nationwide strikes since early December in an outcry over the pensions overhaul, disrupting schools, railways and roads, while lending support to regular protests.

Mass demonstrations in Paris have seen police use tear gas against protesters close to tourist hotspots like the Centre Pompidou museum of modern art, where some demonstrators had erected barricades, set fire to them and smashed up a bus stop.
An alumnus of Knight Capital Group and PwC, the new CFO took on the post on January 01.

Steve is a tremendous asset for BGC, and we strongly value his industry experience, commented BGC chief executive and board chair Howard W. Lutnick. It was clear to us that Steve was the strongest candidate for this role.

His in-depth knowledge of our business, experience with electronic trading companies, strong relationship with our lenders, bankers, and the marketplace, will be invaluable as we continue to accelerate our strategy to further spread automation and technology across the financial markets. The BGC leadership team and I look forward to working closely with Steve in the coming years.

Anthony Warner and Julian Swain, also on January 01, assumed newly created roles as BGCs co-heads of global brokerage. Warner, who came onboard in June 2015, was previously in charge of the companys brokerage business in London and of key Middle East locations.

Swain meanwhile has been with BGC division GFI Group since 2001, most recently serving as global deputy CEO. He and Warner now report to BGC president Shaun D. Lynn.

Reporting to the president, too, is global head of listed products and Paris Jean-Pierre Aubin, who oversaw listed products and primary structured products globally. Aubin has been part of the BGC roster since 2005.

I am truly excited by these changes to our management structure, said Lynn. We are driving our business forward with technology across electronic trading, data, software, and post-trade, and it is important for BGC to be at the forefront of this evolution.

We expect the combination of our world-class technology and broad-based access to liquidity across hundreds of product categories will drive BGC to be the partner of choice for our clients. Anthony, Julian, and JP will together ensure that we are well-positioned for the future and will be focused on delivering on the changing needs of our clients across voice and electronic trading.
Former President Trump blasts Sen. Mike Rounds in emailed statement

Former President Donald Trump criticized South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds after Rounds said the 2020 election was fair on national television Sunday.
A police team of Machilipatnam's R Peta station seized banned tobacco products worth Rs 2.25 lakh.

"Our police team was tracking a person named Polisetti Narayana Murty, we intercepted him on Sunday to find banned gutka packets. Based on the information provided by him, our team then searched the house of one Purnachandra Rao at Mustakhan Peta. There our police found banned gutka and khaini worth Rs 2.25 lakh," Machilipatnam DSP Mahaboob Pasha told reporters here.

The two accused nabbed will be sent to remand, according to Pasha.

According to the official, the accused was bringing gutka from Odisha and Guntur.

Further investigation is underway.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Romanian Orthodox Christians on Monday celebrated Epiphany by jumping into the cold waters of the Danube River to retrieve a cross tossed by a priest, a ceremony which commemorates the baptism of Jesus Christ. By tradition, the person who retrieves the wooden cross will be freed from evil spirits and will be healthy throughout the year.

After the cross is fished out, the priest sprinkles believers with water using a bunch of basil.

The religious holiday of Epiphany is also celebrated in some Western Christian churches as Three Kings Day, which marks the visit of the Magi, or three wise men, to the baby Jesus, and closes out the Christmas season.

Celebrations in the Romanian city of Fetesti also included horse-drawn carriage parades with intricately ornate horses.

Epiphany marks the end of the 12 days of Christmas, but not all Orthodox Christian churches celebrate it on the same day.

While the Orthodox Christian churches in Greece, Bulgaria and Romania celebrate the feast on January 6, Orthodox Churches in Russia, Ukraine and Serbia follow the Julian calendar, according to which Epiphany is celebrated on January 19, as their Christmas falls on January 7.
Arkansas dispensaries sold about $28 million worth of medical marijuana in the first calendar year of legal sales in the state, according to a state agency.

More than 4,200 pounds (1905 kilograms) of marijuana was bought in the state this year, which accounts for more than $28.13 million in sales, the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration reported.

State regulators expect the industry to take off more early next year as the two remaining growing facilities begin full operations and the remaining dispensaries open to the public, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.

At the end of December, 14 of 32 licensed retailers had opened. Two others in Texarkana had received final approval to open.

Marijuana commissioners have expressed frustration at how long it is taking the 32 dispensaries in the state to open since being licensed this year.

Green Springs Medical Dispensary, in Hot Springs, has been a consistent sales leader. By late December, it had sold more than 1000 pounds (453 kilograms) of cannabis, the finance department reported. Following it was the Releaf Center, in Bentonville, which had sold about 502 pounds (227 kilograms).

Dragan Vicentic, Green Springs owner, credited the dispensarys success to being attentive to patients. The dispensary started selling one rotating marijuana product for $5 a gram (.04 ounces) about two months ago after Vicentic consistently heard patients complain that the drug was cheaper on the street.

Thats why were No. 1, bro! Vicentic said. Just like Walmart, youve got a loss leader. This is just one of those things where we say were going to sell one item at cost. We just say were going to give back to the people that got us here.

The Source, a dispensary in Bentonville, had sold more than 385 pounds (174 kilograms), the department reported. Harvest, in Conway, had sold about 261 pounds (118 kilograms), and Fort Cannabis, in Fort Smith, had sold more than 15 pounds (6 kilograms) last year.

Some parts of the state are without a dispensary, including Little Rock. Both of the dispensaries in the capital city have said they expect to open early next year, but neither had yet requested final inspection from state regulators, said finance department spokesman Scott Hardin.

Voters approved an amendment in 2016 to legalize medical marijuana.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Trends Cannabis
Greg Gutfeld outside Fox News headquarters in New York in November. (Bryan Anselm for The Post)

The caustic comic has gone from irreverent cable news oddity to a ratings champ who seems right at home on the network.
Johannes Eisele/Getty

In the early hours after President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Irans top military official, the Democratic presidential field responded in lockstep that the operation had the potential to destabilize the region further and put the lives of Americans and their allies at risk of deadly reprisal.

But as the potential blowback against the United States became clearer in the days following the death of Major General Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Iranian Quds Force and architect of Irans war against ISIS across the region, candidates began to divide themselves into two camps: those who argue that only a steady, experienced hand can steady Americas increasingly erratic foreign policy, and those who point to the past two decades of U.S. foreign policy to show the need for drastic change.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, whose entire presidential campaign centers on the restorationist idea that his decades of Washington experience are the best guarantee to undo the Trump administrations mistakes, has been increasingly nudged closer to the fire by opponents pointing to his past support for the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation, a quagmire from which many of the current crises in the region emerged. As a former two-term vice president and a major figure in U.S. foreign policy during his decades in the Senate, Biden is particularly vulnerable to attacks on geopolitical orthodoxy as an example of what not to do.

Iraq Tells Trump GTFO After Soleimani Strike

Age does not necessarily correlate with wisdom on foreign policy, one foreign policy adviser to a top-tier campaign told The Daily Beast. Over the course of years, and in some cases decades, there is a track record that is extensiveand in some cases it is consistentin pointing to flaws of judgement, and perhaps even a worldview that is not necessarily well-suited to what is required of a commander in chief.

Leading the charge, unsurprisingly, is Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who for years has trumpeted his 2002 vote against authorizing the use of military force in Iraq as a member of the House of Representatives as evidence that decades of foreign policy experience cant supplant good judgment. Even in the days before the strike that killed Soleimani when foreign policy was still very much on the back burner for most presidential hopefuls, Sanders had described Bidens support for the war as a lot of baggage.

Story continues

I was right about Vietnam. I was right about Iraq. I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran, Sanders tweeted on Friday morning, alongside a video underscored by a trap beat in which he describes that war and the vote that authorized it as the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of the United States.

People want to criticize me for that? Go for it, thats okay, Sanders said. I dont apologize to anybody.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, both of whom entered politics long after public opinion and political consensus turned against the invasion of Iraq, have been more implicit in their criticism, instead warning that Soleimanis death risks an escalation of military tensions with Iran that could result in another endless warlike the one Biden voted for.

Every piece of this is about judgement, Warren said on CNNs State of the Union on Sunday, when asked whether Biden should be the most trusted candidate on foreign policy matters despite his past support for the Iraq War, as polls of likely voters have suggested. There are people running for president who are willing to keep combat troops in the Middle East for five years, for 10 years Staying pinned down and escalating our wars in the Middle East is not in the long-term interest of the United States.

Warren has not been immune from criticism for her own response to Soleimanis killing. Her campaigns initial statement in response to the strike, calling the late Quds Force chief a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, was criticized from the left as parroting the talking points of more hawkish Democrats. Warren on Sunday morning dodged the question of whether she still felt that Soleimanis death amounted to an assassination, responding that the question that we ought to focus on is, why now?

On the same program, Buttigieg declined to directly question Bidens judgement on foreign policy matters, telling host Jake Tapper that the focus should be on Trump, his decision-making process ahead of ordering the operation, and as The Daily Beast reported on Saturday, his decision to gossip about impending military action with members of his private Palm Beach resort.

Ill let the V.P. speak to his own judgment, Buttigieg said, noting that his judgement is informed by his experience as a naval intelligence officer in Afghanistan. But earlier in the week, before most Americans or candidates likely even knew who Soleimani was, Buttigieg had blasted Bidens vote as supporting the worst foreign policy decision made by the United States in my lifetime.

You could also argue that we wouldnt be there if it weren't for the invasion of Iraq in the first place, which I still believe was a grave mistake, Buttigieg later told reporters in New Hampshire on Friday.

Buttigieg and Warrens more abstract criticisms of Bidens judgement, the foreign policy adviser told The Daily Beast, harken back to a day when differences on geopolitics werent marks of personal failureso long as you learned from your mistakes.

A lot of this has gone out the window, but theres a hope where we can get back to a point where these positions and approaches can transcend politics, where theyre not personalized, not politicized, but based on principles and values, the adviser added.

The Biden campaign, however, told The Daily Beast that they see the emergence of foreign policy matters as a central issue in campaign politics as a boon, rather than a burden.

These events put into greater relief that we need a commander-in-chief who can, from the moment theyre sworn inand without needing on the job trainingstart repairing the severe damage that Donald Trump has done on the world stage, a campaign spokesperson told The Daily Beast.

One campaign that has felt no compunction about explicitly personalizing Bidens past potential liabilities on the Middle East is that of Trump himself. In the hours after Soleimanis killing, Trump campaign officials declared that Bidens track record in the region was both too bellicose and too simpering.

America's enemies in Iran rejoiced under Obama/Biden, tweeted Trump campaign director of rapid response Matt Wolking. Under Trump, they are crying like babies.

The Trump campaign also pushed out an old interview with former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who served under President Barack Obama, in which he stood by saying that he thought Biden had been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.

Bidens response, as in other campaign moments when his buttons were pressed, has been defensive to the point of inelegance, refusing to respond to Sanders comments about his baggage except to say that Sanders himself has more than his fair share.

On Friday, Bidens response to a reporters inquiry about his role in the 2011 operation that led to the death of Osama bin Laden prompted further questions about whether his foreign policy experience is a help or a hindrance. In an exchange with Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy, Biden said that he would be willing to use an airstrike to kill a terrorist leader, using the bin Laden operation as an example. When Doocy followed up by noting that Biden has previously said that he discouraged President Obama from authorizing the operation, Biden brusquely responded, No, I didnt. I didnt.

How Biden Kept Screwing Up IraqOver and Over and Over Again

The exchangewhich was almost instantly repackaged by the Trump campaign into an email titled Joe Biden just lied about opposing the raid to kill Osama bin Ladensparked a flurry of fact-checking articles noting that by all accounts, including Bidens own in 2012, he had not backed the operation in a group meeting at the time. In 2015, Biden said that he did not offer a firm opinion in that group meeting, saying that it would have been a mistake to do so, but that he had privately encouraged President Obama to trust your gut.

A Biden campaign official confirmed to The Daily Beast that Biden had told Obama in a private conversation that he supported the president following his instincts on the raid, and noted that that aspect of Bidens story has never changed.

Biden, for his part, is hoping to keep the focus on the more pressing matter of Trumps foreign policy, rather than his own.

No president has a right to take our country to war without the informed consent of Americansinformed consent. And right now we have no idea what this guy has in mind, we have no idea, Biden told reporters before a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday evening. He's going off on a tweetstorm on his own, and it's incredibly dangerous and irresponsible.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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High-profile authors are raising money for the nation's bushfire crisis by auctioning-off rare copies of their books, offering writing advice and even dangling a sneak-peek at their latest manuscript.

Young Adult writers Emily Gale and Nova Weetman came up with the idea for an "Authors for Fireys" fundraiser a fortnight ago. The concept, which launched on Sunday, involves writers selling their work on social media to the person who pledges the biggest donation to Victoria's Country Fire Authority.

Australian author Hannah Kent.

Ms Gale said the idea of a Twitter auction was borrowed from fellow author Zana Fraillon, who has raised money for refugees in the past, because it distributes the fundraising workload. Instead of a centralised fundraising committee or donations website, anyone can offer an item for auction on social media and promote it using the "Authors for Fireys" hashtag. The auction winner will then have to send their donation receipt before being sent the prize.

Ms Gale said she and other authors were urging people to donate to the CFA given comedian Celeste Barber's multi-million dollar fundraiser for NSW's Rural Fire Service. (By Monday afternoon, the comedian's bushfire appeal had raised $30 million  more than 10 times the total amount of donations the RFS received in 2019.)
Kansas City Sunday Inferno

7 displaced, 1 KCFD firefighter injured by house fire KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) - The Kansas City Fire Department had an eventful morning trying to extinguish a house that caught fire while a family was inside on Sunday morning. It all began at 10:51 a.m. at a house in the 700 block of Bennington Ave.

Old School Crash Tragedy

90 year-old man killed in crash at 127th & Holmes KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A 90 year-old man died from a crash at East 127th Street and Holmes Road on Dec. 28. Police said the man was driving a Ford pickup north on Holmes when he reportedly cross the center line and struck two southbound vehicles.

The Angels Rise

L Brands stock soars 8.5% after upgrade on strength of Bath & Body Works though Victoria's Secret still a question By L Brands Inc. stock soared 8.5% in Friday trading after it was upgraded to buy from neutral at Bank of America based on the strength of the Bath & Body Works beauty business. L Brands' price target was lifted to $25 from $21.

Right Wing Renaissance

Rush Limbaugh renews radio show contract in a 'long-term' deal "The Rush Limbaugh Show" will continue well into the new decade.

Impeachment Still Awaits

Iran Uncertainty Grips Congress as Impeachment Looms President Trump's decision to strike a top Iranian general has upended Congress's priorities, thrusting matters of war and peace into the spotlight. WASHINGTON - President Trump's abrupt decision to kill Iran's top security commander has reshuffled the already fraught political dynamic around impeachment and thrust matters of war and peace into the middle of an election-year debate over whether to remove Mr. Trump from office.

Kansas City Kindness

Library's VISTA Project honors legacy of MLK with 2020 Hygiene Kit Donation Drive In the spirit of service embodied by the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. the Library's AmeriCorps VISTA Project is collecting donations of travel-size personal care items for a Hygiene Kit Drive. Between January 2-15, 2020, visit any Kansas City Public Library location and bring supplies to drop off in dedicated boxes.

Winter Warming Trend

Above average temperatures for several more days KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Expect the warmer than average temperatures to last through Thursday as a storm system approaches to bring a chance for rain.

For our most dedicated news junkies . . . Here's a glimpse of pop culture, community items and all manner of interesting times. Checkit:And this is thefor right now . . .
Everyones favourite food secrets are back for a fifth season! Go behind the scenes of the factories churning out delicious sweets, old-time classics and the new generation of artisanal treats.

Wednesdays from 9:30pm AEDT.
For those worried about warp-speed war, it would be well to seize todays opportunities to reduce the dangers. The ICBMs on duty today in Russia and the United States can reach their targets in about 30 minutes. Russia has offered to work expeditiously to extend by five years the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty limiting these weapons, including Avangard. The treaty, signed in 2010, expires a little more than a year from now. A five-year extension is a concrete move the Trump administration could take to prevent the expansion of these missile arsenals. Another step to reduce the danger of a miscalculation would be to find a way  bilaterally with Russia  to take the missiles in both nations off launch-ready alert, a Cold War anachronism that remains in place.
A Kenyan pastor horrified his congregation when he repeatedly stabbed his wife in the pulpit during Sunday service and then sliced his own throat.

Mr Elisha Misiko, 55, was the pastor of the Ground for God's Gospel Ministries in Mombasa County, which he co-managed with his wife, Ms Ann Mghoi.

One of the village elders Mr Mtengo Amuri said that Mr Msiko sat down calmly at the start of the Sunday service before standing up and moving 'stealthily' towards his wife, revealing the two knives hidden under his shirt as he walked.

Pictured: Ground for Gospel Ministries in Mombasa County filmed yesterday

Courtesy of KTN News

'The husband moved stealthily towards his wife and stabbed her in the back,' Amuri said. 'When he tried to slit her throat, she blocked him, injuring her hand.'

A police report confirmed that Ms Mghoi, who was the mother of Mr Msiko's four children, bore knife wounds in the back, hand and stomach.

Eyewitnesses said that Mr Msiko repeatedly knifed the mother-of-four before worshippers intervened and arranged for her to be driven to a local hospital but medical staff were unable to save her.

While doctors were working on Ms Mghoi, her husband stabbed himself in the stomach and cut his own throat.

Janet Tole, a friend of the couple, told the Daily Nation the husband and wife had been warring for months and that they were separated. Ms Tole said that Msiko was convinced his wife was barring him from seeing his four children.

Pictured: A village elder speaks to reporters after the incident yesterday

She added that he had threatened to kill his spouse on multiple occasions.

A suicide note left at the scene confirmed Ms Tole's account.

'In the notes, the husband claimed the wife barred him from meeting his four children and was also not involving him in management of the church despite having funded it through a loan, which he was still servicing,' Kisauni Sub-County Police Commander Julius Kiragu, said.

Mr Amuri confirmed the accounts, claiming the murder-suicide was the culmination of many years of disputes over the management of the church and Msiko was fixated with the idea that his wife was trying to take control of the ministry.
A historic music venue that hosted the likes of Madonna, Ed Sheeran and Prince was gutted last night after a huge blaze tore through the roof.

Eight fire engines and around 60 firefighters tackled the flames at Koko in Camden High Street, north London, after being called shortly before 9pm on Monday.

London Fire Brigade said 30 per cent of the building's roof had been alight and warned people to stay away from the area.

The blaze was brought under control in the early hours of Tuesday, but the cause is not yet known.

Koko, formerly known as Camden Palace and the Camden Hippodrome, had been closed for a 40million refurbishment and was covered in scaffolding.

Owner Olly Bengough today said he is 'deeply saddened' and thanked the London Fire Brigade for their 'quick' response.

In a statement, Mr Bengough said: 'We are deeply saddened by the fire that took place at Koko last night and pleased to announce there have been no casualties.

'We want to thank the London Fire Brigade for its quick response and how well it handled the situation.

'The amount of support we have received from the public has been amazing and we'll be doing our best to get the redevelopment of this iconic building back on-track.'

He did not comment on whether the fire would delay the venue's planned reopening in the spring following a refurbishment, saying the club would provide an update as 'circumstances become clearer'.

Around 60 firefighters tackling a blaze at the Koko club in Camden, north London. The London Fire Brigade were called to the music venue at 8.56pm on Monday

The scene this morning after last night's blaze. Emergency crews said firefighters will remian at the scene for the rest of the day

Koko was set to reopen in spring 2020 after a 'major state-of-the-art' revamp, following the purchase of two adjacent buildings.

Fire crews from Euston, Kentish Town, Islington, Soho, Holloway and surrounding areas helped tackle the blaze at the venue, which is close to Mornington Crescent Underground station.

Firefighters will remain at the scene throughout the day.

Pictures showed the former theatre with large flames at the top of the building.

Fire crews from Euston, Kentish Town, Islington, Soho, Holloway and surrounding areas helped tackle the blaze at the venue (pictured)

London Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted: 'London's firefighters have been working tirelessly overnight to tackle a fire at Koko in Camden.

'Their quick response to get the fire under control meant the fire was contained to the roof of the building.

'To all firefighters and (London Fire Brigade) staff involved: thank you.'

Leader of Camden Council Georgia Gould wrote on Twitter: 'Heartbreaking watching the Camden Palace / Koko up in flames this evening, a building that holds so many memories and means so much to us in Camden.'

MP for Holborn and St Pancras Sir Keir Starmer responded: 'Awful news in Camden tonight. Incredible response from our firefighters. As says, we owe them so much.'

Koko (pictured ablaze last night) was set to reopen in spring 2020 after a 'major state-of-the-art' revamp, following the purchase of two adjacent buildings

Roads were closed in the are as the huge place ripped through the venue in Camden, north London

London Mayor Sadiq Khan thanks firefighters who managed to contain the blaze to the roof

Social media user Jarjan Fisher said: 'Massive blaze at in Camden :( amazing work by the London fire brigade, the flames have mostly been subdued now.

'But it's not looking good, I'm very afraid the roof and interior are gone. I hope it can be rebuilt.'

DJ Tony Blackburn tweeted last night: 'I've only just heard about this.

'This is terrible news particularly as it was going through a refurbishment and we were hoping to hold our next BBC Radio London Soul Night Out there when it opens.

'Let's hope nobody has been hurt in the fire at KoKo it's such a great venue.'

Firefighters will remain on the scene (pictured this morning) for the rest of the day
German foreign minister Heiko Maas: 'We are very worried that instability in Iraq will surely increase without the international community's engagement against ISIS.' Photo: Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters

German foreign minister Heiko Maas has described Washingtons threat of major retaliation towards Iran as not very helpful in the current tense situation.

Speaking to German public radio (DLF), Maas expressed deep concern about the Iraqi parliaments decision to expel US troops from the country in response to the US assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad last week. Trump vowed to hit Iraq with crippling sanctions in response.

We are very worried that instability in Iraq will surely increase without the international community's engagement against ISIS," Maas told DLF. He said that without a US troop presence in Iraq, it would be difficult to keep German troops in the country.

READ MORE: Oil and gold spike on Trump and Iran tension escalation

Maas noted that a lot has been invested in rebuilding Iraq in the past few years, and all of this is now in danger of being lost. He added that persuasive arguments, not threats, are the only way to keep an open dialogue going with Iraq.

On Sunday, the leaders of the UK, Germany, and France issued a joint statement appealing for the US and Iran to exercise utmost restraint.

Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, and Angela Merkel jointly stressed the urgent need for de-escalation and said years of work to stabilise Iraq are now under threat. They urged the Iraqi government to keep supporting the fight against ISIS in the region.

The three countries will meet on Monday to discuss Tehrans announcement at the weekend that it would no longer honour the 2015 nuclear agreement. Trump tweeted on Saturday that the US has targeted 52 Iranian sites ... and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.

The escalating tension between the US and Iran caused investors to flock to oil and gold on Monday, with the oil price (CL=F; BZ=F) continuing to trade upwards of 2% to $70 per barrel over supply concerns.
The number of interest-free balance transfer credit cards available has nearly halved in just three years in a potential blow for those looking to shift Christmas spending or shuffle around debt.

There were 122 balance transfer offers in January 2017 compared to 76 today, according to figures from Moneyfacts.

Meanwhile, the average length of time a cardholder has before interest kicks in has fallen from 659 days to 536 days in the same timeframe and the longest interest-free deal from 43 months to 29.

Squeeze: Balance transfer deals were once plentiful but they have shrunk amid a regulatory crackdown on credit card borrowing

Rachel Springall, from Moneyfacts, said: 'Borrowers have around four months less on average to pay back their debt before interest applies than they did in 2017.

'The cost to move debt is also more expensive based on the top deal on the market today compared to 2019, as consumers would need to pay 22.80 more in upfront fees.

'Borrowers would also have to pay an additional 12 a month to clear a core debt of 3,000 within 29 months, compared to if they had grabbed the 33-month offer last year.'

Balance transfer credit cards are a staple of those trying to clear, or shuffle around, their debt and allow cardholders to move balances from one credit card to another temporarily fee-free one in return, often for a fee - but sometimes without.

However, regulators are concerned at the amount of debt consumers have outstanding on plastic.

In February 2018, new rules require credit card companies to encourage those who have been in debt for longer than 18 months to up their repayments.

Credit crunch: Some balance transfer deals have disappeared and remaining ones have shortened over the last 3 years

If that fails, borrowers may end up having interest waived or their cards cancelled.

The disappearing of balance transfer deals is a particular blow because new figures from the Bank of England suggest borrowers may be becoming savvier and getting a grip on their debts.

Figures released last week found consumers paid back 120million more than they borrowed on plastic last November, the first time since July 2013 that the value of Britains credit card debt pile has reduced.

Consumers repaid more credit card debt than they borrowed for the first time since 2013 in November, but the country's plastic debt pile still sits at 72.1bn

Data shows the personal debt mountain still sits at 72.1billion, while separate figures from trade body UK Finance - which cover the UK's biggest banks - for September found as much as 47 per cent of credit card balances could be sitting on 0 per cent deals.

Andrew Hagger, founder of personal finance site Moneycomms, previously told This is Money that some borrowers 'have become reliant on 0 per cent card borrowing to help them keep their heads above water and would be in serious financial trouble if these deals were to disappear completely.'

The number of interest-free purchase cards available has also shrunk from 76 to 68 over the last 12 months, Moneyfacts found.

Currently the two longest balance transfer deals on the market are offered by Sainsbury's Bank and Virgin Money.

Both cards come with a 29 month interest-free term and a 3 per cent balance transfer fee.

If you would rather trade a shorter interest-free term for a lower fee, Barclaycard's Platinum 28 Month Balance Transfer Visa card comes with a 0 per cent term for 28 months and a fee of 1.75 per cent, while Virgin Money charges a fee of 1.45 per cent on its 27 Month Balance Transfer Credit Card Mastercard.
Complex Innovative Design (CID) trials could be transformed for the better, following the publication of recommendations, published today in the British Journal of Cancer* (Monday).

The authors believe, if implemented, the ten recommendations they've developed for CID trials could ultimately reduce the time it takes to get innovative treatments to patients with cancer.

They are now calling on clinicians, funders, regulators and the pharmaceutical industry to get behind the recommendations and work together to rapidly implement them.

CID trials are increasingly being used as an evaluation method by researchers, instead of traditional drug development pathways involving clinical trials from phases 1 to 4.

The CID approach enables researchers to carry out more complex trials that address multiple clinical questions at once. For example, a drug can be simultaneously evaluated for safety and efficacy with different cancer types, which can change as the trial progresses, accelerating the traditional route to drug licencing.

However, they can be challenging to conduct and there are currently no practical guidelines for teams that fund, design and conduct these trials in Europe.

The Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC) network, funded by Cancer Research UK, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and the health departments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, convened a working group of academics, funders, regulators, pharmaceutical industry representatives and patients to address this challenge**.

They developed ten key recommendations *** to cover each stage of the clinical trial pathway.

Each recommendation covers a specific stage of the clinical trial pathway including: trial planning and design, protocol development, patients and public involvement, patient-facing documentation, statistical analysis, defining leadership and oversight, dissemination of results, staff training, the approval process, funding, and evaluating the impact on public health.

Taken together, these recommendations could improve the conduct, quality and acceptability of oncology CID trials in clinical research. Furthermore, improving how different stakeholders interact, promote and share their learnings from CID studies, say the authors, will foster a clinical research environment that could enable CID trials to be carried out in a range of new clinical areas.

Professor Pam Kearns, director of the Cancer Research UK clinical trials unit at the University of Birmingham and co-author of the paper, said: "We owe it to our patients to bring potentially more effective novel treatments into the clinic as quickly as possible, and these recommendations will ensure we have good quality CID trials in place to deliver this promise."

Dr Aoife Regan, head of the ECMC programme office, said: "These recommendations show the power of the ECMC network as a convening force to help strengthen the position of the UK as a world leader in experimental cancer medicine. We hope these recommendations will have an impact not just for cancer research but for all complex trials across all disease types."

Nick Lemoine, Medical Director at the NIHR, said: "Getting promising new cancer treatments to patients who need them the most can take some time, so speeding up this process through Complex Innovative Design trials is a priority. With the expertise within the ECMC network and the new guidelines in place, the UK is now one of the best equipped countries to deliver these trials, which represent the future for evaluating new cancer drugs."

Debbie Keatley, a patient representative and co-author of the guidelines, said: "Patients tell us that they need information about trials in an easy to understand format and language. They also want reassurance that the results seen in the trials will be applicable to real patients seen in the clinic. We welcome these guidelines, which put the patient first."

###

Further quotes from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and the Health Research Authority are available in the notes to editor section.
US President Donald Trump has told Congress to follow his Twitter posts for any action against Iran if it retaliates against the death of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in an American drone strike last week.

Trump who ordered the killing of Soleimani without giving prior information to Congressional leaders, said in the dramatic tweet on Sunday that he was not legally required to notify Congress.

These media posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any US person or target, the United States will quickly and fully strike back, and perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless, the President tweeted.

Yale Law School Professor Oona Hathaway tweeted: This tweet threatens to break several laws. The President cannot notify Congress under the War Powers Resolution by tweet.

In an earlier tweet, Trump threatened the destruction of 52 Iranian targets, including cultural sites.

Wait, when he says These Media Posts..... Is he talking about his Tweets? So is he too scared or lazy to talk to Congress, replied a user.

Under the War Powers Act of 1973, the US President is required to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying US military assets into combat, said media reports.

Soleimani, 63, who was killed in the January 3 US drone strike was the elite Quds Force chief in charge of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operations outside Iran, and has been on the ground in Syria and Iraq supervising militias backed by Tehran.

Trump has used Twitter to issue surprise orders, announcements, and even threats against other nations like North Korea.

In 2018, Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson via a tweet.

Despite threatening war on the platform, Twitter is unlikely to take any action against Trump.

In January last year, the micro-blogging platform declared that blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information.
Iran summons Swiss envoy to protest Trump's threat to target cultural sites

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Jan 5, IRNA -- Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday summoned the Swiss envoy looking after the US interest section to convey protest to the US President Donald Trump over his threat to target Iranian cultural sites prohibited by the International Humanitarian Law governing the armed conflicts.

Araghchi said that the the threats posed by the US president to target Iranian cultural heritage run counter to the Peremptory Norms of the International Law and are amounted to war crimes.

Araghchi said that Trump's hostile, threatening, and unlawful remarks are in contravention of the International Law.

He said that threatening to target cultural sites reminds us of the Mongolian Raid and terror groups that destroyed cultural and historical sites.

He added that Iran will not be intimidated by any threats and will decisively respond to any threat or move against any aggression to its territorial integrity and security.

Araghchi said that history shows that Iran make any invader regret for its criminal act.

According to the will of the Iranian government and people, in addition to all the political and legal actions, Iran reserves the right to respond to US assassination of Lieutenant-General Qasem Soleimani anytime and anywhere, Araghchi said.

The Swiss charge d'affairs said that he will convey Iran's protest to the US officials as soon as possible.

Trump wrote in a series of tweets that if Iran makes a move to avenge the assassination of Lieutenant-General Qasem Soleimani, Trump said the United States has "targeted 52 Iranian sites" and that some were "at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself.

9417**1416

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On the last night of 2019, as the clock struck midnight, a song arose from Jamia Nagar in New Delhi. This was when people elsewhere were bursting crackers, greeting each other and raising toasts. But the people at Jamia Nagar were singing the national anthem. Who were they? For the last three weeks, these protesters have been sitting on dharna against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in the biting cold.

By singing the national anthem, these agitators wanted to prove that they had deep faith in Indias Constitution and sovereignty. They, perhaps, wanted to convey that their movement was completely non-violent. Many of them told the media that they had created squads to see that no anti-social element intruded into this agitation and engaged in any form of violence. Their apprehensions were justified.

About 20-21 people lost their lives in the violence that took place last month around the CAA protests. It also caused huge financial losses. The Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh (UP) police claim that the workers of the Popular Front of India (PFI) played a major role in inciting this violence. Arrests were also made. The UP government used another method of dealing with rioters. Not only was legal action taken against them, but a fine was also imposed for damaging public property. Such legal provisions have existed since the British raj. Wherever rioting took place in those days, the British imposed a financial fine on the people of the affected area. But this is the first instance of its implementation after Independence. In order to ensure that the rage of the police was not directed at them, people in many areas collected money among themselves and gave it to the administration.

Dont you see a thread of similarity between these people and the agitators of Shaheen Bagh? On one hand, the demonstrators have tried their best to respect the law by singing the national anthem. On the other, despite protests being held on every Friday in UP, every effort is being made by society to avoid violence and the wrath of the government. It could be called the Gandhian way of protest.

Violence has many phases. But resistance can last much longer when it is committed to peaceful means. This is what has been happening in many parts of the country, including Delhi. India has witnessed social turmoil but this round is particularly dangerous because of the political subtext.

Let us look at past incidents. In the initial days of the Mandal agitation, in the presence of the police in Delhi, a young student named Rajiv Goswami immolated himself. It generated deep resentment in many places. Pessimists at that time said that the situation was worse than in the days of Partition; that the British had used religion to divide people, and now people were being pitted against each other on the basis of caste. This, it was felt, would adversely affect coexistence in villages.But this did not happen. Thanks to our innate harmony, and efforts by the government, people accepted the new realities.

Later, when the demolition of the Babri Masjid took place in Ayodhya, riots broke out across the country. It felt as if we had gone back to the period immediately after Independence. But today, no one wants to return to that era of riots and violence. So much so that the day the Supreme Court announced its verdict on the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute, nothing happened anywhere; nobody said anything.

Therefore, should we assume that the uproar against the citizenship law will also dissipate over time? This will happen, but only when our political leaders handle this matter with greater seriousness.

Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has assured the people that all political parties will be consulted before implementing the law. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah have said the same thing, repeatedly offering assurances that this Act will not affect any Indian citizen. But the movements born out of distrust continue.

As a result, the Kerala legislative assembly passed a resolution against the CAA on December 31, demanding its repeal. The only Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of the Legislative Assembly protested. But if the arithmetic carried the day in both the Houses of Parliament, then this was bound to happen in the Thiruvananthapuram assembly too. The BJP spokespersons called it a constitutional issue.

Politics is unpredictable and no one is quite sure when our leaders will change their positions. The Biju Janata Dal and the Janata Dal (United) voted in support of the CAA in Parliament, but today, Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik are among the chief ministers who are opposing the National Register of Citizens.

Clearly, the government will have to work hard to bridge the trust deficit on this issue. The government must tackle the emerging discontent and reach a meaningful agreement with the Opposition.

Shashi Shekhar is the editor-in-chief, Hindustan

The views expressed are personal
(Newser)  Police in Indiana say a fatal crash on an interstate happened after a trucker took his eyes off the road to set down his coffee mug, reports Fox News. The crash occurred Sunday morning on I-65 when a semi plowed into eight vehicles that had slowed down ahead, says the Boone County Sheriff's Office. One vehicle ended up pinned against a guardrail and caught on fire; its three occupants were declared dead at the scene. They were identified as Mariah Tomey, 21; Kaylee Kirk, 19; and Hadley Tomey, just a year old. Fourteen people were injured.

story continues below

The truck's driver, 34-year-old Mathew Lewis Small, has been charged with three felony charges of reckless homicide, reports the Indianapolis Star. He told authorities that he'd been heading northbound when he looked to set down his mug and then crashed into the slowing vehicles. The sheriff's office says distracted driving is a major cause of accidents, and "in this case, we believe it was a contributing factor." (Another crash killed five on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.)
President-elect of Guinea-Bissau, Umaro Sissoco Embalo has started a regional tour to boost ties with his regional counterparts.

In Senegal, first stop since he was announced the winner of the election rerun last week, Mr. Embalo met with president Macky Sall in what the Senegalese presidency said was: A sign of recognition for the Head of State who supported him a lot during the difficult times.

On Saturday afternoon, President Umaro Sissoco Embalo landed in Brazzaville where he held about one-hour talks with President Denis Sassou-Nguesso.

About the reason for his visit, Sissoco Embalo told the press that everyone knows that I am an adopted son of President Sassou. It is the least of the things that I come to bow to my father after my election to take blessings and especially his advice.

On Sunday, Embalo was in Abuja, where he met with Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari, Nigerias Foreign Affairs Minister and Buharis Chief of Staff.

Before his inauguration on February 15, the new president of guinea Bissau also plans to visit Cape Verde for talks with President Jorge Carlos Fonseca, acting Chairman of the community of Portuguese-speaking countries.

In statements to the media during his tour, Sissoco Embalo promised to work for unity and peacebuilding in his country marked by recurrent crises. I have made a commitment to form a government of national unity in which everyone will be represented. This is how you can develop a country, he said.

Regarding his quarrel with Guinean President Alpha Conde who has reportedly opposed his election, he assured that this incident was now closed. With President Alpha Conde we are colleagues today. I cannot speak of him today. There have been campaign statements. Today is different. Here ! There is no permanent enemy in life, he said.

Embalo, 47, takes over from Jose Mario Vaz, who came to power in 2014 on hopes of stabilizing a country notorious for coups since gaining independence from Portugal in 1974.

Embalos prime task will be to deal with an ailing economy and a legislature dominated by the PAIGC  the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), which led an 11-year armed struggle to end Portugals colonial rule.

Nearly 70 percent of Guinea-Bissaus 1.8 million people live on less than $1.90 (1.69) a day. The country has long been beset by corruption and drug trafficking. In the 2000s, it became known as a transit point for cocaine between Latin America and Europe as traffickers profited from corruption and weak law enforcement.
France's Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire has cautioned the United States against any tit-for-tat levies on French exports in response to its new digital tax.

If the Americans decide to go ahead and impose sanctions against the digital tax ... in this case we would retaliate, Le Maire said during an interview on France Inter radio.

If there were to be sanctions, and it is a possibility that we will take sanctions, we would immediately contact the WTO [World Trade Organization], he added.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose near 100 percent retaliatory sanctions of French exports, including champagne, leather goods, makeup, and other luxuries manufactured in France.

"This trade war is in no one's interest and I call on our American friends to display wisdom, to return to their senses," Le Maire told the French radio.

The French digital tax includes up to three percent of online company revenue and advertising gained in France. The tech behemoths have previously paid very little because they do not take up actual physical space.

In August, France agreed it would refund any taxes collected that were more than the levy that still needs to be set.

But the Trump administration says that this new French tax punishes American companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon.

Le Maire said he would discuss the issue with US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin by phone, and did not mince words when he mentioned that France could get backing on this from the 27 other members of the European Union.

"We'll study the possibility of commercial retaliation," added Le Maire as he said he would be meeting with EU Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan on Tuesday.

OECD trade talks back on?

Negotiations at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) regarding global revenue in online sales had been stalled by the US until last year. The US offered a proposal in December that France rejected.

Washington needs to work towards a compromise at the OECD to avoid extreme situations that benefit no one," added the French finance minister.

France was slapped with punitive US sanctions in October over European subsidies to European airline manufacturer Airbus 10 percent on EU aircraft and 25 percent on French foodstuffs, including wine.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jan. 6

By Matanat Nasibova  Trend:

Azerbaijans large macaroni producer, Karmen factory, increased the production up to 13-15 percent in 2019, a source in the factory told Trend.

During the reporting period, the daily volume of macaroni production increased up to 73 tons, the source said.

The factory increased the daily production of Bucatini spaghetti up to 10 percent compared to 2018, the source said. At the same time, the total production volume increased up to 22 tons daily while since early 2019 this figure was 20 tons per day.

The factory will continue to increase production capacity this year to bring it up to 35,000-40,000 tons per month, the source said. According to our calculations, such a result is possible only in the second half of this year.

"Currently, the maximum capacity of the factory reaches 80 tons of pasta per day, the source said. We expect to increase this figure up to 85-87 tons in 2020."

The company's products have a certificate of conformity issued by the Azerbaijani State Committee for Standardization, Metrology and Patents.

German Dufler equipment for macaroni production, as well as Italian Fava equipment have been installed in the factory for the production of Bucatini spaghetti in Baku.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @MatanatNasibova
Former Nissan Motor Co Ltd (OTC: NSANY) CEO Carlos Ghosn's flight from Japan, where he was facing fraud charges, to Lebanon was the result of an elaborate, detailed plan involving more than 10 people that took months to work out and exploited a security gap at the Osaka Airport, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Citing unnamed sources, WSJ said an operative working with Ghosn noticed a potential security hole at Osaka's Kansai International Airport months earlier: private jet terminal security was lax and oversized luggage wasn't put through scanners.

Ghosn reportedly went from his Tokyo home, where he was under monitoring, to Osaka and went through security at the private jet terminal in an oversized box used for concert equipment. He was flown to Turkey, changed planes, and went on to his home country of Lebanon. The plan cost millions of dollars, the publication said.

A team of 10-15 operatives working on the mission visited at least 10 airports to study their security, looking for a weakness, WSJ said. Among the people on the plane with Ghosn was American Michael Taylor, a former Green Beret with experience rescuing hostages, the publication said.

An Osaka airport spokesman told the Journal that oversize luggage can be inspected by security, but private jet travelers are a low terrorism risk, and so it is sometimes not inspected. In Japan, airlines use private companies for security.

Ghosn was arrested in 2018 in Japan, accused of financial crimes allegedly committed while he was running Nissan. He has denied all charges, but said Japan's system won't afford him a fair trial.

Related Links:

Former Nissan Chair Ghosn Flees Japan In Box, Turns Up In Lebanon

Interpol Sends Arrest Warrant For Carlos Ghosn To Lebanon

Photo by Ecole polytechnique via Wikimedia.

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A growing body of research finds that telling patients to finish a full course of antibiotics even if theyre already feeling better not only fails to prevent drug-resistant superbugs from forming, but also might make those pathogens stronger.

The latest evidence comes from a study published this week in the journal BMJ by a group of British scientists. That team joins an expanding chorus of experts who said theres no scientific support for the conventional wisdom, first adopted in the mid-1940s, that long courses of antibiotics help prevent bacteria from developing immunity to many or most of the weapons in the antibiotic arsenal.

In reality, these researchers said, the longer antibiotics are used, the more collateral damage is done to the bodys community of helpful bacteria  and that in turn gives resistant strains of bacteria, always present in the human body in small numbers, room to flourish and share their defenses with other pathogens, gradually leading to the superbug strains now estimated to kill 23,000 Americans per year and sicken more than 2 million.

Though the BMJ report is getting a lot of attention, other researchers in past years had also raised questions about the full-course antibiotic mantra.

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One of them was Dr. Brad Spellberg, currently chief medical officer at the LAC+USC Medical Center and associate dean for clinical affairs at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. Last year, he published a piece in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine that arrived at the same conclusions as the BMJ groups findings.

Spellberg said Dr. Louis Rice, a specialist in infectious diseases whos now at Brown University in Rhode Island, nearly a decade ago began bringing up the belief that completing full antibiotic courses may actually help build resistance in bacteria.

Weve been saying this for a long time. The message we are shifting to is that we need to be using short-course antibiotic regimens, Spellberg said.

Today the standard practice is to prescribe courses of antibiotics for one or two weeks. Spellberg argues in his 2016 study that this approach has occurred for no other reason than that humans have thought in week-long blocks of time ever since the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great established the seven-day week in AD 321.

Had Constantine decided there should be four days in a week, we would be prescribing antibiotics for four or eight days instead of seven or 14, Spellberg said.

He said many of USCs hospital programs and clinics are moving toward shorter-duration antibiotic prescriptions based on the latest evidence, but that many other medical organizations still insist on one- and two-week courses.

Dr. Julie Roth, chair of the family medicine department for Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Group in San Diego, said while she and others at the organization may prescribe antibiotics for periods as short as one day, patients should not take articles like the one in BMJ as indications that they should stop their regimen when they think theyre feeling better.

Some patients are sent home from the hospital on oral or (intravenous) antibiotics and need to work closely with their physician. They should not stop antibiotics unless they are directed to, Roth said.

Andrei Osterman, a professor of bioinformatics who studies the specific mechanisms of bacterial resistance at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, said he agrees that administering antibiotics for longer than necessary does, indeed, cause collateral damage to the bodys microbiome  which can provide a home for drug-resistant bacteria to grow.

But he also noted that most antibiotics are only effective against bacteria that are actively multiplying, so the number of days in an antibiotic course needs to be long enough to catch those cells that were not yet dividing when the first few doses were administered.

The primary driver of the number of days was not only preventing resistance, but also making sure there is enough exposure to make sure the infection is held at bay long enough for the bodys immune system to take over and finish the job, Osterman said.

Human metabolic systems, he added, are highly variable in terms of how they process antibiotics, so a short course may work better for some people than others, depending on each patients specific genetics.

As is the case for the British researchers, Osterman said he believes more in-depth research is needed to understand just how long antibiotic courses should last. He said until those analyses are completed, caution is always the best idea, especially when the consequences could be death.

But Spellberg, the USC medical director, said the evidence really is there for anyone who chooses to look.

Multiple rigorous studies have shown that, for example, a five-day course is very effective in treating community-acquired pneumonia, a three-day regimen is adequate for simple bladder infections, five to seven days for kidney infections and four days for standard inter-abdominal infections such as appendicitis. While his organization and others in the Los Angeles area are increasingly prescribing shorter antibiotic courses, he insists theyre not neglecting their patients safety.

Nobodys talking about throwing their patients out the window. Were talking about having an informed discussion between the provider and the patient about when the evidence shows it may be appropriate to stop a course of antibiotics , Spellberg said.

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This majestic spiral galaxy might earn the nickname the "Godzilla Galaxy" because it may be the largest known in the local universe. The galaxy, UGC 2885, is 2.5 times wider than our Milky Way and contains 10 times as many stars.

But it is a "gentle giant," say researchers, because it looks like it has been sitting quietly over billions of years, possibly sipping hydrogen from the filamentary structure of intergalactic space. This fuels modest ongoing star birth at half the rate of our Milky Way. In fact, its supermassive central black hole is a sleeping giant, too; because the galaxy does not appear to be feeding on much smaller satellite galaxies, it is starved of infalling gas.

The galaxy has been nicknamed "Rubin's galaxy," after astronomer Vera Rubin (1928-2016) by Benne Holwerda of the University of Louisville, Kentucky, who observed the galaxy with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

"My research was in a large part inspired by Vera Rubin's work in 1980 on the size of this galaxy." Rubin measured the galaxy's rotation, which provides evidence for dark matter, which makes up most of the galaxy's mass as measured by the rotation rate. "We consider this a commemorative image. This goal to cite Dr. Rubin in our observation was very much part of our original Hubble proposal."

In results being presented at the winter American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, Holwerda is seeking to understand what led to the galaxy's monstrous size. "How it got so big is something we don't quite know yet," said Holwerda. "It's as big as you can make a disk galaxy without hitting anything else in space."

One clue is that the galaxy is fairly isolated in space and doesn't have any nearby galaxies to crash into and disrupt the shape of its disk.

Did the monster galaxy gobble up much smaller satellite galaxies over time? Or did it just slowly accrete gas for new stars? "It seems like it's been puttering along, slowly growing," Holwerda said. Using Hubble's exceptional resolution, his team is counting the number of globular star clusters in the galaxy's halo -- a vast shell of faint stars surrounding the galaxy. An excess of clusters would yield evidence that they were captured from smaller infalling galaxies over many billions of years.

NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope could be used to explore the center of this galaxy as well as the globular cluster population. NASA's planned Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) would give an even more complete census of this galaxy's cluster population, especially that of the whole halo. "The infrared capability of both space telescopes would give us a more unimpeded view of the underlying stellar populations," said Holwerda. This complements Hubble's visible-light ability to track wispy star formation throughout the galaxy.

A number of foreground stars in our Milky Way can be seen in the image, identified by their diffraction spikes. The brightest appears to sit on top of the galaxy's disk, though UGC 2885 is really 232 million light-years farther away. The giant galaxy is located in the northern constellation Perseus.

Credit:

NASA, ESA, and B. Holwerda (University of Louisville)

The Space Telescope Science Institute is expanding the frontiers of space astronomy by hosting the science operations center of the Hubble Space Telescope, the science and operations center for the James Webb Space Telescope, and the science operations center for the future Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). STScI also houses the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) which is a NASA-funded project to support and provide to the astronomical community a variety of astronomical data archives, and is the data repository for the Hubble, Webb, Kepler, K2, TESS missions and more.

Larger images https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2020/news-2020-01

Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.
By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Normally, although I dont like the Wall Street Journals editorial line, I take the perhaps old-fashioned view that many if not most investors cant completely lie to themselves, and so theres a market for reporting excellence, especially on firms (e.g., Boeing) for which the Journal caters. But a recent article on Iraq, Trump Pushes Iraq, Threatens Sanctions After Vote to Expel U.S. Troops, has shaken my faith. Of course, not all the stupid comes from the WSJ. U.S. officials helped!

So this will be a very simple post: Ill just go through the article, pluck out as many solecisms as I can, throw them into buckets, and comment briefly on them. The buckets: Obtuseness, outright errors, lazy reporting, ignorance, strange omissions, and a general inability to look outside our foreign policy establishments imperial mindset. Ill just take the paragraphs in order.

* * *

(1) Obtuseness:

President Trump threatened Iraq with sanctions and a bill for billions of dollars if the U.S. is forced to withdraw its troops from the nation after the Iraqi parliament, responding to a U.S. airstrike that killed a powerful Iranian general on its soil, voted in favor of expelling American forces

And:

Mr. Trump balked at leaving Iraq without reimbursement.

As Yves has pointed out, what you do with a bill is pay it. What Trump has just done is put a price on our withdrawal from Iraq. In other words, its a deal. At the very least, this is a policy innovation (and did anyone in the IMF  or the Kremlin  notice?)

(2) Lazy reporting:

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said pressure from Iran prompted Mr. Abdul-Mahdi and Iraqi lawmakers to act.

We not only whacked Soleimani at the Baghdad Airport, we whacked an Iraqi citizen, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Surely the Iraqis had reasons of their own to act, beyond Pompeos 1-dimensional chess? Yet the Journal simply quotes Pompeo, without contextualizing his remarks.

(3) Obtuseness:

Iran has vowed harsh retaliation, stoking fears of wider conflict across the Middle East, where Gen. Soleimani cultivated a network of proxies that could be activated to strike U.S. interests.

Theres no reason whatever to limit the potential of wider conflict to the Middle East; indeed, Iran has form in that regard, as even the Washington Post has noticed.

(4) Lazy reporting:

In Washington, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said late Sunday the chamber would this week introduce and vote on a war-powers measure to limit Mr. Trumps actions involving Iran. Mrs. Pelosi said the resolution would be similar to one introduced by Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.), who last week filed a measure to force debate and a vote in the Senate ending further military operations in Iran.

It is not clear to me whether Omar Ilhan and Barbara Lees Resolution is the same as the resolution that CIA Democrat Elissa Slotkin is to lead, according to Pelosi, although both are based on a Senate Resolution from Tim Kaine (!). This is the sort of detail I would expect first-class reporting to clarify. (As of this writing, neither resolution is available to congress.gov.)

(5) Ignorance:

In a reminder of the increasingly hostile climate for U.S. troops, two rockets were fired into Baghdads Green Zone, where the U.S. Embassy and coalition troops are located, and a third landed outside of it, an Interior Ministry official said. Six civilians were wounded.

This is not new:

It has been happening for years. I lived in Baghdad from 2003 to 2006, and for most of that time I never had to set an alarm clock, because mortars from Sadr City, aimed at the Green Zone, would always wake me up just after dawn. https://t.co/7ud6hLquqR  Andrew MacGregor Marshall (@zenjournalist) January 4, 2020

(6) Strange omission:

The events have demonstrated the growing power of Iran-backed groups like Kataib Hezbollah, which Iraqi security forces have been unable to prevent firing rockets at bases housing U.S. troops.

A week or so ago, there were enormous protests in Iraq both against corruption, and against Irans presence in Iraq. What happened to them?

(7) Outright error:

Iraqs Foreign Ministry summoned U.S. Ambassador Matthew Tueller on Sunday, denouncing the U.S. attack as a violation of the coalitions mission to fight Islamic State and train Iraqi security forces .

Wrong. Agence France Presse:

The Iraqi foreign ministry on Sunday summoned US ambassador Matthew Tueller to condemn American strikes on Iraq that killed a top Iranian general, an Iraqi commander and other local fighters. They were a blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty, the ministry said in a statement, and contradict the agreed-upon missions of the international coalition.

Surely the Iraq Foreign Ministrys statement was available to the Journal. So why erase the blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty?

(8) Imperial mindset:

Before the vote, a senior State Department official said the U.S. had been working with its allies in Iraq to prevent its taking place, characterizing the killing as supporting the sovereignty of Iraq against Iran. The Iraqi government faced a choice, the official said, as to  whether they want to be an Iranian satellite state or whether they want to be a sovereign nation-state of good standing in the international community .

Why on earth would anybody think we have the right to make that judgement? In fact, from 30,000 feet, our increasing loss of soft power is the context for our increasingly desperate and futile use of hard power.

(9) Disinformation:

U.S. officials said the strike on Gen. Soleimani was part of attempts to deter imminent attacks against American personnel in the region.

When U.S. officials say imminent, they are applying the Bethlehem Doctrine, explained by Craig Murry here:

What very few people, and almost no international lawyers, accept is the key to the Bethlehem Doctrine  that here Imminent  the word used so carefully by Pompeo  does not need to have its normal meanings of either soon or about to happen. An attack may be deemed imminent, according to the Bethlehem Doctrine, even if you know no details of it or when it might occur. So you may be assassinated by a drone or bomb strike  and the doctrine was specifically developed to justify such strikes  because of intelligence you are engaged in a plot, when that intelligence neither says what the plot is nor when it might occur. Or even more tenuous, because there is intelligence you have engaged in a plot before, so it is reasonable to kill you in case you do so again. I am not inventing the Bethlehem Doctrine. It has been the formal legal justification for drone strikes and targeted assassinations by the Israeli, US and UK governments for a decade.

By omitting to clarify that in the national security establishment, imminent means the opposite of what a dull normal would think it means, the Journal propagates a black-is-white level of disinformation.

* * *

Readers, feel free to use this post as an open thread for your musings on the extremely dynamic series of events in the Middle East. And Im sure Ive only scratched the surface of whats wrong with this story, so feel free to dig deeper. If the WSJ had reported on the Boeing 737 MAX the way its reporting on Iraq, wed think the only problem was pilot error.
A new year often brings new hope, but not for the oil and natural gas industry in 2020.

The same supply and demand dynamics that crushed so many companies in 2019 show no signs of evolving, which is terrible news for the Texas economy. Professional analysts vary widely in their exact predictions for the energy industry, but few see any evidence of higher profits.

Crude oil prices will be lower on average in 2020 than in 2019 because of forecast rising global oil inventories, particularly in the first half of next year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said last month.

Politicians and industry boosters love to brag about how Texas ingenuity led to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing of shale rock to release valuable energy molecules. Today Texas produces more oil and gas than ever, but sadly, the world does not need it.

More on oil and gas: U.S. oil and gas companies lag on climate pledges

Texas pumped an average of 3.3 million barrels of crude oil in September, according to the latest data available from the Railroad Commission. To keep oil prices around $60 for West Texas Intermediate, OPEC and their Russian allies are voluntarily holding back 2.1 million barrels a day.

If OPEC opened their taps, as they did in 2014, crude prices would likely drop $10 a barrel, a level the cartel cannot afford.

Surplus inventory would usually signal it is time for producers to cut back. But months or years can pass between an oil company deciding to drill and the day that oil reaches the market. Prices can change a lot in the interim.

Too many companies are also paying bonuses for drilling more wells and producing more energy rather than making a profit. CEOs are rewarded for selling a million barrels of $70 oil into a market that will only pay $60, even if it may bankrupt the firm.

Investors and banks are getting fed up. Oil company stocks are among the markets worst performers, and boards of directors are demanding profits over production. Banks are reducing lines of credit until companies generate enough free cash flow from operations to stay afloat.

Producing less oil, though, will not necessarily lead to higher prices and profits. Remember, the worlds lowest-cost producers in the Middle East are holding back 2 percent of the worlds oil supply. They will release those barrels when prices inch up to preserve their market share.

Industry optimists will argue that growing demand will soak up the current surplus and bring higher prices. They have been wrong for the past five years and are still wrong.

Crude rallied in December with news of a breakthrough in U.S.-China trade talks. A deal would allow regular trade to resume and consume a lot of petroleum. More economic activity historically means higher energy consumption.

Considerable gains in energy efficiency and non-petroleum alternatives, though, have decoupled economic growth from fossil fuel consumption. Vehicles ranging from automobiles to Super-Panamax cargo ships are becoming more efficient every day.

Consumers are also purchasing more electric vehicles and driving fewer miles. The average American is traveling 2 percent less than they did in 2004, according to the federal Department of Transportation and reporting by the Wall Street Journal.

Any significant rise in fuel prices would encourage Americans to drive less or purchase vehicles with lower operating costs. Gasoline and diesel are no longer the only two choices in transportation fuel.

More on oil and gas: Oil and gas slow to adopt artificial intelligence

Lastly, most of the world recognizes we need to cut fossil fuel use to fight climate change. If a Democrat wins this year, federal policy will swing hard against oil and gas.

Smart energy executives should not bank on tightening supply or growing demand to bring them profits. Many are already lowering production costs to survive a low-price future.

The oil and gas rig count dropped 20 percent in 2019, according to oil field service company Baker Hughes, and energy firms slashed 5,000 jobs, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Texas job growth has dropped below the national average

Texans must finally accept that the oil and gas industry was responsible for the so-called Texas economic miracle, and we can no longer depend on it. The impact of lower energy revenues will have ripple effects in every corner of the state.

Lost jobs in the oil patch mean people will buy fewer new pick-ups. Lower profits mean less spending on construction. Firms will contract for fewer engineering, legal and logistical services. State and local governments will see lower revenues from sales and severance taxes.

The best the energy industry should plan for in 2020 is a mini-oil bust. If there is a recession, even that will have seemed optimistic.

Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and policy.

twitter.com/cltomlinson

chris.tomlinson@chron.com
In ordering a strike on Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, President Donald Trump re-opened questions about targeting those abroad who would harm Americans. No one should shed a tear, in Senator Chuck Schumers words, over the death of the Qods Force leader, who was responsible for the killing of hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq. Nevertheless, critics worry that the killing of Soleimani, one of the military leaders closest to Irans religious leaders, could spark an escalatory spiral of attacks and lead to a broader war in the Middle East.

Putting aside the policy of the attacks, Trump critics have raised doubts about the legality of the strike. Shortly after news broke on Thursday night of the attack, Senator Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), while conceding that Soleimani was an enemy of the United States, tweeted: The question is this  as reports suggest, did America just assassinate, without any congressional authorization, the second most powerful person in Iran, knowingly setting off a potential massive regional war?

Killing Soleimani without involving Congress raises serious legal problems and is an affront to Congresss powers as a coequal branch of government, said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot L. Engel (D., N.Y.). The law requires notification so the President cant plunge the United States into ill-considered wars.

Conservatives also raise questions about the legality of the strikes. NRs Kevin Williamson, for example, remains doubtful about whether President Trump could order Soleimanis killing unilaterally. He concedes that Congress may have authorized the president to use force back in the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), in which Congress approved the Iraq War, or even the 2001 AUMF, which granted the president the power to use force against anyone involved with the 9/11 attacks. Though these authorizations took place long ago, the terms of the two laws are sweeping and are not limited by time  in the interests of full disclosure, I helped draft both of them as a Bush Justice Department official. Williamson at least concedes that the administrations case here is not obviously implausible. But he also calls on Pelosi to take the long overdue step of repealing both AUMFs and replacing them with a new instrument that is much more narrowly tailored and takes into account the current political and security realities.

Story continues

These Trump critics have the law wrong. As the Trump administration has suggested, the AUMFs provide legal cover for the Soleimani strike. But even if they didnt, or even if Congress had repealed them, the Constitution would still provide the president with sufficient authority to use force to prevent a future attack on American troops, personnel, or facilities abroad.

The legal difficulty is not posed by the use of force to kill Soleimani individually, as opposed to attacking less specific Iranian targets. The United States has long had a policy of using targeted strikes to kill enemy leaders. After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched a program of drone strikes and Special Forces attacks to kill leaders of al-Qaeda and insurgent groups in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not only did Barack Obama continue these policies, he also launched an air war against Libya that sought as one of its goals to kill its leader, Moammar Qaddafi, in order to trigger regime change. Few, if any, Democratic officials criticized Obama for engaging in illegal assassination or for launching strikes in Libya or, later, in Syria, without congressional approval.

But even if opponents of the Trump administration based their criticisms on constitutional principle, and not political expediency, they would still fail. Killing an individual, of course, is not generally legal. Nor is it always illegal. Killing an individual can be legal when it is carried out by the state as criminal punishment for first-degree murder. It can be legal when a police officer shoots an attacker armed with a weapon. It can be illegal when it is murder.

No American law prohibits the targeting of specific enemy leaders. Neither the Constitution nor federal statutes prevent the direct targeting of individual members of the enemy. Only Executive Order 12,333, issued by President Reagan in 1981, states that no person employed or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination. This was a continuation of a similar ban first issued by President Gerald Ford in 1976, which was subsequently reaffirmed by President Carter, and has been followed by every president since.

But while he banned assassinations, Reagan did not define them. Ever since Reagans executive order, administrations of both parties have generally defined assassination as the murder of a public figure for political purposes. The killings of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Abraham Lincoln were assassinations. By contrast, the killing of the enemy in combat is protected by the laws of war. As Hugo Grotius, the father of modern international law, observed in 1646, it is permissible to kill an enemy. Legitimate military targets include not just foot soldiers, but the command-and-control structure of an enemys military, leading up to its commander in chief. Assassination is different from killing an enemy general, such as Soleimani.

Critics such as Senator Murphy further imply that Soleimani did not constitute a legitimate military target because Trump did not seek congressional approval for any war with Iran. This criticism also misunderstands the law. As a matter of constitutional law, President Trump did not need congressional approval to strike Soleimani or any other Iranian military officer involved with planning or carrying out attacks on our embassy in Baghdad or other U.S. personnel and forces in the region. Scholars have argued for decades over whether Congress must give its authorization, because of its power under the Constitution to declare war, before the president can use force abroad. Ive long taken the view that the president need not receive legislative approval or a declaration of war first, but that Congress can also use its powers to raise the Army and Navy and to fund (and not fund) the military to check the president. Congress can cut off funds for any conflict, or even refuse to grant them in the first place, as it eventually did in Vietnam. It can structure a military to make presidential adventurism less likely, such as reducing the numbers of offensive military forces designed to fight abroad and refocusing the military on defensive systems.

But where we come out on Congresss power to declare war does not matter. Even those who take the broadest view of Congresss war powers admit that the president need not wait for legislative approval when the United States acts in self-defense. During the Constitutional Convention, the delegates changed the initial drafts grant to Congress of the power to make war to its current to declare war. James Madison and Elbridge Gerry supported this change for leaving to the Executive the power to repel sudden attacks. While I disagree with scholars who believe that Congresss power to declare war gives it the sole authority to decide to start a war  in my view, the history shows instead that the power to declare war was the power to decide on the legal status of different levels of hostilities between nations  all agree that Congress need not declare a war when the United States responds with force in self-defense.

Whether killing Soleimani amounted to valid self-defense would raise difficult factual questions if the United States were acting in a purely anticipatory manner. The United States and other countries have recognized that a nation can use force to preempt an imminent attack by an enemy. President Kennedy, for example, stretched the doctrine of anticipatory self-defense perhaps to its limits when he imposed a naval blockade during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis to prevent Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles on an island just 100 miles from Florida. Whether the United States could attack Soleimani in anticipatory self-defense would depend on the facts: whether Iranian forces under his control were planning or in the middle of an attack on U.S. forces or installations.

But in this case, the events of the last few weeks make Trumps legal case all the easier. Iran had already begun attacking U.S. personnel. It supported militias that had already shelled a U.S. base in Iraq, an assault that killed one defense contractor and injured several U.S. soldiers. It had ordered its militias to storm the U.S. Embassy. With access to extensive electronic and human intelligence, the Trump administration could conclude that Soleimani and his associates were planning yet further attacks on American forces. Soleimani had, after all, planned the devastating campaign against U.S. forces during the Iraq occupation, provided support for Hezbollah and other terrorist groups that have lethally attacked American troops in the Middle East, and devised the Iranian drone strike on Saudi Arabias oil facilities.

President Trump could choose to make public the intelligence to prove that Soleimani and his associates were continuing further attacks on Americans. But he need not, as the immediate historical record already reveals the Iranian generals intentions to harm American personnel and installations. Instead of worrying about his constitutional authority, Trump would do better to explain to the American people the broader strategy toward Iran and how the killing of an old, implacable enemy in Soleimani will succeed in deterring, rather than triggering, a broader war with Iran.

More from National Review
JERUSALEM - Israeli authorities advanced plans to build nearly 2,000 new homes in West Bank settlements, an anti-settlement watchdog group said Monday.

Peace Now said nearly 800 housing units received the final approvals needed for construction to begin. It said initial approvals were given for an additional 1,150 homes. Settlement projects require several rounds of approvals.

According to Peace Now, the projects include retroactive legalization of two small outposts that were built without authorization.

The Israeli defence body that oversees civilian affairs in the occupied West Bank, known as COGAT, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Palestinians seek the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as parts of a future independent state. The Palestinians, and most of the international community, consider Israeli settlements in the two areas to be illegal.

Israel considers the West Bank to be disputed territory and claims all of Jerusalem, including the eastern sector, as its capital.

In a break from its Republican and Democratic predecessors, the Trump administration said in November that settlements are not necessarily illegal under international law.

According to official data compiled by Peace Now, settlement planning and construction has spiked since President Donald Trump took office.

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague announced last month that she believes there is a basis for investigating Israels settlement policies in the West Bank, and that they could constitute a war crime.

The prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has asked the court to determine whether she has jurisdiction before opening a formal investigation. Israel has argued that the West Bank is disputed territory whose fate should be resolved in negotiations and Bensouda has no jurisdiction.
No arrests made in JNU campus violence case in over 1.5 years: Govt informs Parliament

JNU to impose night curfew in campus between 10 pm-5 am

JNU violence: How campus politics is turning colleges into battlegrounds

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, Jan 06: The violent clashes at the Jawaharlal Nehru University is a dark reminder of campuses turning into political battlegrounds and losing their academic freedom.

While the ABVP has drawn brickbats for the JNU violence that left at least 34 injured, including teachers after three terrifying hours, confrontational politics has created unrest in the campuses across the country.

Students have been beaten brutally inside three top universities at least three times over two Sundays beginning December 15.

Motley group of the Left leaning activists behind JNU violence

The JNUSU and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad sparred over each other after masked men entered the university campus and attacked students brutally.

The JNU students union claimed that the ABVP members, with their faces masked, were moving in the campus with lathis, rods and hammers and beating up students. The Union has dubbed it as an emergency situation.

"Students are trying to save themselves while being chased by ABVP goons while the police is complicit in the crimes, forcing students to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' slogans," the JNUSU said on Twitter.

However, the ABVP claimed that Left activists were behind the violence in JNU.

It blamed Leftist student organisations SFI, AISA and DSF for the attack where 25 students were injured in the attack.

JNU VC appeals for peace, says top priority is to protect academic interests

Jamia Millia and AMU protests

The brutal attack at JNU comes a week after the same took place at Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi.

Delhi cops entered the university campus and thrashed students without discriminating between sone pelters and those studying in library.

The protest outside the university broke out after over 50 students were injured in a police crackdown following violence during a demonstration on Sunday. The protesters, including university students and teachers took out silent marches carrying posters, banners and tricolours.

The university's students have been at the forefront of the protest against the amended citizenship law.

On December 15, Uttar Pradesh police entered the campus of Aligarh Muslim University and beaten up students. More than 1,000 students were booked.

JNU violence 2016

On 9 February 2016, the premier university was embroiled in a row over "anti-national" activities in which then JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested for charges of sedition.

There was a question mark raised over the footage that showed students at the JNU raising anti India slogans while condemning the hanging of Parliament attack convict, Afzal Guru.

The event was organised even after the University administration withdrew permission for the event just before it was due to begin after a protest by members of the Hindu nationalist student union ABVP.

Not us, it was the Left Unity goons says ABVP

Campus violence in south

Campus politics is serious in southern states like Kerala where some students even resort to attacking the teachers and principals of the colleges.

In July 2018, an Islamist student leader stabbed and killed a communist student leader in Maharajas College, Kochi, Kerala. Two groups quarrelled over displaying posters inside the campus.

In March 2018, the principal of the MES Asmabi College was attacked by communist student activists. The attackers escaped as they immediately escaped to some foreign country.
[January 06, 2020] Delaware Innovation Space Expands the First Fund Investment Program

The First Fund provides early stage science startups with critical seed and pre-seed funding and access to Delaware Innovation Space's business building expertise, community of experts, core programs, scientific equipment, and extensive multi-use laboratories. Successful applicants can now each secure an investment of up to $150,000 from the First Fund Program to fund their startups, via a convertible note, in a 1:1 mix of services to cash. "Our goal with the First Fund is to accelerate formation and growth of high potential early stage science startups, turning them from concepts into realities," said William D. Provine, Delaware Innovation Space President and CEO. "We are excited to bring forward a larger investment program now including a cash component to give entrepreneurs added flexibility in securing what they need when they need it to rapidly propel their startups forward." The original First Fund investment provided startups in the fields of advanced materials, therapeutics, diagnostics, healthcare, chemical ingredients, industrial biotechnology, nutrition, and renewables up to $75,000 in services alone and now the program has been enhanced and now offers up to an additional $75,000 of cash for residential companies at the Delaware Innovation Space, for a total investment of up to $150,000. The exact investment amount an individual startup is eligible for via the First Fund will be determined by a mix of parameters, the most important being he scalability and growth potential of the startup.



The first step for teams seeking funding for their startups from the First Fund program is to complete an on-line application. "We are looking to quickly evaluate and continuously award funding to the most compelling early stage science startups and partner with them as residents of the Delaware Innovation Space to advance and grow their startups," says Provine. "Science-based startup companies are critical components to the radical innovations which improve our daily lives," says Provine. He continues, "It is our mission at the Delaware Innovation Space to help science entrepreneurs craft their business concepts, bring their startup companies to life, and provide them with the support and resources necessary to grow their businesses."

To be considered for the First Fund Program, apply via: https://gust.com/programs/disi-first-fund. About Delaware Innovation Space Delaware Innovation Space is a multi-dimensional, non-profit incubator & accelerator for science start-ups. It is the result of a public-private partnership between the State of Delaware, DuPont and the University of Delaware. Delaware Innovation Space is an ecosystem located in Wilmington, Delaware where scientists, business leaders, community members, investors, and service providers in the industrial biotech, advanced materials, chemical ingredients, renewable energy, nutrition and healthcare fields can build business concepts together and accelerate the path to commercialization. Images for Media usage: https://www.dropbox.com/s/d6xo7rfi061scfj/DISI%20-%20FirstFund%20PR%20Media%20Files.zip?dl=0 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005128/en/

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ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Thousands of people rallied on January 5 in Pakistans largest city of Karachi and clashed with police while trying to force their way toward the tightly guarded American consulate to denounce the killing of Iranian commander Qasim Soleimani.

An American airstrike on January 3 killed Soleimani in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, dangerously escalating Tehrans tensions with Washington. Iran has vowed to avenge the death of its general.

Pakistani televisions aired footage of Sundays rally of mostly Shiite Muslims, including women and children, chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel." They carried images of Soleimani and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader.

Authorities in Karachi deployed additional police and blocked the road leading to the U.S. consulate, effectively preventing protesters from moving beyond the barricades. The rally dispersed later in the evening with no reports of casualties.

Rally leaders in their speeches urged the government not to allow the United States to use Pakistani soil against Iran. Scores of protesters also gathered in the national capital of Islamabad to condemn the U.S. strike before dispersing peacefully.

Pakistan Not To Take Sides

Pakistan clarified on January 5 that it would not take sides in the U.S.-Iran tensions over Soleimanis killing.

The statement came two days after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke with Pakistani military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and shared details of the deadly strike.

The conversation, however, sparked media speculation that Islamabad would side with Washington against Tehran if tensions escalated into a wider conflict.

Pakistani army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor rejected the reports as "propaganda," saying his country would play the role of peacemaker and would not join any campaign that threatens regional stability.

Separately, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said he spoke on January 5 with counterparts in several regional countries, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, to share Islamabads "deep concern" over tensions in the Middle East.

"The foreign minister also reaffirmed that Pakistan would neither let its soil be used against any other state nor become part of any regional conflict," an official statement quoted Qureshi as saying. He stressed the need for avoiding conflict and de-escalating tensions.

Sunni-dominated Pakistan shares a more than 900 kilometer border with Shiite Iran. The neighbors maintain close political, economic, and cultural ties as pro-Iran Shia form an estimated 20 percent of Pakistans more than 200 million population.
TUCSON, Ariz.  Police in Tucson say a man is accused of stabbing his sister to death.

A teenager called 911 on Sunday night to report an incident of domestic violence involving a knife, Sgt. Pete Dugan told the Arizona Daily Star.

Officers responded to a home and detained a man. They went through the house and located a woman with multiple stab wounds in the backyard, according to Dugan.

The victim was taken to the hospital but died a short time later.

Dugan said the suspect and victim, both in their 40s, were brother and sister. Besides the teen, the siblings mother was also in the house. Neither was injured.

Police have not released any family members names.

The investigation remains ongoing.
Many former members of the LGBTQ community told their stories of change at Capitol Hill recently.

The group is part of the CHANGED community, an organization of people who previously identified as LGBTQ and believe their sexual identity was changed because of Jesus.

April Lockhart, of New Mexico, told attendees at the event that she wanted to change from her lesbian lifestyle.

"I had fully believed in this lie that gets perpetuated that people don't change, they can't change, and if you try to change them, it's detrimental to their health. And I just want to say that's a lie, she asserted.

Nobody has the right to tell you (that) you can't be what you want to be. And I did want change. And through the power of God, the Creator of heaven and earth, this was able to happen. These days were able to happen. These moments. And I'm a happy woman.

Luis Ruiz, of Florida, said he was devastated when he found out he was HIV positive because of his homosexual lifestyle.

While I was searching for men, sleeping around a lot, I didn't realize that there was a man looking for me, he said.

"And His name is Jesus. I was able to find a church where they loved me. And they taught me that my identity is not my behavior. My identity was not who I thought it was. But it was a child of God. So I stand here to say that I was a homosexual, a former 'ho.' And now I am a child of God."

CHANGED movement cofounder Elizabeth Woning also spoke at the event, saying she had originally found solace and comfort in the LGBTQ community, but today, she has seen restoration because of her faith.

Our faith compels us to share what we have received, she said. We simply want to offer vision to those who feel conflict in their sexual orientation. But also to ask that America recognize there are multiple options for people who experience LGBTQ. People deserve the right to choose their own path and follow their religious convictions, especially in matters of their sexuality."

Photo courtesy: Teddy Osterblom/Unsplash

Amanda Casanova is a writer living in Dallas, Texas. She has covered news for ChristianHeadlines.com since 2014. She has also contributed to The Houston Chronicle, U.S. News and World Report and IBelieve.com. She blogs at The Migraine Runner.
Eskom is in crisis, and paying R1.8 billion in performance bonuses does not fall within a framework of crisis thinking.

This is the view of Solidarity chief executive Dirk Hermann, who responded to a City Press report that Eskom wants taxpayers to cough up a further R1.8 billion for performance bonuses.

According to the report, Eskom wants to pay R1.8 billion in performance bonuses between 2019 and 2022.

The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) said Eskom did not reveal this plan in its tariff applications.

Nersa was not supportive of the public having to pay for the incompetence and maladministration at Eskom, City Press said.

Eskom in crisis

Hermann said Eskom is hopelessly bankrupt and operationally fragile due to years of looting, mismanagement, and race obsession.

Eskom is in crisis and should be treated as a crisis, Hermann said.

If Eskom is not treated as if it is in business rescue, it is going to explode on itself and South Africa, he added.

Hermann said Eskoms bonus policy states that bonuses will only be paid out if the company makes a profit.

It is common practice in all companies for bonuses to fund themselves. It should be that way in Eskom as well.

Rewarding good workers

Hermann said Solidarity is in favour of rewarding those who perform exceptionally well under the dire circumstances at Eskom, however.

There are unsung heroes in Eskom who keep our lights on. Solidarity members and many other employees work ethics force them to work hours in overtime to keep the place going, he said.

Hermann added that there are also looters who walk around freely, though.

The performers have to be compensated, the looters have to be prosecuted and the lazy have to be fired, he said.

No comment from Eskom

Eskom was asked for comment regarding the reported bonuses, but the company did not respond by the time of publication.
NEW YORK, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. ("Fiat Chrysler" or the "Company") (NYSE: FCAU). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at [email protected] or 888-476-6529, ext. 9980.

The investigation concerns whether Fiat Chrystler and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices.

[Click here for information about joining the class action]

On November 20, 2019, General Motors Company ("GM") filed a federal racketeering lawsuit against Fiat Chrysler and its former executives, accusing Fiat Chrysler of bribing United Auto Workers ("UAW") officials to receive more favorable terms in labor negotiations. Specifically, GM alleged that Fiat Chrysler "corrupted" collective bargaining agreements between GM and UAW in 2009, 2011 and 2015 by paying millions in dollars in bribes, and that the alleged scheme was authorized at the highest levels of Fiat Chrysler, including the Company's late Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne.

On this news, Fiat Chrysler's stock price fell $0.58 per share, or 3.72%, to close at $15.00 per share on November 20, 2019.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com

CONTACT:

Robert S. Willoughby

Pomerantz LLP

[email protected]

888-476-6529 ext. 9980

SOURCE Pomerantz LLP

Related Links

http://www.pomerantzlaw.com


A man and woman, both from Fall River, were arrested last week for allegedly assaulting and robbing a man at gunpoint after invading his home in Raynham on New Years Day, police announced Sunday.

Derek Martin and Jessica Toomey were charged with armed home invasion, witness intimidation and threatening to commit a crime, the Raynham Police Department said in a statement.

The 32-year-old man and 31-year-old woman are accused of entering a home on Tearall Road around 2 p.m., pistol whipping the resident inside and stealing his cash and a cell phone, the statement said.

The victim suffered facial lacerations but declined medical treatment, according to the statement.

Martin and Toomey were brought into custody Friday evening in Middleborough, police said.

The home invasion and robbery were not random, according to police. The suspects had previously been to the victims home.

The Massachusetts State Police Violent Fugitive Apprehension Section, the Fall River Police Department Gang Unit and the Middleborough Police Department assisted in the investigation.

This is a fine example of inter-agency teamwork at multiple levels, Raynham Police Chief James Donovan said. State and municipal agencies came together to ensure that these two violent suspects will be made to face justice."

The suspects are being held by the Bristol County Sheriffs Office at the Ash Street Jail and Regional Lock-Up in New Bedford. They are scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Taunton District Court.
"I can certainly tell you that when I studied in JNU, we did not see any 'tukde tukde' gang there," External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Monday when asked about the situation in the premier university.

After the violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University campus on Sunday, Jaishankar, a JNU alumnus, had swiftly condemned the incident, saying it is completely against the tradition and culture of the university.

"Tukde-Tukde" is a term often used by the right-wing parties to attack the opposition, particularly Left and Left-backed outfits as well as those who support them.

At a book release event, Jaishankar also said that unlike China, India allowed issues like Article 370, Ayodhya and GST to fester for a long time.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Esmail Ghaani, the new head of the Iranian Quds Force, on Monday warned of imminent revenge on the United States, US, following the de...





Esmail Ghaani, the new head of the Iranian Quds Force, on Monday warned of imminent revenge on the United States, US, following the death of General, Qassem Soleimani.





Ghaani, who succeeds Soleimani as head of Quds Force warned that God who is the main avenger will avenge the death of General Soleimani.





Speaking during the funeral of Soleimani in Tehran, the countrys capital, Ghaani insisted that actions will certainly be taken.





God the Almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger, certainly actions will be taken, Esmail Ghaani said.

A US-backed airstrike had killed Soleimani, who is the Revolutionary Guard General and head of the elite Quds Force, at Baghdad International Airport.





Soleimanis killing had sparked rumours of a third world war likely to start between the US and Iran.





Trump had disclosed that Soleimani was plotting to kill lots of American citizens but was caught in the process.





Also, Iran had threatened to attack the US White House, following warning of retaliation by Trump.





The threat was issued by Iranian MP, Abolfazl Abutorabi during an open session of parliament in Tehran, Iran, the countrys Labour News Agency reports




MONTERREY, Mexico - Mexican authorities continued searching Monday for the gunmen responsible for an attack on a sparsely travelled stretch of highway near the Texas border that left a 13-year-old U.S. boy dead and four relatives wounded.

On Saturday night, a family travelling in two vehicles was attacked on a two-lane highway paralleling the U.S.-Mexico border in the township of Ciudad Mier.

One SUV of attackers passed the family and then cut them off causing them to collide and come to a halt. Gunmen then opened fire, according to a statement from the state of Tamaulipas security co-ordinating group. All of the wounded came from one of the familys vehicles, both of which had Oklahoma license plates. The gunmen escaped in another vehicle.

Prosecutors identified the boy who was killed as Oscar Castillo Lopez.

A 10-year-old relative was among those wounded. They were all taken to a hospital in Monterrey after initially being moved to a nearer small town hospital.

On Monday, Luis Enrique Orozco, a deputy in the Nuevo Leon state prosecutors office, said another boy was in critical condition along with a 48-year-old man. A 42-year-old woman was in stable condition, he said. The relationship between the adults and the children was unclear, but Orozco said the two wounded adults were siblings.

Tamaulipas state prosecutors at one point said the boy who died was 14 years old.

The family was returning to the U.S. after spending the holidays in the border state of Nuevo Leon, where Monterrey is located. Some members of the family are originally from the central Mexico state of San Luis Potosi, while some were born in the United States.

What remained unclear was why the family was on such a dangerous stretch of highway after dark.

The area where the attack occurred is contested by drug cartels.

For years Ciudad Mier was the uppermost edge of the Gulf cartels control and Nueva Ciudad Guerrero was the limit for the Nuevo Laredo-based Zetas. Between them sits uninhabited scrub land.

In 2010, after the Zetas split from the Gulf cartel and established themselves as an organized criminal power through prominent displays of graphic violence, Mier became a battleground for the two cartels and most of its residents abandoned the quaint colonial town.

More recently, however, the Zetas splinter group known as the Northeast cartel has been as far downriver as Mier, Miguel Aleman and Camargo, well into what was traditionally the Gulf cartels territory.

Photographs from Saturday nights crime scene showed the Northeast cartels Spanish initials  CDN  scrawled on the back window of one of the vehicles.

The latest U.S. State Department travel advisory in mid-December listed Tamaulipas state as do not travel due to the prevalence of crime and kidnapping.

Heavily armed members of criminal groups often patrol areas of the state in marked and unmarked vehicles and operate with impunity particularly along the border region from Reynosa northwest to Nuevo Laredo, the advisory said. That was where the family was driving.

__

AP writer Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Demi Rose experienced a turbulent 2019 and has since been travelling the world from one exotic location to the next.

The 24-year-old glamour model took some time to 'look after her mind, body and spirit' as she posed topless against an idyllic backdrop in Tulum, Mexico where she saw in the New Year.

In a selection of stunning but equally revealing photos posted to Instagram on Monday, the British beauty playfully posed wearing nothing but skimpy blue crochet bikini bottoms.

Wow: Demi Rose took some time to 'look after her mind, body and spirit' as she posed topless against an idyllic backdrop in Tulum, Mexico

In one photo, Demi stood with her arm across her bare chest, showcasing her curvaceous figure and ample assets.

Her glossy chestnut locks were pulled to one side as the loose waves cascaded down her neck and over the front of her cleavage.

In a bid to show off all her angles, the bombshell also sat on the edge of the water with her back to the camera looking over her shoulder in a sultry manner.

Cheeky: In a selection of stunning but equally revealing photos posted to Instagram on Monday, the British beauty playfully posed wearing nothing but skimpy blue crochet bikini bottoms

Turbulent: The past 12 months has seen Demi travel the world, book high profile modelling jobs and launch a fashion collaboration yet but it was also the year of her mother's death

Suggesting she was taking some down time to relax, the Instagram star, captioned the photo: 'Looking after my mind, body & spirit.'

Taking a break from the sea side snaps, Demi also took some time for a stroll around the town of Tulum.

The star continued to show off her ample cleavage in a busty tube top which she paired with a flowy black maxi skirt and sandals.

Sight-seeing: Taking a break from the seaside snaps, Demi also took some time to stroll around the town of Tulum continuing to show off her ample cleavage in a busty tube top

The steamy snaps come after a candid Instragram post that saw Demi reflect on her 2019.

Revealing that 2019 had been both the 'hardest', yet also 'best' year of her life, she penned: 'Wow what a year. It definitely has been the hardest year of my life but the also the best year of my life.

'Im proud of myself for getting through the hurdles Ive faced and the growth that Ive experienced. Im ready to say goodbye to 2019 and Im SO excited for whats to come in this new year.

'I wish you all an amazing 2020 filled with lots of blessings and love. Thank you for all your support, always. Love you guys!'

Highs and lows: Demi's steamy snapshot comes after she reflected on the past year with a candid post, revealing it had been both the 'hardest', yet also 'best' year of her life

Demi has been travelling the world in recent months following her amicable split from boyfriend DJ Chris Martinez in October.

Before Mexico, Demi enjoyed a break in Jordan and before that, she was posting pictures from Sri Panwa Phuket and Las Vegas.

Demi also saw her career surge in 2019 as she booked several high profile modelling gigs, and launched a swimwear collection with Oh Polly.

However, Demi also struggled with an intense loss last year, announcing the death of her mother Christine Mawby who passed away aged 64 in July.

The tragedy came just eight months after her beloved father Barrie died in October 2018.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 22:50:29|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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NAIROBI, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan police said Monday they have arrested a foreign terror suspect who was conducting surveillance on a military base in Nairobi.

Phillip Ndolo, Nairobi regional police commander said the male Somali-Canadian was arrested on Sunday evening at the Eastleigh residential estate in Nairobi after he was intercepted conducting surveillance on Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) Air Force Base.

"The suspect was interrogated by the anti-terrorism police unit to find out what he was doing there," Ndolo said.

He said the foreigner, Abdinasir Abdule was arrested following intelligence through members of the public that the man was taking photos of the KDF base at different angles when officers pounced on him.

"He was going around while taking pictures including pictures directed to Air Force compound and the police managed to arrest him," said Ndolo.

An internal police report said the suspect did not have any document to ascertain his nationality.

Ndolo said the suspect was later presented before a Nairobi court on charges of being in the country illegally.

Abdule's arrest came a few hours after police arrested three suspects who attempted to gain access to British military camp in Laikipia, central Kenya on Sunday.

Photos of the three suspects were captured by closed-circuit television and circulated. According to police, the three had no weaponry at the time of the arrest.

The three suspects are being interrogated by the police who are on high alert due to a surge in terror-related incidents across the country.
YAOUNDE, Cameroon - At least nine people have died and 30 others have been wounded in an explosion in the Cameroonian town of Fotokol on the northern border with Nigeria, a local official said.

A young man picked up an explosive device thinking that it was a piece of iron and it exploded, killing him and eight others said Midjiyawa Bakari, the governor of Cameroons Far North region.

Bakari said officials are investigating the origins of the explosive device, but it is certainly either from the military fighting Boko Haram extremists in the region or from the Islamic extremist group itself.

Full-scale battles have not been reported recently between the military and Boko Haram in the area, but officials have warned of the presence of landmines and abandoned or missing weapons.

Boko Harams decade-long insurgency began in northeastern Nigeria and has spilled across borders into Cameroon, as well as Niger and Chad. The group has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and created one of the worlds largest humanitarian crises.

In recent years some fighters have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, creating a new threat.
CEOs of the U.K.'s most valuable firms earn 117 times more than the average British worker  meaning they would have already earned a typical worker's annual salary by the end of Monday, according to new research.

In a report published Monday, Britain's Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and thinktank the High Pay Centre analyzed public data to compare the salaries of FTSE 100 CEOs to those of average U.K. workers.

London's FTSE 100 index is comprised of the U.K.'s 100 most valuable public companies.

The CIPD found that in just three working days, chief executives of the country's top firms would take home the U.K.'s median salary of 29,559 ($38,640).

According to the report, the average FTSE 100 CEO earned 3.46 million in 2018, equivalent to 901.30 an hour. In comparison, the median hourly pay of full-time workers was 14.37.

Companies in the U.K. are under increasing pressure to provide transparency and explanation around executive pay.

From this year, publicly-listed firms with more than 250 employees will be required to disclose the ratio between the pay of their CEOs and their average workers.

Those companies will also be legally required to justify top bosses' pay, reporting to the British government on an annual basis.

Peter Cheese, chief executive of the CIPD, said in a press release Monday that businesses needed to "step up and justify very high levels of pay for top executives."

"Greater fairness and openness in pay is essential in building trust, amongst employees as well as external stakeholders and investors," he said. "Expectations on businesses behaving and acting responsibly are rising, and greater transparency around how they are treating and managing all their people is a vital part of building long-term sustainability."
BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jan. 6

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

At this time, Turkeys export to Azerbaijan amounted to $158.1 million, and import from Azerbaijan to $30.9 million, the ministry said.

From January through November 2019, Turkeys trade with Azerbaijan increased by $106.5 million compared with the same period of 2018, exceeding $1.7 billion.

In the first 11 months of 2019, Turkeys export to Azerbaijan amounted to $1.4 billion, and import from Azerbaijan to $353.4 million, a source in the ministry said.

In November 2019, Turkeys foreign trade amounted to $33.2 billion.

During this month, Turkeys export increased by 0.1 percent compared with November 2018, amounting to $15.5 billion.

At this time, import to Turkey increased by 9.7 percent compared with November 2018, and reached $17.7 billion.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

Whether readers realized it or not, the Journals business desk has been under the tender ministrations of Assistant City Editor Mike Murphy for the past nine months while the company searched for a full-time business editor.

Starting today, thats going to be me. So let me introduce myself.

The Readers Digest version: I was raised in the Denver area by my dad, a general contractor, and my mom, a homemaker who after raising eight children went on to nursing school. After journalism school at Metropolitan State University of Denver, I cut my teeth at small-town newspapers, covering everything from county government to crime during stints in Gillette, Wyoming; Evergreen, Colorado; and, most recently, Grand Junction, Colorado. In the middle of all that news-gathering, I got married, moved to Thailand and worked for an experiential education company.

Its been my dream to live in Albuquerque for years  the beauty of the landscape, the presence of extended family and (importantly) the relative affordability of homes compared with my hometown all made a difference. We finally made it here last year, and since March, Ive been learning the lay of the land as a member of the Journals editorial board, meeting with members of the community and writing editorials.

Im beyond excited to jump into my new role alongside the phenomenal reporters who work every day to tell the story of the world of business and industry in New Mexico. I look forward to getting out and meeting those of you in the business community and to hearing from you, our readers. Tips and suggestions are always welcome. I can be reached at gporter@abqjournal.com.
[January 06, 2020] Cambrex Announces Management Changes and Board Appointments

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J., Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cambrex Corporation, the leading small molecule company providing drug substance, drug product and analytical services across the entire drug lifecycle, today announced changes to its management team and Board of Directors to accelerate growth and further operational excellence, building upon its trusted reputation for the highest quality pharmaceutical development and manufacturing capabilities. The following appointments and new positions are effective immediately. Robert Green has been named Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer , succeeding Gregory Sargen, who will depart the company on January 31. Mr. Green joins from General Electric Corporation, where he began his career in 1990 and was most recently CFO of GE Power, a global business unit with $35 billion in revenue operating in 180 countries. In his tenure at GE, Robert served as CFO for eight global business units, including as CFO of GE Healthcare Bio-Sciences, a leading medical diagnostic and life sciences products company.

, succeeding Gregory Sargen, who will depart the company on January 31. Mr. Green joins from General Electric Corporation, where he began his career in 1990 and was most recently CFO of GE Power, a global business unit with $35 billion in revenue operating in 180 countries. In his tenure at GE, Robert served as CFO for eight global business units, including as CFO of GE Healthcare Bio-Sciences, a leading medical diagnostic and life sciences products company. Shawn Cavanagh has been promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer, and will join the Companys Board of Directors . Shawn has served as EVP and Chief Operating Officer of Cambrex since 2011, having originally joined in 1999, and has been instrumental to the companys long-term growth and strategic development.

. Shawn has served as EVP and Chief Operating Officer of Cambrex since 2011, having originally joined in 1999, and has been instrumental to the companys long-term growth and strategic development. Stephan Haitz has been promoted to President, CDMO Sales & Marketing. Mr. Haitz joined Cambrex in 2014 and has served as Vice President, Sales & Business Development. Stephan previously held various sales and business development roles at Lonza and Solvias AG. The Companys Board of Directors will now be comprised of Chairman Wayne Hewett, CEO Steven Klosk, President Shawn Cavanagh, Claes Glassell, who will be rejoining the Board, Permira Partners John Coyle and Henry Minello and Permira Principal Laura ODonnell. Steven Klosk, CEO of Cambrex, said, Im proud of the depth and experience of our talented team, which is reflected in the quality of individuals transitioning to these leadership roles. We are well-positioned for continued growth in the market given our best-in-class assets, broad product capabilities and customer reputation. Im thrilled to be working with this group of individuals and look forward to the strong future ahead. Wayne Hewett, Chairman of the Board, said, I am incredibly honored to serve as Chairman during this inflection point in Cambrexs history. The management team and Board have a remarkable combination of healthcare leadership experience and operational expertise and, following the Permira funds investment, are wel-positioned to support Cambrexs growth and expanded product offering to better serve leading pharmaceutical companies around the world.



Mr. Hewett added, We are especially fortunate that we will continue to have the expertise and leadership of Claes Glassell on our Board. He is a well-respected industry veteran in life sciences and has already been an invaluable resource to the Board and management team of Cambrex for several years. Mr. Hewett concluded, We would like to welcome Robert to Cambrex and are excited to add someone of Roberts caliber and experience to the senior team. On behalf of the Cambrex Board, management and employees, I would like to thank Greg Sargen for 17 years of service to Cambrex. He has had a tremendously positive impact on the company. We wish him all the best.

Henry Minello, Permira Partner, said, We have long admired Cambrex for its excellent reputation for the highest quality products and services from clinical phase development and manufacturing through commercial production. Cambrex is one of a small group of top-tier players that can provide the full suite of services for pharmaceutical customers. With these important management additions and promotions completed, we are excited to be backing a talented senior team to drive growth and meet the ever-expanding needs of the marketplace. About Cambrex

Cambrex is the leading small molecule company that provides drug substance, drug product and analytical services across the entire drug lifecycle. The company provides customers with an end-to-end partnership for the research, development and manufacture of small molecule therapeutics. With over 35 years experience and a growing team of over 2,000 experts servicing global clients from sites in North America and Europe, Cambrex is a trusted partner in branded and generic markets for API and dosage form development and manufacturing. Cambrex offers a range of specialist drug substance technologies and capabilities including biocatalysis, continuous flow, controlled substances, solid state science, material characterization and highly potent APIs. In addition, Cambrex can support conventional dosage forms including oral solids, semi-solids and liquids and has the expertise to manufacture specialist dosage forms such as modified-release, fixed dose combination, pediatric, bi-layer tablets, stick packs, topicals, controlled substances, sterile and non-sterile ointments. For more information, please visit www.cambrex.com About Permira

Permira is a global investment firm. Founded in 1985, the firm advises funds with a total committed capital of approximately US$48bn (44bn) and makes long-term investments, including majority control investments as well as strategic minority investments, in companies with the objective of transforming their performance and driving sustainable growth. The Permira funds have made over 250 private equity investments in five key sectors: Technology, Consumer, Financial Services, Industrial Tech and Services, and Healthcare. Permira employs over 250 people in 14 offices across Europe, North America, and Asia. For more information, please visit: www.permira.com Cambrex Contact:

Stephanie LaFiura

Senior Executive Assistant

(201) 804 3037

Email: [email protected]



Permira Contact:

Nina Suter

Head of Communications

Tel: +44 207 9594037

Email: [email protected] Brooke Gordon / Devin Broda / Julie Rudnick

Tel: +1 (212) 687 8080

[email protected]

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
BDO Unibank Inc. emerged as the Bank of the Year in the Philippines given its focused approach on bringing the best services and loans to customers, The Banker said in a statement.

The London-based financial publication underscored BDOs far-reaching retail network, which enables it to serve the unique banking needs of its clients. It also lauded the banks financial education program and support for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSME) through its relevant loans, as well as its diverse range of financial services, which cover life insurance and online stock trading. Beyond banking, BDO was also recognized for getting the approval of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) for integrating sustainable development into its best practices.

The Banker identified the best banks in 138 countries based on their overall performance for the past 12 months for The Bankers Bank of the Year Awards 2019. Six regional awards, as well as the best bank in the world award for the Agricultural Bank of China were also given away.

True to its We Find Ways philosophy, BDO continues to expand its network to give more Filipinos convenience and access to financial services. For the bank, every branch and ATM helps contribute to a more financially inclusive nation. While its ATMs are open 24/7, select branches have longer banking hours and weekend banking to accommodate clients who may be unavailable during regular banking hours.

BDO now has more than 1,300 branches and over 4,400 ATMs nationwide. This includes the branches of its rural bank subsidiary, BDO Network Bank, which are located in the archipelagos most remote areas, particularly in Mindanao.

BDO Network Bank offers financial solutions, particularly loans for MSMEs like owners of sari-sari stores, water stations, and carinderias to expand their businesses, and salary loans for teachers and government employees to provide for their families.

An advocate of financial education, BDO upholds the value of saving and investing for the future. (PR)
The Mizoram government will be organising Zo Kutpui (festival) in at least 10 states across India and countries such as US, Myanmar and Bangladesh, officials said on Monday.

The first edition of the festival will start on January 9 in Vanghmun in Tripura and will be held over three days, an official of the state tourism department said.

The festival will then move to other states which have significant Mizo population, he added.

The move is an attempt to unify and strengthen the brotherhood among various Mizo tribes living in different parts of the world, the official said.

Chief Minister Zoramthanga would grace the event at Vanghmun, while Tourism Minister Robert Romawia Royte would be the chief host of the festival.

The event will witness various cultural programmes by different Mizo tribes, besides performance by various artistes belonging to Zo ethnic tribes of Mizoram and the Northeast, he said.

Ahead of the state polls of November 2018, the ruling Mizo National Front (MNF) had made "unification" of different Mizo tribes as its poll plank. The festival was an election promise.

An official said the government would soon launch bus services from state capital Aizawl to Kanhmun in Tripura, Churachandpur in Manipur, Shillong in Meghalaya and Tahan in Myanmar to connect people of the Mizo community.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
According to a new market report published by Persistence Market Research " Global Market Study on Ophthalmic Devices: Asia to Witness Highest Growth by 2020, " the global ophthalmic devices market was valued at USD 29,171.5 million in 2014 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.5% from 2014 to 2020, to reach an estimated value of USD 42,685.1 million in 2020.

Globally, the ophthalmic devices market is witnessing significant growth due to increasing prevalence of eye disorders, such as diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration. In addition, growing global aging population, increasing government initiatives towards healthcare infrastructure in developing countries, and increasing incidence of lifestyle-associated diseases are also driving the growth of the market.

However, lack of awareness among people about eye disorders, poor primary healthcare infrastructure, and lack of insurance in developing countries hamper growth of the global ophthalmic devices market. In addition, eye diseases in children are also increasing due to the general lack of awareness.

The global ophthalmic devices market is anticipated to grow from an estimated USD 29,171.5 million in 2014 to USD 42,685.1 million in 2020 at a CAGR of 6.5% during the forecast period.

To Remain Ahead Of Your Competitors, Request for a Sample Here @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3188

Age-related eye diseases, such as glaucoma, cataract, diabetic retinopathy, and age-related macular degeneration, are the leading causes of visual impairment and blindness in North America. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, approximately 22 million Americans aged 40 and above were affected by cataract and 2.3 million Americans were affected by glaucoma in 2011.

In Europe, increasing prevalence of chronic eye diseases among the rising aging population is becoming a challenge for the European healthcare system. In France, the number of age-related macular degeneration cases was 0.3 million in 2000 and it is anticipated to increase by 0.5 million in 2020.

However, glaucoma, cataract, and diabetic retinopathy are the major causes of blindness in Asia. Cataract can be held responsible for 50% to 80% of all cases of blindness in Southeast Asia.

The prevalence of age-related macular degeneration is also increasing in Asia due to increase in life expectancy and rising incidence of diabetes among the younger population. As per the Centre for Eye Research Australia, prevalence of diabetic retinopathy among people ranged between 17% and 22% in India and 43.1% in rural China in 2012.

Some of the major players in the global ophthalmic devices market:

Johnson & Johnson.

Essilor International.

Bausch & Lomb Incorporated.

Novartis AG.

HOYA CORPORATION.

Abbott Laboratories, Inc.

Other.

For Critical Insights on Market, Request For Methodology of Report @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/methodology/3188

The ophthalmic devices market is segmented as follows:

Ophthalmic devices market, by type

Vision care devices

Surgery devices

Diagnostic devices

Ophthalmic devices market, by vision care devices

Contact lenses

Spectacle lenses

Ophthalmic devices market, by surgery devices

Cataract surgery devices

Glaucoma surgery devices

Refractive error surgery devices

Vitreoretinal surgery devices

Ophthalmic devices market, by diagnostic devices

Optical coherence tomography scanners

Fundus cameras

Tonometers

Ophthalmoscopes

retinoscope

pachymeter

Wavefront aberrometers

Corneal topographers

Biometers

Keratometers

Visual field analyzers

Specular microscopes

Autorefractors

Ophthalmic ultrasound imaging systems

Ophthalmic devices market, by Geography

North America US



europe germany france UK italy spain


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Market Research Future (MRFR) projects that the Global Sun Care Products Market will exhibit a sound growth in the forthcoming years. Sun care products have strong penetration in consumer markets worldwide. These products offer the firs-line of defence from harsh sun rays. There is a vast range of sun care products available today. These products are perceived to help in maintaining and restoring skin health. The ingredients are used in preparing sun care products to have properties that shield the skin cell from harmful sun rays. Factors as such continue to drive the global popularity of sun care products.

Industry News

SC Johnson & Sons, a Racine-based consumer chemical company is reportedly planning to acquire Sun Bum a California-based wellness products manufacturer. Sun Bum has an impressive line of personal care products, which include hair care, lip care and sun protection products.

Global Sun Care Products Market: Competitive Landscape

Notable companies discussed in MRFRs report include

Groupe Clarins (France)

Coty Inc. (the US)

L'oreal (France)

Beiersdorf AG (Germany)

Beiersdorf AG (Germany)

Unilever (UK)

Johnson & Johnson (the US)

Shiseido Co. Ltd. (Japan)

Burt's Bees (the US)

Bioderma Laboratories (France)

Global Sun Care Products Market: Segmental Analysis

The segmental analysis of the market has been conducted on the basis of form, type, distribution channel, and end-use.

Based on form, the market has been segmented into gels, sprays, creams & lotion, powder and others.

Based on type, the market has been segmented into after sun products, sun protection products, self-tanning care products and others.

Based on distribution channel, the market has been segmented into non-store based and store based.

The store-based segment covers convenience stores, supermarket and hypermarket, specialty stores and others.

Based on end-use, the market has been segmented into hair care, skin care and others.

Browse Sun Care Products Market Data and Information @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/sun-care-products-market-6798

Global Sun Care Products Market: Regional Analysis

Key regions discussed in the report include North America, South America, Asia Pacific (APAC), Europe and the Middle East & Africa (MEA). North America is the lasted market for sun care products. A large number of Americans use these products. High level of consciousness and desire to keep a healthy and glowing skin are factoring favouring the market growth in the region. Following North America, the demand for sun care products is highest in Europe. In terms of revenue, Europe accounts for the second spot in the global sun care products market. At the same time, increased inclination towards organic and natural variants, is opening new growth avenues for market players. Meanwhile, a sharp rise in demand for sun care products is expected in APAC in the years to come.

About Market Research Future:

At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.

MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.
McAlester News-Capital, Okla.

Jan. 10The Demons are ready for the challenges ahead. Crowder has been facing down opponents and battling all season long, and as coach Garrett Munger pointed out, being introspective helps keep his team focused when they're on the court. "You just do what you can control. That's what we've been trying to talk about," Munger said. "Do what you can control and everything else will fall into ...
Dear Dr Cummings,

I would like to apply for the advertised position of misfit and/or weirdo in Whitehall as advertised on your blog.

I hope you dont mind me addressing you as Dr Cummings. Though there is no evidence that I can find that you have any qualifications at all beyond a BA in History from Oxford, a university that you truly defied the odds by attending after you left private school, I simply refuse to accept this can possibly be true.

So regularly do you pronounce your loathing for Oxbridge egomaniacs with humanities degrees (The Times, 2014) and private school bluffers (this job ad, last week), it is surely impossible to think you, yourself, could actually be one.

From what Ive read, the only actual source of your immense self-regard  the thing that you imagine elevates you above what you very clearly are  is some time you spent reading some books in a basement somewhere.

This, in a way, is fortunate. Because I dont actually have any qualifications either, beyond a humanities degree. All I have to offer, in any concrete form, is a toweringly high opinion of myself. I am confident that you will understand this is more than enough.

I also note that in the job ad you make clear you want people who are cleverer than you. If youd said you want people cleverer than you think you are, I wouldnt have had the audacity to apply. Nor, I imagine, would the late Stephen Hawking, but as you have made clear all that is required is an absolute chancer with a BA, I more than fit the bill.

More to the point, you are going to have to make do with the likes of me. You want to hire experts in mathematical modelling, science and data analytics. But, traditionally, people of this nature work in universities, or in actual science or research, using their actual qualifications.

And most of these people  and this really is where I predict youre going to have issues  think Brexit is the stupidest thing any country has ever done, and wouldnt go anywhere near you with a 10,000-foot barge pole.

Theyve watched their research groups stop receiving applications from foreign students, and theyve seen their funding slashed. And the little visas for scientists plan isnt making any difference. Because scientists, for the most part, dont want to come to little, parochial, backwards-looking Britain anymore. Which you might not want it to be, but it is the certain, inevitable consequence of the racist lies told to win your referendum.

Actions, as you like to say, have consequences. And when its well known that you flooded Facebook with blatant Islamophobia, there is a strong chance youll find that people who arent racist dont want to work for you.

But as I say, thats not a problem for me. Ill say anything. Ill do anything. Any lie, big or small, not a problem for me. I dont care a toss about the consequences of anything I say or do. Thats for the little people to worry about.

You may also have noticed that I have a completely undisguised loathing for you. That, Im sure you can see, is a major plus point. Youve spent whole years, decades nearly, writing angry blog posts and op-eds about Oxbridge egomaniacs with humanities degrees, but as you couldnt be happier to be working for the platonic ideal of such a person, I imagine a healthy amount of inter-office hatred can only be a good thing.

Mainly, I am just itching to get things done, motivated by an unshakeable certainty youll know well  that Im just better than everybody else.

To take just one example, I dont have any legal qualifications either, but I can tell you now that, just like you, I wouldnt possibly doubt for a second that I would know more about constitutional law than the Supreme Court. Just get in their faces, rub them up the wrong way and, eventually, youll get results.

I know you specify at great length that you want people who actually know things, who can actually do things, but come on. What sort of substitute is that for the kind of self-belief that only you and I possess?

We can do anything together, you and me. All we need is belief. Belief and absolutely massive lies. Ideally racist ones.

No need to write back. I start on Monday. Gilet in large, please.

Yours,

Tom Peck

Political sketch writer
The UK government has agreed to support the financing of a trio of Oman hospital projects won by British firm International Hospitals Group (IHG), a report said.

IHG has been appointed for the construction of the Salalah, Suwaiq and Khasab hospitals, backed by over 500m-worth of support from UK Export Finance (UKEF), said The Construction Index report.

UKEF has provided support to help win the contracts and has provided a loan, repayable on a commercial basis, it said.

The three hospitals will provide intensive care, emergency services and specialist baby care. The British government said that the new projects will support jobs in the UK throughout the duration of the build, by drawing heavily on the expertise of the UK supply chain, including the supply of specialist knowledge and medical equipment.

IHG will provide a full design, construction and services package for all three hospitals. Work will also include the construction of emergency power systems, maintenance facilities, roads and other associated infrastructure, the report said.
It has been a baptism of fire for Ireland's first female general since she joined the United Nations peacekeeping mission on the Golan Heights, between Syria and Israel.

After being promoted at home to the rank of brigadier general, Maureen O'Brien took up her appointment as deputy force commander of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) mission last September.

But as she moved in, a vacancy arose in the top post that has yet to be filled. This meant that after a month of briefings and familiarising herself with the area of operations and the key figures from the 10 contributing nations, General O'Brien became acting force commander.

Rising tensions in the Middle East as Iran vows to seek revenge for the United States missile attack which killed General Qasem Soleimani will now make her position even more pivotal.

Irish peacekeeping troops serving with UNDOF and with the Unifil force in south Lebanon are maintaining the strict security levels that have marked the missions in recent years. But they have not been put on a state of high alert.

However, senior military officers at the United Nations headquarters in New York and at Defence Forces headquarters here are monitoring developments on a daily basis.

In an interview with the Irish Independent, General O'Brien described her role since October 16 as "quite challenging" as she kept in touch with all of the contingents in the mission and liaised regularly with representatives from Syria and Israel on a face-to-face basis.

The peacekeepers moved back into the Syrian side in November 2018 after vacating their posts during the internal strife between Syrian forces and anti-government groups.

The UN has now re-occupied 13 of the 36 posts that had been vacated; they are being restored after being damaged in the fighting in the area.

She said the Golan Heights was a fairly calm area at the moment, despite what was going on in the wider region.

Christmas Day was spent with a visit to the Fijian troops and then dinner with the 134-strong Irish contingent, including "turkey and all the trimmings".

The Irish also organised a charity event involving pulling a Mowag armoured carrier for a mile and taking a dip in a makeshift swimming pool.

At the same time, patrolling of the area continued and routine duties were performed.

General O'Brien acknowledged that as well as working hard, they also had time for fun with many occupying their spare time with runs around the 1.2km perimeter of the Irish camp.

Apart from the Irish and the Fijians, the 1,058-strong force also has troops from Nepal (352), India (184) and Uruguay (172), with staff officers from Ghana, Czech Republic, Bhutan, Netherlands and Australia.

General O'Brien has extensive overseas experience and her first two deployments were with the Unifil peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.

All of her postings with peace missions have been in difficult spots, making her one of the most accomplished officers in the Defence Forces.

She also served with MINURSO in Western Sahara, where she realised as a young captain how much women could contribute to a military organisation, and with UNTAET in East Timor while she became the first female deputy commanding officer of an infantry battalion with MINURCAT in Chad.

It has been a long, hard road for women over the past four decades to be fully accepted into the Defence Forces.

The first four women joined the cadet school in 1980 and, after commissioning, they were members of the Women's Service Corps, allocated mostly administrative tasks and, on service overseas, were sent to office appointments at headquarters.

Full integration came in October 1981 when the corps was disbanded and, on the same day, the first female platoon passed out in McDonagh barracks at the Curragh.

But it was a further 11 years before the non-combatant policy for women was withdrawn and females could fully participate in all roles.

General O'Brien agreed with Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces Vice Admiral Mark Mellett that the ratio of women in the military - 6.7pc at home and slightly over 7pc overseas - was not good enough.

Vice Admiral Mellett said huge efforts had been made in recent recruitment campaigns to attract more women and there were several reasons why numbers were so small.

He said studies showed women in most countries were socialised from a young age to fulfil stereotypical "feminine" roles and not to opt for careers such as Stem (science, technology, engineering or maths) or the military.

Conversely, he said, the socialisation of young males predisposed them to more "masculine" pursuits.

General O'Brien accepted that, in her youth, she was more focused on her ability as an athlete with a will to win rather than playing with dolls.

She admitted she had a reputation for being forthright in her views and suggested the title for her biography, should she write one, would be "sticking to my guns".

Asked about settling into life on the Golan, the Galway city born general said: "It's taken a while to get used to it but I have a couple of rooms and now I call them home."
In the aftermath of Donald Trumps 2016 election victory, analysts fiercely debated the role of the approximately six million voters who supported President Barack Obama in 2012 but shifted their support to Mr. Trump in 2016. Democratic strategists also had to worry about their future behavior: Was 2016 a temporary blip or were these voters gone forever? With newly available data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study survey, the largest publicly-available election survey, we can now analyze what happened with these Obama-Trump voters in 2018 and what that might portend for Mr. Trumps re-election campaign.

To understand the potential ramifications of Obama-Trump voters in 2020, its worth understanding how they voted in 2018. Among those who voted, three-quarters stuck with the Republican Party. But Democrats did win back about one-fifth of the Obama-Trump group in 2018, which would amount to a net swing of about 1.5 million votes. While the idiosyncratic governing style of Mr. Trump may have been one key factor in bringing Obama-Trump voters back into the Democratic fold, it wasnt the only reason. Its true that most Obama-Trump voters who stuck with the Republican Party in 2018 strongly approved of the job Mr. Trump was doing as president, but interestingly even half of those who flipped back to the Democratic side at least somewhat approved of Mr. Trump. Democrats won back a significant share of Obama-Trump voters not because those voters disliked Mr. Trump, but in spite of the fact that many actually approved of him.

Instead, these voters appeared to be drawn back toward the Democrats by some of the partys bread-and butter-issues, and in spite of others. On issues like gun control, health care and the environment, these voters look remarkably like the Democratic Partys base  those who voted for Obama in 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016 and a Democratic House candidate in 2018. Eighty-four percent of Obama-Trump voters who voted for Democratic House candidates in 2018 want to ban assault rifles, compared to 92 percent of the Democratic base. By contrast, 57 percent of Obama-Trump voters who stayed with Republicans in 2018 support an assault weapons ban (which has far less support among the Republican base).

Medicare for all is surprisingly popular among all Obama-Trump voters, but especially those who voted for Democrats in 2018. Eighty-three percent of those who switched back to the Democratic Party in 2018 support Medicare for all, nearly as high as the 93 percent support the policy achieves among the most solidly blue Democratic voting bloc.
Congress workers burn an effigy of Pak PM Imran Khan during a protest against the alleged vandalism on Gurdwara Nankana Sahib in Patiala. (PTI)

New Delhi: India on Monday summoned Pakistans Charge daffaires in New Delhi Syed Haider Shah and lodged a protest with Islamabad at the recent acts of vandalism and desecration of the holy Gurudwara Sri Janamasthan at Nankana Sahib, Pakistan, and the targeted killing of minority Sikh community member in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Islamabad was asked to ensure safety, security, and welfare of the members of the minority communities in Pakistan, including their places of worship, and take immediate measures to expeditiously bring the perpetrators of such despicable and heinous acts to justice.

Meanwhile, the main accused in the vandalism case was arrested and charged with a non-bailable section of the stringent anti-terrorism act and blasphemy, a senior Pakistani police officer said on Monday.

In a statement, the MEA said, Pakistans Charge daffaires, Syed Haider Shah, was summoned on Monday to lodge strong protest at the recent acts of vandalism and desecration of the holy Gurdwara Sri Janamasthan at Nankana Sahib, Pakistan.

The MEA added, India also shared strong concerns raised by members of civil society, parliamentarians and others at the continued persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in Pakistan, including the recent despicable and heinous acts. Government of Pakistan was called upon to ensure safety, security, and welfare of the members of the minority communities in Pakistan, and take immediate measures to expeditiously bring the perpetrators to justice.

Following stone-pelting by a mob last week that targeted the Nankana Sahib Gurudwara, it may be recalled that India had on Friday lashed out at the vandalism in the Gurdwara.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prays near the coffins of Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran January 6, 2020. Official Khamenei website/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS

Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani, the newly appointed commander of the country's Quds Force Official Khamenei website/Handout via REUTERS

People attend a funeral procession for Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis Official Khamenei website/Handout via REUTERS

Zeinab Soleimani, daughter of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani speaking during his funeral procession at Tehran University (Photo by - / various sources / AFP)

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani and Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani, the newly appointed commander of the country's Quds Force, pray near the coffins of Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani Official Khamenei website/Handout via REUTERS

Tens of thousands of Iranians thronged the streets of Tehran on Monday for the funeral of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani who was killed in a U.S. air strike last week and his daughter said his death would bring a "dark day" for the United States.

"Crazy Trump, don't think that everything is over with my father's martyrdom," Zeinab Soleimani said in her address broadcast on state television after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered Friday's strike that killed the top Iranian general.

Iran has promised to avenge the killing of Soleimani, the architect of Iran's drive to extend its influence across the region and a national hero among many Iranians, even many of those who did not consider themselves devoted supporters of the Islamic Republic's clerical rulers.

The scale of the crowds in Tehran shown on television mirrored the masses that gathered in 1989 for the funeral of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In response to Iran's warnings, Trump has threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites, including cultural targets, if Tehran attacks Americans or U.S. assets, deepening a crisis that has heightened fears of a major Middle East conflagration.

The coffins of the Iranian general and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was also killed in Friday's attack on Baghdad airport, were passed across the heads of mourners massed in central Tehran, many of them chanting "Death to America".

One of the Islamic Republic's major regional goals, namely to drive U.S. forces out of neighbouring Iraq, came a step closer on Sunday when the Iraqi parliament backed a recommendation by the prime minister for all foreign troops to be ordered out.

"Despite the internal and external difficulties that we might face, it remains best for Iraq on principle and practically," said Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who resigned in November amid anti-government protests.

Iraq's rival Shi'ite leaders, including ones opposed to Iranian influence, have united since Friday's attack in calling for the expulsion of U.S. troops.

Esmail Qaani, the new head of the Quds Force, the Revolutionary Guards' unit in charge of activities abroad, said Iran would continue Soleimani's path and said "the only compensation for us would be to remove America from the region."

Expand Close Zeinab Soleimani, daughter of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani speaking during his funeral procession at Tehran University in the Iranian capital on January 6, 2020. Photo: AFP PHOTO / HO / IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER'S WEBSITE / Facebook

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Whatsapp Zeinab Soleimani, daughter of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani speaking during his funeral procession at Tehran University in the Iranian capital on January 6, 2020. Photo: AFP PHOTO / HO / IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER'S WEBSITE

Prayers at Soleimani's funeral in Tehran, which will later move to his southern home city of Kerman, were led by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Soleimani was widely seen as the second most powerful figure in Iran behind Khamenei.

The funeral was attended by some of Iran's allies in the region, including Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Palestinian group Hamas who said: "I declare that the martyred commander Soleimani is a martyr of Jerusalem."

Adding to tensions, Iran said it was taking another step back from commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers, a pact from which the United States withdrew in 2018.

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Washington has since imposed tough sanctions on Iran, describing its policy as "maximum pressure" and saying it wanted to drive down Iranian oil exports - the main source of government revenues - to zero.

Talking to reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to Washington from Florida on Sunday, Trump stood by his remarks to include cultural sites on his list of potential targets, despite drawing criticism from U.S. politicians.

"They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way," Trump said.

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Democratic critics of the Republican president have said Trump was reckless in authorising the strike, and some said his comments about targeting cultural sites amounted to threats to commit war crimes. Many asked why Soleimani, long seen as a threat by U.S. authorities, had to be killed now.

Republicans in the U.S. Congress have generally backed Trump's move.

Trump also threatened sanctions against Iraq and said that if U.S. troops were required to leave the country, Iraq's government would have to pay Washington for the cost of a "very extraordinarily expensive" air base there.

Expand Close Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prays near the coffins of Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran January 6, 2020. Official Khamenei website/Handout via REUTERS / Facebook

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Whatsapp Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prays near the coffins of Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran January 6, 2020. Official Khamenei website/Handout via REUTERS

He said if Iraq asked U.S. forces to leave on an unfriendly basis, "we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame."
In one of the YouTube videos from Mr. Zhang, the China National Radio employee, a character in the description is incorrectly translated into traditional Chinese from simplified Chinese. Mr. Zhang did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Puma Shen, an assistant professor at National Taipei University who studies Chinese influence efforts, does not believe that disinformation from China is always guided by some central authority as it spreads around the internet.

Its not an order from Beijing, Mr. Shen said. Much of the activity seems to be scattered groups of troublemakers, paid or not, who feed off one anothers trolling. People are enthusiastic about doing this kind of stuff there in China, he said.

In December, Taiwans justice ministry warned about a fake government notice saying Taiwan was deporting protesters who had fled Hong Kong. The hoax first appeared on the Chinese social platform Weibo, the ministry said, before spreading to a Chinese nationalist Facebook group.

Sometimes, Chinese trolls amplify rumors already floating around in Taiwan, Mr. Shen said. He is also on the lookout for Taiwanese social media accounts that may be bought or supported by Chinese operatives.

Ahead of midterm elections in 2018, his team had been monitoring several YouTube channels that discussed Taiwanese politics. The day after voting ended, the channels disappeared.

After Yu Hsin-Hsien was elected to the City Council that year in Taoyuan, a city near Taipei, mysterious strangers began inquiring about buying his Facebook page, which had around 280,000 followers. Mr. Yu, 30, immediately suspected China.
Notes from Indian Country

Curing the problems that seem incurable

Are things any better for Native Americans addicted to drugs and alcohol in 2020 than they were in 2010? I often write that the more things change in Indian Country the more they stay the same.

For example ninety-five percent of the more than 20,000 Native Americans living off the reservation in Rapid City are hard-working and law abiding citizens. It deeply wounds all of us when we see our fellow Lakotas getting caught up in deadly car wrecks while under the influence of alcohol because it is a reflection upon all of us and we know that the average white citizen of Rapid City thinks that most of us are druggies and alcoholics. Innocent children are often the victims in these accidents.

But it seems to us that these terrible happenings are occurring with much more frequency. Indians are involved in street fights, stabbings, and deadly domestic violence that reflect poorly upon all of the Lakota people residing in the border towns and cities of this state.

The number one contributor to nearly all of these gruesome and deadly events is alcohol and drugs. It all comes down to the point that it is the individual Native American who must take the responsibility of not consuming alcohol or using drugs. For years my newspapers have been editorializing that a massive influx of money must be available to the health providers to create a cadre of trained professionals to attack this deadly problem from the ground up. There is no other solution. The consumption of alcohol and the use of drugs is a disease and it must be attacked as a disease. Locking Native Americans up in jails and prisons does not cure the problem, but may even contribute to it. One does not cure a disease by locking up a sick person. One cures a disease by going to the roots of the problems and finding a cure.

Tim Giago. Photo courtesy Native Sun News Today

There have been many good Lakota who saw this problem as a disease and attempted to cure it; people like Melvin Dickie Brewer and Glen Three Stars fought it with all of their might as counselors, but they could never secure the adequate funding to give it the all-out effort needed to kill the disease. They only got crumbs to fight it with and you cant cure an ingrained disease with crumbs.

And so once more we turn to the Indian Health Service and to our elected representatives to please, please send your experts out to Indian Country and give them the tools to cure the disease (alcoholism and drug addiction) that are the number one destroyers of Native Americans. With a massive effort, the job can be accomplished.

We are sick and tired of seeing the lives of our friends and family members demolished because of a curable disease. And the criminal actions of those Natives addicted to these substances that cause the disease are the main reason that more than 35 percent of those incarcerated in our jails and prisons are Native Americans.

Even though many of those charged with DUIs hold jobs and are supporting a family it makes no difference to the white judges and juries who consider the only solution is more prison time. If this sounds racist so be it, but it is the truth. In all of my years as a newspaper editor I have seen the unfair and racist approach in our court system. An action that would get a white suspect a mere slap on the wrist gets too many Natives time behind bars and what is worse one can find Natives sitting in jails across South Dakota for much longer sentences than whites charged with the same crime. This is not a theory, it is a fact.

I could write an entire chapter on the historic trauma that has brought so many Native Americans to the point where drugs and alcohol seems to be their only respite. I am sure that Native American judges and juries would better understand these underlying problems and treat them accordingly. But there are no Native judges in our South Dakota court system (except on the Indian reservations) and Natives are seldom chosen to sit in a jury box.

They say you cant cure a problem by throwing more money at it, but the disease caused by drugs and alcohol in Indian Country has had little money thrown at it because if this had been the case, perhaps we would have found a cure by now.

Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota born, raised and educated on the Pine Ridge Reservation and is the founder of the Native American Journalists Association. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard with the Class of 1991. He can be reached at najournalist1@gmail.com

Content copyright  Tim Giago

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United Gets Stingier With Customer Compensation for Flight Delays

If you take a delayed United Airlines flight and want compensation for your troubles, you may need to ask for it.

United is no longer proactively offering vouchers to customers on flights delayed fewer than six hours, according to a message sent to employees. The airline said it was making the change based on feedback weve received, though the message did not expand on who gave this feedback. A United spokesman confirmed the policy shift.

The change covers delays where United is at fault, for reasons like mechanical problems or crew shortages. No U.S. carrier regularly compensates customers for weather-related problems, though some help customers find discounted hotel rooms.

Like most airlines under reputational duress, United had been generous in the last few years with compensation, often offering vouchers to an entire planeload of people for delays as short as four hours. The airline might offer different amounts to customers depending on their frequent flyer status, but everyone would get something  even people who werent expecting anything.

As an airline  or any company  improves its reputation, it may tighten how much compensation it gives when it disappoints customers, and that appears to be what United is doing here. Since the famous Dr. Dao incident in April 2017  thats when United employees called airport security to forcibly remove a customer from a flight  United has worked diligently to improve its public standing.

Now, for delays between four and six hours, employees will decide what compensation to offer  and theyll only give it after customers ask for it, according to the memo. United agents can share compensation through a mobile app on their airline-owned iPhones.

When situations arise, and they warrant compensation outside of this guideline, do the right thing to take care of the customer, United told employees. With the ongoing enhancements within the In-the-Moment Care app, you can issue compensation on the spot, recover service disruptions, and avoid sending the customer to a website or service desk.

Story continues

Other Airlines

The new policy puts United at odds with at least three other U.S. carriers, which remain more generous when a delay is their fault.

At American Airlines, customers receive proactive compensation for lengthy delays, though spokesman Ross Feinstein declined to break down at what hour customers will begin to see travel vouchers. But American is believed to begin compensating customers before a delay hits six hours.

American proactively provides compensation if a customer experiences a controllable disruption to their travel plans, Feinstein said in an email.

Sun Country, a discount airline, also offers proactive compensation, spokeswoman Jessica Wheeler said in an email. Generally, she said, the airline starts sending vouchers to customers after a four-hour delay, but its not a concrete rule. If we provide travel vouchers as an apology for a delay, we will automatically send to all passengers on the flight, she said.

Many airlines are vague about delay compensation, so customers dont expect it, and so they wont be disappointed if corporate policies change. One outlier is JetBlue Airways, which publishes it departure delay compensation scheme on its website. When a three-to-four hour delay is its fault, JetBlue automatically sends customers a travel voucher for $50. For four-to-five hours, customers get $100, and for five-to-six hours, they get $150. For longer delays, customers receive $200 in travel credits.

JetBlue has different compensation guidelines for delays that begin once the customer is already on the airplane, provided the delay is not caused by a security event.

Similar to Delta

Uniteds new policy is similar to what Delta Air Lines now offers, and thats probably by design. Like United, Delta offers delay compensation on a case-by-case basis.

Generally, airlines alter compensation schemes depending on how customers view them. Delta is a well-run airline loved by many of its customers, and it can delay a flight for mechanical reasons without worrying its passengers will leave for a competitor on their next trip. Delta CEO Ed Bastian is constantly bragging about his company net promoter scores, a measure of customer satisfaction.

United is not yet at Deltas level for reliability or passenger satisfaction, but it has made impressive strides to win more customer loyalty, and may no longer need to compensate everyone on an airplane that could seat more than 300 people.

United may also save some money with its new policy, though the airline has stressed cost savings is not the reason for the change.

This policy empowers our employees to make more personalized service decisions for our customers when a disservice occurs, an airline spokesman said in an email. We will continue to analyze feedback on our policies and further invest in approaches that are most appreciated by our customers.

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South Korean director Bong Joon-ho gives an acceptance speech after winning the award for best foreign language film for "Parasite" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. (local time). / AP-Yonhap



By Kwak Yeon-soo



Bong Joon-ho's satirical thriller "Parasite" won the best foreign film award at the Golden Globes 2020, Monday (KST)  the first Korean film to win the prize in the event's 77-year history.



In a ceremony at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, Bong's "Parasite" beat director LuLu Wang's "The Farewell," Ladj Ly's "Les Miserables," Pedro Almodovar's "Pain and Glory" and Celine Sciamma's "Portrait of a Lady on Fire.".



"Wow... Amazing. Once you overcome the one inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films," Bong said through a translator, accepting the prize.



"Just being nominated along with fellow amazing international filmmakers was a huge honor. I think we use only one language: the cinema."



"Parasite" actors Song Kang-ho, Cho Yeo-jeong and Lee Jeong-eun also attended the ceremony.



The realistic yet cleverly knitted story of two economically polarized families was also nominated for best director and best screenplay, but failed to win either.



The directorial prize went to Sam Mendes for his film "1917," and the best screenplay went to Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood."



"Parasite" has earned enormous praise across the world since May, when the film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.



The film became the highest-grossing international film in the U.S. last year, grossing $23 million  a benchmark only few foreign-language films have achieved. It also crossed the $128 million mark worldwide as of Monday.



The film has won numerous awards so far, apart from winning Cannes' highest award, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay at the National Society of Film Critics, Best Picture at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts, the Sydney Film Prize at the Sydney Film Festival and Best Foreign Language Film at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.



"Parasite" is now eyeing a trophy at the upcoming Academy Awards. The film has been shortlisted for the best international feature film and the best original song category. The final five nominees for the awards will be announced Jan. 13.



For the 92nd Academy Awards slated for Feb. 9 at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, "Parasite" is widely considered to be the strongest challenger for best international feature film.



The other short-listed films in the category are "The Painted Bird" by Vaclav Marhoul from the Czech Republic, "Truth and Justice" by Tanel Toom from Estonia, "Les Miserables" by Ladj Ly from France, "Those Who Remained" by Barnabas Toth from Hungary, "Honeyland" co-directed by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov from North Macedonia, "Corpus Christi" by Jan Komasa from Poland, "Beanpole" by Kantemir Balagov from Russia, "Atlantics" by Mati Diop from Senegal and "Pain and Glory" by Pedro Almodovar from Spain.



"A Glass of Soju" from "Parasite" will also vie for the best original song, being nominated with 14 other songs including "Speechless" from "Aladdin," "Into the Unknown" from "Frozen II," "Never Too Late" from "The Lion King" and "I Can't Let You Throw Yourself Away" from "Toy Story 4."


Chernobyl has won the Golden Globe for best limited series, granting New Jerseys Craig Mazin his latest accolade.

Mazin is the creator of the HBO series, which tied Netflixs The Crown and Unbelievable for the most Golden Globe nominations of any TV series this year (four).

Chernobyl examines the 1986 nuclear disaster, focusing on the pivotal moments just before the explosion of a reactor in Soviet Ukraine. The five-part series, which premiered in May, looks at the causes of the disaster and its devastating consequences, worsened by government cover-up.

Mazin, 48, was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Marlboro. The showrunner and executive producer is an alumnus of Freehold High School and Princeton University. In September, he accepted two Emmys for Chernobyl," for best limited series and writing for a limited series. The drama won a total of 10 Emmys.

Series stars Jared Harris, Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgard were also nominated for Golden Globes for best actor, supporting actress and supporting actor in a limited series. Skarsgard won the Globe for supporting actor.

In working on the series, Mazin consulted the 1997 book Voices from Chernobyl, by Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich, which includes first person accounts of the disaster.

Chernobyl bests Unbelievable, Showtimes The Loudest Voice, Hulus Catch-22 and FXs Fosse/Verdon in the limited series and TV movie category at the Golden Globes.

Have a tip? Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.

Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters.
tech2 News Staff

Vivo S1 Pro finally made a debut in India last week. The smartphone has already been launched in China and Philippines, but the Indian version is different in terms of design, chipset, and RAM. This smartphone is the successor of Vivo S1 that was launched in India last year at a price point of Rs 17,990.

Unlike the China and Philippines version, the Indian version has a diamond-shaped camera module at the back that consists of four cameras. It comes with a Snapdragon 665 chipset and offers 8 GB RAM.

Vivo S1 Pro pricing, availability, and sale offers

Vivo S1 Pro comes in an 8 GB RAM + 128 GB internal storage variant and is priced at Rs 19,990. The smartphone is available in Mystic Black, Jazy Blue, and Dreamy White colour variants.

Vivo S1 Pro is now available for purchase on Vivo website, Flipkart and offline stores.

In terms of sale offers, you can a 10 percent cashback on ICICI Bank credit cards along with a one-time free screen replacement offer. This offer is valid until 31 January only. These offers are valid in offline stores as well. Jio subscribers can also get benefits worth Rs 12,000 but only if they are purchasing the phone online.

Vivo S1 specifications and features

Given that Vivo launches similar variants in India as it did in Indonesia, the smartphone will feature a 6.38-inch fullHD+ Super AMOLED display with a waterdrop-style notch. Powering the device is an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 chipset which is coupled with an 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of onboard storage. This is the only variant in which the device is available.

As far as optics go, the device contains a quad-camera system that has a 48 MP primary sensor, 8 MP sensor, 2 MP sensor for bokeh shots and 2 MP depth sensor. On the front, the device has a 32 MP sensor with an f/2.0 aperture. The device runs on Android 9.2 Pie-based FunTouch OS, which is Vivo's proprietary skin overlaying the main Android OS.

On the connectivity front, the device has a Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v5, USB-OTG, Micro USB, and GPS along with dual 4G VoLTE connectivity options. The entire setup is powered by a 4,500 mAh battery that has an 18 W quick charge option.
Lenovo has visited CES 2020 with a wealth of new products this year, including two smart photo frames that bring wildly different approaches to the market.

The first of Lenovos new gadgets is its Lenovo Smart Frame. Arguably the more interesting of the two gadgets, Smart Frame functions more like a traditional photo or artwork frame. Its primary purpose is to showcase images and artwork. The device comes loaded with a plethora of features and customization options. But it is, at its core, more about displaying stunning imagery than other functionality.

The second device, the Lenovo Smart Tab M10 FHD Plus, is a second-generation device built around Google Assistant. That delivers the full smart home package but with all of the perks of being an Android tablet, building on a similarly-branded product launched by the company late last year.

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Lenovo Smart Frame

Lenovo Smart Frame consists of two primary parts. Thats a customizable frame which can easily be rotated into either landscape or portrait mode and a display. For the former, the company packs in a mounting system that is both clutter-free and easy to install. Lenovo designed the mount with cable management built-in so that cords dont become a tangled mess.

The company will also offer the frame in a range of options at various prices to better match the internal decor. Thats because the second part of the gadget, its display, is intended to serve as smart home-ready artwork rather than a more standard smart home hub.

The Lenovo Smart Frame comes with a dedicated application and AI to help manage which photos are shown, maximizing the use of screen real estate. The app contains hundreds of art pieces for display too.

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Better still, Lenovos digital photo frame features a dedicated color tone sensor. The Smart Frame uses that sensor to adjust the images brightness to better fit with a given rooms ambient lighting, ensuring the photo or artwork always looks its best and most natural in any condition. The included Ambient Mode provides date, time, and weather information over the top of photos, ensuring the photo frame isnt solely aesthetic.

Finally, the company indicates that hand gestures can also be used to control the Lenovo Smart Frame. That includes playback of photo slides or videos that are being shown on the screen.

Display 21.5 IPS Panel w/ anti-glare coating Screen resolution 1920 x 1080 Viewing Angle 85 degrees Processor MediaTek 8167s Operating System Android AOSP 10.0 Cloud Feature Library of curated artwork Speakers 2 x 2 watt Microphone Single microphone array Sensors RGB Sensor (Ambient light)

Gesture Sensor

G, P, L Sensors Networking Wi-Fi: 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 5.0 Installation Snap-on mounting system (rotates portrait & landscape) and organizing cord

system Lenovo Smart Tab M10 FHD Plus 2nd Gen with Google Assistant

Lenovo Smart Tab M10 FHD Plus 2nd Gen with Google Assistant is more than a photo frame

Lenovos second photo frame acts more like a Google Assistant-powered smart home hub. Dubbed the Lenovo Smart Tab M10 FHD Plus, its a second-generation product and follows closely on the heels of another product recently launched by the company  the Lenovo Smart Tab M8.

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In fact, it very nearly mirrors that prior tablet in everything but the size and a few alterations to the processor. There are two RAM variants available with three storage variants. On memory, Lenovo offers either 2GB or 4GB. For storage, the company is giving buyers the option to select 32GB, 64GB, or up to 128GB.

Like many Android tablets, there is a front and rear camera, a plethora of sensors, an SD card slot, a headphone jack, and plenty of Android 9 Pie goodies to spare. The company included two side-firing speakers with Dolby Atmos, a 5000mAh battery, and a 10.3-inch FullHD panel too. But this years CES launch from Lenovo also functions just like digital photo frames do and can do a whole lot more.

Thats because, like the Lenovo Smart Tab M8, this tablet is packed in with a smart-charging dock that attaches via pogo-pins and Googles Ambient Mode for Google Assistant. While theres also a USB-C port for charging, that means this device can serve as both a standard Android tablet and a Google Assistant smart home hub.

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The feature means that when users have the Lenovo Smart Tab M10 FHD Plus docked, it more closely resembles a Nest Home Hub than an Android tablet. When its not being used to access those features, it automatically utilizes Google Photos to act as a digital photo frame when docked.

Display 10.3 FHD (19201200) IPS, 70.3% NTSC, 330 nits SoC MediaTek Helio P22T Tab, Octa-Core,

4 x A53 @ 2.3 GHz, 4 x A53 @ 1.8 GHz RAM 2/4GB Storage 32/64/128GB Cameras Front: 5MP fixed focus

Rear: 8MP autofocus Sensors G-sensor, Vibrator, Hall sensor, P-sensor, L-sensor,

Gyroscope Audio 2 x side speakers, tuned with Dolby Atmos

Dual microphones (with dedicated DSP) Battery 5000 mAh Connectivity Wi-Fi: 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5.0 Inputs/Outputs 1 x USB 2.0 Type-C

SD Card Slot

3.5mm Audio Jack

2-point pogo-pin OS Android 9 (Pie) Colors Iron Grey Dock Smart Charging Dock w/ Micro-USB power adapter Dimensions Length: 9.61 in (244.2 mm)

Width: 6.03 in (153.3 mm)

Height: 0.32 in (8.15 mm) Weight 1.01 lbs. (460 g)

Pricing and availability for the new Lenovo photo frames

Lenovo did not take advantage of CES 2020 to provide an exact launch date yet for either of its new smart home photo frames. It did, however, provide two relatively small windows for homeowners who might be considering a purchase.

The first of the two products to land on market will be the Lenovo Smart Tab M10 FHD Plus 2nd Gen with the Google Assistant. Lenovo expects that to become available as early as April. The device absolutely falls into the budget-friendly end of the Android Tablet spectrum. Lenovo expects the MSRP to fall in at $189.99.

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By contrast, the Lenovo Smart Frame will be arriving much later, in August of this year for North American customers. It will also be more expensive due to both its size and functionality. The company expects to sell the framed customizable 21.5-inch panels at a starting cost of $399.00. That price will undoubtedly vary chiefly based on the materials and colors chosen for the frame.
Nairobi: After Sunday's attack by al-Shabab fighters on a military airstrip in which three Americans were killed, Kenya's top security officials issued a raft of fervent refutations. They claimed no Kenyans died, no militants escaped, and the attack lasted no more than a few hours.

At 9.30am Sunday, the spokesman for Kenya's military, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Njuguna, said "the attempted breach was successfully repulsed" and "the airstrip is safe".

But even as he made that proclamation, the siege was ongoing. And later on Sunday, Njuguna's statement would be discounted by a statement from US Africa Command acknowledging that one US service member and two American private contractors had been killed, and that six aircraft used by the US military had been damaged or destroyed.

Three Americans were killed in the attack on a military base by extremist group al-Shabab. Credit:US Air Force

Interviews with local community members and officials cast doubt on the other assertions by Kenyan officials about the attack on the Kenyan coast, not far from Somalia's border. Locals say one Kenyan civilian was killed by gunfire and that at least 10 militants escaped during the attack and moved through nearby villages.
New Delhi [India], Jan 6 (ANI): India on Monday lodged a strong protest with Pakistan over the recent acts of vandalism and desecration at the revered Nankana Sahib Gurdwara and the "targeted killing" of a Sikh youth in Peshawar.



"Acting Pakistan High Commissioner Syed Haider Shah was summoned today to lodge a strong protest at recent acts of vandalism and desecration of holy Gurdwara Sri Janam Asthan at Nankana Sahib, Pakistan and the targeted killing of minority Sikh community member in Peshawar, Pakistan," the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement.

An angry group of local residents pelted stones at Gurdwara Nankana Sahib in Pakistan on January 3. The group was led by the family of a boy who had allegedly abducted Sikh girl Jagjit Kaur, daughter of gurdwara's panthi, last year.

On Friday, India had strongly condemned the "wanton acts of destruction and desecration" at the holy Sikh shrine, the birthplace of Guru Nanak Dev, and called upon Pakistan to take immediate steps to ensure the safety and welfare of the members of the Sikh community.

New Delhi also shared strong concerns raised by members of civil society, parliamentarians and others at the "continued persecution of religious and ethnic minorities" in Pakistan, including the recent despicable and heinous acts, the ministry had said.

"Government of Pakistan was called upon to ensure safety, security, and welfare of the members of the minority communities in Pakistan, including their places of worship, and take immediate measures to expeditiously bring the perpetrators of such despicable and heinous acts to justice," it added.

This comes after the body of the Sikh youth, identified as Ravinder Singh, was found in the Chamkani police station area of Peshawar on Sunday. He was the brother of an Islamabad-based journalist, Harmeet Singh.

Meanwhile, a delegation of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) led by party president Sukhbir Singh Badal met External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and submitted a memorandum seeking strict action against Imran Chishti, the man accused of inciting violence against Sikhs in Nankana Sahib. (ANI)


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angelo borreson

Roseau County Jail

Angelo Borreson, a 56-year-old man, is accused of fatally shooting Angela Wynne, 51, after she honked her horn to hurry up outside his house in Minnesota, the Minnesota Star Tribune and Associated Press reported.

Wynne had driven to his house to pick him up so they could go buy gas together, the Star Tribune reported, citing the criminal complaint.

But Wynne arrived before he was ready to leave and honked her horn and yelled at him to hurry up, the two outlets reported.

Borreson told authorities he came out of his house and shot Wynne with a shotgun, they added.

The Star Tribune reported that Borreson acknowledged shooting Wynne multiple times but said that it was accident and that he didn't mean for the gun to fire.

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A 56-year-old man in Minnesota accused of fatally shooting a woman who had honked her horn outside his house has been charged with second-degree murder.

Angelo Borreson is accused of shooting Angela Wynne, 51, outside his house near the tiny city of Badger last Wednesday morning, the Minnesota Star Tribune and Associated Press reported.

Wynne had driven to his house that morning, and the two had planned to set off together to buy gas for his car, the Star Tribune reported, citing the criminal complaint.

But Wynne arrived before Borreson was ready to leave, and she honked her horn and yelled at him to hurry up, the Star Tribune reported.

minnesota angelo borreson shooting

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The two outlets reported that Borreson told authorities he then left his house with a shotgun and fatally shot her. He was arrested at the scene, the Star Tribune reported.

Borreson acknowledged shooting Wynne multiple times but said he didn't mean for the gun to fire, the Star Tribune reported, citing the charge against him.

He was charged Friday with second-degree murder and second-degree assault against Wynne. His bail has been set at $750,000, and he is expected to appear in court on March 16, the Star Tribune said.

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Four soldiers including an Army Captain have been killed by armed gunmen in an ambush in Sarkin Pawa in Munya local government area of Niger state.

Three other soldiers were injured in the ambush.

The deceased include a Captain who led the soldiers in the operation, a Staff Sergeant and two Corporals.

The Soldiers were said to have responded to distress calls from Gwar community in Munya local government where the gunmen had invaded and were carrying out a house to house raid.



The soldiers, upon receiving the distress call, mobilized from their base in Zazzaga community and headed to Gwar community accompanied by some armed policemen in their armored vehicle.

It was learned that the gunmen had taken off when they sighted the soldiers but laid an ambush for the soldiers who had followed them into the bush.

The gunmen were said to have started firing immediately the soldiers entered into the bush where they had laid ambush killing the Captain on the spot.

The other three soldiers were killed during the gun battle between the soldiers and the gunmen which lasted for over an hour.

The gunmen burnt two Hilux vans of the soldiers and went away with the Soldiers Machine Gun (MG) riffle.

The Chairman of Munya local government, Alhaji Mohammed Garba Dazz confirmed the incident to newsmen saying the gunmen numbering 30 had invaded the village and held them hostage for hours before the soldiers came to their rescue.

I personally provided logistics to the soldiers before they left for the operation, both the soldiers and the police were overpowered due to a large number of the gunmen.

One hour after they left for the scene, they came back with bullets holes in their armored vehicle and the glass shattered.

As I speak with you now, they have killed four soldiers and three others seriously injured. They have also burnt the Hilux Van of the soldiers.

The bodies of the soldiers have been brought to the Sarkin Power police station and am just from there. That is all I can tell you for now, he said.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The premier Fort George Island Marina in Jacksonville, FL will be offered at auction on February 26, 2020. The marina facility, considered hurricane-safe, is strategically located at the mouth of the St. John's River and is Jacksonville's closest commercial marina to the Atlantic Ocean. The marina also offers quick access to downtown Jacksonville and the Mayport Naval Station.

The current property, with its large building and river frontage is ideal for a number of alternative uses, including warehousing, marine maintenance, vessel repair, and retrofitting. The property sits on nearly three acres and includes a 37,760 sq. ft. storage building, 138 indoor dry slips, 17 wet slips and fueling dock. An additional building is ready for buildout as a clubhouse or restaurant.

The location is appealing to tourists, boaters and commercial entities. "The marina location even comes with a little history," Eric Sarff, Vice President for Murray Wise Associates LLC said. "A historical marker at the marina's street-side entrance notes the significance of St. John's River to river trade in the late 1800s." The sign also shares information on the origin of Pilot Town and the story of Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, Jr. who after working on local boats was eventually elected Florida's 19th governor in 1905.

"This is a rare investment opportunity because of the marina's location and the ongoing work to increase St. John's River's navigation toward JAXPORT," Murray Wise, CEO/Chairman of Murray Wise Associates LLC, said.

The Fort George Island Marina is located at 9954 Heckscher Drive (Highway A1A) in Jacksonville. MWA Auctions & Real Estate will be conducting the live auction at The Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island, FL beginning at 10am on the day of the sale. Bidders unable to attend the live auction may register to bid online.

To learn more about the property, inspection dates, and auction process, contact an MWA representative; or online at FGIMAuction.com; by phone at 800-607-6888 or by email [email protected].

Murray Wise Associates LLC (MWA) has offices in Florida, Iowa and Illinois. Over the last 20 years MWA has acted as advisors for a variety of clients  including family offices, institutional investors and trusts and estates  growing from a traditional farm management and brokerage firm to be considered one of the top land auction companies in the U.S.

SOURCE Murray Wise Associates LLC

Related Links

http://www.mwallc.com


When rape kits go untested, rapists go free. Its a lesson sexual assault victims in Houston and cities across the country had to learn the hard way.

Thats why a recent bipartisan action by lawmakers in Austin and Washington, D.C. is so welcome.

The fitful battle to make sure that crucial DNA evidence is promptly and consistently tested in Texas rape investigations appears to be on firmer footing after President Donald Trump signed into law last Monday legislation that provides $151 million to help states eliminate backlogs in rape kit testing.

The Debbie Smith Reauthorization Act of 2019, named for a Virginia woman whose 1989 rape was not solved until the evidence was finally tested five years later, also pays for DNA training and education programs essential to the proper gathering and processing of the evidence.

The White House action came seven months after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Lavinia Masters Act that requires law enforcement agencies to conduct an audit to determine the number of untested rape kits in the state and set definitive timelines for their analysis. The measure will provide more than $50 million to eliminate the backlog in untested rape kits, and hire and train people to test them.

The Texas law is named for a Dallas woman who was raped at the age of 13. The evidence gathered by police then sat on a shelf for more than 20 years, meaning her attacker could never be prosecuted for the crime as the statute of limitations had run out. The new law would delay the statute of limitations for sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault cases until a rape kit is tested.

The legislation has been courageously pushed by the women whose stories so clearly point to the need for changes after unconscionable testing backlogs were exposed across the country, including in Texas and Houston.

Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, a co-sponsor of the Debbie Smith Reauthorization Act, said the funding had already helped the state reduce its testing backlog from about 20,000 in 2001 to an estimated 2,000 currently. The measure had been routinely renewed every five years since it was first enacted in 2004 but lapsed in September in a congressional tug-of-war.

The Democratic-controlled House included the funding in its rewrite of the Violence Against Women Act, a more comprehensive bill that includes a provision closing the so-called boyfriend loophole by barring anyone convicted of abusing or stalking a dating partner from owning guns. Opposed by the NRA, that legislation was never likely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate.

Cornyn and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, crafted a stand-alone funding bill that passed the Senate unanimously.

Although Congress needs to return to the Violence Against Women Act and especially the issue of guns in the hands of domestic abusers, Cornyns move to extract the money for DNA testing and training from political gridlock was the right thing to do.

Peter Stout, CEO and president of the Houston Forensic Science Center, which gets about $1 million to $1.2 million a year from the Debbie Smith grants, had expressed concern that a delay or termination of the funds would hinder the advances the city has made since the Houston Police Department cleared a backlog of more than 6,600 untested rape kits in 2014. Some of those were from cases dating to the 1980s. Testing them led to 850 hits in the FBIs nationwide database of DNA profiles and dozens of charges in the first year alone.

Stout said last week that the restored funding and new law keep Texas better-positioned than many other states to deal with the testing, but we cant become apathetic in getting to something that is sustainable.

The thousands of women like Debbie Smith and Lavinia Masters should have the assurance that their attackers will not be allowed to remain free to prey on others just because the evidence was never tested.
Bahrain Embassy in Iraq has been receiving calls from citizens, who wanted to return to the Kingdom following escalation of clashes in the country. The embassy stated that it is working with an airlines to ensure their safe return to the Kingdom as soon as possible.

All Bahraini citizens in Iraq will receive required attention and support, the embassy stated. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has warned citizens against travelling to Iraq amidst the recent developments. The Kingdom of Bahrain is following the development of events in the brotherly Republic of Iraq that came as a result of the condemned terrorist acts which the Kingdom previously denounced, stressing the need to de-escalate in order to overcome this period, and to address all forms of violence, extremism and terrorism, the ministry stated.

The Kingdom also stresses the importance of immediate action to be taken by the international community, affirming the need to take all necessary measures to ensure security and stability in the region because of its vital and strategic importance for the whole world, it added. Meanwhile, Iraqs parliament yesterday urged the government to remove thousands of American troops from the country, stepping up pressure over the US killing of a top Iranian general in Baghdad.

US installations were also facing new military stresses, with missiles slamming into the Baghdad enclave where the US embassy is located and an air base north of the capital housing American troops. Ties have deteriorated after an American precision drone strike on the Baghdad international airport on Friday that killed Irans Major General Qassem Soleimani and top Iraqi military figure Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis.

Iraqs foreign ministry summoned the US ambassador, while caretaker premier Adel Abdel Mahdi attended an extraordinary parliamentary session to slam the strike as a political assassination. He joined 168 lawmakers  just enough for quorum in Iraqs 329-seat parliament  to discuss the removal of US troops. Some 5,200 US soldiers are stationed across Iraqi bases to support local troops preventing a resurgence of Daesh. They are deployed as part of the broader international coalition, invited by the Iraqi government in 2014 to help fight Daesh.

The parliament has voted to commit the Iraqi government to cancel its request to the international coalition for help to fight IS, speaker Mohammed Halbusi announced, using another acronym for Daesh. The cabinet would have to approve any decision but the premier had earlier indicated support for a removal. We face two main choices, he told MPs: either immediately voting for foreign troops to leave or revisiting their mandate through a parliamentary process.

Hard-line parliamentarians with ties to the Hashed Al Shaabi military force, which is close to Iran, had demanded a tougher decision calling for the immediate expulsion of all foreign troops. No Kurdish and most Sunni MPs boycotted the session as they were more supportive of a US troop presence, seen as a counterweight to Iran. They had been threatened by Hashed-linked MPs, who said they would be seen as having betrayed Iraq if they boycotted.

Tom Warrick, a former US official and current fellow at the Atlantic Council, said Soleimani and pro-Iran factions within the Hashed had long sought the USs exit. If US forces do end up withdrawing, it could grant Soleimani a post-humous victory, Warrick told AFP. As the session got under way, the US-led coalition announced it was suspending its Iraq operations due to deadly rocket attacks on their bases.

This has limited our capacity to conduct training with partners and to support their operations against Daesh and we have therefore paused these activities, subject to continuous review, it said. There had been fears of a volley of rocket attacks following a warning from a hard-line Hashed faction for Iraqis to move away from US forces by Sunday afternoon. Already, increased tensions prompted NATO to suspend its training activities in Iraq and a US defence official told AFP American-led coalition forces would limit operations.

Iraqs foreign ministry said it had summoned US ambassador Matthew Tueller to condemn American strikes on Iraq. They were a blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty, the ministry said in a statement, and contradict the agreed-upon missions of the international coalition. The ministry also said it submitted complaints to the United Nations Security Council over the strikes, asking it to condemn Soleimanis death as an assassination.
Workers at South Africa's Robben Island Museum, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for nearly two decades, started an open-ended strike over low pay on Monday, their union said.

South Africa's first black president spent 27 years in jail for fighting white-minority rule before he was freed in 1990.

Mandela served most of his sentence on Robben Island, off the coastal city of Cape Town. The prison is now a World Heritage site and a museum visited by more than 300,000 people per year.

"The strike is around a deadlock on salary negotiations that commenced (in) early December 2019," said a provincial head of South Africa's National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union (NEHAWU), Eric Kweleta.

Around 250 out of 500 employees took part in the work stoppage, said Kweleta, with groups picketing in front of the Nelson Mandela Gateway -- where tours begin.

Robben Island Museum has offered its workers a 6.5 percent salary rise, while NEHAWU is demanding at least a 7.5 percent increase.

"At this stage we haven't yet convened to discuss the way forward," museum spokeswoman Morongoa Ramaboa told AFP.

She said the museum's operations continued to "run normally" despite the strike.

Mandela won a sweeping victory in South Africa's first fully democratic election in 1994 -- marking the end of the apartheid regime.

He served as president until 1999 and has remained an iconic figure, fighting social injustice until his death in 2013.

sch/sn/pma
SANFORD, N.C.Motorbunnys popular SFW video series Do It On a Bunny has a new episode that features The Top 11 Sexuality Trends of 2019.

The series 15th episode is hosted by acclaimed sex worker and pop culture whiz Jacq the Stripper, who takes viewers through the best and most ground breaking sex-positive moments of the past year while riding the popular motorized ride-on-top vibrator.

Entering the new year is always a great time for reflection, so why not do it in style? said Craig Mewbourne, CMO of Motorbunny. Jacq the Stripper is the perfect entertainer to ring in the New Years celebrations with a list of everything that made 2019 sexy and wonderful. She is nothing short of hilarious, and were so happy with how this episode became the perfect blend of humor and genuine, respectful acknowledgement of the people and moments that made 2019 a historic year for sex-positivity.

The Do It On a Bunny viral video series features models and influencers attempting various creative activities while riding atop the award-winning pleasure machine. The series debuted in 2017 with holiday-themed editions for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and even a pottery edition featuring a sexy model with her significant other as they re-created the iconic pottery scene from the movie Ghost while riding Motorbunny. To date, there are 15 episodes in the series, with an accumulation of more than 10.5 million views, and more installments to come.

In the latest episode, Jacq recaps historic moments of 2019, which demonstrate our cultures progression of sexual positivity, ranging from the portrayal of sex workers in the media to Queer friendly celebrity moments. The reflection of the last year highlights the ever progressing topic of sex in conservative Western culture.

And finally, No. 11, saving the sexiest for last: fuckin Motorbunny Buck! says Jacq while doing everything in her power to sustain herself. It is the only vibrating saddle with two thrusting motions! In-out! Front to back! What more could you want from a vibrating motorized lover?

To view the latest episode, click here.

To see more videos from the Do It On a Bunny series, subscribe to the Motorbunny YouTube Channel by clicking here.

For more information, visit Motorbunny.com.
A brave family kept their cafe open, despite a bushfire evacuation order, to provide refuge for those forced to stay behind.

The Wharfside Cafe at Snug Cove, at Eden on the New South Wales south soast, was watching the fire danger last Thursday when owner Diana Stojanovic announced her doors would stay open.

'In the event of the fire encroaching on the town itself, Wharfside Cafe will open for anyone seeking refuge,' she said.

'As long as electricity is available, we can offer people a place to charge phones and a relatively comfortable place to be.'

Fire authorities declared the Snug Cove Wharf an evacuation zone on Saturday.

Just before midnight on Saturday, as burnt embers began to fall, Diana's daughter Greta Stojanovic posted pictures on FaceBook of the eerie smoke on the water.

The cafe remained open with customers sheltering inside, some wearing P2 dust masks.

Eerie smoke on the water in this picture posted to Facebook just before midnight on Saturday

Greta Stojanovic (pictured Monday morning) bravely kept her family's cafe open during the bushfire crisis until it was forced to close on Monday when it ran out of water

Those forced to stay behind in Eden sheltered at the Wharfside Cafe at Snug Cove wearing their P2 dust masks (left). Greta Stojanovic said embers were falling and posted a picture of black ash on the path outside (right)

'Were all in good spirits,' she wrote.

By Sunday morning, a wall of flame was bearing down on them less than 20km away and people were told to leave the area.

But Greta kept the cafe open.

Greta Stojanovic posted this picture of HMAS Adelaide hovering offshore as bushfires rage in Twofold Bay, Eden, on Monday morning. Snug Cove is part of Twofold Bay, the deepest natural harbour in the Southern Hemisphere

The normal view outside the Wharfside Cafe, Eden, is brilliant blue, not bushfire beige

'We stayed because there were still people that had to stay behind,' she said.

'I also have animals that wouldnt have been able to properly evacuate.'

Greta told Channel Seven's Sunrise program that she had looked at the map and the Snug Cove wharf had been surrounded by fire everywhere.

'The roads were just also terrifying to us as well because nowhere appears safe down here,' she said.

She was not sure whether boats on the harbour had enough room for everyone who needed to evacuate so she decided to stay and keep the cafe open for those who needed it.

Cafe owner Diana Stojanovic announced her doors would stay open last Thursday

Inside the cafe late on Saturday night as the bushfire threat loomed

Greta said their strategy was to put wet cloths over their faces and hope the fire passed by.

If the situation became dire, they could jump in the harbour to escape as the cafe is situated on the water at Snug Cove, she said.

During the crisis they gave shelter to media people, locals and anyone forced to stay behind in the town.

Diana Stojanovic said the Wharfside Cafe was finally forced to close its doors after running out of water.

'Wharfside Cafe is closed until further notice. We dont have water or staff at present,' she posted on Facebook on Monday morning.
No arrest has been made so far in the murder case of a 25-year-old Sikh man who was shot by unidentified gunmen in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar, his brother said on Monday.

Parvender Singh, a resident of Shangla district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was killed on Saturday in Peshawar where he was to shop for his marriage to be held in February. Earlier, the victim was identified as Rowinder Singh.

The victim's brother, Harmeet Singh, said that the police team was investigating the case and no arrest has been made so far.

He said that Member of Provincial Assembly Ranjeet Singh called him and informed him about his meetings with the top police brass on the issue.

"We do not have a personal enmity with anyone," Harmeet said, adding that his brother's bag having around five lakh rupees, a mobile and a gold locket was also missing.

According to the police, the victim had returned to Pakistan after spending six years working in Malaysia.

"The government must arrest the culprits as early as possible. I will not find peace until the criminals are arrested," Harmeet said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the murder which took place a day after a mob attacked Gurdwara Nankana Sahib where Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev was born.

India on Sunday strongly condemned the "targeted killing" of the minority Sikh community member Peshawar.

Minorities in the Muslim-majority Pakistan make up some two per cent of the country's total population.

Pakistan has witnessed violence against religious minorities in the past as al-Qaeda and Taliban-led militants regularly target Christian, Sikhs, Hindus, Ahmadis and Shiite communities in the country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Pipe manufacturer MAN Industries (India) Ltd on Monday said it has bagged new export orders worth Rs 400 crore.

"The company has received new export orders of approximately Rs 400 crore," the company said in a filing to BSE.

However, the company did not provide further details of the orders.

Man Industries (India) Ltd -- a member of the Man Group of India -- is a manufacturer and exporter of large diameter carbon steel line pipes for various high pressure transmission applications for gas, crude oil, petrochemical products and potable water.

The company has manufacturing facilities for various types of anti-corrosion coating systems.

The shares of the company were trading at Rs 47.70, up 0.74 per cent in morning trade on BSE.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Trend

Over the past 24 hours, Armenian armed forces have violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops 23 times, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said on January 6, Trend reports.

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, 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 Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
[January 05, 2020] HP at CES 2020: Unleashing Next Generation Computing Innovations to Enable More Freedom to Work, Live, Play

Powering amazing experiences for todays creators and workers with sleek designs, 5G, and Tile findable device technology Strengthening sustainability leadership: 82% of all mechanical parts in next gen HP Elite Dragonfly are made from recycled materials; unveils new line of accessories made from recycled ocean-bound plastics LAS VEGAS, Jan. 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HP Inc. today introduced its newest PCs, displays, and accessories at this years Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The companys latest consumer and commercial product innovations offer users the freedom to work more securely and experience content from anywhere, connect devices simply and easily, and gives customers the freedom to show their personal values by offering the worlds first notebook and sleeve made with ocean-bound plastic materials7. We are passionate about creating devices and computing experiences that lead us into the future and enable more freedom in how the next generation creates, consumes content, and collaborates, said Alex Cho, President, Personal Systems, HP Inc. As the PC becomes increasingly relevant, HP continues delivering amazing devices, and display and accessory innovations that deliver both performance and lightness, durability and design, and mobility and privacy. As we enter a new decade, people will continuously evolve how they use technology and desire solutions that enable more freedom in how they work, live, and play. Thirty-four percent of U.S. workers would take a pay cut of up to 5% in order to work out of the office more8. Gen Z engages with online content more than 10 hours a day9. And on average, Gen Z and millennials use five screens per day10, which presents challenges when connecting devices to their ecosystem of accessories. MORE FREEDOM TO EXPERIENCE AND CREATE AMAZING CONTENT HP Spectre x360 15 Performance: Masterfully redesigned for enhanced thermal performance, the HP Spectre x360 15 is HPs most powerful Spectre yet, powered by up to a 10th Gen Intel Core i7processor with NVIDIA GeForce graphics, and up to 17 hours of battery life 2 .

Masterfully redesigned for enhanced thermal performance, the HP Spectre x360 15 is HPs most powerful Spectre yet, powered by up to a 10th Gen Intel Core i7processor with NVIDIA GeForce graphics, and up to 17 hours of battery life . Experience Content: From the 90% screen-to-body ratio to the 4K OLED 15.6-inch display 11 with DCI-P3 with a 30% wider color gamut range 12 , view true-to-life images and vibrant colors like never before.

From the 90% screen-to-body ratio to the 4K OLED 15.6-inch display with DCI-P3 with a 30% wider color gamut range , view true-to-life images and vibrant colors like never before. Mobility: Experience nearly three times faster file transfer speeds with the latest Intel Wi-Fi 6 (gig+) than Wi-Fi 5 13 , and customize network prioritization and settings via Network Booster in HP Command Center.

Experience nearly three times faster file transfer speeds with the latest Intel Wi-Fi 6 (gig+) than Wi-Fi 5 , and customize network prioritization and settings via Network Booster in HP Command Center. Security: With six in 10 consumers physically covering their laptops webcam to feel more secure or prevent it from being compromised14, the device features HPs smallest IR camera at 2.2 mm. The HP Webcam Kill Switch, a dedicated mute mic button, fingerprint reader located on the keyboard deck, and Express VPN and LastPass to create and consume content whenever and wherever you want securely. HP ENVY 32 All-in-One (AiO) Create: See creations come to life on the new ENVY 32 AiO, with up to 65W 9 th Gen Intel Core i7 processors 15 , up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 graphics, up to 32 GB of DDR4 memory, and up to 1 TB SSD 16 or dual storage options to power through photo and video projects effortlessly. The ENVY 32 AiO is the first all-in-one to join NVIDIAs RTX Studio program. Purpose-built for todays creators, RTX Studio is capable of powering over 40 of the worlds top creative and design applications with RTX accelerated ray tracing and AI-assist to speed up tedious task and high-resolution video editing in real-time.

See creations come to life on the new ENVY 32 AiO, with up to 65W 9 Gen Intel Core i7 processors , up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 graphics, up to 32 GB of DDR4 memory, and up to 1 TB SSD or dual storage options to power through photo and video projects effortlessly. The ENVY 32 AiO is the first all-in-one to join NVIDIAs RTX Studio program. Purpose-built for todays creators, RTX Studio is capable of powering over 40 of the worlds top creative and design applications with RTX accelerated ray tracing and AI-assist to speed up tedious task and high-resolution video editing in real-time. Audio Experience: Immerse yourself with surround sound with the worlds first AiO with loudest volume 17 and the worlds first AiO with Advanced Audio Stream 18 - no extra speakers required. Enjoy superb sound, straight from the source, while editing and playing back audio content with built-in front-firing tweeters and subwoofer speakers custom tuned by Bang & Olufsen. With this ultimate audio experience, easily stream your playlists from your phone to your PC speakers, even when the PC is off.

Immerse yourself with surround sound with the worlds first AiO with loudest volume and the worlds first AiO with Advanced Audio Stream - no extra speakers required. Enjoy superb sound, straight from the source, while editing and playing back audio content with built-in front-firing tweeters and subwoofer speakers custom tuned by Bang & Olufsen. With this ultimate audio experience, easily stream your playlists from your phone to your PC speakers, even when the PC is off. Design: From the beautiful edge-to-edge glass display resting on a solid aluminum stand, to the matte Nightfall Black finish, accented with Dark Ash woodgrain, and a heathered acoustic cloth, the ENVY 32 AiO features thoughtful design touches that are integrated into a premium look and feel. With easy access to ports, built-in wireless charging, and a multi-device keyboard to switch from one device to another with a press of a button, everything you need is at your fingertips. MORE FREEDOM TO WORK SECURELY ANYWHERE HP Elite Dragonfly Connect Securely with 5G: The HP Elite Dragonfly is the worlds first business convertible with 5G 20 developed with a smart signal technology to boost antenna performance. This innovative antenna technology enables the device to meet HPs rigorous connectivity standards inside the world's lightest business convertible 21 supporting 5G. Elite Dragonfly features a 10 th Gen Intel Core vPro processor and has the worlds most advanced connectivity and privacy in its class 22 .

The HP Elite Dragonfly is the worlds first business convertible with 5G developed with a smart signal technology to boost antenna performance. This innovative antenna technology enables the device to meet HPs rigorous connectivity standards inside the world's lightest business convertible supporting 5G. Elite Dragonfly features a 10 Gen Intel Core vPro processor and has the worlds most advanced connectivity and privacy in its class . Work Discreetly: HP Sure View Reflect is a breakthrough technology further advancing HPs leadership in privacy innovations that allows you to work discreetly in many lighting conditions. Activate privacy mode with the press of a keyboard button to instantly block prying eyes from viewing the screen with a distinct copper colored privacy.

HP Sure View Reflect is a breakthrough technology further advancing HPs leadership in privacy innovations that allows you to work discreetly in many lighting conditions. Activate privacy mode with the press of a keyboard button to instantly block prying eyes from viewing the screen with a distinct copper colored privacy. Findable: Elite Dragonfly is the worlds first laptop with built-in Tile 23 , the worlds leading smart location company. Easily see where a misplaced or lost notebook is, or with the optional Tile Premium service, get proactive alerts when a device has been left behind.

Elite Dragonfly is the worlds first laptop with built-in Tile , the worlds leading smart location company. Easily see where a misplaced or lost notebook is, or with the optional Tile Premium service, get proactive alerts when a device has been left behind. Sustainable: Elite Dragonfly is the worlds first notebook made with ocean bound plastic material24, and more than 82% of the mechanical parts made from recycled materials25. We are excited to be working with HP as it develops its first 5G connected devices for SMBs and the enterprise, very important and growing categories for Sprint, said Ryan Sullivan, vice president of product engineering and development, Sprint. The combination of HP innovation and Sprint True Mobile 5G will help to take productivity and connectivity to new levels for businesses of all sizes. Qualcomm continues to lead in LTE connected PCs, allowing users to have blazing fast connectivity while on the go, and we are thrilled to drive 5G connected PCs in collaboration with HP, said Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager, Mobile, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. Qualcomm powered 5G PCs are at the heart of the digital transformation trend that will move the computing industry forward and transform the enterprise. MORE FREEDOM TO CONNECT AND SHOW YOUR PERSONAL VALUES New Displays and Sustainable Accessories The HP E24d G4 and HP E27d G4 Advanced Docking Monitors are a new category of intelligent displays that streamline workspace with just one USB-C cable for video, data, and up to 100W of power. With a single button, power both the display and laptop, even when the lid is closed, and login with Windows Hello on the integrated privacy webcam. Empower IT to remotely manage HP devices from anywhere on the network and get immediate peripheral expansion.

are a new category of intelligent displays that streamline workspace with just one USB-C cable for video, data, and up to 100W of power. With a single button, power both the display and laptop, even when the lid is closed, and login with Windows Hello on the integrated privacy webcam. Empower IT to remotely manage HP devices from anywhere on the network and get immediate peripheral expansion. The HP Renew Sleeve is designed to assist with your environmental initiatives. The sleeve is created with knit recycled plastic bottles and knit to shape with minimal manufacturing waste.

is designed to assist with your environmental initiatives. The sleeve is created with knit recycled plastic bottles and knit to shape with minimal manufacturing waste. The HP Renew Series includes a backpack, topload, tote, and slim brief made from 100% recycled PET, or plastic bottles, that are shredded into small pellets, melted into a thin fiber, spun into a roll and woven to create these on-trend, eco-friendly bags in grey or navy for up to a 14- or 15.6-inch diagonal laptop.

includes a backpack, topload, tote, and slim brief made from 100% recycled PET, or plastic bottles, that are shredded into small pellets, melted into a thin fiber, spun into a roll and woven to create these on-trend, eco-friendly bags in grey or navy for up to a 14- or 15.6-inch diagonal laptop. The HP Spectre Folio Backpack and Topload feature a water-resistant waxed canvas exterior to keep devices safe and dry and an RFID pocket that protects credit card and passport information from electronic data reading devices. Each bag is designed with a quilted and cushy 15.6-inch diagonal laptop compartment for added protection and a convenient trolley handle pass through that slides over the handle of your luggage.



Pricing and availability27: HP Spectre x360 15 is expected to be available in March via HP.com for a starting price of $1,599.99. The device will also be available at Best Buy.

HP ENVY 32 AiO is now available at HP.com for a starting price of $1,599.99. The device can also be purchased at Best Buy, Amazon, and other US retailers.

HP Elite Dragonfly with optional Tile integration and HP Sure View Reflect is expected to be available starting February 2020 via HP.com.

HP Elite Dragonfly with 5G and a 10 th Gen Intel Core vPro processor is expected to be available later in the summer. Pricing will be provided closer to availability date.

Gen Intel Core vPro processor is expected to be available later in the summer. Pricing will be provided closer to availability date. HP E24d G4 Advanced Docking Monitor is expected to be available in January via HP.com for $349.

HP E27d G4 Advanced Docking Monitor is expected to be available in January via HP.com for $479.

The HP Renew Sleeve is expected to be available in April via HP.com for a starting price of $59.99.

The HP Renew Series is expected to be available in Spring 2020. Pricing will be provided closer to availability.

The HP Spectre Folio Backpack and Topload are expected to be available in February via HP.com for a starting price of $199.99. About HP

HP Inc. creates technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere. Through our product and service portfolio of personal systems, printers and 3D printing solutions, we engineer experiences that amaze. More information about HP Inc. is available at http://www.hp.com . Copyright 2019 HP Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. ____________ 1 Percent of active and nonactive viewing area to chassis.

2 Up to 17 hours requires laptop configured with Intel Core i7-10510U with Nvidia Mobile GPU, 16GB DDR4-2666 SDRAM (onboard), 512GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD, 15.6" diagonal 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) 2W display, Win10 19H1 Home. Windows 10 MM14 battery life will vary depending on various factors including product model, configuration, loaded applications, features, use, wireless functionality, and power management settings. The maximum capacity of the battery will naturally decrease with time and usage. See www.bapco.com for additional details.

3 Based on All-in-One PCs with 4K display in the market as of 12/18/2019. Display measured diagonally. 4K or ultra-HD (UHD) content required to view full 4K or UHD images. High dynamic range (HDR) content required to view HDR images.

4 Based on All-in-One PCs in the market as of 12/18/2019 with NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics cards.

5 Based on business convertibles with the latest 10th Gen Intel Core vPro U series processor, Windows Pro OS and a convertible non-detachable design offering optional 5G as of December 2019. The 5G module is optional and must be configured at the factory. Module designed for 5G networks up to 3.8 Gbps download speeds as carriers deploy Evolved-Universal Terrestrial Radio Access New Radio Dual Connectivity (ENDC) with both 100Mhz of 5G NR and LTE channel bandwidth, using 256QAM 4x4, requires activation and separately purchased service contract. Check with service provider for coverage and availability in your area. Connection, upload and download speeds will vary due to network, location, environment, network conditions, and other factors. 5G not available on all products, in all regions. Backwards compatible to 4G LTE and 3G HSPA technologies. 5G module planned to be available in US, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK and France at launch, where carrier supported.

6 Based on compact business convertibles with 8th Gen or 10th Gen Intel Core i U series processor, Windows Pro OS, vPro and a convertible non-detachable design under 59 cubic inches as of August 2019.

7 Based on HP's internal analysis as of May 2019. Display manufactured with 5% ocean bound plastic materials by weight. Notebook speaker enclosure component made with 5% ocean bound plastic as of August 2019.

8 Key Remote Work & Telecommuting Statistics, Owl Labs, 2019.

9 Gen Z Engaging with 10 hours of online content per day, Marketing Tech News, 2018.

10 Gen Z Statistics: Gen Z Facts for Marketers, Mediakix, 2018.

11 4K content required to view full 4K images.

12 All performance specifications represent the typical specifications provided by HP's component manufacturers; actual performance may vary either higher or lower.

13 Based on Wi-Fi 5 80MHz and Wi-Fi 6 160MHz minimum requirements when transferring files between two devices connected to the same router. Requires a wireless router, sold separately, that supports 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6). Only available in countries where 802.11ax is supported.

14 HP Webcam Survey , June 2019.

15 Multi-core is designed to improve performance of certain software products. Not all customers or software applications will necessarily benefit from use of this technology. Performance and clock frequency will vary depending on application workload and your hardware and software configurations. Intels numbering, branding and/or naming is not a measurement of higher performance.

16 For hard drives, GB = 1 billion bytes. TB = 1 trillion bytes. Actual formatted capacity is less. Up to 35GB of system disk is reserved for system recovery software.

17 Based on HP internal testing using total speaker wattage with Sound Pressure Level test to measure audio volume in units of decibels (db) on All-in-One PCs in the market as of 12/18/2019.

18 Based on All-in-One PCs in the market as of 12/18/2019. Audio Stream capability with music streaming via Bluetooth devices with PC turned off.

19 Based on All-in-One PCs with 4K display in the market as of 12/18/2019. Display measured diagonally. 4K or ultra-HD (UHD) content required to view full 4K or UHD images. High dynamic range (HDR) content required to view HDR images.

20 Based on business convertibles with the latest 10th Gen Intel Core vPro U series processor, Windows Pro OS and a convertible non-detachable design offering optional 5G as of December 2019. The 5G module is optional and must be configured at the factory. Module designed for 5G networks up to 3.8 Gbps download speeds as carriers deploy Evolved-Universal Terrestrial Radio Access New Radio Dual Connectivity (ENDC) with both 100Mhz of 5G NR and LTE channel bandwidth, using 256QAM 4x4, requires activation and separately purchased service contract. Check with service provider for coverage and availability in your area. Connection, upload and download speeds will vary due to network, location, environment, network conditions, and other factors. 5G not available on all products, in all regions. Backwards compatible to 4G LTE and 3G HSPA technologies. 5G module planned to be available in US, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK and France at launch, where carrier supported. Support for additional carriers available planned available in 2020. Available on HP Elite Dragonfly G2, planned availability mid 2020 and requires factor configuration.

21 Based on compact business convertibles with 8th Gen or 10th Gen Intel Core i U series processor, Windows Pro OS, vPro and a convertible non-detachable design under 59 cubic inches as of August 2019.

22 Based on HPs internal analysis of mobile devices with optional, physically embedded, hardware based, reflective privacy screen with average of .32% luminance reduction in privacy mode at 45 and offering optional 5G as of December 2019. The 5G module and privacy screen are optional and must be configured at the factory. Module designed for 5G networks up to 3.8 Gbps download speeds as carriers deploy Evolved-Universal Terrestrial Radio Access New Radio Dual Connectivity (ENDC) with both 100Mhz of 5G NR and LTE channel bandwidth, using 256QAM 4x4, requires activation and separately purchased service contract. Check with service provider for coverage and availability in your area. Connection, upload and download speeds will vary due to network, location, environment, network conditions, and other factors. 5G not available on all products, in all regions. Backwards compatible to 4G LTE and 3G HSPA technologies. 5G module planned to be available in US, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK and France at launch, where carrier supported as of December 2019.

23 Based on HPs internal analysis of notebooks with factory preinstalled Tile tracking hardware and software as of December 2019. Planned availability on HP ELITE DRAGONFLY Q1 2020. Must be configured at purchase.

24 Notebook speaker enclosure component made with 5% ocean bound plastic as of August 2019.

25 By weight. Mechanical parts include chassis, speaker box, keycap mechanism, battery frame and other small mechanical parts. Applies to Dragonfly Family starting January 2020.

26 Based on docking displays including an RJ45 port, power delivery scheme and additional ports including USB-C video support and having a button that powers both the monitor and a mini desktop, laptop or thin client and network manageability over Ethernet as of December 2019.

27 Pricing from HP.com, subject to change without notice. Retailers pricing may vary.

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/60757917-505e-4958-8d75-2b8ea8ff7e49 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/bf881743-bd78-4b3c-a0f8-cece4e3d680b https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e27728cb-7a6b-4092-97dc-6463d3012a53 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f719acf3-8113-4509-a3b6-6cf1567e2fca https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0fe8dcaf-a342-4782-b55a-6b5b8fa72c22 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f4d5ba92-f171-44e1-bfbe-c4d50771ca5a https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d675939d-b180-49cf-87e9-b6580d26f612 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/5c51b7ee-f310-495c-8c88-d9b84d4b7554 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b704f74c-dfb5-475d-8da4-13bce3c54c11 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/18f21453-d33a-4dc7-9e8c-423e1ffa647d Jenni Balthrop, HP (Consumer) [email protected] www.hp.com/go/newsroom Christina Wahl, HP (Commercial) [email protected]

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Georgia gets another crack at 'Bama for college football title
Two years after neighbors helped kill a plan for low-income senior housing on Laguna Honda Boulevard, the city is giving it another shot.

And this time the proposal seems to have enough political juice to actually happen.

The Mayors Office of Housing and Community Development is looking for an affordable-housing developer to build about 250 apartments for low-income seniors on a city-owned parking lot next to Laguna Honda Hospital. The development would include units for independent seniors, as well as apartments for those requiring more assistance. It would also incorporate a drop-in health center for adults and a child care facility.

The project would rise across the street from the Laguna Honda Boulevard site where Forest Hill residents successfully torpedoed a similar affordable senior development two years ago. That proposal, on property owned by the Forest Hill Christian Church, would have allowed 150 apartments for low-income residents.

But residents complained that building on the site, down a steep hillside from the expensive Forest Hill enclave, could jeopardize the stability of the homes perched above. An engineering report backed up the neighbors concerns, concluding that the hillside would have had to be strengthened to prevent the destabilization of the sandy slope. Some residents also complained that the project would block views and increase crime.

Forest Hill resident Joe Bravo, an attorney who led the effort against the Christian Church project, called the new Laguna Honda proposal a much better concept.

That is where I think it belongs  on a level surface, not on a hill, he said. That is a proper place for it and a proper use of land at Laguna Honda Hospital. Its less isolated than the other project would have been. Its consistent with what we were saying when we opposed the Christian Church development.

Mayor London Breed called the Laguna Honda proposal a great opportunity to use public land to build affordable housing for seniors, who we know are vulnerable to the rising cost of living and are at increased risk of falling into homelessness.

Breed said such housing belongs not just in some neighborhoods, but everywhere.

If everyone steps up to support housing in their neighborhood, then we can make a real difference, she said.

The oval-shaped lot was previously used for construction parking and storage during the recent $585 million renovation of the Laguna Honda Hospital campus. The site is bound by Clarendon Avenue to the north, Woodside Avenue to the south, Laguna Honda Hospital high-rise buildings to the east, and Laguna Honda Boulevard to the west.

Supervisor Norman Yee, who withdrew his support for the Christian Homes project because of neighborhood opposition, said that he has been working with residents to make sure concerns are addressed early in the process. Nonprofit developers have until Jan. 23 to respond to a request for proposals for the project.

Ive been surprised there has been almost no pushback, Yee said. Some of the neighbors have been asking for even more units.

The need for senior-specific affordable housing is grave, Yee said. He cited a city study indicating that 50% of newly homeless residents are 62 or older; adults become eligible for affordable housing at age 62.

He said constituents increasingly complain of not being able to find senior housing options in the city, especially affordable ones. Older people move out of the city, but the farther they go, the less likely their family members will be able to visit them frequently, Yee said.

They lose their network, their community, he said.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Over the next five years, the Bay Area expects to see a 14% increase in adults older than 75 and there will be a shortage of 9,000 senior homes, according to Aegis Living, a senior housing developer.

San Francisco has two senior housing developments opening in 2020: 94 units of low-income housing open this month at 1296 Shotwell St. in the Mission, and the 190-unit Campus for Jewish Living on Silver Avenue in the Excelsior is scheduled for occupancy in the spring.

Rents at the Campus for Jewish Living will start at $5,400 a month and rise to $12,000 a month for a 1,200-square-foot penthouse. That fee includes three meals a day as well as transportation, housekeeping and extensive health and wellness programs. About 90% of the 110 assisted-living units there have been reserved; the developer has not yet started marketing the 80 memory care units.

We have done extremely well, said Staci Chang, who is heading up marketing for the project. There is a high need for age in place, rental senior housing. Its been 20 years since one opened in San Francisco.

Rents at the Laguna Honda project would be set at limits affordable to seniors with incomes between $25,850 and $68,950, with additional subsidies available for residents with extremely low incomes.

Aegis Living President Kris Engskov said his group is looking for development sites in San Francisco.

We think the city has a great need for senior housing, he said. Older people want to be in these urban areas. They have grown up in the cities and dont think they should have to compromise. Quite the opposite.

While intent of the development is to house low-income seniors, Yee pushed the city to make sure the Laguna Honda project has a preschool for children in addition to housing for those in the twilight of their lives. You see these frail old folks  they just light up when they see the little kids running around, he said.

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen
A minibus has been caught on camera ramming a car on London's busy North Circular and shunting it out of the way.

The driver of the van, which is displaying a school bus logo in the rear window, appears to tailgate the red Toyota Prius before accelerating and clipping the back of the back of the car.

It makes the Prius spin 180 degrees and come to a halt facing the wrong way on the A406 in Chingford.

The driver appears to be tailgating the red Toyota Prius on the A406 in Chingford, north-east London

The clip, posted online on Thursday, starts as the van drives very close to the rear of the car.

It then moves in to the left lane, as if it is going to try to undertake the Prius.

But the driver suddenly accelerates and hits the passenger-side wing of the car.

The van, with a school bus sign in the back window, clips the Prius and makes it spin 180 degrees and come to a halt facing the wrong way on the busy road

The car spins in a cloud of tyre smoke (left) and then comes to a stop (right) as the minibus races off down the road

The sound of the crash can be heard inside the vehicle filming the video.

The car spins in a cloud of tyre smoke and then comes to a stop as the minibus races off down the road.

It is not clear if the minibus has passengers on board.

Laughter can be heard, followed by someone saying: 'Oh s***'.

The Metropolitan Police said they could find no record of an incident.
WASHINGTON - FBI agents investigating a lobbyist who has claimed close ties to President Donald Trump and his family searched the man's suburban home and Washington office early Thursday morning looking for evidence of possible fraud, according to people familiar with the matter.

Michael Esposito's business has boomed in the Trump era, but Trump, White House officials and senior Republicans have said he greatly exaggerated his claims of access to the president and his inner circle.

Following a Nov. 1 Washington Post story on Esposito's business, the FBI is investigating whether Esposito defrauded his clients or engaged in any other type of financial fraud, the people said.

Esposito did not respond to phone messages or emails requesting comment, and no one answered the door Friday morning at his home in Sterling, Virginia, about 30 miles west of here.

Neighbors said about a half dozen cars arrived at his home around 7 a.m. Thursday morning and stayed for several hours. People wearing FBI jackets and suits came in and out of Esposito's home.

"They're really nice people," neighbor Richard Tate, who lives across the street, said Friday of the Esposito family. "So I was surprised."

Another couple who lives nearby, Sheza and Salman Mansoor, said they were unaware of the law enforcement activity but that they had often marveled at the luxury cars parked in Esposito's driveway.

On Friday, there was a Rolls Royce and a Lincoln SUV parked in front of Esposito's house. On social media, Esposito has posted photos of himself in other luxury cars and wrote of the pleasure he takes in buying and selling Ferraris, Bentleys and Rolls-Royces.

"Nobody in this neighborhood has cars like that so they stood out," Sheza Mansoor said. "Amazing cars."

An FBI spokesperson declined to comment. Loudoun County, Virginia, Sheriff spokesman Colin Whittington said the sheriff's office assisted Thursday morning with an FBI operation in Sterling but referred questions to the FBI.

Esposito's firm, Federal Advocates, has offices at 1666 K St. NW, which were also subject to search, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department, Sean Hickman, said the Washington police force did not participate in the FBI operation at Esposito's office.

A person who answered the phone at Federal Advocates said the office was closed for the holidays and declined to say whether he was aware of the raid.

After the 2016 election, Esposito sought to join the crop of loyalists who follow every new administration in trying to climb to the top of the Washington influence machine. His ascent was particularly notable, however, because his connections to Trump world don't hold up to scrutiny, and because he had previously represented himself as a Democrat.

After The Post's story in November, Trump bluntly refuted Esposito's claims to have a "strong personal and professional relationship with President Trump." Trump tweeted: "I don't know, to the best of my knowledge, a man named Michael Esposito . . .. I don't like him using my name to build his consulting company, or whatever. Please advise his clients and Administration officials accordingly."

Federal Advocates collected $4.66 million from lobbying clients in 2018, up from $3.25 million in 2017 and $907,000 in 2016, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The explosive growth led Bloomberg Government news service to dub Federal Advocates the top-performing lobbying firm in 2017.

Before the raid occurred, some of Esposito's clients said they were reconsidering their relationship with him, while others have stuck with him.

Polk County, Iowa, Esposito's top-paying municipal client, is seeking new bids for a federal lobbyist for the first time since Federal Advocates landed the contract a decade ago. The contract, which expired at the end of the year, has been renewed annually in the past. The county paid the firm $60,000 a month.

"No county our size pays that much," said Supervisor Matt McCoy, who said Esposito has boasted to him about his close ties to the Trump administration. "I think they were clearly lying to us and misrepresenting things, which puts us in a terrible position."

Another Polk County supervisor, Robert Brownell, said the firm had effectively lobbied on the county's behalf but that "compared to what other counties our size are paying, the contract is out of whack."

Representatives of the National Cannabis Industry Association and Canndescent, a California-based company that sells luxury cannabis products, said they would reconsider contracting with Federal Advocates. "I can't ignore the reporting that came out for sure," Canndescent Chief Executive Adrian Sedlin said. "I want to hear his point of view."

Other major clients, including the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association and Chinese tech giant Huawei -- which signed Federal Advocates to one of the largest lobbying contracts in Washington this year -- said before news of the raid that they planned to remain clients of the firm. Federal Advocates collected $1.65 million from Huawei in a three-month period this year, according to lobbying records.

"We obviously vetted him and chose to work with him," Huawei spokesman Rob Manfredo said. " I haven't heard any reason that we wouldn't."

Huawei recently scored a minor victory when the Trump administration said it has begun issuing licenses allowing some companies to restart U.S. tech sales to the company despite its position on a trade blacklist. Trump has called the company a "national security threat," and the U.S. government has limited Huawei's ability to do business with American firms.

One client of Esposito's that appears to have retained his services is the U.S. Brain Tumor Association, which paid his firm $550,000 in 2018 and another $50,000 in 2019 to push the federal government "to establish health standards for deployed communications technologies and its effect on health and safety," according to lobbying records. The group has warned in press releases about what it says are the dangers of cellphones.

According to its web site, the group "supports families where an individual has developed a brain tumor or neurological disorder." It has not filed the federal tax form and it lists a Gmail address as contact information on its web site.

A spokeswoman for the American Brain Tumor Association (ABTA), which was founded in 1973 and funds more than $1 million in research annually, said "not one single person" among ABTA experts was familiar with the group.

The group lists Kevin Mottus as its president and only staff. Reached briefly by phone, Mottus said he had a "two-way" non-disclosure agreement with Esposito that prevented him from discussing the contract. Asked to describe his organization and its mission Mottus said: "I'm not going to be able to do that. I can't say anything." He did not return additional calls for comment.

_ _ _

The Washington Post's Rachel Weiner contributed to this story.
A senior Saudi envoy has arrived in Washington and will meet Monday with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and senior White House and Pentagon officials in an attempt to de-escalate the crisis in the Gulf.

Why it matters: Saudi Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman  a former ambassador to the U.S.  was urgently sent to Washington by his brother, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi Arabia is deeply concerned it could become engulfed in uncontrolled escalation between the U.S. and Iran following President Trump's decision to kill Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

What they're saying: Saudi officials told the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that the Saudi envoy will urge restraint while in Washington. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan expressed similar hopes of de-escalation on Monday.

The big picture: Countries around the world, and particularly in the region, want to prevent a spiral toward war over the killing of Soleimani. Iranian officials have said around a dozen countries approached Tehran to convey messages from the U.S. regarding the need to de-escalate.

Two key players in the de-escalation efforts are Oman, which has acted as a mediator between the U.S. and Iran for several years, and Qatar, which maintains close contacts both with the Iranians and with the Trump administration.

Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani visited Iran on Saturday and met President Hassan Rouhani.

Yesterday, the Qatari foreign minister had a phone call with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about de-escalation efforts.

Go deeper:
Banking operations are set to be hit on Wednesday (January 8) as several bank employees across the country will be joining an all-India general strike or Bharat Bandh called by Trade Unions.

It is learnt that 10 central trade unions, with support from Left parties, will be on a day-long strike to protest against the economic policies of the BJP-led government at the Centre.

The one-day strike means that a number of bank branches will remain closed on Wednesday and it is likley that ATM services will also be affected due to the strike. The strike, however, will not affect netbanking because NEFT online transfers are now available 247.

The State Bank of India (SBI) officials said that the general strike will not have a major effect on its banking operation but the Bank of Baroda officials said that its banking operations will be affected by the strike.

The SBI released a statement saying very few of its employees will participate in the strike and necessary steps have been taken by the bank for smooth functioning on the day of the strike.

Meanwhile, the 10 central trade unions said that around 25 crore people will participate in a nationwide strike on January 8. The trade unions who will be taking part of the strike include INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF, UTUC. It is to be noted that these unions along with other federations and associations had adopted a declaration in September 2019 to go on a nationwide strike on January 8, 2020.

We expect participation of not less than 25 crore of working people in the forthcoming National General Strike on January 8, 2020, to be followed by many more actions seeking reversal of the anti-worker, anti-people, anti-national policies of the Government, the 10 central trade unions (CTUs) said in a joint statement.

The Ministry of Labour has failed to assure any of the demands of workers which called a meeting on January 2, 2020. The attitude of the government is that of contempt towards labour as we construe from its policies and actions, the joint statement further stated.
The AMU Students Coordination Committee (AMUSCC) has demanded the resignation of JNU Vice Chancellor Prof Jagadesh Kumar, asking him to take "moral responsibility" for the violence in the varsity.

In a statement, AMUSCC said reports from JNU that even medical teams going to assess the injured were prevented by the mob from entering the JNU campus are shocking and only a time-bound judicial inquiry would uncover the full truth.

AMUSCCC is spearheading an agitation against the amended Citizenship Act.

The alleged involvement of goons associated with the ABVP would be confirmed by a judicial probe, it said while strongly condemning the manhandling of Swaraj Party President Yogendra Yadav by goons allegedly under the patronage of the police.

Protesting students at AMU will also be holding a Tiranga march inside the AMU campus later in the day in solidarity with JNU students and all other student bodies currently holding peaceful protests against the CAA.

The Resident Doctors Association (RDA) at the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, AMU is also holding a protest at the Trauma Centre of the Hospital against Sunday's violence at JNU.

In a statement, RDA President Dr Mohammad Hamzas alleged that Delhi Police served as facilitators for the mob.

Secretary of the AMU Staff Association, Prof Najmul Islam said the President, Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India have to directly step in before the situation worsens.

Meanwhile, BJP Lok Sabha Member Satish Gautam, in a statement, demanded that all protesting students at the AMU campus should be immediately suspended and thrown out of the campus.

Gautam said that a university is a place for seeking and not for indulging in politics. He said that if the protesters want to indulge in politicking, they should leave the campus.

The BJP is holding a mass rally at the Exhibition grounds here on January 12 to build up public support for the Citizenship Amendment Act.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BERLIN - A young German woman died in a hospital Monday, the seventh person killed after a drunken driver speeding on an Alpine road in northern Italy plowed into German skiers on vacation, police said.

The accident occurred early Sunday in the village of Valle Aurina, northeast of Bolzano in Italys Alto Adige region, as the Germans gathered near their tour bus. They were between ages of 20 and 25.

Germanys dpa news agency reported the woman was one of two who had been airlifted to a hospital in nearby Austria in critical condition, Bolzano police said. Italys ANSA news agency identified her as a 21-year-old who died at the Innsbruck University Clinic.

Police on Sunday said six people died at the scene and 11 were injured. There were no immediate details Monday on the conditions of the others.

The 27-year-old local man who was driving the car was taken to an Italian hospital after the accident but was soon released and taken to prison. He faces a possible 18-year sentence if convicted.

Italian news reports said the drivers blood alcohol level was nearly four times the legal limit and that he slammed into the tourists as they were getting off their bus and returning home after an evening out. His attorney told dpa he did not think his client was so intoxicated.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 20:20:14|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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TOKYO, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Justice Minister Masako Mori on Monday repeatedly maintained that former Nissan Motor chairman Carlos Ghosn jumping bail and fleeing Japan's justice system was illegal.

Mori told a press conference on the matter that Ghosn, who was facing trial in Japan for alleged financial misconduct, but fled the country to Lebanon via Turkey, did so illegally.

"Leaving without going through proper embarkation procedures and using unauthorized means comprise a crime of illegal departure," Mori told a press conference in Tokyo, while declining to mention details of his escape, which may have involved trained accomplices.

In the first such press conference since Ghosn skipped bail, Mori refuted his claims of a "rigged justice system" here, stating that Japan's justice system "ensures basic human rights" and is operated appropriately.

"This is an issue separate from his illegal departure from Japan," she added.

She was referring to a statement issued by Ghosn's U.S. representative in which the ex-Nissan chief said: "I am now in Lebanon and will no longer be held hostage by a rigged Japanese justice system."

"Guilt is presumed, discrimination is rampant, and basic human rights are denied," Ghosn, whose trial was expected to begin here in April, said.

The 65-year-old ex-auto tycoon was initially arrested more than a year ago by Japanese prosecutors.

Ghosn, who holds Brazilian, French and Lebanese nationality, was accused of under-reporting his remuneration for years and for embezzling company funds. He has denied all the charges, claiming company insiders conspired against him.

He was released on bail in April on strict conditions that included a ban on foreign travel, limited access to telephones and computers and restricted to a surveilled residence.
[January 06, 2020] Arabesque S-Ray Announces New Senior Hires as Part of Its Global Expansion

- Dr Todd Arthur Bridges joins as Global Head of Sustainable Investing & ESG Research at Arabesque S-Ray - Dr Manuel Pinuela is announced as CTO at Arabesque S-Ray - New hires are part of the global expansion of Arabesque S-Ray following investment from four of Germany's leading financial institutions and the federal state of Hessen LONDON, FRANKFURT, Germany, BOSTON and SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Arabesque S-Ray GmbH, the leading global provider of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data, today announced two new senior hires as part of its global expansion strategy. Dr Todd Arthur Bridges has joined as Global Head of Sustainable Investing & ESG Research at Arabesque S-Ray, with Dr Manuel Pinuela appointed as Chief Technology Officer. Both Dr Bridges and Dr Pinuela have joined as Partners of the firm. The appointments are key to the next phase of Arabesque S-Ray's growth following the completion of a $22 million investment round in 2019 from four of Germany's leading financial institutions and the federal state of Hessen. "Both Dr Bridges and Dr Pinuela bring with them a vast amount of experiene in ESG research and technology," said Andreas Feiner, CEO of Arabesque S-Ray GmbH. "I am delighted to welcome them both to the company as we scale up our team, and combine technology and data to create innovative ESG products and services that meet the growing global demand for sustainability."



Dr Todd Arthur Bridges joins Arabesque S-Ray GmbH from State Street Global Advisors, where he was Head of ESG Research and Development. Dr Bridges previously worked as Head of ESG Research at Ethic, and held the position of Research Managing Director at Cornell University. He is a member of the Sustainable Finance Advisory Committee of the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), and holds a PhD in Socioeconomics, Organizational Behaviour and Research Methods from Brown University. Dr Manuel Pinuela is a technology and science entrepreneur, MIT Technology Review Inventor and 2017 Innovator of the Year (35 LatAm Innovators under 35). He is a Co-Founder of Cultivo, Coyo Partners and Drayson Technologies Group, and serves multiple boards as an Executive and Non-Executive Director. Dr Pinuela holds a PhD in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Imperial College London.

Speaking on today's announcement, Dr Todd Arthur Bridges, Global Head of Sustainable Investing & ESG Research at Arabesque S-Ray GmbH, said: "Over the past few years, there have been fast-moving developments across capital markets towards a more sustainable financial system. I am thrilled to join Arabesque S-Ray at a time when demand from investors for ESG data and investment strategies has never been greater, and look forward to working with the team to design and build innovative new solutions that enable sustainable asset allocations." Dr Manuel Pinuela, CTO at Arabesque S-Ray GmbH, said: "Advancements in technology are enabling all stakeholders to implement sustainability at a faster rate than ever before. I am delighted to join Arabesque S-Ray and support the firm's rapid global growth, and look forward to helping create new products that accelerate the transition to a sustainable world." Using ESG big data and machine learning models, Arabesque S-Ray provides technology that is used by many of the world's largest institutional investors, corporations, and consultancies to assess the sustainability performance of over 7,200 companies globally. In 2019, Arabesque S-Ray announced strategic partnerships with five new co-investors: Allianz X, Commerz Real AG, DWS Group, Land Hessen, and Helaba Digital. The strategic partnerships will allow Arabesque S-Ray to enhance its client relationships and expand its business by developing new ESG data products and services across the globe. Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/999819/Arabesque_S_Ray_Logo_Logo.jpg

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Banihal, which houses the Jawahar Tunnel, known as the gateway to Kashmir - is just 110 kilometres from Srinagar and a two-hour journey by train. (Photo Credit: File Photo)

Banihal/Jammu:

Banihal, along the Jammu-Srinagar national highway, is agog with activities over the past one month, thanks to the resumption of the train service in Kashmir and the normal functioning of the internet in the highway township. The resumption of the train service between Srinagar and Banihal on November 17 last year after remaining suspended for over three months following the nullification of Article 370 saw residents of Kashmir thronging the highway town, which falls in the Jammu region, to get access to the internet facility and convert prepaid mobile SIM cards to postpaid.

The internet services continue to remain barred in the entire Valley except for some government offices, hospitals and business establishments since August 5 last year, the day the Centre announced abrogation of Article 370 provisions and bifurcation of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.

While the postpaid mobile phone service was restored in the valley on October 14 last year after remaining suspended for 72 days, the prepaid mobile service is still blocked.

Banihal, which houses the Jawahar Tunnel, known as the gateway to Kashmir - is just 110 kilometres from Srinagar and a two-hour journey by train.

"Over half a dozen internet cafes are functional in the town and many telecom service providers are having good business, mostly because of the heavy rush of students, employment seekers, businessmen and professionals from the valley," Danish Muzaffar, a local, told PTI.

He said since the train arrives from Kashmir at 10.30 am and departs at 3.15 pm daily, majority of the visitors return the same day but many prefer to stay overnight to complete their work, also boosting the business of hotel and restaurant.

"Due to the heavy rush of the customers at the internet cafes, we sometimes are unable to file our reports in time. The rush increased manifold after the resumption of the train service," Muzaffar said.

Bilal Ahmad Bhat, who owns one of the internet cafes in the town, said the internet speed was a problem earlier but now it is normal and the users leave satisfied after finishing their work.

On the complaints of overcharging, Bhat said, "The customers are charged as per normal rates but since there are frequent power cuts, we have to use the generators and in such a case, the customers have to pay extra money."

The internet service in most parts of the Jammu region, where it was suspended, was restored by August end due to overall normal law and order situation.

Hotelier Manzoor Ahmad said winter usually remains a lean period for their business but this time the occupancy is around 100 per cent.

"We are doing good...the guests are staying for a night or two," he said, adding the frequent closure of the Jammu-Srinagar national highway in view of landslides sometimes adds to the pressure.

There is also a heavy rush of customers from the Valley to telecom service providers to convert their prepaid mobile SIM cards to postpaid.

Shoukat Ahmad Wani, a contractor from Srinagar, said he visited the town on Friday and utilized the internet service to upload tenders besides converted the prepaid mobile SIM card to postpaid.

"The government has set up internet touch points at different places but these are inadequate to cater to the heavy rush," he said, requesting for restoration of the internet and prepaid mobile service in Kashmir.

Farooq Ahmad Bhat, another Srinagar resident, accused the hoteliers of "overcharging".

"I used to pay Rs 700 to Rs 1,000 for a room depending on the facilities but this time they are charging between Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500 for different categories of rooms," he said.

A police official said they have stepped up patrolling and are keeping a close vigil in the town to maintain peace.

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Two workers died while cleaning out a chemical tank near Houston, Texas, on December 28. Shawn Jarmail Brown, 44, and Sidarieub Lozano, 29, were cleaning the insides of a trailer-mounted chemical tank when the two died after becoming overwhelmed by toxic fumes. Several other employees were also injured as a result of the incident.

The facility is run by Qualawash Holdings LLC, the largest single commercial wash rack operator in North America. The company operates 53 locations across the United States alone.

The facility where the two men died Saturday is located in Pasadena, a small city outside of Houston. The plant was previously a division of Alpha Technical Services before being bought by Qualawash in 2017.

Efforts to drastically cut costs and raise profits have resulted in a slew of safety violations since the acquisition.

Only last May, cleaning technician Ernesto Poblano became ill after he was ordered to enter a sludge tank with a shovel, bucket and nothing more than a thin protective suit. Poblano had only been working with the company for three weeks at the time.

In a lawsuit filed against the company, Poblano alleged that numerous deadly chemicals had burned his skin and caused him to start suffocating. The company, according to the lawsuit, did not allow him to wash off the chemicals for more than an hour after the incident and he wasnt provided with any medical treatment for three hours. Poblano, in fact, drove himself to the emergency room after the 3 hour observation period by the company had ended.

In the case of Lozano and Brown, emergency calls were not made until four full hours after their bodies were found inside the tank.

The tanker truck industry in particular is infamous for safety violations and associated employee hazards.

Tank washings normally take place after every trip as companies need to ensure that no cross contamination occurs between incoming and outgoing hauls. While these tank washes take more than two hours on average, an entire day is typically lost to washing even with the use of third-party logistic providers who route trucks to optimal wash sites based on location and wait times.

While the entire end-to-end cleaning phase can be completed without any human setting foot in the tank at all, washing companies will nearly always send employees in to clean outside of the washing docks to speed up the overall process. Oftentimes this will involve skipping hazardous material checks or neglecting to perform other safety procedures.

The Qualawash facility in Pasadena had already been cited for four other safety violations by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 2019. Although the companys practices were clearly leading to significant injury and possible loss of life they were only issued $26,850 in fines for all four violations.

Workplace fatalities have been steadily on the rise in the US over the past decade. As of last August, 3,352 workers had died on the job. The total number for 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was 5,250, a 2 percent increase over the 5,147 killed on the job in 2017.

This rise in worker fatalities has occurred in parallel with a similar rise in the stock market and an overall drop in life expectancy for three years in a row for American workers.

The period from 2011 to 2018 saw an increase in 12 percent in lives lost on the job with a total of 39,150 people killed.

Throughout this whole period, the sector of the economy associated with the highest fatality rates were the logistics, transportation and warehousing sectors of which Qualawash is a part.

As grim as the BLS workplace fatality statistics for the logistics industry, they exclude a number of integral companies and industries including Amazon, which is classified as e-commerce rather than a warehouse and logistics company even with its massive and growing trucking and logistics infrastructure.
It's difficult to imagine that when President Trump authorized the hit against General Qassem Soleimani, neither he nor his advisers anticipated that Iran would use the event as the official reason to withdraw from Obama's toothless Iran deal. Nevertheless, progressives themselves seem surprised and panicked and are attributing those feelings to Trump. As usual, they're probably wrong.

A brief history is in order. From day one, President Obama was determined to have a deal with Iran. To that end, for example, in 2009 he ignored the Green Revolution protests that might have overthrown the mullahs lest supporting the protesters interfere with his deal. Likewise, in 2015 he tattled to Tehran when Israel had the chance to kill Soleimani.

And then there was the deal itself. Obama didn't bother trying to stop Iran, the world's greatest terrorist nation, from becoming a nuclear power. Instead, he considered nuclearization a fait accompli. He decided, instead, to get the mullahs to agree to slow the program. In return, Obama promised to lift the longstanding economic embargo on Iran and to give Iran massive amounts of money. His theory was that if the mullahs were paid enough, once they went nuclear...maybe they would be less hostile. That's it.

It was such an awful deal that Obama and his novel-writing foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes did not even try to submit the deal to Congress to get it formalized as a treaty. Instead, Barack "I've got a pen and I've got a phone" Obama flew solo, making his one-sided deal with Iran and sealing it by secretly sending the mullahs $1.7 billion in cash.

To no one's surprise, when it came to the promised slowdown, Israel proved in 2018 that Iran almost immediately started cheating:

Tens of thousands of secret files and other evidence proves [sic] the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is "based on lies and Iranian deception" and should be thrown out, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday. Netanyahu, in an address televised across Israel, said Iran lied when it said it never sought to develop nuclear weapons, then cheated by failing to reveal all its weapons program information to an international watchdog group charged with monitoring the deal. "Even after the deal was made, Iran continued to preserve and expand its nuclear know-how for use at a later date," Netanyahu said.

Not long after that revelation, Trump, with his own executive pen, threw out the deal and reimposed sanctions on Iran. Since then, the sanctions have effectively weakened Iran's economy, a problem helped by America's new position as a net oil exporter. Iranian citizens have responded to the economic freefall by rising in protest across the country, protests that the mullahs have tried quite ruthlessly to quash. The mullahs are not in good shape.

To summarize, Obama gave the mullahs everything and got nothing in return. Trump was able to undercut some of the mullahs' activities by weakening their economy. At all times, the Iran deal benefited no one but Iran.

But that's not how the Democrats see it. It took four New York Times journalists to put together an article saying Iran is now formally pulling out of a deal it had already ignored and that  oh, my gosh!  this is really bad:

"Iran's nuclear program will have no limitations in production, including enrichment capacity," the Iranian government said in an announcement Sunday that seemed to signal the de facto collapse of the 2015 agreement.

Apparently, the New York Times managed to miss entirely the announcement in 2018 about Iran's de facto cheating on the agreement.

The New York Times also assumes that Trump, just like the Times itself, had absolutely no idea that Iran would play the "Nuclear Deal" card:

But so far, it [Soleimani's death] has unleashed a host of unanticipated consequences that could dramatically alter where the United States operates. Increasingly, the killing appeared to be generating effects far beyond the United States' ability to control. That may include Iran's nuclear future. On Sunday, the Iranian government said it was abandoning its "final limitations in the nuclear deal," the international agreement intended to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. The decision leaves no restrictions on Iran's nuclear program, the statement said, including on uranium enrichment, production, research and expansion.

...except that the very next paragraph reveals a fact Trump may well have already anticipated, which is that Iran is hedging its bets when it comes to going off the nuclear reservation:

Iran will, however, continue its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and return to the nuclear limits if the economic sanctions imposed on it are removed and Iran's interests guaranteed, the government said. American sanctions have hit Iran's oil-based economy particularly hard.

Meanwhile in Iraq, perhaps to placate any chance of Iranian retribution or perhaps as a protest against the U.S. conducting a significant anti-Iranian military action on its soil, Parliament asked the U.S. to leave. Again, from the Times:

Lawmakers in Iraq voted on Sunday to require the government to end the presence of American troops in the country after Mr. Trump ordered the killing on Iraqi soil.

But there a problem: In the shifting, chimerical world of Middle Eastern politics, even that vote isn't what it seems. In the very next paragraph, the New York Times admits that the vote is almost certainly symbolic:

The vote will not be final until it is signed by the prime minister, and it was unclear whether Iraq's current caretaker government had the authority to end the relationship with the United States military. Few doubted, however, that the country would take whatever legal actions were necessary to compel a United States departure over the coming months. Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi drafted the language and submitted the bill approved by Parliament on Sunday, leaving little doubt about his support.

People with memories longer than last week will recall what happened the last time the United States military summarily left Iraq, per Obama's orders. (Hint: It's spelled I-S-I-S, or maybe J-V.)

It looks as if both the New York Times and Iran's mullahs are running scared. Trump is a different breed from anything seen in American politics in the last 50 years. He doesn't play by the ordinary rules and, unlike our last president, when he makes a threat, he means it.
Geddes, N.Y. -- The operator of the iconic Villa Pizze Fritte stand and 15 other concessions at the New York State Fair has been awarded a contract to operate year-round food concessions in the new Exposition Center at the fairgrounds.

Syracuse-based Paradise Cos., a veteran concessions company and real estate development firm owned by Grazi Zazzara, was one of nine companies that submitted bids for the contract after the state Department of Agriculture and Markets terminated its contract with Peppinos owner John Vigliotti.

Villa Pizze Frittes two-foot-long hot fried dough rolled in sugar has been a favorite of fairgoers for decades, with long lines the norm.

Villa Pizze Fritte's two-foot-long fried dough rolled in sugar has been a popular treat at the New York State Fair for decades. (Sarah Moses Buckshot | syracuse.com, 2017)

The five-year contract with Paradise requires the company to buy certain products grown or manufactured in New York.

Paradises bid was determined to offer the greatest value to the state, fair officials said Monday. The company will pay the fair commissions of 34% on gross sales up to $125,000; 33% on sales of more than $125,000 and up to $250,000; 31% on sales of more than $250,000 and up to $375,000; and 10% on sales above $375,000.

As part of the contract, the fair retains the right to include other food concession services in up to five events per year at the Expo Center.

All of Paradises milk, cream and cheese products; hotdogs, sausage and bratwurst; bottled water, wine, ciders and spirits must be produced, processed or manufactured in New York. In addition, all coffee must have been roasted in New York and 80% of all beer must be produced or manufactured in New York.

At least one concession stand at the Expo Center must carry products branded under the Department of Agriculture and Markets Taste NY program, which provides opportunities for local producers to showcase their goods at a variety of venues throughout the state and at large public events such as the fair.

We are pleased to have received so many qualified bids for this important contract," fair Director Troy Waffner said in a statement. "Its a reflection of the excellent reception the new Expo Center has received from the event planning community. With most weekends already filled for 2020 in the Expo Center, we are pleased to expand our working relationship with Paradise Companies.

The state terminated Peppinos contract as the exclusive provider of food and beverage services at the Expo Center a little more than a year after the Syracuse restaurant and catering group won what was initially a five-year deal.

The move came three months after Vigliotti paid more than $184,000 in back wages and damages to 103 current and former employees of his three Syracuse-area restaurants to settle allegations that his three Syracuse restaurants violated federal minimum wage and overtime rules.

However, state officials said the decision to terminate the contract was unrelated to the wage law violations. They said they took the action so they could write a new contract that would allow multiple food vendors for certain events at the center.

The $63 million Expo Center opened in August 2018. It features 110,000 square feet of continuous floor space, making it the largest indoor event space north of New York City between Boston and Cleveland.

See also: Peppinos loses food and beverage contract at State Fairs Expo Center

Rick Moriarty covers business news and consumer issues. Have a question or news tip? Contact him anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview published Monday that Democrats nationwide can cultivate too big of a tent, asserting that she and her partys 2020 frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, would be in different political parties in any other nation.

Asked for a profile by New York Magazine about what role she might play as a member of Congress should Biden capture the White House, the freshman House Democrat from New York responded with a groan.

Oh God, she said. In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.

A spokesperson for the Biden campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.

The remarks by Ocasio-Cortez represent a fresh repudiation of Biden, who spent decades in the Senate before serving as vice president. He is widely seen as the standard-bearer in the 2020 race for moderate Democrats and has voiced opposition to progressive legislation championed by Ocasio-Cortez and her allies.

The congresswoman  who has endorsed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the partys nominating contest  previously launched what was widely viewed as a thinly veiled attack against Bidens climate change proposals at an event in Washington in May.

I will be damned if the same politicians who refused to act then are going to try to come back today and say we need to find a middle-of-the-road approach to save our lives. That is too much for me, Ocasio-Cortez said, after Reuters had reported that Biden was crafting a middle ground approach to combating the global threat.

For his part, Biden has praised Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the left-leaning squad of freshman congresswomen as brilliant and really smart, but warned their political ideology was not representative of most elected Democrats.

They are the exception rather than the rule, he told MSNBC in July. If you listen to the guys and women in your business, they say, Thats the majority of people who got elected. We need that kind of energy, but thats not the majority of Democrats who got elected last time.

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Ocasio-Cortez also offered criticism in Mondays story for congressional Democrats, accusing her partys lawmakers of too often working to appease the interests of their most conservative members. She has frequently broken with House Democratic leadership since assuming office in January 2019.

For so long, when I first got in, people were like, Oh, are you going to basically be a tea party of the left? And what people dont realize is that there is a tea party of the left, but its on the right edges, the most conservative parts of the Democratic Party, Ocasio-Cortez said.

So the Democratic Party has a role to play in this problem, and its like were not allowed to talk about it. Were not allowed to talk about anything wrong the Democratic Party does, she continued. I think I have created more room for dissent, and were learning to stretch our wings a little bit on the left.

Ocasio-Cortez said the Congressional Progressive Caucus, of which she is a member, should expel lawmakers without adequate liberal bona fides, charging that they let anybody who the cat dragged in call themselves a progressive. Theres no standard.

The broader Democratic Party, as well, can be too big of a tent, she said.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 6)  Starting this year, members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) have to focus on shedding their excess weight to ensure that they are fit enough to progress in their career.

Police Lt. Gen. Archie Francisco Gamboa, PNP OIC, said Monday that he himself will sign an order that will require police officers to meet the standard Body Mass Index (BMI) in order to increase their chances of climbing up the ranks.

"Actually, pipirmahan ko na 'yung sa BMI na 'pag kung hindi ka compliant sa BMI (actually, I will sign an order wherein if you will not comply with the BMI requirements), you will be denied schooling. Up until you comply with BMI requirements, that's the only time that you can go on schooling," he told reporters in a media briefing.

"At masakit ito (and this will be painful) because there are schooling [classes] that are required for certain positions and there are schooling [classes] required for promotions...we want all policemen to internalize this BMI requirement.," Gamboa added.

He noted that this order will be applicable in all the ranks of the PNP, right from the patrolmen to their generals.

"This is not just for the image of PNP na walang tiyan [dapat]. This is more on individual responsibility. Ini-implant namin dito na yung health mo, na mabuhay ka nang matagal...'pag hindi mo pa mine-maintain 'yung katawan mo, baka di mo abutin retirement mo," the PNP OIC stressed.

[Translation: This is not just the image of PNP to have smaller stomachs. This is more on individual responsibility. We are trying to implant here that you should prioritize your health and live longer. If you don't maintain your body, you might not even reach your retirement.]

Gamboa himself admitted that he has to shed a few pounds to reach his ideal weight.

In 2019, then PNP chief Gen. Oscar Albayalde directed the National Police Training Institute to require police recruits to maintain their BMI before graduating from basic police training.

Police recruits must maintain a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 in order to be part of the police foce, PNP spokesperson PBGen. Bernard Banac earlier said.
Belfast's Body Shop store situated on Donegall Place is relocating to Victoria Square from today.

The beauty retailer will now operate from a unit on the lower level of the shopping centre, next to shirt shop TM Lewin.

It will become Northern Ireland's flagship store for the brand which was founded by the late Dame Anita Roddick in Brighton in 1976.

The retailer began as a small shop providing skincare in refilled bottles that would see it become a brand that "could be a force of good for the world".

It was a pioneer in non-animal tested products and today it has become a retail business that serves over 30m customers worldwide, employing 10,000 people with a further 12,000 in its franchise team.

Ms Roddick sold the business to L'Oreal in 2006 just a year before she died.

Two years ago it was bought by Brazilian company Natura in a 844m deal.

And, on Friday, Natura announced that it had also completed the purchase of global beauty retail brand Avon, following the sale which was announced on May 22, 2019.

There are currently 3,000 Body Shop shops located in 70 countries worldwide, three of which are in Northern Ireland.

Among its most popular products over the years have been Body Shop's oil fragrances including White Musk, which the retailer still sells.

Its more modern product heroes include its Body Shop Drops of Youth serum, one of which sells every 23 seconds according to one report. One of its Himalayan Charcoal Purifying Mask sells every 17 seconds.
Japanese startup FPV Robotics is leveraging drone technology to address a growing global need: inspecting aging infrastructure in an effort to avoid major issues like unexpected bridge collapses. FPV Robotics CEO and founder Masaki Komagata showed me his company's production Waver drone, which is debuting for the first time ever at CES 2020 in Las Vegas this week.

Waver is an amphibious drone, which can fly thanks to eight rotors, and also speed along the surface of bodies of water using its floats. This dual nature makes it particularly well-suited to solving a very specific task -- a problem Komagata set out specifically to solve after observing that Japan Railways (JR) needed this addressed.

This specific problem was rail bridge collapse, including damaged and destroyed bridges along the Tadami River in 2011 due to floods in Niigata and Fukushima. Many of the spans that JR relies upon for its Shinkansen and other local trains in Japan are considerably old, and beginning to show their age. That wear can be further exasperated by environmental disasters -- which are occurring with greater frequency as a result of climate change.

FPV Robotics can't magically repair this aging infrastructure or prevent natural disasters, but it can deliver on-demand, flexible monitoring and inspection at a greatly reduced cost compared to current methods. Komagata partnered with JR and with sensor company OKI on development of the Waver to custom-design it specifically for this use, which is where it got its amphibious abilities and attached multibeam sensor array.

This multibeam technology, provided by OKI, is installed on the bottom of the Waver drone and provides sonar imaging capabilities that allow the drone to accurately map the bottom of a river or seabed from the water's surface. This information, Komagata tells me, can be used to help predict when infrastructure, including bridges and roads, might need to be replaced or reinforced, prior to any actual collapse or damage.

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Waver can autonomously map a predetermined section of riverbed, moving like a Roomba across the water in segment sweeps to build the full picture. It's also equipped with eight rotors, more than your average VTOL drone, which Komagata tells me is for added redundancy so that it can continue to operate effectively even in the unlikely event that it loses power to multiple rotors at once.

In addition to the sea and river bed inspection, the Waver can do a visual inspection of the bridge itself from up close using a more traditional camera, as well as the supporting land from which it extends. Komagata points out that this kind of multi-part inspection can require specialized boats, many hours of trained personnel time, things like temporary scaffolding for a close-up eyes-on approach and a lot more. He estimates based on studies FPV has done that their drone could reduce inspection costs to as little as 1/20th the cost of existing methods. That means it would be possible to monitor much more frequently than can be done currently, and in circumstances where risk to human inspectors on the ground might be a necessary component of using more traditional means.

Waver estimates that just taking into account bridges alone, there's a roughly $25 million per year total addressable market, and it's aiming to acquire around 4% of that (roughly $1 million in revenue) in 2020, and then to grow that by about $2 million per year in the next two fiscal years. It's currently mostly bootstrapped, with 90% of the startup's existing 30,700,000 ($300,000) in seed funding coming from Komagata himself. With that capital, the company has already gone from working prototype (which you can see in the GIF above) to the much more polished production version debuted at CES.

Komagata, an engineer with a focus in drone development, envisions Waver being able to address challenges with aging infrastructure not just in Japan, but globally, though FPV's initial focus is on the market opportunity at home. Ultimately, he hopes that Waver and other drone technology FPV Robotics brings to market helps to "make the world a better place," and addressing challenges like infrastructure inspection is definitely a good place to start.
I ran could attack UK forces in the Middle East as they are a softer target than America, a retired British general has warned.

General Sir Richard Barrons added that the Islamic Republic could also strike at Britain or British forces as it would receive a more muted response than a similar move against the US.

It comes in the wake of the death of General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in an air strike on Friday by the US.

General Soleimani was head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' elite Quds Force, which is responsible for the Islamic Republic's foreign campaigns.

General Barrons spoke of how Britain and its forces could be vulnerable due to their close allegiance with the US but lack of repercussions for attacks.

General Sir Richard Barrons criticises British military / PA

The former Commander of Joint Forces Command, who served in the Middle East, told Sky News: [Iran] doesnt really distinguish between the UK and the US military.

But what it does do is see the UK as a softer target - you could target UK forces and that wouldnt necessarily mean that you receive the full might of US response.

So to some degree Iran can make a point against the UK without incurring the same risk as targeting the US directly.

An Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: The safety and security of our personnel is of paramount importance and we keep our force protection measures under constant review.

For security reasons, we do not comment on specific force protection measures.

Qasem Soleimani funeral in Iran 1 /24 Qasem Soleimani funeral in Iran An Iranian man reacts during a gathering to mourn General Qasem Soleimani VIA REUTERS Mourners wave flags as they gather during the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani AFP via Getty Images Mourners gather during the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (image), Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani and eight others in the Iraqi central city of Karbala AFP via Getty Images Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" today as they mourned an Iranian commander and others killed in a US drone attack AFP via Getty Images Mourners gather in the Iraqi central city of Karbala AFP via Getty Images Mourners take part in the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani AFP via Getty Images Iranians gather to mourn General Qasem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, who was killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran VIA REUTERS A mourner holds up a picture AFP via Getty Images Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" today as they mourned an Iranian commander and others killed in a US drone attack AFP via Getty Images Mourners chant slogans against the U.S. during the funeral of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani, AP Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the US airstrike near Baghdad's airport AP Mourners carry the coffins of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani AP Mourners carry the coffin of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis AFP via Getty Images People attend a funeral procession for Iranian Major-General Qasem Soleiman VIA REUTERS An aerial view shows mourners attending a funeral ceremony for Gen. Qasem Soleimani AP Qassem Soleimani and his comrades who were killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike, are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners AP Mourners carry the coffins of Iran's top general Qasem Soleiman AP Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad's airport AP

There are currently around 1,400 British military and government personnel in Iraq.

Previous deaths of British forces in Iraq have been laid at the feet of General Soleimani, as he helped train Shia militia in the country.

Former US ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria Ryan Crocker told BBC Radio 4s Today programme on Monday: Literally hundreds of coalition soldiers and marines, mostly Americans, were killed by improvised explosive devices that were manufactured in Iran, used by the Iraqi Shia militia trained by Soleimani, in very deliberate targeting.

Thousands of mourners gathered on the streets of the Iranian capital of Tehran on Monday for the funeral of General Soleimani.

The military commander was one of the most powerful men in the country after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #1

Posted on 5 January 2020 by John Hartz

Story of the Week... Editorial of the Week... El Nino/La Nina Update... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Reviews... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week...

Story of the Week...

The signal of human-caused climate change has emerged in everyday weather, study finds

Satellite image showing weather on Jan. 2, 2019. (NOAA)

For the first time, scientists have detected the fingerprint of human-induced climate change on daily weather patterns at the global scale. If verified by subsequent work, the findings, published Thursday in Nature Climate Change, would upend the long-established narrative that daily weather is distinct from long-term climate change.

The studys results also imply that research aimed at assessing the human role in contributing to extreme weather events such as heat waves and floods may be underestimating the contribution.

The new study, which was in part motivated by President Trumps tweets about how a cold day in one particular location disproves global warming, uses statistical techniques and climate model simulations to evaluate how daily temperatures and humidity vary around the world. Scientists compared the spatial patterns of these variables with what physical science shows is expected because of climate change.

The study concludes that the spatial patterns of global temperature and humidity are, in fact, distinguishable from natural variability, and have a human component to them. Going further, the study concludes that the long-term climate trend in global average temperature can be predicted if you know a single days weather information worldwide.

The signal of human-caused climate change has emerged in everyday weather, study finds by Paul Freedman, Capital Weather Gang, Washington Post, Jan 2, 2020

Click here to access the complete article as published on the Washington Post website.

Editorial of the Week...

We are seeing the very worst of our scientific predictions come to pass in these bushfires

As a climate scientist I am wondering if the Earth system has now breached a tipping point

The thing that really terrifies me is that weather conditions considered extreme by todays standards will seem sedate in the future. Photograph: Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images

As a climate scientist, the thing that really terrifies me is that weather conditions considered extreme by todays standards will seem sedate in the future. Whats unfolding right now is really just a taste of the new normal.

At this point I could restate all the lines of scientific evidence that clearly show the links between human-caused climate change and the intensification of extreme weather conditions not just in Australia, but all over the world.

To avoid sounding like a broken record, instead I will say that as a lead author on the forthcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes (IPCC) Sixth Assessment report of the global climate due out next year, I can assure you that the planetary situation is extremely dire.

Its no exaggeration to say my work as scientist now keeps me up at night.

We are seeing the very worst of our scientific predictions come to pass in these bushfires, Opinion by Joelle Gergis, Comment is Free, Guardian, Jan 2, 2020

Click here to access the complete op-ed as publihed on the Guardian website.

El Nino/La Nina Update...

A visit to the zoo: climate patterns that can precede ENSO by Emily Becker, ENSO Blog, NOAA's Climate.gov, Dec 23, 2019

Toon of the Week...

Coming Soon on SkS...

Doubling down: Researchers investigate compound climate risks (Daniel Grossman)

(Daniel Grossman) Year-end climate science summary (Dana)

(Dana) Skeptic al Science New Research for Week #1, 2020 (Doug Bostrom)

Community choice aggregation: A brief introduction (Bruce Lieberman)

(Bruce Lieberman) What psychotherapy can do for the climate and biodiversity crises (Caroline Hickman)

(Caroline Hickman) 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2 (John Hartz)

(John Hartz) 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #2 (John Hartz)

Climate Feedback Claim Reviews...

Article falsely attributes invented quotes to James Hansen

CLAIM/SOURCE: Father of Global Warming Scientist Finally Admits Theory Is Wrong by Baxter Dmitry, Principia Scientific, July 8, 2018 -- Versions of this 2018 article have more recently been widely shared on Facebook.

VERDICT:

KEY TAKE AWAY: This article falsely attributes quotes to NASA climate scientist James Hansen, when these statements are actually the opinions of others. It also misrepresents 1988 projections of global warming produced by Hansen and his colleagues, which were, in reality, accurate.

Article falsely attributes invented quotes to James Hansen by Scott Johnson, Climate Feedback, Jan 1, 2020

Click here to access the detailed review of the claim.

Volcanic CO2 emissions are known to be much smaller than human-caused emissions

CLAIM/SOURCE: Discovery Of Massive Volcanic CO2 Emissions Discredits Global Warming Theory by James Edward Kamis, Principia Scientific, Nov 7, 2018 --Versions of this 2018 article have more recently been widely shared on Facebook.

VERDICT:

KEY TAKE AWAY: This article claims that volcanic sources of carbon dioxide are poorly understood and could well be the cause of modern global warming, rather than human activities. In reality, current annual human-caused emissions are at least 100 times greater than all volcanic emissions.

Volcanic CO2 emissions are known to be much smaller than human-caused emissions by Scott Johnson, Climate Feedback, Jan 1, 2020

Click here to access the detailed review of the claim.

Poster of the Week...

Hat tip to the Stop Climate Science Denial Facebook page.

SkS Week in Review...
Representative image

In the light of the incident which took place on January 4, the unruly passengers may end up in the no-fly list for upto two years.

Passengers aboard Air India's Delhi-Mumbai flight created a ruckus after their flight was delayed because pilots encountered technical glitches just before take-off.

The plane was later grounded and another aircraft was brought in, but eventually the flight was delayed by seven hours.

With the footage going viral on social media, aviation regulator DGCA has asked Air India to investigate the matter and take action against the passengers.

The penalty

The no-fly list, which came into being after the infamous incident involving a Shiv Sena parliamentarian, is one that no flier would want to be in.

The penalty for a passenger included on the list is severe. According to the norms listed by the DGCA, airlines can ban the flier for a duration starting from three months.

The ban period increases to six months, and two years or an defined period till the person is 'perceived to be a national security risk' by the Home Ministry.

A repeat offender will find himself or herself, banned for twice the duration of the previous ban.

What is unruly behaviour?

The DGCA has categorised unruly behaviour into three levels:

Level 1: Unruly behaviour (includes physical gestures, verbal harassment and unruly inebriation)

Level 2: Physically abusive behaviour (includes pushing, kicking, hitting, grabbing or inappropriate touching or sexual harassment)

Level 3: Life-threatening behaviour (includes damage to aircraft operating systems, physical violence such as choking, eye gouging, murderous assault, and attempted or actual breach of the flight crew compartment)

Global regulations

On international routes too, regulations have become stricter to limit unruly behaviour in the air.

On January 1, the Montreal Protocol 2014, or MP14, came into force. The global treaty enables countries to prosecute unruly passengers.

The new protocol closes a legal hole in the earlier Tokyo Convention 1963, which was not very clear on the jurisdiction in which a trouble-making passengers could be legally tried.

Till now, the passenger albeit of where he or she is traveling to, could be tried only in the country where the aircraft was registered. But now with the MP14, the flier will have to face the courts in the country where the flight lands.
By its nature, the Golden Globes are the boozy little cousin to the more prestigious awards ceremonies like the SAG Awards and Oscars.

Guests are treated to endless magnums of Moet & Chandon champagne and a free bar, which usually makes for at least one clanger during speeches; but the red carpet is where the electricity is truly powered on. Stars, ranging from established A-listers to newbies clawing their way up the hierarchy one indie film at a time, clamour to compete for headlines, the results can either be inspiring or disastrous.

The overall theme for this year's ceremony was the celebration of individuality: there were no coordinated political campaigns, executed with precision on the red carpet as there was when the #MeToo movement was ignited in 2018, or the Je Suis Charlie placards in 2015. For 2020, it was just about trying your best; an admirable effort except when you remember the costly hair and makeup teams booked months in advance.

The goal of Golden Globes fashion is expression, you can experiment in ways you wouldn't dare dream at the Academy Awards lest you be reduced to the hallowed halls of style disasters like Bjork's swan dress of days yore.

Expand Close US-Irish actress Saoirse Ronan arrives for the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards on January 5, 2020, at The Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by VALERIE MACON / AFP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp US-Irish actress Saoirse Ronan arrives for the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards on January 5, 2020, at The Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by VALERIE MACON / AFP)

Irish superstar Saoirse Ronan - who lost to Renee Zellweger's performance of Judy Garland in the eponymous Judy, in the Lead Actress - Drama category - executed the type of effortless elegance we've come to expect from her. As one of Hollywood's brightest shining stars, she not only has the acting chops to bolster her CV as proven with her well-earned fourth nomination this year, but is holding on tightly to her title as one of the best dressed women in the world.

On Sunday night, she opted for a glittering slinky gown by Hedi Slimane, a grown-up departure from her usual style, showing plenty of skin and literally glittering thanks to thousands of hand-embroidered crystals. "We wanted to celebrate Saoirses femininity, while being powerful and a little bit sexy, her stylist Elizabeth Saltzman told British Vogue.

You dont think of Saoirse showing skin. This was all about showing skin."

Saltzman also worked with Gwyneth Paltrow, whose modus operandi was also about displaying skin in a tasteful - if not divisive - manner. In an elevated version of the 'naked dress', Paltrow opted for a western-boho hybrid with sheer sleeves, midriff and a seemingly endless array of ruffles by Fendi.

Scarlett Johansson, one of the most photographed contenders of the night for her nomination in Netflix's A Marriage Story, took the opportunity to showcase her natural beauty, but also put on a display of performative public affection with new fiance Colin Jost. Her strapless red gown with sweetheart neckline added just the right amount of drama, complemented by her sleek low bun and natural make-up.

Reese Witherspoon, who established herself as a production powerhouse this year and was celebrating nominations for both Big Little Lies and The Morning Show, arrived in a structured white Roland Mouret gown. "Wearing white to the biggest party of the year, wish me luck," she wrote on Instagram in a typically on-brand wholesome message.

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Jennifer Aniston stuck to her usual style of well-fitting black gowns for the occasion, while Kerry Washington added such a sexy twist to the concept in Altuzarra, she emerged as one of the best dressed on the night.

Jennifer Lopez, on the other hand, a woman famous for her contempt for the demure, ensured her dress earned headlines with or without a Best Supporting Actress win (she was nominated in Best Supporting Actress for her genuinely entertaining starring role in Hustlers). The Valentino gown featured oversized contrasting gold and green bows and while fiance Alex Rodriguez who described her as a "champion" after losing out on the statue, the fashion jury has returned with a guilty verdict for this attempt at runway-to-real-life high fashion.

Michelle Williams, who is pregnant and engaged to Thomas Kail, less than one year after her one-year marriage to Phil Elverum, knew all eyes would be on her last night after the news broke just days before. And she was dressed accordingly. Her orange asymmetric Louis Vuitton gown was given the perfect injection of colourful fun n the form of an electric blue 3D floral sleeve; an indication of her inspiring maternity style to follow during awards season.

Taylor Swift, holding her head high despite the universally panned Cats, chose to make a grand entrance in a polarising floral Etro Couture ball gown.

Meanwhile, it's finally become custom for men - young men, in particular - to unashamedly embrace fashion in genuinely exciting ways. Billy Porter, the official red carpet fashion god, arrived in a white suit with detachable feathered train by Alex Vinash, something he created in mind with practicality.

"Feathers are fragile; the skirt zips off, Billy told E! Live from the Carpet. It is a dinner and I do have to sit down  and this is not a sitting outfit, its a standing outfit.

Expand Close (L-R) Dylan Brosnan, Keely Shaye Smith, Pierce Brosnan and Paris Brosnan attend the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 05, 2020 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images) / Facebook

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Whatsapp (L-R) Dylan Brosnan, Keely Shaye Smith, Pierce Brosnan and Paris Brosnan attend the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 05, 2020 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images)

Ansel Elgort's crushed navy blue tuxedo was age and event appropriate and Lead Actor winner Taron Egerton's decision to wear sunglasses seemed less contrived and more of a James Dean-style throwback. Irish actor Pierce Brosnan, who attended with wife Keely Shaye Smith and sons Dylan and Paris, who were Golden Globe ambassadors, established early trending on Twitter for debuting his goatee, which one can only hope is for a role.

For all the must-see style, see our gallery below:
Ric Holden is MP for North West Durham

Peggottys Cafe, Wolsingham, County Durham

Just a just a couple of days before nominations closed, I got a call and was told that the previous Conservative candidate for North West Durham had withdrawn. After chatting with family and close friends, I decided to throw my hat in the ring.

I thought that the local Association might go for me  I grew up in a similar area (albeit on the wetter side of the Pennines) in a semi-rural former industrial village on the Lancashire/Yorkshire border; Id got experience having been a candidate before and had been heavily involved in campaigning since I was a teenager.

But, to be totally honest, looking at the previous results, it was difficult to believe that this key brick in the Red Wall could tumble.

North West Durham was created in 1950, and had returned Labour MPs comfortably its entire existence. Theresa May and Tim Farron (both good local campaigners) had both been trounced in 1992, and Labours majority had varied between a low of 15 per cent of the vote (with a 6,500 or so majority in 1983) and a high of 54 per cent (with a 25,000 or so majority in 1997.

Even with Jeremy Corbyn in place, Laura Pidcock held the seat very comfortably in 2017 with well over half the vote and an 18 per cent majority of almost 9,000 votes. To win by just one vote would require a swing of almost ten per cent.

To the campaign and the seat: my agent, David, and the Association Treasurer, Marian, met me at the Punch Bowl in Edmundbyers at 6pm on Wednesday, 13th November to fill in my nomination papers.

Ive since learnt that they had both been very disheartened before the meeting, having lost a candidate, and were worried about having a replacement at such short notice who wasnt super-local.

I didnt know at the time but do now that when they both got home that night and called each other to say how happy they were, after meeting me properly, with how things had panned out.

So how and why did a seat thatd never been Conservative go blue for the first time?

Big picture

I may be wrong, but I think that the former Labour MP who wrote that it was all Tony Blairs fault was wide of the mark.

As far as I saw, there were two factors the put us in the ballpark: Corbyn (and by extension Corbyns Labour Party) and his policy on Brexit.

It became patently obvious to me after chatting to people locally that they felt that theyd been taken for granted by Labour for a long time, but that this had been crystalised by its we know better attitude over Brexit  especially after being told by the party in 2017 that it would deliver on the referendum. This was re-enforced by the nature of Corbyns Labour.

The average person I met on the doorstep in North West Durham is moderate and sensible. They know you need good jobs and thriving businesses for the tax revenues for good public services. Theyre not Marxists obsessed with looking back to the Miners Strike. Theyre people who want to get on, work hard for their families but have also have a real sense of community, wand ho dont want to see those working hard at the bottom trapped without opportunity to succeed.

Labour just didnt understand. Portraying themselves as almost a pastiche of Old Labour in a bizarre attempt at cultural appropriation of a working class image fell flat. Local people got the same impression theyd have got if someone hung a Lowry on the wall of an Islington townhouse and then waxed lyrical about what a cultural icon Gracie Fields was to Northern millworkers. Labour handed us an opportunity to capitalise on.

The national campaign was tight and focussed. The concentration on delivering Brexit and on the domestic priorities of the British people was bang on. But I dont think wed quite have made it in North West Durham if it had been just this national picture alone.

Little picture

We started campaigning almost immediately. With hardly any data to go on, I blind canvassed different parts of the constituency to get a feel for the most prominent local issues (one of the worst things you can do as a candidate is to fail to recognise that your local association know their bit of the area well, but individually rarely understand the whole seat.)

After a couple of nights at a room in the local pub I rented a cottage in Weardale for the duration of the campaign, and purely by being around got myself involved in the local community  including attending a rather boozy night at the Wolsingham showground (thanks Mark!)

I threw myself into daily campaigning across the constituency with daily Facebook updates and tweets. Our tiny team grew steadily with the support of some of the more active Association members and people who got involved when they saw what we were doing. We went everywhere and spoke to as many people as we could. And people liked it. They liked seeing someone fighting. And they told their friends.

Labours reaction locally was unbelievable. I became convinced they had better data from generations of campaigning. Their slavish re-iteration of Labours national messaging was helpful. It was like campaigning against a cult rather than a political party.

When Labour did campaign, they turned people off. They had a mistaken belief in the strength of the personal brand of the sitting MP. On the doorstep theyd pretend to be more pro-Brexit or pro-Remain depending on how the person answered the question on the doorstep. Then people talked to their neighbours and found out they were again being treated as fools by the local Labour Party.

And the rest, as they say, is history. On the night we got a 10.5 per cent swing, turning an almost 9,000 Labour majority into a Conservative majority of 1,144.

This is the first of many of these fortnightly columns, and the only one to focus on what has happened, rather than the future. The future is clear, and along the lines of what the Prime Minister has already said. A lot of people lent us their votes this time in the hope of something new and different.

We need to build long-term trust to hold seats like North West Durham. We can win again but we must deliver. Better transport (better bus services, improved roads and, hopefully rail too), protecting and enhancing local services (Shotley Bridge Hospital, GP Services) and ensuring local police and schools have the resources they need are all vital.

What is key underpinning this is for those of us who have had the honour of being elected by these communities to fight remorselessly and with positivity for our communities. The people arent stupid as Labour would have you believe. They know that if you try you wont succeed every time ,but they want you to try  and for your ambition as their MP to match their ambition and aspirations for themselves, their families and communities.

By showing people locally that we get this, we stand a good chance not just of holding seats but of gaining more. If I were in the MP in Wansbeck, Hull East or Sunderland now, I would be rightly very concerned about the next election because its clear, from the Prime Minister down, Conservatives see 2019 as a new baseline, not a high water mark.
The Central Bureau of Investigation has launched a probe against 48 companies, three individuals who allegedly ran these companies and unknown officials of three public sector banks in a fraud by remitting 1,038.34 crore of black money to Hong Kong in 2014-15, two officials said on Monday.

Most of companies named by CBI in its FIR filed on January 3 are allegedly fictitious and showed outward foreign remittances on the pretext of import of goods and foreign travel by Indian tourists whereas there was no such business. The bank officials were paid bribes in cash for assisting in the fraud, alleges CBI.

The individuals - Mohammad Ibramsa Johny, Zinta Midhar, Nizamuddin, and 48 companies named by CBI in its FIR  all have their addresses in Chennai.

The CBI had received information that 51 current accounts of 48 firms were opened in four branches of Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and State Bank of Mysore (now SBI). These accounts were solely used for effecting outward remittances of 1,038.34 crore.

Out of these 51 accounts, 24 were used for outward foreign remittances in American dollars equivalent to over 488 crore towards the advance payment of import of goods. 27 accounts were used for outward foreign remittances in dollars equivalent to over 549 crore towards foreign travel by Indian tourists, the FIR states.

The CBI says the accused persons/companies submitted voter IDs, PAN cards, driving licences, certificate of registration of forms, certificate of import export code of 35 firms issued by Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) Chennai, rental agreements for the purpose of fulfilling the KYC norms in different combinations while sending advance remittances for import of goods.

It is also revealed that out of 24 fictitious firms, only 10 firms have made imports in small quantities. Further, it is also revealed that the goods imported and value of imports did not match with the details/invoices submitted by the firms to the banks concerned and that the value of such imports were very less compared to the value of invoices submitted by the firms at the time of remitting the funds for imports abroad, the CBI added.

Referring to the role of bank officials, the agency said that the accused persons involved in the entire fraud were paid commission on the basis of amount transferred and duration for which the bank accounts remained active and the concerned bank officials were also bribed in cash.

It is apparent that the bank officials were having dominion/control with regard to foreign exchange and they had to follow the mandate issued by the Reserve Bank of India with utmost sincerity and due care. Most of the remittances were remitted during the second half of 2015 and it is seen that the annual turnover of the firms were shown in lakhs, whereas the amounts remitted were in crores which were fraudulently and dishonestly facilitated by the bank officials, the FIR states.
LONDON  Adreena Winters recently visited NYC for a modeling assignment and got her fill of the Big Apples bars, restaurants, and well-hung black guys. See all the best parts of her trip by checking out her new title Adreena Winters NYC Vacation, and find out why she left the city that never sleeps with a huge smile.

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I love everything about New York, and now I have some great memories of all my hookups. Of course, I had to share them with my fans, and I know theyre going to love it, says Winters. I hope all my fans will pay for their porn and purchase Adreena Winters NYC Vacation on Adult Empire or HotMovies. More funding I get for my projects means more vacays my fans can come along on in the future!

Buy Adreena Winters NYC Vacation a la carte or check it out on VOD by steaming it on Adult Empire. Her scene is also available on HotMovies to stream, rent, or own.
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French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged immediate operational assistance to Australia to help fight raging bushfires, protect the population and preserve the country's unique biodiversity.

Macron called Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison to offer France's solidarity as Australians continue to battle wildfires that have devastated entire regions of the country for several months.

At least 24 people have died, 1,500 homes destroyed and over 5.2 million hectares of land burnt since the fires began in September 2019.

Morrison said that the fires might burn for many more months. He announced the Commonwealth is committing an additional 2 billion US dollars over the next two years to support the bushfire crisis recovery effort across the nation.

The prime minister said the money  part of a new National Bushfire Recovery Fund  will be administered by the governments new bushfire recovery agency headed by former Australian Federal Police commissioner Andrew Colvin.

At the Golden Globes ceremony in Los Angeles, the Australian bushfire took centre stage with actors drawing attention to the ongoing crisis.

Australian actor Russell Crowe who won a Globe for his role in The Loudest Voice did not attend the ceremony as he was home "protecting his family from the bushfires".

In his message to his peers in LA, he wrote: "Make no mistake, the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate-change based."

From Ellen DeGeneres to Pierce Brosnan and Australian actress Cate Blanchett, a number of big Hollywood names expressed sorrow and solidarity for Australia.
As technology dramatically transforms the nature of work and the digital skills required of the global workforce, ServiceNow invites applicants from around the globe and across sectors to pitch innovative ideas that will support underserved populations. In partnership with MIT Solve , a marketplace for social impact innovation, ServiceNow's Digital Workforce Challenge is calling for tech-enabled innovations that help solve the growing skills and job vacancies gap.

The Digital Workforce Challenge has enormous potential to address the difficulties that today's workforce and the workforce of the future will face. While technology is changing the very nature of work, 45 percent of employers surveyed report struggling to fill roles due to lack of skills. At the same time, some 30 to 45 percent of the working-age population around the world is underutilized.

"Technological transformation creates both hurdles and opportunities for the workforce," said Kathy Mulvany, Head of Global Impact at ServiceNow. "We believe that technology should be in the service of people. ServiceNow is partnering with MIT Solve to accelerate and expand the opportunities afforded by technology so that everyone  including those left behind and most marginalized  can fully participate, engage in higher-value work, and create prosperous livelihoods for themselves."

Entries are now open and will close on March 2, 2020. Finalists will be selected on April 2, 2020 and will have a slot reserved for them to pitch their ideas at the Knowledge 2020 conference hosted by ServiceNow in Orlando, Florida from May 3-7, 2020. The winning team will receive US$100,000 as well as skills-based mentorship and media opportunities from ServiceNow.

Knowledge 2020 is where extraordinary people come together to take work to the next level by delivering modern digital workflows that unlock productivity and transform the world of work. It is a one-of-a-kind event where people from around the world gather to get inspired, educated and connected by ServiceNow experts and their peers from every industry.

"As technology changes the nature of many jobs and entire industries, now is the time to ensure that the people who are most vulnerable to these changes are well equipped to thrive in the 21st century," said Matthew Minor, Director, International Programs at MIT Solve. "After launching several Solve Global Challenges around skills development and economic inclusion, MIT Solve seeks to expand its impact through new partnerships. As a leader in workplace productivity, ServiceNow is an ideal partner to help solve this problem."

Teams with a solution are invited to apply through MIT Solve's open innovation platform, on the Digital Workforce Challenge website . The competition is open to solutions that are 1) Currently deployed in one or more of ServiceNow's primary markets: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, and Japan, and/or 2) Operating and showing promise in another geography, and ready to be deployed in one or more of ServiceNow's primary markets.

MIT Solve is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that advances lasting solutions from tech entrepreneurs to address the world's most pressing problems. Solve issues four Global Challenges each year to find the most promising Solver teams who will drive transformational change. Solve then deploys its global community of private, public, and nonprofit leaders to form the partnerships these Solver teams need to scale their impact. Join the community at solve.mit.edu .

Contact: Andrea Snyder, Communications and Marketing Director, MIT Solve, [email protected]

SOURCE MIT Solve
Iran will welcome any Indian peace initiative for de-escalating its tensions with US

Massive crowds on the streets of Tehran for the funeral of Qasem Soleimani

International

oi-PTI

Tehran, Jan 06: Weeping amid wails from a crowd of hundreds of thousands of mourners, Iran's supreme leader on Monday prayed over the remains of a top Iranian general killed in a US airstrike in Baghdad, an attack that's drastically raised tensions between Tehran and Washington.

The assault killing Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani already has seen his replacement vow to take revenge as Tehran has abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in response to the slaying.

Separately, Iraq's parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil. The three developments could bring Iran closer to building an atomic bomb, set off a proxy or military attack launched by Tehran against America and enable the Islamic State group to stage a comeback in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.

NEWS AT 3 PM, JANUARY 6th, 2020...

Adding to the tensions, President Donald Trump threatened to demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iraq or impose "sanctions like they've never seen before" if it goes through with expelling U.S. troops.

Soleimani killed: US-Iran tensions to soar and the impact on India

Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened an attack on the U.S. military in the Mideast while speaking to a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Tehran that stretched as far as the eye could see.

"The families of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East will spend their days waiting for death of their children," she said to cheers.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself prayed over the caskets of Soleimani and others slain in the attack. Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani, Khamenei wept at one point during the traditional Muslim prayers for the dead.

The crowd and others wailed. Ghaani stood near Khamenei's side, as did Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other top leaders in the Islamic Republic. While Iran recently faced nationwide protests over government-set gasoline prices that reportedly killed over 300 people, Soleimani's mass processionals has seen politicians and leaders across the Islamic Republic's political spectrum take part, temporarily silencing that anger.

Ghaani meanwhile made his threat in an interview with Iranian state television aired Monday. "God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken," he said.

Massive crowds on the streets of Iranian capital Tehran for the funeral of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in an US airstrike on January 3. pic.twitter.com/ATEO5xgHqA  ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

Ghaani now serves as the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force, an expeditionary arm of the paramilitary organization answerable only to Khamenei. As Soleimani's longtime deputy, Ghaani has been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2012 for his work funding its operations around the world, including its work with proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Saudi Arabia 'not consulted' over US drone strike to kill Iran general Qasem Soleimani

Those proxies likely will be involved in any operation targeting U.S. interests in the Mideast or elsewhere in the world. Already, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans "of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks."

In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimani's killing made U.S. military bases, warships and service members across the region fair game for attacks.

A former Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader suggested the Israeli city of Haifa and others could be targeted should the U.S. attack Iran.

"We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region," Ghaani said.

On the nuclear deal, Iranian state television cited Sunday a statement by President Hassan Rouhani's administration saying the country would not observe the nuclear deal's restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran no longer faces any limitations in operations," a state TV broadcaster said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson specifically urged Iran to "withdraw all measures" not in line with the 2015 agreement that was intended to stop Tehran from pursuing its atomic weapons program.

Iran insisted that it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldn't seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions. It further raises regional tensions, as Iran's longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

Soleimani contributed to an attack in Delhi says Trump: Is he referring to the one in 2012

Iran did not elaborate on what levels it would immediately reach in its program.Tehran has already broken some of the deal's limits as part of a step-by-step pressure campaign to get sanctions relief.

It already has increased its production, begun enriching uranium to 5% and restarted enrichment at an underground facility. While it does not possess uranium enriched to weapons-grade levels of 90%, any push forward narrows the estimated one-year "breakout time" needed for it to have enough material to build a nuclear weapon if it chose to do so.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations watchdog observing Iran's program, did not respond to a request for comment. However, Iran said that its cooperation with the IAEA "will continue as before."

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi earlier told journalists that Soleimani's killing would prompt Iranian officials to take a bigger step away from the nuclear deal.

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Story first published: Monday, January 6, 2020, 13:33 [IST]
Opening Night, one of the headline shows of the Sydney Festival and starring legendary French actress Isabelle Adjani, has been cancelled because producers are concerned about the air quality in Sydney from the bushfires and how it might affect the cast.

Festival director Wesley Enoch said he was extremely disappointed at the last-minute decision, which will leave a sizeable hole in the festival schedule.

Isabelle Adjani won't be coming to Sydney because of bushfire fears. Credit: Julien Hekimian/Getty Images

We have been in constant communication with all international and Australian-based companies in relation to any concerns arising from the current fire situation in NSW and we have been buoyed by their responses.

Overwhelmingly, individual artists and companies  both local and from overseas  have responded by asking how they can help or what they can do to support relief efforts once they are on the ground in Sydney for the festival.
A long-awaited plan to build addition south of Penn Station New York, adding more tracks and platforms, will form a mega-station complex in mid-Manhattan, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday.

Cuomo, speaking at the Association for a Better New York event in Manhattan, announced the sweeping plan to change Penn Stations reputation from one of Dantes levels of hell under his Empire Station District plan. It builds on opening a new train hall at the Moynihan Station across the street, which will accommodate Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road passengers.

"No little fix works. We analyzed it and the best alternative is to acquire the block south of Penn Station and add eight tracks, Cuomo said. Penn cant even handle our planned growth. It would address that.

Penn Station now has 21 tracks that are used by Amtrak, NJ Transit and the Long Island Rail Road. Of those, four tracks are dead end and are of limited use. Cuomo said about 200 million people go through Penn Station annually, more than all three metro area airports combined.

The problem with Penn Station is track capacity, Cuomo said. Even if you build the Taj Mahal and drop it on Penn Station, you still dont have the tracks.

This plan bypasses the stalled Gateway Project, which would build two new train tunnels between New Jersey and New York, and included a future Penn Station South with additional tracks.

A lack of tracks and platform space at Penn Station has blocked NJ Transit from adding direct New York rush hour service on the Raritan Valley and Bergen County lines that now terminate in Hoboken. Commuters also complain of dangerous rush hour overcrowding on platforms at Penn.

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Regional Plan Association applauds Governor Cuomos announcement today to expand the tracks and platforms at Penn Station by extending it to the south, said Tom Wright, RPA president and CEO. Overhauling and unifying the Penn Station complex was a key recommendation in our Fourth Regional Plan and todays announcement is a great step for the future prosperity of the entire metropolitan region.

This plan builds on earlier plans Cuomo announced in 2016 to convert Penn into Empire Station by adding majestic street entrances that were lost when the original Penn Station was demolished in the mid 1960s. Those plans were criticized for not solving Penn Station problems at track level.

This Penn Station expansion would be overseen by the Empire State Development Corporation, which has hired FX Collaborative, a planning consultant. It will add 125,000 square feet and create multiple access points to Penn to make sure people can get in and out quickly.

Empire State Development will work with Amtrak and the MTA and stakeholders, Cuomo said. "It will work with NJ Transit and community boards to develop a plan.

Cuomos announcement was light on cost details or how it would be financed, except to say New York officials will not wait for federal funding. It will require acquiring private- and publicly-owned real estate to create Penn Station south.

The project builds on current work to move Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road operations to the renovated Moynihan train hall, which Cuomo said is scheduled to open in December. The existing Long Island Rail Road concourse in Penn Station is being expanded and a new entrance added from 7th Avenue, which is under construction.

Under the Gateway Project, 35 properties would have to be acquired between West 30th and 31st streets along 7th and 8th avenues for its proposed Penn Station annex south of the existing station. The assessed value of that land was $404 million in 2014, based on NYC tax assessment records.

Amtrak and the Catholic Church are among the property owners, in addition to a 28 story hotel. State officials are in negotiation with property owners and plans call for replacing it with a new transit-oriented development, Cuomo said.

Redevelopment earnings and tax agreements for commercial development could help finance the project, he said. Costs and a schedule still have to be determined, which could be estimated after the project is designed and negotiations are held with stakeholders, said officials in the governors office, speaking on background.

We do this, knowing this is a project we will do on our own. I wont wait for the federal government to decide it wants to help New York or fund the Gateway Project, Cuomo said. Well keep fighting for it (Gateway) butwe have to make our own future.

The governor rattled off a list of major infrastructure projects being built around the world that are making other nations more competitive, including the worlds largest airport in China, and expansion of the Paris Metro. Doing nothing is not an alternative, he said.

Look at what theyre building around the world. If you do nothing, they will pass you by and thats not who we are, Cuomo said. Yes, there will be naysayers and the project wont be perfect. I get it. We looked at the world and said we will be better.

Amtrak officials praised the plan and pledged support

This forward-thinking plan should serve as a model to the nation as we strive to build 21st century transportation and infrastructure systems, said Tony Coscia, Amtrak board chairman, in a statement.

Amtrak looks forward to partnering with Governor Cuomo and New York State, along with the MTA, NJ Transit and the other stakeholders on this project.

Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @commutinglarry. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips.

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Press Trust of India

Eminent scientist Professor Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao on Saturday lamented that science was not getting importance the way it should.

"In media business, banking, money, information technology everything gets prominence but very rarely it mentions about science. Science does not get the importance even in the government," he said at the Children's Science Congress on the second day of the 107th Indian Science Congress here.

Rao, a Bharat Ratna awardee, reminded the audience there is no future of the country without science.

"Unless India becomes great power in science, I cannot see how it can become a great power in the world," said Rao.

The eminent scientist hailed China for doing lot of research in the field of science and publishing as many numbers of papers as the United States of America.

Rao appealed to the children to take up science and pursue it seriously.

He cited examples of many eminent scientists who did not have a bachelor's degree such as Srinivasa Ramanujan but had achieved big in their lives with meagre resources.

"Science does not look at caste, religion and colour.

All it requires is a good human mind, he added.
A mysterious respiratory illness gripping a central Chinese city has put countries in southeast Asia on high alert after it was feared to have spread to Singapore.

Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand have begun screening all passengers arriving from the city of Wuhan, where dozens of people have been infected.

In Singapore, a three-year-old girl with pneumonia was warded and isolated as a precautionary measure, after she had travelled there from Wuhan.

But on Saturday, the Ministry of Health said tests confirmed her pneumonia was not linked to the virus outbreak, reported local news site Today Online.

Epidemiological investigations, clinical assessment and laboratory results  showed the case is not linked to the pneumonia cluster in Wuhan, said the ministry.

Mysterious mist engulfs Chinese city of Wuhan Show all 3 1 /3 Mysterious mist engulfs Chinese city of Wuhan Mysterious mist engulfs Chinese city of Wuhan 1.jpg Getty Mysterious mist engulfs Chinese city of Wuhan Untitled-1.jpg Getty Mysterious mist engulfs Chinese city of Wuhan Untitled-2.jpg Getty

Health authorities in Malaysia have set up testing facilities in airports to single out any passengers with abnormal temperatures.

We will monitor the international entry points to ensure that arrivals from Wuhan go through temperature screening, and if [a] temperature is detected, a second examination will be carried out at the quarantine centre.

Recommended Hong Kong issues emergency response as mystery China disease spreads

Those suspected of being infected by the illness would be referred to the nearest medical facility, said the Malaysian Health Ministrys Disease Control Division.

In Thailand, public health minister Anutin Charnvirakul urged the general public to stay calm and said airports serving daily flights from Wuhan have also had temperature screening devices installed.

According to the Bangkok Post, Mr Charnvirakul said health officials have dealt with communicable diseases including bird flu and SARS before.

He said: We have things under control. Theres no problem here.

Hong Kong authorities have activated a newly created serious response level in response to the outbreak.

The Hospital Authority there said on Sunday there were 15 patients being treated for symptoms after recent visits to Wuhan.

As of Sunday, 59 people were diagnosed with the mystery illness, which has been dubbed Wuhan pneumonia, and have been isolated while they receive treatment.

The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said seven of those diagnosed were in critical condition.

Initial investigations ruled out SARS as well as Middle East respiratory syndrome, influenza, bird flu and adenovirus.

As of now, preliminary investigations have shown no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission and no medical staff infections, said the commission.

The spread of the illness in the city echoes the 2002-03 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic that killed more than 700 people in mainland China, Hong Kong and elsewhere.

Several patients were working at the South China Seafood City food market in Wuhan, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) said could indicate an exposure link to animals.

The WHO said it is closely monitoring the situation and maintaining contact with Chinese authorities, but have not advised any travel or trade restrictions at this time.
With its deluxe suites, A-list patients and world-class art collection that includes works by Picasso and Chagall, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's nickname is "hospital to the stars." But starting this year, it is making a change for its poorest patients.

Effective Jan. 1, the Los Angeles hospital loosened the income cap for patients to qualify for free or discounted care.

Previously, the nonprofit hospital's financial assistance policy allowed patients with household incomes up to 200% of the federal poverty level to qualify for free care, which amounts to $24,980 for an individual or $51,500 for a family of four, based on 2019 figures.

Cedars-Sinai has spent a much smaller percentage of its operating expenses on charity care: 0.19% in 2018 compared with an average of 0.9% by other California nonprofit hospitals, data from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development shows.

The hospital is now making its charity care policy the most generous of the state's 10 largest nonprofit hospitals, ranked by net patient revenue from the 2017-18 fiscal year, according to a California Healthline analysis. It will expand eligibility for free medical care to patients with household incomes up to 400% of the federal poverty level: $49,960 for an individual and $103,000 for a family of four. It will also expand access to discounted care to those with incomes up to 600% of the federal poverty level.

The hospital said it is making the change because it is treating more patients who are "underinsured" because they have health insurance plans with high deductibles, copayments or other out-of-pocket costs.

"More of our patients are having financial difficulties, so we want to help them," Cedars-Sinai said in an emailed statement. It declined to attribute its response to a specific person.

The hospital defended its low charity care percentages, saying the figures don't account for its other charitable grants and programs, or the large number of low-income patients it serves who have publicly funded health coverage. It pointed out that it spent 16.5% of its total expenses in fiscal year 2018 on such programs and expenses.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is the third-largest nonprofit hospital in California, after Stanford Hospital and the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center. It had $3.15 billion in operating expenses in 2018, according to state data.

Nonprofit hospitals are exempt from paying local, state and federal taxes in exchange for providing community benefits, which can include free and discounted charity care, as well as programs like grants for homeless services and free community clinics.

The federal government does not specify an amount of charity care that nonprofit hospitals must provide, which means that policies vary from hospital to hospital, as does the amount of free care they ultimately give.

For instance, of the 10 largest nonprofit hospitals in the state, the University of California-San Diego Medical Center provided the highest share of charity care in 2018  5.2% of operating expenses  which is more than five times the state average for nonprofit hospitals, according to state data. However, it also has relatively low income levels for qualifying: 200% of the federal poverty level for free care and 400% for discounted care.

Kaiser Permanente, which operates 36 hospitals in California, has not been required to report facility-level financial data to the state, so its hospitals were not part of the analysis. Kaiser Permanente allows patients with income up to 350% of the federal poverty level to apply for financial aid. (Kaiser Health News, which produces California Healthline, is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)

Hospitals must post their financial assistance policies online, and inform patients how to apply by posting notices and providing written notice to uninsured patients when they are admitted and billed. But not all hospitals do this, and some actively discourage people seeking financial assistance.

Federal poverty levels aren't the only criteria hospitals consider when granting financial aid. Applications for free care are evaluated case by case, according to many of the hospitals' policies. Whether a patient qualifies can depend on other factors such as family assets, medical debt and even where the patient lives.

Charity care rates are down statewide among all California hospitals.

Jan Emerson-Shea, spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association, said the demand for charity care is decreasing because more people are getting insurance. At the same time, the amount hospitals spend to care for the growing number of patients with public insurance has increased, she said.

Even though hospitals are absorbing those costs, they're not counted as charity care, she added.

Under the Affordable Care Act, some states, including California, expanded Medicaid eligibility to more low-income people. Nearly 13 million Californians, or 1 in 3, are enrolled in California's Medicaid program, which is called Medi-Cal.

"The reimbursement we receive from the government to care for a Medi-Cal or Medicare patient is far less than the actual cost of caring for the patient," Cedars-Sinai said in its statement.

Gerard Anderson, a health policy and management professor at Johns Hopkins University, praised Cedars-Sinai's decision to increase the income threshold for charity care as an example of how hospitals can adjust to the changing needs of the community.

"Because there are fewer people that don't have health insurance coverage, you have to raise the threshold in order to get the same number of people to qualify," he said.

This KHN story first published on California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.
Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu is no longer the firm's official legal representative, public registration documents show.

According to enterprise information database Tianyancha, Wu ceased being Bitmain's legal representative on January 2. Luyao Liu, Bitmain's chief financial officer since 2018, replaced him as the companys general manager and legal representative.

[caption id="attachment_52013" align="alignnone" width="800"]

Source: Tianyancha[/caption]

Wu returned to Bitmain in October, triggering the start of a battle for control of the company that ultimately spilled into public view and resulted in the ouster of co-founder Micree Zhan. CoinDesk reported at the time that Zhan was previously listed as Bitmain's legal representative in public registration records.

Layoffs and a reshuffling of the company's existing workforce followed Wu's return.

That conflict entered a new phase last month when, as reported by Bloomberg, Zhan filed a lawsuit against Bitmain, in which he asked a court in the Cayman Islands to invalidate the shareholder decision that resulted in his ouster. He had previously threatened legal action against Bitmain, and he is now seeking to use the courts to try and regain control of the bitcoin mining giant.

A recent report from CoinShares found that Bitmain's market share slid in recent months even as China's bitcoin miner ecosystem remained a dominant force.

At the same time, Bitmain is pursuing business in South America, particularly in Brazil.
Sen. Peter Harder, the outgoing government representative in the upper house, says the Don Meredith sex scandal proved that the Senate's ethics code needs a rewrite.

At issue is just how long it took Senate Ethics Officer (SEO) Pierre Legault to complete his review of serious allegations that rocked the Red Chamber in the last Parliament  that Meredith harassed or sexually harassed half a dozen Senate staffers and a parliamentary constable.

Legault and his predecessor, Lyse Ricard, spent almost four years probing the claims and ruled in June 2019 that Meredith had engaged in behaviour that constituted harassment. The alleged behaviour included unwanted kissing and exposing his penis, along with yelling and aggressive behaviour in the office.

"In the case of former Sen. Meredith, it was a low point," Harder said.

"I'm proud the Senate had an appropriate mechanism to investigate but I'm not proud of the behaviour. All senators felt some degree of distaste for having to go through this."

Harder said he had hoped the ethics officer, an independent officer of Parliament, would be able to complete the work faster.

"I think we're all uncomfortable with the time frame," Harder said of the four-year investigation.

Meredith resigned in 2017, just as the Senate was poised to expel him over another matter  his inappropriate sexual relationship with a teenage girl.

Two of Meredith's victims spoke to CBC News about their experiences; we've agreed not to name them. They described a callous Senate administration that did little to protect them from an alleged predator.

As for financial compensation for Meredith's victims, Harder said he's "open to it" but it's a decision best left to the Senate's internal economy, budgets and administration committee.

Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press

Along with a lengthy ethics review that left victims in the lurch, the staffers said they were offered little in the way of assistance from a human resources department they said is set up to shield senators from scandal  not to protect the people who work for them.

Story continues

The ethics probe on workplace harassment was started only after a former Senate Speaker, Pierre Claude Nolin, commissioned an outside investigator to review the high staff turnover in Meredith's office. The outside auditor found irregularities in Meredith's treatment of staff. The Senate ethics officer did not proactively pursue any probe until that outside review was complete.

"It's very frustrating for those victims who experienced inappropriate actions," Harder said of the delays. "I think the Senate is well seized of the need for a more expeditious process that still respects due process."

Legault also has been investigating Conservative Sen. Victor Oh  and a trip he took to China  for more than two years. Oh did not disclose the trip as either sponsored travel or a gift, as required by the ethics rules.

SEO's office won't say how often he works

The slow-moving SEO has been a target of criticism in recent months.

In 2018, for example, Legault didn't file a single inquiry report  but his office still cost taxpayers $1.2 million in expenses.

A spokesperson for the SEO has refused to say how many days Legault worked last year, saying that information is "personal" and therefore protected by the Privacy Act. Legault collects between $795 and $930 in pay for each day of work.

Independent Sen. Frances Lankin has expressed frustration with the investigation timelines.

"I am concerned," Lankin told CBC News. "I understand there are reasons. Whether those are good reasons or not, they are what they are. I hope that the ethics committee will revamp the code.

"Is it a limitation of resources? Is it because it's a part-time appointment? I hope the committee will resolve some of these things."

The standing committee on ethics and conflict of interest, which is responsible for all matters relating to the ethics code, has proposed some changes to speed up the SEO process.

The committee tabled a report in the summer but it died on the order paper when the last election was called.

To address the concerns about investigation timelines, the committee is proposing to amend the code to give itself more power to ask the SEO about the status of investigations.

The SEO would be empowered to tell the committee when a senator is believed to be deliberately delaying an investigation. The committee also is proposing to develop "obligations for senators to respond promptly to requests from the SEO," even when the Senate isn't sitting.

The larger Senate will have to decide if the committee's proposals go far enough in addressing the delays.

Colin Perkel/Canadian Press

'Justice delayed is justice denied'

Progressive Sen. Serge Joyal, the chair of the ethics committee, said the length of the Meredith inquiry was unacceptable.

"Of course it's too long or anyone who feels aggrieved by the conduct of [former] Sen. Meredith," Joyal said in an interview. "Justice delayed is justice denied. The people who have been aggrieved should expect that due process will take place in a reasonable period of time.

"But when you try to deconstruct those four years and try to identify at which point there was blockage or there was undue delay, you cannot put the blame on the SEO and say, 'Oh he takes too much time, it was too lengthy.'"

He said senators themselves, along with their legal counsel, can be uncooperative, which can drag out the inquiry process.

Claims of parliamentary privilege by the internal economy committee blocked the release of an existing report on the Meredith matter that would have shortened the SEO inquiry, Joyal said.

But Joyal conceded that even the most complex criminal cases rarely drag on for more than four years.

In his most recent annual report on his activities, the ethics officer acknowledged the criticisms lobbed at his office.

"Over the past fiscal year, concerns have been expressed regarding the length of time required to complete inquiries. There is no doubt that inquiries should be conducted in as short a time as possible," he said.

"An inquiry is a complex, impartial and objective process that is meant to balance the rights and privileges of the Senate to discipline its own members and the right of individual senators to a fair process ... This office does not have the capacity to undertake multiple complex inquiries simultaneously."

While he has been gone for more than two years, Meredith is still on the minds of some senators.

Joyal has said there's little the Senate can do now to sanction a former member. Joyal has proposed stripping Meredith of his "honourable" title.

Under the table of titles used in Canada, senators are to be styled "honourable" for life  even after they resign or retire from the upper house.

Harder said he "absolutely" agrees with Joyal's suggestion.
Kolkata, Jan 7 : Kolkata and various districts of West Bengal on Monday erupted in protests against the attack on students and professors at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi, as students hit the streets in large numbers blockading roads and railway tracks and shouting slogans railing against right-wing Hindutva forces like ABVP, BJP and the RSS.

Holding aloft banners and posters condemning the "fascist attack" at JNU, the CPI-M affiliated Students Federation of India (SFI) led a rally from Presidency University and lit fires and burnt an effigy of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) at the College Street crossing as a mark of protest.

Congress' student wing Chhattra Parishad too protested outside the College Street campus of Calcutta University.

A group of protesting students tried to reach the BJP state headquarters at Muralidhar Sen Lane but were stopped by the police at the nearby P.C. Sarkar Street. The angry students scuffled with the police and accused the Mamata Banerjee-led government of being "hand in glove" with the BJP.

The All India Democratic Students Organisation (AIDSO) brought out a condemnation rally from near the Presidency University and staged a demonstration by obstructing the College Street-M.G. Road Crossing.

"We are observing this day as protest day across the nation. The goons have carried out dastardly attack on fellow students. We cannot but protest," said an AIDSO leader.

Jadavpur University (JU), known for its volatile student politics, was another centre of protests. Through the day, students brought out processions and rallies on the campus and its neighbouring areas.

In the afternoon, hundreds of JU students from the Arts faculty led by the SFI took out a colourful protest march from the campus. With songs and slogans of "Hum Chin ke lenge Azaadi" and "Hallabol Hallabol" on their lips, they went round the campus beating the daffli and clapping in rhythm. A JNU student, who was in the city on leave, also joined the march.

"My friends in JNU are in panic. Also, they are seething in rage after the dastardly attack. I couldn't sit at home and joined the protest here," she said.

Later, students from all streams rallied together, raising incessant slogans and moving around the campus with a banner "tomar buke Nathuram, Amar buke Khudiram" (In your heart is Nathuram, in my heart is Khudiram) in the vanguard. Music director Debojyoti Mishra and filmmaker Aneek Dutta joined the students.

"My age is not the same as yours. But the JNU violence has ignited a fire in me. I believe hitting the streets today won't be in vain. I have come here as a student. You go ahead with your struggle," said an emotional Mishra.

Dutta said: "I won't ask you to jump into the protests with sticks and spears. Because then they will seize on the opportunity. But continue a structured movement. We will be with you." Jadavpur University Teachers Association also took out a procession on the campus condemning the JNU violence.

In West Burdwan district's Durgapur, the SFI blockaded rail tracks for some time.
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday lambasted the Akalis for their alleged "shameless politicisation" of the recent attacks on Sikhs and their religious institutions in Pakistan.

The chief minister, in a statement here, came down heavily on the Akalis, particularly Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal's alleged "abominable" bid to "shamelessly politicise" the killing of a Sikh youth and the attack on Gurdwara Nankana Sahib in Pakistan "to carry out her political battle against the Congress".

He was referring to Harsimrat's tweets in which she had sought to promote the Citizenship Amendment Act in the context of the persecution of minorities in Pakistan, and has attacked him (Amarinder Singh) and the Congress leadership over their criticism of the CAA.

"This is the height of ignorance and stupidity," the chief minister said, reacting to Harsimrat's tweets.

"The CAA, coupled with the National Register for Citizens (NCR), is the kind of tool with which minorities in India will be persecuted even more than those in Pakistan are," he said, adding that it was apparent that the Union minister had no clue about the implications of CAA or the "damage" it will cause to India's secular character, particularly in conjunction with the NRC.

Amarinder Singh said the brazen attacks on minorities, including Sikhs, in Pakistan were so appalling as to be indefensible. "As if these attacks were not shocking enough, Harsimrat and the rest of the Akali leadership had stooped to a shocking low by using them to defend the CAA and target the Congress party," he added.

The chief minister also lashed out at the "double-speak" of the Shiromani Akali Dal on the issue of CAA/NRC, pointing out that just a few days ago, Akali chief Sukhbir Singh Badal had asked for minorities to be included in the purview of the CAA.

"Don't they have any clear stand on the issue?" he asked, adding that these kinds of conflicting statements expos the double standards of the Akalis on this grave issue of national importance.

Making it clear that neither he nor the Congress were against granting citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, etc. being persecuted in other countries, the chief minister reiterated his stand against isolation of Muslims and other religions from the CAA cover.

"There should be no discrimination on religious grounds," he said, adding that nor just Sikhs but other minorities facing persecution elsewhere should be welcomed.

"The SAD was clearly playing to the gallery, and hoping to leverage the Pakistani Sikhs issue, to promote their political interests, as was evident from their representation to the external affairs minister on Monday," the chief minister said.

Considering that SAD is part of the NDA government at the Centre, it would be more apt for it to put pressure on its alliance partner, the BJP, to be more proactive in handling the situation arising out of the anti-Sikh attacks in Pakistan, Amarinder Singh stressed.

"It would be more in order for the SAD and its alliance partners at the Centre to take steps to ensure the safety and security of the minorities within India," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Reasonable people will debate the likeliest ramifications of President Donald Trumps decision to order the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Revolutionary Guard commander whose power in Iran was second only to that of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei  and whose power in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq was arguably second to none.

What shouldnt be in doubt is the justice.

By far the best account of Soleimanis life was written by Dexter Filkins for The New Yorker in 2013. Its worth reprising some of the details.

In 1998, Soleimani assumed command of the Quds Force  the guards extraterritorial terrorist wing  whose prior exploits included a role in the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that killed 85 people.

In 2003, Filkins wrote, Americans received intelligence that al-Qaida fighters in Iran, operating with Tehrans protection and consent, were preparing an attack on Western targets in Saudi Arabia. Despite U.S. warnings to Iran, terrorists bombed three residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 35 people, including 9 Americans.

In 2004, Soleimani began flooding Iraq with lethal roadside bombs known as explosively formed projectiles, which, according to retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, killed hundreds of Americans.

In 2005, the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, and 21 others were killed in a massive car bombing in Beirut carried out by Hezbollah. There were Iranians on the phones directing the attack, one former CIA official told Filkins. If indeed Iran was involved, Soleimani was undoubtedly at the center of this.

In 2006, Hezbollah operatives abducted and killed Israeli soldiers in an operation that, according to Filkins, was carried out with Soleimanis help. It sparked a monthlong war in which thousands of people were killed.

Theres a great deal more of this. And that was just the preamble to his central role in rescuing Syrias Bashar Assad and sustaining Yemens Houthi militia in power, goals pursued through policies of unrestricted brutality. As an agent of international mayhem, Soleimanis peers were Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He was an evil man who died as he had killed so many others.

The proximate reason for Soleimanis killing, according to a Defense Department statement, is that he was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region. If so  and it hardly stretches credulity that he was  the strike was an act of pre-emption. No U.S. president, of any party, should ever convey to an enemy the impression it can plot attacks against Americans with impunity. To do otherwise is to invite worse.

Trumps problem is that, until Thursday, thats what he had done. For almost a year, an escalating series of Iranian attacks on U.S. and allied assets were met by a conspicuous failure to respond militarily. Trump also kept signaling his desire to withdraw U.S. forces from the region.

The result was to embolden the Iranians to hit harder. Instead of a calibrated cycle of escalation matched to a tacit sense of limits, the Iranians reached until they overreached. On Wednesday, Khamenei taunted Trump with the message that there is no damn thing you can do. The supreme leader is now a publicly humiliated man. That is enormously satisfying  and immensely dangerous.

One possible outcome is that a spooked Iranian leadership, already reeling from devastating sanctions and mass demonstrations, will prefer to tread lightly, at least for the time being. For 40 years, the regime has succeeded abroad because its been willing to play dirty games against generally feckless opponents. It may now take its time to reassess that view.

The alternative? Iran could mount a global campaign of terrorist strikes, deploying foreign proxies like Hezbollah for political deniability. It could try to take hostages at the American Embassy in Baghdad, much as it did at the embassy in Tehran in 1979. It could use its influence in Iraq to demand the expulsion of U.S. troops. And it could accelerate its nuclear program, forcing Trump into a major military confrontation he has been eager to avoid, especially in an election year.

The next days will be decisive. The best course for the United States is to spell out clearly to Iran what the paths of escalation  and de-escalation  hold. On the de-escalatory side, a return to the status quo ante and a willingness to explore negotiations over the full range of Irans malign activities, including its regional aggression and expanding nuclear program, in exchange for the easing of oil and other economic sanctions. On the escalatory side, a policy of deliberately disproportionate retaliation to any Iranian aggression, no matter whether its carried out by Iran or its proxies, and no matter whether it aims at us or our allies.

The clearer we are in limning the courses of hope and fear, the likelier we are to achieve a stable balance between them.
In all, Ireland plans to issue between 10bn-14bn worth of bonds in 2020, less than in recent years, with at least one syndicated deal projected (stock photo)

The Government may tap bond markets as early as this week, continuing a pattern of being among the first European countries to sell debt in the new year.

In 2019, the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) raised 4bn in a syndicated sale of 10-year debt on January 9 - the sixth January in a row the state raised cash.

This year it will probably sell a 15-year bond soon, Danske Bank A/S said. "Ireland is typically very quick in coming to the market in the first quarter," Danske analyst Jens Peter Sorensen said. In all, Ireland plans to issue between 10bn-14bn worth of bonds in 2020, less than in recent years, with at least one syndicated deal projected. The lower funding requirement means Ireland may skip a second syndication in the third quarter, Sorensen said. There was a budget surplus of 1.4bn (about 0.4pc of GDP) in 2019, double the 0.2pc forecast in October, which will be handed to the NTMA which can use it to pay down debt or keep on hand as cash.  Bloomberg
Trump Ordered Drone Hit on Soleimani Despite Intel That General Had No Plans to Target US  Report

Sputnik News

12:57 05.01.2020(updated 13:41 05.01.2020)

The death of the senior Iranian commander, who was killed in a US drone strike shortly after midnight on Friday morning, prompted Iranian officials to vow retaliation against US interests in the region.

US President Donald Trump authorised the assassination of Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force Commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani despite conflicting information regarding the Iranian general's intentions, the New York Times has reported, citing the Pentagon and administration sources.

According to the sources, senior officials said that Trump chose to proceed with the assassination amid a 'new stream of intelligence', the significance of which was debated inside the administration, about Soleimani's alleged plans to carry out "imminent" attacks on US diplomats and military forces stationed in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

One sceptical official cited conflicting intelligence which did not share these fears, pointing to 30 December expected to be "a normal Monday in the Middle East," with Soleimani's travels in the region expected to be "business as usual". The official cited communications between Soleimani and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which did not show any imminent plans for an attack as recently as a week before his killing.

Gen. Qasem Soleimani, third right, sits next to the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, Mohammad Ali Jafari, third left, in a meeting of the commanders of the Revolutionary Guard with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran.

Sources also said that while the option of killing Soleimani was listed among one of the possible 'responses' to Iran's alleged involvement in the December 27 rocket attack on a US military base in Kirkuk, Iraq, some officials did not think he would pick what they considered 'the most extreme response'.

DoD and administration officials said that the president had initially authorised airstrikes against Kata'ib Hezbollah, the Baghdad-allied Shia militia group reportedly supported by Iran. These strikes took place, and over two dozen militia fighters were killed and dozens injured in US strikes on five facilities across Iraq and Syria. However, amid the violence that followed, including the attempt by angry Iraqi protesters to storm the US Embassy compound in Baghdad, Trump reportedly changed his mind, and chose to proceed with killing Soleimani.

The sources also said that that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence lobbied Trump to respond hawkishly to 'Iranian aggression', with the vice president's office helping to organise the meetings and conference calls ahead of the assassination.

The NYT piece partially corroborates a recent Bloomberg report citing sources which indicated that National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence and Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney had begun putting together the plot to assassinate Soleimani in the aftermath of the December 27 Kirkuk attack. One US official cited by the business newspaper indicated that the US military wasn't monitoring Soleimani directly on the night of the attack, but launched the strike on the basis of earlier-obtained information about his expected whereabouts at Baghdad International Airport en route to a third country possibly Syria or Lebanon, on Friday morning.

On Saturday, sources told The Washington Post that senior US military officials were reportedly "stunned" by Trump's decision to kill Soleimani. Previous US policymakers did not allow themselves such a brazen response against such a senior member of the Iranian military.

Baghdad Attack

Soleimani served as the long-time commander of the Quds Force, a wing of the Revolutionary Guards tasked with coordinating Iran's military operations abroad. His activities included the provision of military assistance to Iranian allies abroad, including Lebanon's Hezbollah militia group and the Syrian government. In Iraq, Soleimani provided assistance to the country's government-allied Shia militias, formed after Daesh (ISIS)* captured wide swathes of Iraqi territory. These militias, known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), went on to play a key role in pushing back and defeating Daesh between 2015 and 2017.

Soleimani was killed in Baghdad on Friday morning after the convoy he was travelling in was struck by a missile launched by a US drone. The attack also killed several PMF members, including senior PMF commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. President Trump justified Soleimani's death later Friday, with the State Department claiming that Soleimani was responsible for the December 27 attack on the US base in Kirkuk, and alleging that he was planning further attacks on Americans.

*A terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries.

 Sputnik

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Once upon a time, political bosses gathered to select their partys candidate for president. That they met in smoke-filled rooms might be apocryphal - or perhaps not.

In 1910, Oregon instituted the first primary that required convention delegates to support the winner. For flaws ranging from crossover voting impact to the utterly random order of contests, the primaries dominate the nomination process and have made it more democratic.

Conventions that were once the focus of intense national drama have been transformed into posturing sessions that generally introduce candidates whose selection is mathematically guaranteed. Its a fair question: do we even need conventions anymore?

Their role changed dramatically after the 1968 Democratic Party gathering in Chicago erupted into riots over the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and civil rights issues - all on national TV. That caused the Democratic Party to revamp its process to include more emphasis on primary voting.

The Republicans followed. More states added caucuses (notably Iowa in 1972) or primaries to create a more transparent process. Oregons 1910 brainchild is the national norm.

Today, the conventions give each party a location to consolidate its platform and sharpen its attacks on the other. Especially for the party out of power, they can offer a healing process after a bruising intramural campaign.

They reveal the vice-presidential candidate. Unpledged superdelegates (about one in six Democratic delegates this year) still have the potential to matter. "Brokered conventions are still possible, as nearly occurred during the close Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton 2008 Democratic race.

In 2016, some Republicans made a late effort to deny Donald Trump the nomination. But primary results and pledged delegates generally settle the issue beforehand, as they did with Trump. Political operatives in both parties try to avoid brokered conventions, which take the choice from the people and return it to the smoke-filled rooms.

Will the 2020 conventions offer useful information to American voters, especially if the Democratic nominee is known beforehand? Or will they result in name-calling by both sides, polarizing the country even more than it already is?

That will depend upon the tabulation of pledged delegates from Democratic primaries. It will also depend on what party leaders and candidates hope to accomplish.

If these cannot be used as meaningful forums, they may be obsolete. When Democrats gather in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in July, and Republicans in Charlotte, North Carolina in August, the American voters deserve more than a shouting match as the main course.
The American Association for Medicare Supplement Insurance announced the availability of 20 scholarships for insurance agents to attend the organization's 2020 National Medigap industry conference.

"We are pleased to offer 20 scholarships who specialize in Medicare insurance and want to attend the 2020 Medigap Summit in Chicago," shared Jesse Slome, AAMSI's director. The 2020 conference takes place May 13-15, 2020 at the Schaumburg Convention Center located in Northwest Chicago.

"The scholarships will save agents $250 on the conference registration," Slome explains. Regular registration for the industry event is $650. The conference is attended by over 850 industry leaders from all segments of the industry that markets Medicare insurance and related senior insurance products.



To request scholarship information, Email Slome at the Association or call 818-597-3205. "This conference has historically sold out and we anticipate another record-setting event but we are committed to bringing new blood into this important event," Slome notes. "Offering scholarships that make attending affordable is something that we know is appreciated by insurance agents who focus on Medicare insurance."



Information on the conference can be accessed via the Association's website https://medicaresupp.org/2020-medigap-conference-expo/

The American Association for Medicare Supplement Insurance is an advocacy and informational organization that supports the industry and insurance professionals who market Medicare insurance options. The Association organizes the annual Medicare insurance conference that includes a free sales day for insurance agents.
More and more international schools in Kenya continue to come up with each trying to offer the best curriculum that can produce an all-rounded character in a pupil. Potterhouse School is one of the international schools that work to help children discover their purpose in life. The school majorly follows the British curriculum.

Image: instagram.com, @potterhouse_school

Source: Instagram

Potterhouse School was established in 2002. The school has pupils from different backgrounds and nationalities. It aims to have an education system that would address spiritual, academic and social needs which would give the pupils a firm footing in the fast-changing world. Here is everything that you need to know about the students portal, admissions and fee structure of Potterhouse School.

Potterhouse school portal

Potterhouse school is one of the international schools in Runda that offer among the best kindergarten schools. Through the school's portal, even the parents can have access to what their child is doing in school. The school runs from September to July, unlike the 8-4-4 system that runs from January to December. For admissions, it would be advisable if you do it in the school's schedule so as not to miss a term. One can schedule an appointment through the school portal or visit the school on the address from the contacts listed below.

The following is the school's credo, mission, and vision:

Credo

We believe our first responsibility is to the children. We must strive to provide for them an environment that promotes the discovery and application of knowledge

Mission

To teach, train and transform through educational expertise and Christ-like example, moulding and inspiring children to a life of excellence and impact.

Vision

To see children who have a love for knowledge and learning, growing in godliness and equipped to serve their society.

Image: instagram.com, @potterhouse_school

Source: Instagram

READ ALSO: Braeside School admissions, fees structure, location and contacts

Potterhouse School curriculum

Potterhouse follows a form of the British National Curriculum. However, the school differs a little since the students are given a chance to study two additional languages aside from English. The languages are French and Kiswahili. Physics, Biology, and Chemistry are done as separate languages, unlike some UK schools. Parents who want their children to transition from the 8-4- 4 system do so after the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE).

The school has also adopted the Kumon method of teaching. This method of teaching has been integrated into Mathematics and English. This method of teaching has seen to improve childrens performance and also give them confidence.

The following are the subjects covered in the school:

English Literature

English Language

Kiswahili

Mathematics

Physics

Chemistry

Biology

Geography

History

Computer Studies

Business Studies

Art & Design

Music

French

Physical Education

Image: instagram.com, @potterhouse_school

Source: Instagram

READ ALSO: Female teachers rank high on best tutors list

Potterhouse School fee structure

The fee structure for Potterhouse School is as follows;

Image: potterhouseschool.ac.ke, (modified by author)

Source: UGC

Daily rates

For those parents who wish to pay the school fees daily instead of the lumpsum amount, the daily charges are as follows;

Image: potterhouseschool.ac.ke, (modified by author)

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Most popular high schools in Kenya

Potterhouse School contacts

Use the following details to contact Potterhouse School;

Phone number: +254 722 252 551, +254 733 798 546

+254 722 252 551, +254 733 798 546 Email address: info@potterhouseschool.ac.ke

info@potterhouseschool.ac.ke Postal address: P.O Box 950 - 00606 Sarit Center, Nairobi, Kenya

P.O Box 950 - 00606 Sarit Center, Nairobi, Kenya Physical Address: Runda Estate, Runda Road Off Ruaka Road

Runda Estate, Runda Road Off Ruaka Road Website: www.potterhouseschool.ac.ke

Taking children to good schools plays an important role in laying vital foundations. The information above on Potterhouse school will help you decide on what is best for your child.

READ ALSO: Strathmore Secondary School fees structure, KCSE performance, contacts

Source: TUKO.co.ke
Over 100 college students, activists and citizens on Monday evening held a peaceful protest outside the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) to denounce the violence at the JNU campus in New Delhi.

Students from various prominent institutes, including the IIMA, Cept University, AhmedabadUniversity, National Institute of Fashion Technology, National Institute of Design and Gujarat Vidyapith took part in the protest by standing in a row on a footpath outside the top business school.

Violence broke out inside the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) president Aishe Ghosh, were injured. The Left-backed JNUSU and the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) have blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.

"We are against the brutality with which students are being treated. We also put tape on our mouth today to convey the message that people are not being allowed to speak freely.

"Students are being labeled for asking questions. Concerned citizens gathered by their own to register their protest" said Sarthak Bagchi, an assistant professor with the Ahmedabad university.

Dalit activist and independent MLA Jignesh Mevani was among the protesters who demanded stern action against those involved in the attack on JNU students and teachers.

"The attack proved that miscreants have been given a free hand. They knew that the police and government belonged to them. I am confident these miscreants were sent by Home Minister Amit Shah. No one else except the RSS and the ABVP can do such things," claimed Mevani.

The protesters, surrounded by a large posse of police personnel, were holding banners with slogans like - "JNU is Bleeding", "Saffron is New Black", "Stop Brahminical Terrorism", "Save JNU", "With JNU - Against Fascism", "We Stand with JNU", "Stop Turning Campuses into War zones" and "Save Students-Save Democracy".

When prompted by Bagchi, a female protester holding a banner having a highly derogatory slogan about Prime Minister Narendra Modi, took it down immediately.

While some students of the Gujarat Vidyapith, founded by Mahatma Gandhi, weaved khadi on their charkha as a mark of protest, other agitators chanted Faiz Ahmed Faiz's famous poem 'Hum dekhenge' which was the centre of a controversy recently at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur.

"The attack on students inside JNU shows the present government does not like people who do not agree with its policies. But, we all want to tell the students of JNU that entire country is with them.

"This is an attack on the soul of this country. We are the future of this country. Why are we being treated like enemies?" asked student agitators.

When the protest was on, some persons claiming to be associated with the ABVP gathered on the opposite side of the road and displayed banners alleging the JNU attack was planned and executed by 'Left-wing' students.

They waved banners having messages like "Left Attacks JNU" and "Red Terror on JNU".

As a precautionary measure, police detained four ABVP members, said police inspector H M Vyas.

"These youths did not had any permission to hold protest here. Thus, as a precautionary measure, we detained four ABVP members. We will release them later," said Vyas.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India Hardy has lived with pain since she was a toddler  ranging from dull persistent aches to acute flare-ups that interrupt the flow of her normal life.

The pain is from sickle cell disease, a group of genetic conditions that affect about 100,000 people in the U.S., many of them of African or Hispanic descent.

Sitting in the afternoon heat on her moms porch in Athens, Georgia, Hardy recollected how a recent crisis derailed her normal morning routine.

It was time for my daughter to get on the bus, and shes too young to go on her own, Hardy recalled. I was in so much pain I couldnt walk. So, she missed school that day.

Sickle cell disease affects red blood cells, which travel throughout the body carrying oxygen to tissues. Healthy red blood cells are shaped like plump and flexible doughnuts, but in people with sickle cell disease, the red blood cells are deformed, forming C-shaped sickles that are rigid and sticky.

These sickle-shaped cells can cause blockages in the blood vessels, slowing or even stopping normal blood flow. An episode of blockage is known as a sickle cell crisis  tissues and organs can be damaged because of lack of oxygen, and the patient experiences severe spells of pain.

Its like torture

Hardy tries to manage these crises on her own. Shell take a hot bath or apply heating pads to try to increase her blood flow. Hardy also has a variety of pain medications she can take at home.

When she has exhausted those options, she needs more medical help. Hardy would prefer to go to a specialized clinic for sickle cell patients, but the closest is almost two hours away, and she doesnt have a car.

So, Hardy often goes to the emergency room at nearby St. Marys Hospital for relief. Until recently, the doctors there would give her injections of the opioid hydromorphone, which she says would stop her pain.

Then, some months ago, the emergency room changed its process: Now they will actually put that shot in a bag which is full of fluids, so its like youre getting small drips of pain medicine, Hardy said. Its like torture.

Its the same for her brother, Rico, who also has sickle cell disease and has sought treatment at St. Marys. The diluted medicine doesnt give the same pain relief as a direct injection, they say.

Striking a balance

St. Marys staffers explain that theyre trying to strike a balance with their new treatment protocol between adequate pain treatment and the risk that opioid use can lead to drug dependence.

Its a local change that reflects a national concern. The U.S. is in the midst of an addiction and overdose crisis, fueled by powerful opioids like hydromorphone. That crisis has made medical providers more aware of the risks of administering these drugs. More than 47,000 Americans died in 2017 from an overdose involving an opioid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That has prompted some emergency room leaders to rethink how they administer opioid medications, including how they treat people, such as Hardy, who suffer from episodes of severe pain.

We have given sickle cell patients a pass [with the notion that] they dont get addicted  which is completely false, said Dr. Troy Johnson, who works in the emergency room at St. Marys. For us to not address that addiction is doing them a disservice.

Rico Hardy takes medication each day to manage his sickle cell disease at home. When his pain gets severe, he heads to the ER for extra help.(Johnathon Kelso for WABE)

Johnson proposed the ERs shift to intravenous drip delivery of opioids for chronic pain patients because of personal experience. His son has sickle cell disease, and Johnson said he has seen firsthand how people with the disease are exposed to opioids when very young.

We start creating people with addiction problems at a very early age in sickle cell disease, Johnson said.

He brought his concerns to the director of the ER, Dr. Lewis Earnest, and found support for the change. Hospital officials say they also consulted national guidelines for treating sickle cell crises.

Were trying to alleviate suffering, but were also trying not to create addiction, and so were trying to find that balance, Earnest said. Some times its harder than others.

St. Marys says the new IV-drip protocol is for all patients who come to the emergency room frequently for pain, and most of their sickle cell patients are fine with the change.

Caught in the crossfire

The national guidelines cited by St. Marys also say doctors should reassess patient pain frequently and adjust levels of opioids as needed until pain is under control per patient report.

Some people who work closely with sickle cell patients, upon hearing about the new approach to pain management at St. Marys, called it unusual.

When individuals living with sickle cell disease go to emergency departments, they are living in extreme amounts of pain, said Dr. Biree Andemariam, chief medical officer of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America.

Its more common for ERs to give those patients direct pushes of pain medication via injection, she noted, not slower IV drips.

People with sickle cell disease arent fueling the opioid problem, Andemariam said. One study published in 2018 found that opioid use has remained stable among sickle cell patients over time, even as opioid use has risen in the U.S. generally.

If anything, individuals with sickle cell disease in our country have really been caught in the crossfire when it comes to this opioid epidemic, Andemariam said.

She suggested that ER doctors and nurses need more education on how to care for people with sickle cell, especially during the painful crisis episodes, which can lead to death.

Sickle cell pain has a mind of its own, says Anesha Barnes, who has had the disease since she was a baby. She says the longer she stays in a pain crisis, the harder it is to break out of it.(Johnathon Kelso for WABE)

A study of some 16,000 deaths from 1979 to 2005 related to sickle cell found that men in the group lived to be only 33, on average. Women didnt fare much better, living to an average age of 37. The same study suggested that a lack of access to quality care is a factor in the short life spans of people with sickle cell disease.

Researchers who study sickle cell say the opioid epidemic has made it harder for patients with the condition to get the pain medication they need. The American College of Emergency Physicians is focusing on the problem, asking federal health officials to speak out about sickle cell pain and fund research on how to treat it without opioids.

We in the physician community are looking for ways to make sure they get adequate pain relief, said Dr. Jon Mark Hirshon, vice president of the group. We recognize that the process is not perfect, but this is what were striving for  to make a difference.

Considering a move to find relief

In the meantime, India Hardy said she feels those imperfections in the process every time she suffers a pain crisis, and shes not alone.

In addition to her brother, Hardy said she has another friend in Athens with sickle cell disease, and that friend has also reported difficulty in finding pain relief at the St. Marys emergency room.

Its just really frustrating, because you go to the hospital for help  expecting to get equal help, and you dont, Hardy said, her voice breaking. They treat us like were not wanted there or that were holding their time up or taking up a bed that someone else could be using.

Hardy filed a complaint with the hospital but said nothing has changed, at least not yet. She still gets pain medication through an IV drip when she goes to the St. Marys emergency room.

At this point, shes considering leaving her relatives and friends behind in Athens to move closer to a sickle cell clinic. She hopes doctors there will do a better job of helping to control her pain.

This story is part of a partnership that includes WABE, NPR and Kaiser Health News.
The AMU Students Coordination Committee (AMUSCC) has demanded the resignation of JNU Vice-Chancellor Prof Jagadesh Kumar, asking him to take 'moral responsibility' for the violence in the varsity

Aligarh: The AMU Students Coordination Committee (AMUSCC) has demanded the resignation of JNU Vice-Chancellor Prof Jagadesh Kumar, asking him to take "moral responsibility" for the violence in the varsity.

In a statement, AMUSCC said reports from JNU that even medical teams going to assess the injured were prevented by the mob from entering the JNU campus are shocking and only a time-bound judicial inquiry would uncover the full truth. AMUSCCC is spearheading an agitation against the amended Citizenship Act.

Click here to follow LIVE updates on JNU violence

The alleged involvement of goons associated with the ABVP would be confirmed by a judicial probe, it said while strongly condemning the manhandling of Swaraj Party President Yogendra Yadav by goons allegedly under the patronage of the police.

Protesting students at AMU will also be holding a Tiranga march inside the AMU campus later in the day in solidarity with JNU students and all other student bodies currently holding peaceful protests against the CAA.

The Resident Doctors Association (RDA) at the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, AMU is also holding a protest at the Trauma Centre of the Hospital against Sunday's violence at JNU.

In a statement, RDA President Dr Mohammad Hamzas alleged that Delhi Police served as facilitators for the mob.

Secretary of the AMU Staff Association, Prof Najmul Islam said the President, Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India have to directly step in before the situation worsens.

Meanwhile, BJP Lok Sabha Member Satish Gautam, in a statement, demanded that all protesting students at the AMU campus should be immediately suspended and thrown out of the campus. Gautam said that a university is a place for seeking education and not for indulging in politics.

He said that if the protesters want to indulge in politicking, they should leave the campus. The BJP is holding a mass rally at the Exhibition grounds on 12 January to build up public support for the Citizenship Amendment Act.
(Newser)  Iranian police say millions of people flocked to Tehran for Gen. Qasem Soleimani's Monday funeral, and the AP says it seems that at least 1 million would be an accurate figure based on aerial footage and its own journalists. But in a piece for the Washington Post, Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad urges skepticism. "In the city of Ahvaz, where large numbers of people turned out to mourn Soleimani, the government has forced students and officials to attend," she writes. "It provided free transport and ordered shops to shut down." One of those who was willingly there: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who "broke down in tears four times while offering Muslim prayers for the dead," per the AP. More:

story continues below

A nugget from the New York Times surfaced by the Week: Soleimani's killing represents a first since WWIIthat's the last time the US took out a "major military leader" in another country. Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was killed when the US shot down the plane he was in.

The Wall Street Journal reports the White House on Saturday provided Congress with a notification of the Friday strike that took out Soleimani as required by law. The contentswhich the Journal says would cover the "circumstances necessitating" the action, the "constitutional and legislative authority" for it, and "the estimated scope and duration of the hostilities"were classified. Top Senate Democrats including Chuck Schumer and ranking Foreign Relations Committee member Robert Menendez are calling on it to be declassified and made available to the public.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani took to Twitter to respond to President Trump's threat to target 52 sites of cultural importance if Iran retaliated for Soleimani's killing. "Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290. #IR655 Never threaten the Iranian nation." Trump's 52 referred to the 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for more than a year beginning in 1979; Rouhani was referring to Iran Air Flight 655, which US missiles took down in 1988. All 290 on the passenger jet perished. (Looking to know more? Axios flags this Washington Post article from 2013 on Flight 655.)

For more reading on the subject, at Lawfare John Bellinger takes a dive into why attacking these sites would violate the Hague Cultural Property Convention.

(Read more Iran stories.)
The 2010s brought changes to the cultural landscape and development literally changed the landscape of the mid-Willamette Valley.
TORONTO/LONDON (Reuters) - Canadian miner First Quantum Minerals Ltd is weighing investment of around $1 billion to lift output at Africas biggest copper mine in Zambia, a company document seen by Reuters showed, despite a feud with state miner ZCCM-IH over project funding.

The investment would add a decade of life and head off production declines at the Kansanshi copper mine, increasing annual production to 300,000 tonnes over time from an expected 235,000 tonnes last year, according to a company presentation given to Zambian government officials.

But securing board approval, which would be needed over the coming year, is likely to be complicated by disputes between miners and the Zambian government over taxes and assets, according to analysts and miners with knowledge of the country.

Western miners are on edge as Zambia and neighboring countries seek to increase their share of revenue from natural resources.

Zambia hiked copper royalty taxes by 1.5 percentage points last year and introduced a new 10% rate when global prices exceed $7,500 per tonne, consultancy Verisk Maplecroft said.

Mines Minister Barnaby Mulenga last month said copper miners would also have to account for the gold they produce to boost state revenue.

We do not anticipate any fresh investments to extend the life of copper mines while this, and increased taxation, hangs over miners, Verisk Maplecroft senior analyst Indigo Ellis told Reuters on Friday.

A source close to First Quantum said the plans will be presented to the companys board this year but the project is unlikely to win approval without significant changes to Zambias tax regime.

Shares of First Quantum extended losses after the Reuters story and were down 6.3% at C$12.44 on Friday afternoon in Toronto.

First Quantum contemplated expanding Kansanshi in 2011 at a cost of $1.5 billion, but that project was shelved.

Without investment, output would drop sharply from 2022 to about 130,000 tonnes by the middle of this decade, the presentation shows.

Canadian-listed First Quantum is studying expansion amid a dispute with Zambian state miner ZCCM-IH over profits from the mine that have been set aside for the project.

ZCCM-IH owns 20% of Kansanshi Mining PLC, with First Quantum holding the balance.

First Quantum last month began arbitration proceedings against ZCCM-IH following a criminal complaint made by the state miner to Zambian police over a transfer by Kansanshi Mining to a First Quantum subsidiary.

At issue is a transfer of $520 million, a separate document seen by Reuters showed. Two sources said the money had been set aside in a high-interest account to help fund expansion at Kansanshi.

First Quantum was not available for immediate comment on Friday. ZCCM-IH did not immediately respond to a Reuters query.

Sources declined to be identified as the information was not public.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that the house will vote on a war powers resolution this week to limit President Donald Trumps military actions against Iran, warning that his order last week for a lethal strike against a top Iranian commander risked a serious escalation of tensions in the Middle East.

In a letter to Democrats, Ms Pelosi said the US action that killed Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani was a provocative and disproportionate military air strike targeting high-level Iranian military officials that endangered members of the US military, diplomats and others.

Ms Pelosi said lawmakers were concerned that the Trump administration acted without consulting congress and without respect for the constitutional authority congress has to declare war.

She said the house will introduce and vote on a resolution similar to one that senator Tim Kaine introduced in the Senate last week.

It reasserts Congresss long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administrations military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days, Ms Pelosi said.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

Freshman representative Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA and Pentagon analyst specialising in Shiite militias, will lead the resolution in the house.

The measure is likely to pass in the Democratic-controlled house and put Republicans on record on the issue, but it wont go far in the GOP-led Senate.

Congress has struggled to write a new use-of-force resolution for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Republicans have shown little interest in reviving the debate or challenging Trump.

This is a military operation, it is not a legislative operation, and as such it is being conducted by the military commanders, including the commander in chief, senator James Risch, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, which has oversight of war resolutions, said last week.

Still, a bipartisan group of lawmakers has seized on the military drone strike to spark a fresh discussion about the parameters for instigating military action.

Mr Trump took to Twitter to announce possible measures against Iran (Getty)

Were now at a boiling point, and congress must step in before Mr Trump puts even more of our troops in harms way, Mr Kaine said Friday in introducing his resolution.

Republican and Democratic presidents have applied the broad authority of the post-9/11 authorisation and the 2002 Iraq War resolution to multiple military operations, from Libya to Syria. The initial authorisation applied to those responsible for the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks and any associated forces.

Shiite Muslims march to protest against the US strike that killed Soleimani (AFP)

The letter from the speaker late Sunday came hours after Mr Trump claimed that his tweets are sufficient notice to congress of any possible US military strike on Iran, in an apparent dismissal of his obligations under the War Powers Act of 1973.

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any US person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner, Mr Trump tweeted from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, late Sunday afternoon. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!

Mr Trumps declaration was met with disbelief and ridicule from congressional Democrats, who called on the president to respect the role of the legislative branch in authorising new military action abroad.

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The War Powers Act mandates that the president report to lawmakers within 48 hours of introducing military forces into armed conflict abroad.

Such notifications generally detail an administrations justification for US intervention, as well as the constitutional and legislative rationale used by the administration to send troops.

It may also include how long the involvement could last.

On Saturday, the White House delivered a formal notification to congress of the strike that killed Soleimani, according to a senior Democratic aide and another official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity ahead of the notification.

Ms Pelosi criticised that document, which was entirely classified. This document prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner and justification of the Administrations decision to engage in hostilities against Iran, she said in a statement late Saturday.

The Washington Post
DIGBY, N.S.RCMP in Nova Scotia have released photos of a tattered pair of jeans and a large boot as they continue to investigate the discovery of a body along a beach in Digby County.

The Mounties say the body was found Sept. 8 near Sandy Cove.

The provinces medical examiners office later determined the remains were that of a man.

His clothing included a pair of Urban Heritage-brand jeans with a 36-inch waist size and a black Terra-brand boot.

Police say the circumstances that led to the mans death have not yet been determined and the case has been recently added to the website Canadas Missing.

The entry on that website indicates the man is believed to be between 30 and 60.

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A Swiss child rapist serving a life sentence has begged to be euthanized and exposed a legal vacuum in the country which allows assisted suicide.

'It is natural that one would rather commit suicide than be buried alive for years to come,' prisoner Peter Vogt said, in a written response to questions submitted by AFP.

The 69-year-old, convicted for sexual assault and rape against multiple girls and women ranging in age from 10 to 56, claims he is suffering from serious kidney and heart conditions, among other ailments.

He has also been diagnosed with several psychological disorders.

Peter Vogt, 69, during a television interview with Swiss channel SRF. He claims to have serious kidney and hear conditions

Peter Vogt, 69, convicted of sexual assault and rape against multiple women and girls, told AFP he would rather commit suicide than continue being held in a Swiss prison with no hope of release (pictured: stock image of Bois-Mermet prison in Lausanne)

Although Vogt's most recent sentence was a 10-year term handed down in 1996, he is imprisoned for life at Bostadel prison in northern Switzerland as he is still considered dangerous.

This follows a decision in 2004 when Swiss voters approved a popular initiative allowing the indefinite detention of people with established sexual delinquencies who posed a public risk.

The authorities have repeatedly determined that Vogt remains a threat despite years of treatment.

'It would be better to be dead than to be left to vegetate behind these walls,' he said.

In July 2018, Vogt contacted Exit Switzerland, an organisation that supports assisted suicide under specific conditions. He argues that he should be able to benefit from Switzerland's liberal assisted suicide laws too.

'We told him that his particular case needed to be clarified,' Juerg Wiler, its vice president, told AFP.

Swiss law generally allows assisted suicide if the person commits the lethal act themselves - meaning doctors cannot administer deadly injections, for example - and the person consistently and independently articulates a wish to die.

Any detainee possessing discernment should, in principle, have assisted suicide rights if they have 'a physical or mental illness resulting in unbearable suffering,' Barbara Rohner (pictured), lead author of the foundation's report, told AFP

Organisations that support assisted suicide also apply their own procedures, which are more robust than the legal requirements.

The authorities, aiming to take a position on the matter in the coming months, have asked the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Prison and Probation, a publicly funded foundation, to provide guidance following Vogt's request.

In October, the experts at the foundation advised that assisted suicide rights should apply to prisoners under certain conditions, noting that in cases of mental illness two independent specialists should be consulted.

Any detainee possessing discernment should, in principle, have assisted suicide rights if they have 'a physical or mental illness resulting in unbearable suffering,' Barbara Rohner, lead author of the foundation's report, told AFP.

The foundation also recommended that authorities responsible for the prisoner's welfare must ensure the suicide request is not the result of a short-term emotional crisis.

Vogt insisted that he wanted to die because of the 'unbearable' deterioration in his quality of life, along with the fact that he can no longer see his gravely ill mother, who lives in Austria.

He told the Blick newspaper that he wants to end his life on August 13, his 70th birthday.

Rohner said that while Vogt's case may be exceptional, similar situations could increasingly arise.

'There will be more and more elderly and sick prisoners in detention because of the ageing of the prison population,' she said.

According to the Swiss National Science Foundation, a research institute, the number of prisoners over 50 years old doubled to 600 between 2005 and 2016.

The prison of Bois-Mermet is seen on November 18, 2019 in Lausanne, western Switzerland

Vogt told AFP that he knows of another inmate interested in assisted suicide, adding: 'Nobody should have to commit suicide in his cell alone.'

Some have raised concern that assisted suicide requests could be used by convicts as a negotiating tactic to demand better conditions in prison.

For Christine Bussat, founder of the Swiss chapter of the Marche Blanche victims' rights groups, decisions on a convict's right to die should rest with their victims.

That, she added, 'is unfortunately not possible' under the current law.

But most legal and criminal justice experts in Switzerland believe that assisted suicide rights do extend to convicts.

Celine Ehrwein, an ethics professor at Heig-VD University, told public broadcaster RTS that depriving a suffering person of the right-to-die could be considered 'a form of torture'.
Leaders from both factions and state media tried to portray Soleimani as a national hero.

Of course, he is the most notorious leader of the IRGC, because of bloodshed and repression of the Iranian people and as well in the region. He is fully responsible for the catastrophic damage he inflicted on the people of Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, and he thus deserves the title of bloodthirsty hero.

In his role in suppressing the Iranian people, it was enough that during the March 2019 floods in fear of a surge Khuzestan and Lorestan provinces, al-Hashd ash-Shabi forces led by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, entered the area under the pretext of helping flood victims.

This act aroused the anger of the Iranian people to the point that members of the regimes parliament criticized Qasem Soleimanis call to Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and his al-Hashd ash-Shabi mercenaries for fear of public outrage.

Another point is the involvement of the regimes overseas mercenaries in the suppression of the people, as was the case during the 2009 uprising when there were many popular reports from citizens that some of the oppressive forces were foreign Arabs and did not speak Farsi.

His role in suppressing the people of Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon is well-known.

Therefore, the praises of the leaders of both factions are very understandable and natural for the death of such a hero in crime and bloodshed, because Irans supreme leader Ali Khamenei received a devastating strategic blow inside and outside of the country. They lost their deep strategic influence.

On the importance of Soleimanis role in advancing repression and war, Irans President Hassan Rouhani described his role during a visit to Qasem Soleimanis family: His empty place is not easily replenishable. He was not only a war commander and the planer of big military operations, rather he was a unique and talented politician and strategist. (Entekhab daily, 4 January)

It is very clear that the character that Hassan Rouhani described is in fact a criminal terrorist, in the context of his role and the terrorist force under his control in repressing the people in Iran and exporting terror and fundamentalism abroad, especially in the region.

It is because of such a criminal role that after his death, the Iraqi and Syrian people celebrated his death, and the Iranian people expressed their happiness even though they were not able to express it openly because of the oppressive atmosphere so they welcomed the huge blow on the regime via social media.

Against this extreme blow, the rulers of the Iranian regime, including Ali Khamenei, pledged revenge to raise the morale of their disparate forces at home and abroad.

Khamenei wrote in his message: Hard revenge is awaiting the criminals who have their dirty hands stained with the blood of him and other martyrs of the incident last night.

In the meeting with Qasem Soleimanis family, Hassan Rouhani said, The Americans did not realize what a great mistake they made; they will see the effects of this criminal act not only today but over the years to come. (Entekhab website, 4 January)

The regimes national security council postponed Khameneis hard revenge to a right time and place.

The promise of hard revenge of the revenge seeker was promised in this organization with the presence of Khamenei to the Hezbollah people.

But these promises also triggered an internal crisis in the regime, and Hossein Shariatmadari, the managing editor of Keyhan daily, challenged it and wrote in Keyhan: In the statement by the Supreme National Security Council also states that these criminals will be faced with revenge of the revenge seekers of Soleimanis blood at the right place and time should not be added because the sentence right place and time by diplomatic traditions is not showing any decisiveness!

Hossein Shariatmadari also blasted the Rouhani governments actions on Soleimanis death and said: The State Department spokesman has called the Swiss ambassador two times, while the second time was to respond to the Americans message! This commuting, and sending and receiving messages is worrying, and it can be a trick for America to cool down the story and get rid of the hard revenge! (Keyhan, 4 January)

These are hollow threats and the commotion about revenge but show a deep crisis in the Iranian regime after this blow. And so, the Iranian leaders could not hide their fear about any consequences about any counterattack and revenge.

The Setareh Sobh newspaper affiliated with Rouhani expressed concern about the catastrophic consequences of facing the United States and in a piece entitled Where Does the US-Iran Confrontation Lead? warned that the reaction to Qassim Soleimanis demise should be in the form of a cost-benefit formula, and the attraction of benefit and pushing loss from the Iranian people should be considered.

This paper further regretted the loss to the regimes negotiating table and wrote: The analysis of the behavior and movements of the White House, the Treasury, the Pentagon, Congress and  reflects the fact that this country

overpassed the negotiation phase, dialogue, and dealing with Iran, and entered the phase of the conflict with the Islamic Republic, a strategy that is dangerous and could lead to war. (Setareh Sobh, 4 January)

In an article titled Triggering War in the Middle East, Jahan Sanat newspaper blamed Khameneis faction on igniting a war and eventually made this faction responsible for the death of Soleimani: Some people in their reductionist approach on the policy and their wishful evaluations, imagine that Trump will never do that, and its just a bluff 

So, he reacted quickly to what happened at the embassy in Baghdad and revived the memory of the US embassy capture in Iran after the Islamic Revolution. Trump has reacted very fast It is showing the beginning of a new and very dangerous season in the Middle East which was predictable. It can be said that what has already been done is to pull the trigger for war in the Middle East that can have different contexts and different consequences for everyone. (Jahan Sanat, 4 January)

It is clear that the authors of both factions speak about their bad luck because of the consequences, otherwise, there is no reason to worry about the trigger pull.

But what is far more dangerous for the regime than any other issue is the hostility of the Iranian people toward this regime and the danger of a further popular uprising.
Filipinos protest the airstrike in Iraq that killed top Iranian military Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, near the U.S. embassy in Manila, Jan. 6, 2020.

Updated at 5 p.m. ET on 2020-01-06

Philippine officials said they would be ready to bring thousands of Filipinos home from the Middle East if rising hostilities in the region put their lives in danger.

Thai and Indonesian officials, meanwhile, warned their citizens in Iran and Iraq to be on the alert as tensions soar after the United States killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in the Iraqi capital last week.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte met with his top military advisers including Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana on Sunday, two days after Soleimani died in a drone strike near Baghdads international airport.

Im nervous. Iran seems to be hell-bent on a retaliation, which I think will come. Its a matter of time, Duterte said Monday as he signed the nations 4.1 trillion peso (U.S. $80 billion) budget. There is much hurt and even the loss of pride in the Arabic world and retaliation or the cry for blood is there.

Maj. Gen. Soleimani, 62, commanded the Quds Force of Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, both of which Washington had branded as foreign terrorist organizations, accusing them of being behind state-sponsored terrorism across the Middle East.

We do not know what would be the end result of this crisis. It could lead to a protracted war, it could be a wide-scale strife, he said. But whatever it is, we Filipinos are really in great peril.

Government officials estimate 1,600 Filipinos are in Iran and 6,000 are in Iraq respectively.

The sole agenda was how to insure the safety of our countrymen in the Middle East, especially those in Iraq and Iran as the tension between the U.S. and Iran rises, Lorenzana said Monday in a statement describing Sundays meeting.

He said Duterte had ordered the armed forces to prepare its air and naval assets to evacuate and bring home Filipinos who may be trapped in the Middle East if the hostilities kept rising.

After Fridays drone strike, U.S. President Donald Trump posted a series of tweets threatening to strike back quickly if Iran retaliated. He listed 52 potential targets, including important cultural sites.

Iranian officials said such threats could be considered war crimes, and vowed that Tehrans response would be against military sites while the Iraqi parliament voted to expel U.S. troops from the country.

Discussions about evacuations

On Monday, Duterte spokesman Salvador Panelo said only those Filipinos who wanted to be repatriated would be flown home, while forced evacuations could be necessary in the near future.

If their lives are in danger, of course, the government would do everything it can to save them from harm, Panelo told reporters in Manila. The president had instructed everyone to get ready and if the situation escalates, we should pull out our compatriots.

In addition, economic managers are studying the possible implications of hostilities affecting fuel prices locally because the Philippines imports much of its oil from the Middle East, officials said.

Meanwhile, security services have been coordinating with other countries over possible sympathy attacks by groups loyal to Iran.

The national police are profiling possible threats, possible groups who might sympathize, national police chief Lt. Gen. Archie Gamboa said, adding there had been no direct threat so far.

In Jakarta, the Indonesian foreign ministry, while not commenting on the drone strike, called for efforts to de-escalate tensions in the Middle East.

We call on all parties to refrain from any action that can worsen the situation, the ministry said in a statement adding, We call on Indonesian citizens to remain vigilant.

In Bangkok, Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha announced that he had ordered security officers to reinforce embassies where necessary.

Thai officials will consider the safety of the Thai people as most important, Prayuth said.

Thailands embassy in Amman, Jordan, issued a warning letter telling Thais to avoid large gatherings and refrain from traveling to neighboring Iraq.

Thailand, together with the international community, calls on all parties concerned to exercise their utmost patience, avoid provocation and refrain from using force, to reduce tensions and to maintain peace and stability in the region, Thai Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Busadee Santipitaks told BenarNews.
Kylie Jenner has been branded a 'hypocrite' for wearing real mink fur slippers just hours after mourning the half a billion animals killed in the Australia wildfires,

The reality star, 22, was called out for being 'so disconnected' after showing off her 1,080 Louis Vuitton homey flat mule slippers on Instagram, straight after sharing a post of a koala rescued from the fires with the caption 'this breaks my heart.'

The decision to wear shoes made of real animal fur after voicing her heartbreak at the devastating impacts of the wildfires enraged the star's social media followers with one writing: 'Rich people are so disconnected it's unreal'.

Backlash: Kylie Jenner has been branded a 'hypocrite' for wearing real mink fur slippers just hours after mourning the half a billion animals killed in the Australia wildfires

No way: The reality star, 22, was called out for being 'so disconnected' after showing off her 1,080 Louis Vuitton homey flat mule slippers on Instagram, straight after sharing a post of a koala rescued from the fires with the caption 'this breaks my heart'

Another wrote: 'seeing kylie jenner post about the koalas being killed by the fires in australia followed by a picture of her wearing mink sandals on her instagram story really made me realize the extent to which the kardashian familys stupidity reaches.'

Another follower typed: 'likeee... kylie jenner posting a boohoo about dying koalas then straight after posing in her real fur shoes. how would you like someone to come and skin you alive sis.'

One fan praised Kylie for raising awareness of the wildfires, but slammed the move to wear the sandals while droves branded her a hypocrite.

They wrote: 'b4 this blows up don't get me wrong I appreciate her supporting awareness and donating money (she may not have spoke of it but I'm sure she has) but crying about koalas then posting this isn't clever at all.'

The post: The decision to wear shoes made of real animal fur after voicing her heartbreak at the devastating impacts of the wildfires enraged the star's social media followers

Just before: The reality star voiced her heartbreak at the loss of millions of animals

Another wrote: 'Kylie posting her mink fur sandals right after her koalas dying post is peak fake woke behavior I f*****g hate to see it.

While another added: 'That awful person Kylie Jenner posted about koalas dying in Australia then posted herself wearing slippers made from ANIMAL fur. Made from real mink fur. An animal had to die for her slippers, just f**k off Kylie.'

Another fan wrote: 'Kylie Jenner posting a story about the koalas in Australia and then posting a pic of her mink fur slippers in the story immediately after is a big fat OOP.'

Others flocked to social media to ask if Kylie - who is a billionaire make-up brand owner - was donating to the disaster relief after sharing the post.

Enraged: Fans took to Twitter to slam Kylie's decision and accuse her of 'hypocrisy'

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Kylie Jenner for comment.

Kylie has yet to comment on the social media backlash but elder sister Kim Kardashian, 39, hit back at a follower on Monday for claiming the family had not donated to the disaster relief.

They wrote: 'nothing gets me more heated than to see the Kardashians/Jenners talk about climate change/wildfires & not donate even a penny. @KimKardashian @khloekardashian @KylieJenner @KendallJenner m@kourtneykardash

Kim responded: 'nothing gets me more heated than to see people think they know what we donated to and to think we have to publicize everything.'

In November Kim was labelled 'tone deaf' for teasing some 'exciting news' to Australian fans on Twitter amid the raging bushfires.

'Hi Australia! I have some exciting news coming soon just in time for the holidays. Can you guess what is is? Stay tuned for the big announcement...' Kim Tweeted.

She added in a video: 'I'm sending you guys something very special and it's coming very soon... Be sure to stay tuned and follow very soon.'

Many of Kim's Australian fans were infuriated by the post, which appeared to be promoting the launch of her new fragrance.

At the time of Kim's Tweet, there were more than 50 blazes in each of New South Wales and Queensland and a state of emergency had been declared.

She later issued a sincere message to those affected by bushfires during an interview with Australian breakfast show Sunrise.

We have: Kylie has yet to comment on the social media backlash but elder sister Kim Kardashian, 39, hit back at a follower for claiming the family had not donated to the disaster relief

After speaking at length about her new fragrance on the Channel Seven program, Kim wrapped up her interview by adding: 'I just hope everyone is safe and OK after all of the fires in Australia. We're praying for you over here.'

So far, the Australian bushfires have killed 26 people, destroyed more than 2,000 homes and tore through more than four million hectares of land.

An estimated half a billion animals were wiped out in the blazes, which have been burning through much of the east coast of Australia since October.

Wildfires are common during the southern hemisphere summer, and Australians generally take a pragmatic view of them.

No: In November Kim was labelled 'tone deaf' for teasing some 'exciting news' to Australian fans on Twitter amid the raging bushfires - she later sent a message of support

'Just in time for the holidays': 'Hi Australia! I have some exciting news coming soon just in time for the holidays. Can you guess what is is? Stay tuned for the big announcement...' Kim Tweeted

Haunting: An estimated half a billion animals were wiped out in the blazes, which have been burning through much of the east coast of Australia since October

But this year's fires arrived unusually early, fed by drought and the country's hottest and driest year on record.

Experts recently described how two colossal infernos raging in Victoria and New South Wales could meet to form a 'mega blaze.'

On Kangaroo Island, a refuge off the coast of South Australia for some of the country's most endangered creatures, teams had arrived to help euthanize livestock and wild animals injured in the blazes.

Heartbreaking: A dead kangaroo is seen on Kangaroo Island after fires burned for several days

Devastating: Cows lie dead in their paddock after a bushfire in Coolagolite

Harrowing: So far, the Australian bushfires have killed 26 people, destroyed more than 2,000 homes and tore through more than four million hectares of land
Hollywood star Rami Malek says his villain in the upcoming James Bond movie "No Time to Die" is "unique and complex".

The Oscar winner dished out a few details about his character in the film and his experience of working with Britsh actor Daniel Craig on the red carpet of the 77th Golden Globe awards.

"He's quite unique. He's very complex. Daniel calls him misunderstood. But I had the most extraordinary time going head-to-head with that man," Malek told E! News' Ryan Seacrest at the red carpet.

The actor also praised Craig, who has been playing the fictional British spy since 2006, for being a great professional.

"He is a consummate professional. What is really special about that is you see these movies and I love the Bond films. On day one, going out on stage, on set in front of the lens, well, to everybody else, I actually got a Broadway version sitting in the front seat watching Bond do it first hand and there is something that it took a second to step back and go, 'What's my first line again?'" he said.

At the 2020 Golden Globes, Malek was nominated for the best actor in a TV series, drama for his role on "Mr. Robot".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi, Jan 6 : itel, a Transsion Holdings-owned company, on Monday launched its "A25" smartphone with features like HD display, Google Lens and face unlock for Rs 3,999 in India.

"The latest launch, itel A25 is a quintessence of magical features like multi-language support, face unlock, Google Lens and much more available at a budget-friendly price range of under 4k," said Goldee Patnaik, Head of Marketing, itel Business Unit said in a statement.

"We are sure that this powerful combination of features and innovations in itel A25 will extend our customers a very delightful experience and it'll magically transform the sub 4k category," Patnaik said.

The device is available in three colours -- Gradient Purple, Gradient Blue, and Gradient Sea Blue.

In terms of specification, the smartphone features 5.0-inch IPS HD display.

The device packs 1GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage. There's a microSD card slot for expandable storage up to 32GB. It is powered by a 1.4GHz quad-core processor.

In terms of optics, the phone has a 5MP rear camera with flash. There's a 2MP camera with front flash for selfies.

itel A25 also comes with support for Google Lens.

The camera comes with smart recognition capability and HDR features for the rear camera that's new for the entry-level segment under the 4k range On the software front, it runs on Android 9 Pie out-of-the-box and packs a 3,020mAh battery.

Its connectivity options include dual SIM support, dual 4G VoLTE/ViLTE, Bluetooth, and WiFi.

The smartphone also comes with face unlock feature.
Calls for comedian George Lopezs arrest were posted on social media after he apparently joked about an $80 million bounty on President Donald Trumps head.

A eulogist at the Sunday funeral of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a Trump-ordered airstrike on Friday, reportedly proposed the $80 million bounty: We are 80 million Iranians. If each one of us puts aside one American dollar, we will have 80 million American dollars, and we will reward anyone who brings us (Trumps) head with that amount, the unidentified man said.

Commenting on an Instagram post, Lopez wrote, Well do it for half.

By Monday morning, #ArrestGeorgeLopez was trending on Twitter and some were calling for the Latino comic to be deported, perhaps unaware he was born in Los Angeles.

George Lopez just said hed assassinate President Trump for half of the $80 million dollar bounty. @SecretService should take a look at this, tweeted Ryan Fournier, founder of Students for Trump.

Turning Point USA Chairman Charlie Kirk tweeted, ...the FBI and Secret Service should IMMEDIATELY arrest George Lopez for threatening to murder Trump in exchange for $40 million!

It was not the first time a celebrity has gotten into hot water for making remarks about taking a presidents life.

Rocker Ted Nugent stated in 2007 that then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama should suck my machine gun. When President Obama was running for reelection in 2012, Nugent said at a National Rifle Association convention that, If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.

The Secret Service paid a call on Nugent in response to his comments.

However, three months after taking office in 2017, Trump extended a White House invitation to Nugent.
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department plans to pursue the death penalty for a member of the MS-13 gang accused in the kidnappings and killings of two Virginia teenagers in 2016, a move that comes as the Trump administration fights to restart federal executions.

Elmer Martinez, 27, is alleged to be the leader of the Fairfax County clique that authorities say killed a 17-year-old suspected of belonging to a rival gang and a 14-year-old who revealed that crime to the victim's family.

In a court filing Monday, prosecutors said Martinez was singled out for death among the dozen-plus people charged in connection with the crimes because of his "substantial planning and premeditation" and "his lack of remorse for his violent acts."

The Trump administration announced plans in July to resume executing federal prisoners, after a 16-year moratorium. A judge blocked the executions in November, determining that the Justice Department's proposed lethal-injection procedure "is not authorized" by federal law. The Supreme Court refused to let executions resume while the legal battle continues.

President Donald Trump makes frequent references to MS-13 by its full name, La Mara Salvatrucha, including in his most recent State of the Union address, in which he said a border wall was needed to keep the "savage gang" out. The gang formed in Los Angeles during the 1980s by El Salvadorans and has taken over large swaths of Central America and regions in the United States, including pockets of the Washington area.

Defense attorney Robert Jenkins said he was informed by the Justice Department of its decision, a step he said he believed was taken to support the president's stance on illegal immigration.

"I strongly suspect politics is playing a significant role rather than whether or not this is the appropriate thing to do to serve justice," Jenkins said. "Whether or not they truly believe that justice would be served by seeking the death penalty I think is maybe a secondary concern versus what political chips they can gain with his base by appearing to be tough on illegal immigrants."

Jenkins said Martinez, an immigrant from El Salvador, did not have a violent criminal history and is not alleged to have inflicted blows in either slaying.

In their filing, prosecutors said Martinez has a history of uncharged violent conduct, including assaults, stabbings and another attempt at kidnapping and homicide. While in jail awaiting trial, they say he was twice found with a shank.

The deaths of Edvin Mendez, 17, and Sergio Triminio, 14, came during a grisly spike in violence in the Washington region that has since abated amid a crackdown by law enforcement. Killings connected to the gang in the area fell from at least 33 in 2016 and 2017 to seven the following year.

It was in the summer of 2016, according to court documents, that a member of the Park View Locos Salvatrucha group saw the photos on Mendez's Facebook page that would lead to his death: a man surrounded by three 6s. The image led them to mark Mendez, an aspiring member, as a spy for the rival 18th Street Gang. Authorities said local MS-13 leaders agreed Mendez should be killed, sending members from Maryland to Virginia to help.

They lured Mendez to Holmes Run Stream Valley Park under the pretense of a gang meeting, according to an indictment, where they killed him and buried his body. They took turns filming the murder, authorities allege, a video that was sent to gang leaders to help the killers earn promotions.

Mendez's family spent the weeks after his disappearance searching anxiously for information. His brother reached out on Facebook to Triminio, an acquaintance. An associate of MS-13, Triminio admitted that Mendez had been targeted for death by the gang, authorities said.

A day later, according to court records, Triminio got a message on Facebook telling him to go to Fairfax for a gang meeting. His family last saw him leave their Alexandria, Virginia, apartment in his pajamas to take out the trash. His body was found near Mendez's in another shallow grave.

That killing was also recorded. A video recovered from one participant's phone showed a young man in pajamas being attacked with a kitchen knife and machete as he lay face down on the ground, according to a federal indictment.

Prosecutors say the gang had come to believe Triminio also spoke to the police.

Beyond Martinez, 10 more gang members will go to trial in connection with the killings but are not facing the death penalty. Two more were not charged with murder, although court records indicate they were involved. They could be called to testify at trial.

Jay Lanham, the executive director of the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force, said the Holmes Run killings represented a peak in the gang's activity in recent years.

"That was high tide of homicides," Lanham said. "Since then, homicides have subsided somewhat. We are still seeing MS-13 members keep a low profile. We saw them lose a lot of leadership."

- - -

The Washington Post's Mark Berman, Devlin Barrett and Justin Jouvenal contributed to this report.
Pastor Tunde Bakare, Senior Pastor of Latter Rain Assembly has asked Nigerians to stop celebrating enemies of the country.

The cleric said this during the first Sunday Thanksgiving Service of the year at the Citadel, also known as the Latter Rain Church in Ikeja.

He said, The Nigerian Government should be ready to confront the true enemies of our nation and to free Nigerian people of the greed of our oppressors.

We must stop referring to treasury looters as generous and noble. These are the true enemies of Nigeria no matter the title they wear.

We must indeed, stop celebrating these enemies of our nation, he said.

The cleric added that those that champion and fight for democracy are not the enemies of the country, rather, they are heroes.

Read Also: The Last Time I Stepped Into A Bank Was In 1985: Tunde Bakare

The true enemies are found at every level of government from the local to the state and to the federal.

They can also be found on the streets, in households and in the market places.

The enemies of our nation are those who abduct, murder, sell their votes, partake in loots and many more, he said.
Aniwa and Tanna are experiencing meteorological drought-when water shortage become evident. Photo showing people in north Tanna searching for water at the coast . Photo supplied
Amid the ongoing protests over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Union Minister Ramdas Athawale on Monday said the amended law is not against the Muslim community in India and that the Narendra Modi-led BJP government at the Centre is for all.

Speaking at the second national conference of All India Working Journalists Association (AWJA), the Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment said development of Muslim community has been the stand of the Modi government even as he appealed to the community to stop their agitation against the amended law. He said the Act was for minorities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who face religious persecution.

"The Narendra Modi government is for all. The CAA is not against the Indian Muslim community. This law is (to provide citizenship) for persecuted minorities from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who came to India before 2014, he said.

"Therefore, I appeal to the Muslim community to stop the (ongoing) agitation. Your demands will be definitely looked into. Narendra Modi government is not opposing the Muslim community. (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi is not opposing minorities," he said.

The Union Minister further said Modi has always been saying 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwaas' (Together with all, for development of all and with trust of all) and that is government's motto, Athawale said. Referring to the memorandum submitted by the AWJA seeking provision of house to every journalist, legalisation of electronic media and special ordinance to stop attacks on journalists, among other demands, the Union Minister said he supports these demands and would discuss them with the Central government and also with the state governments.
The other advantage of putting Kejriwal in the limelight is that the BJP in Delhi does not have a single credible face whose recall value in terms of leadership or oratorial skills that could compete with the AAP chief. The BJP is undecided on projecting any of its leader as face of Delhi election, a chief ministerial candidate who as a challenger would take on the incumbent chief minister.

"Acche Beete 5 Saal, Lage Raho Kejriwal", Aam Admi Partys catch phrase for 8 February Delhi assembly polls may be a lift from Raj Kumar Hiranis blockbuster Lage Raho Munna Bhai but no one can deny that it is straight, simple and catchy and leaves an impression on the minds of voters.

The slogan is sequel to AAP's 2015 catch phrase, 'Paanch Saal Kejriwal'. For 2020 Assembly polls too, the poll strategists and slogan writers have put a premium on Kejriwals name. After all, five years ago AAP without a organisational base in Delhi had scored an unprecedented victory in the national capital in Kejriwals name. His name personifies AAP.

The other advantage of putting Kejriwal in the limelight is that the BJP in Delhi does not have a single credible face whose recall value in terms of leadership or oratorial skills that could compete with the AAP chief. The BJP is undecided on projecting any of its leader as face of Delhi election, a chief ministerial candidate who as a challenger would take on the incumbent chief minister. In fact, BJP leader and RS member Vijay Goel tweeted this soon after EC announced the dates for Delhi elections.

        ,               #DelhiElections2020  Vijay Goel (@VijayGoelBJP) January 6, 2020

Kejriwal and his team is trying to captialise this opportunity. In the last Assembly elections, AAP used the photo of BJPs Jagadish Mukhi, despite the fact that Mukhi was nowhere in the reckoning for the post. This time around AAP is going sarcastic messaging. Through posters and banners put up in various parts of Delhi it greeted, "seven chief ministerial candidates of BJP". The party tweeted, asking "but the question is who will contest against Arvind Kejriwal":

Aam Admi Party strategists think, and rightly so, that this gives them an edge over their rivals. It should be noted that Congress, which ruled Delhi for 15 continuous years prior to Kejriwals onset in political arena, is immaterial for both the AAP and the BJP.

For BJP, Congresss relevance in these election is only to the extent as to how much percentage of votes it could retain, particularly among Muslim community. For AAP, Congress' relevance is to the extent that latter generally banks on anti-BJP votes and thus the challenge is to sway those votes in AAP's favour.

It will be interesting to see how Congresss new-found aggression against the protests over the Citizenship Amendment Bill, particularly in terms of messaging to the Muslim community, works in terms of political capital. The party, which ironically does not have any prospects in these elections, is still marred by factional feuds and ego clashes.

That makes Delhi election a direct fight between ruling AAP and opposition BJP. It should be noted that after a complete washout in 2019 parliamentary elections, Kejriwal changed his strategy  from a strident critique of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to portraying himself as the man focused on developmental work in Delhi. After EC announced the poll schedule, Kejriwal tweeted:

      Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) January 6, 2020

His tweets on violence in JNU have been mature. He didnt jump to conclusions or indulge in Modi or BJP bashing as he used to earlier. His remarks on the ongoing anti-CAA protests have been measured, as well. He had supported Modi government in Parliament on abrogation of Article 370 and even talked about co-operation with the Centre for all round development of Delhi.

In his latest FM radio advertisement, he talks at length about women safety and how families should talk to their sons and pledge that if they misbehave or harass women then the family would have no link with the boy concerned.

On face of it, Kejriwal seem to have distinct advantage over his rivals in February 2020 elections but he knows this time it is not going to be easy. After serving for five years as the Delhi chief minister, anti-incumbency is one of the factors riding against AAP.

In the last parliamentary elections, AAP finished third in terms of poll percentage  BJP over 56 percent, Congress over 22 percent and AAP close to 15 percent. Last municipal election results, in all three corporations too had surprised AAP. The BJP not only won all three municipal Corporations but also improved its numbers and vote percentage vis-a-vis 2012 municipal and 2015 Assembly polls. In that election, BJP polled 37 percent, AAP 26 percent and Congress 21 percent.
By ANI

MUMBAI: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Monday accused BJP for the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and said that students were assaulted under the Centre's nose.

"There is nothing more unfortunate than the JNU incident. I do not have words to condemn the incident. If something like this can happen under the Centre's nose, then anything can happen in any corner of the country," Gehlot told reporters here.

ALSO READ | Amnesty International criticises Delhi Police for failing to protect students

The senior Congress leader alleged that the BJP government stopped the Delhi Police from taking action against the perpetrators.

"Without the government's consent, it is not possible that the police will stand as an idle spectator while goons assault students," he said.

On Sunday evening, more than 18 students of the university, including JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, were injured and were taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered the varsity and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods.

Gehlot said that the direction in which the country is headed has created uncertainty and everyone is scared of government agencies.

ALSO READ | Bone-chilling violence unleashed on JNU youth with abetment of Modi government: Sonia

"The direction in which the country is headed, there is uncertainty what will happen tomorrow. Democracy is in danger. Everyone is scared of Income Tax Department, CBI, ED, judiciary and Election Commission," he said.

Gehlot, who had come to Mumbai on Sunday, also met his Maharashtra counterpart Uddhav Thackeray at his residence.

"Yesterday, I met Sharad Pawar and I met Uddhav Thackeray today. I am certain that this government will last a full term," he said.
Amazon India on Monday said it has entered into long-term business agreements with Future Group for expanding the reach of the latter's retail stores and consumer brands through its online marketplace

New Delhi: Amazon India on Monday said it has entered into long-term business agreements with Future Group for expanding the reach of the latter's retail stores and consumer brands through its online marketplace.

The development comes after Amazon had agreed to buy 49 percent stake in Future Coupons Ltd that in turn holds a stake in Future Retail Ltd (FRL) last year.

"FRL and Amazon India signed two agreements focusing on key categories - grocery and general merchandise, and fashion and footwear," according to a statement released on Monday.

Future Retail & Amazon India implement long-term business agreements pic.twitter.com/1ozVzyB1zJ  CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) January 6, 2020

Amazon India will also become the authorised online sales channel for FRL stores, and FRL will ensure participation of its relevant stores and programmes on the Amazon India marketplace, it added.

Besides, Future Consumer Ltd (FCL) has also inked a long-term agreement with Amazon Retail India Pvt Ltd (ARIPL) for distribution of Future Consumer's portfolio of brands online. Some of FCL brands include Tasty Treat, Voom, Dreamery, Karmiq, Mother Earth, Kara, CleanMate and others.

As part of the partnership, FRL will augment existing store-infrastructure at its retail outlets for facilitating seamless packaging and pickup of products ordered online. FRL and Amazon India have already launched this service across 22 stores. Both companies plan on rolling this out across the entire FRL store chain based on agreed timelines.

"FRL will leverage its existing infrastructure, strong product knowledge and extensive brand portfolio resulting in higher store productivity and improved margins," as per the statement.

Currently, FRL attracts over 350 million footfalls across its retail network, and Amazon India's marketplace will enable FRL to reach a wider customer base.

Also, FRL will list on the Amazon Prime Now programme, allowing customers to get food, grocery and general merchandise delivery within two hours in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad.

FRL plans to soon list stores like Big Bazaar, and Foodhall in more cites on the Amazon India marketplace.

"In order to drive efficiencies, the two organisations will work closely through a dedicated team, and will explore synergies in distribution, customer acquisition, and marketing initiatives. This creates an enviable collaboration bringing together the best of consumer insights and geographical reach from the online and offline world," the statement said.

Kishore Biyani, Chairman and Managing Director of FRL, said "this arrangement will allow us to build upon each other's strengths in the physical and digital space so that customers benefit from the best services, products, assortment and price".

"FRL's national footprint of stores offering thousands of products across fashion, appliances, home, kitchen and grocery will now be available to millions of customers shopping on Amazon.in, in hours across over 25 cities, Amazon India Senior Vice President and Country Head Amit Agarwal said.

On the FCL-ARIPL partnership, Future Consumer Ltd Managing Director Ashni Biyani said the collaboration will expand the reach of its brands to new sets of customers on Amazon India's online marketplace.

"We will be working closely with Amazon to develop marketing and promotion initiatives and look forward to using Amazon's technical expertise and resources to increase the reach of our brands. Our distinct portfolio of brands catering to aspirational categories will be an excellent addition to Amazon's offerings. Hence, we believe this is a win-win agreement, Ashni Biyani added.

FCL brands are currently available across multiple channels including general trade, digital platforms and modern retail apart from over 1,700 stores across Future Group's retail chains including Big Bazaar, EasyDay, Heritage Fresh, Nilgiris, WH Smith and among others.

"Currently, Future Consumer has a largely offline presence. Through this agreement, Future Consumer will build an online channel and offer Future Consumer's brands to millions of Amazon's customers," the company said.
Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee urges govt to establish the truth of JNU violence

India

oi-Mousumi Dash

Kolkata, Jan 06: A day after the JNU campus violence Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee has urged the government to establish the truth of the incident. Banerjee, who is also a JNU alumnus, has shown concerns over India's image abroad after the masked men attacked JNU students and teachers on campus, on Sunday.

While talking to media Banerjee said that any Indian who cares about the country's image in the world should worry. This has too many echoes of the years when Germany was moving towards the Nazi rule.

Regarding the JNU Registrar's statement that claimed the students protesting against hostel fee hike for the violence, Banerjee, an alumnus of the premier institution added that instead of getting drowned in the chorus of counter accusations the government needs to actually establish the truth of the incident.

Abhijit Banerjee, wife Duflo draped in Dhoti and Sari receive medals of Nobel Prize

The Nobel laureate expressed his concern for those who were injured. And wished the injured speedy recovery.

NEWS AT 3 PM, JANUARY 6th, 2020...

Reportedly, on Sunday nearly 34 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh were injured and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) as violence spread on the JNU campus for nearly two hours, as masked men reportedly armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

Earlier, after winning the Nobel prize when Banerjee, visited the JNU campus last year she said in an interview with media that he faced police action in JNU back in 1983 when he was a student of MA (Economics) at the university.

Recollecting his JNU days, he explained how he was jailed in Tihar for more than a week over protests against the expulsion of the then students' union president. He also recalled that he, along with other protesters had gheraoed the house of the Vice-Chancellor then.

Abhijit Banerjee meets novelist Nabaneeta Dev Sen

Banerjee, who is presently the professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019 for efforts to alleviate global poverty along with his wife, Esther Duflo and fellow economists Michael Kremer.
How to manage electrosensitivity

Today much of humanity lives in a sea of electromagnetic energies, or EM fields. Radio and TV signals are now joined by mobile phone towers and communications masts. Closer to home are mobile phones, Wi-Fi and smart meters. According to Swedish expert and researcher Olle Johansson, this level of radiation is one quintillion (1 followed by 18 zeros) times higher than the background level encountered before modern technology arrived on the scene.

Biological effects were first noticed early, in the 1930s, when a syndrome often referred to as radiowave sickness was encountered among military personnel exposed to radar. During the following decades, this condition was also encountered by amateur radio buffs who were using non-shielded equipment.

People with ES are more likely than the general population to have multiple chemical sensitivities.

Decades later, with multiplying sources of EMF radiation in the environment, this issue has not gone away and trends indicate a continuing growth in numbers affected. Electrosensitivity (ES), also sometimes known as electrohypersensitivity (EHS), affects somewhere around 4-10 per cent of the population in industrialised nations, with women more likely to experience it than men.

Among ES people, physiological damage is often cumulative and irreversible, although there are ways to tackle the symptoms. These symptoms appear to be neurological and immunological in nature and include headaches, fatigue, insomnia, tinnitus and brain fog. People with ES are more likely than the general population to have multiple chemical sensitivity.

The mainstream view

In todays technology-addicted society where radiation-emitting devices are ubiquitous and most people are unaware of experiencing any ill effects, treating electrosensitivity like a real condition is out of step with mainstream public awareness. A common theme is the inevitable tinfoil hat stereotype, implying that the causes are paranoia, irrational beliefs and technophobia.

Given the influence of Wikipedia as one of the worlds most frequently consulted websites, its dismissal of radiation as a cause of electrosensitivity is unhelpful. High-profile scientist Karl Kruszelnicki dismisses the concerns as hysteria. However, sometimes the mainstream media is prepared to go out on a limb by presenting ES from the perspective of those who are affected by it. One example is the Sydney Morning Heralds2015 story Brain on fire.

[In Sweden] since 2000 ES has been recognised as a functional impairment, a form of disability.

While the medical mainstream holds that ES is a genuine condition, it dismisses the symptoms as essentially psychological. The Australian academic Simon Chapman is an example. With a background in public health, he is a high-profile exponent of the nocebo theory. This holds that people generate physical symptoms as a result of a strong belief that something will do them harm. Australian bodies that are inclined to a psychological interpretation include the national regulator Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) and the research unit Australian Centre for Electromagnetic Bioeffects Research (ACEBR).

Ascribing ES to a psychological disorder is not consequence-free; it steers policy making away from curbing radiation levels, and has led to a fair number of ES sufferers being wrongly and unjustly detained in mental institutions for periods of time. It certainly dovetails closely with industry interests.

This psychological interpretation is at odds with the experience of electrosensitives who develop a cluster of symptoms, are unable to obtain a medical diagnosis and only years later identify EMF as the cause.

Weak safety limits

Despite many studies indicating that physiological damage can only occur at non-thermal levels, below those capable of creating a heating effect in the body, decision-makers typically reject this evidence and hold the contrary view that damage can only occur at higher thermal levels. This perspective is reflected in 1998 global exposure guidelines drawn up by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). Widely criticised for being too lax, they appear to have been set at a level that accommodates likely maximum exposures.

Earthing, or grounding, is beneficial to electrosensitives. It involves spending time with one's bare feet on the grass, which has a mild negative charge. Another suggestion is to soak in a baking soda and sea salt bath.

The Australian and New Zealand safe exposure limit of 1000 microwatts per square centimetreis based on the ICNIRP level, and contrasts markedly with a number of countries including China, Russia, and several European contries all have limits of 10 microwatts per square centimetreor less. Australias adherence to ICNIRP is interesting, given the existence of a little-known 1994 CSIRO report, authored by Dr Stan Barnett, acknowledging increasing evidence of health effects occurring at non-thermal radiation levels.

A new concern is radiation from the 5G network, which is currently being rolled out in Australia, and is likely to arrive in New Zealand soon. Small cells may need to installed on residential streets, and it has already been signalled that 5G is likely to prompt ICNIRP to upwardly revise its already-generous radiation guidelines.

Non-ionising versus ionising

An easy error to make is to confuse non-ionising EMF radiation with the ionising radiation associated with radioactivity and x-rays, which is more commonly associated with DNA damage. Both operate on different parts of the spectrum.

Scientific research

In an ideal world it would be easy to diagnose electrosensitivity, but unfortunately there is no standard test to identify it. Among people who self-identify as ES, nocebo may be a small factor, but a thorough investigation of the case histories of people with more severe ES points in other directions.

One class of test is the provocation trial, in which a test subject attempts to detect the presence of an EMF field under blinded conditions, when compared to a placebo. Often these are unsuccessful, based as they are on the shaky assumption that the average ES person has accurate detection powers in real-time. Double-blind studies on the subject tend to have a few common weaknesses, including the exclusion of subjects who dropped out because they felt too ill, and different individuals being more sensitive to different frequencies.

Despite this, some double-blind studies on ES subjects have yielded positive results. These include studies related to tachycardia (elevated heartbeat rate) from cordless phones, a rise in blood pressure from mobile phone exposure, and one female who showed electrosensitivity symptoms following exposure.

Scientific work in this field involves:

Olle Johansson, who until recently worked at Karolinska Institute in Sweden. His 2006 paper found that test subjects with ES exhibited alterations in their mast and dendritic skin cells that were not encountered in the remainder of the population. Similar effects were also found on animals, removing the risk of nocebo being the cause.

Martin Pall is an emeritus professor at Washington State University. An outspoken scientific figure on the topic, he sees voltage-gated calcium channels as the mechanism by which low-level EMFs can have a biological effect. Drugs that block these channels tend to largely prevent negative symptoms.

An Italian-Russian study found that people with ES were significantly more likely to have gene variants in the bodys glutathione antioxidant system. As a result, further oxidative stress was more likely to produce symptoms.

Professor Dominique Belpomme in France looked at 700 ES sufferers. All had decreased levels of melatonin, which probably explains why sleep disturbances are common among electrosensitives. More than one-quarter had a broken blood-brain barrier, and those affected in this way are more likely to be affected by chemicals.

An important 2004 study by Dr Gunnar Heuser was prompted by neurological problems experienced by fire-fighters, starting immediately after a mobile phone tower was installed on their fire station. In all subjects, SPECT scans identified brain abnormalities, indicating hyper-excitability of neurons in some areas of the brain.

Meeting needs

On the whole, the needs of electrosensitives are not being taken into account. The main exception is Sweden, where ES has been recognised as a functional impairment (a form of disability). Electrosensitives receive allowances, and live in houses that are retrofitted to remove radiation sources.

In Australia in 2013, CSIRO research scientist Dr David McDonald was awarded compensation by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in relation to his electrosensitivity.

Olle Johansson argues that people with ES should not be excluded from certain areas of life, or banished to refuges, if they are lucky enough to find one. Swedens policies take the comparatively radical but commonsense view that where human functioning is in conflict with the surrounding environment, the environment should be altered to accommodate the needs of people, rather than people being treated as subservient to their man-made surroundings.

Dafna Tachover from the American ES advocacy group We Are the Evidence believes that the term sensitivity is a case of victim blaming and she prefers to refer to the condition as an injury.

Coping strategies

Inevitably city centres have high EMR levels, and the remote bush has the lowest. While it is possible to implement protection measures in ones private living space, public spaces with their myriad radiation sources pose more of a challenge, and sensitive people typically limit the time that they spend there. Buying a radiation-measuring meter is useful to keep tabs on exposure levels. The term distance is your friend is a good motto to remember; doubling the distance from an EMF source reduces exposure four-fold.

Get a good doctor who has some experience with electrosensitivity, and who can advocate on your behalf if needed.

In terms of navigating the consumer marketplace, corded landlines are obviously far more suitable than cordless phones and mobiles. For people with more severe symptoms, while not desirabke from and energy use perspective halogen globes are ideal in terms of radiation emission, but their sale in Australia will be discontinued from September 2020 onward. For smart meters, which are probably the number one involuntary domestic exposure, field intensity can be greatly reduced by Faraday cage-style units such as the Smartblock. Meters can be wireless-deactivated in Australia, and in New Zealand customers of Nova Energy can swap them for older-style meters.

Avoiding metal helps, whether these are contaminants in the body (heavy metals), metals on the body (jewellery, amalgam fillings, dental implants) or mattress springs. The range of EMF-protective products available online includes shielding paints, special clothing, grounding plates, window film and anti-radiation phone cases.

In the typical modern lifestyle, a positive charge is typically built up in the body as a result of exposure to technological devices. Earthing, or grounding, is beneficial to electrosensitives. It involves spending time with ones bare feet on the grass, which has a mild negative charge. Another suggestion is to soak in a baking soda and sea salt bath.

Finding refuge

When electrosensitive people are looking to relocate to the bush, a key consideration is the mobile coverage map. Unlike the majority of people who are looking for reasonably good coverage, electrosensitives are searching for none at all. These white zones, or black spots, are sought after, and valleys are good because they tend to block incoming signals. The difficulty is that given the incursion of coverage into rural areas, a white zone may suddenly see a new phone tower and sensitive people may be forced to move.

Significant radiation-quiet-zones include the National Radio Quiet Zone in the US state of Virginia, a large area covering about 34,000 square kilometres. In south-eastern France, a refuge is situated in the Drome region, inside a nature reserve. Italy has its own refuge within the Vena del Gesso Regional Park in the province of Ravenna.

RESOURCES

Electrosensitivity Australia

ES-UK

Australian National Register of Environmental Sensitivities

ARPANSA Electromagnetic Radiation Health Complaints Register

We Are The Evidence

Radiation Refuge
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 03:45:49|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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AMMAN, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- King Abdullah II of Jordan reaffirmed the country's keenness to maintain Iraq's security and stability, according to a Royal Court statement.

In a phone call with Iraqi President Barham Salih on Sunday, the king stressed the need to exert all efforts to overcome tensions, protect all components of the Iraqi people, and avoid threats to regional and global peace and stability, the statement said.

On Saturday, Jordan's Foreign Ministry voiced its great concern over the developments in Iraq and urged cooperation to preserve stability in the country.
London, Jan 6 : British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to host European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday at 10 Downing Street for the first time, with a future trade deal high on their agenda.

The meeting comes after Von der Leyen said last month that both sides needed to think seriously about whether the 2020 deadline was enough to reach an agreement, reports Xinhua news agency.

Commentators warned that if no trade deal with the European Union (EU) is in place by December 31, 2020 and without extension, Britain will face major economic disruption with tariffs and quantity restrictions immediately applied to goods sold into the European single market.

Johnson has repeatedly insisted that he will not extend the transition period.

Last month, the House of Commons gave his re-worked Brexit Bill a wide support, where he added a clause to rule out any extension beyond December 31, 2020.

The House of Commons is scheduled to sit for three days this week.

Downing Street does not expect any shocks on the bill, as every Conservative politician had signed up to supporting it.

But opposition parties are expected to put forward a long list of amendments in a last-ditch bid to change it, which seems unlikely to steer Johnson off course.

In the following week, the House of Lords will debate the bill.

Given the majority it passed with in the Commons, the bill is expected to be rushed through, before receiving Royal Assent from Queen Elizabeth II.

EU member state leaders will then be expected to sign up to it to pave the way for Britain's departure from the the bloc on January 31.
By Abdi Sheikh, Joseph Akwiri and Phil Stewart NAIROBI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three Americans - one U.S.

By Abdi Sheikh, Joseph Akwiri and Phil Stewart

NAIROBI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three Americans - one U.S. military servicemember and two contractors - were killed by Somalia's al Shabaab militant group during an attack on Sunday on a military base in Kenya used by both U.S. and Kenyan forces, the U.S. military said.

The military's Africa Command confirmed the deaths and said two other Americans who work for the U.S. Department of Defense were also wounded in the attack on the Manda Bay Airfield in Lamu county, close to the Somali border.

"The wounded Americans are currently in stable condition and being evacuated," Africa Command (AFRICOM) said in a statement.

The attack presents another crisis for Washington just as the Pentagon grapples with a rapidly escalating standoff with Iran following a Friday U.S. drone strike in Baghdad that killed top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani.

Tehran and Washington have traded threats and counter-threats following the strike, stoking fears of open conflict.

The assault by al Shabaab, which has been fighting for more than a decade to overthrow the Somali government and impose strict Islamic law, began before dawn and lasted around four hours, witnesses and military sources told Reuters.

A Kenyan police report seen by Reuters said the Islamist militants destroyed two planes, two U.S. helicopters and multiple American military vehicles during their assault.

The Kenyan military said five militants had been killed in the attack. There were no immediate reports of Kenyan casualties.

In a statement earlier on Sunday, al Shabaab claimed it had destroyed seven aircraft and three military vehicles, without providing other details. It also published pictures of masked gunmen standing next to an aircraft in flames.

AFRICOM said fewer than 150 U.S. personnel had been at the base, where they provided training and counterterrorism support to East African forces.

"Alongside our African and international partners, we will pursue those responsible for this attack," said U.S. Army General Stephen Townsend, who leads Africa Command.

Kenyan military spokesman Colonel Paul Njuguna said the base had been secured.

"This morning at around 5:30 am an attempt was made to breach security at Manda Air Strip. The attempted breach was successfully repulsed," he said in a statement.

"Arising from the unsuccessful breach a fire broke out affecting some of the fuel tanks located at the airstrip. The fire has been put under control."

In the operation to repulse the attack, at least five militants were killed and weapons including four AK47 rifles were seized, Njuguna said.

There was no indication the militants had managed to enter the base. The airfield is separate to another on Manda Island used by commercial flights to Lamu.

Kenya sent troops into Somalia in 2011 after a spate of cross-border attacks and kidnappings. They were later absorbed into an African Union peacekeeping force, now 21,000-strong, which supports the shaky, Western-backed Somali government.

EXPLOSION IN THE DARK

Independent investigator Benjamin Strick, who analyses satellite imagery for open-source investigation websites such as Bellingcat, said the photos of gunmen next to a burning plane published by al Shabaab matched satellite images of buildings and a distinctive aircraft apron adjacent to the base but outside its perimeter.

Residents on nearby Lamu Island, a haven for wealthy tourists and visiting European royalty, said a loud explosion jolted them awake before 4 a.m.

Abdalla Barghash said he later saw a large dark plume of smoke rising from the Manda Bay mainland, where the airstrip and base are located.

Lamu county, which is far more impoverished than the island, is frequently targeted by al Shabaab with roadside bombs and ambushes on travellers or attacks on isolated villages.

The insurgents killed three passengers when they attacked a bus in the county on Thursday.

(Reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Joseph Akwiri in Nairobi and Phil Stewart in Washington; Additional reporting by Humphrey Malalo, Feisal Omar and Katharine Houreld; Writing by Katharine Houreld, Elias Biryabarema and Phil Stewart; Editing by Gareth Jones and Peter Cooney)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Click here to read the full article.

In Photoshoot 6, well have everyone who wears scales on the outside, the announcer drones over a microphone, as dozens of six-foot alligators, snakes, lizards, and other assorted reptiles scramble to pose for a group photo. Some take a final sip from their water bottles, a friend or partner patiently holding their jaws wide open for them; others extricate themselves from hugs with cats or rabbits or birds. I have seen Planet Earth enough times to know that in the animal kingdom, such creatures would be considered prey; but here, in the Hyatt Regency OHare Grand Ballroom, neither natural law nor David Attenboroughs narration applies.

If you identify as a species that hasnt been called yet, not to worry, the announcer adds before calling up otters, then wildcats and sabers. On the floor, about three dozen foxes lie on top of each other in a fur pile, orange-and-white limbs and bellies knotted together on the ground.

More from Rolling Stone

Such public displays of interspecies affection are the currency of MidWest FurFest, an annual convention in Rosemont, Illinois, just a few minutes outside Chicago. Midwest FurFest, or MFF for short, is in its 20th year and offers a wide range of events, including informational panels, photo shoots, talent performances, and a breakdancing competition. It is one of the worlds largest conventions aimed at furries, a highly stigmatized, oft-misunderstood subculture comprised of people who have an affinity for anthropomorphized animals.

The mainstream media has historically painted furries as sex-crazed, socially maladjusted freaks who enjoy rubbing up against each other in giant bunny costumes. This is essentially false. Like most subcultures, the furry fandom is a largely internet-driven phenomenon, providing a label for a preexisting feeling that has always lived, dormant and unnamed, inside a select number of people. While there is a contingent of furries who do derive sexual pleasure from the subculture, the fanbase is much more broad than that.

Story continues

Maybe you really liked drawing wolves during eighth-grade homeroom. Maybe youve always felt an inexplicable affinity with Tony the Tiger. Maybe youve long thought it would be rad to buy a $10,000 curvy hippo costume and enter a breakdancing competition. If you fall into any of these categories, then furries are your kind of people, and FurFest the place to unleash the human-sized sergal (a fictional rabbit/shark/wolf amalgam) within. As the voiceover to an intro presentation for FurFest sonorously boomed over a dubstep beat, You know you are more than a humannow you are the beast that slept inside your mind.

MFF is widely touted as the biggest furry con in the world, and its attendance has increased exponentially in recent years: While the con only saw about 1,000 attendees in 2005, it reported more than 10,900 guests in 2018, and Matt Berger, media relations lead for MFF, estimates that 12,000 were in attendance this year. Thats in part due to the increasing number of younger children and their families who are gravitating to furry culture  during my time at Midwest FurFest, I saw children as young as seven attending dance competitions and meet-and-greets accompanied by their parents, having stumbled on the fandom via YouTube or TikTok.

In so keeping with its increasingly family-friendly image, the fandom has become intent on promoting itself as a beacon of acceptance and inclusivity, and MFF is no exception. As a fox named Tiller told me upon check-in, everyone here is welcome  except Nazis. This message was particularly salient this year, after far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopolous made some highly public threats last September to gate-crash the convention. (Despite his posting a photo from check-in on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, Berger and MFF attendees said that as far as they know, he did not make good on his threat.)

There were no Nazis at FurFest, as far as I could tell, but there was a lot of hugging and dancing and body odor and potential copyright infringement claims (including multiple not-so-thinly veiled renderings of characters from the Nickelodeon series Paw Patrol). The people I spoke with ranged widely in terms of age, education level, and socioeconomic background: there were investment bankers, video retail salespeople, graduate students, animators, software engineers, marketing specialists, veterinary techs, and airline pilots (who, I was told by more than one person, are overrepresented in the fandom, possibly having been inspired by the bear Baloo in the 1990s cartoon series Talespin). Far from the mainstream depiction of the fandom as a sex-crazed monolith, the furries I met really only had a handful of traits in common: they were largely white, LGBTQ, and almost without exception, friendly and sincere, nearly to a fault.

At its most fundamental level, the concept of anthropomorphized creatures has its tentacles deep in history, further back than furry cons or anime or even a certain relentlessly chipper, shirtless cartoon mouse. One of the oldest known works of art, the Paleolithic Lowenmensch sculpture, depicts a human with the head of a lion; the ancient Egyptians also worshipped half-man, half-animal deities; and Aesops fables features a panoply of animal characters imbued with human traits, from cunning to pride to sloth (the three-toed version of which derives its name from the term for laziness).

In this sense, furries are both one of the oldest fandoms and a relatively modern one as well, says Alex Tang, an artist and designer who is also currently working on a book about the history of convention culture. But the furry fandom as we know it has its roots in the early-to-mid 1980s, when a group of sci-fi con attendees who bonded over anthropomorphic animals organized room parties devoted to their mutual interest before splintering off to form their own event.

The advent of the internet  specifically furry-related message boards and IRC channels  brought more furs together. Before, people came across the fandom via things like Disney cartoons and it was a type of media you could consume, versus one you could participate in, says Hookaloof, 24, a bear. Now if you like a piece of art someone has done, you can speak to them, see how they act. Its easier to form an emotional connection to a piece of content, whereas before it was more passive.

In the broader landscape of fan culture, furries are relatively unique: while Star Trek and Star Wars and brony (the term for male My Little Pony fans) cons are united by specific franchises or characters, that is not the case for furries, who largely devise their own characters, called fursonas. Being a furry isnt about being a fan of a person or a group of people, says Matt Berger, media relations lead for MFF. Were fans of each other here.

Furries are also unique in that they all approach the fandom from different vantage points. While some enjoy dressing up as their fursonas, others prefer making or consuming animal-inspired fan art, while others still simply enjoy the camaraderie inherent in the community. The only uniting characteristic of furries is that you need to really like animals. Thats basically it, says Laurie, 38, a librarian with a passing facial and auditory resemblance to a young Elizabeth Warren. You can just like to pet cats and be a furry. You can like to draw and make money and go to the Dealers Den [the artists marketplace] and be a furry. Its all good.

Laurie has been attending MFF for the past 10 years. She always felt an innate connection to animals: She grew up reading Black Beauty, pretending to be a horse during recess. But she is somewhat unique in the fandom in that she doesnt have a typical fursona, arguably the most crucial first step into furry culture. Your fursona can be any one animal or combination thereof; its not uncommon to see aquatic characters with fur, or mammals with wings, or bear/dog/cat/dragon hybrids. But newcomers are encouraged be something other than a wolf or a dog or a fox, by far the most popular animals within the fandom, and to hew to a certain type of internal logic that makes sense to you, if not to anyone else.

That character should also be imbued with a personality, which doesnt necessarily have to be identical your own. You adopt a character who personifies the traits you want, says Phantom, a 32-year-old purple fox with multicolored racing stripes, who out of fursuit, is a small, self-effacing software engineer. At first it was supposed to be a character whos braver and more appealing than I am in my human self, but after some time it becomes more like you, or more like a friend.

Developing a fursona usually starts with creating or commissioning art of your character. If you cant draw, you can hire an amateur artist on Twitter to sketch a rendering for as little as $10 to $20; more established artists can cost upwards of a few hundred or even thousands. From there, you can hire a designer to create a fursuit for your character, or to buy a preexisting fursuit online. From what I saw, however, only about a third of the MFF attendees were in full costume, in part because fursuits are prohibitively expensive, with many costing thousands of dollars. There was one from my manufacturer that went up for auction for $17,000, an Akita named Slate told me. I bought a 1978 Corvette for that amount of money. (He paid $6,000 for his.)

Its also because learning how to navigate the world in suit is, in itself, a challenge. Because the suits heat up extremely quickly, it is not uncommon for furries at cons to pass out, from heat stroke or alcohol poisoning or a combination thereof; it is not unheard of for ER techs in these situations to cut the suit off, essentially a furrys worst nightmare. Eating, drinking, and seeing in costume are also difficult: bumping into other furs is likely, while bumping into small children is near-inevitable. Imagine putting on three different pairs of sunglasses, a husky said onstage at an Intro to FurFest panel. Thats what walking around in a fursuit is like. Later, I confirm this firsthand when someone offers to let me try on their Akita fursuit head, which feels like being encased inside a fluffy 75-pound weight. (It is accurate, though perhaps uncharitable, to note that it also does not smell great.)

For furries who can afford fursuits, however, those suits often serve a very specific function, particularly if they are one of a not-insignificant number of furries that skews more neurodiverse, as Laurie puts it. Many furries have special needs, such as anxiety or an autism spectrum diagnosis, and struggle to interact with others during their daily lives; for those people, donning a fursuit can be nothing short of a social balm. My interaction with people was always awkward and I didnt know how to make conversation, says Vanilla, 23, a lavender husky with autism. But with animals, you dont have to put up a front or anything like that. Appearing in fursuit takes the pressure off her to interact with people verbally, which can be difficult for people with autism: People dont go, Oh, shes awkward, but Oh, shes cute!'

Or, to quote a gray-haired woman at the autism panel: For three days I am not autistic. For three days, I am a giant anthropormorphic version of the Titanic, and Im just being a big dork.

As the staffer told me on my first day, furries are not Nazis, but that is not the same thing as saying that no Nazis are furries. There is a small yet highly vocal contingent of far-right furries (who organized under the hashtag #AltFurry) who have attempted to gate-crash other conventions, including Colorados Rocky Mountain Fur Con in 2016, prompting a counter protest marked by the Dead Kennedy-esque catchphrase Nazi furs fuck off. They show up for the sole purpose of getting dressed up and getting kicked out, says Artemis Wishfoot, 27, a six-and-a-half-foot collie and prominent YouTuber. One of them showed up one year dressed in full World War I German soldier regalia, so he didnt even get it right, he says.

It is perhaps the existence of this subgroup that initially prompted Milo Yiannopolous, a professional far-right troll, to believe that he would have a captive audience at Midwest FurFest. Last September, Yiannopolous  who had seen his audience dramatically fall after he was deplatformed on virtually all social media  posted that he would be attending FurFest. Though he made a cursory stab at claiming genuine interest in the community, even adopting a snow leopard fursona, his announcement prompted tremendous backlash.

That backlash was arguably exacerbated by Midwest FurFests response to Yiannopolouss attendance. Though the board rescinded his registration two days after he posted he would be attending on Telegram, some furries told me at the time they considered the response too slow, and that Yiannopolous should not have been allowed to register to begin with. Indeed, Berger, the head of communications for MFF, said in December that Yiannopolous was banned largely for pragmatic reasons, not ideological ones. As a nonprofit we cant take a political stance either way, he says. Fundamentally for us, based on other things that we had seen in media, he would have required an additional amount of security that we just couldnt bear the burden for.

Such bad press, however, has not nearly been as detrimental to the fandom as the widespread perception that furries, for lack of a better term, fuck. This perception has been bolstered by media portrayals on shows like CSI and 30 Rock, in which one of Tina Feys prospective suitors informs her, to her horror, that the fandoms term for intercourse is yiffing; for what its worth, I did not hear this term once at the con, though I did see two Akitas vaping while playing patty-cake, which was arguably more disturbing.

As Tang points out, within the context of fandom culture as a whole, furries tend to get something of a bum rap in this regard. Anime cons and comic cons sell NSFW porn comics and body pillows, he says, referring first to life-size pillows with characters painted on them. Yet its only the furries that are labeled as adult. Furries themselves are prone to vociferously insisting that there is absolutely nothing inherently sexual about the fandom, and those who claim otherwise are misinformed bigots. As easy as it is to generalize that its just a sex thing, I find its a minority and a very vocal one at that, says Wishfoot, who has polled the community on this question. He found that 60% of furries did not find it sexual at all, with the remaining 40% largely restricting themselves to enjoying NSFW furry art, rather than actually having sex in fursuit. A lot of people have sexual interest, without there being sexual action, he says.

But saying that the furry fandom is not sexual at all is like saying that people who smoke weed only do so for purely therapeutic reasons: While its true for a large number of people, it hardly applies to all of them. There is a substantial contingent of furries attending such after-hours events as kink workshops and latex parties. I think kink and furry are two separate things, but they do tend to overlap, says Stormi, a veterinary tech who teaches kink and consent workshops with her partner at the con. (It should, however, be noted that actually having sex in fursuit is relatively rare: I already have a hard enough time cleaning my fursuit as is, Stormis partner Toby told me.)

The sexual elements of the fandom are not exactly a secret. Much of the artwork in the Dealers Den, the section of the con that sells art and merchandise, is implicitly sexualized, if not overtly pornographic. (Interestingly, the vast majority of this art depicts a thinly disguised version of Nick Wilde, the anthropomorphized fox voiced by Jason Bateman in the 2016 Disney movie Zootopia, the Citizen Kane of the furry fandom.) Adult vendors such as Bad Dragon, which manufactures dragon dildos, also tend to outsell many of the other more family-friendly vendors at the con. Is there a contingent that [incorporates the fandom into their sex lives]? Obviously based on sales, based on lots of things, yes, says Berger. I think the approach that we have is that it is a part of the community, but it is not necessarily fair to say it is representative of the community.

The fact that a disproportionate number of furries self-identify as LGBTQ allows for more sexual experimentation and openness than there may be in fandoms that skew less so, such as, say, the anime fandom. One 2012 survey found that less than 30 percent of furries identified as straight, compared to roughly 96 percent of the general population; in so keeping, I heard someone playfully bellow the phrase get your heterosexuality away from me within minutes of being at the convention.

There are people who use being a furry as a way to explore gender and sexuality, says Laurie. For people who dont want to admit they are experimenting, or they are not in a position where they can change their physical self for whatever reason, they can go online and make this character. And if youre gonna switch something like gender, why not be a unicorn?

The misconception that the fandom is purely sexualized probably stems from similar misconceptions and stereotypes associated with LGBTQ people in general. But some LGBTQ furries say that theyre attracted to the community precisely because they consider it a space where gender and sexuality are not paramount. In my experience, the minute you say you are gay, you are Gay with a capital G. Your sexuality becomes the focus of who you are, says Ragabash, 34, a coyote. And that falls away here because were dressing up like big fluffy animals and having fun.

Historically, there has been some tension between those on the NSFW and SFW sides of the fandom. The early 2000s saw the formation of a small subgroup fiercely devoted to reducing what it viewed as perversion within the community; while this group, known as burned furs, is now relatively small, there is a not-insubstantial number of furries who share this overall goal.

One of them, a bespectacled wolf named Lazer, grew up in Florida in a devoutly religious family. Initially, he and his family told me as they ate veggie wraps outside the Hyatt ballroom, they were resistant to his joining the fandom, due to their concerns with how he could reconcile it with his faith. My first mistake was looking it up on Wikipedia and learning about the sexual attraction and deviant side of it, his mother Jolie said. After praying on it and discussing it in therapy, Lazer decided to jump into the fandom snout-first, though he says he is still uncomfortable with the preponderance of LGBTQ people within the fandom and what he says is his biblical view of homosexuality. I keep thinking, I have to bring my light into darker places,' he says, seemingly finding no inconsistency between this view and the fact that society, as a whole, is not exactly tolerant of adults dressing as multicolored canines.

Throughout FurFest, even if I didnt explicitly ask this question, the undercurrent of the conversation was always: Will furries ever go mainstream? Some of the attendees at MFF, particularly those who have been in the fandom for a long time, believed this was in part happening already, as evidenced by the influx of kids with their parents at the con. I never told my parents I was a furry. I wouldnt dream of being 15 and bringing my parents here, says Laurie. But Im seeing more here  theyve got the glazed parent look in their eyes, but at least theyre here.

The popularity of events like ComicCon may also be contributing to this trend. Ever since Iron Man came out [in 2008] theres been a shift where geek culture is becoming more and more accepted and mainstream, Tang says. Even so, says Laurie, while its more acceptable to tell people youre going to a comic con or a sci-fi con, that still doesnt apply to furry cons. The assumption would be [if I told anyone] that Im a crazy sex person, she says. The mainstreaming of any subculture is contingent on the sanitization of its grittier side,,and if the furry fandom has any hope of finding cultural acceptance, it could only be after it has been thoroughly scrubbed of its sexualized elements, even if they arent front and center in the culture.

I think about this later that evening, when I attend a latex photo shoot and meet a tulip-pink rubber pig named Omni with enormous breasts, comically oversized buttocks, and no apparent holes in her suit for speaking or eating or breathing; the only indication that she was anything other than a 6-foot-tall kinky porcine goddess was a flash of hairy ankle above her Sperry loafers. It was 11 p.m., well within the confines of the after-dark hours for the convention, when Omni could roam (or, more accurately, squeak) through the halls without attracting notice of terrified parents or judgmental Christian dragons. It occurred to me that someday there may be a version of Midwest FurFest where sexy, terrifying latex pigs werent allowed to roam the corridors of the Hyatt at 11:00, or even at all, and even though I am neither kinky nor a furry, I was surprised to find that the prospect of this reality made me sad.

The final night of Midwest FurFest, before a group of hungover furries decamped in the lobby of the Hyatt, drinking iced coffee and nodding by way of greeting instead of the customary hug, I went to a furry rave. I saw a fox covered in Christmas lights slow-dancing with a raccoon. I saw a rainbow-striped zebra with a blond ponytail. I saw a skunk in an Adidas backpack press up against a grey and purple rat. And I saw a cat.fish.tiger.something.I dont know what I am, as a tiny girl with giant paws and giant pupils told me before darting away.

Other than the girl, who was very clearly on ecstasy, no one was doing anything outside the realm of propriety; the average middle school dance would have made for a far more lurid scene. Yet when I posted a video of the rave on Instagram, it was immediately flagged and barred from being shared, for violating its guidelines against inappropriate content. That night, in scrolling through my feed, I saw more misogynistic posts from college Instagram meme pages and photos of emaciated teen influencers in bikinis than I could count; yet somehow the social media powers that be had deemed a video of a thicc hippo dancing with a tiger too offensive for the platform.

So maybe the question isnt whether well ever accept furries; maybe the question is why they would ever want our acceptance to begin with, when they could exist happily at the FurFest rave, the rats grinding with the skunks, the foxes cuddling with the wolves, the rubber pig latex goddesses doing whatever they do with other consenting rubber pig latex goddesses, bringing their own light to dark places, living as the beasts inside their minds, judged by no one but their own half-man, half-animal, all-forgiving gods.

Launch Gallery: Photos: Inside Communal Furry Love at FurFest Midwest

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Donald Trumps head in the wake of General Qasem Soleimanis assasination, according to reports. During the televised funeral of the top Iranian, official state broadcasters said one US dollar would be tabled for every Iranian in the country, with the cash going to whoever killed the US President. Iran has 80 million inhabitants. Based on the Iranian population, we want to raise $80million (61million) which is a reward for those who get close to the head of President Trump, it was announced, according to en24. Soleimani, Irans preeminent military commander, was killed on Friday in a US drone strike on his convoy at Baghdad airport. The attack took long-running hostilities between Washington and Tehran into uncharted territory and raised the spectre of wider conflict in the Middle East. Earlier today Iranian MP Abolfazl Aboutorabi threatened to attack the heart of American politics.

We have the power, and God willing we will respond in an appropriate time. He went on to say that this is a declaration of war, which means if you hesitate you lose. When someone declares war, do you want to respond to the bullets with flowers? They will shoot you in the head. During an open session of parliament in Tehran this afternoon President Trump was called a terrorist in a suit after he threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites hard if Tehran attacks Americans or U.S. assets. Soleimani was the architect of Tehrans clandestine and military operations abroad as head of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promised on Friday that Iran would seek harsh revenge for his death. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that if there were further Iranian attacks on U.S. targets, Washington would respond with lawful strikes against decision-makers orchestrating such attacks. The intelligence assessment made clear that no action  allowing Soleimani to continue his plotting and his planning, his terror campaign  created more risk than taking the action that we took last week, Pompeo said on ABCs This Week show.

The move to kill Soleimani has not been met with universal enthusiasm by Demoracts.
The authors of the latest study used customs data to trace the fallout, examining import values before and after the tariffs. The research showed that the tariffs had little impact on China.

Were just not seeing foreigners bearing the cost, which to me is very surprising, Professor Weinstein said in an interview.

They also found a delayed impact from the tariffs, with the decline in some imports roughly doubling on average in the second year of the levies.

That is because it takes some time for firms to reorganize their supply chains so that they can avoid the tariffs, the authors write.

Reaction to the tariffs has varied across business sectors, however. In the steel industry, for example, companies that export to the United States have dropped their prices  suggesting that other countries are in fact paying close to half of the cost of tariffs, according to the paper.

Because China is only the 10th-largest steel supplier to the United States, though, exporters in the European Union, Japan and South Korea are most likely bearing much of that cost. And as foreign prices drop, domestic steel production has barely budged, which bodes poorly for hiring in the United States steel industry, the authors note.

The steel industry isnt getting that much protection, as a result, Professor Weinstein said.

In previous research, the authors found that by December 2018, import tariffs were costing United States consumers and importing businesses $3.2 billion per month in added taxes and another $1.4 billion per month in efficiency losses. They did not update those numbers in the latest study.
A proposed liquefied natural gas export terminal in Port Arthur took a step forward following a new agreement between the developer and Saudi Aramco.

In a joint statement released on Monday morning, San Diego utility company Sempra Energy and Saudi Aramco announced the signing of an interim project participation agreement, which details how the two companies will work together on pre-final investment activities.

Details of agreement were not immediately available but Saudi Aramco had previously entered into a May 2019 deal where the company agreed to buy a 25 percent stake in the proposed export terminal as well as 5 million metrics tons per year of its LNG production.

"The global demand growth for LNG is expected to continue in the coming years, and we see significant opportunities in this market," Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said in a statement. "This agreement with Sempra Energy is another step forward for Saudi Aramcos long-term gas strategy, and towards becoming the global leading integrated energy and chemicals company."

LNG: Saudi Aramco buys stake in Port Arthur export terminal

Federal officials authorized the Port Arthur LNG export terminal to produce 13.5 million metric tons of the supercooled power plant fuel in an April 2019 permit decision.

The first phase of the project is expected to include two liquefaction trains and up to three LNG storage tanks that will enable the export of approximately 11 million metric tons of LNG per year.

Fuel Fix: Get daily energy news headlines in your inbox

Sempra Energy is seeking to find profits from the record surplus of natural gas being produced in shale basins across the United States. Port Arthur LNG is the second of three LNG export terminals that the San Diego utility company plans to build in the United States and Mexico.

Plans to build a LNG export terminal in the Mexican state of Baja California remain pending but the company has already placed two out of three production units at its Cameron LNG export terminal in Louisiana into commercial service.

Read the latest oil and gas news from HoustonChronicle.com
Iraq's parliament called on Sunday for US and other foreign troops to leave as a backlash grows against the US killing of a topIranian general, and President Donald Trump doubled down on threats to target Iranian cultural sites if Tehran retaliates. Deepening a crisis that has heightened fears of a major Middle East conflagration, Iran said it was taking another step back from commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers. Iran's most prominent general, Qassem Soleimani, was killed on Friday in a U.S. drone strike on his convoy at Baghdad airport, an ...
Cancun trio apprehended with 5 kilos of marijuana

Cancun, Q.R.  Elements of the Quintana Roo Police arrested three people in Cancun after they were found in possession of more than five kilos of marijuana. The arrests took place in Region 65 where police say 20-year-old Katia N, 21-year-old Evelio N and 26-year-old Elias N were taken into police custody.

In a statement, police say the arrests were made when, during a surveillance tour, they attempted to stop a Hyundai, however, the driver fled. Police caught up with the vehicle which lead to a search and discovery of the 5.3 kilos of marijuana.

The trio were transferred to the Quintana Roo Police facilities and made available to the corresponding authority.
Hezbollah Leader Calls for Attacks on US Bases in Region After Iran Generals Death

The leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah called on Shiite militias in the Middle East to attack American military assetsincluding suicide bombingsin the wake of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimanis death in Iraq.

It is the U.S. military that killed Haj Qassem, and they must pay the price, said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese group that has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State, in a speech on Sunday, reported The Washington Post.

There are many U.S. civilians in our regionengineers, businessmen, journalists. We will not touch them. Touching any civilian anywhere in the world will only serve Trumps policy, he added.

But he stressed that the killing of Soleimani wasnt a separate assassination operation and marked the beginning of a new U.S. war in the region, according to The Times of Israel.

Jan. 3, when Soleimani was killed in a U.S. airstrike near Baghdad, is now the date separating two phases in the region it is the start of a new phase and a new history, not just for Iran or Iraq but the whole region, Nasrallah said.

He then accused Israel of being behind Soleimanis death.

Israel wanted to assassinate the Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in Syria, but it couldnt or didnt dare. It turned to the United States, which did it openly, he said.

Israel saw Soleimani as the most dangerous man since the state was established, since he encircled the country with missiles, the Hezbollah leader said.

The Times of Israel reported that Nasrallah called for suicide bombers.

If the resistance  heads in this direction, the Americans will leave our region, humiliated, defeated, and terrified. The suicide martyrs who forced the U.S. out of the region before [still] remain, he said, according to translator David Daoud.

His comments follow similar statements made by Irans top leadership, who have promised to retaliate against the United States. Esmail Qaani, the replacement for Soleimani, said Tehran would avenge his predecessors death.

Certainly actions will be taken, Qaani said on Monday, according to The Associated Press.

But amid the escalating rhetoric, President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday that the United States would target Iranian sites, including cultural sites, should Iran retaliate.

Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently hundreds of Iranian protesters, Trump said, referring to the slain general.

On Sunday night, Trump wrote on Twitter that he is notifying Congress of potential strikes against Iran if it attacks Americans or U.S. assets.

He said, These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020 11:22 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c320ff0a1 1 National mien-sugandhi,Politician,obituary Free

Mien Sugandhi, a former Golkar Party politician who also served as the womens affairs minister between 1993 and 1998 under then-president Soeharto, died on Sunday evening. She was 85 years old.

Mien drew her last breath at 9:50 p.m. in her room at the Gatot Subroto Army Hospital.

Golkar lawmaker Ace Hasan Syadzily confirmed the news of Miens passing.

I have learned about the passing of Mien Sugandhi  former womens affairs minister, wife to now-retired Maj. Gen. Soegandhi, founder of the Mutual Assistance Consultative Organization (MKGR), a member of Golkar Partys core organizational group [KINO], Ace said on Monday as quoted by kompas.com.

He also offered his condolences on behalf of Golkar.

The Golkar Party extends its prayers and deepest condolences over Mien Sugandhis passing. We hope her good deeds will be embraced by God, Ace said.

Mien was born on Jul. 28, 1934. Prior to taking office as womens affairs minister under Soeharto, she served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993. (rfa)
US lawmakers will vote in coming days on a war powers resolution aimed at putting a check on President Donald Trump's military actions after he ordered the killing of top Iranian general, a senior Democrat said.

House Speaker announced the plan to introduce and vote on the resolution "to limit the president's military actions regarding Iran," in a letter to colleagues late Sunday.

The measure, she explained, "reasserts Congress's long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further congressional action is taken, the administration's military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days."



Trump last week ordered the shock killing of Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force and one of the country's most influential leaders, who was slain Friday in a US drone strike in Baghdad.

Pelosi said the move put US troops and civilians in danger by "risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran." Democrats have complained that Trump took the action without first consulting with the so-called Gang of Eight top lawmakers in Congress, including Pelosi, and have insisted that only Congress can declare war.

"As members of Congress, our first responsibility is to keep the American people safe," Pelosi said in her letter.

"For this reason, we are concerned that the administration took this action without the consultation of Congress and without respect for Congress's war powers granted to it by the Constitution." Iran has vowed retaliation for Soleimani's death. Trump has escalated his rhetoric in response, and told Congress that his social media posts about Iran should be taken as notification to lawmakers about his actions.

Pelosi said the resolution will be introduced by Elissa Slotkin, a member of Congress from Michigan and a former CIA analyst who served three tours in Iraq.
Book Cover Fans of the series will encounter familiar faces from previous books as they follow Willie the Crow while he tries to join the dog pack and accompany them into their house.

A continuation of the growing Hickory Docs Series, Doc, Willie, and The Pack shares a new story that will appeal to the readers love of adventure, animals and the outdoors. Fans of the series will encounter familiar faces from previous books as they follow Willie the Crow while he tries to join the dog pack and accompany them into their home. Willies hilarious attempts to gain access to the house will charm young readers and create a conversation about the importance of inclusion.

With past books in the series winning top literary awards, this addition continues the series tradition of offering learning experiences, humorous situations and memorable illustrations. A Kirkus Reviewer praised the series, calling it a sweet slice of rural American canine life.

Like the books that came before it, this new book also contains educational elements that make it a great fit for classrooms. Harkey has a passion for inspiring the younger generation to fall in love with reading and extensive volunteer experience reading the books in her series to local students.

These hunting dogs jump off the page and come to life through Linda's tales of their adventures as they face challenges in life, said Cindy Carr, a second-grade teacher who opened up her classroom to the author. Linda's stories engaged our students in the lives of these dogs, sparking great discussions and learning activities about character development, sequencing, and elements of the story.

Doc, Willie, and The Pack will entertain readers and shed a light on the importance of friendship and the value of kindness. With more books to be released, teachers and families alike will certainly enjoy the series continuous focus on helping children develop stronger reading skills and an appreciation of what the outdoors has to offer.

Doc, Willie, and The Pack: Secrets, Gifts, Family (A Hickory Docs Tale)

By Linda Harkey

ISBN: 978-1-4808-8048-1 (softcover); 978-1-4808-8047-4 (electronic); 978-1-4808-8049-8 (hardcover)

Available at the Archway Publishing Online Bookstore, Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the author

Linda Harkey is a childrens book author, hunting dog owner and former teacher. Graduating from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Business Education, her work as a docent at several local museums writing curriculum for elementary-aged children contributed to the creation of this series. Featured in Story Monsters Ink, OKC Pets Magazine, Tulsa Pets Magazine and American Kennel Club Gazette, she has plans to continue to share her passion for writing and publish more books. She has two children, three grandchildren and her bunch of loving dogs (who are featured in the series). She lives with her husband, Michael, in New Mexico where she volunteers her time in local classrooms promoting children literacy. To learn more, please visit http://www.harkeybooks.com.

Contact:

LAVIDGE  Phoenix

Courtney Vasquez

480-306-7065

cvasquez(at)lavidge(dot)com
Kate Middleton marked her first royal appearance of 2020 in style.

On her way to Sunday church service in Sandringham, the duchess wore a gorgeous plum coat with peach accents, which she paired with brown, knee-high Stuart Weitzman boots, matching suede gloves, and a blue-feathered fedora. By coincidence, Queen Elizabeth also reached for a purple ensemble in her closet while getting dressed for this morning's outing.

Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

Dressed in a skirt-jacket combo several shades brighter than Kate's outfit, the Queen accessorized with a hat in the same color and an amethyst brooch.

Joe Giddens - PA Images/Getty Images

According to People, Kate and Prince William hosted several friends in Norfolk this weekend, and guests  including parents Carole and Michael Middleton, as well as Will's childhood pal Tom van Straubenzee  joined them for church at the Queen's Sandringham estate.

RELATED: Why Kate Middleton Reportedly Regretted Her Christmas Day Outfit

At the beginning of each year, it's tradition for the royals to entertain friends at their country home for a few nights, right before Kate's birthday. However, Hello reports that their vacation is officially over, as George and Charlotte need to return back to school in London this week.

Meanwhile, Harry and Meghan are still on winter-break with Archie in Canada.
The ballots are tallied, the red carpet's been rolled out, and quite a lot of champagne is about to flow: The Golden Globe Awards are here.

The 77th annual event on January 5, organized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, honors the creative minds behind the year's best film and television works in a ceremony at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif.
New Delhi:

Congress interim President Sonia Gandhi on Monday condemned the violence inside Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University. Yesterdays bone chilling attack on students and teachers in JNU, Delhi is a grim reminder of the extent the govt will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent, Sonia Gandhi said. Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged properties on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.

Accusing the Modi government of backing the violence, Sonia Gandhi said, The voice of Indias youth and students is being muzzled every day. The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on Indias young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi Govt is deplorable and unacceptable.

Earlier, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra slammed the BJP after meeting injured students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Gandhi said something was deeply sickening about the government that allows violence to be inflicted on their own children. She even claimed that a student told her that the police kicked him on the head several times.

There is something deeply sickening about a government that allows and encourages such violence to be inflicted on their own children, Priyanka Gandhi tweeted.

Priyanka Gandhi said that some of the wounded students at the hospital told her that masked goons entered the university campus and attacked them with sticks, rods and other weapons. Students told Priyanka that many students have broken limbs and head injuries after the attack.

Wounded students at AIIMS trauma centre told me that goons entered the campus and attacked them with sticks and other weapons. Many had broken limbs and injuries on their heads. One student said the police kicked him several times on his head, she added.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds posted an interesting message from a Facebook friend who wishes to remain anonymous. Heres the relevant part:

Following the death of Soleimani, it seems like nearly the entire DC / academia / journo natsec/forpol commentariat has penned variations on exactly the same essay: the President has acted hastily, has no plan, and isnt capable of envisioning or handling what happens next. The template was established by Ben Rhodes on Twitter a few hours after an MQ-9 Reaper shot a Hellfire missile directly into his professional legacy, and it hasnt varied much since. . . What nearly the entire DC / academia / journo natsec/forpol commentariat actually means by its critique, though, is that they werent included in any of this.

This instantly reminded me of an observation the late great political scientist Aaron Wildavsky made way back in 1986 over the uproar over Reagans failed disarmament deal at the Reykjavik summit with Gorbachev. If you are old enough you may recall the foreign policy establishment/media freakout, which was, however, contradictory. How could Reagan have been so stubborn as to refuse to give up his fanciful Star Wars missile defense scheme in exchange for near-total nuclear disarmament, and how could Reagan be so reckless as to have gone along with a rapid and potentially destabilizing disarmament scheme without consulting our allies?

Wildavsky, a sophisticated and pathbreaking political scientist, thought the matter quite simple:

The contempt hurled at President Reagan over the principles nearly agreed to at Reykjavik reveal the intellectual bankruptcy of his critics. . . One cannot but feel that much of the violent reaction to Reykjavik had no more substantial basis than the extreme pique felt by arms control intellectuals at not being consulted in advance. That was Ronald Reagans real sin in Iceland. For what, after all, was wrong with Reykjavik except that it lacked the imprimatur of the foreign policy establishment?

I tend to think the deep state talk is overdone (and is also distinct from the deeper constitutional problem expressed in the similar phrase the administrative state), but in this instance it might well be the right way to think about the freakout the foreign policy community is having over Trumps decision to kill Soleimani. Trump didnt have their permission!
Pakistan said on Sunday that it will not allow its soil to be used against anyone, amid raging tensions between Iran and the US after the killing of top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in an American drone strike in Iraq.

We will not allow our soil to be used against anyone, Army spokesman Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor was quoted as saying by the ARY News.

Pakistan will not be party to anyone or anything but will be a partner of peace and peace alone, he said quoting Prime Minister Imran Khan.

His remarks came two days after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Friday said that Afghanistans soil will not be used against any nations as per a Bilateral Security Agreement signed between Washington and Kabul in 2014.

Both Pakistan and Afghanistan share border with Iran, which has vowed to avenge the killing of its top general. US President Donald Trump has warned Iran that he has identified 52 possible targets in the country and will hit it harder than ever before if Tehran carries out any attack against America to avenge the killing of Soleimani.

Responding to a question, Ghafoor expressed concerns over the rise of tensions in the region and said the regional situation had been altered after the killing of the Iranian general and Pakistan would play its role in helping peace prevail.

Soleimani, 62, the head of Irans elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was killed when a US drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the Baghdad International Airport early on Friday. The strike also killed the deputy chief of Iraqs powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force.

His killing was the most dramatic escalation yet in spiralling tensions between Iran and the US.

Shortly after the killing of Soleimani, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dialled Pakistan Army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa who emphasised the need for maximum restraint and constructive engagement.

Pakistan will support all peaceful efforts and hopes the region doesnt go towards another war, Ghafoor quoted the army chief as telling Pompeo.

The Foreign Office has also expressed deep concern over the tensions in the region, urging all sides to exercise restraint.

Pakistan has viewed with deep concerns the recent developments in the Middle East, which seriously threaten peace and stability in the region, said the FO in a statement.

Respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity are the fundamental principles of the UN Charter, which should be adhered to, it said, adding that it is important to avoid unilateral actions and use of force.

The FO urged all parties involved to exercise maximum restraint and engage constructively to de-escalate the situation.
Upon admittance into Atrium Health Cabarrus, veterans will receive a special welcome kit, included with gifts, and an American flag will be placed outside their door and on their bed.

It means that all it takes is one little idea, really, to start a big effect, Frutig said. The fact that it has to do with the military, the veterans really need all of the support we can give them and show our appreciation for what they have done for our country.

Frutig said military members and veterans are important to her.

Both of her sons are serving in the military. She also said she had a specific patient who was very ill and ended up dying. He and his wife served in the military.

I started making calls about what do we do to honor our veterans, Frutig said. He was an organ donor, so I felt like we needed to do something, and at that time there wasnt really anything in place. I knew right then that I was going to put something together in ICU, so when we get veterans admitted into the unit, we will be able to honor them for their service.
Unfortunate demise of a loved one brings insurmountable loss to family members and takes good amount of time for them to come to terms with the new reality. However, one of the biggest pain areas for heirs remains accessing the bank deposits of the deceased person. Having a joint account with your loved ones can be a solution to many such deposit succession issues. Let us understand the difference between accessing funds from a solo account and a joint account after the death of the concerned accountholder.

What happens with account with sole ownership?

In case of the death of a sole ownership accountholder, the bank first checks whether the account has a nominee or not. If there is nomination the bank can transfer the proceeds to the nominee considering him or her to be the trustee of the legal heirs. However, the transfer happens only after a lot of paperwork in which the nominee has to produce his identity proof and death certificate of the deceased person. Beside, the bank also checks if there is any restricting order from a competent court against transferring the asset to the nominee. Although the RBI stipulates a time frame of 15 days for a bank to process the claim after it has received it, the bank cannot consider the claim complete until it has done suitable identification of the claimants. Therefore, the process takes longer to get completed.

In case the bank account does not have any nominees, the process gets much longer. All legal heirs have to first agree about the process to claim the deposit. Besides the death certificate of the deceased accountholder and proof of address and photo ID of the legal heirs, they have to produce legal representation, that is, succession certificate or letter of administration or probate granted by a competent court, which is a time consuming process. They will also have to give indemnity to the bank to make good the loss if their claim is found to be invalid or inadequate or there is any adverse ruling by the court later on.

What happens with joint ownership accounts?

Joint account in most of the cases allows smooth transition of funds to the surviving joint holder. Joint accounts are of different types and can be used for different purposes and situations as part of succession planning. A particular type of joint account, known as either or survivor, anyone or survivor clauses, allow unhindered access to all accountholders separately. However, if in an account the mode of operation is joint, then two or more account holders have to authorise together to access the funds. In restricted joint accounts such as 'former or survivor', or 'later or survivor' main account holder is allowed to operate the account till he/she is alive and others get the access to account only in case of death of the primary accountholder. Let us see how you can use different types of joint account for your succession planning.

When the access is open to all account holders, the surviving accountholders can freely operate their account. However, they will have to complete the legal process to get the account updated. "In case of 'Either or Survivor' and 'Former or Survivor' other accountholders can get the access to the account and funds shall be transferred to the survivor on meeting the required conditions including establishment of identity of the survivor, availability of the valid death certificate and no restraining order from the competent court," says Sameer Mittal, Managing Partner, Sameer Mittal & Associates LLP and Chairman, International Trade Council in India.

The restricted survivorship clause in the joint account comes in the form of 'former or survivor' and 'later or survivor'. "In case of joint accounts where one of accountholder dies and has opted for the survivor clause, payment of the balance in the joint account to survivor shall be considered as valid discharge of the liability of the bank subject to identify the survivor being established, valid proof of death of accountholder is produced and also provided that a competent court has not issued a restraining order to the bank for not making the payment to the survivor from the joint account,"says Mittal. So the process in case of joint account facilitates much smooth and timely access to funds when compared to solo account.

A good instrument for senior citizen to plan succession

For senior citizens having a joint account with spouse helps in meeting emergency funding requirement in case one of them faces a medical emergency. You can keep aside your emergency fund in a different account with your spouse and the operation of the account can be made as 'either or survivor' mode. Depending upon your family structure and comfort level you can also add your children by keeping any mode of operation of the account as 'anyone or survivor'.

Similarly, you can keep the funds in a joint account that you intend to give to your loved ones after your death. Depending upon your objective you can choose the control. If you are confident in sharing the full access with your spouse or your children, you can keep the mode of operation of the account as 'either or survivor' if two people are involved and 'anyone or survivor if more than two people are involved.

"It is better for the senior citizen to keep the succession funds in the joint account for easier transfer. The biggest advantage is that it provides access to money to both the holders whenever they need it. In case of death of one account holder, the other account holder can get the access to the funds if they have opted for the survivor clause," says Mittal.

However, if you wish to have full control over access to your deposits, you should keep the mode of operation as 'former or survivor' mode. It will help in a seamless transition of your bank account as it ensures you have full control on the fund until you are alive and once you are not around, ownership of the account is passed on to your joint account holder without much difficulty.
[January 06, 2020] Fluent.ai Unveils Partnership with Smart Home Solutions Leader COMMAX Inc. at CES 2020

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fluent.ai, a speech technology company that offers a range of artificial intelligence voice interface software products, announces today its partnership with COMMAX, one of the leading global brands in smart home control and security devices. The companies have been working together over the past year to integrate Fluent.ais world-leading voice artificial intelligence (AI) technology into COMMAX's advanced smart home control devices.

COMMAXs Wallpad will feature offline voice control in both English and Korean powered by Fluent.ai's speech understanding solution. The voice enabled device will allow customers to securely control and monitor their smart home devices with ease. The Wallpad is a central device that can control a variety of home products, including lights, thermostats, home alarms, digital door locks, door cameras and more, making it simple to manage your home all in one place. Were so excited to partner with COMMAX and showcase our cutting edge work together, said Probal Lala, CEO of Fluent.ai. By offering offline solutions that are simultaneously noise robust and multilingual, we are helping pave the way for the future of smart home and speech technology. Fluent.ais proprietary technology addresses growing concerns of smart home tech listening to conversations when nt being spoken to by offering an embedded solution that operates offline, so no data is ever stored. Beyond this, Fluent.ais embedded software solutions can be programmed to understand any existing language, accent, or combination of languages or accents. This enables any user to interact with their device in their native language and natural way of speaking. Fluents on-device voice commands can be extended through their Hybrid solution, which connects to a third-party voice assistant only when the user wants to ask a cloud-based query.



We are thrilled to partner with Fluent.ai to bring our Wallpad to the next level for smart home technology, said Paolo Byun, CEO of COMMAX. Consumers want embedded voice solutions for their homes, and we are proud to offer this through innovative partnerships like ours with Fluent.ai. COMMAX specializes in smart home technology, while leading global markets with advanced technical power and differentiated products spanning from intercoms, smart home systems to security solutions. The companies will jointly showcase at CES 2020 in Las Vegas (Commax Booth #40721).

Additional information about Fluent.ai can be found at https://www.fluent.ai/ , and more on COMMAX at https://www.commax.com/eng/ . About Fluent.ai

Fluent.ai Inc. is a privately held Canadian company that was founded in 2015. Its mission is to help everyone be understood by their technology. Through over seven years of research, the company developed a range of artificial intelligence (AI) voice interface software products to offer up to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and service providers. The products deliver unprecedented accuracy along with a highly customizable user experience with the goal of finally breaking the barriers to high adoption of voice user interface. About COMMAX

COMMAX Co., Ltd. is a global brand and leader in smart home technology and security. The company offers everything from smart locks to home IoT networks that are on the forefront of the industry. COMMAX works to provide a more advanced value of life and safety with smart home solutions spanning from home security to healthcare systems to eco-friendly energy management systems. Media Contact

Laurel Pierce

Uproar PR for Fluent.ai

[email protected]

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Boris Johnson has warned Donald Trump against carrying out disproportionate strikes on Iran after the US assassinated General Qassem Soleimani.

He was killed in a US airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, on Friday, causing a huge surge in tensions in the Middle East.

The US president had warned that the US could retaliate perhaps in a disproportionate manner" if Iran strikes a US citizen or target.

Mr Trump also claimed Iranian cultural sites are fair game for the US military, dismissing arguments that doing so would constitute a war crime under international law.

On Monday, the prime ministers official spokesman warned that an attack on a cultural target is prohibited under the Hague Convention, of which the US is a signatory.

Boris Johnson has called for a 'de-escalation' of tensions in the Middle East. (Getty)

Iranian general Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike last Friday. (Getty)

US president Donald Trump addresses the media after the airstrike against Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, Iraq (Picture: Reuters)

There are international conventions in place that prevent the destruction of cultural heritage, Mr Johnsons spokesman said.

However, Downing Street insisted that Britain's security partnership with the US remains "very close, despite Mr Trump not informing the UK of its plans to assassinate Soleimani.

Asked if Mr Johnson was convinced the US drone strike was legal, his spokesman said: "States have a right to take action such as this in self-defence and the US have been clear that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on American diplomats and military personnel."

Thousands of people attended the funeral ceremony of Qassem Soleimani in Tehran, Iran. (Getty)

Number 10 urged the Iraqi government to allow foreign troops to remain in the country to fight against the threat posed by Isis.

On Sunday evening, Mr Johnson, along with his French and German counterparts Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, called for a de-escalation in the Middle East tensions.

Earlier on Sunday, Mr Johnson said Soleimani had been "a threat to all our interests" and said: We will not lament his death.

Read more

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Story continues

But Iran has vowed severe revenge for the death of Soleimani, 62, the head of the elite Quds Force, pulling back from the 2015 nuclear accord.

Officials in Iran said millions of people had taken to the streets of the capital Tehran for the generals funeral on Monday.

People packed the streets of the city and mourners were heard shouting, Death to America.

In a televised address, the generals daughter Zeinab Soleimani warned the US it faced a dark day for her fathers killing.

She said: "Crazy Trump, don't think that everything is over with my father's martyrdom.

"The families of the American soldiers in western Asia will spend their days waiting for the death of their children.

The coffins of Qassem Soleimani and others who were killed in Iraq by a US drone strike are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners in Tehran, Iran (Picture: AP)

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei openly weeps as he leads a prayer over the coffin of General Qassem Soleimani (Picture: AP)

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over the caskets of Soleimani and others slain in the US attack.

Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani, wept at one point during the traditional Muslim prayers for the dead.

People attend a funeral procession for General Qassem Soleimani in Tehran, Iran. (Reuters)

People attend a funeral procession for General Qassem Soleimani in Tehran, Iran. (Reuters)

Soleimani's successor Esmail Ghaani stood near Khamenei's side, as did Iranian president Hassan Rouhani.

Amid fears of an all-out war, Iraq's parliament has passed a non-legally binding bill calling for the expulsion of all foreign forces.

About 400 UK troops are stationed in Iraq in the fight against Isis, while the US has 5,200, prompting fears of a withdrawal that could cripple the battle against the terror group.

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[January 06, 2020] Louisiana Teachers Chosen for Curriculum Associates' Inaugural Class of Extraordinary Educators

NORTH BILLERICA, Mass., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Curriculum Associates has selected two Louisiana teachers for the inaugural class of its Extraordinary Educators program, which establishes a tradition of celebrating and connecting exemplar teachers from schools nationwide. Alicia Renaud of Drew Elementary School and Anna Redding of George Welsh Elementary School, both in Ouachita Parish Schools in West Monroe, LA, are among the 31 selected teachers who exhibit best-in-class use of i-Ready and/or Ready in their classroom, illustrate growth and achievement via formal assessments, demonstrate classroom innovation and engagement practices for students, are evangelists for high standards and student achievement, and have been teaching for at least two years. Today, Curriculum Associates' programs are used by teachers in more than 80 percent of Louisiana districts. "As a company founded by passionate educators, we have deep respect for the powerful ways in which talented teachers impact the lives of their students," said Rob Waldron, CEO of Curriculum Associates. "We are proud to recognize Alicia and Anna as Extraordinary Educators. We look forward to sharing their innovative practices that drive student achievement and continuing our rich history of serving Louisiana schools." p>All Extraordinary Educators will have access to a network of peers from around the country to collaborate, connect, and learn from throughout the year, as well as receive unique professional development opportunities from Curriculum Associates. They will also be invited to attend and present at the two-day Extraordinary Educators Leadership Summit in July 2020 , as well as other professional learning events throughout the year.



"I am honored and excited to be named as one of Curriculum Associates' Extraordinary Educators!" said Renaud. "I have fallen in love with the power of Ready Mathematics and i-Ready. The success my students experience with these programs is phenomenal to witness. I look forward to opportunities to share my love of Ready Mathematics with more than just the teachers within my school and district." "It is such an honor to be a member of the first class of Extraordinary Educators through Curriculum Associates," said Redding. "The opportunity to collaborate with educators around the country to enhance instruction and improve student achievement through the Ready and i-Ready [curricula] is an experience I never thought I would have. I am looking forward to promoting Curriculum Associates by sharing the positive impact it has made in my classroom."

To learn more about the 2020 Extraordinary Educators, please visit CurriculumAssociates.com/ExtraordinaryEducators. About Curriculum Associates

Founded in 1969, Curriculum Associates, LLC designs research-based print and online instructional materials, screens and assessments, and data management tools. The company's products and outstanding customer service provide teachers and administrators with the resources necessary for teaching diverse student populations and fostering learning for all students. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/louisiana-teachers-chosen-for-curriculum-associates-inaugural-class-of-extraordinary-educators-300981628.html SOURCE Curriculum Associates

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Shares is the leading weekly publication for retail investors. It is packed with investment ideas, news and educational material to help build and run portfolios and get more from your money.

Shares puts on free Investor Events throughout the year across the country. They provide an opportunity for investors to learn more about companies on the stock market and hear from a range of investment experts including fund managers and Shares journalists.
Heritage Museum of Montgomery County / Heritage Museum of Montgomery County

Montgomery County and Conroe, its county seat, are two of the fastest growing political entities of their types in the United States. It is therefore an anomaly that the basis for the name of the county is yet in dispute. Lets address this question, with an overview of the currently most prominent theories on the matter. The theories range from either a town or certain individuals or families as the answer.

The theory addressing the present town of Montgomery as the key is featured on the website named Texas History Page. It holds that a man named W.W. Shepperd posted lots for sale in Montgomery in the newspaper Telegraph and Texas Register in July 1837. This is hailed as the basis for the naming of the town. The town, in turn, is promoted as the source of the naming of the county. Both of these claims, the naming of the town and of the county, are yet at issue.
A plant-based version of Burger Kings Whopper, which is available in Ireland is not suitable for vegetarians or vegans.

Many had welcomed the news that the fast food chain were offering a plant based alternative.

Hiowever they will be disappointed to learn that The Rebel Whopper, which is made from soy, is not suitable for vegans or vegetarians because of the way it is cooked.

Instead it is being aimed by the fast food chain at flexitarians  people who eat meat but are cutting down on the animal-based food they eat.

Expand Close The burger will be available to anyone with the Burger King app from Monday (Jacob King/PA) / Facebook

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Whatsapp The burger will be available to anyone with the Burger King app from Monday (Jacob King/PA)

Burger King marketing director Katie Evans said: This really is a game changer  we wanted our first plant-based Whopper to replicate the indulgence and flame-grilled taste of the real thing as closely as possible, and were thrilled with the result.

Were delighted to satisfy the demand for this highly-anticipated product and finally bring the Rebel to the UK.

The soy patty, made with the Vegetarian Butcher, is served with tomatoes, lettuce, mayonnaise, ketchup, pickles on a seeded bun.

It is not suitable for vegetarians because it is cooked on the same grill as the restaurants beefburgers, but it is hoped it might encourage some meat eaters to cut down on their meat consumption.

Toni Vernelli, international head of communications and marketing at Veganuary, said: For all of the important issues that Veganuary  and most vegans  are trying to address through their food choices it makes absolutely no difference whether the plant-based patty is cooked separately or on the same grill as the meat.

What does make a big difference to animals and the planet is when non-vegans choose a plant-based menu option, enjoy it and then order it again.

And thats exactly who Burger Kings plant-based Whopper is aimed at, flexitarians who want to reduce their meat consumption for health or environmental reasons, or are considering going vegan.

The Rebel Whopper, already available in Ireland, goes on sale to anyone in the UK with the Burger King app from Monday, and to everyone from Wednesday.
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According to a new market report published by Persistence Market Research "Global Market Study on Diabetic Nephropathy Market - Asia to Witness Highest Growth by 2020,". The global diabetic nephropathy market was valued at USD 2,262.2 million in 2014 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.6% from 2014 to 2020 , to reach an expected value of USD 3,145.9 million in 2020 .

Diabetic nephropathy is a disease of the kidney glomerulus and one of the most significant complications in terms of mortality and morbidity for patients with diabetes. Globally, the diabetic nephropathy market is witnessing significant growth due to increasing prevalence of diabetes and obesity in different regions of the world.

In addition, increasing R&D investments in drug discovery and development and raising awareness about diabetes and kidney-related disorders are also driving the growth of the market. However, stringent regulatory requirements and longer approval time for drugs as well as the lack of comprehensive therapeutic management for diabetic nephropathy are inhibiting the growth of diabetic nephropathy market.

The global diabetic nephropathy market is estimated at USD 2,262.2 million in 2014. It is likely to grow at a CAGR of 5.6% from 2014 to 2020 to reach USD 3,145.9 million in 2020.

To Remain Ahead Of Your Competitors, Request for a Sample Here @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3594

In North America, various government programs are spreading awareness about diabetes and related renal complications. For instance, the National Kidney Disease Education Program, one of the major programs organized by the U.S. government, for increasing awareness about the various kidney diseases.

In addition, the number of diabetic patients are also increasing in the region; according to the SciELO Public Health, approximately 35 million people were affected with diabetes mellitus in 2000 and this number is expected to reach 64 million by 2025 in North America.

In Europe, rise in healthcare expenditure for diabetes treatment and increasing prevalence of diabetes in the various part of Europe is boosting the growth of the European diabetic nephropathy market. According to IDF, approximately 55.4 million people had diabetes in 2010 and the number is expected to reach 66.5 million by 2030 in Europe. According to the IDF, healthcare expenditure for diabetes treatment was approximately USD 105.5 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach USD 124.6 billion by 2030 in Europe.

Asia represents the fastest growing region in the diabetic nephropathy market due to the rise in a diabetic population in various countries such as Japan and the Southeast Asian countries. According to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), developing countries, such as India and China, are expected to have the highest number of diabetes mellitus patients compared to developed countries, such as the US and Germany.

For Critical Insights on Market, Request For Methodology of Report @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/methodology/3594

Some of the major players in the diabetic nephropathy market:
TEXAS CITY  A Galveston County woman has died following her use of e-cigarettes or vaping products, according to county health officials, the third known vaping death in Texas.

Dr. Philip Keiser, who leads the Galveston County Health District, said Monday the woman, a Galveston resident between 30 and 35, died on Dec. 29 after being treated at a local hospital for several months.

Keiser offered scant details about the womans specific case, citing patient confidentiality regulations, saying only that she had primarily been using vaping products delivering THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana. She had presented symptoms of severe lung disease at the time she was admitted to the hospital.

Were very sad to report this death. I think its very sobering that were still seeing deaths from vaping illness, Keiser said. This is a very serious public health threat, and we would encourage people to avoid vaping products if at all possible.

Nationally, over 2,500 cases of vaping-related illness have been reported, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with public health officials working to determine what the cases have in common and what might be the cause.

The outbreak of vaping illnesses is still considered a mystery because e-cigarettes  battery-powered devices that heat flavored liquid, sometimes laced with nicotine or THC, and turn it into a vapor the user inhales  have been used for years without known association with disease.

Keiser noted e-cigarettes have frequently been marketed as alternatives to smoking and he has personally treated patients who have quit smoking cigarettes by transitioning to vaping.

As of Friday, at least four other confirmed or probable cases in Galveston County sent patients to the hospital for e-cigarette or vaping associated lung injury.

Texas announced its first vaping fatality in October, an older woman in North Texas. Dallas County health officials announced last week that a teenager died due to complications from vaping.

The vitamin E acetate used in vaping products to make THC, nicotine, and other compounds soluble to smoke may be closely associated to lung disease, Keiser said. The acetate latches onto the lungs, creating fat deposits that inhibit breathing and cause inflammation.

The outbreak of illnesses has been indiscriminate, affecting teenagers as young as 13 as well as older adults up to 75.

In Texas, which began tracking vaping illness since August, 228 cases of severe lung disease have been identified in people who report vaping before developing symptoms, according to the latest figures published by the state health agency on Thursday. Southeast Texas, which includes Harris and Galveston counties, has reported 43 cases of vaping illness.

The median age for patients in Texas is 22, and about one-quarter of the people affected in Texas are minors. Roughly 90 percent of users interviewed by state health officials acknowledge vaping products containing THC.

No state or federal law requires the reporting of vaping-related illnesses. Any information about vaping cases comes from physicians who voluntarily report cases to local health districts, who then pass the information on to the state. The Texas Department of State Health Services investigates each case and then reports findings to the CDC.

Patients who present symptoms of vaping-related illness are often treated with steroids, and sometimes put on ventilators in severe cases. Keiser said it is too early to know whether steroid treatment is the best course of treatment because not enough evidence exists to prove its effectiveness.

The outbreak of illness among young people caught the attention of President Donald Trump last fall, prompting a flurry of new federal regulations overseeing vaping products. The Food and Drug Administration moved forward on Thursday with a ban on fruit- and mint-flavored products used in e-cigarettes and vaping products. The new rule, which does not apply to menthol and tobacco-flavored products, goes into effect in 30 days.

Texas has also taken steps to prevent teens from obtaining e-cigarettes. State lawmakers last year raised the age to buy all nicotine products to 21.

Keiser said these new regulations on vaping are a good start, and believes more rules will be issued as health officials learn more about the illnesses. He added he would advise parents to keep close tabs on their children that might be using vaping products.

Its really dangerous, people die from this, Keiser said. I think thats the real message we have to get through. This is something that was just recognized six months ago, and look at the number of deaths weve had and how rapidly it occurs.

The CDC recommends those who continue to use vaping products should monitor themselves to ensure they are not experiencing some of the symptoms associated with vaping and e-cigarette illness, including cough, shortness of breath, chest pain, nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, diarrhea, fever, chills or weight loss.

Staff writers Michelle Iracheta and Todd Ackerman contributed reporting.

nick.powell@chron.com
CAIRO  Egypts parliament approved Dec. 22 a Cabinet reshuffle, whereby it was decided to reinstate the countrys Ministry of Information that had been abolished in 2014 as per the 2014 constitution, which considered the ministry to be part of the states control over the media under then-President Hosni Mubarak.

Parliament member Osama Haikal is to return as minister of state for information affairs, after he resigned from parliament to this effect. Haikal served as minister of information in 2011-12.

The new ministers were sworn in before President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi after parliament approved the ministerial changes.

The appointment of Haikal sparked controversy in the country as the ministrys prerogatives and powers are said to be in direct conflict with the countrys media and press authorities.

Following the decision of parliament, journalist Gamal Abdel Rahim, first deputy in the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate (EJS), said in a Facebook post Dec. 22 that the Ministry of Information has no prerogatives as per the constitutional texts and several laws, which stipulate that the national media and press authorities are independent bodies concerned with all press matters and affairs, and therefore the minister has no right to interfere in their work.

Makram Mohamed Ahmed, head of the Supreme Council for Media Regulation (SCMR), told Al-Monitor that as per the constitution and laws, SCMR, media and press authorities are independent and not subject to the executive authority.

Ahmed explained that the minister of information is part of the executive branch, which defines his powers and the purpose of his position.

The prerogatives of the National Media Authority, the National Press Authority and SCMR are provided for in the constitutional texts and the laws regulating their work, Ahmed said.

He added, SCMRs main task is to control what can be called media misinformation practiced by some media outlets and to hold them accountable for any unprofessional content.

Ahmed stressed that at the same time, the state has the right to have a minister who expresses its way of thinking and gives clarifications of its policy and vision toward the different issues, noting that the responsibilities of such a minister should be determined by the Egyptian government.

Karam Gabr, head of the National Press Authority, told Al-Monitor that the reinstatement of the Ministry of Information comes in response to the demand of the Egyptian public that believes it would be necessary to have a ministry to control the media sphere in Egypt that saw several violations of media freedoms.

It was necessary to reinstate the ministry to coordinate between the media and press authorities. Haikal has the necessary capabilities and experience to carry out his responsibility as minister of information, Gabr said.

Tariq Saadah, chairman of the founding committee of Egypts Media Syndicate, concurred with Gabr on the need to have a minister of information to coordinate the media work between the competent media parties in the country.

The fact that the constitution provides for the work of the media and press authorities is not in conflict with the existence of a Ministry of Information and their responsibilities do not overlap. Also, according to Law No. 180 of 2018 to establish SCMR, the council has three competences within the Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Investment and International Cooperation, in such a way that serves both the public and private press and media institutions, be they online or printed, and to issue and renew their licenses," Saadah said.

Mohammad Saad Abdul Hafiz, a member of the EJS council, said that the main responsibilities of the minister of information are yet to be determined, while parliament spokesman Salah Hassab Allah indicated in press statements that the role of the minister would be limited to coordinating between the three media authorities  the NPA, National Media Authority and SCMR  and to control the editorial policy of the national press platforms.

Abdul Hafiz told Al-Monitor there is no conflict between the responsibilities of the new minister and the work of the media bodies, whose prerogatives are clearly provided for in the constitution and the pertinent laws.

He, however, concluded, The reinstatement of the ministry comes after a major failure on the media landscape with the state controlling the media. Instead of changing the press policies and focus on informing the public and provide analysis, those in power have been devising ways to redirect the media landscape by appointing a person with considerable expertise, believing that it would be sufficient to make a change by merely changing the connection tool between those in power and the media. This step might lead to the return of the public opinion to the media sphere.
[January 06, 2020]

New Hitachi Vantara To Create Digital Competitive Edge For Transforming Enterprises

New Company Combines Best-in-Class IT Infrastructure, Data Management and Analytics With Expertise in AI, Industrial Solutions and Digital Transformation



Hitachi Vantara Combines With Hitachi Consulting

SANTA CLARA, Calif. , Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hitachi Vantara , a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), today announced it has come together with Hitachi Consulting as one company to create a new digital infrastructure and solutions powerhouse.

The new Hitachi Vantara aims to become the worlds preferred digital innovation partner by unlocking the good in data that benefits customers, raises the quality of people's lives and builds a sustainable society. Hitachi Vantara will specifically bring a competitive edge to the digital domains that matter most  the data center, data operations and enterprise digital transformation.

The new Hitachi Vantara combines the best consulting-led digital solutions and vertical industry expertise of Hitachi Consulting with Hitachi Vantaras IT domain expertise. Going forward, the integrated company will help customers develop practical, scalable digital strategies and solutions that transform operational processes, improve customer experiences and create new business models to drive innovation and growth.

For example, the new company will offer a holistic manufacturing industry practice as one of several vertical industry practices. The manufacturing practice will integrate consulting methodologies for addressing quality, customization, sustainability and new business models with data-driven solutions such as Lumada Manufacturing Insights from Hitachi Vantara, which integrates silos of manufacturing data and applies AI and machine learning to evaluate and enhance overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

A barrage of data and technology is disrupting enterprises and industries the world over, said Toshiaki Tokunaga, chief executive officer and chairman of the board, Hitachi Vantara. Through the integration of Hitachi Consulting, the new Hitachi Vantara will be uniquely equipped with the capabilities our customers need to guide them on their digital journeys. Were going to be the company that helps customers navigate from whats now to whats next.

Organizations worldwide are being challenged to derive insights and competitive advantage from the vast amounts of data being generated by their people, processes and machines. Industries are simultaneously being disrupted by quickly evolving technologies and architectures, such as AI and IoT. While many of these trends and technologies are not new, MIT Sloan Management Review reports that still only 25% of organizations have digital strategies that are sufficiently mature to build digital innovations and drive enterprise-wide transformation.

The Hitachi Vantara portfolio is built upon a foundation of world-class edge-to-core-to-cloud infrastructure offerings, including the recently introduced Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 series , the worldsfastest data storage array. The portfolio further features AI and analytics solutions, cloud services for application modernization, systems integration and change management services for SaaS-based ERP implementations and migrations, and Lumada -based digital industrial solutions. Hitachi Vantaras offerings are all backed by world-class business consulting, deep experience in improving organization effectiveness, co-development capabilities and global delivery services.







With its expanded capabilities, the new Hitachi Vantara will play a key role in advancing Hitachis 2021 Mid-term Management Plan , which aims to make the company a global leader through Social Innovation Business. The Social Innovation Business strategy centers on combining Hitachis industrial and IT expertise and products to create new value and resolve social issues.

Hitachi Vantara will help advance the plan by expanding revenues from digital business, by digitally transforming Hitachis industrial businesses, by fueling international growth, and by delivering social, environmental and economic value which helps customers contribute to the attainment of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

As announced in September 2019 , Toshiaki Tokunaga, a 30-year Hitachi veteran who has successfully transformed several Hitachi businesses, will serve in the dual role of chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Hitachi Vantara.

The companys two business units , Digital Infrastructure and Digital Solutions, will be led by Presidents Brian Householder and Brad Surak , respectively. Hitachi Vantara today also announced details of other appointments to its executive leadership team .

Additional Resources

Connect with Hitachi Vantara

About Hitachi Vantara

Hitachi Vantara, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., solves valuable digital challenges by guiding our customers from whats now to whats next. We make data centers more effective, harness the power of customers data and rapidly scale digital businesses. Companies choose us to help develop new revenue streams, unlock competitive advantages, lower business costs and enhance customer experiences. Working alongside each customer, we apply our unmatched industrial and digital capabilities to their data and applications to benefit both business and society. Over 80% of the Fortune 100 trust Hitachi Vantara. Visit us at www.hitachivantara.com .

About Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is focusing on Social Innovation Business combining its operational technology, information technology and products. The companys consolidated revenues for fiscal 2018 (ended March 31, 2019) totaled 9,480.6 billion yen ($85.4 billion), and the company has approximately 296,000 employees worldwide. Hitachi delivers digital solutions utilizing Lumada in five sectors including Mobility, Smart Life, Industry, Energy and IT, to increase our customers social, environmental and economic value. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at https://www.hitachi.com .

HITACHI is a trademark or registered trademark of Hitachi, Ltd. All other trademarks, service marks, and company names are properties of their respective owners.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Nick Fuentes

Hitachi Vantara

[email protected]

+1 (415) 690-9355

Mary Welder

Hitachi Vantara

[email protected]ntara.com

+1 (507) 250-2037

Andrew McCrea

Weber Shandwick for Hitachi Vantara

[email protected]

+1 (310) 854-8219
Laura Whitmore says Caroline Flack has been supportive and gracious. (Photo by David M. Benett/Getty Images for EE)

Laura Whitmore is taking over as the host of the winter edition of Love Island from Caroline Flack after the latter's arrest and charge for assault, but there's no bad blood between them.

Flack stepped down from the programme last month following her arrest and according to Whitmore, she's not bitter about her replacement who will kick off the series this Sunday.

"I know shes got a strong network of people around her who are supporting her throughout all of this," she told The Sun. She has been incredibly gracious and supportive of me taking on the role for the winter series.

Read more: Maura Higgins says she was struggling to keep roof over her head before Love Island

Shes a brilliant host and I just hope that I can give the role the justice it deserves while she is taking some time off.

While Flack won't be appearing as the presenter for this series, ITV have said they will keep in touch with her in regard to future seasons.

Laura Whitmore attends the Global Citizen Prize 2019 at Royal Albert Hall on December 13, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

A spokesperson for ITV told Yahoo UK: ITV has a long standing relationship with Caroline and we understand and accept her decision. We will remain in contact with her over the coming months about future series of Love Island.

Whitmore will be in familiar company when she joins the ITV2 programme, which films in South Africa, as her boyfriend Iain Stirling is Love Island's narrator.

Love Island TV presenter Caroline Flack, centre, escorted by police, as she arrives at Highbury Magistrates' Court in London, Monday, Dec. 23, 2019. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

The Scottish presenter has already spoken about his excitement of being joined by his beau on the show as it means they will be able to spend more time together.

Flack made a tearful appearance in court last month where she pleaded not guilty to attacking boyfriend Lewis Burton.

She was subsequently banned from having contact with the 27-year-old, who said he did not want to press charges. Her next court date is 4 March 2020.
A nude illusion gown encased by heaps of tulle and a matching, hooded cape would be theatrical at any trunk show. Especially as an opening look. But when the name on the wall reads Monique Lhuillier, the effect is all the more surprising.

Several heads were turned in Tootsies back room in November, when two dozen of Lhuilliers top customers sat for a presentation of the designers spring 2020 collection.

And later, as the model lowered her flesh-colored bonnet in dramatic fashion, onlookers gasped.

Gauzy layers from both the cape and gown swished at her ankles. Upon closer inspection, a keyhole-shaped cutout exposed a slice of midriff.

This, from a designer best known for sugary wedding dresses?

Since 1996, Lhuillier has been almost exclusively synonymous with bridal. Celebrity darlings such as Reese Witherspoon, Carrie Underwood, Lauren Conrad and even Britney Spears have each said I do in one of the strapless and lace confections that have become Lhuilliers signature.

And though her ready-to-wear offerings may be lesser known, theyre just as studied. Shes shown special-occasion wear on traditional runways for the past 23 years.

Its an offshoot. She started the business in bridal, then moved into color and real-life, said Angelo Devito, Lhuilliers global ready-to-wear sales director. A wedding gown in mostly white or ivory, though, thats all changing as the modern bride is becoming different. Monique wanted to experiment with color to dress the mother of the bride, the wedding guest, the brides sister  or a young woman celebrating her bat mitzvah.

Given Houstons rigorous social calendar, theres plenty of demand for formal attire.

Dr. Sippi Khurana had Houston Symphony Ball in mind when she purchased an aqua, silk faille crop top with matching skirt  the trunk shows other jaw-dropping look.

I picked it because I thought the color was amazing, and that a two-piece was a new, fun take on a ballgown, Khurana said. What I think (Lhuillier) does really well is add a feminine touch to all of her clothes. You feel incredibly pretty and sophisticated at the same time because she hits the trends in a very delicate way.

Two years ago, Khurana hosted an intimate Mothers Day Lunch with Monique Lhuillier shopping event for the designer. Thats when Khurana says she began to appreciate how applying the effort and construction of a bridal gown can really elevate a black-tie garment.

Trunk shows are great because you meet the designer or the creative director and get a lot of information about the upcoming season, she explained. You can take away the important trends and plan for upcoming events. A lot of the special pieces are produced in very limited quantity. So youre almost assured that what you wear will be unique.

Devito concurred. A retail buyer purchases an edited version of whats shown on the runway, he said.

But for a trunk show, he brings everything. The client sees the full breadth of the collection.

And we can do exclusive things, like take a color and fabric and make something else, he continued. If the plunge of a neckline is too deep, we can raise it a few inches. Or make a cocktail dress into a gown.

For Kelley Lubanko, a longtime customer whos attended Lhuilliers trunk shows for more than 10 years, the ability to tweak is a valuable perk. One of her earliest interactions with the designer was modifying the sleeve of a dress during an in-store appearance.

There was this olive-green taffeta ball gown that I still wear, Lubanko said. If the occasion ever calls for a Marie Antoinette theme, Ive got the dress.

She added a paradise-print sheath to her collection at the spring 2020 trunk show. I was thinking of wearing it to (Hermann Park Conservancys) Evening in the Park. Or, I have a wedding in Mexico City in February  it would be perfect for that.

And very on-brand.

Lhuillier designs with todays social jet-setter and how she travels in mind. The latest collection was inspired by 70s swan Marella Agnelli, Italian nobility and the shores of Lake Como. Thats where the ad campaign, which references the regal, modern contessa, was shot.

Hence the oversized bows, billowing bishop sleeves and heavy brocade. There are also iridescent sequins and metallic tassel belts  both plucked straight from an Italian disco and light-years away from anything remotely bridal.

Its a departure from what shes done lately. Shes really upped her game, Lubanko said. Theres more strategic embellishment, and I think that this much color is very new for her.

To illustrate just how wearable the collection is, Tootsies tapped jeweler Theresa Bruno to accessorize each outfit. The styling was convincing. Tousled, brushed-back ponytails and barely-there makeup created a fresh canvas for morganite and yellow beryl stones, which, according to Bruno, are excellent stand-ins for pink sapphires or canary diamonds.

Its high style without being stuffy.

A relaxed, younger direction is exactly where Lhuillier is headed. By Devitos account, Texas is one of the last places that really embraces the evolving DNA of the brand: uber ladylike, alluring and classic at the same time.

A lot of what we do is creating happiness and laughter in clothes. You remember the emotion of feeling beautiful in a dress, he said. Its a mood. And we sell that.

No groom, cake or engagement ring required.

amber.elliott@chron.com
A policeman was trashed by a mob when he along with some other personnel went to a village in Jharkhand's Pakur district on Monday to arrest a man accused of stealing a mobile phone, officials said.

Assistant sub-inspector (ASI) Ramesh Singh was part of a police team that went to arrest one Babudhan Marandi in Littipara Bazar after a stolen mobile was traced to him, Superintendent of Police Rajiv Ranjan Singh said.

Police arrested Marandi and when he was being taken away, his friends raised a false alarm that Marandi was being kidnapped.

The policemen, except Ramesh Singh, were not in uniform.

Soon a mob gathered and attacked the police team, the officer said.

Ramesh Singh was thrashed as he tried to stop the mob from setting a police van on fire, he added.

He was rescued and taken to nearby hospital and later shifted to a medical facility in Dhanbad, the officer said.

"Video of the incident is available and we will identify those behind the attack," he said.

The mobile phone was one among seven such devices allegedly stolen from a crusher unit at Kasturi village under Hiranpur police station area of the district, the SP said, adding that since then the police were trying to locate them.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 25-year-old Odessa man died Sunday in a one-vehicle wreck on County Road 1232, one mile south of Midland, according to a press release from the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Fernando Munoz was driving a Dodge Ram southbound on CR1232. The vehicle drifted off the roadway; Munoz lost control and the pickup rolled, according to the release.
The attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is a desperate attempt to silence the vanguard of a popular protest that is threatening the ruling regimes ability to rule by consent. One way to understand what led us to the day when it became possible for armed men to brutally assault students and faculty in our universities is to realise that our students have been fighting a bigger war over the past four years.

Soon after the Delhi Police arrested JNU Students Union leader Kanhaiya Kumar in 2016, I met students, teachers, and officials across universities in Uttar Pradesh, from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) to Benares Hindu University. I realised then that JNU was not the only university under attack.

Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) students protested against a sociology professor at Lucknow University for sharing a sympathetic article on Kanhaiya Kumar on Facebook. The first woman president of Allahabad University Students Union, Richa Singh, was abused and threatened by ABVP students in the presence of the vice-chancellor inside his office. At the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, students wanted to talk about the suicide of Rohith Vemula and the treatment of Kashmiri students on their campus, but the administration made it clear that this was not acceptable. Aligarhs Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) mayor alleged that AMUs canteen served beef and the local BJP MP, Satish Gautam, sent the university a letter warning against anti-national and anti-government activities on campus. Both students and faculty were afraid of a new atmosphere on campus that could label them anti-national for attending a film screening, sharing an editorial, even attending a discussion that criticised the ruling regime.

And yet, except for a few vocal students, it was hard for most students across these campuses to join the dots to make sense of a new political reality that would target all students, not just Kanhaiya Kumar and JNU. The country was being divided into two camps: Anti-national (anyone critical of the government, liberals, and Muslims) and nationalist (Modi supporters). The fact that students were active on social media did not help them find a voice to express their anger because mainstream media and social media were feeding them doctored videos and misinformation. A student at Lucknow University justified the government crackdown in JNU by showing doctored videos on his cellphone.

Speaking to AMU students outside the Maulana Azad Library, one got a sense that students and faculty were using these attacks to emphasise the historical role of universities as sanctuaries for knowledge and dissent. They were discussing and debating the meaning and history of nationalism. But how long could this form of resistance last when the government was clear that the only thing that mattered was whether a university was patriotic or anti-national?

Even as AMU students wrote dissertations on world literature and discussed multiculturalism in their classes, they came under attack, once again, for a portrait of Jinnah that had been hanging in the union hall since 1938. Aligarhs BJP MP sent a letter to the university seeking the removal of the portrait. Later, Hindutva groups forcibly entered the university when former vice-president and AMU alumnus Hamid Ansari was going to give a lecture on Indian pluralism. Instead of covering the Right-wings smear campaign against AMU, sections of the mainstream media, particularly television channels, joined the governments war against the university. Some television headlines read: Azaadi slogans shouted at AMU, Whys Indias enemy their icon, Is Jinnah an icon for young Muslims in India?.

Two years ago, I think it would have been fair to read the Jinnah portrait controversy as Hindu nationalist politics as usual. Elections in UP were close and AMU was  and remains  a perfect scapegoat to polarise people along religious lines in the already polarised city of Aligarh. Most students outside AMU and JNU may not have paid attention to an emerging political context which was making Indias best public universities symbols of anti-nationalism.

Perhaps the Citizenship Amendment Act/National Register of Citizens is that piece of the puzzle that finally helped students find a voice to protest against something that they have been feeling all along. Because universities have always been political in India, it is not that it is only now that students are being politicised. Rather, the current student protests are an answer to a question that students have been asking for a long time.

Last year in February, along with a few faculty colleagues and students at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, I organised a public reading and discussion of the work of human rights workers and scholars labelled by the government as urban Naxals. We discussed the importance of the need for public intellectuals who can show us the relationship between historical and ongoing injustice against the marginalised. But one student was not satisfied with our scholarly response to the crisis. What can we students do when even you, our professors, dont have a strategy of resistance? Perhaps his own peers have answered his question.

Moyukh Chatterjee is a visiting scholar at Middlebury College and is working on an ethnography of majoritarian state formation in India

The views expressed are personal
The funeral for Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani drew a crowd said by police to be in the millions in the Iranian capital, filling thoroughfares and side streets as far as the eye could see. Although there was no independent estimate, aerial footage and Associated Press journalists suggested a turnout of at least 1 million.
Dublin, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "India Outbound Tourism Market: Demand, Insights, Analysis, Opportunities, Growth Potential and Forecasts to 2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



India outbound tourism market size is expected to generate revenues of around US$ 62 billion by 2026.



Highlighted with 68 tables and 138 figures, this 215-pages report is based on comprehensive research of the entire India outbound tourism market. The report offers the most up-to-date industry data on the actual market situation and future outlook for the India outbound tourism market. The report provides historical market data for 2014-2019, and forecasts from 2020 till 2026.



The report uses data and analysis to discuss potential lucrative opportunities, current and future trends related to India outbound tourism flow, spending, the purpose of the visits and main destination markets. The report provides clear insight into current and future tourism developments of the India outbound tourism market.

Furthermore, this report uses a country-focused analysis to explore the India outbound tourism market. A detailed country-wise analysis of the market is provided, covering a total of 32 nations. Drivers and the restraints are studied in detail to better understand the market and to understand the future growth scope of the market.



The report analyses the market based on countries and presents the forecast in terms of value and volume for the next six years.

Report Coverage:



The Market Size of the India Outbound Tourism with Six Years Forecast

Provides Comprehensive Insights on the Latest India Outbound Travelers Visitation with Six Years Forecast

Detailed Market Share Assessment of the India Outbound Tourism Market

Thoroughly Evaluates Market Share of the India Outbound Travelers Visitation

Includes a Detailed Analysis of the India Outbound Tourism Spending in the 32 Countries

Detailed Insights of the India Outbound Travelers Visitation to the 32 Countries

Delivers a Complete Overview of the Indian Travelers Purpose of Visits (Holiday, Visit Friends / Relatives, Business and Others) to the 32 Countries

Detailed Information about the Major Factors influencing the Market Growth and Challenges within the Industry

The Report Helps Answer the Following Questions:

What is the current size of the overall India outbound tourism market? How much will this market be worth from 2020 to 2026?

How many Indian tourists visit globally?

Which country has highest tourists visit by the Indian people?

What are the market shares of the India outbound tourism visitation and market?

What is the main purpose of visits for the Indian outbound tourists?

What are the main drivers and restraints in the India outbound tourism market?

How will the industry evolve during the forecast period 2020-2026?

Key Topics Covered



1. Executive Summary



2. India Outbound Tourism Market Analysis & Forecast (2014-2026)

2.1 India Outbound Travelers Visitation & Forecast

2.2 India Outbound Travelers Spending & Forecast



3. India OutboundTourism Market Share (2014-2026)

3.1 India Outbound Travelers Visitation Share & Forecast

3.2 India Outbound Travelers Spending Share & Forecast



4. Key Market Drivers and Inhibitors of the India Outbound Tourism Market

4.1 Market Drivers

4.2 Market Inhibitors



5. India Outbound Tourism Market - Top 32 Countries In-Depth Analysis (2014-2026)

5.1 Singapore - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.2 Thailand - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.3 China - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.4 Japan - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.5 Sri Lanka - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.6 Taiwan - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.7 Bhutan - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.8 Nepal - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.9 Cambodia - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.10 Maldives - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.11 Philippines - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.12 Myanmar - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.13 Malaysia - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.14 Mauritius - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.15 Egypt - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.16 Oman - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.17 Qatar - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.18 United Arab Emirates (UAE) - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.19 Bahrain - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.20 Saudi Arabia - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.21 Kuwait - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.22 Turkey - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.23 Australia - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.24 New Zealand - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.25 United States - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.26 Canada - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.27 United Kingdom - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.28 France - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.29 Switzerland - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.30 Italy - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.31 Germany - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.32 Netherlands - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast

5.33 Other Countries - India Outbound Travelers Visitation, Purpose of Visit, Spending & Forecast



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JNU students on Monday carried out protest march from Sabarmati hostel to the campus's main gate raising "Delhi Police go back" slogans. At least 35 people, including JNU Students' Union chief Aishe Ghosh, were injured in violence. Initial reports suggested the matter pertained to a tussle between left and right-wing students at the university. The first round of skirmishes happened post noon, which escalated after 5 pm when "outsiders" entered the campus. In some visuals, women with faces covered were also seen carrying sticks. The attackers not only trashed students and faculty members, but also destroyed properties, including cars and hostel window panes. After police were called in, a flag march was conducted on the campus. Delhi Police PRO MS Randhawa also held a meeting with a delegation of students and teachers and assured probe into the incident. Meanwhile, home minister Amit Shah has ordered a probe into the violence at JNU.

Also read: JNU violence Live: JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh under observation at AIIMS after head injury

Follow BusinessToday.In live blog for all the latest updates on violence at JNU campus

4.56 pm: Over 700 police personnel deployed outside JNU gates

Around 700 police personnel were deployed outside the gates of JNU campus following Sunday's attack on its students and faculty members. The police said the large deployment has been made to maintain law and order.

4.45 pm: Jadavpur University students protest against Sunday's violence at JNU

Students of Jadavpur University in Kolkata carried out protests on Monday following yesterday's attack on JNU students and teachers.

Kolkata: Students of Jadavpur University protest against yesterday's violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). #WestBengal pic.twitter.com/ZPJAkQGckL - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

4.35 pm: JNU incident was like a terror attack, says Sanjay Nirupam

Talking about Sunday's attack on JNU students and teachers, Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam said, "What happened in JNU was like a terror attack. The students and teachers were beaten up by masked goons. The way the student power is being suppressed is not good for the country. Every person in Delhi is feeling unsafe."

4.25 pm: Prasar Bharti tweets video in support of JNU VC's claim that students against anti-fee hike beat up students

"Video bears witness to #JNU VC @mamidala90's statement that those opposing registration for Winter session of #JNU are behind violence to scuttle the academic process of varsity," Prasar Bharti said on Monday. JNU VC had issued a statement on Sunday saying that the students who are against the fee hike had been beating up other students since January 3.

Video bears witness to #JNU VC @mamidala90's statement that those opposing registration for Winter session of #JNU are behind violence to scuttle the academic process of varsity. pic.twitter.com/JWr4n81GbW - Prasar Bharati News Services (@PBNS_India) January 6, 2020

4.10 pm: DCW chief issues summons to JNU Registrar

Delhi Commission for women (DCW) chief Swati Maliwal Monday issued summons to JNU's registrar pertaining to assault on students inside the university campus.

3.45 pm: JNU students protest outside campus gate, raise 'Delhi Police go back' slogans

JNU students on Monday carried out protest march from Sabarmati hostel to the campus's main gate raising "Delhi Police go back" slogans.

3.24 pm: JNU teachers' association demand VC's removal

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA) Monday sought removal of Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar following Sunday's attack on students and faculty members by armed miscreants. Addressing a press conference, JNUTA also demanded a detailed inquiry into the violent attack.

3.15 pm: Students organisations in Chandigarh protest over JNU violence on Sunday

Students' Federation of India (SFI), All India Students Federation and other organisations staged protest over Sunday's violent attack on JNU students and teachers.

Chandigarh: Students' Federation of India (SFI), All India Students Federation and other organisations protest over yesterday's #JNUViolence. pic.twitter.com/Ozq9cIAtWC - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

3.07 pm: Addition forces deployed outside Banaras Hindu University

Varanasi: Additional forces deployed outside Banaras Hindu University also https://t.co/1VpzMcLXaN pic.twitter.com/eyKzMzVEd8 - ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) January 6, 2020

3.03 pm: Inside pics of Sabarmati Hostel, JNU following Sunday's attack

The damaged insides of the Sabarmati Hostel, JNU that was ransacked by armed miscreants. Broken furniture, rods and shattered glass lie on the hostel's floors now.

2.57 pm: Campuses should not be made a political battlefield, says Smriti Irani

Speaking on the JNU violence on Sunday, Union Minister and Amethi MP Smriti Irani said, "I had said it earlier and reiterating it now that educational institutions should not be made 'rajiniti ka akhada' (political battlefield) as it affects the life and progress of our students," Irani told reporters here when asked about the violence in the campus. "I hope students will not be used as 'rajnitik mohre' (political tools)."

2.45 pm: Will file FIR against ABVP, says JNUSU chief Aishe Ghosh

"I'll be recording my statements with the Delhi Police as soon as I'm in a better condition. We're planning to file a combined FIR against the ABVP members. I can recognise some faces who attacked students with rods. Some masks were off. Other students and myself, who were injured, their MLCs have already come and they will reveal the intensity of the injuries," Aishe Ghosh, JNUSU president, tells India Today TV.

2.36 pm: Buck starts with Delhi Police commissioner, stops with Amit Shah: P Chidambaram

Speaking on JNU violence Congress leader Chidambaram said that the buck starts with Delhi Police commissioner and stops with Home Minister Amit Shah.

2.20 pm: JNU violence horrifying, voice of India's youth muzzled: Sonia Gandhi

"The voice of India's youth and students is being muzzled every day. The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on India's young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi govt is deplorable and unacceptable," said Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi.

1.57 pm: JNU Violence Live: Masked men in campus reminded me of 26/11, says Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray likened the JNU campus attack on Sunday to 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008. Condemning the violent attacks Thackeray said this is the first time he is witnessing scenes similar to the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.

1.43 pm: PM Narendra Modi's effigy being burnt inside the Rajasthan University

1.34 pm: Breaking: Scuffle has broken out between NSUI and ABVP at Rajasthan University

1.27 PM: What can Kejriwal do when police is inactive, says Mamata Banerjee

"Delhi's police is not under Arvind Kejriwal rather it is under Central Govt. On one side they have sent the BJP goons and on the other side they made the police inactive. What can Police do if they are directed by higher authority. This is a fascist surgical strike," said West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

#WATCH West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on #JNUViolence : It is very disturbing, it is a dangerous planted attack on democracy.Anyone who speaks against them is labelled a Pakistani and an enemy of the country. We never saw such a situation in the country before this. pic.twitter.com/79oegFnMeA - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

1.26 pm: Bollywood actor Kriti Sanon slams JNU violence

Actor Kriti Sanon speaks out against JNU violence. "It breaks my heart to see what happened at JNU! What's going on in India is horrifying!! Students & teachers being beaten up & terrorized by masked cowards!! The constant blame game!Stooping so low for political agendas!Violence is NEVER a solution! How have we become so inhuman?" Sanon tweeted on Monday.

It breaks my heart to see what happened at JNU! What's going on in India is horrifying!! Students & teachers being beaten up & terrorized by masked cowards!! The constant blame game!Stooping so low for political agendas!Violence is NEVER a solution! How have we become so inhuman? - Kriti Sanon (@kritisanon) January 6, 2020

1.14 pm: Inside visuals from JNU after Sunday's attack

Inside visuals from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) where violence broke out yesterday evening in which more than 30 people were injured.

Delhi: Inside visuals from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) where violence broke out yesterday evening in which more than 30 people were injured. pic.twitter.com/CHjuBtp7FU - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

12.58 pm: Can't tolerate armed, lawless goons as an Indian, says Anand Mahindra

"It doesn't matter what your politics are. It doesn't matter what your ideology is. It doesn't matter what your faith is. If you're an Indian, you cannot tolerate armed, lawless goons. Those who invaded JNU tonight must be traced & hunted down swiftly & given no quarter...," tweeted business tycoon Anand Mahindra.

It doesn't matter what your politics are. It doesn't matter what your ideology is. It doesn't matter what your faith is. If you're an Indian, you cannot tolerate armed, lawless goons. Those who invaded JNU tonight must be traced & hunted down swiftly & given no quarter... - anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) January 5, 2020

12.53 pm: There should be time-bound action on goons who attacked JNU students, says Aditya Thackeray

"Due to these attacks, the image of our country is getting spoiled in the entire world. These goons should be called terrorists because they too come in masks hiding their face. There should be time bound action on these otherwise students from abroad will not come here to study," said Shiv Sena leader and minister Aditya Thackeray.

12.36 pm: DCW Chief summons Delhi Police over assault on female students at JNU

Delhi Commission for Women Chief Swati Maliwal issues summons to Police over assault on female students inside the JNU campus yesterday.

12.26 PM: Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) Secretary's meeting with JNU Registrar, Proctor and other University officials is underway. -- ANI

12.15 PM: "I condemn this violence. There is no doubt these ppl were given the green signal by the powers that be. They had covered their faces in a cowardly way and were allowed to enter JNU with rods&sticks.Worst is there is a video which shows Police allowed them safe passage," says AIMIM chief Assadudin Owaisi.

Also read: JNU violence timeline: Here's how the events unfolded on January 5

11.57 am: BJP's MP Meenakshi Lekhi attacks Left union for JNU attack

"First and foremost, who is going to benefit from yesterday's incidents. Who is stopping the registration process on the campus for the new semester. AVBP is in favour of reopening of the campus. I know that at least one dozen AVBP students have been injured, 5 suffered head injuries, one has collar bone injury," said BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi.

11.53 am: JNU violence needs to be investigated, says Union Minister Prakash Javadekar

"We condemn the violence in JNU. This needs to be investigated. Congress, Communists, AAP and some elements want to create environment of violence in universities across the country," said Union Minister Prakash Javadekar

Union Minister Prakash Javadekar: We condemn the violence in JNU. This needs to be investigated. Congress, Communists, AAP and some elements want to create environment of violence in universities across the country. #JNUViolence pic.twitter.com/jfh4wtDkh6 - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

11.50 am: PDSU activists protest in Osmania University, Hyderabad against JNU violence

Hyderabad: Progressive Democratic Students Union(PDSU) activists protest in Osmania University against yesterday's #JNUViolence

Hyderabad: Progressive Democratic Students Union(PDSU) activists protest in Osmania University against yesterday's #JNUViolence pic.twitter.com/un69Gtl3vU - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

11.47 am: Protests in Karnataka against Sunday's JNU violence

Protest held at Town Hall in Bengaluru against yesterday's violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

Karnataka: Protest held at Town Hall in Bengaluru against yesterday's violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). pic.twitter.com/hQvo086yAo - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

11.42 am: JNU administration complicit in the attack on JNU students: Congress

The Congress on Monday blamed the government of harbouring enmity with the youth of the country and said that the violence at the JNU campus was a reminiscent of the Nazi rule. Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala also accused the JNU administration of being complicit in the violent attack on JNU students on Sunday night. The party also alleged that the Delhi Police was a mute spectator when the attacked was being carried out by armed miscreants.

11.36 am: Delhi Polic DCP enters JNU campus; locks the main gates

Delhi Police DCP entered the JNU campus on Monday morning and locked its main gates.

11.32 am: India witnessed state-sponsored goondaism and terrorism at JNU campus: Congress

"The entire country witnessed state-sponsored goondaism and terrorism yesterday on the campus of JNU. All this happened under the watch of JNU administration and also Delhi Police which is directly controlled by Home Minister Amit Shah," said Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala.

11.30 am: Ongoing situation due to students turning violent, obstructing registration process

"Origin of the present situation in JNU lies in some agitating students turning violent and obstructing academic activities of a large number of non-protesting students. They damaged university communication servers to disrupt the winter semester registration," says JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar.

11.25 am: Amit Shah speaks to Delhi LG; requests him to call JNU reps for talks

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday spoke to Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal and requested him to call JNU representatives for talks, officials said. Shah had a telephonic conversation with the Delhi LG. "The home minister spoke to the LG and requested him to initiate discussions with representatives from the JNU," an official said.

11.20 am: Sabarmati hostel warden resigns; HRD ministry summons JNU admin

JNU's Sabarmati hostel's senior warden R Meena has resigned following Sunday's violent attack on the hostel where students fled after a group of masked men and women barged in and started attacking the students with sticks and rods. Meanwhile, the HRD ministry has summoned the JNU administration in the matter.

11.15 am: Registrar, Pro-VC meet Delhi LG Monday morning; informs him about the JNU situation

Registrar and Pro-VC of JNU met Delhi L-G Anil Baijal on Monday morning and informed him about the ongoing situation at the JNU campus. The violence case has been transferred to Crime Branch. Police officials have began collecting evidence and will also talk to students about the violence that erupted at the campus on Sunday.

11.06 am: Overnight protests in Mumbai continue on Monday morning

Several hundreds of students and members of civil society protesting against the JNU violence (on Sunday) at the Gateway of India, Mumbai continued with their agitation on Monday morning.

10.54 am: All 34 injured JNU students admitted to AIIMS discharged

AIIMA Trauma Centre Chief Dr Rajesh Malhotra has said that all 34 JNU students who were admitted to hospital for treatment on Sunday have been discharged.

10.49 am: Delhi Police responded in time, says DCP Devender Arya

Delhi Police, DCP, South-West, Devender Arya has said that the police responded well in time with the help of social media and videos related to the JNU incident.

10.36 am: JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar appeals to students to maintain calm; says winter semester registration will happen

"Would like to appeal to all students to maintain peace. University stands by all the students to facilitate their pursuit of academic activities. We will ensure that their winter semester registration will take place without any hindrance. They need not fear about their process. The top priority of the University is to protect the academic interests of our students," says JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar.

JNU Vice Chancellor M. Jagadesh Kumar: They need not fear about their process. The top priority of the University is to protect the academic interests of our students. https://t.co/OIvnMlgMZf - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

10.28 AM: India Today reports the Delhi Police will likely transfer the JNU violence case to crime branch. A total of 28 students and faculty members were injured in violence at the JNU campus on Sunday.

10.20 AM: Congress leader Kapil Sibal blames the JNU V-C for violence: "How were masked people allowed to enter the campus? What did the Vice Chancellor do? Why was Police standing outside? What was the Home Minister doing? All these questions are unanswered. This is a clear conspiracy, investigation needed."

Achhe Din !



With the police as collaborators :



Masked men : Destroying the idea of a " university "



Masked agendas : Destroying the idea of " India "



And the " chowkidar " watches , unfazed ! - Kapil Sibal (@KapilSibal) January 6, 2020 10.13 AM: Union Minister Giriraj Singh blames left students for violenceat the JNU campus. They are defaming JNU and have turned the University into acentre of hooliganism, says the Union Minister. 9.52 AM: An FIR has been registered in connection with violence in Jawaharlal Nahru University yesterday. A total of 23 students and some faculty members were injured in the violence. 9.43 AM: The JNU administration strongly condemns any form of violence on the campus, says V-C Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar The JNU administration feels great pain and anguish for the students who have sustained injuries in the violence that took place in JNU campus. The JNU administration strongly condemns any form of violence in the campus. pic.twitter.com/Quk3Zc7wN0 Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar (@mamidala90) January 5, 2020 9.37 AM: ABVP people were directed as henchmen of V-C to beat up students, says JNUSU "The violence that happened today is the result of the desperation and frustration of the VC and his cronies. But the chronology of events that unfolded today is a shameful episode for the Delhi Police who gave a safe passage to ABVP goons imported from outside. For days now the administration has been unable to break our protest. Since 4th January, ABVP people were directed as henchmen of the VC to come and beat up students. They used lathis and pipes on that day," JNUSU has said in its statement on Monday. 9.34 AM: JNUSU says V-C, his cronies responsible for attack on students "The JNUSU would like to make the following statement. The Vice-Chancellor of the university M Jagadesh Kumar is behaving like a mobster who perpetuates violence in the university he is supposed to administer. He uses all means and manner to see to it that students, teachers, Karmacharis and the entire JNU community faces violence by criminals imported from outside using iron rods, stones and lathis. Even as we speak, the JNUSU president is in the trauma centre of AIIMS after she was hit by an iron rod on the head in the ABVP assault," a JNUSU statement says. 9.31 AM: India Today reports that many students are leaving the JNU campus with packed bags after a night of violence and rampage at the university, in which a total of 28 people were injured. 9.15 AM: Brutal attack on JNU students & teachers by masked thugs is shocking, says Rahul Gandhi. "The fascists in control of our nation are afraid of the voices of our brave students," he tweets. The brutal attack on JNU students & teachers by masked thugs, that has left many seriously injured, is shocking.



The fascists in control of our nation, are afraid of the voices of our brave students. Todays violence in JNU is a reflection of that fear.



#SOSJNU pic.twitter.com/kruTzbxJFJ Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) January 5, 2020 8.57 AM: Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), calls the Registrar, Proctor and Rector of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to his office, today. 8.48 AM: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan: "The attack on students is an onslaught by intolerance. The people who have unleashed Nazi model attack on students and teachers in JNU are the ones who are instigating violence and insecurity in the country. The Sangh Parivar should refrain from this dangerous battle of bloodshed at educational institutions. It will be better if they realise that the voice of the students are the voice of this nation." 8.44 AM: Protests have erupted across the country after violence at JNU. Apart from Mumbai, students in Hyderabad also staged a protests condemning attack on students and faculty members at the university in Delhi. 8.37 AM: Author Chetan Bhagat condemn the violence at JNU. "Deeply, deeply concerned about the #JNUAttacks. They are Indian students. In an Indian college. It's not ok to attack or make any Indian college feel unsafe. That doesn't change even if the college is AMU, Jamia or JNU. We destroy our nation if we do or secretly condone this," tweets Bhagat. Deeply, deeply concerned about the #JNUAttacks.



They are Indian students. In an Indian college.



Its not ok to attack or make any Indian college feel unsafe.



That doesnt change even if the college is AMU, Jamia or JNU.



We destroy our nation if we do or secretly condone this. Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhagat) January 6, 2020 8.35 AM: The Delhi Police have gathered CCTV recordings from the JNU campus. At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union chief Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours on Sunday. 8.32 AM: Latest visuals from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) main gate. Violence broke out at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march. Delhi: Latest visuals from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) main gate. Violence broke out in the campus yesterday evening in which more than 20 people were injured. pic.twitter.com/45Zmv8Pnm2 ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020 9.25 AM: List of students injured in the JNU clash Sarthak, 31-year-old

Kamlesh Mandrijo, 30-year-old

Soori krishnan, 23-year-old

Gaurav, 24 -year-old

Shambhavi, 21-year-old (female)

Velentina, 26-year-old

Shivam Chaurasia, 27-year-old

Manish Jangid,25-year-old

Sheshmanee Sahu,22-year-old

Aise Ghosh, 23-year-old

Ameet Parmeswaran,37-year-old

Sucharita, 45-year-old

Nikhil Mathew,24-year-old

Ayush singh,19-year-old

Ashwarya pratap,25-year-old

Shokat,28-year-old

Ujjwal,22-year-old

Deepshikha,19-year-old

Sbimit,21-year-old

Kamran,22-year-old

Mrs Sucharita is the faculty 8.15 AM: Shiv Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray says the goons responsible for attack must face action. "Students mustn't face brutal force! Let them be!" The violence and brutality faced by students, while protesting, is worrisome. Be it Jamia, be it JNU. Students mustnt face brutal force!

Let them be!

These goons must face action. They must be brought to time bound and swift justice. Aaditya Thackeray (@AUThackeray) January 5, 2020 8.00 AM: Students from various colleges in Mumbai held a protest at the Gateway of India on Sunday midnight to condemn the JNU violence. Former JNU students Umar Khalid and Kunal Kamra were part of the group, which also held a candlelight vigil to show solidarity with JNU students. Youngsters, mostly students from different city colleges, assembled on the pavement across Hotel Taj near the Gateway of India to condemn the violence. Mumbai: Students continue to protest outside Gateway of India against yesterday's violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). #Maharashtra https://t.co/6uNb1f9iZR pic.twitter.com/6p2sikQLgl ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

7.50 AM: Home Minister Amit Shah spoke to the Delhi Police chief and has ordered a probe into the incident.
A man has been found guilty of the murder of 18-year-old Cheyon Evans in south west London last year.

Fernando Pope, 21, of no fixed address, was convicted of murder following a trial at the Old Bailey and will be sentenced on February 7.

The court heard that police were called at 4.42pm on Friday, June 14, to reports of a stabbing in Deeside Road, Wandsworth.

Officers attended alongside the London Ambulance Service and found 18-year-old Cheyon in a critical condition.

Cheyon Evans, 18, was stabbed to death in Wandsworth / Metropolitan Police

Despite the efforts of paramedics, including those from Londons air ambulance, he died at the scene a short time later.

A post-mortem examination gave the cause of death as a stab wound to the chest.

Homicide detectives from Specialist Crime launched an investigation and established that Pope had used a large knife to repeatedly stab Cheyon.

Pope was identified via CCTV from the estate and was arrested on Thursday, 20 June. He was charged the following day and remanded in custody.

A police tent near to the scene in Wandsworth / PA

The motivation for the fatal attack has never been established.

Detective Chief Inspector Helen Rance, who led the investigation, said: Cheyon was fatally stabbed by Fernando Pope who has today been convicted of his murder.

Pope is clearly a dangerous man who was intent on causing serious harm that afternoon in broad daylight on a busy residential estate.

Cheyons family have been left completely devastated by their loss and our thoughts remain with them at this time.

Flowers and medical equipment left near to the scene in Wandsworth / PA

In a statement, Cheyons family said the teen was an "amazing" person who played a very important role at home and was the "man of the house".

"The family cant find the words to describe how they feel at this time other than complete and utter emptiness," they said.

Losing Cheyon has affected so many of his family and friends. It has torn their world apart and changed the family dynamic forever. It has truly been the most devastating, traumatic and surreal thing that couldve happened.

Cheyons mother added: My heart will forever be broken and I cant picture a day where I wont grieve the loss of my son.

"I have a permanent hole in my heart that can never be filled and will never stop bleeding.

"My only hope is that Cheyon, like many others that were brutally and horrifically murdered on the streets of London in 2019, will be a name, a story that inspires the government to create change, a better future and better opportunities for the children of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
The Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Tanko Muhammad, has denied links with a former senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, who is being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for alleged extortion.

The complainant, Alhaji Sani Dauda, who reported Sani to the EFCC had claimed that the former senator demanded N4m from him to give to the CJN and four other judges to influence some pending cases in court.

But the CJN, through a statement by the Supreme Courts Director, Press and Information, Dr Festus Akande, described the claim as a blatant lie.

The statement read in part, Justice Tanko Muhammad has never, in his entire life, seen or had any form of encounter or interaction, either directly or remotely with Shehu Sani, let alone giving him assurances of what is not only unethical but equally despicable and inglorious, to say the least.

Let it be known that if the statement credited to Shehu Sani was actually made by him, it is simply a blatant lie, a figment of his imagination and an orchestrated falsehood immodestly concocted to malign, smear and disingenuously tarnish the good image and reputation of the CJN with a view to gaining financial reward.
BEIJING  The mysterious respiratory illness that has infected dozens of people in a central Chinese city is not SARS, local authorities said Sunday.

The 2002-03 SARS epidemic started in southern China and killed more than 700 people in mainland China, Hong Kong and elsewhere. Fears of a SARS recurrence arose this month after patients were hospitalized with an unexplained viral pneumonia in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province.

As of Sunday, 59 people contracted the condition and have been isolated while they receive treatment, according to the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission. Seven were in critical condition.

The commission said in a statement that initial investigations have ruled out SARS  severe acute respiratory syndrome  as well as Middle East respiratory syndrome, influenza, bird flu and adenovirus.

The commission previously said the conditions most common symptom was fever, with shortness of breath and lung infections appearing in a small number of cases. There were no clear indications of human-to-human transmission.

Several patients were working at the South China Seafood City food market in sprawling Wuhans suburbs. The commission said the market would be suspended and investigated.

Hong Kongs Hospital Authority said Sunday that 15 patients were being treated for symptoms including fever and respiratory infection after recent visits to Wuhan.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Hospitals and doctors have been directed to report cases of fever in anyone who has traveled to Wuhan in the past 14 days, Hong Kongs health chief, Sophia Chan, said Sunday. The hospital authority said it has activated a serious response level to curb spread of the infection.

Yanan Wang is an Associated Press writer.
Seventy assembly constituencies (ACs) in Delhi will go to polls on February 8, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced Monday.

Although there are three main political parties in the fray, the contest will be between the incumbent Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which won 67 out of 70 seats in the 2015 elections, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which controls all three Municipal Corporations in the national capital and also won all seven seats from the state in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The Congress, which ruled Delhi for three consecutive terms until 2013, drew a blank in both Lok Sabha and state elections since.

Also Watch l Dont vote for your party, vote for Delhi: Kejriwals message to voters

Two factors will determine Delhis political outcome.

The first is whether the electorate will make a distinction between voting for a central government and a state government. It did so in the 2015 assembly elections, and the BJP was reduced to winning three ACs within months of leading in 60 ACs in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. A CSDS-Lokniti poll conducted during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections showed that the BJP is much more vulnerable than the AAP on this count.

While 82% of the respondents who were voting AAP would have voted for the same party in the event of a snap assembly poll, this number was just 56% and 57% for the BJP and the Congress.

Indeed, a sharp drop in BJPs vote share is what one has seen in all assembly elections  Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand, after the 2019 polls.

The other key factor will be how the Congress performs in these elections. In the two Lok Sabha and assembly elections held between 2013 and 2019, the AAPs fortunes have depended to a large extent on Congress performance. While a complete collapse in Congress votes, like in the 2015 assembly elections, has led to an AAP sweep, Congress vote share reaching double digits has given BJP a big edge in a triangular contest.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, both Scheduled Caste and Muslim votes, the only two communities which did not vote for the BJP in a majority, were divided between the AAP and the Congress.

Whether the AAP can win back votes both from the BJP and the Congress will determine if it can get re-elected to govern Delhi when the results are declared on 11 February.
NATO Ambassadors met on Monday (6 January 2020) to address current tensions in the Middle East and implications for NATOs training mission in Iraq.

Speaking after the meeting of NATOs North Atlantic Council, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stressed that the safety of NATOs personnel in Iraq is paramount and that the Alliance had temporarily suspended training activities on the ground. He added that NATO was prepared to continue training and capacity-building when the situation permits, emphasizing that the Alliance remains strongly committed to the fight against international terrorism.

Read the Secretary Generals press point here
HAMMANA, Lebanon  On a Saturday in November, a small group of boys in matching royal blue shirts, the uniform of the Scouts of Lebanon, gathered beside their hide-out: a small pine forest on the edge of town. Their mission: Collect as many spent shotgun shells as they could find in the next five minutes.

The task had been assigned to them by two volunteers from the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon, a conservation organization focused on protecting birds.

Hunting is ubiquitous in Lebanon, which has the 11th-highest rate of small-arms ownership in the world. In a show of hands, nine of the scouts had claimed to own a gun. Two, both 12 years old, said they were allowed to hunt, and 10 more said they wished they were. Angelo, 16, was not among them.

Some say its a sport, but its not, its a waste of time, he said. There were other things you could be doing with the hours spent waiting for birds, he added.
Talks aimed at ending the political deadlock in Northern Ireland are continuing in Belfast this morning.

Parties at Stormont have until next Monday to reach a deal to restore power-sharing or a new assembly election could be called.
ELSAH  Principia College has launched a global search for a new college president.

On. Dec. 16, John Williams was appointed interim president of Principia College, succeeding Dean of Academics Dr. Meggan Madden who served as acting college president after Dr. Jolanda Westerhof resigned in late October.

Williams is a professor of political science and Asian studies. He has taught at Principia College for more than three decades and served several terms as president of the Faculty Senate.

A 1976 Principia College graduate, Williams has a juris doctor degree from The George Washington University. He was the inaugural recipient of the Horace Edwin Harper Jr. and Evelyn Wright Harper Award for Teaching Excellence in 2013 and is a popular lecturer for the Principia Lifelong Learning and Summer Session programs.

Dr. Westerhof became president of Principia College on July 1, 2018. Her October resignation was voluntary and she requested it to be effective immediately.

In an open forum on campus, the board of trustees released a statement expressing gratitude for Dr. Westerhofs service and contributions to Principia, for her deep expressions of love and care for our students, and for her attention to diversity and inclusion. For several weeks, boxes located throughout the campus were available to collect gratitude notes from students, faculty and staff for Dr. Westerhof.

With nearly 450 students from 36 states and 27 countries, Principia College offers a liberal arts academic program with a focus on Christian Science-based character education, according to its website.

People wishing to recommend candidates to be considered as the next Principia College president are asked to submit them to search@principia.edu.
MONDAY PUZZLE  We sometimes use the word sparkling when we talk about fresh and interesting fill in crossword puzzles. Its a good adjective, but it is rarely a literal description of a particular puzzle.

Today, I can say with all confidence that this debut by the mother-and-daughter team Kathy Lowden and Tess Davison sparkles.

Tricky Clues

Some of the nontheme fill might be a bit beyond a new solver, but once you solve the theme, the rest should fall into place.

For example, if youve just started solving, you might not be familiar with the word GAT, which is a slang term for a pistol. But it has appeared in the New York Times Crossword 213 times, so its worth getting to know. Its short for Gatling gun, which was patented in 1862 by Richard Jordan Gatling and shortened to GAT around 1904.
Ben Stokes launched an astonishing assault on the South African bowlers as England took full command on the fourth day of the second Test against South Africa at Newlands on Monday.

England were 375 for seven in their second innings at lunch, an overall lead of 421 runs. They added 157 runs for the loss of three wickets in 27 overs during the morning.

Stokes slammed 72 off 47 balls to overshadow a maiden Test century by Dom Sibley, who continued his sedate progress as he took his overnight score of 85 to 125 not out. He reached his hundred off 269 balls and faced another 30 deliveries before lunch.

Stokes attacked all the bowlers he faced and hit seven fours and three sixes before being caught at long-on off left-arm spinner Keshav Maharaj.

Ollie Pope fell quickly but Jos Buttler continued the attack, hitting 23 off 18 balls as the lead went beyond 400.

South African captain Faf du Plessis chose not to take the second new ball when it was due after a maiden over by Pretorius at the start of play. He perhaps reasoned that Maharaj had a chance of dismissing Stokes early in his innings.

The tactic backfired, however, as 28 runs were added in five overs before the new ball was taken, including sixes by Stokes off Pretorius and Maharaj.

Stokes played an attacking shot off almost every ball he faced and was undeterred by a let-off on 38 when he top-edged a pull against Kagiso Rabada and wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock ran about 35m but dropped the ball as he dived for it.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A sea of black-clad Iranians on Monday mourned the top commander killed in last week's US drone strike that inflamed tensions across the Middle East, as NATO was set to discuss the spiralling crisis.

Iranians clutching "Down with USA" signs and portraits of their hero Qasem Soleimani massed as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei presided over prayers for the slain head of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force.

The targeted killing of 62-year-old Soleimani ordered by US President Donald Trump saw the Islamic republic vow "severe revenge" before Tehran also took a further step back from the already tattered 2015 nuclear accord with world powers.

In an escalating war of words that has heightened international concern and rattled financial markets, Trump threatened yet more "major retaliation" if Tehran hits back, including strikes on Iranian cultural sites.

Iraq's parliament meanwhile demanded the government expel the 5,200 American troops stationed in the country in response to the Baghdad drone attack which also killed top Iraqi military figure Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

Trump has warned that a forced departure of US troops would prompt sanctions against Iraq that would "make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame".

NATO ambassadors were to hold an extraordinary meeting at Brussels headquarters to "address the situation in the region," said an official of the alliance, which has been forced to suspend its training mission in Iraq.

Germany, France and Britain urged Iran to refrain from taking "further violent actions or support for them", or from steps that further weaken the 2015 nuclear deal.

"It is crucial now to de-escalate," German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a joint statement Sunday.

"We call on all the players involved to show utmost restraint and responsibility." The nuclear deal had offered Tehran relief from sanctions in return for curbs to prevent it acquiring nuclear weapons -- but Trump's withdrawal from it last year has dramatically weakened the agreement.

Despite its latest nuclear step back on Sunday, Iran insisted it will continue to fully cooperate with the UN agency overseeing its atomic programme.

The European leaders also pleaded with all parties to not jeopardise the ongoing battle against the Islamic State jihadist group, which has lost its self-proclaimed "caliphate" but whose militants remain active.

Amid the geopolitical tensions in the oil-rich region, crude prices surged and most equities tumbled while the safe-haven commodity gold hit a more than six-year high in early trading Monday.

The raw emotions sparked by the US killing of Soleimani were on full display in Tehran, where mourners formed a sea of black, dotted with red Shiite flags and white signs, in what state television said was a "several million-strong" turnout.

As they marched down a main artery of the Iranian capital, the mourners chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel". Khamenei appeared to cry as he prayed over the flag-draped coffins containing the remains of Soleimani and five other "martyrs" killed in the strike.

The supreme leader was flanked by President Hassan Rouhani and other top political and military figures as well as Soleimani's son and the slain general's replacement as Quds commander, Esmail Qaani.

"Down with USA," read a placard held up by a young woman wearing a black chadour, while another sign, held aloft by a man, called for "#hard_revenge".

"We must give a crushing response," one of the mourners told AFP.

"We must target whatever military base they have in the region," said the 61-year-old businessman who gave his name as Afkhami. "We must attack all that are in the range of our missiles." Soleimani was one of Iran's most popular public figures, seen as a hero of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

He was also the key figure behind Tehran's alliances across a region where Iran is in often deadly rivalry with US allies Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Trump said last Friday the Quds commander had been planning an "imminent" attack on American diplomats and forces in Iraq. The US president has also threatened bombing 52 unspecified targets in Iran if Tehran attacks US troops and interests in the region.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 6)  Cebu is gearing up for the Sinulog festivities next weekend, with authorities announcing security measures including phone signal interruptions.

Phone signals may be shut down at major events of the Sinulog Festival, like the solemn procession on January 18 and the grand parade on January 19, according to Central Visayas Police Regional Director Valeriano De Leon.

De Leon said they already sent last month to the National Telecommunications Commission the request for mobile phones signal shutdowns for Sinulog.

He added that the exact times when phone signals will be shut off will be announced later as they are waiting for the recommendations from their officers on the ground.

It is also possible for phone signals not to be turned off if the polices intelligence teams are confident enough, De Leon said.

He added that devotees who cannot leave their bags would have to enter the Basilica and other Sinulog venues through special lanes where they would undergo a thorough inspection.

De Leon also said that they will be seeking additional forces from nearby provinces to help in the security of the Sinulog festivities.

The Task Force Sinulog will deploy around 6,000 policemen in Cebu City which is expected to receive an influx of millions of foreign and domestic tourists during the Sinulog weekend.

Basilica Rector, Rev. Fr. Pacifico Nohara, said there will be no major changes in the events of the Feast of the Santo Nino this year except that there will be no grand fireworks during the procession. Funds for the fireworks will instead be donated to communities in Northern Cebu that were devastated last month by Typhoon Ursula.

The procession of the Santo Nino this year will be longer as it will go through a different route.
Gold prices breached the Rs 41,000 per 10-gram mark in the domestic market on Monday, tracking positive overseas trend from the international spot gold that neared a 7-year high, amid heightened tensions in the Middle East.

Supported by a weaker rupee, gold prices for 24 karat in Delhi, spiked to a record Rs 41,400.00 per 10 gram.

On the Multi Commodity Exchange, Gold 05 Feb 2020 Futures spurted by another Rs 984 or 2.5% to a record high of 41,096.00 per 10 gm. On a similar note, Silver March contract also surged 2.25% to Rs 48595 per kg.

Internationally, spot gold surged 1.5% to $1,579.55 per ounce and reached its highest since April 2013.

On January 3, gold prices climbed 2% following news on mounting tensions between the US and Iran after a top Iranian commander was killed in an airstrike by the US in Baghdad. The Pentagon confirmed the death of Iran's key military commander Qasem Soleimaniin, saying the strike was carried out at the direction of US President Donald Trump, and was aimed at deterring future attacks allegedly being planned by Iran.

According to traders, gold extended gains today after Iraq's parliament on Sunday recommended all foreign troops be ordered out of the country.

Adding to the tension, US President Donald Trump on Sunday vowed 'major retaliation' if Iran tries to avenge the killing of its key military commander and doubled down on a threat to bomb Iranian cultural sites. He also threatened to impose 'very big sanctions' on Iraq if it follows through on a Parliament vote calling for the expulsion of US troops based in the country.

Following the news, Brent crude futures jumped to four-month peaks today and gained $1.46 to trade at $70.06 a barrel, while U.S. crude climbed $1.17 to $64.22. Weighed by the spike in crude oil prices, coupled with rising concerns over US-Iran tensions, the domestic unit, Indian rupee too depreciated 25 paise to 72.05 against the US dollar on Monday.

The yellow metal is expected to trade with positive bias amid higher crude oil prices and geopolitical worries.

Rupee vs Dollar: Rupee tanks 31 paise to 72.11 per dollar on rising crude price

Share Market LIVE: Sensex slips 650 points, Nifty at 12,000; Bajaj Finance declines over 4%
Kanpur (UP): A court here is expected to pronounce its verdict on January 18 on the massacre of 20 people in Behmai village, allegedly by bandit Phoolan Devi nearly four decades ago.

The special court for hearing dacoity-related cases was expected to deliver the verdict in the 1981 Behmai massacre case on Monday. But it allowed the defence counsel to submit its written arguments by January 16, district government counsel Raju Porwal said.

The court has now listed the case for January 18, when a judgment is expected on the role of the four surviving accused: Bhikha, Posha, Vishwanath and Ram Singh.

Defence counsel Girish Narain Dubey sought more time to submit written arguments and was granted 10 more days, the government counsel said.

Bandit Queen Phoolan Devi, who later became a politician, and her gang members were accused of killing 20 people belonging to the Thakur community at Behmai village in Kanpur Dehat on February 14, 1981. It was described as an attack to avenge her alleged rape by two other bandits, both Thakurs.

She surrendered to police in 1983 and went on to become an MP from Mirzapur. She was shot dead outside her Delhi home on July 25, 2001.

Initially, 35 people, including Phoolan Devi, were named as accused in the case. Eight of them were reportedly killed by police in separate encounters.

Three others were reportedly absconding.
Jihadists from Somalia's Al-Shabaab group on Sunday stormed a military base used by US forces in Kenya's coastal Lamu region, destroying aircraft and military vehicles, according to Kenyan police and army officials.

A group of attackers breached security at Camp Simba in the early hours but were repelled and four jihadists were killed, said army Colonel Paul Njuguna.

Al-Shabaab has launched regular cross-border attacks since Kenya sent troops into Somalia in 2011 as part of an African Union force protecting the internationally backed government -- which the jihadists have been trying to overthrow for more than a decade.

Lamu region, which includes the Lamu Island tourist hub, lies close to the Somali frontier and has suffered frequent attacks often carried out with roadside bombs.

Njuguna said "an attempt was made to breach security at Manda Air Strip" at 5:30am but the attack was repulsed.

"Four terrorists' bodies have so far been found. The airstrip is safe," he said, adding that a fire had broken out but had since been dealt with.

Al-Shabaab 'lying'

An internal police report seen by AFP said two aircraft, two American helicopters and "multiple American vehicles" were destroyed at the airstrip.

Local police commissioner Irungu Macharia said five people had been arrested near the camp and were being interrogated.

It was not yet known if there were casualties among Kenyan or American troops.

US military officials confirmed the attack and said US and Kenyan forces had repelled the Al-Shabaab fighters.

"Working alongside our Kenyan partners, the airfield is cleared and still in the process of being fully secured," said the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) in a statement.

The nearby civilian airport at Manda Bay, which brings tourists visiting Lamu Island -- a UNESCO World Heritage Site -- was closed for several hours after the incident, according to the civil aviation authority.

Al-Shabaab said in a statement it had "successfully stormed the heavily fortified military base and have now taken effective control of part of the base".

AFRICOM accused Al-Shabaab of lying in order to create false headlines.

US military network

The Somali jihadists have staged several large-scale attacks inside Kenya in retaliation for Nairobi sending troops into Somalia as well as to target foreign interests.

The group has been fighting to overthrow an internationally-backed government in Mogadishu since 2006, staging regular attacks on government buildings, hotels, security checkpoints and military bases in the country

Despite years of costly efforts to fight Al-Shabaab, the group on December 28 managed to detonate a vehicle packed with explosives in Mogadishu, killing 81 people.

Somali women protested against Al-Shabaab in Mogadishu days after the massive car-bomb attack in the city. By Abdirazak Hussein FARAH (AFP/File)

The spate of attacks highlights the group's resilience and capacity to inflict mass casualties at home and in the region, despite losing control of major urban areas in Somalia.

In a November report, a UN panel of experts on Somalia noted an "unprecedented number" of homemade bombs and other attacks across the Kenya-Somalia border in June and July last year.

On Thursday, at least three people were killed when suspected Al-Shabaab gunmen ambushed a bus travelling in the area.

According to the Institute for Security Studies, the United States has 34 known military bases in Africa, from where it conducts "drone operations, training, military exercises, direct action and humanitarian activities".

US military strikes in Somalia surged after President Donald Trump declared the south of the country an "area of active hostilities".

AFRICOM said in April it had killed more than 800 people in 110 strikes in Somalia since April 2017.
EUGENE, Ore.-- With the new year in full swing leaders from Lane County, Eugene and Springfield will be holding events to reflect on the past year and set the agenda for 2020 in the coming weeks.

Leaders will be addressing their communities in this annual event. Each is free open to the public. Here are the details you need to know if you plan on attending.
I t was the third week of term when Charlie lost it, tipping over his desk, swearing at the teacher and storming out of class, where he roamed the corridors, shouting and punching walls.

It was not the first time the 14-year-old had kicked off and he was immediately summoned to the headteacher who gave him a permanent exclusion and banished him to the local Pupil Referral Unit (PRU).

In another UK city that same week, another 14-year-old, William, had a similar repeat meltdown.

But in his case, the school pulled him out of mainstream classes and provided intensive support in a separate on-site unit to help him manage his anger.

The Standard is running a week-long investigation into school exclusions / Nigel Howard

Within a year, Charlie was dealing crack cocaine on a county line, whereas William had got his behaviour under control and was on track to achieve good GCSEs.

The difference between these two children? The first goes to school in London, where permanent exclusions (England-wide) have soared 70 per cent in five years to 7,900 pupils.

The second attends school in Glasgow where, following a radical change in approach 10 years ago, permanent exclusions have fallen to zero and fixed-term exclusions are down 87 per cent.

Why should this tale of two cities interest us?

Because escalating permanent exclusions are now believed to be a key factor behind surging knife crime, up 53 per cent in London since 2014, whereas violent youth crime in Glasgow is down 48 per cent in a decade.

Of related concern is the 135 per cent rise in the number of young people linked to gangs dealing drugs on county lines, according to childrens services.

A City Hall report in September revealed that 4,000 Londoners have been drawn into county lines drug-dealing networks.

Experts who work with young people caught up in county lines say that PRUs have become the recruiting ground of choice for crime bosses to pick off vulnerable teenagers, who then do their job for them and recruit each other.

Evan Jones, head of child criminal exploitation development at St Giles Trust charity, told the Standard: We analysed referrals of around 100 teenagers aged 13 to 18 to our county lines project and found that 100 per cent were in PRUs or had been permanently excluded.

"We expected the figure to be high, but to find not a single one in mainstream education was a shock.

Rebecca Bryant, chief executive of Resolve, a not-for-profit group specialising in community safety, said: The link between PRUs and county lines and rising knife crime is clear.

"Students in PRUs are vulnerable, often because of problems at home, but also because of the shortness of the PRU school day, often only two to three hours long, which means they are especially ripe for gang members to pick off.

Government data analysed by the Standard shows that exclusion is also the biggest predictor of juvenile criminal behaviour, with nine in 10 boys locked up in young offender institutions, including Feltham in west London, having been excluded from school.

What is to be done? Last October, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Knife Crime called for an urgent overhaul of the school system.

Their demands published in a report Back to School? Breaking the link between school exclusions and knife crime  included a repeat of a call made in the May 2019 Timpson Review.

This was for schools to be accountable for the educational outcomes of children they exclude to deter heads from being too hasty in excluding children for minor misbehaviour due to the flawed school rankings system.

They also expressed alarm that pupils in PRUs often attend for only a couple of hours a day and called for an end to this part-time education.

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Over the past six months, an Evening Standard Special Investigation has gone into the underbelly of our education system to ask:

What is the impact of our current system on excluded children?

Is there a different way that still preserves the right of well-behaved children to learn without being disrupted by badly behaved children?

How do we encourage Londons mainstream schools to be more inclusive?

There are about 90 PRUs or similar alternative provision (AP) units in London with many operating like a day-release prison.

We have witnessed how children are searched on entry, free movement is restricted and classrooms, corridors and toilets are locked, requiring staff equipped with electronic fobs to provide access.

The academic outcomes and value for money of these PRUs are shocking. Just 1.6 per cent of PRU pupils manage a strong pass of grade 5 or above in GCSE English and Maths and 96 per cent failed these subjects entirely.

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Yet the cost to the taxpayer is more than 400 million. We pay 18,000 on average for each PRU pupil, rising to 24,000 in London, on a par with the annual fees of the most expensive private schools. For what?

Most PRU headteachers are afraid to open their school to media scrutiny, but those courageous enough to speak out admit the system is broken.

John Bradshaw, headteacher of London East Alternative Provision in Tower Hamlets, one of Londons more successful PRUs (where 22 per cent of pupils got a strong pass in English and Maths GCSE versus the average one per cent), invited us in and spoke with unusual candour.

Mr Bradshaw, who has more than 30 years experience as a headteacher of mainstream schools as well as PRUs, said: If I were to throw the education system up in the air and start again, I would argue that a mainstream school should meet the needs of all its pupils and be fully inclusive.

I would not abolish PRUs but I would severely reduce them. I have no doubt that a significant number of pupils that end up in PRUs could have stayed in mainstream schools if they had the right support.

I am not saying it would be easy but what I have learned is this  there is always a story behind behaviour and if you get to the story, you can change the behaviour.

Mr Bradshaws view is similar to the mantra deployed by Glasgow City Councils dynamic director of education Maureen McKenna that all behaviour is communication.

In other words, bad behaviour is communicating an underlying problem  be it an undiagnosed learning difficulty, domestic abuse or issues around poverty.

The Department for Education records that the biggest single cause of exclusion is persistent disruptive behaviour, accounting for over a third of permanent exclusions, yet it is telling that they keep no record of the underlying reasons for that behaviour.

Mainstream schools are compelled to properly support children with Special Educational Needs and Disability, but children who misbehave are often treated with zero tolerance and simply banished to PRUs to become somebody elses problem.

Over the coming days we will report on schools that are pioneering an inclusions revolution and suggest a new way forward, but today we focus on excluded children.
Bear in mind that Brown is no bland centrist. Hes a down-the-line progressive who campaigns hard for African American votes and speaks of linking labor rights to civil rights. His ideology, however, does not block his capacity for empathy. I will never be one, he writes, who says that people in rural and small-town America vote against their own interest; who am I to say what is their self-interest? But we as progressives have work to do.
California State Capitol Building View Photo

Sacramento, CA  One of the items that California lawmakers will debate is a $4.2-billion climate bond to deal with the impacts of natural disasters.

The Associated Press reports that it would be like an advanced loan before the next catastrophe hits. Republicans are raising concerns that California should instead use existing revenue rather than borrowing new money.

Today kicks off a new legislative session at the state capitol, and the bond is one of dozens of proposals held over from the last legislative session, and they must be approved or denied by the end of this month.

There will also be discussion over the coming weeks about various bills introduced related to PG&E, whose infrastructure has been linked to several wildfires, and who has been criticized about the handling of last years planned power shutoffs.
Iran announced a further rollback of its commitments to the troubled international nuclear accord Sunday amid anger over the US killing of a top commander which also prompted Iraq's parliament to demand the departure of American troops. While vast crowds gathered in Iran's second city of Mashhad as Qasem Soleimani's remains were returned home, the Tehran government said it would forego the "limit on the number of centrifuges" it had pledged to honour in the 2015 agreement which was already in deep trouble. The announcement was yet another sign of the fallout from Friday's killing of Soleimani in Baghdad in a drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump, which has inflamed US-Iraqi relations and among the rival camps in Washington. Iran's 2015 nuclear accord with the United Nations Security Council's five permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany has been hanging by a thread since the US withdrew unilaterally from it two years ago. European countries have been pushing for talks with Iran to salvage the deal, inviting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif to Brussels for talks, but the prospect of progress seemed remote after the government's statement on Sunday night. "Iran's nuclear programme no longer faces any limitation in the operational field", said the statement. This extends to Iran's capacity for enriching uranium, the level of enrichment carried out, the amount enriched, and other research and development, it said. "As of now Iran's nuclear programme will continue solely based on its technical needs," it added. - Europe urges Iran to rethink - Until now, Iran has said it needs to enrich uranium up to a level of five percent to produce fuel for electricity generation in nuclear power plants. Tehran said it would continue cooperating "as before" with the International Atomic Energy Agency but the leaders of Germany, France and Britain reacted by urging Iran to rethink its announcement. "We call on Iran to withdraw all measures that are not in line with the nuclear agreement," Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a joint statement. The European leaders also urged Iran to refrain from taking "further violent actions or support for them." "It is crucial now to de-escalate. We call on all the players involved to show utmost restraint and responsibility." The Europeans have been among the chorus of voices urging restraint in the aftermath of the drone strike which killed Soleimani, the veteran commander of the Revolutionary Guards' foreign operations. But as his remains were paraded through the streets of Mashhad, cries of "Revenge, Revenge" echoed through the streets while mourners threw scarves onto the roof of the truck carrying his coffin. Soleimani's remains had been returned before dawn to the southwestern city of Ahvaz, where the air resonated with Shiite chants and shouts of "Death to America". Some 5,200 US soldiers are currently stationed across Iraqi bases to support local troops preventing a resurgence of the Islamic State jihadist group. But the government could be poised to demand they leave after a vote in the Baghdad parliament where caretaker prime minister Adel Abdel Mahdi joined 168 lawmakers -- just enough for quorum -- to discuss a motion to force US troops. "The parliament has voted to commit the Iraqi government to cancel its request to the international coalition for help to fight IS," speaker Mohammed Halbusi announced. The cabinet would have to approve any decision but the premier indicated support for an ouster in his speech. - 'Iraqi people want the US' - US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reacted by saying he would "take a look at what we do when the Iraqi leadership and government makes a decision" but indicated that he felt American troops were still welcome. "We are confident that the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there to fight the counterterror campaign," Pompeo said on Fox News. Two rockets hit near the US embassy in Baghdad late Sunday, the second night in a row that the Green Zone was hit and the 14th time over the last two months that US installations have been targeted. Pompeo defended the decision to kill Soleimani while insisting that any further US military action against Iran would conform to international law. Trump triggered accusations that he had threatening a war crime by declaring cultural sites as potential targets in a Tweet on Saturday night. Zarif drew parallels with the Islamic State group's destruction of the Middle East's cultural heritage following Trump's tweets that sites which were "important to... Iranian culture" were on a list of 52 potential US targets. "We'll behave lawfully," Pompeo told the ABC network. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been leading the backlash against the Soleimani strike, an operation that Trump only officially informed Congress about after the event. But Trump made light of the calls for him to get Congressional approval in the future, saying such notice was "not required" -- and then saying his tweet would serve as prior notification if he did decide to strike against Iran again. "These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any US person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner," Trump wrote. Iran says it will no longer be bound by the number of nuclear enrichment centrifuges it can operate following soaring tensions with the United states An Iranian woman walk past a mural on the wall of the former US embassy in Tehran Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US would conform to international law
Oil prices surged Friday after President Trump ordered an airstrike that killed Irans powerful military commander, Qasem Soleimani. While the administration says it will take whatever action is necessary on Iran, Academy Securities head of macro strategy, Peter Tchir, says the U.S. economy will be relatively immune from escalation.

I'm a strong believer that higher oil prices are now generally good for the U.S. economy, Tchir told Yahoo Finances The Ticker on Friday. We've got enough people dependent on oil business here that I'm quite comfortable with that. If anything, the one thing I'm changing a little bit is my global outlook. I was expecting Europe and maybe Asia to outperform the U.S. this year. I think they're much more exposed to higher oil prices.

Women taken part in the funeral procession of Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (poster-R) , Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani (poster-L), and eight others in the capital Baghdad's district of al-Jadriya, near the high-security Green Zone, on January 4, 2020. - Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" joined the funeral procession for Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani and Muhandis, both killed in a US air strike. The cortege set off around Kadhimiya, a Shiite pilgrimage district of Baghdad, before heading to the Green Zone government and diplomatic district where a state funeral was to be held attended by top dignitaries. In all, 10 people -- five Iraqis and five Iranians -- were killed in Friday morning's US strike on their motorcade just outside Baghdad airport. (Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP) (Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty Images)

The U.S. is a net exporter of energy, whereas China, Japan, and Europe have to import their energy, according to Tchir. And theyre getting the bulk of their energy from the part of the world that will be affected by the airstrike, he said.

Higher energy prices will impact their economies ... faster than it impacts ours, he noted. I think its going to be more of a drag on their economy ... I think were just fine. Certain states are going to do very, very well with higher energy prices.

Brent futures (BZ=F) spiked by over 3.5% on Friday, the highest pop since drones attacked Saudi Arabias oil facilities in September.

What I like to do is take some chips off the table  maybe for every $4 or $5 you're taking off the table, I want to put $1 or $2 into energy, Tchir says. So I actually think once we get through this, we are going to see global economic growth.

Tchir also says investors should not be concerned about Iran taking retaliatory measures in the Strait of Hormuz.

Strait of Hormuz

We don't think that's very likely, Tchir explains. It's an area that's pretty well defined. We believe if they cause a disruption, it can be cleared up very quickly. They are also well aware that that will just cause the U.S. to escalate further.

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But rising tension in the Middle East is not the only variable driving markets. Investors are eyeing January 15, when President Trump is expected to sign a U.S.-China trade deal as well.

A decent amount is priced in, which is why unfortunately, part of my base case is that we will hear some negative news on trade at sometime in January, Tchir says. It tends to be how the president likes to negotiate, right? You stir the pot, you cause some confusion and you get everyone all upset that maybe it's not happening. So then whatever happens, you get a bigger victory later on.

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The shocking moment a homeless man is set on fire while sleeping on a sidewalk in Brazil before crawling away and dying of his injuries has been caught on surveillance footage.

Carlos Roberto Vieira da Silva was attacked Sunday shortly after midnight by an unidentified man on a street sidewalk in Mooca, a city in the state of Sao Paulo.

A surveillance camera from a nearby business captured the heinous attack when a suspect dressed in black dosed a flammable liquid on the ground near where the 39-year-old man was sleeping on top of a cardboard box.

A huge explosion followed and the assailant abandoned the scene.

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT

Police in Sao Paulo, Brazil, are looking for an unidentified man (circled) who was seen on a surveillance video setting Carlos Roberto Vieira da Silva on fire Sunday morning. The 39-year-old homeless man died at a local hospital from injuries suffered in the attack

The suspect (circled) set the ground on fire before Carlos Roberto Vieira da Silva's body was engulfed in flames. He suffered second and third degree burns to his legs, chest, back and face

Vieira da Silva was seen in the security video footage crawling as his entire body was engulfed in flames.

At least two people ran out of a vehicle and another person raced over in an attempt to put the fire out.

Vieira da Silva suffered burns to 70% of his body and was rushed to Tatuape Municipal Hospital where he was declared dead.

Doctors diagnosed him with second and third degree burns to his legs, back chest and face

A surveillance camera captures the moment Carlos Roberto Vieira da Silva (circled) walks as his body is completely in flames after he was attacked while he slept outside a supermarket in Mooca, a city in the southeastern Brazilian state of Sao Paulo

Good Samaritans (circled) rushed to the aid of Carlos Roberto Vieira da Silva after he was set on fire

Investigators found a gallon of fuel as the site of the attack and were investigating surveillance cameras from the area in hopes of finding and arresting the perpetrator.

Joao Elieser Junior told Brazilian television network G1 that Vieira da Silva had camped out under the supermarket's awning for almost a year.

'People gave him something to eat, drink. Nobody saw any of it,' he said.

A person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, revealed that Vieira da Silva attempted to get him off the streets, but he refused because he wanted to make his own money.
Magma Fincorp today announced that it remains very well capitalized with capital adequacy ratio of over 26%. The company has a granular retail presence within its four businesses i.e., Vehicle Finance (ABF), Affordable Home loans, Affordable loans against property, SME finance and General Insurance.

Update on Liquidity Position:

- Magma raised new liabilities amounting to over Rs 2150 crore entirely from long-term sources during the Oct- Dec 2019 quarter; Of this, funds raise in form of Term Loans and Debentures constituted approx.

Rs 1300 crore.

- Magma has a surplus in matching of Assets and Liabilities in each time bucket across 0-1 year.

- The Company has adequate liquidity cushion of over Rs 2300 crore at consolidated level as on 31 December2019, against its debt repayments due amounting to just about Rs 425 crore till March 2020.

- With excellent liquidity and a strong pipeline of new long-term funding, we continue to witness softening in cost of incremental borrowings. Magma expects the overall cost of borrowings to start softening from Q1FY21 and onwards.

- Considering the comfortable liquidity position, Magma facilitated a request by an investor for early redemption of Debentures of face value of Rs. 200 crore through repurchase in December 2019.

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
General Bipin Rawat will attend his first Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) meeting in his new role as the Chief of Defence Staff on January 17, a senior government officer said on Monday.

Rawat took over as Indias first CDS on December 31.

The DAC, headed by the defence minister, is Indias top defence procurement body that evaluates and green lights acquisition proposals made by the armed forces.

Other members of the council are the minister of state for defence, the three service chiefs, the defence secretary, secretary defence research and development, secretary defence production and director general, acquisition. As Chief of Defence Staff, Rawat holds the charge of permanent chairman, chiefs of staff committee -- a panel consisting of the three service chiefs.

One of Rawats key responsibilities as CDS is to promote the use of indigenous equipment by the services at a time when the armed forces are heavily dependent on imported military hardware.

As CDS, he heads the department of military affairs and is also principal military adviser to the defence minister on all matters related to the tri-services.

He has taken over as Chief of Defence Staff at a time when the three services are facing a worrying fund shortage that could derail some of their modernisation efforts.
Associated Press

NEW YORK  If the thousands of Californians who use Josh Simons app for musicians demand this month that Vampr delete their personal information, Simons will be ready to comply.

The social network company expects to be one of many businesses nationwide subject to the California Consumer Privacy Act, a law that took effect Jan. 1 and gives consumers control over the personal information companies collect, store and often share with other enterprises. Simons, who already had a user privacy policy in place before the act became law last year, has retooled the policy and the Vampr app.

We have half a million users around the world, Simons says. Its definitely something we have to keep in mind.

Companies across the country need to be aware of the laws complex requirements even if they dont deal directly with consumers. It covers companies that conduct business in California, including out-of-state companies that sell products or merchandise to California residents. The law can also cover companies that make money from providing services like payment processing or website hosting to businesses that are subject to the law.

The law does have provisions aimed at exempting small businesses  companies are subject to the law if they have worldwide revenue above $25 million, collect or receive the personal information of 50,000 or more California consumers, households or electronic devices; or those who get at least half their revenue from selling personal information. But small companies can easily reach the 50,000 threshold for collecting or receiving information  an individual who has a phone, tablet, PC at home and one at work counts as four users, not one.

Vampr is currently about 1,000 users shy of the threshold, but Simons expects the app will reach that milestone sometime in January. The Santa Monica, California-based companys home state is its biggest market.

The law aims to protect consumers from having their information sold without their knowledge or consent. It was passed by the California Legislature in June 2018, and modeled on the European Unions General Data Protection Regulation, which took effect in May 2018. The California law was enacted amid increasing concern about companies sharing consumer data, especially after it was learned that the data firm Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed Facebook user information.

The California law gives consumers the right to know what personal information companies collect from them, and what businesses do with it  whether they share, transfer or sell it, and who is the recipient of the information. Under a key provision, companies must give consumers the option to have their information deleted from databases.

The law covers a wide range of data including names, addresses, Social Security and passport numbers, email addresses, internet browsing histories, purchasing histories, personal property and health information, professional or employment information, educational records and information from GPS apps and programs.

Companies subject to the law must ensure their systems and websites are in compliance. Many without in-house technology staffs have hired companies to install software that among other things creates the website buttons and links that allow consumers to see their information and opt out of having it stored. Some companies may decide to get legal help to be sure theyre on the right track. Simons, who himself installed the software to make Vampr compliant, estimates the process cost the business $7,000, a large sum for a small company.

Although the California statute took effect Jan. 1, enforcement wont begin until July 1. And the law as it stands now may change  the Legislature has already passed a number of amendments to clarify and refine the laws requirements, and the state Attorney Generals Office is still formulating regulations and guidance about the law.

Some of the laws complexities grow out of the relationships between companies that use one anothers data, for example, in the case of a payment processor that must use credit card and other personal information provided by a retailer in order to complete transactions. In such cases, the service provider must sign a contract that prohibits them from using the data for any purpose other than what is stated in the contract, says Travis LeBlanc, an attorney specializing in cybersecurity law with the firm Cooley LLP in Washington, D.C.

Vendors that can connect with client companies systems can unintentionally be an entry point for hackers trying to steal personal information. That was the case when hackers were able to steal personal information for more than 60 million Target customers in 2013.

Vendors are often a source of weakness, LeBlanc says. The CCPA helps encourage the company that has the primary relationship with consumers to take responsibility for that.

Attorneys find some of the laws provisions to be vague, making it unclear which companies need to comply. One provision says information is protected if it is sold or transferred to another business or a third party for monetary or other valuable consideration. Attorneys are wondering what valuable consideration means, says David Stauss, an attorney with expertise in technology law with the firm Husch Blackwell in Denver.

This can really become difficult to apply, Stauss says. There are some things that are going to clearly be sales, but thats a gray area.

Some companies that wont be subject to the law nonetheless are setting themselves up to be compliant. Some expect that other states will enact similar laws, while others are aware that data privacy is a sensitive issue they need to address.

Were in an evolving area where consumer sentiment runs very high, says Dawn Barry, president of Luna Public Benefit Corp., a San Diego-based company that collects data for medical research. Although the nature of the companys business makes it exempt from the California law, it nonetheless is compliant with the statute and Europes GDPR, Barry says.
A 41-year-old Queensland man is fighting for his life in hospital with burns to a large part of his body after allegedly being set on fire during an argument over a debt.

Police have charged a 21-year-old Wandal man over the incident, which took place at a Rockhampton home on Saturday.

The burned man was flown to Brisbane. Credit:Dave Hunt/AAP

It will be alleged the 21-year-old visited the Campbell Street residence where an argument broke out between the two over a "financial debt that was owed between the two parties" police believe could have been about $400 to $500.

"This altercation ultimately led to the 21-year-old offender squirting an ignitable fluid into the torso and face area of the victim," acting Detective Senior Sergeant Kevin Mawdsley told media on Monday.
Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Monday said that a Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) delegation will be meeting External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to discuss the issue of security of Sikhs in Pakistan. Taking to microblogging site, Badal mentioned that the delegation will be led by party president Sukhbir S Badal.

This statement of Badal comes after the murder of Sikh youth in Peshawar and attack on Nankana Sahib Gurudwara in Pakistan.

A SAD delegation led by party president Sukhbir S Badal will meet EAM @DrSJaishankar today & urge him to take up the issue of security of #Sikhs in Pak with its govt on emergent basis following hate attack at #NankanaSahib & murder of Sikh youth in Peshawar.@officeofssbadal  Harsimrat Kaur Badal (@HarsimratBadal_) January 6, 2020

READ | MEA: India Condemns Targeted Killing Of Sikh Community Member In Pak's Peshawar

India condemns killing of Sikh youth

"India strongly condemns the targeted killing of minority Sikh community member in Peshawar that follows the recent despicable vandalism and desecration of the holy Gurdwara Sri Janam Asthan at Nankana Sahib and the unresolved case of abduction, forced conversion, and marriage of a Sikh girl Jagjit Kaur," the Ministry of External Affairs said.

It said the government of Pakistan should act in defence of their own minorities instead of "preaching sermons" about it to other countries.

The body of 25-year-old Ravinder Singh was found in the area of Chamkani police station on Sunday, who was in the city for a short while to shop for his wedding. This case of cold-blooded murder in Pakistan, only adds on to the multiple cases of discrimination against the minorities by Imran Khan government.

Even a report filed by the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) had stated back in December that religious freedom has been affected and deteriorated under Imran Khan's government in Pakistan.

READ | Union Minister Harsimrat Condemns Mob Attack On Sikh Shrine In Pakistan

India condemned Nankana Sahib Gurdwara attack

On Friday, India had strongly condemned vandalism at the revered Gurdwara Nankana Sahib in Pakistan and called upon the neighbouring country to take immediate steps to ensure the safety and security of the Sikh community there.

The External Affairs Ministry said members of the minority Sikh community in Pakistan have been subjected to acts of violence at the holy city of Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak Dev. The MEA further added that these reprehensible actions followed the forcible abduction and conversion of a Sikh girl who was kidnapped from her home in the city of Nankana Sahib in August last year.

READ | Harsimrat Kaur Badal Slams Congress Party After Manmohan Singh's Admission On 1984 Riots

READ | Harsimrat Kaur Slams Rahul For Misleading People On CAA, Not Calling Out Pak's Atrocities
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 10:16:12|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A compilation of Chinese President Xi Jinping's speeches marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) has been published by the Foreign Languages Press.

In 2019, Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, attended a host of celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the PRC and delivered important speeches.
Chinese biochemist Gongda Xue has been extradited from Switzerland to stand trial in Philadelphia for allegedly receiving proprietary information stolen from British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline's Upper Merion research facility. Read more

A Chinese scientist accused of aiding a conspiracy to steal trade secrets potentially worth more than $1 billion from GlaxoSmithKline has been extradited from Switzerland to stand trial in Philadelphia.

Federal prosecutors say Gongda Xue, a 50-year-old biochemist, received valuable proprietary cancer research that his sister stole while she worked for the pharmaceutical giants research facility in Upper Merion from 2006 to 2016.

He is also accused of, but has not been charged with, pilfering confidential documents from one of his former employers, a Swiss research institute backed by the global health-care conglomerate Novartis.

Xues handover to American authorities comes after an 18-month court battle in Switzerland, during which he fought extradition, and amid a backdrop of deteriorating U.S.-China trade relations.

For years, American officials have accused the Chinese government of encouraging scientists working for U.S. corporations to steal trade secrets to help jump-start their countrys economy. Despite denials from Beijing, dozens of Chinese and Chinese American researchers in fields ranging from superconductivity to agricultural science have been indicted in U.S. courts.

 READ MORE: Phillys U.S. attorney pursuing corporate espionage

But for all the attention on the economic tensions between the nations, Xues arrival in the United States  just days before Christmas  was met with little fanfare.

The Justice Department has said little about the charges against Xue since a federal grand jury indicted him on 12 counts including conspiracy, theft of trade secrets, and wire fraud last year. As he made one of his first appearances in federal court in Philadelphia on Monday, Xue said nothing, leaving it to his attorney to argue on his behalf.

In court filings, defense lawyers Marc Eisenstein and Barry Coburn have denied the governments accusations, questioned the value of the stolen research, and characterized Xues sister as the driving force behind the alleged crimes.

Dr. Xue has spent more than 20 years building his career and making significant contributions to the fields of cancer and HIV research, Eisenstein wrote in a filing last week. He has a complete lack of prior contact with the criminal justice systems in China, Switzerland, and the United States. He is dedicated to his career and his family.

Xues sister  Yu Xue, one of the worlds leading biochemists and a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Wayne  awaits sentencing after pleading guilty in 2018 to stealing research on promising cancer therapies, many of which she developed during her time at GSK.

Prosecutors say she and four codefendants  including her twin sister and another former GSK colleague  aimed to use confidential documents to launch their own company, which they hoped would put Chinese industry at the forefront of lucrative pharmaceutical cancer research.

Their firm, Renopharma, received more than $2 million in grants and 4,000 square feet of free lab space from the Chinese government. According to U.S. court filings, Yu Xue and her colleagues estimated that the company could be worth as much as $10 billion within a matter of years.

In marketing materials, the business boasted of its access to GSK and Yu Xue, whom it described as the British pharmaceutical makers chief scientist.

Gongda Xue had no formal role in Renopharma. Since moving to Switzerland in 1999, he has worked at a string of universities and attained status as a legal permanent resident. Before his arrest, he lived in Basel with his wife and son.

Still, U.S. prosecutors say he reviewed several of the documents his sister stole and shared equally privileged information from the Friedrich Miescher Institute, a biomedical research institute funded by Novartis that employed him from 2008 to 2014.

He launched his own firm in Switzerland four months before his sisters arrest in 2015. Authorities allege that he also intended to profit from stolen information.

Both Gongda Xue and Yu Xue knew that a successful anticancer product could reap billions of dollars per year in revenue, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert J. Livermore wrote in recent court filings. While working for their respective entities, [both] secretly formed their own companies in hopes of profiting from their research.

Like his sisters, Gongda Xues fate could swing less on the question of whether he possessed stolen proprietary documents than on a debate over how much the information contained within them was worth.

Federal prosecutors have said the information could be worth from $550 million to more than $1 billion. Despite her guilty plea, Yu Xue maintains that the material had virtually no value to GSK.

Her lawyers have argued that much of it was already in the public domain and that the pharmaceutical giant already had patents on several of the therapies discussed within them, meaning that Renopharma could not profit simply by copying them.

Her defense has pointed to GSKs own news releases in the wake of her 2015 arrest, which stated that the breach had no material impact on the companys business or R&D activity.

To the extent that any information in the GSK documents were trade secrets, they were fragmented and akin to having a single puzzle piece in a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, attorneys Peter R. Zeidenberg and John N. Joseph wrote in a filing last year. The information was useless to a person trying to replicate GSKs work product.

A federal judge has yet to issue a ruling on that debate, which could play a determinative factor in the sentence Yu Xue ultimately receives.

But as she sat in the gallery of a federal courtroom Monday in support of her brother, a different  but equally complex  question faced the court.

Gongda Xues lawyers have sought his release on house arrest while he awaits trial. His brother-in-law has obtained an apartment for him in Wilmington, and family members are willing to stake property should he fail to show up to court.

U.S. authorities have filed an immigration detainer against him. That means that even if a judge were to grant his bail request, he would not be released but instead be transferred to an immigration detention facility  an unusual circumstance for a man who had no desire to come to the U.S. and who was brought here after fighting for more than a year to remain in Switzerland.

U.S. Magistrate Judge David R. Strawbridge scheduled a March 16 hearing to further consider the issue.
THE Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) are strengthening their intelligence operation, particularly on terrorist groups in the country who may sympathize with Iraq following the killing of its top general during a US strike on January 3, 2020.

On Sunday, President Rodrigo Duterte met with the security cluster to discuss the possible effects in the Philippines, most especially to those working in the Middle East, of the arising tension between Iran and the United States (US) after the US launched a strike in Baghdad international airport that killed Qassem Soleimani.

AFP newly appointed chief of staff Lieutenant General Felimon Santos said they are yet to monitor any imminent threat directly connected to the conflict.

We presented our action taken. Number one is of course our monitoring with our defense attache present sa nearby countries, Santos said.

Number two is to monitor, intensify our intelligence monitoring on the groups, the local terrorist groups na nasa atin that might express sympathy to the Iranian. As of now, wala pa namang affiliated sa Iran, he added.

PNP officer-in-charge Lieutenant General Archie Gamboa said they are profiling sympathizers and possible threats who may take advantage of the situation.

There are also security concerns kasi siyempre, merong sympathetic either by race or by ideology. So the PNP is profiling possible threats, possible groups who may take advantage or who might symphatize, he said.

Our intelligence monitoring would be continuous up until medyo luminaw na 'yung problema doon sa Middle East, he added.

Santos said Duterte is particular in providing assistance to the overseas Filipino workers who might get caught in the arising tension.

He directed us to prepare and be ready to deploy our assets anytime to evacuate our countrymen in the area, Santos said.

He said they have readied their air assets should they need to be deployed to Iran for the evacuation of the Filipinos there. (SunStar Philippines)
PODGORICA, Montenegro - Dozens of police on Monday were deployed in Montenegro for Orthodox Christmas Eve celebrations being held amid heightened tensions over a religious rights law opposed by the Serbian church in the small Balkan country.

In the historic capital of Cetinje, police separated hundreds of believers who back the Serbian Orthodox Church from those supporting the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which is not recognized by other Orthodox Christian churches.

No incidents were reported during the ritual lighting by the two separate groups of Yule logs on Christmas Eve, which Orthodox Christians celebrate on Jan. 6.

Tensions in Montenegro have soared over a religious law that the Serbian church says will strip it of property, including medieval churches, monasteries and other assets. Montenegrin state authorities have denied plans to do this.

Led by the Serbian church priests, thousands of people have attended daily protest marches against the law in Montenegro since it was approved in parliament last month.

More religious ceremonies are planned throughout the country on Christmas Eve.

The law says religious communities with property need to produce evidence of ownership from before 1918, when Montenegro joined a Serb-led Balkan kingdom and lost its independence.

Montenegro split from much-larger Serbia following a 2006 referendum. About one-third of the small Balkan countrys 620,000 citizens declare themselves as Serbs and want close ties with Belgrade.

The country is a member of NATO and also wants to join the European Union.
B100,000 reward to catch Thai Muang turtle egg thieves

PHUKET: Phang Nga Governor Chamroen Tipayapongtada announced that a reward of B100,000 is on offer to anyone who has information that leads to the arrests of the person or persons responsible for removing leatherback turtle eggs believed to have been stolen from a nest on Thai Muang Beach, north of Phuket.

marineanimalsenvironmentnatural-resourcescrime

By Tanyaluk Sakoot

Monday 6 January 2020, 06:55PM

The reward offered follows officers from the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR) conducting a turtle patrol finding a near-empty nest on Na Yak Beach soon after sunrise on Saturday morning.

The nest that contained only two leatherback turtle eggs. Both eggs were spoiled and would not have produced hatchlings, the officers noted.

The officers excavated the sand around the nest, but no other eggs were found at the site. As turtles usually lay clutches of anywhere from about 50 up to about 100 eggs in one laying, the officers believed that the nest had been raided for its eggs. (See story here.)

I will give B50,000 to anyone who has information that leads to arrest the thief [or thieves], said Phang Nga Governor Chamroen, who has also previously served for years as a Phuket Vice Governor and in 2016 served as Phuket Governor.

This will be added to another B50,000 from the Mai Khao Marine Turtle Foundation and the head of Thai Muang village, bringing the total reward to B100,000, he explained.

I am begging people to protect turtles together, he added. I know that turtle eggs were popular for eating in the past, but we dont see a lot of them in our generation. These turtles are nearly extinct.

In recent months, we have seen turtles came back to Phang Nga beaches. Stealing turtle eggs hurts Phang Nga peoples feelings. I have no idea who did this or why. Maybe they sell the eggs. But if you dont have enough money for food, please come and see me. I will provide it for you, Governor Chamroen assured.

Dont steal turtle eggs. Its illegal under the Wildlife Preservation and Protection Act 2019, he added.

Meanwhile, Haritchai Rittichuay, Chief of the Khao Lampi  Hat Thai Mueang National Park in Phang Nga province, north of Phuket, told The Phuket News today (Jan 6) that police already have some suspects in their sights.

CCTV footage from the area shows the suspects riding a motorbike into the national park area to go fishing. We are checking the motorbikes licence plate, but we have not been able to identify the thief [of thieves] yet, Mr Haritchai said.

If anyone sees a turtle laying eggs on a beach, please call us at 076-679134 so we can quickly go to protect the eggs and take care of them, Mr Haritchai added.
Treasure Island, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/06/2020 -- Affordable beach weddings are an increasingly popular option for couples looking to plan destination weddings in Florida. With pristine local beaches and nearby reception venues, Treasure Island beach weddings can be tailored to each couple. Adopting the opposite of a 'cookie-cutter' approach, Suncoast Weddings, premier Florida wedding planners based on the west coast in Treasure Island, offer a range of affordable beach wedding packages which typically 'bundle and save' ceremony elements which could be pulled together from the 'a la carte' menu. Helping to plan beach wedding receptions, either on the beach or in a beach pavilion allows couples to keep their beach weddings on a budget by keeping all the vendors aligned and listing the costs in one place. Treasure Island has many accommodation choices, some couple choose to get married on the beach behind their hotel, apartments, or beach house. This means the wedding party can relax as they get ready, with a short, sandy walk down the aisle to an arch on the beach. Bamboo arches are popular, with a simple two-post bamboo arch which is perfect for a smaller ceremony, to an elegant four-post arch, typically used for more extravagant ceremonies. Arches can be draped in many different ways, from a soft billowing ivory chiffon to twists of bright and vibrant colors like fuchsia and turquoise. Aisles can also be crafted in a multitude of ways. Popular choices include beach elements such as aisle markers of starfish or conch shells. Without being forced into a set decor, couples who plan their ceremonies with Suncoast Weddings can 'mix and match' decor elements from looks they have seen on social media or create a brand new look unique to their own special day. for couples who can't decide on a single color theme, there are many ways to integrate two or more colors by adding sashes to chairs, sash accents to tikis, or layering colors across the arch. Colors are often used to link in floral accents which are another opportunity to brighten up the ceremony site. Flowers are then often transferred to become centerpieces at a reception. There is a permit fee to get married on Treasure Island, The team at Suncoast Weddings can help with the application. This prevents a time and ceremony location from being 'double booked' by the city. It is one of the first steps to take when the beach weddings on Treasure Island are being planned.



A popular twist on a familiar theme is to gather family and friends together for a beach house wedding. Suncoast Wedding s partner with the Sunset Beach House to offer a venue directly on Treasure Island Beach. The shore is transformed into a ceremony site and then the back yard of the property becomes the 'al fresco' reception venue. If the wedding party is more than twenty or so, there are hotels nearby or boutique cottages offering the prospect of a memorable stay.



Treasure Island Wedding Packages, St Pete Beach weddings, Siesta Key weddings, Madeira Beach weddings, and Clearwater beach weddings boast spectacular sunset views over the Gulf of Mexico, perfect for couples who want sunset wedding day portraits. Florida beach weddings and reception packages can be purchased which includes the ceremony and also the party to follow. This may include items such as a DJ, a custom made cake, a coordinator for the wedding and a professional beach wedding photographer.



About Suncoast Weddings

Suncoast Weddings are based in Treasure Island and offer beach weddings in Florida on the sandy beaches of the west coast of Florida in the Clearwater, St Pete Beach, Madeira Beach, Treasure Island area. With a range of Florida beach wedding packages ranging from a simple 'Toes in the Sand' ceremony to their tropical 'Island Oasis' and 'Ultimate Romance' packages, they have the experience to tailor each special day to the couple and their unique wishes. Choose from themes and color schemes featured on their website or choose something totally new. With eclectic inspiration like a seashell-inspired spiral aisle and a team of beach wedding photographers, videographers, ministers and planners who craft Florida beach weddings and Florida beach vow renewals to delight. They take the guesswork out of planning a beach wedding in Florida.



Contact



Phone: 727-443-0039

Email: sue@suncoastweddings.com

Online: http://www.suncoastweddings.com/
The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations described the killing of one of his country's top generals as an act of war, US media reported late on Friday.

The death of Quds Force commander Major General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad was the most dramatic escalation yet in spiraling tensions between Iran and the United States, despite President Donald Trump's insistence he did not want war.

But, speaking to CNN late Friday night, Iranian ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi said: "In fact was an act of war on the part of the United States and against Iranian people."

"Last night they (the US) started a military war by assassinating by an act of terror against one of our top generals. So what else can be expected of Iran to do? We cannot just remain silent. We have to act and we will act," he said.

"We can't just close our eyes to what happened last night. Definitely there will be revenge, harsh revenge." "The response for military action is military action. By whom, by when, where? that is for the future to witness," he ended the interview by stating.

The remarks follow Trump, speaking on Friday night to Evangelical supporters in Miami, saying that Soleimani was planning "a very major attack" and that he had been preparing multiple "attacks against Americans".

Soleimani -- long seen as a deadly adversary by the US and its allies -- was one of the most important power-brokers across the region, setting Iran's political and military agenda in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
North Koreans march at Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang, Sunday, in this photo released by North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency. / Yonhap



By Kang Seung-woo



In the wake of the drone-led killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, it remains to be seen how the airstrike will affect North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's actions.



Some believe Pyongyang will use the assassination to justify its nuclear program as a necessary form of defense and take its own path toward a nuclear power. But there is also speculation that the North Korean leader may disappear from the public eye  like his predecessors  out of fear of a possible U.S. attempt to assassinate him.



On Monday, three days after the death of the Iranian general in Iraq, the North's official media outlets carried their first reports on the incident, hinting that the country may chart a new course.



"There is nothing to hesitate about in the face of growing hostile acts, nuclear threats and blackmail," the Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece newspaper of the ruling Workers' Party, said in an article.



"We should continue to strengthen our impregnable military power quantitatively to ensure no one ever considers using armed forces against us until the U.S. withdraws its hostile policy."



Also, the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that China and Russia had condemned the U.S. attack as a violation of the U.N. Charter.



Experts say the North Korean regime is likely to take advantage of the airstrike in justifying its attempt to intensify military forces.




Jon Voight has nothing but praises for his daughter, Angelina Jolie, and her ex-husband, Brad Pitt.

Despite any tensions between the former Hollywood couple, Jon has no ill will towards his son-in-law.

During Gold Meets Golden, a pre-Golden Globes gala on Saturday in Beverly Hills, Voight told reporters that he is proud and excited for Pitt for a very unusual, yet successful movie.

Voight spoke about Pitt's Golden Globe nomination for "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood."

The 81-year-old actor also gushed and has been "very much looking forward to seeing" Pitt at the star-studded awards ceremony on Sunday. In fact, he was excited at the prospect of reuniting with his daughter's former husband.

Aside from Pitt, Voight also mentioned his friends, Joe Pesci, Al Pacino, and the possibility of Robert De Niro and the others winning an Academy.

"Robert will probably get an Academy Award or who knows, you never know. But, they're all brilliant. It's always nice to see the good films of a year being discovered and celebrated, you know. It's wonderful. It's good for them," Voight said.

The "Ray Donavan" actor also went on to praise Angelina's parenting skills, adding that it must take a lot of patience with a brood of six kids.

"She loves her kids. She's always involved with them, always concerned for them," Voight furthered. "She monitors everything. She's great."

The four-time Golden Globe winner shared that as a grandfather, he sees each child as unique and that Jolie is excellent at supporting each of their interests. "They all have something special, and what you want to do is provide them with the tools to express that."

Moreover, Voight told Closer Weekly and the other reporters at the Saturday event: "Growing up and I see so much, it's just like an actor gets a good role, an actor is no good unless he gets a part that supports his particular talent."

This was not the first time Voight gushed about his family. He told The Hollywood Reporter, "it's wonderful for me to spend time with Angie. Any five minutes I get, I'm always appreciative. So this is great that I could come and hang out with her a little bit and the kids too."

The famous father-daughter duo did not always have the best relationship and was even estranged for almost seven years.

It was only when Pitt convinced Jolie to fix their father-daughter relationship that they were able to resolve their difference.Since then, they have been on good terms, and their children played a huge part in their reconciliation.

Jolie talked to Vanity Fair in 2017about his dad, saying, "He's been very good at understanding they needed their grandfather at this time. He knows kind of the rule - don't make them play with you. Just be a cool grandpa who's creative, and hang out, and tell stories and read a book in the library."

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's relationship, meanwhile, continues to be complicated. A source told Us Weekly in November 2019 that the former couple still does not see eye-to-eye.

Pitt split from Jolie back in 2016 that led to their ongoing divorce proceedings and an even nastier custody battle over their six children, Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne.

READ MORE: Adele Makes Fans Worried After Photos With Harry Styles Surfaced
WASHINGTON  Sen. Ted Cruz wants the Senate to go on record supporting President Donald Trumps decision to kill Irans top general as Texas Republicans in Congress rally around the president amid escalating tensions with Iran and on Capitol Hill.

Texas Republicans have emerged as some of the loudest voices supporting the U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed Iran military leader Qassem Soleimani, which has escalated tension between the two countries and widened the partisan chasm in Congress, just as lawmakers return from a holiday break.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

As Democrats in both the Senate and the House push war powers resolutions to limit the presidents military actions regarding Iran, saying they are trying to stave off another war in the Middle East, Cruz is pushing a resolution of his own, commending Trump for the strike. The resolution is modeled after one that passed the Senate unanimously, commending former President Barack Obama for the attack that killed Osama bin Laden. Cruz  one of the biggest Iran hawks in Congress  is hoping to persuade at least some Democrats in the Senate to support it, as well.

The hope is that all senators again put aside partisanship and support the killing of this terrorist who has the blood of hundreds of American service members on his hands, an aide to Cruz said.

The strike that killed Soleimani came days after attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which the Defense Department has accused Soleimani of approving. U.S. officials have said Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.

For subscribers: Iraq abandons nuclear limits after generals killing

Virtually all Texas Republicans in Congress have voiced support for the move, with some drawing attention from Trump himself.

In a Fox News radio interview on Monday, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Democrats are looking for some reason to disagree.

We didnt see this kind of partisan division when President Obama decided to take out Osama bin Laden, he said.

Trump, meanwhile, retweeted Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston, over the weekend.

For those claiming theres no plan, that this was reckless: Step #1 of any strategy is to stop letting terrorist regimes attack us without repercussion, Crenshaw wrote in the tweet. Why is this basic truth of foreign policy so controversial?

Democrats, however, say the strike could lead to more attacks against American troops abroad  or even pull the country into another catastrophic war in the Middle East.

The reckless decision by President Trump to assassinate General Qasem Soleimani could lead to Americans seeing more violent acts against them around the world, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, tweeted. I urge Congress to assert its constitutional authority and to enforce the War Powers (Act) to restrain the president from taking us into war. No more endless wars.

For subscribers: Impeachment adds more heat to 2020 Texas elections

The killing of Soleimani has already sparked repercussions in the Middle East. Massive demonstrations have erupted in Iran, with chants of Death to America, as Iranian leaders have vowed to retaliate and said theyll no longer abide by limits on their nuclear program contained in the 2015 nuclear deal. Iraqs parliament, meanwhile, voted Sunday in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for the expulsion of the American forces.

ben.wermund@chron.com
Vehicles line up to enter the United States at the Peace Arch border crossing between Blaine, Washington and White Rock, British Columbia in a file photograph. (Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images)

US Says Reports of Holding Iranian Americans at Border With Canada Are False

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) stated that reports that border agents are detaining Iranians and Iranian Americans at the U.S.Canada border arent accurate.

Social media posts that CBP is detaining Iranian-Americans and refusing their entry into the U.S. because of their country of origin are false, the agency wrote on Twitter.

The Muslim civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations made the claims, along with activists such as Iranian American fashion blogger and activist Hoda Katebi.

Social media posts that CBP is detaining Iranian-Americans and refusing their entry into the U.S. because of their country of origin are false. Reports that DHS/CBP has issued a related directive are also false.  CBP (@CBP) January 5, 2020

Katebi wrote on Twitter that border agents had been ordered to detain Iranians entering the United States who were deemed potentially suspicious  regardless of citizenship status. She claimed that more than 60 Iranians had been held at the U.S.Canada border for more than 11 hours on Jan. 5.

She later challenged the CBPs statement, stating: These accounts are verified by journalists on both sides of the border. Weve seen photo/video documentation & more stories of prolonged detention & interrogation of U.S. citizens of Iranian heritage at this border.

Neither she nor other activists provided documentation of the claims.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations Washington chapter stated in a press release that more than 60 Iranians and Iranian Americans were detained at length and questioned at the Peace Arch Border Crossing in Blaine, Washington.

Many more were reportedly refused entry to the United States due to a lack of capacity for CBP to detain them, the group stated.

The group said the Iranian Americans had attended an Iranian pop concert in Vancouver, Canada, over the weekend. It cited one person, a 24-year-old woman named Crystal, whose last name wasnt listed, who said, We kept asking why we were being detained and asked questions that had nothing to do with our reason for traveling and were told, Im sorry this is just the wrong time for you guys.'

In a statement, Washington state Lt. Gov. Cyrus Habib said he was deeply concerned about reports his office was receiving about Iranian Americans being held, sometimes for 10 hours or longer, at the Canada-Washington border.

My office is working as quickly as possible to gather information and to direct those being impacted to resources, he said.

My statement on reports of Iranian Americans being held at the WA-Canada border: pic.twitter.com/xDmZruiVDX  Lt. Gov. Cyrus Habib (@waltgov) January 6, 2020

The Department of Homeland Security emphasized Iran in an update to its National Terrorism Advisory System on Jan. 4 after an Iran-backed terror group killed a U.S. contractor and hit the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, triggering reprisals from the United States, including the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

At this time we have no information indicating a specific, credible threat to the Homeland, the department stated (pdf).

Iran and its partners, such as Hizbollah, have demonstrated the intent and capability to conduct operations in the United States. Previous homeland-based plots have included, among other things, scouting and planning against infrastructure targets and cyber enabled attacks against a range of U.S.-based targets.

Iran is capable, at a minimum, of carrying out attacks with temporary disruptive effects against critical infrastructure in the United States. Homegrown violent extremists could capitalize on the heightened tensions to launch individual attacks.
The notification that Irish banks were not ready for some new features of the EU Payment Service Directive came from the Central Bank in mid-December when there was clear evidence the new security procedures entailed by the directive were not going to be met anytime soon.

In response to industry concerns about their readiness to apply strong customer authentication to e-commerce transactions, the Central Bank asked the European Banking Authority (EBA) for an additional 12 months for banks and merchants to implement the new standard.

A new deadline to comply by the end of the year has been set.

Version one of the Payment Service Directive established common rules in relation to certain types of electronic payments, such as credit transfers, direct debits, card payments, and mobile and online payments.

Version two, the so-called PSD2, became law in Ireland almost two years ago with the signing by the Finance Minister Paschal ODohonoe of the EU Payment Services Regulations law.

This the EUs attempt to move the banking world forward by making it possible for the EU market in payment services to be opened up to new types of payment services providers that offer a range of new payment services to businesses and consumers.

Effectively, the new directive requires banks to provide third-party providers with access to their customers information, through open application system interfaces.

In the process, it will enable these new service providers to compete with banks and other more traditional payment services providers by offering new, regulated payment products and services such as account information aggregation and payment initiation.

Application programming interfaces provide the means for banking and payments to become more open in a regulated way by allowing different systems to talk to each other, but with added security for consumers and businesses.

They are fundamental to the success of companies like Amazon, Google, Uber, and Stripe. But to date payments to these platforms have been unregulated across the EU.

Brexit has created many problems for the Bank of England in implementing any new EU regulations and prompted the bank to also negotiate a delayed implementation of the version two of the Payment Service Directive with the EBA.

In the case of the UK, an 18-month deferral was agreed, with the Bank of England making it clear that it intends to implement the new directive, despite the plan to pull out of the EU by the end of 2020.

As much of the online purchases by Irish consumers and businesses are from UK e-commerce sites, differing credit card security standards in Ireland and the UK could create havoc in the online sales business.

Recent surveys show that besides Ireland and the UK, over 40% of EU banks missed the original deadline.

However, the banks say they are very anxious to introduce the new security arrangements of the directive because three-quarters of all fraud is committed through online payments, but that the e-commerce merchants and consumers must be educated to use the new standards.

There is evidence that many e-commerce sites would not have been able to continue operating with the added security requirements if the main banks had pushed forward immediately.

Some leading online businesses had prepared for the impact of the new directive, but these are more likely to be larger companies with dedicated teams and resources.

A recent survey from Mastercard found that 75% of online merchants in Europe were unaware of the new standards due for implementation last September.

Visa and Mastercard have been actively introducing new security standards to bring users into line with the directive, as they have seen the fraud rate for digital payments soar compared with in-store transactions in Europe.

In parallel, the banks have been working with cardholders offering them improved authentication methods including biometric authentication.

Bank of Ireland have introduced KeyCode as a secure mobile authentication app, used to generate a one-time security password to allow direct access to online services.

Besides such dynamic passwords, consumers can expect to be asked to provide biometrics, including fingerprint, eye, face and voice recognition in the drive to meet the triple security requirements of the payment directive, if they wish to continue to enjoy their online buying experience.

John Whelan is managing partner at The Linkage-Partnership
Australians are set to miss out on being able to work in the United Kingdom without the need for a work visa under a new trade deal.

The UK is set to leave the European Union by the end of January following Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson's resounding election victory last month fought over Brexit.

His government is set to pursue a bilateral free trade agreement with Australia, that would eliminate import tariffs.

Australians are set to miss out on being able to work in the UK without the need for a work visa under a new trade deal (pictured are Australian women at London's The Church nightclub)

The UK is set to leave the European Union by the end of January following Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson's resounding election victory last month fought over Brexit

Such a deal, however, would be unlikely to give Australians the right to live and work in the UK longer-term without a visa, like they do when travelling to New Zealand.

Australian Trade Minister Simon Birmingham has confirmed Australia would not be pushing for special work rights as part of free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations this year.

'Negotiations for an FTA between Australia and the UK will prioritise enhancing trade with a market that is already our eighth-largest trading partner,' he said in a statement.

'Work and visa settings may also form part of discussions but it is important to appreciate that there is a huge spectrum of grey between the black and white of no movement or unfettered movement.

'Once talks are launched with the UK we will work through all of these issues in the usual way.'

Former Labor foreign minister Bob Carr said the UK was too small a trading partner to pursue a free trade deal with.

'On trade the UK is not generating enough new demand to make it a big part of our future,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'Trade with China, as it draws hundreds of millions more into its middle class, is the big opportunity for both UK and Australia, not trade with one another.'

Since June, Australians travelling to the UK have been entitled to cruise through the ePassport gates at British airports, including London's Heathrow, saving them at least an hour in queuing.

Nonetheless, Mr Carr said Australian travellers were still treated with less priority than EU passport holders.

'Talk of an Anglosphere or a big bold free trade deal means nothing to Australians when we have to wait in a queue for an hour at Heathrow while EU passport holders get waved through,' he said.

University of New South Wales trade economist Tim Harcourt said it was better to separate the issues of work visas and import tariffs when negotiating a free trade agreement.

The UK's departure from the European Union would be unlikely to to give Australians the right to live in the UK without a visa, like they do when travelling to New Zealand (pictured are Australian ex-pats at The Church nightclub in London)

'The FTA should be more focused on bread-and-butter trade issues, market access,' he told Daily Mail Australia on Monday.

Under existing arrangements, Australians can visit the UK for six months as a tourist without a visa.

A visa, however, is required to do paid or unpaid work.

European foreigners working visa-free in the UK was a major factor in the leave campaign securing 51.9 per cent of the vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum - ending a four-decade membership of the EU.

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham has confirmed Australia would not be pushing for special work rights as part of trade negotiations

Until 1967, Australians still carried British passports.

During that decade, the likes of the late writer Clive James, comedian Barry Humphries and feminist pioneer Germaine Greer were among a bevy of Australian ex-pats who made a name for themselves in London.

From Federation in 1901 until the mid-1960s, Great Britain was Australia's biggest trading partner until it moved to join the European Economic Community.

The UK was Australia's eighth biggest trading partner in 2018 with a market share of just 3.2 per cent, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade data showed.

China, by comparison, was Australia's biggest, two-way trading partner with a market share of 25.2 per cent, ahead of Japan (10.1 per cent), the United States (8.7 per cent), South Korea (4.8 per cent), Singapore (3.8 per cent), India (3.6 per cent) and New Zealand (3.4 per cent).

Australia is party to 11 free trade deals that eliminate import tariffs between trading partners.

Bilateral arranagements have been signed with New Zealand (1983), Singapore (2003), the US (2005), Thailand (2005), Chile (2009), Malaysia (2013), South Korea (2014), Japan (2015) and China (2015).

Separate multilateral arrangements were made with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2010 and the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2018.
Well, I think its entirely likely that his testimony would be helpful to the president, because it would identify, basically, a foreign-policy dispute which is reserved to the president under the Constitution  its really his sole authority  as a basis for impeachment, for this, now, the third time in American history, Cornyn said in an interview on Fox News Radios Guy Benson Show. So, it could well be beneficial.
As an early and fierce bushfire season sends Australia up in flames, the scope of the destruction is difficult to fathom. Fires burning across several states have scorched more than 23,000 square miles (more than 14 million acres)  an area more than three times the size of the nine-county Bay Area.

By comparison, the 2017 wildfires in California's Wine Country burned roughly 380 square miles (at least 245,000 acres).

Fire season in Australia usually begins in December, the start of summer in the Southern Hemisphere. But with 2019 being the hottest and driest year on record in Australia, the fires ignited early and some of the blazes have been burning since September.

The destruction is shocking: At least 25 people have been killed and 2,000 homes have been devoured by flames. Hundreds of millions of animals are believed to have died already. In New South Wales alone, an estimated 480 million animals have been affected since September. On Kangaroo Island, a refuge off the coast of South Australia for some of the country's most endangered creatures, teams had arrived to help euthanize livestock and wild animals injured in the blazes.

Cities across the countries have been choked by wildfire smoke for weeks. Australias capital, Canberra, had the worst air quality of any major city in the world for much of Monday. The Department of Home Affairs, which is responsible for coordinating the countrys response to disasters, told all noncritical staff to stay home because of thick smoke choking the city.

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A massive plume of smoke drifted some 1,300 miles to New Zealand and on Sunday afternoon, the sky in Auckland turned an eerie orange-color.

ALSO: Well-wishes to Australia sent from Golden Globe stage

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government was committing an extra 2 billion Australian dollars ($1.4 billion) toward the recovery effort in addition to the tens of millions of dollars that have already been promised.

The fires are still burning. And theyll be burning for months to come, Morrison said. "And so thats why I outlined today that this is an initial, an additional, investment of $2 billion. If more is needed and the cost is higher, then more will be provided.

The prime minister said the military was attempting to get food, fuel and water to burned-out communities, and engineers were working to reopen roads and resupply evacuation centers.

Rain and cooler temperatures on Monday were bringing some relief to communities battling the fires. But the rain was also making it challenging for fire crews to complete strategic burns as they tried to prepare for higher temperatures that have been forecast for later in the week.

"With the more benign weather conditions, it presents some wonderful relief for everybody, the firefighters, the emergency services personnel, but also the communities affected by these fires," Shane Fitzsimmons, commissioner of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, told reporters. But it also presents some real challenges when it comes to implementing tactical and strategic back-burns and other techniques to try and bring these fires under control.

More than 135 fires were still burning across New South Wales, including almost 70 that were not contained. Officials have warned that the rain won't put out the largest and most dangerous blazes before conditions deteriorate again.

Victoria state Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville said at least 200 millimeters (8 inches) of rain would need to fall over a short period of time in order to snuff out the fires  around 20 times what has fallen across the region in the past day. And officials warned that Australia's wildfire season  which generally lasts through March  was nowhere near its end.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Amy Graff is a digital editor with SFGATE. Email her: agraff@sfgate.com.
But she aint been in trouble, a female relative shouted from the gallery before deputies cleared her and several other supporters from the crowded courtroom at the Leighton Criminal Court Building at 26th Street and California Avenue. White covered her face with her hands as she slowly walked back to the courthouse lockup at the end of her hearing.
Syracuse, NY -- A longtime lawyer sparred in open court Monday with a judge over the $1 million bail bond set for an accused double murderer.

Ben Coffin repeatedly argued that state Supreme Court Justice Gordon Cuffy wasnt following the intent or the letter of the states new bail reform law by setting bail far out of the reach of his clients financial ability.

Coffins pointed criticisms Monday signaled a push by defense lawyers to test the waters of the states bail reform, which went into effect with the New Year and prohibits the jailing of defendants before trial except under the most serious of offenses.

The defendant, Treamon Elmore, is headed to trial in coming months in a double murder. He faces a sentence of up to life in prison with no parole if convicted in the shooting deaths of Luis Sepulveda, 21, and Christopher McLaurin, 28, inside a Lynwood Avenue residence in June 2018.

But Cuffy wasnt swayed by Coffins pointed arguments Monday, staying firm to Elmores previously set bail of $500,000 cash or $1 million bond.

Coffin is in a unique position to spar with the judge: hes the former law clerk for retired Judge William Walsh, whose courtroom was next to Cuffys current courtroom.

Coffins arguments included:

Elmore posed only a small risk of flight: Bail reform differentiates between defendants who fail to appear in court for any reason, and those who intend to flee. Coffin said Elmore posed a very small risk of flight to avoid prosecution, arguing that his prior bad behavior -- including a prior failure to appear in court and parole revocation -- shouldnt be held against him under the new law. Cuffy noted he could still consider Elmores character and history.

Bail has to be affordable: Coffin argued the new law required a judge to set bail rationally related to a defendants financial circumstances. He noted that Elmore has been jailed for nearly a year and a half now, making it obvious he cant afford to make it. But Cuffy said hes required to order the least restrictive means to ensure a return to court, and he ruled that the $1 million bail bond or $500,000 cash bail was the least restrictive means under the circumstances.

Strength of the prosecutions case no longer a listed bail factor: Prosecutors have long used the strength of their case as an argument for high bail, as it was a listed factor under the old bail law. But the new law removed strength of case," as well as weight of evidence from the listed factors. Coffin argued that the legislature clearly wanted to keep judges from considering those in setting bail. Prosecutor Shaun Chase on Monday argued that the list under the new law was not exhaustive, and continued to argue those factors. Cuffy called the removal an interesting decision, but ruled that the charge -- murder in this case -- as well as Elmores troubled past, were factors he still could consider.

Seriousness of crime not a factor? Coffin and Cuffy appeared to disagree over whether the law, in practice, allows the judge to weigh the nature of the offense. Coffin said the law makes it clear the level of the crime, (or severity) is not a bail factor. But Cuffy responded that he could set bail that takes into account what the defendant is charged with.

Law requires more bail choices: In recent history, judges have routinely set two types of bail: cash and insurance bond. But the new law requires a third choice from among the half-dozen or so other, rarely used, types of bail in New York state. Cuffy chose partially secured bond, which means that the defendant can reduce the amount of bond by paying a percentage (no more than 10 percent) in cash. Like the other types of obscure bail, it is rarely useful so hardly ever employed. But Cuffy set partially secured bond at $1 million, to go along with the traditional bond of $1 million and cash of $500,000.

In the end, Cuffy held fast to his bail set months ago. And Coffin asked that his objection be noted for the record.

Elmore, who has tried nearly everything to avoid prosecution, complained Monday that his Constitutional rights were being violated because Cuffy has refused to let him possess copies of grand jury testimony and other evidence against him. Cuffy has ruled that Coffin and co-defense lawyer Heather Vincent could show Elmore copies of the paperwork, but could not leave the paperwork with him in jail due to fears of witness intimidation.

Cuffy and the prosecutor noted that the new law does allow him to issue protective orders that limit what information can be seen and/or possessed by the defendant.

Elmore is due back to court later this month as he nears a trial later this winter.
By Trend

Turkmen Minister of Finance and Economy Batyr Bazarov will participate in the meeting of the Turkmenistan-Hungary intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation to be held on January 20-21 in Budapest, Trend reports referring to Business-Turkmenistan agency.

More than ten representatives of the Turkmen Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs will attend the event.

The businessmen involved in agriculture, textile industry, agriculture, bread baking and poultry keeping will discuss the spheres of cooperation with Hungarian partners, the message said.

Hungary is interested in increasing import of chemical products, oil and gas processing products from Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan is learning from Hungarian experience in improvement of irrigation systems and water resources management, the report said.

Turkmenistan and Hungary signed an intergovernmental convention on the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of tax evasion in respect of taxes on income and capital in June 2016.

The diplomatic relations between the countries were established in 1992.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 07:26:00|Editor: huaxia

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SANTIAGO, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Chile's President Sebastian Pinera on Sunday presented a bill designed to improve the public health system, potentially benefiting some 14.5 million people.

Improving the public health sector is one of several demands made by the widespread and sometimes violent protests over the past two months against the high cost of living and lack of adequate state services.

The bill proposes creating a network of healthcare suppliers that will bid to take part in a plan offering members access to quicker and better quality treatment at lower costs. The government will seek to incorporate 1,000 specialists this year and invest in healthcare infrastructure, according to Pinera.

More than 3 million Chileans are currently on a waiting list for medical treatment, he said. "They wait for years and some die waiting."

Protests first broke out in the capital of Santiago in mid-October against a hike in subway fares, and then quickly spread throughout the country.

Clashes between demonstrators and security forces have claimed more than 20 lives, and thousands have been injured or arrested.
[January 06, 2020] Innovative Foundry Technologies Files Patent Infringement Suit Against SMIC, Broadcom, Cypress Semiconductor and DISH Network

PORTSMOUTH, N.H., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Innovative Foundry Technologies (IFT) announced that it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), Broadcom Incorporated, Cypress Semiconductor Corporation and DISH Network Corporation. This new lawsuit follows on the heels of the highly successful first phase of IFT's licensing campaign, through which IFT was able to quickly resolve infringement claims against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), Texas Instruments, MediaTek and Qualcomm, among others. The new infringement suit was brought in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas (C.A. No.: 6:19-cv-719). The defendants are accused of infringing four of IFT's patents: US Patent No. 6,580,122, "Transistor Device Having an Enhanced Width Dimension and a Method of Making Same"

US Patent No. 6,806,126, "Method of Manufacturing a Semiconductor Component"

US Patent No. 6,933,620, "Semiconductor Component and Method of Manufacture"

US Patent No. 7,009,226, "In-Situ Nitride/Oxynitride Processing with Reduced Deposition Surface Pattern Sensitivity" "We were very pleased with the results of the first phase of our licensing campaign, and the speed with which we achieved those results against such major parties as TSMC, UMC, Qualcomm, MediaTe and Texas Instruments. That rapid success validates the strength of IFT's patent portfolio and licensing strategy, and we hope this latest filing shows our resolve to continue pursuing all parties who are practicing IFT's patented technologies," stated Warren Hurwitz, IFT's President and CEO. Hurwitz continued, "We have stated from the beginning our preference to resolve licensing issues early in the litigation process or, better still, before the commencement of litigation, to avoid unnecessary business disruption and costs of legal proceedings. While our preference has not changed, this latest filing shows our intent to pursue licenses from all infringing parties, by whatever means are appropriate."



IFT is represented in this matter by a team of lawyers at Mintz led by Michael Renaud and Adam Rizk. Mintz has been central to IFT's multinational program and successes to date, and will continue to be an essential element of IFT's ongoing global licensing program. ABOUT INNOVATIVE FOUNDRY TECHNOLOGIES LLC.

Established in 2017, IFT actively engages in the acquisition, development, licensing and protection of its intellectual property related to semiconductor fabrication and packaging technologies. At present, IFT owns over 125 US and foreign patents and patent applications acquired from a pioneer in the semiconductor industry, Advanced Micro Devices. This portfolio covers several key aspects of semiconductor design and manufacture, which enable leaders in the automotive, networking, Smart device and other industries to continue to deploy smaller, more powerful and cost-effective integrated circuits. Warren Hurwitz, President and CEO

Innovative Foundry Technologies LLC

[email protected]

(603) 380-9121 Or Michael Renaud, Division Head, Intellectual Property Section

Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky & Popeo, P.C

[email protected]

(617) 348-1870 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/innovative-foundry-technologies-files-patent-infringement-suit-against-smic-broadcom-cypress-semiconductor-and-dish-network-300981639.html SOURCE Innovative Foundry Technologies LLC

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Blood runs in rivulets down President Donald Trump's chin as a fist punches his left cheek. Two golden missiles, each emblazoned with the Iranian flag, shoot across the bottom of the illustration.

"This is message from Islamic Republic Of Iran," reads text in English.

The image of a bloodied Trump accompanied by pro-Iranian statements popped up in an unusual place over the weekend: the homepage of a U.S. government website.

On Saturday, the website for a program that provides free public access to federal government information was reportedly hacked by a group claiming allegiance to Iran. The page for the Federal Depository Library Program was replaced with a graphic titled, "Iranian Hackers!" that included photos of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the country's flag. The actors behind the apparent attack, which resulted in the website being taken offline for hours, identified themselves as "Iran Cyber Security Group Hackers" and warned that their work was "only a small part of Iran's cyber ability."

"We're always ready," the text on the graphic said.

Officials have yet to confirm whether the hackers are directly affiliated with Iran, CBS News reported. A spokesperson for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, told the Hill on Sunday that the situation was being monitored.

"We are aware the website of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) was defaced with pro-Iranian, anti-US messaging," the spokesperson said in a statement. "At this time, there is no confirmation that this was the action of Iranian state-sponsored actors."

Saturday's incident came as tensions between the U.S. and Iran continued to escalate dramatically in the aftermath of an American drone strike that killed one of Iran's top military figures, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, in Baghdad last week. In response, Iran has vowed revenge, prompting experts to warn that a variety of cyberattacks against the U.S. "should be expected."

Revenge appeared to be the message behind the alleged cyberattack on the federal library program's website over the weekend. In the graphic that showed up in place of the original homepage, the fist punching Trump was connected to an arm covered by a green sleeve bearing an insignia similar to the one associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which Soleimani helped lead. The image also featured a version of the strong statement shared by Khamenei, in which the leader promised that "severe revenge awaits those criminals who have tainted their filthy hands with [Soleimani's] blood and the blood of the other martyrs." Toward the bottom of the page, the hackers wrote "#Hard revenge," punctuating the statement with an emoticon of a winking face.

A spokesperson for the Government Publishing Office, which operates the library program, told CNN that none of the agency's other websites were impacted.

"An intrusion was detected on GPO's FDLP website, which has been taken down," said Gary Somerset, the office's chief public relations officer. "We are coordinating with the appropriate authorities to investigate further."

The website was taken down shortly after its homepage was altered, according to CBS News. It was up and running again by late Sunday night.

While at least one senior U.S. cybersecurity official dismissed the apparent hacking as "a nothing event," others have stressed the importance of remaining vigilant against cyberattacks, urging all organizations to increase monitoring, back up their systems, implement multi-factor authentication and have an incident response plan prepared.

A National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin issued Saturday noted Iran's "robust cyber program" in its summary of potential threats faced by Americans. Hackers with ties to Iran have been behind several cyberattacks in recent years that targeted U.S. entities ranging from banks to a New York state dam.

"Iran is capable, at minimum, of carrying out attacks with temporary disruptive effects against critical infrastructure in the United States," the bulletin said. In a tweet, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf added that the agency is "actively monitoring & preparing for any specific, credible threat, should one arise."

Meanwhile, Trump has responded to the possibility of Iranian retaliation using another tactic: more threats. On Sunday, the president tweeted that "should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner."
Mumbai, Jan 7 : Actor Anil Kapoor, who next will be seen onscreen in "Malang", revealed that he always tells superstar Aamir Khan not to stop working with filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani.

Kapoor was interacting with the media at the trailer launch of "Malang" along with his co-actors Adtiya Roy Kapur, Disha Patani, Elli AvRam, film's director Mohit Suri and producers Luv Ranjan, Bhushan Kumar, Ankur Garg and Jay Shewakraman on Monday in Mumbai.

Anil Kapoor has worked with many directors and produers in his 40-year acting career. Talking about camp culture in Hindi film industry and praising makers of "Malang", Kapoor said: "I feel we need producers like Ankur (Garg) and Luv (Ranjan). I have told Mohit (Suri) to continue doing films with them. I always tell Aamir Khan by calling him on phone to say that ayou should not leave Raju Hirani'. Whenever I see films of both of them, I tell Aamir not to leave him." He continued: "I feel whenever you make a good team then you should hold on to it. Team is very important and there are certain stars that come together to make something interesting and exciting." Kapoor gave example of Hollywood actors and filmmakers while backing his viewpoint: "If you see Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprioa they do so many films together. They can work with others, too, but they keep working with each other. There is some magic, obviously. You have to go with the casting but somewhere I feel teams should stand by each other." "Malang" stars Aditya Roy Kapur, Disha Patani, Anil Kapoor and Kunal Khemu in lead roles. It is scheduled to release on February 7.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Union minister V Muraleedharan on Monday visited the Lord Ayyappa temple here and lauded the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) for the well organised pilgrimage season.

The minister also praised the services of Kerala police during the annual two-month-long pilgrimage season.

"The pilgrimage season this time is one of the best. I would like to congratulate the TDB (which manages the shrine) and various departments of the state government," Muraleedharan said in a release.

The TDB manages the shrine.

The release also said the the Minister lauded the services rendered by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).

"We will hold discussions with the TDB and the forest department on the implementation of Sabarimala master plan. Politics will not be a hinderance in the matter," Muraleedharan said.

He also distributed pamphlets as part of the 'Punyam Poonkavanam' project among the devotees.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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- Additional reporting by Aine Kenny

A defiant Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said the Government stands over its decision to commemorate members of the RIC, saying it is a shame some people are boycotting events.

Controversy has arisen over the decision to commemorate Irish men and women who were officers in the forces of the Crown 100 years ago, with several Lord Mayors - including Cork's - saying they will not attend.

Speaking in Dublin, Mr Varadkar said he is disappointed by the decision of some council leaders to stay away from planned events.

I have to say, I'm disappointed to hear that some people are going to boycott the event. I think that is regrettable, he said.

I remember 10 or 15 years ago was very controversial to commemorate the deaths of soldiers in World War One, because some people felt that they shouldn't be remembered because they fought for the British, That has changed, thankfully, he added.

Almost everyone thinks it makes sense, right and proper to remember Irish people soldiers who died in the First World War. And I think the same thing really applies to police officers.

Pollice officers who were killed, Catholic and Protestant alike, who were members of the RIC in the DMP, many of whose families are still alive and remember them. So, I think it's a shame that people are boycotting but the government stands over the decision to hold the event.

He said of those council leaders not attending to allow someone from their councils to attend in their place.

I suppose that someone taking a decision not to attend, I would ask them if they if they're not going to attend to least allow somebody from their council to attend.

"So it's often the case that a public event that if the mayor or Cathaoirleach does not attend then the Leas Cathaoirleach does, he said.

If they want to take a personal decision not to attend, that's their decision, but there may be other people in their city or in their county who feel differently and would like to have these men recognized and perhaps those mayors and those Cathaoirligh who are not attending could ask someone to deputize for sure that would be good, he added.

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan also defended the decision to hold the event, saying it is "in no sense" a commemoration of the Black and Tans.

"The approach to the Decade of Centenaries has made clear that there is no hierarchy of Irishness and that our goal of reconciliation on the island of Ireland can only be achieved through mutual understanding and mutual respect of the different traditions on the island. As part of the Decade of Centenaries (2012-2023), under the guidance of the Expert Advisory Group on Centenary Commemoration, I, on behalf of the Government, will host an event to commemorate the place of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police in Irish History," he said,

"This event is one of a large number of events taking place during this decade to acknowledge and commemorate significant events or developments in the history of our island one hundred years ago. It is not a celebration. It is an acknowledgement the historical importance of both the DMP and the RIC, and is in no sense a commemoration of the Black & Tans or the Auxiliaries he said.

Meanwhile, the Lord Mayor of Cork City has said he will not be attending the commemoration.

Mayor John Sheehan said he received an invite to the ceremony on Friday and thought carefully about it, before eventually deciding not to attend.

"I won't be attending for various reasons. One is that this is commemorating the institutions and not the individuals.

"It would not be appropriate for me to attend while wearing the same chain that Tomas MacCurtain once wore, especially when he was killed by RIC officers.

"I could not commemorate [the RIC] and then commemorate Tomas MacCurtain's death a few weeks later... it would just not be appropriate."

Tomas MacCurtain was shot dead on the 20 March 1920, on his 36th birthday. He was killed in front of his wife and son by a group of men, who were later found to be members of the RIC after an official inquest.

However, the Mayor welcomed the centenary events overall. "Ireland was a very divided place [after the War of Independence and Civil War]. I think we are mature enough now to look at this history and see the genuine beliefs held by people... these beliefs shaped Ireland.

"Cork is doing a whole year of centenary commemorations, for the deaths of Tomas MacCurtain, Terence MacSwiney and also the burning of Cork."

The Lord Mayor says that both MacCurtain and MacSwiney were hugely important to commemorate for the centenary, especially for Cork.

"Terence MacSwiney's death was a huge global event and received worldwide media coverage at the time. It's important to recognise this."

Terence MacSwiney became the Lord Mayor of Cork after the death of Tomas MacCurtain. He was arrested in August 1920 for the "possession of seditious articles and documents" and for the possession of a cypher key.

He was tried, and then imprisoned in Britain. He died while on a hunger strike, protesting his internment.

The current Lord Mayor feels that Irish people still bear a great connection to this part of our history.

"From my visits to schools, it's clear that the children of today have and enthusiasm for this history and they have a great connection to their past." of regeneration, at Cloonmore.
Its an odd new years resolution: To stop taking photographs of the back of my head.

It started with another photograph of me, one taken from the specific angle that you get when youre holding a birthday cake so a two-year old can blow out the candles.

As dUnbelievables would say, Lads whatever MOVE I made.

At first I thought the lighter patch was a bird poo or the imprint of a petit-filoued hand.

No, the lens had discovered a bald patch. Later, I took the first of many photographs of the back of my head and confirmed it.

How long has this been going on? I asked, as if Id caught myself having an affair.

Its just your parting, my wife suggested.

She was expertly playing the role any good partner has to play many times over the course of a long-term relationship: Somehow reassuring the other one that the thing they are obsessing about is not a thing while successfully steering the transition to managing the thing.

She got me hair stuff for Christmas. The key to picking a Christmas present is to keep an ear out for what the recipient has been talking about earlier in the year.

Finding galleries of the back of my head on Dropbox was a small but significant whisper for her.

This hair stuff has multi-peptides in it. Which must be good.

We all need a peptide in our step and multi means more than one, so thats good value.

Its also a serum and if I know anything about science from watching films, I know that serums are usually are our only hope, Commander. It HAS to work!

I know I am a perfect example of all thats wrong with the whiny GenXers of today.

You wouldnt see one of the silent generation who raised the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima worried about a little thinning as he set about thinning the enemy.

The navvies who dug the London Underground in their shirts and ties didnt have serums.

I dont care. I defy anyone to shrug nonchalantly when the first bald patch appears.

My hair is all Ive got. Without it, Im Samson, weakened, (though still fairly ripped and oily, dressed in a loincloth) restrained by Philistines.

One side-effect of this little bad patch is that I have received an infusion of empathy for any other man or woman who makes an attempt to cover up any stages of baldness.

I used to think: Why dont they just face facts and shave it off?

Well I know now. Its because they, like me, probably dont think they have a face for a bald head.

Its all very well for you with your cheekbones. But Ill look less like Colm, more like Gollum.

I have a newfound respect for even the most outlandish of comb overs.

I see them now, not as delusional but as defiance.

There is a man who lives near me who routinely on windy days has a foot long squall of hair standing straight up on one side of his head.

As far as Im concerned he is now avant garde  if he was in Studio 54, Bowie would have ended up looking like him.

Im a long way from comb-overs still. But for now, Im just watching that space.
Sky News

Novak Djokovic was sleep-deprived and pressured by Australian officials to cancel his visa after being detained at Melbourne airport, his legal team have argued. Representatives for the world's top-ranked tennis player also claim he was given a medical exemption after testing positive for COVID-19 on 16 December. After travelling for 25 hours, Djokovic's lawyers claim he was interrogated for six hours at the airport before being allowed to go somewhere to sleep - only to be woken by officials half an hour later and pressured into making a decision on cancelling his visa.
Photo: Terry Hawkins Emma Hawkins will be attempting the All Ride Challenge Day on Jan. 6 for charity.

A local tween is hoping to help a family in need with an experience they'll not soon forget.

Emma Hawkins was hoping to volunteer at the Give Kids The World Village with her dad and the DisDads Club during their annual convention in January, but she was too young. The minimum age to volunteer is 12 and Hawkins will only be 11 during their visit to Orlando.

That's when she decided to come up with her own fundraising idea.

On Jan. 6, Hawkins along with DisDads Club's official mascot, Mr. Penguin, will attempt to ride every ride in Walt Disney World in one single day.

The All Ride Challenge Day is when a person sets out to enjoy all the rides across all four theme parks at Disney World. There will be from 46 to 49 rides open when Emma will attempt the challenge.

Hawkins aims to raise $6,000, which is what it costs to send one family to Give Kids The World Village.

Give Kids The World Village is a storybook themed resort in Florida where critically ill children and their families stay for a week at no cost to themselves. Over 100 different charities from around the world utilize their services and Give Kids The World Village is fully dependent on volunteers and fundraising.

The Aquajet swimmer has raised half of her fundraising goal as of Jan. 5.

You can follow Emma and Mr. Penguin's journey on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
A woman miraculously tracked down her father for the first time in more than two decades after her mother spotted him on the news.

Kelly Francis, 29, hadn't seen her father, Darrell McGrath in 26 years until her mother recognised his voice while watching Newshub on Friday night in her home in Tauranga, New Zealand.

Ms Francis' mother had split with Mr McGrath when she was just 18 months old and she had been on a desperate search to reunite with him since she was 23.

Kelly Francis was able to reconnect with her estranged father Darrell McGrath (pictured) after 26 years when her mother spotted him on the news

Mr McGrath from Timaru had appeared on the news discussing the dangers of drivers stopping to take photos with flowers on the side of a busy highway near Tekapo.

'She said, ''Oh my gosh, I think that's Kelly's dad'' to my brother and my stepdad,' Ms Francis told Newshub.

Following a church event on that same night, the 29-year-old's mother told her daughter she'd found the person she had been searching for.

Immediately, Ms Francis jumped onto Facebook and managed to find him after confirming his middle name and that he had a twin brother.

Ms Francis (pictured with her husband) said she had been desperately looking for her father since she was 23 - after her parents split when she was a toddler

After looking through her photos, her father responded: 'I think you're my daughter.'

The pair are yet to meet in person, as Mr McGrath said he's still saving enough money to make the long journey to see her.

Ms Francis said she offered to pay but her father refused.

'I really want to see him. He really wants to see me. It's really buzzy,' she said.

Timaru is more than 1,000 kilometres away from Tauranga.
Los Angeles prosecutors announced new sexual assault charges against disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein on Monday, as a separate criminal trial against him opened in New York City.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a news release that Weinstein has been charged with raping one woman in her hotel room and sexually assaulting another the next night in a Beverly Hills hotel suite in 2013. He faces up to 28 years in prison if convicted.

We believe the evidence will show that the defendant used his power and influence to gain access to his victims and then commit violent crimes against them, Lacey said in a statement. I want to commend the victims who have come forward and bravely recounted what happened to them. It is my hope that all victims of sexual violence find strength and healing as they move forward.

Before the new charges were announced, Weinstein appeared in a New York City courthouse Monday as a trial over charges of sexual assault against two other women commenced. With jury selection set to begin Tuesday, Weinsteins attorneys appeared to know charges were coming when they asked the judge for potential jurors to be sequestered over the chance that other charges could be brought elsewhere against Weinstein while the trial was ongoing, a request that was denied.

The judge also turned down a proposition from Weinsteins defense to call a police detective who withheld evidence from prosecutors as a favorable witness. The judges ruling caused Weinstein to put his face into his hands.

Last month, Weinstein reached a tentative $25 million settlement with dozens of accusers who had brought civil suits against him.

The deal did not require Weinstein to admit wrongdoing, and would be paid by insurance companies for Weinsteins former studio, the Weinstein Company, as part of a larger bankruptcy deal for the company.

More from National Review
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Researchers have developed a way to prop up a struggling immune system to enable its fight against sepsis, a deadly condition resulting from the body's extreme reaction to infection.

The scientists used nanotechnology to transform donated healthy immune cells into a drug with enhanced power to kill bacteria.

In experiments treating mice with sepsis, the engineered immune cells eliminated bacteria in blood and major organs, dramatically improving survival rates.

This work focuses on a treatment for late-stage sepsis, when the immune system is compromised and unable to clear invading bacteria. The scientists are collaborating with clinicians specializing in sepsis treatment to accelerate the drug-development process.

"Sepsis remains the leading cause of death in hospitals. There hasn't been an effective treatment for late-stage sepsis for a long time. We're thinking this cell therapy can help patients who get to the late stage of sepsis," said Yizhou Dong, senior author and associate professor of pharmaceutics and pharmacology at The Ohio State University. "For translation in the clinic, we believe this could be used in combination with current intensive-care treatment for sepsis patients."

The study is published today (Jan. 6, 2020) in Nature Nanotechnology.

Sepsis itself is not an infection - it's a life-threatening systemic response to infection that can lead to tissue damage, organ failure and death, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC estimates that 1.7 million adults in the United States develop sepsis each year, and one in three patients who die in a hospital have sepsis.

This work combined two primary types of technology: using vitamins as the main component in making lipid nanoparticles, and using those nanoparticles to capitalize on natural cell processes in the creation of a new antibacterial drug.

Cells called macrophages are one of the first responders in the immune system, with the job of "eating" invading pathogens. However, in patients with sepsis, the number of macrophages and other immune cells are lower than normal and they don't function as they should.

In this study, Dong and colleagues collected monocytes from the bone marrow of healthy mice and cultured them in conditions that transformed them into macrophages. (Monocytes are white blood cells that are able to differentiate into other types of immune cells.)

The lab also developed vitamin-based nanoparticles that were especially good at delivering messenger RNA, molecules that translate genetic information into functional proteins.

The scientists, who specialize in messenger RNA for therapeutic purposes, constructed a messenger RNA encoding an antimicrobial peptide and a signal protein. The signal protein enabled the specific accumulation of the antimicrobial peptide in internal macrophage structures called lysosomes, the key location for bacteria-killing activities.

From here, researchers delivered the nanoparticles loaded with that messenger RNA into the macrophages they had produced with donor monocytes, and let the cells take it from there to "manufacture" a new therapy.

"Macrophages have antibacterial activity naturally. So if we add the additional antibacterial peptide into the cell, those antibacterial peptides can further enhance the antibacterial activity and help the whole macrophage clear bacteria," Dong said.

After seeing promising results in cell tests, the researchers administered the cell therapy to mice. The mouse models of sepsis in this study were infected with multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and E. coli and their immune systems were suppressed.

Each treatment consisted of about 4 million engineered macrophages. Controls for comparison included ordinary macrophages and a placebo. Compared to controls, the treatment resulted in a significant reduction in bacteria in the blood after 24 hours - and for those with lingering bacteria in the blood, a second treatment cleared them away.

Dong considers the lipid nanoparticle delivery of messenger RNA into certain kinds of immune cells applicable to other diseases, and his lab is currently working on development of cancer immunotherapy using this technology.

###

This work was supported by the Ohio State College of Pharmacy start-up fund, a National Institute of General Medical Sciences Maximizing Investigators' Research Award and Fundamental Research Funds for Chinese Central Universities.

Co-authors, all from Ohio State, include Xucheng Hou, Xinfu Zhang, Weiyu Zhao, Chunxi Zeng, Binbin Deng, David McComb, Shi Du, Chengxiang Zhang and Wenqing Li.

Contact: Yizhou Dong, dong.525@osu.edu; 614-292-3771

Written by Emily Caldwell, Caldwell.151@osu.edu; 614-292-8152
A day after violence erupted inside the JNU campus here, the Delhi Police registered an FIR against unidentified persons on Monday for rioting and damaging property, officials said.

According to the FIR, students were protesting against a hostel fee hike for the last few days. According to instructions issued by the high court, no protest is allowed within a 100-metre radius of the administrative block of the university.

"On Sunday at 3.45 pm, a police team headed by an inspector, which was deployed in the administrative block, got information that a few students had gathered at the Periyar hostel and a fight had broken out between them. They also vandalised the hostel building," the FIR stated.

The inspector, along with other policemen, reached the Periyar hostel and saw 40 to 50 people, some with their faces covered with masks, carrying sticks in their hands and beating up students and vandalising the hostel, it added.

"Later, police entered the campus after the JNU administration requested them to control the violence inside the university. More police personnel were called and a request was made to students to maintain peace. Police received more PCR calls of violence," the FIR said.

"At around 7 pm, information was received that some people had entered the Sabarmati hostel and were beating up students. They also vandalised the hostel. There were around 50 to 60 people carrying sticks in their hands. They were asked to stop the act and leave the premises, but they kept vandalising the building and beating up students. Thereafter, they ran away and the injured students were rushed to hospitals," it added.

A case was registered under sections 145 (joining or continuing in unlawful assembly, knowing it has been commanded to disperse), 147 (punishment for rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with deadly weapon), 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object), 151 (knowingly joining or continuing in assembly of five or more persons after it has been commanded to disperse) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and section 3 of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, the FIR said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi: A day after students and professors Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) were brutally attacked by some masked goons inside campus, people across India were seen condemning the act and held protest showing posters in solidarity with the JNU on Monday (January 6). The violence also drew strong reactions from students and opposition party leaders and social media was flooded with hashtags in support of JNU.

The protesting students hit the streets demanding strict action against those who resorted to violence on campus. Students in Mumbai also protested outside the Gateway of India on Monday, posters of 'Free Kashmir' were also seen at JNU solidarity march in Mumbai's Gateway of India. Along with students, Bollywood personalities including Sushant Singh, Swara Bhasker, Shabana Azmi, Taapsee Pannu and Anil Kapoor also protested over the JNU incident.

Hundred of JNU students gathered in front of the North Gate of the university to protest against the attack on students and teachers on Sunday. Blaming ABVP for the act of violence JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh said that since past 4-5 days violence was being promoted in the campus by some RSS affiliated professors and ABVP. She added, ''Every iron rod used against the students will be given back by debate and discussion. JNU's culture will not be eroded anytime soon. JNU will uphold its democratic culture''. Aishe further demanded the removal of vice-chancellor.

India Youth Congress members held a torch rally at India Gate against the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal held a meeting in his residence over the incident which was attended by Senior Aam Admi Party leaders and Delhi ministers.

Live TV

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar took to Twitter and expressed shock over the incident. Sitharaman in her tweet ensured that the government wants universities to be in safe space for all students. Union Minister Prakash Javadekar also condemned the attack on students and teachers in JNU and accused the Congress, the AAP and the left parties of creating an atmosphere of unrest in the country.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah spoke to Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal and requested him to call representatives from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and hold talks with the.

On the other hand opposition leaders like Congress' Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, NCP's Sharad Pawar, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut and many others spoke against the government for attacking students.

Sonia Gandhi said, ''The voice of Indias youth and students is being muzzled every day. The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on Indias young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi Govt is deplorable and unacceptable. Everyday campuses and colleges are raided across India, either by the police or lumpen elements with the support of the BJP government. Yesterdays bone-chilling attack on students and teachers in JNU, Delhi is a grim reminder of the extent the Govt will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent."

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra visited AIIMS Trauma Centre where 18 people from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) have been admitted following violence at university.

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackrey compared the attack with 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attack and said, "Attack on JNU students reminds me of 26/11 Mumbai terror attack. Students feeling unsafe in this country."

Left leaders in Kolkata protested against the JNU attack and took out a rally in Kolkata. There were also clash between BJP workers, Jadavpur students protest against mob attack on JNU students on Monday evening.

To ensure security in the campus after violence Delhi police deployed police personnel outside the campus and took out a flag march to ensure there are no more fringe elements in the campus.

Delhi police registered four FIR in the matter and filed a complied case of the incident. The Delhi Police Public Relations Officer (PRO), MS Randhawa, also held a meeting with students and teachers of the JNU at the Police Headquarters at ITO on Monday where the students handed over a set of demands to the official.

Delhi Police Crime Branch has constituted three teams to probe violence in JNU. One of the three teams will examine the CCTV footage, the other will identify the culprits and the third team will monitor the social media platforms spreading rumours and misinformation about the incident.

Violence broke out at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday night as masked men armed with iron rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus.
Updated at 7:13 p.m. ET on 2020-01-06

Indonesias sovereignty over waters off the Natuna Islands cannot be negotiated, President Joko Jokowi Widodo said Monday, after local media reported that Chinese ships, which had entered Jakartas Exclusive Economic Zone in the South China Sea, were refusing to leave.

The Indonesian military was dispatching four ships to the region in addition to three warships and two aircraft deployed there last week, Vice Adm. Yudo Margono, chief of the Joint Regional Defense Command, said on Sunday. On Friday, dozens of Chinese fishing boats and a trio of Chinese coast guard ships had been spotted in Natuna area waters, according to an Indonesian news report.

On the Natuna issue, I think all statements [from Indonesian officials] so far have been good, that the sovereignty of our territory is non-negotiable, Jokowi said during a cabinet meeting.

In addition to the military ships, about 120 fishermen from the northern coast of Java island would be sent to the Natunas to strengthen the Indonesian presence in the region, according to Mohammad Mahfud, the coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs.

We want to mobilize fishermen from the northern coast and maybe from other areas too to fish and conduct other activities there, Mahfud said.

Officials said that about 30 Chinese ships had been sighted in Indonesian territory and refusing to leave, the national news agency Antara reported on Sunday. Government officials could not be reached on Monday to report on the status of the Chinese ships in the region.

They were accompanied by two coast guard vessels and one Chinese fishing surveillance vessel, Margono, the vice admiral, told Antara. We are also actively communicating with Chinese coast guard vessels so that they immediately leave the waters.

Margono said the Indonesian ships would stay in the region until China left the EEZ.

China is Indonesias biggest trading partner and third-largest foreign investor.

A diplomatic row between the two countries erupted last week after Indonesian officials complained that dozens of Chinese fishing boats and coast guard ships had trespassed since Dec. 19 into the economic zone off the Natunas, a group of Indonesian islands in the southern reaches of the disputed South China Sea.

Foreigners cant enter our territory even an inch without the governments approval, Mahfud told reporters. We are not at war, we are simply protecting our sovereignty, but theres no negotiation because the area is ours and its final under international law.

Last week, the Indonesian government dismissed as legally baseless Chinas historical claims to the waters off the Natunas on the grounds that Chinese fishermen have long been active in those waters. Jakarta summoned Chinese Ambassador Xiao Qian to lodge a protest over alleged violations, but Beijing officials insisted they had a legitimate right to sail ships in the area.

Overlapping claims

In 2016, after a series of encounters with Chinese ships in Indonesian waters, including one where the Indonesian Navy fired warning shots at Chinese-flagged vessels, Indonesia irritated Beijing by renaming the maritime region the North Natuna Sea.

Jakarta then launched an ambitious five-point plan for developing the Natunas involving military facilities, fisheries, tourism, oil and gas, and preservation of the environment.

Indonesia has traditionally not been involved in territorial disputes over the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which about U.S. $5 trillion in trade passes annually.

China, through its so-called Nine-Dash Line, claims almost all of the sea, while Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan have their own overlapping claims to portions of those waters.

A South China Sea analyst based in the United States said Beijings Nine-Dash Line overlaps with Indonesias EEZ in waters off the Natunas.

A half of one of Chinas nine dashes in the South China Sea lies within the EEZ claimed by Indonesia based on its Natuna Islands, Alexander Vuving, a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, told BenarNews.

And the imagined Nine-Dash Line significantly overlaps with the waters claimed by Indonesia as its EEZ around the Natuna Islands, although China does not claim the Natuna Islands.

BenarNews staff in Washington contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: An earlier version misattributed the quote about foreigners not being able to enter Indonesian territorial waters to Vice Adm. Yudo Margono.
With the recent legalization of cannabis edibles in Canada, physicians and the public must be aware of the novel risks of cannabis edibles, argue authors in a commentary in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal): http://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.191217

"Although edibles are commonly viewed as a safer and more desirable alternative to smoked or vaped cannabis, physicians and the public should be aware of several risks related to the use of cannabis edibles," write Drs. Jasleen Grewal and Lawrence Loh from the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario.

Cannabis edibles take on average four hours longer to produce noticeable effects in comparison to inhaled cannabis, which can increase the risk of overconsumption. With effects lasting up to 8 hours, edibles can also lead to a longer period of impairment compared to inhaled cannabis. While federal regulations have standardized the presentation of dosing information, the authors warn that "individuals' responses to different products may vary and overdosing may still occur, with cannabis-naive individuals particularly at risk."

At particular risk are children and pets as many edibles look like candy and other appetizing food and drink. Other vulnerable groups include older people and youth; of note, a recent Canadian report found that youth believe cannabis edibles have positive effects on sleep, mood and anxiety, which actually runs counter to what is seen in evidence.

"Physicians should routinely question patients who ask about cannabis about their use or intended use of edible cannabis products so that they can counsel these patients regarding child safety, potential for accidental overconsumption and delayed effects, and potential for interactions with other substances such as alcohol, benzodiazepines, sleeping aids and opioids," caution the authors.

Population-level monitoring, and evaluation of the effects of legalized edibles will ensure that regulations are best able to protect children, youth, seniors and other age groups from health effects related to the consumption of cannabis edibles.

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"Health considerations of the legalization of cannabis edibles" is published January 6, 2020
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Chinese Ambassador to the United Kingdom Liu Xiaoming on Sunday said that banning Huawei means back-pedalling for Britain, which would leave the country trailing behind on technology.

Liu, who made the comments in a signed article published on Sunday Telegraph, said that Huawei provides network services to more than 3 billion people in over 170 countries and regions, of which no country, organization, company or individual has come up with concrete evidence that its products pose any security threat.

"This country's Science and Technology Select Committee also concluded that 'there are no technical grounds for excluding Huawei entirely from the UK's 5G or other telecommunications networks'," he said.

He stressed that China had never and will never ask companies or individuals to collect data, information or intelligence in others countries by illegal means.

"Fabricating 'Huawei risk' in the name of national security is tantamount to giving a dog a bad name to hang him," Liu said. "Doing so will only hamper normal cooperation between countries, and in the end, those who intend to scare others would lift the stone only to drop it on their own feet."

The ambassador said from 2012 to 2017, Huawei brought 2 billion pounds to Britain through investment and procurement, and created 26,000 jobs. In early 2018, Huawei pledged to invest a further 3 billion pounds in the country over the next five years.

"This is a vote of confidence in the economic prospects of the UK as it leaves the EU. It is also a vote of support for China-UK business cooperation," Liu said.

"Banning Huawei means back-pedalling for Britain," Liu said, adding that several British telecommunications operators have admitted that banning Huawei equipment would delay Britain's 5G, leaving it trailing far behind in this latest industrial revolution.

"The image of Britain as an open and inclusive partner for cooperation would also bear the brunt," he said. "So would the confidence of foreign investors and the cooperation between China and the UK."
Last year, Jim Kelleher, an analyst with Argus Research, chose NVidia Corp., (NVDA) as his Top Pick; the stock rose 80% and he believes long-term growth prospects remain strong. For 2020, he suggests another chipmaker.

Qualcomm (QCOM) is a designer and manufacturer of advanced semiconductors for mobile phones and commercial wireless applications. It provides integrated solutions, including processors, GPS, WiFi, basebands and other applications, for smartphones, tablets, and mobile PCs.

More from Jim Kelleher: Can Peloton Pedal to Profits?

Qualcomm has extended its leadership in the 3G CDMA wireless standard into the 4G LTE niche. It derives substantial royalty and licensing revenue from its extensive intellectual-property portfolio for 3G, 4G and now 5G technologies.

Qualcomm had a highly eventful fiscal 2019, which began with the company battling both Apple and regulatory agencies in the U.S. and other jurisdictions. The May settlement and licensing agreement with Apple caused the stock to surge higher, only to retreat when the U.S. FTC reiterated its position that Qualcomm's licensing model violated FRAND standards.

Qualcomm exited the fiscal year having successfully executed on its strategic priorities. These include helping drive commercialization of 5G globally, completing a number of important 'anchor' license agreements, and executing across the product roadmap.

CEO Steve Mollenko explains pf that 5G is a meaningful step-change in complexity from 4G, given that 5G requires new and dense network architectures, high-performance basebands, advanced RF front end designs, increased processing requirements, and leading-edge process nodes.

Additionally, Qualcomm is actively supporting release 16 and 17, which support 5G in adjacent markets such as IoT. Qualcomm believes that '5G will represent the biggest opportunity in Qualcomm's history, according to the CEO.

See also: Welcome to the Top Picks 2020: 125 Investment Ideas for the New Year

Looking ahead to fiscal 2020, a key priority is to continue executing on the 5G transition with partners around the world. Currently, more than 40 device OEMs and more than 30 network operators are launching or announcing 5G products or services; those numbers have doubled since the beginning of calendar 2019.

Qualcomm hit revenue and non-GAAP EPS peaks over five years ago in fiscal 2014, at $26.8 billion and $5.27 per diluted share, respectively. With Apple signed, a potential settlement with the FTC, and 5G looming, Qualcomm may finally be in position to take operating results to new highs, though it won't happen overnight.
Kolkata, Jan 6 : Coming down heavily on the BJP students' wing ABVP and the police for 'aiding and abetting' the perpetrators of violence on students in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), celebrated film director Aparna Sen has said whether there is a 'good raj' in the country.

"JNU students being beaten up by ABVP goons. Live on TV! How much longer are you going to look the other way? Or r u spineless? ...Shame! Shame on ABVP & the police who are aiding & abetting them," Sen posted on Twitter.

In another post on her social media handle, she questioned how universities can come 'under attack'.

"Ok, so who are these masked goons? Allegedly ABVP? Allegedly backed by RSS? Even if we say we don't know, the question still remains: How can our universities be under attack? "What is the Delhi police doing? What is happening in our country? Has it become a 'Goonda Raj,' she asked.

Several masked individuals, both male and female, thrashed students, including girls and teachers, inside the JNU campus with wooden and metal rods.

Two officer-bearers of the Jawaharal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU), including its President Aishe Ghosh -- who was reportedly hit over the eye with an iron rod -- received severe injuries.
'The Delhi police played the most shameful role, they were mute spectators.'

IMAGE: Shards of glass lie on the floor after violence broke out on the JNU campus on Sunday night. Photograph: ANI Photo

Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Brinda Karat met the injured Jawaharlal Nehru University students who were admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, following violence on the campus, on Sunday night.

"They want to establish the silence of the graveyard in university campuses across India. They cannot bear any questioning or dissent. They want subordination and obedience. And that is not going to happen," Karat tells Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com.

The violence we witnessed in JNU on Sunday night was frightening. Does this kind of violence threaten our democracy?

It was a planned attack. Obviously, this could happen because the assailants had political patronage by those in government and the police.

Something like this can never happen. This attack was not a spontaneous one as the BJP and ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) are trying to make it seem to the public. This is 100 per cent a lie.

The JNU attack was well-planned and they went for the teachers and students. They targeted Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union President Aishe Ghosh.

I was with the students and teachers at the AIIMS trauma centre last night. Each and every of them related how they were attacked. And the stories have a pattern of a planned fascist attack on the campus of JNU by the ABVP and the Sangh Parivar.

ABVP students blame the Left-backed students union for the attack. They were also injured in the attack.

When I was at the AIIMS trauma centre and met some of the students they showed me their injuries. Of course, it is for doctors to say one of them had slight scratches on their arm and other one on the nail.

Clearly, the injury they are talking about at least at that time (last night) was not at all visible.

ABVP General Secretary Nidhi Tripathi told me that the Left unions didn't want students to appear for the exams after the fee hike and therefore, they attacked the students. What do you have to say?

This is nothing but a diversionary argument.

The attack on students and roaming around with lathis, iron rods and bricks happened when the teachers were taking out a peaceful procession.

The students had gone there to show their solidarity. It was a peaceful procession which was attacked by the ABVP.

This is a manufactured story and the blame game situation which does not exist at all.

But videos are being circulated which show the Left-backed student union leaders blocking the server room at JNU to ensure that nobody could appear for the exams, which eventually led to the violence.

I am saying that last evening's attack on the students and the violence on students happened during a peaceful procession. All what you are talking is a manufactured story by the ABVP trying to confuse the issue of violence and attack.

But...

The JNU attack could not happen without political patronage.

And the Delhi police played the most shameful role in this attack. They were mute spectators watching the attacks when ambulances were being smashed outside the gates of JNU.

Is it not true that Delhi police is not allowed to enter the JNU campus?

The police cannot enter without permission of the vice-chancellor. But the police was already there when the procession was going on. JNU security was also present. They did not intervene or tried to prevent the attack.

I don't know whether they were scared or whether they had instructions from the administration, so I cannot answer that question.

What will the ABVP achieve by such an attack?

They want to establish the silence of the graveyard in university campuses across India. They cannot bear any questioning or dissent. They want subordination and obedience. And that is not going to happen.

Students are there to question. Campuses are there to debate, discuss and question.

That is the culture of campuses and you cannot smash that with an iron rod.

The BJP says JNU students are not obedient and not thinking of their careers, but opting for political activity and violence.

The BJP's culture is that instead of giving pens to students they are giving iron rods.

Instead of providing computers, they are providing lathis to smash the heads of those who try to dissent.

They have gone so far that they are attacking women faculty members of JNU. Her head was smashed by so-called guru-shishya culture wallahs.
(Alliance News) - Aircraft leasing firm Avation PLC said Monday it has commenced a strategic business review, including possible sale of the company through a formal process.

Avation said that it is already in preliminary discussions with an interested party for the potential sale of the company.

Shares in Avation - which is based in Singapore - were up 8.0% at 293.00 pence on Monday in London, giving a market cap of GBP183.7 million.

Other options to be reviewed includes merger & acquisition activity, and the sale of an aircraft portfolio.

The company has appointed Wells Fargo Securities as its financial adviser to assist with the interview.

Avation said that despite the current discussions, there is no certainty that any offer would be made, or on what terms.

By Dayo Laniyan; dayolaniyan@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
By AFP

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump threatened "major retaliation" Sunday if Iran avenges the killing of a key military commander and he warned of massive economic sanctions against ally Iraq if the country expels US troops based there.

The twin threats came as Iran announced it was further reducing compliance with a tattered international nuclear accord, ending limitations on numbers of centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

The latest blow to the accord, which was meant to ensure Iran did not develop a nuclear weapon under cover of its nuclear industry, deepened the regional crisis set off by Friday's killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad.

Trump ordered a US drone to fire a missile at Soleimani, one of the most influential people in Iran's government, when he was near the Iraqi capital's international airport. Angry, black-clad mourners thronged the streets of Iran's second city Mashhad on Sunday to pay last respects to the remains of Soleimani and chant "death to America."

ALSO READ| Britain will not lament death of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani: PM Boris Johnson

Trump bluntly warned Iran against taking vengeance, repeating his insistence that US bombing targets could include Iran's cultural heritage sites. Critics say that would qualify as a war crime under international law.

"If they do anything there will be major retaliation," Trump told reporters on Air Force One, as he flew back to Washington - and a looming Senate impeachment trial - from vacation in Florida. Trump had already threatened bombing of 52 unspecified targets in Iran if Tehran attacks US troops and interests in the region.

In his latest comments, he was adamant that targets could include places of cultural significance in a country boasting an ancient heritage and two dozen UNESCO-listed sites. "Theyre allowed to kill our people," a defiant Trump said. "They're allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn't work that way."

Iraq tensions also soar

The situation in neighboring Iraq, a US ally, also deteriorated, with the future of some 5,200 American soldiers there in doubt.

Many Iraqis have expressed outrage over the killing of Soleimani, who masterminded deep Iranian influence in the country. A top Iraqi military figure Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was killed in the same US strike.

In Baghdad, unidentified attackers launched a pair of rockets Sunday, hitting near the US embassy in the high-security Green Zone for the second night in a row. That was just hours after Iraq's foreign ministry summoned the American ambassador over the drone strike.

ALSO READ| Iraq parliament calls for expulsion of US military

And Iraq's parliament voted to request the government end an agreement with a US-led international coalition to fight the hardline Islamist group IS in the region. If the government agreed, that would effectively require the departure of US soldiers supporting the local troops in the anti-IS fight.

Caretaker prime minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, who called the US drone strike a "political assassination," indicated he would back the troops' ouster. He said the choices were immediate expulsion or withdrawal under a timeframe.

Trump told reporters that a forced departure of US troops would prompt sanctions even worse than those already imposed, to devastating effect, on Iran's economy. "If they do ask us to leave -- if we dont do it in a very friendly basis -- we will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame," Trump said.

Trump said the main US base in Iraq was "very extraordinarily expensive." "We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," he said. Earlier, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sounded a softer note, saying "the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there to fight the counterterror campaign."

Threats and revenge calls

Soleimani was one of Iran's most popular public figures, seen as a hero of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. He was also the key figure behind Iran's effective network of proxy militias and alliances across a region where Iran is in often deadly rivalry with US allies Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed "severe revenge." What that will look like is the subject of heated speculation in the Pentagon and the White House. Analysts say Iran may be limited in its room for maneuver if it wants to avoid full war with the far more powerful United States.

But a former head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards threatened on Sunday to turn the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv "to dust" if the US attacks targets in Iran. And Khamenei's military adviser, Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan, told CNN that Iran's response to the assassination "for sure will be military and against military sites."

The crisis comes as Trump is embroiled in his own domestic political turmoil. He was impeached by the House of Representatives for abuse of office and obstruction of Congress. The Senate, where his Republican party has a commanding majority, is wrangling over when and how a trial will take place, as the clock ticks down on the November presidential elections.
As the recent escalation of U.S.-Iran tensions overshadowed Iraq's protest movement, the demonstrators demanding overhaul of the political system vowed to keep street pressure on the ruling elite until victory.

News of the ongoing protests in Baghdad and several center-south cities topped Iraq stories for three months until the last day of 2019 when the U.S. Embassy was attacked by pro-Iran crowds.

That incident was followed three days later by the killing of General Qassem Soleimani leader of the Qods (Quds) Force of Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes deputy chief of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) "al-Hashd al-Sha'bi" in a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad airport.

The storming of the U.S. Embassy compound was carried out with surprising ease by pro-Iran militia compared to multiple futile attempts by the protesters at Baghdad's Tahrir Square to reach the Green Zone since last October when the demonstrations first started against corruption, unemployment and poor services. The anti-government protesters also chanted slogans against Tehran's influence in the country, and on several occasions attacked Iranian consulates in the cities of Najaf and Karbala. But the protesters' attempts to cross bridges leading to the Green Zone cost them scores of dead and wounded in clashes with the security forces.

As soon as the news of protests at the U.S. embassy broke out December 31, the protesters in Tahrir Square distanced themselves from it. They issued a statement calling on protesters not to leave the square in addition to maintaining the movement's peaceful nature.

Anti-government demonstrators altogether disassociated themselves from pro-Iran supporters of PMF. "What happened in front of the U.S. Embassy was an attempt to draw people's eyes away from the popular protests now in their fourth month," Ahmed Mohammad Ali, a student protester in the southern city of Nasiriya, told Agence France-Presse. He added, "We're still here, protesting for change and hoping for victory."

An estimated 460 people have been killed in protest-related violence over the past three months, with about 25,000 others reportedly wounded.

But the long, drawn-out protest movement which called for wide-ranging reforms but also denounced Tehran's not-so-discreet interventions in Iraqs internal affairs seems to be suddenly upended by heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

Reuters reported on January 5 that many Iraqis "including opponents of Soleimani, have expressed anger at Washington for killing him and Muhandes on Iraqi soil and potentially dragging their country into another conflict."

But in Nasiriya, at least one protester was killed and three were wounded when militia members carrying symbolic caskets for Soleimani and Muhandes tried to enter their protest camp and gunshots were fired, police and medical sources said.

In a report headlined "Protesters in South Iraq Chanting No to the American and Iranian Occupations", Baghdad's Azzaman daily said on January 5 that demonstrators in the cities of Nassiriya, Diwaniya, Kut and Amara chanted on Sunday slogans against both Iran and the U.S. as "occupiers", in expression of anger and fear that tensions between Washington and Tehran were derailing their anti-government movement.

"We're taking a stance against the two occupiers: Iran and the U.S.," one demonstrator in Diwaniya told AFP.

Another protester was quoted as saying, "We refuse a proxy war on Iraqi territory and the creation of crisis after crisis."

A similar mood was reflected in the shrine city of Karbala where student Ahmad Jawad denounced Soleimani's killing and the ensuing violence. He added, "We refuse that Iraq becomes a battlefield for the U.S. and Iran, because the victims of this conflict will be Iraqis."



On January 5, Al Hadath news channel showed footage of a group of protesters in Baghdad's Tahrir Square chanting on Sunday, "No to Iran, No to America." This was a noted difference from the previous popular slogan of "Out, Out Iran".

Commenting on the impact of escalation between Washington and Tehran, Ghassan Al-Attiyah, director of the Iraqi Institute for Development and Democracy, said the U.S. attacks appeared to have played into Iran's calculation and will primarily harm the protest movement. He added in a Deutsche Welle interview, "Forces linked to Tehran could now give the impression that the most important thing is to fight the U.S. presence in the country."

On January 5, Iraq's parliament passed a resolution calling for an end to all foreign troop presence. It was backed by most Shiite members of parliament, who hold a majority of seats, while many Sunni and Kurdish legislators did not show up for the session.

The resolution commits the government to take the necessary measures ending the agreement of military cooperation with the U.S. and other coalition partners, saying, "The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason." But being a just a caretaker since the resignation of its prime minster Adel Abdul Mahdi at the demand of the protest movement on November 30, legal experts say the government is not empowered to take executive action on such important issues relating to binding agreements and treaties with foreign states.

Since Abdul Mahdi's resignation, the protesters who continue to stage daily anti-government demonstrations have rejected all nominees for the PM post who are not independent or are known to have been members of ruling parties with strong links to Iran.
JNU violence: On January 5, Sunday, a mob of masked people barged into the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus and attacked students and teachers. The mob was carrying sticks and stones for the attack. As many as 28 students and a teacher were injured in the attacks, after which they were rushed to AIIMS Trauma Centre and Safdarjung Hospital.

JNU Students' Union President Aishe Ghosh and faculty member Sucharita Sen were among the severely injured.

The JNU attack took place hours after a scuffle broke out between two groups of students over the online semester registration process. JNU students were protesting against the administration's decision to hike the university's fee. Academic and administrative activities were suspended in the university over the protests.

As per reports, the two groups of students had a face-off after students from the Left parties tried to stop the registration process. After a scuffle broke out, police were called by the university, as mentioned in a report by NDTV.

In the evening, a mob of masked people entered the university and attacked the students. JNUSU has said that BJP's students wing, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad or ABVP, were complicit in the attack. ABVP said that they were attacked by leftist students.

There were, reportedly, messages doing the rounds on WhatsApp groups that asked members of the groups to "thrash the anti-nationals" in JNU, hours before the JNU violence broke out. Union Home Minister Amit Shah has ordered the Delhi Police to hold an inquiry into the matter.

Here's a timeline of how the JNU violence unfolded:

The initial news of masked people gathering at Periyar Hostel broke out at around 3:45pm

JNU Teachers' Association's peace march began at Sabarmati T-point at 4pm. The march was attended by teachers and students, as per reports.

As news of masked people roaming around the campus emerged, the first PCR call by a student took place at 5:57pm.

Teacher Amit Thorat who goes to Periyar to check rushes back after he is beaten by masked people at around 6:15pm.

At around 6:30pm, the masked people move towards the JNUTA march site. Teachers are attacked with stones and sticks as they attempt to engage in dialogue, mentioned a report in The Indian Express.

JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh is attacked by the mob while she tries to tell students not to panic.

Till around 9pm the masked people vandalise property in seven hostels.

After the attacks took place, there was a massive protest outside the JNU gates, videos of which started circulating on social media. Swaraj Abhiyan chief Yogendra Yadav reached there to protest along with the students. He was allegedly manhandled amid the clash between JNUSU and ABVP.

Hours after the JNU violence at the hostels, the Delhi Police entered the campus to restore law and order on the "request of the JNU administration". Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal urged Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal to take stock of the situation and restore order.

Also read: JNU Violence Live: Sabarmati hostel warden resigns; HRD ministry summons JNU administration

Also read: JNU violence: JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh under observation at AIIMS after head injury
For liturgical calendarwatchers and church history enthusiasts, Epiphany ranks as the third most important event of the church year, right after Easter and Pentecost. It was one thing for Israels King to be born among Jewish shepherds and angels. Quite another to have him revealed as the King of the Gentiles too. Epiphany means revelation, and with the revelation of Jesus to the Magi, Gods plan to save his chosen people turns out to be a plan to save the whole world.

By the time we get to Matthew 2, Jesus is a toddler and sleeping in a bed. His family thankfully upgraded to a house, which may have been connected to all those glorious angels. Anybody witnessing that spectacle surely scrambled to make more room available. The family still resides in Bethlehem, where theyre famously visited by a collection of exotic magicians from the east, described by tradition as three kings or wise men, easily the strangest guys to show up in the gospels thus far. Scholars conclude they were likely astrologers, who, having checked their skies, determine an important king has been born who is worth checking out. With the kind of fervor currently reserved for any royal birth, these astrologers trace a star toward Jerusalem, Israels capital city. They drive straight to the palace, since thats where youd expect a king of the Jews to be born.

For the ancients, astrology was the best that science had to offer as far as the cosmos was concerned. It was a world where the earth sat at the center of the universe and stars and planets were thought to be alive. What did the Magi see up in the sky that night? An astral anomaly? A blazing comet? A bright supernova? An alignment of planets? Speculation runs rampant. But whatever they saw, I like how the Magi used the science of their day to pursue truth and how it brought them to Jesus. Searching for truth does that.

Scholars conclude that from the east probably meant the Magi hailed from Persia, Babylon, or Arabia, known to us as Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia: nations whose significance to peace on earth is as important then as now.

What were Arabs doing looking for a Jewish Messiah? Plenty of scholars remain suspicious about whether this epiphany even happened. Who can believe a bunch of Arabian astrologers chase a moving star to go looking for a Jewish kid they think to be divine? Then again, its not the sort of story you concoct as a gospel writer trying to get a new religion off the ground. For serious Old Testament readers, this was not a surprise encounter. Isaiah the prophet saw it coming in chapter 60 of his book: Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn (60:1, 3, ESV, emphasis added). This is where we get the idea that the Magi were kings. Isaiah goes on to foresee how the wealth of nations shall come to you; a multitude of camels shall cover you (vv. 56).This is how camels get into Nativity scenes. And finally, They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord, which is how Isaiah 60 gets linked to the Magi.

Maybe the Magi knew something of Isaiah, which would have given them corroborating reason to follow the light to Jerusalem. They get to the palace but dont find a new king. Theres just the crazy old King Heroda maniacal monarch paranoid about his power to the point of murdering his own wife and sons out of fear that they threatened his throne. The Roman Emperor Augustus reportedly remarked how it was safer to be Herods pig than his kid. We all know the atrocity he commits against innocent children. News of a newborn King terrified Herod. He checked with his Jewish religious advisors and found that the Magis calculations were six miles off. The prophet Micah had later foreseen Israels savior to be born in Bethlehem instead of Jerusalem. Putting on some fake piety, Herod sends the Magi to Bethlehem on a diabolical hunt: Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.

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The irony is unavoidable: Pagan astrologers travel the long distance to adore Israels Savior, but Israels ruler just wants him dead. And not only that, but Israels religious leaders, who know the prophecies inside and out and actually believe, fail to join the journey even though for them it was only a six-mile trip. Why bother?

The Magi may have been wise men, but we all have our biases, even when it comes to divine revelation. If youre looking for royalty, you look for it among glitter and splendor like you find in capital cities, not in Podunk backwater towns like Bethlehem. Who could have imagined a king being born to working class commoners engulfed by the kind of scandal that swamped Mary and Joseph? Jesus wasnt Josephs baby, and everybody knew it. No wonder they couldnt find a place for Mary to give birth in Josephs hometown.

People still seek Jesus in places youd normally expect to find a king: amidst respectability and success, security and contentment. We presume the Lord to be present mostly when theres money in the bank, the careers intact, our relationships are enjoyable, the kids succeed, our bodies are fit, and the weather is nice.

Im not sure the Lord cares much about how far youve made it up the career ladderor about your relational enjoyment, your kids success, good fitness, or the five-day forecast. For most Christians, even the faithful ones, money goes away, careers collapse, relationships break down, children disappoint, our bodies get sick, and the weather can kill you. Remember, the Magi gave Jesus myrrh for Christmas, a spice used for burying bodies. It was like putting embalming fluid under the tree with Jesus name on it. You get the sense these wise men knew how things would turn out. Jesus himself warns that following him requires a cross. Whether you take that literally or metaphorically, the point seems to be that coming to Jesus can be hazardous to your health.

This was certainly true for the Magi. Knowing the horror Herod wrought upon baby boys in Bethlehem, its not hard to shudder at what he had planned for the Magi had they met up with him again. God warned them in a dream to take the back roads home, and fortunately they were the sort who paid serious attention to dreams. Their lives had been changed. They returned to their own country, but they went back as different people.

As a baby, Jesus already shattered human categories of religion and race and class and privilege. Outsiders are welcome inside. Before the story is over, the homeless and destitute, prostitutes, lepers, Roman centurions, condemned criminals, and the IRS will all be welcomed inside too. But the welcome wasnt merely an opening of doors and putting out a welcome mat hoping outsiders might drop by. The disturbing beauty of the gospel is how Jesus became an outsider himself: marginalized and outcast, scandalized and condemned, he descended as low as humanity goes in order to raise us up.

New birth feels like death sometimes, because being born again means death to the sinful life youve been living, and that can hurt. Yet as painful as new birth can be, the new life it brings gets described, and experienced, as both abundant and eternal, full of grace and joy. We read that the Magi were overwhelmed by joy upon coming to Jesusand he was still just a toddler. They bow before him and pay homage though hed yet to speak a word or do a miracle. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praises of the Lord, just like the prophet said they would.

Daniel Harrell is the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today. Today is his first day on the job.
The following editorial appears in the January 4 Washington Post:

- - -

Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani was an implacable enemy of the United States who was responsible for hundreds of American deaths, as well as countless atrocities in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere. His death in a drone strike was being cheered Friday by U.S. allies and progressive forces across the region, from Israelis and Saudis to the pro-reform demonstrators of Beirut and Baghdad. That, however, doesn't mean that President Donald Trump's decision to assassinate him was wise, or that it will ultimately benefit U.S. interests.

The consequences of the strike are unpredictable, but there is no denying the risk that the United States will be pulled more deeply into the Middle East and its conflicts. Having made clear that he wants to pull the nation out of those conflicts, and having said as recently as Tuesday that he wanted peace with Iran, Trump has committed an act of escalation and now is deploying more than 4,000 additional troops to Kuwait as a hedge against Iranian counterstrikes.

It's certainly possible that the killing will have the effect of deterring further Iranian attacks on Americans, such as the rocket strike that killed a U.S. contractor at an Iraqi base last week, or the assault by Iranian-backed militias on the embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday. The loss of Soleimani might disorient and demoralize the militia forces he steered. The Trump administration is clearly hoping Tehran will absorb the blow and retreat, which is why Secretary of State Mike Pompeo kept talking Friday about "de-escalation."

But Iran might choose to strike back, if not immediately then in coming days and weeks. Targets within Iranian reach include U.S. embassies and citizens across the Middle East; shipping in the Persian Gulf; Saudi oil fields; and Israeli cities, against which Soleimani aimed thousands of missiles. Have Trump and his aides thought through the possible Iranian responses and fully prepared for them? Does the administration have a clear goal? While Trump was still tweeting about negotiation, some of his aides appeared bent on regime change in Tehran.

In the short term, at least, the killing of Soleimani along with a senior Iraqi militia commander has probably made both those goals more difficult to reach. The 62-year-old general was not only the architect of Iran's aggressions across the Middle East but also a hero to many Iranians, who may now rally around him and the regime. In Iraq, where Soleimani had been under pressure from anti-Iran demonstrations, political leaders may turn on the United States; a parliamentary vote to expel U.S. troops would be a major Iranian victory.

When Trump took office, Iran's nuclear program was quiescent and its threats to U.S. interests manageable. He pulled the United States out of the treaty that had limited Iran's nuclear activity, and he ratcheted up sanctions against the regime. He took sides in a regional battle between an intolerant Sunni regime in Saudi Arabia and an intolerant Shiite regime in Iran. Now, even as short- and long-term threats from Russia, China and North Korea require urgent attention, the United States finds itself in an ever tenser confrontation with Iran. Trump has yet to offer any explanation of why this is in America's strategic interest.
Reno Omokri has again taken to social media to educate the people about religion and this time, he has given a reason people should stop reading the bible.

According to Reno, people need to stop reading the bible and start reading the scriptures.

Read Also: You Will Not Exit Poverty If You Started Your Life With Borrowing  Reno Omokri

In his words;

Why You Should Read Scripture, And Not The Bible (part 1)

By Reno Omokri

I have been teaching for a while that believers should read Scripture in the original language, and many people ask me what is the difference between Scripture and The Bible?. The difference is that whereas Scripture is the original Word of God, as it was received by the prophets in the original languages in which they wrote it, The Bible is a translation of Scripture, which is often affected by the bias, tradition, agenda and even sometimes, limited education of the translators.

It is just like converting $100 to British Pounds Sterling (GBP). You will get 76.4 pounds at todays rate (January 6, 2020). However, if you try to convert that 76.4 to US Dollars, you will not get $100. You may get $98. Why? Because value is ALWAYS lost in the conversion process.

In translating Scripture to other languages, value is lost. I will give some examples.

In Numbers 23:22 and 24:8, the King James Version says God brought the Israelites out of Egypt with the strength of a unicorn. The thing is that a unicorn is an animal that has never existed before. It is a myth. It only exists in fairy tales!

Now, if you accept the KJV, you will be misled to think that The Bible is not a perfect book. But Scripture is perfect. The challenge is that in 1611, when the King James Bible was translated, science had not yet proven that a unicorn never existed.

The original word used in those two verses of Scripture is r-em, which in Hebrew, refers to a primitive animal that Noah used during the Flood and is now extinct today. The animal is the ancestor of the oryx. But its meaning confused translators of the KJV. Other translators used the words wild ox, not as an accurate translation, but as the closest one.

Another example is 1 John 5:7 of the King James Version, which is used as the primary justification of the doctrine of Trinity. That verse reads in the KJV as follows: For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. The sad truth, however, is that the King James Version erred! Original Scripture does not say that. The oldes;

Why You Should Read Scripture, And Not The Bible (part 2)

By Reno Omokri

Another example is 1 John 5:7 of the King James Version, which is used as the primary justification of the doctrine of Trinity. That verse reads in the KJV as follows: For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. The sad truth, however, is that the King James Version erred! Original Scripture does not say that. The oldest Greek Manuscripts do not have the last part of that verse translated as the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. That is why almost all other translations OMIT it.

It found its way into The Bibles authorised by the Catholic Church via the work of Desiderius Erasmus in 1522, after he was pressured by the Catholic Church to include it. The translators of the KJV then followed Erasmus example. My readers do not have to take my word for it. You can research this. It is a historical fact that neither the Catholic or Anglican Church can deny.

As a matter of fact, when the great scholar and philologist, Jean-Francois Champollion, was going to Egypt in 1829, to research ancient documents and hieroglyphs, he was warned by the Catholic Church that he must not publish anything if it contradicts with the Catholic Churchs doctrine. Again, this is a researchable historical fact.

If you think I am an anti-Christ for saying this, then simply open to 1 John 5:7 in ANY OTHER TRANSLATION other than the King James Version or the Catholic Bible.

I will give one final example. It will shock you to note that the book of Mark, which you read in most Bibles, has an addition that is not in the original Scripture. The true Gospel according to Mark actually ends in Mark 16:8. All the verses thereafter (Mark 16:9-20), were added in the 4th Century). The two oldest manuscript from 300 AD (codex vaticanus, codex sinaiticus) do not have those verses. This is a historical fact. What is more, Mark is actually the oldest gospel, and not Matthew. And again, I urge you to carry out your own independent research.

Some people criticise me for exposing these truths and say I am undermining faith.

Why You Should Read Scripture, And Not The Bible (part 3)

By Reno Omokri

Some people criticise me for exposing these truths and say I am undermining faith. But is faith built one lies and half truth still faith? Did Christ not say ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.-John 8:32.

Christians in Africa must learn that it is not anti-Christ to question what a church tells you. It is actually called NOBLE by Scripture: the Berean Jews were of more NOBLE character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and EXAMINED THE SCRIPTURES every day to see if what Paul said was true. So, how can you read accurate Scripture? Good question. To do that, you need to get a copy of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Scriptures of Genesis to Malachi. What we in Christianity call the Old Testament. It is written in Hebrew and Aramaic). You also need a copy of a koine Greek Scripture (the New Testament written in the Ancient Greek that was spoken during the time of Christ). In my own case, I physically went to Greece and Israel, but you can buy them via amazon.

Do not be intimidated by these languages. Get a Hebrew and koine Greek dictionary, and unlock Scripture. It is worth it. I do it. Apostle Suleman has read it 23 times. You can do it. This is what Scripture means when it says in Proverbs 2:4-5: if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. Children of God should understand that what left Judea was the only Way to God. After Paul took it to Europe, the Romans converted it to a political religion. By the time it left Europe to places like Asia, South America and Africa, it had changed to mind control. So, if you want to know the true way to God, you must, in my opinion (and my opinion may be wrong), go back to what was put together in Judea and Israel, before it was altered by men.

Reno Omokri

Gospeller. Deep Thinker. #1 Bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years. Avid traveller. Hollywood Magazine Film Festival Humanitarian of the Year, 2019.
Unison members on strike outside the Ulster Hospital last month

The Department of Health has urged trade unions to return to talks ahead of planned strike action this week.

Richard Pengelly was speaking as Northern Ireland's health service faces another week of disruption, with more strikes announced by trade unions.

Members of the Royal College of Nursing are to stage walkouts on Wednesday, while members of Unison, Northern Ireland's largest healthcare union, are to go on strike on Friday.

Unison workers across four health trusts are taking the industrial action over pay and staffing levels.

The announcement comes following industrial action by Unison and Royal College of Nursing members last month.

Unions are also calling from pay parity with the rest of the UK and a solution to the crisis has been at the forefront in talks aimed at restoring Stormont power sharing.

The union representing midwifes is also balloting its members as to if they should strike.

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The department's permanent secretary, Richard Pengelly, said it was not too late to call the action off, warning that hospitals are already under severe pressure.

"It's still not too late for trade unions to defer the industrial action planned for this week and get back round the table," he said.

"We have repeatedly made clear that our door remained open for discussions - with the specific aim of drawing up a detailed, costed, implementation plan on staffing.

"We see no good reason why such dialogue cannot begin immediately.

"Deferring strike action would be in the best interests of patients and patient safety and would provide the necessary space for fresh dialogue.

"Our hospitals are already under severe pressure at present, even before the planned industrial action takes place this week."

A wave of actions is planned across Northern Ireland.

At the Belfast trust, all nursing staff at Belfast City Hospital, Royal Victoria Hospital, Mater Hospital, Knockbracken Park Hospital, as well as all community nursing staff, will take part in walkouts from 8am to 8pm, during the first four hours of each shift.

On call workers at all Northern Trust hospitals and community locations, excluding those in the Causeway area, will walk out from 12.01am to 11.59pm, while A&E clerks and receptionists will go on strike from 4am to 8am and 8am to 12pm across two shifts.

Administrative staff, social workers and community care support workers will walk out from 9am to 12pm.

At the South Eastern trust, all members at Ulster Hospital, Ards Hospital, Bangor Hospital and North Down and Ards community settings will walk out from 8am to 8pm. Overtime and bank staff at selected locations will also go on strike from 12.01pm to 11.59pm.

From 10am to 2pm, all Western trust members at South West Acute Hospital, Omagh Hospital and Primary Care Complex, Altnagelvin Hospital, community facilities and sites in the Gransha, Tyrone and Fermanagh areas will walk out from 10am to 2pm.

Mr Pengelly said that pay parity is a "matter for consideration by a minister".

"That is a position that cannot be changed by industrial action," he said.

"In terms of political resolution, all main political parties have already publicly supported the calls for parity with England, and talks are ongoing about restoration of the devolved institutions.

"It is only that process that can provide the mechanism for a sustainable solution on pay."

Meanwhile, members of the Royal College of Nursing will stage their second day of strike action on Wednesday.

Negotiations between the Department of Health and unions broke down last month when unions rejected the offer of a 3.1% pay increase.

On Monday, a ballot of members of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) opened, asking midwives and maternity support workers whether they want to talk industrial action up to and including strike action.

The RCM's Northern Ireland director, Karen Murray, said they have "exhausted every avenue" tying to resolve the dispute.

Despite our best efforts to negotiate a fair pay deal for our members, the department have failed to come to an agreement, she said.

Our midwives here are much worse off in their pay packet than their colleagues in other parts of the UK.

This is simply neither right nor fair. That is why we are recommending our members to vote yes to industrial action.

The RCM ballot will close on January 29.
Akal Takht Jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh on Monday issued an edict awarding a religious punishment to a Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) member for "buying a liquor bottle".

As per the Sikh religious tenets, buying or consuming liquor by a baptised Sikh, especially those holding a religious position, is banned.

Giani Harpreet Singh, Jathedar (leader) of the supreme temporal body of Sikhs, asked the DSGMC member to clean utensils of 'Langar' (community kitchen) and dust the shoes of visiting devotees to Gurdwara Bangla Sahib in Delhi for three days.

A few days ago, a video purportedly showing the DSGMC member buying a liquor bottle from a wine shop had gone viral.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices on Monday.







FTSE 100 - WINNERS







BP, up 1.8%, Royal Dutch Shell 'A', up 1.3%, Shell 'B', up 1.1%. The oil majors were tracking spot oil prices higher, quoted at USD69.55 a barrel, up from USD68.11 late Friday. The North Sea benchmark touched an overnight high of USD70.72 - its highest level since May as tension rose between the US and Iran after the US's killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad on Friday. US President Donald Trump threatened "major retaliation" on Sunday if Iran avenges the killing of its key military commander. AJ Bell's Russ Mould said: "Oil prices are often a good barometer for the state of play in the Middle East, given how much of the black stuff is produced there, so it is unsurprising to see Brent crude trading at its highest level in several months above USD70 per barrel amid the escalating tensions in the region."







Polymetal International, up 1.2%. The Russian gold miner was tracking spot gold prices higher, quoted at USD1,575.77 an ounce Monday, sharply higher from USD1,549.40 late Friday. The precious metal was trading at its highest levels since mid-2013 as the demand for safe haven assets increased. Midcap peers Fresnillo and Hochschild Mining were up 1.2% and 0.9% respectively.







BAE Systems, up 1.2%. Shares in the defence company were higher amid the intensifying US-Iran tensions.







FTSE 100 - LOSERS







Hikma Pharmaceuticals, down 4.5%. JPMorgan downgraded the drugmaker to Underweight from Neutral.







WM Morrison Supermarkets, down 3.5%. Bank of America Merrill Lynch cut the grocer to Underperform from Neutral.







easyJet, down 2.5%, International Consolidated Airlines, down 4.0%, TUI, down 2.8%. The travel stocks were lower as the threat of war reduces the appetite for travel, while higher oil prices feed through to higher jet fuel costs for airlines.







FTSE 250 - WINNERS







Sirius Real Estate, up 2.0%. The Germany-focused commercial property investor said it has acquired two business parks for a combined EUR33.4 million. The Neuss II asset, located roughly 9.5 kilometres from the Dusseldorf city centre, offers 34,000 square metres of space and is 82% let. It complements Sirius Real Estate's existing assets in Dusseldorf, where it already owns two other business parks. In the Brandenburg region, the firm purchased the Neuruppin business parks, an asset with 22,400 square metres of lettable space. Neuruppin is fully-let to a single tenant, ESE GmbH, a waste and recyclables storage systems provider.







FTSE 250 - LOSERS







PageGroup, down 3.6%. The recruiter was cut to Hold from Buy by Jefferies.







OTHER MAIN MARKET AND AIM - WINNERS







Kefi Minerals, up 15%. The gold and copper explorer said the subscription agreement for its Tulu Kapi project in Ethiopia has been completed by its project partner ANS Mining. The government of Ethiopia is investing USD20 million into the project, with KEFI's partner ANS Mining providing USD38 million. The firm said the company operating the project, Tulu Kapi Gold Mines Share Co, will now receive the first tranche of ANS Mining funding of USD9.5 million. Based on already agreed upon financing, and last Friday's gold price of USD1,540 per ounce, Kefi estimates net cash flow over the life of the open pit will be USD433 million. The current net present value of the project - adding Friday's gold price to the definitive feasibility study - is USD323 million, meaning Kefi's 45% stake in the project is worth USD164 million.







By Arvind Bhunjun; arvindbhunjun@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga will announce the outcome of the 2019 National Senior Certificate examinations on 7 January 2020, and the pass rate is expected to be over 80%.

The matric pass rate has steadily increased over the past decade  from 60.6% in 2009 to 78.2% in 2018.

According to the City Press, the matric pass rate will increase even further in 2019 and will reach 80% for the first time.

Despite the tremendous increase in the pass rate, a government review noted that there are issues with the quality of academic outcomes.

Only 172,043 (33.6%) grade 12 students passed at bachelor level in 2018, against the 255,000 Medium Term Strategic Framework target for 2018, it said.

Concerns about mathematics

The Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training, Umalusi, also stated it remains concerned about the countrys mathematics marks.

Umalusi chairperson John Volmink said the body is pleased with the improvement in learner performance in matric subjects such as geography, physical science, and mathematical literacy.

However, mathematics is not progressing in tandem with cognate subjects in terms of learner performances.

For example, performance in physical science seems to be improving year by year, but performance in mathematics is not showing any signs of improvement, he said.

Volmink added that there are concerns about the number of candidates opting for the mathematics exam compared to mathematical literacy.

He said a growing number of learners are selecting mathematical literacy instead of mathematics  a trend which should be addressed by the government.

Matric pass rate  2009 to 2019

The graph below shows the matric pass rate between 2009 and 2019. It should be noted that the 2019 pass rate is currently only speculation as it is based on a media report  and not an official figure.

Now read: Big concern over South African matric maths
As many as 120 cadets from the Northeastern region are participating in the NCC Republic Day Camp here, much less than their strength in the 2019 camp.

Director General of NCC, Lt Gen Rajeev Chopra at a press conference, held at the camp site in Delhi Cantonment, said a total of 2,155 cadets, including 710 girl cadets, drawn from across the country are taking part in the camp this year.

"Cadets from Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh are also part of the camp, and 120 cadets are from Northeast region," he said.

In last year's camp, a total of 2,070 cadets had taken part, including 102 from the then unified Jammu and Kashmir, and 162 from the Northeastern region.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Global Antacid Medications Market

An antacid is a medication that helps neutralize stomach acidity and relieves heartburn, indigestion, or an upset stomach. Antacid medications are usually recommended for minor symptoms. Antacids are generally composed of magnesium carbonate, aluminum hydroxide, and magnesium trisilicate. However, often there are several cases of allergic reactions caused by antacids reported globally. Antacids containing excessive amounts of magnesium might trigger diarrhea, while those containing high levels of calcium and aluminum might cause constipation. Long-term usage of antacids could potentially lead to kidney stones, as well as increase the risk of contracting osteoporosis. The most recognized antacid brands include Alka Seltzer, Gelusil, Milk of Magnesia, Maalox, Gaviscon, Mylanta, Rolaids, and Tums.

Global Antacid Medications Market  Distribution Channels

Antacids are sold through two main distribution channels, namely, chemists and non-chemists. Non-chemists comprise grocers, general stores, and food stores. Abbotts Digene and Pfizers Gelusil are some of the modern, science-based medicines, Eno and Pudin Hara have an Ayurvedic base and are easily available over the counter. Over-the-counter availability of antacids has allowed individuals to self-medicate their bouts of acid reflux. However, if these medicines are consumed regularly, there could be higher chances of a person suffering from a cardiac arrest or stroke in the future. Antacids are available in different forms, such as water dissolving tablets, powder, and melt-in-mouth granules.

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Global Antacid Medications Market Taxonomy  Formulation, Drug, and Demographics

The global antacid medications market is classified on the basis of formulation, drug, and demographics. Based on formulation, the global antacid medications market is segmented into tablets, capsules, suspensions, and drops. On the basis of demographics, the global market is classified as products for pediatrics and products for adults. While speaking of the drug type, the global antacid medications market segmented into histamine-2 (H2) blockers, proton pump inhibitors, and pro-motility agents. Examples of H2 blocker include Nizatidine, Ranitidine, Cimetidine, and famotidine, whereas, the commonly used proton pump inhibitors for acid reflux include Rabeprazole, Esomeprazole, Lansoprazole, Pantoprazole, and Omeprazole. Pro-motility agents are used to stimulate the muscles of the gastrointestinal tract and therefore, strengthen the lower esophageal sphincter and reduce acid reflux.

Growing trend of self-medication is driving the global antacid medications market growth

Surging inclination towards self-medication, which is supported by the increasing availability of over-the-counter products, is expected to propel the global antacid medications market development in the upcoming years.

Global Antacid Medications Market  Regional Outlook

Rising trend of self-medication for treating gastrointestinal disorders fuels the global demand for over-the-counter antacid products. The growing use of antacids in North America, owing to rising incidences of the gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is thus expected to lead to rampant increase in demand for the same in the region. As per a study conducted by the American Gastroenterological Association, published in February 2016, around one-third of the population in the U.S. suffers from GERD. Furthermore, according to a study issued in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in June 2014, the growth rate of GERD prevalence ranged from 18.1%27.8% in North America, 8.7%33.1% in the Middle East, 8.8%25.9% in Europe, 2.5%7.8% in Southeast Asia, and around 11.6% in Australia. Hence, the growing prevalence of GERD creates a favorable environment for the global antacid medications market growth.

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Global Antacid Medications Market  Key Players & Major Developments

Some of the most prominent companies involved in the global antacid medications market are GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Dabur India Limited, Abbott Laboratories, and Pfizer Inc. These market players are involved in various business strategies, such as product launches, in order to expand their product portfolio and strengthen their market presence. For instance, Sun Pharma launched an Ayurvedic digestive remedy, called Pepmelt, to compete with other popular antacid brands, such as Eno (GSK consumer healthcare), Digene (Abbott India), Pudin Hara (Dabur), and Gelusil (Pfizer). In June 2017, Pfizer India acquired AstraZenecas Nekasium, a drug used as an antacid. Nekasium was launched in India in 2006 and has since been recommended by doctors for the treatment of hyperacidity. Furthermore, in October 2018, Dr. Reddys Laboratories launched Omeprazole delayed-release tablets in the U.S. market, which can be used for frequent heartburn issues.

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Illinois industries are reacting to new U.S. Census Bureau data that shows Illinois led the nation in population loss over the past decade. The state lost nearly 160,000 residents in just six years, which could mean fewer members in Congress representing the Land of Lincoln.

Over the six consecutive years of population losses, the rate of decline accelerated year-to-year with more than 51,000 fewer people in the 12 months that ended July 1.

Illinois Chamber of Commerce CEO Todd Maisch said Illinois tax and labor policies are not friendly for businesses. While Maisch said they dont get exit surveys when businesses leave, they do hear about the uncertainty businesses face in Illinois from things like a proposed progressive income tax.

And [businesses] just say Ive got governors in other states and legislatures in other states that are really courting me and promising me stability and a successful future, Maisch said.

Illinoisans will get to vote on changing the state constitutions flat income tax to a structure with higher rates for higher earners this November.

For farmers, Sangamon County Farm Bureau President Phil Sidles said they cant just pick up their land and move it out of state.

So when we lose that rural representation it is a concern of mine, and theres fewer and fewer young farmers in the area so youre going to see that representation shrink even more especially in the ag world, Sidles said.

Demographers say its likely Illinois will lose one U.S. congressman, if not two, come the next reapportionment.

Illinois had 25 congressional districts in 1948, but lost a seat after the 1950 census. Today, there are 18 congressional seats. Illinois lost its 19th congressional seat in 2013 after the 2010 reapportionment. The next reapportionment will occur after the 2020 Census and before the 2022 elections.

If Illinois loses more congressional representation because its bleeding population to other states, U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Peoria, warns that will mean lost representation for rural areas.

What concerns me long term is whos standing up for agriculture, whos standing up for our corn and soybean farmers, for crop insurance, our locks and dams, Lahood said.

To reverse course, LaHood said state government needs reform.

But again, focusing on a business climate on how do we keep Illinois businesses here to thrive and prosper and do well and I think you do that with good economic policy, LaHood said. Listen, we have wonderful assets in this state, Illinois a great state but we havent had good governance and thats what we need in this state.

LaHood pushed for term limits and fair maps. While leader term limits are imposed on the Illinois Senate and House Republicans, House Democrats dont have such a rule. Michael Madigan has been House speaker for all but two years since 1983. Proposals for a fair map amendment that would take redistricting out of the hands of politicians have gone nowhere at the statehouse.
The World Health Organization has estimated more than 340 million children and adolescents ages 5-19 are overweight or obese, and the epidemic has been linked to more deaths worldwide than those caused by being underweight.

The Centers for Disease Control recently reported an estimated 1 in 5 children in the United States, ages 12-18, are living with prediabetes -- increasing their risk of developing type 2 diabetes as well as chronic kidney disease, heart disease and stroke.

Efforts to stem the crisis have led clinicians and health professionals to examine both the nutritional and psychological factors of childhood obesity. In a new study led by the University of Notre Dame, researchers examined how various psychological characteristics of children struggling with their weight, such as loneliness, anxiety and shyness, combined with similar characteristics of their parents or guardians and family dynamics affect outcomes of nutritional intervention.

What they found was a "network effect," suggesting a personalized, comprehensive approach to treatment could improve results of nutritional interventions.

"Psychological characteristics clearly have interactional effects," said Nitesh Chawla, the Frank M. Freimann Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Notre Dame, director of the Center for Network and Data Science and a lead author of the study. "We can no longer simply view them as individualized risk factors to be assessed. We need to account for the specific characteristics for each child, viewing them as a holistic set for which to plan treatment."

The Notre Dame team collaborated with the Centre for Nutritional Recovery and Education (CREN), a not-for-profit, nongovernmental nutritional clinic in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where patients participate in a two-year interdisciplinary treatment program including family counseling, nutritional workshops and various physical activities. Researchers analyzed the medical records and psychological assessments of 1,541 children who participated in the program.

The study's key takeaway points to the significant impact parents and guardians have on their child's health when it comes to nutrition. Strong family dynamics, such as concern for behavior and treatment and a sense of protectiveness for the child, led to improved outcomes of nutritional interventions. A lack of authority, however, led to minimal changes in results.

"This is quantitative evidence of the success and failure of interactions as they relate to the characteristics and interactions between the child and the parent or guardian," Chawla said.

The study also highlights the need for clinics to expand their views on patient populations. For example, while treatment programs that incorporate development of interpersonal relationship -- familial and otherwise -- may improve outcomes of nutritional interventions, the same treatment plan may not have the same result for children experiencing loneliness coupled with anxiety.

"For the group without anxiety, this makes sense when you consider a treatment plan focused on strengthening a child's social circle and address issues stemming from loneliness, such as poor social network, bullying or self-imposed isolation," said Gisela M.B. Solymos, co-author of the study, former general manager of CREN and former guest scholar at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at Notre Dame and at the Center for Network and Data Science. "But patients feeling loneliness and anxiety actually showed minimal changes to nutritional interventions, and may be more likely to benefit from additional services at clinics like CREN."

Co-authors of the study include Keith Feldman, also at Notre Dame, and Maria Paula Albuquerque at CREN.

The National Science Foundation partially funded the study.

###
Crown Princess Mary of Denmark has written a heartfelt letter to Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison amid the bushfire crisis, offering her condolences to families who have lost their homes and loved ones.

The 47-year-old future Queen, who was born and raised in Hobart, Tasmania, said that the time of 'great hardship' in her home country has left her and husband Prince Frederik feeling deeply sympathetic.

'Your Excellency Prime Minister, in this time of great hardship caused by the ruthless bushfires, my husband and I would like to convey our warmest wishes to the Australian people as we enter a new year,' she wrote on the Danish royals website.

Crown Princess Mary of Denmark (pictured with Prince Frederik and NSW RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons in 2013) has written a heartfelt letter to Australia's Prime Minister

Prime Minister Scott Morrison (also pictured with NSW RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons in 2020) has been criticised for his leading of the natural disaster relief

'Our heartfelt condolences to the families who have lost loved ones and our deepest sympathy to the many families who have lost their homes - their livelihoods.'

The mother-of-four went on to address the after effects of such a national tragedy and what this would mean for the small communities who have been razed to the ground.

'When the immediate crisis subsides and people can begin to return from where they have fled, our thoughts and concerns will remain with the affected local communities, as it will undoubtedly take great efforts and time for them to rebuild what has been lost,' she said.

The mother-of-four (pictured in 2013) went on to address the after effects of such a national tragedy and what this would mean for the small communities

Princess Mary and Prince Frederik (pictured at the Winmalee fire station in 2013) diverted their royal tour to visit victims seven years ago

'The courage and unyielding efforts of the volunteer firefighters have our deepest respect and admiration.'

As millions of people around the world follow the news from afar, Princess Mary said she felt 'proud of my Australian heritage' to see so many of her countrymen coming together.

'It makes me proud to witness the strong sense of community and the Australian spirit of 'never giving up' in the face of such devastation and adversity,' she said.

This isn't the first time the Danish royals have expressed solidarity with Australian bushfire victims, having diverted their official tour of the country in 2013 to visit compatriots in the Blue Mountains.

Nearly 200 homes were destroyed in the town of Winmalee after a devastating fire tore through the NSW region of Winmalee in 2013 (Princess Mary pictured with children)

Nearly 200 homes were destroyed in the town of Winmalee after a devastating fire tore through the NSW region that year and - wearing jeans and a pair of running shoes - Mary visited the scene with a sombre expression.

She and Prince Frederik spent a full day speaking to volunteer firefighters and NSW RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons - the same man protecting humans, wildlife and homes during this decade's disaster.

The royal couple last visited Australia in 2017 for a family holiday with their children Prince Christian, 14, Princess Isabella, 12, and twins Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine, eight.
Agro-chemical firm Protection Ltd on Monday said it has acquired three insecticide brands from US-based Corteva Agriscience, which will help the company to generate an additional revenue of about Rs 50 crore annually.

The company has seven manufacturing plants in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Haryana. It posted a net profit of about Rs 130 crore over a turnover of around Rs 1,400 crore during the last financial year.

"We have acquired three premium insecticides brands Dursban, Nurelle-D and Predator brands in India from Corteva Agriscience," MD Ankur Aggarwal told PTI.

This is Crystal's fifth acquisition in last two years and is part of the company's strategy to diversify product portfolio and widen its market presence, he added.

"This acquisition is a part of Crystal's strategy to add value to its business and ensure growth for all its stakeholders. We believe such strategic acquisitions would improve our competitiveness, further help in diversifying our product portfolio and thus strengthen our market presence across India," Aggarwal said.

Aggarwal said these three brands would give Rs 40-50 crore revenue annually.

Corteva Agriscience is a major American agricultural chemical and seed company. Originally an agricultural unit of DowDuPont, it later became one of the major stand alone agricultural organizations in the world.

In 2018, Crystal acquired a specialty chemicals manufacturing facility at Nagpur from Cytec India.

After that it acquired Indian grain sorghum, pearl millet and fodder sorghum seeds business from Syngenta India, followed by the acquisition of four brands namely Furadan, Splendour, Affinity Force and Metcil from FMC India Limited.

Crystal also bought three brands from Syngenta, namely Tilt, Proclaim and Blue Copper.

In 2016, it had signed an agreement with Germany's BASF SE to acquire the brand Bavistin for use in India.



Protection had acquired Hyderabad based company Rohini-Seeds and Rohini Bioseeds and Agritech in 2011.
The Modi government on Monday came under massive attack from the opposition, youths, actors, activists and business tycoons over the "horrifying" violence on JNU students, with the Congress describing the rampage by masked goons as an example of "state-sponsored terrorism" reminiscent of Nazi rule.

As terrified students of JNU reeled under Sunday evening's "mayhem", people hit the streets in multiple cities and towns across the country, condemning the assault and demanding action against the guilty.

Masked mob armed with iron rods, sticks and sledgehammers went on a rampage



for over two hours in Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday evening, leaving at least 34 students and teachers injured.

Demands for holding Delhi Police Chief Amulya Patnaik accountable for keeping police as "bystanders" during the attacks, and the removal of JNU Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar for failing to "protect" the dignity of the institute grew louder.

Congress' Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, NCP's Sharad Pawar, CPI-M's Sitaram Yechury, CPI's D Raja, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and JD-U's K C Tyagi were among those who strongly condemned the attacks on JNU students.

"Yesterday's bone chilling attack on students and teachers in JNU, Delhi, is a grim reminder of the extent the government will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent," Sonia Gandhi said.

Thackeray even compared the JNU violence with the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, and said students were feeling "unsafe" in the country.

The Congress alleged that the goons involved in the attack belonged to the Bharatiya Janta Party and its frontal wing Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad. The charge was rejected by both organisations.

Video footage aired by TV channels showed that a former JNU student and ABVP member was among the goons involved in the rampage.

"The manner in which youth is being attacked and their voices stifled, reminds us of the Nazi Germany of 1933 which seems to have come back under the rule of Modi and Amit Shah after 90 years," Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said.

On its part, the JNU Teachers' Association demanded the removal of Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar, alleging that he failed to protect the students and instead damaging the premier institute.

CPI(M) general secretary Yechury, a former JNUSU president, said, "The vice chancellor is also complicit in this attack. He must be sacked immediately."



In solidarity with JNU students, protests were held at Pondicherry University, Bangalore University, University of Hyderabad, Aligarh Muslim University, University of Mumbai, Delhi University, Ambedkar University, Banaras Hindu University, Chandigarh University, National Law University in Bengaluru, Savitri Bai Phule University in Pune, TISS Mumbai, Jadavpur University, Presidency University, Kolkata and IIT Bombay.

Several Bollywood actors and filmmakers including Rajkummar Rao, Kriti Sanon, Anurag Kashyap and Sonam Kapoor Ahuja also expressed their anguish over the attacks on the JNU students.

Human rights organisation Amnesty International India, too, criticised the Delhi Police for "repeatedly failing" to protect the students peacefully protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Delhi Police remained "shameful bystanders to mob brutality on students", its all-India Executive Director Avinash Kumar said in a statement.

In a statement, Sonia Gandhi alleged that the "horrifying" violence unleashed on India's youth by goons was with the active abetment of the ruling Modi government and demanded an independent judicial inquiry into it.

"The voice of India's youth and students is being muzzled everyday. The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on India's young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi government is deplorable and unacceptable," she charged.

Gandhi alleged that everyday campuses and colleges are raided across India, either by the police or lumpen elements with support of the BJP government.

Lawyer-activists Prashant Bhushan tweeted: "This is the goonda Raj of the BJP/ABVP unleashed at JNU with armed goons attacking students, teachers, doctors, mediamen! All aided & abetted by the @DelhiPolice."



Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra also expressed concern over the attacks on JNU students.

"It doesn't matter what your politics are. It doesn't matter what your ideology is. It doesn't matter what your faith is. If you're an Indian, you cannot tolerate armed, lawless goons. Those who invaded JNU tonight must be traced & hunted down swiftly & given no quarter..," he tweeted.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Edo Publicity Secretary of the All Progress Congress (APC), Joseph Osagiede, says the party is ready for reconciliation if initiated by a neutral body.

Mr Osagiede, who made the disclosure while briefing journalists at the partys Secretariat in Benin on Monday, said either the presidency or the Benin traditional council should make such a move.

According to him, we have already said that we are willing for reconciliation, but we cannot constitute a reconciliation body when you are an interested party in the issue.

A neutral body from the presidency or Benin traditional council can set up a committee for reconciliation.

He expressed optimism that the crisis in the party at the state level was dying down as the activities of the Edo Peoples Movement (EPM), a breakout group of the party, was fading away.

READ ALSO:

I think the APC crisis is already ending because we know that EPM is already folding up; we know that the members of EPM are also reaching out to us.

Mr Osagiede said it was expected that the National Chairman of the party, Adams Oshiomhole, should heed to the wish of the Oba of Benin, Ewuare 11 who had called for peace to reign.

The Obas wish is that there should be peace and for Oshiomhole to still be supporting EPM, he is working against the wishes of the Oba.

The national chairman should take a clue from the Oba and come home, meet with the governor and take him to the Oba and say we have reconciled.

He added that he was not a factional publicity secretary of the party but the state publicity secretary, noting that those who left the party to form EPM had no bearing with APC.

(NAN)
Houthi artillery shells and landmines have killed 232 civilians including 68 children and 29 women in Yemens Red Sea province of Hodeida since Stockholm Agreement, the pro-government Giants Brigades said on Thursday.

In a statement carried by its official website and seen by Arab News, the Giant Brigades said the Iran-backed Houthis escalated military attacks and planting landmines since late 2018, killing 232 and injuring 2311 people in different districts in Hodeida.

The internationally-recognised government and Houthis signed the UN-brokered Stockholm Agreement in late 2018 that meant to stop a major military offensive by government forces on the strategic city of Hodeida that hosts the biggest and most important city seaport in Yemen.

Under the agreement, both sides are obliged to halt hostilities by withdrawing forces outside the city in exchange for Houthis hand over key seaports in the province of Hodeida to neutral Yemeni forces under the supervision of the UN.

On Thursday, the Giant Brigades said Houthis committed 16000 breaches to the agreement by heavily shelling residential areas and government forces gatherings in Durihimi, Hays, Khokha, Al Jah and areas on edges of Hodeida.

From December 2018 to December 2019, Houthi incursions and artillery fire had destroyed 446 public and government facilities including farms and houses. Backed by massive military support from the Saudi-led coalition, thousands of Yemeni troops marched towards Hodeida after seizing control of strategic locations in the provinces of Lahj and Taiz including Bab Al Mandab Strait.

The offensive gained momentum when hundreds of troops loyal to the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh defected from Houthis after the killing of their leader and began trickling into the west coast battlefield. When the government forces stormed Hodeida airport in late 2018, the UN brokered a deal that was designed to stop the offensive.

Government say the agreement was largely breached as Houthis intensified attacks on government forces in 2019, cashing in infighting in Aden between the government and Southern Transitional Council.

Formed from the Giant Brigades, Tehama Resistance and the Republic Guard, the Joint Forces have been deployed outside the city of Hodeida and other liberated regions to secure them from Houthi incursions.
From left, actor Kim Nam-gil, director Kim Kwang-bin and actor Ha Jung-woo pose for pictures during a press conference for a new film "The Closet" in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Thursday. Courtesy of CJ ENM



By Lee Gyu-lee



Actors Ha Jung-woo and Kim Nam-gil teamed up to take on a challenge with unprecedented roles in their career in horror, mystery and drama film "The Closet."



"This film was more of a challenge for me as a producer than as an actor. I think it is a type of movie that cannot be defined as one specific genre of mystery," said actor Ha, who is also a co-producer of the film, during a press conference for the film in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Thursday.



The flick revolves around an architect Sang-won (played by Ha) who moves into a new house with his daughter after losing his wife in an accident. He struggles to cope with the loss and take care of his daughter. Then one day, his daughter vanishes in the house without a trace, leaving him clueless until a mysterious man (Kim) comes to his door and tells him she has been taken inside the closet.



"This has the character, story, genre that I've never taken the challenge to do, so I thought 'this would be an interesting work to build up the piece together,'" Ha said.



To play the father figure as a single man himself, he said he had to ask around his married friends, but also noted that it was fairly easy to approach. "My character used to live life as a single man, leaving the child to his wife. Then, the accident occurs and he's completely responsible for his daughter," he explained.



"And in the process of taking parental responsibility, there's imperfection and clumsiness which would be similar to how I would be with a child on my own."



Director Kim Kwang-bin, who is making his directorial debut with this film, revealed that a moment of getting chills from looking at a closet door left ajar gave him the idea for the movie. "Maybe because I wasn't fully awake, but it felt very creepy like someone was behind that closet door. Then later, I came up with the idea that it would be interesting to put together that intense moment and drama genre into a film," he said.





A poster for "The Closet," which is will premier this February. / Courtesy of CJ ENM
A grieving woman has been given an apology from a hospital after she missed her partner's dying breath.

Celia Jones, 65, was restricted to one-hour visits on just two days a week and the phone call she received to tell her that partner Brian Boulton's condition had worsened was delayed by one hour.

Her visits to the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, South Wales, were restricted after she was accused by staff of giving Mr Boulton a larger dose of his prescribed furosemide medication.

Celia Jones, 65, has been given an apology from the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, South Wales, after she missed her partner's dying breath. Pictured: Ms Jones with her dog Aiko

But a report found the health board did not take into consideration if Ms Jones - who had been with Mr Boulton for 18 years - was vulnerable and did not give her the chance to appeal the decision.

Ms Jones rushed to the hospital when she got the delayed call in 2017.

But she missed his last moments and was unable to be by his side when he passed away.

The Ombudsman report into his death found there was a 'significant injustice' that she was not there in time.

Ms Jones said: 'I came in on the Tuesday, stayed for the hour, and never saw him alive again.

'He died on the Wednesday. The day I wasn't supposed to visit.

'I was treated appallingly and because they didn't contact me in time, I couldn't be with Brian when he died.'

Investigators found nursing staff had waited an hour to get in touch with Ms Jones - despite Mr Boulton's worsening condition being obvious.

Now the health board has issued an apology over the standard of care at the hospital.

Ms Jones had been put on restricted visiting hours just three days before her partner died.

Ms Jones was restricted to one-hour visits on just two days a week and the phone call she received to tell her that partner Brian Boulton's (pictured) condition had worsened was delayed by one hour

She was accused by staff of giving Mr Boulton a larger dose of his furosemide in September 2017.

But the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales found no record that Ms Jones had admitted this to a senior ward manager.

Ms Jones, of Newport, said: 'I was falsely accused of something I regard as a criminal act.

'I feel vindicated but it's been more than two years and it's been very difficult.

'It's been awful. I've not felt able to grieve for Brian properly and I was accused of some awful things.'

The report found visiting restrictions were imposed 'without warning'.

A spokesman for Aneurin Bevan University Health Board said: 'The health board has offered its apologies to Ms Y and we are very sorry for those elements of Mr Z's care which were found to be below the expected standard, despite the best efforts of our staff.' Pictured: Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, South Wales

It said the health board did not take into consideration if Ms Jones was vulnerable and did not give her the chance to appeal the decision.

The report also upheld Ms Jones's complaint about a failure to spot Mr Boulton's oesophageal cancer on a CT scan a month before he died.

Ms Jones was referred to as Ms Y in the report - and Mr Boulton was Mr Z.

A spokesman for Aneurin Bevan University Health Board said: 'The health board has offered its apologies to Ms Y and we are very sorry for those elements of Mr Z's care which were found to be below the expected standard, despite the best efforts of our staff.

'We have fully co-operated with the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales' Office inquiry and provided information to aid their independent investigation.

'We have accepted the recommendations outlined in the report.

'As a health board, we are fully committed to learning and making improvements to the care that we provide, including improving the experience for patients and their families.'
The Daily Beast

Fox News White House correspondent and perpetual nemesis of Jen Psaki thought he had Joe Bidens press secretary cornered on Monday when he asked her why the president is still referring to COVID-19 as a pandemic of the unvaccinated when so many people are getting breakthrough infections. He was wrong.I understand that the science says that vaccines prevent death, Doocy began, before undercutting that basic truth. But Im triple-vaxxed, still got COVID. Youre triple-vaxxed, still got COVI
(Alliance News) - Shefa Gems Ltd on Monday said Chief Financial Officer David Ben David has agreed to invest USD50,000 in the company via a convertible loan.

Shefa Gems focuses on gemstone exploration and development projects in northern Israel.

In November, Ben David had invested USD200,000. Under the terms, the convertible loan has rolled up interest at 5%, convertible into ordinary share at 5 pence each until March 31. After the loan is converted, Shefa Gems must grant its lender one unlisted warrant per conversion share.

If Shefa Gems's share price does not hit 10p per share within 24 months of conversion, the lender is to receive further shares so as to issue GBP389,080 worth of shares in total to the lender.

Chair Michael Rosenberg said: "We are delighted in this investment which demonstrates the confidence that our CFO has in the company."

Shares in Shefa Gems were untraded in London on Monday at 3.55p each.

By Evelina Grecenko; evelinagrecenko@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
A bid to ban the sale of fossil fuel cars from 2030 has been described as unrealistic (Lewis Whyld/PA)

A plan by the Government to ban the sale of fossil fuel cars from 2030 has been described as unrealistic.

Minister for Climate Action and Environment Richard Bruton published the Draft General Scheme of the Climate Action (Amendment) Bill 2019 on Monday, and said that it is priority legislation.

The Bill aims to ban the sale of fossil fuel cars from 2030, and would see fossil fuel cars not getting NCTs from 2045.

Labour Party climate spokesman Sean Sherlock TD said the Governments proposal to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2030 is unrealistic without greater supports.

The latest climate announcement from the Government is another example of spin devoid of the real change needed to tackle the climate emergency, he said.

There is still no sense of how the Government will support low-income families who will not be able to afford new electric carsSean Sherlock, Labour

The Climate Plan published towards the end of year lacked detail or ambition, and todays announcement is another instalment of the ministers PR strategy.

The token proposal to ban the sale of fossil fuel cars by 2030 is unrealistic, and far ahead of what other, better prepared countries are proposing. For example, the UK will ban sales from 2040 and is considering reducing that to 2035.

He added: Meanwhile, Ireland is far behind in the rollout of electric cars and infrastructure. There is still no sense of how the Government will support low-income families who will not be able to afford new electric cars. What financial measures will be put in place for this?

Green Party climate spokesman David Healy welcomed the draft scheme but said a new National Development Plan is needed.

Ireland faces the challenge of decarbonising at a rate of 7 or 8% a year, which is three or four times faster than currently planned. This will require a stronger all-of-government Climate Action Plan and a completely different National Development Plan reflecting the new ambition.

A good start would be an immediate shift in electricity generation from coal and peat, which will give immediate emissions reductions.

We must also immediately start on the changes which will deliver emission reductions in the longer term, in the transition to a zero-carbon, circular economy.

Irish Farmers Association environment chairman Thomas Cooney said proposals to introduce methane reduction targets would be damaging to Irelands rural economy and global climate emissions, unless a well-funded climate action strategy is introduced for the sector.

Farmers are tired of being kicked around and scapegoated when it comes to climate action. The fact is transport remains Irelands biggest climate problem, not livestock. Climate emissions from transport have increased by 137% since 1990, while emissions associated with farming have only increased by 1%.

Methane is a short-lived gas, which lasts about 12 years in the atmosphere. Yet it is being benchmarked and wrongly compared to carbon dioxide, which can last up to 200 years in the atmosphere.
Islamabad, Jan 6 : Pakistan has renewed its offer for mediating in the Middle East crisis and reaffirmed its resolve not to become a part of any conflict in the region, it was reported.

The offer was formally conveyed by Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi during a telephonic conversation with his counterparts from Iran (Mohammad Javad Zarif), Saudi Arabia (Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud), the United Arab Emirates (Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed) and Turkey (Mevlut Cavusoglu) on Sunday, reports Dawn news.

This was the first time Qureshi contacted the leadership in Tehran after the January 3 US airstrike that killed Iranian Army General Qasem Soleimani.

According to an official announcement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there was a wide-ranging exchange of views between Qureshi and the four foreign ministers on "the unfolding situation in the region".

The Minister also reaffirmed that Pakistan would neither let its soil be used against any other state nor become part of any regional conflict.

Qureshi is expected to make a policy statement on the Middle East situation in the National Assembly or the Senate on Monday (today).

Qureshi's calls to his counterparts comes after Army spokesman and Director General of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor declared in categorical terms that Pakistan would not allow its soil to be used against anyone and would continue to play its role in establishing durable peace in the region, said Dawn news.

During an interview with ARY News TV channel, he acknowledged that Soleimani's death had "changed the situation in the region", saying Pakistan desired that the region "does not go towards another war".
Hyderabad: There will be major changes in the Cabinet after the forthcoming municipal elections. It could either be before or after next months Budget session.

Whether it will be fresh Cabinet or a major reshuffle will depend on Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. There is a possibility of some ministers getting the axe and quite a few fresh faces making the grade.

Mr Rao has already warned the ministers in a party meeting held two days ago that they will be removed from the Cabinet if they do not achieve wins in the municipalities in their districts. A recent development is that some ministers are giving statements in support of party working president K.T. Rama Rao becoming the CM.

A senior TRS leader commented that these indicate about a major Cabinet reshuffle. At least five ministers, whose performance has not impressed KCR, will be dropped.

In fact, the Chief Minister thought of dropping them in September. But giving weightage to certain political equations, he postponed the decision.

If Mr Rao makes Mr Rama Rao the Chief Minister as is being strongly speculated, his Cabinet automatically gets dissolved when he resigns.

If Mr Rao wants to postpone the decision for some time, he will make major changes in the Cabinet.

There are speculations in TRS circles that if Mr Rama Rao becomes CM, Rajya Sabha member J. Santosh Kumar who is a relative to the CM, is likely to be inducted into the Cabinet as would Chennur MLA Balka Suman and Legislative Council Chairman Gutta Sukhendar Reddy.

KCR and Mr Rama Rao are unhappy over two ministers in a district who they feel are damaging the party image with their bickering.

Both ministers will be shown the door.
Heather Humphreys, the business, enterprise, and innovation minister, The Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation has announced that she is considering the introduction of the socalled right to disconnect.

It is a potentially significant change to existing law  and the implications for employers are significant.

The Governments proposal is based upon an initiative introduced in France in 2017, which itself had its origins in a decision of the French Supreme Court in 2001.

In that case, an employee was accused of misconduct by not being available on his mobile phone outside of working hours.

The Supreme Court ruled the employee was under no obligation to work at home in the circumstances of the case.

In 2017, the French government introduced a legislative measure giving statutory effect to the Supreme Court decision. The French Labour Code now provides that employers must honour an employees right to disconnect.

An employer must establish mechanisms for regulating the use of digital tools to ensure respect for rest periods and leave, as well as personal and family life.

Employers are obliged to draw up a charter setting out how the right to disconnect works in practice and, in essence, the measure will theoretically allow an employee to refuse to work outside of normal office hours.

French politicians supporting the measure pointed to an increase in the incidence of work-related stress in recent years. Indeed, one referred to employees physically leaving the office, but not leaving work: They remain attached by a kind of electronic leash  like a dog.

In France, the measure has not been without its critics  employers have pointed out that many industries need to deal with international partners in other time jurisdictions.

Differences in timezones, for example, mean it may be detrimental to a companys interests to allow employees to refuse to work outside of normal working hours.

Another notable point in respect of Frances measure is that there is no penalty for violating it. In other words, an employer might choose to ignore the provisions without sanction.

So, what lessons can Irish legislators learn from all of this? Theres no real data on how effective  or not  the measure has been in France; the legislation is still, after all, relatively new.

However, the signs are not necessarily optimistic. In the past, France has attempted to regularise working hours for social policy reasons. A good example is the fact that on paper, France has a mandatory 35-hour working week. A study conducted in 2016, however, suggested 71% of employees work more than 35 hours each week.

There is no doubt that achieving a reasonable work-life balance is a positive thing. However, its debatable whether the right to disconnect is necessarily the best way to achieve this.

Enforceability is likely to be a major issue  unless our own Government takes a different path to France and imposes an actual fixed penalty upon employers for refusing to honour the right to disconnect, the proposal could have negligible effect.

On the other hand, such a move would be an extremely serious one for Irish employers  employees here are largely well-educated on their rights. If some form of penalty is introduced by the State, that could have a forest-fire effect.

Employers would have serious concerns about financial penalties being introduced.

Aside from the fact that prohibiting working outside of core contracted hours could have a chilling effect on flexible working arrangements in place in workplaces, there is the fact that many commercial organisations wont be able to compete effectively if they cannot deal with customers in other jurisdictions because of timezone differences.

The right to disconnect isnt necessarily a bad thing but its either likely to be largely aspirational or mandatory in nature, which could meet with considerable resistance from employers and, seriously affect competitiveness.

Patrick Walshe is partner and employment law expert at Philip Lee Solicitors


Scientists say they have discovered new details about young Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs.

Researchers examined fossilized skeleton samples from two small Tyrannosaurus rex  also known as T. rex. The skeletons were discovered in the western American state of Montana in the early 2000s.

Researchers named the two dinosaurs Jane and Petey. Each T. rex was estimated to have stood a little taller than a horse and was about twice as long.

The researchers say the fossilized bone samples have helped them better understand the history and development of this famous dinosaur. The findings are described in a study recently published in Science Advances.

The examination team was led by Oklahoma State Universitys Center for Health Sciences.

Holly Woodward was a lead writer of the study. She said in a statement that it was unusual to study such small fossils from the T. rex family. This is because researchers usually seek to collect the largest fossil samples they can find to study and to show in public.

"The problem is that those smaller fossils may be from younger animals, Woodward said. So, for a long while we've had large gaps in our understanding of how dinosaurs grew up, and T. rex is no exception."

The team removed thin pieces from the leg bones of Jane and Petey and examined the samples under a microscope. Woodward said the study of the bones microstructure can provide valuable information about the animals growth rate, age and metabolism.

Researchers said they were able to use this method to count rings within the fossil bone to estimate age. They said Jane lived to be age 13, while Petey was 15. The size of the blood vessel openings showed the two dinosaurs were still experiencing growth at a fast rate at the time of death.

It takes a T. rex about 20 years to reach adulthood. Fossil evidence shows that when fully grown, the T. rex was about 12 meters long and about 5 meters tall.

The researchers say the samples have already provided important details about young T. rexs growth and development. The fossil examinations suggest the small T. rex grew as fast as modern-day warm-blooded animals such as mammals and birds, the team reported.

The researchers said the findings suggest that the teenage T. rex animals were very quick on their feet and had knife-like teeth for cutting. By comparison, the adult T. rex had teeth meant to crush large bones.

The researchers said they found a clear link between T. rex growth rates and the availability of food. This was discovered in spacing between the yearly growth rings of the fossil bones.

The spacing between the rings within Jane, Petey, and even older individuals is inconsistent, Woodward said. Some years the spacing is close together, and other years it's spread apart." This finding suggests the T. rex grew less during years in which food supplies were limited. If a large supply of food was available, the T. rex experienced far more growth.

Some scientists have questioned whether the two small skeletons really came from a T. rex. Those scientists said they believed the two represented evidence of a newfound kind of dinosaur species called Nanotyrannus. The researchers said they believed Nanotyrannus was similar to T. rex, but was smaller and showed different skull and bone development.

But Woodward and her team said the latest evidence from the two examined skeletons suggests they belonged to teenage T rex dinosaurs  not a new species with a smaller body size.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from Agence France-Presse, Oklahoma State University and Science Advances. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

Quiz - Study Provides New Details about Teenage T. Rex Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

gap  n. an empty period between things happening

metabolism  n. the chemical processes by which a plant or an animal uses food and water to grow and heal and to make energy

mammal  n. a kind of animal that feeds milk to its young and that usually has hair or fur covering most of its skin

inconsistent  adj. not staying the same in quality or behavior

skull  n. the bones of the head that surround the brain
British actor-comedian Sacha Baron Cohen took a potshot at Mark Zuckerberg during his appearance at the 2020 Golden Globes, accusing the Facebook founder of "spreading Nazi propaganda".

The "Dictator" star took to the stage to introduce Taika Waititi's "Jojo Rabbit", which was nominated in the best motion picture comedy or musical category when he made the reference to the social media mogul.

"The hero of this next movie is a naive misguided child who spreads Nazi propaganda and only has imaginary friends. His name is Mark Zuckerberg. Sorry, this is an old intro for the 'The Social Network'," he said.

Cohen has earlier criticised social media platforms and their founders for heightening discrimination.

He last took social media platforms to task in November during his speech at the Anti-Defamation League's 'Never Is Now Summit on Anti-Semitism'.

"All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history," he had said.

Cohen also penned an opinion piece in The Washington Post calling out Facebook and Zuckerberg's negligent rules on posting propaganda.

At the 77th Golden Globe awards, Cohen was also nominated for best performance by an actor in a limited series or motion picture made for TV for "The Spy". He lost in the category to Russell Crowe.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi:

Nationwide outrage over the violence in the JNU campus in New Delhi founds its expression in Maharashtra also where protests were organised on Monday to denounce the attack on students, teachers and vandalism inside the prestigious university.

Protests against the violence - that had left at least 34 people, including JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) president Aishe Ghosh, injured - were held in Mumbai, Aurangabad and Pune among other cities. Political leaders led by state Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray also condemned the attack.

Maharashtra minister Jitendra Awhad joined the protest at the Gateway of India in south Mumbai, while Thackeray said the JNU violence reminded him of the deadly 26/11 terror attacks in the financial capital.

A poster with the message "Free Kashmir" was carried by one of the protesters at Mumbai's Gateway of India.

Reacting sharply to the poster, former Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis took to Twitter and wrote: "Protest is for what exactly? Why slogans of 'Free Kashmir'? How can we tolerate such separatist elements in Mumbai? 'Free Kashmir' slogans by Azadi gang at 2km from CMO? Uddhav ji are you going to tolerate this Free Kashmir Anti India campaign right under your nose???" he tweeted.

Protest is for what exactly?

Why slogans of Free Kashmir?

How can we tolerate such separatist elements in Mumbai?

Free Kashmir slogans by Azadi gang at 2km from CMO?

Uddhav ji are you going to tolerate this Free Kashmir Anti India campaign right under your nose???@OfficeofUT https://t.co/zkWRjxuTqA  Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) January 6, 2020

Violence had broken out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) have blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.

Why should a poster reading 'Free Kashmir' be seen at Gateway of India, Mumbai?? Isn't this a protest against yesterday's violence at JNU?? How are the two even connected?? #LeftKillingJNU pic.twitter.com/AsRCbPrjfB  Priti Gandhi (@MrsGandhi) January 6, 2020

Awhad sat with the protesters for a while on Monday. "When people fear intellect, there is anarchy," the NCP minister told reporters.

NCP president Sharad Pawar said JNU students were subjected to a cowardly and planned attack.

Hundreds of people, including students, women and senior citizens - who assembled at the Gateway of India at Sunday midnight - demanded action against the culprits and called for Union Home Minister Amit Shah's resignation.

"JNU students and professors were subjected to a cowardly but planned attack," Pawar said.

"Use of violent means to suppress democratic values and thought will never succeed," the former Union minister said.

Asserting that students in Maharashtra were safe, Thackeray said he will not tolerate any move to hurt them. Terming the masked attackers at JNU as "cowards", Thackeray said their identity should be revealed.

The protesters at the Gateway of India refused to end their stir till their demands were met.

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Tens of thousands of hectares set aside by the Victorian government to protect the greater glider and other threatened species from logging have been ravaged by bushfires.

Three months ago, in a bid to gradually phase out logging in native forests by 2030, the Andrews government mapped out more than 96,000 hectares across Victoria that would be exempt from timber harvesting  with 48,500 hectares in East Gippsland.

The greater glider is a protected species now under further threat. Credit:Josh Bowell

The plan was described by the government in November as the largest environmental protection policy in the states history.

But The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald have confirmed much of the proposed protected area set aside in Gippsland fell within areas impacted by fires, further endangering some of Victorias most threatened species.
New Delhi:

A couple of weeks after popular TV actor Kushal Punjabis sad demise, wife Audrey Dolhen has come out and spoken about her husbands death and being blamed for the death of the television actor.

According to Dolhen, Kushal is to be blamed for their failed relationship and even called him a careless father. It was reported that Kushals failed marriage with Dolhen and financial crisis was the reason behind him taking the tragic step. The two got married in 2015.

We had problems in our marriage but it was not a failed marriage. I never stopped Kian from talking to his father Kushal. It was Kushal who was not serious about his family, Dolhen told PeepingMoon.com.

I invited him to settle down in Shanghai but he was least interested. In fact, it was me who was looking after his expenses. Kian lost interest in his father because of lack of seriousness. I tried my best to save my relationship with Kushal, she added.

Dolhen, who is currently working as CCO in CMA CGM China Shipping Company said that she in contract bound in her job I was on contract with my company and Kushal was not able to understand this. He wanted me to shift to London. It was not possible for me to quit my job. Kushal was a careless father who never bothered about his sons future. I was at the receiving end in the marriage and not him. I was with our son Kian in France for Christmas holidays, she said.

I dont know why I am being blamed for his death, it was Kushal who failed in our relationship, Dolhen added.

According Dolhen, Kushals parents accused her of harassing him and for demanding a huge sum of money for a divorce. They said that she took away their three-year-old son Kian, which shattered Kushal and made him take his life.

Dolhen has been summoned by Mumbai Police in connection with Kushals suicide.
Amid claims that Karnataka has already diverted 27% of Mahadayi river water, opposition parties in Goa are expected to jointly take on the BJP-led coalition government over the interstate water dispute.

Addressing a press conference at the state Legislative Assembly complex here on Monday, Leader of Opposition Digambar Kamat said that leaders of opposition parties met in the morning to work out a legislative strategy, which involves moving an adjournment motion to discuss the issue, during the day-long session on Tuesday.

The Mahadayi issue is of most critical importance to Goa and needs to be discussed in the state Assembly, Kamat said.

All opposition parties and one Independent MLA will be moving the adjournment motion together. You need a minimum seven members to sign and put it before the Speaker, the Leader of Opposition also said.

Earlier in the day, former deputy chief minister Sudin Dhavalikar alleged that Karnataka had already diverted 27% of the water from the Mahadayi basin in Karnataka.

They have already diverted 27% of the water. Assurances by Union Minister for Environment and Forests Prakash Javadekar to lead a joint inspection of the works along the Mahadayi river have not been fulfilled, said Dhavalikar, who is one of the senior-most leaders of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party.

Opposition party Goa Forward is also a signatory to the request made to the Speaker seeking adjournment motion to discuss the Mahadayi issue.

A special session of the State Assembly has been called for January 7 to ratify the extension of existing reservation to Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Caste by 10 years. A bill to the effect was passed in Parliament last month.
KAPALUA, Hawaii  Justin Thomas looked anything but a winner.

Slumped in the interview chair. Tired. A little disheveled. Without a smile.

The only clue hed just won for the 12th time on the PGA TOUR was the beautiful glass trophy shaped in a wave with a whale tail diving in sitting on the floor next to him.

Thomas had, in fact, just won the Sentry Tournament of Champions, for the second time no less, to take ownership as the most prolific TOUR winner of those in their 20s. It took three extra holes, but he had indeed prevailed over Patrick Reed and Xander Schauffele.

He could be forgiven for his lethargy. The final few hours of a tough week which included wild winds and weather throughout were brutal on his nerves. Hed looked anything but a winner on the last few holes in regulation and even early in the playoff, just as he did now. And the emotional rollercoaster had worn him down. Its hard to fathom your achievements in those circumstances so instantaneously.

Earlier he had looked a winner for sure. Starting the day one back of Schauffele, he wrestled the lead at the ninth hole as he went through a stretch of four straight birdies (8-11) to extend his buffer. The lead was two with three holes to play, but a bogey on 16 cut it in half.

Still, on the last, the par-5 finisher, Thomas had a one-shot advantage. He hit a poor drive but then inexplicably hit his second shot into the penalty area when he could have laid up safely. When he missed his eight-foot par putt, he thought it was over.



Related: Leaderboard | What's in Thomas' bag?

But Schauffele missed from closer and a playoff it would be. He dodged Reed missing putts to win on the first and second playoff holes before making birdie on the third to clinch.

The emotions and how I was winning and then I was barely winning and then I was losing and then I barely got in a playoff that takes a lot out of you. I probably don't seem as elated as I might be or as I would hope to be, Thomas confirmed.

But it'll just take a little bit. Once I get back to the hotel hopefully with my family, I'll be able to enjoy it a little bit and we'll talk about it. But relief is definitely a word that comes to mind.

I truly felt like through 15 holes it was one of the best rounds I had played. I was in such control tee to green. I was putting it beautifully, my irons were awesome, and I hit a really good drive on 16, just the wind took it more, and then 18 was just a disaster. I really didn't hit very many good shots on the hole. But it worked out.

In winning, Thomas rocketed to the top of the FedExCup standings. He joined Tiger Woods (34) and Jack Nicklaus (20) as the only players with 12 or more PGA TOUR wins before the age of 27 in the last 60 years. It is his second win this season, and third in his last six TOUR starts.

And he joined Stuart Appleby (3), Geoff Ogilvy (2) and Dustin Johnson (2) as multiple winners of the Sentry Tournament of Champions since the event moved to The Plantation Course at Kapalua in 1999.

Thomas had started the week saying he was disappointed he hadnt won more. Now he is on his way to rectifying that.

It means a lot. A decent amount of them I got fortunate like I did today. That's what happens when you win. Stuff goes your way, Thomas said.

It's not supposed to be that hard. I know it's hard, but I made it about five times as hard as it needed to be. Obviously you have to play well and make some putts and hit some shots, but at the end of the day, you need stuff to go your way, and it definitely did today, and it feels great.

It's another one down. I want to keep building on that, and I feel like I'm really just trying to get better every year, and we're improving in some of the right areas. Next week we will try to get to 13.

Of course the last time he won at Kapalua, in 2017, he almost let it slip to Hideki Matsuyama. But he went to the Sony Open and started with a 59. He would win that event with a record-low score. Perhaps if he recreates that, we might see a bigger grin.


The Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT), an ally of the ruling BJP in the state Monday launched an indefinite sit-in against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) near the headquarters of Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council, about 25 km from here.

The party also pressed for a separate Tipraland by carving out of the tribal council from the state which constitutes two third of the state territory.

IPFT spokesperson Mangal Debbarma said, The demonstration will continue till the Centre takes positive step. We want either the scrapping of the act or exempting entire Tripura from its purview".

IPFT general secretary Mevar Kumar Jamatia said Though our alliance partner, the BJP does not agree with our stand we will continue aour gitation unless an amicable solution is achieved.

"We feel achieving the separate Tipraland is the ultimate solution to end the tribal angst in the state, Jamatia, who is also the Tripura tribal affairs minister said.

The party's leaders said different tribal bodies had met Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi on December 12, 2019 soon after the Citizenship Amendment Bill was passed in Parliament and he had assured them that he would make sure that the tribals are protected in the state. But nothing was communicated to them so far.

The Centre and many government agencies have confirmed that there are illegal immigrants in Tripura and if CAA is implemented here, it would harm the interests of the indigenous people," party president N C Debbarma told reporters.

Debbarma, who is also the state revenue minister, said after partition many non tribals had entered Tripura from the then East Pakistan and the tribals, who were then in majority, were reduced to minority.

They would be further alienated if CAA is implemented and foreign nationals are allowed to settle here taking the advantage of CAA, he said.

Meanwhile, a joint forum of three tribal political parties and different social organisations, announced a series of agitations from Tuesday to press for scrapping of CAA and the proposed NRC in Tripura.

The Joint Movement Against CAA (JMACAA), a joint forum of three tribal political parties and social organisations, announced a series of agitations from Tuesday.

JMACAA too had met Shah on December 12 in New Delhi and had sought his approval for exempting Tripura from the ambit of CAA.

JMACAA convener Anthony Debbarma Monday said, Shah had assured them of a second round of discussion with it for an amicable solution to the problem.

We also met Uion Minister of State for Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy for further correspondence and twice held meetings with Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb, but are yet to receive any positive indications for solution of the problem.

"We cannot wait for indefinite period, so we decided to launch our movement, he told reporters on Monday.

The constituents of JMACAA are Indigenous Nationalist Party of Twipra (INPT), Tripura Students Federation (TSF) and Borok Peoples Human Right Organisation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The family of a teenager murdered by a criminal who had been released on licence have told an inquest they were refused access to details of the killers monitoring by the justice system.

Conner Marshall, 18, was beaten to death after being mistaken for a love rival by David Braddon, who was being supervised in the community after being convicted of two drugs offences and assaulting a police officer.

On Monday, an inquest heard that Braddon missed appointments with probation services in the months leading up to the murder, while probation staff were unaware that he had previously been convicted of beating up a partner.

The murder victims mother, Nadine Marshall said she was only told that Braddon was being supervised at the time he killed her son five months after the murder at Trecco Bay Holiday Park in Porthcawl, South Wales, in March 2015.

Expand Close David Braddon was jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years in June 2015 after pleading guilty to murdering Conner Marshall (SWP) / Facebook

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She said it took another eight months of pleading with probation services to get a summary of the details in April 2016, but said the Wales Community Rehabilitation Company refused to give the family access to the full probation report.

Mrs Marshall said: Following numerous phone calls and visits to the house from various staff from Wales CRC, I had one particular meeting with a lady and a gentleman who were prepared to show the report on laptop.

I wasnt allowed to hold the laptop or have a hard copy. I tried to take a photo on my phone but the laptop was taken away and I was told the meeting was over.

The mother-of-three, from Barry, said she and husband Richard travelled to the Ministry of Justice in London to request the probation report, only to be told they were not entitled to it.

But the following day, the MoJ said the family would be given the full report, and they received it months later in November 2016.

South Wales Central Coroners Court heard that Mr Marshall had been at the caravan park with friends when, in the early hours of March 8, he wandered alone into the path of Braddon, who had consumed valium, cocaine and alcohol.

Braddon believed Mr Marshall was his ex-girlfriends former partner, and attacked him with a metal pole and kicked him in the face and ribs.

After stamping on Mr Marshalls face and stripping him naked, Braddon realised he had attacked the wrong person after checking his victim with the light on his phone.

Mr Marshall was discovered by another holidaymaker, who had been woken up by a groaning sound under a caravan at the campsite.

By this time, Braddon, of Caerphilly, South Wales, had fled the scene and was eventually arrested by police in Scotland.

Mr Marshall died in the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, on March 12 2015.

Braddon pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life with a 20-year minimum term.

Assistant Coroner Nadim Bashir said too much reliance on self-reporting had meant probation staff were unaware that Braddon had been convicted of battery on a partner in 2009.

He said the inquest would look at the input of the Probation Service and the terms of Braddons licence.

Kathryn Oakley, a probation service worker, who was in charge of assessing and managing Braddon in the community, told the inquest she had been overwhelmed with her workload at the time, and described the Wales CRC offices as chaotic and short staffed.

She said: It was a difficult time and a difficult environment.

Ms Oakley said Braddon, who was diagnosed with psychosis, was recommended for a community order despite probation staff not being aware of his previous criminal history.

She also said a risk assessment was not carried out on him due to the volume of cases she was dealing with, and admitted she could have challenged him more on missed appointments with the probation service, which she said became sporadic into the beginning of 2015.

The inquest continues.
US President Donald Trump says he'll put heavy sanctions on Iraq after its president called for US troops to leave the country. It comes after the US killed a top military general in neighbouring Iran, BBC writes in the article Soleimani: What are sanctions and why do countries use them? A pro-Iran group of Iraqi MPs voted to call for US troops to leave Iraq - 5,000 of them are there as part of the international coalition against the Islamic State (IS) group (banned in Russia).

But what are sanctions and how do they work? Sanctions are punishments a country (or group of countries) puts on another country. In this case, it would mean that the US bans American companies in certain industries from exporting their goods to Iraq. US products sold in Iraq - which were worth 1.3bn in 2016 - include machinery, vehicles and medical instruments. Sanctions can have serious consequences on the people living in Iraq - as they have in the past.

Why do countries use sanctions?

"You can impose sanctions against another state because you want to see a change in behaviour of the other state," says Professor Moritz Pieper, a lecturer in international relations at the University of Salford. The idea is that "the population gets angry, and will demand from its own government to do something to rectify the situation." Countries can also introduce sanctions in retaliation to other countries' sanctions. For example, Russia did this in 2014 in response to restrictions put on them by the EU and USA.

What different types of sanctions are there?

The sanctions potentially being used by the USA are economic - they would ban companies from selling goods to Iraq. Countries can also impose financial sanctions. That's when the financial assets of certain people or organisations are frozen, so they can't access their money in foreign bank accounts. US banks are now banned from providing loans to Russia.

When have sanctions been used against Iraq before?

The UN imposed strict economic sanctions against Iraq between 1990 and 2003. This led to a humanitarian crisis in the 1990s as many Iraqis struggled to get hold of food and medicine. The UN had to start a programme called oil-for-food, which exchanged food and other goods for Iraqi oil. That programme was later caught up in a corruption scandal, where Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein was found to have made billions of dollars - and UN officials to have taken money from bribes - through the scheme.

What are 'smart sanctions'?

Sanctions can be quite a blunt instrument if they are a blanket ban on something, and can have unintended consequences. But "smart sanctions" are sometimes used - they're much more targeted and designed to only punish a small number of people rather than an entire nation. For example, people close to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad - including his wife Asma - have had their assets frozen over the government's violent response to the Syrian uprising. For example, there are bans on exporting arms to countries including Armenia, Iran and Syria. The US and EU (including the UK) also enforced sanctions against Russia in 2014 as a result of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. They banned some of the major business leaders with ties to the Russian government from coming into the EU and US.
Twins Adrian and Jennifer Uribe of San Antonio expect to enroll at UTSA when they graduate from high school.

20 FOR 2020

A YEAR-END SERIES OF ARTICLES ABOUT UTSA'S BOLD FUTURE

JANUARY 6, 2020  Editors note: This new program could allow an estimated 4,100 newly admitted students to qualify for tuition-free enrollment at UTSA, increasing access for low- and middle-income families. [First published Dec. 12, 2019]

To increase the access to a college education for students from low and middle-income families, The University of Texas at San Antonio has launched its UTSA Bold Promise initiative, a groundbreaking program that covers 100% of an undergraduates tuition and fees for four years.

The Bold Promise program will create opportunities for students from across Texas whose families may not otherwise have been able to afford a college education. An estimated 4,100 newly admitted students could qualify for UTSA Bold Promise in fall 2020.

UTSA was founded 50 years ago on the belief that San Antonians deserve access to high-quality education and opportunities.

TAYLOR EIGHMY, UTSA President

The Bold Promise program is open to first-time freshmen who are state residents who come from families with an income up to $50,500, the median income in San Antonio, and qualify for admission by ranking in the top 25% of their high school class. Students must have graduated from high school within 16 months of their initial enrollment as first-time freshmen.

With this program UTSA plans to devote an estimated $41 million in aid, and when coupled with support from existing federal and state programs, UTSAs total aid and scholarship disbursement for fall 2020 will top more than $292 million to enable college going for those in financial need.

Every day, in everything we do, UTSA students, staff and faculty embrace the ideal that education is the great equalizer of our society, said UTSA President Taylor Eighmy. UTSA was founded 50 years ago on the belief that San Antonians deserve access to high-quality education and opportunities. Today, with the launch of UTSA Bold Promise, we are reaffirming that commitment and creating a pathway for students from all across the state to pursue higher education and build prosperity for themselves and their families.

The UTSA Bold Promise program could save as much as $80,000 for the De Leon/Uribe family. After their twins, Jennifer and Adrian Uribe, graduate from Lanier High School this year, they expect to enroll at UTSA to study architecture and civil engineering, respectively.

We are so excited to be among the first students to benefit from the UTSA Bold Promise program, said Jennifer Uribe. Having our tuition and fees taken care of means we will be able to focus all of our time on studying for our classes and preparing for our careers.

UT System Chancellor James B. Milliken added, Higher education is the engine of social and economic mobility, and higher attainment levels have far-reaching benefits not only for those who earn a college degree but also the communities in which they live and work. The Board of Regents and I applaud UTSAs commitment to an accessible and affordable college degree.

To be considered for the program, eligible students must be admitted to UTSA and submit a FAFSA/TASFA application by the priority deadline of Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2020. Tuition will be automatically awarded to students who meet qualifications; no separate or additional application is needed. Students in the program will receive aid to support undergraduate tuition and mandatory fee costs for eight consecutive semesters as long as eligibility is maintained.

Once enrolled, Bold Promise students must enroll full-time each semester (12 credit hours or more) and maintain a 2.5 grade point average to continue their eligibility.

 To apply to UTSA for fall 2020, visit future.utsa.edu/apply.

 To learn more about the UTSA Bold Promise program, visit www.utsa.edu/promise.

UTSA was founded on the hopes and dreams of generations of San Antonios culturally rich and predominantly Hispanic population, said Kimberly Andrews Espy, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. Through Bold Promise, we will continue to deliver on this important mission by investing university resources to support families and provide students a life-changing opportunity to pursue degree programs that prepare them for success in the jobs of the future.

As part of a larger effort to create pathways for educational excellence for San Antonians, UTSA has assigned designated recruiters to engage with high school students in San Antonios Westside neighborhood to increase enrollment from the community.

The Hispanic thriving university also established a Westside Scholarship Fund, announced earlier this fall as part of its Presidential Initiative on Westside Community Partnerships, to improve access to higher education for students from the area.
P resident Trumps order to kill Irans Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani was intended to deter further Iranian attacks in the Middle East. This clear miscalculation of Tehrans reaction will instead unleash waves of instability across the region, imposing strategic challenges on the UK and EU as well.

In time, Tehran will respond with direct and indirect proxy attacks against US interests, infrastructure and partners, in a bid to avenge Soleimanis death and demonstrate its own capabilities. Back and forth encounters between Tehran and Washington could ensue in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. What happens after that is anyones guess.

To prevent the spread of instability, Europe and Irans neighbours should discuss de-escalatory measures, including sanctions relief for Tehran and the preservation of the Iran nuclear agreement.

Dr Sanam Vakil, Project Director, Future Dynamics of the Gulf, Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs

Editor's reply

Dear Sanam

Youre right to urge a de-escalation of tension, but surely its too early to say that the US has made a miscalculation in assassinating Qasem Soleimani?

You say that Tehran will respond with direct and indirect attacks against American interests. But Iran has for months been stepping up its indirect attacks on the US, using militias and terrorists.

AFP via Getty Images

The recent assault on the US embassy in Baghdad is an example. Soleimani, who orchestrated this, has now faced the ultimate consequence.

As for the direct attack on US interests that you anticipate, I would be surprised if Iran risked it. For, despite the social media hysteria, this is not a World War Three between roughly equal opponents.

The USs military superiority is overwhelming  and would the repressive Tehranian leadership gamble its own survival in challenging it? We shall see.

George Osborne, Editor of The Evening Standard

Labour denial risks another loss

The general election was lost, but the belief from some within Labour, including Jeremy Corbyn himself, was that the party had won the argument. When voting in the Labour leadership election, the membership will have to decide if winning the next election is now more important than just winning the argument.

In public opinion terms it is currently all to play for. Some candidates may have already performed better than others in polls, but Deltapolls latest data shows that no more than a third of the public have heard of any one candidate. Game on.

Joe Twyman, Co-founder and director, Deltapoll

Ironies of rail chaos are no joke

Commuters disembark a South Western Railway train at Waterloo Station as train strikes hit the south of England / REUTERS

I find it ironic that safety training for staff who have been on strike for several weeks is a reason given by South Western Railway for the chaos experienced when many returned to work after Christmas [Commuters hit by rail strike farce, January 2].

Its ironic since a key factor behind the strike is the claim that SWR intends to eliminate guards and make many services driver-only, thus arguably reducing safety. Another irony is that many of the rail company owners are based in Germany and France  but thats even less funny.

David Reed

Politics needs English grads

Putting aside which long-term projects Dominic Cummings has in mind when calling for graduates to join the No 10 political team, he is right to say that the term diversity has been co-opted to identity politics and disconnected from genuine cognitive diversity.

But hes wrong to associate this phenomenon with Oxbridge English graduates specifically. It is precisely in the more traditional institutions that English instruction is least likely to enforce forms of identity politics, and most likely to pay attention to literature per se.

Maria Beatrice Giovanardi launched the petition against Oxford University Press this summer. / Pixabay

When Cummings writes: You want to figure out what characters around Putin might do he is suggesting that you need literary-critical skills.
A 46-year-old Pennsylvania man died Sunday night when his pickup truck crashed into a tree and burst into flames.

State police said the crash that killed Jonathan L. Miller of Alburtis occurred just after 7 p.m. on State Street in Berks Countys Longswamp Township.

Millers truck was engulfed in flames when a trooper arrived, police said.

The road was closed at the crash site for four hours.
The demand for sacking of JNU Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar grew louder on Monday, with the students' union and teachers accusing him of behaving like a "mobster" and of "perpetrating violence" in the university.

Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, who was brutally attacked on Sunday by a group of masked men, accused him of "incompetency" and demanded that he should step down.

CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, a former JNUSU president, said, "The vice chancellor is also complicit in this attack. He must be sacked immediately."



On his part, Kumar appealed to all students to maintain peace, saying the university's top priority was protecting the academic interests of students.

The JNU Teachers Association (JNUTA) demanded that the vice-chancellor either tender his resignation or be removed by the HRD Ministry.

"He is a cowardly vice-chancellor who introduces illegal policies through the backdoor, runs away from questions of students or teachers and then manufactures a situation to demonise JNU," the JNUSU charged.

"The violence that happened is the result of the desperation and frustration of the VC and his cronies. But the chronology of events that unfolded today is a shameful episode for the Delhi Police who gave a safe passage to ABVP goons imported from outside," it alleged.

Sonajharia Minz, a former JNUTA president, questioned the absence of Kumar when the entire incident was unfolding.

"Where was our supreme authority, the VC, when this attack was happening between 4.30 to 7 pm? Where was he," Minz asked.

Vikramaditya Chaudhary, a faculty member, said they tried to call the administration officials but no one responded.

"My wife was chased by a mob. She ran for her life while she was abused and chased. She also locked the house from inside. They banged every house in the complex of the housing society," Chaudhary alleged.

Kumar stayed away from meeting that were held between JNU administration and HRD Ministry on Monday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to President Donald Trump multiple times every day last week, culminating in Trumps decision to approve the killing of Irans top military commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Pompeo first spoke with Trump about killing Soleimani months ago, said a senior U.S. official, but neither the president nor Pentagon officials were willing to countenance such an operation, the Washington Post reported.

For more than a year, defense officials warned that the administrations campaign of economic sanctions against Iran had increased tensions with Tehran, requiring a bigger and bigger share of military resources in the Middle East when many at the Pentagon wanted to redeploy their firepower to East Asia.

Trump, too, sought to draw down from the Middle East as he promised from the opening days of his presidential campaign. But that mind-set shifted on December 27 when 30 rockets hit a joint U.S.-Iraqi base outside Kirkuk, killing an American civilian contractor and injuring service members.

On December 29, Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley traveled to Trumps private club in Florida, where the two defense officials presented possible responses to Iranian aggression, including the option of killing Soleimani, senior U.S. officials said.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo will announce plans Wednesday to establish in Syracuse the states first regional high school and worker training center that focuses on science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics, or STEAM.

The governor will commit at least $71.4 million to renovate the abandoned Central High School near downtown Syracuse into a multipurpose complex that will educate and train the workforce of the future, administration officials said.

The renovated campus at South Warren and East Adams streets will house a new regional STEAM high school and a new state-funded worker training and apprenticeship center administered by SUNY Empire State College.

Cuomo plans to include the proposal in his 2020 State of the State address Wednesday at Empire State Plaza Convention Center in Albany.

The high school is a centerpiece and top priority of the Syracuse Surge, Mayor Ben Walshs technology-focused development plan thats expected to drive the citys growth for the next decade and beyond.

Cuomo decided to expand the project to include a new workforce training center that will offer high school equivalency degrees, advanced technical certification and college degrees.

The idea is to prepare high school graduates and workers of any age with skills for in-demand advanced technology jobs through apprenticeships and business partnerships in Central New York.

As the resurgence of Central New York continues, the region today has a record number of jobs that employers often struggle to fill with qualified workers, Cuomo said. This new high school of applied learning and workforce training program will create a pipeline of educated, highly skilled workers who are equipped to tackle jobs of the 21st century that are driven by technology and are growing in the region.

Cuomo said the expanded project is part of the commitment he made in his State of the State speech last year to support the Syracuse Surge.

The new high school, which will draw students from across Central New York, is expected to open in time for the September 2021 school year. Construction would start this year.

The project would not be able to proceed without state authorization and funding.

A bill approved by New York lawmakers in June authorizes the Syracuse City School District to establish the school in partnership with Syracuse and Onondaga County.

Onondaga County plans to issue bonds to initially pay for the renovation. The county would be reimbursed for 98% of the cost through the state Education Departments fund for new school construction.

Cuomo has been reluctant to sign the legislation without assurances that local government would pay for any cost overruns in the project. The old Central High School opened in 1903 and hasnt been used as a school since 1975.

Assemblyman Bill Magnarelli, D-Syracuse and state Sen. Rachel May, D-Syracuse, who wrote the STEAM school legislation, structured it so that more money would be available up front than for a typical state-supported school project.

Walsh, Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon and Syracuse Schools Superintendent Jaime Alicea promised in a Dec. 3 letter addressed to state Budget Director Robert Mujica that local government would pay for any potential unforeseen cost overruns for the project.

Cuomo has until Feb.8 to sign the bill, agreeing to reimburse $71.4 million of the $75 million cost to renovate the old Central High School into the STEAM school. If he doesnt act by then, the bill will lapse, and the money would have to be included separately in the state budget process.

The new regional school would be operated by the Syracuse City School District but open its doors to students from across Central New York.

Officials expect 60 percent of the new high schools students will be from Syracuse, with the remaining 40 percent from across the region.

The school will be designed to serve 1,000 students, with 250 students per grade, in the ninth through 12th grades.

The school will open initially to ninth-graders and add a grade in each of the next three years until it serves all grades in September 2024.

Curriculum for the new school will be developed in partnership with Syracuse University, Le Moyne College, Onondaga Community College and other local colleges and universities.

The workforce training center, located on the same campus as the Syracuse STEAM High School, will offer high school equivalency, advanced technical certification and college degrees.

The training center would be modeled on the Northland Workforce Training Center in Buffalo, a $44 million project that Cuomo unveiled in 2015 as part of the Buffalo Billion redevelopment plan.

The Buffalo center, which opened in 2018, provides training for careers primarily in the advanced manufacturing and energy sectors.

Cuomo administration officials said Monday they did not know how much it would cost to establish the Syracuse workforce training center. SUNY Empire State College would operate the center and funding for the project would likely come from SUNYs capital budget.

The Syracuse center would offer students of any age, including those changing careers, the flexibility to take about 800 courses online.

Workers who are changing careers would be offered free college credits for previous workplace training and experience.

Under the program, Empire State College would evaluate previous training programs completed in the workplace and assign equivalent college credits. The goal is to cut down on the time and cost for an overall college education.

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As the fierce blazes continue to rage across Australia, a Northern Ireland man has been helping firefighters by transporting campsite bases to the areas worst affected.

Newtownbreda native Brian Cartmill lives in Melbourne in Victoria.

The 61-year-old has lived in Australia for 30 years and works as a truck driver, volunteering with his lorry during "fire season".

Nineteen people have died as a result of the bushfires raging through Australia, dozens remain missing and thousands of families are displaced.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has already sent in troops, ships and planes to bushfire danger zones.

The fires were fuelled by record temperatures and several months of severe drought.

The worst affected areas are along the eastern and southern coasts, including New South Wales and Victoria.

Emergency warnings remain in place in Victoria, where Brian lives, and four people remain missing in the state.

An evacuation from the Victoria beach town of Mallacoota is ongoing, since it was isolated by the fires on New Year's Eve.

Brian said he has seen entire towns turned to ash during his travels.

He said there is now a great fear among residents that two massive fires will join together.

"I drive a heavy goods vehicle over here," he says.

"I work for a company based over in Tasmania and I help out with shipping during fire season every year.

"We supply support for the firefighters and deliver the camps that they use, which are eight by 20 foot containers which include a kitchen, fridge area, toilet, shower and laundry blocks and one that has 250 sleeping bags contained within.

"So we get the call and load up and head to where we are needed.

"We drop out the containers, then head back and repeat.

"This year has been horrific as the fires are breaking out all over the state.

"There have been so many deaths and so much property destroyed.

"It is just awful.

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"And it looks like today we have lost a whole firefighters' campsite to the fire. The kitchen alone was worth $800,000 but it would have been far too dangerous to go back to pick up."

Brian said that what he has seen travelling through the country has terrified him.

"I saw a wall of smoke and flames that would go from Belfast to Ballynahinch, if not Newcastle, and the sky turning a terrifying colour of red.

"At one point the road from Bairnsdale to Mallacoota - which is the last town in Victoria before you cross into New South Wales - was closed.

"There's a large town in that area called Lakes Entrance that during the year has a population of maybe 2,500 during the year but grows to 20,000 at Christmas.

"It's a stunningly beautiful town on a beach.

"People are so scared as there is only one road in or out and the fire cut off the Princes Highway.

"In another coastal town, Mallacoota, people were told to get into the water to escape the fire.

"I can never remember this happening before.

"Can you imagine being there in a tent or caravan with your kids aged from newborn up and you can't get out? Especially with warnings that a fire is heading towards the town.

"It is just petrifying.

"People in towns were told to get out, but because they have paid for their holidays, many are staying thinking they can fight nature.

"You can't beat Mother Nature when she is in full swing. And with the road cut off, no one can get supplies in."

Brian said that what he does can be dangerous, but nothing in comparison to what the firefighters are doing.

"What we do is nothing compared to the firefighters," he said.

"We are safe, but it does almost stop your heart when you come around a corner and see in the distance a wall of smoke.

"I have never seen anything like it.

"The fires produce their own weather system.

"When the embers rain down it's like a heavy rain shower.

"Then after the devastation, the place looks like the surface of the moon with these black trees everywhere.

"This is going to last for months.

"If two fires link up it will burn from the mountains to the coast and that's about 400km in a straight line, and it's all forest in between.

"So far they think over 500m animals have been lost. I would say that's a conservative number.

"The loss of life hits everyone so hard. A lot of the guys are volunteers and just helping out the folks in their area. So everyone knows them.

"Last week one of the volunteers died in the fires. His wife is expecting their first child in May. It's just utterly heartbreaking."

Brian said that people are fearful for their families and for the future.

"The army reserves have been called in to help," he said. "Never before has this happened.

"We have tragically lost people. We have lost towns, beautiful old buildings that have stood for years and years, all gone.

"How can you replace that?

"Now we have a smoke haze in Melbourne that is causing trouble for people with breathing problems.

"The area on fire in Victoria is around half the size of Belgium, but that will grow in the next few hours as the wind is changing and picking up.

"So that will affect the fires and if they join up, God help us all."
French President Emmanuel Macron was on Monday committing to continue the fight against the militant Islamic State group, including through France's military presence in the Middle East. Macron has stated again that "France was keen on having a French military presence in the region within the framework of the fight against the Islamic State group (IS)", said Sibeth Ndiaye, spokesperson of the French government.

Macron said during a Cabinet meeting that he also condemned Iran's "aggressive intentions" and its decision to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal, according to Ndiaye.

Ndiaye said the French president called for a de-escalation of tensions over recent events, including the US airstrike that killed Iran's top military commander last week in Baghdad. France has over 1,000 troops involved in the military operation against IS in Iraq and Syria.

In a phone call with US President Donald Trump on Sunday, Macron expressed his "full solidarity" with the US-led coalition in Iraq and France's determination to work with partners to ease tensions. Iraq's parliament on Sunday called for US troops in the country to leave.
tech2 News Staff

Venus could still have active volcanoes on it, with its most recent eruptions taking place a few years ago, according to a new study.

So far, astronomers agree that Jupiter's moon Io is the only known place apart from Earth known to host active volcanoes that spew lava. The Earth's moon and Mars are both thought to have once had volcanoes on their surface, which died out many millions of years ago.

Going by the levels of trace sulfurous gases in its atmosphere, scientists think Venus could still harbor active volcanoes. Scientists reviewed data from the European Space Agency's Venus Express probe, suggesting that some of the lava flows is as recent as 2.5 million years old, and potentially less than 2,50,000 years old.

Some data collected by the Venus orbiter in 2010 points to unusually-high emissions of visible to near-infrared light at multiple sites on the planet. When these emissions are high, it suggests that new surfaces on Venus have experienced weathering from the hot, caustic atmosphere of Venus.

The exact ages of these lava flows, however, researchers are still uncertain about, because a lot is still unknown about how quickly volcanic rocks alters in response to the harsh atmosphere of Venus, and how these changes affect the emissions of visible to near-infrared light.

Scientists used crystals of a green mineral commonly found in volcanic rock, called olivine, to put their theory to test. Watching for how these crystals altered when exposed to conditions like those on the surface of Venus, researchers placed the olivine in a furnace with Earth air heated to 1,650 degrees F (900 degrees C) for up to a month. The olivine was coated in days with red-black mineral hematite.

Venus Express circled the planet between 2006 to 2014, during which time it reportedly detected signatures of olivine from orbit, suggesting that the olivine came from recent volcanic eruptions. It is was from a much older eruption, reacting with Venus' atmosphere will have made it obscure.

"This is the first time we may have seen active volcanism on another planet," Justin Filiberto, study lead author and planetary scientist at the Universities Space Research Association's Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, told Space.com. The scientists have explained and elaborated their finding in the journal Science Advances.
- Khalwale who was reacting to a terror attack at Manda Airstrip in Lamu proposed an aggressive approach in dealing with militants

- The ex-senator said time was ripe for Kenya to borrow a leaf from US President Donald Trump's approach of tackling terrorists

- Mutunga dismissed the proposal reminding Khalwale that fighting terrorism was a complex matter and not as easy as the bullfights he is used to

Former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga has cracked up netizens after taking a swipe at Boni Khalwale's strategy to counter terrorism in the country.

The former Kakamega senator had proposed an aggressive way of dealing with terrorists just like what the United States of America's President Donald Trump did to the Iranian general.

READ ALSO: Mombasa pastor stabs wife, takes own life during church service

Ex CJ Willy Mutunga (pictured) teased Boni Khalwale over his proposed strategy to fight terrorism. Photo: Willy Mutunga.

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Mwanahabari Ken Mijungu athibitisha kutishiwa maisha na mpenzi Msomali wa Betty Kyallo

Khalwale, who cited a series of terror attacks in the country including Sunday, December 5, botched attacked at Manda airstrip in Lamu, said it was high time Kenya considered to join Trump and borrow a leaf from his "no-nonsense approach".

"Besides the many other terrorist attacks, Dusit 2, Westgate and now this! Kenya must firmly join the rest of the free world in supporting POTUS, Donald Trump, in his no-nonsense approach in tackling terrorism, terrorists and terror groups. Kudos KDF," he tweeted.

READ ALSO: Woman who cheated with former Tahidi High actress Jackie Matubia's baby daddy emerges

The former CJ who took note of Khalwale's proposal seized the opportunity to hit the ex-senator below the belt in a hilarious tweep that left netizens in stitches.

Mutunga raised a number of rhetorical questions and challenged the Bullfighter to think through them so that he does not make a blunder when Deputy President William Ruto's dream-government encounters such a security challenge.

The senator is a keen supporter of the DP who is eyeing the presidency in 2022.

Ex Kakamega senator Boni Khalwale during Kibra by-election where he engaged rowdy youths in stone-throwing. Photo: Boni Khalwale

Source: Facebook

At the tail end of his response, Mutunga unleashed the final bile on the vocal politician reminding him that countering terrorism was not akin to bull fights he is used to.

"Which world is free? Who are the terrorists? As a political leader you need to think through these questions. You may encounter them when you join Rutos government. Believe me its more complex than bull fights," he replied.

Netizens who saw the teasing response could not hold their laughter.

Do you have a groundbreaking story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690. Contact Tuko.co.ke instantly.

The Blind Tailor, I don't want people to pity me. I want them to be encouraged by my story | Tuko TV

Source: TUKO.co.ke
OKLAHOMA CITY, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Gov. Stitt issued a proclamation declaring Jan. 26-Feb. 1 Oklahoma School Choice Week. In doing so, he joined dozens of other governors and hundreds of city and county leaders nationwide in recognizing the historic celebration of education.

Oklahomans have planned 665 events and activities to celebrate opportunity in education during the Week, including rallies, roundtable discussions, festivals, school fairs, and more. Nationwide, Americans will participate in 50,000 independently planned celebrations, with the goal of sparking conversations about educational choice and the different types of learning that parents want for their children.

"We thank Gov. Stitt for issuing this proclamation and making School Choice Week official in Oklahoma," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We wish Oklahoma families the best in their National School Choice Week celebrations and hope they use the Week as an opportunity to find the best educational setting for their child."

As a nonpartisan, nonpolitical public awareness effort, National School Choice Week shines a positive spotlight on effective education options for students, families, and communities around the country. From January 26 through February 1, 2020, more than 50,000 independently-planned events will be held in celebration of the Week. For more information, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com.

For more information, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com , or visit www.facebook.com/schoolchoiceweek .

SOURCE National School Choice Week

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Hollywood's selfless do-gooders left the Golden Globes feeling abused, insulted, broken and shell-shocked thanks to Ricky Gervais, a host who couldn't give a damn about their hurt feelings. They can't say they weren't warned

They'd come to slap each other's backs and feel virtuous about themselves.

Very, very virtuous.

The world's biggest stars - not least in their own mirrors - flocked to Sunday night's Golden Globes to show us all how woke, worthy and wonderful they are. And, of course, to attack their go-to punchbag President Trump.

Meat was even banned from their dinner tables to illustrate just how much these kind-hearted celebrities care about the environment.

'See, we're saving the planet!' was the proud collective message, spoken by multi-millionaire actors and actresses who'd flown to Los Angeles in their private jets and been driven to the Beverly Hilton Hotel in stretch limousines.

Who cares about such massive gas-guzzling carbon footprints when they're making the ultimate sacrifice of swapping their steaks for 'vibrant chilled golden beet soup', 'King Oyster mushroom scallops risotto' and a vegan opera dome dessert'?

But these selfless do-gooders left three hours later feeling abused, insulted, broken and shell-shocked thanks to a host who couldn't give a damn about their hurt feelings.

They can't say they weren't warned.

'It's a room full of the biggest virtue-signalers and hypocrites in the world,' Ricky Gervais had said in a pre-Globes interview with the Spectator magazine, 'so I've got to go after that'.

Throughout this hilariously biting tirade, Tom Hanks' contorted face said it all. The most bankable movie icon of them all, and one of the nice guys in a tawdry industry, looked like he'd swallowed a litre of Tabasco sauce and was self-immolating

Leonardo DiCaprio was the target of one of the biggest jokes. 'Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, nearly three hours long,' he grinned, 'Leonardo DCaprio attended the premiere and by the end his date was too old for him.' As the camera panned to a clearly embarrassed DiCaprio, ruthless Gervais stuck the boot in further: 'Even Prince Andrew was like, 'Come on Leo, mate. You're nearly 50, son!'

And go after that he most definitely did, like a ravenous jackal gorging on the tortured entrails of freshly-slain rabbits stuck in headlights.

Gervais's opening monologue at last night's Globes in Los Angeles only lasted seven minutes and 42 seconds.

But that was more than long enough for him to punch a gigantic crater in the absurdly two-faced PC-crazed balloon that infests modern Hollywood.

It was savage, brutal, vicious and hilarious - exactly what that crowd needed, even if their shocked, frozen (and not just from all the Botox) faces suggested they'd just stumbled into hell on earth.

It was also what we all needed, which is why Gervais has been trending worldwide on Twitter ever since, to almost universal acclaim.

The reason his verbal assault resonated so powerfully is because it came just when many people, including me, feared the world had gone completely nuts  shamed, dragged and cancelled into supine submission by a staggeringly intolerant radical liberal mob intent on sucking every ounce of freedom and joy out of life.

Gwyneth Paltrow is seen looking shocked as Gervais fired one of his brutal missives

Fueled by their radical, preachy echo chambers on social media platforms that bear little relation to mainstream thinking, these soul-draining twerps have tried to enforce their narrow, extremely illiberal views onto the rest of us, and set out to destroy anyone that tries to stand up to them.

They've been so successful that some awards shows like the Oscars have pathetically surrendered to the howling bullies and declined to even have a host out of blind panicky terror that whoever it was might inevitably offend someone.

Yet amid all this nonsense, one star has stood out like a shining shaft of free speech gold amid an acrid hot mess of speech-denying excrement, and that's been Ricky Gervais.

He's point-blanked refused to bow to this modern-day McCarthyism, ranting against it all day every day on Twitter with a mixture of incredulity, defiance and savagery.

Gervais doesn't care about all the flak he takes because. well, he just doesn't care.

His view is that comedy is comedy, and jokes are jokes.

And those thin-skinned little snowflakes who constantly throw their offended toys out of the stroller should simply be ignored.

That's why he's the most successful comedian on the planet.

And that's why I was so eagerly looking forward to his performance last night, the fifth time he's presented the Globes.

'Do your duty  roast 'em!' I tweeted him yesterday.

An entreaty that Ricky 'liked' seconds later.

To say he didn't disappoint is the understatement of the Millennium.

From the moment he appeared on stage and flashed that mischievous grin, it was clear he was going to be taking no prisoners.

Though ironically, he started by targeting an actual recent prisoner.

'I came here in a limo tonight,' he quipped, and the license plate was made by Felicity Huffman.'

Huffman, a former Golden Globes winning actress who is married to actor William H. Macy, was jailed in 2019 for her part in the infamous college exam-cheating scandal after she admitted paying for a proctor to correct SAT questions answered incorrectly by her daughter.

'No, shush,' taunted Gervais as the audience reacted in dismay. 'It's her daughter I feel sorry for. That must be the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to herand her dad was in Wild Hogs.'

Gervais ridiculed Martin Scorcese (right) for his lack of height, while Robert De Niro looked unimpressed (left)

Ellen DeGeneres found some of the jokes amusing, while Cate Blanchett looked slightly less impressed

Having immediately broken his solemn promise last week not to attack any individuals  a promise I knew he'd only made to throw everyone off their guard  Gervais sprayed a machine-gun of mockery at myriad other big names, calling Joe Pesci 'Baby Yoda' and James Corden a 'fat p*ssy', ridiculing Martin Scorcese for his lack of height, and Leonardo DiCaprio for his preference for youthful girlfriends.

'Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, nearly three hours long,' he grinned, 'Leonardo DCaprio attended the premiere and by the end his date was too old for him.'

As the camera panned to a clearly embarrassed DiCaprio, ruthless Gervais stuck the boot in further: 'Even Prince Andrew was like, 'Come on Leo, mate. You're nearly 50, son!'

But it was when the host directed his fire at Hollywood as a whole that he excelled himself.

He accused the movie executives in the room of being 'terrified of Ronan Farrow' and branded them 'perverts', sneering: 'He's coming for ya.'

Then he suggested billionaire pedophile and star-befriender Jeffrey Epstein ddn't kill himself, and as people booed (again), he scoffed: 'Shut up, I know he's your friend, but I don't careyou had to make your own way here in your own plane, didn't you?'

And he brilliantly mocked the town's dubiously self-interested reactive diversity initiatives, saying: 'We were going to do an In Memoriam this year but when I saw the list of people who had died, it wasn't diverse enough. No, it was mostly white people and I thought, nah, not on my watch.'

Fearless Gervais even hammered his own employers for the night, the Hollywood Foreign Press, as 'very racist,' said 'most films are awful'  at an event supposedly celebrating film! - and railed against the new brand of corporate giants dominating Tinsel Town.

'Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show,' he said, 'a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing. made by a company that runs sweat shops in China.'

Ironically, Apple boss Tim Cook looked like a sweat shop himself as all eyes turned to him in the audience.

Then Gervais rounded on that audience themselves.

'You all say you're woke but the companies you work for  unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service, you'd call your agent wouldn't you?'

More gasps, but Gervais wasn't finished with them yet.

'So, if you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech. You're in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So, if you win, come up, accept your award, thank your agent, thank God and f*ck off, OK?!'

Throughout this hilariously biting tirade, Tom Hanks' contorted face said it all.

The most bankable movie icon of them all, and one of the nice guys in a tawdry industry, looked like he'd swallowed a litre of Tabasco sauce and was self-immolating.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

This was a Hollywood awards night, where stars are sycophantically praised not unceremoniously buried.

This was intended as another chance to remind the world how awful Trump is, not themselves!

But Gervais knows that celebrities and comedians whacking Trump are two-a-penny.

Far rarer is the star who shines a light on the stinking hypocrisy of Hollywood itself, the place that loves to take the high moral ground yet itself lurks in a sewer of immorality.

It takes courage to do this in a town that can make or break entertainers' careers, real balls of glistening steel.

'Our next presenter starred in Netflix's Bird Box,' Gervais said towards the end, introducing Sandra Bullock.

'A movie where people survive by acting like they don't see a thing. Sort of like working for Harvey Weinstein.'

As the audience gasped once again in more fake 'what, me?' horror  beautifully proving his point  before booing him, Gervais jeered back: 'You did it, not me'

Exactly.
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2020 / Aston Bay Holdings Ltd. (TSXV:BAY)(OTCQB:ATBHF) ("Aston Bay" or the "Company") announces that it will conduct a non-brokered private placement (the "Offering"), subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange"), for aggregate gross proceeds of up to $1,200,000. In response to increased interest, the Company wishes to make additional Canadian prospectus exemptions available for wider participation by investors in the Offering.

The Offering will consist of units (the "Units") at a price of $0.06 per Unit. Each Unit will consist of one common share of the Company and one full warrant (a "Warrant") entitling the holder thereof to acquire an additional common share (the "Warrant Share") of the Company at an exercise price of $0.12 per Warrant Share for a period of 24 months from the date of issuance. The Warrants will be subject to acceleration provisions when the volume weighted average trading price is greater than $0.25 for 10 consecutive trading days.

The Offering will be conducted pursuant to available prospectus exemptions including sales to accredited investors, family members, close friends and business associates of directors and officers of the Company, to purchasers who have obtained suitability advice from a registered investment dealer pursuant to the exemption set out in BC Instrument 45-536 (the "Investment Dealer Exemption") and to existing shareholders of the Company pursuant to the exemption set out in British Columbia Securities Commission BC Instrument 45-534 (the "Existing Shareholder Exemption").

The Offering is not subject to a minimum amount and the maximum offering is 20,000,000 Units for gross proceeds of $1,200,000. Assuming the Offering is fully subscribed, the Company plans to allocate the gross proceeds of the Offering to: (i) exploration on its Buckingham Gold Property in Virginia, USA ($700,000) and (ii) general working capital ($500,000).

If the Offering is not fully subscribed, the Company will apply the proceeds to the above uses in priority and in such proportions as the Board of Directors and management of the Company determine is in the best interests of the Company. Although the Company intends to use the proceeds of the Offering as described above, the actual allocation of proceeds may vary from the uses set out above depending on future operations, events or opportunities.

If the Offering is over-subscribed, subscriptions will be accepted at the discretion of the Company and subject to the approval of the Exchange; therefore, it is possible that a subscriber's subscription may not be accepted by the Company even though it is received within the Offering period unless the Company determines to increase the size of the Offering.

The Existing Shareholder Exemption is available to shareholders residing in all Canadian jurisdictions. Shareholders of record of the Company as at January 5, 2020 (the "Record Date") are eligible to participate under the Existing Shareholder Exemption. To rely upon the Existing Shareholder Exemption, the subscriber must: a) have been a shareholder of the Company on the Record Date and continue to hold shares of the Company until the date of closing of the Offering, b) be purchasing the Units as a principal, and c) either may not subscribe for more than $15,000 of securities from the Company in any 12 month period or have received advice from a registered investment dealer regarding the suitability of the investment. Existing shareholders interested in participating in the Offering should consult their investment advisor or the Company directly.

The Offering may be closed in one or more tranches as subscriptions are received. The minimum subscription amount is 20,000 Units for $1,200.

All securities issued pursuant to the Offering will be subject to statutory hold periods in accordance with applicable United States and Canadian securities laws.

The securities offered have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold absent registration or compliance with an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws.

Subject to Exchange approval, finder's fees may be paid to persons who introduce the Company to investors.

The Company also advises that its private placement previously announced on November 14, 2019 has expired having passed the regulatory deadline for completion. No further closings will be completed under that financing

About Aston Bay Holdings Ltd.

Aston Bay is a publicly traded mineral exploration company exploring for gold and base metal deposits in Virginia, USA, and Nunavut, Canada. The Company is led by CEO Thomas Ullrich with exploration in Virginia directed by the Company's advisor, Don Taylor, the 2018 Thayer Lindsley Award winner for his discovery of the Taylor Pb-Zn-Ag Deposit in Arizona

The Company has acquired the exclusive rights to an integrated dataset over certain prospective private lands and has signed agreements with timber and land companies which grants the company the option to lease the mineral rights to 11,065 acres of land located in central Virginia. These lands are located within a gold-copper-lead-zinc mineralized belt prospective for Carolina slate belt gold deposits, as well as sedimentary VMS, exhalative (SEDEX) and Broken Hill (BHT) type base metal deposits. Don Taylor, who led the predecessor company to Blue Ridge and assembled the dataset, has joined the Company's Advisory Board and will be directing the Company's exploration activities for the Blue Ridge Project. The Company is actively exploring the Buckingham Gold Project in Virginia and is in advanced stages of negotiation on other lands in the area.

The Company is also 100% owner of the 1,024,345-acres (414,537-hectares) Aston Bay Property located on western Somerset Island, Nunavut, which neighbours Teck's profitable, past-producing Polaris (Pb-Zn) Mine just 200km to the north. The Aston Bay Property hosts the Storm Copper Project and the Seal Zinc Deposit with drill-confirmed presence of sediment-hosted copper and zinc mineralization.

The Company's public disclosure documents are available on www.sedar.com.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Statements made in this press release, including those regarding the completion of the acquisition, management objectives, forecasts, estimates, expectations, or predictions of the future may constitute "forward-looking statement", which can be identified by the use of conditional or future tenses or by the use of such verbs as "believe", "expect", "may", "will", "should", "estimate", "anticipate", "project", "plan", and words of similar import, including variations thereof and negative forms. This press release contains forward-looking statements that reflect, as of the date of this press release, Aston Bay's expectations, estimates and projections about its operations, the mining industry and the economic environment in which it operates. Statements in this press release that are not supported by historical fact are forward-looking statements, meaning they involve risk, uncertainty and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. Although Aston Bay believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on these statements, which apply only at the time of writing of this press release. Aston Bay disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by securities legislation. We seek safe harbour.

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 news release.

THIS PRESS RELEASE, REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE CANADIAN LAWS, IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES, AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER TO SELL OR A SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO SELL ANY OF THE SECURITIES DESCRIBED HEREIN IN THE UNITED STATES. THESE SECURITIES HAVE NOT BEEN, AND WILL NOT BE, REGISTERED UNDER THE UNITED STATES SECURITIES ACT OF 1933, AS AMENDED, OR ANY STATE SECURITIES LAWS, AND MAY NOT BE OFFERED OR SOLD IN THE UNITED STATES OR TO U.S. PERSONS UNLESS REGISTERED OR EXEMPT THEREFROM.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CONTACT:

Thomas Ullrich, Chief Executive Officer

thomas.ullrich@astonbayholdings.com

(416) 456-3516

Sofia Harquail, IR and Corporate Development

sofia.harquail@astonbayholdings.com

(647) 821-1337

SOURCE: Aston Bay Holdings Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/572195/Aston-Bay-Holdings-Announces-Terms-for-Non-Brokered-Private-Placement
A Los Angeles police officer has pleaded not guilty to groping a deceased woman's breast while on duty last year.

David Rojas, 27, appeared in downtown LA court Monday morning and entered a not guilty plea to a felony count of sexual contact with human remains without authority.

Rojas, who is free on $20,000 bail, is due back in court on February 27. If convicted of the charge against him at trial, he could face up to three years in prison.

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Los Angeles Police Department Officer David Rojas is arraigned in a corpse-groping case in Los Angeles Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles on Monday

Rojas was charged in December 2019 with a felony count of sexual contact with human remains without authority

Rojas, a four-year veteran on the force, was responding to a report of a dead body in a residential unit with his partner on October 20, 2019, when the alleged incident occurred, reported NBC Los Angeles.

At one point, Rojas's partner left to retrieve something from their car, and Rojas attempted to turn his body camera off before allegedly fondling the corpse.

But, unbeknownst to Rojas, body cameras used by the LAPD continue recording for two minutes after the button has been pressed.

LAPD officials say the alleged incident was captured on those two minutes of film, and discovered by superiors during a routine inspection in late November.

Rojas was arrested on December 12 and released on bail the same day.

He has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the case.

Rojas, a four-year veteran on the force, was responding to a report of a dead body in October 2019 when he was allegedly caught on his body camera fondling the victim's breast

Chief spokesman Josh Rubenstein told the LA Times at the time: 'We immediately launched an administrative investigation once we learned about the incident.'

A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the officers' union, added: 'If this allegation is true, then the behavior exhibited by this officer is not only wrong, but extremely disturbing.

'[It] does not align with the values we, as police officers, hold dear, and these values include respect and reverence for the deceased. This behavior has no place in law enforcement.'

The union has apologized to the family of the deceased woman, whose name has not been made public, reported ABC7.
"We expect $80 a barrel crude risk to be low as we have enough spare oil capacity. Iran event will keep oil between $60 a barrel and $70 a barrel," said Arvind Sanger of Geosphere Capital Management in an interview to CNBC-TV18.

He said the potential sanctions on Iraq by the US is a bigger risk for oil prices.

International benchmark Brent crude futures crossed $70 a barrel mark for the first time since September 2019, rising nearly 3 percent to $70.49 a barrel after the US President Donald Trump issued a threat to impose sanctions on Iraq amid escalating tensions with Iran in the Middle East.

Brent oil prices jumped more than $5 a barrel this month after the US air strike in Iraq killed top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani on January 3, which raised concerns of increasing Middle East conflict that could disrupt oil supplies from a region.

Middle East accounts for nearly half of the world's oil production.

Earnings season for the quarter ended December 2019 will kick off with Infosys reporting its numbers later this week. Most analysts expect earnings recovery will begin from first half of CY20, which seems to be priced in by the market.

"Market is already discounting a meaningful earnings recovery as the market has been trading ahead of valuations, but it offers value in midcap and smallcaps," Sanger said.

Market is ahead of economic fundamentals which have begun seeing a tunraround, he added.

The rally seen by the market was despite slowdown in the economy which grew at a slower pace of 4.5 percent in September quarter of 2019.

Geosphere likes some of the auto component companies in India now as auto components offer reasonable value, which is an area of interest, he said.

Among other sectors, the pullback seen in one or two PSU banks is interesting, he added.

Sanger also sees great value in some real estate stocks. "The worst is behind us but not in a rip-roaring recovery," he said.
Union members of UNITE HERE stand during the opening of the first-ever "Workers' Presidential Summit" at the Convention Center in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2019. The Philadelphia Council of the AFL-CIO hosted the event. (Tom Gralish/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) Read more

In 1964, nearly a third of workers in the United States were members of a union  then even as a youth, I was one of them. Today, only about one in ten workers are unionized. In Pennsylvania, union membership rates have dropped from 21 percent in 1989 to 12 percent in 2018.

This decline in union membership, which mirrors the rest of the countries drop, is one of the many reasons wages have stagnated, and why the top one percent of Americans could soon hold more wealth than the entire middle class.

As the Democratic candidates for president lay out their visions for restoring the middle class  and for addressing the major economic imbalances  its time to talk seriously about enacting an Economic Bill of Rights, a quintessential progressive idea first proposed by Franklin Roosevelt in his final State of the Union address in 1944.

An economic bill of rights was necessary, Roosevelt argued, because the political rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness. He proposed that all Americans had a right to a livable wage, freedom from unfair competition and monopolies, homeownership, medical care and education.

The time has arrived to coalesce around a third Economic Bill of Rights, and chief among these rights should be the protected right of workers to freely join a union.

Years before FDRs speech in 1944, his National Labor Relations Act recognized the right to self-organization [and] to form, join, or assist labor organizations.

Then in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized that "everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests." And of course, the First Amendment has always similarly been read to protect freedom of association.

But with union membership rates falling precipitously over the past five decades, workers have been left with little or no say both about their futures and, pretty obviously from the figures above, about their real wage levels. All the while, too many corporations  multinational and medium-sized alike  challenge workers geographic immobility with their own unbridled capital and technological mobility.

Beyond improving the pay and the rights of those who are currently employed, we must recommit to investing more in workforce training and development for the future generations. The Workforce Investment Act was first passed in 1998 and later re-authorized as the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act to strengthen federal worker training programs. From 2000 to 2015, however, federal funding for this vital program was cut by about 45 percent, from $5.1 billion a year to just $2.1 billion.

Two billion dollars per year is a paltry amount for the government to spend on American workers. According to a report by the National Skills Coalition, the U.S. spends just 0.1 percent of its GDP on active labor market policies, lower than any other industrialized nation aside from Mexico. Australia spends 24 times as much of its GDP on labor development, and Ireland spends 48 times as much. And yet America has the largest economy in the world.

The same report found that if the U.S. was to invest just $80 billion more over the next ten years in workforce development, seven million more Americans would receive intensive re-employment services each year. And more than four million more workers could earn industry-recognized credentials.

When we think of the values which make this country great, we think of freedom, equality and opportunity. But these values become meaningless for a workforce which isnt free to protect its interests. Its time that we match our policies to our ideals and that we again make emboldening our workforce a priority so that the American dream will be all of Americas reality.

Leo Hindery Jr. is co-chair of the Task Force on Job Creation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Formerly the CEO of AT&T Broadband and its predecessor, Tele-Communications Inc., he is currently an investor in media properties. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.
Protests were held across India Monday after masked assailants wielding batons and iron rods went on a rampage at a top Delhi university, leaving more than two dozen injured. Controversy over Sunday's violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) comes as a new challenge to the government as it confronts major nationwide protests against a new citizenship bill that critics say is anti-Muslim. Some students blamed the university attack on right-wing activists, but they also accused police of doing nothing to stop the violence. At least 28 students and teachers were injured, while doctors and nurses from a nearby hospital who went to treat them were also attacked, their union said. Scores of riot police on Monday patrolled the university -- the alma mater of several key ministers in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cabinet -- picking their way past shattered glass and broken doors and furniture. They made no immediate arrests, but blamed the violence on "rival student groups". As condemnation of the attacks spread, more than 1,000 people held a vigil in Mumbai. Other demonstrations were held in Bangalore, Kolkata and other major cities. - Student groups blamed - Nobel economy prize winner Abhijeet Banerjee, a former JNU student, said the attacks had "echoes of the years when Germany was moving towards Nazi rule". Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party denied claims by the opposition Congress that it was responsible, and in turn blamed left-leaning student groups which dominate the university's politics. The government has promised an investigation, while home minister Amit Shah -- a close Modi aide -- told university administrators and police to maintain order at the campus, which has been tense since protests in November over fee increases. The unrest comes as nationwide protests continue against a citizenship law passed in December that bars Muslims from a measure granting nationality to minorities from three neighbouring Islamic-majority countries. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets across the country, and more than 25 people have been killed. Critics say the legislation goes against India's secular constitution, but Modi says the new law is intended to help "persecuted" minorities. The street protests have further divided a country that gave Modi a landslide return to power in May last year. Modi's opponents blame his policies for the country's sluggish economy and social unease. India's leading trade unions Monday called for a general strike on January 8 to protest against the government's "anti-people" policies. More than 60 student unions have supported the one-day strike. Students and their supporters face off against police outside the Jawaharlal Nehru University gate in New Delhi Placards supporting Jawaharlal Nehru University students on display on a roadside near the campus in New Delhi
The whole world always wants a piece of the Royal Family, which is why every news and event will never slip our day. Amongst all the updates on the Royal Family, one of the most awaited events is no other than a Royal Wedding.

In history, news outlets will follow and broadcast just about every detail of the Royal Wedding from the invitation, wedding dress, venue, food to be served, and of course, the guest list. The wedding itself is broadcasted live on TV for the whole world to see.

But it looks like it will take a long time for us to witness yet another Royal Wedding. This is after one of the biggest networks that usually covers the event announces that they will not have a televised feed for Princess Beatrice's upcoming marriage to the Italian property developer, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi.

On Saturday, BBC said that instead of covering the entire wedding and replacing the network's regular programming like they always do when covering a Royal Wedding, they will only offer "news coverage of the wedding across their services."

During the most recent Royal Weddings of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as well as Prince William and Kate Middleton's, BBC got the rights to air the royal occasion for free.

Reports suggest that the network is staying away from covering Princess Beatrice's wedding due to her father's most recent scandal and connection with a convicted pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein.

"Andrew is so toxic at the moment; I wouldn't be surprised if it's going to be a private wedding with a couple of photos released afterward," Royal author Phil Dampier explained.

It could be recalled that in October 2018, ITV was the one who made it possible for Princess Beatrice's sister, Princess Eugenie's wedding to Jack Brooksbank to be broadcasted live. The 2018 Royal Wedding coverage said to have gained a massive three million viewers.

But ITV has yet to comment if they will also be covering Princess Beatrice's wedding after BBC snubbed the said Royal event.

The date and venue for the Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozz nuptial are yet to be confirmed by Buckingham Palace. A palace spokesperson said that all details would be released "in due course."

Reports suggest that the ceremony will be at St. George's Chapel in Windsor and the wedding is expected to take place somewhere between May or June so it will not coincide with the Royal Ascot.

It was in early 2019 when news broke that Princess Beatrice's father, Prince Andrew, has direct involvement with the late infamous pedophile. In November, the Duke of York had a one-on-one interview with BBC's Emily Maitlis where he said he does not regret his relationship with Epstein.

During the same interview, the 59-year-old Duke of York denied the allegation that he slept with one of Epstein's alleged sex slave, then 17-year-old Virginia Roberts. He also denied meeting the minor during the years they claimed to be seeing each other.

Roberts claimed that between the years 1999 to 2002, she slept three times with Prince Andrew, and it took place in London, New York, and Epstein's private Carribean house.

READ MORE: Really?! Prince Andrew 'Happy' With Messy Interview, Says Reporter
A cat who was found trapped in a car engine after being driven 130 miles between Birmingham and London on Christmas Day will be rehomed, an animal charity said.

The feline, who was named Tinsel by the Celia Hammond Animal Trust, was discovered after "meowing" could be heard when a vehicle was parked in east London by an unsuspecting driver.

When the bonnet was opened, neighbours managed to grab the cat from the engine and called the animal charity.

Despite thousands of shares on social media, the trust said the cat's owner could not be traced and Tinsel would now be vaccinated and microchipped before being rehomed.

"In spite of all the publicity this little cat has had - press, television, radio, hundreds of people scouring missing cat sites - her owner has not been found," a Celia Hammond spokesman said.

"We always knew it was going to be a 'needle in a haystack' search but with so many people trying so hard to reunite her with her owner, it had to be worth trying even though no one had the faintest idea where in Birmingham she had come from.

"Thank you so much to everyone who has tried so hard to trace her owner and has spread the word about her far and wide."

The charity said it was working under the assumption that the "sweet" animal was a pet who had hidden in the car before the driver went on the trip south.

As the cat had not been microchipped, the trust has "no idea" where the animal lives.

It had hoped that the "distinctive" pattern on her face would jog someone's memory and her picture was shared on lost and found pet websites.

"We now have to do whats best for Tinsel (her new name) and we are going to rehome her after we have spayed, vaccinated and microchipped her," the spokesman added.

"She has shown signs over the last couple of days of coming into season, so the possibility that she could have bolted out of the car and ended up a pregnant stray on the street doesnt bear thinking about.

"Thank goodness the people who called us and grabbed Tinsel managed to hang onto her till they got her safely shut into a residents flat."
[January 06, 2020] Myovant Sciences to Present at the 38th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

BASEL, Switzerland, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Myovant Sciences (NYSE: MYOV), a healthcare company focused on developing innovative treatments for women's health and prostate cancer, today announced that Lynn Seely, M.D., Myovants CEO, will present at the 38th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference on Wednesday, January 15, 2020 at 7:30 a.m. Pacific Time in San Francisco, California.

A live webcast of the presentation will be accessible on the Events page under the Investors & Media section of the Myovant website at www.myovant.com . Please connect to the company's website at least 15 minutes prior to the presentation to ensure adequate time for any software download that may be required to listen to the webcast. A replay of the webcast will be available at the same location for 30 days following the conference.





www.myovant.com . Follow @Myovant on Twitter and LinkedIn . Investor Contact:

Frank Karbe

President, Chief Financial Officer

Myovant Sciences, Inc.

[email protected]

Media Contact:

Albert Liao

Director, Corporate Communications

Myovant Sciences, Inc.

[email protected]

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NEW YORK  The husband of the chief of staff to Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie was arrested on federal drug charges Monday at John F. Kennedy International Airport for his alleged role in trafficking $100,000 worth of cocaine from Jamaica in June.

Orlando Dennis, 31, of the Bronx, the husband of Heastie top staffer Jevonni Brooks-Dennis, had just flown in from Jamaica, where hed been since December, when he was stopped by federal agents. They arrested him on drug charges that carry a minimum of five years in prison, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents discovered text messages between Dennis and two alleged co-conspirators  Ryan Smalling and William Brown  accused of conspiring to move more than 3.5 kilos of cocaine discovered in a bag at the airport on June 7. The bag, which had a purple bandanna tied to it, arrived on Caribbean Airlines Flight BW 11 from Montego Bay, but went unclaimed. Agents discovered the drugs the next day sealed in plastic-covered bricks.

Smalling, a Swissport airport employee texted Dennis there was a "big problem," the complaint said.

Dennis allegedly told agents he knew Brown was a narcotics trafficker involved in cocaine and marijuana, the complaint said, and that he had sent him money on June 7. Dennis told agents Brown told him he had sent a bag to the United States from Jamaica on June 7.

Customs and Border Protection records showed that Brown had flown to Jamaica in May and did not return until July. Brown was in Jamaica when the bag was sent to JFK and while he spoke to Smalling, the complaint said. It said Smalling and another JFK employee exchanged text messages in which Smalling said "that the people who had sent the Bag were now saying that they were going to kill him."

While Dennis admitted knowing that the bag was involved in some kind of illegality, he denied knowing that the bag contained drugs, the complaint said.

Dennis told the agents Brown informed him that Smalling had taken the bag and would not give it to Brown. Dennis said Brown told him to call Smalling to tell him the bag belonged to Dennis and to threaten Smalling.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Dennis admitted he called Smalling about 10 times, told Smalling that the bag belonged to him and threatened Smalling, the complaint said.

Contacted by email, Michael Whyland, a spokesman for Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, told the Times Union: "The speaker does not know anything about this. You should reach out to Mr. Dennis's attorney."

In September, Smalling and Brown were indicted on charges of conspiracy to import, distribute and possess cocaine.

Smalling pleaded guilty to the entire indictment, while Brown pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to import cocaine.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Members of the Sikh community hit the streets at various places in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad, as well as in other parts of the State on Sunday protesting against the attack on the historic Gurudwara Nankana Sahib in Lahore, Pakistan by a mob which rained stones on devotees.

The members of the minority Sikh community in Pakistan have been subjected to acts of violence at the holy city of Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak Dev.

The Sikhs living in Telangana condemned the "wanton acts of destruction and desecration" at Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and urged Pakistan to take immediate steps to ensure safety and welfare of the Sikh community. They also said that members of the minority Sikh community in Pakistan have been subjected to acts of violence in the holy city of Nankana Sahib.

ALSO READ| MoS Home G Kishan Reddy asks why Opposition isnt calling out atrocities in Pakistan

The agitating Sikhs shouted slogans against the Pakistan government and condemned Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for not taking action against the culprits involved in the attack. Effigies of Imran Chisti Baba, who made derogatory remarks and incited the mob were burnt at Gowliguda.

Hundreds gathered at Central Gurudwara Sahib Gowliguda, Ameerpet, Secunderabad, Sikh Chawniat, Attapur, Nizamabad, Karimnagar and other places in the State. During the protest near Keys High Schools in Secunderabad, S Gurucharan Singh Bagga, president, Gurudwara Sahib Guru Singh Sabha said what has happened is condemnable.

"It has not happened for the first time. They abduct our children and convert them. Pakistan should put an end to such incidents" Gurudwara Sahib Ameerpets president, S Bhagender Singh said during the rally taken out from Ameerpet.

S Harbans Singh, chairman, Sikh Gurudwara Barambala, Attapur deplored the mob attack on the gurudwara and said atrocities on Sikhs cannot be tolerated. "The attack on Nankana Sahib is a cowardly and shameful incident," he said.
The zero-carbon building complex boasts exceptional features, and will offer a very high-quality work environment to employees.

Jointly developed by ENGIE and Nexity, the complex will comprise six buildings of six to seven stories each, for a total floor area of 135,000 sq.m and an excellent level of performance and services. The eco-site was designed by architecture firms SCAU, Chaix & Morel et Associes and Art & Build, with landscaping by Base. Delivery is planned between the second quarter of 2023 and the end of 2024.

"Swiss Life Asset Managers is very pleased to accompany ENGIE in this project, a cornerstone of ENGIE's zero-carbon strategy, with 100% green energy on-site as well as a park spanning nearly 2 hectares and 10,000 sq.m of balconies. This development is perfectly in step with the values of Swiss Life Asset Managers, a driving force behind the sustainable development of the cities of tomorrow," announced Frederic Bol, CEO of Swiss Life Asset Managers France.

"This project will be the showcase of the ENGIE Group's zero-carbon strategy. We are very pleased to have an investor like Swiss Life on board with our project. Designed as an inclusive community, harmoniously connected to the city and open to local residents, the eco-site will represent the city of tomorrow. For our employees, it will be a unique community and an accelerator of our culture of working together, promoting external interaction and internal collaboration," said Pierre Deheunynck, Executive Vice President of ENGIE.

"Nexity - just like ENGIE, through its business lines - has a strong identity in making sustainable cities. We are ahead of the curve in zero-carbon cities, first and foremost because we strongly believe in this vision for the future and also because we think it will give us a considerable competitive edge. We developed and offered ENGIE a ground-breaking partnership to design its future head office. In its decision to invest in the project, Swiss Life has joined us in this ambition, and we are very proud to have them on board," said Veronique Bedague, Deputy CEO of Nexity.

The future eco-site aims to achieve HQE Excellent, BREEAM Excellent and BiodiverCity certifications for its environmental performance, as well as WiredScore Gold and OsmoZ certification for its connectivity and quality of life at work.

The district of La Garenne-Colombes, which is growing rapidly and benefits from the draw of Paris and La Defense, has already seen the arrival of a number of major companies.

The business park will be very well served by public transport, with RER Lines A and E, the T2 tram line and - as part of the Greater Paris project - the metro's future Line 15, positioning the site 20-25 minutes from Paris' Gare de Lyon and Gare du Nord train stations and 40 minutes from the airports. For this transaction, Swiss Life Asset Managers was advised by Les Notaires du Trocadero as well as Lacourte Raquin Tatar for legal aspects, and SEDRI and Barbanel for technical aspects.

Nexity and ENGIE were advised by Bazin Entreprises CMS for occupancy strategy and consulting; Les Notaires du Trocadero; De Pardieu Brocas, DS Avocats and Gide Loyrette Nouel for legal aspects; and CBRE, JLL and Nexity Conseil & Transaction for marketing and sales strategy and consulting.

Media Relations

Investor relations contact (France)

Marie Caradec, Head of Communications

Phone: +33 (0)1 40 15 22 04, marie.caradec@swisslife-am.com

Fargo

Yohann Hendrice: +33 (0)6 16 83 28 89 - yhendrice@fargo.agency

Amelie Verone: +33 (0)6 46 60 03 35 - averone@fargo.agency

Zarema Kanieva: +33 (0)6 16 83 29 16 - zkanieva@fargo.agency

www.swisslife-am.com

About Swiss Life Asset Managers

Swiss Life Asset Managers has more than 160 years of experience in managing the assets of the Swiss Life Group. This insurance background has exerted a key influence on the investment philosophy of Swiss Life Asset Managers, which is governed by such principles as value preservation, the generation of consistent and sustainable performance and a responsible approach to risks. That's how we lay the groundwork for our clients to make solid, long-term plans - in self-determination and with financial confidence. Swiss Life Asset Managers offers this proven approach to third-party clients in Switzerland, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the UK.

As at 30 june 2019 assets under management for third-party clients amount to EUR 71.6 billion. Together with insurance assets for the Swiss Life Group, total assets under management at Swiss Life Asset Managers stood at EUR 225.0 billion.

Swiss Life Asset Managers is the leading real estate manager in Europe1. Of the assets totaling EUR 225.0 billion, EUR 60.5 billion is invested in real estate. In addition, Swiss Life Asset Managers has real estate under administration of EUR 26.0 billion through its subsidiaries Livit and Corpus Sireo. Total real estate under management and administration at the end of june 2019 thus came to EUR 86.5 billion.

Swiss Life Asset Managers employs about 2300 people in Europe.

1 PropertyEU, Top 100 Investors, December 2018

Disclaimer

The information contained in this document is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute an offer to issue or sell, or a solicitation of an offer to (i) subscribe for or purchase shares, units or other financial interests in investments, or (ii) provide services. This document is provided to each recipient for information purposes only and does not constitute a recommendation for personal investment. This document does not necessarily cover all important topics or aspects of the topics covered. It has been prepared without regard to the financial and other circumstances of the people who receive it. Investors are advised to seek independent advice before making any investment decisions. Past performance is not representative of future performance. Investment involves risks.

About ENGIE

ENGIE is committed to taking on the major challenges of the energy revolution, towards a world more decarbonised, decentralised and digitalised. The Group aims to become the leader of this new energy world by focusing on three key activities for the future: low carbon generation in particular from natural gas and renewable energy, energy infrastructure and efficient solutions adapted to all its customers (individuals, businesses, territories, etc.). Innovation, digital solutions and customer satisfaction are the guiding principles of ENGIE's development. ENGIE is active in around 70 countries, employs 150,000 people worldwide and achieved revenues of 66.6 billion in 2016. The Group is listed on the Paris and Brussels stock exchanges (ENGI) and is represented in the main financial indices (CAC 40, BEL 20, DJ Euro Stoxx 50, Euronext 100, FTSE Eurotop 100, MSCI Europe) and non-financial indices (DJSI World, DJSI Europe and Euronext Vigeo Eiris - World 120, Eurozone 120, Europe 120, France 20, CAC 40 Governance).

Press contact:

Tel. France: +33 (0)1 4422 2435

Email: engiepress@engie.com

About Nexity

AT NEXITY, WE AIM TO SERVE ALL OUR CLIENTS AS THEIR REAL ESTATE NEEDS EVOLVE

Nexity offers the widest range of advice and expertise, products, services and solutions for individuals, companies and local authorities, so as to best meet the needs of our clients and respond to their concerns.

Our business lines - real estate brokerage, management, design, development, planning, advisory and related services - are now optimally organised to serve and support our clients. As the benchmark operator in our sector, we are resolutely committed to all our clients, as well as to the environment and society as a whole.

Nexity is listed on the SRD and on Euronext's Compartment A

Nexity is included in the following indices: SBF 80, SBF 120, CAC Mid 60, CAC Mid & Small and CAC All Tradable

Ticker symbol: NXI - Reuters: NXI.PA - Bloomberg: NXIFP

Contact
She wasnt the first to bring up the dire situation in Australia. Early on, Russell Crowe won best actor in a limited series for The Loudest Voice. But he wasnt there to accept: He opted to remain at his home in Australia out of concern for the fires. Instead, he sent a message that was read on his behalf by Jennifer Aniston.

Make no mistake, the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate-change-based, he wrote. We need to act based on science, move our global work force to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is. That way we all have a future.

Later, Ellen DeGeneres, accepting the Carol Burnett Award for lifetime achievement, began by saying: Australia, I love you; my heart goes out to everyone who is suffering in Australia, all the animals that weve lost.

And winning one of the final awards of the night, best actor in a drama for his twisted turn in Joker, Joaquin Phoenix said he didnt want to rock the boat, but that the boat had already been rocked.
As the face of Alera Group in Anchorage, AK and Tacoma, WA, were backed by the power of more than 80+ locations across the United States, with industry-leading experts and the resources of a national firm.

The Wilson Agency and Albers & Company are changing their name and brand as part of the ongoing evolution of the company. The firm will now be known as Wilson Albers, an Alera Group Company. Alera Group acquired the two firms along with ConnectHR in early 2018.

The work these two firms have been doing to integrate the companies, along with becoming Alera Group companies, is complete and reflected in the new branding.

As the face of Alera Group in Anchorage, AK and Tacoma, WA, were more than a local firm with local resources, says Lon Wilson, Managing Partner of Wilson Albers, an Alera Group Company. Were backed by the power of more than 80+ locations across the United States, with industry-leading experts and the resources of a national firm.

As an Alera Group company, the firm is able to offer the resources, technical expertise and best practices of a large national firm, while maintaining their personalized service and local relationships. The innovative culture of Alera Group allows Wilson Albers to collaborate with national partners to expertly meet clients unique needs.

In addition, ConnectHR - focused on providing strategic hands-on HR support to local businesses - will take this opportunity to update the branding to Alera ConnectHR.

About Wilson Albers, an Alera Group Company

Wilson Albers has operated as The Wilson Agency in Alaska for over 55 years and Albers & Company in Washington for over 35 years and holds a robust legacy of industry experience and customer satisfaction. Through their core values of unquestionable integrity, dedication to excellence, caring for people, family, community, and lifelong learning, the firm strides toward their collective vision: empowering people to lead a life of significance. They prioritize service to their customers, to their communities, to their organization and to each other.
Texas hospital ordered to keep 11-month-old Tinslee Lewis on life support: 'This is a prayer answered'

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A Texas appeals court has agreed to delay a judges ruling that would have allowed a hospital to end life-sustaining treatment for an 11-month-old girl despite her mothers objections.

On Friday, the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth ordered Cook Children's Medical Center to not remove Tinslee Lewis from life support until it makes a final ruling in the case, according to Texas Right to Life, the pro-life group advocating for Tinslee. The order was handed down just one day after a judge denied the extension of a restraining order keeping the baby on life support.

Born premature, Tinslee has a rare, incurable heart defect and relies on a feeding tube. Since July, she's also been on a ventilator machine that helps her breathe due to a chronic lung disease. According to doctors, the little girl is in pain and will not get better.

Kimberlyn Schwartz, a spokeswoman for Texas Right to Life, said her organization was grateful and relieved the appeals court had granted the emergency stay, adding the action would give her group more time to contact doctors and hospitals who could treat Tinslee.

This gives us so much hope for Tinslee, Schwartz said. This is a prayer answered.

Doctors at the Fort Worth hospital had planned to remove Tinslee from life support on Nov. 10 after invoking Texas "10-day rule." The rule, which can be employed when a family disagrees with doctors who say life-sustaining treatment should be stopped, stipulates treatment can be withdrawn after 10 days if a new provider cant be found to take the patient.

In a statement, hospital officials said they had reached out to more than 20, well-respected healthcare facilities and specialists over the course of several months, but all agreed that further care is futile.

With the support of Texas Right to Life, Tinslees mother, Trinity Lewis, had fought to keep her daughter on life support. Texas Right to Life opposes the 10-day rule, arguing it allows hospitals to make decisions that strip away patients rights to life and due process against their familys wishes, a grave injustice is committed.

I want to be able to make that decision for her, Trinity said. Shes made it this far. I know shes going to continue to fight for her life.

Ahead of Fridays ruling, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, Gov. Greg Abbott and the states solicitor general sent a letter to the appeals court, asking it to delay the judges order.

This case presents a life-or-death decision, said Paxton. The right-to-life and the guarantee of due process are of the utmost importance not only to baby Tinslee and her family, but to all Texans. I will continue to fight for Tinslee and my office will continue to use all necessary resources to ensure that she will not be deprived of her right to live.

The date of the appeal is not yet set. The same Second Court of Appeals will hear Tinslees appeal.

Tinslees case echoes the debate over Charlie Gard, a terminally ill British infant who died in 2017 amid debate over whether he should remain on a ventilator. The case garnered global attention because of the implications it had for the rights of parents to determine the best course of medical care for their children.
Ville de Fotokol securisee par l'armee Archives

Eleven persons are believed to have died and 26 others injured when jihadist fighters belonging to the Boko Haram group active in Nigeria launched an attack in the afternoon of Monday, January 6, 2020.

LOeil du Sahel reports that the attack took place on the bridge over the River El Beid that links Fotokol, a locality in the Logone and Chari Division of Cameroons Far North Region, to Gambaru, a village in Nigeria.

Cameroon-info.net recalls that Fotokol is a municipality about 300metres across River El Beid from the Nigerian village of Gambaru, where Fotokol residents often go for supplies.

This appears to be the bloodiest Boko Haram attack in Cameroon since that of June 2019 in which 16 soldiers of the countrys defence forces were killed when the jihadist fighters attacked Darak, a locality in the Far North Region.

Last years incident took place in the night of Sunday June 9 to Monday June 10, 2019 when 300 heavily armed fighters of the Boko Haram terrorist group attacked Darak in the Logone and Chari Division of the Far North Region, Beti Assomo Joseph, Cameroons Minister Delegate at the Presidency of the Republic in charge of Defence said in a statement at the time.

During the said attack, a riposte by Cameroons Defence Forces attached to Sector No. 1 of the Multinational Joint Task Force of the Lake Chad Basin resulted in a fierce gun exchange that lasted for several hours.

After taking control of the situation, the government said 16 soldiers were shot and killed, while eight others were injured. On the part of civilians, eight were killed and one wounded.

The defence minister said 64 Boko Haram fighters were neutralised (killed), eight captured and many others wounded as they fled while three heavy duty machines belonging to the assailants were destroyed in last years Darak attack.

Boko Haram's decade-long uprising to establish a hardline Islamic state in Nigeria's northeast, which has killed more than 27,000 people and left 1.8 million homeless, spilled into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

An anti-Boko Haram force combining soldiers from Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria has since been set up but has failed to rout the group from the restive Lake Chad region.
It has been nine years since al Shabaab was defeated by a military offensive, spearheaded by foreign peacekeepers, to drive al Shabaab out of the capital Mogadishu. At that point the brief period when the Islamic terrorists controlled a lot of the country ended. Al Shabaab had been increasing the areas it controlled since it first appeared in 2006, but quickly lost control of Mogadishu and much else over the next few years. Like anyone else seeking to control all of Somalia, the number of local enemies reaches a point where the attacker is overextended and vulnerable to counterattack. Al Shabaab has been on the defensive ever since 2011 but has taken advantage of the increased economic activity. GDP has grown about three percent a year since 2017 throughout Somalia. This enabled al Shabaab to resume its extortion efforts in a big way. There is more to steal and al Shabaab wants all it can get. Unfortunately so do a lot of other armed groups.

The follow the money approach had some success and al Shabaab ended up with more money to fund more operations. While al Shabaab depicts itself as a patriotic organization seeking to cleanse Somalia of non-Moslems, foreigners and corruption, that effort is made possible by money and lots of it. Al Shabaab uses corrupt and criminal practices to obtain as much cash as it can because veteran al Shabaab members must be paid and new weapons and other equipment are easier to purchase than steal from militias or security forces.

The extortion is often carried out by establishing road checkpoints and demanding money to let commercial traffic and affluent passengers through. Al Shabaab will contact the businesses that depend on these routes to arrange fees their vehicles must pay to make sure the shipments get through without delay. The security forces often disrupt these checkpoint operations and al Shabaab has to demand no more taxes than merchants can afford. Sometimes the fees are collected in Mogadishu and the checkpoints are told to let certain shipments pass. The security forces have a hard time stopping this because banditry has been common in Somalia forever and, as local strongmen get paid off, al Shabaab can avoid many attacks by the security forces.

The national government continues to be a work-in-progress and the senior politicians devote most of their efforts to protecting or expanding their power. Too many of the competing factions are armed and will fight rather than be coerced into going along with something that will help all of Somalia at the expense of their faction. Compromise is seen as weakness, vulnerability and an excuse to be attacked. The result is something described as a failed state. That is an area that never was a unified and stable state and is still cursed with a fundamental political instability. It is generally agreed that the best examples are Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan and many African states that were created by colonial rulers who underestimated the durability of tribal traditions and the difficulty of creating a civil society. Failed states tend to account for most of the lawless violence on the planet. Most of these deaths are caused by Islamic terrorism, which is a common feature in the most violent failed states.

While global Islamic terrorism-related deaths have fallen by over 50 percent since 2014 when there were 35,000 that was largely because one Islamic terror group, in particular, ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) was defeated. As a result global terrorism deaths hit 19,000 by 2017 and less than 16,000 for 2018. The decline continued in 2019. This activity is most visible in the GTI (Global Terrorism Index), which counts all forms of terrorism. But Islamic terrorism is the main cause and for years ISIL was the deadliest practitioner. That led to a curious situation in Egypt which in 2018 dropped out of the top ten as they suppressed most of the ISIL activity in Sinai. In 2017 Egypt was number three but now it is at eleven.

The top ten consists of Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, India, Yemen, Philippines, and Congo. India, Philippines, Yemen and Congo all have Islamic terrorism accounting for a minority of the deaths. Somalia is one of the areas where there have been fewer deaths in the last few years. Al Shabaab has learned that the most profitable approach is to carry out fewer dramatic, high visibility attacks and otherwise conserve your manpower and resources. Thus the emphasis on spectacular attacks in major cities like Mogadishu or against an American military base.

A major reason why al Shabaab continues to survive and thrive is the endemic corruption found in Somalia. To demonstrate this, consider that according to international surveys Somalia is, and has been for some time, the most corrupt country on the planet. Currently the ten most corrupt nations are Somalia (the worst with CPI of 10), Syria, South Sudan, Yemen, North Korea, Sudan, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Afghanistan and Libya (CPI of 17). Corruption in the Transparency International surveys are expressed as the Corruption Perception Index (CPI). This is measured on a 1 (most corrupt) to 100 (not corrupt) scale. The most corrupt nations (usually North Korea/14, Yemen/14, Syria/13, South Sudan/13 and Somalia/10) have a rating of under 15 while of the least corrupt (New Zealand and Denmark) are over 85.

Many foreign aid efforts in Somalia have been shut down because of the persistent, and extreme, corruption. Thats the main reason the 21,000 man peacekeeping force is going to start withdrawing in 2021. It is mainly about money and limited resources. Peacekeepers are expensive and a decade of peacekeeping in Somalia has produced meager results. There is a demand for peacekeepers in other parts of the world, often in places where peacekeepers make more of a difference. Somalia is considered a wasted effort in a world of too much demand and too little supply. This is a common situation with failed states and Somalia is the worst of the worst.

January 5, 2020: In the south (Lamu County, across the border in Kenya), al Shabaab attacked the Manda Bay airfield before dawn. The facility is used by Kenyan and American forces to fly reconnaissance missions along the border. Three Americans were killed (one military and two contractors) and two were wounded. Two turboprop aircraft and two helicopters were destroyed along with several vehicles. The attackers lost five dead as they were driven out of the base. Other al Shabaab casualties were unknown. There were 150 Americans stationed at the base, most of whom provided training for Kenyan troops. Al Shabaab frequently carries out attacks in Lamu country because the Islamic terrorist group has been operating from camps in the nearby Boni Forest, which has long been a refuge for outlaws because of the thinly populated woodlands are on both sides of the border. Inside Somalia American aircraft and UAVs operate out of the Baledogle airbase which is 85 kilometers northwest of Mogadishu. This is also a training base for Somali Special Forces and commandos, which makes it a less desirable target for al Shabaab. The Somali commandos are often supported by American UAVs, which perform surveillance and reconnaissance for the commandos and an occasional airstrike. Africom (U.S. Africa Command) runs the Balendogle base as well as American operations at the Kenyan Manda Bay base. Since early 2017, when Africom increased its use of armed UAVs over Somalia there have been 110 UAV airstrikes that have killed over 800 al Shabaab and ISIL members. Striking back at those air operations has long been an al Shabaab goal.

January 3, 2020: About 45 kilometers west of Mogadishu an American UAV used missiles to kill three al Shabaab men. This was in support of Somali special operations forces that were operating in the area and had chased al Shabaab out of several towns and villages, killing twenty Islamic terrorists as they did so.

January 2, 2020: In the south (Lamu Country, across the border in Kenya), several gunmen fired on a bus traveling north on the coast road. Three people on the bus were killed. Al Shabaab was suspected.

December 29, 2019: In the southeast (Lower Shabelle region), American UAVs attacked two al Shabaab targets, killing four of the Islamic terrorists.

December 28, 2019: In Mogadishu, an al Shabaab truck bomb went off at a busy checkpoint killing 81 people and wounded 125. Al Shabaab did not take credit for this initially because the bomb had not reached its intended target (a Turkish road construction site) and instead just killed a lot of civilians. This angers most Somalis so al Shabaab tries to pretend they had nothing to do with it. Since al Shabaab is responsible for nearly all the terror attacks in Mogadishu they get the blame anyway. They dont get the additional scorn for boasting about it. In this case, al Shabaab admitted, two days later, that the bomb was indeed theirs and apologized for the large number of civilian casualties.

December 16, 2019: In the south (Dujuuma, 350 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu), an American UAV missile attack killed one al Shabaab man.

December 11, 2019: Outside Mogadishu, six people, including four nearby civilians and a soldier, died after an al Shabaab attack on an army base was repulsed. The attackers rushed the base while aboard pickup trucks. This led to heavy fire from the base and the trucks turned around and fled.

December 10, 2019: In Mogadishu, five al Shabaab gunmen attacked the presidential compound, were repulsed with three killed. The two survivors tried to retreat to a nearby hotel but were killed in a nearby parking lot.

December 6, 2019: In the south (Mandera Country, across the border in Kenya), al Shabaab gunmen stopped a bus and let the 45 ethnic Somali passengers go while the eleven non-Somalis (all Christians) were murdered.

November 25, 2019: Somalia Libya are the two most dangerous areas for foreign aid workers to visit and work in. Foreign aid groups, especially those that send foreign medical specialists in to provide care for desperate locals, have organized International SOS to collect and compile safety data on countries where foreign medical specialists or foreign aid workers, in general, might be called on to help. This ranks potential aid destinations from safest to most dangerous. A bit less dangerous are Afghanistan and Venezuela followed by Iraq and a lot of African nations. Risks measured include general safety (infrastructure and prevalence of diseases), crime rates and the attitude of locals towards foreign aid workers. In both Libya and Somalia foreign aid workers face not one threat but dozens of gangs, militias and semi-official armed groups. A few areas are somewhat safer but there are large rural areas in Somalia and Libya where there is often no one responsible for public safety.
The Delhi Police on Monday rejected charges of reaching the JNU campus late despite several pleas by the students' union, asserting that they responded to PCR calls and law-and-order situation professionally to bring things under control.

Under attack for not acting swiftly to prevent the violence on Sunday, the police also dismissed the charge that they were mute spectators despite a small number of police personnel being present on the campus.

Talking to the media, Delhi Police spokesperson Mandeep Singh Randhawa said the force was deployed in the administrative block of the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the scuffle took place in an area far from the spot.

Randhawa said the internal security of the JNU lay with the varsity administration. "We have responded to PCR calls, and law-and-order situation professionally," he said.

According to the spokesperson, calls received by the police around 5 pm were from hostel areas away from the administrative block and it alerted them about a scuffle.

"We immediately responded to the calls and brought the situation under control. Normally, the police deployment is only at the administrative block of the varsity. The area where the scuffle took place was far from there," the officer said.

The high court had earlier directed the Delhi Police for deploying the personnel in plain clothes to ensure that protests do not happen within the 100 metres of the administrative block.

Around 7.45 pm, the officer said, the police received a request from the JNU administration, following which they went inside the university, conducted a flag march and brought the situation under control.

Earlier, JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh said she had contacted the Vasant Kunj North police station incharge and also senior officers stating that a mob was assembling in the university.

JNUSU vice president Saket Moon alleged that the police turned up after two hours, much after the mob left the campus.

"The police deployment is only at the administrative block of the varsity. The area where the scuffle took place was far from there," Randhawa said.

A fact-finding committee has also been formed in connection with the incident which is being headed by Joint Commissioner of Police (Western Range) Shalini Singh, he said.

The police's Crime Branch is already probing the case and it has found some vital clues.

On Monday, the investigation team visited the Sabarmati hostel and tried to understand the sequence of events.

Police sources said that some of the people involved in the violence were from outside, but most of them were from the inside the university. However, the police is probing.

According to police sources, there were a series of clashes on Sunday. The first clash started at 11 am, then another clash took place at 2.30 pm, followed by a third one between 3-3.30 pm.

The fourth one was more violent when some masked persons barged inside the Periyar hostel at 4.30 pm, sources said, adding the police would investigate the reason behind these clashes and the people who were involved in them.

According to the sources, there was stone pelting around 6.30 pm, followed by masked people entering the Sabarmati hostel with sticks and rods and vandalising it.

An FIR has been registered against unidentified people in connection with the violence and the crime branch is probing it.

"All the CCTV footage of the incident are being collected and an investigation has been initiated into it. Crime Branch has constituted a separate team to probe the case," the spokesperson said.

"Crime Branch is carrying a detailed investigation into all the CCTV footage of the incident and those that were also uploaded on social media and circulated on WhatsApp. In total 34 people including female were injured in the incident," he said.

The police said three FIRs were registered on the complaint of JNU administration against the some of the students for allegedly destroying servers near the Centre of Biotechnology and for inciting violence. This was done during a dispute over the online registration.

"We received the complaints on January 3 and 4. The scuffle had been going on between two group since last week," an official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Kenyan security forces are holding three terror suspects who were arrested for trying to attack a British military camp in the country, an official said on Monday.

The suspects attempted to force their way into the British army camp in Laikipia County in central Kenya on Sunday.

Their photos were circulated after being captured on closed-circuit television camera, Laikipia County Criminal Investigations Officer, Peter Muinde, said.

Mr Muinde said as the chief and security officers were following up leads on Sunday, they found the suspects near Nanyuki police station where they arrested them.

Investigations are ongoing into the incident which came hours after Somalia-based extremist group al-Shabab stormed a military airstrip in Manda Bay along Kenyas eastern coast, he said.

The U.S. Africa Command, responsible for military relations with 53 African nations, said a U.S. service member and two civilian contractors working for the U.S. Defense Department were killed in the attack.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack.

(Xinhua/NAN)
Mamata Banerjee upset after not being allowed to speak during PMs meet

Missionaries of Charity itself requested SBI to freeze all bank accounts: Govt

Mamata Banerjee on PM Modi's virtual hospital launch: We inaugurated it last year

Support protest against CAA, not bandh for the cause: Mamata

India

oi-PTI

Kolkata, Jan 06: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said though she backs protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, she will not support any bandh for the cause.

The Left parties had on December 26 last year announced a nationwide strike on January 8 and a seven-day protest from January 1 against the CAA, National Population Register (NPR) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

Mamata, speaking at an administrative meeting in Kakdwip in South 24 Parganas district, observed that she supports the cause (protest against CAA, NPR and NRC) but will not back any bandh which she said causes trouble to people and loss to the exchequer.

'Are you Pakistan's Ambassador?': Mamata Banerjee hits out at Modi

NEWS AT 3 PM, JANUARY 6th, 2020...

Left leaders had sought support for the bandh from all political parties protesting the CAA.

Mamata also instructed her administration to take measures to ensure normalcy on January 8.

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Story first published: Monday, January 6, 2020, 14:31 [IST]
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Abandoned Christmas trees, that just days prior sat proudly in the rooms of millions of homes, are being thrown out across the UK as the festive season draws to a close.

The discarded trees lay in piles at a car park in Sunninghill Centre in Berkshire, as festive revellers across the country decided to wave goodbye to their decorated trees on the twelfth day after Christmas.

In an effort to embrace the new year and avoid any bad luck they might incur according to superstition, revellers left their trees, that were once decorated with colourful lights and tinsel, at the collection site before going about their daily activities.

The old and forgotten trees, which now looked worse for wear, will later be removed, shredded and turned into compost and soil conditioner by the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead council.

According to tradition, trees should be taken down on the 12th night of the festive calendar, also known as Ephiphany, which falls on January 5.

In the Christian calendar, Ephiphany, which comes from Greek word meaning 'manifestation', commemorates the day that a star led the three kings or wise men, to the baby Jesus.

The scenes come after the packaging company GWP Group revealed that eight million Christmas Trees, totalling 12,000 tons in weight, are bought every year.

A festive reveller braves the winter chill to discard their old Christmas tree at Clayfield Copse in Berkshire as the festive season draws to a close

An old tree is left abandoned at a collection site at Sunninghill Centre in Bray, Berkshire, as people decide to embrace the new year and avoid any bad luck

The trees sit in piles at the collection site in Bray, Berkshire, as festive revellers embrace the new decade and throw away their Christmas trees

The trees, which were left at a collection site in Berkshite, will later be collected by the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead council and recycled

The discarded trees, which once sat in the rooms of millions of homes in the UK, will be removed and shredded by the council before being turned into compost

The old and forgotten Christmas trees, which will soon be turned into soil conditioner, were left at the collection site on January 6

According to Christian tradition, trees are to be taken down on the twelfth night of the festive calendar- which is also known as Ephiphany

The trees, which were once decorated with colourful lights and tinsel, lay on the ground at the collection site as revellers decided to wave goodbye to the festive period
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden visits a campaign field office in in Waterloo, Iowa on Jan. 4, 2020. (Patrick Semansky/AP Photo)

Biden Gets Support From 3 Swing-State Democrats

Presidential candidate Joe Biden got support from three swing-state members of Congress, who touted Bidens decades of experience in Congress and as vice president.

Reps. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.), and Conor Lamb (D-Penn.) said theyre endorsing Biden, 77, for president.

All three served in the military and mentioned Bidens foreign policy experience, which he has repeatedly referred to while making his case for the nomination.

Our country needs a steady hand, someone who can help heal the country, an experienced and proven leader who can build teams with deep expertise and work across the aisle, Houlahan, who served in the Air Force, said in a statement released over the weekend by Bidens campaign.

Pennsylvania is not red or blue but a purple place which our next President needs to carry to win, she said.

Luria, who represents a district that President Donald Trump won in 2016, added, Joe Biden is battle-tested on the world stage, in Congress, and in the White House. He will defeat Donald Trump and win in tough districts like mine.

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.) prepares to be interviewed on television just outside the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Dec. 17, 2019. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Conor Lamb, a Democratic congressional candidate for Pennsylvanias 18th district, speaks to reporters in a March 2018 file photograph. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Lamb was also elected in a district that went for Trump in 2016.

The three endorsements follow one by Rep. Abby Finkenauer (D-Iowa), who endorsed Biden last week.

Most congressional Democrats havent endorsed a candidate but out of those who have, many have announced support for Biden. Biden leads the pack with 52 endorsements from noteworthy Democrats, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Penn.) and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) previously announced their support for the former vice president, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Biden has spent recent days hammering President Donald Trump over the U.S. militarys air strike in Iraq, which took out Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Every Democratic presidential contender criticized the decision.

Warren also got a big endorsement on Jan. 6, earning the support of Julian Castro, the former Obama administration cabinet secretary who recently announced the end of his own 2020 campaign.

Theres one candidate I see who will make sure that no matter where you live in America or where you family came from in the worldyou have a path to opportunity, he said in a video that showed him meeting Warren.
Song Joong Ki is reported to be heading to Colombia soon to film his upcoming movie!

It was reported by SpoTVNews on the 3rd of January that actor Song Joo ki will be flying to Bagota Colombia's capital city this mid-January. It is said to be for the shooting of his new film titled "Bogota."

The story of the movie centers on young people who immigrated to Colombia in the year 1990s.

In November it is reported that Song Joong Ki has just finished up filming for the sci-fi movie "Lightning Ship." Then he immediately went into the preparations for filming his new film "Bogota."

Sources informed SpoTVNews that Song Joong Ki is trying his best and is working hard to prepare for the upcoming film, up to the point that he already flew for a trip to Colombia last month to check the place out.

History D&C, which is Song Joong Ki's new agency has already approved of the actor that he is flying to Colombia this month. It is also reported that he will be there on the site location filming for a span of three months.

In addition actors, Lee Hee Joon alongside Kwon Hae Ho has also reportedly joined the film's casting.

Song Joong Ki 's project "Bogota" is scheduled to be released in theaters in South Korea in the second half of the year 2020.

After starring in the new series of Korean superstar Song Joong Ki's Arthdal Chronicles, he is also set to star in the sci-film "Lighting ship."

Joong Ki plays the role of Tae Ho, a pilot who is still poor even though he is doing everything for money. She will be joining one of Korea's finest young actresses, Kim Tae Ri.

Tae Ri will be playing Sun Jang. Among Tae Ri's past projects that have been hit include "The Handmaiden" (1987), "Little Forest" and "Mr. Sunshine."

Jin Seon Kyu's role as Tiger Park is another savage housekeeper. Seon Kyu's hit projects include "The Outlaws" and "Extreme Job."

It will also feature great actor Yoo Hae Jin.

Director Jo Sung-Hee says it took 10 years for the "Lightning Ship" that started shooting in July.

Joong Ki is still starring in the Arthdal Chronicles with another Korean superstar Jang Dong Gun and good actress Kim Ji Won.

On the other hand, his film

"Lighting Ship" is expected to come out this summertime.

We can definitely say 2020 is a great year for projects of the famous actor and we are all excited to see the films of Song Joong Ki come out!
Senior Producers, Larger-Cap Near-Term Production

Aluminum Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld

Symbol Rating 3-Jan-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2019E %

Alcoa Inc AA 2.7 US$21.50 186 $3,990 3.58 (0.86) 0.75 -- 28.7 2.38 2.53 4.32 8.5 5.0 6.2 0.0%

Alumina Ltd AWC 3.0 US$1.58 2880 $4,592 0.24 0.12 0.10 13.3 16.7 0.22 0.15 0.10 10.8 15.2 6.1 11.2%

Aluminum Corp China Ltd (ADR) ACH 2.3 CNY$2.49 17023 $8,169 0.04 0.07 0.11 34.9 22.1 0.77 0.88 0.89 2.8 2.8 15.0 0.0%

Century Aluminum CENX 2.5 US$7.80 89 $693 (0.14) (1.28) 0.41 -- 19.2 (0.79) 0.03 0.96 NM 8.1 32.7 0.0%

United Company Rusal Ltd (HK) 486 2.3 US$0.49 15193 $7,491 0.11 0.08 0.10 6.1 4.7 0.05 0.10 0.08 4.8 5.9 10.0 0.0%

Average 18.1 18.3 6.7 7.4 14.0

Iron Ore

Cliffs Natural Resources CLF 2.4 US$7.82 270 $2,112 3.71 1.10 0.78 7.1 10.0 1.57 1.85 1.01 4.2 7.8 10.7 3.1%

Fortescue Metals Group Ltd (AU) FMG 3.2 US$7.47 3079 $23,146 0.69 1.15 1.00 6.5 7.4 0.96 1.55 1.40 4.8 5.3 6.4 4.8%

Kumba Iron Ore Ltd (SA) KIO 3.8 ZAR$415.33 322 $9,499 30.06 58.73 46.42 7.1 8.9 47.32 86.95 65.23 4.8 6.4 6.9 9.3%

Labrador Iron Ore Royalty (CA) LIF 2.1 C$23.89 64 $1,176 2.01 3.40 2.69 7.0 8.9 2.32 3.51 2.79 6.8 8.6 16.3 5.2%

Mount Gibson Iron Limited (AU) MGX 2.7 AUD$0.98 1158 $793 0.07 0.12 0.10 8.3 9.5 0.07 0.10 0.15 9.7 6.5 35.7 3.9%

Average 7.2 8.9 6.1 6.9 15.2

Note: Currency shown is that used by the company for financial reporting. Currency does not always reflect the country/market in which the company/stock symbol trades. GAAP may differ between stocks due to countries and markets.

The tables are compiled from the Thomson Reuters database of consensus Ratings & Estimates of equity analysts. The historicals and estimates of earnings and cash flows exclude non-operating, special items.

Thomson Consensus Rating System: Buy (1.0), Buy/Hold (2.0), Hold (3.0), Sell/Hold (4.0), Sell (5.0) Source: Thomson Reuters.

Base Metals & Diversified

Large Cap Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld

Symbol Rating 3-Jan-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2019E %

Anglo American PLC (UK) AAL 2.5 US$28.61 1371 $39,232 2.50 2.88 2.67 9.9 10.7 5.50 5.40 5.74 5.3 5.0 8.1 4.0%

Antofagasta PLC (UK) ANTO 2.8 US$12.08 986 $11,905 0.52 0.58 0.59 20.7 20.3 1.33 1.93 1.68 6.3 7.2 9.6 0.9%

BHP Billiton Ltd BHP 2.7 US$27.21 5058 $130,300 1.81 1.94 1.96 14.0 13.9 3.45 3.46 3.30 7.9 8.2 8.8 4.7%

China Molybdenum Co Ltd (HK) 3993 2.2 CNY$3.08 21599 $13,102 0.22 0.08 0.12 39.0 25.6 0.44 0.31 0.24 10.1 12.8 52.2 0.0%

Freeport McMoran C&G FCX 2.3 US$12.80 1451 $18,572 1.52 0.01 0.51 NM 25.2 2.65 1.14 1.76 11.2 7.3 7.3 2.1%

Glencore International PLC (UK) GLEN 2.2 US$3.16 13324 $42,134 0.41 0.16 0.24 19.8 13.4 0.81 0.61 0.66 5.2 4.8 7.4 2.9%

Grupo Mexico (MX) GMEXICOB 2.5 US$2.86 7785 $22,365 0.17 0.22 0.24 13.1 12.1 0.22 0.32 0.36 9.0 8.0 9.2 7.0%

Hindustan Zinc (IN) HZ 2.6 INR$215.25 4225 $12,749 19.47 18.76 20.04 11.5 10.7 21.39 21.96 24.09 9.8 8.9 6.7 0.0%

MMC Norilsk Nickel (RU) GMKN -- RU$5,429.84 158 $49,908 -- 899.94 1210.92 6.0 4.5 -- 689.72 1388.13 7.9 3.9 15.5 11.7%

Rio Tinto PLC (UK) RIO 2.7 US$58.94 1621 $99,967 5.12 6.24 5.48 9.4 10.8 6.88 8.54 8.06 6.9 7.3 8.8 5.3%

South32 Ltd (AU) S32 2.5 US$1.86 4928 $9,201 0.22 0.14 0.13 13.2 14.8 0.34 0.31 0.29 6.0 6.4 4.9 3.6%

Southern Copper Corp SCCO 2.4 US$41.55 773 $32,121 2.00 2.00 2.12 20.8 19.6 3.02 2.78 3.04 14.9 13.7 16.8 4.7%

Sumitomo Metal Mining (JP) 5713 2.2 JPY$3,544 291 $9,468 265.40 225.22 260.32 15.7 13.6 438.78 447.61 406.96 7.9 8.7 11.8 1.8%

Teck Resources Ltd TCK 2.0 C$21.97 554 $9,387 4.07 2.99 2.64 7.3 8.3 7.62 6.46 6.19 3.4 3.6 5.1 0.9%

Vale SA (ADR) VALE 2.4 US$54.05 5284 $70,788 5.27 5.74 6.88 9.4 7.9 9.94 9.13 8.90 5.9 6.1 10.1 4.1%

Average 15.0 14.1 7.8 7.5 12.2

Mid Cap

Assore Ltd (SA) ASR 3.2 ZAR$268.10 140 $2,615 55.70 60.50 53.72 4.4 5.0 14.60 18.27 27.33 14.7 9.8 9.6 6.5%

Aurubis AG (GR) NDA 2.9 EUR$54.66 45 $2,745 5.17 3.25 3.86 16.8 14.2 4.75 5.42 5.45 10.1 10.0 6.7 3.1%

Boliden AB (SW) BOL 2.8 SEK$246.20 274 $7,193 26.32 21.91 24.03 11.2 10.2 43.03 36.29 42.78 6.8 5.8 7.3 3.9%

Exxaro Resources Ltd (SA) EXX 1.7 ZAR$132.96 359 $3,387 20.57 26.30 26.37 5.1 5.0 (0.17) 15.24 11.81 8.7 11.3 8.2 8.8%

First Quantum Minerals (CA) FM 2.2 US$9.56 689 $6,592 0.71 0.34 0.48 28.1 19.8 2.87 1.52 2.48 6.3 3.9 16.0 0.1%

Iluka Resources Ltd (AU) ILU 3.3 AUD$9.23 423 $2,728 0.72 0.58 0.77 15.8 12.0 1.49 0.88 1.19 10.5 7.8 -- 2.2%

Independence Group NL (AU) IGO 2.5 AUD$6.31 591 $2,607 0.11 0.25 0.37 25.7 17.2 0.59 0.73 0.82 8.7 7.7 23.9 2.1%

Ivanhoe Mines Ltd (CA) IVP 2.0 US$3.12 1192 $3,728 0.03 (0.00) (0.04) -- -- (0.02) (0.03) (0.04) -- -- -- 0.0%

Jiangxi Copper Co "H" (HK) 358 2.3 CNY$9.72 3463 $7,051 0.70 0.74 0.82 13.1 11.8 2.36 1.57 1.14 6.2 8.5 15.9 2.2%

Kazakhmys PLC (UK) KAZ 2.3 US$7.10 472 $3,355 1.18 0.98 0.98 7.2 7.3 1.51 1.40 1.50 5.1 4.7 25.2 1.3%

KGHM Polska Miedz (PO) KGH 3.6 PLN$96.12 200 $5,066 8.29 10.66 9.96 9.0 9.7 19.30 19.92 19.29 4.8 5.0 5.8 0.0%

Lundin Mining Corp (CA) LUN 2.0 US$5.88 734 $4,315 0.30 0.20 0.46 28.7 12.8 0.65 0.72 1.12 8.1 5.2 8.4 0.0%

Mineral Resources Ltd (AU) MIN 2.0 AUD$16.57 188 $2,183 1.15 1.38 1.50 12.0 11.1 1.59 1.40 1.84 11.9 9.0 10.1 0.0%

MMG Ltd (HK) 1208 2.5 US$0.29 8055 $2,348 0.01 (0.01) 0.00 -- 59.6 0.21 0.09 0.14 3.3 2.1 12.4 0.0%

Oz Minerals (AU) OZL 2.5 AUD$10.65 324 $2,412 0.73 0.50 0.55 21.3 19.5 1.45 1.27 1.44 8.4 7.4 9.1 2.3%

Sesa Sterlite Ltd (ADR) SSLT 2.3 INR$157.75 3705 $8,193 17.89 16.89 19.36 9.3 8.1 60.18 53.79 49.95 2.9 3.2 4.5 1.2%

Vale Indonesia Tbk PT (ID) INCO 1.7 US$0.25 9936 $2,505 0.01 0.01 0.01 43.7 27.9 0.02 0.02 0.02 13.6 11.6 16.7 0.0%

Vedanta Resources PLC (UK) VED -- US$10.85 285 $3,089 -- 0.87 1.24 12.5 8.7 -- 9.96 12.60 1.1 0.9 -- --

Average 16.5 15.3 7.7 6.7 12.0

Small Cap Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld

Symbol Rating 3-Jan-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2019E %

Anglo Pacific Group PLC (UK) APF 1.8 GBP$1.83 181 $435 0.18 0.21 0.21 8.9 8.8 0.20 0.23 0.22 8.0 8.2 20.3 4.6%

Atalaya Mining PLC (UK) ATYM 1.2 EUR$2.25 137 $347 0.25 0.24 0.42 9.4 5.4 0.40 0.16 0.26 14.1 8.8 21.2 0.0%

Eramet (FR) ERA 1.7 EUR$44.86 27 $1,333 1.83 1.07 6.73 41.9 6.7 16.01 11.42 18.67 3.9 2.4 6.7 1.0%

Ero Copper Corp (CA) ERO 2.4 US$17.31 86 $1,484 0.03 0.60 1.07 29.1 16.2 0.94 1.44 1.74 12.0 10.0 -- 0.0%

Hudbay Minerals HBM 2.4 US$3.90 261 $1,021 0.40 (0.13) (0.03) -- -- 1.84 1.15 1.23 3.4 3.2 3.6 0.4%

Mechel OAO (ADR) MTL 4.0 RU$62.89 555 $626 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 8.1 0.0%

Mitsui Mining & Smelting (JP) 5706 2.3 JPY$2,924 57 $1,539 58.51 122.39 226.70 23.9 12.9 649.22 626.83 733.61 4.7 4.0 6.6 2.7%

Nexa Resources NA NEXA 3.0 US$8.47 133 $1,128 0.25 (0.87) 0.18 -- 48.0 2.61 1.19 2.81 7.1 3.0 -- 0.0%

Outokumpu (FN) OUT1V 3.1 EUR$2.82 416 $1,310 0.34 (0.16) 0.13 -- 21.6 0.52 0.53 0.61 5.3 4.6 8.2 6.2%

Sandfire Resources NL (AU) SFR 2.6 AUD$6.00 178 $747 0.72 0.69 0.85 8.7 7.1 1.44 1.49 1.74 4.0 3.4 4.1 3.4%

Turquoise Hill Resources TRQ 3.0 US$0.75 2012 $1,489 0.20 0.14 0.07 5.3 10.1 0.09 0.01 0.07 97.7 10.1 7.6 0.0%

Volcan Cia Ninera VOLABC1 2.3 US$0.14 4077 $2,064 0.01 (0.00) 0.01 -- 10.8 -- -- -- -- -- 9.9 0.0%

Western Areas NL (AU) WSA 2.4 AUD$2.98 274 $570 0.04 0.17 0.29 17.4 10.1 0.32 0.44 0.52 6.8 5.7 10.8 1.0%

Average 18.1 14.3 15.2 5.8 9.7

Note: Currency shown is that used by the company for financial reporting. Currency does not always reflect the country/market in which the company/stock symbol trades. GAAP may differ between stocks due to countries and markets.

The tables are compiled from the Thomson Reuters database of consensus Ratings & Estimates of equity analysts. The historicals and estimates of earnings and cash flows exclude non-operating, special items.

Thomson Consensus Rating System: Buy (1.0), Buy/Hold (2.0), Hold (3.0), Sell/Hold (4.0), Sell (5.0) Source: Thomson Reuters.

Gold

Large Cap Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld

Symbol Rating 3-Jan-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2019E %

Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd AEM 2.0 US$60.92 239 $14,570 0.31 0.97 1.82 63.0 33.5 2.60 3.69 5.13 16.5 11.9 18.3 0.9%

Barrick Gold Corp ABX 2.2 US$18.57 1778 $33,027 0.35 0.52 0.73 35.7 25.4 1.51 1.81 2.24 10.3 8.3 11.6 1.0%

Franco-Nevada FNV 2.4 US$103.18 189 $19,489 1.17 1.69 2.11 60.9 49.0 2.55 3.22 3.82 32.0 27.0 40.2 1.1%

Kirkland Lake Gold (CA) KL 2.8 C$43.97 210 $9,233 1.36 2.66 2.65 16.5 16.6 2.58 4.13 4.28 10.7 10.3 49.0 0.3%

Newcrest Mining Ltd (AU) NCM 3.3 AUD$20.98 769 $16,226 0.66 0.89 1.04 23.6 20.2 1.90 1.96 2.02 10.7 10.4 12.4 1.0%

Newmont Goldcorp NEM 2.1 US$42.83 820 $35,114 1.34 1.31 1.92 32.7 22.3 3.41 3.93 4.84 10.9 8.9 17.2 1.5%

Polyus Gold International (UK) PGIL 2.0 RU$7,286.00 134 $15,864 617.74 724.84 831.98 10.1 8.8 589.63 861.18 977.19 8.5 7.5 -- 4.1%

Zijin Mining Group (HK) 2899 1.6 CNY$3.63 25377 $16,520 0.18 0.17 0.21 20.8 17.2 0.44 0.36 0.49 10.0 7.5 25.3 0.0%

Average 32.9 24.1 13.7 11.5 24.9

Mid Cap

Alamos Gold AGI 2.2 US$5.87 391 $2,299 0.05 0.21 0.26 28.0 22.6 0.55 0.73 0.73 8.1 8.1 13.9 0.7%

AngloGold Ashanti Ltd AU 2.7 US$23.48 415 $9,912 0.51 1.21 2.22 19.4 10.6 2.05 2.62 3.96 9.0 5.9 7.7 0.4%

B2Gold Corp BTG 1.7 US$3.86 1026 $3,969 0.16 0.24 0.37 16.0 10.6 0.43 0.49 0.64 7.9 6.0 13.0 0.0%

Buenaventura (ADR) BVN 3.0 US$14.69 276 $3,966 (0.02) 0.45 0.75 32.9 19.5 1.36 0.64 1.06 22.9 13.9 13.8 0.8%

Centerra Gold (CA) CG 2.2 US$7.87 294 $2,310 0.26 0.71 1.07 11.0 7.4 0.74 1.45 1.98 5.4 4.0 6.8 0.0%

Detour Gold Corp (CA) DGC 2.4 US$19.12 177 $3,397 0.37 0.58 0.92 33.0 20.7 1.47 1.87 2.10 10.2 9.1 12.9 0.0%

Evolution Mining Ltd (AU) EVN 2.9 AUD$3.67 1704 $4,348 0.14 0.17 0.24 21.2 15.5 0.39 0.42 0.50 8.7 7.4 9.4 2.2%

Gold Fields Ltd (ADR) GFI 3.0 US$6.54 829 $5,658 0.07 0.22 0.47 30.4 14.0 0.75 1.07 1.44 6.1 4.6 6.2 0.5%

Kinross Gold Corp KGC 2.5 US$4.70 1254 $5,911 0.10 0.31 0.39 15.3 12.0 0.63 0.88 1.05 5.4 4.5 8.7 0.0%

Northern Star Resources (AU) NST 2.3 AUD$11.92 734 $6,118 0.30 0.44 0.70 27.2 17.0 0.58 0.75 1.06 15.9 11.3 19.8 1.2%

Polymetal International PLC (UK) POLY 2.4 US$15.83 470 $7,445 1.00 1.15 1.47 13.7 10.8 1.14 1.50 1.87 10.6 8.5 12.1 4.0%

Pretium Resources PVG 2.1 US$10.94 196 $2,147 0.54 0.51 1.11 21.5 9.9 1.07 1.17 1.81 9.4 6.0 -- 0.0%

Royal Gold Inc RGLD 3.2 US$120.13 66 $7,880 1.60 2.05 2.69 58.7 44.7 4.45 4.48 5.23 26.8 23.0 28.9 0.8%

Saracen Mineral Holdings (AU) SAR 2.0 AUD$3.46 1103 $2,653 0.10 0.18 0.27 19.7 12.8 0.25 0.32 0.41 11.0 8.5 39.6 0.0%

Sibanye Gold Ltd (SA) SGL 1.8 ZAR$37.01 2670 $6,905 (0.01) 1.95 6.48 19.0 5.7 5.31 2.49 10.01 14.9 3.7 11.5 0.0%

SSR Mining SSRM 2.3 US$18.52 123 $2,278 0.23 0.71 1.14 26.0 16.2 0.50 1.54 2.16 12.0 8.6 10.2 0.0%

Yamana Gold Inc AUY 2.5 US$3.88 950 $3,698 0.12 0.12 0.19 32.3 20.2 0.43 0.52 0.68 7.5 5.7 7.6 0.8%

Zhaojin Mining Industry Co Ltd (HK) 1818 2.3 CNY$8.04 3270 $3,775 0.15 0.21 0.33 37.8 24.3 0.53 0.78 1.10 10.4 7.3 20.8 0.5%

Average 25.7 16.4 11.2 8.1 14.3

Small Cap Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld

Symbol Rating 3-Jan-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2019E %

Acacia Mining PLC (UK) ACAA -- US$2.93 410 $1,200 0.11 0.22 0.25 13.5 11.7 0.31 0.44 0.52 6.7 5.6 -- 0.0%

Alacer Gold Corp (CA) ASR 2.6 US$5.14 295 $1,517 0.05 0.41 0.49 12.7 10.4 0.33 0.78 0.98 6.6 5.2 54.3 0.0%

Centamin Egypt (CA) CEE 2.4 US$1.66 1156 $1,917 0.06 0.06 0.09 25.9 17.8 0.19 0.10 0.14 16.7 11.9 4.1 4.8%

Eldorado Gold Corp EGO 2.8 US$8.25 159 $1,274 (0.17) 0.10 0.84 80.0 9.8 0.42 1.06 2.19 7.8 3.8 10.7 0.0%

Endeavour Mining Corp (CA) EDV 1.8 US$19.02 110 $2,090 0.49 0.75 1.71 25.5 11.1 2.33 2.98 4.29 6.4 4.4 12.0 0.0%

Equinox Gold Corp (CA) EQX 2.2 US$7.46 113 $848 (0.10) 0.13 0.51 59.7 14.5 (0.25) 0.74 1.21 10.2 6.2 -- 0.0%

Harmony Gold Mining Ltd HAR 2.1 ZAR$55.30 542 $2,096 1.80 4.36 7.75 12.7 7.1 8.56 11.17 14.93 5.0 3.7 7.9 0.0%

Hecla Mining Co HL 3.3 US$3.35 496 $1,660 (0.11) (0.14) 0.03 -- NM 0.22 0.23 0.36 14.7 9.4 9.3 0.6%

Highland Gold Mining Ltd (UK) HGM 2.7 US$2.64 364 $959 0.15 0.26 0.29 10.1 9.1 0.37 0.41 0.44 6.4 6.0 7.7 6.1%

Hochschild Mining PLC (UK) HOC 2.4 US$2.29 514 $1,178 0.05 0.12 0.14 19.3 16.4 0.36 0.43 0.45 5.3 5.0 4.0 1.7%

Iamgold Corp IAG 2.7 US$3.65 468 $1,713 0.06 0.01 0.25 NM 14.6 0.41 0.54 0.85 6.7 4.3 4.8 0.0%

Lundin Gold Inc (CA) LUG 2.1 US$6.56 223 $1,468 (0.12) (0.18) 0.34 -- 19.3 (0.17) (0.12) 0.58 -- 11.3 -- 0.0%

Oceanagold Corp (AU) OGC 2.1 US$1.99 622 $1,208 0.20 0.06 0.19 34.4 10.3 0.55 0.34 0.45 5.8 4.4 4.8 0.2%

Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd OR 2.1 C$12.50 157 $1,518 0.20 0.26 0.33 48.5 38.2 0.53 0.64 0.75 19.5 16.6 51.8 1.6%

Perseus Mining Ltd (AU) PRU 2.0 AUD$1.15 1168 $939 0.00 0.02 0.05 48.5 21.9 0.10 0.15 0.18 7.6 6.5 -- 0.0%

Regis Resources Ltd (AU) RRL 2.8 AUD$4.37 508 $1,553 0.33 0.37 0.43 11.9 10.1 0.53 0.55 0.59 7.9 7.4 8.3 3.0%

St Barbara Ltd (AU) SBM 2.3 AUD$2.76 699 $1,349 0.32 0.27 0.31 10.3 9.0 0.52 0.45 0.49 6.2 5.7 3.5 2.7%

Sandstorm Gold Ltd (CA) SAND 2.1 US$7.35 175 $1,286 0.03 0.08 0.13 93.3 56.0 0.24 0.32 0.40 22.7 18.5 34.9 0.0%

Semafo (CA) SMF 2.4 US$2.04 334 $683 (0.01) 0.25 0.31 8.1 6.6 0.34 0.75 0.71 2.7 2.9 5.1 0.0%

Silver Lake Resources (AU) SLR 2.2 AUD$1.40 878 $860 0.03 0.05 0.08 26.9 16.9 0.14 0.15 0.19 9.2 7.5 17.4 0.0%

Torex Gold Resources (CA) TXG 1.9 US$15.69 85 $1,340 0.23 0.72 1.22 21.7 12.9 2.68 3.13 3.16 5.0 5.0 8.8 0.0%

Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd (CA) WDO 2.0 C$9.90 137 $1,046 0.11 0.32 0.46 30.8 21.8 0.34 0.57 0.62 17.4 16.1 78.0 0.0%

Average 31.3 16.2 8.9 7.2 14.7

Note: Currency shown is that used by the company for financial reporting. Currency does not always reflect the country/market in which the company/stock symbol trades. GAAP may differ between stocks due to countries and markets.

The tables are compiled from the Thomson Reuters database of consensus Ratings & Estimates of equity analysts. The historicals and estimates of earnings and cash flows exclude non-operating, special items.

Thomson Reuters Rating System: Buy (1.0), Buy/Hold (2.0), Hold (3.0), Sell/Hold (4.0), Sell (5.0) Source: Thomson Reuters.

Silver Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld

Symbol Rating 3-Jan-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2019E %

Americas Gold & Silver Corp (CA) USA 1.8 US$3.08 83 $255 (0.25) (0.20) 0.21 -- 15.0 0.21 0.07 0.52 45.7 5.9 58.7 0.0%

Coeur Mining Corp CDE 2.4 US$7.70 241 $1,852 (0.01) (0.22) 0.19 -- 41.0 0.11 0.56 1.04 13.8 7.4 9.7 0.0%

Endeavour Silver Corp EXK 3.2 US$2.37 140 $332 (0.10) (0.23) (0.01) -- -- 0.21 (0.00) 0.20 -- 11.8 9.5 0.0%

First Majestic Silver Corp AG 2.6 US$11.96 205 $2,450 (0.21) 0.03 0.16 NM 74.8 0.18 0.51 0.78 23.5 15.4 22.1 0.0%

Fortuna Silver Mines FSM 2.1 US$4.03 160 $647 0.24 0.17 0.46 23.7 8.8 0.52 0.36 0.92 11.2 4.4 8.6 0.0%

Fresnillo (UK) FRES 2.7 US$8.65 737 $6,374 0.46 0.22 0.31 38.7 28.3 1.09 0.86 0.94 10.1 9.2 6.8 2.9%

MAG Silver Corp MAG 1.9 US$11.41 86 $987 (0.09) (0.05) 0.28 -- 41.2 (0.05) (0.04) 0.08 -- NM -- 0.0%

Pan American Silver PAAS 2.2 US$23.48 210 $4,915 0.39 0.61 0.98 38.5 24.1 1.01 1.48 2.51 15.9 9.4 18.7 0.9%

Silvercorp Metals Inc SVM 2.0 US$5.62 172 $969 0.21 0.21 0.22 26.5 25.3 0.40 0.41 0.39 13.6 14.4 -- 0.6%

Wheaton Precious Metals WPM 1.9 US$29.55 447 $13,211 0.48 0.58 0.87 51.2 33.9 1.22 1.17 1.47 25.4 20.0 23.3 1.4%

Average 35.7 32.5 19.9 10.9 19.7

Platinum Group Metals

African Rainbow Minerals (SA) ARI 2.1 ZAR$165.17 224 $2,584 25.61 29.27 29.20 5.6 5.7 13.97 17.61 22.93 9.4 7.2 35.3 7.1%

Anglo American Platinum Ltd (SA) AMS 3.0 ZAR$1,343.08 270 $25,721 28.22 72.96 95.35 18.4 14.1 59.17 82.08 102.91 16.4 13.1 38.5 2.2%

Impala Platinum (SA) IMP 2.3 ZAR$148.43 799 $9,118 1.23 10.57 17.56 14.0 8.5 9.05 16.36 19.04 9.1 7.8 40.7 0.0%

Lonmin PLC (UK) LMI -- US$0.96 290 $278 -- 0.41 0.40 2.3 2.4 -- 0.48 0.02 2.0 62.9 -- 0.0%

North American Palladium Ltd (CA) PDL -- C$19.73 59 $883 -- 2.30 2.49 8.6 7.9 -- 3.95 -- 5.0 -- -- 1.3%

Northam Platinum Ltd (SA) NHM 2.1 ZAR$127.51 510 $4,616 (0.92) 4.29 10.21 29.7 12.5 3.39 12.86 18.85 9.9 6.8 86.3 0.0%

Average 13.1 8.5 8.6 19.5 50.2

Diamonds & Gems Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld

Symbol Rating 3-Jan-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2019E %

AK Alrosa PAO (RU) ALRS 2.4 RU$33.75 7365 $10,191 12.29 8.12 10.00 4.2 3.4 16.55 8.74 12.72 3.9 2.7 3.9 10.7%

Lucara Diamond Corp (CA) LUC 2.0 US$0.64 397 $254 0.03 0.04 0.06 16.8 10.1 0.11 0.15 0.17 4.3 3.8 1.3 9.0%

Mountain Province Diamonds (CA) MPVD 2.3 US$1.14 210 $185 (0.10) (0.12) 0.08 -- 14.9 0.69 0.41 0.56 2.8 2.0 -- 3.2%

Petra Diamonds Ltd (UK) PDL 2.5 US$0.12 865 $100 (0.01) (0.01) 0.01 -- 20.5 0.12 0.10 0.09 1.2 1.3 4.3 0.0%

Average 10.5 12.2 3.0 2.4 3.2

Fertilizers

Arab Potash Co (JR) APOT -- JOD$20.45 83 $2,408 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 15.9 6.3%

CF Industries CF 2.4 US$46.08 217 $10,019 1.24 2.29 2.58 20.2 17.9 6.40 6.78 7.22 6.8 6.4 19.1 2.4%

Compass Minerals CMP 2.3 US$60.00 34 $2,033 1.93 2.17 3.72 27.7 16.1 5.63 5.09 9.70 11.8 6.2 12.5 5.1%

Incitec Pivot Ltd (AU) IPL 2.9 AUD$3.19 1606 $3,582 0.18 0.11 0.19 27.8 17.0 0.36 0.29 0.40 11.0 8.0 10.3 1.4%

Israel Chemical (IS) ICL 2.3 US$4.64 1305 $6,061 0.37 0.40 0.41 11.6 11.2 0.48 0.77 0.71 6.1 6.5 8.2 4.2%

K & S Aktiengesellschaft (GR) SDF 2.5 EUR$11.04 191 $2,360 0.22 0.52 0.82 21.2 13.4 1.61 2.62 2.86 4.2 3.9 9.6 2.0%

Mosaic Co MOS 2.3 US$20.76 379 $7,863 2.12 0.55 1.47 37.9 14.1 3.75 3.37 3.42 6.2 6.1 10.8 0.7%

Nutrien Ltd NTR 2.0 US$46.85 573 $26,857 2.69 2.39 3.04 19.6 15.4 3.28 6.96 6.01 6.7 7.8 -- 0.0%

Sociedad Quimica Minera (ADR) SQM 3.0 US$26.72 263 $6,944 1.67 1.10 1.25 24.3 21.3 1.99 1.60 1.58 16.7 16.9 10.0 4.6%

Yara International ASA (NO) YAR 2.5 NOK$40.28 272 $10,972 1.68 2.97 3.40 13.6 11.9 2.77 6.13 6.14 6.6 6.6 9.1 1.7%

Average 22.6 15.4 8.4 7.6 11.7

Note: Currency shown is that used by the company for financial reporting. Currency does not always reflect the country/market in which the company/stock symbol trades. GAAP may differ between stocks due to countries and markets.

The tables are compiled from the Thomson Reuters database of consensus Ratings & Estimates of equity analysts. The historicals and estimates of earnings and cash flows exclude non-operating, special items.

Thomson Reuters Rating System: Buy (1.0), Buy/Hold (2.0), Hold (3.0), Sell/Hold (4.0), Sell (5.0) Source: Thomson Reuters.

Uranium Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld

Symbol Rating 3-Jan-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2019E %

Cameco Corp CCJ 2.4 C$11.73 396 $3,572 0.53 (0.00) 0.09 -- NM 1.68 0.87 0.82 13.5 14.3 8.2 0.6%

Denison Mines DNN 2.1 US$0.53 590 $241 (0.04) (0.04) (0.03) -- -- (0.04) (0.04) (0.02) -- -- -- 0.0%

Energy Resources Australia (AU) ERA 4.0 AUD$0.16 3691 $413 0.03 (0.03) (0.09) -- -- (0.11) 0.17 (0.03) 0.9 -- 14.1 0.0%

Uranium Participation Corp (CA) U 2.1 C$4.09 138 $434 (0.03) 0.16 0.26 25.3 15.8 (0.04) (0.04) (0.05) -- -- -- 0.0%

Average 25.3 15.8 7.2 14.3 11.1

Coal

Large - Mid Cap Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld

Symbol Rating 3-Jan-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2018 2019E 2020E 2019E 2020E 2019E %

Adaro Energy TBK (ID) ADRO 2.5 US$0.11 31986 $3,375 0.01 0.01 0.01 7.7 8.1 0.03 0.02 0.02 4.4 4.7 5.4 9.5%

Banpu Public Co Ltd (TH) BANPU 2.9 THB$0.40 5162 $2,089 0.08 0.03 0.04 15.6 10.7 0.08 0.09 0.07 4.7 5.6 16.7 5.8%

China Coal Energy Co (HK) 1898 2.1 CNY$2.83 13259 $8,329 0.34 0.51 0.45 5.6 6.3 1.54 1.54 1.54 1.8 1.8 12.0 2.7%

China Shenhua Energy Co (HK) 1088 2.4 CNY$14.88 19890 $51,202 2.22 2.23 2.09 6.7 7.1 4.44 4.00 3.47 3.7 4.3 5.3 6.3%

Consol Energy CNX 2.9 US$8.54 187 $1,593 1.36 0.62 0.52 13.7 16.5 4.13 4.18 4.17 2.0 2.0 7.4 0.0%

Whitehaven Coal Lyd (AU) WHC 2.4 AUD$2.65 1026 $1,901 0.54 0.36 0.19 7.4 13.7 0.87 0.62 0.41 4.3 6.5 6.5 0.0%

Yancoal Australia Lyd YAL -- AUD$2.92 1320 $2,696 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 0.0%

Yanzhou Coal Mining Co Ltd (HK) 1171 2.7 CNY$6.42 4912 $6,290 1.75 1.82 1.61 3.5 4.0 3.71 3.59 3.44 1.8 1.9 17.1 0.0%

Average 8.6 9.5 3.3 3.8 10.0

Small Cap

Fushan Int'l Energy Group (HK) 639 2.3 HK$1.76 5302 $1,198 0.21 0.22 0.22 7.9 8.0 0.31 0.32 0.42 5.5 4.2 7.6 10.0%

NLC India Ltd (IN) NLCINDIA -- INR$57.60 1387 $1,120 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 8.2 --

New Hope Corp Ltd (AU) NHC 2.4 AUD$2.10 832 $1,221 0.31 0.27 0.20 7.8 10.7 0.44 0.36 0.34 5.8 6.2 13.5 6.8%

PT Tambang Batubara Bukit (ID) PTBA 2.9 IDR$2,670 11521 $2,216 477.00 367.62 322.74 7.3 8.3 746.44 286.17 301.92 9.3 8.8 9.5 15.0%

PT Bumi Resources (ID) BUMI -- US$0.01 65477 $343 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 0.0%

Average 7.7 9.0 6.9 6.4 9.7

Limited Partnership

Alliance Resource Partners LP ARLP 2.5 US$11.65 128 $1,493 2.99 1.59 0.92 7.3 12.7 5.31 2.61 1.90 4.5 6.1 3.2 13.3%

Natural Resource Partners LP NRP -- US$21.19 12 $260 6.43 5.20 4.12 4.1 5.1 9.19 7.06 5.28 3.0 4.0 3.4 7.1%

Average 5.7 8.9 3.7 5.1 3.3

Note: Currency shown is that used by the company for financial reporting. Currency does not always reflect the country/market in which the company/stock symbol trades. GAAP may differ between stocks due to countries and markets.

The tables are compiled from the Thomson Reuters database of consensus Ratings & Estimates of equity analysts. The historicals and estimates of earnings and cash flows exclude non-operating, special items.

Thomson Reuters Rating System: Buy (1.0), Buy/Hold (2.0), Hold (3.0), Sell/Hold (4.0), Sell (5.0) Source: Thomson Reuters.

Recent and Forecast Commodity Prices

Cash Price (3-Jan-20)

Aluminum ($0.80 / lb)

Cobalt ($14.52 / lb)

Copper ($2.76 / lb)

Lead ($0.86 / lb)

Molybdenum ($9.32 / lb)

Nickel ($6.23 / lb)

Tin ($7.60 / lb)

Zinc ($1.04 / lb)

Palladium ($1967 / oz)

Platinum ($980 / oz)

Silver ($18.02 / oz)

Uranium ($25.00 / lb)
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Linkedin Glenda Kwek (Agence France-Presse) Sydney, Australia  Mon, January 6, 2020 22:05 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c3211652c 2 Environment Australia,fire,environment,animals,koala,bushfire,climate Free

At least half of Australia's only disease-free koala population, a key "insurance" for the species' future, is feared dead with more badly hurt after bushfires swept through an island sanctuary, rescuers said Sunday.

Kangaroo Island, a popular nature-based tourist attraction off the coast of South Australia state, is home to many wild populations of native animals including the much-loved koala, where the populated was estimated at 50,000.

Massive bushfires have flared up in the vast country's southeast in a months-long crisis, killing nearly half a billion native animals in New South Wales state alone, scientists estimate.

Conditions have been particularly severe in recent days, with an ongoing blaze on Kangaroo Island spreading rapidly and razing 170,000 hectares -- one-third of the island -- on Friday.

"Over 50 percent (of the population) has been lost," Sam Mitchell of Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park, which is raising funds to care for the injured koalas, told AFP.

"Injuries are extreme. Others have been left with no habitat to go back to, so starvation will be an issue in coming weeks."

A University of Adelaide study published in July found that the Kangaroo Island koala species is particularly important to the survival of the wider population as it is the only large group free from chlamydia.

Read also: 'They told people not to come': Australia's bushfires ravage tourism industry

The bacterial infection -- which causes blindness, infertility and death in the species -- is widespread in koalas in the eastern Queensland and New South Wales states and also occurs in Victoria state.

"They are an insurance population for the whole population," the University of Adelaide's Jessica Fabijan, who carried out the study, told AFP. "These fires have ravaged the population."

Fabijan said massive bushfires in New South Wales and Victoria's Gippsland region, home to major koala populations, is also expected to have killed many animals.

"It's one of the biggest tragedies for the population since the late 1800s when they used to hunt them for their fur," she added.

Habitat loss, dog attacks, car strikes and climate change have already led to a sharp decline in the furry marsupial's population, which is believed to have numbered more than 10 million prior to European settlement of the continent in 1788.

The koalas cannot be removed from the island due to their chlamydia-free status, the state government said, adding that veterinarians were rescuing and treating the injured animals on-site.

Topics : Australia fire environment animals koala bushfire climate
2019 marked a very important year for Irelands beef farmers, as they sought to take back some of the market control from the countrys top meat processors.

Countrywide pickets, organised by the Beef Plan Movement (BPM), began back in early August, with farmers protesting outside sixteen meat processing facilities throughout the country.

Longford farmers showed their solidarity to the cause by joining the pickets outside Kepak Kilbeggan, Kepak Athleague and Liffey Meats Ballyjamesduff.

They then took pickets to Kepak Ballymahon and C&D Foods in Edgeworthstown, vowing to stay on as long as was necessary.

With protests lasting eight weeks in total, the main aim was to secure improved prices for the beef stock they produce. However, as blockades continued and efforts made to commence beef crisis talks, Meat Industry Ireland (MII) confirmed they would not enter into talks while illegal blockades continued.

Injunctions were then sought and granted against leading members of the BPM, as well as two Longford farmers over their role in blockades at C&D Foods Edgeworthstown.

These legal threats eventually led to the countrywide cessation of protests at the end of September, with farmers vowing to return to pickets if demands were not met.



In the weeks following, attempts were made to commence beef market taskforce talks. However, representatives of MII claim they were blocked from entering talks by farmers voicing their concern of legal injunctions hanging over the heads of two farmers and leaders of BPM .

This led to the suspension of talks, before farmers again showcased their frustrations at a lack of progress being made and commenced another strand of protests. This time, they caused a major traffic disruption in Dublin city as a convoy of tractors made their way to Kildare Street in late November, demanding a meeting with Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed, TD.

The main aim of the tractor protest was to highlight the falling incomes of the farming community, especially those in the beef and meat sector. The protest continued until Minister Creed agreed to speak to representatives of protestors.

With prices yet to increase significantly as of December 2019, farmers have already announced plans of further protests in early January. The team behind the tractor protest in Dublin have organised another demonstration, which is due to take place on January 15.

Will farmers finally receive a fair price for their produce in 2020? Or will 2020 spell the start of further demonstrations? Now, we wait and see.
Foreign Minister S Jaishankar on Monday held discussions over regional issues with his Jordanian and Qatari counterparts Ayman Safadi and Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani respectively.

"Thank FM @AymanHsafadi of Jordan for our conversation today. The discussion on bilateral relations and regional issues reflected the close and warm ties between India and Jordan," Jaishankar said in a tweet.

"Appreciated the insights of FM of Qatar @MBA_AlThani_ in our telephonic talk today on the regional situation. Conversation reflected our strong bilateral partnership," he said in another tweet.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Queen Letizia of Spain donned a stunning blue coat dress to return to work today after a festive break.

The monarch, 47, looked ethereal in a figure-skimming, floor-length number with a V-neck as she appeared relaxed at the traditional celebration of the Pascua Militar in Madrid.

It is tradition that the attending Queen wears a long dress and Letizia didn't veer from the dress code with her outfit, but did opt for a formal gown with a daring slit that showed off her toned legs.

Letizia wore her hair in a plaited low chignon for the event, which is a long-standing tradition for the Spanish military, dating back to 1782.

Queen Letizia of Spain donned a stunning blue coat dress to return to work today with her husband King Felipe after a festive break. The monarch, 47, looked ethereal in a figure-skimming, floor-length number with a V-neck as she appeared cheerful at the traditional celebration of the Pascua Militar in Madrid

Letizia wore her hair in a plaited low chignon for the event, which is a long-standing tradition for the Spanish military, dating back to 1782

Her husband King Felipe, 51, who is also Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, donned his full military regalia for the event, which is on January 6 every year.

The parade, which was combined with a reception at the Palacio Real, was held to mark Epiphany - a national holiday in Spain.

Considered almost as important as Christmas Day itself, Epiphany marks the moment when baby Jesus, at just a few days old, was seen for the first time by the Magi or Three Kings.

It is tradition that the attending Queen wears a long dress and Letizia didn't veer from the dress code with her outfit, but did opt for a thigh-high split in her formal gown

Her husband King Felipe, 51, who is also Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, donned his full military regalia for the event, which is on January 6 every year

Known in Spain as El Dia de los Reyes (Day of the Kings), it is celebrated with presents and colourful parades, the oldest of which takes place in Valencia.

The biggest and most important, however, is Madrid's - thanks in no small part to the presence of a real king at the procession.

Showing off her sartorial prowess, the Queen opted for sky-high black stilettos but kept accessories to a minimum, opting for a small pair of pearl earrings and a statement gold ring.

The parade, which was combined with a reception at the Palacio Real, was held to mark Epiphany - a national holiday in Spain. Considered almost as important as Christmas Day itself, Epiphany marks the moment when baby Jesus, at just a few days old, was seen for the first time by the Magi or Three Kings. The royal couple are pictured here after they chaired the army celebration marking Epiphany Day

A natural beauty, the royal sported a smokey pink eye shadow and lashings of black mascara with a complementary rose lip gloss.

Letizia's last public engagement was before her festive break, where she took a tour of The Other Court exhibition, at Madrid's Royal Palace.

The exhibition looks at Spain's close ties with the Austrian Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The biggest and most important, however, takes place in Madrid - thanks in no small part to the presence of a real king at the procession. Pictured: King Felipe views the mounted Royal Guard members next to Queen Letizia

Queen Letizia and King Felipe VI greet a military woman during the army celebration marking Epiphany Day at the Royal Palace in downtown Madrid

King Felipe VI delivers a speech next to Queen Letizia and acting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez (third right) as they attend the army celebration marking Epiphany Day

The Queen married King Felipe at the Almudena Cathedral at Royal Palace, Madrid, in May 2004.

The couple are parents to Princesses Leonor, 13, and Sofia, 11.

Before marrying into the royal family, Letizia had previously worked as a reporter for the news channel 24 Horas where she held a weekly anchor position on the show Informe Semanal and also a position on the daily morning news programme.
In order to acknowledge the positive role and responsibility of media in disseminating the outreach of Yoga in India and abroad, Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting (I & B) Prakash Javadekar will confer the first 'Antarrashtriya Yoga Diwas Media Samman' to 30 media houses in New Delhi on January 7.

The "Antarashtriya Yoga Diwas Media Samman (AYDMS)" was instituted in June last year to mark the contribution of media in spreading the message of Yoga.

Under it prizes will be bestowed under three categories, including eleven to be conferred under the category "Best Media Coverage of Yoga in Newspapers", eight to be conferred under the category "Best Media Coverage of Yoga in Television," and eleven to be conferred under the category "Best Media Coverage of Yoga in Radio".

The prize will comprise a special medal, plaque, trophy and a citation.

"The contribution of Media in popularising of Yoga and the entries were assessed by a Jury comprising of 6 members and was headed by Justice C. K. Prasad, Chairman, Press Council of India," said a government release.

The International Day of Yoga has been celebrated annually on 21 June since 2015. The idea of International Day of Yoga was first proposed by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his address at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), on September 27, 2014.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
What's next for "Star Wars" fans after the ninth installment of the sequel trilogy? Fans are giving their two cents, pitching ideas to Lucasfilm for what they wish to see next.

Ideas like Revan's story, an R-rated Vader movie, and even a nature docu-series voiced over by David Attenborough have been pitched. It all started with the Twitter challenge posted by "Joseph Was A Spice Runner" who goes by @DoctorRagnarok on social media.

The Star Wars aficionado caught the attention of fans when he asked for pitches that are not remakes from the saga. He wanted original, creative ideas that could get the attention of Lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy.

#FilmTwitter #StarWarsFans



Lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy call you to pitch a Star Wars movie for them. It could be a standalone movie, a trilogy, anything you want.



What's your pitch?



Note: No remakes of *Insert SW movie here* Be creative. Lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy call you to pitch a Star Wars movie for them. It could be a standalone movie, a trilogy, anything you want.What's your pitch?Note: No remakes of *Insert SW movie here* Be creative. pic.twitter.com/yS8hH7elzh  Joseph Was A Spice Runner (@DoctorRagnarok) January 2, 2020

All for the Fun of It

The saga fan later updated his post to reveal that he is no way connected to Lucasfilm. He revealed how he had been getting full drafts in his DMs and wished for the public to stop sending them.

The fan added that he does not have the clout nor the money to boost these people's works. Rather, he strongly cautioned them to protect their ideas and publish them on websites online. He praised many for their brilliant ideas and told them to "get to work on them."

Not All Fans Are Happy with "Skywalker"

Part of the reason why "Star Wars" fans have decided to intervene was because of how "Rise of Skywalker" ended. Critics have claimed that the ninth installment may have attempted to undo some of the changes made on "The Last Jedi."

Filmmakers J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio explained the challenges of trying to balance as much as 24 characters. Further, they had to somehow coincide plot points dating as far back as 42 years.

The "Rise of Skywalker" director and writer unveiled how they wanted to do a two-part final installment. However, George Lucas himself directed that the saga would only have nine movies.

Terrio added how it breaks him to leave important details out of the film. He said he was aware of plots that would give characters more to do and the story more depth. However, a 'Part 1" and 'Part 2' of "Rise of Skywalker" was out of the question from the very beginning.

"Star Wars" Fans Start Brainstorming

The saga fans convened over on DoctorRagnarok's Twitter post, making it a sounding board of their creativity. It is expected that by now, some of these pitches would at least have made it to Lucasfilm.

With over 4,000 comments and hundreds retweets, suffice to say, filmmakers and writers are bound to get some ideas of this post.

Among the pitches up for the taking include a TV series on the handmaidens of Naboo. One combined the idea of "Star Wars" with "Top Gun," having a rogue squadron and the training pilots go through.

There was also the idea of making a musical on Rebo's story. One asked for a third installment of Kotor and another wanted more of Han Solo with Qi'ra becoming a tyrannical crime lord.

Why Not Just Give It a Break

However, other fans are not much in a rush to get the next "Star Wars" films out there. After all, there has been as much as five movies in the last four years, as one pointed out.

As of date, there has already been rumors that the next "Star Wars" movie story has already been finalized. It is said to be set four centuries before the "Skywalker" saga. If true, these fan-made pitches remain proof that the "Star Wars" hype is not dying.

READ MORE: 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker': First Same-Sex Kiss on Star Wars EXPLAINED
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday termed the attack on students and teachers at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University as a "fascist surgical strike" by the BJP, evoking sharp reactions from the saffron party, which said she should stop shedding "crocodile tears".

Banerjee, who is also the TMC boss, said she had begun her political career as a student leader but never before witnessed such "brazen attack" on educational institutes.

"Whatever is happening across the country is very disturbing... I, too, was involved in student at one point in time, but never have I witnessed this sort of an attack on students and educational institutions...

"It was a planted attack on democracy. Yesterday's was a fascist surgical strike on the student community," Banerjee told reporters, before leaving for her three-day trip to Gangasagar.

Whoever raised voice against the BJP was dubbed "anti national" or a Pakistani", she claimed.

"India is a democracy and we have our right to protest. Anyone who speaks against them is branded an enemy of the state. In a democracy, how can someone be branded anti- national or Pakistani for his or her protest against the government," Banerjee questioned.

The Delhi Police is not under Arvind Kejriwal dispensation, it is under the central government, she said.

"On one hand, they (BJP) have sent goons, and, on the other, they have asked the police to not to take any action. What could police do if they are asked by their higher ups to stay put?" she said.

On Sunday, too, the CM had condemned the violence on JNU campus, terming it a "heinous act".

A four-member Trinamool Congress (TMC) delegation is visiting JNU on Monday to express solidarity with the students and teachers, she said.

Reacting to Banerjee's comment, West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh said, "Banerjee should stop shedding crocodile tears for the students of JNU."



"Where was she when Union minister Babul Supriyo was heckled on Jadavpur University campus on September 19 (last year)? Just to score some political points, she is sending a delegation. Why didn't she send a delegation to those colleges which were ransacked by TMCP activists over the past eight years," he questioned.

Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged properties on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prince Charles, 71, and Camilla at London's Leicester Square on December 4 last year

Prince Charles still intends to visit Israel despite heightened tensions in the Middle East after the assassination of Iran's top general Qassem Soleimani on the orders of Donald Trump.

Clarence House announced Charles would be visiting Israel and Palestine from January 23 to 24, where he will attend the World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem.

Charles will meet both Israeli president Reuven Rivlin, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem.

The visit is scheduled after the World Economic Forum summit at Davos, which he will attend for the first time in nearly 30 years.

The 71-year-old Prince of Wales will give a keynote address at the annual meeting in the Swiss town in a fortnight's time on January 22 - his first visit since 1992.

Charles's trip comes despite security concerns in the Middle East following Mr Soleimani's death in Baghdad on January 3.

Charles (right) at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1992 - his last visit to the summit

Charles's Sustainable Markets Council aims to champion sustainable markets around the world with help from companies, financial institutions and governments.

Charles's visit to Davos will be a stopover on the way to his visit to Israel and Palestine at the UK Government's request.

His new initiative hopes to 'find ways to rapidly decarbonise the global economy and make the transition to sustainable markets', Clarence House said today.

A spokesman for Charles added that the scheme also 'brings together leading international figures from the private, public and philanthropic sectors'.

Charles has been outspoken about climate change for years - and is pictured talking about the issue in the City of London at the May Day Business Summit on Climate Change in May 2008

The heir to the throne is attending the summit, which takes place between January 21 and 24, at the invitation of the World Economic Forum.

Prince William visited Davos in 2019 as he spoke to Sir David Attenborough about the environment and opened up about his personal mental health struggles.

Charles is the Royal Family's most noted and passionate green campaigner and recently told how he believes climate change reaches a 'tipping point'.

Speaking last November during his tour of New Zealand, Charles said he feared for his grandchildren's future as the world faces 'an urgent global crisis'.

Charles talks to insurance industry chiefs about climate change in London in September 2007

He added that humans have been on a 'dizzying spending spree for centuries' with the planet's resources and we are facing a 'climate and biodiversity emergency'.

Charles has been outspoken about climate change for years  and last year it was revealed he attempted to convince US President Donald Trump of its seriousness.

Speaking at Clarence House in July 2019, Charles warned that the following 18 months were critical for humanity to survive the impact of climate change.

The Prince said the future of our species  as well as the world's wildlife  could be decided in a series of crucial United Nations meetings between world leaders.

Prince William, pictured at a glacier in Pakistan in October 2019, has launched an award which will grant millions of pounds to those who can come up with solutions to global warming

Last month, Prince William warned that humanity risks irreparably damaging the Earth with climate change  and humans had just ten years to save the world.

He said we can either continue on our present course and 'irreparably damage the planet' or use our 'unique power' to solve the climate crisis for generations to come.

Invoking Nasa's missions to the Moon, the prince launched an ambitious 'Earthshot Prize' to spearhead a decade of action.

The award, which has been endorsed by Sir David Attenborough, will grant millions of pounds to those who can come up with solutions to global warming.
A Bahujan Samaj Party delegation on Monday met Uttar Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel and sought her intervention for the release of "innocent" people jailed in connection with protests against the amended citizenship law and immediate withdrawal of cases against them.

The delegation, led by party MP Satish Mishra, handed over a memorandum to the governor at Raj Bhawan a day after BSP chief Mayawati asked the Uttar Pradesh government to apologise to the people for putting anti-citizenship law protesters behind bars without thorough investigation.

"The BSP has opposed this law which grants citizenship on the basis of religion, making it divisive and unconstitutional... and had also voted against it in Parliament," the memorandum signed by Mayawati said.

"There was widespread opposition to this law all over the country and in UP there was violence. Earlier the police and state government held the protestors solely responsible for it and also acted in a vindictive manner, putting people in large numbers behind the bars," it said.

It claimed media reports had brought to fore the attitude of the state government, police and administration which had been most barbaric and biased.

The memorandum said that the BSP demanded judicial probe into the incidents of violence and police action, saying it would expose before the people the real attitude of the UP government and excesses of police and administration.

It said the state government should provide "justifiable" financial assistance to the kin of those who died during the protests and demanded that "innocent" people who were jailed be released immediately besides withdrawing the cases lodged against them.

The BSP's demand came against the backdrop of a local court, on Saturday, granting bail to social activist Sadaf Jafar and former IPS officer S R Darapuri, besides 13 others arrested in connection with anti-CAA protests in Lucknow.

In a tweet, Mayawati had said, "In Uttar Pradesh, especially in Bijnor, Sambhal, Meerut, Muzzafarnagar, Firozabad, innocent people have been sent to jail for protesting against the CAA/NRC without an investigation. This issue has also been raised by the media and is highly shameful and condemnable."



Accusing the Yogi Adityanath-led government of jailing anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protesters without any proper investigation, she had asked them to apologise to the public.

Officials maintain that 19 people died in clashes during widespread protests across the state in December, though opposition parties claim a higher toll.

Around 1,200 people were arrested and 5,558 kept in preventive detention following clashes during the protests, the officials said.

The act grants citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Jains,Parsis, Buddhists and Christians fleeing religious persecution from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh who came to India on or before December 31, 2014. It has been called discriminatory as the legislation excludes Muslims from the three countries.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Moscow on January 11 for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the crisis triggered by the killing of top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. airstrike.

Merkel will make the trip on the invitation of Putin and they will also discuss the situation in Syria, Libya and Ukraine, Reuters reported.

The parties also plan to discuss a range of bilateral issues.

Merkel's spokesman said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas would accompany her on the trip.

Soleimani, viewed as the second most powerful man in Iran, was killed at Baghdad airport last Friday by a U.S. drone. The attack has taken long-simmering U.S.-Iranian hostilities into uncharted waters and stoked concerns about a major conflagration.

ish
Apple CEO Tim Cook had a great seat at the Golden Globes on Sunday night. The seat was so good, in fact, that he was able to see and hear clearly actor and comedian Ricky Gervais slam his company.

During his opening monologue, Gervais noted that Apple's new series, The Morning Show, had earned a nomination for best television series drama. When he mentioned Apple, the camera panned to Tim Cook, who had a smile on his face. He probably lost it before the sentence was over.

"Apple rolled into the TV game with a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China," Gervais said. The camera moved away from Cook's face before the punch line, leaving us all to wonder how he reacted when the joke landed.

But Gervais wasn't done. He then turned his attention to the actors in the room, and seemed to suggest that Apple and Disney aren't the best of companies to work with on creative projects.

"So, you say you're woke, but the companies you work for [are] unbelievable," Gervais said. "Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service, you'd call your agent, wouldn't you?"

Gervais's comments must not have sat well with Cook or Apple. The company is notorious for keeping tight control over its public image. And Cook, as the company's leader, may be one of the most tightly scripted executives in the world. Every comment, every commercial from Apple, is thought out and meant to preserve the company's brand appeal.

But China continues to be a problem for Apple.

Technically, Apple doesn't operate manufacturing facilities in China. Instead, the company partners with other companies, like Foxconn, to produce its devices.

That said, Apple's partners, and therefore Apple, have at times been criticized for poor working treatment. Apple has for years operated an audit system to inspect its third-party manufacturing partners and has a zero-tolerance policy on poor working conditions, child labor, and other workforce issues. But in its regular reports on working conditions in its supply chain, Apple still finds issues.

Ultimately, Apple argues that its suppliers make progress each year thanks in part to its audits and evaluations.

But that didn't save the company from Gervais's jokes Sunday night. And although we don't know for sure how Cook handled the jab, he made no indication on Twitter that he took offense.
It is with great sadness and a sense of loss that we record the passing of Anastasia (Cissie) Deady, Ballinlough, Carrigeen Co. Kilkenny which occurred on Sunday morning the 25th August 2019 at her daughter Anne's home. She was 92 years old, having celebrated her birthday on the 30th July. Anastasia was of a quiet disposition and the oldest member in the Carrigeen community. Her death came as a great shock to her family. Anastasia was born on the 30th July 1927 to the late Thomas and Brigid Rowe,Ballygorey. She was the last surviving member of the Rowe family. She was predeceased by her beloved husband Michael (Mikey). Her sisters Margaret Walsh, Ballygriffin, Mary-Kate Roche, Curraghmore, Slieverue, Hannah O' Connell, Gracedieu. Her brothers Philip Rowe, Ballygorey, John Rowe, Ballygorey and Manchester. Anastasia was educated at Carrigeen Primary school and Mooncoin Vocational school, where she spent many happy years.Years later she met the love of her life Michael (Mikey) Deady. They got married and resided in Ballinlough where they raised a family of six children. She was a devoted wife to her late husband Mikey, with whom she cared for so well. When illness struck in 1999, this meant a whole new change of life for him,which he accepted with edified patience,never once complaining when confined to a wheelchair. He was an example to us all. She was always there for him. Anastasia was a devoted Mother, Grandmother and Great-grandmother. She loved all her family.They were always her first concern, she put their needs ahead of her own, She was hardworking, as was her husband Mikey, generous, caring, thoughtful, loving and so much more.She was a stay at home mother, always there for her family. She was up early to get them ready for school, had dinner ready when they arrived home, helped with their homework along with Mikey and catered for all their other needs. Anastasia enjoyed the company of family and friends, having a chat and a laugh over a cup of tea or coffee with a nice cream cake and buns provided on occasions by her niece Brigid McGrath. She loved travelling and went on a round the world trip and holiday to Australia, America and Canada with Mikey and her brother-in-law Joseph. They spent a month away and enjoyed it immensely. Anastasia was a great home cook and provided gorgeous meals and delicious apple tarts, cakes, puddings and brown bread for her family. She was never happier than when everyone tucked in and enjoyed. Anastasia was a lady of great faith, to whom her religion and spiritual values played a major part in her life. A staunch believer in God and family traditions. A devotee of the family Rosary, which was recited each night with her family. She attended Mass in her local church, up until such a time that she was unable to attend, she then listened to the broadcast of the Mass on the radio from Mooncoin parish church. When Mikey passed away in 2011, Anastasia went to live with her daughter Anne and son-in-law Noel in their home in Carrigeen. She travelled to England, Lourdes, Knock and other parts of Ireland with them. She was delighted and excited heading off on her journey.She enjoyed shopping and going out for meals, particular the Granville Hotel, Waterford, meeting people for a chat. In 2012 the Eucharistic Congress Bell arrived in the parish, Anastasia was honoured to ring it, and be part of that great occasion. She enjoyed the simple things in life. She had the pleasure of meeting Eileen Dunne and Michael Murphy from RTE in the Watergate Theatre Kilkenny at a show there. Anastasia had a great love of sport. She played camogie in her early years and kept a great interest in hurling, especially when Kilkenny were playing. She had her headband on and her flag in her hand cheering them on.Anastasia was delighted to meet Henry Shefflin, D.J.Carey and Brian Cody at the launch of their Autobiographies in Langtons Hotel, Kilkenny. Proud to have her photograph taken with them, with their books. Anastasia had an interest in music and song, reading the daily and local newspapers, Ireland's own, magazines in general, solving wordsearch puzzles and keeping in touch with all the local news.She always looked forward to the First Fridays with a visit from Fr. Martin Tobin and previously from Fr. Peter Muldowney and Fr. Larry O'Keeffe. They were so good to her, her daughter Anne brought her the Eucharist weekly. Rosary and prayers were recited on Monday evening by Fr. Liam Barron at her daughters home and on Tuesday evening by Fr. Martin Tobin at Powers funeral home. A large number of people came to pay their respects in the presence of her loving family,as her remains lay in repose. Anastasia's remains was then taken back to her daughters home on Tuesday night where she lay until Wednesday morning. The family walked the short distance to St. Kevin's church, Carrigeen where her remains were received and blessed by Fr. Martin Tobin. Requiem mass was celebrated on Wednesday at 12.00 noon in the presence of a large congregation by Fr. Martin Tobin and concelebrated by Fr. Liam Barron, Fr. Peter Muldowney and Fr. Richard Brennan. The memorabilia which played a major part in Anastasia's life were carried to the alter by her daughters Patricia Kelly who carried her walking stick, Brigid Finn her wordsearch puzzle book, Her granddaughter Joanne Kelly her ninety second birthday card, Chloe Deady a Kilkenny flag, Son Tommy Deady a radio, Niece Brigid McGrath a cookery book. Son-in- law Noel Walsh a bottle of holy water and a rosary beads. A commentary on the significance of the gifts was given by Fr. Liam Barron.Readings were read by Anastasia' s daughter Anne Walsh, Granddaughter Rebecca Twomey. Prayers of the faithful remembered with gratitude the doctors, nurses, carers and staff of U.H.W. who were so good to Anastasia during her admissions there, also St. Patrick's Hospital for respite in recent times. They were shared by her Grandchildren Joanne Kelly, Rebecca Twomey and her Great-grandchild Emma Finn. Fr. Martin gave an uplifting and meaningful homily. The Bread and Wine which exemplified Anastasia's great faith in the sacrifice of the Mass was carried to the alter by her daughter Anne and son-in-law Noel. Anastasia's Granddaughter Joanne recited a poem "Thank you Nanny " on behalf of the Grandchildren to the Grandmother they had loved and the lovely memories she left behind. Her daughter Anne recited the Communion reflection and gave a eulogy on the life and times of a wonderful Mother on behalf of the family. During the Mass some beautiful hymns and song were sung by soloist Megan Butler and organist. Her wonderful voice poured out a rendering and comforting words of the song "Pie Jesu" as Anastasia's remains was entering the church. It's pathos filled the church and connected in a powerful way with the end of Anastasia's life. Thanks to one and all who have helped in the celebration to honor and remember Anastasia's life. Thanks to Fr. Martin for celebrating the requiem Mass with concelebrants Fr. Liam, Fr. Peter and Fr. Richard. Thanks and appreciation to Fr. Larry O'Keeffe and Fr. Dan Bollard for their continuous prayers and support.The readers, those who read the prayers of the faithful, communion reflection, eulogy, the bearers of the offertory gifts, soloist Megan and organist, sacristan Julianne Walsh for looking after everything so well, alter servers Chloe Walsh, Lucas Delahunty, Doireann Vereker and Cormac Fenton. To the Carrigeen catering hall commitee, Martin and Claire Power funeral directors and gravediggers. Interment took place in the adjoining cemetery where Anastasia was laid to rest beside her beloved husband Mikey. There was a large representative gathering showing the high esteem and regard that Anastasia was held by members of her family, friends and community. Sincere sympathy is extended to her sons Michael and Tommy Deady, daughters Anne Walsh, Brigid Finn, Mary Twomey, Patricia Kelly, sister-in-law Sr. Mary Deady, Convent of Mercy, Greenhill, daughter-in-law, sons-in-law, grandchildren, great grandchildren, nieces, nephews, extended family, relatives and friends.As a Mother, Grandmother and Great Grandmother she will be dearly missed. May Anastasia's gentle soul rest in peace.Mam, we thank you for your friendship, love and support and the countless things you did for us over the years.We love you dearly and will cherish you always. We are filled with gratitude that you enriched our lives in so many ways.Always smiling, always happy ,always putting us first.You loved us unconditionally and were the best Mother anyone could wish for. You will always be remembered as loving, kind, generous and gave us all, along with Dad anything we ever needed in life , for which we will be always grateful. We were so lucky to have you. It is hard on us now that you are gone,but we will carry you with us each and every day in our hearts.The loss of a Mother can never be replaced, but the love of a Mother can never be lost. Life goes on, but memories will get us through.We are grateful for the years that we had together. On behalf of all your children and grandchildren, I want to thank you for being the warm, loving, kind,compassionate and great Mam and Nan that you were. I know that one day we will all be together and until then we ask that God will keep you safe for all nights and protect you until that time.



God made a wonderful Mother

A Mother who never grows old

He made her smile of the sunshine

And he moulded her heart of pure gold

We see the stars at nightime

Shinning bright and clear

And we say Goodnight, God Bless

We know that you will hear.



Mam, has landed the ultimate Christmas gift, she is with Mikey once again. Mam and Dad loved Christmas, but as each Christmas arrives, nostalgia and special memories of those happy times together will never fail to bring a smile or a tear. So,on this First Christmas we take solace from fond memories of Christmas with Mam.

Sleep in Heavenly Peace.



My First Christmas in Heaven



I see the countless Christmas trees around the world below

With tiny lights, like heaven's stars, reflecting on the snow.

The sight is so spectacular, please wipe away the tear

For I am spending Christmas with Jesus Christ this year.



I hear the many Christmas songs that people hold so dear

But the sound of music can't compare with the Christmas choir up here.

I have no words to tell you, the joy their voices bring,

For it is beyond description, to hear the angels sing.



I know how much you miss me I see the pain inside your heart

But I am not so far away, we really aren't apart.

So be happy for me, dear ones, you know I hold you dear.



And be glad I'm spending Christmas with Jesus Christ this year.



I am sending you each a special gift, from my heavenly home above,

I send you each a memory of my undying love,

After all, my love is a gift more precious than pure gold

It was always most important in the stories Jesus told.



Please love and keep each other, as my Father said to do.

For I can't count the blessing or love he has for each of you.

So, have a Merry Christmas and wipe away that tear

Remember, I'am spending Christmas with Jesus Christ this year.



I will sleep in peace until you come to me.
Born of Mexican descent, Aaron is an award-winning chef, successful restaurateur and a judge on MasterChef. He is incredibly passionate about Cholula, so this partnership, which will include product and recipe development, events, and content, was a match made in hot sauce heaven .

"We are excited to kick off our new partnership with Aaron in such a permanent way," said Maura Mottolese, CEO of The Cholula Food Company. "Together we have some of the most passionate fans in the world, and we're thrilled to show that we're just as committed to them."

Fans of Cholula are invited to visit Daredevil, located in Chinatown, New York City, between 12:00 pm and 10:00 pm on National Hot Sauce Day, January 22nd, and choose from the inspired tattoo designs. The original tattoos were designed by world-class artists at Daredevil, one of the premier tattoo shops in New York. By getting inked, not only will fans be able to wear their hot sauce passion on their sleeve (or leg, or chest  wherever!), but each ink recipient will also be entered for a shot at a lifetime supply of Cholula.

Cholula diehards outside of New York can enter for a chance to visit the Big Apple at https://www.instagram.com/cholulahotsauce/ beginning today. One winner will be flown to NYC to hang out with Aaron and the Daredevil crew and go home with an awesome new tattoo.

"Those who know me know I love Cholula and I love tattoos, so I couldn't pass up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring them together to celebrate my partnership with Cholula," said Aaron Sanchez. "I love Cholula's distinct flavor, so I'm excited to be able to share that love with everybody through new products and recipes I'm helping to develop."

See the Aaron Sanchez x Cholula presents #CholulaInk Sweepstakes Official Rules at https://www.cholula.com/cholula-ink-contest-rules for complete prize details, ARV and additional eligibility restrictions.

About Cholula Hot Sauce

Cholula Hot Sauce is the delicious result of a recipe using a blend of arbol and piquin peppers along with a creative mix of spices and inspired by its rich Mexican heritage. The iconic wooden cap represents the true commitment to craftsmanship behind every product.

In addition to the Original recipe, the product line includes five additional varieties  Chipotle, Green Pepper, Chili Garlic, Chili Lime and Sweet Habanero, which can be found in retail and in food service nationwide. For more information about Cholula Hot Sauce, check out www.cholula.com.

About Aaron Sanchez

Aaron Sanchez is an award-winning chef, TB personality, author and philanthropist. He is chef/owner of Sanchez in New Orleans, and a judge on FOX's hit culinary competition series MasterChef and MasterChef Junior. He is Partner and Creative Director of Cocina, the first online content platform dedicated to celebrating Latin lifestyle through its vibrant culinary culture. Aaron grew up in the restaurant business and is passionate about preserving his family's legacy through food and encouraging diversity in the kitchen.

Aaron's love for the arts extends beyond the kitchen. He is a partner in world-renowned tattoo shop and museum, Daredevil Tattoo in NYC. An avid music lover, he enjoys cooking to the sounds of Portugal the Man, Shakey Graves, Cafe Tacvba, Alabama Shakes, Tank and the Bangas, Amos Lee, Lianne La Havas and Lenny Kravitz. He has a son, Yuma, and lives in New OIrleans, LA.

About Daredevil Tattoo

Daredevil Tattoo opened in 1997 when tattooing was legalized in NYC. They feature several artists working in all different styles of tattooing. Walk ins are always welcome and they are open every day noon until 10pm. They are proud to also showcase a Museum of Tattoo History with a world class collection of tattoo artifacts focusing on the history of tattooing in New York City.

SOURCE Cholula Hot Sauce
Adult themes

Succession, Chernobyl and Fleabag were big winners in the TV categories at the 77th Golden Globe Awards today. Each won two awards.

Russell Crowe won for The Loudest Voice, which became one of several moments to shout-out to Australia in the midst of bushfires.

Crowe was not in attendance. He sent a message advocating climate change action.

Make no mistake, the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change based, he said.

We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place that it is. That way, we all have a future.

Australian bushfires were mentioned several times, including by Ellen DeGeneres (it was the first acknowledgement she made), Cate Blanchett (calling out to volunteer firefighters), Patricia Arquette, Pierce Brosnan and a somewhat rambling Joaquin Phoenix.

But the night for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association began with host Ricky Gervais again delivering some brutal one-liners, noting it was his last hosting so he didnt care anymore.

I came here in a limo tonight, and the license plate was made by Felicity Huffman. I feel sorry for her daughter. That must be the most embarrassing thing thats ever happened to her. And her dad was in Wild Hogs. 

 This show should just be me coming out and saying, Congratulations, Netflix, you win everything.

We were going to do an In Memoriam, but when I saw the list, it wasnt diverse enough. I said no, not on my watch.

Tonight isnt just about the people in front of the camera. In this room are some of the most important TV and film executives in the world. People from every background. But they all have one thing in common: Theyre all terrified of Ronan Farrow.

Talking of all you perverts, it was a big year for pedophile movies. Surviving R. Kelly, Leaving Neverland  The Two Popes.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood , nearly 3 hours long. Leo attended the premiere and by the end his date was too old for him. Even Prince Andrew was like Come on.

, nearly 3 hours long. Leo attended the premiere and by the end his date was too old for him. Even Prince Andrew was like Come on. The world got to see James Corden as a fat pussy. He was also in the movie Cats , but no one saw thatJudi Dench said it was the role of a lifetime because she loves nothing more than plonking herself down on the carpet, lifting her leg, and licking her own minge.

, but no one saw thatJudi Dench said it was the role of a lifetime because she loves nothing more than plonking herself down on the carpet, lifting her leg, and licking her own minge. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. Accept your award, thank your agent, and your god, and f*** off.

Ricky Gervais also closed the show saying, Please donate to Australia.

TV winners in bold:

Best Television Series  Drama

Big Little Lies (HBO)

The Crown (Netflix)

Killing Eve (BBC America)

The Morning Show (Apple TV+)

Succession (HBO)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series  Drama

Jennifer Aniston (The Morning Show)

Olivia Colman (The Crown)

Jodie Comer (Killing Eve)

Nicole Kidman (Big Little Lies)

Reese Witherspoon (The Morning Show)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series  Drama

Brian Cox (Succession)

Kit Harington (Game of Thrones)

Rami Malek (Mr. Robot)

Tobias Menzies (The Crown)

Billy Porter (Pose)

Best Television Series  Musical or Comedy

Barry (HBO)

Fleabag (Amazon)

The Kominsky Method (Netflix)

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon)

The Politician (Netflix)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series  Musical or Comedy

Christina Applegate (Dead to Me)

Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)

Kirsten Dunst (On Becoming a God in Central Florida)

Natasha Lyonne (Russian Doll)

Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series  Musical or Comedy

Michael Douglas (The Kominsky Method)

Bill Hader (Barry)

Ben Platt (The Politician)

Paul Rudd (Living with Yourself)

Ramy Youssef (Ramy)

Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Catch-22 (Hulu)

Chernobyl (HBO)

Fosse/Verdon (FX)

The Loudest Voice (Showtime)

Unbelievable (Netflix)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Kaitlyn Dever (Unbelievable)

Joey King (The Act)

Helen Mirren (Catherine the Great)

Merritt Wever (Unbelievable)

Michelle Williams (Fosse/Verdon)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Christopher Abbott (Catch-22)

Sacha Baron Cohen (The Spy)

Russell Crowe (The Loudest Voice)

Jared Harris (Chernobyl)

Sam Rockwell (Fosse/Verdon)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Patricia Arquette (The Act)

Helena Bonham Carter (The Crown)

Toni Collette (Unbelievable)

Meryl Streep (Big Little Lies)

Emily Watson (Chernobyl)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Alan Arkin (The Kominsky Method)

Kieran Culkin (Succession)

Andrew Scott (Fleabag)

Stellan Skarsgard (Chernobyl)

Henry Winkler (Barry)

Cecil B. DeMille Award: Tom Hanks

Carol Burnett Award: Ellen DeGeneres
When it comes to spas, I'm the ultimate picky princess. Over the past 30 years as a well-being writer, I've put some of the world's poshest palaces through their paces.

So I was intrigued when I heard about Monart Day Spa in Poundbury, Prince Charles's experimental village near Dorchester in Dorset, built to his exacting standards. The spa is its latest amenity, opened by HRH himself. But is it fit for a prince or princess?

Since building started in 1993, the Prince's project has been both praised and pummelled in equal measure.

Fans cheer its sustainable, carbon-neutral aims; its desire to build community and its commitment to affordable housing (35 per cent of its housing stock is for rental or shared ownership).

When it comes to spas, Jane Alexander says she is the ultimate picky princess. Over the past 30 years as a well-being writer, she's put some of the world's poshest palaces through their paces

Critics jeer, calling it a 'feudal Disneyland', which lacks architectural vision and is little more than an overpriced, oversized retirement village.

My first impression was that it was pretty, but slightly unsettling  as if an issue of Country Living had come to life.

I asked a woman outside Waitrose what it's like to live there.

'A bit weird, to be honest,' she said. 'When the flags go up to show the Prince is coming, everyone jumps. People race around filling in potholes and plastering cracks so everything's perfect.'

'But it's a wonderful place to live  friendly, convenient, clean and safe,' chipped in another woman.

The spa is its latest amenity, opened by HRH himself. But is it fit for a prince or princess?

The spa is housed in the lower levels of the Royal Pavilion in Queen Mother Square.

The brand-new neo-classical buildings are imposing, and a statue of the Queen Mum watches over proceedings. There's also a pub  The Duchess of Cornwall  and an estate agent, as well as a pint-sized Waitrose.

Poundbury looks perfect until you walk around the Royal Pavilion and hit... nothing. The buildings give way to a straggle of hoardings. The project is still not finished, resulting in an odd atmosphere. It reminded me of the film The Truman Show, where the whole town is an elaborate stage set.

So I swiftly retraced my steps to the front of the Royal Pavilion, and, the moment I pushed open the heavy front doors of HRH's new spa, that surreal feeling vanished. The reception area is intimate and welcoming.

Many spas are built to impress, on an imposing scale, and that first approach, walking across acres of marble floor to reception, can feel intimidating. This is quite different  luxurious, for sure, but also cosy and warm.

The decor, predominantly soft grey and teal, makes it feel both soothingly homely and sumptuous. Part boudoir, part gentleman's club, it cunningly contrives to appeal to both men and women, and so far the clientele is a 50-50 mix  unusual for a UK spa.

The spa is housed in the lower levels of the Royal Pavilion in Queen Mother Square

I hunted desperately to find smudged paint or even a speck of dust, but nope, not a thing. Maintenance verges on the obsessive, apparently. 'Absolutely everything is checked, all the time,' said spa manager Jo Bullock.

Apparently, when Prince Charles opened the spa, he was intrigued by the thermal suite, and I indulged myself with a vision of Camilla lounging on one of the therapeutic beds by the pool, ordering him to stay under the hydrotherapy jets a bit longer to ease off that shoulder tension.

The spa is compact, but well designed, so it would be possible for Harry and Meghan to avoid bumping into William and Kate, if the supposed 'chill' still remains  pop the Cambridges in the sauna while the Sussexes cool down in the 'Highland Mist' shower. The children would have to stay at home, though  the spa is strictly over-18s only.

In the main relaxation area screens divide the space, so you have privacy as you sip herbal tea. I'm asked which couch I would like.

I chose one tucked away in a snug corner. A name card is placed on it and I'm told it's mine for the whole day. Now that is a genius idea and one I really wish all spas would adopt.

If you've never been to a spa, it can be confusing, embarrassing even, if you don't know what to do or how to use things. Here, nothing is assumed and you're given clear instructions on how to spend a very happy couple of hours in the thermal suite.

Here, nothing is assumed and you're given clear instructions on how to spend a very happy couple of hours in the thermal suite

You can potter from the Himalayan Salt Grotto (supposedly good for the lungs and immune system), through the Sanarium (warm but not sweltering, to ease muscles and sore joints) and then ramp up the temperature in the sauna or steam room.

In busy spas, the latter can often become tepid with people charging in and out, but, here, they keep guest numbers restricted (no more than 25 people at a time), so the spa never feels overcrowded and the steam room stays, well, steamy.

Good bodywork is the other vital component of a top spa. So next, I settle down on the (deliciously warmed) couch in one of Monart's plush treatment rooms for a Lumafirm body massage (90 for 55 minutes).

Massage might feel like a pampering indulgence, but done well, it has a host of health benefits: it boosts circulation of both blood and lymph fluid, reduces stress and muscle tension, increases joint flexibility, improves skin tone and can ease pain  quite apart from being supremely relaxing.

My mind was buzzing and I honestly didn't think I'd switch off, but somehow it happened.

Apparently, when Prince Charles opened the spa, he was intrigued by the thermal suite

Massage therapist Deneka explained that she uses repetitive circular movements, going clockwise for a while, and then switching direction. 'It confuses the mind,' she said. 'So after a while it gives up and lets go.' Clever.

Three beauty ranges are on offer, each hitting a specific note: Pevonia, majoring in marine and botanical extracts; Zelens, a hitech range developed by plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr Marko Lens, an expert in skin ageing; and Made for Life (formally Spiezia Organics). This 100 per cent organic range is suitable for everyone, even people living with cancer who are often turned away from spa treatment rooms.

Men are well catered for, too and I rather liked the idea of Prince Charles pitching up for the Gentleman's Retreat aimed at the 'discerning man' (195 for a half day with one treatment).

You can potter from the Himalayan Salt Grotto (supposedly good for the lungs and immune system) and then ramp up the temperature in the sauna or steam room

I'd prescribe the Full Body Moor Mud Tension Relief treatment for him, or the Pevonia Skinfit Myoxy-Caviar facial which might soothe his flushed face.

After a morning of pampering, I was looking forward to lunch, but sadly it was a little underwhelming.

My chilli-glazed salmon with a trio of salads was tasty enough, but the flavours didn't really zing. And while the portions were certainly generous, I would have expected more imaginative presentation from a spa.

All in all, the spa is really very lovely, and with introductory offers starting from 45 for two hours in the thermal suite (until March 31), it's not too expensive. But the big question is will Charles and Camilla get to enjoy it?

'It's just like a smart London spa  of course they'll try it,' one of the women outside Waitrose told me.

The other nodded vigorously. 'Camilla loves Poundbury,' she said. 'Her sister lives nearby and did the interiors for The Duchess of Cornwall pub/hotel. So they'll be coming  no doubt about it.'

n MONART Day Spa, Royal Pavilion, Poundbury, Dorchester, Dorset DT1 3DX (relax@monartspa.co.uk; 01305 595000). Introductory prices start at 45 for two hours' access to the thermal suite. A half-day package including lunch and a massage or facial costs 150.
Last summer, police began offering shelter beds in lieu of citations to homeless people who had been contacted for encroachment, illegal lodging, littering or other minor infractions. But while about 300 people took the offer, many of them left the shelter within a day or two, Wahl said.
Hyderabad (Telangana) [India], Jan 6 (ANI): Scores of students of Hyderabad Central University took out a protest march in solidarity with Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students, and against the violence on JNU campus on Sunday.



They raised slogans like "Hum Leke Rahenge Azadi" and "Delhi police Murdabad" during the march.

On Sunday evening, more than 18 students of the university, including JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, were injured and taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered JNU and attacked them and teachers with sticks and rods.

Politicians, cutting across party lines, condemned the attack on students which took place in JNU on Sunday. They urged the administration to nab the culprits and take strict action against those found guilty. (ANI)


Possible drive-by shooting at wedding in Oroville

Police are investigating after a drive-by shooting at an Oroville wedding sent one person to the hospital. Witnesses said a car with four men inside pulled up and fired four shots at home. One person was sent to the hospital, family members said he will be ok. If you have any information on the shooters, call the Oroville Police Department.

Suspect fights Chico Police Officer and attempts to remove firearm from holster

A man is waking up behind bars this morning, Chico police said he reached for an officer's gun while resisting arrest. Police said it all started when an officer tried to make a traffic stop on Juan Orr who was riding a bike. Orr punched the officer twice before being handcuffed, then tried to swallow a bag of meth. Police said Orr tried to escape while being treated at the hospital.

Chico police arrest man wanted for terrorist threats

Chico police said they have been cracking down on street crimes during the winter break at Chico State and Butte College. They arrested Melvin Mikell, wanted on a warrant out of Yuba City for felony threats. This brings the number of arrests by street crimes unit D to 24 in the past three weeks. Police said with students out of town they have more time to focus on crimes that impact the quality of life in Chico.

The latest: Cyber attack on Enloe Medical Center

Enloe Medical Center in Chico is still dealing with the impacts, after a cyber-attack that crippled its computer network.

Director of Advancement and Communications at Enloe said the attack happened Thursday night. The attack shut down some systems and crippled phone lines. Local law enforcement and the FBI are working on the case.

$50,000 reward offered for information related to Siskiyou County murder

The Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office is asking for the public's help in solving an April 2019 murder case. Investigators are offing a $50,000 reward to solve a Siskiyou County murder. Detectives have been working to find out who killed Spencer Hodgson. Police found his body on April 8, 2019, near Yreka Walker Road in the Klamath River area. Investigators said Hodgson had recently moved there from Santa Cruz. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office.

Pelosi says House will introduce 'War Power Resolution' aimed to limit Trump's Iran military action

Democrats vow to stop President Trump's threats and plans with regard to Iran. In a letter obtained overnight, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told democrats they'll vote this week to force President Trump to end hostilities with Iran. The letter is in response to a series of tweets sent out by the president threatening to bomb over 52 Iranian sites if the country retaliates.

John Bolton said he is prepared to testify in Senate trial if subpoenaed

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham said the Senate should move forward with a trial even without articles of impeachment from the house. Democratic leaders said new evidence has come to light and they want to hear from witnesses, including the president's acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.


Vice Admiral Dong Jun, general director of the Chinese side and deputy commander of the PLA Southern Theater Command delivers speech at the opening ceremony on Jan. 6, local time. The PN-PLAN Bilateral Exercise, code-named Sea Guardians-2020, kicked off at the Pakistan Navy Dock Yard in Karachi, Pakistan on the morning of January 6. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Mu Ruilin)

By Dong Zhaohui

KARACHI, Pakistan, Jan. 6 -- The PN-PLAN Bilateral Exercise, code-named Sea Guardians-2020, kicked off at the Pakistan Navy Dock Yard in Karachi, Pakistan on the morning of January 6, local time.

According to the consensus reached between Chinese and Pakistani Navies, the joint drill will be held from January 6 to 14 in waters of northern Arabian Sea, with the purpose of enhancing security cooperation between the two countries, consolidating the development of the all-weather strategic partnership, and promoting the joint construction of a safe marine environment.

The joint drill also aims to innovate the methods of conducting China-Pakistan joint naval drills and enhance the capabilities of the two navies to jointly cope with maritime terrorism and crime. The drill has nothing to do with the regional situation and is not targeted at any third party.

Vice Admiral Dong Jun, general director of the Chinese side and deputy commander of PLA Southern Theater Command, and Vice Admiral Asif Khaliq, general director of the Pakistani side and commander of the Pakistani Naval Fleet delivered speeches at the opening ceremony. VA. Khaliq then announced the start of the drill.

Vice Admiral Asif Khaliq, general director of the Pakistani side and commander of the Pakistani Naval Fleet delivers speech at the opening ceremony on Jan. 6, local time. The Sea Guardians-2020 China-Pakistan Joint Naval Drill kicked off at Karachi, Pakistan on Monday morning.(eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Mu Ruilin)

The Chinese participating troops mainly consist of the naval forces under the PLA Southern Theater Command. The PLA Navy deployed five warships including destroyer, frigate, supply ship and submarine rescue vessel with two ship-borne helicopters and dispatched more than 60 special operations soldiers.

The Pakistani participating troops mainly include two Zulfiquar-class F22P/F21 frigates, two fast attack craft (FAC), one fixed-wing anti-submarine patrol aircraft, two ship-borne helicopters and more than 60 special operations soldiers.

The drill consists of two phases including port training and maritime joint drill. The drill covers subjects including discussion and exchange, tactical deduction, formation movement, joint patrol, air-defense and anti-missile, maritime interception and temporary inspection, visit, board, search and seizure (VBSS) operations, joint anti-submarine, maritime live-firing, and joint marine training.

The Chinese participating naval ships, including the guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan (Hull 175), the guided-missile frigate Yuncheng (Hull 571), the comprehensive supply ship Weishanhu (Hull 887), and the submarine rescue ship Liugongdao (Hull 865) have already docked at Karachi military port on January 4 and 5 local time.

The Pakistan Navy held a grand welcoming ceremony for the Chinese naval fleet at the dock on the morning of January 5. Over 200 people including Commander of the Pakistan Navy Fleet Vice Admiral Asif Khaliq,President of the Pakistan Navy Tactical School Commodore Zafar Iqbal, Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Yao Jing, Chinese Military Attache to Pakistan Chen Wenrong, staff member of the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan and representatives of Chinese-funded institutions, Chinese students and local overseas Chinese welcomed the Chinese warships at the dock.

Vice Admiral Asif Khaliq, Ambassador Yao Jing and Rear Admiral Huang Fengzhi, commanding officer of the Chinese participating forces and deputy chief of staff of the Navy under the PLA Southern Theater Command, all spoke at the welcome ceremony.

VA. Asif Khaliq said that the Sea Guardians drill is a strong witness to the continuous development of relations between the two countries and the continuous deepening of maritime cooperation between the two navies. The concept of the Sea Guardiansbilateral naval exercise is to provide a platform for the two navies to share information, enhance understanding and deepen their common interests. This concept will eventually become the basis for the two navies to test and improve their technical and tactical capabilities, maintain regional marine security, learn from each other and enhance the level of cooperation and synergy.

Ambassador Yao Jing said that the peace of the oceans is related to the safety of each country and region. The name of the joint drill, Sea Guardians, fully reflects the good wishes of the Chinese and Pakistani navies in jointly building a community of shared maritime destiny, and demonstrates the confidence and capability to jointly guard marine peace and security. This is the sixth time that the two navies hold bilateral joint drill. Yao Jing believes that the Sea Guardians series will be another famous brand of cooperation and exchange between the Chinese and Pakistani armed forces along with the Warrior series between the two ground forces and the Eagle series between the two air forces.
A labor of love founded in Chicago by three best friends, Marcus Sakey, GG Sakey and David Crooch, Ritual meets growing consumer demand for a complex, flavorful and interesting alternative for people who are choosing not to drink.

Crafted for use in cocktails, Ritual can be swapped 1:1 with traditional spirits to make non-alcoholic versions of classic recipes. Ritual Zero Proof Gin Alternative mirrors the familiar flavor of gin with cucumber, juniper berries, mint and basil, perfectly served with tonic; the whiskey alternative is warm and soulful, with notes of oak and vanilla, the perfect match for orange and bitters. Overall, consumers choosing not to drink alcohol are ready to mark a moment with something more than club soda, creating a demand for even more spirit alternatives. According to a 2019 Distill Ventures data study, 58% of consumers are drinking more no-and low-abv drinks than last year, and 55% of the most influential bartenders in New York, Los Angeles and London believe the no-and low-alcohol trend will continue to grow within the next 12 months.

When it launched in September, Ritual sold out of its projected six-month supply of product in just five weeks. The consumer desire for choice in drinks is clear: globally, consumers explicitly mention "non-alcoholic" 81% more often than they did one year ago according to Google Trends between May 2018 and 2019; Forbes declared non-alcoholic drinks the biggest trend in cocktails back in May, and Whole Foods dedicated one of its top 10 food trends for 2020 to alcohol-alternative drinks.

Founded in London in 2013, Distill Ventures is the world's first independent drinks accelerator, with the mission to support entrepreneurs on their quest to establishing and scaling brands for future generations of consumers. The company is active in both traditional spirits categories and emerging drinks categories across Europe, Asia and North America. Ritual is the first public non-alcoholic brand from the United States to join the company's growing portfolio of international non-alcoholic brands, which make up 25% of the entire portfolio.

"This is a movement," said Marcus Sakey, founding partner and chief brand officer of Ritual Zero Proof. "Just like almond milk and veggie burgers, spirit alternatives are changing the landscape. In 18 months, we predict non-alcoholic options will be on every menu and the shelves of every grocery store. Americans want more choice, and Ritual Zero Proof is all about more  more flavor, more moments, more life, that is. It's the only American-made spirit alternative to echo the taste, smell and burn of a spirit  without the alcohol or calories."

"We are thrilled to welcome Ritual Zero Proof and its seasoned team of drink entrepreneurs into the Distill Ventures portfolio as we build the future of non-alcoholic drinks, a category we have proudly supported since our investment in Seedlip back in 2015," said Heidi Dillon Otto, Portfolio Director and Non-Alcoholic Lead, Distill Ventures North America. "We look forward to working closely with Ritual's team to unlock growth as, together, we shape the global non-alcoholic drinks landscape and continue to provide consumers with a broad array of choices when seeking out their drinks."

"We are excited to support such an interesting new brand in the vibrant non-alcoholic space," said Eugene Khabensky, Ventures Director, Diageo. "We put the consumer at the heart of our business, and Ritual Zero Proof is a fantastic offering that provides consumers with more choices of the highest quality."

As is customary with all companies that work with Distill Ventures, the founders and current investors of Ritual will retain majority ownership, with Diageo holding a minority stake. They will continue to run the business independently as the company continues to expand.

Ritual gin and whiskey alternatives can be found in more than a dozen premier locations in Chicago, including major beverage retailers, bars and Michelin-starred restaurants. The products are also available online, both through the brand's website and on Amazon. For more information, visit RitualZeroProof.com.

About Ritual Zero Proof

Ritual Zero Proof is the first American-made spirit alternative to use all-natural botanicals to echo the taste, smell and burn of liquor  without the alcohol or calories.

Headquartered in Chicago, Ritual Beverage Company is a labor of love founded by three longtime friends. Marcus Sakey is an internationally bestselling author with more than two million books in print; David Crooch is a renowned natural foods expert and serial entrepreneur; GG Sakey is an experienced project manager and advertising veteran. Artists and entrepreneurs, foodies who work out and parents who drink, they developed Ritual as a new way to mark a moment.

After experimenting with hundreds of recipes and in consultation with bartenders, chefs and beverage professionals, in September of 2019 Ritual launched two flagship products, a gin alternative and whiskey alternative. Ritual is currently available for purchase at local Chicago retailers, bars and Michelin-starred restaurants, as well as online through Amazon and on RitualZeroProof.com.

To learn more about Ritual Zero Proof, visit our website and follow along with @RitualZeroProof on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

About Distill Ventures

Established in 2013, Distill Ventures is the drinks industry's first accelerator for new and growing brands. Our aim is to support entrepreneurs to develop, scale and sell the drinks brands of the future. Through a combination of cash investment, mentoring support and access to a network of experts, Distill Ventures works with founders to help brands go further, faster. Distill Ventures operates across both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink categories, and invests at all stages, from pre-launch (through to those requiring significant growth and expansion capital). It is operated independently and backed by Diageo, the world's leading premium drinks company, who provide investment funding, as well as resources and access to their global network of experts. Following its investment in Seedlip, the world's first non-alcoholic spirit, the company established a dedicated non-alcoholic practice in 2017, becoming the first-ever drinks accelerator to do so. Today, 25% of global Distill Ventures investments are in non-alcoholic.

To date, more than 15 brands have received investment via Distill Ventures, including: Stauning, one of Europe's standout new whiskies from Denmark; Starward, a distinctive Australian whisky, exclusively matured in Australian wine barrels; Westward, a leading American single malt whiskey from Northwest provenance; Seedlip, the world's first non-alcoholic distilled spirits brand, which was majority acquired by Diageo in 2019; and Belsazar, a German aperitif acquired by Diageo in 2018. Further information on Distill Ventures and details on how acceleration works for drinks brands is available at www.distillventures.com.

About Diageo

Diageo is a global leader in beverage alcohol with an outstanding collection of brands including Johnnie Walker, Crown Royal, Bulleit and Buchanan's whiskies, Smirnoff, Ciroc and Ketel One vodkas, Captain Morgan, Baileys, Don Julio, Tanqueray and Guinness.

Diageo is listed on the London Stock Exchange (DGE) and the New York Stock Exchange (DEO) and Land our products are sold in more than 180 countries around the world. For more information about Diageo, our people, our brands, and performance, visit us at www.diageo.com.

Visit Diageo's global responsible drinking resource, www.DRINKiQ.com, for information, initiatives, and ways to share best practice. Follow us on Twitter for news and information about Diageo North America: @Diageo_NA and on @Diageo_News for global news and information.

Celebrating life, every day, everywhere.

SOURCE Ritual Zero Proof

Related Links

https://www.ritualzeroproof.com


Indian Youth Congress workers on Monday evening took out a torchlight procession to protest the violence on JNU campus.

The protesters, some of them wearing masks, symbolising attack on JNU students by masked men on Sunday evening, marched from IYC headquarters here to India Gate, said IYC media incharge Amrish Ranjan Pandey.

"Such an attack on a prestigious institute like JNU in the national capital raises big question mark on the credibility of Delhi Police and Home Ministry," said a statement from the outfit.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
2 Chicago teens arrested for stomping, robbing pregnant woman on train originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

Chicago police said they have arrested two teens who assaulted and robbed a pregnant woman on a train last week.

Officers said the 15- and 16-year-old girls turned themselves in on Saturday and admitted to brutally attacking a 28-year-old woman after seeing themselves on surveillance footage, according to the Chicago Police Department.

MORE: Recent college grad fatally shot driving on I-95 in Miami; hunt for killer launched

Juatonna Davis, who is four weeks pregnant, told police that a group of teens started an argument with her on the train last Sunday and began to attack her. She said one of them struck her in the back of the head, knocking her to the floor, before the others began kicking and stomping her in the back and rib area.

"I feel people kicking me, going through my pockets, they attacked us," Davis told Chicago ABC station WLS. "The whole time my friend was yelling, 'She's pregnant, she's pregnant, don't fight her, she's pregnant.'"

PHOTO: Police lights on a police cruiser. (STOCK PHOTO/Getty Images)

"The whole time in my head I'm just praying that I make it home to my child," she added.

The two teens turned themselves in a day after police released photos from the scene, asking for the public's help in identifying four female and two male suspects, the department said.

MORE: Massachusetts professor arrested for attacking coworker with fire poker, authorities say

Police are still searching for the remaining four suspects.

"The offenders admitted to participating in the robbery and admitted to punching and kicking two female victims on the CTA Red Line Train," the department said in a statement. "The offenders were charged accordingly. Area Central Detectives continue their efforts in identifying, locating and charging the remaining offenders that participated in the incident."

The unidentified teens were each charged with one felony count of robbery and two felony counts of aggravated battery in a public place.

They are scheduled to appear in court on Monday.
Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Monday condemned the violence in Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and asked Union Home Minister Amit Shah to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Violence had broken out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, after which the police conducted a flag march.

"We strongly oppose the way JNU students were treated on Sunday night. Girls were assaulted in the violence. Those responsible should be identified and arrested," he said here.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) president Aishe Ghosh, were injured.

He pointed out that the prestigious university was the alma mater of many distinguished persons, including former prime ministers of Nepal and Libya, Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

"It is the responsibility of Union Home Minister Amit Shah to identify the accused and take action against them. This country cannot progress with hatred, it can only tread forward on the part of non-violence," the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister said.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) have blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Adam Borowski





Mix a New Year's Eve party with a philosophical mood and you get a perfect milieu for intellectual revelry. I certainly had a lively exchange of views with a friend. At one point, she made an assertion that English is the language of the global elite. Apparently, one can't belong to the global elite without mastering the modern lingua franca. I'm sure Francophones vociferously disagree. Personally, I don't speak French unless I absolutely have to. You wouldn't want to hear my French, believe me.



It's clear that society has a cartoonish vision of the global elite: There's much more to being in the most exclusive club in the world than having an exorbitant net worth, throwing lavish parties, even curtsying in impressive high heels. While misconceptions abound, the fact is that outsiders find it virtually impossible to join the ranks of the global elite. Why? Call it the divine right to rule if you're an esotericist; call it genetics if you're a materialist.



Social stratification isn't as obvious as it used to be, so many people erroneously believe we no longer live in a hierarchical system with impenetrable class barriers. Every exclusive club has a series of ''shibboleth tests'' to weed out the ones who don't belong. A phrase, a custom, a minute detail can give you away. Rubbing shoulders with the elites is a fleeting privilege for a member of the masses.



Make no mistake, bemoaning hoi polloi is counterproductive. Societies can't function without the masses, geniuses and psychopaths. It takes three to tango, apparently. How can you expect the masses to be reasonable when the elite don't lead by example? That's why an invading force always targets the intelligentsia first. The citizens of South Korea and Poland know what it's like to have their elite forced to serve a foreign power. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union exterminated a considerable portion of the Polish elite, dealing a devastating blow to the country. A smart population is an occupier's nightmare.



If we want our civilization to prosper, rather than completely collapse, then establishing an inclusive global elite isn't a matter of puerile vanity  it's a matter of necessity. A society centered on individualism, imbued with a Confucian appreciation of harmony seems to be the optimal solution.



"We need equality,'' I hear you say.



"We need to get rid of elitism,'' someone else adds.



Elitism doesn't need to carry negative connotations. It doesn't have to be about parochial snobs sitting on their high horses. Elitism can simply mean striving for excellence. It's worth remembering that the global death toll of ''enforced equality'' is around a hundred million victims. The grotesque social experiment failed. If, for some inexplicable reason, you're still fascinated by Communism, talk to Hong Kongers and Taiwanese. They have been living in the shadow of a Communist behemoth for decades. Don't casually dismiss their comments as propaganda. Life is often neither black nor white. You sometimes need to look for answers in the infinite shades of gray.



Do you really want to live in a world where a single death is a tragedy, while a million deaths is a statistic?





Adam Borowski (adam.borowski1985@gmail.com) is a technical Polish-English translator and an international relations aficionado. He is the author of a novel titled: ''Perfect lives. Perfect selves.''


Oil prices rose again on Monday, pushing past $70 per barrel for the first time in seven months as fears grow about a potential war between the US and Iran following the killing of a top Iranian general.

Brent crude added another 2 per cent to Fridays gains and experts warned the price could more than double to $150 if the tense situation in the Middle East escalates to a full-blown conflict.

That would have a knock-on effect on the world economy, increasing petrol prices for consumers and putting upward pressure on the cost of a broad range of goods.

Motorists will feel the pinch, even if oil prices remain at current levels. The AA warned that at $70 a barrel, petrol could soon hit 130p a litre, its highest level since May.

The US oil price benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, also rose 1.2 per cent on Friday to $63.78 before falling back slightly.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

Oil has gained strongly since Donald Trump ordered a drone attack which killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, dramatically escalating tensions between Tehran and Washington.

The US president intensified his rhetoric further on Saturday, warning that if Iran retaliates - as it has vowed to do - American forces could attack Iranian cultural sites with no military value.

Mr Trump tweeted: Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have.... targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD, he wrote on Twitter.

Such provocative statements have raised fears of heightened violence in the region, and even war.

While the primary concern is for human life, conflict would also affect the worlds supply of oil, with a number of key facilities and transportation lanes seen as potential targets for Iranian retaliation.

Tehran could block off the vital Straits of Hormuz, an artery through which around a fifth of the worlds oil supplies travel. The strait between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, which is just 20 miles across at one point, was the scene of the highjacking of two oil tankers in June.

Capital Economics forecasts that a war between the US and Iran would lead to oil prices more than doubling.

Our analysis shows that while the price of Brent could soar to as much as $150 per barrel, the rally may prove short-lived as supply networks adjust and demand falters in the wake of higher prices, the consultancy said.

The FTSE 100 dipped 0.6 per cent on Friday to 7,576 while gold prices surged to a seven-year high as investors sought safe assets.
Charlotte Crosby and Ryan Gallagher's blossoming romance on I'm A Celebrity will surely come as a surprise to the former Married At First Sight star.

That's because Charlotte had actually snubbed Ryan, 31, on Instagram several weeks before they met on the show, where she instantly fell head over heels for him.

During her nightclub tour of Australia in November, the 29-year-old failed to respond to a comment from Ryan after he'd asked about her whereabouts.

Future couple? Charlotte Crosby and Ryan Gallagher's blossoming romance on I'm A Celebrity will surely come as a surprise to the former Married At First Sight star

'You off already, darlin? Catch ya next time x,' Ryan wrote below a photo of Charlotte catching a flight home - but she didn't reply.

'You couldn't scream for attention more if you tried, mate,' a fan commented, as several others trolled Ryan over the apparent snub.

Charlotte was accompanied by her now ex-boyfriend Joshua Ritchie during her trip Down Under in November, which perhaps explains why she didn't respond.

Snubbed! That's because Charlotte (left) had actually snubbed Ryan (right) on Instagram several weeks before they met on the show, where she instantly fell head over heels for him

Awkward: During her nightclub tour of Australia in November, the 29-year-old failed to respond to a comment from Ryan after he'd asked about her whereabouts

How embarrassing! 'You off already, darlin? Catch ya next time x,' Ryan wrote below a photo of Charlotte catching a flight home - but she didn't reply

Mocked: 'You couldn't scream for attention more if you tried, mate,' a fan commented, as several others trolled Ryan over the apparent snub

During Sunday's premiere of I'm A Celebrity, Charlotte was thrilled to see Ryan.

She also admitted they had previously flirted over Instagram, but said they had never met face to face.

'I cannot believe Ryan is here! The thing about me and Ryan is we've never actually met - but we have spoke on social media,' said Charlotte.

'I feel like we've had bit of a flirt, so it's a little bit awkward.'

Ryan added: 'I'm happy to see Charlotte, she seems like she is a lot of fun. She's mad!'

She was taken! Charlotte was accompanied by her now ex-boyfriend Joshua Ritchie (left) during her trip Down Under in November, which perhaps explains why she didn't respond

'We've had a bit of a flirt': During Sunday's premiere of I'm A Celebrity, Charlotte was thrilled to see Ryan. She admitted they had previously flirted over Instagram, but said they had never met

Many viewers were confused as to how Ryan and Charlotte had become acquainted, given the fact they live in different countries and don't seem to have mutual friends.

One explanation is that they are both represented in Australia by the same talent agency, Stage Addiction, and share the same manager.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Charlotte and Ryan's representative for comment.

Hmm! Many viewers were confused as to how Ryan and Charlotte had become acquainted, given the fact they live in different countries and don't seem to have mutual friends
Seeing the growth potential ahead, many tech giants, such as Lenovo, Ericsson, Qualcomm, and Huawei, are targeting the Vietnamese market.

Vietnams digital economy is expected to value at US$43 billion in 2025.

Many technology-related sectors in Vietnam are expected to develop strongly in the time to come as the countrys rapid digital transformation is attracting big interest from foreign tech giants.

Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) reported that more multinationals are seeking to co-operate with MIC in the switchover.

Statistics from Vietnams Ministry of Planning and Investment also showed that some US$1.3 billion worth of FDI in Vietnam was spent on sci-tech last year, ranking fourth among the most attractive sectors.

Experts said as Vietnamese businesses awareness about the importance of technology has much improved, they are rushing to apply advanced technologies, thus creating new opportunities for multinationals.

Seeing the growth potential ahead, many tech giants, such as Lenovo, Ericsson, Qualcomm, and Huawei, are targeting the Vietnamese market.

Ken Wong, senior vice president of Lenovo Group, said that Lenovo Group considers Vietnam among the most interesting markets to promote its new products as an emerging market, along with many others in Asia Pacific, have both an appetite for innovation and the growing industrial base that make Lenovos strategy possible.

Other technology giants are also following this trend. Americans Qualcomm, one of the worlds biggest chip designers and suppliers, has recently also announced the launch of the Qualcomm Vietnam Innovation Challenge in 2020 to support the development of Vietnams rising technology ecosystem. It targets innovative SMEs by supporting and encouraging them to design new products related to 5G, IoT, machine learning, smart cities, and multimedia utilizing Qualcomms mobile platforms and technologies.

According to Nam Thieu, country manager of Qualcomm Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, by virtue of Vietnams policies to actively join Industry 4.0, Qualcomm has been expanding its presence in the country, with a plan to build new international-standard laboratories in Vietnam in 2020.

Similarly, Huawei, the worlds leading provider of ICT infrastructure and smart devices, is seeking co-operation with Vietnamese Commission for the Management of State Capital at Enterprises (CMSC) on digital transformation and the digital economy. The CMSC is now the representative of the state holding 19 state-owned corporations, such as PetroVietnam, Vietnam Electricity, Vinacomin, VNPT and MobiFone, which are powerful locomotives in vital economic sectors.

Ambitious plans

According to the e-Conomy Southeast Asia report 2019 released by Google, Temasek and US-based global management consultancy Bain, Vietnam is evolving into one of the most digital of all economies in the ASEAN. As the second fastest-growing digital economy in the region after Indonesia, its value is expected to almost quadruple from US$12 billion currently to US$43 billion in 2025.

Vietnam is also the third most-funded economy in the ASEAN after Indonesia and Singapore, raising almost US$1 billion in digital economy funding since 2015.

These developments have given Vietnam confidence to set highly ambitious targets for itself. The national strategy for Industry 4.0 expects the internet economy to contribute 20 per cent to GDP by 2025, while creating jobs and attracting high-quality foreign direct investment.

The National Digital Transformation Plan also envisions Vietnam among the top-four digitalized ASEAN economies and among the worlds top 40 in the National Competitiveness Index  both by 2025. These ambitions are important for driving government, business, and consumer transformation.

However, to meet the ambitious targets, Jeff Paine, managing director of Asia Internet Coalition, suggested that a stable and predictable regulatory and policy landscape, in line with international best practices, is needed to enable digital platforms, products, and services to actively contribute to and support the digital economy goals of Vietnam. Hanoitimes

Anh Hong

Digital transformation turns into Chapter 2 Digital transformation is shifting towards a new chapter  Chapter 2  ending experimentation with artificial intelligence (AI) and moving simple workloads to the cloud at many organisations.
Libya's ambulance service has called for a pause in fighting so it can retrieve the bodies of civilians - AFP

At least 28 people were killed in an attack on a military academy in the Libyan capital on Saturday, the government said.

Tripoli, which is under the control of the internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), is facing an offensive by military commander Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) that began in April.

There has been an increase in airstrikes and shelling around Tripoli in recent weeks, with fears that fighting could escalate further after Turkeys parliament voted to allow a troop deployment in support of the GNA.

Forces allied with the GNA described Saturdays attack on the military camp at Al-Hadhba as "an aerial bombing" launched by their eastern rivals. An LNA spokesman denied involvement.

Hamid bin Omar, GNA's Health Minister, told Reuters that the number of dead and wounded was still rising. A spokesman for Tripoli's ambulance service said that some body parts could not be immediately counted by forensic experts.

Earlier, the ambulance service appealed for a temporary ceasefire to allow its members to retrieve the bodies of five civilians killed on As Sidra Road, an area south of central Tripoli, and evacuate families living in there.

Emergency teams withdrew after coming under fire while trying to access the area on Saturday, it added.

An increase in airstrikes and shelling in and around Tripoli has caused the deaths of at least 11 civilians since early December and shut down health facilities and schools, the UN mission in Libya said on Friday.

Rockets and shelling also shut down Tripolis only functioning airport on Friday.
The Princes Highway to the Mallacoota turn-off and the Great Alpine Road west of Omeo are the first priorities for state government repair crews racing to re-open roads cut off in the bushfire crisis.

Department of Transport roads boss Jerome Weimar said on Monday morning that 18 communities in East Gippsland were still cut off from the outside world, not accessible by road and many of them without power or struggling with communications.

Mr Weimar told ABC radio on Monday morning that crews were out inspecting and removing dangerous trees from the Princes Highway between Orbost and the Mallacoota turn-off in the far east.

A number of roads in East Gippsland and the north-east of the state remain closed with fallen power lines, toppled trees and damaged bridges and other structures.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 6, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Georgia Giorgi Gakharia has congratulated Armenians living in Georgia on Christmas.

I wish a Happy Nativity and Theophany of Christ to all our Armenian citizens, who celebrate this feast today. I wish peace, happiness, and prosperity to every family. The love and friendship between our nations have been cemented throughout the centuries, and we will continue building our country together.



I wish you all the best on this holiday, PM Gakharia said in a message published through the Georgian governments website.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
One day after an attack by al-Qaida affiliate al-Shabaab on a base in Kenya left a U.S. soldier and two American contractors dead, a contingent of crisis response troops has arrived in the region, officials said.

The Sunday morning attack at Manda Bay, Kenya, came on the heels of a Dec. 28 attack by al-Shabaab on civilians in Mogadishu, Somalia, in which 80 people died. Al-Shabaab also took credit for that attack.

Between 50 and 100 U.S. troops with the East Africa Response Force (EARF) were deployed to Manda Bay, U.S. Africa Command spokeswoman Samantha Reho told Military.com. The number represents a sizable reinforcing element, as AFRICOM officials have said fewer than 150 American troops were at Camp Simba on Manda Bay prior to the attack.

The response force, which falls under Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, based in Djibouti, is equipped for military operations including protecting Americans and U.S. diplomatic facilities, supporting noncombatant evacuations, providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief and "other missions as directed," according to an AFRICOM release.

Related: Soldier Killed in Kenya Is Identified After Attack

It's one of a number of response force elements created in response to the Sept. 11, 2012, terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead.

In a previous mission, EARF deployed to Libreville, Gabon, in January 2019 to monitor expected unrest in an adjacent country, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

As attention has focused on the Middle East in the wake of a U.S. strike that killed Iranian Quds Force Commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, AFRICOM officials said they have had to battle misinformation about Sunday's deadly attack in Kenya.

"Contrary to various open source reports, U.S. Africa Command does not assess yesterday's attack by al-Shabaab is linked to Iran," officials said in a release. "While Iranian involvement is not suspected in the attack, U.S. Africa Command has observed other nations, including Iran, seek increased influence in the Horn of Africa."

AFRICOM also issued a statement Monday from the commanding officer, Army Gen. Stephen Townsend, addressing false rumors that he had been killed in the al-Shabaab attack.

"Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated," Townsend said. "This is yet another example of the lies, propaganda and fake news coming from al-Shabaab and other malign actors such as Iran and its proxies."

The soldier who was tragically killed in the attack has been identified as 23-year-old Spc. Henry Mayfield Jr., out of Fort Rucker, Alabama.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.

Read More: Army Rangers Deploy to Join US Force Buildup in Middle East
Nicole Maldonado twirled her 2-year-old daughter, wearing a paper gold crown, on the dance floor in front of the Cuarteto Borinquen, a Puerto Rican band that played rhythmic villancicos and aguinaldos  the islands traditional Christmas carols.

The toddler spun off toward her great-grandfather, Luis Vega, 88, who laughed as he took her hand.

Thats his new dancing partner, said Maldonado, 30. Dancing with him is one way we keep Puerto Rico alive for her.

On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of San Antonios Puerto Ricans gathered at the San Fernando Cathedrals Community Center downtown to celebrate Three Kings Day, a Hispanic holiday that extends the Christmas season well into the new year.

The Jan. 6 holiday is also known as the Feast of the Epiphany, and its celebrated by Christians across Latin America and Spain, with slight ritualistic differences. In Mexico, children often put shoes out on the porch in return for presents. In Puerto Rico, a shoebox is placed under the bed.

But each country celebrates it in honor of the Biblical story of the three kings  Melchior, Gaspar and Balthazar  who, as the tale goes, followed a star to baby Jesus. Also known as the three Wise Men, they arrived on a camel, horse and elephant to the manger bearing gifts for the boy. The gifts gold, frankincense and myrrh  symbolized his royalty, divinity and mortality.

Families often eat a dense, donut-shaped bread called the rosca de reyes, which represents the crowns worn by the kings. A small figurine of baby Jesus is hidden within its sweet layers. Festivities often start the day before in family homes and community centers like San Fernando Cathedrals, and in many countries, large city-wide parades are held on the day itself.

In Puerto Rico, the holiday produces a fervor surpassing Christmas.

This was the Puerto Rican Heritage Societys 26th time to host the Fiesta de los Tres Reyes Magos celebration. In one corner, children pasted jewels on paper crowns in tribute to the three kings. Nearby the crown station, children decorated cardboard boxes that they would later slip under their beds with hay and grass for the magical kings animals to munch on.

Meanwhile, the kings  much like Santa Claus  leave behind gifts for the children. The actor Lin Manuel Miranda jokes that growing up in New York, it was like a special little secret that Latinos got an extra Christmas.

Rita Creitoff said she had a feeling her 7-year-old daughter, Angelica, would be getting an Easy-Bake Oven from the Reyes Magos that night. She said its important to her to keep the tradition alive, despite having lived away from the island for years.

I want her to know a little about how we grew up. This is something to make her happy. And it gives her something to look back on thats meaningful, that reminds her of us, Creitoff said.

As the sounds of the island filled up the room, so did the smells. There were servings of arroz con gandules, the yellow, spiced rice made with olives and pigeon peas; piles of crisp, marinated pork called pernil; and stacks of half-moon pockets of fried dough filled with ground meat  known as pastelillos.

The revelers piled food on paper plates and washed it down with Malta India, a popular carbonated malt drink.

This is such a joy because it reminds me of when I was a child, said Vega, his blue eyes tearing up at the memories of growing up in Humacao, a municipality on the east coast of the island. The music, it brings me right back in time.

He met his wife, whos Mexican and grew up on the West Side, soon after he moved to San Antonio over 62 years ago. The Air Force veteran said he walked from the former Brooks Air Force Base all the way to the West Side to see her on their first date.

He spent most of the afternoon dancing with his granddaughter and great-granddaughter, his smile stretched large under his Korean War veterans cap.

We always come here and exchange phone numbers and make new friends, and exchange recipes. Everybody makes the best rice, right? Everybody says they have the best rice recipes, Maldonado said as her grandfather and daughter danced. This is about family, more about everybody getting together and sharing stories, sharing music.

sfosterfrau@express-news.net | @silviaelenaff
New Delhi, Jan 6 : The Centre on Monday told the Supreme Court that children, whose parents have been given citizenship through NRC, will not be separated from their families and sent to the detention centres in Assam.

Advocate appearing for the families of nearly 60 children excluded from Assam NRC submitted before a bench headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde that the children were excluded despite showing all documents connected with the NRC process, and on the contrary parents were included.

The apex court recorded Attorney General KK Venugopal undertaking stating that children excluded from NRC whose parents have been given citizenship will not be sent to detention centres in Assam.

Venugopal also informed the court that 19 lakh have been excluded from final NRC.

The apex court also issued notice to Centre and Assam on a plea alleging children being sent to detention centres after NRC.

The top court also asked the Assam government to ensure that the newly appointed NRC coordinator explains or withdraws some of his objectionable Facebook posts.
As strong winds are making their way across the region this afternoon, a member of the public is warning others about what could come falling from the skies.

One Bay of Plenty resident, who went down to the Mount to eat their lunch, thought it would be safe to sit under a tree to get out of the wind.

Because of the wind, the woman and her husband decided to go back to the car to eat.

She says she is lucky, because not long afterwards a huge Norfolk Pine cone landed near where they would have been sitting.

If there were people under that it could have been very serious, says the resident, who wishes not to be named.

They are not light. They are very heavy.

There was someone who had their car parked under the tree as well, but theyve moved.

So it could cause some serious damage. It could actually kill.

A size comparison of the pine cone and the human head.

Shes unsure exactly how heavy the cone would be, but says its around 1-2kgs.

Her message for other residents is; I wouldnt even stand under the trees because they came from such a height and at a fast speed.

It would definitely knock you out.

I would just be very careful being under the trees, even parking a car under the trees.

The Norfolk Pine cone has been described as heavy as a pineapple but solid and hard.

Winds around the Bay of Plenty this afternoon has been forecasted as strong 61km/h SW winds.
AirPods were one of the most popular gifts this past Christmas. However, a supposedly beautiful gift landed one mother and her son in the hospital last week after the seven-year-old boy accidentally swallowed one of the AirPods.

In a report from Daily News, the mother of the boy, Kiara Stroud, posted an X-Ray result online of her son's stomach showing the wireless earbud lodged inside the boy's internal organs. This unusual accident reportedly happened while the boy was holding the device near his mouth. Stroud immediately rushed her son to Children's Healthcare where the boy was admitted.

Stroud posted on her Facebook along with a picture of the result of the X-ray, "I can't make this up. My child, my child and no more AirPods for this kid."

In a follow-up post, she wrote that they let her son know that everything is fine and to stay calm so that he will feel relaxed and the doctors can do their jobs well. She also added, "Today was one of the days we'll look back on, thank God that everything was okay and laugh at when he's older."

When Stroud was asked to give details as to what happened and exactly how the child accidentally choked on the wireless earbud, she did not give too many comments.

In another interview, she said "He's like, 'I don't want to be near my phone. I don't want it to connect to my phone and start playing music.'"

Meanwhile, the doctors who handled the boy told Stroud that the AirPod will come out naturally within the following days. This story is a good lesson not only for Kiara Stroud, but also to all parents who give small devices to their children.

Apple has previously warned that some of its devices and accessories may present a choking hazard. Parents are reminded that before giving anything to their children they have to first read the safety information included with the device.

According to Dr. Sean McGann, he has never treated anyone who has swallowed an earbud, but foreign body ingestion is most common the pediatric medicine. McGann is an emergency physician in Philadelphia at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

Dr. Gary A. Smith, president of the Child Injury Alliance, also added that children swallow a wide variety of objects and the incident of Stroud's son is not surprising. He also said that most of the time, it's children below the age of three years that accidentally swallow foreign objects.

However, according to McGann the only dangers he sees in the swallowed AirPod is its battery, if the AirPod was swallowed with the batteries exposed it could harm the child, but if the batteries are enclosed with plastic there is probably nothing to worry about.

"Typically if something makes its way into the stomach, it will pass. The esophagus is the more challenging passageway," said McGann.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, choking is the leading cause of death of children below three years old.
A 13-year-old boy was catapulted 20ft into the air before he crashed down on pavement after a reverse bungee fairground ride went badly wrong.

The child was conscious after his fall but sustained multiple fractures in the slingshot ride accident in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Onlookers screamed as the boy was detached from the ride and flew through the air before landing on the ground.

A 13-year-old boy was catapulted 20ft into the air (left and right) before he crashed down on pavement after a reverse bungee fairground ride went badly wrong at Kok-Tobe mountain recreation area in Almaty, Kazakhstan

Initial reports said the elastic rope snapped at the point the teenager was supposed to be catapulted upwards at the city's Kok-Tobe mountain recreation area.

But video shows the elastic was intact after the accident and it is believed there was a problem with his harness or strapping.

Health officials in Almaty said the boy was rushed to hospital with multiple injuries, including four compression fractures of his lumbar vertebrae, as well as a broken wrist, ankle and heel.

The boy is fastened in place on the bungee fairground attraction before he is catapulted into the air

Initial reports said the elastic rope snapped at the point the teenager was supposed to be vertical. But video shows the elastic was intact after the accident and it is believed there was a problem with his harness or strapping

He is being cared for in the city's Children's Emergency Centre, and faces weeks in hospital.

Head of the public health department Tleukhan Abildaev said: 'The boy who fell from an attraction at Kok-Tobe has many fractures.'

A spokesman said: 'He was examined by doctors. He is receiving all necessary medical care in full. The boy's condition is stable.'

Police said today they have opened a criminal case into the incident.
A mysterious outbreak of pneumonia that has infected dozens of people in China is still baffling scientists.

Doctors have ruled out severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) as being the cause of the virus which has struck 59 people in Wuhan.

Seven patients are in a critical condition, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced it is closely monitoring the situation.

Other possible cases have cropped up in 15 travellers who returned to Hong Kong and following visits to the city in Hubei province. One suspected case was also reported in Singapore.

The two nations have put new screening measures in place following fears travellers will spread the mystery illness.

It was feared the life-threatening SARS, a highly contagious virus, was behind the flurry of cases in Wuhan.

SARS killed hundreds of people in China and Hong Kong in the early 2000s. But no cases have been recorded in the world since 2004.

But SARS, bird flu, Middle East respiratory syndrome and adenovirus have now been ruled out following investigations, authorities have said.

The outbreak  which began at the start of December  has prompted the closure of a seafood market in Wuhan's suburbs, where several patients worked.

A mysterious respiratory illness that has infected 59 people in central China is still baffling scientists as they rule out Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Pictured, Central Hospital in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the cases have been identified

The South China Seafood City food market where several of the infected patients worked has been suspended while under investigation

The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said in a statement on Sunday evening: 'We have excluded several hypotheses, in particular the fact that it is a flu, an avian flu, an adenovirus, respiratory syndrome severe acute (SARS) or Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).'

Some 163 people who had been in contact with those infected are currently under medical observation, while efforts continue to try and identify the virus.

No obvious human-to-human transmission has been found and no medical staff had been infected, the commission previously said.

Experts from the National Health Commission is to carry out further tests, in hope of finding a cause of the cases.

Hong Kong's Hospital Authority said Sunday that a total of 15 patients in Hong Kong were being treated for symptoms including fever and respiratory infection after recent visits to Wuhan. Tests have yet to confirm if they have the same illness.

Hospitals and doctors have been directed to report cases of fever in anyone who has travelled to Wuhan in the past 14 days. The city is home to 11million people.

The hospital authority said it activated a newly created 'serious response' level over the weekend to curb spread of the infection.

The city's health department added an additional thermal imaging system at Hong Kong's airport to check if arriving passengers had a high temperature.

More staff have been assigned to carry out temperature checks at the West Kowloon high-speed rail station, which connects Hong Kong to mainland China.

Hong Kong's health chief Sophia Chan warned residents against visiting wet markets  places that sell fresh meat  and eating wild game in mainland China.

The South China Seafood City food market, where many of the infected patients had worked, has been suspended until investigations are complete.

But the two latest possible cases in Hong Kong  two females, aged 12 and 41  are not thought to have visited the market during a trip to Wuhan.

A Chinese nurse wears a mask as she attends to patients at a hospital in Beijing amid a SARS outbreak in April 2004

The South China Morning Post reported Singapore has had one suspicious case of the mystery illness.

The Ministry of Health said on January 4 that it had been notified of a three-year-old girl from China who had been to Wuhan and was suspected to have the illness, The Straits Times reported.

She had been isolated as a precautionary measure and preliminary tests suggested respiratory syncytial virus had caused pneumonia. It is not clear how she was uncovered as a suspected case of the mystery virus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said it was closely monitoring the situation and maintaining contact with Chinese authorities.

It added 'the reported link to a wholesale fish and live animal market could indicate an exposure link to animals'.

But the agency added that no travel or trade restrictions are necessary at this time.

The mystery condition's most common symptom is fever, with shortness of breath and lung infections appearing in a 'small number' of cases.

Typical symptoms of SARS include a high temperature, fatigue and headache, with a dry cough and breathing difficulties arising later on.

The 2002-2003 SARS epidemic started in southern China and killed more than 700 people in mainland China, Hong Kong and elsewhere.

The WHO criticised China for under-reporting the number of cases following the outbreak, which infected four people in the UK.

China sacked its then-health minister Zhang Wenkang for the poor handling of the crisis, several months after the first case was reported.

Online speculation about a resurgence of SARS began when the mystery infection was first reported in Wuhan.

Wuhan police on Wednesday said they had punished eight people for 'publishing or forwarding false information on the internet without verification'.
A NSW man has been killed and a woman critically injured after being struck by a police car which crashed and flipped in a two-vehicle collision in north Tasmania.

Police have launched a professional standards investigation into the accident at an intersection in central Launceston about 8.30pm on Monday.

The pair had been crossing the road when they were struck by the police car after it clipped a silver Lancer, flipping and spinning several times.

A male pedestrian has been killed and a woman seriously injured in a crash involving a police car and another vehicle in north Tasmania (file picture)

The woman, also from NSW, is in a critical condition in Launceston General Hospital.

Preliminary investigations indicate the police officer was responding to a call for assistance.

The police car had its emergency lights activated and went through a red light at the intersection of Paterson and St John streets, police say.

Several members of the public rushed to help the victims before emergency services arrived.

'This is a tragic incident and our thoughts are with the family of the deceased man and the woman currently in hospital,' Acting Deputy Commissioner Jonathan Higgins said in a statement.

A male police offer and the female passenger of the Lancer remain in hospital with non life-threatening injuries.

'We will also be providing support to those emergency services workers who have been affected,' Deputy Commissioner Higgins said.
2019 was an active year for tornadoes in Alabama, the most active in a while.

And it was an active decade, too. It turns out that one Alabama county is No. 1 in the nation when it comes to tornado warnings, according to a report by The Washington Post.

But first, a look back at 2019. According to National Weather Service data, there were 82 confirmed tornadoes in Alabama in 2019, which is way above the 10-year average of 59.3.

Its also the most active year since 2011, which included the historic April 27 outbreak, when 62 tornadoes were confirmed in the state in just one day. There were 145 tornadoes that year, which smashed the previous record of 94 in 2008, according to the weather service.

Alabama as a whole had 595 tornadoes in the past decade.

And one Alabama county was No. 1 in the nation when it comes to tornado warnings over the same time period.

Thats according to data compiled by The Washington Post and U.S. Tornadoes, which shows that Washington County, in southwest Alabama, has been under more tornado warnings during the past 10 years than any other county in the nation.

According to their findings, there were 122 tornado warnings for parts of the county from Jan. 1, 2010, until Dec. 31, 2019.

The Post said the unincorporated community of Yarbo is the hot spot in the county and has been under a tornado warning 51 times over the past decade. Thats nearly three times as many tornado warnings as were issued for Tornado Alleys Oklahoma City over the same time span.

The incorporated town with the most warnings was Chatom, according to The Post. It had 50 tornado warnings over the past decade.

Among the worst tornadoes to hit Washington County during the past decade was an EF3 on April 15, 2011, that killed three people.

As far as 2019 goes, southwest Alabama as a whole had 12 confirmed tornadoes, according to the National Weather Service in Mobile. One of those tornadoes was blamed for an injury.

Of the 12 tornadoes, eight were EF1s and 4 were EF0s, according to the weather service.
A top general in Iran has said that killing President Donald Trump would not be enough retaliation for the death of Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani, suggesting that Iran's response to the deadly US air strike would not stop with a single attack.

'Firing a couple of missiles, hitting a base or even killing Trump is not valuable enough to compensate for martyr Soleimani's blood,' Gen Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Guard's aerospace program, said on state TV.

'The only thing that can compensate for his blood is the complete removal of America from the region.'

Hajizadeh's comments on Monday came as an emotional funeral for Soleimani in Tehran drew a crowd said by police to be in the millions in Tehran.

Scroll down for video

Iran's Gen Amir Ali Hajizadeh (left) has said that killing President Donald Trump would not be enough retaliation for the death of Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani, suggesting that Iran's response to the deadly US air strike would not stop with a single attack

Thousands of people gathered in Tehran on Monday for the second day of Qassem Soleimani's funeral after he was killed in a US drone strike on Friday

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wept over Soleimani's casket, his prayers joining the wails of mourners who flooded the streets of Tehran demanding retaliation against America for a slaying that's drastically raised tensions across the Middle East.

Authorities later brought Soleimani's remains and others to Iran's holy city of Qom, turning out another massive crowd.

It was an unprecedented honor for a man viewed by Iranians as a national hero for his work leading the Guard's expeditionary Quds Force. The US blames him for the killing of American troops in Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before his death Friday. Soleimani also led forces in Syria backing President Bashar Assad in a long war.

His death already has pushed Tehran to abandon the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as his successor and others vow to take revenge. In Baghdad, the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, something analysts fear could allow Islamic State militants to mount a comeback.

Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened an attack on the US military in the Mideast while also warning Trump, whom she called 'crazy.'

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (fourth from left) wept over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral

The general's daughter Zeinab Soleimani (pictured today) spoke to mourners during the funeral procession in Tehran and directly threatened an attack on US forces in the region

'The families of the American soldiers ... will spend their days waiting for the death of their children,' she said to cheers.

Her language mirrored warnings by other Iranian officials who say an attack on US military interests in the Middle East looms.

Iranian state television and others online shared a video that showed Trump's American flag tweet following Soleimani's killing turn into a coffin, the 'likes' of the tweet replaced by over 143,000 'killed'.

Khamenei prayed over the caskets of Soleimani and others at Tehran University after a brief mourning period at the capital's famed Musalla mosque. The mosque was where prayers were said over the body of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, after his death in 1989.

Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani and referred to him as a 'living martyr,' broke down four times in tears while offering traditional Muslim prayers for the dead.

'Oh God, you took their spirits out of their bodies as they were rolling in their blood for you and were martyred in your way,' Khamenei said as the crowd wailed. Soleimani will be buried Tuesday in his hometown of Kerman.

Soleimani's successor, Esmail Ghaani, stood near Khamenei's side as did President Hassan Rouhani and other leaders in the Islamic Republic. While Iran recently faced nationwide protests over government-set gasoline prices that reportedly led to the killing of over 300, Soleimani's death has brought together people from across the country's political spectrum, temporarily silencing that anger.

Demonstrators burned Israeli and US flags, carried a flag-draped US coffin or displayed effigies of Trump. Some described Trump himself as a legitimate target.

Mohammad Milad Rashidi, a 26-year-old university graduate, predicted more tension ahead.

'Trump demolished the chance for any sort of possible agreement between Tehran and Washington,' Rashidi said. 'There will be more conflict in the future for sure.'

Iranians set a US and Israeli flag on fire during Monday's funeral procession for military commander Qasem Soleiman

Protesters staged a symbolic 'execution' of a Donald Trump effigy during the funeral ceremony of Qassem Soleimani

Mourners are seen holding up a poster with a photo of Trump's severed head

Another mourner, Azita Mardani, warned that Iran 'will retaliate for every drop of his blood.'

'We are even thankful to (Trump) because he made us angry and this fury will lead to shedding of their blood in the Persian Gulf and the region's countries,' Mardani said. 'Here will become their graveyard.'

Ghaani made his own threat in an interview shown Monday on Iranian state television. 'God the Almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken,' he said.

Markets reacted Monday to the tensions, sending international benchmark Brent crude above $70 a barrel for some of the day and gold to a seven-year high. The Middle East remains a crucial source of oil, and Iran in the past has threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20 percent of all the world's oil traded passes.

Ghaani, a longtime Soleimani deputy, has now taken over as the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds, or Jerusalem, Force, answerable only to Khamenei. Ghaani has been sanctioned by the US since 2012 for his work funding its operations around the world, including its work with proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Those proxies likely will be involved in any operation targeting US interests in the Middle East or elsewhere.

Already, the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans 'of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks.' In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimani's killing made US military bases, warships and service members across the region fair game for attacks.

'We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region,' Ghaani said.

On the nuclear deal, Iran now says it won't observe the accord's restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities. That's a much-harsher step than they had planned to take before the attack.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have urged Iran to 'withdraw all measures' not in line with the deal.

Iran insisted it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldn't seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions last year. It further raises regional tensions, as Iran's longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.
The government has signalled to at least two of its blue chip firms  Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC)  to be ready to participate in the strategic disinvestment of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), two officials aware of the developments said.

In the 2019-20 financial year, the government, which has been facing a slowdown in growth for six straight quarters, has so far mopped up just 17,364.26 crore through disinvestment. In the July 2019 budget, the Centre set a disinvestment target of 1.05 lakh crore.

The participation of IOC and ONGC would be a contingency measure in case of a muted response from prospective private bidders, said the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. BPCLs strategic disinvestment by March 31 is crucial to the government achieving its target, they said.

Strategic disinvestment implies substantial sale of government shareholding in a public sector company along with the transfer of management control.

Initially, the government did not favour the participation of state-run oil majors such as ONGC and IOC in BPCLs disinvestment, mainly because the public sector companies would have to shell out a huge sum of around 60,000-70,000 crore in the process, according to the officials.

It is also possible that a consortium of public sector companies, led by either ONGC or IOC, could bid for the governments stake in BPCL. However, it could be the last resort and proposed to be exercised only if disinvestment of the company to private entities would appear difficult within this financial year, one of the officials mentioned above said.

The second official said the government may adopt the model it chose in the case of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) to offload its stake in the last quarter of 2017-18. In January 2018, in an off-market deal, ONGC acquired the governments entire stake (51.11%) in HPCL for 36,915 crore.

Such transactions also attract minimum resistance as the controlling stake of one PSU [public sector undertaking] is transferred to another PSU, the second official said.

Email queries sent to the finance ministry, the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM), the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, IOC and ONGC did not elicit any response.

The officials quoted above pointed out that the government was left with just three months to achieve the disinvestment target of 1.05 lakh crore, which could prove to be one of the crucial revenue streams to contain the fiscal deficit at 3.3% of the gross domestic product (GDP) as per the 2019-20 budget.

The interim budget presented on February 1 set a disinvestment target of 80,000 crore for 2019-20. While presenting the full budget for 2019-20 after the Lok Sabha elections, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, on July 5, raised the disinvestment target to 1.05 lakh crore.

The governments direct and indirect tax collections are not robust, mainly because of the economic slowdown, and they may not act as a surplus to cover up for a shortfall in the disinvestment target.

Indias GDP grew 4.5% in the July-September quarter (the second quarter of fiscal 2019-20), the slowest pace of expansion since March 2013.

It appears difficult for the government to disinvest companies such as BPCL in such a short span of time, and also get the proceeds of sale by March 31, 2020, a disinvestment expert said requesting anonymity. In this scenario, sale to state-run companies could be explored, he said.

Niranjan Hiranandani, president, The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), said, Yes, It is possible to do the sale, but it looks challenging to close the full transaction.

He was, however, not in favour of divesting governments stake to another PSU. This is not the right way to do. Disinvestment should be to the private sector, he added.

On November 20, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) accorded in-principle approval for strategic disinvestment of five state-run companies, including the governments entire stake [53.29% shareholding] in BPCL, while retaining its ownership in Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL) through some other public sector company.

The four other companies in the strategic disinvestment list are Shipping Corporation of India Ltd (SCI), Container Corporation of India Ltd (CONCOR), Tehri Hydro Development Corporation India Ltd (THDCIL) and North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Ltd (NEEPCO).

In case of difficulties in selling off BPCLs stake and receiving its proceeds before March 31, the government may take the route that is prescribed for the strategic disinvestment of THDCIL and NEEPCO, the first official said.

CCEA in November decided to divest the governments entire stakes in THDCIL (74.23% shareholding) and NEEPCO (100%) along with management control to state-run energy major NTPC Ltd.
The European Commission has been asked to investigate turf-cutting on protected bogs after the Government's own reports admitted the practice was continuing.

A complaint sent to the commission in recent days cites the country's official Habitats Assessment Report, which found turf-cutting was continuing at 22 raised bogs designated Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) and six that are Natural Heritage Areas.

It also includes social media posts from recent months where turf-cutters boasted of cutting at 53 protected bogs.

Reference is also made to information supplied by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht to the Peatlands Council that 282 individual plots within peatland SACs were cut during 2019.

Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE), which lodged the complaint, also raised concerns about remarks by Heritage Minister Josepha Madigan last November in which she said she might seek exemptions to continue cutting at 14 protected sites.

"This proposal is astonishing from a government that is supposed to be addressing climate change across all departments, without even considering the impact on Ireland's dwindling biodiversity," the FIE said.

Turf is a fossil fuel and its burning needs to stop under climate action measures, while the bogs need to be preserved and rehabilitated to naturally preserve carbon rich materials and prevent emissions from entering the atmosphere.

The department said it did not comment on third party correspondence with the commission.

It is the second time the FIE has brought the complaint to the commission. A previous investigation was closed in 2013 after assurances were received that action was being taken to stop cutting.
Turkey said that it will try to de-escalate the soaring tensions between Iran and the United States and will do anything it can, to reduce the cycle of violence. Turkeys Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu reportedly revealed that Ankara has been in touch with both parties after the top commander of Irans elite Quds Force was killed by US forces.

Cavusoglu held phone calls with his Iranian and US counterparts to discuss the issue and said that current escalation would be on the agenda when Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Turkey on January 8. He informed that he has also discussed the issue with Russia, Britain, Qatar, Pakistan and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Iraq has asked foreign military forces to leave the country but Cavusoglu opined that it would strengthen radical groups in the region.

While leaders from around the world have avoided taking sides with calls of restraint, China has held the United States responsible for the escalation in the aftermath of the Iranian Generals killing. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that the decision of the Trump administration to unilaterally withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal is the primary cause of nuclear tension.

Read: Turkey Detains Pilots To Probe Carlos Ghosn's Escape Through Istanbul

'Iran displayed restraint'

The spokesperson said that even after Iran was forced to reduce the compliance of the nuclear deal due to external factors, the country has been displaying restraint and had clearly expressed its political will to comprehensively implement the deal. He emphasised that Iran is not violating its obligation to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) since it was Trump administration who defied its international responsibilities by withdrawing from the deal.

Read: Turkey Probes How Nissan Chief Ghosn Fled Via Istanbul

In 2015, Iran reached a historic nuclear deal with P5+1 group which included the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany. Iran, under the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), agreed to limit sensitive nuclear activities in lieu of lifting economic sanctions. But the US-Iran relation worsened when the Trump administration, in May 2018, unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal accusing Iran of violating the terms of JCPOA and followed it with crippling economic sanctions.

Read: Soleimani's Daughter Threatens US Of 'dark Days' After Father's Death

Read: Iran Supreme Leader Khamenei Leads Soleimani's Funeral Prayers

(With inputs from agencies)
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday accused the Congress and the AAP of "burning the national capital in the fire of riots".

Addressing a gathering here, Shah said the Congress and the AAP "misled the youth and people of Delhi and committed the sin of burning the national capital in the fire of riots".

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, his party and AAP are responsible for "riots" and breach of peace in the national capital over the amended citizenship law, he alleged.

"Unashamed, they are still saying they will give legal aid to those behind the riots, go to their houses and take care of them," he charged.

Shah said Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought in the new legislation to give citizenship to minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who have sought refuge in India, but "Congress and AAP, especially Rahul and Priyanka (Gandhi Vadra), are misleading minorities in the entire country".

"They are telling them 'you will lose your citizenship due to CAA'. There is no provision in the amended law that takes away citizenship of people. Why are you lying?" Shah said.

The country is "watching with binoculars Rahul Gandhi supporting rioters", he said, adding the Congress leader is identifying himself with those vitiating peace in the country.

Shah, who is also the BJP president, said that Delhi bore the brunt of "riots" for four days during the recent violent protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). He held the AAP government and the Congress responsible for it.

He said Rahul Gandhi and Kejriwal spoke the language of Pakistan and demanded proof from the prime minister when the forces conducted surgical strikes on terror camps in Pakistan.

"No one had the courage to revoke Article 370. Modiji did it in one stroke. Our flag is flying high in Kashmir. No one can separate Kashmir from India now," Shah said.

The Congress adopted double standards on the issue of building a Ram temple in Ayodhya. For their vote bank politics, they delayed resolution of the issue, he alleged.

"Don't worry. Let Rahul, Kejriwal and company do whatever they want. A sky-touching temple will be built in Ayodhya," he said.

The home minister also criticised Kejriwal for not granting sanction to prosecute those who allegedly raised anti-India slogans on JNU campus in 2016.

"Some students shouted anti-India slogans, said 'Bharat tere tukde honge'. Tell me should not they be sent to jail? But Kejriwal is not granting sanction to prosecute them. Who do you want to save, Kejriwal ji?" he asked in a dig at the AAP chief ahead of the Delhi Assembly polls.

The election to the 70-member Delhi Assembly will take place on February 8 and results will be declared on February 11, the Election Commission announced on Monday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Neither the US nor Trump will get anything out of the murder of Soleimani. This is what expert on international law and international relations, political scientist Suren Sargsyan wrote on his Facebook page, touching upon the murder of commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran Qasem Soleimani by the US and the possible consequences of the murder.

Neither the US nor Trump will get anything out of the murder of Soleimani. This was a one-step and miscalculated operation with no strategy or tactics.

1. Trumps rating didnt go up.

2. This wont have an impact on his impeachment. It also wont have a positive impact on his possible re-election (lets not forget Carter, who also didnt get re-elected due to his failed policy on Iran).

3. Passions have flared more in Washington.

4. Not only the Democrats, but also Trumps administration was against this operation.

5. The US will be dealt a blow from Iran that will possibly be as painful and adequate as the murder of Soleimani.

6. This operation wont change Irans policy and wont restrain Iran in the region.

7. As a result of this, the people of Iran will unite around the government, meaning there will be less internal upheaval.

8. Although there wont be a war between Iran and the US, there will be more proxy wars, and geography will expand.

9. Those wars will be seen more in Syria, Iraq and possibly Lebanon where Hezbollah is based.

10. The potential deployment of the US military base from Iraq will lead to serious consequences. Baghdad and Washington already have discrepancies that reached the climax after the murder.

11. Terrorist groups will obviously take advantage of the situation. This serves as a new and wide opportunity for the half-dead Islamic State, which is an ideological group and will be reborn.

12. This is also a new opportunity for the Kurds.

13. This is also a new challenge for Turkey, which invades Iraq to persecute the Kurds on a regular basis.

14. The main risk for Armenia concerns the Armenians abroad, particularly in Syria and Lebanon.

15. The possible proxy clashes in the South Caucasus, including in the territory of Armenia imply another risk. It seems as though the special services of the US and Iran have been taking advantage of Armenias territory to go against each other for a long time now, he wrote.
ZAGREBFormer Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic, candidate of the top opposition party the Social Democrats, will be Croatias next president, the results of the presidential election showed on Sunday.

In the second and final round of the election, Milanovic won 52.7 percent of votes. At the same time, the incumbent Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, candidate of the ruling center-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), garnered 47.3 percent of the votes.

The presidents role is mostly ceremonial in Croatia. The head of state cannot veto laws but has a say in foreign policy, defense, and security matters.

Milanovic, who served as prime minister from 2011 to 2015, ran his election campaign on a promise to fight corruption, which he said had increased since he lost power to the conservatives.

Milanovics victory is a wind in the sails of the Social Democrats and will strengthen the party ahead of a parliamentary vote (due in the autumn), political analyst Branko Caratan told state television.

In the first round of the election two weeks ago, Milanovic beat 11 other candidates to come first with 29.6 percent of votes, with Grabar-Kitarovic in second place with 26.7 percent.

For me (from now on), each party will on the formal level be the same. I will cooperate with everyone who will have the executive power. I will not make divisions among the Croatian citizens, Milanovic told his cheering supporters in the party campaign headquarters.

The outgoing president Grabar-Kitarovic in her speech wished Milanovic a successful five-year term in office, which begins in February.

It is in the interest of our country which needs to preserve stability, she said.

While some analysts said Milanovics victory could hurt the standing of Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic in his HDZ party, ahead of the party leadership election this year, others said he would be able to manage the challenge.

I think that Plenkovic is a skilled politician who will know how to balance in the new situation, Smiljana Leinert Novosel told state television.

Croatia took over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union on Jan. 1.

By Igor Ilic
Two Union ministers of the Modi cabinet were among those who condemned the violence that unfolded on Sunday night at the premises of the premiere Jawaharlal Nehru University. Others included bureaucrats and Members of Parliament.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman: The finance minister, a JNU alum, was one of the first to have tweeted condemning the violence. She tweeted that she remembered JNU as a place for debates, but not violence.

Horrifying images from JNU - the place I know & remember was one for fierce debates & opinions but never violence. I unequivocally condemn the events of today. This govt, regardless of what has been said the past few weeks, wants universities to be safe spaces for all students, read her tweet .

Horrifying images from JNU  the place I know & remember was one for fierce debates & opinions but never violence. I unequivocally condemn the events of today. This govt, regardless of what has been said the past few weeks, wants universities to be safe spaces for all students.  Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) January 5, 2020

External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar: The EAM, a former alum, too, was the first from the government to respond. In his tweet, he condemned the violence and said the violence is not part of JNUs culture.

Have seen pictures of what is happening in #JNU. Condemn the violence unequivocally. This is completely against the tradition and culture of the university, he tweeted.

Have seen pictures of what is happening in #JNU. Condemn the violence unequivocally. This is completely against the tradition and culture of the university.  Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) January 5, 2020

Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant: Kant, who heads the government think tank, is also an alum and in his tweet, he remembered JNU as a place where vibrant debate and different viewpoints existed.

#JNU has always been a centre of lively & vibrant debate, discussion & co-existence of different viewpoints. What has happened today is extremely sad & tragic. I strongly & unequivocally condemn the violence on campus. This is totally unacceptable, he tweeted.

#JNU has always been a centre of lively & vibrant debate, discussion & co-existence of different viewpoints. What has happened today is extremely sad & tragic. I strongly & unequivocally condemn the violence on campus. This is totally unacceptable.  Amitabh Kant (@amitabhk87) January 5, 2020

CPI leader Sitaram Yechury: Yechury, another alum, reached AIIMS and later at a midnight protest at the ITO police station to land his support to injured students. In a series of students he blamed the government for abetting the violence.

The state of security in Indias premier University in the national capital is a very damning barometer of law and order in the country and a matter of deep concern. If students are not safe, then who is, read one of his tweets.

The state of security in Indias premier University in the national capital is a very damning barometer of law and order in the country and a matter of deep concern. If students are not safe, then who is?  Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) January 5, 2020

Social justice secretary R Subrahmanyam: Subrahmanyam, a former alum and former education secretary, was vocal in his condemnation. His transfer to the social justice ministry, as per several reports, was linked to the ongoing protests at JNU. His reaction was one of the few from the IAS officers, several of who have studied in the university.

#JNUViolence completely unacceptable and shameful. I condemn the violence is no uncertain terms and demand immediate action against the hooligans, Subrahmanyam tweeted.

#JNUViolence completely unacceptable and shameful. I condemn the violence is no uncertain terms and demand immediate action against the hooligans.  R. Subrahmanyam (@subrahyd) January 5, 2020

Former Nepal PM Baburam Bhattarai: The former prime minister, while retweeting a tweet of actor Swara Bhasker, urged that the JNU be saved. Bhattarai and Bhasker are both alums.

My heart-felt solidarity with my alma mater JNU! Please save this holy temple of learning, read one of Bhattarais tweets.

My heart-felt solidarity with my alma mater JNU! Please save this holy temple of learning! https://t.co/Uedm0Rbh2t  Baburam Bhattarai (@brb1954) January 5, 2020

Journalist and political commentator Sanjaya Baru: Baru, who was an advisor to former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh, confirmed the violence in the first few minutes when it was unfolding and said that goons were attacking students. His wife, Rama Baru, is a JNU professor.

... My wife teaches there. Her students live on campus. They have been calling in fear. This is an organised attack that alumnus like me should stand up against, read one of Barus tweets.

I don't live on campus. My wife teaches there. Her students live on campus. They have been calling in fear. This is an organised attack that alumnus like me should stand up against.  Sanjaya Baru (@Barugaru1) January 5, 2020

Political analyst and Swaraj India president Yogendra Yadav: Yadav, another JNU alum who was one for the first political leaders to have landed at the University to register his support, was physically manhandled twice. He fell on the divider and had a minor injury to his eye. Most of the heckling was caught on live TV, and he said that later at AIIMS, too, he was attacked.

There is no one to stop the goons, reality is before you, Yadav told reporters moments before he was attacked.

Congress MP Pradyut Bordoloi: Bordoloi, an alum of the University, compared the violence to Hitlers Third Reich regime.

As an alumnus of JNU and an informed citizen of India, it gives me great pain to witness what happened in JNU today. Its reminiscent of the Third Reich regime of Hitler but no matter how much you try to break us, we will rise and fight this regime peacefully and unitedly, he tweeted.

As an alumnus of JNU and an informed citizen of India, it gives me great pain to witness what happened in JNU today. Its reminiscent of the Third Reich regime of Hitler but no matter how much you try to break us, we will rise and fight this regime peacefully and unitedly.  Pradyut Bordoloi (@pradyutbordoloi) January 5, 2020

More than 20 people were injured when masked men attacked students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday evening during a meeting called by JNU Teachers Association. The police has registered an FIR and are scanning social media posts and CCTV footages as part of its investigation.
The calls come as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the beginning of the deployment of his country's troops to Libya.

Egypt, Italy and France stressed that Turkeys recent intervention in Libya endangers security and peace of the region entirely, a statement by the Egyptian foreign ministry read.

According to the statement, the consensus was expressed during phone calls by Egyptian foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry with his Italian and French counterparts Luigi Di Maio and Jean-Yves Le Drian.

The calls, which come as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the beginning of deployment of his country's troops to Libya, are part of intensive contacts with international partners on ongoing developments in Libya.

The ministers reaffirmed rejection to any military interference in Libya, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ahmed Hafez said, as they underscored the necessity to support efforts aiming towards a political solution for the Libyan crisis.

In the past weeks, tensions have continued to mount in the Mediterranean region following controversial accords signed between Ankara and Libya's Government of National Accord, led by Prime Minister Fayez Al-Sarraj.

Egypt has reiterated its firm support of the eastern-based Libyan National Army and its commander Khalifa Haftar, stressing its rejection of "any form of intervention in Libyas domestic affairs."



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Samsung has developed artificial intelligence avatars that are virtually indistinguishable from real humans, according to leaked footage of the firms secretive Neon project.

Developed by Samsung Technology and Advanced Research Lab in the US, it the latest artificial intelligence platform developed by the South Korean technology giant and appears to be the most human-like AI ever created.

The official unveiling is set to take place at CES in Las Vegas on Tuesday, though a full promo video was discovered within the source code of the Neon website.

Samsung dismissed rumours that Neon has anything to do with the companys artificial assistant Bixby, stating that the project is unlike anything you have seen before.

One of the engineers working on the project, Pranav Mistry, revealed ahead of the launch that the technology can autonomously create new expressions, new movements, new dialogue (even in Hindi), completely different from the original captured data.

Not everyone was convinced by the realism of the avatar, with Twitter users describing them variously as creepy and deformed and weird.

Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty

It is unclear what Samsung plans to use the technology for, though some speculate it could prove useful for online customer service, or to act as virtual receptionists at hotels and other establishments. It may even explore virtual reality settings, which is how other tech firms plan to use lifelike avatars.

In March 2019, Facebook announced its Codec Avatars project, which aims to allow people to create realistic versions of themselves using 3D capture technology.

The idea is to use these avatars within virtual reality worlds, meaning Facebook users could connect with friends and family in a three-dimensional social network. It is something referred to as social presence, and is reminiscent of the fictional worlds inhabited within the sci-fi novel Ready Player One.

Facebook claims the avatars would help social connections in virtual reality become as natural and common as those in the real world, and could be experienced using hardware built by its VR subsidiary Oculus.

Right now, proximity determines whom we have relationships with, said Yaser Sheikh, the director of research at Facebook Reality Labs.

The real promise of augmented reality and virtual reality is that it lets us spend time with whomever we wish and build meaningful relationships no matter where people live.
South Korea's top security officials will have a National Security Council (NSC) meeting to discuss the current Iran crisis on Monday afternoon, Cheong Wa Dae said.



President Moon Jae-in instructed the members of the NSC standing committee to closely review security conditions, the safety of South Koreans in the region and crude oil supply, in particular, according to Cheong Wa Dae's spokesperson Ko Min-jung.



Trade, Industry and Energy Minister Sung Yun-mo also plans to attend the session at the call of the president, she added, although he's not a formal member of the NSC panel.



It will be presided over by Chung Eui-yong, director of national security at the presidential office.



Military tensions have been sharply rising since last week's killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, arguably Iran's most powerful commander, by an U.S. drone bombing at Baghdad's international airport.













Global oil prices have further soared. The growing sense of crisis may also affect South Korea's move to play a role in ensuring the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.



It may serve as a wake-up call for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who has threatened to unveil a "new strategic weapon" to counter Washington's "hostile" policy against his regime. (Yonhap)
I recently spoke to Jonathan Rosenbaum, the longtime and widely respected film critic for the Chicago Reader and author of numerous books on filmmaking. He has been writing about cinema and cultural life since the 1960s. His latest effort is a two-volume work, with the overall title of Cinematic Encounters, published by the University of Illinois Press. The first volume (November 2018) is subtitled Interviews and Dialogues, the second (June 2019) Portraits and Polemics. The books consist of essays, interviews and reviews covering several decades.

Jonathan Rosenbaum in Paris, 2017

Rosenbaum was born in Florence, Alabama in 1943. His grandfather owned and operated a small chain of movie theaters in the South, including one in Florence. Remarkably, Rosenbaum was raised in a house designed for his parents by the illustrious architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In a memoir, the critic describes himself during his youth as an Alabama moviegoer who largely grew up in my familys movie theaters.

The convulsions produced by the civil rights movement and other social struggles clearly influenced Rosenbaum, as they did many members of his generation. He participated in one of the famed Selma to Montgomery [Alabama] protest marches led by Martin Luther King, Jr. in March 1965. He describes it here.

Rosenbaum lived in Paris and London in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where he began writing movie and literary criticism and befriended numerous filmmakers. In the late 1970s he taught film criticism at University of California, San Diego, taking over classes taught by well-known critic Manny Farber.

Rosenbaum has contributed to many leading film publications. His books include Moving Places: A Life in the Movies (1980/1995); Film: The Front Line 1983 (1983); Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism (1995); Movies as Politics (1997); Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Films You See (2000); Discovering Orson Welles (2007) and Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition (2010).

Alabama police attack Selma-to-Montgomery Marchers, March 7, 1965

Whether one agrees with his assessment in each case or not, Rosenbaum is an elegant and thoughtful writer. The pieces in the new books deal with a disparate group of filmmakers, from the widely known to the relatively obscure. One of Rosenbaums admirable qualities is his willingness to stick his neck out on behalf of figures neglected or even scorned by mainstream film reviewing.

Many readers of Rosenbaums commentaries over the years have been appreciative as well of his publicizing and championing global cinema in the face of American media parochialism and worse. The two new books include discussions with or about US, Canadian, Chilean, British, French, Belgian, Danish, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Hungarian, Czech, Iranian, Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese filmmakers.

In Interviews and Dialogues, Rosenbaum speaks to a number of intriguing figures, among them Orson Welles, Geraldine Chaplin, Samuel Fuller, Alain Resnais, Ivan Passer, John Carpenter, Raul Ruiz and Jean-Luc Godard. Along with numerous others, directors Jerry Lewis, Luis Bunuel, Yasujiro Ozu, Ermanno Olmi, Jacques Rivette, Elaine May, James L. Brooks and Richard Linklater come in for consideration in Portraits and Polemics.

In my view, the material on Welles, Resnais, Fuller, May, Lewis, Rivette, Carl Dreyer, Jacques Tati, Andre Delvaux and Jacques Demy is the most rewarding.

There are many critical judgments expressed here in these two volumes. At their best, they attempt to place films and filmmakers in a comprehensible relationship to our lives and times. In a comment about French director Robert Bresson (in a 1997 essay), for example, Rosenbaum writes that it seems to him a far more fruitful approach to Bressons style to see it growing out of concrete and material historical experience than to treat it as a timeless, transcendent, and ultimately mysterious expression of abstract spirituality.

Rosenbaum goes on to expound the view that cinema is concerned with the world, not with an alternative to it, and that cinema belongs to the world, including us, or as he observed on another occasion, if film is an important art form, its important because it addresses the way we live.

In our recent telephone conversation, we spoke about a number of filmmakers who are not as well known today as they should be. We devoted some time, for example, to discussing French director Jacques Tati (1907-1982), an interview with whomin late 1972is one of the first in (and among the highlights of) Interviews and Dialogues. Tati, a one-time popular cabaret performer and mime, is one of the truly unusual figures in cinema history.

Tatis PlayTime (1967), which took some nine years to make, is a satirical work set in Paris airports, office buildings, apartment houses and fashionable eating establishments. Tati appears in it, but only as one character among many. Fellow French director Francois Truffaut greeted it as a film that comes from another planet, where they make films differently. In PlayTime s extended, final scene, Rosenbaum notes, as the posh restaurant falls to pieces, everyone gets acquainted.

Jacques Tati in Playtime (1967)

Another artist who came up for discussion was Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968), the Danish-born film director whose best-known films include The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Vampyr (1932), Day of Wrath (1943), Ordet (1955) and Gertrud (1964).

Day of Wrath, based on a Norwegian play, concerns itself with denunciations of alleged witchcraft in early 17th century Denmark. Rosenbaum observes that the film was made and premiered during the darkest days of the Nazi occupation of Denmark, when Jews were being deported and that it clearly registers as one of the great Resistance films.

Day of Wrath (1943)

Rosenbaums books introduced me to the work of Belgian filmmaker Andre Delvaux (1926-2002). His 1966 film, The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short, based on a 1945 novel, recounts the fatal obsession of a respectable, repressed, middle-aged male high school teacher with one of his graduating female pupils (played by Beata Tyszkiewicz, the future wife of Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda).

As a final introductory note, in my view, Rosenbaum, in the recently published books and elsewhere, overvalues certain contemporary filmmakers, including Bela Tarr (Hungary), Pedro Costa (Portugal) and a number of others. Their efforts, I believe, more than anything else, reflect the consequences of critical social events and traumas (the rise and collapse of Stalinism, the social origins of fascism and the Holocaust, the betrayed or abortive revolutions in France, Portugal and elsewhere in the years 1968-1975) that the artists have not worked through or understood.

The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short (1966)

These directors films tend to express, in other words, less the underlying social reality of our epoch, the unfinished 20th century, and more the confusion, disillusionment and even despair the aforementioned, intellectually and aesthetically undigested events have engendered in certain quarters.

The following is an edited version of our discussion.

* * * * *

David Walsh: Youve been at film criticism a long time. What do you think your particular contribution has been to the discussion of film and art?

Jonathan Rosenbaum: This is partly based on the insights of other people from whom Ive learned and listened to about my work.

Jonathan Rosenbaum in 2014

I think the internationalism is significant. I have tried to bring films of all sorts to peoples attention, sometimes relatively obscure ones.

I think theres also the particular way in which I use the first person, with the idea that people should know where my biases lie. The autobiographical aspect of my work is one I consider importantwhether its influential or not is another question.

Moreover, I argue strongly that the critic should not have the first or the last word, but should intervene in a public discussion that begins before the critic comes along, and continues after the critic leaves. I think that this position is probably not a usual one.

DW: What about your somewhat unusual or distinctive childhood, growing up in the South during the civil rights period? What influence do you think that had?

JR: It had a great deal of influence. I was very fortunate to have grown up when I did compared with people who are young today, who must find it incredibly difficult. I was very much influenced by the counter-culture. There was much that was deluded about it, but I also was in France, if not in May 68, in June 68 and the remainder of that summer.

One thing that had an enormous influence on me was becoming friends with members of the French Communist Party whose tastes in cinema and art were quite different from those of American leftists that I knew. They were much more drawn to a certain intellectual radicalism, as represented by people such as [filmmakers] Jacques Rivette, Robert Bresson and Jacques Tati.

French workers during factory occupation, June 1968

Moreover, I fundamentally rediscovered American cinema through French criticism, and by living in Paris for five years. I think that had an impact on my work.

Im not a mainstream writer. The most mainstream piece Ive ever done, which got me a lot of attention, is a piece that was widely disliked and which Im not fond of in its published form, an obituary of Ingmar Bergman published as an op-ed piece in the New York Times in August 2007. On my website, I published my original draft, which I think is acceptable, whereas I felt, in retrospect, that agreeing to do that piece in the way I did was almost like signing a pact with the devil.

DW: Why so?

JR: For one thing, it had to be rewritten several times to suit the editors biases. What most people took away from it was not what I was even interested in writing about. The headline the Times gave it was Scenes From an Overrated Career. I wanted to talk about how important Bergman was as a theater director, and they cut all that out.

Ingmar Bergman

I think my objection was less to Bergman than to the way he was being received in the mainstream. To me, the superiority of [Danish filmmaker] Carl Dreyer over Bergman is very important. I think most people who worship Bergman dont even know Dreyers work or life very well.

Dreyers cinema is about challenges to belief rather than belief. I think thats an idea that would be harder for someone in the mainstream to accept, because so much of what conventional opinion is concerned with is closure, the final word, feeling comfortable with something. It seems to me that my interest in Orson Welles, for example, goes very much against that, which is why I even titled my book, Discovering Orson Welles. In other words, its an ongoing process.

DW: I think in addition to being apart from the mainstream, your being apart from academia, or largely apart from it, has been a generally fortunate thing. At least in recent decades.

JR: Its true, although I do try to keep up with whats going on in academic circles. I have a lot of ideological and artistic objections to academiaand not only because I was treated relatively badly by various institutions, something I mention in the introduction to one of the new books.

DW: You use the term polemics in one of your titles. Writing about British filmmaker Sally Potter, for example, you suggest that the fact her films have both been widely and unfairly disparaged by other critics may have helped to intensify my support, but they certainly havent caused it. Does it ever concern you that you might be saying B because the media says A, or because this or that critic you dont care for says A?

JR: Yes, it does. Im sometimes reactingwhich, by the way, was what Manny Farber, my favorite American film critic, said he tended to do very often. In other words, he basically reacts against conventional thinking. I test my own thinking in this manner, for example, when I critique the British critic David Thomson on James L. Brooks.

DW: I interviewed the director of a film entitled Icebox [2018], Daniel Sawka, about refugee children locked up by the US government. He mentioned that Brooks was the producer. He told me that Brooks was very passionate about the refugee issue, and that instantly gave me a more favorable opinion of him.

JR: Brooks is a very paradoxical figure and I think thats what fascinates me about him. Hes not a figure one can pinpoint ideologically that easily. One of the things I find horrifying about Broadcast News [1987] is that its impossible to establish whether the news reports are accurate or not. Its as though Brookss entire sense of the ethics of reporting has to do with this more inner-directed business as to whether the tears of a given anchorman are genuine or not genuine, but not whether the actual impact of the report is progressive or reactionary. Thats quite strange, but thats compatible with the whole way the television industry operates, so I think one can learn quite a bit from the film.

I think its a pity that if I had to pick one film by Brooks on which to rest his importance its one that no one can see, the original, musical version of Ill Do Anything [1994], which he destroyed himself.

DW: Your comments about Elaine May also interest me. I havent seen all of her films. I saw The New Leaf [1971], The Heartbreak Kid [1972] and Mikey and Nicky [1976] many years ago. I certainly agree with you that the media trashing of Ishtar [1987] was overdone.

JR: Ishtar is her weakest film. When I met her a few years ago, I was asked in her presence which I thought were her best films. I mentioned Mikey and Nicky and The Heartbreak Kid, and she seemed pleased. I think she considers them her best as well.

John Cassavetes and Peter Falk in Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky (1976)

DW: One of the things thats striking in your books is that you dont wax nostalgic about the good old days.

JR: I think theres a lot of distortion, for example, when people speak about the 1960s or 70s as being the golden age of cinema. They forget that the [Jean-Luc] Godard films and others they like so much were attacked by critics and closed within a week.

DW: You make this comment in Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition [2010]: Its sad in some ways to see the old paradigms of cinema dying in the U.S. But the emerging paradigms of cinephilia in this part of the worldwhich could significantly be almost anywhere else in worldare exciting to me, and I dont believe that were obliged only to lament the new state of things.

And this is from a recent interview: One of the changes is in taste, which is different from aesthetic and conceptual changes. But it seems to me that young people are much more sympathetic to difficult films than they used to be, which is a very good sign. There are more interesting difficult films now than there were in the sixties, for example.  When I was in college, I would see a film and it would have a big effect on me and I would wait two or three months before I met someone else who saw the film and before I read about it in a magazine. Now, I can see something really interesting and immediately read about it on the Internet. I think theres an important difference in that, which actually helps communication and creates a new kind of community. What I also find interesting is that its a more natural growth.

JR: Of course theres a negative side to online culture too. Im a somewhat skeptical admirer of Stanley Kubrick, but I am an admirer. However, if you go to the various websites devoted to Kubrick, its alarming to what extent they get into obsessive, quasi-religious discussions. They ascribe all sorts of ridiculous things to his films, hidden features in his films that no one could possibly see. It becomes a kind of a flight from reality.

Obviously, on the Internet you get more of everything, more thats good and more thats bad. More importantly, theres an openness to material and issues.

DW: I watched Jacques Tatis PlayTime [1967] again, as a result of reading your new books. And I was very struck by that film. I admire greatly the interview you did with Tati [Tatis Democracy].

JR: PlayTime was a film that didnt grab me immediately, but, as I got to know it better and better, it changed my relationship to living in cities. It actually made it easier or even possible to live in cities.

DW: There is so much there: the element of social critique, the comedy, the compassion, the choreography. You worked with him. What was Tati like, personally?

JR: He was not an intellectual. He was very responsive to what was going on immediately around him. So it was disconcerting, because before very long youd be part of one of the gags hed dream up.

Most amazingly, I once saw him perform 20 minutes for a dog in a restaurant where he went to lunch, which was in the same building as his office. He wasnt concerned about anyone else there, only the dog as an audience. The thing that I found really touching, which I only learned recently, is that when he was preparing Mon Oncle [1958], he would follow dogs around for days, just to see where they went and what they did. He had that childs curiosity about him.

DW: And, as well, as your essays title suggests, he had a democratic spirit. What was Tatis political or social outlook?

JR: I dont know how he voted, but he was a funny kind of combination of being very progressive about some things and being very reactionary about others.

Thats how the French criticism tended to regard him. For example, Jean-Andre Fieschi from the Cahiers du Cinema [a prominent film journal], one of the people who influenced me, and a Communist, criticized Tati for that.

DW: Although you do cite Fieschi as saying Never, perhaps, has a film [PlayTime] placed so much confidence in the intelligence and activity of the spectator.

JR: I think thats true. Thats an important part of my own politics, relative to my own book, Movie Wars [2000]which, by the way, is by far my most popular book, and thats interesting because it had no advertising budget whatsoever. The book hit a nerve.

One of the arguments in that book is that the industry tends to look at the audience as a bunch of fools.

DW: One of the essays that raises issues closest to my heart is the one on Carl Dreyers Day of Wrath [1943]. It raises the complex relationship between history, social life, the personal history or personality of the artist and his or her artwork.

JR: Do you consider Day of Wrath a Resistance film?

DW: I think youd have a more informed opinion about that than I do. I havent seen the film in a long time.

JR: Dreyer himself was in denial about it, but I think it was. Even though its complicated by the fact that the Nazis apparently liked the film!

DW: You point out that Dreyers comment, One never knows, of course, what goes on in ones subconsciousness also suggests that some works of art ultimately know and say more than their makers do. I would tend to argue, all important works of art ultimately know and say more than their individual makers do.

JR: One of things thats always stuck with me in regard to Don Quixote is Harold Blooms commentthat you can criticize both Don Quixote and Sancho Panza as being foolish and deluded, but together, Bloom commented, they know more than we do. I find that an extraordinary statement.

DW: I agree, its excellent. But I have to confess Im thinking about this in the context of writing about the various efforts at present to eliminate artists from the past or the present because of their moral or sexual failings.

JR: On my website I attack [Variety critic] Owen Gleiberman because when Roman Polanskis Dreyfus film [Jaccuse, or An Officer and a Spy] showed in Venice, and Polanski in some interview said he identified with Dreyfus. Gleiberman said, how dare he! A rapist who was guilty comparing himself to Dreyfus who was innocent, etc. He was completely overlooking that fact, for example, that more recently Polanski was involved in very involved libel suits that he successfully brought against people who claimed things that he hadnt done, acts that he hadnt committed.

The way the media works now, the only thing of significance about Polanski is that he had sex with a young teenage girl more than 40 years agowhat hes done since then has no consequence at all. I find that incredibly unfair. I was so shocked when I read a columnist comparing Polanski to a Nazi-collaborating French official [Maurice Papon], when Polanskis parents were sent to the camps and his mother died there! To say that was such a disgusting thing.

And Woody Allen, whom I dont care for as a filmmaker, its not at all clear that hes guilty of anything.

DW: I dont care for his last number of films, but his virtual blacklisting is disgraceful.

JR: Well, it all boils down, in my opinion, to this: We cant get rid of Donald Trump, so who can we get rid of? Its frustration or a distraction.

DW: There may be frustration and impotence, but its also being manipulated in the sense that, along with anti-Russia hysteria and various other things, its the Democratic Partys attempt to ensure that opposition to Trump remains right-wing.

JR: And now Michael Bloomberg has entered the race. His purpose seems to be to get rid of Elizabeth Warren.

DW: In defense of beleaguered billionaires. But I was speaking as well about the effort to get rid of artists from the past, having recently written against the New York Times piece in November headlined, Is It Time [neo-Impressionist French painter Paul] Gauguin Got Canceled?

JR: I read that piece. Its an amazing notion.

DW: Who speaks like that? To cancel Gauguin, or any major artist.

JR: Thats like the 1984 version of journalism.

DW: Returning to the passages on Carl Dreyer, you go on, Dreyer remained so faithful to his art that he may have wound up saying more about his own times than most direct commentators. This is what a good deal of honest, serious art does.

This is an argument I was making in the Gauguin piece. Its not the same point, but its related: the artist, in his or her art, is often better than he or she is as a human being.

JR: Although I agree with to you some extent about [director and informer] Elia Kazan in The Sky Between the Leaves, one thing tends to get overlooked. The real villains in the Hollywood blacklist were the producers and the studio heads, the people who actually imposed the blacklist, rather than the people who ratted. They even name awards after these people. It seems to me a little unfair that they get away with murder while Kazan gets shafted.

Parenthetically, I do agree with you in your book that Chaplin, Orson Welles and John Ford are probably the three greatest figures in American cinema.

DW: I think if an artist of some repute, such as Kazan, had stood up to the blacklist, it would have had an enormous impact. In that piece, I tried to avoid an ad hominem attack on Kazan. I watched his films, or as many of them as I could get hold of. I thought some of them were interesting, I thought some of them were not interesting or convincing. There is that edge of hysteria and bad faith in a lot of them. On the Waterfront [1954] I reject in toto, intellectually and artistically.

JR: I hate its self-righteousness about informing. To me, Wild River [1960] may be Kazans best film.

Montgomery Clift and Lee Remick in Wild River (1960)

DW: I wanted to ask you about the Frank Lloyd Wright house you grew up in.

JR: My best friend in Chicago, Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, has just finished a film about it thats going to be premiering in January. Its called A House is Not a Home: Wright or Wrong.

The Wright house was commissioned by my parents. Mehrnaz has basically made a film about how difficult it becomes when you find yourself living inside a work of art or trying to live inside a work of art.

Rosenbaum House, Florence, Alabama (Photo creditMmdoogie)

DW: What was it like growing up in that extraordinary house?

JR: In some ways, it was like a fortress, which is also true of other Wright homes. In other words, there was an ideology about private space and not being part of a community, which I have negative feelings about. The house is now a museum, its actually owned by the city.

I attribute part of my liking for [widescreen] CinemaScope, Yasujiro Ozu, Alain Resnais, and some other filmmakers to the experience of growing up in that house. You know, Nicholas Ray said that he learned his respect for the horizontal line from Wright. Its a very horizontal house.

DW: Many members of your generation, and mine, have fallen by the wayside, gotten rich, become conservative or simply cheaply misanthropic. Do you have any thoughts on why you have remained true to the artistic and intellectual principles you more or less started out with?

JR: One conclusion Ive come to recently is that if youre independent of the mainstream, you can brand yourself. If youre in the mainstream, its the mainstream that brands you.

If one is called, for example, an avant-garde artist, then one has a certain flexibility in the choices one can make. Even the fact that Im claimingwhich in many peoples minds would be incredibly arrogant or pretentiousthat what Im doing in these two books is artistic, its not simply a social act, Im actually trying to do something aesthetic through criticism, thats something I have the freedom to claim, which I would not have if I were writing for the mainstream.

DW: Youre speaking about the ability to maintain a certain independence, economically and intellectually.

JR: Yes. I was brought up to think that if I didnt write for the New Yorker or Time magazine, I was a failure. Ive come to feel that although I now have a much smaller audience than I did when I was writing for the Chicago Reader, I actually think Im succeeding more as a writer now than I did then, because its a much more relevant, focused audience.

I have between 800 and 1,000 people visiting my website each day, but its important to me that at least half of them are not from the US. Very far-flung places. Thats very satisfying to me, that Ive created a community, which is kind of like an intellectual, artistic community.

History gets changed by a group of people agreeing upon something, which eventually becomes embraced by a larger group of people. That was what the French New Wave was, or you could talk about Soviet cinema, or Italian neo-realism.

It would seem to me that the internet would have enormous political potentiality. The big corporations are doing the same things all over the world. So, it would seem that there must be all sorts of ways the left could organize internationally.

DW: Absolutely, thats our firm conviction, and experience already. I think the possibilities are almost limitless. Weve had a year of mass protest and the movements are often being organized on peoples cellphones. Somebody called it the year of the leaderless revolutions. Now, none of them have succeeded and I wouldnt want to idealize the current level of thinking in the slightest, but the potential is enormous. I believe they have to be international in character.

Theres a problem with historical and social knowledge, especially among the younger generation, through absolutely no fault of their own.

JR: Thats in part because the educational system in this country is totally screwed up. On the other hand, Im much more popular with people in their 30s and younger than I am with people my own age or even closer to my own age. The people who read me tend to be in their 20s and 30s.

DW: Again, finally, I wanted to register my appreciation for your efforts on behalf of film and art against philistinism and commercialism.

JR: Thank you.
WASHINGTON  The Trump administration on Monday took its first step toward tighter pollution controls on trucks, an anomalous move for a government known for weakening environmental policies but one that would pre-empt tougher state rules.

Andrew Wheeler, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, began the legal and regulatory process for curbing highway truck emissions of nitrogen dioxide, which has been linked to asthma and lung disease.

While the move could give President Trump a nominal environmental achievement for the 2020 campaign, public health experts say the truck regulations are not as out of line with administration policy as they would appear. The emerging rule will quite likely limit nitrogen dioxide pollution more than current standards, they say, but still fall far short of what is necessary to significantly prevent respiratory illness and even premature deaths.

Instead, the administration appears to be complying with the wishes of the trucking industry, which has called for a new national nitrogen dioxide regulation to override states that could otherwise implement their own, tighter rules. On that front, the E.P.A. rule is likely to open a new battle in Mr. Trumps long-running war with California over environmental regulations and states rights. California is already moving ahead with stringent state-level standards on nitrogen dioxide pollution from trucks that could be replicated by other states.
Learning Management System (LMS), a term once alien to the corporate world is now well recognized at every level of an organization irrespective, of its size or industry. According to Markets And Markets report (Ref #1), (LMS) market is expected to grow from USD 5.22 Billion in 2016 to USD 15.72 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 24.7%. Having said that, the recognition may not necessarily have a positive connotation to it. Corporates have popularized the use of LMS but very few have truly maximized the benefits from its capabilities. Interestingly CLOs, Learning Heads, Instructional designers, may like their LMS, but by and large all the learners are either neutral or hate the experience. It is also key to note that users do see a lot of value that LMS adds but it is the experience that becomes a key deterrent. This begs the question  what is going wrong with LMS experience. Unfortunately, the answer is not that simple. Lets introspect a bit

Selecting the LMS

Lets start with the LMS selection process. When you buy a car, you look at your requirements - enthusiasts will look for features, racers will look for speed, city drivers will look for fuel efficiency and size, while others may have criteria such as value for money, resale value, and so on. So requirements are based on what the ultimate users goals are. While not everybody is savvy enough to make the right choice based on their needs, they still manage to identify a close match. But in LMS selection process, employees who are ultimate users of the system barely contribute to the criteria definition. Over the years, the criteria, bidding process, requirements matrix, etc. has become exhaustive and IT, HR and L&D devised their own checklists to ensure that all items are ticked before the final selection is made. However, somewhere in this process, audience analysis, requirements prioritization based on organizational needs, cultural and behavioral aspects of the organization, etc. is often overlooked. It is important to start the process with focus on what people really want, why they need an LMS and what will make them stick to the decision for a longer duration. The experience design, features and functionalities, administration and management, governance and reporting has to be with the learner at the center rather than IT, HR, etc. processes influencing it. According to user-research done by Capterra (Ref #2), 69% of the buyers are new buyers, and only 31% are switching from existing LMS, hence there is a high probability that new adopters may overlook this critical aspect.

LMS Implementation

It is well understood that the implementation is the most critical phase in the journey of LMS rollout. However, the responsibility often rests on the shoulders of the LMS vendor rather than an internal team in-charge of the implementation. Not that LMS vendors do a bad job of it, but they simply run their well-practiced steps, demonstrate completion, and move on. There is very little focus on the motivation, communication, and sustainment of interest of end users. A better approach would be to form an implementation team consisting of representatives from different streams such as HR, L&D, user groups, IT, Corporate Communication and business stakeholders. These teams can work with the LMS vendor to create an implementation and rollout plan. The teams can play a big role as they are well aware of the needs and challenges of the end users, organizational constraints, culture and values, strategic initiatives and goals, and so on, and can create a comprehensive and all-inclusive strategy and plan that is integrated with the learners jobs, skill requirements, and career plans. Well begun is half done and it is so true in case of LMS selection, as most users may have a prejudice and first impressions matter, communication, marketing campaign, onboarding programs, training sessions, focus group testing, etc. should also be an integral part of the plan.

Ongoing support and maintenance

This is the most undervalued aspect simply because once an LMS is rolled out, it is expected to function smoothly without any intervention. The only operational support expected is from a team of administrators who perform routine administration activities such as course upload, course assignment, user creation, etc. In reality, this requires the same amount of focus and rigor, if not more, than the selection and implementation process. Apart from the administration of the LMS, periodic evaluation of usage, responses, feedback, issues reported and their resolution, etc. need to be analyzed. Based on those corrective measures in terms of activating new features, changes to configurations, updates to manuals and documentation, user training, gamification and introducing incentives etc. need to be carried out. Content analysis and improvement is also a part of this exercise. The evaluation of goals and success criteria for LMS implementation should be a part of periodic evaluation to ensure alignment of training delivery with overall organizational goals. Again, this should be done by a team comprising representatives from different streams.

How technology can help

With rapid and disruptive changes in technology, an LMS as a software system is going through a transition. Traditional models are being molded into new ways of delivering content  and delivering new types of content as well. Conventional user interfaces, look and feel, and interactions are undergoing massive changes. There is a shift in focus from content to the learner. Responsive design, the use of gamification, a recommendation engine, adaptive learning paths, competency-based learning, social networking and collaboration to integrate informal learning with the formal modes, are some of the examples of how technology is transforming the way training and development is done. According to user-research done by Capterra (Ref #2), Live Video Conferencing (38%), Integrated Talent Management (28%), Mobile Learning (27%), Gamification (22%), Social Learning (20%), are most desired features by the learners. There are many LMS and, tools and platform providers who have joined the EduTech crusade by providing these and many other features. There are many more planning to contribute with innovative solutions. A future where Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays the role of an instructor or even a content writer is not far away. What needs to be seen is whether the AI can also play a part in selection, implementation and administration to address some of the areas of improvements mentioned above. For example, an AI could analyze the shortcomings of an existing LMS and provide recommendations for the selection criteria of new LMS, or the AI could create a content and skill taxonomy based on existing data, which can be then used as a starting point for new LMS implementation. The AI could observe user behavior and provide inputs to determine the engagement level, emotional attachment, identify distractors, etc. From an organizations perspective, if an AI could predict ROI in terms of change in productivity, operational efficiency, sales numbers, etc. based on human capital development interventions, and propose remedial paths. This would completely change the way corporates look at training and development. LMS selection, implementation and administration will no longer be the responsibility of one department but will get integrated into the organizations DNA.
Railway system braced for Spring Festival travel rush

By:Wu Qiong | From:english.eastday.com | 2020-01-06 16:15

With just weeks to go before the Spring Festival of 2020, the railway system in the Yangtze River Delta is now bracing for the travel rush, known in Mandarin as Chunyun, the largest annual migration on earth.

According to the latest plan, the Shanghai Railway Bureau has arranged 1,276 passenger trains (including 950 bullet trains) for this years travel rush, hitting a new record in its history. Among them, 276 trains are extra trains.

Chunyun 2020 will last for 40 days, from January 10 to February 18. It is estimated that there will be 79.6 million passengers in the Yangtze River Delta, a year-on-year increase of 4.6 million. That means 1.99 million passengers need to be transported each day.

The passenger traffic volume ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year is expected to be 31.5 million, a rise of 1.9 million year-on-year; the volume after the festival is projected to be 48.1 million, up by 2.7 million year-on-year.

However, long-distance travel has actually begun for some, as peoples travel from Yangtze River Delta cities to Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Chongqing already started around January 1.

As the Spring Festival of 2020 comes earlier than usual, it is also expected that the passenger flow will extend to the end of February.

During the holiday week, people usually travel for family visits or tourism. Based on previous statistics, a tourism peak to Xiamen and other coastal cities will emerge on around January 26 (the second day of the first lunar month).

As the circumstances may require, the railway authorities will make adjustments according to the change of the passenger flow. As of January 3, a total of 3,282 trains have been arranged for train coupling by the Shanghai Railway Bureau for Chunyun 2020, with over 1.8 million seats added.

It is reported that from December 12 to January 2, a total of 3.09 million railway tickets have been sold across the country.

(Photos/whb.cn)
A Fort Drum soldier has admitted to getting three rifles and two pistols from fellow soldiers who were accused of burglarizing North Country gun shops.

Tyrease Kimmons, 20, is facing up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines for his role in possessing stolen guns. Kimmons pleaded guilty to his role in December in federal court.

Kimmons was charged this fall along with fellow soldiers Rian Patterson, 22, and Devin Diggs, 20, after nine guns were stolen from two licensed gun shops in the North Country region over a three-week period, prosecutors said.

Some of the firearms, five in total, were located in a duffle bag under Kimmons bed, court records said. The guns were loaded at the time they were recovered, according the court records.

Investigators said in court papers Kimmons knew the other men burglarized gun shops and he knew that he was receiving the stolen guns illegally.

Kimmons denied helping to plan the burglaries and participating in them. Surveillance footage at one of the shops showed two masked people broke in, investigators said.

Kimmons, who lives in Evans Mills but works at Fort Drum, has no criminal history, according to court records. He served a tour in Afghanistan from October 2018 to July 2019, court records said. Kimmons family is from North Carolina, one reason a judge decided he should be held in jail pending the disposition of the case.

Kimmons is scheduled to be sentenced in April.

Public Affairs Reporter Julie McMahon covers courts, government, education and other issues affecting taxpayers. She can be reached anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-412-1992

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Democrats have slammed Donald Trumps decision to launch an airstrike to kill Irans top general, arguing the vote by Iraqs parliament to expel American troops shows damage has already been done to US interests.

The claim was made by senator Chris Murphy on Sunday, just after the Iraqi vote in Baghdad, where Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani was killed on Friday.

In an interview with CBS News Face the Nation, Mr Murphy said that former presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush both decided against launching attacks to kill Soleimani, even though they knew his whereabouts.

They believed ultimately that would get more Americans killed, and you can already see the consequence to US security in the region, he said, referring to those past presidents and the Sunday vote in Iraq.

Questioning why it was suddenly necessary to take this dramatic step, Mr Murphy continued: We do not generally execute high-level political figures of sovereign nations, in part because we know that that opens a Pandoras box that may expose American officials to assassination, but also because we know that ultimately that may get more Americans killed, as it likely will.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

The critique of the Trump administration from Mr Murphy is consistent with the reaction from many Democrats in the United States, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who has complained in recent days that the White House did not consult congressional leaders before launching the attack.

The need for advance consultation and transparency with Congress was put in the Constitution for a reason  because the lack of advanced consultation and transparency with Congress can lead to hasty and ill-considered decisions, Mr Schumer said on Friday during a speech on the Senate floor.

The framers of the Constitution gave war powers to the legislature and made the executive the commander in chief for the precise reason of forcing the two branches of government to consult with one another when it came to matters of war and peace, he continued. It is paramount for administrations to get an outside view to prevent group think and rash action, to be asked probing questions, not from your inner and often insulated circle, but from others, particularly Congress, which forces an administration before it acts to answer very serious questions.

Bernie Sanders, a leading Democrat in the 2020 presidential race, has gone as far as to introduce legislation that would block funding for a war with Iran, unless the Trump administration consults Congress and gets explicit approval.

"Today, we are seeing a dangerous escalation that brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East, Mr Sanders wrote in a statement on Friday announcing the legislation, alongside fellow progressive Ro Khanna, who introduced the legislation in the House.

Soleimanis killing on Friday was met with swift promises by Iranian officials for revenge, and have led to tens of thousands of protesters and mourners taking to the streets across Iran.

In videos of those demonstrations, protesters can be heard shouting death to America as they mourn the figure who has been described in the West as evil, but remains a popular figure in Iran.

Among American allies and politicians in the US, officials have been quick to condemn Soleimanis character, but have expressed concern that Mr Trumps decision to kill him would have a destabilising effect on the region.
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The Bharat Stage VI (BS-VI) version of Toyota Kirloskars flagship product Innova Crysta has seen a maximum increase of Rs 1.12 lakh compared to its BS-IV variants.

Offered in 24 variants in petrol and diesel formats, the starting price of the people carrier has gone up by Rs 11,000 to Rs 112,000 due to the shift to the new emission standard.

These price are introductory and could change in the ensuing period. Supply of the BS-VI compliant Innova Crysta will begin from February across India, but will be subject to BS-VI fuel availability.

Toyota has sold more than 900,000 units of the Innova since its launch in 2005, including 270,000 units of the Innova Crysta. The model, the management said, has a segment share of 40 percent.

The entry variant of the Innova, which is powered by a petrol 2.7 litre engine, is now priced at Rs 15.36 lakh as compared to Rs 15.13 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi). The most expensive variant is the diesel automatic version, which is now priced at Rs 24.06 lakh as against Rs 23.67 lakh.

The Innova Crysta is one of the first multi-seaters to get a BS-VI makeover even as home grown automakers like Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) and Tata Motors are yet to roll out their first products under BS-VI in the same segment, with the Marazzo and Hexa, respectively.

In comparison, foreign auto giants such as Suzuki, Honda, Mercedes and Kia Motors have taken the lead in launching BS-VI variants much before the April 1 deadline. While Mahindra introduced its first BS-VI offering -- XUV 300 -- in December, Tata Motors is yet to launch its offering.

Passenger car market leader Maruti Suzuki was the first to launch BS-VI variants beginning April last year and has clocked sales of more than three lakh so far. Kia debuted in India, complete with a BS-VI powered SUV called Seltos.

Naveen Soni, Senior Vice President, Sales & Service, Toyota Kirloskar, said, The regulatory vehicle emission limits for particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) will be same irrespective of the size of the car as well as for cars that run on CNG, petrol or diesel.
Condemning the violence in JNU in Delhi, AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Monday said the BJP-led government at the Centre should perform its Constitutional duty, ensure justice and prevent such incidents.

The Congress and Telangana Jana Samiti (TJS)of M Kodandaram also condemned the violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

"We appeal to BJP. You are certainly in power. But, how long you will save these people. All these Frankensteins areyours. Police in Delhi report to you. You have not learnt any lesson from Jamia Millia," Owaisi told reporters.

Recalling the recent Jamia Millia incidents, he said violence happened in JNU now.

Social activist and psephologist Yogendra Yadav was attacked and the incidents in JNU happened in front of police, he claimed.

Wondering how long "one-sided" action happens, the Hyderabad MP asked why such incidents cannot be prevented.

He also asked why the cyber cell of police would not come to know when mobilisation happens on social messaging platforms.

"This is national capital. This is not happening in a village," he said.

When pointed out about the reported comments of ABVP leaders that the perpetrators of violencebelong to the Left wing, he "appealed to the government to perform its Constitutional duty" and ensure justice.

He claimed that "brown shirts" (in Germany) used to indulge in attacks in a similar manner.

Condemning the violence in JNU, Owaisi said the government should listen to the cries for help by the women students.

"... they attack students and create an atmosphere of terror for one-and-half-hours. The girl students there screech to protect themselves and the government does not listen to the voice of their screeching.

"Why the government would not listen? The government should listen to the screeching and the calls for support. Why it took one and half hours. Why permission was given to them? This is very sorrowful, he said.

Owaisi earlier expressed solidarity with the students of JNU, following violence in the university, and said the "cruel attack" was meant to "punish" the JNU students as they "dared to stand up".

"In solidarity with the brave students of JNU. This cruel attack is meant to 'punish' JNU students because they dared to stand up. It's so bad that even Union Ministers are tweeting helplessly. Modi Sarkar must answer why cops are siding with goons," the Hyderabad MP tweeted.

Former Congress MP V Hanumantha Rao and S P Kranthi Kumar, spokesperson, Telangana Pradesh Youth Congress, also condemned the violence in JNU.

The Youth Congress functionary demanded a judicial probe on this into the incident, a Congress release said.

Telangana Jana Samiti (TJS) president Kodandaram condemned JNU incident and the alleged attack on Yogendra Yadav, a party release said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Curious just how far your dollar goes in Eldridge?

According to Walk Score, this Houston neighborhood is somewhat walkable, is somewhat bikeable and has some transit options. Data from rental site Zumper shows that the median rent for a one bedroom in Eldridge is currently hovering around $916.

So, what might you expect to find if you've got $1,000/month earmarked for your rent? Read on for a roundup of the latest rental listings, via Zumper and Apartment Guide. (Note: Prices and availability are subject to change.)

Hoodline offers data-driven analysis of local happenings and trends across cities. Links included in this article may earn Hoodline a commission on clicks and transactions.

14300 Briar Forest Drive

Here's this one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment situated at 14300 Briar Forest Drive. It's listed for $909/month for its 775 square feet.

The building features a fitness center and a swimming pool. When it comes to pets, both meows and barks are welcome.

(Take a gander at the complete listing here.)

4040 Synott Road

Next, here's a 993-square-foot two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment at 4040 Synott Road that's going for $929/month.

The unit has hardwood flooring, a walk-in closet and a dishwasher. The building features on-site laundry and secured entry. Good news for animal lovers: Both dogs and cats are welcome here. Be prepared for a $300 pet fee and a $200 pet deposit.

(Check out the complete listing here.)

1910 Westmead Drive

Located at 1910 Westmead Drive, here's a 916-square-foot two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment that's listed for $969/month.

The listing promises a balcony and a dishwasher in the unit. When it comes to building amenities, expect assigned parking and a swimming pool. For those with furry friends in tow, know that cats and dogs are welcome on this property. Be prepared for a $400 pet deposit.

(Check out the complete listing here.)

1555 Eldridge Parkway

Listed at $960/month, this 680-square-foot one-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom apartment is located at 1555 Eldridge Parkway.

Amenities offered in the building include a swimming pool. The unit also has a dishwasher. Both cats and dogs are allowed. Future tenants needn't worry about a leasing fee.

(See the complete listing here.)

This story was created automatically using local real estate data from Zumper and Apartment Guide, then reviewed by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Additionally, if youre an agent or a broker, read on for real estate marketing ideas to promote your local listing.

Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
While interacting with the media in Hyderabad, Murugadoss said: "Fans will see vintage Rajinikanth in the second half fight sequence in. I'm sure they will applaud for five minutes for the scene".

Produced by Lyca Productions, Rajinikanth plays a bad-ass cop in the film which also has Nayanthara, Nivetha Thomas, Suniel Shetty, Prateik Babbar, and Yogi Babu in pivotal characters.

At the pre-release event in Hyderabad, Superstar said eating modestly, sleeping modestly, talking minimally and exercising well are the key factors to be in a calm and composed zone.

Darbar is all set to release on December 9 worldwide.



Images & Text: Moviebuzz




R K Vij By

After the recent cases of rape and murder, the police once again faced mounting anger. Though the culprits in the gang-rape and brutal murder of the veterinary doctor in Telangana were arrested quickly (and later killed in an encounter), the general antagonism over the working of the criminal justice system has not abated. The barbarity with which the crime was committed shook our conscience.

Unfortunately, no one came forward to extend a helping hand. Capital punishment for the offence could not instil even a speck of fear in the crimes perpetrators. Even the newly added penal provisions to punish police officers for disobeying law did not persuade them to act promptly. The police must set its house in order before pointing fingers at others in the criminal justice system. As every encounter has to follow certain guidelines issued by the Supreme Court and the matter is sub-judice and under the NHRCs scrutiny, my focus will be on issues that surface time and again and need to be seriously addressed.

The attitude of the police in evading registration of FIRs is not uncommon in India. Taking notice of the reports of Malimath Committee and National Police Commission, a Constitution Bench of the SC in the Lalita Kumari case (2013) said the number of FIRs not registered is approximately equivalent to the number of FIRs actually registered. It reiterated the legislative intent of the law and noted that the police have no discretion to refuse registration of a crime if the information given discloses commission of a cognisable offence. Though a crime is generally registered in the police station having territorial jurisdiction of investigation, it cannot refrain from investigation merely on the ground that the offence has been committed beyond its jurisdiction. Despite the fact that no proceedings of a police officer can be questioned on this ground, complainants are shown the door and even serious offences are not taken cognisance of at times. This trend needs to be corrected.

One of the reasons for not registering cases of doubtful jurisdictions is the limited number of investigating officers and the ever-increasing work pressure in police stations. With the explosion of new forms of crime like cybercrime, this workload is further increasing. Though the SC, recently, taking suo moto cognisance of increasing crime against women under The POCSO Act, in re: Alarming rise in the number of reported child rape incidents, has asked the states not only to sensitise police officers to complete investigation in the given time-frame of two months but also to increase the number of investigating officers, the response of the states is awaited. The number of investigating officers must be sufficient to fulfil the legislative mandate of maintaining law and order. The behaviour of police officers also needs improvement through continuous training and effective supervision.

Another reason for poor registration of crime is that the increasing figures of crime are generally linked with the performance of (police) station house officers (SHOs). Though prevention of crime may suitably be rewarded,the number of crimes registered must not be the only parameter to measure the performance of SHOs. The socio-economic and psychological dynamics of crime must be taken note of. Public perception about crime situations (which obviously includes prevention, quick response and detection) and behaviour of the policemen need to be considered as the prime factors for measuring their performance.

Witness (including victim) protection is another area that needs strengthening. Though a well-structured Witness Protection Scheme, 2018, is applicable across the country, the police require additional resources to implement it effectively. A few best practices of the West may be implemented. Offenders in serious crimes on parole must be tracked using electronic collars to ensure they keep a safe distance from the victim. Recidivists must be dealt with separately to ensure they are integrated well with society on their release.

Further, a few offences can be prevented or at least their severity minimised with the use of technology. Most of the police command centres are now tech-driven. The traditional 100 number of the police is being replaced by 112 that provides integrated services of the police, ambulance and fire. The emergency response vehicles under this scheme are deployed 24x7 at various hotspots and reach the caller location quickly. This has enhanced public confidence in the police. The 112 mobile app can also be made use of by women and others in case of any emergency. Many states including Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have already launched this service on a wide scale, and other states are in the process of upgrading their control rooms. Similarly, installation of sufficient geo-tagged CCTV cameras at public places that are controlled centrally may also deter potential criminals.

Time and again, it has been observed that many who are present on the spot, instead of making efforts to prevent the crime, film videos and make them viral. Such persons must be punished. The Chhattisgarh government has amended Sections 354 (outraging modesty of women) and 376 (rape) of the CrPC and made bystanders liable for punishment if they do not prevent commission of offence and immediately inform the police. This could be implemented in all states.

Other suggestions may include strict enforcement of the law to prevent illegal sale of petrol and acids and increasing the number of women officers in the police force. Given the deep-rooted patriarchal mindsets, policing cannot be improved in isolation and on its own. The democratically elected governments must keep womens security on the top of their agenda and do their best to strengthen our countrys criminal justice system.

R K Vij

The author is a senior IPS officer in Chhattisgarh.

Views expressed are his own

Email: vijrk@hotmail.com
The district headquarters of Ramanagara district, is 50 km from Bengaluru and the district was created when H.D. Kumaraswamy was CM in 2007.

Bengaluru:The Karnataka government is contemplating renaming Ramanagara district as Nava Bengaluru perhaps on the lines of Navi Mumbai in a bid to attract investment to the state. District in-charge minister and deputy chief minister C.N. Ashwath Narayana disclosed the idea three days back and since then, a controversy has erupted over the renaming with former CM and JD(S) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy stiffly opposing the move.

Ramanagara city, the district headquarters of Ramanagara district, is 50 km from Bengaluru and the district was created when H.D. Kumaraswamy was CM in 2007. This district is situated on the route to Mysuru and those who are familiar with Bollywood, know very well that the iconic movie Sholay was shot in Ramanagara with the place named Ramgarh in the film.

Dr Narayana, while proposing the renaming, felt Bengaluru city was too crowded and there were infrastructure problems here with investors continuing to flock to the IT City without choosing Tier-II cities proposed by the state government.

However, the proposal was given the thumbs down by former CM Kumaraswamy who threatened to launch an agitation if the district was renamed Nava Bengaluru. He took to Twitter to condemn the government move and said that just by renaming the district, the destiny of Ramanagara and its people will not change. He also said that development programmes planned for the district should be implemented first. If the government goes ahead with its plan, it will have to face the consequences as people will launch an agitation. For the sake of real estate interests, the government should not indulge in this as the district has a rich heritage and history, he said Sunday morning.

Meanwhile, chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa said Sunday afternoon that his government has not taken any decision in this regard.
Anand Mahindra

Industrialist Anand Mahindra called for strict action against those responsible for the violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus.



It doesn't matter what your politics are. It doesn't matter what your ideology is. It doesn't matter what your faith is. If you're an Indian, you cannot tolerate armed, lawless goons. Those who invaded JNU tonight must be traced & hunted down swiftly & given no quarter...

 anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) January 5, 2020

"Those who invaded JNU tonight must be traced & hunted down swiftly..." the Chairman of the Mahindra Group said on Twitter.

Violence broke at the JNU campus in New Delhi, where masked men, armed with sticks and stones, entered the premises and attacked students and teachers.



Today we start our 2-day annual Group conference with our top 101 global leaders. Well brainstorm to evolve future strategies. But first we pray for peace, calm & non-violence to prevail throughout this country. No business strategy can exist independent of such an environment

 anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) December 17, 2019

This is not the first time Mahindra has shared his thoughts on developments happening in the country. After protests broke out in December 2019 against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), he called for "peace, calm & non-violence," adding that such an environment can make it difficult to conduct business.
[January 06, 2020] OpenGate Capital Portfolio Company Sargent and Greenleaf Acquires Delaney Hardware Company

OpenGate Capital, a global private equity firm, announced today that its portfolio company, Sargent and Greenleaf ("S&G"), a specialized high security lock business, has acquired Delaney Hardware Company ("Delaney"), a leading provider of security related hardware products. The business was acquired from HCI Equity Partners. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Established in 1992, Delaney designs, manufactures and distributes security related hardware, locksets and hollow metal doors for commercial and residential applications across the United States. Headquartered in Cumming, Georgia, Delaney's combined work force includes approximately 150 people and has additional operations in Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. S&G's acquisition of Delaney includes its Premier Steel Doors & Frames ("Premier") division, which is a specialty manufacturer of hollow metal security doors and frames with operations in Monroe, Louisiana; Houston, Texas; and Austell, Georgia. The combination of S&G and Delaney creates a highly diversified security hardware solutions platform with significantly improved competitive positioning, addressing a large global market. The integration and growth plan will be led by Mark LeMire, S&G's CEO. The combined business will actively seek further add-on acquisitions. LeMire commented, "The acquisition of Delaney is an exceptional opportunity to drive greater scale and ultimatly better serve a customer base seeking the highest quality security and hardware solutions. Our combined business will offer customers an extensive product portfolio, a broader base of technical resources, and enhanced security solutions."



Delaney's senior management personnel, Libby Zappala and Joey Meggs, will continue in their current roles as President of Delaney and President of Premier, respectively. OpenGate Capital sourced Delaney through its global origination team led by Joshua Adams, Managing Director - Business Development. From the firm's Los Angeles office, the following team members are responsible for negotiating and overseeing the investment: Matthias Gundlach, Managing Director - M&A; Aaron Figura, Senior Vice President - M&A; Paul Bridwell, Managing Director - Operations; and Andrew Martinez, Vice President - Operations.

OpenGate acquired S&G in May of 2019 as one of six platform investments completed in the same year. About OpenGate Capital Founded in 2005, OpenGate Capital is a global private equity firm that strives to acquire and optimize lower middle market businesses throughout North American and Europe. With a strategic international presence and a focus on corporate carve-outs and complex situations, the firm's expertise allows it to realize a seller's divestiture objectives while mitigating the risks associated with a business's transition to independence. OpenGate is headquartered in Los Angeles and Paris and has a seasoned in-house team of professionals overseeing the entire lifecycle of each investment. To learn more about OpenGate, please visit www.opengatecapital.com. About Sargent and Greenleaf Sargent and Greenleaf is one of the world's leading manufacturers of medium- and high-security locks and locking systems. Founded in 1857, Sargent and Greenleaf provides security solutions to financial institutions, commercial businesses, governments and consumers around the world. Delivered through an international network of distribution partners, Sargent and Greenleaf products continue to set the standard for quality, value and technical innovation. S&G is a pioneer in the high security industry, inventing several industry firsts, and has a leading innovation and digital platform that consistently brings new and improved products and features to the market. To learn more about Sargent and Greenleaf, please visit www.sargentandgreenleaf.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005014/en/

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Deputy Foreign Minister Araqchi: Trump's hostile remarks clearly amount to war crime

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 05 January 2020 2:07 PM

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Abbas Araqchi says "hostile" remarks made by Donald Trump, the president of the United States, clearly amount to war crime according to international law.

Araqchi on Sunday summoned the Swiss ambassador, whose country represents Washington's interests in Iran, to convey the Islamic Republic's firm dismissal of Trump's threatening language by describing his latest anti-Iran threats as "utterly unacceptable and unconventional."

Referring to Trump's threat to strike Iran's cultural sites, the Iranian official said, "Such a threat is reminiscent of the Mongols' invasion or the actions of terrorist and criminal groups in the destruction of cultural and historical sites, which according to international law, amount to war crime."

"The Islamic Republic of Iran will not bow to any threat or intimidation and stands firmly ready to respond to any threat or act against its [national] security and territorial integrity."

In a Saturday tweet, the White House tenant claimed that the US military would hit "very important" targets related to Iran if the Islamic Republic seeks retaliation.

" we have  targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran," Trump tweeted, making a reference to the 1979 US embassy incident in Tehran.

The threat came after Iranian authorities said they would give a harsh response to the US strikes that led to the martyrdom of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Baghdad early on Friday.

Saying history has shown that the Iranian nation will make any aggressor regret their acts, Araqchi added, "In line with the demands of the Iranian government and nation, the Islamic Republic, apart from all the political and legal measures, reserves the absolute right to react to the assassination of the martyred commander, Qassem Soleimani, at a time and place that it deems appropriate."

The Swiss ambassador, in turn, said he would convey Iran's protest to US officials.

Trump's new threat to strike 52 important targets in Iran, including the cultural ones, provoked a strong backlash, with many calling it a "war crime."

Reacting to Trump's tweet later on Sunday, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also took to his official Twitter account reminding Trump that although "barbarians have come and ravaged our cities, razed our monuments and burnt our libraries" throughout history, Iranians still stand tall.

Zarif also drew an analogy between Trump's assertions and Daesh's crimes in destroying cultural heritage of some regional countries, noting that the US president is "hallucinating about emulating ISIS war crimes by targeting our cultural heritage."

Iran's Minister of Information and Communication Technology Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi also reacted to Trump's remarks through a tweet on Sunday, calling the US president "a terrorist in a suit."

He added Trump will learn "very soon that NOBODY can defeat 'the Great Iranian Nation & Culture'."

General Soleimani, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy chief of the Iraqi pro-government Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), was assassinated in a US airstrike in Baghdad during the early hours of Friday. Four other Iranians and four more Iraqis in their company were also martyred.

The Pentagon said in a statement that Trump had ordered the US military to assassinate the Iranian commander.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said on Friday that those who assassinated the commander must await a harsh revenge.

In a statement on Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei stated that the "cruelest people on earth" assassinated the "honorable" commander who "courageously fought for years against the evils and bandits of the world."

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In his most direct attack on the Congress and its allies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday dared the detractors of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act to protest Pakistans atrocities on minorities for the past 70 years instead of rising against Parliament.

Modi was addressing a gathering at the Siddaganga Mutt after laying the foundation stone for a museum dedicated to Shivakumara Swami, the late pontiff.

Those protesting against the Parliament of India, I want to tell them that they need to expose Pakistans deeds at the global level, Modi said. You should have that guts...to protest and raise your voice against Pakistans deeds for the past 70 years. If you want to shout slogans, shout against atrocities against minorities there. If you want to rally, do it in favour of Dalits and the downtrodden who have come from Pakistan. If you want to do dharna, do it against Pakistans deeds, he said.

It was some weeks ago Parliament passed CAA, Modi pointed out. But the Congress, its allies and the ecosystem theyve created are standing up against Parliament, Modi said. The hate they have for us (BJP) is the same voice being heard against Indias Parliament of late. These people have begun protesting the countrys Parliament. They are protesting against Dalits, the oppressed and the downtrodden who have come from Pakistan seeking refuge, he said.

The Congress and its allies dont speak against Pakistan, but are instead holding protests against those who took refuge in India to save their life, religion and the pride of their sisters and daughters, the PM charged. They dont have time to speak against Pakistan over atrocities against minorities. Why is their mouth locked up?

Protecting the refugees is our cultural and national responsibility, the PM said. Most of the Hindus who have come are Dalits and downtrodden, we cannot abandon them, he said, adding, We should also help Sikh, Jains and Christians whove come from Pakistan.

Pakistan was born on the basis of religion, Modi said, while accusing the neighbour of persecuting its religious minorities. Whether it is Hindu, Sikh, Christian or Jain, atrocities against them have increased in Pakistan. Thousands of such people had to flee and come to India seeking refuge, he said.

The abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir signalled the change in Indias policy against terrorism, Modi said. By abrogating Article 370, an effort has been made to remove the fear of terror and uncertainty from the life of people there. A new beginning of development has been ushered in for Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, he said.

The road was also cleared for the construction of a grand temple for Lord Ram at his birthplace (Ayodhya) with peace and everybodys cooperation, Modi said.
Californias new data privacy law, modeled after the European Unions General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), took effect on New Years Day . The states attorney general has said the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) wont be enforced until July 1, but the effort to strengthen protections of consumer data is underway.

Heres a guide to what matters for K-12 schools.

CCPA (the new law) applies directly to for-profit companies, not schools. The law affords the states residents opportunities to know how big companies are using their data and to make decisions about how their data is used, including the right to request deletion of data they want to keep private. Companies with at least $25 million in revenue or 50,000 users are includedwhich means schools arent, though many of the companies they work with are. Think Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon.

Data use restrictions in K-12 education were already in place. Thanks to existing K-12 education privacy laws like FERPA and COPPA , education technology companies are already making many of the newly mandated disclosures, according to Linette Attai, a close observer of the education technology landscape and president of PlayWell, a for-profit provider of education for young children.

Overall, this law will not require an enormous amount of extra work on the part of school districts. Educators and administrators can breathe easy, said Andrea Bennett, executive director of California IT in Education. Unlike in 2015, when a new California law, AB-1584 , required schools to renegotiate agreements with many of their ed-tech partners, The majority of people Ive spoken to are thinking that its not going to be a major task like AB-1584, Bennett said.

Issues may arise if parents exercise CCPA rights to request the deletion of personal information that schools are required by other laws to maintain. Many schools host student information on third-party platforms owned by major companies like Microsoft. Under the new law, parents have a right to request the deletion of data on those serversbut schools are also required by law to keep certain data on file for reporting to the state and federal government.

Hypothetical instances that might cause conflict include parents with separate addresses who want control of the students listed home address, or undocumented immigrants concerned about their location being exposed, according to Bennett. Those cases are likely to be few and far between, according to Bennett, but no guidance currently exists to figure out how to respond when they arise.

Lawyers hope California officials will clarify ambiguities in the law related to education. Relationships among schools, companies, parents, and students are more complicated and less linear than relationships between companies and consumers, said Mark Williams, an attorney advising California IT in Education and other organizations on navigating CCPA. Its unclear what would happen, for instance, if a student requested deletion of information from a tech platform that an individual teacher had asked the student to use. Most relationships between school districts and providers are not part of a contract, but are entered into at the teaching level, Williams said.

Williams said he and his colleagues expect holes in the law will eventually be sorted out, but clarification may require further legislation or regulatory guidance.

The difference between a company websites privacy policy and a company products privacy policy is crucial. Attai anticipates some confusion when parents or school employees look at an education technology companys website for general information and see a privacy policy listed at the bottom. That policy might mention selling some user data to third partiesa transaction that would not occur when students are using the companys actual product.

A website might serve two purposesit might be predominantly for marketing purposes but also include a portal for student login to the product, Attai said. Careful attention to privacy policies and the intended audience for the website or platform is a fundamental first step in determining what sort of data collection and use is acceptable.

More students will enjoy privacy under the new law. CCPA extends data privacy rights to children under the age of 16, whereas previous laws only covered children under 13, according an analysis of the law from the Education Framework blog. That means parents of children under 16 must opt in before the sale of IP addresses, geolocation information, and inferences drawn from personal data to create a data profile of a consumer.

The protections are stronger, but advocates are still worried. Leonie Haimson, a student data privacy advocate who founded and serves as executive director of the nonprofit Class Size Matters, said shes concerned about the California attorney generals offices capacity to enforce penalties for violations of the law. Though California and other states already strictly prohibit the sale of student data, some organizations and companies continue to do so .

Im skeptical, but I do think that this is a definite step forward, and its one that other states will hopefully emulate, Haimson said.

Similar laws could arise in other states or on the federal level. Several dozen states are considering privacy policies of their own, and advocates are pushing for stronger federal laws around privacy, using GDPR in Europe as a model.

These laws are confusing for everyone. Recent surveys of teachers suggest that many people feel they havent had adequate training on privacy laws and their responsibilities to students along those lines, Haimson said.

Jennifer King, director of consumer privacy at Stanford Law Schools Center for Internet and Society, recommends high school teachers turn the privacy law into a teachable moment. Educators in California can work together with students to make requests for data information from a company like Facebook, and parse the findings together.

The California legislature didnt include any funding for public education on the laws contents and hasnt provided helpful FAQ resources, King said.

Haimson finds the lack of clarity troubling.

You can pass all the laws that you want in the world, Haimson said. If no ones paying attention to them, they have no real impact on whats happening in the classroom.

Image: Getty
Japan vowed to strengthen its border checks and take a closer look at bail practices to prevent further lapses such as the one that let fallen auto titan Carlos Ghosn flee the country without being detected, the justice minister said.

Masako Mori declined to give any details of how Ghosn managed to leave without a trace, telling reporters on Monday that the matter is under investigation and steps are already being taken. This was the first time a government official has held a news conference about Ghosn's departure since reports emerged almost a week ago that the former chief of Nissan and Renault had secretly made his way to Lebanon.
It is not uncommon to see companies perform well in the years after insiders buy shares. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of examples of share prices declining precipitously after insiders have sold shares. So shareholders might well want to know whether insiders have been buying or selling shares in Picton Property Income Limited (LON:PCTN).

Do Insider Transactions Matter?

Most investors know that it is quite permissible for company leaders, such as directors of the board, to buy and sell stock in the company. However, such insiders must disclose their trading activities, and not trade on inside information.

We don't think shareholders should simply follow insider transactions. But logic dictates you should pay some attention to whether insiders are buying or selling shares. As Peter Lynch said, 'insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons, but they buy them for only one: they think the price will rise.

See our latest analysis for Picton Property Income

The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At Picton Property Income

Independent Non Executive Director Maria Bentley made the biggest insider purchase in the last 12 months. That single transaction was for UK69k worth of shares at a price of UK0.93 each. That implies that an insider found the current price of UK0.98 per share to be enticing. Of course they may have changed their mind. But this suggests they are optimistic. While we always like to see insider buying, it's less meaningful if the purchases were made at much lower prices, as the opportunity they saw may have passed. Happily, the Picton Property Income insider decided to buy shares at close to current prices. Maria Bentley was the only individual insider to buy shares in the last twelve months.

You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by individuals) over the last 12 months, below. By clicking on the graph below, you can see the precise details of each insider transaction!

Story continues

LSE:PCTN Recent Insider Trading, January 6th 2020

Picton Property Income is not the only stock insiders are buying. So take a peek at this free list of growing companies with insider buying.

Does Picton Property Income Boast High Insider Ownership?

Many investors like to check how much of a company is owned by insiders. I reckon it's a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. Based on our data, Picton Property Income insiders have about 0.2% of the stock, worth approximately UK1.0m. We prefer to see high levels of insider ownership.

What Might The Insider Transactions At Picton Property Income Tell Us?

It is good to see the recent insider purchase. And the longer term insider transactions also give us confidence. On this analysis the only slight negative we see is the fairly low (overall) insider ownership; their transactions suggest that they are quite positive on Picton Property Income stock. If you are like me, you may want to think about whether this company will grow or shrink. Luckily, you can check this free report showing analyst forecasts for its future.

But note: Picton Property Income may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with high ROE and low debt.

For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We currently account for open market transactions and private dispositions, but not derivative transactions.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
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Iran's foreign minister challenged Donald Trump today with pictures of millions packing the streets of Tehran for General Qassem Soleimani's funeral after he was killed in a US drone strike.

'Have you EVER seen such a sea of humanity in your life, @realdonaldtrump?' Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted. 'Do you still want to listen to the clowns advising you on our region? And do you still imagine you can break the will of this great nation? End of malign US presence in West Asia has begun.'

Iranian state media has claimed that millions attended Soleimani's funeral in Tehran on Monday, although the numbers could not be verified.

Zarif, who is US-educated, will be well aware of President Trump's frequent boasts about crowd sizes at his rallies in the past and most notably, his inaugural address.

Later Trump fired back his own taunt, tweeting: 'IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!'

It comes as Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was seen weeping over Soleimani's coffin as hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the commander's funeral procession.

Speaking to the wailing crowds, Soleimani's daughter Zeinap directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region. 'The families of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East will spend their days waiting for death of their children,' she said to cheers.

Warning of a 'dark day' looming for the United States, she said: 'Crazy Trump, don't think that everything is over with my father's martyrdom.'

Iranian state media said 'millions' of people had gathered in Tehran to mourn Soleimani's death in scenes not witnessed since the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989

Zarif, who is US-educated, will be well aware of President Trump's frequent boasts about crowd sizes at his rallies and most notably, his inaugural address

Pictures from a drone show hundreds of thousands lining the streets of Tehran to Azadi Square for the funeral ceremony of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Forces, who was killed in a U.S. drone airstrike

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (fourth from left) wept over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral

Mourning: Thousands of people gathered in Tehran for the second day of Qassem Soleimani's funeral after he was killed in a US drone strike on Friday

A tearful Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left) prayed over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral today

The general's daughter Zeinap Soleimani (pictured today) spoke to mourners during the funeral procession in Tehran and directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region

Iranians set a US and Israeli flag on fire during Monday's funeral procession for military commander Qasem Soleiman

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (centre) and president Hassan Rouhani (immediately to his right) lead prayers over Soleimani's coffin. On Khamenei's left is chief justice Ebrahim Raisi, and to his left is the slain general's successor Esmail Qaani

Protesters staged a symbolic 'execution' of a Donald Trump effigy during the funeral ceremony of Qassem Soleimani

Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport on Friday, shocking the Islamic republic and sending tensions spiralling in the Middle East.

His remains were flown back to Iran last night, carried in a cardboard box which had its own row of seats on a passenger jet.

Iran has vowed 'severe revenge' and yesterday abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal in response to the airstrike, while Trump has threatened a 'disproportionate response' targeting cultural sites.

Adding to the tensions, Trump has warned of sanctions against Iraq if it goes through with expelling US troops from the country - a move which could spark an ISIS resurgence there.

As the Middle East teetered on the brink of war:

Iranian state media said 'millions' of people had gathered in Tehran to mourn Soleimani's death in scenes not witnessed since the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989;

Soleimani's replacement as commander of the Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, vowed revenge and said Iran was aiming to 'get rid of America from the region';

Trump threatened Iraq with sanctions after the country's parliament voted to kick out the 5,000 US troops stationed there, sparking fears of an ISIS resurgence;

The US president defended his targeting of cultural sites despite Democratic claims that he was preparing to commit war crimes;

The US-led coalition against ISIS in Iraq said it was pausing its fight against the jihadist group to shore up its own defences against an Iranian reprisal;

Oil prices jumped to their highest level since September, surpassing $70 per barrel, amid fears that Iran could harass ships in the Strait of Hormuz;

Rockets landed near the US embassy in Baghdad for the second night in a row, with American troops and diplomats on high alert for Iranian reprisals;

Germany, France and Britain called for de-escalation and urged Iran to stick by the 2015 nuclear agreement which is now on the brink of total collapse;

Boris Johnson's spokesman cautioned against the destruction of cultural heritage and called Iran's move away from the nuclear deal 'concerning' after the PM returned from holiday for crisis talks in London.

Today the supreme leader was flanked by Soleimani's son, his military replacement Esmail Qaani and Iranian president Hassan Rouhani at the funeral in Tehran.

Mourners prayed together with Khamenei whose voice cracked as he prayed over the flag-draped coffin.

Some mourners shouted 'Death to America' and burned US and Israeli flags as the coffins of Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader who also died in the drone strike were passed over their heads.

Iranian state TV put the crowd size at 'millions,' although that number could not be verified.

The scale of the crowds in Tehran mirrored those who turned out in 1989 for the funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic.

Soleimani will lie in state at Tehran's famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him. He will eventually be buried in his hometown of Kerman.

Mourners marched towards the university, a key artery in Tehran, and formed a sea of black along Enghelab Street dotted with red Shiite flags and white signs.

The coffin of Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was also killed in Friday's attack, was draped in the Iraqi flag and passed over the crowds alongside Soleimani's casket.

'We must give a crushing response,' said one of the mourners, a 61-year-old businessman who gave his name as Afkhami.

'We must target whatever military base they have in the region. We must attack all that are in the range of our missiles.'

One poster held by a mourner read: 'It is our right to seek a harsh revenge,' echoing comments by Iranian military and political leaders.

Washington regards Soleimani as a terrorist leader who was plotting against Americans and had the blood of thousands on his hands through his work with Iranian proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

But many Iranians considered Soleimani, a decorated veteran of the eight-year war with Iraq, a national hero, particularly for mobilising Shi'ite Muslim groups in Iraq to help crush the militant Sunni jihadists of ISIS.

Soleimani was also close with Khamenei's children and the supreme leader had been photographed embracing him in public. The Ayatollah made a rare visit to Soleimani's home the day he was killed to offer condolences to his grieving widow and grown children.

Coffins of Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were seen resting on passenger seats on a jet heading to Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran last night

The flag-draped coffin of Qassem Soleimani is passed over the heads of mourners at his funeral in the centre of Tehran today

Mourners gather in Tehran to pay their respects to a military commander who was hailed as a hero by many Iranians

Soleimani (pictured) was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport on Friday, shocking the Islamic republic and sending tensions spiralling in the Middle East

Thousands of mourners line the streets of Tehran for the funeral procession today, with people waving Iranian and Iraqi flags

Soleimani's successor Esmail Qaani cries over the coffin of his assassinated predecessor during the funeral in Tehran today

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and Soleimani's long-time lieutenant and successor Esmail Qaani stand by the coffin of the military commander who died on Friday

One funeral organiser has called on every Iranian to donate money towards an $80million bounty on Trump's head, according to Iranian television.

On Friday Khamenei vowed 'severe revenge' as he declared three days of mourning.

Esmail Qaani, who has succeeded Soleimani as commander of the Revolutionary Quards' powerful Quds Force, also swore revenge in an interview with state TV which was aired today.

'God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken,' he said.

'We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region.'

American forces are braced for retaliation and the US-led coalition against ISIS said in a statement yesterday that it was pausing its fight against the jihadists to shore up its own defences.

US bases in the region are shoring up their defences and there are also fears that Iran will harass shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which is critical to the world's oil supply.

The global benchmark for crude oil rose above $70 a barrel on Monday for the first time in over three months, with jitters rising over the escalating military tensions.

One Iranian MP also warned of an attack on the White House while an adviser to Hassan Rouhani posted a list of Trump-owned properties in a hint of a possible reprisal.

A former head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards also threatened on Sunday to turn the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv 'to dust' if the US attacks targets in Iran.

Last night Iranian state TV said the country would no longer respect any of the nuclear limits in the 2015 deal, which Trump abandoned last year but which European powers are desperately trying to preserve.

Under the deal, Tehran had pledged to reduce its nuclear capacities for several years, including by capping its enrichment of uranium at 3.67 percent, far below the more than 90 percent required for a nuclear weapon.

Iran has already overstepped some of the limits since Trump pulled out of the deal last year, which include restrictions on Iran's supply of centrifuges and the level to which uranium can be enriched.

Last night two rockets landed near the US embassy in Baghdad, the second night in a row that the heavily fortified Green Zone was hit and the 14th time over the last two months that US installations have been targeted.

Iranian troops parade behind a smoke screen from buring incense as crowds gather in Tehran today to pay homage to slain military commander Qasem Soleimani

Khamenei stands at the front of mourners in Tehran today as hundreds of thousands of Iranians turned out to pay tribute

Iranians set a US and an Israeli flag on fire during a funeral procession in Tehran today

Huge crowds of mourners in the streets of Tehran today where Iranians wailed over the death of the general who was killed

Iranian revolutionary guards surround the coffins of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and others who died in Friday's drone strike

Mourners line the streets of Tehran during Soleimani's funeral today. Iranian state TV claimed that 'millions' were there

Mourners burn flags of the U.S. and Israel during a funeral ceremony for Iranian general Qassem Soleimani today

Friday's drone attack was ordered by President Donald Trump, who said Soleimani had been planning an 'imminent' attack on Americans in Iraq.

In a series of sabre-rattling tweets, Trump has warned that the US will 'quickly and fully strike back, and perhaps in a disproportionate manner' if Iran aims fire at US targets.

The president said America had lined up attacks on 52 targets 'important to Iran and the Iranian culture', representing the number of Americans held hostage at the US embassy in Tehran after a raid in 1979.

Talking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington last night, Trump stood by his targeting of cultural sites despite claims of potential war crimes.

'They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way,' Trump said.

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, who is running for her party's presidential nomination, said Trump was 'threatening to commit war crimes'.

The president's critics have also accused him of launching the attack on Soleimani to boost his popularity before he faces an impeachment trial in the coming weeks.

In Britain, a spokesman for prime minister Boris Johnson issued a warning over Trump's plans, saying there were international conventions in place to stop the destruction of cultural heritage.

Trump has also warned he will demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iran's neighbour Iraq or impose 'sanctions like they've never seen before' if Baghdad goes through with expelling U.S. troops.

The sanctions would make those on Iran look 'tame', Trump said, adding: 'We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there... we're not leaving unless they pay us back for it.'

Iranians carry the coffin during the funeral ceremony of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Forces, who was killed in a U.S. drone airstrike in Iraq

Mourners gather in Tehran today to pay homage to top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, after he was killed in a US strike in Baghdad ordered by Donald Trump

Iranians burn US and Israeli flags during the funeral ceremony in Tehran today, three days after the military leader's death

Iranian army cadets hold up posters of military commander Qassem Soleimani as they march during his funeral in Tehran

Yesterday the Iraqi parliament backed a recommendation by the prime minister for all foreign troops to be ordered out - a move which Washington fears could allow an ISIS resurgence.

Iraq's rival Shi'ite leaders, including those opposed to Iranian influence, have united since Friday's attack in calling for the expulsion of U.S. troops.

There are around 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, deployed after ISIS seized Mosul in 2014.

Today German foreign minister Heiko Maas said threatening Iraq was 'not very helpful'. Germany has a small contingent of troops there training Iraqi forces.

Monday's procession in Tehran comes after Soleimani's remains were returned to Iran on Sunday.

The Iranian general's body was marched through the streets of Baghdad, before it was flown to the city of Ahvaz in southwest Iran, where around one million mourners gathered to pay their respects.

A video of the journey posted on social media on Sunday five cardboard boxes resting on seats in the cabin of a passenger jet rather than being loaded into the cargo or baggage compartments.

The Revolutionary Guards said the overwhelming number of mourners in Mashhad forced the cancellation of a ceremony that had been planned in Tehran on Sunday night.

Mourners carry mock coffins with images of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Iranian revolutionary guards surround the coffins of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and others who were killed in the US attack

Speaking to the crowds which stretched as far as the eye could see (pictured), Soleimani's daughter Zeinap directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region

Soleimani had long been considered a lethal foe by US lawmakers and presidents, with Trump saying he should have been killed 'many years ago.'

Tensions between Iran and the West had been ratcheting up for months, peaking last summer when a series of Gulf tankers were hit by mysterious explosions which Washington blamed on Iran.

The last straw was an attack by a pro-Iran mob on the US embassy in Baghdad this week, where demonstrators burned the entrance to the compound and besieged diplomats inside.

Tributes have poured in from across the Middle East and beyond for Soleimani, who was seen as the Islamic republic's second most powerful person after the supreme leader.

Iraq's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on Sunday offered his condolences to Khamenei, according to the supreme leader's official website.

'Soleimani's martyrdom caused great sorrow,' said the statement.

'His unique role over the years in fighting with Daesh elements in Iraq, and the great pains he endured in this path is unforgettable,' it said, referring to the Islamic State group.

President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan also paid his respects in a telephone call to Rouhani.

A statement from the Afghan presidential palace said Ghani assured Rouhani that 'Afghan soil will never be used against any other country'.

Iran could fall back on its regional militant allies or proxies to launch a retaliatory attack, such as Iraqi militiamen, Lebanon's Hezbollah or Yemen's Houthi rebels.

The Revolutionary Guard also routinely harasses U.S. Navy vessels in Persian Gulf and surrounding waterways, while Iran has surface-to-sea missile batteries along its coast as well.

Last night the leaders of Britain, France and Germany appealed for a de-escalation.

'We call on all the players involved to show utmost restraint and responsibility,' they said in a joint statement.

Boris Johnson is gathering key ministers for crisis talks today as the Iran standoff threatens to spiral out of control - with threats from Tehran to kill British troops.

The PM is back in Downing Street after his Caribbean break, but finds himself walking a tightrope between Donald Trump and other allies who want to ease tensions.

Following massive funeral marches in Iraq, his body was flown to Ahvaz, Iran. Military personnel carry Soleimani's casket in Iran. A tide of mourners packed the streets of the Iranian city of Ahvaz Sunday to pay respects to the top general

Iranian mourners crowded in to touch the casket and express their grief at the death of the powerful general

The scale of the crowds in Tehran today (pictured) matched those who turned out in 1989 for the funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic

Breaking his silence last night, Mr Johnson said Britain 'will not lament' the death of Qassem Soleimani, saying the genreal had played a role in the deaths of thousands of innocent people and was a 'threat to all our interests'.

But he also appealed to both Trump and Iran for calm, urging both sides to encourage de-escalation, after a senior Iranian commander Iranian issued a chilling warning that British forces could be hit.

Today the PM's spokesman called Iran's move away from the 2015 nuclear deal 'concerning' and cautioned against the destruction of cultural heritage but said countries such as America a right to act in 'self-defence'.

A former US ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria said Iranian general Qassem Soleimani 'deserved' to die - but criticised the decision not to inform Britain about the strike.

Ryan Crocker told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Literally hundreds of coalition soldiers and marines, mostly Americans, were killed by improvised explosive devices that were manufactured in Iran, used by the Iraqi Shia militia trained by Soleimani, in very deliberate targeting.

'Britain too lost a number of soldiers in the same attacks. If anybody out there deserved killing, it was Qassem Soleimani.'

But Mr Crocker said he was 'concerned' about the White House's failure to warn allies of its controversial decision to kill Mr Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad last week.

He said: 'Britain is and has been for a number of years our foremost ally. When we take an action like this it can have great consequences for our allies. We, I think, owe it to them to consult in advance.'
We needed a weekend away, and we were more concerned with how pretty our Airbnb was than where it was necessarily located, Sara Zandi says, somewhat jokingly, as her husband Sohail laughs in the background. Thats how this couple discovered the town of Bovina eight years ago, after meeting in New York City. Most people stop along Hudson or Woodstock, but we pushed a lot further. And it just felt really magical.

Set about three and a half hours north of the city, amid rolling hills and farmland, the 600-person town was once an old dairy outpost, says Sohail, where people would get their tools and send their mail and do their grocery shopping. Its sort of stayed that way. There isnt a Quik Mart. The locals here care about it a lot, he says. You can walk from one edge of town to the other in 15 minutes. (Sara chimes in to say, Fifteen minutes, walking slowly.)

In 2014, they discovered that a 19th-century building was for salewhich had a restaurant on the ground floor and two apartments on the second floorand they bought it. They opened Brushland Eating House, with Sohail as the head chef and Sara as the manager, and lived upstairs. But through the window of their new small-town address, they could see a different home that put yet another plan into action. Sohail had the idea that if they bought that property across the street, they could rent out the apartments above their restaurant on Airbnb. So he asked the owners if they would sell, and they agreed.

Photo by Christian Harder

The building was originally a barrel-making factory, and the owners hadnt done a whole lot, Sara remembers. The drywall was up, but it didnt fit. The windows were vinyl. The insulation was exposed in the bathroom upstairs, and a tiny camp washer was hooked up to the sink. As was the case when they first visited Bovina, all this pair saw was potential. The bones were really beautiful, Sara says. And with its proximity to the restaurant, it was the right decision. We knew we had to make it our own.

Story continues

Photo by Christian Harder

The 1,000-square-foot house, which has two bedrooms and one bathroom, used to be directly accessible from the sidewalk with a large picture window next to the entrance. It was convenient, but it also completely lacked privacy. The first decision Sara and Sohail made was to flip the layouts orientation so that visitors have to walk alongside the house and onto a porch to get to the front door. Once that was figured out, they bought large windows to line either end of the kitchen and living space. We chose windows that would set the tone and give the house character, Sara says. The house can be dark, and by turning its orientation around, the windows let in a lot of light. From our porch, we can see a stream and fields, and its also where the sunset is.

They didnt want to touch the exposed beams and joists on the ceiling, or do much to the original staircase and flooring besides clean it up. The floors are a yellow pine, and I think I tested 10 or 12 finishes, Sohail says. I landed on a wood lye, and I must have done four or five coats with sanding in between. I kept thinking it looked weird, but then we stayed at the Hotel Peter and Paul in New Orleans and the floors looked identical to ours. So I felt validated.

The minimal yet cozy backdrop of the windows and floors influenced how they approached the rest of the home. They installed a woodstove as a fireplace in the living area, and had a friend design the dining table from white planks. A 1970s leather sofa Sohail found on eBaythe matching chairs are in their bedroomseparates that space from the kitchen, which was made to be pretty over practical, Sara notes. We spent the last five years living and eating in a restaurant where everything is super-practical and industrial, she continues. We needed a place that was softer, where maybe we would have to be a little more careful about cooking, but thats okay. They purchased the cabinetry unfinished from Lowe's, and Sara painted it herself. To give the cabinets a unique edge, Sara and Sohail turned to a local carpenter who custom-made the pulls.

Photo by Christian Harder

By the time Sara and Sohail finished this renovation late last year, they had spent four years on the project. It sounds like a lot of time, they know, but it was done in the midst of running a restaurant, opening their Airbnbs, and doing a lot of the work themselves. Our friends joke that they couldve renovated three homes in the time it took to do this one, Sara says. But we just took our time, and we were fine living in itour bedroom was our sanctuary. We care a lot about what the house was, and respecting that.

As Sara speaks, Sohail is in the background agreeing. We care a lot about balance, and doing this all at once might have made it seem like a theme, or a point in time, he says. Sara responds, Were still happy with the decisions we made years ago. The restaurant, and this house, are home.

Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
An astronaut on the International Space Station captured this view of smoke from devastating wildfires obscuring the region around Sydney, Australia on Jan. 3, 2020. (Image credit: NASA via Twitter

The horrific wildfires of southeastern Australia right are clearly visible to satellites in space, and now astronauts have begun tracking them from the International Space Station.

A new photo, which NASA shared on Twitter Jan. 3, shows billowing smoke that surrounds Sydney and is blowing into the nearby Tasman Sea. At the time, the space station was roughly 269 miles (433 kilometers) above Australia at the time, NASA said in the tweet.

The wildfires, which began September, have so far killed at least 25 people. The fires have burned an area about twice the size of the state of Maryland, torching about 2,000 houses and, according to the Associated Press . Additionally, Australia's wildlife has suffered tremendously , with countless animals losing their lives to the fires.

Related: Australia's Deadly Wildfires in Photos: The View from Space

A satellite image of the smoke coming from the Australia wildfires on Jan. 1, 2020. (Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Mike Carlowicz.)

While this is wildfire season in Australia, experts have said that these fires are more extreme than usual and can be linked to climate change. "Climate change is increasing bushfire risk in Australia by lengthening the fire season, decreasing precipitation and increasing temperature," the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has said, according to USA Today.

A satellite image of Australia before the devastating fires of this fall/winter, taken on July 24, 2019. (Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Mike Carlowicz.)

In addition to astronaut views, NASA's venerable Landsat 8 and Aqua Earth-imaging satellites have captured images of the thick smoke in southeastern Australia, particularly around Victoria and New South Wales. The dusty smoke shows up as tan in the images, while normal clouds look bright white, NASA said in a statement .

A satellite image of the smoke coming from the Australia wildfires on Jan. 1, 2020. (Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Mike Carlowicz.)

"The record-setting and deadly fire season in Australia took a dramatic turn in the last week of December and the first week of January," Mike Carlowicz with NASA's Earth Observatory at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland wrote in the statement. "Residents of southeastern Australia told news media about the daytime seeming to turn to night, as thick smoke filled the skies and intense fires drove people from their homes."

On Monday (Jan. 6), Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that he would provide an additional 2 billion Australian dollars ($1.4 billion) to fight the fires. "The fires are still burning. And they'll be burning for months to come," Morrison said in the Associated Press report . "If more is needed and the cost is higher, then more will be provided."

However, despite the promises made by Morrison and existing support to fight against the raging fires, many Australians are unhappy with the Prime Minister's previously, seemingly relaxed attitude toward the crisis and his dismissal of climate change and its deadly impact, according to the New York Times.

NASA has been keeping a close eye on this crisis for weeks and has been updating satellite imagery frequently via its Worldview tool. This tool feeds in data from 26 satellites (known as the Earth Observing System); observatories such as Aqua, Suomi NPP and Terra all contribute to the massive database.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook .
Hebert Smith Freehills (HSF) has added to its roles in the development of the Docklands precinct in Melbourne, this time helping secure a major financing for a project.

The legal giant counselled the financier of the $250m The Docklands Residence project, which will be located inside the mixed-use waterfront precinct. The project itself, located in front of the District Docklands shopping complex, is a mixed-use development, which includes a 200-room Marriott hotel and 88 residences.

The HSF team was headed by finance partner Lucy McCullagh and real estate partner Jane Hodder, who were supported by executive counsel Dinh Ptok, senior associates Kimberley Lean and Josh Todd, and solicitor Sama Rahman.
A few months ago, I was standing outside a Demo Day event in the heart of Silicon Valley. With the temperature approaching 90 degrees, I was beginning to feel the heat, and I wasnt the only one sweating; with various entrepreneurs running from investor to investor, you could feel a palpable nervous energy in the air.

And yet, something struck me as different. Nearly every entrepreneur was discretely focused on building an outwardly sustainable enterprise. From alternatives to plastic packaging to next-generation milk replacements, this crop of entrepreneurs placed sustainability benefits front and center as a product attribute. Additionally, they were looking for investors that shared their vision of a more equitable and sustainable world.

This is somewhat surprising, especially when you consider how significantly Silicon Valley took a hit on green enterprises and cleantech just over a decade ago. From 2007 to 2008, venture capitalists poured more than $6 billion into cleantech enterprises, on top of the Federal governments investment of $40-plus billion in tax breaks and subsidies. One firm alone, Khosla Ventures, recorded in excess of $1 Billion of related investments.

Related: It's Official: Customers Prefer Sustainable Companies.

We all know what happened next: The market crashed. Appropriately, this scared off many venture investors for close to a decade from outwardly green or sustainability-focused enterprises. Yet now, as the climate crisis becomes more acute, consumer attitudes towards sustainable businesses are fundamentally shifting and compelling businesses to take action. Earlier this year, The Walt Disney Company banned plastic straws from all its theme parks, and just recently, Marriott announced they were phasing out single-use plastics from all of their owned and franchised hotel properties.

This is big. And as a new crop of entrepreneurs rapidly start businesses with sustainability as a foundational tenet, there is much we can learn. Chief amongst these is creating a product that consumers will not just like, but love. By focusing on product first and foremost, entrepreneurs will be able to convince consumers of an attendant sustainability-value proposition. Second, entrepreneurs should partner with sustainability-focused organizations that provide crucial third-party credibility.

Create a Product People Love

Growing up, I used to go to a local burger restaurant just outside of Toronto. While I would order the cheeseburger, my friend, who is now an environmental conservationist, would order the veggie burger. Im not a vegetarian, but I feel like I am doing better for the planet because meat production is so resource intensive, he said.

Do you actually like that burger?" I responded.

Hell no!" he answered honestly. "But I make sacrifices for what I care about and think others will do the same."

Unfortunately, he was wrong. For the majority of consumers, giving up established behaviors, benefits and luxuries in the name of sustainability is very hard as we focus on maximizing consumption. Behavioral change, especially in relation to a preventative benefits, is often vexing and slow-going. This may be why products that previously emphasized sustainability, to the sacrifice of their core value offering, faced significant growth challenges.

And yet, over the past few years, entrepreneurs have turned a significant corner. New products have entered the market that at least meet, and in some instances exceed, the standards of traditional and less-sustainable incumbents. Front-and-center examples of this include meat-replacement products like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, while lesser known examples like Perennial intend to provide a replacement for dairy products aimed at seniors.

Entrepreneurs are even turning to packaging innovation. For example, Ever & Ever, a new water product from Vita Coco, is made from an aluminum can that is infinitely recyclable. This can go a long way toward putting a dent in the waste from single-use plastic bottles, one million of which are sold every second around the world.

Partner with Sustainability Leaders

A few years ago, I got into a heated discussion with a friend of mine about a certain airlines claims of sustainability and waste diversion. While the airline claimed that more than 20 percent of their waste was being diverted, there was no specificity in the type of waste. Was it catering waste? Was is terminal waste? With no substantiation and data, we could not come to any agreement.

Consumers are smart. They are now expecting data behind any sustainability claims. They wont settle for vague claims anymore. The easiest thing for entrepreneurs to do is partner with leading organizations, nonprofits and advocacy groups to substantiate the environmental and sustainability benefits of their product. It is not enough to just claim that you are sustainable, you have to prove it and make a commitment to doing so over the lifecycle of your company. This could involve significant supply chain audits, certifications and other mechanisms by which entrepreneurs can prove the conscious nature of their organization.

There are numerous organizations to partner with, depending on sector or focus. If you are focused on general sustainability, you can work with CurrentState and conduct an audit. If you are working with advocacy organizations, 350.org is a good place to start. A good example of a co-op program is sustainable-fish certification from the Monterrey Bay Aquarium.

On the marketing side, you can work with organizations like The Lonely Whale Foundation, whose Museum of Plastic provides sustainable organizations the opportunity to drive valuable earned media while consciously raising awareness of the challenges of single-use plastics.

Related: Don't Forget to Embrace Sustainability

The Medium Is the Message

Sustainability-focused enterprises are having a comeback as entrepreneurs and investors pour resources into the space. There is much we can learn from these trailblazers. First, you can focus on building a core product that users love. Second and significantly, to substantiate any claims of sustainability, you need to partner with leading organizations in the space. But there is no doubt that the opportunity to thrive economically and conscientiously is riper than ever before.

Related:

Why Entrepreneurs Should Be More Worried About Uber Than AB5

Reachy Is an Expressive, Open-Source Robot

What 2020 Holds For The Indian Startup Ecosystem?



Copyright 2020 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Shameless ex-MP Keith Vaz returned to Westminster to play a role in shaping the upcoming Labour leadership battle today, weeks after quitting the Commons in disgrace over a cocaine and rent boys scandal.

The 63-year-old attended today's meeting of the party's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC), which is due to decide on the rules and format of the battle to replace Jeremy Corbyn.

Mr Vaz did not run in his Leicester East seat in the December 12 general election, having been handed a six-month suspension from the Commons after he was caught offering to buy Class A drugs for male sex workers.

But he is understood to have retained his seat on the NEC as a representative of ethnic minority party members.

Mr Vaz arriving at a Labour NEC meeting last year. He is believed to have attended today's as a representative of BAME party members

Party animal: Keith Vaz pictured with a belly dancer at the 2009 Labour Conference

The NEC meets in central London this afternoon to hammer out the rules and timetable for the contest to replace Jeremy Corbyn.

The Labour leader, 70, announced he would step down after the disastrous election last month which handed an 80-seat majority to Boris Johnson.

But there are fears that the NEC - a body which is controlled by allies of the current Labour leader - could move to 'stitch up' the contest in favour of a left-wing candidate like Rebecca Long Bailey.

The committee could do that by making it more difficult for new members to join the party by increasing the cost of doing so or by imposing a tight or even retrospective deadline for joining to stop new members from being eligible to vote.

Former Europe minister Mr Vaz, was found by the House of Commons Standards Committee last year to have committed a 'very serious breach' of code of conduct for MPs.

The Sunday Mirror reported in September 2016 that Vaz, posing as an industrial washing machine salesman called Jim, invited two male prostitutes into his flat to engage in paid-for sex and offered to pay for cocaine for another man to use.

Married with two children, Vaz, who was born in Aden to a family from Goa, wasbeen the MP for the central England seat of Leicester East from 1987.

'I found Mr Vaz's account of the events that led to the media reports incredible,' said Kathryn Stone, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, in October.

'I found his reason for being unable to assist me fully with my inquiry implausible.'

The standards committee said his explanation that the men were there to discuss redecorating the London flat, and that he may have been given a 'spiked drink', was 'not believable and, indeed, ludicrous'.

Mr Vaz was suspended from Parliament for six months on October 31 but because of the dissolution for the election he could have dodged his punishment if he was re-elected.

Instead he announced in November that he would not stand, saying: 'I have decided to retire after completing 32 years as the member of parliament for Leicester East.

In that time I have won eight general elections. It has been an honour and a privilege to serve my constituency since I came to the city in 1985.'

He was replaced as a candidate by Claudia Webbe, a controversial supporter of Jeremy Corbyn who retained the seat for Labour.

But her 6,019 majority was down from the 22,428 achieved by Mr Vaz in 2017.
National parks and state forests will be targeted in a major new federal effort to conduct more land clearing and controlled burn-offs under an approach that could shame the states into stronger action.

The Morrison government will heighten pressure on the states to intensify their programs to lighten the fuel load in parks and forests before the peak bushfire season, but has stopped short of more drastic intervention.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Parliament House in Canberra on Sunday. Credit:Rohan Thomson/Getty Images

Prime Minister Scott Morrison named the issue as the one raised with him most commonly by communities struck by this summers bushfire crisis, signalling he wanted a national approach to clear future threats.

Natural Disaster and Emergency Management Minister David Littleproud has set up a federal inquiry into the issue, in an exercise that is expected to hear intense debate between environmentalists and others over controlled burn-offs.
MADRID, SPAIN - JANUARY 04: Spain's interim Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gestures during his speech during the investiture debate at the Spanish Parliament on January 04, 2020 in Madrid, Spain.

Spain is on track to get a new government Tuesday, but its economic and political future remains uncertain.

Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez is set to receive enough support at a parliamentary vote Tuesday that will put an end to almost one year of political uncertainty. Sanchez won a snap election in April of 2019 but struggled to form a government led by his Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). As a result, another snap vote took place in November, which is now culminating with the first coalition government that Spain has seen in modern times.

"A progressive coalition"  is how Pedro Sanchez described his deal with Unidas Podemos, a group of left-leaning parties, whose leader Pablo Iglesias became known in the aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis for his opposition to austerity policies. However, Pedro Sanchez will also be relying on other smaller parties to govern the southern European country.

"The new PSOE-Unidas Podemos government will not probably have a stable parliamentary majority to rely on, which means it will have to negotiate most policy measures on a case-by-case basis with other parties," Antonio Barroso, deputy director at the research firm Teneo, said in a note Friday.

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Pedro Sanchez's agreement with Unidas-Podemos received 166 out of 350 votes in the Spanish Parliament on Sunday. The result did not deliver the absolute majority that they needed, but a new vote is scheduled for Tuesday, where a relative majority will be enough to install the new government.

Nonetheless, Florian Hense, economist at Berenberg bank, told CNBC Monday that it is "not very likely" the new government will last until the end of the mandate.

"It is a coalition government, which is not very common in Spain, it lacks an outright majority, and whose likely simple majority relies on the abstention, of among many other regional parties, the big separatist ERC (a Catalan separatist party)," Hense told CNBC via email.
By PTI

BEIJING: China on Monday slammed what it called US "adventurism" which aggravated tensions in the Middle East and urged all parties to exercise restraint, saying Beijing was "highly concerned" over the worsening situation following the killing of a top Iranian general by America.

While sharply critical of US actions including threats of sanctions against Iraq, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang, however, hinted that Beijing plans to go ahead with the signing of the phase one deal with US next week to end the ongoing trade war.

The killing of Maj Gen Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was the most dramatic escalation yet in spiralling tensions between Iran and the US.

"China is highly concerned about the situation in the Middle East," Geng said when asked about US and Iran tensions.

"Worsening of the tensions in the Gulf region is the last thing anyone wants to see Power politics is unpopular and unsustainable.

The US adventurism goes against the basic norms governing international relations and aggravates tensions and instability in the region," he said.

China opposes the use of force in international relations, he added.

"Military means will lead nowhere and maximum pressure won't work either.

ALSO READ | Donald Trump threatens Iraq with sanctions 'like theyve never seen before'

We believe all sides should earnestly abide by the purposes and principles of the UN charter and basic norms governing international relations" he said.

"We urge the US not to abuse its force," Geng said as he called on the relevant parties to exercise restraint to prevent spiral of tensions and escalation.

He also hinted that China will go ahead with its phase one trade deal with the US expected to be signed on January 15 to end the trade war despite its strong stand on American actions against Iran.

"China and the US reached phase one trade deal.

The two sides are in close communication to follow-up the matter," he said.

US President Donald Trump had launched the trade war against China last year demanding Beijing to reduce massive trade deficit.

Trump is also demanding an intrusive verification mechanism to supervise Beijing's promise to protect intellectual property rights (IPR) technology transfer and more access to American goods to Chinese markets.

Geng skirted direct reply to a question whether China plans to increase its military presence in the Gulf region in view of the tensions.

The air strike killing Iranian General Soleimani took place days after the trilateral joint naval exercises between China, Iran and Russia in the Gulf of Oman.

The exercises were held from December 27 to 30.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif visited Beijing and held talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi just ahead of the Friday US air strike.

Geng also criticised Trump's threat to impose harsh sanctions on Iraq like it has seen "never before" if US troops are expelled from Baghdad.

"We oppose the wanton use of sanctions and threat of sanctions.

We also oppose unilateral sanctions and so called long arm jurisdiction.

Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity should be upheld," he said.

Iraqi lawmakers on Sunday approved a resolution asking the Iraqi government to end the agreement under which US sent troops more than four years ago to help fight ISIS.

Geng defended Iran's plan to rollback its commitments on the nuclear deal.

"We believe Iran is being forced to reduce its commitments due to certain external factors.

At the same time, it is exercising restraint and clearly stated its political will for effective implementation" of the nuclear deal, he said.

"Now there is growing complexity in situation in the Middle East," he said, adding that the Iranian nuclear deal is facing severe challenges due to unilateral withdrawal by US' ignoring its international obligations which is the root cause of tensions in the Gulf region.
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Trump Threatens Sanctions on Iraq if US Forces are Expelled

By VOA News January 05, 2020

U.S. President Donald Trump says the United States will not leave Iraq unless it is paid back for a U.S. air base it built there.

Trump was reacting to Sunday's Iraqi parliament resolution urging the government to expel 5,200 American troops.

Trump told reporters on Air Force One Sunday night that the U.S. has an "extraordinarily expensive" air base in Iraq that cost billions of dollars.

"We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," he said, threatening sanctions "like they've never seen before" if the U.S. is not able to leave Iraq on a "very friendly basis."

The United States uses 12 different military facilities across Iraq. Trump did not specify which base he was talking about.

The Iraqi parliament demand for U.S. forces to get out was a protest against the U.S. drone attack at the Baghdad airport that Iran's top general Qassem Soleimani.

The Shi'ite majority in the parliament voted for the resolution calling on the caretaker government to end the bilateral agreement with the U.S.-led coalition to station troops on Iraqi soil.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed doubt U.S. forces would be expelled, telling Fox News, "We are confident the Iraqi people will want the U.S. to remain."

State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus says the U.S. is "disappointed" by the Iraqi decision and is waiting for clarification of the legality of the move. She said the U.S. urges Iraq to change its mind.

"We believe it is in the shared interests of the United States and Iraq to continue fighting ISIS together. This administration remains committed to a sovereign, stable, and prosperous Iraq," she said.

The U.S. and Iraq agreed to the reintroduction of American troops in Iraq four years ago to help fight against Islamic State terrorists. That came after all U.S. troops had been withdrawn from the 2003 U.S. invasion force that eventually toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi parliamentary resolutions are nonbinding. But caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mehdi had earlier urged parliament to take urgent measures and end the presence of foreign troops as soon as possible.

The prime minister called on lawmakers to act because of what he said were breaches of the troop agreement after the U.S. attacked a militia base in Qiam, which killed 25 Shi'ite militiamen, and the drone strike on Soleimani's car as he left the Baghdad airport.

But he said any decision on U.S. troops must make sure that Iraq's national interests and security are not damaged.

Riyad Muhammad Ali Al Masoudi, member of the Iraqi parliament, told VOA's Kurdish service, "We do not want to create a political or security void in this regard. What do we really want, is to preserve the Iraqi sovereignty and political future of the country. We hope this agreement will serve in the interests of Iraq, and will not be used against Iraq."

Meanwhile Lebanon's pro-Iranian Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah delivered a fiery speech to his supporters in Beirut urging the Iraqi parliament "to expel the U.S. from their country," and insisted that "the crime of killing (Qassem Soleimani) must be avenged."

Patsy Widakuswara, Kenneth Schwartz, Ed Yeranian, VOA Kurdish service contributed to this report.

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Los Angeles prosecutors have charged Harvey Weinstein with sexually assaulting two women on successive nights during Oscars week in 2013, bringing the new case against the disgraced Hollywood mogul on the eve of jury selection for his New York trial.

The case, brought by a taskforce set up by the Los Angeles County district attorney to handle sex crime allegations against major entertainment figures, puts Weinstein in deep legal peril on both coasts, where he built his career as the one of the most powerful figures in showbusiness before a barrage of allegations from more than 75 women led to his downfall and ignited the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein, 67, was charged with raping a woman at a Los Angeles hotel on February 18 2013, after pushing his way inside her room, then sexually assaulting a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel suite the next night.

He could get up to 28 years in prison on charges of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery.

We see you, we hear you and we believe you, district attorney Jackie Lacey said in announcing the charges, addressing the movie producers accusers.

Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said the charges open the next chapter for a man who has gotten away with too much for too long, while Beverly Hills Police Chief Sandra Spagnoli called the cases horrendous crimes perpetrated by a sexual predator.

Weinstein has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Expand Close Harvey Weinstein leaves the court in New York (Seth Wenig/AP) / Facebook

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Jury selection is set to begin on Tuesday in the New York case, in which Weinstein is charged with raping a woman in a New York City hotel room in 2013 and forcibly performing a sex act on another woman, Mimi Haleyi, in 2006.

He has said any sexual activity was consensual. If convicted of the most serious charges in New York, two counts of predatory sexual assault, he faces a mandatory life sentence.

The charges announced on Monday in LA took more than two years to file because the women were reluctant to provide all the information necessary, according to Ms Lacey.

The taskforce is still investigating allegations against Weinstein from three women, the district attorney said.

Weinstein is expected to appear in court in LA after his trial in New York, Ms Lacey said, adding that prosecutors will recommend 5 million dollars (3.8 million) bail.

Ms Lacey urged other victims to come forward: We need the voices of all victims to help us remove sexual predators from our community and protect others from these violent crimes.

She said the timing of the LA charges was unrelated to the New York trial, adding the filing and the announcement came on the first business day in which all the necessary people could be gathered.

Neither woman has stepped forward publicly, but one of them is expected to give evidence in the New York case as part of an effort by prosecutors to portray Weinstein as a sexual predator with a distinct pattern of conduct.

Celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, who represents Haleyi and actress Annabella Sciorra, who is scheduled to give evidence against Weinstein in New York, welcomed the new charges.

The walls of justice are closing in on Harvey Weinstein. He is now being prosecuted both in New York and Los Angeles, Ms Allred said, adding: Women are no longer willing to suffer in silence and are willing to testify under oath in a court of law.

The alleged attacks in LA came days before the Hollywood studio boss was photographed on the Oscars red carpet with his fashion designer wife Georgina Chapman, who was pregnant at the time.

At the 2013 Academy Awards, Weinstein had several major contenders, including Silver Linings Playbook, Django Unchained and The Master. His movies took home an armful of Oscars, including Jennifer Lawrences first Academy Award and trophies for director Quentin Tarantino and actor Christoph Waltz.

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Earlier on Monday, Weinstein and several of the women who have accused him converged at a New York City courthouse for final preparations for his trial.

His lawyers suggested they knew the additional charges might be coming, asking the judge to sequester the potential jurors because of that possibility. The judge denied the request.

Weinstein entered the courthouse using a walking frame following recent back surgery. Asked outside how his back felt, he responded with a thin smile and a so-so gesture with his hand.

Across the street, actresses and other women who say they were sexually harassed or assaulted by Weinstein branded him a villain undeserving of pity.

He looked cowardly. He wouldnt look at us. He wouldnt make eye contact, said Sarah Ann Masse, a performer and writer who said Weinstein once sexually harassed her in his underwear during a job interview. This trial is a cultural reckoning regardless of its legal outcome.
With the start of the new year, let us take a look at the wildfires of 2019 that ravaged the world. From Siberia to Australia, all nations have experienced record-breaking wildfires caused due to various reasons ranging from dry lightning to record-breaking heat in some places. While some fires like the recent one in Australia have claimed lives and other just engulfed buildings and did not claim any lives.

Australia 2019

In early and mid-2019, Australia also suffered from bushfires, separate from the major bushfires that they are suffering from now. In March of 2019, dry lightning lit several fires in the East of Victoria, which is a state in Australia. The bushfire that lasted for two days as a result at the Bunyip State Park destroyed 29 houses and 67 outbuildings were lost to the fire before it could be brought under control.

Sometime in late January 2019, lightning strikes caused bushfires in Tasmania. This particular fire claimed four houses including Churchill's hut which was built in 1920 by an Elias Churchill.

January 2019 also saw bushfires in southwestern Australia caused by a major heatwave. The fire that took place near Collie which had put all the residents at risk. There were fires in the month of February as well in Forrestdale Lake nature reserve in that had put several suburbs at risk.

Amazon Fires 2019

Fires in the Amazon rainforest and the Amazon Biome spanning Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru made headlines for a long time in the international media. During the tropical dry season, the fires occur in the Amazon because farmers use slash-and-burn methods of agriculture to clear land for use.

The Amazon rainforest is the world's largest carbon sink and plays a very important role in controlling global warming and its negative effects.

According to reports, by August 29, there were 80,000 fires all across Brazil which is a 77% increase from last year. The intensity and longevity of the fire were also aided by an unusually long dry season. The fires burnt 9,060 square kilometres of the land most of it being forest.

Siberia Wildfires 2019

The Siberian wildfires as they are being called began on July 2019 in poorly accessible areas of northern Krasnoyarsk Krai, the Sakha Republic and Zabaykalsky Krai, all in Siberia, Russia. There were no deaths due to the fires. By the end of the month of July, the fires spanned 2.6 million hectares.

The smoke released by the wildfires affected the air quality of much of Siberia and even air travel was disrupted. As of August 6, 161 fires were still active and being fought by firefighters and the other fires were solely being monitored because the fires were in remote areas.

Investigations revealed that the fires may have been started in order to hide illegal logging operations.

California Fires 2019

California saw 7,860 fires as estimated by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the US Forest Fire services. According to reports all the fires encompassed 259,823 acres. The largest fire of the year called the Kincade Fire became the largest fire in 2019 burning 77,000 acres of land by November 6.

Current Australian Bushfire

As of now, the bushfires in Australia has already claimed the lives of 25 people. The bushfire is predominantly worse than previous years due to record-breaking heat and drought as well as dry lightning strikes. The fires greatly affected the state of New South Wales as well as eastern and north-eastern Victoria.

Fire crews from all over Australia were called in to help relive the exhausted local crews but even that was not enough. As a result, hundreds of volunteer firefighters have had to fight the blazes to protect the Australian people. As of now, the fires have already burned 16,000,000 acres of land.

Read: Australians Evacuated By Plane Amid Wildfires

Read: 2 More Missing In Australian Wildfires As Rain Brings Relief

In addition, thousands of koalas are feared to have died in a wildfire-ravaged area north of Sydney, further diminishing Australias iconic marsupial, while the fire danger accelerated Saturday in the countrys east as temperatures soared. The mid-north coast of New South Wales was home to up to 28,000 koalas, but wildfires in the area in recent months have significantly reduced their population.

Read: Kangaroo Island Devastated By Wildfires

Read: Australia: Woman Shares Photo Of Dad Catching '5-minute Sleep' In Between Fighting Fires
Hana Japanese Fusion | Photo: Surekha S./Yelp

Looking for a sublime Asian fusion meal near you?

Hoodline crunched the numbers to find the top Asian fusion spots around Indianapolis, using both Yelp data and our own secret sauce to produce a ranked list of where to venture next time you're on the hunt.

December is the top month of the year for consumer spending at restaurants across the Indianapolis area, according to data on local business transactions from Womply, a provider of CRM and business health for small businesses. Daily spending at Indianapolis-area restaurants grew to $1,206 per business in December of last year, 10% higher than the average for the rest of the year.

Hoodline offers data-driven analysis of local happenings and trends across cities. Links included in this article may earn Hoodline a commission on clicks and transactions.

1. Hana Japanese Fusion

Photo: staci l./Yelp

First on the list is Hana Japanese Fusion. Located in South Emerson at 6905 S. Emerson Ave., Suite F, the Japanese restaurant and sushi bar is the highest-rated Asian fusion spot in Indianapolis, boasting 4.5 stars out of 135 reviews on Yelp.

2. Rook

Photo: adrian a./Yelp

Next up is downtown's Rook, situated at 501 Virginia Ave., Suite 101. With four stars out of 389 reviews on Yelp, the Chinese, Filipino and Asian fusion spot has proven to be a local favorite.

3. Meet Noodles 

Photo: amy l./Yelp

Castleton's Meet Noodles , located at 6368 E. 82nd St., is another top choice, with Yelpers giving the Asian fusion spot, which offers ramen noodles and more, 4.5 stars out of 104 reviews.

4. Asian Snack

Photo: daniel f./Yelp

Asian Snack, a Chinese and Asian fusion spot that offers seafood and more, is another much-loved go-to, with 4.5 stars out of 58 Yelp reviews. Head over to 3605 Commercial Drive in Eagledale to see for yourself.

5. Indy Asian Cuisine

Photo: indy asian cuisine/Yelp

Over in Nora-Far Northside, check out Indy Asian Cuisine, which has earned four stars out of 89 reviews on Yelp. You can find the Chinese, Taiwanese and Asian fusion and spot at 9516 Haver Way.

This story was created automatically using local business data, then reviewed and augmented by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 16:41:48|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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TEHRAN, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of thousands of Iranians in Tehran on Monday mourned the assassination of senior general Qassem Soleimani.

Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force of Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), was killed in a U.S. raid in Iraq's capital Baghdad on Friday.

The black-clad mourners flooded to the Enghelab (Revolution) and Azadi (Liberty) streets to pay their tribute to Soleimani.

The mourners were shouting anti-U.S. slogans in rage and carrying placards calling for "immediate departure" of U.S. forces from the region.
Gold price surged on Monday (January 6, 2020) to a historic high of Rs 41,000 per 10 gram as tensions in Central Asia continue to soar. In the domestic Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX), the gold price has jumped by almost Rs 1,800 in the last couple of days.

Tensions and threat of war between Iran and the United States of America have resulted in global share markets tanking and crude oil price on the rise which has led to a spike in gold price across the world. In the international market, gold on Monday is trading close to a seven-year high.

The rise in gold price is being attributed to US President Donald Trump and Iran government threatening retaliatory strikes following the killing of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani in Iraq in an American drone strike. Moreover, the deadlock in US-China trade talks continues giving one more reason for investors to flock to gold.

Zee Business spoke to Motilal Oswal Commodities research analyst Amit Sajeja who gave the reasons behind the gold price rise. "The gold price rise was expected as any further breakthrough in the second round of US-China trade talks. So, the market was expecting the gold price to go up to $1610 to $1630 per ounce while in the domestic markets at MCX, it was expected to hit Rs 41,000 per 10 gms."

Sajeja also pointed pout that gold price will continue to rise in the near future and may even reach Rs 42,000 per 10 gram.

According to Reuters, spot gold rose 1.7% to stand at $1,577.98 per ounce by 0409 GMT. Gold price had also rallied as much as 1.8% to touch $1,579.72, its highest since April 10, 2013, while the US gold futures gained 1.8% to $1,580.30.

US President Trump on Sunday also threatened to slap sanctions against Iraq after the latter asked American and other foreign troops to leave the country.
So often, by settling for the diatribe, we miss the dialogue. By spouting vitriolic and foul language we miss out on what must be venerated and engaged with. By defining ourselves through other peoples weaknesses and struggles we lay bare out our own hollowness. As we turn a page, I share a few thoughts about my view on Indias hopes and ambitions, complexes, and complications in an attempt to capture our grammar and soul.

Keep the dialogue on the straight and narrow. Dont lose the conversation politicians  not everyone seeking to speak is a goon or troublemaker. Separate the wheat from the chaff. India deserves this. It will not be easy, but theres no other way. Absence of peace is not war - it is dialogue and more dialogue.

The good news is that there is an undercurrent of change in India, not yet defined, difficult to capture and even more tenuous to lead. To anyone who says s/he knows whats happening in India, my question is this what are you smoking? This undercurrent is beyond electoral politics and fiefdoms, dynasties and accompanying decay. It is about a people rearing to go and an economy struggling to break decades-old barriers that are based neither in civilizational knowledge nor sound economic policies. We are an agricultural society of 1.3 billion people in transition and we speak a thousand tongues living between a few centuries. Scaling and implementation are not our only problems.

READ | The Germans Are A Grand People

Over the past months, the focus of what I speak and write has been this listen to young people. Whenever I am stuck or struggling with words thought and word, I write for a living and I turn to what young people are reading and podcasting in many languages around the world. They are angry and disappointed, hopeful and funny. Some are actively engaged, others less. But one thing is certain in their search for answers is the cutting to chase from rotten structures and accompanying. The time is not far when fence-sitters will have nothing to sit on except their heap of lies. The young are prescient, sometimes skipping entire generations of corruption as they mature past fake and fickle Gods.

The old must make way for the new. Responsibility is the other side of democratic rights, something many Indians, including politicians dont grasp. The I surfaces at the drop of a challenge to the we and the me is omnipresent. This applies as much to left and right-wing intellectuals (who else) and is peculiarly Indian. It stems from a failure to look at issues without placing oneself right in the middle of everything. It may also be called ego.

Young people may veer off the track every now and then but didnt it happen to you when you were their age? Were you never confused between what you grew up with and what the work of the world and even your elders taught you? Questioning is not disobedience, distraction is not destruction. Wherever they are and whatever is agitating them, young people are in search of guidance and mentoring, not data and conferences because generations of lectures have lined a few pockets and failed most people. Insulting them would be to ignore the writing on the wall.

READ | Justice For India

India is an old civilization and a young country. I am of the view that civilizations that seek to bring back their past glory without modernising systems, enabling processes encouraging job creation will not fare well as democracies in the 21st century. Where China has succeeded (and it's not a democracy), Greece and Italy have failed. Persia, Iraq, and Japan have their own struggles between civilizational cultures and modern societies. There is no one answer.

The word for what is happening in India is certainly not revolution! Its a phrase called growing up. Revolutions are for television star speakers and digital divas that from the security of their gated communities and the glare of camera lights tell the rest of us to go and fight. Dont take them seriously. When the lights and makeup are off, they gang up and laugh at us you and me and haggle about late payment of appearance fees. My favourite entertainers are televisions evangelists who fight to keep other evangelists out, like gangs securing their shrinking territories.

Ganging up or dancing on pinheads is a distinguishable Indian trait, seeking comfort in numbers that hide peoples incapacity to stand up for what they believe in. Groups become gangs with all the negative connotations attached to it ranging from latent bullying to foul language on twitter. Martyrs all, to them I say this if youve survived to tweet about it, it couldnt have been that bad. The joke is on you.

READ | Of Pilgrims, Progress, Polemics and Politicians

If you define yourself by the weaknesses of others and their missteps you are a coward incapable of individual thinking and reflection. Engaging with difference and diversity even if it means setting all your pre-conceived notions aside needs the courage of conviction and faith in your democracy. Thats a tall order between television appearances (pocket money for most), Twitter vitriol-spewing, running from book festivals and fake handbags where more of the same gets regurgitated. Nothing shines like fake including speech and faith.

Gangs will always behave like gangs be they political, social, economic or even within families. There will always be outsiders and people who bring in winds of change will be ostracised. Which is why I remain very positive about what is happening in India and other parts of the world because young people are prescient. I trust them.

Signing off, I have this to say. Comparing India to the United States (US) is silly beyond belief. America has long been a major economic and military power. India has a long road ahead. We need them more than they need us, but there lies the cut. India needs to better define the scope of that interaction. Self-respect is not bravado- quite the opposite. The media and responsible commentators have a role to play here. WaPo and NYT dont even influence Americans (remember Trump won), and their influence in India is sub-zero except for gangs and gangrenous conversations who beg to be published in America and London. Till such time you beg to be recognised in these settings, youll remain a beggar. Let that sink in.

There is no civilizational crisis in India theres a job crisis and a public health crisis. In the preceding lines I wrote that I sensed an undercurrent of good. I believe it will no longer be co-opted and divided, bought and sold by the wailing left and the see we told you right. It will be Indias India, it will be lead by communities of people with similar goals and aspirations beginning with jobs, access to health and education.

We, the people of India dont need intermediaries to translate our dreams. Middle people are warmongers who double-dip, cause mayhem and run. The sooner we discard them, the better for us all.

Happy New Year!
E mmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Boris Johnson have made a European appeal for Iran and the US to step back in the escalating Middle East crisis.

The three leaders released a statement saying while they were concerned by the negative role Iran has played in the region  including through forces directed by General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike last last Friday  there was now an urgent need for de-escalation.

We call on all parties to exercise utmost restraint and responsibility. The current cycle of violence in Iraq must be stopped, the joint statement, released late on Sunday night, said.

We specifically call on Iran to refrain from further violent action or proliferation, and urge Iran to reverse all measures inconsistent with the JCPOA [the Iran nuclear deal].

We recall our attachment to the sovereignty and security of Iraq. Another crisis risks jeopardising years of efforts to stabilise Iraq.

We also reaffirm our commitment to continue the fight against Daesh [Islamic State], which remains a high priority. The preservation of the Coalition is key in this regard. We therefore urge the Iraqi authorities to continue providing the Coalition all the necessary support.

We stand ready to continue our engagement with all sides in order to contribute to defuse tensions and restore stability to the region.

General Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike / AP

About 400 UK troops are stationed in Iraq in the fight against IS, while the US has 5,200, prompting fears of a withdrawal that could cripple the battle against the terror group.

Meanwhile, Mr Johnson is to assemble key ministers to discuss the spiralling crisis in the Middle East after the USs assassination of Irans top military leader.

The Prime Minister is also likely to continue high-stakes diplomatic discussions with world leaders on Monday over the Trump-ordered drone strike on Gen Soleimani.

The PM urged de-escalation from all sides, saying that calls for reprisals will simply lead to more violence in the region and they are in no ones interest after the killing in Baghdad on Friday.

Meanwhile, Iran announced it will abandon the limits in the unravelling nuclear deal on fuel enrichment, its uranium stockpile and research activities in a move that could bring it closer to assembling an atomic bomb.

And The Times quoted an unnamed senior commander in the elite Quds Force, which Gen Soleimani commanded, as warning British soldiers could be fatally attacked as collateral.

Our forces will retaliate and target US troops in [the] Middle East without any concern about killing its allies, including UK troops, as this has turned in to a fully-fledged war with much collateral damage expected, the commander said.

The PM said he will be speaking to Iraq to support peace and stability after its parliament called for the expulsion of foreign troops, including British soldiers working against IS.

Mr Johnson spoke to President Macron and Chancellor Merkel after arriving back in the UK on Sunday morning from his Caribbean holiday amid mounting criticism.

Amid fears of an all-out war, Iraqs parliament passed a non-legally binding bill calling for the expulsion of all foreign forces.

The Ministry of Defence was understood to be awaiting the decision of the Iraqi government before acting over UK soldiers based there as part of the US-led coalition.

A UK Government spokesman said: We urge the Iraqi government to ensure the coalition is able to continue our vital work countering this shared threat.

He backed the first option.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab spoke to him on Sunday morning.
Prices have not been finalized but will be similar to those at locations in Texas and Michigan, where tickets for an adult and child under 8 years old start at $22.50 for a two-hour visit. The Woodfield Mall location will also have a cafe and Peppa Pig-themed store.
[January 06, 2020] Ontellus Announces Investment by Aquiline Capital Partners

HOUSTON, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Ontellus, a leader in outsourced records retrieval, announced today the completion of an investment in the company by Aquiline Capital Partners, a private equity firm based in New York and London who invests in businesses globally, across financial services and technology. Aquiline invested alongside The CapStreet Group, LLC, a current investor in the business and management. As part of the transaction, Aquiline provided capital for growth purposes and acquired a majority ownership stake in the company. The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Ontellus is one of the largest national providers of tech-enabled medical, billing, and other claims related records procurement for insurance companies and law firms. Ontellus is recognized for its overall performance, high-quality service, fast turnaround times, and proven scalability. Aquiline's investment in the company provides resources and capital to support the continued expansion of the company's records retrieval capabilities. "We're thrilled to join forces with Aquiline and see the many ways that Aquiline's investment and insurance experience will help us grow our company and bring additional services and capabilities to our clients," said Darren Klauser, CEO of Ontellus, "We look forward to working with them as we enter this next chapter." Jeff Greenberg, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Aquiline said, "We are excited to partner with Darren and the Ontellus management team to help them build on Ontellus' leading industry position." Greenberg continued, "We believe the company is well-positioned to meet growing demand from record requesters and providers for solutions that address numerus challenges related to exchanging records and utilizing claims information in a secure and compliant manner."



Harris Williams served as the exclusive financial advisor and Wilkie Farr served as the legal advisor to Ontellus. Weil, Gotshal & Manges served as the legal advisor to Aquiline. About Ontellus

Ontellus empowers insurance carriers, self-insured corporations and law firms to reduce costs, make informed decisions and accelerate claims resolution. As one of the nation's largest, privately-held data retrieval and claims intelligence provider, Ontellus leverages decades of experience and cutting-edge technology to deliver impactful products and client-centric services within industry-leading turnaround times. For more information, please visit www.ontellus.com.

About Aquiline Capital Partners

Aquiline Capital Partners, founded in 2005 and based in New York and London, is a private equity firm investing in businesses across the financial services sector in banking and credit, insurance, investment management, and financial technology and services. For more information about Aquiline, its investment professionals, and its portfolio companies, please visit www.aquiline.com. About The CapStreet Group

The CapStreet Group is a Houston, Texas based private equity firm that invests in owner-managed, lower middle market companies. CapStreet targets companies operating in the industrial and outsourced business service sectors, including tech enabled services and software businesses. CapStreet's approach is to partner with strong management teams with the goal of building out corporate infrastructure, accelerating growth and profitability, and creating long term sustainable businesses. For more information, visit The CapStreet Group website, www.capstreet.com. For Inquires:

Ontellus:

Prairie Elliott, Director of Marketing

[email protected]

Phone +1 713 335 4512 Aquiline Capital Partners:

Brunswick Group

Alex Yankus / Harry Mayfield

[email protected]

Phone +1 212 333 3810 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ontellus-announces-investment-by-aquiline-capital-partners-300981097.html SOURCE Ontellus

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 15:06:37|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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KABUL, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan arrested over 1,200 people accused of smuggling or keeping drugs during last year, authorities said on Monday.

"Counter-Narcotics Police of Afghanistan (CNPA) and detective security organizations arrested 1,287 suspects, including 37 women and two foreign citizens, linked to 1,081 cases of transportation or keeping of narcotics nationwide during 2019," Counter-Narcotics Criminal Justice Task Force of Afghanistan (CJTF) said in a statement.

After initial investigations, the CNPA has handed over the cases to the Central Narcotics Tribunal or CNT, a special Afghan court for jurisdiction of major drug cases, the statement said.

Huge amounts of drugs and banned-chemical materials, including 2,449 kg heroin, 1,421 kg morphine and 30,737 kg opium, 106,780 kg of hashish and 1,165 kg of Methamphetamine were also seized over the period, the statement noted.

In addition, a primary and an appellant court of the CNT have sentenced 2,676 defendants to different ranges of imprisonment and 63 persons were cleared by the courts due to lack of evidence during the year, the statement said.

In 2018, some 6,400 tons of opium were produced in Afghanistan, a country notorious for growing opium-producing poppies for the illicit drug trade.
Algiers, 6 January 2020 (SPS) - Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune has reiterated Algeria's commitment to the consistent support of just issues, especially the Western Sahara issue.



During his presidency of the Council of Ministers on Sunday, following the formation of the new Algerian government, Mr. Tebboune stressed Algeria's rejection to interference in the affairs of other countries and that it will respond vigorously to any attempt of interfering in its national affairs, which remains the foundation of its commitment to peace and security in the region, the Maghreb, Africa and the world, as well as its commitment to the constant support of just issues, especially the issue of Western Sahara and Palestinian issues.



He emphasized that Algeria should not in any way give up its duty of solidarity and good-neighborliness, which continues to promote through cooperation aimed at achieving a regional integration that is beneficial to all parties. (SPS)



062/SPS/T
IMAGE: Union Home Minister Amit Shah addresses a public event at Tughlaqabad, in New Delhi, on Monday. Photograph: Press Information Bureau of India

Union Home Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah on Monday accused the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi of misleading the people for five years and said after the February 8 assembly polls, a new dispensation will take over and accelerate development in the national capital.

In a series of tweets, Shah also alleged the AAP government made only promises throughout its tenure and now in the last three months, public money was being spent on advertisements for its announcements.

'I am confident that through this festival of democracy, the government led by a party, which misled people for five years and gave hollow promises, will be defeated and a government will be formed under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that can fulfil the people's aspirations,' he said.

Shah said the people of Delhi are still looking for free Wi-Fi, 15 lakh CCTV cameras, new colleges and hospitals, as promised by the AAP government.

Welcoming the announcement of the polls, Shah said this election will lay the foundation for accelerating development in Delhi.

'I hope that the people of Delhi will vote in large numbers and create a new record,' he said.

The home minister appealed to the BJP workers to tell people of the national capital not only about the historic work done by the central government, but also the truth about the AAP government, which has been a 'hindrance to the development of Delhi'.

Shah said this election is the election for the poor to fulfil their dream of a concrete house, this election is an election to remove from powers those who have deprived the poor from the benefits of the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, which provides poor the right to free treatment, and this election is an election to remove those who do politics of vote bank by violating peace.

The elections to the 70-member Delhi assembly will take place on February 8 and results will be declared on February 11, the Election Commission announced on Monday.

Earlier in the day, Shah accused the Congress and the AAP of 'burning the national capital in the fire of riots'.

Addressing a gathering in New Delhi, Shah said the Congress and the AAP 'misled the youth and people of Delhi and committed the sin of burning the national capital in the fire of riots'.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, his party and AAP are responsible for 'riots' and breach of peace in the national capital over the amended citizenship law, he alleged.

"Unashamed, they are still saying they will give legal aid to those behind the riots, go to their houses and take care of them," he charged.

Shah said Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought in the new legislation to give citizenship to minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who have sought refuge in India, but 'Congress and AAP, especially Rahul and Priyanka (Gandhi Vadra), are misleading minorities in the entire country'.

"They are telling them 'you will lose your citizenship due to CAA'. There is no provision in the amended law that takes away citizenship of people. Why are you lying?" Shah said.

The country is 'watching with binoculars Rahul Gandhi supporting rioters', he said, adding the Congress leader is identifying himself with those vitiating peace in the country.

Shah, who is also the BJP president, said that Delhi bore the brunt of 'riots' for four days during the recent violent protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

He held the AAP government and the Congress responsible for it.

He said Rahul Gandhi and Kejriwal spoke the language of Pakistan and demanded proof from the prime minister when the forces conducted surgical strikes on terror camps in Pakistan.

"No one had the courage to revoke Article 370. Modiji did it in one stroke. Our flag is flying high in Kashmir. No one can separate Kashmir from India now," Shah said.

The Congress adopted double standards on the issue of building a Ram temple in Ayodhya. For their vote bank politics, they delayed resolution of the issue, he alleged.

"Don't worry. Let Rahul, Kejriwal and company do whatever they want. A sky-touching temple will be built in Ayodhya," he said.

The home minister also criticised Kejriwal for not granting sanction to prosecute those who allegedly raised anti-India slogans on JNU campus in 2016.

"Some students shouted anti-India slogans, said 'Bharat tere tukde honge'. Tell me should not they be sent to jail? But Kejriwal is not granting sanction to prosecute them. Who do you want to save, Kejriwal ji?" he asked in a dig at the AAP chief ahead of the Delhi Assembly polls.

On Sunday, Shah had also accused the Aam Aadmi Party convener of favouring the "tukde tukde gang" by not giving sanction to prosecute former Jawaharlal Nehru University students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar in a sedition case.

At the Tughlaqabad event, the home minister accused the AAP government of doing nothing to improve the lives of the people of Delhi and only deceiving them by publishing advertisements in the past three months about its tenure.

Shah took a dig at the Kejriwal dispensation over the various schemes implemented by it.

"Kejriwal had promised to install 15 lakh CCTV cameras for the safety of residents of Delhi. People are looking all over, but can't find any camera," Shah said.

"The AAP government had also promised free WiFi. However, your phone's battery will drain while searching for WiFi signals as they are nowhere to be found."

The BJP president claimed that the Delhi Jal Board, which he said would register a profit of Rs 150 crore, was running at a loss of Rs 800 crore under Kejriwal.

"Though Kejriwal reduced water bills, he supplied poison-like water to the people of Delhi," Shah said.

"The poor water quality in Delhi speaks volumes about your inability to govern the city."

On the AAP government not joining the Centre's Ayushman Bharat scheme, Shah alleged that Kejriwal feared if the programme was implemented in Delhi, the people would favour the BJP in the assembly election.

Kejriwal had said on Sunday that the healthcare schemes of the Delhi government were better than Ayushman Bharat, underlining that such programmes of his dispensation was completely free for all irrespective of the rich or poor.

Shah also alleged that the AAP dispensation had done maximum damage to the poor and people living in the rural areas.

He accused the Delhi government of waiting for the election to regularise the unauthorised colonies.

Edited by Utkarsh Mishra
The Congress is prepared for the upcoming Assembly polls in the national capital and will run an "aggressive" campaign in the run-up to the elections to be held on February 8, Kirti Azad, campaign committee chairman of the party's Delhi unit, said on Monday.

The polls to the 70-member Delhi Assembly will take place on February 8 and the results will be declared on February 11, the Election Commission announced on Monday.

"We are prepared and will run an aggressive campaign, which will compare the works done by the Congress under (former chief minister) Sheila Dikshit and the current (Arvind) Kejriwal government in Delhi," Azad said.

The Congress will corner the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), questioning them over the condition of schools, hospitals and regularisation of unauthorised colonies in Delhi, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Express News Service

KENDRAPARA: Union Minister of State for Steel Faggan Singh Kulaste launched the BJPs awareness campaign on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) at the seaside Ramanagar village under Mahakalapada block here on Sunday.

Ramanagar and nearby villages have a presence of large number of Bangladeshi Hindu refugees. Coastal areas of Kendrapara is home to around 70,000 Bengali speaking people, most of whom came from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1947. Many also migrated to the district from Bangladesh in the 1970s.

Addressing a public meeting at Ramanagar, Kulaste said Hindus and Indian Muslims have nothing to worry about CAA and National Register of Citizens (NRC) as both only aim to weed out infiltrators. Under the CAA, Hindu refugees would be granted citizenship and Muslims who are living in India for the last several decades and have proper documents would not be affected. Only those Muslims who have infiltrated from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan should be worried as they would be identified and thrown out of the country, he said.

"Millions of Hindus fled Pakistan and East Pakistan at the time of our countrys partition which was done on religious lines. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan became Islamic Republics and adopted Islam as their state religion. From 23 per cent in 1947, Pakistans minorities today constitute a mere three per cent of the population. Keeping in mind the religious persecution of minorities in these three countries, the NDA Government decided to grant Indian nationality to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan under CAA," Kulaste said.

The demand of some opposition leaders to give citizenship for Muslims living in these three Islamic countries is illegal and irrational. These leaders are opposing CAA with an eye on the votes of illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh, he said.

The Union Minister assured Indian citizenship to all Hindu refugees from Bangladesh who have settled in seaside villages of the district. I came to know that many Hindu refugees from Bangladesh are staying in Kendrapara since long but have no legal documents to prove themselves as Indian citizens. Now, all of them will get Indian citizenship under the CAA, Kulaste added.

President of the district unit of BJP Kishore Panda said in 2005, the Government had served Quit India notices on 1,551 suspected Hindu Bangladeshis living in the seaside villages of Mahakalapada and Rajnagar blocks under the Citizenship Act, 1955. Now, these people are delighted after the Centre passed the Citizenship Amendment Bill and no more fear of deportation.
Donald Trump, in spite of his personal connections to the adult industry, became in 2016 the first major-party presidential candidate to run on a platform that included a specific plank calling for restrictions on pornography. Since then, a group of Trumps supporters have attempted to push him into declaring a new War on Porn.

As AVN.com reported last month, a growing number of newspaper op-ed columns and other publications just in the past several months have attempted to argue that conservatives must use their political power to impose standards of virtue, public morality, and the common good on the countryan edict that mostly boils down to a ban or at least sharp restrictions on internet porn.

But last Friday, the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed by libertarian writer and Reason magazine editor Matt Welch sounding an alarm about the new calls for a crackdown on porn.

The War on Porn, Welch writes, is at its heart a war on personal freedoms.

Emboldened conservatives are trying to use the Trump moment to steer the GOP firmly away from its commitments to individual liberty, he wrote in the op-ed titled Conservatives are coming for your Pornhub.

Welch cites a manifesto published by the Trumpian right-wing site First Things, which attacked non-Trump-supporting conservatives for supposedly fetishizing individual autonomy.

In a disturbingly Orwellian twist, the manifesto declared that personal liberty is, in fact, not liberty at all, but tyranny.

These are the same people who also brought us a whole damn month last year of internecine conservative warfare over drag-queen story hour, Welch remarks in his L.A. Times essay. They consider your constitutional objections to be about as relevant as stopping a tidal wave with a slide rule.

Welch also warned that the Trumpian conservatives are willing to partner with the puritans of the left, as happened with last years passage of the FOSTA/SESTA anti-sex trafficking law that has accomplished the opposite of its stated intentions, while leading to a crackdown against free expression online.

The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.

Trump-era manifesto artists, responding as they are to a democratic upheaval, are seeking to use anti-democratic means to criminalize expression enjoyed by tens of millions, Welch wrotewarning that the forces fighting the newest War on Porn will not be satisfied by a series of angry manifestos and strongly worded letters.

The implications, he wrote, will leap from page to prison.

Photo From "Perversion for Profit" YouTube Screen Capture
They shocked fans when they announced that they were ending their 22-year marriage last month.

But Colin Firth and his estranged wife Livia proved they're friendly exes as they teamed up to host a special screening of The Great Hack in London on Monday evening.

The screen star, 59, and the environmental activist, 50, posed for snaps with their industry pals as they discussed the documentary - based on the FacebookCambridge Analytica data scandal in early 2018.

Strong unit: Colin Firth and his estranged wife Livia proved they're friendly exes as they teamed up to host a special screening of The Great Hack in London on Monday evening (pictured with Christopher Steele, Carole Cadwalladr and Mike Lerner)

Kingsman: The Golden Circle actor Colin cut a sharp figure in a black turtleneck top and grey jeans, while Livia nailed business chic in a sleek black suit.

The former couple appeared in great spirits alongside former intelligence officer Christopher Steele, author Carole Cadwalladr, and filmmaker Mike Lerner, after insisting they would maintain a 'close friendship' following the split.

Two years ago, it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica had harvested the data of Facebook profiles around the world for political advertising without users' consent.

The Netflix film, released last year, is based on the scandal and was produced and directed by Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer.

In good company: The screen star, 59, and the environmental activist, 50, posed for snaps as they discussed the documentary - based on the FacebookCambridge Analytica data scandal

Beaming: The Kingsman: The Golden Circle actor cut a sharp figure in a black turtleneck top and grey jeans, while Livia nailed business chic in a sleek black suit (also pictured with Edward Lucas and Ryan Fox)

Amid the news of their split, Colin and Livia said they remain 'united in their love for their children' almost two years after it emerged she had an affair with her childhood friend.

The TV star confirmed the news in a statement last month, and insisted he would maintain a 'close friendship' with Livia.

The couple have been married for 22 years, and share two sons, Luca, 18, and Matteo, 16.

Chilling: Livia shared an image of Colin and their friends sat out on their deckchairs in the sunshine, presumably taken on New Years Day

A statement from their publicists said: 'Colin and Livia Firth have separated. They maintain a close friendship and remain united in their love for their children. They kindly ask for privacy. There will be no further comment'.

Their split comes after it was revealed in March last year that Livia was alleged to have had a year-long affair with Italian journalist Marco Brancaccia.

She sparked a police investigation after claiming her childhood friend Mr Brancaccia harassed her with a 'frightening' barrage of messages.

Confirmed: The TV star confirmed the news in a statement last month, and insisted he would maintain a 'close friendship' with Livia

The Oscar-winner confronted his wife over a 'heartbreaking and malicious' email from her ex-lover in March 2018.

The message contained revelations 'designed to wound' the King's Speech star - who has maintained a dignified silence over the affair.

At the time, a friend of Colin said: 'This guy Marco basically told Colin everything he had been doing with his wife for a year. The email was a detailed diatribe, humiliated Colin and was designed with no other motive than to wound.

Rumoured: Their split comes after it was revealed last year that Mrs Firth was alleged to have been having an affair with Italian journalist Marco Brancaccia (pictured)

Family: The pair, pictured together at the London premiere of the sequel to Mamma Mia! in July last year, have two children together called Luca, born in 2001, and Matteo, born in 2003

'He described intimate meetings that would devastate any husband  no matter what the state of their marriage. And he did so with the misguided and hopeless belief he could destabilise the efforts being made by Colin and Livia to sort things out.

'Colin presented this to his wife and in what must have been a very difficult confrontation. But he is the man that he is and has maintained his dignity throughout.'

As well as the email to the screen star, his wife claimed she received phone calls, lived in terror and believed she was being followed.

The brunette also said emails containing pictures of her were sent to her 57-year-old husband after the pair reunited.

But Mr Brancaccia, 55, told The Times that she had invented the claims to cover up their affair, which happened between 2015 and 2016.

A spokesman for the couple at the time said: 'A few years ago Colin and Livia privately made the decision to separate. During that time Livia briefly became involved with former friend Mr Brancaccia. The Firths have since reunited.

Pictured: Livia and Colin pictured together at the premiere of 'Nocturnal Animals' during the 73rd Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, in September 2016

'Subsequently, Mr Brancaccia carried out a frightening campaign of harassment over several months, much of which is documented. For obvious reasons, the Firths have never had any desire to make this matter public.'

The Academy Award, Golden Globe and Bafta winner shares a son with former partner Meg Tilly, his co-star in the film Valmont.

The pair, who have a home in Chiswick, London, and Umbria, Italy, are often seen together at red carpet events.
Keith Walker struggles a bit as he carefully unloads an enormous iron wheel, or pulley, from a trailer outside his Rockland Township barn.

After all, it has a diameter of about 5 feet and weighs something like 300 pounds.

Walker, 56, rescued the wheel from a three-story building in the 300 block of Franklin Street in Reading.

He also removed a large gear, two cable pulleys and a brake band that comprised the lift apparatus of a freight elevator. The assembly was intact in the rafters on the top floor of the building.

It looks to me like it was a hand-cranked apparatus, said Walker, a former software engineer. From the ratio of the gears, Im guessing it could lift about 3,000 pounds.

According to a manufacturers mark, it was made at Morse Elevator Works in Philadelphia, probably in the late 19th century.

Located in the Fishtown area, Morse Elevator Works was once the worlds leading producer of freight elevators, according to Workshop of the World: Philadelphia by Stuart Paul Dixon.

Morses exhibit won a medal at the Chicago Columbian Exposition in 1893. The company was bought by Otis Elevators in 1902.

Ups and downs

The minute he saw Antonio Batistas ad on Facebook Marketplace, Walker knew he had to have the old elevator apparatus.

Batista recently bought the building at 317-321 Franklin St., home to Filberts Seafood store for more than 50 years. The building is undergoing renovation.

Beginning in early December, Walker spent several weeks dismantling the intricately connected wheels, gears and pulleys.

With help from his brother, David Walker, and a friend, Tom Hughes, Walker lowered the apparatus from the rafters.

Part of it had to be winched through a pair of cargo doors because it was too large to fit into a stairway. The smaller pieces, though extremely heavy, were lugged down the stairs.

There was little doubt in Walkers mind that it had been a freight elevator. But what, he wondered, was it used for.

Reading Times news articles and deeds in the Berks County Courthouse offered some clues to the historical mystery.

Dr. William Yohn, a Reading veterinarian, owned a livery stable on the site in the mid-to-late 1800s. Yohns home was at 53 S. Third St., and the stable was at the rear of the property on Carpenter Street, an alley.

An 1884 deed identifies the Yohn stable as a two-story frame building.

The Yohn stable was replaced by a three-story brick structure, the present building. An 1897 deed identifies it as a three-story brick stable owned by August C. Wertz.

Its fair to conclude that the Morse elevator was likely to have been installed when the brick stable was built between 1884 and 1897. And, that it was used as part of the livery or subsequent businesses.

August C. Wertz & Brothers ran a flour, feed and storage house at 319-321 Franklin, according to an item in the Reading Times on Oct. 25, 1910.

Galleries of gears

Once symbols of Americas industrial might, large iron wheels and gears have become objects of art.

An enormous gear, a remnant of Textile Machine Works, greets guests at The Works restaurant in Wyomissing.

In the courtyard of the former Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Co. in Pottsville, a Reading Railroad subsidiary, huge gears from abandoned colleries have been welded into an impressive sculpture reminiscent of an era when coal was king.

A Philadelphia contractor who renovates taverns, Walker said, has expressed interest in the decorative qualities of the old Morse elevator apparatus.

Though impressive, Walker said the curved spokes of the large wheel served a practical purpose.

The spokes were more than decorative.

Ive been told that they reduced stress, he said, making it less likely that the gear would fail.

Walker admits a penchant for saving heavy industrial equipment of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As Walker Antiques, he exhibits at Renningers Antique and Collectors Extravaganza in Kutztown and at shows in Philadelphia.

His efforts, Walker stressed, are about more than money. Its about respect for the workers and workmanship of a bygone era.

He imagines rugged factory workers pouring molten iron into sand molds at Morse Elevator Works.

Im fascinated, Walker said, by what people used to do with their hands.

(Reading Eagle reporter Michelle Lynch contributed to this story.)
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Mike Pompeo woke on Tuesday to a 4 a.m. call alerting him to a large protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

As demonstrators began hurling molotov cocktails at the heavily fortified compound, Pompeo grappled with the new security threat to his diplomats in phone calls starting at 4:30 a.m. with Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Matthew Tueller, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, according to U.S. officials.

The secretary also spoke to President Donald Trump multiple times every day last week, culminating in Trump's decision to approve the killing of Iran's top military commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, at the urging of Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Pompeo had lost a similar high-stakes deliberation last summer when Trump declined to retaliate militarily against Iran after it downed a U.S. surveillance drone, an outcome that left Pompeo "morose," according to one U.S. official. But recent changes to Trump's national security team and the whims of a president anxious about being viewed as hesitant in the face of Iranian aggression created an opening for Pompeo to press for the kind of action he had long been advocating.

The greenlighting of the airstrike near Baghdad International Airport represents a bureaucratic victory for Pompeo, but it also carries serious risks: another protracted regional war in the Middle East; retaliatory assassinations of U.S. personnel stationed around the world; an interruption in the battle against the Islamic State; the closure of diplomatic pathways to containing Iran's nuclear program; and a major backlash in Iraq, whose parliament voted on Sunday to expel all U.S. troops from the country.

For Pompeo, whose political ambitions are a source of constant speculation, the death of U.S. diplomats would be particularly damaging given his unyielding criticisms of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton after the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and other American personnel in Benghazi in 2012.

But none of those considerations stopped Pompeo from pushing for the targeted strike, U.S. officials said, underscoring a fixation on Iran that spans 10 years of government service from Congress to the CIA to the State Department.

"We took a bad guy off the battlefield. We made the right decision," Pompeo told CNN. "I'm proud of the effort that President Trump undertook."

Pompeo first spoke with Trump about killing Soleimani months ago, said a senior U.S. official, but neither the president nor Pentagon officials were willing to countenance such an operation.

For more than a year, defense officials warned that the administration's campaign of economic sanctions against Iran had increased tensions with Tehran requiring a bigger and bigger share of military resources in the Middle East when many at the Pentagon wanted to redeploy their firepower to East Asia.

Trump, too, sought to draw down from the Middle East as he promised from the opening days of his presidential campaign. But that mind-set shifted on Dec. 27 when 30 rockets hit a joint U.S.-Iraqi base outside Kirkuk, killing an American civilian contractor and injuring service members.

On Dec. 29, Pompeo, Esper and Milley traveled to one of the president's private clubs in Florida, where the two military officials presented possible responses to Iranian aggression, including the option of killing Soleimani, senior U.S. officials said.

Trump's decision to target Soleimani came as a surprise and a shock to some officials briefed on his decision, given the Pentagon's long-standing concerns about escalation and the president's aversion to using military force against Iran.

One significant factor was the "lockstep" coordination for the operation between Pompeo and Esper, both graduates in the same class at the U.S. Military Academy, who deliberated ahead of the briefing with Trump, senior U.S. officials said. Pence also endorsed the decision, but he did not attend the meeting in Florida.

"Taking out Soleimani would not have happened under [former secretary of defense Jim] Mattis," said a White House official, who argued that Mattis's Pentagon was risk-averse. "Mattis was opposed to all of this. It's not a hit on Mattis, it's just his predisposition. Milley and Esper are different. Now you've got a cohesive national security team and you've got a secretary of state and defense secretary who've known each other their whole adult lives."

Mattis declined to comment.

In the days since the strike, Pompeo has become the voice of the administration on the matter, speaking to allies and making the public case for the operation. Trump chose Pompeo to appear on all of the Sunday news shows because he "sticks to the line" and "never gives an inch," an administration official said.

But critics inside and outside the administration have questioned Pompeo's justification for the strike based on his claims that "dozens if not hundreds" of American lives were at risk.

Lawmakers left classified briefings with U.S. intelligence officials on Friday, saying they heard nothing to suggest that the threat posed by the proxy forces guided by Soleimani had changed substantially in recent months.

When repeatedly pressed on Sunday about the imminent nature of the threats, whether it was days or weeks away, or whether they had been foiled by the U.S. airstrike, Pompeo dismissed the questions.

"If you're an American in the region, days and weeks - this is not something that's relevant," Pompeo told CNN.

Some defense officials said Pompeo's claims of an imminent and direct threat were overstated, and they would prefer that he make the case based on the killing of the American contractor and previous Iranian provocations.

Critics have also questioned how an imminent attack would be foiled by killing Soleimani, who would not have carried out the strike himself.

"If the attack was going to take place when Soleimani was alive, it is difficult to comprehend why it wouldn't take place now that he is dead," said Robert Malley, the president of the International Crisis Group and a former Obama administration official.

After the strike, Pompeo held back-to-back phone calls with his counterparts around the globe but received a chilly reception from European allies, many of whom fear that the attack puts their embassies in Iran and Iraq in jeopardy and has now eliminated the chance to keep a lid on Iran's nuclear program.

"We have woken up to a more dangerous world," said France's Europe minister, Amelie de Montchalin.

Two European diplomats familiar with the calls said Pompeo expected European leaders to champion the U.S. strike publicly even though they were never consulted on the decision.

"The U.S. has not helped the Iran situation, and now they want everyone to cheerlead this," one diplomat said.

"Our position over the past few years has been about defending the JCPOA," said the diplomat, referring to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

On Sunday, Iran announced that it was suspending all limits of the nuclear deal, including on uranium enrichment, research and development, and enlarging its stockpile of nuclear fuel. Britain, France and Germany, as well as Russia and China, were original signatories of that deal with the United States and Iran, and they opposed Trump's decision to withdraw from the pact.

"No one trusts what Trump will do next, so it's hard to get behind this," said the European diplomat.

Pompeo responded to U.S. allies by saying "the Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did - what the Americans did - saved lives in Europe as well," he told Fox News.

Israel has stood out in emphatically cheering the Soleimani operation, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praising Trump for "acting swiftly, forcefully and decisively."

"Israel stands with the United States in its just struggle for peace, security and self-defense," he said.

Since his time as CIA director, Pompeo has forged a friendship with Yossi Cohen, the director of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, said a person familiar with their meetings. The men have spoken about the threat posed by Iran to both Israel and the United States. In a prescient interview in October, Cohen said Soleimani "knows perfectly well that his elimination is not impossible."

Though Democrats have greeted the strike with skepticism, Republican leaders, who have long viewed Pompeo as a reassuring voice in the administration, uniformly praised the decision as the eradication of a terrorist who directed the killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

"Soleimani made it his life's work to take the Iranian revolutionary call for death to America and death to Israel and turn them into action," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said.

A critical moment for Pompeo is nearing as he faces growing questions about a potential Senate run, though some GOP insiders say that decision seems to have stalled. Pompeo has kept in touch with Ward Baker, a political consultant who would probably lead the operation, and others in McConnell's orbit, about a bid. But Pompeo hasn't committed one way or the other, people familiar with the conversations said.

Some people close to the secretary say he has mixed feelings about becoming a relatively junior senator from Kansas after leading the State Department and CIA, but there is little doubt in Pompeo's home state that he could win.

At every step of his government career, Pompeo has tried to stake out a maximalist position on Iran that has made him popular among two critical pro-Israel constituencies in Republican politics: conservative Jewish donors and Christian evangelicals.

After Trump tapped Pompeo to lead the CIA, Pompeo quickly set up an Iran Mission Center at the agency to focus intelligence-gathering efforts and operations, elevating Iran's importance as an intelligence target.

At the State Department, he is a voracious consumer of diplomatic notes and reporting on Iran, and he places the country far above other geopolitical and economic hot spots in the world.

"If it's about Iran, he will read it," said one diplomat, referring to the massive flow of paper that crosses Pompeo's desk. "If it's not, good luck."
Terrifying moment revellers are flung from fairground ride when mechanical arm breaks

This is the terrifying moment two revellers were injured after being flung from a fairground ride when the mechanical arm snapped.

The pair were among hundreds of locals celebrating at the carnival in Antipolo City, the Philippines, on December 29.

They were riding on the 'Spiral Jet' ride - a type of mechanical swing carousel - when the arm holding their gondola suddenly snapped off.

Footage shows how the boy and girl were thrown to the ground while still locked into the chair.

A large piece of equipment then drops inches from them.

A shocked bystander, who asked to remain anonymous, said he was waiting in line for his turn on the ride when the accident happened.

He said: ''There was no indication of a problem with the ride. The carriage just suddenly snapped. The two people were hurt and the ride was closed."

"The ride was working fine before them, but the pole connecting the carriage with the ride seemed to have leaks. There seemed to be gas coming out of it."

The two injured victims were conscious but rushed to the hospital immediately to receive treatment.

The operators said they are ready to help the victims with the hospital and medical expenses.

Carnival management told local media that those affected by the accident could contact their office for assistance.

Investigations into why the seat dislodged are ongoing.
"Geopolitical tensions are at their highest level this century. And this turbulence is escalating," he said with a warning: "We are living in dangerous times."

"This cauldron of tensions is leading more and more countries to take unpredicted decisions with unpredictable consequences and a profound risk of miscalculation," Guterres said in a statement on Monday.

Guterres, who said that he was in touch with leaders around the world about the situation, had a straightforward message: "Stop escalation. Exercise maximum restraint. Re-start dialogue. Renew international cooperation."

He avoided naming any country in his statement when he spoke of "unpredicted decisions" with "profound risk of miscalculations."

It could apply to the US, which set off the turmoil in the sensitive Gulf and Middle East regions by the attack near the Baghdad airport last week that killed Soleimani, who was the head of the Quds Force of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

And also to Iran, which has threatened retaliation and has announced it would further move along with its nuclear processes that it had stopped in accordance with multi-national deal made in 2015.

US had withdrawn from the deal.

Guterres said, "Even nuclear non-proliferation can no longer be taken for granted."

Militias affiliated with the Quds Force started the current round of confrontation when they attacked a base in Iraq killing a US contractor and President Donald Trump blamed Soleimani for it.

The US State Department said that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to Guterres and expressed his appreciation for his diplomatic efforts.

The Security Council that met Monday morning could not agree on even a statement on Soleimani's killing or the attack on the United States embassy in Baghdad because of the veto threats from permanent members ranged on either side.

The US mission to the UN said the Security Council's silence on the attack on its Baghdad embassy last week was because permanent members Russia and China would not allow it "to issue the most basic of statements underscoring the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises."

It said, this "once again calls the Council's credibility into question. Such expressions of support should not be controversial or warrant courage."

Permanent Representatives Zhang Jun of China and Vasily Nebenzi of Russia told reporters that their countries had wanted a more comprehensive statement about all the developments in the region and not just on the embassy attack.

Zhang called the situation "dangerous" in the region and said that Beijing urges the US to not "abuse" the use of force.

Speaking separately, Nebenzia said that Moscow condemned the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad, but it wanted the Council to also deal with the broader issues surrounding it like the violation of territorial integrity of nations and the killing of Soleimani.

Guterres, who painted a gloomy picture of the world at start of a new decade, said, "Everywhere we see many people frustrated and angry. We see increased social unrest and growing extremism, nationalism and radicalization, with a dangerous advance of terrorism in several areas of the world, notably in Africa."

He said that the world faced dangers from "technological conflicts that fracture world markets," widening inequalities and climate change.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)
Diana Ploch remembers the disorientation immediately following the September 2018 collision that totaled her Toyota  just trying to make sense of what was going on. The airbag from the 2006 Camry had exploded into her face, leaving her dazed. The last thing she was thinking about was what to do with her car.

I was sitting on the ground, and the tow truck driver came over and said, Here, you got to sign this right now; were taking the car to the impound lot, she recalled. They were just so authoritative, I didnt even think to question them.

Her parents, who met her at the vehicle storage facility were worried and equally distracted. When a worker from the tow lot thrust paperwork at them to sign, they did so without much thought. Ploch recalled thinking it was odd how he held one over the other and folded the top form in half so it was unclear what her father was signing. It was only months later that she learned they had been part of a scheme regulators say is taking the Houston area by storm: car flipping.

Storage facilities are limited by law on what they can charge owners of vehicles from so-called incident management tows following accidents. Dianas father, however, unknowingly had granted the storage facility permission to move his car to a body repair shop  with an almost identical name, conveniently located at the same address and owned by the same person  which quickly ran up more than $1,700 in fees for preservation, transfer and teardown on the totaled car.

Local police and state regulators say such schemes in which cars are deceptively flipped from regulated storage businesses to unregulated repair shops are soaring.

We get 30 to 40 reports a month, said Montgomery County Sheriffs Deputy Roy Leck. And theres a lot that dont get reported.

During the past couple years, car flipping cases brought by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, which issues towing and storage licenses, have been exclusively against Houston-area companies, records show. Allstate alone reported recovering more than 120 obviously totaled vehicles per month that had been moved from storage facilities to body shops, an epidemic in the Houston area, according to court documents. Instead of a few hundred dollars, the insurer said it paid an average of $1,500 to the body shops, totaling millions of dollars in unnecessary fees per year.

No one has a single answer why Greater Houston has proven such fertile ground for the ploy  were fortunate its only in the Houston area, TDLR spokeswoman Tela Mange said. Police and even some wrecker companies, however, say the areas outdated, free-for-all towing system is at least partially to blame.

More Information What to do Regulators say if you have been in a crash and need your vehicle towed, do not sign anything at the scene. "It's not the time to be signing legal documents," said Tela Mange, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Let on-scene police arrange it and contact your insurance company as soon as possible to avoid unnecessary fees, added Sgt. James Cabrera, head of the Harris County Sheriff's Office towing unit. Most businesses are reputable and tows go smoothly. Still, if you find yourself at a vehicle storage facility needing to make a decision, make sure you understand exactly what you are signing - and that you can see it, stressed Mange: "I've seen cases where people cover the documents so you can't see what you're signing," she said. Contact local police or state regulators with complaints: * Houston Police Department Auto Dealers Detail: 832-394-4869 * Montgomery County Sheriff's Office Towing Enforcement: 936-538-7782 * Harris County Sheriff's Office complaints: 713-274-7410or hcsohcw@yahoo.com * Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation: https://www.tdlr.texas.gov/complaints/ See More Collapse

Its a very antiquated system thats gone away in most other areas, said Ken Ulmer, owner of SafeTow and executive director of the Texas Towing and Storage Association, as well as a longtime member of Houstons Automotive Board, which oversees local licensing for wreckers and storage lots.

Dark glass, cell phone jammer

The local flipping boom has surprised law enforcement and regulators because Houstons most notorious bust occurred only four years ago.

Among the areas wrecker drivers and storage facility owners, Ulmer said, it was common knowledge that Stans Wrecker, a licensed vehicle storage facility, was flipping totaled cars to USA Auto Collision, an unlicensed body shop at the same Almeda Genoa Road location. No one in this industry was unaware of what he was doing.

By late 2015, Houston police had received so many complaints that it mounted an undercover sting operation. Using totaled cars as bait, it staged wrecks in locations investigators knew tow trucks affiliated with Stans Wrecker would respond to, recalled Sgt. Lisa Cruz, who led the effort.

Once at Stans, the undercover officers confirmed details of the hundreds of complaints. Dazed drivers were being tricked or pressured into transferring their vehicles to the next-door repair shop, which was charging $3,000 for getting their cars out, for doing nothing, absolutely nothing, Cruz said. People without insurance often lost their cars, she added.

For subscribers: Four arrested in tow-truck, repair scam

Further investigation revealed a sophisticated operation: employees worked from scripts designed to confuse already disoriented drivers fresh off a wreck; company workers slipped drivers deceptive paperwork from behind darkened windows so customers could not identify them; customers who felt pressured often would try to call their insurance companies seeking advice, but said their calls always seemed to fail; police discovered an illegal cell phone jamming device behind the counter.

Eventually, four people were charged with engaging in organized criminal activity. The final defendant, Ricardo Gonzalez, was sentenced to six months in jail after pleading guilty last summer.

Cruz said news of the arrests and sentences led to an immediate reduction in local flipping complaints. For some, though, Ulmer said, the case sent a different message: People looked at them and thought: Look at how much money you could make.

Wild West

In many ways, the Houston-area tow business remains the Wild West.

In Harris and Montgomery counties, wrecker drivers cruise major arteries and common crash sites while monitoring law enforcement radios. Police and tow companies agree that with more than 600 registered in Houston, 260 in Montgomery County and nearly 1,000 in Harris County, the supply of wreckers far outstrips the demand.

When police scanners broadcast a crash call, wrecker drivers in the area will fly to it, said Sgt. James Cabrera, head of the Towing and Storage Unit for the Harris County Sheriffs Office. Drivers typically are paid on commission, so it is not uncommon to see a dozen or more trucks crowding even minor two-vehicle crashes. The City of Houston contracts with individual companies for crash tows on highways, but not on local roadways.

Different rules apply to a tow drivers contact with motorists depending on location. Houston bans towing solicitations, but Harris County has no rules against it before police arrive. In Montgomery County, there are rules restricting towers contact with crash victims, but No one really knows about it, Leck conceded.

The assembled drivers drop small brass chips identifying their companies into a hat. A police officer draws out as many chips as there are cars needing to be towed.

In addition to encouraging wreckers to hurry to crash scenes, the system is economically inefficient, Ulmer said. Due to the random draws, he estimated that fewer than half of the crashes his trucks respond to end up winning tows.

Police say such poor odds can breed a secondary market, where drivers who lose the hat draw offer to purchase the right to tow from the winners. The price by definition will be higher than the official fees set by law  $174 in Houston, $145.50 in Harris County  providing an incentive to pad the bill down the line.

Leck said he has seen printouts advertising bounties a body shop offered to wrecker drivers if they delivered a car from an accident scene  up to $1,000 for 2013-or-newer vehicles, less for older cars. Vehicle storage units are licensed by the state and may charge only $20.64 per day for keeping a car, so unscrupulous owners seek opportunity to generate money to pay the bounties outside the rules at affiliated body shops.

Deception, trickery, misrepresentation

Were not exactly the most loved businesses out there, said Jonathan Bruce, a Houston attorney who represents tow companies and body shops. Concerns about a local car flipping scourge are overstated, he said, with most cases brought by insurance companies interested in steering repair work to their preferred companies.

All the state is doing is operating as an arm of the insurance companies, he said.

Regulators respond that if distracted drivers can be persuaded or tricked into granting permission to transfer a totaled car needing no repair to a body shop, unregulated businesses can rack up steep and unnecessary fees that someone must pay.

In a matter of hours, the bill can be $2,000, Leck said.

Those most familiar with the system concede it needs modernization. Leck said he will present Montgomery County commissioners with a proposal for a stricter towing ordinance later this month. Harris County already is considering contracting with a private company that uses GPS-tracking to closely manage the incident-management towing process, from dispatching only the closest and necessary trucks, to drop-off, where the driver snaps a photo of the vehicle and submits it, Cabrerea said.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Meanwhile, police say they remain hampered by limited manpower. State licensing cases can take years to investigate. Even if a scheme is proven, revocations only last a year, after which the offender can reapply. Until then, it is a simple matter for operators to move assets to a new company, often owned by an associate or relative and located at the same address.

Last August, an administrative judge concluded Rodolfo Meraz, who did business as FM 1960 Wrecker, used deception, trickery, and misrepresentation to tow (vehicles) from the accident scene to (his) unregulated body shop. Records show Meraz later transferred his tow trucks to another license he held, for a company called Sixty Wrecker.

In November, after receiving additional complaints against Meraz, TDLR filed another case against the second company. The new company is merely an alter-ego of, or mere tool to continue the operations of (Merazs) earlier towing company, which had its license revoked, the department asserted in a filing.

Merazs attorney, Bruce, said there was nothing illegal about the practice. The rules provide for that, he said. If the state wants to change them, the legislature needs to do that.

Slew of fees

Although the Plochs were unaware of it, they had signed forms authorizing workers to transfer their mangled Camry from South West Carzone Auto Storage, a regulated vehicle storage facility where prices were limited by law, to the nearly identically named South West CarZone body shop at the same address, where prices were not regulated.

Records show the shop quickly assessed a slew of fees: $324 for payout, a $500 administrative fee, $300 for preservation and transfer and $320 for storage, about double the legal rate. The body shop charged $200 for teardown, even though all parties agreed the car was totaled.

At a January 2019 hearing, company owner Subhi Abuhamra admitted the Plochs Toyota was a total loss. He acknowledged flipping has been occurring for a long time, according to administrative court documents, but added that unless he moved the cars between companies, he would go out of business. Abuhamra did not return a call to his business.

An administrative law judge concluded Abuhamra had engaged in a calculated flipping scheme. She recommended he be assessed a $5,000 fine, and his storage license be revoked. The license was revoked last July, but state records show the fine remains unpaid.
SEOUL, South Korea, Jan. 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Nunaps, a South Korean digital therapeutics startup, has closed a KRW 5 billion (US$ 4.2 million) Series A round by Company K Partners, KTB Network, and K2 Investment Partners.

The company plans to use the fresh capital to build digital therapeutics platform related to neurological disorders. Nunaps has recently initiated a pivotal clinical trial of its first product, Nunap Vision, which provides visual perceptual training to treat visual field defects caused by brain damage. It is the first digital therapeutics trial approved by MFDS (formerly known as KFDA) in South Korea.

Nunap Vision is a SaMD (Software as a Medical Device) utilizing HMD VR. While its clinical efficacy has already been demonstrated in previous proof-of-concept studies, Nunaps designed the pivotal clinical trial to be multi-center, double-blind, randomized, and placebo-controlled for further validation.

Nunaps takes pride in its in-house convergence medical and tech professionals comprised of neurologists, software and game/VR developers, engineers, AI scientists, perceptual psychologists, and mathematicians. Three neurologists are fully committed to investigate and develop its pipelines: Dong-Wha Kang, founder and CEO, MD, PhD, Professor of Neurology and Head of R&BD Group at Asan Medical Center; Hyun-Wook Nah, MD, PhD, former Professor of Neurology at Dong-A University Hospital; Hana Kim, MD, PhD, former clinical fellow in Neurology (Division of Dementia) at Asan Medical Center.

Kang said that he decided to go into business in 2017 to develop a new therapy having clinical and practical applications for patients who suffer from visual field defects. "They have had no effective treatment until now," he said. "In our efforts to treat patients with unmet needs, we naturally came up with digital."

Kang-Soo Lee, CIO of Company K Partners, commented, "Nunaps is Korea's first digital therapeutics company and has great potential to become a global top-tier, setting up clinical trials for new digital therapeutics that employs AI technologies to address neurological disorders."

The startup plans to develop pipelines for various brain disorders to become a leading digital therapeutics platform company in the next few years. The CEO emphasized that, "It is vital to carry out patient-centered R&D for the developed products to be put into practical use." He added, "We will develop super-customized digital therapeutics so that patients may directly experience our products and be empowered to engage in our development."

SOURCE Nunaps
China announced on Sunday that an unknown form of viral pneumonia has broken out in the central city of Wuhan and has so far infected almost 60 people.

Image Credit: peterschreiber.media / Shutterstock.com

The outbreak, which has prompted authorities to quarantine affected individuals, has led to online speculation about a resurgence of the SARS virus.

However, the Wuhan health commission has said the pneumonia outbreak is not like the highly contagious SARS virus and has also ruled out several other viral infections. Wuhan police said on Wednesday that eight people had been punished for publishing or forwarding false information on the internet without verification.

We have excluded several hypotheses, in particular the fact that it is a flu, an avian flu, an adenovirus, respiratory syndrome severe acute (SARS) or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)." Wuhan Health Bureau

The first case of infection was first reported last week in Wuhan, which has a population of more than 11 million. On Sunday, neighboring Hong Kong reported more suspected cases, as nine people returning from Wuhan were found to have fever and respiratory symptoms.

The unknown strain has been linked to a seafood market

The unidentified strain has been linked to a seafood market in Wuhan, that has since been closed for disinfection. Medical experts are trying to identify the strain, but in the meantime, they say it is probably not going to lead to an outbreak on the same scale as the 2003 SARS epidemic that claimed the lives of hundreds in China and spread as far as the US and Canada.

However, vigilance should not be relaxed, they warn. According to the Wuhan health commission, seven of the 59 patients diagnosed with the virus have been in a critical condition since Sunday, although none have yet died. All of the patients have been quarantined, and 163 people who had been in close contact with them have been placed under observation.

No evidence so far of human-to-human transmission

The Wuhan bureau has said there is no evidence so far of human-to-human transmission, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has said: the reported link to a wholesale fish and live animal market could indicate an exposure link to animals.

However, virology experts are not entirely convinced that human-to-human transmission can be ruled out: They did not exclude this possibility completely, says Leo Poon, a virologist and SARS expert at the University of Hong Kong.

Strengthening precautionary measures

Governments are now tightening up on precautionary measures, with Hong Kongs Hospital authority limiting hospital visiting hours and making it mandatory for visitors to wear facemasks. Hong Kong airports thermal imaging system has been enhanced to screen people coming in from Wuhan, and temperature checks at the citys train station have been stepped up.

On Thursday, Singapores Ministry of Health announced that it would also be temperature screening people arriving on flights from Wuhan, while Taiwans Centers for Disease Control has requested that doctors and airport quarantine staff report any cases of symptoms among people who have traveled to Wuhan.

The WHO has said it is closely monitoring the situation and is in close contact with Chinese authorities.

"There are many potential causes of viral pneumonia, many of which are more common than severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus," said a spokesman last week. "WHO is closely monitoring this event and will share more details as we have them."

What is the probability of a 2003-like SARS epidemic?

The WHO criticized China for its under-reporting of SARS cases following the outbreak in 2003 that killed 349 people in mainland China and 299 in Hong Kong.

However, Poon says the fact that this new, unidentified virus has not caused any deaths so far, is reason to believe that the outbreak will not take a more serious turn.

Microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong, Yuen Kwok-yung, says there have been significant advances in scientific research and laboratory diagnostic capabilities since the SARS outbreak over a decade ago.
Union Minister V Muraleedharan on Monday claimed that the attack on students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi by a masked gang was a well-planned conspiracy, even as the Congress in Kerala hit out at the BJP saying it cannot always suppress dissenting voices.

Muraleedharan, the lone Kerala union minister, alleged that there was a conspiracy to malign the country's universities.

"The violence inside the JNU campus was a well-planned conspiracy. This was a conspiracy to malign universities of the country saying campuses are marred by violence," Muraleedharan told the media here.

He also alleged that the marxist party has a history of unleashing violence and then portray the victims as criminals.

"The students of extreme left and the Congress are behind the violence. They want to sabotage the normal functioning of the campus," the minister said.

However, the leader of the opposition in the state assembly Ramesh Chennithala said the attack on teachers and students of JNU by "Sangh Parivar forces showed the horror of fascism that has plagued the country."



"The BJP must understand that they cannot always suppress the dissenting voices. The criminal silence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah has encouraged violence," the senior congress leader said in a statement.

He also cited reports that purportedly said the attack on the students and the teachers were provoked after two girls protested Shah's visit to some houses in Delhi as part of the BJP's outreach campaign on the Citizenship Amendment Act.

"At night, masked criminals entered the JNU campus and brutally attacked students including girls and teachers. The police were silent on providing support to the attackers," Chennithala said.

The brutal assault of students shows the attitude of the BJP towards the university which had produced many stalwarts including Nobel laureates, he added.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has also condemned the violence saying "Nazi-style attacks" on students and teachers inside the campus were an attempt to create unrest and violence in the country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hotel Business News and Analytics

Important! This article is written by orangesmile.com editors and is protected by copyright law. The article can only be re-used with a direct link to www.orangesmile.com

NEWS BLOCKS:

European Travelers Become Less Interested in Thailand

Thailand has always been a popular holiday destination for tourists from Europe, but the situation has started changing in recent years. While hotels in Koh Samui and Phuket do not seem to lose their popularity, the price of such vacations is growing, so it currently costs as much or even less to travel to Greece, Turkey, Spain, Egypt, and Italy.



European-based tour operators say that recently they have experienced troubles promoting resorts in Thailand to European tourists. The prices are on par with vacations in Europe. Moreover, as Thailand is increasingly popular with Asian travelers, primarily guests from China, some Europeans feel not welcome anymore. Indeed, one night including American breakfast in a 5-star hotel in Koh Phangan, Koh Samui, and Koh Samet can reach US$500. Tourists can book a 5-star hotel in Spain, Italy, and Greece for the same price. A night in a 5-star hotel in Turkey and Egypt will be even cheaper  approximately US$350.



If we look at 4-star hotels, the situation is the same. The price of 4-star hotels in popular Thai resorts is roughly US$350, which is the same with 4-star hotels in Italy, Spain, and Greece. Turkey and Egypt have lower prices  roughly US$200 per night in a 4-star hotel. In Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, the average price is US$300 per night.



Strong baht is one of the reasons for such high prices. Many hotels in Thailand have also raised their rates because they can always count on guests from Asian countries. Within just five years, the price of a holiday in Thailand has increased by almost 40% in euro and by 30% in US dollars. This is definitely a change that many European tourists cannot overlook. Some hotels in Thailand now focus on Chinese guests and dont care much about tourists from Europe. Some tour operators in the EU, such as Zurich-based Asia365, saw a two-digit drop in bookings in Thailand.



Of course, there are hotels in Thailand that have not raised their rates drastically, and so they do not have a significant decrease in the number of guests from Europe. Vietnam is the winner in this case because the country gets more tourists who previously made their choice in favor of Thailand. Southern Europe, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, and the Caribbean are now the biggest competitors of Thailand on the international tourism market. According to the data published by Kasikorn Research Center, the share of European tourists in Thailand is to reduce by 1.5% in 2019, and their spending is to decline by 1% to 468 billion baht.

06.01.2020Stay in touch with the latest news of a worldwide hotel industry. All up-to-date analytics, reports , and news about hotel business trends on OrangeSmile.com.
Leap Therapeutics, Inc. LPTX announced that it has entered into an exclusive option and license agreement with China-based biopharmaceutical company, BeiGene, Ltd. BGNE. Per the agreement, Leap Therapeutics granted BeiGene an option to gain exclusive rights to develop and commercialize its anti-Dickkopf-1 (DKK1) antibody, DKN-01, in Asia (excluding Japan), Australia and New Zealand. Leap Therapeutics will retain all rights to DKN-01 for the rest of the world.

Per the terms of the agreement, Leap Therapeutics will receive $3 million in upfront payment from BeiGene. The company is also eligible to receive an additional payment if BeiGene exercises its option, following initial proof-of-concept studies. The agreement also includes additional payments from BeiGene, related to certain development, regulatory, and sales milestones, taking the total deal value to up to $132 million.

Apart from the licensing deal, Leap Therapeutics also signed private equity financing deals with BeiGene and two other institutional investors worth approximately $27 million. The company had nearly $10 million in cash resources as of Sep 30, 2019. These deals will boost its cash resources significantly and support its operations in the long term.

Shares of Leap Therapeutics surged almost 52% following the announcement of these deals. However, shares of the company have declined 46.5% in the past year while the industry remained flat in that period.

Leap Therapeutics is developing monotherapy and several combination therapies of its pipeline candidate, DKN-01, in multiple early- to mid-stage studies targeting esophagogastric, hepatobiliary, gynecologic and prostate cancers. We note that Leap Therapeutics is currently developing DKN-01 in combination with other PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors namely Mercks MRK Keytruda, Bristol-Myers BMY Opdivo and Roches Tecentriq.

BeiGene stated in its press release that DKN-01, in combination with checkpoint blockade, has shown promising signals in a biomarker-defined population of gastric cancer patients.

Story continues

As part of the licensing deal, BeiGene intends to develop DKN-01 in combination with its anti-PD-1 inhibitor, tislelizumab, as treatment for gastric cancer (GC)/gastroesophageal junction cancer (GEJ) whose tumors express high levels of DKK1. However, Leap Therapeutics will conduct studies on the combination regimen in first and second-line GC/GEJ, before exercise of option by BeiGene, The studies are expected to start in the first half of 2020.

Leap Therapeutics, Inc. Price

Leap Therapeutics, Inc. Price

Leap Therapeutics, Inc. price | Leap Therapeutics, Inc. Quote

Zacks Rank

Leap Therapeutics currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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Men wanted for New Years Eve gang attack on Layan Beach surrender to police

PHUKET: Two men wanted for their part in a gang assault at Layan Beach on New Years Eve that left one man in hospital with serious injuries have surrendered to police.

violencecrimepolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Monday 6 January 2020, 02:36PM

One of the suspects who surrendered to police. Photo: Cherng Talay Police

The attack occurred on Layan Beach on New Year's Eve. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Cherng Talay Police Chief Col Phirachai Pomboonmee confirmed that two of the suspects wanted for the attack has surrendered themselves to police. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Phuket natives Danuphon Songsri, 29, and Suriya Naitasin, 20, presented themselves at Cherng Thalay Police Station on Saturday (Jan 4), Cherng Talay Police Chief Col Phirachai Pomboonmee confirmed.

The men were wanted for their part in an attack on Jatuphon Eu-chat, 26, his brother and their friends and family who were celebrating the New Year countdown on Layan Beach on Dec 31.

During the attack, Mr Jatuphon was stabbed once in the base of the left side of his neck, and while he was on the ground the group of men repeatedly kicked him,

One of the attackers reportedly fired a gun, but no people were shot. (See story here.)

Col Phirachai explained that Danuphon and Suriya have both been charged with affray causing serious injury.

We are waiting on confirmation from doctors at Vachira Phuket Hospital on whether the suspects used a knife to stub Mr Jatuphon. If they did use a knife, they will face a charge of attempted murder as well, Col Phirachai said.

Col Phirachai added that police were still working on tracking down the other men wanted for their role in the attack.
Toronto's subway system contains elevated levels of air pollutants that must be addressed, the city's chief medical officer said in a new report on Monday while assuring passengers it continues to be safe to ride.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 6/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Toronto's subway system contains elevated levels of air pollutants that must be addressed, the city's chief medical officer said in a new report on Monday while assuring passengers it continues to be safe to ride.

Dr. Eileen de Villa is recommending the Toronto Transit Commission take action to improve air quality after an independent assessment ordered by the city's public health unit found elevated levels of particulate matter.

Further study must be done to determine the impact on passengers, de Villa writes in her report to the Toronto Board of Health, adding it is still safe to ride the subway.

"Taking the subway is associated with benefits to people's health and well-being and is a health-supportive way to travel, especially as an alternative to personal vehicle use," de Villa said.

The board of health asked for the air quality study in 2017 to determine the health impacts for passengers in the subway system.

At the time, Board of Health chairman Joe Mihevc requested the report on so-called "rail dust," which he said studies had determined was created largely from "steel-on-steel grinding between the subway car wheels and the track."

That assessment, released Monday with de Villa's report, notes that particulate matter in the subway is comprised of higher concentrations of metals such as arsenic, cadmium and chromium, than what's found in outdoor air.

It also notes that health impacts from exposure to subway PM2.5 are higher on Line 2, the Bloor-Danforth portion of the system, because of the length of time passengers spend on the trains and platforms.

However, De Villa notes there are no health-based standards to assess passenger risk from the specific particulate matter in the subway system, and more work must be done to determine the impacts.

"Overall, the results of the assessment indicate that levels of PM2.5 and several of its metal components are high enough to warrant mitigation," she said.

TTC spokesman Stuart Green said the agency has taken action to address air quality over the past three decades, including the introduction of new vehicles and improved ventilation and filtration systems.

Subway air quality testing shows the TTC is well below provincially mandated occupational health regulations, but protective equipment is supplied to a small group of employees, he added in a statement.

"We remain fully committed to continuing our world-leading efforts in subway air quality improvement by monitoring the effectiveness of our actions to date," Green said.

The chairman of the Toronto Board of Health said the report shows there is room to improve air quality in the subway, but the service remains safe.

"If there is a message for Torontonians to take away, it's that riding the TTC is the healthier way," Coun. Joe Cressy said.

Toronto Mayor John Tory said air quality is an issue every subway system around the world is working to address.

"I am committed to making sure the TTC continues this work in the existing system and in all future subway projects," he said in a statement.

The Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents TTC employees, slammed the report for not examining the health impact of exposure to workers.

"If the conditions in the subway require many kinds of mitigation for passengers, any reasonable person has to be deeply concerned about what this means for anyone who works there," said ATU Local 113 president Carlos Santos.

The report comes weeks after a retired worker with the Toronto Transit Commission launched a court case against the agency, alleging it violated the provinces Environmental Protection Act by allowing harmful contaminants into the citys subway system.

The Ontario NDP's transit critic said improving air quality in the subway system will require investment and she urged the Progressive Conservative government to commit the required funds.

"There are measures the TTC can take to improve air quality but it involves funding," Jessica Bell said. "As a provincial politician, I'm concerned about how the province should be providing its fair share to the TTC."

A spokeswoman for Ontario's Ministry of Transportation said an agreement signed last fall between the province and city could allow Toronto to redirect some funding from subway expansion projects to modernization and upgrades for the existing system.

"This could free up capacity for the city to begin dealing with the existing network's state-of-good-repair needs," Christina Salituro said in a statement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 6, 2020.
A young man arrested for causing a drunken disturbance at a west Dublin nightclub was a "loose cannon ready to go off", a judge has said.

Dylan O'Donovan (24) resisted gardai when they arrested him during a "classic public order incident".

Judge David McHugh adjourned the case for a restorative justice report.

O'Donovan, of St Aongus Court, Tallaght, pleaded guilty to threatening, abusive and insulting behaviour, public intoxication and resisting gardai.

The incident happened at Buzz, Moran's Red Cow Hotel, last March 9.

Gda Conor Dooley told Blanchardstown District Court that security staff made an effort to remove a man from the premises, and when he dealt with O'Donovan the accused tried to evade arrest.

He had previous public order offences.

"He's going to end up sooner or later in that door there," Judge McHugh said, indicating the court's custody area.

O'Donovan had apologised for his behaviour after the incident, his barrister Jennifer Jackson said.

He had gone to the garda station with his mother and offered an apology.

It was a "classic public order incident", Ms Jackson said.

Drink

The accused had been in the club, had too much to drink and was "completely out of it".

He did not usually drink and had no explanation for what happened.

"He's a loose cannon, ready to go off. That would be my view," the judge said.

There had been a "level of immaturity at play", but the accused was now in the process of turning his life around, Ms Jackson said.

The judge remarked that it was O'Donovan's mother who was acting responsibly, and it was thanks to her that he was still "halfway on the rails".

"He should be ashamed of himself.

"He's a grown man," Judge McHugh said, adjourning the case to a date in March.
Sunday's episode seemed to illustrate Cuban's point when several of the investors still tried to one-up each other with tales of selling their businesses in the midst of turning down a pitch.

"We're all long-winded at some level when we go out because that's the hardest part of the show," Cuban told fellow Shark Barbara Corcoran on a November episode of "888-Barbara." "You want to sound smart and you want to contribute something to the entrepreneur. You want to leave them with something of value."

According to billionaire Mark Cuban, the "hardest part" of being on ABC's "Shark Tank" is saying two words: "I'm out."

Not all the Sharks were initially biting at a pitch for the SlumberPod, a cover that can be put over a travel crib to give babies a dark place to sleep. ("It's a tent," Shark Robert Herjavec pointed out.)

Lori Greiner said she wasn't interested because she didn't think mother-daughter co-founders Lou Childs and Katy Mallory needed investment from a Shark. The founders said SlumberPod had no debt and was already profitable. The co-founders said the company did $556,000 in sales in 2019 alone.

Greiner said it reminded her of her own success, because she didn't get outside investment in her own business early on.

"I think about, sometimes, if I had given away a percentage of my business, would it have been right for me? Or was it better that I had to figure out everything and do it myself, which made me stronger, smarter, better and not a one-person company anymore," Greiner said.

"I don't say this often, but I think you should continue to do what you're doing. Because I truly believe that. I'm out."

Then Corcoran chimed in: "I want to add to Lori's story if I may," she said. "Something happened to me that was a real lesson in my career.

"I was in a terrible real estate recession. I owed the whole world so much money and Merrill Lynch came and offered to buy my [real estate] business. They offered me $250,000," Corcoran said. Then "they changed their mind. I thought the sky had fallen."

But it wasn't the disaster Corcoran thought. "It was only five years later I sold my business for $66 million," she said. "To Lori's point, be careful when you sell your stock."

However Corcoran added, "that being said, I want to take advantage of you." She offered the founders $400,000 for a 25% stake in the company and a royalty per unit sold: "Every time you sell something, you name the number, I just want some kind of payment so I know I'm getting paid back first," Corcoran said.

Kevin O'Leary also offered the founders $400,000 as a loan at 9% interest for a 7% stake.

But before the SlumberPod founders could respond to the offers, Cuban shared the story behind the business that made him a billionaire.

"I'm gonna share a story similar to Barbara's," he said.

"When we started Broadcast.com, we were the first streaming company in the country, and Microsoft got into that business. Microsoft invited us up and we started talking about an offer," Cuban said. "To Barbara's point, we thought we were right there for an offer that was going to be $75 million. We didn't get that offer."

However, just "two years later, we sold for $5.7 billion [to Yahoo] because we didn't take that offer."

"I'm out," Cuban added.

After all the tales of selling their company for millions or billions and the advice, the SlumberPod founders countered Corcoran's offer, asking for $400,000 for 20% stake without a royalty, and she accepted.

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PRESTON -- A Preston man considered a serial peeper is facing 22 felony pornography charges after police found child porn on multiple electronic devices and digital items seized in an unrelated case.

Rickford Rehmann Munger, 64, is charged in Fillmore County District Court with possession of pornographic work by a registered predatory offender and 11 felony counts of possession of pornographic work-computer disk/electronic/magnetic/optical image with porn. He made his first appearance on the charges on Jan. 2, when Judge Matthew Opat set conditional bail at $10,000 and unconditional bail at $80,000.

On Sept. 30, Preston Police Chief Blaise Sass was contacted by an investigator with the Rochester Police Department notifying him that they had discovered evidence for a Preston Police Department case.

Rochester police executed a search warrant on Munger's apartment in Preston for an unrelated matter and seized "multiple electronic devices and digital items." When the items were reviewed, investigators found suspected child pornography, according to the criminal complaint.

The investigation also found evidence of other pornographic images and videos that had been downloaded including "rape porn" and spy-cam videos, the complaint states.

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"Munger had his own videos where he was recording females changing or showering in private residences," the complaint reads. "Some of the videos were taken from outside a window."

There was evidence that Munger was also looking to access the dark web. The dark web is a highly encrypted network that, among other things, allows users to talk, blog and share files confidentially. It is most frequently used for illegal activity.

Munger's next court appearance on the charges is scheduled for Feb. 10. He is currently being held in the Olmsted County Adult Detention center on $50,000 unconditional bail. In that case, Munger was arrested on July 1 after a woman reported seeing a man looking into multiple windows in the 1200 block of Fourth Avenue Southwest. The man, later identified as Munger, was located a block away. He was wearing knee pads covered in dirt, Rochester Police Lt. Mike Sadauskis said at the time.

Munger's criminal history dates back more than 25 years and includes multiple prison stays for several counts of first-degree burglary, second-degree assault and failing to register as a predatory offender. Offenders are required to list with law enforcement all vehicles they're associated with, as well as any address where they might stay.

His last conviction was in August 2017. In that case, he pleaded guilty in Olmsted County District Court to a single count of interfere with privacy-enter home/stare/peep in window, according to court records. A charge of interfere with privacy-previous conviction was dismissed as a result of a plea agreement.

In that case, he was sentenced to 180 days in jail.
Spain's Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez failed on Sunday in a first attempt to get parliament's backing to form a government, leaving him two days to secure support to end an eight-month political gridlock.

Sanchez has been acting prime minister since a first inconclusive election in April and November did not produce a conclusive result. He needed an absolute majority of at least 176 votes in his favor in the 350-seat house to be confirmed as prime minister but failed to get it. He obtained 166 votes in favor and 165 against, with 18 abstentions, while one lawmaker did not attend.

On Tuesday, Sanchez will only need a simple majority -- more "yes" than "no" votes. He is likely to get that after securing a commitment from the 13 lawmakers of Catalonia's largest separatist party, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), to abstain.
A Delhi court on Monday dismissed a complaint filed by the father of one of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case, seeking an FIR against the sole witness in the matter for allegedly giving interviews to various channels after charging money.

The sole eyewitness, a friend of 23-year-old victim, was accompanying her in the bus when the gruesome incident took place and he had also sustained injuries.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sudhir Kumar Sirohi dismissed the complaint finding there was no sufficient ground to direct the police to register an FIR, on the plea, which alleged that the act of the witness affected the case by "resulting into a media trial".

The complaint, filed by Heera Lal Gupta, father of Pawan Kumar Gupta, had cited some recent media reports which alleged that witness charged money to appear for interviews on various channels, his advocate A P Singh had said.

"This calls for independent investigation into the perjury that appears to have been committed by him (witness), being the sole witness, his testimony has strongly influenced the outcome of the case which led to the imposition of death penalty of the accused," the complaint said.

Citing the reports, the advocate stated that "on the basis of said facts and circumstances, it is clear that the conduct of him clearly shows that his testimony was false and fabricated... This goes to the root of his testimony and if established would show that the testimony is in fact false."



"It is quite clear that the sole eye witness in case has accumulated lakhs of rupees in bribe from various channels... and thus affected the case by resulting in media trial," the complaint stated.

It said that based on witness' "false" testimony, the accused in Nirbhaya gang rape case were convicted and given capital punishment.

The lawyer told the court that a complaint was filed with the Delhi Police to lodge an FIR in this regard. However, no action was taken.

Last month, a Delhi court had directed Tihar jail authorities to seek response from the four death row convicts in the case whether they are filing mercy pleas against their executions with the President of India.

The case is likely to be taken up for hearing on January 7.

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, had dismissed the plea of Akshay Kumar Singh, one of the four convicts, saying review petition was not "re-hearing of appeal over and over again" and it had already considered the mitigating and aggravating circumstances while upholding the death penalty.

In December last year, Nirbhaya's parents had approached the court to fast-track the procedure to hang all four convicts in the case.

The Supreme Court on December 12, 2018, dismissed a PIL seeking direction to the Centre to execute the death penalty awarded to the four convicts -- Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay and Akshay.

Nirbhaya is the changed name of the December 2012 gang rape-cum-murder victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, who was raped and brutalised in a moving bus in South Delhi by six people.

The woman had boarded the nearly vacant bus in Munirka in South Delhi along with her male friend on her way back home on December 16 that year. After raping and brutalising the woman and beating her friend, the assailants had thrown them out of the bus.

After receiving initial treatment in New Delhi for a few days, she was shifted to the Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore, where she succumbed to injuries on December 29, 2012.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Fashionistas and pets lovers unite for the 7th annual Wags and Whiskers brunch and pet fashion show coming to Hotel Zaza next month.

The fashion show, formerly Best Friends Brunch will take place on Saturday, Feb. 8 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the museum district's Hotel Zaza and will feature a Broadway-themed brunch, a pet fashion show, silent auction and more.
Some Christian and Buddhist groups met BJP working president J P Nadda on Monday to extend their support to the amended Citizenship Act.

Bharatiya Janata Party media co-convenor Sanjay Mayukh said Bharatiya Buddha Sangh president Sanghpriya Rahul and senior functionaries of the National Christian Forum met Nadda to express their thanks to the Modi government for amendments in the citizenship law and extended their support.

BJP spokesperson Tom Vadakkan said all Christian denominations were represented by the forum having functionaries from different parts of the country.

The amended citizenship law seeks to confer citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis who had arrived in India by December 31, 2014, due to religious persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

Opposition parties and various groups have opposed the law, which has triggered nationwide protests. They have called the law against the Constitution for making religion a ground for citizenship, a charge rejected by the BJP.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
OTTAWA - Hundreds of Canadian soldiers were hunkered down on military bases in Iraq on Monday, their missions suspended due to security concerns, as the U.S. and NATO offered contradictory messages about the future involvement of western forces in the war-torn country.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 6/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a media conference after a meeting of The North Atlantic Council at Ambassadorial level at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. The head of the NATO military alliance is suggesting the Canadian-led training mission in Iraq is not about to be permanently shut down. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/Virginia Mayo

OTTAWA - Hundreds of Canadian soldiers were hunkered down on military bases in Iraq on Monday, their missions suspended due to security concerns, as the U.S. and NATO offered contradictory messages about the future involvement of western forces in the war-torn country.

The Canadians were on high alert against any attack following the killing of an Iranian general by the U.S. over the weekend, which had prompted threats of retaliation from Tehran and calls from Iraq's parliament and outgoing prime minister for the withdrawal of foreign troops.

The commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and widely considered the second-most powerful leader in Iran after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian Maj.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani was killed by a U.S. drone near the Baghdad airport Friday night.

Following a meeting in Brussels Monday with representatives from all 29 members of the military alliance, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg indicated a Canadian-led training mission in Iraq would resume once the security situation there improved.

"We have suspended our training mission now because of the security situation on the ground, but we are ready to restart the training when the situation makes that possible," Stoltenberg told reporters during a news conference at NATO headquarters.

The NATO chief went on to defend the training mission, which includes 250 Canadian soldiers and is being commanded by a Canadian general, as essential for defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant even as he called on Iran to exercise restraint.

Only hours later, however, reports began to emerge that the commander of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIL had written a letter to Iraq's defence ministry indicating he was preparing to pull out his troops in response to Baghdad's wishes.

The letter from U.S. Marine Corps Brig.-Gen. William H. Seely III specifically referenced a resolution passed by Iraq's parliament on Sunday and endorsed by outgoing Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi calling for the forced withdrawal of all foreign troops.

"We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure," he wrote.

A copy of the letter was obtained by Reuters, AFP and the Washington Post, all of whom reported confirming its authenticity.

Yet U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper insisted to reporters at the Pentagon that there had been no decision to leave Iraq. The U.S. military's top general, Mark Milley, similarly insisted the letter was a poorly worded draft that had been sent by mistake.

Earlier in the day, the Canadian government had indicated it was preparing to take a wait-and-see approach to the situation in Iraq, with Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne reaching out to his Iraqi counterpart to reiterate Canada's commitment to fighting ISIL.

"Minister Champagne pledged to continue to work with the government of Iraq to achieve the peace, stability and prosperity that the people of Iraq want and deserve," Champagne's office said in a statement. "Both ministers have agreed to keep in close touch in the coming days and weeks."

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan similarly asserted on Twitter following conversations with Stoltenberg and British Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace that the government was "committed to a stable Iraq, the fight against (ISIL) and to resume training when the situation allows.

"During the temporary pause, our focus is on the safety of those who serve."

The Prime Minister's Office said Justin Trudeau spoke to Stoltenberg to discuss the situation in Iraq.

"They emphasized the importance of de-escalating tensions and the need to support security and stability in Iraq and the wider region, notably through ongoing counter-Daesh efforts," it said in a readout from the conversation, adding that Stoltenberg noted NATO is prepared to continue training when "the situation permits."

The confusion around Seely's letter underscored the degree to which the future of Canada's mission in Iraq is beholden to decisions in Washington and Baghdad  and how quickly such decisions can come. A U.S. withdrawal would likely lead to a similar pullout by Canada.

Alex Ruff, a retired colonel who served with the NATO training mission in Iraq before retiring from the military last year and being elected a Conservative MP, said military planners in Ottawa will be working through all possible scenarios to prepare for whatever comes.

"I'm sure all the planners, they're earning their money right now because they are going through the planning cycles necessary to react accordingly once NATO or U.S. or Canadian leadership or any of the nations make their respective decisions," he said.

And while Ruff expressed confidence that the Canadian troops in Iraq are taking sufficient measures to protect themselves, he said that when it comes to the future of the mission: "It's going to be a decision made by NATO and, ultimately, the Iraqis. ... It's their country."

Canada has commanded the NATO training mission since it was created in 2018, with Maj.-Gen. Jennie Carignan having recently taken the helm. The mission was established to train the Iraqi military in the basics of soldiering so they can defend against any ISIL resurgence.

The NATO mission is separate from that of dozens of Canadian special-forces soldiers who have been working with local security forces in northern Iraq's Kurdistan region since October 2014. Canada also has medical personnel and a helicopter unit in the north.

Their activities have also been similarly suspended while the Canadian government waits to see how the situation unfolds. The government has not said what contingency plans it has to withdraw quickly.

Canada first deployed troops to fight ISIL, or Daesh, in 2014 when the extremist group overran large parts of Syria and Iraq. The mission has evolved several times since then as the focus has shifted from beating back ISIL to ensuring it does not have the ability to reconstitute itself.

The Canadian military also has troops in Kuwait, Lebanon and Jordan as part of the anti-ISIL mission.

Yet popular unrest in Iraq over endemic corruption, a lack of government services and Iran's influence in the country, the mounting tensions between the U.S. and Iran, and the ongoing war in Syria have pulled attention away from the fight against ISIL.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 6, 2020.
A federal government website was hacked over the weekend to show messages vowing revenge for the death of Irans most powerful commander and a doctored photograph of President Trump being punched in the jaw. The intrusion was consistent with the work of low-level nationalist Iranian hackers, experts said.

For an unspecified amount of time starting Saturday, the website of the Federal Depository Library Program featured the altered photograph superimposed over a map of the Middle East, accompanied by a tribute to Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, whose killing in an American drone strike on Friday prompted worldwide political upheaval.

Hacked by Iran Cyber Security Group Hackers, text on the website read before it was put back online. This is only small part of Irans cyber ability!

The program, administered by the United States Government Publishing Office, helps the public access government documents on a wide variety of subjects  including bills, regulations and studies  in more than 1,100 libraries around the country. Its website was taken down for 24 hours as officials conducted a security analysis and put back online Sunday after they found that none of the sites data was compromised, Gary Somerset, a spokesman for the office, said in an email Monday.
Baghdad [Iran], Jan 06 (ANI): At least six people suffered injuries after six Katyusha rockets fell in Baghdad, Iran on Sunday.

Three of the rockets fell inside the heavily fortified Green Zone housing government buildings and foreign missions, the Iraqi military said. The rest fell in the nearby Al-Jadriya area, reported Al Jazeera.



Earlier multiple rockets were launched in Baghdad's Al-Jadiriya area and outside Balad Airbase here, informed Iraqi Army official.

Only days after Iran's IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani was killed by the US targeted airstrike, Bagdad's Green Zone area was also hit by a rocket with no reports of human casualties, reported CNN. (ANI)


A Bolivian student was taken by authorities on Tuesday for spreading her negative opinions regarding the interim government of the country. She had been spreading her ideas through the creation of memes. The memes accounts are now put down by the student.

The name of the student who created the meme account is Maria Alejandra Salinas. She is studying at La Universidad Mayor de San Andres. Her arrest was being criticized by many. Many of her university leaders are expressing their support for Salinas. Some of them are calling her arrest as a violation of her freedom of speech in the country.

Salinas is a graduate student in the university with a focus on feminist studies. She named the meme account that she created on the social media platform Facebook, Suchel. She made the account after the resignation of the country's former president Evo Morales this past November.

Evo Morales had left his office after being suspected of cheating in the elections and manipulating its results. After hearing the news that the police forces of the country are being ordered to arrest him, he left his office and flew to Mexico. He and his supporters believe that he is a victim of the story.

After Evo Morales had left his position as the leader of Bolivia, Jeanine Anez Chavez had assumed the position as the interim leader of the country.

According to Salinas' statement, the account she created aims to counter the current state media. The meme account that she created mainly includes content with humor on the political issues in the country and was also aiming at the current leadership in the country.

As her meme account's following grew to more than 10,000, she started receiving an increasing number of threats to her life. Some were even threatening to rape her.

On December 28, 2019, she released a public announcement saying that she will be deactivating the meme account that she created on Facebook. She feared that the continuance of the operation of her Facebook meme account will cost her or her family's life.

According to a tweet, with the power of the interim government of Bolivia to control traditional media in the country, its citizens are turning to different social media platforms such as Facebook for "real" news. One social media post had expressed his disappointment because Salinas had to shut down her Facebook meme account because of the threats she was receiving.

She is being accused by the government of inspiring violence in the country. Salinas denies such accusations.

The Bolivian student shared that the accusations about her promotion of hate and the indoctrination of the people of Bolivia are not true. She claims that the Facebook meme page that she created did not reach ten percent of the total population of Bolivia. She claims that she has no power to influence the people of the country.

In less than 2 months, the current interim government of Bolivia, in the leadership of Anez, has already received numerous accusations of violating human rights laws.
At the inauguration ceremony (Photo: VNA)

The facility was built on nearly 6 hectares of land at a total cost of 100 billion VND (over 4.3 million USD at current exchange rate), which was donated by philanthropists and Buddhist followers.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony, Vice Chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee Ngo Hung said nine religions are operating in Soc Trang with more than 630,000 followers.

Buddhism is a major religion in the province with 184 temples and more than 500,000 followers.

He said the new monastery meets the spiritual need of local residents.

The Truc Lam Zen is a Vietnamese Buddhist sect founded by King Tran Nhan Tong. Tran Nhan Tong, born Tran Kham, ascended to the throne when he was 21. He was famed for defeating Yuan-Mongol invaders twice as well as developing the national economy and culture during his 15-year reign. The king abdicated when he was 35 and spent the rest of his life on Yen Tu Mountain, located in where is now Quang Ninh province, to practice and propagate Buddhism. He founded the Zen Buddhist sect of Truc Lam there.
HUD solicited bids for the Rosewood facilities  a dozen nursing homes and one assisted living center  until the end of May, but since then it has repeatedly declined to disclose the name of the prospective buyer or the purchase price. According to court filings, there were four bids for the properties, which the department had valued at $95 million.

A HUD spokeswoman said the department could not comment until the sale is complete. The department has spent nearly $30 million since August 2018 to make up for shortfalls in funding at the Rosewood facilities and to pay for repairs.

Greystone, which manages nursing homes in Florida, was identified as the incoming owner of the Rosewood chain in a licensing application filed in December with the Illinois Department of Public Health. The application documents, which were released in response to a public records request, indicate that Greystone will own and operate the facilities through a series of limited liability companies. The firm also intends to rename each of the facilities, according to the application.

It is not clear how Greystone is paying for the facilities, or if the firm is getting any credit from HUD for the losses it may have incurred in the default.

The sale of the Rosewood facilities will not immediately end the work of the court-appointed receiver, the Long Hill Company. David Lawlor, Long Hills president, said in a court filing last month that his firm may remain on the job for another year to help with the transition to the new owner and operator.
'I'm absolutely fine': Wrestler Nisha Dahiya issues video after reports of her being shot dead

Stop prevaricating, act against those persecuted minorities: India to Pakistan

International

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Peshawar, Jan 06: A 25-year-old Sikh man has been shot dead by unknown gunmen in the northwestern city of Peshawar in Pakistan, police and the victim's family said on Sunday, a day after a mob attacked Gurudwara Nankana Sahib in Lahore where Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev was born.

Rowinder Singh had come to Peshawar from Shangla district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to shop for his wedding, police said.

"His bullet-riddled body was recovered from the area under the Chamkani police station and sent to a hospital," police said in a statement.

Untouched and undamaged: Pakistan govt denies reports of mob attack on Nankana Sahib

"Police have already launched a probe into the killing," the statement said.

The victim's brother Harmeet Singh told the media that an unknown person called him from Rowinder's cellphone on late Saturday and informed him that "my brother was killed".

"The government must arrest the culprits as early as possible. I will not find peace until the criminals are arrested," he said.

No group has claimed responsibility of the murder which took place a day after a mob attacked Gurdwara Nankana Sahib where Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev was born.

India on Sunday strongly condemned the "targeted killing" of the minority Sikh community member Peshawar.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Pakistan should stop "prevaricating" and take immediate action to apprehend and give exemplary punishment to the perpetrators of the crime.

After Nankana Sahib attack, Sikh youth killed in Pakistan's Peshawar

"India strongly condemns the targeted killing of minority Sikh community member in Peshawar that follows the recent despicable vandalism and desecration of the holy Gurdwara Sri Janam Asthan at Nankana Sahib and the unresolved case of abduction, forced conversion and marriage of a Sikh girl Jagjit Kaur," the MEA said.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday condemned the recent incident of vandalism at the Nankana Sahib, saying it goes against his "vision" and the government will show "zero tolerance" against those involved in it.

NEWS AT NOON, JANUARY 6th, 2020

Gurdwara Nankana Sahib, also known as Gurdwara Janam Asthan, is a site near Lahore where the first Guru of Sikhs, Guru Nanak, was born.

Pakistan's Foreign Office on Friday rejected the media reports that the Gurdwara Nanakana Sahib was desecrated in a mob attack, saying the birthplace of the founder of Sikhism remains "untouched and undamaged" and the "claims of destruction" of one of the holiest Sikh shrines are "false".

Imran condemns Nankana Sahib incident, says it goes against his 'vision'

Minorities in Muslim-majority Pakistan make up some two per cent of the country's total population.

Pakistan has witnessed violence against religious minorities in the past as al-Qaeda and Taliban-led militants regularly target Christian, Sikhs, Hindus, Ahmadis and Shiite communities in the country.
The Midland Daily News is partnering with WCMU Public Media to host a community conversation on news literacy featuring Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Wesley Lowery.

This free event is open to the public and is set to begin at noon Friday, Jan. 24, at Creative 360, located at 1517 Bayliss St. in Midland.

Lowery is a journalist at The Washington Post. He was a lead on the Post's "Fatal Force" project that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2016 as well as the author of "They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement." In 2017, he became a CNN political contributor.

Lowery will discuss news literacy during this community conversation.

"In this age of disinformation, news literacy is an incredibly important topic and we are beyond thrilled to host this event with WCMU Public Media," said Daily News Editor Kate Hessling. "Midland is extremely lucky to have a speaker of this caliber coming to our area to discuss news literacy. We hope the community takes advantage of this free event."

Though the event is free, attendees are encouraged to register online so organizers have an estimated head count. You can register online at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pulitzer-prize-winning-journalist-wesley-lowery-on-news-literacy-tickets-86003734485?utm_source=eb_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=new_event_email&utm_term=viewmyevent_button

For more information, call Kate Hessling at 989-839-4240 or email khessling@hearstnp.com.
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Linkedin Kornelius Purba (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020 08:32 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c320f7bff 1 Opinion #commentary,commentary,China-Indonesia,diplomacy,diplomatic-missions,diplomatic-relations,diplomatic-tension,foreign-policy,foreign-affairs,Natuna,Natuna-sea Free

Actually, it was just a matter of time before the year-long skirmishes between Indonesian and Chinese fishermen, the latter often heavily guarded by Chinas naval vessels, would escalate and become a more open quarrel between the two countries. But still, last weeks blunt statements by Chinas Foreign Ministry on the Natuna Islands were shocking to many Indonesians.

In his press briefing in Beijing, the Foreign Ministry spokesman insisted that Chinese fishermen are free to fish in their traditional fishing area, which partly overlaps Indonesias exclusive economic zone (EEZ), because Chinas position and propositions comply with international law, including UNCLOS [the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea].

So whether the Indonesian side accepts it or not, nothing will change the objective fact that China has rights and interests over the relevant waters, Geng Shuang asserted.

Such an answer has been regularly issued on the South China Sea. Indonesia always tried to distance itself from the dispute, but this time Jakarta can no longer keep to that position. China realizes Indonesia is a key unifying factor for ASEAN, but now ASEAN faces a new situation in which its most important member will also be directly involved in the sensitive issue. The government would be in trouble domestically if it fails to appear firm in ensuring it retains control over the Natunas.

President Joko Jokowi Widodo should talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping to prevent a worsening situation. Jokowi is definitely under pressure domestically. He was often accused by his political opponents of being too weak against China for economic reasons. I disagree. The President is being very realistic, as are leaders of other nations.

President Xi needs to know the real feelings and sentiments of the Indonesian people. He will take it seriously when Jokowi honestly conveys his position to his counterpart. The Chinese leader needs to demonstrate more soft power diplomacy. Indonesias economy is indeed significantly dependent on China, but China also knows that such dependence will not last eternally.

Indonesia and China are to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the normalization of their diplomatic relations this year, which always sticks to the principle of mutually beneficial interests, trust and respect for their respective territorial integrity. However, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang soured the commemoration mood with his harsh assertion that no one could stop Chinese fishermen from fishing in Natuna waters. Is it hard to guess why Beijing chose this moment to challenge Indonesia?

Indonesian officials said Indonesia has to do nothing with China over the Natuna Islands and their surrounding waters, as UNCLOS does not recognize traditional fishing grounds, and therefore Jakarta would not open any negotiations with Beijing. Among Indonesian Military officers, however, the common mood is that Chinas position is totally unacceptable and we should take concrete actions in the field.

For millions of Indonesians, Chinas diplomat has crossed the line by openly challenging Indonesias territorial integrity. Their pride as a nation has been wounded, for right or wrong reasons. China can easily do it to smaller members of ASEAN, but not with us, was the common reaction of Indonesians on social media.

The two countries reopened official ties after Indonesia unilaterally cut off relations following allegations that China was behind the foiled coup blamed on the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) on Sept. 30, 1965. China strongly denied the accusation. Only after 25 years, then president Soeharto agreed to reopen diplomatic ties.

Since then, robust bilateral relations have grown, especially economically. Indonesia is the largest member of ASEAN and, along with Vietnam, the country is consistently wary of the worlds economic and military superpowers. Indonesia and many ASEAN members always prefer the military presence of the United States in this region, to counter Chinas rising power.

President Jokowi, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi and Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto have sounded firm but have refrained from sharply rebuking China, more with an eye to the potential domestic implications. Rather than fearing possible reprisal, they realize the implications could be serious domestically. Resentment against China remains despite warm diplomatic ties: just have a glimpse at the social media buzz.

Netizens have also raised demands to bring back the hugely popular former fishery and maritime minister, Susi Pudjiastuti. Millions of Indonesians adore her, particularly for her orders to sink foreign fishing vessels, including those of China and Vietnam, which were found guilty of poaching in Indonesian seas. Ordinary people dont care about other officials statements that Susis blowing up and sinking vessels policy is mainly her PR. She remains their Superwoman guarding Indonesias seas.

China claims nearly the whole of the South China Sea, as reflected in its nine-dash line, while the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan claim some parts of the resource-rich ocean territory. Indonesia itself is not a claimant in the South China Sea, but Chinas claim based on the history of its fishermens traditional grounds around the Natunas could also be adopted by other nations. Fishermen from Sulawesi have fished for centuries in Australias waters, so could we also claim historic rights there? But wouldnt that be ridiculous?

President Xi once said: "By turning antagonism to synergy, hostility to friendship, together we will forge a community of shared destiny for all humankind."

Maintaining sustainable relations between China and Indonesia is much more important than bickering over Natuna. Indonesians need China and vice versa. But the aspirations of the people at the grassroots level are often totally different from those of their leaders.
Firing celebratory gunshots into the sky on New Year's Eve or the Fourth of July is a dangerous game of chance, authorities said.

But it's also basic physics: What goes up must come down.
Police keep a watch as students stage a protest over Sundays violence, at the main gate of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, on Monday. A group of masked men and women armed with sticks, rods and acid allegedly unleashed violence on the campus on Sunday evening, injuring 30 students and faculty of the university. (PTI)

New Delhi: Strong support from all quarters across the country poured in for students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) who were victims of a brutal attack by masked goons on Sunday evening. While students across the country held protest marches and took out rallies in support of JNU students, many political leaders and Bollywood stars too rallied behind the injured students, demanding strict action against the perpetrators and the sacking of the JNU Vice Chancellor, M. Jagadesh Kumar.

Around 34 students and teachers from JNU, who were admitted to the AIIMS trauma centre on Sunday night following attacks by masked men in the campus, were discharged early on Monday.

Two senior wardens of JNU hostels  Periyar and Sabarmati  resigned on Monday on moral grounds for failing to protect students during the attack, while Shiv Sena leader and Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray stirred the political caldron by equating the attack on JNU students to Mumbais 26/11 terror attacks.

Demanding an independent judicial inquiry into the violence, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said, The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on Indias young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi government is deplorable and unacceptable. Every day campuses and colleges are raided across India, either by the police or lumpen elements with support of the BJP government.

Students of the JNU, that has become a battleground of Left versus Right politics ever since the BJP came to power at the Centre, also received support from several other quarters. I think any Indian who cares about the nations image in the world should worry. This has too many echoes of the years when Germany was moving towards Nazi rule, said Nobel prize winner and JNU alumnus Abhijit Banerjee.

Pushed on the back foot over allegations that its student wing, the ABVP, had planned and carried out the attack on students, the BJP, and the JNU administration tried to give a spin that the violence was a result of a clash between two factions of students and blamed students affiliated to the Left, led by Jawaharlal Nehru University Stud-ents Union (JNUSU) president Aishe Ghosh, for it.

Social media evidence blames ABVP

However, throughout the day evidence on social media emerged indicating alleged role of the ABVP with screen-shots of WhatsApp chats indicating its hand in the pre-planned attack.

According to reports, when media organisations called the telephone numbers on the WhatsApp group, they got vague answers saying the numbers were being misused. However, NDTV claimed some people in the WhatsApp group accepted they were from ABVP and that they had indeed participated in the violence in JNU.

The ABVP on its part has denied its hand in the attack and instead blamed the Left students of violence and accused JNUSU leader of leading the mob of masked goons. The JNU administration too has tried to portray the matter as a clash between two groups of students, largely blaming the Left JNUSU for the ruckus in the campus.

But Ghosh on Monday categorically accused the ABVP of the murderous attack on her, other students and professors saying among the attackers were a few ABVP students of JNU and some outsiders.

Yesterdays attack was an organised attack by goons of RSS and ABVP. Since past four-five days violence was being promoted in the campus by some RSS affiliated professors and ABVP The answer to every iron rod used against the students will be replied to, through debate and discussion. JNUs culture will not be eroded... JNU will uphold its democratic culture, said Ms Ghosh.

Total of 34 people, including Prof. Sucharita Sen and Ms Ghosh, were injured in the attack on JNU students by masked men and women carrying iron rods, hammers and stones. The JNUSU president was hit with rods and hammers leading to roughly 15 stitches on her forehead. She also suffered a fracture in her left hand and other injuries.

Even though minor incidents have been taking place for the last couple of days in the campus where JNUSU is protesting fee hike and preventing allegedly ABVP-backed students from registering for the second semester, the shocking mob attack happened around 6.30 pm on Sunday when a masked group entered JNU campus from the back gate and left after beating and threatening students for almost 90 minutes according to some accounts. The masked group, which included some girls, also allegedly molested girls.
Climate activists have boarded a gas mining rig in Dundee in an attempt to stop it from heading out to the North Sea.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) Scotland has said three of its members had climbed aboard the Valaris 122 rig and intended to there for as long as possible to prevent it from operating.

The environmental group added that the trio had taken all necessary safety precautions and informed police of their peaceful occupation.

The rig is currently at Princess Alexandra Wharf at the Port of Dundee and is due to begin a nine-month contract for Shell later this month.

An XR Scotland spokesperson said protesters have been equipped with supplies and plan to hang an XR flag from the rig.

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Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou/The Independent Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Trafalgar Square Angela Christofilou/The Independent Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Trafalgar Square Angela Christofilou/The Independent Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Trafalgar Square Angela Christofilou/The Independent Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Trafalgar Square Angela Christofilou/The Independent Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou/The Independent Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou/The Independent Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Trafalgar Square Angela Christofilou/The Independent Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou/The Independent Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Trafalgar Square Angela Christofilou/The Independent Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Trafalgar Square Angela Christofilou/The Independent Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Trafalgar Square Angela Christofilou/The Independent Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou/The Independent Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou 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protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou Extinction Rebellion protesters shut down London roads Angela Christofilou

The group is demanding the Scottish and UK governments tell the truth about the impact of the fossil fuel industry and its effect on climate change.

Activists have also urged politicians to decommission fossil fuel infrastructure, introduce a just transition for workers and communities, and establish a legally binding citizens assembly for environmental issues.

One of the members who boarded the rig, Jo, who declined to give her full name, said she was taking part in the protest for her niece.

I dont want to say to her that I didnt take a stand when I had the choice and left it to other people to sort it out, she said.

I am going to give it my best shot and go down fighting because I can see the world through her eyes and I want to protect things for her.

A fellow protester, Fiona, said the world has zero chance of staying below the 2C global warming limit set by the Paris climate agreement with the current size of the fossil fuel industry.

We are currently living in a world warmed by 1.1C  and we are seeing the catastrophic, heartbreaking and devastating effects every day, she said.

A spokesperson for Forth Ports, the owner of the Port of Dundee, said they are aware of the protest and have a pilot boat at the scene as a safety precaution should anyone require assistance.

Shell said it is aware of the incident and its prime concern is the safety of the workers and protesters involved.

Additional reporting by PA
Castro and Warren at the June presidential debate. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Days after ending his own campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, Julian Castro is endorsing Elizabeth Warren. He made the announcement in a video Monday.

Theres one candidate I see whos unafraid to fight like hell to make sure Americas promise will be there for everyone, who will make sure no matter where you live in America or where your family came from in the world  you have a path to opportunity, too, he said in the video. Thats why Im proud to endorse Elizabeth Warren for president.

Today I'm proud to endorse @ewarren for president.



Elizabeth and I share a vision of America where everyone counts. An America where peoplenot the wealthy or well-connectedare put first. I'm proud to join her in the fight for big, structural change. pic.twitter.com/xDvMEKqpF3  Julian Castro (@JulianCastro) January 6, 2020

The former Housing secretary and mayor of San Antonio ran an unapologetically progressive campaign that won support from activist groups. But he struggled to collect enough donations and support in the polls to remain in the race.

Castros endorsement of Warren isnt a shocker. The two have appeared close throughout the primary, with an October Texas Tribune article declaring that they may be rivals  but theyre buddies, too. Their close relationship reportedly goes back to Castros time in the Obama administration while Warren sat on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

With the Iowa caucuses a month away, Warren is no doubt hoping that Castros endorsement provides her campaign with a much-needed shot in the arm. A CBS NewsYouGov poll released over the weekend showed a three-way tie in the state, with Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and Bernie Sanders all at 23 percent. Warren trailed at 16 percent.
Iran to decide on 5th step of reducing JCPOA commitments tonight: Mousavi

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Sun / 5 January 2020 / 15:54

Tehran (ISNA)  Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Seyyed Abbas Mousavi announced on Sunday that an important meeting over the 5th step of reducing Iran's commitment under the 2015 nuclear deal will be held tonight and the final decision on the issue will be taken.

At Sunday press conference, Mousavi paid tribute to late commander of the IRGC Quds Force Major General Qassem Soleimani and stressed that General Soleimani was a hero in fighting against terrorism, cruelty, and extremism.

He emphasized that foreign ministry will keep working in collaboration with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and its new commander Brigadier General Esmaeil Qa'ani.

"Iran and its Foreign Ministry don't accept negotiation under the shadow of threat," Mousavi said.

Answering a question about US' message to Iran through Swiss embassy in Tehran, the spokesman said, "The message was a letter from US Secretary of State that was non-diplomatic and impolite. We reviewed the letter and answered it in words that fit US officials but it was lower than their expectations".

The official also denied reports that an Omani delegation has come to Iran for mediation.

End Item



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I read with great interest the recent piece on FoxBusiness.com by S&P Global Platts President Mr. Martin Fraenkel. As he is based in the United Kingdom, and I am in Minnesota, I hope the next time he finds himself in the United States he drops by our brewery so he can meet firsthand the eighty-two individuals who devote their livelihood to Summit Brewing.

Instead of denigrating Americas vibrant beer industry, Id hope hed be open-minded in understanding the impact of the $180,000 increase in aluminum costs Summit faced last year.

THE YEAR IN BEER: TRENDS AND TOP BRANDS FOR 2019

I would also invite him to join me in enjoying beer, which remains Americas most popular alcohol beverage.

Summit Brewingmuch like brewers across the United Statesis putting more and more of our beer in aluminum cans. Although we have been in business for thirty-four years, we have only been packaging our beer in cans for less than six years. To date, canned beer is 37 percent of our total sales.

When most people think of beer, they think of barley, hops, yeast and water. But it is, in fact, aluminum that is the biggest commodity cost for our nations brewers. Today, more than 60 percent of all the beer brewed and sold in the United States is packaged in aluminum, and the American beer industry annually purchases more than 36 billion aluminum cans every year.

As a business owner, I dont want special treatmentI just want to make sure I am paying a fair price for everything that I buy, and that the prices reflect market fundamentals.

However, brewers across the United States are seeing their aluminum costs skyrocket. Unfortunately, due to the combination of recently imposed tariffs on imported primary aluminum and a complicated, obscure pricing system known as the Midwest Premium, the cost of aluminum beverage cans has increased dramatically.

MILLER64 JOINS DRY JANUARY WITH A BEER-DRINKING TWIST

In March 2018, President Trump imposed a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum. Americas beverage industries paid an additional $458 million on the 2.33 million metric tons of aluminum purchased between March 2018 through July 2019 purportedly because of the tariff. However, a recent analysis conducted by a leading economic firm shows that the U.S. Treasury only collected 16 percent of this sum totaling about $73 million.

Story continues

Why? Under current law, there is no direct oversight authority by a federal agency overseeing the Midwest Premium. As a result, companies like mine have to pay a Midwest Premium, including the tariff, even though most of the aluminum we buy isnt actually subject to any tariff.

Most of the aluminum sold in the United States comes from Canada, a country that is not subject to the tariff. In the case of aluminum can sheet, most is not subject to a tariff because it is made from recycled scrap aluminum.

Despite this fact, brewers like myself are still charged the full tariff-paid premium, which has resulted in increased costs to thousands of American brewers throughout the county. Even more outrageous, so long as the U.S. needs to import aluminum, even negligible amounts, from countries subject to tariffs, all aluminum, including recycled aluminum already in the United States, is priced as though it is tariffed.

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE

Even President Trumps administration recognizes issues with the aluminum market. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross recently said, The fact of aluminums price going up does not seem to justify a huge increase in the Midwest premium.

As a brewer, we are subjected to multiple layers of oversight, which, while a bit painful I understand is necessary since it ensures everyone in the brewing industry remains honest.

The Aluminum Pricing Examination Act makes sure that we shine a little light on the entities that benchmark aluminum premiums. It does not, as Mr. Fraenkel states, enable the federal government to set the price of aluminum.

Members of Congress from across the ideological spectrum have backed the legislation because they understand that it is time to provide some oversight to this opaque system. If S&P Global Platts is operating in good faith, then a little transparency on their system will only vindicate them.

Instead of blasting a vibrant American industry from a far-away office, I hope Mr. Fraenkel will take a moment to understand brewers do not want a handout. We understand the competitiveness of the industry and work every day to provide our customers with a wide array of beers to meet this demand.

We want an honest playing field from the entities we depend, so Americas beer industry can continue to support more than 2.1 million jobs and provide more than $328 billion to our nations economy.

Mark O. Stutrud is the founder and president of Summit Brewing Company in St. Paul, Minnesota.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS

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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 6)  Malacanang dubbed Vice President Leni Robredo's findings on the war on drugs a "dud," saying she had no authority to recommend changes to the anti-drug program after three weeks as co-chair of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD).

"Palagay ko ang failure ay 'yung pag-upo niya (sa ICAD). Kung failure 'yun e 'di sana 'yung problema natin sa droga, inabot na siguro ng lahat ng pamilya. The fact remains that we have dismantled so many illegal drug factories," Panelo said in a Monday press briefing, insisting thousands of drug pushers and addicts have surrendered while those who resisted arrest have been killed due to police operations.

[Translation: I think the failure is when she took part in the ICAD. If it was a failure then our drug problem should have reached all families. We have dismantled so many drug factories.]

Robredo released a report to the media on Monday morning detailing her findings and recommendations during her brief stint as ICAD co-chair, saying that Duterte administration got measly score of 1 over 100 in its crackdown on narcotics since President Rodrigo Duterte took office.

READ: Robredo flunks Duterte admin in drug war, says less than 1 percent shabu seized by authorities in the last three years

Records from the Philippine National Police (PNP) show that of 3,000 kilograms of shabu consumed per week worth 25 billion, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) only seized 1,344 kilos in 2019, Robredo said. In terms of value, there's about 1.3 trillion shabu in the market each year, which led the Vice President to say that the government merely touched 1 percent of the problem.

"It doesn't mean na failure kahit na 1 percent... Maraming sinirang factories ng droga, maraming nahuli," Panelo said. "Hindi totally eradicated kasi maraming pumapasok (na droga), pero nahuhuli pa rin natin. Pero 'yung mga pumapasok, nahuhuli pa rin natin."

[Translation: There were drug factories dismantled and a lot of people arrested. Drugs have not been totally eradicated since there's a lot of drug shipments coming in, but we still intercept them.]

Malacanang dismissed her claim, saying instead that Robredo was ill-informed as she had limited resources and did not consult the agencies on the ground for guidance.

"When she was threatening this report, she implied na meron siyang mga nadiskubreng iregularidad na akala mo bombang sasabog sa mukha. It's a dud, wala naman siyang sinabi doon na bago na hindi tinututukan ng mga ahensya na involved sa laban sa droga. There is nothing new," the Presidential spokesman said, even pointing out that Robredo "just wants to be relevant" by releasing her report.

The Vice President was set to release her findings last month but opted to postpone it to give way to relief efforts after strong earthquakes shook Mindanao.

TIMELINE: VP Robredo's short stint as anti-drug body co-chair

Robredo also suggested that the Dangerous Drugs Board rather than PDEA be made the lead agency in the war on drugs to ensure a more comprehensive approach, in order to cover prevention, rehabilitation, and reintegration efforts. She also called to recalibrate funding to cover these concerns, saying the campaign has been "lopsided" in favor of law enforcement.

Panelo said Robredo cannot be considered an expert in the drug war due to her short appointment. Still, he said her recommendations will be left to the discretion of concerned agencies.

"Ang problema kasi, ilang araw lang siyang naupo doon eh ang dami na agad niyang sinasabi na wala naman siyang expertise," Panelo said. "Ang dapat nagsasalita ng mga mungkahi at rekomendasyon ay 'yung mga taong nandoon, hindi 'yung mga nasa labas. Kasi tayo, wala tayong alam doon eh. It's the expert that should give us recommendations, those involved in the drug war."

Robredo said Malacanang has received a copy of the report, but Panelo said he doesn't know yet if Duterte has read it.

'Saddening'

PDEA Director-General Aaron Aquino said Robredo's tirade is a "mere political attack" on the President, belying figures that the drug was has made a mere 1 percent progress.

"As far as PDEA is concerned, the metrics for the success of the anti-illegal drug campaign is drug clearing, crime index, trust rating and operational accomplishments. To date, PDEA cleared 16,706 barangays of illegal drugs out of 33,881 or 49.13 percent," Aquino said in a statement, adding that Duterte's approval rating also peaked in December last year.

The PDEA chief and ICAD chair added that his agency has seized 45 billion worth of illegal drugs in the last three years and arrested 225,284 drug users and pushers. "How can she claim its a failure? Yes, there are still shortcomings and flaws to the illegal drug programs particularly on rehabilitation but that is what ICAD is addressing now as one working committee," Aquino said.

Aquino once gave a fearless forecast that Robredo will fail in leading the country's crackdown on illegal substances. The Vice President later reported that the former cop pleaded for her to stay at the helm of ICAD.

READ: Maam wag mo kaming iiwan: Robredo claims PDEA chief pleaded her to stay in anti-drug body

Robredo's spokesman Barry Gutierrez went on to refute Aquino, saying the Vice President stuck to "empirical evidence" in making the report.

"DG Aquino does not dispute these numbers and instead presents completely unrelated statistics such as the number of arrests and the President's approval rating. These do not address the basic point that only a miniscule fraction of total drug supply is being stopped by government efforts," he said in a statement on Monday afternoon, telling the ICAD chief to read Robredo's report in full.
Politicians should regain public's trust before polls





With about three months to go before the upcoming April general election, calls are growing for political reform. The harsh reality, however, makes it difficult to expect the elections to bring about new politics to the country. This is because politicians, both ruling and opposition, are still mired in old politics: partisan struggles and ideological confrontations.





Such outdated politics culminated recently when the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) railroaded two fast-tracked bills for electoral and prosecutorial reform at the National Assembly. The conflict between the liberal DPK and the main conservative Liberty Korea Party (LKP) shows no signs of abating in the run-up to the elections.



Making matters worse, the rival parties are trying to rally their support by deepening political and ideological divisions. Simply put, they are firmly sticking to the status quo and protecting their own vested interests. This means that politicians, progressive and conservative alike, are ignoring the public's aspiration for drastic changes to the nation's political landscape.



President Moon Jae-in was elected under the slogan of building a new Korea by eliminating "old evils" in the aftermath of the impeachment of his predecessor Park Geun-hye in a massive corruption and power abuse scandal. Since his May 2017 inauguration, Moon has vowed to create a fair and just society.



For this reason, the Moon government and the ruling party should have gone all-out to usher in clean politics and reconstruct democracy. But they have been long on words but short on action. They have failed to be any different from the corrupt and incompetent Park administration. Rather, they seem to have resorted to the outdated politics of previous governments.



It is really disappointing to see the Moon administration easily forgetting the lesson from Park's ouster. The government has already forgotten the cries of mass candlelit rallies calling for Park's removal from power and the start of new politics. Moon has yet to make good on his promise to reach out to the opposition parties for "cooperative politics." He has still refused to embrace the LKP as political partners.



Of course, the Moon government and the DPK are not alone in bearing responsibility for the current political situation. The LKP has also invited the public's rage for its intransigence and extreme struggles in pursuing opposition just for the sake of opposition. It has failed to reflect on its failure as a former ruling party which could not prevent its then president from engaging in corruption and influence-peddling.



Against this backdrop, the rival parties should make concerted efforts to leave their old political shenanigans behind and introduce new politics. If they cannot do this ahead of the elections, they may lose the rare opportunity to make a political transformation and establish a mature democracy. Most of all, it is imperative to create a new political culture based on dialogue and compromise.



The ultimate goal of politics is to promote national unity and social cohesion to help the people live a better life. Without serving this goal, there is no reason for politicians to exist. They must double down on restoring the trust of the pubic before it is too late.




New Delhi, Jan 6 : India on Monday summoned Pakistan High Commission representative to lodge its protest against the desecration of the birthplace of first Sikh guru at Nankana Sahib and the killing of a Sikh youth in Pakistan.

A Ministry of External Affairs statement said that Pakistan's Charge d'affaires, Syed Haider Shah, was summoned following the recent "acts of vandalism and desecration" of the holy shrine of Sikhs in Punjab province and the targeted killing of Parvinder Singh, a member of the Sikh community in Peshawar.

Describing the incidents as "despicable and heinous, the government also shared concerns raised by members of the civil society, Parliamentarians and others at the continued persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in Pakistan.

New Delhi asked Islamabad "to ensure safety, security and welfare of the members of the minority communities in Pakistan, including their places of worship." The Imran Khan-led government has been urged to expeditiously bring the perpetrators to justice.
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361 Degrees International Limited (HKG:1361), which is in the luxury business, and is based in China, saw significant share price movement during recent months on the SEHK, rising to highs of HK$1.83 and falling to the lows of HK$1.31. Some share price movements can give investors a better opportunity to enter into the stock, and potentially buy at a lower price. A question to answer is whether 361 Degrees International's current trading price of HK$1.38 reflective of the actual value of the small-cap? Or is it currently undervalued, providing us with the opportunity to buy? Lets take a look at 361 Degrees Internationals outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if there are any catalysts for a price change.

View our latest analysis for 361 Degrees International

What's the opportunity in 361 Degrees International?

According to my relative valuation model, the stock seems to be currently fairly priced. Ive used the price-to-earnings ratio in this instance because theres not enough visibility to forecast its cash flows. The stocks ratio of 7.61x is currently trading slightly below its industry peers ratio of 8.98x, which means if you buy 361 Degrees International today, youd be paying a reasonable price for it. And if you believe that 361 Degrees International should be trading at this level in the long run, then theres not much of an upside to gain from mispricing. Is there another opportunity to buy low in the future? Since 361 Degrees Internationals share price is quite volatile, we could potentially see it sink lower (or rise higher) in the future, giving us another chance to buy. This is based on its high beta, which is a good indicator for how much the stock moves relative to the rest of the market.

What does the future of 361 Degrees International look like?

SEHK:1361 Past and Future Earnings, January 6th 2020

Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Buying a great company with a robust outlook at a cheap price is always a good investment, so lets also take a look at the company's future expectations. With profit expected to grow by 56% over the next couple of years, the future seems bright for 361 Degrees International. It looks like higher cash flow is on the cards for the stock, which should feed into a higher share valuation.

Story continues

What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? It seems like the market has already priced in 1361s positive outlook, with shares trading around its fair value. However, there are also other important factors which we havent considered today, such as the financial strength of the company. Have these factors changed since the last time you looked at 1361? Will you have enough confidence to invest in the company should the price drop below its fair value?

Are you a potential investor? If youve been keeping an eye on 1361, now may not be the most advantageous time to buy, given it is trading around its fair value. However, the positive outlook is encouraging for 1361, which means its worth diving deeper into other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to take advantage of the next price drop.

Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters  the fundamentals  before you make a decision on 361 Degrees International. You can find everything you need to know about 361 Degrees International in the latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in 361 Degrees International, you can use our free platform to see my list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
The leaders of Germany, France and Britain on Sunday urged Iran to drop measures that go against the 2015 nuclear deal. (Photo Credit: File Photo)

New Delhi:

The leaders of Germany, France and Britain on Sunday urged Iran to drop measures that go against the 2015 nuclear deal, after Tehran announced it would no longer abide by a limit on enrichment. "We call on Iran to withdraw all measures that are not in line with the nuclear agreement," German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British PM Boris Johnson said in a joint statement.

Iran on Sunday announced that it will no longer abide by the 2015 Nuclear deal. According to the 2015 Nuclear Deal, which is officially called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed between Iran and five permanent members of the security council plus Germany, Iran had agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium. It also was required to cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98%, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of its gas centrifuges for next 13 years.

With tensions rising following the US drone strike at Baghdad airport that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and top Iraqi military figure Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the European leaders also urged Iran to refrain from taking "further violent actions or support for them."

It is crucial now to de-escalate. We call on all the players involved to show utmost restraint and responsibility." The European leaders also pleaded with the parties to not jeopardise a battle against IS jihadists, after the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution demanding that thousands of US troops be ousted.

"Preserving the (anti-IS) coalition is of great importance in this context. We call on the Iraqi authorities to continue to provide the coalition with the necessary support," they said.

On Saturday, in the aftermath of Soleimanis killing, Trump warned Iran that the US has identified 52 possible targets in the country and will hit it harder than ever before if Tehran, which has vowed severe revenge, carries out any attack against America to avenge the killing of top military commander Qasem Soleimani.

Soleimani, 62, the head of Irans elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was killed when a US drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the Baghdad International Airport early on Friday. The strike also killed the deputy chief of Iraqs powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force.

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Indonesian rescuers mounted a desperate search Friday for those missing after flash floods and landslides sparked by torrential rains killed at least 43 people across the Jakarta region while health authorities raced to prevent disease outbreaks.

Around a dozen people were still unaccounted for after record rains that started on New Years Eve pounded the capital and left swathes of the megalopolis, home to some 30 million, under water and with thousands homeless. Around 192,000 residents have been evacuated to temporary shelters, according to authorities, with many unable to return to waterlogged homes in neighbourhoods turned into wastelands of debris and overturned cars.

Were encouraging people whose houses are still inundated to go to a safer place, said National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Agus Wibowo. The agency said 43 people had been confirmed dead in Greater Jakarta and neighbouring Lebak regency in the south of Java island.

Waters had receded in many areas and power, which had been shut off across many districts, was being restored. In hard-hit Bekasi, on the outskirts of the city, swampy streets were littered with debris and crushed cars lying on top of each other -- with waterline marks reaching as high as buildings second floors.

The government said Friday it would start cloud seeding to the west of the capital -- inducing rain using chemicals sprayed from planes -- to prevent approaching rainfall from pounding the region.

Everythings gone

Using inflatable boats to evacuate residents trapped in their homes, including children and seniors, rescuers said they were targeting the hardest-hit areas of the city on Friday. Shelters filled up with many refugees, including infants, resting on thin mats as food and drinking water ran low.

Its impossible for me to go back to my home, said 72-yearold Lumongga Siregar. We have no clean water right now ... and were hoping for more food because there isnt much, she added. Mother Dewi Puspitasari worried about her one-yearold daughters health.

The blanket and mat Ive got here arent thick enough for her and were scared she will get sick, she told AFP. Indonesias health ministry said it deployed some 11,000 health workers and soldiers to distribute medicine, disinfectant hygiene kits and food in a bid to stave off outbreaks of Hepatitis A, mosquito-borne Dengue fever and other illnesses, including infections linked to contact with dead animals.

In hard-hit Lebak outside Jakarta, residents started the slow process of cleaning up their deluged homes. Everythings gone, said shop owner Aminah, who goes by one name. I couldnt bring anything ... I left it all because I got scared at how high the water was getting.

Phenomenally bad

Around Jakarta, a family -- including a four and nine-yearold -- died of suspected gas poisoning from a portable power generator, while an eight-yearold boy killed in a landslide and an 82-year-old pensioner were also among the victims. Others died from drowning or hypothermia, while one 16-yearold boy was electrocuted by a power line.

Most services have been restored although some commuter train lines were still suspended Friday. Jakarta is regularly hit by floods during the rainy season, which started in late November. But this weeks disaster marked Jakartas worst flooding since 2013 when dozens were killed after the city was inundated by monsoon rains.

This years flooding was phenomenally bad because of the extremely high rainfall, said Yayat Supriatna, a Jakarta-based urban planning expert.
Boris Johnson today pleaded with Iraq not to kick out UK and US troops in response to the killing of Qassem Soleimani

Boris Johnson today pleaded with Iraq not to kick out UK and US troops in response to the killing of Qassem Soleimani.

In a phone call with Iraqi counterpart Adil Abdul Mahdi, the PM tried to cool anger by stressing his commitment to 'Iraq's stability and sovereignty' after the Iranian commander was assassinated on its territory.

He also 'emphasised the importance of the continued fight against the shared threat' from ISIS, according to Downing Street.

The appeal came after Iraqi parliamentarians voted to expel coalition forces from the country following the dramatic drone strike in Baghdad on Friday. The result is not binding unless accepted by the government.

Mr Trump reacted with fury to the threat, warning that Iraq could face crippling sanctions if it follows through.

Mr Johnson's official spokesman refused to criticise the drone strike today despite Tehran saying UK forces could be 'collateral damage' in reprisals.

But No10 did caution that attacks on cultural sites - an idea Mr Trump has mooted - could break international law.

Mr Johnson has returned to Westminster after his Caribbean holiday, but finds himself walking a tightrope between Mr Trump and other allies who want to ease tensions.

In a phone call with Iraqi counterpart Adil Abdul Mahdi (pictured), the PM tried to cool anger by stressing his commitment to 'Iraq's stability and sovereignty' after the Iranian commander was assassinated on its territory

The UK has armed forces personnel deployed in a variety of locations across the Middle East

Soleimani (left), the architect of Tehran's overseas clandestine and military operations as head of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, was killed on Friday in a US drone strike (President Trump right) on his convoy at Baghdad airport

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab (left) and Mr Johnson's key adviser Dominic Cummings (right) were at work in Whitehall today as the Iran crisis threatens to snowball

Soleimani's body was returned to Iran on Sunday. People are seen carrying his casket upon arrival at Ahvaz International Airport in Tehran. The casket was greeted by chants of 'Death to America' as Iran issued new threats of retaliation

Breaking his silence last night, Mr Johnson insisted Britain 'will not lament' the death of Qassem Soleimani.

He said the general, killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad on Friday, had played a role in the deaths of thousands of innocent people and was a 'threat to all our interests'.

Trump's drone strike could 'pay off', Jeremy Hunt says Donald Trump's dramatic strike on commander Qassem Soleimani could 'pay off', Jeremy Hunt said today. The former foreign secretary said the controversial killing was a 'bold move' - pointing out that Qassem Soleimani was behind 'regional instability'. 'I think it's easy to underestimate why it could have been a bold move that actually pays off because if there's one person who's responsible for regional instability - in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen - it was Soleimani,' he told Sky News. 'He was the hardline radical inside the Iran regime who had the ear of the Supreme Leader.' Advertisement

Briefing reporters today, the spokesman said: 'States have a right to take action such as this in self-defence, and the US have been clear that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on American diplomats and military personnel.'

Iran has vowed to avenge the death of Soleimani, and a senior commander has issued a chilling warning that British forces could be hit.

An unnamed commander told The Times: 'Our forces will retaliate and target US troops in Middle East without any concern about killing its allies, including UK troops, as this has turned into a fully fledged war with much collateral damage expected.'

Former security minister Admiral Lord West has raised concerns that UK assets could be a 'softer target' than those of the US.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump has reacted with fury after Iraq said US and UK forces could be kicked out of the country. The president suggested the country could be hit with crippling sanctions if it follows through on the move.

The UK cautioned against the expulsion, saying it would give a major boost to ISIS just as the terrorist group seems to be on the back foot.

Donald Trump's dramatic strike on commander Qassem Soleimani could 'pay off', Jeremy Hunt said today

Washington says Soleimani was the architect of Iran's proxy wars across the Middle East and behind the deaths of hundreds of Americans in roadside bombings and other attacks.

Mr Trump issued a series of explosive tweets yesterday, threatening all-out war against the Iranian regime and boasted of the military arsenal at his disposal.

Chaos as UK troops abandon their anti-IS missions in Iraq Britain's fight against ISIS is in chaos after the training mission in Iraq was ditched. Soldiers teaching local forces how to fight the militants were ordered to guard their bases instead amid fears that Iran could launch an attack in revenge for the killing of General Qassem Soleimani. Iraq's parliament also voted to boot out all US-led forces in response to the drone strike. If the vote is approved by the government, thousands of foreign troops including British soldiers, would be forced to leave, crippling the battle against the militants. Prime minister Adil Abdul Mahdi said it was 'time for American troops to leave for the sake of our national sovereignty'. The British government urged Iraq to allow UK soldiers to continue their training mission. More than 200 are stationed at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, alongside American and German troops. Others are deployed in Erbil, northern Iraq, and there are a handful at two locations in Baghdad. Announcing the suspension of the training, a statement from the US-led mission against Islamic State cited rocket attacks in Iraq that were threatening the safety of coalition personnel. It added: 'As a result we are now fully committed to protecting the Iraqi bases that host coalition troops.' Former defence minister Tobias Ellwood said: 'This training suspension must not be permanent because it simply undermines the military efforts and huge resources put in to tackling Islamic State. 'This would lead to another reign of terror which will have repercussions far beyond the Middle East.' Advertisement

Referring to Iranian promises of retaliation published on social media, the US President tweeted: 'These media posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!'

Mr Johnson flew back from his holiday on the private island of Mustique yesterday, having ignored calls to return home early to deal with the crisis.

After landing in London, he held talks with Mr Trump, France's president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel.

He will assess the situation with Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace later.

Mr Johnson's spokesman said: 'The coalition is in Iraq to protect Iraqis and others from the threat from Daesh at the request of the Iraqi government.

'We urge the Iraqi government to ensure the coalition is able to continue our vital work countering this shared threat.

'The Foreign Secretary spoke to the Iraqi president and prime minister this weekend.

'The Prime Minister is speaking with his Iraqi counterpart today and our ambassador in Baghdad is in touch with political leaders in Iraq to emphasise these points and urge them to ensure we can keep fighting this threat together.'

The PM said in a statement last night: 'General Qassem Soleimani posed a threat to all our interests and was responsible for a pattern of disruptive, destabilising behaviour.

'Given the leading role he has played in actions that have led to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and western personnel, we will not lament his death.

'It is clear however that all calls for retaliation or reprisals will simply lead to more violence in the region and they are in no one's interest.'

He urged all sides to encourage de-escalation and said the UK had taken steps to boost the security of UK personnel and interests in the region.

Mr Johnson, Ms Merkel and Mr Macron released a joint statement overnight in which they again stopped short of criticising the US.

'We have condemned the recent attacks on coalition forces in Iraq and are gravely concerned by the negative role Iran has played in the region, including through the IRGC and the Al-Quds force under the command of General Soleimani,' they said.

'There is now an urgent need for de-escalation. We call on all parties to exercise utmost restraint and responsibility. The current cycle of violence in Iraq must be stopped.

'We specifically call on Iran to refrain from further violent action or proliferation, and urge Iran to reverse all measures inconsistent with the JCPOA.

'We recall our attachment to the sovereignty and security of Iraq. Another crisis risks jeopardizing years of efforts to stabilize Iraq.

'We also reaffirm our commitment to continue the fight against Daesh, which remains a high priority. The preservation of the Coalition is key in this regard. We therefore urge the Iraqi authorities to continue providing the Coalition all the necessary support.

Chancellor Sajid Javid was also at work in Downing Street today, but is not thought to be taking part in meetings on the Iran situation

'We stand ready to continue our engagement with all sides in order to contribute to defuse tensions and restore stability to the region.'

Ministers will meet today to discuss the situation and the National Security Council will gather later in the week. Parliament will be updated when it returns from recess tomorrow.

Retired lieutenant general Sir Simon Vincent Mayall told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that UK forces would be at risk because they were 'joined at the hip' with the US in Iraq.

The Ministry of Defence adviser said: 'I don't think the British are any more vulnerable than the Americans in this case - we are joined at the hip in this.

'But the Iranians are quite right. Because we're so closely joined in this, any attack on American assets will inevitably, possibly lead to to British casualties as well.'

Lord West, a former head of the Royal Navy, warned that Britain could be a 'softer target' than the US for an Iranian retaliatory attack.

He told the Telegraph: 'Iran will assume that Britain would be party to any all out attack by the US.'

But former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said the dramatic step by the US could 'pay off'.

'I think it's easy to underestimate why it could have been a bold move that actually pays off because if there's one person who's responsible for regional instability - in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen - it was Soleimani,' he told Sky News.

'He was the hardline radical inside the Iran regime who had the ear of the Supreme Leader.'

Iran's nuclear announcement effectively ends its remaining commitments to a deal it agreed with Barack Obama. It said it would no longer observe restrictions on uranium enrichment or on research and development.

The statement noted that the steps could be reversed if Washington lifted its sanctions on Tehran.

The announcement came hours after hundreds of thousands of took to the streets to mourn Soleimani and chant 'death to America'.

The general's remains were carried through the cities of Ahvaz and Mashhad, ahead of a burial in his home town of Kerman tomorrow. One organiser for a funeral procession called on all Iranians to donate $1 each 'in order to gather an $80million bounty on President Trump's head'.

In a major blow for the fight against Islamic State, Iraq's parliament met for an emergency session yesterday and vowed to expel the 5,000 US troops in the country.

The vote still needs the approval of the Iraqi government, which has allowed a US-led presence to help combat the terror group. It had the backing of prime minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, who said it was 'time for American troops to leave'.

The US-led coalition announced its troops had suspended training in order to focus on protecting bases from Iranian attacks.

Iran has issued a series of threats against the Americans, with the foreign minister warning that the days of US troops in the region were over.

Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted: 'Whether kicking or screaming, end of US malign presence in West Asia has begun.'

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned in a televised address that US troops would pay the price for the killing of Soleimani by returning home in coffins.

Iranian lawmakers chant anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans to protest against the US killing of Iranian top general Qassem Soleimani at the start of an open session of parliament in Tehran, Iran, on Sunday

Tens of thousands of Iranians carrying the coffin of Qasem Soleimani while the crowds of mourners wept in the city of Mashad
From prison cells to Ph.D.: Advocates push to restore college access in prison

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What started as selling drugs as a teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, led to a pattern of more serious poor decisions for Stanley Andrisse as he grew up.

By his mid-20s, he found himself convicted of three felony drug trafficking charges with a prosecutor calling for 20 years to life in prison. The sharp words said by the prosecutor that day in 2006 stuck with Andrisse.

As he began a 10-year prison sentence, he contemplated the label he was given by the attorney. Could he really be a career criminal with little hope of leaving the criminal lifestyle?

Looking back on his life choices as a teenager and young adult, he was led at the time to believe that the prosecutor was right.

For much of my early incarceration, I saw myself as a bad person, Andrisse told The Christian Post in a recent interview. I saw myself as this career criminal. I saw myself as being someone who was hopeless. Once I got out, I thought the only thing that was really left for me to do was to continue doing what I had been doing.

But thanks to encouragement from a mentor and his pursuit of higher education, Andrisse turned his life around.

Today, Andrisse is living proof of the abundance of talent and intelligence living within people imprisoned in correctional facilities across the United States. And if given the opportunity and access to postsecondary education, they are capable of reaching extraordinary heights many never thought possible.

What we seek to do is really change that narrative around what that potential is [for people in prison], he said.

Years removed from his imprisonment, Andrisse is an endocrinologist scientist and assistant professor at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., where he is researching Type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance.

He also holds a visiting professorship at Georgetown University Medical Center and previously held an adjunct position at Johns Hopkins Medicine  a far cry from the career criminal label that had been pressed on him over 13 years ago.

Additionally, Andrisse serves on the frontlines of the growing bipartisan push to restore access to federal postsecondary education grants for people serving behind bars. He also mentors 100 formerly and currently incarcerated people each year as the executive director of a nonprofit called From Prison Cells to PhD (P2P).

P2P is one of many organizations advocating on Capitol Hill for a measure to restore incarcerated students eligibility to receive Pell Grants.

Pell Grants are a federal subsidy provided to low-income students to help them pay for college and other forms of postsecondary education. The grants are provided to all eligible students who apply.

But after tough-on-crime legislation passed in 1994, students in prisons have been barred from receiving Pell Grants. Since then, most college education programs in prisons have vanished.

Restoring Pell Grants to prisons, Andrisse argues, would provide more access to vocational classes as well as college and university degree programs. In due time, proponents contend, improving access to education in prisons will only reduce the nations troubling recidivism rate.

Nationally, 43.3 percent to 51.8 percent of formerly incarcerated individuals will recidivate within three years of leaving prison, Andrisse explained. Education has been correlated with a drastic reduction in recidivism rates.

What does the data say?

A research report from the independent national research and policy organization Vera Institute of Justice, published last January, states that most people in prison in the U.S. are not receiving postsecondary education despite the fact that 64 percent are academically eligible.

The report explains that 58 percent of people who are incarcerated in the U.S. do not complete any education program at all while in prison. Citing 2014 data, the report suggests that only 9 percent completed a postsecondary program during their prison time.

Part of the problem is that access to postsecondary education in prison is extremely limited.

Most existing programs are funded through the federal Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative, which serves a maximum of 12,000 incarcerated students nationwide annually through partnerships with over 60 higher education institutions.

The Vera Institute report estimates that if the ban on Pell in prisons is lifted, about 463,000 incarcerated people would be eligible to receive Pell Grants.

According to a 2014 RAND Corporation report, the odds of recidivating are anywhere from 36 percent to 43 percent less likely for those who take part in correctional education programs than for those who do not.

The RAND report also found that the odds of finding post-release employment for those who participated in a correctional education program was 13 percent to 48 percent higher than for those who did not.

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Soldiers Memorial vandalized with anti-war graffiti Police in St. Louis, Missouri, are investigating vandalism at the Soldiers Memorial, which was spray-painted with anti-war graffiti over the weekend.

This wasn't a demonstration of peace and love . . . Look at the tags closely and it seems like. Checkit:
Communities from Wilbraham to Marthas Vineyard will use $7.5 million in grants from the state Department of Environmental Protection, funded by a federal settlement with several automakers, to help pay for vehicles ranging from diesel trucks to hybrid garbage trucks.

The department awarded grants for 98 projects, supporting the purchase of electric vehicles, liquid-propane-gas school buses, cleaner diesel trucks" and ferry engines. One grant will pay for a marine shore-power installation.

The money is from a settlement agreement the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency negotiated with Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., Audi, and Porsche, involving violations of the Clean Air Act. The federal governments enforcement against them began Jan. 4, 2016.

Massachusetts will see a total of $75 million from the settlement over 15 years.

The round of grants includes $304,380 to Wilbraham to purchase two diesel trucks and $140,437 to Amherst to purchase a diesel truck.

In a letter to the Amherst Town Council, Town Manager Paul Bockelman on Jan. 3 said the town would contribute $37,000 toward buying a tri-axle roll-off truck for the Department of Public Works to use in garbage collection and disposal.

It is estimated that this new vehicle will reduce the amount of diesel gas used by 1,150 gallons per year, he said, adding that the town expects to apply for another grant in future, since there is about $50 million remaining in the settlement funds.

The towns sustainability coordinator and public works superintendent collaborated on the grant application, the letter said.

The largest grants in the state were $500,000.

The Marthas Vineyard Regional High School District received that for two electric school buses, and the city of Cambridge got that amount for three plug-in, hybrid garbage trucks.

In 2018, transit authorities in the Pioneer Valley and on Marthas Vineyard announced plans to use $11 million in settlement money to buy electric buses.
India on Monday sought investment from Singapore in newly launched National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP), under which the government aims to take up infrastructure development projects worth over Rs 102 trn.

During a meeting between Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Singapore Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies Tharman Shanmugaratnam, it was decided that both countries will take forward the collaboration on Networked Trade Platform Initiative of Singapore.

Both ministers agreed on intensifying expert level discussions on this issue and concretise the way forward.

The Networked Trade Platform (NTP) developed by Singapore Customs and GovTech is a one-stop trade and logistics ecosystem which supports digitalisation efforts and connects players across the trade value chain in Singapore and abroad.

"Finance Minister Smt. @nsitharaman encouraged investors from #Singapore to explore the newly launched National Infrastructure Pipeline and become partners to the big push that Government of #India is envisaging for India's infrastructure sector," the finance ministry said in a tweet.

Last week, the finance minister unveiled Rs 102 trillion of infrastructure projects that will be implemented in the next five years as part of the government's spending push in the infrastructure sector.

These projects are on top of Rs 51 trillion spent by the Centre and the states during the last six years. The new pipeline consists of 39 per cent projects each by the Centre and states and the balance by 22 per cent by private sector.

"FM also expressed satisfaction in the work of the Joint Working Group on Fintech set up between #India and #Singapore and encouraged the Working Group to look into the long-term opportunities which are destined to grow manifold with more digital platforms becoming operational," it said.

"#Singapore's Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies extended Singapore's support for India's G20 Presidency in 2022 and expressed Singapore's strong desire in partnering with #India to ensure that India hosts a successful G20 Presidency," it said.
KPC Mission Statement:

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History

Kendallville Publishing Co. Inc., the predecessor of KPC Media Group Inc., was founded by O. E. Michaelis and George W. Baxter after merging their Kendallville daily newspapers into the Kendallville News-Sun on Aug. 7, 1911. The company was sold to C. O. Merica in 1913. He died in 1918 and his wife, Alice Merica, became the principal owner of the company for the next half century. At the time of her death on Jan. 25, 1969, at the age of 103, she was the oldest newspaper publisher in the United States. George O. Witwer, who came to Kendallville as editor and general manager of The News Sun in 1962, became the principal owner and publisher in 1969. Witwer family members continue as the owners and operators of the company. Terry G. Housholder, who first went to work for the company while in high school in 1969, was president and publisher from 2001 to 2018, when he stepped down as publisher but remained president of the board. The companys name changed to KPC Media Group Inc. in 2005, to reflect its expanded geographic market and additional products and services. The companys main office is at 102 N. Main St., Kendallville, in the same building where the publishing firm was founded a century ago. The companys other offices are in Auburn, Angola, Albion, Churubusco and Fort Wayne.

KPC Media Group Inc. remains a family-owned newspaper with family members still involved in day-to-day operations. It produces a variety of publications and websites. The following is a brief description and history of each:

The News Sun

The News Sun is the daily newspaper serving Noble and LaGrange counties in northeast Indiana. It traces its history back to the spring of 1859 or 1860 in Kendallville when Judson Palmiter began publication of the Noble County Journal, renamed the Kendallville Standard in 1870. In 1877, Dr. A.S. Parker launched a competitor to the Standard called the Weekly News. The two weeklies coexisted until 1898 when the publishers of the Standard hit the streets of Kendallville with the Daily Sun. Eight years later, in 1906, the Weekly News followed suit and began publication of the Daily News.

Daily competition existed in Kendallville for only five years. On Aug. 7, 1911, the Daily News and Daily Sun were consolidated into the Kendallville News-Sun. In 1965, the publishing company converted its letterpress printing operation to the offset process with the purchase of a four-unit press and folder. It was the third daily newspaper in Indiana to convert to the cold-type process. On July 2, 1984, with a redesign of the newspaper, the city name was dropped from the page one flag of The News Sun, reflecting the newspapers growing circulation area. On March 12, 2000, the newspaper added its Sunday edition. On April 6, 2009, it converted to a morning newspaper seven days a week.

Steve Garbacz, who has worked for KPC since 2015, is the managing editor of The News Sun.

The Star

The Star is the daily newspaper serving DeKalb County, Ind.. Its history reaches back into the 19th century. The Auburn Courier began publication as a weekly in 1871. Three years later, it found it had a competitor in the weekly Auburn Republican, renamed the Auburn Dispatch in 1885. They later merged.

In 1913, the Courier and Dispatch, a twice-a-week publication, became a daily named The Evening Star. The paper was owned and published by Verne Buchanan from 1916 until 1968, when it was purchased by Nixon Newspapers of Wabash, Indiana.

In December 1971, The Evening Star was purchased by KPC. On March 12, 2000, the newspaper added its Sunday edition. On April 6, 2009, it converted to a morning newspaper seven days a week. The newspapers name then became The Star.

David R. Kurtz is the editor of The Star.

The Herald Republican

The Herald Republican, serving Steuben County, Ind., traces its roots to the pre-Civil War publication, the Steuben Republican, first published in May 1857. The Angola Herald began publication as a Democratic newspaper in January 1876, as a counter to the Republican viewpoint. Both newspapers published continuously as separate newspapers, although printing of the two newspapers was consolidated in 1925 with the formation of the Steuben Printing Co. The two newspapers maintained separate ownership until the 1960s with the death of Angola Herald publisher and owner Harvey Morley. The Herald was then purchased by the Willis family, which had owned the Steuben Republican since 1907.

The Willis family continued to publish the Herald and the Republican weeklies separately until 1979 when the two newspapers merged, becoming the Herald-Republican. Then, in December 1982, the Willis family sold the Herald-Republican to Home News Enterprises of Columbus, Indiana. Home News expanded the newspaper to twice-weekly in April 1989, publishing first on Wednesdays and Fridays, and then Wednesdays and Saturdays, starting in September 1997.

KPC Media Group Inc. purchased the newspaper in August 2001, and expanded the paper on Sept. 12, 2001, to a daily newspaper.

The editor is Michael Marturello.

The Advance Leader

The Advance Leader, serving western Noble County, Ind., became part of KPC Media Group Inc. in May 1975. The weekly Cromwell Advance, founded in 1912 by Forrest Robbins, was purchased from Jim and Greta Wallace. The weekly Ligonier Leader, founded in 1880 by E.G. Thompson, was purchased from Norm Davis. The two mastheads were merged to form The Advance Leader, with the first issue published on May 14, 1975. The first co-editors were David Kurtz and Grace Witwer Housholder. The editor and general manager is Steve Garbacz, who joined KPC in 2015.

The Garrett Clipper

The Garrett Clipper, serving the Garrett and area community in southern DeKalb County, Ind., was purchased by KPC Media Group Inc. on Oct. 1, 1999, from Wayne and Pat Bartels. The Clipper of Garrett was formed in 1885 by A.J. Little and H. E. Little and is the oldest operating business in the city. The editor and publisher of The Clipper is Sue Carpenter, who joined KPC in 1974.

The Butler Bulletin

The Butler Bulletin, serving eastern DeKalb County, Ind., was purchased by KPC Media Group Inc. in December 2005, from publisher Joe Shelton, who founded the newspaper in 1976. The editor is Jeff Jones, who has worked for the weekly since 1985.

Albion New Era

The Albion New Era was founded in 1872 by Samuel E. Alvord, a native of Pennsylvania, who came to Noble County in 1849. He was a school teacher, lawyer, county clerk and journalist. The newspaper was sold to Jacob P. Prickett on Jan. 1, 1876. In 1896, the New Era was sold to J. E. Buchanan and then to Edwin L. Adair in 1903. Adair, an educator and former superintendent of Noble County schools, was the father of U.S. Rep. E. Ross Adair, who served northeast Indiana in Congress from 1951-1971. Richard C. Prickett, who was the longtime chief legislative aide to Congressman Adair, was owner and publisher of the New Era from 1940 until his death in 1978. Robert L. Allman took ownership of the company on Feb. 1, 1978. KPC acquired the paper in October 2014.

Northwest News

The Northwest News, serving the Huntertown, Arcola, Dupont and White Swan communities, was founded by Allman in August 1997. KPC acquired the paper in October 2014.

Churubusco News

The Churubusco News was established by Robert L. Allman in August 1992. Among the other Churubusco newspapers that previously existed were the Tri-County Truth (1891-1990), the Busco Paper (1914-1936) and the Churubusco Weekly Herald (1881-1882). KPC acquired the paper in October 2014.

IN|Whitley County

IN|Whitley County, a publication by KPC Media Group, is Whitley County's only free, all-local newspaper, which is delivered by mail to residents of Whitley County. The publication was launched by KPC in the spring of 2017.

Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly

The Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly, a newspaper dedicated to covering local and regional business news, debuted on March 14, 2005. It serves Fort Wayne and the 16-county region surrounding the Summit City. The editor is Lisa Long.

Times Community Publications  now IN|fort wayne Publications

The Times Community Publications, with free-distribution newspapers serving communities in Allen County, was purchased by KPC Media Group Inc. in December 2006, from founder Bill Fahlsing. The monthly publications serve five communities in Allen County: the Aboite area, New Haven, Northeast Allen County, Dupont area and downtown Fort Wayne.

The Smart Shopper

KPC has produced total-market-coverage print products since the mid-1970s. The Smart Shopper is a free newspaper and advertising publication that serves the residents in LaGrange, Noble, DeKalb and Steuben counties. This publication is delivered to more than 42,000 households every week.

KPC Phone Books & Directories

KPC has had a Phone Book Division since purchasing The Herald Republican in 2001. The previous owners had published the Steuben County phone book annually since 1986. In 2003, in addition to publishing the Steuben book, KPC published the first Noble/DeKalb County book. In 2004, KPC expanded to three books with a separate book for DeKalb County and a combined Noble/LaGrange County book.

Commercial Printing

In addition to the daily and weekly production of its own publications, KPC Media Group Inc. prints a wide variety of other publications on its high-speed Goss SSC 16 unit press with four-color capabilities. We offer printing on broadsheet, tabloid and mini-tab formats. Bindery, inserting and composition services are also offered.

KPC Direct (Direct Mail Services)

Direct mail is a fast, affordable way to grow and gain more customers when you only have a few seconds to get their attention. KPC Direct can deliver your message to a custom targeted list to ensure you reach your best potential customers with your newsletter, catalogue postcard and more. With superior customer service and unsurpassed expertise we can guide you through all of the intricacies of creating a direct mail campaign and get it delivered accurately, on time and at the lowest possible postage rate. Let us work with you to establish your business vision and with direct mail.
Today we'll look at Bosideng International Holdings Limited (HKG:3998) and reflect on its potential as an investment. In particular, we'll consider its Return On Capital Employed (ROCE), as that can give us insight into how profitably the company is able to employ capital in its business.

First of all, we'll work out how to calculate ROCE. Second, we'll look at its ROCE compared to similar companies. Finally, we'll look at how its current liabilities affect its ROCE.

What is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?

ROCE is a measure of a company's yearly pre-tax profit (its return), relative to the capital employed in the business. All else being equal, a better business will have a higher ROCE. Overall, it is a valuable metric that has its flaws. Author Edwin Whiting says to be careful when comparing the ROCE of different businesses, since 'No two businesses are exactly alike.

So, How Do We Calculate ROCE?

Analysts use this formula to calculate return on capital employed:

Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT)  (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)

Or for Bosideng International Holdings:

0.15 = CN1.6b  (CN16b - CN6.0b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2019.)

Therefore, Bosideng International Holdings has an ROCE of 15%.

Check out our latest analysis for Bosideng International Holdings

Is Bosideng International Holdings's ROCE Good?

One way to assess ROCE is to compare similar companies. Bosideng International Holdings's ROCE appears to be substantially greater than the 9.6% average in the Luxury industry. I think that's good to see, since it implies the company is better than other companies at making the most of its capital. Separate from Bosideng International Holdings's performance relative to its industry, its ROCE in absolute terms looks satisfactory, and it may be worth researching in more depth.

Our data shows that Bosideng International Holdings currently has an ROCE of 15%, compared to its ROCE of 5.9% 3 years ago. This makes us wonder if the company is improving. You can see in the image below how Bosideng International Holdings's ROCE compares to its industry. Click to see more on past growth.

Story continues

SEHK:3998 Past Revenue and Net Income, January 6th 2020

When considering ROCE, bear in mind that it reflects the past and does not necessarily predict the future. Companies in cyclical industries can be difficult to understand using ROCE, as returns typically look high during boom times, and low during busts. ROCE is, after all, simply a snap shot of a single year. What happens in the future is pretty important for investors, so we have prepared a free report on analyst forecasts for Bosideng International Holdings.

Bosideng International Holdings's Current Liabilities And Their Impact On Its ROCE

Liabilities, such as supplier bills and bank overdrafts, are referred to as current liabilities if they need to be paid within 12 months. Due to the way the ROCE equation works, having large bills due in the near term can make it look as though a company has less capital employed, and thus a higher ROCE than usual. To check the impact of this, we calculate if a company has high current liabilities relative to its total assets.

Bosideng International Holdings has total liabilities of CN6.0b and total assets of CN16b. As a result, its current liabilities are equal to approximately 37% of its total assets. Bosideng International Holdings has a middling amount of current liabilities, increasing its ROCE somewhat.

Our Take On Bosideng International Holdings's ROCE

Bosideng International Holdings's ROCE does look good, but the level of current liabilities also contribute to that. Bosideng International Holdings looks strong on this analysis, but there are plenty of other companies that could be a good opportunity . Here is a free list of companies growing earnings rapidly.

There are plenty of other companies that have insiders buying up shares. You probably do not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
BOSTON - A Guatemalan woman seeking asylum in Massachusetts is suing the federal government to reunite with her partner and son, who have been ordered to remain in Mexico under the Trump administrations asylum process.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of Maudy Constanza and her partner, Hanz Morales, argues the asylum policy violates constitutional due process and equal protection rights.

United States law protects asylum seekers like Ms. Constanza, Mr. Morales, and their children, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts said in the suit filed Friday in federal court in Boston. The law forbids sending people to countries where they will be persecuted or tortured, and provides migrants with an opportunity to see an immigration judge before they may be sent to a place where they fear such persecution or torture.

The civil rights group said the couple fled Guatemala with their three young children last year after Morales was shot four times. The family travelled together to Mexico but split up just before crossing the U.S. border in July 2019.

Constanza and the couples two daughters were released into the U.S. to pursue their asylum claim, but Morales and their 9-year-old son were returned to Mexico.

They are among more than 50,000 people who have been sent back to the country as a result of President Donald Trumps Remain in Mexico policy, which took effect in January 2019.

Formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, the policy requires asylum seekers from certain Spanish-speaking nations, including Guatemala, to wait out the U.S. immigration court process in Mexico.

But while living in Mexico, Morales and his son have survived an attempted kidnapping, struggled to find food and rarely leave their home because of the violent and dangerous conditions near the border, according to the ACLU.

The organization wants a federal judge to declare the asylum policy unlawful and allow Morales and his son to await the outcome of their case in the U.S. with the rest of their family.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is named in the suit, declined to comment.

The ACLU and other groups sued last year in San Francisco federal court on behalf of 11 migrants challenging the asylum policy. An appeals court panel heard arguments in the case in October but has yet to rule.

The ACLUs San Diego chapter has also sued the federal government over the policy, arguing that asylum-seekers should have access to an attorney before being returned to Mexico to wait.

___

Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.
Larijani: Trump commits crime equal with 1953 coup

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Jan 5, IRNA -- Iranian Parliament speaker Ali Larijani said US President Donald Trump has committed a crime equal with the 1953 coup engineered by the United States against Iranian legitimate government of Mohammad Mossadeq.

Addressing the Majlis formal session on Sunday, Larijani said that magnitude of targeted assassination of Iranian Commander Lieutenant General Qasem Soleimani led to place Trump's name in the same list as 1953 coup and targeting Iran passenger plane in 1988.

Condemning the US state terrorism of targeted assassination of Iranian IRGC Quds Commander Lieutenant General Qasem Soleimani, he said the Friday accident has changed political balance of both the region and the international community.

General Soleimani was a brave commander who played pioneering role in defending regional security, he noted.

Upon the request of Iraqi and Syrian governments, Iranian commander helped their people and uprooted terrorists by effective plans.

US officials alleged that General Soleimani wanted to take measures against American forces in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, adding that their allegation is not valid but a lie.

He urged US House of Representatives and people to know that Trump's allegation against the Iranian commander is a lie to cover up an international crime the US president perpetrated against the Iranian commander.

He reiterated that assassinating Iranian and Iraqi senior officials in Baghdad airport is outright violation of the United Nations Charter.

US president's brutal act is regarded as a war crime, he said.

Larijani addressed Trump saying his impolite secretary of state has dragged him into a quagmire.

He warned the US against endangering peace in the region, saying the US Administration is responsible for putting international peace at risk.

9376**1416

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The Pound New Zealand Dollar (GBP/NZD) exchange rate edged higher this morning, with the pairing currently trading around NZ$1.968 as global economic uncertainty continues to escalate ahead of the Washington-Beijing phase one trade deal, which is due to be signed off on the 15th January.

However, Chinas Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing commented that he was cautiously optimistic about the Chinese economy due to rising tensions between the US and China. This follows Washingtons airstrike on Iran which killed Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani.

Mr Chan commented:

Any escalation between the two countries may portend further instability in the Middle East which could have negative implications on the global economy, including Singapore.

With China being New Zealands largest economy, news of Chinese economic uncertainty has dampened market confidence in the risk-sensitive New Zealand Dollar today.

Meanwhile, in New Zealands economic news, today will see the release of the NZIER Business Confidence figure for the third quarter, and with any improvement on the previous quarters -35% we could see the NZD/GBP exchange rate improve.

UK Services PMI Beats Forecasts

The Pound (GBP) edged higher against the Kiwi following todays release of the UK Markit Services PMI, which beat forecasts were revised higher from 49 to 50 in December.

Tim Moore, Economists Associate Director at IHS Markit, was upbeat in his analysis, saying:

It is notable that the forward-looking business expectations index is now the highest since September 2018 and comfortably above its 'flash' reading for December. The modest rebound in new work provides another signal that business conditions should begin to improve in the coming months, helped by a boost to business sentiment from greater Brexit clarity and a more predictable political landscape.

However, this failed to provide much uplift for Sterling as the UKs largest sector continued to remain rather sluggish towards the end of 2019.

Brexit uncertainty also continues to hold back the GBP/NZD exchange of the 31st of January, when the UK is due to leave the European Union and enter its transition period which abruptly ends in late December this year.

GBP/NZD Exchange Rate Outlook: Could Sterling Sink on Further Brexit Uncertainty?

New Zealand Dollar (NZD) traders will be awaiting tomorrows release of the NZ Global Dairy Trade Price Index, which is expected to improve slightly from -5.1% to -0.8%. However, if this beats forecasts we could see the Kiwi improve on renewed hopes for New Zealands economic improvement.

Sterling traders will continue to pay close attention to Brexit developments after Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to open trade talks with the European Commission President, Ursula Von Der Leyen in Downing Street.

Any signs of growing tensions between the UK and the EU would prove Pound-negative as Brexit uncertainty increases.
As Congress reconvenes, it remains unclear when and under what circumstances the Senate will hold a trial on whether President Trump should be removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors. That uncertainty needs to end.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should promptly transmit the two articles of impeachment approved by the House to the Senate so that arrangements for a trial can begin. For his part, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should agree that witnesses whose testimony could be vital can be called to testify either by the Senate on its own initiative or in response to requests by the Houses managers or Trumps lawyers.

If McConnell is unwilling to commit to allow witnesses, Republican senators who want a fair trial should make it clear to the majority leader that they will join with Democrats to force his hand. Already, one Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has expressed concern over McConnells statement that the Senate would be working in total cooperation with the White House counsels office. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has said she was open to witnesses, though she thought decisions on whom to call should wait until after arguments by lawyers and the responses to questions submitted by senators.

Good for them for once again demonstrating their willingness to think independently. If just a few more Republicans insisted on witness testimony, that would produce the necessary majority. A trial with witnesses would be both fair to Trump, whose lawyers should be able to cross-examine them, and in the national interest. As Sen. Doug Jones, D-Alabama, put it in an opinion column in the Washington Post: For Americans to have confidence in the impeachment process, the Senate must conduct a full, fair and complete trial with all relevant evidence regarding the presidents conduct.

Jones rightly argued that a fair trial would require testimony from past and present administration officials who didnt testify in the House impeachment investigation, notably acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney (who is also director of the Office of Management and Budget) and former national security advisor John Bolton. Mulvaney and Bolton are also among the witnesses Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer has said should be subpoenaed to testify.

Bolton has been free with public comments about a variety of issues  most recently U.S. policy toward Iran. But he has failed to share with Congress what he knows about Trumps apparent efforts to persuade Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, and any connection between that request and the decision to stall hundreds of millions of dollars in congressionally approved aid. Boltons lawyer tantalizingly said in November that Bolton was personally involved in many events, meetings and conversations relevant to the impeachment inquiry.

If anything, recent developments strengthen the case for a Senate trial that includes testimony from witnesses who could shed further light on Trumps actions. On Dec. 29 the New York Times reported on how Trumps opposition to releasing the $391 million in security assistance for Ukraine sent shock waves through the White House and the Pentagon.

The newspaper also reported on a meeting in August in which Bolton, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo unsuccessfully sought to persuade Trump that releasing the aid was in the interest of the United States.

Did Trump explicitly acknowledge at that meeting or at any other that he was withholding aid in order to put pressure on Ukraine to announce the investigations? Testimony from Mulvaney, Bolton and other administration officials could answer that question.

With the process moving to the Senate, its appropriate to try to obtain testimony. Republicans who insist that Trump did nothing wrong should support such an effort.

Still, the goal should be a fair and complete trial. That is not what McConnell seems to have in mind, although he did say recently that Senate Republicans havent ruled out witnesses.

Yes, the Republican majority in the Senate gives that party a control over the process comparable to that exercised by the Democratic majority in the House. But that doesnt give McConnell the license to rush through a half-baked trial when the allegations against the president are so serious. A handful of Republican senators could and should make the majority leader recognize that fact.

 Los Angeles Times
The streets of Tehran were full of black-clad mourners on Monday, sending off Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian general whose death by U.S. drone strike last week has stoked fears of a new war in the Middle East.

Millions of Iranians are expected to take part in nationwide events honouring Soleimani in the lead-up to his Tuesday burial in his home town of Kerman.

The death has created fears of a new war between the U.S. and Iran and prompted Iran to drop any cooperation with a 2015 deal to limits its nuclear weapons programmes.

It also prompted Iraqi legislators to call for the removal of U.S. troops there, since Soleimani was killed at Baghdads airport.

The U.S. said Soleimani had to be targeted because he was planning attacks on U.S. citizens.

However, the incident may have turned Soleimani into a martyr in Iran.

Interestingly, many of those who turned out for the burial marches did not seem to be blind supporters of the Iranian regime.

Soleimani was a good and loyal soldier who defended our country for decades, said a 43-year-old plumber who identified himself only as Behnam M.

He credited the dead general with keeping militias of the Islamic State organisation out of Iran after they spread through Iraq and Syria.

Soleiman prevented that and thats why were all thankful to him, he said.

Another woman, who identified herself as Massumeh H, a 39-year-old housewife, said she was no fan of the government.

She said her son studies in Minnesota and is very happy there. She added that she has no problems with the U.S. or Americans.

Nonetheless, she was out with the crowds shouting: Death to the USA. This Trump is a complete idiot.

She said Trump had no right to target an Iranian soldier in another country just because he was pursuing interests different from those of the White House.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei conducted a prayer for the dead at the University of Tehran early Monday, with thousands present, including President Hassan Rowhani.

The ceremony was broadcast live on almost all the countrys television channels.

READ ALSO:

The keynote speaker was Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the militant Hamas group, which controls the Gaza Strip. Soleimanis daughter, Zeinab, also spoke.

The U.S. and the Zionists should not think that the fight against them will be interrupted with my fathers death, she said.

It will continue without him.

Afterwards, Soleimanis body is due to be transported to Azadi Square in the west of Tehran.

Millions of people are expected to be waiting along the almost 3km-long stretch to say goodbye to the former commander of the elite Quds Force, a division within Irans paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

The government declared on Monday a local public holiday in Tehran so that everyone could take part in the ceremony.

Several streets in the city centre were closed to cars because of the huge number of people expected, and schools and universities remained closed.

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Everywhere, walls are plastered with posters of Soleimani with the phrase You are gone, but we will keep following your path printed on them.

From Tehran, Soleimanis body is to be brought to the Shiite stronghold of Qom, where another ceremony in front of a mausoleum is planned.

Soleimani is expected to be finally laid to rest on Tuesday in his birthplace, the south-eastern town of Kerman, where the day has been declared a holiday.

This follows events on Sunday where hundreds of thousands of Iranians mourned Soleimani in Ahvaz in south-west Iran and in the holy city of Mashhad in north-east Iran, according to local media.

Aerial images from both cities show queues of people kilometres long.

The crowds were so massive that a third event with Irans entire leadership on Sunday evening at the Imam Khomenei Mosque in Tehran had to be cancelled because Soleimanis body could not be transported into the Iranian capital.

The events are against the backdrop of ever worsening relations between Washington and Iran and Iraq.

Iran has threatened retaliation for the attack, which prompted Trump to declare he would order attacks on Iranian cultural heritage sites in such a case.

He has also threatened sanctions on Iraq should U.S. troops be forcibly removed.

(dpa/NAN)
Engineer Ahmed Mohammed Shareef Al Khoori general director of the UAE Federal Transport Authority- Land & Maritime (FTA) held a meeting recently with Madiyar Menilbekov, Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the UAE, at the FTA office in Abu Dhabi.



Al Khoori welcomed the Kazakh delegation and discussed FTAs pioneering innovative projects and initiatives being implemented in accordance with the authoritys regulatory and oversight role to carry out the authoritys strategies in line with the nations leading vision.



During the meeting, both parties discussed ways on how to enhance cooperation efforts as well as exchanged experiences on best practices with the sector. They also talked about drafting a bilateral memorandum of understanding focused on increasing the cooperation between the two countries on key initiatives.



Al Khoori highlighted that the land and maritime transport sector in the UAE has been witnessing major progress in line with the strategic plans for land and maritime transport infrastructure. He further noted that FTA, through its strategic and operational plan, continues to effectively play its role in supporting local institutions and help them contribute to achieving the UAE Vision 2021, which embodies the national direction of these two vital sectors.



The Ambassador of Kazakhstan reiterated during the meeting the strong relations between the UAE and the Republic of Kazakhstan and hailed the wise leadership of HH Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE; HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai; and HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. - TradeArabia News Service
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister on Monday appealed for calm after a "very dangerous" escalation following the killing of a top Iranian general in a US drone strike.

Prince Faisal bin Farhan's appeal came as the US warned that Saudi Arabia faced a "heightened risk" of missile and drone attacks after Tehran vowed to avenge last week's assassination of Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad.

"It's certainly a very dangerous moment," Prince Faisal told reporters in Riyadh.

"We hope that all actors take all the steps necessary to prevent any further escalation and provocation." Prince Faisal spoke after a meeting of foreign ministers of Arab and African coastal states, including Egypt, Yemen and Djibouti, aimed at enhancing regional security, Saudi state media reported.

The killing of Soleimani, seen as the second most powerful man in Iran, is the most dramatic escalation yet in spiralling tensions between Washington and Tehran, prompting fears of a major conflict in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both allies of Washington, are vulnerable to Iranian counter strikes.

A string of attacks on Gulf oil tankers last year that were blamed on Iran, despite its denials, has raised tensions.

Strikes against Saudi oil installations in September also led Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to adopt a more conciliatory approach aimed at avoiding confrontation with Tehran.

Saudi King Salman emphasised the need for measures to defuse tensions in a phone call at the weekend with Iraqi President Barham Saleh.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has instructed Prince Khalid bin Salman, the deputy defence minister, to travel to Washington and London to urge restraint, the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported this week.

Prince Khalid will meet White House and US defence officials, the paper said, citing unnamed sources.

The US embassy in Riyadh has warned its citizens that military bases and energy facilities, particularly in the kingdom's oil-rich Eastern Province and areas near the Yemeni border, are vulnerable to missile and drone attacks.

Yemen's pro-Iran Huthi rebels, locked in a five-year conflict with a Saudi-led military coalition, have also called for swift reprisals for Soleimani's killing.
Police investigating the disappearance of two Idaho children believe the first wife of their mother's new husband may have been poisoned, DailyMail.com can reveal.

But tests on the exhumed body of fitness fan Tammy Daybell won't be completed for at least another two weeks, Fremont County Sheriff Len Humphries said.

'We're looking for poison, but we are just having to wait for lab results,' Humphries said in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com.

'You could say we are in a sort of holding pattern right now.'

Daybell died on October 19, aged 49. She was in training for a 5K run to be held a few days after her death, one friend told DailyMail.com.

'She was into healthy living, very fit  and then all of a sudden we hear she has died,' the friend said. 'It didn't make sense then and it doesn't make sense now.'

Mother-of-five Daybell was married to Mormon Doomsday author Chad Daybell who then tied the knot with Lori Vallow two weeks after her death.

Chad Daybell and Vallow are now in hiding after police started to question the whereabouts of her two youngest children, Tylee Ryan, 17, and Joshua 'JJ' Vallow  who have not been heard from since late September.

'POISONED': Police believe Tammy Daybell's death was caused by poison, DailyMail.com can reveal. The mother-of-five died on October 19, aged 49. She was in training for a 5K run to be held a few days after her death, one friend told DailyMail.com

HUSBAND: Daybell was married to Mormon Doomsday author Chad Daybell (pictured together). But two weeks after his wife's death Chad married Lori Vallow

ON THE RUN: Chad Daybell (left) and Vallow (right) are now in hiding after police started to question the whereabouts of her two youngest children, Tylee Ryan, 17, and Joshua 'JJ' Vallow  who have not been heard from since late September

MISSING: Tylee Ryan (left) and Joshua JJ Vallow (right) have not been seen or heard from since September but cops only realized they were missing two days before Thanksgiving when they were asked to conduct a welfare check by relatives who had been unable to contact JJ since September

Cops fear the youngsters are dead but Daybell, 51, and Vallow, 46, are refusing to cooperate with the hunt.

Vallow had taken JJ out of school and authorities were unaware they were missing until his worried grandmother called them saying she could not contact him.

Fremont Sheriff's Department is heading up the investigation into Tammy Daybell's death after she died at her home in Salem, Idaho, 15 minutes  and across the county line  from the apartment in Rexburg where the children were last known to be living.

'From an investigation point of view this is a disaster,' Humphries said in his office in St. Anthony, Fremont's county seat.

'There are multiple agencies involved  us, Rexburg police, the FBI, as well as police departments in Arizona.

'There are people who have died strangely in several places, and two kids that we have absolutely no idea where they are.

'Add to that, the mother is known to have told family members that her daughter died a year ago, which we know is not true.

'And then she claimed that the 17-year-old had run off with the 7-year-old and didn't say anything to authorities.

'What kind of parent doesn't help try to find their own kids when they are missing?' he said.

Fremont County Sheriff Len Humphries (pictured) said he believed Daybell and Vallow have left Idaho but are still in the United States. 'From an investigation point of view this is a disaster,' Humphries said in his office in St. Anthony, Fremont's county seat. 'What kind of parent doesn't help try to find their own kids when they are missing?'

The Fremont County Coroner originally ruled that Tammy Daybell had died of natural causes, but after suspicions were raised she asked a judge in Utah to have her body exhumed from its grave in Evergreen Cemetery in Springville, Utah, where Chad had once worked. But tests on the exhumed body won't be completed for at least another two weeks, Humphries said. Pictured: The grave where Tammy's body was exhumed from

Daybell and Vallow are linked to at least three other suspicious deaths and one attempted murder in just the last two years, adding to cops' suspicions that the children may have been killed. Pictured: Map showing the suspicious deaths that the couple are linked to

Timeline of Joshua and Tylee's disappearance July 11: Lori Vallow's husband, Charles Vallow, killed in self-defense by her brother, Alex Cox, in Arizona following an argument between the three people August: The last time Joshua's grandparents, Kay and Larry Woodcock, said they saw the boy via FaceTime August: September: Lori moved children Joshua and Tylee to Rexburg, Idaho September 23: The last time Joshua was seen at his school in Idaho October: Activity found on a Venmo account that may belong to Tylee October 19: Chad Daybell's wife, Tammy Daybell, dies at their home in Rexburg. Officials rule her death to be of natural causes October 22: Tammy is buried in Springville, Utah Late October: Lori and Chad get married November 26: Out-of-state relatives ask Idaho police to perform a welfare check on Joshua. Lori and Chad claim he is in Arizona with a family friend. Police also learn Tylee has not been seen since September, either November 27: Police execute a search warrant at Lori and Chad's home, discovering the couple have fled the city December 11: Tammy Daybell's body is exhumed from the Utah cemetery December 12: Lori's brother, Alex Cox, believed to have died in Arizona Advertisement

Humphries said he believed Daybell and Vallow have left Idaho but are still in the United States.

Their attorney Sean Bartholick said in a statement: 'Chad Daybell is a loving husband and has the support of his children in this matter. Lori Daybell is a devoted mother and resents assertions to the contrary.

'We look forward to addressing the allegations once they have moved beyond speculation and rumor.'

Fremont County Coroner Brenda Dye originally ruled that Tammy Daybell had died of natural causes, but after suspicions were raised she asked a judge in Utah to have her body exhumed from its grave in Evergreen Cemetery in Springville, Utah, where Chad had once worked.

The body was dug up on December 11 and now a coroner in Utah is performing tests.

Humphries revealed that police in Arizona alerted his department that things may not be as they seemed. In his 12 years as sheriff, he said he had never had any contact with Chad Daybell.

'Then about 10 days prior to her death we got a call that a guy in a mask was firing paintballs at their house. By the time we responded of course there was no one there. The feeling was it was all a prank.'

At the time Tammy Daybell wrote on Facebook: 'Something really weird just happened,' the East Idaho News reported.

'I had gotten home and parked in our front driveway. As I was getting stuff out of the back seat, a guy wearing a ski mask was suddenly standing by the back of my car with a paintball gun. He shot at me several times, although I don't think it was loaded.

'I yelled for Chad and he ran off around the back of my house.'

Daybell and Vallow are linked to at least three other suspicious deaths and one attempted murder in just the last two years, adding to cops' suspicions that the children may have been killed.

Vallow's husband Joseph Ryan was just 59 when he died of an apparent heart attack in 2018. He was cremated so his body cannot be exhumed.

She then married Charles Vallow, who was shot dead by her brother Alex Cox after the three got into an argument when he went to pick up JJ in July. Vallow was 62.

Tammy's body was dug up on December 11 and now a coroner in Utah is performing tests. Humphries revealed that police in Arizona alerted his department that things may not be as they seemed. He said about 10 days before Tammy's death police got a call about 'a guy in a mask was firing paintballs at their house'

At the time Tammy Daybell wrote on Facebook (pictured): 'Something really weird just happened. I had gotten home and parked in our front driveway. As I was getting stuff out of the back seat, a guy wearing a ski mask was suddenly standing by the back of my car with a paintball gun. He shot at me several times, although I don't think it was loaded. I yelled for Chad and he ran off around the back of my house'

Cox, who had been charged in both Texas and Utah for violent assaults, died on December 12, the day after Tammy's body was dug up. He was 51. The cause of his death has not been released.

And Brandon Boudreaux was shot at as he drove in Gilbert, Arizona, on October 2. The Jeep that his would-be killer was driving was registered to Charles Vallow, who had died three months earlier, court papers show.

Boudreaux told the Arizona Republic that his wife, Melani  Lori Vallow's niece  had joined Daybell's cult and suddenly asked for a divorce over the summer.

Daybell has written some 25 books and was known as a 'prepper' someone who is getting ready for the End of Times, Dr. Cristina Rosetti, a PhD who spent four years researching fundamentalist Mormons, told DailyMail.com.

'They become hoarders, for lack of a better word, gathering a lot of food, water and ammunition,' Rosetti added.

'This is not something out of the ordinary, it is something that Mormonism encouraged at a time and there has been a history of people preparing for the last days.'

Daybell was a member of a group called Preparing A People. On its website, he described himself as 'author, publisher, speaker, visionary.'

Michael and Nancy James, who run the organization's website, say they are cooperating with police in their search for Daybell and Vallow and have removed any promotional material for the couple as it would be 'inappropriate' for them to keep it on the site.

'Like everyone, we are deeply disturbed over media reports involving Mr. Daybell and his new wife Lori Vallow and her 2 missing children,' the Jameses wrote on the site.

DEAD HUSBAND: Vallow's first husband Joseph Ryan was just 59 when he died of an apparent heart attack in 2018. She then married Charles Vallow (pictured together), who was shot dead by her brother Alex Cox in July. Vallow was 62. Cox, who had been charged in Texas and Utah for violent assaults, died on December 12, the day after Tammy's body was dug up. He was 51. The cause of his death has not been released

ATTEMPTED MURDER: Brandon Boudreaux (left) was shot at as he drove in Gilbert, Arizona, on October 2. Boudreaux said that his wife, Melani (right)  Lori Vallow's niece  had joined Daybell's cult and suddenly asked for a divorce over the summer

'We do not share any of Chad Daybell's or Lori Vallow's beliefs if they are contrary to Christian principles of honesty, integrity and truth, or if they do not align with the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,' they added.

Daybell claims his religious views were formed as a young man when he had two near-death experiences. The first was when he was cliff jumping as a 17-year-old and he 'crossed into another dimension and realized there was a world beyond this one.'

The second was in his early-20s when he was smashed around in heavy surf. 'He was hit with a monstrous wave at La Jolla Cove in California, the biography for his book Living on the Edge of Heaven states.

'While his body was being tossed by the wave, his spirit was visiting with his grandfather, who showed him future events involving his still-unborn children.

Chad Daybell (pictured) allegedly claimed to have prophesied the death of his previous wife three weeks before she died

'This accident caused his 'veil' that separates mortal life from the Spirit World to stay partially open, so he often feels as if he has a foot in both worlds.'

He has written about apocalyptic times in a series of 'Times of Turmoil' books. One of the books, Days of Fury, tells of Mormons coping with the imposition of martial law and the aftermath of an earthquake in Salt Lake City, Utah.

But Daybell's fame as an author has now been overshadowed by the mystery of his disappearance and the deaths of so many people associated with him and his new wife.

Lori's former mother-in-law, Kay Varrow Woodcock wrote on Facebook: 'Things started changing over the past 18+ months when Lori began spending all her time with a new religious group, that we refer to as a 'cult'.

Woodcock, who lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana, told Fox 10 that Lori's personality had changed over the past 24 months.

'To think that within the last two years she has completely changed into a monster, I'm making an understatement,' Kay said.

She added: 'Something happened to her. Once she got involved with that cult with Daybell, she just turned off. The person we knew just went away.'

Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact the Rexburg Police Department at 208-359-3000, or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 800-THE-LOST.
"I can't tell you how I'm just so lucky. I have to be the luckiest person," Lt.-Gov. Janice Filmon says of her life so far.
Irans UN ambassador says US started a war against Iran

Donald Trump said strike was to stop a war, not to start a war

US deploys 3,000 more troops to Middle East

Second airstrike in Baghdad kills five people, Iraqi officials claim

The US started a war against Iran by killing top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, Irans UN Ambassador has said.

Majid Takht Ravanchi said the killing of the general in a US airstrike in Baghdad would bring harsh revenge from Iran.

His comments come as Donald Trump said the decision to launch the airstrike was aimed to stop a war, not to start a war.

General Qassem Soleimani was killed in an airstrike at Baghdad airport (Picture: Pool / Iranian Supreme Leader Press Office /Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

The death of General Soleimani, head of Irans elite Quds force, in the airstrike at Baghdad airport, which also killed nine others, has sparked an escalation in tensions between America and Iran, including the deployment of thousands of US troops to the region.

On Friday, Iraqi officials claimed that another air strike north of Baghdad hit two cars carrying Iran-backed militia, killing five people.

He should have been taken out many years ago

Speaking at his private club in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, Mr Trump said he ordered the strike because Soleimani had killed and wounded many Americans over the years and was planning to kill more.

We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war, he said, added: He should have been taken out many years ago.

Donald Trump said the airstrike was aimed to stop a war, not start one (Picture: REUTERS/Tom Brenner)

Iran has vowed revenge for the attack, and in an interview with CNN Mr Ravanchi said: The US has already started a war against Iran, not just an economic war but something beyond that by assassinating one of our top generals.

He added: There will be harsh revenge.

His comments echo those of Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who vowed harsh retaliation after the airstrike, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani who called the killing a heinous crime and said his country would take revenge.

Troops deployed and US citizens urged to leave Iraq

In the aftermath of the airstrike, which hit headlines around the world, the United States said it was sending nearly 3,000 more army troops to the Middle East.

Story continues

The US also urged American citizens to leave Iraq immediately and said the US embassy in Baghdad, which was attacked by Iran-backed militiamen and their supporters last week, is closed with all consular services have been suspended.

US embassies also issued a security alert for Americans in Bahrain, Kuwait and Nigeria.

Marches in Tehran

Thousands of worshippers in Tehran took to the streets after Friday prayers to condemn the killing, waving posters of Soleimani and chanting Death to deceitful America.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called on the resistance the world over to avenge Soleimanis death.

Thousands of people took to the streets in Tehran following Soleimani's death (Picture: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

Mr Trump has also faced criticism on home turf, with Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden saying he had: tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox, which could leave the US on the brink of a major conflict across the Middle East.

The US Defence Department said it killed 62-year-old Soleimani because he was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region. It also accused the general of approving violent protests at the US embassy in Baghdad.

As tensions continued to escalate, the European Union warned against a generalised flare-up of violence.

Russia condemned the killing, and China said it was highly concerned.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: A 27-year-old thief, who got trapped in a house, attempted suicide by setting himself ablaze on Wednesday. The injured Shashank works as daily wage labourer and had tried to burgle a house in HAL.

A senior police officer said, around 6.30 am, house owner Mohan, a civil contractor, was leaving his home in Vibuthipura, with his wife and children.

While Mohans wife was packing some things outside their house, Shashank gained entry into it. The family locked the door from outside unaware that Shashank was inside.

Fearing that he would be caught as he had no access to escape, he tried to hang himself but didnt succeed. He then brought a pillow and bedsheet to the kitchen and set himself ablaze after leaking LPG. Around 8.30 am, when the family returned and saw the fire, they alerted the neighbours who doused the fire and found Shashank inside. The family alerted HAL police before rushing him to a private hospital from where he was shifted to Victoria hospital. He is said to be out of danger.

A case has been registered against Shashank and police said they will arrest him after he is discharged from the hospital.
UTICA, N.Y.  After FEMA denied individual assistance to victims of the Halloween floods, the Community Foundation of Herkimer and Oneida Counties is partnering with the Rising Phoenix Holdings Corporation to raise money locally.

Community members are invited to donate money to the Foundation for flood assistance, which Rising Phoenix Holdings will match up to $50,000.

"Its been well documented, this community has a giving spirit and it comes together, particularly in times of need. People are anxious and willing to help their neighbors who are suffering from the effects of mother nature in this instance as well as others, said John Swann, executive vice president of the Community Foundation.

Rising Phoenix Holdings Corporation is the parent company of disaster preparedness and recovery firms like Tidal Basin Government Consulting and Adjusters International, Ltd.

Since any federal help for individuals is unlikely, local support is now even more importantand the partnership we announced last November with Rising Phoenix Holdings Corporation continues to double each dollar that we receive for flood recovery efforts, said Alicia Dicks, Community Foundation president and CEO.

The company match could make up to $100,000 in aid available to help those whose homes and small businesses were damaged by the floods.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has 30 days to appeal FEMAs decision to deny federal assistance to flood victims. In a statement released Friday, Cuomo expressed his disappointment with the decision, saying:

FEMA needs to step up, do the right thing and help these people restore and rebuild their lives and homes. The agency's sole mission is to help communities dealing with disasters and a one-sentence denial is woefully inadequate and does nothing to offer hope for these families. We will be appealing this denial.

For more information, or to donate to the Foundation, visit: foundationhoc.org/floodmatch2019.
Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) on Monday called for the removal of vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar accusing him of perpetuating violence after attack by a masked mob on the campus on Sunday evening.

JNUSU said, goons from outside, especially Delhi University were imported to break the momentum of the hostel fee hike protest, which has been going on for over two months.

Mr. Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, it is time to go! The JNU community has a single point demand. That either this V-C resign or the MHRD as the competent authority remove him! Those who are trying to malign and destroy this university will not succeed.. JNU will live on! JNUSU said in a statement.

M Jagadesh Kumar is behaving like a mobster who perpetuates violence in the university he is supposed to administer, it said.

He uses all means and manner to see to it that students, teachers, karamcharis and the entire JNU community faces violence by criminals imported from outside using iron rods, stones and lathis.

Protests across country over JNU violence: Live Updates

The administration, however, blamed the students protesting the hostel fee hike and leading a semester registration boycott for the violence.

The JNU administration feels great pain and anguish for the students who have sustained injuries in the violence that took place in JNU campus. The JNU administration strongly condemns any form of violence in the campus, Kumar had tweeted on Sunday.

JNUSU said ABVP members were behind the attack as they were planning for the entry of outsiders disclosed by WhatsApp chats. Several screenshots had made the rounds on Sunday with messages about mobilising inside the campus and carrying out violence.

ABVP denied the accusations on Sunday, blaming the Left groups for the violence.

During attacks in Periyar hostel, School of Social Sciences II, Mahi Mandavi hostel and most notably Sabarmati, lathis, rods and huge stones were used, JNUSU said describing Sundays attack.

Hooligans from outside not only broke glasses, smashed cars and broke things - even assaulting the dhaba workers, but also most disturbingly and shamefully went inside the girls wing of Sabarmati, and thereafter a lot of girls hostels to intimidate and attack female students, it said.

Vice-president Saket Moon, general secretary Satish Chandra Yadav and joint secretary Md Danish had also carried out a march on campus late Sunday night to condemn the attack on campus.

The JNU teachers association (JNUTA) has called for a press conference on Monday afternoon at the university campus.

More than a dozen students, including the JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, and a teacher Sucharita Sen were injured in the attack on Sunday evening.

Rival student groups accused each other of starting the violence that ended after the police came inside the campus and held a flag march.
In the conversation with Mr Pompeo, Mr Jaishankar highlighted Indias stakes and concerns in the region amid the spiralling US-Iran tensions.

New Delhi: After the assassination of a top Iranian general by the United States in Iraqi capital Baghdad on Friday, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar on Sunday spoke to both Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif and US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and noted that developments have taken a very serious turn, adding that India remains deeply concerned about the levels of tension.

In the conversation with Mr Pompeo, Mr Jaishankar highlighted Indias stakes and concerns in the region amid the spiralling US-Iran tensions.

Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed in Baghdad early on Friday reportedly in a drone strike by an American drone. The US had accused Gen. Soleimani of plotting terror attacks worldwide.

The developments have alarmed India due to the possible fallout on its strategic port development project at Chabahar in Iran, which provides sea-land connectivity to Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan.

Just concluded a conversation with (Foreign Minister) FM @JZarif of Iran. Noted that developments have taken a very serious turn. India remains deeply concerned about the levels of tension. We agreed to remain in touch, Mr Jaishankar tweeted on Sunday evening.

He later tweeted: Had a telephonic discussion with Secretary of State @SecPompeo on the evolving situation in the Gulf region. Highlighted Indias stakes and concerns.

Observers note that the escalation in tensions between Iran and the United States may further scare Indian private companies, who are part of the Chabahar port project due to a possible adverse impact on their investments and any possible economic punitive steps that the United States may take in the coming days on foreign companies investing in Iran. India is in a tight spot now as it has excellent relations with both Iran and the United States.

Mr Jaishankar had last month visited Tehran for the 19th session of the India-Iran Joint Commission there on December 22. The two sides had expressed satisfaction at the progress achieved in operationalisation of Shahid Beheshti Port at Chabahar, and had recognised that it has a potential to act as a gateway between the Indian subcontinent, Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia and Europe. Both nations had also welcomed the utilisation of the port for exports from Afghanistan and discussed ways to promote it.

India had on Friday said the increase in tension has alarmed the world, and called for de-escalation and restraint. New Delhi added that peace, stability and security in this region is of utmost importance to India.

In a statement from New Delhi on Friday, the external affairs ministry had said: We have noted that a senior Iranian leader has been killed by the US. The increase in tension has alarmed the world. Peace, stability and security in this region is of utmost importance to India. It is vital that the situation does not escalate further. India has consistently advocated restraint and continues to do so.
RAMALLAH, West Bank  Under the patronage of Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, the Jerusalem District Electricity Company (JDECO) signed Dec. 29 with eight banks operating in the Palestinian territories a memorandum of understanding under which the banks shall buy JDECOs entire debt to the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC), which amounts to 670 million shekels ($191.4 million). This is provided that the government pays the banks its financial dues to JDECO in the form of monthly installments.

This agreement followed Shtayyehs remarks Dec. 19 that his government decided to settle the electricity bills on behalf of all Palestinian camps. They include bills that have accumulated over the past years and monthly bills that will be issued in 2020.

In a press statement explaining Shtayyehs remarks on the same day, Palestinian government spokesperson Ibrahim Melhem indicated this is a part of the governments efforts to get JDECO  the largest electricity distribution company in the West Bank  out of its crisis.

Melhem noted that it was agreed upon with the company on some steps to improve its debt collection, particularly from the businesses set up in the camps, adding the government will pay the electricity bills on behalf of the camps located in JDECO's concession areas in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Jericho.

JDECO's crisis has escalated in the past few months with the debt due to the IEC piling up. Subsequently, the IEC began cutting off electricity to Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Jericho over several phases.

On Dec. 26, JDECO announced having received from the IEC a timetable for the fifth phase of power cuts stretching from Dec. 29 to Jan. 2, 2020, for Ramallah and Bethlehem.

The first phase of power cuts began Sept. 22 and ended Oct. 24. The second phase began Nov. 17 and ended Dec. 5; at this time, the IEC cut off three to four lines (areas) for two hours a day, depriving city centers, government headquarters and health centers of electricity for that period of time. During the third phase of the cutoff, from Dec. 15 to Dec. 19, and the fourth phase, which started Dec. 22 ended Dec. 24, the IEC cut off electricity for three hours a day.

The main reason behind JDECOs dilemma and accumulated debt has been its inability to collect electricity bills from citizens in Area C who refuse to pay and in the 13 Palestinian refugee camps located in its concession area.

The moment the crisis was ignited, the relevant parties  namely the Energy and Natural Resources Authority, the Ministry of Finance and JDECO  strived to get the company out of its crisis. They held multiple meetings to discuss crisis resolution scenarios, particularly the debt due from the camps. On Nov. 26, the Finance Ministry and JDECO came to an agreement in this regard.

Zafer Melhem, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Authority, told Al-Monitor that under the agreement, the government will settle electricity bills on behalf of the Palestinian households residing in the refugee camps that are located in JDECOs concession area. Yet it will not settle the bills on behalf of the businesses or factories in the camps, he added. Melhem pointed out that payments of future electricity bills will be limited to a particular period of time that will be later on fixed and agreed upon.

Melhem indicated the Finance Ministry will be committed to paying the upcoming monthly bills on behalf of the households in 13 camps, ranging between 3.5 and 4.2 million shekels ($1-$1.2 million) a month, beginning in early 2020. There is a solution to the [problem of the] previous debt, which will be paid in installments as agreed with JDECO, provided that the first installment is paid at the beginning of 2020, he stated.

Commenting on the debt due by the merchants and factories in the camps to JDECO, he said, These [merchants and factories] need to pay for the electricity they consumed. They are not exempt from payment, and the government will not pay on their behalves."

Under the agreement, the Finance Ministry pledged to pay the camps entire accumulated debt generated from domestic consumption, which the government estimates at 280 million shekels ($80 million), namely 3 million shekels ($857,000) in monthly installments over the next six years, as well as the future bills to the banks. This is while the company shall collect the debt due by the industrial and business consumers in the camps, and bring the defaulters before the judiciary.

Commenting on the payment mechanism of the debt due to the IEC, the chairman and CEO of JDECO, Hisham Al-Omari, said the banks operating in the Palestinian territories will purchase the accumulated debts due by JDECO to the IEC, thus paying JDECOs entire debt to the IEC. Omari said the Finance Ministry will pay back the banks in installments over the next six years.

He said the government will pay the banks the future monthly bills for the households in the camps and a part of the camps accumulated debts. He noted the camps accumulated debt is about 530 million shekels ($151.5 million), out of which the government only recognizes 280 million shekels ($80 million) in domestic consumption.

Omari said this solution is acceptable and will greatly help solve the companys crisis. He said JDECO will take firm measures against owners of factories and businesses who refuse to pay for electricity by cutting off their electricity, and they will discuss other options to collect the accumulated bills in cooperation with the government.

He said the total debt due by JDECO amounts to approximately 1.3 billion shekels ($371.4 million) divided into two parts. The first part is 636 million shekels ($181.7 million), the payment of which was frozen per an agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel in September 2016. Back then, he said, it was agreed that JDECO would pay the amount in 48 installments after the implementation of said agreement. Yet JDECO has yet to pay given the differences between the two sides on some items. The second part of the debt the banks will buy amounts to 670 million shekels ($191.4 million), he added.

Omari stressed the need to find a solution for the commercial and industrial sector in the camps through the government and official institutions. JDECO will exempt no one, he said, noting that JDECO will work on addressing the illegal tapping into the electricity grid in several areas in coordination with the government. The government needs to enforce the law in the fight against this theft, particularly since the sanctions in this regard are not a deterrent, Omari said in reference to the fact that courts have not been implementing the provisions of the 2009 General Electricity Law.
CARACAS  Venezuelas authoritarian leader, Nicolas Maduro, moved Sunday to consolidate his grip on power by taking control of the countrys last independent institution and sidelining the man who had staked a rival claim to the presidency.

In a chaotic legislative session in which security forces surrounded the National Assembly building, supporters of Maduro blocked the re-election of Juan Guaido, the opposition leader, as the bodys head in an attempt to deprive him of the position that allowed him to challenge Maduros leadership.

The Maduro administrations move plunges a turbulent political situation further into chaos at a time when Venezuela is already facing an economic collapse, which has forced millions of its citizens to flee.

Venezuela now has two men who assert they are the rightful president and two rival legislatures  one of which has two competing leaders, since Maduros supporters Sunday elected one man to lead it, and Guaidos supporters gathered at a newspapers headquarters to re-elect him.

Maduro effort to seize control of the National Assembly was immediately denounced by members of the Venezuelan opposition, who called it a parliamentary coup detat and said there had been no quorum to call the vote.

Guaido positioned himself as head of a caretaker government a year ago, just two weeks after being elected head of the assembly. Standing in the streets of Caracas with hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, Guaido said then that Maduros 2018 election was fraudulent. Invoking an article of the Constitution that transfers power to the head of the assembly if the presidency becomes vacant, he claimed the countrys leadership.

That announcement last year was quickly recognized by dozens of foreign governments, including the U.S., which backed him by imposing crippling sanctions on Maduros government.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

To continue to claim the interim presidency, Guaido needed to be re-elected as head of the assembly Sunday, according to analysts in and outside the country.

On Twitter, Michael Kozak, acting assistant secretary for the State Departments Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, said that Guaido remains Venezuelas interim president under its constitution.

Julie Turkewitz is a New York Times writer.
The Governor of Borno State, Babagana Zulum, has accused security personnel of the Nigeria military and police of collecting bribes of N1000 from travellers who do not have national identity cards.

The governor made the accusation Monday afternoon when he visited the Maiduguri-Damaturu highway where thousands of travellers were stranded because security officials manning the highway locked it down.

The highway is relatively the safest access in and out of Maiduguri, despite suffering repeated Boko Haram attacks recently.

Upon reaching the Maiduguri entrance checkpoint, located near the Borno State University, the governor met hundreds of vehicles queued up on both sides of the lanes.

This is unacceptable, Mr Zulum said speaking on top of his voice.

How can you subject people to this kind of torture all in the name of National ID card? And you are all here collecting N500 and N1000 from poor travellers who dont have national ID card.

When a soldier tried to offer some explanation, the governor said No this is not right. The federal government has not created an enabling environment for our people to get their national ID cards and you are here collecting N500 and N1000 as a fine for not having what the federal government has not provided for all.

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The governor said he has received several reports about the alleged extortion at the Maiduguri checkpoint.

Mr Zulum then asked his aides to call the Theatre Commander of the war against Boko Haram, General Olusegun Adeniyi.

On phone, the governor was heard saying, Theater Commander where are you? Right now Im at the checkpoint near state university and we have thousands of people stranded and your people are here collecting money from people because they dont have National ID Card. Why?

Mr Zulum directed the security personnel at the gate to open the gates on both sides to allow all travellers to move.

Some of the passengers told journalists that they have been held at the gate for several hours without any explanation.

I left Damaturu since 9 a.m. and I arrive here at about 11 a.m. But here I am being held till 3 p.m.,  said a bus driver who identified himself as Isa Adamu.

A woman travelling from Bauchi to Maiduguri said, I was asked to give N500 because I dont have ID card, but I had nothing to give because we passed the night in Damaturu yesterday, because the soldiers said it was late to proceed at about 5 p.m. And I spent all the money I had with me.

Mr Adeniyi later arrived at the scene and tried to explain that the massive traffic hold up was not caused by soldiers at the checkpoint. According to him, the hold up was because of an attack that happened earlier in the day.

He said he would investigate the accusation to find out if it was true.

Mr Zulum insisted that it was true. I saw them with my eyes, I spoke with people that were asked to give money!

The exchange between the governor and the army general deteriorated to as both men argued over other security matters.

The governor left in anger for Jakana, a village 45km from where Boko Haram attacked on Saturday.

You must know that the government and people of Borno state are behind you and your men, but you must call your soldiers to order, you must check their excesses, Mr Zulum said.
Southeast Wisconsin health officials want you to pledge your blood, literally, to help others.

Area blood supplies are dwindling because of increased demand, much of it due to the increased number of complex therapies such as chemotherapy, organ transplants and heart surgeries which require large amounts of blood and blood products, according to the Red Cross and World Health Organization.

The American Red Cross said winter is one of the most difficult times of the year to collect enough blood products to meet patient needs. It is difficult partly because busy holiday schedules and bad weather often result in canceled blood drives.

Additionally, seasonal illnesses such as the flu force potential donors to forgo their blood donations, according to the Red Cross.

According to the World Health Organization, blood is the most precious gift that anyone can give to another person  the gift of life. A decision to donate blood can save a life, or even several if your blood is separated into its components  red cells, platelets and plasma.

Pledge telethon set

The Versiti Blood Center of Wisconsin, the sole provider of blood products to every hospital in southeast Wisconsin, will kick off National Blood Donor Month with a Pledge 3 telethon Tuesday.

They are encouraging people to make blood donations by connecting through #Pledge3Donations and be a hero! http://bit.ly/2UUeqag.

Versiti will transform part of its Milwaukee donor center 638 N. 18th St., into a telethon phone bank and is asking people to call the phone bank at 1-877-BE-A-HERO and pledge three lifesaving donations  one appointment in January and two additional for the year ahead.

Versiti officials said the goal is to schedule 1,000 appointments Tuesday to ensure a sufficient blood supply for the coming weeks and months.

The center hopes to encourage blood donations through the statewide telethon in lieu of an emergency appeal. It is especially in need of O-negative and O-positive blood types.

Can give blood here

After scheduling donations, Kenosha County residents can make their blood donations at the Kenosha Donor Center, 8064 39th Ave.

The telethon will feature community leaders including Milwaukee Brewers manager Craig Counsell, Childrens Wisconsin hospital chief executive officer Peggy Troy and Marquette University President Michael Lovell, Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales and Milwaukee Municipal Court Judge Derek Mosley.

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Ahmedabad/Bhuj, Jan 6 (UNI) Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) of the Gujarat police has seized 35 kg heroin worth around Rs 175 crore from a Pakistan boat in the Arabian sea off the Jakhau coast of Kutch district in Gujarat and arrested five Pakistan nationals from the boat, a senior police officer of the ATS on Monday said.



Head of the ATS Himanshu Shukla said that they had received credible information that an illegal consignment of narcotic drugs, Heroin, is going to be smuggled in Gujarat through Coast.

The information further revealed that the consignment is being sent in Pakistan fishing boat from Pakistan.

ATS Officers contacted Indian Coast Guard, and it was decided to launch a joint operation to apprehend the smugglers and seize the contraband. A team of officers of ATS, boarded Indian Coast Guard Fast Interceptor Boats (IBs) at Jakhau, Kutch, and a joint search was started.

Commandos of Marine Task Force and SOG Bhuj-Kutch were kept in boats in Indian waters to help in apprehending the smugglers.



Continuous search operation was undertaken near the location, located North West of Jakhau, which was indicated in the information available with ATS Gujarat. A suspicious Pakistan boat was identified at the said location in Indian waters.

ICG IBs stealthily started following the boat, and at the opportune moment officers and personnel of ICG IBs along-with ATS Officers successfully boarded the suspicious boat. Search of the suspicious boat revealed 35 packets of contraband heroin on Pakistani boat JamJam.

The approximate weight of confiscated contraband is 35 Kg valuing Rs 175 crores (approx) in international market. "The interrogation of the apprehended accused persons is in progress jointly by all agencies," he said.



The five Pakistan nationals apprehended from the boat were identified as Anees Isa Bhatti (30), Ismail Mohammed Kachchi (50), Ashhraf Usman Kutchhi (42), Kareem Abdulla Kutchhi (37) and Abubaqar Ashraf Sumra (55).

UNI RAJ RHK1249
Bollywood celebrities including actors Swara Bhaskar, Taapsee Pannu, Dia Mirza, Shabana Azmi, Riteish Deshmukh, Zeeshan Ayyub, Shabana Azmi and filmmaker Sudhir Mishra took to social media to condemn the violence carried out by a masked mob on the students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday.

Actor Swara Bhaskar, who is an alumnus of the university, was quite vocal about the issue since the very beginning of it.

JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh attacked by alleged ABVP Goons.. This attack is ONGOING @DelhiPolice Vasant Kunj thana is less than 1km away!!!!!!!! Why are you letting this happen??? pic.twitter.com/4z5QqA6kya  Swara Bhasker (@ReallySwara) January 5, 2020

The actor also shared a video of herself urging the residents of New Delhi to reach JNU campus gates in large numbers. Bhaskar further wrote that her parents live in the JNU campus; she later thanked everyone and confirmed that her mother is safe as peace has been restored at the university.

My mom is safe. JNU is peaceful for now & the gates are open! Eternal gratitude to the citizen protestors of Delhi who showed up at JNU main gate earlier tonight- you saved JNU! Thanks to the media & reporters who risked their own safety & showed Us what terror was unleashed 2day pic.twitter.com/4PekW5E9yN  Swara Bhasker (@ReallySwara) January 5, 2020

Calling it heartbreaking, actor Rajkummar Rao wrote on Twitter, What happened in #JNU is shameful, horrific and heartbreaking. Those who are responsible behind these attacks should be punished. #JNUViolence.

What happened in #JNU is shameful, horrific and heartbreaking. Those who are responsible behind these attacks should be punished. #JNUViolence  Rajkummar Rao (@RajkummarRao) January 5, 2020

Actor Prakash Raj questioned the silence of the spectators and tweeted, Hurt..anguished..sickening to hear of the barbaric attack on students in #JNUViolence THESE WOUNDS ARE DEEPER THAN FLESH.. will we hang our head in shame for being silent spectators or will we stand up against these bigots who are terrorising our children..our future #JustAsking.

Hurt..anguished..sickening to hear of the barbaric attack on students in #JNUViolence THESE WOUNDS ARE DEEPER THAN FLESH.. will we hang our head in shame for being silent spectators or will we stand up against these bigots who are terrorising our children..our future #JustAsking  Prakash Raj (@prakashraaj) January 5, 2020

Comedian Bhuvan Bam wrote, Ek tweet ke liye mujhe dhamki di thi phone pe Kaat denge tujhe. Bina security waala middle-class baccha kya karta? Chup raha. Number report kiya. Aaj bhi gaaliyan padh sakti hain. Lekin mujhe mera desh pyaara hai. Imaandaar hoon, insaan hoon. #JNUattack #JaiHind. (I was threatened for one tweet. What a middle-class kid would have done in such a case. I kept quite and reported the number. I can be abused even today. But I love my country, I am honest and I am a human).

Ek tweet ke liye mujhe dhamki di thi phone pe Kaat denge tujhe. Bina security waala middle-class baccha kya karta? Chup raha. Number report kiya. Aaj bhi gaaliyan padh sakti hain. Lekin mujhe mera desh pyaara hai. Imaandaar hoon, insaan hoon. #JNUattack #JaiHind   Bhuvan Bam (@Bhuvan_Bam) January 5, 2020

Filmmaker Sudhir Mishra also tweeted, I shudder as I try and imagine the extent of the violence against the students that caused even the counsel of the Delhi Police to hang his head in shame.

I shudder as I try and imagine the extent of the violence against the students that caused even the counsel of the Delhi Police to hang his head in shame . https://t.co/mBIFpPP4Vm  Sudhir Mishra (@IAmSudhirMishra) January 5, 2020

Terming the incident as horrific, actor Riteish Deshmukh took to Twitter and said, Why do you need to cover your face? Because you know you are doing something wrong, illegal & punishable. There is no honour in this-Its horrific to see the visuals of students & teachers brutally attacked by masked goons inside JNU-Such violence cannot & should not be tolerated.

Why do you need to cover your face? Because you know you are doing something wrong, illegal & punishable. There is no honour in this-Its horrific to see the visuals of students & teachers brutally attacked by masked goons inside JNU-Such violence cannot & should not be tolerated  Riteish Deshmukh (@Riteishd) January 5, 2020

Deskhmukhs wife and actor Genelia Deshmukh also took Twitter to condemn the attacks on JNU students. Absolutely disturbed to see the visuals of masked goons enter JNU and attack students & teachers - sheer brutality!! Humble appeal to the police to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice, she tweeted.

Absolutely disturbed to see the visuals of masked goons enter JNU and attack students & teachers - sheer brutality!! Humble appeal to the police to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice  Genelia Deshmukh (@geneliad) January 5, 2020

Senior actor Shabana Azmi shared Bhaskars video and said, This is beyond shocking! Condemnation is not enough. Immediate action needs to be taken against the perpetrators.

Actor Dia Mirza throwing a powerful question at netizens, tweeted, How long will this be allowed to continue? How long will you turn a blind eye? How long will the defenceless be attacked in the name of politics or religion? Enough is enough. @DelhiPolice.

How long will this be allowed to continue? How long will you turn a blind eye? How long will the defenceless be attacked in the name of politics or religion? Enough is enough. @DelhiPolice  Dia Mirza (@deespeak) January 5, 2020

Pink actor Taapsee Pannu also shared a video of the rampage and tweeted, such is the condition inside what we consider to be a place where our future is shaped. Its getting scarred for ever. Irreversible damage. What kind of shaping up is happening here, its there for us to see.... saddening.

such is the condition inside what we consider to be a place where our future is shaped. Its getting scarred for ever. Irreversible damage. What kind of shaping up is happening here, its there for us to see.... saddening https://t.co/Qt2q7HRhLG  taapsee pannu (@taapsee) January 5, 2020

Vivek Agnihotri, director of the film The Tashkent Files, however, claimed it be a staged attack, Thats all the wokes want to prove. Hence, the staged drama of #JNUViolence #JNUattack. They have nothing to do with democracy or freedom. All they want is to somehow prove that Hindu Terrorism exists. So that its not lonely for Islamic terrorists. Asli baat yeh hai.

Thats all the wokes want to prove.



Hence, the staged drama of #JNUViolence #JNUattack



They have nothing to do with democracy or freedom. All they want is to somehow prove that Hindu Terrorism exists. So that its not lonely for Islamic terrorists.



Asli baat yeh hai. https://t.co/tzB7IuCO3A  Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) January 6, 2020

Actor Nandita Das shared a glimpse of protests in Mumbai., Whats going on? Is anybody listening? Seeing?? and shared a glimpse of a protest at the Gateway of India in Mumbai around the same time. At Gateway of India - spontaneous protest- peaceful and solemn- in solidarity with JNU #JNUProtests. she captioned the video.

At Gateway of India - spontaneous protest- peaceful and solemn- in solidarity with JNU #JNUProtests pic.twitter.com/B0bAEl7CrW  Nandita Das (@nanditadas) January 5, 2020

Earlier on Sunday evening, more than 18 students, including JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, were injured and taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered the JNU and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods. The JNU administration and political leaders, cutting across political lines, had condemned the attack on students and urged the police to take action against the perpetrators.

(With ANI inputs)

Follow @htshowbiz for more
(Alliance News) - Echo Energy PLC said Monday it has now spudded the Campo Limite exploration well and perforated a deeper secondary target at Campo La Mata x-1 well in Argentina.

Echo Energy shares were up 8.4% in London at 2.44 pence each on Monday.

The Latin-America focused oil and gas company said following the mobilization of the Petreven H-205 rig to the Palermo Aike production concession in the Santa Cruz Sur assets, the company has spudded the Campo Limite exploration well.

The company said the well is expected to reach total measured depth next week and will be then followed by wireline logging operations.

Echo Energy also said following the completion of drilling operations at La Mata x-1 well at Tapi Aike, the deeper secondary target in the Anita Formation has been perforated and mechanical stimulation will begin shortly.

It is expected to complete on next two weeks, the company noted.

By Loreta Juodagalvyte; loretajuodagalvyte@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Inmate who escaped during statewide lockdown still on the run originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

One inmate is on the run and another has been captured after authorities discovered the pair missing during an emergency count at 1:45 a.m. Saturday at Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

Officials said the Mississippi Department of Corrections K-9 and Emergency Response Teams are still searching for Dillion Williams, 27, and that David May, 42, has been captured.

The Mississippi Department of Corrections tweeted just before 3:30 a.m. that David May was in custody. Further details weren't immediately released.

IN CUSTODY: Parchman escapee David Lee May pic.twitter.com/QKn008D32e  MDOC (@MS_MDOC) January 5, 2020

Day was convicted of two counts of aggravated assault and sentenced to life in prison in October 2017. He is 5 feet, 9 inches tall and weighs 171 pounds, according to jail records.

Williams was convicted of residential burglary and aggravated assault and sentenced to 40 years for the two crimes in 2010. He is 6 feet, 2 inches tall and weighs 175 pounds.

Prison officials said both men are black males of medium build with brown eyes and black hair.

PHOTO: Undated photos show David May, 47, and Dillion Williams, 27, who were discovered missing during an emergency count about on Jan. 4, 2020, in Jackson, Miss. (Mississippi Department of Corrections)

All prisons throughout Mississippi, including state, private and regional facilities, were still on lockdown Saturday following a violent week during which at least four inmates have died since last Sunday.

MORE: US prisons and jails using AI to mass-monitor millions of inmate calls

"We are continuing to be vigilant and mindful of the situation," Commissioner Pelicia E. Hall said in a statement Friday. "These are trying times for the Mississippi Department of Corrections. It is never a good feeling for a commissioner to receive a call that a life has been lost, especially over senseless acts of violence."

Several other inmates were injured during the incidents. The state said one death occurred at the South Mississippi Correctional Institution in Leakesville and another at the Chickasaw County Regional Correctional Facility in Houston. Two of the deaths were at Parchman, from which May and Williams just escaped.

Story continues

There was a fifth death in the past week, also at Parchman, but the Department of Corrections said it was unrelated to the "major disturbances."

MORE: Oklahoma releases hundred of prisoners as part of the state's criminal justice reform

"There is a lot of misinformation fanning the flames of fear in the community at large, especially on social media," Hall said in a statement. "Cellphones are contraband and have been instrumental in escalating the violence."

"I understand the publics right and need to know," Hall continued. "But my department will not rush to release information for the sake of perpetuating rumors."

All prisoner movement in the state's three prisons, three private prisons and 15 regional facilities is limited to emergencies only, authorities said.

Anyone with information about Williams is asked to contact the MDOC at 662-745-6611 or the nearest law enforcement agency.
by Tanya Gazdik , January 5, 2020

The most-read auto stories of the year focused mainly on campaign and personnel changes. However, my top 10 most-read stories includes an odd duck that cannot be ignored.

La-Z-Boy Taps Kristen Bell, Ditches Brooke Shields was not only this reporters top read story of 2019, it was the top-read story for all of MediaPost. Theres a bit of an interesting back story. I generally dont cover retail (thats my colleague Sarah Mahoney), but I have covered La-Z-Boy several times in the past to pitch in, so the company contacted me last May.

The release touted the new campaign with Kristen Bell (one of 2019s most-seen stumpers-for-hire, she was also in Samsung, Enterprise and Neutrogena commercials) but failed to mention the dismissal of Brooke Shields, who had served as the furniture companys pitch person for nine years.

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That was noteworthy so I included background about Shields' past involvement and noted it in the headline. La-Z-Boys PR company took issue with the headline, preferring that the focus be on Bells arrival, but it wasnt inaccurate, so we didnt change it. P.S.: The company hasnt contacted me with any other news to pitch since then.

My other Top 10 stories were auto-related with the exception of one financial services story on Progressive, which clocked in at number eight. It mentioned another popular (albeit fictional) stump woman, Flo: "Progressive Gives Flo A Vacation, Unveils 'Motaur.'"

Coming in at number two was a story about the growing trend of automakers getting into superhero movies: Audi Teams With Marvel Studios For 'Avengers: Endgame.'"

Tesla got on the charts with the third-most read story, which featured a popular topic overall on MediaPost, search: Tesla Most-Googled Car Brand By Americans.

Subaru stories are always well-read, as are stories about animals, so its natural that Subaru Establishes 'National Make A Dog's Day'" would log in at number four.

Three of the top 10 focused on CMO shifts, of which there was no shortage of in 2019. Former Mazda exec Russell Wagers arrival at Kia came in at number five -- "Kia Gets New Marketing Chief" -- while the self-explanatory Hyundai CMO Dean Evans Resigns and "Jeremy Tucker Out At Nissan North America" came in at numbers six and 10 respectively.

Campaign stories rounded out the rest of the top 10, including "Volkswagen Supports Teachers During Sales Event" at number seven, and a second Kia story, "Kia Launches Redesigned Digital Experience Via Elephant," at number nine.

Heres looking forward to all the good stories, automotive and otherwise, of 2020.
E vents in the Middle East can appear remote from London. They are not. Qasem Soleimani, who commanded the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps expeditionary unit, supported attacks, even here. In 2015, police raided a property in north-west London where Iranian-backed, Hezbollah-linked groups had stockpiled three tonnes of ammonium nitrate to attack an unknown target.

This was no surprise to many who had been following the campaigns of the 62-year-old who was killed last week. Since the revolution in 1979, Soleimani has been serving the dictatorship to suppress enemies at home and abroad, calling for student uprisings to be crushed, and organising for enemies to be killed around the world.

Germanys response to the US killing shows our European partners know the threat he posed. A career of terrorism has seen hundreds killed in Europe, but his real crimes have been in the Middle East, where hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Muslims, have been murdered by those he supported, armed and trained.

The expertise of his Quds Force  the terrorist unit he commanded, which took its name from the Arabic for Jerusalem  was impressive and his allegiances were flexible. In Afghanistan, having nearly gone to war with the Taliban in 2001, he recovered relations so well that by 2006 British and other Nato soldiers were being killed by bombs made from Iranian equipment.

Mourners gather to pay homage to Qasem Soleimani / AFP via Getty Images

The militias Soleimani backed increased his power in Iraq. The British hostages captured by Asaib Ahl al-Haq in 2007 were almost certainly killed with his knowledge.

Others were taught to make bombs that could pierce armoured cars and aim rockets using online mapping. Backing such groups with arms and ammunition became Iranian foreign policy.

Celebrations among those communities in Syria and Iraq butchered at Soleimanis command shows how little he will be mourned by many. But he was more than just a dealer in death abroad. His profile was more like a film star, and his ability to decide his own actions  with unquestioned support from the opium-addicted Ayatollah Khamenei  meant he had more latitude than other commanders.

The questions now are: who and what will fill that void? Already the US relationship with Iraq is under strain following the attack, and it is being condemned by Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who had the backing of both Iran and the US. The Iraqi parliament has asked the US to withdraw its remaining troops, and the government in Baghdad must now decide what to do.

Killing Soleimani has ended one source of violence and the command of a man who made presidents and prime ministers quake. There is a chance  admittedly remote  that this could mark a turning point. But that would require allies to work together and, so far, theres little sign of that.
Pakistan ready to play its role for impartial plebiscite in kashmir: Imran Khan

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday said that being a party to the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, Pakistan stood ready to play its role to ensure a free and impartial plebiscite in accordance with the United Nations Security Council resolutions.



In his message to the nation on Right to Self-Determination Day annually observed on January 5, the prime minister said, Every year, the 5th of January reinforces our commitment to uphold the fundamental human rights of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.



On this day, in 1949, the United Nations made a commitment for the realization of the right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people through a free and impartial plebiscite under the auspices of the United Nations.



He said the day also reminded the international community, especially the United Nations, of the imperative of honouring its commitment towards people of Jammu and Kashmir.



He viewed that the importance of the inalienable right to self-determination has been acknowledged in all important human rights covenants and decisions of the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council.



Due to Indian intransigence, the UN Security Council has failed to fulfil its pledge to the Kashmiri people.



The prime minister said that more than 72 years of illegal occupation of Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) were a saga of brutalisation of the Kashmiri people.



Around 900,000 occupation forces have converted the region into the largest prison in the world. Post-5th August 2019, India has unleashed a new reign of terror in IOJ&K, locking the region down and abusing human rights of the innocent people especially women, children and the elderly with impunity, he remarked.



He said Kashmiri people had been deprived of their rights to life, food, health, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and above all, the right to self-determination for over 150 days.



The recent wave of unprecedented Indian state-sponsored terrorism in IHK and discriminatory steps against minorities, especially Muslims, were a clear manifestation of the Hindutva ideology espoused by the RSS-inspired Indian government, he added.



The prime minister urged the world to ensure that human rights abuses did not go unpunished and that the perpetrators of these heinous crimes against humanity were held accountable.
In another huge setback for former liquor baron Vijay Mallya, the Supreme Court on Monday said that he cannot use his petition pending in the top court to stall the insolvency proceedings, initiated by SBI in the United Kingdom. Mallya had filed a petition asking the London court to not take up the matter because the matter is pending before the Indian Supreme Court.

The apex court said no one can seek relief anywhere in the world by citing cases pending in this court. A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde passed the order.

Centre raises doubt over Mallya's settlement claim

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the Supreme Court that no money has been received from Vijay Mallya so far. The hearing of the case has been adjourned till Friday. The Centre also raised doubts on his settlement claim. SG Mehta told the court that despite talking of settlement, not a single rupee has been paid by Mallya. The former liquor barron had approached the apex court on June 27 seeking a stay on the confiscation of properties owned by him and his relatives.

On January 1, the special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Mumbai permitted a consortium of 15 banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI) to utilise movable assets of fugitive Vijay Mallya towards repayment of his debts.

The assets, comprising financial securities like shares of the United Breweries Holdings Ltd (UBHL), were attached by the special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in 2016 when it declared Vijay Mallya a proclaimed offender.

Vijay Mallya ran away in 2016

According to investigating agencies, the Kingfisher owner had run away from the country in 2016 when cases against him were registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED). According to agencies, Vijay Mallya had taken loans from these various banks and never paid his debts. The principal amount Vijay Mallya owes to the banks is around Rs 5,000 crore which has risen to around Rs 12,000 crore with the 11.5 per cent interest that has been mounting because of the non-payment of dues.

READ | Banks allowed to utilise Mallya's movable assets to clear debt

READ | Huge setback for Vijay Mallya, SBI gets nod to auction assets worth Rs 13,000 crores

In February last year, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had told the special PMLA court that it had no objection to the liquidation of confiscated assets by a consortium of banks, led by the State Bank of India.

Currently, Mallya remains on bail pending the UK High Court appeal hearing in the extradition proceedings brought by India in relation to fraud and money laundering charges. He had been arrested on an extradition warrant back in April 2017 and has been fighting his extradition in the UK courts since then. He was granted permission to appeal against his extradition order, which is scheduled in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for February.

READ | Vijay Mallya case: Court order on confiscation of assets to be issued soon

READ | Vijay Mallya posts massive thali pic, netizens remind him of Jail food
PR-Inside.com: 2020-01-06 17:12:03

AM Best America Latina Executives to Attend 2020 Guatemala Insurance Week

Midori Honda

Market Development Director

AM Best America Latina

+52 55 1102 2720, ext. 102

midori.honda@ambest.com

Carlos De la Torre, senior director, and Midori Honda, market development director, both of AM Best America Latina, will attend the 2020 Guatemala Insurance Week, which will take place Jan. 13-18, 2020, in Guatemala City.

The insurance week in Guatemala is the largest (re)insurance-related event for the Guatemalan industry. The event program includes seminars, meetings and industry gatherings, and serves as a networking opportunity for insurers, brokers, reinsurers and associations as they prepare their strategies for the upcoming year.

AM Best maintains a stable market segment outlook on Guatemalas (re)insurance market due to carriers demonstrated ability to adjust underwriting strategies amid volatile economic conditions to maintain profitability. To access the report, please visit www3.ambest.com/bestweek/purchase.asp?record_code=. Other Latin America market outlooks can be found on Bests Market Segment Outlooks page.

To schedule a meeting with De la Torre and Honda to discuss the commercial aspects of and the process for initiating a Bests Credit Rating, please email midori.honda@ambest.com.

AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data provider specializing in the insurance industry. The company does business in more than 100 countries. Headquartered in Oldwick, NJ, AM Best has offices in cities around the world, including London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.

Copyright  2020 by A.M. Best Company, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005
(L-R) Former housing secretary Julian Castro, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) talk during the first night of the Democratic presidential debate in Miami, Florida, on June 26, 2019. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Castro Endorses Warren After Dropping Out of 2020 Race

Former Obama administration cabinet secretary Julian Castro endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) for president four days after he dropped out of the 2020 race.

Today Im proud to endorse @ewarren for president. Elizabeth and I share a vision of America where everyone counts. An America where peoplenot the wealthy or well-connectedare put first. Im proud to join her in the fight for big, structural change, Castro, 45, said in a statement.

Castro released a video celebrating his grandmother and mother, a single mom to Castro and his twin brother, saying: My story wouldnt be possible without the strong women who came before me.

Theres one candidate I see who will make sure that no matter where you live in America or where you family came from in the worldyou have a path to opportunity, he said.

Today Im proud to endorse @ewarren for president. Elizabeth and I share a vision of America where everyone counts. An America where peoplenot the wealthy or well-connectedare put first. Im proud to join her in the fight for big, structural change. pic.twitter.com/xDvMEKqpF3  Julian Castro (@JulianCastro) January 6, 2020

Castro met with Warren, a meeting documented in the video. Castro told her that he sees his vision in her campaign.

The thing I hear the most from people in the selfie lines is hope, Warren, 70, told Castro. Because we know whats broken, we know how to fix it, were building a movement to get it done.

It takes a great president, it also takes the people behind the president, Castro responded.

Castro ended his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination on Jan. 2. He struggled to meet thresholds to make the debate stage in recent months, missing the December debate. He was not expected to qualify for the series of debates in early voting states that start in mid-January.

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary and Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro speaks at the J Street National Conference in Washington on Oct. 28, 2019. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo)

Castro was mayor of San Antonio, Texas, before becoming the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the later years of the Obama administration. He joined the University of Texas at Austins LBJ School of Public Affairs in 2017 after leaving that position.

Im so proud of the campaign that weve run together. Weve shaped the conversation on so many important issues in this race, stood up for the most vulnerable people, and given a voice to those who are often forgotten, Castro said when he announced the end of his campaign.

But with only a month until the Iowa caucuses, and given the circumstances of this campaign season, Ive determined that it simply isnt our time. So today its with a heavy heart and with profound gratitude that I will suspend my campaign for president.
President Donald Trump has threatened to impose sanctions on Iraq and demand billions of dollars in compensation if it expels American troops, in retaliation for a US strike in Baghdad that killed one of Irans top generals.

The comments, which only ratcheted up soaring tensions in the region, came as Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led emotional funeral prayers in Tehran over the remains of General Qassem Soleimani, the slain head of the Quds Force, the foreign military arm of Irans elite Revolutionary Guards.

Iranian state TV claimed millions had poured onto the streets of the Iranian capital to bid farewell to the feared commander who was killed in a US drone strike Baghdad airport on Friday.

The scale of the crowds shown appeared to be the biggest since the 1989 funeral of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the 1979 revolution that set Iran on its political collision cause with Washington.

Mr Trump, who has twice threatened to target Iranian cultural sites despite the action being a possible war crime, also lashed out at Iraq.

Baghdads leadership denounced the targeted killing of Soleimani in its territory as a gross violation of its sovereignty. On Sunday the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution telling the government to end the presence of foreign troops in Iraq and ensure they not use its land, air, and waters for any reason.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

Furious, the US president said his troops would not leave without being paid for its military investments in Iraq over the years and warned that he would hit Baghdad with economic penalties if forces did have to withdraw.

We will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, Mr Trump told reporters.

If theres any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.

(Presidents official website/AFP) (Official President's website/AFP)

He added: Were not leaving until they pay us back for it.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated that the US military may well strike more Iranian leaders if the Islamic Republic retaliates but he tried to downplay Trumps threat to attack Iranian cultural sites, which could be illegal under international and US military law.

Mr Pompeo said only that any strikes would be legal.

Well behave inside the system, he added. We always have, and we always will.

Washington has scrambled to contend with the repercussions of the surprise killing of Soleimani, which was so contentious it has been described as a declaration of war.

Tehran has already said it will no longer abide by any limits of an international nuclear deal including restrictions on the enrichment of uranium, or research and development, in a devastating blow to the 2015 deal brokered with the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany.

Hours later Iraqs parliament voted to oust US and other foreign troops fighting the Islamic State.

Soleimani, 62, who oversaw the training and financing of Irans feared proxy groups like the Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq and the Lebanese Military group Hezbollah, was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, as well as overseeing the killing of civilians and sieges in places like Syria.

But to his supporters in the region, he was a key figurehead in the battle against western imperialism. His death has only galvanised that image.

In Iran on Monday Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani, wept as he prayed over the caskets of the commander, while crowds chanted death to America outside.

Soleimanis successor, Esmail Qaani stood near Khameneis side, as did Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other top leaders in the Islamic Republic.

The leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas that governs the blockaded Gaza Strip was also in attendance.

Ismail Haniyeh, in an address to Iranian mourners, described Soleimani, as the martyr of Jerusalem.

Soleimanis daughter Zeinab also spoke reiterating that her fathers killing will only resurrect the cause.

Crazy Trump, dont think that everything is over with my fathers martyrdom, she said.

Qaani, the new head of the Quds force, made his own threat in an interview with Iranian state television also aired on Monday.

God the Almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly, actions will be taken, he said.

Mourners in Tehran gather to pay homage to top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, after he was killed in a US strike in Baghdad last week (ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images)

He added Iran would continue Soleimanis path and said, the only compensation for us would be to remove America from the region.

Over the last few days, mass funerary processions have taken place across the country, which up until recently had been gripped by nationwide anti-government protests during which over 300 people were reportedly killed.

The commanders assassination appears to have temporarily silenced that anger and instead has seen politicians and leaders across the Islamic Republics political spectrum take part in the mourning.

It has also united factions in Iraq against the US: rival Shiite leaders, including ones opposed to Iranian influence, have united in calling for the expulsion of American troops.

Mr Trumps decisions and statements have been met with shock and confusion from his western allies.

(Iran Press TV via AP (Iran Press TV via AP)

Germanys foreign minister Heiko Maas told Deutschlandfunk radio on Monday its not very helpful to threaten sanctions on Iraq, and said together with other European powers they would talk to Iran to try to salvage the nuclear agreement.

Frances Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire meanwhile said that the tensions in the Middle East would only serve the Islamic State and increase the terrorist threat over France and Europe.

In a statement late Sunday Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his French and German counterparts Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel called for all sides to work towards an urgent easing of tensions in the Persian Gulf saying there is an urgent need for de-escalation.
TOWN OF MANLIUS, NY - Manlius town Democrats broke tradition when they swept the November election, flipping control of the board from Republican to Democrat.

Three of the four newly elected Democratic councilors broke tradition again last week when they decided not to be sworn in with a Bible. Instead, they used the towns book of codes.

John Deer, Elaine Denton and Heather Waters each chose to put their hand on the codes book for the swearing in ceremony on Dec. 30 in the town hall. The fourth Democrat, Katelyn Kriesel, stuck with the Bible, as did other town officials sworn in.

Why not use the Bible?

Deer said he decided not to use a Bible because he is an atheist, and also because he believes in the separation of church and state.

"I just thought it was the right thing to do,'' he said.

Waters also said separation of church and state is what motivated her to use a text other than the Bible.

She said she first considered using something written by Matilda Joslyn Gage, because that would mean something to her personally. Gage was a womens suffragist, abolitionist and author who lived in Fayetteville in the 1800s.

Waters said she chose the codes book to be neutral, she said.

"I really wanted to be clear that I would be representing the people no matter what their faith or their beliefs,'' she said.

Denton said she used the codes book because she took an oath to represent the people, and using the codes book seemed more appropriate for me.

Kriesel said she opted to use the Bible because she regularly attends Immaculate Conception, a Catholic church in Fayetteville, and said she is religious.

I have always been a spiritual person, and its important to me to reflect that in my commitment to the town," she said.

Jonathan Parent, an assistant professor of political science at Le Moyne College, said using a Bible or other book in a swearing-in ceremony is not required by law or the U.S. Constitution, but it is a tradition embedded in history.

"Its a tradition that dates back to George Washington,'' Parent said. Its a historic practice - something thats an entirely cultural thing.

Using a text other than the Bible is pretty unusual, but not unheard of, Le Moynes Parent said.

Newly elected U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), and Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) took the oath of office on the Quran last January. Both are Muslim-Americans.

Krysten Sinema, a new Democratic senator from Arizona, took her oath using a law book that contained both the U.S.'s and Arizonas constitutions, according to news reports.

John Quincy Adams used a law book when he was sworn in as U.S. president in 1825, according to the The New England Historical Society.

In August, a St. Louis County, MO councilwoman chose to be sworn in on the popular Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places Youll Go!"

The Manlius ceremony

Here is a video taken by the Manlius Democrats of the swearing-in ceremony. The first new board member to be sworn in using the codes book starts at 3:00.
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Celeste Barber was spotted organising supplies to be delivered to local Rural Fire Service stations after raising more than $30million for the bushfire appeal.

The 37-year-old comedian and her husband Api Robin assisted at a charity drive location near their Northern NSW home on Monday.

They sorted through piles of donations which would then be repurposed and designated to volunteers who have been battling out of control blazes across much of the east coast of Australia for months.

Pictured: Celeste Barber was spotted sorting through donations at a charity drive on Monday

Her husband Api Robin assisted during the appeal, doing much of the heavy lifting and carting boxes of supplies back and forth

Two men stand in horror as they watch plumes of smoke and sky-high flames tower over Batlow

More than 855,000 people around the world have donated to the bushfire fundraising effort set up by Ms Barber

Celeste has received more than 850,000 donations in just three days, after first sharing a Facebook appeal asking her 1.8 million followers to donate on Friday.

So far, she has raised more than $34.5million. That number continues to climb.

The fires have so far claimed at least 24 lives, left dozens injured - including hero firefighters and volunteers - as well as destroying more than 1,000 homes and leaving about 500million animals dead.

Celeste - who is known for her parodies of celebrities' Instagram posts - also spent the weekend buying much-needed supplies for firefighters on the frontline.

Celeste was spotted sorting through donations, which included general supplies like instant coffee, dried pasta and spam

She was just one of a handful of people who stopped by throughout the day to lend a hand or drop off supplies

On Monday, the couple were coordinating and delivering non-perishable goods like boxes of up-and-go, packets of chips, spam and instant coffee to RFS stations.

Pictures of the couple hard at work show them juggling multiple boxes and carrying cases of water in and out of the shed where all the donations were being stored.

Throughout the day, locals continued arriving with more donations and supplies.

RFS stations and the state premier in Victoria have recently had to ask people to stop making physical donations because most storage locations are at capacity, and have asked those wanting to make a contribution to donate money instead.

Celeste and Api spoke to locals who arrived to deliver supplies which would be redistributed to RFS stations

People donated boxes of water as well as non perishable foods, toiletries and clothing to the charity drive on Monday

Firefighters (pictured at Batlow on Saturday) have spent weeks defending lives and property from the blazes

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has begged people to donate money rather than items, saying many stations are at capacity.

'I don't want to appear harsh in any way, but we don't need any more clothes, food, trucks on our roads,' he said on Sunday.

'I know it all comes from a place of kindness and I thank everybody who's made those donations.'

The CFA, Victoria's rural fire service, echoed that call: 'Experience tells us that donation of money is much more effective and provides more flexibility than the donation of material items or pre-loved goods.'

One of the cars which arrived at the charity drive came stocked with supplies for volunteers

On Sunday, Celeste's husband Robin shared a video of his wife 'getting some essentials ready... for those heroic folks fighting the blazes'.

The footage showed Celeste struggling with six shopping trolleys filled with water, medical supplies and toiletries at a Coles supermarket.

Her generosity and leadership during the crisis has led to some other celebrities calling for Celeste to be named as the next prime minister of Australia.

How to donate to bushfire relief funds Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has begged people to donate money rather than items, saying many stations are at capacity. 'I don't want to appear harsh in any way, but we don't need any more clothes, food, trucks on our roads,' he said on Sunday. 'I know it all comes from a place of kindness and I thank everybody who's made those donations.' The CFA, Victoria's rural fire service, echoed that call: 'Experience tells us that donation of money is much more effective and provides more flexibility than the donation of material items or pre-loved goods.' STATE FIRE SERVICES Donations can be made to the state-funded rural fire services. Some states allow pledges to individual brigades. Victoria: search 'CFA Donate' NSW: search 'NSW RFS donate' South Australia: search 'CFS Foundation' Queensland: search 'Donate to RFBAQ' to donate to individual brigades FALLEN FIREFIGHTERS' FAMILIES The NSW RFS has established official funds for the young families of Samuel McPaul, Geoffrey Keaton and Andrew O'Dwyer, who lost their lives battling fires this season. Search 'Support firefighter families' on the NSWRFS site. CELESTE BARBER'S DONATION PAGE More than half a million people from across the globe have pledged $23.4 million to the NSW RFS through the Australian comedian's Facebook fundraiser. That amount is equivalent to two weeks of funding for what is the world's largest fire service. AUSTRALIAN RED CROSS DISASTER RELIEF FUND Donations are being accepted through the general disaster relief fund, which goes to helping those affected by bushfires, heat, floods, cyclones and other emergencies. More than $8 million has been raised since New Year's Eve. SALVATION ARMY The Salvos are providing meals to evacuees and first-responders. Search 'Salvos bushfire appeal'. ST VINCENT DE PAUL Vinnies is helping with bills, clothing, bedding and food. The Queensland government chipped in $25,000 in September as part of a wider $100,000 donation. Search 'Vinnies Bushfire Appeal'. WILDLIFE NSW Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service (WIRES) say they received more than 20,000 calls in December alone, up 14 per cent. Search 'WIRES donate'. Mogo Zoo and the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital have both set up GoFundMe pages, raising $50,000 and $3.1 million respectively. Search 'Mogo Zoo Fire Recovery' or 'Port Macquarie Koala Hospital' on GoFundMe.com. GOFUNDME Millions have been raised on the website, including the wildlife funds above, $138,000 for the Mallacoota Fires Support Fund and $110,000 in one fund for Cudgewa and surrounding Victorian towns. But, given anyone can set up a page, fraud is a possibility - such as a funeral fund for young Cobargo father Patrick Salway. That page was falsely established in his niece's name, raising $4000. 'She has not opened this page and is absolutely gutted ... that someone would be so f***ing low to do this to her and our family,' Mr Salway's brother-in-law, Dean Hancock, said. Advertisement

Celeste announced on Facebook on Friday that she had set up the fundraiser.

'I'm raising money for The Trustee for NSW Rural Fire Service & Brigades Donations Fund and your contribution will make an impact, whether you donate a lot or a little. Anything helps,' she wrote.

The funds raised by Celeste will be split between a variety of organisations, but could take months to get to those areas most in need.

The mother-of-two has kept her 6.5 million Instagram followers updated with hourly posts about her plans for the funds.

While she initially intended that the money would go directly to The Trustee for NSW Rural Fire Services (RFS) and Brigades, Ms Barber said after feedback from donors it will now be shared around the country.

A spokesperson for the RFS told Daily Mail Australia they had been in discussion with Ms Barber about her wishes for how best to distribute the money when it is received.

Mr Robin smiled as he helped carry in two cases of bottled water while he volunteered on Monday

Ms Barber and her husband have spent recent days collecting donations (left) which they gave to a collection centre on Monday morning (right)

More than $34million in donations made to comedian Celeste Barber's fundraiser could take MONTHS to get to those in need - so where will all the money go? By Josh Hanrahan for Daily Mail Australia The mother-of-two has kept her 6.5 million Instagram followers updated with hourly posts about her plans for the funds. While she initially intended that the money would go directly to The Trustee for NSW Rural Fire Services (RFS) and Brigades, Ms Barber said after feedback from donors it will now be shared around the country. A spokesperson for the RFS told Daily Mail Australia they had been in discussion with Ms Barber about her wishes for how best to distribute the money when it is received. 'Her people have spoken to our executives and are in ongoing discussions as to what will be done with the money when it comes through,' an RFS spokesman said. 'Nothing has been finalised as yet and it will take some times for those funds to be transferred, sometimes up to 90 days.' In one of her many updates on Sunday, as fires raged across the country, Ms Barber admitted she was 'overwhelmed' by the prospect of having to distribute the massive amount of cash. But she assured her followers it would go to the places in most need, promising that it would be split between states and organisations with varying focus. 'It seems with raising a f**k tonne of money, comes a f**k tonne of people telling you what you should do with it,' the comedian said. 'It's going to the Rural Fire Service (RFS) and it will be distributed out. I'm going to make sure that Victoria gets some, that South Australia gets some, also the families of people who have died in these fires. 'I get it, I'm hearing you all... and I get it, you guys have donated so yes, say what it is that's needed. 'There are conversations that are going to be happening with fancy people in fancy RFS land and we will sort it out, I want you to know that. 'Otherwise why have we raised this money if it's not going to go to the people who absolutely need it.' Facebook can take up to 90 days to distribute money donated through fundraising, but unlike other organisations does not charge a processing fee. Daily Mail Australia contacted Ms Barber for comment, but she was unavailable. Advertisement

Celeste and her husband have already raised more than $30million for the bushfire appeal in a matter of days

Celeste was spotted sorting through donations, which included general supplies like instant coffee, dried pasta and spam

As her fundraiser grows by the minute, the likes of Pia Miller, Laura Byrne and Angie Kent have called for Celeste to become Australia's 'next PM'.

Miller shared a post to Instagram on Sunday, which read: 'Celeste Barber for PM.'

Byrne also used the hashtag '#CelesteForPM', before adding: 'What a woman.'

Angie, a former Bachelorette, paid tribute to Celeste for inspiring so many people from around the world to donate.

Angie wrote: 'This is what happens when we work together and have strong humans leading the way. Thank you, Celeste, and your army of amazing people who follow you and have donated.'
US President Donald Trump on Sunday vowed major retaliation if Iran tries to avenge the killing of its key military commander Qasem Soleimani and doubled down on a threat to bomb Iranian cultural sites.

If they do anything there will be major retaliation, Trump told reporters.

Trump, speaking on Air Force One on his way back to Washington from a vacation in Florida, also said he would impose very big sanctions on Iraq if it follows through on a parliament vote calling for the expulsion of US troops based in the country.

The presidents rhetoric added to already spiraling tensions in the Middle East following the killing by the United States of Soleimani -- one of the most important figures in the Iranian government -- in a drone strike near Baghdads international airport.

Also Watch l Soleimani killing: MPs raise death to America chants in Iran Parliament

Trump had already threatened widespread bombing of Iran if Tehran carries out its own threats to attack US troops and interests in the region.

In his latest comments, he dismissed strong criticism of his earlier warnings that targets could include unspecified cultural sites in Iran -- a country with an ancient heritage.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesnt work that way, he said.

Trumps reaction to the Iraqi parliament vote urging the departure of US troops also illustrated the widening fallout from the decision to kill Soleimani last week.

He said that Iraq, a US ally, would be treated like foe Iran, whose economy has been devastated by US-led sanctions, if the troops were made to exit on unfavorable terms.

If they do ask us to leave -- if we dont do it in a very friendly basis -- we will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before, Trump said.

Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.

Trump said the US base in Iraq was very extraordinarily expensive.

Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it, he said.
"These awards strengthen our exploration portfolio in the Eastern Mediterranean," said Mike Cousins, senior vice president of exploration and new ventures at ExxonMobil. "We look forward to working with the government and deploying our proven expertise and advanced technology."

The acquisition includes acreage in the 1.2 million North Marakia Offshore block, which is located approximately five miles offshore Egypt's northern coast in the Herodotus basin. The remaining 543,000 acres is in the North East El Amriya Offshore block in the Nile Delta.

ExxonMobil will operate both blocks and hold 100 percent interest. Operations, including acquisition of seismic data, are scheduled to begin in 2020.

"ExxonMobil has been a partner in Egypt's growth for more than 115 years, and these awards reaffirm our commitment to pursuing high-quality opportunities in the country," said Hesham Elamroussy, chairman and managing director of ExxonMobil Egypt.

The awards add upstream interests to ExxonMobil's long-standing downstream presence in Egypt, where it has been a leading fuels, lubricants and specialties marketer since 1902.

About ExxonMobil

ExxonMobil, the largest publicly traded international energy company, uses technology and innovation to help meet the world's growing energy needs. ExxonMobil is a global leader in LNG project execution and holds an industry-leading inventory of resources, is one of the largest refiners and marketers of petroleum products, and its chemical company is one of the largest in the world. For more information, visit www.exxonmobil.com or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/exxonmobil.

Cautionary Note:

Statements that reference future events or conditions in this press release are forward-looking statements. Actual future results, including project plans and outcomes may differ significantly depending on changes in long-term oil or gas prices and other market or economic factors that affect the petroleum industry; the timely completion and the results of future exploration programs; reservoir performance; unexpected technical difficulties or other technical or operating factors; the actions of governmental authorities or regulatory agencies, including obtaining necessary permits and approvals; the outcome of commercial negotiations; and other factors listed under the heading "Factors Affecting Future Results" on the Investor page at the ExxonMobil website at www.exxonmobil.com and in Item 1A of ExxonMobil's most recent Form 10-K. References to resources in this release include volumes that are not yet classified as proved reserves under SEC definitions, but that are expected to be ultimately recoverable.
A ruling by the Dutch Supreme Court - that the country must press ahead with significant cuts in carbon emissions - could prove a breakthrough for climate activists, writes Kyran Fitzgerald.

On New Years Eve, the city of Sydney went ahead with a A$6.5m (4m) fireworks display while much of southern Australia burned, reducing many hundreds of properties to ashes and leaving scores of people dead.

The citys public relations department surpassed itself. 2020 arrives in sparkly Sydney style, said its press release, prompting a furious response from Sydney Morning Herald columnist, Elizabeth Farrelly.

Even inside, the air made your eyes water. Sparkly? Theres nothing sparkling about this.

Australias bumbling prime minister, Scott Morrison, fresh from a family break in Hawaii, was filmed by a TV camera turning his back on a young woman made homeless by the conflagration after she declined to shake his hand.

The PM stood by his policy of climate change scepticism though he has finally acknowledged the seriousness of the current situation, and is now warning that the crisis is set to last several months.

Next month, the outgoing governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, will take up a new job as the United Nations envoy for climate action. Mr Carney has warned that the world will face irreversible heating unless firms shift their priorities soon.

He estimates that we are on course to register a warming in global temperatures of almost 4Cfour degrees centigrade. Further foot-dragging could result in a massive wipeout in asset values as society is forced into a last-minute panicked response.

Mr Carney estimates that in this event, up to 80%5 of coal assets and one half of developed oil reservesd would be stranded, resulting in a financial wipeout of Venezuelan proportions.

Some states have been taking action. Denmark has just announced that, in 2009, it sourced almost half of its power from wind. It aims to achieve 100% of its power from renewable sources by 2030. The EU average is 14% though here, at least, Ireland does well, with just under 30% of its power coming from wind energy sources.

The Danes are also targeting a 70% reduction in their greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Across the North Sea, in the Netherlands, the countrys Supreme Court has delivered an important ruling. In what is being seen as a breakthrough for climate activists, the court has ruled that the countrys government is legally obliged to press ahead with significant cuts in carbon emissions.

The court has ordered the government to step up its efforts to reduce emissions. In the view of the judges, a government has an obligation to protect its citizens human rights in the face of climate change, adding that  specifically  it must reduce emissions by at least 25% compared to 1990 levels by the end of 2020.

The case was taken by the Urgenda Foundation, a group of climate activists.

The court concluded that individual nations have direct obligations under Articles 2 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights regarding the right to life and to family life.

Parents of health-compromised children in smoked-out places like Sydney will understand all too well the import of this judgment.

The legal counsel for Urgenda, Dennis van Berkel, told The Guardian that, while no court outside the Netherlands would be bound by the decision, it would have influence and wouldprovide others with inspiration.

According to David Boyd, UN special rapporteur, it is the most important climate change decision so far, confirming that human rights are being jeopardised by the climate emergency, and that wealthy nations are legally obliged to achieve rapid and substantial emissions reductions.

Closer to home, climate activists have also been taking their case to the courts. Environmental NGO, Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE), have taken a case in which they argued that the Governments National Mitigation Plan failed to comply with the Climate Act 2015.

They have argued that the plan was unconstitutional as it failed to protect fundamental rights set out in the constitution, such as the right to life, bodily integrity and protection of the environment.

The case, known as Climate Case Ireland, is the first in which citizens seek sought to hold the Government accountable for its role in contributing to damaging climate change.

In a recent decision of the High Court, Mr Justice McGrath ruled in favour of the Government on the substantial claim, while at the same time accepting that the FIE had legal standing to bring the action.

The judge acknowledged that the country is already being impacted by climate change, while noting that this was also accepted by the authors of the plan, which recognises that there is a limited window for real action.

Much of the argument before the court centred around the separation of powers between the three pillars of government  executive, legislative, and judicial  and the reluctance of the court to usurp the functions of the executive arm.

Counsel for the FIE, Eoin McCullough, stressed the non-mandatory, negative nature of the relief sought.

It is simply a request to the court to quash an unlawful policy, he submitted. That the striking down of a piece of legislation may have knock-on financial implications does not necessarily involve an infringement of theseparation of powers.

The FIE has applied for permission to leapfrog the Court of Appeal and have its appeal heard directly in the Supreme Court.

If the Supreme Court accepts the case, we can anticipate an interesting encounter  one that will provide clarity regarding the attitudes of our top judges towards an issue which will loom ever larger in importance.
This article is for investors who would like to improve their understanding of price to earnings ratios (P/E ratios). To keep it practical, we'll show how Magna International Inc.'s (TSE:MG) P/E ratio could help you assess the value on offer. Magna International has a P/E ratio of 9.78, based on the last twelve months. In other words, at today's prices, investors are paying CA$9.78 for every CA$1 in prior year profit.

View our latest analysis for Magna International

How Do I Calculate Magna International's Price To Earnings Ratio?

The formula for P/E is:

Price to Earnings Ratio = Price per Share (in the reporting currency)  Earnings per Share (EPS)

Or for Magna International:

P/E of 9.78 = CA$54.21 (Note: this is the share price in the reporting currency, namely, USD )  CA$5.54 (Based on the year to September 2019.)

Is A High P/E Ratio Good?

A higher P/E ratio means that investors are paying a higher price for each CA$1 of company earnings. All else being equal, it's better to pay a low price -- but as Warren Buffett said, 'It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price'.

How Does Magna International's P/E Ratio Compare To Its Peers?

The P/E ratio essentially measures market expectations of a company. We can see in the image below that the average P/E (14.1) for companies in the auto components industry is higher than Magna International's P/E.

TSX:MG Price Estimation Relative to Market, January 6th 2020

This suggests that market participants think Magna International will underperform other companies in its industry. Many investors like to buy stocks when the market is pessimistic about their prospects. It is arguably worth checking if insiders are buying shares, because that might imply they believe the stock is undervalued.

How Growth Rates Impact P/E Ratios

Earnings growth rates have a big influence on P/E ratios. That's because companies that grow earnings per share quickly will rapidly increase the 'E' in the equation. And in that case, the P/E ratio itself will drop rather quickly. So while a stock may look expensive based on past earnings, it could be cheap based on future earnings.

Story continues

Magna International's earnings per share fell by 19% in the last twelve months. But it has grown its earnings per share by 5.3% per year over the last five years.

A Limitation: P/E Ratios Ignore Debt and Cash In The Bank

It's important to note that the P/E ratio considers the market capitalization, not the enterprise value. In other words, it does not consider any debt or cash that the company may have on the balance sheet. In theory, a company can lower its future P/E ratio by using cash or debt to invest in growth.

Such spending might be good or bad, overall, but the key point here is that you need to look at debt to understand the P/E ratio in context.

So What Does Magna International's Balance Sheet Tell Us?

Magna International has net debt worth 17% of its market capitalization. It would probably deserve a higher P/E ratio if it was net cash, since it would have more options for growth.

The Bottom Line On Magna International's P/E Ratio

Magna International's P/E is 9.8 which is below average (15.8) in the CA market. The debt levels are not a major concern, but the lack of EPS growth is likely weighing on sentiment.

When the market is wrong about a stock, it gives savvy investors an opportunity. If it is underestimating a company, investors can make money by buying and holding the shares until the market corrects itself. So this free report on the analyst consensus forecasts could help you make a master move on this stock.

You might be able to find a better buy than Magna International. If you want a selection of possible winners, check out this free list of interesting companies that trade on a P/E below 20 (but have proven they can grow earnings).

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed housing laws during his first year in office that aimed to protect tenants from egregious rent increases, prevent discrimination against people who pay rent with vouchers, and block cities from stymieing new construction.

But the year concluded without Newsom signing a game-changing law that would spur construction of new homes, which is largely seen by advocates and lawmakers as the key to solving Californias housing crisis.

Californias local governments as of November were on pace to approve building permits for 111,000 new housing units in 2019, down from 117,000 in 2018. While running for governor, Newsom set a goal of building 3.5 million new homes by 2025, which amounts to 500,000 new housing units per year.

The 120 members of the Legislature are reconvening in Sacramento for the second half of a two-year session with increased pressure to focus their attention on speeding production of millions of new housing units.

I think the administration working with the Legislature has set the stage for a significant push on preservation and protection, said Assemblyman David Chiu, chairman of his chambers housing committee and author of the law that caps rent increases.

But I think its incumbent on all of us in Sacramento this year to double down particularly on production, the San Francisco Democrat continued. That has to be the focus of 2020.

Housing advocates are banking on the Legislature to deliver what David Garcia, policy director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, has called the ultimate solution to the increasing crisis: policies to construct housing for Californians of every demographic and income level.

Here are some of those ideas:

Rewriting zoning laws

Expect Sen. Scott Wieners top priority this year to be sending a bill to Newsoms desk that would knock out the restrictions local governments place on new development.

Wiener carried a high-profile zoning proposal, Senate Bill 50, in 2019 that was left in the dust in May after Senate Appropriations stalled it. It would have required local governments to allow for denser housing near transit-rich areas.

Critics of SB 50 said the legislation signaled the end to single-family neighborhoods. Others said it would worsen gentrification in communities of color in urban areas.

Wiener, D-San Francisco, converted SB 50 into a two-year bill, giving the proposal another chance to reach Newsom. Wiener has pledged to put an end to the restrictive, exclusionary, low-density zoning through the bill.

We have to ramp up housing production and so, yes, keeping renters stable in their housing is incredibly important. Funding affordable housing is incredibly important. But in the long run, to solve this problem, we have to build millions of homes, Wiener said. And its too hard to build housing of any type in California. We have to make it easier.

Newsom in recent months has advocated for policies like the one Wiener is proposing.

We need to continue this kind of energy to focus on increasing that supply, Newsom said in October during a ceremony to sign housing legislation. Continuing to do the good work that Scott Wiener has been doing raising the issue of production in this state, and trying to do what he can to help his colleagues be convinced that theyre going to survive if they just come on over and help support, a little bit more, an indulgence in the construction side of things.

Funding affordable housing

Lawmakers also want to find more money to spur redevelopment construction.

Newsom rejected legislation last year to authorize an eventual $2 billion in funding for affordable housing, saying in his veto message of Senate Bill 5 that such costly proposals should be part of budget deliberations.

Sen. Jim Beall, the San Jose Democrat who wrote SB 5, said fixing the housing crisis cant be done overnight with one-time funding and his office confirmed he would reintroduce SB 5 on Monday.

Advocates have instead urged Newsom in a November letter to commit $5 billion in his January budget for affordable housing initiatives.

The coalition of 11 groups that penned the letter asked for a permanent expansion of the low-income housing tax credit and funding for extremely low-income housing options, saying the scale of the crisis calls for bigger, transformative solutions.

A priority for the California Housing Consortium, which signed on to the letter, is to streamline the Housing and Community Development Departments affordable housing application process, a highly technical idea for a bill, said the groups lobbyist Marina Wiant.

But I think it will be meaningful and make it easier for both the state and the development community to underwrite and develop critical and affordable housing units, Wiant continued.

Two more bills that stalled in 2019 could return. One proposal would make it easier for voters to approve bonds to build affordable housing by lowering the threshold for passage. Another would reform how cities calculate and impose fees on new development.

Tackling homelessness

Chiu said lawmakers will likely take up a debate on whether homeless people should have a right to housing, and then discuss how to finance an initiative to build more shelters and increase mental health care.

The conundrum that we see around California is that every resident in every city says we have a homeless crisis and we need to do something about it, Chiu said. But when it comes to who makes the investment and where housing should be built, everyone says someone else ought to do it.

Assemblyman Miguel Santiagos legislation was signed last year to allow Los Angeles to speed up the environmental review process for emergency and supporting housing projects, a success his office said he plans to expand to a statewide policy this year.

Homelessness is a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions. Families are living in tents and people are dying on the streets, Santiago, D-Los Angeles, said in a statement to The Sacramento Bee. The shortage of homeless housing is not just confined to LA City. You see it everywhere in the state. If California wants to get serious about keeping people off the streets and building homeless housing faster, then we must start by removing barriers.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
The unprecedented attack on students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi on Sunday night is one of the darkest episodes in recent times in India. It brings to the fore a range of troubling issues  the increasing mob violence; the rule of law (or its absence) in the heart of the capital; the action (or inaction) of Delhi Police, which reports directly to the ministry of home affairs (MHA); the systematic undermining of one of Indias most important higher educational institutions in line with what appears to be a concerted attack on universities; the deployment of inflammatory rhetoric to tarnish critics; the abdication of constitutional duties by authorities concerned; and, ultimately, the weakening of Indian democracy itself.

Here is what we do not know conclusively about what happened in JNU on Sunday: The complete background of all the attackers who brutally beat up students and teachers, unleashed a reign of terror, and vandalised property. But here is what we do know: These attackers engaged in violence; many of those beaten up were critical of both the government and the university administration; the university administration was absent: the police did not enter the university and restore order for hours, allowing the mob to continue; the police also turned a blind eye to the violence outside the gates, where activists and journalists were beaten up, even as others cheered on the attack with violent slogans; the miscreants walked out, with the police looking on; and no one was arrested.

Put it all together, and certain conclusions are inescapable. Irrespective of the background of the violence  the JNU administration claims that those students who were boycotting the registration process for the new semester because of their opposition to the fee hike were pressuring those who were keen to register and this led to clashes  it is clear that three institutions have failed. The vice chancellor, M Jagadesh Kumar, failed to end the controversy over the fee hike, ensure peace, provide security to students, call in the police on time, and has been generally partisan in his approach, by treating a set of students as enemies. The human resource development (HRD) ministry has failed in providing leadership and resolving issues in JNU  in fact, by replacing the secretary who was seeking to find a middle ground, it closed doors on a reconciliation. And the Delhi Police, and by extension the home ministry, has failed, for it was at best, a bystander to the violence, and at worst, an active enabler of the violence on Sunday. For true justice, the VC must resign on moral grounds; the HRD ministry must get an independent, non-partisan figure as VC and address student grievances; the Delhi Police must arrest the culprits immediately; a truly independent enquiry must be instituted; and heads must roll in both Delhi Police and MHA for abdication of duties. Otherwise, be prepared for the erosion of the rule of law and the rise of mobocracy.
A day after the mob attack at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), a delegation of TMC MPs which had gone to the varsity to express solidarity with the students was not allowed to enter the campus here on Monday, said party sources.

Led by former Union minister Dinesh Trivedi, the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) delegation consisted of MPs Sajda Ahmed, Manas Bhunia and Vivek Gupta and was stopped at the gate of varsity, the TMC sources said.

Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

The Left-controlled JNU Students' Union and the RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) blamed each other for the incident in which at least 28 people, including JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh were injured.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Charles Yeboah

06.01.2020 LISTEN

When an infamous Florida "pastor" with a handful of followers threatened and carried out his actions to burn the Qur'an, I'd by then said to close associates that 'the Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Centre, this time placed his supposed intelligence above wisdom. And that what's he's done will only cause chaos and divisions in the world than healing the gaps.'

Sequel to his (Terry Jones) actions, American flags and interests were burnt in some Muslim dominated countries. Consulates and staffs were torched, leading to lost of lives in American envoys in Libya, with the ambassador general himself, Christopher Stevens, perishing.

Imagine the ripple effects of one man's "unthoughtful" move! Though the 'pastor' did not have an immediate direct repercussions arising from his actions, but his country America suffered, and with that, he's suffered somehow greatly.

My native Goka people in the Republic of Ghana say: 'if you ridicule the whistling of your servant, you'll not hear his sweet voice singing.' That adage is related to how the people should all the time have ears for learning from all sources.

With that timeless sayings of my nativity, I've grown to embrace all teachings from whatever source. I peruse them, adapt and adopt the needed part in my life, and the chaff, I take it as a wake-up call, a catalyst that adjure me to doing what saves mankind from groping in the darkness.

With that emphasis made, I'm finding it difficult to comprehend why a supposed "Awakened African" will not be guided by history, or a universal wisdom that commands the one who seeks wisdom to be a reader, but with a smirking air of accomplishments desecrate any written, edited, endorsed, and believed sacred books like the Bible, Qur'an, and the Torah, by throwing them in a toilet as seen in the culled picture in this writeup!

If we aspire to the respectable majestic height of "Awakeness", then, we have an onerous obligation to build from the debris, the unreasonable religious rivalry of old that has held back African progress for centuries.

No where in a civilised world, safe in slavery, have I seen people freely accorded respect to the leader who capriciously insult and whip the followers to follow his dictates hookline-and-sinker. You don't win a soul to your line of faith by destroying the physical symbols that defines them. Even if you do, don't forget it'll be a pyrrhic victory. Your actions will come back in a boomerang circle to hunt you one day.

On the other hand, the African whose mind has been taken over by the tenets of the 'despised' beliefs or faiths of others we think are in the darkness; that we're to target and illumine.

The New World Order does not celebrate soldiers who cannot capitalise on the power of the BRAIN, but his fate is tethered to the power of the BLOW.

That's what the supposed Awakened African is got to do. If we see the Bible, Qur'an, and the Torah as a White Supremacists' brainwashing literature, not the history of some characters in such books whom when we learn from; can redeem Africa from neocolonialism and imperialism.

The tales about the Davids of the Torah, the Jesuses of the Bible, and the Muhammads of the Qur'an: teaches the Revolutionary Soldier bent on erecting again our fallen walls: "no toil ends without a handsome reward".

Their documented struggle lives teach us: "our today's struggle of Africa to ward of the stranglehold of exploitation could come to an imminent end if we don't buckle and waiver but move more steps in our emancipation fight."

And to participate in our emancipation forward march to the Promised Land in nigh, the Supposed Awakening African Still Needs Awakening!

Written by: Charles Yeboah (Sir Lord)

Contact/WhatsApp: +233249542111

Email: [email protected]
Presidents on the brink of war tend to rely on an array of Oval Office assets: teams of experienced advisers, trusted sources of intelligence, strong ties with U.S. allies and credibility with the broad American public.

President Donald Trump may be in short supply across nearly all those categories as he faces the prospect of an escalating conflict with Iran.

Trump's decision to approve an airstrike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the leader of Iran's paramilitary Quds Force, came at a moment in his presidency when his national security team has been depleted by waves of departures and distracted by months of impeachment hearings before Congress.

But even before the Ukraine crisis, Trump had spent much of his first three years in office attacking critical capabilities ordinarily cultivated by commanders in chief: He has disparaged U.S. intelligence agencies, disrupted relationships with European partners and diluted the power of the bully pulpit with thousands of falsehoods.

In many ways, Trump's approach to the presidency adds to the uncertainty of an increasingly volatile situation in the Middle East, with the administration deploying thousands of additional troops to the region even as Iran vows to take revenge with attacks on unspecified American targets.

Former U.S. national security officials described the situation as worrisome in part because of Iran's capabilities but also because of Trump's tendency to ignore advisers and favor instinct over hard information.

"That's going to be a problem going forward if this situation deteriorates," said John McLaughlin, the former deputy director of the CIA. Trump and members of his Cabinet with critical roles in a potential conflict with Iran have two defining qualities, McLaughlin said: "low credibility and limited experience."

So far, Trump appears to be leaning heavily on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for guidance on the decision to target Soleimani and the strike's aftermath, as well as making the public case that the operation was warranted.

Pompeo is the longest-standing member of Trump's inner circle, having served as CIA director before moving to the State Department. He is also regarded as a credible voice among conservatives, including in foreign policy circles otherwise skeptical of Trump.

Even so, the administration's initial statements about the airstrike - including those made by Pompeo in a string of television appearances and calls to foreign counterparts - have at times been contradictory and greeted with skepticism.

In a television interview on Friday, Pompeo repeatedly emphasized that the decision to target Soleimani was driven by U.S. intelligence assessments warning of "imminent" danger to American lives overseas.

Members of Congress emerged from private briefings with U.S. intelligence officials on Friday saying they heard nothing to suggest that the threat posed by the paramilitary forces led or guided by Soleimani had changed substantially in recent months.

More broadly, Pompeo asserted that "the world is a safer place today" even as Americans were urged to evacuate from Iraq and that the strike had decreased the chance of conflict with Iran even as thousands of additional American troops were reportedly being rushed to the Middle East.

Pompeo's elevated standing in the Cabinet is in part a reflection of the stream of departures from the administration's upper ranks. Former defense secretary Jim Mattis, who served as a Marine general in Iraq and Afghanistan, resigned last year. Trump has also gone through three national security advisers, including former lieutenant general Michael Flynn, former lieutenant general H.R. McMaster and John Bolton.

The current national security adviser, Robert O'Brien, stepped into the job in late September as the impeachment investigation was accelerating in the House. He is a lawyer who served in the U.S. Army Reserve with little known expertise on Iran or the Middle East.

Turmoil within the National Security Council has further eroded critical areas of expertise, including counterterrorism, officials said.

U.S. officials fear that Iran may seek to retaliate for Soleimani's death by using its networks of paramilitary proxies in Iraq and Syria, or its links to terror groups including Hezbollah. If so, coordinating the counterterrorism efforts of the CIA, FBI and other agencies could prove critical to safeguarding potential American targets.

But the top counterterrorism official at the NSC was installed in the job late last year and has less experience than many of his predecessors. Kash Patel, a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., also has a strained relationship with the CIA and FBI, current and former officials said, in part because of his involvement in efforts by Trump and his allies to discredit those agencies and accuse them of seeking to undermine the president.

Trump has spent much of his presidency attacking U.S. spy agencies, rejecting their conclusions on critical national security issues ranging from Russia's interference in the presidential election to the complicity of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

And yet Trump and other officials have pinned the decision to target Soleimani on intelligence from those same agencies the president so frequently disparages. "The risk of doing nothing was enormous," Pompeo said Friday on CNN. "Intelligence community made that assessment and President Trump acted decisively last night."

In explaining his reluctance to trust U.S. spy agencies, Trump has often pointed to the erroneous assessments they made nearly two decades ago that Iraq had stockpiles of banned weapons - judgments cited by President George W. Bush as a rationale for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Those faulty prewar claims have had a lasting impact on American credibility in the Middle East and beyond. Trump's penchant for making false or exaggerated claims - something he has done more than 15,000 times while in office, according to a tally by The Washington Post - has likely compounded that credibility gap.

McLaughlin recalled a famous episode in the Cold War when President John Kennedy dispatched Dean Acheson, the secretary of state, to Paris to brief French President Charles de Gaulle on the U.S. discovery of Soviet attempts to install missiles in Cuba.

Acheson brought satellite images to show de Gaulle, but the French president - reportedly miffed that he was merely being "informed" about the development rather than "consulted" on any U.S. response - waved the photos away, saying that the word of the president was sufficient.

"That's not going to happen with Trump," McLaughlin said.
BEIJING, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- A senior Chinese military official Friday called on scientific and technological experts in the military to take the lead in developing the army with science and technology and make greater contributions to building a strong military.

Zhang Youxia, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks when meeting with newly selected academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the country's two top science institutions, from the military.

Zhang stressed accelerated efforts to increase the contribution rate of science and technology to combat capability.

He asked sci-tech experts in the military to develop unshakeable confidence, tackle difficulties and scale new heights in military science and technology.

Zhang also emphasized the achievement of more breakthroughs in sci-tech innovation and the cultivation of high-caliber innovative talents.
Acuity Brands is delivering a complete smart home ecosystem with Juno AI, taking the lead in smart home lighting design, and we are thrilled to recognize the Company as a 2020 IoT Breakthrough Award winner.

IoT Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global Internet-of-Things (IoT) market, today announced that Acuity Brands, the North American market leader and one of the world's leading providers of innovative lighting and building management solutions, has been selected as the winner of the Connected Home Lighting Product of the Year award for its Juno AI smart lighting solution in the 4th annual IoT Breakthrough Awards program.

Juno AI downlight with Alexa built-in, is the only smart home product to integrate four advanced technologies  the Alexa voice service, high performance JBL speakers, sophisticated lighting controls and state-of-the-art Juno LED lighting  into a single ceiling light fixture. It can be used to order pizza, play music and playlists, and control other Juno AI downlighting in and around the home  including dimming the lights to set the mood and adjusting color temperature from warm to cool. Juno AI connects to any Alexa-enabled smart home devices  lawn sprinklers, vacuums, security cameras, ambient lighting and much more  through simple voice commands.

Juno AI offers total control for todays modern smart home, from lighting, sound, voice, privacy and more, said Jeff Spencer, Acuity Brands Lighting Vice President and General Manager of Smart and Connected Devices. Not only is Juno AI blending seamlessly into the home, it allows consumers to easily program advanced smart home applications all while controlling privacy by muting or turning it off completely with the flick of a switch. We are proud to receive this significant industry recognition and look forward to driving further innovation in the smart lighting and smart home market.

The mission of the IoT Breakthrough Awards program is to recognize the innovators, leaders and visionaries from around the globe in a range of IoT categories, including Industrial and Enterprise IoT, Smart City technology, Connected Home and Home Automation, Connected Car, and many more. This years program attracted more than 3,700 nominations from companies all over the world.

Acuity Brands is showcasing a high-level of innovative design and ingenuity with the Juno AI smart lighting solution, incorporating a smart LED, Alexa, and a high-performance JBL speaker into one powerful breakthrough product, said James Johnson, managing director at IoT Breakthrough. Acuity Brands is delivering a complete smart home ecosystem with Juno AI, taking the lead in smart home lighting design, and we are thrilled to recognize the Company as a 2020 IoT Breakthrough Award winner.

Acuity Brands provides intelligent network systems that can optimize energy efficiency and comfort as well as enhance the occupant experience for various indoor and outdoor applications, all the while reducing operating costs. Additionally, the company continues to expand its solutions portfolio, including software and services, to provide a host of other economic benefits resulting from data analytics that enables the IoT and supports the advancement of smart buildings, smart cities and the smart grid.

About IoT Breakthrough

Part of Tech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence and recognition platform for global technology innovation and leadership, the IoT Breakthrough Awards program is devoted to honoring excellence in Internet-of-Things technologies, services, companies and products. The IoT Breakthrough Awards program provides a forum for public recognition around the achievements of IoT companies and products in categories including Connected Home and Home Automation, Connected Car, Industrial IoT (IIoT) and Smart City, Consumer IoT and more. For more information visit IoTBreakthrough.com.

About Acuity Brands

Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE: AYI) is the North American market leader and one of the worlds leading providers of lighting and building management solutions. With fiscal year 2019 net sales of $3.7 billion, Acuity Brands currently employs approximately 12,000 associates and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia with operations throughout North America, and in Europe and Asia. The Companys products and solutions are sold under various brands, including Lithonia Lighting, Holophane, Aculux, American Electric Lighting, A-Light, Antique Street Lamps, Atrius, Cyclone, DGLogik, Distech Controls, DTL, eldoLED, Eureka, Gotham, Healthcare Lighting, Hydrel, Indy, IOTA, Juno, Lucid, Luminaire LED, Luminis, Mark Architectural Lighting, nLight, Peerless, RELOC Wiring, ROAM, Sensor Switch, Sunoptics and Winona Lighting. Visit us at acuitybrands.com
Susan Locklear traces her activities with Holocaust Museum Houston to some 30 years ago when her younger son came home from Deepwater Elementary School in Deer Park with questions about Nazi concentration camps.

The Dobie Ninth Grade Center teacher, who lives in Clear Lake, credits her love for learning, particularly history, to her father, the late Richard King of Deer Park.

However, her purple hair is Locklears own invention.

Its just for fun. The kids love it, she said.

It does spark interest, added Locklear, a 1973 graduate of Deer Park High School, who teaches AP human geography to Dobie freshmen.

I started dyeing my hair a couple of years ago at the beginning of each school year, she said. Its pretty easy. I do it myself with a spray can from CVS.

By the middle of the school year, it fades to pink, she said. My hair is white; so it blends in.

How we treat people who are different

At the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year, Locklear introduced a new program to her students, Engines of Change, which is connected to Holocaust Museum Houston, where Locklear serves on the education committee.

The curriculum uses the Holocaust as a background for the discussion of how we treat people who are different from ourselves, she said.

The topics for the next four months will focus on social justice, civil discourse, human rights and the power of art.

One of the programs most active students, Jacob Montez, will represent Dobie as an ambassador to a Jan. 27 conclave at the museum with other Houston-area high school students who will analyze social concerns that affect the city, state and world.

The 14-year-old son of Nathan and Alma Montez of Pasadena attended several events at the museum last fall, including a speaker event with Dolores Huerta, an activist who helped co-found the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez.

Locklear, who is single, said that her father instilled an attitude of achievement in her.

Fulfilling a dream to be a teacher

Becoming a teacher was my childhood dream, she said, but it wasnt until her two sons left for college and she saw the opportunity after the company she worked for was sold. Locklear moved in with her parents and enrolled at Sam Houston State University.

In 2002, she graduated with a bachelors degree in secondary education with majors in history and English and a minor in geography.

This is Locklears 18th year with Pasadena ISD, where she has taught at three schools.

In 2011, she was named teacher of the year by the Texas State Historical Association.

As a member of World Affairs Council Houston and a travel fellow with the American Geographical Society, Locklear has become a global traveler, making trips to places including China and India.

This is my fifth year teaching AP human geography, she said, explaining that its the only subject for which a Texas high-school freshman can get a semesters college credit by completing the course and scoring well on a college-board exam in May.

The course explores how humans have understood, used and changed the surface of the Earth, including patterns of human population, mitigation and land use, per a description at apstudents.collegeboard.org.

For more about Holocaust Museum Houston, visit www.hmh.org. For more on the Engines of Change program, visit https://bit.ly/2QurlMn or message education@hmh.org.

Don Maines is a freelance writer who can be contacted at donmaines@att.net
 DBS, Standard Chartered and UOB provide SGD945m green loan to finance Allianz and Gaw Capitals acquisition of DUO Tower and DUO Galleria

 SGD945m green loan was structured according to Ophir-Rochor Commercials green loan framework, which is aligned with Green Loan Principles

SGD945m green loan

DBS, Standard Chartered and UOB provide SGD945m green loan to finance Allianz and Gaw Capitals acquisition of DUO Tower and DUO Galleria

DBS, Standard Chartered (Singapore) and United Overseas Bank (UOB) have teamed up to provide a SGD945m green loan to Allianz Real Estate and Gaw Capital Partners to support their joint acquisition of DUO Tower and DUO Galleria in Singapore.

Allianz Real Estate, announced in July last year that acting on behalf of several Allianz companies, and Gaw Capital, representing a sovereign wealth fund separate account, they have signed a sale and purchase agreement to acquire DUO Tower and DUO Galleria (DUO), a premium grade-A office asset with ancillary retail in Singapore for approximately SGD 1.6 billion. Allianz will own a 60% interest and the remaining 40% will be owned by Gaw Capital. The asset will be jointly managed by Allianz Real Estate and Gaw Capital.

Designed by internationally acclaimed German architect Ole Scheeren, DUO has redefined Singapores skyline with its distinctive hexagonal plated towers. The asset was completed in 2017 and was awarded the Green Mark Platinum Award, the highest accolade from Building and Construction Authority of Singapore. Located above the Bugis MRT Interchange station, DUO offers excellent connectivity to the CBD, Marina Bay and other metropolitan areas.

The commercial asset comprises 557,972 square feet of international premium grade-A office space with floor plates ranging between 26,000 and 31,000 square feet as well as 59,873 square feet of retail space. The asset is stabilized with a current occupancy of 97%.

Both DUO Tower and DUO Galleria have held the Green Mark Platinum Certification awarded by the Singapore Building and Construction Authority since 2013. This is in recognition of the mixed-office and retail developments green features, such as the double-glazed low-emissivity glass exterior[2], rainwater harvesting system and surrounding lush green landscape.

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The three banks acted as green loan advisers, joint mandated lead arrangers, underwriters and bookrunners to Ophir-Rochor Commercial Pte. Ltd., the joint venture between Allianz Real Estate  acting on behalf of several Allianz group companies  and Gaw Capital Partners. UOB also acted as the facility and security agent to the syndicated green loan.

Ms Lim Lay Wah, UOBs Global Head of Financial Institutions Group (Banks, Non-Bank Financial Institutions, Global Property Funds and Financial Sponsors), said, As part of contributing to the communitys long-term economic, social and environmental well-being, UOB is committed to securing more green business opportunities together with our clients. The real estate sector has been leading the charge in the demand for green financing, with more property owners, managers and financial sponsors upholding sustainability standards as part of their climate action efforts. The green loan to Allianz Real Estate and Gaw Capital exemplifies our collaborative approach with our clients to fund projects that are environmentally friendly and promote sustainability.

Mr Chew Chong Lim, Managing Director and Global Head of Real Estate, Institutional Banking Group, DBS Bank, said, Responsible banking is one of the key tenets of our sustainability agenda and financing green infrastructure is an important way to encourage a tangible shift towards a low carbon economy. We are encouraged by the steady traction in green and sustainability-linked loans from the real estate industry, and continue to seek meaningful partnerships with like-minded players to advance the collective ambition to build towards a more sustainable future.

Mr Patrick Lee, Chief Executive Officer, Standard Chartered Bank Singapore, said, Standard Chartered Bank is committed to growing its sustainable finance portfolio in Singapore so that it can play a role in directing capital to build a more green and sustainable environment. Singapore is fast becoming a hub for green and sustainable loan issuances with over US$6 billion of loan issuances between 2018 and October 2019. We are keen to do more and will seek opportunities to work with our partners like Allianz Real Estate and Gaw Capital Partners who are exhibiting leadership in making a social and environmental impact and raising the bar for green financing in Singapore.

Mr Rushabh Desai, CEO of Allianz Real Estate Asia Pacific, said, Sustainable factors have a strong influence on the way that Allianz Real Estate acquires and manages its buildings and we have recently joined a number of initiatives that consider investments with a sustainable approach while seeking to improve social well-being. Through green loans, we find yet another path to investing responsibly while strengthening our relationships with like-minded business partners.

Ms Christina Gaw, Managing Principal and Head of Capital Markets for Gaw Capital Partners, said, Gaw Capital Partners is keen to integrate ESG considerations into every part of our business. This green loan reflects our commitment in finding ways to finance and to operate a more sustainable business. We are also excited to support the development of sustainable capital markets globally.

The SGD945m green loan was structured in accordance with Ophir-Rochor Commercials green loan framework, which is aligned with the Green Loan Principles issued by the Loan Market Association in 2018. In addition, KPMG in Singapore provided independent limited assurance on Ophir-Rochor Commercials green loan framework.

DBS is a leading financial services group in Asia with a presence in 18 markets. Headquartered and listed in Singapore, DBS is in the three key Asian axes of growth: Greater China, Southeast Asia and South Asia. The banks AA- and Aa1 credit ratings are among the highest in the world. Recognised for its global leadership, DBS has been named Worlds Best Bank by Euromoney, Global Bank of the Year by The Banker and Best Bank in the World by Global Finance.

The post SGD945m green loan provided by 3 banks to acquire DUO Tower and DUO Galleria appeared first on iCompareLoan Resources.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  Clevelanders getting sick with flu are substantially younger than in the previous five seasons, the Cleveland Department of Public Health reported Monday.

Flu intensity in Cleveland jumped from moderate in previous weeks to very high in the week ending Dec. 28. Influenza-like illnesses and confirmed hospitalizations were well above the five-year average, according to a report that Merle Gordon, director of the health department, released to The Plain Dealer.

Data out of Cuyahoga County tells the same story. Children younger than 10 have had the highest number of hospitalizations of any age group so far this flu season in Cuyahoga County, said Richard Stacklin, data analyst with the county Department of Health.

During the week ending Dec. 28 in the county, more than 80% of the 640 emergency department visits for flulike illness were people ages 0 to 24.

The B strain of influenza started circulating months earlier than usual this flu season, according to WebMD. A study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics shows the B virus killed proportionately more children than the A virus from 2010 to 2016, according to WebMD.

The county Health Department includes city of Cleveland data in its flu reports, Stacklin said.

Last week, the death of a 16-year-old Berea-Midpark High School student became Ohios first reported pediatric flu death this season. Kaylee Roberts died Dec. 31 after a brief illness.

Health officials dont know if she had any prior medical conditions, or if she had received a flu shot, Stacklin said. If the information were known, it would not be released publicly because of privacy laws governing health information.

Its hard to determine if Kaylee is an example of this flu season being more dangerous for young people without knowing her medical history, Stacklin said.

Recent statistics released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also show that the flu season is striking children nationally. There have been 27 child fatalities nationally this season, the highest seen in the last 17 years at this point in the flu season.

Overall, nearly 3,000 Americans have died this season because of the flu, and 55,000 have been hospitalized, according to the CDC.

Parents should ensure their children get the flu vaccine as the best way to stop the spread of the illness. Children older than 6 months can get the vaccine. Anyone receiving the flu shot for the first time should get two shots, 28 days apart, Stacklin said.

You can get a flu shot at many drugstores, retail stores, the Cuyahoga County Board of Health and doctors offices. There are no vaccine shortages in Ohio. The cost is $10 and up, depending on insurance.

To find where the vaccine is available near you, go to vaccinefinder.org.

You can also call the Cleveland Department of Public Health flu hotline at 216-664-4621 to find out about the departments flu vaccination schedule.

Meanwhile, Signature Health, a community-based health care agency in Cleveland, offers flu shots through its Free Vaccines for Children program. Any child from birth through 18 years of age is eligible to receive a free VFC-supplied vaccine if he or she meets at least one of the following criteria:

 The child does not have health insurance.

 The child is enrolled in Medicaid (including Medicaid HMOs).

 The child is an American Indian or Alaskan Native.

 The child has health insurance that does not pay for the vaccine. This is applicable only to children attending a federally qualified health center (Signature Health), rural health clinic or local health department).

Signature Health has six locations across Northeast Ohio. Adults may also get the flu shot at Signature Health, paid for by Medicare and Medicaid, or billed on a sliding scale. Call 440-578-8200 to schedule an appointment.

Other flu stories by Julie Washington:

16-year-old girl first flu-related death in Cuyahoga County this season

Flu season off to slow start, peak likely in December
On New Years Eve, Brianna Ferrys husband, a Fort Bragg soldier, received a call that hed need to deploy to the Middle East, and within hours he was on a plane out of North Carolina, the Associated Press reported.

This mother of a nearly 1-year-old daughter doesnt know where her husband has landed. Speaking with NBCs Today, Ferry said she is trying to stay positive and have more good days than bad days, but its really hard.

Ferrys husband is one of some 3,500 soldiers expected to all be shipped out by mid-week from the United States Armys 82nd Airborne Divisions Immediate Response Force. The troops were ordered to the Middle East as part of one of the nations largest quick deployments in decades, as tensions rise with Iran following the killing of Major General Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian commander, in an airstrike that President Donald Trump ordered, the New York Times reported.

The soldiers in this rapid-response force must be ready to drop their lives at a moments notice. April Shumards husband was home caring for the couples five children while she was at work at a day spa when he received a call to report to the base, according to the AP.

He soon texted her: Were leaving tomorrow.

Shumard told the outlet, The kids kept going, Whens Dad going to be home?

RELATED: Mark Hamill Among Those Calling Out Trump for Saying Obama Would Start Iran War to Get Re-Elected

Donald Trump and Qasem Soleimani | Mark Wilson/Getty Images; IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER'S OFFICE HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

This rapid change in life circumstances can be extraordinarily stressful for those left behind.

Im slowly losing my sanity, wrote the pregnant wife of a soldier on Facebook, according to the New York Times. The woman said she was 12 hours from her nearest family member.

And Taylor Smith is worried about the imminent deployment of a friend whose wife has a high-risk pregnancy and is due soon, CNN reported. On Sunday night at the Berean Baptist Church, Smith asked the congregation for prayers.

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We believe hes leaving somewhere around Tuesday, Smith told CNN, and his wife is due Wednesday.

However, Smith noted that the military community surrounding Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina, is there to help those left behind.

Fayettevilles unique in that situation, he told CNN. Neighbors take out for neighbors. And thats one of the things we learn here: love thy neighbor.

Shumard described Fayetteville the same way.

This was so last-minute, she told the Associated Press while asking people to reach out to the families of the 82nd Airborne. Just try to help out whoever you know who might need some babysitting or help or just get some groceries and bring it to their house.
Jacques Bernard "Jacky" Ickx is undoubtedly one of the most successful racing drivers out there. Aside from successfully competing in Formula 1, he also has six 24 Hour of Le Mans titles under his belt. Most of those Le Mans titles were won with him driving a Porsche. Now 75 years old, the Stuttgart-based marque is honoring the Belgian racing driver with a special edition Porsche 911.

Based on the 911 Carrera 4S, the tribute model is officially called the Belgian Legend Edition. Coincidentally, its available exclusively in Belgium as well. More importantly, however, it is the first-ever special edition model offered by Porsche from the current 992-series era. It is also the first 992 to receive Porsches Paint to Sample treatment finished in a unique X Blue color. Aside from the unique color, a badge of the Belgian flag and Jacky Ickxs signature on the B-pillar separate this from a standard 911.
A Muslim group have travelled to a fire-ravaged town to offer support to those who have been affected by the devastating blazes.

Members of the Newport Islamic Society cooked meals for exhausted firefighters at the Johnsonville Volunteer Fire Brigade over the weekend.

The brave firemen have been working tirelessly to contain blazes that have been raging in East Gippsland for the past week.

'It was very emotional to see how tired and drained they were. They were just exhausted,' volunteer Lookman El Kurdi told Daily Mail Australia.

Members of the Newport Islamic Society cooked meals for exhausted fire fighters at the Johnsonville Volunteer Fire Brigade over the weekend

Members of the Newport Islamic Society and the Johnsonville Volunteer Fire Brigade have lunch together on Saturday

'It felt really good to at least give them a feed and prey for them and show we are thinking about them.'

Mr El Kurdi said the group felt compelled to help after seeing what was happening around the country.

Along with cooking the meal, the group also collected five truckloads of much-needed items to be delivered across the region.

About 40 volunteers served food to the exhausted fire fighters in Johnsonville on Saturday

Firefighters were thrilled with the much-needed delivery of food and canned goods

'We were seeing all these bushfires that were happening around Australia and felt we needed to do something.

'We put the call out and within 48 hours we had collected so many items.'

Hundreds of homes have been destroyed as a result of the bushfires across East Gippsland.

Many communities have been displaced as a result of the devastating infernos.

Along with cooking the meal, the group also collected five truckloads of much-needed items to be delivered across the region

The East Gippsland area has been ravaged by bushfires, but they have seen some relief from rain on Monday

Fire fighters have been working around the clock to save what they can, with more than 766,000 hectares of land being burnout in the area.

However, some reprieve was promised with 10 millimetres expected in the area on Monday.

But communities would be back in the firing line later in the week when blazes threaten to flare up.
Kilkenny has once again been deemed cleanest of 40 towns and cities surveyed by business group Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL).

The Marble City has topped the IBAL litter rankings for a record fourth time, having last won in 2014. It finished ahead of Killarney, which was third in 2018, and Swords at the top of the table. In all, 21 of the 27 towns inspected were deemed clean, a great result but down on previous years.

Among the areas to come in for praise were the Clara approach road, High Street, Market Cross, Mac Donagh Junction Train Station, the Gowran approach road, and the N10 - M9 Connecting Road to Carlow. The banks of the River Nore were deemed 'wonderful' - 'a lovely riverside environment with olde style street lamps'.

Areas flagged as potential problems include an abandoned/closed building at Parliament Street, and the recycle facility at St Canice's - reportedly 'let down by loose litter items to the rear'.

"Kilkenny reclaims its position at the very top of the league  a superb achievement for such a popular bustling centre," says the An Taisce report.

"With so many top ranking sites, there are a few which deserve a special mention, not just for their cleanliness but overall presentation and maintenance eg High Street, Market Cross Shopping Centre, The Train Station (both exterior and interior) and the River Nore River Walk  all were exceptionally well presented and maintained, creating a very fresh impression. This very high standard was sustained for all, bar one, of the sites surveyed  the recycle facility at St Canices was moderately littered."

For the first time, all cities centres were clean, and there was significantly less litter on city streets compared to a decade ago. However, Dublin North Inner City recorded its worst showing in years and was branded seriously littered, while overall litter levels in Irelands towns were up on 2018.

In 2019 we saw an unwelcome increase in isolated heavily littered sites within many towns, which brought down their scores, said Conor Horgan of IBAL. Citizens and tidy towns groups need to push local authorities to focus on these sites and ensure they are clean for when IBAL revisits them in 2020.

The past decade has brought a 13% reduction in litter levels in our city centres, while litter in towns has remained constant over the same period.

Weve seen the fruits of the greater attention given to keeping our city centres clean to the point where they are now almost as clean as our towns," says Conor Horgan.

"In 2019, for the first time, all were deemed clean. IBAL has been surveying disadvantaged city areas over the past 5 years but has seen little reduction in litter over the period. Unfortunately, the gap in cleanliness between these neglected areas and the high-profile city centres is not closing.

From next year, an EU directive will force tobacco manufacturers to cover the cost of cigarette butt collection and processing in an effort to drastically reduce the numbers of cigarettes disposed of in the environment. IBAL is offering to facilitate the setting up of a pilot programme to recycle butts in Kilkenny, as winner of the league.
Iran expanded its stockpile of low enriched uranium beyond the nuclear deals limit of 300 kilograms, conducted research that could enable it to build more advanced centrifuges, exceeded the previous limits on the level of enrichment, and started operating centrifuges in a hardened bunker near the city of Qom  but it stopped short of exiting the agreement entirely.

All of these steps have been reversible, since the Iranians hoped they would either force President Trump to accept a new deal that would lift the American sanctions on Iran  he seemed to consider that seriously when he came close to meeting with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran last September  or get European leaders to provide financial compensation. Now any such deal seems impossible.

The resumption of previously frozen Iranian nuclear activities  uranium enrichment to the more dangerous level of 20 percent, a significant step toward weapons-grade levels, or resuming construction on the plutonium-producing heavy water reactor could dramatically reduce the time necessary for Iran to acquire the material needed to build a nuclear weapon. The nuclear deals restrictions, now abandoned, had established a threshold of at least a year.

Irans nuclear expansion would force the Trump administration to either accept the risk that Tehran acquires a nuclear weapons capability  an ironic outcome of leaving the allegedly bad nuclear deal  or it will have to conduct military strikes to prevent it and initiate the conflict it claims it wants to avoid.

Iranian leaders understand that a dash for a bomb would provoke international opposition and garner support for military strikes. Tehran is likely to take incremental steps and raise the bar for an American response.

Under the nuclear deal, it would have been many years before Iran could increase enrichment, the size of its uranium stockpile or the number of its centrifuges. By destroying a deal that it claimed did not last long enough or impose enough restrictions on Irans nuclear program, the Trump administration has created a situation in which Iran may soon end up with no nuclear restrictions at all.

Some Americans may see Irans nuclear expansion as an opportunity to take military action against the Iranian regime. When he was a member of Congress, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued the United States could destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity with under 2,000 sorties and it was not an insurmountable task.
Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have warned all retaliation options are on the table and they will send American soldiers back in coffins if US citizens do not pressure their government to withdraw troops from the country.

The comments came as Iraqs prime minister told the US ambassador to Baghdad that Washington must cooperate to prevent an open war with Iran and pull out its forces.

Speaking to The Independent, factions within the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), said they had no red lines hindering their revenge for the Friday drone strike on Baghdad Airport which killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the PMFs chief.

They threatened attacks against US military interests and servicemen in Iraq but said the net may widen to civilians if the nation re-elected Donald Trump, therefore, endorsing his crimes.

On Monday Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led funeral prayers in Tehran over the remains of Soleimani, who headed up the Quds Force, the foreign military arm of Irans elite Revolutionary Guards that worked closely with the PMF.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

Iranian state TV claimed millions had poured onto the streets to bid farewell to the feared commander. The scale of the crowds shown on television appeared to be the biggest since the 1989 funeral of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Our message to the American people is you have to pressure Trumps government to withdraw their troops from Iraq before we send your soldiers back in coffins, said Jawad Al Telbawi, a commander and spokesman for a faction within the Iran-supported PMF.

All retaliation options are on the table. After the crime committed by Trumps administration, our revenge will be the size of our doctrine and no red lines shall hinder our revenge.

Calling the American president a fool and a blackmailer he added that if the US people re-elected Mr Trump in the 2020 elections, the PMF and its affiliates will scale up the violence.

If the American people re-elect Trump to the US presidency, this would mean they support his crimes. This may change our position towards the American people. All American interests in the region will be at risk.

Iraqs caretaker prime minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi met the US ambassador Mathew Tueller on Monday to urge cooperation saying it was key to prevent sliding towards an open war with Tehran.

He told the diplomat the US must also work with Iraq to bring about the withdrawal of American troops from Iraqi soil.

Recommended US actions in Iraq could plunge the country into crisis once again

Tensions in Iraq and the wider Middle East reached boiling point this week, after a US drone strike in Baghdad killed Soleimani, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and several other officials.

Soleimani, 62, who oversaw the training and financing of Irans feared proxy groups like the PMF in Iraq and the Lebanese Military group Hezbollah, was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, as well as overseeing the killing of civilians and sieges in places like Syria.

But to his supporters in the region, he was a key figurehead in the battle against western imperialism. His death has only galvanised that image across the region.

In Iraq, the PMFs forces called the US army criminals.

We shall convulse the ground underneath the American armys feet in Iraq. These are not slogans, rather truths in which we believe, Mr Telbawi added.

The assassination also angered Iraq who saw the strike as a massive violation of the countrys sovereignty. Iraqs parliament voted on Sunday to expel US and foreign troops in the wake of the killing.

Baghdad has for years worked to balance its alliances with both Washington and Tehran: some 5,000 US military personnel are believed to be in Iraq to help fight Isis militants and train Iraqi forces.

Furious, Mr Trump threatened to impose sanctions on Baghdad if they followed through with expelling US troops. He also demanded billions of dollars in financial compensation for US military investments in Iraq over the years.

He later threatened to target 52 sites in Iran, including areas of cultural importance, which if carried out would likely be a war crime, according to legal experts.

On Monday night an apparently leaked letter suggested that the US military was pulling out of Iraq, but Mark Esper, the defence secretary, later said this was not the case.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani responded by saying the US president should never threaten the Iranian nation.

Americas western allies have rushed to try to pull back the US and Iran from the brink of war.

Dominic Raab, who spoke to Irans foreign minister Mohammad Jawad Zarif on Monday, urged all sides to find a diplomatic solution to tensions.

The key message that we have got to all of our European and American partners but critically also to the Iranians, to the Iraqis and all of those affected in the region is the importance of defusing the tensions, to de-escalate ... and the importance of finding a diplomatic way through, Mr Raab said.

Jens Stoltenberg, Natos secretary general, also called for restraint during emergency talks between Nato ambassadors in Brussels on Monday, where he said: A new conflict would be in no ones interest.

Members of the Hashed al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), paramilitaries stand guard during a funerary procession for Wissam Alyawi, a leading commander of the Asaib Ahl Al-Haq faction that is part of the PMF, in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on October 26, 2019 (Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty Images)

Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, meanwhile focused on the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, brokered with the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, that aimed to prevent Tehran from building an atomic weapon.

After Soleimanis killing Tehran said it would no longer abide by any limits of an international nuclear deal including restrictions on the enrichment of uranium, or research and development, dealing a devastating blow to the deal.

We have to convince Iran that its also in its own interest, she said.

Frances foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Iran could now enrich uranium without any constraints and so European powers would consider launching the dispute mechanism for the deal in the coming days.

In Iran the countrys Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani, presided over the main funerary prayers in Tehran  where he wept as he prayed over the commanders casket.

Over the last few days, mass funerary processions have taken place across the country, which up until recently had been gripped by nationwide anti-government protests during which more than 300 people were reportedly killed.

Recommended Iran abandons nuclear deal commitments after US killing of Soleimani

The commanders assassination appears to have temporarily silenced that anger and instead has seen politicians and leaders across the Islamic Republics political spectrum take part in the mourning.

Soleimanis successor, Esmail Qaani, stood near Khameneis side, as did Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and other top leaders in the Islamic Republic.

The leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas which governs the blockaded Gaza Strip was also in attendance, despite the fact that Egypt has only granted him permission once to travel in December on the condition he did not visit Iran.

Soleimanis daughter Zeinab also spoke reiterating that her fathers killing will only resurrect the cause.

Crazy Trump, dont think that everything is over with my fathers martyrdom, she said.

Mr Qaani, the new head of the Quds force, made his own threat in an interview with Iranian state television also aired on Monday.

God the Almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly, actions will be taken, he said.
Mr Shah said its beneficiaries are largely dalits and poor people. and those opposing the law are against these people.

New Delhi: BJP president Amit Shah sought to reassure the Muslim community Sunday and said the Citizenship Amendment Act has no provision about taking away the citizenship of minorities and alleged that the Congress scions, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, were instigating riots by misleading the people about the law.

Mr Shah said its beneficiaries are largely dalits and poor people. and those opposing the law are against these people. Addressing a meeting of Delhi BJP workers here, he called Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and the Gandhis anti-dalit for questioning the law. The BJP president said AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had extended support to rioters by saying she will visit the homes of those houses behind the riots.

(Arvind) Kejriwal has misled people. The Congress, especially Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, has instigated riots by misleading people. Do you want a government in Delhi which incites riots for politics, he asked.

Mr Shah also attacked Pakistan for terrorising Sikhs as he referred to the recent attack on Gurdwara Nankana Sahib by a violent mob in Pakistan and asked Opposition leaders to open their eyes to atrocities against minorities in the neighbouring country. This is an answer to all those opposing the CAA. Tell me if these Sikhs who were attacked the other day in Gurdwara Nankana Sahib will not come to India, then where they will go? he asked. The Opposition leaders were spreading a pack of lies over the CAA, he said.

Mr Shah also urged BJP workers to conduct an intensive campaign to inform the masses about the law that helps the persecuted. The CAA seeks to grant citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians, Jains and Parsis who came to India by December 31, 2014 from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh over religious persecution.

The Opposition was inciting the minorities against the CAA by alleging they will lose their citizenship, he said. Mr Shah assured members of the minority communities that none of them will lose citizenship due to the CAA, saying the law was about giving citizenship to minorities from three neighbouring countries, and not taking it away from anybody.

Sundays meeting with booth-level workers, attended by Mr Shah and BJP working president J.P. Nadda, is being considered significant as it has virtually launched the partys campaign for the Delhi Assembly polls.

Mr Shah said the Opposition parties were habituated to the politics of opposition and votebank and referred to their stand against measures like the law on triple talaq among Muslim men and the nullification of Article 370. They also opposed construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, he said, noting that a recent Supreme Court order had paved the way for building the temple.

The Opposition parties have led the protests against the CAA, caling it against Indias Constitution as it makes religion a ground for citizenship. In the past few weeks, the country has been witnessing protests against the amended citizenship law. The Centre has repeatedly said it has so far not discussed the proposal for a National Register of Citizens.
New Zealand has announced its first-ever Bachelorette star of the globally-successful dating franchise.

After three seasons of The Bachelor in their country, Kiwis will finally have the opportunity to watch a female lead search for her Mr. Right.

Doctor and occasional actress, Lesina Nakhid-Schuste, is the lucky woman set to meet a mansion-full of hunky suitors in her search for love.

The Doctor will see you now! New Zealand have announced their first Bachelorette, stunning surgeon and aspiring actress Lesina Nakhid-Schuste

In a promotional clip released by TVNZ, Dr Nakhid-Schuster said she has 'high expectations' for her future partner.

The bombshell brunette giggled during the sneak peek, where she detailed what it would take contestants to win her heart.

'I want a guy with a good smile... driven, kind,' she said.

'Someone who can talk about his feelings. Someone who can go for a surf and wear a business suit and scrub up well' Lesina added.

Bombshell! Social media was abuzz when the announcement was made, with many men claiming they were kicking themselves for not signing up

The driven beauty was involved in a long-term relationship while studying at university, but has had trouble finding her Prince Charming since.

'I've had boyfriends and I've dated, but nothing super serious. I've been single now for a while,' she told Stuff.co.nz.

Social media was abuzz when the announcement was made, with many men claiming they were kicking themselves for not signing up.

'I've been single now for a while': Lesina applied to be New Zealand's first Bachelorette as she has struggled to find a boyfriend since she was studying in university

Born in the US, Dr. Nakhid-Schuster moved to New Zealand when she was one, but has been working in Australia for the past year.

As well as being a doctor, she is an occasional actress who had had minor roles on Shortland Street and Power Rangers.

When she's not working, Lesina insists on going 'anywhere sunny', with her Instagram profile littered with bikini-clad photos.

She will be guided on her journey to find love by New Zealand's first Bachelor, Art Green, who is returning to the show as its host after his successful 2015 season.

The Bachelorette is due to air on TNNZ 2 later this year.
Firefighters manage a controlled burn to help contain a larger fire near Falls Creek, Australia (Rick Rycroft/AP)

Australias government has said it is willing to pay whatever it takes to help communities recover from deadly wildfires that have ravaged the country.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government was committing an extra two billion Australian dollars (1 billion) towards the recovery effort in addition to the tens of millions of dollars that have already been promised.

The fires are still burning. And theyll be burning for months to come, Mr Morrison said.

And so thats why I outlined today that this is an initial, an additional, investment of two billion dollars. If more is needed and the cost is higher, then more will be provided.

Mr Morrisons announcement of the funds, which will go towards rebuilding towns and infrastructure destroyed by the fires, came as the death toll from the disaster rose with the discovery of a body in a remote part of New South Wales.

The body is believed to be that of a 71-year-old man who was last seen on New Years Eve moving equipment on his property on the states south coast, police said.

Police found the body on Monday between the property and a car, both of which had been destroyed by fire.

Another person in southern New South Wales was reported missing, New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

Nationwide, at least 25 people have been killed and 2,000 homes destroyed by the blazes.

Rain and cooler temperatures on Monday were bringing some relief to communities battling the fires.

But the rain was also making it challenging for fire crews to complete strategic burns as they tried to prepare for higher temperatures that have been forecast for later in the week.

With the more benign weather conditions, it presents some wonderful relief for everybody, the firefighters, the emergency services personnel, but also the communities affected by these fires, Shane Fitzsimmons, commissioner of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, told reporters.

But it also presents some real challenges when it comes to implementing tactical and strategic back-burns and other techniques to try and bring these fires under control.

More than 135 fires were still burning across New South Wales, including almost 70 that were not contained.

Officials have warned that the rain will not put out the largest and most dangerous blazes before conditions deteriorate again.

Victoria state emergency services minister Lisa Neville said at least 200 millimetres (8in) of rain would need to fall over a short period of time in order to snuff out the fires  around 20 times what has fallen across the region in the past day.

And officials warned that Australias wildfire season  which generally lasts through until March  was nowhere near its end.

No-one can be complacent. Weve got big fire danger coming our way towards the end of this week, Victoria state premier Daniel Andrews told reporters in Melbourne.

Expand Close Fire-damaged trees are cleared in Bairnsdale, Victoria (Department of Defence/Private (P) Michael Currie via AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Fire-damaged trees are cleared in Bairnsdale, Victoria (Department of Defence/Private (P) Michael Currie via AP)

We are by no means out of this. And the next few days, and indeed the next few months, are going to be challenging.

Australias capital Canberra had the worst air quality of any major city in the world for much of Monday.

The Department of Home Affairs, which is responsible for co-ordinating the countrys response to disasters, told all non-critical staff to stay home because of thick smoke choking the city.

The prime minister said the military was attempting to get food, fuel and water to burned-out communities, and engineers were working to reopen roads and resupply evacuation centres.

On Kangaroo Island, a refuge off the coast of South Australia state for some of the countrys most endangered creatures, teams had arrived to help euthanise livestock and wild animals injured in the blazes.

Hundreds of millions of animals are believed to have died already in the fires across the country.

Heavy smoke, meanwhile, was hampering the navys efforts to airlift people out of Mallacoota, a coastal town in Victoria cut off for days by fires that forced as many as 4,000 residents and tourists to shelter on beaches over the weekend.

Around 300 people were still waiting to be evacuated on Monday.

Expand Close People boarding a helicopter as the fire-ravaged community of Mallacoota is evacuated (Corporal Nicole Dorrett/ADF via AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp People boarding a helicopter as the fire-ravaged community of Mallacoota is evacuated (Corporal Nicole Dorrett/ADF via AP)

The prime ministers announcement of relief funds comes as he finds himself under siege for what many Australians have viewed as his lax response to the crisis.

On Saturday, he announced he would dispatch 3,000 army, navy and air force reservists to help battle the fires and committed 20 million Australian dollars to lease firefighting aircraft from overseas.

But the moves did little to damp down the criticism that Mr Morrison had been slow to act, even as he has downplayed the need for his government to address climate change, which experts say helps supercharge the blazes.

Wildfires are common during the southern hemisphere summer, and Australians generally take a pragmatic view of them.

But this years fires arrived unusually early, fed by drought and the countrys hottest and driest year on record.

Scientists say there is no doubt man-made global warming has played a major role in feeding the fires, along with factors such as very dry brush and trees and strong winds.

The environmental group Greenpeace said the relief funds announced by Mr Morrison were a drop in the ocean, given the widespread devastation from the fires.

Every single cent of that money should be contributed by the coal, gas and oil companies whose carbon pollution has caused the climate crisis that has created these extreme fire conditions, right across the country, Greenpeace Australia Pacific head of campaigns Jamie Hanson said in a statement.

Slugging everyday taxpayers with the bill for this just adds insult to injury. These big polluters have become rich by trashing our climate and its time that they started coughing up for the repair bill.
Wang Xiaoyun [For Women of China]

Editor's Note: China Women's News recently selected the Top 10 inspirational women figures of China in 2019 at year's end. Here is a brief introduction of their deeds:

Wang Xiaoyun: Decoding 5 Top Codes in 10 Years

Wang Xiaoyun, born in Zhucheng, a city in East China's Shandong Province, in August 1966, is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a member of the International Association for Cryptologic Research. Wang received a Doctorate in Mathematics from Shandong University in 1993 and began to study cryptology in the same year.

On September 7, 2019, Wang was awarded the Mathematics and Computer Science Award of the Future Science Prize to honor her pioneering contribution to cryptology. She is the first woman winner of the prize.

Wang has decoded five top codes in 10 years. Her dream is advancing Chinese Cryptography to rank first in the world.

Lu Yutong (R1) [For China Daily]

Lu Yutong: Standing out in World's Supercomputer Industry

Lu Yutong is a professor with the School of Data Science and Computer Science under Sun Yat-sen University and director of the National Supercomputing Center in Guangzhou, capital city of South China's Guangdong Province.

Lu has been engaged for years in research and implementation of large-scale parallel system software for domestic high-performance computing.

Lu acted as the program chair of the 34th International Supercomputing Conference held in the Exhibition Center of Frankfurt in Germany on June 17-20, 2019. She was the first program chair from China and the first woman to be the conference's program chair.

Liu Xin [For Women of China]

Liu Xin: Chinese Woman Host Debates with CNN

Liu Xin, born in Zhenjiang, a city in East China's Jiangsu Province, in November 1975, is now a host at China Global Television Network, CCTV's international arm.

On May 22, 2019, Liu refuted the remarks on the trade war against China given by Trish Regan, the woman host of Fox Business of the United States. At 8:25 am, on May 30 (US Eastern Standard Time 8:25 pm, May 29), Liu and Regan had an open debate on Sino-US trade, which is the first time a Chinese host directly debated with an American host.

This debate lets the world hear China's voice again in the globalized era  solving problems needs positive dialogue and equal negotiation.

Annie Wu Suk-ching [Women of China]

Annie Wu Suk-ching: Speaking for Hong Kong at UN

Hong Kong entrepreneur Annie Wu Suk-ching, born in Hong Kong in September 1948, is now a monitoring adviser of the Hong Kong Federation of Women.

On September 9, 2019, Annie Wu spoke for Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) at the 42nd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, telling the world about the real current state of Hong Kong and saying that the violence has caused great damage. Before that, she had spoken out many times to admonish the SAR's young people.

At the beginning of the reform and opening up, Wu and her father founded the first joint-venture enterprise in the Chinese mainland.

After Hong Kong's return to the motherland, she dedicated herself to the communication and cooperation between Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland, setting up a Chinese history and culture educational foundation for the adolescents and the Chinese Foundation Secondary School and organizing Hong Kong teenagers to exchange and study in the Chinese mainland, which actively enhanced their understanding of Chinese history and culture.

Hua Chunying [For Women of China]

Hua Chunying: Showing China's Attitude to the World

Hua Chunying, born in Huai'an, a city in East China's Jiangsu Province, in April 1970, is the Spokesperson and Director-General of the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). Hua has been working in the ministry since 1993. In 2012, she began to act as the spokesperson of the MFA.

Hua is the 27th spokesperson of the MFA and the 5th woman spokesperson. In the past seven years, she has been praised by the public for her wise, friendly, flexible personality and her style of answering questions. In 2019, she became the first woman Director-General of the Information Department of the MFA.

Li Ziqi [For Women of China]

Li Ziqi: Telling Chinese Stories, Becoming a Global Cyber Celebrity

Li Ziqi, born in Mianyang, a city in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, in 1990, is a famous food video blogger. In 2016, Li began to shoot videos themed on traditional Chinese cuisine. Her works originate from Chinese people's real and simple traditional lives, and show the traditional Chinese culture and the charm of delicious food.

Li's videos express a positive attitude to life and a spirit of independence. She is praised by many mainstream media outlets. By June 2019, she had over 50 million fans on the Internet and her videos had received a total of 8 billion hits.

Li is also very popular abroad. People around the world begin to understand the "interesting and beautiful" Chinese culture after watching her videos and praise the Chinese people for their diligence and intelligence.

Su Donglin [For Women of China]

Su Donglin and Wu Huiming: Winners of the National Scientific and Technological Awards

Su Donglin, born in Laiwu, a city in East China's Shandong Province, in March 1960, is a professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Electronic Information Engineering under Beihang University.

Su has long been engaging in the research on the basic theory and key technologies of electromagnetic compatibility and development of major equipment.

She won the first prize of State Technological Invention Award in 2018 for her project related to electromagnetic compatibility at the national science and technology awarding ceremony held on January 8, 2019.

Wu Huiming [For Women of China]

Wu Huiming, born in Nanjing, capital city of East China's Jiangsu Province, in September 1967, is the General Manager of Zhejiang Kaitian Engineering Technology Co, Ltd, a national registered geotechnical engineer and a registered supervising engineer.

Wu won the first prize of the National Science Progress Award in 2018 for her composite foundation research at the national science and technology awarding ceremony.

With 30 years of development, composite foundation technology has been widely applied in the constructions of expressway, high-speed railway, municipal roads and ports.

Yan Jinxiu [For Women of China]

Yan Jinxiu: Chinese Woman Excels in Global Tunnel-Construction Industry

Yan Jinxiu, born in Santai, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, in September 1964, is a researcher and Vice President of China Railway Academy and a famous tunnel-construction expert in China.

In the past 30 years, she has been researching tunnel engineering technology and has received many awards. At the same time, Yan actively participated in domestic and overseas academic exchanges, and she introduced foreign tunnel technologies and ideas to China and helped Chinese technology go abroad through the platform of the International Tunnelling Association (ITA).

On May 8, 2019, Yan was designated as the new Chairperson of the ITA, making her the first chairperson from China and the first woman chairperson in the ITA's history.

Miao Xiaohong [Women of China]

Miao Xiaohong: Returning to Sky at Age of 82

Miao Xiaohong, born in Linqu, East China's Shandong Province in 1937, is one of China's second group of women pilots. On May 28, 2019, the 82-year-old woman returned to the blue skies, after 31 years, to encourage young women to join China's aviation industry. She wanted to make this flight as her gift to the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China and China's air force.

File photo of Huang Wenxiu [For Women of China]

Huang Wenxiu: Woman Official Devoted to Poverty Alleviation

Huang Wenxiu, was born in Baise City, in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, in April, 1989. In 2016, Huang graduated from Beijing Normal University and returned to work in her hometown. In March 2018, she worked as the first secretary of Baini Village in Leye County, in Baise, to lead 88 impoverished households, totaling 418 impoverished people, to shake off poverty.

On June 17, 2019, Huang unfortunately died from a flash flood on her way back to the village, at the young age of 30. General Secretary Xi Jinping urged that all Party members and young people to learn from her strong sense of mission, responsibility and dedication to poverty reduction.

The Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China posthumously awarded Huang the title of "Model of the Times." The All-China Women's Federation awarded her the honor of the National March 8th Red-banner Holder.

(Source: China Women's News/Translated and edited by Women of China)
Six wind farms have missed a Dec. 31 deadline to install new aircraft detection lighting systems on their turbine towers as required by North Dakota law.

The new system replaces the blinking red lights or strobes on wind towers and only light up when an aircraft is in the area, detected by radar.

"We all know that this technology has been talked about for a long time," said Public Service Commissioner Julie Fedorchak. "It's been promised to the people living near the wind farms."

Those wind farms were permitted after June of 2016. Fedorchak said it was made part of the permitting process for these facilities.

"If I'm living out among these facilities, I might be feeling like this is an empty promise," Fedorchak said.

The law passed by the North Dakota Legislature does not allow the PSC to give these wind operators extra time to get the new systems put in.

Fedorchak said the PSC is sending letters to the six wind farms telling them they have to comply with the law. She said the companies have been a part of the discussions, and none of them had expressed any concerns with the deadline date.

"This is not a surprise to them," Fedorchak said. "And it was well within their means to meet that deadline. And they didn't."

Fedorchak said the wind farms could be subject to financial penalties for not meeting that deadline. She said one of the wind farms is still under construction and has promised that the new lighting system will be installed when construction is complete.

For older wind farms, the Legislature gave the operators until the end of 2021 to retrofit their turbine towers. Fedorchak said in those cases, the PSC does have the option of giving them more time.

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Vedanta is the Indian subsidiary of Vedanta Resources Plc, a London-listed company

New Delhi: Vedanta Ltd on Sunday said it proposes to raise up to Rs 2,000 crore via issuance of non-convertible debentures (NCDs).

"We would like to inform you that the company proposes to offer rated, secured, redeemable, non-cumulative, non-convertible debentures aggregating up to Rs 2,000 crore in one or more tranches," Vedanta said in a filing to the BSE.

The company will hold a meeting of its committee of directors on Wednesday on this issue.

"The above issuance is pursuant to the approval of the shareholders passed vide special resolution at the 53rd annual general meeting of the company held on 24 August 2018 and the board of directors' resolution passed at their meeting held on May 7, 2019," the filing said.

Vedanta Ltd is a diversified natural resources company whose business primarily involves producing oil and gas, zinc-lead-silver, copper, iron ore, aluminium and commercial power.

The company has presence across India, South Africa, Namibia, Australia and Ireland.

Vedanta is the Indian subsidiary of Vedanta Resources Plc, a London-listed company.
China's heaviest satellite - and also its most advanced - has successfully reached its destination in a high orbit around Earth.

The Shijian-20 satellite reached its far-away spot on Sunday and is the first verification satellite for the Dongfanghong-5 (DFH-5) satellite platform.

It launched on December 27 atop the Long March 5 Y3 rocket, which has has been hailed the 'world's most powerful rocket' by Chinese media.

The satellite, and its complex platform, is expected to be used for future missions to the moon and beyond, including a planned trip to Mars in 2020.

Its geosynchronous orbit keeps it fixed in place 22,000 miles above China as the planet spins and allows for 24/7 communication.

It is hoped the satellite will eventually have a wide range of purposes, including communications, remote sensing and scientific experiments, according to the Chinese space agency.

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China's heaviest satellite has successfully enters into a geosynchrous orbit around Earth, a huge step for the country's space programme. Geosynchrous orbit is more than 22,000 miles above Earth

WHAT IS A GEOSYNCHROUS ORBIT? A geosynchronous orbit is a high Earth orbit that allows satellites to match Earth's rotation. Satellites in a geosynchrous orbit are more than 22,000 miles (35,000km) above Earth - considerably higher than most satellites. Their extreme vantage points affords them the ability to monitor weather, communications and surveillance equipment it is especially useful for monitoring a single location for a long period of time as it matches Earth' spin. This means over months and years, the satellite will be scrutinising the same region relentlessly. Advertisement

The satellite is being hailed as China's most advanced craft yet by state-run media and weighs a reported eight metric tonnes.

The Shijian-20 satellite, which translates as 'Practice', is designed to be a high-throughput communications satellite 'capable of delivering 1 Tbps bandwidth for ultrafast speeds,' Chinese space officials said according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

It is also believed the satellite will test out a new laser communications system for future missions and ion thruster technology.

Zhou Zhicheng, chief engineer of the DFH-5 satellite platform, says it is far superior to its predecessors, the DFH-3 and 4.

Pei Shengwei, deputy chief designer of the Shijian-20 satellite, said: 'The DFH-3 platform follows the international technology standards while the technology of DFH-4 platform follows and even keeps pace with the international technology in some areas. That means we have reached the same level with others in some technologies.'

China's Long March 5 is currently one of the most powerful rocket's in the world and will help it launch for Mars and create its new space station. It is claimed to weigh in excess of eight metric tonnes and launched on December 27 atop the Long March 5 Y3 rocket

China now spends more than Russia and Japan on its civil and military space programmes, and in 2003 became only the third nation to put a human into orbit. People turned up to watch and photograph the launch in December

It is claimed it has improved in weight, power and in-orbit lifespan, which will serve the needs of high-capacity satellites in the next 20 years,

The success of the Long March 5 launch gets the Chinese space programme back on track after a previous attempt in July 2017 failed mid-launch.

It was a test of 'key technologies related to future space missions', according to the China's National Space Administration.

'The rocket is tasked with important missions,' Wu Yanhua, the deputy head of China's National Space Administration, told CCTV in December.

'It will be tasked with a series of key missions including launching China's first Mars probe, the Chang'e-5 lunar probe and a core module for the manned space station.'

China's space programme has had recent successes with Chang'e-4's landing on the far side of the moon but the growing technological and communicative prowess of the Asian superpower is likely to unnerve other nations.

The country's history of censorship and various spying allegations levied against Chinese telecommunications firms such as TikTok and Huawei has tarnished China's reputation and seen trust in the nation's technology tumble to an all-time low.
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So, Joaquin Phoenix made his fans proud yet again after he won the Best Actor's trophy at the Golden Globe 2020. He got a standing ovation too. Everyone is cheering for him.

When he held the trophy in his hand, the man gave a little awkward yet inspiring as well as powerful speech, which was heavily beeped out because of expletives.

Joaquin Phoenix Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama Full Speech:#GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/yhz1ScCMjp  Joaquin Phoenix Source (@joaquinsource) January 6, 2020

He got a little emotional too. He hadn't completed his speech when the music started playing and he was cut off in between.

Here's to you #JoaquinPhoenix for a stellar performance & an equally stellar speech, very interesting how they tried to drown out his speech with music, as soon as he expressed ire at people for flying on private jets & asking them to do more than give well wishes to Australia pic.twitter.com/NPZ6UJkbmn    (@PropitiousOn3) January 6, 2020

Fans noticed this. And now they are angry. A lot of them lashed out at Golden Globes on social media.

So Joaquin Phoenix just gave the best winners speech at the #GoldenGlobesAwards2020, and was cut off by music.  Sean Croft (@SeanCroftOnAir) January 6, 2020

Joaquin Phoenix is the only one played off by music tonight. His speech was rambling, but it doesnt matter. Hes sweeping everything, including the Oscar. #GoldenGlobes  Daniel Howat (@howatdk) January 6, 2020

Joaquin Phoenix winning Best Actor for Joker and applauding the plant-based menu and speaking about climate change. How DARE the networks cut his speech!!! And HOW DARE they start playing music to cut him off. The music is playing for the planet. May we wake up. #GoldenGlobes  Allison M. Skywalker (@AlliCinema) January 6, 2020

lol interesting how they started playing the music on joaquin phoenixs speech as soon as he started calling out people for flying on private jets and asking them to do more than give well wishes to australia  miss vanjie (@nosnawsyma) January 6, 2020

So, the only person who got the wrap it up music was #JoaquinPhoenix for actually making a statement about rich people giving up luxuries to help our planet. Shame on the producers of the #GoldenGlobes for that move.  Demetria Johnson (@DemiJaNell) January 6, 2020

Joaquin Phoenix started his speech by giving a nod to his fellow nominees. "I know people say this, but I really do feel honored to be mentioned with you."

He added that while he reached out to other nominees, he was "a little too intimidated by" Christian Bale who was nominated for Ford vs Ferrari. "To my fellow nominees, we all know theres no fucking competition between us," he added.

Thanking director Todd Phillips, he said, "You convinced me to do this movie and you encouraged me to give everything and be sincere. I cannot believe you put up with me."



Stressing out on the importance of acting on climate change, he added, "Contrary to popular belief, I don't want to rock the boat. But the boat is fucking rocked."

Joaquin Phoenix Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama Full Speech:#GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/oxOor7F0MX  Joaquin Phoenix Source (@joaquinsource) January 6, 2020

He ended his speech with a plea to help Australia.

"It's really nice that so many people have sent their well wishes to Australia but we have to do more than that," Phoenix emphasized.

"Hopefully, we can be unified and actually make some changes. It's great to vote, but sometimes we have to take that responsibility on ourselves and make changes and sacrifices in our own lives. We don't have to take private jets to Palm Springs for the awards," the actor said.

Meanwhile, people are celebrating the Joker aka Joaquin Phoenix's win.

He totally deserved it, didn't he?


Apex exporters' body FIEO on Monday said all traders should not be looked from same prism for GST fraud cases as there could be a fraction who might have misused the facility.

Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) President Sharad Kumar Saraf said that it is unfortunate that exporters have been singled out for GST frauds.

He was reacting to a direction of the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), which has asked the Directorate General of Foreign Trade to make the accreditation system for star exporters more robust to curb tax fraud.

"Like any other section of the society, there could a fraction of exporters who might have misused the GST refund facility. It will be unfair to subject the entire exporting community for serious checks and investigation based on alleged misuse by limited few," he said in a statement.

He offered his services to help authorities to locate the exporters and helped them in the investigation.

He also said there are many instances where actual payment of GST to the government is very low as compared to IGST refund.

The GST refund has affected the liquidity of exporters since there is a time lag between the payment of ITC and its refund at the time of exports.

He added that unfortunately, the scheme of e-wallet, which has been recommended by the GST Council as early as October 6, 2017, which was expected to be put into operation in April 2018 and then deferred to October 2018, has not yet been rolled out.

The scheme may have helped in easing the liquidity problem of exporters, he said.

The FIEO president said he has written to the government requesting the authorities to discuss the issue across the table and explore solutions to minimise, if not avoid, the revenue leakage all together.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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SEOUL, South Korea, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The following is a statement from HWPL:

On December 28, about 50 prominent South Korean religious leaders issued a joint statement concerning the controversy that are coming from Presbyterian Pastor Rev. Jun Kwang-hoons hate speeches and anti-government activities. The event was hosted by the Christian Federation of Anti-Corruption and Sponsored by Pan-Religion Association says HWPL.

The CCK is one of the largest Christian alliances in South Korea, comprising 69 denominations and 20 organizations which together represent over 12 million people.

In the statement the religious leaders denounce Rev. Jun for the sins committing social conflict and division due to his remarks including, God, if you mess around, Ill kill you, Islam and homosexuality are diseases, and Women say Satans words. Moreover, further statements were made which among other things are classified as discrimination against women and Buddhism.

Back in October 2019, calling the South Korean President Moon Jae-In, Rev. Jun has led an anti-government demonstration and insisted that President Moon is a spy to drive the country to ruin. The growing concern of the CCK and Rev. Jun is coming from the question the Constitution of South Korea that mandates the separation of religion and state.

Massimo Introvigne, an Italian sociologist and the director of Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR) as the largest international organization studying new religious movements, noted that, The activities of the CCK and Rev. Jun Kwang-hoon are causing international concern. In addition to their radical political activities, the CCK and Rev. Jun are spreading religious intolerance in Korea and abroad through hate speech and discrimination against groups they label as heretic.

"Over the political activism the Western media pointed out, Rev. Juns anti-social, anti-religious, and anti-national remarks and behaviors are something to be called a 'public enemy,'" said Ven. Hyewon, South Korean Representative of World Buddhist Summit. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/world/asia/jun-kwang-hoon-pastor-.html)

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/fadbd6de-3f44-48f4-bd2b-7ede5be0e3cc

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/856644a5-5d91-475a-b4cd-8ac90233ed14

Contact:

So Hee Kim

+ 49 151 43444 546 (Germany)


[January 05, 2020] CIF's President MP Sethrida Geagea and Eurisko Mobility Launch Smart Forest: an AI/IoT Initiative for the Preservation of Lebanon's Forests

BEIRUT, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Eurisko Mobility, leader in Digital Transformation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) / Smart City technology and Enterprise Mobile & Web development in Lebanon and the Middle East, partnered with the Cedar International Festival's committee to offer an advanced system to 7 forests all over Lebanon. Atop of Lebanon's forest shrinkage to below 12%, numerous wild fires have endangered the sustainability of the country's ecosystem. In the absence of effective national strategies, Eurisko Mobility's "Smart Forest", which relies on Internet of Things (IoT) and AI, promises radical change. Traditional solutions are becoming obsolete as they are built on static mathematical formulas, exclude the specific natural characteristics of th forest in question, and provide fluctuating prediction accuracy when applied to different types of forests in different areas of the world.



Smart Forest relies on an advanced AI/Machine Learning engine that learns the specific natural characteristics of any forest within Lebanon. The amount of data collected enhances the Fire Risk Index precision, even allowing the identification of fires induced by non-natural factors via Outlier Detection, and copes with climate change via Unsupervised Machine Learning. Through an interactive dashboard, the System enables comparison of historical metrics with real-time metrics related to air and soil temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, windspeed, CO/CO2 emissions and others. Smart Forest also features an automated Notifications Engine triggered by increase in fire risk or CO/CO2 emissions, that will send emails, SMS, push notifications, automated phone calls, to specific response organisms, such as Civil defense, municipalities or NGOs, depending on level and type of danger, averting potential destructive fires.

For this country-wide scale project, a clear route map has been set: data collection, preparation and processing to select optimal AI/machine learning models for each forest, a centralized system linking all forests together, and finally, integration with drones to dispatch real-time photos and geographic coordinates of fires. Eurisko Mobility through its founders Ziad Tawk and Edgard Tawk, is proud to fully sponsor the Smart Forest development, deployment and maintenance, estimated at USD$700,000 for the 7 forests, and entrust Deputy Sethrida Geagea with offering it to the Government in-formation as a project for the benefit of Lebanon. MP Geagea expressed her heartfelt support to the Tawk brothers, hoping the "black cloud would disappear from the skies so we can resume our successes together." Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1060658/Eurisko_main_Sethrida_Geagea.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1060657/Eurisko_inside_Ziad_Tawk.jpg Contact

Eurisko Mobility

Tel: +961-9-854069

[email protected]

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) criticized the Democratic party for its tolerance of relative moderates, saying her own party has become too big of a tent in an interview published Monday.

For so long, when I first got in, people were like, Oh, are you going to basically be a tea party of the left? And what people dont realize is that there is a tea party of the left, but its on the right edges, the most conservative parts of the Democratic Party, Ocasio-Cortez told New York Magazine. So the Democratic Party has a role to play in this problem, and its like were not allowed to talk about it.

The freshman lawmaker also lashed out at party leadership for their intolerance of internal criticism, saying were not allowed to talk about anything wrong the Democratic Party does.

Ocasio-Cortez pointed to the reaction elicited by her 2018 election as proof that Democrats cater too often to conservative interests, and that the partys progressive shift was helping Democrats learn to stretch our wings a little bit on the left.

She then bashed the Congressional Progressive Caucus, of which she is a member, for being overly permissive in allowing moderates to adopt the label, saying they let anybody who the cat dragged in call themselves a progressive.

In March, the New York Democrat threatened moderate colleagues during a caucus meeting, with her former spokesman saying Democrats are putting themselves on a list if they work with Republicans.

In the Monday profile, the self-identified socialist took aim at former Vice President Joe Biden, saying that she didnt feel ideologically aligned with a potential Biden-run White House.

Last month, Biden criticized bad judgement in the medias inflated coverage of the freshman representative, and suggested the Democrats had not moved as far to the left as Ocasio-Cortez advertised.

In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are, Ocasio-Cortez, who along with other members of the Squad have endorsed fellow progressive Bernie Sanders for president, said.

Story continues

Ocasio-Cortez also detailed clashes with party leadership over her role within the party, saying she was frustrated to get singled out over and over again over a series of interviews by the Democratic leadership. She also claimed a lot of members think Im like a Koch brother for her alleged influence on elections.

She pointed to her insistence on proposing the Green New Deal in favor of other climate resolutions, arguing that these very small incremental plans are a form of denialism.

In April, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized Ocasio-Cortezs progressive activism, saying that whatever orientation they came to Congress with, they know that we have to hold the center.

After her former chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti drew the ire of the Congressional Black Caucus for comparing moderate Democrats to 20th-century southern segregationists, Ocasio-Cortez met with Pelosi in a July meeting that went very well, according to the Speaker at the time. Chakrabarti, who admitted the Green New Deal was more about economics than climate, resigned soon after. His former boss criticized him for divisive comments in the wake of his departure.

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Kieran Culkin's wife, Jazz Charton, has shared behind-the-scenes images of herself breastfeeding prior to the Golden Globes and then pumping at the ceremony.

The 37-year-old Succession actor was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Series at the 77th Golden Globes Awards on Sunday evening, which he attended with his wife of nearly seven years.

Behind the scenes footage from Charton's Instagram page showed the new mother, who welcomed the couple's first child in September, handling mommy duty by breastfeeding their baby girl, Kinsey Sioux, before the show.

Date night: Kieran Culkin attended the 77th Golden Globes Awards on Sunday evening with his wife, Jazz Charton, as he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Series

All the accessories: It was later revealed Charton carried her breast pump to the awards show on the red carpet in a white drawstring bag to pump during the show

Mommy duty: Prior to the ceremony, Charton shared on Instagram a picture of herself getting ready while breastfeeding the couple's three-month-old daughter

Balancing act: Charton also shared snaps earlier on Sunday morning (left) and her with her husband on the way to the awards show (right)

'Running late...' Charton wrote in one post showing herself breastfeeding the young child while a makeup artist did her makeup.

Culkin is pictured in the background enjoying white wine in his tux as his wife gets ready for the awards show.

Then other snaps following Charton's post showed the couple on a 'mom and dad date night' out to the awards show held at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California. The couple found a babysitter for the daughter with the help of actress Anna Paquin, Charton revealed in an Instagram post Monday.

Mommy duty didn't end for Charton after she breastfed her child before the awards show, though.

She also shared with followers how she had to pump during the ceremony. Red carpet images showed the woman carrying her breast pump in a white drawstring bag while posing with her husband.

Another picture involved Charton holding up the pump for the camera and informing followers that was what she was doing when Culkin lost his award.

The actor was up for Best Supporting Actor in a Series for a second year in a row with his role as Roman Roy in Succession. But he lost the award this year to Stellan Skarsgard for his role in Chernobyl.

No time off: The mom-of-one later shared with followers how she was pumping when her husband lost out to the Best Supporting Actor in a Series award

Supportive friend: Culkin's co-star Sarah Snook accompanied Charton to the bathroom during the show when she went to pump

Stopping by: The couple attended HBO's Official Golden Globes Awards After Party at Circa 55 restaurant after the awards show

Early night: The final snap from Charton's Instagram showed the mom still in her Golden Globes dress while breastfeeding her daughter before bed

'Guess who was pumping when Kieran lost again?' Charton wrote.

Culkin's co-star Sarah Snook, who plays his sister on Succession, even accompanied Charton to the bathroom when she was pumping.

Charton also revealed how last year she was able to cheer up Culkin about the loss by conceiving their first child. This year around, though, the woman didn't know quite how to top that moment.

'Last time he lost I got pregnant...I don't know how to top that,' Charton wrote in a post showing the couple together with Culkin looking sad.

She even went as far as writing 'loser' over the top of her husband's head with a heart drawn around it.

Following the awards show, The couple was briefly pictured at the HBO Official Golden Globe Awards After Party at Circa 55 restaurant before they left to reunite with their daughter.

'Best reason to end the night early,' the mom wrote.

She was pictured feeding her daughter while still in her Golden Globes dress. Her daughter looked ready for bed in a patterned onesie.

Although Culkin lost last night, he won the family award by celebrating the evening with his wife and three-month-old daughter.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 22:01:24|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on Jan. 3, 2020 shows Chan's restaurant in Sham Shui Po district in Hong Kong, south China. (Xinhua/Li Gang)

HONG KONG, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A burning petrol bomb whirled into Chan's restaurant in the small hours on Monday, breaking his simple life in such a violent way that he had never expected.

At about 2:00 a.m. local time, the glass bottle filled with inflammable liquid exploded in the 30-square-meter spicy food restaurant in Sham Shui Po district, Hong Kong. "I and three diners in the restaurant hastily put out the fire. Fortunately, no one got hurt and my restaurant was not on fire," said Chan.

The attackers, two masked men in black, escaped. Police found an unexploded petrol bomb at the scene and the investigation was underway.

In fact, Chan has become the target of rioters for a long time as he made no secret of his support for police on online social media platforms. One of his photos taken in front of a water cannon vehicle, used by police to disperse rioters, was dubbed the evidence of his "guilt."

His personal information was leaked on the Internet. Some spread rumors that he harbored knife attackers and threatened to vandalize his restaurant. Some repeatedly lodged hostility complaints to food hygiene watchdog over the sanitary condition of his restaurant.

The livelihood of Chan, 47, and his family relies on the small restaurant, which remains open till 3:00 a.m. to attract more diners. However, the disruptive and violent acts of rioters made their life even harder.

"They (rioters) silenced people with different opinions by vandalizing shops and restaurants. It is not democracy and freedom, but pure bullying and violence," Chan said in tears. "I'm definitely against violence. They should put forward their demands in a rational way and violence is not a choice."

After Chan was doxxed, some regular customers never showed up, but more new faces come to express support. One late night, a young man came to Chan's restaurant for dinner all the way from Shenzhen just to cheer him up.

"It makes me feel more and more strongly that there are still people in the society who may not dare to make a public statement but firmly oppose violence and support the police at the bottom of their heart," Chan said.

At the beginning of 2020, Chan said he wished for a peaceful new year. "I hope more young people who used to participate in violent activities can regret what they did and make a clean break with their past."
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel on Monday condemned the violence in Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University and said it was now time for the BJP government at the Centre to go.

Violence had broken out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, after which the police conducted a flag march.

Speaking to reporters at the Police Lines helipad here, Baghel said, "Not only in JNU, but what happened earlier in other universities shows the BJP is suppressing students."



He said the BJP must remember it was students' power that had brought the party to power earlier, but these same students were now being suppressed by the NDA government.

"The time has now come for the BJP government to go," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Trump warns of 'disproportionate' strike amid fears of Iran retaliation

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 05 January 2020 9:30 PM

US President Donald Trump says the US would strike back at Iran "perhaps in a disproportionate manner," defying pressure from Congress over his war powers amid spiraling tensions between Tehran and Washington.

The comment came in a tweet Sunday, days after he ordered the assassination of Iran's General Qassem Soleimani in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

"These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any US person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless," claimed the US president.

With Iran vowing to retaliate the cowardly attack in due time, there were concern in the United States about Trump's irrational escalation of tensions in the region.

Senate democratic leader Charles Schumer told ABC earlier in the day that he "will do everything I can to assert our authority. We do not need this president either bumbling or impulsively getting us into a major war."

"We need Congress to be a check on this president," said the New York Democratic lawmaker.

Congressional Democrats also expressed skepticism towards the evidence the Trump administration has cited to justify the assassination claimed to have been aimed at averting "imminent attack."

"I think we learned the hard way, Chris, in Iraq, in the Iraq war, that administrations sometimes manipulate and cherry-pick intelligence to further their political goals. That's what got us into the Iraq war," Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen told Fox News.

This is while a military official told Politico that the Pentagon has deployed a task force of special operations troops that includes Army Rangers to the Middle East.

"I'm saying that they have an obligation to present the evidence," Van Hollen said, adding that while "everybody knows that Soleimani was a very bad, despicable guy," the administration has "not supported" its "claim of an imminent threat."

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has defended Trump's decision to launch the terrorist attack near the Baghdad airport.

"We would have been culpably negligent had we not taken this action," the former CIA chief told NBC "It's never one thing. ... It's never one moment. It's never one instance," he said. "It's a full situational awareness of risk and analysis."

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Reports of Iranians and Iranian-Americans being detained for questioning upon entering the U.S. kicked off a furor on Sunday from Washington state to Washington, D.C., marking a new domestic blowback to the Trump administrations targeted killing of a key Iranian leader.

The Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a prominent Muslim civil liberties group, said on Sunday that more than 60 people of Iranian descent, including American citizens, were held for hourslong periods of questioning over the weekend at the Peace Arch checkpoint in Blaine, Wash., along the border with Canada. CAIR noted that many Iranian-Americans would continue to approach the port of entry over the weekend as some return to the U.S. after attending an Iranian pop concert Saturday in Vancouver.

The initial reports and the backlash they triggered  with references to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II  highlighted the potential risks inside the U.S. even before the fierce retaliation promised by the Iranian government for the killing of Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Irans elite paramilitary forces, by a U.S. military drone on Thursday.

CAIR said in its statement that a source at U.S. Customs and Border Protection had reported that the agency received a national directive from the Department of Homeland Security to report and detain anyone with Iranian heritage entering the country who is deemed potentially suspicious or adversarial, regardless of citizenship status.

We are working to verify reports of a broad nationwide directive to detain Iranian-Americans at ports of entry so that we can provide community members with accurate travel guidance, Masih Fouladi, executive director of CAIRs Washington chapter, said in a statement .

People return to the headquarter of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015, after getting the go ahead from emergency personal. Earlier the building was evacuated after staffers came in contact with a suspicious substance that arrived in the mail. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Len Saunders, an immigration attorney in Blaine, said his contacts through CBP indicated that headquarters in Washington had ordered new vetting procedures, which appear to be directed toward people born in Iran, that require port directors to sign off on admitting anyone held for questioning.

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A CBP spokesperson denied that DHS or the agency had issued any such directive.

Social media posts that CBP is detaining Iranian-Americans and refusing their entry into the U.S. because of their country of origin are false, the spokesperson said.

The agency says it often adjusts operations and staffing to balance security needs with lawful travel and trade. Processing times at the Blaine port of entry reached an average of two hours Saturday evening, though CBP said some travelers waited up to four hours to cross.

Sam Sadr, who lives in North Vancouver, said he was held for nearly nine hours at the Peace Arch border crossing on Saturday after the birthplace printed on his Canadian passport caught the attention of the U.S. customs officer.

Sadr, who was born in Tehran, told POLITICO he was on his way to Seattle for the day with his family. The officer, he said, asked him to pull over and go into the border office to provide more information.

Sadr recalled arriving at the border at 11:07 a.m. Pacific time. He and his family were finally allowed to enter the U.S. around 7:45 p.m.

In between those times, the officers took their passports and asked lots of questions, he said. After a couple of hours, the officers asked the same questions again.

They wanted to know where they were coming from, where they went to school, whether they had military backgrounds and whether they had firearms licences, Sadr said.

Why me? Why my parents? Why my sisters, brothers? I dont know, said Sadr, a professional photographer who received his Canadian citizenship two years ago.

We are innocent.  This completely discriminates.

While he was waiting, he said, he saw many other people of Iranian descent also held up at the border crossing. He said some people, including officers, appeared to be frustrated with the situation.

Sadr, who left Iran more than 12 years ago, said he and his family stayed in the U.S. for only about an hour since it was so late and the stores had closed.

Asked for comment on Sadrs story and to explain the discrepancy between the four hours figure in CBPs statement and Sadrs nearly nine hour ordeal, a CBP spokesperson said the agency stood by their earlier statement.

Attorneys monitoring the situation at the border in Washington state said they had not seen any evidence that American citizens with Iranian ties were denied entry to the U.S. Those being held for questioning are now being processed more quickly  within 30 to 60 minutes, rather than upwards of 10 hours as some experienced on Saturday, said Matt Adams, legal director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Projects Seattle office.

It doesnt make any sense, because these are individuals who are U.S. citizens and dont have any individualized suspicion associated with them, other than the fact that theyre Iranian or of Iranian heritage, he said. Whats clear is that they are being targeted for the secondary inspection because of their Iranian background, and there must be some kind of directive to CBP officers to pull them over, he added.

Attorneys in Washington state said CBP officers questions focused on travelers family members and where they went to school or worked, as well as whether they or a relative had any ties to the Iranian military.

The questioning of Iranians and Iranian-Americans wasnt unique to Washington state.

John Ghazvinian, an Iranian-American historian and U.S. citizen, said he was subject to additional questioning on Sunday when he flew back on Air France from a trip to Egypt.

Well, just landed at JFK and  no surprise  got taken to the special side room and got asked (among other things) how I feel about the situation with Iran, he wrote in a tweet that went viral. I wanted to be like: my book comes out in September, preorder now on amazon.

Well, just landed at JFK and  no surprise  got taken to the special side room and got asked (among other things) how I feel about the situation with Iran. I wanted to be like: my book comes out in September, preorder now on amazon  John Ghazvinian (@JohnGhazvinian) January 5, 2020

In an interview, he said that the first CBP officer flipped through his passport and asked him, When was the last time you were in Libya?, to which he replied, Ive never been to Libya. The officer quickly corrected himself to say "Iran," to which Ghazvinian told him that he had last been there in 2009. He then was asked more questions in a private secondary screening, he said, the first time hes ever been held up when returning to the U.S.

Asked whether he felt he was pulled aside because he was Iranian-American, he said he didnt want to speculate on another persons private thoughts or motivations, but [the officers] first question was about the last time I had been to Iran.

Ghazvinian, the interim director of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said that the officers told him they had flagged him for extra scrutiny because it looked as though he had bought a one-way ticket to the U.S., when in fact he hadnt. The female CBP officer, whom he described as very friendly, also asked him in the secondary screening whether he had family members in Iran and what they thought of what is going on. He told them he hadnt talked to them about the situation.

Then she asked him what he thought of the tensions between the U.S. and Iran, to which he responded by saying he didnt think the question was relevant. She said, We are just curious about what people think about these things, and I said, It feels a little political, and then she dropped it, he recalled.

The events, which he called inherently a stressful experience and nerve-wracking, involved a five- to 10-minute wait and around three minutes of questioning, he said.

Soon after he cleared immigration and customs, he sent out the tweet and said he was surprised by the attention it got.  It was not my intention to paint myself as some type of victim here. I dont feel that way.

To be honest, I thought it was just funny and so I just sent out what I thought was a lighthearted tweet, he said.

Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project, said the accounts made public thus far were very disturbing and were stoking fear among a population already sensitive to border issues, given the Trump administrations travel restrictions on Iranian nationals.

The government has a legitimate interest in verifying identity, citizenship or legal status at the border, but it has no business infringing on the constitutional rights of citizens and legal permanent residents by detaining and invasively questioning them about their associations, religious or political beliefs or practices, Shamsi said.

Reps. Adam Smith and Pramila Jayapal, both Seattle-area Democrats, tweeted Sunday that they were trying to gather more information on the detentions at the border with British Columbia.

Let me be clear: Instituting xenophobic, shameful and unconstitutional policies that discriminate against innocent people, trample over basic civil rights, and put fear in the hearts of millions do not make us safer, Jayapal said in a statement.

Deeply disturbed by reports that Iranian Americans, including U.S. citizens, are being detained at the Canadian border with WA State.



My office has been working on this all morning. Please contact us with information on directly affected people at WA07PJ_casework@mail.house.gov.  Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) January 5, 2020

Rep. Suzan DelBene, a Democrat whose district includes Blaine, said she was also investigating the reports .

Parmida Esmaeilpour, a director with the Civic Association of Iranian Canadians in Vancouver, said concerns related to crossing the U.S. border had been building in her community for several days.

Its my understanding that [authorities] said that they would be detaining or questioning people who may have some sort of suspicious ties to the [Iranian] government, said Esmaeilpour, whose association works to encourage Iranian-Canadians to engage more in Canadas political process. But in practice were seeing that its actually being applied much more indiscriminately to anyone of Iranian background whos trying to cross the border.

A Canada Border Services Agency spokesperson directed inquiries to DHS.

One former DHS official said he was worried that in the future, as part of a tit-for-tat with Iran, CBP could tighten its screening of potential visitors to the U.S. even more to take a harder look and a longer view of somebodys travel history, which would lead CBP port-of-entry directors and officers to err on the side of caution absent any formal guidance.

Saunders, the immigration lawyer, said two of his clients, both Persian-Canadians and one of whom is an American citizen, encountered hours of questioning at two different ports of entry in Washington state on Saturday.

Why were 50 to 100 Persians sitting inside the Peace Arch port of entry yesterday for hours upon hours? he said Sunday. They were being singled out. I saw it myself.

Andy Blatchford reported from Ottawa. Nahal Toosi and Connor O'Brien contributed reporting from Washington.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : The Centre on Monday told the Supreme Court that children, whose parents have been given citizenship through NRC, will not be separated from their families and sent to the detention centres in Assam.

Advocate Aparna Bhat, appearing for Citizens of Justice & Peace - a public trust, filed an application, citing how the final list NRC in Assam published on August 31, 2019, has unreasonably and unfairly excluded the names of certain sections of persons, which essentially results in violation of the basic principle of family unification by excluding members of a family.

"The present application concerns cases of children even when their parents and, in some instances, the relatives/guardians of the children are part of the NRC," said the application.

Bhat contended before a bench headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and comprising Justices B.R. Gavai and Surya Kant that nearly 60 children have been excluded from Assam NRC, despite having in possession of the requisite documentation connected with the NRC process, while, on the contrary, their parents were included.

"Almost three months after the publication of the NRC Final List, the state of Assam is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis as a direct result of these mass exclusions," said the application, citing three instances where families have been divided as a result of the children being excluded to illustrate the arbitrary manner in which the NRC process has been undertaken.

At this, the apex court recorded Attorney General K.K. Venugopal's undertaking stating that children excluded from the NRC but whose parents have been given citizenship will not be sent to detention centres in Assam.

Venugopal also informed the court that 19 lakh have been excluded from final NRC.

The apex court issued notice to the Centre and Assam on a plea alleging children being sent to detention centres after the NRC.

The application highlighted gamut of issues pertaining to publication of final list of NRC specifically for children from marginalised families -- Parents excluded from the NRC Final List when children are included; Children excluded from the NRC Final List even as their parents and relatives are included; Children excluded from the NRC Final List who are from disconnected families and stay with close or distant relatives; and Orphaned children excluded from the NRC Final List who do not reside in state orphanages or homes.

"Allow the present Application and direct the office of the Coordinator to immediately take steps to ensure that no child is left out of the NRC especially in cases where the parents/guardians/caregivers are in the list", said the application.

The application said the data suggests that almost 100 people have lost their lives as a direct result of the citizenship issues involved in the publication of the NRC which include 27 recorded deaths in Assam's detention camps. It also claimed that there are already around 1,100 detainees in the state's six detention centres located in Goalpara, Kokrajhar, Silchar, Jorhat, Tezpur and Dibrugarh.
Former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said that he is ready to testify in a possible Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump if he receives a subpoena, Trend reports citing Sputnik.

"I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify," Bolton said in a statement.

The Democrat-led House of Representatives launched an impeachment inquiry into President Trump in September 2019 in the wake of a whistleblower's complaint about Trump's July phone call with Ukraine's President Zelensky.

John Bolton served as the 27th US National Security Advisor from April 2018 to September 2019 when he was dismissed by Trump, who cited Bolton's differences with some people in the administration and his policy on North Korea as the reasons for such a decision.
Confirmed cases of a mystery virus causing atypical pneumonia have continued to grow as authorities in the central Chinese city of Wuhan ruled out Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS.



In Hong Kong, 21 people have been treated in isolation in hospitals in the city after arriving there from Wuhan, the Hospital Authority said, adding that none of the patients had visited Wuhan's South China Seafood Market mentioned as a possible link between cases by mainland Chinese health officials.



"The patients concerned had not visited wet markets in Wuhan before the onset of symptoms," Hospital Authority (HA) infection control chief Raymond Lai said in a statement.



"The HA will keep monitoring the patients' conditions and provide appropriate treatment," Lai said.



Seven of the 21 have been discharged, while the rest are in a stable condition and being treated for fever, respiratory symptoms or pneumonia, the statement said.



But the Hong Kong Centre for Health Protection (CHP) has raised its response level to "serious," saying the unknown pathogen had "public health significance."



Health officials in Wuhan said on that seven people are seriously ill in the city with the mystery virus out of a total of 59 cases since the outbreak began.



"The public is urged to maintain strict personal, food and environmental hygiene both locally and during travel," China's National Health Commission said in a directive sent to the Hong Kong government and quoted on its website.



No fatal cases reported

It said no fatal cases have yet been reported, and a total of 163 close contacts were under medical surveillance and symptom-free so far.



"For the time being ... the investigation has not identified any evidence of definite human-to-human transmission and no healthcare workers have been infected," the Hong Kong CHP said.



Hong Kong experts have said in recent media interviews that the possibility of person-to-person transmission can't be ruled out, however.



The type of virus causing the outbreak is "still under investigation," according to China.



"Respiratory pathogens including influenza viruses, avian influenza viruses, adenovirus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome have been ruled out," the CHP statement said, citing the Chinese health ministry.



The Hong Kong CHP also warned people to take personal hygiene precautions and stay away from live animal markets.



But Ai Li, a resident of Wuhan, said there wasn't much public health advice or reporting on the outbreak across the border in mainland China.



"I have seen news about it online, but we haven't heard anything [from official media reports]," Ai said.



Asked if people were wearing masks or taking other precautions in Wuhan, she said: "No, nobody is worried. Nobody is even thinking of panicking."



China's official tendency to silence

A mainland Chinese resident who gave an online nickname Zhuzhu said there is a world of difference between the public information culture in Hong Kong and the official tendency to silence under the ruling Chinese Communist Party.



"Hong Kong has done a good job in this matter, and they have done a good job of preventive measures," Zhuzhu said. "Here in China, preventive measures aren't carried out very well."



The World Health Organization (WHO) said on that there could be a link to animals.



"The reported link to a wholesale fish and live animal market could indicate an exposure link to animals," the WHO said, adding that the symptoms reported in patients were mainly fever, with a few patients having difficulty in breathing and chest radiographs showing invasive lesions on both lungs.



"The symptoms reported among the patients are common to several respiratory diseases, and pneumonia is common in the winter season," said the WHO, adding that the concentration of cases should be handled "prudently".



But it said it was against imposing any travel or trade restrictions on China.



SARS -- described as atypical pneumonia caused by a coronavirus -- killed 349 people in mainland China and another 299 in Hong Kong in 2003. The virus, which infected more than 8,000 people around the world, is believed to have originated in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.



The WHO declared China free of the SARS virus in , although it criticized the Chinese government's initial attempt to cover up the crisis.



Reported by Qiao Long and Wong Lok-to for RFA's Mandarin and Cantonese Services. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
FDLIP

FDLP

A group claiming to be from Iran hacked and defaced a US government agency website on Saturday with an image of Trump being punched in the face alongside pro-Iranian messages.

As of Sunday morning, The Federal Depository Library Program's (FDLP) website was down and the message had been removed from its main page. However, pro-Iranian messages are still showing on its Google search page details.

This apparent hack comes just days after the death of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US airstrike ordered by President Trump.

In return, Iran has promised "harsh revenge;" experts warned that this could include cyberattacks.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A group claiming to be from Iran hacked and defaced a US government agency website on Saturday, posting an image of Trump being punched in the face alongside pro-Iranian messages. The news was first reported by The Daily Mail.

As of Sunday morning, The Federal Depository Library Program's (FDLP) website was down and the message had been removed from its main page. However, screenshots taken of the site on Saturday show what the defaced site looked like:

The FDLP has not yet amended changes to its page details shown on Google search. There is still a message from the hackers, which says: "In the name of god. >>>>> Hacked By Iran Cyber Security Group HackerS ... ;)<<<<<. This is only small part of Iran's cyber ability ! We're always ready."

The FDLP is run by the US Government Publishing Office and the public access to government publications and information for free.

Gary Somerset, chief public relations officer for the US Government Publishing Office, confirmed in a statement emailed to Business Insider that the organization was coordinating with "the appropriate authorities to investigate further."

Story continues

A spokesperson for The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency  a federal organization that is responsible for defending the US against cyberattacks  said in a statement emailed to Business Insider that there is currently no confirmation that this was the work of Iranian state-sponsored actors.

The spokesperson added: "As described in the recent NTAS (National Terrorism Advisory System) bulletin, in these times of increased threats, all organizations should increase monitoring, back up your systems, implement multi-factor authentication, and have an incident response plan at the ready."

The news comes just days after the death of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US airstrike ordered by President Trump.

Iran promised to take "harsh revenge" in return, and experts said that this could include cyberattacks.

Cybersecurity and defense experts told Business Insider's Aaron Holmes that Iran has been beefing up its computer-warfare capabilities since it faced a cyber attack in 2010 on its nuclear facilities.

"Iran is an intelligent cyber opponent with an army of people testing our systems every minute of every day. It is the ultimate game of cat and mouse," Sam Curry, chief security officer at Cybereason, told Holmes on Friday.

But other experts reiterated that the US would be prepared for an attack of this sort.

"I absolutely think that they will look to attack our critical infrastructure on the homeland," Kiersten Todt, a cybersecurity adviser in the Obama administration and the managing director of the Cyber Readiness Institute, told Holmes.

He continued: "Our capabilities and our preparedness for that type of attack is strong, and our military is extremely well prepared for this."

Read the original article on Business Insider
A 22-year-old student from West Bengal, visiting Himachal Pradesh as a tourist along with his friends, died on Monday after the taxi they were travelling in plunged into Beas River near here, said police.

The deceased was identified as Sandipta Kundu, whose seven friends too were injured in the mishap, Mandi superintendent of police Gurdev Sharma said.

Kundu (22) died on the spot as the taxi fell into Beas river in Mandi's Aut area when it was on its way to Delhi from Manali, he said.

A group of students from West Bengal had hired an Innova taxi from Manali for Delhi, the police said, adding the vehicle fell into the river as the driver lost control over it soon after crossing the Aut tunnel.

The injured have been identified as Sahid (24), Kartik (22), Ashok (20), Kalyan (21), Rahul (29), Saurav (23) and Bappa Mandal (25).

A critically injured Kartik was referred to PGI Chandigarh, whereas the other injured were treated in a Mandi hospital.

The SP said that a case was registered against the driver in Aut police station.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Imagine getting 40 customers in one night for a vehicle that starts at $43,895 and reaches $60,500.

Steve Fuentes did.

"And we're up to 100 reservations now," he said. "The Mustang Mach-E has had a tremendous positive response. This is one of the biggest game changers we've ever had."

The owner of Sunnyvale Ford in the heart of Silicon Valley raved about response to the 2021 Mustang Mach-E SUV at a dealership located just blocks from Tesla, the rival high-profile electric carmaker led by controversial CEO Elon Musk. "I just think the market is ripe and it's ready for something other than Tesla. Our all-electric SUV with a 300 mile range is super cool and functional."

Fuentes noted that the high-efficiency vehicle will allow drivers to use special commuter lanes in the notoriously congested West Coast highways. "It's like the e-ticket at Disneyland," he said.

More than 1 in 4 buyers of the now sold-out first edition version of the Mach-E lives in California.

Ford Motor Co. has been inundated with orders for the 2021 Mustang Mach-E.

Yet response from other parts of America to the vehicle has been immediate.

Tom Nardone, 49, an entrepreneur from Birmingham, Michigan, placed his $500 reservation for a base model 2021 Mustang Mach-E with all-wheel drive within hours of watching the unveiling on YouTube. "I'm interested in efficiency. I like the idea of a Tesla but I don't trust Tesla. I would've bought a Chevrolet Bolt but it wasn't very attractive. Right now I'm driving a 2020 Camry hybrid. I love it. This new vehicle will replace my wife's 2017 Dodge Journey."

Mike Van Camp, 36, an industrial metal fabrication contractor from Schereville, Indiana, chose the Mustang Mach-E GT nearly two decades after buying a 2001 GT yellow convertible. "I was looking for something sporty and considered getting a Jeep Gladiator. But this, it's the first of its kind and I can say I was there when it first came out."

Anne Thimm, 58, a retired analyst from Alexandria, Virginia, laughs when she talks about her love of Mustang.

Story continues

"Back in 2001, the Mustang Bullitt came out and I just fell in love with that car. I walked into a Ford dealership and the guy said to me, 'Honey, don't you think that's a little too much for you?' Like, really? I was just floored. I was ready to pay cash for that car. So I walked right out and went to another Ford dealership 15 miles down the road and got my Bullitt. I loved that car."

She sadly parted with the Mustang to transport her four dogs.

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Anne Thimm, a retired analyst from Alexandria, Va., is glad the Mustang Mach-E will hold her dogs: Truman, a retired racing greyhound; Tina, a Spanish Galgo; and whippets, Bambi and Remi.

"I mourn that car every day," Thimm said. "Now we can get a Mustang to haul our dogs and also have electric. When I saw the Mach-E, I thought, 'Oh my God, it checks all our boxes.' It's fun and it has plenty of room."

Soon she will replace her Toyota Highlander hybrid with a first edition red Mach-E.

Matt Stanford, general manager at Varsity Ford in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said he has totaled 70 orders for the Mach-E already.

"And I actually ordered one for myself, a black GT," he confessed. "I have professors who have ordered, doctors, Ford employees, folks looking for an answer to the combustible engine  people concerned about their carbon footprint. I've got folks in their mid-20s all the way up to their late 60s."

This is new territory for Ford, said Stanford, whose uncles founded the dealership and whose family members sell cars. "Ford, instead of sticking its toe in the pool, jumped completely into the deep end. Tesla has owned the market. Tesla is just killing it. There's a sexiness to the Tesla vehicle. It's a status symbol, almost a way of life for some people. It's a sleek, nice looking car. So Ford's going at 'em."

First editions are selling mostly in Carbonized Gray at 38%, Grabber Blue Metallic at 35% and Rapid Red at 27%. More than 80% of U.S. customers are reserving Mach-E with an extended range battery. About 55% are buying all-wheel drive. Almost 30% are choosing the top-model GT.

The Dearborn automaker doesn't reveal the number of first editions sold but does note that the company has promised only 50,000 Mach-E vehicles that will be sold for the first 12 months in the U.S., Canada and Europe, and then other markets including China, Ford spokeswoman Emma Bergg confirmed.

There are four other trim levels besides the first edition. A potential tax credit of $7,500 will be applied to the prices below:

Select, from $43,895

Premium, from $50,600

First Edition, from $59,900

California Route 1, from $52,400

GT from $60,500

While some Mustang aficionados freaked out when Ford announced the iconic pony car's name would be used on an SUV, many Mustang collectors loved the idea.

"I own a silver 2005 Mustang GT," Nardone said. "I'm dying to get rid of that Mustang. It gets 12 miles to the gallon. This electric Mustang is going to be quicker than my Mustang GT."

Van Camp, who drives a 2017 Ford Explorer for work, has been searching for years for the right car and all-electric didn't play a key role in his decision. "I was definitely dead set on buying a Mustang and after I saw the Mach-E, I definitely knew I wanted that Mustang.

"It'll probably be an evening car, a weekend car. There's still a little trepidation about taking it on road trips. I'm anxious to see where the charging stations will be. They don't pinpoint a lot around my area yet; I'm just outside Chicago. But I know I can go back and forth from my house to Blackhawks games because they have charging stations in their parking lot."

With energy efficiency top of mind, now Van Camp is considering the idea of installing solar panels at his business, Van's Industrial.

Carla Bailo, CEO of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, said she's not surprised by the rapid response to the hot new electric vehicle.

"We're starting to see a new era in EVs," she said. "They're being seen as performance vehicles now. They really get off the line fast. They have great acceleration. Because of that, you're getting kind of an enthusiast culture around EVs. Initially when they came out, it was more about the green side of things and saving the environment. Now this is being marketed as a performance vehicle."

Fuentes said the potential for Ford can't be overstated.

"This Mustang Mach-E is going to be so impactful," he said. "If we're getting this kind of response, and it's a year away, you can only imagine and have to believe that this is the second coming of the original Mustang."

While America is responding with enthusiasm, consumers in the Golden State continue to lead the way.

"California has been on the environmental forefront for decades and Californians are on the leading edge of electric vehicles," said Mike Levine, Ford North America product communications manager. "Ford is committed to bring EVs to market that are exciting and meet the needs of California and the rest of the U.S. as well as customers around the world."

Contact Phoebe Wall Howard at 313-222-6512 or phoward@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @phoebesaid. Read more on Ford and sign up for our autos newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 2021 Ford Mach-E Mustang: Dealerships see big response to electric SUV
L'ancien president centrafricain Francois Bozize a Bangui en janvier 2013, avant sa chute. L'ancien president centrafricain Francois Bozize a Bangui en janvier 2013, avant sa chute.

De retour a Bangui depuis le 15 decembre, lancien president dechu Francois Bozize dont les proches craignent une arrestation, demande toujours a etre recu par le chef de lEtat, Faustin-Archange Touadera. En vain, pour le moment.Rentre discretement a Bangui dans la soiree du 15 decembre dernier, Francois Bozize simpatiente. Des son retour dans le pays, lancien president, chasse du pouvoir par les rebelles de la Seleka en avril 2013, a demande a rencontrer le president Faustin-Archange Touadera, qui lui a, pour le moment, oppose une fin de non-recevoir. Lattente commence a etre longue pour Bozize. Le pouvoir nenvoie aucun signe positif , confie a Jeune Afrique une source dans lentourage de lancien president centrafricain. Si cette rencontre compte tant pour le clan Bozize, cest quelle determinera la position du pouvoir actuel vis a vis de lancien president.
Luxembourg's move to make public transport free at the point of use certainly received a lot of press. How has international opinion developed over the months?

Early international reporting on the move was largely factual in tone, with news outlets communicating the decision rather than taking a stance one way or the other. With time, some of provided more in-depth analyses and opinions - so what's the international verdict?

BBC - not altogether positive

Marc Auxenfants wrote a piece for the BBC titled 'the cost of Luxembourg's free public transport plan'. As with many of these pieces, he begins by outlining the issue of congestion and cross-border transport - these are roundly considered valid issues.

The piece does highlight the potential positives, for instance using the case of a man called M'Barek Rabii, a divorced father making minimum wage, for whom the savings are very welcome indeed.

However, Auxenfants also highlights negative aspects - two key concerns in particular. First, he notes that public transport is not sufficiently reliable and developed to coax higher-earning commuters away from their cars. Second, Auxenfants argues that the cost of the plan is unfairly distributed and will carry with it considerable costs for cross-border workers who rely on the mileage tax deduction - he uses the example of a banker who commutes from Mondorff in France (not to be confused with Mondorf in Luxembourg), who will lose some 2,000 in tax deductions as the mileage deduction is revised.

The Conversation - 'won't get people from A to B'

Written by two researchers at the University of Luxembourg, Constance Cerr and Markus Hesse, this piece too is critical of the initiative. The authors note that the move has been an excellent marketing move and has been great for Luxembourg's public image, but argue that Luxembourg's public transport system is 'a mess'.

Their key concern is that ticket price is only one factor taken into account when choosing your mode of transport, and that Luxembourg already benefits from highly subsides and comparatively cheap fares. "Roads, rail tracks and stations are in a dire state, and government funding has not caught up with current demand and delayed investments from the past," say the authors. They further argue that the equality issue, making public transport equally an option for all, doesn't add up given this situation - and that the real problem facing Luxembourg from an inequality standpoint is the soaring cost of housing.

PRI - it may not work

PRI, Public Radio International, interviewed Dr. Oded Cats of Delft University of Technology, whose area of research is transportation. Cats was not convinced by the move, noting that similar moves in for instance Tallinn - where public transport was made free at point of use for all residents - had not seen an increase in new public transport users.

Like Cerr and Hesse above, Cats noted that "it's very seldom the case that one doesn't use public transport because it's too expensive compared to the car," and pointed to Luxembourg's already subsides fares. In sum, Cats said he "would not expect great impacts," partly because traffic often comes from across the borders, and partly because many of Luxembourg's workers receive cars as part of their pay package from employers.

A bonus - Bernie Sanders

This likely did not pass you by, but back in December of 2018, Bernie Sanders was quick to congratulate Luxembourg on the move - noting that it was an "important step ... at a time when scientists are warning us that we must take immediate and aggressive action to curb our carbon pollution emissions."


Want to treat your Valentine to a truly Texas date? Take them to the 'White Claw love shack' at a H-E-B.

On Twitter, @c8trin shared a photo of the display: stacks of White Claw and Truly hard seltzers topped by an arc of pink and white balloons.
A convicted robber who instructed a 17-year-old girl to lure a 22-year-old man into an ambush has been jailed for at least 30 years for stabbing him to death.

Ayodeji Azeez, 22, from Dagenham, was targeted in November 2018 after 'proudly' posing on social media with his new BMW car.

A 17-year-old girl, who was spared jail, had ensnared him on Snapchat under the direction of Kevin Lusala, 23, known as Krimbo, and arranged to meet him in Anerley, south London.

Ayodeji Azeez, 22, from Dagenham, was stabbed to death by Kevin Lusala, 23, (right) in November 2018 after 'proudly' posing on social media with his new BMW car

She wore shorts and gave her innocent victim a hug before directing him towards a car park, where Lusala and another robber were lying in wait to ambush him.

She has told jurors: 'I got into the car and hugged him. I knew he was about to be robbed.

'I felt sorry for him but I had no feelings for him. I just did not want to be there when it was happening.'

When he tried to resist the robbery, Lusala stabbed Mr Azeez 16 times with a large knife.

Mr Azeez stumbled into the road and was pronounced dead, despite efforts of paramedics to save him.

Mr Azeez was chased down the street before he was stabbed. He was murdered in broad daylight in Samos Road (pictured)

Chaise Gray, 24, then stole Mr Azeez's car but abandoned it a few streets away, jurors heard.

At his trial, Lusala, who went by Krimbo and Krimz on social media, claimed a mystery man called 'Drago', who had gold teeth and tattoos, was responsible for the killing.

An Old Bailey jury rejected his explanation and found Lusala guilty of murder and conspiracy to rob.

The girl had admitted being part of the robbery plot and Gray was found guilty of the same charge.

Father-of one Lusala was joined by his co-defendants, all from south-east London, at the Old Bailey to be sentenced by Judge Mark Dennis QC.

The court heard Lusala had a string of convictions dating back to when he was 14, including for robbery and possessing a 10cm long knife.

Mr Azeez's mother Toyin Adeigbe speaking outside the Old Bailey in London after her son's killer was jailed for life

The judge handed Lusala a life sentence with a minimum term of 30 years in jail for murder and 12 years for the plot to rob Mr Azeez, to run concurrently.

Gray swore and muttered angrily as he was jailed for 10 years.

The 17-year-old girl, who ran off before the killing, wept as she was handed a three-year youth rehabilitation order.

A supporter of Gray reacted angrily in the public gallery and shouted at the judge: 'Are you f****** dumb? My brother got 10 years.'

Judge Dennis said the conspiracy to rob Mr Azeez was helped by the 'comparative anonymity provided by social media'.

He said. 'This had been a planned ambush with the deceased being lured from his home in Dagenham with the expectation of meeting a female.

'This was a truly shocking and cruel attack carried out in broad daylight in a residential area.'

Such 'gratuitous violence' would have horrified and traumatised anyone who witnessed it, he said.

He said Lusala was a manipulative character and the 'vulnerable' female defendant had been out under 'undue influence' by older man.

Following the trial, she had written a 'letter of apology and remorse' for her part in the plot which led to Mr Azeez's death.
Ten central trade unions on Monday said around 25 crore people will participate in a nationwide strike on 8 January to protest against the government's 'anti-people' policies

New Delhi: Ten central trade unions on Monday said around 25 crore people will participate in a nationwide strike on 8 January to protest against the government's "anti-people" policies.

Trade unions INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF, UTUC along with various sectoral independent federations and associations had adopted a declaration in September last to go on a nationwide strike on 8 January, 2020.

"We expect the participation of not less than 25 crore of working people in the forthcoming National General Strike on 8 January, 2020, to be followed by many more actions seeking reversal of the anti-worker, anti-people, anti-national policies of the Government.

"The Ministry of Labour has failed to assure on any of the demands of workers which called a meeting on 2 January, 2020. The attitude of the government is that of contempt towards labour as we construe from its policies and actions," the 10 central trade unions (CTUs) said in a joint statement.

About 60 organisations of students and elected office-bearers of some universities have also decided to join the strike with an agenda to raise voice against increased fee structure and commercialization of education, it said.

The trade unions condemned the JNU violence and similar incidents in other university campuses and expressed their solidarity with students and teachers all over India.

The unions also expressed displeasure over no Indian Labour Conference being held since July 2015, the codification of labour laws and privatisation of PSUs.

"As many as 12 airports are already sold out to private hands, 100 percent sale of Air India is already decided, the decision to sell BPCL taken, BSNL-MTNL merger announced and 93,600 telecom workers already thrown out of jobs under the garb of VRS (voluntary retirement scheme)," it added.

The unions are also against privatisation in railways, corporatisation of 49 defence production units and forced merger of banks.

The joint platform of more than 175 farmers and agricultural workers unions will extend its support to workers' demands and observe 8 January as Gramin Bharat Bandh along with their charter of demands, they added.
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Were only six days into January and the Duchess of Cambridge has succeeded in making us want to end our self-imposed spending ban to buy a fedora hat.

The mum-of-three wore a navy blue hat with feather detailing when she stepped out for her first royal appearance of 2020, with husband Prince William, over the weekend.

The 37-year-old royal wore a Navy Pheasant Wrap Fedora from Hicks and Brown when she attended a church service at St. Mary Magdalene church in Sandringham on Sunday, alongside the Queen.

The Duchess, who turns 38 on January 9, has been staying in Norfolk with her family over the Christmas holidays.

Kate Middleton attends a church service at St. Mary Magdalene in Sandringham on Sunday [Photo: Getty]

The fedora costs 95 and is available in four sizes: extra small, small, medium and large, which means it fits heads measuring from 53cm to 60cm.

Kate wore the chic pinched headpiece with the burgundy marl funnel neck Denton coat from London-based label Roksanda, which is no longer available to buy.

She completed her ensemble with brown suede knee high boots, which featured button detail on the side, as well as a blue quilted bag.

While we may have been wrapped up in knitted bobble hats over Christmas, we are certainly planning to take a leaf out of Kates style book and opt for a trendy fedora for our next outing.

For those who are looking to emulate Kates look, but without the hefty price tag - we have you covered.

Buy it: Navy Pheasant Wrap Fedora from Hicks and Brown | 95

Five affordable alternative fedora hats

Grey Wool Fedora Hat | 25 (Was 49) from Mint Velvet

BaZhuaYu001 Womens Fedora Hats with Belt Buckle Wide Brim Panama Fedora Cap | 12.98 from Amazon

Braided Felt Fedora Hat | 45 from & Other Stories

Fedora Hat | 10 (Was 25) from Warehouse

Fedora Hat with Snake Print Trim | 21.60 (Was 36) from La Redoute

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Recto revives bill on tax-free overtime pay

Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto has renewed his call to make the overtime pay of government and private sector workers tax-free.

Recto's proposal, first filed during the 15th Congress, seeks to amend the tax code by including "overtime pay" in the tax-exempt items.

Admittedly, Recto said his proposal will cost government foregone revenues, but pointed out that more money in taxpayers' pockets will raise workers' disposable income and boost consumer spending.

"This, in turn, would trigger demand for more goods and services thereby stimulate activities in the industrial and service sectors and eventually generate more taxes," the senator explained.

Recto's Senate Bill No. 601 is expected to benefit an estimated 26.7 million wage and salary workers from both private and public sectors.

The bill seeks to exclude overtime pay from the computation of taxable income, amending Section 32 (B) (7) of the National Internal Revenue Code of 1997.

It defined overtime pay as "compensation due to hours worked in excess of the required normal working hours."

"An employee who renders overtime work puts in additional hours of work and requires greater physical and mental effort. Instead of being able to rest early and spend more time with the family, the employee is forced to extend the working hours to achieve the organization's goals. Thus, it is only fitting that the employee is properly compensated for additional work hours rendered," said Recto.

Under the Labor Code, the prescribed number of hours of work for employees for six consecutive days is eight hours a day.

If the employee renders more than eight hours of work, the employer is required to pay additional compensation equivalent to the employee's regular wage plus at least 25 percent of his regular wage and if the overtime work falls on a holiday or rest day, the rate is increased to 30 percent.

State workers are also entitled to overtime pay subject to Civil Service laws, rules and regulations.

Under existing laws, overtime pay of employee is taxable.

Recto said the current set-up not only limits the full enjoyment of monetary benefits due the employee for putting in more hours of work but also diminishes the value of the additional physical and mental effort exerted.


Kelly Brook would love to propose to boyfriend Jeremy Parisi on Diamond Beach in Iceland.

The 40-year-old model - who has been dating the hunk since 2015 - admitted she would have no problem with being the one to get down on one knee when asked if she'd consider asking the 34-year-old French model to be her husband in 2020, which is a leap year, which means it is traditionally acceptable for a woman to pop the question of the extra day, February 29.

She told the new issue of OK! Magazine: "You may have planted a seed there. That would be fun. I've always wanted to get engaged on Diamond Beach in Iceland. It's beautiful, so maybe if we book a trip..."

Kelly revealed two years ago, that she popped the question to her beau while they were holidaying in Antigua because she thought Shirley Heights, a restored military lookout, was the perfect place to get engaged, but he treated her proposal as a joke.

She said at the time: "When we were in Antigua and the sun was setting and we were up at Shirley Heights, I said to Jeremy, 'Will you marry me?' And he said, 'Be quiet there are people around!' So I tried to propose but he said it was too busy and told me to be quiet! I've asked him, but it wasn't private enough."

However, Kelly was glad that Jeremy turned down her proposal because she was only joking and admitted she was worried that getting engaged would put unnecessary pressure on them.

She explained: "It wasn't seriously. We're so happy as we are at the moment, I don't think it's really something that's that important to us.

"We're just going with the flow and we're happy travelling and doing our thing. It could put a bit of pressure on us that we don't really need."

Although the loved-up pair aren't engaged yet, Kelly wears a ring Jeremy gave her on her wedding ring finger.
West Berlin, NJ -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/06/2020 -- As the new decade arrives, small business owners across the United States are reassessing their budgets and preparing for another year of success. Unfortunately, the winter season can be particularly difficult for small business owners who operate a construction or demolition business, as cold temperatures and inclement weather makes it more difficult to complete projects. Hydraulic Breaker Services, LLC is proud to help small business owners keep their staff safer during the winter by providing up to 100 percent financing for the used hydraulic breakers and hammers they need.



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Los Angeles prosecutors charged Harvey Weinstein on Monday with sexually assaulting two women on successive nights during Oscars week in 2013, bringing the new case against the disgraced Hollywood mogul on the eve of jury selection for his New York trial.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 6/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FILE - In this July 9, 2018 file photo, Harvey Weinstein arrives for a pre-trial hearing in New York. Weinstein's trial begins Monday, Jan. 6, 2020, more than two years after a torrent of women began accusing him of misconduct. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

Los Angeles prosecutors charged Harvey Weinstein on Monday with sexually assaulting two women on successive nights during Oscars week in 2013, bringing the new case against the disgraced Hollywood mogul on the eve of jury selection for his New York trial.

The case, brought by a task force set up by the Los Angeles County district attorney to investigate sex-crime allegations against entertainment figures, now puts Weinstein in deep legal peril on both coasts, where he built a career as the one of the most powerful  and feared  figures in show business before a barrage of accusations from more than 75 women led to his downfall and ignited the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein, 67, was charged with raping a woman at a Los Angeles hotel on Feb. 18, 2013, after pushing his way inside her room, then sexually assaulting a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel suite the next night. He could get up to 28 years in prison on charges of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery.

Actor Rose McGowan speaks at a news conference outside a Manhattan courthouse after the arrival of Harvey Weinstein, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020, in New York. Weinstein is on trial on charges of rape and sexual assault, more than two years after a torrent of women began accusing him of misconduct. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

"We see you, we hear you and we believe you District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in announcing the charges, addressing herself to the studio boss's accusers.

Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said the charges open the "next chapter" for a man who has gotten away with too much for too long, while Beverly Hills Chief Sandra Spagnoli called the cases horrendous crimes perpetrated by a sexual predator.

Lawyers for Weinstein had no immediate comment on the new charges, though he has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Jury selection is set to begin Tuesday in the New York case, in which Weinstein is charged with raping a woman in a New York City hotel room in 2013 and forcibly performing a sex act on another woman in 2006. He has said any sexual activity was consensual. If convicted of the most serious charges, predatory sexual assault, he faces a mandatory life sentence.

Actors Rosanna Arquette, right, and Rose McGowan hug outside a Manhattan courthouse after the arrival of Harvey Weinstein, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020, in New York. Weinstein is on trial on charges of rape and sexual assault, more than two years after a torrent of women began accusing him of misconduct. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

"The walls of justice are closing in on Harvey Weinstein. He is now being prosecuted both in New York and Los Angeles," celebrity attorney Gloria Allred exulted in a statement. Allred represents one of the alleged victims in the New York case as well as actress Annabella Sciorra, who is scheduled to testify against Weinstein in New York.

She added: Women are no longer willing to suffer in silence and are willing to testify under oath in a court of law.

The charges announced Monday in Los Angeles took more than two years to file because the women were reluctant to provide all the information necessary, according to Lacey. The alleged attacks follow a pattern similar to the offences described in the New York case, dozens of lawsuits and womens accounts to media outlets.

The first accuser is an Italian actress, according to her attorney, David Ring. The woman, who asked that her name not be used, said in court documents that Weinstein arrived uninvited at her hotel on the night in question, forced her to perform oral sex on him and raped her, then threatened her life if she disclosed the attack, according to court documents.

Harvey Weinstein, center, leaves court following a pre trial hearing, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020, in New York. The disgraced movie mogul faces allegations of rape and sexual assault. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Ring said in a statement Monday that his client "values her privacy, but will do what is necessary to obtain justice for what Weinstein did to her in 2013.

The second woman said she had agreed to meet Weinstein for a business meeting at his Beverly Hills hotel and was unwittingly led into the bathroom of his suite, where a naked Weinstein prevented her from leaving, took down her dress and masturbated as he held her in place by her breast, court papers said.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have been victims of sexual assault, unless they agree to be named.

The task force is still investigating sex-crime allegations against Weinstein from three women, the district attorney said. Prosecutors said they declined to bring charges involving three other women because the cases were beyond the statute of limitations.

Attorney Gloria Allred waits to enter the courtroom for the Harvey Weinstein trial at State Supreme Court in New York, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. Weinstein is on trial on charges of rape and sexual assault, more than two years after a torrent of women began accusing him of misconduct. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Lacey, along with the two police chiefs, urged other victims to come forward. "We need the voices of all victims to help us remove sexual predators from our community and protect others from these violent crimes," she said.

Weinstein is expected to appear in court in California after his trial in New York is finished, Lacey said. She said prosecutors will recommend $5 million bail.

The district attorney said the timing of the Los Angeles charges was unrelated to the New York trial, explaining that the filing and the announcement came on the first business day on which all the necessary people could be gathered.

Neither woman has stepped forward publicly. But one is expected to testify in the New York case as part of an effort by prosecutors to portray Weinstein as a sexual predator with a habit of forcing himself on young actresses and women trying to break into Hollywood.

Actor Rose McGowan makes her way through the crowd at a Manhattan courthouse after the arrival of Harvey Weinstein, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020, in New York. Weinstein and several women who have accused him of sexual misconduct converged at the New York City courthouse ahead of his trial on charges of rape and sexual assault. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

The alleged attacks in Los Angeles County came days before the Hollywood producer was photographed on the Oscars red carpet with his fashion designer wife, Georgina Chapman, who was pregnant at the time.

At the 2013 Academy Awards, Weinstein had several major contenders, including Silver Linings Playbook, Django Unchained and The Master. His movies took home an armful of Oscars, including Jennifer Lawrences first Academy Award and trophies for director Quentin Tarantino and actor Christoph Waltz.

At the time, the allegations against Weinstein were little more than rumours around Hollywood. When that years nominees were announced, emcee Seth MacFarlane joked after reading the list of contenders for best supporting actress: Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.

The charges are the first to be brought by the task force in the two years since it was formed. It has investigated more than 20 men, many of them prominent actors and producers, but declined to file charges in nearly all, usually citing statutes of limitations.

Earlier in the day Monday, Weinstein and several of the women who have accused him converged at a New York City courthouse for final preparations for his trial.

Weinsteins attorneys suggested they knew the additional charges might be coming  There is a potential L.A. situation going on, his lawyer Donna Rotunno told reporters  and asked the judge to sequester the potential jurors to shield them from the news. Judge James Burke refused and also declined to impose a gag order to prevent Weinstein's attorneys from speaking to the media.

Across the street, actresses and other women who say they were sexually harassed or assaulted by Weinstein branded him a villain undeserving of anyone's pity.

He looked cowardly. He wouldnt look at us. He wouldnt make eye contact, said Sarah Ann Masse, a performer and writer who said Weinstein once sexually harassed her in his underwear during a job interview. This trial is a cultural reckoning regardless of its legal outcome.

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Rotunno said she was hopeful a fair jury could be found: In this great country, you are innocent until proven guilty."

After a string of successes at Miramax and Weinstein Co. with movies such as Pulp Fiction" Shakespeare in Love and The King's Speech, the studio boss met his downfall when many of the allegations against him were brought to light by The New York Times and The New Yorker in October 2017.

____

Hays and Sisak reported from New York. Associated Press writers Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles and Jake Coyle in New York contributed to this story.

___

This story has been corrected to show that Weinstein was charged, not indicted.
Pompeo Staunchly Defends Drone Attack on Iranian General

By VOA News January 05, 2020

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday staunchly defended the drone attack that killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, but refused to publicly offer any evidence supporting the American claim that he posed an imminent threat to U.S. forces and officials in the Mideast.

Pompeo, in one of a string of interviews on news talk shows, told ABC that senior U.S. leaders who had access to all of the intelligence before the attack on Soleimani had "no skepticism" about the necessity of killing him.

"The intelligence assessment made clear that no action allowing Soleimani to continue his plotting and planning, his terror campaign, created more risk than the action that we took last week," the top U.S. diplomat said. "We reduced risk."

But Pompeo several times declined to reveal evidence of the threat the U.S. believed that Soleimani posed.

"There are simply things we cannot make public," Pompeo told Fox News. "You've got to protect the sources providing the intelligence."

On CNN, Pompeo said U.S. officials would continue to disclose information about the drone attack, but only "consistent with protecting our sources and methods and importantly our capacity to continue to understand what's going on in presenting threats. You don't want to risk that intelligence."

Meanwhile, Tehran said it would further roll back its participation in the 2015 international nuclear deal that U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from. Iran said it would enrich uranium without restrictions.

The war of threats between Washington and Tehran in the aftermath of Soleimani's killing was unabated.

U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday that the U.S. has identified 52 sites in Iran, including "some at a very high level & important ... to the Iranian culture," that the U.S. would strike "very fast and very hard" should Iran attack any U.S. personnel or assets in retaliation for the killing of Soleimani. The number 52 represents the 52 American hostages taken by Iran in 1979 and held for 444 days.

Under the Geneva Conventions laying out the legal constraints of war, attacking another country's cultural sites is a war crime. But Pompeo, while not rebuking Trump's Twitter comment, told ABC, "We'll behave lawfully. We'll behave inside the system. Every target that we strike will be a lawful target and it will be designed at the singular mission of protecting the American people."

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed "severe revenge" against the killing of Soleimani. His top military adviser, Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan, told CNN, "The response for sure will be military and against military sites."

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in a televised news conference, "Iran is not seeking a war but is ready for any situation." He said the final decision in response to Soleimani's killing would be made by "the system's leadership."

He said Iran would try to "devise a response in a way that would both make the enemy regret" Soleimani's killing and "not bring the Iranian nation to a war."

Tehran said a million people poured into the streets of Mashhad, the country's second city, to mourn Soleimani's death. Because of the ongoing program there, authorities canceled a planned event in Tehran, instead urging Iranians to attend a ceremony honoring Soleimani at Tehran University on Monday.

In the U.S., Republican lawmakers voiced support for Trump's order to kill Soleimani. But opposition Democrats said that while they believed that Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of U.S. forces in the Mideast, Trump's action increased the threat of a U.S.-Iran war and complained that a military intervention like that against Soleimani required congressional approval.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen told Fox, "We're now headed very close to the precipice of war." He said that "you just can't go around and kill" world figures the U.S. opposes. "The president is not entitled to take us to war" without congressional authorization."

Larry Pfeiffer, the director of the Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security at George Mason University and a former senior director of the White House Situation Room, rebuked Trump's threats against Iranian cultural sites. He told VOA, "This is not how America should behave and would likely violate international conventions and norms." Pfeiffer said Trump's threats "sound like something that would be issued by an autocratic regime like North Korea."

"When the U.S. president makes it open season on cultural sites, he offers false justification to adversaries to do the same," Pfeiffer said.

Trump said Friday that Soleimani's killing was long overdue.

"We took action last night to stop a war," Trump said at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. "However, the Iranian regime's aggression in the region, including the use of proxy fighters to destabilize its neighbors must end and it must end now."

Trump claimed Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, Iraqis and Iranians, saying the longtime Iranian general "made the death of innocent people his sick passion" while helping to run a terror network that reached across the Middle East to Europe and the Americas.

Analysts say any retaliatory actions against the U.S. by Iran would likely come after the three days of mourning that were declared Friday.

On Saturday, the White House formally notified Congress of Friday's drone strike. Under the War Powers Act, the notification is required within 48 hours of introducing U.S. forces into an armed conflict that could lead to war.

The classified document was sent to congressional leadership, officials said. It would likely describe the Trump administration's justifications for the strike against Soleimani, as well as intelligence information behind the decision and the expected scope of the military involvement. It is not known if the information will be released to the public.

Soleimani's body is being moved late Sunday to Tehran, before he is buried Tuesday in his hometown of Kerman.

Jeff Seldin and Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.

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A former general counsel for Faraday Future has sued the electric car start-up, saying he left his lucrative practice at one of the major US law firms because executives falsely painted a bullish picture of the companys prospects.

Hong Liu left Mayer Brown and moved to California from New York because executives of the Tesla competitor allegedly made false claims about a pending US$2bn investment into the company, Bloomberg Law said.

The investment, which was rumoured to come from Chinas Evergrande Group, did not push through. Liu said in the lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York that he was fired after less than a year into the job without receiving the pay he was promised.
An off-duty Houston police sergeant working an extra job at a Midtown business opened fire on a man who was pistol-whipping and robbing a homeless person across the street Monday afternoon, police say.

The sergeant, who was not immediately identified, spotted the struggle on Hadley Street just east of Fannin while working at a mid-rise business office in the 2200 block of Fannin around 1 p.m., according to Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo. Once the sergeant realized what was happening, he ran across Fannin and confronted the man, who raised the pistol toward the officer, Acevedo said.
A Delhi court on Monday remanded five persons, including two Bangladeshi nationals, arrested for allegedly causing violence during an anti-CAA protest recently at Seempuri in North East Delhi, in judicial custody.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Mona Tardi Kerketta sent the five to prison for two weeks under judicial custody after the Crime Branch sleuths produced them before the court.

The accused, remanded to judicial custody, include Ghaziabad resident Mohammad Shoiab (19), Pilibhit resident Mohammad Amir (24), Seemapuri resident Yusuf (40), besides the two Bangladeshi nationals Mohammad Azad and Mohammad Subhan,



The court sent them to judicial custody as the police did not seek their remand for custodial interrogation.

Apart from the five arrested, two juveniles too were detained and sent to the Juvenile Justice Board, a police officer said.

In the case, the police had earlier arrested 11 persons, who are currently in the judicial custody.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
It was a promise Matt Perrin wasn't able to keep.

"I'll never take away your independence," he'd told his mother, Rosemary, then 71, who lived alone on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in a much-loved cottage.

That was before Rosemary started calling Perrin and her brother, confused and disoriented, when she was out driving. Her Alzheimer's disease was progressing.

Worried about the potential for a dangerous accident, Perrin took away his mother's car keys, then got rid of her car. She was furious.

For family caregivers, this is a common, anxiety-provoking dilemma. They'll promise Mom or Dad that they can stay at home through the end of their lives and never go to assisted living or a nursing home. Or they'll commit to taking care of a spouse's needs and not bringing paid help into the home. Or they'll vow to pursue every possible medical intervention in a medical crisis.

Eventually, though, the unforeseen will arise - after a devastating stroke or a heart attack, for instance, or a diagnosis of advanced cancer or dementia - and these promises will be broken.

Mom or Dad will need more care than can be arranged at home. A husband or wife won't be able to handle mounting responsibilities and will need to bring in help. A judgment call - "This will only prolong suffering, there's no point in doing more" - will be made at the bedside of someone who is dying.

"We want to give loved ones who are sick or dying everything we think they want - but we can't," said Barbara Karnes, 78, an end-of-life educator and hospice nurse based in Vancouver, Wash. "And then, we feel we've failed them and guilt can stay with us for the rest of our lives."

She hasn't forgotten an experience with her mother-in-law, Vi, who moved in with Karnes, her husband and two children after becoming a widow 30 years ago. At the time, Vi was in her 70s, weak and frail. Karnes was working full time and keeping the household going.

"My mother-in-law and I got into a disagreement, I don't remember what it was about. But I remember her saying to me, 'You promised you would take care of me,' and making it clear that she felt I'd let her down. And I said, 'I know, I was wrong - I can't do it all,' " she remembered. "I still feel bad about that."

"No caregiver I know sets out to deceive another person: It's just that none of us have a crystal ball or can predict what the future will hold," she said. "And the best we can do isn't always as much as we thought was possible. We have to figure out a way to forgive ourselves."

Richard Narad, 64, a professor of health services administration at California State University, spent months after his wife's death in December 2011 mentally reviewing the last hours of her life before achieving a measure of peace.

His wife, April, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 5 and was legally blind when the couple married in 1994. A year later, she had the first of several strokes. Eventually, April was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. In the last 18 months of her life, she was hospitalized 13 times.

April had told her husband she wanted "full code" status in the event of an emergency - in other words, "do everything possible to keep me alive." But she was nervous about his willingness to honor her wishes because his own end-of-life views differed from hers.

"I think certain care is futile and you need to give up earlier," he explained.

In the end, April was rushed to the hospital one night after dinner, gasping for breath. There, Narad directed medical staff to pursue "full code" interventions. But when a physician came out to tell him that death appeared inevitable, Narad remembers saying, "Well, if that's the case, just call it."

Had he broken a promise to insist that other treatments be tried? Narad spent months wondering but eventually accepted that he acted in good faith and couldn't have saved April's life.

With illness, older couples can end up reevaluating commitments they've made. Kathy Bell, 66, of Silver Spring, Md., promised her husband, Bruce Riggs, 82, that she'd stay with him "through all the changes in our lives" when they married in 1987. Then in August 2011, he received a diagnosis of Alzheimer's.

The couple moved into a senior living facility, but as Riggs's condition worsened he had to go to a memory care facility in 2014. The following year, Bell had lunch with a man whose wife lived at the same facility. He told her his therapist had recommended he start dating.

"That planted the idea of possibly doing this myself at some point," Bell said, and two years ago she met a man who has become a regular companion.

Does she feel she has broken her promise to her husband, who was committed to a monogamous marriage? "No, I don't," Bell said, adding that "it's not clear whether he knows me at this point. He doesn't talk. The way I view it: I still love him. I still go to see him. I'm still taking care of him."

Promises can be explicit - spoken aloud - or implicit, understood without direct communication. Both kinds can inspire regret.

Debra Hallisey, 62, a caregiver consultant based in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, describes making an unspoken promise to her father, Don, when he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2014. Their agreement, which was never voiced: Neither would tell Hallisey's mother, Doris - who has diabetes, mobility issues and is legally blind - how sick he was.

"I knew he was shielding [Mom] from knowing the truth. When she would ask questions, he wouldn't say anything," Hallisey said. Because her mother was disabled, Hallisey accompanied her father to doctor's appointments.

When Hallisey's father died in February 2015, Doris was shocked and Hallisey was overcome by remorse. "It was then, I said to my mother, 'Mommy, there are no more secrets. If something is wrong, I am going to tell you, and together we're going to determine the best thing to do,' " she said.

In line with that promise, Hallisey has been direct with her mother, who uses a walker to get around her home in Somerset, New Jersey, and has round-the-clock home care. If and when Doris becomes unable to walk, she'll have to move, Hallisey has said.

"I've told her, 'Mommy, I'll do everything to keep you in this house, but you have to use your walker and work at staying strong. A wheelchair won't work in your house,' " Hallisey said. "I know that keeping her at home is a promise I may not be able to keep."

Matt Perrin made the decision to move his mother, Rosemary, to assisted living in 2017, after realizing he couldn't coordinate care for her escalating needs at a distance. (Rosemary lived on Cape Cod; Perrin lived in New Hampshire.) Because he had vowed to protect her independence, "I felt so guilty - a guilt that I had never felt before," he admitted.

Rosemary resisted the move, but after a few months, she settled into her new home.

"I felt relief then, and I still do," Perrin said. "I wish I didn't make that promise to my mom, and I wish she weren't living with Alzheimer's. But I'm thankful that she's in a place that's really good for her, all things considered."

- - -

The report is from Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
A few dozen Iranian-Canadians gather in Toronto on Jan. 3, 2020, to celebrate the death of Iranian general Gen. Canada is closely monitoring developments after Iraq's parliament called for the expulsion of foreign troops from the country, a spokesman for Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said. (The Canadian Press/Cole Burston)

Plans for Canadians Unclear After Iraq Lawmakers Call for Expulsion of Foreign Troops

OTTAWACanada is closely monitoring developments after Iraqs parliament called for the expulsion of foreign troops from the country, a spokesman for Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said.

But Sajjans press secretary, Todd Lane, would not say whether contingency plans are in the works for getting Canadian military personnel out of Iraq should the situation there deteriorate further.

Iraqi lawmakers approved a resolution Sunday asking the Iraqi government to end an agreement under which American and allied forces have been in the country for more than four years to help fight the ISIS terrorist group, also known as Daesh.

The bill is nonbinding and subject to approval by the Iraqi government but has the backing of the outgoing prime minister.

The Canadian-led NATO training mission in Iraq has been temporarily suspended in the wake of the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

The training mission, currently led by Maj. Gen. Jennie Carignan, has been under Canadian command since it was launched in October 2018 at the request of the Iraqi government.

A U.S. airstrike Friday killed Soleimani and a number of top Iraqi officials at the Baghdad airport. Soleimani was the architect of Irans proxy wars across the Mideast and was blamed for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in roadside bombings and other attacks.

We continue to monitor and evaluate the situation, and remain in close co-ordination with our international partners, Lane said in an email.

Our goal remains a united and stable Iraq and preventing the re-emergence of Daesh.

When asked, Lane would not divulge whether Canada had plans to remove its soldiers from Iraq. We wont have a further comment at this point, he said.

Canada has 250 military members working with the NATO training mission as well as dozens of special forces troops who have been working in the northern part of the country with Iraqi security forces.

Tensions in the Middle East have escalated since the air strike with both U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian leaders trading threats of retaliation.

Those tensions are also now being felt in Canada with a group representing Islamic Americans reporting that dozens of Iranians and Iranian-Americans were detained at length and questioned at the Peace Arch border crossing linking British Columbia to Washington State.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said many more were reportedly refused entry to the United States, including many with U.S. citizenship who were returning to their homes in the United States from an Iranian pop concert that took place on Saturday in Vancouver.

Those detained reported that their passports were confiscated and they were questioned about their political views and allegiances, the council said in a statement posted online.

The statement quoted a 24-year-old American medical student who said she was detained and interrogated for more than 10 hours. Email and phone messages sent to the council went unanswered.

A spokesman for Border Security Minister Bill Blair said the Canada Border Services Agency has no involvement in the matter.

All Canadian citizens, regardless of their background, are equal before and under the law, and no one will ever be arbitrarily detained at the Canadian border nor refused entry purely because of their ethnicity or religion, Blairs office said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said Monday that reports that border agents were detaining Iranians and Iranian-Americans at the U.S.-Canada border werent true.

Social media posts that CBP is detaining Iranian-Americans and refusing their entry into the U.S. because of their country of origin are false, the agency said in a statement.

Reports that DHS/CBP has issued a related directive are also false, it added. DHS stands for the Department of Homeland Security.

By Terry Pedwell
By PTI

NEW DELHI: "I can certainly tell you that when I studied in JNU, we did not see any 'tukde tukde' gang there," External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Monday when asked about the situation in the premier university.

After the violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University campus on Sunday, Jaishankar, a JNU alumnus, had swiftly condemned the incident, saying it is completely against the tradition and culture of the university.

"Tukde-Tukde" is a term often used by the right-wing parties to attack the opposition, particularly Left and Left-backed outfits as well as those who support them.

ALSO READ: Union ministers Jaishankar, Sitharaman condemn violence at JNU campus

"What I had to say on JNU, I said it yesterday. It was very clear," said the External Affairs Minister when asked during a book release event about attacks on JNU students on Sunday.

A mob of masked people had stormed the JNU campus and systematically targeted students in three hostels, unleashing mayhem with sticks, stones and iron rods, hitting inmates and breaking windows, furniture and personal belongings. They also attacked a women's hostel.

Have seen pictures of what is happening in #JNU. Condemn the violence unequivocally. This is completely against the tradition and culture of the university.  Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) January 5, 2020

"Have seen pictures of what is happening in #JNU. Condemn the violence unequivocally. This is completely against the tradition and culture of the university," Jaishankar had tweeted after the incident.
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Iran's supreme leader today wept over the coffin of the Iranian general who was killed in a US airstrike, as the warlord's daughter swore revenge on US troops despite Donald Trump's threats of a fearsome response.

A tearful Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral.

Speaking to the wailing crowds which stretched as far as the eye could see, Soleimani's daughter Zeinab directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region.

'The families of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East will spend their days waiting for [the] death of their children,' she said to cheers.

Warning of a 'dark day' looming for the United States, she said: 'Crazy Trump, don't think that everything is over with my father's martyrdom.'

Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport on Friday, shocking the Islamic republic and sending tensions spiralling in the Middle East.

His remains were flown back to Iran last night, carried in a cardboard box which had its own row of seats on a passenger jet.

Iran has vowed 'severe revenge' and yesterday abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal in response to the airstrike, while Trump has threatened a 'disproportionate response' targeting cultural sites.

Adding to the tensions, Trump has warned of sanctions against Iraq if it goes through with expelling US troops from the country - a move which could spark an ISIS resurgence there.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (fourth from left) wept over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral

Mourning: Thousands of people gathered in Tehran for the second day of Qassem Soleimani's funeral after he was killed in a US drone strike on Friday

A tearful Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left) prayed over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral today

The general's daughter Zeinab Soleimani (pictured today) spoke to mourners during the funeral procession in Tehran and directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region

Coffins of Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were seen resting on passenger seats on a jet heading to Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran last night

Iranians set a US and Israeli flag on fire during Monday's funeral procession for military commander Qasem Soleiman

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (centre) and president Hassan Rouhani (immediately to his right) lead prayers over Soleimani's coffin. On Khamenei's left is chief justice Ebrahim Raisi, and to his left is the slain general's successor Esmail Qaani

Protesters staged a symbolic 'execution' of a Donald Trump effigy during the funeral ceremony of Qassem Soleimani

As the Middle East teetered on the brink of war:

Iranian state media said 'millions' of people had gathered in Tehran to mourn Soleimani's death in scenes not witnessed since the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989;

Soleimani's replacement as commander of the Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, vowed revenge and said Iran was aiming to 'get rid of America from the region';

Trump threatened Iraq with sanctions after the country's parliament voted to kick out the 5,000 US troops stationed there, sparking fears of an ISIS resurgence;

The US president defended his targeting of cultural sites despite Democratic claims that he was preparing to commit war crimes;

The US-led coalition against ISIS in Iraq said it was pausing its fight against the jihadist group to shore up its own defences against an Iranian reprisal;

Oil prices jumped to their highest level since September, surpassing $70 per barrel, amid fears that Iran could harass ships in the Strait of Hormuz;

Rockets landed near the US embassy in Baghdad for the second night in a row, with American troops and diplomats on high alert for Iranian reprisals;

Germany, France and Britain called for de-escalation and urged Iran to stick by the 2015 nuclear agreement which is now on the brink of total collapse;

Boris Johnson's spokesman cautioned against the destruction of cultural heritage and called Iran's move away from the nuclear deal 'concerning' after the PM returned from holiday for crisis talks in London.

Today the supreme leader was flanked by Soleimani's son, his military replacement Esmail Qaani and Iranian president Hassan Rouhani at the funeral in Tehran.

Mourners prayed together with Khamenei whose voice cracked as he prayed over the flag-draped coffin.

Such public displays of intense grief are common among Shiite Muslims, who hold martyrs in the highest esteem. It also signals deep respect for the deceased.

The funeral showcased the depth of the bond Khamenei had with the slain general and gave insight into how Soleimani's death is being felt personally by the supreme leader.

Some mourners shouted 'Death to America' and burned US and Israeli flags as the coffins of Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader who also died in the drone strike were passed over their heads.

Iranian state TV put the crowd size at 'millions,' although that number could not be verified.

The scale of the crowds in Tehran mirrored those who turned out in 1989 for the funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic.

Soleimani will lie in state at Tehran's famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him. He will eventually be buried in his hometown of Kerman.

Mourners marched towards the university, a key artery in Tehran, and formed a sea of black along Enghelab Street dotted with red Shiite flags and white signs.

The coffin of Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was also killed in Friday's attack, was draped in the Iraqi flag and passed over the crowds alongside Soleimani's casket.

'We must give a crushing response,' said one of the mourners, a 61-year-old businessman who gave his name as Afkhami.

'We must target whatever military base they have in the region. We must attack all that are in the range of our missiles.'

One poster held by a mourner read: 'It is our right to seek a harsh revenge,' echoing comments by Iranian military and political leaders.

Washington regards Soleimani as a terrorist leader who was plotting against Americans and had the blood of thousands on his hands through his work with Iranian proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

But many Iranians considered Soleimani, a decorated veteran of the eight-year war with Iraq, a national hero, particularly for mobilising Shi'ite Muslim groups in Iraq to help crush the militant Sunni jihadists of ISIS.

To Iran's supreme leader, Soleimani was a loyal aide who conferred with him often and cemented Tehran's footprint far beyond the country's borders, helping to preserve and advance the principles of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought the Shiite leadership to power.

Soleimani was also close with Khamenei's children and the supreme leader had been photographed embracing him in public. The Ayatollah made a rare visit to Soleimani's home the day he was killed to offer condolences to his grieving widow and grown children.

Their relationship was so close that Khamenei was photographed more than once embracing Soleimani in ways that are customary in Iran for fathers and their beloved sons.

Unlike other military commanders in the Revolutionary Guard Corps., the 62-year-old general answered only to the 80-year-old Khamenei.

Khamenei so revered him that he awarded the general Iran's highest military order in March. IWhen pinning the medal on Soleimani, the Iranian leader said he hoped God would reward the general and help him live a blissful life that ends with martyrdom.

'Of course, not any time soon,' Khamenei said, adding that the 'Islamic Republic needs him for years to come.'

And in death, Soleimani has received what no man before him has in modern Iran. His funeral processions have been spread over several days and cities, marking the first time Iran has ever honored a single man with such ceremonies. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such an honor after his death in 1989.

The flag-draped coffin of Qassem Soleimani is passed over the heads of mourners at his funeral in the centre of Tehran today

Mourners gather in Tehran to pay their respects to a military commander who was hailed as a hero by many Iranians

Soleimani (pictured) was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport on Friday, shocking the Islamic republic and sending tensions spiralling in the Middle East

Thousands of mourners line the streets of Tehran for the funeral procession today, with people waving Iranian and Iraqi flags

Iranian state media said 'millions' of people had gathered in Tehran to mourn Soleimani's death in scenes not witnessed since the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989

Soleimani's successor Esmail Qaani cries over the coffin of his assassinated predecessor during the funeral in Tehran today

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and Soleimani's long-time lieutenant and successor Esmail Qaani stand by the coffin of the military commander who died on Friday

One funeral organiser has called on every Iranian to donate money towards an $80million bounty on Trump's head, according to Iranian television.

On Friday Khamenei vowed 'severe revenge' as he declared three days of mourning.

Esmail Qaani, who has succeeded Soleimani as commander of the Revolutionary Quards' powerful Quds Force, also swore revenge in an interview with state TV which was aired today.

'God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken,' he said.

'We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region.'

American forces are braced for retaliation and the US-led coalition against ISIS said in a statement yesterday that it was pausing its fight against the jihadists to shore up its own defences.

US bases in the region are shoring up their defences and there are also fears that Iran will harass shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which is critical to the world's oil supply.

The global benchmark for crude oil rose above $70 a barrel on Monday for the first time in over three months, with jitters rising over the escalating military tensions.

One Iranian MP also warned of an attack on the White House while an adviser to Hassan Rouhani posted a list of Trump-owned properties in a hint of a possible reprisal.

A former head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards also threatened on Sunday to turn the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv 'to dust' if the US attacks targets in Iran.

Last night Iranian state TV said the country would no longer respect any of the nuclear limits in the 2015 deal, which Trump abandoned last year but which European powers are desperately trying to preserve.

Under the deal, Tehran had pledged to reduce its nuclear capacities for several years, including by capping its enrichment of uranium at 3.67 percent, far below the more than 90 percent required for a nuclear weapon.

Iran has already overstepped some of the limits since Trump pulled out of the deal last year, which include restrictions on Iran's supply of centrifuges and the level to which uranium can be enriched.

Last night two rockets landed near the US embassy in Baghdad, the second night in a row that the heavily fortified Green Zone was hit and the 14th time over the last two months that US installations have been targeted.

Iranian troops parade behind a smoke screen from buring incense as crowds gather in Tehran today to pay homage to slain military commander Qasem Soleimani

Khamenei stands at the front of mourners in Tehran today as hundreds of thousands of Iranians turned out to pay tribute

Iranians set a US and an Israeli flag on fire during a funeral procession in Tehran today

Huge crowds of mourners in the streets of Tehran today where Iranians wailed over the death of the general who was killed

Iranian revolutionary guards surround the coffins of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and others who died in Friday's drone strike

Mourners line the streets of Tehran during Soleimani's funeral today. Iranian state TV claimed that 'millions' were there

Mourners burn flags of the U.S. and Israel during a funeral ceremony for Iranian general Qassem Soleimani today

Friday's drone attack was ordered by President Donald Trump, who said Soleimani had been planning an 'imminent' attack on Americans in Iraq.

In a series of sabre-rattling tweets, Trump has warned that the US will 'quickly and fully strike back, and perhaps in a disproportionate manner' if Iran aims fire at US targets.

The president said America had lined up attacks on 52 targets 'important to Iran and the Iranian culture', representing the number of Americans held hostage at the US embassy in Tehran after a raid in 1979.

Talking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington last night, Trump stood by his targeting of cultural sites despite claims of potential war crimes.

'They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way,' Trump said.

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, who is running for her party's presidential nomination, said Trump was 'threatening to commit war crimes'.

The president's critics have also accused him of launching the attack on Soleimani to boost his popularity before he faces an impeachment trial in the coming weeks.

In Britain, a spokesman for prime minister Boris Johnson issued a warning over Trump's plans, saying there were international conventions in place to stop the destruction of cultural heritage.

Trump has also warned he will demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iran's neighbour Iraq or impose 'sanctions like they've never seen before' if Baghdad goes through with expelling U.S. troops.

The sanctions would make those on Iran look 'tame', Trump said, adding: 'We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there... we're not leaving unless they pay us back for it.'

Iranians carry the coffin during the funeral ceremony of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Forces, who was killed in a U.S. drone airstrike in Iraq

Mourners gather in Tehran today to pay homage to top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, after he was killed in a US strike in Baghdad ordered by Donald Trump

Iranians burn US and Israeli flags during the funeral ceremony in Tehran today, three days after the military leader's death

Iranian army cadets hold up posters of military commander Qassem Soleimani as they march during his funeral in Tehran

Yesterday the Iraqi parliament backed a recommendation by the prime minister for all foreign troops to be ordered out - a move which Washington fears could allow an ISIS resurgence.

Iraq's rival Shi'ite leaders, including those opposed to Iranian influence, have united since Friday's attack in calling for the expulsion of U.S. troops.

There are around 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, deployed after ISIS seized Mosul in 2014.

Today German foreign minister Heiko Maas said threatening Iraq was 'not very helpful'. Germany has a small contingent of troops there training Iraqi forces.

Monday's procession in Tehran comes after Soleimani's remains were returned to Iran on Sunday.

The Iranian general's body was marched through the streets of Baghdad, before it was flown to the city of Ahvaz in southwest Iran, where around one million mourners gathered to pay their respects.

A video of the journey posted on social media on Sunday five cardboard boxes resting on seats in the cabin of a passenger jet rather than being loaded into the cargo or baggage compartments.

The Revolutionary Guards said the overwhelming number of mourners in Mashhad forced the cancellation of a ceremony that had been planned in Tehran on Sunday night.

Mourners carry mock coffins with images of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Iranian revolutionary guards surround the coffins of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and others who were killed in the US attack

Speaking to the crowds which stretched as far as the eye could see (pictured), Soleimani's daughter Zeinab directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region

Soleimani had long been considered a lethal foe by US lawmakers and presidents, with Trump saying he should have been killed 'many years ago.'

Tensions between Iran and the West had been ratcheting up for months, peaking last summer when a series of Gulf tankers were hit by mysterious explosions which Washington blamed on Iran.

The last straw was an attack by a pro-Iran mob on the US embassy in Baghdad this week, where demonstrators burned the entrance to the compound and besieged diplomats inside.

Tributes have poured in from across the Middle East and beyond for Soleimani, who was seen as the Islamic republic's second most powerful person after the supreme leader.

Iraq's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on Sunday offered his condolences to Khamenei, according to the supreme leader's official website.

'Soleimani's martyrdom caused great sorrow,' said the statement.

'His unique role over the years in fighting with Daesh elements in Iraq, and the great pains he endured in this path is unforgettable,' it said, referring to the Islamic State group.

President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan also paid his respects in a telephone call to Rouhani.

A statement from the Afghan presidential palace said Ghani assured Rouhani that 'Afghan soil will never be used against any other country'.

Iran could fall back on its regional militant allies or proxies to launch a retaliatory attack, such as Iraqi militiamen, Lebanon's Hezbollah or Yemen's Houthi rebels.

The Revolutionary Guard also routinely harasses U.S. Navy vessels in Persian Gulf and surrounding waterways, while Iran has surface-to-sea missile batteries along its coast as well.

Last night the leaders of Britain, France and Germany appealed for a de-escalation.

'We call on all the players involved to show utmost restraint and responsibility,' they said in a joint statement.

Boris Johnson is gathering key ministers for crisis talks today as the Iran standoff threatens to spiral out of control - with threats from Tehran to kill British troops.

The PM is back in Downing Street after his Caribbean break, but finds himself walking a tightrope between Donald Trump and other allies who want to ease tensions.

Following massive funeral marches in Iraq, his body was flown to Ahvaz, Iran. Military personnel carry Soleimani's casket in Iran. A tide of mourners packed the streets of the Iranian city of Ahvaz Sunday to pay respects to the top general

Iranian mourners crowded in to touch the casket and express their grief at the death of the powerful general

The scale of the crowds in Tehran today (pictured) matched those who turned out in 1989 for the funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic

Breaking his silence last night, Mr Johnson said Britain 'will not lament' the death of Qassem Soleimani, saying the genreal had played a role in the deaths of thousands of innocent people and was a 'threat to all our interests'.

But he also appealed to both Trump and Iran for calm, urging both sides to encourage de-escalation, after a senior Iranian commander Iranian issued a chilling warning that British forces could be hit.

Today the PM's spokesman called Iran's move away from the 2015 nuclear deal 'concerning' and cautioned against the destruction of cultural heritage but said countries such as America a right to act in 'self-defence'.

A former US ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria said Iranian general Qassem Soleimani 'deserved' to die - but criticised the decision not to inform Britain about the strike.

Ryan Crocker told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Literally hundreds of coalition soldiers and marines, mostly Americans, were killed by improvised explosive devices that were manufactured in Iran, used by the Iraqi Shia militia trained by Soleimani, in very deliberate targeting.

'Britain too lost a number of soldiers in the same attacks. If anybody out there deserved killing, it was Qassem Soleimani.'

But Mr Crocker said he was 'concerned' about the White House's failure to warn allies of its controversial decision to kill Mr Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad last week.

He said: 'Britain is and has been for a number of years our foremost ally. When we take an action like this it can have great consequences for our allies. We, I think, owe it to them to consult in advance.'
Somalia's al-Shabaab terrorists attack base used by American, Kenyan troops

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 05 January 2020 9:11 AM

Militants of the Somalia-based al-Shabab terrorist group have launched an attack against a military base used by US and Kenyan forces in neighboring Kenya, with conflicting accounts of the aftermath.

In a statement on Sunday, Kenya's army spokesman Colonel Paul Njuguna said an attempt had been made at 5:30 a.m. local time "to breach security at Manda Air Strip," located on Kenya's coast near the border with Somalia.

"The attempted breach was successfully repulsed. Four terrorists' bodies have so far been found. The airstrip is safe. Arising from the unsuccessful breach a fire broke out affecting some of the fuel tanks located at the airstrip," he added.

The US military command for Africa, AFRICOM, confirmed the attack in a statement, saying it is monitoring the situation.

The al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab terror group claimed responsibility in a statement, but said the raid was still ongoing.

It said it had "successfully stormed the heavily fortified military base and have now taken effective control of part of the base."

The Takfiri outfit also said there had been both Kenyan and American casualties.

"Seven aircraft and three military vehicles were destroyed in the attack," said the statement, which included photos of aircraft ablaze and an al-Shabaab militant standing nearby.

In September 2019, the al-Shabaab militants launched two separate attacks on a US military base and a European Union military convoy in Somalia.

In 2011, the terrorist group was pushed out of Somalia's capital city with the help of African Union forces.

However, al-Shabaab still wields power in rural areas across the country, and every now and then launches deadly terrorist attacks against government, military, and civilian targets in the capital, as well as regional towns.

It has fought successive Somali governments as well as neighboring governments in Kenya and Uganda.

Somalia has faced instability and violence since 1991, when the military government was overthrown.

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Since Monday midnight, Russian-led forces have been observing the ceasefire.

Russia's hybrid military forces on January 5 mounted four attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, with one Ukrainian soldier reported as killed in action, while one soldier also killed and another wounded when their car hit a landmine there.

Read alsoJFO HQ reveals enemy death toll in Donbas over 2019

"On January 5, armed formations of the Russian Federation violated the ceasefire four times. As a result of enemy shelling, one member of the Joint Forces was killed," the press center of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) Headquarters said on Facebook in a morning update as of 07:00 Kyiv time on January 6.

Russia-led forces used 82mm mortars, which are banned under the Minsk peace agreements, as well as grenade launchers of various systems, heavy machine guns, and other small arms.

Three of the attacks were reported in the Skhid [East] tactical grouping responsibility zone: near the village of Vodiane (82mm mortars), outside the village of Pavlopil (heavy machine guns), and not far from the village of Hnutove (grenade launchers of various systems and small arms).

Another enemy attack (using a sniper rifle) was recorded in the Pivnich [North] tactical grouping's zone, on defenders of Krymske.

In addition, on January 5, near the village of Khutir Vilny, a GAZ-66 truck of one of the units of the Joint Forces carrying out logistical support measures hit an unknown explosive device (probably a TM-62 anti-tank landmine), resulting in one soldier was killed and another was seriously injured.

Since Monday midnight, the enemy has not opened fire. There have been no Ukrainian army casualties since then.
Las Vegas, Jan 7 : Lenovo has launched its new, thinnest and lightest 'Legion Y740S' Windows 10 gaming laptop with up to eight hours of battery life at the CES 2020 for a price of $1099.

With up to 10th Gen Intel Core i9 processors reaching more than 5GHz, the Legion Y740S has "Q-Control", allowing users to shift gears with a simple press of their Fn+Q keys.

"Jump into Performance Mode for higher frame rates, down-shift into Quiet Mode for better battery life to watch a movie or stay the course in Balance Mode for day-to-day usage," the company said here on Monday.

Available in Iron Grey with metal finish and illuminated Lenovo logo on its cover, the laptop weighs 2kg and offers rear and side ports including Thunderbolt 3 to allow for easier coupling with company's first-ever external eGPU companion accessory: the Lenovo Legion BoostStation.

At the event, the company also unveiled a new Lenovo Legion Y25-25 gaming monitor with a 24.5-inch, Full HD IPS panel display built into the striking near-edgeless chassis at $319.

Crank up refresh rates all the way to 240Hz-more FPS means that more data flows between the GPU and monitor, helping to eliminate tearing in most multiplayer games boosted with AMD Radeon FreeSync technology.

It comes with anti-glare panel and up to 400 nits of brightness.

The company also introduced G32qc 32-inch gaming monitor with near-edgeless bezel QHD (2560 x 1440) screen resolution for clear visuals and superior picture quality at $319.99.

The company also unveiled the latest ThinkBook designed for the next generation workforce.

ThinkBook Plus features an innovative e-Ink cover display that helps users be more productive when multitasking by improving focus, collaboration and creativity.

Featuring a 13.3-inch FHD main display and a 10.8-inch e-ink display on the cover, on which users can create illustrations and diagrams with the integrated Lenovo Precision Pen and receive essential notifications when the lid is closed allowing them to stay focused during meetings.

It features 10th Gen Intel Core processors, Windows 10, standard solid-state storage (SSD) and available Intel Optane memory.

Apart from gaming monitors, Lenovo also introduced its latest gaming mouse and keyboard.

Lenovo Legion M600 Wireless Gaming Mouse features an extra-long battery life7 and energetic 1000Hz polling rate to dramatically lessen latency for lightning-fast reaction times usually reserved for wired gaming mice at $79.

Lenovo Legion K300 RGB Gaming Keyboard comes with clean minimalist design, curved body, and customizable five-zone RGB illumination and lighting effects at $49.
The Australian Navy on Friday began sea evacuations of thousands of people trapped by bushfires which have been burning out of control in the southeast of the country and killed at least 19 people since they started in September.Smoke from the Currowan Fire is pictured from St Georges Basin south of Nowra and looking towards Sussex Inlet and Lake Conjola, Australia. (Image: Reuters)
The Chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria in the Michika Local Government area of Adamawa State, Rev. Lawan Andimi, who was declare...





In a short recorded video Rev. Andimi declared that if its pleased God that he be released, he would be out, but if God decides not to get him out that they should look after his children. pic.twitter.com/idbOlQRWYY CAN CHAIRMAN, ABDUCTED, CRIES OUT FROM BOKO HARAM CAMPIn a short recorded video Rev. Andimi declared that if its pleased God that he be released, he would be out, but if God decides not to get him out that they should look after his children. https://t.co/UHJKJVPVPJ January 5, 2020

In a video clip posted on Twitter by journalist, Ahmad Salkida, on Sunday, Andimi pleaded with the Adamawa State Government and CAN leadership to come to his rescue.The cleric, who spoke in Hausa and English intermittently, urged his family not to be afraid, adding that he would return home safely if it is the will of God.He said, I have never been discouraged because everything is in the hands of God. God who made them to take care of me and leave me alive will touch them So, I am appealing to fellow reverends, particularly my President, Rev. Joel Billy, who is a strong man of love, that he will do his best to speak with our governor and other necessary agents for my release.These people (Boko Haram) have been treating me well. They have been feeding me with what I want to eat and they provided me with a nice place to sleep and everything. They have not done anything wrong to me and I believe that God, who made them to act in such a way, is still alive.By the grace of God, I will be together with my wife, children and colleagues and if the opportunity has not been granted, then maybe it is the will of God. All well wishers and colleagues should be patient. Dont cry, dont worry but thank God for everything.Andimi was on Thursday abducted during the New Year celebration.Meanwhile, the Governor of Adamawa State, Ahmadu Fintiri, who was represented by the Deputy Governor, Crowther Seth, at the inauguration of CAN secretariat in the state, has called for payers for AndimiFintiri said he was aware of and sympathised with CAN over the kidnap of Andimi by Boko Haram terrorists.He said, As we inaugurate this gigantic edifice, the government is aware of the kidnap of one you whos the Chairman of CAN, Michika Local Government Area chapter. We are saddened by this development and want to urge prayers for his release. We know that theres nothing God cannot do.
Fresh cherries take express ship to Shanghai

By:Wu Qiong | From:english.eastday.com | 2020-01-06 16:20

Nicknamed the Cherry Express, a ship sailing from Chiles Port of Manzanillo to Shanghais Yangshan Port arrived on Tuesday December 31.

Containing 7,700 tons of J-Grade Chilean cherries in 378 containers, the ship arrived at 3:30pm.

China has become the largest market for Chilean cherries. In 2018, 92.3% of Chilean cherries were exported to Asia, of which 95% entered the Chinese market. In 2019, the imports of the fruit in China rose by around 30%, especially due to the sales agreements inked at the International Fruit Conference (in August 2019) and the second CIIE (China International Import Expo) in November 2019.

Driven by the huge market demand, a direct sea transportation of Chilean cherries was launched, shortening the time from Chile to China by 8-13 days.

After a round of spot checks and inspections, the J-Grade cherries were released as soon as possible by customs on January 1, 2020.

The container carrier was operated by China COSCO Shipping, a Chinesestate-ownedshippingand logistics services suppliercompany. It will deliver nearly 20,000 tons of Chilean cherries to China in three shipping shifts. Before the containers could be opened, they had to transfer in Hong Kong and then be transported to Shanghai by taking to the road or river. Now, the cherries can be shipped to Shanghai in just 23 days.

The Yangshan Port is one of the citys most important import ports for fresh fruit. Taking advantage of the Lin-gang New Area of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, the Yangshan Port has expedited customs clearance to ensure the freshness of fruits and reduce enterprises time and logistics costs. The authorities have contacted the shipper and liner in advance, to provide a one-stop inspection and management service for the imported Chilean cherries.
Godrej Consumer Products rose 1.21% to Rs 696 after reporting business update for Q3 December 2019.

Godrej Consumer Products announced on Monday that in Q3 December 2019, it witnessed relatively mixed demand across some of its geographies of operations.

In India, demand continued to be challenging, impacted by a general consumption slowdown. Despite weak demand conditions, the company continued marginally higher than mid single digit volume growth trend during the quarter. The uplift in volume growth was led by gradual recovery in household insecticides, new product launches, effective marketing campaigns and tactical consumer offers.

The sales value growth also mirrored the trend of past few quarter's sales value growth. The company assured a gradual improvement in consumer demand in the quarters ahead driven by good monsoon and government stimuli, the company said in a statement.

In Indonesia, the company recorded close to high single digit constant currency sales growths, amidst an improving demand environment in home and personal care space. The growths are driven by new product launches and gradual expansion of general trade distribution.

In GAUM (Godrej Africa, USA, Middle East), the company saw a good recovery with higher than mid single digit constant currency sales growth, thus reversing the trend of the past few quarters. The performance was driven by improved efficiency in South Africa and Rest of Africa & Middle East cluster.

Within the "others" geographies, the performance in Latin America is expected to be strong in constant currency terms. However, in rupee terms due to currency depreciation in Argentina, the firm expects the performance to be muted. Performance in SAARC countries was robust, it added.

The stock trades above its 20 days simple moving average, but below its 50 days moving average placed at 681.85 and 703.51 respectively. These levels will act as crucial support and resistance levels in near term.

Godrej Consumer Products is engaged in the manufacture of personal and household care products. The firm's geographic segments include India as well as overseas. It offers hair care products.

On consolidated basis, company's net profit fell 28.36% to Rs 413.88 crore on 1.32% decline in net sales to Rs 2,608.15 crore in Q2 September 2019 over Q2 September 2018. The company posted a one-time gain of Rs 259.72 crore in the second quarter last financial year due to the divestment of its UK business during the period. Excluding exceptional and one-off items, net profit grew 11% year-on-year to Rs 384 crore in Q2 September 2019.

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Ross Perot spent December 1969 collecting postcards. As the 1960s came to a close, Americans, whatever their political orientation, were weary  riots in the cities, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and RFK, seismic changes in the culture and 47,752 and counting Americans dead in Vietnam. Ross Perots politics were conservative, and he had observed with growing distaste the antics of the Vietnam War protest movement, which had grown militant in 1969. It represented everything that Perot thought was wrong with young Americans: a lack of patriotism; a disdain for free enterprise; sloppy appearance; and a lack of discipline. To counter a massive antiwar march on Washington in November, Perot paid for the printing and distribution of 25 million postcards in support of President Nixon, reading Mr. President, you have my support in your efforts to bring about a just and lasting peace, to be mailed back to the organization Perot formed for the purpose of receiving them, United We Stand. While Perots postcard drive garnered a bit of national press, it hadnt made the media splash Perot had hoped for. Nothing if not persistent, Perot soon cooked up another venture.

To the extent Americans had heard of Ross Perot at the time, it was likely because of the blockbuster IPO of his computer company, Electronic Data Systems Corp., in September 1968. Offered at $16.50 per share, it was soon trading at ten times that price and Ross Perot became the worlds first tech billionaire. Perot was born and raised in east Texas and after graduating from Annapolis in 1953 and serving his four years of active duty in the Navy, took a job at I.B.M. in Dallas selling computer systems. He was the greatest salesman in I.B.M.s storied history. He sold so many computers that he repeatedly refused promotions, as taking a salaried executive position would have dramatically reduced his salary. He was selling so many computers that I.B.M. had to take drastic action to reign in his compensation, cutting his commission rate by 80% and assigning him a reverse quota  an annual sales above which he would receive no commission. In 1962, Perot achieved this reverse quota, on January 19.

Story continues

Disgusted with I.B.M., he quit a few weeks later and formed Electronic Data Systems with $1,000 of capital. In 1965, after the Medicare legislation was passed, Electronic Data Systems won the contract from Texas Blue Shield to automate the payments processing for the program. Soon, Electronic Data Systems had similar contracts in ten other states. By 1968, New York investment bankers were beating a path to Perots door begging to take him public. Perot, the homespun Eagle Scout suspicious of everything Eastern, particularly Wall Street, turned them away, all but one. For reasons no one can quite explain, Ross Perot took a strong liking to a tall, tough-talking young Italian American banker, Frank Langone, from the second-tier investment bank R.W. Pressprich and Company. R.W. Pressprich would take Electronic Data Systems public, and Frank Langone would become a legend on Wall Street and a billionaire himself, founding successful companies like Home Depot and becoming a governor of the New York Stock Exchange.

On December 15, 1969, Ross Perot called a press conference to announce that United We Stand would charter a plane to take humanitarian supplies and Christmas presents to American prisoners of war held in North Vietnam. He told the press he had sent a telegram to Pham Van Dong, the Premier of North Vietnam, asking for permission to land in Hanoi, but had not yet been given a response. In any event, Perot said, the plane would depart Los Angeles International Airport the following week. Perot also announced that United We Stand would be sponsoring trips by the wives and children of American prisoners of war to go to the Paris peace talks and lobby North Vietnamese officials for their release. On December 19, Perot summoned the press again. United We Stand would now be sending 150 wives and children to Paris and two planeloads of supplies and Christmas presents to Hanoi. He conceded he had not heard from the North Vietnam government as whether hed be allowed to land the planes he had chartered for the trip.

The following day, Hanoi responded. North Vietnam promised that the American prisoners would receive all gifts sent via existing protocols  the postal route through Moscow  but under no circumstances would Perots planes be given clearance to land in Hanoi. Undeterred, Perot told the press the planes would be taking off for Bangkok the next day. We have sent a return cable to the North Vietnamese explaining that the purpose of our trip is to improve the relationship between the people of the United States and the people of North Vietnam, he told the New York Times. Allowing private American citizens to bring Christmas directly to these men would be a major step toward improving relationships between our people. We are still confident that once the North Vietnamese fully understand the purpose of our mission and the desirable effect it will have between the people of both countries they will allow us to enter.

On December 21, Perot left Love Field in Dallas aboard the first of the two chartered jets, which he christened the Peace on Earth, en route first to Los Angeles to load the supplies and then on to Bangkok. The second plane, which Perot named the Goodwill Toward Men, would leave the following day. On December 24, Perot and a contingent of Red Cross volunteers and reporters aboard the Peace on Earth landed in Bangkok, Thailand with 75 tons of Christmas gifts, food and medical supplies. He met with North Vietnamese officials to convince them of the merit of his mission. The North Vietnamese, however, hadnt budged. On Christmas day, 150 family members of American POWs landed in Paris seeking to meet with the North Vietnamese delegation at the Paris peace talks in order to obtain the release of their loved ones. The North Vietnamese refused to meet with them. After only six hours on the ground in Paris, they boarded the plane and returned to New York. Perot spent Christmas in Laos. The following day, he met with North Vietnamese diplomats there, but with the same result. That afternoon, he announced he was abandoning the mission to North Vietnam, but would seek to have the supplies delivered on his behalf by the Soviet Union. On December 27, back in Bangkok, Perot held another press conference, this time announcing that the Peace on Earth would be flying to Moscow to deliver the aid packages. Perot had hoped to fly from Bangkok to Rome and an audience with Pope Paul VI  hoping to enlist the Vaticans blessing for his mission  before flying to Moscow, but the western route was denied him when Burma and India, at the request of the Soviets, refused to allow Perot to fly across their airspace. So on December 28, Perot flew east, over the arctic circle, for a 12-hour layover in Anchorage, Alaska, before resuming the easterly journey to Copenhagen, Denmark. Two days later, on New Years Eve, Ross Perot, still in Copenhagen, announced that the Soviets had formally denied his visa application and that he and his planes would be returning home.

Perot spent $1.5 million on the aborted mission, a financial debacle. But he had captured the heart of a weary America. His supersonic patriotic quest to aid the POWs became daily front page news in papers around the country during the 1969 holiday season, including the New York Times which covered his every stop and every pronouncement. Perot represented an American ideal seemingly lost that winter: the rugged individualist, the Texas cowboy leading the cavalry to fix the mess the Best and the Brightest in Washington made of that decade. Unfortunately, Hanoi and Moscow had other plans.
PASADENA, Calif., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. ("Alexandria" or the "Company") (NYSE: ARE) announced today that it is commencing an underwritten public offering of 6,000,000 shares of common stock, subject to market conditions, in connection with the forward sale agreements described below. The Company expects to grant the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 900,000 additional shares.

Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, BofA Securities, Citigroup and J.P. Morgan are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering.

The Company expects to enter into forward sale agreements with Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Bank of America, N.A., Citibank, N.A., and JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., London Branch (the "forward purchasers") with respect to 6,000,000 shares of its common stock (and expects to enter into forward sale agreements with respect to an aggregate of 6,900,000 shares if the underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares in full). In connection with the forward sale agreements, the forward purchasers or their affiliates are expected to borrow and sell to the underwriters an aggregate of 6,000,000 shares of the common stock that will be delivered in this offering (or an aggregate of 6,900,000 shares if the underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares in full). Subject to its right to elect cash or net share settlement, which right is subject to certain conditions, the Company intends to deliver, upon physical settlement of such forward sale agreements on one or more dates specified by the Company occurring no later than April 6, 2021, an aggregate of 6,000,000 shares of its common stock (or an aggregate of 6,900,000 shares if the underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares in full) to the forward purchasers in exchange for cash proceeds per share equal to the applicable forward sale price, which will be the public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions, and will be subject to certain adjustments as provided in the forward sale agreements.

The Company will not initially receive any proceeds from the sale of shares of its common stock by the forward purchasers or their affiliates in the offering. The Company expects to use the net proceeds, if any, it receives upon the future settlement of the forward sale agreements to fund pending and recently completed acquisitions, and the construction of highly-leased development projects, with any remaining proceeds to be used for general working capital and other corporate purposes, which may include the reduction of the outstanding indebtedness under the Company's commercial paper program, if any, and the outstanding balance on the Company's unsecured senior line of credit, if any. Selling common stock through the forward sale agreements enables the Company to set the price of such shares upon the pricing of the offering (subject to certain adjustments) while delaying the issuance of such shares and the receipt of the net proceeds by the Company until the expected funding is required.

The offering is being made pursuant to an effective registration statement on Form S-3 that was previously filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any of the Company's securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state.

Copies of the prospectus supplement relating to this offering, when available, may be obtained by contacting: Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Attn: Prospectus Department, at 200 West Street, New York, NY 10282, telephone: 866-471-2526, or email: [email protected]; BofA Securities, NC1-004-03-43, Attn: Prospectus Department, at 200 North College Street, 3rd floor, Charlotte, NC 28255-0001, or email: [email protected]; Citigroup, Attn: Broadridge Financial Solutions, at 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, or telephone: 800-831-9146; or J.P. Morgan, Attn: Broadridge Financial Solutions, at 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, or telephone: 1-866-803-9204.

Alexandria, an S&P 500 urban office real estate investment trust, is the first and longest-tenured owner, operator and developer uniquely focused on collaborative life science, technology and agtech campuses in AAA innovation cluster locations. Founded in 1994, Alexandria pioneered this niche and has since established a significant market presence in key locations, including Greater Boston, San Francisco, New York City, San Diego, Seattle, Maryland and Research Triangle.

This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding the Company's offering of common stock (including an option to purchase additional shares of common stock) and its intended use of the proceeds. These forward-looking statements are based on the Company's present intent, beliefs or expectations, but forward-looking statements are not guaranteed to occur and may not occur. Actual results may differ materially from those contained in or implied by the Company's forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of factors, including, without limitation, the risks and uncertainties detailed in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company assumes no obligation to update this information. For more discussion relating to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in the Company's forward-looking statements, and risks and uncertainties to the Company's business in general, please refer to the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequently filed quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.

CONTACT: Sara Kabakoff, AVP  Corporate Communications, (626) 788-5578, [email protected]

SOURCE Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.are.com


Music really is a universal language, according to a new study of how people in the U.S. and China respond to different genres of sounds.

The "Star-Spangled Banner" stirs pride. Ed Sheeran's "The Shape of You" sparks joy. And "ooh la la!" best sums up the seductive power of George Michael's "Careless Whispers."

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have surveyed more than 2,500 people in the United States and China about their emotional responses to these and thousands of other songs from genres including rock, folk, jazz, classical, marching band, experimental and heavy metal.

The upshot? The subjective experience of music across cultures can be mapped within at least 13 overarching feelings: Amusement, joy, eroticism, beauty, relaxation, sadness, dreaminess, triumph, anxiety, scariness, annoyance, defiance, and feeling pumped up.

"Imagine organizing a massively eclectic music library by emotion and capturing the combination of feelings associated with each track. That's essentially what our study has done," said study lead author Alan Cowen, a UC Berkeley doctoral student in neuroscience.

The findings are set to appear this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We have rigorously documented the largest array of emotions that are universally felt through the language of music," said study senior author Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology.

Cowen translated the data into an interactive audio map, where visitors can move their cursors to listen to any of thousands of music snippets to find out, among other things, if their emotional reactions match how people from different cultures respond to the music.

Potential applications for these research findings range from informing psychological and psychiatric therapies designed to evoke certain feelings to helping music streaming services like Spotify adjust their algorithms to satisfy their customers' audio cravings or set the mood.

While both U.S. and Chinese study participants identified similar emotions -- such as feeling fear hearing the "Jaws" movie score -- they differed on whether those emotions made them feel good or bad.

"People from different cultures can agree that a song is angry, but can differ on whether that feeling is positive or negative," said Cowen, noting that positive and negative values, known in psychology parlance as "valence," are more culture-specific.

Furthermore, across cultures, study participants mostly agreed on general emotional characterizations of musical sounds, such as angry, joyful and annoying. But their opinions varied on the level of "arousal," which refers in the study to the degree of calmness or stimulation evoked by a piece of music.

For the study, more than 2,500 people in the United States and China were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk's crowdsourcing platform.

First, volunteers scanned thousands of videos on YouTube for music evoking a variety of emotions. From those, the researchers built a collection of audio clips to use in their experiments.

Next, nearly 2,000 study participants in the United States and China each rated some 40 music samples based on 28 different categories of emotion, as well as on a scale of positivity and negativity, and for levels of arousal.

Using statistical analyses, the researchers arrived at 13 overall categories of experience that were preserved across cultures and found to correspond to specific feelings, such as being "depressing" or "dreamy."

To ensure the accuracy of these findings in a second experiment, nearly 1,000 people from the United States and China rated over 300 additional Western and traditional Chinese music samples that were specifically intended to evoke variations in valence and arousal. Their responses validated the 13 categories.

Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" made people feel energized. The Clash's "Rock the Casbah" pumped them up. Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" evoked sensuality and Israel Kamakawiwo?ole's "Somewhere over the Rainbow" elicited joy.

Meanwhile, heavy metal was widely viewed as defiant and, just as its composer intended, the shower scene score from the movie "Psycho" triggered fear.

Researchers acknowledge that some of these associations may be based on the context in which the study participants had previously heard a certain piece of music, such as in a movie or YouTube video. But this is less likely the case with traditional Chinese music, with which the findings were validated.

Cowen and Keltner previously conducted a study in which they identified 27 emotions in response to evocative YouTube video clips. For Cowen, who comes from a family of musicians, studying the emotional effects of music seemed like the next logical step.

"Music is a universal language, but we don't always pay enough attention to what it's saying and how it's being understood," Cowen said. "We wanted to take an important first step toward solving the mystery of how music can evoke so many nuanced emotions."

###

Co-authors of the study are Xia Fang at the University of Amsterdam and York University in Toronto, and Disa Sauter at the University of Amsterdam.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Donald Trump insists that Iranian cultural sites are fair game for the U.S. military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so could constitute a war crime under international law. He also warned Iraq that he would levy punishing sanctions if it expelled American troops in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed a top Iranian official.

But Congress is pushing back, in what's expected to be a pivotal week as lawmakers return from a holiday recess. On Monday, two top Senate Democrats called on Trump to immediately declassify the administrations reasoning for the strike on the Iranian official, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, saying there is no legitimate justification for keeping the information from the public.

And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said late Sunday the House would introduce and vote this week on a war powers resolution to limit the presidents military actions regarding Iran. In a letter to House Democrats, Pelosi called the airstrike provocative and disproportionate and said it had endangered our servicemembers, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran. A similar resolution was introduced in the Senate.

Congress, which has the sole power to declare war, has complained that Trump did not provide advance notice of his decision to strike in Iraq. Trump did meet the 48-hour deadline required by the War Powers Act to notify Congress after the deadly drone strike, though the document was classified and no public version was released.

The administration is expected to brief lawmakers on its actions this week.

In their letter to Trump, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and the Senate Foreign Relation Committees Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey said the White Houses classified notification sent to Congress late Saturday under the War Powers Act was insufficient and inappropriate.

It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner, they wrote. An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society. They asked that the notification be declassified in full.

Pelosi said the notification raises more questions than it answers. This document prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner and justification of the Administrations decision to engage in hostilities against Iran.

Iran has vowed to retaliate for Trumps targeted killing of Soleimani, the head of Irans elite Quds force. It has sparked outrage in the Middle East, including in Iraq, where more than 5,000 American troops are still on the ground 17 years after the U.S. invasion. Iraqs parliament voted Sunday in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for the expulsion of the American forces.

Trump first raised the prospect of targeting Iranian cultural sites Saturday in a tweet. Speaking with reporters Sunday as he flew back to Washington from his holiday in Florida, he refused to back down, despite international prohibitions.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, Trump said.

On Iraq, Trump said the U.S. wouldnt leave Iraq without being paid for its military investments there over the years  then said if the troops do have to withdraw, he would hit Baghdad with economic penalties.

We will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, he said. If theres any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.

He added: Were not leaving until they pay us back for it.

The administration has scrambled to contend with the backlash to the killing of Soleimani, which marked a stark escalation in tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. military may well strike more Iranian leaders if the Islamic Republic retaliates. He tip-toed around questions about Trumps threat to attack Iranian cultural sites, a military action that likely would be illegal under the laws of armed conflict and the U.N. charter.

Pompeo defended the targeted killing of Soleimani, saying the administration would have been culpably negligent in its duty to protect the United States if it had not killed him.

He did not provide evidence for his previous claims that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on Americans. Instead of arguing that an attack had been imminent, Pompeo said it was inevitable.

Trumps threat to attack cultural sites, rattled some administration officials. One U.S. national security official said the president had caught many in the administration off guard and prompted internal calls for others in the government to clarify the matter. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly to the issue, said clarification was necessary to affirm that the U.S. military would not intentionally commit war crimes.

Oona Hathaway, an international law professor at Yale and a former national security law official in the Defense Department's legal office, said Trumps threat amounted to a pretty clear promise of commission of a war crime.

The presidents threats to Iran did little to quell Tehrans furor over the death of Soleimani. Iranian state television reported that the country would no longer abide by any limits of the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with the United States and other world powers. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018 and stepped up economic sanctions on Tehran, actions that accelerated a cycle of hostilities leading to the last weeks killing.

Schumer said he worried that the actions the president took will get us into what he calls another endless war in the Middle East. He promised we wouldn't have that.

Schumer said Trump lacks the authority to engage militarily with Iran and Congress needs a new war powers resolution to be a check on this president. To which Pompeo said: We have all the authority we need to do what weve done to date.

Trump made clear Sunday that he saw little reason to give Congress advanced warning if he orders the military to carry out further actions against Iran.

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner," he wrote on Twitter. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!

In response, the House Foreign Affairs Committee tweeted: This Media Post will serve as a reminder that war powers reside in the Congress under the United States Constitution. And that you should read the War Powers Act. And that youre not a dictator.

Some Democrats running to challenge Trump in November questioned whether he had a long-term plan for the Mideast.

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Trump was ill-prepared for the repercussions of the strike on Soleimani and had alienated allies by not alerting them of the plans. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said, When youre dealing with the Middle East, you need to think about the next and the next and the next move. This is not checkers.
The 23-page booklet in English, Hindi and Bengali, published as part of BJP's statewide campaign in favour of the amended Citizenship law

Kolkata: Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP top brass categorically saying that nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC) has not been discussed by the Centre, the West Bengal BJP in its booklet claimed that after implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the register of citizens will be in the pipeline.

The 23-page booklet in English, Hindi and Bengali, published as part of BJP's statewide campaign in favour of the amended Citizenship law, states that the Centre is intending to implement the NRC across the country.

The CAA has been simplified in a question and answer format to allay people's fears on the law, party sources said. A question in the booklet read, "Will there be NRC after this? How much is it needed? And if there is NRC, will Hindus have to go to detention centres like in Assam?"

The answer to the question said, "Yes, there will be NRC after this. At least, that is the intention of the central government." The booklet claimed Hindus have been sent to detention centres not due to NRC but because of Foreigners Act.

"The NRC is Assam took place as per orders of the Supreme court and the Foreigners Act was passed by the Congress government. The BJP government in Assam did not bring the NRC. Rather, it has decided to move court against the NRC," the booklet said.

It said the Hindus lodged in detention centres in Assam would be released after the CAA is implemented. "It is heard that there are around two crore infiltrators in Assam and West Bengal. It is needed to enlist these infiltrators as D-voters. This only speaks volumes about the problem of infiltration in the country. That is why countrywide NRC is needed," the booklet said.

Reacting to BJP's claims on NRC in the booklet, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) leadership said, "truth has come out". "The cat is now out of the bag. The truth of BJP has come out. We have been saying that the Prime Minister and the Union ministers have been trying to confuse the people by making contradictory statements on NRC. The people of this state and the country will give

them a befitting reply," TMC secretary-general Partha Chatterjee said.
Shaman Durek said he was 'so incredibly sad' for their three children's loss

Ari Behn, 47, who divorced from Martha in 2017, was father to her three children

Princess Martha Louise's bisexual shaman boyfriend has said he feels 'so incredibly sad' for the royal's children in his first comments on Ari Behn's Christmas Day suicide.

Durek Verrett, 44, from LA, shared a touching post on Instagram last night about Ari, who was married to Princess Martha for 15 years and shared three daughters together, Maud Angelica, 16, Leah Isadora, 14, and Emma Tallulah, 10.

Alongside an image of a floating lotus flower, he posted: 'Out of deep respect for Martha and Ari's children, I will not comment on the passing of their father, not now nor later, other than to say I am so incredibly sad for their loss.'

Durek's tribute after he was criticised for 'flirting' with a Women's Sportswear model and praising her body on Instagram a day after Ari killed himself.

Princess Martha Louise's bisexual shaman boyfriend Durek Verrett, 44, shared an Instagram post saying he felt 'so incredibly sad' for Martha and Ari's children in his first comments since Ari's death

Princess Martha announced her relationship with shaman Durek in May, but an Instagram post suggests they may have been seeing each other from at least February this year.

He has been silent since Ari's death on Christmas Day, although he was criticised for 'flirting' with a model on Instagram a day after it was announced.

Self-proclaimed shaman Durek told the woman 'miss you love you dear friend' in a now deleted comment on a photo of her wearing a small bikini at five-star Intercontinental Hotel in Phu Quoc, Vietnam.

His now removed words provoked outrage online, with Instagram users telling him to focus on his girlfriend's three children and supporting them instead of spending his time scrolling Instagram.

Shaman Durek, who is believed to have been dating Princess Martha for almost a year, shared the message on Instagram almost two weeks after her ex-husband's death

Princess Martha's boyfriend suggested he felt 'so incredibly sad' for Martha and Ari's children Maud Angelica, 16, Leah Isadora, 14, and Emma Tallulah, 10, (pictured at Ari's funeral on Friday)

Durek's latest comment comes a day after Princess Martha Louise made her own tribute to her ex-husband online.

On Saturday, she shared a beaming photograph of Ari on Instagram alongside a heartbreaking tribute to her former husband.

Sharing a post with her 150,000 Instagram followers, Martha wrote: 'We are so infinitely sad and sorry for the loss of just you, because you were the girls warm, funny, wise and good dad that they so dearly miss.'

'We miss the funny comments, your fine viewpoints, the poetic tone, the overflowing compliments, the great love you had for them.'

Shaman Durek had been criticised publically for commenting on this Women's sportswear model 'miss you love you dear friend' on the above Instagram post the day after Ari's death

She went on: 'Now there is a void where you were, because no one can ever replace you for our beautiful girls.

'And it is so painful to think that you would leave the earth. We are in deep sorrow and pain all together.'

She went on to touch on Ari's battle with his mental health, saying: 'An invisible illness took you more and more, because thats when the mental health fails.

'For a long time, we gradually saw you disappear, but we held on to the belief that this would go well. Your family fought for you. They have been there for you day and night.'

Princess Martha's statement in full Dear Ari, We were supposed to be together at Christmas and celebrating. 'We had all been looking forward to it. And we are so infinitely sad and sorry for the loss of just you, because you were the girls warm, funny, wise and good dad that they so dearly miss.' 'We miss the funny comments, your fine viewpoints, the poetic tone, the overflowing compliments, the great love you had for them.' She went on: 'Today you would have been so proud of them. But now there is a void where you were, because no one can ever replace you for our beautiful girls. 'And it is so painful to think that you would leave the earth. We are in deep sorrow and pain all together.' She went on to touch on Ari's battle with his mental health, saying: 'An invisible illness took you more and more, because thats when the mental health fails. 'For a long time, we gradually saw you disappear, but we held on to the belief that this would go well. Your family fought for you. They have been there for you day and night.' 'You are and will continue to be deeply missed, Ari. And I feel sad that you never really understood how loved you were. 'I hope that we who are left can be good at praising each other and saying the nice words to each other. 'For we have this life to share just how happy we are for each other and what wonderful qualities we see in each other.' She added: 'We keep you in love, Ari, and move on with your words: Every day is a party and you are a piece of jewelry.' Advertisement

She continued: 'I feel sad that you never really understood how loved you were.'

She ended her statement saying: 'We keep you in love, Ari, and move on with your words: Every day is a party and you are a piece of jewelry.'

Former Norwegian royal Ari had battled against alcoholism and spoke last year about feeling 'terrified' with 'devouring anxiety'. He made headlines in 2017 after accusing disgraced actor Kevin Spacey of groping him under a table.

Ari killed himself just a year after admitting he felt like a 'clown' following the divorce from the Norwegian royal.

Princess Martha Louise broke her silence on Ari Behn's Christmas Day suicide on Saturday, sharing a heartbreaking tribute to her ex-husband

Princess Martha said she felt sad that her former husband 'never really understood how loved' he was (pictured together in 2015)

He separated from the fourth in line to the Norwegian throne in 2017, after the pair said they had 'grown apart'.

Members of the Norwegian Royal Family led the mourners who turned out to pay their respects at his funeral on Friday.

Shaman Durek did not appear to be in attendance at the event.

She suggested she and her three children had been left 'in deep pain and sorrow' following Ari's Christmas Day suicide

The Norwegian royal family laid Princess Martha's former husband to rest in an emotional ceremony on Friday

A solemn Princess Martha Louise was joined by Princess Ingrid Alexandra, Queen Crown Princess Mette-Marit and King Harald at the Olso Cathedral.

Ari's eldest daughter Maud Angelica delivered an emotional eulogy to her late father during the course of the service.

Princess Martha Louise, and her daughters Emma Tallulah Behn, Leah Isadora Behn and Maud Angelica Behn then proceeded to place flowers on the casket of the Princess' ex-husband.
The decision by the Egyptian government to move four large pharaonic sculptures from Luxor, in Upper Egypt, to iconic Tahrir Square, in downtown Cairo, has sparked controversy. During a Dec. 26 visit to redevelopment work on Tahrir, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli revealed the government's intention to transfer the huge sphinxes with ram heads from the Karnak Temple complex to stand alongside an obelisk from the time of King Ramses II, which is currently in the nearby Egyptian Museum off Tahrir Square.

A number of archaeologists and social media activists in Egypt and beyond expressed their objection to the move, urging the government to leave the sphinxes in Luxor and to instead install replicas in Cairo. Monica Hanna, head of the Heritage and Archeology Unit at the Arab Academy for Science and Technology in Aswan, circulated a petition to stop the transfer. Addressed to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the petition garnered the signatures of 1,500 professors, archaeologists and well-known personalities, Hanna told Al-Monitor.

The petition lambasted the planned transfer as a violation of international norms regulating the preservation of monuments and historical buildings, citing Article 7 of the Venice Charter (1964), a set of international guidelines for the conservation and restoration of historic structures. The charter is non-binding but served as the basis for the UNESCO World Heritage Convention (1972), to which Egypt is a signatory. The article states that the moving of a monument or its parts cannot be allowed with the exception of efforts to safeguard it.

Hanna stands among those who believe it would be better to make copies of the rams for Tahrir Square rather than jeopardizing the original statues by moving them and also by exposing them to Cairo's air pollution, which can be particularly damaging to the statues' sandstone. The parliamentarian Haitham el-Hariri sent a memorandum to the speaker asserting that moving the statues violates international law and calling for the production of replicas.

International criticism challenging the planned transfer was swift. Shaikha Mai bint Mohammed Al Khalifa, chair of the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities and president of UNESCO's Arab Center for World Heritage, sent an official message to the Ministry of Antiquities on Jan. 2.

Any amendment to a site of this importance must be preceded by consulting the UNESCO World Heritage Center, submitting reports that assess the impact on the site itself, and other matters stipulated in the operational guidelines of the World Heritage Convention, she wrote, suggesting that Egyptian and international experts be allowed to study the ramifications of the move.

The Egyptian government has thus far refused to concede an inch, arguing that it is making good use of the nation's heritage by putting the statues on full public view. Mustafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that the sphinxes have been located behind the first edifice of the Karnak Temple complex, away from the tourist circuit known as the Road of Rams linking Luxor and the Karnak temples.

Waziri said the statues will be protected and preserved on Tahrir, with a fence surrounding them.

The redevelopment of Tahrir Square was controversial even before this latest dustup. Lobna Abdel Aziz, a professor of architecture and urban design at Minya University's Faculty of Fine Arts, posted images on Facebook that she identified as designs for the Tahrir Square development project. They show the rams and obelisk positioned at the center of the square.

[The plan] does not take into consideration the historical importance of one of the most renowned squares in Egypt, Abdel Aziz wrote on Facebook, calling Tahrir the icon of the January 25 Revolution. It was on Tahrir Square that Egyptians gathered in mass in 2011 to successfully demand that President Hosni Mubarak step down after 30 years in office.

Abdel Aziz noted that an international competition had been held for redeveloping the square some seven years ago, but that the present government had simply dismissed the project selected. Instead, she charged, it chose to embark on a new path without a clear reason or a clear goal.

In early 2012, the Military Transitional Council that controlled Egypt after the revolution had announced the competition to redesign the square, which had become synonymous with the event. The project submitted by Mohamed Zeinhum, a professor at Helwan University's Faculty of Applied Arts, won. His proposal called for reconstructing the square in the shape of the number 25 and envisaged public spaces for recreation and artistic performances.

Implementation of the project was shelved when the country fell into political turmoil following the election of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi as president. Last August, the government announced that it would start the redevelopment of the square as part of a larger plan to develop historic Cairo.

Ali Abu Dasheesh, an archaeologist with the Zahi Hawass Center of Egyptology at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, said that there is nothing wrong with moving the four statues to Tahrir Square if the government can guarantee their protection.

A fence will surround the obelisk and the four statues, and there will be adequate space around them in order to prevent any human interaction with the antiquities, Abu Dasheesh told Al-Monitor. Also, the Egyptian Museum is located near Tahrir Square, which means that regular restoration will be carried out on the monuments.

Abu Dasheesh believes that Tahrir should not be a site commemorating the January 25 Revolution, as previously planned, because it is a recent event. He prefers instead that the location be dedicated to the history and civilization of Egypt.

Tahrir is the largest square in Cairo. It was restructured in the 19th-century in an attempt by Ismail Pasha to model the Egyptian capital on the design of Paris. To this end, he requested that the square resemble the square around the Arc de Triomphe. The square, or midan in Arabic, was known as Midan Ismailiya until the 1952 revolution that overthrew the monarchy, after which it was renamed Midan Tahrir, or Liberation Square, under President Gamal Abdul Nasser.

It happens in countries around the world that squares host the countrys monuments and famous historical objects, Abu Dasheesh said. That is what will happen with Egypts Tahrir Square as well.
Tehran should avoid "further violence and provocations", NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned Monday, as tensions mount in the Middle East after US forces killed a top Iranian general.

The warning came as the EU called an extraordinary meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels on Friday to discuss the fallout from the killing of Qasem Soleimani, head of Tehran's Middle East operations as commander of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force.

At a hastily-convened emergency session of NATO's ruling council on Monday afternoon, US officials explained the thinking behind the decision to kill Soleimani at Baghdad airport on Friday -- an operation that caught many of Washington's allies by surprise.

Stoltenberg stressed that the drone strike, which killed at least 10 people, was a "US decision" but said the other 28 NATO members had repeated their longstanding concerns about Iran's destabilising activities in the Middle East.

Asked twice whether any member states criticised the US strike, Stoltenberg stressed their unity and their concern about Iran's behaviour.

"We have recently seen an escalation by Iran, including the strike on a Saudi energy facility, and the shoot-down of an American drone," Stoltenberg said.

"At our meeting today, Allies called for restraint and de-escalation. A new conflict would be in no-one's interest, so Iran must refrain from further violence and provocations."



Tehran has vowed to avenge Soleimani, one of Iran's most popular public figures and a key player in its network of alliances and proxy forces around the Middle East, while US President Donald Trump has threatened "major retaliation" if any American targets are hit.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU was talking to all parties to try to defuse tensions, calling for restraint and urging gains made in Iraq since the defeat of the Islamic State group to be preserved.

"After recent developments in Iraq, now it is important to halt the cycle of violence so that one more action does not give rise to the next one, and instead space is again created for diplomacy," von der Leyen said.

Friday's meeting of foreign ministers will also address the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, which curbed its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief but is now teetering on the brink of collapse.

EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell tweeted that the accord, which has been unravelling since US President Donald Trump pulled out in May 2018, was "now more important than ever".

And he criticised Tehran's latest steps away from the accord, after it said it would forego the "limit on the number of centrifuges", casting doubt on an EU push for talks to salvage the deal.

Borrell spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif at the weekend and issued a personal invitation to come to Brussels, but so far Iran has not given a public response.

At Monday's NATO meeting the US "provided the rationale behind the action against General Soleimani", Stoltenberg said but refused to give further details. The situation has also deteriorated in Iraq, where lawmakers have called for the 5,200 US soldiers deployed there to leave.

NATO maintains a 500-strong mission in Iraq, preparing local forces to take on Islamic State group extremists, but its core training activities have now been suspended until the security situation improves, Stoltenberg said.

A NATO diplomat told AFP the alliance would have to "wait and see" how Baghdad responds in the coming days.

"From our point of view the parliament resolution is not binding. We take note of it, but have to wait what the government is going to do," the diplomat said.

"We still think that the presence of international troops in Iraq should be continued in order to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State. But we have to respect what the Iraqi government will eventually decide."



Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement late on Sunday urging Iran to "refrain from further violent action or proliferation" and criticising the "negative role" Tehran played in the Middle East through Soleimani's forces.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Fashion designer Coco Chanel's secret hideaway has finally been sold for an undisclosed price four years after it came onto the market for 3million.

The Rosehall Estate near Lairg, Scotland, was once the secret Highlands bolthole of Chanel, founder of the multi-million pound fashion dynasty, who lived there in the 1920s with her lover Hugh Grosvenor, the second Duke of Westminster.

An undisclosed offer made by a foreign buyer has been accepted, although it is understood the house and 700 acres of grounds will take millions to restore.

The Rosehall Estate in the Scottish Highlands near Lairg was the secret bole hole of Coco Chanel and her lover High Grosvenor

And the ramshackle 12-bedroom mansion will be turned into a luxury hotel to prevent it crumbling away after planning permission for restoration was approved.

Rosehall was one of the most expensive properties in Scotland, when it was marketed back in 2015, but after it failed to sell for two years the asking price was slashed by half a million pounds.

The mansion was originally built in 1873 to replace another house on the same site that was destroyed by fire.

The crumbling mansion is in need of urgent repair and the asking price on the house was slashed by half a million in 2017 from the original price of million

A pink Rosehall cart from the Scottish Estate. The ramshackle 22-room mansion will now be turned into a luxury hotel to prevent it crumbling away after an undisclosed offer was approved by a foreign buyer

French designer Chanel was the duke's lover between 1924 and 1930 and spent several summers at Rosehall, redecorating every room in handsome floral wallpaper inspired by her flat in Paris.

She is also said to have included in her design the use of the first bidet in Scotland, although this is disputed.

Scraps of the French designer's hand-blocked wallpaper can still be seen in the 22 rooms, while Winston Churchill stayed there in 1928 as he recovered from illness.

The wealthy Duke spent his summers at Rosehall with the French designer throughout their affair which lasted from 1923 until 1929. The pair are pictured at the Grand National in March 1925 (left). Peeling floral wallpaper (right) inspired by Chanel's Paris flat seen at the Rosehall Estate

A description of the house on the register's website says: 'Beige was a colour which Chanel frequently used in her interiors, such as her office door at the famous Rue Cambon Chanel showrooms in Paris and the sofa in her apartment on the second floor

Writing to his wife, Clementine, Churchill had much praise for the French fashion designer.

He wrote: 'Coco fishes from morn till night, and in two months has killed 50 salmon.

'She is very agreeable - really a great and strong being fit to rule a man or an Empire.'

A window looking out on the outbuildings on the Rosehall Estate (left). Foliage (right) covers the exterior of The Rosehall Estate which had planning permission approved for it to be converted into a luxury hotel

A pathway leading up to the 22-room ramshackle mansion. Coco Chanel frequented the house during her affair with the duke between 1924 and 1930

Coco Chanel (left) at Rosehall Estate in the 1920s. Chanel was said to have disapproved of its interior design, replacing it with her own furnishings. A light switch (right) covered in cobwebs and rust at The Rosehall Estate

The house was due to become a hotel in 2014 but previous negotiations fell through.

It has been uninhabited since 1967 and is on Scotland's register of high risk properties, with extensive dry rot.

Pictures show peeling wallpaper, crumbling ceilings, rusted metal and its generally dilapidated state.

The original property was built for Richard Dunning, 2nd Lord Ashburton (1782-1823), after he bought the estate in 1806, but the house burnt down in May 1817.

It was replaced with the current house and likely incorporated some fabric from the former, such as the West wing with its barrel-vaulted ceiling.

The French designer's hand-blocked wallpaper can still be seen in the 22 rooms (left). The floral wallpaper inspired by Chanel's Parisian flat is seen peeling away (right)

It was acquired by Hugh Grosvenor, one of the world's richest men, in the 1920s and although he only owned it a short time, Chanel was said to have disapproved of its interior design, replacing it with her own furnishings.

It is the only known house in Scotland with an interior by Chanel and its survival has been hailed as 'remarkable' by experts from the Buildings At Risk register.

A description of the house on the register's website says: 'Beige was a colour which Chanel frequently used in her interiors, such as her office door at the famous Rue Cambon Chanel showrooms in Paris and the sofa in her apartment on the second floor.

Built in the 1820, the property's most exuberant period was over 100 years later in the 1920s when it was bought by Hugh 'Bendor' Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster

The regal stately home offers panoramic views over the surrounding countryside near Lairg in Sutherland, Scotland

'Local knowledge had suggested that the house contained the first bidet in Scotland, installed as part of Chanel's scheme, however this seems unlikely as bidet's were being manufactured in Scotland from the early 1900s.

'This particular model appears to feature in Shank's 1912 catalogue, albeit produced for the French market.'

Author Caroline Young, who wrote Living With Coco Chanel, about the properties linked to the designer, said it was 'fantastic' that Rosehall had found a buyer.

She visited the house recently and was amazed by what she saw, including the famous bidet still in situ, crumbling wooden shutters and four poster beds piled up against interior walls.

She said: 'The home offers a fascinating insight into Coco Chanel's time in Scotland in the 1920s, and despite its disintegrating state, touches of Chanel's taste in interior design can still be seen.

'She enjoyed the remoteness and the quiet beauty of the place, and with the influence of the Duke's tweed jackets, Scottish textiles would heavily influence her collections from then on.

'Rosehall has been on the market for a while, and it seemed a shame that all this history and heritage could be lost. I think it could make a wonderful boutique hotel, and I hope that it will be sympathetically renovated to preserve Chanel's legacy.'
Harvey Weinstein has been indicted on new sex crime charges in Los Angeles, just as his trial on separate rape and sexual assault charges in New York was poised to get underway, prosecutors announced Monday.

The Hollywood mogul has been charged with raping one woman and sexually assaulting another in separate incidents over a two-day period in 2013, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a news release.

"We believe the evidence will show that the defendant used his power and influence to gain access to his victims and then commit violent crimes against them," Lacey said in a statement. "I want to commend the victims who have come forward and bravely recounted what happened to them. It is my hope that all victims of sexual violence find strength and healing as they move forward."

Weinstein allegedly raped a woman in a hotel room on Feb. 18, 2013, after he pushed his way inside her room, prosecutors said. The next night, he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel suite.

Weinstein faces up to 28 years in state prison if he is convicted of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery by restraint. His arraignment has not yet been scheduled and prosecutors will recommend $5 million bail.

The news came the same day that Weinstein and several of the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct converged Monday at the New York City courthouse where a judge and his lawyers handled the final preparations for his high-stakes trial on charges of rape and assault.

Speaking at the New York courthouse Monday prior to the announcement, Weinstein's attorneys suggested they knew charges might be coming. They asked the judge for potential jurors to be sequestered partly because of the possibility that charges could be brought elsewhere against Weinstein while the trial was ongoing. The denied that request.

"There is a potential L.A. situation going on," his lawyer, Donna Rotunno, told reporters after the hearing.

"We don't know what is going to happen. We're hoping not," added another of his lawyers, Damon Cheronis. "We have no control over what happens in Los Angeles or anywhere else."

Earlier Monday, Weinstein, 67, entered the courthouse in New York leaning on a walker following a recent back surgery. When asked outside the courtroom how his back felt, Weinstein responded with a thin smile and a so-so gesture with his hand.

"Not so good," he said. "Better."

In a brief hearing, the judge declined to gag Weinstein's attorneys from speaking to the media  in addition to denying the motion to sequester jurors. The judge also turned down a defense request to call as a witness a police detective who had been accused of mishandling part of the case.

Across the street, actresses and other women who say they were sexually harassed or assaulted by Weinstein dismissed him as a villain undeserving of anyone's pity.

"He looked cowardly. He wouldn't look at us. He wouldn't make eye contact," said Sarah Ann Masse, a performer and writer who said Weinstein once sexually harassed her in his underwear during a job interview. "This trial is a cultural reckoning regardless of its legal outcome," she said.

Jury selection in the trial will start Tuesday, more than two years since the allegations first came to widespread public attention and catalyzed the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein faces allegations that he raped one woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and performed a forcible sex act on a woman, Mimi Haleyi, who had come to him seeking film work in 2006.

He has pleaded not guilty and says any sexual activity was consensual. If he's convicted of the most serious charges against him, two counts of predatory sexual assault, Weinstein faces a mandatory life sentence.

For that to happen, prosecutors must demonstrate Weinstein had a habit of violating women, beyond the two directly involved in the encounters in which he's charged. To that end, they plan to call actress Annabella Sciorra, who says Weinstein forced himself inside her Manhattan apartment in 1993 or 1994 and raped her after she starred in a film for his movie studio.

They also wanted jurors to hear from a few of the more than 75 women who have come forward publicly to accuse Weinstein of sexual misconduct ranging from harassment to assault. The first allegations were brought to light by The New York Times and The New Yorker in October 2017.

Speaking outside the courthouse as proceedings began, a group of Weinstein's accusers spoke with reporters, including Masse, the actresses Rosanna Arquette, Dominique Huett and Rose McGowan, model Paula Williams, Louise Godbold and the actress and journalist Lauren Sivan.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio  A man found dead near RTA rapid tracks died from a gunshot wound to the chest, according to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner.

The medical examiner on Friday ruled Christopher Dardens death a homicide. No arrests have been made in the case.

Darden was found dead about 6 p.m. Dec. 1 on RTA rapid tracks near the West 65th-Lorain station, according to police. A rapid operator spotted the body and notified RTA police, who called Cleveland police to the scene.

Cleveland police officers noted in police reports that it appeared the body had been there for a while.

The officers noted the body showed no obvious signs of trauma and turned the case over to the medical examiner.

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The Generation Z, millennials and the social media generation, however, received high praise from the Prime Minister.

In the backdrop of youth-led agitations against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) in universities all over the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the latest edition of his Mann Ki Baat (yes, it was the very last one in 2019), averred that the Indian young person possessed an innate dislike for anarchy. He held out high hopes for them in terms of their contributions to nation-building, and rightly, given the size of their demographic, their talent and expertise sets, all of which he openly acknowledged.

It is true that Indias youth has the potential of playing an important role in nation-building, but one must not forget that they also suffer the lack of decent educational opportunities and unemployment, and they additionally bear the burden of various anxieties. Their massive participation in recent protests, be they on the issue of increased fees and arbitrary changes to university and hostel rules or the CAA, are a sign of these multiple, deep-seated systemic malaises. Treating them as a mere law and order issue and their participants as minds misled by the Opposition would, therefore, be misguided.

The Generation Z, millennials and the social media generation, however, received high praise from the Prime Minister. All of us experience that this generation is extremely talented. It thrives on dreams to do something new, something different. It has its own set of opinions. And the best part is, especially in the case of India, they appreciate the system, they prefer to follow the system. And in the event of system not responding properly, they get restless and even courageously question the system itself, he said, adding that he himself considers this attribute to be a virtue. But he emphasised that the countrys youth detest anarchy of any sort, as well as lack of governance, instability, nepotism, casteism, favouritism and gender discrimination.

Various studies conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies during the last decade indicate that Indias youth suffers from various anxieties, unemployment being one. The data from a 2017 study indicates 73 per cent of Indian youth shared anxiety about employment (46 per cent a great deal of anxiety and 27 per cent some anxiety). Anxiety with regard to jobs is most seen among youth in the age group 18 to 25 years. The youth also share anxiety about missing opportunities for a good education (54 per cent), especially those in the age group of 15-17 years (83 per cent), and those aged 18-21 years (74 per cent). But these are not the only anxieties the Indian youth share, they even fear possibilities of being targets of mob violence and riots. The Indian youth also bear anxieties regarding personal and parental health alongside other family problems.

There are various reasons behind Indian youth having these anxieties. Negative societal discrimination is one of those. Prime Minister Modi rightly pointed out that sex-based discrimination was prevalent among Indian youth. The CSDS study, too, seconds that finding. It also shows prevalence of bias based on other identities, namely, caste, religion, class and region. While religion-based discrimination is faced more by Muslims as compared to others, dalits and adivasis are the targets of caste-based discrimination.

Participation of young people from various social groups in movements during the last one decade is also a result of this discrimination. It will be completely wrong to think that they are dancing to the tune of the Opposition in this regard or are being brainwashed by the tukde-tukde gang or anti-national forces. A very large number of young people have admitted to not being a member of a political party. Still, their participation in protests went up from 12 per cent in year 2011 to about 25 per cent in 2013. One must recall that this is the time that India witnessed Anna Hazares movement against corruption and the social movement on the Nirbhaya issue. The figures of youth participation in protest demonstrations declined to 12 per cent during 2016-17 as young people perceived the government to be doing well. The country had witnessed various agitations by the end of 2019 and there is massive participation of young people in these movements.

Besides the immediate reason which angers youth and motivates them to participate in agitations and protests, increased interest in politics has also worked as a catalyst for youths increased presence in such movements over the last decade. Minister for human resource development Ramesh Pokhriyal may be right in the respect of not allowing universities to become a hub of politics, but students interest in politics is on the rise all the same. Also, it will be difficult to think of universities that are not a space for legitimate political activities. The CSDS study indicates that in 1996 only 30 per cent of Indian youth had an interest in politics. That number is 52 per cent in recent times. One must recognise the fact that this is nothing new  even in the past universities have been seats of political thought and many leaders of the present and the past are the product of student politics and student movements. Who knows that these new movements might not give the country its political leaders from Generation Next?
Wall88.com scored 44 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 2/5.0 Stars by Social Team

This CoolSocial report was updated on 15 Dec 2013, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

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At least two federal highway policemen were on Monday shot in Yobe State in a suspected Boko Haram ambush, a witness has told PREMIUM TIMES.

The attack occurred along MaiduguriDamaturu highway.

The police commissioner in charge of Borno State, Mohammed Aliyu, confirmed the attack but said no officer died.

But a witness reported seeing two officers on the ground Monday morning as security forces ordered all travellers to Damaturu, the Yobe State capital, back to Maiduguri.

I think they may have been dead from the attack, a commercial driver who gave his name as Bukar Modu, said of the victims. We were all asked to turn back to Maiduguri. No vehicle was allowed to pass.

According to him, the incident occurred between Jakana and Mainok towns. The two towns are have recently witnessed increased Boko Haram attacks.

PREMIUM TIMES learned that the Army Brigade in Bogozo has now been relocated to Jakana as part of measures to safeguard travelers on the Damaturu/Maiduguri highway.

The police chief, Mt Aliyu, said, As I speak to you now, my men are in the location. I dont have the information concerning any death. But what I know is that one of them was shot on his hand. I will give you the details as soon as I get.

Another driver told PREMIUM TIMES that only vehicles coming from Damaturu were being allowed to enter Maiduguri while those travelling out of Maiduguri could not be allowed to pass through.
Spiralling insurance costs are continuing to put severe pressure on marts and could ultimately force some livestock sales centres to close, a leading mart executive has claimed.

PJ Buckley of Golden Vale Marts (GVM) said higher insurance costs, in addition to the increased expense associated with improving health and safety standards in marts, had brought a renewed focus on the viability of many smaller marts.

The GVM chief executive pointed out that insurance costs for the co-ops five marts centres  at Kilmallock, Abbeyfeale, Dromcollogher, Tullamore and Carrigallen  had risen to 150,000 in 2019.

And it was difficult to get people to quote; because when you put cattle and people together theres danger, Mr Buckley said.

GVM has invested heavily over the last number of years on improved mart infrastructure in an effort to reduce risk and to meet stricter Department of Agriculture licensing regulations for marts.

These capital investments included the addition of overhead livestock viewing areas in Kilmallock, as well as upgrading the pens, and installing additional gates and cameras in marts.

In addition, GVM employ a health and safety officer to patrol the passageways in each of the marts on the sale days.

All of these measures are contributing to a lot of extra cost, but on the other side income is not increasing, Mr Buckley pointed out.

The GVM boss said these additional costs were putting real financial pressure on marts.

I dont want to see marts closing, but its clear that with costs rising and mart throughput more or less static that some sort of rationalisation could have to take place, Mr Buckley predicted.

Meanwhile, Donegal Livestock Mart manager, Eimear McGuinness, told the Farming Independent that insurance rates at marts had generally doubled in the period from 2012 to 2018.

While the vast majority of the countrys marts are insured by FBD, Ms McGuinness said the entry of an English firm into the market had resulted in a slight reduction in the premiums charged to a small number of marts during 2019.

Ms McGuinness launched a discussion group, Mart Managers of Ireland, for the sector last autumn. She said the group had already met with the Department of Agriculture to discuss the ongoing problems regarding insurance costs.
A Russian tourist has been found dead in Georgias mountainous Gudauri resort, buried under an avalanche, the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs confirmed.

The tourist went missing yesterday and a Georgian rescue team had been searching for him since then.

The body was transported to Tbilisi. Police are investigating the incident, Agenda.ge reported.
By Olivia Rose

ONE hundred and eighty-seven Haitian migrants were rescued from a small boat just 17 miles southwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands on December 20.





Multiple agencies including the Royal Bahamas Defence Force (RBDF), Royal TCI Police Force and the US Coast Guard cutter Seneca crew apprehended the passengers.





In a statement on December 21, US Coast Guard officials said a helicopter crew deployed to Great Inagua, Bahamas, spotted the 30-foot vessel carrying the men and women.





Watchstanders and the Coast Guard liaison officer for the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands coordinated a joint response.





The Seneca crew and a Her Majestys Bahamian Ship crew arrived and helped the 187 people to embark the two ships, the US Coast Guart statement said.





The Seneca crew took 86 people and the Bahamian ship took 100 people. The Seneca crew then destroyed the visiting vessel because it posed a hazard to navigation.





"Safety at sea is our number one priority and we are always grateful to work with our international partner agencies to save lives, Lieutenant Commander Justin Matejk said.





He added: "This case involved 187 people on a 30-foot boat with no safety or communication equipment.





"Thats over 100 lives travelling in an unpredictable, unforgiving environment with no safety net. Without our intervention, many people couldve been injured or worse.





According to a statement from the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force, 100 Haitian migrants were handed over to Bahamas immigration officials.





The remaining 86 passengers were handed over to the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Marine Branch Unit at 10am on December 21.





They were taken to the South Dock Port for processing by TCI immigration officials.





In a separate incident, at about 8am on Saturday, December 21, illegal migrants were seen in the Highland Estate and Chalk Sound.





Police and immigration officers were subsequently dispatched and were able to intercept a white truck transporting five Haitian migrants.





The migrants were taken to the Detention Centre for processing and the driver of the white truck was arrested for harbouring.





At about 10am, three additional Haitian migrants were arrested along Millennium Highway, Blue Hills, police spokeswoman Takara Bain said.





In a third report, Marine Branch and immigration officers captured 69 Haitian migrants on West Caicos on December 21, after investigations revealed that an illegal vessel had ran aground.





The migrants were transported to the South Dock Port for processing.





Acting Commissioner of Police Rodney Adams said: "There is a vast amount of good work occurring as a result of the OPBAT initiative. This is evident through the event overnight.





He said the initiative has been proven to be beneficial since its inception and has become a virtual necessity in the fight against human trafficking and or the transport of illicit drugs and firearms.





"We therefore look forward to the continued strengthening of this trilateral partnership.





"I also wish to thank all local law enforcement partners that are currently assisting with ongoing operations on Providenciales and West Caicos.





Acting Governor Anya Williams added: "We are grateful to the US Coast Guard, Royal Bahamas Defence Force, Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force and Turks and Caicos Islands Immigration Department for their work overnight in the interception of a sloop carrying over 180 individuals and their work on the ground to apprehend persons that landed on two separate locations.





"The joined-up approach of these agencies must be commended as we remain vigilant in the protection of our borders and in apprehending persons that illegally enter our shores.





Anyone who may have information on these incidents can call 911, the Chalk Sound Police Station at 338-5901 or 941-8082 or Crime Stoppers anonymously on 1-800-8477.




Remember the movie, Wag the Dog? It seems we are living that movie in real life once again. To direct attention away from impeachment, President Donald Trump may very well have bumbled the world, ultimately, into an all-out war in the Middle East.

President Trump praised U.S. intelligence and said that targeted Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani had directed recent attacks on Americans in Iraq. I find it strange that Trump believes the intelligence community now but when its members indicated Russia meddled in our last election, he called it fake information. Either you trust the intelligence community or you dont; you cant have it both ways.

This president has spewed out so many verified lies that he has lost all credibility with me. Sincerely, can you believe anything he says?

Jeanette Ballantyne,

Akron
The Supreme Court accepted the resignation of Lee Soo-jin, Monday, who wants to run for the parliamentarian election in May. /Yonhap



By Kim Se-jeong



Lee Soo-jin, a former district court judge, resigned from her post Monday to run in the upcoming general election, a move that has drawn criticism for "damaging the integrity" of judges.



According to Yonhap News Agency, Lee submitted a resignation letter Dec. 31, and the Supreme Court accepted it Monday.



Lee Soo-jin
A landmark case to stop the NHS from prescribing 'experimental' puberty blockers to children who wish to undergo gender reassignment will be taken to the High Court.

Former psychiatric nurse Susan Evans, 62, who previously worked for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, became increasingly concerned that young children were being given 'experimental treatment' without what she believed were adequate assessments.

Now, lawyers acting for Ms Evans will lodge papers at the High Court this week in order to commence legal action against the trust which runs the UK's only gender identity development service (GIDS) in North London.

The case is also being brought on behalf of the mother of an autistic teenager, 15, who was born 'Katie' but who now prefers to be called 'Jon', who is currently on the waiting list for treatment at the service.

Former psychiatric nurse Susan Evans (pictured), 62, will launch a case to stop the NHS from prescribing 'experimental' puberty blockers

The mother, who is known as Mrs A to protect her child's identity, and Ms Evans, will argue that children under the age of 18 cannot give valid consent to the administration of hormone blockers and cross-sex hormones.

Ms Evans, who has also held the role of senior fellow in education at the University of East London, has raised almost 28,000 online to fund legal costs and is not seeking compensation.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Ms Evans claimed the Tavistock was willing to offer drugs to children under 16, and even as young as nine or 10.

She said: 'When I was working within the service, what I found out fairly quickly was that some of the children were being referred on to get hormones at a very young age - at the time it was 16, to me it seemed a young age - but they were maybe seen four or five times by some of the clinicians.

'I just couldn't see that enough psychological work had been done with the children.

'They've lowered the age group for this experimental treatment.

'It's an off-licence treatment, the drug was not developed for the purpose for which it's being used.

Ms Evans, who previously worked for the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust in London, became increasingly concerned that young children were being given 'experimental treatment' without what she believed to be adequate assessments

'I used to feel concerned it was being given to 16-year-olds, but now the age limit has been lowered and children as young as perhaps nine or 10 are being asked to give informed consent to a completely experimental treatment for which the long-term consequences are not known.

'The Tavistock will say the effects are fully reversible but the truth is nobody knows that for sure.'

Ms Evans said that 'virtually 100 per cent' of the children who were started on the 'experimental blocker' received cross-sex hormones 'which is going to lead to much deeper difficulties in physical terms, perhaps leading to future infertility (and) interfering with sexual functioning'.

She added: 'I don't believe a child of nine or 10 can possibly understand - no matter how clever they are or how mature they seem - can possibly comprehend what their future adult life will be like and also then what they are consenting to possibly giving up, or the risks to their health.'

Ms Evans said more than 30 per cent of children at the clinic are autistic, while 'many have suffered some sort of trauma in their early lives' and others are confused and socially anxious.

She added: 'I think this rapid affirmation and fast-tracking after maybe four or five appointments needs to be questioned in the courts now.'

Ms Evans said many children seen at the service will be 'completely convinced they are the other sex' but over time 'come to terms with who they are'.

Up to 90 per cent of children 'could go without medicalisation', she argued.

Writing on the Crowd Justice online page to raise funds, Mrs A said: 'I have deep concerns that the current clinical approach at GIDS means that my daughter will be subjected to an experimental treatment path that is not adequately regulated, where there are insufficient safeguards, where her autism will not be properly accounted for and where no-one (let alone my daughter) understands the risks and therefore cannot ensure informed consent is obtained.'

A spokesman for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust said: 'It is not appropriate for us to comment in detail in advance of any proposed legal proceedings.

'The GIDS is one of the longest-established services of its type in the world with an international reputation for being cautious and considered.

'Our clinical interventions are laid out in nationally-set service specifications.

'NHS England monitor our service very closely. The service has a high level of reported satisfaction and was rated good by the Care Quality Commission.'
KASANGATI  Police have arrested Kyadondo East MP Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine and a number of journalists and fired teargas at his supporters in Gayaza.

Police set off stun grenades and teargas in Gayaza Town as tensions rose after Police blocked his meeting.

Police have also arrested NTV Uganda reporter Arnold Sseremba alongside NBSs Eddy Kisekka and Radio Simbas Ssematimba Bwejiire.

In the same scuffle, one of NTV Uganda drivers Moses Egesa was partially hit by a teargas canister.

This, as they covered the arrest of presidential hopeful Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine after blocking his meeting.

Bobi Wine was scheduled to hold a consultative meeting at Our Lady of Good Counsel church in Gayaza, Catholic Parish.

Bobi Wine was later detained was bundled into the back of police van along with several of his supporters, and other opposition leaders including People Power spokesperson Joel Ssenyonyi.

His arrest on Monday contributed to chaos in Kampala as police and Bobi Wine supporters clashed.

Several people were wounded as police fired bullets and teargas, while Bobi Wine supporters responded by hurling rocks.

While Kyagulanyi planned the consultation meetings under Sect. 3 of the Presidential Elections Act, the police accuse him of acting in contravention of Sect 13 of Public Order Management Act

Police also arrested a number People Power coordinators as it continues to heavily deploy at Our Lady Of Good Counsel Gayaza, Catholic Parish a place scheduled to host Bobi Wines first consultative meeting.

Those arrested include Kasangati mayor Tony Ssempebwa who heads Bobi Wines elections teams.

Police have since ordered tent and music service providers off the place arguing the grounds are open and consultations should be in closed spaces.

Related
District Police Officer Ismailur Rehman said that suspect Imran projected personal dispute as a religious issue and used it to deliver hate speech, The Express Tribune said in a report.

Islamabad, Jan 6 (IANS) Police in Pakistan's Punjab province on Monday arrested a key suspect who was involved in the attack on the Nankana Sahib Gurdwara carried out by a Muslim mob, trapping Sikh devotees inside the shrine.

The suspect also posted the religious slur on social media after which the local administration took action on Prime Minister Imran Khan's directive and arrested Imran, who was leading the protest on January 3 in the birthplace of Guru Nanak, the first Sikh Guru.

The suspect has been charged with desecration of a holy place, terrorism and other serious accounts.

Videos circulated on social media showed the mob, led by the family of a man who had abducted and forcibly converted a Sikh girl Jagjit Kaur, raised communal and hateful slogans against the minority community and pelted stones at the shrine.

ksk/
(CNN)  The 77th Golden Globes will kick off awards season Sunday (Monday, PHT), and we are here to get you ready for it.

Here's what you need to know about Hollywood's golden night, brought to you by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, to honor the best in film and television.

Where to watch

The event telecast will air Sunday at 8 p.m. EST on NBC.

Who's hosting?

British comedic actor Ricky Gervais will be returning to host the show for a fifth time.

He took on master of ceremony duties previously from 2010-2012 and in 2016.

Gervais is known for his biting humor and in the past has run afoul of some in Hollywood for his biting wit while hosting.

That alone should make it worth it to tune in just to see who, if anyone, he skewers.

Top nominees

This year it's all about the streaming services.

Netflix led in total nominations, thanks to a strong showing from the films "Marriage Story" and "The Irishman." The dramas were nominated for six and five awards respectively.

In the television categories, the Netflix series "The Crown" and "Unbelievable" got four nominations each, as did HBO's "Chernobyl."

Two major stars won't have to compete to be honored.

Tom Hanks will be receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award, while Ellen DeGeneres will be the recipient of the Carol Burnett Award in recognition of their careers.

Hanks is actually competing, however. He's up for best supporting actor in a motion picture for his role in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood."

Presenters

Some of the biggest names in the industry are set to present at the ceremony. They include Tim Allen, Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Cate Blanchett, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tiffany Haddish, Scarlett Johansson, Margot Robbie, Zoe Kravitz, Jason Momoa, Elton John and former host Amy Poehler.

Moments to watch

Besides checking for Gervais's snark level, there's always the chance a winner will talk about politics in their acceptance speech.

Given all that's happening in the world and the fact it is an election year, we are almost betting on it.

Folks will also be waiting to see if Jennifer Lopez snags a statue for her much hailed performance in "Hustlers" and if Joe Pesci will show up even though he's known to shun the spotlight.

He's nominated for best supporting actor for his role in "The Irishman."
CHICO, Calif. - In California, thousands of people gathered throughout the state to protest the strikes over the weekend.

In Chico, dozens of people gathered downtown in protest. Demonstrators showed up with signs in hand.

Action News Now spoke to protestors who said they are worried about rising tensions with Iran. They said more military action could lead to war.

"I don't think murdering people is a way to negotiate foreign policy," Charles Withuhn, a protester said. Another protester told Action News Now, "that's an act of war and it scares me to death."

On Friday, President Trump said the strike was not intended to start a war, calling the general a terrorist and saying he threatened American interests.

RELATED: US sending 3,000 more troops to Mideast as reinforcements

Opponents have criticized the way the president and the U.S. have used its military force without legal justification abroad.
Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court on Monday asked the state election commission (SEC) not to issue the election notification for 120 municipalities and 10 municipal corporations till Tuesday evening, by when it would decide on the legality of the poll schedule released on December 23.

According to the SECs schedule, the notification is to be issued on January 7 and elections held on January 23. Challenging this, Telangana state Congress president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy and several others had approached the High Court.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Raghavendra Singh Chauhan and Justice A. Abhishek Reddy heard the petitions post noon on Monday. As the arguments remained incomplete, the court adjourned the hearing to Tuesday as the first case to be heard at 10.30 am. Senior counsel Desai Prakash Reddy, representing Mr Uttam Kumar Reddy, said the schedule issued by the SEC was also the notification under the terms of the Telangana Municipalities Act. He said that it was contrary to sub-sections 1, 2, 3 of Section 195 of the Act. He said that issuing the election notification before announcing the reservation of wards was clashing with the Act.

With that, Chief Justice Chauhan asked the SEC, Suppose I belong to the SC community and I do not know whether my ward is going to be reserved for SCs or not. If the SEC does not give me sufficient time, how can I obtain a caste certificate. Senior counsel C.V. Mohan Reddy, representing the SEC, said the election notice of December 23 was just meant to call upon the voters to exercise their vote as per the schedule that would commence on January 7.

Mr Mohan Reddy submitted that the finalisation of reservations was not the duty of the SEC and it was to be performed by the state government.

As per Rule 7(2C) of the Municipalities Act, a candidate aspiring to contest an election in a reserved seat has to give a self-declaration that he belongs to the particular reserved community. There is no need to submit the caste certificate, he said.

With arguments remaining incomplete, the court adjourned the case to Tuesday and directed the SEC to furnish the chronology of the dates and the rules and election manual which is to be followed to conduct the polls before issuing the notification.
"Serving in the military changes you. The shades and degrees of change vary for everyone, but no one is ever the same as...
This is the summer from hell. I cant imagine anyone is enjoying their break  not with the quadruple whammy of drought, heatwaves, bushfires and smoke haze were experiencing. If it happens again next summer  or the one after  as it very well could, can you imagine the political doghouse Scott Morrison and his Coalition parties will be in?

Morrison is already bearing most of the ire of people displaced by the fires. So much so that hes learned not to show up to offer his commiserations. But is it really his fault? No. Just one of the six prime ministers weve had over the past two decades can hardly take all the blame. In any case, Morrison is right to protest that nothing Australia could have done by itself could have stopped the deterioration in climate were seeing. The only solution is global, so all the big, rich economies  particularly the Americans, less so the Europeans  must share the blame for the continuing rise in average temperatures.

And even the biggest developing economies  China and India, particularly  could have done more to reduce the intensity of their emissions (emissions per dollar of GDP) without abandoning their efforts to raise their living standards to some higher fraction of those we have long enjoyed.

But Morrison doesnt escape the responsibility of leadership as easily as that. For one thing, its his side of politics thats done most to sabotage the limited and belated efforts Australia has made, since the defeat of the Howard government, to contribute to the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Protest-stricken Chinese University in Hong Kong opened its new term on Monday with people returning in masks over a health scare, as one student was sent to hospital with symptoms similar to that of a mystery pneumonia virus that has gripped mainland China.

The female patient, 20, was eventually cleared by authorities and found to be infected with known viruses instead of the one in question.

Tighter security and access controls were also in place at the Sha Tin site for its first full day in operation since the occupation by radical anti-government protesters in November, which devastated swathes of the campus and halted classes.

Many were seen on the grounds wearing surgical or particulate filter masks after Wuhan authorities put the number of people admitted to hospital with an unidentified type of pneumonia to 59 on Sunday, up from last Fridays 44.

According to investigations on the mainland, no evidence of human-to-human transmission has been identified, and there are also no known cases of the virus outside Wuhan.

Some of the starkest images of the Hong Kong protests were captured at Chinese University, which is tackling Wuhan pneumonia issues on its full return after Novembers devastation. Photo: Winson Wong

In the case of the 20-year-old female student, who is from the mainland and lives on campus, she recently returned from the city in Hubei province, and was sent to Prince of Wales Hospital in Sha Tin on Sunday after complaining of fever and respiratory infection symptoms.

She had visited Union Hospital earlier that day but was not kept in care, sparking questions over whether the private hospital had reported her case to authorities. A hospital spokeswoman said staff explained to the student that she should be quarantined at a public hospital after seeing a doctor, but the woman said she would seek medical consultation elsewhere on her own accord.

Sources said the student lived on the fifth floor at Bethlehem Hall, a dormitory at United College under Chinese University. The institution confirmed she was eventually sent to hospital for further check-ups on Sunday night and was in a stable condition on Monday.

Story continues

Local health authorities said between Sunday and noon on Monday, six more patients who had visited Wuhan in the past two weeks developed pneumonia-related symptoms, including the female student. That brings the total number of suspected cases reported in Hong Kong to 21, of which seven have already been cleared and discharged from hospital.

The Centre for Health Protection said the CUHK student was found to have common viruses, including a type of coronavirus unrelated to the cases in Wuhan, while the other five new cases were found to be flu infections or that of known viruses as of Monday.

At Bethlehem Hall, which houses 228 students, dormitory staff covered part of their faces on Monday and distributed surgical masks to residents.

Year Three student Tristia Wong, 20, who lives on the same floor as the female student with symptoms, said their warden had reminded them not to stay too long on that floor, adding staff had already cleaned the entire level with bleach.

Ive also moved to sleep in a girlfriends room on another floor for the moment. Unless it is really necessary, I wont go back to the fifth floor, she said.

On Monday night, the student union of Lee Woo Sing College, under CUHK, said in a statement that two hostel residents  who are roommates and had gone to Wuhan last month  were sent to a hospital from the dormitory after one of them was coughing but had no fever.

A university spokesman confirmed the incident and said the two students had been discharged after undergoing a check-up at a public hospital.

At S.H. Ho College, also under CUHK, at least one student who arrived in Hong Kong from Wuhan chose to move into a single room temporarily for isolation, the spokesman added.

At University MTR station, which reopened in December after closing for more than a month following vandalism by anti-government protesters, security guards were standing by on Monday, checking staff and students IDs before they entered the campus.

Much of the 137-hectare campus have been restored but school buses are still operating on temporary routes after most of its 75-vehicle fleet suffered severe damage.

A large proportion of students and staff were seen wearing masks as studies resumed for the second term of the academic year. Photo: Winson Wong

Students and staff said they found the tightened security acceptable, as the process only took a few seconds.

Administrative worker Jay Ling, 29, said staff who were responsible for student programmes faced pressure after the previous term ended early.

Rescheduling might be needed to catch up, she said. But since my work is mainly about office administration, personally I dont find any major impact.

In a letter to staff and students, Chinese University vice-chancellor and president Rocky Tuan Sung-chi admitted that some inconveniences were expected for the opening period of the second term.

I must ask for your patience and understanding in allowing time for the campus to ease back to its former state of diversity and vibrancy, he said, adding that greater challenges ahead included rebuilding confidence among university members and stakeholders.

On a brighter note, the university has also installed a capsule machine on campus with some 300 small gifts daily to welcome returning students. The feature will be there until Friday.

The university, which suffered some of the worst damage during the protests with buildings vandalised and dangerous materials stolen from laboratories, is making repairs worth HK$70 million (US$9 million), including HK$30 million to fix or replace school buses.

This article After Hong Kong protest devastation, Chinese University returns for new term under shadow of Wuhan pneumonia first appeared on South China Morning Post

For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2020.
MBABANE  Once again, the year 2020 will start off on a struggle for primary schools in the country as the FPE grants will not be released any time soon.

This is because most schools have not been able to meet the stipulated deadlines set by the Ministry of Education and Training. The deadline was for the submission of the lists of beneficiaries. Initially, school heads were supposed to submit the lists by December 13, 2019. The deadline was later shifted to December 20, 2019 but still there had been no progress.

In the past, the free primary education (FPE) grants were released before new year. There are over 600 primary schools in the country. Minister of Education and Training Lady Mabuza, in an interview, said she felt sabotaged by the head teachers by deliberately delaying the process of having the grants released on time and further shifting the blame on her.

Submissions

Mabuza decried the late submissions, adding that such had been going on every year, yet there was no primary school head teacher who was not aware that when schools closed for the third term, all paperwork relating to FPE grants was supposed to have been submitted. She said this was to accommodate processing of the submitted documents as it also took time. According to the minister, she was frustrated by the whole procedure as well and had tried engaging the regional education officers (REOs) in the four regions to check whether the paperwork was on point.

This is to avoid a situation where the documents take long and end up being rejected by the Treasury Department, stated the minister. Mabuza said the delay in submissions would affect the release of the FPE grants to the various schools. According to Mabuza, she would then be blamed for the late release of the funds, yet in actual fact the delay was not caused by her. The minister said there were very few schools that had submitted and funds to be paid out were around E3 million. In an interview with Hhohho REO Thuli Langwenya, she confirmed to have received paperwork from some of the schools in the region. According to Langwenya, some schools had heeded the ministers call to submit before the deadline, which was December 20, 2019.

Challenges

However, she said the documentation for those schools which submitted had been held up in her offices due to various challenges. She said in the past when the PINs (personal identity numbers) were not enforced and the ministry was paying through cheques, the payment system used to be faster. The REO said the PIN verification took most of their time. The REO said many schools in the Hhohho Region had submitted the pupils records, including those head teachers who retired last month. She said some of the challenges, however, included the network which had been down since last week Friday. As such, she said they had been unable to verify the documentation before presenting it to the Ministry of Education. Since Friday, the network has been down and the service provider has been trying to restore it, Langwenya stated.

Verification

She added that the verification process was taking them longer than expected. Langwenya said there was a need to verify all the submitted information by checking the correspondence of the PINs against the pupils names. Also, she said they needed to establish whether the pupils were emaSwati and the names should also be reflected in their birth certificates.

After checking all this information, Langwenya said they then corroborated how much grant the school was entitled to before submitting the paperwork to the head office for further processing.

Meanwhile, Lubombo REO Dzabulase Mthupha also corroborated with his colleague on the issue of the network. Mthupha said they were unable to verify most of the pupils PINs as their network was down and they were failing to capture any data. He said a majority of the head teachers had submitted, while some had been turned back for wrong PINs while others were missing. This was also causing the delay as the grants cannot be processed if there is a query, Mthupha said. He said it was however, not all the head teachers who had submitted the paperwork.
Identity and access management in 2022 - what will the future look like?

As we enter into 2022, there is still a level of uncertainty in place. Its unclear what the future holds, as companies around the world still contend with the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote working has been encouraged by most organisations and the move to a hybrid working system has become business as usual, for the majority of businesses. Some have reduced their office space or done away with their locations altogether. Following best security practices With all this change in place, there are problems to deal with. According to research, 32.7% of IT admins say they are concerned about employees using unsecured networks to carry out that work. Alongside this, 74% of IT admins thought that remote work makes it harder for employees to follow best security practices. This need to manage security around remote work is no longer temporary. Instead, companies have to build permanent strategies around remote work and security. The coming year will also create a different landscape for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). Here are some key predictions for next year and what to start preparing for in 2022: The reality of SMB spending around security will hit home SMBs had to undertake significant investments to adapt to remote working SMBs had to undertake significant investments to adapt to remote working, especially in comparison to their size. They had to undertake significant digital transformation projects that made it possible to deliver services remotely, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Weve seen a shift in mindset for these companies, which are now more tech-focused in their approach to problem solving. According to our research, 45% of SMBs plan to increase their spending towards IT services in 2022. Around half of all organisations think their IT budgets are adequate for their needs, while 14.5% of those surveyed believe they will need more, to cover all that needs to be done. Identity management spending to support remote work For others, the COVID-19 pandemic led to over-spending, just to get ahead of things and they will spend in 2022, looking at what they should keep and what they can reduce their spending on. Areas like identity management will stay in place, as companies struggle to support remote work and security, without this in place. However, on-premise IT spending will be reduced or cut, as those solutions are not relevant for the new work model. Services that rely on on-premise IT will be cut or replaced. The device will lead the way for security We rely on our phones to work and to communicate. In 2022, they will become central to how we manage access, to all our assets and locations, IT and physical. When employees can use company devices and their own phones for work, security is more difficult. IT teams have to ensure that theyre prepared for this, by making sure that these devices can be trusted. Wide use of digital certificates and strong MFA factors Rather than requiring a separate smart card or fingerprint reader, devices can be used for access using push authentication There are multiple ways that companies can achieve this, for example - By using digital certificates to identify company devices as trusted, an agent, or strong MFA factors, like a FIDO security key or mobile push authentication. Whichever approach you choose, this can prevent unauthorised access to IT assets and applications, and these same devices can be used for authentication into physical locations too. Rather than requiring a separate smart card or fingerprint reader, devices can be used for access using push authentication. Understanding human behaviour Alongside this, it is important to understand human behaviour. Anything that introduces an extra step for authentication can lead to employees taking workarounds. To stop this, it is important to put an employee education process in place, in order to emphasize on the importance of security. The next step is to think about adopting passwordless security, to further reduce friction and increase adoption. Lastly, as devices become the starting point for security and trust, remote device management will be needed too. More companies will need to manage devices remotely, from wiping an asset remotely if it gets lost or stolen, through to de-provisioning users easily and removing their access rights, when they leave the company. Identity will be a layer cake Zero Trust approaches to security Identity management relies on being able to trust that someone is who they say they are. Zero Trust approaches to security can support this effectively, particularly when aligned with least privilege access models. In order to turn theory into practical easy-to-deploy steps, companies need to use contextual access, as part of their identity management strategy. This involves looking at the context that employees will work in and putting together the right management approach for those circumstances. For typical employee behaviour, using two factor authentication might be enough to help them work, without security getting in the way. How enterprises manage, access and store identity data There will also be a shift in how enterprises manage, access, and store that identity data over time For areas where security is more important, additional security policies can be put over the top, to ensure that only the right people have access. A step-up in authentication can be added, based on the sensitivity of resources or risk-based adaptive authentication policies might be needed. There will also be a shift in how enterprises manage, access, and store that identity data over time, so that it aligns more closely with those use cases. Identity management critical to secure assets in 2022 There are bigger conversations taking place around digital identity for citizenship, as more services move online as well. Any moves that take place in this arena will affect how businesses think about their identity management processes too, encouraging them to look at their requirements in more detail. Overall, 2022 will be the year when identity will be critical to how companies keep their assets secure and their employees productive. With employees working remotely and businesses becoming decentralised, identity strategies will have to take the same approach. This will put the emphasis on strong identity management as the starting point for all security planning.
Attari (Punjab) [India], Jan 6 (ANI): Pakistani authorities on Monday handed over 20 Indian fishermen, as a goodwill gesture, to their Indian counterparts at the Attari-Wagah border.



The fishermen, who hailed from the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, were released from the Landhi Jail in Lahore on Sunday.

They were arrested by the Maritime Security Agency for allegedly venturing into Pakistani territorial waters for fishing last year.

Pakistan had released 360 Indian fishermen last year. (ANI)


University Towers, at the corner of Forest and South University avenues in Ann Arbor, in 2019. (Jacob Hamilton | The Ann Arbor News)

ANN ARBOR, MI  When the 18-story University Towers broke ground in 1964, downtown Ann Arbor already had a handful of tall buildings.

But nothing this dramatic or controversial.

The seven-story Glazier Building at Main and Huron was considered the city's first high-rise in 1908, and the 10-story First National Bank Building at Main and Washington pushed the skyline to new heights in the 1920s.

Then came the 11-story Maynard House apartments at the corner of William and Maynard streets in 1962.

But a few years later, when University Towers shot into the sky along South University Avenue, it dwarfed everything else downtown had ever seen.

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The 18-story University Towers rising in April 1965. (Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org)

The 18-story student apartment tower at South U and Forest Avenue, by the University of Michigan campus, became the city's tallest building in 1965, a rank it held only for a few years before the 26-story Tower Plaza on William Street topped it.

Still holding the No. 2 spot, University Towers remains taller than any modern-day high-rise in Ann Arbor, and it ignited community debates about building height, downtown parking and other growth-related concerns still playing out today.

Its sheer height prompted city officials to form a committee and hire consultants to study the high-rise and parking problem, The Ann Arbor News reported in 1965.

At the time of construction of that building, many citizens were protesting its height, The News reported. The City Planning Commission recently described these complaints as an overwhelming display of public attitude against such tall buildings.

It was one of several high-rises erected during Ann Arbors building boom of the 1960s, when the citys population ballooned from just over 67,000 to over 100,000.

Most of the residential growth happened outside the downtown, but it was in the citys commercial core where increasingly taller buildings were being proposed.

Heres a look back at the saga of University Towers, which introduced Ann Arbor to high-rise controversy.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

September 1964 - construction begins

In September 1964, construction began on the U-shaped building, then slated to include 270 apartments  a mix of efficiency, one- and two-bed units plus retail and office space on the first and second floors.

Robert E. Weaver, president of R.E. Weaver Co. of Ann Arbor, and Towne Realty of Milwaukee were the developers. Weaver, who six years later was elected to City Council, estimated 800 university students would live in the building.

"Due to the scarcity and high cost of Central Campus-area land, this type of facility is needed to provide close-in student housing to help care for increasing UM enrollment," Weaver said then, suggesting they were "pioneering" student high-rises. "The apartment building in vertical concept is logical on scarce, high-cost land."

The building was to have a terrace surrounding a large swimming pool for students, and possibly other common areas.

The developers asked UM to advise on apartment layouts, making them efficient living and study areas with luxurious overtones.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

September 1964 - photo from news clipping above

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

Oct. 13, 1964 - parking deck proposed

With the project underway, a lingering question remained: how to address parking challenges that would result from University Towers addition to South U.

Off-street parking for tenants wasnt being provided, as it wasn't required in the Central Business District.

During the past few weeks, numerous Ann Arbor residents and students have protested the construction of the 18-story apartment house without off-street parking facilities, The News reported. It is believed the construction of a 400-space carport would do much to solve the problem of parking.

Towne Realty proposed leasing the citys nearby Forest Avenue parking lot and building a four-level parking deck there, with a mix of hourly and permit parking. The developer was willing to pay to build it if the city would pay to operate it.

The local chamber of commerce backed the idea, arguing it would be a net revenue gain for the city.

Permits would not be reserved for University Towers tenants. Rather, they would be sold on a first-come, first-served basis.

City Administrator Guy C. Larcom agreed the matter should be discussed at a future City Council meeting.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

Oct. 20, 1964 - another high-rise/parking proposal

As South U talks continued, city leaders were approached by an attorney for an undisclosed developer proposing another apartment high-rise above a multi-level parking deck on the Library Lot, the city-owned parking lot next to the downtown library.

The idea never came to fruition.

After considering several high-rise development proposals over the decades, the city is now planning an urban park and civic center commons on the Fifth Avenue site, an idea city voters endorsed in November 2018, halting a 17-story high-rise.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

Oct. 20, 1964 - new opposition arises

After construction began on University Towers, a newly formed group called the Ann Arbor Property Owners Association voiced objections.

The group, which included local developers and property investors like Dennis Dahlmann and John C. Jack Stegeman, wanted to hold University Towers to the letter of the law.

While city officials determined the project met city code, John Gunn, the groups president, argued the development was in violation of state housing law because the ground-level court was too small  20 feet wide instead of 33 feet wide.

The association retained a lawyer and contacted the city attorneys office, prompting the city to look into the alleged violation.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

Oct. 26, 1964 - construction stopped

Within days, the city revoked the building permit for University Towers, saying the building didn't meet setback requirements under the state housing code.

The property owners group that protested the development had met with city officials and threatened legal action if the permit was not revoked.

Much groundwork has already been done at the site of the proposed high-rise apartment-commercial building, which has been a matter of controversy since plans were made public, The News reported.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

Oct. 27, 1964 - variance sought

With construction halted, University Towers developers turned to the city's housing board of appeals to request a variance to allow the project to proceed.

City Attorney Jacob F. Fahrner Jr. said it appeared a 19-foot setback from the property line was required on the west side, whereas the building was planned with a 10-foot setback. Footings already were poured, though.

Mayor Cecil O. Creal said it was a confusing matter and the city might have to get the states 1917 housing law changed. If the matter wasnt resolved, he said, it could stymie growth in the Central Business District.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

Nov. 3, 1964 - legal questions

With the matter set to go before the appeals board, Larcom updated City Council, saying city code did not require the 19-foot setback and many Michigan cities ignored the state housing law because it was outdated. If the city went by the letter of the law, you wouldnt get a very desirable building, he said.

"It was pointed out that several apartment buildings have been built in the Central Business District without adhering to state housing law. City ordinances do not require setbacks for apartments constructed in the CBD," The News reported.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

Nov. 5, 1964 - saga continues

For two and a half hours, the city's housing board of appeals heard arguments for and against granting a variance for the $5 million development.

Local attorney William Barense, representing the developers, gave an hour-long presentation, saying many new buildings in Ann Arbor were in violation of state housing law, and other cities similarly didnt follow the law. He questioned whether it even applied to Ann Arbor, since the city had its own local zoning ordinance.

Barense told the board the developers and city officials worked together to determine the 18-story building was legal before a permit was issued, and $200,000 was now sunk into construction of the footings and foundation and it would cost $125,000 to alter them, in addition to a $200,000 loss on steel beams already ordered.

Local attorney John Conlin Jr., representing 50-plus residents, contended the board lacked authority to grant a variance for the western setback.

He also said there still were legal questions about whether the building must have an eastern setback and a larger ground-level court.

The board adjourned without making a decision.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

Nov. 11, 1964 - high-rise OK'd

After a two-hour closed session and a delay to get a written opinion from the city attorney, the appeals board OK'd proceeding with construction.

The board said it was allowing a setback variance because construction already had been permitted and started, and it would cause unreasonable hardship for the developers to change plans.

The board said the original foundation permit was issued due to conflict and ambiguities in the various codes and laws applicable to a building of this height.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

December 1964 - height limits

As University Towers continued to rise, City Council voted 9-1 in December 1964 to give initial OK to a new ordinance imposing a 15-story height limit on new buildings, effectively placing a temporary moratorium on structures any taller.

Gunn, developer of a proposed 24-story commercial-apartment building at the corner of Liberty and Thompson, chided council for the move, singling out Council Members Eunice Burns, Robert Weeks and Edward Pierce.

The three Democrats issued a joint response, saying Gunns frustration was understandable, but they voted to hold the height of buildings at a reasonable level to give city officials time in which to evolve a fair, workable, comprehensive plan for dealing with the construction of high-rise buildings in Ann Arbor.

It wasnt to stop all high-rise construction, they said, but to work out solutions to the problems created by high-rise buildings before the buildings are up and its too late.

Three nationally known planning consultants held an all-day conference with city officials the previous Friday. The consultants advised a temporary height limit would be reasonable to cope with a rash of high-rises and would not hinder investment in Ann Arbors lively housing market, the Democrats said.

Gunn accused Democrats of taking a stand against high-rises to create a spring election issue, but four of the nine votes for the height limit came from Republicans.

While the 15-story limit was in place, city officials planned to craft new regulations to guide future high-rise construction consistent with community interests, possibly limiting high-rises near city landmarks.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

January 1965 - design discussed

Towne Realty discussed University Towers design features in January 1965, indicating there would be space for five businesses and student commons areas on the first floor and 16,000 square feet of office space on the second floor. One of the first-floor tenants was to be Miller's Farm Dairy Store with an ice-cream parlor.

It was now planned to have 240 apartments. In addition to studio, one- and two-bedroom units, there would be a fourth type of apartment geared toward graduate students with three distinct living-sleeping rooms, plus bathroom and kitchen. Monthly rent was estimated between $50 and $60.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

January 1965 - height limits continued

Discussion of height limits continued, with the city's Planning Commission indicating it wasn't in favor of interim measures.

The 15-story limit imposed by council was to be temporary until a study of parking and height limits in the Central Business District was complete.

Council asked the Planning Commission to weigh in on the height matter, but the commission indicated it didnt have enough information to make a formal recommendation and preferred to wait.

Some commissioners who had recommended not allowing apartment developments in commercial zones in the Central Business District questioned whether a 15-story limit was arbitrary.

Council previously OKd allowing apartments in commercial zones and the citys planning director at the time warned of impending problems with doing so.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

February 1965 - going vertical

University Towers continued to take shape through winter.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

February 1965 - $45M in projects

With the building boom in full swing, there reportedly was more work than workers. The cost of projects in Ann Arbor the previous year totaled $45 million and included 95 apartment houses and 31 other major buildings.

The city built a new six-story city hall two years earlier.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

March 1965 - skybound

Six of 18 stories of steel framing for University Towers were in place by March 1965 and the project was to be completed by August.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

April 1965 - high-rising controversy

Typical of high-rise buildings or building plans which have stirred controversy in Ann Arbor in recent months is University Towers, which will be the citys tallest building and a giant among midgets in the Universitys shopping area, The News reported, noting neighboring buildings were mostly two stories tall.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

April 1965 - still rising

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

May 1965 - $22M in high-rises

In May 1965, several high-rises  $22 million worth  were either planned, underway or completed in the city, including some downtown and some along the Huron River.

That included downtown hotels like the Campus Inn (known today as the Graduate hotel) and the Ann Arbor Inn (now Courthouse Square apartments), as well as a proposed 21-story apartment building at Fourth Avenue and Ann Street, a project that never came to fruition.

One of the developers said at the time the city was lucky to get apartment high-rises downtown because of the high taxes they pay.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

May 1965 - view atop University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

May 1965 - worker atop University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

May 1965 - view from University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

May 1965 - view from University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

May 1965 - more commanding views

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

May 1965 - worker atop University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

May 1965 - view from University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

May 1965 - view from University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

May 1965 - view from University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

May 1965 - final steel beam for University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

May 1965 - final steel beam for University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

July 1965 - nearing completion

In July 1965, the 240-unit University Towers was moving closer to completion and was expected to welcome its first tenants Aug. 21. About half the apartments already were leased, mostly to university students.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

Aug. 30, 1965 - cycle of the times

When traffic barricades next to University Towers were removed in August 1965, the resulting on-street parking spaces were quickly filled with motorcycles, an increasingly popular means of student transportation at the time.

In response to controversy over lack of parking, the developers were planning to build a nearly 500-space deck on the Forest Avenue parking lot within six months.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

September 1965 - height limits discussed

By September 1965, there was talk of putting the question of high-rise height limits to city voters.

City Council had just voted 7-4 in August to approve the controversial Tower Plaza development, which would rise 26 stories on William Street.

The city committee that studied the high-rise issue suggested a max of 18 stories or 180 feet, which is generally the limit today in the most densely zoned parts of downtown.

Those involved in committee discussions in 1965 acknowledged they could just have easily recommended a limit of 15 stories or 20 stories, or any other figure.

Height limits would help the city pace growth and spread it out over a wider area of the Central Business District, argued Norman Elkin, an urban planning consultant who helped prepare a high-rise and parking report for the city.

Richard A. Ahern, a local architect and city planner, didnt see value in limiting height, arguing it would just result in developers building to the maximum with results that would be functionally and aesthetically undesirable.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

September 1965 - more parking worries

The city's lack of parking requirements for apartment buildings in the Central Business District continued to be a topic of conversation.

Some city officials were hesitant to require every high-rise to have its own parking deck built into it due to concerns it could destroy building appearance.

There also was talk the city may eventually have to figure out a better way to move people in and out of downtown without cars.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

February 1966 - view of University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

February 1966 - view of University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

February 1966 - high-rises dot city

Another development underway downtown was the seven-story City Center office building, shown at right, kitty-corner from city hall at Huron and Fifth Avenue.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

March 1966 - parking deck construction

Construction of the 499-space Forest Avenue parking deck was well underway in March 1966 and scheduled to be complete that spring.

It was being built by a subsidiary of Towne Realty, co-developer of University Towers, and would be turned over to the city for operation under contract.

After a few decades of use, South Us only public parking deck eventually fell into disrepair, and the city and UM partnered in 2000-2001 to build a replacement deck that now has 578 public parking spaces and 277 spaces for university employees.

University Towers as a corporate entity does not have a contract for parking in the garage, but 33 of its hundreds of tenants were paying for monthly permits to park in the garage as of November 2019, according to the Downtown Development Authority.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

March 1966 - parking deck construction

Construction workers on break at the Forest Avenue parking deck construction site in March 1966.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

June 1966 - view of University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

July 1966 - view of Art Fair on South U from University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

July 1966 - view of Art Fair on South U from University Towers

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

July 1966 - more Forest Avenue apartments

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

August 1966 - 26-story tower underway

By August 1966, work was underway on the 26-story Tower Plaza high-rise at William and Maynard. It included 300 apartments, converted to condos in the 1980s.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

July 1967 - University Towers sold

Less than two years after completing construction, Towne Realty sold its interest in University Towers.

Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. acquired full ownership in the interest of good investment and appointed as building manager a subsidiary of a Houston-based company that had built similar high-rises around the country.

The property has sold several times since then.

With an assessed value of $27.2 million, its now owned by a company based outside Boston, Massachusetts, which pays more than $430,000 in annual property taxes to Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, schools and other local taxing entities.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

November 1968 - Tower Plaza is new tallest building

Exterior work on Tower Plaza on William Street was substantially complete by November 1968, making University Towers the second-tallest building in Ann Arbor.

At 26 stories, Tower Plaza towered above the 11-story Maynard House, a 74-unit apartment building that opened across the street in 1962.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

April 1969 - high-rise hotel on Huron Street

The 215-room Campus Inn hotel, one of Jack Stegeman's projects and known today as the Graduate, nearing completion on Huron Street.

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Ann Arbor News archives courtesy of OldNews.AADL.org

July 1972 - view of University Towers

For many years, University Towers remained the only high-rise on South U, but a major transformation and densification of the corridor is now underway.

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Jacob Hamilton | The Ann Arbor News

2019 - University Towers today

University Towers, one of several 1960s high-rises still standing in Ann Arbor, is shown here next to Landmark, one of the new high-rises of the last decade.

Just out of frame in this photo are several more modern-day high-rises in the South U area that include luxury apartments primarily geared toward UM students above ground-floor businesses.

More high-rise developments are in the works, including another 13-story tower recently approved for South U.

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Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

2019 - University Towers today

The University Towers and Landmark high-rises along South U on Nov. 27, 2019.

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Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

2019 - University Towers today

The perks of living in University Towers are advertised on one of the building's windows on Nov. 27, 2019.

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Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

2019 - University Towers today

Insomnia Cookies is one of the ground-floor tenants of University Towers on Nov. 27, 2019.

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Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

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Investors wealth tumbled by a whopping Rs 3.11 lakh crore in two successive sessions of decline in the equity market following escalation in tensions in the Middle East.

Equity markets have been falling for second day in a row, with the 30-share key BSE index plummeting 679.85 points to a low of 40,784.76 on Monday.

The Sensex had ended 162.03 points, or 0.39 per cent, lower at 41,464.61 on Friday as well.

Led by the weakness in equities in the last two trading sessions, the market capitalisation of BSE-listed companies plunged by Rs 3,11,234.47 crore to Rs 1,54,15,637.95 crore in late morning trade.

US President Donald Trump on Sunday vowed "major retaliation" if Iran tries to avenge the killing of its key military commander Qasem Soleimani.

Following the news, Brent crude futures surged nearly 3 per cent to USD 70.59.

From the 30-share pack, 29 stocks were trading with losses led by Bajaj Finance, SBI, HDFC and Maruti Suzuki India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After Real Housewives of Dallas stars, LeeAnne Locken, and Brandi Redmond have come under fire for racist remarks and behavior, fans are now criticizing Stephanie Hollman and her husband for donating to a politician who has a reputation for anti-Muslim hate.

Stephanie Hollman, Travis Hollman | Danny Bollinger

Beth Van Duyne and her history of anti-Muslim hate

The Republican politician served as the mayor of Irving, Texas, from 2011 until 2017, when President Donald Trump appointed her as a regional administrator for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In August 2019, she resigned and announced her plans to run in the 2020 elections to represent Texass 24th congressional district. The former mayor first came under fire in 2015 when she pushed for support of a bill that would ban Sharia law, or the Muslim code of law and morality, following a false claim.

The belief that Sharia is gaining traction in America has been considered a conspiracy theory pushed by anti-Muslim groups. She also made anti-Muslim statements criticizing a 14-year-old who was suspended from school for bringing in a homemade alarm clock.

Beth Van Duyne, a former Texas mayor who stoked hysteria around an Islamic tribunal and has associated with anti-Muslim hate groups, is running for U.S. Congress.https://t.co/t0siwPX9oo  CAIR National (@CAIRNational) September 3, 2019

Police officers also arrested him as they believed it was a fake bomb. The school and police department received criticism from people who thought they targeted him based on his name and religion.

However, Van Duyne wrote a statement on Facebook defending the school and police for looking into what they saw as a potential threat. The following year, the parents of the student named the politician as a co-defendant in a defamation lawsuit for libelous and inflammatory statements against the minor.

A judge has since dismissed the suit. She has also received awards from two-anti-Muslim hate groups; ACT for America and the Center for Security Policy.

Stephanie and Travis Hollman donated money to her campaign

In August 2019, Real Housewives of Dallas star Stephanie Hollman, and her husband Travis, both made four contributions of $2,800 for a total of $22,400 toward Van Duynes run for Congress next year.

Look up @stephhollman's political donations. She donated to Beth Van Duyne who received national attention for her Islamophobic comments and ties to anti-Muslim hate groups. #RHOD pic.twitter.com/OZyheu8uOF  Housewife Fan (@HousewifeFan08) January 2, 2020

Its unclear why the two support her and what their relation is to the politician. However, the Texas-based couple did donate to her campaign after her reputation of anti-Muslim hate became public.

Fans call for a cast reboot after too many racist allegations

After LeeAnne Locken made derogatory comments towards fellow housewife Kary Brittingham during Season 4, fans called for her removal. Even Andy Cohen referred to the comments as vile and disgusting.

Additionally, a video resurfaced of Brandi Redmond mocking Asians with her children sitting behind her. Now that another housewife is associated with someone people perceive as racist, fans are calling for an entire cast reboot.

One Twitter user admitted she loves Stephanie but thinks its time to bring in some good people. Another called her a hypocrite and said she has no room to talk about LeeAnne being racist.

While Bravo has not officially confirmed the fifth season of RHOD, they have advertised casting online. Watch Real Housewives of Dallas Part 2 Reunion on January 8, 2020, at 8 p.m. EST on Bravo.
Leaders of the Congress, as well as the Aam Aadmi Party also supported the protest meet which was held at Panaji's Azad maidan grounds and was attended by a several hundred-crowd.

Panaji, Jan 6 (IANS) Students, opposition party leaders and members of civil society on Monday, held a protest in Panaji against the assault on Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University students and members of the faculty late on Sunday, which left several students injured.

"We can see that the government is trying to scapegoat the JNU and they want to create an example out of this university and send a message to the students across the country that if you protest, this will be your fate. They want to indulge in politics of fear," Prasenjit Dhage, a student at the VM Salgaocar college of law.

Earlier on Monday, the Congress legislature party also passed a unanimous resolution condemning the violence against the students by unidentified members of a mob at the university campus in the national capital.

"The CLP condemned the attacks on students at JNU and other parts of the country. It is shameful," Leader of Opposition Digambar Kamat said.

The Aam Aadmi Party in Goa also described the violence against JNU students and faculty members.

"The attack on students is an attack on the future of India itself, as students are the future who need to have a free and fair environment for pursuing their education," Goa AAP convener Elvis Gomes said in a statement issued on Monday.

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aliens exist and may already be on earth, but we just cannot see them, the first Briton in space Dr Helen Sharman has said.

The female cosmonaut, 56, said that there 'must' be other sorts of life out there as there are so many billions of stars and solar systems.

She was first launched into orbit in 1991 as part of a Soviet project, and spent almost eight days in space aboard the Soyuz TM-12 and Mir space station, before returning to earth.

She said that there must be other lives out there due to the many billions of stars

The first British cosmonaut told The Observer Magazine: 'Aliens exist, theres no two ways about it. There are so many billions of stars out there in the universe that there must be all sorts of different forms of life.

'Will they be like you and me, made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not. It's possible they're here right now and we simply can't see them.'

In the interview she also highlighted how she is often referred to as the first British woman in space, rather than first Briton, highlighting an assumption that it was a man.

'When Tim Peake went into space, some people simply forgot about me. A man going first would be the norm, so Im thrilled that I got to upset that order,' she said.

Dr Sharman also told children at a south London primary school that there 'must be (aliens) out there', following a visit in 2016.

'I don't know (if aliens exist)' she said, reports a local newspaper. 'Maybe they're totally see-through. I don't think any were close to my spaceship but there must be some out there. I would love to meet an alien.'

Dr Helen Sharman was first launched into space in May 1991 for an eight day mission in partnership with the Soviet Union

She was selected for the Russian space project after responding to a 1989 radio advertisement looking for applicants for Project Juno.

After 18 months of rigorous training at Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, Russia, she was launched into space for eight days.

She has not returned to space since, and was turned down for Space Projects with the European Space Agency in 1992 and 1998.
The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has established no fewer than 70 enrolment centres in Kano State.

The NIMC Coordinator in the state, Mohammed Auwal-Sanusi, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kano on Monday that the enrolment centres, including the temporary ones, were increased from 50 to 70 as part of renewed efforts to facilitate the operation of the commission in the state.

The temporary enrolment centres give our staff the opportunity to deploy their mobile kits and stay at the centres for one or two weeks before leaving the place, he said.

He said establishing additional registration centres was necessary so as to reduce the hardship being encountered by residents, especially those living in remote areas of the state, in reaching the designated enrolment centres.

He said the additional centres will give all Kano residents the opportunity to be enrolled into the National Identity Database and issued with the National Identification Number (NIM).

The commission had also established some special enrolment centres at places where there is a concentration of people like Bayero University Kano (BUK), Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH), Kwari textile market and Murtala Mohammed Hospital, he said.

He said the commission was looking into the possibility of collaborating with the Kano State Government to register and enrol especially final year students who must use the National Identification Number to register for JAMB examinations.

The collaboration with the state government is in the process. This will enable us to go schools in order to get the students enrolled to make it easy for them to register for the JAMB examinations, he said.

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He called on the media to continue to support the commission through massive public awareness on the importance of the National Identification Number to encourage residents to come and obtain the number.

On challenges, the coordinator said inadequate funding remained the major obstacle hindering the smooth operation of the commission as it required no less than N150 billion to enable it implement the project successfully.

Inadequate funding is the major challenge of the commission. When the present Director-General took over in 2015, he did mention that the N7 billion budget of the commission was grossly inadequate to enable it implement the project.

According to the DG, the commission requires N150 billion to meet up with the number of its demands, he added.

(NAN)
Manya Lazaroff, director of Chabad at Texas A&M University, was caught by surprise.

She was in the middle of a meeting when a crew from KBTX-TV arrived at the Rohr Chabad Jewish Center to present her with the Be Remarkable award on December 12th. Since July, Daniel Stark Law and the TV station have given the award to nine Brazos Valley residents who do remarkable things.

Kaitlyn Smith, Brand Manager at Daniel Stark P.C. says that when they launched their campaign they received 300 initial nominations for remarkable Brazos Valley residents. Manya was one among them. Yet Manya is only the tenth local to receive the bi-monthly award. She was nominated by Allison Nagelberg of New Jersey whose son, Cory attended Texas A&M and by Lindsey Guindi, a local community member.

What was so noticeable about Manya was that even a basic google search revealed comments and posts from people who were touched by and appreciative of Manyas personal care, Kaitlyn shared with Lubavitch.com.

In the TV clip of her award News 3s Rusty Surette describes the center, nestled in the College Station neighborhood as a home away from home for Jewish Aggies (the nickname for students at Texas A&M.) Inside, students are treated to a home-cooked meal and treated like family. And in this family, Manya is the Mom, he says.

Manya takes that title seriously as she cares for her Aggie family and the larger Bryan-College Station communities with unbounded love and energy. Its all part of the agenda that brought Manya and her husband, Rabbi Yossi to Texas in 2007. Our goal is that after four years here you walk out a stronger, healthier, more empowered, more educated Jew.

Whether its sending hot chicken soup to a student, or community member who doesnt feel good, or providing a listening ear, or a shoulder to cry on for those going through a hard time, they keep their eye on that goal. (She remembers my birthday, even five years after my son graduated, Allison says.) Manya teaches Torah classes, hosts Shabbat and holiday dinners and parties, arranges a zumba class, a cooking club, womens Torah and Tea sessions and a Hebrew school. She pioneered an initiative to bring awareness to and support for those struggling with mental wellness with the same aim in mind.

The Chabad philosophy is that we dont beat darkness with a stick. We shine a light so that someone can bask in it, and find their inner light and walk on stronger, Manya says. With warmth and acceptance she hopes to be the light that will bolster college students struggling with their mental health to go forth and shine their own lights.

She strives to create meaningful relationships with a broad spectrum of students and community members. She opens up her heart, she opens up her home and provides inspiration to everyone she meets, and changes lives through her mentorship, Lindsey shared with the law firm.

You meet them for even one hour and youre blown away by their warmth and love, Allison tells Lubavitch.com. Manya is unflappable, I dont know how she does it. There are people waltzing in and out of her home and she will drop whatever she is doing to spend time with someone who needs her.

The Lazaroffs do all this while raising their six kids. Their youngest are 10-year-old triplets.

This Mom though, wont take all the credit, emphatically insisting that everything that happens at Chabad is a team effort. We run on support from other people. Its not about me, its about the team  the Rabbinic Fellows who assist us, our family, the students, alumni, parents and our generous donors. Were just the feet on the ground, Manya says. She also makes note of the support of her sister representatives, creating Chabad on Campus homes-away-from-home on over 260 college campuses around the world.

The reassurance shes providing for parents, the home she is providing for the students, all this is remarkable, says Kaitlyn. She has a large family, but is creating an even larger family and they are lucky to have her.

Once again, Manya asserts, were not remarkable, were representatives of the Rebbe, who are part of a team of the world network of shluchim making sure every jew has the spiritual, emotional, and physical support they need.

And Allison is confident theyre doing that. Chabad is obviously a religious organization, but it quickly becomes part of your social life, your community. It becomes integral not just to college life, but to your life as a whole.
After years of broadcasting news on China Central Television, Kang Hui has become an item of newsworthy interest himself. Despite his fame, he prefers to keep a low profile but he has actually become popular on the internet with his penetrating judgments and his vlog introducing China's diplomacy.



"I never expected that I would become popular online, but I'm willing to take that responsibility, and will do a good job. People can get information from various channels and I would like to try to pass on information from different channels to them, especially young people."

Kang's surge in popularity is due in no small part to his new book Average Score (Ping Jun Fen). Published by Changjiang Literature and Arts Publishing House, the book records Kang's life story from childhood. It scored highly, with 7.1 points out of 10, on China's popular review platform Douban.

At the book launch on Nov 30 in Beijing, Kang said he had originally rejected the idea about writing a book on himself.

"I always believe I am someone who has few stories to tell since I didn't experience many ups and downs. I have just led an ordinary life," he says.

But a publisher changed his mind when he told him not to underestimate his experiences.

"He said you just put down what you have experienced. Even if only one sentence would touch a reader, and make him or her resonate with you, the book is meaningful," recalls Kang when he explained how he was persuaded to put pen to paper.

Kang says, modestly, that the title means he is very ordinary in terms of talent. "I have to strive continuously so that I can achieve an average score. I cannot gain an edge over others without huge effort in any area."

After anchoring Xinwen Lianbo, one of the world's most-watched news programs produced by CCTV, for more than a decade, Kang's name is now closely linked to this program. Kang intertwined his story in the book with the program and its changes over the years.

Xinwen Lianbo is a highly demanding live program and Kang freely admits to the pressure in anchoring it. "Every word I say carries huge weight, every second I stay in the studio is a political task, and every day is like an exam for me. Even after anchoring it for more than a decade, I still feel tense every time I sit in the chair."

As a journalist and anchorman at CCTV, he has also witnessed many important events in Chinese history and recorded some of them, including the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. For example, when he reported on the expo, he was required to make introductory videos about different pavilions to attract greater public interest. He and his colleagues battled the crowds and joined the queues to enter the pavilions. Dealing with the influx of so many visitors added to the problems of filming, picking the right shots and angles. After several weeks, it took a toll on his voice which nearly played havoc with his live broadcasts.

A Douban user, Caomeicaomeidexigua, says: "I can feel Kang's frankness from this book, the parts about his family life attracted me the most. And his letter to his mother moves me to tears."

Besides his work experiences, Kang also talks about his family life, including stories of his parents, sister, wife and two cats. "We should always remind ourselves to express love to those we hold dear," Kang points out at the book launch.

Douban user Lulu says: "I can imagine his character and his ways of dealing with things after reading the book. I have similar characteristics, but he is much more strict with himself. I should learn from him."

Kang, ever the professional, is critical about his writing. "The time was quite limited for me to write this book, and I always feel my writing is very tense."

Kang says readers may not know everything about him after reading the book, "but if some points can hit the target and make them smile, I guess that would be the best interaction between us".
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 22:24:26|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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TOKYO, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Justice Minister Masako Mori on Monday repeatedly maintained that former Nissan Motor chairman Carlos Ghosn jumping bail and fleeing Japan's justice system was illegal.

Mori told a press conference on the matter that Ghosn, who was facing trial in Japan for alleged financial misconduct, but fled the country and arrived in Lebanon on Dec. 30 via Turkey, did so illegally.

"Leaving without going through proper embarkation procedures and using unauthorized means comprise a crime of illegal departure," Mori told a press conference in Tokyo, while keeping mum on the potentially elaborate and dramatic details of his escape, which may have involved trained accomplices.

In the first such press conference since Ghosn skipped bail, Mori refuted his claims of a "rigged justice system" here, stating that Japan's justice system "ensures basic human rights" and is operated appropriately.

"This is an issue separate from his illegal departure from Japan," she added.

She was referring to a statement issued by Ghosn's U.S. representative in which the ex-Nissan chief said, "I am now in Lebanon and will no longer be held hostage by a rigged Japanese justice system."

"Guilt is presumed, discrimination is rampant, and basic human rights are denied," Ghosn, whose trial was expected to begin here in April, said.

The 65-year-old ex-auto tycoon, was initially arrested more than a year ago by Japanese prosecutors.

He was released on bail in April on strict conditions that included a ban on foreign travel, limited access to telephones and computers and restricted to a surveilled residence.

Ghosn, who holds Brazilian, French and Lebanese nationality, is believed to have left from Kansai International Airport in Osaka on a private jet on Dec. 29, traveling to Lebanon via Turkey.

Sources close to the matter have said that immigration here have no record of Ghosn leaving Japan, while the the Tokyo District Court said last week that there have been no changes made to his bail conditions and he remains banned from traveling abroad.

Local media here, citing a Lebanese media outlet, said the former auto bigwig may have hidden in box that was designed to carry musical equipment and departed from Japan undetected from a regional airport.

It has been reported that he managed to flee Japan with the assistance of a security company and was in possession of a French passport.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK said Monday that Japanese aviation sources have said that the names of two U.S. citizens may have been on the boarding list of the private jet believed to have been used by Ghosn to flee Japan.

Three Turkish crew members, including two pilots, were also on the list, the sources said.

The name of one of the Americans aboard matches that of a prominent former U.S. special forces member, NHK said, citing foreign media, adding that the individual may have been involved in an operation to rescue an American journalist captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2009.

Meanwhile, the Japanese foreign ministry has said that Japan and Lebanon do not have an extradition treaty, which means that Ghosn cannot be legally handed over to Japan without Lebanon first agreeing to it.

If Lebanon refuse to cooperate in handing over Ghosn to Japanese authorities, Ghosn will not face trial in Japan in April, a senior foreign ministry official here said last week.
By Agencies

MUMBAI: Shaken by the attacks in the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus in Delhi late on Sunday, hundreds of people staged protests across India on Monday condemning the manner in which students and teachers were targeted.

MAHARASHTRA

The impromptu protests started from midnight and continued till morning at the Gateway of India, near the IIT-Bombay campus in Powai in Mumbai. And in Pune, protests occurred in the FTII campus.

Many carried the Tricolour, candles, handwritten banners and posters expressing solidarity with the JNU students and raised slogans demanding action against those involved in the attack.

Maharashtra minister Jitendra Awhad of NCP joined the students at the protest and sat with them discussing their demands.

"When people begin to fear intellect, there is anarchy," the minister told reporters.

"I am going to convey feelings of the students to the government. When students agitate, one should understand that this is a serious issue," he said.

ALSO READ: Delhi Police files FIR, case transferred to Crime Branch; Registrar, Pro-VC meet LG

Several political leaders from the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi slammed the violence against the JNU students-teachers and demanded stringent action against the perpetrators, here on Monday.

Terming it as "a planned attack", Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar said the students and professors were subjected to a cowardly attack.

"I strongly condemn this undemocratic act of vandalism and violence. Use of violent means to suppress democratic values and thought will never succeed," Pawar said.

State Congress and Revenue Minister Balasaheb Thorat strongly flayed the "brutal violence unleashed by the goons of ABVP" inside the JNU.

ALSO READ | JNU violence: Fascist attack, says Rahul Gandhi; BJP blames 'tukde tukde' gang

"This is sheer hooliganism, they are ransacking property and harming people. I demand that the attackers should be brought to book immediately," Thorat said.

Shiv Sena leader and Environment Minister Aditya Thackeray said that the violence and brutality faced by students while protesting is worrisome.

"Be it Jamia, JNU, students mustn't face brutal force. Let them be! These goons must face action. They must be brought to time-bound and swift justice," Aditya Thackeray demanded.

More protests are planned during the day on Monday, said an activist P.S. Prasad, at the University of Mumbai and at the Hutatma Chowk in south Mumbai, besides other colleges and universities, by student organizations and NGOs.

HYDERABAD

A group of students and citizens staged a protest here condemning the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, police said.

Expressing solidarity with the JNU students, the protesters gathered near Ambedkar statute on Tank Bund after midnight on Sunday and raised slogans like "Students Fraternity Zindabaad" and held placards that read "We are with you JNU".

They raised slogans andheld a candlelight protest and later dispersed, a senior police official told PTI.

The protesters also raised slogans against the Narendra Modi government over the CAA.

Similarly, a group of students under the banner of "HCU Students Union" also protested against the violence at JNU.

They took out a rally late Sunday night on the campus of University of Hyderabad (UoH) here condemning the "brutal attack on JNU students" and blamed the ABVP for the violence and demanded the arrest of the culprits.

PUNJAB

Some students on Monday shouted slogans during a seminar at the Panjab University here to protest the violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

The students shouted slogans when Haryana Assembly Speaker Gian Chand Gupta was speaking a seminar- 'Women's Participation in Decision Making' at the PU campus here.

Protesters including girls students were taken out of the seminar hall by the security personnel.

Later talking to media, one of the protesters Kanupriya strongly condemned the attack on the Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union (JNUSU) President Aishe Ghosh.

Talking to reporters, Gupta described the protest as "a premeditated act".

ALSO READ | Got no response from police; students, teachers beaten up bloody: JNU student on January 5 violence

Protests also took place at Pondicherry University, Bengaluru University, and Aligarh Muslim University.

Students staged peaceful marches to register their protest against the violence on the JNU campus.

"Today it is them, tomorrow it can be us. Violence in any form is condemnable. We stand by our friends in JNU," Raiza, a Pondicherry University student said.
America's military strategy in Iraq was thrown into confusion Monday as the Pentagon admitted a letter from a general informing the Iraqi government of an imminent US troop pullout was sent by "mistake." The latest developments came as a sea of black-clad mourners in Tehran paid homage to Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force who was killed in a US strike in Iraq on Friday. US Brigadier General William Seely informed his Iraqi counterparts in a letter dated Sunday that American troops were preparing to leave Iraq. "We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure," said the letter, whose authenticity was confirmed to AFP by both Iraqi and US defence officials. Seely said the US-led coalition would "be repositioning forces." "In order to conduct this task, Coalition Forces are required to take certain measures to ensure that the movement out of Iraq is conducted in a safe and efficient manner," said the letter. It said helicopters would be travelling in and around Baghdad's Green Zone where the US embassy is located as part of the preparations. AFP could hear helicopters flying low over Baghdad throughout the night on Monday. But Pentagon Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley said on Monday the letter was a mere "draft" and "should not have been sent." "It was a mistake, an honest mistake, a draft unsigned letter, because we are moving forces around," Milley told reporters in Washington. US Defence Secretary Mark Esper said the letter was "inconsistent" with Washington's position and denied there had been a decision to leave Iraq. The US drone strike that killed Soleimani, as well as Iraqi military commanders, has sparked fury in both Iran and Iraq, with Tehran vowing revenge. Iraqi lawmakers on Sunday urged the government to oust all foreign troops from Iraqi soil. - Trump threatens 'retaliation' - Some 5,200 US soldiers are stationed across Iraqi bases to support local troops preventing a resurgence of the Islamic State group. They make up the bulk of a broader coalition, invited by the Iraqi government in 2014 to help combat the jihadists. On Monday, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei fought back tears as mourners flooded the streets around Tehran University to honour Soleimani. The targeted killing of the 62-year-old Soleimani saw Iran step back even further from the already tattered 2015 nuclear accord with world powers. In an escalating war of words that has heightened international concern and rattled financial markets, Trump threatened yet more "major retaliation" if Tehran hits back, including strikes on Iranian cultural sites. Writing in all-caps on Monday, Trump tweeted: "IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!" - 'Path of sobriety' - Iraq requested in a letter to the UN -- seen by AFP -- that the Security Council condemn the US drone strike, so that "the law of the jungle" was not allowed to prevail. The operation represented "a dangerous escalation that could lead to a devastating war in Iraq, the region and the world," wrote the Iraqi ambassador to the UN, Mohammed Hussein Bahr-Aluloom. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned Iran must avoid "further violence and provocations" after the alliance held emergency talks in Brussels. "At our meeting today, allies called for restraint and de-escalation. A new conflict would be in no-one's interest," he said. Saudi Arabia -- an oil-rich US ally seen as vulnerable to Iranian counter strikes -- also appealed for calm. The European Union, whose foreign ministers will hold emergency talks Friday, said it was in Iran and Iraq's interest to "take the path of sobriety and not the path of escalation." EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell said he "deeply regrets" Iran's latest step back from the nuclear deal. The agreement had offered Tehran sanctions relief in return for curbs to prevent it acquiring nuclear weapons -- but Trump's withdrawal in 2018 dramatically weakened the deal. Despite its latest step, Iran insisted it would continue to cooperate with the UN agency overseeing its atomic programme. - Throngs of mourners - The raw emotions sparked by the killing of Soleimani were on full display in Tehran, where state television said "several million" black-clad mourners filled the streets. "The last time I remember such a crowd was at Ayatollah Khomeini's funeral 30 years ago," said Iranian journalist Maziar Khosravi. As they marched down a main artery of Tehran, the mourners chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel". Soleimani, a beloved hero of the 1980s war with Iraq, will be laid to rest in his hometown Kerman on Tuesday. Trump on Saturday issued a US strike list of 52 targets in the Islamic republic. "Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290. #IR655 Never threaten the Iranian nation," Rouhani tweeted, referring to 290 lives lost in July 1988 when a US warship shot down an Iran Air plane in the Gulf. Trump said his figure of 52 targets represented the number of Americans held hostage at the US embassy in Tehran for more than a year starting in late 1979. Amid the tensions in the oil-rich region, crude prices surged and most equities tumbled while safe-haven gold hit a more than six-year high. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (L), accompanied by Ebrahim Raisi, Chief Justice of Iran, in front of the coffin of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani US President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened yet more "major retaliation" if Tehran hits back, including on Iranian cultural sites Iranian mourners lift a picture of slain military commander Qasem Soleimani during a funeral procession in the capital Tehran Iranian mourners carry a picture of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (R) granting the highest military honour of Iran to General Qasem Soleimani Iranians flood Tehran to mourn commander Qasem Soleimani who was killed in a US strike Map of Iran and Iraq showing developments in military escalation in which Iranian commander General Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US strike on the orders of US President Donald Trump
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 22:48:28|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The 20th Meet in Beijing International Arts Festival opened Monday with a concert delivered by Chinese and Japanese artists at the National Centre for the Performing Arts.

More than 60 performances and three exhibitions will be staged over the following month as part of the festival by art troupes and over 700 artists from 12 countries and regions, including the National Ballet of China, the Maria Pages Company, French pianist Richard Clayderman and the Berlin Philharmonic.

The festival this year will feature elements of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, which will remain a feature for the next two editions of the festival.

As the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are also around the corner, Japan was chosen as the festival's guest country of honor this year.

The closing ceremony of the festival will take place on Feb. 4 at the Beijing National Stadium.
(Bloomberg) -- The milk float, a home-delivery service that evolved from horse-drawn carriages to early electric vehicles, belongs firmly in the past. Or does it?

A little known Amsterdam-based online grocery company had revived the concept, but with a modern flourish.

Picnic BV has a concept dubbed Milkman 2.0 to deliver groceries using electric vehicles, focusing on less food waste and fewer food miles traveled. The company buys and delivers locally, with its vans going no faster that 50 kilometers per hour.

Our aim is create a sustainable infrastructure for food delivery, Joris Beckers, the companys 53-year-old co-founder, said in a phone interview.

Founded in 2015, Picnic has unleashed a fleet of 1,000 electric vans on to the streets of the Netherlands and Germany and plans to add hundreds more by the end of 2020. The company says the delivery vehicle it has designed and produced is fully electric and has no small particle emissions and prevents traffic due to its slim design.

Wealthy Backers

Backed by investors including the investment arm of the entrepreneurial Fentener van Vlissingen family, the company raised 250 million euros ($278 million) in a new round of funding in November.

Other backers include De Hoge Dennen Capital, the De Rijke family and Hoyberg, the investment arm of the Hoyer family, which is a shareholder of Heineken NV.

We are high growth, high risk, but in it for the long-term, Beckers said.

The company will use the cash to continue its growth and build a robotised fulfilment center for online groceries in Utrecht, Holland. The center will aim to process around 150,000 orders every week, it says.

Building Infrastructure

The grocery-delivery market is intensely competitive, and Picnics concept is not entirely original. In the U.K., Ocado is among online supermarkets with no stores that delivers from its warehouses. In Germany, theres Bringmeister.

Picnic says it has a 5% market share in the most mature cities in which it is active. The grocery market in the Netherlands totals 40 billion euros and in Germany its 175 billion euros, according to the company.

Story continues

This year was a record for Picnic, which added almost 300,000 new customers in the Netherlands and Germany. Picnics annual revenue currently stands at about 300 million euros, but the company has its sights set on bigger things.

A law graduate and a biking enthusiast, Beckers, who said at a Shop Talk Europe conference in 2017 that he stumbled into the internet world around about 1999, when Amazon was still a little bookstore, doesnt want Picnic to stop at groceries.

Food is our entry point but were building an e-commerce infrastructure, he said.

For instance, the company is operating a number of pilot projects with fashion retailers including Zalando SE to allow customers to send their returns back via Picnic.

We are disrupting and significantly improving the e-commerce experience, Beckers said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Syed in London at ssyed35@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Giles Turner at gturner35@bloomberg.net, Vidya Root

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Activist Irom Sharmila on Sunday, January 5, participated in the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR) at Sir Puttanna Chetty Town Hall in Bengaluru. She participated in a 'burqa and bindi' protest marking the birth anniversary of social reformer Savitribai Phule. Further, the activist attended the protest along with her child.

About Irom Sharmila

Irom Sharmila, known across the world as the 'Iron Lady' of Manipur. The civil rights activist is known for her 16-year hunger strike against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in the state. She ended the protest in 2016.

Read: People gather to stage protest against CAA, NRC, NPR in Bhubaneswar

Protests against CAA

Several violent protests have been erupting across Assam, West Bengal, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh against the newly amended Citizenship Act, following the violence at Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi where over 50 students were detained by police during the protests. The anti-CAA movement has spread to more places like Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pondicherry, Patna and so on.

Read: CAA Protests: Akhilesh Yadav alleges 'deaths by UP police's bullets', visits victims kin

The Citizenship Act was passed in the Lok Sabha on December 9 and then by the Rajya Sabha on December 11. The Act seeks to grant Indian citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. Through this bill, Indian citizenship will be provided to the members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian communities, who have come from the three countries to India till December 31, 2014, and put an end to them being treated as illegal immigrants in the country.

Read: AAP's Sanjay Singh: 'BJP avoiding real issues, CAA, NPR, NRC are mere distractions'

Read: Cong will not implement CAA, NPR, NRC in present forms in Delhi if voted to power: Chopra

(WITH ANI INPUTS)
One of Americas Oldest Milk Producers Files for Bankruptcy

Borden Dairy Inc., one of the largest milk producers in the United States, announced it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, becoming the second major dairy company to do so in the past two months.

Dean Foods, the largest milk producer in America, filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 12.

Borden said in a statement that it filed for bankruptcy because it cant afford its debt load and pension obligations. The firm currently has about 3,300 employees.

We must achieve a more viable capital structure, said Borden CEO Tony Sarsam in a statement. This reorganization will strengthen our position for future prosperity. Over the past 163 years, we have earned the distinction of being one of the most well-recognized and reputable national brands.

In the bankruptcy filing, Borden listed estimated debts and liabilities ranging between $100 million and $500 million, according to the Dallas Business Journal. It filed the claim in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

Sarsam told the Business Journal on Sunday that Bordens bankruptcy cannot be compared with Deans bankruptcy filing.

Our situation differs in fairly significant ways, Sarsam said. All of our businesses are EBIDTA-positive and were growing. Dean is shrinking, and theyve been negative for multiple quarters in a row. Their filing was largely about operational problems they couldnt solve, said Sarsam.

Dean Foods, meanwhile, reported losses in seven of the last eight quarters, according to the report.

Unlike a lot of companies in this situation, were still focused on our people, Sarsam said. A lot of companies will raise the white flag on employee recognition and pay increases. Were not going to do any of that. Its business as usual.

But Bordens statement said that its business has been impacted by broader dairy trends.

Despite our numerous achievements during the past 18 months, the company continues to be impacted by the rising cost of raw milk and market challenges facing the dairy industry, Sarsam said in the statement. These challenges have contributed to making our current level of debt unsustainable. For the last few months, we have engaged in discussions with our lenders to evaluate a range of potential strategic plans for the company. Ultimately, we determined that the best way to protect the company, for the benefit of all stakeholders, is to reorganize through this court-supervised process.

Over the past four decades or so, American milk consumption has been gradually on the decline. In 1975, the average American drank about 28.7 gallons of milk per year, while by 2017 the average person drank about 17.1 gallons annually, the Business Journal noted.
The "Finland: Advanced Facilities Analysis 2019" report from Wintergreen Research, Inc has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Growth in the advanced facilities market is based on the implementation of polymer-based drug delivery technology, energy-efficient data centers, and AI computing. Access to locations across the world through strategically placed cables promises to make Finland the location of choice for a data center. Favorable work environments and a culture of integrity are a huge draw for the country. The people are nice and the working conditions are comfortable in Finland.

The research and development department in Turku Finland is the only research and development unit in the Bayer Group focused on polymer-based drug delivery technology. The technology can be utilized in products with a lifetime of a few months up to several years. polymer-based drug delivery technology promises to provide a significantly high growth market and to attract companies who want to be close to the Finish center of excellence for this technology.

Data centers and networks in Finland are unique and wonderful. Aiber Networks Finland data center implements a cloud. Aiber Networks converted an underground military facility. The caves in which the company is building are made up of three separate tunnels that will each be used for individual data halls. The caves have been converted and used to host high availability cloud services.

The site offers 13,000 square feet of space. It supports 50 kW per rack, with a total power consumption of up to 4 MW. The Tampere data center is designed to meet Tier IV specifications. It features a high degree of automation. Free cooling and liquid cooling are employed, and waste heat is sold to the city's electrical company. The project is estimated to cost between $55 million and $110 million dollars.

Google PUE of 1.1 in Finland is unmatched anywhere else in the world. The climatic environment is an asset in Finland as data centers need cooling. The scale is everything in the era of the Clos architecture of the data center and optical transceivers inside the data center. Data moves at the speed of light around the network inside the data center so scale is important. Outside the mega data center, the charter is to leverage international cable infrastructure. Plans are attracting investment in data communications access in Finland that provides worldwide reach with millisecond data transmission anywhere.

Varian Medical Systems Finland Oy is offering world class product sets. Varian Medical Systems Finland Oy makes ultraviolet (UV), infrared and radiological equipment for biological and medical applications. Varian Medical Systems Finland Oy is the developer of Varian's premium radiotherapy treatment planning systems, such as Eclipse and BrachyVision.

Key Topics Covered in this Report:

Efficient Data Centers

Low PUE

5G in Finland

Local Total Recordable

Incident Rate (TRIR)

Occupational Safety and Health

Employment Contracts

Workplace Laws and OSH

Unions Use Collective Bargaining

Work Safety Regulations

Double Taxation

Tax Issues Arising On Construction Projects

Regulations and Compliance

Tax incentives

Customs Regulations

Finland Bio-Pharma

Finland Medical Technology

Finland Hyperscale Data Centers

Mega Data Centers

Google PUE of 1.1 in Finland

Finland Data Communication

World-class data centers

Business Ecosystems

Networks

Co-location Service

Equipment

Round Trip Delay Table

Cloud Exchange Fabric Data

Transport

Arctic Connect Cableway

Companies Mentioned

Addoz

AECOM

Aiber

Arctic Security

Bayer

Cathexis UK Holdings Limited

Codescoop

Confederation of Finnish Construction Industries (RT Rakennusteollisuus) (CFCI)

CSC

Equiinix

Espoo

Ficolo

Finlex

Finnish Association of Building Owners and Construction Clients (RAKLI)

Finnish Construction Trade Union Rakennusliitto

Flexbright

Fluor

Fortis

Gearshiftgroup

Google

Granlund

Granlung Telia

Hetzner

Honeywell

HP Enterprise

IndoorAtlas

ISG Plc

Johnson Controls

Kone

Lemminkinen/DPR Fortis Mission Critical

LocusLabs

Luia

MediaTek

Microsoft

Neste Jacobs

Nokia Siemens

Oulu

OuluHealth

OVHcloud

Paras Biopharmaceuticals

Pfizer

Pyry PLC

Radar Installations

RD-ROI Helsinki DC

Sea Lion

Sirius Engineers Ltd

Skangas' LNG

Telia

The ABB Group

Third Space Auto

Tieto

Turku

Yandex

YIT

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/i8i1na

Source: Wintergreen Research, Inc

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As the U.S. awaits possible retribution over a recent airstrike that killed a top general, theres at least one American businessman who can attest, in detail, to what happened after he provoked Iran.

In October 2013, Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate and prominent supporter of conservative politicians and Israel, appeared on a panel in New York in which he suggested that the U.S. could send a message to Iran, regarding its nuclear ambitions, by detonating an American warhead in the middle of the Iranian desert.

You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position, said Adelson, who later became a major supporter of President Donald Trump. His comments infuriated Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who two weeks later said America should slap these prating people in the mouth.

Months later, in February 2014, hackers inserted malware into the computer networks of Adelsons Las Vegas casino. The withering cyber-attack laid waste to about three quarters of the companys Las Vegas servers; the cost of recovering data and building new systems cost $40 million or more.

A year after the attack, the top U.S. intelligence official confirmed that Iran was behind it.

Now, as Iran vows revenge for the airstrike, the U.S. faces an aggressive adversary in which digital warfare may be among its best options to strike directly at the American population. In the years since the Sands incident, Iranian hackers have continued their attacks, targeting a U.S. presidential campaign, universities, journalists, and even a dam in suburban New York.

Im sure the Iranians are asking their hackers for a list of options, said James Lewis, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who oversees the policy research groups cybersecurity program. Cyber-attacks can be tempting if they can find the right American target.

Milan Patel, former chief technological officer of the FBIs cyber division, said he was worried about what may come next since Iran has shown interest in targeting critical infrastructure. Power generation like hydro and electric, thats where they can cause the most real world damage, said Patel, now the chief client officer at the cybersecurity firm BlueVoyant.

A representative for Las Vegas Sands Corp. didnt return a message seeking comment.

Iran is hardly the only U.S. cyber adversary. China has allegedly stolen so much intellectual property from U.S. companies, including by hacking, that FBI Director Christopher Wray accused the country of trying to steal their way up the economic ladder at our expense.

But cyber-attacks can also be used to create disruptive effects that can impact millions. In a computer-dependent world, hackers can clog ports, shut down transportation networks, and open dams.

Iran has shown a willingness to use those types of digital attacks  targeting some of the U.S.s biggest banks, the worlds top oil producer, and Adelsons casino empire.

Destructive Attacks

Cyber adversaries, including Iran, have generally aimed attacks at targets unlikely to fully draw a response from the U.S.s own potent cyberwarfare arsenal.

Evidence of possible retaliation of the American drone strike emerged late on Jan. 4 when the website for the little-known U.S. Federal Depository Library Program was hacked and defaced with pro-Iranian, anti-U.S. messaging, confirmed a spokesman for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The site has since been taken down.

At this time, there is no confirmation that this was the action of Iranian state-sponsored actors, reads a statement issued by CISA, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

The FDLP is a government entity created to make federal publications available to the public for free.

Tit-for-Tat Fears

Given the heightened tensions, a major digital strike by Iran could trigger the kind of escalating, tit-for-tat strikes that fling the two sides toward the brink of war. The U.S. is widely believed to have the ability to shut down power grids, interrupt air travel and create chaos at ports through digital strikes alone. Irans hackers and digital arms are less sophisticated, cybersecurity experts say, but the number of U.S.-related targets available to them is huge.

The digital feud between the U.S. and Iran dates back more than a decade, to when a devastating digital worm called Stuxnet crippled an Iranian uranium processing facility. That attack has been attributed by multiple media outlets to the U.S. and Israel.

Partly in response, Iranian hackers launched attacks starting in 2011 that overwhelmed the websites of Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and others over a period of months. The attacks eventually proved little more than an inconvenience for online customers, but financial institutions spent millions of dollars to keep their websites up and running over the period of the attacks.

Learning Period

Those early Iranian attacks are now seen as part of a learning period, as the countrys hackers worked to catch up with the sophistication of other cyberpowers before beginning to target physical infrastructure like pipelines and dams.

In 2013, Iranian hackers breached the control system of a small dam in Rye, New York, according to a federal indictment. While the hackers were successful in gaining access to the dams systems, which allowed them to see information like water levels and the dams settings, they were unable to operate the gate that controls water levels because it had been manually disconnected for maintenance. It isnt known if the Iranian hackers intended to release water from the dam.

More recently, Iranian government-linked hackers tried to infiltrate email accounts of a U.S. presidential candidate, current and former U.S. officials and journalists, Microsoft Corp. reported last year. The New York Times and Reuters reported that President Trumps re-election campaign had been targeted.

While the presidential campaign wasnt among those compromised, that attempted breach, and the many others, has provided experience to a group of hackers that may now be assigned with seeking revenge on the U.S.

Norman Roule, a former CIA official who also served as national intelligence manager for Iran, said cyber-attacks will almost certainly increase in the coming months. Irans cyber strategy will likely seek to accomplish three goals: punishing the U.S., deterring the U.S. from future attacks and allowing Iran to save face, he said.

Lewis, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said if the Iranians decide to retaliate with a cyber-attack, they will likely want something dramatic in choosing a target.

The big question is: will they do something symbolic, like the bank attacks? he said. Or try for both symbolic and disruptive, as they did with Sands?

With assistance from Ryan Gallagher.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
A new book, entitled Leitrim: History and Society has been published recently to great acclaim.

Consisting of almost 900 pages of fascinating text, photos, maps, tables; this book covers many interesting aspects from Leitrim's history, ranging from its physical landscape, its prehistoric past, its medieval history (500AD - 1500AD), the Spanish Armada, and the Great Famine to its current landscape and the quest for a sustainable future for Leitrim.

This book is the most comprehensive history ever published about Leitrim.

In a series of 35 very readable chapters, written by 35 eminent historians and well-known local writers, Leitrim's chequered history is revealed in chapters about some of its best-known people.

You can read about icons such as Sean MacDiarmada, Frederick Hamilton, Jimmy Gralton, John McGahern, Fr Thomas Maguire and many more.

There are also chapters about momentous events such as plantations, revolutions, elections, population increase and decline, sporting contests, and the experiences of its people shaped by their religious allegiances, Catholic or Protestant.

This is no academic tome; typical of these latter chapters is Tommy Morans chapter on all aspects of sport in Leitrim since 1800.

Others include Ballinamore man, John Logan who writes on Leitrim and the 1914-18 war, Mohill man, Pat McGarty on Leitrim Politics and Society, 1916-22.

Fr Liam Kelly writes on Sean MacDiarmada and James Wrynn on Jimmy Gralton.

Maire Doyle, now sadly deceased, writes on John McGahern and Ruth McManus on the future of land use in Leitrim.

This wonderful history is co-edited by Monsignor Liam Kelly (originally from Kiltubrid) and Dr. Brendan Scott ( from Ballinaglera).

The General Editor is Professor William Nolan (UCD).

For the publishers, Geography Publications, Leitrim is the 27th county to have its history published by them in their Irish County; History and Society series.

A limited edition of 500 books have been published of this Leitrim volume.

This book would make an ideal gift at any time of the year, for a relation or friend or for a Leitrim person living abroad.

It will be a much sought after book in years to come.

It is 60 RRP and is available in retail outlets throughout the county as well as online.

Bryan Dobson, of the Dobson family, Mohill and of course one of RTEs best known and most popular broadcasters launched the book on December 6 in Aras an Chontae, the County Council Offices in Carrick-on-Shannon.
The local Maoist leaders who attended the meeting included Sonu, Nagesh, Raghu, Kamli, and Kannaya, the reports said.

Bhopal: Nearly three weeks after the death of the secretary of Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee (DKSZC), Ramanna alias Ravula Srinivas, the Maoist leadership is yet to find his replacement leaving local Naxal leaders and cadres in the region, particularly in Bastar in Chhattisgarh, anxious.

That it is proving a challenging task for the Maoist leadership to find Ramannas replacement can be gauged from the fact that two central committee (CC) membersRamakrishna, currently the secretary of Andhra Orissa Border committee, and Ganesh Uike alias Saka Hanumanthu, who has been elevated as DKSZC member and made West Bastar Divisional Committee and southern regional unified command last yearof the outlawed outfit have declined the offer to head the DKSZC citing their advancing age.

The development clearly indicates that Maoists are facing serious challenge from security forces to retain their fast shrinking base in Dandakaranya region, particularly in Bastar in Chhattisgarh, Bastar range inspector general of police P. Sunderraj told this newspaper.

Other top rung Maoist leaders, who are in the contention for the crucial post of strategic zone of DKSZC, which generates revenue to the tune of `300 crore per annum in the form of extortions for the outlawed outfit, included Tippri Tirupati alias Devji, the secretary of the Central Military Commission (CMC); Raju alias Vijaya Juru, the secretary of North sub-zonal bureau; and K. Rama Chandra Reddy, who has recently been promoted from East Bastar Divisional Committee in-charge to DKSZC member.

In another development, Madkam Hidma, a Naxal leader hailing from Sukma district in South Bastar, who currently commands the first battalion of CPI (Maoist), has staked claim to the post, intelligence reports said.

Hidma held a meeting of local Maoist leaders including commanders of platoons under his battalion in the village of Sakler under Kistaram police station in South Bastar district of Sukma on December 13 to chalk out the future course of action in wake of the death of Ramanna, intelligence reports, accessed by this newspaper, revealed.

The local Maoist leaders who attended the meeting included Sonu, Nagesh, Raghu, Kamli, and Kannaya, the reports said.

He stands a remote chance of replacing Ramanna as secretary of DKSZC considering his position in the Maoist hierarchy, an expert, in the know of the developments in the Maoist circle, told this newspaper.

While the next big figure among Maoists in South Bastar is clearly Hidma, who has cultivated a persona much like Ramanna did in his early days, security agencies feel his identity as a tribal may be a drawback, a senior police officer of Chhattisgarh said.

It is difficult for the central committee members of CPI (Maoist), all of whom are from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, to accept a leader from Chhattisgarh, he added.

Ramanna died at Pallaguda in Sukma district on December 7 and was cremated at Betlenka in the district two days later.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wept while leading mourners in prayer for the funeral on Monday of slain military commander Qassem Soleimani, whose death in a US drone strike has caused a huge outpouring of national grief.

Iranians poured on to the streets of the capital Tehran to bid farewell to the commander of the Quds Force, the unit in charge of foreign operations of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Huge crowds thronged Tehran's streets for the funeral. Credit:Iranian government

State media said they numbered in the millions. The scale of the crowds, shown on television clogging major streets, was the biggest since the 1989 funeral for the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the revolution that set Iran on its political collision course with Washington.

The supreme leader's voice cracked with emotion as he said prayers, forcing him to pause.
When Angela Brackett convinced her Mornelle Court neighbours to support her idea of beefing up security for schoolchildren after a spate of gun violence in their Scarborough neighbourhood, she didnt envision it growing into a program hailed as a model for citizen-led initiatives.

Since 2008 there has not been a shooting in Mornelle Court, and I believe its because we stood up for our community, Brackett said.

At the time, student attendance had plummeted following two shootings within days of each other in the summer of 2008, she said. The route to the school went right past the scene of one of the homicides.

People were afraid to walk in the community and our kids werent going to school, she said.

That fall, Brackett hosted meetings at her home to marshal support for a common cause: public safety.

It would lead to the creation of the Mornelle All-Stars Coalition, which started as supervised safewalk escorts to nearby Military Trail Public School and which has since expanded to include after-school homework help, a book club and March break and summer camps.

The program is now credited with boosting student attendance and academic performance at the school, and, after partnering with Toronto police six years ago, has become the envy of other police divisions from Vancouver to Los Angeles.

The residents said were taking our community back, Brackett said.

Brackett and her fluorescent vest wearing civilian troops are well-respected by Mornelle Court residents and trusted by school staff who sometimes relay concerns about student attendance to Brackett.

Attendance and academic performance has shot up for students supported by the coalition, said principal Sohail Shaikh, a Military Trail native.

The reason that it has been so impactful in our community is because they have expanded it, Shaikh said. It shows the power of what can happen when it starts within the community rather than outside agencies coming in.

Many parents, in the neighbourhood are new to Canada, working multiple jobs, which makes it difficult to walk their kids to school and provide necessary after-school reading and math supports, Shaikh said.

Bracketts team saw this need and with the support of Coun. Paul Ainslie convinced Toronto Community Housing to give them a vacant room in the basement of 90 Mornelle Crt., which they transformed into a hub with a kitchen, donated computers, and reading and writing material.

The after-school program, which runs three days a week, averages about 30 to 40 kids, while the summer camps handle about 80 a day.

The kids (in Mornelle Court) are no longer idle during the summer because theyre still receiving education and recreational activities, Shaikh said. I would love for her to get extra resources to be able to offer it to more students in the area.

Coun. Paul Ainslie, whose ward covers Mornelle Court and several other blocks designated priority areas where poverty, racism and other factors put youth at risk, says residents from Tuxedo Court in his ward have been asking how they can replicate the program there.

At city hall, her group has been held up as an example of what you can do with community-based programming, Ainslie said.

During a recent school day, the hallways at Military Trail public were abuzz with excitement as 29 frolicking youngsters awaited their escort home.

Its for our safety and all the volunteers are good people, says Hadia Muheddia, 9. It allows more kids to go to school if their parents are unable to take them.

Her friend Zamiah Anderson, 7, agreed.

Its a good place for kids, Anderson said. We do homework and get free snacks.

Walking amongst the group is Const. Randall Arsenault, whos ambushed by a jubilant crew of students.

Six years ago, the coalition mended a once adversarial relationship with police. Arsenault had heard about the program and paid Brackett a visit. With the blessing of his supervisors at 43 Division, Arsenault started lending a hand.

He has since gone from being a vilified outsider  having obscenities and even garbage hurled at him from balconies  to a neighbourhood fixture.

He helped tear down the walls, letting people see that residents and police can work together, Brackett said.

Known to make appearances at community events in his division, Arsenaults work caught the eye of his superiors, who placed him in the role of community engagement officer, giving him the freedom to lend a hand on youth initiatives across the city.

He is a big believer in spreading the word about his community work through social media, and is very active on Instagram and YouTube (40 YouTube post alone), with videos of him doing everything from providing advice to new officers to sitting down with community leaders and interacting with youth within 43 Division.

In Mornelle Court, he walked the children home from school, helped with fundraising, and volunteered with the summer camp and after-school program.

From the start of the safewalk program there has been a drop in crime in the area, he said.

He said rather than building bridges with the community, he tried to make friends and that led to his success.

Police services (in L.A., Florida and Vancouver) are looking at this program and are asking about how to engage a community.

The affable officer was recently placed back on front-line duty, sparking outcry from Mornelle Court residents. Arsenault still visits on his own time.

Arsenaults changes in duty was done in part with Toronto police launching a new neighbourhood police initiative, where a handful of officers will be designated to do community engagement in certain divisions for a period of time.

I hope they have officers in there (Mornelle Court) for a few years at a time, he said, adding its hard on the community when different officers fluctuate in and out.

Another issue affecting the program is scarcity of funds. It depends heavily on donations from local businesses, churches and agencies.

We do a lot of things with donations and out of our own pockets to keep it going, Brackett said.

TCHC donated space for the hub and the city has provided some grant supports in past years, but Coun. Ainslie said its not nearly enough.

I get frustrated trying find them support, Ainslie said. We (city) have grant programs that they do one or two years and they expect people to be self-sustaining after that.

Brackett said a lack of funds wont stop her troop of volunteers.

In the throes of preparing grill cheese sandwiches for more than two dozen children in the after-school program, Brackett paused to reflect on how far the program has come in spite of the challenges.

We did it because we wanted to make our community safer and now its gone way beyond that, she said.
Berlin

The leaders of Germany, France and Britain called Sunday for Iran to abide by the terms of a 2015 nuclear deal that Iranian state television reported the country will abandon amid heightened tensions with the United States over the killing of Iran's most powerful general.

President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018 and stepped up economic sanctions on Tehran, even as other world powers stuck by the agreement.

In a joint statement, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged Iran to refrain from conducting or supporting further "violent acts."

Iran has threatened revenge for the U.S. killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq last week.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

The three European leaders specifically urged Iran to "withdraw all measures" not in line with the 2015 nuclear agreement, which was intended to stop Tehran from pursuing its atomic weapons program.

Iranian state television cited a statement by President Hassan Rouhani's administration saying the country would not observe the deal's restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities.
Once upon a time, novelist Alfred Mendes told his grandson harrowing tales of his time in World War I. Decades later, the grandson, now an Oscar-winning director, has distilled the essence of those stories into an imagined tale from the narrow cinematic perspective of one continuous take.

What I was searching to find was the spirit of the stories he told me, and the sense of how fragile life was in that war, says Sam Mendes, who co-wrote 1917 with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, and whose resume includes American Beauty and the Bond films Skyfall and Spectre.

He described how his best friend, the man who signed up with him and went to the front with him, was killed by a direct hit of a shell and literally disappeared, standing next to him. There was no corpse; there was nothing. That sort of thing, at 11 or 12, being born in peacetime, stays with you.

Mendes says the most important specific detail he took from his grandfathers stories was he was small and fast, and the mist hung at 6 feet in no mans land; (Germans) couldnt see his head above the mist, so he would carry messages from post to post. And often the quickest way was to jump outside of the trench and run along no mans land and jump back in again.

REVIEW: Does '1917' live up to the hype?

In 1917, two young English soldiers (played by George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman) desperately carry crucial information miles across what was so recently - what might still be - enemy territory.

In a war that was really about paralysis when (the enemies) were standing 200 yards away from each other for years, how do you take a long journey? Then we discovered this period in 1917 when the Germans retreated, and suddenly they were cut adrift in this land they had fought over all those years, says Mendes.

Though he had crafted a full outline, he experienced paralysis of his own when trying to actually write the screenplay. Enter Wilson-Cairns, with whom he had already collaborated several times (twice on projects that didnt come to fruition). Luckily, she turned out to be a self-described history nerd.

Yes, a big nerd. A big, big nerd, she says with a winning smile and lilting evidence of her Scottishness. She admits to Mendes, When you said World War I in that call, I danced.

Ive always had interest in world wars, particularly living in the U.K., theyre so present. In every town and village - Glasgow, where Im from, lost an entire generation. I remember walking by war memorials and seeing my surname on them. So there was always a connection. I was fascinated by people surviving a huge human casualty. How did they deal with it?

Mendes adds, Shes the most gruesome - you know, anything graphic in the movie, I had to tame it. Krystys taste is to express it fully.

BEYOND '1917': Here are five other WWI movies/TV projects worth watching.

The 31-year-old veteran of Showtimes Penny Dreadful doesnt deny that. Id always wanted to write a war film, and being a youngish woman, you dont necessarily get offered those kinds of jobs. When Sam gave it to me, I would have killed someone to do it. Im so excited by it, to bring all this knowledge I had and crystallize it - as Sam encouraged, to tell this huge, almost unwieldy battle story, but through (only the protagonists) view.

Mendes had always envisioned 1917 as one continuous shot. That would immerse viewers in the films world, in the literal trenches, in the sometimes literal fog of war, so they would get no more information than the characters had. The film relies, too, on Roger Deakins nimble cinematography, which flows seamlessly from the sublime to the hideous, and Dennis Gassners magic-trick production design, which incredibly balances form and function.

Given that movie magic stitches together scenes to create the illusion of a single oner (one long take) the film required very long, unbroken takes.

There were days when I thought, This is impossibly difficult, because you had a 9-minute take, and after 8 minutes and 40 seconds, someone made a mistake and none of it was usable. Even though it was magic, you had to start again, says Mendes, with rueful laughter from both. I was on the floor with frustration at times. And you just did it again.

Wilson-Cairns says, There would be times when everyone would be gathered around a monitor on a quiet set, going (whispers) Go on George, go on George .. Youd feel electricity in the air. And when things went wrong, Aaaaahhhh! There was such a shared desire to get it right all the time. It was wonderful.

When asked what Alfred Mendes might have thought of 1917, the director smiles.

He forced me, when I was 12, to sign a contract hed written up: That I would write my first novel at the age of 18. And I never did. Obviously, he says with an eye roll, as he and his co-writer laugh. But I did make this. And I think he probably would have liked it.
By Olivia Rose

SCORES of graduates from both public and private secondary schools across the TCI were awarded for their excellent performances during 2019 external examinations.





A whopping 131 students received accolades on December 13 at the 23rd annual National Academic Awards Ceremony for passing the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) and the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) examinations.





The ceremony was held at Wesley Methodist School in keeping with the Ministry of Educations established practice that the school which fields the top performing student nationally hosts the ceremony.





All students honoured at the event met the minimum criteria of attaining five passes (grades I to III or A to C) - English language and mathematics were compulsory.





The theme for the ceremony was Youths: An indomitable force in diversity.





Students honoured this year were drawn from the British West Indies Collegiate (BWIC), Clement Howell High School (CHHS), Helena J Robinson High school (HJRHS), Marjorie Basden High School (MBHS), Raymond Gardiner High School (RGHS), TCI Middle School (TCIMS) and Wesley Methodist School (WMS).





Students were recognised in batches based on five categories.





Category one focused on students passing five to nine subjects after sitting the examinations.





Ninety-seven students from nine schools were awarded in this presentation.





Category two focused on students passing 10 or more subjects. Thirty students from six schools were awarded in this presentation.





In category three students were recognised for acing English language and mathematics.





Students recognised in this presentation received a General I or II or an A or B only.





Category four saw students honoured for top performances by discipline.





In this presentation students recognised earned the best grades according to subjects within humanities, technical and vocational studies, foreign languages, business, science, and hospitality.





The following students were recognised in the various disciplines.





Business - Llewvandra Basden (HJRHS), Dashante Lightbourne (WMS) and Roshanti Williams (HJRHS).

Humanities - Wendana Rolle (TCIMS), Anthonique Asamoah (WMS) and Rianna Douglas (WMS).

Technical vocational studies - Danarissa Forbes (CHHS).

Science - Zobreann Brown (BWIC), Asia Fernandez (BWIC), Ricardo Joasilus (MHS),

Belandy Joseph (MBHS), Asher Smith (TCIMS) and Charabelle Handfield (WMS).

Foreign language - Ricardo Joasilus (WMS).

Hospitality - Sherlley Baxes (HJRHS).





In this presentation, the best performing students from schools with the Career Development Programme were recognised.





HJ Robinson and Raymond Gardiner presented Anddy Lantigua (HJRHS) and Zarran Forbes (RGHS) for this category.





Students from the TCI that make it onto CXCs Regional Merit Lists were also recognised for their outstanding achievement.





Every year at the culmination of the examination process CXC produces a list of the 10 best performing students for each subject offered across the region.





In 2019 two students from the TCI made it onto a list.





Olimeisha Williams of HJRHS tied for sixth place out of 5,129 entries for the subject family and resource management while Teandra Ewing of CHHS tied for fifth place in Caribbean History out of 9,135 entries.





The final presentation recognised the overall top performing students for the country.





Normally three students are selected but this year the ministry acknowledged two students due to a lack of adherence to the criteria.





The criteria for this category stipulates that: "A student must be a Turks and Caicos Islander and the subjects attained must be earned in one examination sitting.





"With respect to the subjects earned, students must earn a minimum of eight subjects with a General I or IGCSE A, those subjects must include English language, mathematics, one science subject, one humanities subject, information technology and a foreign language.





The top performing students are provided a scholarship from the Government and this is supplemented with prizes from sponsors.





This year the Sandals Foundation provided laptops for the students.





Leshante Cox (MBHS) the second-place awardee received a cash prize from CIBC First Caribbean Bank and the first-place student Charabelle Handfield (WMS) received a cash prize from Nagico Insurance.




The best display of the Jacksonville Monument Companys work wont be found in the 109-year-old firms East State Street location.

Weve probably done most of the work in Diamond Grove and East cemeteries just because weve been here so long, company owner Andy Bruington said. When I came into the business in 1986, there were some sections that didnt have any burials in them, and now they are almost full. I can remember doing many of those sections.

Bruington, a Jacksonville native, started working for the monument company after graduating high school, during which he had dated  and later married  the bosss daughter. He worked there for 12 years before buying the business in 1998.

Bruington has ushered this traditional stone-carving business into the 21st century. Jacksonville Monument Company uses an automatic sandblasting machine guided by computer-generated stencils, and there is a laser-etching machine that can chisel custom-drawn images on black granite.

But the finest memorial artistry is still created the old-fashioned way, by the firms on-staff artist, who takes customers requests and draws them freehand.

When you are in business, you are only as good as your employees, and I have four employees who are as good it it gets, Bruington said. Thats a big part of it, knowing that my employees are going to help take care of those families.

That personal touch is important, Bruington said, because most of their customers come through the door during some of the most difficult times of their lives.

Its part of the healing process. We give them something that is there forever. Its a place for them to go and memorialize a loved one they have lost, Bruington said. Theres something to go to rather than just a grave. Our biggest compliment would be that someone remembers us years later as having helped them through the bereavement process.

Bruington said the typical 1,500-pound monument takes about three weeks to complete. The process starts when the customer selects a stone color and memorial design. Jet black stones are imported from India, Africa or China, while most of the lighter gray granite comes out of Georgia, mahogany granite from the Dakotas, and darker gray granite is quarried from Vermont.

The stones arrive cut and finished, ready for Jacksonville Monument artisans to work their magic.

Jacksonville Monument used to finish their own granite, they used to get a block off of a railroad delivery and saw it in a big pit in the back, Bruington said. The problem with that today is, freight costs would eat you alive because youd have to pay for the whole block but you may not use but a third of it.

The finished product is still delivered and installed the old-fashioned way  with a hoist truck, a four-wheel cart to push the stone to the grave site, and a lot of manual labor.

Bruington is also proud of the war memorials that Jacksonville Monument Company has created for communities, and through local connections it now has its work in several other states, including Iowa, Texas, Indiana and Missouri.

Gayle Clark is Jacksonville Monument Companys secretary, office manager and a saleswoman. She joined the business 10 years ago.

One of the nicest things is when you get a thank you note from a family that says we helped them and that they loved the job that we did and the product they received, Clark said. When they come here its the last thing they are going to do for their loved one. So we dont pressure them, we do whatever they want to do.

We do a drawing for everyone who comes here to make sure everything is correct on their stone, because once its cut in stone, you cant take it back, Clark said. So we try our hardest to make sure its the way they want it.

Clark takes as much pride as the other employees do of their work and, like Bruington, often stops to admire the finished product.

My kids get mad at me when I pull into a cemetery to look at our work, Clark said. Actually, my two daughters love it, but my son is a little weirded out by it.

The Jacksonville Monument Company owner has a son and daughter, but both have other careers, so there likely wont be another family member to eventually take over the business.

But the 51-year-old Bruington intends to be around for a while, and is always mindful of the tradition embodied in the firm.

Obviously, it takes quality work to be in business a long time, Bruington said. We put quality foundations and quality lettering in everything we do. Quality is really our number one sell.

Every Monday, the Journal-Courier will feature people from the area who have interesting stories to tell. To suggest someone for consideration, send an email to communitynews@myjournalcourier.com with their name, contact information and a brief description of what makes them special.
Ishani Chowdhurys Dec. 24 letter, The real victims in South Asia, was wrong when it accused Bangladesh of discriminating against Hindus, Buddhists and Christians. The Bangladesh constitution guarantees equal rights to the people who practice those and other religions, and the government has enforced those rights. It even has declared holidays to celebrate major festivals of the minority religious communities.
Marketing efforts will kick off in spring 2020, when Shure will make these new products available. The wireless noise-cancelling headphones and true wireless earphones will enhance the existing line of premium listening products currently offered by Shure in its consumer segment.

"The biggest legends in music  Elvis, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, and others  have trusted Shure microphones and gear in studios and on the biggest stages worldwide," said Eduardo Valdes, Senior Director of Global Marketing for Musician and Consumer Audio at Shure. "Now, music lovers can experience that same quality of audio wherever they go."

Shure's new products include the AONIC 50 Wireless Noise-Cancelling Headphones, designed with comfort in mind. Shure provides headphones for the professional audio industry  people who wear headphones all day for a living  so creating comfortable, high-quality headphones with 20 hours of battery life is in the Shure DNA.

The Company is also launching the AONIC 215 True Wireless Sound Isolating Earphones with the same design musicians use for in-ear monitoring on-stage. With up to eight hours of battery life and three additional full charges on the go, these earphones feature tremendous sound quality in a small package with exceptional comfort and a secure fit for an uninterrupted, world-class listening experience.

Engineered from decades of studio experience, the AONIC line boasts the long-term value and professional performance that the most discerning listeners demand. Shure's AONIC headphones and earphones ensure that music lovers, audiophiles, and musicians will have the most premium listening experience  on the train, in the gym, or at home.

To stay true to Shure's premium audio quality, the Company's team of acoustical engineers focused on balancing the ambient sounds and acoustics of the AONIC product line. These efforts align with the latest Bluetooth technology and codecs, which are now able to accurately deliver legendary Shure audio quality in a wireless format.

Whether it's understanding the significant role that comfort plays in choosing a listening product, or the rigorous durability standards that every single one of its products must meet, Shure developed the AONIC line to exceed the industry threshold for quality. Because an outstanding listening experience isn't only about sounding great, special attention was given to:

Battery Life  Fly from one corner of the world to the other on a single charge

 Fly from one corner of the world to the other on a single charge Adjustable Noise Cancelling  Block out unwanted noise for a fully immersive experience

 Block out unwanted noise for a fully immersive experience Environment Mode  Fine-tune how much of the outside world to let in with the free ShurePlus PLAY app for iOS and Android, specifically engineered by Shure to enable product feature customization for the new AONIC line

Full product details will be available when the products launch in spring 2020.

CES attendees can preview the new headphones and earphones in a real-world experiential setting at the Shure booth (#20200). For every AONIC demo, Shure will make a donation to Save The Music, a music education non-profit helping kids, schools, and communities discover their full potential through the power of making music. All attendees who participate in a demo will be entered to win a pair of new headphones, earphones, or VIP tickets to Lollapalooza 2020, which takes place in Shure's hometown of Chicago. Fans can sign up to receive updates on the campaign with Adam Levine and the products here.

About Shure

Shure (www.shure.com) has been making people sound extraordinary for nearly a century. Founded in 1925, the Company is a leading global manufacturer of audio equipment known for quality, performance, and durability. We make microphones, wireless microphone systems, in-ear monitors, earphones and headphones, conferencing systems, and more. For critical listening, or high-stakes moments on stage, in the studio, and from the meeting room, you can always rely on Shure.

Shure Incorporated is headquartered in Niles, Illinois, in the United States. We have more than 30 manufacturing facilities and regional sales offices throughout the Americas, EMEA, and Asia.

SOURCE Shure

Related Links

http://www.shure.com


London: A letter claiming the United States will move troops out of Baghdad ahead of a possible full withdrawal from Iraq has been downplayed as a "poorly worded" draft after triggering mass confusion among allies including Australia.

While the United States has stressed it has "no plans" to leave Iraq, there is a growing expectation coalition forces will eventually have to leave following Monday's shock parliamentary vote ordering the expulsion of the US-led mission from the war-torn country.

A full withdrawal would represent a momentous shift in Middle East politics and trigger the sudden recall of hundreds of Australian troops who are working to eradicate the Islamic State terror group from the region.

The letter - written by a US general and addressed to the Iraqi government - forced US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper to convene a snap press conference to say "no decision" had been made to leave the country entirely.
Mumbai, Jan 6 : For the second time in less than a month, thousands of students took to the streets on Monday in different parts of Maharashtra to protest against the stark hooliganism in the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus on Sunday.

The protests were organised by various left and right wing students organisations, raising slogans against each other and also against the violence in JNU for which they blamed the other side, barely a month after similar rallies were taken out to condemn the violence in Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi and Aligarh Muslim University campuses.

In Nashik, Nationalist Youth Congress Party activists clashed with the workers of the RSS youth wing, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and police intervened to forcibly separate them.

NYCP workers attempted to storm inside the Aurangabad BJP office, but were prevented by the police, while Nationalist Congress Party activists staged a noisy demonstration outside the state BJP offices here.

Sensing the mood, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray hurriedly convened the media to publicly reassure that "the youth and students are absolutely safe in Maharashtra, and any attempts to create disturbances in campuses would be dealt with a heavy hand".

Comparing the Sunday's JNU violence with the November 26, 2008 terror carnage, Thackeray demanded: "Why were the attackers' faces covered? Why were they hiding? They (the attackers) are cowards and the country will never support their acts. Those who indulged in the JNU violence need to be unmasked before the whole country." The protests in Mumbai started in a small way around midnight (Sunday-Monday), with messages relayed on social media networks with candle-lit vigils and a procession to the iconic Gateway of India.

By afternoon of Monday, the trickle swelled into huge crowds at the Gateway of India, with many protesters apparently prepared for a long vigil, armed with snacks and water, mobile chargers and battery banks, basic medicines, snacks, blankets/shawls to beat the chill, even tampons and napkins.

The venue attracted several politicians and celebrities like Sushant Singh, Varun Grover, and Shrikant Matondkar, legislators Abu Asim Azmi, Rohit Pawar, Kapil Patil, farmers leader Ashok Dhawale, activists like Jatin Desai, Fahad Ahmad, NCP leader and Housing Minister Jitendra Awhad, among many more.

At all venues, the participants including students from IIT-Bombay, the TISS, the University of Mumbai, several city colleges, youth and social organisations, activists and other trooped with hand-painted banners/posters with anti-BJP-ABVP slogans, the National Tricolour, pictures of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and other leaders, and demanded action against the perpetrators of the JNU violence.

"The protest is peaceful and the participants sang patriotic songs, chanted slogans condemning the BJP-led government at the Centre, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and demanded immediate action against the goons who created the mayhem in JNU," Desai told IANS from the venue.

Similarly, right-wing groups also sported the Indian flag and protested outside the Pune University and in the Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya (MGAHV) in Wardha this afternoon.

The left-wing groups also held similar protests in Mumbai, Pune, Wardha, Aurangabad, Nashik and other places, condemning what they termed as "right-wing terror tactics" against the JNU students and professors.

"We have a huge protest outside the Pune University campus in which students of the FTII are also participating. We strongly condemn the violence unleashed by the ABVP and BJP-supported goons against the JNU students-professors," Yuvak Kranti Dal Vice-President Kamlakar Shete told IANS from the Pune protest venue.

"Nearly a 100 students joined the peaceful protest this evening and unanimously expressed solidarity with the JNU students-professors," said activist Chandan Saroj from the MGAHV campus in Wardha.

Thackeray added that "the youth of the country are like a bomb and must not be tinkered with or their angst could explode" as he assured his full support to the youth.

"There are apprehensions in the minds of the country's youth, students. There is a need to take them into confidence, address their doubts and make them feel secure of their future," he urged, promising their safety in the state.

The JNU incidents echoed loudly in political circles and the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi.

Terming it as "a planned attack", NCP President Sharad Pawar said the students and professors were subjected to a cowardly attack. "I strongly condemn this undemocratic act of vandalism and violence. Use of violent means to suppress democratic values and thought will never succeed." State Congress President and Revenue Minister President Balasaheb Thorat strongly flayed the "brutal violence unleashed by the goons of ABVP". "This is sheer hooliganism, they are ransacking property and harming people. I demand that the attackers should be brought to book immediately," Shiv Sena leader and Environment Minister Aditya Thackeray said that the violence and brutality faced by students while protesting is worrisome. "Be it Jamia, JNU, students mustn't face brutal force. Let them be! These goons must face action. They must be brought to time-bound and swift justice." Minority Affairs Minister Nawab Malik strongly condemned the JNU violence and demanded strict action against the culprits. "Hostels are being attacked. Students and staff are being beaten up. Police is not acting upon to protect them. BJP's politics is playing with the future of the country." At all protest spots in the city and state, the Maharashtra Police deployed tight security to prevent any untoward incidents.

(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at q.najmi@ians.in)
Kathmandu, January 6

Nepali student leaders have condemned the attack on students and teachers by masked men and women at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi on Sunday.

They have said that the attacks represent an attack on democracy and show that those in power are afraid of the voices of the students. Their comments come as a group of masked and women carrying batons and rods attacked students of the university on Sunday evening.

NCP-aligned All Nepal Free Student Union co-coordinator Ranjit Tamang said, The attack on JNU, the watchdog voice of justice, smears soot over the face of democracy in India. Tamang said that the incident shows that those in power are afraid of the voices of the students. He demanded a judicial probe into the incident and those found guilty be punished.

Nepal Student Union leader Nain Singh Mahar said that what happened at JNU should not happen at any academic institution. He said that the people behind the attacks should be brought to book.
A man alleged to have fatally shot his fiancee Friday after proposing on New Years Eve has been charged with murder, according to court records.

Kendrick Akins, 39, is accused of shooting and killing his 33-year-old fiancee on Friday in the parking lot of a northwest Houston apartment complex on the 5500 block of Holly View Drive.

Officers received reports that a woman had been shot following an argument. Akins allegedly shot her in the chest with a pistol, according to court records. A witness said Akins fled to his apartment, but he returned and shot at a neighbor who had overheard the fight and tried to help her.

The woman died at the scene. Police said the neighbor was not struck by gunfire.

Akins took off on foot after the shooting. He came into a Houston police station for questioning early Saturday and was booked into jail later that afternoon.

He faces one charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one charge of murder. Akins was convicted of aggravated assault of a family member in 2008 and has prior felony convictions for possession of a weapon as a felon and possession of a controlled substance, according to court records..

Akins bond -- initially set at $150,000 for the murder and $75,000 for the aggravated assault -- was raised in court Monday to $250,000 for the murder charge.

Family members identified the victim as Dominic Jefferson. Her sister expressed her confusion on Facebook, where just days before, she had streamed their engagement on Facebook Live.

He just proposed to her in front of the whole world, she cried. I want to know why. Why would you do this? You say you loved her.

The two had been dating for about three months.

She said Jefferson was the mother to two boys and one girl.

Samantha Ketterer contributed to this report.

gwendolyn.wu@chron.com
The prime minister has criticised the SNS chair.

PM Peter Pellegrini (centre) met with Defence Minister Peter Gajdos (r) and Chief of General Staff of the Slovak Army Daniel Zmeko at the Military Intelligence building in Banska Bystrica. (Source: TASR)

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Slovakia will not withdraw its seven soldiers from the Iraqi mission for now, several members of the Security Council have decided.

The January 5 meeting was initiated by PM Peter Pellegrini after being addressed by Defence Minister Peter Gajdos of the Slovak National Party (SNS).

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The discussion over the soldiers presence in Iraq was put on the table after the January 3 attack on Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, who was killed by the US Army based on US President Donald Trump's order. In response, Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed revenge.

Similar to how we came to this mission with soldiers of other nations and countries, we must act together when making further steps, Pellegrini said.
Avila said the key to solving this issue is at the inception of new technologies, not the implementation downstream  meaning diverse communities must be at the table when new technologies are under development so everyone benefits from a new product or service.

A local push for diversity

Census reports show more than 30% of Arizonas population identify as Hispanic or Latino.

Arizona is ranked third in the nation for net tech employment growth in 2017 and 2018. With Arizona tech on the rise, members of the tech community say that the industry needs to do more to include new groups of people on the local level.

Ortiz said the uneven playing field makes it difficult for people of color and women to enter the industry.

Its really intimidating to go into these groups, she said. Theyre so confident and assertive, and I didnt feel like I was able to ask the appropriate questions to further my career. Its a really big set back.
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By State Representative Richard Heath

Jan. 06, 2020 | MAYFIELD

By State Representative Richard Heath Jan. 06, 2020 | 12:10 PM | MAYFIELD

In just a few short days, legislators from across the state will convene the Kentucky House and Senate to do the work of the people. To prepare for this session, I have been meeting with constituents, reading pre-filed bills, and listening to testimony from officials for the past several months. However, I always want to invite your input and thought it might be helpful if I share a little bit of information about how to keep up with the General Assembly and, of course, how to reach me during session.



As I mentioned, we convene on Tuesday, January 7 at Noon. House members will begin business by adopting the rules we will follow for the next four months and working through a few other orders of business. This is extremely important, essentially setting the ground rules for how bills will be voted on, how much time we will give legislation and how we will work together with members, regardless of our political differences, to accomplish the goals we need to move our state forward.



This is a long session, so we will meet for 60 legislative days and adjourn on April 15. It is also a budget session, so our biggest priority will be crafting the spending plan our state will operate under over the next two years. This will be incredibly difficult. Although our state has seen revenue growth because of historic economic investment and growth in jobs, we also struggle under the remnants of our political past. We still carry more than $43 billion in unfunded public pension liability, rank sixth in the nation for people who sit behind bars in our jails and prisons, and have more than twice the number of people on Medicaid than we do children in our public schools. In a lot of ways, our states predicament is similar to a child paying off the credit card debt of a parent or grandparent. It will be tough, but I am pleased to see my colleagues share my commitment to responsible budgeting and the idea that we are stewards of the taxpayers money.



Governor Andy Beshear will join us on January 14 to share how his priorities fit with our mission of putting Kentucky families first and moving Kentucky forward. While not specifically budget related, I expect we will get an inkling of what his budget he will present on January 28 will look like. I sincerely hope that the Governor will propose a budget that is based on realistic goals and assumptions for the state. It is easy to make campaign promises, but it is much different when the responsibility of governing for the entire state falls solely on your shoulders. There are an array of urgent needs for the Commonwealth, and I hope the Governor will consider all of those needs when presenting his requests. Some of the proposals suggested by the Governor will likely be things that all of us in the General Assembly can find common ground on. There are other items where we will disagree. This is a natural part of the political process.



This is some of what you can expect to see in the coming months. There will be plenty of other committee discussions and proposals brought forth for consideration as we strive to pass legislation aimed at making Kentucky stronger by growing our economy, protecting life, defending our most vulnerable and preserving Kentucky values. Rest assured that as the session progresses, I will continue to keep you up to date with what is happening in our state Capitol.



If you would like to keep up with the work we do, the Legislative Research Commission maintains a great website that houses all the bills filed for consideration, meeting schedules, our contact information and some research and general information. And, they update it daily to reflect how bills are amended. Visit the website at www.legislature.ky.gov.



I also want to hear from you on any issue that is important to you. It is crucial for me to understand your views so that I may better represent you in Frankfort. I can be reached during the week from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. (EST) through the toll-free message line at 1-800-372-7181. You can also contact me via e-mail at Richard.heath@lrc.ky.gov. You can keep track of committee meetings and potential legislation through the Kentucky Legislature Home Page at www.lrc.ky.gov and you can also follow me on my Facebook page Richard Heath 2nd District State Representative.
NXT HITS THE NYC SUBWAYS, DREW MCINTYRE BREAKS IT DOWN, PAIGE UPDATE AND MORE WWE NEWS

Benjamin Doe sent word that WWE is advertising NXT in the New York City subway with a print campaign:

Paige is back on WWE Backstage this week. She has been teasing something big for her career on social media. After her last neck procedure, the biggest thing would be a surprise appearance in the Royal Rumble but there's no word if that is happening.

There will be an episode of WWE Break It Down with Drew McIntyre tonight following Raw.

John Cena will be on Wednesday's "Jimmy Kimmel Live."

The Dusty Classic will kick off on this Wednesday's edition of WWE NXT with NXT Tag Team Champions Kyle O'Reilly and Bobby Fish vs. NXT UK Tag Team Champions Wolfgang and Mark Coffey and Imperium (Fabian Aichner and Marcel Barthel vs. The Forgotten Sons (Steve Cutler and Wesley Blake. The show will be headlined by Keith Lee vs. Donovan Dijakovic vs. Damien Priest vs. Cameron Grimes with the winner becoming the top contender to WWE NXT North American Champion Roderick Strong.

NXT has live events this Friday in Pittsburgh, PA and Venice, Florida. We are seeking live reports.

Friday Night Smackdown and 205 Live will emanate from Evansville, Indiana this Friday.

WWE will present the latest Steve Austin interview this Sunday following NXT UK Takeover: Blackpool, with Kane being interviewed.

Tommaso Ciampa will be doing an autograph signing on Saturday 1/25 at Walmart at 10505 Broadway Street in Pearland, Texas at 9 AM to promote Royal Rumble weekend.

XFL Training Camp: Day 1 Highlights

Thanks to Paul Jordan.

If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here!
Renee and I believe that healthcare is a basic human right, said businessman Bob Parsons. Hope for Haiti is making it possible for even the most impoverished Haitians to receive medical treatment, essential medications and compassionate care.

The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation has awarded a $3,085,000 multi-year grant in support of Hope for Haiti in response to the organizations Haitian Solidarity Campaign. The campaign seeks to honor the people of Haiti and their resilience during a decade which saw the devastating impact of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Hurricane Matthew and the most recent wave of political and civil unrest. Funds from the grant will be primarily focused on improving access to quality healthcare, medication and dental services in Southern Haiti.

We became involved with Hope for Haiti when the earthquake hit 10 years ago and wanted to help. We did our research on organizations working in Haiti and chose them for their intimate knowledge of the country, their boots on the ground and their efficient use of resources to maximize every dollar for those in need, said businesswoman Renee Parsons. Weve continued to partner with Hope for Haiti for all of these same reasons 10 years later. They are making a difference in the communities they serve and weve seen transformational change for the better over the last 10 years. Were proud to work with Hope for Haiti on these important initiatives now, and into the future.

Hope for Haitis medical programs include managing a free-standing clinic, training and staffing community healthcare workers, operating mobile clinics that extend its reach into rural areas and collaborating with partner agencies to distribute donated medical equipment, medication and medical supplies. In addition to providing direct primary care and underwriting the cost of surgeries, Hope for Haiti is also addressing an increase in chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and malnutrition through both medical intervention and community health education. The organization has also increased its focus on womens health and services for girls in their partner communities in Southern Haiti.

"Hope for Haiti strives to provide the Haitian people with a pathway to a better life despite the numerous challenges that exist, such as the pronounced lack of medical care, said Hope for Haiti CEO Skyler Badenoch. The success of our mission relies on generous donors like The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation and thanks to this grant, thousands of children, parents and grandparents will get desperately needed care that not only treats but prevents illness.

Hope for Haiti is the leading nonprofit focused on comprehensive poverty alleviation, healthcare and education in Southern Haiti. The organization has implemented an integrated model for development that has been proven to reduce poverty by working with community leaders in rural communities in five key program areas: education, healthcare, infrastructure, access to clean water and economic opportunity.

Renee and I believe that healthcare is a basic human right, said businessman Bob Parsons. Hope for Haiti is making it possible for even the most impoverished Haitians to receive medical treatment, essential medications and compassionate care.

Longtime supporters of Hope for Haiti, The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation has committed more than $10 million to the organization since 2010 in support of disaster relief, education, healthcare and community development initiatives. Hope for Haiti has a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator and is recognized as a Platinum Level partner by the GuideStar Exchange. To learn more, visit http://www.hopeforhaiti.com.

About Hope For Haiti:

Hope for Haiti is a Naples, Florida, based 501(c)(3) charitable organization with the mission to improve the quality of life for the Haitian people, particularly children. Building upon 27 years of experience, Hope for Haiti works in five core program areas (Education, Healthcare, Water, Infrastructure and Economy) to connect, heal and empower communities in the Greater South of Haiti. Hope for Haiti is a 4-star rated charity by Charity Navigator and is a participant at the Platinum Level through the GuideStar Exchange, two leading independent evaluators recognizing the organization's transparency and careful stewardship of donor resources.

About The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation:

The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation offers support to nonprofit organizations successfully working to empower, educate, nurture and nourish people during what is often the darkest time of their lives. Founded in 2012 by philanthropists and business leaders Bob and Renee Parsons to provide hope and life-changing assistance to the countrys most vulnerable populations, The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation offers critical funding at critical times to those in need. The Foundations giving is driven by the core belief that all people  regardless of race, religion, roots, economic status, sexual orientation or gender identity  deserve access to quality healthcare, education and a safe place to call home. Follow @WeDealInHope on social media or visit TBRPF.org to learn more about partner organizations and the important work being done in the community.
Two more people were missing in remote parts of the Australian state of New South Wales as rain and cooler temperatures brought some welcome relief to Australian communities battling wildfires on Monday.

But the rain also brought challenges for fire crews as they attempted to complete strategic burns in preparation for higher temperatures forecast for later in the week.

The developments came as Prime Minister Scott Morrison  battling a personal PR disaster through his handling of the crisis  announced a $2 billion AUD (1.06 billion) funding boost to help the relief effort.

And several Hollywood stars used the Golden Globes awards to express their support for Australia as the fires continue, with some saying the situation was more clear proof of the need to do more to fight climate change.

Australias wildfires, which began in September, have so far scorched an area roughly the size of Croatia, killing at least 24 people and destroying some 2,000 homes.

More than 135 fires were still burning across New South Wales (NSW), Australias most populous state, including almost 70 that were uncontained. The Rural Fire Service warned the rain would not put out the largest and most dangerous blazes before conditions deteriorated again this week.

Expand Close A truck sits burnt out before a destroyed house at Conjola Park, NSW (Rick Rycroft/AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp A truck sits burnt out before a destroyed house at Conjola Park, NSW (Rick Rycroft/AP)

Australias capital, Canberra, had the worst air quality of any major city in the world on Monday morning owing to smoke from nearby wildfires.

The Department of Home Affairs, which is responsible for coordinating the countrys response to disasters, told all non-critical staff to stay home because of the abysmal air quality.

With the more benign weather conditions it presents some wonderful relief for everybody, the firefighters, the emergency services personnel, but also the communities affected by these fires, Shane Fitzsimmons, the Commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service, told reporters.

But it also presents some real challenges when it comes to implementing tactical and strategic back-burns and other techniques to try and bring these fires under control.

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NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said there was no room for complacency.

Unfortunately, overnight, its become apparent that we have two people unaccounted for in New South Wales, she said at a news conference.

The fires have evolved as something of a public relations disaster for Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who announced on Monday an extra $2 billion AUD toward the recovery effort in addition to the tens of millions of dollars that has already been committed.

Mr Morrison announced on Saturday he would dispatch 3,000 army, navy and air force reservists to help battle the fires. He also committed $20 million AUD (10.6 million) to lease firefighting aircraft from overseas.

But the moves did little to tamp down criticism that he was slow to act, even as he has downplayed the need for his government to address climate change, which experts say helps supercharge the blazes.

Expand Close Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is confronted by angry residents as he visited a wildfire-ravaged Cobargo, NSW, at the height of the fires (ABC TV/AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is confronted by angry residents as he visited a wildfire-ravaged Cobargo, NSW, at the height of the fires (ABC TV/AP)

Australians know to expect summer wildfires. But the blazes arrived early this year, fed by drought and the countrys hottest and driest year on record.

Scientists say theres no doubt man-made global warming has played a major role in feeding the fires, along with factors like very dry vegetation and trees, and strong winds.

Mr Morrison, chided for past remarks minimising the need to address climate change, has deflected criticism while trying to change his tone.

He has faced widespread criticism for taking a family vacation in Hawaii at the start of the wildfire crisis, as well as for his sometimes distracted approach as the disaster has escalated and his slowness in deploying resources.

His handling of the deployment of reservists also came in for criticism. Commissioner Fitzsimmons, who is leading the fight in NSW, said he learned of the deployment through media reports.

It is fair to say it was disappointing and some surprise to hear about these things through public announcements in the middle of what was one of our worst days this season, with the second-highest number of concurrent emergency warning fires ever in the history of New South Wales, he said.

Mr Morrison was also forced to defend a video posted on social media Saturday that promoted the deployment of reservists and the governments response to the wildfires.

At the Golden Globes, messages of support for Australia came from stars including Ellen DeGeneres, Patricia Arquette and Australian-born Cate Blanchett.

Russell Crowe, New Zealand born but a long-term Australian resident, could not attend as he was home helping take precautions against the fires. Winning a Golden Globe for his role in The Loudest Voice, Crowe sent a message which was read out on stage by Jennifer Aniston.

It said: Make no mistake, the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is. That way, we all have a future. Thank you.
A pair of former Melbourne nightclub promoters have been found guilty of cocaine possession and handed prison sentences by a Balinese court.

William Cabantog and David Van Iersel were arrested after 1.12 grams of cocaine was found during police raids on the Lost City nightclub and their homes in Canggu, Bali, on July 19.

Cabantog, 35, was sentenced to one year in prison, minus time served. Van Iersel, 38, received a nine-month sentence. With time served, he is likely to be released in April.

The pair were sentenced in Denpasar District Court on Tuesday afternoon.
WASHINGTON -- The United States has designated Asaib Ahl Al-Haq as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), saying the Iraqi militia is a proxy for Iran.

The U.S. State Department statement on January 3 said that it was also sanctioning two of the groups leaders.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the militia and its leaders "violent proxies of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The State Department said Asaib Ahl Al-Haq, also known as the League of the Righteous, is backed by Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, which has been similarly designated by the United States.

The State Department said it also designated Qais al-Khazali, leader of Asaib Ahl Al-Haq, and his brother Laith al-Khazali, another leader of the group, as specially designated global terrorists.

Such designations will freeze the U.S.-related assets of the group and the two leaders, generally ban Americans from doing business with them, and make it a crime to provide support or resources to the militia.

The move comes hours after a U.S. drone strike killed the powerful commander of the elite Quds Force in an attack in Baghdad, igniting outrage in Iran.

Qasem Soleimani, one of the most powerful military men in Iran, was killed in an attack on two vehicles at Baghdads international airport in the early morning hours of January 3.

Tehran has vast influence and supports many Shi'ite militias based in neighboring Iraq. Baghdad has attempted to balance its relations between the United States and Iran, both of which provide crucial military and financial support to the struggling government.

With reporting by Reuters
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Industry hairstylists tasked with getting A-listers Reese Witherspoon, Charlize Theron, Saoirse Ronan and Lucy Boynton red carpet ready all turned to one hero product to get the job done.

Hair pro Adir Abergel was one busy man, dashing around Beverly Hills to ensure both Theron and Ronan were perfectly coiffed. Abergel, who is the Creative Director of the hair brand Virtue Labs, evidently had a trick up his sleeve: the innovative Virtue Healing Oil.

The $42 product, already a favorite among celebrities and beauty editors, is a clear, glossy oil that purports to deliver shine, softness and moisture without weighing down hair.

Reese Witherspoon's go-to stylist Lona Vigi also used the same hydrating, reparative formula to smooth the Morning Show actress' locks.

Judging by a peek at Vigi's Instagram Stories, she also turned to Virtue Labs' lightweight Dry Shampoo and Volumizing Mousse to achieve Witherspoon's slicked back bob.

Giving us further insight into the arsenal us mere mortals need to look like a star, Vigi teased that she used the cult-favorite Dyson Supersonic hair dryer professional edition to achieve body and bounce.

Everyone might have been talking about British actress Lucy Boynton's metallic glitter eyeshadow look, but her tousled, textured hair do was equally as glam.

Boynton's stylist, Jenny Cho, revealed that she used the Healing Oil on The Politician star's damp hair, and finished with the Texturizing Spray to achieve the perfectly undone look.

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Virtue Labs, based in North Carolina, has other notable celebrity fans in Jennifer Garner, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Biel. The brand is anchored around its trademarked signature ingredient, Alpha Keratin 60ku; a transformative protein that is extracted from ethically-sourced human hair, therefore our bodies recognize it and treat it as our own.

Discovered by Dr. Luke Burnett, a retired US Army Colonel, and his team, Alpha Keratin 60ku binds directly to areas of damage and fills them in, revealing hair thats a shinier, stronger version of itself. Dr. Burnett is now the Chief Science Advisor for Virtue Labs, guiding the brand on how to utilize this wonder ingredient (which is keratin in its purest form) to truly repair hair.

Better yet: All products in the range are gluten free, cruelty free, and free of paragons, sulfates, phthalates, synthetic colors and dyes.

Ready to get your Hollywood glow up?
By Jingliang Li, ASIC Architect, IoT Department, Synaptics

and Krishna Balachandran, Product Marketing, NVM IP, Synopsys

Introduction

The smart, connected home vision is close to reality. Imagine the following scenario.

You get a camera notification on your phone that the Grade AAA Sichuan Whole Peppercorns that you ordered have arrived. This is because your smart home camera recorded the delivery of the expected package, read the bar code, and traced it back to your online order. You come home from work and the camera recognizes you and opens the door for you. When you enter the kitchen, you find that the display on the refrigerator shows that you have enough organic fresh tofu and fresh green onions to cook ma-po tofu. Before you begin cooking, you refresh your memory of the recipe by asking your voice assistant, which reads out the steps after an online search. Just as you finish cooking, you hear from your voice assistant that your partner is home. That is because the Smart Camera recognized your partner at the door and broadcast it to all your connected home devices, which your voice assistant picked up and communicated to you. You decide to play mood music to relax and ask your voice assistant to search for contemporary jazz artists from your online music subscription, which then blankets your dining room until dinner is over. Next you watch your favorite late-night comedy show, by asking your set-top box to switch to the appropriate channel. Right before bed, you study your appointments on the smart display and ask it to wake you up a couple of hours before your first meeting. Then you close your eyes, the lights slowly dim and turn off, and a night light switches on in case you need to get up in the night.

Figure 1: Vision of the smart connected home, which is fast becoming a reality

The scenario depicted above is close to reality and a privileged few can enjoy such a smart, connected home today. This has been made possible by the confluence of processing, communication, voice and image recognition, and artificial intelligence technologies. The connected home comprises of smart home devices that process information, communicate with each other, recognize voice commands, display information, and act with each other in cohesion. This is truly the manifestation of the Internet of Things (IOT), poised to change the way we live, forever.

Smart Home Devices Need Lots of Smarts

Semiconductor companies are focused on creating powerful smart home devices to usher in the promise of the smart, connected home. These devices are realized as systems-on-chip (SoCs) designed to meet the sustained performance requirements for different use-cases and optimized for recognition of far-field voice commands.

Figure 2: Typical smart connected home SoC

Sustained performance is achieved by harnessing the combined processing power of central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), and neural network engines. For example, optimization for far-field voice communications involves the ability to recognize and distinguish voice commands from background noise or sounds emanating from media players. A neural network engine is employed in parallel to the processors to endow the edge devices with intelligence to execute application such as voice recognition and natural language processing, event detection, and object recognition, all of which learn from the user preferences. Appropriate interfaces need to be integrated into the smart home devices to enable them to communicate with each other. As some of the devices will be plugged into the wall and others will be battery operated, designing for low power is a requirement. Finally, the devices must be equipped with proper firmware and software to enable seamless support for enterprise and service providers.

Though smart home devices can communicate with centralized servers and benefit from the processing power of enterprise cloud computing, latency can get in the way of fast response timesfor example, turning on the sprinklers, if fire is detected in the house, needs to happen fast. For situations like this, devices need some level of edge intelligence, so stacking a host of processing capabilities in these devices is the preferred choice of smart home device vendors.

Security and Privacy are Critical to the Smart, Connected Home

Smart home devices handle a lot of your private data, such as your biometric information, as well as copyrighted media and data. Securing private data is critical--so critical that in September 2018, California passed a cybersecurity law mandating the security of connected devices. The law will go into effect in 2020 and requires IOT device manufacturers to equip reasonable security features in all internet-connected devices. Data privacy is at the center of why many users dont want to have their information sent to the cloud for processing. Report after report from third party companies testing security of connected smart home devices have revealed serious privacy flaws in their security implementations. Findings included vulnerabilities in authenticating the users and open backdoors when communicating with the vendors cloud service. Privacy scandals have even included service providers recording and analyzing private conversations between the residents of a home. A cybercriminal trying to harvest personal data for identify theft can exploit the many vulnerabilities and create spearfishing attacks to gain access to user accounts.

The privacy problem is further exacerbated with the need to store and process more data at the edge, which is the preferred choice of smart home device developers to deliver low latency and fast response times. Edge devices can be even more prone to attacks than central servers in the cloud. While cloud servers are managed by large companies with lots of resources and their reputations at risk, edge devices can and do come from vendors with varying degrees of commitment to security in favor of smaller form factors, lower costs, or faster time-to-market. The increasing amounts of personal and private data stored in edge devices can be a treasure trove for hackers.

Figure 3: Examples of valuable assets in smart home products can include copyright-protected content and biometric data

Valuable Assets in Smart Home Products

There are several valuable assets that warrant privacy protection in smart home products. Video and audio programming are copyright protected and streamed content is usually available only with a paid subscription. Conditional access, based on user authentication, is used to prevent unauthorized access to copyright-protected media. Unique product information (such as chip identification, version number, authorized market segments, and product configurations) is often used to determine who has access to which devices and content and need to be protected as well. Without protection, the unique product information can be used to impersonate the product to gain access to copyright-protected information. Smart home devices gather user data such as fingerprints, voice and face identification data, payment information for paid services, and personal health data, all of which are very sensitive and private. Finally, the product makers intellectual property stored in the smart home device, such as source code and program data, also needs to be protected.

Types of Attacks on Smart Home Devices

Attacks from cyber criminals can take many forms. The hacking event can lead to a remotely disabling a connected home device, identity theft from eavesdropping on the user data stream, exfiltrating protected content, or re-purposing the functionality of a smart home device. Exfiltrating protected content such as audio and video programming is common and leads to copyrighted material being pirated and made available for unauthorized access. In a typical attack, the hacker targets a smart home devices neural network algorithms that process voice or perform facial recognition. The hacker proceeds to first reverse engineer the software or algorithms and then insert malicious modifications to achieve alternate functionality or performance. Hackers with physical access to the devices can perform attacks that extract encryption keys, critical instructions, critical data, and device makers intellectual property.

Designing SOCs with a Security Mindset

The semiconductor industry has been diligently working to secure smart home devices and come up with the concept of a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to ensure secure, smart, connected home devices.

Figure 4: Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) within an SoC enhances security

The concept of a TEE is straightforwardcreate a trusted platform of hardware and software to ensure protection of code and data. The goal of a TEE is to maintain authenticity, integrity, and confidentiality of the system. Authenticity ensures that the system behaves as expected and correctly protects the sensitive assets. Authenticity is achieved through a chain of trust built on a Root of Trust embedded in SoC hardware. Integrity prevents modification of authenticated code and data during the SoC code execution time. Confidentiality prevents code and data from being exported out of the device without proper authentication. Confidentiality is achieved by using encryption keys to protect sensitive data. Encryption keys are derived from the Root-of-Trust keys securely stored in SoC hardware.

Designers can take multiple approaches to implementing a TEE. One of the common ways is to build a secure enclave consisting of a secure CPU, secure storage, and cryptographic accelerators. This ensures the confidentiality and integrity of the system and provides a security boundary. Within this boundary, trusted execution activities protect high value code and data for diverse use cases such as authentication, payment, and content protection.

Non-Volatile Memory at the Center of the Root-of-Trust

To understand why non-volatile memory (NVM) is at the center of the root-of-trust, let us walk through the process of a secure boot flow for a smart home SoC.

Figure 5: Root-of-Trust Needs Non-Volatile Memory (NVM)

The secure boot starts with instantly verified and authenticated firmware. Both the firmware and the encryption keys for authenticating the firmware are stored in the secure Root of Trust module within the SoC. The firmware is typically stored in a Read Only Memory (ROM), and the secure keys that authenticate the firmware are stored in a separate NVM.

The ROM code is decrypted using the secure keys stored in the NVM within the Root of Trust, thereby making the code secure and trusted. The code executed by the primary bootloader is considered secure and trusted as well since the contents of the Root of Trust module are executed here. The primary bootloader executes the code for the application CPU bootloader, which is also considered secure and trusted. Subsequent code executions by the application CPU bootloader, the operation system, and applications running on the device thus run inherently secure and trusted code.

The entire secure boot flow is nothing but building a chain of trust. The Root of Trust is crucial to ensuring a secure and trusted boot flow. Since so much depends on the proper authentication of the code stored in the Root of Trust, the keys should have persistency when the device is powered off, meaning that they must be stored in an NVM.

NVM Requirements for Secure Root-of-Trust

Keys stored in the NVM in the Root of Trust need to be unalterable, so after the product maker has programmed the keys once, they should not be re-programmable. One-Time-Programmable (OTP) NVM is therefore the only choice for implementing a secure Root of Trust.

Figure 6: OTP is the only choice for implementing a secure Root-of-Trust

Since OTP memories can be implemented in a few ways, choosing an OTP based on inherently secure technology is imperative to resisting and thwarting attempts by hackers to gain undue access. The OTP must be reliable, area efficient, and consume less power as smart connected home devices come in various form factors, are cost sensitive, and sometimes battery operated. Access time of the OTP is also important to accelerate the boot time of the entire system.

Not all OTP NVM is Equally Secure

Embedded OTP NVM can be based on floating-gate, Electric-fuse (e-fuse), or antifuse technology, each of which has implications for security.

Floating-gate OTP NVM traps charge on a floating gate to store a binary digit and deplete the charge to erase it. Trapping and depleting charge requires high supply voltages, while creating a floating gate and its associated insulating oxide means adding manufacturing steps to a standard CMOS process. The data in a floating-gate OTP NVM can be erased by exposure to ultraviolet light or radiation, giving hackers an opportunity to manipulate its value.

Figure 7: Enlarged view of a programmed TSMC 20nm electrical fuse in a HKMG process Source: Techinsights

E-fuse based OTP NVM replaced floating-gate OTPs in advanced process nodes because floating-gate OTP NVM typically does not scale well below 40nm, so semiconductor foundries provide them to customers as process enabling IP. Programming e-fuses involves breaking continuously etched polysilicon or metal lines to create an open circuit, which is achieved by exploiting electromigration. However, e-fuses are the least secure because inspection under a scanning electron microscope (SEM) easily reveals which fuses have been programmed vs. those that are not, lending themselves to be reverse engineered by hackers.

Antifuse OTP NVMInherently Secure

Antifuse OTP NVM is created on the principle of oxide breakdown. Every CMOS device uses oxide as an insulator between the gate and the channel. High voltage applied to the gate of a CMOS transistor causes the oxide breakdown and programs the OTP. Other transistors that do not have high voltage applied to their gates remain unprogrammed. Since no charge is stored or trapped, the OTP NVM is not susceptible to hacking techniques based on altering the devices supply voltage or temperature. Oxides in modern standard CMOS process technologies are very thin and of the order of tens of Angstroms (each Angstrom is a 10th of a nanometer), making the broken oxide invisible to electron microscopy, so the NVM cells state cannot be read out. With these advantages, it is clear why antifuse-based OTP NVM has become the de facto solution for storing encryption keys securely in hardware.

Figure 8: Antifuse-based OTP is inherently secureits impossible to tell if this OTP has been programmed

Security-Enhanced OTP NVM

Even though antifuse OTP is fundamentally physically secure, steps can be taken in the design of the OTP to further enhance it.

High voltages applied to the OTP NVM on unprogrammed locations can program the memory and alter the initial content. To prevent accidental or purposeful programming with high voltages, the OTP must be designed to detect tampering events that include applied voltages that are out of the specified operating range of the SoC. The OTP NVM should raise a flag when such events are detected so that the security engine within the SoC can take appropriate action to disable the attempt or lock access to the OTP NVM.

In addition to tampering, if hackers attempt to access data, the OTP NVM should detect it and send a signal to the embedded processor to take evasive action. Data tampering should be met with preventative action with incorrect data being sent to the output bus of the OTP NVM to befuddle the hacking attempt. Hackers often use a technique called differential power analysis (DPA) to reverse-engineer the contents of OTP NVM. DPA relies on reading the power signature emanating from programmed vs. unprogrammed locations and finding the pattern of the stored content. OTP NVM designed to protect against DPA attacks need to be data agnostic in their programming, meaning that regardless of the content stored in the OTP NVM, the power signature should be the same and should be uniform. Security-oriented OTP NVM architectures include other features like data obfuscation, which generates continuous stream of data on the output bus between read cycles, security locks to disable bits or sections of OTP NVM, and disabling programming an address after it has been programmed once.

Synopsys OTP NVM Based on Inherently Secure Antifuse Technology

Synopsys DesignWare OTP NVM IP is based on the inherently secure antifuse technology. Synopsys is the technology and market leader in antifuse-based OTP NVM with products in volume production for 180nm to 10nm process technologies. Synopsys OTP NVM IP is built on two different OTP NVM bit cells, both of which are patented and have proved to be area efficient, scalable, and reliable in multiple process technologies and foundries. The antifuse-based OTP NVM is fundamentally secure not only because programmed bits cant be distinguished from unprogrammed bits, but also because there is no charge to erase as in a floating-gate structure. Since the programmed state of a bit within an OTP memory array is independent of charge, there is no leakage in the programmed state and attempts to reverse-engineer information stored in the OTP will likely be unsuccessful.

Taking Security Further with Synopsys DesignWare XSC OTP NVM

Synopsys DesignWare XSC OTP NVM incorporates additional security logic in the periphery of the OTP NVM to resist, detect, and stop hacking attempts. These design enhancements make the OTP NVM an ideal choice for semiconductor companies that need to build a tamper-resistant IOT product. The XSC OTP NVM is available in bit counts up to 32Kb to help secure essential program code and data and encryption keys in connected home devices.

Conclusion

The market for piracy is huge and hackers have become increasingly sophisticated even when security is implemented in hardware. The race between the aggressors and protectors is a battle without end. Smart connected home devices are increasingly storing and processing very sensitive and private user data in addition to attempting to deliver copyright protected content from service providers. Protecting consumer data is vital. The semiconductor industry has converged on the idea of Root of Trust to secure and authenticate home IOT devices. Secure antifuse-based OTP NVM is central to implementing the Root of Trust. Embellishing the OTP NVM with advanced security features further protects the valuable assets of the smart home device maker and consumers. The reputation of companies providing home IOT devices and services is on the line. Today, security drives product design decisions. OTP NVM based on antifuse technology and enhanced with security features delivers on the promise of attack resistance and has become the choice of this market segment and many others including applications targeting the mobile, military-aerospace, and automotive markets.

If you wish to download a copy of this white paper, click here






A small cafe in one of the towns hardest hit by bushfires has taken the extraordinary step of offering free food and coffee to victims and firefighters.

Michelle and Maisy Roberts said it was an easy decision to put the community ahead of profits, by throwing the doors open to the Croajingalong Cafe in Mallacoota, East Gippsland, Victoria.

The small coastal town was the scene of large scale evacuations earlier this week, as thousands of locals and holidaymakers were evacuated to Melbourne on Navy ships.

For the locals who remained or have since returned, the cafe's mother and daughter team have been working around the clock to provide coffee and sandwiches, and a place for the community to come together.

Talking to The Today Show, their efforts led new co-hosts Karl Stefanovic and Alison Langdon to give them a round of applause.

Michelle (left) and Maisy Roberts (right) said it was an easy decision to put people ahead of profits, by throwing the doors open to the Croajingalong Cafe in Mallacoota, East Gippsland, Victoria and offering free coffee and food

Michelle Roberts said she simply wanted to bring some 'normality' back to the small country town, which has been ravaged by some of the worst fires to hit the region.

'They've been pretty long and exhausting days, a lot of people here have lost homes so we're all really tired... but everyone's in good spirits,' Michelle said.

'I just wanted to bring back some normality to town, people really appreciated it and it was a place of relief.

'They can have a conversation and talk to each other about the things that have happened, because it's been quite traumatising.'

She said the cafe's efforts had been aided by donations from others, with items such as coffee beans and meat proving invaluable.

The selfless efforts of the cafe owner came as the town was invaded by fire on New Year's Eve, leaving 4,000 people - including 3,000 tourists - with no option but to seek shelter on the beach.

Incredible photos showed thousands of people from the town huddling by the edge of the water, as the sky turned orange.

Michelle Roberts posted this to a Mallacoota Facebook page on New Year's Eve as thousands of locals sought shelter on the beach as fire threatened the town

Talking to The Today Show, their efforts led new co-hosts Karl Stefanovic and Alison Langdon (pictured) to give them a round of applause

The sky turns red over East Gippsland, Victoria, on Saturday as bushfires threaten towns

Thousands of Mallacoota residents and holidaymakers had to be evacuated from the town on Friday ahead of worsening fire conditions over the weekend

Large Navy ships arrived in the coastal town on Saturday to ferry the stranded away to safety before conditions worsened.

From Bastion Point Jetty the HMAS Choules and MV Sycamore took the evacuees to Western Port on the Mornington Peninsula, about an hour from Melbourne.

According to Maisy Roberts, locals who remained had been sticking tight together.

'It's been traumatising, we've never been through something like this in town at least, but we're all pulling together,' she said.

'We keep meeting to have a few drinks or just talk to each other about things.'






Japan Justice Minister Masako Mori speaks during a press conference about Carlos Ghosn's escape from Japan. / Getty

TOKYO  Former Nissan and Renault boss Carlos Ghosn began his astonishing escape from Japan with a bullet train ride from Tokyo to Osaka, possibly accompanied by several people, Japanese news agency Kyodo reported Monday.

Japanese authorities also said on Monday they may still press for Ghosn's extradition from Lebanon to face multiple charges of financial wrongdoing, even though the country does not normally extradite its nationals.

Security cameras captured Ghosn leaving his home on Dec. 29 at about 2:30 p.m. (0530 GMT) and arriving some hours later at Tokyo's Shinagawa Station, where he took the train 300 miles to Shin Osaka Station, Kyodo said, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The international fugitive then went by car to a hotel near Osaka's Kansai International Airport, where he boarded a private jet at 11:10 p.m., according to the media report.

Ghosn was forbidden from leaving Japan while awaiting trial on charges of financial misconduct, which he has denied, but he fled at the end of 2019 to escape what he called a "rigged" justice system.

Prosecutors are now working with police to piece together Ghosn's route and find out who helped him, Kyodo said.

In the government's first briefing since Ghosn skipped bail, Justice Minister Masako Mori said on Monday that as a general principle, Tokyo could request the extradition of a suspect from a country with which it has no formal extradition agreement.

Such a request would need to be carefully examined based on the possibility of "guaranteeing reciprocity and the domestic law of the partner country," Mori told reporters in Tokyo.

Arrest warrant

Mori did not say what would guarantee reciprocity (the idea that benefits or penalties extended by one country to citizens of another should be reciprocated). She also did not say if there were any Lebanese nationals in Japan wanted in Lebanon.

Story continues

Mori offered little insight into the events of Ghosn's escape to his ancestral home, repeatedly saying she could not comment on specifics because of an ongoing investigation.

Japanese officials broke days of silence about the Ghosn case on Sunday, saying they would tighten immigration measures and investigate his escape thoroughly. The authorities have also issued an international notice for his arrest.

Government offices and most businesses in Japan have been shut for the New Year holidays, which formally ended on Monday.

Lebanon has said it received an Interpol wanted notice for Ghosn and that he entered the country legally. A senior Lebanese security official, meanwhile, has said Lebanon does not extradite its citizens.

Mori also defended Japan's justice system against Ghosn's charges that it was "rigged" and discriminatory.

In Japan, suspects who deny charges against them are often detained for long periods and subject to lengthy questioning without a lawyer present, a system critics call "hostage justice."

"Various comments about Japan's justice system and this unjust departure are two different things," Mori told reporters, saying criticism of the justice system could not be used to justify Ghosn's escape.

"Departure in an unjust way without proper procedure is tantamount to smuggling, an illegal departure amounting to a crime."

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Mumbai, Jan 6 : A gamut of Bollywood personalities like Reema Kagti, Rajkummar Rao, Manoj Bajpayee and Nimrat Kaur, among many others have condemned the attack on students and teachers by a mob at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi.

Several masked individuals thrashed students and teachers inside the campus here with wooden and metal rods on Sunday.

While the number of the injured in the various clashes which occurred throughout the day was not yet known, at least 20 students were admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences with severe injuries, including the Students Union President Aishe Ghosh, who was reportedly hit over the eye with an iron rod.

Here's what the celebrities have tweeted: Reema Kagti: I stand with the students and people of India. Shame on the government of India for their brutality and barbarism. #JNU #AMU #Jamiya #NoToNRC #NoToCAA.

Mahesh Bhatt: It's here! Fascism has come to India in the name of national security. Time to shed our toxic silences and speak against it in one voice.

Rajkummar Rao: What happened in #JNU is shameful, horrific and heartbreaking. Those who are responsible behind these attacks should be punished. #JNUViolence.

Manoj Bajpayee: Cruel...horrific.....scary..images from JNU are very disturbing. It should be condemned in no uncertain words. No democracy should allow colleges and universities to be so unsafe that goons can enter at will at any time to hurt and intimidate.

Nimrat Kaur: Disgusted with the cancerous India we wake up to every single day. What's next? Who's next? Where's next? We're yet to heal from all the recent horrific atrocities and new ones just bulldoze their way right in. Sickened to disbelief. #JamiaMilia #UP #JNU #India.

Sharing a newspaper clipping about the attack, Twinkle Khanna tweeted: India, where cows seem to receive more protection than students, is also a country that now refuses to be cowed down. You can't oppress people with violence-there will be more protests,more strikes,more people on the street. This headline says it all.

Actress Taapsee pannu too shared a photograph of the same clipping and wrote: Sums it all For everyone who refuses to look at it, acknowledge it let's wait till your house burns down.

Kriti Sanon: It breaks my heart to see what happened at JNU! What's going on in India is horrifying!! Students & teachers being beaten up and terrorised by masked cowards!! The constant blame game!Stooping so low for political agendas! Violence is never a solution! How have we become so inhuman? Sonam Kapoor: Shocking disgusting and cowardly. Have the balls to at least show your face when you want to attack innocents.

Tahir Raj Bhasin: Attempting to shut down student voices of dissent with violence is the death of democracy. #Jnuattack Anurag Basu: Organised attack on the students because what they say, do or believe in?! Since when has having an opinion a crime in modern India! Cover your faces, the world is looking at you....#SOSJNU.

In another tweet, Basu wrote: Only credible voice of resistance and opposition left in this country are students, You'll not be able to muzzle this voice. Keep trying. #JNUattack.

Amyra Dastur: So this is what it's c'me to? Beating up students and teachers with steel rods! Shutting off Street lights! Masked Extremists destroying everything in their path and the Police stand idle! India will not be ruled by Gundagiri! #IStandWithJNU Saiyami Kher:: What happened in #JNU is appalling, horrific and heartbreaking. Policies, religion, ideology nothing matters and cannot justify violence. We are Indians first. These cowardly masked attackers need to be punished.

#JNUAttack #JNUViolence
Carplat is a mobility company which delivers a rental car to the customer's door. The company took over Hi Parking in Nov. 2019./ Courtesy of Carplat



By Jung Hae-myoung



Rent-a-car services are becoming more popular in the mobility industry, as the share economy becomes standard for customers.



These kinds of services are different from previous rent-a-car services with the concept of "sharing." For example, rented cars can be shared between two people or more, or with a community.



"The reason that rent-a-car services attract investment in the industry is that the new car-sharing format is becoming more popular in the market with rising demands," an official from a mobility company said.



Socar, a car-sharing company now under the control of VCNC, owner of Tada, is one of the most aggressive companies in launching the renting service.



Last November, the company launched "Socar Pairing" where a customer can long-term rent a vehicle and another customer can rent the same car when it is not in use by the original renter. The original customer can receive a discount when they give notice to the company that one will not use a vehicle for a certain period of time.



The company has so far attracted 1.9 billion won of investment from SoftBank Ventures, KB Investment, and Stone Bridge Ventures.



The service provides 23 different types of cars, including Sonata, Grandeur, Benz E Class, BMW 5 series, Tesla, and Jeep Renegade.



Carplat, which is run by plat, has also launched a car sharing service. Collaborating with parking business called Hi Parking, the company launched the service last November, where companies sharing the same parking lot can share the cars.



It provides various service from sharing cars to after services such as car washing and repairing.



Currently 11 different parking spaces are running the service in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province with 50 cars each. The company aims to expand the service to all over the region in the country targeting the companies in the building with Hi Parking.



BeMyCar, a smart mobility platform company, also attracted investment of 10 billion won. The company provides service called "CarO" where the customer can "subscribe" to ride a luxury car such as a Porsche, Maseratti, Mercedes, Land Rover with fee of 1,070,000 won per month.



"Unlike other countries, South Korea does not allow P2P car sharing, so companies compete with car models they own. The number and types of cars have increased and the fact that this data can be useful in the future mobility industry were considered well by the investment companies," an official from Socar said. "The demands also increased. People from all ages are using the service," she added.


Dozens of Iranian Americans were held at the Canadian border over the weekend and questioned about their backgrounds and political views, the New York Times reports. Some travelers said they were detained up to 10 hours.

According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations chapter in Washington state, more than 60 Iranians and Iranian Americans were held for questioning at the Peace Arch Border Crossing in Blaine, Washington, on Saturday. Customs and Border Protection has said the reports were false and that some people had simply experienced delays because of an overloaded staff.

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According to CBP, heightened general security had bogged down processing at the border. The Department of Homeland Security had intensified security at all ports of entry after Iran had threatened to retaliate against the U.S. for last weeks killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Irans military force. Soleimani was a powerful and popular figure in Iran, and state-run news there said millions attended his funeral Monday. Iran has said it will no longer abide by the full terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, and members of its parliament chanted death to America in their chamber on Sunday. Lawmakers in Iraq, who have expressed outrage that the killing occurred on Iraqi soil, voted unanimously to expel U.S. troops from their country. President Donald Trump has promised to impose sanctions on Iraq if the country acts on that vote.

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In its report Sunday, CAIR alleged that DHS had instructed CBP agents to  report and detain anyone with Iranian heritage entering the country who is deemed potentially suspicious or adversarial,  whether U.S. citizens or not. A number of travelers reported being singled out for lengthy questioning.

The news sparked an outcry on social media. Some accused border agents of violating the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, while others accused CAIR, a prominent Muslim civil rights group, of spreading false rumors. CBP has said there was no such directive from DHS. Social media posts that CBP is detaining Iranian-Americans and refusing their entry into the U.S. because of their country of origin are false, a CBP spokesperson said.

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CBP said that some travelers had to wait up to four hours to cross because of the delays at the port of entry. But citizens and noncitizens of Iranian descent told the Times, Politico, and the Los Angeles Times about waiting for far longer, while travelers of other national origins were quickly processed. Officers are not allowed to refer people for a secondary screening just because of national origin.

The incident reminded some critics of the Muslim ban that Trump had instituted in 2017. Of all the Muslim-majority countries targeted by the ban, Iran had the largest population of U.S. residents and the largest population of people likely to travel between the two countries with regularity.

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Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and other Democratic officials from the state said they were looking into the reports. According to the L.A. Times, Washington Lt. Gov. Cyrus Habib has said his office received reports of probing questions about Soleimanis killing and family members serving in the Iranian military, which is compulsory for all adult men.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal said on Sunday she had been working on this all morning and that she was deeply disturbed by the reports. Rep. Adam Smith said his office had also been working on the matter. It is unacceptable for the civil liberties of Americans and immigrants to be violated, he said on Twitter. We cannot let discrimination dictate our policies and actions.
John Minchillo, STF / Associated Press

Former San Antonio Mayor and HUD Secretary Julian Castro dropped his bid for the presidency. Jeremy's been covering the campaign and has the scoop. Meantime, a church shooting in the Fort Worth area has thrust the gun debate back into the spotlight in Texas. Andrea has the details.

All that and more as we go behind the headlines for a look at what's really going on at the Texas Capitol and in Washington with the state's #1 political podcast: The Texas Take. Join the conversation featuring Scott Braddock, editor of The Quorum Report, Houston Chronicle political writer Jeremy Wallace, and Chronicle reporter Andrea Zelinski.
Tens of thousands forced into shelters after floodwaters submerge entire neighbourhoods in Jakarta and satellite cities.

The death toll from floods and landslides in Indonesia has risen to at least 66 people, as the countrys authorities warned residents of more heavy downpours in the coming days.

Entire neighbourhoods in the capital Jakarta and its satellite cities, home to about 30 million people, were submerged last week by floodwaters that forced tens of thousands into temporary shelters.

Five days after the floods, 66 people have died as of today, Agus Wibowo, a spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency, said on Monday.

Nine people died in Jakarta, while the rest of the fatalities occurred in neighbouring districts, according to the agency.

I didnt manage to evacuate anything

Authorities, meanwhile, asked residents to take precautions and safeguard their possessions in the face of more expected storms.

There is still potential for mid to heavy rainfall with lightning, thunder and strong winds in greater Jakarta, Indonesias weather bureau said in a statement.

Last weeks deluge was the heaviest in the capital since record-keeping began in the 19th century, the bureau said, leading to the citys deadliest flood in years.

Some 377mm (14.8 inches) of rain pounded parts of the vast city, with floodwaters reaching up to the second floor of some buildings after rivers overflowed.

I didnt manage to evacuate anything  my house remains but the windows and doors are gone, said Aminah, a flood victim.

At least two people in Jakartas west were taken to hospital on Monday after the collapse of a five-storey building, which Indonesias search and rescue agency said may have been caused by a build-up of rainwater.

Flash flooding also killed more than half a dozen people in Lebak, a regency of Baten province, including a seven-year-old boy who was reportedly swept away by the water.

A total of 169 areas across Indonesia were reported last week to have been overwhelmed by floods.

Located in the equatorial belt, Indonesia with its tropical climate often suffers from flash floods and landslides, mainly triggered by monsoon rainfall between October and April.
The Swiss painter and printmaker Felix Vallotton was an intriguing, talented but slippery artist. From painting to painting in Felix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet, a small survey of his career, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you often dont quite know what to expect next in terms of style or subject, even within the same year.

They begin with the soulful Self-Portrait at the Age of 20 from 1885, just after three years of study at the Academie Julian in Paris. It shows the artist looking wise beyond his years, already adept at a suavely brushed surface redolent of Manet, Ingres and Degas. In The Sick Girl, a sparkling interior scene of 1892, his realist style hardens to such perfection that it dazzles but also seems slightly cold.

At the other extreme is Street Scene in Paris, from 1897, which has the flattened, rough-edged shapes of the small Post-Impressionist cohort that called itself the Nabi. The group included the artists good friend, Edouard Vuillard, and Vallotton himself, although he didnt share their preference for images of cozy domesticity. Also from 1897, his portrait Thadee Natanson, in which realism takes on a stiffening naivete that evokes the self-taught French artist Henri Rousseau. Vallotton, who wrote criticism for a newspaper in Lausanne, Switzerland (where he was born in 1865), gave Rousseau an early laudatory review.
(Alliance News) - RBG Holdings PLC reported on Monday the pre-trial settlement of Project Blue Sky, one of its internally funded litigation cases.

The legal services firm, previously known as Rosenblatt Group PLC, said Project Blue Sky was a damages-based agreement for a shareholder dispute case.

The parties have agreed to a settlement "just over a year since the claim was filed", and a year earlier than the scheduled trial at the end of 2020, the company noted.

"This has therefore enhanced the group's internal rate of return on the investment," the company said.

RBG Holdings said it has also part-financed the case in line with its strategy. The return of the company's investment in the case, in terms of cash and time, was 184% with and internal rate of return of 317%.

The company said Project Blue Sky is its smallest self-funded litigation case, and the company has invested GBP2.5 million in 11 other cases which are yet to conclude.

"The settlement, while not material in terms of the group's forecast full-year financial results, is, however, the first successful completion of a case that the group has invested in since its flotation in May 2018," RBG Holdings said.

"It demonstrates the significant returns that can be achieved through the group's litigation finance strategy," the company noted.

In September last year the company had said it acquired sell-side corporate finance boutique Convex Capital Ltd for GBP22 million in total and changed its own name to reflect the significance of the deal.

RBG Holdings shares were up 2.2% in London at 94.50 pence each on Monday.

By Loreta Juodagalvyte; loretajuodagalvyte@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Representative image

Iran-backed Iraqi militia commander Qais al-Khazali said if US troops do not leave Iraq, they would be considered an occupying force.

Khazali was speaking after Iraq's parliament backed a recommendation by the prime minister to end the presence of foreign troops, a response to the U.S. killing of a top Iranian military commander and an Iraqi militia leader in Baghdad.

The U.S. sanctioned Khazali's Asaib Ahl al-Haq group on Friday, saying it was an Iranian proxy.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 13:58:31|Editor: ZX

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Students shout slogans during a protest against the violence that erupted inside Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), in New Delhi, India, Jan. 6, 2020. University and college students staged protests and demonstrations across many cities in India, including Mumbai, Delhi and Aligarh, throughout Sunday night, against the violence that erupted inside the Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) injuring around 30 students. (Xinhua/Javed Dar)

NEW DELHI, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- University and college students staged protests and demonstrations across many cities in India, including Mumbai, Delhi and Aligarh, throughout Sunday night, against the violence that erupted inside the Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) injuring around 30 students.

Students belonging to various colleges, institutes and universities were seen continuing with their protests at Mumbai's popular monument Gateway of India till Monday morning.

Clashes had broken out between two groups of students at the JNU campus on Sunday evening. While one group backed by the JNU Students Union (JNUSU) had been opposing the proposed fee-hike and registration process for forthcoming semester examinations, the other group demanded immediate registration process.

The JNUSU blamed the violence on the students and activists belonging to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), said to be the student wing of the country's main ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The intense violence also evoked sharp reactions from the political class, as several senior politicians cutting across party lines visited the JNU and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) where injured students were admitted to.

Most of the injured students were discharged from AIIMS after treatment, said latest media reports.

The country's Home (Internal Security) Minister Amit Shah ordered probe into the clashes and the ensuing violence that lasted for a couple of hours inside the JNU Campus.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, both of whom are JNU alumni, condemned the violence inside the university campus.
Crew members work on a high-speed train at Beijing North Railway Station in Beijing, capital of China, on Dec. 28, 2019. The high-speed railway line connecting Beijing and Zhangjiakou in north China's Hebei Province will go into service on Monday, China Railway Corporation said Saturday. (Xinhua/Peng Ziyang)

Chinese people witnessed many positive changes in their lives during 2019, as the Chinese government delivered on its promises to improve the livelihood of its people in various aspects.

More convenient transportation

Chinas Ministry of Transport has so far overachieved in all 12 goals released at the beginning of 2019, finishing the construction and reconstruction of 290,000 kilometers of rural roads nationwide and realizing the opening of hardened roads in all possible townships and administrative villages.

The country has also connected the public transit cards issued by 448 county-level cities and 275 cities at prefecture-level and above, and increased high-speed railway mileage by more than 5,000 kilometers during 2019.

More than 10 high-speed railway lines had been put into operation in China by the end of the year, bringing the countrys total high-speed railway mileage to more than 35,000 kilometers, continuing to rank first in the world.

Cheaper and faster Internet connection

By the end of 2019, all objectives specified in the Report on the Work of the Government in March 2019 about speeding up broadband and lowering internet rates had been realized.

On Nov. 11, 2019, Chinas Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published regulations on the administration of services enabling cellphone users to switch their telecommunications service carriers without changing their phone numbers.

Many favorable policies dealing with raising the speed and lowering the rates of internet services have been rolled out in China. They cover such areas as reducing rates of broadband and dedicated internet access services of small and medium-sized enterprises, launching price floor rate plans for low-income and senior citizens, offering a maximum discount to registered impoverished households, and reducing roaming fees in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao area.

Heart-warming services ensuring better social security

At the beginning of 2019, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of China announced that China would fully implement a social security system that covers the entire population and steadily improve the benefits of social insurance.

So far, the number of Chinese residents with social security cards has exceeded 1.3 billion, accounting for more than 93 percent of the countrys population. Meanwhile, the country has issued more than 80 million electronic social security cards.

By the end of October 2019, 59.8 million registered impoverished residents had joined basic elderly endowment insurance, ensuring that rural residents entitled to the cost of living allowances were receiving them.
The following is a Q&A transcript provided by the Embassy of India in Korea on recently legislated Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019. It aims to offer an easier pathway to Indian citizenship for the persecuted religious minorities in certain neighboring countries.  ED.



Q: Why should Baluchis, Ahemadiyas in Pakistan, Rohingyas in Myanmar not be considered for this kindness?



A: The CAA has not stopped any foreigners of any country from applying for Indian citizenship under The Citizenship act, 1955. Baluchis, Ahemadiyas and Rohingayas can always apply to become Indian citizens as and when they fulfill qualifications provided in the relevant sections of the Citizenship Act, 1955.



Q: In what ways, does it benefit Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians from these three countries?



A: All legal migrants (whose travel documents are complete) including the minority communities from three countries were and are and will continue to be eligible to apply for Indian citizenship if they fulfill the qualifications laid down in the Citizenship Act, 1955. The CAA has not changed this situation whatsoever. Only some migrants from these communities and countries will benefit from the CAA if they have incomplete or no documents or their documents have expired.



Q: Doesn't India have an obligation under the U.N. to take care of refugees?



A: Yes it does. And it is not shying away from it. There are more than two lakhs (200,000) Sri Lankan Tamils and Tibetans in India and more than 15,000 Afghans, 20-25,000 Rohingayas and a few thousand other refugees of different nationalities presently live in India. It is expected that someday these refugees will return to their homelands when conditions improve there.



Q: Will illegal Muslims immigrants from these three countries be automatically deported under this law?



A: No. The CAA has absolutely nothing to do with deportation of any foreigner from India. The deportation process of any foreigner irrespective of his religion or country is implemented as per the mandate of the Foreigners Act, 1946 and/or the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920. These two laws govern entry, stay movement within India and exit from India of all foreigners irrespective of their religion or country. Therefore, the usual deportation process would apply to any illegal foreigner staying in India.



Q: Does the CAA affect Indians (Hindus, Muslims, anyone)?



A: No. It has absolutely nothing to do with any Indian citizens in any way. The Indian citizens enjoy fundamental rights conferred on them by the Constitution of India. No statute including the CAA can abridge or take them away. There has been a misinformation campaign. The CAA does not affect any Indian citizens, including Muslim citizens.



Q: What about Sri Lankan Tamils?



A: India has provided citizenship to 4.61 lakh (461,000) Tamils of Indian origin after signing PM level agreements in 1964 and 1974. Presently 95,000 Sri Lankan Tamils are living in Tamilnadu on central and state government subsidies and grants. They can apply for Indian citizenship whenever they become eligible.



Q: Why only these three countries? And why only religious persecution of above notified denominations?



A: The CAA deals with persecution on religious lines in three neighboring countries where the constitution provides for a specific state religion. Followers of other religions have been persecuted in these three countries. The bill is very focused and provides remedy for a particular situation in which some foreigners of these six minority communities find themselves.



Q: Does this mean that Muslims from these three countries can never get Indian citizenship?



A: Muslims from these three and all other countries can always apply for Indian citizenship and can get it if they are eligible. The CAA has not stopped any foreigner from any country from taking citizenship of India provided he meets existing qualifications under the law. During the last six years, approximately 2,830 Pakistani citizens, 912 Afghani citizens and 172 Bangladeshi citizens have been given Indian citizenship.



Q: Whom does CAA apply to?



A: It is relevant only for Hindu, Sikhs, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi and Christian foreigners who have migrated, fled from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan into India up to 31.12.2014 on account of persecution faced by them due to their religion. It does not apply to any other foreigners including Muslims migrating to India from any country including these three countries.



FAQ on National Register of Citizens



Q: Is National Register of Citizens (NRC) a part of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)?



A: No. CAA is a separate law and NRC is a separate process. The CAA has come into force nationwide after its passage from Parliament, while the NRC rules and procedures for the country are yet to be decided. The NRC process that is going on in Assam has been implemented by the Honorable Supreme Court and mandated by the Assam Accord.



Q: Do Indian Muslims need to worry about CAA + NRC?



A: There is no need for an Indian citizen of any religion to worry about CAA or NRC.



Q: Will NRC be for people of a particular religion?



A: No. NRC has nothing to do with any religion at all. NRC is for every citizen of India. It is a citizen register, in which names of every Indian will be recorded.



Q: Will people be excluded from NRC on religious grounds?



A: No, NRC is not about any religion at all. Whenever NRC will be implemented, it will neither be applied on the basis of religion nor can it be implemented on the basis of religion. No one can be excluded just on the basis that he follows a particular religion.



Q: By conducting NRC, will we be asked to present proof of us being Indian?



A: First of all, it is important to know that at the national level, no announcement has been made to begin NRC process. If it is implemented, it does not mean that anyone will be asked for proof of being Indian. NRC is merely a normal process to register your name in the Citizens' Register. Just like we present our identity cards or any other document for registering our names in the voter list or getting an Aadhaar card made, similar documents shall need to be provided for NRC, as and when it is carried out.



Q: How is citizenship decided? Will it be in the hands of government?



A: Citizenship of any person is decided on the basis of The Citizenship Rules, 2009. These rules are based on the Citizenship Act, 1955. This rule is publicly in front of everyone. These are five ways for any person to become a citizen of India:

- Citizenship by Birth,

- Citizenship by descent

- Citizenship by registration

- Citizenship by naturalization

- Citizenship by incorporation



Q: Will I have to provide details of birth of parents etc. to prove my Indian citizenship?



A: It would be sufficient for you to provide the details of your birth such as date of birth, month, year and place of birth. If you do not have the details of your birth, then you will have to provide the same details about your parents. But there is absolutely no compulsion to submit any documents of parents. Citizenship can be proved by submitting any documents related to date of birth and place of birth. However, a decision is yet to be taken on such acceptable documents. This is likely to include voter cards, passports, Aadhaar, licenses, insurance papers, birth certificates, school leaving certificates, documents relating to land or home or other similar documents issued by government officials. The list is likely to include more documents so that no Indian citizen has to suffer unnecessarily.



Q: Do I have to prove ancestry dating back before 1971?



A: No. For pre-1971 genealogy, you do not have to submit any type of identity card or any documents like birth certificate of parents / ancestors. It was valid only for the Assam NRC, based on the 'Assam Accord' and the directive of the Honorable Supreme Court. For the rest of the country, the NRC process is completely different and under The Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003.



Q: If it is so easy to prove identity, then how were 19 lakh (19,000) people in Assam affected due to NRC?



A: Infiltration is an old problem in Assam. To curb it, there was a movement and in 1985, the then Rajiv Gandhi government, to identify the intruders, had to enter into an agreement to prepare NRC, assuming the cut-off date of 25 March 1971.



Q: During NRC, will we be asked to present old documents, which are difficult to collect?



A: There is nothing like that. Common documents will only be required to prove identity. When the NRC is announced at the national level, then rules and instructions will be made for it in such a way that no one will face any trouble. The government has no intention of harassing its citizens or putting them in trouble!



Q: What if a person is illiterate and does not have relevant documents?



A: In this case, the authorities will allow that person to bring a witness. Also, other evidence and community verification etc. will also be allowed. A proper procedure will be followed. No Indian citizen will be put in undue trouble.



Q: There are a large number of people in India who do not have homes, are poor and are not educated and they do not even have any basis of identity. What will happen to such people?



A: This is not entirely correct. Such people vote on some basis and they also get the benefit of the welfare schemes of the government. Their identity will be established on the basis of that.



Q: Does NRC exclude anyone for being transgender, atheist, Adivasis, Dalits, women and landless without / without documents?



A: No. NRC, as and when carried out does not affect any of the mentioned above.


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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020 15:07 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c32106c3a 1 City building-collapse,development,building,safety-issues,safety-standards Free

The partial collapse of a five-story building in Jakarta on Monday morning has reportedly injured 11 people, according to an official.

The building is located on Jl. Brigjen Katamso near the Slipi overpass heading toward Tanah Abang in Central Jakarta.

National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) operational director Brig. Gen. Budi Purnama said the injured people consisting of eight who were inside the building and three outside.

Three people are convenience store attendants who were able to rescue themselves. We rescued five people from the second floor, Budi said at the location on Monday, kompas.com reported.

Victims outside the building were two male ride-hailing motorcycle taxi drivers and a woman.

Among the injured, three people, identified only as West Jakarta resident F, 27, South Jakarta resident MI, 37, and Tangerang resident EJ, 52, have been brought to Tarakan Hospital in Central Jakarta for treatment.

The agency, in cooperation with relevant institutions such as the Fire and Rescue Agency, Public Order Agency and police, is currently assessing the location to ensure no other victims remain inside the building.

Budi said the incident might have been caused by the dilapidated building.

The walls seem to be weathered and wet. From our engineering [point of view], [the building] is not safe, he said.

A similar opinion was expressed by Rifan Gusrianto, a rescuer from SAR Jakarta, saying that puddles were found on the roof.

This building is not safe because there are puddles on the rooftop, he said at the location.

There is no channel built to let the water flow off the building, hence it seeped into the walls, he said.

Seepages were found on the ceilings on the third and fourth floor because there was no access to discharge water from the rooftop, he added.

Jakarta Spatial Planning Agency head Heru Hermawanto said the agency would probe into the cause of the incident.

We will try to find out the cause. If we look in a glance, the quality of the building structure was too brittle, he said. After the police [investigate], we will check the cause."

The first floor of the building was used for an Alfamart convenience store, while the second and third floors were utilized as its warehouse. How the fourth and fifth floors were used is unclear. (sau)
LONDON  Prime Minister Boris Johnson was on the Caribbean island of Mustique, still basking in the glow of his recent election victory, when the news came last Friday that President Trump had ordered the killing of a powerful Iranian general  without tipping off, let alone consulting, his British ally.

The British government was livid about the lack of notice, according to current and former officials, particularly because there are about 400 British troops deployed in Iraq, and Britain has historically been more closely aligned with the United States on combat operations there than any other country.

But Mr. Johnson held his tongue until Sunday evening, after he returned to London. Even then, he issued a carefully worded four-paragraph statement that said he would not lament the killing of the general, Qassim Suleimani, warned Iran against reprisals and said nothing about Mr. Trumps action.

It was a circumspect reaction for a politician not known for his circumspection, and it underscored Mr. Johnsons predicament as he confronts what is arguably the first foreign policy crisis of the post-Brexit era.
Iran no longer to abide 2015 US nuclear deal 06 January, 2020



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Woke Bingo Iran said Sunday it would no longer abide by any of the limits of its unravelling 2015 nuclear deal with world powers after a US airstrike killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad, ending an accord that blocked Tehran from having enough material to build an atomic weapon.



The announcement came Sunday night after another Iranian official said it would consider taking even-harsher steps over the US killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani on Friday.



Hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets on Sunday in Iran to walk alongside a casket carrying the remains of Soleimani, the former leader of its expeditionary Quds Force that organises Tehran's proxy forces in the wider Mideast.



The leader of one such proxy, Lebanon's Hezbollah, said Soleimani's killing made US military bases, warships and service members spread across the region fair targets for attacks. A former Revolutionary Guard leader suggested the Israeli city of Haifa and centres like Tel Aviv could be targeted.



Iran's state TV cited a statement by President Hassan Rouhani's administration saying the country will not observe limitations on its enrichment, the amount of stockpiled enriched uranium as well as research and development in its nuclear activities. It did not elaborate on what levels it would immediately reach in its programme.



The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations watchdog observing Iran's programme, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, Iran said that its cooperation with the IAEA will continue as before.



Meanwhile, Iraq's parliament voted in favour of a resolution calling for an end of the foreign military presence in their nation, an effort aimed at expelling the 5,000 US troops stationed there over the war against the Islamic State group.



Soleimani's killing has escalated the crisis between Tehran and Washington after months of trading attacks and threats that have put the wider Middle East on edge. The conflict is rooted in President Donald Trump pulling out of Iran's atomic accord and imposing sanctions that have crippled Iran's economy.



Iran has promised harsh revenge for the US attack, which shocked Iranians across all political lines. Many saw Soleimani as a pillar of the Islamic Republic at a moment when it is beset by US sanctions and recent anti-government protests.



Retaliation for Soleimani could potentially come through the proxy forces which he oversaw. Soleimani's longtime deputy Esmail Ghaani already has taken over as the Quds Force's commander.



The US Embassy in Saudi Arabia separately warned Americans of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks.



Late Saturday, a series of rockets launched in Baghdad fell inside or near the Green Zone, which houses government offices and foreign embassies, including the US Embassy.



Trump wrote on Twitter afterward that the US had already targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture.



Trump did not identify the targets but added that they would be "HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD".



The 1954 Hague Convention, of which the US is a party, bars any military from direct hostilities against cultural property. However, such sites can be targeted if they have been re-purposed and turned into a legitimate military objective, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.



Iran, home to 24 UNESCO World Heritage sites, has in the past reportedly guarded the sprawling tomb complex of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with surface-to-air missiles.



After thousands in Baghdad on Saturday mourned Soleimani and others killed in the strike, authorities flew the general's body to the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz. An honour guard stood by early Sunday as mourners carried the flag-draped coffins of Soleimani and other Guard members off the tarmac.



The caskets then moved slowly through streets choked with mourners wearing black, beating their chests and carrying posters with Soleimani's portrait. Demonstrators also carried red Shia flags, which traditionally both symbolise the spilled blood of someone unjustly killed and call for their deaths to be avenged.



Officials brought Soleimani's body to Ahvaz, a city that was a focus of fighting during the bloody, 1980-88 war between Iraq and Iran in which the general slowly grew to prominence. After that war, Soleimani joined the Guard's newly formed Quds, or Jersualem, Force, an expeditionary force that works with Iranian proxy forces in countries like Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.



Authorities then took Soleimani's body to the city of Mashhad later Sunday. State TV estimated that a million mourners came out to the Imam Reza shrine to pay their respects, although that number could not be independently verified. Soleimani's remains will go to Tehran and Qom on Monday for public mourning processions, followed by his hometown of Kerman for burial on Tuesday.



This marks the first time Iran honored a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Khomeini received such a processional with his death in 1989. Soleimani on Monday will lie in state at Tehran's famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him.



Soleimani was the architect of Iran's regional policy of mobilizing militias across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, including in the war against the militant Islamic State group. He was also blamed for attacks on US troops and American allies going back decades.



Although it's unclear how or when Iran may respond, any retaliation was likely to come after three days of mourning declared in both Iran and Iraq.



Mohsen Rezaei, a former leader of the Guard, told a crowd of mourners in Tehran that the Israeli city of Haifa and other centers like Tel Aviv could be targeted. Rezaei earlier alleged without offering evidence that Israel leaked information to the US about Soleimani's whereabouts, which allowed them to carry out the drone strike.



"Rest assured we will level to the ground Haifa and Israeli centers so that Israel will be wiped out," he said. "The issue is very serious for the Iranian nation. You hit us and you should get hit. You attacked us and it is the Iranian nation's right."



Iranian officials planned to meet on Sunday night to discuss taking a fifth step away from its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, one that could be even greater than planned, Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi told journalists.



"In the world of politics, all developments are interconnected, Mousavi said.



Iran previously has broken limits of its enrichment, its stockpiles and its centrifuges, as well as restarted enrichment at an underground facility.



The Iranian parliament on Sunday opened with lawmakers in unison chanting: Death to America! Parliament speaker Ali Larijani compared Soleimani's killing to the 1953 CIA-backed coup that cemented the Shah's power and to the US Navy's shootdown of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988 that killed 290 people. He also described American officials as following the law of the jungle.
Korean cosmetics continue to gain popularity overseas.

The Korea Trade Statistics Promotion Institute said on Friday that the country's cosmetics exports rose 34 percent on-year to US$490 million last month.

China was the biggest importer, with shipments worth $220 million, which accounted for 46 percent of Korea's total cosmetics exports.
The only state representative to vote against accelerating 5G wireless facilities in Connecticut is holding a forum on the issue in Stamford later this month, alleging that the faster internet technology could bring health and environmental concerns.

State Rep. David Michel, D-Stamford, is hosting What You Should Know About 5G on Jan. 15 at the Ferguson Library in downtown Stamford.

This is raising serious issues for residents and state and local officials charged with protecting public health, safety, privacy, security, wildlife and property values, his flyer for the event said.

5G wireless internet is expected to be 100 times faster than the current fourth-generation internet, and has been touted by Gov. Ned Lamont as critical for economic and workforce development.

When representatives voted in June on House Bill 7152, Michel was the only member who opposed it. The law established a council on 5G technology, charged with developing guidelines and reviewing requests from carriers for installing wireless service facilities. It also called for making highways and public rights-of-way available for the new technology.

Michel, who is from France, traveled there last year and spoke with French elected officials who are pushing that nation to move more cautiously on 5G technology, he said.

This is a whole new technology and it has never been tested with independent, peer-reviewed studies, he said.

The state, meanwhile, is moving ahead on telecom technology. Gov. Ned Lamont and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz are scheduled to make an announcement Monday morning in Norwalk with a telecom provider, in what they are billing as a partnership that will expand access to high-speed, mobile internet.

Speakers at the forum will include Frank Clegg, the former president of Microsoft Canada, B. Blake Levitt, author of the book Electromagnetic Fields, A Consumers Guide To The Issues And How To Protect Ourselves, Patti Wood, founder of the nonprofit Grassroots Environmental Education, and Devra Davis, an epidemiologist and founder of the Environmental Health Trust.

The event is co-sponsored by Michel, Grassroots Environmental Education and Americans for Responsible Technology.

Columnist Dan Haar contributed to this story

Liz.teitz@hearstmediact.com
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Members of several social justice groups were joined by a few veterans who gathered about a hundred yards from the entrance to Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston on Sunday afternoon to protest the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, the presence of U.S. service members in the Middle East and escalations of military action by the U.S. in the region.

The protest was one of several in large cities across the country over the weekend to condemn the U.S. airstrike in Iraq last Thursday that killed Soleimani, commander of Iran's Quds force.

The strike came days following a Kataib Hezbollah rocket attack on an airbase in Iraq that resulted in the death of a U.S. contractor and wounding of several other Americans and Iraqis. Shortly after, members of that same Iranian-backed militia stormed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

In total, about two dozen protesters stood at the intersection of N. Walters Street and Interstate 35, about a hundred yards away from Fort Sam's entrance for a couple of hours Sunday afternoon.

"We're protesting the current situation and killing of Iranian military leader Suleimani and the U.S. being in Iraq over 30 years," said Rachell Tucker, 35. "We have an insane defense budget. The U.S. has so much homelessness and hunger, (so does) San Antonio itself. With only $20 billion we can help out."

Tucker says she served in the U.S. Army from 2002 to 2011 and now works as an educator. She said her time in active duty and talking to other anti-war veterans changed her mine about military interventions. "I just awakened," she said.

Local groups taking part in the protest included About Face: Veterans Against the War, Party for Socialism and Liberation, People United Against Oppression, Refuse Fascism, Veterans for Peace, and the Tenants Union of San Antonio.

They held signs urging peace and for the U.S. to withdraw forces from the Middle East. Protesters also wanted to publicize the GI Rights Hotline as an option for servicemen and women to learn about conscientious objections to participating in a war. One sign read, "Soldier, soldier, don't you know you can refuse to go to war."

Jules Vaquera, who said she served in the U.S. Air Force and was deployed to Iraq in 2005 and 2006, said they chose Fort Sam Houston for a reason. "We are here for vets who are active duty. To give them hope and that they have a choice," she said.
Margot Robbie, 29, refuses to be ashamed of being 'ambitious' in Hollywood.

Speaking to Woman's Day magazine on Monday, the Australian actress was candid in her remarks ahead of the premiere of her new film, Bombshell.

'Men can be ambitious and be praised for it, while women can be ambitious and considered a b**ch,' the Once Upon A Time In Hollywood star said.

Scroll down for video

'It's such a double standard!' Margot Robbie, 29, reveals why she refuses to be ashamed of being an 'ambitious' and driven woman in Hollywood

'I feel like that's one of those things where it is such a double standard,' the I, Tonya actress added.

Margot went on to say that while things were changing, attitudes surrounding ambitious women still had a long way to go.

The blonde star went on to praise her Bombshell co-stars Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron for their own work ethics in Hollywood.

'Men can be ambitious and be praised, while women are considered a b*tch': Margot spoke out about the double standards in Hollywood, and generally, when it came to ambition

'We produce, we all act, we've all gone about and done things in our lives,' she said.

Margot ended by saying that women should not be 'sorry' for their ambitions and goal-driven attitudes.

The film Bombshell focuses on sexual harassment claims at FOX News. Margot plays the fictional character of Kayla Pospisil.

'We produce, we all act, we've all gone about and done things in our lives': Margot praised her co-stars Charlize Theron (L) and fellow Australian Nicole Kidman (M) for their work ethic

Charlize Theron portrays former news anchor Megyn Kelly, and co-star Nicole Kidman plays Gretchen Carlson.

Speaking to E! News at the Golden Globes on Sunday, Margot said she used Twitter to get into the mind of millennial, conservative women.

She said: 'Kayla and my political point of views are different.'

Coming soon! The film Bombshell focuses on sexual harassment claims at FOX News. Margot plays the fictional character of Kayla Pospisil

An Australian native, Margot recently made a plea for donations to her more than 17 million followers on Instagram.

'I'm sure you're all aware of what is happening in Australia at the moment with the fires. I didn't want to show you more pictures of the devastation,' said Margot.

She went on to share pictures from her childhood in Dalby, Queensland, where she grew up on a regional farm.
I have spent 20 years building a wine-import company. On Jan. 14, the Trump administration could destroy it all by imposing a 100 percent tariff on European wine.

Mine is not the only American business that would suffer. The United States imports over $4.25 billion a year in European wine, which is handled by thousands of importers, distributors, wine stores and restaurants. In recent weeks weve all been scrambling to avoid disaster. We are sending emails and letters to clients, begging them to call their representatives in Congress. We are fighting not just to be able to drink European wine; we are fighting for our livelihoods and for our hundreds of thousands of employees.

We have already been hurt by tariffs. In October  a peak season for wine sales  the government imposed a 25 percent tariff on French, Spanish and German wines, along with single-malt Scotch and other European food products.

I and most of the other importers I know spent weeks on the phone negotiating with winemakers to keep working with us. Many of them wanted to walk away from the United States market; after all, these days demand from Asia is huge. We cut margins and raised prices as little as possible, all the while wasting precious time we would have normally devoted to trying to increase our sales.
Another year of movies is ahead of us! Weve mentioned a lot of these films already, but heres a handy list of all the films coming to Netflix this year...so far. (thread)  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

THE OLD GUARD: From director Gina Prince-Bythewood, Charlize Theron and Kiki Layne lead a covert group of immortal mercenaries who must fight to keep their team together when they discover the existence of a new immortal and their extraordinary abilities are exposed.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

MISS AMERICANA: From director Lana Wilson, a raw and emotionally revealing look at Taylor Swift; following one of the most iconic artists of our time as she learns to embrace her role not only as a songwriter and performer, but as a woman harnessing the full power of her voice.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

MANK: From director David Fincher, the story centers around the writing of CITIZEN KANE. Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance, and Lily Collins star.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

UNCORKED: Mamoudou Athie (UNICORN STORE), Courtney B. Vance, and Niecy Nash star in Prentice Pennys feature directorial debut. Elijah (Athie) must balance his dream of becoming a master sommelier with his father's expectations that he carry on the familys Memphis BBQ joint.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Uncorked

REBECCA: Director Ben Wheatley's adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's novel (adapted by Hitchcock in 1940) follows a newly-married young woman (Lily James) who finds herself battling the shadow of her husband's (Armie Hammer) dead first wife, the mysterious Rebecca.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Rebecca

HILLBILLY ELEGY: Amy Adams, Glenn Close, and Gabriel Basso star in director Ron Howard's adaptation of J.D. Vance's memoir of the same name, a modern exploration of the American Dream about three generations of an Appalachian family.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Hillbilly Elegy

DA 5 BLOODS: The latest Spike Lee joint follows four African American vets who return to Vietnam, searching for the remains of their fallen squad leader and the promise of buried treasure. Chadwick Boseman, Paul Walter Hauser, Norm Lewis, Delroy Lindo, and Jonathan Majors star.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Da 5 Bloods

THE BOYS IN THE BAND: From producer Ryan Murphy, Joe Mantello's adaptation of the play follows a group of gay friends who reunite to celebrate one of their birthdays. When the hosts potentially closeted college roommate shows up uninvited, the evening is thrown into turmoil.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

The Boys in the Band

TO ALL THE BOYS: P.S. I LOVE YOU: Lara Jean (Lana Condor) and Peter (Noah Centineo) have just taken their romance from pretend to officially real in the when another recipient (Jordan Fisher) of one of her love letters enters the picture.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You

EUROVISION: When aspiring musicians Lars (Will Ferrell) and Sigrit (Rachel McAdams) are given the opportunity of a lifetime to represent their country at the worlds biggest song competition, they finally have a chance to prove that any dream is a dream worth fighting for.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Eurovision

IM THINKING OF ENDING THINGS: A road trip becomes a twisted mix of palpable tension, psychological frailty, and sheer terror in the latest from Charlie Kaufman, starring Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette, and David Thewlis.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

I'm Thinking of Ending Things

ALL THE BRIGHT PLACES: Based on the novel by Jennifer Niven, Brett Haley's adaptation tells the story of Violet Markey (Elle Fanning) and Theodore Finch (Justice Smith), who meet and change each others lives forever.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

All The Bright Places

THE LAST THING HE WANTED: In this Joan Didion adaptation from Dee Rees, a veteran D.C. journalist (Anne Hathaway) loses the thread of her own story when a guilt-propelled errand for her father thrusts her from byline to unwitting subject in the very story shes trying to break.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

The Last Thing He Wanted

A FALL FROM GRACE: In this thriller from Tyler Perry, Grace (Crystal Fox), a disheartened woman restored by a new romance, discovers her relationship is full of secrets, and her vulnerable side quickly turns violent. Phylicia Rashad, Bresha Webb, Cicely Tyson also star.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

A Fall From Grace

TIGERTAIL: This film from writer/director Alan Yang (MASTER OF NONE) tells the story of a Taiwanese factory worker who leaves his homeland to seek opportunity in America, where he struggles to find connection while balancing family & newfound responsibilities.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Tigertail

THE WILLOUGHBYS: Convinced theyd be better off raising themselves, the Willoughby children hatch a sneaky plan to send their selfish parents on vacation. The siblings then embark on their own high-flying adventure to find the true meaning of family.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

The Willoughbys

THE KISSING BOOTH 2: Elle (Joey King) & Noah (Jacob Elordi) just had the most romantic summer ever, but as he heads off to Harvard Elle juggles a long-distance relationship, college applications with her BFF Lee (Joel Courtney) & friendship with new classmate Marco (Taylor Perez)  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

The Kissing Booth 2

THE HALF OF IT: Shy, straight-A student Ellie is hired by sweet but inarticulate jock Paul who needs help wooing the most popular girl in school. But their new & unlikely friendship gets tricky when Ellie discovers she has feelings for the same girl. From writer/director Alice Wu  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

The Half of It

DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD: In this inventive portrait, director Kirsten Johnson (CAMERAPERSON) seeks a way to keep her 86-year-old father alive forever by staging fantasies of death and beyond. Together, dad and daughter confront the great inevitability awaiting us all.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Dick Johnson is Dead

THE PLATFORM: In a future dystopia, prisoners housed in vertically stacked cells watch hungrily as food descends from above  feeding the upper tiers, but leaving those below ravenous and radicalized.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

The Platform

CRIP CAMP: Down the road from Woodstock in the 70s, a revolution blossomed at a ramshackle summer camp for teens with disabilities, transforming their lives & igniting a movement. Directed by Nicole Newnham & Jim LeBrecht, exec produced by President Barack Obama & Michelle Obama.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Crip Camp

SPENSER CONFIDENTIAL: Mark Wahlberg reteams with director Peter Berg to play an ex-cop, Spenser, who moves in with Hawk (Winston Duke), an aspiring MMA fighter with his own rap sheet. Between gym rounds, the duos taunts turn to trust, and they team up to solve a double homicide.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Spenser Confidential

SERGIO: Wagner Moura and Ana de Armas star in this sweeping drama from director Greg Barker. Set in the chaotic aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, the life of top UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello hangs in the balance during the most treacherous mission of his career.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Sergio

OVER THE MOON: Animation icon Glen Keane makes his feature directorial debut in this musical adventure about a girl who builds a rocket ship to travel to the moon in order to prove to her father that a legendary Moon Goddess really exists.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Over the Moon

COFFEE & KAREEM: A Detroit cop reluctantly teams with his girlfriends 11 year-old son to clear his name and take down the citys most ruthless criminal. Ed Helms and Taraji P. Henson star.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Coffee and Kareem

THE PROM: Ryan Murphy directs this story of a lesbian teenager who's banned from attending the big dance with her girlfriend. The injustice prompts a cast of Broadway eccentrics to descend on the small Indiana town to fight back. Meryl Streep, James Corden & Nicole Kidman star.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

The Prom

OUT OF THE FIRE: Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) is a fearless black market mercenary with nothing left to lose when his skills are solicited to rescue the kidnapped son of an imprisoned international crime lord. Action-packed, edge-of-your-seat thriller directed by Sam Hargrave.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Out of the Fire

LOST GIRLS: Inspired by true events, from filmmaker Liz Garbus. Police inaction drives Mari Gilbert (Amy Ryan) to investigate the disappearance of her daughter. Mari's search of the gated community where Shannan was last seen brings attention to over a dozen murdered sex workers.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Lost Girls

JINGLE JANGLE: From writer/director David E. Talbert, a holiday musical tale of an embattled toymaker, his precocious granddaughter, and a magical invention. Forest Whitaker, Keegan-Michael Key and Madelen Mills star.  Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) January 3, 2020

Jingle Jangle

Netflix recently posted a thread with titles and descriptions of their upcoming 2020 releases. This post is that list, with additional information from IMDB where available. There are films from Dee Rees, David Fincher, Charlie Kaufman, Alan Yang and more, starring actors such as Toni Collette, Chadwick Boseman, and Ana de Armas. There are original works and adaptations, dramas and comedies - definitely an attempt to have something for everyone. Read on for more info.: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Harry Melling: Gina Prince-Bythewood: Greg Rucka: Action, Fantasy: A covert group of immortal mercenaries who must fight to keep their team together when they discover the existence of a new immortal and their extraordinary abilities are exposed.: Based on the comic book by Leandro Fernandez and Greg Rucka: Lana Wilson: Documentary: A raw and emotionally revealing look at Taylor Swift; following one of the most iconic artists of our time as she learns to embrace her role not only as a songwriter and performer, but as a woman harnessing the full power of her voice.: Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Tuppence Middleton: David Fincher: Jack Fincher: Biography, Drama: Follows screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz's tumultuous development of Orson Welles' iconic 1941 movie: This is David Fincher's first film since 2014's: Courtney B. Vance, Mamoudou Athie, Niecy Nash, Sasha Compere: Prentice Penny: Drama: Elijah must balance his dream of becoming a master sommelier with his father's expectations that he carry on the familys Memphis BBQ joint.: This is director Prentice Penny's feature film debut.: Lily James, Armie Hammer, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ann Dowd: Ben Wheatley: Jane Goldman, Joe Shrapnel, Anna Waterhouse, based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier: Drama, Mystery, Romance: A young newlywed finds herself in living in the shadow of her wealthy husband's previous wife.: Director Ben Wheatley's last two films wereand: Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Gabriel Basso, Frieda Pinto: Ron Howard: Vanessa Taylor, based on the novel by J.D. Vance: Drama: A modern exploration of the American Dream about three generations of an Appalachian family.: Amy Adams and Glenn Close have been nominated for 13 Oscars combined, but have zero wins.: Chadwick Boseman, Paul Walter Hauser, Norm Lewis, Jonathan Majors: Spike Lee: Spike Lee, Kevin Willmott, Matthew Billingsly: Drama: Four African American vets who return to Vietnam, searching for the remains of their fallen squad leader and the promise of buried treasure.: Danny Bilson and Paul de Meo wrote an earlier version of the script, which underwent rewrites.: Jim Parsons, Matt Bomer, Zachary Quinto, Andrew Rannells: Joe Mantello: Mart Crowley (play): Drama: A group of gay men who gather in a NYC apartment for a friend's birthday party. After the drinks are poured and the music turned up, the evening slowly exposes the fault lines beneath their friendships and the self-inflicted heartache that threatens their solidarity.: The cast for the film transferred directly from the summer 2018 Broadway revival of the play.: Lana Condor, Noah Centineo, Ross Butler, Jordan Fisher: Michael Figmonari: Sofia Alvarez, J. Mills Goodloe: Drama, Romance: Lara Jean and Peter have just taken their relationship from pretend to officially official when another recipient of one of her old love letters enters the picture.: Based on the novel by Jenny Han: February 12, 2020: Will Ferrell, Rachel McAdams, Dan Stevens, Pierce Brosnan: David Dobkin: Will Ferrell, Andrew Steele: Comedy: When aspiring musicians Lars and Sigrit are given the opportunity to represent their country at the world's biggest song competition, they finally have a chance to prove that any dream worth having is a dream worth fighting for.: Based on the annual Eurovision competition.: Toni Collette, Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, David Thewlis: Charlie Kaufman: Drama, Horror, Thriller: An unexpected detour causes a woman who is trying to figure out how to break up with her boyfriend to rethink her life.: Based on the novel by Ian Reid: Elle Fanning, Justice Smith, Alexandra Shipp, Keegan Michael-Key: Brett Haley: Liz Hannah, Jennifer Niven: Drama, Romance: The story of Violet and Theodore, who meet and change each other's lives forever. As they struggle with the emotional and physical scars of their past, they discover that even the smallest places and moments can mean something.: Based on the novel by Jennifer Niven: February 28th, 2020: Anne Hathaway, Willem Dafoe, Ben Affleck, Tony Jones: Dee Rees: Crime, Drama, Mystery: A veteran D.C. journalist loses the thread of her own narrative when a guilt-propelled errand for her father thrusts her from byline to unwitting subject in the very story she's trying to break.: Adapted from Joan Didion's novel.: Vincent D'Onofrio, David Lynch, Forest Whitaker, French Stewart: Jennifer Lynch: Eric Charles, Jennifer Lynch: Drama, Thriller, Mystery: Detective Michael Tabb knows the city he protects inside and out. He has felt its true heart, as much as its dark underbelly: but he does not know who, in both the dark and light - is taking the lives of young girls.: The director is the daughter of David Lynch, and has directed on many television shows throughout her career.: Christine Ko, Fiona Fu, Tzi Ma, Margot Bingham: Alan Yang: Drama: A multi-generational tale of one family from 1950's Taiwan to present-day New York.: Director Alan Yang worked onand: Jane Krakowski, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short, Alessia Cara: Kris Pearn, Cory Evans: Kris Pearn: Animation: When the four Willoughby children are abandoned by their selfish parents, they must learn how to adapt their Old-Fashioned values to the contemporary world in order to create something new: The Modern Family.: Based on the book by Lois Lowry.: Joey King, Molly Ringwald, Jacob Elordi, Joel Courtney: Vince Marcello: Jay S. Arnold, Vince Marcello: Comedy, Romance: Following the love adventures of Elle, Noah, and Lee.: From the same director as the original.: Leah Lewis, Collin Chou, Enrique Murciano, Becky Ann Baker: Alice Wu: Comedy, Romance: A shy, introverted, Chinese-American, straight-A student finds herself helping the school jock woo the girl they both secretly love. In the process, each teaches the other about the nature of love as they find connection in the most unlikely of places.: Alice Wu also directed 2004's, and designed software for Microsoft before pursuing a filmmaking career full time.: Kirsten Johnson: DocumentaryA daughter helps her father prepare for the end of his life.: Johnson is a prolific cinematographer.: Ivan Massague, Zorion Eguileor, Antonia San Juan, Emilio Buale: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia: David Desola, Pedro Rivero: Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller: A vertical prison with one cell per level. Two people per cell. One only food platform and two minutes per day to feed from up to down. An endless nightmare trapped in The Pit.: Premiered in the TIFF 2019 Midnight Madness section.: James Lebrecht, Nicole Newnham: Documentary: Down the road from Woodstock, a revolution blossomed at a ramshackle summer camp for teenagers with disabilities, transforming their lives and igniting a landmark movement.: Lebrecht is a former camper.: Mark Wahlberg, Winston Duke, Alan Arkin, Colleen Camp: Peter Berg: Brian Helgeland, Sean O'Keefe: Crime, Drama, Mystery: An ex-felon named Spenser returns to Boston's criminal underworld to unravel a twisted murder conspiracy.: Based on the novel by Ace Atkins and Roger B. Parker: Ana de Armas, Garret Dillahunt, Wagner Moura, Brian F. O'Byrne: Greg Barker: Craig Borten: Drama: A sweeping drama set in the chaotic aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, where the life of top UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello hangs in the balance during the most treacherous mission of his career.: It's inspired by a true story.: January 20, 2020: Glen Keane: Audrey Wells: Animation, Adventure, Musical: A girl builds a rocket to travel to the moon in hopes of meeting the legendary Moon Goddess.: This is Sony Animation's first film to be released directly to Netflix.: Taraji P. Henson, Ed Helms, Betty Gilpin, David Alan Grier: Michael Dowse: Shane McCarthy: Comedy: A Detroit cop tries to clear his name with the help of with his girlfriend's young son.: The director's most recent film was: Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, James Corden, Awkwafina: Ryan Murphy: Chad Beguelin, Bob Martin, Jack Viertel: Comedy, Drama, Musical: A troupe of hilariously self-obsessed theater stars swarm into a small conservative Indiana town in support of a high school girl who wants to take her girlfriend to the prom.: The musical that the film is based on premiered on Broadway in 2018.: Chris Hemsworth, David Harbour, Golshifteh Farahani, Derek Luke: Sam Hargrave: Joe Russo: Action, Drama: An Indian businessman recruits a mercenary to find his kidnapped son.: The film was formerly known as: Amy Ryan, Dean Winters, Thomasin McKenzie, Gabriel Byrne: Liz Garbus: Michael Werwie: Drama, Mystery, Thriller: When Mari Gilbert's daughter disappears, police inaction drives her own investigation into the gated Long Island community where Shannan was last seen. Her search brings attention to over a dozen murdered sex workers.: Based on the book by Robert Kolker.: Forest Whitaker, Keegan-Michael Key, Madelen Mills, Hugh Bonneville: David E. Talbert: Musical: An imaginary world comes to life in a holiday tale of an eccentric toymaker, his adventurous granddaughter, and a magical invention that has the power to change their lives forever.: Filmed in Elm Hill, Norwich, England.Source Netflix Twitter
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  Weve seen a string of violent anti-Semitic attacks across the five boroughs in the last few weeks.

In one episode, a man was arrested after allegedly going on a stabbing rampage at the home of a rabbi in Monsey, N.Y. Five people were injured in the attack, which took place on the seventh night of Hanukkah.

Earlier in December, two people opened fire on a kosher market in Jersey City. Four people, including a New Jersey police detective, were killed.

Suspects in both those cases have reportedly had connections to the Black Hebrew Israelites sect, some of whose members have been linked to violent, religion-fueled extremism over the years.

Sect members spewed racial epithets at white Catholic high school students from Covington, Ky., during that infamous confrontation in Washington, D.C., last year.

You remember that incident. It was the one where the white Catholic kids were at first blamed for an episode in which they themselves were actually the victims of hate.

The anti-Semitic attacks weve seen in the city also include street assaults and verbal threats of violence.

Its been horrible to see in this day and age, but the attacks are sadly just the latest examples of an increase in anti-Semitic violence, vandalism and rhetoric weve seen over the last few years.

Some of the hate has been driven by an increasingly militant pro-Palestinian movement, in particular the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions effort, which treats Israel as if it were apartheid-era South Africa. Is there no way to be pro-Palestinian while not hating on Jews?

The left would love to lay the new anti-Semitism at the feet of right wingers and white supremacists. But its not quite that simple, is it?

Dems, including those lawmakers who took part in pro-Jewish demonstrations this past Sunday, should look into their own ranks and call out the anti-Semitism they see there.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) sparked controversy last year by tweeting its all about the Benjamins, baby when talking about pro-Israel lobbyists and their sway over U.S. lawmakers. A tired and still damaging trope about Jews and money.

Omar also trafficked in anti-Semitic hate speech when she suggested that American Jews have a dual allegiance to the U.S. and Israel. Another shop-worn trope, which casts Jews as the other and implies that they cant be trusted.

How did the Dem-led House of Representatives respond to Omars comments? By voting to condemn prejudice in all its forms. Omar was not singled out, even though it was her comments that sparked the House vote in the first place.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) and Omar were also criticized by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) for sharing an anti-Semitic cartoon by Carlos Latuff.

Tlaib is the same lawmaker who said she felt a calming feeling when thinking about the Holocaust, because her Palestinian ancestors lost their land in order to give Jews a safe haven. Ask yourself if any Republican would have gotten any benefit of the doubt for such comments.

Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour has also been called out for anti-Semitic comments, but that hasnt stopped Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) from using her as a surrogate in his presidential campaign.

And Dems like Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) and former Rep. Keith Ellison, the latter of whom served as deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee and who is currently the Minnesota state attorney general, were slow to denounce the Nation of Islam and its virulently anti-Semitic, leader Louis Farrakhan.

GOP President Donald Trump has also been accused of trafficking in anti-Jewish tropes. Dems and the media were quick to call him out, even as Trump has defended Israel, recently signed legislation to combat anti-Semitism, and fulfilled a long-held American pledge by moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Dems should be just as forceful in calling out anti-Semitism in their own ranks.
On Monday, members of Congress will shuttle back to the U.S. Capitol ready  we hope  for a frenetic new year of impeachment drama, foreign policy deliberations, legislative debates and fiesty re-election campaigns.

Forget politics as usual. Theres bumpy and unfamiliar territory ahead.

When they step back in Washington, the Connecticut delegation has expressed in no uncertain terms that it wants an immediate briefing from the White House on the assassination of a top Iranian general this week and the deployment of additional U.S. troops to the Middle East, as fears of a snowballing conflict in the Middle East mount.

Will Congress contemplate war with Iran in 2020? Its possible.

Moreover, U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., are staring down the barrel of a historic Senate impeachment trial expected to start roughly soon and continue who knows how long.

U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4, is still hoping for a shoulder tap from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to dip his toe in Senate waters as a House manager for the prosecution of President Donald Trump in the trial. U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, will seek the leadership of Congresss powerful budget-writing committee.

And in what may be the only shred of normalcy, every member of the Connecticut delegation has a list of bills they pray will crawl their way through both chambers to Trumps desk for an autograph.

U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5, said her 2020 top priority is passing Democrats revamped Higher Education Act, which would provide more federal aid to make college affordable, boost student support services and pin tougher regulations on colleges that dont make the grade. It comes with a chunky $400 billion price tag over 10 years.

DeLauro on Friday said her 2020 focus will be passing her paid family and medical leave bill, a longtime goal of the congresswoman who has taken leave herself to fight cancer.

People are working in jobs that do not pay them enough to keep up with the rising costs they face every day, DeLauro said. Sadly then, it is no surprise that very few can afford to lose several weeks of wages in order to take care of an ill loved one or for the birth or adoption of a child. The FAMILY Act would fix that economic challenge workers are facing across the country.

DeLauro said she wanted meaningful Congressional action on the bill, which has not yet passed the House. Trump support for the bill appears unlikely after Trumps daughter and adviser, Ivanka Trump, snubbed DeLauro and her partner U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., as unwilling to compromise and did not invite them to a White House summit on paid family leave.

When legislators resume lawmaking, the Senate is expected to pass the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal, an agreement to rewrite the rules of North American trade that was negotiated, in part, by U.S. Rep. John Larson, D-1, and DeLauro. Thats a big deal because trade with Canada and Mexico supports 145,100 jobs in Connecticut, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said.

And you can bet the Murphy and Blumenthal will try to reignite their negotiations over gun reforms in 2020. Murphy has lead talks with Republicans over expanded background checks fun gun purchases since August, and Blumenthal is focused on red flag laws with U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

But when will the Senate pass anything, if its bogged down in an impeachment trial? We dont really know.

Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., are still in a face-off with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., over calling new witnesses in the Senate trial. Pelosi has withheld the two articles of impeachment passed by her chamber in an attempt to win a fair Senate trial.

McConnell called Pelosis interference a non-starter on Friday and said the Senate will continue the ordinary business of the Senate until it receives the articles.

We cant hold the trial without the articles, he said.

You may remember Murphy said back in December Pelosi should send the articles sooner rather than later because it should be up to the Senate to craft the rules for the trial.

But whenever the Senate gets around to it, the trial is significant, even if it is very likely to result in Trumps acquittal. The Houses impeachment of Trump was the most monumental action of Congress in 2019 and perhaps in decades, said Michael Malbin, professor of political science at the State University of New York at Albany.

Nothing Congress has done this past year is remotely as important as the Houses decision to impeach the President, Malbin said. By implication, that also puts the Presidents actions and reactions on the same level of importance. Whether you agree or disagree that the facts support removal, or wish that a censure might have sufficed, the historic significance cannot be gainsaid. Nor could the historic significance have been avoided. Inaction of any kind would be equivalent to acceptance.

And before anyone starts moaning that Congress didnt do anything else in 2019, heres short list of laws passed last year that are meaningful to Connecticut:

A $1.4 trillion spending package, keeping the federal government afloat until September. DeLauro, who chairs a spending subcommittee, negotiated a significant portion of the package, including a new provision to fund $25 million in federal gun violence research. The bill gave some tax exclusions to volunteer fire fighters and first responders, a provision fought for by Larson. It also repealed a tax on employer-sponsored health plans and allocated funding for cumbling foundations research, provisions introduced by U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2.

A massive defense bill that sets up the U.S. Navy, Air Force and Military to buy new submarines, helicopters and airplane parts from Connecticut manufacturers like General Dynamics Electric Boat, Pratt and Whitney and others. Courtney and Blumenthal both played key roles in shaping this legislation. It also created a new allowance for the surviving spouses of veterans, a measure introduced by Hayes.

The Sept. 11 Victim's Compensation Fund was permanently replenished. It pays claims to first responders and others sick with World Trade Center-related illnesses. Hundreds of Connecticut residents have sought aid from the fund.

A bill to make animal crushing and other forms of animal cruelty a federal crime was introduced by Blumenthal and passed.

Finally, in 2019, we wished a happy retirement to Dan Freedman, who with wisdom and wit brought you the D.C. Buzz each week for many years. His are big shoes to fill, but hopefully I will grow into them.

Were walking into another wild year. Button up, Connecticut.

emilie.munson@hearstdc.com; Twitter: @emiliemunson
Reynhard Sinaga has been has been jailed for life and must serve a minimum of 30 year Photo credit: Greater Manchester Police/PA Wire

A student from Indonesia has been named as Britain's worst ever rapist after being convicted of more than 150 offences over more than two and a half years.

Reynhard Sinaga, 36, was found guilty of luring 48 men from outside bars and clubs in the city of Manchester back to his flat, where he drugged and assaulted them. In some instances he would then film the attacks on his mobile phone.

Ian Rushton, North West Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor, said: "Reynhard Sinaga is the most prolific rapist in British legal history.

"His extreme sense of sexual entitlement almost defies belief and he would no doubt still be adding to his staggering tally had he not been caught.

"Sinaga's unthreatening demeanour duped these young men - many of whom thanked him for his kindness in offering them a place to stay - into thinking this monster was a Good Samaritan.

"But once back at his flat he used victims as objects purely for his own gratification - then appears to have derived further twisted pleasure from re-watching his films in court and putting victims through the trauma of giving evidence."

Judge Suzanne Goddard QC ruled that following four separate trials he must serve a minimum of 30 years in jail.

She told Sinaga: "You are an evil serial sexual predator who has preyed upon young men who came into the city centre wanting nothing more than a good night-out with their friends.

"One of your victims described you as a monster. The scale and enormity of your offending confirms this as an accurate description."

The judge continued to say: "Rarely, if ever, have the courts seen such a campaign of rape as this, covering so many victims over a prolonged period."

She said the true scale of Sinaga's offending may never be known but that police appeared to have established 195 men were filmed by the defendant while unconscious.

Judge Goddard added: "It is ironic that were it not for the films that you took of your evil crimes it seems that most of these offences would not have even been discovered, let alone prosecuted.

"Your actions show you as a dangerous individual with no sense of reality.

"In my judgment you are a highly dangerous, cunning and deceitful individual who will never be safe to be released. That is for the Parole Board."

Sinaga had shown "not a jot of remorse", she continued, and noted at times he appeared to be "actually enjoying the trial process".

Detectives from Greater Manchester Police say they are keen to speak to about 70 of the potential victims who have not yet been identified from Sinaga's videos to ensure they have any support needed.

Earlier, Judge Goddard said police had established there are 195 different males who appear to be unconscious while Sinaga sexually assaulted them on film.

Bev Hughes, Greater Manchester's Deputy Mayor for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice, said: "The police, St Mary's Sexual Assault Referral Centre, Survivors Manchester, Victim Support, the National Probation Service and other partner agencies have worked together to provide victims and survivors with the best possible support throughout the trials.

"I also want to echo GMP's appeal for further victims of Sinaga to come forward, so we can ensure they get the support they need.

"I also want to urge anyone who has been a victim of any rape or sexual assault to come forward and report it to police, confident that they will receive the help and support they need.

"Greater Manchester is a resilient place. We have undergone traumas in the past and, together, come through them. Sinaga is an appalling individual, who acted alone and is now off our streets. He is in no way representative of our city-region and people should not be fearful of enjoying all that Manchester city centre has to offer."

With additional reporting from Press Association
Three people have been charged with breaching total fire bans on days of significant NSW fire dangertwo of which for allegedly cooking in the open.

Three people have been charged with breaching a total fire ban amid significantly elevated fire danger across NSW.

The incidents occurred on Saturday and Sunday at Cooma in NSWs south, Tarro near Maitland and Countegany south of Queanbeyan.

The former two incidents allegedly involved attempts to light an open fire for cooking, while the latter involved the lighting of several small fires.

The three accused have been issued court attendance notices and will appear in NSW courts within the next three months.

Another man was on the weekend charged with allegedly using power tools which sparked a 25-hectare blaze at Marsden Park, northwest of Sydney.

A fire believed to be lit by fireworks on Sunday evening also burned a grassed area at Sydney Olympic Park.

At least 60 homes were destroyed in blazes across southern NSW on Saturday, taking to 576 the number of houses razed since New Years Eve.

The state experienced severe to extreme fire danger on Saturday.

Update on Victorian Fires

Meanwhile, thick smoke is likely to blanket Melbourne for days as bushfires continue to tear through the states east.

The air quality is at its worst in East Gippsland, as dozens of bushfires continue to burn in the region on Monday.

The Environment Protection Authority has also recorded very poor air quality in Melbournes metropolitan area, attributing the smoke to bushfires burning in the state as well as in NSW and Tasmania.

Chief environmental scientist Andrea Henwood urged people to take precautions to take precautions, saying the smoke will linger until Wednesday.

Close everything up. Seal the doors. Now would be a good time to do that because this is going to persist for the rest of the day, Henwood told reporters.

If it persists into the next couple of days you want to have as much clean air as you can within your home.

Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton advised people with lung or heart conditions, the young and old, and pregnant women to stay indoors.

He said healthy people may also experience symptoms including eye, nose and throat irritation, coughing, sneezing and congestion.

For those severely impacted by the smoke, Sutton said face masks were an option.

Theyre not for everyone. They need to be fitted properly. If theyre not fitted properly, theyre not working, he said.

There are 31 fires burning across Victoria as of Monday morning, with 18 in eastern Gippsland and six in the northeast.

One million hectares has been burnt across Victoria.

Rain has started to fall, but not across all fire-affected areas and not enough to douse the fires, and is creating new difficulties.

It does in fact create some other challenges in a strange way. We had a Forest Fire Management vehicle tip over yesterday, thankfully no one was seriously injured, Premier Daniel Andrews told 3AW on Monday.

Andrews said the track the vehicle was travelling had been greasy because rain had not fallen there in such a long time.

So its better than it not raining but its nowhere near enough for us to think this fire events over, he said.

The deadly fires have killed Buchan man Mick Roberts and Maramingo Creek man Fred Becker and destroyed at least 110 properties and 220 outbuildings. Four people remain missing.

The cooler weather has allowed military helicopters to deliver supplies to isolated communities and help with evacuations, reaching 13 communities on Sunday.

They also rescued 406 people from Mallacoota and will continue to try and fly out a remaining 300 people who registered for evacuation. Navy ships brought out more than 1100 people on Saturday.

More than 3500 properties remain without power, with AusNet bringing in generators when possible and restoring the network when it is safe to do so.

All warnings now sit at a watch and act level.

The state government has announced a fund to support Victorian bushfire survivors, contributing $2 million.

An additional 71 firefighters from the United States and Canada will arrive on Wednesday to help with firefighting efforts.
Naomi Watts is no stranger to red carpets.

And on Sunday, the 51-year-old dazzled yet again as she attended the 77th Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles.

The 21 Grams star oozed old Hollywood glamour in a sparkling black halterneck gown at the awards show.

Star power: Naomi Watts is no stranger to red carpets, and the 51-year-old dazzled yet again on Sunday as she attended the 77th Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles

Naomi flaunted her slender figure in the floor-length gown, which hugged her curves in all the right places.

She paired the dress with a metallic black clutch.

The British-Australian star wore her blonde bob in a wavy style and opted for a classic makeup look complete with red lipstick.

Accessories: Naomi paired the showstopping dress with a metallic black clutch

Naomi plays former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson in Showtime miniseries The Loudest Voice, which tells the story of late chairman Roger Ailes' downfall.

The Loudest Voice was nominated for two awards and won one.

Russell Crowe won Best Actor in a Limited Series but the show itself lost out to HBO's Chernobyl in its category.

Naomi recently paid tribute to Australia's first responders amid the country's bushfire crisis, which has seen more than 12 million acres burnt.

Beauty: The British-Australian star wore her blonde bob in a wavy style and opted for a classic makeup look complete with red lipstick

She shared a video from her Christmas vacation in Byron Bay, NSW, and revealed that she was concerned for the wildlife and locals.

'This was my last eve in Byron, NSW, Australia. To get a sense of how beautiful the wildlife regularly sounds... Please turn up the volume,' she wrote on Instagram.

'The fires have been truly horrendous. It's so upsetting and worrying. So much wildlife already lost. And still much of the summer ahead.'

'My heart goes out to those who've lost loved ones and homes. Big gratitude to the brave firemen who literally haven't stopped during the holidays,' she added.

'Heartbroken for all the animals, plants and land. Pray for rain.'
T he Standard has begun a week-long investigation into school exclusions after a rise in excluded pupils was linked to soaring numbers being recruited by county lines dealers, as well as youth violence and youth imprisonment.

A 70 per cent surge in permanent exclusions in England since 2012/13 is now seen by experts as a significant factor contributing to knife crime in London, up 53 per cent since 2014.

Here, the Standard speaks to four Londoners with experience of being excluded as part of our week-long investigation:

'Feeling stupid is normal for me'

Ryan, 14, Lambeth

I got excluded for the first time when I was 12. Just a little mess up. I was in the primary school frame of mind and got behaviour points for backchat and after that the teachers earmarked me as trouble. I tried to change but the school wasnt taking me serious. I was put in a room called internal exclusion for two weeks. Then I got kicked off site for three weeks.

They wanted to send me away to a centre for excluded kids in Peckham but my dad said it wasnt safe because of knife crime, so he kept me at home. I chatted online with other people also kicked out, who thought the whole thing was funny.

The next year things got worse for me and I was sent to a PRU for a trial period. I had friends there so I thought it might work but it was like prison for teenagers.

"All the bad people put into one school. Its like hell. Teachers repeat the same thing over and over, people encourage each other to be bad, and the year 11s do year seven work. Few children make it out of the PRU but I kept my head down and behaved and the teachers said I didnt need to be there.

Teenagers Ryan and Daniel on a south London estate / NIGEL HOWARD 

I was sent back to mainstream but by then I had missed so much school that I felt lost. I just felt embarrassed. I couldnt do the maths, I couldnt do the English. I felt theres no point in me being in school because it made me look dumb.

"I am in year nine now. They put me in the isolation unit most days. Theres 15 people there. You sit in a booth and copy from textbooks. People sleep or go on their phones. I was sent there for mucking about and shouting. Its because I dont understand my work and feel stupid. I am not a bad kid, I just need help. But school dont care. They want to force me out. I dont know what to do. Feeling stupid is normal for me now.

From poetry and cello to gangs and guns

Eliza Rebeiro, 26, Croydon

In primary school I won awards for poetry and public speaking, I played cello and was a happy child, but in year 8 I hit the buffers. Somebody wrote something nasty about a teacher in a book, called her a lesbian, and because I had written other silly things in the book, the headteacher got involved and said she would force who done it out of me.

It was a high-achieving Catholic school and the head told me I shouldnt even be at the school because my parents were divorced and that wasnt Catholic. I was 11 and didnt know how to react so I laughed and she sent me home. I had never been in trouble or sent home before, but after that I became aggressive and argumentative.

At 12, I was sent to a PRU in Croydon and was the only female in my year. I ended up being passed between three PRUs and never made it back to mainstream.

CEO Eliza Rebeiro (left) and Youth Worker Abigale Wray from crime prevention campaign, Lives Not Knives / Daniel Hambury/@stellapicsltd

The PRUs mentally f***ed me. I arrived young and naive  and got introduced to drugs, gangs and knives. Every day we met in the car park before school and shared a joint. I was high on weed before first lesson even began. Some of my peers had no dinner at home and they were dealing drugs to get by and carrying wads of cash.

There were fights every day and I had to develop a hard shell to survive. I saw someone stabbed in the head with a pencil, kids getting CS-gassed by police. I was 13 when I saw my first gun and 14 when I saw my first stabbing. I had replaced cello and poetry with weed and alcohol. Sometimes we would start drinking while still at the PRU.

Luckily, one teacher spotted I was smart and gave me one-to-one tuition. Thanks to her, I passed five GCSEs but most of my peers didnt even turn up for exams.

Being at the PRU shaped my life. I founded a campaign at 14 called Lives Not Knives that has become a charity working with over 100 children, including excluded kids. But I have had to rebuild my confidence and my ability to trust people. I lost who I was and am still trying to get that person back.

PRU introduced me to the crime side of life

Abigale Wray, 18, Lewisham

I had been in top sets throughout primary school, but when I was 13 my relationship with my mum broke down. I started being rude to teachers and getting into fights with other kids at school. At 14, I was kicked out and sent to a PRU in south London. I had no idea what to expect. It was really different  small classes, fewer teachers, less subject choices, shorter days. It was hard to concentrate. People would walk in and out of classrooms in the middle of lessons and just kick off for no reason.

I had to learn to stand up for myself and to fit in and the first thing I learned from my peers was how to steal. We would go to Superdry at Stratford Westfield and steal coats. We did it once a week after school for about six months. At the PRU I saw people smoking weed and carrying knives for the first time. The boys hid their knives in the bushes near school. At first it was shocking but it soon became normal for me.

Youth Worker Abigale Wray / Daniel Hambury/@stellapicsltd

"On the days of our GCSEs, the PRU picked us up from home in a minibus to make sure we sat them. I failed English, science and business studies, but was one of very few to pass maths.

Now I work as a youth worker for a charity helping excluded children. I am passionate about finding the reasons behind their behaviour and supporting them. When I look back, I see how things could have been different if I had someone to talk to. I had fallen out with mum and felt alone and misunderstood. There was no attempt from the school to understand why I was struggling. One of my colleagues from the PRU is in prison for life for the murder of a teenager. And this year I lost a friend to knife crime. The PRU introduced me to the crime side of life. Not to anything good.

'I was the youngest there... It can mess with your mind'

Daniel, 13, Lambeth

When I was in year seven, I had a little altercation with a teacher. I was in trouble and she told me to sit at a certain table and I refused and told her to shut up and walked out and slammed the door. Next thing I knew I got excluded and sent to the PRU for a six-week trial.

I was only 12 and the youngest kid there. Every day you go through metal detectors to be checked for knives. It felt like you were going in to a prison. It can mess with your mind.

"People class it as a place for bad kids and losers. But once inside, it werent too bad. I knew people there so that was cool. It was a place to link up with my friends and reflect on what you did in real school. I done some learning  English, maths, science. It wasnt terrible but it is low standards and not like real school, so if you stay long you get messed up.

My older brother is at uni and he gave me a lecture that I got to fix up if I want a future. I took his advice and got back to mainstream in year eight and I done good. Im better in class and I feel calmer. I think I had a narrow escape. I wouldnt tell a teacher to shut up now.
Long gone are the days when education levels weren't inherently tied to income levels. Twenty-first-century teens as young as high school freshmen consider what colleges are available to them sooner rather than later to make a decent living in the long run.

Be it grades or moneymany young adults automatically choose the more convenient access to community college to begin their undergraduate education. With 41% of all undergrads in a two-year school, according to the American Association of Community Colleges, Stacker looked to Niche to find out the top community colleges in every state across the country.
More than 1,000 Vietnamese workers of a Taiwanese firm in northern Ninh Binh Province resumed work Monday after a three-day strike demanding higher Tet bonuses.

The workers of the wholly foreign-invested Ever Great International Footwear Company complained that they had not been given bonuses for the 2020 New Year holiday.

Also, for the upcoming Lunar New Year, or Tet, the countrys biggest and most important holiday, leaders of the company had announced a bonus of just half a month's basic salary for workers who had worked for a year or more. Those who had worked for the company for less than a year were to be given a much lower bonus.

Upset, the workers struck work Saturday, demanding that the company reconsiders its holiday bonus policy.

Tran Kim Long, vice chairman of the provincial labor federation, said the firm has since agreed to give Tet bonuses of a months basic salary for those working from a year and more, and a percentage of the monthly salary for others, depending on their experience with the company.

Ever Great International Vietnam began operations in September 2018 and produces leather footwear for export.

Companies in Vietnam will pay employees an average Tet bonus of VND6.71 million ($288) this year, a 7.1 percent increase from last year, according to a report prepared by the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs based on a survey of 25,000 companies and 3.15 million workers in 40 provinces and cities.

The upcoming Tet will be a seven-day holiday that will start January 23, 2020, two days before the Lunar New Year. Government offices and state-owned companies will close for seven days from January 23 to 29.

The Vietnam General Confederation of Labor in 2018 published a study on minimum wages and cost of living after polling over 3,000 workers in 150 different businesses.

Of them, 26.5 percent said they were "barely getting by" while 12.5 percent said their incomes were not enough to support their families and they had to work overtime or do additional jobs to make ends meet.

A recent report by the labor ministry recorded 67 strikes in the first half of 2019, one less than in the same period last year, mostly demanding better pay and food.

82 percent of workers' strikes in January-June 2019 happened in foreign invested companies. South Korean and Taiwanese companies accounted for 16 strikes each, Chinese firms for 10 and Japanese companies for four.
New Delhi: In 2020, more large companies will opt for flexible coworking spaces for their short-term expansion plans, says a study that revealed that this segment is no longer driven solely by start-ups, millennials and small and medium-sized enterprises.



While tech-giant Google has already leased office space with coworking operator Simpli Work in Gurugram to expand its operations, even banks and telecom companies are keen on their teams to operate away from headquarters and closer to entrepreneurs, showed the research by real estate services company Anarock Property Consultant.



Towards 2018-end, the total supply of flexible workspaces was anywhere between 7-7.5 million sq. ft. area and it crossed 12 million sq. ft. by the end of 2019.



"Despite the WeWork debacle in the US dominating headlines and raising questions about the future of the coworking business, the segment has emerged as a viable asset class for landlords and operators in India," said Anuj Puri, Chairman, Anarock.



"The coworking market has grown by leaps and bounds and is a significant factor in the strategy for occupiers," he added.



There are currently more than 200 coworking players operating across India, with the top seven players in this space alone having more than 350 centres across multiple cities in the country.



These players include Cowrks, WeWork India, Awfis, Regus, Smartworks, 91springboard and OYO's Workspaces.



"This number is likely to double or even treble in the next two years, given the rate at which these leading players actively leased spaces across major cities in 2019," Puri said.



The coworking sector has also witnessed the entry of major realty players. Bengaluru-based developer Brigade Group ventured into the coworking segment with the launch of BuzzWorks'.



Hospitality player Roseate Hotels and Resorts has also forayed into this space by opening its first coworking centre at its hotel Roseate House' in Delhi's Aero City.



Even as US-based WeWork's failed IPO raised doubts about the company's future, WeWork India's expansion remained on course.



Owned by realty firm Embassy Group, the company has been mainly funded by Embassy so far and pays a management fee to the parent company.



With 37 operational coworking centres, the company is currently present in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Gurugram, Pune, Noida and Hyderabad.



But 2019 also witnessed a growing wave of consolidation in the sector, in the form of mergers and acquisitions.



In fact, the consolidation wave had already begun in 2018, with major acquisitions like One Co.Work acquiring IShareSpace and AltF CoWorking acquiring Noida-based Daftar India, Puri said.



"The trend continued in 2019 with Oyo taking over Innov8 for Rs 220 crore. In 2020, we will see smaller or city-specific operators merge with national players looking to enter or establish themselves in tier II, III markets," he added.
Getty

On Sunday, just days after the U.S. strike that killed the powerful Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, the Trump administration got its first real taste of international pushback. The Iraqi parliament voted to oust American troops from the country and Tehran announced that it would pull completely out of its obligations under the 2015 nuclear deal.

The pushback didnt come in the form of a targeted strike on a major American outpost or U.S. service member, but combined, the two events served as a wakeup call for officials in Washington who for days had tried desperately to manage the fallout of the Soleimani strike, with some describing it as an act to advance the cause of peace.

President Donald Trumps truculent response? Threaten Iraq with sanctions if it expels U.S. troops: If they do ask us to leave, if we dont do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.

Tehrans announcement about its nuclear program Sunday indicated that the efforts Iran and the United States made in recent months to discuss the possibility of negotiations had all but evaporated. And the Iraqi vote in parliament, although nonbinding, worried officials in the State Department who for days had tried to convince officials in Iraq that backing Americas presence in the country was still the best bet for a continued partnership.

In response to Sundays events Trump threatened disproportionate strikes against Tehran and indicated he would not be constrained by anyone on the Hill.

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless! the president raged on Twitter on Sunday afternoon.

Sundays maelstrom and new developments were not entirely unexpected by Trumps national security brass or his war planners. Shortly before he ordered Thursdays fateful, potentially world-altering attack, the president was briefed on a menu of possible consequences if Soleimani were slain. According to two administration officials, one of the listed potential consequences was attacks on U.S. military personnel abroadand another was the Iranian regime deciding to amp up its nuclear program.

Story continues

For senior Iraqi officials who have worked closely with the United States, including Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, fears that their country will become the proxy battleground for a war between the U.S. and Iran have combined with a sense of betrayal by their American allies.

Last week, as Abdul-Mahdi worked to calm an increasingly explosive confrontation, he turned to Soleimani for help. An American contractor had been killed by a militia, Kataeb Hezbollah, that is part of the Iraqi governments forces but which answered to Soleimani. Then came retaliatory U.S. airstrikes against Kataeb Hezbollah, killing at least 24 people. The militias supporters responded by trying to batter their way into the fortress-like U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdads Green Zone.

The Iraqis had known that Soleimani could make the violence worseor he could rein in the many Iraqi militias over which he held de facto command, and thus ease the tensions.

When the embassy siege ended, Abdul-Mahdi got a phone call from Trump thanking his government, and Trump asked him to play the mediators role between the U.S. and Iran. But Trump already had ordered the drones and helicopters set in motion to terminate the Iranian general in a fiery blast early last Friday morning near Baghdad airport.

Trump claims he ordered the hit to stop a major attack on Americans. But Abdul-Mahdi told Iraqs parliament Sunday, I was supposed to meet Soleimani the day he was killed. He had come to deliver a message from Iran responding to the message we delivered from Saudi [Arabia] to Iran.

Abdul-Mahdi and other Iraqi officials, framing this as duplicity from Trump, apparently feel they have little choice at this point but to demand American forces withdraw. Indeed, as the vote approached on the nonbinding resolution Sunday, Abdul-Mahdi offered parliament only two options: that the U.S. pull out deliberately and slowly or that it do so as quickly as possible. And Abdul-Mahdi, long considered friendly by Washington, said he favored the second option.

In the hours after Soleimanis fiery demise, senior officials in the State Department were tasked with reaching out to officials throughout Iraq to try to ease fears that the country would yet again become an American battlefield. But the more pressing concern for the State Department and the White House, according to two senior U.S. officials, was convincing politicians in Baghdad and Erbil, the capital of Iraqs Kurdistan Regional Government, that they should continue to support the presence of U.S. troops in the country. Axios was the first to report that the U.S. reached out to Iraqi officials to try and stop the vote in parliament.

For more than a year, leading Iraqi politicians have called on the U.S. to withdraw, saying their presence was only inflaming tensions on the ground with Iran-backed militias. And the most important push by the State Department was to shore up Kurdish supportto ask that Kurd members of parliament not show up for a vote that would oust American troops from the country.

The outcome wasnt 100 percent predictable, sources said. For months American diplomats in Iraq have privately raised concerns that the Kurds were unhappy with the U.S., that they felt they could not rely on a Trump White House.

The Kurds, and many Sunni members of parliament, did not show up for the vote, which can be construed as a de facto show of support for the U.S. position. But parliament still voted for the removal of American troops from the country.

The vote cannot be implemented by Abdul-Mahdis caretaker government, so technically the U.S. forces have some breathing room. But the writing, as they said in ancient Babylon, is on the wall.

Senior officials at the Pentagon and State Department have discussed the possibility of moving American troops to the Kurdish region of Iraq. But with Kurdish support somewhat shaky, that option isnt clear, either.

On Sunday night, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One he would sanction Iraq like theyve never seen before and that they would make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame. "We're not leaving unless they pay us back, Trump said, apparently referring to a U.S. air base in the country.

To much of the Iraqi government, Soleimanis killing was a final straw. To the Iranian leaders and scores of the Islamic republics citizens, it was an act of war and a rallying cry to vengeance. To Trumps stateside critics, it was yet another disastrous decision made by a spectacularly unfit commander in chief.

But to Trumps base and power centers of his partyMAGA faithful, conservative war hawks, religious right leadersit was a cause for elation.

Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor and an outside adviser to Trump, said that as he watched the news early on Friday, the morning after the strike, he quickly rewrote the address he was set to deliver at an Evangelicals for Trump event to thank God for a president like Donald Trump who is willing to confront evil and take action.

And on Friday, President Trump went before the news cameras, shortly before his trip to that Evangelicals for Trump gathering in Florida, to insist to the world, We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.

Senior Iraqi officials are only too aware that American political considerations that could determine the fate of their nation are based largely on Trumps re-election strategy at this point. The result, they suggest, is counterproductive.

You are strengthening the guysthe Iraniansyou want to weaken, said one Iraqi official friendly to the United States. But the question is what to do now. Then he added ominously, How do you avoid further escalation with the understanding that the Iranians have to do something?

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The USA Doubles Down on its Saudi Allegiance By Craig Murray January 05, 2020 " Information Clearing House " -For the United States to abandon proxy warfare and directly kill one of Irans most senior political figures has changed international politics in a fundamental way. It is a massive error. Its ramifications are profound and complex. There is also a lesson to be learned here in that this morning there will be excitement and satisfaction in the palaces of Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Tehran. All of the political elites will see prospects for gain from the new fluidity. While for ordinary people in all those countries there is only the certainty of more conflict, death and economic loss, for the political elite, the arms manufacturers, the military and security services and allied interests, the hedge funds, speculators and oil companies, there are the sweet smells of cash and power. Tehran will be pleased because the USA has just definitively lost Iraq. Iraq has a Shia majority and so naturally tends to ally with Iran. The only thing preventing that was the Arab nationalism of Saddam Husseins Baath Socialist Party. Bush and Blair were certainly fully informed that by destroying the Baath system they were creating an Iranian/Iraqi nexus, but they decided that was containable. The containment consisted of a deliberate and profound push across the Middle East to oppose Shia influence in proxy wars everywhere. This is the root cause of the disastrous war in Yemen, where the Zaidi-Shia would have been victorious long ago but for the sustained brutal aerial warfare on civilians carried out by the Western powers through Saudi Arabia. This anti-Shia western policy included the unwavering support for the Sunni Bahraini autocracy in the brutal suppression of its overwhelmingly Shia population. And of course it included the sustained and disastrous attempt to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria and replace it with pro-Saudi Sunni jihadists. Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter This switch in US foreign policy was known in the White House of 2007 as the redirection. It meant that Sunni jihadists like Al-Qaida and later al-Nusra were able to switch back to being valued allies of the United States. It redoubled the slavish tying of US foreign policy to Saudi interests. The axis was completed once Mohammad Bin Salman took control of Saudi Arabia. His predecessors had been coy about their de facto alliance with Israel. MBS felt no shyness about openly promoting Israeli interests, under the cloak of mutual alliance against Iran, calculating quite correctly that Arab street hatred of the Shia outweighed any solidarity with the Palestinians. Common enemies were easy for the USA/Saudi/Israeli alliance to identify; Iran, the Houthi, Assad and of course the Shia Hezbollah, the only military force to have given the Israelis a bloody nose. The Palestinians themselves are predominantly Sunni and their own Hamas was left friendless and isolated. The principal difficulty of this policy for the USA of course is Iraq. Having imposed a rough democracy on Iraq, the governments were always likely to be Shia dominated and highly susceptible to Iranian influence. The USA had a continuing handle through dwindling occupying forces and through control of the process which produced the government. They also provided financial resources to partially restore the physical infrastructure the US and its allies had themselves destroyed, and of course to fund a near infinite pool of corruption. That US influence was balanced by strong Iranian aligned militia forces who were an alternative source of strength to the government of Baghdad, and of course by the fact that the centre of Sunni tribal strength, the city of Falluja, had itself been obliterated by the United States, three times, in an act of genocide of Iraqi Sunni population. Through all this the Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi had until now tiptoed with great care. Pro-Iranian yet a long term American client, his government maintained a form of impartiality based on an open hand to accept massive bribes from anybody. That is now over. He is pro-Iranian now. Such precarious balance as there ever was in Iraq was upset this last two months when the US and Israelis transported more of their ISIL Sunni jihadists into Iraq, to escape the pincer of the Turkish, Russian and Syrian government forces. The Iranians were naturally not going to stand for this and Iranian militias were successfully destroying the ISIL remnants, which is why General Qassem Suleimani was in Iraq, why a US mercenary assisting ISIL was killed in an Iranian militia rocket attack, and why Syrian military representatives were being welcomed at Baghdad airport. It is five years since I was last in the Green Zone in Baghdad, but it is extraordinarily heavily fortified with military barriers and checks every hundred yards, and there is no way the crowd could have been allowed to attack the US Embassy without active Iraqi government collusion. That profound political movement will have been set in stone by the US assassination of Suleimani. Tehran will now have a grip on Iraq that could prove to be unshakable. Nevertheless, Tel Aviv and Riyadh will also be celebrating today at the idea that their dream of the USA destroying their regional rival Iran, as Iraq and Libya were destroyed, is coming closer. The USA could do this. The impact of technology on modern warfare should not be underestimated. There is a great deal of wishful thinking that fantasises about US military defeat, but it is simply unrealistic if the USA actually opted for full scale invasion. Technology is a far greater factor in warfare than it was in the 1960s. The USA could destroy Iran, but the cost and the ramifications would be enormous, and not only the entire Middle East but much of South Asia would be destabilised, including of course Pakistan. My reading of Trump remains that he is not a crazed Clinton type war hawk and it will not happen. We all have to pray it does not. There will also today be rejoicing in Washington. There is nothing like an apparently successful military attack in a US re-election campaign. The Benghazi Embassy disaster left a deep scar upon the psyche of Trumps support base in particular, and the message that Trump knows how to show the foreigners not to attack America is going down extremely well where it counts, whatever wise people on CNN may say. So what happens now? Consolidating power in Iraq and finishing the destruction of ISIL in Iraq will be the wise advance that Iranian statesman can practically gain from these events. But that is, of course, not enough to redeem national honour. Something quick and spectacular is required for that. It is hard not to believe there must be a very real chance of action being taken against shipping in the Straits of Hormuz, which Iran can do with little prior preparation. Missile attacks on Saudi Arabia or Israel are also well within Irans capability, but it seems more probable that Iran will wish to strike a US target rather than a proxy. An Ambassador may be assassinated. Further missile strikes against US outposts in Iraq are also possible. All of these scenarios could very quickly lead to disastrous escalation. In the short term, Trump in this situation needs either to pull out troops from Iraq or massively to reinforce them. The UK does not have the latter option, having neither men nor money, and should remove its 1400 troops now. Whether the triumph of killing Suleimani gives Trump enough political cover for an early pullout  the wise move  I am unsure. 2020 is going to be a very dangerous year indeed. Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk Do you agree or disagree? Post your comment here
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 22:58:30|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Yang Keqin, former chief procurator of Jilin Provincial People's Procuratorate, has been indicted on charge of taking bribes, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) said Monday.

Yang was accused of taking advantage of his former positions to seek profits for others and accepting vast sums of money and gifts in return, the SPP said in a statement.

Yang's case was handed over to the Shijiazhuang Municipal People's Procuratorate in north China's Hebei Province for review and prosecution upon the designation of the SPP after the National Supervisory Commission concluded the investigation, it said.

Yang will stand trial in the Shijiazhuang Municipal Intermediate People's Court, it added.

The SPP said the prosecutors had informed the defendant of his litigation rights, interrogated him and listened to the defense counsel's opinions.
Bargain hunters are saving hundreds of dollars in the shoe department just by shopping in the children's footwear aisle.

Taking to a consumer Facebook group, Australian mothers confessed they have been buying kids' shoes for their own adult-sized feet for a fraction for the price.

Many shoppers said they discovered the money-saving trick after store employees informed them that kids' size six shoes are an equivalent to ladies' size eight.

Mother Amanda said she managed to get herself a pair of black Nike trainers (pictured) for herself in the kids' section after shopping for the same footwear for her daughters

'I called my local store looking for a particular shoe in a size eight and the sales girl put aside a kids' size six for me. She told me it was the same as a women's size eight,' Lorena said.

'Went in, tried them on and they were perfect. So definitely something to remember for next time.'

And she wasn't the only one who shopped in the kids' aisle, with many saying they have been buying children's shoes for years.

Mother Amanda said she managed to get herself a pair of black Nike sneakers for herself in the kids' section after shopping for the same footwear for her daughters.

'I was fairly skeptical myself so took them into Foot Locker and tried them on... I walked out with the kids size seven,' she said.

Kathleen explained she's a women's size six but could fit into a children's size four.

Australian mothers have confessed they have been buying kids' shoes for their own adult-sized feet for a fraction for the price (stock image)

Tara said she can squeeze her size nine feet into a kids' size seven after she purchased a pair of Adidas superstars shoes for just $60. The adult's version normally cost double the price at $120.

'I always wanted a pair but not with their price tag. I look at the kid's white with silver stripes, $60. Asked if I could try a pair on only to be told they were junior sizes and was directed to the women's section where the price was higher and they didn't have white and silver,' she said.

'At the register, I mention to the manager who served me that "it's a shame they don't make the silver and white in adult sizes" and he told me that a seven in junior is equivalent to a nine in ladies.

'Unfortunately no size seven in stock of these shoes but I asked to try on a different color, because I didn't believe him and to my shock, my big size nine foot fit! Almost half the price of adult shoes! Ordered the white and silver online.'

Stephanie said: 'I always check out the kids' shoes... they seem to have nicer shoes for kids, they think adults like boring shoes.'

And Sarah said: 'I buy children's shoes all the time because I like a lot of them better than the women's shoes so why not.'

However Kimmi warned: 'The sole on kids shoes isn't the same as adult shoes. You might save money initially but not in the long run.'
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. - An organizer of a white nationalist rally in Virginia that erupted in violence in 2017 has been jailed for failing to comply with court orders in a federal lawsuit against him and other rally participants, according to the non-profit backing the suit.

A federal judge ordered Elliott Kline to jail Monday afternoon after finding that he remained out of compliance and in contempt of court, said Amy Spitalnick, executive director of Integrity First for America.

The judge had previously ordered Kline to surrender himself to the custody of the U.S. Marshals on Monday.

Kline served as leader of a white nationalist group called Identity Evropa, which was known for its campaigns to post white supremacist propaganda on college campuses. Kline receded from a public role in the white nationalist movement after The New York Times investigated and debunked his claims about his military service.

Plaintiffs attorneys have said Kline has ignored court orders to turn over certain records, including credentials for email and social media accounts he has used.

Spitalnick said Kline was taken to the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Jail. Officials there could not immediately be reached Monday, but a spokeswoman for the U.S. Marshals Service confirmed Kline was in the federal agencys custody at a local facility.

The lawsuit that Integrity First for America is funding was brought by Virginia residents injured during two days of violence in August 2017. It accuses the white nationalists of violating state and federal civil rights laws and seeks a court ruling prohibiting further alleged violations as well as financial judgments.

The lawsuit says Kline moderated an online forum to privately communicate with other Charlottesville rally organizers and plan what the suit alleges was a violent conspiracy.

White nationalists marched through the University of Virginia campus on Aug. 11, 2017, where they clashed with counterprotesters. A rally the following day descended into violence. Shortly after authorities forced the rally to disband, a neo-Nazi plowed his car into a crowd of counterdemonstrators, killing a young woman and injuring many other people.

A trial for the lawsuit is scheduled for October.
USOSM President and CEO Richard Hall talks about new partnership with Peachtree Dunwoody. Were honored to announce this new partnership with Peachtree Dunwoody, one of the most well respected OMS practices statewide.

U.S. Oral Surgery Management (USOSM)  a specialty management services company headquartered in Irving, Texas, that exclusively serves premier oral and maxillofacial surgeons  is pleased to announce a new partnership with Peachtree Dunwoody Oral & Facial Surgery PC, an oral and maxillofacial surgery practice with two locations in the Atlanta, Georgia area. USOSM has multiple partnerships spanning six states: Texas, Colorado, Georgia, Tennessee, Minnesota and Alabama.

Were honored to announce this new partnership with Peachtree Dunwoody, one of the most well respected OMS practices statewide, says Richard Hall, USOSM president and CEO.

Peachtree Dunwoody specializes in providing individualized, exceptional patient care for both adults and children. The practice has three surgeons and two locations. One at 3280 Howell Mill Road, Suite 221, in Atlanta, and the other at 5505 Peachtree Dunwoody Road, Suite 660, in Sandy Springs. The surgeons are Glenn Maron, DDS, FACS; Amy Kuhmichel, DMD and Shenan Bradshaw, DDS, MD. They offer a full scope of oral and maxillofacial surgery options, with expertise ranging from corrective jaw surgery to wisdom tooth removal. They also perform dental extractions and replace missing teeth with dental implants. In addition, they can diagnose and treat facial pain, facial injuries and TMJ disorders. Drs. Glenn Maron and Amy Kuhmichel have advanced training in the management of cleft lip and palate care, as well as reconstructive maxillofacial surgery.

We look forward to working with USOSM. They have a reputation for doing what they say theyre going to do and for doing things right. They leave the clinical decisions up to the surgeons and provide us with the support we need to continue providing our patients with truly excellent patient care, says Dr. Maron.

A shared services organization, USOSM collaborates with premier oral and maxillofacial surgeons to offer a partnership solution for continued and accelerated practice success. USOSM offers operational, marketing and administrative support services, reinvests resources, and applies best practices to improve clinical and financial performance and produce steadier, more profitable growth for all.


(Bloomberg) -- Alphabet Inc.s Google urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that the companys use of Oracle Corp.s software for the Android mobile operating system violated copyrights, in a case that may reshape legal protections for software code.

Google, in a filing to the court dated Monday, largely repeats the search giants well-established arguments in a case that has been contested for almost a decade: That it was legal to use parts of Oracles Java programming language to help make Android communicate more easily with other software. A defeat, Google has argued, would restrict further innovation in the computing industry.

Oracle, which acquired Java when it bought its original developer Sun Microsystems, argues that its owed at least $8.8 billion for Googles use of the code without a license. Much of Googles business success over the past decade came from its ability to place its search engine -- and advertisements -- on phones running Android, which account for roughly one of every four smartphones worldwide.

The case is likely to have ramifications beyond Google and Oracle -- many tech companies and startups rely on using bits of code other companies develop or own when building new software. Thats the plea Google is making to the court.

An Oracle win would upend the way the technology industry has always approached the important issue of software interfaces, Kent Walker, Googles legal chief, wrote Monday in a blog post. It would for the first time grant copyright owners a monopoly power to stymie the creation of new implementations and applications.

Oracle initially sued Google for copyright infringement in 2010. Since then, the case has worked its way through the legal system, spurring two jury trials and numerous appeals. The Supreme Court turned down Googles first request to review the case in 2014. After a federal appeals court ruled in Oracles favor, Google filed another appeal to the high court, and the justices agreed in November to take the case. The court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in March or April and to rule by the end of June.

Story continues

The case is Google v. Oracle America, 18-956.

--With assistance from Mark Bergen, Greg Stohr and Susan Decker.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gerrit De Vynck in New York at gdevynck@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Andrew Pollack, Molly Schuetz

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

2020 Bloomberg L.P.
LINCOLN, Neb., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Sandhills Global will host a one-day auctioneer forum on January 14th in St. Cloud, Minnesota, focused on a range of proven best practices for successful auction management. Sandhills is the tech company behind Auction Flex, AuctionTime.com, HiBid.com, FleetEvaluator, and many other brands, all of which serve to help connect buyers and sellers across multiple industries.

The forum will begin with a morning session focused on the implementation and use of Auction Flex software. This session will cover cataloging, clerking, accounting, and other topics. After a break for lunch, attendees will learn about AuctionTime.com, the weekly online-only auction platform designed especially for construction equipment, farm machinery, trucks, and trailers; and HiBid.com, an internet bidding solution that is integrated with Auction Flex and supports webcast, internet-only, and absentee bidding.

The event will conclude with a meet-and-greet reception from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., which will afford attendees an opportunity to network and share best practices. Attendees will also receive hours that can be applied towards continuing education hours for the National Auctioneers Association.

Interested in attending the upcoming auctioneer forum? Call 352-414-1947, email [email protected], or contact your AuctionTime.com sales representative to register.

About AuctionTime.com

Powered by Machinery Trader, CraneTrader, Truck Paper, TractorHouse, and MarketBook AuctionTime.com is a product of Sandhills Globalan information processing company headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska. AuctionTime equipment listings appear both online and in print across Sandhills' trade publications and corresponding websites to reach buyers around the world in the trucking, agriculture, construction, and heavy equipment industries.

About Auction Flex & HiBid

Auction Flex is the market-leader in auction software for live auctions, with capabilities that include cataloging, clerking, cashiering, accounting, mailing list management, inventory management, multi-parcel, and more. Auction Flex also provides a seamless solution that enables auction houses to upload auction catalogs online and accept internet absentee bids, conduct internet-only auctions, or offer webcast live internet bidding through its integrated web service and internet bidding solutionHiBid (both a private-label solution and a portal). Auction Flex and HiBid were built from the ground up to function together seamlessly.

Contact Auction Flex

352-414-1947

[email protected]

SOURCE AuctionTime

Related Links

http://www.auctiontime.com


A court on Indonesia's tourist island of Bali sentenced two Australian men on Monday to nine and 12 months in jail for possessing cocaine.

Former Melbourne nightclub promoters William Cabantog and David Van Iersel were arrested last July in a police raid at the Lost City Club in the island's trendy Canggu neighborhood with 1.12 grams (.04 ounce) of cocaine in the pocket of Cabantog's jeans.

A three-member panel of judges at the Denpasar District Court found Cabantog and Van Iersel guilty of possessing and using a Category 1 drug.

Police initially said that Cabantog, 36, who was described as a hospitality consultant, was well known for circulating cocaine in Canggu. The Lost City Club was managed by Van Iersel, 38. But during the trial, the two men were able to convince the judges that the cocaine was only for their own use.

Cabantog was sentenced to 12 months in jail and Van Iersel to nine months, and their lawyers said they accepted the verdict. State prosecutors had been seeking an 18-month sentence for Cabantog and 14 months for Van Iersel.

Indonesia has very strict drug laws and convicted traffickers are often executed by a firing squad. More than 150 people are on death row, mostly for drug crimes, and about a third of them are foreigners.

Eighteen people convicted of drug-related offenses have been executed under the current administration of President Joko Widodo.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
OAKLAND (BCN)

The fate of the case against a man charged with murder for the fatal stabbing of 18-year-old Nia Wilson at the MacArthur BART station in Oakland in 2018 remained up in the air on Monday even though a trial judge was selected and a jury selection date was scheduled.

John Lee Cowell, a 29-year-old transient, is charged with murder and attempted murder for allegedly stabbing Wilson and her sister, 26-year-old Letifah Wilson, on the platform at the MacArthur station at 9:36 p.m. on July 22, 2018.

Cowell also is charged with a special circumstance allegation that he killed Wilson while lying in wait, a charge that would result in life in prison without parole or the death penalty if he's convicted.

Cowell's trial on Monday was assigned to veteran Alameda County Superior Court Judge Allan Hymer, who was appointed to the bench in 1997 by former Gov. Pete Wilson.

Hymer said the first panel of potential jurors for Cowell's trial will be brought to court on Jan. 15.

But Hymer also scheduled a hearing for Jan. 13 on a motion filed by Cowell's attorney Christina Moore asking that his trial be moved out of Alameda County because she doesn't think he can get a fair trial locally due to the pervasive publicity his case has received.

In her motion, Moore said 55 percent of respondents in a survey the defense recently conducted of 470 Alameda County residents said they believe Cowell is definitely guilty or probably guilty of murder.

She said those numbers include people who indicated they have no familiarity with Cowell's case, but she said 81.5 percent of the 315 people who said they're familiar with the allegations against him said they believe he definitely or probably is guilty of murder.

Another twist to Cowell's case is that Moore said at a hearing on Dec. 20 that she thinks there are new indications that Cowell is mentally incompetent to stand trial.

At a hearing on Dec. 24, Judge James Cramer said Cowell's trial can proceed but ordered that an additional evaluation be done by psychiatrist Jason Roof of the University of California at Davis.

Roof's report will be discussed at a hearing in Cramer's courtroom on Jan. 15, the same day that the first jury panel for Cowell's trial will be brought to Hymer's courtroom in the same building.

Cowell's trial could be suspended if Roof indicates in his report that he thinks Cowell is mentally incompetent.

Cramer previously suspended the criminal proceedings against Cowell on Dec. 27, 2018, saying there was "substantial evidence" that he was mentally incompetent to stand trial.

But at a hearing on July 17, Cramer reinstated the criminal proceedings against Cowell, based in part on a new doctor's report that found that Cowell was competent to stand trial.

Alameda County prosecutor Butch Ford said after the short hearing for Cowell on Monday that the reason the jury panel is being brought to court before all the issues in the case have been resolved is that Cowell invoked his right to a speedy trial, which means that his case must move forward without delays.

Copyright  2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
A day after violence broke out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday said that the incident reminded him of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.



"I was reminded of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack. An investigation is needed to find out who were these masked attackers," Thackeray said.

"There is an atmosphere of fear among the students in the country, we all need to come together and instil confidence in them," he added.

On Sunday evening, more than 30 students, including JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, were brutally assaulted and taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob, allegedly members of ABVP, entered JNU and attacked them and some professors with sticks and rods.

The JNU administration and political leaders, cutting across political lines, have condemned the attack on students and urged the police to take action against the perpetrators.

The ghastly terror attacks in Mumbai which took place on November 26, 2008, lasted for four days killing 166 people and injuring over 300 others. The 26/11, as these attacks are often referred to, saw 10 LeT terrorists coming to Mumbai via sea route from Pakistan and carrying out a series of coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across India's financial capital.

Meanwhile, Congress President Sonia Gandhi alleged that the "horrifying" violence unleashed on India's youth by goons was with the active abetment of the ruling Modi government and demanded an independent judicial inquiry into the violence in JNU.

In a statement, she accused the Modi government of seeking to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent and said Sunday's "bone-chilling" attack on students and teachers in JNU was a grim reminder of that.

"The voice of India's youth and students is being muzzled every day. The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on India's young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi government is deplorable and unacceptable," she charged.

Gandhi alleged that everyday campuses and colleges are raided across India, either by the police or lumpen elements with support of the BJP government.

"Yesterday's bone-chilling attack on students and teachers in JNU, Delhi is a grim reminder of the extent the Govt will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent," she said.

The Congress president said students and youth need affordable education, a deserving job, a promising future and a right to participate in the thriving democracy. "Sadly, the Modi government seeks to suffocate and restrain each one of these aspirations," she charged.

"The entire Congress Party stands in solidarity with India's youth and students. We strongly deprecate the sponsored violence in JNU yesterday and demand an independent judicial inquiry," she said.

After a meeting of Jawaharlal Nehru University authorities with the secretary of the Ministry of Human Resource Development on Monday, the Chief Proctor of the university, Dhananjay Singh said that efforts are on to normalise the situation in the campus.



With Inputs From Agencies
A Unique Platform to Accelerate Applications, Protocols and AI

Targeting Data Center and Automotive Markets.

A 25X Performance Improvement over Second Generation MPPA

Grenoble - France, Las Vegas - USA, January 6, 2020 - Kalray (Euronext Growth Paris: ALKAL), a pioneer in processors for new intelligent systems, today announced the company will showcase its MPPA-3 aka Coolidge, its third generation of unique and patented MPPA (Massively Parallel Processor Array) processor family at CES 2020 in Las Vegas, from January 7 to 10, 2020.



Coolidge demonstrated at CES

Just a few weeks after having received the first samples of Coolidge from manufacturing, Kalray will showcase a complete Artificial Intelligence use case running on Coolidge at CES, including a common demo with NXP, one of the leading semiconductor companies.

Coolidge samples general availability is planned for April.



Coolidge uniquely positioned for the booming market of intelligent systems

Coolidge represents a 25X performance improvement[1] over second generation MPPA, with improvement of artificial intelligence capacities, increased ease of programming and higher-performance interfaces in particular for next generation of data centers.

Coolidge is targeting the booming market of intelligent systems, from next generation of data center infrastructure, 5G to next generation of cars. Coolidge is a compelling choice versus FPGA, which are expensive and difficult to program; GPU, which are tailored for mathematical algorithms; and AI processors, designed for AI only. Coolidge-based cards can be configured to deliver specialized acceleration performance in a wide set of demanding functions such as vision, signal processing, encryption, software stacks, real-time protocols, etc.

Eric Baissus, CEO of Kalray comments: "Yet another important phase for the company. Coolidge is the platform to support company's ambitions on data center markets, answering needs of growing diversity of Data Center workload acceleration and on automotive, enabling integration of multiple critical functions on the same chip while providing huge computing performance."



Data Center's growing need for accelerations at Compute, Storage and Networking

"2CRSi is eager to evaluate the new Coolidge processor from Kalray and excited to explore solutions leveraging Kalray's configurable cards. The performance of this third-generation processor will enable an expansion of our offer in high-growth areas such as Artificial Intelligence or compute acceleration, while enabling more and more distributed and disaggregated data center implementations", said Alain Wilmouth, CEO of 2CRSi.



Automotive and embedded markets need for integration of multiple critical functions and high compute performance

"We are very happy to see the strategic partnership with Kalray reach a new milestone and have Coolidge integrated into the NXP BlueBox, our development platform for automated driving, showcased at CES. We are convinced NXP and Kalray will bring multiple benefits to the development and industrialization of ADAS and AD vehicles with safe and secure solutions integrating multiple critical functions and providing very high computing performance" said Kamal Khouri, Vice President & General Manager, Advanced Driver Assistance, NXP.



Coolidge has been designed to address the challenges and constraints of the new generation of intelligent systems:

High computing power with low energy consumption

Open and easily programmable system

Real-Time data processing and deterministic behavior

Concurrent execution of many heterogeneous critical tasks in parallel on a single chip

Advanced security and safety mechanisms suitable for the most demanding systems, defined in collaboration with Kalray's partners in the aerospace, defense and automotive fields





For more information and to view the demonstrations, come and visit us at CES from January 7 to 10 at Las Vegas, USA: NXP's booth CP18, Central Plaza.





Next publication:

January 22, 2020: H2 2019 business report



ABOUT KALRAY

Kalray (Euronext Growth Paris - FR0010722819 - ALKAL) is the pioneer in processors for new intelligent systems. A genuine technological breakthrough, "intelligent" processors are able to intelligently analyze a vast quantity of data on the fly and to make decisions and interact in real time with the outside world. These intelligent processors will be largely deployed in fast-growing sectors such as new-generation networks (intelligent data centers) and autonomous vehicles, as well as in healthcare equipment, drones and robots. Kalray's offering spans both processors and global solutions (electronic boards and software). Created in 2008 as a spin-off of CEA ("Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique", the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission), Kalray addresses a broad spectrum of customers including server manufacturers, intelligent system integrators and consumer product manufacturers such as car makers. Read more at: www.kalrayinc.com







INVESTOR CONTACTS

Eric BAISSUS

contactinvestisseurs@kalray.eu

Tel. +33 (0)4 76 18 90 71



ACTUS finance & communication

Caroline LESAGE

kalray@actus.fr

+ 33 1 53 67 36 79 MEDIA CONTACTS

Loic HAMON

communication@kalray.eu

Tel. +33 (0)4 76 18 90 71



ACTUS finance & communication

Serena BONI

sboni@actus.fr

Tel. +33 (0)4 72 18 04 92

[1] 25 TOPS (Tera Operations Per Second) performance for Coolidge versus 1 TOPS for previous generation Bostan

------------------------

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Full and original release in PDF format:https://www.actusnews.com/documents_communiques/ACTUS-0-61549-cp_kalray-showcases-coolidge-at-ces-2020_en_vdef.pdf
Reacting to AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi's statements, where he asked Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to not worry about Indian Muslims, BJP MLC from Telangana Ramchander Rao said that his party has always thought of Muslims as real Indians.

"What Asaduddin Owaisi must think is that the BJP has always believed that Indian Muslims are the real Indians because when they had the opportunity to go away during partition, they decided to stay in India. Therefore, there is nothing new in these statements by Owaisi. He has only repeated what Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah have said. We believe that they are Indians as they are here with us," Rao told ANI on Sunday.

He, however, criticized Owaisi for his earlier acts of "inciting the Muslims against the Central government", but welcomed the change in his stance.

"He has been inciting the Indian Muslims against the Indian Government till now. Now that the CAA has come, they are taking the Indian flag in hand and singing the anthem, we welcome it," he added.

He said that the change in the tone of the AIMIM MP from Telangana had come after hearing the statements of the Prime Minister and the Home Minister of the country.

Earlier on Saturday, Owaisi had slammed Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for peddling a seven-year-old violence video from Bangladesh as a case of what he claimed to be "Indian police's pogrom against Muslims in UP".

The Hyderabad MP further said that Khan should worry about the state of affairs in Pakistan rather than worrying about the Indian Muslims. "Pakistan's Prime Minister posted a video from Bangladesh falsely claiming it to be from India. Mr Khan you worry about your own country. We have rejected the wrong theory of Jinnah, we are proud Indian Muslims and will remain so," Owaisi had said at an event.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The white pozole with La Newyorkinas churros. Photo: Melissa Hom

The pastry chef and La Newyorkina owner Fany Gerson is a scholar of Mexican sweets  literally, she wrote the book on them  but shes also a soup fiend. For the last few years, shes hosted friends for a Three Kings Day meal of the pastry rosca de reyes and pozole, the hominy soup beloved in Mexico. (My best friend from college and his family joke that its the Mexican cultural contribution were most proud of.) While pozole is most famously made with pork or a pigs head, which lends a gelatinous element that makes for a particularly rich broth, its a dish with many variations and different proteins. Its comfort food on the order of mapo tofu or pho, an intoxicating synthesis of its ingredients: fat kernels of corn floating in soothingly rich broth, the zap of tart lime, and the fresh crunch of ingredients like sliced radish.

Pozole is one of Gersons favorite foods, and the same can be said of her friend Danny Mena, the chef who runs Brooklyns La Loncheria (you may know him from the now-closed Hecho en Dumbo). New York has its fair share of taqueria and torta spots, tamale vendors, panaderias, and a few specialists in regional obsessions like birria. Its not hard to find pozole in New York, though its usually part of a broader menu or maybe a weekend special (its said to have mystical powers for curing a hangover). Mena had been thinking about opening his own pozole spot, in fact, when Gerson approached him with her own idea: How about a pop-up at her West Village ice cream and pastry shop, La Newyorkina? It was kismet, she says. Called La Pozoleria, it opens today.

The green pozole. Photo: Melissa Hom

Menas long love affair with pozole is well documented. He recommended the pozole spot Los Tolucos as one of his favorite spots in Mexico City (both chefs hometown), and called the pozole verde his favorite recipe in his recent cookbook, Made in Mexico. At the pop-up, youll be able to choose from four kinds of pozole ($8 to $14). Menas recipes are drawn from various Mexican states most famous for the dish. Theres a Morelos-style white pozole, made with a pork broth sans chilies; a Jalisco-style red pozole, with chicken stock and roasted chicken; and a Guerrero-style green pozole, with pork broth seasoned by pumpkin seed and chiles, lifted from Menas book.

These are the three famous variations  what most people think of when they think about pozole. But the most compelling and unique is the fourth version, a vegetarian one made with a corn broth served with corn kernels and the Mexican instant-ramen brand called Maruchan. Gerson got the idea for the dish when she was doing research for My Sweet Mexico and a friend took her to a place that sells that best esquites she says shes ever had.

The ramen pozole. Photo: Melissa Hom

They sell the instant ramen with, instead of water, the broth of the esquites, and then top it off with esquites and the whole sort of toppings situation, Gerson explains. Her and Menas version takes it more firmly into pozole territory. Its going to be like a ramen pozole, the hominy but cooked in the way you cook esquites with esquites. A very rich, corn-based broth.

Gerson also says they take inspiration from the Mexico City pozoleria Casa de Tono, which served just pozole and flautas when it opened. Gerson and Menas flautas ($6 for two) are long and thin, like stretched-out cigars, and come stuffed with either tinga, the shredded chicken in chipotle sauce; requeson and epazote; or potato and cheese. A lot of places here offer flautas but theyre really tacos dorados, Gerson says. Flautas means flute, so theyre supposed to be long.

Proper flautas. Photo: Melissa Hom

The menu is rounded out by extras like esquites ($6), add-ons like adobo pork ribs ($4) and roast cabbage ($2), and three combo meals of flautas with a small pozole ($12), a large pozole with churros ($15), and a sort of three-course meal of guacamole with a small pozole and churros ($19). Gerson isnt shy to admit that shes turning to pozole during soup season to compensate for ice-cream sales lagging during the winter. Theyve rearranged the shop a bit to make the pozole pop-up work, but theres no definite end date. If its successful and they keep it going after the winter, theyll introduce tacos al pastor. Either way, youll still be able to get all of Gersons sweets: the arroz con leche cheesecake, impossible flan, nieve de garrafa, and so on. Now you can just make it a meal.

The menu. Photo: Melissa Hom
CBP says claims that its detaining and refusing entry to Iranian Americans due to country of origin are false.

Organisers and activists have warned that immigration authorities in the United States detained and questioned at length dozens of individuals owing to their Iranian descent, a claim that Customs and Border Patrol dismissed as false.

Activists and the Washington chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-WA) said immigration authorities detained and questioned at least 60 Iranians and Iranian-Americans over the weekend at the Peace Arch Border Crossing in Blaine, Washington. The watchdog group said some were held and questioned for at least 11 hours.

A US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesperson dismissed as false social media posts purporting that Iranian Americans were detained and refused entry because of their ethnic origins.

The spokesperson added that reports that DHS/CBP has issued a related directive are also false. The spokesperson was referring to allegations made by CAIR, who cited an unnamed source at CBP, that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a national order for CBP to report and detain individuals of Iranian origin entering the country who are deemed adversarial.

CAIR said one woman, identified as a 24-year-old American medical student named Crystal, was detained for 10 hours with her family before being released.

Crystals family reached out to the Iranian-American writer and community organiser Hoda Katebi, who then took the matter to CAIR-WA.

Katebi said by the time she was contacted by Crystals family, they were at the facility for five hours. Other people were already there for eight to nine hours, she said.

According to CBP, wait times at the Blaine facility were on average two hours on Saturday evening, but some travellers had to wait up to four hours due to an increased number of people trying to go through the port of entry and reduced staffing during the holiday season.

Citing individuals she spoke with and assisted, Katebi said the questions asked of those of Iranian origin had nothing to do with immigration.

They were asked [about] specific organisations, and political factions in Iran and their affiliations with them or their views on them or groups that they never even heard of, Katebi said the individuals she assisted said. She also said they were asked about their college majors. Katebi said she feared such questions were geared to finding reasons to find an Iranian suspicious.

Robert McCaw, CAIR government affairs director, said: This is the type of scenario that CAIR monitors for after US foreign entanglement with Muslim countries.

Tensions with Iran and the United States escalated dramatically last week after President Donald Trump ordered the killing of Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian military commander, in Iraq. Iran has promised severe retaliation.

CBP said: Based on the current threat environment, CBP is operating with an enhanced posture at its ports of entry to safeguard our national security and protect the America people while simultaneously protecting the civil rights and liberties of everyone.

On Saturday, DHS said at this time there is no specific, credible threat against the homeland.

Several US politicians commented on the reports of detentions at the Washington-Canada border, including Washington US Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who said she was deeply disturbed.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee said on Twitter that his office is closely tracking reports that Iranian Americans, including US citizens and lawful permanent residents, have been detained. He urged anyone affected to contact his office.

Editors note: A previous version of this article listed Washington state as Washington, DC. This mistake was made during the editing process and has been corrected throughout.
An eastbound detour has been lifted hours after an early morning chain-reaction crash on the Pennsylvania Turnpike that killed five people and injured dozens more in Westmorland County.

The state Turnpike Commission announced about 4 p.m. that the eastbound detour beginning at the New Stanton Interchange (Exit 75) had been lifted, and all lanes are open.

Westbound lanes remain closed, according to the announcement.

The closures came after a crash about 3:33 a.m. Sunday on the Turnpikes westbound lane near mile marker 86.1 in Mount Pleasant Township. Following the crash, the highway was closed in both directions between New Stanton (Exit 75) and Breezewood (Exit 161), according to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission.

According to authorities, a passenger bus traveling from New Jersey to Cincinnati was moving downhill when its driver was unable to negotiate a turn and hit an embankment, causing the bus to roll.

The rolled bus was then struck by two tractor-trailers, police said. Eventually, a third tractor trailer and a passenger vehicle also crashed into the wreckage.

Five people were killed in the crash and about 60 were injured, police said, explaining that the injured were transported to multiple hospitals in the region to receive treatment.

11 were taken to Forbes Hospital

28 were taken to Frick Hospital

18 were taken to Somerset Hospital

Some of the passengers on the bus do not speak English, authorities said.

The Red Cross has been dispatched to the area hospitals to help patients and their families, according to a state police news release.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

READ MORE:

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By Express News Service

CHANDIGARH/ NEW DELHI: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday attempted to deflect attention from Fridays mob attack on Nankana Sahib shrine by attempting to equate it with protests over the amended Citizenship Act (CAA) and scattered violence in parts of India.

Khans attack coincided with the targeted killing of a young Sikh businessman from Malaysia in Peshawar, which drew sharp condemnation from New Delhi over the continuing violence against minority Sikhs in Pakistan.

Khan took to Twitter claiming there was a difference between such attacks in Pakistan and those in India.

The major difference between the condemnable Nankana incident and the ongoing attacks across India on Muslims and other minorities is this: the former is against my vision & will find zero tolerance and protection from the govt including police and judiciary, Khan tweeted.

Khan claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modis vision supports minorities oppression and the targeted attacks against Muslims.

Islamabad tried to downplay the Sikh angle in the Nankana incident, saying authorities in its Punjab province have informed that it was the outcome of a scuffle between two local Muslim groups at a tea stall and the administration had immediately intervened and arrested the accused. It added, that birth place of Guru Nanak was undamaged.

The version contradicted its earlier version that the attack was provoked by municipal authorities deciding to turn over the management of Nanak Dev College to Nankana Sahib trust and the protests against it.

Amid Imrans spin, news broke of the killing of Sikh businessman Ravinder Singh by unknown gunmen. Singhs younger brother, Harmeet Singh, a Peshwar journalist, told this paper that Ravinder was gunned down as he was shopping for his wedding scheduled in February.

The MEA reacted immediately saying, India strongy condemns the targeted killing of a minority Sikh community member in Peshawar, an incident that took place in the backdrop of an attack on Nankana Sahib Gurdwara in Pakistan.

MEA demands swift action

The Indian MEA said Islamabad should stop prevaricating and should take action to apprehend and punish the perpetrators. It said the Pakistan government should act in defense of its own minorities instead of preaching sermons about it to others.
BAGHDAD  A push led by pro-Iran factions to oust U.S. troops from Iraq is gaining momentum, bolstered by a Parliament vote in favor of a bill calling on the the government to remove them.

But the path forward is unclear, and in Iraqs deeply divided terrain, with a resigned prime minister and raging proxy war between Iran and the U.S., ending Americas 17-year military presence in Iraq is a risky undertaking, and wont be easy.

Iraq was barely starting to recover from a devastating four-year war against the Islamic State group when a mass uprising against the countrys ruling elite erupted on Oct. 1, forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi two months later. He hasnt been replaced.

A pullout of U.S. troops could cripple the fight against Islamic State militants and allow the extremists to make a comeback. Militants affiliated with the group routinely carry out attacks in northern and western Iraq, hiding out in rugged desert and mountainous areas. Iraqi forces rely on the U.S. for logistics and weapons in pursuing them.

An American withdrawal could also enable Iran to deepen its influence in Iraq, which like Iran is a majority Shiite country.

It is not that simple, Lebanese political analyst Ibrahim Bayram said. This will increase the complications inside Iraq, the conflicts and contradictions  and the clash, both political and non-political, between the Iranians and Americans.

Iraqi lawmakers voted Sunday to expel the 5,200 American troops in the country after the U.S. air strike last week that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani along with senior Iraqi militia leaders.

On Monday, Abdul-Mahdi met with U.S. Ambassador Matthew Tueller and stressed the need for the two countries to work together to execute the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq, according to a statement from his office.

In their meeting, Abdul-Mahdi said relations with Washington must be built on a sound basis. He didnt elaborate, but said the situation in Iraq was critical and that all efforts were being exerted to prevent sliding towards an open war.

The Iraqi parliament vote angered President Trump, who promptly warned Iraq that he would levy punishing sanctions if the government expelled American troops. He said the U.S. wouldnt leave without being paid for its military investments in Iraq over the years.

Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Zeina Karam are Associated Press writers.
Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets of lower Manhattan on Sunday to show their support to New Yorks Jewish community following a wave of anti-Semitic attacks that shocked the region late last year. Ignoring the cold weather, people gathered at Foley Square in Manhattan to then march across the Brooklyn Bridge. NYPD estimated that some 20,000 people participated in the march.

Not sure I've ever seen this many people in one place in New York #NoHateNoFear pic.twitter.com/u1POs1xzJ2  Natalie (@natalierachel) January 5, 2020

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Lawmakers and government officials joined the demonstrators who chanted, No hate, no fear, our Jewish families are welcome here. The spate of recent anti-Semitic violence, which included an attack inside a Hasidic rabbis home in a New York suburb on Dec. 28, put a spotlight on just how much these types of crimes have increased. The NYPD says there was a 24 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2019 when compared to 2018. And it isnt just in New York. A report from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, shows that anti-Semitic crimes in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago has reached an 18-year high.

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Anti-Semitism is an attack on ALL New Yorkers  and we stand up for our neighbors in this city.



 @NYCMayor #NoHateNoFear pic.twitter.com/sAFcgv0c44  NYC Mayor's Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) January 5, 2020

No way to adequately capture how massive this crowd is, but it's huge.



A single march is not going to end anti-Semitism in NYC. But the size--and diversity--of this outpouring of support for the Jewish community is unprecedented. #NoHateNoFear #JewishandProud pic.twitter.com/cE33gSMP2G  Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) January 5, 2020

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo spoke at Sundays march and said he would propose a new law to label hate crimes as domestic terrorism. These are terrorists and it should be punished as such, Cuomo said. He also vowed that the state would increase funding for security and presence of security forces in vulnerable communities. While were here today in the spirit of solidarity and love, government must do more than just offer thoughts and prayers. Government must act, Cuomo said.

No hate. No fear. Signs reading messages of hope and solidarity flood the streets of #LowerManhattan in todays anti-hate rally. pic.twitter.com/WsL5JsPdL0  Nina Kapur (@ninakapur1) January 5, 2020

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Estimates are that there are twenty-five thousand people here, marching in solidarity against anti-Semitism and hate. This is the #NYC we know and love. #HateHasNoHomeHere #NoHateNoFear #NoHate pic.twitter.com/CaysIsyV1I  Carolyn B. Maloney (@CarolynBMaloney) January 5, 2020

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Mayor Bill De Blasio, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsen Gillibrand were among the elected officials who participated in the demonstration. Schumer said he would introduce legislation to incrase federal funding to protect houses of worship. They need to be protected, and so our proposal, we were able to get a $30 million increase in a grant to protect houses of worship last year. I am now proposing that it quadruple to $360 million, he said. Schumer also drew a historical parallel. When people of good will saw anti-Semitism in Germany in the 20s and 30s, they did not do enough, he said. We are standing strong.

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We've lost count of how many times insiders have accumulated shares in a company that goes on to improve markedly. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of examples of share prices declining precipitously after insiders have sold shares. So we'll take a look at whether insiders have been buying or selling shares in Desane Group Holdings Limited (ASX:DGH).

What Is Insider Buying?

It's quite normal to see company insiders, such as board members, trading in company stock, from time to time. However, most countries require that the company discloses such transactions to the market.

Insider transactions are not the most important thing when it comes to long-term investing. But it is perfectly logical to keep tabs on what insiders are doing. For example, a Columbia University study found that 'insiders are more likely to engage in open market purchases of their own companys stock when the firm is about to reveal new agreements with customers and suppliers'.

Check out our latest analysis for Desane Group Holdings

Desane Group Holdings Insider Transactions Over The Last Year

Over the last year, we can see that the biggest insider purchase was by MD, CEO & Executive Director Phil Montrone for AU$91k worth of shares, at about AU$1.45 per share. That implies that an insider found the current price of AU$1.49 per share to be enticing. While their view may have changed since the purchase was made, this does at least suggest they have had confidence in the company's future. We do always like to see insider buying, but it is worth noting if those purchases were made at well below today's share price, as the discount to value may have narrowed with the rising price. Happily, the Desane Group Holdings insiders decided to buy shares at close to current prices.

Desane Group Holdings insiders may have bought shares in the last year, but they didn't sell any. You can see the insider transactions (by individuals) over the last year depicted in the chart below. If you click on the chart, you can see all the individual transactions, including the share price, individual, and the date!

Story continues

ASX:DGH Recent Insider Trading, January 6th 2020

Desane Group Holdings is not the only stock insiders are buying. So take a peek at this free list of growing companies with insider buying.

Desane Group Holdings Insiders Bought Stock Recently

It's good to see that Desane Group Holdings insiders have made notable investments in the company's shares. In total, insiders bought AU$230k worth of shares in that time, and we didn't record any sales whatsoever. This could be interpreted as suggesting a positive outlook.

Does Desane Group Holdings Boast High Insider Ownership?

For a common shareholder, it is worth checking how many shares are held by company insiders. I reckon it's a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. Desane Group Holdings insiders own 40% of the company, currently worth about AU$24m based on the recent share price. I like to see this level of insider ownership, because it increases the chances that management are thinking about the best interests of shareholders.

What Might The Insider Transactions At Desane Group Holdings Tell Us?

It's certainly positive to see the recent insider purchases. And the longer term insider transactions also give us confidence. Once you factor in the high insider ownership, it certainly seems like insiders are positive about Desane Group Holdings. Looks promising! To put this in context, take a look at how a company has performed in the past. You can access this detailed graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

If you would prefer to check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt.

For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We currently account for open market transactions and private dispositions, but not derivative transactions.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Former Finance Minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram lashed out on Delhi Police and the government for the violence against students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) by unidentified assailants.

Congress leader P. Chidambaram on Monday held Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik answerable to the violence unleashed against students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University by a masked mob yesterday evening.

Speaking to the media, Chidambaram said Patnaik and Home Minister Amit Shah should explain to the people and the injured students how such a mob was allowed to roam free and unfettered in the university campus, attacking people at will and in a targeted fashion. He demanded the culprits should be identified as soon as possible. They should be arrested and justice must be given to the students injured in the melee.

Along with this, the former home minister described the JNU violence as a descent into fascism and said there surely were intelligence inputs on Sundays attacks. Chidambaram questioned why the Delhi Police commissioner didnt reach the campus despite TV channels covering the attacks on the students.

This is the gravest act of impunity that we have seen in recent times. Nothing can be more shocking and shameful: Shri @PChidambaram_IN #ChhatraVirodhiBJP pic.twitter.com/m6dv7CzuXX  Congress (@INCIndia) January 6, 2020

Home Minister Amit Shah has since called for a meeting with JNU students via the Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal. Police have lodged a case against unnamed people for the wanton destruction.

The incident took place under the watch of JNU administration and also Delhi Police that is under the control of Home Minister Amit Shah. They went from hostel to hostel and beat up students calling them anti nationals and urban naxals: @rssurjewala#ChhatraVirodhiBJP pic.twitter.com/8NEaXxc5kU  Congress (@INCIndia) January 6, 2020

In the press conference, Chidambaram said the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was a sinister and mischievous plan to divide the country. He denied that the National Population Register 2010 had anything to do with the NPR 2020 put forward by the NDA government. Several BJP leaders have been trying to assuage the people that their NPR 2020 is a continuation of the Congress NPR in 2010. Not many have been convinced though.

Earlier on Saturday, Chidambaram had said the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government at the Centre is taking all the wrong steps to boost the growth of India and doesnt have any clue on how to tackle problems facing the country.

     ,

                                ,      ,        #ChhatraVirodhiBJP pic.twitter.com/wP90cHHcrC  Congress (@INCIndia) January 6, 2020

Also Read: Anti-CAA protest: Delhi Police asks Shaheen Bagh protesters to end their 21-day protest

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What's cooking? Class leaders Anna and Loula at the Costa Navarino resort

'I've always wanted to know how to make tzatziki,' says Jane, a fellow guest at Costa Navarino, a five-star resort tucked back from the glorious west coast of the Peloponnese peninsula of mainland Greece.

Weve both taken an afternoon off from sunbathing, swimming and relaxing to join others who want to learn to cook  traditional Greek style.

We have gathered in a kitchen at a nearby stone-built home in the hills overlooking the historic Bay of Navarino. Holding court are the delightful Anna and Loula, who begin by teaching us how to make the refreshing yogurt and cucumber dip tzatziki, an essential accompaniment for any Greek meal.

Their day job is to cater for many a Big Fat Greek wedding but they also enjoy sharing their knowledge and love of local delicacies with visitors to Messinia, one of the least tourist-trodden regions of Greece.

Since we dont speak Greek and the hosts have only a smattering of English, there is a good deal of gesticulating, demonstrating and pointing.

Im later charged with grating three courgettes to mix with olive oil, eggs, chopped onion, mint, flour and salty feta before it is scooped into a dish and baked for 40 minutes.

Next is the preparation of hilopites, traditional Greek noodles. Flour, eggs, milk and salt are the only ingredients  along with a dollop of elbow grease to knead the doughy mixture into the right consistency.

Then the fun part starts  rolling out the dough with a long wooden pin thinner than a broomstick. Once I have made a circle the size of a giant pizza, I roll it up around the pin. I then take a knife and split it open lengthwise against the pin. This creates a layering effect of the flattened dough. I slice it  with direction from our hosts  into short, broad noodles which are then tossed in flour ready for cooking later.

While we are at work, we nibble on lalaggides  Greek pancakes  served with delicious golden honey.

A simple Greek salad and chicken in tomato sauce are also prepared, and in no time we are sitting down to savour the feast we have created.

Tempting: Costa Navarinos Westin Resort has 13 restaurants. Pictured is a dish from Da Luigi, a buzzy Italian

The Greek areas famous olives. Olive oil is practically compulsory with most meals at Costa Navarino and across Messinia

Over a late lunch, there is plenty of chat about other favourite Greek specialities, including kleftiko  lamb slow-cooked in spices.

The rough translation is thieves dinner  so named because several hundred years ago, fugitives escaping despotic rule in Greece were forced to steal their rulers animals and then cook the meat in covered fire pits to avoid detection.

For those who prefer a less hands-on culinary adventure, they will find foodie heaven back at Costa Navarinos Westin Resort. Award-winning chefs prepare exquisite menus with local ingredients in 13 restaurants. We sampled Armyra (Greek), Da Luigi (a buzzy Italian) and Flame, serving mouthwatering steaks.

But my favourite was the fish restaurant Barbouni. I selected my own sea bass from the display before having it freshly grilled. You can dine there only at lunchtime to protect nesting turtles from artificial light on their path to the sea at night.

Olive oil is practically compulsory with most meals at Costa Navarino and across Messinia. The region produces its fair share of the glorious liquid gold from vast plantations of ancient groves.

Keeping cool: The vaulted ceiling in the lobby of the Westin Resort, a five-star property tucked back from the glorious west coast of the Peloponnese peninsula of mainland Greece

During our stay, we attend an olive oil tasting session at the resort, given by sommelier Kristina Stribakou. She tells us that when tasting, you need to suck air through your teeth to experience the full flavour. Its a noisy business.

Kristina explains how the most sought-after olive oil is extra virgin. And to get the best results for her own oil that she produces nearby, the juice from the olives must be squeezed out just as the fruit turns from green to purple. The process needs to be carried out at a temperature no higher than 14C  cold-pressed, in the jargon.

Her oil uses the native Koroneiki olive, which is unsuitable for eating but perfect for oil-making.

I couldnt agree more.

Sally Hamilton was a guest of Costa Navarino ( costanavarino.com ). Seven nights B&B costs from 1,750pp. Return flights with Aegean ( en.aegeanair.com ) from Heathrow or Gatwick to Athens start from 80.

Basque in the glow of Michelin stars... How to spend 48 hours in San Sebastian

The city of San Sebastian in northern Spains mountainous Basque Country has grown from a humble fishing village into an international gourmet hotspot. The region now has more Michelin stars per head than anywhere else in the world.

The city, known locally as Donostia, is a delightful mix of old and new: narrow, cobbled streets, elegant avenues, Belle Epoque architecture and the pockmarked walls of the Hotel Maria Cristina, a reminder of San Sebastians warring past.

Day one

Morning

Gastronomic hotspot: The port area of San Sebastian, with the historic old town in the background

Get your bearings (and sensational views of the city) from Monte Urgull. Its a 30-minute hike through leafy slopes to the summit, and easily accessible from the north-west corner of the Parte Vieja, the citys old town, next to the fishing port.

En route youll pass crumbling military battlements and the ruins of a 16th Century castle. A British cemetery halfway up honours fallen soldiers who died in the two-month Siege of San Sebastian in 1813. At the peak, youll be greeted by a giant sandstone statue of Christ, and an exhilarating panorama of the city, its three beaches and hills beyond.

Afternoon

You dont have to travel far to discover Basque history and culture. The San Telmo Museum (santelmomuseoa.com) is at the foot of Monte Urgull at Plaza de Zuloaga in a restored 16th Century cloistered Dominican convent. Dont miss the huge paintings depicting historical scenes inside the church. The museum is open daily except Mondays, and admission is 6 (free on Tuesdays).

Evening

Quick bite: Dishes at a pintxo bar selling the Basque regions answer to tapas

For truly unforgettable dining, try Akelarre (akelarre.net), one of the restaurants that helped spearhead the Basque food revolution. Its perched on a clifftop on Mount Igueldo, where you can enjoy a 240 tasting menu while taking in sunset views over the Cantabrian Sea.

For those on more modest budgets, head to one of hundreds of vibrant pintxo (pronounced pincho) bars selling the Basque regions answer to tapas, and wash it down with a glass of txakoli, the local sparkling wine. Watch as the waiter pours it skilfully into your glass from a height to reduce acidity.

Day two

Morning

Start in La Bretxa Market where stalls sell a dizzying array of meats, cheeses and olives. At the fish section, hake, snapper and monkfish are lovingly displayed like works of art.

For pastries, head to the marble-fronted Pasteleria Otaegui (pasteleriaotaegui.com), while delis such as Zaporejai (zaporejai.com) offer melt-in-the-mouth Iberico ham.

Afternoon

Watch surfers tackle the Atlantic waves at Zurriola beach, home to the citys thriving surf scene. The summer months see barefooted locals wandering from beach to surf shops and cafes. Burn off those gourmet bites and catch a wave yourself  hire a board at a surf shop and take a lesson if youre a beginner.

You cant fail to miss the dramatic, cube-shaped Kursaal Convention Centre on the jetty. This futuristic-looking building, built to resemble two large rocks, hosts exhibitions, concerts, conferences and the citys annual film festival.

Now stroll along the picturesque promenade curving around the sweeping golden sands of La Concha beach. Carry on towards the western end until you reach the steep, green slopes of Monte Igueldo. Take the century-old funicular railway through shaded forests to a small amusement park at the top. The views make this one of San Sebastians most popular spots.

By Max Woolridge
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TORONTO, Jan. 6, 2020 /CNW/ - SLANG Worldwide Inc. ( CNSX: SLNG ), (Frankfurt: 84S), ("SLANG" or the "Company"), a global leader in the cannabis consumer packaged goods sector with a vast portfolio of popular brands distributed in over 2,600 stores across the United States, today announced that it is expanding into the Ohio medical cannabis market by the entering into of a licensing agreement with Standard Wellness Company, LLC ("Standard Wellness").

Pursuant to the licensing agreement, Standard Wellness has been granted an exclusive license to produce and distribute the SLANG product suite in Ohio, beginning with its category-leading O.penVAPE, Pressies, Bakked and District Edibles brands. SLANG will derive revenue for each branded product sold in the state, with sales expected to commence in 2020.

"We strive to create brand awareness early and establish relationships with consumers in attractive, new cannabis markets," said SLANG CEO Peter Miller. "Our discipline around capital efficiency makes partnerships like this very strategic in achieving our near and long-term goals for brand awareness, while giving our partners a competitive advantage and a running start in their markets."

Standard Wellness was Ohio's first vertically integrated licensed cannabis producer. Its cultivation and processing facility is located in Gibsonburg, Ohio, and it currently distributes products to every medical cannabis dispensary in the state.

"Our strategy is to partner with leading brands to bring the finest quality cannabis products to patients in Ohio and empower them to lead healthy and rewarding lives," said Standard Wellness CEO Jared Maloof. "Our agreement with SLANG will enable us to diversify our product portfolio with recognized brands and help fuel our continued growth."

Licensed medical cannabis sales commenced in Ohio in January 2019. By the end of November, nearly 75,000 patients had registered with the State Board of Pharmacy and total cumulative product sales had reached US$49 million, according to the Ohio Medical Control Program. The total market for medical cannabis sales in Ohio is expected to exceed US$500 million by 2022, according to estimates published by Cormark Securities in January 2019. Ohio is the seventh largest state in the U.S. with a population of 11.7 million.

About SLANG Worldwide Inc.

SLANG Worldwide Inc. is a global leader in the cannabis CPG sector with a vast portfolio of popular brands distributed in over 2,600 stores across the United States. The Company specializes in acquiring and developing market-proven regional brands as well as launching innovative new brands to seize global market opportunities. SLANG is listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the ticker symbol SLNG and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the trading symbol 84S. For more information, please visit www.slangww.com.

About Standard Wellness

Standard Wellness is Ohio's premier medical marijuana brand serving patients with a full line of cannabis-based natural health remedies. The company was founded in 2017 and uses a fully integrated processing, production and dispensary system, through its sister company The Forest Sandusky LLC, to offer high quality medicinal marijuana products. Its cultivation and processing facility is located in Gibsonburg, Ohio. Standard Wellness also cultivates medical marijuana in Utah and will commence processing and production there in early 2020. Most recently, Standard Wellness was awarded cultivation licenses in the State of Missouri. For more information visit www.standardwellness.com. The Cleveland-based law firm Walter | Haverfield advised Standard Wellness on the SLANG transaction.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements." Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements, or developments in the industry to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects," "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur.

Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by management of SLANG at this time, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive risks, uncertainties and contingencies that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Applicable risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to regulatory risks, changes in laws, resolutions and guidelines, market risks, concentration risks, operating history, competition, the risks associated with international and foreign operations and the other risks identified under the headings "Risk Factors" in SLANG's final long form prospectus dated January 17, 2019 and "Risks and Uncertainties" in the management discussion and analysis for the year ended December 31, 2018, each as filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. SLANG is not under any obligation, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable law.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this news release.

SOURCE SLANG WORLDWIDE

For further information: SLANG media inquiries: [email protected]; SLANG investor inquiries: [email protected]; Standard Wellness media inquiries: [email protected]; Standard Wellness investor inquiries: [email protected]

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www.slangworldwide.co


Iran: US continued military presence in Iraq shows occupation

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Jan 5, IRNA -- Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani hailed the law enacted by the Iraqi parliament on exit of the US forces from that country, saying that the US continued presence in Iraq amounts to occupying the country.

He made the remarks in a meeting with a special security adviser to the Syrian president Ali Mamlouk who is currently in Iran on behalf of Bashar al-Assad.

Shamkhani added that the Americans and arrogant powers will soon understand that assassination of commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps' (IRGC) Quds Force Lieutenant General Qasem Soleimani will be far more dangerous for them.

Referring to the epic and unprecedented presence of the Iraqi people in the funeral of General Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes and approval of the US forces exit from the country, he said that Iraqi government, parliament and people took the lead to avenge on the assassination and slapped in Trump and his team's face with these big acts.

Declaring Iran's official stance against assassination of Lieutenant General Soleimani, Shamkhani said, "We will respond to the crime militarily, but it will not be limited to military acts."

Shahkhani pointed out that Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes are symbols of strong willing for resistance against the oppressors and the bullying powers.

The Syrian official, for his part, said, "I have been tasked by President Bashar al-Assad to express deep regret and condolences to Iran's Supreme Leader and president and Your Excellency."

Referring to the status of Martyr Soleimani among the region's Muslims and oppressed nations, he said that certainly, grief of the Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Yemeni and Afghan peoples for martyrdom of Soleimani is not less than that of the Iranian people.

Soleimani belongs to all freedom-seekers across the world and surely, his martyrdom will be a prelude to liberation of Palestine and elimination of Israel, Mamlouk said.

8072**2050

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17 cars, two minibusses and one bus collided on the motorway

Open source

A large-scale road accident, in which five Ukrainians were injured, took place in Slovakia, in Tatra, HNonline reports.

It occurred on the D1 motorway near Spisska Storak, where 17 cars, two minibusses and one bus collided.

According to preliminary information, provided by the portal, two people were injured at the scene of the accident. At the time of the accident, 41 people were in the vehicles.

At the same time, the Special Control community reports on Facebook that 10 people, including five Ukrainians, were injured in an accident near the Slovak town of Poprad on the D1 motorway.

It is noted that two injured Ukrainians were taken to the clinic. They have minor injuries. A minibus with Ukrainians was heading from Prague to Lviv region. The cause of the accident was bad weather in the area of the D1 motorway.

As we reported earlier, a plane with 100 people aboard crashed in Kazakhstan. The country's Industry Ministry reported that on Facebook.

The tragedy occurred not far from Kyzyl-Tu in Almaty region, at 07:22 a.m. local time.

Two Ukrainians, who were at the board of the plane crashed in Kazakhstan, have had their spines broken.
LAS VEGAS - Flying taxis and a robot that can fetch toilet paper when you're stranded on the loo were among the technologies showcased this week at the annual CES gadget show in Las Vegas.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 6/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Moen Flo water usage meter with latest app is shown here at the CES Unveiled media preview event, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

LAS VEGAS - Flying taxis and a robot that can fetch toilet paper when you're stranded on the loo were among the technologies showcased this week at the annual CES gadget show in Las Vegas.

The annual technology conference is the place for big brands and startups alike to unveil their products and services for the coming year, though larger companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft typically hold their own announcement events. Streaming services and surveillance technologies are among the hot topics. The show formally opens Tuesday following two days of media previews.

Here are some highlights:

UBER'S AERIAL RIDE

Uber and Hyundai are teaming up to build a fleet of flying taxis.

Uber, the ride-hailing giant, said its four-passenger Uber Air Taxi will initially be piloted, but over time will become autonomous. Uber says it wants to conduct flight demonstrations in 2020 and make such vehicles commercially available in 2023.

The goal is to help riders breeze over traffic in shared air taxis between suburbs and cities and eventually within cities. Uber plans to launch the aircraft in Dallas, Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia. The air taxis, which look like a cross between a helicopter and a small airplane, will be all-electric.

The Alarm.com water management smart water valve is shown here with the app at the CES Unveiled media preview event, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

The air taxis are designed to take off vertically and cruise at speeds up to 180 miles per hour (290 kilometres per hour). They're designed to fly up to 60 miles (97 kilometres) at a time.

While Uber has been working on the air taxi concept for years, Hyundai brings to the project a company with experience manufacturing cars on a global scale.

The companies said Hyundai will produce and deploy the vehicles while Uber provides airspace support services and connections to ground transportation. Uber will not own the air taxis, but the aircraft will be permitted to operate as part of Ubers transportation network.

ROBOT FOR THE LOO

Charmin wants to solve a familiar feeling: being stranded on the toilet with an empty toilet paper roll.

Its solution: a two-wheeled robot that can fetch a fresh roll. The robot, around 6-inches tall, has the face of a bear  like the cartoon ones in Charmins commercials  and toilet paper sitting on top.

But dont expect it to roll to your bathroom anytime soon. Procter & Gamble, the company that owns Charmin, said the robot wont be for sale and was just an example of whats possible.

Car companies have concept cars, but P&G has concept bathrooms, said Marc Pritchard, who oversees Procter & Gambles brands.

The CarePredict Tempo Series 3 appears on display at the CarePredict booth during CES Unveiled before CES International, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Las Vegas. The wearable device for seniors detects changes in the senior's activity and can alert caregivers and family via an app. (AP Photo/John Locher)

The company didnt have a working robot available at a press conference Sunday, though executives say one will be demonstrated when the show floor opens Tuesday.

SENSING WATER LEAKS

New sensors promise to stop water leaks before they ruin your home.

Monitors from Alarm.com and Flo Technologies connect to homes water lines and track usage. If the systems sense more water than usual is flowing through the pipes, they send an alert through their apps  after all, it could just be a long shower. But if something really seems off kilter, the monitors will automatically shut off water.

Flo used CES to launch its newest sensor, a raindrop-shaped device that looks like a smoke alarm and can detect any water or moisture when attached to toilets, washers or other leak-prone areas. Each detector costs $50.

Another option, Phyn, makes a $299 device that hooks up to the pipes under a sink and measures changes in water pressure.

TRACKING THE ELDERLY

What are your grandparents up to? Startups are pitching a way to keep an eye on the elderly from afar.

The Charmin RollBot is on display during a Procter & Gamble news conference before CES International, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

The new sensors can tell if a loved one has moved around and eaten  for instance, by detecting when the fridge is opened.

The efforts come as the U.S. government expects adults over 65 to outnumber children for the first time by 2034.

We want to enable loved ones to live on their own, said Ryan Herd, founder of Caregiver Smart Solutions.

Caregiver's sensors tracks the elderly through motion detection, though the product can also tell if someone has showered by measuring humidity. Another company, CarePredict, has a wrist-worn device that can detect falls and alert caregivers. It also tracks how much the person has moved around and what rooms theyre spending most of their time in.

Tracking isn't cheap. CarePredict's device, for instance, costs $450, plus a $70 monthly fee.

Neither company uses cameras, so you'll need something else if you want to peer into your grandparents' homes. Just keep in mind that if you can check video on an app, so might a skilled hacker.

GADGETS FOR YOUR EAR

Nearly 67 million wireless earbuds are expected to be sold this year, according to projections by organizers of this week's CES gadget show in Las Vegas. Thats up 35% from 2019, making it one of the fastest-growing categories in consumer tech.

According to the organizers, the Consumer Technology Association, much of the growth will come from Apples AirPods and Samsungs Galaxy Buds, both of which play music and take calls without any wires. But others are vying for your ear canal, too. Amazon started selling its own buds late last year, and Microsoft plans to have one in 2020.

Also popular: smartwatches, fitness trackers and other devices that track and monitor your health. The CTA expects 64 million health devices to be sold this year, the first time the group has counted the category.

Smartphones and TVs will see slower growth. Both are expected to rise just 2%.

Overall, revenue in the U.S. consumer tech industry is expected to grow 4% to $422 billion, the CTA said. But the group warned that its numbers could change significantly if the trade war with China escalates or if tariffs are expanded. Much of the world's electronics are put together in China, and the CTA has said that steeper tariffs could hurt the industry by making gadgets more expensive for consumers.

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___

This story has been corrected to state that Uber's air taxis are designed to cruise at a speed of 180 miles per hour; a technical issue led to publication of an incorrect figure.

___

AP Business Writer Cathy Bussewitz in New York contributed to this story.

___ AP's CES coverage:

https://apnews.com/Consumerelectronics
Health systems, politicians and researchers have blamed emergency room overcrowding on the decline of primary care, inappropriate use of the ED, a fragmented health system, and more recently, social determinants of health. Read more

For decades ever more patients have been arriving at emergency departments (EDs). As concern has mounted, and emergency department crowding  most evident in wait times  has increased, fingers have been pointed. Health systems, politicians and researchers have blamed the decline of primary care, inappropriate use of the ED, a fragmented health system, and more recently, social determinants of health.

The solutions offered follow from these diagnoses. Improve primary care access, encourage patients and their doctors to use more primary care, penalize patients who are deemed retrospectively by simple algorithms to have used the ED inappropriately, improve care coordination, and improve social determinants of health by actions like paying for housing or transportation.

In a recent New York Times article, A Doctors Diary: the Overnight Shift in the ER, a physician describes the tragic cases, frantic pace of work, and long delays of the ED. The article rings true to us: two economists, one an emergency physician and one a fairly frequent user of the ED.

However, the solutions enumerated in the article are unlikely to solve ED overcrowding overall. In an economic framework, they all address only one of the problems  the demand for ED visits.

But the core problem is the supply of resources the system makes available to treat that demand, and the nature of ED care. Suppose that methods were found to make these changes happen and average demand for ED care fell, then hospitals would surely be advised to reduce staffing in the short run, and space in the long run, to avoid having periods of expensive downtime and underused resources. After such rescaling, patients would face the same delays as before and, if anything, the patient mix might be more sad and severe.

Emergency medicine has proven itself to be a remarkably efficient clinical specialty. As a practicing ED physician, when a critical patient comes in, has a breathing tube put in, is started on powerful medications to increase blood pressure, is given multiple IV antibiotics, has dozens of life-threatening diseases considered and ruled out, and then is hopefully sent out to a waiting ICU bed, the doctor has at most a minute to take a deep breath, clear his mind, and then see the next patient.

By allowing periods of emergency room backup, the staffing pattern assures a continuous supply of cases to be treated, with no wasted resources  even if patient convenience, anxiety, and comfort suffer. This efficiency comes at a potential price: higher mortality for patients when the ED is particularly crowded, a narrow focus on the type of problems solved in the ED (we wont fix your chronic hypertension, for instance), and high burnout rates in the specialty.

If hospitals carefully balanced supply of nurses, physicians, hospital beds, and ED beds to just meet the demand on average, there will inevitably be periods where for several hours or days demand outstrips supply and patients build up in the waiting room and in ED beds waiting for their hospital bed to be available. The obvious solution, not mentioned in the Times article, is to pay the cost of more hospital capacity.

But who will do so? Most hospitals are not-for-profit, but they cannot be for-losses. Hospitals lose money on the uninsured and possibly other patients who visit their EDs and make money on the privately insured. This cross-subsidization is a source through which hospitals fund the EDs key role in disaster preparedness and providing care to the uninsured. Private insurers are understandably more reluctant to fund these public benefits with private funds, but the public Medicare and Medicaid programs have obviously not been eager to spend more either  or even make ED wait time a quality metric with financial consequences.

A solution, then, is to fund EDs to add more capacity than at present even if it is more frequently excess. Not an easy solution for todays insurers, or even under some Medicare for All scenarios, but necessary if the problem of overcrowding is to be solved.

Another solution is to address a different cause of ED overcrowding, the lack of inpatient beds to take patients out of the ED and to their ultimate destination. It would use pay-for-performance; essentially an insurer would pay less money for any admission where the insured waited more than two hours between the time the decision to admit was made and the patient was moved to their inpatient bed. This would force hospitals to redistribute resources from the whole hospital to the ED rather than taking a narrow perspective that the ED loses money.

Either way, the question is whether we are willing as insurance purchasers and taxpayers to pay more for more resources. In health care, as in everything else, we cant get something for nothing.

Ari Friedman, MD, PhD is a practicing emergency physician at the University of Pennsylvania and an economist focusing on the unscheduled care system. Mark Pauly, PhD is Bendheim Professor in the department of health care management, professor of health-care management, and professor of business economics and public policy at the Wharton School, and professor of economics in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a member of the Inquirers Health Advisory Panel.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020 12:31 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c32101df9 1 City Bogor-regency,bogor,West-Java,jakarta,anies-baswedan Free

Bogor Regent Ade Yasin gave a "cartoonish" response to Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedans argument that recent flooding in Jakarta was mainly caused by excessive water flows from Bogor regency and other adjacent areas.

What does he mean by that? Im not an Avatar who could bend water, said Ade on Saturday, referring to popular cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender, as quoted by tempo.co.

Avatar, produced by American television network Nickelodeon, centers on the titular character who can control natural elements such as water, earth, fire and air.

She said her administration had toiled to clear reservoirs to increase their water capacity and was running river normalization programs.

Ade said both regional and provincial administrations and the central government should work together to mitigate floods.

We should work hand in hand, from the local and provincial [levels] to the central government, to mitigate this disaster, not blame [each other], she said.

Previously, Anies said flood prevention must start upstream by building dams and basins to control the water flow.

Water management in the upstream region [is needed] by building dams, ponds and water retention basins to control the volume of water that flows downstream, but its all under the authority of the central government, he said on Thursday, as quoted by tribunnews.com.

West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil also responded to Anies statement, saying that rivers had been flowing from Bogor to Jakarta for ages and thus the blame should not be put on the rivers.

We couldnt say that water flow from Bogor wouldnt go through Jakarta because its been like that since the beginning, he said.

The problem is how we manage [the water]. Isnt it extreme to construct a huge dam in Bogor? he added.

He also said that Indonesia is not the only country that suffered from extreme weather and natural disasters.

The weather is extreme. According to Google, even developed countries were hit by floods, even though they have greater knowledge and resources, he said.

The West Java administration declared an emergency status on Friday after floods and landslides hit several areas in the province since New Years Eve, killing more than 30 people and displacing more than 170,000.

Bogor regency recorded the most casualties in the province with 16 people, while another nine died in Bekasi municipality.

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency reported that the death toll from floods and landslides in West Java, Jakarta and Banten climbed to 60 as of Sunday. (mpr)
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday announced an additional 2 billion dollars over two years to a new agency to coordinate a national response to rebuild communities and livelihoods following the deadly bushfire crisis.

The National Bushfire Recovery Agency, headed by former federal police chief Andrew Colvin, will help bushfire affected communities recover.

The agency would be funded with an initial 2 billion Australian dollars (USD 1.38 billion) to ensure the families, farmers and business owners hit by the unprecedented bushfires would get the support they needed as they recover, the Prime Minister said.

"It's a long road ahead and we will be with these communities every step of the way as they rebuild," Morrison, who is facing widespread criticism in Australia for his handling of the crisis, said.

The bushfire crisis has taken a very heavy toll with more than 1,500 homes already lost throughout the course of this fire season, which has been running since September, according to the government.

Over 20 people have lost their lives so far.

"While the immediate focus for our emergency services and the Australian Defence Force is keeping people safe and defending against the fires hitting so many areas, we also need to be ready to hit the ground in communities where the fire-front has passed to help them rebuild.

"The agency will ensure the work of state and territory governments is being supported and act as a 'one stop shop' central team to coordinate the response. We will do whatever it takes," he said.

Meanwhile fire continued to burn across several regions of the country including New South Wales and Victoria which on Monday received some relief following rain.

Commissioner of New South Wales Rural Fire Service Shane Fitzsimmons confirmed that nearly 150 fires were still burning across the state.

"We are certainly seeing an easing of conditions right across the state. And as a matter of fact, there's even a bit of drizzle happening down here on the south coast. And it's certainly a welcome reprieve," he said, adding that "'unfortunately it is not putting out the fires. It's not helping us with the furthering of the work of back burning and consolidation work".

"All our fires are now off the emergency warning alert level. We've got nine at the watch and act alert level, which is indicative of ongoing fire behaviour and potential and fire still burning in and around lots of communities. There's lots of damage and destruction," he said.

In Victoria, all emergency warnings statewide were downgraded following rain however a total of 15 'watch and act' warnings remained in place for the state.

No Victorians were now unaccounted for because of bushfires, according to latest confirmation by state Premier Daniel Andrews who also announced a new bushfire relief agency for the state.

In South Australia, the bushfire on Kangaroo Island was still uncontrolled, burning at 'watch and act' level.

Earlier, the fire had killed two people, burnt about a third of the Island and is believed to have killed approximately half of the Island's Koala population.

The Mayor of Kangaroo Island said he knows at least 50 homes that have been destroyed.

Water and power infrastructure has been significantly damaged in the island's west. Repair estimates are not yet known.

Almost six million hectares have burned in Australia in the ongoing bushfire crisis, with over 20 deaths reported so far.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Morrison called up 3,000 military reserve troops to combat the bushfires, the first time that reservists were called up in such a large number "in the living memory".

Morrison was criticised for taking a family vacation in Hawaii at the start of the wildfire crisis, with many people complaining about the lack of readiness in utilisation of resources.

Last week, he was heckled when he visited a township in New South Wales where houses have been destroyed and one of them belonged to one of the three volunteer firefighters who have died in the crisis.

Over 3,000 firefighters are on the frontline, with 31 specialist strike teams in place across NSW.

Australia's military has been assisting with aerial reconnaissance, mapping, search and rescue, logistics and aerial support for months.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Syed Raza Hassan and Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam

KARACHI/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Protestors clashed with police in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi on Sunday, as thousands of demonstrators attempted to march toward the U.S. consulate to protest the killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani.

Soleimani, a powerful Iranian military commander and the architect of Iran's spreading military influence in the Middle East, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq on Friday.

In Karachi, thousands of Shi'ite protestors, including women and children, carrying images of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as of Soleimani, marched and chanted slogans of "Death to America," and "Death to Israel."

The protest was organized by a diverse group of Shi'ite Muslim organizations.

Pakistani security forces blocked the road leading to the U.S. consulate in Karachi using shipping containers. However, some protestors attempted to push through the security cordon and climb over the containers, leading to scuffles with security forces.

Police were able to push protestors back and prevent them from getting beyond the barricades. Following a brief period of tension on Sunday evening, the demonstration was called off.

Iran, with a Shi'ite Muslim majority, enjoys a large support base in Pakistan, its neighbor to the east. Though Pakistan is a Sunni Muslim-majority country, it has a fairly large Shi'ite population.

"Pakistan should not in any way allow its soil to be used against Iran," a senior cleric, Shahanshah Naqvi, said while addressing the protest rally.

A smaller rally was also held in the capital, Islamabad, where protestors burnt U.S. and Israeli flags.

It dispersed without any violence.

Earlier, the spokesperson of Pakistan's Army told local media the country would not allow its soil to be used against anyone, referring to speculation about an imminent military standoff between the United States and Iran.

He quoted Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and the Army chief as saying they wanted a peaceful resolution to all disputes.

(Reporting by Syed Hassan in Karachi and Gibran Peshimam in Islamabad; Editing by Euan Rocha and Frances Kerry)
Post-operative Pain Management Market Overview:

Pain is an adverse postoperative outcome that requires effective pain management in the form of medications. The post-operative pain management is gaining traction in the global market owing to the increasing surgical treatments across the globe. As per the Report that has been published by Market research Future (MRFR), the global post-operative pain management market is anticipated to expand steadily at a CAGR of 5.4% during the forecast period of 2017-2023.

You Can Get Latest Free Sample Copy Of Post-operative Pain Management Market Research Report  Global forecast to 2023 Here !! https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1246

Market Drivers and Restraints:

Increasing prevalence of diseases that require surgical treatments and development of new drugs for faster pain relief are some of the major factors that are driving the global post-operative pain management market.

The necessity of providing effective pain management while ensuring minimum side effects is leading to increased research for development of high-quality post-operative pain management solutions, resulting in the expansion of the global post-operative pain management market.

Increasing incidences of chronic diseases like cancer, renal diseases, cardiovascular diseases and others and rise in number of geriatric populations are fueling the growth of the global post-operative pain management market. The increasing research and development expenditure in order to introduce highly-effective medications are impacting positively on the growth of the global post-operative pain management market.

However, complications associated with the overdose of pain management drugs and poor primary health care services in the underdeveloped regions are likely to act as restraints on the growth of the global post-operative pain management market during the forecast period.



Post-operative Pain Management Market Segmentation:

The global post-operative pain management market has been segmented on the basis of pain type, product, application and target area. Based on pain type, the post-operative pain management market is segmented into acute pain, moderate pain and severe pain. Based on product, the post-operative pain management market is segmented into non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), antiepileptic drugs, COX-2 inhibitors, opioids and other analgesics.

Based on application, the post-operative pain management market is segmented into cancer pain, arthritic pain, neuropathic pain, musculoskeletal pain, migraine and others. Based on target area, the post-operative pain management market is segmented into back, legs, hand and arms and others.



Post-operative Pain Management Market Regional Analysis:

Geographically, the global post-operative pain management market is segmented into Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East and Africa. Among these regions, Americas is dominating the global post-operative pain management market owing to the large patient pool undergoing surgical procedures and availability of well-developed healthcare infrastructure in this region. The Europe region accounts for second largest share in the global post-operative pain management market owing to the increasing research and development activities for introduction of new drugs with fewer side-effects.

The Asia Pacific region is projecting fastest growth in the global post-operative pain management market owing to the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases that require surgical treatment and rapid rise in geriatric population in this region. The post-operative pain management market in the Middle East and Africa region is projecting steady growth due to lack of awareness and poor primary health care services in the underdeveloped areas of this region.

Industry Updates:

In August 2018, an expert panel of health care providers and patients from John Hopkins University, a private American university, have announced the creation of nations first set of operation specific prescribing guidelines for 20 common surgical procedures. These guidelines are based on the premise that the postoperative opioid prescribing limit should be based on the type of procedure performed rather than a blanket approach.

Key Players:

The prominent players profiled in the global post-operative pain management market report by MRFR are Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Israel), Eli Lilly (the U.S.), Pfizer (the U.S.), Johnson & Johnson (the U.S.), Purdue Pharma (the U.S.), Endo Pharmaceuticals Plc. (the U.S.), Forest Laboratories Inc. (the U.S.), GlaxoSmithKline Plc. (the U.K.), F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. (Switzerland), Baxter International Inc. (the U.S.) and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. (Canada).

Browse Complete Report with Niche Segments and Top Industry Players at https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/post-operative-pain-management-market-1246

About Market Research Future:

At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.

MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by Components, Application, Logistics and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.

In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.

Contact:

Market Research Future

Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers

Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar,

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WASHINGTON (AP)  The Trump administration has built up the biggest backlog of unfunded toxic Superfund clean-up projects in at least 15 years, nearly triple the number that were stalled for lack of money in the Obama era, according to 2019 figures quietly released by the Environmental Protection Agency over the winter holidays.

Two of the Superfund projects are in Connecticut: One in Durham and one in Waterbury.

The accumulation of Superfund projects that are ready to go except for money comes as the Trump administration routinely proposes funding cuts for Superfund and for the EPA in general. The four-decade-old Superfund program is meant to tackle some of the most heavily contaminated sites in the U.S. and Trump has declared it a priority even while seeking to shrink its budget.

There hasnt been a sense of urgency, said Violet Donoghue, who has lived for 31 years on Bon Brae Street in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. Toxic PCBs have poisoned some local soil, water and fish at nearby Lake St. Clair, and the neighborhood is one of the 34 Superfund sites where clean-up projects languished for lack of money in 2019.

I feel many people have been harmed, but thats only my opinion," Donoghue said. She said the last word from the EPA was that soil would be removed from the front of her house. Now when they say theyre cleaning it, I say, OK, give me the date,'" she said.

The unfunded projects are in 17 states and Puerto Rico. They range from abandoned mines that discharged heavy metals and arsenic in the West to an old wood pulp site in Mississippi and a defunct dry cleaner that released toxic solvents in North Carolina.

In Connecticut, the Durham Meadows site includes an area of groundwater contamination generally centered on Main Street. It contains industrial and residential properties. The 30-acre Scovill Industrial Landfill site in Waterbury includes cleanup of a site previously used for disposal of ash, cinders, demolition debris and other wastes generated by the company that was at the site until the 1970s.

Congress created the Superfund program in 1980 after the Love Canal episode and other notorious pollution cases. Its intent is to hold polluters responsible for cleanup costs or provide taxpayer money when no responsible party can be identified.

Trump is focused on putting Americans first, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler told a Senate environment committee early 2019. There may be no better example than our success in the Superfund program.

We are in the process of cleaning up some of the nations largest, most complex sites and returning them to productive use, Wheeler said then.

But two former EPA officials whose work dealt with Superfund oversight said the growing backlog of stalled Superfund projects under the Trump administration, and steady or ebbing numbers of clean-up construction projects completed, point to a different picture.

Theyre misleading Congress and the public about the funds that are needed to really protect the public from exposure to the toxic chemicals, said Elizabeth Southerland, who worked for 30 years at EPA, including as director of science and technology in the water office, before retiring in 2017. Its detrimental.

This is a regulatory failure, said Judith Enck, who served as the EPAs regional northeastern U.S. administrator under President Barack Obama.

Given the growing numbers of unfunded clean-up projects, EPA should be knocking on the door of Congress and saying, give us more money to deal with the sites, Enck said.

Asked what the EPA spent money on instead, and why the agency didnt ask Congress for more to deal with the growing backlog, EPA spokeswoman Maggie Sauerhage offered few specifics Thursday.

The EPAs Superfund program will continue to prioritize new construction projects based on which sites present the greatest risk to human health and the environment, Sauerhage said in an email. Further, the agency maintains the authority to respond to and fund emergencies at these sites if there is an imminent threat to human health and the environment.

She pointed to some areas where Trump's Superfund effort was more on par with that of his predecessors. Long-term remedial efforts to make sure contamination didnt rebound at existing Superfund sites, for example, averaged 64 a year under Trump. That compares with an average of 60 a year in Obama's last five years.

But overall, the backlog of 34 unfunded projects is up from only 12 in 2016, Obama's last year.

At the site of another of 2019's unfunded Superfund projects, Montanas Upper Tenmile mining region, which includes the community of Rimini and a subdivision downstream, the EPA has been providing bottled water to residents for the past decade in response to water supplies polluted by about 150 abandoned gold, lead and copper mines.

Pollution still flows from the mines and into Upper Tenmile Creek more than 20 years after the area was added to the Superfund list.

About 6 miles from Rimini in the rural Landmark subdivision is a huge pile of contaminated soil that was removed from residential yards. It was supposed to be hauled away but now has weeds growing over it after sitting untouched for several years, said Patrick Keim, who lives nearby.

Its a sword of Damocles hanging over us, Keim said. It just seems counterproductive they would spend two or three million dollars re-mediating this piece of property, haul it off and stockpile it across the road and then run out of money and leave this big pile for everybody to look at.

Montana environmental regulators also are involved in the cleanup but say they need the EPA to come through with money for the work to resume, since the federal agency is providing 90 percent of funding.

Under Trump, the EPA has pointed to a different yardstick in declaring it was making progress on Superfund clean-ups  the number of cleaned-up sites officially deleted from the roster of more than 1,300 Superfund sites.

In 2019, for instance, the EPA said it had deleted all or part of 27 sites from the official Superfund list, saying that was the most deletions since the George W. Bush administration. But deletions from the list typically reflect clean-up work done over decades and often completed on the ground years ago, meaning Trump is sometimes taking credit for work done under his predecessors.

In 2018, for example, the EPA cited the seven Superfund sites fully or partially removed from the list in the previous year as a signature accomplishment of the Trump administration. Records showed the physical work was completed before Trump took office, The Associated Press reported at the time.

Sauerhage, the EPA spokeswoman, did not directly respond to questions about the backlog of 34 unfunded Superfund clean-up projects. The EPA posted the total on its website without fanfare the day after Christmas. Some of the projects that are ready to start have languished for lack of money since Trumps first year in office.

EPA has been one of the main focuses of Trumps efforts to cut federal regulations and oversight that he sees as burdening businesses. Trump each year has asked Congress for nearly one-third cuts in EPAs budget, and has sought much smaller cuts for Superfund.

Congress has kept both levels of funding roughly even.

___

White contributed from St. Clair Shores, Michigan, and Brown from Billings, Montana.
Occidental Petroleum said Monday it will make its pipeline arm, Western Midstream Partners, an independent company and reduce its ownership stake in the firm in order to cut its overall debt load.

Houston-based Oxy acquired Western as part of its massive $38 billion purchase of Anadarko Petroleum last year, and a potential sale of Western was considered one of the best ways to help Oxy pay off the deal.

However, Western's market value plunged by about 30 percent last year, putting any possible sale on hold. Western's market value is currently about $10 billion.

Now, Oxy said it will reduce its roughly 55 percent stake in Western to below 50 percent this year and make the pipeline firm fully independent. The deal would let Oxy take Western's debt off of its books and still allow Oxy to maintain an operational relationship with Western and its pipelines and processing capabilities.

"We repaid $7 billion of debt less than five months after closing our acquisition of Anadarko and will continue to reduce debt in 2020 with proceeds from asset divestitures and free cash flow," said Oxy Chief Executive Vicki Hollub.

As part of the deal, Oxy said it will transfer employees to Western and provide limited administrative services for up to two years during the transition.

RELATED: Howard Hughes buys former Anadarko towers, old ConocoPhillips campus for $565m

Just last week, Oxy said it would sell the twin-tower Anadarko headquarters in The Woodlands - while leasing back one tower - and the old ConocoPhillips campus in the Houston Energy Corridor for a combined $565 million to the Howard Hughes Corp. to help further reduce Oxy's debt. Oxy had originally intended to move its headquarters to the Conoco campus but nixed those plans after buying Anadarko, deeming the campus too small to accommodate everyone.

Instead, Oxy will maintain a presence in The Woodlands as well as its current headquarters in Houston's Greenway Plaza.

But the biggest part of Oxy's debt reduction thus far is the ongoing $8.8 billion sale of Anadarko's Africa assets to the French energy major Total.
"At CES 2020, we are happy to unveil our Alcatel mobile product lineup for the first half of 2020, all of which are supporting users in today's fast-paced, modern lifestyle," said Peter Lee, General Manager, Global Sales and Marketing at TCL Communication. "Our latest smartphones, tablet and USB dongle are made for basic value seekers who are looking for the best in essential technology experiences without compromising style."

Alcatel 3L: Bringing improved low-light camera performance to affordable smartphones

With the triple-camera setup on the Alcatel 3L, getting an affordable phone no longer means you need to sacrifice on imaging performance. The 48MP AI main rear sensor is capable of delivering clear photos and videos in low light conditions, thanks to the built-in 4-in-1 big pixel technology that combines four pixels into a larger 1.6m 12MP image to increase light sensitivity. It also utilizes AI algorithms to automatically identify up to 22 different scenes, optimizing the image based on its category. Additionally, a 5MP camera is equipped with a 115 super wide-angle lens, allowing users to capture as much of the scene as possible, and a 2MP rear camera with a macro lens to take close-up photos in incredible detail. Also, the 8MP front camera with LCD flash allows for top class photos for users.

The Alcatel 3L also introduces a new design called Aurora, which features micro texture laser etching technology on a shimmering gradient back design. This approach enables each phone to exhibit a variety of different colors using spectacular shifting patterns that resemble the Aurora Borealis, the mysterious Northern Lights.

Designed with an expansive 6.22-inch HD+ Vast display, the Alcatel 3L provides users with vivid visuals. Alcatel 3L makes media come to life with a 19:9 aspect ratio that provides an immersive large-screen experience that fits comfortably in their pocket. Its highly efficient Octa-core processor, 4GB RAM and 64GB built-in storage help the phone handle the most resource-demanding content with ease, so you can stream HD videos, take photos and play games without interruptions. A large all-day battery will easily get you through your daily routine and more.

The Alcatel 3L will be available in select markets in Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa in Q1 2020 at prices starting from $155 USD (139), in Chameleon Blue, Dark Chrome and Agate Green.

Alcatel 1S: A powerful triple-camera smartphone for under $110

With a triple camera, powerful performance and a great viewing experience, the Alcatel 1S definitely delivers essential smartphone experiences and the most mainstream technologies to more people. The smartphone hosts a 13MP + 5MP + 2MP triple rear camera, serving high quality photos. Powered by AI, the 13MP camera uses 22 types of scene detection which automatically adjusts camera settings when taking photos. Additionally, the 5MP camera with bokeh provides portrait mode for visually appealing photos with a 'background blur' to focus on the subject. Capture photos of small plants, animals and insects, without missing details by using the 2MP macro camera.

Thanks to an octa-core processor and day-long battery, the Alcatel 1S will keep up with hours of streaming music, HD video and uninterrupted gaming. Users will also enjoy an immersive viewing experience with the 6.22-inch HD+ Vast display. Much like the Alcatel 3L, the ethereal Aurora design approach on the Alcatel 1S gives the phone a unique feel, complete with an elegant S-curve design.

The Alcatel 1S will be available in select markets in Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa in Q1 2020 starting from $110 USD (99), in Agate Green and Power Gray.

Alcatel 1V: An enhanced big screen smartphone experience

The Alcatel 1V boasts an expansive 6.22-inch HD+ Vast display for a big screen experience, bringing full screen immersion to anyone who is looking for an affordable smartphone that's capable of providing video streaming and basic gaming. With a distinctive feather-patterned finish, curved sides and 2.5D front glass, the Alcatel 1V shows that it is possible to offer a stylish smartphone that's easy on your wallet. It also has a non-smudging design to prevent fingerprints, as well as a perfect, solid grip that fits right in your palm. Its power-efficient core processor is made to support heavy tasks, such as playing games, streaming HD content including photos and videos.

Users can step up their photo game using the smartphone's dual camera with AI scene detection as well as its depth sensor. The Alcatel 1V also supports the use of a dedicated Google Assistant Button. Whether driving, on the go or at home, users can get things done in a flash and plan ahead so they can focus on what matters most.

The Alcatel 1V will be available in select markets in Latin America, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa in Q1 2020 starting from $88 USD (79), in Prime Black and Pine Green.

Alcatel 1B  A smooth Android 10 (Go edition) smartphone experience

The Alcatel 1B provides an optimized smartphone user experience with Android 10 (Go edition), a quad-core processor and up to 2GB RAM, resulting in twice the storage, enhanced apps for better performance, data savings, and built-in mobile security, generating in an ultra-fast multitasking capability. Its 5.5-inch HD+ display enables perfect visual experience.

The smartphone hosts a Smart Manager service that runs in the background to clear memory instantly and optimize power intelligently. Users can freely roam on-the-go as the Alcatel 1B has a large 3000 mAh battery, getting them through the day with ease, without having to carry around a charger.

A dedicated Google Assistant button comes built-in to add more convenience to anyone who needs quick access to thousands of tasks, all of which can be done through a single click and voice queries. It's easy to stay on top of plans while on-the-go, in the car or at home with the Google Assistant.

The Alcatel 1B will be available in select markets in Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa in Q1 2020 starting from $66 USD (59), in Prime Black and Pine Green.

Alcatel TKEE MINI  Tablet for kids, designed to teach through play

Trusted by parents and loved by kids, the TKEE MINI encourages teaching through play. The child-focused tablet has a top selection of games and interactive books for different ages, intelligent Q&A (Google Assistant).

Along with sporting an attractive and colorful design, the tablet has a removable bumper case with soft, rounded corners for safety. It encourages good habit usage and ideal posture with a foldable back stand, comes with eye distance detection from 25cm (9.8 inches) to protect children's eyes, and provides 30 minute alerts for screen breaks and usage time. Moreover, the tablet provides a safe environment for kids to play and learn as it posesses website-insulation, a kid-friendly interface, multiple profiles for different kids and parental controls, to stop children from getting distracted online.

The Alcatel TKEE MINI has passed the TUV test, an internationally accredited quality test for eye protection, and uses a SW Bluelight filtering solution for enhanced eye comfort. Parents concerned with device durability can be at ease thanks to a bumper case that comes with the tablet and has been thoroughly tested to withstand drops from up to 3 feet.

The Alcatel TKEE MINI will be available in select markets in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa in Q1 2020 starting from $88 USD (79).

Alcatel LinkKey IK41  LTE/4G 150Mbps USB dongle, access internet connection anywhere, anytime

The Alcatel LinkKey IK41 is a lightweight, portable, pocket-sized LTE cat4 USB dongle. Users can easily exchange data on their desktop or laptop with a fast transmission download speed of up to 150Mbps and upload speed of up to 50Mbps. The LinkKey's two external antennas provide users with a reliable internet connection and allow for antenna enhancement signals to be accessed in dense houses and other areas with poor signal.

With the Alcatel LinkKey IK41, everyday life becomes easier while travelling as it provides internet connectivity to machines and equipment. With no batteries and cables, it makes for a useful travel companion assuring high speed and stable 4G internet access whenever and wherever users want. Alcatel LinkKey IK41 is supported by operating systems Linux 2.6.20 or later, Windows 7 or later, and Mac 10.6 or later.

The Alcatel LinkKey IK41 will be available in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa in Q1 2020 starting from $49 USD (44).

To see all the latest mobile devices from TCL Communication at CES 2020, please visit our booth at #12930, Central Hall, Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV.

For more information on these all-new Alcatel mobile devices from TCL Communication, please visit www.alcatelmobile.com.

About TCL Communication

TCL Communication Technology Holdings Limited (TCL Communication) designs, manufactures and markets an expanding portfolio of mobile devices and services worldwide through a comprehensive, multi-brand portfolio that includes TCL, Alcatel and BlackBerry branded products. Additionally, TCL Communication is the brand owner, R&D developer and manufacturing partner of Palm branded devices. The company's products are sold in more than 160 countries throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Incorporated in Hong Kong, TCL Communication operates its own manufacturing in China as well as global R&D centers. For more information, please visit www.tclcom.com.

TCL is a registered trademark of TCL Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Alcatel is a trademark of Nokia used under license by TCL Communication.

Trademarks, including but not limited to BLACKBERRY and EMBLEM Design are the trademarks or registered trademarks of BlackBerry Limited, used under license, and the exclusive rights to such trademarks are expressly reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. BlackBerry is not responsible for any third-party products or services.

Palm is a trademark owned by TCL Communication and under license by Palm Ventures Group through Wide Progress Global.

Google, Android, Google Lens and other related marks and logos are trademarks of Google LLC.

SOURCE TCL Communication Technology Holdings Ltd.

Related Links

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BALLSTON SPA  Republican state lawmakers have been railing New Yorks bail reforms for almost a year.

Its not anything new. The reforms were passed last April, and legislators were talking about them for months before that. But the recent media cycle would suggest that the changes  which, starting Jan. 1, eliminated cash bail and pre-trial detention for most misdemeanors and non-violent felonies  are brand new and suddenly drawing ire.

Nearly every week for the past two months, Republicans have held multiple press conferences across the state assailing the reforms. On Monday, just two days before the start of the 2020 legislative session, that push was evident: At 1:30 p.m., state GOP Chairman Nick Langworthy held a bitter news conference at the Capitol, where he called the changes "an assault on civilized society." He called on the Democrats in control of state government to immediately repeal the laws and work on crafting new legislation that he said would be forged with more input from law enforcement and not endanger society.

"These strip elected judges of the ability to determine threat levels to public safety," Langworthy said. "[Democrats] handcuffed our prosecutors, muzzled crime victims and empowered criminals in the court."

An hour later, U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, opened a roundtable event on mental health in law enforcement by touching on the reforms, which she said are "fundamentally flawed."

In a state where Democrats control both chambers of the state Legislature and the governors office, Republicans are latching onto bail reform as their top legislative issue heading back into session. In the weeks leading up to the reforms effective date, GOP legislators said murderers, sex offenders and other dangerous criminals would head back into their communities.

Now, less than a week into 2020, they have names and faces to attach to their cries.

Take 52-year-old Paul Barbaritano, for example: an Albany man charged with choking and stabbing a woman to death last July, who was charged with manslaughter and released Jan. 1. Or 22-year-old Gerard Conway, who police had arrested last week for burglarizing four Long Island businesses and released under the new law  only for him to break into another store less than a day later.

"We've seen, as it's been implemented, that there's an understanding that it was rushed and it simply doesn't take into consideration the safety of our community," Stefanik told reporters Monday.

Different GOP members have called for different solutions, with some saying the bail reform should be repealed entirely, while others have called for amendments. The most popular proposals have suggested offering judges more discretion and adding some offenses to the list of bail-eligible crimes.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Even some Democrats have said theyre open to changes: New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio said last week that he supports giving judges the ability to gauge whether someone is a danger to the community and set bail accordingly. In recent days, both Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins have suggested that they are open to reviewing the law and perhaps tweaking it slightly.

On Monday morning at an event in Manhattan, Cuomo characterized the new statutes as "a work in progress" and acknowledged that changes are needed and there are "consequences that we have to adjust for."

But some of the staunchest supporters of the bail reform have stood by the changes, arguing that the bail system had criminalized poverty and that those who could afford bail would be released anyway. Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris held a phone call with reporters early Monday to dispel myths about the law and dismiss the "fear-mongering" that he says Republicans have embraced.

In an interview Monday afternoon, Gianaris said the previous system only worked for people who had "a big enough checkbook" to pay their way out of detainment, and the reforms help make the system more equitable for people without the means to pay bail. He said the few days the laws have been in effect have only produced anecdotes, not data, and Republicans have capitalized on tragedies to push a "sensational" narrative.

"The bail reforms for violent crimes have still left things the way they are, but for the lower-level crimes that don't have violence, it's unfair to have the poor penalized while the rich are at home in their communities," he said.
BRUSSELS - The European Parliament proposes to officially recognize three separatist Catalan leaders as European lawmakers next week, following a decision by the European Unions top court.

A leaked internal note issued by the European Parliament says lawmakers will take note of the election of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, former vice-president Oriol Junqueras, and former minister Toni Comin during a plenary sitting next week, with effect from July 2, 2019.

In a message to The Associated Press Monday, the European Parliaments communication service said the full accreditation as European lawmakers of Junqueras, Puidgdemont and Comin will be processed by EP administration without any further delay.

The move follows a decision last month from the EUs top court, the European Court of Justice, which overturned a ruling preventing Puigdemont and Comin from taking their European Parliament seats.

The two are wanted in Spain for their role in an illegal 2017 secession bid by the Catalan government and separatist lawmakers. They fled in exile to Belgium after the attempt failed and were elected to the European Parliament in May as representatives of Catalan separatist parties from Spain.

The ECJ also ruled that Junqueras, a former Catalan regional vice-president serving a prison sentence in Spain for his role in Catalonias banned independence referendum, had earned the right to immunity when he was elected as a European lawmaker alongside Puigdemont and Comin.

A Spanish court sentenced Junqueras in October to 13 years in prison for sedition. Spains state attorney has called for Junqueras to be released temporarily so he can be sworn in as a member of the EUs legislative body.
By Express News Service

Its raining appreciation for Rakshit Shettys latest film, Avane Srimannarayana, and the praise has made debutant director Sachin Ravi ecstatic.

The cop period drama saw a pan-India release with multiple dates, starting with Kannada on December 27, followed by the dubbed versions of Telugu on January 1, and Tamil and Malayalam on January 3.

The team, who paid a visit to the three other states, is currently doing their rounds in Karnataka. They are on a four-day visit that began on Saturday, and are covering places in Bengaluru, Tumakuru, Chitradurga, Davangere, Hubli, Dharwad, Udupi and Mangaluru, before ending the promotional tour in Mandya.

ALSO READ: 'Avane Srimannarayana' feels the heat

The film has been getting daily feedback from the audience of different states and according to the director, after a stupendous opening in Sandalwood, Tollywood has also given a thumbs up to ASN.

The film opened to good response and collection, while also receiving critical acclaim from the Tamil and Malayalam-watching audience.

The film has started many discussions among cine-goers. Word of mouth has been helping ASN reach different places. Overall, everything looks positive, says Sachin, who is looking forward to the Hindi release as well.

The Bollywood version will see a trimmed version, which will run for two hours and 52 minutes. The trimmed version is also out in all other languages since last Friday, he tells us.

Sachin, who firmly believes in just doing good work, never gauged such an outcome for the film. The response has been overwhelming for the director, who claims he is not in a position to express his happiness.

ALSO READ: Rakshit Shetty has made me more passionate about cinema, says Shanvi Srivastava on Avane Srimannarayana

The first-timer also handled the films editing and visual effects and says the character Narayana is a big winner with audiences. Everything Narayana does in the film was enjoyed.

Even his combination with Achyuth anna (Achyuth Kumar) along with the rest of the characters played by Shanvi Srivastava and other cast members.

Every element of the film has been accepted, says Sachin, who admits that the only problem audience members had was with the films length.

As a filmmaker, I have watched the film 100 times. I feel there is a difference from the opinion we get from friends and the actual viewers. Accordingly, eight out of 10 who watched the film said they enjoyed the film, but stressed about the length, which they mentioned it lies in the second half. This was a judgment we couldnt make before the films release. We expected people to enjoy it, but the audience felt it was a lag. Based on their opinions, we have trimmed the film, says Sachin.

The film has been jointly produced by Pushkar Malliakarjunaiah and H K Prakash, has music by Ajaneesh B Lokanath and Charan Raj, and camera work by Karm Chawla.
TEHRAN, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Iran on Sunday announced the fifth and final step to end its commitments to the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, official IRNA news agency reported.

"In the fifth step of withdrawing from its commitments, the Islamic republic drops the last key restriction under the nuclear deal, namely 'restriction on the number of centrifuges'," IRNA cited the announcement by Iranian government as reading.

Therefore, "Iran's nuclear program will no longer embrace any practical restrictions, including the level and purity of enrichment, the mass of enriched materials and R&D activities," read the announcement.

"From now on, Iran's nuclear program will advance based on its own technical requirements," it said.

In a reaction to the U.S. withdrawal from the landmark 2015 Iranian nuclear deal in May 2018 and the subsequent sanctions, and in a response to the Europe's sluggishness in facilitating Iran's banking transactions and its oil exports, Iran, since May 2019, made staged moves to drop its nuclear commitments.

Iran had said that the cut of obligations under the 2015 nuclear deal was a "wake-up call" for the remaining parties of the deal to protect Iran's economic interests.

"As before, Iran will continue its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)," according to Iran's announcement on Sunday.

The Iranian government, however, said that Tehran is ready to re-embrace its nuclear commitments, in case anti-Iran sanctions are removed and its economic interests under the nuclear deal are secured.
Former President John Dramani Mahama has urged religious and traditional leaders to be bold in criticising the worrying levels of nepotism and corruption under the Akufo-Addo government.

Nepotism doesnt become right because a different government is in power and our religious and traditional leaders must have the courage to speak up against it, he said.

The flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) said this in an address at the 88th Annual National Convention of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission Ghana.

Mr Mahama who addressed the Convention on the theme, Corruption- A threat to national development, peace and security, said nepotism breeds corruption, adding that corruption has been the bane of Ghanas development.

According to him, while corruption exists in advanced countries as well, the existence of strong institutions and the values of transparency have helped them to reduce corruption to an absolute minimum.

He pointed out that the only way to succeed in the fight against corruption is to strengthen the anti-corruption institutions, fund them appropriately and provide them with the human resources for them to do their work.

He also said the institutions can only be effective if they are given autonomy and independence in their functions.

They must have the autonomy and independence to sanction and to deal with any person who indulges in corruption.

The NDC flagbearer recognised the role of the media in fighting corruption, noting that they are the watchdogs over those in power. He, however, expressed his disappointment with sections of the media, explaining that it is a paradox when the media acts as a watchdog of the government against the people.

He also called on the government to be tolerant of criticism, stressing that government must be tolerant of criticism and when these organisations and investigative bodies expose corruption, government must listen and act.

Mr Mahama assured Ghanaians that if given the mandate in December 2020 elections, he would ensure the effective implementation of the assets declaration regime and make it fully compliant.

He commended the Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission in Ghana for their continuous contributions towards the physical and moral developments of its members in particular and Ghanaians as a whole.

The former President called on Ghanaians to pray for a peaceful and transparent election.

The Ameer and Missionary-In-Charge of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission Ghana, Maulvi Noor Mohammed Bin Salih, commended President Mahama for his humility and demeanour, noting that they are characteristics that if he holds on to, will bring him success.

Various scholarship awards were presented to deserving students from BECE to PhD level.

President Mahama was accompanied by the National Chairman of the NDC Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketia and former Chief of Staff Julius Debrah.

 Myjoyonline.com
Notably, all new employees have the opportunity to meet with Rob Siegfried, CEO and Founder, to better immerse themselves in Siegfried's higher purpose, which is to help people transform themselves into better leaders to exponentially improve their lives.

Siegfried is pleased to welcome all of its talented new Professionals to the Firm.

William Beeker, CPA, joins our Denver Market as an Associate Manager. His gregarious attitude and infectious confidence help him succeed in all environments. Beeker earned his Bachelor of Science in accounting from the University of South Alabama. Most recently, he was a Senior Associate at KPMG.

McCabe Buege, CPA, joins our National Road Warrior Market as an Associate Manager. He is observant of clients' business and problems, then uses logic and determination to suggest solutions. Buege earned his Master of Accountancy from the University of Minnesota and his Bachelor of Science in accounting from the University of Central Florida. He was most recently a Senior Audit Associate at PwC.

Stacy Cox, CPA, joins our Philadelphia Metro Market as a Senior Associate. Her vigilant and driven work-ethic motivates and challenges her team to stay on track and accomplish goals. Cox, who was most recently a Supervisor at RSM, earned her Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a focus accounting and financial management from Bucknell University.

Henry Garner, CPA, joins our Detroit Market as an Associate Manager. His passion for meeting new teams, experiences and the unknown give him great motivation for tackling challenges with a positive outlook in mind. Garner earned his Bachelor of Science in accounting from Oakland University and was most recently a Senior Finance Analyst at General Motors.

Melinda Hagadorn joins our National Operations team as a National Recruiting Assistant. Passionate, detailed, and ambitious, Hagadorn is dedicated to seeking the best in herself and others. She currently attends Wilmington University, where she is pursuing her Bachelor of Science in accounting and finance.

Caitlin Hanna, CPA, joins our Chicago Market as a Senior Associate. She works to come up with creative solutions to produce exceptional work for clients. Hanna earned her Bachelor of Business Administration in accounting and Master of Science in accounting from the University of Cincinnati. Most recently, she was an Assurance Senior at EY.

Ashley Harris, CPA, joins our Silicon Valley Market as a Senior Associate. Her positive energy and team-focused mindset allow her to integrate quickly into any environment. Ashley earned her Master of Science in accounting & consultancy from Villanova, along with her Bachelor of Arts in economics.

Naomi Himmelstein joins our New York Market as a Senior Associate. She uses her innovative approach to solving problems to exceed expectations. Himmelstein earned her Master of Science in accounting and Bachelor of Science in commerce from the University of Virginia. Most recently, she was an Assurance Senior at EY.

Michael Kemske joins Siegfried Advisory in our Philadelphia Metro Market. He uses his refined technical expertise to excel in every client environment. Prior to joining the Firm, Kemske was most recently a Senior Accountant at CreditShop LLC, a start-up financial services company. He earned his Bachelor's Degree from West Chester University in 2014.

Mark King, CPA, joins our Chicago Market as a Manager. He is passionate about delivering solutions and his mental agility and flexibility make him a dynamic addition to any team. King earned his Master of Science in accounting from Miami University, and earned his Bachelor of Arts in business management and financial economics from Wittenberg University. He was most recently a Manager at PwC.

Trent Lively joins our Los Angeles Market as an Associate Manager. He utilizes his mental agility and unwavering confidence to lead his teams, motivating them day in and day out to accomplish exceptional results. Lively, who earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in accounting from the University of Redlands, was most recently an Audit Senior Associate at KPMG.

Tony Nip joins our Charlotte Market as an Associate Manager. His motivation and resourcefulness enable him to work through challenging issues to meet deadlines. Nip earned his Master of Science in accounting from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and his Bachelor of Science in biology from The University of North Carolina Wilmington. Most recently, he was a Senior Business Procedures Consultant at Brighthouse Financial.

Ba-Cuong Phan-Nguyen joins our Charlotte Market as an Associate Manager. He continuously strives to provide innovative solutions to complex problems, while driving efficiency and productivity across the team. Phan-Nguyen, who was most recently a Manager at EY, earned his Bachelor of Commerce in accounting from the University of Calgary.

JoAnna Pickett joins our National Market Leadership Team as a Siegfried Ambassador in the West Region. She is a positive and motivated professional who leads by encouraging others to be the best version of themselves. Pickett earned her bachelor's degree in early childhood education from Georgia College, and was most recently an Account Manager at Wonderist Agency.

Amanda Santa, CPA, joins our Cleveland Market as a Senior Associate. She has a strong work ethic and eagerness to learn which enables her to tackle difficult projects with confidence. Santa, who earned her Master of Business Administration and Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, most recently worked as an Audit Senior at Deloitte.

John Snyder, CPA, joins our Philadelphia Metro Market as a Senior Associate. He always takes the initiative and brings his pleasant personality to build strong emotional connections within his teams. Snyder earned his Bachelor of Business Administration in accounting and finance from Temple University. Most recently, he was an Audit Senior at Deloitte.

Jane Uy, CPA, joins our Atlanta Market as a Senior Manager. She prides herself on challenging routine practices and encourages collaborative efforts to make improvements. Uy graduated from Bicol University with a bachelor's degree in accounting, and was most recently an Audit Manager at EY.

Evan Wardrop, CPA, joins our Charlotte Market as a Senior Associate. His ability to integrate quickly into any team and confront problems head-on allows him and his peers to successfully accomplish common goals. Wardrop earned his Master of Accountancy and Bachelor of Science in accounting and finance from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He was most recently a Senior Associate at KPMG.

Spencer Willet, CPA, joins our Cleveland Market as an Associate Manager. He is a diligent worker who pays close attention to detail and always maintains a positive attitude. Willet, who was most recently a Senior Associate at PwC, earned his Bachelor of Business Administration in accounting and finance from Ohio University.

Mazen Yanes joins our New York Market as a Manager. His dedication to continued learning allows him to excel in any environment and help his clients achieve success. Yanes was most recently an Assistant Vice President at MUFG Securities Americas Inc. He earned his Master of Science in accounting from DeVry University and his Bachelor of Science in finance, banking and investment from Arab International University.

More information about the Firm and its career opportunities is available at siegfriedgroup.com.

About The Siegfried Group, LLP

Siegfried works alongside financial executives across the nation on their most important accounting and finance projects. Filled with an innovative spirit and led by an ambitious entrepreneur, Siegfried provides unique Leadership Advisory and combines it with high-potential talent. At the heart of our Firm is our approach to individual leadership and the continual pursuit of helping people grow both personally and professionally. As a whole, we value having fun, being fair, and building and sharing stakeholder value.

Contact:

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SOURCE The Siegfried Group, LLP

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A police officer has been rushed to hospital after he was struck by a car in a hit-and-run in north-east London.

The officer was hit by the car on Chigwell Road, Woodford Green, in the early hours of Monday.

He remains in hospital but police said his injures are not life-threatening.

Scotland Yard said it was a search was under way for the driver, who left the scene after the crash.

Redbridge MPS said in a tweet: "An officer has been injured during an incident around 12.10am.

"He was hit by a car in Chigwell Road.

"A search is being carried out for the driver which left the scene.

"The officer is in hospital & we await a condition update."
Trawlers should be banned from fishing within three miles of Scotland to boost fish stocks, campaigners say

by Jamie Johnson

January 06,2020 | Source: The Telegraph

Trawlers should be banned from fishing within three miles of Scotland in order to boost fish stocks, say campaigners.



The Open Seas coalition, which includes angling bodies, ecotourism firms, scallop divers, coastal communities and salmon conservation boards want to reinstate a law which existed between 1889 and 1984 to secure a future for fisheries, the people and wildlife that depend on them.



The move to protect some 18,000km (11,185 miles) of mainland and island coastline and 13,790 sq km of sea is also backed by the National Trust for Scotland (NTS).



Alistair Sinclair, of the Scottish Creel Fishermens Federation, told the Guardian: We need to look forward and think of the generations coming after us. We have to secure a future for the young folk and families in rural communities along our coastline.



Open Seas, a conservation charity say that scallop dredgers use heavy toothed machinery, that can penetrate up to 10cm into the seabed and leave the sea floor scarred for up to a decade.



Any change in the law would have an impact on boats that trawl for langoustine or dredge for scallops near to shore, but campaigners have said that ultimately, it will lead to more employment opportunities and an increase in fish stocks.



Citing a study made for the Scottish Government, Open Seas say that a three-mile closure could produce up to 2,707 extra jobs after 20 years, and at least 1bn of additional income because of the boost in fish numbers.



Stuart Brooks, head of conservation and policy for the National Trust for Scotland told the Guardian: Fundamentally, its about the sustainability of our fisheries, and the people and wildlife that depend on them.

Theme(s): Fishing Craft, Gear and Fishing Methods.
More than 40% of Irish workers have no private pension and will be entirely reliant on state supports when they retire.

Statistics issued by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) also show that people tend to leave it late to start contributing to their pension fund, with pension coverage lowest among younger workers.

The 2019 Pension Survey shows a slight increase in the numbers making provision for their retirement, with supplementary pension coverage increasing by 3% in the last 12 months.

However, the survey has found that huge parts of Irish society could be left entirely reliant on state supports when they retire.

Among the findings are:

Just six-out-of-ten workers aged 20-69 have supplementary pension coverage. This includes occupational pension coverage from current or previous employment.

Pension coverage remains lowest among younger workers. More than four-fifths of workers aged 20-24 do not have a pension. Just 44.8% of 25-34-year-olds report having a pension.

Pension coverage is greatest among workers aged 45-54, where it is 71.8%.

Over half (51.0%) of self-employed persons have pension coverage. Almost a third (32.7%) of workers with personal pension provision have deferred payments for a period of time.

The survey also asked those who do not have supplementary coverage why they don't. One-third of respondents said they can't afford it and 36% said they never got around to organising it.

Some 60% of those who don't have a pension expect to rely entirely on the state pension in retirement.

From next year, the pension will not be payable until people reach the age of 67.

The Government has plans to introduce auto-enrolment in workplace pension schemes from 2022, which should address the issue of people who simply fail to get around to setting up a pension.

Jerry Moriarty, CEO of the Irish Association of Pension Funds, said the figures make for worrying reading in the context of Ireland's ageing population.

"The 2016 Census report shows that there are now 296,837 males and 340,730 females aged 65 or older in Ireland.

Those numbers are set to grow substantially over the next 10-15 years driving up the cost of retirement provision to the State," he said.

If the levels of private and individual pension provision remain as low as they are now, the Government will come under pressure to do more for pensioners as the current State Pension is set at a level to just keep people out of poverty.

"And, with the growing numbers of people receiving this, it will be difficult to even sustain it."

He warned younger workers, where participation is lowest, to start saving when their disposable income is at its highest.
(CNN)  Days away from the start of a criminal trial at the center of the #MeToo movement and a potential conviction that could send him to prison for decades, Harvey Weinstein is addressing it 26 months since the allegations of sexual misconduct against him were first brought to light.

The highly-anticipated rape trial against Weinstein begins Monday. The former film producer answered eight questions from CNN via email.

"The past two years have been grueling and have presented me with a great opportunity for self-reflection," Weinstein wrote. "I realize now that I was consumed with my work, my company and my drive for success. This caused me to neglect my family, my relationships and to lash out at the people around me. I have been in rehab since October 2017, and have been involved in a 12-step program and meditation. I have learned to give up my need for control."

Since initial bombshell reports by The New York Times and The New Yorker in October 2017, more than 80 women have accused Weinstein of sexual abuse ranging from harassment to rape. He is charged with predatory sexual assault, a criminal sexual act, first-degree rape and third-degree rape.

The case against Weinstein centers on an allegation that he raped a woman in a New York hotel room in 2013, and a second woman who accused Weinstein of forcibly performing oral sex on her at his Manhattan apartment in 2006.

Other Weinstein accusers will be permitted to take the stand as witnesses throughout the trial to illustrate an alleged pattern of abusive behavior.

He has pleaded not guilty and has repeatedly denied all allegations of non-consensual sex.

Weinstein declined to answer if he felt empathy for his accusers.

"While I do have many empathetic opinions regarding many people, I am following the advice of my lawyers on the eve of my trial to not offer any commentary on this," he responded.

In a statement through Time's Up on Thursday, 25 women who came forward with allegations against Weinstein addressed the significance of his trial.

"This trial is critical to show that predators everywhere will be held accountable and that speaking up can bring about real change," their statement read in part. "We refused to be silenced and will continue to speak out until this unrepentant abuser is brought to justice."

CNN spoke to Weinstein's criminal defense attorney, Donna Rotunno, on Friday.

She said Weinstein would be "the first one to say he did bad things," but he's not a criminal.

"He cheated on his wife, he was dishonest about that, he had multiple women he slept with at different points and he would say that those were bad choices," Rotunno said. "He's lost everything for those bad choices. Nobody is trying to claim that he is a saint and that he never did anything wrong ... I don't believe Harvey is a rapist."

Weinstein also believes that the media has sensationalized the allegations against him.

"The public's biggest misconceptions come from the assumptions that have been made through the help of media," he wrote. "That is also all I can say on this for now."

Weinstein, who is recovering from back surgery last month, told CNN he's been leaning on his "family, friends and loved ones" leading up to trial "to help me get through this."

Weinstein and his ex-wife, Georgina Chapman, divorced shortly after the allegations against him surfaced.

"My meditation and focus on looking inward has helped me balance my emotions," Weinstein wrote. "The whole process has been overwhelming, but I am working every day to stay level."

Although Weinstein maintains his current focus is the criminal trial ahead, he has contemplated what his life may look like beyond that.

"I plan to focus on my children, my health and rest," he said when asked his plans if found not guilty. "If I can do something positive to advance the causes that I had always championed, I hope to find a way to do so."

His former movie studio, The Weinstein Company, which he co-founded in 2005 with his now estranged brother, Bob Weinstein, is no more. But he believes it is possible for him to rebuild a career in the film industry.

"It will take a bit of work to build back to it," Weinstein wrote. "If I can get back to doing something good and building places that help heal and comfort others, I intend to do so."

Since the allegations against him became public, Weinstein has been relatively reclusive.

"I spend the vast majority of my free time working with my legal and communications teams," Weinstein responded. "I read several books a week on history, politics and fiction. My main focus has been proving my innocence and clearing my name."
australia fires

SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images

Australia's devastating fires have reached an unprecedented peak in the first few days of January, according to multiple reports.

Photos from Australia's New South Wales state taken Sunday show shocking red skies blanketing communities with an eery, thick fog.

Visit Insider.com for more stories.

The devastating bushfires in Australia that have drawn military deployments and millions of dollars of aid meant to address "unprecedented" amounts of damage, authorities said in a Saturday press conference.

Pictures showing skies in parts of the country's New South Wales state show the shocking effects of months of fires that have devastated nearby areas. Blood-red skies hung over the state, which currently has 150 active fires, 64 of which are uncontrolled, according to The Associated Press.

See the latest shocking photos from the fires.

The scenes from New South Wales appeared almost post-apocalyptic as a heavy, glowing blanket of smoke hung above areas like Canberra.

australia fires

Rohan Thomson/Getty ImagesVisitors to the Parliament House wore protective face masks to block out the smoke and ash in the air.

australia fire

Alex Ellinghausen/The SMHFairfax Media via Getty Images

Reuters reports that officials in Canberra asked for 100,000 extra breathing masks as Sunday saw the world's worst-ever recorded air quality. The masks are expected to arrive for residents on Monday.

The foggy skies even appeared-blood red in some areas.

australia fires

SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty ImagesMore than 5.25 million hectares (13 million acres) of land have been burnt so far in this fire season across Australia and nearly 1,500 homes have been destroyed in New South Wales alone.

australia fires

SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images

Source: Reuters

The fires have been devastating for rural areas, and authorities said approximately 480 million mammals, birds, and reptiles, have died in the fires.

australia fires

SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images

Source: News.com.au

Story continues

The eery glow wasn't limited to Australia, as skies in Auckland, New Zealand, also appeared orange late Sunday.

australia fires

Fiona Goodall/Getty Images

Auckland sits around 1,300 miles from Sydney and was first exposed to the smoky skies around 2 p.m. local time on Sunday, according to Weather Watch.

Despite the haze, police told Auckland residents there was no need to alert authorities.

australia fires

Phil Walter/Getty ImagesAuthorities jumped at the change in weather that spread light rain and cooler temperatures on Sunday as a break to continue delivering supplies to and evacuating affected residents.

australia fires

Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images

Despite the break in weather, New South Wales (NSW) state Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons warned on Saturday that it was not enough to extinguish the almost 200 fires that were still burning.

Read more:

Thousands of troops being called to help as bushfires rage across Australia. Here's what you need to know.

Nearly half a billion animals have been killed in Australia's devastating bushfires

Stunning images from space reveal the shocking extent of Australia's bushfire crisis

I spent New Year's trapped by Australian bushfires that looked like a scene from a warzone

Read the original article on Insider
The Vietnam Association of Motorcycle Manufacturers (VAMM) reported gloomy figures for the last months of 2019, a time when the industry typically expects a boom in sales revenue.

A Honda shop in Hanoi

Instead,VAMM members, comprising Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Piaggio and SYM, sold just over227,000 units in October and 230,000 units in November, a drop of 6.5 percentand 2.2 percent, respectively, compared to the same periods in 2018.

Businesshas been poor during the first three quarters of 2019 as VAMM members struggledto boost sales, according to the association. A report by VAMM said sales byits members dropped 6.13 percent in Q1, 4.39 percent in Q2 and 3.8 percent inQ3 compared to the previous year.

Total sales for 2019 by VAMM members were estimated at around 3.2 million unitscompared to nearly 3.4 million units sold in 2018. Of which, Honda, thecountrys largest motorcycle manufacturer, alone sold 2.6 million units, followed by another Japanese brand Yamaha,which sold over 400,000 units.

Industryexperts have long forecast the decline of the motorcycle industry. AsVietnamese families income increases, more and more consumers have beenswitching to buying cars. In addition, a rise in demand for electric bikes andthe nations direction to reduce the number of motorcycles, especially in largecities, have all contributed to a sharp fall in demand for motorcycles.

2019saw a rise in the popularity of electric motorcycles, with major brandsincluding Vietnamese Vinfast consolidating their hold on the domestic marketwith aggressive sales promotions including heavy discounts and offering freecharging for their vehicles.

Vinfast,a subsidiary of VinGroup, have sold thousands of Klara e-motorcycles sincetheir debut in late 2018. The electric vehicles have proven to be popular amongcity dwellers, especially young students, for their lightweight and moderndesign. As of now, owners of e-motorcycles are not required to hold a drivinglicence, which counts as another advantage for e-motorcycle makers over theirtraditional counterparts.

Foreigne-motorcycle firms also wasted no time entering the fray with Republic of Koreas brand Mbigo rolling out several models withprices ranging from 1,700 USD to 2,600 USD. Chinese brand YADEA joined the market inOctober 2019 with their latest offering the YADEA G5, priced at 1,700 USD. The firm also opened a factory in thenorthern province of Bac Giang.

Salesof combustion engine motorcycles will likely continue to fall to just under 2.5million units by 2024, according to industry experts, as competition frome-motorcycles is set to further intensify in the years to come./. VNA

Vietnam ranks fourth among countries with largest number of motorcycles Vietnam ranks fourth among the countries that house the largest amount of motorbikes in the world, according to Motorcycles Datas statistics in 2018.
Planned Parenthood Watchdog Assails Abortion Empire Over Annual Report NEWS PROVIDED BY Life Decisions International (LDI) Jan. 6, 2020

FRONT ROYAL, Va., Jan. 6, 2020 /Christian Newswire/ -- Planned Parenthood watchdog Life Decisions International (LDI) has blasted the abortion-committing empire based on information made public in the behemoth's 2018-2019 Annual Report. The following statement is by LDI President Douglas R. Scott, Jr.: If I were to describe the state of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) in just a few words, they would be "dollars, deception and death." Planned Parenthood has increased its devotion as each area is essential to the group's existence.



Nobody will be surprised to hear Planned Parenthood continues to serve as a vacuum for taxpayer dollars. In FY 2014-2015, PPFA took in a staggering 1296.1 billion dollars. The figure had increased virtually every year. Until now. In Fiscal Year 2018-2019, PPFA generated $1638.6 billion. This was down from the $1665.1 billion it received the previous year, but not by much. It is basically a wash when considering previous years. Still, $26.5 million is not insignificant.



It is important to note elected officials sent 616.8 million taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood in FY 2018-2019, which was 38 percent of the Goliath's income. But in the previous Fiscal Year, taxpayers sent $563.8 million, which made up 34 percent. Compare these figures to PPFA's income through general (non-taxpayer) donations. In FY 2018-2019, it took in $591.3 million, some 36 percent of the total. In FY 2017-2018, the figure was $630.8 million, or 38 percent. While general donations took a big dip, the gap was filled by taxpayers.



Many people surely think taxpayers no longer give hundreds of millions to PPFA. After all, President Donald J. Trump has been in office more than three years. Despite decades of work and countless donor dollars spent, taxpayer funding has increased. In fact, PPFA received more from American taxpayers than ever before, although the percentage of the total has been higher in the past. We desperately need to reevaluate our tactics and standards. Failing to do so will result in more of the same.



Incidentally, PPFA reported $110.5 million in "excess revenue over expenses" -- something some might call a "profit." PPFA has always ended with a huge surplus. The total just for 2008-2009 through 2018-2019 is $1.060.2 billion. Does Planned Parenthood really need taxpayer dollars?



PPFA has released statistics regarding its "services." In 2018, PPFA's well-paid hired killers successfully took the lives of 345,672 preborn human beings -- a record number. On the brighter side, PPFA's sale of the abortion drug known as "emergency" birth control has plummeted. In 2013 PPFA sold 1.44 million kits. The number has dropped every year. In 2018, PPFA was able to sell 593,586 kits. By contrast, 4,279 women were sent out the door because the mother wanted to consider adoption. Planned Parenthood has never directly provided support for a mother who wants to keep or release the baby for adoption. That is simply not what they do; not why PPFA exists.



Not surprisingly, the number of PPFA customers treated for a sexually transmitted disease increased from 3.93 million in 2017 to 4.15 million in 2018. Why is this no surprise? Planned Parenthood's existence is greatly aided by customers who become infected. And to think PPFA claims the higher the number, the greater need for its survival as a corporation.



The bottom line is that we have seen some areas where the Pro-Life/Pro-Family Movement has made progress. But this is no time to rest as there are several areas where we have taken a hit. The key is to never give up. Planned Parenthood figures this will eventually happen because people will tire of fighting the battle. If good, life-affirming people give up, Planned Parenthood's philosophy will reach every part of American society -- and beyond. Founded in 1992, Life Decisions International (LDI) is a leading voice against Planned Parenthood. Leaders have participated in debates, made countless public presentations, testified before lawmakers, and taken their message overseas to fight the International Planned Parenthood Federation. LDI's primary work has been the Corporate Funding Project. Due to participation by thousands of caring people, the international boycott of corporations that fund Planned Parenthood has seen great success. In the U.S. alone, some 366 corporations -- large and small -- have agreed to stop funding the deadly group, which has cost the pro-abortion serpent some $21.5 million since the boycott started in 1992.



SOURCE Life Decisions International (LDI) CONTACT: Doug Scott, 540-631-0380 ext. 707,

E-Mail (for reporters/journalists): media@fightpp.org

General E-Mail: ldi@fightpp.org

Related Links fightpp.org



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US military officers in Baghdad in 2003: the Iraqi parliament has taken steps towards expelling foreign troops deployed in the country: EPA

The assassination of Qassem Soleimani has capsized Iraqi politics in the most dangerous of ways, making it possible that the country will be plunged once again into a state of permanent crisis and war from which it has escaped in the last two years.

President Trump is threatening sanctions against Iraq if it expels the 5,200 US military person in the country, while the Iraqi parliament has passed a non-binding resolution demanding the eviction of foreign troops after what it sees as a flagrant breach of Iraqi sovereignty.

Some commentators draw comfort from the fact that any official move by the Iraqi government to kick out US troops is far down the road and so, consequently, are any counter-measures by Mr Trump.

In reality, the crisis over the presence of US troops on the ground in Iraq is already with us and will get worse. The US troops returned to Iraq in 2014 to combat Isis after it captured Mosul and was advancing on Baghdad. The US forces provided logistic, intelligence and, crucially, helped orchestrate US air support for Iraqi soldiers and paramilitaries fighting Isis. These anti-Isis forces consist of the Iraqi army and the Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilisation Forces, the Shia paramilitary umbrella group, whose fighters are paid by the Iraqi government and headed by a senior Iraqi government official. Many of these paramilitary groups have Iranian links or are under Iranian control.

From the moment that a US drone killed General Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of the powerful Kataib Hezbollah group, the priority for US troops in Iraq changed. It was no longer to pursue Isis and prevent its resurgence, but to defend its highly vulnerable bases from possible attack by Shia paramilitaries. This immediately relieved pressure on Isis which is trying to stage a come-back. The biggest cheer in Iraq after the US drone strike last Friday will have come from Isis commanders in their isolated bolt-holes in the desert and mountains of Iraq and Syria.

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The US bases in Iraq are in fact more usually compounds within Iraqi military facilities. This means that from day one the US troops there are close to being hostages surrounded by potentially hostile Iraqis. Iraqi security units made no effort to protect the US embassy in the Green Zone in Baghdad last week. Even if the compounds are not directly assaulted or subjected to rocket fire self-protection will be their priority.

Mr Trump, supported by Boris Johnson, has justified the killing General Soleimani by pretending that his sole role in Iraq was to organise attacks on US and British forces. But the real history of the relations between the US and Iran since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 has in fact been a strange mixture of rivalry and cooperation. This is not obvious because the cooperation was largely covert and the rivalry explicit. Iraqis, whose leaders balanced nervously between Washington and Tehran, used to say of them: They wave their fist at each other over the table and shake hands under it.

This contradictory approach stretches back thirty years: the US and Iran both vied to be the predominant foreign power in Iraq, but they also had dangerous enemies in common. The US had not finished off Saddam Hussein after his defeat in Kuwait in 1991, because they feared that his fall would open the door to Iranian influence. Washington changed its mind on this in due course and, by the end of the 1990s the CIA and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards both had bases in Salahudin in Iraqi Kurdistan that publicly ignored each others existence, but communicated privately through third parties.

Rivalry intensified after the US became the dominant power in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But in the long term both countries wanted a stable Shia government in power in Baghdad and realised that this could only happen if both the US and Iran agreed on Iraqi leaders acceptable to each other. Nouri al-Maliki was the choice of the US ambassador in Baghdad to be Iraqi prime minister in 2006 in the knowledge that Iran would approve  the British ambassador of the day objected and was shown the door.

This same system of joint decision making at distance produced al-Malikis successor, Haidar al-Abadi in 2014 and the current prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, in 2018. The same convenient US-Iran arrangement decided the appointment of other senior officials, such as president Barham Salih, who was long close to the Americans, but was the surprising choice of Iran.

The common interest of these two outside powers was particularly close when Isis was at the peak of its strength between 2014 and 2017. The links were weakened by the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, damaged further by his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, and finally destroyed by the assassination of General Soleimani.

A great danger in the present crisis is that Mr Trump and his advisers know even less about Iraq than did George W Bush and Tony Blair in 2003. For instance, a problem about attacking the pro-Iranian Shia paramilitary groups is that they are part of the Iraqi state. The Iraqi Interior Minister always belongs to the Badr Organisation, a pro-Iranian grouping. The military muscle of the Iraqi security forces, which the US is in Iraq to support, comes in part from such groups with whom the US has just gone to war.

It is not a war that the US is likely to win, but it will inevitably reduce Iraq to chaos. Thanks to such confusion, with its enemies at each others throats, Isis may again take root and flourish. In the Islamic world, the killing of General Soleimani will be seen as not only anti-Iran, but anti-Shia. Everywhere conflicts are being stirred to life of which Mr Trump knows nothing, but is about to find out.

Read more

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"BAVENCIO is the first immunotherapy to demonstrate in a clinical trial a statistically significant improvement in overall survival as a first-line treatment for patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma," said Chris Boshoff, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Development Officer, Oncology, Pfizer Global Product Development.

At the planned interim analysis, Phase III JAVELIN Bladder 100 study met the primary endpoint of prolonging overall survival (OS) as a first-line maintenance treatment versus standard of care

BAVENCIO is the first immunotherapy to significantly prolong OS in locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma (UC) in the first-line setting in a Phase III trial

Cancer.net. Bladder Cancer: Introduction. https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/bladder-cancer/introduction. Accessed January 2020.

SEER. Cancer Stat Facts: Bladder Cancer. https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/urinb.html. Accessed January 2020.

Bukhari N, et al. Update on the Treatment of Metastatic Urothelial Carcinoma. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6011065/. Accessed January 2020.

Von der Maase H, et al. Comparing Gemcitabine Plus Cisplatin, With Methotrexate, Vinblastine, Doxorubicin, Plus Cisplatin in patients With Bladder Cancer. Journal of Clinical Oncology. 2005;23(21):4602-4608.

San Francisco, CA (UroToday.com) -- EMD Serono, the biopharmaceutical business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in the US and Canada, and Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) today announced the Phase III JAVELIN Bladder 100 study met its primary endpoint of overall survival (OS) at the planned interim analysis. In this study, patients with previously untreated locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma (UC) whose disease did not progress on induction chemotherapy and who were randomized to receive first-line maintenance therapy with BAVENCIO (avelumab)* and best supportive care (BSC) lived significantly longer than those who received BSC only. A statistically significant improvement in OS was demonstrated in the BAVENCIO arm in each of the co-primary populations: all randomized patients and patients with PD-L1positive tumors. The safety profile for BAVENCIO in the trial was consistent with that in the JAVELIN monotherapy clinical development program. The results of the study will be submitted for presentation at an upcoming medical congress and shared with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other health authorities."These latest positive data from the JAVELIN clinical development program add to the body of evidence for BAVENCIO in the treatment of genitourinary cancers, and we look forward to discussing these results with health authorities."UC accounts for about 90% of all bladder cancer.When bladder cancer is metastatic, the five-year survival rate is 5%.Combination chemotherapy is currently the first-line standard of care for patients with advanced disease, but despite high initial response rates, durable and complete responses following first-line chemotherapy are uncommon, and most patients will ultimately experience disease progression within nine months after initiation of treatment."Our unique maintenance approach with BAVENCIO has significantly prolonged survival for patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma in this trial," said Luciano Rossetti, Head of Global R&D for EMD Serono. "We believe this approach could become part of routine clinical practice, as these results are a major advance on the existing standard of care."In 2017, the FDA approved BAVENCIO for the treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma who have disease progression during or following platinum-containing chemotherapy, or who have disease progression within 12 months of neoadjuvant or adjuvant treatment with platinum-containing chemotherapy. This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on tumor response and duration of response. JAVELIN Bladder 100 is the confirmatory study for the conversion to full approval.*BAVENCIO is under clinical investigation for the first-line maintenance treatment of advanced UC. There is no guarantee that BAVENCIO will be approved for first-line maintenance treatment of UC by any health authority worldwide.JAVELIN Bladder 100 ( NCT02603432 ) is a Phase III, multicenter, multinational, randomized, open-label, parallel-arm study investigating first-line maintenance treatment with BAVENCIO plus BSC versus BSC alone in patients with locally advanced or metastatic UC whose disease did not progress after completion of first-line platinum-containing chemotherapy. A total of 700 patients whose disease had not progressed after induction chemotherapy as per RECIST v1.1 were randomly assigned to receive either BAVENCIO plus BSC or BSC alone. The primary endpoint is OS in co-primary populations of all patients and patients with PD-L1positive tumors. Secondary endpoints include progression-free survival, anti-tumor activity, safety, pharmacokinetics, immunogenicity, predictive biomarkers and patient-reported outcomes in the co-primary populations.References:Source: "BAVENCIO Significantly Improved Overall Survival In Patients With Locally Advanced Or Metastatic Urothelial Carcinoma | Pfizer". 2020. Pfizer.Com. Related Content:Conference Coverage: ASCO 2019: Chemotherapy, Antibody Drug Conjugates, and Radiation with or without Anti-PD1/Anti-PD-L1

Read: From the Desk of Evan Yu: If Not 1st Line, How About Creating a 1.5 Line Therapy for Metastatic Urothelial Carcinoma?
Capital crunch has grounded the expansion plans of Air India's engineering arm AIESL, which gets almost 90 per cent of the revenue by maintaining the flag carrier's fleet, according to its CEO H R Jagannath.

Air India Engineering Subsidiary Limited (AIESL), the loss-making subsidiary, requires at least Rs 1,000 crore capital infusion to help it undertake some 20-30 more component overhaul jobs, which are currently being outsourced to international players, Jagannath said in an interaction on the week-end.

Set up in 2013 as a separate subsidiary, AIESL provides maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) services, both line and major maintenance, to various type of aircraft of Air India group's 170-aircraft strong fleet besides to third party airlines as well as the defence forces.

However, with the government set to privatise Air India, the company may lose the bulk of its business but Jagannath is confident of retaining it from the new investor because of the service "quality and lower cost."



"We require good amount of cash. The MRO business is capital intensive. Air India is supposed to give me Rs 1,000 crore. But since the airline itself is facing a cash crunch, we have not been able to get these funds.

"Had the company got this money, we would have set up at least 20-30 components overhaul facilities in-house, a business which is now going out of the country," he said.

Jagannath said that the domestic MRO market stands at around USD 1.2-1.5 billion with maintenance cost of the Indian airline accounting for almost 8-15 per cent of the total cost.

"The maintenance cost depends on the age of the aircraft. The lower the age, the lesser the maintenance cost," he said.

He said while Air India group's entire fleet is maintained in-house, the private domestic carrier's are forced to send out their aircraft to MROs in countries like Dubai, Singapore and Malaysia for want of certain component overhaul facilities in the country despite higher cost.

"I am discussing with SpiceJet, which is ready to give me all their maintenance jobs. We are negotiating rates with them," he said adding IndiGo is ready to give its planes to AIESL for replacing all four landing gears.

AIESL already has a contract with SpiceJet for maintenance of its aircraft at Thiruvananthapuram.

He said thatthe company's Nagpur MRO requires another around Rs 100 crore to make it fully functional.

AIESL has six MRO facilities across Mumbai, Delhi, Nagpur, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Thiruvananthapuram, along with engines shops and landing gear maintenance facilities.

The Air India Specific Alternative Mechanism (AISAM) has approved re-initiation of process for the government''s 100 per cent stake sale in Air India along with Air India Express and the airline's stake in AISATS.

The Government is expected to issue Expression of Interest for AI sale in this quarter.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Faisal Dimaukom

MANILA, Philippines  One of the at-large suspects in the 2009 Ampatuan massacre has been finally caught after evading arrest for over a decade, authorities said on Monday.

The Police Regional Office Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (PRO BARMM) identified the arrested suspect as 42-year old Faisal Dimaukom, also known as Kagi Faizal.

Police said Dimaukom was apprehended early Monday in an operation launched at Barangay Kabinge, Datu Saudi Ampatuan in Maguindanao.

The focus operation was jointly conducted by elements from the Regional Intelligence Division of PRO BARMM, Regional Mobile Force Battalion 14 and DSA MPS.

Recovered from Dimaukoms possession was an F1 Fragmentation hand grenade.

The suspect was turned over to Parang Municipal Police Station for documentation and proper disposition.

Dimaukom is among the 80 out of nearly 200 suspects in the massacre who were at large when the Quezon City Regional Trial Court (QC RTC) Branch 221 released last month its verdict on the gruesome killing.

On December 19, QC RTC Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes handed down a guilty verdict to some members of the political Ampatuan clan, including former Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Governor Zaldy Ampatuan, Anwar Ampatuan Sr., Anwar Ampatuan Jr., and Anwar Sajid Ampatuan, for their involvement in the murder of 57 people, including members of the media.

READ: Ampatuans convicted in massacre case head to Court of Appeals

READ: Kin of Ampatuan massacre victims seek higher civil damages

Originally, there were 58 victims in the massacre but the 58th person, photographer Reynaldo Momay of the local paper Midland Review, was declared missing after his body was not found in the scene.

The ambush happened when 32 members of the media were on their way to a local Commission on Elections office to cover the filing of then gubernatorial bet Esmael Mangudadatu  a political rival of the Ampatuans.

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Six of the victims were not part of the Mangudadatu supporters and the media convoy.

The Ampatuan massacre is considered the worst election-related violence and attack on press freedom in the Philippines.

The post Authorities arrest Ampatuan massacre fugitive appeared first on UNTV News.
The Farewell actor Awkwafina created history with her win at the Golden Globes 2020. Awkwafina has now become the first woman of Asian descent to win the Best Actress award in the comedy/musical category. Read on to know more details about this story.

Awkwafina creates history with her Golden Globes win

The Farewell was one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the year. The comedy film was written and directed by Lulu Wang and starred Awkwafina in the lead role. The critically acclaimed film had Awkwafina playing the role of Bili, an American woman whose family chooses to keep the truth of their grandmothers terminal diagnosis from her and embark on a trip to China to spend the last few days with the matriarch. Apart from winning several accolades and nominations since its release, the Wang-directed film also marked a historic win at the Golden Globes this year.

Also read | Golden Globes 2020: 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood' Wins Best Motion Picture

Awkwafina, the lead actor of The Farewell, bagged her first Golden Globes win this year. Awkwafina became the first actor of Asian descent to win the Best Actress Golden Globes Award in the comedy/musical category. The Farwell actor talked about her win backstage at the Golden Globes. Awkwafina became the second Asian-origin actor to be nominated in this category. Last year, Crazy Rich Asians actor Constance Wu in this category.

Also read | Golden Globes 2020: 'Chernobyl' Wins Award For Best Limited Television Series

Awkwafina said that she finds the fact mind-blowing that she has become the first actor of Asian descent to win. She continued by stating that she feels incredible but also feels that she wants this to happen more and hopes that this is just the beginning.

In an interview with a media portal, Awkwafina had previously talked about her nomination. In the interview, she said that when they were working on the film, they just wanted to tell the story. But she feels that it is awesome that the film is getting recognition.

Also read | Golden Globes 2020: Olivia Colman's Tipsy Acceptance Speech Is Winning Hearts

Also read | Golden Globes 2020 | Brad Pitt Wins Best Supporting Actor Award

Get the latest entertainment news from India & around the world. Now follow your favourite television celebs and telly updates. Republic World is your one-stop destination for trending Bollywood news. Tune in today to stay updated with all the latest news and headlines from the world of entertainment.
Oppositionists and activists organized a protest rally in Gori (Shida Kartli region), where Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili plans to arrive to participate in the Presidential Christmas celebration.

Protesters carrying placards came to the central square of the city where festivities are planned in connection with Zurabishvilis decision to pardon a number of prisoners, since Archpriest Mamaladze, convicted of attempting to kill the Secretary General of the Patriarch of All Georgia Ilia II, was not among them. Previously, the Holy Synod asked Zurabishvili to pardon him, Sputnik Georgia reports.
The unusual gathering will give Europeans a chance to coordinate plans among all 28 member states. Leaders have been reluctant to publicly condemn the United States for Soleimanis killing, focusing most of their ire on Iran, which they view as the core threat to their security interests. But they have invested more than a year of efforts to try to preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear deal following Trumps pullout. Many European diplomats view Soleimanis death as the final blow to hopes that the accord could hold together until the possible election in November of a U.S. president more supportive of the nuclear agreement than Trump.
Ukrainians sing Christmas carols as they carry decorated stars of Bethlehem in Lviv - REX

The head of Ukraines recently independent Orthodox Church has compared Russias treatment of believers in annexed Crimea to Stalin-era repressions, after authorities ordered a church demolished.

Metropolitan Epiphaniy, the primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, said believers in Crimea and the east of the country had particularly suffered at the hands of Russia since the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was granted independence in 2018, to the fury of Moscow.

In Crimea, the Russian authorities, the temporary authorities, are trying to completely supplant us, he said in an interview ahead of Orthodox Christmas on January 7.

Officials are trying to evict the congregation from the peninsulas Ukrainian cathedral and at the end of last year ordered the absurd destruction of another church building in Crimea, he said.

This is reminiscent of the Stalin-era of the USSR, when churches were destroyed, he told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in a Ukrainian-language interview.

Epiphaniy said he had raised the issue on a recent trip to the United States and had asked the international community to condemn Russias actions.

Metropolitan Epiphaniy of Kyiv and All Ukraine spoke out against Russia Credit: Hennadii Minchenko/ Ukrinform

Last year the Ukrainian Orthodox Churchs Archbishop Kliment was briefly arrested in Crimea in what he described as an attempt to tarnish his reputation. His cathedral in Simferopol has also reported attacks by vandals.

In October 2018, the leader of the global Orthodox community granted independence to the Ukrainian Church, after more than 300 years under the jurisdiction of Moscow.

Kiev had been pushing for the move since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and Moscows support for separatist rebels in the ongoing conflict in Eastern Ukraine.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which is closely aligned to the Kremlin, cut ties with the top Orthodox patriarch in Istanbul, in one of the biggest rifts within Christianity for almost 1,000 years.

Around 600 churches previously aligned to Moscow have joined the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church over the last year, Epiphaniy said. That figure is disputed by Moscow, which says some of the churches have been seized.

The Ukrainian Church leader added that he wanted the conversions to continue to be peaceful, calm and voluntary... we do not need confrontation.

In his Christmas address on Monday, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow called for the unity of Orthodoxy and multiplying love.
Hundreds of people have been relocated from a North Carolina public housing community over ongoing concerns about carbon monoxide.

The Durham Housing Authority said in a statement Friday night that it was conducting an immediate emergency relocation of all McDougald Terrace residents to hotels after several residents were treated for elevated carbon monoxide levels.

The safety of our residents is our top priority, and we are taking immediate action to relocate everyone impacted while working with a cross-functional response team to stabilize the units as quickly as possible, the authoritys CEO Anthony Scott said in a statement.

The authority said each building would be inspected and cleared of any carbon monoxide risk. Residents would be provided a daily per diem for food and that transportation to the hotels was being coordinated.

The Herald-Sun reported that the move came after a tense meeting earlier in the week during which residents accused the authority of ignoring unsafe living conditions.

One emergency medical services official said at that meeting that the county cant rule out carbon monoxide in the recent deaths of two infants at the complex.

The housing authority said it would provide further updates about the situation on Saturday.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics North Carolina
Writer Kim Keum-hee Korea Times file



By Park Ji-won



Some recipients of the 44th Yi Sang Literary Award, one of the most prestigious literary awards in Korea, refused to accept their runner up prize criticizing unfair practices in publication contracts, sparking a debate over copyright on literary works.



Writer Kim Keum-hee, the runner up of the award who is best known for "Kyung-ae's Heart," said she was listed as a runner up of the award but refused to take it as the award's contract forced her to transfer her copyright on her writings to the organizer for three years.



"I got a phone call yesterday that I was listed among the winners. I was happy at first. But when I read the (prize) contract, I felt terrible." Kim Tweeted on Saturday, further stating that the prize required her to adjust her contract, giving copyright of her award-winning short novel to the organizer for three years.



"The contract said that I cannot use my novel as a title piece nor include it in a book Is it that hard to change the contract? Is this how the company's show respect to the writers and their efforts? I know my remarks may not be beneficial (to me), but if I don't raise my voice, the writers' creations will be trapped in the word 'copyright transfer.'"



It is very rare for the winners of the prize to refuse to accept the award.



Another novelist Choi Eun-young, author of "Shoko's Smile" who also won the runner up prize of the award, reportedly said she also refused to accept the prize for the same reason as Kim.



According to the publishing company and previous winners, the licensing term was included in the contract since the 43rd Yi Sang Literary Award last year. With Kim's comments going viral, the organizer decided to delete that certain term on the licensing from the contract.



The award was established in 1977 to commemorate prominent modern writer Yi Sang's achievements. The yearly collection archiving the short- and medium-length novels of the winners of the award has been published each year in January.


President Trump definitely knows his audience.

Trump called in to Rush Limbaugh's radio show on Monday, and, as he often does, touched on nearly every topic under the conservative sun. And, in typical Trump ranting fashion, he spun several falsehoods about impeachment, the Mueller investigation, and more along the way  and bragged about his apparently stellar performance on Facebook.

Trump tackled the most pressing news early in the interview, continuing to defend his strike on Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani and saying it should've been done years ago. He then "repeat[ed] his exaggeration of the amount of money Iran got access to" under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, CNN's Daniel Dale pointed out, with Trump falsely claiming it was U.S. money, not just Iran's own assets, relieved from tariffs under the deal. Next up came Trump's repeated claim that former Secretary of State John Kerry violated the Logan Act when discussing the JCPOA limiting Iran's nuclear power, which Kerry denies.

Next up, Trump dove back into former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, which ended a solid seven months ago. He falsely claimed $45 million was spent on the probe, but it was more like $32 million, of which the government expects to recoup $17 million, Dale said. Next up in falsities is Trump's suggestion that Democrats are "trying to affect the election, illegally" by sending articles of impeachment to the Senate. There's nothing illegal about impeachment, no matter when it happens.

Meanwhile, in the only new news to come out of the interview, Trump said he recently had dinner with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who apparently congratulated him for being "No. 1 on Facebook," whatever that means.

More stories from theweek.com

19 books to read in 2020

Mitch McConnell may have just given Nancy Pelosi a strategic opening in the impeachment standoff

America is guilty of everything we accuse Iran of doing


A New Jersey man who sued Staples after injuring his back when he fell in a store in Mercer County has been awarded more than $3.64 million by a jury, according to his attorney.

Jim Simmons fell after tripping on a merchandise tote that had been left unattended by an employee at the store in Hamilton on May 30, 2015, Lawrence-based law firm Stark & Stark said in a statement.

Simmons, of Bordentown, had to undergo multiple surgeries after he suffered a herniated disc in his spine, as well as pain and numbness in his lower back that caused problems with his right leg, his attorney David Schmid said.

Simmons, who was 55 at the time of the injury, said he was browsing computers when a worker was called away and left the bin behind, the lawyer said.

Though Schmid contended Staples violated its customer safety policies, the Massachusetts-based office retail company blamed Simmons for falling.

Simmons has had degenerative changes to his spine and is still in pain despite undergoing physical therapy and enduring lumbar epidural steroid injections, his attorney said.

A jury sitting in Mercer County awarded Simmons a $3,648,030 verdict.

A spokeswoman for Staples didnt immediately respond to a message from NJ Advance Media seeking comment.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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BEIJING, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- China will play a constructive role in maintaining peace and security in the Middle East and the Gulf region while remaining objective and fair, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Saturday.

Wang made the remarks during a phone call with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

The dangerous U.S. military actions violated the basic norms of international relations and would aggravate regional tensions, Wang said.

He voiced China's opposition to the use of force in international relations, saying military means only lead to a dead end and maximum pressure will get nowhere.

China urges the United States not to abuse force and calls for dialogue to seek solutions to problems, he said.

For his part, Zarif briefed Wang on Iran's position regarding the attack on a senior Iranian commander.

The Iranian foreign minister strongly condemned the U.S. brutal act, which he said would bring severe consequences.

Iran has sent a letter to the UN secretary-general and hopes that China will play an important role in preventing the escalation of regional tensions, said Zarif.
iTrip Vacations proudly announces the launch of its world-class short term and vacation property management services in Charlotte, North Carolina. The North Carolina addition is part of a growing number of destinations managed by iTrip Vacations, the largest franchise brand serving the short-term vacation rental industry in North America.

iTrip Vacations has expanded their property management program in North Carolina. Vacation property owners and guests in greater Charlotte now benefit from world-class property management and customer service. iTrip Vacations Charlotte  owned and managed by Marco and Mary Ceccarelli  has launched as the newest iTrip Vacations destination.

The short-term property management company serves rental owners and guests in the following areas: Charlotte, Pineville, Mint Hill, Huntersville, Davidson, Lake Norman, Denver, Lowesville, Sherrills Ford, Harrisburg, Kannapolis and Concord. The full-service program focuses on increasing net rental income and guest satisfaction, while providing international marketing, free light maintenance, 24/7 property care and automatic-response systems.

Bringing iTrip Vacations white-glove service to Charlotte was a dream of ours after we had them manage our own condos in Myrtle Beach, says Mary Ceccarelli, iTrip Vacations Charlotte owner. Coming from an owners point-of-view, I can confirm iTrip Vacations' immeasurable comparison to the competition when it comes to technology, affiliates and overall customer service.

The North Carolina addition is part of a growing number of destinations managed by iTrip Vacations, the largest franchise brand serving the short-term vacation rental industry in North America.

Additionally, our quarterly performance numbers show iTrip Vacations leading the short-term property management industry in terms of measurable metrics, says Steve Presley, iTrip Vacations co-founder. In 2019, we also earned Elite Partner status with HomeAway/Vrbo for the second consecutive year.

Charlotte serves as a commercial center in North Carolina, and ranks among the best places to live and visit. The area, which includes Lake Norman and Concord, offers diverse activities paired with world-renown sports, art, culture, green space and lots of local flair.

To learn more about the full-service property management program, contact iTrip Vacations Charlotte at 704-912-4199 (local).

About iTrip Vacations

iTrip Vacations is a national leader in vacation rental management. iTrip provides full-service property management programs to more than 75 destinations in North America, while enhancing experiences through affordable luxury accommodations and custom programs.
By ANI

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Monday dismissed an application filed by the father of one of the death-row convicts in the Nirbhaya rape case, who had questioned the credibility of the sole witness by claiming that he was "tutored" and sought the registration of FIR against him.

The court had on December 20 reserved the order on an application filed by Pawan Kumar Gupta's father till today. The petition had stated that the girl's friend committed perjury for giving false testimony in the court.

The sole eye-witness was accompanying the 23-year-old girl when she was raped and murdered by six men on a moving bus on December 16, 2012.

It claimed that the boy accompanying Nirbhaya in the bus turned the case into a "media trial" by charging money from the news channels to give interviews.

"This calls for an independent investigation into the perjury committed by him. Being the sole witness, his testimony has strongly influenced the outcome of the case," the complaint stated.

Perjury relates to willfully making a misrepresentation under oath.

Earlier, Metropolitan Magistrate Sudhir Kumar Sirohi had said that the witnesses record statements "under oath and what they say outside the courtroom cannot raise a question on their credibility as a witness."

Besides Pawan Kumar Gupta, three others - Akshay, Vinay, and Mukesh are facing the gallows in the case.

The main accused, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar Jail during the trial. Another accused was a minor at the time of the commission of the crime and was sent to a reform facility and released after three years.
Georgina Mbira is a Kenyan media personality, events host and voice-over artist. She is most notable as host of My Perfect Wedding on Maisha Magic East.

She spoke to Sunday Magazine about how she spends her Sundays.

Sunday is the day

I spend with my family, go to church and have some time to shop.

What makes Sunday special?

The fact that I am able to serve at my church plus I dont have to cook on Sunday.

If you could be with one person on Sunday who would it be?

My husband Kevin. We dont spend as much time together during the week as I would want to so Sunday is a ball when he is around.

Describe your perfect Sunday weather

Sunny, definitely sunny! I get to go for a walk and reflect. Cant do that while being rained on now can you?

Sunday lunch includes

Chapati and chicken.

Rules you break on Sunday?

Absolute laziness takes the day.

If you had the power, which day would you replace Sunday with?

Friday. I do not party on a Sunday but Friday is another story altogether.

If you could be anywhere on a Sunday, where would you be?

Somewhere on a beach and hope time freezes.

If Sunday was an animal, it would be

A sloth.

The last thing you do on a Sunday night is?

Pray together and listen to the boys unending science facts.

Bedtimes on Sunday is 

Anytime between 1 am and 3 am. Because I end up binge-watching reality TV shows.
Trump ratchets up tension with aggressive rhetoric even as his administration says Soleimani killing was to stop war.

US President Donald Trump has ratcheted up his rhetoric against Iran and Iraq, warning of a major retaliation if Iran strikes back in reprisal for the USs assassination of one of its top military commanders and threatening sanctions on Iraq after its parliament called on US troops to leave the country.

Trump and his advisers have been defending the drone attack that killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, escalating tensions in the region.

Trump says Soleimani was planning attacks against US citizens and that he would consider releasing intelligence reports that led him to direct the killing.

Asked on Air Force One about potential retaliation by Iran, Trump said: If it happens, it happens. If they do anything, there will be major retaliation.

Trump, who spoke to reporters on his way back to Washington from a holiday in Florida, has said Soleimani was killed to avoid war with Tehran and warned against further escalation.





But he has deployed aggressive rhetoric in public, tweeting that the US would target 52 Iranian sites, some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture if Iran struck any US citizens or assets in retaliation.

Surrounded by hawks

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denied on Sunday that Trump said he would target Iranian cultural sites but the president contradicted him when asked about the issue on Sunday night.

Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people and were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, he said.

Targeting cultural sites with military action is considered a war crime under international law, including a UN Security Council resolution supported by the Trump administration in 2017 and the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property.

The US-based Human Rights Watch said on Sunday that Trumps threat to attack sites of cultural importance would be war crimes if carried out.

President Trump should publicly reverse his threats against Irans cultural property and make clear that he will not authorize nor order war crimes, said Andrea Prasow, acting Washington director at Human Rights Watch. The US Defense Department should publicly reaffirm its commitment to abide by the laws of war and comply only with lawful military orders.

Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, gets off Air Force One after a holiday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Speaking to reporters on the plane, he stepped up his rhetoric against Iran and threatened sanctions on Iraq [Kevin Wolf/AP Photo]

The president also issued a threat to Baghdad after the Iraqi parliament backed a resolution calling for US and other foreign troops to leave the country.

Trump said if Iraq asked US forces to leave and it was not done on a friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.

We have a very extraordinarily expensive airbase thats there. It cost billions of dollars to build, long before my time. Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it, Trump told reporters.

Nader Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver told Al Jazeera Trumps comments were borderline insane and a cause for concern.

This is someone who is completely surrounded by war hawks, is driven by his ego and is in a re-election campaign, Hashemi said. I think hes calculating that this type of tough rhetoric plays well with his domestic base.
Finlands new Prime Minister is planning to introduce a new working schedule for its workers in the country that would involve a four-day-week and six-hour working days, the Dailymail is reporting.

Sanna Marin, 34, is the second youngest head of government in the world.

She said the policy, if approved eventually, would allow workers to spend more time with their families.

The mother-of-one leads a centre-left coalition with four other parties which are all headed by women, three of which are under 35.

The United Kingdoms third-highest-circulation daily newspaper quotes her as saying: I believe people deserve to spend more time with their families, loved ones, hobbies and other aspects of life, such as culture.

This could be the next step for us in working life.

Not her first time

Before Marin became Prime Minister, she held a position as the Minister of Transport for Finland.

While in office in that position, Marin advocated for shorter work weeks to improve employee rapport and productivity.

In Finland, currently, it is normal to work eight hours per day, five days per week.

Reaction

The proposal was immediately welcomed with enthusiasm by the minister of education, Li Andersson, the leader of the Left Alliance.

She said: It is important to allow Finnish citizens to work less. It is not a question of governing with a feminine style but offering help and keeping promises to voters .

In neighbouring Sweden, where the six-hour-day has already applied since 2015, results showed that employees were happier, wealthier and more productive.

In early December, Finlands ruling Social Democratic Party council voted 32-29 to name Sanna Marin over rival Antti Lindtman to take over the governments top post from incumbent Antti Rinne.

In November, Microsoft Japan took a bold move in a bid to improve work-life balance by introducing a three-day weekend for their employees.

The results showed that productivity went up by a staggering 39.9 per cent.
New Delhi [India], Jan 6 (ANI): Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday launched a website on the grant of permission for aerial photography, remote sensing survey of defence land.



"Raksha Mantri Shri @rajnathsingh launches website on the grant of permission for aerial photography/remote sensing survey of defence land, today. Also seen are Defence Secy. Dr @drajaykumar_ias, CDS Gen Bipin Rawat, CNS Adm Karambir Singh, CAS ACM RKS Bhadauria & COAS Gen MM Naravane," Principal Spokesperson, Ministry of Defence said in a tweet. (ANI)


One of the best investments we can make is in our own knowledge and skill set. With that in mind, this article will work through how we can use Return On Equity (ROE) to better understand a business. To keep the lesson grounded in practicality, we'll use ROE to better understand New Jersey Resources Corporation (NYSE:NJR).

New Jersey Resources has a ROE of 11%, based on the last twelve months. Another way to think of that is that for every $1 worth of equity in the company, it was able to earn $0.11.

View our latest analysis for New Jersey Resources

How Do You Calculate ROE?

The formula for ROE is:

Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations)  Shareholders' Equity

Or for New Jersey Resources:

11% = US$170m  US$1.6b (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2019.)

Most know that net profit is the total earnings after all expenses, but the concept of shareholders' equity is a little more complicated. It is all the money paid into the company from shareholders, plus any earnings retained. You can calculate shareholders' equity by subtracting the company's total liabilities from its total assets.

What Does ROE Signify?

ROE measures a company's profitability against the profit it retains, and any outside investments. The 'return' is the amount earned after tax over the last twelve months. The higher the ROE, the more profit the company is making. So, as a general rule, a high ROE is a good thing. That means ROE can be used to compare two businesses.

Does New Jersey Resources Have A Good Return On Equity?

By comparing a company's ROE with its industry average, we can get a quick measure of how good it is. Importantly, this is far from a perfect measure, because companies differ significantly within the same industry classification. Pleasingly, New Jersey Resources has a superior ROE than the average (8.3%) company in the Gas Utilities industry.

NYSE:NJR Past Revenue and Net Income, January 6th 2020

That is a good sign. In my book, a high ROE almost always warrants a closer look. For example you might check if insiders are buying shares.

Story continues

The Importance Of Debt To Return On Equity

Most companies need money -- from somewhere -- to grow their profits. The cash for investment can come from prior year profits (retained earnings), issuing new shares, or borrowing. In the first two cases, the ROE will capture this use of capital to grow. In the latter case, the debt required for growth will boost returns, but will not impact the shareholders' equity. Thus the use of debt can improve ROE, albeit along with extra risk in the case of stormy weather, metaphorically speaking.

New Jersey Resources's Debt And Its 11% ROE

New Jersey Resources clearly uses a significant amount of debt to boost returns, as it has a debt to equity ratio of 1.02. There's no doubt the ROE is respectable, but it's worth keeping in mind that metric is elevated by the use of debt. Debt does bring extra risk, so it's only really worthwhile when a company generates some decent returns from it.

In Summary

Return on equity is useful for comparing the quality of different businesses. Companies that can achieve high returns on equity without too much debt are generally of good quality. If two companies have the same ROE, then I would generally prefer the one with less debt.

But when a business is high quality, the market often bids it up to a price that reflects this. The rate at which profits are likely to grow, relative to the expectations of profit growth reflected in the current price, must be considered, too. So you might want to take a peek at this data-rich interactive graph of forecasts for the company.

If you would prefer check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss thisfree list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Condemning the attack on students and teachers of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi on Sunday, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said it was a fascist surgical strike.

I started my career as a student leader. I know student politics very well. It is very disturbing and is an attack on democracy. Nowadays, I have seen how they are torturing the students and even professors are not being spared. It is a fascist surgical strike, Banerjee said on Monday.

Banerjee also appealed to the student community to fight together against the government. We are all with the student community, she said.

At a time when the attack in JNU by masked men is being criticized across the country and allegations have surfaced that it was orchestrated by members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), Dilip Ghosh president of the Bharatiya Janata Partys West Bengal unit blamed the communists for initiating such attacks in educational institutions and said that accounts are being set straight.

ABVP, however, alleged that it was the cadres of the Students Federation of India who used to chase and beat college students. The youth wing supporters of both the Trinamool Congress and the Congress were beaten up. Now accounts are being settled, said Ghosh.

Blaming the SFI  the students wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)  Ghosh said that it was the SFI and the communists who introduced such fights in educational institutions and now they are being beaten up.

It is a fact that now communists are being beaten up across the country. They deserve it because of the treatment they had meted out earlier. Educational institutions are not places where you fight. But who started it? The communists and the SFI started it. Except for colleges in Tripura, West Bengal and Kerala, we never heard of any incidents, he said.

Lashing out at Ghosh, CPI(M) politburo member Md Salim, condemned Ghoshs statements and said: The less the likes of Dilip Ghosh speak on university campuses be it Jadavpur University or JNU, the better. He has never spoken of anything except violence. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and Ghosh all follow the pattern of Hitler and Mussolini. But we have all learnt from history how fascists are defeated.
Amid the catastrophic bushfires back home, Australian stars brought plenty of glamour to the Golden Globes in Los Angeles on Sunday night.

The likes of Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie and Cate Blanchett dazzled on the red carpet as the international spotlight fell on the unfolding disaster Down Under.

There were several heartfelt messages about the crisis, which has so far claimed the lives of 24 people and destroyed more than 1,500 homes.

Despite winning Best Actor in a Limited Series for his portrayal of Roger Ailes in The Loudest Voice, Russell Crowe was absent from the ceremony, having decided to stay at home to help his neighbours defend their properties in rural NSW.

The show must go on! Amid the catastrophic bushfires back home, Australian stars like Nicole Kidman brought plenty of glamour to the Golden Globes in Los Angeles on Sunday night

Nicole, 52, looked chic in a cherry red strapless gown, which she paired with a gold pouch bag and strappy red stilettos.

She was joined on the red carpet by her husband, Keith Urban, 52, who looked typically suave in a black suit.

The swanky outing comes a day after Nicole and Keith donated $500,000 to the Rural Fire Service.

Catastrophe: During the ceremony, there were several heartfelt messages about the bushfire crisis, which has so far claimed the lives of 24 people and destroyed more than 1,500 homes

Glamour couple: Nicole was joined on the red carpet by her husband, Keith Urban, 52, who looked typically suave in a black suit

Philanthropic: The swanky outing comes a day after Nicole and Keith donated $500,000 to the Rural Fire Service

In the firing line: The couple's $6.5million Georgian mansion in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales is also reportedly 'under threat' from nearby bushfires

Meanwhile, the couple's $6.5million Georgian mansion in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales is also reportedly 'under threat' from nearby bushfires.

The 1878-built retreat is in the village of Sutton Forrest, approximately 8km from Exeter, where residents have been told to 'take shelter, as it is too late to leave'.

Nicole is nominated for Best Actress in a TV Series (Drama) for her performance in HBO's Big Little Lies.

Angelic: Margot Robbie looked fabulous in a strapless top and long white skirt as she floated down the red carpet

Elsewhere, Margot Robbie looked fabulous in a strapless top and long white skirt as she floated down the red carpet.

The 29-year-old styled her hair in a middle parting and opted for a glamorous makeup palette.

She is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Bombshell, a drama about the downfall of late Fox News chairman Roger Ailes.

Emotional plea: Hours before stepping onto the red carpet, Margot had shared a video to Instagram in which she tearfully asked her fans to donate to the Australian firefighters

Hours before stepping onto the red carpet, Margot had shared a video to Instagram in which she tearfully asked her fans to donate to the Australian firefighters.

She showed photos from her family album, including snaps of herself as a child growing up in rural Queensland.

'Please, if you haven't already donated, please do, and let's give future generations the kind of childhood I was so lucky to have,' she said.

Elegant: British-Australian actress Naomi Watts, 51, oozed old Hollywood glamour in a sparkling black halterneck gown

Meanwhile, British-Australian actress Naomi Watts, 51, oozed old Hollywood glamour in a sparkling black halterneck gown.

She accessorised with a black clutch bag and a silver diamond ring, and topped it all off with a pop of red lipstick in the form of Shiseido's Modern Matte Powder Lipstick in 512.

Makeup artist Jillian Dempsey used an array of products from the beauty brand in order to create Naomi's look for the evening, including a complexion perfecting blend of the Shiseido Synchro Skin Self Refreshing Foundation, Synchro Skin Self-Refreshing Concealer, and Synchro Skin Self-Refreshing Finishing Powder.

Naomi, who stars as Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson in The Loudest Voice, recently shared a tribute to the bushfire victims and heroic firefighters battling the blazes.

Yellow there! Cate Blanchett, 50, also made a spectacular arrival at the Golden Globes in a yellow pleated gown with a bejewelled harness-inspired bodice

She shared a video taken during her Christmas holiday in Byron Bay, NSW, which she captioned: 'The fires have been truly horrendous. It's so upsetting and worrying. So much wildlife already lost. And still much of the summer ahead.'

'My heart goes out to those whove lost loved ones and homes. Big gratitude to the brave firemen who literally havent stopped during the holidays!!' she added.

Cate Blanchett, 50, also made a spectacular arrival at the Golden Globes.

Dramatic: Toni Collette also turned heads in a showstopping ensemble, opting for a black ball gown with floral embroidery detailing

Cate, who is is nominated for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for Where'd You Go, Bernadette, wore a yellow pleated gown.

The dramatic frock featured a bejewelled, harness-inspired bodice and statement pleated sleeves.

Toni Collette also turned heads in a showstopping ensemble, opting for a black ball gown with floral embroidery detailing.

No-show: Russell Crowe chose not to attend the Golden Globes, instead remaining at home in Australia to help his neighbours defend their homes from the bushfires. Pictured in 2002

She is nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series for Unbelievable.

However, there was one Australian who was conspicuously absent from the ruby pile: Russell Crowe.

Russell chose not to attend the Golden Globes, instead remaining at home in Australia to help his neighbours defend their homes from the bushfires.

The 55-year-old was personally impacted by the raging inferno when his rural property was badly damaged in November.

Crisis: The 55-year-old was personally impacted by the raging inferno when his rural property was badly damaged in November

Achievement: Russell won Best Actor for a Limited Series for his portrayal of Roger Ailes in The Loudest Voice (pictured)

Despite his absence, Russell won Best Actor for a Limited Series for his portrayal of Roger Ailes in The Loudest Voice, which can be streamed on Stan.

He did, however, send a very pointed statement about climate change, which presenter Jennifer Aniston read aloud on stage.

The statement read: 'Make no mistake. The tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is.'

Ellen DeGeneres, who is married to Australian actress Portia de Rossi, expressed her support for Australia while receiving a lifetime achievement award.

Friendship: Ellen DeGeneres, who is married to Australian actress Portia de Rossi, expressed her support for Australia while receiving a lifetime achievement award

Supportive: Pierce Brosnan echoed the chorus of support, telling Australians to 'stay strong' and that the rest of the world is 'with you'

'Australia, I love you,' she told the audience. 'My heart goes out to everyone who is suffering in Australia and all of the animals we have lost.'

Pierce Brosnan echoed the chorus of support, telling Australians to 'stay strong' and that the rest of the world is 'with you'.

Cate Blanchett also specifically thanked the volunteer firefighters working tirelessly to help their communities, while Joaquin Phoenix discouraged his peers from using private jets amid the climate crisis.

Australia's wildfires have burned about 12.35 million acres of land and destroyed more than 1,400 homes. The death toll has reached 24 people.

Stand-ins: Russell send a very pointed statement about climate change, which presenter Jennifer Aniston (left) read aloud on stage. Pictured with Reese Witherspoon

Having his say: Russell's statement read, 'Make no mistake. The tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is'
Most Indian experts on Iran and the Gulf see India backed up in a corner in arguably the worst tension the region has seen in 30 years following the killing of one of Irans top military strategists and leader, Qasem Suleimani.

Experts caution that quick judgments  given that the situation is still evolving, with Iraqi Parliament resolving to expel all US forces from its soil and the US announcing it is ready to sanction Iraq  could be erroneous. But, they say, despite the optics of Foreign Minister S Jaishankar calling US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and publicly ...
The impromptu protests started from midnight and continued till morning at the Gateway of India, near the IIT-Bombay campus in Powai in Mumbai. And in Pune, protests occured in the FTII Campus.

Mumbai, Jan 6 (IANS) Shaken by the attacks in the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus in Delhi late on Sunday, hundreds of people staged protests in Mumbai and Pune on Monday condemning the manner in which students and teachers were targeted.

Many carried the Tricolour, candles, handwritten banners and posters expressing solidarity with the JNU students and raised slogans demanding action against those involved in the attack.

Several political leaders from the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi slammed the violence against the JNU students-teachers and demanded stringent action against the perpetrators, here on Monday.

Terming it as "a planned attack", Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar said the students and professors were subjected to a cowardly attack.

"I strongly condemn this undemocratic act of vandalism and violence. Use of violent means to suppress democratic values and thought will never succeed," Pawar said.

State Congress and Revenue Minister President Balasaheb Thorat strongly flayed the "brutal violence unleashed by the goons of ABVP" inside the JNU.

"This is sheer hooliganism, they are ransacking property and harming people. I demand that the attackers should be brought to book immediately," Thorat said.

Shiv Sena leader and Environment Minister Aditya Thackeray said that the violence and brutality faced by students while protesting is worrisome.

"Be it Jamia, JNU, students mustn't face brutal force. Let them be! These goons must face action. They must be brought to time-bound and swift justice," Aditya Thackeray demanded.

More protests are planned during the day on Monday, said an activist P.S. Prasad, at the University of Mumbai and at the Hutatma Chowk in south Mumbai, besides other colleges and universities, by student organisations and NGOs.

qn/dpb
Pretty in pink it wasnt. Amid murky light, Nathan Lyons performance could be better described as persistent in puce. But, in the manner of a process worker putting in his hours and drawing an honest paycheque, he got the job done.

A five-wicket haul in Sydney was a puzzling gap in Lyons record. On the famous pitch where even Allan Border took 11 wickets in a Test match, where selectors are apt to get double-vision over the possibilities of spin, Lyon had paid too many runs (nearly 50) for not enough wickets (26 in eight matches). The further from home, the stranger the conditions, the better Lyon had performed.

It was such a paradox that Shane Warne had even suggested Lyon sit out this Test match to give Mitchell Swepson a chance. Lyon compared this to the idea of Warne sitting out a Sydney Test match to give Stuart MacGill a chance. By Sunday morning, either through apology or perceptiveness or both, Warne was forecasting mayhem from Lyon.

Mayhem wouldnt describe it, but to watch Lyon going about his business was a fine study in the craft of off-spin bowling. Initially, he was cautious about lobbing the ball too full into the footmarks at the Randwick end left by Neil Wagner and Mitchell Starc. He crept up the pitch, drawing Tom Blundell forward. Then he dragged down a half-tracker, his worst ball of the summer, but managed to bowl Blundell between his legs. No longer does Lyon carry the hangdog look of the long-suffering tweaker who never gets the lucky breaks.
A 13-year-old boy was punched in the stomach before being subjected to anti-Semitic abuse while travelling on a bus in London, the Jewish neighbourhood watch group Shomrim has said.

The teenager was attacked while travelling along High Road towards Stamford Hill in north London at about 11.45am on Sunday, according to a Twitter post retweeted by the Metropolitan Polices Haringey account.

The tweet, which was posted by the Shomrim group, said a male hit the boy, who was Jewish, and shouted: You stupid Jews think you own the world.

The Met confirmed it had received a report of anti-Semitic abuse and an assault taking place on a bus in the Stamford Hill area.

A Met spokesman said no arrests have been made and inquiries continue.

There were no reports of any serious injuries, Scotland Yard said.
Harvey Weinstein has been indicted on new sex crime charges in Los Angeles, just as his trial on separate rape and sexual assault charges in New York was poised to get underway, prosecutors announced Monday.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a news release that Weinstein has been charged with raping one woman and sexually assaulting another in separate incidents over a two-day period in 2013.
Forbidden City turns 600

By:Wu Qiong | From:english.eastday.com | 2020-01-06 16:17

The year of 2020 marks the 600th birthday of the Forbidden City. On the first day of 2020, the Palace Museum released a set of old and new photos reminding people of the past and present of the magnificent ancient architectural complex. Wang Xudong, director of the Palace Museum, also had a media interview for the first time and announced the following anniversary celebrations within the year.

(Forbidden Citys past and present)

For this year, people can expect a special exhibition looking back onto the past six centuries of the Forbidden City, and a series of seminars, TV productions and public service activities will also be organized.

(The square of the Gate of Supreme Harmony)

The former director of Dunhuang Academy in Gansu Province, Wang took office in the Palace Museum on April 8, 2019. His career has been dedicated to the conservation of grottoes, ancient murals and earthen ruins.

(Wang Xudong. Photo by Wang Jue, Peoples Daily)

According to Wang, the Forbidden City is a treasure house which contains endless artistic, historical and scientific valuables to be explored. Though at 600 years old, it still has to better integrate itself into the international community, communicate more with other cultures, and learn from other countries advanced civilizations. At the same time, the Forbidden City needs to be connected with the general public by linking with peoples lives.

2020 is also the 95th year since the Palace Museum was founded. Standing in the new decade of the 21st century, Wang said they will keep trying to employ both restorative and preventive protection methods to conserve the cultural relics. He also expects to turn historical relic resources and digital resources into appealing cultural creative products to invigorate the Palace Museum.
Anti-war activist protest in front of the White House in Washington, DC, on January 4, 2020. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images

"Lethal conflict" between Iran and the U.S. is a risk in 2020, but the scale of the threat posed by Tehran could be overexaggerated, according to Eurasia Group. In a note on Monday, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer and Chairman Cliff Kupchan outlined the consultancy's top risks for 2020. While they acknowledged that Iran was indeed a geopolitical risk, Bremmer and Kupchan claimed that "neither Trump nor Tehran wants all-out war." "The failure of U.S. policy toward Iran, Iraq, and Syria creates significant risks for regional stability," the authors said. "These include a lethal conflict with Iran (and) upward pressure on oil prices."

"Deadly skirmishes inside Iraq between U.S. and Iranian forces are likely," the note added. "Iran will disrupt more tanker traffic in the Persian Gulf and hit the U.S. in cyberspace. It may also use its proxies in other Middle East countries to target U.S. citizens and U.S. allies." But Eurasia noted that media speculation around the escalating tensions had created a "red herring" relating to the risk posed by Tehran. "The new 'axis of evil'  Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and Syria  is unlikely to blow up in 2020, despite the headlines," they said. "Iran represents the biggest threat, but neither Trump nor Tehran wants all-out war."

Election risks

Among other risks for global investors and market participants, the U.S. election was identified by Eurasia as the biggest threat for 2020. "This year, U.S. institutions will be tested in unprecedented ways," Bremmer and Kupchan said. "We face risks of a U.S. election that many will view as illegitimate, uncertainty in its aftermath, and a foreign policy environment made less stable by the resulting vacuum." Describing the election as "a U.S. Brexit," the authors warned that much of the risk would arise from the result being contested  whether or not Trump emerged victorious. "Either scenario would create months of lawsuits and a political vacuum, but unlike the contested Bush-Gore 2000 election, the loser is unlikely to accept a court-decided outcome as legitimate," they speculated.

Tech divide

Another key risk this year would be the "decoupling" of the American and Chinese technology sectors, according to Eurasia. Noting that the divide had already disrupted core areas such as semiconductors, cloud computing, and 5G, they warned that 2020 could see the split impact the broader economy. Some tech experts have speculated that a division between U.S. and Chinese technology could eventually lead to the creation of two separate internets  one led by China, another by the U.S.  a phenomenon dubbed the "splinternet." Eurasia also warned that the technology separation would provoke further political clashes between the U.S. and China. "The two sides will continue to use economic tools in this struggle  sanctions, export controls, and boycotts  with shorter fuses and goals that are more explicitly political," analysts said in the note.

Domestic politics
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 17:30:54|Editor: Yurou

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MACAO, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The business performance of Macao's restaurants and retailers in October 2019 was less satisfactory than that in September, and restaurants expected the business to weaken in November, the special administrative region's statistics department said here on Monday.

The latest report from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that there were 32 percent of the interviewed restaurants and similar establishments recording a year-on-year rise in revenue in October, a decrease of 6 percentage points from September 2019.

Meanwhile, 44 percent of the interviewed establishments reported a year-on-year decline in revenue in October, representing an 8 percentage point increase from September.

For retail trade, 40 percent of the interviewed retailers registered a year-on-year sales increase in October, a drop of 3 percentage points from September.

The proportion of interviewed retailers reporting a year-on-year decrease in sales edged up by 1 percentage point from September to 40 percent.

The interviewed restaurants and similar establishments expected their business to weaken in November, with 46 percent of them anticipating their revenue to decline year-on-year, an increase of 5 percentage points from October.

On the other hand, the proportion of interviewed establishments predicting their revenue to remain steady year-on-year rose by 2 percentage points to 44 percent.

Retailers expected a slight improvement in their business in November as compared to October, with 29 percent of the interviewed retailers forecasting their sales to increase year-on-year, a growth of 2 percentage points from October.

Meanwhile, 29 percent of the interviewed retailers foresaw a year-on-year sales decrease in November, down by 3 percentage points from October.
The country's largest real estate agent has issued a downbeat assessment of the housing market in 2020, warning that it has deteriorated in the last year and that the issues are unlikely to abate soon.

Marian Finnegan, managing director of Sherry FitzGerald, said "restrictive lending policies" has caused a collapse in price growth in many parts of the country.

She warned that limited access to credit has caused a "stagnant" environment in the second-hand sales market and that the dysfunctionality in the rental market is continuing to worsen.

She said 2020 will see "a stable rather than expanding transaction base" due to the decision by the Central Bank not to alter the lending rules.

"The continuation of the help-to-buy scheme should underwrite new homes development, particularly in regional Ireland," Ms Finnegan said.

"However, the pace of increase in construction activity will inevitably disappoint without further interventions.

Price inflation will remain largely stable. However, rental inflation will remain elevated and volatile unless we see a notable improvement in the supply of rental properties.

The average value of homes grew by 0.2% in 2019. This compares to growth of 3.7% in 2018.

There was modest price growth outside Dublin at 1.5%, though this figure had been 4.5% in 2018.

In the regional centres outside of Dublin, Limerick recorded the highest increase at 4.1%, while prices in Cork and Galway increased by 0.8% and 0.7% respectively.

Ms Finnegan said the figures show a "largely flat pricing environment" in 2019.

According to the Property Price Register, there were approximately 38,700 sales in the first nine months of 2019, the most recent figures available.

It was a 4% increase in comparison to the same period in 2018. Notably, though, the volume of new dwellings sold fell by 4% nationally and 20% in Dublin.

Ms Finnegan said it appears that we are "no closer to resolving the national crisis that is the housing market".

"If anything, the crisis has deteriorated in the passing year," she said. "Despite the strength of demand, overall transaction activity in the residential market remained flat during 2019."

Issues in the rental market continue to worsen, with price growth at a three-year high and a large number of landlords exiting the market. One-third of all vendors selling with Sherry FitzGerald were selling their investment properties.

"Rents continue to rise rapidly and with the continued exodus of private landlords from the market, there is little hope that this will abate soon," Ms Finnegan said.

"Despite the considerable debate and discussion, we are still no closer to resolving the overall accommodation crisis."
As recent newcomers to the Bay Area taco scene have proven, the idea of there being a canonical way to make a taco is kind of bunk. Both taquerias include dishes that showcase the creativity of Tijuana, the border city whose dynamic and ever-changing restaurant scene brought us Caesar salad, mesquite-grilled carne asada and quesabirria. Whats most compelling about this kind of regional Mexican food is its inherent instability: In a town with so much coming and going, the idea of local dishes having a fixed state is laughable. Los Angeles has long been influenced by Tijuana, and its great that the citys culinary reach is extending to the Bay Area more and more.

Above all, I hope the big thing we can take from the slow Tijuanization of our taco scene is the loosening up of taco dogma, especially on the part of diners who rag on anyone whos trying something new or charging more for dishes made with better ingredients. Who says a taco cant have strawberries and pecans on it, as Javier Campos Gutierrez does them at Tijuanas Tacos Salceados? Why dont we fry cheese on our tortillas, or serve every taco with guacamole, made tight and almost fluffy like unbaked meringue?

This all is to say that the Tijuana example reveals the futility in rubbing together any brain cells to ponder whether or not a food is authentic. If tacos from Mexico arent authentic, then what is? Assuming that a nations cuisine will never changethat foccacia in Italy will always be what you had at that one Ligurian cafe in 1998 or that everyone in Vietnam makes pho the same wayis just denial, like trying to dam a creek with your foot.

Give me tacos with strawberries, with seaweed, with French fries! What else can we do withor even withouta tortilla?

What delights wed miss out on if we refused what was new based on technicalities.

Best song I heard in a restaurant

Moanin by Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers at Umami Mart

The tasting counter at the back of Umami Mart in North Oakland is the perfect bar. Heres where you can sample some of the many boutique sakes and shochus from this Japanese importers extensive collection, all while munching on dried sardines and soaking in good jazz. Its easy to succumb to the scene-setting aspects of jazz, the idea that hearing it is part of doing something sophisticated in a sophisticated place.

Yet trying to resist that feeling while existing in this beautiful space and sipping sake out of glass cups is like wrestling with air. Just embrace the moment. Feel cool. And if you start to get too big for your britches, know that Umami Mart is selling bathtub stools just five feet away from where youre sitting.

What Im eating

Soleil Ho / SFC

For the sake of comparing all the variations on the quesabirria theme, I started 2020 by looking into a Mission district street vendor that goes by Birria Vic on Instagram. He only sells quesabirria tacos ($4 each), and several of his fans have entreated me to go since he started up this past fall. His setup consists of a flat-top grill, a portable burner for consome and a table with bowls of chopped red onion, cilantro and creamy green salsa. Mine could have been crisper and less greasy, though, so I think Ill stick with Tacos El Patron for now.

Recommended reading

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

 In case you missed itI reported out a story about restaurants and food vendors that serve just one thing, like Minnie Bells Soul Movement in Emeryville and El Garage in Richmond.

 Despite its name, this restaurant in Oakland isnt serving Tijuana-style cuisinebut its seafood-centric menu looks amazing nonetheless. Look at those oysters! I really appreciate that Omar Mamoon brought it to my attention, and his thoughts about giving older restaurants their due are well worth remembering.

 Ive been catching up on Julian K. Jarboes food column, The Care and Feeding of Your Sex Change, over at Entropy Mag. Loosely, they talk to transgender people about their relationships with food and eating  how eating disorders, misgendering and mental health factor into it all. Highlights include Summer Drink Pairings For Your Dysphoria Haircut and an interview with writer Daniel Lavery about soup and uterine atrophy.

 This is a list of the best things Ive eaten in the last decade, and you cant have any of it. Helen Rosners essay reminds me of why food is such a perfect site of memory; and why trying to communicate anything about what youve eaten to other people can be so hard. Plus, Im proud to get a shout-out for introducing her to Indomies Mee Goreng Satay noodles!

Bite Curious is a weekly newsletter from The Chronicles restaurant critic, Soleil Ho, delivered to inboxes on Monday mornings. Follow along on Twitter: @Hooleil
Crossing Toyota Naas have partnered up with Gail Murphy of Gails Rails  Kildares very own image consultant, fashion blogger and social media influencer, introducing her as their Brand Ambassador for 2020.

A local celebrity in her own right with her strong online presence, Style Studio and master classes, Gail hails from Dublin but has been living in Kildare for the last 15 years and has the motor industry in her blood.

Her father works in the motor trade, her brother is a talented mechanic and her son is working his way up the ranks as a mechanic, following in the family footsteps.

In another life, she herself worked as a service receptionist at a Toyota dealership so when she was approached by Crossings Toyota Naas with the proposed partnership, it was a natural fit!



A white Hybrid C-HR delicately detailed with her logo, keys in her hand and a big smile on her face, she took straight to social media to make the announcement!

Gail wrote: One of the most amazing pinch me moments happened to me  I have officially became Brand Ambassador for Crossings Toyota Naas for 2020! December 16 was a very proud day for me and the Toyota brand is very close to my heart.

New Brand Ambassador for the Crossings Toyota Naas, with her logo delicately applied to her C-HR



Style and sustainability are at the heart of Gails business, and so the partnership between herself and Crossings Toyota Naas  promoting their range of Hybrid vehicles made perfect sense. Toyota Hybrids are self charging so you never have to plug them in and they are super fuel efficient, running on a petrol/electric engine and produce less harmful NOx and CO2 emissions than petrol and diesel.



If you want to see how Gail gets on with her new C-HR, you can follow her on her social media channels for updates.

But if you want to test drive one yourself, contact Crossings Toyota Naas on the Sallins Road.

#HOMEOFHYBRID
Sunday evening at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California was quite a star-studded affair as Hollywoods biggest celebrities made their way onto the red carpet at the 77th Golden Globe Awards, the first showbiz awards gala for 2020. Stars from the film and television fraternity walked wearing their most glamourous outfits at the event which was hosted by British comedian Ricky Gervais. Among the many celebrities present were also Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Nick Jonas, Jennifer Lopez, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Renee Zellweger, Kirsten Dunst, Dakota Fanning, Isla Fisher, Tiffany Haddish, Margot Robbie, Joaquin Phoenix, Billy Porter, Taylor Swift, to name a few.

The evening was the perfect showcase of the trends one will be seeing in the coming year 2020, from the solid colours, the white and black combination gowns, off-shoulder gowns, puffy sleeves, bursts of neon colours, chokers and strapless gowns. While it was impossible to point a finger at the sartorial sense of any of the impeccably dressed celebrities, there were still some that left us disappointed. Here are the best and worst dressed celebrities from the 77th Golden Globe Awards. Read on:

Red had quite a big presence on the red carpet, and every woman in red was an absolute sensation. We absolutely loved Nicole Kidman in her strapless deep red Versace gown, Scarlett Johansson in her strapless scarlet Vera Wang gown with a plunging neckline. Helen Mirrens off-shouldered Dior gown in crimson looked gorgeous with her Harry Winston necklace, while Sofia Vergara showed off her curves in her embellished body-hugging Dolce and Gabbana marsala number.

Pink also had quite a moment at the red carpet, from Kirsten Dunsts gorgeous Rodarte number to Priyanka Chopra Jonas pink off-shoulder Cristina Ottaviano which she wore with Bvlgari diamond necklace and rings.

Also seen in pink were Tiffany Hadish and Dakota Fanning, but we cant really say we loved their look.

BIlly Porter (REUTERS)

A lot of white was also seen on the red carpet with ultimate style icon, Billy Porter taking the lead with his all-white Alex Vinash tuxedo with a coat featuring a giant feather train.

Also seen in white was Reese Witherspoon, who looked timeless as ever in her Roland Mouret gown, she was styled by Petra Flannery.

Also read: Priyanka Chopra stuns in pink gown, Bvlgari jewels, Nick Jonas looks dapper in suit, remind us why theyre the best-dressed couple

We also saw a lot of black and white gowns, but Zoey Kravitzs Saint Laurent polka-dotted number and Margot Robbies embellished Chanel ensemble won us over. Actor-filmmaker Greta Gerwig also looked great in a black Proenza Schouler dress with a thigh-high side slit and a white off-shoulder bodice.

Joey King arrives at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Joey Kings white heavily structured gown was also quite note-worthy. The Kissing Booth actor was seen in a highly-sculptured black and white Iris van Herpen dress with interesting wavy detail and bare shoulders.

Brighter colours were also seen on the red carpet, Cate Blanchett was seen in a gorgeous architectural yellow number. The 50-year-old didnt look anywhere close to her age in the gorgeous yellow column frock by Mary Katrantzou, and could give any 20-year-old a run for their money. Sienna Millers pale yellow Gucci number and Zoey Deutchs bright yellow Fendi full-sleeved gown were both looking amazing on the leading ladies. However, it was Taylor Swifts Etro gown with its stark, eye-hurting design and bursts of green and yellow that was a total let down.

Beyonce or Queen Bey as we all call her entered the Golden Globe ceremony a little late alongside husband Jay-Z. While Jay-Z wore a tux, Beyonce stunned in a plunging black gown with enormous metallic gold puffy sleeves. She styled her blonde hair sleekly and wore huge danglers in her ears. She may not have won a Globe, but shes Beyonce, so she still wins.

This image released by NBC shows presenters Paul Rudd, left, and Jennifer Lopez at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. (AP)

At 50, Jennifer Lopez still manages to look amazing, and her red carpet looks are what legends are made of, remember the fabulous green jungle-print Versace dress? But unfortunately, the stunner failed to impress at the Golden Globes with her Maison Valentino look. The actor wore a gown which was topped with a huge green and gold bow, and we have to say, as much as we love JLo, we just cant love this look. Funnily enough, New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman tweeted, Jennifer Lopez has come as a giant present. I thought we were past that.

Who do think deserves the best and worst dressed title?

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The Beaumont Independent School District now will begin each meeting by hearing from members of the public who wish to speak.

The changes, which come as part of an updated local policy outlined by the Texas Association of School Boards, were proposed recently.

Shannon Allen discussed the TASB policy at a November board meeting.

The public can not be denied the opportunity to speak, even if more than one person or several people have the desire to speak about one topic, Allen said.

We used to have it stated in our policy that 30 minutes was allotted for public comment. That is no longer the case.

The specific policy update was outlined at Decembers regular meeting, but not voted on.

In addition to the public comment period moving from the middle of the meeting to the beginning, community members now will be able to sign up any time before the 6 p.m. meeting.

Speakers may sign up through the link available under the BISD Board tab on the school districts website or may sign up with the board secretary, the new policy reads.

At a glance What: BISD changes public comment rules to the start of meetings When: Every month beginning Jan. 16 Where: BISD administrative office, 3395 Harrison St., Beaumont How: Sign up online by 4:30 p.m. or in person before 6 p.m. See More Collapse

Speakers who sign up before 4:30 p.m. will be able to speak for 2 minutes, while speakers who sign up after 4:30 p.m. but before 6 p.m. will be able to speak for 1 minutes.

At regular meetings, public comment continues to be permitted on any topic whether it is an item on the agenda that is posted or not, Allen said in November.

At special meetings, including board workshops or work sessions, public comment is limited to items that are posted on the agenda.

The only limitation on public comments under the new policy are complaints, including matters involving district personnel.

While board members can respond by providing specific factual information or recitation of existing policy  the board shall not deliberate or decide regarding any subject that is not included on the agenda.

Meetings also have an updated disruption policy that prohibits the audience from cheering, clapping or audibly commenting during the business portion of the meeting.

isaac.windes@hearstnp.com

twitter.com/isaacdwindes
Sean Reaume can tell you a lot about debt anxiety.

At age 18, Reaume realized he had an option to get more money quickly: He could borrow from a payday lender. At the same time, he found out he was eligible for a $500 credit card through his bank  which he says he overspent, taking years to pay the money back.

When Reaume got a higher-paying job around three years ago, he realized he could get a larger loan than hed ever taken out before  so he went to a payday lender and was approved for $2,700. Reaume worked to pay the amount off, but was laid off from his job for about five months, losing his ability to make payments.

The lender ended up taking him to court, later garnishing his wages in order to recoup the money.

The anxiety started there and it kind of spiralled. It made it worse, Reaume says.

Indeed, Reaume acknowledges that he didnt believe that anxiety could affect him so seriously until about three years ago, when his debt caught up and caused him too many problems in his life and relationships.

Reaume says he found himself drinking more than normal as his situation snowballed. As the collection calls began to mount, he struggled to keep his situation secret from his partner.

I got into terrible habits, Reaume, who is now 27, says. I (was) receiving calls constantly and its like, what do I do? I know I need to pay these things. I (didnt) know what the repercussions necessarily are.

Reaume isnt alone. A survey conducted in September showed 40 per cent of Canadians do not expect to escape debt in their lifetime  with 67 per cent of respondents assuming everyone else was carrying debt as they were.

And while much has been written about the financial effect overwhelming debt can have, new research is emerging showing it takes a serious toll on mental health as well.

Dr. Hayley Hamilton, Senior Scientist at CAMHs Institute for Mental Health Policy Research, says that general research has shown an association between the stress individuals experience as a result of being in debt and mental health problems.

A recent study co-authored by Hamilton found an association between debt and those who reported high to moderate psychological distress, poor or fair mental health and poor to fair physical health.

The CAMH study asked 8,045 adults in Ontario to self-rate their health levels in each area with a screening tool. What is particularly interesting about the study, Hamilton says, is that stress experienced is often subjective.

This subjective financial stress is often more important than the level of debt itself, Hamilton says. You and I might owe the same amount, but Im really stressed about it.

Some research suggests that this (feeling of stress) might be more important than the actual amount of debt that you owe.

Doug Hoyes, co-founder of Hoyes Michalos and Associates, a licensed insolvency trustee that helps borrowers recover from serious debt problems, says that situations such as these are all too-common among his clients.

Reminding people that they are not going through debt alone is among the first things he tells new clients. Pretty much everybody we deal with is experiencing some kind of stress as a result of (debt). Its just kind of par for the course for what were dealing with, he says.

Hoyes advises his clients not to compare themselves to people they see living large on social media, as thats not a complete picture. They only post a picture of that great vacation, Hoyes says. They dont post the picture of the credit card statement after the vacation is over.

Much of the anxiety caused by debt comes from being thrown into a new situation, such as a divorce, illness or losing your job, Hoyes says.

When life takes a turn that is different one expects, it makes it very stressful, Hoyes says. Its not the debt that causes the stress. Its the inability to service the debt that causes the stress.

If someone has a $10 million house and a $1 million mortgage, its no big deal, Hoyes says. But if I have a credit card with a couple of thousand bucks owing on it and Im not sure I can make the minimum payment this month, thats hugely stressful.

According to Hoyes, the mental strain of dealing with debt can be minimized by getting professional help and putting together a realistic plan to pay it down.

But you have to look closely at the people you work with, Hoyes warns. Debt consultants may ask for money up front  something Hoyes says is a red flag. Licensed insolvency trustees are not allowed to ask for payment up front, settling with clients after paperwork is filed.

He also advises that you ask for qualifications and ask questions about the process before getting into an agreement with a debt consultant. If you ask a few questions, it (should be) obvious whether youre dealing with someone whos legit or not.

For his part, Reaume says he started the process of getting out of debt two years ago with some help from his family. Now hes working hard to repair his credit and has some hard-won advice on how to avoid getting in trouble to begin with.

He says it was incredibly easy for him to get a loan from every (lender) around as soon as he turned 18, at the time working what he describes as a mediocre job.

It enables you to just go crazy with it, Reaume says.

Dont get a loan from these places, Reaume warns, referring to payday lenders. Work harder on trying to work out things with your bank ... even if you fail on those loans, its a lot better for your credit in the end.
TMC leader Dinesh Trivedi on Monday likened both the violence against JNU students on Sunday evening and police action against anti-CAA protesters in Jamia Islamia campus last month to "terrorist attacks".

Trivedi drew the parallel while conveying his party chief Mamta Banerjee's support to the people protesting in South East Delhi's Shaheen Bagh against recent changes in the citizenship law.

Trivedi, a former railway minister, was part of a Trinamool Congress delegation, comprising Rajya Sabha MP Manas Bhunia, Lok Sabha MP Sajda Ahmed and Vivek Gupta, which visited a group of protesters agitating here at Shaheen Bagh against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC).

"They think they are god and have the power to write everyone's (account) books but don't want any accountability for their work. Don't ask us anything about it. They have crossed all limits," Trivedi told the gathering of thousands that included women and children.

"We are coming from the JNU which was attacked. There was also an attack on Jamia (Millia Islamia) which was carried out by the police. These attacks are equal to terrorist attacks because who goes out for such acts wearing masks! It's only the terrorists who do so," he added.

His statement comes a day after the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University in which several masked goons had run riot on the campus and attacked teachers and students.

The TMC leader also slammed the central government over the contentious changes in the citizenship law and a proposed pan-India NRC, saying his party won't allow the division of the country on religious ground.

"Who are you to ask us for our identity cards? You were nowhere to be seen in the fight for freedom (from British rule)... On one side, you preach 'Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam' (whole world is one family) and on the other, you are trying to divide the country. We won't let that happen.

"We (TMC leaders) have come here to promise you that we won't let the country get divided on religious line. This is (Mahatma) Gandhi's India, Maulana (Abdul Kalam) Azad's India, this is your and my India," he said.

He also lauded the courage of a 90-year-old woman, a regular at the protest venue in Shaheen Bagh.

"She is defying the age. Her effort is commendable. We have learnt from TV that you are also here to protest," he said.

Bhuian, a Rajya Sabha MP, said the TMC delegation has come to Delhi to extend its party's support and solidarity to the protestors.

"Delhi is bleeding. Students and teachers have been attacked in JNU and Jamia. Our Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee has asked us to convey her full support to the protestors. She has said we won't allow the country to be divided on religious grounds through CAA, NRC and the National Population Register (NPR)," Bhuian told PTI.

Thousands of people, including women and children, are protesting outside Jamia Millia Islamia and nearby Shaheen Bagh to oppose the CAA and the NRC.

Besides Delhi, protests have been witnessed at several places in the country over the contentious law and have led to clashes at several places including Uttar Pradesh, where more than 20 people have died.

According to the amended law, members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan till December 31, 2014 due to their persecution there on the ground of religion will not be treated as illegal immigrants and given Indian citizenship. The law excludes Muslims.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
ABC

The Views Meghan McCain on Monday declared her surprise that people would fear war after President Donald Trump assassinated top Iranian general Qassem Soleimania decision she is unequivocally happy about.

Returning from its holiday break on Monday, The View brought on ABC News political director Rick Klein to discuss the ongoing Iran crisis. While discussing concerns from Democrats that the president is escalating tensions with Iran to distract from impeachment, McCain seemed to come to the defense of the president she has often criticized.

Yesterday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Soleimani was, quote, actively plotting against the American public and that Trump made the right decision, the conservative host said. I was actually really surprised to see things like World War III trending, just given the fact that Soleimani was responsible for over 600 American deaths.

Why do you think people are reacting the way that they are? McCain continued. Do you think its just because there is this trust gap, if you will, between the president of the United States and the American public? For me, when a big, bad terrorist gets blown up, Im happy about it.

Klein, meanwhile, said there were two things at play here: The trust gap Americans have with the president and the fact that the administration hasnt been able to explain how imminent the threat was of any attacks Soleimani was purportedly planning against the United States.

In a later segment, McCain wondered why Trump was getting so much blowback over the attack on Iran since, in her opinion, other Republican presidents would have made the same decision.

Iran has been escalating their attacks for months and months, the proudly hawkish pundit stated. I mean, they were harassing our warships, firing rockets to American troops, orchestrated a rocket strike to killed a U.S. contractor and wounded four service members and obviously stormed the U.S. embassy.

I made the argument to a friend of mine yesterday that I dont think a President Marco Rubio or President Romney would have necessarily done anything different by taking out Soleimani, she added. Why do you think people are reacting this way to Trump doing this?

Story continues

Klein noted that much of it has to do with Trumps track record and the way hes conducted himself and the fact that hes sitting under impeachment and would have reason to distract.

I also think if this was another president, a president Rubio or Romney, I think there would still be questions asked, which are the right questions to ask, the ABC reporter continued. When you use military force to kill a guy, you want to know what was behind it.

Fellow co-host Sunny Hostin, meanwhile, further stated that previous presidents had the opportunity to kill Soleimani but passed on it because everybody knew that taking out someone whos not just a terrorist but also someone whos a member of a government, a sitting position in a government, thats a provocative action. Its actually tantamount to war.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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The Consulate General of Iraq in Detroit will open a memorial event for slain Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, the consulate announced Monday on its Facebook page.

The Consulate General of the republic of Iraq in Detroit announces the opening of a register of condolences to the lives of the martyrs who have fallen as a result of the recent American raids in Iraq, the post reads. The event will take place on January 7 and 8 and is open to the public.

Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards elite Quds Force, was killed Thursday in a U.S. precision airstrike at Baghdad International Airport ordered by President Trump. The commander was the architect of Iranian war strategy in Syria, and is considered by U.S. officials to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq following the 2003 invasion.

The register of condolences is also intended for Abu Mahdi Al-Mohandis, leader of the Kataib Hezbollah militia group. The group, which is distinct from Lebanons Hezbollah, killed an American civilian contractor in Iraq on December 29. Al-Mohandis also attended the riots outside of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad that preceded the air strike.

The consulate sits in Michigans 14th congressional district. District Representative Barbara Lawrence, a Democrat, had no immediate comment on the issue. The event has, however, caught the eye of the FBI.

We are aware of events scheduled  both locally and nationally  in response to recent overseas incidents, Special Agent Mara R. Schneider told theA Detroit Free Press. While there is no specific and credible threat to this area at this time, we urge the public to be vigilant and report any suspicious activity to law enforcement.

Michigan Rising Action, the local arm of the Republican America Rising PAC, called on Michigan Democrats to denounce the event in a statement.

Soleimani is a known terrorist with the blood of many Americans on his hands. We call on Rep. Tlaib, Sen. Peters, Rep. Slotkin, Rep. Dingell, Rep. Lawrence, and Rep. Stevens to immediately denounce this action being taken by the Iraqi Consulate in Detroit, Tori Sachs, executive director of Michigan Rising Action, said in part.

More from National Review
Passengers are seen in the waiting room at Nanchangxi Railway Station in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province. [Xinhua]

BEIJING, January. 4 (Xinhua)  Over 300 million train tickets for the Spring Festival travel rush have been sold after the presale kicked off on December. 12, 2019, according to the latest statistics from China's railway operator.

Thursday saw a single-day record of 16.33 million tickets sold for train journeys on January. 31, the first working day after the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, the China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. (CSRC) said.

About 14.43 million tickets were sold via the official 12306 online booking services on Thursday, accounting for 88.4 percent of the total.

Popular trains of the day are return trips to major cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, with tickets almost sold out.

Thanks to the nationwide promotion of electronic tickets, travelers can use their ID cards to enter and exit train stations instead of using paper tickets for boarding, according to the CSRC.

The upcoming Spring Festival holiday is a traditional time for family reunions, while the travel rush will last for 40 days from January. 10 to February. 18.

(Source: Xinhua)
Getty

Donald Trump has threatened to "quickly and fully strike back" if Iran attacks any American citizens or targets, and says any American response could be "in a disproportionate manner".

The threat comes as the world waits to see how Iran will respond to the recent killing of Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani at a Baghdad airport, sparking major anti-US protests across Iran.

On Twitter, Mr Trump suggested that the threat was a "legal notice" to Congress that he might green light such an attack, and suggested that such notice "is not required". Legal scholars have contradicted that notion, though, saying that the War Powers Resolution regulating the launching of wars does not allow Mr Trump to notify Congress through tweet, and noting that the US Constitution does require congressional approval before the country can be taken to war.

"These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any US person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner," Mr Trump wrote.

He continued: "Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!"

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2020

The threat comes just days after Soleimani was killed in a targeted air strike at an airport in Baghdad. Following his death, Iran leaders have threatened to avenge his death, but it is not clear when or how that revenge may come. The US has justified the attack by saying that an "imminent" attack on Americans was coming, and that killing Soleimani was seen as a way to thwart that effort.

Story continues

Even so, Mr Trump has been criticised in the days following the attack for not consulting Congress before the attack, with Democrats questioning the wisdom behind such a drastic measure since previous presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush had likewise had the ability to kill the leader but determined not to because of the risk that it would spark unrest in the Middle East.

They believed ultimately that would get more Americans killed, and you can already see the consequence to us security in the region, Democratic senator Chris Murphy said on Sunday, referring to those past presidents and a Sunday vote in Iraq to expel US troops following the air strikes.

"We do not generally execute high-level political figures of sovereign nations, in part because we know that that opens a Pandoras box that may expose American officials to assassination, but also because we know that ultimately that may get more Americans killed, as it likely will, he continued, referring to the attack as a "dramatic step".

Shortly after Mr Trump's threat was posted, the president's legal assertions were challenged by legal scholars. That group includes Oona Hathaway, the founder and director of the Centre for Global Legal Challenges at Yale University.

"This tweet threatens to break several laws. First, the President cannot notify Congress under the War Powers Resolution by tweet," she wrote on Twitter in response. "Second, he claims "[s]uch legal notice is not required." That's not true. Any time the president involves the armed forces into 'hostilities,' he must--at a minimum--notify Congress within 48 hours."

She continued: "Third, he is also obligated to 'in every possible instance . . . consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situation where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances . . .' under the" War Powers Resolution. "Fourth, he is promising a 'perhaps ... disproportionate' strike in response--that's another promise of an international law violation. Any action taken in self defence (the apparent justification for the strikes) must be necessary and proportionate to the threat posed."

And she concluded: "That any of this has to be said suggests just how insane this situation has become. Where are the White House, [Department of Justice, Department of Defence and] State [Department] lawyers?"

Read more

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Ireland's finance minister confirmed on Friday that the state likely ended 2019 with a budget surplus of 0.4% of gross domestic product after tax receipts for last year came in 1.4 billion euros ahead of expectations.

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe last month raised the projected surplus to 0.4% of GDP from 0.2% in October after another unexpected surge in corporate tax receipts. GDP figures for the final quarter of 2019 are due to be released in March.

Receipts for all the main tax categories were in line with expectations with the exception of corporation tax, which ended 2019 1.4 billion euros ahead of forecast, Donohoe said in a statement before full data due to be released on Friday. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
This refers to the well-written piece, Five banking trends for the new year (Bankers Trust, January 6). While there will be more non-performing asset (NPA) recovery and a slight increase in credit off-take, there are certain features which will continue to cause concern in the financial sector.

Firstly, there will be fresh accretion of NPAs from problematic NBFCs/HFCs and from Mudra loans as well as retail loans going bad. This feature will get aggravated in an economy which is slowing down. Secondly, with fairly wide divergence in the NPAs as declared by banks and ...
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- With the new year comes unprecedented rights for consumers under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to control and protect the massive amounts of data that companies collect from them. Common Sense has new free resources to help families exercise their rights including a "Do Not Sell" form and tips for how to understand what information companies have about them and how families can best protect it.

In an era where we're tracked with every click, swipe, and voice request, the new law, which was co-sponsored by Common Sense, now allows parents, teens, and other consumers to demand that companies tell them what information they've collected about them, and to delete and no longer sell their personal information. The law extends extra protections for teens up to age 16, prohibiting companies from selling their data unless explicitly given permission.

The CCPA also requires companies to provide consumers with information on their websites about how to exercise their privacy rights. Common Sense is providing a free request form that consumers can download and send in through mail or email to find out which categories of data are collected about them, to find out how their data is used, and to tell a company not to sell it. And even though some companies say they don't sell data, consumers have the right to know which data has been collected about them and can request to delete their information.

"Because we cannot count on profit-driven companies to prioritize privacy and consumer protections, Common Sense is providing a free form consumers can use to exercise their rights," said James P. Steyer, CEO of Common Sense. "California is ground zero for privacy protections and holding tech companies accountable. The time has come once and for all to take action and take back our privacy."

The Common Sense privacy resources also include tips for families on their new rights, illustrative videos on why their data is important and how it affects their day-to-day lives, tips on how to better protect children's privacy at home and in school, privacy reviews of edtech and games, and an educational curriculum on privacy.

Today's kids have had access to devices their entire lives, and these devices have in turn had access to kidswith little regulation or protection around what data is collected or how it is used. This means companies have been tracking everything from their health and habits to their education and political beliefsand we don't yet know what implications this will have for them going forward.

Common Sense co-sponsored the new law as part of its advocacy for tech reforms that will lead to the improved digital well-being of kids and families and protect against the ongoing profiling and commercial use of kids' data.

What parents need to know:

1. As of January 1, 2020, the CCPA provides consumers:

The right to know which personal information is being collected about them.

The right to know which categories of personal information are sold and to whom.

The right to opt out and say no to the sale of their personal information.

The right to access their personal information.

The right to download or transfer their personal information.

The right to have information they provided to a company deleted.

The right to equal service and price whether or not they exercise their privacy rights.

2. For kids under 16, companies will be prohibited from selling their data unless parents (for kids under 13) or teens (age 1315) tell the company they can.

3. Companies will not go to consumers. Families have to contact the companies directly to exercise their rights.

4. For accessing or deleting information, many companies may require individuals to log in to the service to verify identity. To exercise the right to know what data has been collected about them, every individual must submit a form with each company (there are no family forms).

5. A company is supposed to fulfill requests within 45 days.

6. To tell companies not to sell your data, individuals can submit a form or should be able to click on a "Do Not Sell" link on their sites.

7. Consumers can submit requests starting January 1, 2020. Companies have until July 1, 2020, before compliance is enforced.

Find more information here .

About Common Sense

Common Sense is the nation's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in the 21st century. Learn more at commonsense.org.

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Lisa Cohen

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SOURCE Common Sense

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The rate of 10 gram 22-carat gold in Mumbai was Rs 47,640 plus 3 percent GST, while 24-carat 10 gram was Rs 52,009 plus GST

Gold prices hit a fresh lifetime high to Rs 40,842 per 10 gram, gaining Rs 750 in the Mumbai bullion market as investors scurried to take cover in the safe-haven metal due to escalating tension between the US and Iran.

The precious metal has already gained Rs 1,602 per 10 grams in just the first five days of 2020, most of it clocked after January 3 when a US airstrike killed Iran Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani.

In the international market, the metal hit a seven-year high. The last high was hit on April 10, 2013.

According to Gajendra Prabu, Technical Research Analyst, HDFC Securities, the weekly chart of gold shows the rally has a strong tone. Price has started moving up in a rising channel indicating a bullish trend, he said, adding, he would maintain bullish stance until $1,610 and take profits from there towards $1650  1690 band.

Global brokerage firm Goldman Sachs has maintained its 3, 6 and 12-month forecast for the precious metal at $1,600 per troy ounce as bullion continues to be a better hedge than oil during phases of geopolitical uncertainty, according to a Reuters report.

The rate of 10 grams 22-carat gold in Mumbai was Rs 37,411 plus 3 percent GST, while 24-carat 10 gram was Rs 40,842 plus GST. The 18-carat gold quoted at Rs 30,632 plus GST in the retail market.

The gold/silver ratio that refers to the amount of silver required to buy an ounce of gold stood at 85.16 to 1.

Silver prices gained Rs 625 to 47,955 per kg from its closing on January 3.

In the futures market, gold rate touched an intraday high of Rs 41,096 and an intraday low of Rs 40,250 on MCX. For the February series, the yellow metal touched a low of Rs 36,098 and a high of Rs 41,096.

Gold futures for delivery in February rose Rs 728, or 1.81 percent on the MCX trading at Rs 40,840 per 10 gram in evening trade in a business turnover of 14,940 lots. Gold contracts for April delivery gained Rs 768, or 1.91 percent, at Rs 41,064 per 10 gram in a business turnover of 8,140 lots.

The value of the February contract traded so far is Rs 5,293.58 crore and April contract saw the value of Rs 532.41 crore.

Similarly, Gold Mini contract for February was higher by Rs 737, or 1.84 percent at Rs 40,803 in a business turnover of 12,771 lots.

Axis Securities advised its clients to sell gold at Rs 40,950 with stop loss at Rs 41,100 and target of Rs 40,790.

According to Motilal Oswal, MCX Gold has support at Rs 40,750-40,600 whereas resistance is at Rs 41,100-41,330. It advised clients to buy on dip targeting resistance level of Rs 41,100-41,330.

The brokerage firm expects spot gold to find key support at $1,550 whereas resistance remains at $1,595.

At 1:06 pm (GMT), spot gold was up $25.65 at $1,578.45 an ounce in London trading.
In this episode, writer Nii Larte laments the dilemma of patients following the government's decision to park ambulances meant to save lives again...Let's hear from him....

The people of a country voted for a government that assured that an ambulance for each constituency was in the offing.

The electorate bought into the promise because it was to revamp their ailing national ambulance service and also improve the quality of their healthcare delivery. Three years after the nod had been given; nothing major has been recorded in that regard.

Although some of the ambulances have arrived they're parked at the country's State House. When those in authority were forced to do the needful and distribute them for the time being because patients were in dire need, the citizens were asked to wait for a while.

When they almost thought the moment of joy was near, they rather had to take a pause and prepare for more profuse bleeding. Why? The intended distribution of the ambulances was delayed further without recourse, just 48 hours before the scheduled date. The citizens are now enraged and cannot fathom why. They are yet to come to terms clearly if they had made the right choice due to the listed reasons for the three-week postponement.

Well, you've so far not read parts of your favorite novel; it isn't the script of one of those nice movies either. Guess what? This's actually a real situation currently happening in Ghana where its health sector currently operates a fleet of 55 ambulances for its close to 30 million population. An average of 520,000 citizens who share one ambulance should've enjoyed some respite because the promise to get each of their constituencies an ambulance was to be fulfilled. Shockingly, it 'ended in tears', just to borrow a popular catchphrase in the country at the moment.

When voters take to social media to vent their angst and frustration

A huge doubt has therefore been cast on our seriousness in strengthening our already weak emergency response system as a developing country. After months of pressure mounted on the government to release the 96 out of the 307 ambulances, it says it has procured for distribution, it didn't budge. It defended its decision and cited among other things technical issues that needed to be first addressed. But for me, it was pretty obvious that the political expediency on the part of the country's leaders was at its best display.

It was crystal clear that the government was awaiting the arrival of the remaining ambulances to colorfully commission it as is done by all parties to score their cheap political points. After giving its own timelines and proposing Monday, January 6, 2020, for the 'outdooring' of the ambulances, the Health Minister and the National Ambulance Service two days prior to the event date request more days in a rather interesting twist. How? Nothing new really! The very same reasons for holding onto the distribution of the first batch of ambulances have been given again just that, it has been written on paper in a letter to the President. A clear case that our tolerance as a people in patiently waiting for the needless commissioning has just been taken for granted.

Tricycles as ambulances

In a country where many rural communities have due to the shortage of functional ambulances been left with no other choice than to use tricycles and commercial vehicles to carry patients who have been referred to other facilities, usually through very harsh circumstances, one will only wonder if the continuous parking and non-distribution of the idling ambulances is to subject patients to more humiliation or normalize the practice. The current turn of event is just deepening the woes and intensifying the plight of pregnant women and many other sick persons who lose their lives as a result of this precarious situation.

The lack of an ambulance in the Wa East District of the Upper West Region compelled a 21-year old woman at Kpaglaghi to be delivered of her baby in a tricycle

Pooh-poohing the so-called technical issues

In the five-point explanation, the National Ambulance Service argued that issues such as the training of staff and paramedics on the usage of the ambulances and medical equipment as well as an improved state of the art digitized ICT dispatch system needed to be addressed. The other concerns it raised were the installation of tracking devices, the establishment of service centers and the need for the labeling of the ambulances. Couldn't all of these have been done in advance given the crucial services ambulances provide? There was no planning and forecasting, I guess. How does one go to war without adequate training? Why couldn't the training of staff be done earlier? Contingencies in health services are allowed. Provisional plans must be adopted while we improvise and use the ambulances. Ghana's digitization and ICT challenges alone make me cringe and feel the wait for the completion of the technical issues will take forever. Don't think far; name any of our technology services without hitches. Congratulations to you if you found any, the hospitals are not even there yet with digital services so why bother our ambulances with it now?

A local man will not sit unconcerned to be bitten by a snake, likewise, why are authorities justifying the indefensible while people continue to suffer as the ambulances breathe fine air? Let me take you back to the much-touted drone for medical supplies initiative . Though I was not in support, did they not complete all the necessary training and infrastructure with some drone centers established after the grand launch? Even though not all drone centers are ready, the policy is cruising. So what are they telling us? Same cannot be done to the ambulances? Do we have to finish with everything before we hit the ground running? Doing things in a piecemeal approach is not a crime. We should be given a break! Pressure group, Occupy Ghana was just spot on when it described the act as gross irresponsibility on the part of the government.

Those in charge seem to be unfazed about major key issues such as a responsive national response command center and which if not critically examined, will throw the very reason for the operationalization of the ambulances off gear. Issues of recurrent cost, emergency patients' journey, reforming emergency care in the country and even how the government can plan to meet some of its health targets appear to be at the bottom of the list for them.

What we can do

Ghanaians may generally not be angry enough. It is just about the time that the amount of force that led to the cancellation of the national referendum and the dropping of the new parliamentary chamber is exerted on the government to make the parked ambulances move. The media ought to expose how the government by this act is making life for the sick unbearable. It must also make the masses understand the severity and harm the continuous parking of the ambulances is having on healthcare.

More importantly, there is a need to revise our health management service education programs. This current situation brings to bear how those who pass through our health training institutions are being equipped. Does it mean for all this while, no paramedic has been trained to man an ambulance which is an essential machine in providing healthcare? An inclusive training capable of dealing with our health issues on all fronts is one of the many ways forward.

Ghanaians are obviously not enthused about the governments failure in releasing the ambulances

To avert many of these instances, the political determinant of health cannot be ignored. Ghanaians must vote out and demand accountability from any political party that unperturbedly toy with an essential sector such as health. A change in voting pattern and support of realistic policies devoid of partisan colorization will end the shameful flow where 'partisan shenanigans' take us for granted. Pressure groups must not rest on their oars. They should also join in the fight to ensure that our ambulances are released.

It can't end in tears for 'bleeding' patients, why park ambulances again?

In any case, the one constituency, one ambulance will still not be enough to deal with our emergency issues. It is, however, a step towards one end. The ideal case in a perfect system will be for every health facility to possess its own ambulance. So why not distribute and use the few that we have managed to procure to augment our healthcare delivery system rather than sit on this time bomb. Just maybe, there is more to the tales both the Service and the Health Ministry are telling us.

Call it flimsy, untenable, insensitive, embarrassing and sickening, the excuses being given and you will just be right. This is indicative that our government does not prioritize healthcare. These reasons for the non-distribution of the ambulances should be the last thing Ghanaians must be wake up to. Must life not be saved and should the needless deaths not end? Our leaders need to be careful with how the issue of the parked ambulances is being handled. My worst fear? The ambulances are not left to the mercy of the weather, get grounded and rot for the country to lose the huge sums of money it expended in procuring them. Let's think about this; a healthy nation is a wealthy nation. Say it after me! It just cannot end in tears for our 'bleeding' patients, why park our ambulances again?



The author of this piece, Nii Larte Lartey is a Broadcast Journalist with Citi FM/Citi TV

Nii Larte has interests in Health, Education and stories about young people
Ruth Edwards is MP for Rushcliffe.

The breach of the US Embassy in Iraq and the US retaliation in assassinating Qasem Soleimani are potent symbols of the increasing tensions between Iran and the West.

There are clear, visible signs of the Government moving to protect our people and assets in the region, with Royal Navy ships being sent to protect tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. But, unseen, there will also be huge amounts of activity in Security Operation Centres across the country to step-up our digital defences.

Suppliers of Critical National Infrastructure, such as my former employer BT, often face an increase in attempted cyber security attacks at times of high international tensions.

Cyber attacks are increasingly used by nation states to continue war by other means. Ten years ago, the Stuxnet virus was deployed against Iran to damage centrifuges being used in its nuclear programme and, last year, US officials claimed to have carried out a cyber attack which degraded Irans ability to target tankers in the Gulf.

We know that Iran has been developing its own cyber capabilities. Malware such as the Shamoon virus, which wiped out much of the digital infrastructure of oil companies like Saudi Aramco and RasGas, has been attributed to Iranian-backed sources.

We may not have yet seen a C1 cyber-attack against the UK  thats an attack that cripples our critical infrastructure  but the UKs ability and willingness to deploy both hard and soft cyber power against nation state adversaries and organised criminal groups will be crucial as we redefine our role in international affairs post-Brexit.

This years Security, Defence and Foreign Policy review provides an excellent opportunity to reinforce Britains place as a leader in international cyber power.

As well as investment in hardware  ships, jets and kinetic weapon  the UK must prioritise investment in defensive and offensive cyber capabilities.

Yes, that means investing in the latest technologies, but it also means making sure we have enough people with the skills to defend infrastructure and businesses across the country. This is the most pressing issue.

Government research has found that 54 per cent of businesses in the UK lack the skilled people they need to protect themselves from cyber-attack. This is a global problem, with current estimates that we will have a global shortage of 1.8 million cyber security professionals by 2022.

Previous governments have rightly sought to address the shortage of talent coming through the pipeline, with initiatives such as CyberFirst encouraging young people to study cyber security at university. This has been an effective method of getting young people into the industry.

What we need now is a comprehensive strategy to help train and transfer people into cyber security roles mid-career. The 3 billion National Skills Fund, announced in the Conservative election manifesto, to help adults re-train and re-enter the workplace provides this opportunity. Sectors of strategic national importance, such as cyber security, should be prioritised.

Finally, we must project soft-power abroad. In the same way the UK helps developing countries build infrastructure through its international aid programme, we need to use our leadership in cyber security to help our friends and trading partners develop their capacity.

For example, the UK has made good progress in improving the infrastructure of the internet and making it harder for attackers to exploit, through its Active Cyber Defence Programme. It also has advanced information sharing practises between the public and private sector and has spent years developing a comprehensive strategic approach to tackling cyber threats. Helping others to build this capacity would strengthen cyber security across the world.

Cyber Power will be a defining characteristic of the 20s: the UK can, and must, lead in its deployment.
A Chinese mother has been accused of abandoning her baby in a rubbish bin next to a hospital.

The woman is said to have thrown away the child whose umbilical cord was still attached to him yesterday in eastern China's Jiangsu Province.

The boy was reportedly rescued by a passer-by and is being looked after by a hospital in the city of Huai'an.

Surveillance footage purports to show the woman putting her newborn son into a blue bin before slowly leaving the site in China. It shows her looking back to the bins a few times

The incident took place in the wee hours on Shenzhen Road next to the People's Hospital in the county of Lianshui, according to Lianshui Hot Line.

Surveillance footage purports to show the woman standing in front of a row of bins on the side of a street before stuffing an identified item into one of them.

The clip then shows her leaving the site slowly, but not before casting a few last looks towards the plastic containers.

According to online accounts, the baby was rescued after being found by an elderly woman. The child was taken to the hospital next to the bins and doctors found him to be healthy

Eventually she walks away from the scene while holding some items in her right hand.

The video then shows one passer-by taking a bag out of the bin, watched by a companion.

According to online accounts, the deserted boy was rescued by an elderly woman who happened to pass the bins.

The child was allegedly taken to the People's Hospital in Lianshui and found to be healthy.

He remains under the care of the hospital, it is claimed.

According to the Chinese criminal law, parents who abandon their minors could face up to five years in prison.

The police have not commented on the matter as of writing.
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A 230-foot 40 million superyacht called Game Changer - owned by a mystery billionaire - has been moored up on the Thames.

The vessel - which has a crew of 22 and a maximum of 12 guests - was modified to include a custom dive centre and a below-deck hanger for an Airbus H130 T2 helicopter during a shipyard refit.

It is equipped as an exploration vessel to study the world's oceans, examine biodiversity, marine conservation and conduct oceanographic surveys and set off in November 2018.

A 230-foot Dutch-built superyacht called Game Changer owned by a mystery billionaire has been moored up on the Thames

The vessel - which has a crew of 22, and a maximum of 12 guests - is equipped as an exploration vessel to study the world's oceans, examine biodiversity, marine conservation and conduct oceanographic surveys

It has been moored at Tower Bridge and was pictured sailing past cruise ship Columbus which is docked at London International Cruise Terminal.

The superyacht has a total of 250 square metres of open deck space and won Support Vessel of the year in 2018.

It has a submarine, a hospital facility and the afterdeck has a helicopter landing pad.

The vessel - built by Dutch firm DAMEN - can cruise the polar oceans at a maximum speed of 22.5 knots and a cruise range of 4,500 nautical miles.

It has been moored at Tower Bridge and was pictured sailing past cruise ship Columbus (pictured) which is docked in London International Cruise Terminal

It has a submarine, a hospital facility and the afterdeck has a landing pad with a below deck hanger to store a helicopter. Pictured: Game Changer alongside cruise ship Columbus

Game Changer was designed as a support vessel to allow owners of super yachts to carry larger helicopters, more staff and equipment while enjoying their own luxury vessels.

In 2017, DAMEN said there are now either 11 of these support vessels completed or under construction.

Mark Vermeulen, DAMEN Product Director said: 'Our clients want to go to exciting new destinations with less established superyacht infrastructure and they want to have more fun with larger tenders, larger helicopters and submersibles.

'They also want to take more staff, guides, pilots and security personnel with them. Game Changer is the massive leap forward in capability that they need, but at a much lower cost than a larger yacht. Plus, they get all the benefits of flexible operations and privacy. Thats why we call it the Smart Stretch.'

Game Changer was completed in March 2017 and was sent into the North Sea for sea trials before being offered to clients.

The vessel - built by Dutch firm DAMEN - can cruise the polar oceans at a maximum speed of 22.5 knots and a cruise range of 4,500 nautical miles. Pictured: The vessel's kitchen

Game Changer was designed as a support vessel to allow owners of super yachts to carry larger helicopters, more staff and equipment while enjoying their own luxury vessels. Pictured: The ship's custom dive centre

In 2017, DAMEN said there are now either 11 of these support vessels completed or under construction. Pictured: A helicopter flying over Game Changer

According to the company, there is a further 110 square metres of storage below decks.

The heli deck on Game Changer is larger than those found on most super yachts meaning it can cope with larger aircraft with a longer range.

It also carries enormous amounts of aviation fuel, diesel and fuel for the owner's tender. It is also able to carry spare parts and luggage.

It also carries enormous amounts of aviation fuel, diesel and fuel for the owner's tender. It is also able to carry spare parts and luggage. Pictured: Inside Game Changer
File Image

The United States will quickly strike back, "perhaps in a disproportionate manner," if Iran strikes any American person or target, U.S. President Donald Trump said.

"These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!" Trump said on Twitter.

American forces on Friday killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, fuelling anti-American protests across Iran and ratcheting up tensions between the two longtime adversaries.
The Kenyan government and military have been criticized in the past for their characterization of attacks, even while they are ongoing. When al-Shabab attacked the Westgate mall in Nairobi in 2013, and again when the group attacked the DusitD2 hotel and office complex last January, Kenyan officials declared the attacks over even while journalists at those scenes reported continuing explosions and gunfire.
Internet rating sites are just as important as recommendations from friends and family in choosing a doctor, but other factors matter more

Find a restaurant. Book a hotel. Choose a product to buy. Online ratings and reviews from other customers can help with making decisions on all of these, and their use has exploded in the past decade.

But online ratings of physicians? A new poll suggests they don't yet hold as much sway with the Americans who use the most health care: people over age 50.

In all, 43% of people between the age of 50 and 80 said they had ever looked up a doctor online to see how others rated him or her, or what was said in their reviews.

One-third of them had done so at least once in the past year, according to new results from the National Poll on Healthy Aging. And two-thirds of them had chosen a doctor due to good online ratings and reviews.

When it comes to choosing a physician, online reviews matter about as much as what an older person hears from family and friends through word of mouth - but only one in five poll respondents called either source of information "very important."

The poll, carried out by the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation with support from AARP and Michigan Medicine, U-M's academic medical center, involved a national sample of more than 2,200 adults aged 50 to 80. They answered questions about many aspects of online physician ratings.

"People of all ages are turning to the web to find information, so it is not surprising that older Americans are looking up physician ratings online," says David Hanauer, M.D., M.S., an associate professor at the University of Michigan, IHPI member and specialist in clinical informatics who worked on the poll. "But it is a bit of a surprise that these online ratings now carry as much weight as recommendations from family and friends."

What mattered more to older Americans than the number of stars a doctor received online? According to the poll, 61% of all those polled said the wait time for an appointment was very important, and about 40% said that about recommendations from other doctors or the physician's level of experience.

Meanwhile, only 7% of those polled said they had actually posted a review or rating of a doctor online -- even though older adults are much more likely than most younger people to see more than one physician, or to see physicians and other providers multiple times in a year.

"Finding a new doctor can be stressful. Online rating might be one of many sources of information that can help older adults navigate this process," says Preeti Malani, M.D., director of the poll and a professor of internal medicine at U-M.

No matter what, the new poll results suggest that the stereotype of older adults as not Internet-savvy is outdated.

"This survey makes it clear that although online physician reviews and ratings are important to older consumers, they are savvy about information gathered on the internet and have a healthy dose of skepticism around them, too," says Alison Bryant, Ph.D., senior vice president of research for AARP.

Among those who did look at reviews, 69% said they wouldn't select a doctor who had mostly negative reviews. Meanwhile, 71% said that a few bad reviews among a large number of positive reviews wouldn't keep them from choosing a physician.

Just over half of those polled said they thought physicians influence their ratings to make themselves look good. And in fact, 17% of those who posted a review said they did so because the staff at their doctor's office encouraged them to.

Most older adults don't appear to be using a longstanding source of information: state medical boards.

Hanauer, who has faculty positions in the Department of Pediatrics at the U-M Medical School and at the U-M School of Information, is the Program Director for Clinical Informatics at the Michigan Institute for Clinical & Health Research. He is a member of IHPI and of U-M's Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation and Research (CHEAR) Center.

The National Poll on Healthy Aging results are based on responses from a nationally representative sample of 2,256 adults aged 50 to 80 who answered a wide range of questions online. Questions were written, and data interpreted and compiled, by the IHPI team. Laptops and Internet access were provided to poll respondents who did not already have them.

###

A full report of the findings and methodology is available at http://www.healthyagingpoll.org, along with past National Poll on Healthy Aging reports.
In a rare display of emotion from the typically reserved and measured supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cried openly Monday at the funeral of slain Gen Qassem Soleimani, his most important military commander with whom he shared a deep bond.

Oh Allah, they are in need of your mercy, and you are exalted above punishing your servants, Khamenei said during a mass prayer as he stood over a flag-draped casket with the remains of Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq on Friday.

Khamenei's voice cracked under the weight of the moment during a funeral procession unlike any in Iran's recent history. Police said attendees numbered into the millions.

The funeral showcased the depth of the bond Khamenei had with the slain general and gave insight into how Soleimani's death is being felt personally by the supreme leader. It could also impact how Khamenei responds to the United States.

The US killed Soleimani, other Revolutionary Guard members and a senior Iraqi militia leader in a stunning attack on their convoy, shortly after Soleimani had arrived at Baghdad's international airport.

The killing, ordered by President Donald Trump, has dramatically heightened the risk of war as senior Iranian figures vow to strike US military targets in response.

To many across the Middle East, Soleimani was a dangerous figure whose armed militias killed thousands of Sunni Muslims in Syria and threatened regional security. To the US, he was the man responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq and countless attacks on Iraqis fighting alongside American forces.

In Iran, Soleimani was a lionised figure who embodied Iran's lethal reach in the face of crushing US pressure. He was a powerful commander in charge of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force, overseeing Iran's proxy militias abroad, ranging from Hezbollah in Lebanon to armed factions in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

In Iraq, that meant directing the country's mostly Shiite paramilitaries, including in the fight alongside the US against Sunni extremists like the Islamic State group.

To Iran's supreme leader, Soleimani was a loyal aide who conferred with him often and cemented Tehran's footprint far beyond the country's borders, helping to preserve and advance the principles of the 1979 revolution that brought Iran's Shiite leadership to power.

Their relationship was so close that Khamenei was photographed more than once embracing Soleimani in ways that are customary in Iran for fathers and their beloved sons.

In one such photograph from 2018, Khamenei, seated on an elevated platform, leans down and kisses Soleimani's forehead. In another image from 2017, Khamenei is seen kissing Soleimani's cheek during Ashoura, a religious day of mourning among Shiites.

Unlike other military commanders in the Revolutionary Guard Corps., the 62-year-old general answered only to the 80-year-old Khamenei.

So revered was he by Khamenei, that the supreme leader awarded the general Iran's highest military order in March. Iran's Tasnim Agency reported that Soleimani is the only Iranian military official to receive the Order of Zulfaqar since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

When pinning the medal on Soleimani, the Iranian leader said he hoped God would reward the general and help him live a blissful life that ends with martyrdom.

Of course not any time soon, Khamenei said, adding the Islamic Republic needs him for years to come. To Soleimani, Khamenei was a venerated spiritual figure whom he referred to as his dear and honourable leader.

In 2015, Soleimani was quoted saying: I ask God to sacrifice my life for you. So close were they that Iranian media is describing the slain general as Khamenei's own Malik al-Ashtar, a reference to the most loyal companions of the first Shiite leader, Imam Ali.

And in death, Soleimani has received what no man before him has in modern Iran. His funeral processions have been spread over several days and cities, marking the first time Iran has ever honoured a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such a processional with his death in 1989.

Khamenei vowed that the Quds Force's strategy would be unchanged and he quickly named a successor to Soleimani, but the slain general's standing and relationship with Khamenei is not as easy to replace.

That's in part because their relationship extended beyond the war room. Soleimani was also close with Khamenei's children and had been photographed kissing one of the sons on the forehead.

In a deeply personal and symbolically weighty gesture, Iran's supreme leader made a rare visit to Soleimani's home the day he was killed to offer condolences to his grieving widow and grown children.

Rather than calling him by his last name as is customary, Khamenei referred to him as Hajj Qassem another indication of how close the two were.

That same day, Khamenei declared three days of mourning across the country and vowed harsh retaliation." The loss of Soleimani is bitter," Khamenei said in statements carried on Twitter and in Iranian media Monday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two WhatsApp groups with posts purportedly showing attempts by the suspects in Sundays rampage to organise and coordinate their attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students and teachers are being linked to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) - a link that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) student body strongly denied.

According to screenshots circulated on social media, the first signs of coordination on the platform were visible at around 5:30pm when one user shared the link to the Unity against Left WhatsApp group on another group called the Friends of RSS. This user, according to members of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) and publicly available files available on internet, was identified as Yogendra Bhardwaj  an ABVP leader in JNU.

Bhardwajs name comes up next to the posts on the screenshots, and the phone number used by him is associated with his name on publicly accessible documents uploaded by the Delhi Universitys Sanskrit department, which identifies him as an ad-hoc teacher. PhD scholars are often appointed as temporary teachers for lower-level courses in DU colleges.

Also Watch l JNU violence: Injured student leader describes assault; wants VC sacked

Manish Jangid, secretary of ABVPs JNU unit, confirmed that the WhatsApp groups existed but said that the numbers of his colleagues were added by rivals from Left organisation onto the groups to defame them. Our numbers were taken using some server and we were added in the group as admin. We were not aware about those groups, he said. Rahul Chaudhary, ABVPs national media coordinator, too, denied the role of any ABVP member. We can add anyone in any group these days and take a screenshot and defame people. If they [Left groups] have proof against us for planning and plotting on WhatsApp groups then they should give it to the police, he said. A JNUSU councillor, asking not to be named said Bhardwaj was an ABVP member and studied in Sanskrit department.

HT called the number that purportedly belonged to Bhardwaj but it was switched off.

A second WhatsApp number linked to an ABVP member appeared to belong to Vikas Patel. People from DU can also enter from the Khajan Singh swimming pool, said a message from a phone number linked to Patel in the Friends of RSS group.

That number was seen in posts made by ABVP community groups on Facebook, where Patel is linked to that number. In a Facebook profile, which was later deleted, Patel identified himself as a member of the ABVP.

This number was switched off when HT attempted to reach it.

Many of us saw Patel with a stick along with the mob inside the campus. He has deleted his Facebook account now. Patel is an ABVP member and was a student here, said JNUSU vice president Saket Moon.

Chaudhary denied Patel or any other ABVP member have shut their social media accounts.

JNUSU members alleged that several others who were part of the WhatsApp groups and made posts were members or supporters of the ABVP. HT could not get a second corroboration of who these other numbers belonged to.

A third number also became the subject of social media attention and was traced to political consultant linked to the Congress. The owner of the number, a political consultant named Anand Mangnale, told HT that he had joined the group to warn friends of where attacks were happening. Mangnale posted, People in support of JNU are coming to main gate. Whaa kuch karna hai (Do we need to do something there)?

He said he was in the group to spy on members. I had entered the WhatsApp group around 8:30pm, about 3 hours after it was formed. To extract information from them, I acted like I am one of them, said Magnale.

After supporters of ABVP and RSS highlighted Mangnales posts as a Congress worker, he denied he was associated with the party. I was hired to help Congress during the LS polls, but I am not affiliated to them, he told HT.

Viral posts on social media also carried images and videos, purportedly of ABVP members, carrying sticks and hammers. HT could not verify the origin of the images. In one such photo, two purported ABVP members were seen carrying sticks and walking into the JNU campus.Chaudhary contended that some of these posts could be morphed.

ABVP, too, released videos to target JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, with one purporting to show her at the Periyar hostel where an alleged attack took place on the ABVP members. Moon, the JNUSU vice president, denied that Ghosh was an attacker and said that she had gone to stop the attack.

Delhi Police spokesperson, Mandeep Singh Randhawa, said that the crime branch team is monitoring social media and is in the process of collecting videos and pictures showing the mob attack and those involved in it.

We have been requesting students and teachers of JNU to provide us all the videos and pictures they have related to Sundays violence on the campus. Pictures of masked attackers extracted from mobile videos that are being uploaded on social media along with pictures of individuals taken from their social media profiles, establishing a link, will also be examined to ascertain its authenticity, he said.
Tourists take part in the Dual Narrative tour lead by tour guides, Noor Awad and Lana Zilberman Soloway, walk down steps, as the Dome of the Rock is seen behind them in Jerusalem's Old City

By Steven Scheer

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel received a record number of tourist visits in 2019 but growth could be slowed this year due to cuts in spending on advertising to promote the country as a destination, the tourism ministry said on Monday.

The announcement came at a time of heightened concern over security in the Middle East after the United States killed a top Iranian general. However, a tourism ministry official said the ministry was no more concerned about the potential impact of geopolitics on tourism than usual.

Israel recorded a 10.6% rise in tourism last year to 4.55 million visits, bringing in 22 billion shekels ($6.3 billion) in revenue.

That came despite two major escalations between Israel and Palestinian militants who control Gaza. Some 1,300 rockets were fired into Israel in 2019, the most since the last major war fought with Hamas in Gaza in 2014.

"We are within reach of achieving 5 million tourists, but we are concerned that the momentum we have achieved in focused marketing that has proven itself will not continue with the same intensity because of significant budget cuts," Tourism Ministry Director-General Amir Halevi said.

Israel's budget deficit is expected to have exceeded 3.5% of gross domestic product in 2019, above a target of 2.9%.

The Israeli economy has so far weathered two inconclusive elections and a year of successive caretaker governments. The political stalemate means it will be well into 2020 before a new annual budget is passed, triggering months of cutbacks. The third election in less than a year will be held on March 2.

"Tourism growth has been driven by increased marketing budgets in recent years, and we hope that, despite the budget cut in 2020, we will be able to maintain the tremendous achievements we have reached," Tourism Minister Yariv Levin said in a statement.

The United States remained the top country for incoming tourism in 2019, with a 7% rise to nearly 890,000 entries, followed by France, Russia, Germany, Britain and Italy. Tourism from China jumped 49% to 156,000.

(Reporting by Steven Scheer)
President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump arrive at the White House in Washington on Jan. 5, 2020. The Trumps were returning from spending the holidays at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla.(Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Trump Doesnt Want to Delay Senate Impeachment Trial Over Iran: Conway

President Donald Trump doesnt want to delay a Senate impeachment trial over the tensions with Iran, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Jan. 6.

Asked if Trump favors delaying the trial to focus on Iran, Conway told reporters in Washington: It looks like [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi favors a delay in the impeachment process, because she hasnt bothered to send over the articles of impeachment from the House. Which is it? Is the president is an imminent threat to the republic, a clear and present danger who must be removed immediately? Or did she take a little mini-sabbatical over the break and has decided when to send over the articles of impeachment?

Pelosi has withheld the articles of impeachment from the Senate after the House voted on Dec. 18, 2019, to impeach Trump.

Why would he want to delay the trial? He knows the trial is going nowhere. He wants a full and fair trial, but that doesnt mean a lengthy one. Those articles of impeachment are very thin, Conway said.

They know their case is very weak. They know their case was very obtuse, was very weak, very specious, and she wont send those over. So, delay a trial for what reason? I mean, lets get on with it already.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks to media at the Capitol in Washington on Dec. 19, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) are attempting to force Pelosi to submit the articles to the Senate. Graham said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday Morning Futures that hed push for a change to the Senate rules if the articles arent received this week.

My goal is to start this trial in the next coming days, not let Nancy Pelosi take over the Senate, he said.

Well use the Clinton model, where you take the record established in the House, let the House managers appointed by Pelosi make the argument, let the president make his argument why the two articles are flawed, and then well decide whether we want witnesses. But this should be done in a couple of weeks, he said, echoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Hawley said he was introducing on Jan. 6 a change to Senate rules, accusing Pelosi of trying to obstruct the Senate trial.

We need to change the Senate rules to allow the Senate to dismiss this case if she refuses to send the articles over, he said during an appearance on Fox News.

Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, said on Jan. 6 that the Senate could eliminate the courtesy of waiting for the House or hold a summary vote in light of the Houses failure to send the articles over. McConnell said on Jan. 3 that he expects the articles to be sent to the Senate soon.

Pelosi has declined to publicly comment on a timeline for sending the articles over. Shes said shes withholding the articles because she wants the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans, to hold a fair trial.

On Jan. 3, she accused McConnell of assisting Trump in an alleged cover-up of the presidents abuse of power.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speaks on the Senate floor at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 3, 2020. (Senate TV via AP)

In December, the House upheld its Constitutional duty to defend democracy For The People, honoring the vision of our Founders for a Republic. In an impeachment trial, every U.S. Senator is required to take an oath to do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, Pelosi said in a statement.

For several months, the House has subpoenaed documents and witnesses which the President stonewalled. These cases are now in the courts. While the House nevertheless was able to obtain compelling evidence of impeachable conduct, Leader McConnell knows full well that the Presidents obstruction of the House impeachment inquiry is unprecedented and in defiance of our system of checks and balances.

The American people deserve the truth. Every Senator now faces a choice: to be loyal to the President or the Constitution. The GOP Senate must immediately proceed in a manner worthy of the Constitution and in light of the gravity of the Presidents unprecedented abuses. No one is above the law, not even the President.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Jan. 5 that Democrats hope to convince four Republicans to vote to bring witnesses in to testify to the Senate.

You cant have a fair trial without witnesses and documents, particularly those that were right at the scene of the charges. But four Republican senators can join us. We have the ability to require votes on the four witnesses we have asked for, whether theres an agreement or not. We have the ability to ask for the documents. And I hope, pray, and believe theres a decent chance that four Republicans will join us, Schumer said.

He said President Bill Clintons 1999 trial was different because fact witnesses had already testified, whereas in this case, some of Trumps top advisors havent testified yet. These are four witnesses who are eyewitness to the main charge against the president, that he withheld the aid for political benefit to himself, he said.
New Delhi [India], Jan 6 (ANI): BJP leader Manoj Tiwari on Monday said that the perpetrators of violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) do not want examinations to take place on time.



"The situation of JNU is very critical. The students who were beaten up want to take the exams and those who are the perpetrators do not want examinations. My opinion is that there should be an investigation into the matter as soon as possible followed by strict action against the perpetrators of the violence," Tiwari told ANI.

"Priyanka Gandhi only met with JNUSU injured students, not ABVP students," he added.

On Sunday evening, more than 30 students of the university, including JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, were injured and were taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered the JNU and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods.

The JNU administration and political leaders, cutting across political lines, condemned the attack on students and urged the police to take action against the perpetrators.

Meanwhile, the situation remained tense but peaceful outside JNU on Monday morning as the university guards maintained a strict vigil at the gate, checking I-cards of all those entering the university. (ANI)


International Committee of the Red Cross trucks arrive with food and seeds for displaced civilians in Buthidaung township, western Myanmar's Rakhine state, October 2019.

The number of civilians displaced during the past year amid an uptick in armed conflict in Myanmars northern Rakhine state has reached more than 100,000, a regional relief organization said Monday, as authorities continue to limit area access to groups providing aid.

The new figure based on on-the-ground surveys of internally displaced persons (IDPs) by the Rakhine Ethnics Congress (REC) is an increase from the relief groups November tally of 92,500 villagers who had fled their homes due to fighting between Myanmar forces and the rebel Arakan Army (AA).

Hostilities between the two militaries intensified in late 2018, as the AA stepped up its efforts to achieve greater autonomy in Rakhine and establish a headquarters there. After AA fighters conducted a deadly attack on police outposts on Jan. 4, 2019  Myanmars Independence Day  country leader Aung San Suu Kyi ordered the government army to crush the rebels.

As the fighting continues meanwhile, humanitarian aid groups are struggling to get food and supplies to the ever-growing number of IDPs.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says it has provided food, medical supplies, and drinking water to roughly 50,000 civilians in over 100 displacement camps in the state.

In December 2018, the ICRC and the Myanmar Red Cross Society visited over 100 IDP camps in Kyauktaw, Buthidaung, Ponnagyun, Rathedaung, Minbya, Mrauk-U, and Maungdaw townships and met with IDPs, said Kyaw Khaing Min, an ICRC spokesman in Myanmar.

We have been providing food supplies, medical aid, drinking water and other essential items to the IDPs, he said. So far, we have provided these supplies to over 50,000 IDPs.

Besides the ICRC, the U.N.s World Food Programme (WFP) and Myanmars Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement have also been delivering food to IDPs in northern Rakhine state.

But the REC says that international relief groups must still coordinate their plans with the government and obtain permission from authorities who limit where they can go in the state and to which IDP camps they can deliver supplies.



Some are not counted

The group also cites the governments official tally of IDPs, which stands at only 40,000, as a major obstacle to getting more humanitarian aid into conflict-affected areas.

Because the aid is based on government definitions and data, not all IDP who need supplies are getting them, said REC secretary Zaw Zaw Tun.

Not all IDPs receive aid, he told RFAs Myanmar Service. The government only count IDP camps that fits their definition and provide aids to them.

The government only counts civilians living in IDPs camps as being displaced, and omits those who have fled to other villages or into the jungle or have sought shelter with relatives.

The international organizations are also required to refer to the governments data, Zaw Zaw Tun added. If they try to provide aid to IDP camps in other areas, they have to request permission. Even after they receive it, they are prohibited from going on account of security reasons.

Civil society organizations helping the IDPs said they cannot provide supplies to the camps they wish to serve because of the permission requirement and because of authorities who prevent them from traveling by land and water in the region.

Colonel Win Zaw Oo, spokesman for the Myanmars militarys Western Command which is responsible for Rakhine state, told RFA that authorities allow all humanitarian aid groups to travel if they have permission from the central or state government.

If the Union government or the state government and local authorities gave them permission, then there is no reason we wouldnt approve, he said.

The government says that IDPs have been provided rice rations and 500 kyats (U.S. $0.33) each daily, Win Myint, Rakhines minister of municipal affairs and spokesman.

When we get lists of IDPs from local administrations, we forward them to the central government in Naypyidaw, he said. All they need is to communicate with us.

The more than 700 displaced civilians at the Kanhtaunggyi IDP camp in Myebon township, who require 10 bags of rice and 600,000 kyats (U.S. $400) daily to cover meals and other expenses, relay on aid from the ICRC and WFP because the government provide nothing, said Thein Win, the person in charge of the camp.

We have received rice; its enough for two or three months, but we still have to spend money on meat and groceries such as cooking oil and salt, he said. We are scraping by.

We got some dried fish from private donations, he added. We are eating these rations bit by bit. We are now out of cooking oil. We also need cash to buy fish for meals.

Woman injured in blast

While the IDPs struggle to get enough food in the camps, Myanmar and Arakan forces continue to battle it out in various parts of northern Rakhine.

Mortar shells landed in an ancient temple area in Kyauktaw township, injured a woman in her home nearby, a local aid group said Monday.

The Phyusin Myittar humanitarian group from Kyauktaw town said the injured woman  20-year-old U Win Aye  was hit by a fragment from the mortar shell explosion around 5 p.m. Sunday in her home in Maha Myat Muni village.

I heard there was a landmine explosion, said Nyi Pu, the groups chairman. Afterward, I heard the military had fired a mortar in response. A woman was hit by the mortar shell blast while she was at home.

U Win aye is being treated for chest and forehead wounds at the township hospital, he added.

Local residents said the earlier explosion came from an AA landmine attack on a military convoy.

I heard there was a mine explosion near the Maha Myat Muni temple, so the soldiers near the temple must have fired back in response, and they hit a girl from Maha Muni village, said Maung Hla Kyaw, a Rakhine state lawmaker from Kyauktaw township.

Neither the Myanmar military nor the AA confirmed the attack.

There is no such thing. There was no battle, said military spokesman Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun.

Yesterday, there were two armed clashes  one in Mrauk-U and another one near Yarmaung bridge, he said. Only these two.

There are no military troops stationed at the said location, Zaw Min Tun added. But there might be some troops mobilizing in the area.

AA spokesman Khine Thukha said he hadnt received a report about the incident in Maha Myat Muni village.

RFA could not independently confirm which army was responsible for blast.

Reported by Waiyan Moe Myint and Phyu Phyu Khine for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Fortum has today (12/20) signed an agreement to sell its district heating business in Joensuu, Finland to Savon Voima Oyj. The total consideration on a debt- and cash-free basis is approximately EUR 530 million. Fortum expects to record a tax exempt capital gain of approximately EUR 430 million in the City Solutions segment's first-quarter 2020 results. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2020.

In June 2019, Fortum announced it would review and consider strategic options for the Joensuu and Estonian district heating businesses. The strategic review for the Estonian district heating business is still ongoing. In line with its strategy, Fortum continuously reviews its businesses to optimise its portfolio for value creation.

"The Joensuu district heating business is centred around the highly efficient and modern combined heat and power plant. The business transformation to lower carbon intensity has largely been done and the detailed plans for further decarbonisation have been prepared. The divestment raised large interest among buyers and provided a great opportunity for us to sell the business to a reliable company with the ambition to further develop the business locally in Joensuu. In Finland, we can now focus our efforts on the decarbonisation project targeting discontinuation of the use of coal in 2025 in the district heating network in the City of Espoo," says Per Langer, Executive Vice President, City Solutions at Fortum.

"In line with our strategy, this is an excellent opportunity to extend our core district heating business to the Joensuu network in close vicinity to our existing networks. We value the solid fundamentals of the asset and see potential in further developing it along with the existing team, including continuing the peat-to-bio conversion of the Joensuu district heating business according to the plans laid out by Fortum," says Arto Sutinen, CEO of Savon Voima Oyj.

In 2018, Fortum produced approximately 550 GWh of heat and approximately 240 GWh of power in Joensuu. The operations currently employ three Fortum employees, who will transfer with the business as old employees. The operation and maintenance services are sourced from an external partner.

Fortum Corporation

Ingela Ulfves, VP, IR and Financial Communications

Further information:

Media:

Timo Piispa, Head of Heating & Cooling Finland, tel. +358 50 453 2758

Investors & analysts:

Ingela Ulfves, VP, IR and Financial Communications, tel. +358 40 5151 531

Mans Holmberg, Manager, IR and Financial Communications, tel. +358 44 518 1518

Rauno Tiihonen, IR Manager, tel. +358 10 453 6150
NOVEMBER 29, 2019  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Preview 3 of Gravalots marquee collection for 2020, shot in Surulere, Lagos has been released. New pieces are beautifully crafted from woven As -oke material, a textile native to the Yoruba tribe, maintaining Gravalots strong emphasis on sustainable materials, traditional techniques and local expertise. Strong & vibrant colours are used throughout the release, mixing tailored and loose fits with heavily textured textiles. This can 
Democrats In Congress Not Satisfied With White House Notification Of Soleimani Attack

By RFE/RL January 05, 2020

The White House has sent its formal notification to Congress of the January 3 drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump that killed senior Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, who was traveling in Iraq at the time.

The notification was sent on January 4 under a 1973 U.S. law called the War Powers Act, which requires a presidential administration to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action or imminent actions.

The White House did not immediately comment on the notification, the details of which are classified, and it is not clear if a redacted version will be released to the public.

While most Republicans have praised Trump for his actions, many Democratic lawmakers have criticized the president for failing to seek advance approval or notify Congress of the attack, expressing concerns that it could lead the United States into a war with Iran.

The U.S. administration was expected to explain the circumstances, the authority under which the strike was undertaken, and the planned duration of the military mission.

The leading Democrat in the House of Representatives, speaker Nancy Pelosi, later said the notification "raises more questions than it answers."

"This document prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner, and justification of the administration's decision to engage in hostilities against Iran," Pelosi said in a statement.

"The highly unusual decision to classify this document in its entirety compounds our many concerns, and suggests that the Congress and the American people are being left in the dark about our national security," she added.

Trump has said he ordered the attack to "stop a war" and that Soleimani had been in the process of organizing "imminent and sinister" attacks on U.S. interests and allies.

The 62-year-old Soleimani was commander of Iran's elite Quds Force, the foreign arm of Iran's hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/democrats-in- congress-not-satisfied-with-white-house-notificatio n-of-soleimani-attack/30360834.html

Copyright (c) 2020. 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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A cave diver in his 60s has died after getting trapped deep underwater in a Cumbrian fell, despite a desperate hours-long bid to save him.

The pensioner was found 200 feet into the passages of Lancaster Hole, one of England's largest underground networks, after a search was launched when he failed to resurface at the specified time.

A cave diver found the man after 40 rescuers from the Cave Rescue Organisation (CRO) and Cave Diving Group (CDG) rushed to the scene to search for the man.

Police said his next of kin had been informed.

A pensioner in his 60s has died after getting trapped in the extensive cave systems by the Lancaster Hole in Cumbria. (Pictured are rescuers)

As many as 40 rescuers rushed to the scene after the man was late to resurface

A spokesman from the CRO said: 'We searched from the point where the cave diver entered the Lancaster Hole downstream passage, other entrances, and possible exits were also searched by team members and a cave diver.

'Unfortunately, while conducting his underwater search the rescue diver discovered the missing diver.

'The casualty was immediately brought back to the sump pool chamber and removed from the water, where it was apparent that he was deceased.'

On its Facebook page the Irish Cave Rescue Organisation said there was a huge logistical and physical effort involved, with a 'very sad outcome'.

The cave system has several entry and exit points, and stretches beneath Cumbria, Lancashire and the Yorkshire Dales.

Cumbria Constabulary told The Telegraph that the man had been visiting the area on a cave diving trip.

A cave diver who went into the system found the man 200 feet from the entrance

The man's next of kin have been informed. (Pictured above is the rescue operation)
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A detailed analysis report of the Global Refrigerated Display Cases Market has been covered in the report coupled with a thorough description of each company profile with information on the H.Q, future capabilities, key mergers & acquisitions, financial outline, partnerships and new product launches and developments.

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SINGLE apps for all travel needs, passport free travel and mobile app check-in are the top three new travel norms expected by travelers in the next decade, according to a new research by Agoda, one of the worlds fastest growing digital travel platforms.

With the continued advancement of technology, revolutionary travel apps and better connectivity, people expect a lot more from their travel experience in the next decade. Over half or almost half of respondents in Taiwan (50 percent) and in Southeast Asia: Indonesia (56 [ercent), Singapore (54 percent), Malaysia (53 percent), the Philippines (48 percent) and Thailand (48 percent) consider this the norm in the next decade.

This compares to only a third of people in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) (33 percent). One in two Southeast Asians also view mobile app check-inallowing guests to skip the registration queue, download their room access key, and go straight to their roomsas the norm in the 2020s, with Singaporeans (54 percent), Filipinos (53 percent), Malaysians (58 percent) and Thais (49 percent) most expectant of this trend.

Meanwhile, Singapore (50 percent), Vietnam (47 percent), the Philippines (45 percent), China (44 percent) and Australia (41 percent) are the top five origins most likely to see a future with passport-free travel. In the UK and US, they are less expectant of this advancement with only one in five expecting it to be the norm within the next decade.

Technology has already made such a positive impact on how and where people travel as innovative technologies, like those developed at Agoda, give travelers instant access to millions of hotels and home properties around the world with real time pricing and availability.

It is a technology golden age for travelers, as technology is developed to simplify the way anyone, anywhere can search, book, and pay for flights, hotels or holiday accommodation. ...Asian travelers, in particular, are enthused by, and expectant of, technology developments that enhance and simplify their travel experience. Asian based companies are now leading the world in technology adoption and development to achieve this. I expect to see Asia press ahead with that lead in the 2020s, especially in areas such as video and augmented reality, improved mobile services with more chat and voice solutions and payments to help bring the unbanked online, said Timothy Hughes, vice president of corporate development at Agoda.

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Eco-friendly travel choices

The study also revealed that people want to increase the amount of travel in 2020.

Exploring more of their own country was cited by 40 percent of respondents globally, while international travel was anticipated at 35 percent.

Whats also interesting, in the context of global narratives on climate sustainability, is the trend that more than a quarter want to make more eco-friendly travel choices in the next decade.

Travelers from Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia are most keen to make eco-friendlier choicesperhaps more aware than others with the recent closure of Maya Bay in Thailand and the Boracay rehabilitation program in Philippinesand thus, travelers want to do their bit even when on holiday.

Travelers in the 35 to 44 and 55+ age groups most likely want to explore their own countries and territories more (40 percent and 42 percent respectively), with those from China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, the US, and Vietnam choosing domestic destinations within their top three wishlist destinations for the coming decade.

Top destination wishlists

Kyoto landed the top spot as the worlds most desired destination to visit in the 2020s. Asia dominates the global travel wishlists destination for the next decade, as travelers from both Asia and the West showcase a growing curiosity for Asian treasures like Kyoto (Japan) famed for its Shinto shrine, with its eclectic blend of culture, food and history. This was followed by Bangkok (Thailand) and Bali (Indonesia).

Travelers in the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam and Malaysia want to cross off their own capital cities from their travel lists.

Filipinos will continue traveling

Filipinos, the study said, will continue to explore Asia in the next decade.

Forty-five percent of travelers from the Philippines would like to explore more of their own country in the coming decade while 39 percent would like to travel more internationally.

Manila tops the wishlist for Filipino travelers in the 2020s, followed by Seoul (South Korea) and Kyoto (Japan).

Moreover, 53 percent of Filipino travelers expect to check in to hotels using their mobile phones while 48 percent expect to be able to use a single app for all their travel needs. Thirty-five percent of travelers from the Philippines aim to make eco-friendlier travel choices in the next decade. (PR)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 07:06:59|Editor: xuxin

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NAIROBI, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. service member and two Department of Defense contractors were killed, following an attack by al-Shabab on Sunday at the Manda Bay Airfield in Kenya, according to the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM).

Additionally, two Department of Defense members were injured, who are now in stable condition and being evacuated, the AFRICOM said in a statement.

"As we honor their sacrifice, let's also harden our resolve. Alongside our African and international partners, we will pursue those responsible for this attack and al-Shabab who seeks to harm Americans and U.S. interests. We remain committed to preventing al-Shabab from maintaining a safe haven to plan deadly attacks against the U.S. homeland, East African, and international partners," U.S. Army General Stephen Townsend, commander of the AFRICOM, said.

According to the statement, the attack on the compound involved indirect and small arms fire. After an initial penetration of the perimeter, the Kenya Defense Forces and the AFRICOM repelled the al-Shabab attack. Six contractor-operated civilian aircraft were reportedly damaged to some degree.

The Manda Bay Airfield is utilized by U.S. forces, whose missions include providing training to African partners, responding to crises and protecting U.S. interests in the area, according to the statement.

Paul Njuguna, spokesman of the Kenya Defense Forces, confirmed that five al-Shabab terrorists were killed in the attack in which the extremist group claimed responsibility.
Government of National Accord rejected the rumours claiming gains of militias and mercenaries of war criminal Haftar.

The forces of Libyas renegade general Khalifa Haftar said they have entered Sirte, taking control of large parts of the coastal city.

Khaled al-Mahjoub, a spokesman of Haftars self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA), said the fighters captured all the districts surrounding the city, including al-Qardabiya airbase, before moving towards the city centre.

However, Libyas internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) rejected the information in a statement, referring to it as rumours claiming gains of militias and mercenaries of war criminal Haftar.

GNA said the government forces repelled LNAs attack, destroying two armed vehicles near the east of Sirte.

The situation inside Sirte is completely under control, and the clashes that took place on the eve of this day took place outside the city, the government said.

Counter narrative

Earlier on Monday, LNA sources said the takeover came after forces from the city of Misrata, a key source of military power for GNA, retreated from Sirte.

A resident in Sirte city centre told Reuters News Agency by phone that they can see convoys of LNA inside Sirte city  they control large parts of the city now. We also hear gunfire.

Al Jazeeras Mahmoud Abdelwahed, reporting from the capital Tripoli, said that, according to the military sources in Sirte, Haftars forces took control of several parts of the city, including the port and the city centre along with the military camps in the south of the city.

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The city is very strategic because it is very close to the oil fields and oil ports in central Libya and the coast, he said.

We are also getting news from the military sources in Misrata that they are sending troops to Sirte to repel the attacks of Haftars forces.

Capturing Sirte would be an important gain for Haftar, who since April has been waging a military offensive on Tripoli which is home to the GNA.

Sirte lies in the centre of Libyas Mediterranean coast, and has been controlled by GNA-aligned forces since they ejected the ISIL (ISIS) armed group from the city with the help of US air raids in late 2016.

Turkish forces

The LNA advance comes as Turkey is deploying military advisors and experts to Libya to help shore up the GNA, part of a trend of rising international involvement in Libyas conflict.

Haftars LNA has received material and military support from countries including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan and Egypt, according to UN experts and diplomats.

In recent weeks, there has been an escalation of fighting, shelling and air raids around Tripoli.

On Saturday evening, a military college in the capital was hit, killing at least 30 people, a day after the only functioning airport in Tripoli faced its latest closure due to shelling and rocket fire.

Sirte, the birthplace of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, was taken over by ISIL in early 2015, becoming the groups most important base outside the Middle East.

The city is just to the west of Libyas oil crescent, a strip of coastline along which several key oil export terminals are located. Haftars forces seized the oil ports in 2016.
Manchester, Iowa  Each Democratic presidential candidate has a different argument for why he or she is the candidate most likely to beat President Trump in November. Amy Klobuchar points to her record winning over Republican voters in Minnesota. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders each claim to have the right stuff to win over working-class voters in the midwestern states that decided the 2016 election. Elizabeth Warren, well . . .

While campaigning in Iowa over the weekend, Warren told voters a tale of how she won the 2012 Senate race in Massachusetts when nobody thought a Democrat could. Noting that Republican incumbent Scott Brown had a 65 percent approval rating and $10 million saved in his campaign coffers, Warren told voters at a Saturday town-hall event here in Manchester: Nobody thought that anyone could beat him, and especially because he had just beaten a woman in a special election less than two years earlier. She added that unnamed Democrats who encouraged her to run told her, You will totally lose, but you should go ahead and get out there and do it.

All I can say is, Democrats: Get a better sales pitch, Warren added. I started out, I was down 17 points. I ended up beating him by seven-and-a-half points.

Of course, its not true that nobody thought a Democrat could knock Brown from his perch in the bluest of blue states that cycle. In fact, when Warren launched her campaign in August 2011, contemporary news reports noted that handicappers call a BrownWarren race a tossup.

It is true that some election-watchers gave Brown a slight edge. Larry Sabato, for example, rated the race as leans Republican at the time Warren announced her candidacy (though he had changed it to a toss-up by the end of 2011). Its also true that Warren faced a real challenge in the race  Brown was popular, and had made a national name for himself in taking the seat to begin with. But Warrens claim that nobody thought a Democrat could beat him in Massachusetts  a state that Barack Obama carried by 26 points in 2008, a state that had not elected a Republican senator since 1972 before Browns stunning 2010 victory  doesnt withstand even the slightest scrutiny.

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For one thing, Brown had won by five points against a weak Democratic candidate at a time when the unemployment rate was still very high and Republicans were extremely energized by Obamacare. He wasnt invulnerable. For another, in the years since, Warren hasnt proved to be unusually popular for a Massachusetts Democrat. Running against a weak, little-known Republican during the 2018 Democratic wave, she performed a few points worse than Hillary Clinton had in taking the state two years earlier. Last year, the liberal website Vox even saw fit to ask: Why isnt Elizabeth Warren more popular in Massachusetts?

The fact that Warren underperformed Hillary Clinton in 228 of Massachusettss 351 towns, and did so in a blue-wave year, speaks to her weakness with working-class white voters on the ballot, Cook Political Report editor Dave Wasserman told Vox. Many parts of Massachusetts are culturally more similar to Wisconsin or Michigan than they are to Cambridge or Boston or Amherst. And that has to be a serious concern for next November, should it get to that.

Though Warren has faded somewhat in the Democratic presidential primary, she remains very much in the hunt. A YouGov/CBS poll of Iowa voters that was released on Sunday showed Biden, Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg tied at exactly 23 percent each, with Warren in striking distance at 16 percent. But as she struggles to reclaim the momentum she had earlier in the race, electability remains an issue at the top of Democratic voters minds. Grossly overstating the challenge she faced from Brown in 2012  and hence her record of electoral achievement  is not likely a good way to help a candidate who has already been widely mocked for bending the truth to the point of breaking it in the past.

More from National Review
A high number of Uyghurs, including youngsters seized by security forces following ethnic unrest in Chinas Xinjiang region, may have become victims of forced organ harvesting, according to an independent researcher.



Ethan Gutmann said that the forced disappearance of hundreds of Uyghur men and boys following the 2009 ethnic riots in Xinjiangs capital Urumqi should be of great concern to the world no matter what else may be occurring.



But I suspect it goes further than that, Gutmann, an expert at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told RFAs Uyghur Service when asked about the possibility that many ordinary Uyghurs, apart from political prisoners, would have been victims of forced organ harvesting.



Ill just say this: I think what has happened to the Uyghur community inside China since 2009 is a great mystery. And I have some ideas, some clues that suggest some very disturbing possibilities, but I am not willing to make any definitive statement until I have proof in hand.



The Munich-based Uyghur World Uyghur Congress (WUC), an exile group, last year called on China to account for the thousands of Uyghurs believed to have disappeared in custody after deadly violence following long-simmering tensions between Han Chinese and Uyghurs.



Many Uyghurs have attempted to uncover the whereabouts, condition, and fate of their forcibly disappeared loved ones, but continually find their requests for information being rejected or ignored, said WUC president Rebiya Kadeer.



China has been extracting organs from living prisoners in addition to its much publicized and criticized practice of taking vital body parts from executed convicts, Gutmann told a U.S. congressional hearing in September last year.



A new issue



Most victims are said to be practitioners of Chinas banned Falun Gong spiritual group, but Gutmann told the hearing he believes that the practice of taking organs from prisoners began in the remote Xinjiang regionwhere ethnic Uyghurs say they are discriminated against by Han Chinesein the 1990s and had expanded nationwide by 2001.



When asked by RFA to compare the plight of Uyghur organ-harvesting victims to those of the Falun Gong group, Gutmann said that though it is indisputable that the vast majority of victims have been members of the spiritual group, Falun Gong media outlets have begun listing Uyghurs as victims as well.



Thats a real shift for Falun Gong practitioners, who start from a base of being unavoidably influenced by mainland cultural norms and prejudices.



Personally I estimate 65,000 of them [Falun Gong members] went under the knifeand theres nothing surprising about those numbers as Falun Gong comprised fully 70 million people at its height in 1999, he said.



How many Uyghurs were harvested? Hard to answer, and although it may be high in a per-capita sense, it will always be much smaller than Falun Gong in absolute numbers.



Also, he said research on forced organ-harvesting among Uyghurs is a relatively new issue.



Keep in mind too that its a relatively new issue. Researchers have been looking into Falun Gong harvesting since 2006; I only came out with The Xinjiang Procedure a year ago, he said, referring to a report he has published on the systematic live harvesting of organs by the Chinese regime.



Testing ground



Gutmann said he was aware of Chinese nuclear tests in Xinjiang during the 1960s and of allegations of birth defects and unusual cancers among the Uyghur population and couldnt help but wonder if the region was being used as a testing ground again, this time, for live organ harvesting.



In conducting his own research on organ harvesting in China, Uyghur organizations and individuals were extraordinarily helpful, Gutmann said.



[I also tried to] cut down on possible contact with spies. You know, espionage is just a fact of life for any organized force which is going up against the [ruling] Chinese Communist Party.



Gutmann noted that the U.S. government has so far taken a passive role in the controversy.



[But] if you accept that organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience has taken place, if you accept the existence of this mini-genocide, then, as the worlds superpower, you are honor-bound to do something about it, Gutmann said.



And the U.S. feels that conflict with China at a time when the economy is so shaky is an unaffordable luxury.



Simple and practical steps can still be taken, though, Gutmann said, suggesting that efforts be made to criminalize the organ tourism procedure in China and forbid American companies from conducting clinical tests of transplant patients on [Chinas] mainland.



U.S. medical schools should also refuse to train surgeons from China, unless they can verify they are not going to conduct forced organ harvesting, Gutmann said.



'Unsustainable'?



The U.S. government opposes illegal or unethical harvesting of, or trafficking in, human organs, the State Department said in a Dec. 19 reply to a congressional letter asking for information on transplant abuses in China.



"The U.S. government has urged China to cease the practice of organ harvesting from executed prisoners," the State Department said.



"There are indications that Chinese authorities are rethinking their policies and revising their practices ... [but] we will continue to make known our concerns and urge China to take steps to stop such abuses.



Interviewed last year in the World Health Organization's Bulletin, Wang Haibo, an organ transplant expert for China's Ministry of Health, acknowledged ethical problems with the use of organs taken from executed prisoners and called the system unsustainable.



"The implementation of [a] new national system will start early next year [2013] at the latest," Wang said.



But though civil hospitals in China may perform transplant surgery, the harvesting of organs itself is done by China's military and police, said Torsten Trey, executive director of the Washington-based Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting.



"The military hospitals operate on their own decisions, and don't have to follow orders from the civil side, including the Ministry of Health," Trey said.



"Once an organ is procured and offered for transplantation to civil hospitals, it is almost impossible to track down the organ source on the military side."

Reported by Rukiye Turdush for RFAs Uyghur Service. Written in English with additional reporting by Richard Finney.
Haryana Education Minister Kanwar Pal Gujjar (Image: Wikimedia)

To deal with the problem of pending bills, Haryanas Education Minister Kanwar Pal Gujjar has endorsed a decision to disallow children of defaulters from writing competitive examinations for government jobs.

While addressing the media in Yamunanagar on January 4, he backed state Power Minister Ranjit Chautalas proposal to debar students whose parents have not cleared their electricity bills.

Pal announced that they may soon make it compulsory for all such students to obtain a no-objection certificate (NOC) from the state power department to apply for any competitive examination.

Justifying his statement, the education minister said: What is the problem with this? Children of those who have not paid their electricity dues should not be allowed to sit for the exams of government jobs. The government is thinking about this.

He added: The government had earlier almost halved the electricity bills and most people cleared their dues after that. However, some who are habitual defaulters, are yet to pay their bills. If we do not take strict actions against them, it will be unfair towards those who are diligent.

Pal even said that a discussion on the same is underway although it is yet unclear when it will be implemented, reported the Free Press Journal. He also clarified that only those students due to appear for competitive exams to get a government job will be asked to produce the NOC to prove that his/her family is not a defaulter.

Meanwhile, after receiving backlash, Chautala has backtracked on his statement and said no cabinet-level discussion has started on a policy as such and this was only said to push people to clear their dues. He also said that his statement was misconstrued as it was aimed to encourage those who duly pay their bills on time.

According to the Times of India , one of his spokespersons dismissed all other claims and stated that that only candidates contesting panchayat and civic body elections will have to procure NOCs from the distribution companies. He added that there will also be a policy to recover the arrears from defaulters.
WASHINGTON  More than 2,300 years ago, the Persian capital of Persepolis was burned by a foreign warrior in a fatal blow to the empire and its rich heritage. The ruins of the ancient city, in modern-day southwest Iran, could now be on President Trumps target list of 52 sites he has threatened to attack as tensions escalated between Washington and Tehran.

Mr. Trump did not identify which places the United States might strike, as he warned on Twitter that he would order  52 in all, one for each American who was held hostage for the duration of the Iranian Revolution takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

But he said on Saturday that some of the sites were very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture.

Those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD, he added. The USA wants no more threats!
[January 06, 2020] BDO USA, LLP Expands in Greater Washington, D.C. and Baltimore Markets Through Addition of Biegel Waller Tax Advisory Services

BDO USA, LLP, one of the nation's leading accounting and advisory firms, announced an expansion in the Greater Washington, D.C. and Greater Baltimore markets through the addition of 14 partners and professionals from Biegel Waller Tax Advisory Services. The combination of BDO and Biegel Waller Tax Advisory Services was effective Jan. 1. The addition of Biegel Waller Tax Advisory strengthens BDO's presence in the Greater Washington D.C. and Baltimore area," said Wayne Berson, CEO of BDO USA. "Together, our clients will benefit from a broader and deeper bench of tax advisory resources. We can help clients evolve their tax strategies, understand their total tax obligations, leverage emerging technologies to improve operational efficiencies, and leverage their tax data to make more informed business decisions. I am pleased to welcome the Biegel Waller team to BDO." Biegel Waller Tax Advisory Services is a tax consulting firm in Columbia, Maryland specializing in international tax, state and local tax, tax compliance and tax advisory services. Founded in 1998, the firm works with Fortune 500 and multi-national clients across various industries, including hospitality, hotel management, real estate, government contracting, information technology and life sciences. Biegel Waller LLP is a member of the Biegel Waller group.



"Through the combination of Biegel Waller Tax Advisory Services and BDO, our clients will benefit from both firms' extensive tax advisory knowledge and holistic approach to strategic tax planning," said Jim Waller, Co-Founder and Partner at Biegel Waller Tax Advisory Services. "With BDO, we will have even more resources to anticipate and manage clients' challenges in a constantly evolving tax landscape. "Through this expansion, BDO continues to execute its targeted growth strategy, expanding its depth and breadth of offerings in key markets across the country," said Allan D. Koltin, CEO of Koltin Consulting Group, who advised both firms on the combination. "Biegel Waller Tax Advisory Services and BDO share common cultural philosophies, including cultivating high-performing, engaged teams that provide exceptional client experiences."

BDO will maintain Biegel Waller's primary office at 10211 Wincopin Circle, Suite 300, in Columbia, Maryland. About BDO USA BDO is the brand name for BDO USA, LLP, a U.S. professional services firm providing assurance, tax, and advisory services to a wide range of publicly traded and privately held companies. For more than 100 years, BDO has provided quality service through the active involvement of experienced and committed professionals. The firm serves clients through more than 60 offices and over 700 independent alliance firm locations nationwide. As an independent Member Firm of BDO International Limited, BDO serves multi-national clients through a global network of more than 88,000 people working out of nearly 1,800 offices across 167 countries. BDO USA, LLP, a Delaware limited liability partnership, is the U.S. member of BDO International Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, and forms part of the international BDO network of independent member firms. BDO is the brand name for the BDO network and for each of the BDO Member Firms. For more information please visit: www.bdo.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005883/en/

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CHICAGO  A U.S. solider from the Chicago area was among three people killed in an attack on a military base in Kenya.

The family of Henry Mayfield Jr. of Hazel Crest confirmed his death Monday. The 23-year-old held the rank of Army Specialist.

Two other Americans, both contractors with the U.S. Department of Defense, were also killed Sunday by al-Shabab extremists at Manda Bay Airfield.

I last spoke with him New Years Day via FaceTime, said Mayfield's mother, Carmoneta Horton-Mayfield. We discussed him not having to go to Somalia and he told me everything was good and safe at his base. He told me everything would be OK. Those were his last words to me.

Mayfield joined the Army in 2018 after a year in college and was most recently stationed at Fort Rucker in Alabama, said his father, Henry Mayfield Sr.

He said his son had been in Kenya since October, installing and maintaining heating-and-cooling systems.

He was looking for better opportunities, but also he enjoyed serving, Mayfield Sr. said. He was that kind of kid. He would help. It fit him. It was good for him. He enjoyed being in the Army.

Al-Shabab, based in neighboring Somalia, claimed responsibility for the assault.

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I was there on Sunday and probably had over 200 cars come in and leave throughout the day. It was nonstop in and out," Naumovski said. "Theyre coming from out of state or wherever. The demand is definitely still there.
Capsicum Re, the specialist reinsurance broker, launched a aviation reinsurance team led by David Bell. Bell is based in London and reports to Matt FitzGerald, managing partner of the London Property and Specialty division.

Bell brings 36 years of aviation industry experience and is a veteran of the aviation reinsurance market. He began his career at C.T. Bowring in aviation claims and then had various roles in insurance and reinsurance broking before joining Aon in 1999. Initially focusing on satellite business, Bell moved to be the executive broker for a number of large aviation accounts and regions, notably in Japan and the Far East. In 2016 he joined AIG as global head of Aerospace where he was responsible for underwriting and business strategy across all aviation business lines including space.

2019 was a challenging year for the aviation market having suffered from years of declining rates and notable loss activity, said FitzGerald. However, there were also a number of positive developments: our joint venture partner Gallagher acquired JLTs global aerospace division, there were a number of new entrants into this class as well as exits and there is an upwards pricing momentum in the aviation market. We are entering this market as we see an opportunity to bring our client focused, holistic entrepreneurial approach to this sector.

Bell said: Capsicum Res growth from a start up to the worlds fifth largest reinsurance broker in just six years has been incredibly impressive. Its a dynamic, entrepreneurial and ambitious broker and I look forward to working with the team to develop its aviation reinsurance offering.

Source: Capsicum Re

Topics Reinsurance Aviation AIG
Hong Kong police in riot gear rounding up suspected protesters during the demonstration. (PHOTO: Willie Siau/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

By Faris Mokhtar and Yoojung Lee

(Bloomberg) -- North London Collegiate School has been educating girls in the British capital since the days of Queen Victoria. These days, its looking further afield -- to Singapore. And, as chance would have it, the timing seems impeccable.

The private school is seeing a rush of interest in its new outpost from anxious expats in Hong Kong, who are sizing up options for their children given the running protests in the former British colony. One international school in the city-state said applications from Hong Kong have increased by about one-quarter.

Singapore has plenty of advantages for expats. The city-states political stability, high education standards, green spaces, low crime and efficient infrastructure make it appealing for those considering a change of scenery.

Singapore has a sound reputation internationally in terms of livability, said Jason Tan, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological Universitys National Institute of Education. With the current situation in Hong Kong, families are looking to move elsewhere.

Months-long pro-democracy protests that show no sign of ending have disrupted the Asian financial center, crippling its economy and seriously hurting the retail and hospitality sectors. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimated in October that as much as $4 billion may have flowed to Singapore due to the turmoil, while real estate brokers from Canada to Australia say theyre seeing a surge in interest from people looking to relocate.

Since August, when the violence intensified, school placement consultancy ITS Educational Services Ltd. in Hong Kong has received four inquiries a week on average about schools in Singapore.

School Talks

Parents are worried about their children traveling to school and how safe it is to be traveling on public transport, director Anne Murphy said.

Murphy, who is based in Hong Kong, was invited by four financial companies to conduct talks on Singapores international schools because employees have been offered the option of relocating.

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While she wasnt able to disclose the name the firms, she said the talks focused on the choices of international schools available, admissions process and waiting lists. Each was attended by around 12 to 20 parents, most either lawyers, traders or fund managers. The majority were expats, including American, Indian, British and French nationals.

Even those without Singapore visas were accepted through our help, Murphy said, adding ITS often recommended schools that could sponsor a student with a guardian visa.

A six-day shutdown of schools in November, prompted by fresh levels of violence, is another reason parents are casting their eyes abroad. Theyre angry their children were unable to travel to school, despite living nearby. Especially when school fees have burnt a small hole in their pockets.

Stamford American School Hong Kong charges about HK$178,000 ($22,850) a year for students up to grade five. That jumps to almost HK$200,000 for grades six to nine. Hong Kong International School charges around HK$216,000 for younger students and up to HK$245,950 for children in grades six to 12.

These costs are quite extravagant and significant if your child is unable to attend school, Murphy said.

Not Cheap

During the November shut down, the Singapore American School received inquiries from families wanting to enroll their children as soon as possible, according to director of admissions Treena Casey. Others were inquiring about getting their children in the door from August, the start of the new school year.

But the move isnt always smooth, or cheap.

Most of Singapores international schools have long waiting lists and prices rival Hong Kong. At the Singapore American School, students who are non-U.S. citizens cost as much as S$54,800 ($40,620) a year depending on the grade. The Canadian International School in Singapore charges up to S$40,900.

Casey said the school had witnessed a 25% jump in applications from Hong Kong but couldnt say how many would be joining in the new year. Weve tried to accommodate where we can. We have an extensive wait list, she said.

The French School of Singapore has seven new students starting this month, according to communications and events director Sebastien Barnard. Thats more than the school would normally expect, although its not considered a particularly large migration for us, he said.

The Canadian International Schools head of communications and marketing, Michelle Sharp, said theres been an increase in both inquiries and applications, but couldnt share figures. Spaces are extremely limited for a January start, with wait lists at most grade levels.

North London Collegiate School in England, meanwhile, is opening a branch in Singapore in August. It started accepting enrollments in October and to date, about 12% of inquiries have come from Hong Kong, said Vandana Rao, director of community relations.

Its important to find schools that are the right fit and affordability is a factor, Tan said. The high costs in Singapore could deter Hong Kong parents from relocating.

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In this write-up, I am going to withhold the names of the persons whose actions or pronouncements have motivated me to put out this publication. This is because I expect all Ghanaians to see and understand who a real Statesman of credible standing beneficial to the citizenry is, hence not limiting myself to the two individuals in mind.

There are two types of Statesmen or Stateswomen. There are the good ones and the worst ones. The good ones are those who gear their career, interventions and actions to benefit their country, citizens and humanity while the worst ones are those who do things to satisfy their egoism in total detriment to the benefit of the greater masses. The bad ones in pursuit of their aims and objectives can knowingly or unknowingly be dictatorial.

Who is a Statesman and what does a Statesman do? Let me fall on the dictionary and other accepted definitions. "A statesman or stateswoman is usually a politician, diplomat or other notable public figure who has had a long and respected career at the national or international level". They are "a person who is experienced in the art of government or versed in the administration of government affairs or a person who exhibits great wisdom and ability in directing the affairs of a government or in dealing with important public issues"

No matter how good your intentions are, could you be a respected Statesman if you live the life of "robbing Peter to pay Paul?" You can attend world conferences to speak eloquently, intelligently, and wisely in defence of your country and her policies, or to lobby for good things for your country. Nonetheless, if you do not respect the laws of your country, assuming yourself to be a monster capable and able to bulldoze yourself through to getting whatever you want, irrespective of how you obtain them, can you be said to be a useful Statesman?

If you are able to point out the mistakes of he who is leading, to do the right things but you indulge in doing the wrong things, can it be credited to you as being a Statesman? Yes, you can still be a Statesman but are you a good or a bad one?

If you keep admonishing your government or the president of your country to provide the citizens of the country jobs, better roads, potable water, better security etc., but you choose to take your personal huge money to hide in foreign banks, thus operate offshore accounts, intimidate the poor and rob them of the little that they have in contravention of the laws of your country, can you claim to be a responsible Statesman?

Before proceeding any further, let me pause and quote a passage from the bible to support my argument. For the sake of those of you public readers not having your bible handy to refer to, I am going to reproduce the entire passage here.

2 Samuel 12:1-12

1 The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. 4 Now a traveller came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveller who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him. 5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this must die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity. 7 Then Nathan said to David, You are the man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave your masters house to you, and your masters wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. 9 Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own. 11 This is what the LORD says: Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. 12 You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel."

Was King David not a Statesman? Was he not punished for his actions why because they were reprehensible in the sight of God? This goes to confirm that Statesmen behaving badly must be told off, if we can't punish them. They should not be venerated contrary as suggested by the famous and popular Ghanaian.

Who then is a Statesman that you prefer to have to accord them respect?

You can choose whoever you want despite their actions. You are entitled to your choice and opinion. Opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one and everyone thinks everyone else's stinks", said Simone Elkeles. Or, "Opinions are like noses, everybody's got one and they're all different", said David Lipe.

Nevertheless, being a complete hypocrite, greedy and lawless, does in no way make one a Statesman worthy of anyone's recognition and respect. Should we kowtow to such a person for being a Statesman, they will continue to do worse things to the detriment of the peace of the nation and the safety and security of the people therein. This is my humble opinion.

For me, the person recently acknowledged as a Statesman by a well known Ghanaian hence calling on all Ghanaians especially, the Statesman's tribesmen and women to pamper him is no Statesman to me at all. We should not by our extolling attitudes help to create human monsters who will always turn round to devour us when we least expect.

See my actions and writings as a contribution of my widow's mite towards fighting to make Ghana, my motherland's land, a better place to live in for many Ghanaians. I earnestly call on all honest, God-fearing and well-meaning Ghanaians the world over to support my noble cause of securing justice for the poor and the needy in Ghana, especially the people of Kumawuman.

Thank you to God Almighty and the late Op. Kwame Basoah and Awo Serwaah for inculcating in me the spirit of discernment, selflessness and dedication to be of service to my country and humanity.

Rockson Adofo

Sunday, 5 January 2020
More than a dozen Democrats wanted to compete against Donald Trump and deny him a second term in the White House. There appeared to have been a feeling among a section of them that it would be easy to get nominated. Possibly, they under-estimated the power of debates that decide the future. In order to get the final nomination, they had to participate in open debates and the number of hopefuls kept reducing. As things stand right now, a survey carried out by Hill-HarrisX indicates the top five contenders as Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bloomberg, and Pete Buttigieg.

Joe Biden Urges Voters to Make 2020 the Year for Gun Control https://t.co/3pCczPD0bU  Mike 'Thomas Paine' Moore (@Thomas1774Paine) January 4, 2020

Daily Mail UK provides a brief about these top five. Joe Biden is the former vice president, and Senator Bernie Sanders is the independent from Vermont. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren is a Senator from Massachusetts, Michael Bloomberg is the billionaire former mayor of New York City, and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

Bernie Sanders announced he raised $34.5 million in the final quarter of last year, an eye-popping haul that's the largest quarter for any Democratic hopeful this cycle https://t.co/bLPDeUUTdv  POLITICO (@politico) January 2, 2020

The base of this ranking is the percentage of backing of Democrat voters as on the date of the survey.

These are 28, 16, 11, 11, and 6 respectively. As is evident, both Michael Bloomberg and Senator Elizabeth Warren occupy third place in the race.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is the only woman of the five

The Hill-HarrisX poll, conducted in late December, revealed that 12 percent of Democratic voters have yet to make up their minds on who they will support.

Discuss this news on Eunomia

Some of the lower-tier candidates hope to improve their standing but the gap is too large. Michael Bloomberg entered the race late and depends on his financial power. He is funding his own campaign that does not allow him to participate in any of the Democratic debates. Forbes pegged his worth at $56.7billion.

ELECTION 2020 -- Bloomberg out for the count?? Gives wrong answer at Q&A?? "I just dont remember," Democratic presidential candidate and former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg said when asked about the Central Park Five. https://t.co/50rvRd0y3y via @HuffPostPol  World News Focus (@WorldNewsFocus) January 2, 2020

Daily Mail UK gives a peep into fundraising drives by others.

Bernie Sanders revealed he raised more than $34.5million in the quarter. It proved that his health issue in October did not slow the momentum of fundraising. Both he and Elizabeth Warren depend largely on small contributions from donors most of which come online.

Fundraising dipped, but Warren is keeping pace with other leading candidates for the 2020 presidential nomination. https://t.co/KNiycAKpCx  HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) January 3, 2020

Joe Biden brought in $22.7million, while Pete Buttigieg raised $24.7million.

Another study puts Elizabeth Warren in the top five

The Iowa caucuses are hardly one month away and CNN has released a list of five top contenders. This is as of January 2 and will be reviewed and recast every two weeks.

As of now, the top five are Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bloomberg, and Pete Buttigieg. According to CNN, chances of Joe Biden, the former vice president, for the nomination are bright. He has many positives but losses in Iowa and New Hampshire could make him uncomfortable.

Bernie Sanders follows Biden and has good online support with fundraising and his campaign is gaining momentum but he cannot take things for granted. As for Elizabeth Warren, she appears in this list of top five as well. She has the best organization in Iowa and is competitive in New Hampshire. If she wins these, she could hope to be the 46th president of the United States.
CINCINNATI, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- KYOCERA SENCO Industrial Tools, Inc. (Senco), the nation's largest staple manufacturer, today welcomes a decision by the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) to impose preliminary antidumping duties of 301.64 percent on all imports of medium and heavy collated steel staples from China. The duties will take effect on or about January 10, and will be collected on imports dating back to mid-October. These duties will be imposed on top of anti-subsidy duties of 12.38 percent up to 156.99 percent, levied in a preliminary decision released in early November 2019. The combined preliminary duties now total 303.48 percent to 448.09 percent.

"We should not have to compete with dumped and subsidized imports and applaud the Department of Commerce for continuing its important work to stop unfair and illegal trade practices," said Cliff Mentrup, CEO of Senco. "This development is certainly another step in the right direction. It's good news for our company and the entire industry."

The antidumping investigation was initiated on July 3, 2019 in response to petitions filed by Senco, wherein the company asked DOC and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to investigate imports from China. An antidumping (AD) investigation commenced to address unfair pricing along with a countervailing (CVD) duty investigation to address unfair subsidies. The company sought relief in the form of duties in both cases.

Since then, the two investigations have moved swiftly and smoothly, even ahead of schedule at times. The DOC issued an expedited preliminary decision in early November allowing retroactive imposition of duties after finding critical circumstances, including a 55% increase in imports in the three months immediately after these cases were filed as importers rushed in imports in an attempt to avoid duties.

A final determination in the anti-dumping investigation is expected around May 19, 2020.

For more on the company's petitions, see the company's press release.

For more on the ITC's investigation, review the commission's press release.

For more on DOC's preliminary CVD determination, review the agency's fact sheet here.

For more on DOC's preliminary AD determination, review the agency's fact sheet here.

Contact Elizabeth Heaton, [email protected], 202-445-9858

SOURCE KYOCERA SENCO Industrial Tools, Inc.
New Delhi: Declaring his unwillingness to takeover the reigns of Tata Sons again, Cyrus Mistry, in a statement on Sunday, threw light on the relationship of his family-run Shapoorji Pallonji (SP) Group and the Tata Group and said that although a minority stakeholder, his family has been a guardian of the Tata Group for over five decades.

He said that the relationship between Tata Group and Shapoorji Pallonji Group, which owns 18.37 per cent stake in Tata Sons, spanned multiple decades and was built on common agreement and mutual faith. Mistry added that as a minority stakeholder, it was in his and SP Group's own interest to ensure the long term success of Tata Group.

"As an 18.37 per cent shareholder, it is in our own interest to ensure the Group's long-term success. My family, although a minority partner, has been a guardian of the Tata Group for over five decades," Mistry said in his statement.

Tata Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata, in his petition to the Supreme Court on Friday, had said that SP Group was only a financial investor to Tata Sons and there was no partnership between both Tata Group and the SP Group. He said that the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal's (NCLAT) judgement reinstating Mistry as Tata Son's chairman starts on a "wrong" premise of treating Tata Sons as a "two group company".

"The appellant (SP Group) has been associated with Tata Sons from the year 1965 when the SP Group first became its shareholders. There has never been any relationship akin to a partnership between the 'Tata Group' and the SP Group and the latter has always been a financial investor in the Tata Sons," he said.

Tata further said that SP Group did not hold a seat in the Tata Sons' board, and said that judement was based on misconceived understanding.

"The Impugned Judgment holds that there was purported comity and mutual relationship between the 'Tata Group' and SP Group until the replacement of Cyrus Mistry as the Executive Chairman of Tata Sons. But such alleged mutual understanding cannot also imply mean that there was a relationship akin to partnership between the 'Tata Group' and the SP Group, where the latter were entitled to a seat on the Board of Tata Sons," Tata said.

Mistry, on Sunday, said that he although he would not take up any post on Tata Sons board or that of its companies, he would continue to pursue all options to protect SP Group's rights as minority stakeholder, including the resumption of a seat for the his family-run group on the Tata Sons' board.

He also observed that the founding fathers of the Tata Group had laid a strong ethical foundation that cared for all stakeholders and former Tata leaders worked together with the minority partner to create value for all stakeholders

However, in the last three years, the leadership of the group has shown "scant" respect for the rights of the minority stakeholders, Mistry said.

"In the last three years, both in conduct and in their statements to the world at large, the Tata Group's leadership has shown scant respect for the rights of minority shareholders. It is time the group's management introspects and reflects on its conduct as it embarks on future actions," his statement read.

Mistry said that the legal fight is not about him but for the protection the rights of minority shareholders and upholding their rights.

"This legal fight has never been about me. It has always been and will always be about protecting the rights of minority shareholders and upholding their right to demand a higher standard of corporate governance from controlling shareholders."

Acknowledging the NCLAT's December 18 verdict, he said: "I am humbled by the NCLAT order, which after review of the enormous material on record, recognized the illegal manner in which I was removed and the oppressive and prejudicial conduct of Tata and other Trustees."

The statement comes just days after Tata Sons and Ratan Tata moved the Supreme Court challenging the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal's December verdict which ordered the reinstatement of Mistry as the Chairman of Tata Sons.

Ratan Tata, in the petition filed in the top court on January 3, had said that that the appellate tribunal's verdict was "erroneous" and it "pulled down" the governance and corporate structure of the group.

Mistry was appointed as the sixth chairman of Tata Group in 2012 but ousted on October 24, 2016.
Phuket mahjong raid nets 46 gamblers

PHUKET: A raid on a house in Wichit early this morning saw 46 people arrested for illegal gambling, police reported earlier today (Jan 6).

crimepolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Monday 6 January 2020, 03:43PM

Col Bandit Khaosutham, Chief of the Phuket Provincial Police Investigation Division, reported that he received a tip-off 00:45am saying that people were gambling in the house, located in Moo 4, Wichit.

Col Bandit together with Wichit Police Deputy Chief Lt Col Thamsan Boonthong and other officers raided the house, where they found people gambling on mahjong.

Among the gamblers arrested were six women, Col Bandit said.

The gamblers ranged from 23 to 47 years old, and most were from Chaing Mai and Chiang Rai, he said.

Police seized six gambling tables, B8,460 cash, gambling chips and other gambling equipment, Col Bandit said in his report.

All of the gamblers were taken to Wichit Police Station and charged for illegal gambling, he noted.

Col Bandit added that the raid was carried out in accordance with a direct order by Phuket Provincial Police Commander Maj Gen Rungrote Thakurapunyasiri to arrest all gamblers in Phuket.

if anyone has information about illegal gambling in Phuket, please report it by calling the police at hotline 191, he said.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Even as the Supreme Court has clarified Aadhaar should be made mandatory only for availing benefits under government schemes, motorists have found they cannot recharge FASTags  an electronic toll payment system  without Aadhaar validation.

With the January 15 deadline for complete migration to e-payment approaching, motorists say they are being made to run from pillar to post when they approach banks and toll gates to purchase FASTags.

They are told that without Aadhaar they will not be able to recharge FASTag accounts on the mobile application. An NHAI official confirmed that Aadhaar is mandatory for filling the electronic KYC form in the myfastag application.

The document need not be that of the vehicle owner. It can also be that of any family member or friend who has a bank account. Using one FASTag account, multiple vehicles can be recharged, the official said.

Motorists are not amused by this news. At Nallur toll gate, I was told I have to provide Aadhaar to link my bank account with the my fastag mobile app without which I will not be able to recharge online. Else, I have to physically go to bank or toll gate to deposit a payment in the account each time and use it, said Santhosh Narayanan of Thiruverkadu.

Another motorist, Vishnu Durai of Bengaluru said draconian rules are being imposed on people as per whims and fancies of central government officials without considering the ground reality.

Even after motorists pay a hefty fee for using roads, NHAI is harassing them. Why cant they accept other proof like driving licence or voter ID, he asked.

The e-payment system is being partially implemented at 48 toll plazas, maintained by NHAI, in Tamil Nadu since December 15.

About 75 per cent out of 482 lanes were converted to accept toll only electronically, while two lanes were earmarked for cash payment.

However, citing a shortage of FASTags and reluctance on the part of a section of motorists, the Central government extended the deadline for complete migration to e-payment to January 15.
Northern China, a hotspot of air pollution, has always been an area of great interest to study owing to the significant impacts on human health, the climate and ecosystems.

"However, most studies have focused on the sources and the formation mechanisms, which cannot provide us with knowledge on the fate of various species like reactive nitrogen, i.e., nitrogen deposition," says Masters student Zhen Wang, from the Institute of International Earth System Science, Nanjing University. "Therefore, in our study we estimated the nitrogen deposition in northern China through a combination of remote sensing data and atmospheric chemical transport model simulations."

Wang and his coauthors interpreted the spatial and seasonal patterns of inorganic nitrogen deposition using NO2 and NH3 column measurements from satellites and the Model for Ozone and Related Chemical Tracers, version 4 (MOZART-4). The result was a unique "top-down" estimation of nitrogen deposition in northern China, and the findings have been published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters.

According to this study, the average nitrogen deposition flux in northern China was 54.5 kg N per hectare (ranging from 16.3 to 106.5 kg N per hectare). That is equal to 10% of the annual nitrogen application for the rotation of winter wheat-summer maize in this region. Of the total nitrogen deposition, 36% was deposited via precipitation and 64% was deposited through dry deposition.

According to Wang, this estimated nitrogen deposition flux will be helpful in determining the magnitude and pollution status in northern China without ground measurements, supporting the construction plan for environmental monitoring in the future. In addition, the generated spatial and seasonal patterns of nitrogen deposition in northern China provide basic information for evaluating the influence of nitrogen enrichment on regional biogeochemical cycles, such as forests, grasslands, and farmland ecosystems.

"Although the method of remote sensing can provide us with general knowledge regarding the spatial pattern of nitrogen deposition, the current resolution still has difficulty in identifying hotspots," adds Dr. Xiuying Zhang, the corresponding author of the study. "Therefore, further research from our group will focus on atmospheric nitrogen deposition inversion with high spatial and temporal resolution."

###
Life comes at you fast.

For Valerie Thompson, the driver of the Aurora-based Target 550 racing team, fast is never fast enough.

Thompson is one of the fastest drivers in the world and one of a handful of women who get behind the wheel of the fastest internal combustion engine vehicles on the planet with the sole purpose of setting land speed records.

The Arizona resident hopes to set a land speed record and crack 420 miles per hour when she and the team head to Australia in March. For Thompson, its a return to the same dry lakebed where she crashed while traveling 343 miles per hour in 2018. She walked away with minor injuries.

On the latest episode of Beat Check with The Oregonian, Thompson discussed how she got into speed racing, what makes her keep doing it despite her terrifying crash and the 2018 death of fellow female speed racing competitor Jessi Holmes, who died on Oregons Alvord Desert last August.

Heres the full episode:

-- Andrew Theen; atheen@oregonian.com; 503-294-4026; @andrewtheen

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Bollywood celebrities including actors Riteish Deshmukh and Shabana Azmi took to social media to condemn the rampage carried out by a masked mob on the students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday.

Terming the incident as "horrific", actor Riteish Deshmukh took to Twitter and said, "Why do you need to cover your face? Because you know you are doing something wrong, illegal & punishable. There is no honour in this-Its horrific to see the visuals of students & teachers brutally attacked by masked goons inside JNU-Such violence cannot & should not be tolerated."

Deskhmukh's wife and actor Genelia Deshmukh also took Twitter to condemn the attacks on JNU students.

"Absolutely disturbed to see the visuals of masked goons enter JNU and attack students & teachers - sheer brutality!! Humble appeal to the police to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice," she tweeted.

Actor Swara Bhaskar who is an alumnus of the university was quite vocal about the issue since the very beginning of it.

Bhaskar tweeted a video of the JNU Student Union President Aishe Ghosh bleeding and crying. "JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh attacked by alleged ABVP Goons... This attack is ONGOING @DelhiPolice Vasant Kunj thana is less than 1km away!!!!!!!! Why are you letting this happen???" Bhaskar tweeted.

The actor also shared a video of herself urging the residents of New Delhi to reach JNU campus gates in large numbers. Bhaskar further claimed that her parents live in the JNU campus.

Senior actor Shabana Azmi shared Bhaskar's video and said, "This is beyond shocking! Condemnation is not enough. Immediate action needs to be taken against the perpetrators."

Actor Dia Mirza throwing a powerful question at netizens, tweeted, "How long will this be allowed to continue? How long will you turn a blind eye? How long will the defenceless be attacked in the name of politics or religion? Enough is enough. @DelhiPolice."

'Pink' actor Taapsee Pannu also shared a video of the rampage and tweeted, "such is the condition inside what we consider to be a place where our future is shaped. It's getting scarred for ever. Irreversible damage. What kind of shaping up is happening here, it's there for us to see.... saddening."

Earlier on Sunday evening, more than 18 students, including JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, were injured and taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered the JNU and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods.

The JNU administration and political leaders, cutting across political lines, had condemned the attack on students and urged the police to take action against the perpetrators.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Israel's military and other security services undergo largest rearmament in years

Spain PM calls for a debate to consider COVID-19 endemic disease

Flyone Armenia and Pegasus receive permission for Yerevan-Istanbul-Yerevan flights

Pope condemns "baseless" ideological misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines

Arab foreign ministers to visit Beijing

Azerbaijanis stoned an Armenian car on the Stepanakert-Goris road

Armenian FM has a phone call with his Polish counterpart

Macron travels to French Riviera to discuss internal security issues

Artsakh Foreign Ministry: Azerbaijan's aggressive behavior aims to disrupt Russian peacekeepers' activities

US COVID-19 cases reach 60 million

European Parliament President hospitalized due to immune system dysfunction

Washington and Ankara discuss normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey

WHO excludes emergence of deltacron strain

In Karabakh Azerbaijanis shelled tractor

Indian Defense Minister tests positive for COVID-19

US-Russia talks on security guarantees lasting for seven hours already

NEWS.am daily digest: 10.01.22

Pashinyan appoints Hayk Mkrtchyan as Deputy Governor of Kotayk province

Blast in eastern Afghanistan kills nine children

Pashinyan: One of key priorities of Armenia presidency at CSTO is strengthening of crisis response mechanisms

Internet cut off in Kazakhstan

Armenia, Kazakhstan ombudspersons confer on Armenian communitys rights

Armenia, Russia defense ministers discuss Kazakhstan

Turkey defense minister meets with their envoy in process of normalization of Armenia relations

Iranian Foreign Ministry reports progress in Vienna negotiations

Dollar continues going up in Armenia

New attempt by migrants in Belarus to storm Poland border

Skat Airlines resumes Yerevan-Aktau and Aktau-Yerevan flights

New Covid-related restrictions to be introduced in Armenia

Karabakh police: Firefighters also targeted by Azerbaijan shooting (PHOTOS)

Artsakh Defense Army has not fired on Azerbaijan positions

Azerbaijani military are protesting amid military awards deprivation

Azerbaijanis open fire in Nagorno-Karabakh

Karabakh MFA: Events in Kazakhstan are result of actions planned by Turkey

Armenia army General Staff has new deputy chief

Australia to buy US $ 2.5 billion of armored vehicles

Artsakh emergency service: Search for soldiers remains continued during holidays

Kazakh Colonel Nazanov dies after heart attack

Australia begins to vaccinate children aged 5-11 with COVID-19 vaccine

Putin: Peacekeeping contingent to stay in Kazakhstan for a limited period

Armenia 2nd-President Kocharyan v. premier Pashinyan lawsuit court session is closed

Azerbaijan commandos conduct military exercises

Part of the Great Wall of China collapsed due to earthquake

Armenia MP: Turkey, Azerbaijans regional calculations have mixed up

Copper prices decline

Armenia ex-President Kocharyan v. PM Pashinyan lawsuit trial resumes

Gold is getting cheaper

EU is ready to support in addressing Karabakh crisis

126 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Fire in residential building in New York leaves 19 people killed

National Center for Infectious Diseases Yerevan branch employees protesting outside center

Karabakh President: Radical Pan-Turkic circles are actively involved in process in Kazakhstan

Oil is getting more expensive

Mars helicopter Ingenuity preparing for difficult 19th flight

Interior ministry: About 8,000 people detained in Kazakhstan

Earthquake hits Armenia-Azerbaijan border zone

Researchers create substitute for egg whites from fungus

Kazakhstan official information channel removes message about 164 casualties

EC says construction of new nuclear power plants in Europe will require  500 billion in investment

Ghost ship that sank 343 years ago discovered in US

Post-COVID-19 antibodies may attack healthy cells, scientists say

Pope says he was praying for Kazakhstan

Media: 164 people die in Kazakhstan during riots

Peskov: CSTO session does not plan to sign documents yet

Criminal cases launched after bomb threat in Armenian, Belarus embassies in Moscow

Norwegian military surrender panties before demobilization

Iranian MFA says Tehran is ready for talks on downed plane of UIA Ukraine

Russian defense minister says information war is on all fronts

Several strategic objects in Kazakhstan transferred to CSTO contingent under protection

David Minasyan elected head of Armenia's Parakar community

Bloomberg: US is considering issue of limiting supply of high-tech products to Russia

Armenia reports 142 COVID-19 new cases

Council of Elders meeting continues in Armenia's Parakar

White House speaks on Blinken statement on Russian peacekeeping troops

Armed people detained at border in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan talks stabilization of situation in all regions of country

Azerbaijanis demand Armenian soldier change his faith by taking away his cross, Ombudsman says

Armenian painter Mher Mansurian dies in France

At least 17 killed in Egypt road accident

NATO chief announces Russia forces continued buildup in Ukraine

Armenian militarys transfer to Kazakhstan is completed

Azerbaijan opens fire on military positions near Armenia village

Unidentified persons report threat of explosion at Armenia, Belarus embassies in Moscow

Putin confers with Pashinyan, Lukashenko on situation in Kazakhstan

Zakharova: OSCE has not provided real assistance to reporters who were attacked in Kazakhstan

Lukashenko, Putin discuss situation in CSTO member countries

Russia's Putin has telephonic conversation with Kazakhstan's Tokayev

Quake hits waters off Chile

President Tokayev declares national mourning in Kazakhstan on January 10

US diplomats do not leave Kazakhstans Almaty yet

1 more person dies of coronavirus in Karabakh

Artsakh resident, 91 found dead near village

Russia MFA reacts to Blinken's words about Russian military in Kazakhstan

195 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Kazakhstan security committee ex-chief detained

Kazakhstan interior ministry: There are foreigners among those detained in Almaty region

Russia continues transporting its peacekeepers to Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan launches investigation into 180 retailers of liquefied petroleum gas

BMW introduces concept vehicle that can change colors

Shootings continue in Kazakhstans Almaty
New Delhi, Jan 6 : The Supreme Court on Monday issued a notice in the matter of illegal planting of non-approved Genetically Modified (GM) crops (Bt. Brinjal, HT. Bt. Cotton, etc) by Shetkari Sangathan, a union of farmers, and others.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for petitioner Aruna Rodriges, before a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra sought a moratorium on the environmental release of any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the absence of -- (a) comprehensive, transparent, and rigorous bio-safety protocols in the public domain; (b) bio-safety studies conducted by independent expert bodies, the results of which are made available in the public domain; and (c) GMOs, given the irreversible impacts of GMO contamination, are a fitting case for the application of the Precautionary Principle.

The application cited the illegal planting of unapproved Bt. Brinjal and herbicide tolerant (HT) cotton which is also a GMO across various states." Genetic contamination is irreparable and irreversible. It is also confirmed that there can be no co-existence between GMOs and Non-GMOs in agriculture and contamination has been confirmed even as a result of single field trials", said the plea.

The plea contended that it is apparent that the regulatory apparatus designed to ensure that GMOs are not released into the environment, except after stringent protocols of risk assessment applied rigorously and sequentially, has ignominiously collapsed. This is evident through the wholesale illegal cultivation of unapproved GMOs in the country.

"Taking advantage of the collapse of the regulatory regime miscreant organisations and individuals are inciting and misleading farmers, across several states, who may not be aware of the gravity of their action, to plant Bt Brinjal, HT (RR) cotton, and HT Bt cotton", said the plea citing the illegal planting of Bt. Brinjal in Haryana, which was identified in April 2019.

The plea contended that a few marginal miscreant organizations are instigating farmers to plant GM Brinjal and other unapproved GM crops while being fully aware that said action would be illegal.

"One such organisation is the Shetkari Sangathan that carried out its public threat to plant unapproved and illegal Bt Brinjal and Herbicide Tolerant Cotton (HTBt Cotton) in Maharashtra in the presence of police personnel", said the plea.

The plea also cited the recommendation of the Technical Expert Committee (TEC) constituted by the apex court.

"The 5-member TEC Reports' recommendations are required to be implemented to safeguard India. In the meanwhile, the status quo must be maintained with an interim injunction on the environmental release of any GMO whether in open field trials/plantings, and including the commercial approval of any GMO crop", said the plea.

The apex court said it will hear the recommendations of TEC, and asked its experts to be present in court on the next date of hearing.

"Direct Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee to lay down an urgent comprehensive 'Contamination Protocol' with regard to brinjal as a priority, laying down measures to be taken in case of contamination and the procedures required to eradicate any contamination, to safeguard our brinjal foundation seed stock and genetic diversity", said the plea.
I'm A Celebrity viewers labelled Charlotte Crosby a 'genius' and 'innovator' on Monday night's episode.

The Geordie Shore UK star impressed her campmates as she straightened her unruly blonde locks with just two tin cans.

Surprised by her own hack, the 29-year-old announced that she's taking bookings.

'Inventor of the year!' I'm A Celebrity's Charlotte Crosby (pictured) revealed her genius hack on Monday night's episode. The star turned two tin cans into a makeshift HAIR STRAIGHTENER

'I bloody love Charlotte on I'm A Celeb. Making her own straightener out of pots and pans,' one viewer wrote on Twitter.

'Oh, my God. Charlotte is a dead set bush mechanic with that makeshift hair straightener,' another said.

'Woah! The hair straightening trick was beyond impressive!' one fan posted.

On a mission to 'make straighteners today': Charlotte clamped two metal dishes together, and was amazed by the results

'Genius,' another commented, along with: 'Charlotte for inventor of the year.'

On Monday's episode, Charlotte announced to her campmates that she couldn't 'deal with this hair' and was on a mission to 'make straighteners today'.

'I wear extensions. I'm not like the Australian girls who have flowing natural locks of hair.'

Charlotte then made a makeshift hair straightener out of two metal dishes clamped together, and was amazed by the results.

Online praise: Viewers described Charlotte as a 'genius' and 'innovator' on Twitter

Taking bookings: 'It totally works! We have a salon,' Charlotte declared. 'I'm taking bookings, if anyone wants a booking'

'It totally works! We have a salon,' she declared. 'I'm taking bookings, if anyone wants a booking.'

'I'm popping off to the salon,' Charlotte continued. 'A genius, I know! I'm going to have straight hair. I'm going to have my hair all straight.'

The star later emerged with miraculously glossy and straight tresses.
Israels prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to accidentally admit his country has nuclear capabilities with an apparent slip of the tongue on Sunday.

Mr Netanyahu described his country as a nuclear power at a weekly cabinet meeting before quickly correcting himself with an embarrassed smile.

Israel is widely-believed to possess nuclear weapons but it has never confirmed or denied claims about its atomic arsenal and has maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity on the issue for decades.

While reading prepared remarks in Hebrew on a deal with Greece and Cyprus for a subsea gas pipeline, Mr Netanyahu said: The significance of this project is that we are turning Israel into a nuclear power.

He immediately corrected himself to say energy power and then paused before continuing with his comments.

The apparent blunder comes at a time of heightened tensions between the US, an ally of Israel, and arch-foe Iran after Donald Trump ordered an airstrike which killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Iraq.

Mr Netanyahu has welcomed the killing and praised Mr Trump for ordering the strike, which sparked anger in the Middle East and threats of retaliation from Iran.

The Israeli prime minister is currently fighting for his political survival after two inconclusive election results in April and September last year and an indictment on corruption charges in November.

He has denied the charges, which include bribery, fraud and breach of trust, and asked to be granted immunity.

Recommended Benjamin Netanyahu asks for immunity from corruption charges

The request is expected to delay his trial until after another election in March, which is now likely to focus on whether he should be granted immunity or step down to stand trial.

Despite international pressure, Israel has refused to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which aims to further the goal of nuclear disarmament.

Its nuclear capabilities have been considered an open secret for years after Mordechai Vanunu, a former nuclear technician, revealed details of the countrys alleged nuclear weapons programme in 1986.

Mr Vanunu was later kidnapped by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and brought back to Israel, where he was sentenced to 18 years in jail for treason and espionage.

Additional reporting by Reuters
The Rural Fire Service has slammed claims that a furious firefighter who told Scott Morrison to 'get f***ed' before collapsing on the ground from exhaustion will be sacked.

Volunteer firefighter Paul Parker from Nelligen, on the New South Wales south coast, pulled his fire truck over on the weekend to deliver a blunt message to the prime minister.

'Are you from the media?' Tell the prime minister to go and get f**ked from Nelligen,' he shouted, before collapsing on the ground from exhaustion and explaining he'd failed to save seven homes.

Days after the incident, an online petition emerged claiming Mr Parker 'faces dismissal' from the RFS.

Paul Parker pulled his fire truck over to the side of the road in Nelligen, on the NSW South Coast, to deliver the blunt message to the prime minister

'What a real kick in the face is [Paul] who leaned out of the fire truck and abused the prime minister to the media is facing dismissal from the rfs,' the petition read.

'Paul had been working for days with little sleep and little food to save strangers properties selflessly putting himself in harms way. Please everyone show your support for Paul and sign this petition.'

While a spokesperson for the RFS confirmed Mr Parker was given time off to recover from exhaustion, dismissal rumours were denied.

'Paul Parker has not been dismissed and nor will he be,' the spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

'The change.org petition is completely unfounded and we don't know where it came from.'

The hashtag #savepaul also emerged on Twitter on Sunday night.

Days after the incident, an online petition emerged claiming Mr Parker 'faces dismissal' from the RFS

The petition generated more than 48,000 signatures in 18 hours.

The criticism for Mr Morrison came amid growing outrage over the prime minister's handling of the bushfire crisis.

Mr Morrison was slammed for secretly jetting off to Hawaii for a family holiday in late December as the bushfires worsened.

Last Thursday, when visiting Cobargo on the NSW south coast, he walked away from a distraught resident.

The prime minister was filmed approaching a young woman and forcing her to shake his hand before walking away when she demanded better funding for the NSW Rural Fire Service.

The woman, Zoey Salucci-McDermott, later said the interaction broke her heart.



After shouting at the cameraman, the exhausted fireman collapsed to the ground next to the road
A 52-year-old man has been charged with the murder of Dianne Barrett (pictured) after her remains were discovered in bushland

A 52-year-old man has been charged with a missing woman's murder after her remains were discovered in bushland.

Dianne Barrett, 59, went missing in May last year before her remains were discovered off Nettleton Road, in Karrakup, 45 minutes south-east of Perth, on Sunday.

Neighbours say the pair were friends but police are yet to confirm if the two knew each other, Nine News reported.

Officers raided the home of the accused murdered before he was arrested and later charged on Sunday.

In July Ms Barrett's brother Dave Barrett said the disappearance of his sister, who was a musician and a teacher, was out of character.

'I'm thinking foul play, but how serious or to what degree I'm unsure of,' Mr Barrett told WA Today. 'This is totally out of character.

'She's just a simple, caring person who would bend over backwards for anybody.'

The victim's bank statements listed her last purchase at a Bunnings in Rockingham on May 11, where she was also seen on CCTV.

Ms Barrett was reported missing on May 24 with her remains later found in bushland off Nettleton Road road in Karrakup

Her disappearance was later reported to police by a neighbour on May 24.



When police attended her Ridley Way home they found her car in the driveway, the fireplace lit and her dog still at home.

The accused man was refused police bail and will appear in Rockingham Magistrates Court on Monday.
Nikki Osborne broke down in tears during the second episode of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! on Monday.

The 38-year-old comedian was discussing her 'exceptional' seven-year-old son, Teddy, who is on the spectrum.

During an emotionally raw conversation with her co-stars, Nikki admitted Teddy's diagnosis had been 'really scary at the start'.

'You are just so terrified what their life's going to be like': On Monday, comedian Nikki Osborne (pictured) broke down while talking about her autistic son Teddy, seven, on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!

'He probably won't speak and it's hard to hear that,' she continued, before getting overcome with emotion.

Nikki said Teddy presented with 'lots of traits' typical of those suffering from autism when he was younger, including 'nonverbal, spinning, rocking'.

'Being told your son mightn't speak or interact when they're a baby is quite a shock, and it's just the not knowing how they're going to be,' she continued.

Touching: 'He probably won't speak and it's hard to hear that,' Nikki continued, before getting overcome with emotion. Pictured with Teddy

'You are just so terrified what their life's going to be like and we had no idea.

'It was hard at the start but what turned out to be what we thought was the hardest is the biggest blessing.'

Despite the uncertainty surrounding his future, Nikki said Teddy, who was diagnosed with high-functioning autism, is now thriving.

Strong: The former model, who has been married to actor Jamie Starr (back) since 2007, said it was especially hard on her eldest son, Will (left)

'He is an angel. He is a killer, got a girlfriend, ahead in school, killing it, and all his therapists go he is unbelievable and an amazing turn around,' she added.

The former model, who has been married to actor Jamie Starr since 2007, said it was especially hard on her eldest son, Will.

'We basically had to put him on hold,' she confessed, referring to him as 'the forgotten sibling' on Instagram.

True love: 'He is an angel. He is a killer, got a girlfriend, ahead in school, killing it, and all his therapists go he is unbelievable and an amazing turn around,' Nikki added

'He had to grow up really quickly and help me. It is a lot to ask. He had to grow up fast. At five, we said, "I'm sorry, you have to be an adult", which...' she said, before trailing off in tears.

Nikki said her husband had been a pillar of strength for her, and admitted it was often 'hard work'.

'We were so scared. And we were talking about it and my husband's sitting there, we had a cry and he just goes, "Forget normal",' she said.
Photo: The Canadian Press In this Saturday, Jan. 4, 2020, photo, released by the U.S. military, a U.S. Marine with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines that is part of a quick reaction force, carries a sand bag during the reinforcement of the U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad, Iraq, Jan. 4, 2020. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Kyle C. Talbot via AP)

Canada is closely monitoring developments after Iraq's parliament called for the expulsion of foreign troops from the country, a spokesman for Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said.

But Sajjan's press secretary, Todd Lane, would not say whether contingency plans are in the works for getting Canadian military personnel out of Iraq should the situation there deteriorate further.

Iraqi lawmakers approved a resolution Sunday asking the Iraqi government to end an agreement under which American and allied forces have been in the country for more than four years to help fight the Islamic State group, also known as Daesh.

The bill is nonbinding and subject to approval by the Iraqi government but has the backing of the outgoing prime minister.

The Canadian-led NATO training mission in Iraq has been temporarily suspended in the wake of the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

The training mission, currently led by Maj. Gen. Jennie Carignan, has been under Canadian command since it was launched in October 2018 at the request of the Iraqi government.

A U.S. airstrike Friday killed Soleimani and a number of top Iraqi officials at the Baghdad airport. Soleimani was the architect of Iran's proxy wars across the Mideast and was blamed for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in roadside bombings and other attacks.

"We continue to monitor and evaluate the situation, and remain in close co-ordination with our international partners," Lane said in an email Sunday. "Our goal remains a united and stable Iraq, and preventing the re-emergence of Daesh."

When asked, Lane would not divulge whether Canada had plans to remove its soldiers from Iraq.

Canada has 250 military members working with the NATO training mission as well as dozens of special forces troops who have been working in the northern part of the country with Iraqi security forces.

Tensions in the Middle East have escalated since the air strike with both U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian leaders trading threats of retaliation. Those tensions are also now being felt in Canada with a group representing Islamic Americans reporting that dozens of Iranians and Iranian-Americans were detained at length and questioned at the Peace Arch border crossing linking British Columbia to Washington State.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said many more were reportedly refused entry to the United States, including many with U.S. citizenship who were returning to their homes in the United States from an Iranian pop concert that took place on Saturday in Vancouver.

"Those detained reported that their passports were confiscated and they were questioned about their political views and allegiances," the council said in a statement posted online.

The statement quoted a 24-year-old American medical student who said she was detained and interrogated for more than 10 hours. Email and phone messages sent to the council went unanswered.

A spokesman for Border Security Minister Bill Blair said the Canada Border Services Agency "has no involvement in the matter."
Condemning the violence against students and teachers at the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus in Delhi late on Sunday, hundreds of people from the city staged various protests on Monday. While students converged to express their solidarity against the violence, political student outfits were not far behind to colour the incident for their political gains as the protests held different themes across the city.

With students and social organisations seething with anger, protests were held at Good Luck chowk on FC road, collectors office and Savitribai Phule Pune University. Many carried the Tricolour, candles, handwritten banners and posters expressing solidarity with the JNU students and raised slogans demanding action against those involved in the attack. Students of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) called the attack on the students and teachers an appalling display of intolerance.

Organisations including Lokayat, Students Islamic Organisation of India, Samatesathi Vakil and Janta Dal (Secular) held a protest at Good Luck chowk, FC road on Monday.

Firdaus Shaikh, a member of Students Islamic Organisation of India, said, The incident which took place at JNU on Sunday is shameful. This shows that the government is scared of the students and is trying to suppress their voice.

The revolution started by students will spread across the country and now this attack will help us increase our numbers, said Shaikh.

Shraddha RR from Lokayat, said, The government is targeting students and making them a scapegoat. We voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, now they are questioning our citizenship.

Student unions, including the ABVP, National Students Union of India and others, were involved in a war of allegations demanding answers to the violence unleashed at JNU on Sunday night.

FTII students condemn the attack

The first of the protests in the city began at FTII on Sunday night wherein students carried torches in a mashal march. Students gathered at the Wisdom Tree point on the campus and marched to the main gate where they were joined by students from the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE) and Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU).

The protests which began at around 10.30 pm continued till 1.30 am till the students were dispersed by the police.

Campus security is not allowing us to hold protests inside the campus, said V Aadith, president, FTII Students Association, on Monday.

FTII will be holding a protest on Tuesday. Student groups from SPPU, Fergusson College, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics and other groups such as Yuva Kranti Dal, National Alliance of Peoples Movements, and Navjevan Bharat Sabha will be participating in Tuesdays protest, said Aadith.

Protests by ABVP

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP ) students held a protest at the SPPU campus and raised slogans condemning the attack on the JNU students and attacked left-wing political parties.

Dayanand Shinde, SPPU - ABVP unit president, said, The violence was perpetrated by the leftist organisations who were unhappy with the support being received for Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC).

ABVP condemns the threats and violence being committed by communist oriented groups who are taking law and order into their hands and spread terror among students, said Shinde.

Attacks aim to silence voice of students

Student unions affiliated to various political parties have also planned protests against the JNU attack. Satish Pawar, president, National Students Union of India at SPPU said that repeated attacks were taking place at JNU to silence the voices of dissent.

FTII to hold protests today

FTII will be holding a protest on Tuesday. Student groups from the SPPU, Fergusson College, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics and other groups such as Yuva Kranti Dal, National Alliance of Peoples Movements, and Navjevan Bharat Sabha will be participating in this protest, said V Aadith, president, FTII Students Association.

ABVP attacks left-wing political parties

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP ) students held a protest at the SPPU campus and raised slogans condemning the attack on the JNU students and attacked left-wing political parties.

Dayanand Shinde, SPPU - ABVP unit president, said, The violence was perpetrated by the leftist organisations who were unhappy with the support being received for Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC).
With reported flu cases in Virginia ticking up, a less common type of the virus is being discovered more often this season.

Of the more than 1,800 cases confirmed by lab reports since the start of the 2019-2020 flu season, 75% have been identified as type B, according to the Virginia Department of Health.

We normally see increases a little later, but its not unusual. Its tracking along with what we saw in the 2014-2015 season, said Em Stephens, respiratory disease coordinator for the health department. The unusual thing about this season is flu B.

The frequency of type B influenza in Virginia mirrors whats being seen across the country. It has been found in 68% of all lab-tested cases reported to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health officials said type B is generally more common in children, though not exactly more severe. It also means that people over 65 who are usually susceptible to the flu might not catch it this year.

Scott Pauley, a spokesman for the CDC, said its the first time since the 1992-1993 flu season that influenza B has been identified more often than influenza A nationally.
Wine merchant Georges Duboeuf (pictured), the man who brought the bottle of Beaujolais to the masses, has died at the age of 86

Wine merchant Georges Duboeuf, the man who brought the bottle of Beaujolais to the masses, has died at the age of 86.

Duboeuf, considered one of the giants of 20th Century oenophilia, was dubbed 'The Pope of Beaujolais' for turning the little-known French red into a staple on the Western World's drinks menus.

By the 1980s, his advocacy for the earthy, smoky wine saw its monthly release date being known as Beaujolais Nouveau Day.

His daughter-in-law Anne announced he died of a stroke at around 5pm on Saturday at his home in the village of Romaneche-Thorins, 30 miles north of Lyon.

In the 1950s Mr Duboeuf founded L'Ecrin Maconnais-Beaujolais, an association of wine producers, to help push local wines across Europe.

His deals with traders and key restaurateurs across the region helped make Beaujolais more appealing to the mass market.

He then opened his own winery, Georges Duboeuf Wines, in 1964.

Duboeuf kept things traditional, using centuries-old methods of winemaking to produce every bottle.

Duboeuf, considered one of the giants of 20th Century oenophilia, was dubbed 'The Pope of Beaujolais' for turning the little-known French red into a staple on the Western World's drinks menus

He would also monitor the wine fastidiously and had an almost compulsive devotion to hygiene.

As the winery grew to other regions, Duboeuf set up a shop and museum of winemaking in Romaneche-Thorins.

But it was his desire to share his love of Beaujolais Nouveau in that made him a cult figure.

Throughout the 1980s, he held special Beaujolais Nouveau festivals which were attended by Michelin-starred restaurateurs and celebrities of all kinds.

By the time he passed the company on to his son Franck in 2018, the company was producing about 30 million bottles a year which were sold internationally.

Dominique Piron, president of the Inter Beaujolais company, said Mr Duboeuf was responsible for 'raising the Beaujolais flag all over the world'.

'He had a nose, an intuition, [he was] a step ahead of everyone,' he said.
Immigration authorities deported Oumar Yaide to his native Chad soon after Thanksgiving, ending his decade-long battle to obtain asylum in the United States.

But a federal judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to bring the 31-year-old back  a rare move that shows the agency violated Yaides due process rights when it deported him, his attorneys said.

Still, its unclear when Homeland Security will fly him back to San Francisco, where hes lived for about eight years. His attorneys are worried that Yaide, a gay Muslim man who has not lived in Chad for 10 years, is in danger in a country where gays and others are targeted.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer granted Yaide a temporary restraining order on Dec. 18 requiring the government to return him to the U.S. as he awaits a court decision that may determine whether officials will reopen his case.

Yaide has a constitutional right to procedural due process, Breyer wrote in his ruling. He also enjoys a statutory right to file a motion to reopen his removal proceedings.

But Sean McMahon, Yaides attorney, said the government has given no indication of when it will bring him home.

Chad criminalized homosexuality in late 2016. The country in north-central Africa is under a dictatorship and is fraught with political turmoil. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are at risk of being tortured or killed by family members or the government if theyre outed.

The president has been in power for 30 years, and theres extreme and widespread human rights abuses across the board, said McMahon, an attorney with Pangea Legal Services, a San Francisco nonprofit that represents immigrants in complex legal matters, such as asylum.

Our top concern is getting him back as fast as possible. Any additional day he spends in Chad is very concerning to me.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees U.S. immigration court, said it does not comment on federal court decisions. It deferred questions about return procedures to Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.

ICE said it does not comment on pending litigation.

Steve Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School, said its rare for people who are deported to be able to return to the U.S.

Procedures exist to bring people back, but foreign nationals rarely know about them, and the government is loath to allow it unless a federal judge orders it, he said in an email. Unfortunately, this administration is deporting more and more asylum seekers erroneously.

Yale-Loehr said Breyer did not rule that Homeland Security necessarily violated the law by deporting Yaide while his motion to reopen was pending, but that he had jurisdiction to consider Yaides request for relief. Homeland Security had argued the judge did not have the authority to do so, according to the ruling.

Yaide, a restaurant worker known for his kindness and positivity, is popular in his community, according to McMahon and Yaides friends. He previously volunteered with the African Advocacy Network, a San Francisco nonprofit that provides immigration, legal and other services.

Yaide immigrated to the U.S. in 2009. He petitioned for asylum as a member of the Gorane ethnic group and said he was at risk of persecution in his home country because his family expressed anti-government views.

An immigration judge denied his petition for asylum in September 2014. The Board of Immigration Appeals and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco denied his appeals, most recently in December 2018.

ICE arrested Yaide in August after agents showed up at his apartment in the Mission District claiming to look for someone else, his attorney said. They took him to the Yuba County Jail in Marysville, where he was detained for about three months.

McMahon filed a motion to reopen Yaides case in October, requesting that the court allow him to present a new basis for asylum. Yaide had not come out as gay when he originally petitioned for asylum in 2009. Returning to Chad would put him in grave danger, his attorney argued.

But with the motion to reopen pending, authorities pulled Yaide out of Yuba Dec. 1, transferring him to the Sacramento airport without notifying McMahon, he said. Friends found out he was no longer in the jail and notified McMahon.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

The next day, Pangea attorneys petitioned the court and requested a temporary restraining order in a last-minute effort to halt Yaides deportation.

They had no idea where Yaide was but hoped he was still in the U.S., McMahon said.

A judge granted the order, halting Yaides deportation until oral arguments could be made in a formal hearing before Breyer on Dec. 4.

But Yaide was already in Chad. He had been in Homeland Security custody  out of the country on an airplane  when attorneys petitioned on his behalf, McMahon said.

They moved forward with the hearing, and Breyer issued a decision Dec. 18 ordering Homeland Security to bring Yaide back.

If Yaide is imprisoned or killed in Chad, the government will have denied him any chance to have his motion to reopen adjudicated, he wrote.

ICE was originally required to return Yaide within two weeks, but the agency asked for more time. They must update the court by Wednesday.

McMahon said Yaides case is unique because hes gotten overwhelming support from neighbors and friends who have become a second family to him during his time in San Francisco.

They took weekly road trips to visit Yaide in Yuba, made dozens of calls to his deportation officer to advocate for his release, and raised funds at a local bar to help with his legal defense. A GoFundMe for Yaide collected $11,600.

Tatiana Sanchez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: Tatiana.Sanchez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TatianaYSanchez
Rochester, Minn., Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Destination Medical Center (DMC) is now accepting applications from individuals and teams for the Assistive Tech Challenge, a pitch competition to facilitate greater independence for people with disabilities and the daily challenges they face. Online application deadline is February 10, 2020. The pitch competition takes place April 4, 2020 in Rochester, Minnesota at the Rochester Civic Theatre.

The Assistive Tech Challenge puts a spotlight on the regions innovative spirit, said Chris Schad, organizer of the challenge and director of business development at DMCs Discovery Square. It encourages entrepreneurs to develop their ideas while showcasing solutions for individuals with disabilities.

This competition welcomes teams in two divisions:

Open Division - for community-based teams and students.

Professional Division - for companies formed with annual revenues not exceeding $200,000

Open division winner of the inaugural Assistive Tech Challenge, Rochester-based Adapt-A-Cart, has developed a solution to a real-life problem.

The Assistive Tech Challenge has given us a platform to solve a problem that directly affected our daily lives as wheelchair users. Because of the competition, we now have a start-up company that we believe will help other users shop at grocery stores and other retail outlets, said Adapt-A-Cart Co-founder Nick Elliott.

Winner of the professional division of the inaugural challenge, Minneapolis-based Vitals Aware Services, is excited about its future.

We know that we have compelling stories, and we've created technology that is saving lives and empowering individuals and families living with various conditions and disabilities, said Stan Alleyne, Vitals Aware Services director of communications. Competitions like Destination Medical Centers Assistive Tech Challenge gave us the opportunity to work on our pitch and then receive expert feedback that we can use to accelerate our business growth.

First place teams in each category will receive $5,000. Second place teams in each category will receive $2,500. All first and second place teams will be eligible to participate in the Walleye Tank pitch competition in Minneapolis in May 2020.

Participants in the 2020 Assistive Tech Challenge should develop a product or service related to:

Independent living

Access to employment

Support for care providers

Social skill development

Improved public infrastructure

Teams will address the following questions during a five-minute presentation to an expert panel of judges, followed by three minutes of Q&A:

What problem are you solving?

How are you solving the problem?

Why is your team the one to solve it?

What do you need to further develop your idea?

As part of a recruitment effort, DMC hosted a series of design thinking workshops in communities and at universities throughout the upper Midwest this past fall.

The Assistive Tech Challenge is supported by BioSig Technologies, Colliers International, Fredrikson & Byron, P.A., Home Federal Savings Bank, Mayo Clinic Office of Business Development, Rochester Home Infusion, Kabara Institute, Saint Mary's University of MN and Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation.

For more information, visit assistivetechchallenge.com.

###

About DMC

Destination Medical Center (DMC) is the largest public-private economic initiative in Minnesota's history. The 20-year plan to transform Rochester into a global destination for health and wellness will attract developers, investors, startups, and entrepreneurs to live, work and play in America's City for Health. For more information, visit dmc.mn.

Attachments
G erman police have shot and killed a man who tried to attack them with a knife.

The 37-year-old tried to attack officers outside a police station in Gelsenkirchen, western Germany, on Sunday night.

Officers have not confirmed whether extremism was a possible motive for the attack

Police spokesman Christopher Grauwinkel said the 37-year-old man, whose name was not given, first used an unidentified object to attack a police car.

He then approached officers with the item in his hand. As the man came towards the officers, they saw that he had a knife in his other hand and did not stop despite several orders to do so.

A 27-year-old police officer then fatally shot him.

Local media reported that the man shouted "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great" in Arabic, as he moved towards police. German news agency Dpa said the attacker was a Turkish citizen.

Markers placed on the ground inside cordoned-off area in front of the police station / AP

It comes in the wake of two attacks in France.

On Sunday an unidentified 28-year-old man threatened people before police fired bullets into his legs in the French city of Metz.

He had been shouting 'Allahu Akbar' - Arabic for God is the Greatest - around a housing estate in the Borny district..

On Friday a suspected terrorist went on a rampage in Villejuif in the southern Paris suburbs on Friday afternoon.

Nathan Chiasson, 22, had also been shouting 'Allahu Akbar' when he went on the rampage, stabbing three people at random.

One, a 56-year-old man, died at the scene after trying to protect his wife, who suffered wounds to the neck.

She ended up in intensive care, along with a third victim who also suffered severe stab wounds.

After witnesses raised the alarm, Chiasson, wearing a fake explosive vest, ran towards a Carrefour supermarket where he was shot at least six times by police and died at the scene.
The Fort Bend County Sheriffs Office has arrested an Islamic religious leader for alleged sex crimes against children. Mohamed Omar Ali, age 59, was charged with one count of sexual assault of a child and three counts of sexual indecency of a child following his arrest on Jan. 3.

At a press conference Monday morning, Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls stated that all four victims were children under the age of 14. Ali is a Somalian national who was living in the U.S. illegally. According to Nehls, bail for Ali was set at $125,000, but due to his illegal status, Immigration and Customs Enforcement put a detainer on Ali, and Ali is being held at the Fort Bend County jail.

According to Detective Michael Alexander of the Fort Bend County Sheriffs Office, Ali gained access to his alleged victims by gaining the trust of the victims families, who invited him into their homes to teach the Quran to their children.

Shariq Abdul Ghani, Director of the Minaret Foundation and representative of the Muslim community, added that Ali was not an employee or official volunteer of any particular mosque, but he traveled to different mosques and schools in the area, establishing himself as a defacto religious leader. He has a very fluent understanding of the Quran, and hes fluent in Arabic, which makes him an ideal teacher, he said.

Surveillance of Ali began in September of 2019, after victims reported the abuse to the FBI, but investigators believe the alleged crimes date back to 2013. Investigators believe there are many more victims that have not come forward, and the sheriffs office urges those victims to come forward.

The focus now, according to Nehls, is finding these potential victims, which can be a challenge due to some of the nuances of Muslim belief regarding sexual assault. Said Nehls, You will hear that if a child in the Muslim community is assaulted in any way sexually, that child may be considered unclean, and will that child be able to get married in the future?

Alexander stated that the stigma has already made the investigation difficult, and his office has not been able to move the investigation as quickly because of it.

Nehls added, Put your religious affiliation away, folks, and do what's in the best interest of your child, and reach out to us.

Ghani is working with the sheriffs office to ensure the Muslim communitys full cooperation with law enforcement. Ghani is working to make sure the community knows that it is safe to speak with the authorities. Ghani also hopes that destigmatizing sexual assault within the community will encourage more victims to come forward. In every culture, theres a different definition of survivors trauma, and some people who are ashamed to come forward may be from a culture that has this idea of how society might treat them, Ghani explained. The most important thing now is to help identify a victim and connect them with law enforcement.

The sheriffs office is asking anyone who is a potential victim to contact Sgt. Jonathan Howell at (281) 341-4797. Nehls emphasized that all victims will remain anonymous with their identities protected. They can come in with total confidence and talk to us, and we will not release their identity in any way, he said.

claire.goodman@chron.com
Lockdown-like restrictions to return in Maharashtra? Here's what CM Uddhav Thackeray has to say

Reminded me of the 26/11 attack: Uddhav Thackeray on JNU violence

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Mumbai, Jan 06: The attack on the JNU students on Sunday reminded me of the Mumbai 26/11 attacks, Shiv Sena chief and Maharashtra Chief Minister, Uddhav Thackeray said.

I will never allow anything like this to happen in Mumbai, he also said.

Akhilesh, Mayawati condemn JNU campus violence, slam Centre

He also said that the identity of the attackers must be revealed. If the Delhi Police failed to find out who the perpetrators are, then they will also be in the dock, he further added.

NEWS AT 3 PM, JANUARY 6th, 2020...

It may be recalled that Thackeray had earlier likened the violence at the Jamia Millia University to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

In Mumbai, people have been protesting at the Gateway of India after the violence at the JNU left 26 injured. The police have appealed to the people to call off the protest, but they have continued to do so expressing solidarity with those at JNU.
Lucknow: The exercise to mark migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh has started under the Citizenship Amendment Act, which has been going on for the last several days. Uttar Pradesh is the first state to initiate action towards granting citizenship to migrants. The state government has asked all the district magistrates to identify such migrants and prepare a list of them. They will also be identified under this exercise, are living illegally in the state.

According to information received from sources, it has been learned that the state's Additional Chief Secretary, Home Avnish Kumar Awasthi said that the District Magistrate of all the districts has been instructed to identify the migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Having lived here for decades without citizenship. At the same time, he said that the purpose of preparing the list is to ensure that with the intervention of the state government, it can be ensured that the real migrants are getting citizenship of the country. With this, they will be able to become citizens of the country. This is the first time such a list is being made. The government will also inform the Union Ministry of Home Affairs on illegal Muslim migrants in the state.

For your information, let us tell you that the Additional Chief Secretary said that according to the information so far, there are more number of migrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh in Lucknow, Hapur, Rampur, Shahjahanpur, Noida and Ghaziabad. It is known that the citizenship law has been widely opposed in Uttar Pradesh and 28 people have died in violent demonstrations. The protesters allege that Muslims living in India are being targeted under the cover of the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Also Read:

Modi government's big move on black money, Swiss bank notice to 3500 account holders

Arrest notice issued against first Hindu Chief Justice of Bangladesh, know what is the whole matter?

Sulemani's daughter's big statement, says 'Father's blood will not go in waste'

Priyanka-Mayawati targets Modi government over attack in JNU
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump insisted Sunday that Iranian cultural sites were fair game for the U.S. military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so could constitute a war crime under international law. He also warned Iraq that he would levy punishing sanctions if it expelled American troops in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed a top Iranian official.

Trumps comments came amid escalating tensions in the Middle East following the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Irans elite Quds force. Iran has vowed to retaliate and Iraqs parliament responded by voting Sunday to oust U.S. troops based in the country.

Trump first raised the prospect of targeting Iranian cultural sites Saturday in a tweet. Speaking with reporters Sunday as he returned to Washington from his holiday stay in Florida, he doubled down, despite international prohibitions.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, Trump said.

The targeted killing of Soleimani sparked outrage in the Middle East, including in Iraq, where more than 5,000 American troops are still on the ground 17 years after the U.S. invasion. Iraqs parliament voted Sunday in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for the expulsion of the American forces.

Trump said the U.S. wouldnt leave without being paid for its military investments in Iraq over the years  then said if the troops do have to withdraw, he would hit Baghdad with economic penalties.

We will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, he said. If theres any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.

He added: Were not leaving until they pay us back for it.

The administration has scrambled to contend with the backlash to the killing of Soleimani. Though he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, the targeted American strike marked a stark escalation in tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. military may well strike more Iranian leaders if the Islamic Republic retaliates. He tip-toed around questions about Trumps threat to attack Iranian cultural sites, a military action that likely would be illegal under the laws of armed conflict and the U.N. charter.

Pompeo said only that any U.S. military strikes inside Iran would be legal.

Well behave inside the system, Pompeo said. We always have and we always will.

Trumps warnings rattled some administration officials. One U.S. national security official said the president had caught many in the administration off guard and prompted internal calls for others in the government, including Pompeo, to clarify the matter. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly to the issue, said clarification was necessary to affirm that the U.S. military would not intentionally commit war crimes.

Oona Hathaway, an international law professor at Yale and a former national security law official in the Defense Departments legal office, said Trumps threat amounted to a pretty clear promise of commission of a war crime.

The presidents threats to Iran did little to quell Tehrans furor over the death of Soleimani. Iranian state television reported that the country would no longer abide by any limits of the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with the United States and other world powers. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018 and stepped up economic sanctions on Tehran  actions that accelerated a cycle of hostilities leading to the last weeks killing.

The administration also pushed back Sunday on questions about the legality of the strike on Soleimani. Pompeo said the administration would have been culpably negligent in its duty to protect the United States if it had not killed him. He did not provide evidence for his previous claims that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on Americans. Instead of arguing that an attack had been imminent, he said it was inevitable.

We watched him continue to actively build out for what was going to be a significant attack  thats what we believed  and we made the right decision, he said, adding later: We continue to prepare for whatever it is the Iranian regime may put in front of us within the next 10 minutes, within the next 10 days, and within the next 10 weeks.

Congressional Democrats were skeptical.

I really worry that the actions the president took will get us into what he calls another endless war in the Middle East. He promised we wouldnt have that, said Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senates top Democrat.

Schumer said Trump lacks the authority to engage militarily with Iran and Congress needs a new war powers resolution to be a check on this president. To which Pompeo said: We have all the authority we need to do what weve done to date.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said the administration violated the Constitution by not consulting with Congress in advance.

Its also important because one, you potentially get members of Congress to buy in ahead of time, and two, they may ask that hard question thats not asked in an insular group, Warner said.

Congressional staffs got their first briefings from the administration on Friday, and members were expected to be briefed this week.

But Trump made clear Sunday that he saw little reason to give Congress advanced warning if he orders the military to carry out further actions against Iran.

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner, he wrote on Twitter. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!

Democrats in Congress have complained that Trumps order to kill Soleimani took place without first consulting with or informing top lawmakers, noting that Congress still holds sole power to declare war. Trump did meet the 48-hour deadline required by the War Powers Act to notify Congress of the deadly drone strike, though the document provided Saturday was entirely classified and no public version was released.

Moving swiftly to rebuke Trump for not consulting with Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said late Sunday the House would introduce and vote this week on a war powers resolution to limit the presidents military actions regarding Iran. In a letter to House Democrats, Pelosi called the airstrike provocative and disproportionate and that it had endangered our servicemembers, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran. A similar resolution was introduced in the Senate.

Some of the Democrats running to challenge Trump in November questioned whether he had a long-term plan for the Mideast.

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Trump was ill-prepared for the repercussions of the strike on Soleimani and had alienated allies by not alerting them of the plans. I think we need a president who could provide steady leadership on Day One, he said. The next president is going to inherit a divided nation and a world in disarray.

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. said: When youre dealing with the Middle East, you need to think about the next and the next and the next move. This is not checkers. And Im not sure any of us really believe that this president and the people around him are really going through all of the consequences of what could happen next.

Pompeo appeared on ABCs This Week, CNNs State of the Union, NBCs Meet the Press, CBS Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday and Fox News Channels Sunday Morning Futures. Schumer was on ABC, Warner and Warren were on NBC, Petraeus was on CBS, Buttigieg was on CNN and Graham was on Fox News Channel.
Photo: iStock

Here's the most recent top news you may have missed in Sacramento.

16-year-old girl shot, killed near River City High School

A 16-year-old girl is dead following a West Sacramento shooting on Saturday night near River City High School.

Read the full story on CBS13 CBS Sacramento.

Fire damages KCRA TV station, forces evacuations

A Fire Department spokesman said there were no injuries in the two-alarm fire that started between the first and second floors of a building at the TV station just after midnight Sunday.

Read the full story on The Sacramento Bee.

Anti-war protesters march through downtown days after US drone strike kills Iran's top general

A group of nearly 100 anti-war protesters marched through downtown Sacramento on Saturday, days after a drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump killed Iranian military commander and U.S.-designated foreign terrorist Qasem Soleimani.

Read the full story on CBS13 CBS Sacramento.

3 injured in single-vehicle crash

Three people were injured in a crash in Sacramento County on Friday morning, according to the River Delta Fire District.

Read the full story on KCRA 3.

Homicide at Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center under investigation

Officials are investigating a homicide last month at the correctional facility, the Sheriffs Office said Sunday.

Read the full story on KCRA 3.

This story was created automatically using data about news stories on social media from CrowdTangle, then reviewed by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
A reward of up to $25,000 is being offered for any information that may lead to an arrest and conviction in the case, police said.
Imran Khan opens up on Nankana Sahib violence

International

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Islamabad, Jan 06: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the recent incident of vandalism at the Nankana Sahib, saying it goes against his "vision" and the government will show "zero tolerance" against those involved in it.

Gurdwara Nankana Sahib, also known as Gurdwara Janam Asthan, is a site near Lahore where the first Guru of Sikhs, Guru Nanak, was born.

According to media reports, a violent mob had attacked the Gurdwara and pelted it with stones on Friday. A team of police had to intervene briskly to control the situation.

Breaking his silence on the incident, Khan said that there is a "major difference between the condemnable Nankana incident and the ongoing attacks across India on Muslims and other minorities".

Imran condemns Nankana Sahib incident, says it goes against his 'vision'

"The former is against my vision & will find zero tolerance & protection from the govt incl police & judiciary (sic)," he tweeted, referring to the Nankana Sahib incident.

Khan claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "vision supports minorities oppression and the targeted attacks against Muslims."

NEWS AT NOON, JANUARY 6th, 2020

He also alleged that the Indian police, supported by the government, are leading attacks against Muslims.

India has strongly condemned vandalism at the revered Gurdwara and called upon the Pakistan government to take immediate steps to ensure the safety and security of the Sikh community there.

After Nankana Sahib attack, Sikh youth killed in Pakistan's Peshawar

On Saturday, Indian leaders cutting across party lines and various outfits condemned the mob attack on the historic Gurdwara, terming it as "cowardly" and "shameful".

Hundreds of protesters thronged the streets near the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi demanding that Islamabad provide adequate security to Sikh shrines and community members there.

Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhandhak Committee (SGPC), the apex body which manages Sikh shrines in India, said it will send a four-member delegation to Pakistan to take stock of the situation and urged the Pakistan government to take stringent action against the culprits who attacked the gurdwara - one of the holiest sites in Sikhism.

Stop prevaricating, act against those persecuting minorities: India to Pakistan

Pakistan's Foreign Office on Friday rejected the media reports that the Gurdwara Nanakana Sahib was desecrated in a mob attack, saying the birthplace of the founder of Sikhism remains "untouched and undamaged" and the "claims of destruction" of one of the holiest Sikh shrines are "false".
Controversial Nigerian actress and social media drama queen, Tonto Dikeh is finally back in Nigeria after her alleged forced stay in Dubai. She recently stepped out with her son to attend church and shared photos online.

Recall a while ago, news broke out that the actress on her trip to Dubai, had been involved in a scuffle that allegedly led to her arrest. Subsequent reports claimed that her passport was seized.

This particular rumour was fueled by the fact that despite everybody else (including her bestie, Bobrisky) returning to Nigeria after the One Africa Music Fest, Tonto remained in the Arabian city.

Well, the actress is finally back in Nigeria. She recently stepped out with her son to attend church service and took to her Instagram page to share series of photos with little King Andre.

READ ALSO: 5 Ghanaian 'shakers and movers' who own luxury cars in mind-blowing photos

Swipe to see more photos below:

Recall YEN.com.gh earlier reported the news of how Nigerian blogger, Stella Dimoko Korkus, popularly known as SDK, got involved in a war of words with the actress and her cross dresser best friend, Bobrisky. The blogger resulted in revealing some details about the lives of Dikeh and her best friend.

Her revelation came after Bobrisky took a swipe at her for spreading false reports about Dikeh's alleged arrest in Dubai. Dikeh who claimed SDK lied about her passport being seized by Dubai authorities, took to social media to debunk the report with a video.

In the video, she described SDK as a "bitter old facial disabled woman" and held up her passport to prove to her fans that it was in fact not seized by any authority as opposed to SDK's report.

Enjoyed reading our story? Download YEN's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Ghana news!

Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Source: YEN.com.gh
Pioneer Millworks introduces the latest addition to their popular Shou Sugi Ban line of charred Larch wood paneling: Undressed. This grade can be installed as-is or site finished. Applied to our sustainably harvested Larch, Shou Sugi Ban Undressed brings unmatched texture and tones

Pioneer Millworks, a reclaimed and sustainable wood products company in New York and Oregon, introduces the latest addition to their popular Shou Sugi Ban line of Larch charred wood paneling: Undressed. This variation, as the name teases, comes with no additional finish applied, celebrating the tones and textures achieved with the ancient Japanese technique of burning wood.

This Japanese technique is pragmatic and dynamic, explains Jonathan Orpin, founder and president of Pioneer Millworks. Applied to our sustainably harvested Larch it offers designers and homeowners a choice of color and texture; a look that could evolve over time depending on exposure to the elements.

Shou Sugi Ban is an ancient Japanese technique of burning wood as a preservative treatment for exterior siding. Pioneer Millworks is applying this process to sustainably harvested Larch, an incidental species which has notable insect and rot resistance. The Undresses planks are burned then brushed to better expose the grain and texture of each unique board. It can be left to naturally weather and wear or be finished on-site. This grade joins three others: Deep Char which exposes an alligator-like texture, Shallow Char which produces rich black and brown tones while maintaining saw marks and high relief grain texture, and Color Char which is charred, brushed, and burnished with color (most popular in blue, green, and red).

Suitable for interior or exterior vertical applications, the company notes that the Shou Sugi Ban technique can be applied to other reclaimed and sustainable wood species on request. The Undressed grade comes standard with shiplap or ripped two edges, 5 wide, 2 to 12 long.

There is an effortless style achieved with this line, shares Jered Slusser, wood sales specialist at Pioneer Millworks. The Undressed version offers such texture and tone that each time we share it folks want to interact, to touch it and see it in various applications. It is easy to understand why it is a hugely popular product and were excited to share it. The company will showcase Shou Sugi Ban, Undressed at the International Builders Show (IBS) trade show in Las Vegas in January 21-23, 2020.

About Pioneer Millworks: For 30 years Pioneer Millworks has been inspired by all of you to develop creative reclaimed and sustainable wood flooring, paneling, and siding. Numerous species, grades, textures, and color options for architects, designers, builders, and homeowners are available. Options that are easy for builders to install; options that have a story which homeowners and end-users can connect with; options that are good for our people and our planet. Pioneer Millworks is FSC-certified and Green America approved. All of their products are LEED point eligible and many are UL GREENGUARD Gold certified.


ORLANDO, Fla. - The Department of Homeland Security is agreeing to share citizenship information with the U.S. Census Bureau as part of President Donald Trumps order to collect data on who is a citizen following the Supreme Courts rejection of a citizenship question on the 2020 Census form.

Trumps order is being challenged in federal court, but meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security two weeks ago announced the agreement in a report. It said the agency would share administrative records to help the Census Bureau determine the number of citizens and non-citizens in the U.S., as well as the number of illegal immigrants.

Information that will be shared include personally-identifiable data, the Homeland Security document said.

Trump ordered the Census Bureau to collect citizenship information through administrative records from federal agencies and the 50 states after the Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration last summer by deciding that a citizenship question wouldnt be allowed on this springs 2020 Census questionnaire.

Opponents of the citizenship question had argued it would scare off immigrants, Hispanics and others from participating in the once-a-decade head count. The 2020 Census will help determine how many congressional seats each state gets as well as the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funds.

The order to collect citizenship data through federal and state administrative records currently is being challenged by civil rights groups in federal court in Maryland.

As part of the order, the U.S. Census Bureau has asked state drivers license bureaus for records, but so far only Nebraska has agreed to co-operate.
Hunting wild animals has been practised by humans for millions of years; however, the extraction of wildlife for subsistence and commercialisation has become a major biodiversity threat in recent decades. Meanwhile, over-exploitation is reported to be the second most important driver of change and biodiversity loss globally.

To assess the state of affairs, an international group of scientists, led by Dr. Francisco M. P. Goncalves of the University of Hamburg in Germany, went on a roundtrip along the roads between five main Angolan cities. Their observations made it possible to conclude that, despite the existing legislation, as well as government efforts to handle poaching and bushmeat trade, currently there is no effective law enforcement mechanism to help dealing with the situation.

In their study, the team also states that Angola is one of the richest and most biodiverse countries in Africa with an estimated 6,850 native and 226 non-native plant species, 940 bird species (including many endemic species), 117 amphibians species, 278 reptile species, 358 freshwater fishes (22% of them endemic) and 275 species of mammals.

The long-lasting civil war in Angola has contributed to the dramatic loss of wildlife and led to the near extinction of many species, as a result of the increase in illegal poaching. A variety of fresh, smoked or dried bushmeat, as well as live animals, are being sold along the roads, mostly to urban dwellers travelling between the main cities of Angola.

Despite the recent outbreaks of diseases (i.e. Ebola in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo), animals still appear to be obtained directly from hunters and slaughtered with no sanitary measures, while the consumption of wildlife in Africa is frequently associated with an increased risk of acquiring zoonotic diseases.

The major trade road runs between the provinces of Bengo and Uige, where the animals sold include many species of antelopes, monkeys, snakes and a globally protected species of pangolin (Manis tricuspis). Multiple species of wading birds and parrots are often sold in pet shops, as well as along the streets. At fairs and entry points to the main cities, these can be found offered by young boys.

Although there is no evidence of cross-border trade, there might, however, be cases of bushmeat trade in the informal markets at the principal border posts. Commercial activities between the countries are not regulated and stay intense, note the scientists.

"We witnessed a Chinese customer looking for pangolins in one of the villages; pangolin scales, when soaked, are trusted for having medicinal properties for a large variety of human illnesses mostly in Asia. It is currently estimated there are 0.4-0.7 million pangolins hunted annually, representing an increase of around 150% only for medicinal purposes over the past four decades," share the researchers.

Trying to find a solution, the Angolan government has undertaken a number of measures, including: a list of species prohibited for hunting and trade (five of those species were found on the markets during the survey); banning hunting of certain species outside the hunting season; introducing compensation fees.

However, despite the legal basis, local authorities (i.e. police checkpoints close to the road markets) do not take the necessary measures to discourage hunting and bushmeat trade practices in the region. Due to lack of clear definition and responsibility arrangements, the hunting and trade of wild animals remain uncontrolled.

All these recent observations bring us to the necessity for a re-assessment of the wildlife in Angola and the need to produce appropriate legislation to be efficiently enforced across the whole territory of the country. This can be achieved through better-educated police officials and alternative sources of meat supply in rural areas. These actions should bring down the demand for bushmeat and reduce the overharvesting of wildlife, suggest the scientists.

###

Original source

Goncalves FMP, Luis JC, Tchamba JJ, Cachissapa MJ, Chisingui AV (2019) A rapid assessment of hunting and bushmeat trade along the roadside between five Angolan major towns. Nature Conservation 37: 151-160. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.37.37590
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Security Cabinet ministers Monday that the killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani was carried out solely by the U.S. and that Israel was not involved in any way and must not be dragged into the escalating conflict, two ministers who attended the meeting told me.

Why it matters: Like other countries in the region, Israel is concerned that Iran will retaliate against it in order to avenge the killing of Soleimani.

Since Soleimani was killed last week, Netanyahus office ordered Cabinet ministers not to speak to the press about the issue in order to prevent public statements that might create the impression Israel was involved in the operation.

Details: According to the two ministers who attended the meeting, Netanyahu said, The killing of Soleimani is a U.S. event, not an Israeli event, and we should stay out of it."

Netanyahu told ministers that the only thing they can say to the media if they are asked about the Soleimani killing is that Israel supports the U.S. and its right to defend itself.

The big picture: The director of Mossad and the head of military intelligence told ministers during the meeting that for now, the probability of an Iranian retaliatory attack against Israel is low and that "Israel stayed in a distance from the incident," ministers told me.

The intelligence chiefs told the Cabinet that Iran will start developing its retaliation on Tuesday, when the period of national mourning for Soleimani's death is over.

Go deeper: Saudi envoy arrives in Washington amid fear of U.S.-Iran war
Democracy is fragile, not self-perpetuating. It requires tending for it to flourish. Incompetent, self-serving, and corrupt leadership poses an existential threat to its survival.

Retired national security analyst Dr. Michael B. Harrington has published a comprehensive examination of President Donald J. Trumps public life  from his mob connections in the early 1980s through his first two stumbling years in the White House. In The Forty Year Con Game Dr. Harrington documents Trumps consistent history of ignorance, self-absorption, poor judgment, corruption, impulsive decision-making, bigotry, and strong authoritarian instincts. Taken together, Dr. Harrington writes, these character flaws guaranteed a disastrous presidency.

During the 2016 election, many voters were largely unaware that their soon-to-be presidents claims of success were a veneer cloaking his incompetence and failure as a businessman. As the 2020 election approaches, President Trump faces increasing skepticism among Americans  even those who originally entrusted him with their vote  that he is fit for high office.

Having witnessed Trumps skill at defrauding others over four decades, I was appalled by his election to the highest office in our country, Dr. Harrington said. Democracy is fragile, not self-perpetuating. It requires tending for it to flourish. Incompetent, self-serving, and corrupt leadership poses an existential threat to its survival.

Dr. Harringtons book serves as a cautionary tale. The Forty Year Con Game reminds readers that political con artists are common both in the U.S. and around the world and argues that Trumps forty-year con game may be the nearest, most dangerous threat to democracy the country has faced since the Civil War.

Dr. Harrington has had the courage to provide a well-researched, factual, informative book about the character of our current leader, a reader wrote in a five-star Amazon review of the book. It's a real eye-opener that sheds light on a national crisis.

The Forty Year Con Game: Everything You Need to Know About Donald Trumps Threat to Democracy

By Dr. Michael B. Harrington

ISBN: 978-1-7960-4584-0 (hardcover); 978-1-7960-4585-7 (softcover); 978-1-7960-4586-4 (e-book)

Available through Xlibris, Barnes & Noble and Amazon

About the author

Dr. Michael B. Harrington is a former Marine and Foreign Service Officer, and he most recently served for more than three decades as a national security analyst for a large federal research and development center. Dr. Harrington earned his doctorate in economics and management science from the University of California, Irvine, and has authored numerous studies at various levels of classification for highly specialized audiences and several journal articles. This is his first book. Dr. Harrington currently resides in a suburb of Washington DC. To learn more, please visit http://www.centralvirginiawatch.com.

General Inquiries, Review Copies & Interview Requests:

LAVIDGE  Phoenix

480-648-7557

dgrobmeier@lavidge.com
The outstanding thing about big museum shows is that they can transcend the objects themselves to become global cultural phenomena. One may not be in Paris for the Louvres record-breaking Leonardo da Vinci show but would have certainly heard of the waiting list and the multiple debates that go around the show.

If you plan to visit various cities like New York, Paris, Madrid and much more, here is an art exhibition list of the biggest and most influential shows of 2020. And if you are unable to visit these art exhibitions of 2020 you could wait for a few months they will be live on their social media handle.

Also read | Art Exhibition Held Jointly By China, India

Furusiyya: The Art of Chivalry Between East and West at the Louvre Abu Dhabi

Feb. 19May 30 - Louvre Abu Dhabi set out to achieve a show of more than 130 historic objects from various cities like France, Iraq, Spain, and Syria will tell the story of knighthood in the medieval ages. The artworks of these objects have been culled from a series of French museums including Frances national museum of the Middle Ages in Paris, the Musee de Cluny, and they combine objects in the permanent collection of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi.

Also read | UK Museum Exhibits 3500-year-old Disposable Cup That May Have Served Wine

Marina Abramovic: After Life at the Royal Academy of Arts

Sept. 26Dec. 8 - This solo exhibition will be Abramovics first major survey in the United Kingdom and more astounding, the Royal Academys first female solo show in its 250 years of history. Often as much, when someone spends more than 730 hours staring at strangers in the Museum of Modern Art, it is hard to forget it. But Abramovics 50 year-career has involved in so much more than mere endurance, and the survey will include photos, video, and work she has specifically made for the exhibition that has nothing to do with performance.

Also read | Germany: 500 Blocks Of Ice Used To Create Masterpiece At Ice Exhibition

Gego at the Guggenheim

Oct. 9March 21 - Gertrud Goldschmidt (1912-1994), who went by the name Gego, is well known for her hanging wire sculptures. At the works best, its spidery lines and disorienting asymmetry gave viewers the impression of having tripped and stumbled into a computer simulation. She produced much more than sculpture, and the Guggenheims retrospective, which will include about 200 artworks from her very long, storied career, should have something in store for everyone.

Also read | Exhibition In London To Honour Indian Artists Who Painted For East India Company
Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane is expected to visit the Siachen glacier on January 9, a senior officer said on Monday.

This will be Naravanes first outstation trip after taking over the top job.

Siachen is strategically important as it acts like a wedge between the Shaksgam valley under Chinese control and Baltistan, which is occupied by Pakistan.

As long as the region is in Indias control, the Pakistani army cannot link up with the Chinese to pose a threat to Ladakh.

Over a 1,000 soldiers have died guarding Siachen since the Indian Army took control of the inhospitable glacier in April 1984, almost twice the number of lives lost in the Kargil war.

While around 220 men have been killed in firing from the Pakistani side, the other casualties were caused by extreme weather and terrain.

A ceasefire between India and Pakistan was announced in November 2003.

Defence minister Rajnath Singh announced last October that the Siachen was now open to tourists as part of the governments efforts to boost tourism in Ladakh and give people a first hand experience of the tough conditions in which army personnel operate.

Naravane took over as the Army chief on December 31. In his 39-year military career, Naravane has commanded a Rashtriya Rifles battalion, raised an infantry brigade, led a strike corps and headed the Army Training Command.

He was also part of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka and served as Indias defence attache to Myanmar.

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Jami L. Resch pledged Monday in her first public outing as Portlands new police chief to be a collaborative chief who will work to be out in the community as much as possible.

Resch said shell continue the momentum that predecessor Danielle Outlaw began and said she hopes to serve out the remaining five years of her career as the citys chief.

The 45-year-old police veteran will mark 21 years with the Portland bureau in February. She addressed news reporters from a 14th floor conference room of the Justice Center with Mayor Ted Wheeler by her side, a week after news broke that Outlaw had accepted a job as Philadelphias next police commissioner.

Resch said shes dedicated to working to stem gun violence and traffic-related deaths, speeding up hiring to fill a growing number of officer vacancies, working to hold officers accountable, improving trust in the city and continuing to seek help from outside agencies as Portland braces for large protests in this upcoming election year. There are 100 vacancies in the bureau, leaving 901 sworn officers on the job.

Its a little bit overwhelming but its a very proud moment,'' Resch said. "I never wanted Chief Outlaw to leave, but Im honored to take over.''

Resch received a call from Wheeler on Dec. 27 offering her the top job, a day after Outlaw phoned him to say she planned to accept the Philadelphia post. On Saturday, Resch showed up at the bureau to attend its monthly Muslim Advisory Council meeting, a group shes been involved with for several years. Earlier Monday morning, she welcomed four new officers hired by the bureau.

Wheeler said he chose Resch because he believes she can "seamlessly'' continue to make the improvements in the police force that he and residents want. He said shes been crucial in setting a vision for the bureau as deputy chief, demonstrated she can work well with city commissioners and is respected by rank-and-file officers and other command staff.

I made an executive decision because I had my eye on Chief Resch for quite some time, he said. I know what shes capable of  I already knew her. I already trusted her and I believe shes the best person for the job.

Resch, a Montana native who grew up in the Beaverton area, graduated from Beaverton High School and received a bachelors degree from the University of Portland, where she majored in allied health services with a minor in psychology.

She had a plan to become a doctor. When that didnt transpire, she ended up becoming part of the Police Bureaus Operation 80, a large class of recruits hired at the same time in February 1999.

In all honesty, it was something that I did almost to see if I could, she said of her switch to law enforcement. I had never been on a ride-along. I had never shot a gun. I had never done anything related to police work.

Since then, shes enjoyed a quick rise in the bureau. She became deputy chief under Outlaw in May after serving a year as assistant chief of investigations. She was promoted to captains rank in October 2016.

She was a captain at North Precinct and an acting commander there, a lieutenant at East Precinct and in the criminal intelligence unit, a sergeant of the gun task force, a manager of the Portland Police Honor Guard and a critical incident commander. Shes also worked as a neighborhood response team officer and crime analyst for the former Gang Enforcement Team in the bureaus Tactical Operations Division.

Resch was sworn in as chief during a private ceremony last Tuesday at the Police Bureau, a day after Outlaw was introduced in Philadelphia as the next police commissioner. A public swearing-in ceremony is set for Thursday morning.

Serving under Outlaw, Resch said she was impressed by Outlaws ability to relate to people.

There were a lot of things that Chief Outlaw did exceptionally well," Resch said. "I tried to learn as much from her as I could while she was here. She was very articulate in her public speaking. She bonded well immediately with people. They got an instant sense from her that she was compassionate about her job and her relationships that she had with the community, and I would like to continue that.

Resch said she expects that her experience rising within the Portland police force and familiarity with the city could help her foster important community relationships.

Having been here as long as I have been, I might be able to move some of these relationships farther, quicker, she said.

Outlaw, an outsider from Oakland, started in Portland in October 2017 after a national search and served two years and two months.

Wheeler decided against conducting another national search based on several factors, he said.

"Theres a lot going on at the Police Bureau,'' he said. He cited budget preparations getting underway, police contract talks starting this month and called it a delicate time for the city in its effort to comply with a federal settlement arising from an investigation into police use of force against people with mental illness.

Chief Resch is the right person to continue to drive that momentum, the mayor said.

Wheeler also had concerns that hed be at a disadvantage in attracting other strong candidates in a year when hes up for reelection in May.

Resch took some of her time at the podium before news cameras to plead for community help to solve seven shootings that occurred over New Years Eve and to spread awareness about traffic fatalities, urging motorists not to speed or drive while drunk or distracted. She also said she supports body cameras for police and that the policy is still being developed.

Wendi Steinbronn, who retired from the Police Bureau as North Precincts commander and is now Washougal police chief, described Resch as hard working, very humble and no-nonsense.

She has a great sense of humor, and I cant think of anyone in the Bureau who has ever said anything negative about her,'' Steinbronn said. "That is a rare quality.''

Steinbronn said she first met Resch when Resch was part of the bureaus Operation 80' class. Mike Frome, who Resch appointed last week to serve as her assistant chief of operations, also was in that class.

Shortly after Resch was promoted to sergeant and working night shift at East Precinct, Steinbronn recalled how Reschs night crew of officers were complaining about their district assignments in the precinct territory.

She showed up to roll call the next day and had all the district assignments on pieces of paper and each officer had to draw a slip and whatever they drew was their district for that shift, Steinbronn said. This of course put a stop to the complaining.

Resch will set a great example, Steinbronn said. Yet Resch is also one not to take herself too seriously.

I think shes had a great variety of assignments that will serve her well, Steinbronn said. She described Resch as a collaborative leader who will delegate responsibilities but ultimately will take responsibility for decisions made under her command.

Im very excited for her. Shes a strong leader and very deserving of the role, Steinbronn said.

5 Jami Resch welcomes refugee families at PDX

Resch also won praise for her work with vulnerable communities in Portland.

Musse Olol, vice chair of the bureaus Muslim Advisory Council and president of the Somalia American Council of Oregon, and Laila Hajoo, president of Islamic Social Services of Oregon who is on the advisory councils board, both called Resch a caring, trustworthy officer who has supported the council for years. She helped bring together different sects of Muslims to participate together in the group, which previously had been called the Arab-Muslim Advisory Council.

Shes very accessible. Shes very easy to talk to, Olol said. He always admired how Resch would visit mosques in the city on Ramadan and introduce herself to worshippers to try to give them a sense of security, he said.

She was instrumental in supporting us whenever we needed her to be there for us. She was the most reliable officer we saw from the Police Bureau, Olol said.

He was pleased to learn she was selected chief but not surprised, he said. I knew that was the trajectory she was headed, he said. She had that levelheadedness and humbleness and understanding and a willingness to learn.

At their Saturday meeting, Hajoo said, council members talked about a recent alleged hate crime against a Portland State University foreign exchange student who had her hijab grabbed from her head. They discussed the need to reach out to the universitys public safety officers to encourage them to contact the council so members could provide support for the student. Resch has built that trust with council members, Hajoo said.

Toc Soneoulay-Gillespie, who served as director of Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement Program for two and a half years, said Resch often turned out at Portland International Airport to help welcome new refugee families. She would come in uniform and help grab their luggage, load it into cars and hand out welcome bags or water, Soneoulay-Gillepsie said. Shed also encourage other officers to join her.

One night, a family was leery of putting their child in a car seat, but Resch helped in a friendly, fun way, making the child laugh as she explained how the seat worked, Soneoulay-Gillespie said. Resch also has annually attended Refugee Adjustment Day, helping serve food or watch children in the daycare area as refugees get help on how to apply for green cards, Soneoulay-Gillepsie said.

For Jami, its not just showing up to show face, she said. "She comes to contribute.''

Officer Daryl Turner, president of the Portland Police Association that represents Portland officers, sergeants and detectives, said he was Reschs last field training officer before she was allowed to work alone on patrol as a rookie cop. Turner called Resch smart and hard-working.

Salem Deputy Chief George Burke, who retired from the Portland Police Bureau as North Precinct commander in 2016, worked closely with Resch, who was a captain in the precinct under him. He said she worked to ensure that supervisors were meeting federal settlement requirements in writing after-action police reports.

"She would be the one who would make sure those things were done and done on time,'' he said. "Shes very systematic, meticulous.''

More than many top police commanders, Resch also is open to others opinions and advice, Burke said.

"I think she knows what she doesnt know,'' he said. "For a person who is the chief executive of the Police Bureau, shes a very humble person and really willing to hear from her people. Shes much more open in seeking input from others.''

Resch, who made $185,556.80 as the bureaus No. 2 cop, will be paid an annual salary of $215,000.

During her career, shes also been a member of the bureaus Slavic advisory council and active in the Catholic Charities Refugee Integration Program. Resch also volunteered her time with Camp Rosenbaum, Shop with a Cop and acted as a mentor for the Z-man Scholarship Foundation, according to the bureau.

Resch was married to a Portland firefighter for 22 years before their divorce in 2017. They have two sons. Shes now dating a recently promoted Portland police lieutenant, David Michaelson.

The bureau confirmed the two have been in a long-term relationship and said theyre registered as domestic partners with the Bureau of Human Resources. "Even before her promotion, there has been a plan in place to ensure that she will not play a role in any decisions regarding him,'' police spokesman Sgt. Kevin Allen said in an email.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

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Jan. 6, 2020--A small wildfire in San Diego County in 2017 resulted in a big uptick in children visiting the emergency room for breathing problems, according to new research published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

In "Increase in Pediatric Respiratory Visits Associated with Santa Ana Wind-driven Wildfire Smoke and PM2.5 levels in San Diego County," Sydney Leibel, MD, MPH, and co-authors report that the Lilac Fire, which burned from Dec. 7-16, resulted in 16 more visits each day to the ER by children under the age of 19 for breathing complaints. The complaints included difficulty breathing, respiratory distress, wheezing and asthma.

Before it was extinguished, the Lilac Fire burned 4,100 acres. In 2017, wildfires burned more than 1.5 million acres across California, according to the state's Department of Forestry & Fire Protection.

"We conducted this study because wildfires are becoming increasingly common in California," said Dr. Leibel, a pediatric allergist/immunologist at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego and an assistant professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "While there is significant data on the respiratory effects of theses wildfires in adults, we wanted to investigate the health effects of wildfire smoke in the vulnerable pediatric population."

In collaboration with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, the authors also demonstrated how the regional phenomenon known as the Santa Ana Winds have increased the health impacts of these fires in the county.

The researchers also found that children under the age of 12 were more likely to develop breathing problems leading to an ER visit than older children. The authors report that they found a similar pattern of increased visits for respiratory complaints to the county's urgent care centers during the wildfire, especially by younger children.

To account for seasonal changes in ER and urgent care visits, the researchers analyzed health electronic medical records from 2011-17. They also analyzed levels of fine particle pollution, known scientifically as PM2.5. over the same time period. The researchers estimated that there was a five-fold increase in these tiny particles during the wildfire.

The authors said that the five zip codes with the largest changes in ER and urgent care visits for pediatric respiratory problems were located downwind of the wildfire, which was driven by the Santa Ana Winds blowing from northeast towards the county's more populated coastal communities.

Given predicted changes in climate and population growth, the authors write that the impact of wildfires in the county is likely to grow in the coming decades.

"Our findings suggest that public health efforts focused on protecting young children with early warning systems and mitigation efforts downwind of Santa Ana Wind-driven wildfires may decrease the impact of these destructive wildfires in the future," Dr. Leibel said.

###

About the Annals of the American Thoracic Society

The AnnalsATS is a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Thoracic Society. The Journal delivers up-to-date and authoritative coverage of adult and pediatric pulmonary and respiratory sleep medicine and adult critical care. The scope of the Journal encompasses content that is applicable to clinical practice, the formative and continuing education of clinical specialists and the advancement of public health. The journal's impact factor is 4.026.

Editor: Colin Cooke, MD, MS, associate professor in the department of internal medicine at the University of Michigan.

About the American Thoracic Society

Founded in 1905, the American Thoracic Society is the world's leading medical association dedicated to advancing pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine. The Society's 15,000 members prevent and fight respiratory disease around the globe through research, education, patient care and advocacy. The ATS publishes three journals, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology and the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

The ATS will hold its 2020 International Conference, May 15-20, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where world-renowned experts will share the latest scientific research and clinical advances in pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine.
Stephanie Carlisle: While architects are not fully responsible for steel manufacturing or concrete production per se, there is a direct line from the material specifications that architects write to the steel mills of China, the coal mines of Appalachia, the brick kilns of India, or clear-cut forests in the Pacific Northwest or the Amazon. She says the design industry has to change, and quickly.  Fast Company
DENVER  Jude spent so many years fighting for the bill to allow transgender Coloradans to more easily change their names and gender designations on identity documents that, eventually, they named the thing after her.

That bill became a law in 2019   Judes Law   and went into effect Wednesday.

And early Thursday morning, Jude, 13, rode with her mom and sister from Boulder County to the state health department building in Denver, where Jude became the first person in Colorado to benefit from the law that bears her name.

Boom, she said as she ripped her old birth certificate in half, before ripping it a few more times for good measure.

I was living under a name that didnt match who I was, said Jude, whose family asked The Denver Post to publish only her first name because of safety concerns. I wasnt living as my true self, which caused a lot of self-hate. By changing this, it pretty much cuts off all association with that.

Thanks to Judes Law, she has a new birth certificate and a sense of completeness.

The law brought several key changes. It let people obtain brand new birth certificates rather than amended ones. It undid the requirement that transgender Coloradans prove that they underwent reassignment surgery before being allowed to change their gender designation on identity documents. And it removed the long-standing requirement for public notice  in a newspaper, typically  of name changes.

These various changes, said Judes sister Madison, are immeasurably valuable to those who need them.

This is a step toward her just being able to completely be who she is, Madison, 19, said while beaming in her sisters direction. Thats beautiful. Thats all anybody really wants  to live exactly as we are, to be accepted and loved through all of it.

___

Thats the One That Relates to Me

On March 26, 2015, Jude was at home playing with her toys when she abruptly came out to Madison and her mom, Jenna. I feel more like a girl than a boy, she said. She was too young to know for sure what she was coming out as.

I think we knew what lesbian and gay meant, Jude added, but we had to look up definitions. My mom read them off and she read the transgender definition and I was like, Thats the one. Thats the one that relates to me. And I felt like finally theyd get to understand what Id been going through.

By April 2015, she had dropped her birth name. In June, the family moved from Colorado Springs to Boulder County, which they felt would be a more supportive community for Jude.

In February 2016, Jude, then 9 years old, testified for the first time at the state Capitol for the bill that would later be named for her. It swiftly died. She returned the next year and, on her 10th birthday, she spoke before a GOP-controlled state Senate committee that killed the bill. The bill died twice more in the Senate before Democrats, who already held the House and governors office, seized a Senate majority in November 2018. The flip breathed new life into the effort to loosen rules that Jude and many others have described as degrading.

Jude said it was tough to come to the Capitol every year to share her deeply personal story and then watch, over and over, as lawmakers voted against her interests. On one occasion, a male state senator misgendered her  intentionally, she and Jenna suspect  in an elevator right after she testified.

Jude and I have this motto: You suit up and show up and you dont give up, Jenna said. And we learned that when we were testifying. It was hard for me to sit there as a mom and listen to them say no to her, and to have to be graceful about it.

As much as you dont want to internalize it, it starts to feel that way, like My kid isnt good enough. But thats just not the truth.

Jude isnt bitter, though. She said the years of struggle galvanized the transgender community, and allies, in Colorado.

Fighting for their humanity

Brianna Titone fought at Judes side throughout that struggle, testifying for the bills that ultimately failed. Now shes a first-term state representative  the first transgender person in Colorado history to serve in that role  and her vote helped the bill to finally pass in 2019.

Said Titone, an Arvada Democrat, To have Jude there and a lot of the other folks wed seen year after year, testifying and fighting for their humanity  it was very emotional for me to be able to vote yes.

Titone said she hopes Judes Law can bring peace to transgender and non-binary Coloradans. She knows well the pain that inaccurate identity documents can cause.

Its horrible. Everyone just cant wait to have their name reflect the name they want, she said. I remember the first day that I got my new drivers license with the right gender on it. It was a celebratory time for me. I had a party with my friends. That just kind of completes the person, to see that all the documents match up.

Jude was joined at the health department Thursday by a transgender 9-year-old named Gavi, who, Gavis mom said, sees Jude as a huge role model. Judes father and sister spoke in similarly glowing terms, as did state Rep. Daneya Esgar, the Pueblo Democrat who ran the bill that became Judes Law.

Jude emphasized during an interview that she sees the law change as a win not for herself but for a community. She is, however, happy to remain at the center of the policy fight, wherever it heads next.

Coming off last years landmark victory at the Capitol, she already has her sights set on a bigger step: passing Judes Law at the federal level. She has spoken to U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Lafayette, about this, and has also met with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Pete Buttigieg is coming to Denver next week, and the family is trying to find a way for Jude to meet the Democratic presidential candidate, too.

Ive really learned the power of one persons voice and how much it can affect other people, how much it can spark other peoples voices in the community, Jude said. Sometimes you just need one person to start a path and other people will join it.

By sitting down in a chair and just telling my story, I can get a lot done.
The ACLU of Alabama said the states prison crisis is bound to get worse this year because of a sharp decline in the rate of paroles granted by the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles.

In a news release today, the ACLUs Campaign for Smart Justice said the number of paroles dropped from 4,239 in 2018 to 2,291 last year. It projects a much steeper decline in the number this year.

In the last two months of 2019, the board considered 200 inmates for parole and granted only 17, the ACLU said. At that rate, and based on the approximately 150 parole hearings scheduled for January, the ACLU projects only 134 paroles will be granted this year.

The ACLU says the reduction in paroles is the main factor in its projection that Alabamas prison population will increase by more than 3,700 inmates next year.

Alabamas Parole Board and the Bureau of Pardons and Paroles have tremendous power over our prison population," ACLU of Alabama Executive Director Randall Marshall said in a news release. "Their decisions to docket fewer eligible people for hearings and to grant fewer paroles are exacerbating Alabamas prison crisis systemwide. For individuals who are trying to survive inside Alabamas overcrowded and violent prisons, the boards actions can truly be a matter of life or death. State agencies should be working together to solve this disaster, but instead new leadership at the Bureau and Board have doubled down, justifying their actions with the same old tough-on-crime ideology and fear-driven rhetoric that has pushed Alabamas addiction to incarceration for decades.

The Campaign for Smart Justice called on the U.S. Department of Justice, Gov. Kay Iveys administration, and state lawmakers to address this impending catastrophe.

According to the September 2019 monthly statistical report of the Alabama Department of Corrections, the most recent available, the ADOC had 20,953 inmates in prisons designed for 12,412, a 169% occupancy rate. The prison population grew last year after several years of declines.

The Department of Justice alleged in a report in April that the level of violence, drugs, weapons, and other problems in Alabamas mens prisons create conditions that violate the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments. Ivey has called the situation a crisis.

Ivey and Attorney General Steve Marshall spearheaded changes at the parole board approved by the Legislature last year. That came after parolee Jimmy ONeal Spencer was accused in the murders of three people in Marshall County in 2018.

The legislation made the director of the Bureau of Pardons and Paroles an appointee of the governor and wrote into state law some restrictions on consideration for early parole. Ivey appointed former Attorney General Charlie Graddick as director. Graddick began work on Sept. 1. The three-member board, which is appointed by the governor with confirmation by the state Senate, still makes decisions about whether to grant parole.

Ivey Press Secretary Gina Maiola issued a statement in response to the Campaign for Smart Justice report.

As a public safety necessity, there was a dire need to change how things were being done at Pardons and Paroles, Maiola said. "Governor Ivey tasked Judge Graddick to enact critical reform, and she has full confidence that he will continue guiding this change and ensure the previous failures do not occur again. She has made it clear that one of her main priorities is to address the many challenges facing the states prison system, which includes the issue of overcrowding. Granting paroles for the sole reason of meeting a quota is a shiftless method to solving the greater problems, not appropriate and not in the best interest of any Alabamian. The governor looks forward to working with her Study Group on Criminal Justice Reform to make substantive change this coming Session."

Heres the number of paroles granted each of the last five fiscal years:

2015: 2,114

2016; 2,794

2017: 3,805

2018: 4,239

2019: 2,291

The total number of inmates in Alabama Department of Corrections custody dropped from by almost 4,000 from 2015 to 2018, down to about 20,500, but rose last year by about 1,000 inmates.

The rate of parole had already dropped sharply before the new legislation in the wake of the Spencer murder charges.
An $80million bounty has been placed on Donald Trump's head in the wake of General Qasem Soleimani's assassination, according ...





An $80million bounty has been placed on Donald Trump's head in the wake of General Qasem Soleimani's assassination, according to reports.





During the televised funeral of the top Iranian, official state broadcasters said one US dollar would be tabled for every Iranian in the country, with the cash going to whoever killed the US President.





Iran has 80 million inhabitants. Based on the Iranian population, we want to raise $80million (61million) which is a reward for those who get close to the head of President Trump, it was announced, according to en24.





Soleimani, Iran's preeminent military commander, was killed on Friday in a US drone strike on his convoy at Baghdad airport.

The attack took long-running hostilities between Washington and Tehran into uncharted territory and raised the spectre of wider conflict in the Middle East.





Earlier today Iranian MP Abolfazl Aboutorabi threatened to attack the heart of American politics.





We can attack the White House itself, we can respond to them on the American soil, he said according to the Iranian Labour News Agency.





"We have the power, and God willing we will respond in an appropriate time."





He went on to say that this is a declaration of war, which means if you hesitate you lose.





When someone declares war, do you want to respond to the bullets with flowers? They will shoot you in the head.





During an open session of parliament in Tehran this afternoon President Trump was called a "terrorist in a suit" after he threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites hard if Tehran attacks Americans or U.S. assets.





Soleimani was the architect of Tehran's clandestine and military operations abroad as head of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force.





Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promised on Friday that Iran would seek harsh revenge for his death.





U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that if there were further Iranian attacks on U.S. targets, Washington would respond with lawful strikes against decision-makers orchestrating such attacks.

When someone declares war, do you want to respond to the bullets with flowers? They will shoot you in the head.





During an open session of parliament in Tehran this afternoon President Trump was called a "terrorist in a suit" after he threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites hard if Tehran attacks Americans or U.S. assets.





Soleimani was the architect of Tehran's clandestine and military operations abroad as head of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force.





Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promised on Friday that Iran would seek harsh revenge for his death.





U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that if there were further Iranian attacks on U.S. targets, Washington would respond with lawful strikes against decision-makers orchestrating such attacks.

Nancy Pelosi, House speaker, criticised the manner in which the decision was taken.





She said: This initiation of hostilities was taken without an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Iran, without the consultation of the Congress and without the articulation of a clear and legitimate strategy to either the Congress or the public."




WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Association of Professional Insurance Agents (PIA National) and its carrier council, The PIA Partnership, have unveiled a new agency perpetuation planning program for PIA members and agents appointed by carriers participating in The PIA Partnership.

The PIA Partnership's new Agency Journey Mapping program, available at www.agencyjourneymapping.com, explains the means and methods of determining agency valuation based on cash flow potential and future earnings potential. The program then expands to identify how agencies may plan for their own internal or external succession to achieve the goals of the perpetuator, the successor, and the staff and clients of the agency.

"Every agency will eventually perpetuate at the death, disability or retirement of its owners or earlier sale of the agency," said PIA National President Dennis Kuhnke, CIC, CPIA, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "Yet few agency owners adequately prepare for perpetuation and fewer still understand the principles of valuation to properly calculate their business' value in a succession or perpetuation. Our goal is to help agents understand the issues surrounding agency perpetuation, while making it easy for them to create a personalized perpetuation plan for their agencies."

"Not preparing for the ownership transition of their agencies costs agency owners in multiple ways," said Al Diamond, president of Agency Consulting Group, Inc., The PIA Partnership's content partner for the Agency Journey Mapping program. "Some lose tens of thousands of dollars or more of value by assuming that every agency is worth the same 'multiple.' Others don't prepare themselves or their successors until very close to ownership conversiontoo late to be very effective. Sadly, many never plan for a crisis requiring immediate perpetuationthe very thing that they counsel their own clients to avoid. Agency Journey Mapping addresses all of these issues and more without divulging anything about the individual agencies."

Agents using the Agency Journey Mapping program will learn about agency valuation, internal perpetuation methods, external perpetuation methods and contingency buy/sell agreements. They will learn how to maximize their retirement income when they leave their agency while protecting their family's income should they die or become disabled before then.

Agency Journey Mapping began as a series of live seminars held in cities across the country. That live program has been recorded and is now available on-demand along with an extensive resource library that agents can use to create a perpetuation plan that is personalized to their agency.

Agents who prefer a live seminar to the on-demand option can indicate that on the Agency Journey Mapping website. They will then receive a personal invitation when a live seminar is scheduled near them. The live seminars generally qualify for 4-hours of continuing education (CE) creditsthe on-demand seminar does not. Live seminars also include a 30-minute private consultation with PIA's perpetuation partner, Al Diamond of Agency Consulting Group.

The PIA Partnership is a joint effort of leading insurance carriers and PIA. PIA and the companies belonging to The PIA Partnership work together to develop hands-on tools for PIA members and agents appointed by Partnership carriers, specifically addressing areas of opportunity in the agency-company partnership.

"The PIA Partnership has long identified agency perpetuation as important to the continued viability of the independent agency system," said 2019 PIA Partnership Chair Tom Hamilton, CLU, ChFC, from the Sales Division of Erie Insurance. "The group introduced Perpetuation Central back in 2007."

"Perpetuation Central was a self-service, online resource that has long been among the most popular Partnership programs," said 2020 PIA Partnership Chair Ryan Dawson of The Hanover. "In rejuvenating that toolset, we saw the opportunity to add live seminars to the program and to reorganize the offering around those seminars. The resulting program is both comprehensive yet easy for agents to understand and utilize."

The PIA Partnership was established in 1996. PIA would like to thank the PIA Partnership companies who helped to develop Agency Journey Mapping: Central Insurance Companies, Encompass Insurance, Erie Insurance, Liberty Mutual Insurance, MetLife Auto & Home, National General Insurance, Progressive Insurance, Selective Insurance Group, State Auto Insurance Companies and The Hanover Insurance Group. Learn more about The PIA Partnership at www.ThePIAPartnership.com.

Founded in 1931, PIA is a national trade association that represents member insurance agents and their employees who sell and service all kinds of insurance, but specialize in coverage of automobiles, homes and businesses. PIA members are Local Agents Serving Main Street America. PIA's web address is www.pianet.com.

The PIA Partnership Presents: Agency Journey Mapping

www.agencyjourneymapping.com

This press release is online at:

https://pianet.com/news/press-releases/2020/the-pia-partnership-launches-agency-perpetuation-planning-program

SOURCE National Association of Professional Insurance Agents

Related Links

http://www.pianet.com


Former White House national security adviser John Bolton announced Monday that he would be willing to testify in the Senate impeachment trial against President Trump should he be subpoenaed.

The House has concluded its Constitutional responsibility by adopting Articles of Impeachment related to the Ukraine matter. It now falls to the Senate to fulfill its Constitutional obligation to try impeachments, and it does not appear possible that a final judicial resolution of the still-unanswered Constitutional questions can be obtained before the Senate acts, Bolton said in a statement.

I have had to resolve the serious competing issues as best I could, based on careful consideration and study. I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify, the former senior Trump adviser concluded.

Bolton, known for his hawkish stance on foreign policy, was ousted as national security advisor in September after finding himself at odds with several other members of the administration, although he argued he had resigned before he was fired.

The Republican majority in the Senate is not currently planning to call on Bolton to testify in the upcoming trial.

The House last month passed two articles of impeachment against Trump, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, relating to accusations that the president engaged in a quid pro quo with the Ukrainian government involving U.S. military aid and the Ukrainian presidents agreement to publicly announce an investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has since then refused to send the articles over to the Senate until Democrats receive assurances of a fair trial in the upper chamber, which could include a concession from Republicans to call witnesses like Bolton. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has so far shown no appetite to negotiate with Democrats on the trial process, however.

More from National Review
President Donald Trump on Monday ruled out moving US troops out of Iraq unless it paid the cost of building an expensive air base there and threatened it with "very big" sanctions, a day after the Gulf country's Parliament voted to oust American troops in response to killing of top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in a US drone attack on its soil.

The Iraqi Parliament on Sunday voted to expel the US troops from its territory which have been there to help the Iraq dispensation fight the ISIS terror group.

Iraq's move comes in response to the killing of Maj Gen Soleimani, 62, the head of Iran's elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, in a US drone attack on a convoy that was leaving the Baghdad International Airport early on Friday. The strike also killed the deputy chief of Iraq's powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force.

Soleimani's killing was the most dramatic escalation yet in spiralling tensions between Iran and the US, already hit by serious differences over Tehran's ambitious nuclear programme.

We're not leaving (Iraq) unless they pay us back for it," Trump said while responding to a question on the resolution passed by the Iraqi Parliament.

He was speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One while travelling from Mar-a-Lago in Florida to Andrews Joint Base in Maryland as he returned to the White House from his Christmas and New Year vacation.

We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it, he said.

However, Trump did not name the airbase.

If they do ask us to leave, if we don't do it in a very friendly basis. We will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, Trump said issuing a strong warning to Iraq.

Trump also threatened to put "very big" sanctions on Iraq if there is any opposition from the Gulf country.

If there's any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq, he said.

Trump said that the US has spent a lot of money in Iraq.

I told you, Iraq, was the worst decision, going into the Middle East was the worst decision ever made in the history of our country, and I've said that publicly so I guess I can say that right now going into the Middle East was the worst decision ever made in the history of our country, but we are there and they went into Iraq, he said.

Iraq, by the way, they didn't knock down the World Trade Center. That's been very nicely proven. But we went in and we're there and we're pulling out, pulling out of a lot of different areas. With Syria, I pulled out because I'm not going to guard his border. Why should I be guarding the border? he asked.

They've got troops, let them guard, that border's been under siege, for thousands of years they've been fighting on that border. We call it the safe zone, it's really the opposite of the safe zone, many many people have been killed and by the way many people from Turkey have been killed, it's a double," Trump said.

As the tensions escalated between Iran and the US following the killing of Soleimani, Tehran on Sunday announced its fifth step back from the 2015 landmark nuclear deal, saying it would not observe the nuclear deal's restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities.

In a statement, Tehran, however, said it would continue cooperating "as before" with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors the implementation of the nuclear deal.

On Saturday night, Trump warned that the US will target 52 sites in Iran some of which are "at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture" if the Islamic republic attacks American personnel or assets.

Responding to Trump's remarks, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said targeting cultural sites was a 'war crime'.

Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Khamenei has vowed a revenge against the killing of his general, saying "severe revenge awaits the criminals" behind the attack.

Soleimani was widely seen as the second most powerful figure in Iran behind the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His Quds Force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, reported directly to the Ayatollah Khamenei and he was hailed as a heroic national figure.
A man who shot himself on New Year's Eve after allegedly killing his daughter and her husband has been charged with murder.

Lindita Musai had been trying to start a new life away from her father when she was cut down in a hail of bullets alongside her new husband Veton on New Year's Eve.

Osman Shaptafaj, 55, was charged with two counts of murder by homicide squad detectives in Melbourne on Thursday.

The alleged killer remains critically ill in The Alfred hospital under police guard.

He was charged at his hospital bed after his condition was uplifted to stable.

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Osman Shaptafaj in a post from Facebook. He is said to have been estranged from his family when he is accused of gunning down his own daughter

The Albanian Australian Islamic Society mosque in Carlton North on Saturday. Thousands lined the street to pay their respects to the deceased couple

The couple married about a year ago but were dating for at least five years

He has been remanded in custody to appear in court in May.

Ms Musais father lived just 5km from the couple but was estranged from her and her mother amid accusations of turmoil within the family.

He was found soon after the attack a block away with gunshot wounds to his head.

Daily Mail Australia has been told all was not well in the Shaptafaj household.

A family member, who wished to remain anonymous, said Mrs Musai had endured a 'difficult' upbringing.

Osman Shaptafaj has been accused killing his daughter and her husband before turning the gun on himself

Veton Musai, 29, succumbed to his injuries on Wednesday, a day after his wife Lindita

Osman Shaptafaj in another Facebook rant. He remains in hospital in a critical, but stable condition after shooting himself twice in the head

He claimed Mrs Masai's mother had separated from Shaptafaj about eight years ago after spending time in hospital.

'I'll just say it was nothing to do with his backgound or his beliefs, as he has no beliefs,' the man said of the attack.

He claimed the alleged killer's daughter had bravely turned him away to begin a peaceful life with her new husband, who succumbed to his injuries on Wednesday.

'It's really making me sick ... to be honest with you. Lindita and Veton were perfect, absolutely perfect,' he said.

The relative said Lindita's mother had done her best to live in the unhappy household, but found the courage to leave after a stint in hospital.

'She was trying to keep the peace, to the point of leaving him, the house, the car and money not to put (him) on edge,' he said.

The pair were allegedly attacked in their home in Yarraville, western Melbourne about 10.30am on Tuesday last week.

Osman Shaptafaj remains in a critical condition in hospital after allegedly turning a gun on himself. He is accused of shooting dead his own daughter and son-in-law in a shocking New Year's Eve attack

The couple were found on the front porch of their house with gunshot wounds to their upper bodies

Hundreds of mourners gathered to farewell the couple at the Albanian Australian Islamic Society mosque in Carlton North on Saturday.

They packed the mosque to pray and to listen to short eulogies given during the hour-long service.

About three thousand more stood outside the mosque on the street to pay their respects.

Mrs Musai became the 266th Australian to be killed in 2019 - the last in Victoria - and the 72nd woman lost to violence last year.

Mr Musai's brother Drilon paid tribute to the couple on Facebook on Sunday, expressing anger at their tragic deaths.

'Finally, hate killed beauty, a devil killed love! The Angels were shot smiling, That the monster didn't sleep!' he wrote.

'Veton, I am broken without you, The family is broken without you, but the memories we have of you will hold us together forever and help soothe these wounds.

'To everyone out there. Please remember Veton and Lindita for who they were, their love, their passion and their otherworldly presence, because to remember them for what happened is an injustice to love itself.'

Victoria Police are investigating a family dispute as the motive behind the chilling attack ahead of the New Year.

The couple reportedly had other guests at their home when the incident took place.

They were found on the front porch of their house with gunshot wounds to their upper bodies.

A gun was found at the end of the street on public land. Investigators are now trying to piece together what drove the man to allegedly open fire.

The couple had wed earlier this year and were allegedly shot on the front porch of their house on Tuesday morning

Lindita Musai, 25, (pictured) was allegedly shot dead and her husband Veto Musai, 29, critically injured on Tuesday morning in a hail of bullets at their western Melbourne home

A 55-year-old man was rushed to hospital after allegedly shooting himself twice (pictured)

A witness told Channel 7 in Melbourne he had seen a man come out of a bush and shoot himself in the head, fall to the ground, then get up again and shoot himself again.

Mr Musai's cousin shared his grief on Facebook after the 29-year-old died in hospital 30 houra after he was shot.

'I don't know how to put the words together.. Allah knows best why things happen the way they do,' he started, before adding he 'can't even begin to explain' how he's feeling.

'The only thing keeping us strong is belief in God.

'May Allah bring the two gorgeous souls together again in Jannah.'

The young couple had only been married a year, but had been a couple for at least five. Friends described their wedding as one of the 'best they'd ever been to'.

'Such a lovely couple, such a lovely family... One of the best weddings I've been to in Australia,' a friend of the family wrote on Facebook.

Mrs Musai was employed as a receptionist for real estate firm Colliers International in Melbourne's CBD while her husband worked at a nearby bank.
The criminal trial of a New York man may help explain how tens of millions of dollars in illicit profits were allegedly generated by a global insider-trading network that included a Greek pharmaceutical executive, a Goldman Sachs banker, a Monaco poker player, a Swiss trader and a Manhattan restaurant owner.

Telemaque Lavidas is the first of the accused to go before a jury in the U.S., where prosecutors say he was one of the people feeding information into a network of traders on several continents. His trial starts Monday in federal court.

In a scheme that stretched for years and included dozens of trades, participants cultivated ties to bankers, made bets based on information gleaned from them and shared leaks in face-to-face meetings or over encrypted social media apps such as Signal or WhatsApp, the government claims. The network was based on location and affinity, with some of the European traders saying they hung out together in clubs and in posh locales.

"The investigation to date has identified over 50 deals where the subject traders have engaged in suspicious trading, as a result of which the participants in the scheme have collectively made over $100 million in profits," an FBI agent said in a 2017 affidavit made public last month.

Lavidas allegedly played a small role in the wider plot. He is accused of providing non-public, market-moving tips about Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. that he got from his father, Athanase Lavidas, a former Ariad board member and the chief executive officer of the family-owned Lavipharm SA. The younger Lavidas passed the tips to Georgios Nikas, a Greek businessman who owns restaurants in New York and used the information to make trades before big share moves, prosecutors said.

In exchange, the U.S. claims Lavidas got a $500,000 investment from Nikas's wife in his fruit-bar company, Mediterra Inc.

Lavidas was among six people charged in October, when the U.S. announced a series of cases alleging insider trading by a loosely organized network of bankers, traders and entrepreneurs. Links also emerged between suspects in probes in the U.K. and France.

A key witness in Lavidas's trial is expected to be Marc Demane-Debih, a Geneva-based trader arrested in Serbia last year. He pleaded guilty to 38 counts in a secret hearing in October. Demane-Debih agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in hopes of leniency when he's sentenced.

Demane-Debih claims that Nikas told him at a 2011 dinner party that he had inside information about Ariad that he got from Lavidas and his father, the government said. Nikas has also been charged, but he remains in Greece and is considered a fugitive.

Lavidas's lawyer, Jonathan Streeter, didn't respond to an email seeking comment on the trial.

At a hearing in December, Streeter told U.S. District Judge Denise Cote that one defense will be that the Ariad tips that Nikas allegedly used to make his trades didn't come from Lavidas, but from Darina Windsor, a former Centerview Partners LLC investment banker in London who is charged but not in U.S. custody.

While Lavidas is charged only with giving tips to Nikas about Ariad, prosecutors claim Demane-Debih provided Nikas with inside information about many companies. That suggests the Swiss banker may be a link to others accused of being in the ring.

FBI Special Agent Shannon Bieniek said in the 2017 affidavit that the government has been investigating an insider-trading network that involved residents of the U.S., U.K., France, Switzerland, Israel, Cyprus, Greece and Hong Kong since 2013. Shares of pharmaceutical companies were bought and sold before important news releases were issued, Bieniek said. Some media reports were "manufactured by the participants in the scheme," she said.

In addition to Lavidas, Nikas and Windsor, U.S. authorities have charged Goldman Sachs investment banker Bryan Cohen with passing confidential information. Cohen, who's free on bail and on leave from the bank, is scheduled to go on trial in Manhattan Feb. 4. He denies wrongdoing.

The U.S. also charged Joseph El-Khouri, a securities trader and avid poker player who lives in London and Monaco. He's free on bail in London while fighting extradition to the U.S. Another defendant is Benjamin Taylor, a former Moelis & Co. investment banker who lived with Windsor in London.

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Lavidas, a U.S. citizen, has been in jail since his arrest. Cote considered him a flight risk and rejected an elaborate $26 million bail package.

Trading in Ariad was based around four stock-moving events, which helped generate the illicit profit for Nikas, according to the government.

In June 2013, Lavidas allegedly told Nikas that the Ariad board had learned that one of its drugs, Iclusig, was going to be approved by the European Commission. Nikas bought thousands of shares and profited when the news was made public and Ariad shares surged 12%.

In September and early October 2013, Lavidas told Nikas that the Food and Drug Administration had concerns about Iclusig's safety, according to the government. The stock fell 67% when the FDA's concerns were reported.

Then, in November or December 2013, Lavidas gave Nikas a heads-up on an FDA decision to let Iclusig back on the market, which touched off a 16% increase, the U.S. claims. In July 2015, Nikas traded before public reports of a potential acquisition of Ariad that sent its stock up 41%, prosecutors said.

The case is U.S. v. Lavidas, 19-cr-716, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
Ghislane Maxwell with an unidentified male companion attends the Opening of the Asprey Flagship Store on 5th Avenue in New York City on Dec. 8, 2003. (Mark Mainz/Getty Images)

Ghislaine Maxwell Guarded By Former US Navy SEALs After Multiple Death Threats

Jeffrey Epsteins former associate Ghislaine Maxwell is being guarded by former U.S. Navy SEALs amid concerns that her life is in danger, the Mail on Sunday reported.

The British socialite has received a number of credible death threats and is being guarded round the clock by former U.S. Navy SEALs in various safe houses in the American Midwest, according to a source.

There has been so much rubbish written about Ghislaine. The reality is she receives multiple, credible death threats on a daily basis. The hate mail is sometimes 2 [feet] high, the source told the publication.

She is constantly moving. Her life is in danger. She is being guarded by the best of the very best and that includes former U.S. Navy SEALs. Shes not under the protection of any government. Shes on her own.

The news of Maxwells alleged whereabouts comes after a source earlier this month told Page Six that she was no longer in the United States and was instead dividing her time between multiple countries, including the UK and Israel.

She is not in the U.S., she moves around. She is sometimes in the UK, but most often in other countries, such as Israel, where her powerful contacts have provided her with safe houses and protection, they said.

However, the source dismissed the reports, telling the Mail on Sunday: I only wish. This is costing her a fortune. She moves constantly. The reports are just [expletive].

In December last year, Reuters said that Maxwell, along with several others, was being investigated by the FBI for her supposed role in facilitating Epsteins alleged illegal behavior.

Maxwell has denied the allegations and has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, as part of their investigation, Reuters says that the FBI is reportedly interested in the Duke of York, Prince Andrew, who has also been accused of having improper relations with a 17-year-old American woman, Virginia Roberts.

Roberts, now 36, claims she was trafficked to the UK in 2001 by Epstein and was forced to have improper relations with the Duke on three occasions in 2001 and 2002 when she was 17.

The Duke has repeatedly denied these allegations and any suggestion of wrongdoing but has since stepped down from royal duties for the foreseeable future following a so-called car crash interview with the BBCs Emily Maitlis.

During the interview, Andrew reiterated his denials of Robertss allegations and claimed he did not remember meeting her, despite photographic evidence to the contrary.

However many branded the Duke as unapologetic over his friendship with billionaire Epstein after he admitted he did not regret it.

The people that I met and the opportunities that I was given to learn either by him or because of him were actually very useful, he told Maitlis.

Last week it was claimed the Duke had asked Maxwell to defend him publicly, but she reportedly refused.

A source told Page Six: Andrew pleaded with Ghislaine to publicly defend him. She carefully considered it but decided no good would come of it [if she came forward]. It isnt in her best interests.

Epstein was found dead in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York on Aug. 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

His death was ruled as suicide by the New York medical examiner, who said he had hung himself with a sheet from his bed.

The 66-year-old had pleaded not guilty to sexually abusing girls as young as 14 and young women in New York and Florida in the early 2000s.

More than a dozen lawsuits are seeking millions of dollars in compensation for women who say they were sexually abused by the wealthy financier at his homes in Manhattan, Florida, New Mexico, the Virgin Islands, and Paris.
Scores of U.S. firefighters are joining the international effort to combat Australian bushfires that have killed at least 25 people and destroyed 2,000 homes since September.

The Idaho-based National Interagency Fire Center said it has assigned at least 83 fire personnel to Australia, including 37 in New South Wales and 44 in neighboring Victoria. It's the first time in a decade a major contingent of U.S. firefighters has been pressed into emergency service Down Under.

More help is on the way. About 70 firefighters from Canada and the U.S. are expected to arrive Wednesday. And California's Cal Fire, which has received aid from Australian firefighters to combat devastating fires in California in recent years, said it is closely monitoring the situation in southeast Australia and will send firefighters if needed.

"Having experienced firsthand the devastation that wildfires can create, we share your concern about the wildfires currently ravaging Australia," the agency said in a statement. "We stand with the people of Australia who have supported us during our catastrophic wildfires."

Record heat and drought conspired to ignite almost 24,000 square miles of land, about the size of West Virginia. The fires began months ahead of the normal December to March fire season  summer in Australia.

A wood chip mill burned by bushfires is seen as smoke rises in Quaama in Australia's New South Wales state on Jan. 6, 2020.

Relatively mild conditions and light rain that graced the region Monday was encouraging but provided little actual assistance, authorities warned.

With the more benign weather conditions, it presents some wonderful relief for everybody, the firefighters, the emergency services personnel, but also the communities affected by these fires, said Shane Fitzsimmons, commissioner of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service.

Lisa Neville, emergency services minister in Victoria, south of New South Wales, says it would take 8 inches of rain over a short period of time to snuff the blazes sweeping across southeastern Australia. Fitzsimmons emphasized that the weather break will do little to douse the more than 130 fires burning in his state.

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More: Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban pledge $500,000 to fight Australia's wildfires

It also presents some real challenges when it comes to implementing tactical and strategic back-burns and other techniques to try and bring these fires under control," Fitzsimmons said.

The Department of Home Affairs, which is coordinating the response to the bushfire crisis, even told staff to stay home Monday because of poor air quality in the capital of Canberra from smoke.

The forecast calls for the rain to end soon, and higher temperatures and winds will roll into the region later in the week. Fire Service spokesman Greg Allan said thousands of firefighters were racing to beat the heat, strengthening containment lines to slow the spread of large fires and protect homes and businesses.

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said difficult terrain and dangerous conditions were slowing access to some fire-affected areas. Hundreds more homes could be added to the list of those destroyed in coming days, she said.

"Priority today and over next few days is to turbocharge the recovery process," she said. "Providing essential supplies and power, clearing local roads and ongoing support to those who have lost their homes."

Contributing: The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Australia fires: US firefighters join effort to combat historic blazes
BANGKOK - A community in southern Thailand has offered a reward for catching whoever stole dozens of unhatched eggs of an endangered turtle species.

The Pacific Leatherback turtle eggs were stolen before dawn Sunday from a beach in the southern province of Phang-nga, said Pratom Rassamee, head of the provincial Marine and Coastal Resources office.

This theft is a grave incident for both marine biologists like me and local residents near the beach, said Thon Thamrongnawasawat, one of Thailands top marine biologists. We believe around 50 or more precious eggs are gone.

Outraged local residents donated 50,000 baht ($1,660) for a reward to catch the thieves, and the sum was matched by provincial authorities, bringing the total to 100,000 baht ($3,320).

The eggs are protected by law, and stealing or possessing them is punishable by a prison term of three to 15 years and a fine of 300,000 to 1.5 million baht ($9,950-$49,760).

Police are hunting those thieves down, Pratom said by phone. The animal is loved by people living around here.

He said footage from security cameras along the road might offer some clues to the thieves identity.

The Pacific Leatherback is the worlds largest sea turtle but is also critically endangered, and its nests had not been seen in Thailand for five years until January 2019. They are disappearing because of attacks by predators, excessive fishing, egg poaching by humans for food and increasingly unsuitable natural environments.

Thats why so many people are upset, Pratom said. I hope police can bring those thieves to justice. They have to know that those turtle eggs are not food, and they mean a lot both Thailand and the world.

The area around Thai Muang Beach, where the nest was discovered, has long been known as a egg-laying area and hosts a turtle sanctuary run by the governments Phang-nga Coastal Fisheries Research and Development Center.

The regional national park office offers a reward of up to 20,000 baht ($660) for anyone discovering a new turtle nest on the beaches of Phang-nga and neighbouring Phuket in order to facilitate their protection.
Iran's government announced Sunday that it would no longer abide by any limits on its enrichment of uranium, according to Iranian state TV.

Why it matters: This could be the final blow to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, raising the risk that Iran will move toward a nuclear weapon. However, Iran has said it will continue to allow inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and is prepared to return to compliance with the deal if the U.S. removes sanctions.

Context: President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in May 2018, setting off a chain of events that have seen tensions rise to the point where the two countries may now be on the brink of war.

European leaders have attempted to mediate in order to keep constraints on Iran's nuclear program intact.

The Trump administration says its goal is to force Iran to negotiate a more comprehensive deal, though that seems a remote prospect given the current realities.

Between the lines: Iran's decision to not immediately raise its enrichment levels to 20% and allow the IAEA to maintain inspection access is notable. Some experts, including the European Council on Foreign Relation's Ellie Geranmayeh, view the move as Tehran leaving open a "narrow window for diplomacy."

The Crisis Group's Iran expert Ali Vaez adds: "Irans decision to put aside the cap on the # of centrifuges as its 5th step away from its JCPOA commitments is less harsh than the initially feared resumption of 20% enrichment. This shows Iran still wants the Europeans on its side and doesnt want to break the deal yet."

Go deeper: Trump's threat to target cultural sites sparks Iranian furor
Brightway Insurance Co-founder Michael Miller will assume the role of president and CEO of the Florida-based company.

Miller takes over for Talman Howard, who has been in the position for the last seven years.

Miller said Howard was instrumental in helping us rebuild our executive team, which was key to our transition from being a single-state franchise system to a countrywide franchisor. Miller and his brother David co-founded Brightway in 2008. Brightway Insurance is now a national property/casualty insurance distribution company with more than $636 million in annualized written premium.

The company also announced other changes to its executive team, which include:

Leslie Kolleda-Wright, formerly V.P., Agency Growth & Development, is now chief of staff. In that role, she will work with Miller in outlining and executing key strategies as well in leading the day-to-day operations of the company. She will also continue to lead the companys marketing and communications functions. Kolleda-Wright has been with Brightway for nearly six years leading the groups that support franchisees and, prior to that, served as brand and communications business leader at two publicly traded insurance companies for over 26 years.

Scott Pollard, formerly director of Agency Development and Carrier Relations is now V.P., Agency Growth & Development, filling the role that Kolleda-Wright is being promoted from. In that role, he will be responsible for developing and executing strategies that help franchisees grow. The following groups will report to Pollard: Agency Development, Agency Support, Training, Onboarding and Carrier Relations. Pollard brings more than 25 years of insurance experience with him to the role; he joined Brightway in 2018.

Chip Hyers has joined the company as V.P., Sales. Hyers brings with him 15 years experience in building, growing and managing sales and operations teams. In his role at Brightway, he will help the company develop sales tools and strategies that help franchisees and the company grow.

Brightways Executive Team is now made up of:

Executive Chairman: David Miller

President and CEO: Michael Miller

Chief of Staff: Leslie Kolleda-Wright

Chief Financial Officer: Bob Taylor

Chief Technology Officer: Bob Hitchcock

General Counsel: Max Staplin

V.P., Customer Experience: Kris Azar

V.P., Sales: Chip Hyers

V.P., Business Intelligence and Technical Support: Chinikqua Maddox

V.P., Agency Growth & Development: Scott Pollard

V.P., Accounting: Jess Spendley

Topics Florida
By Yi Whan-woo





Korean real estate investors are rushing to the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), thanks to favorable exchange rates and higher yields than other regions, according to the Polish Investment and Trade Agency Seoul Office last week.



It said the Korean investors have outpaced Germans and emerged as "the most active group of foreign buyers of commercial real estate in CEE" with an investment of more than 1 billion euros in the first half of 2019.



"Asian investors, and particularly South Koreans, have really made their presence felt in the CEE," David Dixon, a partner at the Warsaw branch of multinational law firm Dentons, said in a press release from the Polish Investment and Trade Agency Seoul Office.



"Favorable exchange rates and higher yields in CEE, coupled with the availability of first-class office buildings and logistics developments should continue to stimulate Asian investment in the coming months."



The Korean presence is a part of the growing Asian investment in the CEE real estate market.



Asian capital invested directly in commercial real estate in CEE since 2013 totals 7.7 billion euros.



The share of Asian capital in total investment volumes in the whole of Europe was 14.5 percent.



The office sector is the main attraction for investors, with the supply of such buildings in major CEE cities doubling over a decade to 21.8 million square meters.



Projected development completion is anticipated to boost stock by 20 percent by 2021.



Under the circumstances, the office sector attracted 6.5 billion euros in 2019, up 30 percent from 2018.



Office market growth in the region is linked to economic development of the cities.



CEE cities are among the fastest growing in Europe, with 16 of the 20 best-performing European cities, according to the CEE Investment Report.



"When comparing business opportunities and risk-adjusted returns, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Bucharest have never been closer to Milan or Berlin," the Polish Investment and Trade Agency Seoul Office said. "The report provides a comprehensive update on the development of the leading cities in the region, which have undergone profound economic and social transformations in recent years."



Jang Hyon-suk, executive managing director at Korean real estate investment trust JR AMC, said his company would expand acquisition of core office properties in well-established CEE sub-markets.



"With yields in Western Europe breaking historic records, the CEE has become a very appealing substitute whereby high yields can still be achieved, simultaneously minimizing any trade-off in building quality or macro risk profile," Jang said.



At the same time, core CEE cities such as Warsaw, Budapest and Prague were growing strongly to become serious competition for traditional Western European cities.




What sort of legacy will Prime Minister Narendra Modi leave India? Oh, come on say those who like him (and they are a large number), its way too early to talk about a legacy. The man is full of energy, strong in the saddle and is likely to be around till 2030.

They are probably right. Despite the recent halo around NCP supremo Sharad Pawar for outwitting the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo at their own game of thrones in Maharashtra, there seems little traction around a wider pan-India anti-Modi front. That is not without reason.

The dirty tricks department of the BJP is continuing to polarise the Hindu vote by targeting Muslims alone out of other so-called foreign religions  Zoroastrianism or Christianity  as spoilers of national progress and integrity. This is not new.

Christianity has not been a threat. It was dignified 210 years ago, when it took up arms against the slave trade, out of Africa. Today its global profile is greatly helped by the generally humanist behaviour of Christian-dominant nations in Europe and North America, who are standard bearers of the modern virtues of democracy, equality, liberty and the rule of law.

Nor is Zoroastrianism a threat. It has no global salience today even in its home  Persia (modern Iran)  from where 1,000 years ago the Parsis fled religious persecution by the conquering Muslims. They are refugees in India, who are more nationalistic than the original inhabitants, as is always the case with new citizens.

In contrast, Islam does not rhyme with modernity. It presents a strong, alternative sovereignty, backed by petro-dollars. It is increasingly more assertive globally.

To be sure, moderate Islamic countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina Wajed demonstrate some virtuous democratic trends.

But these are not the standard bearers of Islam. That honour goes to Sunni Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Turkey and Shia Iran, where there is a strong confluence between religion and the State. None of these countries shine if viewed through the modern lens of good governance, equality or liberty.

Allah has bestowed his followers with vast quantities of black gold. Only a ramping up of a combination of nuclear and renewable power, as the preferred energy source, can dilute the fiscal heft of this gift and weaken the pull of resurgent, global Islam. But this is unlikely any time before 2040.

This means that Hindu polarisation will remain politically attractive over the near future. The Ram Mandir and Rath Yatra political template, exploited by the BJP leaders from a gentler time  Lal Krishna Advani and Atal Behari Vajpayee  is likely to increase in potency.

This is the real problem for Narendra Modi. So attractive is the Hindutva path to political power, and so used are his followers to exercising dominant power, that it will be well nigh impossible to get away from the current high.

Expect a new population control law limiting all families to two children to follow the completion of a national population register. This will, while appearing fair and even-handed, disproportionately impact Muslims, who are more fertile than Hindus.

Left-leaning, secular intellectuals explain that their fertility has nothing to do with Islam; that Muslims are poorer than Hindus and it is well known that for the poor, constraining the family size is not a priority. This argument is salient. But a trope does not need a reason behind it to become popular. It is enough that it seems true.

It is therefore certain that Narendra Modi will go down in history as the Hindu leader who brought dignity and pride to a religion  which, like the white, blue collared masses of middle America  has felt neglected in its own home; ignored by its own, mostly Hindu, leaders; relegated to a residual status on which all the burdens of social compromise could be saddled. This ersatz revivalism is Mr Modis claim to a page in history.

But how sustainable is such religious revivalism without a cleansing of the embedded barriers to organic consolidation? An excess of rituals over substance has created a curious disconnect between the modern demands of a scientific temperament, equality of opportunity, changing norms are androgenising society and shaping global allegiances, while contradictions afflict traditional roles and relationships  not least between men and women, the rulers and the ruled, patrimony and dissent and the aged versus the youth.

Its no longer politically correct to demonise dalits, and the law punishes those who should dare to do so. But ask any dalit how free and equal he or she feels, and the answer will surely be  not fully empowered, yet. The good news is that the hope for a better future accompanies dissatisfaction about the present.

Similar misconceptions and shibboleths about race, region and language divide our population deeply. Customs and norms which encourage preservation of genetic purity lie hidden under the more acceptable mask of cultural affinity. Underneath deep-rooted biases grow and fester.

Mr Modis true legacy lies in being the liberator of the Hindus from the shackles of self-doubt. Doing so would require that all Hindus acquire equal opportunities. But in achieving this objective lies the certainty that Hindu society will cease to feel threatened; that it shall become universally confident, open to external influences and thereby cease to be a narrowly focused religious, pocket borough.

Mr Modi might never see the fruit of his labours, even though at 69 years he is a mere spring chicken compared to the average age of 85 years that 12 of the 14 previous Prime Ministers enjoyed till their natural end.

But surely it must torment Mr Modi, in his sleep, that the tortuous political process of Hindu consolidation  started by the Advani-Vajpayee duo in 1992  and refined into a fine art by the Modi-Shah duo  can only end in its own disintegration.

Dominance breeds decay. This is the path Christianity trod. This is the path Islam is on today, with fundamentalism breeding distance or tacit rejection among its 1.2 billion followers. Surely a disquieting prospect for Hindutva afficionados to look forward to.
Photo: The Blu Crab Seafood House & Bar/Yelp

Visiting Ridglea North, or just looking to better appreciate what it has to offer? Get to know this Fort Worth neighborhood by browsing its most popular local businesses, from a Japanese sushi bar to a craft beer emporium and tap room.

Hoodline crunched the numbers to find the top places to visit in Ridglea North, using both Yelp data and our own secret sauce to produce a ranked list of neighborhood businesses. Read on for the results.

1. Little Lilly Sushi

Photo: Christopher D./Yelp

Topping the list is Japanese restaurant and sushi bar Little Lilly Sushi. Located at 6100 Camp Bowie Blvd., it's the highest-rated business in the neighborhood, boasting 4.5 stars out of 349 reviews on Yelp.

On the menu, look for an array of different sushi and sashimi options, hand rolls, classic Japanese appetizers like miso soup, edamame and seaweed salad, lunchtime bento boxes, assorted stir-fried entrees and a rotating selection of chef's creations and specials, such as togarashi-seared tuna, uni (sea urchin), tempura okra and tuna tacos.

2. The Blu Crab Seafood House & Bar

Photo: The Blu Crab Seafood House & BAr/Yelp

Next up is Cajun bistro and piano lounge The Blu Crab Seafood House & Bar, serving seafood and more, situated at 6115 Camp Bowie Blvd., Suite 104. With four stars out of 494 reviews on Yelp, it's proven to be a local favorite.

According to its Yelp page, The Blu Crab Seafood House & Bar specializes in Cajun-inspired seafood plates and made-from-scratch New Orleans-style fare. Noteworthy dishes to try here include the seafood bruschetta, king crab legs, ceviche, Texas red snapper and crab-stuffed shrimp.

3. Lone Star Taps & Caps

Photo: Erick D./Yelp

At last, beer bar Lone Star Taps & Caps is another prime choice. Yelpers give the business, located at 6115 Camp Bowie Blvd., Suite 114, 4.5 stars out of 56 reviews.

Lone Star Taps & Caps is known for its extensive variety of craft beers from all over the globe, both on-tap and in cans or bottles. Patrons can choose to either sample brews in the on-site tap room, or opt to take a growler home.

This story was created automatically using local business data, then reviewed and augmented by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
New Delhi:

US President Donald Trump on Sunday vowed "major retaliation" if Tehran launches attacks to avenge the killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, ratcheting up fears of a spiralling conflict. Trump, speaking on Air Force One on his way back to Washington, also said he would impose "very big sanctions" on Iraq if it follows through on a parliament vote in support of US troops being expelled from the country amid anger over the death of Soleimani in a drone strike near Baghdad's international airport.

On Sunday, Iraqs parliament voted to expel the US military from the country. The lawmakers voted in favour of a resolution that mandates to end the presence of military of any other country in Iraq. With almost 5,000 US troops stationed in Iraq, the resolution seeks United States to withdraw its military.

The resolution comes after a US airstrike killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani inside Iraq, dramatically increasing regional tensions.

Earlier, the United States had sent troops to Iraq more than four years ago to help in the fight against the Islamic State group.

The resolution was backed by most Shiite members of parliament, who hold a majority of seats. Many Sunni and Kurdish legislators did not show up for the session, apparently because they oppose abolishing the deal.

Earlier, Iran announced that it will no longer abide by the 2015 Nuclear deal. According to the 2015 Nuclear Deal, which is officially called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed between Iran and five permanent members of the security council plus Germany, Iran had agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium. It also was required to cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98%, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of its gas centrifuges for next 13 years.

Soleimani, 62, the head of Irans elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was killed when a US drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the Baghdad International Airport early on Friday. The strike also killed the deputy chief of Iraqs powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force.

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After former Nissan chairman jumped the bail and fled to Lebanon, reports claim that the fugitive used bullet train and a private jet to escape Japan. Ghosn was awaiting trial in Japan on financial misconduct charges and was not allowed to contact his wife but she reportedly played an important role in planning his escape.

A Japanese news channel reported that Ghosn boarded a bullet train from Tokyo's Shinagawa station on December 29 and got off at a station in western Osaka. The 65-year-old executive took a taxi to a hotel near Kansai airport and availed a private jet to Istanbul. It is believed that the business tycoon switched planes and travelled to Beirut. On December 30, Ghosn was smuggled out from house arrest and reportedly met Lebanons President Michel Aoun and had a warm interaction. But the officials have not confirmed the meeting.

Read: Japan Vows To Improve Border Checks, Bail After Ghosn Flight

Meanwhile, France announced that if Ghosn arrives in the country, he will not be extradited. Speaking to a French news channel, junior economy minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said that France never extradites its nationals but the French government had opined that the former executive should not have absconded from Japans justice system. The minister said that no one is above the law but if Ghosn, who has French citizenship, arrived in France, the government will not discriminate while applying the rules.

Read: Japan Says Ghosn's Escape Inexcusable, Orders Investigation

Corporate money for private use

Japanese tax officials had found out that the former Nissan executive diverted corporate money for his private use. The National Tax Agency of Japan had reached the conclusion that Ghosn made donations to a Lebanese University and paid consultants fees to his sister using Nissan money. The tax agency had ordered Nissan to pay taxes on the 150 million yen, which was recorded as office expenses for three years since they determined that money was spent for private purpose.

Carlos Ghosn served as chairman and CEO of Renault as well as chairman of Mitsubishi Motors. He was also the chairman of the RenaultNissanMitsubishi Alliance, a strategic partnership between the automobile manufacturers. It is said that Ghosn was working on strengthening Nissans relationship with Renault when he got arrested in November last year.

Read: Turkish Private Jet Firm Says Planes Used 'illegally' In Ghosn Escape

Read: Turkey Detains Pilots To Probe Carlos Ghosn's Escape Through Istanbul
New Delhi [India], Jan 6, Delhi (ANI): Union Minister Giriraj Singh on Monday accused the left students of defaming the Jawaharlal University and has said that they have turned the university into a centre of hooliganism.



"The way the left party workers have created a ruckus in JNU campus and have beaten up student, I don't know what they want JNU to become in this country. Left students are defaming Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), they have turned the University into a centre of hooliganism", Singh told ANI.

Meanwhile, Union Minister Smriti Irani has urged that the universities should not be converted into political centres while asserting that investigation will reveal more details of the incident.

"Investigation has begun, so will not be right to speak on it now, but Universities should not be turned into hubs of politics, neither should students be used as political pawns", Irani told ANI.

Earlier on Sunday evening, more than 18 students of the university, including JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, were injured and were taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered the JNU and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods.

Delhi police on Monday registered an FIR in connection with the violence after receiving multiple complaints with regard to JNU attacks. (ANI)


The JNU Teachers' Association on Monday took out a march from Sabarmati T-Point to the main gate of the campus to protest against the attack on a group of students and faculty members by a violent mob.

The JNUTA also demanded sacking of JNU Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar.

Nearly 35 students were taken to the AIIMS and Safdarjung hospitals on Sunday evening after a violent mob ran amok, attacking students and damaging property on the varsity campus.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Company strengthens leadership team to support pre-commercial efforts and launch optimization

SAN DIEGO, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kura Oncology, Inc. (KURA), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of precision medicines for the treatment of cancer, today announced the appointment of Kirsten Flowers as Chief Commercial Officer. Ms. Flowers joins Kura most recently from Array Biopharma, where she served as head of commercial operations until the completion of its $11.4 billion acquisition by Pfizer in July 2019.



Kirsten is a world-class leader in building successful commercial organizations and launching precision medicines for the treatment of cancer, said Troy Wilson, Ph.D., J.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Kura Oncology. With our ongoing AIM-HN pivotal trial and our positive regulatory feedback on a second registration-directed study in AITL, we believe tipifarnib can become a meaningful franchise in both HRAS mutant solid tumors and CXCL12-pathway dependent cancers. We are delighted to welcome Kirsten, who is ideally suited to help lay the foundation and build the commercial capabilities required for sustainable, long-term growth of our company.

Ms. Flowers brings extensive commercial experience leading top-performing oncology product launches at large pharmaceutical and biotechnology organizations. Most recently, she served as Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations at Array Biopharma, where she built and led the commercial organization that delivered the successful launch of Braftovi + Mektovi for patients with BRAF-mutant melanoma in the U.S. Previously, she held various commercial leadership roles at Pfizer, including serving as the U.S. commercial lead for the launch of the blockbuster drug IBRANCE in breast cancer and for the launch of INLYTA in renal cell carcinoma. She began her career at Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals. Ms. Flowers earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BS in Molecular & Cellular Biology and Psychology from the University of Arizona.

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Kura is an exciting company with significant potential to serve patients, said Ms. Flowers. I am impressed by the companys patient-focused culture, the strength of its leadership, the clinical development program for tipifarnib in both HRAS mutant solid tumors and CXCL12-driven indications, and the emerging pipeline of drug candidates. I look forward to joining this talented team to build a commercial organization to help bring important new targeted therapies to patients with cancer.

About Tipifarnib

Kura Oncologys lead drug candidate, tipifarnib, is a potent, selective and orally bioavailable inhibitor of farnesyl transferase in-licensed from Janssen in December 2014. Previously, tipifarnib was studied in more than 5,000 cancer patients and showed compelling and durable anti-cancer activity in certain patient subsets; however, no molecular mechanism of action had been determined that could explain its clinical activity across a range of solid tumor and hematologic indications. Leveraging advances in next generation sequencing as well as emerging information about cancer genetics and tumor biology, the Company is seeking to identify those patients most likely to benefit from tipifarnib. Tipifarnib has been granted Fast Track designation by the FDA for the treatment of patients with HRAS mutant HNSCC. Kura has received multiple issued patents for tipifarnib, providing patent exclusivity in the U.S. and foreign countries.

About Kura Oncology

Kura Oncology is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to realizing the promise of precision medicines for the treatment of cancer. The Companys pipeline consists of small molecule drug candidates that target cancer signaling pathways where there is a strong scientific and clinical rationale to improve outcomes by identifying those patients most likely to benefit from treatment. Kuras lead drug candidate is tipifarnib, a farnesyl transferase inhibitor, for which the Company is conducting a registration-directed trial in patients with recurrent or metastatic HRAS mutant HNSCC and plans to conduct a second registration-directed trial in patients with relapsed or refractory AITL and related lymphomas. Kuras pipeline also includes KO-947, an ERK inhibitor, and KO-539, a menin-MLL inhibitor, both of which are currently in Phase 1 dose-escalation trials. For additional information about Kura, please visit the Companys website at www.kuraoncology.com .

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from historical results or from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements include statements regarding, among other things, Kuras potential for growth and the projected timing for full enrollment of the AIM-HN trial. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially include the risk that compounds that appeared promising in early research or clinical trials do not demonstrate safety and/or efficacy in later preclinical studies or clinical trials, the risk that Kura Oncology may not obtain approval to market its product candidates, uncertainties associated with performing clinical trials, regulatory filings and applications, risks associated with reliance on third parties to successfully conduct clinical trials, the risks associated with reliance on outside financing to meet capital requirements, and other risks associated with the process of discovering, developing and commercializing drugs that are safe and effective for use as human therapeutics, and in the endeavor of building a business around such drugs. You are urged to consider statements that include the words may, will, would, could, should, believes, estimates, projects, promise, potential, expects, plans, anticipated, intends, continues, designed, goal, or the negative of those words or other comparable words to be uncertain and forward-looking. For a further list and description of the risks and uncertainties the company faces, please refer to the companys periodic and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available at www.sec.gov. Such forward-looking statements are current only as of the date they are made, and Kura Oncology assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contacts

Company:

Pete De Spain

Vice President, Investor Relations &

Corporate Communications

(858) 500-8803

pete@kuraoncology.com

Investors:

Robert H. Uhl

Managing Director

Westwicke Partners, LLC

(858) 356-5932

robert.uhl@westwicke.com
Mitsubishi Motors Corp has signed on to Israeli startup Otonomo's car-data marketplace as Japanese automakers race to make up ground on U.S. and European rivals to provide in-vehicle connected services.

The first Japanese auto manufacturer to join a platform like Otonomo's, Mitsubishi Motors will get access to a network of some 100 retailers, insurers and others who will pay for the data and provide revenue-generating services such as parking apps, on-demand car washing and subscription-based refueling.

The initiative will roll out this year in the United States and Europe, with Japan following later, the companies said. They did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.

The Japanese have lagged in providing connected-car services, with just 30 percent of vehicles sold last year equipped with embedded connectivity, compared with more than half in the United States and Europe, according to consultancy SBD Automotive.

It could be a costly missed opportunity. McKinsey & Co. predicts the market for in-vehicle data will swell to as much as $750 billion by 2030.

In addition, the Japanese brands risk losing touch with an increasingly connected consumer globally.

"It is about understanding customer behaviours: how they use their cars and how they maintain them," Mo Al-Bodour, a Detroit-based analyst at SBD, said by email.

"This has implications that range from current customer relationships to how future products should be designed."

Other Japanese manufacturers have so far focused on building their own platforms.

Toyota has a subscription-based service called T-Connect, which offers things like real-time traffic information and links to a human operator for help with restaurant booking or getting assistance in the event of an accident.

Honda has developed a similar offering called Honda Connected, but it has partnered with Alibaba in China to develop connected services specific to that market.

What Otonomo offers is a way to scrub and standardise the data coming out of the vehicles and ensure its use conforms to the privacy laws of each region.

The four-year-old, Tel Aviv-based startup also has partnerships with Daimler and BMW. It expects to announce more tie-ups with car makers later this year, co-founder and CEO Ben Volkow said by email.
A Walmart Walmart Supercenter in the US state of Pennsylvania is facing an unusual and expensive problem after someone intentionally released bedbugs in a men's changing room, according to a media report.

A manager at the store in Edinboro found a closed pill bottle with live bugs crawling inside and reported it to authorities Thursday, police said in a statement.

The bottle was found inside a boy's jacket which was for sale.

"We take this seriously and are looking into this," a Walmart spokesperson told CNN. "We are fully cooperating with law enforcement on their investigation."



On Friday, health safety company Ecolab confirmed that the insects were bedbugs.

A Walmart employee later found a second closed pill bottle containing dead bedbugs in the men's department, police said.

"A third-party pest management service has visited the store and we are working with them to assess next steps," the Walmart spokesperson said.

"In the meantime, we have blocked off the impacted area."



State Police are investigating the matter and looking for the person or people responsible, they said.

Bedbugs are "small, flat, parasitic insects" that survive by feeding off the blood of people and animals as they sleep, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

They do not spread disease, but can leave itchy bite marks which may lead to an allergic reaction for some people. While extremely small, bedbugs can live for months without feeding.

Bedbug infestations are also very expensive to fight.

Professional extermination of bedbugs typically costs USD 200 to USD 1,500 per room and often fails, the report said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Brent crude topped $70 a barrel today for the first time in months on the unending flow of updates from the Middle East that point towards further escalation between the United States and Iran.

Oil prices soared early last Friday morning after U.S. forces in Iraq assassinated Irans most powerful and visible military leader, Qassem Soleimani.

The United States killed the Iranian general in an air strike early on Friday morning according to Pentagon reports. Influential Iraqi militia commander and advisor to Soleimani, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was also killed in the attack according to a militia spokesman.

US President Donald Trump said he was ready to strike Iran directly if it retaliated for the assassination.

As usual, he took to Twitter to announce the threat, which said Washington has already selected 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!

Then, on Sunday, Trump threatened Iraq with sanctions if the country expelled U.S. troops as Baghdad said it would, after parliament voted in favor of the expulsion.

"The mood in the country was pushing for it," CNN quoted a source as saying following the vote. "This was not something that could have been avoided."

Meanwhile, Iran has made another step towards withdrawing from the so-called nuclear deal that halted its nuclear program. In a tweet on Sunday, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said As 5th & final REMEDIAL step under paragraph 36 of JCPOA, there will no longer be any restriction on number of centrifuges This step is within JCPOA & all 5 steps are reversible upon EFFECTIVE implementation of reciprocal obligations Iran's full cooperation w/IAEA will continue.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
By Tim Kelly and Junko Fujita

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan on Sunday said it would tighten immigration measures after former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn fled the country while on bail, its first official response to an astonishing escape that has transformed the executive into an international fugitive.

Authorities have remained quiet after Ghosn revealed on Tuesday that he had fled to his childhood home of Lebanon to escape a "rigged" justice system in Japan. All government offices and most businesses in Japan have been shut for the new year holidays.

The former Nissan Motor and Renault chairman was arrested in Tokyo in November 2018 and faced multiple charges of financial wrongdoing, which he denies.

Justice Minister Masako Mori said Ghosn's "apparently illegal" departure was very regrettable and added there was no record of him leaving the country. She promised a thorough investigation and said authorities had issued an international notice for his arrest.

"I have instructed the Immigration Services Agency to coordinate with related agencies to further tighten departure procedures," she said, adding that Ghosn's skipping bail was not justified, and that the court had revoked his bail.

Separately, prosecutors issued a statement defending Japan's justice system, saying his departure ignored the legal system and amounted to a crime.

It remains unclear what Japan might do to bring him back. It has extradition treaties only with the United States and South Korea, meaning it might be difficult to return Ghosn from Lebanon.

Mori was due to brief reporters in Tokyo on Monday morning.

ARREST WARRANT

Lebanon this week said it had received an Interpol arrest warrant for Ghosn. It has said he entered the country legally.

A senior Lebanese security official said it was not yet clear whether Ghosn would be summoned for questioning over the warrant, but added that Lebanon does not extradite its citizens.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Ghosn slipped out of Japan aboard a private jet hidden in a large black case typically used to carry audio gear. He was accompanied by a pair of men with names matching those of American security contractors, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with an investigation into the escape.

Story continues

There was no X-ray conducted of the large case, which was loaded onto the private jet that was believed to have carried Ghosn, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported.

A Turkish private jet operator has said two of its planes were used illegally to carry Ghosn, with an employee falsifying the lease records to exclude the executive's name.

According to the company, MNG Jet, he flew from Osaka, Japan, to Istanbul, where he changed planes and flew to Beirut.

Turkey has detained seven people, including four pilots, as part of an investigation into his passage through Istanbul.

Japanese prosecutors said the legal system guarantees all defendants a prompt, open and fair trial. They added that Ghosn's more than 100 days of detention were justified on the grounds that he "had an extensive domestic and overseas network and that he could deploy his considerable influence to conceal evidence."

(Reporting by Tim Kelly, Junko Fujita and Kiyoshi Takenaka; Writing by William Mallard and David Dolan; Editing by Gerry Doyle)
The heartbroken wife of a diver mauled to death by a shark has paid a gut-wrenching tribute to 'her rock' - and insisted she doesn't want the animal responsible killed.

Karen Milligan spoke out on Monday just 24 hours after her husband Gary Johnson was taken by a great white off Cull Island in Esperance, south-east of Perth.

'Gary was my rock. He was a kind, gentle, strong man. He only ever saw the best in people. He will be so truly missed by me, by his family and his friends and the world will be a poorer place without this most beautiful man,' Ms Milligan said.

Karen Milligan shared a touching tribute on Monday after her husband Gary Johnson was mauled to death by a shark

The couple ran the Esperance Dive Club together. It was their shared passion for the water that saw their relationship blossom.

'He loved diving. He loved squash. He loved his work. He loved Esperance. Most of all he loved his friends and families,' she said.

'He and I were at home in and on the ocean. We would go out diving in our boat whenever we could, most weekends.

'We took photos, not fish. We were always aware of the risks, and often told each other that if we were attacked by a shark, that would just be unlucky.'

Ms Milligan said she and her husband were animal lovers and was staunchly anti-shark culling.

'We were completely against shark culling, and I still am. We have watched with dismay the reduction of fish stocks over the years,' she said.

Ms Milligan said she and her husband shared a passion for diving and did so most weekends

Ms Milligan said her husband loved his family with all his heart. Pictured: Mr Johnson with his mother, brother and sister

'We believed that if fish stocks were better protected, then the risk to people in the water would be reduced.'

She said her husband's dream was to turn Esperance into a marine park.

Western Australia Police are still scouring the waters for Mr Johnson's body, using specialist divers along with a search plane.

Details of Ms Milligan's chilling Triple 000 call emerged earlier on Monday.

'My husband's been taken by a great white,' she told the police operator, The Australian reported.

Emergency services are still searching for Mr Johnson. His wife was treated for shock. Police pictured at the scene

Peter Hudson, who was friends with Mr Johnson, said he was a 'very nice bloke'.

'People liked him. He did a lot to encourage people to appreciate the beauty of the ocean,' he said.

One of the first responders - Glen Quinlivan - was setting up his power boat for a day trip when he heard Ms Milligan's cries for help.

'We tried to find him. We tried to help her but to no avail,' Mr Quinlivan told The West.

'I really feel for her, she's obviously witnessed something you don't want to see.'

Mr Johnson was a recreational diver who loved to share his passion for the ocean

He said the winds were blowing towards Charley Island when they found evidence Mr Johnson had been taken.

Mr Quinlivan said they saw no sign of Mr Johnson, but found his flippers and part of his wet suit.

'I've done plenty of free diving around the area. I've dived in that spot before... I won't be again. You always have it in the back of your mind,' he said.

The tragic incident marks the second fatal shark attack in three years in the region after a 17-year-old died in 2017.

The attack happened at about 1.30pm off Cull Island in Esperance, south east of Perth, on Sunday

Ms Milligan also took a moment to state their views on the habitat of sharks around Western Australia

Laeticia Brouwer was attacked by a great white at Wylie Bay when she was holidaying with her family over the Easter long weekend.

Sean Pollard was attacked in 2014 by two great white sharks in the area and he lost his left arm and right hand.

A local told 9 News on Sunday it was 'only a matter of time' before the next shark attack.

'It's frustrating,' the person said.

This is the second fatal shark attack in three years in the region after a 17-year-old died in 2017

'There have been so many hanging around lately. But what can you do? History is going to keep repeating itself, unfortunately.'

Esperance Shire president Ian Mickel told The West that losing people in the ocean to sharks was tragic.

'We have thousands of people having a good time on the water and [to] get a fatal shark attack - it's a major concern,' he said.

Laeticia Brouwer was attacked and killed by a shark at Wylie Bay when she was holidaying with her family over the Easter long weekend

'There is a lot being done with Shark Smart, we've got the majority of our surfers contributing to that. Tagged sharks are registering against the buoys [receivers]but this is really tragic.'

Swimmers have been advised to stay clear of the area and follow local beach closures.

Last month Shelley Payne, Shire of Esperance councillor, said more needed to be done to warn locals about sharks.

She said she wanted signage near the entrance informing people to check online about shark sightings.
The Australian wildfires, women's rights and calls for people to vote in the 2020 election were sprinkled into the speeches of actors and actresses who scooped up awards that the 77th annual Golden Globes.

The ceremony, held at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, was hosted by comedian Ricky Gervais, who delivered an expletive-filled monologue that poked fun at the Hollywood elite.

"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" and "1917" took home the top prizes for best picture in their respective categories.

Quentin Tarantino's flick won in the comedy or musical category as well as earned the director and writer a best screenplay award. Sam Mendes' "1917" earned the drama category's top prize and he took home the Globe for best director.

Sunday's ceremony was a night for underdog nominees.

Laika Entertainment's "Missing Link" won the prize for best animated feature, upsetting Disney and Universal. Disney had represented three of the five nominated films with "Toy Story 4," "Frozen II" and "The Lion King." The upset is only the third time that the top prize did not go to a Disney film.

Awkwafina nabbed the award for best actress in a comedy or musical, beating out acting legends Cate Blanchett and Emma Thompson and up-and-coming stars Ana de Armas and Beanie Feldstein. Awkwafina is the first Asian American to win in this category.

Hildur Gudnadottir, who wrote the score for "Joker," is the first solo woman to win the Golden Globe for best score.

The breakout South Korean film "Parasite" took home the award for best foreign language film.

"Once you overcome the one inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films," director Bong Joon Ho said during his acceptance speech.

Netflix scored four best picture nominations  "Marriage Story," "The Two Popes" and "The Irishman" were nominated for the drama category and "Dolemite is my Name" earned a nod in the musical or comedy category. In total, it earned 17 nominations, the most of any studio. HBO followed just behind with 15.

However, it was Disney and AT&T that won the night. Disney's won three awards for shows on Hulu  "The Act" and "Ramy"  and for FX's "Fosse/Verdon.

AT&T won six awards, including four from HBO's "Succession" and "Chernobyl" and two from Warner Bros. "Joker."

Still, Netflix's numerous nominations underscore the changing Hollywood landscape. As theaters balk at Netflix's shorter theatrical windows for films, critics have embraced the streaming service's content.

Similar to the Emmy Awards, "Fleabag" and "Chernobyl" dominated the television awards portion of the ceremony. Phoebe Waller-Bridge won for best actress in a comedy TV series and for best comedy TV series. HBO's "Chernobyl" won for best limited series and actor Stellan Skarsgard won best actor in a limited series for his performance in the show.

Ellen Degeneres was the recipient of the Carol Burnett Award, which honors excellence in television. It was handed off to Degeneres by a tearful Kate McKinnon, who thanked the comedian for paving the way for other LGBTQ performers in the industry.

The Carol Burnett Award is considered the TV equivalent to the Cecil B. DeMille Award, which was given to Tom Hanks during the telecast for for excellence in filmmaking. Hanks blamed a cold he was battling for his emotional reaction to a standing ovation he received.

"You're a dope if you don't steal from everybody you've ever worked with and I've stolen from the likes of the people that only need one name," he said.

And the winners are...

Best Motion Picture  Drama

"1917" (WINNER)

"Irishman"

"Joker"

"Marriage Story"

"The Two Popes"

Best Actress  Drama

Renee Zellweger, "Judy" (WINNER)

Cynthia Erivo, "Harriet"

Scarlett Johansson, "Marriage Story"

Soairse Ronan, "Little Women"

Charlize Theron, "Bombshell"

Best Actor  Drama
25 crore people likely to participate in nationwide strike on Jan 8

Could not sleep the whole night: Anil Kapoor on JNU violence

'They were singling out people and attacking': Aishe Ghosh

'Called police for 2 hours but got no help': JNUSU vice president

'Organised attack by goons of RSS and ABVP': Aishe Ghosh on JNU violence

JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh

Students across the country on Monday continued to protest against the violence on Jawaharlal Nehru University campus a day earlier in which masked men with sticks, rods and hammers attacked students and teachers and damaged property.

At least 23 students and teachers, injured in the violence, were admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences that began around 6pm after a demonstration against hike in hostel and academic fees. Aishe Ghosh, president of JNU Students Union, was seen bleeding from her head in a video and was heard saying, I was brutally attacked. I am bleeding and not in a condition to talk.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) have blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.

The violence prompted the varsity administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

Here are the live updates:
T ributes were paid today to a scuba diver who was killed by a great white shark in Western Australia, as details of his wifes desperate emergency call were revealed.

Gary Johnsons body was still missing after the shark attack near Cull Island, close to West Beach in Esperance, at about midday local time yesterday.

His partner Karen Milligan, who was just yards away at the time, told a police operator: My husbands been taken by a great white.

She was being treated for shock in hospital on Monday.

Mr Johnson was a recreational diver and president of the Esperance Dive Club.

Police were using specialist divers and a search plane to find the body.

Ian Mickel, president of Esperance Shire said: Its a real shock to know a person as experienced as Gary has lost his life while he was doing what he loved.

The area was the scene of a fatal shark attack in April 2017 when teenager Laeticia Brouwer was bitten while surfing with her father.

In 2014, Sean Pollard lost his left arm and right hand in an attack by two great white sharks.
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It didnt take limp Democrats long to voice their condemnation of Trumps destruction of the evil General Soleimani. This man had orchestrated terror, massive violence and deaths around that region for 20 years including the recent attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. These leaders of weakness were quick to attack Trump but couldnt muster the stomach to attack Soleimani in the past. That policy empowered him to move freely about the region entering many nations with no concern. He had just arrived from Lebanon where he had been plotting with Hezbollah to attack Israel.

This is not a war against a sovereign nation, Iran, but an action of anti-terrorism against a violent deadly organization, Qud, which was planning more violence against American contractors, diplomats and military personnel in Iraq. Iran doesnt want to move troops into Iraq so they use surrogates in Iraq to foment insurrections and terror. This action disrupts that plot.

Silly Democrat analysts and media experts have no clue about the Iranians and their potential for deadly violence. Let me remind everyone, Joe Biden, who was first to denounce the destruction of the bloody Soleimani, earlier denounced the state of Texas for changing their law which allowed weapons in churches. If Joe has been in charge, his foolishness would have led to many more deaths in the recent church shooting near Ft Worth. Joe Biden is not only delusional, hes dangerous. He would be a disaster as president.

Ilhan Omar, in her condemnation of the president, tweeted she will step in to stop Trump. Just how will she do that? And isnt it interesting she says this when he destroys an Iranian terrorist leader? Isnt it interesting her comments appear to reveal indifference to what a threat Soleimani was to American military and diplomatic personnel? This thinking by Omar and others is why Congress was not notified before the attack on Soleimani. Who could trust Omar, who is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, with classified intelligence like this?

Omar is not alone in her thinking. There has been strong backlash over MSNBCs Joy Reid appearing to cheer on terrorists attacking the embassy in Baghdad hoping it would be Trumps Benghazi. The recent attack in Baghdad was in retaliation for the US destroying Hezbollah militants who recently attacked U.S. servicemen in Iraq, killing an American private contractor. Iran supports Hezbollah and that was why Soleimani was in both Lebanon and Iraq.

Whatever Reids twisted statement meant it further reveals the radical lefts weakness and what they think of Trump and millions of Americans who voted for him. And they want us to trust them with our security and running the nation?

Ralph Miller

* * *

Excellent points by Mr. Miller on the whacking of the Iranian General by President Trump and the members of our Armed Forces. I would add another to his Hall of Shame. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut severely criticized the President for his actions. Funny just the week before he criticized the President for not reacting to the attack on our Embassy saying no one feared the U.S. anymore. Kind of similar to John Kerry who was, "against the Iraq war before he was for it."

Then Murphy dug his hole a little deeper and said Trump's actions were equivalent to Iran assassinating our Secretary of Defense. Really Senator, when was the last time a Secretary of State was outside the embassy of a country in another foreign country leading an assault on its walls.

Whatever became of the Democrat party of FDR, Truman, JFK, Sam Nunn and Joe Lieberman, who ironically was succeeded by Murphy.

Douglas Jones

Ooltewah

* * *

I doubt that General Soleimani was of sterling character nor do I think he was a friend/ally of the United States. However, I do wonder about the motive(s) that Trump used in deciding to attack and kill him. While the catalyst for this killing may have been the attack on the American embassy, I seriously wonder if this attack gave Trump an opportunity to draw attention away from the impending impeachment proceedings by providing the world something violent and inflammatory to see. To focus attention on something in another part of the world (and thus to direct it away from the politician himself and his questionable actions) is an old political trick.

As an American citizen and veteran, I do strongly object to this administration's putting the lives of thousands of young American servicemen and servicewomen at risk by escalating tensions in the Mid-east. Such a tactic is especially heinous if the intent is to delay the appropriate impeachment process that follows questionable behavior on the part of an American politician.

Tim McDonald

* * *

These are some thought-provoking letters of reasoning that concerns our national security and well-being. Sometimes in the mirror we see what we want to see.

In regard to Mr. McDonalds comments about President Trump possibly drawing attention away from impeachment by striking at Soleimani and Irans extended terror network, I see no political trick here. President Trump did what administrations before him were too timid to do after the U. S. had suffered the results of Irans terror. Was he to wait while Soleimanis terrorists attacked and killed more innocent victims? Wait until whenever the political stunt of impeachment has blown away or ended?

At least if not more, the administration took out a leader of terror who apparently was planning more terror attacks. What I do see is an opposing party out to damage and bring down a president at any costs and by any method. The real trick is how the Democrats have corruptly, lied, twisted and dangled impeachment out to damage this setting president. Questionable behavior really focuses then on the democrats. Have no doubt the liberal Democrats really want to extinguish or wipe out the 2016 voters choice.

Gerald Presley

* * *

I am not sure when Mr. McDonald wrote his comment regarding the rationale for killing General Solemenei in Baghdad, but given Sec. Pompeo's statement that the general was in Iraq to coordinate, with his Iraqi allies, further attacks on the embassy and other friendly sites, I believe the drone strike was completely warranted. If anyone has paid attention to the Iranians over the last 40 years, it is evident that they have been continually at war with the U.S. and General Solemenei has been the primary architect of their attacks throughout the world. He got what he deserved.

Prior to recent attacks, President Trump had acted with restraint toward Iran's provocations in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere, however, the recent missile and embassy attacks by Iranian backed factions combined with the intelligence that further attacks were imminent required a measured response. By giving the Iranians and their allies a bloody nose with the promise of further responses to continued attacks, Mr. Trump has given the mullahs a clear indication of his resolve. Nobody wants a hot war with Iran, but it's their decision as to how to respond. I believe that the Iranian leaders will back off rather than risk further damage to their fragile hold on power.

The assertion that this current action is meant to be a distraction from impeachment is beyond ludicrous. The Democrats still cannot get over Hillary's defeat and impeachment is just one more feeble attempt to overturn the election and remove the most effective leader this country has seen since Reagan. Regarding questionable behavior on the part of an American politician, I am assuming that the reference is probably in regard to Adam Schiff.

Jim Nelson
Five Pakistani nationals onboard a boat were apprehended mid-sea off Gujarat coast on Monday morning when they were allegedly trying to smuggle drugs into the state, police said. Nearly 35 packets of suspected drugs were seized from the five men near Jakhau coast in Kutch district, Superintendent of Police, Kutch-West, Saurabh Tolumbia said.

The early morning operation in the Arabian Sea was carried out by teams of Kutch Police's Special Operation Group, Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad and the Indian Coast Guard, he said.

"We have arrested five Pakistani nationals and seized about 35 packets of suspected drugs from them near Jakhau. We have also seized their boat," the official said.

A team from a forensic science laboratory has been called in to examine the contraband and ascertain its type, he added.
Oil prices surged, gold hit a 6.5-year high and most equities tumbled on Monday after the US assassination last week of a top Iranian general added more fuel to Middle East fires, dealers said.

The leaders of Germany, France and Britain have agreed to work towards a de-escalation of Middle East tensions following the US drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani.

US President Donald Trump has nonetheless warned of a "major retaliation" if Tehran takes revenge for Friday's killing of the Iranian commander, which triggered a sell-off in stocks and a spike in crude.

Oil extended its gains on Monday and gold shone brightly to briefly touch USD 1,588.13 per ounce -- a level last seen in April 2013 -- as investors flocked to the safe-haven precious metal.

It then eased back to USD 1,574.08 in afternoon European trades.

Asian, European and US stock markets tanked meanwhile, having wobbled before the weekend as of the assassination flashed across traders' screens.

"Today's ... losses extend the stock market weakness that began on Friday when a US airstrike killed Iran's top Military Commander Qasem Soleimani," said London Capital Group analyst Jasper Lawler.

"The prospect of Iran avenging the killing of Soleimani and then a retaliation from the US is keeping de-escalation hopes at bay.

"We would expect the impact of these Middle Eastern tensions to be more durable in commodities markets than in equities," he said.

Iran announced on Sunday a further rollback of its commitments to its nuclear accord, while Iraq's parliament demanded the departure of US troops from the country as fallout from the attack spread.

The crisis has jolted investors who were in an upbeat mood as China and the US prepare to sign their mini trade deal next week, and data indicated a slight improvement in the global economy.

Both main crude oil contracts rallied, with Brent topping USD 70 for the first time since September when attacks on two Saudi Arabian facilities briefly halved output by the world's top producer.

After facing criticism for the action and calls to dial down the tension, the US president was in a fighting mood, saying the White House had dozens of sites lined up for strikes in case of retaliation by Iran -- adding that he did not need Congressional approval, even for a "disproportionate" hit.

"Geopolitical tensions look like remaining elevated in coming days, so lending support to oil prices and keeping risk asset markets on the defensive," said Ray Attrill at National Australia Bank.

On Wall Street, falls from record highs last week were followed by more losses as trading began on Monday, after all seven bourses in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states finished sharply lower.

Energy firms rallied meanwhile since higher crude prices tend to lift their profits and revenues.

Inpex jumped more than four percent in Tokyo while in Hong Kong, PetroChina added four per cent and CNOOC surged 3.6 per cent.

Back in London, BP jumped almost 2.0 per cent in value and Royal Dutch Shell 'A' shares added 1.1 per cent.

West Texas Intermediate: UP 0.98 per cent at USD 63.67 per barrel Brent Crude: UP 1.2 per cent at USD 69.41.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The signing ceremony of the PPA between EVN and Phongsubthavy Group of Laos, under the witness of Vietnams Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Lao PDRs Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith

The signing ceremony for the two hydropower project was witnessed by Vietnams Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and the Laos PDRs Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith.

Nam San 3A and Nam San 3B hydropower plants operate with the total installed capacity of 114MW and annual average electricity output of 364 million kWh/year for Nam San 3A, and 232 million kWh/ year for Nam San 3B. These are two out of 11 hydropower plants under Nam Mo Group's hydropower plant projects being developed by Phongsubthavy Group in order to sell electricity to Vietnam through a 220kV transmission line which will be co-invested by Phongsubthavy Group for the section in Lao territory and EVN for the section in Vietnamese territory. The transmission line will be scheduled to complete in 2022.

The Power purchase agreement has been signed by Tran Dinh Nhan, general director of EVN, and Phongsavath Senaphuan, chairman of Phongsubthavy Group, under the witness of Minister Tran Tuan Anh (Ministry of Industry and Trade of Vietnam) and Minister Khammany Inthirath (Ministry of Energy and Mines)

Earlier, in February 2019, the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Lao Ministry of Energy and Mines completed the negotiations and signed the agreement on co-operation in the development of electricity and mine projects during the official visit of the General Secretary, President Nguyen Phu Trong.

On June 24, 2019, Phongsubthavy Group, the first power plant developer in Laos, signed the PPA with EVN for the Nam Sum 3 hydropower project located in Houaphan province, Laos, with the total capacity of 156MW, providing 626 million kWh per year.

Importing electricity from neighbouring countries, including Laos, is one of the immediate measures taken to help Vietnam meet the electricity demand for socio-economic development.
Union home minister Amit Shah on Monday spoke to Delhis Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal and requested him to call representatives from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to hold talks after Sundays violence at the campus.

The Union minister had spoken to the chief of the Delhi Police commissioner Amulya Patnaik on Sunday and instructed him to take necessary action.

The home ministry had said in a tweet that Amit Shah has ordered an enquiry to be carried out by an officer of the joint commissioner of police level and asked for a report to be submitted as soon as possible.

We have taken cognizance of yesterdays JNU violence and have registered an FIR. Social media and CCTV footage will be part of the investigation, deputy commissioner of police (southwest), Devendra Arya, was quoted as saying by ANI on Monday.

Follow JNU live updates here

Groups of masked men and women armed with sticks and rods stormed JNU on Sunday evening and attacked students and teachers, triggering waves of condemnation and protests across the country.

Videos and television visuals showed the mob in jeans and shirts, with strips of cloth covering their faces, vandalise hostel rooms and common areas, hurl stones and hit students with sticks on the south Delhi campus.

At least 23 students and teachers were admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) with injuries from the violence that began around 6pm after a demonstration against hikes in hostel and academic fees.

The Left-backed JNU students union (JNUSU) and many students alleged that members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, attacked them.

The ABVP has refuted charges and in turn, accused members of the Left parties of leading the violence.

Police have registered a first information report in connection with the violence but no arrests have been made as yet.

Police, which initially refused to enter the campus as the mob rampaged inside, went inside a little after 9pm, almost three hours after the violence first erupted.

They said it entered the campus after getting a request and permission from the JNU administration. They said a fight broke out between two student groups who vandalised hostels and indulged in violence.

Tension has been simmering on the campus for almost two months because of a stand-off over a proposed fee hike, which, in some cases, meant that a pupil would be paying 30 times the current amount.

The agitating students, led by the JNUSU, had also called for a boycott of the ongoing registration process of new students.

The university administration has blamed students protesting against the fee hike for the violence.

Political parties and leaders have condemned the violence and traded charges.
University of Maiduguri graduate and Research Fellow with the Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria, Kazeem Jimoh has been selected for the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Award under the category of MAB Young Scientist of 2019.

This programme seeks to promote a new generation of scientists worldwide in addressing ecological and sustainability issues.

Also Read: Harmattan: Two Friends Suffocate From Charcoal Smoke While Trying To Keep Warm In Jos

The award is focused at encouraging young researchers to undertake work on ecosystems, natural resources and biodiversity.

Kazeem is the only Nigerian among the seven scientists from different parts of the world to win the 2019 Young Scientist.

His work, Impact of Green Economy In Biosphere Reserve Project As An Alternative Livelihood Source On The Poverty Status Of OMO Biosphere Reserve Communities, was widely reviewed and selected by the council for the award.
Hundreds of friends, family members and strangers took over a street corner in Oaklands Montclair neighborhood Sunday to remember and mourn Shuo Zeng, who was killed last week in the quiet, hillside community.

The crowd shared stories about Zeng in front of a makeshift memorial that included a collage of heartfelt messages posted onto windows at the Starbucks near where the 34-year-old Oakland resident died. Residents called for more police patrols in Montclair, which they say has experienced an increase in crime in recent months.

We get to go home and hug our kids right after this, but your parents, they will never get to do that, Serban Simu, a colleague of Zengs, said through tears. And I sure hope the last time (your parents) saw you they did get to hug you and tell you how proud they are of everything you have achieved.

Zeng was killed on his birthday Tuesday morning after chasing two people who had stolen his laptop from the Starbucks on the corner of Mountain Boulevard and Antioch Street. Zeng raced after them to retrieve his computer, witnesses said, when he was hit by the getaway vehicle and dragged on the ground. He was taken to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Julie Ruef, who was sitting next to Zeng in the cafe when his laptop was stolen, said the entire incident unfolded in less than a minute.

I feel awful for him and his family. Its not right, society cant tolerate a situation where youre working in Starbucks, and 30 seconds later youre dead in the street, Ruef said. It was so traumatic and brazen and unbelievable.  I cant get those images out of my head.

Zeng earned a doctorate in physics in 2015 from Kansas State University. He then came to the Bay Area, where he worked as an engineer and a research scientist at Aspera, an IBM company in Emeryville.

At the vigil, people spoke of a kind and talented man who loved table tennis, martial arts, photography and the outdoors: a man who carried a friends baby when he noticed that his arms were tired, made great strides in the field of machine learning, and always asked about peoples lives and family.

I still dont believe that hes no longer with me, but I know that he has been loved by so many people, said Zengs cousin, who did not want to share her full name. In our generation, we had the one-child policy, so both me and Shuo are the only child. But (it doesnt feel) like that, because I always have Shuo. Hes my older brother.

Two suspects were arrested and charged in the slaying last week. Byron O.J. Reed Jr., 22, faces a count of murder in the course of robbery, and Javon Eugene Lee, 21, faces a count of involuntary manslaughter. Both are charged with second-degree robbery in addition to several special allegations. They appeared in Alameda County Superior Court on Friday but did not enter pleas. Lee is scheduled to return to court Monday morning to continue his arraignment.

Organizers of the vigil said they wanted to keep the focus on Zeng, but frustration about crime in the small community bubbled up. Sue Graham, who started the Post-it Note memorial on the Starbucks windows, said the city needs to do more to curb robberies, thefts and car break-ins in Montclair.

It could have been my son, my friend, my neighbor, it could have been anybody, Graham said. But unfortunately, with respect to the leadership in Oakland, we the taxpayers continue to be let down.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Oakland Councilwoman Sheng Thao, who represents Montclair, opened the vigil by calling for a moment of silence for Zeng, then said she will ensure that the walking officer in Montclair spends more time in the community. Councilman Dan Kalb, who represents parts of North Oakland, said he is working to create more police academies so vacant positions at the Police Department can be filled.

In every business district that I have the ability to work with, there is a call and a need for more officers, said Oakland police Capt. Christopher Bolton. Unfortunately right now, anything we add to one particular community is something taken away from somewhere else.

The city will hold a town hall meeting on public safety at the Montclair Presbyterian Church on Thursday at 7 p.m. Zengs family members said they plan to hold memorial services in the Bay Area and China.

Grace Koenigsaecker, a friend of Zengs, said she hopes he is not defined only by his tragic death, but also remembered for his kind demeanor.

Shuo was much more than a victim, she said. He was so friendly, truly to his core.

Joaquin Palomino is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jpalomino@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JoaquinPalomino
Luo Huining, who was appointed at the weekend, gave little indication of whether China would change approach to city.

The new head of Chinas liaison office in Hong Kong, the most senior mainland official based in the territory, said on Monday he hoped the city would return to the right path as anti-government protests continue.

Luo Huining, 65, replaced Wang Zhimin, who had held the post since 2017, on Saturday in the most significant political change since the protests began last June.

The liaison office, which reports to Chinas State Council, or cabinet, is a platform for Beijing to project its influence in the city and has faced criticism there and in mainland China for misjudging the situation in the Chinese-controlled territory.

Luo delivered a short statement to reporters in Mandarin rather than the Cantonese that is more widely spoken in the city.

He gave little indication as to whether Beijings approach towards Hong Kong would change.





In the past six months, Hong Kongs situation has made everybodys heart wrench, Luo said, declining to take questions from reporters. Everyone earnestly hopes that Hong Kong can return to the right path.

Conciliatory tone

Millions have taken to the streets in a wave of protests sparked by opposition to a now-abandoned proposal to allow extraditions to mainland China, that have since evolved into broader demands for greater democratic freedoms and police accountability.

While the huge protest marches have been largely peaceful, smaller groups of hardline protesters have repeatedly battled riot police and more than 6,500 people have been arrested.

Luo struck a conciliatory tone, saying Hong Kong had made an important contribution to (Chinas) opening up and modernisation.

And in a brief reference to the political violence he quoted President Xi Jinpings New Year speech saying without a harmonious and stable environment, how can there be a home where people can live and work happily.

The Liaison Office was targeted in July by protesters throwing eggs and daubing the building with graffiti.

Luo previously served as governor of Qinghai province and was also appointed to senior Communist Party positions in Qinghai and Shanxi provinces, according to state-run newspaper China Daily.
SAN JOSE, Calif. and GUANGZHOU, China, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GOWIN Semiconductor Corp., the worlds fastest-growing programmable logic company, releases full production of their GW1NZ-ZV FPGA, offering 50% lower static power consumption over competing flash-based FPGAs at under 28uW.



Low power FPGAs have had a distinct advantage over many microcontrollers for applications requiring always-on and always-monitoring of IO and peripherals in a system. The reason is that microcontrollers must always have their entire processor clocked in order to provide monitoring functions. While the processor speed can be changed to consume less power its active power consumption is often considerable. Alternatively, an FPGAs dynamic power consumption is based on the number of logic elements used and the rate at which data is being transitioned and clocked. If an FPGAs static power is low, FPGAs can be optimized to consume dynamic power only on the small subset of logic elements used for IO and interface monitoring while the other logic elements are gated from seeing any activity.

GOWINs Ultra-low power flash-based GW1NZ-ZV device is now in full production offering the lowest power consumption to date. With a 0.9V core voltage, it offers static power consumption at less than 28uW. As a result, the GW1NZ-ZV FPGA is over 2.4x lower in static power consumption when compared to competitive flash-based FPGA devices. The low sub-1V core voltage also promotes significantly lower dynamic power consumption and overall total power profile.

Mobile, Edge and IoT applications benefit tremendously from FPGAs in always-on applications due to their ability to continuously monitor data at very low power consumption while the rest of the system is placed in standby. Monitoring peripheral activity with an FPGA often only requires a small portion of the total logic elements. The FPGA can dynamically throttle additional FPGA resources or be used to wake up other components in a system behaving as a power management unit for the FPGA design itself as well as the product.

About GOWIN Semiconductor Corp.

Founded in 2014, GOWIN Semiconductor Corp., headquartered with major R&D in China, has the vision to accelerate customer innovation worldwide with our programmable solutions. We focus on optimizing our products and removing barriers for customers using programmable logic devices. Our commitment to technology and quality enables customers to reduce the total cost of ownership from using FPGA on their production boards. Our offerings include a broad portfolio of programmable logic devices, design software, intellectual property (IP) cores, reference designs, and development kits. We strive to serve customers in the consumer, industrial, communication, medical, and automotive markets worldwide.

For more information about GOWIN, please visit www.gowinsemi.com

Copyright 2020 GOWIN Semiconductor Corp. GOWIN, LittleBee, GW1N/NR/NS/1NSR/1NZ, Arora, GW2A/AR, GOWIN EDA and other designated brands included herein are trademarks of GOWIN Semiconductor Corp. in China and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. For more information, please email info@gowinsemi.com

Media Contact:

Scott Casper

scott@gowinsemi.com
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Union Home Minister Amit Shah trained his guns at the Congress' Gandhis once again for allegedly fomenting trouble on the issue of CAA. But this time, he has added Aam Aadmi Party's name to the list.

Shah alleged, "The Congress and the AAP have committed the sin of burning Delhi in the fire of riots. The people of Delhi will hold you accountable for it. For days, riots took place and Delhi was inconvenienced. Congress and AAP are responsible for this." Shah was referring to the violence which unfolded on the streets of Delhi following opposition to the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act. Shah, on Monday blamed Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi for misleading minorities of the country. Shah asked, "This CAA is a provision of granting citizenship, not a provision for taking citizenship of anyone. Why are you lying?" This is not the first time he targeted the Gandhis on the issue of CAA. Earlier, he claimed Rahul and Priyanka had instigated riots by misleading people over the Citizenship Amendment Act.

He also targeted the Arvind Kejriwal government over his government's CCTV promise and non-implementation of Ayushman Bharat, the Centre's mega health scheme.

Shah was speaking after inaugurating Delhi's cycle walk in Tughlakabad area.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines)  Vice President Maria Leonor "Leni" Robredo has finally spoken up about her findings and recommendations on the Duterte administration's drug war, baring that authorities have seized less than one percent of shabu since 2016.

In a press briefing on Monday, Robredo said the government failed in its narcotics campaign with a measly score of 1 over 100, with the way it implemented the narcotics campaign since President Rodrigo Duterte took office.

"Isipin na lang natin kung exam ito, ang magiging score ng ating pamahalaan ay 1 over 100," Robredo said.

[Translation: If this were an exam, our government would only have a score of 1 over 100.]

"Failure talaga siya, dahil 'yung kampanya sa droga, maraming aspeto. Masyadong tinutukan 'yung street-level enforcement," she said.

[Translation: The anti-drug campaign really was a failure. There are a lot of aspects. They focused on street-level enforcement.]

Robredo, who co-chaired the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD) for less than three weeks, cited official data from various government agencies, implying that drugs continued to proliferate not just in small communities, but also among big drug networks.

"Kung gusto talaga nating tapusin ang salot ng mga iligal na droga, mga malaking supplier at hindi lang ang maliit na pusher ang kailangan nating habulin," she said.

[Translation: If we really want to put an end to illegal drugs, we should go after the big suppliers instead of the small drug pushers.]

"Sa kabila ng lahat ng Pilipinong pinatay at lahat ng perang ginasta, hindi lumampas sa 1 percent ang naipit natin sa suplay ng shabu at sa perang kinita mula sa droga," she said.

[Translation: In spite of all the Filipinos who were killed and all the money spent by the government, we only seized less than 1 percent in supply of shabu and money involved in illegal drugs.]

Records from the Philippine National Police (PNP) would show that of 3,000 kilograms of shabu consumed per week worth 25 billion, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) only seized 1,344 kilos in 2019 alone, Robredo added.

"Bilyun-bilyong piso ang katumbas ng ganitong droga. Ayon sa datos ng PNP, 1.3 trillion ang halaga ng umiikot na shabu kada taon," she said.

[Translation: These drugs cost billions of pesos. PNP even said that the cost of shabu had reached 1.3 trillion per year.]

Official government data also shows that only 1.4 billion worth of assets linked to illegal drugs were frozen from 2017 to 2018, Robredo said. This is less than one percent of total drug money circulating in the narcotics trade.

DDB should lead anti-drug campaign

Robredo noted that instead of the PDEA, the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB), which focuses on anti-drug policies, should have chaired the campaign, since it has a wider perspective about the country's drug problem.

"'Pag PDEA kasi, law enforcement. 'Yun siguro 'yung isang failure ng ICAD, na yung chairmanship niya binigay niya sa PDEAKung DDB, ang tingin namin, yung perspektibo mas malawak, mas strategic yung pagplano ng programa."

[Translation: PDEA focuses on law enforcement. Perhaps that was the failure of ICAD, the chairmanship was given to PDEA. If DDB, we think, it has a wider perspective, a better strategy in planning the program.]

Right after her appointment in November 2019, Robredo met with United Nations and United States officials, several national and local government bodies, and members of the private sector and religious groups to discuss how to improve the country's drug campaign.

However, Duterte sacked her 18 days into the job, claiming that Robredos connivance with the US delegation was a misstep for supposedly putting the state's security at risk considering she is an opposition leader.

"Kahit tinanggal na 'ko sa posisyon, ipagpapatuloy ko ang trabaho, maliit man ang budget at maliit man ang ating opisina," Robredo said.

[Translation: Even if I was sacked from my post, I will continue my job, whether the budget of my office is big or small.]

READ: Duterte fires Robredo from anti-drug czar post

The Vice President said she will submit a "private letter" containing her initial findings to the President to bare more discoveries about the narcotics campaign.
The measure is likely to pass in the Democratic-controlled House and put Republicans on record on the issue, but wont go far in the GOP-led Senate. Congress has struggled to write a new use-of-force resolution for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Republicans have shown little interest in reviving the debate or challenging Trump.
A new information technology bill currently under discussion in the Nepalese parliament threatens to undermine media freedom. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its affiliates, the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) and the Nepal Press Union (NPU) have strongly condemned the proposed new law and urged the parliament to amend it in order to guarantee Nepali citizens constitutional right to freedom of expression.

The controversial bill - passed by the Development and Technology Committee of House of Representative (HoR) on 29 December - threatens freedom of speech online.

Among the concerns expressed by Nepali journalists organisations are that it includes provisions to impose fines of up to Rs 1.5 million (over 10.000 ) or jail terms up to five years for posting content on social media that in the eyes of government may pose a threat to the countrys sovereignty, security, unity or harmony.



The bill also includes mandatory provisions for social media companies to be registered in Nepal to open an office in the country. If not, the use of their services will be banned.

The bill replaces the existing Electronic Transaction Act (ETA) which had been widely misused to arrest and harass citizens over their social media posts. According to the cybercrime cell at Nepal Police, 106 cases were filed in Kathmandu Valley in the last three years for illegal posts on social media. This apart, the bill provides for far tougher punishments for committing the same offense on the internet than in person.

The FNJ claims the bill is in contravention to citizens' rights of freedom of expression enshrined in Nepals constitution.

FNJ said: We would like to remind the Government of Nepal about its earlier agreement to hold consultations with FNJ and other stakeholders while the government introduces any bill related to media and freedom of expression. Therefore, we urge the government of Nepal to take the IT bill forward only after wider consultation with stakeholders and adhering to the spirit of freedom of expression.

Nepal Press Union (NPU) denounced the governments proposed law as undemocratic.

NPU said, The bill gives plenty of space for the authorities to curb freedom of expression and media freedom. Therefore, it is not acceptable to NPU. NPU calls on the Government of Nepal to correct the bill- provisions upon wider consultation with stakeholders.

IFJ General Secretary, Anthony Bellanger, said: This new IT bill is another example of governments trying to curb freedom of expression and silence critical voices in the name of online security. We call on the government to step back and start a wider consultation with stakeholders and unions to develop a new communications bill that respects and fully guarantees media freedom and freedom of expression.
The Andhra Pradesh Police on Monday appealed to people not to stage protests in the Amaravati capital region as permission for the same has not been granted.

While addressing the media persons, Amaravati's Tulluru village Additional Superintendent of Police (SP) Chakravarti said, "There is no permission for dharna in Amaravati capital region. We appeal to people not to hold any Padayatra [Foot March] as there is no permission."

People of 29 villages in the region have been protesting since Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy mooted the idea of three state capitals. They are demanding Amaravati to be retained as the sole capital of the state.

While reacting on highhandedness shown by the police officials, Chakravarti said that cases have not been filed against those who staged protests. "It has only been served to those who attacked the media persons."

The SP further said that the farmers will not be "disturbed until they remain peaceful". "In case anybody violates the law, action will be taken against them.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amit Shah talked to Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal and requested him to call representatives from JNU for discussions. (Photo Credit: File Photo: PTI)

New Delhi:

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday talked to Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal and requested him to call representatives from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) for discussions, officials said. The telephonic conversation between the home minister and the LG came a day after masked men indulged in violence on the JNU campus.

The home minister spoke to the LG and requested him to initiate discussions with representatives from the JNU, an official said.

On Sunday, Amit Shah spoke to Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik about the situation at JNU.

The Home Ministers office tweeted, Union Home minister has spoken to Delhi police commissioner over JNU violence and instructed him to take necessary action. The noble minister has also ordered an inquiry to be carried out by a joint CP-level officer and asked for a report as soon as possible, it said.

The Ministry of Home Affairs also sought a report from the Delhi Police about the situation prevailing in the prestigious institution and the steps taken to restore peace.

Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged properties on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.

At least 34 people, including JNU Students Union (JNUSU) president Aishe Ghosh, were injured in the violence.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the RSS-affiliated ABVP blamed each other for the violence.

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MinterEllison provided, from the get-go, a focussed and dedicated team supporting the MTR and MTS teams through all stages of review and analysis, negotiation and finalisation of the large suite of highly complex documentation throughout various levels of the contracting chain, said Rodney Chen, principal legal adviser for projects and international business at MTR.

Chen said that the work included conceptualising a range of novel and difficult contracting solutions.

James Nicholls, senior legal adviser at MTR, also had praise for MinterEllisons work.

Not only was MinterEllison's work technically exceptional, but the team also integrated seamlessly with the MTR and MTS legal, technical and commercial teams to provide coherent advice and solutions aligned across all streams, Nicholls said. MinterEllison have built a strong and trusted relationship with the MTR and the MTS teams, and we look forward to working with them closely as we move into the delivery phase of this exciting project.

Owen Cooper, lead partner for MinterEllison on delivery aspects of the project, and Jonathon Williams, lead partner advising MTS, highlighted the significance of the project.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-05 23:53:33|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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WUHAN, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- A total of 59 viral pneumonia cases of unknown cause had been reported in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, by Sunday morning, local health authorities said late Sunday.

All the patients have been put in quarantine, with the number in serious condition falling to seven from 11 after treatment and the others in stable condition, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said in a statement.

The tests on the exact pathogens and the investigation over the cause of the infections are underway. Influenza, bird flu, adenovirus, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) have been ruled out, the statement said.

A preliminary investigation showed that there have been no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission and no reports of infections among medical staff, it said.

Some of the patients, who fell ill with pneumonia between Dec. 12-29, are sellers from a local seafood wholesale market that has been temporarily shut down, said the statement.

A total of 163 close contacts have been put under medical observation and they have shown no abnormal symptoms including fever. Local authorities are still searching for more close contacts.
Education

Montgomery County Community College will present the spring installment of the interview/talk show program Issues and Insights April 20 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in Science Center room 214, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The programs will be simulcast to the Colleges West Campus in South Hall room 216, 101 College Drive, Pottstown. Dr. Kolsky will offer a humorous presentation, Carrots, Sticks and Politics: A State of the Nation and the World Message. In this speech, he will provide his interpretation of domestic and international politics and then welcome questions from the audience for discussion. Issues and Insights, is free and open to the public. For information, contact Dr. Thomas Kolsky, professor of political science, at 215-641-6380 or tkolsky@mc3.edu.

Montgomery County Community Colleges STEM Scholars Program will host a STEM Jam! open house April 25 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the Advanced Technology Center at the Colleges Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The drop-in event is designed for students interested in learning more about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Activities will include STEM program information and career advising, STEM speakers throughout the day from industry and academia, micro-helicopter and robotics competitive obstacle courses and demonstrations and static models of STEM student and faculty work. For more information about STEM Jam! or STEM programs at MCCC, contact William Brownlowe at wbrownlowe@mc3.edu or 215-641-6644, or Robin Zuhlke at 215-619-7440 or rzuhlke@mc3.edu.

Temple Ambler, located at 580 Meetinghouse Road, presents the following events:

International Club Global Bazaar April 15 from 5 to 8 p.m. The Ambler Campus International Club invites all students, faculty, staff and the community to celebrate a multitude of diverse cultures, which will be showcased at the organizations Global Bazaar. This family friendly event will highlight cultural traditions and celebrations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, South American, North America and Africa through music, entertainment, food and informative displays developed and presented by students at the Ambler Campus. Young visitors will be provided with passports, which they may get stamped at each country they visit. Prizes will be awarded to world travelers who talk to cultural representatives, answer questions about the countries theyve visited and take part in fun-filled activities designed to help them learn about the rich diversity of cultures found throughout the world. Refreshments will be served. The event is free. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail tuc36466@temple.edu.

EarthFest 2011 April 29 from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. More than 75 exhibitors, including the Philadelphia Zoo, The Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Elmwood Park Zoo and the Insectarium, will take part in EarthFest 2011. School students of all ages are invited to attend and develop displays of their own. EarthFest partner the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society also offers its Kids Grow Expo, featuring the Junior Flower Show, as part of the event. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail duffyj@temple.edu.

Annual Spring Plant Sale May 7 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The plant sale  an Ambler Campus tradition dating back to the early 1900s  will feature woody plants and perennials in portable sizes, hardy trees, shrubs, and vines, native plants that are attractive to wildlife, herbs, and hanging baskets. There will also be numerous special plants for sale to highlight Amblers special anniversary year. Garden books and garden tools will also be available for sale. Students, staff, and volunteers from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture and the Ambler Arboretum Advisory Committee will be available to answer questions. All proceeds from the Spring Plant Sale will support the Ambler Arboretum Fund and the Pi Alpha Xi National Honor Society. Information: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary.

June Homecoming/Louise Bush-Brown Garden Dedication June 5 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. (June Homecoming), Bright Hall Lounge; 2 p.m. (Garden Dedication), Ambler Campus Formal Perennial Gardens. Tickets  June Homecoming: Participant  $18 per person; Sustainer  $25 per person; Benefactor  $40 per person. The 2011 June Homecoming, sponsored by the School of Environmental Design Alumni Association, will include the Alumni Association annual meeting and luncheon. June Homecoming will be followed by the formal dedication of Temple University Amblers Formal Perennial Gardens as the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Gardens. During this 100th anniversary of the campus, Temple University Ambler and the Ambler Arboretum of the Temple University is honoring Louise Bush-Browns many contributions to the history of the campus by formally dedicating the gardens in her honor. During the program, campus Executive William Parshall will welcome guests, Ambler Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey will speak about the Bush-Browns and the history of the garden, and an official ribbon cutting will be held for the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Garden. Following the ribbon cutting, guests are invited to take a tour of the gardens, which will wend their way to the Campus Greenhouse for the School of Environmental Designs annual Plant Auction. Information (Garden Dedication): 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Information (June Homecoming): 215-482-0722. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary.

Northview Garden Tour and Fundraiser for the Ambler Arboretum June 12 from noon to 5 p.m. Call for reservations. Tickets: $15 per person or $20 at the door. In addition to the gardens of the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey has a garden oasis all her own right in Ambler  Northview. Visitors will have the opportunity to take self-guided tours throughout the many gardens, where garden experts will be available to answer questions about the various designs. The Ambler Keystone Chapter of the Womans National Farm and Garden Association will also provide tea and refreshments. All proceeds from the tours will support the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University. Information or to register: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary.

The Senior Adult Activities Center of Montgomery County, 536 George Street, Norristown, will hold the following events:

SAAC Adult Day Care, an alternative to Nursing Home Care is available  for information call 610-275-1960

Volunteers are needed for Meals on Wheels Program (call the number above)

SAACs Fifth Avenue Boutique opens Monday through Friday from 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Exercise with Theresa will be held every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1 p.m.

Dance class is held every Monday at 10 a.m.

Tai Chi is held every Monday at 10 a.m.

Yoga is held every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m.

Line Dancing is held every Thursday at 10:30 a.m.

Dancing with Joan is held every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m.

Sculpture Class is held Wednesdays from 2 to 3:30 p.m.

Why Should I Learn Spanish? will be held Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m.

Generations On-Line computer classes for seniors will be held Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.  4 p.m.  computers are available during those hours.

Health Living will be held every Tuesday at 1 p.m.

Boomer U will hold the following events. Boomer U is located at 45 Forest Avenue, Ambler. Registration & payment is required for all events: 215-619-8863.

Pilates Class is held Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:30 a.m. First class is free; please bring a mat. For information call 610-291-5376.

Blue Bell School of Dance, 921 Penllyn Blue Bell Pike, Blue Bell, hosts Argentine Tango Classes and a Milonga dance party every Friday evening. Lessons start at 8:30 p.m. followed by dancing at 9:30 p.m. Andrew Conway, master Argentine Tango dancer, instructor and performer and his partner Linda Chase will instruct. All levels welcome and no partner is needed. Refreshments will be served. Fee is $12 per person and includes lesson and dancing. Information: 215-634-1101 or www.amoretango.com.

The Montgomery Hospital Medical Center will offer the following classes:

Childbirth Education Class- all parents are invited to participate, including those who are delivering at

other hospitals. For more information on maternity services or classes, call 610-270-2020.

CPR and First Aid Courses are offered for beginners to experiences health care providers. Call 610-270-2313.

The Ambler SAAC (Senior Adult Activities Center), located at 45 Forest Ave in Ambler will hold the following events:

Tai Chi every Monday and Thursday at 11 a.m.

Yoga is every Tuesday at 1 p.m. and Friday at 10:30 a.m.

Strength and balance training every Wednesday at 10 a.m.

Armchair Aerobics is held every Monday at 10 a.m.

Gourmet Weight Wise every Thursday at 12:30.

Fitness Center and Pool Room open daily 8 a.m.-4 p.m.

The Diabetes Education Center will offer day and evening classes each month. Health insurance pays for diabetes education classes. Preregistration is required. Call 610-270-2301.

For Kids & Families

The Ambler Kiwanis Club will host its annual Easter Egg Hunt April 26 at 10 a.m. in Ambler Borough Park, located just off of the intersection of Hendricks Street and Valley Brook Road. Members of the Wissahickon Key Club will assist Kiwanians in hiding thousands of wrapped chocolate eggs in a designated area of the park. Also hidden will be plastic colored eggs, which are redeemed for prizes. Elementary school children are separated by age.

Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation will hold its 21st annual Storybook Egg-Stravaganza April 15 fom 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Upper Dublin Township Building. Toddlers and preschoolers love this annual event where photo opportunities with favorite friends abound! Treasures are collected from UDP&Rs assortment of lifesize cutouts of favorite cartoon characters from Disney, Sesame Street, Nickelodeon and other well-known animation. Children can have their picture taken with Bugsy OHare; bring your own camera. And dont forget a basket for goodies! $7 for UD residents; $12 for non-residents. Pre-register at 215-643-1600 ext. 3443.

Splash Week is a free week-long program that teaches children and families basic swimming skills and water safety practices. All YMCA branches will host multiple classes each day from April 11 to 15. For more information, contact the Ambler Area YMCA at 215-628-9950.

Healthy Kids Day is April 16 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The day is filled with fun, engaging and artistic activities that cultivate healthy living as part of the YMCAs larger efforts to help more kids and families become physically active. All activities are free and open to the community. For more information, contact the Ambler YMCA at 215-628-9950. No reservation is required.

The Ambler Area YMCA has added several new programs for area youngsters. Classes are held late afternoons or evenings on various weekdays. For more information, visit philaymca.org or call 215-628-9950.

Basic Beading: Ages: 10+. Wednesdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. This class will teach you the fundamentals of wiring and stringing along with how color can be used to create unique and vibrant beadwork design. You will create various jewelry including earrings, bracelets, charm pendants and much more! Supplies will be provided. Bringing your own jewelry pliers or tools would be a plus.

Messin with the Masters: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. Learn about some of the worlds greatest artists. You will be inspired to create your own Starry Night with oil pastels and tempera paints, a tissue paper painted Monet garden, a Picasso head using scraps of paper, a Georgia OKeeffe clay flower bowl and a Rousseau jungle collage.

Super Scientist: Ages: 5-7. Mondays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Well be concocting chemistry experiments such as making slime, mixing potions and having fun with magnet magic. Your budding little scientist will enhance his/her creative thinking and motor skills and to top it off will learn that science can be serious fun.

Wacky Junk Art: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 6 to 6:45 p.m. Why throw it away! Instead join us to make household junk into aliens from outer space, wacky specs, crazy hats, body masks or a recycled train.

Globe Trotters: Ages: 4-6. Tuesdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Youre never too young to start thinking globally. Each week, we explore a new country through crafts, games, music, stories and even some taste-testing. A perfect introduction to our great big world!

Crazy about Crafts: Ages: 5-7, Thursdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Let your childs creative juices flow with our fun arts and crafts projects each week. Fine motor skills and creative thinking skills will be enhanced with this crafty class.

Come out and join the Ambler Area YMCAs Teen and Junior Leaders Club. Participants are given the freedom to plan community service projects year round and truly make a difference in the lives of people in need. Those in Teen and Junior Leaders also attend leadership retreats all along the East Coast three times a year and meet other leaders who are doing the same great work in their respective areas. Dont miss out on this inspiring opportunity. Teen Leaders, ages 13-17, meet every Wednesday from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Junior Leaders, ages 10-12, will begin in the spring and will meet every Monday. For more information, contact Mike Miles, Teen Director, 215- 628-9950 x 1540 or mmiles@philaymca.org.

Did you know that the new Ambler Area YMCA holds childrens birthday parties at its site for members and non members as well. The Ambler Y does all the work from start to finish and birthday parties include a personalized cake, ice cream, beverage and paper products. Parties are held on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and include two party hosts to lead activities, set-up, clean-up and assist with serving. You can have a Splash Party for children ages six to 12 in the new zero depth entry pool with water slide and spray fountains. Up to 25 children have exclusive use of the pool area with 30 minutes in the party room. Sports Parties are offered for kids ages four to 12 with age appropriate activities and games, and sports such as floor hockey, soccer, basketball or dodge ball. Children ages three to five years of age will enjoy parties in the Family Active Center with use of the Moon Bounce and organized activities, such as parachute play and songs. For information, 215-628-9950 ext. 1583.

Community Events at the Ambler Y:

-YAchievers YMCA Achievers is a developmentally based, extracurricular, educational and team mentoring program designed to help students in grades five through 12 prepare for fulfilled livelihoods in college and beyond. Participation is free and all students in this program receive a free YMCA membership. Registration for the 2009 program begins now. You do not need to be a YMCA member to utilize these special services. Call 215-628-9950 to register.

Greater Norristown Art Leagues Childrens Weeklong Summer Art Camps will be held at 800 West Germantown Pike in East Norriton, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday throughout the summer. The cost per session is $125 per student for ages 6 and up. Jo Ann Cooksey Bono teaches an introduction to basic drawing skills and techniques from 10 a.m. until the lunch break each day. In the afternoon sessions, Mary Vogel Lozinak involves the students in hands on projects such as collage, papermaking, T-shirt printing, 3D design and sculpy clay. Fridays Graduation Day includes an art show, awards ceremony and reception for parents, siblings, grandparents and friends. All supplies are included. Students provide their own lunch. A refrigerator is available and the building is air-conditioned. This is the 15th year to run this successful program. Both instructors are professional artists with State Police and Child Abuse Clearances. To register, call Jo Ann at 610-279-1008, or register on-line at www.gnal.org.

Health

Dresher Physical Therapy is hosting an interactive seminar discussing its Golf Assessment Progam April 30 from 10 a.m. to noon at Dresher Physical Therapy, 1075 Virginia Drive, Suite 200, Fort Washington. Physical therapist Chris Miller, certified through the Titleist Performance Institute, will discuss why your body may be the most important piece of golf equipment you invest in and how this can drastically improve your game. $10 in advance; $15 at the door. Call 215-619-4545 to reserve your spot.

The Chestnut Hill Center for Enrichment, Center on the Hill and Chestnut Hill Hospital will host a Senior Health and Resource Fair April 14 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church, 8855 Germantown Ave. The event is free. For more information, call 215-248-0180 or e-mail chseniors@cavtel.net.

The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is hosting Help Yourself to Health, a new six-week workshop for older adults with ongoing health conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, heart disease and others. The free workshop will take place at the Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center, 45 Forest Ave. on six Thursdays, May 12 through June 16 from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Although there is no charge to participate, registration is required. To register, call 215-619-8863.

The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is sponsoring an eight-week program called A Matter of Balance: Managing Concerns About Falls. Presented by the Montgomery County Health Department, this workshop will be held on Tuesdays, May 3 to June 21 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Ambler Center, 45 Forest Ave. If you pre-register by April 27, the fee is only $5! Registration at the first class is $10. (Checks should be payable to SAAC and will benefit our Meals on Wheels program that serves homebound seniors.) A workbook will be provided and refreshments will be served. Call 215-619-8863 to register or for more information.

Fort Washington Wellness Center classes are ongoing. There are several offered during lunch or right after work, for your convenience: Boot Camp from noon to 1 p.m. on Monday; Zumba is MWF from 11 a.m. to noon and Friday at 4 p.m.; there are 25 cycling classes; Ashtanga and Vinyasana Yoga and Pilates; and a group Womens Strength Training class M-F from 10 to 11 a.m. Questions, call Cathy DeMarco at 215-641-1245.

Following the success of other local area programs, Impact Sports and Upper Dublin Parks and Recreation are delighted to team up again to offer a spring program for the 2011 season! Upper Dublin area children ages 3-5 years old can attend a Sports Program featuring their favorite sports games; soccer, rugby, hockey, track and field, basketball, and more. The program will start on April 27 and run through June 1. Cost for the program is $85 for the six weeks. The classes will be running 12- 1 p.m.; 1- 2 p.m.; 2- 3 p.m. For more info or to register, call Upper Dublin Township on 215 643 1600 or visit their website a http://www.upperdublin.net.

Spring Aquatic Programs  UDHS Pool:

-Summer is just around the corner  Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool can help get you into shape! Programs begin in March; preregistration is required.

 Shallow Water Aerobics  Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 8-8:45 p.m., $40R/$50NR.

 Adult Swim Instructions  Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 7-8 p.m., $50R/$60NR

-Open Rec Swims are fun for the whole family! Come out on Fridays from 7-9 p.m. or Saturdays from 1-4 p.m. and enjoy use of the pool and diving area. Fridays are offered through June 17; Saturdays are offered March 12-May 21.

-Join a growing group of adult lap swimmers and water walkers. Lanes are set aside evenings and weekends for use; lanes are shared. Monday  Thursday from 7:30-9:30 p.m.; Fridays from 7-9 p.m. and Saturdays (March 12-May 21) from 1-4 p.m.

-Private Swimming & Diving Lessons for ages 3-adult are offered at the UDHS Pool through a partnership with the Upper Dublin Aquatic Club (UDAC). Visit the UDAC website for more information, www.udac.us, and click the link to UDHS Private Lessons.

-Looking for local programs for US Masters Swimming (adults) or Water Polo (all ages)? UDAC and UDSD are working together to develop programs that will be offered at the UDHS Pool. Add your name to Interest Lists by emailing slohoefer@upperdublin.net. emails will be sent about clinics and program start dates.

Questions about Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool, group use of the pool or pool rental? Contact Susan Lohoefer, Facility & Community Affairs Manager at slohoefer@upperdublin.net or call 215-643-8800 x8994.

SilverSneakers Fitness Program. The Healthyways SilverSneakers Fitness Program is a result-oriented program that enables older adults to take charge of their health. The program is an innovative blend of physical activity, healthy lifestyle and socially oriented programing. Members of the program are eligible for a free YMCA membership, with use of the pool and exercise equipment, along with customized classes designed for older adults who want to improve their strength, flexibility, balance and endurance. If you are a subscriber to Independence Blue Cross (Personal Choice 65 PPO) or Keystone 65 HMO, Bravo Health, or Health Options Programs (HOP), call the Ambler Area YMCA, 215-628-9950 or Hatboro Area YMCA, 215-674-4545. You can also visit www.silversneakers.com.

Zumba Fitness offers Zumba dance/fitness classes at Academy of Dance and Music/BBAD Studio located at 1524 DeKalb Pike in Blue Bell (behind Sherwin Williams). Classes are offered three times a week: Tuesdays at 6 p.m., Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 8 a.m. For a free trial pass for your first class, email us at info@danceandmusic.biz or call 610-277-2557. For more info, visit our site at www.academyofdanceandmusic.org.

Chestnut Hill Health Systems presents the following Health Education Programs:

FITNESS CLASSES

Golden Yoga: A Breathing, Stretching and Relaxation Class. Fridays, 2:30-3:30 p.m. Lea Auditorium, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. Registration for four classes at a time required. Golden Yoga is Classical Yoga, adapted by the SKY Foundation, to accommodate those who have difficulty getting up and down from the floor. The program includes postures, breathing, relaxation and meditation techniques, all performed while sitting in a chair and standing. Registration required. Call 215-247-3029. Cost: $20 for 4 classes per month.

Tai Chi: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 8:30  9:30 a.m. Springfield Residence, 8601 Stenton Ave. Classes, for the novice or beginner/intermediate student, are designed to improve balance, power, posture, coordination, flexibility and mental focus. Slow, gentle movements are modified to most everyones abilities. For more information or to sign up for a free introductory class, call 215-882-2804. Cost: $8 per class/paid monthly.

SUPPORT GROUPS

Weight Loss Surgery Support Group: Fourth Wednesday of the month, 7-8 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. Join us for a monthly get-together where well share information for those interested in weight loss surgery, learn from guest speakers discussing current news on issues including lifestyle modification, nutrition and exercise and provide ongoing support for those who have completed surgery. Registration required. Call 215-753-2000.

Breast Cancer Networking Group: Fourth Tuesday of the month 5:30  7 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. A free, confidential support group for women living with a diagnosis of breast cancer designed to provide a forum for sharing information, feelings and concerns associated with breast cancer. Facilitated by Tish Wakefield, LCSW, Oncology Social Worker. Registration required. To register or for more information, call 215-248-8047.

New Moms Support Groups Tuesdays 10:30 a.m.  12 p.m.; contact Jeanine ORourke, MSW or 2:30  4 p.m.; contact Susan Schack, Ph.D Volunteer Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. The Center for Postpartum Depression at Chestnut Hill Hospital is pleased to offer two new support groups to support new moms. Both groups will be run by experienced mental health professionals who really get it when it comes to new motherhood and juggling relationships, extended family, work/family balance and self-care. If you are experiencing new mom challenges that often heighten anxiety and involve hormonally driven depression, join us for an informative and supportive forum to connect with other moms. Infants are welcome. $30 per session (flexible based on need). Registration is required. Call Dr. Schack, 646-265-2484, or Ms. ORourke, 215-206-2931.

Man to Man Prostate Cancer Support Group Third Thursday of the month 8-9 a.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. A networking group for men diagnosed with prostate cancer designed to provide education, support and encouragement. Spouses and partners welcome. Harry M. Baer, MD, Chief, Urology Division, will host Ask the Doctor. Registration required. Call 215-248-8325.

Contact the Senior Center by phone 215-248-0180 or email (chseniors@cavtel.net) with your questions about these programs or any of our on-going activities and classes.

Holy Redeemer HomeCare and Hospice seeks compassionate and emotionally mature volunteers to provide support to local hospice patients and their families in Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties. Volunteers may also assist with pet therapy and administrative work within the hospice department and are requested to have daytime availability. Hospice patient care volunteers visit with patients in their homes or nursing facilities once a week for two to three hours. They provide emotional support and companionship to patients and family members, assist with errands or provide respite for caregivers. Bereavement volunteers support the families of hospice patients following the loss of a loved one, while administrative volunteers assist with typing, mailings and/or filing. Hospice care workers provide a great service to families and loved ones of hospice patients. Many volunteers also report a great deal of personal satisfaction as a result of their services. Patient care and bereavement volunteers complete an application and attend an 18-hour volunteer training program that covers the medical, psychological and spiritual aspects of hospice volunteering. Day and evening training programs are offered. To sign up for volunteer opportunities in Pennsylvania, contact Holy Redeemer Volunteer Coordinator Jean Francis at 215-698-3737 or email jfrancis@holyredeemer.com.

Librarytalk

Upper Dublin Public Library, 805 Loch Alsh Avenue, Ft. Washington, 215-628-8744

www.upperdublinlibrary.org

APRIL CHILDRENS PROGRAMS:

Storytimes: Please register in the library.

o Wee Ones: 0 to 23 months Thursdays and Fridays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m.

o Tiny Tots: age 2. Wednesdays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m. and Fridays 11 to 11:20 a.m.

o Jr. Book Lovers: ages 3 to 6. Tuesdays 10:30 to 11 a.m.

o Bedtime Storytimes: 7 to 7:30 p.m. April 20 and 27. Wear your jammies, bring your teddy & hear Miss Barbara read bedtime stories! For ages 3 to 6.

APRIL TEEN PROGRAMS:

North Hills Library Teens April 28 from 4 to 6 p.m. Movie Matinee

APRIL UDPL ADULT PROGRAMS:

NEW! ESL Conversation Group. Tuesdays from 7 to 8 p.m. Interested in practicing your English in a safe and caring environment? Come to our conversation group and improve your skills! Please register with Kay Klocko at 215-628-8744 or kklocko@mclinc.org.

One-on-One Computer Mentoring. Get personalized assistance from experienced computer volunteers! Sign-up for a one-hour session. Limit one session per month. Please register  contact info above.

Book Groups Please register with Kay Klocko 215-628-8744.

o Daytimers: April 21 at 1:30 p.m. Tired of book groups where you all read the same book? Read any fiction or non-fiction book on this months theme: Explorers. Please register.

Meetings:

Annual Meeting of the Friends of UDPL: April 14 at 1 p.m.

Board of Directors: April 20 at 7 p.m.

Blue Bell Library www.wvpl.org Upcoming Events: The Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 650 Skippack Pike (Route 73) in Blue Bell, is diagonally across from the Blue Bell Inn. Call 215-643-1320 or visit their website at www.wvpl.org.

For children and teens at Blue Bell:

* Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian.

* Mondays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages.

* Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages.

* Fridays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages.

* Family Movies, new releases, second Saturdays of the month at 1:30 p.m.

* May 14  Despicable Me

* June 11  Alpha and Omega

* Special Events

* April  watch for date of spring/Easter events

* April 14 at 4:30 p.m.  Junior Lego Club for children ages 3 through 5. Parents and caregivers need to stay with children.

* April 14 at 7 p.m.  Jeopardy for ages 11 to 18. Test your book and library knowledge for prizes. Sign up to be a contestant. No sign up to be in the audience. Snacks provided.

* April 16 at 1 p.m.  Adult Mystery Book Group discussing The Beekeepers Apprentice by Laurie King.

* April 16 at 1:30 p.m.  Childrens event for One Book, Every Young Child celebration. Story and craft for book Whose Shoes?

* April 19 at 7 p.m. and April 26 at 1:30 p.m.- Adult book group discusses The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. Group led by Adam Button.

* April 30 through May 3  Friends book sale with about 10,000 items for sale for children, teens and adults.

* May  sign up for Science in the Summer

* June  sign up for Enrichment Programs for Elementary-Age children

* June  sign up for Summer Reading, all ages

For adults at Blue Bell:

* Daytime Book Discussion Group  fourth Tuesday, Jan  April at 1:30 p.m.

* April 26  The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

* Night-time Book Discussion Group  third Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m.

o April 19  The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

* Art Series with Dr. Sheldon Weintraub, docent at The Barnes and speaker at local colleges

o April 27 at 2 p.m. The Art of Looking at Art-Is She Nude or Is She Naked?

*Mystery Book Discussion Group, third Saturday of the month at 1 p.m.; new mystery theme each month; www.wvpl.org/programs

* Yoga on Mondays at 1:30 p.m. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop-in class.

* Tai Chi on Mondays at 3 p.m. with Dr. Kurt Findeisen. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop in class.

* Philadelphia Museum of Art presents class on their Marc Chagall exhibit, April 13 at 2 p.m.

* Giant Book Sale, April 29  May 3

o Starts with almost 10,000 items for children and adults!

o Held during library hours.

o Preview for members of the Friends of the Library, April 28 at 7 p.m.

o Join the Friends and attend the preview sale. Modest fee to join.

* Blooms at Blue Bell Gardening Series

o May 11 at 1 p.m.  Summer Bulbs by PA Horticultural Society

* Knitting group Mondays and Wednesdays at 10 a.m. Work on your project or observe and learn. The groups continue year-round in the community room.

* Socrates Cafe discussion group every Monday at 7 p.m. You pick the topic to discuss each week. No sign-up, nothing to read.

* Bridge every Friday at 12:30 p.m. New players welcome.

* Mah Jong every Wednesday at 1 p.m. New players welcome.

*Chess every Wednesday at 7p.m. for adults and teens 14 and older.

* Movie Matinee showing recent releases every Thursday at 2 p.m. April 14: Maos Last Dancer; April 21: Welcome to the Rileys; April 28: Conviction; May 5: Inception; May 12: Inside Job; May 19 The Kings Speech; May 26 The Fighter; June 2 Rabbit Hole; June 9 Black Swan; June 16 127 Hours

* Ongoing like-new, year-round book sale for adults & children during library hours

* Library opening at 10 a.m. Monday through Saturday!

Ambler Library, a branch of the Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 209 Race St., 215-646-1072. www.wvpl.org. All the following events occur at the Ambler Library.

* Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian.

* Tuesdays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages.

* Thursdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages.

* For adults:

* Beading Group meets the first and third Monday of every month at 1 p.m. Work on your own projects or come to watch and learn.

* Free Family History Lookup with Connie Briggs. Email Connie for an appointment at the Ambler Library. conniebriggs@comcast.net

* Special Events:

* April 14 at 1:30 p.m.  Book Group discusses Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian.

* April 19 at 7 p.m.  Travel to Paris with world traveler Harry Balin. Tea and scones at 6:30 p.m.

* April 21 at 7 p.m.  Art with Sara for children in fourth through seventh grades.

*May 2 at 6:30 p.m.  Discuss the movie Lone Star with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time.

*May 10  Robert Capucci discusses Art into Fashion. Tea and scones served at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m.

*May 12 at 1:30p.m.  Book Group discusses The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.

*May 17  Tour the gardens of Devon and Southwest England with Lois McMullen. Tea and Scones at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m.

*June 13 at 6:30 p.m.  Discuss the movie Blade Runner with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time.

Meetings and Lectures

The Unisys Blue Bell Retiree Group will meet in the Church on the Mall in the Plymouth Meeting Mall April 14 at 1:30 p.m. Kathy Sacket Young, director/trainer with the North Penn YMCA, will speak on Keeping Fit in Retirement. For more information, contact Membership Committee Chairperson Jerry Feldscher at 610-275-3538 or President Al Rollin at 215-368-4833.

The next FWBA meeting will be April 28 at the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Networking begins at 11:30 a.m.; meeting from noon to 1 p.m. Leon Singletary, Principal, First Contact HR and FWBA Executive Board, will present: Social Media: How to Use It To Get More Business. Lunch is provided courtesy of the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Members are welcome to bring a guest. An RSVP is requested by return email or 215-628-0313.

Big Brothers Big Sisters Southeastern PA is hosting a information sessions over the next few weeks on how to become a Big Brother. The information sessions will take place: April 16 at noon, April 19 at 8 a.m. and April 28 at 6 p.m. All sessions will be held at the groups Norristown Office,t 530 DeKalb St., Norristown. For more information, call 610-277-2200.

The North Penn Chapter of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) normally meets on the third Tuesday of each month from now until May. Meetings are held at the William Penn Inn on Route 202 and Sumneytown Pike, Upper Gwynedd, PA. Social hour starts at 5:30 p.m., dinner is served at 6:30 p.m., and the technical program begins at 7 p.m. Cost with reservation is $28 for members. Members without reservations and guests pay $30. Students with reservations pay $15. Reservations may be made by noon on the Monday preceding the meeting by phoning 215-371-1854 or emailing the reservation to northpennima@yahoo.com northpennima@yahoo.com. Information about the North Penn Chapter is available at http://northpenn.imanet.org/.

LeTip, a professional organization of men and women who are dedicated to the highest standards of competence and service meets every Tuesday at Cedar Brook Country Club, 180 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell at 7 a.m. -meeting officially starts at 7:16 a.m. and ends at 8:31 a.m. Our purpose is the exchange of business tips, leads, and referrals. Each business category is represented by one member and conflicts of interest are disallowed. Guests are welcome to visit any of our breakfast meetings.

Every third Thursday of month, Sunrise Assisted Living of Blue Bell (795 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell, PA 19422, 215-619-2777) serves as a satellite site to 148th Legislative district PA congressman Mike Gerber from 10 a.m. to noon. Stop by for help needed with things such as disability placards and license plates, vehicle registration, utilities issues, birth/death certificates,property tax/rent rebates, etc. Notary services arranged by appointment.

The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce is an action-oriented organization dedicated to promoting its members and the economic health of eastern Montgomery county. The Chamber is committed to serving as a catalyst by uniting business, community agencies, government and education to make our county a great place to live and work. For information, call 215-887-5122 or visit www.emccc.org.

Do you have a fear of public speaking? Blue Bell Toastmasters Club can help. We meet from 7 to 9 p.m., on the second and fourth Tuesday at the Marriott Courtyard, located on Route 202, directly across from the Montgomeryville Mall. Learn how to improve communication and leadership skills in a friendly and supportive environment. Guests are welcome. Admission fee: $5. For more info, visit www.bbtoast.org.

The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will hold the following meetings (for reservations to any of the following, email info@PennSuburban.org)

-Breakfast News Network, 7:30-8:45 a.m. at Normandy Farm Hotel (1401 Morris Road, Blue Bell, PA 19422) $15 members, includes full buffet breakfast. Join us for a networking program at Normandy Farm Hotel every Thursday morning for breakfast, business news, informative speakers, and plenty of networking. The cost includes a full breakfast buffet. Copies of the business cards will be made available to those who would like them.

The BNI, Fort Washington Chapter meets every Monday at The Hilton Garden Inn, 520 Pennsylvania Ave., Fort Washington for a networking meeting. Meetings are from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. Visitors are welcome. The only cost to attend is the cost of your meal. For information or a reservation to attend, please call Luanne Cram at 215-947-7784, or visit our Internet site at: http://www.BNIDVR.Com and click on the menu item Find a Chapter.

For the past seven years, people have enjoyed participating in WVWAs Adopt-a-Tree program. Individuals can support the Association in its reforestation efforts by purchasing native trees to be planted. Supporters can plant their adopted tree or have WVWA volunteers will plant it. Trees cost $30 each. If you would like to volunteer or purchase a tree(s), please contact: Bob Adams at Bob@wvwa.org or call: 215-646-8866 for more information. Check www.WVWA.org for directions and maps.

Sustainable Upper Dublin, http://sustainableupperdublin.org, meets the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m., at the Upper Dublin Township Building, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington, PA 19034. Please send any questions to suec@sustainableupperdublin.org or call 610-996-6316. To learn more about Sustainable Upper Dublin, view or join the discussion at http://googlegroups.com/group/sustainableupperdublin.

Special Events

The Mattie N. Dixon Community Cupboard will hold its first nutrition class April 19 at 10 a.m. at the Community Cupboard, 150 N. Main St., Ambler. Lynne Sinclair, a nutritionist from Abington Memorial Hospital specializing in diabetic nutrition, will conduct the class. Topics will include healthy eating, beneficial foods, recipes, making meals with every day foods, and how to use unfamiliar produce. A healthy snack will be provided.The class is is open to all residents in Montgomery County.

The Historical Society of Fort Washington presents The History of Conshohocken April 19 at 8 p.m. at the Clifton House, 473 Bethlehem Pike, Fort Washington. Jack Coll will present an illustrated program on the history of the Borough of Conshohocken. Coll is a longtime resident of Conshohocken and a member of the Conshohocken Historical Society. He is co-author with his son, Brian, of the Arcadia Then and Now Series book Conshohocken. He has also done books Conshohocken and West Conshohocken Sports and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Italian Feast. He has taken many photos for the Conshohocken Record and the Norristown Times Herald. This program is free. Refreshments will be served. For additional information, call 215-646-6065.

Taste of the White House Soiree featuring former White House Chef Walter Scheib will take place April 29 at 6 p.m. at Manufacturers Golf & Country Club in Fort Washington to celebrate HealthLinks 10th anniversary and honor its founders, the Eugene Jackson Family. The evening will heat up with a Chef Meet & Greet, followed by a specially selected presidential menu. Gala tickets are $150 per person. Proceeds benefit HealthLink, a free clinic providing compassionate, quality medical and dental care to uninsured, working adults in Bucks and Montgomery counties who fall in between the health care cracks. Go to http://tasteofthewhitehouse.charityhappenings.org to make reservations online or lend support through sponsorship. For event information, call 267-699-0124 or email jmarushak@healthlinkmedical.org.

The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association will hold an open house at the Evans-Mumbower Mill April 17 from 1 to 4 p.m. The Mill is at the corner of Swedesford and Township Line Roads in Upper Gwynedd. The open house is free but donations are welcome. For more information, call 215-646-8866 o email info@wvwa.org.

The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce will host Breakfast With Your County Commissioners and State Representatives April 21 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the Holiday Inn Fort Washington, 432 W. Pennasylvania Ave. Commissioners: James R. Matthews (Chairman), Joseph M. Hoeffel (Vice Chair), State Representatives: Todd Stephens (District 151) and Josh Shapiro (District 153). Register onlineat www.emccc.org. $10 for EMCCC member; $20 for non-members.

Upper Dublins Districtwide Allied Art Show will be held April 27 from 5:30 to 9 p.m. in the Upper Dublin High School Athletic Complex.

The Rev. Alfred Muli, chaplain at Fort Washington Estates, will be the featured speaker at the Kiwanis sponsored breakfast observing the National Day of Prayer May 5 at 7 a.m. at the William Penn Inn. The breakfast is open to the public ($15). Reservations can be made by calling 215-646-4356 or by emailing georgesaurman@Juno.com.

The Upper Dublin Shade Tree Commission invites people to participate in its spring bare root planting events, sponsored in part by Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Friends of Robbins Park. On April 9, zix trees will be planted at the Evelyn B. Wright Park & Community Pool, 401 Logan Ave., North Hills, at 9 a.m., followed by the planting of 10 trees at Sheeleigh Park, Loch Alsh Avenue and Douglas Street, Ambler, at 10:15 a.m. On April 29, students from Upper Dublin High School will join the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to plant 16 trees in Robbins Park, Butler Pike and Meetinghouse Road, Ambler, to help launch the societys Million Trees campaign. This event will occur in conjunction with Temple Amblers EarthFest. Experienced tree-tenders are sought to assist the students. For more information,contact Ron Ayres at 215-653-0421 or 215-483-4348.

The Friends of the Wissahickon and the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association are teaming up once again to clean the Wissahickon Creek from top to bottom April 30 from 9 a.m. to noon. This spring marks the 41st anniversary of Wissahickon Valley Watershed Associations annual Creek Clean Up, and the second year that FOW has teamed up with WVWA. Volunteers of all ages will clean the creek, the surrounding trails and the many tributaries of the Wissahickon Creek. Armed with bags, volunteers will be assigned to sections of the creek. Following the clean up, all volunteers are invited to WVWAs Talkin Trash picnic in Fort Washington State Park, with food provided by Whole Foods Market of North Wales. The pavilion is located on Mill Road in Flourtown. To help out in Montgomery County, all volunteers must be pre-assigned a section of the Wissahickon Creek to clean. Please contact Bob Adams, WVWA director of stewardship, at 215-646-8866 ext. 14 or bob@wvwa.org. To work with the Friends of the Wissahickon in Philadelphia, meet at the pavilion along Forbidden Drive, a short distance south of the intersection of Forbidden Drive and Northwestern Avenue. Limited parking is available along Northwestern Avenue and other nearby streets. Volunteers are encouraged to bike or carpool to the event. To participate, register at www.fow.org. Contact Kevin Groves with questions at 215-247-0417 ext. 105 or groves@fow.org.

Montgomery County Community Colleges International Club invites the community to the second annual International Festival April 20 from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The rain date is April 26. The International Club will transform the outside quad area into multicultural celebration with various performances by dancers, singers and musicians. Artists will share their artwork at various display tables. Activities include games, raffles, Easter egg decorating and henna tattoos. Students will have samples of international cuisine at tables representing different countries and will serve food from various local ethnic restaurants. Throughout the evening, volunteers will accept donations and will raffle gift baskets and prizes to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity. Donations of food, international clothes and prizes are needed. Volunteers, including artists and performers, are welcome. For more information or to sponsor an activity, contact Gillian Nel, International Club president, at gnel9277@students.mc3.edu or 267-974-0163.

The Arts and Humanities Division at Montgomery County Community College is partnering with the Philadelphia Writers Conference to host Memoirs Matter: How Life Stories (Including Yours) Can Transform Your Relationship to Literature April 23 from 1 to 3 p.m. in Advanced Technology Center room 101, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The event is free and open to the public. In the first part of this two-hour seminar, professor and author Robert Waxler will explain how writing his two memoirs affected his life as well as his relationship to literature. In the second part, blogger and workshop leader Jerry Waxler will present a sequence of steps to help writers find their own story. For information, contact Dana Resente at dresente@mc3.edu.

The Maple Glen Garden Club will hold its fourth annual Plant Sale on May 7 from 8 to 11 a.m. Perennials, shrubs, vegetables and native plants grown by the club members will be sold. The club uses the plant sale proceeds to fund community projects, a college scholarship and community plantings. The sale will be held in the 500 block of Coach Road, Horsham, as part of a neighborhood garage sale. Plants will be sold at bargain prices. For more information, email MapleGlenGardenClub@gmail.com.

The Relay for Life Craft Show is looking for local crafters to participate in show, which will be May 21 from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the Wissahickon High School track, 521 Houston Road, Ambler. There is a $10 entry fee, and 20 percent of sales are donated to the American Cancer Society. Participants will receive a 6-foot table under a tent. For information, contact Joanne at joannescoles@comcast.net or Mindy at mcamsilver@comcast.net.

Spring House Estates is hosting its annual book fair on April 18 from 4 to 7 p.m. and April 9 from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Included will be hardback and paperback used books. Spring House Estates is located at 728 Norristown Road, Lower Gwynedd.

The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will present the Penn Suburban/Hatfield Joint Business Card Exchange April 20 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Univest Bank Lansdale Area Financial Service Center, 120 Forty Foot Road, Hatfield. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. Join Univest National Bank and Trust Co. for a spring-inspired Business Card Exchange at its newest office in the Hatfield Pointe Shopping Center. Come out and meet members of Univests executive management team while enjoying fine food and beverages.

13th Annual Community Reading Day Kick-off Breakfast Get Together April 26 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the North Wales Area Library, 233 Swartley St., North Wales. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. For more information, contact the chamber office at 215-362-9200 or info@pennsuburban.org. Join presenting sponsor Verizon, chamber staff and fellow members for the Community Reading Day volunteer get together. The Community Reading Day program allows volunteers to read a designated book to second-grade students throughout 38 area public and private schools and present the book as a gift to each class. Even if you are not a volunteer, you are cordially invited to stop by to network, enjoy coffee and pastries.

Ambler Mennonite Church is hosting a Spring Craft Show and Flea Market May 21 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Rain date will be May 28. The community is invited to shop the great craft booths, find some gifts and deals, as well as enjoy home baked goods and tasty lunch specials. Childrens activities are planned. All vendors are encouraged to contact the church at 215-643-4876 or AmblerMennonite@verizon.net. Advertising, signage, customer parking and a shuttle to auxiliary parking at nearby lots for vendors will be provided. 10 foot by 10 foot spaces can be rented for $5 each and tables for an additional $5 each. All proceeds from space and table rentals go toward school kits for children around the world. The church is located at the corner of East Mt. Pleasant Avenue and North Spring Garden Street, Ambler.

The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association presents The Life & Times of Aquatic Insects in the Wissahickon Creek April 16 from 1 to 3 p.m. Join WVWA for a hands-on program. RSVP required: www.wvwa.org or 215-646-8866. WVWA member fee: $5 per person / $15 per family. Non-WVWA member fee: $10 per person / $20 per family.

The photography exhibition Natures Palette by photo-artist Judy Miller will run March 18 to May 19 at the Art in the Storefront gallery, 41 E. Butler Pike, Ambler.

JPRN  Networking For People in Transition & People Who Can Help Them  Unemployment remains high. JPRN, the Jarrettown Professional Relationship Network can help. Are you trying to network your way to a new job? Do you have expertise or contacts that can help people in transition? Is your company or organization looking for people in the area? This is a free outreach program to support those seeking work, involve people with contacts and networking know how, and involve local companies. Meetings held monthly at Jarrettown United Methodist Church, Limekiln Pike.

Pennsylvanias Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) grant program is now open for the 2010-11 heating season. Grants are based on income, family size, type of heating fuel and region. Additional information, such as specific income limits, and applications for LIHEAP grants are available online via the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Access to Social Services (COMPASS) website at www.compass.state.pa.us. Applications are available at most public officals district offices, county assistance offices, local utility companies and community service agencies, such as Area Agencies on Aging or community action agencies.

Begin your holiday shopping at Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation! Entertainment books for 2011, Philadelphia North, are now on sale at $30 each. Regal/United Artists movie tickets are on sale for just $7.50 each, and tickets to the Adventure Aquarium, Baltimore Aquarium, and the Philadelphia Zoo are also available. Discounted ski vouchers to area mountains will be arriving in December; call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation office hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

RSVP of Montgomery County and the Wissahickon Valley Public Library have partnered again to offer the public their popular free mock interview sessions. The mock interviews are conducted by RSVP volunteers who are retired professionals, some of whom were in hiring positions themselves. Packets of information which include a sample employment application and interviewing tips with mock interview questions are available at the library to pick up prior to a scheduled mock interview or will be sent via email once the interview is scheduled. To schedule your interview, please contact Janis Glusman at RSVP 610-834-1040, ext. 16. The library is also offering a free resume review service. Bring in your current resume and the professional reference staff will assist you with hints and tips on capturing your work history accurately.

Registration for Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation summer playgrounds, Camp B.I.G. and Small Folks, X-Zone, and sports camps has began. Register online at www.upperdublin.net/store, or at the UDP&R office, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington. Call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information.

Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Danielles Espresso Cafe presents Mornings at Mondaug Bark Park April 16 and May 21 from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Meet fellow dog lovers. These events include complimentary coffee, treats for people and pups and raffles/giveaways.

Upper Dublins Annual Spring Flea Market will be held June 4 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Reserve a table, or come and shop. Tables are $15 for UD residents, $20 for non-residents. This successful event occurs rain or shine. Refreshments available. Call 215-643-1600 ext. 3443 to register for a table.

Regal movie tickets available for purchase at Upper Dublin Township Parks & Recreation. Reduced rate: $7.50 per ticket. Some restrictions apply. Call 215-643-1600 x3443.

Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation movie tickets $7.50 Regal Cinemas, United Artist & Edwards Cinemas on sale throughout the year Monday  Friday from 9 a.m.  4 p.m.

Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation Camp Sign-ups for Stony Creek Day Camp  Stony Creek Tracers and Park n Tots. Register on-line at www.whitpaintownship.org OrCome to Township Building with check or Visa MasterCard Monday  Friday from 9 a.m.  4 p.m. For additional information call 610.277-2400 ext. 374

Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation offers exciting new programs for the fall:

-Returning favorites include UK Elite Petite Soccer, Tiny Dancers, Kiddie Tennis, Fun-nastics, Messy Playtime, Little Chefs, and more. Babysitters Training will be offered in November and December. Continuing Adult Fitness Classes include Cardio Circuit, Core & More, Yoga, Boxing, and Adult G.Y.M. For more information call 215-643-1600 x3443. Register for programs online at www.upperdublin.net/store.

Music and Theater

The community is invited to a Cantors Concert April 16 at 8 p.m. Congregation Beth Or, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen. Listen and hum-along to the Yiddish, pop tunes and classical music performed by Congregation Beth Ors own Cantor David Green and his special guest, Cantor Irvin Bell, from Temple Beth Israel in Deerfield Beach, Fla. The cantors will be accompanied by Mark Sobol and his Klezmer musicians. Tickets are $18 in advance and $25 at the door. RSVP with payment to Barb Murtha, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen, PA 19002, or call 215-646-5806 ext. 220.

Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse will host the Jameson Sisters May 14. Doors open at 7:30 pm, performance at 8:00 pm. Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse is located at the corner of Rte. 202 & Sumneytown Pike, Gwynedd. $5 suggested donation. Light refreshment available at a modest cost. For further information, call 215-393-9576 or visit gwyneddmeeting.org/coffeehouse.html.

Celebrate patriotism through song with Gwynedd-Mercy Colleges choir, the Voices of Gwynedd, as it presents Hear America Singing April 15 at 8 p.m. The choir will perform song selections from all over the country, including Georgia on My Mind, New York State of Mind, and a medley including Philadelphia Freedom and Allentown. The performance will end with When the Saints Go Marching In to acknowledge the choirs upcoming tour in New Orleans. Hear America Singing will take place in the Julia Ball Auditorium, located in St. Bernard Hall. Parking is available in lots A, C and D. Admission is free.

The Choristers will present Anton Dvoraks Stabat Mater April 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Upper Dublin Lutheran Church in Ambler. The choir will be accompanied by a 41-piece orchestra. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for senior citizens, $10 for students and children are free. Tickets will be sold in advance or at the door. For more information, call 215-542-7871 or visit TheChoristers.org

Religious News

The Staircase Gallery at Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation in Fort Washington will feature the work of Emily Ennuat-Lustine. The artist will be showing paintings and graphics inspired by her own personal spiritual journey and quest for meaning. Some of the works to be shown have been inspired by Biblical Psalms and writings. Her work has been shown at Abington Art Center, Cheltenham Arts Center and Old City Gallery of Jewish Art among others. The exhibition is open Friday evenings starting Feb. 18 after Shabbat services. Gallery hours are: Mondays through Thursdays 10-4:30, Fridays 10-3 and following Shabbat Services and Sundays 10-1. The synagogue is located at 190 Camp Hill Road in Fort Washington. For additional information contact the synagogue office at 215-283-0276.

Reunions

St. Matthews High School Conshohocken Class of 1961 is looking for classmates. For details, contact Greg Marincola at 215-646-2239, 215-740-1296 or gregcola@comcast.net.

Olney High School Class of 1971 is Lloking for classmates for a 40th reunion Oct. 28. For details, contact Judy at ohsclassof71@yahoo.com or 215-870-7572.

Abington High School Class of 1961 is seeking classmates for a 50-year reunion to be held Oct. 14-15, 2011.Visit the website, www.abington61.com, for details or call 215-947-1779.

Overbrook High School class of January 1956 is having a 55 year reunion on May 22, 2011 at the Bala Golf Club in Philadelphia. For information please contact overbrookreunion56@comcast.net

Germantown High School Class Of January 1961 is looking for classmates for 50th year reunion to take place in May of 2011. Please contact: 215-362-9148, 856-577-0659 or samdelcomo@comcast.net

The June 1961 class of Germantown High School is holding their 50th reunion on May 15, which will be a brunch. For further details please contact Linda Dorfman Alten at lindaalten@yahoo.com or call 215-441-8411.

Support

New Life Presbyterian Church in Dresher, will host GriefShare, a special seminar and support group which will run on Monday evenings from 7 to 9 p.m., from March 7 through June 6. At each meeting there will be a DVD about the grief process, discussion and reference to a grief workbook. Preregistration is required to secure a place in the group and to purchase a GriefShare notebook (for a one-time fee of $15). The notebook goes along with the 13-week schedule covering such topics as: living with grief, the effects of grief, and stuck in grief. For more information or to register, call: Sandy Elder at 215-884-5149.

PUPS (People Understanding Parkinsons) A self-help group for those adjusting to a new diagnosis or dealing with the early stages of Parkinsons Disease. Meets fourth Tuesday of the month from 1 to 2:30 p.m., at Abington Health Center, Schilling Campus, Willowood Building, 2510 Maryland Road, Suite 251, Willow Grove. For more information or to RSVP, contact Lorna at 215-542-2931.

The North Penn Visiting Nurse Associations Meals on Wheels program is looking for volunteers to pack or deliver meals to the elderly and infirmed. Meals are packed and delivered mornings, Monday through Friday. You can volunteer for as many days per week or month as you would like. Packaging meals requires approximately 2-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves making sandwiches, packaging food into individual serving containers and packing coolers with the meals. Delivering meals requires approximately 1-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves loading coolers into your car and delivering a route of approximately 10 to 15 stops. The Meals on Wheels program is also in need of emergency, winter-weather volunteers to pack and deliver meals in bad weather. North Penn VNA is located at 51 Medical Campus Drive in Lansdale and delivers meals in the Lansdale, North Wales and Blue Bell areas. For more information or to volunteer, please call Bridget, North Penn VNA Meals on Wheels coordinator at 215-855-8296.

Elkins Park Area CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) meets the first Tuesday of every month, 7- 8:30 p.m., at Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital in Elkins Park. For information on CHADD or ADHD, please see our website www.chadd.net/249 or call Claire Noyes at: 215-779-6656.

Center for Loss and Bereavement, 3847 Skippack Pike, Skippack (610-222-4110) www.bereavementcenter.org Offers professional counseling for individuals, couples, children and families dealing with issues of loss and bereavement. Six-week adult support groups: Newly forming young adult grief support group  every other Wednesday, 7  8:15 p.m. (free of charge); Monthly loss of child support  second Mondays, 7-8:15 p.m.; Six-week young loss of spouse/partner  Thursdays, 10-11:15 a.m.; Other groups scheduled as interest is shown for suicide loss support, adult loss of parent, motherless daughters, adult loss of sibling, coping with chronic illness and disability and mens loss of spouse. Nellos Corner Family Bereavement program offers peer grief support groups for ages 4 through teen and their caregivers  Every other Tuesday or Wednesday (free of charge) Local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children also meets at the Center. Registration required. Call for further information.

CHADD is a national organization for children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder, providing education, advocacy and support for individuals and their families with AD/HD. Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital, 60 Township Line Road, Elkins Park, PA 19027, will host children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder on the First Tuesday of each month 7  8:30 p.m. Free, no childcare provided.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphias Kehillah of Old York Road is sponsoring a free Caregiver Support Group for individuals who care for an elderly person with cognitive and/or physical impairments. The group meets at SarahCare Adult Day Care Center, 101 Washington Lane, Suite G-6, Jenkintown, Pa., on the first Wednesday of each month. Patty Rich,
Apart from the five arrested, two juveniles too have been detained and sent to the Juvenile Justice Board. (Photo Credit: File )

New Delhi :

Two Bangladeshi nationals among five men have been arrested by the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police for allegedly causing violence violence during an anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) protest recently at Seempuri in North East Delhi, officials said on Monday.

Besides the two Bangladeshi nationals among the five arrested, two others belong to Uttar Pradesh and one to Seemapuri, they said.

The accused have been identified as Ghaziabad resident Mohammad Shoiab (19), Pilibhit resident Mohammad Amir (24), Seemapuri resident Yusuf (40), besides the two Bangladeshi nationals Mohammad Azad and Mohammad Subhan, said police.

Apart from the five arrested, two juveniles too have been detained and sent to the Juvenile Justice Board, a senior police officer said.
Sterling Bank's founder and chief exec Anne Boden has ambitions to float the digital-only lender as soon as 2022

Starling Bank is planning to become the UK's first digital-only lender to be listed on the stock market.

Its founder and chief executive Anne Boden has ambitions to float Starling, best known for its turquoise debit cards and flashy mobile phone app, as soon as 2022.

The digital bank has so far raised 263million from start-up investors since it was founded in 2014, which it has used to build its banking app and a payments platform used by top-tier lenders and the Government.

When those investors want to cash in, Boden plans to list her business on the London Stock Exchange through an initial public offering (IPO) rather than selling it to a major High Street banking rival.

This would give normal savers the chance to buy shares in Starling and take a punt on the digital bank's success.

Boden told the Mail: 'I didn't do all of this to sell out to a big bank. I think the future for us will be an IPO in two to three years' time.

'We're demonstrating a path to profitability that other digital banks have not, and we plan to break even at the end of next year.'

Boden, who has previously worked at a roster of traditional banks including Lloyds, Standard Chartered, UBS and RBS, said that breaking even, and finally making a profit, is one of the hurdles which Starling must cross before listing.

In the year to November 30, 2018, the last period for which Starling filed accounts, it made a loss before tax of 26,856.
Philadelphia City Councilmember Cherelle L. Parker on Monday unseated her Democratic colleague Bobby Henon as majority leader.

The leadership election, finalized during Mondays inauguration ceremony, was the sharpest rebuke yet of Henon from his colleagues since he and other officials with the local Electricians union were indicted on federal corruption and fraud charges last year.

Henon and other defendants with International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98, including its leader, John J. Johnny Doc Dougherty, have pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The majority leader position comes with a pay raise  $9,000 on top of members $131,000 base salary  but has little direct power. The politics of leadership elections, however, often shape the dynamics of the ensuing Council session, with members trading future favors and forming alliances to win the posts.

Parker is also seen as a potential candidate for mayor in 2023, at the end of Mayor Jim Kenneys second term. She declined on Monday to say why she ran against Henon, emphasizing Councils unity going forward.

We work together, and its not something that we talk about a lot, Parker said. Its very much an internal process but I look forward to working with all of my colleagues.

Henon also didnt say much about the results. Internal process, he said. Looking forward to the next four years.

Council President Darrell L. Clarke faced no opposition in his bid for a third term in the bodys top post.

Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr. was elected majority whip and Mark Squilla deputy majority whip. They replaced Bill Greenlee and Blondell Reynolds Brown, both of whom declined to seek reelection last year.

The majority leader race came down to the wire, with Henon and Parker each having won the support of six of their colleagues in the 14-member Democratic caucus as late as Friday. The winds shifted in Parkers direction over the weekend, when freshman Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, who had not committed to a candidate but was believed to be with Henon, signed on to her candidacy.

Thomas decision meant that all three incoming Democrats supported Parker over Henon. The others are Jamie Gauthier and Katherine Gilmore Richardson.

Gauthier said the indictment factored into her vote.

I didnt want to vote for someone for leadership that had that level of baggage, Gauthier said. Personally, Councilman Henon is a great person. But in making that decision for leadership, the person needs to be able to focus and needs to be able to lead without being caught up.

Kenney did not get involved in the leadership elections, lawmakers said. The race between Henon and Parker pitted two of the constituencies most important to Kenneys 2015 victory against each other: the building trades unions and the Northwest Coalition, the powerful political organization from which Parker hails.

The unseating of Henon was a victory for Councilmember Maria Quinones-Sanchez, who has clashed with Local 98 and was an early proponent of replacing Henon as majority leader following the indictment.

City Council has a leadership team that reflects the electoral mandate of 2019, Quinones-Sanchez said Monday.

No minority leader was named. The only non-Democrats on Council are Republicans David Oh and Brian ONeill, the most recent minority leader, and Kendra Brooks of the Working Families Party, who unseated a Republican to win a historic third-party victory in November. Brooks is the first Council member from outside the two major parties in the 100 years since the body adopted a modern legislative structure.

Oh, who has clashed with the citys GOP establishment, said after the election that he would not support ONeill for the leadership post and did not want it himself, meaning none of the three non-Democrats was willing to vote for another.

ONeill said he believed that the leadership posts of minority leader and whip were becoming obsolete even before Brooks election.

I mean, we had three Republicans, and we had two [leadership] officers out of the three, ONeill said. I dont really have a problem with it.
JU students take out rallies against police action in Jamia

It's a painful moment: West Bengal Guvs car blocked at Jadavpur University for second day in row

Jadavpur University students clash with police in Kolkata

India

oi-Deepika S

Kolkata, Jan 06: A clash has broken out between students of the Jadavpur University and the West Bengal Police in Kolkata during the former's protest against the JNU violence. Reportedly, the police also lathicharged the students.

Students of the Jadavpur University, activists of the SFI and members of other Left outfits took out a rally protesting against the violence at JNU campus.

A march was also taken out by the BJP on the issue and both the sides came face to face at Sulekha More, leading to a brawl.

Scuffle among students, not where we were posted: Police on JNU attack

Police put up barricades and blocked both the rallies, however, allegedly abuses were hurled and slogans and counter-slogans raised by the two sides.

After repeated attempts to calm the situation, officials said police baton-charged to disperse the rally..
At some point, Russian gas may be distributed through Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), the ambassador of the Russian Federation to Azerbaijan Mikhail Bocharnikov said in an interview to the Azerbaijani SVS channel.

The diplomat congratulated Azerbaijan on the gas pipeline launch, calling the completion of the project a great success. Bocharnikov emphasized that the country "invested a lot in this project," and now "can reap its fruits.

He recalled that both Russia and Azerbaijan are oil and gas countries producing hydrocarbons.

"Although we already cooperate - Russia participates in the development of oil and gas condensate fields in Azerbaijan. Who knows, maybe, at some stage, our gas will be distributed through TANAP, I would not rule this out, Prime economic information agency quotes Bocharnikov as saying.
The foreign aid department will escape the axe as Boris Johnson scales back his proposed Whitehall shake-up, the Mail can reveal.

Plans for a radical overhaul that would have seen a raft of departments created, merged or scrapped have been curtailed.

Instead the Prime Minister will largely concentrate on improving performance in the existing ministries.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's planned Whitehall shake-up is to be scaled back. The Department for International Development will not merge with the Foreign Office

The Department for International Development is expected to be given a reprieve and will not now be merged with the Foreign Office. The suggested creation of a borders and immigration ministry separate from the Home Office is also unlikely to happen.

A pared down re-organisation of departments will take place next month as Mr Johnson carries out his much-awaited Cabinet reshuffle.

Ministers facing the threat of losing their jobs include Andrea Leadsom. The Business Secretary is a Brexit stalwart, but was largely kept away from the national campaign ahead of the general election.

Government departments will be told to overhaul how they communicate what they are doing, as part of Mr Johnson's plans. The creation of a borders and immigration ministry separate from the Home Office is also unlikely to happen

Among those in line for promotion are Oliver Dowden and Rishi Sunak. Together with Robert Jenrick  who was appointed to the Cabinet as Housing Secretary when Mr Johnson became prime minister in July. They are seen as the next generation who could be nurtured into becoming Cabinet big beasts. It is understood that Sajid Javid will keep his job as Chancellor.

As part of Mr Johnsons drive to improve Whitehall performance, government departments will be told to overhaul how they communicate what they are doing. Government press officers will be instructed to use the internet to find new ways to get their messages across to the public.

Oliver Dowden and Rishi Sunak (pictured from left) are in line for a promotion. Meanwhile ministers facing the threat of losing their jobs include Andrea Leadsom

Tory strategists believe they need to make in-roads into the overwhelming proportion of young people who vote Labour in order to stay in power at the next election.

Dominic Cummings, the Prime Ministers senior adviser, last week made a public appeal for super-talented weirdos to apply to work in Downing Street and the rest of Whitehall.

Mr Johnson's senior advisor Dominic Cummings (pictured on January 6) has revealed he wants official who include true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and [those who] fought their way out of an appalling hell-hole

Writing on his personal blog, Mr Cummings revealed he wants to bring in special advisers and officials who include true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and [those who] fought their way out of an appalling hell-hole. Mr Cummings said he believed there are many brilliant people in the civil service and politics, but warned there are some profound problems at the core of how the British state makes decisions.

We want to hire an unusual set of people with different skills and backgrounds to work in Downing Street with the best officials, he said.

Mr Johnson is under pressure to improve how Britain spends foreign aid after he pledged at the election to keep David Camerons commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on overseas development.

The UKs foreign aid budget rose 493million in 2018 to reach 14.6billion for the first time, the Daily Mail revealed last week. Spending in China and India increased to 151million, even though both are rich enough to mount missions to the Moon.

Leading charities had warned that a suggested plan to fold Dfid into the Foreign Office would be counter-productive as it could lead to less money going to the worlds poorest people. The National Audit Office had previously said that a lack of transparency in government departments outside of Dfid meant uncertainty that UK aid was being used effectively.
The oil price rose above $70 a barrel on escalating tensions between the United States, Iran and Iraq and the price of gold surged to a near seven-year high as investors sold shares to buy safe-haven assets.

Brent crude futures soared to a high of $70.27 a barrel at 0222 GMT, up $1.67, or 2.4%, extending gains on Friday after the death of the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Iraq.

It's the highest level since last September - when Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq oil processing facility was attacked. That's up from $66 at the end of last year.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was at $64.39 a barrel, up $1.34, or 2.1%, after touching $64.44 earlier, the highest since April, CNBC reported.

On January 3, the Pentagon reported that a missile strike near Baghdads airport had killed General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards elite Quds Force. According to the U.S. Administration, the operation was defensive, as it was aimed at protecting U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East. According to Washington, the attacks planned by the Iranian general could have led to the deaths of hundreds of Americans and Iraqis.

After the attack, Irans Supreme National Security Council vowed at an emergency session to exact "severe revenge" on those involved in the killing of Soleimani, blaming the U.S. for the attack. In a telephone call with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif bashed the attack as an act of terrorism by the U.S. In the letter submitted to the U.N. Security Council on Friday, Tehran called to "denounce that illegal criminal step" and also declared its right to self-defense.
An image grab from an Iran Press video shows Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left) weeping as he recites a prayer in front of the coffin of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani duing a funeral procession in the capital Tehran on January 6, 2020. (AFP)

Dubai: In a rare display of emotion from the typically reserved and measured supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cried openly Monday at the funeral of slain Gen. Qassem Soleimani, his most important military commander with whom he shared a deep bond.

Oh Allah, they are in need of your mercy, and you are exalted above punishing your servants, Khamenei said during a mass prayer as he stood over a flag-draped casket with the remains of Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq on Friday.

Khamenei's voice cracked under the weight of the moment during a funeral procession that was unlike any in Iran's recent history. Police said attendees numbered in the millions.

The funeral showcased the depth of the bond Khamenei had with the slain general and gave insight into how Soleimani's death is being felt personally by the supreme leader. It could also impact how Khamenei responds to the United States.

To many across the Middle East, Soleimani was a dangerous figure whose armed militias killed thousands of Sunni Muslims in Syria and threatened regional security. To the U.S., he was the man responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq and countless attacks on Iraqis fighting alongside American forces.

In Iran, however, Soleimani was a lionized figure. To Iran's supreme leader, Soleimani was a loyal aide who conferred with him often. Their relationship was so close that Khamenei was photographed more than once embracing Soleimani in ways that are customary in Iran for fathers and their beloved sons.

In one such photograph from 2018, Khamenei, seated on an elevated platform, leans down and kisses Soleimani's forehead. In another image from 2017, Khamenei is seen kissing Soleimani's cheek during Ashoura, a religious day of mourning among Shiites.

The 62-year-old general answered only to the 80-year-old Khamenei.

So revered was he by Khamenei, that the supreme leader awarded the general Iran's highest military order in March. Iran's Tasnim News Agency reported that Soleimani is the only Iranian military official to receive the Order of Zulfaqar since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

When pinning the medal on Soleimani, the Iranian leader said he hoped God would reward the general and help him live a blissful life that ends with martyrdom. Of course not any time soon, Khamenei said, adding the Islamic Republic needs him for years to come.

To Soleimani, Khamenei was a venerated spiritual figure whom he referred to as his dear and honorable leader. In 2015, Soleimani was quoted saying: I ask God to sacrifice my life for you.

So close were they that Iranian media is describing the slain general as Khamenei's own Malik al-Ashtar, a reference to the most loyal companions of the first Shiite leader, Imam Ali.

And in death, Soleimani has received what no man before him has in modern Iran. His funeral processions have been spread over several days and cities, marking the first time Iran has ever honoured a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such a processional with his death in 1989.

Khamenei vowed that the Quds Force's strategy would be unchanged and he quickly named a successor to Soleimani, but the slain general's standing and relationship with Khamenei is not as easy to replace.

That's in part because their relationship extended beyond the war room. Soleimani was also close with Khamenei's children and had been photographed kissing one of the sons on the forehead.

In a deeply personal and symbolically weighty gesture, Iran's supreme leader made a rare visit to Soleimani's home the day he was killed to offer condolences to his grieving widow and grown children.

Rather than calling him by his last name as is customary, Khamenei referred to him as Hajj Qassem _ another indication of how close the two were.
U S President Donald Trump ignored European appeals to step back over the spiralling Middle East crisis by insisting Iranian cultural sites are fair game for the US military.

Iran has vowed to retaliate and Iraqs parliament responded by voting on Sunday to oust US troops based in the country.

Mr Trump first raised the prospect of targeting Iranian cultural sites Saturday in a tweet. Speaking with reporters as he flew back to Washington from his holiday stay in Florida on Sunday he doubled down, despite international prohibitions and fears it could be classed as a war crime.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, Trump said.

The killing of General Soleimani sparked outrage in the Middle East, including in Iraq, where more than 5,000 American troops are still on the ground 17 years after the US invasion.

Iraqs parliament voted on Sunday in favour of a non-binding resolution calling for the expulsion of the American forces.

Mr Trump said the US would not leave without being paid for its military investments in Iraq over the years  then said if the troops do have to withdraw, he would hit Baghdad with economic penalties.

We will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, he said. If theres any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.

He added: Were not leaving until they pay us back for it.

The administration has scrambled to contend with the backlash to the killing of General Soleimani. Though he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, the American strike marked a stark escalation in tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US military may well strike more Iranian leaders if the Islamic Republic retaliates. He tip-toed around questions about Mr Trumps threat to attack Iranian cultural sites, a military action that likely would be illegal under the laws of armed conflict and the UN charter.

Mr Pompeo said any US military strikes inside Iran would be legal.

Well behave inside the system, Mr Pompeo said. We always have and we always will.

General Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike / AP

Mr Trumps warnings rattled some administration officials. One US national security official said the president had caught many in the administration off guard and prompted internal calls for others in the government, including Mr Pompeo, to clarify the matter.

The official, who was not authorised to speak publicly, said clarification was necessary to affirm the US military would not intentionally commit war crimes.

Oona Hathaway, an international law professor at Yale and a former national security law official in the Defence Departments legal office, said Mr Trumps threat amounted to a pretty clear promise of commission of a war crime.

The presidents threats to Iran did little to quell Tehrans furore over the death of General Soleimani.

Iranian state television reported the country would no longer abide by any limits of the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with the United States and other world powers. Mr Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018 and stepped up economic sanctions on Tehran  actions that accelerated a cycle of hostilities leading to the last Fridays assassination.

The administration also pushed back on Sunday on questions about the legality of the strike on General Soleimani.

Mr Pompeo said the administration would have been culpably negligent in its duty to protect the United States if it had not killed him. He did not provide evidence for his previous claims that General Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on Americans. Instead of arguing an attack had been imminent, he said it was inevitable.

We watched him continue to actively build out for what was going to be a significant attack  thats what we believed  and we made the right decision, he said.

We continue to prepare for whatever it is the Iranian regime may put in front of us within the next 10 minutes, within the next 10 days, and within the next 10 weeks.

Some Congressional Democrats were sceptical.

I really worry that the actions the president took will get us into what he calls another endless war in the Middle East. He promised we wouldnt have that, said Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senates top Democrat.

Mr Schumer said Mr Trump lacked the authority to engage militarily with Iran and Congress needs a new war powers resolution to be a check on this president. To which Pompeo said: We have all the authority we need to do what weve done to date.

Senator Mark Warner said the administration violated the Constitution by not consulting with Congress in advance.

Congressional staffs received their first briefings from the administration on Friday, and members were expected to be briefed this week.

But Mr Trump made clear on Sunday he sees little reason to give Congress advanced warning if he orders the military to carry out further actions against Iran.

These media posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any US person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner, he wrote on Twitter. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!

Moving swiftly to rebuke Trump for not consulting with Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said late Sunday the House would introduce and vote this week on a war powers resolution to limit the presidents military actions regarding Iran.

In a letter to House Democrats, Ms Pelosi called the airstrike provocative and disproportionate and said it had endangered our servicemembers, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran.

A similar resolution was introduced in the Senate.
Ms. Campbell, who did not know the victim, approached her from behind and grabbed the hijab before trying to choke her with it, the district attorneys office said, citing court documents.

After the woman pushed Ms. Campbell away, Ms. Campbell forcibly took the hijab, prosecutors said. According to court documents, Ms. Campbell then rubbed it on and across multiple exposed sexually intimate parts of her body, the district attorneys office said.

The victim, who attends Portland State University, told the police that since the attack, she no longer feels safe wearing a hijab in public and is relying on alternative methods to cover herself, prosecutors said.

Ms. Campbell, who was arrested in December in an unrelated matter, was scheduled to appear in court on Friday but did not show up, prosecutors said.

Phone calls and messages left for a phone number listed under Ms. Campbells name were not immediately returned on Sunday night. She did not appear to have a lawyer.
Union Minister Prakash Javadekar on Monday condemned the attack on students and teachers in JNU and accused the Congress, the AAP and the left parties of creating an atmosphere of unrest in the country.

"I condemn the violence which took place last night in JNU. Some elements from Congress, Aam Aadmi Party and the Left are deliberately trying to create an atmosphere of violence and unrest in the country, especially in universities. This should be investigated," Javadekar tweeted.

Reacting to the incident that occurred on Sunday night, the minister of environment and information and broadcasting, questioned the presence of some politicians inside the campus at the time of the incident, saying it was a conspiracy by them.

"Within 10 minutes of the violent attacks, Yogendra Yadav reaches the venue. Others are also present. How is it possible? This needs to be considered. These people are deliberately causing unrest in the universities. It is a conspiracy," he said.

The minister also said that it needs to be found out who has been creating obstacles in the semester registration process going on since last three days.

"Semester registration is going since the last three days. It needs to be investigated that who was creating obstacles in the process. Who beat the students? Yesterday outsiders came and assaulted students and teachers. This needs to be investigated. Amit ji (Amit Shah) has directed the police to investigate and it will act swiftly," he said.

Violence broke out at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police.

Many were injured and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.
WASHINGTON - For a few tense hours Monday, the United States appeared to have announced that American troops were pulling out of Baghdad after nearly 17 years.

Turns out, it was just an honest mistake.

Heres the bottom line, this was a mistake, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said as he tried to unravel a knot of miscommunication that came at a time of already soaring tensions with the Middle East.

The bungled message started when a draft letter from Marine Brig. Gen. William Seely began circulating on social media. Addressed to an official at the Iraqi Ministry of Defence, the letter said U.S. troops would be repositioning forces to prepare for onward movement.

Seely added, We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure.

The order Seely mentioned was a reference to the Iraqi parliaments vote over the weekend to expel U.S. troops after an American drone attack killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad.

A flurry of news reports followed Seelys letter, saying the United States was ending its military presence in Iraq.

But after a few hours of denials and frantic phone calls, top Pentagon leaders tried to do damage control, stating flatly that the U.S. had no plans to leave and saying the letter was a poorly worded draft that never should have gone out.

Nobodys leaving, Milley said. Theres no onward movement. Honest mistake.

Defence Secretary Mark Esper said the U.S. has been re-positioning troops, largely due to increased security threats from Iran. The letter was meant to co-ordinate with the Iraqi military on an increase in U.S. helicopter and troop movements as they shift positions around the country, Esper and Milley said.

Theres been no decision whatsover to leave Iraq, Esper said. Theres no decision to leave, nor did we issue any plans to leave or prepare to leave.

Its not entirely clear who leaked the letter. According to Milley, the draft was circulated to key Iraqi officials as part of a co-ordination process to let them know about the increased helicopter movements. Officials say it was first posted on the website of an Iranian-backed militia group.

Now its a kerfuffle, Milley lamented.

Efforts Monday to reach Seely and his spokesperson were not successful.

The blunder is a black eye for the Pentagon at a time of high tensions stemming from the targeted killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Irans elite Quds Force.
A day after the violence broke out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus, Union human resource development (HRD) minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank said on Monday that the government cannot allow educational institutions to turn into political dens and promised strong action against the perpetrators of the attack.

Addressing the media in Bhubaneswar, Pokhriyal said autonomous educational institutions like JNU were there for academic purposes only and should only focus on education. Asked about the Sundays violence at the premier institute, he said: Anyone found guilty in the JNU violence would not be spared.

He further urged JNU students to maintain the dignity of the university and peace on campus. I have said this earlier also that these autonomous institutions cannot be allowed to become political adda (dens). Strong action will be initiated against people involved in such an attack, said Pokhriyal.

Meanwhile, top HRD ministry officials met officials from the JNU administration on Monday and took stock of the situation.

The meeting, headed by secretary (Higher Education) Amit Khare at the HRD ministry, was attended by JNU Pro-VC Chintamani Mahapatra, Registrar Promod Kumar, Rector Rana Pratap Singh and Proctor Dhananjay Singh. The secretary held a detailed discussion with them and was also briefed about the current situation in JNU, a senior HRD ministry official said.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, JNU Proctor Dhananjay Singh appealed the students to not panic.

We appeal to students to not panic and leave the campus. Measures are being taken to normalise situation on the campus and ensure safety of everyone, he said.

According to a varsity official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, a detailed report has been given to the HRD ministry that narrates the sequence of events which led to the violence.

The university, in its report, mentioned that a group of students were protesting against winter semester registration in the university and resorted to vandalism to prevent others from registering for the same.

This group had exhibited aggression on Sunday evening following which police was called, the official said, adding that the ministry has also been apprised of the violence perpetrated by the masked men in Periyar hostel.

All the facts have been conveyed to the ministry. The varsity is keen that the registration process recommences and have extended the date for the same.

According to a senior HRD ministry official, the ministry is closely watching the developments at the university and to ensure that appropriate action is taken as early as possible. The ministry is in touch with all stakeholders, including the students, the faculty, university administration and the ministry of home affairs, the official added.

(With inputs from HTC Bhubaneswar)
By PTI

AMRAVATI: The YSRCP government in Andhra Pradesh said on Monday that it had issued an order for providing Rs 15,000 to poor women sending their children to schools under the 'Amma Vodi' scheme, fulfilling a poll promise made by the party.

The scheme will be operational from 2019-20 fiscal, it said.

The financial assistance would be provided to all mothers or guardians irrespective of the number of their children, it said.

"The assistance would be directly deposited in the beneficiaries' bank accounts in January every year till the child completes class 12," the government said in a statement. The order sanctioning financial assistance of Rs 15,000 per beneficiary was issued last week, it said.

The district educational officer or vocational educational officer or regional educational officer would release the amount to the beneficiaries' savings bank account.

The data of the beneficiaries under the scheme would be available with the gram volunteer of the respective village in the state, it added.

The government said the assistance will be given to children studying in all government, private aided, private unaided schools/junior colleges. The scheme is applicable to the mothers of children who are below the poverty line.

The beneficiary should be a white (BPL) ration cardholder and ensure that the student must have 75 per cent attendance in the school/college.

In the case of dropout from school or college, the scheme would not be applicable to the beneficiary. Government employees and income taxpayers are not eligible for the scheme.

Besides, the government has included orphans and street children in this scheme who are studying in schools through voluntary organisations.

The financial assistance will be provided to these organisations after coordination with the department concerned, the statement added. To ensure transparency, the beneficiaries' list would be displayed at the village level.
The latest installment in the saga that will not end: The California State Lands Commission and California Coastal Commission are now suing billionaire Vinod Khosla to ensure the public has access to Martins Beach, a stretch of coastline Khosla has argued for over a decade is his personal property.

On Monday, the state commissions filed suit in San Mateo County Superior Court seeking to prohibit Khosla from erecting no trespassing signs and blocking the road down to the beach with a gate. Martins Beach, popular with surfers and picnicking families, is south of Half Moon Bay.

In 2008, the Sun Microsystems co-founder paid $32.5 million for an 89-acre property that includes Martins Beach Road. He then gated off the road, cutting off access to the public. The move has prompted continued legal action to get the road reopened, and in 2018 it seemed the case had finally been resolved in the public's favor when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up Khosla's case.

But the case got new life in Nov. 2019 when the San Francisco-based 1st District Court of Appeal ruled in favor of Khosla.

The crux of the case centers around "public dedication." In property law, this dedication can either be explicit (a land grant by the owner, for example) or implied. The Martins Beach case is one of implied public dedication; supporters of keeping it open have argued because previous owners allowed beach-goers to use the single road down to Martins Beach, that constituted public dedication of the road.

The appeals court ruled that this was not the case, as previous owners charged a parking fee to use the beach.

"Because the publics use of the road and beach was thus permissive, it did not ripen into a public dedication that would give the public a permanent right to use the property," the ruling read.

Monday's lawsuit alleges that because the public has used Martins Beach for generations  an assertion the commissions plan on backing up with photos and witness testimony  permanent public access has been established.

Our goal here is to make sure that any public rights that exist are properly protected, Seth Blackmon, chief counsel for the State Lands Commission, told the Mercury News. And that folks arent blocked off from beaches in California.

When asked by the New York Times in 2018 why Khosla continues to fight in court, he said he was doing it on principle.

"If I were to ever win in the Supreme Court, Id be depressed about it," Khosla said. "I support the Coastal Act; I dont want to weaken it by winning. But property rights are even more important."

Katie Dowd is an SFGATE Senior Digital Editor. Email: katie.dowd@sfgate.com | Twitter: @katiedowd
G LOBAL markets tumbled and the oil price surged today as escalating tensions between the US and Iran triggered rising security concerns over the Middle East.

Investors sold equities and piled into the safe havens of gold, the Swiss franc and US government bonds as they reacted to Irans weekend threat of severe revenge after the US killing of its top military commander Qasem Soleimani.

It is unclear exactly how Iran will react but worst-case scenarios include a severe escalation in Iraq, where there are still thousands of British and US troops. Iran has said it will focus on military targets, but investors fretted about potential attacks on oil supplies from the Middle East, sending crude above $70 a barrel for the first time since suspected Iranian drone strikes on Saudi oil installations in September.

The FTSE 100 fell 75.40 points at 7546.68 despite rises from oil giants BP and Shell, reacting to the 3% jump in the price of crude. The Dax in Germany was off 2%, while in Paris the Cac-40 dropped 1.5%.

Oil traders believe prices could continue to rise if supply lines in the region are hit. It is understood Iran is deciding whether to close the Strait of Hormuz, the busiest shipping lane in the world, or again attack Saudi oil facilities.

The UK has sent HMS Montrose and HMS Defender to the Gulf to protect UK-flagged ships travelling through the Strait of Hormuz.

Last year US and British container ships were attacked on a regular basis by Iranian-backed militia.

BP shares gained 71.5p to 501p and Shell climbed 32p to 2330p on Londons premier index.

A near-2% jump in gold prices sent miners Polymetal International up 14.5p to 1224p and Fresnillo up 3.6p to 664p.

Heading in the opposite direction were airlines, which could see their costs increase if oil prices keep rising.

EasyJet slid 41.5p to 1340p and International Consolidated Airlines, which owns British Airways, fell 21p to 604p. Wizz Air also dropped 108p to 3788p and Ryanair lost 0.64 cents to 14.10.
Kolkata/Ganga Sagar, Jan 6 (IANS) Terming the violence on JNU students and professors as a "fascist surgical strike", West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday called it "pre-planned" and indicated the BJP was involved in the attack as she appealed to the student community to come together to ensure a joint fight against the Narendra Modi-led Central government.

"This is a fascist surgical strike. We have never seen anything like this before. Everywhere this is going on, be it Lucknow, or Moradabad. They are doing whatever they feel like," she said.

The Chief Minister said the way students and professors were tortured was "very disturbing".

"It is very disturbing, not only for me, but for all. I feel ashamed at the way democracy has come under vicious attack," she said.

She appealed to the student community to join forces.

"I appeal to the student community to come together. Let us jointly fight against this government," Banerjee, who was baptised into politics through student movements, told media persons in Kolkata.

Condemning the violence let loose on the students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, she accused the BJP of sending "miscreants" and then asking the police to stay inactive.

"They sent the BJP goondas (hoodlums). The police were made inactive. What can the police do? They got instructions from higher ups not to take any action, but remain silent spectators while the BJP got active. This is absolutely wrong," she said.

The Chief Minister said in a democracy, governments will come and go. "But nobody has the right to run amok just because they have the majority. Whatever functions I perform, they have to be as per constitutional stipulations."

"I feel ashamed at the way democracy has come under vicious attack. If anybody speaks out, he is dubbed a Pakistani. If anybody speaks out against some persons in power, he is dubbed an enemy of the nation.

"This has never happened in India in the past. But the difference between India and Pakistan is that Pakistan is not a democratic country. On the other hand, we feel proud that India is a democratic country," she added.

Later, interacting with media persons at the Ganga Sagar island, Banerjee said: "It is totally a pre-planned attack."

"Why did the outsiders along with all the hooligans and all the arms go there? They beat up the students and teachers mercilessly."

Banerjee alleged that through the administration officials were present there, nobody rescued the students who were victims of the violence.

"Democracy is in danger. The impartiality of institutions is in danger. Freedom of expression is in danger," she said.

ssp/vd
The second meeting of Home Minister Amit Shah-headed Group of Ministers (GoM) is likely to take place on Tuesday, according to a source.

The meeting is expected to discuss the Preliminary Information Memorandum (PIM) on the Air India sale process, the source said.

The Air India Specific Alternative Mechanism (AISAM) or GoM has already approved re-initiation of the process for the government's 100 per cent stake sale in Air India along with Air India Express and the carrier's stake in joint venture AISATS.

"The second meeting of the Group of Ministers on Air India sale may take place on Tuesday. It is likely to discuss the Preliminary Information Memorandum on the sale process," the source in the know of development told PTI on Monday.

He also said that "the expression of interest could be invited 45 days after the uploading of the PIM document".

The last GoM meeting took place in September last year. Apart from Shah, it was also attended by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Commerce and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The claim: I shouldnt have to give up my career  make a choice, either give up your career or violate your religious beliefs. The government shouldnt put me in that position.  Fort Worth talk radio host Chris Salcedo.

Salcedo made the remark in reference to a Waco justice of the peace who was sanctioned by a state commission earlier this month for only officiating opposite sex, but not same-sex, marriages.

PolitiFact ruling: False. Justices of the peace are not required to officiate marriages and do so mainly for their own benefit, not as an integral duty of the job. Many justices of the peace in Texas have opted to not perform any marriages because of their religious beliefs regarding gay marriage.

Discussion: Salcedo made the claim during an interview with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as they discussed the case of a Waco justice of the peace who was sanctioned by a state commission in December for only officiating opposite sex, but not same-sex, marriages.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

About PolitiFact PolitiFact is a fact-checking project to help you sort out fact from fiction in politics. Truth-O-Meter ratings are determined by a panel of three editors. The burden of proof is on the speaker, and PolitiFact rates statements based on the information known at the time the statement is made. See More Collapse

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct issued Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley a public warning over her refusal to perform same-sex ceremonies; the commission could take further action if she refuses to stop the practice. Hensley sued the commission over the punishment last month, calling it a violation of the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Paxton, a Republican, reiterated the stance of his office, one that has not changed since just after the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage. He said people are entitled to religious exemptions when it would violate their faith to carry out the duties of their job.

But Salcedos description of Hensleys situation is inaccurate. No one is asking Hensley to violate her religious beliefs to keep her career: officiating marriages is an optional activity. A state commissions opinion on the matter suggested she could officiate all marriages or no marriages, but not selectively choose one type.

Justices of the peace handle low-level civil and criminal cases, including traffic and other Class C misdemeanor cases and civil cases involving up to $10,000.

They can also officiate marriages, but this is considered extra-judicial, an optional activity that earns them thousands per year in personal income.

So while there may be some financial incentive to do it, it is by no means required.

In fact, some justices of the peace in Texas have chosen not to officiate any marriages in order to avoid the religious dilemma, including in McLennan County, where Hensley lives.

The commission decided to investigate Hensley based at least in part on a Waco Herald-Tribune article in which she was quoted about her decision to decline same-sex marriages and how she believed she was entitled to a religious accommodation.

It found that she had refused to perform same-sex marriages since 2016, instead only performing opposite-sex marriages and referring same-sex couples to other officiating JPs and clergy.

The state commission that sanctioned Hensley said her actions cast doubt on her capacity to act impartially to persons appearing before her as a judge due to the persons sexual orientation.

Now, Hensley can appeal the sanction, start performing same-sex marriages or stop performing marriages altogether.

Hensley has argued that she is entitled to a religious exemption, but there is no law or legal precedent in Texas establishing such an exemption for a justice of the peace in this context.

This question varies by state, depending on whether the states Supreme Court has taken up a case and established a precedent.

Two legal opinions on the subject that have been issued by state agencies  a 2015 opinion from the attorney generals office and the Judicial Commission sanction  are nonbinding.

In a 2015 opinion filed after the U.S. Supreme Court case on same-sex marriage, Paxton supported peoples right to assert a religious exemption under the First Amendment, though he noted that fines and litigation were possible.

The recent Judicial Commission opinion punished Hensley for giving off the appearance of bias, seeming to indicate an exemption would not be possible.

But Douglas Laycock, a University of Texas law professor, said neither document is legally binding.

The basic answer is we dont know yet, Laycock said. This may well wind up in the courts.

Some states, such as North Carolina, have passed laws on this subject, but Texas has not.

The North Carolina law allows some officials, similar to a justice of the peace, to decline to administer any marriages if they have a sincerely held religious objection to same-sex marriage, but they may not be selective and only marry opposite-sex couples.

People in other government positions, like county clerks who issue marriage licenses, have less flexibility, as issuing marriage licenses can be part of their job description.

For more on the research and the conclusion, visit Politifact Texas, www.politifact.com/texas/


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As one of the world's most successful actresses, Scarlett Johansson has her pick of the top, and most expensive, skincare products available - but when it came to her complexion prep for this year's Golden Globes, the A-lister chose to use a brilliant budget find.

The 35-year-old screen star's skin glowed on the red carpet - no doubt thanks in part to the fact that she was putting on an incredibly romantic display with fiance Colin Jost - and her makeup artist has now revealed the $31 routine he used to prep her perfect complexion.

Beauty pro Frankie Boyd started off Scarlett's Golden Globes beauty regimen with three products from budget-friendly brand The Inkey List, kicking things off with the $7.99 Hyaluronic Acid serum.

Complexion perfection: Scarlett Johansson's makeup artist Frankie Boyd revealed he used three very budget-friendly skincare products to prep the star for the Golden Globes

Get that glow: First, Frankie used The Inkey List's $7.99 Hyaluronic Acid to plump and hydrate the 35-year-old Marriage Story star's skin

'Im obsessed with this Hyaluronic Acid which seamlessly melts into the skin,' Frankie said of the product, while revealing that he used the serum as the first step in Scarlett's post-cleanse regimen for the night.

Posting on his Instagram, Frankie once again praised The Inkey List's Hyaluronic Acid, saying: 'I like to use it as a serum. It's a little more on the liquid-y side - as you can see it looks like a gel.

Bargain! As well as the hyaluronic acid serum, Frankie also used the brand's $9.99 Caffeine Eye Cream, which he used both before and after applying eye makeup

'It totally evaporates into the skin and leaves it nice and plump.'

Hyaluronic acid is a much loved ingredient within the beauty industry thanks to its ability to hold up to 1,000x its own weight in water, which means that it works wonders as far as hydration and plumpness are concerned.

The Inkey List's Hyaluronic Acid is described by the brand as an 'ultimate hydrating must-have with two per cent hyaluornic acid to hydrate the skin, leaving it smoother and plumper'.

Frankie then continued Scarlett's skincare routine with The Inkey List's $9.99 Caffeine Eye Cream, 'a hydrating and lightweight under-eye cream that reduces puffiness and fine lines'.

However the beauty pro didn't just rely on the product pre-makeup - revealing on his Instagram that he actually used the eye cream on Scarlett after he had applied her eyeshadow in order to 'clean up' the look, working with a Q-tip for maximum accuracy.

Last but not least in his budget-friendly skincare line-up was The Inkey List Hemp, a moisturizer that is rich in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, which help to give the skin a serious boost of hydration, and a natural glow.

You glow girl: Hyaluronic acid can hold up to 1,000x its own weight in water, meaning that it works wonders as far as hydration and plumpness are concerned

Happy as can be: Scarlett's radiant glow may well have also been due to the very romantic display she was putting on with her fiance Colin Jost

In any areas where Frankie wanted more of a matte look, he simply patted the skin down with a tissue after the moisturizer had soaked in.

After finishing the skincare regimen, the beauty pro moved on to makeup - using products from Jill Stuart Beauty to create the Black Widow star's look for the night, while giving her body a radiant glow using products from Alleven.

'Im always on the quest to find the most natural body bronzer,' he said of the product on his Instagram account, before revealing that it was fellow makeup artist Sir John who recommended he try Alleven.

'I asked my longtime friend @SirJohn what he uses to get that glow and he turned me on to @AllEvenLondon. It give a very realistic bronze glow with a little coverage to blend out any imperfections.'

Meanwhile Scarlett's hair was coiffed to perfection by celebrity hairstylist Jenny Cho, who used tools from GHD and products from Sisley Paris to ensure the perfect low updo for the evening.

'Clean, healthy, shiny hair is the number one foundation for any style you do,' the hair pro said of the look, adding: 'I wanted Scarlett to look as fresh as a clear water.'

To achieve this, she used GHD's new Helios Professional Hairdryer and the GHD Paddle Brush to blow out Scarlett's blonde locks, before smoothing the hair down with the GHD Oval Dressing Brush.

Eager to ensure a smooth and sleek style all night, Jenny used a hair oil from Sisley Paris on Scarlett's ponytail before wrapping it up into the knotted updo that the star modeled on the carpet.

As for the Black Widow actress's nails, celebrity manicurist Emi Kudo was on-hand to ensure that Scarlett looked perfect from head to fingertip.

'For the Golden Globes this year, Scarlett was looking for a unique nail look with an "apricot sheer color,"' Emi revealed.

Party time! After the awards show, Scarlett changed out of her red Vera Wang gown and into a Monique Lhuillier mini dress before arriving at the Netflix after party

Romance: While she changed out of her ensemble, her glowing skin remained just as perfect throughout the evening

'To accent her gown, we went with a thin French manicure that is overlaid with a custom blend of two classic Essie polishes elevating the classic look with a modern shimmer.'

Those classic Essie polishes were Sugar Daddy and Blanc, which were applied on top of the brand's All in One Base Coat, and then followed up with the Gel-Setter Top Coat to ensure they lasted throughout the night and beyond.

All that pre-awards show prep clearly paid off because Scarlett's beauty look not only lasted through the ceremony, but also late into the night's after parties.

Before arriving at Netflix's post-Golden Globes soiree, Scarlett changed out of the strapless red Vera Wang gown that she modeled at the ceremony, swapping the elegant number for a flirty and fun feathered mini dress from Monique Lhuillier.

However, her glowing beauty look remained the same - as did her incredibly loved-up display with SNL host Colin, with the pair spending much of the evening attached to one another.

Scarlett was hoping to take home the gong for her film Marriage Story however she missed out to Renee Zellweger for her role as Judy Garland in 'Judy'.

Marriage Story earned six separate nods however only took home one award, Laura Dern's Supporting Actress win.

The Netflix romantic dramedy was nominated for Best Screenplay, Best Actress In A Supporting Role (for Laura Dern), Best Actress in a leading dramatic role (Johannson), Best Actor (Adam Driver), Best Original Score and last but not least, Best Motion Picture.

In addition to her critically acclaimed role in the Noah Baumbach feature, she appeared in Best Motion Picture  Musical or Comedy nominee Jojo Rabbit.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang hinted that Beijing plans to go ahead with the signing of the phase one deal with US. (Photo Credit: Representative Image)

Beijing:

China on Monday slammed what it called US "adventurism" which aggravated tensions in the Middle East and urged all parties to exercise restraint, saying Beijing was "highly concerned" over the worsening situation following the killing of a top Iranian general by America. While sharply critical of US actions including threats of sanctions against Iraq, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang, however, hinted that Beijing plans to go ahead with the signing of the phase one deal with US next week to end the ongoing trade war.

The killing of Maj Gen Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was the most dramatic escalation yet in spiralling tensions between Iran and the US.

"China is highly concerned about the situation in the Middle East," Geng said when asked about US and Iran tensions. "Worsening of the tensions in the Gulf region is the last thing anyone wants to see, power politics is unpopular and unsustainable. The US adventurism goes against the basic norms governing international relations and aggravates tensions and instability in the region," he said.

China opposes the use of force in international relations, he added. "Military means will lead nowhere and maximum pressure won't work either. We believe all sides should earnestly abide by the purposes and principles of the UN charter and basic norms governing international relations" he said. "

We urge the US not to abuse its force," Geng said as he called on the relevant parties to exercise restraint to prevent spiral of tensions and escalation.

He also hinted that China will go ahead with its phase one trade deal with the US expected to be signed on January 15 to end the trade war despite its strong stand on American actions against Iran. "China and the US reached phase one trade deal.

The two sides are in close communication to follow-up the matter," he said. US President Donald Trump had launched the trade war against China last year demanding Beijing to reduce massive trade deficit.

Trump is also demanding an intrusive verification mechanism to supervise Beijing's promise to protect intellectual property rights (IPR) technology transfer and more access to American goods to Chinese markets. Geng skirted direct reply to a question whether China plans to increase its military presence in the Gulf region in view of the tensions.

The air strike killing Iranian General Soleimani took place days after the trilateral joint naval exercises between China, Iran and Russia in the Gulf of Oman.

The exercises were held from December 27 to 30. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif visited Beijing and held talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi just ahead of the Friday US air strike. Geng also criticised Trump's threat to impose harsh sanctions on Iraq like it has seen "never before" if US troops are expelled from Baghdad.

"We oppose the wanton use of sanctions and threat of sanctions. We also oppose unilateral sanctions and so called long arm jurisdiction. Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity should be upheld," he said.

Iraqi lawmakers on Sunday approved a resolution asking the Iraqi government to end the agreement under which US sent troops more than four years ago to help fight ISIS. Geng defended Iran's plan to rollback its commitments on the nuclear deal. "We believe Iran is being forced to reduce its commitments due to certain external factors.

At the same time, it is exercising restraint and clearly stated its political will for effective implementation" of the nuclear deal, he said. "Now there is growing complexity in situation in the Middle East," he said, adding that the Iranian nuclear deal is facing severe challenges due to unilateral withdrawal by US' ignoring its international obligations which is the root cause of tensions in the Gulf region.

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Members belonging to Somalia's militant group Al-Shabaab attacked a military base used by American troops in the coastal Lamu region, Kenya on December 5. According to reports, extremists killed three Americans and wrecked numerous aircraft and military vehicles. A spokesperson of the Kenyan military, Colonel Paul Njuguna said that the members of Al-Shabaab attacked the base at dawn on December 5, adding that four of the attackers were killed.

Njuguna said that the militants attempted to enter Manda Air Strip during the wee hours of December 5 but their attempts were squashed, adding that a fire had broken out but was bought under control. In addition to this, Kenya's Inspector General of Police, Hilary Mutyambai, said that all the officers were on high alert after the attack on the military base.

This morning at around 5:30 am an attempt was made to breach security at Manda Air Strip. The attempted breach was successfully repulsed. Four terrorists bodies have so far been found. The airstrip is safe.https://t.co/CXoAWBgXC4  Kenya Defence Forces (@kdfinfo) January 5, 2020

In a statement, the chief of US Africa Command (Africom), General Stephen Townsend, offered condolences on everybody's behalf to the family and friends of the American citizens who lost their lives in the attack. The statement further added that two US Department of Defence personnel had also suffered injuries. However, the US military stated that the three people who died included a services employee and two civilian defence contractors. A member of the local government, Irungu Macharia, said that five people had been taken into custody near the military camp. Macharia further added that the detainees had also been subject to interrogation.

Read: US Military Strikes Iran Backed Paramilitary Group Kataib Hezbollah In Iraq, Syria

Read: US Military Forces Arrive At Kuwait Air Base

Al-Shabaab claim superiority

After the attack, Al-Shabaab released a statement in which they said that they had successfully attacked the military base, adding that they had control over a large part of the base. However, Africom said that the militant group had been lying in order to create false news. In its response, Al-Shabaab said that the fight had lasted for 10 hours, mocking the US military that it could not fend off an attack orchestrated by few men.

Militant group Al-Shabaab has regularly launched attacks across the border since the time Kenya sent its soldiers to Somalia in the year 2011. The Kenyan forces were a part of the African Union force that was tasked to protect the government that had backing by the International community, which the Jihadi fighters were trying to topple for a period of more than 10 years.

Read: Trump Says His Twitter Posts Serve As Notification To Congress About Iran

Read: Trump Threatens 'major Retaliation' If Iran Launches Attacks

(With inputs from agencies)
ISIS terrorists were spotted in Bengal as well: UP police sources

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Jan 06: The Uttar Pradesh police who sounded a high alert following the presence of two Islamic State terrorists say that the same persons had been spotted in West Bengal as well.

The terrorists were identified as Abdul Samad and Ilyas. A source in the UP police informed OneIndia that these terrorists are trying to cross over to Nepal. A massive manhunt has been launched for the two.

The source also said that the terrorists were also spotted at Siliguri in West Bengal. The alert is significant in the wake of the Intelligence Bureau reporting that a module of the Students Islamic Movement of India in Nepal had been fanning violence in the state during the protest around the newly amended citizenship law.

The honey-trap headache: The four exclusive modules in India that report to the ISI

The police have formed a crack team to track down these terrorists. Teams have been dispatched to Maharajganj, Kushinagar and Siddharthnagar to track down these elements.

NEWS AT NOON, JANUARY 6th, 2020

India and Nepal share a 1,751-km-long porous frontier, which has reportedly been used by Pakistani elements and terrorists in the past. A number of such operatives have been nabbed by Indian border guarding agencies.

To hit Kashmir and Punjab together ISI activates its K2 plan

Uttar Pradesh shares a 599.3-km-long open border with Nepal, touching seven districts - Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Kheri, Bahraich, Sravasti, Balrampur, Sidhharthnagar and Maharajganj.
In this image taken from video, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei openly weeps as he leads a prayer over the coffin of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike on Friday, at the Tehran University campus, in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. Read more

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  In a rare display of emotion from the typically reserved and measured supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cried openly Monday at the funeral of slain Gen. Qassem Soleimani, his most important military commander with whom he shared a deep bond.

Oh Allah, they are in need of your mercy, and you are exalted above punishing your servants, Khamenei said during a mass prayer as he stood over a flag-draped casket with the remains of Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq on Friday.

Khamenei's voice cracked under the weight of the moment during a funeral procession unlike any in Iran's recent history. Police said attendees numbered into the millions.

The funeral showcased the depth of the bond Khamenei had with the slain general and gave insight into how Soleimani's death is being felt personally by the supreme leader. It could also impact how Khamenei responds to the United States.

The U.S. killed Soleimani, other Revolutionary Guard members and a senior Iraqi militia leader in a stunning attack on their convoy, shortly after Soleimani had arrived at Baghdad's international airport. The killing, ordered by President Donald Trump, has dramatically heightened the risk of war as senior Iranian figures vow to strike U.S. military targets in response.

To many across the Middle East, Soleimani was a dangerous figure whose armed militias killed thousands of Sunni Muslims in Syria and threatened regional security. To the U.S., he was the man responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq and countless attacks on Iraqis fighting alongside American forces.

In Iran, Soleimani was a lionized figure who embodied Iran's lethal reach in the face of crushing U.S. pressure. He was a powerful commander in charge of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force, overseeing Iran's proxy militias abroad, ranging from Hezbollah in Lebanon to armed factions in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. In Iraq, that meant directing the country's mostly Shiite paramilitaries, including in the fight alongside the U.S. against Sunni extremists like the Islamic State group.

To Iran's supreme leader, Soleimani was a loyal aide who conferred with him often and cemented Tehrans footprint far beyond the countrys borders, helping to preserve and advance the principles of the 1979 revolution that brought Iran's Shiite leadership to power.

Their relationship was so close that Khamenei was photographed more than once embracing Soleimani in ways that are customary in Iran for fathers and their beloved sons.

In one such photograph from 2018, Khamenei, seated on an elevated platform, leans down and kisses Soleimani's forehead. In another image from 2017, Khamenei is seen kissing Soleimani's cheek during Ashoura, a religious day of mourning among Shiites.

Unlike other military commanders in the Revolutionary Guard Corps., the 62-year-old general answered only to the 80-year-old Khamenei.

So revered was he by Khamenei, that the supreme leader awarded the general Iran's highest military order in March. Iran's Tasnim News Agency reported that Soleimani is the only Iranian military official to receive the Order of Zulfaqar since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

When pinning the medal on Soleimani, the Iranian leader said he hoped God would reward the general and help him live a blissful life that ends with martyrdom.

Of course not any time soon, Khamenei said, adding the Islamic Republic needs him for years to come.

To Soleimani, Khamenei was a venerated spiritual figure whom he referred to as his dear and honorable leader. In 2015, Soleimani was quoted saying: I ask God to sacrifice my life for you.

So close were they that Iranian media is describing the slain general as Khameneis own Malik al-Ashtar, a reference to the most loyal companions of the first Shiite leader, Imam Ali.

And in death, Soleimani has received what no man before him has in modern Iran. His funeral processions have been spread over several days and cities, marking the first time Iran has ever honored a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such a processional with his death in 1989.

Khamenei vowed that the Quds Force's strategy would be unchanged and he quickly named a successor to Soleimani, but the slain general's standing and relationship with Khamenei is not as easy to replace.

That's in part because their relationship extended beyond the war room. Soleimani was also close with Khamenei's children and had been photographed kissing one of the sons on the forehead.

In a deeply personal and symbolically weighty gesture, Iran's supreme leader made a rare visit to Soleimani's home the day he was killed to offer condolences to his grieving widow and grown children.

Rather than calling him by his last name as is customary, Khamenei referred to him as Hajj Qassem  another indication of how close the two were.

That same day, Khamenei declared three days of mourning across the country and vowed harsh retaliation."

The loss of Soleimani is bitter," Khamenei said in statements carried on Twitter and in Iranian media Monday.

Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat contributed from Tehran, Iran.
US President Donald Trump threatened Iraq with massive sanctions on Sunday after the Iraqi parliament recommended the expulsion of US forces from the country, unless, he added, the US was compensated for an extraordinarily expensive air-base built there and operated by American military.

The American president also defended his earlier threat to attack Iranian cultural assets as reprisal for strikes from Iran carried out in retaliation against the killing of General Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian military commander, in a US drone strike outside the Baghdad international airport. Trump has come under severe criticism at home on that score.

We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base thats there, the president told reporters on his way back to Washington from holidays spent at his private resort in Miami, Florida. Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it.

If the Iraqis insisted and did not do it in a very friendly basis, the president said the sanctions on Iraq will be like theyve never seen before. We will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, Trump said.

The Trump administration snapped back sanctions on Iran early 2018 after unilaterally pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), more commonly called the Iran deal, that was in force before the agreement in 2015 and ratcheted it up several notches in a strategy to apply maximum pressure to force Tehran to give up its nuclear programme altogether and not just cap if for a period mandated by the pact, and also abandon its ballistic missiles programme and cease nefarious activities int he region. The US has put out a 12-condition demand for resuming talks with Iran.

Responding to questions about his tweet targeting Iranian cultural assets, the president said, Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural site?. It doesnt work that way.

Chances of the two sides resuming dialogue grew ever more remote over the weekend as an angry Iran suspended its commitments under the JCPOA. The Islamic Republic of Iran will end its final limitations in the nuclear deal, meaning the limitation in the number of centrifuge, it said in a statement. Therefore Irans nuclear program will have no limitations in production including enrichment capacity and percentage and number of enriched uranium and research and expansion.
A passenger bus skidded off the road and rolled down a precipice in Sri Lanka's Badulla district on Monday, killing 7 people and injuring 40, according to media reports.

The accident took place near the mountain town of Madulsima, about 250 kilometers from the capital Colombo, police said.

Seven passengers died and another 40 were injured in the accident, police said.

The injured have been rushed to Passara hospital, they said.

Road accidents are common in Sri Lanka, mainly due to reckless driving and poorly maintained roads.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday alleged that the "horrifying" violence unleashed on India's youth by goons was with the active abetment of the ruling Modi government and demanded an independent judicial inquiry into the violence in JNU.

In a statement, she accused the Modi government of seeking to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent and said Sunday's "bone chilling" attack on students and teachers in JNU was a grim reminder of that.

"The voice of India's youth and students is being muzzled everyday. The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on India's young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi government is deplorable and unacceptable," she charged.

Gandhi alleged that everyday campuses and colleges are raided across India, either by the police or lumpen elements with support of the BJP government.

"Yesterday's bone chilling attack on students and teachers in JNU, Delhi is a grim reminder of the extent the Govt will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent," she said.

The Congress president said students and youth need affordable education, a deserving job, a promising future and a right to participate in the thriving democracy. "Sadly, the Modi government seeks to suffocate and restrain each one of these aspirations," she charged.

"The entire Congress Party stands in solidarity with India's youth and students. We strongly deprecate the sponsored violence in JNU yesterday and demand an independent judicial inquiry," she said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Historically, after Super Tuesday in early March, a leader emerges from the primaries, allowing party money and machinery to consolidate around one person. This year, Democrat party insiders worry that Super Tuesday will end without any candidate holding a clear lead, leaving room for Mike Bloomberg to buy his way into the election:

Democrats are now beginning to confront a very real scenario where the nomination  and the winnowing  will not be decided in states where campaigns have been plowing ground for more than a year, but in places and calendar dates so deep into primary season that until recently they've received almost no attention at all. The Iowa field is bunched together with little daylight between a handful of well-funded candidates. Each of the four early voting states continues to present the prospect of a different winner. And, at the end of that gauntlet on Super Tuesday, a free-spending billionaire  Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor  is waiting to challenge whichever candidate or candidates emerge. [snip] Looking at the possibility of a still-contested nomination even after Super Tuesday's massive delegate allocation on March 3, Washington state Democratic Party chair Tina Podlodowski said mid-March will "probably matter more than ever before." One strategist working with a presidential candidate said, "We've never had a situation where we get past Super Tuesday and there's still five people in the field," predicting that possibility this year. "We're in bizarro world here," the strategist said.

Currently, each of the remaining candidates who has a chance appeals to and offends different core Democrat demographics:

The elderly, white Bernie Sanders, an open socialist, has the greatest appeal to young voters marinated in leftism throughout their school years. To them, Bernie's authentic. The vestiges of centrist Democrat voters remaining in the party find his socialism unappealing.

The elderly, white Elizabeth Warren, an anti-capitalist populist who is socialist but won't admit it, appeals to feminists and wonks. Her endless self-serving lies; scolding tone; and complicated, unworkable policies offend a lot of the base.

The elderly, white Joe Biden, who's desperately trying to hang onto Obama's coattails, even as Obama keeps tugging them out of his gasp, holds a nostalgic Obama-era appeal to black voters. Nevertheless, he's showing his flop sweat when he tries to get to the left of Bernie, his corruption is catching up with him, and he's getting (there are no other words for it) weird and confused.

The young white Pete Buttigieg is appealing because... Well, we don't know why. Aside from positioning himself as the gay Obama, he's inexperienced and has a mediocre track record as mayor. He's the equivalent of a class valedictorian announcing he's running for president. While his military service may appeal to the Heartland, most party faithful, especially the young, are not impressed.

The middle-aged white Amy Klobuchar has tried to position herself as a sensible mother figure, which mostly means she tries to broker other people's opinions at debates, which looks weak. It doesn't help that behind that motherly persona, she has a reputation for being an unpleasant diva.

And finally, the young, Asian Andrew Yang hangs in there by virtue of looking sane and cracking sometimes amusing race-based jokes about Asians. His sudden fundraising surge in December took him from has-been back to maybe. Like Buttigieg, he's another high school valedictorian aiming high.

Despite their flaws, each of the above candidates is bringing in enough money to stay in the race. That's a problem because, when a Democrat presidential candidate finally emerges, lots of voters will already have dug deep during the primaries and be unable, or unwilling, to cough up more money.

Meanwhile, hardcore Progressives find dismaying the leading candidates' whiteness. Cory Booker is still out there campaigning for an offer to be vice president, but one can't ignore that candidates of color have not fared well with likely or registered Democrat voters. Party faithful castigate Americans generally and Donald Trump specifically for this offense to identity politics, conveniently overlooking the fact that it's their own base giving the cold shoulder to minority candidates.

And all the while, per Politico, Bloomberg is waiting in the wings:

In addition to flooding the airwaves with television ads, Bloomberg has already put more than 200 staffers on the ground in states that vote in March and April. He traveled recently to Ohio and Michigan, where he has hired senior state-level staff and plans to open 9 offices and 12 offices, respectively. His campaign told POLITICO he plans to open five offices in Missouri, 17 in Florida and 12 in Illinois. "Before Bloomberg got in, I said whoever wins South Carolina on February 29 will be the nominee because of the momentum factor" coming out of the first four primary states, said Bob Mulholland, a Democratic National Committee member from California. "Bloomberg kind of puts a pause on that."

Even if Bloomberg manages to buy himself a candidacy, it's hard to imagine Americans being enthusiastic. It's noteworthy that Donald Trump, a billionaire (although not nearly as rich as Bloomberg), ran one of the most cost-efficient campaigns in recent American history, barely digging into his own pocket. Trump won because he spoke to the American people, not because he bought the American people.

Our prediction is that the Democrats will end up with a brokered convention  and no good options. They'll be stuck with an old socialist, a shrill socialist, a senile socialist wannabe, a socialist child, and a free-spending socialist/capitalist fusion with a tin ear. Buy popcorn, because this should be fun.
The Linh Dam Complex in Hanoi fails to follow the original blueprint and approved planning by the authorities. (Photo: VNA)

The Ministry of Construction (MoC) and Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE) have set up inspection teams to review the issue and put forward solutions.

In Hanoi, there are many apartment building projects that violate their original plans and design, so house buyers could not be granted certificates of land use rights and home-ownership, reported the Hanoi Moi (New Hanoi) newspaper.

Le Phong Hoan, the owner of an apartment in Ha Dong district, is one example.

When refused a certificate of land use rights and ownership for the apartment, Hoan knew his apartment building was on the list of projects which violated their approved planning.

I bought the apartment in 2013, and was provided all related papers by the investor, Hoan told the paper.

But when I submitted an application for land use rights and ownership, I was told that the authority had no documents relating to the project. Therefore, I could not be granted the certificate, said Hoan.

Hoans building is part of the Bemes apartments and shopping centre, which was due to comprise two buildings. But the investor built Hoans building  the third  without permission. This means many buyers were sold unlicensed apartments.

Similarly, the Linh Dam apartment buildings in Hoang Mai district were originally designed to have 12 blocks of 27 floors each, but the investor built 36 or 40 floors without permission.

Additionally, many investors have mortgaged the buildings to get loans for other projects, meaning buyers are unable to complete land use procedures or get ownership certificates.

The lack of certificates means apartment buyers cannot mortgage their property or use it as collateral for bank loans or complete inheritance procedures.

Many people had to sell their apartments below their real value because they did not have the proper certificates.

To implement the instructions from the Hanoi Peoples Committee, the citys Natural Resources and Environment Department has set up two inspection teams to review apartment building projects which lack certificates of land use rights and house ownership.

According to the department, as of November 2019, there were 135 projects which had violated regulations, including changing approved designs or transferring the buildings to other investors without permission.

The projects comprise a total of 62,200 apartments, of which 33,204 have received certificates, while the other 29,071 lacked necessary documents.

Tran Anh Dung, director of Hanoi Land Registration Office, said that people have lived in the buildings for years.

They asked many times to be granted the certificates but failed, said Dung.

In fact, the municipal Party Committee has asked relevant agencies to deal with the issue.

However, the current legal system on investment, construction and land still has many inconsistencies, the director said.

The MoC and MoNRE have suggested measures to deal with the issue after a working session with the municipal authority.

The certificates will be granted to those who have paid all money to the investors, even though the investors have not yet fulfilled their financial obligations to the State.

For projects with violations of approved designs and planning, the certificates will be considered for those who bought apartments in approved areas.
Ghanas Finance Ministry is targeting to raise $3 billion in funding from its diaspora, through African Sankofa Account to fund economic development in the West African nation.

The government will structure the investment vehicle to offer better rates to depositors, Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta said.

He said the initiative was dictated by governments quest to ensure that the Diaspora bring tangible benefits to the economy while offering them an opportunity to make good returns on their investments.

In 2017, the country realized about $1.6 billion from remittances; it increased to $2.5 billion in 2018 and there are projections it would cross $3 billion in 2019, after securing about 2.5 billion dollars in the first quarter of the year, he said.

Mr Ofori Atta explained that although many people in the diaspora had the desire to invest in the economy, the challenge over the years had been how to identify the right products that did not conflict with the countrys securities rules.

Through the new initiative, the government is seeking to encourage the full participation of the diaspora in the countrys economic development.

Ghana is gradually building industrial capacity. Growth in industry was projected at 9.8% in 2019 and 5.9% in 2020.
File photo of former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn (Photo: AFP/Ludovic Marin)

The 65-year-old executive skipped bail nearly a week ago, fleeing Japan where he was awaiting trial on multiple counts of financial misconduct that he denies.

The details of his escape remain spotty, with Japan saying it is still investigating how he slipped past strict security measures imposed as part of his bail conditions.

Citing people involved in the investigation, Nippon Television Network (NTV) said Monday that Ghosn boarded a "shinkansen" bullet train from Tokyo's Shinagawa station on Dec 29.

He got off at a station in western Osaka, arriving around 7:30pm and taking a taxi to a hotel near Kansai Airport, NTV said.

He is thought to have taken a private jet the same day from the airport, bound for Istanbul, where he switched planes and continued to Beirut.

Last week, local media reported Ghosn was caught on security camera leaving his Tokyo home by himself around noon on Dec 29.

But the exact circumstances of his departure from Japan are still shrouded in mystery.

The justice ministry said it did not have records of Ghosn departing Japan.

"It is believed that he used some wrongful methods to illegally leave the country," Justice Minister Masako Mori said at a press conference on Monday.

"I have instructed the immigration agency to further tighten the departure process," she added.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Ghosn was loaded onto the flight from Osaka in a large case for audio equipment, which was later found at the back of the cabin.

The newspaper cited unnamed sources close to the investigation in Turkey as saying that holes had been drilled into the bottom of the container to ensure the businessman could breathe.

Japan's transport ministry told AFP that luggage checks are not mandatory for private jets.

"Operators of private jets decide if luggage checks are necessary or not while airline operators are obliged to conduct security checks under Japan's aviation law," a ministry official told AFP.

"The security checks are carried out to prevent danger such as bombs, and to prevent hijacks," he said, adding such risks are considered less likely for private jets.

Ghosn, who has French, Brazilian and Lebanese nationalities, was able to enter Lebanon on a French passport, according to airport documents seen by AFP.

A court in Tokyo had allowed Ghosn to keep a second French passport as he needed one to travel inside Japan, a source close to the matter has told AFP.

Japan has launched a probe into the humiliating security lapse and prosecutors said they would "coordinate with the relevant agencies to swiftly and appropriately investigate the matter."

Ghosn has vowed to give his own account at a hotly awaited press conference in Beirut this week.
The Dutch GP is being set up to survive without Max Verstappen, according to Zandvoort circuit boss Robert van Overdijk.

Extensive renovations at Zandvoort are currently taking place to prepare for Holland's 2020 return to the Formula 1 calendar, including novel banked corners.

"We are setting up the ultimate racing festival which can compete with anything else," van Overdijk told De Telegraaf newspaper.

"We want it to have a reputation so strong that it can continue even if Max Verstappen is no longer racing. What we are doing will put Zandvoort on the map for the next ten years," he added.

(GMM)
B oris Johnson has given HS2 the go-ahead despite criticism over its cost and impact on the environment.

The cost of HS2 came under fire after a Government-commissioned review found the project could end up costing up to 106 billion.

HS2 was allocated 56 billion in 2015, with phase one planned to launch in 2026, although the recent report said it could be pushed back until 2031.

The Prime Minister said on Tuesday that to avoid further blow outs in HS2s cost or schedule, a series of measures will be taken to restore discipline to the programme.

This will include appointing a minister whose full-time job will be to oversee the project, and changes to the way HS2 is managed.

Boris Johnson Gives HS2 The Green Light

Addressing the House of Commons, Mr Johnson said his Government had the guts to take the decision to deliver prosperity across the country.

In his response to the Oakervee Review conducted by former HS2 chairman Douglas Oakervee, Mr Johnson said it "leaves no doubt of the clinching case for high-speed rail".

However, there has been considerable backlash from environmentalists who say HS2 will "push nature to the brink".

Installation of the high-speed railway system will lead to the loss or damage of up to 108 ancient woodlands in England, including five internationally protected wildlife sites and put protected creatures such as white-clawed crayfish, the willow tit and the dingy skipper butterfly under threat of local extinction.

The Woodland Trust charity said the scheme would shoot a poisoned arrow through the heart of our ancient woods and their wildlife and become a permanent reminder of backward environmental thinking.

Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester said he would call for a timetable for work in the north, which has not yet been released.

Mr Johnson followed his comments on HS2 by adding there is "no immediate prospect" of construction beginning on a third runway at Heathrow.

The Standard takes a look at how much has been spent on the project so far and what the proposed route is:

What is the proposed HS2 route?

HS2 proposed route / PA Graphics

High Speed 1 was the 68-mile railway line from London St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel in Folkestone in Ken which opened 2008.

High Speed 2 is the second, more ambitious project, constituting 345 miles of new tracks.

It was announced in 2009 by Labour's last Transport Secretary Lord Adonis and has been supported by successive governments ever since.

Phase one of HS2 is planned to run between London and Birmingham, with phase 2 to run in a Y-shaped route, one from Birmingham to Leeds and the other route from Birmingham to Manchester.

The initial plan was for the lines to carry 400m-long (1,300ft) trains of up to 250mph, with each train having as many as 1,100 seats, potentially trebling passenger numbers between the cities.

Boris Johnson has announced the government is pressing ahead with HS2 / AFP via Getty Images

The line, linking London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds on one route, is said to slash journey times by half.

Phase one of the route will start at London Euston before running through the north west of the capital.

It will then cut through rural areas of the UK, such as Buckinghamshire and parts of the Midlands, before ending up in Birmingham.

Mr Johnson said the Government will seek to identify where cost savings can be made in Phase 1 without carrying out a detailed redesign.

Before designs for Phase 2b are finalised and legislation is introduced, the Government will introduce an integrated plan for rail in the North, he told MPs.

He added: It will, in line with the findings of the Oakervee Review, look at how we can best design and integrate rail investments across the North including Northern Powerhouse Rail between Leeds and Manchester.

How much has been spent on HS2 so far?

Billions of pounds have already been spent on the project since it was first launched.

The price tag set out in the 2015 budget came in at just under 56bn. However, the government has estimated the project's cost will double, with the latest figure rising to 106bn.

The 106bn figure comes from a review of the project leaked in January.

Corbyn attacks Government over HS2 costs

Lord Berkeley however, said independent analysis arrives at a figure of at least 107.92 billion. During the election last year, Boris Johnson said he expected the figure to rise above 100bn.

According to the Guardian, by September last year around 7.5bn had already been spent on the project thanks to preparatory work in London and Birmingham, which included demolitions and buying properties along the route.

Mr Oakervee's review recommended that work on phase 2b of HS2 from the West Midlands to Manchester and Leeds should be paused for six months to investigate if it could be a mix of conventional and high-speed lines, according to the Financial Times, which has seen a copy of the paper.

The review concluded that the Government should "on balance" continue with the 250mph railway, which would initially go from London's Euston station to Birmingham and then to Leeds and Manchester by 2040, but that this is subject to "a number of qualifications".

When is HS2 expected to launch?

An artist's impression of a HS2 train on the Birmingham and Fazeley viaduct / Press Association Images

The railway was always due to open in stages, with phase one initially expected to launch in 2026 and the final section from Crewe to Manchester and Birmingham to Leeds completed by 2033.

However, a report by HS2 Ltd chairman Allan Cook said the original plans "did not take sufficient account" of the effect of building a high-speed line through areas that are densely populated and with challenging ground conditions.

In 2016, the National Audit Office reported the planned opening date was at risk because the company in charge had missed one third of its own planning and development milestones.
Govt extends Rs30,000-cr line of credit to BSNL ahead of 4G rollout

The government has extended a Rs30,000 crore line of comfort for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL). This is over and above the Rs70,000-crore revival package announced for BSNL and MTNL.

The revival package was to fund a Rs29,937 crore voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) for employees above 50 years of age, which is the biggest chunk of the revival package, pay up working capital credit and acquire 4G spectrum, which it has been lacking so far.

The VRS package comprises Rs17,169 crore ex-gratia amount and Rs12,768 crore towards pension, gratuity and commutation. Of the 1 lakh eligible employees for VRS, 78,560 have opted for the scheme. By the end of 31 January all these employees will be provided a retirement package.

The government believes that by reducing the huge workforce of the firm, 1.65 lakh employees of BSNL for instance, which eats up 77 per cent of its revenues in payment of salaries, the companies can become competitive and profitable over a period of time.

Apart from VRS, the government will be providing Rs 23,814 crore towards administrative allocation of 4G spectrum to these firms. The two firms will also raise long-term bonds of Rs15,000 crore for which sovereign guarantee will be provided by the government. With this amount the two firms will restructure their existing debt and also partly meet their capex, opex, and other requirements. The government also said the two PSUs would monetise their assets like land etc worth Rs38,000 crore over a period of four years.

BSNL needs to pay its vendors dues that add up to more than Rs10,000 crore. It owes more than Rs2,000 crore to network provider Nokia alone.

BSNL has sought a loan of Rs4,000 crore to Rs5,000 crore from State Bank of India (SBI) to meet its immediate capex requirements.

BSNL has so far secured loans of around Rs20,000 crore and plans to raise another Rs10,000 crore in the near future.

Meanwhile, the state-owned telecom firm has submitted details of 14 properties worth Rs20,160 crore to the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) as part of an asset monetisation plan.

Reports citing BSNL Chairman and Managing Director P K Purwar said the 14 assets identified for monetisation are spread across India in locations like Mumbai, Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai, Ghaziabad and other places.

The revival package also includes merging both BSNL and MTNL - the two loss-making firms - monetising their assets and giving VRS to employees so that the combined entity turns profitable in two years.
'Our soldiers' duty there is coordination. They will develop the operation centre there. Our soldiers are gradually going right now,' Erdogan told CNN Turk during an interview

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced his troops had begun deploying to Libya to defend the UN-backed government.

'Our soldiers' duty there is coordination. They will develop the operation centre there. Our soldiers are gradually going right now,' he told CNN Turk during an interview on Sunday.

The Turkish parliament passed a bill allowing the government to send troops to Libya aimed at shoring up the UN-recognised government in Tripoli.

The Tripoli government has come under sustained attack since military strongman general Khalifa Haftar launched his offensive in April.

Haftar is backed by Turkey's regional rivals, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, while the UN-backed government has the support of Ankara and its ally Qatar.

Erdogan said Turkey's objective was 'not to fight', but 'to support the legitimate government and avoid a humanitarian tragedy'.

A woman brandishing a rifle takes part in a demonstration held by Libyans and Syrians in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi to protest against Turkey's prospective military intervention in support of the UN-recognised Tripoli-based government on Monday

He added that Turkey would not be deploying its own combat forces.

'Right now, we will have different units serving as a combatant force,' he said, without giving details on who the fighters would be and where they would come from.

Senior Turkish military personnel would coordinate the 'fighting force', Erdogan explained, sharing their experience and information to support Tripoli.

Turkey's move comes after the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord made a formal request for military support.

Libya and Turkey signed security and maritime agreements in November last year, angering Mediterranean countries including Greece and Cyprus who also seek to exploit energy resources in the region.

Demonstrators raise a picture of Syrian President Basha al-Assad as they take part in a demonstration held by Libyans and Syrians in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi - the east of the country is controlled by Haftar

The Tripoli-based government of Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj has faced an offensive by the rival regime in the east and forces loyal to commander Haftar.

The fighting has threatened to plunge Libya into violent chaos rivalling the 2011 conflict that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Ankara supports Sarraj's government along with Italy and Qatar.

The eastern government is supported by France, Russia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and other key Arab countries.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday defended President Trumps order to launch a drone strike that killed Irans Gen. Qassem Soleimani, escalating tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Pompeo, who appeared on all the top Sunday morning network and cable news shows, maintained that the worlds a safer place after the airstrike near Baghdads airport killed Soleimani and several associates. The White House said Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.

Amid reports casting doubt on the intelligence of an imminent Iranian attack on American targets, Pompeo maintained there was sufficient evidence that Soleimani, who as commander of Irans Quds Force has been responsible for hundreds of American deaths in Iraq, was planning further attacks. He did not cite a specific target or date.

The American people have the evidence right in front of their eyes, he told CNNs State of the Union host Jake Tapper. We don't have to guess about what Soleimani was up to. We know what he did on Dec. 27. He killed an American. And we know what he's done for years and years and years, killed hundreds of Americans.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

There's no need to guess about what Soleimani would have been up to the day after, and the day after, and the day after, he continued. We saw that he was plotting further plans to take down Americans, and in some cases many Americans. We took the right action to defend and protect America.

When asked exactly how imminent the attacks were, Pompeo dodged the question.

Are we talking about days? Are we talking about weeks? Tapper asked.

If you're an American in the region, days and weeks, this is not something thats relevant, Pompeo responded, adding, You have to prepare. You have to be ready.

If the Iranian leadership makes a bad decision  we hope that they wont  but when they do, America will respond.

Pompeo said he was proud of Trumps order and the execution of the drone strike.

Story continues

Its very clear the worlds a safer place today. Qassem Soleimani no longer walks the planet, he told George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program This Week, adding that Trump made the right decision to stop Qassem Soleimani.

We would have been culpably negligent had we not taken this strike, he said.

Trump on Friday said he gave the order to stop a war, not start one.

As Iran vowed severe revenge for Soleimanis killing, the State Department instructed Americans to leave Iraq as well as Pakistan and Iran. The Pentagon on Friday announced it was deploying 3,500 additional U.S. troops to the Middle East to help protect American assets.

Trump on Saturday tweeted a warning that Iran will be hit very fast and very hard if it attacks in retaliation to Soleimanis killing.

Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats! Trump said.

Pompeo dismissed arguments that Trumps threat to attack targets of cultural importance would constitute a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which define the destruction of cultural objects and places of worship as war crimes. He maintained that the U.S. would react lawfully in the event of an attack on American assets.

Ive seen what we are planning in terms of the target set. Im sure the Department of Defense is continuing to develop options, Pompeo said. The American people should know that every target that we strike will be a lawful target, and it will be a target designed with a singular mission, of protecting and defending America.

A leading Iranian military adviser, Hossein Dehghan, told CNN said the country's response to the killing of Soleimani will be a military response.

"It was America that has started the war. Therefore, they should accept appropriate reactions to their actions, Dehghan said. The only thing that can end this period of war is for the Americans to receive a blow that is equal to the blow they have inflicted. Afterward, they should not seek a new cycle."

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:
BERLIN (Reuters) - Amazon.com is considering opening stores in Germany, its second biggest market after the United States, the ecommerce company's head in the country was quoted as saying on Saturday. 'The fact is that we know that customers shop offline and that they like variety,' German newspaper Welt am Sonntag quoted Ralf Kleber as saying in an interview, adding that he declined to give concrete details or a timetable. Amazon already operates stores in the United States and Britain, including the Whole Foods grocery chain and checkout-free Amazon Go food stores.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Amazon.com is considering opening stores in Germany, its second biggest market after the United States, the ecommerce company's head in the country was quoted as saying on Saturday.

"The fact is that we know that customers shop offline and that they like variety," German newspaper Welt am Sonntag quoted Ralf Kleber as saying in an interview, adding that he declined to give concrete details or a timetable.

Amazon already operates stores in the United States and Britain, including the Whole Foods grocery chain and checkout-free Amazon Go food stores.

Kleber also told the newspaper that Amazon wants to push shopping via its Alexa voice-controlled devices, noting that it was selling its Echo Dot device at a low price to encourage widespread adoption.

(Reporting by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Gareth Jones)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Christian leader in Iraq worries volcano about to erupt after killing of Iranian general

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Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Baghdad Louis Raphael Sako called on Christians and Muslims in Iraq to pray for their leaders Monday as rumors of war run rampant after a U.S. military strike killed Irans top security and intelligence commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

In his homily, Sako described the situation in Iraq and the Middle East as a volcano about to erupt as he called on people around the world to pray and push to avoid further escalation of the ongoing tensions surrounding the situation, noting that innocent people will be the fuel for such fire.

Soleimani, who was responsible for the killing of 608 American soldiers in Iraq, arming Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, was killed Friday along with several officials from Iraqi militias backed by Tehran in a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport that was authorized by President Donald Trump. An American MQ-9 Reaper drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the airport.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as well as other leaders have since pledged revenge and remained committed to that narrative Monday as millions gathered in Tehran to mourn Soleimani in a funeral procession.

God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger, said Esmail Ghaani, the Iranian general who will succeed Soleimani as head of the Quds Force, the foreign expeditionary arm of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, The New York Times reported.

Certainly actions will be taken, Ghaani added.

In an earlier statement Friday, Sako said many Iraqis were fearful of war after Soleimanis death.

Iraqis are still in shock of what happened last week. They have fears of having Iraq turned to a battleground, rather than being a sovereignty homeland, capable of protecting its citizens and wealth, Sako said.

In such critical and tense circumstances, it is wise to hold a round table meeting for all the parties concerned to have a reasonable and civilized dialogue that spares Iraq the unexpected consequences. We implore the Almighty God to grant Iraq and the region a peaceful, stable, secure and normal life that we are longing for.

A source identified only as Ali with Global Catalytic Ministries told Mission Network News that Christians in Iraq and the Middle East, in general, could face dire consequences as tensions escalate.

Iran, and many Middle Eastern countries look at Christianity as a Western influence, and especially as a U.S. influence. So, whenever they want to  make a statement to Western culture, they always arrest Christians or do worse things  beat them, torture them, kill them, Ali said.

At Soleimanis funeral Monday, his daughter, Zeinab Soleimani, said in a eulogy that the United States and Israel faced a dark day, The New York Times reported.

You crazy Trump, the symbol of ignorance, the slave of Zionists, dont think that the killing of my father will finish everything, she said.

Lawmakers in Iraq voted 170-0 Sunday in favor of expelling United States troops from their country and the government is now considering new parameters for the American military there as they make arrangements for their departure.

American troops will be limited to training and advising Iraqi forces, but will not be allowed to move off their bases or to fly in Iraqi airspace while plans are being made for their departure, Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, the military spokesman for Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, told the Times.
Storms to slam the West before moving across the country originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

A series of storms will impact the Pacific Northwest through the week with heavy rain that could lead to flooding and mudslides.

This morning we already have 8 states under snow, wind and flood alerts.

PHOTO: This morning we already have 8 states under snow, wind and flood alerts. (ABC News)

Today, very heavy rain will continue for Washington and Oregon with flooding and some mudslides possible. Also, heavy snow in the Cascades and into the northern Rockies will make driving difficult on I-90 and I-84.

By Tuesday into Tuesday night, an even stronger storm will move into the West Coast spreading rain all the way down to northern California with heavy snow from Sierra Nevada to the Cascades.

PHOTO: By Tuesday into Tuesday night, even stronger storms will move into the West Coast spreading rain all the way down to northern California with heavy snow from Sierra Nevada to the Cascades. (ABC News)

By Thursday afternoon and evening, the western storm will reach the Heartland with heavy rain from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes.

This heavy rain will continue into Friday with some locations getting up to a half a foot with flooding being a big threat.

Along the Gulf Coast we could see a severe weather outbreak with damaging winds and even a few tornadoes by the end of the week on Friday.

Take a look how much rain can fall in the West, some areas in Washington and northern Oregon could see near a half a foot.

In the mountains, up to 3 feet of snow could fall and avalanche danger could be a big threat by the end of the week.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 20:27:15|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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CAIRO, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Secretary General of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit strongly denounced on Monday an airstrike on the military academy in Libya's capital Tripoli.

"Targeting of residential areas, civil and medical facilities and infrastructures is utterly rejected and condemned under any circumstances," Abul Gheit said in a statement.

He warned that such actions will harm all real chances for a political solution for the conflict-torn country.

Abul Gheit urged the Libyan warring parties to refrain from further escalations and return to the negotiating table.

He reiterated the pan-Arab body's full solidarity with the Libyan people in support of any efforts to restore security and stability.

The airstrike that happened on Saturday killed 30 students and injured 33 others, according to Libya's UN-backed government.

The UN-backed government accused the east-based army of carrying out the airstrike.

The east-based army has been leading a military campaign in and around Tripoli, attempting to take over the city and topple the UN-backed government.

Libya has been suffering escalating violence and political instability ever since the fall of the late leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Just minutes into an interview at Government House, Lt.-Gov. Janice Filmon wants to know: Are we having fun yet?

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 6/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Just minutes into an interview at Government House, Lt.-Gov. Janice Filmon wants to know: "Are we having fun yet?"

Seconds later, her husband Gary, a former Tory premier, comes into the sitting room to kiss her goodbye. He accidentally trips over a photographers equipment on the floor and catches himself flying across the room, looking like Bobby Orr scoring an overtime winner in 1970.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Lt.-Gov. Janice Filmon was appointed to her position in 2015 by Stephen Harper.

The assembled quartet  Filmon, one of her assistants and two Free Press staffers  cant help but laugh, as does the former premier.

So yes, we are having fun.

Janice Filmon knows, perhaps better than anyone in the province, how to put others at ease. Her way with people is partly why former prime minister Stephen Harper appointed her Manitobas lieutenant-governor in June 2015.

"Janice Filmon is a strong leader who has been extensively involved in her community for decades," Harper said about the appointment. "As a champion of health care and education, she has been an exemplary volunteer who has helped a wide range of Manitobans through her tireless efforts."

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Filmon wants to write a book and be a significant figure in the lives of her nine grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Filmon is the former chair of the board of directors of the CancerCare Manitoba Foundation, and she is the founding chair of the Nellie McClung Foundation. Those are just two of her many community pursuits.

Filmon, a former social worker with the Childrens Aid Society, has received the Order of Manitoba and Order of Canada.

A lieutenant-governors first term can be no more than five years and Filmon is rounding that corner in the next six months.

Shes uncertain whether she will be reappointed and doesnt want to talk about it for the record. The Prime Ministers Office also wouldnt comment on whether shell be appointed to a second term.

Filmon does want to talk about her bucket-list for the next six months, regardless of whether they are her last as the Queens representative in Manitoba.

Not among the bucket list items is viewing The Crown on Netflix, by the way. Filmon said shed like to see the show, but rarely watches television, unless it involves sports. She also made a point during her husbands political career to not read the news, but she makes exceptions nowadays. She prefers books and currently has about six on the go, including a daily meditations book, and Jean Teillets The North-West Is Our Mother.

But back to the bucket-list.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The lieutenant-governor has made a point of hosting public events at Government House.

The lieutenant-governor has made a point of hosting public events at Government House. She invites Manitobans to wander in, usually for her Conversations and Celebrations series of talks with distinguished guests, including Teillet, who discussed the history of the Metis Nation, and Keith Macpherson, who will be there Tuesday to discuss mindfulness. She plans to host more events, which have always sold out.

But Filmon, 76, has had to pare back her busy schedule in recent months after undergoing surgery for breast cancer Sept. 30.

Thirty years after her last round of cancer treatment, she was under the scalpel again.

"I, at the time, didnt know that I had a problem. I was feeling good. And thats the thing about cancer: it can be cultured in a perfectly healthy body, right? One minute youre fine and then, a week later you go to the doctor and they tell you something," she said.

"Thats the thing about cancer: it can be cultured in a perfectly healthy body, right? One minute youre fine and then, a week later you go to the doctor and they tell you something."

Filmon said shes doing well now and pacing herself. Doctors said it would take two to three months for her to start feeling like herself again and get her energy back.

On Dec. 5, she made her first public appearance since the surgery, granting royal assent to Bill 7, the Employment Standards Code Amendment Act.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Filmon is uncertain whether she will be reappointed and doesnt want to talk about it for the record. The Prime Ministers Office also wouldnt comment on whether shell be appointed to a second term.

The bill gives employment leave to victims of interpersonal violence, whether or not they know the perpetrator. Previous legislation only granted such leaves to victims of domestic violence.

Filmon said she recognized how significant the bill was when she made her first visit back to the legislative chamber.

"So I was aware of that for sure, and equally aware when people stood up and clapped," she said of MLAs in the legislature.

"That will be one of the memories in my memory bank that was quite extraordinary, forever. Because that was about the humanity. That wasnt about bills or about anything else  that was about a person to a person."

"I cant tell you how Im just so lucky. I have to be the luckiest person... And if I get another 30 years out of this cancer operation, Ill have been really lucky."

When she was installed in 2015, there was a less-than-full turnout among members, some of whom were in their constituencies for community events. A small number of Tory members were absent, while more than half the NDP government caucus was away.

Filmon instinctively shuts down any question about having won them over; she doesnt want to comment on politics. But she appears to have charmed many Manitobans, including strangers, who sent flowers and gifts while she was recovering from surgery.

"I have had incredible, and I dont know  I want a better word than that... leave it at incredible and I might be able to come back to it  support, encouragement, love," she said.

"And honestly, to think in 2019, now 2020, that you can be in some kind of public office and feel loved? I mean, honestly, its quite remarkable."

The lieutenant-governor said shes done a lot of reflecting recently, not to mention brainstorming about "little mini explosions" of monthly events she can host at Government House this year, which is Manitobas 150th anniversary.

Those will include a conference with Gov. Gen. Julie Payette and all her provincial and territorial representatives in Winnipeg from June 22-24.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Otherwise, her bucket-list is full of more personal tasks. She wants to write a book and be a significant figure in the lives of her nine grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. And she wants to take good care of herself physically.

"I cant tell you how Im just so lucky. I have to be the luckiest person," Filmon said of her life so far.

"And if I get another 30 years out of this cancer operation, Ill have been really lucky."

 with files from Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press

jessica.botelho@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @_jessbu




Haiti - Chile : The Chilean opposition wants to know what happened to the rapes in Haiti





As part of the extension of the presence of Chilean troops in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Vice President of the Chilean Senate, Senator Alfonso de Urresti of the Socialist Party (Main Opposition Party, 13.3%), noted the absence of representative of the Ministry of Defense and considered on the other hand inadmissible that the Government of Sebastian Pinera does not report of allegations against peacekeepers, for rape of women, girls and minors, during their mission in Haiti.



Very offensive, he asked that the absence of a report on the cases reported in Haiti be declared, stating "11 year old girls have been abused, these are international crimes and I ask that this be taken into account during the vote. This is not an official matter, it is a repeated attitude of the members of the Chilean mission in Haiti with minors and women [...] We cannot have rapists representing the State of Chile in Peace Missions !"



Adding in the same tone "[...] even if it was a single Chilean soldier who raped or ill-treated a minor in the Mission in Haiti, this requires a sanction and we cannot let him go. That is why I consider it irresponsible to vote in favor of the agreement to extend the permanence of the troops in Bosnia and Herzegovina in this context."



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-29615-haiti-flash-the-uruguayan-minister-of-defense-minimizes-the-sexual-abuse-of-his-soldiers-in-haiti.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-14173-haiti-flash-un-peacekeepers-towards-a-new-scandal.html



SL/ HaitiLibre


















Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 23:26:34|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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MOSCOW, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu held a phone conversation with Iranian army's Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri to discuss the aftermath of the U.S. killing of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, the Russian Defense Ministry said Monday.

During the conversation, the military leaders discussed practical steps to prevent the escalation of tensions in the Middle East after Soleimani's death, the ministry's broadcasting service said.

Soleimani, commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Quds Force, was killed in a U.S. airstrike near Baghdad International Airport on Jan. 3.

Iran's top leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed "tough revenge" for the deadly attack.
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SEATTLE  The commercial portion of the Apex Hotel Condominium, at 2225 First Ave., has sold for almost $5.3 million, according to King County records.

The seller was Belltown Collective LLC, which acquired the property in 2012 for $1.2 million.





. . .
Other units include around 100 Marines from the Second Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment. The company-size contingent is deployed to Kuwait as part of a special purpose task force meant to respond to emergencies in the Middle East. The Marines, fresh off helping American forces withdraw from northeastern Syria, are reinforcing dozens of security personnel positioned at the American Embassy in Baghdad. The compound is large, more than 100 acres, with guard posts, living areas, dining halls and small shops.

Around 100 Army Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment deployed shortly after last weeks drone strike. The Rangers, part of the secretive Joint Special Operations Command, most likely will act as a reaction force if any Iranian-backed forces launch a concerted attack on an American position, according to one Defense Department official.

The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit includes roughly 2,200 Marines and sailors, composed of an infantry battalion, logistics unit and a squadron of aircraft, namely transport helicopters and attack jets. They are aboard Navy ships in the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group, made up of around 2,000 sailors, and are steaming toward the Middle East as part of a previously scheduled deployment.

These Marine Expeditionary Units have long served as a global response force. Often their deployments in the Persian Gulf have found them supporting operations in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

The Troops Already in the Region

There are between 45,000 and 65,000 American military personnel  the number can vary by the day  now deployed in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations, including around 5,500 troops in Iraq and 600 in Syria.

In response to Iranian attacks and provocations since May, the Pentagon deployed about 14,000 additional troops to the Persian Gulf region, including roughly 3,500 more to Saudi Arabia. The military assets include early warning aircraft, maritime patrol planes, Patriot air and missile defense batteries, B-52 bombers, a carrier strike group, armed Reaper drones and other engineering and support personnel.

Roughly 2,000 American troops are in Turkey, mostly based at Incirlik Air Base. Despite recent tensions with the fellow NATO country, the United States has continued to use the airfield. American aircraft launched hundreds of combat sorties from the base at the height of the conflict against the Islamic State in 2016 and 2017.
Gardai have arrested three men after an armed robbery in Co. Meath today.

Officers intercepted two cars on the N3 at Clonee at around 3pm immediately after armed raiders robbed a Cash in Transit van.
The Libyan National Army (LNA), led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, took full control of the country's largest city of Sirte, LNA spokesman Ahmed Mismari said on Monday, Trend reports citing Sputnik.

"The Libyan National Army has taken control of the city of Sirte," the spokesman said in a statement.

Earlier in the day, an LNA source said that the army had entered Sirte and had taken control over the city's seaport. Forces supporting Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) then said that the LNA had captured a military base south of Sirte, according to the Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera.

Libya has been torn apart between the two rival administrations since 2011 when its long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and killed. The LNA has been trying to seize control over the country's capital of Tripoli, currently controlled by the rival UN-backed GNA, since April 2019. Sirte, located between Tripoli and Benghazi, is Gaddafi's birthplace.
The Supreme Court on Monday sought an explanation from the Assam government over the allegation that the state coordinator for NRC was making communal statements.

"He should not be saying all this. You (Assam government) have to explain this. Whatever you want. He should not be saying all this," a bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde observed after senior advocate Kapil Sibal drew the attention to the alleged statement made by the state NRC coordinator.

The bench was hearing the petition which also sought removal of the state coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma.

Also Read: Assam NRC final list out: What will happen to the 19 lakh excluded people?

Several other petitions have been filed relating to the NRC in Assam and the bench issued notices to the Centre and Assam Govt and sought response within four weeks.

A petition was also heard in which it was stated that around 60 children have been excluded from the NRC but their parents have been granted citizenship through NRC.

Attorney General K K Venugopal and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre and the Assam government, said such children will not be separated from their parents.

In the order, the bench also comprising justices B R Gavai and Surya Kant said children whose parents have been granted citizenship through NRC will not be sent to the detention centre.

The response on the petition has to be filed in 4 weeks.

Also Read: CAA & NRC II: Here are the myths and facts about all-India National Register of Citizens

Also Read: Citizenship Amendment Bill: Vistara, IndiGo, GoAir, SpiceJet cancel flights to Assam
NEW YORK, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Greystone , a leading national commercial real estate lending, investment, and advisory company, has provided an $8 million HUD-insured loan to refinance a 90-bed skilled nursing facility in Plainfield, Connecticut. The transaction was originated by Lisa M. Fischman of Greystone.



The $8,008,000 permanent FHA financing carries a 35-year term and 35-year amortization along with a low, fixed rate. Greystone provided a bridge loan to the borrower to acquire the facility earlier in 2019.

The family-owned and operated Colonial Health & Rehab Center of Plainfield offers long- and short-term skilled nursing and rehabilitation services, as well as respite, hospice and palliative care. The facility also offers recreational and lifestyle amenities on-site to its residents.

One of the key benefits of our seamless bridge-to-HUD platform is our ability to move our clients quickly from the initial acquisition into permanent financing, said Ms. Fischman. We are thrilled with the final outcome and look forward to Colonial Healths continued success serving its local community.

It was a pleasure working with the team to finalize the transition of our bridge loan to HUD, said Curtis Rodowicz, co-owner and administrator of Colonial Health & Rehab. This strategic financing places us in a financially secure position for years to come. We are grateful for the diligence and hard work of all the vendors, partners, and friends we made along the way that assisted in the comprehensive package that was approved. Colonial Health & Rehab looks forward to expanding with future growth opportunities in our neighboring communities.

Co-owner Robert Darigan added, We know that we have a financing partner in our corner that believes in us and us in them.

About Greystone

Greystone is a real estate lending, investment, and advisory company with an established reputation as a leader in multifamily and healthcare finance, having ranked as a top FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac lender in these sectors. Our range of services includes commercial lending across a variety of platforms such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, CMBS, FHA, USDA, bridge and proprietary loan products. Loans are offered through Greystone Servicing Company LLC, Greystone Funding Company LLC and/or other Greystone affiliates. For more information, visit www.greyco.com .
The Mental Health Commission has slammed the practice where residents from an Acute Psychiatric Unit were transferred to a separate centre for the night, just to ease bed shortages, before being transferred back to the APU the next day.

The finding was made in a report on the Cappahard Lodge in Ennis in County Clare, which despite only being half full during the day, was at capacity at night due to transferring patients from the APU to help alleviate bed shortages there.

According to the Mental Health Commission: "Cappahard Lodge is not suitable to provide care for acutely mentally ill people."

The MHC published reports on four mental health centres  Cappahard Lodge, the Jonathan Swift Clinic St James Hospital in Dublin 8, St Vincents Hospital, Fairview in Dublin 3, and St Catherines Ward in St Finbarrs Hospital in Cork city.

Cappahard Lodge is an approved centre registered for 32 beds but had 15 residents at the time of admission. Formerly a nursing home, it has single bedroom accommodation for all the residents, many of whom lived in the approved centre for a number of years. According to the MHC, it has "demonstrated impressive improvement in compliance with regulations over the previous 3 years".

But it said it was concerned about the transfer of APU residents into Cappahard. Chief executive of the Mental Health Commission, John Farrelly, said:

The continued practice identified in one centre, of a transfer of residents from an acute psychiatric unit to provide sleeping accommodation in order to alleviate bed shortages, on a systemic basis, is an outdated and obsolete practice that is not acceptable in a modern service. This was permitted under the old 1945 Act but has long been rejected as a practice in providing care for acutely mentally ill people.

Other issues were found at the three other centres. The report on St Catherine's Ward read: "There has been no improvement in the rate of compliance with regulations from 2017 to 2019, remaining poor at 62%."

The inspection process identified six high risk non-compliances in the areas of food and nutrition, individual care planning, general health, privacy and maintenance of records. The report said there was a significant number of deficits in the 10 individual care plans inspected and that there were issues with patients' privacy and dignity.

"In terms of general health two of five clinical files inspected indicated that the resident had not received a physical examination within the previous six-month timeframe. The nutritional status had not been documented in any of the five clinical files inspected," it read.

The report into St Vincents Hospital said it has shown a steady increase in compliance over the past three years, but the inspection found two high-risk non-compliances related to individual care planning and premises: "The centre was not kept in a good state of repair inside and out". At the time of inspection, there was no social worker present on the team for six weeks and there was a "lack of adherence to governance and reporting relationships in the hospital by some unidentified parties".

There was also increased compliance levels at Jonathan Swift Clinic St James Hospital, but there were shortcomings, the MHC saying it was unsuitable as an inpatient mental health unit and was not kept in a good state of repair externally and internally and was not clean, hygienic and free from offensive odours.
January 06 : Daisy Shah, who recently made a successful Gujarati debut in Gujarat 11, is looking forward to a promising 2020. The Race 3 actress is currently gearing up for her next Bollywood movie, 'See You in Court'.

An elated Daisy, an avid social media user, took to her Instagram handle and posted a bunch of her stunning pictures. The diva looked her best in a desi avatar. Daisy, who made her debut in Bollywood with the action thriller Vandae Maatharam in 2010, posed for a photoshoot in her elegant ensemble.

The actress chose a monochrome outfit and dazzled in it. She looked stunning in a baby pink lehenga and choli. The Hate Story 3 actress opted for this glamorous outfit that featured an embellished pink lehenga, which she teamed with a sleeveless choli and an organza dupatta. She flaunted her beauty with no accessories except a pair of earrings. She glammed up her look with pink lips.

In the film See You in Court, directed by Sachin Kaushik, Daisy will play the role of a child psychologist. The movie is about a 12-year-old, who files a case against his parents. Daisy has already started shooting for the film in Chandigarh.
On January 5, the armed formations of the Russian Federation violated ceasefire in the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) area in eastern Ukraine four times.

The enemy used 82mm mortars banned under the Minsk agreements, grenade launchers of different systems, heavy machine guns and other small arms to shell positions of the Joint Forces, the press center of the JFO Headquarters reports.

As noted, the enemy launched three attacks in the zone of action of tactical force East and one more attack in the zone of action of tactical force North.

One member of the Joint Forces was killed on January 5.

Today, the Russian-occupation troops have not violated ceasefire yet.

ish
Esmail Qaani, the replacement for the Iranian regimes General Qassem Soleimani, said at Soleimanis funeral over the weekend that Iran would avenge Soleimanis death as another military official threatened to target sites inside the United States.

A U.S. airstrike took out Soleimani and other Iranian officials in Baghdad early Jan. 2.

Thousands attended Soleimanis funeral, during which the regimes Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was reportedly crying as he prayed over the caskets of those who were killed. Soleimanis daughter, Zeinab, was among the speakers at the funeral.

Families of the American soldiers in western Asia have witnessed Americas humiliation in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yemen and Palestine wars, and will spend their days waiting for the death of their children, she said Monday, according to a translation from the Associated Press.

Two military leaders also added new verbal threats.

Maj. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, the primary military adviser to Khameni, told CNN that Iran would not use Iran-backed militias for the next strike, but would strike directly against U.S. military sites.

It might be argued that there could be proxy operations. We can say America, Mr. Trump, has taken action directly against usso we take direct action against America, he said. Our reaction will be wise, well considered and in time, with decisive deterrent effect.

Dehghan claimed that America started the war, adding: The only thing that can end this period of war is for the Americans to receive a blow that is equal to the blow they have inflicted. Afterward they should not seek a new cycle.

Qaani, Soleimanis replacement as head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, on Monday told state television that there would be retaliatory actions taken.

God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken, Qaani said, according to the Associated Press.

President Donald Trump said on Twitter Saturday that the United States would target Iranian sites, including cultural sites, if Iran attacks the United States again.

Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently hundreds of Iranian protesters, Trump said, referring to Soleimani.

He was already attacking our Embassy, and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!

Trump reiterated his position to reports on Air Force One on Sunday, promising major retaliation if Iran conducts another attack.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, Trump said.

From The Epoch Times
The ruling AAP will face the Delhi election next month with the hope to repeat its stellar performance in the last Assembly polls, while the BJP, which bagged all seven seats here in the Lok Sabha election, will be aiming at expanding its vote share in the national capital.

The Arvind Kejrial-led (AAP) had got 54.3 per cent votes in the 2015 Assembly polls, while the (BJP) got a vote share of 32 per cent and the Congress managed to bag just 9.6 per cent of the total votes polled.

The 70-member Delhi Assembly will go to polls on February 8, the Election Commission announced on Monday, setting the stage for a political battle in the backdrop of a number of issues, including the amended citizenship law.

The AAP had stunned political heavyweights in the 2015 polls, bagging 67 of the 70 seats, leaving just three for the saffron party, while the Congress had drawn a blank.

However, in the 2019 parliamentary polls, the BJP led the show, sweeping all seven seats.

The saffron party had amassed a whopping 55 per cent vote share, leaving the Congress on the second spot with 22.50 per cent votes and the AAP at a dismal low of 18.10 per cent votes.

In 2019, the AAP won only one seat of the over 40 it contested across nine states and Union territories and its vote share in the national capital was the highest in the country.

The Kejriwal-led party had fielded candidates in Delhi, Chandigarh, Bihar, Goa, Punjab, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Haryana, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh, but only Bhagwant Mann of the party came up trumps from Sangrur in Punjab.

The BJP was planning to conduct multiple surveys for a better selection of political issues and candidates for the Delhi Assembly, after its massive victory in the Lok Sabha polls, senior leaders of the party had said after the general election.

BJP leaders have high hopes in the upcoming Delhi polls as the party got more votes than the Congress and the AAP in 65 of the 70 Assembly segments in last year's Lok Sabha election.

The AAP had registered its massive victory in the 2015 Delhi Assembly polls thanks to a strong support of the residents of slums and unauthorised colonies.

A large number of Purvanchalis, who account for around 35 per cent voters in the national capital and who had voted for the AAP in the previous Assembly election, live in these areas and their support will be crucial for victory in the coming polls, a senior Delhi BJP leader had said.
A recent paper describes how a group of scientists painted zebra stripes on cows. The authors conclude that this unusual method might help protect livestock from biting flies and, consequently, help reduce the use of pesticides. Share on Pinterest Could a zebras stripes make a cows life better? Why do zebras have stripes? Rudyard Kiplings Just So Stories inform us that the stripes developed because the zebra stood in the slippery-slidy shadows of trees. Scientists, however, have other ideas. They have not firmly established why the zebra is adorned with such an elaborate and impressive design, but theories include thermoregulation, confusing predators, communicating with other zebras, and camouflage. Although there is little evidence to support these explanations, one theory does have some experimental backing  some scientists believe that the black and white stripes of a zebra protect it from biting insects. As just one example, a 2019 study found that horses wearing coats with striped patterns attracted fewer flies than both horses without any covering and horses wearing materials without stripes. With growing support, it now seems reasonable that a zebras stripes function as an insect repellant. This fact, of course, is interesting in its own right, but can this information be useful, too?

Using stripes as protection Biting flies are a serious concern for livestock owners because they affect cattles behavior and can lead to economic losses. The presence of biting flies reduces feeding and bedding down time, which can affect the animals development. Also, when biting flies are present, cattle tend to bunch together to reduce the risk of sustaining bites. This bunching behavior increases heat stress and the risk of injury. Additionally, it can reduce weight gain and negatively affect milk production. Some researchers estimate that biting insects in the United States cost the dairy and beef industry more than $2 billion each year. If a zebras stripes can help it minimize fly attacks, could similar stripes also help cattle? A group of researchers recently set out to explore this question, and they published their results in the journal PLOS ONE .
Amidst national mourning in Iran over the death of General Qassem Soleimani, commander of Irans elite Quds Force, a man announced a bounty of $80 million on US President Donald Trump. During the funeral procession of Soleimani, an unidentified Islamic eulogist declared the bounty, broadcasted live on a state TV station.

We are 80 million Iranians. If each one of us puts aside one American dollar, we will have 80 million American dollars, and we will reward anyone who brings us Trumps head with that amount, said the eulogist to the huge crowd gathered in Mashhad.

The man went on to say that whoever brings the head of yellow-haired lunatic will get $80 million on behalf of the great Iranian nation. Meanwhile, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in a statement, said that it was not possible to hold the procession in Tehran due to the massive crowd. It said that the funeral procession needs to be cancelled and urged people to attend a ceremony honouring Soleimani at Tehran University on January 6.

At Solemanis funeral procession in Mashad one of the organisers called on all Iranian to donate $1 each in order to gather an $80million bounty on President Trumps head. pic.twitter.com/Qb7AAfAiww  Ali Arouzi (@aliarouzi) January 5, 2020

Read: 1951-2020: 69 Years Of US-Iran Relations Leading To Soleimani's Killing

On January 3, the United States announced that it killed General Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike at Baghdads international airport. After Soleimanis death, Trump said that the United States terminated him because he was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel.

In a televised briefing, he added that Irans top commander made the death of innocent people his sick passion, contributing to terrorist plots as far away as New Delhi and London.

Read: Iran General Replacing Soleimani Vows Revenge For US Killing

Iran exits nuclear deal

The situation has further escalated after Iran officially announced its exit from the 2015 nuclear deal. In 2015, Iran reached a historic nuclear deal with P5+1 group which included the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany.

Iran, under the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), agreed to limit sensitive nuclear activities in lieu of lifting economic sanctions. However, the Trump administration, in May 2018, withdrew from the nuclear deal accusing Iran of violating the terms of JCPOA and followed it with crippling economic sanctions.

Read: Iran Exits Nuclear Deal Amid Rising Tensions With The US

Read: Trump Steps Up Warning To Tehran; Says US Ready To Strike 52 Iranian Sites If Tehran Retaliates
The Congress on Monday said the large-scale death of infants in public hospitals in Gujarat exposes "failure" of the ruling BJP in managing healthcare and asked the government to ensure funds earmarked for medical services are spent properly and not wasted on celebrations.

The main opposition party said Gujarat has image of a "progressive" state, but it still lacks basic health facilities for common people.

From the governments own admission, 36,000 infants die in the progressive state of Gujarat every year, or 100 infants every day, which exposes the governments failure in providing proper health facilities to people.

"We do not seek to politicise the issue, but this figure is a matter of grave concern, Congress leader Paresh Dhanani said.

Addressing the media here, the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly asked the BJP government to ensure budgetary allocation for health is spent properly and crores of rupees "wasted" by the government on organising "celebrations" are used to improve medical services.

He said a delegation of Congress leaders will meet Governor Acharya Devvrat on Wednesday with a set of demands related to improving health services in Gujarat.

Health Minister Nitin Patel had on Sunday told reporters that 12 lakh children are born every year in Gujarat.

He said of these, 30 per 1,000 babies born die according to the governments last statistics, which brings the mortality figure to roughly 100 babies per day.

Last month, as many as 111 infants died at Rajkot's civil hospital, Patel had said.

"The government has failed in managing health services in the state with rampant privatisation of hospitals and medical colleges helping private players at the cost of public, Dhanani said.

"The government should immediately stop unnecessary expenditure on state-sponsored celebrations and focus on improving health services by filling in vacancies of doctors and other staff in government hospitals rather than exploiting youth in the name of contract service, he said.

Meanwhile, state Congress president Amit Chavda visited the Rajkot civil hospital and met officials along with local party leaders and workers.

Chavda, along with party workers, also held a sit-in to protest what he called "negligence on part of the state government which is causing the death of infants".

"Lack of doctors, medical facilities and serious negligence on part of the government in managing health services have resulted in the death of infants. If anyone is responsible for these deaths, it is the government," he said.

During the meeting with the governor, the Congress delegation will also make a representation on a host of other issues, Dhanani said.

These include demanding an urgent survey of damaged crop area of 87 lakh hectare and compensation to farmers and extension of the one-day assembly session on January 10, called by the government to bring a resolution in support of Citizenship (Amendment) Act, to discuss other issues of public concern, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A new property listing is raising questions as to whether one of the last Kmart stores still open in the Lehigh Valley has a future here.

The 94,241-square-foot Kmart property, 801 Male Road, in Wind Gap is listed for sale by Kin Properties for $2.5 million. (The) former K-Mart Super Center with plenty of room and potential to expand a new tenants company, the listing states.

It remains unclear if this means Kmart could still have the potential to remain with a lease option to a possible new landlord. Jeff Ross, the real estate broker for the property, did not immediately return multiple requests for information. Larry Costello, spokesman for TransformCo., Kmarts newly-formed parent company, declined comment.

The store itself remained in full swing Monday morning with employees stocking shelves saying they heard no news of a sale or closure. Asked if the store would have deep discounts or liquidation sales any time soon, an employee shook her head but admitted she would likely be the last to know. All departments -- ranging from home improvement, pantry and appliances to auto care, household and toys to footwear, outdoor and furniture -- all appeared well stocked with some things, such as clothing, on modest sales.

Word got out to loyal patrons over the weekend who began posting Sunday over Facebook about the property listing.

Looks like Kmart will come to a possible heartbreaking end. Its still open and serving customers as normal. , one poster wrote.

That is a shame, commented another.

Wind Gap Plaza currently has two vacancies previously housed by Payless ShoeSource and RadioShack. The strip mall currently includes Dollar Tree, Petvalu, Passion Nails, Fine Wines and Good Spirits, Holiday Hair, Advance Auto Parts, Anytime Fitness, Anthonys Pizzeria, Hong Kong restaurant, AT&T and GIANT supermarket.

Kmart announced in August 2019 the discount retail chain would be closing four additional stores in New Jersey and the Wilson Borough location at 320 S. 25th St. in Pennsylvania. By mid-December, the Wilson Borough store was shuttered after a couple months of liquidation sales.

After careful review, we have made the difficult but necessary decision to close the Kmart stores ... ," Costello then said in a statement.

Aside from Wind Gap, the areas only other remaining Kmart is at 400 N. Best Ave., in Walnutport.

Transform Co., the parent of Sears and Kmart, was formed after Sears Holdings declared bankruptcy in October 2018 beneath a reported $11.3 billion in debt. While the company did re-emerge somewhat after the bankruptcy, Transform still announced this past November it would be closing nearly 100 Kmart and Sears stores nationwide by the end of the year. The move to streamline operations included the areas last remaining Sears, an anchor tenant at Whitehall Mall, expected to close sometime next month.

A CNBC news report stated retailers received some good news in February 2019 when Sears Holding Corp. Chairman Eddie Lamperts hedge fund ESL Investments reportedly won a $5.2 billion auction for the assets of both chains. The deal then allowed for about 400 stores to stay open under TransformCo. and saved roughly 45,000 jobs. Now, an estimated 182 Sears and Kmart stores will be left nationally after the reported closings.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
By Clifford Kulwin

An assailant with a machete storms into a rabbis home in Monsey. Shooters bent on killing Jews go on a rampage in Jersey City. A recent Anti-Defamation League (ADL) study finds a dramatic increase in physical assaults on Jews in recent years.

I dont know anyone who rejects the notion that antisemitism in the United States is on the rise.

Daily, we hear about violent attacks, defacing of Jewish buildings, desecration of Jewish cemeteries, Cosmopolitan Jew references in the public square (e.g. George Soros controls the media), and other antisemitic acts.

Jews are genuinely worried about their personal safety. I hear it all the time. Forget about it cant happen here. Many now curb the visible aspects of their Jewish lives: they visit Jewish institutions less often, alter their dress, and maintain a new and unwanted sense of alertness as they go about their day. The subject dominates conversations within the Jewish community. Its what we talk about.

Public officials have been quick to respond, but their responses must reflect a critical reality: antisemitism is a complex phenomenon.

In the Rhineland Massacres of 1096, Crusaders destroyed entire Jewish communities and killed all the inhabits, in the name of avenging their Lord. This is religious antisemitism, based on the belief that Jews killed Jesus. And it continues. Yes, the Nostra Aetete statement of 1965, and every reputable historian of the era, assure us this was not so, but two years ago another ADL study found that over a quarter of Americans believe that the Jews killed Jesus.

In a Facebook post just after the deadly shooting at the Jersey City Kosher Supermarket, Jersey City Board of Education member Joan Terrell-Paige demonstrated another kind of antisemitism: African American homeowners in the Jersey City neighborhood were threatened, intimidated and harassed by the Jewish newcomers, whom she said threatened to bring drug dealers and prostitutes to live next door to you if homeowners wouldnt sell their houses.

This is economic antisemitism. In the post, Terrell-Paige accuses Jews of using economic wherewithal to get what they want, at the expense of those who are too poor to fight back.

And if we assume that a handful of unscrupulous individuals did just what Terrell-Paige says they did, by choosing not to attack them as individuals, but rather going after an entire people, she demonstrates a third kind of antisemitism: racial antisemitism, the belief that Jews as a race seek control over other races, an antisemitism of which Adolf Hitler was especially fond.

In fact, in Mein Kampf, Hitler calls Jews a race that exploits other races, the same charge essentially made by Terrell-Paige. How ironic that Hitler would have despised her, an African American, as much as he would have despised me, a Jew!

There are other antisemitisms, too, like social, ethnic and even literary antisemitism, in the form of Dickens Fagin, who embodies every negative Jewish stereotype imaginable, and T.S. Eliots poem Burbank with a Baedeker, Bleistein with a Cigar.

But how do we define antisemitism? I go back to the definition I learned from a rabbinical school history professor 40 years ago: Antisemitism is opposition to Jews, as Jews. By this definition, the December 10 supermarket shooting was an act of antisemitism, as was last weeks machete attack in Monsey, N.Y., as was 2017s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville and 2018s synagogue attack in Pittsburgh.

But we also have to be aware that, sometimes, the anti-Jewish part of an antisemitic attack is not all thats important.

Within hours of the Monsey attack, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo labeled it an act of domestic terrorism. Yet it now appears machete wielder Grafton Thomas was seriously mentally unbalanced. Wouldnt it be more productive to focus on how someone so severely ill slipped through the system?

David Anderson and Francine Graham arrived in Jersey City intending to shoot Jews. They committed a horrible, antisemitic slaughter. But as well, Anderson had a history of armed violence and spent several years in and out of jail. What does it mean that someone like him was able to secure firearms?

Terrell-Paiges remarks are straight, undiluted antisemitism. The backlash, against her, starting with Governor Murphy, has been reassuring to witness.

And the thousands who marched in Charlottesville, sparking President Trumps notorious remark that there are good people on both sides, knew exactly what they were saying when they shouted Blood and soil, Jews will not replace us.

Public officials have announced their commitment to address this increase in antisemitism. Thats good. But while the definition of antisemitism is straightforward, engaging it must be as multifaceted as the problem. Increased police patrols in vulnerable neighborhoods are essential, but they are just a start.

Are the roots of a specific incident economic or religious? Is it racial? Does an attack have more to do with gun control or mental health? Is it a domestic manifestation of the Middle East conflict? Or a radical preacher exhorting followers to avenge a 2,000 year old crucifixion?

Answers to questions like these will be complicated. They will require study and analysis. They will have to combine law enforcement, education, cultural advocacy, and public policy. But anything less is lip service.

Jews today are nervous. Prejudice is everyones enemy. Hopefully, those we entrust with the responsibility to lead us recognize that, and will spare no effort in keeping America a safe and nurturing place for all who call it home.

Clifford Kulwin is Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Bnai Abraham, Livingston.

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NATO ambassadors will gather on Monday in Brussels for an urgent meeting convened by the head of the military alliance to discuss the situation in the Middle East after a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad killed a top Iranian general, a NATO official said.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg organized the meeting after consultations with member of the alliance, Reuters reported.

NATO ambassadors meet regularly, but Mondays meeting was organized at short notice after the alliance decided on Saturday to suspend its training mission in Iraq over security risks following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani on Friday.
Representative Elissa Slotkin, who will lead the resolution in the House. Photo: Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag

On Sunday night, hours after the president doubled down on his threat to bomb cultural sites in Iran, Nancy Pelosi announced that the House will attempt to limit Trumps authority to wage war in the Persian Gulf. This week, the House will vote on a War Powers Resolution to limit the Presidents military actions regarding Iran, the letter states. It reasserts Congress long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administrations military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days.

JUST IN: The House will vote this week on a War Powers resolution to limit Trumps authority to go to war with Iran, @SpeakerPelosi announces. pic.twitter.com/QY0xDXgESZ  Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) January 6, 2020

Pelosi states that the resolution is similar to the one filed by Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine in the Senate, which reiterates that any declaration of war or authorization of force against Iran must be authorized by Congress. Unlike in the Senate  where Iran hawk Lindsey Graham will help enforce party lines to ensure the conflict will not de-escalate  the resolution should pass in the House, where it will be led by Michigan Representative Elissa Slotkin, a former Defense and CIA analyst who specialized in Shia militias, which are a likely conduit for Iranian retaliation in the region.

In an interview on Saturday, Slotkin said that Trump has abused the blurry distinction between what was practiced as a matter of habit  like including Congress in things, or notifying Congress and allies, consulting oversight committees when big decisions had to be made and what is truly required by law. Trumps Sunday claim that a tweet counted as a notice to Congress of any further action against Iran probably falls within that concerning gray area addressed by Slotkin.

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2020

Over the weekend, other forces pushed back against the ramp-up of the burgeoning conflict. Arab states in the Gulf, likely settings for a proxy conflict between U.S. and Iran, are working on multiple tracks to try to keep tensions between Tehran and Washington from building into a military confrontation, according to a Bloomberg report. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will reportedly send the Deputy Defense minister, his younger brother Khalid bin Salman, to Washington this week to urge restraint. We will be the first to pay the price for any military showdown, so its in our best interest not to see things get out of hand, Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political-science professor in the United Arab Emirates, told Bloomberg.

Closer to home, Trump officials, working in an administration that forces the separation of migrant families and causes intentional climate damage, finally answered a common hypothetical: What does it take for staffers to push back against the presidents worst impulses? According to two senior officials who spoke with CNN, the answer is war crimes: Nothing rallies people like the deliberate destruction of beloved cultural sites, one official told the network, countering Trumps criminal threat.
Angelina Nicole Douse, 21, of 115 Jefferson Street, Cordova, pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to a felony.

Circuit Judge Howard King sentenced her under the Youthful Offender Act not to exceed three years, suspended to probation for 18 months.

On Feb. 22, 2019, John Albert Green, 33, of 1430 Beason Road, Orangeburg, entered the S.C. State Credit Union on Boulevard Street with the intent to steal.

Authorities allege that while Green was in jail after his arrest, he told his brother and two cousins where he hid a firearm and cash after he fled the bank.

Douse is one of his cousins.

Green is currently serving an eight-year sentence in prison after he pleaded guilty to entering a bank with the intent to steal on Aug. 27, 2019.

Accessory charges are pending against his brother, Mark Anthony Green, 36, of 2889 Rosedale Drive, Orangeburg, and his cousin William Faybien Givens Jr., 23, of 115 Jefferson Street, Cordova.

In other pleas:

 Tyjuan Damarious Markel Washington, 18, of 112 Garnet Street, Orangeburg, pleaded guilty to breaking into a motor vehicle.

King sentenced him under the Youthful Offender Act not to exceed five years, suspended to five years of probation.

He ordered Washington to obtain his GED, complete substance abuse counseling and undergo random drug/alcohol testing.

Washington is also required to pay restitution.

 Andre Marquell Fogle, 35, of 499 Easterlin Road, Bowman, pleaded guilty to second-degree domestic violence.

King sentenced him to 18 months in prison, suspended to 18 months of probation.

Hes required to complete a batterers treatment program.

King stipulated that once he completes the program, Fogles probation term may end early.

Fogle is not allowed to possess any firearm or ammunition for the next three years.

Contact the writer: mbrown@timesanddemocrat.com or 803-533-5545. Follow on Twitter: @MRBrownTandD.

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The blowback over the US killing of a top Iranian general mounted Sunday as Iran announced it will no longer abide by the limits contained in the 2015 nuclear deal and Iraq's Parliament called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil

Tehran: The blowback over the US killing of a top Iranian general mounted Sunday as Iran announced it will no longer abide by the limits contained in the 2015 nuclear deal and Iraq's Parliament called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil.

The twin developments could bring Iran closer to building an atomic bomb and enable the Islamic State group to stage a comeback in Iraq, making West Asia a far more dangerous and unstable place.

Iranian state television cited a statement by President Hassan Rouhani's administration saying the country would not observe the deal's restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran no longer faces any limitations in operations," a state TV broadcaster said.

In Iraq, meanwhile, lawmakers voted in favour of a resolution calling for an end to the foreign military presence in the country, including the estimated 5,200 US troops stationed to help fight Islamic State extremists. The bill is subject to approval by the Iraqi government but has the backing of the outgoing prime minister.

In yet another sign of rising tensions and threats of retaliation over the deadly airstrike, the US-led military coalition in Iraq said it is putting the battle against IS on hold to focus on protecting its own troops and bases.

The string of developments capped a day of mass mourning over Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad on Friday. Hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets in the cities of Ahvaz and Mashhad to walk alongside the casket of Soleimani, who was the architect of Iran's proxy wars across the Mideast and was blamed for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in roadside bombings and other attacks.

US President Donald Trump responded to the Parliament's troop withdrawal vote with a monetary threat, saying the US expected to be paid for its military investments in Iraq before leaving and threatening economic sanctions if the US is not treated properly.

We have a very extraordinarily expensive airbase thats there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time. Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it," he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

If they do ask us to leave, if we dont do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions as theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame," he said

He added: Were not leaving until they pay us back for it.

State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus earlier said the US is awaiting clarification on its legal meaning but was disappointed by the move and strongly urged Iraq to reconsider.

We believe it is in the shared interests of the United States and Iraq to continue fighting ISIS together, Ortagus said.

The leaders of Germany, France and Britain issued a joint statement on Sunday calling on Iran to abide by the terms of the nuclear deal and refrain from conducting or supporting further violent acts.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson specifically urged Iran to withdraw all measures not in line with the 2015 agreement that was intended to stop Tehran from pursuing its atomic weapons program.

Iran insisted that it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldn't seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions. It further raises regional tensions, as Iran's longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

Iran did not elaborate on what levels it would immediately reach in its program. Tehran has already broken some of the deal's limits as part of a step-by-step pressure campaign to get sanctions relief. It has increased its production, begun enriching uranium to five percent and restarted enrichment at an underground facility.

While it does not possess uranium enriched to weapons-grade levels of 90 percent, any push forward narrows the estimated one-year breakout time needed for it to have enough material to build a nuclear weapon if it chose to do so.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations watchdog observing Iran's program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, Iran said that its cooperation with the IAEA will continue as before.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi earlier told journalists that Soleimani's killing would prompt Iranian officials to take a bigger step away from the nuclear deal.

In the world of politics, all developments are interconnected," Mousavi said.

In Iraq, where the airstrike has been denounced as a violation of the country's sovereignty, Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said that the government has two choices: End the presence of foreign troops or restrict their mission to training Iraqi forces. He called for the first option.

The majority of about 180 legislators present in Parliament voted in favour of the troop-removal resolution. It was backed by most Shiite members of Parliament, who hold a majority of seats. Many Sunni and Kurdish legislators did not show up for the session, apparently because they oppose abolishing the deal.

A US pullout could not only undermine the fight against the Islamic State but could also enable Iran to increase its influence in Iraq, which like Iran is a majority-Shiite country.

Soleimani's killing has escalated the crisis between Tehran and Washington after months of back-and-forth attacks and threats that have put the wider West Asia on edge. Iran has promised harsh revenge" for the US attack, while Trump has vowed on Twitter that the US will strike back at 52 targets VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. 

He doubled down on that threat Sunday, dismissing warnings that targeting cultural sites could be a war crime under international law.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, Trump told reporters.

The US Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks. In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimani's killing made US military bases, warships and service members across the region fair game for attacks. A former Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader suggested the Israeli city of Haifa and centers like Tel Aviv could be targeted should the US attack Iran.

Iranian state TV estimated that millions of mourners came out in Ahvaz and Mashhad to pay their respects to Soleimani.

The casket moved slowly through streets choked with mourners wearing black, beating their chests and carrying posters with Soleimani's portrait. Demonstrators also carried red Shiite flags, which traditionally symbolize both the spilt blood of someone unjustly killed and a call for vengeance.

The processions marked the first time Iran honoured a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such a procession with his death in 1989. Soleimani on Monday will lie in state at Tehran's famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him.

Soleimani's remains will go to Tehran and Qom on Monday for public mourning processions. He will be buried in his hometown of Kerman.
An eighth person has died in the NSW south coast bushfires since December 30, police have confirmed.

A body was found about 4pm (local time) on Monday between a Nerrigundah property and a car, which were decimated in the Badja Forest Road Fire.

NSW Police received reports of a missing 71-year-old man, who was last seen on December 31, and was moving equipment on his Nerrigundah property.

The body, which is yet to be formally identified, is believed to be that of the missing man.

Fire crews are working frantically to put in containment lines through out the NSW south coast region after many communities were devastated by bushfires. Source: AAP

Due to fire risk, police were unable to access the property until Monday when they conducted a large-scale search.

Detectives from the South Coast Police District are being assisted by the NSW Police Force Rescue and the Volunteer Rescue Association.

A report will be prepared for the coroner and inquiries continue, NSW Police said in a statement.

This bushfire season, which started in October, 20 people have died in NSW, eight of those being from the south coast, and 10 of the 20 have died in the past week.

In NSW 136 bushfires continue to burn on the south coast, Snowy Mountains, Blue Mountains, Central Coast and Mid North Coast, amounting to almost five million hectares.

Since the start of the bushfire season, it has been confirmed 1482 homes have been destroyed, with that number expected to rise.

With AAP

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play.
Power returned on Jan. 5 and as promised, the show rewound the clock on the day that Ghost was shot. The first of the last five episodes, Still Dre, was dedicated to none other than the series reigning snitch and what he was doing before, during, and after the shooting.

Told from his perspective, it showcased things we didnt really know about the character, but it seems the writers humanization of Dre really didnt work. No one likes him. Heres a recap of the educational experience that is episode 11. Dont read this spoiler if you havent watched the episode yet.

(L-R from top) Naturi Naughton, Joseph Sikora, Rotimi, Michael Rainey Jr., Larenz Tate, Courtney A. Kemp, Curtis 50 Cent Jackson, Omari Hardwick and Lela Loren of Power | Getty Images/Rich Fury

Dre believes in himself

The opening scene shows Dre at home in papa mode while explaining to his girlfriend Tina why they should stay in New York. She wants to escape the heat thats on him, but he believes theyre safe now and that he can become the drug king of NYC with his operation. According to him, he made a move that will ensure nothing will ever happen to her, him, or their baby Heaven ever again.

He then looks at the TV and learns that James/Ghost left Tates campaign and is running for lieutenant governor with Walsh. Now hes pissed and heads to Saxes house.

Dre confronts him about planting the phone and taking Ghost down, and Saxe says its going to take time. He then breaks the news to Saxe that Ghost is running for office. Dre, whos obviously scared, tells Saxe to fix things and walks out.

Nothing can stop Dre from being grimy

Things flip to him standing in warehouse with his crew, including an old jail buddy named O.Z. who just joined the fold. While theyre discussing product and distribution problems, Dre says hes done with the Serbians, but a voice calls out, But were not done with you. Finally!

The Serbians are there to avenge Jason and they only want Dre, not a fight. But O.Z. fires the first shot and shootout occurs. Dre barely escapes after using his homeboy O.Z. as a shield (insert head shake). He slips out the warehouse with a bullet wound in his arm, cheating death once again. He heads home where Tina patches him up and she reiterates they have to leave town.

After some back and forth, he agrees, but realizes he needs money. She tells him theres one person he needs to see about it.

Sergeant Rodriguez twists facts, works to recruit a new snitch

2-Bit and Spanky were just brought in from being picked up at Tommys warehouse and are being interrogated by Rodriguez separately. 2-Bit is too hard to give up any intel on Tommy, even though she tries to use psychology to pit everyone against Tommy.

They each declare, I aint no snitch, but eventually, she wears Spanky down with threats about the three-strike law and doing hard time. He tells her to look into Ponchos murder.

Dre shakes everyone down

That person who Dre needed to see is his mother. He rolls up on her in a church parking lot, woefully pleading his case with her about turning his life around and needing financial help. Hes whining. She hasnt seen him in years and didnt know about his daughter. She doesnt believe anything he says and refuses to help. When you gonna stop lying, Andre? You think you can play me like that?

Since that doesnt work, he goes to Tashas daycare to extort her for money. He says hell snitch on Tariq unless she throws him $50,000, and she tells him to kick rocks. After threatening to burn her daycare down, he tells her to call Tariq to get money. She does it and sets up a meeting between the two.

Dre and Tariq link up and junior brings Dre about $10,000, saying hell get the rest, but he needs Dre to get a gun for him. Dre counters with a request to see Ghost in return for getting the piece, and Tariq is reluctant at first because he and his pops are not even on good terms. Dre gets his way anyway.

The two jet off to Ghosts office at Truth and he asks Tariq, Why you would you bring our enemy here? Tariq explains that Dre threatened to snitch if he didnt, and Ghost orders him out the room. Dre starts whining about Ghost setting him up for Jasons murder and Ghost pretends he didnt know about Jasons death.

Dre says he needs money to keep quiet and leave town, and Ghost offers $250,000. Dre complains, but Ghost says take the deal, and hell text him in an hour with a meeting place and time. We saw this scene play out already from Ghosts perspective, so we know how this goes.

Next, Ghost gives the speech about Dre being a wannabe gangster. Tsk tsk. Dre finally leaves.

Jail is a place where dots get connected

2-Bit and Spanky discuss who ratted on Tommys operation, and while Spanky insists it was probably Tommy, 2-Bit is more thoughtful. He figures it was Dre. Spanky looks concerned.

Meanwhile Dre goes to shake down Tate for new IDs and license plates and gives up dirt on the St. Patricks, particularly the fact that Tariq killed Ray Ray. Dre loves being the emperor of the rat kingdom, and Tate agrees to help. Hes then seen smiling and talking to his girlfriend on the phone, telling her hes picking up the money and paperwork. But the cops roll up on him at the meet spot thanks to Ghost betraying him. Hes arrested for Jasons murder.

2-Bit and Spanky are transferred from holding to a jail cell in orange jumpsuits. This is where 2-Bit gets the call from Ghost to put out a jailhouse hit on Dre. In return, hell financially take care of his and Spankys families while theyre locked up. Like clockwork, Dre shows up in jail and 2-Bit positions himself with a shank.

Dre creates a distraction to get himself out of a fatal situation, but a guard comes and takes him to Rodriguez. He strikes a dirty deal with her based on the joint lie that he saw Ghost kill Terry Silver. She gets him out. 2-Bit and Spanky conclude that the only reason Dres released early is because he snitched.

Not believing Dre will be back in lockup, 2-Bit tries one last effort by calling Tommy from the burner phone. During this conversation, B.G.s death is finally acknowledged and Tommy didnt know he was dead or that Dre did it.

Tommy refuses to help 2-Bit with Dre because he has the feds on his neck and theyre investigating him over Poncho. 2-Bit is suspicious about the Poncho thing because who else knew about that?

Dre escapes, but then gets lured back in

While being transported by FBI agents for witness protection, Dre tricks them into stopping the car so he can pee. Its nighttime, and he stands behind a pillar and pretends to go, but then runs off. Next stop? Mamas house. He breaks into the affluent home and sneaks into her closet where her jewelry is kept. But Mama Coleman was not sound asleep, and while hes sifting through her stuff, she surprises him from behind with a cocked pistol and some harsh words.

She goes off about how hes always been evil, and he runs down a whiny soliloquy about the terrible way she treated him as a child. It looks like hes about to cry. Dre then snatches the gun and turns it on her and adds that he purposely kept his daughter away from her.

He drops the gun and goes outside where his girlfriend and baby are waiting in a Mercedes. Were not sure whose car it is or how she knew to meet him there, but there they are.

He drives off to go see Tate about the IDs, but the councilman has one last job for him. He spills $100,000 on the desk and says he needs Dre to kill James St. Patrick tonight. Dre is hesitant because he knows it wont be an easy job. Tate offers half of the money in advance and the rest after the job. Dre tries to buck up and demands all of the money on the spot, but Tate does not back down and uses the IDs and tags as leverage. Whos gangster now?

Dre finally agrees, saying, You aint got nothing to worry about, cause you just paid me to do something Id do for free. He leaves, gets in the car, and gives the new identities and cash to his girlfriend. I got it done, Baby.

He explains that he has to take Ghost out under the agreement with Tate, but she seemingly talks him out of it because they have the cash and IDs. He agrees and drives off, but changes his mind and argues, I gotta do this, and turns the car around to go to Truth.

Who shot Ghost?

Mobb Deeps The Start of Your Ending comes to mind for the next scenes in Still Dre. Dre arrives at Truth and goes to pull out his gun as he approaches the back entrance. Inside, he hears a gunshot and runs out. Outside, he runs into Rodriguez and knocks her out with one punch.

He hurries and speeds away but while at a red light, sees Tommy standing on a street corner before he disappears. Hes shook and hauls it to a gas station for snacks and gas, which seems like poor planning.

There, he learns from a TV broadcast that James St. Patrick was killed at his nightclub. Dre smugly heads back out to the car, but the cops roll up and arrest him for the crime. He looks distraught.

In county lockup, hes booked, and his mom and girlfriend come to see him in his orange jumpsuit. Tina scolds him, and his mother assures him that shell help take care of his girl and daughter, telling him she loves him, but he belongs there.

Hes scared and begs her to help him get a good lawyer, otherwise hes a dead man. He tearfully says goodbye to Heaven and says hell be out soon.

Of course, Dre crosses paths with 2-Bit and Spanky in the dining hall who are happy to see this dude back in jail. But Dre stages a fight so he can get sent to solitary. Hes sitting on the floor when the door flap opens and wet towels are tossed into the cell. Its Spanky and the towels are doused with something flammable. 2-Bit tells him its a gift from Ghost.

Without a guard in sight and nowhere to run, he begs for his life, telling them Ghost is dead. 2-Bit says the money from Ghost is just a bonus. Dre gets squirted with the liquid and they toss a lighter into the cell, roasting a screaming Dre to a fiery crisp! No one sheds a tear, and this is perhaps the most celebrated death on Power. To the end, he was definitely still Dre.

In a closing scene, Spanky signs some papers with Rodriguez and is preparing to be transported to witness protection. You can predict how that will go.
HSG sets only 11 per cent growth rate in profit

HSG has just published the documents used for the 2019-2020 fiscal years shareholder meeting. Accordingly, the company targets a consumption output of 1.5 million tonnes with the revenue of VND28 trillion ($1.2 billion) and the profit of VND400 billion ($17.4 million), up 11 per cent on-year.

The expectation comes from a 12.15 per cent growth in accumulated profit to VND3.4 trillion ($1.48 billion) as of early 2020. HSG will keep adjusting the company structure, including subsidiaries, factories, branches, and stores.

In the 2018-2019 fiscal year, the steel firm also set the goal of VND34 trillion ($14.78 billion) in revenue and VND500 billion ($21.74 million) in profit. However, it only got the turnover of VND28.035 trillion ($12.2 billion) and the profit of VND361 billion ($15.7 million), equivalent to 89 and 72 per cent of the plan.

During the period hundreds of branches have been dissolved to restructure the goods distributor system. HSGs business strategy is to maintain only one branch in every city or province and turn the remaining branches into stores.

As of the end of 2019, the group had 536 distributors, up 45 against 2018. The numbers include 55 branches across the provinces, 10 storage houses, and 471 stores.

Despite the conservative business plan, the document also showed a positive outlook in easing the debt burden. Over the past year, HSG cut 17 per cent in financial costs, 14 per cent in sales costs, and 30 per cent in management costs.

By late September 2019, the group recorded VND6.7 trillion ($291.3 million) in bank loans and financial debts, down nearly VND4.2 trillion ($182.6 million) compared to the beginning of the fiscal year.

Currently, the group still occupied the largest market share with 30.6 per cent as of the end of 2019, despite a fallback since 2018s 34.3 per cent. The group's share in the steel pipe market also fell to 15 per cent from 17.3 per cent.

Under the strains of the US-China trade war, the United States Department of Commerce in late 2019 levied a tariff of 456 per cent on a series of local steel goods the material of which originates from South Korea and Taiwan and then undergo simple processing in Vietnam before being exported to the US, according to Reuters.
Sweeple is continuing to sweep across Alabama.

The Birmingham-based startup has now moved into Huntsville, and is looking to complete its seed-round funding this year in order to roll out an app.

Sweeple, founded by Adam and Nancy Bassett, pairs up homeowners and businesses needing cleaning with college students who need extra money. Adam Bassett said the idea for the business came when his wife saw a demand among homeowners for cleaning services with reliable, trustworthy workers.

It launched last March in Birmingham and is getting started this month in Huntsville.

Weve been getting great reviews, Adam said. And weve been pleasantly surprised at the feedback weve gotten from customers. Theyre not only happy with their service, but theyre happy to give back in some way. One customer enjoyed having them in her house each week and interacting with them.

Each sweeple must undergo a background check, have at least a 2.8 GPA and be a non-smoker. Those without cleaning experience undergo a training process. Their bios are listed on the site and they are rated according to performance.

Sweeple also offers different cleaning options. Theres the Tidy Up - a picking up and straightening, with beds made, dishwashing, wiped counters and vacuuming for $35 an hour with a two-hour minimum. Theres also a deeper Squeaky Clean, which includes cleaning and sanitizing bathrooms, cleaning doors, mopping, dusting and other services, and a combination of the two options. Business packages include standard cleaning, except for waxing floors.

Once more funding is secure, Bassett said the company wants to further expand, increase its marketing and offer more through an app.

This story was modified at 8:39 a.m. Jan. 8 to correct the round of funding the company seeks.
Trump Says US Will Not Leave Iraq Until Baghdad Pays for American Air Base, Threatens Sanctions

Sputnik News

03:28 06.01.2020(updated 04:45 06.01.2020)

The Iraqi parliament on Sunday voted to expel all foreign troops from the nation's territories and cut off ties with the US-led international anti-terrorist coalition after Friday's assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Baghdad, by the US

US President Donald Trump was referring to the Balad military base that houses US forces some 50 miles north of Baghdad.

"We have a very extraordinarily expensive airbase that's there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it [...] We will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame", Trump said Sunday, while traveling back to DC from Florida.

Earlier in the day, Iraq's parliament voiced its support to a recommendation put forward by Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi to order the withdrawal of US-led coalition troops from the country and ending cooperation with the international coalition.

The Trump administration expressed its disappointment over the Iraqi parliament's decision. The US-led international coalition said it would suspend anti-terrorist operations in Iraq, adding that its activities would be focused on protecting US military bases in the wake of the assassination and recent attacks on the facilities hosting US troops.

Due to the likelihood of expelling US troops from Iraq, EU leaders called on Baghdad to ensure continued support for the international US-led anti-terrorism coalition, as well as the 2015 Joint Cooperative Plan of Action nuclear treaty.

Kataib Hezbollah, the Iraqi Shia militias within the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces, earlier threatened to launch attacks on military installations used by US forces in Iraq unless the Trump administration quickly implements the group's ultimatum to withdraw US troops from the nation.

Over the weekend, the Iraqi capital witnessed several rocket attacks, including in the residential area of Al-Jadriya and at the Balad military base. No one has claimed the responsibility for the shellings.

Trump Doubles Down on Threats to Target Iranian Cultural Sites

Trump also suggested that his administration "may discuss" releasing intelligence related to Soleimani's assassination and reiterated his recent threat to attack Iranian cultural sites.

"They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn't work that way", Trump said.

Trump, who without informing the US Congress that had authorized the assassination of the top Iranian general, attempted to justify the extrajudicial killing by framing it as a preemptive, defensive move to prevent war, later boasting that Washington had targeted 52 additional Iranian cultural and military sites for US airstrikes if Iran decides to retaliate.

Trump's statement has roused serious backlash from Iran. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif slammed Washington, and stated that any attack on Iranian culture would constitute a war crime.

US State Secretary Mike Pompeo stated that all action would be within the bounds of legality.

"We'll behave lawfully, we'll behave inside the system. We always have and we always will," the secretary of state remarked.

Targeting cultural sites is a war crime according to the 1954 Hague Convention for the protection of cultural sites. The UN Security Council also passed a resolution in 2017 that called the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage sites a war crime.

A Sputnik

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Panasonic HomeHawk transcosmoss customer communication strategies help clients solve their challenges, such as sales of their popular items overseas, global achievement with established strategies in Japan, and the differentiation of their products overseas.

transcosmos inc. is now assisting Panasonic Corporation in their marketing promotions for "HomeHawk," their home monitoring camera system for the U.S. market. In partnership with its subsidiary transcosmos America Inc., transcosmos is providing Panasonic with its one-stop services that cover social listening to planning and executing marketing strategies in the U.S. market.

"HomeHawk" by Panasonic is a family of home monitoring camera systems that Panasonic sells for the U.S. market. It is designed for hassle-free installation, provides super wide-angle camera views and its high-quality color night vision monitors and records everything in full color, even at night. As e-commerce shopping becomes more and more popular, the theft of packages left at people's front doors is becoming a social problem in the U.S. Under such circumstances, consumer needs for preventing package thefts and keeping strangers out are high in the market. Recognizing this, Panasonic wanted to enhance their marketing promotions to drive "HomeHawk" sales.

To assist Panasonic in promoting "HomeHawk," transcosmos started off with social listening to understand its users. More specifically, transcosmos analyzed collected user reviews and learned how the product is currently perceived by users while identifying its competitive differentiators. transcosmos also listed up user needs in the entire security camera market, set potential target segments (personas), and then developed selling messages that match each circumstance and challenge of set personas. Based on the results of such prep work, transcosmos created and operated the "HomeHawk" product website as well as managed internet promotions. Ultimately, the website achieved a high click through rate (CTR) for Google Search Ads.

Here are the comments received from Sadao Natsuyama, Appliances Company, Panasonic Corporation:

"To successfully launch an e-commerce channel for our new product category, we thought it necessary to incorporate fresh perspectives in taking approaches to attract shoppers to the channel and increase conversion rate (CVR). Starting from user analysis via social listening and making the product page more attractive, transcosmos offered us various proposals and plans as well as feedback on the results to make the store even better from an objective standpoint. We look forward to receiving more proposals from transcosmos that enable us to convey the appeal of the entire HomeHawk product family to our customers, thereby growing our business in the U.S. market going forward."

Based on a clear understanding of each market characteristic, transcosmos delivers diverse services including digital marketing and customer support that meet local business practices, culture and user needs through its 168 bases across 30 countries and regions. transcosmos offers effective customer communication strategies for the real-world to help clients solve their challenges and sell their popular items overseas, achieve results in the global market by executing localized strategies building on those that worked in Japan and find ways to differentiate themselves in the international market.

 About "HomeHawk"

Simple. Reliable. Secure. Appliances Company, Panasonic Corporation sells HomeHawk, a family of home monitoring camera systems under these messages in the U.S. The HomeHawk Front Door and Outdoor cameras are perfect for setting up and securing your front door from both design and feature perspectives.

Product name: HomeHawk

HomeHawk by Panasonic: https://shop.panasonic.com/homehawk

Key features: 172-degree wide-angle view, color night vision, 100% wireless, waterproof, mobile-app alerts, 2-Way Talk, works with Alexa & Google Assistant, no monthly fees



transcosmos is a trademark or registered trademark of transcosmos inc. In Japan and other countries.

Other company names and product or services names used here are trademarks or registered trademarks of respective companies.

About transcosmos inc.

transcosmos launched its operations in 1966. Since then, we have combined superior "people" with up-to-date "technology" to enhance the competitive strength of our clients by providing them with superior and valuable services. transcosmos currently offers services that support clients' business processes focusing on both sales expansion and cost optimization through our 168 bases across 30 countries/regions with a focus on Asia, while continuously pursuing Operational Excellence. Furthermore, following the expansion of e-commerce market on the global scale, transcosmos provides a comprehensive One-Stop Global E-Commerce services to deliver our clients' excellent products and services in 48 countries/regions around the globe. transcosmos aims to be the "Global Digital Transformation Partner" of our clients, supporting the clients' transformation by leveraging digital technology, responding to the ever-changing business environment.

https://www.trans-cosmos.co.jp/english/

About transcosmos America Inc.

Since our foundation in 1988, transcosmos America Inc. has been committed to increase customer satisfaction by assisting clients, in particular Japanese businesses, operate in the U.S. market. Building on both proven know-how developed in Japan and knowledge, experience and cutting-edge technologies in the U.S., we continue to deliver diverse services including e-commerce strategy planning, e-commerce site development, digital marketing, selling on Amazon, e-commerce one-stop services that range from importing to logistics to fulfillment to customer services as well as customized solutions that meet the needs of each client. Visit us here: https://transcosmos.com/

The U.S. E-Commerce Market Blog (Japanese only): https://transcosmos.com/jp/blog/
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 21:13:20|Editor: huaxia

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Apart from strengthened mutual political trust as well as economic and trade relations, China-Africa cooperation has enriched and expanded into more sectors such as culture, education and health.





by Xinhua writer Zhu Shaobin

NAIROBI, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi is to pay official visits to Africa from Jan. 7 to 13 as his first overseas visit in 2020, which will mark the 30th consecutive year since 1991 that a Chinese foreign minister has visited Africa at the start of every year.

Such a well-kept tradition already tells a lot about the flourishing and brotherly nature of China-Africa relations, and the year 2020 bears special significance for both sides since they embark on a new decade of strong ties well maintained by tradition and mutually beneficial cooperation over the years.

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi addresses the opening ceremony of the Coordinators' Meeting on the Implementation of the Follow-up Actions of the Beijing Summit of the Forum on the China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing, capital of China, June 25, 2019. (Xinhua/Liu Bin)

UNSTOPPABLE TREND

The tradition of a Chinese foreign minister visiting Africa at the start of every year dates back to January 1991 when then Chinese vice premier and foreign minister Qian Qichen visited four East African nations.

It has since become an unstoppable trend as succeeding Chinese foreign ministers, including Tang Jiaxuan, Li Zhaoxing, Yang Jiechi and Wang, continued to choose Africa for their first trip of the year.

The very idea for such a tradition, as the late Qian put it, is because China believes that economies around the world were becoming more interdependent especially since the end of the Cold War, and Africa, as a big group of countries in the United Nations family, represents an important force in international affairs.

So naturally, establishing friendly cooperative ties with Africa serves China's interests, Qian once said.

Containers are seen on a vessel at the new container terminal in Walvis Bay, Namibia, Aug. 2, 2019. (Xinhua/Zhang Yu)

Moreover, China, as the world's largest developing country, has to strengthen solidarity and cooperation with Africa and other so-called third world countries because this is the cornerstone of China's foreign policy.

At a press briefing held last week, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said this fine tradition also reflects Chinese priority to develop ties with Africa.

Wu Chuanhua, a research fellow at the Institute of West Asian and African Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said maintaining the same tradition over 30 years is unique in the history of diplomacy, noting that the tradition is cherished by both sides.

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 13, 2019 shows the 50 MW solar power farm in Garissa, Kenya. (Xinhua/Xie Han)

FOCAC FUNDS

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), a dialogue oriented towards promoting China-Africa cooperation and broadening consensus on issues of mutual concern.

Since the FOCAC's inception in 2000, China and Africa have witnessed unprecedented cooperative outcomes.

China has been Africa's largest trading partner for 10 consecutive years. In 2018, trade volume between China and Africa amounted to 204.2 billion U.S. dollars, up 20 percent year-on-year.

The first freight train of the Nairobi-Naivasha Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) arrives at the Naivasha Inland Container Depot in Kenya, on Dec. 17, 2019. (Xinhua/Wang Teng)

In infrastructure, Chinese expertise and technologies have given rise to numerous transformative mega-projects such as railways, ports, aviation hubs and power plants in Africa. In December last year, Kenya launched the Nairobi-Naivasha Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) cargo service, which has extended the Mombasa-Nairobi SGR to better connect the hinterland.

"Over the past 20 years, China-Africa relations have developed in an all-around way," Wu noted. "Apart from strengthened mutual political trust as well as economic and trade relations, cooperation has enriched and expanded into more sectors such as culture, education, and health."

Evariste Irandu, a professor at the University of Nairobi, said China, after having achieved its own historic development through decades of hard work, has pledged to assist other less fortunate countries, and one of the principal beneficiaries of Chinese commitment is Africa.

People dance to celebrate the launch of the Nairobi-Naivasha Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) cargo service in Nairobi, Kenya, on Dec. 17, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Yan)

In December 2015, at the FOCAC summit in Johannesburg, China announced 10 major cooperation plans to promote industrialization and agricultural modernization in Africa, backed by a fund of 60 billion dollars.

China would extend an additional 60 billion dollars of financing to Africa, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at the opening ceremony of the 2018 Beijing Summit of the FOCAC.

China's pledge to Africa is "a clear testimony to China's commitment," Irandu noted.

The professor added that the FOCAC is indeed based on "win-win cooperation," adding the regular visits to Africa by senior Chinese government officials clearly indicate that China is really sincere and honest in seeing the continent develop.

A Chinese agricultural expert (L) checks paddy fields with a local agricultural technician in Xaixai of Gaza, Mozambique, Nov. 28, 2019. (Xinhua/Zhang Yu)

NEW DECADE

The past year saw Africa launch the operational phase of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), forming what could be the world's largest free trade area that covers more than 1.2 billion people with a combined gross domestic product of 2.5 trillion dollars.

Expectations are growing high and trading is expected to commence within AfCFTA on July 1, 2020. Officials and experts believe that Africa and China are set to see broadened cooperation with AfCFTA's launch.

"China has shown keen interest in assisting Africa in closing her huge infrastructure gap especially in high speed rail and road development," said Irandu. "This will open up many inaccessible parts of the continent for regional and international trade."

Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat (C) announces the operational phase of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement during the launching ceremony in Niamey, Niger, July 7, 2019. (Str/Xinhua)

With the operationalization of the AfCFTA, the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) offers a great opportunity for Africa to develop its gigantic infrastructure projects and build transport networks linking different parts of the continent, said AU Commissioner for Trade and Industry Albert Muchanga at a conference in Ethiopia last month.

His words were echoed by He Wenping, a CASS researcher, who said that since the BRI was proposed in 2013, "Africa has become an important partner of China in implementing the Belt and Road Initiative."

(Xinhua reporters Cao Kai and Wang Xiaopeng in Nairobi also contributed to the story.)

(Video reporters: Cao Peixian, Tang Jiefeng, Zhang Yuliang, Yang Yi; Video editor: Yin Le)
Students affiliated to the RSS- backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad on Monday held a demonstration outside Ruia College in Matunga against violence in Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University and accused Leftist outfits and the JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) of orchestrating it.

Violence had broken out at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured.

Speaking to reporters here, ABVP national secretary Ankit Owhal said, "The Left and JNUSU are responsible for Sunday's violence. Some 23 ABVP students were injured. The police must arrest the people who went around in masks attacking students."



He said allegations about the ABVP orchestrating the violence was "propaganda by Leftists organisations to tarnish our image".

He claimed Delhi police had uncovered "evidence" that the violence was carried out by students affiliated to Leftist groups.

The Delhi Police, incidentally, has registered a case against unidentified people in connection with the violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Why have Italian LMV (Light Multipurpose Vehicles) M65 "Lynx" 4x4 armored vehicles been seen in Syria used by Russian and Syrian troops? This has been the case since 2016 and several times Italy was accused of violating the 2014 sanctions against providing Russia with military equipment. Several investigations were conducted and it was discovered that Italy did not violate the sanctions, it simply fulfilled one phase of the LMV sale to Russia before the 2014 sanctions took effect.

The Russian LMV saga began in 2012 when, after nearly two years of negotiations, vigorous internal dissent within Russia and several successful tests, Russia finally signed a purchase order for 60, not the 2,500 originally discussed, Italian LMV armored vehicles. Kits were sent so that the vehicles could be assembled in Russia. The number of component kits was later increased to 264 before the 2014 sanctions took effect. Yet Russia reported that they had assembled 358 LMVs. There is no way to confirm the Russian claims, which do not match export sales records the LMV manufacturer and Italian government maintained.

In Russia, the LMV deal was opposed by Russian vehicle manufacturers and Russian generals who resented depending on foreign armored vehicles when Russia had long designed and built similar equipment. The main reason given, in Russia, for the LMV deal was to improve Russian production techniques. This made sense because the LMV was a superior light armored 4x4 wheeled vehicle, not just because of good design but also because of high quality manufacturing methods. This was demonstrated in Syria where Russian and Syrian troops preferred the LMV to similar Russian made vehicles because the LMV offered better protection and was easier and more comfortable to operate.

The main Russian competitor for the LMV is the Tigr (Tiger). It is based on a hummer-like vehicle, the Gaz-2330. Like the American M1114 (armored hummer), the Tigr weighs five tons, carries a crew of four, and a load of about a ton (or an additional five men, if configured for that). The Tigr costs $88,000 each, compared to $145,000 for the M1114, and was offered for export as a less expensive alternative to the M1114. But the M65 provides much better protection than the Tigr or M1114 and many Russian officials would like to see Russian vehicle manufacturers get a close look at the LMV. That apparently led to some improvements in the Tigr.

The seven ton, 4x4 M65 LMV is another design influenced by the success of American armored hummers and MRAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like the hummer, the LMV normally carries five people. The LMV can carry a RWS (Remote Weapons Station) on the roof and there are variants with the rear of the vehicle used for cargo or equipment. The LMV is similar in size to the hummer (5.1 meters/15.8 feet long and 2.35 meters/7.3 feet wide) but is actually a few percent larger and weighs about a third more. Like the hummers built with armor (rather than having it added), the LMV provides excellent protection from bullets and roadside bombs. The V-shaped hull of the LMV improves protection from explosions beneath the vehicle. The LMV costs nearly half a million dollars each, when tricked out with all the accessories and is a major improvement over the older vehicles is was meant to replace.

So far the Italian manufacturer, Iveco, has sold about 4,000 LMVs to Spain, Italy, Belgium, Britain, Brazil and Norway. The Italian army ordered 1,210 LMVs and some were used in Afghanistan, where they performed well. Russia was going to buy, or build under license, over 2,000 LMVs but the 2014 economic sanctions placed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine halted that. The Russians originally wanted to build most of their LMVs locally under license and thus obtain a lot of practical knowledge in the use of Western manufacturing techniques. Even before the 2014 sanctions, the collapse of oil prices after 2013 put that idea on hold.

By 2014 Russia was in the process of buying warships and other Western military equipment using licensed production deals. Those were halted abruptly in 2014 and Russian manufacturing techniques still are in need of updating.
(Bloomberg) -- Lenovo Group Ltd. showed off the inside of its foldable $2,499 ThinkPad computer, which goes on sale mid-year, in order to instill confidence in a category that has had some technological setbacks.

An earlier prototype of the 13-inch tablet that folds in half first previewed last May, but the technology behind the hardware has evolved. That folding mechanism makes the computer easier to transport, but has also been tricky for some other companies to deploy well. In a demonstration at the CES consumer technology show in Las Vegas, there was no crease in the display when its fully unfolded  unlike with the Samsung Galaxy Fold and Lenovos own forthcoming Motorola Razr smartphone  and its compatible with a keyboard attachment that mounts on the top of the screen.

The plastic OLED screen has carbon fiber plates beneath it for dent resistance, an issue that also plagued Samsungs device, as well as a silicon and magnesium frame around the edges to prevent breaks. In an interview, Lenovo commercial PC President Christian Teismann said the company spent four years developing its folding screen technology and that the computer is designed to last a typical three- to four-year life cycle.

With about six months to go before shipping, the computer still appears to need some tweaks to work properly with Microsoft Corp.s Windows operating system. It also runs on a new Intel Corp. chip thats slower than those that typically are found in computers at a comparable price point. Given its expense, the machine likely will appeal first to early adopters, but technology companies are pushing for foldable devices to eventually become mainstream hits. Lenovo will also offer a 5G version for an extra charge, making the device one of the first computers to run on the new high-speed wireless standard.

To contact the author of this story: Mark Gurman in Los Angeles at mgurman1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Molly Schuetz at mschuetz9@bloomberg.net

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

2020 Bloomberg L.P.
The new building will use 5G, multi-access edge computing (MEC), artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technology solutions from AT&T to power its state-of-the-art, smart facility for cancer research, treatment and wellness education.

The Ellison Institute aims to create a new paradigm in cancer research and treatment, where patients and researchers, doctors and scientists have the opportunity to interact in a community environment. Integrating cutting-edge technologies with the building will help reimagine the connectivity within healthcare and enhance the patient experience within the clinic while eventually providing an anticipatory, high-touch service.

The Ellison Institute's collaborative think tank facilitates a change in the approach to cancer research, prevention and wellness by bringing together world-class medical researchers and leading experts in physics, engineering and mathematics. By developing one of the most technologically advanced cancer research facilities, the team will amass data intelligence that will help to delineate the success of these collaborative interactions within the building.

"Cancer touches us all, and our hope at the Ellison Institute is to change the course of this disease by the way we approach it," said Dr. David Agus, founding director and chief executive officer of the Ellison Institute. "As a cornerstone of the Institute, our collaborative environment and interactive care clinic offer a different healthcare experience for patients, physicians and researchers. AT&T's collaborative approach to identifying our needs and integrating transformational technologies will enable this multi-level synergistic ecosystem within the building and provide a blueprint available to virtually any institution looking to transform how they share information."

"Nearly 40 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lifetime," said Mo Katibeh, chief marketing officer, AT&T Business. "AT&T Business's work with the Ellison Institute to bring next generation technologies like 5G and Edge Compute will support their vision of transforming the way cancer is treated. AT&T's solutions will help bridge the intersections across disciplines to create a truly collaborative environment."

The goal of this collaboration is to use technology to create a first-of-its-kind experience for visitors, patients, clinicians and students.

An easy-to-use wayfinding app allows patients, visitors, and staff to orient themselves with the facility using a 3D map. Appointment alerts are sent, and directional guidance provided  including navigation to parking and additional lab locations located 20 minutes away.

Connected sensors track patient-staff interaction. The research and care process are studied for collaboration that can lead to better outcomes. In the future, facility assets and supply chain are in the plans for integration.

Reliable wireless communications  provided through the Distributed Antenna System  allows for wall-to-wall coverage inside the Ellison Institute with enough capacity for thousands of users.

Immersive, personalized and engaging experiences for patients and visitors are expected to be delivered through the combination of these and other technologies.

The AT&T global network is the foundation and backbone that will help support the latest medical technologies used and developed at the facility. It will help enable the Ellison Institute to gain medical insights and help drive outcomes for their patients through enhanced sharing of information. The solution being deployed will consist of Distributed Antenna System (DAS), 5G using millimeter wave spectrum, multi-access edge computing and an IoT platform.

With this agreement, AT&T and the Ellison Institute are integrating a powerful combination of technologies into one future-proof facility to try to help defeat a life-ravaging disease. As the cutting-edge approach of this state-of-the-art facility is implemented and results are achieved, they can be shared across the industry  benefiting the greater good of healthcare research all over the world.

Slated to open this winter, the Ellison Institute's new building located in West Los Angeles will house interdisciplinary cancer research laboratories alongside a cancer treatment and wellness clinic. The facility will also serve as an educational destination where students and the community can tour the building, observe ongoing research in the labs and view curated art by the likes of Ai Weiwei, Laura Owens, Robert Indiana and Jeff Koons on display. Wellness, education and global outreach programs will be facilitated in the building's auditorium and test kitchen.

For more information about the Ellison Institute, visit ellison.usc.edu.

About Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC

The Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine was founded in 2016 to leverage technology, spark innovation, and drive interdisciplinary, evidence-based research to reimagine and redefine cancer treatment, enhance health, and transform lives. Under the leadership of Dr. David B. Agus, MD, the Ellison Institute was designed to tackle the difficult questions in health care and research to push the boundaries of medicine forward. The objective of the Ellison Institute is the rigorous and rapid translation of novel technologies into practice for use in clinical, diagnostic, and laboratory settings. The Institute is comprised of dedicated clinicians, experts and thought-leaders from disparate backgrounds who have come together to make a meaningful, positive impact on the lives of patients. This one-of-a-kind Institute hopes to serve as a powerful catalyst for innovation and reimagining the status quo in medical research and cancer treatments. For more information, visit Ellison.usc.edu.

For more information, contact:

Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC

(310) 454-3080

[email protected]

SOURCE Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC
A man bashed in a pub by members of rap group OneFour 'can't remember a thing' from the night he was repeatedly bludgeoned in the head with a hammer and left in a pool of blood.

It comes as a blow-by-blow account of the brutal melee involving three of the viral Mount Druitt drill music rappers at a Sydney hotel about 1am on Saturday July 21, 2018 can be revealed.

Court facts obtained by Daily Mail Australia describe in chilling detail the rappers' and their friends' attack on two men at Rooty Hill's Carousel Inn in Sydney's west.

The documents reveal how the pub's owner desperately tried to intervene, warning the thugs: 'You're on CCTV. We have hundreds of cameras here.

'Whatever you're thinking of doing, you don't want to do it here.'

Shocking attack: Dahcell 'Celly' Ramos - an on-again, off-again member of OneFour - attacks a man with a hammer during the brawl at the Carousel Inn in Rooty Hill, NSW

The documents said after the fight eased off, the owner told the attackers 'police have been called!' - and was promptly knocked out.

He was smacked in the right side of the face with a timber chair leg by Dahcell 'Celly' Ramos - an on-again, off-again member of the band.

Celly and well-known stars Salec 'Lekks' and Pio 'YP' Misa are all serving jail terms for the shocking melee.

But it's cold comfort for the brawl's main target.

Daily Mail Australia has been told the tradesman, Troy, has no memory of the bashing.

The victim suffered skull, nasal, septum, sinus wall and eye socket fractures, lacerations to his cheek, eyebrow and eyelid and 'significant' facial swelling. Both of his ears were wounded - from his earrings being tugged from his ears, court documents said.

His friend, Anthony, was not as badly injured.

Troy had been recovering well until the recent spate of publicity, a source said.

'He was in a good place. But all of this has really stirred sh** up again.

'We didn't know it was coming out in the media.'

The man only recently had the wrenching experience of reliving the whole night by watching the evening's CCTV footage.

The viral 'drill' music group from Mount Druitt, OneFour, is struggling with two of its main members - Lekks (left) and YP (second from left) behind bars over a brutal pub bashing in July 2018. The rest of the group's four official members, Spenny (third) and J-Emz, were not involved

OneFour has been described by GQ as 'The Western Sydney Rap Group Taking Over Hip Hop' . Their 'drill' music is a sub-genre of hip hop and lyrics often focus on gang life, guns and drugs

How the brutal night unfolded

The three OneFour members involved in the crime had been at a house party before deciding to kick on to the pub just before midnight.

Lekks - who would be described as the instigator of the brutal attack - had been drinking heavily.

About the same time, the two victims, Troy and his best friend Anthony, were at the poker machines in the outdoor gaming room, sitting next to one another.

An agreed statement of facts, tendered during Lekks' court case and seen by Daily Mail Australia, explains what happened next:

INJURIES OF THE VICTIM OF CAROUSEL INN ATTACK Non-displaced fracture to the right side of the skull near the temple

Fractures to both sides of the nasal bone

A displaced nasal septum fracture

Two right sinus wall fractures

Fractures to the floor and lateral wall of the right eye socket

A laceration to his cheek and lip that breached the dermis and epidermis

A 5cm laceration to his right eyebrow

A 4cm laceration to his right eyelid

Significant swelling to the face, particularly around the right eye

A wound on both ears as a result of earrings being pulled from his ears Advertisement

12:59AM: Lekks enters the room in a black hooded jumper.

He walks to a poker machine and says hello to another player.

Then he wanders back out to the carpark.

1AM: Security guards tell Lekks and his rowdy group to keep it down.

Lekks then re-enters the pub, returns to the poker machine next to Troy, and stands behind it.

Troy asks: 'Why are you looking at my f***ing machine?'

Lekks fires up and gets 'aggressive'.

The security guard explains to Troy: 'He's just watching his friend play.'

But they continue to argue and Lekks is asked to leave.

1:05AM ONWARDS: Lekks slams a gate on the way out.

He continues to 'yell and gesture' at the victims.

'Come outside, we'll fight! Come out,' he says.

Both victims get up from their seats.

Five of Lekks' friends - including YP and Celly - run over.

Pio 'YP' Misa was the first of the group to throw a punch - or, rather, a chair leg

One asks 'what happened?'

Lekks and his mates then try and enter the gaming area but are blocked by security.

Celly, YP, Lekks and a friend, Timothy Willett, try and burst into the gaming room through another door.

Security try and intercept them.

But at the same time, two more of their friends, Jimmy Vaafusuaga and 'Lausii' manage to get in through the unguarded entrance.

Lekks shouts at the men and challenges them to a fight.

Three security guards try and get in between him and the victims and successfully hold him back.

But Lekks's rap group mates, YP and Celly, attack.

YP pulls a timber leg from inside his clothes and then smacks Anthony over the head with it twice.

Above, CCTV captures the moment he strikes one of the two of the two victims, Anthony, with a chair leg

Anthony backs away, but YP follows and hits him a third time.

Then Celly pulls a hammer from his jacket and smashes Troy in the head several times.

Their friend Vaafusuaga punches the victim in the head.

Celly then stomps on Troy's head 'multiple times'.

The moment the artist known as 'Celly' (dressed in black, on right side) kicks in Troy's head

Vicious: Dahcell 'Celly' Ramos beat the man with a hammer and then stomped on his head

Celly raises his hammer to attack again but is pulled away.

Their friend Timothy Willett punches the second victim, Anthony, in the head.

Troy is left sprawled on the ground and the fight seemingly ends.

Sua picks up Troy's head by the hair and shakes it.

Assault: Lekks, one of the most prominent members of the rap group, picks up the man's head by the hair and shakes it

'Lekks', or Salec Sua, never steps out in public without covering his face - unless he's at the pub, above

1:08AM: A pub employee calls the police.

1:12AM: Police arrive.

The group leave and run away.

Lekks jumps in a waiting gold Ford sedan with a woman.

But they don't get far with police turning their sirens on.

Lekks is arrested.

The rest of the group are rounded up over the following hours.

They are taken to Riverstone Police Station and all decline police interviews.

Back on tour but missing members: What happened next

Lekks was jailed for at least four-and-a-half years, Celly - the hammer attacker - for a decade, and YP for four for their roles in the bashing.

At Lekks' sentencing, Judge James Bennett said it was 'tragic' what had unfolded and that the rapper had 'great potential'.

The court was told: 'They [the rap group] have the capacity to succeed if they remove themselves from any temptations the street has to offer'.

(Neither of the other key members of OneFour - nicknamed Spenny and J-Emz - were involved in the incident.)

The rap group has since travelled to Auckland on tour, but J-Emz was refused entry into the country. Lekks' little brother has reportedly filled in his role.

OneFour claim their Australian events have come under pressure to be pulled by police, a claim denied by the NSW Police Force.

One thing is for sure - Celly, Lekks and YP's victims won't be attending one of their gigs anytime soon.
Ranchi (Jharkhand) [India], Jan 6 (ANI): Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Monday approved the formation of 22 fast track special courts for expeditious trial of rape cases, including that of minors under POCSO (Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences) Act in the state.



"Chief Minister Hemant Soren has approved the administrative formation of 22 Fast track Special Courts for faster disposal of rape cases and cases under POCSO Act," the Office of Chief Minister, Jharkhand tweeted.

"Approval has been given for the formation of 22 posts for District and Additional Sessions Judge. In addition to that, 7 posts in each of these 22 courts would be created under Class III and Class IV for operations. The total number of posts will be 154 under the non-gazetted category," the CMO said in another tweet.

Soren was recently sworn-in as the 11th Chief Minister of Jharkhand after the JMM-Congress-RJD alliance won a comfortable majority by securing 47 seats in the 81-member House in the assembly elections held in December last year. (ANI)


One of the best investments we can make is in our own knowledge and skill set. With that in mind, this article will work through how we can use Return On Equity (ROE) to better understand a business. We'll use ROE to examine Computer And Technologies Holdings Limited (HKG:46), by way of a worked example.

Computer And Technologies Holdings has a ROE of 14%, based on the last twelve months. One way to conceptualize this, is that for each HK$1 of shareholders' equity it has, the company made HK$0.14 in profit.

See our latest analysis for Computer And Technologies Holdings

How Do You Calculate ROE?

The formula for ROE is:

Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations)  Shareholders' Equity

Or for Computer And Technologies Holdings:

14% = HK$67m  HK$478m (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2019.)

Most know that net profit is the total earnings after all expenses, but the concept of shareholders' equity is a little more complicated. It is all the money paid into the company from shareholders, plus any earnings retained. You can calculate shareholders' equity by subtracting the company's total liabilities from its total assets.

What Does Return On Equity Signify?

ROE measures a company's profitability against the profit it retains, and any outside investments. The 'return' is the yearly profit. A higher profit will lead to a higher ROE. So, all else being equal, a high ROE is better than a low one. That means ROE can be used to compare two businesses.

Does Computer And Technologies Holdings Have A Good ROE?

Arguably the easiest way to assess company's ROE is to compare it with the average in its industry. Importantly, this is far from a perfect measure, because companies differ significantly within the same industry classification. Pleasingly, Computer And Technologies Holdings has a superior ROE than the average (11%) company in the IT industry.

SEHK:46 Past Revenue and Net Income, January 6th 2020

That's clearly a positive. We think a high ROE, alone, is usually enough to justify further research into a company. For example you might check if insiders are buying shares.

Story continues

Why You Should Consider Debt When Looking At ROE

Most companies need money -- from somewhere -- to grow their profits. That cash can come from retained earnings, issuing new shares (equity), or debt. In the case of the first and second options, the ROE will reflect this use of cash, for growth. In the latter case, the use of debt will improve the returns, but will not change the equity. Thus the use of debt can improve ROE, albeit along with extra risk in the case of stormy weather, metaphorically speaking.

Computer And Technologies Holdings's Debt And Its 14% ROE

Shareholders will be pleased to learn that Computer And Technologies Holdings has not one iota of net debt! Its solid ROE indicates a good business, especially when you consider it is not using leverage. After all, when a company has a strong balance sheet, it can often find ways to invest in growth, even if it takes some time.

The Bottom Line On ROE

Return on equity is useful for comparing the quality of different businesses. In my book the highest quality companies have high return on equity, despite low debt. All else being equal, a higher ROE is better.

Having said that, while ROE is a useful indicator of business quality, you'll have to look at a whole range of factors to determine the right price to buy a stock. It is important to consider other factors, such as future profit growth -- and how much investment is required going forward. So I think it may be worth checking this free this detailed graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Bill de Blasios short-lived presidential campaign didnt attract a lot of voters before it died on September 20, hence the many headlines like Bill de Blasio Strikes Out with Voters, Gets Zero Percent Support in Latest 2020 Poll (CBS News New York, August 6). One group did enthusiastically back de Blasios quixotic bid, however: the hotel union, which spent $440,000 on ads outside of New York that extolled de Blasios farcical and doomed campaign.

Why? Were de Blasio to be elected president, there would be no obvious benefit to hotels, since presidents dont have much to do with national hotel policy. Moreover, since de Blasio could not serve as both mayor of New York City and president at the same time, the hotel union would have lost a known friend in City Hall. Who knows who might replace de Blasio as mayor? Maybe theres another Bloomberg on the way.

More likely is that the Hotel Trades Council knew de Blasio had no chance to be president but spent lavishly on his campaign anyway as a way to signal its warm feelings for the mayor. Now the union is calling in the favor. Surprise! De Blasio is delighted to help it stomp out non-union hotel building in New York City.

De Blasio loves to fulminate against landlords and high rents, but if New Yorkers should try to earn some of that rent back by using Airbnb to link up with visitors who are eager to pay for unused space, they may find themselves under attack by that very same mayor. De Blasio has ramped up an enforcement squad tasked with rounding up and punishing violators of subleasing laws. By sheer coincidence, the hotel unions enthusiastically support all of this action to stymie their competition.

Of course there was no quid pro quo here. Why, that would be illegal! The hotel union spent $440,000 on ads supporting de Blasios presidential candidacy, and its members were 30 percent of the individual donors to the delusional and laughable de Blasio 2020 campaign. Then, by sheer coincidence, de Blasio did exactly what the unions wanted him to do. Quid, quo. No pro, though! Just quid . . . quo. Peter Ward, the $515,000-a-year president of the Hotel Trades Council, told the New York Times he never discussed with the mayor the idea of giving him union support in exchange for pro-union policies: I mean, Jesus Christ, how stupid would you be to have that conversation? How stupid, indeed?

Story continues

The Times reports that Wards union is now close to a groundbreaking win in New York: Mayor de Blasio has directed his administration to draft rules that would require hotel developers to obtain a special permit before they can build. This is how important matters with broad effects get decided in places like New York City: in the fine print that never comes close to penetrating the consciousness of voters. The upshot of the draft rules, say developers, will be to stop any more non-union hotels from being built. Down the line, this will mean higher hotel prices in New York City, which we all knew were far too reasonable and needed to be jacked up a bit. (Union hotel-room attendants make an average of $34 an hour plus lavish health care and retirement benefits, and the union recently extracted $149 million from the Waldorf Astoria for converting part of the hotel to condos.)

Hotel prices are central to one of the leading industries in New York City, which is tourism: out-of-towners wont come to Gotham to spend their money if they cant afford the lodging in the first place. Anything that raises hotel prices will adversely affect all the other New Yorkers who work in industries that rely heavily on visitors, such as cab drivers, restaurant workers, even Broadway chorus boys. New York has built its reputation (and a lot of businesses) on a reputation for being welcoming to outsiders. This latest move by de Blasio is yet another indication that he puts his own interests above New York Citys.

De Blasios war on Airbnb is an even more direct attack on New Yorkers that is hard to disguise as anything but a favor to a deep-pocketed donor. What possible benefit can accrue to New Yorkers by preventing them from renting out their apartments? Instead, de Blasio and allies have framed this as a matter of stalking unscrupulous landlords for supposedly turning what ought to be a nice cheap apartment reserved for you into a high-priced hotel room for out-of-towners. De Blasio has poured more than $6 million additional funding into a special enforcement agency that has become the anti-Airbnb squad, fanning out into the city to conduct more than 4,000 inspections and declare more than 2,600 violations of subleasing laws since 2017. De Blasio also signed a law forcing Airbnb to supply lots of information about hosts to city enforcers; reluctance to have the city snooping into their affairs is expected to greatly discourage would-be renters.

De Blasio has been fortunate that his entire mayoralty, now six years old, has occurred within an economic boom period and during an almost uninterrupted string of successes on Wall Street. Yet an August poll found his approval rating in New York state to be nine points lower than President Trumps. Maybe New Yorkers understand that his man-of-the-people rhetoric has little to do with the reality.

More from National Review
Update Jan 7: The body of Valerie Hough has been found.

Earlier: Gardai in Roscommon are asking for help to find a woman who went missing from her home this morning.

Officers are looking for Valerie Hough, aged 42, who went missing from her home in the Knockroe area of Castlerea in the county today.

Valerie is described as being five foot seven inches tall with a slim build and red hair.

When last seen, Valerie was wearing a long, dark puffer coat, blue jeans, a scarf and grey Nike runners.

It is believed Valerie was driving a blue Ford Focus Convertible car at the time she went missing.

Gardai and Valeries family are concerned for her and are asking anyone who may know where Valerie is or may have seen her to contact Castlerea Garda Station on 094 962 1630, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station.
In a press conference on Sunday Iran Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Mousavi said Oman had not sent a delegation to Tehran to mediate with the U.S. to be rejected as claimed by Lebanon's Al-Mayadeen.

According to the Islamic Republic News Agency, the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen which is close to the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran, quoted an "informed source" on Sunday as saying that Iran has refused any mediation.

An Omani delegation sent to Tehran on Saturday had to leave the country without meeting with Iranian officials, Al-Mayadeen claimed.

n a statement carried by Oman News Agency on Sunday the Sultanate of Oman called on the United States and Iran to seek dialogue to ease the tensions after a U.S. drone attack in Baghdad on Friday killed the Iranian Qods Force commander.

The statement also calls on the international community to urge both sides to de-escalate.

The Omani Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi on Saturday evening condoled his Iranian counterpart Mohammad-Javad Zarif in a phone call and conferred with him on the recent developments in the region. Details of their talks have not been revealed.

Oman maintains good ties with Iran and has mediated between Tehran and Washington during the past four decades, particularly in the process of nuclear talks. On several occasions the Sultanate acted as a mediator between the two countries for exchange of prisoners.

The Sultan of Oman who has friendly relations with Iran is suffering from cancer but an official Omani statement today said he is "stable".
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The US deployed at least 700 soldiers to the Middle East days prior to President Donald Trump's ordering of last week's deadly Iranian drone attack.

Service members and their relatives said they began getting calls about the deployment as early as Tuesday, which was New Year's Eve.

Lt. Col. Mike Burns, a spokesman for the 82nd Airborne Division, told The Associated Press about 700 service members had already been deployed by the time Trump gave the order for Friday's fatal drone strike which took out Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.

Troops were seen departing for the Middle East over the weekend with the 82nd Airborne Division seen Sunday leaving Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

Burns said 3,500 members of the division's quick-deployment brigade, known officially as its Immediate Response Force, will have deployed within a few days of the attack.

Iran has vowed 'harsh retaliation' for the strike near Baghdad's airport that killed Soleimani, the architect of its interventions across the Middle East. The head of Iran's elite Quds Force was blamed for attacks on US troops and American allies going back decades.

Bri'anna Ferry's husband got the call on New Year's Eve, and she said he was on a plane to the Middle East within hours.

Paratroopers assigned to the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, are pictured Sunday departing for the Middle East from Fort Bragg, North Carolina

The paratroopers by the hundreds were brought Pope Army Airfield about 15 minutes away to board aircraft that would fly them to the Middle East on Sunday

Members of a quick-deployment brigade, known officially as an Immediate Response Force, march toward an airplane Sunday at the Army's Pope Airfield

Chartered aircraft (pictured) also assisted in the deployment of paratroopers assigned to the 1st Brigade Combat Team from the 82nd Airborne Division

'This isn't how military life goes, normally you have advanced notice about what's happening,' she said.

She fears he could miss milestones with their baby daughter, including her first birthday, but also wants him to focus on his mission.

'I told him, don't worry about us. We'll be fine,' she said. 'Focus on your mission.'

One service member said he was making plans for the night's festivities when he was called to help load up the soldiers that same day, according to video footage released by the military.

'Almost our whole squadron got alerted,' the unnamed airman said in footage taken of him while loading a cargo plane at Fort Bragg on Saturday.

'I was getting ready to go out for New Year's when they called me.'

Donald Trump gave the order for Friday's fatal drone strike which took out Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Iran has vowed 'harsh retaliation' for the strike near Baghdad's airport that killed Soleimani, the architect of its interventions across the Middle East

A paratrooper secures his gear after arriving at Pope Army Airfield, about 15 minutes from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where the 82nd assembled thousands of paratroopers for deployment to the Middle East

A couple of paratroopers say their farewells before deployment to the Middle East from Fort Bragg, North Carolina on Sunday

US Army paratroopers from the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, hear from their superiors before deployment from Pope Army Airfield, North Carolina

Additional service members arrive for deployment at Pope Army Airfield. Service members and their relatives said they began getting calls about the deployment as early as Tuesday, which was New Year's Eve

Locked and loaded, these paratroopers are among thousands getting sent to the Middle East as the US readies for a response from Iran, if any, after President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike that took out Iranian General Qassem Soleimani on Friday

Being a US soldier in a fast-response force sometimes means being sent halfway across the world within a day, leaving no time to say goodbye to those staying behind.

That's what happened to April Shumard when her husband, a member of the 82nd, got the call.

Her husband was among hundreds of soldiers deployed Saturday from Fort Bragg, which is located in North Carolina.

The service members were dispatched to Kuwait to serve as reinforcements as a response is awaited for the slaying of the top Iranian general.

Shumard said her husband was at home, minding the couple's five children while she was at work at Healing Hands day spa, when he sent her a text. He had to rush to base. He wasn't sure if it was a drill or a deployment. Then she got another text: 'We're leaving tomorrow.'

Troops are seen resting up before deployment. Many were called at a moment's notice to serve after President Trump gave the order for Friday's fatal drone strike which took out Iranian General Qassem Soleimani

Another paratrooper catching some final winks before deployment to the Middle East

Service members made one final check of their equipment before their deployment from Pope Army Airfield to the Middle East

The final checks include firearms that were packed away for the deployment

One service member said he was making plans for his New Year's Eve festivities when he was called to help load up soldiers that same day for deployment, according to video footage released by the military

Paratroopers at Pope Army Airfield assemble before boarding buses that will take them to aircraft on standby for their deployment

Paratroopers board buses at Pope Army Airfield that will take them to their air transports for deployment, many having been called just a day, or even hours, before

She said her husband has been in the military since 2010 and has already deployed twice to Afghanistan. But with those prior instances, the family had much more time to prepare and say goodbye.

In the gray early morning light Saturday, Army video showed soldiers dressed in camouflage fatigues filing into planes, carrying rucksacks and rifles. Humvees were rolled onto another cargo plane and chained in place for the flight to the Middle East.

Burns said the soldiers within the Immediate Response Force train constantly to be ready to respond quickly to crises abroad. When called by their superiors, they have two hours to get to base with their gear and must maintain a state of readiness so that they can be in the air headed to their next location within 18 hours.

'So whether they were on leave, whether they were home drinking a beer, whether they were, you know, hanging out, throwing the kids up in the yard, you get the call and it's time to go,' he said.

An unnamed service member steps off a bus, ready for deployment. Another said he was making plans for his New Year's Eve festivities when he was called to help load up soldiers that same day for deployment, according to video footage released by the military

Being a US soldier in a fast-response force sometimes means being sent halfway across the world within a day, service members and their relatives said

Service members arrive on the air strip at Pope Army Airfield to be dispatched to Kuwait to serve as reinforcements in response Iran's threat after the slaying of Soleimani

The troops were to board military transports for their deployment to the Middle East to respond to Iran's potential threat against America for the slaying of Soleimani

A US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III is serviced on the ramp while awaiting the arrival of US Army paratroopers from the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, deploying from Pope Army Airfield

He said that soldiers typically keep individual 'go-bags' of their personal gear with them at their living quarters.

Shumard said Fayetteville is a tight-knit community, and she expects people to work together to support families who are suddenly missing a parent.

'This was so last-minute,' she said, urging people to reach out to the 82nd's families.

'Just try to help out whoever you know who might need some babysitting or help or just get some groceries and bring it to their house.'

Deployed service member board a military transport bound for the Middle East to await Iran's response, if any, for the slaying of Soleimani, who headed Iran's elite Quds Force and was blamed for attacks on US troops and American allies going back decades

Paratroopers are lined up boarding an airplane at Fort Brag on Saturday on their way to the US Central Command area of operations
A coroner has said an east London council should do more to stop swimmers bathing illegally in a disused dock after a young artist drowned.

Illustration student Jonathan Adebanjo, 23, died while swimming with friends in Shadwell Basin on July 23 last year during a record heatwave.

It took police 16 hours to recover his body from the dock, which has become a popular bathing spot in hot summers.

Inner North London assistant coroner Edwin Buckett told Tower Hamlets council there is a risk that future deaths will occur unless action is taken.

In a report he said: The water in Shadwell Basin is murky with rubbish and discarded items below the surface.

"There is an undercurrent at the basin and the area where the deceased was swimming was not covered by CCTV.

Mr Adebanjo, from Catford, was a competent swimmer, say his family. Before his death he was due to start his final year at Camberwell College of Arts.

There have been several deaths in the 30ft-deep basin in the past few years. The water is full of machinery from its time as a working dock.

Mr Buckett added: I am concerned that the signs indicating that swimming is prohibited should be larger and should indicate the reason why swimming is dangerous.

In 2018, Tower Hamlets started a campaign to warn people of the dangers, stepping up patrols and warning bathers they could face a 500 fine.
"We are declaring jihad and general mobilization. Men and women, officers and civilians will be provided with weapons," Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar of the Libyan National Army said in a televised address. The situation in the country has been unstable for many years: as a result of the civil war with the military support of NATO countries and their allies in 2011, the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya was abolished, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was killed and the government was overthrown.

Five years later, commenting on the policy of Western countries on Libya, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said: "They violated the UN Security Councils mandate that sealed the airspace to prevent air strikes  but they still bombed the country from the air and eventually brutally murdered Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, no matter what sort of person he was. This was also a war crime. And now Libya is flooded with terrorists supplying militants, weapons all the way up to Mali, the Central African Republic and Chad.

Now Libya remains a hotbed of instability and a breeding ground for terrorism, there is no end to internecine armed strife there, while its economy and social sphere are degrading. Libya is divided between two centres of power: the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) led by Fayez al-Sarraj and the temporary parliament and government of Abdullah al-Thani, supported by the Libyan National Army (LNA), led by Khalifa Haftar, in the east of the country.

In December, the GNA requested Turkey's air, ground, and naval military support to counter Haftar, and this year the Turkish parliament approved sending troops to Libya. But according to unconfirmed reports, at the first stage it won't be comprehensive support, just military specialists for training GNA fighters, as well as supply of Turkish-made weapons.

However, the Libyan parliament, based in the east of the country, has voted unanimously to cut relations with Ankara, supported the idea of empowering the General Staff of the Armed Forces to block airports, ports and checkpoints, while Prime Minister of Libyas Interim Government based in the east of the country Abdullah al-Thani immediately called Russian Presidential Envoy for the Middle East and Africa and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov.

Moscow views the start of a political dialogue between the Libyan parties as the main condition for the cessation of hostilities without preconditions. The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly called on the Libyans to cease hostilities, declare an unlimited ceasefire and start a dialogue aimed at working out the agreements. "Many agreements have been offered by various countries. They were either signed or reached verbally. There have been conferences in France and Italy and a meeting in the UAE. Now there is talk of a conference in Berlin. But all this will keep the situation suspended if the sides do not come to a very specific agreement on considering the interests of all political, clan and ethnic forces in Libya. Only the Libyans themselves can agree on overcoming the crisis into which they were plunged by a NATO aggression under the excuse of support for the Arab Spring," Sergei Lavrov repeated.

Saudi Arabia has already condemned the Turkish parliament for approving a bill to send troops to Libya. Riyadh fears that the escalation of the conflict will pose a threat to the regional security, as it will interfere in the country's internal affairs in violation of all relevant international agreements and principles. At the same time, the African Union urged to prevent external interference in Libyan affairs, and the Egyptian Naval Forces carried out military exercises in the Mediterranean Sea with the participation of a Mistral class helicopter carrier accompanied by units from the Special Submarine Forces and naval special forces. There are also unconfirmed reports about masked armed people speaking Syrian Arabic in Tripoli.

The situation has since continued to deteriorate further. Tonight, 23 to 28 students were killed in an air strike on a military military college in Tripoli. The GNA blamed the attack on the Libyan national army, because Haftar announced December 12 he ordered militants to launch a "decisive battle" to capture Tripoli.
The leaders of the U.S. and Iran lobbed threats at each other following the death of a top Iranian general who was killed Friday in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq's capital.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promised harsh revenge following the killing of Qassem Soleimani.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to attack multiple Iranian locations if Iran takes retaliatory measures for Soleimani's death. Trump tweeted that the U.S. has identified 52 sites in Iran that the U.S. would strike "very fast and very hard" should Iran attack any U.S. personnel or assets. The number 52 represents the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago.

"This is not how America should behave and would likely violate international conventions and norms," Larry Pfeiffer, the director of the Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security at George Mason University, told VOA. Pfeiffer, who is a former senior director of the White House Situation Room said Trump's threats "sound like something that would be issued by an autocratic regime like North Korea."

"When the U.S. president makes it open season on cultural sites, he offers false justification to adversaries to do the same," Pfeiffer said.

Trump spoke Friday about the killing of Soleimani for the first time since U.S. defense officials confirmed the Iranian general had been killed in a U.S. airstrike.

Trump said Soleimani's killing was long overdue. "We took action last night to stop a war," Trump said at his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. "However, the Iranian regime's aggression in the region, including the use of proxy fighters to destabilize its neighbors must end and it must end now."

Trump maintained Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, Iraqis and Iranians, saying the longtime regime general "made the death of innocent people his sick passion" while helping to run a terror network that reached across the Middle East to Europe and the Americas.

Iraqi officials said another airstrike early Saturday hit a convoy of Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary network, killing at least five people. Iraqi state media blamed the strike on the U.S., which has not confirmed the attack.

Analysts say any moves that Iran would take would likely come after the three days of mourning that were declared Friday.
Egypt sold $865 million in one-year, dollar-denominated T-bills on Monday at an average yield of 3.54%, the central bank said.

The bills are due to be settled on Tuesday and mature on Jan. 5, 2021. T-bills worth $854.1 million and issued one year ago are due to mature on Tuesday

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Photo: Ann W./Yelp

A new Chinese spot has opened for business in the neighborhood. Called Six Pack Foods, the new addition is located at 5000 University Way NE, Suite A in the University District.

Six Pack Foods offers pork belly, braised beef brisket, rice casserole, rice or egg noodles and more on the menu.

Six Pack Foods has made a good impression thus far, with a four-star rating out of five reviews on Yelp.

Connie W., who was among the first Yelpers to review the new spot on Dec. 19, wrote, "The rice casserole comes with stir-fried egg + tomato and bok choy. The noodles are in a soup base with bok choy. They also offer some pickled vegetables and chilis to add to your dish at the table."

Yelper Kristen K. added, The pork belly was just the way I wanted itsuper soft, extra fatty and delicious! Note: Don't be scared of the spicy chili symbol on the menu. I'm really bad with spicy food, but I'd rate this 'mild.'"

Six Pack Foods is now open at 5000 University Way NE, Suite A., so stop by to welcome the new business to the neighborhood.

Want to keep your finger on the pulse of new businesses in Seattle? Here's what else opened recently near you.

This story was created automatically using local business data, then reviewed and augmented by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
The Delhi High Court on Monday upheld the five-year imprisonment awarded to a man for repeatedly sexually assaulting his 10-year-old niece and rejected his contention that the minor had conceived a devious plan to implicate him.

Justice Vibhu Bakhru said the court found no room for doubt that the man had sexually assaulted the child and dismissed his appeal against his conviction and sentence awarded by the trial court in May 2017.

"...the testimony of the child is quite clear and there is no doubt that the appellant (man) had sexually assaulted the child. The contention that the child had implicated the appellant because he used to scold her is unpersuasive.

"The child has clearly described the sexual assault committed on her and this court is unable to accept that the child of such tender years could have conceived of a devious plan for making such bile allegations to implicate a close relative only because he would scold her and compel her to do her schoolwork," the judge said.

According to the prosecution, the girl's father, after her mother's death, left her with her paternal aunt and her husband.

In November 2014, police received information about an abandoned girl in a bus. The child told the officials that she ran away from her aunt's house as her uncle used to repeatedly sexually assault her.

The minor was medically examined and a case was registered against her uncle.

During the trial, the man had pleaded innocence and claimed that the girl levelled the allegations against him as he and his wife used to scold her for not doing school homework.

The high court, however, said there was merit in the man's contention that the inference drawn by the trial court on the basis of a sketch drawn by the child was unwarranted.

Noting that the child had drawn a house, a girl carrying balloons and a girl's dress, it said, "This did not, in any manner, indicate that the child had an intermingled relation, or any inference of commission of a sexual assault could be drawn by the said sketch."



The reasoning of the trial court in this regard is plainly in the realm of conjectures and surmises, the high court said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Relatives and friends of Mark Anthony Ruivivar, who was killed in an alleged shootout with police, join his funeral procession in Manila, Dec. 15, 2019.

President Rodrigo Dutertes deadly war on drugs has failed and should be scrapped, the Philippine vice president said Monday as she issued findings from her brief stint late last year as co-head of the agency that conducted the anti-narcotics campaign.

Leni Robredo claimed that the campaign, which has killed thousands of people since mid-2016, had resulted in only a tiny fraction of the countrys methamphetamine supply being seized. Robredo, who leads the political opposition, made the comments more than a month after Duterte fired her as co-leader of the agency, only 18 days into that job.

From day one, I have asked it to be scrapped, Robredo told a news conference.

Very clearly, based on official data, despite the killings of Filipinos and all the money spent, the amount of shabu and drug money weve seized has not gone beyond 1 percent of those in circulation, she said, using the local name for methamphetamine.

Dutertes anti-drugs campaign focused on small-time drug peddlers who often end up dead on the streets, while leaders of big-time drug syndicates got away, the vice president said.

Instead of chasing and killing the drug pushers on the street, we need to get to the source of the drugs  the big-time drug lords, Robredo said. They are the real enemies, not the ordinary citizens.

Robredos comments were mainly based on information she received when she served briefly in November as co-leader of the governments anti-drugs committee. Duterte dismissed her from the role her after she had questioned the way the anti-narcotics campaign was being carried out.

During her time with the agency, Robredo met with U.S. officials to discuss the campaign, a move that irked the president. On Monday, she said data from various government agencies implied that drugs continued to proliferate despite the bloody crackdown.

Dutertes spokesman, Salvador Panelo, on Monday belittled Robredos statements.

She implied that she discovered irregularities, Panelo told a news conference. Its a dud. She did not mention (anything) new.

Official figures indicate that more than 6,000 people have been killed in the crackdown during the past three years, but rights groups often cite a much higher death toll.

Duterte, 74, is facing two complaints for mass murder before The Hague-based International Criminal Court over the killings, which authorities had described as gunfights during legitimate anti-narcotics operations. Last year, the U.N. Human Rights Council voted to approve a resolution calling for an investigation into the killings.

International bodies react

During the weekend, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights invited member states, civil society groups and members of the public to submit their own analysis of the rights situation in the Philippines by the end of this month.

It vowed to protect the identities of all interviewees, while promising that all information received would be corroborated and verified.

Meanwhile, London-based rights group Amnesty International said Robredos revelations were a damning insider account of the governments murderous approach to solving the drug problem.

This is yet more proof that the Duterte administration should address the problem through drug rehabilitation programs rooted in communities  not through brutal policy of extrajudicial killings, Joanne Mariner, AIs research director for Southeast Asia, said in a statement.

President Duterte must end Oplan Tokhang  his violent drug war policy  and initiate credible and independent investigations into past deadly operations, to obtain justice for countless victims of extrajudicial killings over the last four years, she said.
OPECs crude oil production further declined in December as the cartels leader Saudi Arabia continued to lead by example cutting much more than required and as the biggest laggards in complianceIraq and Nigeriamoved to better comply with their quotas, the monthly Reuters survey showed on Monday.

According to the survey of OPEC and oil companies sources, and ship-tracking data, OPECs production in December 2019 dropped by 50,000 barrels per day (bpd) compared to November and stood at 29.5 million bpd.

In November, OPECs crude oil production declined by 193,000 bpd from October, as Saudi Arabia cut production ahead of the OPEC+ meeting, Iraq tried to fall in line with its quota, and Iran further suffered from the U.S. sanctions, according to OPECs official figures.

In December, Saudi Arabia continued to reduce production, while OPEC and its Russia-led allies agreed to deepen the cuts in the first quarter of 2020 to prevent another glut on the market when demand is typically lower.

The Saudis reduced their crude oil production by another 50,000 bpd in December, taking the Kingdoms over-compliance to more than 500,000 bpd compared to its quota in the deal, according to the Reuters survey.

IraqOPECs number two in terms of production and number one in terms of cheating with production quotasalso reduced its production by 50,000 bpd. Although this wasnt enough to reach full compliance, Iraq was complying at 59 percent with its quota last month, up from meager 23-percent compliance in November, the survey found. Related: These Oil Stocks Are Soaring As Middle East Risk Explodes

Nigeria saw its production drop by 80,000 bpd, nearing its quota, because of reduced exports of Bonga crude, traders told Reuters.

Angola saw the highest rise in production among OPEC members in December, after the end of maintenance that had affected the Girassol grade, according to the survey.

Venezuela also managed to raise production, which, if confirmed in OPECs figures later this month, would mean that the country exempt from the cuts and under U.S. sanctions would have had a three-month streak of rising production.

A Bloomberg survey last week found similar trends in OPECs production in DecemberSaudi Arabia cutting even more, and Iraq and Nigeria reducing their non-compliance rate.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Jennifer Aniston's Golden Globes experience was a night to remember.

The Morning Show actress, 50, looked radiant as she showed off the chic black custom Dior number she wore to celebrate the best of Hollywood in an Instagram on Monday.

Before sharing her stunning look, Jen told fans about how pal/co-star Reese Witherspoon boldly asked Jay-Z and Beyonce for a glass of the champagne they brought for themselves.

Cheers! Jennifer Aniston had a great night at the Golden Globes, even getting the opportunity to share champagne with Jay-Z and Beyonce at the affair

She lavished Reese in complements in a selfie with the Southern Belle and producer Kristin Hahn holding glasses of bubbly.

'Reese!? This is one of the many reasons I love you. We ran out of water at our table so naturally she asked Jay Z and Beyonce for a glass of their champagne.'

Instead of drinking the same sauce as the other celebs, the ultra power couple brought their own supply of Ace of Spades.

The champagne brand is produced by Armand de Brignac, of which Jay-Z bought a $200million stake in 2017.

Bottom's up! Pal/ The Morning Show co-star Reese Witherspoon managed to get a few glasses of the fancy bubbly after asking politely

One of a kind! She lavished Reese in complements in a selfie with the Southern Belle and producer Kristin Hahn holding glasses of bubbly

The next part of Jen's Instagram Story showed her sipping the special champagne.

Proving they were the best of buddies, the Friends favorite finished up her Stories with a shot of she and Reese walking down a hall holding hands.

It was a big night for Aniston, who was nominated for Best Actress  Television Series Drama alongside castmate Reese.

And she dressed for the spotlight, stunning in her classically chic couture.

Linked: Proving they were the best of buddies, the Friends favorite finished up her Stories with a shot of she and Reese walking down a hall holding hands

It takes a village! Jennifer showed how many hands it takes to put a look together in an Instagram post

She talked about what it took to prepare her look while showing off her ensemble on her Instagram feed.



'Last night. My little women,' she wrote along with a photoset showing her surrounded by stylists and assistants.

'Supported me all night. (Had enough room for them and then some under that gown!).'

She thanked Dior for creating the 'stunning piece of art' while finishing up the set with the gown's concept drawing.
A lot of us depend on our iPhones to stay productive and in touch with our teams. If you're like me, as the new year begins, you've probably decided it's time to get your business and your personal life organized so that you can be more productive this year.

One of the best ways to be productive is to have the right technology and tools available to get work done. But, let's face it--it's not always easy to sort through all of the noise and it can leave you a little overwhelmed.

If that's the case, you're not only not alone--you're also in luck. That's because I've put together a list of the 10 iPhone productivity apps that you should download right now to make 2020 the year you get stuff done.

1. Evernote

It would be disingenuous of me to have a list of apps that can help you get organized without including Evernote. That's because I use it for everything. I brainstorm in Evernote. I clip articles into Evernote to read later. I scan documents and save audio notes. Basically, it's my digital brain. There are apps that do some of those things better, but none that do them all.

2. Spark

I'm really picky about email apps. Admittedly, probably more so than is reasonable, but I am. And, I really want to love Apple's Mail app, but I just can't because it's missing the ability to share with other apps. Which is why I love Spark so much. It's not perfect (e.g, there's only one line of preview), but it connects with just about every other app and service I use every day, which is why it's essential for me.

3. Shortcuts

So, technically, Shortcuts isn't an app as much as it's a feature of iOS 13 and iPadOS. Still, it's incredibly useful at keeping things organized. It's basically a workflow automation tool that allows you to create sequences that combine actions from various apps. So, for example, you can create a shortcut that emails you a pdf of all of the Trello cards on a specific board.

4. Reminders

While there are better pure task-management or to-do apps (see Things 3, below), Reminders and Siri together are a killer productivity combination. The ability to simply ask Siri to "remind me to call Mike at 3 p.m." or "remind me to send Dave the presentation when I get to the office" is unbelievably helpful, and maybe my favorite thing about the iPhone and Apple Watch. Especially the ability to have her remind you based on your location.

5. Trello

Trello is how I keep my day-to-day work organized. I use it for research, for managing content for this column, and for my design and marketing projects. I love how versatile it is, and I'm a big fan of the "card" setup, since it just makes sense for my brain. One of the best parts is that it's free for up to 10 boards, which is a great way to start getting yourself organized this year.

6. Things 3

I'm still mostly a pencil-and-paper kind of guy, but if you need an app to keep track of tasks, Things 3 is probably the best there is. The iOS app is clean, simple to use, and capable of keeping all of your tasks organized. The biggest drawback is that you have to pay for iPhone, iPad, and Mac versions separately, which makes it pretty pricey. If you need something cheaper, see Reminders (above), which is free.

7. Ulysses

Ulysses is my writing app of choice. It doesn't do a lot else, which is a bonus. In fact, in my opinion, it's the best pure writing tool for iOS or macOS. It's also great that it syncs with iCloud across all of your devices. It'll cost you $40 a year, but it's well worth it, especially if you're a writer or other type of content creator like me.

8. Dropbox

Dropbox has added features over time, but at its core, it's still the simplest, quickest way to keep all of your files synced across all of your devices. I'm also a big fan of the fact that the iOS app allows you to scan documents as PDFs and even record audio files. While there are plenty of competitors like Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, and iCloud, none of those have an iPhone app that's anywhere as useful at staying organized.

9. LastPass

One of the ways most of us could probably be a little more organized is with the dozens of passwords we use every day. In fact, not only does an app like LastPass make you more productive, it also makes your online accounts and information safer. LastPass stores your existing passwords, keeps them secure, and even lets you know when you've reused passwords that have been compromised.

10. Otter.ai
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Delivery workers who depend on e-bikes, throttled-assisted bicycles that can reach up to 28 mph, are on edge following a string of thefts. The suspects havent attempted to steal cash or food, but rather the bikes themselves, which can cost as much as $2,000.

According to the New York Times, the same two men have been implicated in 22 different robberies since September. In each case, delivery workers were held at knifepoint or pepper-sprayed before having their e-bikes stolen. The report doesnt mention a neighborhood or hot spot for the thefts. Another two e-bikes have been stolen but the cases do not appear to be related.

Delivery workers are in a particularly vulnerable position: Not only do they deliver to distant neighborhoods after dark but their right to use e-bikes is not protected under the law. Late last month, Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed a bill that would have legalized e-bikes and e-scooters, citing safety concerns.

In a Queens College study cited in the same report, less than half of delivery workers who have been robbed said they filed a police report. Part of that can be chalked up to their status as immigrants. But the NYPD is encouraging them to come forward regardless or, at the very least, work with police to find ways to prevent future targeting.
NAIROBI, Kenya  Kenyan police say they have arrested three suspected terrorists who tried to force their way into a British Army training camp on the same day that al-Shabab extremists attacked a military base and killed three U.S. military personnel.

The internal police report seen by the Associated Press says the men were arrested Sunday after trying to enter the British Army Training Unit in Laikipia county. It occurred around the same time as the al-Shabab assault on the base in Lamu county.
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No arrest has been made so far in the murder case of a 25-year-old Sikh man who was shot by unidentified gunmen in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar, his brother said on Monday.

Parvender Singh, a resident of Shangla district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was killed on Saturday in Peshawar where he was to shop for his marriage to be held in February. Earlier, the victim was identified as Rowinder Singh.

The victim's brother, Harmeet Singh, said that the police team was investigating the case and no arrest has been made so far.

He said that Member of Provincial Assembly Ranjeet Singh called him and informed him about his meetings with the top police brass on the issue.

"We do not have a personal enmity with anyone," Harmeet said, adding that his brother's bag having around five lakh rupees, a mobile and a gold locket was also missing.

According to the police, the victim had returned to Pakistan after spending six years working in Malaysia.

"The government must arrest the culprits as early as possible. I will not find peace until the criminals are arrested," Harmeet said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the murder which took place a day after a mob attacked Gurdwara Nankana Sahib where Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev was born.

India on Sunday strongly condemned the "targeted killing" of the minority Sikh community member Peshawar.

Minorities in Muslim-majority Pakistan make up some two per cent of the country's total population.

Pakistan has witnessed violence against religious minorities in the past as al-Qaeda and Taliban-led militants regularly target Christian, Sikhs, Hindus, Ahmadis and Shiite communities in the country.
Wegmans will eliminate all single-use plastic grocery bags from stores across New York state beginning Monday, Jan. 27.

The Rochester-based grocery store chain announced the move Monday, ahead of a state ban on single-use plastic bags that takes effect March 1. Wegmans will encourage customers to use reusable bags for groceries, but will still offer paper bags at a fee of 5 cents per paper bag; sales will be donated to local food banks.

By adding a charge for each paper bag, our hope is to incentivize the adoption of reusable bags, and in time, achieve our goal of eliminating all single-use bags, Jason Wadsworth, Wegmans packaging and sustainability manager, said in a statement. This approach has proven successful at our two-store pilot. On average today, 20% of the bags used across all Wegmans stores are reusable. However, at our pilot stores in Corning and Ithaca, weve flipped that statistic so that only 20% of the bags used are single-use bags.

Wegmans first eliminated single-use plastic bags in July for its Corning and Ithaca stores. Other stores around the state have already posted signs pushing for customers to buy or use reusable bags.

And despite offering paper bags, Wegmans would still prefer customers use eco-friendly reusable bags. A spokesperson told syracuse.com last year that paper bags do not break down in many landfills.

Paper bags biodegrade efficiently in ideal conditions (access to light, air, water), which landfills do not provide, a Wegmans spokesperson said. According to the Biodegradable Products Institute, landfills are kept dry and air-tight to minimize uncontrolled biodegradation that can lead to ground water pollution and production of methane gas.

This photo provided by Wegmans shows the size difference between a box of 1,000 plastic bags (left) and a ream of 400 paper bags (right). The company is encouraging customers to switch to reusable bags.

The company also notes that it takes seven tractor-trailers to transport the same number of paper bags as plastic bags carried by one tractor-trailer. A spokesperson also shared a photo of a box of 1,000 plastic bags next to a ream of 400 paper bags, and the smaller number of paper bags clearly takes up more space.

Reusable bags are washable, can be used for more than just grocery shopping, are more durable, and prevent waste and other environmental problems.

The new state ban on single-use plastic bags applies to groceries, retailers and small businesses that provide bags to carry out goods. Exceptions are allowed for bulk items, sliced or prepared foods, a newspaper for delivery, prescription drugs and uncooked meat, fish or poultry.

Trash bags, food storage bags and other plastic bags sold in bulk are also not covered by the ban.

Thanks for visiting Syracuse.com. Quality local journalism has never been more important, and your subscription matters. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 slightly pared early losses but was still down 0.45% by the close. Travel & leisure , autos and chemicals baskets all fell more than 1% to lead losses as almost every sector traded in the red.

Market players are fleeing riskier assets like equities in favor of safer alternatives like gold and bonds after a U.S. airstrike last week killed Iran's top military commander, Qasem Soleimani, in Iraq. The attack has heightened already-volatile relations between Washington and Tehran.

Oil is also surging on the back of intensifying U.S.-Iran tensions, amid fears it could disrupt supply in the Middle East. Brent crude futures were up .6%, or 43 cents, at $68.60 a barrel at 4:30 p.m. London time. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures climbed 0.3%, or 17 cents, to $63.22.

Over the weekend, Iraq's parliament passed a resolution calling for the government to expel foreign troops from the country. President Donald Trump responded by threatening to impose sanctions on Iraq. Meanwhile, Iran has declared it will no longer adhere to uranium enrichment restrictions agreed under the 2015 nuclear deal.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ascot Resources Ltd (TSX: AOT; OTCQX: AOTVF) (Ascot or the Company) is pleased to announce further outstanding results from drill holes completed in the Silver Coin deposit of Ascots Premier Gold Project (PGP) near Stewart in northwestern British Columbia.



Highlights from 30 drill holes reported in this release include:

30.81g/t Au over 6.69m in hole P19-2137

over 6.69m in hole P19-2137 28.96g/t Au over 3.20m in hole P19-2136

over 3.20m in hole P19-2136 12.24g/t Au over 4.59m in hole P19-2130

The Silver Coin deposit is located approximately five kilometres to the north of the Premier mill and 800 metres south from the Big Missouri deposit. In 1991, the Premier mill processed 102,500 tonnes of Silver Coin ore at a grade of 8.88g/t Au. Ascot acquired Silver Coin in 2018 and is currently preparing a mine plan using side hill access.

At Silver Coin, Ascot conducted an 11,000-metre drill program in the 2019 field season. This release reports the results from the fourth and final set of drill holes, adding to the intercepts reported in releases of September 5, October 9 and December 2.

Derek White, President and CEO of Ascot commented, This concludes results from our 2019 drill campaign at PGP. This last set of holes produced some outstanding results for the Company with thick high-grade intercepts. Overall at Silver Coin we reported 34 individual intercepts over 10g/t gold, including one exceptional 273g/t gold interval. The new intercepts underpin a better understanding and predictability of the geological model and provides Ascot a stronger base to work from for the development of the forthcoming updated resource statement and feasibility study. We are pleased to announce that we will be hosting a Webinar on Wednesday January 8 at 1:05 pm Pacific/4:05 pm Eastern. Details can be found on our web site. In addition, we would like to invite interested parties to meet Ascot management in person at the upcoming Cambridge House investor show and at the industry focussed Roundup in Vancouver if you are planning to attend.

Drill Results

This news release presents the results from 30 drill holes, comprising 3,783 metres of drilling, completed from 8 separate pads. The holes were drilled to test the northern and southernmost parts of the deposit.

Drill holes from pads SC30 and SC35 were targeted on a previously modeled mineralized zone (see figure 2) to follow up previous widely spaced high-grade gold intercepts. The holes were successful in increasing the density of drill spacing and the confidence level in interpretation of the geology. Drill holes 2118 and 2123 from pad SC-01 intersected gold mineralization at the northwestern periphery of the deposit that will require future follow-up as the deposit appears to still be open in that direction.

Drill holes from pads SC-31 and SC-32 were targeting peripheral parts of the deposit. The drill holes from pads SC-03, SC-04 and SC-10 intersected gold mineralization at various levels and will contribute to improving the grade interpolation in the targeted zones.

The results of the infill program exceeded expectations and are expected to be particularly positive when integrated into the pending resource update for the Premier Gold Project. The results from the Silver Coin drill holes are summarized in Table 1 and the pad locations are listed in Table 2.

Figure 1 is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/48336d4b-560a-45db-b6a1-366db85e9e13. Image of the Silver Coin deposit showing the locations of collars and drill holes reported in this release relative to the existing underground infrastructure and the orientation of the cross-section A-A.

Figure 2 is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cd186b55-907d-4e00-9086-2835d582bd10. The cross-section A-A is in mineralization at the southern end of the Silver Coin deposit with a view to the north-east. The section shows the zone as it was modeled before the 2019 drill infill drilling. The new mineralized intercepts fall largely within the modeled zone and updated wire frames are in progress.

Table 1 Summary of drill results from Silver Coin

Hole # pad azimuth/dip From (m) To

(m) Width

(m) Au

(g/t) Ag

(g/t) P19-2087 SC-03 75/-45 54.50 55.70 1.20 9.08 56.0 also 63.30 64.40 1.10 36.50 80.0 and 69.65 70.65 1.00 12.10 27.0 P19-2088 SC-03 75/-55 70.60 72.05 1.45 7.72 27.0 P19-2089 SC-03 300/-58 61.00 62.00 1.00 3.03 16.0 P19-2090 SC-03 300/-65 59.10 63.00 3.90 9.55 44.9 incl. 62.50 63.00 0.50 35.80 205.0 also 86.35 87.50 1.15 9.67 34.0 and 89.50 90.50 1.00 8.54 34.0 and 96.85 98.40 1.55 8.25 24.0 P19-2091 SC-31 105/-55 no significant intercept P19-2092 SC-03 270/-60 46.30 50.30 4.00 3.55 23.0 also 64.40 68.35 3.95 4.39 3.5 and 91.29 92.29 1.00 4.60 9.0 and 102.62 103.62 1.00 5.93 12.5 and 110.00 111.00 1.00 11.30 10.0 P19-2093 SC-10 270/-82 70.87 71.66 0.79 4.05 3.0 also 92.87 95.12 2.25 8.32 41.7 and 124.27 126.27 2.00 11.10 16.0 P19-2094 SC-10 270/-50 190.90 192.90 2.00 1.97 3.0 P19-2095 SC-10 304/-77 162.31 164.31 2.00 4.78 17.0 P19-2096 SC-10 355/-81 87.88 89.88 2.00 14.13 15.8 incl. 88.88 89.88 1.00 23.65 24.5 also 120.16 122.16 2.00 6.56 20.0 and 168.5 172.53 4.03 6.61 10.5 P19-2097 SC-10 50/-77 102.78 103.75 0.97 6.03 15.0 also 107.60 110.60 3.00 4.02 22.8 and 170.36 172.36 2.00 6.85 18.0 P19-2098 SC-32 270/-81 39.65 41.65 2.00 1.14 6.0 P19-2099 SC-32 90/-83 29.46 31.46 2.00 1.04 1.0 P19-2111 SC-04 270/-50 85.10 86.10 1.00 2.98 14.0 also 114.87 116.63 1.76 5.37 6.0 P19-2112 SC-04 270/-60 116.27 117.57 1.30 10.90 7.0 P19-2113 SC-04 270/-70 54.54 56.54 2.00 16.90 10.0 also 120.89 122.16 1.27 9.13 17.0 and 139.24 140.48 1.24 4.35 5.0 P19-2114 SC-04 240/-45 71.47 72.35 0.88 1.29 18.0 P19-2115 SC-04 240/-58 51.66 52.72 1.06 273.00 143.0 also 89.99 90.83 0.84 6.60 7.0 and 120.91 121.91 1.00 7.17 8.0 P19-2116 SC-04 270/-70 70.17 72.17 2.00 4.31 1.0 also 97.40 98.40 1.00 4.67 14.0 and 105.40 106.40 1.00 3.24 26.0 and 122.73 123.73 1.00 5.20 6.0 P19-2118 SC-01 90/-45 29.87 32.92 3.05 2.73 16.0 P19-2123 SC-01 90/-77 44.40 45.42 1.02 20.80 21.0 P19-2130 SC-35 40/-60 63.83 68.42 4.59 12.24 11.7 incl. 65.41 66.41 1.00 31.80 25.5 P19-2131 SC-35 60/-52 68.15 70.11 1.96 1.21 2.0 P19-2132 SC-35 65/-43 72.22 73.42 1.20 7.16 11.5 P19-2133 SC-35 90/-65 51.00 53.25 2.25 1.89 6.0 P19-2135 SC-35 255/-65 93.00 101.75 8.75 18.38 29.3 incl. 96.00 96.75 0.75 99.50 121.0 P19-2136 SC-30 230/-59 96.65 99.85 3.20 28.96 36.2 incl. 97.75 98.75 1.00 74.10 63.0 P19-2137 SC-30 200/-70 98.07 104.76 6.69 30.81 29.1 incl. 98.07 98.71 0.64 139.00 137.0 P19-2138 SC-30 195/-83 86.07 88.07 2.00 1.68 4.0 P19-2139 SC-30 110/-52 77.32 79.11 1.79 3.73 25.0

True width is estimated to be approximately 70-90% of reported intercepts.

Table 2 Drill pad locations

Pad # UTM N UTM E Elevation Hole no. SC-1 6218350 435766 811 2118, 2123 SC-3 6218234 435867 950 2087-2090, 2092 SC-4 6218175 435847 952 2111-2116 SC-10 6218050 435887 1015 2093-2097 SC-30 6217663 435880 1047 2136-2139 SC-31 6217661 435578 941 2091 SC-32 6217625 435764 1022 2098, 2099 SC-35 6217575 435820 1013 2130-2133, 2135

Upcoming Events

Ascot will be hosting a live Webinar Townhall on Wednesday January 8, 2020 at 1:05pm Pacific/4:05pm Eastern. To register, please visit www.ascotgold.com under the Events section and click the link.

Ascot will also be at the Cambridge House Vancouver Investor Conference from January 19-20 and at the Roundup from January 20-21.

Quality Assurance/Quality Control

Lawrence Tsang, P. Geo., the Companys Senior Geologist provides the field management for the Premier exploration program. John Kiernan, P. Eng., Chief Operating Officer of the Company is the Companys Qualified Person (QP) as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical contents of this news release.

Analytical work is being carried out by SGS Canada Inc (SGS). Ascots quality-assurance and quality-control program includes the use of analytical blanks to monitor for cross contamination, certified reference material standards to assess analytical accuracy, and duplicate samples to quantify sampling precision. This is in addition to the internal quality assurance program employed by SGS.

Samples are dried and weighed by SGS. They are then crushed to 75% passing 2mm, with 250g split and pulverized to 85% passing 75m. Samples are processed on site by a mobile lab supplied by SGS and run by SGS personnel. All splits are sent to SGS in Burnaby. There, all samples are digested using aqua-regia with an ICP-AES finish and fire assay with AA finish for gold. Samples over 100ppm silver are digested with aqua regia and then volumetrically diluted before an ICP-AES or AA finish (up to 1,500ppm). Samples over 1,500ppm silver are fire assayed with a gravimetric finish. Samples over 10ppm gold are fire assayed with a gravimetric finish. Identified or suspected metallic gold or silver are subjected to metallics assays. Sampling and storage are at the Companys secure facility in Stewart.

For more information about the Company, please refer to the Companys profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com or visit the Companys web site at www.ascotgold.com , or for a virtual tour visit www.vrify.com under Ascot Resources.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF

ASCOT RESOURCES LTD.

Derek C. White, President and CEO

For further information contact:

Kristina Howe

VP, Investor Relations

778-725-1060 / khowe@ascotgold.com

About Ascot Resources Ltd.

Ascot is a Canadian-based junior exploration company focused on re-starting the past producing historic Premier gold mine, located in British Columbia's Golden Triangle. The Company continues to define high-grade resources for underground mining with the near-term goal of converting the underground resources into reserves, while continuing to explore nearby targets on its Premier/Dilworth and Silver Coin properties (collectively referred to as the Premier project). Ascot's acquisition of IDM Mining added the high-grade gold and silver Red Mountain project to its portfolio and positions the Company as a leading consolidator of high- quality assets in the Golden Triangle.

The TSX Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

All statements, trend analysis and other information contained in this press release about anticipated future events or results constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as seek, anticipate, believe, plan, estimate, expect and intend and statements that an event or result may, will, should, could or might occur or be achieved and other similar expressions. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein are forward-looking statements. Although Ascot believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements and/or information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements since Ascot can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements, including the risks, uncertainties and other factors identified in Ascots periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators, and assumptions made with regard to: the estimated costs associated with construction of the Premier and Red Mountain Projects; the timing of the anticipated start of production at the Premier and Red Mountain Projects; the ability to maintain throughput and production levels at the Premier Mill. Forward-looking statements are subject to business and economic risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results of operations to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from Ascots expectations include risks associated with the business of Ascot; risks related to exploration and potential development of Ascots projects; business and economic conditions in the mining industry generally; fluctuations in commodity prices and currency exchange rates; uncertainties relating to interpretation of drill results and the geology, continuity and grade of mineral deposits; the need for cooperation of government agencies and native groups in the exploration and development of properties and the issuance of required permits; the need to obtain additional financing to develop properties and uncertainty as to the availability and terms of future financing; the possibility of delay in exploration or development programs and uncertainty of meeting anticipated program milestones; uncertainty as to timely availability of permits and other governmental approvals; and other risk factors as detailed from time to time and additional risks identified in Ascots filings with Canadian securities regulators on SEDAR in Canada (available at www.sedar.com). Forward-looking statements are based on estimates and opinions of management at the date the statements are made. Ascot does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements.
Netizens in India appear to have in no uncertain terms told Finland's newly elected Prime Minister Sanna Marin that they want in on her proposal to introduce a new working hour policy in her country.

Finland Prime Minister Sanna Marin has proposed the introduction of six-hour work shifts and a four-day working week in the country. The youngest serving PM in the world has plans to follow the lead of Sweden, where the six-hour working experiment began in 2015. According to European reports, Marin believes 'people deserve to spend more time with their families' and give time to their hobbies. The centre-left PM thinks this development in the working hours will be the 'next step' in professional life.

Netizens took to microblogging platform Twitter to share their feelings on the newly-proposed bill with some hilariously urging Sanna Marin to grant them Finnish citizenship. Others urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to introduce a similar kind of law in India. The reactions on twitter are absolutely hilarious

How to get Finland citizenship   Yespal Kheria (@yespal_kheria) January 6, 2020

wow will i get visa i will relocate...  Prabhu Natarajan Mudaliyar (@prabhunataraj12) January 6, 2020

Honorable Prime minister (@PMOIndia ) @narendramodi please look to this policy and apply this in our country. We all will be very happy to see this.  Rohan Gupta (@rohan300557) January 6, 2020

I am going to finland bye  ~Amit~ (@1Amitz) January 6, 2020

Read: Finland PM To Introduce Six-hour Work Shifts, Four-day Working Week

Read: Sir Alex Ferguson Has An Epic Reaction To Solskjaer Taking Off Anthony Martial; Watch

Currently, most people in Finland work eight hours a day for five days a week. The country's fellow Scandinavian neighbour Sweden's experiment's early results reportedly suggest that it increases productivity, well being and health, but is expensive. International reports also state that some critics believe the reduction in working hours and days can leave an adverse effect on businesses and economic growth. However, Marin's education minister Li Andersson welcomed the latest proposal.

Read: Conor McGregor Once Shocked A UFC Fan By Walking Into His Apartment; Watch Fans Reaction

Marin was elected as Finland's new Prime Minister, making her the world's youngest at 34 years of age. The Social Democratic Party's leader was appointed as the PM after Antti Rinne resigned in the month of June. The council of the SDP voted 32-29 to appoint Marin as the PM. Talking to local media outlets, Marin said that it is a long road ahead in order to rebuild trust among the people after having won votes by a narrow margin ahead of rival Antti Lindtman.

Read: Karlie Kloss Was Reminded Of Her Connection To Trump Family, Watch Her Reaction


Iran officially held the funeral for the commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, in Tehran Jan. 6. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, flanked by President Hassan Rouhani and judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi, conducted the prayer service. Various processions across Iran were held in the days leading up to the funeral, drawing the largest crowds Iran has seen since the 1989 funeral of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

While the large outpouring of mourners across a country that had just witnessed some of its most severe protests less than two months ago has caught many Iran observers by surprise, how Iran will galvanize this sentiment and how it will respond to the US assassination of Soleimani is still being debated.

Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, told Ali Mamlouk, special security adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Our response to this crime will certainly be militarily, but it will not be limited to military actions. Mamlouk is in Tehran as Assads representative for Soleimanis funeral.

Shamkhani added, After committing this crime with lies, the Americans tried to portray the people of this region as being happy over the martyrdom of these two warriors. But the wave of angry people in mourning  revealed their big lie. Along with Soleimani and 10 others was Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a commander of Iraqs Popular Mobilization Units, which is also known as Hashid Shaabi. Shamkhani added, The blood of these martyrs made the unity in Iran and Iraq a hundredfold.

Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign policy adviser to Khamenei, said, The Americans did an idiotic thing [by martyring] Soleimani, and they have to leave the region. Experience has shown that in facing Iran and the resistance, they have always failed. He added, If the United States does not leave the region, it will be another Vietnam for them. In listing his achievements, Velayati said that Soleimani had the closest relationship with Russias president, Vladimir Putin.

Iranian media has speculated about how Iran will respond. Tasnim News Agency, which is close to the IRGC, wrote an article titled Five features of the strategic revenge on America. The first feature is that revenge will not be limited to one action: This revenge will not be limited to a few soldiers or damaging the infrastructure or bases of the enemy.

The second feature, the article stated, is that revenge will not be limited to one location geographically. Soleimani was an international figure, according to the article, and active across the region; therefore, revenge will not be limited to a few countries or West Asia. The article continued, American interests all around the world are prone to being attacked.

The third feature maintains that the result of revenge will be strategic and not tactical. One of the end results of revenge would be the expelling of Americans from Iraq and the region. The fourth feature holds that those exacting revenge would be transnational. Given that Soleimani was a transnational and international figure who helped resistance groups across the region, these groups  even acting independently, according to the article  could take revenge.

The fifth feature, stated the article, is that Americans can never be at ease from revenge; they must expect any type of revenge at any level  responses some of which are from Iran and other responses that are completely uncontrollable  from resistance groups.
Marilyn Manson and Courtney Love appear to finally be on good terms following decades of tumult.

The 51-year-old rocker attended a pre-Golden Globes Nirvana reunion concert and was overheard by Page Six discussing the status of his feud with Love.

Courtney Love, the widow of beloved Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain, did not attend the reunion show at the Art of Elysium Gala in Los Angeles on Saturday night.

On good terms: Marilyn Manson said he and Courtney Love are 'tentatively friends' following decades of tumult at a pre-Golden Globes Nirvana reunion concert, according to Page Six (Pictured in 2014)

Page Six reportedly 'overheard' Manson chatting about his history with members of Nirvana as well as Courtney love and said that the pair were 'tentatively friends.'

'We've toured together, we've known each other for many years,' he was heard saying about Courtney. 'We've had spats, mostly in the press.'

Adding: 'I hope that she's doing well. I think that she's in London right now, and I'm here.'

For nearly 20 years, Love and Manson have bickered publicly since he toured with her band Hole in the 1990s. The tour ended abruptly and the rumored cause was tension between the rock stars.

'We've toured together, we've known each other for many years,' he was heard saying about Courtney. 'We've had spats, mostly in the press. I hope that she's doing well. I think that she's in London right now, and I'm here.' (Manson pictured Saturday)

Years later, the pair starred in several episodes of FX's Sons of Anarchy but never filmed together.

In 2015, Manson spoke about their rift during a Q&A with Esquire when he was asked if he and Courtney had 'buried the hatchet.'

'We never really had a falling out,' he explained. 'We've always been weird with each other, because she's slept with pretty much every one of my friends, supposedly. Not me, though.'

Adding passive aggressively: 'She, one time, told me she was mad at me because I didn't want to f--- her and I was smarter than her. I said, "Well, you kind of proved your own point right there on that one." But it was cool.'

History: Manson was overheard discussing his decades long feud with Love which began when they toured together in the 1990s at the Nirvana reunion show at the Art of Elysium Gala (Pictured Nirvana's surviving members Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear with St. Vincent on Saturday)

Tribute: For a one-night-only Nirvana tribute show for charity the band's surviving members - Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear performed with St. Vincent, Beck and Grohl's 13-year-old daughter Violet who stepped in for the late Kurt Cobain (Pictured Grohl, Cobain and Novoselic)

Manson was in the crowd over the weekend for a one-night-only Nirvana tribute show for charity with the band's surviving members - Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear.

Musicians St. Vincent, Beck and Grohl's 13-year-old daughter Violet stepped in for the late Kurt Cobain.

Courtney Love, who was absent from the show, married Cobain in 1992 and the two welcomed daughter Frances Bean that same year.

Cobain died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1994. Nirvana subsequently dissolved following his death.
New Delhi [India], Jan 6 (ANI): The senior warden of Sabarmati Hostel in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), R Meena has resigned from his post a day after violence in the university premises.



In his letter, Meena stated, "We tried but could not provide security to hostel."

On Sunday evening, more than 30 students, including JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, were injured and taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered JNU and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods.

The JNU administration and political leaders, cutting across political lines, had condemned the attack on students and urged the police to take action against the perpetrators. (ANI)


What happened

Something strange just happened in Russia.

On Monday, shares of Russian coal and steel giant Mechel (NYSE:MTL) rocketed to close 36.3% higher on no apparent news. In fact, very little news could be expected, as the country is currently only about two-thirds of the way through a winter holiday season running from "new" Christmas on Dec. 25, through "old" Christmas on Jan. 7 -- and even "old" New Year on Jan. 14. In theory at least, very little should be happening in Russian business right now.

And yet, something did apparently just happen at Mechel.

So what

A couple of possibilities suggest themselves. Since at least as far back as August, Mechel has been negotiating with its bankers to restructure or postpone repayment of its debts, which currently exceed cash on hand by some $7.4 billion. (To put that in context, Mechel's market capitalization is just $738 million). If Mechel has somehow managed to work out a deal with its lenders, that could stave off fears of bankruptcy, and explain the shares' rapid rise.

Or there's this possibility: In another attempt to salvage its finances, in October, Mechel petitioned the Kremlin to compensate it for the loss of its Donetsk electrometallurgical plant, which was seized by the Kremlin-backed Donetsk People's Republic in Ukraine in 2016. According to The Moscow Times, Mechel has asked the Kremlin to pay it $280 million in compensation for the loss of the plant -- far too little to pay off all the company's debt, but perhaps enough to cover a few months' interest payments, and explain today's rise.

Now what

Whether either of these happy scenarios is helping out Mechel stock today, or whether it's something else entirely (or nothing at all) remains to be seen. Given the scale of today's bounce back in Mechel's stock price, however, my bet is that there is some logical explanation.

We may have to wait until the end of the holiday celebrations, however, to find out what it is.
Firefly Aerospace has pushed the planned debut launch of its Alpha rocket to April as the company prepares for a very busy 2020.

In particular, figuring out the two-stage rocket's avionics system "gave us fits," Firefly CEO Tom Markusic told Space.com in a recent interview. That's because the company was originally hoping to make Alpha's flight-termination system fully autonomous, he explained.

When the vendor couldn't qualify that advanced system in time, the vendor switched to the usual "human in the loop" system. But waiting for parts pushed back Firefly's December 2019 launch time frame to something closer to March 2020. Firefly then chose to take a little more time for further refinements and is now aiming for April 2020 for the first launch of the 95-foot-tall (29 meters) rocket, Markusic said.

Related: A Private Spaceflight Decade: Commercial Space Soared in the 2010s

Firefly has begun Alpha Stage 1 Qualification testing, the last major milestone of Alpha development. We've installed the stage, which includes four Reaver engines, on Fireflys TS2. We'll begin hotfire testing soon, culminating in multiple 165 sec full mission duty cycle tests. pic.twitter.com/lUULGH3gHoDecember 30, 2019 See more

The Firefly team is currently working on fully qualifying the Alpha's first stage, with all the components being fitted together on a stand for a test fire that should take place soon. If that goes according to plan, the first Alpha rocket should be ready for shipment to the launch site, California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, in February, Markusic said. If problems are found in qualification, more time will be needed for adjustments.

Firefly is seeking to help fill a launch niche that SpaceX left behind about 10 years ago, when Elon Musk's company traded in its 68-foot-tall (21 m) Falcon 1 rocket for the 230-foot (70 m) Falcon 9 , which now routinely launches satellites to orbit and cargo toward the International Space Station. At the time, SpaceX cited a lack of market interest as a reason for moving on from Falcon 1, according to the NewSpace Journal .

But fast-forward a decade and the space market is a considerably different beast. Now there are dozens of small companies competing for launch opportunities and thousands more that have payloads they want flown into space. Markusic, who used to work for SpaceX, said he now sees a market opportunity to exploit with the Alpha, which is capable of lofting 2,200 lbs. (1,000 kilograms) of payload to low-Earth orbit. (For comparison, another small launcher, Rocket Lab's Electron booster , can get about 500 lbs., or 225 kg, to orbit on each mission.)

Alpha's first flight will include commercial payloads from Benchmark Space Systems and AstroGrams and a satellite provided by another customer whose identity has not been revealed. Firefly will also devote a share of its first rocket space to its Dedicated Research and Education Accelerator Mission (DREAM) program, which aims to give students and small companies a chance to get payloads to space.

The backlog of customer requests is immense, Markusic said, to the extent that the company is building three rockets simultaneously right now. The second mission, targeted for June 2020, will be fully filled with paying customers, as will the third mission that's targeted to fly this fall.

The first stage of Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket is powered by four Reaver engines. (Image credit: Firefly Aerospace)

Alpha features composite materials instead of aluminum to save weight, Firefly representatives have said. The rocket's Reaver engines are also simpler than traditional engines, using one combuster instead of the usual two; indeed, Alpha will be the first orbital rocket ever to fly that technology.

"But otherwise, the rocket is a pretty conventional, two-stage, oxygen and kerosene [fuel], proven combination," Markusic said.

In future missions, Firefly plans to incorporate into Alpha an advanced upper stage, called the orbital transfer vehicle (OTV), to boost satellites into higher orbits. "We have to make a lot of progress on OTV next year," he said, referring to 2020. Some parts of the OTV will fly on the debut mission, with others going up on future flights.

Alpha isn't all that Firefly is working on. In late 2018, for example, the company was selected as a participant in NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program . "We hope to have secured a full contract for our first lunar lander in this next year," Markusic said.

And in partnership with Aerojet Rocketdyne, Firefly is working on a 2.5-stage launch vehicle called Beta that can send 8,800 lbs (4,400 kg) to a 125-mile-high (200 km) orbit. That rocket is still in the early stages of design, but 2020 will be the time when at least some of the hardware is developed, Markusic said.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace . Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook .
Pan-United signs MoU for AI development

06 January 2020

Pan-United Corp of Singapore has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with South Korea's largest ready-mix company, Eugene Corp, to explore the possible use of artificial intelligence (AI).

The MoU will allow Eugene Corp to assess and evaluate the utility of Pan-United's AiR platform, before exploring further opportunities for the adoption of the software.

Published under
Now that The Mandalorian has concluded its initial, generally satisfying 10-episode run, the streaming service leans into dogs.

Togo

Now streaming on Disney+.

In search of viewing options, as an alternative to the latest Golden Globes awards show on Sunday night, I briefly sampled the new, live-action Lady and the Tramp, before fleeing in terror -- clearly, I am not amongst the target audience -- and then settled on the new, live-action Togo, primarily because of its star, Willem Dafoe, and good word-of mouth on social media. (Thanks, Anderson Le, and friends!)

Nature threatens the promise of full bellies and warm beds in the opening moments. Leonhard Seppala (Willem Dafoe) is a hardened musher with a soft spot for his aging dog, Togo, who faithfully leads his primary team of sled dogs. Sep, as he's known, has barely settled into bed with his loyal and supportive wife Constance (Julianne Nicholson) after a brutally cold run when the male leadership of Nome, Alaska, supplicates him to undertake a 600-mile round-trip journey to bring back serum that is desperately, and immediately, needed to treat a sudden outbreak of deadly diphtheria.

Sep and Constance do not have children, and so the faithful Togo fills that role, even more so for the stubborn, taciturn Sep than for Constance. Still, they know all the children who have been stricken, and they know their parents and family members. Sep's decision has already been made for him.

From there, writer Tom Flynn and director Ericson Core, who also serves as director of photography, follow Sep, Togo and the dogs on a trip that is fraught with danger. The freezing-cold, stormy weather worsens with each passing minute, and prospects for survival likewise dim. The previously indefatigable Togo is also showing his age; after 12 years, the conclusion of his lifetime is rapidly approaching.

And how has he spent his years? We learn more about Sep, Constance, and Togo through flashback sequences that document their changing relationships, and how Togo eventually became lead sled dog for Sep.

The film is stylish to behold; director Core is well-experienced as a cinematographer, with Payback (1999) and The Fast and the Furious (2001) among his early credits. He also served as d/p on his previous feature, the Point Break (2015) remake, which I haven't seen. He has a steely eye on coordinating the alternating primary colors that dominate the sledding scenes, in contrast with those set in and around Sep and Constance's home and dog-breeding/training property in Nome, which helps make Togo a pleasure to watch.

As good as Julianne Nicholson proves to be, in an underplayed performance as a spirited wife who expresses her strong feelings without calling attention to them, it is Willem Dafoe whose presence dominates every moment of the movie. From his sexy, snarling, electrifying debut in Kathryn Biegelow's The Loveless (1981) throughout a series of roles that have cemented his ability to breathe vibrant life into every character he plays, he always brings a fresh perspective.

His performance as Sep is strikingly different and hits far more warm, resonant keys than the dark hues he brought to his oft-menacing character in Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse (2019). He's a sympathetic person who is in love with his dear wife and a loyal dog, and that helps to make Togo what it is.

Summing up: Come for Willem Dafoe. Stay for Willem Dafoe, plus Julianne Nicholson and a very special dog.

Now Streaming covers international and indie genre films and TV shows that are available on legal streaming services.


Tehran, Iran  The remains of Qassem Soleimani, head of the countrys elite Quds Force killed in a US air strike, arrived in Tehran on Monday after a day of funeral processions in the cities of Ahvaz and Mashhad, which saw hundreds of thousands  if not millions  of people pour onto the streets in a burst of grief and anger.

The reception to Soleimanis assassination on Friday has already been compared with the burial of Irans first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who died of natural causes and was buried in Tehran in 1989. Millions of people took to the streets that day, in what was then described as the biggest funeral procession in Irans modern history.

Iranian leaders have pledged severe revenge in response to Soleimanis killing, which has triggered a dramatic escalation of tensions in the Middle East.

Abbas Aslani, of the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies, a think-tank close to the office of the Iranian president, said the assassination of Soleimani has made Iranians rally around the flag.

At Tehrans Valiasr Square, an oversized red banner, covering several floors of a mid-rise building, showed a white silhouette image of Soleimani. Your blood challenges any adversary, read an inscription in English underneath his image.

At the Tehran Metro, passengers were heard chanting, No compromise, no surrender.

Soleimanis remains were originally scheduled to arrive in Tehran on Sunday night. But the ceremony in Mashhad was delayed for hours due to the size of the crowd that showed up and paid tribute at the Imam Reza Shrine, the heart of the Shia faith in Iran.

In Tehran on Monday, a sea of men, wearing all-black outfits, and women in black chadors, waited for the arrival of Soleimanis remains, as loudspeakers blared mourning hymns. A traffic jam has formed in the intersections leading to the unfinished grand mosque, named after Khomeini, where the current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led the prayers for Soleimani. Khamenei was seen sobbing as he led the prayers alongside President Hassan Rouhani.

Also among those in the crowd was Ismail Haniya, the leader of the Palestinian group Hamas. In his speech, he urged unity  to punish those behind the heinous crime, referring to Soleimanis assassination.

On Tuesday, Soleimanis remains will be taken to his hometown of Kerman for the last rites before his burial.
New Delhi [India], Jan 6 (ANI): A high-level committee chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday approved additional central assistance of over Rs 5,908 crore to seven states from National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF).



A Home Ministry release said the meeting took place to consider additional central assistance to seven states which were affected by floods, landslides, and cloudburst during the monsoon.

"The high-level committee (HLC) approved additional central assistance of Rs 5908.56 crore to seven states from National Disaster Response Fund," the release said.

It said Rs 616.63 crore had been approved for Assam, Rs 284.93 crore for Himachal Pradesh, Rs 1869.85 crore for Karnataka, Rs 1749.73 crore for Madhya Pradesh, Rs. 956.93 crore for Maharashtra, Rs 63.32 to Tripura and Rs 367.17 crore to Uttar Pradesh.

Earlier, the central government released interim financial assistance of Rs 3,200 crore to four states.

"In addition, the central government has released Rs 8068.33 crore to 27 States as the central share from State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF)," the release said. (ANI)


by Steven Smiley | Sun, Jan 5th 10:29pm EST

Dante Exum scored a career-high 28 points (11-for-13 FG) (4-for-4 3PT) in a 118-103 loss to Minnesota on Sunday. Exum logged a season-high 24 minutes off the bench.

Fantasy Impact:

Unlike his stint in Utah, look for Exum to see some serious minutes with the current state of an injury riddled Cleveland roster. Another Cavalier scorer, Kevin Porter Jr., went down with a left knee injury in the middle of the third quarter, and did not return.
The Ghana Railway Workers Union and the Association of Railway Senior Officers have raised concerns over the company's current financial instability which they attribute to an ensuing impasse between the government and the Manganese Company.

According to them, the company's major source of revenue which is from haulage of Manganese ore from Nsuta to the Takoradi Port has been affected since Ghana Manganese Company is out of business due to the impasse.

The General Secretary of the Ghana Railway Workers, Godwill Ntarmah in a Citi News interview appealed to President Akufo-Addo to intervene in the matter as the issue is having a toll on the livelihood of employees.

The challenge is that, even as at December [2019], salaries have not been paid. Now, if it is going to continue, it means January [2020] is going to be a challenge, he said.

He said the development may require that the government provides funds to pay workers' salaries but such a measure is not sustainable.

The company is for the state and so what it means is that the government has to come in and give us money to pay the salaries which we don't think is going to be sustainable so we think whatever impasse between the two should be resolved amicably and we start operation, he stressed, noting that there may be worker agitations if the company does not get regular income to pay its workers. If workers are in employment and they are not being paid, what will come next is agitation.

There has been an ensuing impasse between the Government of Ghana and the Ghana Manganese Company after the government in August 2019 shut down the company due to alleged nonpayment of taxes and price manipulation between the periods of 2010 to 2017.

The company subsequently denied the allegations.

The sector Minister, Kwaku Asoma-Cheremeh, days later reversed the decision after some meetings with the company.

---citinewsroom
Chennai, Jan 6 : The MDMK, DMK have expressed their support for the January 8 nationwide strike announced by the trade unions to protest against the anti-labour policies of the Centre.

In a statement issued here on Monday, MDMK General Secretary Vaiko said the party has extended its support to the strike.

The DMK President M.K. Stalin in a statement said his party extends its support to the nationwide strike by trade unions pressing for 14 demands.

Stalin said the BJP-led government at the Centre, instead of protecting the workers' rights, is focussed on snatching them.
The Fire and Rescue NSW Station 428 Queanbeyan in a Facebook post made it abundantly clear that political parties, like the Greens, have no say or influence in the decisions of Fire and Rescue organisations that undertake hazard reduction burns and well as the time and place they will be conducted.

Dismissed as mere conspiracy stories

The decision to conduct, cancel of delay hazard reduction burns before the summer is decided by the predicted intensity of the burn and if there is a danger to it exceeding safe limits for the firefighters. Other factors that might influence them are the native flora and fauna as well as the government to some extent.

Read: Tropical Cyclone Blake Forms Off Western Australia's Kimberley Coast

Read: Australians Bring Koalas Injured In Fires To Park

Former NSW Fire and Rescue Commissioner Greg Mullins while talking to local media said that blaming the Green Party is futile as they have no influence. He also added that such statements are basically conspiracy stuff and a very obvious attempt to turn the topic away from discussions on Climate Change.

As explained by the facebook post by Station 428, Hazard Reduction burns are specifically designed to minimize hazards around urban areas. They are meant to lessen the intensity of the fire. Backburning is a method by which the fire is burnt back on itself and thereby creating a buffer zone of already burnt land which can not burn again.

Read: Australia Bushfire Crisis: PM Sets Up National Bushfire Recovery Agency, Toll Climbs To 24

Read: Australian Man Refuses To Leave His 60 Dogs Until They Are Evacuated From Bushfire Area

Major parties punch down on Greens like clockwork. Some MPs are suggesting Green's supporters are responsible for setting the fires to further their agenda because apparently a nationally coordinated conspiracy is more believable than climate change...  A2L (@AY2EL) January 6, 2020

In related news, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Sunday, January 5 established a National Bushfire Recovery Agency to co-ordinate recovery efforts ranging from rebuilding infrastructure to providing mental health support even as authorities struggled to tackle the raging bushfire crisis which has so far claimed the lives of 24 people.

(with inputs from agencies)
@theMarket: New Wall of Worry for Markets

Donald Trump's decision this week to kill Iran's second-most important figure, Gen. Qassem Soleimanai, this week placed a time-out on the stock market's bull run into the New Year. Do you run for the hills or do you buy the dip?

If I look back to other geopolitical events, my first reaction is to use any further declines as an opportunity to increase exposure to the stock markets. At the same time, I wouldn't chase those categories of assets that have vaulted higher in response to this event. Gold and oil both moved higher overnight, but those gains could be fleeting as investors begin to assess whether or not there will be any further downside.

That is not to say that dropping a bomb on the architect of many of America's greatest problems in the Middle East will go unanswered by the Iranian government. How and when the Iranians respond should keep all the markets on edge in the near future. And therein lies the problem.

In my opinion, the best of all possible outcomes is for the Iranians to respond quickly, maybe this weekend or next week. That would give our side the greatest chance of thwarting such a move because we would be on high alert. As time passes, however, human behavior is such that gradually we would begin to let down our guard.

In the same way, investors will be cautious at first, but as time goes by without a response, it will be back to business as usual. Until it isn't. And while geopolitical events are always a risk when investing, the high valuations that presently exist throughout the markets could set us up for s a significant fall. Of course, it depends on what and how successful the Iranian response is.

Clearly, from a number of indicators such as momentum, sentiment and in some cases, extreme valuations, stocks are due for a pullback. This week's US Advisor Sentiment report indicates extreme overbought conditions right now. The bull/bear spread expanded to 41.1 percent from 40.4 percent. In the past, differences above 30 percent signal concerns and those over 40 percent indicate investors should begin to take defensive action.

For many of us, the spectacular gains we have enjoyed in 2019 set us up for disappointment this year. Like everyone, I would love to see this bull market continue. I am as greedy as the next guy, but I have been in this game long enough to know that rarely happens. And while the majority of strategists and analysts are uber-bullish right now about the prospects for stocks this year, that could change at the first hint of adversity.

As such, don't get your hopes up too high right now. What you wish for the most (more upside), would simply set us up for a nasty decline when we least expect it. Prepare, instead, for some volatility. Expect stocks to decline, likely sooner than later, possibly even before this month is out. And if it were to occur, whether because of Iran, a snag in the Phase One trade deal, or something else, be glad, be happy, because it could set us up for further gains in the months ahead.
A Grinch who stole a little bit of Christmas in Hoboken is now behind bars.

Luis Lourido, 52, of Union City has been charged with four counts of burglary and theft between Oct. 12 and Dec. 29, Hoboken Detective Lt. Danilo Cabrera said.

Cabrera said Lourido, who was arrested on Jan. 2 in the area of 15th Street and Bergenline Avenue in Union City, was responsible for the following crimes:

Entering a residential building in the area of 11th Street and Willow Avenue on Oct. 12, placing multiple packages in a black bag and walking out;

Entering a residential building in the area of 11th Street and Willow Avenue at 4:34 a.m. on Dec. 4, grabbing multiple packages and carrying them out;

Entering a residential building in the area of 11th Street and Willow Avenue at 5:56 a.m. on Dec. 7, grabbing multiple packages and carrying them out;

Stealing a vehicle and driving off with it at 8:11 a.m. on Dec. 31 in the area of Ninth and Clinton streets.

Hoboken Detective Sgt. William Collins, Detectives John Quinones and Adam Colon and Police Officers Fabian Quinones and Connor Milne responded to 15th Street and Bergenline Avenue looking for Lourido in connection with the burglaries, Cabrera said. The officers located Lourido at 9:52 p.m. and arrested him.

Lourido, who police said Luis was in possession of drug paraphernalia at the time of his arrest, was also charged with being a fugitive from justice in California and Illinois, Cabrera said. Lourido also had a bail-jumping warrant from Jersey City. He was taken to the Hudson County jail.
Assembly elections will be held on February 8 in Delhi which will witness a triangular contest among the ruling AAP, the BJP and the Congress.

The results will be declared on February 11, the Election Commission announced on Monday.

Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said the notification for the polls will be issued on January 14 while the last date of withdrawal of candidature will be January 24. With the issuance of the notification, the nomination process will commence.

The announcement of poll schedule comes days after parts of the city witnessed incidents of violence and protests against the amended citizenship law and the proposed countrywide National Register of Citizens.

Responding to a question on the law and order situation in the national capital, the Chief Election Commissioner said, "I won't say we (the Commission) are very sanguine, but we are hopeful that they (police) will be able to control the situation (and make it) conducive for polls."



"And in any case in the polling process, if there is some kind of an extra-ordinary situation, always (there) are provisions for kind of deferring the polls. All these provisions are there. The Constitution empowers ECI to take a call if needed," he said at a press conference.

Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra was not present at the press conference as he was not in town. Arora said the poll schedule has been decided unanimously by all the three election commissioners.

In the 2015 polls, Arvind Kejriwal had led the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to an unprecedented victory with his party bagging 67 seats, leaving just three seats for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The Congress drew a blank.

Soon after the poll schedule was announced, Chief Minister Kejriwal said the AAP would seek votes on the work done by its government in the last five years.

Both the BJP and the Congress will seek to oust the AAP from power in the national capital.

BJP president Amit Shah on Monday accused the AAP government of misleading the people of Delhi for five years and said after the February 8 assembly polls, a new dispensation under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take over and accelerate development in the national capital.

Over 1.46 crore voters can exercise their franchise in the February 8 Assembly election, according to the final electoral roll published on Monday.

There are total 1,46,92,136 voters -- 80,55,686 males, 66,35,635 females and 815 belonging to third gender -- in the final voters list.

All voters will be provided QR code-enabled voters slip which will speed up voting through easy identification.

In a separate press conference earlier in the day, Delhi Chief Electoral Officer Ranbir Singh said there were no instructions regarding registration of refugees covered under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in the electoral roll this time.

This time Delhi will have 13,659 polling stations as compared to 11,763 in 2014, a jump of 16.89 per cent, according to an EC press note.

The Commission has decided to extend the facility of postal ballot for "absentee voters", people with disability and those above 80 years of age in all 70 assembly constituencies.

In October last year, the government had amended election rules to allow "absentee voters" to vote by postal ballot.

Electors on duty in polling station, electors who are above 80 years of age and the electors marked as 'Persons with Disabilities' in the Electoral Roll will have the option to seek postal ballot paper for casting their vote.

The facility of absentee voter status was provided for the first time in the country in seven assembly constituencies in Jharkhand which went to polls recently.

For Delhi elections, the Commission will deploy 33,600 ballot units, 18,200 control units and 20,600 paper trail machines.

At least one ballot unit and one control unit make up for one electronic voting machine.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Former Disney Channel star Josie Totah has reportedly signed on to star in a reboot of Saved By The Bell premiering this summer on NBC's forthcoming streaming service, Peacock.

The 18-year-old transgender activist - whose gender affirmation was in August - will play popular, sharp-tongued Bayside High School cheerleader Lexi, according to THR.

Josie (born Joseph aka JJ) previously acted in Netflix's No Good Nick, NBC's Champions, Fox's Glee, and the 2017 movie Spider-Man: Homecoming.

New gig! Former Disney Channel star Josie Totah has reportedly signed on to star in a reboot of Saved By the Bell premiering this summer on NBC's forthcoming streaming service, Peacock (pictured November 24)

Her gender affirmation was in August: The 18-year-old transgender activist will play popular, sharp-tongued Bayside High School cheerleader Lexi (pictured October 13)

Elizabeth Berkley and Mario Lopez are producing and reprising their roles as Jessie Spano and A.C. Slater in the half-hour, single-camera 10-episode comedy.

'Im so excited.... to be back at Bayside!' the 47-year-old Showgirls alum gushed after the first table read last month.

'Are you ready for grownup Jessie?! Jessie and Slater are back for more fun. We are thrilled to have Emmy winning 30Rock writer @TraceyWigfield bring the sequel to life on NBC/Universal.'

The SBTB reimagining 'explores what happens when California Gov. Zack Morris (Mark Gosselaar's role) gets into hot water for closing too many low-income high schools and proposes the affected students be sent to the highest-performing schools in the state  including Bayside High.'

The original NBC sitcom aired for four seasons spanning 1989-1993 followed by two made-for-TV movies (Hawaiian Style and the College Years) and one spin-off series, The College Years.

Transformation: Josie previously acted in Netflix's No Good Nick, NBC's Champions (pictured), Fox's Glee, and the 2017 movie Spider- Man: Homecoming

'Im so excited to be back at Bayside!' Elizabeth Berkley and Mario Lopez are producing and reprising their roles as Jessie Spano and A.C. Slater in the half-hour 10-episode comedy

After the first table read last month, the 47-year-old Showgirls alum gushed: 'Are you ready for grownup Jessie?! Jessie and Slater are back for more fun'
Joleen and Craig Dudek of Buena Park, Calif., are seen via Skype during a press conference announcing a $46 million settlement with Ikea. Read more

Ikea will pay $46 million to the parents of a 2-year-old boy who died when a recalled dresser toppled onto him, according to the familys lawyers.

Jozef Dudek was crushed under a Malm dresser after his father put him down for a nap in their California home in May 2017. Jozef was the eighth child known to have died by an unsecured Ikea dressers toppling forward, and the first death confirmed after the furniture giants recall of more than 17 million bureaus in 2016.

Lawyers for the family described it as the largest settlement ever made for the wrongful death of a child.

While millions of families were unaware that the Malm dresser was unstable and unsafe for use in a home with small children, Ikea knew, said Alan Feldman of Philadelphias Feldman Shepherd law firm.

Jozefs parents, Joleen and Craig, bought the popular low-cost dresser in 2008 and were unaware of the 2016 recall. The pair struggled to choke back tears as they remembered their first child as a loving son who slept through the night and always tried new foods.

We never thought that a 2-year-old could cause a dresser to topple over and suffocate him, Joleen Dudek said in a statement via Skype. It was only later that we learned that this dresser was unstable by design and did not meet safety standards, and that this had happened to other little boys.

Ikea dressers have been linked to the deaths of nine children across the country. The recalled items were taken off the market and remodeled.

While no settlement can alter the tragic events that brought us here, for the sake of the family and all involved, were grateful that this litigation has reached a resolution, Ikea, which has its North American headquarters in Conshohocken, said in a statement. We remain committed to working proactively and collaboratively to address this very important home-safety issue.

Ikeas June 2016 recall, initially described as affecting 29 million items, was the largest furniture recall in history, involving not just dressers from its Malm line, but dozens of other models sold by the retailer over decades. The company agreed to give full refunds in most cases.

Six months after the recall, Ikea paid $50 million to the parents of the three toddlers, including 2-year-old Curren Collas of West Chester, who died after a dresser toppled onto them in 2014 and 2015. The Feldman Shepherd firm also represented the three families in that case.

Feldman said the Dudeks settlement was significantly larger because Jozefs death came after the recall, and Ikea did not effectively alert families in possession of the faulty dressers. He said the Dudeks never received an email from the company, even though they were members of Ikeas family rewards program. They do not have cable television, and did not see any news announcements, he said.

The companys recall efforts also came under scrutiny after only about 3% of the dressers had been repaired or returned through January 2017, a group of advocates that includes the Consumer Federation of America said. After two toddlers died in 2017, the company launched an informational campaign about the recall and sent crews to consumers homes to either anchor dressers or collect them.

To date, about 1.4 million dressers have been addressed, according to an Ikea spokesperson, though safety advocates worry that millions of families could still be unaware of the furniture risks.

With the settlement, Feldman said, Ikea has committed to broaden its outreach about the recall. He suggested that include an email to the companys full customer database and a social media campaign.

An estimated 5,800 children under the age of 7 were injured from furniture tip-overs between 2015 and 2017, according to a December 2018 report from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the federal regulatory agency that oversees recalls.

The Dudeks said they would donate $1 million of the settlement proceeds to three organizations that work to protect children from dangerous products  Kids in Danger, Consumer Reports, and the Consumer Federation of America.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Guatemalan asylum seeker in Massachusetts whose partner and son are in hiding in Mexico. They were sent there as part of the United States Remain in Mexico policy.

ACLU attorneys argue the Department of Homeland Security violated the due process and equal protection rights of Maudy Constanzas family. Constanza, her partner Hanz Morales and their three children fled Guatemala after Morales was shot four times. Morales and their son were sent to Mexico as part of the Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP, while Constanza and their two daughters were allowed to seek asylum in the United States.

The policy is a boon for violent criminal groups that specifically persecute migrants in Mexico. The U.S. government knows migrants are persecuted, and it has both a legal duty not to send people back to places where that happens and decades-old procedures for determining when that duty applies, ACLU attorneys wrote in the federal complaint filed Monday. Yet MPP circumvents these procedures and systematically denies migrants any reasonable opportunity to escape its grip.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment, citing its policy not to comment on pending litigation.

The department said in January at least 56,000 migrants have been returned to Mexico to await their immigration hearings under MPP, though the accuracy of the numbers has been questioned. Data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University suggests that MPP surpassed 56,000 by the end of November.

The department has credited MPP as a process to deter immigrants who enter the country illegally from making fraudulent asylum claims.

The MPP will provide a safer and more orderly process that will discourage individuals from attempting illegal entry and making false claims to stay in the U.S., and allow more resources to be dedicated to individuals who legitimately qualify for asylum, the DHS website states.

The program has come under scrutiny over the past year as its been implemented. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported in December that fewer than 10,000 out of the estimated 47,000 in the program as of September, had completed their cases. Of those, 5,085 cases were denied, and 4,471 cases were dismissed without a decision being made.

Human Rights First published a list of at least 660 reported cases of murder, rape, kidnapping and other attacks against migrants placed in Mexico under MPP. The list includes 148 cases of children who were kidnapped or nearly kidnapped.

The ACLU of Massachusetts lawsuit is the latest challenge to MPP. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard arguments in October in a federal lawsuit challenging MPP. The ACLU of San Diego filed a separate lawsuit challenging part of the process known as non-refoulement interviews, in which migrants can make their case for why they cannot be taken to Mexico to await their immigration hearings. The ACLU of San Diego is challenging the governments practice of refusing to let migrants attorneys participate in the interview.

Even without the backing of the ACLU of Massachusetts, Morales obtained what the majority of migrants in MPP do not have: legal counsel.

Its already a difficult process with a lawyer, and without a lawyer the process becomes virtually impossible," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council. Of course, thats setting aside massive security concerns of being stuck in Nuevo Laredo, a city where you might have to travel through a gun battle on your way to court in the morning.

In Laredo, one of now six immigration courts handling MPP cases, attorneys who take on cases are often meeting their clients for the first time at their first hearing.

Its just not safe for attorneys to be traveling back and forth into Nuevo Laredo, said Lisa Koop, an attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago. She and her colleagues have represented at least a dozen migrants classified in MPP.

Theres real prejudice and disadvantage that comes from the fact that the only rapport that we have with clients before we head into these asylum trials is what weve been able to establish through telephonic communications the weeks leading up to the meeting," Koop said.

When Constanzas family lived in Guatemala, her partner had been shot four times after witnessing a murder. The family of five moved from one town to the next in Guatemala. They returned home briefly, living in hiding, but they ultimately decided they needed to leave to find safe haven in the United States.

In June, the family started their trek toward the U.S. border. Constanza and the couples two daughters ended up separated from Morales and their 8-year-old boy at the end of their journey.

Constanza and the couples daughters crossed the border around July 13. They were apprehended, processed and issued notices to appear in immigration court. Then they were allowed to live in the United States while their asylum case plays out.

The three went to Massachusetts to stay with relatives and havent seen Morales or the boy since.

Its so horribly unfair, there are so many separated families and children suffering, Constanza told the Boston Globe in December. If I came here, it is because I had to leave and I wanted my children to have the opportunity to live in peace.

Morales and the boy crossed the border near McAllen, Texas, around July 19. Three days earlier, the Department of Homeland Security had enacted a rule requiring that people who enter the United States by crossing another country first seek asylum in that country.

Morales and his son had not applied for asylum in Mexico, not knowing about the policy, according to the complaint.

When Morales and his son were apprehended by border patrol agents, they were issued notices to appear and processed under MPP. Then they were told they would be sent to Mexico and could not return to the United States until their next immigration hearing.

He refused to cross the bridge at first, according to the complaint. Immigration officials took him and his son to a holding cell  initially saying they would be separated, never to be seen again  but the next day they were given another chance to cooperate.

ACLU attorneys argue that at that point Morales and his son should have been entitled to whats called a non-refoulement Interview, a process where migrants can make their case why they cannot be made to await their hearings in Mexico.

Koop, the attorney who handles Laredo cases, said its no secret that migrants have been exposed to violence.

Everybody knows whats happening there. Its only by willful ignorance that people are able to allow this program to persist, Koop said.

Morales learned about the non-refoulement interview three months into his stay in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, after he and his son were nearly kidnapped twice.

At the Mexican immigration building, Mr. Morales and H.E.M.C. saw some people that went out to buy food or other items and never came back; those who had stayed behind said that they had been kidnapped, attorneys wrote in the complaint.

A pastor took them in, so they were no longer sleeping outside the Mexican immigration building. Now they live in hiding in the apartment set up by the pastor and rely on him for food.

Morales had the interview after his first immigration hearing in October, after he obtained an attorney, but Morales never learned what came of the interview, court documents say.

Morales and his son, now 9, have spent the last nearly six months in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, an area for which the U.S. State Department has issued a Level 4 travel warning for Americans not to visit.

The U.S. government gave them a date for a final removal hearing. ACLU attorneys say that because of the third-country asylum rule, the two are eligible for relief under the Convention Against Torture and withholding from removal, and that they would face a higher standard of evidence.
Admitting theres a problem is usually the first step toward dealing with it.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 6/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Editorial

Admitting theres a problem is usually the first step toward dealing with it.

And yet, when it comes to climate change  undoubtedly the most urgent problem of our time  many people still deny it exists. What will it take to get climate skeptics to take this issue seriously? Grim studies are not compelling to them; nor are the pleas from scientists, who have reached a near-universal consensus on human-made climate change. Instead of listening to the words of young climate activists such as Greta Thunberg, people fixate on the fact shes touring the world instead of attending school.

So maybe we turn to the images of climate change-related disasters. Right now, Australia is burning. The pictures are harrowing. Red and orange skies, choked with smoke. Peoples homes exploding. The continents most beloved creatures, koalas, with scorched paws and fur. People, in masks and goggles protecting them from unbreathable air, fleeing their homes for the beach, in the hope that the sea may help them survive.

The continent is the face of the climate crisis, the brushfire photos an apocalyptic preview of whats to come if we cant accept the truth of the critical issue at hand. "This will happen" has become "This is happening." Its not a prediction. Its reality.

The Australian wildfires are far from being the first or only climate-related disaster weve faced. Last year alone saw an intense heat wave sweep India and Pakistan, with highs reaching 51 C. Much closer to home, Manitoba saw a freak October snowstorm and unprecedented fall flooding in 2019; a dry growing season and a wet harvest left more than 180,000 hectares of farmland in the province unharvested.

Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Weather and climate are not the same, its true, but weather is a part of climate. Extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts and floods, occurring in greater frequency and severity, are heralds of a changing climate. Human beings are complicit and, in increasing numbers, are suffering. And they  we  will continue to suffer. Famine, disease, resource precarity, war  its all in our future unless there is radical change.

For a long time, even those who accepted the reality of climate change remained reluctant to use the phrase "climate change." As history has shown, our species isnt great when it comes to the long game. We tend to be more concerned with instant gratification. Its hard to wrap ones mind around the future, and its easy to maintain a certain amount of cognitive dissonance about something thats happening half a world away.

And so, we remain hung up on the first step: admitting theres a problem.

In 2020, theres no longer room for debate about the existence of climate change. Treating it as a hypothetical is a luxury the inhabitants of this critically ill planet can no longer afford. We need our leaders to make climate change a priority issue, but that cant happen until they, and we, stop wasting precious time with circular debates and denials while the world burns down around us.

Climate-change deniers, including those directly invested in the fossil-fuel industry, should no longer dictate the terms; a false balance  sometimes described as "bothsidesism"  has no place in the current conversation. Regardless of your political affiliation, or your financial interest, or your chosen sources of information about the most critical issue of our lifetimes, we all live on Earth.

Isnt trying to save it in everyones best interest?
Crude oil jumped for a second day, the price of gold rose to almost a seven-year high, and European stock markets fell amid the flare-up in tensions between the US and Iran.

Irish shares joined in the sell-off, with Ryanair falling 1.5% as the airline is vulnerable to the potential of increased fuel costs if crude prices continue to trade at an elevated level.

But Irish banks also fell back -- Bank of Ireland and AIB closed 3% and 1.4% lower -- as investors across Europe bought so-called safe stocks, instead.

"There have been some signs of a potential cooling in tone led by the UK, yet the US and Iran have shown little willingness to step back from the brink," said Joshua Mahony, senior market analyst at online broker IG, and markets are "transfixed on that US-Iran issue for now".

However, in Ireland, not all shares fell, with Dalata Hotel Group gaining in the session, while the fallout for CRH -- which earns a large slice of its profits in the US -- falling only slightly.

And US stock markets were little affected, as investors judged the US economy would escape any significant fallout, said Capital Economics in London.

@akaebube this happened in Tehran, Iran today. The biggest funeral ever. That crowd is mind boggling.... https://t.co/N2nZORNLbs  Abdulaziz Haji (@abdulazizhaji09) January 6, 2020

Oil prices jumped by about 1% in the latest session, pushing the price of Brent crude above $70 a barrel, as rhetoric from the US, Iran and Iraq fanned tensions in the Middle East after the US air strike killed a top Iranian military commander. Brent crude soared to a high of $70.74 a barrel and traded at $69.36, up 76 cents on the day, later in the session.

The gains extended Fridays more than 3% advance after a US airstrike in Iraq killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, heightening concerns about an escalation in conflict in the Middle East and the possible impact on oil supplies.

The region accounts for nearly half of the worlds oil production, with a fifth of the worlds oil shipments passing through the Strait of Hormuz. US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose sanctions on Iraq, the second-largest producer in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries if US troops were forced to withdraw from the country. He also said that the US would retaliate against Iran if Tehran were to strike back after the killing.

The situation brings lots of uncertainty and geopolitical tea-leaf reading on reactions. While the closure of the Strait of Hormuz remains a very unlikely event, the deterioration in Iraq bears supply risks, said Norbert Rucker, head of economics at Swiss bank Julius Baer.

Geopolitics tend to be a temporary force on oil markets and we believe this time is no different. We raise our near-term forecast to $65 per barrel and maintain a neutral view.

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) raised its first-quarter projection for Brent by $5 to $70 a barrel, assessing that Iran is likely to want to avoid open conflict.

We maintain our forecast that the two countries are likely to avoid outright war. Iran is not in a position financially, after more than a year of crippling US sanctions, to finance a lopsided war with the US, EIU global economist Cailin Birch wrote in a note.

In Ireland, energy supplier Naturgy estimates the price of wholesale gas slumped to a 10-year low last year, but crude oil price rose 11% from 2018. But it warned the US-Iran tensions could send oil prices higher.

- Additional reporting by Reuters
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Market Research Future Published a Research Study on Phenolic Antioxidant Market Research Report, Size, Share and Industry Analysis - Forecast to 2023

Industry Updates:

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Market  Overview

Growth of end use industries of phenolic antioxidants has sparked a high rate of growth in the industry. Market Research Future which specializes in market reports related to the chemicals and material sector amongst others lately issued a report on this industry. The market is estimated to develop at CAGR of 5.10% to attain a USD 1830.05 million in revenues till 2023.

The expansion of the market has gained dominance primarily due to the increased demand being observed from its end use industries. Its end use industries like fuel and lubricants, cosmetics and pharmaceutical have rapidly increased the scope of applications for the market.

Global Competitive Analysis

The players of this market are looking to gain an extensive share of the market segment by the successful use of their primary resources to commence expansion changes which is long lasting. This attitude has set off trends which are related to development which is especially volume driven. This has effectually led to amplification in diverse ranges of product forms. The sectors extensive change due to the accelerated expansion pace has led to experimentation with many benefit points. The industrys long term progress can be capitalized upon by constant continuing process improvements and maintaining financial fluidity to invest in the most advantageous strategies when they are on hand.

The vital players in the global market for phenolic antioxidant are DSM (Netherlands), BASF SE (Germany), Sumitomo Chemical Company (Japan), Oxiris Chemicals S. A. (Spain) and Chitec Technology Co., Ltd.

Detailed Regional Analysis

The international Phenolic Antioxidant industry is segmented into regions such as Latin America, Asia Pacific, Europe, North America and the Middle East & Africa. The Asia Pacific region registered the main market share in the year 2016, and is expected to develop at a maximum CAGR of 5.20% approx during the forecast period. The power of the Asia Pacific region is primarily because of the mounting demand for food from escalating population along with rising use of rubber and plastic in this region. The European region follows Asia Pacific, which is the second major market share and it is anticipated by 2023 to reach USD 420.47 million. Germany is the main market share of the European region and is estimated to remain principal to the region's growth throughout the forecast period due to better penetration of end user industries in the country. The North American market is a noteworthy region in the global market for phenolic antioxidant. It has a considerable market share of 20%, as of the year 2016. The US dictates the North American market's share on the basis of volume and value due to growing demand for packaged, preserved and processed food in the country.

Browse Key Industry insights spread across 123 pages with 47 market data tables & 13 figures & charts from the Report, "Phenolic Antioxidant Market Information: by Source (Natural and Synthetic), by Application (Food, Plastics & Rubber, Pharmaceutical, Cosmetic, Fuel & Lubricant and Other), and by Region (Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa,) - Forecast till 2023 " in detail along with the table of contents @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com / reports / phenolic antioxidant-market-3937

Industry Segments

The international industry for phenolic antioxidant is categorized on the basis of application, source and region. The source segmentation of the market is into synthetic and natural. The application category of the market includes plastics & rubber, food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and lubricant & fuel. The regional division of the phenolic antioxidant market includes Latin America, Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday termed the attack on students and teachers at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) as a "disturbing and fascist strike" by the BJP.

Banerjee, who is also the TMC supremo, said she had begun her political career as a student leader but never before witnessed such "brazen attack" on educational institutes.

"Whatever is happening across the country is very disturbing... I, too, was involved in student politics at one point in time, but never before have I witnessed this sort of an attack on students and educational institutions...

"Yesterday's was a fascist strike on the student community," Banerjee told reporters, before leaving for her three-day trip to Gangasagar.

Whoever raised voice against the BJP was dubbed an "anti national" or a Pakistani", she claimed.

"India is a democracy and we have our right to protest. How can someone be branded anti-national or Pakistani for his or her protest against the government," Banerjee questioned.

On Sunday, too, the CM had condemned the violence on JNU campus, terming it a "heinous act".

A four-member Trinamool Congress (TMC) delegation is visiting JNU on Monday to express solidarity with the students and teachers, she said.

Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged properties on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended President Donald Trumps decision to kill Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani.

Pompeo made the administrations case during multiple television interviews on Sunday, saying there was no skepticism among senior U.S. leaders who had access to all the intelligence on Fridays targeted killing.

We would have been culpably negligent had we not taken this action, Pompeo said on NBCs Meet the Press.

Its never one thing. ... Its never one moment. Its never one instance. Its a full situational awareness of risk and analysis," Reuters cited him as saying.

Pompeo said intelligence justifying the Soleimani strike has been shared with leaders in Congress and he expects they will be briefed again this week. He bolstered Trumps promise to respond forcefully to any Iranian attack.

Weve told the Iranian regime: enough. You cant get away with using proxy forces and think your homeland will be safe and secure. Were going to respond against the actual decision-makers - the people who are causing this threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Pompeo said on ABC.
(Getty Images file photo)

SINGAPORE  The funeral service provider and the funeral parlour behind a mix-up that led to a wrong body being cremated said on Monday (6 January) in an apology that it has suspended an employee from duty over the incident.

The employee has failed to follow established procedures for the collection of bodies post-embalming, said funeral service provider Harmony Funeral Care and funeral parlour Century Products in a joint statement as both companies vowed to improve current protocols.

The management of the companies is conducting a thorough investigation to ascertain what happened and look into measures to prevent a similar situation from recurring.

Kee Kin Tiong, 82, was mistakenly given a send-off with Christian traditions funeral rites despite being a Taoist due to the mix-up on 30 December by the employee, said family members, according to a Straits Times report. The incident is believed to be the first-ever case of a wrong body being cremated here.

Kees body and that of another 70-year-old man had been lying in the same embalming room at Century Products at the time, the report added. Harmony Funeral Care did not say what happened to the 70-year-olds body.

What we know so far is that the Harmony Funeral Care employee who collected Mr Kees body from Century Products embalming room mistook Mr Kee for our clients deceased relative and failed to follow established procedures for the collection of bodies post-embalming, said the two companies.

He has been suspended from duties pending the outcome of our investigation.

Apology to Mr Kees family

The statement added that Kees funeral was handled by another undertaker, although they did not mention the name of the company.

We sincerely apologise to the family of the late Mr Kee Kin Tiong for the distress caused to them when we incorrectly collected his body and cremated him ahead of his funeral rites on 30 December 2019, it said.

We understand how important it is for family members to be able to send off their deceased loved ones in a manner that accords with their faith, and we deeply regret that the family of Mr Kee were unable to do so.

Story continues

Both companies added that they take full responsibility for the mistake and have reached out to Kees family from the day the error was discovered to make appropriate amends.

We will continue to engage Mr Kees family and work to make it right by them as soon as possible, it added.

The two companies also shared some of the proposed immediate changes that were shared during a consultation with the National Environment Agency (NEA).

These include placing identification tags on the wrist and ankle of the deceased, removable only after the body has been received at a wake venue or a crematorium.

This is in addition to the current industry practice of placing over the deceased a white cloth that bears the undertakers company name and address of the wake venue. The new tags will have the deceaseds personal particulars and the address of the wake, the statement said.

Other proposed steps include requiring funeral staff and embalmers to sign off a checklist of procedures and controls, maintaining a logbook of bodies received at and collected from the embalming facility, tightening security to restrict access to the embalming room to only authorised personnel and installing a new video system outside the Century Products embalming room.

Customers will also have to provide final confirmation of the identity of the deceased regardless of whether a closed casket or one with a viewing panel is used, and particularly so for cases involving direct cremation without a wake, it added.

The companies also proposed to conduct regular audits to ensure compliance with the new processes.

This is the most difficult time in our companies history and we truly appreciate the patience, understanding and goodwill of our customers, regulators and business partners, said the two companies.

We will work hard to regain their trust in us and to lead new and higher standards for the industry.

Licence suspension

An NEA spokesperson said on Sunday that its investigations into Harmony Funeral Care found that it had not put in place sufficient measures to ensure the proper handling of the body, which resulted in the egregious error.

It will be barred from the use of government after-death facilities at Mandai Crematorium and Choa Chu Kang Crematorium & Cemetery until it can demonstrate that it has implemented satisfactory measures to prevent a repeat of the incident, the spokesperson added.

Separately, the agency issued a notice to suspend the licence of Century Products until it is able to demonstrate improvements to its record-keeping to prevent future such errors.

An inspection of Century Products' premises by the NEA on 31 December last year confirmed that it had not kept proper records of the bodies received or removed from the premises, said the NEA spokesperson.

Century Products will be charged under the Environmental Public Health (Funeral Parlours) Regulations for the infringements, added the spokesperson.

Those convicted will face a fine of up to $1,000 and up to $2,000 in the case of a second or subsequent conviction.



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Cremation mix-up: NEA takes action against funeral service firms
Eeben Barlow, chairman of Specialised Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection International (STTEP), a private army, has accused the...





Eeben Barlow, chairman of Specialised Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection International (STTEP), a private army, has accused the US of influencing President Muhammadu Buhari to terminate the contract to rescue Chibok girls.





Speaking in an interview with Al Jazeera, Barlow said Buhari did not have any choice but to end the contract because he came under pressure from the US  a country he said sponsored the then All Progressives Congress (APC) candidates campaign in 2015.





Boko Haram insurgents abducted 276 girls from Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno state in 2014. So far, 112 of the girls are still held captive by the insurgents. Fifty-seven were lucky to escape while 107 were released in batches in Swiss-coordinated negotiations.





In the build-up to the 2015 elections, the President Goodluck Jonathan administration made some successes in combating Boko Haram but after the Buhari administration came on board, the momentum went down temporarily.

Barlow said his army was initially engaged to rescue the Chibok girls but that changed to combating Boko Haram.





Our initial aim was not Boko Haram per se, it was to rescue the Chibok girls. They were the girls that were kidnapped and the western response was #Savethegirls (#BringBackOurGirls), he said.





That type of nonsense does not save girls. Unfortunately, these girls became victims of a situation where the security had broken down in a specific area, they were kidnapped and that was the first mission  rescue the Chibok girls.





We ended a selection process of the Nigerian soldiers, the soldiers were retained after a selection process, they were trained in a specific way to conduct a hostage rescue operation.





However, after about five or six weeks of the training of the hostage rescue team we were asked to change our mission and that mission was to go to a town called Maiduguri in north-east Nigeria that had come under severe threat of Boko Haram and we rapidly had to transition what we were doing and suddenly train an offensive force with the minimum of equipment.





We rushed to Maiduguri and we met with 7th infantry division commander, he was under pressure, we finally understood the pressure he was under and our suggestion to him that the force that we have trained which named the 72nd mobile strike force would actually spearhead the division and that is precisely what we did.





The operation was in three phases, the first phase was to cut a dividing line across north-eastern Nigeria and isolate Boko Haram into two isolated areas and mop up. One area in the south was the start and after that then mop up in the north. The division will follow behind and occupy terrain.





But we were never allowed to execute the entire operation. In one month, we took back terrain larger than the terrain of Belgium from Boko Haram. We were not allowed to finish because it came at a time that governments were in the process of changing.





President Jonathans government saw the entire Boko Haram contract, if we call it that, as a last grasp to regain popularity. The incoming president, President Buhari was heavily supported by a foreign government and one of the first missions was to terminate our contract.





We were told it was the United States and they had actually funded President Buharis campaign and the campaign manager for President Buhari came from the US.





Im not saying the United States is bad, I understand foreign interests but Id have thought that a threat like Boko Haram on the integrity of Nigeria ought to be a priority but it wasnt.





When asked why the US allegedly aborted the mission, he said: I think the US can answer that, I have come to realise that when a foreign interest clashes with a states interest and domestic interest, conflict is bound to ensue and those conflicts continue with no end.





Barlow added that the federal government would be in the right position to disclose how much they were paid for the operation.




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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020 19:40 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c321150fa 1 National millennials,KBBI,Education-and-Culture-Ministry Free

The Education and Culture Ministry has chosen milenial (millennial) as Indonesias 2019 word of the year, the first such award from the ministry.

The choice of the word milenial was based on its popularity, usage and distribution, the ministrys acting Language Agency head Dadang Sunendar said at a press conference in Jakarta on Monday as quoted by Antara news agency.

According to the Great Dictionary of the Indonesian Language (KBBI), milenial is defined as relating to the millennium or relating to the generation born between the 1980s and the 2000s.

Dadang cited the words popularity on Google Trends and its widespread use among all levels of Indonesian society, ranging from government officials to members of the general public.

He added that the word had been used in several big news events such as the Millennial Road Safety Festival held by traffic police divisions across the country last March and the appointment of millennial presidential expert staff in November.

The word milenial is also used in many fields including national media, scientific publications, as well as in government, the private sector and education fields, Dadang said.

Milenial was also among the most searched-for words on the online KBBI, with 19,834 searches as of Dec. 30, 2019. Other popularly searched words include aktivitas (activity), analisis (analysis), daring (online), literasi (literacy) and survei (survey). (kmt)
One of the six pillars of the Chester County Historic Courthouse on North High Street will shine in blue light on January nights beginning Tuesday evening in recognition of National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.
REXBURG, Idaho  Authorities have searched the home of an Idaho man linked to the suspicious death of his first wife and the disappearance of his two new stepchildren.

On Friday, investigators with the Rexburg police, Fremont County sheriffs office and FBI executed a search warrant on the house Chad Daybell shared with Tammy Daybell, who was found dead at home in October.

Initially thought to be a natural death, Tammy Daybells remains have since been exhumed in Utah, where she was buried. Autopsy results are pending.

The search warrant was also in connection to the disappearance of Joshua Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 17, who havent been seen since September.

The childrens mother, Lori Vallow  who is also now known as Lori Daybell  married Chad Daybell shortly after the other wifes death.

Lori Daybells former spouse, Charles Vallow was killed in July in Arizona in a confrontation with her brother, Alex Cox. Cox, who died on Dec. 12, said he shot Vallow in self-defense.

Authorities havent said why they got the warrant or what they found.

Rexburg police have said Chad and Lori Daybell are named as persons of interest because they never reported the kids missing, have repeatedly lied about where their children are  initially saying the boy with special needs was in Arizona  and arent cooperating with the investigation.

The couple has since issued a statement through an attorney, saying they love their son and daughter and look forward to addressing allegations once they have moved beyond speculation and rumor.

Chad Daybell, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is a self-published author who writes about near-death experiences and doomsday events.

Chad and Lori Daybell participated in podcasts for a group called Preparing a People, which the group said involves the second coming of Jesus Christ. The group has since removed those podcasts.
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Australian explorer Geoff Wilson has cracked the record for the longest unsupported journey across the Antarctic, covering 5306 kilometres of icy terrain with nothing more than his own body, a wind kite and a sled full of food.

Dr Wilson, 49, skied into the Russia's Novolazarevskaya Station early on Saturday, Antarctic time, 58 days after he set out, beating the previous record by 206 kilometres.

"I was thrilled to be alive, overjoyed to be done and waves of relief washed over me as I stood almost stunned in a colourful isolated Russian outpost, the wind screaming through it," Dr Wilson wrote on his blog, The Longest Journey.

During his solo odyssey, Dr Wilson became the first human to scale Dome Argus, the highest point on the Antarctic plateau, without vehicles or help from another person, the technical definition of "unsupported".
Geng Meiyu (L), key inventor of the drug GV-971, also a researcher of Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica under Chinese Academy of Sciences, discusses the research progress with her colleague at the Green Valley institute in Shanghai, east China, Nov. 3, 2019. Photo:Xinhua

An innovative Chinese Alzheimer's drug that hit the domestic market last week will go through clinical trials on 2,000 patients overseas in 2020.

The orally administered drug GV-971 will be tested in 200 clinical centers in North America, the European Union, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific and other places, according to Green Valley Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, one of the drug's co-developers.

The company said it plans to complete the global clinical trials in 2024 and submit the New Drug Application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency in 2025.

GV-971 was jointly developed by the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Ocean University of China and Green Valley, after a 22-year study.

The results of the mechanism of action study were published in the international journal Cell Research in September 2019, saying that the drug, extracted from brown algae, works by modifying gut bacteria to ultimately reduce brain inflammation in mice that were genetically engineered to have the disease.

It was approved to market last November by China's National Medical Products Administration, which said the GV-971 "can improve cognition in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD)."

According to researchers, apart from animal experiments, more than 1,100 Chinese AD patients participated in clinical trials before the drug hit the market. In the last test, a total of 818 participants from 34 leading hospitals in China took 450 mg GV-971 orally twice a day for a treatment period of nine months, which proved safe and effective in improving cognition.

"Because of its effectiveness on Chinese patients, we expect this drug to benefit more people in the rest of the world," said Lyu Songtao, chairman of the Shanghai-based pharmaceutical company.

At least 50 million people worldwide have dementia and AD is the root cause behind 60 percent to 70 percent of the cases, according to the World Health Organization.

AD is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory, thinking skills and the ability to carry out simple tasks.

China currently has about 10 million AD patients and the number is expected to increase to 40 million by 2050, more than the population of Canada, according to China Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics.

The aging population and high medical costs are urgent tasks the country is facing. For Chinese AD patients, the average spending can reach 130,000 yuan (about 18,665 U.S. dollars) per year.

Lyu said the monthly cost of GV-971 is only about 3,580 yuan.
Banking operations across the country are likely to get affected on Wednesday as employees of many public sector banks (PSBs) will go on an all-India general strike or 'Bharat Bandh' on January 8.

Several bank branches and ATM services could take a hit as PSB employee unions will protest against the Modi government's recent banking reforms and labour policies.

Meanwhile, the State Bank of India (SBI) has said that it expects a minimal impact of the bank strike on its operations.

Also Read: Bank strike on Jan 8: SBI predicts minimal impact; Syndicate Bank assures steps for smooth operation

"The membership of our bank employees in unions participating in strike is very few, so the impact of strike on Banks operation will be minimal," SBI said in a stock exchange filing.

Whereas, Bank of Baroda fears the strike will affect its functioning. The bank said that it is ensuring required measures to ensure smooth functioning of its branches.

"The Bank is taking necessary steps for smooth functioning of Bank's Branches/Offices on the day of strike, in the event the strike materialises, the functioning of the branches/offices may be affected/paralysed," the bank said in a separate regulatory filing.

Also Read: Banking services to be hit today as 2 employee unions plan strikes across India

Canara Bank also in its stock exchange filing said, "The Bank is taking necessary steps for the smooth functioning of Bank's Branches/Offices on the day of proposed strike. However, in the event, the strike materialises, the functioning of the branches/offices may be impacted by the strike."

Banks have been informed by Indian Banks' Association (IBA) that bank unions including All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA), All India Bank Officers' Association (AIBOA), Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI), Indian National Bank Employees' Federation (INBEF), Indian National Bank Officers Congress (INBOC) and Bank Karmachari Sena Mahasangh (BKSM) will go on a pan-India general strike on January 8. Ten central trade unions have expressed support towards the strike.

Also Read: Karur Vysya Bank MD & CEO P R Seshadri resigns; stock slips nearly 5%
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a South Florida businessman with aiding and abetting the misappropriation of millions of dollars of investor funds from 1 Global Capital, LLC, a now-bankrupt Florida-based merchant cash advance company. The Commission previously charged 1 Global and its former founder, chairman, and CEO, Carl Ruderman, with misappropriating the funds as part of a $322 million fraud perpetrated on 3,600 retail investors in 42 states.

According to the SEC's complaint, Steven A. Schwartz, Ruderman's brother-in-law, served as 1 Global's director and, according to 1 Global's marketing materials, as its chief operating officer. The complaint further alleges that Schwartz became trustee of a Ruderman family trust in June 2014, and that shortly afterwards, Ruderman had Schwartz execute an agreement conveying ownership of 1 Global to the trust. As alleged, until 1 Global declared bankruptcy in July 2018, Schwartz allowed Ruderman to use the trust to misappropriate several million dollars in investor funds to pay for Ruderman's luxury lifestyle.

In a parallel action, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida today announced criminal charges against Schwartz.

The SEC's complaint, filed in federal district court in Miami, charges Schwartz with aiding and abetting 1 Global and Ruderman's violations of the antifraud provisions of Sections 17(a)(1) and (3) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rules 10b-5(a) and (c) thereunder. The SEC seeks a court-ordered injunction, a civil penalty, and an officer-and-director bar.

The SEC's continuing investigation is being conducted by Gary Miller in the Miami Regional Office and supervised by Elisha L. Frank and Glenn S. Gordon. The SEC's litigation is being led by Robert K. Levenson. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Florida Office of Financial Regulation.
A social media influencer has caused outraged by refusing to take down a video and images she posted, despite followers accusing her of blackface.

Ghadeer Sultan, of Kuwait, shared a video on January 1 with her two million followers which showed her with various shades of skin tones and wigs associated with women of colour, as she lip synced to the song, We Are The World.

She quickly gained media attention with the majority of people slamming her actions as offensive in the comments.

Sultan retaliated by posting an image of herself with a significantly dark shade of foundation, brown-coloured contact lenses and a long dark wig.

The post outraged Instagram users who accused the naturally fair beauty influencer of being racist and using blackface.

Delete this, youre disgraceful, one person commented.

This is not ok, another added as thousands of commenters demanded she remove the image.

The influencer responded hours later by posting another image of herself from a different angle with the same look and wrote, I am not racist... I hate racism.

She justified her actions by saying she was showing off her make-up artistry to show what I am capable of.

The make-up artist defended the image by telling her 2 million followers that she wanted to show what I am capable of. Source: Instagram

The second photo upset even more social media users who questioned the influencers reason for the culturally inappropriate image.

Black skin is not a costume and blackface is not a talent to show off, an irate reader responded.

The fact that you posted a second picture with an ignorant message demonstrates how culturally insensitive, disrespectful and unaware you are, another person said.

The self-described professional make-up artist appeared to enjoy the attention and has followed up her controversial posts by sharing local news coverage of her post and another video where she celebrated New Years Eve, also in dark make-up and various wigs.

Story continues

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play.
Getty

Donald Trump has suffered a stinging rebuke over his actions towards Iran from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which took to Twitter to remind the president: Youre not a dictator.

The panel, chaired by New York Democrat Eliot Engel, was responding to one of Mr Trumps own tweets in which he warned Tehran against taking violent retribution against America in response to the killing of influential general Qassem Soleimani in a US air strike near Baghdad International Airport on Friday.

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any US person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner, the president wrote on Sunday evening. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!

Parodying his aggressive legalese, the House committee responded: This Media Post will serve as a reminder that war powers reside in the Congress under the United States Constitution. And that you should read the War Powers Act. And that youre not a dictator.

The act alluded to in the reprimand refers to a resolution introduced in 1973 in the wake of the Korean and Vietnam wars requiring any US president to actively seek the consent of Congress before launching the military into armed conflict.

While Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution recognises the president as the commander-in-chief of the army and navy, Article I, Section 8 leaves the responsibility for actually declaring war in the hands of elected representatives, therein ensuring the separation of powers.

Mr Trump signed off on the assassination of Soleimani  in an attack that also killed four members of the Popular Mobilization Forces including Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis  from his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago early in the new year, declining to inform Congress or other world leaders who can expect to suffer the consequences should Iran retaliate as it has threatened to do.

Story continues

The president was similarly criticised in October for failing to brief House speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff  two members of Washingtons gang of eight  ahead of the operation to kill Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

He has also repeatedly made the worrying and mistaken claim that Article II of the Constitution gives him the right to do whatever I want as president, notably during an address to conservative student activists at a Turning Point USA summit in July last year.

This Media Post will serve as a reminder that war powers reside in the Congress under the United States Constitution. And that you should read the War Powers Act. And that youre not a dictator. https://t.co/VTroMegWv0  House Foreign Affairs Committee (@HouseForeign) January 5, 2020

Chairman Engel used his own Twitter account to add his voice to the chorus of condemnation against Mr Trumps recklessness, stating: The American people dont want war with Iran, and neither do I. We need to send a clear message to the White House: dont plunge this country into an ill-conceived war against Iran.

In the Middle East, Iranians have taken to the streets en masse to mourn the generals death while the countrys technology minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi has labelled Mr Trump: A terrorist in a suit.
The Danish royal family have posed in front of the Swiss Alps, as Princess Marys three-month stint in the country with her young children officially begins.

The Tasmanian-born Crown Princess of Denmark will reside in the country with her four children, Prince Christian, Princess Josephine, Princess Isabella and Prince Vincent while they attend boarding school.

Princess Mary and her family have posed from the Swiss Alps. Photo: Instagram/@detdanskekongehus

Prince Christian, Princess Josephine, Princess Isabella and Prince Vincent will attend school in Switzerland for three months. Photo: Instagram

Over the course of 12 weeks, the royal kids will attend the Lemania-Verbier International School and while Mary will stay with the children throughout their stint, their father, Prince Frederik will visit them in between his royal duties.

In the adorable photos, the royal children can be seen wearing their uniform and a pair of snow boots, with a beautiful sunset visible in the background.

"With the school stay, the Crown Prince couple wants to give their children a common experience in an international environment, the caption on the photo read on the Danish royal familys Instagram.

The children usually attend Tranegardsskolen school in Denmark.

Princess Marys message of support to bushfire victims

The new photo comes just days after Princess Mary wrote a letter addressed to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, giving her support to Australia as the bushfires rage on.

Princess Mary and Prince Frederik sent a letter of support to Australia amid the bushfire crisis. Photo: Getty Images

"In this time of great hardship caused by the ruthless bushfires, my husband and I would like to convey our warmest wishes to the Australian people as we enter a new year," the letter began.

"Our heartfelt condolences to the families who have lost loved ones and our deepest sympathy to the many families who have lost their homes  their livelihoods.

"When the immediate crisis subsides and people can begin to return from where they have fled, our thoughts and concerns will remain with the affected local communities, as it will undoubtedly take great efforts and time for them to rebuild what has been lost.

She also revealed the courage and unyielding efforts of the volunteer firefighters have our deepest respect and admiration.

Got a story tip or just want to get in touch? Email us at lifestyle.tips@verizonmedia.com.
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New Delhi, Jan 6 : The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) Director General Rajesh Ranjan on Monday appealed CISF personnel to observer 2020 as the year of "mobility" to accomplish the objective of serving the nation with "utmost dedication and professionalism".

While interacting with the personnel of 340 units of the CISF deployed in far-flung areas, he urged the force personnel to continue focussing on training and physical fitness; leveraging modern gadgetry and technology, and assured of helping them with all measures for the welfare of them and their families in terms of logistics such as housing, land and equipment.

The objective of the DG's Webcast address was to reach out and connect with the last force personnel deployed in far-flung areas of the country from North to South (Jammu and Kashmir to Kudankulam in Kanyakumari (Tamil Nadu) and from North-Eastern states to West (NHPC, Subansiri in Assam to Kandla Port in Gujarat), a Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) statement said.

In his address, the DG congratulated the force personnel for their selfless and dedicated service in securing the critical infrastructures and sensitive establishments of our country and highlighted the achievements of the force during the year 2019.

The CISF -- a 1.62 lakh strong force -- currently secures 347 units with two new inductions at Nayra Energy in Jamnagar and Indian Museum in Kolkata. The total number of Fire Wing Units is 103 with two new units in Fire Wing at NPGCL, Aurangabad (Bihar) and PVUNL, Patratu (Jharkhand).
With more than 30 years of P&C insurance industry experience, Levesque was most recently serving as president of the regional insurance segment of a major US insurer. A release noted that 15 of those years were spent in San Diego  in his new role, Levesque will once again be based in the city. He has the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) and Certified Insurance Counselors (CIC) designations.

W. R. Berkley Corporation president and CEO W. Robert Berkley, Jr. thanked Gallacher for his years of service.

Under Steves leadership, the Preferred Employers Insurance team has honed their ability to assist California businesses to identify workplace risks, prevent workplace injuries and provide quick access to the highest quality medical professionals available when an injury does occur, Berkley said in a statement.

The CEO also noted that incoming president Levesque has extensive underwriting experience and expertise in the California market, which will be valuable assets to Preferred Employers Insurance.
The U.S. will begin sending Mexican asylum-seekers to Guatemala to wait out their cases instead of allowing them to remain in the U.S., according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Why it matters: The Trump administration had previously implemented a "remain in Mexico" policy for asylum-seekers from Central America, but international law forbids asylum-seekers from being sent back to their home country due to concerns they may face prosecution. Mexicans account for more than half of the estimated 21,000 asylum seekers waiting along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The big picture: The "remain in Mexico" policy for Central Americans was implemented in November, but asylum officials were emailed guidance in recent days on how to expand the process to include Mexicans, per BuzzFeed.

Asylum officers will interview the asylum-seekers to determine whether they are eligible to be deported to Guatemala and gain protections there rather than the U.S.

What they're saying:

Mexico is dangerous; Guatemala is even more so. This expansion of the [agreement] continues to prevent legitimate asylum-seekers from having their cases heard by the US and foists them upon the Guatemalan system, which has about a dozen staff. Asylum in the US is now practically available only for people wealthy and privileged enough to get visas, shutting out many of the most vulnerable groups asking for help at our borders.

 An anonymous asylum official told BuzzFeed

Go deeper: Republican governors reject Trumps offer to ban refugees
Readers often demand that the columnists they read say something about the outbreaks of crime, especially murders, that occur in their area. But the columnist has a hard time imagining a would-be murderer reading a column decrying such killings and being persuaded not to follow through with plans to commit a homicide. It should go without saying that everybody  including the murderers themselves -- knows that murder is bad, and that a columnist pointing that out is unlikely to have much of an effect.

A lack of awareness cant be blamed for the intentional and malicious taking of another human beings life, but maybe a failure to consider the consequences can be blamed for those reckless and unintentional acts that result in homicide. Maybe the people firing their guns into the air to bring in the new year can be persuaded that the tradition needs to be thrown out with the old.

As of Friday, 38-year-old Sheldon Stevens Jr. was being held at the Cuyahoga County Jail in lieu of a $500,000 bond after Cleveland police say he accidentally killed his 31-year-old live-in girlfriend, Erika Miranda on New Years Day. Police say Stevens had been drunkenly firing off rounds at a party he and Miranda were hosting. Court records indicate that Stevens was trying to reload the weapon when a bullet discharged and fatally struck Miranda in the chest.

The owner of the home -- who lived in a unit below the couple -- described his tenants as good neighbors and said he never heard them arguing. Its a senseless tragedy, Chad Maushard said. Both sides are going to be feeling this for years to come.

The word senseless is used far too often to describe criminal acts. Its used in place of words like evil or depraved or inhumane. But in this case senseless fits -- because theres never a sensible reason to aimlessly fire a gun into the air, and if Stevens hadnt been engaged in that senseless act, then he wouldnt have needed to reload the weapon while Miranda stood nearby.

Even if Stevens had managed to safely and successfully reload his weapon, the fact remains that every round he fired into the air had the potential to hurt or kill someone. A Houston woman standing in her driveway fell to the ground soon after the calendar flipped to 2020. She was announced dead at the scene, and authorities say they suspect she was the victim of a falling bullet. A Delray Beach, Fla., woman was treated at a hospital after a bullet from an unknown shooter struck her above her left knee. A bullet smashed through a South Carolina state troopers windshield New Years Eve, and, here in Ohio, Allen County Sheriff Matthew Treglia reports that a falling bullet ricocheted off his patrol car and struck him in the bullet-proof vest he wore on his chest.

And all of that happened in the few hours before or after the transition into 2020. A year ago, a 9-year-old boy inside his Cleveland home was struck in the hand by a stray bullet that may have been fired as part of a celebration.

Unlike murderers, we can make the strong argument in these cases that the people firing their weapons dont realize what theyre doing, that theyve convinced themselves that the bullets they fire into the air are most likely to fall harmlessly to the ground. Its easier to believe that they fall harmlessly when  in almost all situations  the shooters have no idea where the bullets theyve fired come down. But the fact that the shooters dont see where their bullets land doesnt mean that their bullets landed harmlessly. Firing weapons into the sky is the kind of crime thats most likely to hurt a person the shooter never sees. Investigators often have no idea who fired the bullet or from where. Deputies investigating the Houston womans death scoured the area for hours searching for shell casings that would indicate where the gun had been fired, but they didnt find anything.

In Button, Button, an episode of the 1985 television series The Twilight Zone, a mysterious stranger tells a couple that pushing a button inside a box will earn them $200,000, but that it will also cause the death of someone whom you dont know. The couple debate back and forth  could it really be that bad if they dont know whose death they cause?  before finally caving in and pushing the button. Then the stranger reappears and tells them that hell take the box to someone else, with this chilling statement: I can assure you it will be offered to someone whom you dont know.

That may be the only way to get through to people who are reckless enough to put the lives of people theyll never see at risk: asking them to consider how theyd feel if people theyve never seen caused the sudden deaths of their loved ones. Theres no good that can come from firing guns into the air to celebrate New Years Day. But, as we see repeatedly, theres a whole lot of bad.

Jarvis DeBerry is a columnist at cleveland.com and a member of the editorial board. Reach him at jdeberry@cleveland.com or on Twitter at @jarvisdeberry.
Emilia Sanmiguel turns 5 this month, and she has a lot of questions about dying. She recently asked her mother what it feels like to be shot. There was a heartbreaking reason why.

In September, her father Javier Sanmiguel was killed as he tried to help victims of a car crash outside his familys east side St. Paul home. One of them shot Javier, 31, who left behind a wife, Kayla, and four young children, including Emilia, who now asks: "What does it feel like when you die? Will it hurt?"

Javier was one of 31 people killed in a near-record number of St. Paul homicides in 2019. The number includes one man fatally shot by police . As city officials struggle to stem that violence in 2020, interviews with family members of two men shot and killed reveal the damage done extends far beyond the bullets.

Kayla Sanmiguel, 33, is careful to tell Emilia her father did not feel anything when he was shot. He died right away. The pain for Kayla and her family, however, lingers.

"It's been pretty hellish," she told MPR News recently. "Life used to be an exciting adventure and now it feels like drudgery. I hear that that gets better, and I'm hopeful that it does. I had the best husband and the kids had the best papa. [Its] a little bit overwhelming to think about what the children have lost."

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Bible study, then gunfire

The Sanmiguel shooting came during a spasm of violence in St. Paul last fall  three shootings, three dead in the span of nine hours.

"It was shocking. It was outrageous. And it was an anomaly," St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell told reporters after announcing arrests of two 15-year-olds in one of those shootings, along with a plan to beef up patrols and refocus the departments energy on solving all the killings.

A week later, 41-year-old RayVell Carter was leaving St. Albans Church of God in Christ after Bible study when gunfire erupted . He was shot as he walked with his father and young daughter.

Police officers rushing to the scene in the Summit-University neighborhood found a trail of blood that led to Carter.

His death was the sixth homicide in the city within 17 days.

St. Paul police are still investigating Carters death. His mother, Pamela Carter, believes justice will come to her son's killer and any accomplices, but she's not looking for revenge.

"I don't want to see these children lost because I believe they're young and reckless and not even understanding the real harm of what they're doing," she said. "I would like to give them a chance to change."

Pamela Carter said her son had that chance. Hed gone to prison twice on drug possession charges. Hed lost his way then but eventually got back on the right path, she said.

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"Not everything in his life was perfect. Neither [was] mine. But he was a great son, very compassionate toward his parents, looked out for us, took care of us," she said. "If we needed anything, he was available to do it."

St. Paul-born and a Highland Park High School graduate, RayVell Carter lived in Roseville. Those he left behind include three children, a younger sister and a big extended family.

Carter had a comedic streak, he liked to write music, read and research his interests, his mother said. That included working on developing a financial literacy website. He was certified as an electrician's apprentice but didn't pursue work as an electrician because he landed a job as distributor for Coca-Cola.

As she mourns, Pamela Carter said she believes people need to recover their moral compass.

"When I grew up in this community, everybody went to church. Now, hardly nobody in this community goes to church. That's a huge difference," she said. "People may say that doesn't matter. Yes, it does because it teaches you principles and values that sometimes you may not even get at home."

Love your family

Kayla Sanmiguel, Javier and their children were living in a duplex in St. Paul's Payne-Phalen neighborhood at the time of the shooting . It was a place they'd purchased, remodeled and rented out.

In addition to teaching himself real estate and construction, Javier had worked in restaurant management and as an interpreter.

"He just cared about people and had a more optimistic and compassionate view than almost anybody I've ever met. He wanted to do justice to anything he was a part of," Kayla said. "If he was going to do something, it was going to be 110 percent."

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They'd been hoping to buy more properties nearby. Javier believed that investing in the neighborhood and paying attention to local issues was a way for care for the people around him, his wife said.

Recently, however, they became increasingly concerned about the neighborhoods future. There was more vandalism. A family they knew nearby had their home shot at by a stranger. Some people were driving too fast. Kayla and Javier had been looking to move.

When they heard the car crash outside their home Sept. 9, Javier immediately jumped up and hurried out the door to see if he could help. Kayla called 911 and was out the door herself within a few minutes. That's when she heard the gunshot.

"I kind of knew it was him. I don't know how. I just figured, if somebody was right there, it was going to be him," Kayla said.

Then she heard more gunfire.

"[It was] a frantic, surreal, horrible, horrible war-zone feel.  We're hiding behind a smushed car and I'm thinking, 'My goodness. He's shooting at my house with my children sleeping in that front room," she said.

Lionel Eaton was charged with second- and third-degree murder in Javier's death. Prosecutors say the 27-year-old crashed his SUV into the back of a woman's sedan, causing her to hit several unoccupied vehicles.

Witnesses say when Javier and others looked into the back of Eaton's vehicle and tried to open the hatch, Eaton allegedly fired a handgun from inside.

Eaton's mother has told officers that her son had been acting erratically and she was concerned he was having a mental health crisis, according to court documents. Eaton allegedly told police he was rammed by another car and feared for his life.

Kayla Sanmiguel said St. Paul needs more police officers.

" Rec centers are currently not the answer because we're in crisis mode," she said. "We're not really doing preventative care right now because we don't have the resources to cover everything."

As her family moves forward from terrible loss, Kayla said she keeps reminding herself of the specific combination of humility and gratitude that made her husband unique.

Sanmiguel said she likes to think if everyone were a little more like Javier, it would solve a lot of problems in St. Paul and elsewhere.

"Go home and love your family," she said. "That's how you fix the big problems."

This story originally appeared at: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/01/06/aftermath-two-st-paul-homicides-many-lives-shattered of story Questions or requests? Contact MPR News editor Meg Martin at newspartners@mpr.org  2019 Minnesota Public Radio. All rights reserved.


If everything goes to plan, and thats a big if, we should hear from fugitive former car boss Carlos Ghosn this week.

A press conference is promised and if it goes ahead, the international press corps will resemble a gang of Taylor Swift fans when tour tickets go on sale in the scramble for front row seats.

Will the former kingpin of the Nissan/Renault/Mitsubishi alliance say anything of substance?
While Australia has been absorbed in the tragedy of the bushfires, the rest of the world has been transfixed by fear that the assassination of Irans most senior general on the orders of US President Donald Trump might start a new Middle East war.

There is no need to shed tears for Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force who was killed in a US drone attack on Iraqi soil last week. He masterminded  and was the public face of  a violent campaign to spread Irans influence in Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and Iraq that included committing war crimes against civilians.

The killing of General Soleimani on Friday followed an attack last week on the US embassy in Baghdad, which Mr Trump blamed on Iran. The embassy attack came after US air strikes on Iran-backed militia in Iraq and Syria. Mr Trump may have thought such tough action could teach the Iranians a lesson while conveniently distracting attention from impeachment proceedings. Iran-backed forces throughout the Middle East, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, have threatened violent retaliation and there are serious doubts about how Mr Trump plans to respond.

Australia, which has troops in the region who could come under attack, can certainly express support for US concerns about Irans aggressive policies, but Prime Minister Scott Morrison has rightly urged the US to exercise restraint. The cycle of violence must not be allowed to spin out of control.
Chennai, Jan 6 : The principal opposition party in Tamil Nadu, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) on Monday boycotted Governor Banwarilal Purohit's customary address to the State Assembly in the New Year.

When Purohit began his address, the Leader of the Opposition and DMK President M.K. Stalin and other members of his party tried to raise various issues.

Stalin was denied chance to speak while Purohit tried to pacify him in vain.

Soon after, Stalin and his party members staged a walk out.

Later in a statement Stalin said the Governor's address is just a customary act in this government and will not have any impact in the state and hence DMK boycotted it.
The private pathologist hired by Jeffrey Epstein's family to investigate the pedophile's death claims newly-released photos from the autopsy reaffirm his conclusion that it wasn't a suicide.

Dr Michael Baden, who was paid by Epstein's brother Mark to oversee the autopsy following the millionaire's death in his New York City prison cell in August, said the injuries to Epstein's neck, captured in images from the medical examiner, 'are more indicative of homicide'.

Baden said the ligature mark on Epstein's neck 'doesn't match' the bed sheet noose seen in photos from the millionaire's cell at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center.

'It was too wide and too smooth,' the pathologist said during a Fox News interview on Monday. 'This is a rougher injury.'

He also noted that there was no blood on the noose, and said that the three neck fractures Epstein suffered would not have been caused by hanging.

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES

Dr Michael Baden, the private pathologist hired by Jeffrey Epstein's family to investigate the pedophile's death, claims newly-released photos from the autopsy reaffirm his conclusion that it was a homicide rather than a suicide

Baden said the ligature mark on Epstein's neck 'doesn't match' the bed sheet noose seen in photos from the millionaire's cell at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center

Graphic images from the autopsy report showed a deep, bloody ligature mark on Epstein's neck. Baden said there was no way the mark could have been made by a bed sheet

Epstein was found dead on August 10 in the prison cell where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

His death was officially ruled a suicide by New York City Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson but prompted widespread conspiracy theories and speculation that he had instead been murdered.

Epstein's death at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center - while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges - was officially ruled as a suicide by hanging

Baden said it was 'premature' to close the case as a suicide as many questions surrounding Epstein's death remain unanswered.

'I think there's a lot of information that still hasn't been revealed yet that is essential in order to arrive at a conclusion, whether this is a suicide or homicide,' he said.

'I think the important thing is to find out what was seen when the guards first went into the cell. Was he hanging? Was he on the ground? As some people reported when he was found.'

Baden also charged that first responders 'destroyed a lot of the forensic evidence' by removing Epstein's body from the cell as quickly as they did.

'EMS is not supposed to remove dead bodies from jails,' he said. 'They're supposed to have a whole forensic workup, what kind of forensic evidence is on the clothing, how long the person was dead.

'We can tell from the ligature mark that he had been -- there was a tight ligature around his neck for many hours, and the front of the neck, before he was found--so he was dead for a long time. But we could be more specific about that if somebody tested out the stiffness of the body, et cetera, at the scene.'

Photos of the inside of Epstein's jail cell were revealed for the first time during a 60 Minutes segment on Sunday

The photos reveal that fragments of material were found hanging from a window, while a large strip of bedding was also looped through a hole on the top bunk bed

The photos were taken by the New York City medical examiner's office

Epstein's autopsy report found his neck had been broken in several places, including the hyoid bone located near the Adam's apple. Pictured above is his broken hyoid bone

Earlier on Monday Baden appeared on CBS This Morning and repeated his previous assertion that the fractures in Epstein's neck were indicative of homicide rather than suicide.

'There were multiple fractures of the Adam's apple, the thyroid cart lamb and the hyoid bone that are more indicative of a homicidal strangulation than a suicidal strangulation,' he said.

'[With] hanging suicide 90 percent of the time there are no fractures, maybe 10 percent, 15 percent, they have hyoid or thyroid fracture.

'You don't have three fractures with the weight of the body on the ligature. You to have a lot more pressure by ligature or by hands to get those fractures.'

Baden also questioned the fact that investigators have not said whether there was DNA on the noose.

'The FBI or the medical examiner would have done swabs for DNA on the ligature. Whose DNA is on it? Was it Epstein alone ore Epstein and somebody else?' he asked.

Baden said that Epstein's family believes his death may have been a homicide based on the autopsy results and that they are desperate for the truth to be revealed.

'There is no advantage to the family whether it's a homicide or suicide,' Baden told CBS This Morning on Monday. 'There is no money involved. They just want the truth.

'The brother [Mark] or the estate would just as soon have this to be a suicide, because there is no advantage to them to be a homicide.

'Mark Epstein is now concerned about a homicide if his brother was killed because he knew too much, is he also at jeopardy? Are other people at jeopardy?'

Baden rejected the notion that he made the homicide determination because he's being paid by Epstein's family and that's what they believe.

Citing his time as New York City medical examiner in the late 1970s, Baden said his professional opinion has never been influenced by who is paying him.

Earlier on Monday Baden appeared on CBS This Morning and repeated his previous assertion that the fractures in Epstein's neck were indicative of homicide rather than suicide

.@AnthonyMasonCBS asks Dr. Michael Baden about the position of Jeffrey Epsteins body when he was found dead. https://t.co/XugYNMxmAm



Warning: This report contains graphic images. pic.twitter.com/Ecqc6TKV30  CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) January 6, 2020

Graphic photographs from Epstein's autopsy were revealed for the first time during a 60 Minutes segment on Sunday - along with other images from inside his cell.

Multiple nooses fashioned from the orange bedding were found fastened to the window and top bunk bed and on the floor.

The photos also showed multiple prescription pill bottles, several electrical cords and enough bed sheets for several inmates dumped on the floor.

A handwritten note, which was found alongside a ball point pen, contained complaints he seemingly had about prison conditions.

Among the complaints were that one guard had 'kept me in a locked shower stall for 1 hour' and another 'sent me burnt food'.

Epstein also wrote: 'Giant bugs crawling over my hands. No fun!!'

A handwritten note found in Epstein's cell, which was found alongside a ball point pen, contained complaints he seemingly had about prison conditions including that a guard had kept him locked in a shower stall for an hour

The photos from inside the cell also showed multiple prescription pill bottles and food on the top bunk

Prescription pill bottles with Epstein's name on them were also found inside his cell

Another noose that appeared to be made out of bed sheets was found elsewhere in Epstein's cell after his death

The procedures that should've been followed in Epstein's jail unit: The two guards were required to jointly conduct institutional counts at 4pm, 10pm, 12am, 3am and 5am of the prisoners in the unit. Both officers are required to walk the six levels of the unit to count and observe every inmate. They then have to each fill in and sign a form with the date and time the counts were performed. The slips are then collected and taken to the prison's control center where officers double check them to make sure every inmate is accounted for. In addition to the count, officers assigned to the unit Epstein was in are required to walk around every 30 minutes to ensure inmates are 'alive and accounted for', according to the indictment. They are also required to sign forms saying they carried out these 30-minute checks. In total, the two guards were required to carry out five institutional counts. Prosecutors say surveillance video shows the officers did not conduct a single count despite them logging that they did. They are also accused of falsely signing off that they had carried out more than 75 separate 30-minute checks. Advertisement

The circumstances surrounding Epstein's death continue to raise questions about protocol at the federal prison.

The two prison guards who were responsible for checking in on Epstein the night he hanged himself have since been charged with falsifying records and conspiracy.

Tova Noel, 31, and Michael Thomas, 41, - who have pleaded not guilty - were allegedly shopping online for furniture and napping instead of checking on the millionaire pedophile in his jail cell just 15 feet away from them.

After they discovered Epstein dead, the officers allegedly told a supervisor they had 'messed up' and 'didn't do any checks' in the hours before he killed himself, according to a criminal complaint.

Noel and Thomas, who were assigned to Epstein's Special Housing Unit at the federal jail, are accused of failing to check on him every half-hour, as required, and of fabricating log entries to claim they had.

The two guards were required to jointly conduct institutional counts at 4pm, 10pm, 12am, 3am and 5am of the prisoners in the unit. They were supposed to walk the six levels of the unit to count every inmate.

In addition to that count, officers assigned to the unit Epstein was in were required to walk around every 30 minutes to ensure inmates are 'alive and accounted for', according to the indictment.

Prosecutors said surveillance video showed the pair did not conduct a single count despite them logging that they did.

The two prison guards - Tova Noel, 31, (right) and Michael Thomas, 41, (left) - who were responsible for checking in on Epstein the night he hanged himself have since been charged with falsifying records and conspiracy

The two prison guards who were responsible for checking in on Epstein the night he hanged himself and ultimately found him dead have since been charged with falsifying records and conspiracy. Pictured above is Epstein's jail cell after his death

The two guards were allegedly shopping online for furniture and napping instead of checking on the millionaire pedophile in his jail cell just 15 feet away from them. Pictured above is the gate that separated the guards from the hallway where Epstein's cell was

After they discovered Epstein dead, the officers allegedly told a supervisor they had 'messed up' and 'didn't do any checks' in the hours before he killed himself, according to a criminal complaint

The charges brought against the two officers were the first in connection with Epstein's death while awaiting trial on charges of sexually abusing teenage girls.

Epstein had been on suicide watch after he was found July 23 on his cell floor with bruises on his neck.

He was taken off suicide watch about a week before his death, which meant he was less closely monitored but still supposed to be checked on every 30 minutes.

The city's medical examiner ruled Epstein's death a suicide but that didn't stop the conspiracy theories from swirling.

Both Epstein's brother and the lawyers who represented him in his criminal case expressed doubts about the medical examiner's conclusion.

Epstein's death ended the possibility of a trial that would have involved prominent figures and it sparked widespread anger that he wouldn't have to answer for the allegations.

He had pleaded not guilty to sexually abusing girls as young as 14 and young women in New York and Florida in the early 2000s.

Epstein had once counted the rich and powerful, including U.S. President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew, among his associates.
The Gendys, who live in Fresh Meadows, Queens, base their volunteerism at St. Mary and St. Antonios Coptic Orthodox Church in Ridgewood, where they have been members for more than 30 years. Membership at the church increased significantly after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in 2011. The subsequent rise of the Muslim Brotherhood prompted many Copts  members of the countrys Orthodox Christian minority  to flee for the United States.

We love to see people who are new people, new immigrants, because they dont know anything  they need guidance, Ms. Gendy, 58, said. Those are the people we really focus on.

The Gendys retired in late 2016 and began their volunteer work the following year. Using an office at the back of the churchs first floor, they help members of the congregation sign up for public benefits, health insurance and financial aid.

Its a problem if you dont know how to speak the language of where you live, Ms. Gendy said. The community rejects you, too.
This weekend, the killing, in a US military strike, of Qassem Suleimani, Irans hugely influential top security and intelligence official, reverberated through the media and around the worldaccelerating the sporadic Trump-era tit for tat with Iran, which is now something much more immediate and alarming. Iran continued to threaten revenge for Suleimanis killing, and said it would suspend the remaining restrictions imposed upon it by its 2015 nuclear deal with Western powers. In Iraq, where Suleimani was traveling when he was killed, lawmakers passed a (symbolic, for now) resolution to expel foreign troops. Closer to home, people of Iranian descentincluding Americansreported being detained for long periods at the border between the US and Canada, where they were asked about their political views. (According to the New York Times, one family said it was told, by a border official, that this is a bad time to be an Iranian.) And Trump spat out a string of dire tweets. In one, he threatened to strike 52 Iranian sites, including some important to Iran & the Iranian culture; in another, he cast his tweets (These Media Posts) as official notification to Congress that should Iran hit back at the US, the US will hit back harder. The latter missive had journalists baffled; Maggie Haberman, of the Times, simply tweeted, ??. Sometimes, there are no words.

Trump and his administration have insisted that they killed Suleimani to avert an imminent attack, but theyve yet to provide specific evidence of this to the public, the press, or, it would seem, Congress. The claim seems increasingly shaky. As early as Friday, a Pentagon source told the Times that Suleimani offered no new threat; on Saturday, Rukmini Callimachi, who covers terrorism and the Middle East for the paper, said officials told her that the evidence for an immininent attack was razor thin. Also Saturday, the Washington Post reported that Trump killed Suleimani because negative coverage of his decision, last year, to abort a planned strike against Iran had made him look weak. Sharp, reported skepticism of the official linetoo often lacking in coverage of the US and Iranwas welcome. But it was unevenly distributed. On Fridayas the Times reported the no new threat claim a few paragraphs into a news piece, the top of its homepage blared Trumps claim that he had acted to stop a war. Footage of Trump saying those words rolled at the top of TV news shows, without anchors adding adequate context. Stenography is never good journalism. When it comes to war, its unforgivable, and thats before we get started on this administration.

Related: The killing of Qassem Suleimani and the road to war with Iran

Collectively, we did seem more skeptical of Trumps rationale by the end of the weekend than we had been at the beginning. Yesterday, Mike Pompeothe secretary of State who, the Post reports, was key in getting Trump to approve the Suleimani striketoured all five of the Sunday shows, reshuffling his talking points as he went. (At times, he sounded bored.) Unlike Trump and other right-wing firebrands, Pompeo is a flattering, cajoling intervieweeChuck, youve been at this a long time; the American people are smart, toobut his accounts had gaping holes, and his interlocutors picked up on many of them. On CNN, Jake Tapper pressed Pompeo repeatedly on Trumps threat to hit cultural sites; on ABC, George Stephanopoulos noted that doing so would amount to a war crime. Still, some progressives, in particular, felt interviewers were too deferential to Pompeos responses. In light of recent events and past history, anything less than asking, over and over again, but where is the evidence? does feel inadequate.

One skeptical narrative that emerged over the weekend, including on the Sunday shows, was the wag the dog theorythat Trump killed Suleimani to distract from his impeachment. The theory isnt baseless. (Exhibit A: Trumps predictions, in 2011 and 2012, that Barack Obama would hit Iran for electoral benefit.) And regardless of Trumps intentions, the strike did have the effect of deflecting our attention from impeachment, or at least diluting it.

But there are reasons to doubt the theory, too. (Is Trump really that strategic?) And, more importantly, we neednt rely on speculation to justify keeping impeachment in the pictureit is, in fact, a key part of the Iran story, and its crucial that we hold our focus on both simultaneously. Both threads are about foreign policy, and Trumps fitness to hold high office in that context. And theyre both concerned with Trumps relentless war on the truth. Impeachment is the most urgent reminder weve yet faced that this administrations foreign policy must not be taken at face value.

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On Friday night, MSNBCs Chris Hayes did a good job of situating the killing of Suleimani in this context. His first words of his showafter playing Trumps stop a war remarkwere Massive contradictions from the White House; later, Hayes mentioned impeachment, and reminded his viewers that there is absolutely no reason for anyone in the US to credit anything the president or his administration says about matters of life and death and war and peace until it is demonstrably verified. Full stop. Not all journalists have the license to talk like Hayes, a liberal host on a liberal network. But we should all keep his advice front of mind.

Below, more on Trump, Iran, and impeachment:



Other notable stories:

ICYMI: Journalism and the foreseeable future

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among other outlets. He writes CJRs newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop.
A NEW million-dollar ramp which will allow boats to safely and efficiently load and offload wheeled cargo has been built at the Grand Turk Port.





The roll on roll off or RoRo ramp will allow for better trade and travel between Grand Turk and Salt Cay.





Almaida Wilson, the District Commissioner of Salt Cay, performed the ceremonial ribbon cutting at the opening of the ramp on December 19.





She was joined by Premier Sharlene Cartwright Robinson as Minister of Finance, Investment and Trade with responsibility for the Ports Authority.





During the ceremony, the premier said: "This project nearing a million dollars in cost, is part of an overall strategic approach to develop the ports system throughout the Turks and Caicos Islands. No island will be left behind.





She added: "I am thrilled that my Government was able to deliver on such projects; those that enhance and impact the lives of Turks and Caicos Islanders for the better.





The new ramp is elevated and features a sturdy step for people to use during its operation which replaces a steep metal ladder that boating passengers previously used.





The project was budgeted in 2018 and went out for tender and "after overcoming several challenges was completed this year, a press release from the Premiers Office said.





Also attending the event were Deputy Speaker of the House of Assembly, Hon. Derek Taylor, Chairman of the Ports Authority, Urban Jason Francis, and Acting Director of the Ports Authority, Delton Jones.





Salt Cay and Grand Turk residents, personnel from the Ports Authority and key stakeholders joined the attendees.





Roll on roll off boats are designed to carry wheeled cargo such as cars, trucks or trailers that can be driven off the vessel on their own.





This is in contrast to lift on lift off boats which use a crane to load and unload cargo.





The roll on roll off ramps allow the vehicles to be transported on and off the vessel when in port.




House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) speak during a press conference in the House Studio of the US Capitol in Washington on Sept. 2, 2019. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Schiff Calls for Public Hearings on Trump-Ordered Airstrike That Killed Soleimani

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) called for public congressional hearings on the Trump administrations decision to authorize an airstrike that killed top Iranian commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

I think there should be open hearings on this subject, Schiff, who was in charge of an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump late last year, told The Washington Post in an interview published Jan. 6. The president has put us on a path where we may be at war with Iran. That requires the Congress to fully engage.

Schiff said in an interview with CNN that the airstrike may increase the risk to Americans around the world, before stipulating that he hasnt seen the intelligence that taking out Soleimani was going to either stop the plotting that is going on or decrease other risks to the United States.

Soleimanis death was prompted by a series of events in Iraq, which included the siege of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo linked the activity to Iran and Soleimani.

By killing Soleimani, the United States disrupted an imminent attack that would have endangered American lives, Pompeo said. On Jan. 5, he said that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley got it right when he said we were culpably negligent had we not gone after Soleimani when we had the opportunity.

Protesters chant anti-U.S. slogans during a demonstration against the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, close to United States consulate in Istanbul on Jan. 5, 2020. (Lefteris Pitarakis/AP Photo)

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway also mounted a defense of the airstrike, saying Trump is the commander in chief, and he did what a responsible, strongnot weakcommander in chief does when faced with the opportunity to take out one of theif not theworlds most wanted terrorist.

The White House sent a notification to Congress on Jan. 4 regarding the strike, as required under the 1973 War Powers Act. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who was briefed on the airstrike in its aftermath, said the classified White House notification raised more questions.

This classified War Powers Act notification delivered to Congress raises more questions than it answers. This document prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner, and justification of the Administrations decision to engage in hostilities against Iran, Pelosi wrote on Jan. 4. The highly unusual decision to classify this document in its entirety compounds our many concerns, and suggests that the Congress and the American people are being left in the dark about our national security.

The public wrangling over whether Trump should have told Congress has prompted a debate about the White Houses legal requirements. But former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, an Obama appointee, said Trump was right.

If you believe everything our government is saying about General Soleimani, he was a lawful military objective and the president, under his Constitutional authority as commander in chief, had ample domestic legal authority to take him out without additional congressional authorization, Johnson told MSNBC on Jan. 5.

Soleimani was a lawful military objective because he was either a terrorist or a general in a military force that was engaged in armed attacks against our people, Johnson said.
Reuters

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -More than 1 million Indians received their third COVID-19 vaccine dose on Monday as the country rolled out boosters for frontline workers and vulnerable elderly, with the Omicron variant fuelling an eight-fold rise in infections in 10 days. The health ministry said only 5% to 10% of the infected have sought hospitalisation, compared with 20% to 23% during the Delta-driven last wave that peaked in May. Authorities say most people have shown no or only minor symptoms and have recovered quickly at home. "The situation is dynamic and evolving, therefore, the need for hospitalisation may also change rapidly," Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan wrote in a letter to state authorities asking them to regularly review staffing levels.
May Quinn, whose brother Robert Walker was killed in the massacre, lays flowers at the memorial

Some of the families of the victims

Pastor Barrie Halliday speaking at the Kingsmill memorial service at the scene of the atrocity in Co Armagh

A memorial service marking the 44th anniversary of the Kingsmill massacre has been held at the site in south Armagh where 10 Protestant workers were shot dead.

The textile workers were shot when their minibus was ambushed outside the village of Kingsmill on their way home from work on January 5, 1976.

Those on board were asked their religion, and the only Catholic was ordered to run away. The killers, who had hidden in hedges, forced the 11 remaining men to line up outside the van before opening fire. Alan Black was the sole survivor.

The attack took place close to where Catholic brothers John Martin Reavey (24) and Brian Reavey (22) were shot dead a day earlier in Whitecross by the UVF. A third brother Anthony (17) died several weeks later from his wounds.

On the same day as the Reavey murders, three members of the O'Dowd family were killed near Gilford by the same UVF gang.

Barry O'Dowd (24) and his brother Declan (16) died along with their uncle Joe (16) after armed and masked men burst into their home during a family reunion. Families and friends of the Kingsmill victims held a commemorative service yesterday morning to mark the anniversary of the attack, which took place on a small rural road in south Co Armagh.

The families and victims' campaigners gathered at the scene where the killings took place 44 years ago. They laid wreaths at the spot and said prayers during a short service. A memorial there lists the names of those who died, featuring gold lettering against a polished black background.

Pastor Barrie Halliday said the families of the victims are "still in the dark".

"The families still have no answers. There is no closure for the families four decades on and they still feel the same anguish," he said.

"The inquest is stuck in the mud but the families are optimistic the new legislation may mean we get some answers from the Guards (Garda)."

Gardai will be permitted to give evidence at Troubles era inquests in Northern Ireland after urgent legislation was passed by the Oireachtas last year.

No one has ever been convicted of the murders, which have been widely blamed on the IRA, although it never admitted responsibility.

The Kingsmill inquest opened in May 2016. Proceedings were delayed shortly afterwards when a palm print found inside the van suspected of being the getaway vehicle was positively matched. The inquest resumed sittings in 2017 and there have been more than 30 sessions.
A staff member was inside Mr Percival's bar early on Monday morning when a gunman fired multiple shots into the Howard Smith Wharves venue from a boat in the Brisbane River, police have confirmed.

Howard Smith Wharves has responded by looking into increasing its security measures after Mr Percival's was the victim of an attack by a lone arsonist less than three weeks ago.

The shooting occurred about 2am and the bullets came from a dinghy carrying three or four people.

Nobody was injured, with the Boundary Street bar closed to the public at the time of the attack, but a staff member inside the business had a lucky escape.
Soon after Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray compared the JNU violence with 26/11 attacks on Mumbai, several leaders slammed the CM for his controversial statement. Senior BJP leader Kirit Somaiya, lashed out at the Maharashtra CM as he stated that Uddhav Thackeray should not forget that he is the CM of a state in India and not in Pakistan.

BJP condemns Thackeray's controversial statement

Speaking to Republic TV, Kirit Somaiya said, "After becoming the CM, now Shiv Sena and Uddhav Thackeray want to prove more pro-Congressi or whatever way they want to go. Now they are comparing it to Kasab, they are giving credibility to Kasab. If they want to appease Rahul Gandhi, we will not object but he cannot insult those who have suffered in 26/11 and the people of Mumbai."

Furthermore, he added, "In a similar manner, he tried to grieve sensitivity to the English who ruled us. He compared the JNU incident to that of the Jallianwala Baugh. We not only condemn Uddhav Thackeray's statement but we will tell them that please keep this in mind that you are a Chief Minister of a state in Hindustan not in Pakistan."

READ | Asaduddin Owaisi Slams Delhi Police For 'creating Fear At JNU Campus'

Uddhav Thackeray's controversial statement

The Chief Minister of Maharashtra on Monday said, "The attack on JNU students on Sunday night reminded me of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack. I will not allow anything like JNU to happen here in Maharashtra...students are feeling unsafe in the country." Uddhav added, "If Delhi Police fail to find out perpetrators of the attack, then they will also be in the dock," he said. Uddhav also asserted that students in Maharashtra are safe.

READ | JNU Violence: Owaisi Blames Centre; Says "Cruel Attack Meant To "punish" Students'

Maharashtra Chief Minister said that there is an atmosphere of fear among the students in the country and there is a need to instil confidence in them. Terming the students as a "bomb", Uddhav said that they should not be triggered. Earlier in December, Uddhav Thackeray had compared the violence at Jamia Milia Islamia University with the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

READ | Cong, AAP, Others Deliberately Want To Create Atmosphere Of Violence: Javadekar On JNU

JNU violence

Violence broke out at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus. At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours.

Later, a delegation of students and teachers met the Delhi Police and put forth various demands before them, including urgent medical assistance to injured students and arrest of the accused behind the violence.

READ | Appropriate Action Will Be Taken, Says Piyush Goyal On JNU Violence
The Jawaharlal Nehru University has extended the date for the semester registration process till Sunday since the servers have not been restored yet.

In a statement, Registrar Pramod Kumar said a few "miscreants" had severely damaged the information and communication service (CIS) systems of the university "as part of their continuing agitation".

"This has caused complete failure of the main power supply of CIS Data Centre, severe damage to Optic fibers cables, and power cables of all racks," he said. "The JNU cloud and other information and communication systems are completely shut down."



Intranet, wired and wireless, systems are not operational in the campus, Kumar said, adding the registration process for winter semester 2020 had completely stopped since the afternoon of Saturday.

All efforts have been made to repair the system and restore the damaged equipment and data by the administration, he said.

"This is to inform all the students that registration process will remain open until January 12 without any late fee for registration," he said.

The university will make every effort to facilitate the registration of every student, the official said, while urging all students to participate in the winter semester registration as soon as the CIS Data Centre is made functional.

The registration process had commenced last Wednesday and ended on Sunday. The students' union had called for a registration boycott in protest against the hostel fee hike.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Photo: Derek Story/Unsplash

Missed the most recent top news in San Diego? Read on for everything you need to know.

Pickup truck driver flees after crashing, landing atop car

A pickup truck driver fled the scene after somehow landing on top of another vehicle in Rolando Sunday, according to the San Diego Police Department.

Read the full story on NBC 7 San Diego.

2 military bases tighten security at entry gates

Some military bases in San Diego County have instituted heightened security measures and warned of increased entry gate delays, according to base Twitter posts.

Read the full story on FOX 5 San Diego.

Man robs Linda Vista Taco Bell at gunpoint

San Diego Police arrested two men Saturday night accused of robbing a Linda Vista Taco Bell at gunpoint.

Read the full story on 10News  ABC San Diego KGTV.

3 injured in hit-and-run near Pechanga Arena; Driver caught

A suspected drugged driver was in custody this morning in connection with a hit-and-run crash near the Pechanga Arena in San Diego that left three pedestrians hospitalized.

Read the full story on 10News  ABC San Diego KGTV.

Firefighters Quickly Douse Fire in South County Homeless Encampment - Times of San Diego

A fire that broke out in a suspected South County homeless encampment was put out quickly Sunday afternoon by the Chula Vista and San Diego fire departments.

Read the full story on Times of San Diego.

This story was created automatically using data about news stories on social media from CrowdTangle, then reviewed by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
Recently, an oft-cited Business Insider survey ranked the rudest cities in America. The top 10 are all bastions of misguided liberalism. They are sanctuaries to illegal aliens and often hostile towards law-abiding citizens by imposing oppressive taxes and silly regulations and by encouraging lawlessness by handcuffing law enforcement.

Intrigued, I compared the Business Insider list to a survey that ranks cities on a conservative-liberal spectrum, and to other surveys that rank by friendliness, safety, and crime. The results are insightful: independent surveys indicate that the rudest, most dangerous, and least friendly cites are overwhelmingly liberal and sanctuary cities. Moreover, some conservative cities that rank more favorably are larger than a few of the degenerate liberal cities.

Let's start by comparing a list of the most liberal cities, as compiled by The Economist and published by Forbes, to the Business Insider list of rudest cities. It's uncanny: two completely separate surveys are almost interchangeable. Indeed, seven cities are on both lists, while neither of the ignominious lists has a single conservative (mostly) city. Juxtaposed is Forbes's list of the most dangerous cities.

Forbes's most liberal cities Business Insider rudest cities Most dangerous cities San Francisco New York Detroit Washington D.C. Los Angeles St. Louis Seattle Washington, D.C. Oakland Oakland Chicago Memphis Boston Boston Birmingham Minneapolis Detroit Atlanta Detroit Buffalo Baltimore New York Baltimore Stockton Buffalo Philadelphia Cleveland Baltimore San Francisco Buffalo

It just jumps out at you: the rudest, most crime-infested cites are exclusively liberal. This is not just a function of size, as Jacksonville, for example, has a larger population than San Francisco, Seattle, D.C., and Boston. You'd expect that it would be riddled with big-city problems including crime and rudeness; however, it is ranked the 17th rudest, well below the putrid liberal bastions. The contrast with other conservative cities, demonstrated below, is even starker.

None of the cities that manages to eke out a little conservatism, at least by city standards, makes either the rudest or most dangerous cities list:

Forbes's Most Conservative Cities

Mesa, Ariz. Oklahoma City Virginia Beach Colorado Springs Jacksonville Arlington, Texas Anaheim Omaha Tulsa Aurora, Colo.

Conservative cities do tend to be friendlier, however. Consider Omaha and Oklahoma City, and even Charleston (relatively conservative by city standards). Corroborating this is the Reader's Choice Awards survey, put out by Conde Nast Traveler.

Granted, most large cities are run by demented Dems, making the notion of rude cities somewhat self-evident. Nevertheless, several of the most dangerous cities are smaller than medium-sized cities that lean conservative. For example, Oklahoma City, ranked the 2nd most conservative by Forbes and 8th most friendly according to Big Seven Travel, is bigger than Memphis, Baltimore, Oakland, Cleveland, Birmingham, St. Louis, and Stockton  all cities with the dubious distinction of rating highly on Forbes's most dangerous list. Omaha, 8th most conservative and 7th friendliest, is about the same size, population-wise, as Oakland but is bigger than Cleveland, Birmingham, St. Louis, and Stockton.

Here's a list compiled by the Immigration Reform Law Institute. It reveals the destitution of liberal policies, showing the top 10 sanctuary cities with the highest crime rates:

Sanctuary communities with highest crime

San Francisco New York Minneapolis Philadelphia Seattle Chicago Montgomery County, Md. and Fairfax County, Va. Prince George's County, Md. Boston Santa Clara County, Calif.

Liberal apologists will advance specious arguments that illegal aliens don't commit the most crimes, but that entirely misses the point  all these crimes are preventable! In addition to the untold misery (imprisoned by P.C., some jurisdictions don't even track the stats, lest they offend the loony leftists) the crimes inflict upon citizens, it costs a lot to lock the criminals up  presuming they are prosecuted, and presuming that some liberal judge-cum-legislator doesn't release them prematurely.

There's also a study, awaiting peer review but still posted on the Social Science Research Network, that ranks states by the number of psychopaths it harbors. Here's that disturbing list:

States with most psychopaths States with least psychopaths Connecticut West Virginia California Vermont New Jersey Tennessee New York/Wyoming North Carolina Maine New Mexico Wisconsin Oklahoma Nevada Montana Illinois Mississippi Virginia Indiana

Maybe it's an astonishing coincidence that a big majority of states with the most psychos are liberal; then again, Trump Derangement Syndrome and the debilitating disease of liberalism may be contributing to their psychopathology and disinhibition. Illinois is noteworthy because it foisted upon us an effete and unaccomplished senator who wielded his narcissistic selfie stick and who brought psychopathy into to the White House.

While we're at the state level, let's note that the friendliest states have a conservative bent, per Big Seven Travel. Notable exceptions are "Minnesota Nice" and Hawaii, where they're encouraged to schmooze with revenue-producing tourists:

Most friendly states Least friendly states Minnesota New York Tennessee Arkansas South Carolina Delaware Texas Massachusetts Wyoming New Jersey Indiana Washington Colorado New Hampshire Kansas Nevada Oklahoma Florida Hawaii Rhode Island

This is important because when wayward liberal city mayors run amok, Republican state legislatures can discipline them by asserting the pre-eminence of state law. Indeed, state legislatures often introduce laws pre-empting runaway cities.

To summarize: The rudest, least friendly, and most dangerous cities are ravaged by ill conceived liberalism. At great personal and financial expense, they often mollycoddle illegal aliens. More conservative cities are friendlier and more hospitable. Conservative-leaning states are also friendlier.

There is also a bifurcation between urban uber-liberals and rural conservative strongholds. Hopefully, this will self-correct: with maturity, the city-dwelling Millennials will gain more experience and integrate more complex information, thereby ridding themselves of their postmodern educational indoctrination. For those with the mental fortitude to exorcise their intolerant liberal demons, their level of consciousness will rise commensurately. Eventually, their liberal bleeding hearts will succumb to conservative brains. In the meantime, please remain in your stinky, crime-ridden asphalt jungles, and leave our pleasant conservative enclaves to thrive.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 23:05:31|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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ALGIERS, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Monday received an invitation from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to attend an international conference on Libya due to be held in Berlin.

Tebboune received a phone call from Merkel during which the two officials exchanged views on developments in Libya and prospects for restoring peace in the north African country, local media quoted a presidency statement.

Algeria and Germany share "identical views on the Libyan crisis as they both favor political solutions and urge immediate cessation of armed clashes and put an end to foreign military interventions," the statement added.

Merkel's phone call coincides with a visit to Algiers by Head of the Libyan Government of National Accord Fayez al-Sarraj, who is due to meet with President Tebboune to discuss developments in Libya and ways to overcome the current crisis.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is also due to pay a two-day visit to Algiers later on Monday with the Libyan issue figuring top on the agenda of talks.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday defended the NDA government's decision in 2016 to allow a Pakistani probe team including officials from spy agency ISI to visit the Pathankot air force base to probe a terror attack.

Speaking at a book release event, Jaishankar also said that no country has been battered by terrorism the way India has been and that efforts to "normalise" terror must be defeated.

Jaishankar also appeared to take a dig at former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon when he said agreements with Pakistan like at Sharm El Sheikh and Havana lacked "strategic clarity" and had done "harm" to India.

Last week, Menon slammed the government over the Citizenship Amendment Act, saying India had "isolated" itself at the global stage by enacting the law.

Jaishankar also said India allowed issues like citizenship, Article 370, Ayodhya and GST to fester for a long time, adding China was impressive in looking for solutions to problems and it "is a big learning opportunity" for India.

In a clear reference to Pakistan, he said India should never ever allow terrorism to be normalised.

"The perpetrators of terrorism will try to normalise terrorism, will try to pass it as another instrument and as 'one more thing we do'.... They are playing a game, but we should not ever play their game," Jaishankar said.

"So, sometimes, when we don't have strategic clarity, and we have had occasions like Sharm-al-Sheikh and Havana, where we have allowed victim and perpetrator to try and come on the same plane. I think we have done ourselves harm," he said.

He said the NDA government did not put the victim of terror and perpetrator of terrorism on the same plane by allowing the Pakistani team to visit the Pathankot airbase as part of the joint investigation into the Pathankot terror attack case.

"I do not think Pathankot put the two (victim and the perpetrator) on the same plane. It was very clear. And this government is very clear on who is the victim and who is the perpetrator. That has been a consistent narrative and it stays that way," said Jaishankar.

"The investigation that happened was to pressurise the Pakistanis so that they did not have an excuse to say that 'well, we made an offer and you did not accept it and therefore, it trailed away'. The idea was: Look, you ask me anything reasonable, I will agree and now you go and act," Jaishankar said.

The opposition Congress had attacked the Modi government for allowing the visit by Pakistani probe team, alleging it had betrayed the country's national interests and its security.

The External Affairs Minister appeared to be critical of past government for not making adequate attempts to find solution to long-pending problems.

"We look at a problem, and we think a problem is a problem, and I wish the problem would go away. Our instinct is not to hone in on the solution. Our instinct is to kick it down the road," Jaishankar said.

"To me, the big concern I have is, after years of doing it (kicking can down the road), today we have accumulated a legacy of problems. And if you see what is happening today in this country, these problems have caught up with us," Jaishankar said.

"The last two years have been very active years of debate, argumentation and decision-making. We tend to see them as individual issues and with some reason. But I want to see them as a trend," he added.

He said a lot of complex issues being resolved by the current government were accumulated over a period of time.

"Look at the citizenship issue. Citizenship issue started 40-50 years ago. Rajiv Gandhi did an agreement in Assam in 1980. You look at (Article) 370. I mean, 370 was a temporary article if you look through the Constituent Assembly papers," said Jaishankar.

"The general sense then was that within a few years we will resolve the issue of 370, but not for 70 years.

"Look at Ayodhya, show me where in the world would you have an unresolved problem for 150 years. So, we have let problems be there for 50 years, 70 years and 150 years," he said.

Talking about GST, he said it was obvious that India needed a single-tax system, but people kept kicking it down the road.

"Even our social problems and economic problems, a lot of it - we tended - to put it off. So, to my mind, the big learning out of China is unless a society has a mindset to decisively address its current issues, you are not going to walk the world (confidently)," he said.

He said China's systemic mindset has been to decisively address its current issues.

The Indian instinct is to not look for a solution, but let it be someone else's problem, Jaishankar said adding China's instinct to look for a solution is a big learning opportunity for India.

"In order to articulate the rise of China and what it means for India and the world- we need to look at how the Soviet Union and United States became global powers," he said.

They accomplished it over a large time period whereas China's rise has been significantly faster, he added.
A mob wearing masks and carrying sticks barged into the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus on Sunday and attacked students and teachers, prompting protests across the country.

At least 23 students and teachers were injured in the attack, which the Left-back JNU students union (JNUSU) blamed on the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

The students group affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has denied the charges.

Here is what happened on Sunday?

As a part of the ongoing agitation against a substantial increase of the hostel fee, JNU teachers had called for a march on the campus at 4pm. Around two hours later, teachers and students said a mob of people entered the campus raising provocative slogans and were armed with sticks and rods with their faces covered. The masked individuals also entered hostels and went around knocking on rooms.

The mob entered after JNUTAs march ended and they were speaking to students around Sabarmati, said PhD student Abdul, who saw the event unfold before him. They were shouting religious slogans and randomly started beating anyone they could lay their hands on. I ran away from there to save my life, he said.

How many injured?

At least 23 people were brought to the Trauma Centre at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) with injuries ranging from head wounds to lacerations, cuts, and bruises.

The injured include JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh who was seen with a bleeding head and professor Sucharita Sen who teaches at the School of Social Sciences.

Since it was a Sunday, hospital authorities said they couldnt cope with the influx and had to ask for help.

What did the administration say?

While condemning violence, the administration said it was the students agitating against hostel fee hike who engaged in violence.

Around 4.30 pm Sunday, a group of students, who are against the registration process moved aggressively from the front of the admin block and reached the hostels. The administration immediately contacted the Police to come quickly and maintain law and order on the campus, registrar Pramod Kumar said in a statement.

Since the Sunday afternoon, the campus has witnessed scuffles at the schools as well as inside the hostel premises between the groups of students who wanted to stop the registration and those who wanted to register and continue their studies.

VC M Jagadesh Kumar said the administrations top priority is to protect academic interests of students and it would ensure that semester registration takes place without hindrance.

What does ABVP say?

While the students union on campus accused them of the violence, ABVP has denied the allegations and blamed the Left-led groups instead.

The secretary of ABVP JNU unit and ABVPs JNUSU presidential candidate (2019-2020) Manish Jangid has been severely injured and left with a fractured hand and many ABVP activists have suffered head injuries, ABVP said.

The group also added that the Left activists attacked students who wanted to register for the upcoming semester.

Protests against the violence

Hundreds came to the old Delhi Police headquarter at ITO to demonstrate against the force alleging it did not take timely action to prevent the violence.

Since then protests against the JNU violence have swept through many cities, including Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Raipur, etc, across the country. Delhi School of Social Work and Delhi University have also called for a demonstration.
REUTERS/Candace Elliott

Despite a Santa Claus rally to close 2019, Canadian energy stocks remain undervalued as the sector strengthens into the new year, according to analysts at Laurentian Bank.

The iShares S&P/TSX Capped Energy Index ETF (XEG.TO), a basket of large Canadian energy companies, has climbed 15 per cent since early December as oil prices pushed higher. Those shares gained additional momentum in the wake of the U.S. attack that killed a prominent Iranian military leader last week. The incident continues to raise fear of a supply-disrupting conflict in the key crude-producing region.

A one-month view of the iShares S&P/TSX Capped Energy Index ETF. (Yahoo Finance Canada)

Analysts have forecast European Brent crude could reach $150 per barrel under such a scenario. West Texas Intermediate, the North American benchmark, could climb to $80 per barrel, according to Henry Rome at Eurasia Group.

We believe a prolonged strength of WTI pricing could result in companies shifting from maintenance mode to growth once again and generating additional free cash flow, Laurentian analyst Todd Kepler wrote in a note to clients on Monday. Even after the sector rally in December, we believe investors can find bargains on the buy side of the trade.

Despite the recent strong performance, he said valuations for companies under the banks coverage remain at historic lows after delivering an average loss of 23 per cent in 2019.

Illustrative of investor apathy toward the oil and gas equities in 2019, the WTI benchmark increased 31 per cent throughout 2019, while the S&P/TSX Energy Index decreased 13 per cent, Kepler added.

Greg Taylor, chief investment officer at Purpose Investments, agrees that investor sentiment around Canadian energy has largely ignored rebounding oil prices.

Energy has come into this year as being one of the most-hated sectors out there, and most under-owned. People havent really been paying attention to the stabilization in the oil price, he told Yahoo Finance Canada last week.

Taylor expects large energy firms like Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ.TO) and Suncor Energy (SU.TO) to deliver strong returns, as well as mid-cap companies like Tourmaline Oil (TOU.TO).

Story continues

Kepler said his top pick heading into 2019 was Whitecap Resources (WCP.TO), which delivered a 29 per cent total return for the year, including dividends.

After a tumultuous year in oil and gas equities, we believe companies have taken the necessary steps to set a budget that maximizes free cash flow in a muted growth environment, but can react quickly to higher commodity prices to grow production, he wrote.

Jeff Lagerquist is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on Twitter @jefflagerquist.

Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android.
Clearcover, a digital managing general agent focused on auto insurance, said it has raised $50 million in new financing. The company said the money will be used to accelerate further national growth as well as further its plans to become a full-stack carrier doing business across the country.

OMERS Ventures led the Series C financing. Previous investors American Family Ventures, Cox Enterprises and IA Capital Group also participated. The company announced a $43 million Series B financing a year ago, and with the new round, has raised more than $104 million since its 2016 launch.

This investment enables us to continue delivering better coverage  for up to 230 million licensed U.S. drivers  for less money, Kyle Nakatsuji, Clearcovers co-founder and CEO, said in prepared remarks.

Clearcover said it has tripled policy sales year over year in 2019 while quadrupling premium. The company currently does business in Arizona, California, Illinois, Ohio and Utah. Clearcover said it plans to expand in existing markets and in new states throughout the U.S. in part by adding additional automotive and financial services industry distribution partners.

The company also said it is pursuing plans to become an insurance carrier in all 50 states and expand its partnership footprint.

Currently, Clearcovers insurance policies are underwritten by Response Indemnity Co. of California in California and Clearcover Insurance Co. in Illinois. Response Indemnity is part of the Fortegra family of companies and is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida.

Clearcovers data-driven platform uses artificial intelligence to make coverage recommendations. The company pitches its platform as a way to streamline the insurance buying process and eliminate the need for excessive marketing, and it says the process boosts efficiency and can save customers 50 percent on car insurance.

Topics California Insurance Wholesale Funding
Cambridge Analytica scandal is far from over as new shocking details have come under the light after a former employee of the now-defunct company reportedly leaked explosive documents. An anonymous twitter handle named 'Hindsight is 2020' has started releasing documents, apparently on behalf of Brittany Kaiser, a former employee turned whistleblower. "Democracies around the world are being auctioned to the highest bidder. We release the documents that explain how," reads the biography of the twitter handle.

Read: Cambridge Analytica Deceived People Over Use Of Facebook Data: US Regulators

More to come

So far, documents related to the firm's operations in Brazil, Kenya, Iran, and Malaysia have been released. The new documents reveal unreleased project plans, case studies, emails and negotiations that took place during Cambridge Analytica's active days from 2014-2018. Over the next few months, more than 100,000 documents relating to work in 68 countries are set to be released. The twitter handle alleges that the parent company SCL Group shut down amidst scandal when extensive data work in the shadows of elections globally was called into question via subsidiary Cambridge Analytica. To avoid document confiscation, SCL Group and CA went bankrupt and filed for insolvency proceedings.

Read: Facebook Suspends Thousands Of Apps Amid Cambridge Analytica Probe

The files released by Kaiser revealed that Cambridge Analytica offered to help the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) to influence voting in over 40 parliamentary constituencies in Malaysia's 14th General Election in 2013. According to the documents, UMNO requested the company to prepare a proposal to regain 13 parliamentary seats in the 2013 general election. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was the then president of the UMNO party. The party ruled Malaysia for more than sixty years until it was defeated in the 2018 general election. The documents suggested that the company was involved with a political party in Ukraine in 2017. The United Kingdom and the United States launched investigations into Cambridge Analytica's alleged involvement in the 2016 US presidential election and Leave.EU political campaign.

Read: Facebook Social Networking Apparently Under Investigation By FTC , After Cambridge Analytica Penalty

According to US regulators, the company's main objective was to first profile and then target voters from personal information and data provided by Facebook. International media reported that Cambridge Analytica acquired data of up to 87 million Facebook users via the 270,000 users who used the Facebook app called 'This Is Your Digital Life'. Facebook users who downloaded the third-party app gave permission to access their data which resulted in the app sharing the information with Cambridge Analytica. The app breached Facebook's terms of service by sharing data with the UK-based data analytics and consulting company.

Read: Netflix Documentary 'The Great Hack' Explores Facebook's Role In Cambridge Analytica Data Privacy Scandal
Bollywood actors Sonam Kapoor, Swara Bhasker, Shabana Azmi, Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub and Taapsee Pannu, and filmmakers Aparna Sen and Hansal Mehta on Sunday condemned the violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and urged Delhi Police to intervene.

Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night after masked men armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police.

At least 18 people were injured and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). JNU students' union president Aishe Ghosh suffered a head injury.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the RSS-affiliated ABVP blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours. Several disturbing videos that show masked people carrying sticks and bats have gone viral on social media.

Sonam wrote, "Shocking disgusting and cowardly. Have the balls to at least show your face when you want to attack innocents."

Shocking disgusting and cowardly. Have the balls to at least show your face when you want to attack innocents. https://t.co/laFmsF8DTK Sonam K Ahuja (@sonamakapoor) January 5, 2020

Dia Mirza wrote, "How long will this be allowed to continue? How long will you turn a blind eye? How long will the defenceless be attacked in the name of politics or religion? Enough is enough."

How long will this be allowed to continue? How long will you turn a blind eye? How long will the defenceless be attacked in the name of politics or religion? Enough is enough. @DelhiPolice Dia Mirza (@deespeak) January 5, 2020

Swara, whose mother Ira Bhaskar is a professor at the JNU, took to Twitter to appeal to the people on social media to reach the campus "to pressure the government and Delhi Police" to control the violence.

"Urgent appeal!!!! To all Delhiites PLS gather in large numbers outside the Main Gate of JNU campus on Baba Gangnath Marg.. to pressure the govt. & #DelhiPolice to stop the rampage by alleged ABVP masked goons on JNU campus," the actor captioned the video, adding that she was concerned about her parents' safety who live at the campus.

Urgent appeal!!!! To all Delhiites PLS gather in large numbers outside the Main Gate of JNU campus on Baba Gangnath Marg.. to pressure the govt. & #DelhiPolice to stop the rampage by alleged ABVP masked goons on JNU campus. PLS PLS share to everyone in Delhi! 9pm on 5th. Jan pic.twitter.com/IXgvvazoSn Swara Bhasker (@ReallySwara) January 5, 2020

Commenting on Swara's video, Azmi said she was shocked by the violence and called for immediate action against the perpetrators.

"Is this really happening ? Im not in India and it all seems like a nightmare. 20 Students Admitted To AIIMS As Violence Breaks Out In JNU. Students and Teachers beaten. Reprehensible, Appalling Condemnable. Immediate action must be taken against the perpetrators," she tweeted.

Aparna alleged that the JNU students were being beaten up by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) "goons".

"How much longer are you going to look the other way? Or r u spineless? Yes I AM a liberal! Yes, I AM secular! And proud to be so if THIS is the alternative. Shame! Shame on ABVP & the police who are aiding & abetting them!" she tweeted.

Taapsee said it was saddening to see an educational institution "getting scarred forever".

She shared a video allegedly showing the situation on campus.

"Such is the condition inside what we consider to be a place where our future is shaped. It's getting scarred for ever. Irreversible damage. What kind of shaping up is happening here, it's there for us to see..." Taapsee tweeted.

such is the condition inside what we consider to be a place where our future is shaped. Its getting scarred for ever. Irreversible damage. What kind of shaping up is happening here, its there for us to see.... saddening https://t.co/Qt2q7HRhLG taapsee pannu (@taapsee) January 5, 2020

Zeeshan asked people to reach the JNU in large numbers.

"By closing the doors and roads they have given free hand to their goons. Tell your friends and relatives, tell everyone and gather there together," the actor said in a tweet.

"Friends in Okhla and Jamia go to Shaheen Bagh. This #JNUAttack has been done to divert attention and they'll surely attack Shaheen Bagh at night," he tweeted.

Zeeshan further called for peace amid violence and urged people to exercise patience and take care of their friends.

Director Anurag Kashyap retweeted several purported videos of violence and vandalism from the JNU.

Mehta asked Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to intervene.

"Dear @ArvindKejriwal. Can you do something to stop the violence in JNU?" the filmmaker tweeted.

Writer Kanika Dhillon too asked Kejriwal to step in.

"Sir!!! Pls atleast reach there!!!! Ur presence will help!!!!" she said.

"Masaan" fame director Neeraj Ghaywan asked the police to help the students.

"Extremely distressing video from JNU. @DelhiPolice, these are students, the future of our nation, like your own. Help them please!" Ghaywan wrote.

Filmmaker Vinod Kapri also shared an alleged video from JNU campus.

"This is a horrifying video. At least 30-40 masked goons are vandalising JNU hostel. Delhi Police is nowhere to be seen. This has full political support. TV news channels have shut their eyes," Kapri tweeted.

Filmmaker-composer Vishal Bhardwaj also condemned the violence. "It's shameful and enraging to see what's happening in #JNUViolence," he said.

Director Bejoy Nambiar questioned the silence of many in the film fraternity.

"All you silent friends of mine watch this !!! Watch this & then come and talk to me about how concerned you are about the damage to public' property. How is THIS OK ? How can we watch students & teachers being brutally attacked like this and stay quiet ?" he asked.

"#SOSJNU @DelhiPolice this is NOT OK. JNUSU president has been brutally beaten up. She is severely wounded. Media Please het there @ndtv @BBCIndia #JNU," tweeted director Onir.

First @jamiamillia_ Then @amu_page and now @JNU_IN . There seems to be a systematic way of terrorising the students voices ... Voices of dissent being silenced. But the nation is awake again tonight with our students. We are with you . and your voices cant be silenced Onir (@IamOnir) January 5, 2020

Actor Richa Chadha said: "A few months ago JNU gave the world a Nobel laureate. Now JNU teachers and students are being beaten up for protesting a fee hike. World watches."

"Frightening visuals from #JNU. Praying that the #Delhipolice intervene swiftly and protect the students. Stay safe students. What a scary world we live in," wrote actor Siddharth on the microblogging site.

Director Anubhav Sinha tweeted: "Either this Government is not capable of maintaining law and order or they are complicit..."

Writer Gaurav Solanki called the attack on the varsity "an act of terror by terrorists".

Director Anurag Basu said: "We can't remain mute spectators anymore! #SOSJNU".

Actor Renuka Shahane wrote on the microblogging site: "Complete lawlessness! How could masked goons enter JNU & terrorize students and teachers? What is @DelhiPolice doing?... Unbelievable!! Scary!! Shameful.

Rajkummar Rao: What happened in #JNU is shameful, horrific and heartbreaking. Those who are responsible behind these attacks should be punished.

Kriti Sanon: It breaks my heart to see what happened at JNU! Whats going on in India is horrifying!! Students & teachers being beaten up & terrorized by masked cowards!! The constant blame game!Stooping so low for political agendas!Violence is NEVER a solution! How have we become so inhuman?

Follow @News18Movies for more
The Nigeria Immigration Service has released details of its new Visa-on-Arrival application processes for Africans and non-Africans.

The Service made this known on its website on Monday.

This is to notify the General Public that Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has rolled out a new Visa on Arrival Application Process for all Business Travelers and African Union (AU) countries, except for ECOWAS member countries, the website read.

President Muhammadu Buhari in December announced that starting from January 2020, Africans traveling to Nigeria will be able to obtain their visas upon arrival.

The president said he believed that Nigeria needs to bring down barriers that have hindered the free movement of our people within the continent through the introduction of the new policy.

According to details on the NIS website, the visa on arrival is available to Frequently traveled High Net Worth Investors with business interest in Nigeria; and Citizens of African countries.

For African nationals to apply for a visa, they need to visit the NIS portal and follow the instructions after selecting the option, Visa on Arrival.

The website reveals that documents that are necessary during the application process include: an original passport photograph, an introduction or application letter addressed to The Comptroller General of Immigration, NIS HQ, Abuja, stating their name, nationality, passport number, purpose of visit, proposed date of visit and port of entry, flight itinerary, and address in Nigeria or hotel reservation.

Business travelers, when applying for the visa, are required to use the same NIS portal as indicated.

The only difference is the documents they need to upload, which includes everything mentioned for the African nationals, a copy of passport data page and of airline return ticket, and an invitation letter from host company.

The website said that it is important to note that a successful online payment is not an approval, hence, applicants should not proceed to Nigeria until they receive Visa on Arrival Approval Letter.

Already, nationals of ECOWAS countries are free to visit Nigeria without Visa.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with India's top business stalwarts and discussed how to improve economic growth and create new job opportunities. Benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty extended losses for the second consecutive session on Monday on concerns over escalating tensions in the Middle East following the death of a top Iranian general in a US air strike. National Stock Exchange (NSE) launched an AI-powered learning platform NSE Knowledge Hub in the presence of Union Minister Piyush Goyal. Read for more top stories from the world of business and economy:

1. PM Modi holds meet with Indian business leaders; Ambani, Tata, Adani attend event

The meeting was attended by top businessmen like Ratan Tata (Tata Sons), Mukesh Ambani (Reliance Industries), Anand Mahindra (Mahindra & Mahindra), Gautam Adani (Adani Industries), Sunil Mittal (Bharti Airtel), along with others.

2. NSE launches AI-powered learning platform Knowledge Hub

Spearheaded by NSE Academy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NSE, the platform seeks to collaborate with organisations in the BFSI industry to enhance skills of their employees and academic institutions to prepare future-ready talent for the financial services industry.

Sensex and Nifty were trading lower for the second consecutive session on account of negative global cues.

4. India becomes 2nd largest market on corporate renewable power

Indian corporates have been increasingly procuring renewable power through the open access route, mainly to meet decarbonisation targets and cost savings because of lower cost of renewable power vis-a-vis other sources.

5. Q3FY20 to be one of the toughest quarters for media industry: Edelweiss

The ad revenue decline in Q3FY20 is primarily due to the economic slowdown that has resulted in cutback in ad spends by large categories such as consumer goods, auto, telecom and retail.
By PTI

LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Monday demanded a probe by a sitting Supreme Court or High Court judge into deaths of children at Gorakhpur Medical College.

Blood tests conducted on 1,800 children admitted in the hospital between January and October last year showed that they were suffering from encephalitis, but the government admitted only 500 such cases by "tweaking the records", he told reporters here.



ALSO READ: Akhilesh Yadav asks Yogi to worry about Gorakhpur children deaths and not Kota hospital

He alleged that acting at the behest of the government, the doctors there described illness of the children as acute fever and claimed that around 1,500 children had died there between January and October last year.

Yadav demanded that a team of doctors headed by a sitting Supreme Court of High Court judge be set up to probe the deaths.

The former chief minister said that when his father Mulayam Singh Yadav was in power, the then SP government used to pay compensation to the next of kin of the victim.

The SP government doubled the amount when the party returned to power in 2012, but the present government has stopped it, he added.
Vietnam's health ministry has urged local health authorities to tighten management at border gates in response to Chinas Wuhan pneumonia outbreak.

A passenger has her body temperature checked at Lang Son Provinces Huu Nghi Border Gate.  VNA/VNS Photo

On Monday, the health ministry directed provinces and cities to monitor the health status of all passengers travelling to and from Wuhan City, China with thermal scanners, when cross-border trading activities and visits heighten when the Lunar New Year festival draws near.

They are also asked to prepare all necessary facilities, instruments, chemicals and medicines and human resources to deploy preventative measures in a timely manner in all possible scenarios, even during the holidays.

According to the General Department of Preventative Medicine, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Chinas National Health Commission are launching a collaborative investigation into infections and have not recommended any travel restrictions to and from Wuhan.

The Vietnamese health ministry has also cooperated with WHO to keep updated on the developments of the outbreaks in China.

By Saturday, 44 people in Wuhan City have been diagnosed with viral pneumonia, the China Daily reported.

Eleven of them were in severe condition, while the rest were declared stable. According to the Wuhan Health Commission, symptoms include fever and breathing problems.

Local authorities are conducting examinations on the virus pathogens in search of the causes.

Seasonal flu, avian influenza, influenza A and other common respiratory diseases have been excluded.  VNS
The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) has threatened to sanction all unlicensed LPG retail outlets and operators with stiff penalties.

The DPR North West Zonal Operations Controller, Isa Tafida, made this known to journalists in Kaduna while reacting to Saturdays gas explosion at Sabon Tasha, Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that the gas explosion killed five persons, including a professor, and destroyed valuable properties on January 4.

The police in a statement, after the incident in Kaduna, confirmed that five persons were killed, while four others sustained injuries.

Mr Tafida who condoled with victims of the explosion, said that the gas retailer operated illegally, without even a category D license being issued to retailers in the zone.

He urged investors, gas plant operators and retailers to obtain the required license, that would ensure safe handling of gas, to avoid similar accidents in the future.

The DPR Kaduna Zone wishes to extend its sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims, the government and people of Kaduna state.

We regret the unfortunate incident of gas explosion that occurred on Saturday that recorded loss of lives, injuries of various degrees and loss of worthy properties.

The outcome of our preliminary investigations reveal that the facility is an illegal gas retailing vendor that engages in illegal storage, decanting and sales of LPG (cooking) and acetylene (industrial gases).

The operator of that illegal facility is unknown to the department and the facility is not licensed by DPR, Tafida said.

According to him, the department has variously conducted trainings, monitoring of LPG outlets and issued warnings to members of the public not to patronise the illegal operators.

He said that DPR had also enjoined such illegal operators to follow the laid down rules and regulations, by obtaining license to ensure safe handling of gas; considering its volatility.

Gas retailers who do not have category D license for retailing LPG are desperate for money, because LPG is new source of money and the public now know better, that using gas for cooking is faster and cleaner; but the public need to be aware that it has to be handled with caution.

Investors should invest in gas business but they should follow the rules and regulations and do it in line with best practices, he said.

The agency said it had approved and licensed 38 LPG plants in Kaduna State in 2019.

Despite this, hundreds of unlicensed retailers and gas vendors are still operating within Kaduna city, Mr Tafida regretted.

(NAN)
They're expected to make their Golden Globes red carpet debut together later in the evening.

But ahead of Sunday's award show frenzy, pregnant newlyweds, Joshua Jackson, 41, and Jodie Turner-Smith, were spotted picking up some groceries at Erewhon, Calabasas.

The 33-year-old mom-to-be was glowing as she drew attention to her burgeoning baby bump.

Scroll down for video

Calm before the storm! Joshua Jackson and his pregnant wife, Jodie Turner-Smith, walked arm-in-arm during a loved-up casual grocery outing on Sunday in Calabasas, ahead of the Golden Globes

Jodie braved the winter chill in a black maxi dress that had thick braided spaghetti style sleeves.

She accessorised her look with a dainty necklace, shades and ensured all eyes were on her stellar wedding rings.

The Queen & Slim star appeared to be wearing very little to no makeup and walked arm-in-arm with her man back to their car.

GorgeousL Jodie braved the winter chill in a black maxi dress that had thick braided spaghetti style sleeves

Natural beauty:The Queen & Slim star appeared to be wearing very little to no makeup for the outing

Joshua opted for a casual grey T-shirt and grey cargo style trousers for the casual outing.

The father-to-be carried all the shopping bags along with a small cup of coffee.

Jodie and Joshua made their red carpet debut as a married couple on Saturday evening as part of the W Magazine's Best Performance pre-Golden Globes party at the Chateau Marmont.

Casual: Joshua opted for a casual grey T-shirt and grey cargo style trousers for the casual outing

Mr and Mrs Jackson! Jodie and Joshua made their red carpet debut as a married couple on Saturday evening as part of the W Magazine's Best Performance pre-Golden Globes party at the Chateau Marmont

'Jodie Turner-Smith and Joshua Jackson seemed in good spirits,' a source to Us Weekly.

They mingled throughout the night and chatted with Taylor Russell, Lakeith Stanfield, Ellen Pompeo and Armie Hammer, to name a few.'

They added that the pair appeared to be in extremely high spirits.

'Josh was smiling ear to ear throughout the night and they both seemed really happy.'

Neither the model or the Dawson's Creek actor have commented on their new relationship status, although, they were spotted out back in August picking up their marriage license while out in Beverly Hills recently.

The two were first seen out together back in November 2018 getting cozy at Usher's 40th birthday party.
New reports emerged Monday on how fugitive former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn jumped bail in Japan, as the country's justice minister said border controls would be bolstered after the escape.

The 65-year-old executive skipped bail nearly a week ago, fleeing Japan where he was awaiting trial on multiple counts of financial misconduct that he denies.

He is now in Lebanon and the details of his escape remain spotty. Japan said it is still investigating how he slipped past strict security measures imposed as part of his bail conditions.

Citing sources close to the investigation, public broadcaster NHK said Monday that Ghosn left his residence by himself on the afternoon of December 29 and met two men at a Tokyo hotel.

The three then boarded a Shinkansen bullet train together from Tokyo's Shinagawa station to a station in western Osaka, arriving around 7:30 pm.

The trio then checked in at a hotel near Kansai Airport, but only the two men accompanying Ghosn were caught on security camera leaving the hotel later in the evening, NHK said.

They were carrying "two big boxes" which were not checked by customs staff at the airport, the report added.

Ghosn is believed to have taken a private jet from the airport that evening, bound for Istanbul, where he switched planes and continued to Beirut.

But many details of his departure from Japan are still shrouded in mystery.

- 'Wrongful methods' -

The justice ministry said it did not have records of Ghosn departing Japan.

"It is believed that he used some wrongful methods to illegally leave the country," Justice Minister Masako Mori said at a press conference on Monday.

"I have instructed the immigration agency to further tighten the departure process," she added.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Ghosn was loaded onto the flight from Osaka in a large case for audio equipment, which was later found at the back of the cabin.

The newspaper cited unnamed sources close to the investigation in Turkey as saying that holes had been drilled into the bottom of the container to ensure the businessman could breathe.

Story continues

Japan's transport ministry told AFP that luggage checks are not mandatory for private jets.

Ghosn, who has French, Brazilian and Lebanese nationalities, was able to enter Lebanon on a French passport, according to airport documents seen by AFP.

A court in Tokyo had allowed Ghosn to keep a second French passport because he needed one to travel inside Japan, a source close to the matter has told AFP.

Japan has launched a probe into the humiliating security lapse and prosecutors said they would "coordinate with the relevant agencies to swiftly and appropriately investigate the matter."

Ghosn has vowed to give his own account at a hotly awaited press conference in Beirut this week.

He has said he left Japan because he was no longer willing to be "held hostage by a rigged Japanese justice system."

Ghosn stands accused in Japan of under-reporting his salary, deferring part of his income until after his retirement and concealing this from shareholders, as well as syphoning off millions in Nissan cash for his own purposes.

Jiji Press agency reported late Monday that Ghosn may have fled Japan after learning that public prosecutors had obtained significant evidence supporting the alleged transfer of Nissan cash.

Citing informed sources, Jiji said prosecutors disclosed to the defense during pretrial procedures in autumn of last year, or later, the existence of an email detailing a Lebanese investment company's report to Ghosn about the funds transfer.
When Chesa Boudin is sworn in this week as San Franciscos district attorney, one of his responsibilities will be deciding whether to charge officers in a handful of police shooting investigations that were left unresolved by his predecessor, George Gascon.

Of the five cases Boudin will review when he takes office, one stands out the most: the 2017 fatal shooting of Keita ONeil by rookie Officer Chris Samayoa, who had just graduated from the police academy and was on his fourth day of a 16-week field training program. The case is being closely watched by legal observers and advocates as a possible test case for the new district attorney, who campaigned on holding law enforcement more accountable.

Unlike the other unresolved police shooting cases in which suspects had allegedly shot at or attacked officers, ONeil, 42, was unarmed and apparently fleeing when Samayoa fatally shot him in the head during a police chase through the Alice Griffith public housing complex. Chief Bill Scott fired Samayoa weeks after the shooting, signaling he believed the shooting was wrongful.

Representatives for ONeils family and police watchdogs called the case low hanging fruit, saying its a chance for Boudin to make good on his campaign pledge to be tougher on cops. But some police groups and advocates, like the city police union, said Samayoa was doing what he was trained to do. His dismissal was unwarranted, they said, and criminal charges would be even more unreasonable.

One thing Im committed to doing is enforcing the law equally, Boudin said in a recent interview with The Chronicle. He declined to comment on any open matters, saying he had not been briefed on the cases and commenting could risk interfering with investigations.

In general, though, he said his goal as district attorney is to take whatever step is necessary to rebuild trust between law enforcement and communities that law enforcement protect. He also promised to resolve investigations into police more quickly.

Boudin was more pointed on the campaign trail, saying the city needs to be very, very serious about officers who dont follow the rules. He was also the only candidate in the race to say he would have charged officers in one of San Franciscos most incendiary police killings  the 2015 shooting of Mario Woods in the Bayview.

Gascon cleared the five officers who fired 26 rounds at Woods in a shooting that was captured on video and prompted sweeping reforms in the department. The former district attorney cited insufficient evidence to prove the officers acted unreasonably in defending themselves and others, spurring outrage from some activist groups.

The fatal shooting of ONeil also caused an uproar in San Francisco.

Now Playing: WARNIG GRAPHIC VIDEO: Police body camera footage released during a town hall meeting Thursday night showed a rookie San Francisco police officer fatally shooting an unarmed carjacking suspect, who had jumped out of a stolen minivan and ran beside a pursuing patrol cruiser. Keita ONeil, 42, was identified as the man killed by rookie police officer Chris Samayoa. Video: San Francisco Chronicle

It happened at the end of a police chase on Dec. 1, 2017. ONeil allegedly grabbed the keys from a state lottery worker on Potrero Hill, pushed her to the ground and drove off in her white minivan.

Officers intercepted the van on Highway 101 in the Bayview and chased it into the Alice Griffith public housing complex two blocks away, where ONeil got out and ran toward a pursuing patrol car.

Behind the wheel of the police cruiser was Officer Edric Talusan, a field training officer who was instructing Samayoa.

Police released body camera footage from Samayoas chest shortly after the shooting that showed the officer drawing his pistol from the passengers seat as the cruiser was still moving. A second later, Samayoa opened the side door and fired a single shot through the window, hitting ONeil in the head as he ran beside the car. Police said ONeil was unarmed.

Neither officer had activated his body-worn camera before the shooting, an apparent violation of department policy. But Samayoa turned his on immediately afterword, allowing the 30 seconds before the device was turned on  known as buffering mode  to be recorded without sound.

Before becoming a cop, Samayoa had graduated from Riordan High in 2008 and earned a masters degree at the University of San Francisco in counseling and psychology. He later got a job counseling homeless families at Edgewood Center in San Francisco.

Three months after the shooting, the chief fired Samayoa, who was on a probationary period and could be let go without showing cause. Scott didnt explain why he fired the officer.

It would be egregious not to have prosecution, said Melissa Nold, an attorney representing ONeils mother in a wrongful death lawsuit against the two officers and the city. This is low-hanging fruit and easy for the district attorney. The officer was fired.

She added that if theres not going to be prosecution on this case, its really a bad statement on what the district attorneys future is going to be like.

But Tony Montoya, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, defended Samayoa. Even though the officer was fired, the union said it will still provide him with an attorney if hes charged. Samayoas attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Based on the totality of the circumstances and based on his training and experience, Chris reasonably responded, Montoya said. Even if it was an experienced officer, I think you would have had the same results.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Montoya pointed out that the shooting happened in a split second and Samayoa probably didnt have time to see that ONeil didnt have a weapon.

From our experience, people fleeing the police usually run away from police, but in this circumstance ONeil ran toward the officers, he said. In my mind this guy could be coming to attack or ambush or whatever.

/ Courtesy San Francisco Police Department

What Samayoa was thinking at the time and what he told investigators will probably be a crucial piece of the investigation. But because the officers didnt activate their body cameras, investigators dont have a recording of what was said in the patrol car.

The law on police use of force at the time, established by a pair of U.S. Supreme Court cases, considers whether a reasonable officer in similar circumstances would have acted the same way. The law does not consider what an officer may learn in hindsight.

It happened so fast that its impossible to ascertain whats going on and what this officer reasonably perceived  no one can see it, said Ed Obayashi, an attorney and Plumas County sheriffs deputy who is an instructor on use-of-force investigations.

The officers could have reasonably believed he was going to attack them, he said. Obviously he committed a violent felony and now suddenly hes running toward the officers. Theres not a lot of time to think under those circumstances. Just because hes not armed is not a factor to determine whether the use of force was justified.

Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB392 after controversial police killings of people of color. The new law, which took effect Jan. 1, directs police to use deadly force only when necessary in defense of human life and, when possible, to use techniques to de-escalate a confrontation before shooting.

The law does not define necessary, and many attorneys and law enforcement groups have debated whether it actually changes the states use-of-force standard. But either way, the law cannot be applied retroactively, so prosecutors must consider cases like ONeils under the previous standard.

Boudin must review four other officer-involved shootings when he takes office: the January 2017 nonfatal shooing of Sean Moore, who fought with police on the steps outside his front door in the citys Oceanview neighborhood; the March 2018 police killing of Jesus Delgado Duarte, an armed robbery suspect who was shot in the trunk of a car in the citys Mission District after he fired first on police; the September shooting by sheriffs deputies that killed a dog and left David Wesser with a hand injury in his Polk Gulch apartment; and the nonfatal shooting last month of Jamaica Hampton, who allegedly attacked an officer with a bottle and was shot as he ran toward another officer in the Mission District.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky
Donald Trump likes to smash things, such as the U.S. commitment to the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal. Occasionally he smashes bad things, perhaps inadvertently, opening a crack and the light gets in.

One crack is the removal of the energy proportionality clause from the new NAFTA. It compelled Canada to offer the U.S. first access to the majority of our oil and gas.

Although never invoked, its spectre helped merge Canadas energy resources into U.S. supplies, ended our energy sovereignty and imperilled energy security for eastern Canadians. If retained, it would have blown a hole in Canadas climate plans.

When Canada ratifies the new NAFTA this month, the old NAFTA will automatically die. The U.S. and Mexico have already ratified the USMCA, as Washington calls the new deal. Strangely, ratification will suspend but not terminate NAFTAs predecessor, the 1989 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Miraculously, like a zombie the FTA could spring back to life should the USMCA die in the mandatory sunset review in 2026.

Who could the FTAs reanimated corpse haunt? Canadas climate plan for one.

In 1989, the FTAs framers had no inkling of the coming age of climate emergency, or if they did, they chose to ignore it. Proportionalitys obligation for Canada to make available for export to the U.S. the majority of our oil and natural gas was put in the FTA and transferred unchanged to NAFTA (Article 605). Mexico got exempted on sovereignty grounds.

The rule forbade Canada from reducing oil exports to the U.S. like it did during international oil shortages in the 1970s so domestic oil could be sent to Eastern Canadians to protect them from freezing in the dark. That act infuriated the foreign-dominated oil industry in Alberta. They worked with Albertas Conservative government to get a separate energy chapter in the FTA to prevent Ottawa from pursuing a Canada-first energy policy ever again.

What a difference 30 years makes. Albertas current restriction on oil production to boost oil prices likely violates proportionality. Fracking and shale oil have made the U.S. the worlds greatest oil producer, with less need for oil from Alberta producers. The latter demand pipelines to tidewater to find markets outside the U.S. The FTA is badly out of date.

Chrystia Freeland oversaw negotiations on the USMCA and waxed enthusiastically about ditching the energy ratchet clause, her name for the energy proportionality rule. It committed us to selling a certain portion of our energy exports to the United States, she exclaimed. It impinges on our sovereignty.

I was pleasantly shocked. No Canadian government official has talked positively about Canadian energy sovereignty since the 1989 FTA.

Its good to see energy proportionality die along with NAFTA. But we must guard against it snapping back under a resuscitated FTA. The USMCA is subject to review every six years, at which point the U.S., Mexico, and Canada can decide to extend or kill it. If a future U.S. president decides the USMCA is the worst deal ever and ditches it, the FTA will automatically snap back.

Its return would hinder Ottawa and the provinces from phasing out the production of oil and natural gas in Canadas transition to a net-zero carbon future. This is a serious barrier because the production of oil and gas, mainly for export, is Canadas largest and fastest growing source of greenhouse gases. Canada cannot reach net-zero emissions by 2050 if the FTAs energy proportionality clause is revived and enforced.

I have not discussed whether the USMCA is a net benefit to Canada. I am not a fan of its bias to corporations that are given the right to enter the three countries and be treated as citizens. That bias encouraged the movement of investment to low wage regions and hollowed out good paying jobs in Canada and Northern U.S. states. Meanwhile, people in the three countries are denied rights of entry and citizenship.

Whatever ones position on the USMCAs merits, all sides should agree that while Ottawa ratifies it and kills NAFTA, it also kills the FTA. Zombies are fun in movies, but less so in real life. Why leave a cudgel lying around for a future Trump-like U.S. President to use against us?
Indoor Gardening: How to Care for Your Houseplants Through the Winter

Just because theres snow covering your garden doesnt mean you have to forgo the quiet company of plants. Whether youve brought some potted plants in from the garden, or have a number of regular house plants, youll want to be sure to treat them right through the winter. Indoor gardening
This project demonstrates a holistic design through both the architecture and interior design, as well as the spaces between, and produces a result that responds to a modern interpretation of a Japanese home.

Architect : Conran and Partners

Location : Tokyo, Japan

Year : 2019

Photography : Luke Hayes

From the architect: Conran and Partners endeavoured to achieve a complete understanding of the spatial experience, designing a continuous journey from the street to the home and its most private areas, through a hierarchy of spaces and layers.

The concept was inspired by Cushion pine at Aoyama, a wood block print by Katsushika Hokusai from the series Thirty views of mount Fuji, created when this area was a green landscape traditionally occupied by the Samurai. The design references the essence of the print through the form of the building, its use of natural stone and a series of generous landscaped terraces. Returning the landscape to this urban neighbourhood.

The building responds to immediate built context in terms of scale and massing, yet its form is unique to the location. The densely planted ziggurat form of the building references the Hokusai image and the historical spirit of the area, but also creates an opportunity for an enhanced green environment at a local level within one of the great mega cities of the world.

The buildings proximity to the Olympic park means it will be ideally positioned for the Japan 2020 Olympics in Minamiaoyama. Yet positioned far enough away to benefit from the private sanctuary of Aoyama.

By applying an international insight to a local environment, Conran and Partners' approach focused on the physical and cultural context of the location but also upon a determination to understand the end-users needs.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Centre Point Tower London by Conran and Partners

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Apple Marunouchi creates a restrained presence in the heart of Tokyo
Good morning, Bay Area. Its Monday, Jan. 6, and one Bay Area span is being eyed for a redo. Also, Rudy Giulianis non-Ukraine work for the president is under scrutiny. Heres what you need to know to start your day.

Dreaming of a new bridge

There are no concrete plans to replace the 64-year-old Richmond-San Rafael Bridge anytime soon. In fact, the only thing concrete about the span are the chunks that have fallen from it.

Now Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, is crusading for a new, better structure. If the bridge is going to last another 10 or 20 years, thats great, he said. But we should be planning for what the next span will look like.

Although state and regional transportation agencies have sunk more than a billion dollars into maintenance, the bridge wouldnt survive a major disaster, Levine noted.

Caltrans recently began studying whether its time to develop a new structure. Agency staff estimated it could come to $8.2 billion.

Read more about the crusade to replace the bridge in Rachel Swans report.

Giulianis other job

Doug Mills / New York Times 2018

Rudy Giulianis mixing of his business interests, closeness with President Trump and involvement in government actions involving Ukraine are the subjects of much attention as the impeachment case against the president moves toward the Senate.

But a Chronicle investigation has found that Giulianis blurring of White House and personal business didnt start with Ukraine. It began in 2017 when Giuliani was named as a White House adviser in an area where he had limited experience but was trying to build a clientele: cybersecurity.

One expert said Giulianis cybersecurity advisory role had the potential for Giuliani to enrich himself. But because Trump never made the job official, the public may never know whether that happened.

In a special report, Washington correspondent Tal Kopan takes a hard look at the former New York City mayors cybersecurity role. Read her story here.

Do not bring a list!

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

We are a universe of the random and the good, says Liliana Peliks, operations director of Scrap, a giant warehouse on Toland Street in San Francisco that has turned others junk into treasure for crafters, artists, teachers and anyone interested in reuse on the cheap.

But never come to Scrap expecting to find what you are looking for, founder Anne Marie Theilen tells reporter Steve Rubenstein. Expect to find something else.

Surviving the Holocaust

Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

These musical instruments were present during terrible atrocities. Now, 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, they serve as Violins of Hope.

A new music project has been built around a collection of more than 80 violins and other instruments that were played in concentration camps and ghettos during the Holocaust.

The collection, curated by a father-son pair of Israeli instrument restorers, is coming to the Bay Area for an extended residency that will include art exhibits, chamber concerts from local organizations, and a commissioned world premiere by Jake Heggie featuring mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke.

Joshua Kosman gives the full story behind this unique collection that carries the weight of history with it.

Ending the brrrrrrrmmmm

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

The next frontier in Californias battle against pollution: lawn equipment.

State air regulators are laying long-term plans to phase out gasoline-powered devices such as leaf blowers and lawn mowers, saying they can produce more noxious emissions than cars.

But plenty of Bay Area cities are already acting, reporter Mallory Moench writes.

Around the bay

 Iran blowback: Tehran abandons nuclear limits after killing of Qassem Soleimani. Approval of killing: Iranian Americans rally in S.F. to celebrate generals death. Protest in S.F.: Thousands march to denounce U.S. attack, potential war with Iran.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

 49ers to face Vikings: San Francisco gets to play the lowest seed in the NFC playoffs Saturday.

 Impressive case file: FBI agent had front-row seat to many notorious crime scenes.

 Forced treatment: Do Californias most severely mentally ill need more required help?

 Major medical tool: Bay Area doctors target health consequences of childhood trauma.

 Whats in store for S.F. housing in 2020? More new homes, but not nearly enough.

 Youth justice: Reform-minded lawyer takes charge of S.F. juvenile hall.

 Job opening: S.F. cultural director to step down this month.

 Rent control law: What landlords and tenants need to know about the states new regulations.

 Public health problem: A fine on kids who vape? Some California cities want it.

Chronicle Food

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

Weve created a new science of coffee that breaks essentially every single rule that was previously known in coffee brewing. Everything is upside down.

Eli Salomon, founder of Oakland manufacturer Voga Coffee, had no formal coffee industry experience but wanted to create a new drip coffee machine that would match the taste of pour-over coffee. Reporter Janelle Bitker writes how the outcome of that idea  Ground Control  works and how its catching the attention of local roasters.

Bay Briefing is written by Taylor Kate Brown and sent to readers email inboxes on weekday mornings. Sign up for the newsletter here, and contact Brown at taylor.brown@sfchronicle.com.
[January 06, 2020] Lift & Co. Ushers in Cannabis 2020 with Canada's Premier Cannabis Business Conference in Vancouver on January 9

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lift & Co. Corp. ("Lift & Co." or the "Company") (TSXV: LIFT) (OTCQB: LFCOF) returns to Vancouver this week with the annual Lift & Co. Cannabis Business Conference (LCBC) on Thursday, January 9 at the Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC). Canadian and international industry and business leaders will be taking the stage for a day of dedicated talks on the topmost topics affecting cannabis going into 2020.

The Lift & Co. Cannabis Expo (the Expo) then takes over the VCC for a massive two-day trade show on Friday, January 10 and Saturday, January 11. More info on LCBC and the Expo can be found here . Tapping into this trend, this years 2020 LCBC keynote will be Data: The New Soil For Cannabis Growth, for which Lift & Co. will be joined on stage by two of North Americas leading data and consulting firms, Nielsen and EY Canada. This trio of presentations, moderated by Ipsos, will address the future of data insights and how analytics will propel cannabis into the next major CPG category. ?Lift & Co. will also be on the Fire & Flower Stage at the Expo on Friday for a deeper dive into cannabis consumer insights with a second data talk alongside Ipsos and BDS analytics. Were so excited to welcome CPG insights heavyweights like Nielsen, Ipsos, and EY Canada to elevate the cannabis conversation this year, said Matei Olaru, CEO of Lift & Co. Their presence signals an important shift for cannabis in year two, and will set the tone for a three-day event that will offer attendees the earliest view into cannabis in 2020. Lift & Co. has always strived to drive important topics forward at our events, and were looking forward to what is shaping up to be our most important Vancouver conference to date. These data sessions come on the heels of the launch of Lift & Co.s consumer insights platform Cohesion in 2019, and recently announced strategic partnership with Nielsen to create an industry-first consumer segmentation tool for early 2020. Additional LCBC talk highlights include: The Power and Potential of Psychedelics : Leading researchers and entrepreneurs provide insights into this uncharted industry

: Leading researchers and entrepreneurs provide insights into this uncharted industry Lessons from California: Building a Brand and an Industry : California-based cannabis leaders will share their insights and some lessons Canada can take away

: California-based cannabis leaders will share their insights and some lessons Canada can take away Trust after CannTrust: Rebuilding Confidence in the Industry: three presentations each touch on how brands can reframe the conversation to establish and maintain customer confidence The Lift & Co. Cannabis Expo Vancouver 2020 takes place following LCBC, on January 10 and 11. The Expo features over 280 exhibitors and two full days of talks on the Fire & Flower Stage. Together, LCBC and Expo are Canadas largest cannabis consumer and industry convention, with last years Vancouver event drawing in more than 18,000 visitors. All access passes for the LCBC, which include entry to the full Lift & Co. Expo, sell out every year and are still available in limited quantities for $550 (CAD). The Lift & Co. Expo Industry day is $75 (CAD), and consumers can attend Expo Consumer Day for just $10 (CAD). For media accreditation for the Vancouver Lift & Co. Expo, please click here . LCBC STAGE SCHEDULE Data: The New Soil For Cannabis Growth

9:15 a.m. - 10 a.m.

The worlds leading consulting and data experts present three talks on the role that data will play in the near future as cannabis becomes a global, mult-billion-dollar CPG. From market research, to supply chain management, to consumer insights, cannabis organizations will have to use never-before-available data to achieve unprecedented growth expectations.





Moderator: Michael Rodenburgh, Executive Vice President, Western Canada, Ipsos

Panelists: Jon Kamin, Chief Revenue Officer, Lift & Co.

Cynthia Pachovski, Vice President, Media & Marketing Cloud, Canada, Nielsen

Holly Palmer, Vice President, Transaction Advisory Service Team, EY Canada Legalization 2.0  State of the Nation

10 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.

Regulatory industry leaders will reflect on the cannabis market today and how to overcome tough regulatory challenges to best serve the growing base of customers, and where they see the industry going next.

Moderator: Fern Glowinsky, President and CEO, Merrco Payments

Panelists:

Dan Demers, Vice President, Government Relations and Regulatory Affairs  Canadian Health Food Association (CHFA)

Peter Guo, B.C. Leader - Cannabis Industry Services and Enterprise Risk Services, MNP

Annaliese Kibler, Director of Regulatory Affairs, Aurora Cannabis

Allan Rewak, Vice President, Institutional Relations, Emerald Health Therapeutics The Power and Potential of Psychedelics

11 a.m. - 11:40 a.m.

Cannabis legalization has paved the way forward for some new and exciting ventures, with psychedelics being at the top of the list. Leading researchers and entrepreneurs provide some insights into this uncharted industry.

Moderator: Matei Olaru, CEO, Lift & Co.

Panelists: Ronan Levy, Founder, Field Trip Ventures Inc.

Irie Selkirk, Founder, Rise Wellness Retreat

Mark Haden, Executive Director, Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Trust after CannTrust: Rebuilding Confidence in the Industry

11:40 a.m. - 12:10 p.m.

Did CannTrusts unlicensed growing scandal lead many Canadians to lose faith in the industry? With trust top of mind for consumers and investors, these three presentations each touch on how brands can reframe the conversation to establish and maintain customer confidence.

Panelists: Chris Bolivar, Vice President, Strategic Growth, Fire & Flower

Sony Gokhale, General Counsel, The Supreme Cannabis Company Inc.

Paul Pedersen, Co-founder & CEO, Nextleaf Solutions Capital Markets and Cannabis: An Inside Look

1:30 p.m. - 2 p.m.

Industry experts will provide an overview of the investment landscape and market sentiment, and discuss current challenges and opportunities for cannabis stocks in 2020.

Moderator: Tanya Rowntree, Global Head of Client Success, Equity Capital Markets, TMX Group

Panelists: Michelle de Cordova, Principal, ESG Global Advisors Inc.

Ryan G. Smith, Co-founder & CEO, LeafLink

Roderick Stephan, Partner, Altitude Capital Raising Capital: What Investors Are Looking For

2 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.

In this session, finance experts share their predictions on the market and will provide meaningful tips on attracting investors and what investment criteria hedge funds and VCs are really looking at.

Moderator: Sherri Altshuler, Partner, Aird & Berlis LLP

Panelists: Narbe Alexandrian, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canopy Rivers Inc.

Matthew Nordgren, CEO & Founder, Arcadian

Penny White, President & CEO, The Yield Growth Corp. Cannabis Leadership  Managing People & Culture in the Cannabis Space

2:30 p.m. - 3 p.m.

Human resources and leadership specialists will share their strategies around people, culture, and what effective leadership looks like in the cannabis space.

Panelists: Charlotte Collett, Chief People Officer, Sundial Growers

Marcie Kiziak, CPHR, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Alcanna

Tina Shannon, Director of Human Resources, Organigram Lessons from California: Building a Brand and an Industry

3:30 p.m. - 4 p.m.

California-based cannabis leaders will share their insights on what the state has done well, where they can improve, how brands have played a part in the success, and some lessons Canada can take away.

Panelists: Michael Elkin, Co-founder, CannaBrokr

Rico Tarver, Co-founder & Market Leader, CannaGather

Ophelia Chong, Partner & Co-Founder, Green Sky Strategy International Cannabis Markets: The Next 12 Months

4 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.

International LPs and cannabis leaders give insights into what markets we should keep an eye on and provide a look ahead to the coming year.

Moderator: Matt Lamers, International Editor, MJBizDaily

Panelists: Deepak Anand, CEO & Co-founder, Materia Ventures

Andrew Miller, Head of Canadian Business Development-Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Clever Leaves

Rosy Mondin, CEO & Director, World-Class Extractions About Lift & Co.

Lift & Co. (TSXV: LIFT) (OTCQB: LFCOF) is a publicly traded technology company modernizing the cannabis industry. Forward Looking Statements

This news release and each of the documents referred to herein contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein are forward-looking information. Often, but not always, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as plans, is expected, expects, scheduled, intends, contemplates, anticipates, believes, proposes or variations (including negative and grammatical variations) of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved. Such statements are based on the current expectations of management and are based on assumptions and subject to risks and uncertainties. Although management believes that the assumptions underlying these statements are reasonable, they may prove to be incorrect. The forward-looking events and circumstances discussed in this press release may not occur by certain specified dates or at all and could differ materially as a result of known and unknown risk factors and uncertainties affecting the Company. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements, there can be other factors that cause results, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate or that management's expectations or estimates of future developments, circumstances or results will materialize. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release, and subject to change after such date. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise such information, except as required by applicable law, and the Company does not assume any liability for disclosure relating to any other company mentioned herein. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as the term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE Lift & Co. Corp. Contact Information: Lift & Co.: Kasia Malz

Chief Financial Officer, Lift & Co.

416-953-6657

[email protected] Nikki Laoutaris,

Communications Manager, Lift & Co.

1-647-464-0148

[email protected] Investor Relations:

Thesis Capital

Prit Singh,

905-510-7636,

[email protected] A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ea3d487a-c693-47a7-8234-e9a54499a89c

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From presidential politics to China to oil prices, heres what Im watching this year.

The big picture: A few key decisive moments this year will help determine whether concerns over climate change  rising since my last two annual outlook columns  will translate into action that would transform our global energy system.

1. Politicking

Were seeing a new high water mark for climate changes role in the presidential contest among Democratic candidates. And although its unlikely to be the top issue, I expect it to be a wedge issue in the general election more than it has been in previous cycles.

If Democrats win the White House, keep control of the House and regain the Senate, the party would likely attempt big climate legislation similar to the last such efforts in 2009 and 2010.

But, but, but: If that occurred (a big if, especially in the Senate), its still a big open question whether the party would have enough support from even its own ranks to pass the type of sweeping policy White House hopefuls are proposing.

2. Bottom of the barrel for oil and gas

Middling global oil prices are producing reliably affordable gasoline. Thats great for consumers  and President Trumps reelection campaign.

The increased geopolitical risk in the oil-rich Middle East following the U.S. killing of Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian military official, late last week is a wild card, but for now it appears the early spike may not last unless more escalation occurs.

Meanwhile, middling prices are bad for producers struggling to profit off a global glut of oil and gas.

Several major oil companies, including Shell, Chevron and Spanish producer Repsol, have written down billions worth of assets due to that glut.

3. Big oils greenish shifts

Lurking in the background of those write-downs is the prospect that even more assets could become stranded if the world takes drastic steps to combat global warming, as scientists and a vocal group of politicians, investors and activists are calling for.

That pressure is compelling some companies to accelerate a trend that has been underway in earnest since 2017: Invest in green technologies and set increasingly ambitious emission reduction targets.

4. Carbon taxes

That trend among big oil companies is adding momentum and money to what is still a long-shot campaign to get Congress to pass legislation pricing carbon emissions.

In fact, most major corporations support such a policy, and organizers of the campaign say the goal is to have both chambers of Congress introduce bipartisan measures this year.

But, but, but: Even if that happens, many of the loudest Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail are saying such a policy isnt nearly enough, and meanwhile, nearly all Republicans remain publicly opposed to energy taxes.

5. Paris Climate Agreement

If a decades-long problem like climate change ever had a make-or-break moment, 2020 would be it for two reasons.

The United Nations annual conference, set for November in Glasgow, Scotland, will offer the most high-profile moment for the Paris deal since it was signed in 2015. The accord calls upon nations to submit new plans by this year to slash emissions over the next 10 years, but efforts are already falling short.

to slash emissions over the next 10 years, but efforts are already falling short. Trump is also likely to formally withdraw from the deal on Nov. 4, the day after the election, which will increase rallying cries and protests but likely only further dampen actual potential for progress.

6. China rising

China, which announced in 2017 it would create a national system for trading carbon dioxide credits as a way to cut emissions, is on track to begin trading sometime this year, according to the Environmental Defense Fund and others following it closely.

The development, which is not a foregone conclusion, would immediately create the worlds largest system for controlling carbon dioxide emissions  given China's huge economy, energy appetite and related emissions.

7. Trade wars

Im watching two:

The well-known one underway since Trump became president, which has affected several facets of the energy industry, including solar and natural gas.

A lower profile one but whose implications could sweeping: The European Union announced late last year its moving forward on plans to impose financial penalties on imports from nations that are less aggressive on climate change, which in this status quo would include the U.S.

8. Renewable challenges

As the share of wind and solar in electricity grows around the world, so are their problems  but also the incentives for storage.

Californias law requiring rooftop solar in new homes just went into effect this month, and Im watching how other states with especially aggressive clean-energy targets  Hawaii, New York and New Mexico  actually implement them.

9. Senior reactors

Several nuclear reactors  up to 20% of those operating in the U.S.  could likely receive approval this year to run an unprecedented 80 years, after the first such approval late last year.

The trend helps combat climate change, but it's also raising serious safety concerns among environmental groups.

10. Climate change, in real time

Two trends are colliding:
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The chairman of the Tata group N Chandrasekaran has said the steel conglomerate cannot have a situation where India keeps funding the mounting losses at its struggling Port Talbot steelworks in the UK. He emphasised that the Port Talbot steelworks in Wales, one of the largest in Europe, needed to be "self-sustaining" in an interview with the Sunday Times.

The head of the 84 billion-pound turnover conglomerate that also owns British luxury automaker Jaguar Land Rover, refused to commit to continuing to make UK steel, the report said.

Chandrasekaran, 56, said, "I need to get to a situation where at least the plant (Port Talbot) is self-sustaining."

"Whether it is in the Netherlands or here, we can't have a situation where India keeps funding the losses just to keep it going," he told the British newspaper.

Tata Steel's pre-tax losses were 371 million pounds last year, up from 222 million pounds in 2017-18. In November, Tata announced plans to cut 3,000 jobs across Europe.

Just under half of Tata's 8,385-strong UK workforce are based in Port Talbot, the BBC reported on Sunday.

Paul Evans, the Unite labour union's regional officer for Wales, said: "This interview just adds more pressure on the Tata workers at Port Talbot. The site is obviously key to the future of the other Tata plants in Wales.

"The workforce at Port Talbot have for many years proved they are the producers of world class quality steel and Wales and the UK can't afford to lose the expertise and commitment they have shown over the years."

A spokesman for Tata Steel's European operations said: "What our chairman said in the interview has already been communicated to colleagues through our transformation programme.

"That programme is about building a stronger and more sustainable European steel business by improving profitability so we can pay for investments necessary to secure our long-term future," the BBC report quoted the company spokesman as saying.

"The plans include productivity improvements, reduced bureaucracy and increased sales of higher-value steels, as well as employment cost savings," he added.

Tata has two large steelworks in Europe - Port Talbot, and one near Ijmuiden in the Netherlands, about 30km north-west of Amsterdam. Tata Steel acquired the Anglo-Dutch steel-giant Corus in 2007 for 6.2 billion pounds.
Donald Trumps threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites would be a war crime if carried out, legal experts have claimed, as the US president doubled down on his comments over the weekend.

In the aftermath of the US killing of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Iraq last week, Mr Trump warned Iran that a list of targets had been drawn up should it retaliate, including cultural sites with no military value.

Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have.... targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD, he wrote on Twitter.

International law prohibits deliberate attacks on civilian objects not being used for military purposes. Experts in international law said the attacks, if carried out, would constitute war crimes.

President Trump should publicly reverse his threats against Irans cultural property and make clear that he will not authorise nor order war crimes, said Andrea Prasow, acting Washington director at Human Rights Watch.

Ms Prasow added that the threat demonstrated the presidents callous disregard for the global rule of law.

The US Defence Department should publicly reaffirm its commitment to abide by the laws of war and comply only with lawful military orders, she said.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

Iran has vowed to retaliate for the death of Soleimani, the leader of Irans Quds Force, who was killed in a US drone strike at Baghdad airport last Friday. Mr Trump ordered the strike against Soleimani following weeks of tensions between the US military and Iran-backed militias in Iraq.

The killing, and the presidents subsequent threats, have provoked a flood of criticism at home and abroad.

Boris Johnson issued a rare criticism of the UKs transatlantic ally on Monday.

There are international conventions in place that prevent the destruction of cultural heritage, the prime ministers spokesperson said.

You are threatening to commit war crimes, said Senator Elizabeth Warren, a frontrunner in the Democratic partys list of candidates hoping to challenge Mr Trump in Novembers election.

We are not at war with Iran. The American people do not want a war with Iran, she added.

Brett McGurk, former US envoy to the international coalition set up to defeat Isis, called Mr Trumps comments unacceptable and unAmerican.

American military forces adhere to international law. They dont attack cultural sites. And theyre not mercenaries. Reckless and unprecedented words from a commander-in-chief, he said.

Irans foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tweeted that targeting cultural sites is a WAR CRIME.

Having committed grave breaches of intl law in Fridays cowardly assassinations, @realdonaldtrump threatens to commit again new breaches of JUS COGENS [international law], he added.

Despite the criticism, Mr Trump doubled down on his threat on Sunday.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, the president said in comments to reporters.

Recommended Trump threatens to sanction Iraq if US troops expelled

The president also raised the prospect of using disproportionate force to respond to any Iranian retaliation  which would also constitute a war crime.

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless! he wrote.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo appeared to offer a confusing defence of the presidents words in an interview with CNN.

If we need to defend American interests, we will do so. What President Trump said last night is consistent with what we have said all along, he told CNNs Jake Tapper.

And the American people should know we will always defend them and well do so in a way that is consistent with international rule of law and the American constitution, he added, without explaining how targeting cultural sites would not violate international law.

 Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei weeps at Soleimani prayers

The Geneva Conventions specifically prohibit any acts of hostility against cultural objects, including making such objects the target of reprisals, according to Human Rights Watch.

The rights group also noted that the US is a party to the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954), which similarly prohibits such attacks.

The United Nations' cultural agency, Unesco, addressed the controversy with a reminder that the US had signed treaties committing to not harming cultural heritage in the event of armed conflict.

Unesco director general Audrey Azoulay said the US had signed a 1972 convention that obliged it not to undertake "any deliberate measures which might damage directly or indirectly the cultural and natural heritage" of other states.

Rhys Davies, an international criminal law barrister, told The Independent that the kind of military action described in Mr Trumps tweets could certainly be a war crime, but that any kind of prosecution might be difficult.

Even though the US is not a signatory of the International Criminal Court, there is a domestic framework where someone could be brought to justice in the US. But that probably enters the realm of the political.

As the leader of Irans Quds Force, 62-year-old Soleimani was the architect of Irans expanding influence across the Middle East. He travelled the region in his dual roles of diplomat and military commander to build and support a resistance bloc  an alliance of Shia militant groups that would facilitate Irans regional ambitions and counter US influence.

The proxy groups he built and supported killed hundreds of US troops during the Iraq War.
Lucknow, Jan 6 : Uttar Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel, on Monday, visited the residence of Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav and inquired about his health.

The Governor went to Mulayam's residence on the Vikramaditya Marg and spent about half an hour there. She wished him on the New Year and inquired about his health.

Mulayam Singh Yadav has been unwell since the past few months and was recently hospitalised in a private hospital in Mumbai for four days.

This is the first time that the Governor has made a courtesy visit to meet an opposition leader in the state.
Puerto Ricans are particularly fond of memes, and they quickly shared one showing the collapsed natural arch covered with a blue tarpaulin like the ones that still cover many homes whose roofs were damaged during Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Among them was Mr. Rodriguezs house in the Esperanza neighborhood of Guanica, where some of the most serious damage was reported, including five collapsed houses. Now, in addition to the tarp he has had since Maria, Mr. Rodriguezs house has huge cracks running up and down his green interior walls.

It cracked open everywhere inside, said Mr. Rodriguez, 83, a retired bus driver.

The first cracks appeared a few days ago, after the first temblors. They worsened on Monday, and pipes in the bathroom broke, leading to some flooding.

Luz Dastas, 51, whose house in Guanica is also covered by a leaky blue tarp, left with her 26-year-old daughter, Aida Torres, after the first tremors. Mondays quake opened new cracks in the walls of her house.

When her granddaughter, Alondra Suarez, 7, felt the earth shake one recent night, I stayed up until the morning, Alondra said. I ate a chocolate to see if I could feel better.

On Monday, strong aftershocks of 4.9, 4.3 and 4.4 magnitude continued to rock the island into the late afternoon, rattling nerves over and over again. Officials warned of possible mudslides and urged people to stay off the roads to allow emergency personnel to assess the damage.
AP

At least five people are dead and dozens more injured after a multiple vehicle crash on the Pennsylvania turnpike, according to transportation officials.

The crash occurred around 30 miles east of Pittsburgh and involved at least two semi-trucks, several passenger vehicles and a tour bus, which reportedly flipped onto its side.

At least 60 people were injured when those vehicles collided early Sunday, according to Pennsylvania Turnpike spokesman Carl DeFebo, who tweeted information about the crash.

They were reportedly transported to three area hospitals.

A spokesperson for Excela Health, the company that runs the Excela Frick Hospital where around 25 of the victims were transported, said that they received patients ranging in age from 7 years old to 52. Nine of the victims were under the age of 18, said spokesperson Robin Jennings.

One of the victims sent to Excela was transported to a nearby trauma centre, and Ms Jennings said the condition of other patients was not known.

Another eleven victims were transported to the Forbes Hospital in Monroeville, according to spokesperson Stephanie Waite, who was not immediately able to provide the ages of the victims. She said one was in critical condition, and the other 10 were in fair condition.

It was not immediately clear which hospital the remaining victims were sent.

The cause of the crash is unclear, and the National Transportation Safety Board is gathering information related to the incident. The agency has not indicated whether it will launch a formal investigation.

Weather conditions in the county at the time of the crash were listed as potentially having light precipitation, with air temperatures below freezing. Mr DeFebo said it was premature to say if weather contributed to the crash.

The stretch of highway, which is the main artery connecting the Philadelphia area to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, remained closed hours after the crash. It was not clear when it might reopen.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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Recent months have seen university campuses become the nerve centres of democratic political life and scenes of resistance against authoritarianism and brutal police repression. The horrifying events that unraveled on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus on Sunday night were a part of this, but they also showed some important differences.

This time, it was not uniformed policemen who entered JNU to unleash an assault, but masked goons wielding lathis and iron rods who conducted a well-planned, targeted, brisk and brutal attack on the students and teachers. The police, which has detained protesting students by the hundreds in recent weeks, showed its complicity in the violence by its inaction, not intercepting or detaining even a single assaulter. The university administration, which has been quick to take punitive action against minor acts of peaceful protest by students and teachers, issued statements that misrepresented the events and failed to even so much as mention the entry of armed groups into the campus.

This is the situation that JNU finds itself in today structures that have been designed to protect the life of this academic institution have turned against its community of students and teachers. The universitys administration, the states police force, and groups trained for violence by the ruling party appear be part of this destructive campaign.

Students in JNU have been agitating over the past two months against a hefty and arbitrary hike in hostel fees sprung on them mid-semester, which threatened to make staying on in the university unviable for many. What was striking about this agitation has been the intense involvement of large numbers of students who do not usually play an active role in student organisations and campus politics. The fee hike, by its evident unfairness, seems to have touched something deep in the moral sensitivity of students, linking it to the vital issue of affordable public education in India.

Perhaps it was not just the increase in fees that elicited this intense response. It was also the high-handedness of university administration, which over the past four years ever since the present vice-chancellor was appointed, has refused to work as part of the university community, resorting to arbitrary or politically-motivated decisions and punitive measures, instead of consultation and collective decision-making. The recent crisis around the registration of students for the new semester must be seen against this background. The administration has dealt with this through denial and by painting a false picture of the situation.

The past few days saw the introduction of violence into the campus as a new instrument for dealing with student protests. Protesting students have been alleging physical assaults by security guards and Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) students, supported in certain instances by some teachers. Images and videos show this violence, which, in some cases, has involved physically threatening teachers who have insisted on a resolution to the present crisis through dialogue.

This spate of violence culminated in Sundays vicious attack by an organised gang with lathis and iron rods on a large gathering on peace and democracy organised by JNU Teachers Association, in which several teachers and students were badly injured. They moved on to some hostels and teachers residences in order to attack. Several students and teachers have been badly injured in this attack and about 20 people had to be admitted to hospitals. This was followed by the mobilisation of crowds at the universitys main gate shouting aggressive, bloodthirsty slogans against the JNU community, and roughing up people who do not share their views. The non-violent unity and resolve of students and teachers in the face of this aggression, and the support they received from the academic community and civil society in the city, eventually forced the goons to leave and the hostile crowd to withdraw from the gate. The alleged connivance of the administration with the violence has made the campus unsafe for academic work.

It is evident that what is at issue in Sundays violence is neither the fee hike nor the registration for the new semester. This a planned attack on the vital role students have played in recent protests against the violent, anti-democratic agenda of the government and the ruling party. We have seen this in Jamia Millia, Aligarh Muslim University, Jadavpur University and several other campuses. Students  pushed to the brink by an unprecedented sense of oppression and the rule of untruth and hatefulness  have adopted a staunch stance of refusal and created a new politics unanticipated by the ruling political calculus. Terms such as anti-national do not seem to do the work of hatred effectively anymore. Students are now reclaiming the national flag and the national anthem from divisive politics, not as insignia of the state, but as symbols of freedom and resistance. The Constitution has acquired a new political salience.

What we saw in the recent violence is a desperate last-ditch throwing away of all rule books and pretences, and an attempt to destroy the spirit of resistance through violent physical force in all its ugly nakedness. At stake in the confrontations in JNU and other campuses are no less than our democratic futures being freshly forged by students.

Atul Sood and Udaya Kumar are professors at Jawaharlal Nehru University, at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development and the Centre for English Studies respectively.

The views expressed are personal.
Did you ever see a baby more beautiful than Victoria Setuke, or a mother prouder and happier than Victorias mother Patience?

They featured on the 9 oclock news the other night on RTE, and in most of the papers the following day, because Victoria was the first baby born in the new year (and the new decade) in Ireland.

Victoria was followed a few minutes later and 165 miles away in Cork when Diana Rodrigues gave birth to Aida Cheryl, and a few hours after that baby Suzanna Ptoczak also arrived in Cork.

Three little girls, all doing well, all welcomed to the world by their families and the staff who delivered them. Three more Irish citizens for us to nurture and respect and be proud of. I certainly hope so. But I cant be sure.

There was a time when, if you were born in an Irish hospital you were an Irish citizen. It was my birth right, and the birth right of my wife and all our children. And yours too in most cases. But none of my grandchildren had that, because we took it away in 2005.

As a result, none of my grandchildren could say they were Irish simply because they were born here. They were guaranteed their citizenship because (a) they were born here and (b) their parents could also prove they were Irish. Being born in Ireland became just one of the criteria.

I dont know if Victoria Setukes mum is an Irish citizen. From the television it was clear that she is of African origin. Aidas parents are from India, and Suzannas parents are Polish.

If any of them want to apply for citizenship for their child  I hope they do  they will have to establish one or other of a complicated set of links to our little country. If, for example, mum or dad has been legally resident here for three of the four years immediately prior to the birth of their child, that might be enough. If either parent has formally been granted refugee status, that might do the trick too.

But on the Late Late Show on Friday night, Ryan Tubridy welcomed three more newborn citizens  and gave them each a gift of Prize Bonds (every newborn baby should be given a savings certificate by the State, in my humble opinion). One of the babies  a stunningly beautiful little girl  will go back from the hospital in which she was born to the Mosney accommodation centre, because her mum is still seeking asylum in Ireland.

It may be the case (I cant say because I dont know all the circumstances), that beautiful little girls path to Irish citizenship will be a lot more complicated. It may even happen that she will be deprived of something that every previous generation was born with. I hope thats not so, but its certainly possible. Because we were all conned into thinking that wed be overrun by citizenship tourists if we didnt pass a referendum on the subject.

And even if it all works out for all of them, there are still people in Ireland whod like to strip their citizenship away because of the colour of their skin or their original ethnic origin.

No sooner had the pictures of newborn babies appeared than social media began its usual outpouring of hate and bile. The babies were branded as part of the great replacement, some kind of foreign plot to destroy Irish culture and heritage.

The people behind these nonsensical theories, at least one of whom has been roundly rejected by the electorate several times, seem to believe that we are under some sort of existential threat from babies. Foreign babies, of course.

These are in many instances the same people who are running intimidatory and threatening vigils outside maternity hospitals that, alongside their primary function of bringing new babies into the world, also offer safe abortion services to women who need them.

And of course, if anyone objects to their levels of hatred and intolerance, they start another protest, this time in favour of free speech.

In some ways, this is the most dangerous trend of all. I dont care about the vulgar abuse, but I really do believe that these hatemongers should be prosecuted when they incite others to hatred and violence against people whose only crime is their skin colour or religion.

I find it hard to understand why the State hasnt acted already against these cruel ideologues who think they can say whatever they like under the banner of free speech.

They may be small in number now, and on the surface they may just seem bonkers, but weve been here before. Political movements have been built on hatred of the other, and we know the damage they have caused.

Even conservative, although usually sensible, polemicists like David Quinn seem to have fallen for this claptrap about free speech. He seems to spend roughly half his life writing widely-read newspaper columns and appearing on the radio, and the other half complaining about being silenced and marginalised.

Of course, hes going to accuse me of exaggerating wildly by saying that about him. But a couple of days ago he tweeted that the government has designs on both freedom of expression and the right to protest. In other words, it has strong and undeniable authoritarian tendencies. Talk about wild exaggeration.

We passed a law many years ago making it illegal to demonstrate, or even to hand out leaflets, directly outside polling stations. We did so because it was seen as an interference in the democratic process, and there was some muttering about free speech then. Oddly enough, the heavens didnt fall in.

And free speech and the right to protest wouldnt be damaged in the slightest if we were to pass a law insisting that protests within, say, 200m of a maternity hospital (assuming they werent part of a properly recognised industrial dispute) would also be illegal.

The deeper issue is the intolerance and the hatred (and by the way, David Quinn doesnt do either of those).

We have to find a way to say to the whole world that hatred and intolerance is not welcome in Ireland. We have too much history of stigmatising and marginalising anyone who belongs to the other, and it goes on still.

Maybe thats why the newspapers reported on New Years Day that a lot of the parents of new-born babies didnt want to have their names, or their babies names, published. In some cases a desire for privacy, perhaps, but maybe in others a fear of the hatred.

The overwhelming majority of us in Ireland rejoice at the arrival of Victoria and Aida Cheryl and Suzanna, and all the other babies from all over Ireland and beyond.

We want to see them grow up loved and nurtured and educated to be strong and independent.

We want to see the next generation of Irish citizens, whatever their skin colour or religion or place of origin, as proud or being Irish as we are, as determined to contribute as we were.

Its the ones who hate and want to inspire hate that we dont want here, ever again.
Thick smoke from bushfires is likely to blanket Melbourne for days, prompting a warning from authorities.

The air quality is at its worst in East Gippsland, as dozens of bushfires continue to burn in the region on Monday.

The Environment Protection Authority has also recorded 'very poor' air quality in Melbourne's metropolitan area, attributing the smoke to bushfires burning in the state as well as in NSW and Tasmania.

Authorities have warned that thick bushfire smoke will potentially blanket Melbourne's metropolitan area until Wednesday

Chief environmental scientist Andrea Henwood urged people to take precautions, saying the smoke will linger until Wednesday.

'Close everything up. Seal the doors. Now would be a good time to do that because this is going to persist for the rest of the day,' Dr Henwood told reporters.

'If it persists into the next couple of days you want to have as much clean air as you can within your home.'

Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton advised people with lung or heart conditions, the young and old, and pregnant women to stay indoors.

He said healthy people may also experience symptoms including eye, nose and throat irritation, coughing, sneezing and congestion.

Scientists have warned people to stay inside and seal up their doors before the smoke sets in

For those severely impacted by the smoke, Dr Sutton said face masks were an option.

'They're not for everyone. They need to be fitted properly. If they're not fitted properly, they're not working,' he said.

There are 31 fires burning across Victoria as of Monday morning, with 18 in eastern Gippsland and six in the northeast.

One million hectares has been burnt across Victoria.

Rain has started to fall, but not across all fire-affected areas and not enough to douse the fires, and is creating new difficulties.

People may experience symptoms including eye, nose and throat irritation, coughing, sneezing and congestion

'It does in fact create some other challenges in a strange way. We had a Forest Fire Management vehicle tip over yesterday, thankfully no one was seriously injured,' Premier Daniel Andrews told 3AW on Monday.

Mr Andrews said the track the vehicle was travelling had been greasy because rain had not fallen there in such a long time.

'So it's better than it not raining but it's nowhere near enough for us to think this fire event's over,' he said.

Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton advised people with lung or heart conditions, the young and old, and pregnant women to stay indoors

The deadly fires have killed Buchan man Mick Roberts and Maramingo Creek man Fred Becker and destroyed at least 110 properties and 220 outbuildings. Four people remain missing.

The cooler weather has allowed military helicopters to deliver supplies to isolated communities and help with evacuations, reaching 13 communities on Sunday.

They also rescued 406 people from Mallacoota and will continue to try and fly out a remaining 300 people who registered for evacuation. Navy ships brought out more than 1100 people on Saturday.

There are 31 fires burning across Victoria as of Monday morning, with 18 in eastern Gippsland and six in the northeast

More than 3500 properties remain without power, with AusNet bringing in generators when possible and restoring the network when it is safe to do so.

All warnings now sit at a watch and act level.

The state government has announced a fund to support Victorian bushfire survivors, contributing $2 million.

Seventy-one firefighters from the US and Canada will arrive on Wednesday to help with firefighting efforts.
The DG level talks between India and Bangladesh, continuing since long, are held twice every year  once each in India and Bangladesh.

One indication that the NRC and the CAA have so far not affected India-Bangladesh ties is that the border security forces of both nations held their 49th director- general level talks from December 25 to 30, 2019. Indias Border Security Forces (BSF) delegation was headed by its DG, Vivek Johri, and Border Guards Bangladeshs (BGB) delegation was headed by its DG, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Shafeenul Islam.

While the nationwide protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) have proved to be the result of a concerted campaign by the Opposition parties, particularly the Congress, to instigate masses by much use of lies, there has been some apprehension about how these two moves may affect India-Bangladesh relations.

In one of his recent articles, Indias former high commissioner to Bangladesh, Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, expressed concern over the CAA and its possible fallouts as its passage only allowed illegal migrants other than Muslims to easily obtain Indian citizenship. He is reported to have expressed his anxiety about the possibility of reverse migration, which may encourage Islamists and anti-Indian lobbies in Bangladesh to target Hindu minorities there, besides adversely affecting the bilateral relationship. He stated that: India has always maintained that the NRC in Assam is a domestic issue whenever concerns were raised in Bangladesh. The NRC undoubtedly is a domestic issue and so is the CAA, which is an amendment to Indias Citizenship Act of 1955. The CAA states that designated non-Muslim persecuted minorities will not be treated as illegal migrants if they have entered India by December 31, 2014, and fast-tracks the grant of Indian citizenship via naturalisation after 6 years. The Bangladesh government too has reportedly acknowledged that the CAA and the NRC are Indias domestic issues but have rejected the CAAs provisions that Hindus are a persecuted minority. Bangladeshs leaders have also said that if India provides a list of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, it will take them back after due verification.

One indication that the NRC and the CAA have so far not affected India-Bangladesh ties is that the border security forces of both nations held their 49th director-general level talks from December 25 to 30, 2019. Indias Border Security Forces (BSF) delegation was headed by its DG, Vivek Johri, and Border Guards Bangladeshs (BGB) delegation was headed by its DG, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Shafeenul Islam.

India and Bangladesh share a 4,156-km-long (2,582 miles) international border, the fifth-longest land border in the world, which includes 262 km (163 miles) in Assam, 856 km (532 miles) in Tripura, 180 km (110 miles) in Mizoram, 443 km (275 miles) in Meghalaya, and 2,217 km (1,378 miles) in West Bengal.

The stretch of this border in Assam was one through which a large number of Bangladeshi illegal immigrants entered and were converted into a vote bank by the Congress ruling in Assam. This was during the tenure of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, when there was a large strength of Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) operatives posted in Bangladesh.

By 1990, the terrorist group United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa), who claimed to be engaged in a liberation struggle against state terrorism and economic exploitation by India for the establishment of a sovereign, independent Assam, had in fact become nothing but terrorists steeped in large-scale extortion of money from businesspersons, abductions and cold-blooded killings of political leaders, police personnel and innocent people. Ulfa had also penetrated almost all departments of the Assam government under the Asom Gana Parishad, a party which emerged from/after the bloody Assam Agitation against the entry of foreigners  mainly Bangladeshi illegal immigrants crossing a porous border.

Towards the end of November 1990, just before the Central government clamped Presidents rule in Assam and launched the Indian Army under its Operation Bajrang, top Ulfa leaders, having come to know owing to their penetration in the state government, escaped to Bangladesh, thereby making a mockery of their championing the cause of Assam. In Bangladesh, Ulfa collaborated with Pakistans ISI there and provided it the long awaited golden opportunity of penetrating Indias Northeastern region and establishing links with insurgent groups there for anti-India activities.

Presidents rule ended in Assam on June 30, 1991, with the Congress coming to power under Hiteshwar Saikia. With Operation Bajrang being stopped before the elections, Ulfa were able to re-group and a couple of days after Saikias swearing in as chief minister, Ulfa abducted 14 people from six different parts of the state. Ulfa demanded six of its detenus in exchange for two hostages  Russian engineer Sergei Grischenko and ONGC executive B.N. Jaiswal. On July 8, 1991, Saikias newly installed Congress(I) government declared a general amnesty for 650 Ulfa detenus rather than just the six, and released 324 of them on July 9, Ulfas deadline.

Meanwhile, the Army had to launch a second operation, code-named Rhino, as Ulfa had become active again in Assam and thanks to its leadership in Bangladesh, the ISI there not only established links with other Northeastern insurgent groups like the National Socialist Council of Nagaland/Nagalim-Issac-Muivah (NSCN-IM), the Peoples Liberation Army and some others, supplying them with sophisticated arms and in fact converting them from insurgents to terrorists. Apart from supporting them for anti-India activities, including circulation of fake Indian currency, ISIs master plan for Assam became the stepping up of Bangladeshi illegal immigrants through Ulfa with a long-term aim of altering Assams demography. This authors book Assam: Terrorism and the Demographic Challenge (Centre for Land Warfare Studies, Knowledge World) released in 2008, elaborates on much of what has been mentioned and becomes relevant to refer to again, because by 2008, the demography of eight districts in Assam had altered. Now, at least 11 are affected. Hence the need for NRC.

Short of December 2008, when the Awami League under Sheikh Hasina Wajed won with a massive mandate, the Ulfa and other groups in Bangladesh escaped into Myanmar, with Ulfa making forays into China too. But from 1990 till 2008, there was a concerted drive by ISI and Ulfa for large numbers of Bangladeshi illegal migrants into Assam and settled them in 11 districts at least. Many of these were reportedly issued ration cards by Assams Congress ministers with a view to develop a massive vote bank. Also, the Ulfa was of great help to the Congress in Assam by way of influencing the public under the threat of their guns to vote for the Congress during successive elections.

The DG level talks between India and Bangladesh, continuing since long, are held twice every year  once each in India and Bangladesh. This time the talks were held in New Delhi as per schedule. The agenda items cover all issues related to the border including smuggling of drugs, gold, fake currency, cattle, action against the remnants of the Indian insurgent groups, construction of fence within 150 yards of IB, developmental works within 150 yards of IB, deaths and injuries to civilians and BSF personnel along the IB, death/injuries to BD civilians, human trafficking and illegal immigration. Discussions were held on each agenda point to make the border guarding more effective despite the difficulties posed by the topography.

After thorough discussion on the agenda points, both sides agreed to adhere to the conclusions reached. Highlights of the Joint Record of Discussions signed by both DGs are:

? To prevent injuries or loss of life to BSF personnel on borders while preventing criminal activities, both forces agreed to make all possible efforts to curb the menace of cattle smuggling or any other criminal activity and to ensure tranquility on the borders.

? Responding to concerns of BGB on death of Bangladeshi nationals on borders, BSF assured that a non-lethal weapon policy is strictly followed by its personnel. Firing is resorted to only in self-defence  when BSF patrols are surrounded and attacked. It was specified that BSF does not discriminate between criminals based on nationality.

? For the camps of Indian insurgent groups in Bangladesh the BGB informed that Bangladesh does not allow its soil to be used by any entities or elements hostile to any country but agrees to take action against miscreants, if there are any.

? Both sides agreed to take strong measures for prevention of illegal border crossings and to intensify the simultaneous coordinated patrols in vulnerable areas.

? On smuggling of drugs, narcotics, arms, etc, both sides reviewed the steps being taken for prevention and agreed for sharing of real time information, if any, including relevant information of apprehended criminals.

? Sharing the importance of a coordinated border management plan in dealing with issues related to the border security grid, it was reiterated that joint mapping of vulnerable areas would be done according to crime statistics and trends.

Both sides expressed their satisfaction over the deliberations in the conference, which was meaningful and cordial, reflecting the friendly bilateral relations between the two countries. Both sides agreed for expeditious implementation of the decisions taken in the conference.

Incidentally, Maj. Gen. Shafeenul Islam also reiterated that NCR and CAA were Indias domestic issues.

The writer, a retired Army officer, is a defence and security analyst based in New Delhi
Finland Prime Minister Sanna Marin has proposed the introduction of six-hour work shifts and a four-day working week in the country. The youngest serving PM in the world has plans to follow the lead of Sweden, where the six-hour working experiment began in 2015. According to European reports, Marin believes 'people deserve to spend more time with their families' and give time to their hobbies. The centre-left PM thinks this development in the working hours will be the 'next step' in professional life.

Read - Sweden Beats Finland 3-2 To Take Bronze At World Juniors

Results of Sweden's experiment

Currently, most people in Finland work eight hours a day for five days a week. Country's Scandinavian neighbour, Sweden's experiment's early results reportedly suggest that it increases productivity, well being and health, but is expensive. International reports also state that some critics believe the reduction in working hours and days can leave an adverse effect on businesses and economic growth. However, Marin's partner and education minister of Finland, Li Andersson welcomed the latest proposal.

Read - Finland Offers Crash Course In Artificial Intelligence To EU

Similarly in the UK, the ruling party's main opposition, Labour had promised to implement a four-day working week with 'no loss of wages' within ten years before the December elections. The defeated party also planned to cut the average working week to 32 hours. However, Conservatives won with a thumping majority on December elections, leaving Labour's plan unsuccessful. Meanwhile in Finland, after multiple strikes, the labour unions and industrial employers reached a deal on pay rises and working conditions.

Marin was elected as Finland's new Prime Minister, making her the world's youngest one at 34 years of age. The Social Democratic Party's leader was appointed as the PM after Antti Rinne resigned in the month of June. The council of the SDP voted 32-29 to appoint Marin as the PM. Talking to local media outlets, Marin said that it is a long road ahead in order to rebuild trust among the people after having won votes by a narrow margin ahead of rival Antti Lindtman.

Read - Twitter Applauds Finland's New Female Majority Cabinet With 12 Women

Read - Newly-elected Finland's Prime Minister Promises To Keep Posting On Instagram
Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Monday said NCP chief Sharad Pawar's name should be considered by all political parties for the 2022 presidential election

Mumbai: Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Monday said NCP chief Sharad Pawar's name should be considered by all political parties for the 2022 presidential election.

Raut also claimed that by 2022, there will be enough numbers "on our side" to decide the presidential candidate. Pawar recently played a key role in bringing together

the Congress and the Shiv Sena to form government in alliance with his party in Maharashtra.

Talking to PTI, Raut said, "Sharad Pawar is a senior leader of the country. I think his name should be considered by all political parties for the post of President, the election for which will be held in 2022." Asked about the opinion of other political parties on fielding the former Union minister and four-time state chief minister, Raut said he has "merely proposed" Pawar's name.

"I think other political parties can also propose other senior candidates for the post of President. By 2022, there will be enough numbers on our side to decide the presidential candidate," said the Rajya Sabha member. Pawar's party has got most of the 'plum' ministries, including Home and Finance, in the Uddhav Thackeray-led

Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi government.
A child receives a vaccination shot at a hospital in Huaibei in China's eastern Anhui province on July 26, 2018. (-/AFP via Getty Images)

Chinese Authorities Rule out SARS in Mysterious Pneumonia Outbreak, Now 59 Cases

The Chinese regime has confirmed more people have contracted an unknown viral pneumonia in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, bringing the total to 59 less than a week after state-media first reported the outbreak.

The local governments health commission on Jan. 5 ruled out the flu, bird flu, adenovirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), as being the cause of the virus. It added that it is still investigating the matter.

News about the disease has been heavily censored online, and has triggered widespread alarm, stirring up comparisons to the SARS breakout in 2002-2003 which killed hundreds of mainland Chinese. Due to the regimes cover-up, the disease spread globally and led to more than 8,000 contracting the disease.

Patients of the mysterious illness have reported symptoms such as fever, having difficulty breathing, and invasive lesions in the lungs.

Of the 59 people diagnosed, seven of them were in serious condition, while the vital signs of the remaining patients were generally stable, the Wuhan Health Commission said. All of them have been isolated and are receiving treatment at Jinyintan Hospital in the Dongxihu district of Wuhan.

Authorities have also identified 163 people who have had close contact with the patients. These people have not been isolated.

Out of those diagnosed, the earliest one exhibited symptoms on Dec. 12, and the latest fell ill on Dec. 29.

The total number rose from an earlier update released by authorities on Jan. 3, which said 44 people were diagnosed, of which 11 were in serious condition. It remains unclear whether the reduction in the number of patients in a serious condition indicated that the definition of serious may have changed or that condition of the four patients has improved.

The announcement said that most of the patients are vendors at the local Huanan Seafood Market. The market, located close to Hankou Railway Station in the citys Jianghan district, sells seafood and meats, including a variety of wild animal meats. The market has been closed since Jan. 1 after news of the outbreak broke.

Some of the patients, however, have not frequented the market, according to Chinese state-run media. There is no information on how these people came to be infected with the virus.

Meanwhile, concern has heightened in neighbouring cities and countries. Visitors to Wuhan from Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and Taiwan, who have exhibited fever symptoms, have been isolated in their home regions for further examination. None of these people visited the market when they were in Wuhan.

Suspected Cases

The latest figures come as the Commission released another update on the escalating epidemic on Jan. 5. The outbreak of viral pneumonia was first reported on Dec. 31, 2019.

The announcement confirmed that in addition to the 59 patients in Wuhan, five people in Singapore and 16 in Hong Kong have also been hospitalized with pneumonia symptoms after visiting the Chinese city.

So far, Chinese authorities are yet to name the disease, or provide information on how the virus spreads and whether it can be transmitted from person-to-person. The authorities say they are isolating the patients who have been diagnosed with the mystery illness.

Wuhan has about 11 million residents and is the busiest transportation hub in China.

Annual passenger traffic is over 23 million at Wuhan Tianhe airport, with direct flights to 63 overseas cities, including Hong Kong, Taipei, New York, London, and Dubai. Another 277 million passengers travel by rail and bus to or from Wuhan, according to the city governments report.

If any passengers unknowingly in the incubation period travel to other cities or countries, the spread of the virus would not be able to be contained.

Threat

A reporter who works for an Wuhan state-run media told the Chinese-language Epoch Times on Jan. 5 that the local government hadnt planned to notify the public of the epidemic, which was revealed accidentally.

Several officials were punished. [The city government] defined the accident a major public opinion accident affecting social stability. It asked all departments control their employees [to keep silent], the reporter said. He asked to remain anonymous.

Chan King-ming, a well-known biochemist focusing on toxicology research in Hong Kong, told The Epoch Times on Jan. 5 that the Wuhan government should tell people what happened.

For infectious diseases, the government must set up an immediate notification mechanism. Otherwise, the virus will infect more people and the situation will be out of control, Chan said. The virus can mutate. The more people it infected, the faster it will mutate.

On Jan. 4, the Hong Kong government launched a severe emergency response to the virus and stepped up measures to prevent it from spreading.

On the afternoon of Jan. 5, Taiwans Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung announced at a press conference that the government will quarantine and monitor all potential patients who went to Wuhan in past 15 days who have symptoms of pneumonia.
Qatar, the Middle East country with a population of over 2.5 million, has banned cryptocurrency trading.

According to a statement shared with The Block by the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) Regulatory Authority, the regulator has said that Virtual Asset Services may not be conducted in or from the QFC at this time."

The services include fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-crypto trading, custody, and financial services related to virtual assets, per the statement.

Specifically, the regulator has said that the ban includes "anything of value that acts as a substitute for currency, that can be digitally traded or transferred and can be used for payment or investment purposes."

The move has been taken "in accordance with QFC Law No. 7 of 2005 and the Financial Services Regulations (FSR)," said the authority, adding that "all Authorised Firms (as defined in the FSR) are not currently permitted to provide and/or facilitate the provision of Virtual Asset Services or otherwise exchange, trade or deal in Virtual Assets, until further notice."



There will be penalties in case of any violation of the law, said the QCFRA.



In 2018, Qatars central bank also said that bitcoin trading in illegal in the country. This cryptocurrency is highly volatile and can be used for financial crimes and electronic hacking as well as risk loss of value because there are no guarantors or assets, it said at the time.

UPDATE (Jan. 7): This story has been updated to include comments from the Qatar Financial Centre Regulatory Authority
Just after 8 a.m., Chicago police responded to a report of a burglary that had taken place in the 2800 block of West Fullerton Avenue, which is where MOCA Modern Cannabis is located, while the business was closed. The break-in started in the side door, possibly with a person using a key card, and the person then took off with cash from the shop, according to police.
A young Greenie pictured backburning before bushfire season has been slammed by trolls who claim the image is staged.

Two images were posted on the Australian Young Greens Facebook page showing a young woman dressed in a helmet and green forest fire management suit in front of a backdrop of burning trees.

'It would be a real shame if people shared this picture of Greens member Elly doing the hazard reduction burning for this season, the right wing wouldnt cope!' the caption reads.

The post has since been deleted, but drew more than 600 comments and nearly 2,000 shares. But not all comments were positive.

'Bit of a pose. Sorry but there are real Greenies in the CFA you could take real photos of,' one comment reads.

The Australian Young Greens have been trolled online by commentators who say their photos of member Elly backburning before the bushfire season have been staged

'Well I'm a Greenie, however who on earth who is actually using a tool like that carries it like that?' another comment says.

'Where are her gloves?' another post reads.

Australian Young Greens pinned a comment on the top of the feed, reading 'and for the people wondering, these photos are from April, in preparation for this years fire season which started in *WINTER*.'

Some continued to question the credibility of the images, claiming safety regulations clearly weren't in place.

'I hope RFS was there during this. As a former VFRS member, this photo concerns me, fuel reduction you say yet she doesn't have a hose in her hand (pretty essential for control) and the fire in the background is climbing the tree, a big no no during fuel reduction, gotta keep it on the ground!' one comment reads.

Eagle-eyed commentators noted a lack of safety regulations in the backburning operation, including not wearing gloves or having a hose on hand in case of an emergency

'Cant see a drop of sweat or any rubbish on her, must not be doing much,' another said.

Others pointed the finger at The Greens, blaming their backburning policies for the bushfire crisis.

'Your mismanagement of the forests is the single one cause for these fires being as devastating as they are. Nothing to do with climate change,' one said.

Daily Mail Australia have contacted Australian Young Greens and The Greens for comment.

A political firestorm ensued in November after volunteer firefighter Tyson Smith attacked environmental authorities in a now deleted Facebook post for curbing controlled burning that removes fuel that makes fires burn stronger and faster.

'These enviro authorities that put a stop to reduction burns need to be held personally accountable for the losses people have endured,' he said.

A volunteer firefighter during a backburning operation at Burrill Lake, south of Ulladulla, on Sunday

A volunteer firefighter extinguishes a spot fire in a backburning exercise in the Blue Mountains in December

'The fuel loading we are seeing out on the ground is ridiculous. We are looking at 5-10 years of growth, this fuel source is making these fires untouchable, we can't even get near them to fight them.'

Former deputy PM Barnaby Joyce agreed and pointed the finger directly at The Greens who he accused of pushing such policies.

'We haven't had the capacity to easily access (hazard) reduction burns because of all of the paperwork that is part of green policy,' he told The Australian.

'So many of the practicalities of fighting a fire and managing it have been stymied by the Greens.'

Mr Joyce argued the left-wing party was just using the fires to score political points as Australian policy had no impact on climate change, while experts hit back at his claims, calling his views 'tired old conspiracy theories'.

Barnaby Joyce accused The Greens of impeding with and preventing fire and rescue groups reduction burns

Former NSW fire and rescue commissioner Greg Mullins wrote in the SMH in November that the weather that was to blame.

'Blaming ''greenies'' for stopping these important measures is a familiar, populist, but basically untrue claim,' he wrote.

Instead, it was hotter and drier conditions and higher fire danger ratings that were preventing agencies from carrying out prescribed burning.

University of Wollongong Professor Ross Bradstock, who has been studying bushfires for 40 years, said Mr Joyce's claims were 'without foundation'.

'It's simply conspiracy stuff. It's an obvious attempt to deflect the conversation away from climate change,' he told the Guardian.

The Greens then released a strongly worded statement declaring its support for hazard reduction burns and backburning 'when guided by the best scientific, ecological and emergency service expertise'.

'Attempts by right-wing pundits and politicians to place the blame on the Greens represent the worst kind of dishonest politics,' it said.

'The Coalition has spent six years in office ignoring the chief cause  the drying of our landscape caused by severe climate change, which is the result of continuing to mine, burn and export coal, oil and gas.'

Opposition figures instead pointed to the NSW Government's cuts to fire services for allowing less controlled burns to be completed.

This included 35.4 per cent from Fire and Rescue NSW and 75.2 per cent from the Rural Fire Service's capital budget in the 2019 state budget.
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Savari, Inc., a Silicon Valley-based auto tech company and pioneer of V2X communications technology, today announced that two leading global automotive manufacturers and one leading OEM in Asia have committed to implementing its V2X Software Stack in new automobiles, beginning in 2020. Together, these automotive OEMs account for more than 30% of the U.S. market share and roughly 15% of the global market share for automotive sales in 2019. As a result, Savari's V2X software will be operating in roughly one in three cars domestically, and one in seven cars worldwide.

Working alongside the broad automotive and telecom ecosystems, Savari expects its V2X, cellular-compatible technology to deliver numerous benefits to drivers and communities around the world, including greatly enhanced safety, higher levels of automated driving, lowered environmental impact, traffic efficiency and more.

"With over a decade of testing in real-world installations and global demonstrations, Savari's V2X software delivers the broadest and most robust array of features of any V2X solution on the market," said Ravi Puvvala, CEO, Savari. "Our partnership with two of the largest global automotive OEMs and one of the leading OEMs in Asia will bring the power of V2X to millions of drivers worldwide."

Savari Leads the Rapidly Growing V2X Global Market

Commonly referred to as V2X, Vehicle-to-Everything communications technology enables direct, nearly instantaneous communications between vehicles, roadside infrastructure and pedestrians. According to Markets Reports World, the global V2X Communication System market is projected to reach $6.43 billion by the end of 2023, growing at a CAGR of 14.32% during 2019-2023.

Savari's V2X Software Stack is both radio technology and radio hardware vendor agnostic. It supports both DSRC and C-V2X and is integrated with the major chipset providers. Additionally, Savari's V2X Software Stack is POSIX-compliant and available on major operating systems including Linux and QNX. With a focus on smart cities V2X, Savari works closely with road and city authorities, and has developed applications that are broader in scope than many developers, encompassing infrastructure-to-phone and vehicle-to-phone applications, as well as Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I).

Over the past few years, Savari has completed multiple successful demos in the U.S and abroad. In the U.S., Savari's technology has been demonstrated in Washington D.C and Denver, CO. Savari has also completed interoperability demonstrations in Shanghai , Paris and Japan .

Savari Passes Critical RED Certification

Savari is also pleased to announce it has completed a critical certification for its C-V2X equipment: The EU Radio Emissions Directive (RED) testing for its MobiWAVE on-board-units and StreetWAVE road-side-units.

RED testing is required for deploying any radio-based device in Europe and requires passing stringent requirements for mission-mode transmission and reception. The technology must not interfere with other radio devices in both the spectral and physical vicinity or emit spurious radio transmissions.

In addition to acquiring this critical certification, Savari's software is also compliant with the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT); CEN, one of three European Standardization Organizations recognized by the European Union; and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which is responsible for developing and defining voluntary standards in Europe. Savari was the first stack provider to have joined and supported the 5GAA (5G Automotive Association), an international cross-industry organization of companies from the automotive, technology, and telecommunications industries.

Most recently, Savari's MobiWAVE on-board unit successfully completed ETSI C-V2X PlugtestsTM , performed in partnership with 5GAA. Field interoperability testing included road hazard signaling, road works warning, longitudinal collision risk warning and intersection collision risk warning.

"Having obtained all of the critical certifications for quality and safety, both domestically, in Europe and Asia, Savari is poised to revolutionize the global automotive market, connecting drivers and their vehicles to roadside infrastructure and creating a safer, more efficient driving experience for all," said Puvvala.

Savari at CES

Savari is showcasing its products and technology at CES 2020, taking place January 7-10 in Las Vegas, NV, booth #1316 Tech East, Westgate Pavilion, Smart Cities.

About Savari, Inc.

Savari seeks to make the world's roadways and vehicles automated and safer by deploying advanced wireless sensor technologies and software. Savari builds software and hardware sensor solutions for automotive car manufacturers, the automotive aftermarket and smart cities. The company is a pioneer in the development and application of V2X communications. V2X radio communications enable cooperative and coordinated driving that are crucial elements of Level 4 and Level 5 vehicle automation. The technology allows vehicles to share data with other vehicles, traffic lights and smartphones. With more than 150 man-years of V2X learning and development and 15 million-plus miles per year of public testing, Savari is a leader in V2X technology. Savari is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., and has offices in Munich, Germany, Shanghai, China and Bengaluru, India. For more information, visit savari.net.

Savari Media Contact

Lynette Mandal

Director Marcom

[email protected]

M: +1.408.623.7665

SOURCE Savari, Inc.

Related Links

http://savari.net


Six Illinois Congress members are among more than 200 who have asked the Supreme Court to consider overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that established a womans right to an abortion.

Most of the Illinois legislators were Republicans, with the exception of Congressman Dan Lipinski, who is a Democrat.

Others signing a brief Thursday that urges justices to uphold a Louisiana law that severely restricts access to abortions were Illinois Republicans Michael Bost, Rodney Davis, Adam Kinzinger, Darin LaHood and John Shimkus.

Roughly 80% of the Republicans in Congress  39 senators and 166 House members  and one other centrist House Democrat signed the amicus, or friend of the court, brief in the case of June Medical Services LLC v. Gee. They also asked the justices to consider overturning another landmark abortion ruling in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The court has exercised that judgment to overrule precedent in more than 230 cases throughout its history, the lawmakers wrote. Forty-six years after Roe was decided, it remains a radically unsettled precedent: Two of the seven justices who originally joined the majority subsequently repudiated it in whole or in part, and virtually every abortion decision since has been closely divided.

Planned Parenthood Illinois Action denounced the move.

Weve seen 26 abortion bans pass in 2019 and were already seeing people having to cross state lines or wait long times just to access basic healthcare, said Brigid Leahy, senior director of public policy for the group. If the Supreme Court overturns or severely restricts access to abortion, it could pave the way for states to effectively ban abortion for over 25 million people of reproductive age.

The court is expected to hear the June Medical case this spring, and a ruling is likely in June. At issue is a 2014 Louisiana law, passed but never enacted, that requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. Only one doctor in Louisiana has been able to meet the requirement, challengers of the law say, and they argue that its sole purpose is to make access to abortion more difficult. Proponents contend the law is needed to ensure the health and the safety of women seeking abortions.

The case is certain to inject the divisive politics of abortion into the 2020 presidential race. President Donald Trump ran and won in 2016 partly on a promise to nominate Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe, and June Medical is the courts first case on abortion since Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both appointed by Trump, joined the court.

The sheer number of those signing the brief suggests the importance that Republicans place on restricting abortion rights and telegraphing to their core supporters that they are serious about doing so. The signers include the top three House Republicans  Reps. Kevin McCarthy of California, Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Liz Cheney of Wyoming  and the No. 2 Senate Republican, John Thune of South Dakota.

But Sen. Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, did not sign. Nor did several Republicans facing challenging reelection contests in politically competitive states, including Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Martha McSally of Arizona. The two Democrats who signed, Reps. Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Lipinski, are both from the partys conservative wing. Peterson broke with Democrats last month in voting against impeaching Trump, and Lipinskis stance against abortion rights has prompted internal strife within the party.

The brief was drafted by Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion rights group. Katie Glenn, a lawyer for the organization, said that when the court took the case, members of Congress wanted to weigh in. But, she said, they are aware that overturning Roe would be a huge leap, even for a court that is moving to the right.

No one is going into this case with an expectation that Roe v. Wade will be overturned, Glenn said. However, the court has the opportunity to reconsider the precedent that has gotten us to where were at, and thats all that the members of Congress were seeking to point out, that it is the courts prerogative to assess the jurisprudence that got us here.

Democratic lawmakers have filed their own amicus brief calling for the Louisiana law to be struck down. Stephanie Schriock, the president of Emilys List, a group that works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, assailed the Republican brief in a statement.

Reproductive rights and the ability to make our own health care decisions are fundamental to the freedoms we have under the Constitution, she said. Unfortunately, this amicus brief proves that not only is the threat to those rights very real, but it is at a critical tipping point where the minority is ready to strip our freedom away against the majoritys wishes.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Monday endorsed Texas House candidate Eliz Markowitz, becoming the latest presidential hopeful to get involved in a pivotal January Fort Bend County special election.

The former vice presidents endorsement follows presidential candidate Michael Bloombergs visit to the district late last month, when he canvassed door to door with Markowitz. Former presidential candidate Beto ORourke also campaigned with Markowitz before he ended his White House bid, and has remained active in the district since then.

The state House seat, left vacant since Republican John Zerwas retired in late September, has captured the attention of national and state Democrats, who view the Fort Bend district as a key pickup opportunity amid their broader effort to gain control of the Texas House.

In the first round of the special election, Markowitz  the lone Democratic candidate  finished first but did not secure a majority of the votes. She tallied 39 percent, while Republican Gary Gates received 28 percent. The runoff between Markowitz and Gates is set for Jan. 28.

In a statement, Biden cited Markowitzs background as an educator and her support for access to health care and quality public education.

Im from a family of teachers and I know the real deal: Not only is Eliz an educator and activist  shes the kind of fighter who will bring heart and smarts to the statehouse and to communities across Texas and at home in Fort Bend County, Biden said.

Markowitz cast Bidens endorsement as a sign of momentum and said his support is truly humbling. A recent internal poll showed Markowitz and Gates in a dead heat, according to Markowitzs campaign.

Gates, a businessman, has been endorsed by Gov. Greg Abbott, U.S. Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, and Republican Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls, among other local Republicans.

Though Democrats are optimistic about flipping the district, Republicans have noted that the six GOP candidates combined for 61 percent of the vote in the first round. Zerwas won re-election by 8 percentage points in 2018, while Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz edged ORourke by 3 points in the district.

Since ending his presidential campaign, ORourke has continued to campaign for Markowitz, visiting the district last month to block walk with her shortly before he announced the launch of a political action committee aimed at electing Democrats in battleground state House races.

Bloomberg, meanwhile, has ramped up his campaign operations in Texas, with his visit to the Houston area last month marking his second trip to the state since he launched his campaign in late November. A Dec. 11 CNN poll showed Biden leading the Democratic field in Texas with 35 percent, followed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders with 15 percent. Bloomberg registered 5 percent support in the poll.
Quentin Tarantino has finally taken one of the top prizes at the Golden Globes.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood won the Golden Globe on Sunday for Best Motion Picture  Musical or Comedy, becoming the first film written and directed by Tarantino to win either one of the two top best picture awards at the show.

Previously, Tarantino won screenplay Golden Globes for writing Django Unchained and Pulp Fiction, and he won for writing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on Sunday night. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has also honored actors from his films, including with two wins for Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, as well as Brad Pitt earlier on Sunday's broadcast.

Now, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is headed to the Academy Awards, where it looks to be in a tight Best Picture race with Martin Scorsese's The Irishman. Like at the Golden Globes, Tarantino has received Oscars for his screenplays, but one of his films has never won Best Picture.

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New Delhi: India has strongly reacted to the stone pelting at Nankana Sahib Gurdwara in Pakistan and murder of a Sikh youth in Peshawar. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) was quick to react on Sunday after reports emerged of the murder of Ravinder Singh, brother of journalist Harmeet Singh in Peshawar. "Strongly" condemning the "targeted killing of minority Sikh community", MEA asked Islamabad to stop "prevaricating and take immediate action to apprehend and give exemplary punishment to the perpetrators of these heinous acts."

Ravinder, 25, got married a few days ago and was coming to Peshawar from Shangla. This was the second statement by India on the situation of Sikhs in Pakistan. On Friday, when stone-pelting happened in front of Nankana Sahib Gurdwara, the birthplace of Guru Nanak, India expressing its "concern", condemned the "wanton acts of destruction and desecration of the holy place".

Live TV

New Delhi called up Islamabad to take "immediate steps to ensure the safety, security, and welfare of the members of the Sikh community" and take "strong action" against miscreants who desecrated the Gurdwara. Meanwhile, the Sikh community in Delhi have also strongly protested against the stone pelting at Nankana Sahib. Saturday saw a large protest by Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee and Akali Dal near the Pakistani high commission in Delhi's diplomatic enclave.

Reactions have been coming from the Sikh community across the world. Lone Sikh MP of Afghan parliament Narendra Singh Khalsa raised Nankana Sahib Gurdwara violence in the Afghan Parliament on Saturday morning. While speaking in Afghan Parliament, he urged the Afghanistan government to raise the matter with Pakistan government and take action against those responsible for pelting stone at the holy shrine. Preet Kaur Gill, the first female British Sikh MP, tweeted, saying, "This is a worrying concern why is the Sikh community being attacked in Pakistan?" and tagged Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Nearly a decade after the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, researchers from the University of Georgia have found that wildlife populations are abundant in areas void of human life.

The camera study, published in the Journal of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, reports that over 267,000 wildlife photos recorded more than 20 species, including wild boar, Japanese hare, macaques, pheasant, fox and the raccoon dog--a relative of the fox--in various areas of the landscape.

UGA wildlife biologist James Beasley said speculation and questions have come from both the scientific community and the general public about the status of wildlife years after a nuclear accident like those in Chernobyl and Fukushima.

This recent study, in addition to the team's research in Chernobyl, provides answers to the questions.

"Our results represent the first evidence that numerous species of wildlife are now abundant throughout the Fukushima Evacuation Zone, despite the presence of radiological contamination," said Beasley, associate professor at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources.

Species that are often in conflict with humans, particularly wild boar, were predominantly captured on camera in human-evacuated areas or zones, according to Beasley.

"This suggests these species have increased in abundance following the evacuation of people."

The team, which included Thomas Hinton, professor at the Institute of Environmental Radioactivity at Fukushima University, identified three zones for the research.

Photographic data was gathered from 106 camera sites from three zones: humans excluded due to the highest level of contamination; humans restricted due to an intermediate level of contamination; and humans inhabited, an area where people have been allowed to remain due to "background" or very low levels of radiation found in the environment.

The researchers based their designations on zones previously established by the Japanese government after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident.

For 120 days, cameras captured over 46,000 images of wild boar. Over 26,000 of those images were taken in the uninhabited area, compared to approximately 13,000 in the restricted and 7,000 in the inhabited zones.

Other species seen in higher numbers in the uninhabited or restricted zones included raccoons, Japanese marten and Japanese macaque or monkeys.

Anticipating questions about physiological condition of the wildlife, Hinton said their results are not an assessment of an animal's health.

"This research makes an important contribution because it examines radiological impacts to populations of wildlife, whereas most previous studies have looked for effects to individual animals," said Hinton.

The uninhabited zone served as the control zone for the research.

The scientists said although there is no previous data on wildlife populations in the evacuated areas, the close proximity and similar landscape of the human-inhabited zone made the area the ideal control for the study.

The team evaluated the impact of other variables: distance to road, time of activity as captured by the cameras' date-time stamps, vegetation type and elevation.

"The terrain varies from mountainous to coastal habitats, and we know these habitats support different types of species. To account for these factors, we incorporated habitat and landscape attributes such as elevation into our analysis," Beasley said.

"Based on these analyses, our results show that level of human activity, elevation and habitat type were the primary factors influencing the abundance of the species evaluated, rather than radiation levels."

The study's results indicate the activity pattern of most species aligned with their well-known history or behavior patterns. Raccoons, who are nocturnal, were more active during the night, while pheasants, which are diurnal animals, were more active during the day. However, wild boar inside the uninhabited area were more active during the day than boar in human-inhabited areas, suggesting they may be modifying their behavior in the absence of humans.

One exception to these patterns was the Japanese serow, a goat-like mammal. Normally far-removed from humans, they were most frequently seen on the camera footage in rural human-inhabited upland areas. The researchers suggest this might be a behavioral adjustment to avoid the rapidly growing boar population in the evacuated zone.

###

The free-roaming menagerie in Fukushima also included the red fox, masked palm civet, weasel, sika deer and black bear. The full list of wildlife captured on camera and additional details on the study can be found at https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/fee.2149

Additional authors on this study include Phillip Lyons, University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, Aiken, South Carolina, and UGA's Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, Athens, Georgia; Kei Okuda and Thomas Hinton, Institute of Environmental Radioactivity, Fukushima University, Fukushima, Japan; and Mathew Hamilton, SREL, Aiken, South Carolina.
While Air India's net loss in 2018-19 was around Rs 8,556 crore, its current total debt is around Rs 80,000 crore.

New Delhi: Air India chief Ashwani Lohani on Saturday said that "rumours" of the disinvestment-bound airline's shutdown are "all baseless", weeks after he told the Civil Aviation Ministry that the carrier's financial situation was "grossly untenable" for sustaining operations.

"Rumours regarding Air India shutting down or closing operations are all baseless. Air India would continue to fly and also expand and there should be no cause for concern whatsoever to travellers, corporates or agents. Air India the national carrier is still the biggest airline of India," the Air India Chairman and Managing Director tweeted.

In a letter to the ministry last month, he had said, "It also needs appreciation that the overall financial situation is grossly untenable and the airline may not be able to sustain physical operations in the absence of immediate government intervention and support that we have been repeatedly requesting for in the recent past."

Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri had clarified on 31 December that the national carrier, which is incurring a loss of Rs 20-26 crore daily, will keep on running till it is privatised.

While Air India's net loss in 2018-19 was around Rs 8,556 crore, its current total debt is around Rs 80,000 crore.

"We made an attempt two years ago. That attempt proved to be less than successful. We have learnt from that experience. It is our endeavour now that we will be issuing an expression of interest in the coming few weeks. Hopefully, sooner than later," Puri had said.

In 2018, the government had proposed to offload 76 percent equity share capital of the national carrier as well as transfer the management control to private players.

However, the offer failed to attract any bidder when the deadline for initial bids closed on 31 May 2018. Therefore, the Centre re-started the disinvestment process this year.

The Centre plans to divest its entire stake in Air India this time so as to make it attractive for private entities.

At a meeting with some 13 Air India unions in Delhi on Thursday, Puri had said that the government was trying to address the concerns of the employees regarding issues such as job protection post-privatisation.
[January 06, 2020] Huawei Technologies USA Executive Tim Danks to Speak at 2020 Consumer Electronics Show

PLANO, Texas, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Huawei Technologies USA Vice President of Risk Management and Partner Relations, Tim Danks, will speak on two industry panels at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2020). Held in Las Vegas from Jan. 6-10, CES is the annual trade show held by the Consumer Technology Association and is known as the largest consumer trade show of the year. The CES panel, "The Global Economic Impact of AI," will take place on Monday, Jan. 6 at 10:15 a.m. PT in the North Hall (N256) of the Las Vegas Convention Center. During the session, Danks will discuss how artificial intelligence could potentially impact the world economy, and how soon changes might take place. He will be joined on the panel by Ritika Gunnar, VP of Data and AI Expert Labs and Learning at IBM, and Edward Hsu, Senior Adviser, Disruptive Technologies at World Bank. The panel will be moderated by Jonathan Swartz, Senior Writer for MarketWatch. "Technology is advancing more rapidly than ever, and artificial intelligence is our generation's transformational technology that will be used in almost every sector of the global economy," Danks said. "I'm excited to share some of Huawei's experiences and dive deeper into the promising future of AI at CES." Huawei continues to invest heavily in AI research, with an emphasis on developing the capabilities for more efficient, secure, and automated machine learning solutions. Huawei is focused on using AI to create value: business value, industry value, and societal value. In 2019, the company announced Ascend family of AI chips will power a full range of AI scenarios for customers and partners. They will provide AI capabilities for public and private clouds, the industrial Internet of Things and consumer devices. These chips are part of a full-stack portfolio that includes an automated development toolkit, a unified training framework, ad a set of powerful application enablement tools.



In addition, Danks will be participating in a fireside chat, hosted by Silicon Dragon. The session, "Fireside Chats: Global Tech Titans," will take place on Tuesday, Jan. 7 at 5 p.m. PT in the Turnberry Towers, and also feature Charles Zhang, GM, Global Business Unit at Baidu and Tim Zanni, Partner, Global & US Technology Sector Lead at KPMG, with moderator Rebecca Fannin, author of Tech Titans of China. Huawei will also be at booth #10939 in the Tech East section of the Las Vegas Convention Center, located in Central Hall.

For more information on CES 2020, visit https://www.ces.tech/. About Huawei

Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. With integrated solutions across four key domains  telecom networks, IT, smart devices, and cloud services  we are committed to bringing digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. Huawei's end-to-end portfolio of products, solutions and services are both competitive and secure. Through open collaboration with ecosystem partners, we create lasting value for our customers, working to empower people, enrich home life, and inspire innovation in organizations of all shapes and sizes. At Huawei, innovation focuses on customer needs. We invest heavily in basic research, concentrating on technological breakthroughs that drive the world forward. We have more than 188,000 employees, and we operate in more than 170 countries and regions. Founded in 1987, Huawei is a private company fully owned by its employees. For more information, please visit Huawei online at www.huawei.com or follow us on:

http://www.linkedin.com/company/Huawei

http://www.twitter.com/Huawei

http://www.facebook.com/Huawei

http://www.youtube.com/Huawei Press contact: Kimberlee Bradshaw Archibald / [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/huawei-technologies-usa-executive-tim-danks-to-speak-at-2020-consumer-electronics-show-300981654.html SOURCE Huawei

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Rain and cooler temperatures have brought welcome relief to Australian communities and fire crews grappling with raging wildfires, as celebrities used the Golden Globes as a platform to voice their support.

But authorities warn the danger is not over yet as temperatures are expected to rise again later in the week and the rain would not be enough to put out the largest blazes by then.

Two people have also been reported missing in NSW, confirmed state premier Gladys Berejiklian.

Fire crews are also racing against the clock to complete strategic burns in preparation for deteriorating conditions.

Shane Fitzsimmons, Commissioner of the New South Wales (NSW) Rural Fire Service (RFS), said: With the more benign weather conditions it present some wonderful relief for everybody, the firefighters, the emergency services personnel, but also the communities affected by these fires.

Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A firefighter hosing down trees and flying embers in an effort to secure nearby houses from bushfires near the town of Nowra in the state of New South Wales on 31 December 2019 AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Smoke billows from a huge bushfire that has torched over 200,000 acres of land in East Gipplsand, Victoria on 2 January EPA Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Residents look on as flames tear through bushland in Lake Tabouriee, Australia on 4 January on 4 January Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Boats are pulled ashore as smoke and wildfires rage behind Lake Conjola on 2 January Robert Oerlemans via AP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A firefighting helicopter tackles a bushfire in East Gippsland, Victoria on 31 December EPA Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A firefighter gives water to a parched koala in Cudlee Creek, South Australia AP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Firefighters tackle a blaze as it tears through a farm in New South Wales on 21 December AP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures The sky is turned red over East Gippsland as fires continue to rage through Australian bushland on 4 January Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A kangaroo near bushfires in Nowra AFP/Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures An aerial view of a bushfire near Bairnsdale State Government of Victoria/EPA Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Firefighters work to tackle a blaze on the outskirts of Sydney on 31 December 2019 Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A firefighting helicopter dumps water on a bushfire on the outskirts of the town of Bargo near Sydney Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Children play at the showgrounds in the southern New South Wales town of Bega where they are camping after being evacuated from nearby sites affected by bushfires AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A satellite image of the Batemans Bay showing smoke and fire from wild bushfires European Union, Copernicus Sentinel Data via REUTERS Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures The afternoon sky glows red from bushfires in Nowra AFP/Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Burning embers cover the ground as firefighters battle against bushfires around the town of Nowra AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures The sky glows red as bushfires continue to rage in Mallacoota, Victoria Jonty Smith via Reuters Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures The remains of burnt out buildings along a main street in the New South Wales town of Cobargo AFP/Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Firefighters try to protect homes around Charmhaven, New South Wales NSW Rural Fire Service/AP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Wildfires rage under plumes of smoke in Bairnsdale Glen Morey via AP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Business owners stand in front of their shop which was destroyed by a bushfire in Cobargo EPA Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A helicopter dumping water on a fire in Victoria's East Gippsland region Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning/AFP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Nowra AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Think smoke from bushfires fills the air in eastern Gippsland Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures "Carmelised" snow caused by dust from Australian bushfires is seen near Franz Josef glacier in the Westland Tai Poutini National Park, New Zealand Reuters Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Firefighters hose down trees as they battle against bushfires around the town of Nowra AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Smoke billowing from a fire burning at East Gippsland, Victoria. More than 800,000 hectares have been burnt in East Gippsland EPA/DELWP Gippsland Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Smoke billowing from a fire burning at East Gippsland EPA/DELWP Gippsland Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures LIFES.A.BREEZE via Reuters Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Smoke and wildfire rage behind Lake Conjola Robert Oerlemans via AP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A house and van are seen destroyed after bushfires ravaged the town of Bilpin, west of Sydney AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A helicopter fighting a bushfire near Bairnsdale in Victoria's East Gippsland region State Government of Victoria/AFP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Fire and Rescue personal run to move their truck as a bushfire burns next to a major road and homes on the outskirts of the town of Bilpin Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Amy, left, and Ben Spencer sit at the showgrounds in the southern New South Wales town of Bega where they are camping after being evacuated from nearby sites affected by bushfires AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A firefighter sprays foam retardant on a back burn ahead of a fire front in the New South Wales town of Jerrawangala AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Two bushfires approach a home located on the outskirts of the town of Bargo Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Property damaged by the East Gippsland fires in Sarsfield, Victoria EPA Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Nowra AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Property under threat from the East Gippsland fires in Sarsfield EPA Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures The main street of the New South Wales town of Bombala is pictured shrouded in smoke from nearby bushfires AFP via Getty

But it also presents some real challenges when it comes to implementing tactical and strategic back-burns and other techniques to try and bring these fires under control.

At the Golden Globes on Sunday, a number of Hollywood stars used their speeches to highlight the bushfire crisis, which started early this summer.

Recommended Russell Crowe sends Golden Globes acceptance speech from bushfires

Russell Crowe won best actor in a limited series or motion picture made for TV as Roger Ailes in the Loudest Voice, but was absent from the ceremony because he was with his family in NSW preparing for the latest blazes.

Jennifer Aniston, who was presenting the award, read out Mr Crowes acceptance speech on his behalf.

Make no mistake the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate-change based, he said. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is.

Cate Blanchett also used the stage to draw attention to the climate disaster and praise volunteer firefighters who have been working tirelessly to stamp out the fires.

Ms Blanchett said: There are a lot of Australians in the room tonight. I know we are all very grateful for the call-outs to our fellow compatriots who are suffering under the bushfires, so thank you.

I wanted to do a special call-out to the volunteer firefighters who have been at the centre of battling the climate disaster that is facing Australia.

And of course, when one country faces a climate disaster, we all face a climate disaster, so were in it together. Thank you very much.

Other Australian celebrities including Margot Robbie and Nicole Kidman used social media to encourage people to donate to Australian firefighters before the ceremony.

Ms Kidman said: Our family is safe, but obviously many families have been put under enormous stress and duress right now. And were so deeply upset and worried.

Her husband, Keith Urban, added: Theres a lot of people who have lost so much down there already and theres more to come, too. Were not out of the woods; this is just really the beginning of summer.

But people are doing amazing work down there. We want to thank everyone whos been working so hard.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who won two awards for Fleabag, told reporters backstage she will auction off the suit she wore to the ceremony and donate the proceeds to Australian wildfire relief, reported Variety.

Wildfires in the summer are a natural phenomenon, and Australians know to expect them. But they began unexpectedly early this year, fuelled by drought and the countrys hottest and driest year on record.

Scientists say theres no doubt man-made global warming has played a major role in feeding the fires, along with factors like very dry vegetation and trees, and strong winds.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on Saturday he would dispatch 3,000 army, navy, and air force reservists to the frontlines of the fire and committed A$10 million (10.6 million) to lease firefighting aircraft from overseas.

But the catastrophe has evolved into a public relations disaster for him as Australians criticise him for downplaying the need for the government to address climate change.
Calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi India's "Hindu Jinnah", former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi on Monday accused him of following the "two-nation theory" of the Pakistan founder to divide the nation on the basis of religion.

The Congress veteran leader also decried Sunday night attack on JNU students, saying it was reflective of the BJP's "policy of repression that would bring further misfortune" for the country.

The massive protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the proposed pan-India NRC have made it clear that Indians do not want the kind of Hindutva the BJP and the RSS seek to bring into the country, he said.

"The prime minister alleges that we (the Congress) are talking the language of Pakistan, but it is he who has reduced himself to the level of the neighbouring country. He is following (Muhammad Ali) Jinnah's two-nation theory (to divide the country) on the basis of religion and has emerged as India's Hindu Jinnah," Gogoi said, launching a stinging attack on Modi.

"We are Hindus but we don't want our country to become a Hindu Rashtra. The majority of people who are protesting, and even those who have been killed, are Hindus. They do not want the Hindutva the BJP and RSS are propagating," he told a press conference.

He said violence of the kind that was seen at JNU on Sunday night posed a threat to the country's unity and integrity.

The 3-time former chief minister of Assam said the anti-CAA protests began in the state and gathered steam there, but it spread across the country because of the BJP's "policy of repression".

Calling the Modi government "arrogant", the Congress leader claimed it would go to any extent to enforce the new citizenship law.

Referring to the killing of five protesters in police action during the anti-CAA stir in Assam, Gogoi said the BJP governments at the Centre and in the state were still blaming the Congress and the Left for the violence.

"Are we so powerful that we can instigate AASU, AJYCP, KMSS and all other regional organisations to come out on the streets to protest? There is no conspiracy. The BJP has no political knowledge and is not interested in listening to the voice of the people," Gogoi said.

The BJP, he asserted, will not be able to win even 25 of Assam's 126 seats if assembly elections were to be held immediately. Such was the enormity of public anger, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Veteran businessman Michael Spencer has been made chairman of the Centre For Policy Studies

City tycoon Michael Spencer has been made chairman of the Centre For Policy Studies.

The veteran businessman will take over at the think-tank from ad mogul Lord Saatchi.

Spencer, 64, founded financial services firm ICAP, which was at one stage the world's biggest inter-dealer broker.

When the company  later renamed NEX Group  was sold to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for nearly 4billion in 2018, Spencer's stake netted him 650million.

The father of three is also a Conservative Party donor and was at one stage its treasurer.

His appointment at the right-leaning Centre For Policy Studies  which was founded in 1974 by Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph  continues the think-tank's close-knit relationship with the Tories.
[January 06, 2020] InterGlobix Magazine enters into Media Partnership for PTC's Annual Conference HERNDON, Va., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- InterGlobix LLC, a global consulting company focused on the convergence of data centers, subsea and terrestrial fiber, and owner of InterGlobix Magazine, today announced that it has executed a Media Partnership with Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) in support of PTC's Annual Conference, PTC'20: Vision 2020 and Beyond. PTC's Annual Conference is a strategic springboard for the global communications industry, providing all attendees with a three-day platform to focus on planning, networking, and discovering what lies ahead for the ICT industry. PTC's Annual Conference will take place from 19-22 January 2020 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort in Honolulu, Hawaii. InterGlobix President and IEIC Executive Director, Vinay Nagpal will be taking part in two panel discussions at PTC'20: - Architectural Inter-Relationship of Data Centers and Networks

Sunday, January 19th, 15:30  16:45, MPCC South Pacific 1 - Data Centers and Networks on the (Cutting Edge)

Wednesday, January 22nd, 09:00  10:15, MPCC South Pacific 2 As part of the Media Partnership, InterGlobix Magazine will be available for PTC'20 attendees in Hawaii. The latest edition of the magazine features an exclusive interview of Sharon Nakama, CEO of PTC, an editorial coverage on Hawaii as a destination and a must-read Events section that also puts spotlight on the PTC reception held in Washington DC. InterGlobix Magazine is industry's one-of-its-kind premier publication focused on Data Centers, Connectivity and Internet Infrastructure. The premier publication has rapidly become a favorite of various industry professionals globally across the datacenter and connectivity industry. "We are pleased to have InterGlobix Magazine as a supporting media organization for our upcoming Annual Conference, PTC'20: Vision 2020 and Beyond," said Sharon Nakama, CEO of PTC. "The PTC Members and industry leaders featured in the publication since its inception is impressive. We look forward to their participation at PTC'20." "PTC is a globally recognized organization promoting the advancement of information and communication technologies (ICT), and Sharon is a well-accomplished industry leader and a role model for many. I am very excited about our partnership with PTC, and look forward to collaborating together," said Jasmine Bedi, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of InterGlobix Magazine. ABOUT INTERGLOBIX MAGAZINE

InterGlobix Magazine is industry's premier datacenter and connectivity reference guide. It recognizes the key shapers behind this relatively young industry and delves deep into the lifestyle of the most successful industry personalities. It features behind-the-scenes stories at datacenter construction sites, looks into the emerging subsea ports, latest terrestrial and mobile industry innovations and keeps you in the know. Each feature-rich issue offers a platform to our partners and clients to showcase their exclusive products and services. InterGlobix Magazine is owned by InterGlobix LLC, a global consulting company focused on the convergence of Data Centers, Subsea and Terrestrial Fiber. For more information, please visit www.interglobixmagazine.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/interglobix-magazine-enters-into-media-partnership-for-ptcs-annual-conference-300981467.html SOURCE InterGlobix LLC

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[January 06, 2020] D.A. Davidson & Co. Serves as Exclusive Financial Advisor to Steripod Toothbrush Accessory Brand

D.A. Davidson & Co. announced today that it has served as exclusive financial advisor to Steripod, a leading toothbrush accessory brand, in its sale to Ranir, LLC, a subsidiary of Perrigo and a leading global manufacturer of store brand and value brand oral care products. Developed by doctors and independently tested for efficacy at an accredited lab, Steripod is a clip-on protector that fits any standard or electronic toothbrush. Each Steripod contains thymol - found in many mouthwashes and oral antiseptics - and a patented design to help keep your toothbrush fresh and clean for up to three months. "We were pleased to work with Steripod on this transaction and believe the Steripod oral care products will be a great addition to Ranir's existing product portfolio," said Dan Friedman, Director of Investment Banking at D.A. Davidson. "The D.A. Davidson Consumer Investment Banking Team was instrumental in enabling us to achieve an optimal outcome in this transaction," said Paul Krok, Founder and CEO of Steripod. "Their industry knowledge, transaction expertise, and commitment to our success has resulted in us finding the right partner to continue the growth of the Steripod brand in the oral care market." Ranir, a Perrigo company, is a leading global manufacturer of store brand private label consumer oral care products, including power and manual toothbrushes, teth whiteners, dental floss, flossers and interdental brushes. Founded in 1979, Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Ranir serves retail customers globally and is committed to delivering affordable, healthy smiles in millions of households every day. Its products, which include some of the world's largest oral care store brands, can be found at major retailers in more than 50 countries. The consumer and customer insight driven research and development-focused company also owns, manufactures and markets the Plackers and REMBRANDT brands and proudly employs more than 650 associates worldwide.



D.A. Davidson's investment banking division is a leading full-service investment bank that offers comprehensive financial advisory and capital markets expertise. The group has extensive transaction experience serving middle market clients worldwide across five industry verticals: consumer, diversified industrials, financial institutions, real estate and technology. Together with its European strategic partner, MCF Corporate Finance, D.A. Davidson originates and executes transatlantic M&A transactions under the common brand of D.A. Davidson MCF International.

About D.A. Davidson Companies D.A. Davidson Companies is an employee-owned financial services firm offering a range of financial services and advice to individuals, corporations, institutions and municipalities nationwide. Founded in 1935 and headquartered in Montana, with corporate offices in Denver, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle, the company has approximately 1,350 employees and offices in 25 states. Subsidiaries include: D.A. Davidson & Co., the largest full-service investment firm headquartered in the Northwest, providing wealth management, investment banking, equity and fixed income capital markets services and advice; Davidson Investment Advisors, a professional asset management firm; D.A. Davidson Trust Company, a trust and wealth management company; and Davidson Fixed Income Management, a registered investment adviser providing fixed income portfolio and advisory services. For more information, visit dadavidson.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106006012/en/

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Incoming is Robert Kennedy (pictured), who makes the switch from Aviva Ireland to take on the position of chief executive officer, Ireland. He will join in March 2020, subject to standard regulatory approval. Kennedy was previously the head of sales and distribution at Aviva Ireland and led the development of its broker business for six years, having previously enjoyed stints with RSA and Aon.

I am in the enviable position of having a great team already in place and I look forward to working with the team to realise Aston Larks ambition for Ireland through a combination of organic growth and acquiring like-minded brokers, he said.

Also incoming is Mark Nolan, making the switch from his role as financial controller at AA Ireland to take the chief financial officer role, also from March onwards. Nolan has spent time at the likes of Deloitte, Quotedevil Ltd and Pembroke Insurances.

Both Kennedy and Nolan will now join the boards at Robertson Low and Wright Insurance Brokers, with Robertson Lows current MD Andy Low becoming executive chairman, while Wright Insurance Brokers founders Tony and Breda Wright will remain on that companys board.

I look forward to welcoming Robert and Mark to the team to help drive our ambition for growth, said group CEO Peter Blanc. They will both bring their extensive leadership experience to bear as we look to fulfil our potential in Ireland. This is an important stage in Aston Larks development plans to create the leading quality independent insurance broking business in Ireland.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 6) - The Supreme Court has denied with finality the petition to legalize same-sex marriage in the country, according to a resolution released Monday.

The resolution dated Dec. 10 said the motion for reconsideration has no substantial arguments that would warrant the reversal of the original decision.

No further pleadings or motions will be entertained, said the resolution. Let entry of judgement be made immediately.

Laywer Jesus Falcis in 2015 filed a petition before the court to declare the Articles 1 and 2 of the Family Code unconstitutional. Those provisions only limit marriage between a man and a woman.

The lawyer also wanted to nullify Articles 46(4) and 55 (6) of the Family Code, which include homosexuality or lesbianism as legal grounds for annulment and legal separation.

The Supreme Court earlier said it recognized the history of discrimination and marginalization against members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex community, but it junked the petition for "lack of standing" and for "failing to raise an actual, justiciable controversy."

In Asia, same-sex marriage has been legalized only in Taiwan so far.
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Vietnamese property portal batdongsan.com.vn

Singaporean-based real estate technology company PropertyGuru Group in 2018 injected an investment of $9 million into Vietnamese property portal batdongsan.com.vn. The Singaporean company has since brought more regional business opportunities to the local site as well as providing technological support. Meanwhile, Batdongsan gets easier access to the database of potential buyers in PropertyGurus other markets in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Jeremy Williams, CEO at PropertyGuru Group, said that Vietnam has been hailed as one of the best destinations in Southeast Asia for property investment, adding that the local real estate market currently boasts robust growth.

Because of this, PropertyGuru decided to invest in this market, hoping to bring regional experience to local property seekers and to help the local market reap the benefits from its integration into the ASEAN region, said Williams.

Since then, many other deals have been agreed between technology companies in the countrys real estate market and financial funds.

Genesia Ventures of Japan, South Koreas Access Venture, and Mynavi Corporation, also of Japan, have poured investment into homedy.com  a search engine website for property in Vietnam.

Meanwhile the Singapore real estate broker PropNex has signed a franchise agreement with PropNex Realty Vietnam to increase its presence in Vietnam.

PropNex CEO Ismail Gafoor had highlighted the potential of the Vietnamese real estate market. With a growing economy and positive predictions about the real estate market, we believe Vietnam is an important place for us to establish a brand, said Gafoor.

Other proptech startups providing brokerage services include Propzy, a full-stack real estate platform that originates and facilitates property sale and leasing transactions, and Rever, a tech-enabled real estate brokerage company.

RealStake, which was established in Singapore in 2018 and now has subsidiaries in Thailand and Vietnam, provides a platform that allows users to easily invest in fractional ownership of real estate. Luxstay, a Vietnamese startup founded in 2016, meanwhile provides an online platform that connects homeowners looking for short-term rentals with tourists or business travellers.

Besides proptech companies, the ecosystem also includes accelerators and community builders that more broadly serve Vietnamese startups.

They include startup.vn, Zone Startups Vietnam, Topic Founder Institute, and Vietnam Silicon Valley, as well as Saigon Innovation Hub and renowned accelerator and early-stage venture fund 500 Startups Vietnam.

Involved in proptech

Besides technology companies, real estate developers are racing to apply high-tech in their real estate projects in Vietnam.

Proptech is highlighted in the built environment with large local examples like BRG Group and Japans Sumitomo pumping $4.2 billion into the creation of a smart city in Hanoi.

Smart cities and their many permutations cover a range of measures from fully-meshed neighbourhoods understanding pedestrian and public space movement, through to the recent roll-out by Siemens for the trial of a Hanoi traffic management system.

Sunshine Group, another local property developer, has built a series of smart homes and a smart living ecosystem by applying integrated technology into their products. This tech includes the Sunshine Cab app, similar to the Grab system, to serve their residents, a Smart Home App, and Sunshine Mart, which offers cashless payments through the Sunshine online service. The overall aim is to provide homeowners an intelligent and high-tech urban complex that focuses on transportation, shopping, and relaxation services.

Vingroup, the biggest local real estate developer in Vietnam, upgraded its 280-ha large project into a dynamic smart township named Vinhomes Smart City in the west of Hanoi recently.

The project uses AI technology with facial recognition features and a single command centre to provide a full suite of information services for occupants, from air quality monitoring to environmental pollution warnings.

It is expected that for future real estate developments, staying smart will not just be a trend but also a must-have. The adoption of new technology platforms generates new and more easily-accessible market data, which is a key for overall real estate transparency in Vietnam.

Mega-money market

With 64 million internet users, accounting for 66 per cent of the countrys population, Vietnam has quickly adopted modern technology and promptly caught up with the rest of the world.

The proptech market in Vietnam is estimated at $500 million, and according to ESP Foundation, a Singapore-based fund which is pouring investment into startups in Vietnam, online advertising in the real estate industry (including banners) has reached $100 million.

FinREI Investments JSC  a fintech startup focusing on real estate  released that as of May 2019, more than 55 proptech companies were active in Vietnam. About 80 per cent of players in the market are foreign startups or those funded by overseas investors.

In the Vietnamese proptech ecosystem, the most notable segments of proptech are related to the residential market in tech-enabled brokerage, leasing and renting, and property management.

The second-most active proptech segment is in coworking, which is now strongly growing in line with the booming office market in Vietnam. Notable companies and brands include Dreamplex, Toong, and Cogo.

Another developed segment within the Vietnamese proptech industry is listing and marketplaces. Platforms like Batdongsan and MuaBanNhaDat are making it easier for users to list their properties either for sale or for rent.

According to Jeriel Tan, marketing manager at technode.com, these proptech segments do not solely serve consumers in the near term, but given the fast-changing natural and built environment, also affect long-term government planning, sustainability, and climate change.

Furthermore, proptech companies in Vietnam have started to collaborate with fintech players.

We expect the residential sector, given the level of investment and consumer engagement, to be the first to connect proptech and fintech, said Tan.

Listing real estate websites have also announced collaborations with e-wallet providers for easier collection of service fees from their users.
One evening in October 1969, Elizabeth Kendall went to a bar in Seattle with her friend Angie. Kendall had just received a parking ticket, which had left her  a divorced mother of one  upset. In a counter-intuitive move, Angies roommates boyfriend had suggested she go out to celebrate the ticket, rather than lament it.

At the Sandpaper Tavern, two men invited Kendall to dance. One of them was a tall, sandy-haired stranger, while the other turned out to be a creep. Luckily for Kendall  she thought  the sandy-haired man was still there, providing her with the perfect escape.

She went back to his table, chatted with him more, and soon marvelled at their incredible chemistry. As I watched his handsome face while he went on about places to go and things to see, I was already planning the wedding and naming the kids, she would later write in her memoir. He was telling me that he missed having a kitchen because he loved to cook. Perfect. My prince.

That prince was Robert Theodore Bundy. Years later, Bundy, known to Kendall and to the public as Ted, would be revealed as one of Americas most infamous serial murderers, having killed at least 30 women and girls across seven states.

Kendall was in a relationship with Bundy for six years during his crime spree  though she quickly suspected that her boyfriend might be connected to the string of murders unfolding around them. Twice, she called the police on him. Twice, the authorities told her she had nothing to worry about. So she kept on loving him, letting him into her life as well as that of her daughter Molly, whom he partly raised.

Books of the decade Show all 40 1 /40 Books of the decade Books of the decade Toni Morrison  God Help the Child (2015) Toni Morrison died in August; her final novel, 2015s God Help the Child, displays her award-winning powers of elegant prose and imagination. Children are mistreated and prejudice abounds in this disturbing modern fairy tale set around the enigmatic character of Bride, who makes a mistake that has devastating consequences. (MC) Books of the decade Ian McEwan  Solar (2010) Solar, which was partly based on Ian McEwans own experiences during a trip to the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, is a darkly comic novel. Against the backdrop of the battle against climate change, McEwan tells the story of middle-aged Nobel laureate Michael Beard, a self-serving physicist whose own world is in danger of meltdown. (MC) Books of the decade Manning Marable  Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (2011) Columbia University professor Manning Marable died on 1 April 2011, just days before the publication of his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Marable drew from letters, diaries and FBI files for a meticulous, incisive and balanced account of the life of the civil rights leader. The book cuts through the myths to reveal Malcolm X in all his conflicted complexity. (MC) Books of the decade . Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey  She Said (2019) They wrote the story that changed the world and now theyve explained how they did it. In She Said, the Pulitzer Prize-winning duo explain how they managed to barge through Hollywoods ironclad gates and break the Weinstein story, publishing allegations from several women accusing the disgraced producer of sexual assault in The New York Times. While the details are sparse in terms of sources and specific tactics, there are some startling revelations, including how Gwyneth Paltrow became a helping hand and the extreme lengths Weinsteins team went to in order to thwart both reporters and silence the alleged victims. (OP) Books of the decade Emily Witt  Future Sex (2016) Future Sex is perhaps one of the few nonfiction books about sex and relationships that came before #MeToo and somehow remains relevant today. Finding herself suddenly single at the age of 30, Witt immerses herself in the sexual subcultures of San Francisco, trying her hand at everything from polyamory to orgasmic meditation. Its a fascinating piece of work, one that illustrates Witts talents as an essayist and gives plenty of room to many astute observations on sexual liberation. (OP) Books of the decade Yuval Harari  Sapiens (2011) Every now and then a book comes along that tilts your perspective on the world. This internationally best-selling phenomenon is one of them. Covering just about the entire sweep of human history, it makes you understand the fits, starts and savagery of progress. (CR) 36. Emily Witt  Future Sex (2016) Books of the decade Emma Cline  The Girls (2016) The Girls is about exploring the appeal of being in a cult. Inspired by Charles Mansons murderous family, the book serves up a more tense, richer depiction than Quentin Tarantinos Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, one that puts women at the centre, examining what motivates and captivates them. (OP) Books of the decade Marlon James: A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014) The Booker-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Jamaican-born Marlon James, follows the lives and deaths of seven of the would-be killers in the failed 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley. The novel cleverly weaves fiction and fact  and the language has a musical rhythm. Some of the epiphanies in the book are linked to songs. (MC) Books of the decade Raynor Winn  The Salt Path: A Memoir (2018) Terminal illness and bankruptcy shouldnt make for an inspiring read but they somehow do in Raynor Winns poetic, provocative memoir. After losing the family home, Win and her husband set out to walk the South West Coast path, shaking a fist at his grim diagnosis. Its as much a meditation on the power of nature as Books of the decade Nina Stibbe  Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life (2013) Theres deadpan and then theres Nina Stibbe, who proves herself the heir to Adrian Mole in this novel written in the form of letters to her sister from a child-minding job in London. A provincial girl grappling with the strange salads of the metropolitan literary elite, Stibbe is comic gold. (CR) Books of the decade Patrick deWitt  The Sisters Brothers (2011) The assassins Eli and Charlie Sisters were played by John C Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix in the film version of Canadian-born writer Patrick deWitts second novel. The narrator Eli captures the lawless, unpredictable nature of frontier life in the mid-19th century. The Sisters Brothers is a compelling, unsettling tale of the Gold Rush era. (MC) Books of the decade Gail Honeyman  Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine (2017) Every office has its misfit, and this is the funny, deeply touching story of a woman whose aversion to social niceties and the work Christmas lunch hides a traumatic past. Common acts of kindness rekindle the protagonist in this beautifully told debut. (CR) Books of the decade Anna Burns  The Milkman (2018) Anna Burns became the first writer from Northern Ireland to win the Man Booker Prize, when she triumphed with The Milkman in 2018. Burnss challenging, intriguing novel presents an unnamed 18-year-old girls perspective of her life during the Troubles in the Seventies. The 41-year-old paramilitary leader known as the Books of the decade Sophie Mackintosh  The Water Cure (2018) Thanks to Margaret Atwood and the state of the world, feminist dystopian fiction is having a moment and Sophie Mackintoshs The Water Cure is a notable contribution to the genre. It is perhaps one of the most creative of additions, cleverly weaving mystery and murder with sex and sisterhood, all while Mackintosh seduces the reader into her Shakespearean realm. (OP) Books of the decade Anne Tyler  A Spool of Blue Thread (2015) Anne Tyler is a master of stories about family life in middle-class America. A Spool of Blue Thread, the 20th novel from the author of The Accidental Tourist, adroitly shines a light on sibling rivalry, family secrets and the wounding power of grief. Her tale of four generations of the Whitshanks demonstrates again her gift for comic detail. (MC) Books of the decade Anne Enright  The Green Road (2015) The Green Road, by Dublin-born Anne Enright, is set in County Clare, a wild place geographically and emotionally. Enrights keen gift for observation is at play in this family saga based around Hanna, Dan, Constance and Emmets Christmas return to the home that their scary matriarch, Rosaleen, is selling. A funny, painful tale of selfishness and compassion. (MC) Books of the decade Amor Towles  A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) The gentleman in question is Count Rostov, a bon vivant and aristocrat placed under house arrest in a fancy Moscow hotel after the communists seize control. His wit and enduring humanity make this charming, quirky novel sing. (CR) Books of the decade Elif Batuman  The Idiot (2017) When fact meets fiction, the result is almost always fascinating as the reader spends hours trying to discern which is which. Such is the appeal of The Idiot, Elif Batumans debut novel, which tells the semi-autobiographical tale of a young woman studying at Harvard in the mid-Nineties. After pontificating on the purpose of email, she soon becomes obsessed with an enigmatic Hungarian student whose insouciance will leave you spinning in a state of total frustration. (OP) Books of the decade Orhan Pamuk  The Red-Haired Woman (2016) Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuks 10th novel was the short, stunning The Red-Haired Woman, which is at once a fable and a gripping tale of youthful obsession, exploring protagonist Cem Celiks desire for the red-haired, enigmatic member of a theatre troupe. The father-son relationship in the novel also allows Pamuk to deftly explore the changing nature of Turkey. (MC) Books of the decade Ariel Levy  The Rules Do Not Apply (2017) A dazzling insight into the mind of one of The New Yorkers most prolific writers, Ariel Levys memoir will seem relatable to all those who have at one time or another felt a startling sense of dissociation from their life, which is probably most of us. Levys personal tragedies will leave readers reeling. There is one passage in particular that will stay with you for months in which Levy describes how she suffered a miscarriage on a hotel room floor while on an assignment in Mongolia. She was 19 weeks pregnant at the time and her son, born alive, died in her arms. It is a story of resilience to the highest degree. (OP) Books of the decade Marilynne Robinson  Lila (2014) Lila was the third novel in Marilynne Robinsons Gilead Chronicles  following Gilead (2004) and Home (2008)  and tells, in unflinching terms, the story of Lila, the young woman who married the elderly Reverend Ames in a dusty Iowa town. Robinson writes beautifully and, as a sophisticated religious thinker, asks searching questions about faith and doubt. (MC) Books of the decade David Sedaris  Calypso (2018) There are few writers as gloriously strange, acerbic, funny and faintly ruthless as Sedaris, who once again mines his family history in this collection of autobiographical short stories. It includes a tale in which he feeds his Books of the decade Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie  Americanah (2013) Both a love story and a look at how racial divides play out in the UK and the USA, Americanah is as enchanting as it is thought-provoking. Its impossible not to root for Ifemelu, the clever Nigerian ingenue who ends up struggling to find a minimum wage job as she studies in America. (CR) Books of the decade Julian Barnes  The Sense of an Ending (2011) Julian Barness novella The Sense of an Ending is a subtle examination of the search for answers to lifes unresolved relationships. The divorced sexagenarian protagonist Tony Webster, is thrown into emotional turmoil when he receives an unexpected bequest that prompts him to reconnect with a college girlfriend. He is forced to face up to the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss. (MC) Books of the decade Tara Westover  Educated (2018) No matter how many documentaries you watch or books you read on Mormonism, its almost impossible to understand such a community from the outside. Tara Westover opened peoples eyes with Educated, explaining how she went from growing up in a Mormon fundamentalist family in Idaho to studying for a PhD at the University of Cambridge. Its an inspiring story of grit and determination that doubles up as an homage to the power of self-education and, well, reading. (OP) Books of the decade Maggie Nelson  The Argonauts (2015) Few things reinforce tired gender cliches like marriage and parenthood, so huzzah for Maggie Nelson with this subversive memoir. It subjects romantic love, pregnancy, motherhood and all the attendant tedious cultural baggage to an intensely intelligent, glittering critique. (CR) Books of the decade Richard Ford  Canada (2012) In Canada, retired English teacher Dell Parsons, the son of hapless bank robbers, looks back on the heart-breaking events of his teenage years and tries to take account of how his life was shaped. The settings include Great Falls, Montana, and Saskatchewan in Canada, but its Richard Ford sure-footed journey over emotional terrain that is so utterly majestic. (MC) Books of the decade Donna Tartt  The Goldfinch (2013) A 13-year-boy survives a terrorist bomb that kills his mother at an art museum, and as he stumbles through the wreckage, he takes a small painting called The Goldfinch. The tiny relic of the Dutch Golden Age becomes a source of both solace and enigma in Tartts superb, Pulitzer-winning third novel. (CR) Books of the decade Jonathan Franzen  Freedom (2010) Walter and Patty Berglund, the seemingly perfect couple who meet at college in the 1970s, are at the heart of Jonathan Franzens fourth novel. The story of their unravelling marriage is explored in a rich, nuanced novel. Freedom is more than just a tale of wedded unbliss: it is about the messiness of love and longing in the modern world. (MC) Books of the decade Elif Shafak  Honour (2011) A sprawling, multi-generational tale of a Turkish family who make a new life in London, this novel has a so-called honour killing as its centre of gravity. Shafak, a best-selling author in Turkey and many other countries, conjures up the hypocrisy that holds women to different standards, with devastating results. (CR) Books of the decade Helen Macdonald  H Is for Hawk (2016) When Helen Macdonald lost her father, she acquired a hawk. This idiosyncratic approach to grief makes for a lyrical, moving probe into both the process of mourning and our relationship with the natural world. (CR) Books of the decade Margaret Atwood  The Testaments (2019) Not just a novel but a fully fledged cultural phenomenon, the sequel to the Handmaids Tale was met with midnight readings and fans decked out in the creepy red and white gowns from the TV adaptation of the original. A superb and suspenseful expose of misogyny and the moral ambiguity at the heart of a fanatical regime. (CR) Books of the decade Jennifer Egan  A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) Time is a central theme of Jennifer Egans vibrant A Visit from the Goon Squad, which interconnects stories involving Sasha, a kleptomaniac New Yorker in her mid-thirties, and her music business boss Bennie Salazar. The problems of relationships are explored in a witty novel that has interesting things to say about the loss of vitality in the digital world. (MC) Books of the decade Matt Haig  Reasons to Stay Alive (2015) Theres a reason why Matt Haigs writing on mental health has earned him such high praise, with the Duchess of Sussex among his fans. And it all started with this bestselling memoir in which the childrens fiction author describes falling into a deep depression in his early twenties that left him contemplating taking his own life. Its not an easy read, but in a society where suicide remains grossly misunderstood and gender stereotypes hinder men from speaking openly about their mental wellbeing, its a crucial one. (OP) Books of the decade Arundhati Roy  The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) Twenty years after her stunning debut The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy followed up with the mesmerising The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. With biting ironic wit, Roys epic dissects life in India in the wake of the partition conflict. The characters, including the transgender woman Anjum, are intimately drawn. Roys novel challenges you to care about life. (MC) Books of the decade Sally Rooney  Conversations with Friends (2017) The feted 27-year-old author has acquired a reputation as a millennial literary powerhouse since her debut in 2017. While Rooney has gone on to publish a second novel, Normal People, which was shortlisted for this years Man Booker Prize, Conversations with Friends remains her best work. With its snappy short sentences, sophisticated plot and characters so complex that its hard to like any of them, the novel established Rooney as one of the most exciting new writers around. (OP) Books of the decade George Saunders  Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) Lincoln in the Bardo tells the story of a single night in the life of Abraham Lincoln  when his 11-year-old son was buried  through an experimental tale involving 166 narrators in the bardo, the transitional state between ones death and rebirth, according to Tibetan Buddhism. George Saunders enchanting tour-de-force won the 2017 Man Booker Prize. (MC) Books of the decade Lisa Taddeo  Three Women (2019) In 2019, female desire warrants shrewd examination more than ever. Thank goodness, then, for Lisa Taddeo, who spent eight years documenting the sexual experiences of three very relatable but very different women. The result is a powerful collection of interspersed narratives that probe the most intimate corners of the female psyche. I can think of nothing like it. (OP) Books of the decade Paul Beatty  The Sellout (2015) An outrageous satire of contemporary race relations, Beattys The Sellout tells the story of a black man called Bonbon who is seeking to reinstitute slavery and segregation. When it won the Booker, the chair of the judges compared Beatty to Swift and Twain. (CR) Books of the decade . Hilary Mantel  Bring Up the Bodies (2012) The sequel to Mantels Booker-winning Tudor tour de force, Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bodies did not Let Down the Readers. Her immersive prose takes us back into the poetic, rigorous mind of the archetypal career politician, Thomas Cromwell. The subject is the stuff of school days  Henry Tudors marriage to Anne Boleyn, and her fatal failure to produce a male heir. To allow another marriage and safeguard the stability of the country, Cromwell engineers Boleyns downfall, constructing capital charges against the queen along with a few of his old enemies to boot. Despite the biggest spoiler in history, Mantels novel is so finely pitched that we feel all the tension of the luxurious, blood-tinged Tudor court. (CR)

Her suspicions were right, and in 1981, two years after Bundy was found guilty of murder in Florida  and eight years before his execution by electrocution  Kendall wrote a book telling her side of the Bundy story, titled The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy.

The original edition of The Phantom Prince, published by Madrona Publishers, a Seattle-based imprint, has long been out of print. On Amazon, it has become a sought-after item, with some of the cheaper copies beginning at $98.98 (76)  and several fetching around $200. One especially expensive specimen, deemed to be in an acceptable state, is for sale at $999.99.

At the New York Public Library, the sole copy of The Phantom Prince is available only upon request. The book must not leave the premises and can only be read in a dedicated room, where it is held for just a few days. Bags and coats are banned but laptops, notebooks and pens are allowed in.

Soon, The Phantom Prince is about to become much less elusive. The book is being reprinted, with additional elements, by Abrams Books, a New York City-based publisher. Some might wonder whether the world truly needs yet another Bundy expose, when 2019 already brought us Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile, the Netflix film starring Zac Efron as the serial killer, and Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, a true-crime documentary series.

Yet its apparent from the very first line of The Phantom Prince to Mollys final chapter (one of the additions made to the books new version) that Kendalls voice, as well as that of her daughter, are needed.

Paradoxically, as the notoriety of a serial killer builds over time, the true horror of their crimes can fade from public consciousness. Only by reckoning with the realities of the lives they took or forever distorted can we find some sense in the true-crime frenzy dominating our cultural output.

For Michael Sand, a vice president and publisher at Abrams who acquired the rights to The Phantom Prince, Kendalls narrative remains as stirring today as it was when it was first published almost 40 years ago. Kendall herself explains in the updated edition of her memoir that it was the Zac Efron film, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile, which convinced her it was time to tell her story again.

It was well directed and well acted, she writes of the movie. We [Kendall and her daughter] were left with the feeling that Zac Efron and Lily Collins [who plays Kendall] got it right. Even so, during the filmmaking process, we realised that with the dramatisation of a true story, things must be omitted, condensed, or combined to help the story fit within time constraints. Molly and I decided that it was essential that we tell our story in our own words as we experienced it, which was why we decided to issue this second edition of The Phantom Prince.

Kendall wrote a new introduction as well as a new afterword for the book, while Molly wrote an entire chapter documenting her own relationship with Bundy. That chapter, which marks the first time Molly has spoken out publicly about Bundy, is perhaps the most compelling and the most poignant part of The Phantom Prince. Molly, a gifted writer, vividly describes the love she felt for Bundy when he became part of her family, followed by the agony of realising who he truly was.

As a girl, she recounts regarding him as a hero  an inevitability, since Bundy, according to both Kendall and Molly, had an uncanny ability to gain others trust, admiration, and love. Molly then recalls being sexually abused by Bundy at the age of seven, after which she no longer trusted Ted to act correctly towards [her]. Learning about Bundys crimes, she writes, made her lose faith in other human beings as well as the divine.

The Phantom Prince is filled with surreal scenes  Bundy joking about his own crimes with Kendall before she knew he was their perpetrator, Bundy catching a falling item behind his back without even turning to look at it, like he had eyes in the back of his head, Bundy running to tackle a man who had just stolen a womans purse at a mall. You know why he saw it? Molly writes. Because he was watching. He must have been watching her. Like a predator watches prey.

The mother and daughter talk candidly about the cognitive dissonance separating their experiences of Bundy from his real identity, and the toll that discrepancy took on their lives for years after his murder convictions. Kendall is a recovering alcoholic with decades of sobriety under her belt, while Molly, who tried to drown [her] grief in alcohol, drugs, smoking, and reckless behaviour of all kinds has been sober for 13 years.

In her new afterword, Kendall acknowledges the cringeworthy parts of her memoir as it was published in 1981, saying she was still in denial at the time of its release. I still cared deeply for Ted when I wrote the original book, she admits in her new introduction.

It took years of work for me to accept who he was and what he had done. I still felt lingering shame that I had loved Ted Bundy. It was healing for me when women started telling their stories of sexual violence and assault as part of the #MeToo movement. I could relate to keeping experiences secret for fear of being judged.

The Phantom Prince is being released ahead of a new Amazon Prime series titled Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer, in which Kendall and Molly both speak in front of the camera. The idea behind the project is to tell the Bundy story through the prism of the sexual revolution of the Seventies  acknowledging the profound misogyny behind his crimes. This is perhaps the only Bundy content still needed. Whether in writing or in person, its high time we hear the women speak.

The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy, Updated and Expanded Edition by Elizabeth Kendall, with a contribution by Molly Kendall, is published 7 January (Abrams Press, 19.99/$17.50)
Army cadets attend a funeral ceremony for Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani - AP

Irans supreme leader wept openly over the flag-draped coffin of Qassim Soleimani at a vast public funeral in central Tehran on Monday as the Islamic Republic mourned the slain general and vowed to avenge his death.

Zeinab Soleimani, the generals daughter, told the huge crowd of up to a million people that US would face a dark day when Iran retaliated for her fathers death in an American drone strike in Baghdad.

"Crazy Trump, don't think that everything is over with my father's martyrdom," she said. The families of US soldiers in the Middle East will spend their days waiting for the death of their children.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, normally a stony religious figure, could not hold back tears as he led the crowd in prayers. Some in the crowd burned US flags and effigies of Donald Trump as they chanted Death to America.

Soleimanis death continued to reverberate around the region as Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Iraqs prime minister, said he would push ahead with plans to expel American troops from Iraq despite warnings from Donald Trump that the US would retaliate with sanctions.

Mr Abdul-Mahdi summoned Matthew Tueller, the US ambassador in Baghdad, and told him he intended to implement a non-binding parliamentary calling for American forces to fully withdraw from Iraq.

The Prime Minister stressed the need for joint action to implement the withdrawal of foreign forces in accordance with the decision of the Iraqi parliament, a spokesman said, adding: Iraq is making all possible efforts to prevent a slide into an open war.

While it is still not clear if the Iraqi government will fully implement the parliamentary vote, the statement from Mr Abdul-Mahdis office indicates the enormous political pressure he is under from Iran and pro-Iran Iraqi politicians to kick the US out.

Iraqs parliament voted 170-0 to expel the US but votes were almost entirely from Shia MPs while Sunni and Kurdish parliamentarians did not attend the session. Video emerged Monday of the parliamentary speaker, who is Sunni, appealing to colleagues not to go ahead with the vote.

Story continues

Mr Trump warned that he would impose sanctions to force Iraq to cover the cost of the withdrawal. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, he said.

Germany said the American threat was not very helpful as Western nations try to calm Iraqi anger over the strike on Soleimani. A withdrawal of Americas 5000 US forces would likely force other European states to pull out, raising fears of a vacuum that the Islamic State (Isil) could fill.

Mourners gather to pay homage to top Iranian military commander Qassim Soleimani in the capital Tehran Credit: Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images

Nato has already suspended its training mission for Iraqi troops amid fears of Iranian retaliation and the US-led coalition against Isil has halted its operations as it forces focus on fortifying their positions against a possible Iranian attack.

European foreign ministers are due to hold crisis talks on Friday in response to Irans announcement that it would no longer respect the limits on the production of uranium laid out in the 2015 nuclear agreement.

If Iran moves ahead with higher level uranium enrichment and larger scale production it will effectively mean the end of the nuclear agreement, which European states have tried to preserve despite pressure from the US.

Josep Borrell Fontelles, the EU foreign policy chief, said he deeply regrets the Iranian announcement but would await verification from the UN nuclear watchdog before deciding how to respond.

Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, dispatched his younger brother Khalid to Washington for consultations with the Trump administration as the Saudi government called for de-escalation of tensions.

Despite being a sworn enemy of Iran, Saudi Arabia is deeply worried that it may be in the firing line of a possible Iranian revenge attack and is appealing to Mr Trump to avoid an all-out war.
A video with the alleged couple Alia Bhat and Ranbir Kapoor has been doing the rounds on social media. Fans have been unable to get over how Ranbir Kapoor encourages Alia Bhatt to join the aarti. The video has been grabbing attention as fans find the gesture adorable.

Ranbir Kapoor asks Alia Bhatt to join the aarti

In the video released, Ranbir Kapoor can be seen doing the aarti by himself while Alia Bhatt stands beside him. In the beginning, he can be seen conducting the aarti alone. He later makes a gesture towards his alleged girlfriend Alia Bhatt to join him and hold the diya. She ends up joining his arm as they perform the aarti together. The video is from an event which was conducted for their upcoming film, Brahmastra. Have a look at the video here.

Brahmastra is an upcoming much-anticipated superhero trilogy. The film stars Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt in pivotal roles. It is being directed by Ayan Mukherjee. Brahmastra will also feature actors Dimple Kapadia, Amitabh Bachchan, Mouni Roy, and Divyendu Sharma. It is expected to hit the theatres in May 2020.

Read Alia Bhatt And Ranbir Kapoor Mobbed At Mumbai Airport, Escape With Security; Watch

Also read Best Of Ranbir Kapoor's Dialogues That Made His Fans Go "aww"

Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt get mobbed at the airport

Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt celebrated their New Year in Thailand. In a video uploaded on social media, the two actors can be seen getting mobbed by fans at the Mumbai International airport. Fans can be seen vying for a selfie or even a glimpse of the superstars. The incident happened when they were returning from their Thailand vacation. The duo made it to their car safely as the security worked efficiently towards ensuring so. Have a look at the video here.

Read Alia Bhatt Cheers For Mumbai City FC Along With Beau Ranbir Kapoor At Super League Match

Also read Romance Or Not, Ranbir Kapoor's Bromance With Ayan Mukerji Is Forever
A bitter experience on a train in 1974 in Nis, a border town between what is now Serbia and Bulgaria, turned N R Narayana Murthy into a "compassionate capitalist", leading him to create Infosys, the country's IT bellwether. Recalling the incident, Murthy said he was engaged in a conversation with a girl, who could only understand French, but it landed him in trouble.

"We were talking about life in Bulgaria. I think the boy, who was accompanying the girl, got upset with us for some reason. So, he went and brought the police," Murthy said on Sunday while addressing the audience at a tech fest organized by IIT, Bombay, through a video link.

The Bulgarian guards took Murthy's passport, luggage and dragged him on the platform. He was kept in an 8X8 room, with primitive toilet facilities, for a few days. "I thought they would open the door in the morning and get me some breakfast since I was the state guest, but nothing happened. I lost all hope of eating anything," he said.

The next morning, police took Murthy to the platform and pushed him into the guard's compartment of a departing freight train. At this point, Murthy had not had anything to eat or drink for five days in a row.

The guards said, "Look, you are from a friendly country called India, so we are letting you go but we will give you your passport when you reach Istanbul."If a country treats friends like this, Murthy thought to himself, he would not want to be part of a communist country ever. "That cued me from being a confused leftist to a determined compassionate capitalist," he said.

That incident pushed Murthy towards taking the plunge into entrepreneurship. He said his first attempt at entrepreneurship was a company called Softronics focused on providing IT services to the domestic market, in Pune, which he closed as he could not see any future prospects.

Also read: Samsung Electronics to unveil new Galaxy S series, foldable phone on February 11
Sharp led North Carolinas highest court until reaching the mandatory retirement age of 72 in 1979, the Times reported.

I broke the ice, she said the year she retired, according to the News & Record. I hope I made it a little easier for women who want to be lawyers and judges. But no one else can have the fun, the pleasure and the shock of being first.

As a vocal opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment, she was something of an oxymoron.

The ERA, which prohibited gender discrimination, was passed by Congress in 1972 as the 27th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, according to the Encyclopedia of North Carolina.

It then went to the states for ratification, where it met resistance from conservative women who feared that civil society would fall into chaos if the amendment passed, the encyclopedia entry reads.

U.S. Democratic Sen. Sam J. Ervin Jr. of North Carolina was among those who opposed it, and Sharp  a highly respected Democrat  publicly backed him, according to the encyclopedia.
Rochelle Humes' younger sister Sophie Piper is just days away from heading into the Love Island villa South African winter love Island villa.

The medical PA, 21, has revealed she wants a man who is 'tall, tanned and light-eyed' to sweep her off her feet on the ITV reality show.

She has already left behind the blustery UK winter to enjoy up to six weeks of sun-soaked matchmaking in Cape Town.

Winter Love Island: Rochelle Humes' baby sister Sophie Piper is just days away from heading into the South African winter Love Island villa

Sophie, who boasts 12,000 followers on Instagram, is signed to MiLK Management London and often delights her fellow social media users with striking snaps.

On her ideal match, the budding reality star insists she's looking for a partner who is care-free, but also self-assured.

The stunner says: 'Kind with something about them, someone who doesnt take themselves too seriously. I like confident but not cocky. Tall, tanned and light eyes.'

Sophie admits she is not a fan of someone who is 'cheesy', and is interested in natural jokers: '[A turn off] is when someones cringey. I love banter but hate it when someone tries to be funny and theyre not.'

Desire: The medical PA, 21, has revealed she wants a man who is 'tall, tanned and light-eyed' to sweep her off her feet on the ITV reality show

Spot the difference: In April, Sophie was said to have been in advanced talks with producers who were 'desperate' for her to appear in the reality show (pictured with Rochelle last year)

'I like confident, not cocky': On her ideal match, the budding reality star insists she's looking for a partner who is care-free, but also self-assured

On being loyal to her new friends in the villa, the Essex beauty adds: 'I wouldnt be sneaky about anything, Id be open about it. Try and do it in the right way.

'It takes me a while to like someone, but when I do like someone I really like them. So if I met someone and I was still like, oh hes nice but not 100%, youd probably be able to see that. If someone did come in and I preferred him Id have to make it clear.

'Being friends with someone and not going after their man, I would never do anything to my close friends.

Working it! Sophie, who boasts 12,000 followers on Instagram, is signed to MiLK Management London and often delights her fellow social media users with striking snaps

She's honest: On being loyal to her new friends in the villa, the Essex beauty adds: 'I wouldnt be sneaky about anything, Id be open about it. Try and do it in the right way'

'Obviously I know its different because in the villa, you could know people for a handful of days and everyone expects you to do girl code. I just think its about going about things the right way and being friendly.'

Former The Saturdays songstress Rochelle, 30, who also has a younger brother Jake and a sister Lili, is often a feature on Sophie's social media accounts.

In April, the brunette was said to have been in advanced talks with producers who were 'desperate' for her to appear in the reality show.

Reunion: Rochelle and Sophie were reunited with their half-sister Lili after 23 years apart two years ago

An insider told The Sun at the time that ITV2 bosses had made Sophie an offer, but she was 'deciding with her family' whether it was the right move for her.

The source said producers hope Soph could mimic the success of last year's Love Island champion Dani Dyer - who is the daughter of EastEnders star Danny Dyer.

'Dani and her claim to fame with dad Danny captured viewers and boasted the show's ratings,' an insider said.

But the source also described Sophie, who regularly posts glamorous shots to her Instagram page, as the 'perfect islander'.

They continued: 'She's incredibly beautiful and loves meeting new people after already doing a season in Ibiza.

'She's currently deciding with her family if it's the right move for her but it's looking like a strong possibility.'

A representative for the ITV2 show told MailOnline: 'We don't comment on speculation around the forthcoming line up for Love Island'.

Siblings: Former The Saturdays songstress Rochelle, 30, who also has a younger brother Jake and a sister Lili, is often a feature on Sophie's social media accounts

Rochelle and Sophie were reunited with their half-sister Lili after 23 years apart two years ago thanks to a push from their mutual friend and Love Island star Kem Cetinay.

Their parents divorced when Rochelle was three years old, and she only met her sibling once when she was five. Rochelle grew up with her mother Roz Wiseman while Lili was raised by their father Mark Piper.

Speaking to Giovanna Fletcher on her Happy Mum Happy Baby Podcast, the mother-of-two said despite feeling terrified of meeting Lili, the pair instantly bonded and have 'spoken every day since'.

She's ready! She has already left behind the blustery UK winter to enjoy up to six weeks of sun-soaked matchmaking in Cape Town

Rochelle said: 'I grew up with my mum and sister, all my siblings are half siblings. My dad was never around.

'I've never told anyone this before. Two years ago, I was at our management's Christmas party and Love Island's Kem was there.

'He was chatting away and said, ''I got to talk to you... as soon as I became a celeb, I promised my friend Lili that I would talk to you as she's your sister on your dad's side."

'I knew of her and met up with her when I was five, but it was so complicated as they were a lot younger and my dad wasn't involved.

'On a drunken night out, Kem asked me if he could give her my number.

'She WhatsApped me and I didn't reply till the morning. We planned to go out for dinner with my other sister and brother and I made Marvin come with me because I was so scared.

'We are literally the same people, Marvin was like, "OMG, there's more of you." We've spoken every day since - Jeremy Kyle style. It's like we've known each other all our lives.'

Love Island starts Sunday at 9pm on ITV2.
We warmly welcome owners Cindy Riley and Drew Burgess, along with their amazing agents in Monkton, Timonium and Shrewsbury, to the company. - Terri Bracciale, Baltimore Metro Region President

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices PenFed Realty, one of the countrys fastest-growing real estate companies, today announced the affiliation of well-respected Baltimore County-based brokerage firm Riley & Associates Realtors.

We warmly welcome owners Cindy Riley and Drew Burgess, along with their amazing agents in Monkton, Timonium and Shrewsbury, to the company, said Baltimore Metro Region President Terri Bracciale. Their firms reputation for delivering exceptional service to home buyers and sellers in the area is unparalleled, and we are committed to helping them continue to serve their customers, grow their business and achieve success in years to come.

Founded in 1990 by Riley and joined by Burgess as co-owner in 2004, the company has a roster of 26 of the most esteemed real estate professionals in the area.

When we met with the PenFed Realty team, we immediately felt that they understood the kind of brokerage weve built, said Riley. Our two companies have very similar cultures and work ethic, and their relative size and hands-on leadership style make our transition more comfortable and personal.

In our fast-paced industry, a smaller company like ours is always hard-pressed to keep up with the latest on the technology front, said Burgess. By partnering with PenFed and a global brand like Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, we can leverage best-in-class tools, powerful programs and effective marketing strategies that can make it easier for our agents to grow and succeed.

The transition took effect on January 1, 2020. Former Riley & Associates Realtors sales professionals will continue to provide real estate services in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Both Riley and Burgess will also continue their careers as sales professionals with the company for many years to come.

About Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices PenFed Realty

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices PenFed Realty (http://www.penfedrealty.com) is a full-service real estate company with an annual sales volume of almost $5 billion. The company has 1,800 agents and more than 50 offices, providing complete real estate services nationwide. PenFed Realty is a wholly-owned subsidiary of PenFed Credit Union and is a member of the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices brokerage network, operated by HSF Affiliates LLC. Membership with PenFed Credit Union is not required to conduct business with BHHS PenFed Realty. We are proud to be an equal employment opportunity employer. Equal Housing Opportunity.
It is that time of year when hundreds of art aficionados flock to the University of Miamis campus for one of the leading art festivals in the country. For more than six decades the Beaux Arts Festival of Art has brought together people from all walks of life to experience a festival that raises funds to benefit the Universitys Lowe Art Museum.

There is heavy tradition behind the Beaux Art Festival. Over the years its brought generations of people together, said Jill Deupi, director of the Lowe Art Museum. Art is a universal language, and this festival presents art in an approachable setting, in essence bringing a lot of enjoyment to family and friends.

The Beaux Arts Festival of Art first began in 1952, originally called the Clothesline Sale, which gave young artists a chance to meet the buying public. Throughout the years the festival has grown into an annual project and is now a juried show with over 200 participating artists in 10 different mediums on the grounds of the Coral Gables campus.

Our mission is to support the art museum as well as to encourage an appreciation of art in our community, said Lauren Dowlen, president of the Beaux Arts Festival of Art. It is a deep honor to be part of this beloved jewel and incredibly humbling to be part of this organization.

The festival also includes a student artist showcase where middle school and high school students from both public and private schools enter their works of art to a juried art contest where over 350 art pieces are judged. The top 150 entries are then exhibited inside the Lowe Art Museum. Deupi believes this is a great opportunity for young artists.

Having the opportunity to receive recognition is incredibly affirming and encouraging. I think positive reinforcement gives students the sense of wanting to continue their studies in art, she said.

The Beaux Arts Festival of Art runs from Jan. 18 and Jan. 19 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For more information visit https://www.lowe.miami.edu/

Below are exhibitions showcased at the Lowe and events at other venues during the month of January.

Lowe Art Museum

Through Jan. 19, 2020

Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present

A leading member of the new Afro-Cuban cultural movement, visual artist Juan Roberto Diago has produced a body of work that offers a revisionist history of the Cuban nation. His history, a term that he frequently inserts in his works using the visual language of graffiti, contradicts the official narrative of a racially harmonious nation created through the selfless efforts of generous white patriots. Diagos Cuba is a nation built on pain, rape, greed, and the enslavement of millions of displaced Africans, a nation still grappling with the long-term effects of slavery and colonialism. To him, slavery is not the past, but a daily experience of racism and discrimination. Africa is not a root, but a wellspring of cultural and personal affirmation, the ancestors that sustain him in his journey. This exhibit examines Diagos creative work over the course of his entire career. It traces his singular efforts to construct new pasts, the pasts required to explain the racial tensions of contemporary Cuba, the pasts of this Afro-Cuban present. Guest curated by Alejandro de la Fuente, Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, professor of African and African American Studies, director of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for Africa and African American Research, and chair of the Cuba Studies Program at Harvard University.

Thursday, Jan. 23, 7 to 9 p.m.

Opening Reception: Binomial: Claudia DeMonte & Ed McGowin

Description: The Lowe Art Museum is delighted to be hosting the first joint exhibition of artists Claudia DeMonte and Ed McGowins work in South Florida. Entitled Binomial, this engaging show explores not only the independent endeavors of these two highly accomplished artists but also the creative symbiosis that has marked their shared lives and careers for more than three decades.

Saturday, Jan. 25, 12 to 3 p.m.

Community Day

Description: Community Days offer children and adults the opportunity to explore art and culture through an array of music, dance, storytelling and hands-on art-making activities.

Through March 2020

ArtLab at the Lowe: Russia Unframed

Russia Unframed seeks to highlight the impact of Russia's immense cultural, ethnic, racial, and religious diversity on the arts, both within its borders and throughout the diaspora. Now in its tenth year, ArtLab @ the Lowe is an annual student-curated exhibition that provides University of Miami students with hands-on experience in the curatorial and museum fields.

Through May 3, 2020

Carlos Estevez: Cities of the Mind

The most recent project of renowned Cuban-American artist Carlos Estevez, Walled Cities features nine large-format circular paintings that reference the artists fascination with city plans. Inspired by the Havana of his youth, the Medieval European cities to which he has traveled extensively as an adult, and his abiding interest in symbolic cosmology and origin stories, Estevez has created in this body of new work personal maps of the human mind influenced by ancient cartography. Guest curated by Dr. Carol Damian, a former professor of Art History, Florida International University.

Frost School of Music's Maurice Gusman Concert Hall

Wednesday, Jan. 15 at 7:30 p.m.

Bitches Brew Revisited, a celebration of 50 years of Jazz fusion

Chuck Bergeron and John Daversa, Directors, Charles Pillow and Dave Liebman, Saxaphones, Shelly Berg and Martin Bejerano, Pianos, Frost Sextet and Frost Concert Jazz Band

Join the Frost Sextet and the Frost Concert Jazz Band as they revisit music from Miles Daviss audacious Bitches Brew, released in 1970, reimagined in new arrangements by saxophonist Charles pillow. As part of his residency at Frost, NEA Jazz Master Saxophonist Dave Liebman, a Miles Davis sideman, performs with both Frost groups.

Saturday, Jan. 25 at 7:30 p.m.

Maria Schneider presents Donny McCaslin With the Frost Schools Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra (HMI)

Maria Schneider, artistic director

Scott Flavin, resident conductor, Donny McCaslin, saxophone

In her concert debut as Artistic Director of the Frost Schools Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra, NEA Jazz Master composer, arranger, bandleader, and recipient of twelve Grammy nominations and five Grammy awards, Maria Schneider presents a program featuring saxophonist Donny McCaslin.

Thursday, Jan. 30 at 7:30 p.m.

String Music for a Winters Evening

Kevin Kenner, piano, Charles Castleman, violin, The Stamps String Quartet

Come and enjoy an evening of musical virtuosity. The superb program opens with Eugene Ysayes Sonata No.3 in D minor Ballade, for unaccompanied violin, and also his exquisite Snows of Yesteryear, originally scored for violin and string orchestra. Cesar Francks Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano; and Gabriel Faures elegant Piano Quartet No.1 round up the evenings program.

Center for the Humanities

Thursday, Jan. 16 from 12 to 12:50 p.m.

The Evolving Humanities Series: Hugh Thomas

Lau Founders Hall, Room A

The Center for the Humanities and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute present a series of four brief lectures on humanities disciplines, including history, religious studies, English, and philosophy. In keeping with OLLI programming, these talks are designed for community members aged 50 and better but limited seating may be available for other guests.

Cosford Cinema

Showings this month include Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Oscar Shorts and Hustlers

For showtimes and tickets, visit http://www.cosfordcinema.com/
Wherever I go these days Im peppered with questions about who is most likely to win the Democratic nomination for president and who is likely to win the presidency.

I will always say that I dont know, that there is no way at this point of knowing, but they often respond: Well, you know more than me.

Yes, I know enough to know that predictions at this point are meaningless and irresponsible. There are so many moving parts that could have a direct and significant impact on the race, and we have no idea how they will pan out, like cases working their way through the courts and the impeachment trial.

But, there are also the things we cant predict, like a national or international crisis.

Last week, Donald Trump demonstrated the incredible power the president has to create such a crisis with the assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in Iraq.
Nancy Pelosi announced Sunday night that the House would introduce a War Powers Resolution this week to limit Donald Trump's ability to take military action following the attack that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.

'[The resolution] reasserts Congress's long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administration's military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days,' Pelosi wrote in a dear colleague letter Sunday.

Democratic leaders expressed outrage over the weekend for the president's failure to notify Congress ahead of the strike on Soleimani, a top Iranian military commander who was classified as a terrorist during the Obama administration.

'As Members of Congress, our first responsibility is to keep the American people safe,' The House Speaker continued in her letter. 'For this reason, we are concerned that the Administration took this action without the consultation of Congress and without respect for Congress's war powers granted to it by the Constitution.'

Even if the resolution succeeded in the House, the chances are slim to none that the Republican-controlled Senate would vote to limit Trump's powers.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Sunday in a letter to Democratic colleagues that they would introduce a War Powers Resolution this week to limit Donald Trump's military action in Iran

'[The resolution] reasserts Congress's long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administration's military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days,' Pelosi wrote in her letter

Donald Trump tweeted Sunday that if Iran retaliates against the U.S. he will take 'disproportionate' action against them. He also said he did not need to notify Congress if he decides to issue another attack

Trump warned on Saturday that he would target 52 Iranian sites if Tehran decided to retaliate against the airstrikes

The resolution comes after Trump ordered an airstrike on an airport in Baghdad, Iraq that took out Iranian General Qassem Soleimani (pictured). Democrats lament Trump did not notify Congress of the military action before it was carried out

The resolution introduction comes after Trump directed an airstrike on an airport in Baghdad, Iraq, killing Soleimani. The attacked followed a raid on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, which has never been breached before, on New Years Eve by protesters who support Iran-backed Shia militia amid growing escalations between the U.S. and Iran.

Lawmakers and politicians lament that the president did not inform Congress of the planned attack, but the president asserted Sunday he did not have to tell Congress.

'These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!' Trump tweeted over the weekend.

Lawmakers have few options for tamping down any escalation by the president.

As members of Congress return to Capitol Hill Monday from their year-end holiday recess, Democrats said they will attempt quickly to pass legislation to bar him - or any future U.S. commander-in-chief - from conducting a campaign against Iran without obtaining Congress' approval.

Pelosi said the Democratic-led chamber would introduce and vote this week on a War Powers Resolution that would force Trump to stop military action against Iran within 30 days.

The resolution is being led by Democratic Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA and Department of Defense analyst who specialized in in Shia militias.

The resolution, however, is expected to fail with no indications that the Republican-controlled Senate would stray from Trump.

Thousands gathered in Tehran for Soleimani's funeral, where his coffin and others who were killed in the drone strike, were processed on a truck through the city

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left) wept as he recites a prayer in front of the coffin of General Soleimani during a funeral procession in Tehran Monday

The processions marks the first time Iran has honored a single man with a multi-city ceremony since the funeral of Islamic Republic founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (left) and Democratic Senator Bob Menendez (right) sent a letter to Trump demanding he declassify the notification he sent to Congress following the attack

HOW CONSTITUTION SPLITS THE POWERS TO WAGE WAR The Constitution makes the president the Commander-in-Chief in Article II but it does not give him power to declare war; that power falls to Congress in Article I. Splitting those powers has long been the source of tension. In fact Congress has only declared war five times, most recently in World War II. In 1973, with the Vietnam war now having long divided the country and Nixon deep in crisis, his orders to secretly carry out bombings in Cambodia created a mood on Congress to limit his ability to expand the Vietnam conflict. Both houses passed the War Powers Resolution. It said that the president had to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to action. It forbids the action from going on for more than 60 days without the president asking Congress for an 'authorization for the use of military force,' known as an AUMF, or a formal declaration of war, both of which are in the gift of Congress. The 60 days can be extended by the president by 30 days solely to withdraw from the conflict. Nixon vetoed the bill but both houses voted to over-ride him. Since then its use has not been without controversy. Bill Clinton was accused of violating it with bombings in Kosovo in 1999 without Congressional approval after the 60 days were passed and Barack Obama's use of airpower in Libya in 2011 never had explicit Congressional approval. AUMFs have been granted under the powers to George W. Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and before the invasion of Iraq, both of which remain in force. Advertisement

Longtime foes Tehran and Washington have been in a war of words since Soleimani was killed by the U.S. early on Friday - Thursday U.S. time - with Iran vowing retaliation against the U.S.

On Sunday, Trump doubled down on his threats to target Iran for any retaliatory attacks and Iran said it was stepping back from commitments to a 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers.

Trump broke precedent when he didn't notify congressional leaders before the attack on Soleimani.

Under the U.S. War Powers Act, the president must inform Congress within 48 hours of introducing military forces into armed conflict abroad. Those notifications normally detail the justification for the intervention.

He also classified his formal notification to Congress of the attack on Saturday.

Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, told The Washington Post in an article published Monday that he wants the House hold open hearings on multiple aspects of this spiraling situation in Iranian-U.S. relations.

'I think there should be open hearings on this subject,' Schiff said. 'The president has put us on a path where we may be at war with Iran. That requires the Congress to fully engage.'

Schiff is helping lead the House leading impeachment efforts against the president  and several Democratic lawmakers have not ruled out the possibility that the situation could bring about even another article of impeachment against Trump on top of the two already levied against him.

Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat who serves as the minority leader, and Robert Menendez of New Jersey sent a letter to Trump Sunday asking him to declassify the war powers notification following the attack.

'It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner,' they wrote. 'An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society, and there appears to be no legitimate justification for classifying the notification.'

The War Powers Act also bars a president from committing U.S. armed forces from any foreign action lasting more than 60 days without Congress' approval.

By making the War Powers notification classified, Trump limited lawmakers' ability to talk about it, and sidestepped the law's goal of keeping Americans informed about military action, some legal experts said.

The War Powers Act was passed in 1973, largely in response to President Richard Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia.

Congress' main power over the president is its control of federal spending, and the Democratic-controlled House could pass legislation that would bar Trump from spending any taxpayer dollars on a conflict with Iran.

Donald Trump said in a tweet Sunday that his words should serve as his official notification to Congress that he will take action

The House Foreign Affairs Committee responded to Trump's tweet, telling him to look at the War Powers Act. 'You're not a dictator,' the account for the panel wrote

However, Republicans removed a similar measure from the annual National Defense Authorization Act last year before it was passed with overwhelming support from both parties and signed into law by Trump last month.

Congress can also put pressure on a president by refusing to pass bills he supports, and the Senate could block his nominees. But Senate Republicans have shown little appetite for opposing Trump.

The Democratic-led House impeachment of Trump has led his party to rally more closely around him, further complicating efforts to rein him in on Iran.

Administration officials are expected to brief Congress on Iran this week. Lawmakers said they want a detailed explanation of the administration's justification for the strike against Soleimani, as well as future plans.

Rep. Slotkin noted that past administrations had decided not to go after Soleimani after determining it could lead to a protracted conflict.

'The Iranian government has vowed to retaliate and avenge Soleimani's death, and could do so in any number of ways,' she said on Twitter.
Hollywood star Russell Crowe won the Golden Globe Awards for his role as Roger Ailes in "The Loudest Voice" and the actor used the platform to share a "poignant" message on climate change amid Australia fires.

Actor Jennifer Aniston, who was the presenter for the category, said Crowe was not attending the ceremony because "he is at home in Australia protecting his family from the devastating bushfires."



"Make no mistake. The tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is. That way we all have a future, thank you," Crowe wrote in his message read out by Aniston.

The actor, 55, has been posting about the fires on Instagram and Twitter regularly since past few months. He has also donated to NSW Rural Fire Service and encouraged others to do the same.

As per reporter,the wildfires have scorched an area twice the size of the US state of Maryland and have killed at least 24 people.

Others nominated alongside Crowe in the best performance by an actor in a limited series or motion picture made for television category were Sam Rockwell ("Fosse/Verdon"), Jared Harris ("Chernobyl"), Christopher Abbott ("Catch-22") and Sacha Baron Cohen ("The Spy").

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
[January 06, 2020] STEAM Education Leader Matatalab Makes First Appearance in North America at CES 2020 Las Vegas

Matatalab, the world's leading STEAM education solution provider, will make its debut appearance at CES (News - Alert) 2020 from Jan. 7 to Jan. 10 in Las Vegas, NV. Matatalab's booth will be located at #25964 in the South Hall. Matatalab's current product lineup, such as the Matatalab Coding Set and Matatalab Lite, will be available for review and trial. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005032/en/ Matatalab Coding Set (Photo: Business Wire) Matatalab robot sets follow the kids' cognitive development from concrete to abstract and adopt simple symbol design to let kids understand coding and computational thinking through fun yet challenging game quests. Matatalab's business covers both B2B and B2C markets, providing proessional solutions including coding robots, curriculums, teaching aids packages, etc., to educational institutions and families around the world.



Matatalab has partnered with the European School Network, a network co-founded by the Ministry of Education of 31 EU countries, and has been adopted by more than 20 FCL educational research centers around the world, becoming one of the two global partners from China. Matatalab has entered into more than 40 elementary educational markets in the UK, Germany, France, U.S., Singapore, Korea, Russia, Brazil, etc. and has been adopted by more than 4,000 educational institutions including preschools, kindergartens, primary schools, and training centers. Matatalab has also developed over 1,000 online and offline retail channels, including Carrefour, Sam's Club, Conrad, Darty, etc. In North America, Matatalab has partnered with Goddard School, a top kindergarten education group, to move into more than 500 kindergartens. In the retail market, Matatalab has cooperated with ToysRUs in Canada in part of offline stores.

During years of development and expansion, Matatalab always holds the value of "Coding and Confidence to Make a Difference." At CES 2020, Matatalab aims to experience innovative technologies and look for exciting opportunities to cooperate. About Matatalab Matatalab is an education technology company with a dedication to provide innovative STEAM education solutions for educational institutions and families worldwide. Through series of tangible coding products and coding enlightenment, Matatalab helps to cultivate computational thinking skills and to prepare children for the digital world. For more information about Matatalab, please visit www.matatalab.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005032/en/

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Exports are of interest to most wine-producing countries, even if only as a national revenue stream. When a country is in a good location for wine production, then that production will usually exceed local consumption. The excess can then be exported to places where wine is harder to produce.An interesting question, then, is how much of each countrys wine production is exported. For example, it has been noted by Vinex that: despite being sixth largest producer in the European Union, Romania exports less wine than does Sweden. Clearly, exports are not a big thing for the Romanian wine industry.The data graphed below come from the OIV database , which has collected worldwide data since 1995 (ie. the past 25 years). I have looked only at countries with (almost) complete data for both Wine Production and Wine Exports up to 2017; and I have excluded those countries where exports exceed production (ie. imports + re-exports are the dominant form of export). This results in 41 countries, 22 of which appear in the following graphs.Of the 41 countries, one third have changed in one consistent direction through time, either increasing or decreasing their export percentage. Three other countries changed between the first and second halves of the time period.We can start this survey by looking at the three biggest wine producers in the world (see Global wine exports ). Both Spain and Italy have increased their export percentage, while France has done so to a lesser extent. Only Spain regularly exports >50% of its production these days, indicating that the locals in these places are consuming quite a lot of wine.Next we can note three other European wine producers that have shown some increases in export percentage during the time period. Only Germany has been consistently increasing; and all three seem to have reached a plateau. Germany is, of course, also one of the worlds biggest importers of wine, especially from Italy and Spain (see Global bulk wine routes visualized ), which makes its move into exporting an interesting trend (much of it going to the Netherlands, the UK and the USA). Both Germany and Portugal come close to exporting 50% of their wine production.As noted above, Romania exports very little of its wine production (as shown in the next graph), usually only 3-4% these days. Some of the other eastern European wine producers, on the other hand, have greatly varying export percentages. Bulgaria has often exported >50% of its wine production. On the other hand, Uzbekistan had a big export boom between 2005 and 2010, and Czechia had one between 2008 and 2015. The latter has since returned to c.10% exports.In contrast to Czechia, its former compatriot Slovakia has steadily increased its wine export percentage this century (shown in the next graph), so that it is now consistently >50%. Further south-east, Georgia has experienced a revival of its wine industry since 2007, so that it might now exceed 50% exports. Lebanon showed an increase until 2010, although it has since held steady at 20-25% exports.The big losers in terms of wine exports have been the former big exporters to France, all located in northern Africa: Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia). Their bulk wine was used to beef-up some of the lighter French wines; and in recent decades this role has been replaced by wine from first Italy and now Spain. So, these African countries now export <3% of their wine production.The so-called New World wine countries of the southern hemisphere have all grown their wine industries in recent decades (as shown next), and all except South Africa now export >50% of their wine production. Indeed, for Chile and New Zealand the exports sometimes reach 90% of production, which is by far the greatest in the dataset. I have looked at exports from Australia and New Zealand in more detail in previous blog posts.Finally, we can look at those two countries with relatively large wine productions but small export percentages, and with little recent increase in that percentage: Argentina and the USA. The locals are, indeed, rather thirsty. I have also previously looked in more detail at United States wine imports and exports So, the answer to the question posed in the title appears to be: Australia, Chile, Georgia, New Zealand, Slovakia, and Spain, although several other wine-producing countries come close.
Ahead of the annual Union Budget presentation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday interacted with top business tycoons to discuss issues facing the economy and measures needed to boost growth and create jobs

New Delhi: Ahead of the annual Union Budget presentation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday interacted with top business tycoons to discuss issues facing the economy and measures needed to boost growth and create jobs.

Richest Indian Mukesh Ambani, Tata group patriarch Ratan Tata, telecom czar Sunil Bharti Mittal, billionaire Gautam Adani, Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra, and mining baron Anil Agarwal were among those present at the discussion.

Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran, TVS chairman Venu Srinivasan, L&T head AM Naik were also present, according to a photograph of the meeting released here.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present her second Union Budget on 1 February with an eye to reviving growth.

Prime Minister @narendramodi interacts with leaders from India Inc about ways to boost #growth and #job creation pic.twitter.com/ROMGTEtQo5  CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) January 6, 2020

The latest GDP data for the July-September quarter showed a significant further moderation in the pace of economic growth to 4.5 percent - the weakest in six years, with a key contributory factor being a slump in manufacturing output.

The Modi government has undertaken a number of measures to arrest the growth slowdown. In September 2019, it announced a cut in the corporate tax rate to 22 percent from 30 percent. The government also lowered the tax rate for new manufacturing companies to 15 percent to attract new foreign direct investments. The tax rate reductions bring India in line with rates in other Asian countries.

The government's other initiatives include bank recapitalization, the mergers of 10 public sector banks into four, support for the auto sector, plans for infrastructure spending, as well as tax benefits for startups.

But experts say none of these measures directly address the widespread weakness in consumption demand, which has been the chief driver of the economy.

Also, financial sector fragilities continue to weigh on the economic growth momentum, with the high level of non-performing loans on the balance-sheets of the public sector banks, constraining their fresh lending.

Furthermore, there are also risks from potential contagion effects from troubled non-bank financial companies (NBFCs) to the balance-sheets of some commercial banks, which could further weigh on the overall pace of credit expansion.

In response to the growth slowdown, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has eased policy rates significantly during 2019, with a series of rate cuts since February 2019.

Further stimulus measures are expected in the upcoming Budget where the focus is likely to be on reforms, including some structural measures such as reducing red tape and boosting foreign direct investment.

The meeting with industrialists is in the series of discussions that Modi has had during the last couple of weeks to seek suggestions to revive growth.

In the previous meetings, he met Kotak Mahindra Bank CEO Uday Kotak, State Bank of India head Rajnish Kumar, HDFC Bank managing director Aditya Puri, IT industry veteran TV Mohandas Pai; former finance secretary Hasmukh Adhia; Tech Mahindra CEO CP Gurnani, Intel India general manager Nivruti Rai and Tata Consultancy Services chief executive Rajesh Gopinath.

He also reportedly has held one-on-one meetings with sectoral experts.

Modi has so far met over 60 entrepreneurs and businessmen from sectors such as FMCG, finance, renewable energy, diamond, retail, textiles, MSMEs and startups and technology.

Follow full coverage of Union Budget 2020-21 here
Queensland's outdoor attractions are the focus of a $600,000 advertising campaign to lure Americans to the Sunshine State.

Tourism Industry Development Minister Kate Jones said the campaign, running adverts across North American print and digital platforms, would come at the right time, with new flight services between the US and Brisbane.

North Americans will be targeted in a tourism campaign hoping to bring them to Queensland. Credit:Tammy Law

American tourists are classified as high-value travellers. This makes the US a lucrative target market for Queensland, Ms Jones said.

The $600,000 campaign began after a memorandum of understanding involving Brisbane Marketing, Destination Gold Coast, and Tourism and Events Queensland was signed.
DETROIT -- Its a new year and spring training is just around the corner.

While many players get to the Detroit Tigers training complex in Lakeland, Fla., weeks early, pitchers and catchers will officially report on Feb. 11. The rest of the team will be in town for a full-squad workout five days later.

The full calendar for the year to come is listed below.

Jan. 10: Teams and unsigned arbitration-eligible players exchange proposed salaries.

Jan. 21: BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot results announced.

Jan. 22-24: Tigers caravan. Locations and details to be announced.

Jan. 25: Autograph sessions at selected locations in downtown Detroit. Time and locations to be announced.

Feb. 3-21: Salary arbitration hearings in Phoenix. The Tigers have gone to arbitration with a player only once since 2001, winning a case against pitcher Michael Fulmer last spring.

Feb. 11: Tigers pitchers and catchers report to Lakeland, Fla.

Feb. 12: First pitcher-catcher workout at TigerTown.

Feb. 17: First full-squad workout at TigerTown.

Feb. 21: Tigers play exhibition against Southeastern (Fla.) University at Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland.

Feb. 22: Tigers open Grapefruit League season against the Philadelphia Phillies in Lakeland.

March 26: Opening Day: Tigers open 2019 season against the Cleveland Indians at Progressive Field. Active rosters must be reduced to 26 players.

March 30: Home opener at Comerica Park at 1:10 p.m. against the Kansas City Royals.

June 10-12: MLB amateur draft in Omaha, Nebraska.

July 14: MLB All-Star Game at Dodger Stadium.

Sept. 27: Final day of regular season. Tigers finish the year at home against the White Sox.

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Senator Koko Pimentel urged the Department of Energy (DOE) to closely monitor world oil prices

Senator Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III urged the Department of Energy (DOE) to closely monitor world oil prices as tensions between the United States and Iran continue to escalate.

"The DOE should strictly watch the oil price movement globally, especially with respect to Philippine sources of crude oil. Crude prices keep surging and it could batter our economy," expressed Pimentel.

The Senator, who chairs the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, also advised that the DOE must plan to secure new sources of crude oil as early as now, in view of the flare-up in US-Iran-Iraq relations.

"The government must study and seriously consider securing new sources of our crude oil. Spiking oil prices have led to recessions in the past. Mabuti nang advance mag-isip so that we are prepared," noted Pimentel.

Pimentel suggested that the Philippines should consider getting oil from Russia; a move which, the Senator believes, could strengthen Philippines-Russia relations in the process.

Oil prices have risen sharply following the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike near Baghdad International Airport.
A man was shot to death by Limestone County sheriffs deputies on Sunday evening.

The shooting happened around 5:15 p.m. at a home on Sugar Way in a rural area of Elkmont.

George Dison, 57, was declared dead at the scene, said Stephen Young, a sheriffs office spokesman.

57-year-old George Dison was shot and killed by Limestone County deputies at a home on Sugar Way in Elkmont around 5:15 p.m., sheriffs spokesman Stephen Young confirmed. pic.twitter.com/r6F46UIuLs  Ashley Remkus (@aremkus1) January 6, 2020

We don't really know much yet about George Dison. I haven't been able to reach any family yet. Court records don't show any prior felony convictions in Alabama state court or in the federal court district for north Alabama.  Ashley Remkus (@aremkus1) January 6, 2020

After two deputies arrived at the scene to investigate a report of domestic violence, Dison walked out of the woods carrying a shotgun, Young said. Dison ignored orders to drop the weapon, then pointed it at the deputies, Young said. The deputies fatally shot Dison.

Its a shame it had to occur this way, Young said. But by all appearances, it looks like (the deputies) didnt really have any other choice.

The State Bureau of Investigation is assisting with a probe of the deadly incident.

Limestone County Coroner Mike West said Disons body will be taken to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences for autopsy.

Young said deputies had also been called to investigate a domestic violence situation earlier on Sunday. That call came in around 11 a.m.
Photograph: Ali Haider/EPA

The future of the US military presence in Iraq is in question amid scenes of confusion in Washington, as the Trump administration scrambled to respond to Iraqi demands for the troops to leave after last weeks assassination in Baghdad of Irans top general, Qassem Suleimani.

The US-led coalition taskforce fighting Isis in Iraq delivered a letter to the Iraqi defence ministry on Monday saying preparations would begin right away to ensure that movement out of Iraq is conducted in a safe and efficient manner.

But soon afterwards, the defence secretary, Mark Esper, told journalists in the Pentagon: That letter is inconsistent with where we are right now and insisted that no decision had been taken to evacuate Iraq. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, said the letter had been sent in error.

That letter is a draft, it was a mistake, it was unsigned, it should not have been released, Milley said, adding that it was poorly worded, implies withdrawal, that is not whats happening.

Early on Tuesday, Sulemanis body arrived in his home town, the south-eastern city of Kerman in the final stage of his funeral processions. State TV broadcast live images of thousands of people in the streets, many dressed in black, to mourn the death of the general. Hossein Salami, the leader of Irans Revolutionary Guard, threatened to set ablaze places supported by the US, sparking anti-Israel chants from the crowd.

Were here today to pay respects to the great commander of the holy defence, said one of the mourners, who came from the southern city of Shiraz to attend the funeral.

A withdrawal of the US-led taskforce from Iraq would dramatically weaken the effort to stop Isis regrouping, marking a strategic victory for Iran and a serious setback for the Trump administration, which urged Baghdad not to expel its counter-terrorist forces.

The evident confusion in Washington added to an impression among US allies and enemies alike that the decision to assassinate Suleimani without a clear plan of what to do next had weakened the US in the region.

Story continues

US allies have continued to distance themselves from the decision, as millions of Iranians took to the streets to mourn and demand revenge for the assassination of the countrys top general.

Both Israel and Nato stressed they were not involved in the airstrike on Friday. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has already expressed disappointment in the lukewarm reaction of Washingtons European allies.

Related: Weeping supreme leader heads vast crowds mourning Suleimani in Iran

But the response of Israels prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was particularly striking, as he has been one of Trumps staunchest supporters on the world stage.

He told a meeting of his security cabinet on Monday: The assassination of Suleimani isnt an Israeli event but an American event. We were not involved and should not be dragged into it.

The Saudi deputy defence minister, Khalid bin Salman, was in Washington on Monday to urge restraint, joining a growing international chorus.

Frances foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, insisted there was still time for diplomacy but warned that without urgent action to defuse rising tensions there was a real risk of a new Middle East war.

The UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, who spoke to Pompeo on Monday, said that the regions cauldron of tensions is leading more and more countries to take unpredicted decisions with unpredictable consequences and a profound risk of miscalculation.

Following the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, Irans Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has appointed Suleimani's deputy, Esmail Qaani, as the new commander of the Revolutionary Guards elite Quds Force.

Little is known about his role in the Quds, a special operations force responsible for projecting Iranian military power overseas.

Like Suleimani, the 62-year-old from Mashhad joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a young man in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution.



He worked for IRGC counterintelligence before being appointed as Suleimanis second-in-command in 1997.



The pair are said to have been close friends. Both veterans of the brutal 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Iranian media quoted Qaani as saying their bond came from being children of war.

Comments from an IRGC political deputy this week suggested the division of labour between the two meant while Suleimani focused on Quds operations in the Middle East in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, Qaani handled more bureaucratic affairs as well as relationship building with groups in Africa and Afghanistan.

He was sanctioned by the US over funding international Quds Force activity and proxy forces in 2012.

While Qaani is believed to be weaker and less charismatic than his predecessor, he has already echoed Khamenei in promising revenge for Sulemanis death.

Quds Force operations are likely to continue unchanged, as the groups structure means it can rely on its institutional power rather than individual leaders. Bethan McKernan

The Trump administration refused a visa to the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, to come to New York to address the UN security council on Thursday, violating the UN headquarters agreement, the Foreign Policy website reported. A spokesman for the Iranian mission said it had not been informed of any decision, and a UN spokesman declined to comment.

The US letter to the Iraqi military was signed by the US commanding general in Iraq, Brig Gen William Seely, and said that US forces will be repositioning over the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement.

The taskforce would try keep disruption to a minimum and do much of the airlift at night to alleviate any perception that the US was bringing more troops into Baghdads fortified Green Zone.

Related: Iraq scales down threats to expel US forces after Trump reaction

In London, the foreign office would not confirm or deny reports that the UK was scaling back staff at its embassies in Iran and Iraq to a minimum level, saying only that both sites were open and the safety and security of our staff is of paramount importance and we keep our security posture under regular review.

Boris Johnson is to chair a meeting of the national security council as Britain continued to urge all sides in the crisis to draw back from all-out conflict. The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, spoke on Tuesday to Zarif to stress the need for a diplomatic resolution.

Iran has threatened a severe response to the US killing of Suleimani by drone strike in Baghdad last week. Brig Gen Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of Irans aerospace division, said on Monday that the only appropriate response would be the the complete destruction of America in the region.

While beginning to withdraw counter-Isis forces from Iraq, the Pentagon, meanwhile, continued to pour reinforcements into the region in case of a direct conflict with Iran. US defence officials said the roughly 2,500-strong marine force onboard the Bataan amphibious ready group, equipped with Cobra helicopters and Harrier jets, would be sent to the Middle East from its current position in the Mediterranean.

Three thousand airborne troops are already on the way to Kuwait, and CNN reported that B-52 bombers were being sent to the Indian Ocean base of Diego Garcia, for potential use over the Middle East.

On Monday, Iraqs caretaker prime minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, had summoned the US ambassador, Matthew Tueller, and called on the two countries to cooperate in arranging the US withdrawal. However, Abdul-Mahdi did not give a deadline for the US departure.

Trump faced condemnation on Monday for his threat to strike Iranian culture sites among 52 targets that the US would bomb in reprisal for any future Iranian attack. The number, he explained, was the same as the number of Americans taken hostage when the US embassy in Tehran was seized after the Islamic revolution in 1979.

Trump was also under continued pressure from Democrats on Monday for the lack of transparency over his justification for the assassination of Suleimani, who commanded the elite Quds force of Irans Revolutionary Guards. Trump and Pompeo have claimed the general was plotting imminent attacks against US targets.

Abdul-Mahdi said the Iranian military leader had flown to Iraq to negotiate, and he claimed Trump had asked the Iraqi government to mediate.

Related: Here's what could be lost if Trump bombs Iran's cultural treasures | Sergio Beltran-Garcia

Trump did not consult Congress or US allies before ordering the strike in the early hours of the morning in Baghdad. On Saturday, the White House delivered a formal notification to Congress as required by the 1973 War Powers Act, but its contents were classified. Normally such notifications are public documents with a classified section if required.

The Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Menendez wrote to Trump on Monday, demanding the war powers notification be declassified.

We did not see anything here that he deemed required such a classification, a Senate staffer said. The War Powers Act provision requiring the 48-hour notification was included partly for transparency purposes with the American people during these delicate moments. [Its] pretty self-defeating to hide something meant to be transparent.

The White House has suggested it will brief selected members of Congress this week, but Kellyanne Conway, a Trump adviser, said the decision on timing was up to the Pentagon.

US allies in Europe and the Middle East have stressed that Suleimani had been a destabilising and destructive presence in the region, but they have largely stopped short of supporting Trumps decision, calling for restraint on all sides.

The US briefed Nato ministers on Monday on the Suleimani killing. Speaking to journalists later, the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, distanced the alliance from the operation.

This is a US decision, it is not a decision taken by either the global coalition nor Nato, but all allies are concerned about Irans destabilizing activities in the region, Irans support to different terrorist groups, Stoltenberg said. He also confirmed the suspension of the Nato training mission in Iraq.

In everything that we do, the safety of our personnel is paramount. As such, we have temporarily suspended our training on the ground, the secretary general said.

There is mounting concern that the more cautious stance by the US-led coalition would make it much less effective and allow Isis to regenerate.

The bottom line is that there wont be much counter-terrorism going on in Iraq and Syria any time soon, wrote Luke Hartig, former senior director for counter-terrorism on the national security council, now at the New America foundation. Trumps counter-terrorism legacy in Iraq and Syria may be a series of dead bodies but nothing that addresses the core of the problem and no partners willing to help us root it out.




Following a vote in the Iraqi parliament Jan. 5, requesting the government to work on expelling US troops from the country, US President Donald Trump threatened Iraq with severe sanctions, which would worsen the already destroyed Iraqi economy.

Although the successive Iraqi governments all had a role in destroying the economy, the government of Adel Abdul Mahdi, the current caretaker prime minister, played a large part due to a series of miserable policies and decisions he adopted since coming to office in October 2018.

The government, which resigned along Abdul Mahdi on Dec. 1, approved a package of economic decisions to ease the ongoing demands-triggered protests that erupted at the beginning of October. Yet experts believe the next government will not go forward with these decisions that will cost the economy huge losses.

The outgoing Iraqi government had vowed to boost the economy, but it failed to create jobs, build new projects or solve the crises that afflicted society. Iraq has weak basic services such as electricity, health care and education.

Nevertheless, the government issued more than 30 decisions that included employing thousands of people, distributing grants to more than 600,000 people and approving the Pension Law and the Federal Service Council Law.

A source at the Council of Ministers, who preferred not to be named, argued that protests across Iraq rushed the government into making decisions, albeit arbitrary ones that will be substantially detrimental to the economy in the coming years.

The source told Al-Monitor that these decisions aim to tame the protests. Iraqs public sector is saturated; the growth rate has reached 400% since 2003 until now. Consequently, Iraq spends billions of dollars annually on the street without reaping any benefits.

He added, The cost of the reform packages exceeded $5 billion during the first two months of the protests. Among others, grants were distributed to unemployed youths, residential lands were allocated at low prices to citizens and some measures in the sectors of industry and agriculture were eased. If such amounts were properly spent, this would have reduced the unemployment rate by setting up factories. Iraq is unable to manage its economic crisis.

International economic organizations do not seem satisfied with the recent Iraqi states measures that increased spending. The World Bank indicated in a recent report that current expenditures during the first half of 2019 increased by 28.8% compared to the same period in the previous year, based on an increased bill of wages and subsidies to alleviate social pressures resulting from poor job creation in the private sector.

The source added, It is clear that the package of decisions will increase expenditures as it aims to incorporate the militias in the security forces and employ large numbers of graduates in ministries and state-owned companies.

Outgoing Prime Minister Abdul Mahdi had listed to his ministers the accomplishments of his government in the Cabinet session during which he submitted his resignation. He made it seem as if Iraq was a developed country that does not suffer any social and economic problems. We signed contracts with Germany, France, China, Saudi Arabia and Iran.  Hundreds of suspended projects were put back in business, which means employing hundreds of thousands of people, he said.

He pointed out that the Iraqi economy was boosted after spending hundreds of billions of dollars, allocating large numbers of lands to citizens and employing people. He added that he fought corruption and that Iraqs black oil sale revenues will reach $600 billion.

Abdul Mahdis statements were not accurate. His governments policy was based on random spending, by increasing the number of employees and distributing grants that led to a duplication of salaries and failure in organizing the relationship with the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) did not implement the signed oil agreement between Erbil and Baghdad. As of last September, Baghdad gave the KRG $3.4 billion without the latter sending a single barrel of oil to the Iraqi State Organization for Marketing Oil.

The numbers that Abdul Mahdi raised in his resignation speech are mostly inaccurate and far from the reality that Iraqis live in. The $600 billion in black oil annual sale proceeds is an unimaginable figure. Yet no explanation was issued by his office or Oil Minister Thamer al-Ghadban.

Financial and administrative corruption had surged under Abdul Mahdis rule, despite the establishment of the Supreme Anti-Corruption Council. The sale of jobs became public. Even the jobs that the government launched in tandem with the protests and sit-ins denouncing corruption, were sold at $7,000 by some executive officials. Whats more, parliament, the supervisory authority, started defending the corrupt and calling onto the judiciary to release them from prison.

Ammar al-Rubaie, financial researcher at Al-Mustansiriya University, told Al-Monitor, The Iraqi economy is at a very critical stage. The Iraqi population has increased by 100% since 2003, while services have remained unchanged since the 1980s.

He clarified that the majority of the protesters are unemployed, while government reforms have served only employees and increased their pensions. The unemployed so far have received nothing. Among others, the health insurance law and the social security law have yet to be approved. The Iraqi parliament has, however, voted on a bill to cancel the financial privileges of officials. But when the current crisis subsides, this bill will be challenged by a member of parliament and will be reversed. The government of Haider al-Abadi had introduced several reforms but the Supreme Federal Court accepted the challenges against these reforms. The privileges were returned to the officials.

Rubaie added, The current government decisions will be canceled by the next government because they will cost the economy billions of dollars in losses annually. Consequently, the next government should resort to investment, privatization of losing government companies and the establishment of housing and other projects to uplift the economy.

Iraq and the International Monetary Fund had signed an agreement in 2015 to restructure the Iraqi economy by reducing the number of employees and promoting the private sector. But the outgoing government's policy undermined this agreement by increasing spending and not adhering to its terms due to increased oil prices.
Here are todays top news, analysis and opinion curated for you at 9 AM. Know all about the latest news and other news updates from Hindustan Times.

Will soon register FIR: Delhi police after Sunday violence on JNU campus

The Delhi police said it has received several complaints in connection with Sundays violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) where masked men and women armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus. Read more

Priyanka Gandhi starts chalking out minority outreach plan ahead of 2022 UP polls

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has sought the caste composition in each of Uttar Pradeshs 403 assembly constituencies as her party seeks to reach out to the Dalits, Other Backward Class (OBCs) and Muslims ahead of the 2022 assembly polls in the state, Congress functionaries aware of the developments said. Read more

Rain likely in north over 3 days; temperatures to fall in Delhi between Jan 9-11: IMD

Temperatures are likely to fall in Delhi between January 9 and 11 after a spell of rain triggered by a western disturbance over the next two days, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Sunday, almost a week after a change in wind direction brought relief from an intense cold wave in the national capital.Read more \

Iran says will forego limit on centrifuges as tensions with US soar

Iran on Sunday announced its fifth reduction in its nuclear commitments, saying it will forego the limit on the number of centrifuges, as tensions with the United States soar after the killing of a top Iranian commander in a US strike. Read more

Golden Globes 2020: From Parasite to Fleabag, check out full list of winners

The Golden Globes, Hollywoods most freewheeling televised award show, are underway at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hill, Los Angeles, hosted by Ricky Gervais for the fifth time. The first award of the night went, fittingly to a streaming service series. Check out the full list of winners here

Indian jugaad: Steam irons, hairdryers used to dry pitch in Guwahati, social media has field day

Virat Kohli won the toss, opted to field first and the two skippers went back in. It started raining and for the rest of the night, frequent showers and damp patches on the field and on the pitch ensured that the crowd had to go back home without seeing any action. The showers lasted less than an hour. Once the showers relented, super soppers ran up and down and even steam irons and hairdryers were used to dry the pitch. Read more

The US Left and Indian democracy | Analysis

The nullification of Article 370 has prompted the Left-Liberal segment of the American establishment to denounce Indian democracy as majoritarian. The charge is fascinating because it says more about the motives and fate of American progressivism than it does about Indian democracy, writes Rahul Sagar. Read more
A Winter Weather Advisory is issued for Northern Oneida, Northern Herkimer, and Lewis Counties from

4:00am Monday to 4:00am Tuesday for accumulating moderate snowfall and gusty winds. This will create

hazardous driving conditions for your Monday morning and evening commute.

Sunday night, the snowfall begins. A low pressure system moves in from the West with a cold front attached

to it. The snowfall will become moderate to heavy overnight and into Monday morning ahead of this front.

Plan on needing some extra time to brush off your car Monday morning and for your morning commute with snow

covered roads. Temperatures will be in the upper 20s.

As this cold front moves into Central New York late Monday morning, the winds will begin to pick up. Wind

speeds will be around 15-20mph with gusts up to 30mph. This will create blowing snow and areas of low

visibility. Highs will reach the mid 30s.

Monday evening, the snow becomes lighter and is more confined to the North Country. This is because the wind

direction will change to a West wind. This means the lake effect snow bands will roll off the East side of

Lake Ontario. The snow will move inland over Northern Oneida, Lewis, and Northern Herkimer Counties. These

are the areas a Winter Weather Advisory is issued for.

The snow continues Monday night, eventually ending Tuesday morning with decreasing cloud cover. Overnight

lows in the mid 20s. By Tuesday morning, we will have accumulated about 4-7" in the North Country, 2-4" in

the Mohawk Valley, and around a trace to 2" for areas further South.
Why do I see myself differently in photographs compared with when I look in the mirror?
President Donald Trump speaks during an "Evangelicals for Trump Coalition Launch" at King Jesus International Ministry, Friday, Jan. 3, 2020, in Miami. Read more

WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump insists that Iranian cultural sites are fair game for the U.S. military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so could constitute a war crime under international law. He also warned Iraq that he would levy punishing sanctions if it expelled American troops in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed a top Iranian official.

Two top Senate Democrats are calling on the Republican president to immediately declassify the administrations reasoning for the strike on the Iranian official, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, saying there is no legitimate justification for keeping the information from the public.

In a letter Monday to Trump, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and the Senate Foreign Relation Committees Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey said the White Houses classified notification sent to Congress late Saturday under the War Powers Act was insufficient and inappropriate.

It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner, they wrote. An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society.

They asked that the notification be declassified in full.

Congress has registered unease with Trumps decision to strike in Iraq without advance notice to lawmakers and then to send the notification, which is required under the War Powers Act, as entirely classified.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the over the weekend the highly unusual classified notification raises more questions than it answers. This document prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner and justification of the Administrations decision to engage in hostilities against Iran.

Trumps comments Sunday came amid escalating tensions in the Middle East following the killing of Soleimani, the head of Irans elite Quds force. Iran has vowed to retaliate, and Iraqs parliament responded by voting Sunday to oust U.S. troops based in the country.

Trump first raised the prospect of targeting Iranian cultural sites Saturday in a tweet. Speaking with reporters Sunday as he flew back to Washington from his holiday stay in Florida, he doubled down, despite international prohibitions.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, Trump said.

The targeted killing of Soleimani sparked outrage in the Middle East, including in Iraq, where more than 5,000 American troops are still on the ground 17 years after the U.S. invasion. Iraqs parliament voted Sunday in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for the expulsion of the American forces.

Trump said the U.S. wouldnt leave without being paid for its military investments in Iraq over the years  then said if the troops do have to withdraw, he would hit Baghdad with economic penalties.

We will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, he said. If theres any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.

He added: Were not leaving until they pay us back for it.

The administration has scrambled to contend with the backlash to the killing of Soleimani. Though he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, the targeted American strike marked a stark escalation in tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. military may well strike more Iranian leaders if the Islamic Republic retaliates. He tip-toed around questions about Trumps threat to attack Iranian cultural sites, a military action that likely would be illegal under the laws of armed conflict and the U.N. charter.

Pompeo said only that any U.S. military strikes inside Iran would be legal.

We'll behave inside the system, Pompeo said. We always have and we always will.

Trumps warnings rattled some administration officials. One U.S. national security official said the president had caught many in the administration off guard and prompted internal calls for others in the government, including Pompeo, to clarify the matter. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly to the issue, said clarification was necessary to affirm that the U.S. military would not intentionally commit war crimes.

Oona Hathaway, an international law professor at Yale and a former national security law official in the Defense Department's legal office, said Trumps threat amounted to a pretty clear promise of commission of a war crime.

The presidents threats to Iran did little to quell Tehrans furor over the death of Soleimani. Iranian state television reported that the country would no longer abide by any limits of the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with the United States and other world powers. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018 and stepped up economic sanctions on Tehran, actions that accelerated a cycle of hostilities leading to the last weeks killing.

The administration also pushed back Sunday on questions about the legality of the strike on Soleimani. Pompeo said the administration would have been culpably negligent in its duty to protect the United States if it had not killed him. He did not provide evidence for his previous claims that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on Americans. Instead of arguing that an attack had been imminent, he said it was inevitable.

"We watched him continue to actively build out for what was going to be a significant attack  thats what we believed  and we made the right decision, he said, adding later: We continue to prepare for whatever it is the Iranian regime may put in front of us within the next 10 minutes, within the next 10 days, and within the next 10 weeks.

Congressional Democrats were skeptical.

I really worry that the actions the president took will get us into what he calls another endless war in the Middle East. He promised we wouldn't have that, Schumer said.

Schumer said Trump lacks the authority to engage militarily with Iran and Congress needs a new war powers resolution to be a check on this president. To which Pompeo said: We have all the authority we need to do what weve done to date.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said the administration violated the Constitution by not consulting with Congress in advance.

Congressional staffs got their first briefings from the administration on Friday, and members were expected to be briefed this week.

But Trump made clear Sunday that he saw little reason to give Congress advanced warning if he orders the military to carry out further actions against Iran.

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner," he wrote on Twitter. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!

Democrats in Congress have complained that Trumps order to kill Soleimani took place without first consulting with or informing top lawmakers, noting that Congress still holds sole power to declare war. Trump did meet the 48-hour deadline required by the War Powers Act to notify Congress of the deadly drone strike, though the document provided Saturday was entirely classified and no public version was released.

Moving swiftly to rebuke Trump for not consulting with Congress, Pelosi said late Sunday the House would introduce and vote this week on a war powers resolution to limit the presidents military actions regarding Iran. In a letter to House Democrats, Pelosi called the airstrike provocative and disproportionate and said it had endangered our servicemembers, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran. A similar resolution was introduced in the Senate.

Some of the Democrats running to challenge Trump in November questioned whether he had a long-term plan for the Mideast.

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Trump was ill-prepared for the repercussions of the strike on Soleimani and had alienated allies by not alerting them of the plans. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said, When you're dealing with the Middle East, you need to think about the next and the next and the next move. This is not checkers.

Pompeo appeared on ABCs This Week," CNNs State of the Union, NBCs Meet the Press,' CBS Face the Nation,'' Fox News Sunday" and Fox News Channels Sunday Morning Futures. Schumer was on ABC, Warner was on NBC and Buttigieg was on CNN.
Officials install equipment on traditional fishing boats in Ranai, the capital of Natuna regency in Indonesias Natuna Islands, Dec. 5, 2019.

Indonesia is boosting patrols in its maritime territory in the South China Sea after incursions by Chinese coast guard and fishing boats in recent days.

The head of Indonesias Maritime Security Agency (Bakamla) said the country would defend its waters off the Natuna Islands  an archipelago at the southern reaches of the contested sea  after more than 60 Chinese ships trespassed in its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in late December.

We will be present there and we will stake our claim, Vice Admiral Achmad Taufiqoerrohman, the chief of Bakamla, told reporters after meeting with cabinet ministers in Jakarta on Friday.

The Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) will also exert their strength, Achmad said.

He did not indicate how many additional personnel or ships would be deployed, saying those details were confidential.

TNI said it had deployed three ships, one maritime reconnaissance aircraft and an Indonesian Air Force plane to patrol Natuna waters. Another ship was on its way to the region from Jakarta, the military said in a statement.

After Jakarta lodged a diplomatic protest over the December incursion, Beijings foreign ministry defended the presence of Chinese boats around the Indonesian islands, saying that China has rights and interests over the relevant waters.

Chinese boats including three coast guard vessels were again spotted in Natuna waters on Friday, according to Indonesian media outlet Tempo.

When we conduct air patrol this morning, we find 30 boats there. I have deployed more security personnel, it quoted the Bakamla chief as saying.

Gas fields near the islands are believed to hold up to 226 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to data from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources.

Following a series of encounters with Chinese ships in Indonesian waters in 2016, including one in which the Indonesian Navy fired warning shots at Chinese-flagged vessels, Indonesia further irritated Beijing by renaming the area the North Natuna Sea.

Jakarta then launched an ambitious five-point plan for developing the Natunas that involved military facilities, fisheries, tourism, oil and gas, and preserving the environment.

It is our right to develop the Natuna waters, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told reporters on Friday. We would also like to emphasize again that there have been violations by Chinese vessels in Indonesias EEZ.

The South China Sea BenarNews Overlapping claims

Indonesia has traditionally not been among countries in the region engaged in territorial disputes over the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which about U.S. $5 trillion in trade passes annually.

China, through its so-called Nine-Dash Line, claims almost all of the sea, while Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan have their own overlapping claims to portions of those waters.

In a 2016 ruling on a case brought by the Philippines, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague said there was no legal basis for Beijing's maritime claims. But China rejected the ruling and launched a building spree in territories it has taken over in the sea.

Chinas Nine-Dash Line overlaps with Indonesias EEZ in waters off the Natunas, U.S.-based experts on the South China Sea told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Evan Laksmana, a senior researcher at the Jakarta-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said the Natuna waters had been one of Indonesias potential flashpoints since the 1990s because of their location in the South China Sea.

If the military anticipated some form of conflict spillover, from regional countries fighting with each other  the Natunas are among the likeliest or closest scenarios, Evan told BenarNews.

In addition to the problems in the South China Sea, I think this maritime crises over fisheries potential has given an additional public momentum for the TNI to put in place pre-existing policies and plans to beef up military security in the area, he said.

Natuna Island BenarNews

A future Pearl Harbor

In 2018, Indonesia began building a military base on Natuna Besar, the regencys main island, which will reportedly house several branches of the armed forces when completed as well submarines, warships and fighter jets. Ryamizard Ryacudu, the defense minister during President Joko Widodos first term, envisioned the base as a future Pearl Harbor.

The Natuna Integrated TNI Unit is part of our strategic plans to develop our strength to provide deterrence against threats, especially at the borders, military commander Air Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto said during the facilitys launch in 2018.

Military officials did not grant BenarNews access to the site during a visit to the regency in December, and TNI officials in Jakarta declined to respond to questions for this report.

Civilians in Natuna privately expressed doubts that tourism could flourish in a place with such a heavy military presence.

But the government has established a network of parks in the island chain, and plans to nominate Natuna as a UNESCO Global Geopark due to its biodiversity and unique geological features.

What triggered the central government to beef up the military is the South China Sea issue, Rohdial Huda, a former fishing boat captain and entrepreneur in Ranai, told BenarNews.

The plan to strengthen the local economy by promoting tourism and fisheries could boost the countrys prestige, according to Rohdial.

National pride does not only come from fighting strength, but also economic strength. If the economy is strong, so is our self-esteem. If the economy is weak, we are weak too, he said.

Hardiansyah, the head of tourism and culture in the islands, said he was optimistic that the central governments plan to make Natuna a tourism hub could increase regional revenue.

The government is building a seaport in Senoa Bay off one of the Natuna islets that will allow tourists from Singapore and Malaysia to come by boat.

Currently, tourism contributes Rp 2.7 billion (U.S. $193,800) [to the local economy] and we hope it will increase 10-fold or maybe more, Hardiansyah told BenarNews.

Jakarta has also poured money into developing Natunas fishing industry in the past five years. In October, the government launched the Natuna Integrated Marine and Fisheries Center, which had been in development for three years and cost 221.7 billion rupiah ($15.9 million).

Dedy Damhudy, head of the fisheries empowerment division at the Natuna Regency Maritime and Fisheries Office, said programs and policies introduced by Jakarta had contributed to bigger catches.

During the last four years, the impact has been significant. There have been plenty of fish. Coral reefs have been rehabilitated, Dedy told BenarNews.

Natuna is unique among Indonesian territories because it borders so many countries, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore and Malaysia. Fishing boats from countries closer than China commonly trespass in the area, local fishermen say.

The government policy of seizing and sinking foreign fishing boats was popular among Indonesians but exposed the government to criticism from affected countries. That policy may change under Edhy Prabowo, Indonesias new minister of maritime affairs and fisheries.

New minister Edhy seems [to be] moving towards overturning his predecessors policies, so it seems possible that blowing up ships may no longer be the priority for the new ministry. But we have to wait and see, said Evan of the CSIS in Jakarta.

Edhy has said that the scuttling of confiscated boats was a good policy, but it was not enough.

What to do after that? We have to develop the industry. How is our fisheries industry faring? What about our fishermens yield? These are things we have to improve, the minister said recently.

Edhy said his ministry was considering donating impounded boats to local fishermen with court approval instead of destroying them.

Meanwhile in Ranai, it is often fishermen who inform the Navy about the presence of foreign boats.

In this storm season, they enter our territory saying they need to take cover. But they dont go to port. They keep taking fish. Just last year, we saw hundreds of them. The ships are huge, dozens of tons. Some are more than 100 tons, Rusli, a local fisherman, told BenarNews in December.

Confrontations even occur, with boat rammings on the open sea.

We are OK as long as the Navy or fisheries patrols keep going out. If someone escorts us, we dont feel afraid, Rusli said.

Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.
Associated Press

Chevron said Monday it will pull its employees out of Iraq temporarily amid an escalation in tensions following the United States' targeted killing of Iran's top military general.

Chevron said it was evacuating its workers and contractors from the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq after the U.S. State Department urged Americans to flee Iraq because of concerns from Iran-backed militias and the potential targeting of Americans in the area.
New Delhi:

The attack on students and teachers at the Jawarharlal Nehru University by unidentified goons triggered protests across India on Monday as the clamour grew for the resignation of the vice chancellor who is being blamed for inaction during the violence that left 34 people injured.

As horrific first-person accounts emerged of the attack on Sunday evening, including on JNU students union president Aishe Ghosh, Delhi Police said no arrests have been made and that they have transferred the case to the Crime Branch, who claimed to have found "vital clues."

Politicians of all parties condemned the violence. The opposition and JNU students blamed the ABVP, the students' wing of the BJP for the violence, and accused the Delhi Police of inaction. The BJP said campuses should not become political battleground.

On Sunday, a mob of masked young people stormed the JNU campus in south Delhi and systematically targeted students in three hostels, unleashing mayhem with sticks, stones and iron rods, hitting inmates and breaking windows, furniture and personal belongings. They also attacked a women's hostel.

The 34 people, including students and faculty members, who were admitted to the AIIMS trauma centre were discharged on Monday morning, officials said.

Timeline of how the violence unfolded in JNU:

January 4: Around 1 pm, masked intruders entered the Central Information System and damaged the server.

January 5: Around noon, ABVP students who had gone for registration were attacked. This went on till 1 pm. Security guards who tried to intervene were also beaten up.

After 5 pm: More than 50 intruders entered the campus from the back gate. Armed with lathis, clubs, sticks and iron rods, they entered the hostels and attacked students inside Sabarmati Hostel and Koyna Hostel. They also attacked students who were at dhabas. Masked intruders also specifically attacked JNUSU official bearers and students.

5:30 pm: When the first distress call was made, few local police personnel reached the campus, but were stopped at the entrance gate because no permission was given.

Around 6:45 pm: The JNU administration gave a written consent to Delhi Police to enter inside. Then subsequently several calls were made by students who were attacked.

7 pm: The Delhi Police entered the JNU campus. Reinforcement entered the campus after 7:30 pm. Senior officers DCP, JCP reached the campus gate around 7:45 pm. More deployments were made after 8 pm.

7:30 pm: JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh was attacked while telling students not to panic.

Till 9 pm: The mob runs riot inside the hostels.

Delhi Police registers FIR

The Delhi Police registered an FIR against unidentified persons on Monday for rioting and damaging property, officials said. According to the FIR, students were protesting against a hostel fee hike for the last few days. According to instructions issued by the high court, no protest is allowed within a 100-metre radius of the administrative block of the university.

'Specifically targeted': Aishe Ghosh

I was specifically targeted on Sunday during a peace march on campus. Around 20-25 masked persons disrupted the march and attacked me with iron rods, the union president, her head swathed in bandages, told news agency PTI after being released from hospital earlier Monday.

She received at least 15 stitches on the head, and her arm was in a cast after the attack.

"For the last four-five days, some RSS affiliated professors were promoting violence to break our movement," Ghosh alleged at a press conference later.

ABVP denieS being responsible

The ABVP has denied being responsible, and in turn, has blamed Ghosh's Left-supported union of stage managing the violence. It also claimed that many of its activists were injured, but has not presented any to the media.

Protests across the country

Protests against the citizenship amendment act and the attack against students of JNU -- which has seen a 70-day strike against the hike in fees -- segued into one with students joining parties across the political spectrum to call for accountability.

Large protests took place on Monday in universities in Pondicherry to Chandigarh and Aligarh to Kolkata. Protests were also held at the National Law University in Bangalore and IIT-Bombay as well as at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

In Mumbai, the protest by students at the Gateway of India that started at midnight continued.

In New Delhi, the youth wing of the Congress Party took out a torchlight march through central New Delhi.

In Nepal, JNU alumni gathered at Maitighar Mandala in Kathmandu to voice their protest, as did students at Oxford University and University of Sussex in Britain and at Columbia University in the US.

Bollywood spoke up too

"Horrifying", "heart-breaking" and "barbaric" is how many in the film industry, including actors-filmmakers Anil Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Rajkummar Rao, Anurag Kashyap and Sonam Kapoor Ahuja, described the attack.

The JNU campus was a battle zone with the shattered windowpanes and the shards of glass mute testimonies of the violence the night before.

Uneasy calm in JNU

A day after they were attacked in what they believed was their safe refuge, many students in Jawaharlal Nehru University on Monday were both angry and fearful with some demanding that the guilty be booked and others saying they were going home.

There was an uneasy calm in the campus where there was a massive deployment of security personnel and authorities only allowed students with valid ID cards inside. However, these measures did not assuage the concerns of students over their safety.

(With PTI inputs)
Bollywood celebrities including actors Riteish Deshmukh and Shabana Azmi took to social media to condemn the rampage carried out by a masked mob on the students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday.

Terming the incident as "horrific", actor Riteish Deshmukh took to Twitter and said, "Why do you need to cover your face? Because you know you are doing something wrong, illegal & punishable. There is no honour in this-Its horrific to see the visuals of students & teachers brutally attacked by masked goons inside JNU-Such violence cannot & should not be tolerated."Deskhmukh`s wife and actor Genelia Deshmukh also took Twitter to condemn the attacks on JNU students."Absolutely disturbed to see the visuals of masked goons enter JNU and attack students & teachers - sheer brutality!! Humble appeal to the police to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice," she tweeted.

Actor Dia Mirza throwing a powerful question at netizens, tweeted, "How long will this be allowed to continue? How long will you turn a blind eye? How long will the defenceless be attacked in the name of politics or religion? Enough is enough. @DelhiPolice."`Pink` actor Taapsee Pannu also shared a video of the rampage and tweeted, "such is the condition inside what we consider to be a place where our future is shaped. It`s getting scarred for ever. Irreversible damage.

What kind of shaping up is happening here, it`s there for us to see.... saddening."Earlier on Sunday evening, more than 18 students, including JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, were injured and taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered the JNU and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods. The JNU administration and political leaders, cutting across political lines, had condemned the attack on students and urged the police to take action against the perpetrators.
The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a law framed by the West Bengal government in 2008 to constitute the Madrasah Service Commission for appointment of teachers in madrasahs, saying the selection of teachers and their nomination by the panel was not violative of the rights of minority educational institutions.

The apex court held that the West Bengal Madrasah Service Commission Act, 2008 ensured that the panel, comprising experts in the field, screened talent across the state, adopted a fair selection procedure and selected the best available candidates purely on the basis of merit.

It said the commission also ensured that even while nominating, the interests of the minority institutions were taken care of.

A bench of justices Arun Mishra and U U Lalit said the state legislature had taken care to see that the composition of the commission would ensure compatability of the teachers, who would be selected to impart education in the madrasah education system, which was also emphasised in the statement of objects and reasons.

"The statutory provisions thus seek to achieve excellence in education and also promote the interest of minority institutions," the top court said.

Holding that the provisions of the Act were not violative of the rights of minority educational institutions, the bench said the selection of teachers and their nomination by the commission would satisfy national interests as well as the interests of such institutions.

"However, the additional feature in the present matter shows that the composition of the commission, with a special emphasis on persons having a profound knowledge in Islamic culture and theology, would ensure that the special needs and requirements of the minority educational institutions will always be taken care of and thus, the present case stands on a different footing.

"We hold that the provisions of the Commission Act are not violative of the rights of minority educational institutions on any count," it said.

The top court said selection of meritorious students was accepted to be in national interest and a minority institution could not, in the name of right under Article 30(1) of the Constitution, disregard merit or merit-based selection of students.

It set aside the Calcutta High Court verdict, which had held the legislation as unconstitutional.

"We declare all nominations made by the commission in pursuance of the provisions of the Commission Act to be valid and operative. However, if after the disposal of the matters by the high court any appointments are made by the concerned madrasahs, such appointments of teachers shall be deemed to be valid for all purposes.

"But the commission shall hereafter be competent to select and nominate teachers to various madrasahs in accordance with the provisions of the Commission Act and the rules framed thereunder," the bench said.

It added that any departure from the concept of merit and excellence would not make a minority educational institution an effective vehicle to achieve what has been contemplated in various decisions of the apex court.

"Further, if merit is not the sole and governing criteria, the minority institutions may lag behind the non-minority institutions rather than keep in step with them," the bench said.

Several petitions were filed in the Calcutta High Court challenging the validity of the law, contending that the government, which funds or provides aid to minority institutions, can formulate guidelines for appointments of teachers but cannot itself appoint them.

The high court had declared the Act unconstitutional, saying it was violative of Article 30, which stated that all minorities shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.

The high court verdict was challenged in the top court by teachers who were appointed under the new law.

The Supreme Court, while agreeing to hear the batch of pleas challenging the high court verdict, had granted the petitioners interim relief and directed the state government not to remove them from their jobs till the final order.

In 2018, the top court had allowed the West Bengal government to fill the vacant posts subject to the final outcome of the case.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Is Nordea Bank Abp (STO:NDA SE) a good dividend stock? How can we tell? Dividend paying companies with growing earnings can be highly rewarding in the long term. On the other hand, investors have been known to buy a stock because of its yield, and then lose money if the company's dividend doesn't live up to expectations.

In this case, Nordea Bank Abp likely looks attractive to investors, given its 9.4% dividend yield and a payment history of over ten years. It would not be a surprise to discover that many investors buy it for the dividends. There are a few simple ways to reduce the risks of buying Nordea Bank Abp for its dividend, and we'll go through these below.

Click the interactive chart for our full dividend analysis

OM:NDA SE Historical Dividend Yield, January 6th 2020

Payout ratios

Dividends are usually paid out of company earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. Comparing dividend payments to a company's net profit after tax is a simple way of reality-checking whether a dividend is sustainable. Nordea Bank Abp paid out 221% of its profit as dividends, over the trailing twelve month period. Unless there are extenuating circumstances, from the perspective of an investor who hopes to own the company for many years, a payout ratio of above 100% is definitely a concern.

We update our data on Nordea Bank Abp every 24 hours, so you can always get our latest analysis of its financial health, here.

Dividend Volatility

From the perspective of an income investor who wants to earn dividends for many years, there is not much point buying a stock if its dividend is regularly cut or is not reliable. For the purpose of this article, we only scrutinise the last decade of Nordea Bank Abp's dividend payments. During this period the dividend has been stable, which could imply the business could have relatively consistent earnings power. During the past ten-year period, the first annual payment was 0.20 in 2010, compared to 0.69 last year. This works out to be a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 13% a year over that time.

Story continues

Dividends have been growing pretty quickly, and even more impressively, they haven't experienced any notable falls during this period.

Dividend Growth Potential

Dividend payments have been consistent over the past few years, but we should always check if earnings per share (EPS) are growing, as this will help maintain the purchasing power of the dividend. Nordea Bank Abp's earnings per share have shrunk at 17% a year over the past five years. With this kind of significant decline, we always wonder what has changed in the business. Dividends are about stability, and Nordea Bank Abp's earnings per share, which support the dividend, have been anything but stable.

Conclusion

When we look at a dividend stock, we need to form a judgement on whether the dividend will grow, if the company is able to maintain it in a wide range of economic circumstances, and if the dividend payout is sustainable. We're a bit uncomfortable with its high payout ratio. Moreover, earnings have been shrinking. While the dividends have been fairly steady, we'd wonder for how much longer this will be sustainable if earnings continue to decline. To conclude, we've spotted a couple of potential concerns with Nordea Bank Abp that may make it less than ideal candidate for dividend investors.

Given that earnings are not growing, the dividend does not look nearly so attractive. Very few businesses see earnings consistently shrink year after year in perpetuity though, and so it might be worth seeing what the 16 analysts we track are forecasting for the future.

If you are a dividend investor, you might also want to look at our curated list of dividend stocks yielding above 3%.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Somrita Ghosh By

Express News Service

Groundwater in Delhi is depleting so fast that the national capital may run out of it by 2020. The assessment, damning as it is, was made by the Niti Aayog, the central authority mandated to put the nation on a growth trajectory, in a recent report.

A recent study commissioned by the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) also painted an alarming picture, saying groundwater levels in the city are vanishing at an astonishing rate of 10 cm every year. With its air already laced with toxic poison and groundwater sources drying up, the city not only risks slipping further down on the livability index but also sending its residents scrambling and scrounging for every drop in the not too distant future.

The depth of water below the surface varies in different parts of the Delhi, largely due to geological factors and proximity of the source to the Yamuna. While in some parts, such as those in the vicinity of the Yamuna flood plain, groundwater could be reached barely 1.2 metres below the surface, in others, particularly to the south of Delhi Ridge ground, it could be as far as 64 metres below the ground, according to a study by Central Ground Water Board (CGWB).

With the demand for groundwater on the rise to meet the needs of the rising population, more water has to be extracted. The situation is the same in Delhi as it is elsewhere. A CGWB report on Delhi says vast swathes of the city, barring some parts, are battling groundwater deficiency. However, the Board does not have data on how much groundwater is extracted. However, whats plain to see is that lakes and other groundwater sources are drying up or are being encroached, and, unless revived, the city will struggle for every drop, Sushmita Sengupta, programme manager, Water Programme, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), said.

To put a leash on rampant, often illegal, extraction of groundwater, the Delhi government recently sealed unauthorised borewells across the city in line with a directive from the National Green Tribunal (NGT).

Government effort

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, also the chairman of Delhi Jal Board (DJB), is seized of the citys groundwater deficiency and depletion, and has laid out a revival plan through rejuvenation of dying lakes and other water bodies.

The DJB, too, has held out an optimistic take on the citys groundwater scenario, saying that water bodies on its watch, which have a combined holding capacity of 135 million gallons, will cover 350 acres of the city in the forseeable future.

No time limit can be set for such projects. The groundwater situation will improve gradually. It is a continuous process. In many areas (of Delhi), the groundwater levels are already showing signs of improvement. If we can provide potable water to the people, they wont feel the need to turn to illegal extraction. This is precise what we are working at. If we can curb extraction, it will help maintain the citys groundwater balance, Dinesh Mohaniya, vice chairman, DJB, said.

The DJB has divided its groundwater revival work into four steps. First is revival of dying lakes and abandoned pits by relaying them in a manner that helps boost the groundwater level. It also includes digging more canals. Second is the Palla project, which is aimed at holding the citys rain run-off on the Yamuna flood plains. Third is rainwater harvesting and fourth, drain water harvesting.

Lakes, canals, pits

Faced with limited raw water sources and rising demand to meet household, commercial and industrial needs, the DJB started working on a plan to use treated effluent water as a source to recharge the groundwater levels in an environmentally sustainable manner. It has also been working simultaneously on reviving the citys lakes, canals and abandoned pits.The first effort to that end was the revival of the Rajokri Lake in 2018.

Relaid at a cost of Rs 222.10 lakh, the dying water body was fed with wastewater discharged from surrounding areas using SWAB technology. The area around the lake has seen a wave of landscaping and beautification  with the setting up of a Chhat Puja ghat, an amphitheatre and walkways to encourage community participation in keeping the lake in good order.

The water bodies currently in Delhi are of certain types  totally dry, sewage-contaminated, filled with rain water, minor contamination or totally clean. Satpula, Ghoga and Roshanara, which are among the dry lakes, have been treated using the same mechanism. The ones that are full are pumped dry before being filled with treated water using a natural technique, Ankit Srivastava, technical advisor, DJB, said.

In bigger lakes where the water cannot be pumped out, the DJB is using the Decentralised Sewage Water Treatment Plant (DSTP) tech to re-circulate existing water.Fifteen days of rainfall isnt enough to revive groundwater in the city. We have to think of alternatives, one of which is to use treated water, Srivastava said.

The DJB is also working on reviving old canals. Srivastava said a 4-km-long abandoned canal in Northwest Delhi has identified for revival. It will be filled with flood water from the Yamuna, he said.

There are many canals, like the one at Auchandi, which receive water from Haryana for irrigation. The DJB has given its nod to replacing canal water with the one from sewage treatment plants. As much as 51 cusec will be used for drinking purpose, he said. In other minor canals, the DJB plans to install DSTPs such as the one in Mungeshpur drain, which can clean sewage water from villages. In Mundka, Najafgarh and West Delhi, irrigation minors will be soon get clean water.

Palla Project

One of the governments pet project aimed at recharging groundwater sources, the Palla Project aims at holding rainwater in the Yamuna floodplains in a giant reservoir between Palla and Wazirabad. As part of the project, small ponds will be dug to hold water from an overflowing Yamuna during the monsoon season. A pilot project was implemented last year and the DJB claimed that a report has shown amarked improvement in the groundwater level. Spread over 18 acres, the ponds received flood water from the Yamuna for 12 days.

Rainwater harvesting

As per government rule, rain water harvesting (RWH) has been made compulsory in government buildings, schools and housing societies. The role etched out for the DJB in this direction is to provide financial support of upto Rs 50,000 for installing such systems and also help with technical assistance, empanelled agencies and simplified designs.While 80 per cent of government buildings and schools have installed RWH systems, the DJB said the response from housing societies hasnt been as encouraging.

Drain water harvesting

Initiated as a pilot project in East Delhi, the DJB and Irrigation and Flood Department have deployed a drain water purification system in Shahdara link drain near Akshardham, using electrocoagulation technique to purify sewage water.Initial estimates suggest that the plant can filter and supply 4 million gallons per day of drinking water in East Delhi, as well as help groundwater recharge in adjoining Noida.The DJB is also experimenting with Geotextiles bag to clean the drains. The bags are mostly used in stopping erosion of river banks. Made of polypropylene or polyester, Geotextiles are permeable fabrics having the ability to filter drain sludge.

Technology Used

The technologies being put to practice to revive groundwater are Phytorid technology, developed by National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) and the DJBs SWAB. Phytorid and SWAB are natural and cost-effective ways of treating water. But in cases where these techniques cant be applied, we rely on electromechanical pumping, Srivastava said.

Quality of Soil

Soil infiltration is the process by which water on the surface seeps into the ground. In Delhi, the soil quality is mostly light with subordinate amount of medium texture soils. While the Yamuna has sand pit on both sides  4 to 5 km wide and 40-50 feet deep, the Asola Bhatti Mines is rocky. The one in Dwarka is mixed with silt and pebble, making its soil strata percolation rate different than others.

Challenges

Srivastava noted the technical challenges faced by the DJB, topping which is the non-availability of a specific guideline. Theres also a lot of inter-disciplinary work involved and currently, we dont have enough engineers, he said. He also cited encroachment, resistance from locals and socio-economic issues.

Projects on anvil

A 10 MLD effluent pumping station at Okhla STP, estimated at Rs 44.57 crores. From the STP, treated effluent water will be supplied to fill the abandoned mining pits of Bhatti mines through a 27.5-km pipeline. Project tipped to increase the groundwater level in the Chhattarpur Assembly constituency as well as nearby Sangam Vihar, Deoli, Mehrauli and Ambedkar Nagar constituencies

DJB to rejuvenate water bodies in its control and beautify 4 of them using Phytorid treatment technology, of capacity 300 KLD each, at Rasulpur, Bindapur, Dhinchaukalan and Tikrikalan. These water bodies will recharge the groundwater levels in these areas

DJB to develop 25 MLD naturally sustainable wastewater treatment plant in the defunct oxidation pond, of 35 ML capacity, near a 6-acre lake. It will also set up a biodiversity-cum-wetland park at Timarpur
Running for the Labour leadership, Sir Keir Starmer will need all the help he can get to take on the hard-Left Momentum loons who have seized control of the party and want to hand the crown to continuity Corbyn candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey.

So Starmer will doubtless be pleased to hear that Lord Adonis, arch-Remoaner and Transport Secretary under Gordon Brown, has called him Labours only hope, urging people to join ASAP and vote for him.

Yet Adonis has not always been such a vocal fan of the wooden Shadow Brexit spokesman.

Sir Keir Starmer (pictured above) will need all the help he can get to take on the hard-Left Momentum, says Andrew Pierce

Lord Adonis (pictured above in 2018) has called Sir Starmer 'Labour's only hope'

Who was it who variously called Starmer a consistent disappointment and failure throughout the Brexit process, not a leader in any form and a lawyer who only works to instructions from his client? Step forward, the noble Lord Adonis!

A further unwelcome Starmer fan is former London Mayor Ken Livingstone. Red Ken, a Corbynite who quit Labour in 2018 before he was sacked over anti-Semitism allegations, told me on LBC radio he is incredibly impressed with Starmer, adding: I . . . would work to put him into Downing Street because hes not a ghastly Blairite.

Words of encouragement that the more centrist Starmer might prefer to be silenced.

Why it's all geek to new MP

A rapid ascent of the career ladder is predicted for Joy Morrissey, the new Tory MP for Beaconsfield.

She is the second American-born Conservative female MP to take her seat after Nancy Astor, back in 1919.

She defeated pompous ex-Attorney General Dominic Grieve, but Morrissey has another record to her name: she is the only known former B-movie actress currently in the Commons.

Joy Morrissey (pictured above) is the Conservative candidate for Beaconsfield

Her biggest acting role came in 2008 when she starred, under her stage name Joy Boden, in the low-budget comedy bonk fest Geek Mythology.

The films premise is that a lonely man becomes magically irresistible to women, with dire results. Just like most nights in the Commons bar, then.

Clear a space on your bookshelf. Tom Watson, who dramatically quit as Labours deputy leader before the election, is about to publish his new book Downsizing, about his remarkable eight-stone weight loss.

Not all Labour MPs have taken this in good grace. One was overheard muttering in the Commons: Are you sure its not about us losing 59 seats at the general election?

Tom Watson (pictured above) previously said he stood down from the Labour Party because of the 'brutality and hostility'

In a bid to get his head round the BBCs vast, Kafka-esque bureaucracy, Aunties former chairman Michael Grade visited the HR department after taking over in 2004.

He met a woman there, he said, who told him: Ive been brought in to do an audit of our overseas staff . . . we dont know how many people weve got working overseas.

He was told it had taken a year so far and would take a year more!



Scotlands First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was interviewed on TV in front of a bookcase packed with Ian Rankin novels, which feature the gruff fictional detective John Rebus.

Surely Sturgeon knows that Rebus would be opposed to her bid for Scottish independence.

Rankin, a Scot, once told a literary festival: Rebus likes the status quo. He fears change.

A lesson Sturgeon could do with learning.

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is pictured above on December 19 2019

An early morning woke-up call

Interviewed by environmental activist Greta Thunberg as she guest edited Radio 4s Today programme, Sir David Attenborough told the Swedish teenager she had aroused the world.

Too much, perhaps, for the BBC News website, which mysteriously quoted the veteran broadcaster as having informed Greta she had woken up the world to climate change.

Certainly a more woke version.
Did you know that Africa has some of the most profitable air routes in the world? The profitability of the African air routes explains the reason why most international carriers have huge interests in the African air travel. However, Africa is home to some of the fastest-growing airlines in the world. So, which are the best airlines in Africa?

Image: thenational.ae

Source: UGC

Unlike those from the developed countries, the oldest airlines in Africa are only a few decades old. Despite this, many have grown significantly to attain recognition not only on the continent but all over the world. While international carriers still dominate the most profitable routes in Africa, local airlines have dominated the domestic market and are slowly taking up most operations connecting Africa to the rest of the world.

List of the best airlines in Africa

These are the most developed airlines on the continent:

1. Ethiopian Airlines

Ethiopian Airlines is, without a doubt one of the richest airlines, not just in Africa but also around the world. The airline is home to more than 115 ultra-modern fleets, one of the highest numbers in Africa. These figures place it as the biggest airline in Africa. The ultra-modern fleets assist the airline in serving passengers from 120 destinations across the globe.

READ ALSO: Kenya Airways cabin crew salary

On top of having the ultra-modern fleet and serving slightly over 120 destinations across the world, the airline is synonymous with comfort and space. Even though the definition of luxury is relative, the airline has in the last three years, received the highest ratings as far as comfort and space are concerned.

Ethiopian Airlines is also one of the most affordable airlines in Africa. While the ticket pricing is subject to several factors, its pricing is always lower (and affordable) compared to its global competitors.

2. South African Airways

South African Airways is one of the most reliable airlines in Africa. With its headquarters in Tambo International Airport, South Africa, the airline is a recipient of numerous awards. Some of these awards include Best Airline Staff, Best Business Lounge, Best airline Cabin Cleanliness, and Best Cabin Crew.

Over the years, South African Airways has demonstrated its commitment to customer satisfaction. Flying with the South Africa airlines is a great opportunity to be part of unparalleled African hospitality. The airline is also known for its stand on quality services.

Compared to local and international competitors, Southern African Airways has the best deals as far as ticket prices are concerned. The prices, however, depend on several factors. In the case of missing luggage or breakdown of communication, the carriers customer service is fast to respond.

3. Air Mauritius

Prior to 1967, Mauritius  the paradise island  was less connected through the air. Air Mauritius has connected the island to the world in the last five decades. Currently, the carrier has direct flights to 4 continents and 22 destinations. On average, the carrier has over 1.7 million passengers yearly, thanks to the airlines 13 airliners.

Image: airmauritius.com

Source: UGC

Although the airline transport over 40,000 tons of cargo every year, its primary revenue is from passengers  to and from Mauritius. The airlines biggest source of income explains the reason why Air Mauritius is synonymous with unparalleled customer care and its dedication to comfort and space for passengers.

Thanks to Air Mauritius approach to the aviation industry, the carrier has received some of the key aviation awards. According to SKYTRAX rankings, Air Mauritius is the safest airline in Africa.

4. Kenya Airways

Founded in 1977, the airline is one of the most popular airlines in Africa. Over the years, Kenya Airways has gone through changeovers, especially in management and its general operations. One of these key transitions is becoming the first national carrier in Africa to go through privatization. Although there are talks on nationalizing the carrier, operating as an autonomous entity has enabled the carrier to compete with other airlines effectively.

Over the years, the airline has redefined professionalism in this industry. The passengers, for example, are certain about comfort, security, and unmatched customer care. Kenyan Airways is also one of the few airlines in Africa to have flexible booking procedures.

In 2019, the airline became part of the few airlines that have direct flights to the USA. According to pundits, direct flights to the USA were an important boost to the African aviation industry and more importantly, to the Kenyan carrier.

5. Royal Air Maroc

Royal Air Maroc (RAM) is one of the largest airlines in North Africa. A list of the best carriers in Africa is incomplete without mentioning RAM, which is owned entirely by the government of Morocco. Founded in 1957, RAM is also one of the oldest carriers in Africa.

Apart from offering some of the best deals in North Africa, RAM is synonymous with its spacious and comfortable fleet. Thanks to this trademark, Royal Air Maroc has the highest number of destinations, 98, making it in the list of the best African airlines. The Casablanca based carrier also offers some of the best deals in the African aviation industry.

READ ALSO: Ethiopian Airlines Nairobi office location and contacts

Over the past ten years, RAM opened new destinations with the primary purpose of expanding its market. In the next decade, the carrier hopes to launch flights to Asia, with a focus on China.

6. Fastjet

Fastjet  a South African/British airline  is one of the best low-cost carries on this list. With less than a decade in operation, the carrier has redefined budget travelling in Africa. Prior to Fastjet, the budget travel options were inexistent. Fortunately, Fastjet has opened doors for other budget-friendly airlines in Africa.

Fastjet is in two main countries  South Africa and Zimbabwe. The company has, in the recent past, expanded to other markets such as Tanzania, Mozambique, and Zambia. Although the aviation industry in Africa has faced many financial challenges, young airlines such as Fastjet have continued to register growth and expansion.

The main reason why Fastjet is one of the best airlines in Africa is the companys commitment to customer care. The carrier is one of the best examples of customer-centred airlines in Africa.

7. Air Seychelles

The airline is the national carrier for the Republic of Seychelles. Air Seychelles, like other successful airline sin Africa has undergone through different transitions. One of these transitions is the acquisition of 40% of the airlines ownership by Etihad Airways  another giant in the air travel.

Image: airseychelles.com

Source: UGC

Although the airline has only six destinations, it is one of the most efficient airlines in Africa, based on different reasons. One of the key areas that makes Air Seychelles one of the best airlines in Africa is the carriers commitment to customer service. For example, the carrier is one of the few airlines in the world that allows passengers (in the economy class) to check in with a maximum of two suitcases (32 kilograms each).

Finally, Air Seychelles is a progressive airline, thanks to its attachment to Etihad. All the policies by this carrier are well thought and futuristic.

8. Arik Air Airlines

Commonly referred to as the wings of Nigeria, the carrier is the only airline from Western Africa on this list. Among all the West Africa airlines, Arik Air is the most progressive and customer-centred carrier. Founded in 2002, the airline has redefined air travel in this part of the world, especially for passengers travelling on a budget.

READ ALSO: List of the top aviation schools in Kenya

The airline home to some of the best staff services in Africa. According to the management, treating their passengers well is one of the companys focus in the industry. In addition, the company has one of the best loyalty programs in Africa. The main aim of the loyalty program is to reward passengers using the carrier in their 13 destinations.

Even though the airline has faced some financial challenges, it has been able to readjust policies on time. In less than two decades, the airline is redefining air travel in Nigeria and the surrounding countries.

9. Mango Airlines

In most cases, government-owned airlines are expensive for passengers. Mango Airlines, a state-owned, carrier is, however, one of the most affordable airlines in Africa. South African Airlines is also one of the best entities as far as adapting to technology is concerned. The ticketing process, for example, is purely an online process and therefore one of the best in Africa.

In order to make the airline one of the most affordable airlines in Africa, it does not include drinks and food in the ticket prices. However, the airline has partners in the hospitality industry that give passengers these services. Outsourcing these services creates a win-win situation between the carrier and the passengers.

10. TAAG Angola Airlines

TAAG is the oldest airline in Africa. Founded in late 1938, TAAG Angola Airlines has not only redefined longevity in the air travel industry but it has also opened up Angola as one of the key trading and tourism destinations in Africa. The government of Angola owns 100% of the airlines shares and therefore making it a fully government-owned carrier.

READ ALSO: List of aviation courses and colleges offering them in Kenya

The airline has 31 destinations on four continents. The 31 destinations are all strategically located across the globe. Over the years, TAAG has been able to overcome harsh economic realities in the aviation industry by only flying in economically viable routes.

TAAG is also synonymous with comfort and futuristic air travel, thanks to its all-Boeing fleet. The carrier has also registered some of the highest ratings from clients across the world.

Although there are new entries in the African aviation industry  such as Air Tanzania  the above 10, companies are the best airlines in Africa. It is also interesting to note that airlines have global and African partners. Through partnerships, the carriers have been able to compete with global giants such as British Airways and Emirates Group.

READ ALSO: Kenya School of Flying fees structure, scholarships, location, and contacts

Source: TUKO.co.ke
Egypts Foreign Ministry has appealed Washington against any further escalation after the US air strike that killed the commander of Irans elite Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani.

The Foreign Ministry is following with great concern accelerating developments in Iraq, which augur an escalation it is important to avoid, the ministry said in a statement.

For this reason, Egypt calls for containing the situation and avoiding any escalation. Soleimani was killed by US airstrikes ordered by President Donald Trump in Baghdad on Friday.

In a statement on his killing, the US pentagon said General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.

General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more, the pentagon added.

The US embassy in Baghdad urged American citizens in Iraq on Friday to depart immediately, few hours after the killing of Soleimani.

Also, the Netherlands urges Dutch citizens to leave Baghdad Deutsche Welle (DW) quoted the Dutch Foreign Ministry as saying in a statement.

Despite Egypts overtures towards Iran, Egypt is bound, under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, to remain allied to Irans regional rivals, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, because both have sent financial aid and foreign direct investment to Egypt following Sisis accession to power.

besides, the United States and Egypt share a strong partnership based on mutual interest in Middle East peace and stability, economic opportunity, and regional security.
OMSK, Russia  Locals in this Siberian city are calling for an impartial investigation into the death of Dmitry Fyodorov, a 25-year-old man whose decapitated body was found on a railway late last month.



About 80 people braved frigid temperatures on January 4 to attend a demonstration at which participants signed a petition urging federal prosecutors to investigate the police handling of the case.



Fyodorov, an information-technology specialist and musician, was arrested on December 15 and charged with the large-scale distribution of narcotics. On December 18, after he was released on his own recognizance pending trial, Fyodorov recorded a video in which he claimed that the drugs had been planted on him by the police.

Error rendering VK.

Fyodorov said that a National Guard officer pretended to pull a small packet from Fyodorov's jacket. The officer dropped the item on the ground and ordered Fyodorov to pick it up, he said, and then claimed Fyodorov's fingerprints proved the packet containing narcotics belonged to him.



Police confiscated Fyodorov's telephone and held him without contact with legal counsel or relatives for almost 24 hours.



On December 26, Fyodorov's decapitated body was found on a local railway. Two days later, police said his death was either a tragic accident that occurred as Fyodorov was crossing the tracks or a suicide.



Human rights activists in Russia and abroad have long alleged that police and security forces in the country often fabricated drugs cases for various reasons ranging from extortion to the harassment of political opponents, journalists, and civil-society activists.

Every year more than 100,000 people in Russia are convicted of violating Article 228 of the Criminal Code, which outlaws "the making, acquisition, storage, transportation, sending, or sale of narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances."



In June 2019, the arrest of investigative journalist Ivan Golunov on drugs charges sparked domestic and international outrage and protests. The case was dropped, and several high-ranking Moscow police officers were dismissed for allegedly fabricating the evidence against him. A Moscow judge classified the case materials in November, so there is no way of knowing whether anyone has been or will be prosecuted.

'Very Little Bleeding'



Omsk municipal lawmaker Dmitry Petrenko has said he planned to meet with Fyodorov about his allegations but that meeting never took place. Petrenko told RFE/RL that he examined Fyodorov's body in the morgue and concluded his injuries were not caused by being hit by a train.



Petrenko said the head was cleanly severed from the body and there was very little bleeding, as if the decapitation occurred long after Fyodorov had died.



"I was surprised that a train could hit the neck so precisely  it was too implausible for the circumstances," Petrenko said.

Fyodorov's girlfriend, Lyudmila Troitskaya, said she did not see any blood when she visited the place where the body was found and that she is convinced Fyodorov was brought there after he was already dead.



The press service of the Omsk Oblast branch of the Interior Ministry declined to respond to RFE/RL's query as to whether there was a video recording of the police search of Fyodorov, as required by law.



A police spokeswoman told a press briefing on December 27 that it was a violation of the Criminal Procedural Code that the investigation into Fyodorov's case proceeded without the involvement of a defense attorney.



Fyodorov's lawyer, Igor Suslin, said he has not ruled out the possibility that his client committed suicide, adding that if he did then he was driven to it by the actions of the police.

Written by RFE/RL senior correspondent Robert Coalson based on reporting by Arina Yuzhnaya and Maria Chernova of the Siberia Desk of RFE/RL's Russian Service. Current Time contributed to this report.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Two years after the death of a 47-year-old college professor near Koyambedu in a road accident, a motor accident claims tribunal directed an insurance company to pay a compensation of Rs 44.72 lakh to her family.

A petition filed by the two sons of the deceased said that on January 19, 2017, their mother Mohideen Fathima was riding pillion on a vehicle driven by one C Ravimurugan.

While crossing a speed breaker, the rider applied the brake suddenly resulting in Mohideen Fathima falling from the bike and sustaining head injuries.

She was rushed to a private hospital where she succumbed to injuries.

Denying the allegations, Ravimurugan submitted that when he tried to cross the speed breaker, Mohideen Fathima fell from the bike suddenly. He had been falsely implicated in the case.

The tribunal, presided by P Revathy, held that the accident occurred due to rash and negligent driving and directed Oriental Insurance Company to pay the compensation.
WASHINGTON - The U.S. must brace for Iran to launch bold cyberattacks designed to cause major financial damage or threaten American lives as retaliation for the killing of one of its top generals, cybersecurity experts say.

Security experts say that Iran may be willing to cross dangerous boundaries in cyberspace: For instance, they warn, Iranian hackers could launch attacks that shut down electricity for some Americans, destroy important financial records or disrupt hospital or transportation systems in ways that threaten lives.

"We're in a more escalated situation than we've been in the past, and there are some serious questions about where the red lines are," John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis for the cybersecurity company FireEye, told me. "They may not have a problem with people getting hurt at this point."

Experts are also warning Iran could launch widespread attacks against U.S. companies that encrypt their information and hold it for ransom or target U.S. government contractors to punish them for working with the Trump White House. Or they might target U.S. allies in the Middle East or U.S. diplomatic targets abroad.

"We're definitely in new territory," Robert Lee, founder of the cybersecurity firm Dragos, which protects major industrial systems, and a former National Security Agency official, told me.

Iran has routinely tested the boundaries of what it could get away with in cyberspace, including pummeling U.S. banks after the Obama administration imposed new sanctions in 2012 and hacking control systems at a New York dam in 2013. It also allegedly wiped data from tens of thousands of computers at the Saudi state oil company Aramco in 2012 in one of the most destructive digital attacks ever launched.

But it has always stopped short of launching the most serious attacks on U.S. targets. Experts fear it may soon abandon this restraint since the killing of Quds Force Commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani - who the Trump administration charged was planning major attacks against U.S. targets.

Still, there are limits to Iran's capabilities. Lee says Iranian hackers aren't sophisticated enough to launch an attack that could affect the whole nation; shutting off large portions of the electrical grid is not the true concern here. But they could disrupt electricity on a smaller scale, for instance, by targeting a U.S. city or portions of it. That could succeed by prompting widespread fear about a larger attack and, possibly, draw the U.S. into an even broader conflict by triggering an outsize response.

"It's really hard to do these attacks, and you shouldn't expect to see major blackouts across the U.S. as a whole," Lee said. "My concern is that they'll get a small win and we'll overreact."

Iranian hackers have gained access to U.S. industrial companies' computer networks in the past, Lee told me, but there's no public evidence they've launched destructive hacks once they're in there.

Hultquist made a similar point on Twitter:

"Of course these actors will also be conducting cyber espionage on government and military targets now. We saw a spike in activity during tensions last summer that NSA publicly indicated was probably designed to understand policy maker thinking. . . .

"Another facet of the Iranian cyberthreat is the cyberattack (disruptive/destructive) capability posed by Iran. Will they cripple our society? I highly doubt it. Could they score some major blows against individual companies and maybe even the US sense of security? Absolutely."

Government officials are also sounding alarms. Just hours after Friday's U.S. airstrike that killed Soleimani, the Department of Homeland Security's top cybersecurity official, Chris Krebs, warned U.S. businesses to raise their defenses against Iranian hacks. He wrote on Twitter:

"Given recent developments, re-upping our statement from the summer. Bottom line: time to brush up on Iranian TTPs and pay close attention to your critical systems, particularly ICS. Make sure you're also watching third party accesses!"

By Saturday evening, Krebs's agency was also monitoring the hack of a minor government website run by the Government Publishing Office, which was defaced with propaganda for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. There's no confirmation tracing the hack to the Iranian government, agency spokeswoman Sara Sendek said.

Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, also urged DHS to ramp up preparations for an Iranian cyberattack and called on the White House to brief Congress on its plans.

Tensions ratcheted up dramatically over the weekend with Iran suspending its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal. Trump warned that if Iran took military action against the U.S., he would target Iranian cultural sites, which would constitute a war crime under international law.

Iran may want to delay any damaging cyberattacks until it's clear how far the conflict will escalate, experts say. That's especially likely because most highly damaging cyberattacks require months of advance work to surreptitiously break into a company's computer networks - and attackers can only strike once before they're discovered and kicked out.

"Iran will definitely use everything they have at their disposal eventually, but I don't think a major cyberattack right this second makes sense," Jake Williams, founder of the cybersecurity company Rendition Infosec and a former National Security Agency official told me. "Every piece of malware Iran uses now removes a bullet they can fire later to have a greater effect."

There's also a possibility, however, that Iran will be extra careful about crossing red lines with a cyberattack out of fear the Trump administration will retaliate much more aggressively than expected.

The Obama administration was wary of escalating hacking conflicts or of responding with military force, preferring to rely on indictments, sanctions and diplomatic tools. The Trump administration, however, has been much less predictable. Already on Sunday, Trump was warning that his administration might respond to Iranian attacks "in a disproportionate manner" - another possible violation of international law.

"All the lines are completely obliterated with this administration, and you don't know how they're going to react," said Tony Cole, chief technology officer at Attivo Networks. "So [Iran] is going to have to tread carefully."
South Korean refiners and petrochemical companies are bracing for potential fallout from the U.S. killing of a top Iranian general, which has already sent global oil prices higher, industry sources said Monday.



The fatal drone strike on Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, on Friday sparked tensions in the Middle East, sent jitters through global financial markets and pushed oil prices higher.



The price of South Korea's benchmark Dubai crude stood at US$67.69 per barrel on Friday, up $2.1 from Thursday.



The latest geopolitical risk does not appear to have caused any supply disruption of crude oil or hit the bottom lines of South Korean refiners at the moment, as they have been diversifying oil import sources away from Iran.

But they remain watchful of developments in the region.



In 2018, the U.S. imposed the most biting sanctions ever on Iran following its exit from a 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran and five major world powers.



In May last year, the U.S. ended its sanctions waivers for South Korea, China, India and five other countries for Iranian oil imports, prompting Seoul to diversify its sources of oil imports.



South Korean refiners and chemical firms had relied heavily on Iranian condensate -- an ultralight crude oil -- to make various petrochemical products thanks to a stable supply and price competitiveness.













Naphtha, a key raw material for petrochemicals, is derived from condensate.



As of November, Saudi Arabia's crude accounted for a lion's share of South Korea's total oil imports at 28.2 percent, followed by Kuwait crude with 14.1 percent, American crude with 12.7 percent, Iraqi crude with 10.9 percent and the United Arab Emirates' crude oil with 7.8 percent, according to the Korea Petroleum Association.



An association official said the fallout from the targeted killing could be limited in terms of effect on crude oil prices, noting oil prices stabilized soon after drone strikes on Saudi Arabia's crude processing facilities in September last year.



Joo Young-joon, deputy minister for energy and resources at the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy, said South Korea will closely monitor the situation in the Middle East and take swift actions to minimize any fallout on South Korea.



The combined oil reserves held by the South Korean government and local refiners came to 200 million barrels as of 2018.



Still, South Korea did not let its guard down as tensions are brewing in the Middle East.



Iran has vowed to retaliate against the U.S. airstrike, a scenario that could lead to a conflict between the U.S. and Iran, which in turn could engulf the region.



One of key concerns is whether Iran will block the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil supply route, including shipments to South Korea, Japan and China.



A shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz would have catastrophic consequences on the world's economy, as the U.S. killing of Soleimani could lead to higher oil prices and higher freight costs. (Yonhap)
When I read about whale grandmothers running creches for their grandchildren while their parents went out to work  ie to find and round up fish to feed the family  I was, of course both touched and intrigued.

In fact, it was less sentiment and more wonderment that attracted me to this newly discovered and scientifically proven fact which indigenous sea-people, from Inuit Eskimos to South Pacific islanders have, no doubt, known for millennia.

It is truly wondrous that the females of four other species on Earth  all of them whales  follow the pattern of human females and, post menopause, help nurture, protect and feed a second generation, even perhaps a third.

The phenomenon is known as the grandmother effect.

In a study of orca whale females  which stop reproducing in their 30s or 40s but may live for decades more  this behaviour and its evolutionary benefit was clearly evident.

After menopause, they become grandmothers and in a study of 378 orca juveniles enjoying grandmother care 4.5% of those whose grandmothers die themselves die in the two years afterwards.

So, the phenomenon helps the survival of the young and of the species.

Why female whales should experience menopause is not entirely understood.

In orcas  killer whales  when mothers, pre-menopause, breed alongside daughters, the offspring of the older generation have a higher rate of mortality.

Also, if mothers continue to be sexually active alongside females of a second generation, conflict can arise.

It would seem that menopause in whales has a function beyond, but parallel to, the grandmother effect.

In mammal species that remain reproductive all their lives, there are also caring grandmothers  notably among elephants  that help their grandchildren.

While whale grandmothers may lead their charges to fish shoals and even feed them, grandmother elephants lead youngsters to good foraging locations and will trample paths to give them access to food supplies.

As we know, whales are extraordinary creatures in multiple ways. While doing a bit of reading up for this column, I came upon a dozen accounts of unique and fascinating whale behaviour.

Humpback whales sing the same song year after year but add small variations until the melodies become too complex or too boring and are abandoned and are replaced by entirely new composition, which all develop and learn.

Its the males that sing, hoping to attract females. Again, there are parallels in human and whale behaviour  the humpback beau singing, and his paramour listening, as in And Mary, all smiling, sat listening to me....

Among whales, there are also the Miles Davis whales, the bowheads of the Greenland Sea.

They toot and flute, no two melodies the same, all improvisation and originality  not same-olds same-olds like instinctive mating calls, but changing year to year.

Bowheads outdo many songbirds in their repertoire of serenades breaking the silence of the months-long Arctic darkness.

Charlie Bird Parker? How about Charlie Bowhead Parker? It sounds good. I think hed have liked it. He was a big man, who did a lot of smiling.

Tragically, the Spitzbergen group of bowheads that were studied now number 200; when first hunted in the 1600s they numbered 24,000. They can live for 200 years.

It was in the blubber of a bowhead, killed in 2007, that fragments of a bomb lance  an explosive harpoon manufactured between 1879 and 1885  was found.

Ivory and slate harpoons, probably even older, have also been found.

Almost every story of these magnificent creatures is, unfortunately, tragic. For example, there are only 30 north Pacific right whales left. Commercial, not indigenous, hunters almost wiped out the herds.

They were certainly right for the commercial fleets, slow-moving, easy targets that, also, remained buoyant after being killed.

It is difficult not to succumb to anthropomorphism  attributing human characteristics to animals  when one considers the human-like characteristics of whales.

Indeed, sentimental as it is, maybe, in this case, sentiment engenders action toward their conservation.

A mother orca carrying her dead child with her for two weeks, perhaps naively hoping it might come back to life.

Humpback whale mothers and their calves whispering to one another to avoid detection when predators are nearby. Yes: they touch the heart and play the heartstrings.

But the likely predators will be orcas, born killers. Nature remains red in tooth and claw.

Meanwhile, happy new year to my readers. As 2020 arrives here in La Gomera, Canary Islands, the sunsets over El Hierro, 50 miles to the west, are spectacular and the German holidaymakers take a million pictures.

They rival the sunsets over Courtmacsherry Bay on cloudless days.

At night, with the clear skies, the floor of heaven, as Shakespeare called it,is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.
TORONTO, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Arizona Metals Corp. (TSX.V:AMC) (the Company or Arizona Metals) is pleased to announce that on January 4th, 2020 it commenced its fully-funded 6,000m surface drilling program at its Kay Mine VMS project, located in Yavapai County, Arizona. The Company has engaged Boart Longyear Drilling Services to undertake the drill program and International Directional Services LLC to provide directional drilling services.



SRK Consulting Inc, was engaged in October 2019 to complete a review of the Kay Mine historic data and its final report was received in December 2019. The purpose of the SRK review was to further refine the drill plan and identify additional potential targets prior to the commencement of drilling.

The first assay results of the drill program are expected to be received during Q1 2020, with completion of the drill program anticipated in Q2 2020. The drill for the program is a LF90 track rig with a capability of drilling both HQ and NQ core to a maximum vertical depth of 1,100 m (Figure 1 below).

Figure 1: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ca8b82e5-4df3-4285-8033-bdc5e8238981

The first phase of drilling will comprise 16 holes, ranging in length from 300m to 650m, with the goal of testing the historic estimate defined by Exxon Minerals in 1982 (Figure 2 and Table 1) and also to test the possible depth extensions of the lenses. The lenses to be tested are along a strike length of approximately 275m and range in depth from approximately 100m to 700m. The bulk of the historic estimate defined by Exxon lies between a depth of 150m and 450m and 12 of the 16 planned drill holes have been targeted to intersect this zone. The remaining 4 holes will test possible extensions of the lenses from a depth of approximately 450m to 600m depth (Figure 3). It is anticipated that the results of this program, along with additional future drilling, could be incorporated into a resource estimate.

Short Tons (millions) Copper Grade Gold Grade (g/t) Zinc Grade Silver Grade (g/t) 6.4 2.20% 2.8 3.03% 55 Table 1. Historic estimate by Exxon Minerals in 1982, reported as proven and probable reserves

The historic estimate at the Kay Mine was reported by Exxon Minerals in 1982. The historic estimate has not been verified as a current mineral resource. None of the key assumptions, parameters, and methods used to prepare the historic estimate were reported, and no resource categories were used. Significant data compilation, re-drilling and data verification may be required by a Qualified Person before the historic estimate can be verified and upgraded to be compliant with current NI 43-101 standards. A Qualified Person has not done sufficient work to classify it as a current mineral resource, and Arizona Metals is not treating the historic estimate as a current mineral resource.



Figure 2: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c35b1eba-d63a-4129-b8f4-30207a6aa1c2

Arizona Metals Corp plans to undertake additional drilling to test the potential extensions of the deposit both along strike and at depth. Exxon reported a true width intersection of 10m at 4% copper at a depth of 670m, and the deepest mineralized intersection was reported at a depth of 900m. Exxon also estimated that only one quarter of the strike had been tested, based on geophysical surveys and by mapping the mineralized horizon at surface.

Figure 3: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/bd149fa6-b84d-4fa6-bed9-9b75373c5017

Arizona Metals Corp engaged Geotech Ltd. to complete a helicopter VTEM geophysical survey in March 2019. The results of the survey identified two large near-surface, untested anomalies, the Central Conductor and Western Conductor (Figure 4), located 500m and 1000m, respectively, directly west of the Kay deposit. The Company is currently working on a drill permit application for these two targets, which it expects to submit in Q1 2020, with drilling anticipated to commence during Q2 2020.

Figure 4: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/810f09c5-9321-404b-9439-76a2a5459a83

About Arizona Metals Corp

Arizona Metals Corp owns 100% of the Kay Mine Property in Yavapai County, which is located on a combination of patented and BLM claims totaling 1,300 acres that are not subject to any royalties. An historic estimate by Exxon Minerals in 1982 reported a proven and probable reserve of 6.4 million short tons at a grade of 2.2% copper, 2.8g/t gold, 3.03% zinc, and 55g/t silver. The historic estimate at the Kay Mine was reported by Exxon Minerals in 1982. The historic estimate has not been verified as a current mineral resource. None of the key assumptions, parameters, and methods used to prepare the historic estimate were reported, and no resource categories were used. Significant data compilation, re-drilling and data verification may be required by a Qualified Person before the historic estimate can be verified and upgraded to be compliant with current NI 43-101 standards. A Qualified Person has not done sufficient work to classify it as a current mineral resource, and Arizona Metals is not treating the historic estimate as a current mineral resource.

The Kay Mine is a steeply dipping VMS deposit that has been defined from a depth of 150m to at least 900m. It is open for expansion on strike and at depth.

The Company also owns 100% of the Sugarloaf Peak Property, in La Paz County, which is located on 4,400 acres of BLM claims. Sugarloaf is a heap-leach, open-pit target and has a historic estimate of 100 million tons containing 1.5 million ounces gold at a grade of 0.5g/t (Dausinger, 1983, Westworld Resources).

The historic estimate at the Sugarloaf Peak Property was reported by Westworld Resources in 1983. The historic estimate has not been verified as a current mineral resource. None of the key assumptions, parameters, and methods used to prepare the historic estimate were reported, and no resource categories were used. Significant data compilation, re-drilling and data verification may be required by a Qualified Person before the historic estimate can be verified and upgraded to be compliant with current NI 43-101 standards. A Qualified Person has not done sufficient work to classify it as a current mineral resource, and Arizona Metals is not treating the historic estimate as a current mineral resource.

The Qualified Person who reviewed and approved the technical disclosure in this release is David Smith, CPG.

This press release contains statements that constitute forward-looking information (collectively, forward-looking statements) within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation, All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that discusses predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as expects, or does not expect, is expected, anticipates or does not anticipate, plans, budget, scheduled, forecasts, estimates, believes or intends or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results may or could, would, might or will be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release include, without limitation, statements regarding VTEM survey results, permitting and drilling; use of funds; and the business and operations of the Company. In making the forward- looking statements contained in this press release, the Company has made certain assumptions. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that the expectations of any forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: availability of financing; delay or failure to receive required permits or regulatory approvals; and general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this press release. Except as required by law, the Company disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions, changes in factors affecting such forward- looking statements or otherwise.

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE (NOR ITS REGULATORY SERVICE PROVIDER) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE

For further information, please contact:

Marc Pais

President and CEO

Arizona Metals Corp.

mpais@arizonametalscorp.com

(416) 565-7689

www.arizonametalscorp.com
For the moment at least it takes the attention of the American media and international media away from things like Ukraine and Russian meddling and it puts the spotlight on President Trump as this erratic, not very responsible loose cannon who is prepared to do whatever it takes, not so much to protect the United States but to take away the spotlight from the impeachment trial and to change domestic dynamics. So I think this plays well for the Russians, Rumer said. It raises the question of the real rationale behind the strikes and it makes Putin look like the more responsible leader.
Michigan congresswoman Elissa Slotkin will lead the effort to draft a resolution limiting President Donald Trumps military actions against Iran.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi told House Democrats in a Sunday letter that Slotkin, a former CIA and Pentagon analyst, will lead the introduction of a war powers resolution calling for an end to military actions in regard to Iran without congressional approval. Pelosi said the resolution is meant to reassert Congresss long-established oversight responsibilities" after Trump ordered a lethal strike against a top Iranian general last week.

Pelosi, D-Calif., said killing Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani was a provocative and disproportionate" act that imperils U.S. military service members, diplomats and others. Top Iranian officials threatened a retaliatory attack on U.S. military interests in the wake of Soleimanis death on Jan. 3, the Associated Press reported.

Congress has the sole power to declare war under the U.S. Constitution. Pelosi said the war powers resolution would impose a 30-day limit on military action against Iran, if passed.

Pelosi expressed concern that Trump acted to assassinate Soleimani without Congressional approval. Michigans House Democratic representatives, in statements released last week, said Trump is recklessly moving the U.S. closer to another costly war in the Middle East.

Trump said swift action was necessary to stop Soleimani from carrying out imminent attacks on American diplomats and military personnel. The U.S. Department of Defences said Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region."

Slotkin served multiple tours in the Middle East under the Bush and Obama administrations, specializing in the analysis of Shia militias commanded by Soleimani. The freshmen congresswoman said she was well acquainted with Soleimanis violent campaigns in the region in a lengthy statement released Jan. 3, but said Trump needs congressional approval before embarking on any additional military actions.

I watched friends and colleagues get hurt or killed by Iranian rockets, mortars and explosive devices that were provided to Iraqi proxies and used against U.S. forces under Soleimanis guidance, Slotkin said. What always kept both Democratic and Republican presidents from targeting Soleimani himself was the simple question: Was the strike worth the likely retaliation, and the potential to pull us into protracted conflict?

Slotkin could not be reached for this story on Monday.

Michigan Republican Party Chairman Laura Cox criticized the House war powers resolution in a Monday statement.

By trying to limit President Trumps powers to deal with such terrorists, Nancy Pelosi and Elissa Slotkin are sending a dangerous message to our enemies overseas and turning their backs on the victims Soleimani left in his wake," Cox said.

A similar resolution was introduced by U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., on Jan. 3. The resolution will force a public debate in the Republican-led Senate, Kaine said in a statement.

Were now at a boiling point, and Congress must step in before Trump puts even more of our troops in harms way, Kaine said in a statement. We owe it to our service members to have a debate and vote about whether or not its in our national interest to engage in another unnecessary war in the Middle East.

Members of Congress complained that Trump did not seek approval for the airstrike, which killed Soleimani in Iraq. Trump notified Congress through a classified document within the 48-hour period required by the War Powers Act of 1973.

Trump said his Twitter account is sufficient to notify Congress about additional military actions against Iran.

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner, he wrote on Twitter Sunday. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!

U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, I-Cascade Township, responded by posting images of the Constitution to Twitter early Monday morning.

This Constitution of the United States of America will serve as notification to the president that should he order nondefensive strikes without congressional approval, he will be in violation of the law, Amash wrote on Twitter. Such legal notice was provided in 1789 but is given here again nevertheless."

Amash was harshly critical of Trump during the weekend, saying his actions threaten to undermine the Constitution.

When a president engages in war without congressional authorization and Congress does nothing to stop him, the two branches cut the American people out of the process, in violation of our Constitutions design, Amash wrote on Twitter. This undermines both the liberty and the safety of the people.

Republicans largely praised Trumps actions, arguing the president took necessary steps to eliminate a man who coordinated with a network of terrorists in the region and was responsible for the deaths of countless Americans. House Republicans representing Michigan expressed no issues with Trumps decision to act without Congress in statements released last week.

Tori Sachs, executive director of conservative nonprofit Michigan Rising Action criticized Slotkins involvement in military decisions involving the Middle East.

Rep. Slotkin was part of the Obama Administrations team that allowed ISISs resurgence in Iraq and failed negotiations with Iran, Sachs said. Now Pelosi wants Slotkin to lead the disparaging of President Trump for taking decisive action to keep Americans safe. Slotkins and Pelosis hypocrisy is clear.

Meanwhile, Congress and the Trump administration are reacting to increased tensions in the Middle East. Iraqs parliament voted Sunday in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for the expulsion of the American forces, the Associated Press reported.

Trump vowed to strike back if Iran retaliates.

Trump threatened to target Iranian cultural sites Saturday on Twitter, which would likely be illegal under international law. Trump doubled down on the idea Sunday in a meeting with reporters after he flew back to Washington from his holiday in Florida.

Theyre allowed to kill our people," Trump said. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said any U.S. military strikes will be lawful during a Jan. 5 interview with ABCs This Week."
Capitalizing on the award-winning neurofeedback developed for both the Original Muse and Muse 2, Muse S allows users to comfortably go from daytime use into bedtime prep and introduces Go-to-Sleep Journeys that react to your body and mind.

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Muse by Interaxon Inc., a leading consumer neurotechnology and meditation company, today announced the launch of its newest product, Muse S. This multi-sensor fabric headband offers a new way to access biofeedback-enhanced meditation, and promote healthy pre-sleep habits for restorative sleep.

Muse S (CNW Group/Muse by Interaxon Inc.)

Building on the company's current roster of award-winning neuro and biofeedback devices, Muse S offers a versatile, soft and flexible form factor as well as newly introduced Go-to-Sleep Journeys. The Go-to-Sleep Journeys seamlessly blend voice guidance with biofeedback soundscapes that respond to your physiological state for a truly personalized bedtime soundtrack that helps you learn how to turn off your busy mind and let the world melt away - day or night.

"We wanted to offer our users improved ways to hack their bedtime ritual through responsive guidance, neurofeedback and tangible data," said Chris Aimone, Muse Co-Founder and CTO. "Muse S was designed with two key things in mind: to bring meditation to even more aspects of your life, and to take the advanced neurotechnology we are known for and compile it all into a versatile and extremely comfortable EEG headband that is optimized for a truly unique relaxation experience."

Made from plush, breathable material, Muse S is designed for improved fit and signal quality on a wider variety of head sizes. With stretch fabric that is travel-friendly, Muse S is our most comfortable Muse everso comfortable you'll love meditating with it anytime, anywhere.

Imagine slipping into bed with your Muse S, starting a Go-to-Sleep Journey like "Enchanted Forest" or "Underwater World," tucking away your phone, and closing your eyes. Guided by the calming voice of your selected meditation teacher, you'll be taken through a soothing and responsive journey, designed to move your wandering mind away from the busy thoughts that keep you awake and gently guide you into a restful slumber.

Each Go-to-Sleep Journey has its own unique soundscape, which is made up of individual sounds that reflect different feedback centers including brain activity, heart rate, and movement. These individual feedback sounds are layered in real-time to work together to create a personalized soundscape that reflects changes in your physical and mental states - a personalized sleep soundtrack, shaped by you in real-time!

In addition, when you purchase a monthly or yearly Guided Meditation Subscription, you'll have access to a rich content library of more than 300 meditations from renowned meditation teachers. The extensive content also offers a variety of relaxation techniques, Go-to-Sleep soundscapes and curated guided mediation collections geared to a particular condition or goal (e.g. sleep, performance, stress and more). For beginners or those who want even more guidance, the subscription provides in-depth courses with step-by-step instructions, such as The Sleep Basics course by Dr. Shelby Harris, an expert in behavioral sleep medicine.

Pricing & Availability

Muse S is now available for $349.99 USD at www.choosemuse.com and Amazon in North America with a worldwide release coming soon.

To unlock unlimited access to 300+ meditations with new content released monthly, you can subscribe to the Guided Meditation Subscription for $12.99 USD per month or $94.99 USD per year.

Now available at www.choosemuse.com .

About Muse by Interaxon Inc.:

At Muse, our team of neuroscientists, meditation teachers, and engineers develop state-of-the-art experiences using research-grade EEG technology. Our goal is to help individuals build a rewarding meditation practice and live healthier, happier, more connected lives through human-centered technology. Our award-winning neurofeedback devices, and premium content offering of guided meditations with responsive learning functionality, help users meditate by providing real-time audio feedback on their meditative state through the Muse companion app. We make the intangible, tangible.

More information about Muse is available at www.choosemuse.com .

Milestones we're excited about:

# of employees: 65+

65+ Offices: Toronto, Ontario and Denver, Colorado

and Sessions of meditation with Muse  : Over 100 million minutes to date and currently the largest brain data (EEG) collection in the world.

 Over 100 million minutes to date and currently the largest brain data (EEG) collection in the world. Research institutions using Muse: The Mayo Clinic, NASA, Harvard , MIT , U of T, UCL, UCSD, Inria, UVic, UBC, and many more.

The Mayo Clinic, NASA, , , U of T, UCL, UCSD, Inria, UVic, UBC, and many more. Meditating with Muse works: A recent study at the Catholic University of Milan showed that four weeks with Muse significantly reduced stress as well as potentially beneficial neuroplastic changes in users' brains, compared to controls. Original published papers from the 1Balconi Lab study can be found here and here .

SOURCE Muse by Interaxon Inc.
Inside Hook

For much of his career, Terry Gilliam has been viewed as a beloved underdog. He spent decades getting a distinctive Don Quixote adaptation made; he had the leading man of one of his films die during shooting; he grappled with studio interference surrounding his dystopian masterpiece Brazil. But lately, a series of events entirely of Gilliams own making have caused many to lose whatever respect or admiration they may have had for the filmmaker. Its not career immolation on the level of Morrissey, but its not far behind.

First came a December interview with IndieWire in which Gilliam apparently felt compelled to join the auteurs expressing frustration with the Marvel Cinematic Universe club. Much of his disdain was reserved for Black Panther, about which he said, I think the people who made it have never been to Africa. (Gilliam is incorrect on this.)
And there is Office of Management and Budget (OMB) official Michael Duffey, a player in the Ukraine drama whose role is becoming clearer. The website Just Security said Thursday that it had obtained unredacted communications between Defense Department officials and their counterparts at OMB, including Mr. Duffey. These emails appear to show that a hold on Ukraine aid came at the clear direction from POTUS and that staff became increasingly alarmed about the legality of refusing to disburse money Congress had appropriated. An investigation into how executive branch officials understood and raised concerns about the Ukraine aid blockage is a must.
ANN ARBOR, MI  It happened gradually.

Year by year, downtown Ann Arbor changed more and more, one luxury apartment high-rise or condo building at a time

And the biggest downtown housing boom in the citys history isnt over yet, with several more major developments in the pipeline, including a 19-story high-rise behind the historic Michigan Theater.

Since 2004, 16 new apartment developments  including a dozen high-rises ranging from eight to 14 stories tall  brought roughly 4,800 new beds to the downtown area.

Thats not counting some smaller-scale projects, or nearly 1,800 additional apartment beds under construction or planned.

Additionally, the number of new condos in the downtown area since 2001 is approaching 400, with 140-plus more in the pipeline.

The University of Michigan also added 1,080 beds in the downtown area with two new student dorms in the last decade.

While some of the new downtown housing has attracted working professionals and retirees, it has mostly catered to a growing number of students attending UM.

The following is a timeline of 21st-century developments that brought several thousand more residents downtown.

2002  First residents move into Ashley Mews, a nine-story office and commercial building with eight penthouse condos at 414 S. Main St., plus 47 townhouse-style condos in primarily three-story buildings, with eight affordable housing units.

The Ashley Mews development in Ann Arbor on Nov. 27, 2019.Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

2004  First tenants move into Corner House Lofts, an eight-story, 56-unit, 133-bed apartment building with ground-floor commercial space at 205 S. State St.

Corner House Lofts, 205 S. State St., in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton | MLive.com

August 2006  First residents move into Liberty Lofts, a six-story, 68-unit condo project that involved repurposing the old Eaton Corp. factory at 315 Second St.

Liberty Lofts, 315 Second St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

December 2006  First residents move into Loft 322, a five-story, 21-unit condo building at 322 E. Liberty St.

Loft 322, 322 E. Liberty St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

March 2008  First residents move into Ashley Terrace, now known as 111 North Ashley, an 11-story, 99-unit condo building with two lower levels of commercial space at 111 N. Ashley St.

111 N. Ashley St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

May 2009  First tenants move into 411 Lofts, now known as YOUnion, a 10-story, 96-unit, 343-bed, student-focused apartment high-rise with ground-floor commercial space at 411 E. Washington St.

YOUnion Ann Arbor, 411 E. Washington St. and Varsity Ann Arbor, 425 E. Washington St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

May 2009  First tenants move into Zaragon Place, now known as Z Place, a 10-story, 66-unit, 248-bed, student-focused apartment high-rise with ground-floor commercial space at 619 E. University Ave.

Zaragon East, 619 E. University Ave. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

August 2010  First students move into the University of Michigans North Quad, a 450-bed undergraduate dorm and academic complex at 105 S. State St.

The University of Michigan's North Quad dorm and academic complex on Nov. 27, 2019.Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

August 2012  First tenants move into City Place, a 24-unit, 144-bed student-focused apartment development with two three-story buildings at 425 S. Fifth Ave.

City Place, 425 S. Fifth Ave. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

August 2012  First tenants move into Zaragon West, now known as Z West, a 14-story, 99-unit, 200-bed, student-focused apartment high-rise with ground-floor commercial space at 401 Thompson St.

Zaragon West, 401 Thompson St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

August 2012  First tenants move into Landmark, a 14-story, 173-unit, 606-bed, student-focused apartment high-rise with ground-floor commercial space at 1300 S. University Ave.

University Towers, 536 S. Forest Ave. and Landmark, 1300 S. University Ave. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

August 2013  First tenants move into The Varsity, a 13-story, 181-unit, 415-bed, student-focused apartment high-rise at 425 E. Washington St.

The Varsity apartment high-rise on Washington Street in Ann Arbor on Nov. 27, 2019.Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

December 2013  First tenants move into Ann Arbor City Apartments, now known as Ann Arbor City Club Apartments, a 10-story, 155-unit, 194-bed apartment building with 16 units designated as affordable housing at 201 S. First St.

Ann Arbor City Club Apartments, 201 S. First St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

July 2014  First residents move into four-story, two-unit condo building at 401 N. Fourth Ave.

401 N. Fourth Ave. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

April 2015  First residents move into three- and four-story condo buildings with 16 total units at 414 N. Main St.

414 N. Main St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

November 2015  First residents move into three-story flatiron building with one two-level condo above a ground-level office at 544 Detroit St. near downtown.

The flatiron building at 544 Detroit street on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2019.Jenna Kieser

August 2015  First tenants move into 618 South Main, a six-story, 164-unit, 195-bed apartment building at 618 S. Main St.

618 South Main, 618 S. Main St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

August 2015  First students move into the University of Michigans Munger Graduate Residences, a 630-bed graduate dormitory at 540 Thompson St.

University of Michigan's Munger Graduate Residences on Nov. 26, 2019.Nicole Hester | MLive.com

August 2015  First tenants move into ArborBLU, a 13-story, 113-unit, 242-bed, student-focused apartment high-rise with ground-floor commercial space at 624 Church St.

Sterling Arbor BLU, 624 Church St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

October 2015  First guests stay at 110-room Residence Inn by Marriott at 120 W. Huron St., the first new downtown hotel in decades, providing extended-stay options.

Residence Inn by Mariott, 120 W. Huron St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

May 2016  First tenants move into Foundry Lofts, a 14-story, 204-unit, 546-bed, student-focused apartment high-rise with ground-floor commercial space at 413 E. Huron St.

Foundry Lofts, 413 E. Huron St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

July 2016  First residents move into The Mark, a five-story, seven-unit condo building at 318 W. Liberty St.

The Mark, 318 W. Liberty St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

August 2016  First residents move into 121 Kingsley West, a six-story, 18-unit condo development at 121 W. Kingsley St.

121 Kingsley West, 121 W. Kingsley St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

October 2016  First residents move into Main on the Park, a three-story, four-unit condo building at 542 N. Main St.

The Main on the Park Condos south of North Main Park on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2019.Jenna Kieser

February 2018  First residents move into five-story, 24-unit condo building at 410 N. First St.

410 N. First St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

August 2018  First tenants move into three-story, four-unit, 24-bed, student-focused apartment building at 141 Hill St. near the downtown/campus area.

A new 24-bed student apartment building at the corner of Hill and Adams streets in Ann Arbor on Nov. 27, 2019.Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

August 2018  First tenants move into Six11, a 13-story, 90-unit, 320-bed, student-focused apartment high-rise with ground-floor commercial space at 611 E. University Ave.

Six11, 611 E. University Ave. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

August 2018  First tenants move into The Yard, a six-story, 229-unit, 588-bed, student-focused apartment building with ground-floor commercial space at 615 S. Main St.

The Yard, 615 S. Main St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

August 2018  First tenants move into Hub Ann Arbor, a 12-story, 124-unit, 310-bed, student-focused apartment high-rise at 603 E. Huron St.

Hub Ann Arbor, 603 E. Huron St. and the Graduate Ann Arbor, 615 E. Huron St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

December 2018  First residents move into Kingsley Parkside, a five-story, three-unit condo building at 213 W. Kingsley St.

Kingsley Parkside, 213 W. Kingsley St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

November 2018  City voters block plans for a 17-story, mixed-use high-rise on the city-owned Library Lot at 319 S. Fifth Ave., deciding instead the parking lot should become an urban park and civic center commons.

The 17-story Core Spaces development proposed for Ann Arbor's city-owned Library Lot on Fifth Avenue, where city voters instead have opted for a downtown central park. (Myefski Architects)

August 2019  First tenants move into Vic Village North, a 12-story, 56-unit, 257-bed, student-focused apartment high-rise with ground-floor commercial space at 1107 S. University Ave.

The Vic Village North apartment high-rise at 1107 S. University Ave. on Nov. 22, 2019.Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

September 2019  First residents move into the 51-unit, mostly five-story Kingsley Condominiums at 218 W. Kingsley St. as construction nears completion.

Kingsley Condiminiums, 218 W. Kingsley St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

Recently completed  A six-story office and retail building with a three-story streetwall was built at 315 S. Main St.

A six-story development at 315 S. Main St. in Ann Arbor.Jacob Hamilton

Underway  Work continues on the five-story, 41-unit, 52-bed Montgomery Houze apartments at 212 S. Fourth Ave., a project that involves rehabilitating a former Montgomery Ward department store building and a three-story vertical addition.

The Montgomery Houze apartments at 212 S. Fourth Ave. in progress on Nov. 25, 2019.Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

Underway  A five-story, 17-unit condo building is under construction at 309 S. Ashley St.

The condo development site at 309 N. Ashley St. in Ann Arbor on Nov. 26, 2019.Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

Underway  A four-story, 171-unit, 182-bed apartment building with ground-floor commercial space is underway at 151 E. Hoover Ave., where an entire neighborhood block near the downtown/campus area has been demolished.

A 171-unit, 182-bed apartment building with ground-floor commercial space under construction at 151 E. Hoover Ave. on Nov. 27, 2019.Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

Underway  The Gallery, a five-story, 19-unit condo building is under construction at 441 S. Ashley St.

Demolition work in preparation for The Gallery development, a five-story, 19-unit condo building at the northeast corner of Ashley and Jefferson, on Nov. 6, 2019.Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

Underway  The Madison on Main, a roughly 40-unit, 46-bed, five-story apartment building with ground-floor commercial space at 600 S. Main St.

The Main and Madison development site in Ann Arbor on Nov. 27, 2019, where underground site-prep work was recently completed in anticipation of vertical construction in 2020.Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

Underway  A three-story, five-unit, 28-bed, student-focused apartment building is under construction at 132 Hill St. near the downtown/campus area.

A new student apartment building underway at 132 Hill St. in Ann Arbor on Nov. 27, 2017.Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

Planned  A six-story building at 321 N. Main St. with retail and office spaces on the first three floors, 14 apartments on floors four and five, and four condos on floor six.

The vacant site of a future development at 321 N. Main St. in Ann Arbor on Jan. 3, 2019.Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News

Planned  Vic Village South, a 13-story, 131-unit, 300-bed, student-focused apartment high-rise with 14 affordable housing units and ground-floor commercial space at 1100 S. University Ave.

Vic Village South architectural rendering.

Planned  Vic Village East, a 13-story, 40-unit, 184-bed, student-focused apartment high-rise with ground-floor commercial space at 1209 S. University Ave. Plans were unveiled in 2016 and put on hold until Vic Village South is built. The developer expects to submit a new plan, which may include affordable housing.

A 2016 rendering of a 13-story high-rise proposed at 1209 S. University Ave. in Ann Arbor.Hamilton Anderson Associates

Planned  A 19-story, 240-unit, 466-bed apartment high-rise with 19 affordable housing units and ground-floor commercial space behind the Michigan Theater at 616 E. Washington St.

Bloomfield Hills-based Cerca Trova LLC is teaming up with Chicago developer CA Ventures to propose mixed-income apartments and ground-floor commercial space to replace four rental houses and an old commercial building along Washington Street behind the Michigan Theater in downtown Ann Arbor.ESG Architecture & Design and J. Bradley Moore & Associates

Planned  A six-story companion building planned along with the high-rise behind the Michigan Theater, with 19 workforce-housing micro units" at 212 S. State St.

Bloomfield Hills-based Cerca Trova LLC is teaming up with Chicago developer CA Ventures to propose mixed-income apartments and ground-floor commercial space to replace four rental houses and an old commercial building along Washington Street behind the Michigan Theater in downtown Ann Arbor.ESG Architecture & Design and J. Bradley Moore & Associates

Planned  The Standard, a 10-story, 218-unit, 421-bed apartment high-rise with ground-floor commercial space at 425 S. Main St.

Rendering of The Standard, a 10-story, 236-unit, 413-bed apartment high-rise with ground-floor commercial space planned at 405 S. Main St.Myefski Architects

Planned  Four-story, six-unit, 18-bed apartment building at 327 E. Hoover Ave. near the downtown/campus area.

A four-story, six-unit, 18-bed apartment building planned at 327 E. Hoover Ave.Myefski Architects

Planned  Three-story, three-unit, 16-bed apartment addition atop Espresso Royale at 1101 S. University Ave.

A 2018 rendering of a planned three-story addition atop the Espresso Royale building at 1101 S. University Ave. in Ann Arbor.J. Bradly Moore and Associates

Planned  The Glen, a nine-story, mixed-use development with 162 hotel rooms, 24 one-bedroom apartments and 4,000 square feet of commercial space at 201 Glen Ave. near the downtown/campus area.

Plans for The Glen, a mixed-use development including hotel, apartment and retail/restaurant uses on Glen Avenue between Catherine and Ann streets submitted to the city of Ann Arbor in August 2017. The project architects are Neumann/Smith Architecture of Southfield and J Bradley Moore & Associates of Ann Arbor.

Planned  The Garnet, a five-story, 10-unit condo building at 325 E. Summit St. near downtown.

Drawing by J Bradley Moore & Associates Architects showing plans for The Garnet condos at 325 E. Summit St. in Ann Arbor.Rendering by J. Bradley Moore and Associates Architects

Planned  A nine-story, 160-room hotel replacing the Firestone auto repair shop at 402 E. Huron St.

Design rendering submitted to the city of Ann Arbor by ESG Architects and Mortenson Development Inc. showing plans for a nine-story hotel where the Firestone auto repair shop now stands at 402 E. Huron St.ESG Architects

Planned  Four six-story buildings with 96 condo units, a nine-story hotel with 148 rooms, a riverfront restaurant, new commercial spaces, public green space, walking trails, an event pavilion and more at 841 Broadway St. just north of downtown.

A conceptual layout by SmithGroup showing plans for redevelopment of the DTE Energy MichCon site at 841 Broadway St. in Ann Arbor.SmithGroup

Future possibility  The city is considering redevelopment options -- including affordable housing in some cases -- for various city-owned sites and parking lots in the downtown area. Proposed sites include 350 S. Fifth Ave., 415 W. Washington St., 121 E. Catherine St., 404 N. Ashley St., the Kline Lot at Ashley and William streets, the First and William parking lot, 721 N. Main St. and 353 S. Main St.

The Y Lot at 350 S. Fifth Ave. in Ann Arbor on Oct. 2, 2018.Photos by Ben Allan Smith

Future possibility  The University of Michigan is considering building a dormitory on the old Fingerle Lumber property at the southwest corner of Madison Street and Fifth Avenue.

The former Fingerle Lumber property on Fifth Avenue, a possible future University of Michigan student housing site in Ann Arbor, on Sept. 4, 2019.Jacob Hamilton | MLive.com

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Early on Friday morning Iraqi time, a U. S. drone strike at the Baghdad airport killed Irans top military leader, Qasem Soleimani. For decades, Soleimani has been the mastermind behind Irans involvement in armed conflicts and acts of terror across the Middle East, from supplying the terrorist organization Hezbollah, to attacking Saudi oil fields and international shipping, to targeting U. S. forces in the region. In fact, the Pentagon lays the deaths of over 600 U. S. military personnel directly at Soleimanis feet.

At the time of his death, Soleimani was just 15 miles away from the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, which, last week, was stormed by militants thanks to Soleimani.

Writing in the New York Times, the Hudson Institutes Michael Doran asserts, Taking out the architect of the Islamic Republics decades-long active campaign of violence against the United States and its allies, especially Israel, represents a tectonic shift in Middle Eastern politics.

And, despite not knowing what those tectonic shifts might bring, Doran concludes, The world to which we wake up today, rid of its most accomplished and deadly terrorist, is a better place.

Of course, the U. S. attack on Soleimani raises a whole host of questions. How will Iran respond? Will it expand its proxy war through Shiite militias? Will it dare take on the U. S. military directly? Will it unleash terrorist cells in the Middle East and even here in America? Is this a decisive step toward a wider, bloodier war in the Middle East and maybe even beyond?

It is impossible to see the future, especially in such a volatile region that features such volatile actors. But we can evaluate whether this decision, and any decision leading to hostile action, is justified according to what is called Just War Theory. Over the centuries, Christian thinkers from Augustine to Aquinas to the Reformersseeking to reconcile Christian teaching on the sanctity of human life with the Christian responsibility to love our neighbors by protecting them from evilhave proposed a set of conditions by which a violent act can be considered justified. These conditions deal with both whether war ought to be waged, as well as how war should be waged.

First, the cause for going to war and the intention behind it must be just. Second, the war must be waged by a legitimate authority. Third, force must be used as a last resort. Fourth, force used in war must be proportionate to the threat. Fifth, force must not target non-combatants, and finally, there must be a reasonable chance of success.

Obviously, these conditions deal with very precarious details, including some that we, as the watching public, may or may not have access to or assurances of. If we measure the killing of Soleimani against these conditions, we can conclude that given Soleimanis long resume of terrorism and evil, and his targeting of America and Americas allies (including civilians), there was just cause.

Whether the act was performed by a legitimate authority is a tougher question, since a formal, declared state of war does not exist between Iran and the U. S. However, our forces are in Iraq legally, with Congressional mandate and the approval of the Iraqi government. Soleimani was instigating hostile acts against the U.S. and the Iraqi government with, according to the Pentagon, plans to do even more. (David French offers a helpful explanation in this Twitter thread).

The attack, a precise drone strike, did not target civilians, which also addresses the questions of proportionality and probability of success. Was the attack a last resort? Thats difficult to know. Clearly, sanctions against the Iranian regime werent affecting Soleimanis activities around the region.

The most difficult question, in my view, is whether the evils prevented are greater than the potential consequences. Will this bold, new posture cause Iran to curtail its activities, or will it ignite a wider war? Well only be able to answer this question in hindsight.

Of course, we are dealing with limited information. But, well need to keep these just war conditions in mind in the days and weeks ahead. As Mindy Belz told me in a special episode about Soleimani and Iran available on the BreakPoint Podcast: While America has been focused on impeachment, the Middle East has been exploding all over again.

Most importantly, lets pray to the God of History, for wisdom for the President and Congress, for the safety of our men and women in uniform as well as the many other lives at stake, and for peace in the Middle East.

Please leave a comment below and tell us what you think.

Resources:

Trumps Ground Game Against Iran

Michael Doran | The New York Times | January 3, 2020

Just War Theory

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Publication date: January 6, 2020

Photo courtesy: Sayyed Shahab o Din Vajedi/Creative Commons, cropped and resized

BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931  2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.

John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
Mourners packed the streets of Tehran early Monday for ceremonies to pay homage to top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, after he was killed in a US strike in Baghdad.

Clutching portraits of their hero in their hands, the crowd gathered on the outskirts of Tehran University where the supreme leader is to preside over prayers for the slain general.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(TNS)  The Maine Legislature cranks back into gear when it convenes the second session of the biennium on Wednesday, with a focus on several key issues, including health care, corrections, broadband access and climate change.Lawmakers are poised to start their work on solid financial ground, with an estimated state budget surplus of close to $120 million based on the last revenue forecast in November I think we are going to be absolutely looking at how we can bring people together, start with a clean slate and good conversations about what we invest in, said House Speaker Sara Gideon, D-Freeport.Any new spending or taxation would likely come in the form of a supplemental budget bill that would have to be offered first by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills.Mills, like Gideon, said state government accomplished a lot in 2019 under Democratic leadership, but there was still much work to be done.This coming session, I look forward to working with the Legislature to continue to tackle health insurance issues, to support quality early and adult education, to strengthen our economy and expand our workforce, and to protect Maine people from the impacts of climate change, Mills said in a written statement. By tackling these issues, Maine can and will continue to make progress for its people and future generations.Republican leaders said they would brace against unnecessary spending or adding levels of unsustainable debt, instead focusing on key issues, such as figuring out sustainable ways to pay for state road and bridge repairs without regularly borrowing money to do that work.We are not going to borrow our way into a good economy, Senate Minority Leader Dana Dow, R-Waldoboro, said. He said Republicans would do their best to hold the line on taxes and want to focus on sustainable infrastructure improvements and workforce development but do it in a way that doesnt pinch the states many small businesses.House Republicans want to make it clear that Maines most pressing needs should come first, House Minority Leader Kathleen Dillingham, R-Oxford, said in a prepared statement. Forecasted monies should fund needs, not wants. They should help people that are struggling with real-life needs right now. Maines most pressing needs include our roads, nursing homes, direct care workers and people with disabilities on waitlists.House Republican members of the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee warned that $76 million of the budget surplus in the revenue forecast are one-time monies, which may not be available on an ongoing basis.Like Dow, they also said they want to focus on funding highway construction and repair without borrowing for it and without raising additional taxes, lamenting the states current $8 billion, two-year budget, which is 11 percent higher than the states previous budget.We then borrowed $105 million for transportation, said Rep. Amy Arata, R-New Gloucester. We need to set priorities. Any additional spending of existing tax revenues should go toward true priorities that should have been included in the $8 billion budget.The budget-writing Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee has January public hearings already scheduled on a half-dozen borrowing or bonding packages worth at least $200 million.Among the bills are measures that would earmark $65 million for research and development for biomedical and biotechnology work focused on helping families dealing with aging, dementia and Alzheimers disease; $20 million for local food processing facilities; $50 million for expanding commercial fishing and aquaculture infrastructure; and $50 million to help research labs expand and add new equipment and facilities.All of the proposals also require matching funds from other public or private sector sources, and if passed by the Legislature would go to statewide referendum for voter approval.Democrats have vowed to continue their efforts to reduce health care costs while expanding access.Bills to be considered include proposals to set up a new state-run health insurance exchange program, expand dental care for children on Medicaid, and curb the price of prescription drugs. Other bills look to help small businesses provide health insurance to their employees or provide incentives to those that do.Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, said a bill meant to provide health insurance consumers with a state-run health insurance consumer protection advocacy office was also a top priority.Information is power, Jackson said. And anyone that feels like they can pull the wool over your eyes by just spouting off a bunch of stuff, these individual people who have no idea, these insurance people just tell them no. You know  deny, deny, deny and they can get nine out of 10 people to go away.Jackson said Maine health care consumers need an advocate in their corner when they are going up against the corporate health insurance industry.The bills seek to expand on the accomplishments of 2019, when the Legislature and Mills moved forward with funding for a voter-approved expansion of the states Medicaid program, MaineCare, under the federal Affordable Care Act.That expansion, which was expected to add about 80,000 to the states health care benefits program for low-income Mainers, so far has only seen about 40,000 new enrollments, but the number is expected to continue to grow.A broad range of criminal justice and correctional issues will also be a top focus of the Legislature.The Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee will hear Wednesday from Department of Corrections Commissioner Randall Liberty, who will brief the panel on department-related issues, including the status of the Downeast Correctional Facility, youth recidivism rates and mental health treatment for incarcerated youth.The Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee has hearings planned in the weeks ahead on numerous bills. These include revisiting state funding of county jails and an ongoing shortage of forensic bed space for those charged with or convicted of crimes who have mental health and substance use disorders or who have been deemed incompetent to stand trial by a court.Lawmakers are considering a range of policy shifts to reduce the cost of housing prisoners, including reducing or eliminating bail requirements for lower-risk, nonviolent defendants and improving programs that help those leaving jail or prison reintegrate into society with housing, job training and health care programs.The states system for providing lawyers to those who are charged with crimes but are unable to afford an attorney, the Commission on Indigent Legal Services, is also expected to face additional scrutiny in 2020 in the wake of a report from the nonpartisan Sixth Amendment Center, which found the states system, the only one of its kind in the U.S., may be falling short in providing adequate legal services to those accused of crimes here.The report also drew into question how private attorneys who are certified to defend indigent clients are paid by the state and highlighted a lack of oversight in billing and payment practices by the state and the attorneys.In December the Legislatures watchdog Government Oversight Committee ordered its investigative arm , the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, to launch an investigation into the recently reformed commission.Lawmakers will also consider a series of education bills, including measures that create incentives for school districts to buy all-electric buses and establish rules limiting how schools can discipline young children.Another bill in the hopper would permit retired police officers to be hired as school resource officers.Other bills will continue a focus on higher education student debt. One measure, offered by Senate Majority Leader Nate Libby, D-Lewiston, would create a student debt forgiveness program for first responders, home health care providers and public school teachers in an effort to retain and attract workers to those fields.Libby said Democrats remained focused on the quality and affordability of health care, workforce development and the sustainable development of public infrastructure.Libby also said Democrats intend to redouble their efforts to improve broadband and high-speed internet access for rural Maine, following a 2019 defeat of a bonding proposal that would have earmarked funds for that.Instead of a bonding package, Libby said Democrats would try to use state surplus funds for broadband expansion, with a requirement for matching investments from the private sector. He said in a meeting of Senate Democrats three weeks ago there was broad support for that approach.Libby said Democrats had promised Mainers they would expand access to high-speed internet.We want to try to make good on that commitment, he said.Libby also rebuked Dow, the Senate Republican leader, on state debt, saying the current state budget included funds to cover the debt service on the bonding bills that lawmakers failed to send on to voters in 2019. Republicans withheld their support for bonds, which require a two-thirds vote by lawmakers, except for those related to roads and bridges, which were approved by voters in November.It is important people understand we are not talking about new money for bonding, Libby said. The money is there, but Republicans are just not interested in getting that money out and into the ground for infrastructure improvement and economic development, so we are going to try a different way.Some of the Mills administrations top environmental priorities during the 2020 session are expected to focus on a class of chemicals, known as PFAS, that are causing health concerns in Maine and across the country.Commonly used in nonstick cookware and water-repellent fabrics as well as firefighting foam, some varieties of PFAS have been linked to cancer, thyroid disorders, high cholesterol and other health effects. States such as Maine are scrambling to identify PFAS contamination and regulate the chemicals because federal agencies have been slower to respond.The Mills administration is preparing a bill to allow the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to order responsible parties to clean up PFAS contamination or to pay for the remediation. If enacted, the legislation would give the department the same authority it already has for a host of other contaminants, such as mercury.But the Mills administration is also expected to introduce additional measures based on the recommendations of a PFAS task force that examined the issue for more than six months.That groups recommendations included requiring all community water systems to test for the chemicals, mandating that fire departments notify the DEP whenever they use PFAS-laced firefighting foams, and a bond measure to help the state cover the growing costs of dealing with contamination hot spots.
Outside Tumbarumba's fish and chip shop, where George and Katrina Dimitropoulos are handing out free egg and bacon rolls, half a dozen tired men are chewing and counting in the smoky haze.

They list the families now homeless since fires arrived on New Year's Day, the streets worst hit and the miraculous stories of properties saved. They agree on 18 homes gone or severely damaged, mostly in the town's north and surrounding areas, "and we haven't even driven around yet".

Rodney Shaw outside his childhood home in Tumbarumba. Credit:Zach Hope

On the NSW Rural Fire Service emergency map, the old timber town of about 1800 people is a black dot pinned between two ever-expanding walls of fire drawing together across the state border.

"If you don't need to be here, leave now," Snowy Valleys Council officers told a "short-but-not-so-sweet" community meeting on Monday afternoon, where locals collected donated canned food, water and toiletries.
Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa on Monday said the much awaited cabinet expansion will take place in about a week to 10 days and that he wants to complete the exercise before his proposed visit to Davos to attend the World Economic Forum meet later this month.

"Cabinet expansion has to be done in a week or 8-10 days.

There is also information that Amit Shah (Union Home Minister and BJP national President) will be coming to Bengaluru on January 16 or 18.

Before that I will go to Delhi and get things cleared and will expand the cabinet at the earliest," Yediyurappa said.

Speaking to reporters here, he said he wanted to complete the exercise before his Davos visit.

He said he was not keen on leaving for Davos, but was told that some Chief Ministers would have to g and so would attend it as it is a very important event.

"I will make all efforts to expand the cabinet before that," he said.

With Yediyurappa making it clear that 11 of the disqualified JDS-Congress MLAs who got re-elected in the December 5 bypolls on BJP tickets will be made ministers, lobbying has been on within the party for the remaining ministerial berths.

Currently there are 18 ministers, including the Chief Minister, in the cabinet that has a sanctioned strength is 34.

Cabinetexpansionwillnotbe aneasytaskfor the Chief Minister as he willhave to strike a balance by accommodating the victorious disqualified legislators as promised and also make place for old guards, upset at being "neglected" in the first round of the induction exercise.

He also has to give adequate representation to various castes and regions in hiscabinet and also deal with allocation of key portfolios.

The Chief Minister, who has indicated that the Ministry expansion may take place any time after Sankranti, is likely to travel to Davos on January 20, according to sources.

Yediyurappa, along with Union ministers Piyush Goyal and Mansukh Mandaviya, as well as Chief Ministers Amarinder Singh (Punjab), Kamal Nath (Madhya Pradesh), are expected join over 100 Indian CEOs at Davos in Switzerland later this month for the WEF's 50th annual meeting, which will be attended by thousands of rich and powerful from across the globe.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
PAXTANG  Joshua Sanders just opened his vape shop Dec. 30.

Its a great, corner location in a large space that was once a furniture store. But he may soon have to shutter his business or move elsewhere.

The same day Sanders opened East Coast Vapor in Paxtang, he learned borough officials are mulling a regulation that would prevent businesses such as his from operating in the downtown area of this town just outside of Harrisburg.

Borough manager Keldeen Stambaugh said the pending ordinance has been in the works for some time before Sanders came to town. If approved, the ordinance would change Paxtangs zoning code to prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes and vaping-related products in most of the borough.

A public hearing on the change is set for 6:15 p.m. Jan. 21 in the Paxtang Borough Municipal Building, 3422 Derry Street. Borough council will likely vote on the proposal that same night.

If approved, the new amended code would only allow the sale of vaping products in Paxtangs commercial district, located roughly in the northwest, southwest and southeast corners of the borough. Such sales would be prohibited in the downtown district, where Sanders set up shop at 3440 Derry Street.

Paxtang zoning map by PennLive on Scribd

Had he known such an ordinance was under consideration, Sanders said he never would have purchased the property and moved there from Swatara Township, where he had been in business since 2011. Though borough officials say this ordinance has been in the works, Sanders said he called them in September, months before closing on the property, to ensure he could locate his vaping business there.

He told them he would be selling e-cigarettes and vaping products and was told youre good to go, he said.

I did my due diligence, Sanders said Tuesday. It blows my mind.

Sanders said he has consulted an attorney.

While Stambaugh said she cannot comment on Sanders account of the situation due to the potential litigation, she noted this is a pending ordinance, and if its adopted, Sanders must comply with it.

The borough is aware the property owner is selling vaping products, she said, adding a business license has not been issued. The zoning officer has issued an enforcement notice demanding the property owner comply with the proposed amendment."

Discussions on the measure date back many months to when council discussed a similar amendment to the code that now restricts potential medical marijuana dispensaries to the same commercial district, she noted.

The proposed ordinance indicates Paxtang Borough Council has authority to zone for the promotion, protection, and facilitation of public health, safety, morals and general welfare.

It seems like they dont want a vape shop here, and theyre doing whatever they can so I wont be here, Sanders said.

The alternative to him operating a business there is the building sitting vacant, off of the tax rolls, he said. The building where he is operating is the former Johnnys Discount Furniture.

Vaping made headlines in 2019 with numerous reports of death and lung injury, which Stambaugh said was a factor that fueled borough councils discussion in developing the proposal. It comes as the Trump Administration announced Thursday it will prohibit fruit, candy, mint and dessert flavors from small, cartridge-based e-cigarettes that are popular with high school students, The Associated Press is reporting. But menthol and tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes will be allowed to remain on the market.

The flavor ban will also entirely exempt large, tank-based vaping devices, which are primarily sold in vape shops that cater to adult smokers.

In September, Trump and his top health officials said they would soon sweep virtually all flavored e-cigarettes from the market because of their appeal to young children and teens. But that effort had stalled after vaping lobbyists pushed back and White House advisers told Trump the ban could cost him votes with adults who vape, according to The Associated Press.

Vaping proponents argue that vaping has helped many to quit smoking cigarettes and is a safer alternative than smoking tobacco

Paxtang is one of just a few Pennsylvania municipalities that have taken stances on vaping.

In Irwin in Westmoreland County, the borough is part of the Young Lungs at Play program, which prohibits smoking and vaping in designated parks and playgrounds. The borough recently updated its ordinance to comply with the program, barring vaping from parks, borough manager Shari Martino explained.

In Blairsville in Indiana County, borough council earlier this year voted to prohibit vaping on public property, where tobacco was already prohibited, the Indiana Gazette reported in June.

And last month in Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney signed a bill banning the sale of flavored vaping pods and those with high levels of nicotine at stores teens and children are allowed to enter, Philly.com reports.

Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.




Temporary closure imposed on Philippines' North Star Meat Merchants because of African swine fever



William Dar, Philippines' Agriculture Secretary said a closure notice was directed to the company after African swine fever (ASF) was discovered in its products sold in Quezon City on December 19, 2019, reported ABS-CBN News.

In a statement, North Star said the positive ASF case was an isolated incident. The company said it is currently working with the Department of Agriculture to roll out biosecurity protocols. These include swiftly disposing products possibly affected by ASF, sanitising facilities on a daily basis and suspending plant operations temporarily to assist with full sanitation of the facility.

According to the Department of Agriculture, the local government has confiscated the ASF-infected products, with the National Meat Inspection Service (NMIS) tasked with evaluating North Star.

The confiscated North Star products had the NMIS seal, which certified its meat products as ASF-free. Dar has ordered NMIS to provide an explanation as to why NMIS green lit North Star products.

Dar added that ASF outbreaks have been reported in the Pampanga and Bulacan provinces of the Philippines.



- ABS-CBN
Peter Ngufor archives

A supporter and advicer to the country's ruling party in the North West region, has urged President Paul Biya to take back declarations of war he made against separatists in the Anglophone regions.

Speaking during a press briefing in Bamenda recently, the chief executive officer of Farmers' House, Peter Ngufor said the military option President Paul Biya has taken to end the war in the English-speaking regions was a wrong step.

" The question of resorting to military solution was not very good because our armed forces are trained to fight wars, not fight the population who are unarmed", he cried.

He was reacting to the end of year speech delivered by President Biya on New Year's eve, where the President said he was to tackle the ongoing crisis with more arms if separatists fail to drop their weapons.

The CPDM militant said he sees separatist fighters as protesters and not terrorists. He said it was impossible for someone to live with his neighbour for 50 years and wake up one day to declare them terrorists.

He however commended the Head of State for the speech he presented, given that it addressed all areas of interest in the country, a speech he said reflected a new Cameroon.

" I insist on the term New Cameroon because it means we forget the past and turn a new leaf", he said. He further suggested that the should apologise and stop teh word terrorism.

" Apologising does not ;mean you are weak, but that you have seen errors and want to correct. He should grant a general amnesty to those ailed within the context of the Anglophone crisis and those in the Diaspora so that we all start afresh, as he himself called it a New Nation", he advised.
That's all for today's live coverage of Victoria's bushfires on Tuesday January 7th.

Our live blog will be back later in the week when the fire danger is set to increase again.

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There are 12 fires currently burning. 1.2 million hectares have burnt, and more than 1000 livestock are dead, with thousands more 'missing'.

State authorities and Premier Daniel Andrews warned people in areas of fire danger against being complacent later this week, when 30 degree temperatures are forecast for much of Victoria and the mercury may rise to 40 degrees in the state's north-east.

"[Advice] messages will be sent out Thursday and Friday this week. They are about life and death, and people need to remain vigilant," Mr Andrews said this afternoon.

"This is not over by a long shot."

In a bid to neatly categorise the large bushfire zone, two of the four fire complexes were renamed this evening.

The East Gippsland fires west of the Snowy River have been called the "Tambo Complex", while fires east of the river are called the "Snowy Complex".

The two fire complexes in north-east Victoria near Corryong are not yet named, because impact assessments on the ground and by ADF aircraft have not yet taken place.
A social media user has slammed a 'digital-free' pub after she claims her friends were and 'chastised' for using their phones to take photographs during their annual gathering.

Sally Lait, from London, criticized an unnamed pub in the Samuel Smith Brewery chain in a lengthy Twitter thread, saying the group were stunned to learn their regular pub had become a 'mobile, tablet and laptop-free zone'.

She said staff repeatedly policed the group for using their phones to 'take photographs, conversation enhancement and finding information', and told them to leave if they didn't like it.

The Londoner said the policy was 'black and white' and said the attitude of staff proves the 'dangers of privilege and lack of empathy' when it comes to digital-free zones.

Some Twitter users argued that the policy is anti-women, because they may want to contact with friends during a date with a stranger or check in with a babysitter, while another wrote: 'What about someone on their own who just wants a quiet drink? Are they supposed to stare at the wall?'

MailOnline has contacted Samuel Smith breweries for comment.

Sally Lait, from London, slammed an unnamed pub in the Sam Smith Brewery chain in a lengthy Twitter thread yesterday after claiming she was 'chastised' and 'policed' for using her phone in a 'digital free zone'

Sharing a lengthy thread on Twitter which has since received over 7,400 likes, Sally said: 'I want to talk a little bit about the dangers of privilege and lack of empathy when it comes to increasingly popular "digital-free" experiences, though the lens of my time in a Sam Smith pub yesterday.'

She explained that her friends, who come from across the country, had met online in 1999, and have since tried to get together in real life every year.

She said they had returned to the same pub for the last five years because there was a large enough area for the gang to sit together, talk, and play board games.

But after gathering in their 'normal place' over the weekend, they were stunned to discover signs had gone up within the pub, declaring it a 'mobile, laptop and tablet-free zone'.

Sally said staff were 'black and white' about enforcing the strict no technology policy, telling them customers could 'leave' if they wanted to use their phones (pictured, a beer mat explaining their policy in the pub)

She explained that the group were enjoying their afternoon together, but at several times used devices as a 'conversation enhancement, finding information, illustrating points, and taking photos to record.'

She said: 'Several times the staff came over to tell us to stop using devices, which we did, until I asked for more information on the policy.

'The policy, at least in this pub, is black and white. If you want to use devices, don't come in.

'No kinds of usage are allowed, "there are no grey areas, it's black and white". The staff member then started to talk about the evils of digital addiction.'

The Londoner shared her experience in the pub in a lengthy Twitter thread online yesterday which has since been liked over 7,400 times

She said that when the group asked how their afternoon of socialising was made worse by bringing out devices, they were told: 'It's on the door, you don't have to come in.'

She went on: 'Fair enough, most of our usage wasn't needed. But what about situations where a device is genuinely essential for someone?

'Helping to independently read a menu if visually impaired? Quickly reading and writing to communicate if hearing is difficult?'

'Having a policy to encourage conversation is one thing. Actively policing it it another.'

Sally shared a snapshot of one of the signs within the pub designating it a 'mobile, tablet and laptop free zone'

She continued: 'This act can cause people to feel they have to share private reasons for why they're doing what they are. But even if they do, the answer was consistent: "I don't care. Don't come in".'

Sally added: 'The worst example given in this instance was almost boastfully shared.

'The staff member we spoke to told us that he'd had a man constantly checking his phone because his son was in hospital.

'The same level of empathy was applied: "You can't use your phone. Leave".'

Sally shared a lengthy Twitter thread about her experience online, saying staff told them they'd even asked a man checking on his hospitalised son to leave the pub

Sally went on to say that all of the staff worked under the same hardline policy, adding: 'The staff work in fear; if they want to stay working there, they need to police a zero tolerance policy.'

Sally said that the group wouldn't return to the pub, and criticised the growing-trend of digital free spaces.

She said: 'Don't openly discriminate against people, or attempt to dehumanise anyone by removing assistance that supports their life, just because it's packaged in a digital device. Your experience of technology is not the same as others.'

Other social media users were stunned by her experience, with one writing: 'I don't go to pubs but I certainly won't go to these with my type 1 diabetic husband who needs to use his phone with his insulin pump...'

Other social media users were stunned by the Twitter thread, with one deeming it 'shabby stuff'

Another commented: 'Yuk. Thanks for the warning, Sally. This policy discriminates against people on their own, especially women. Shabby stuff.'

Another wrote: 'What about someone on their own who just wants a quiet drink? Are they supposed to stare at the wall? Or a girl on her own arriving early to meet her friends? Having a phone to check when they're getting there and help ward off male attention while she's alone?'

One added: 'This has a gendered impact too. Many women use their phones as an insurance policy when meeting a man for the first time. Mothers on a rare night out, regularly check with the babysitting etc. etc. Women not welcome?'
Sinduja Jane By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: Union health ministrys technical evaluation committee (TEC) has given its nod for four new government medical colleges in Tamil Nadu, at its meeting in New Delhi on Thursday.

The new colleges at Ariyalur, Cuddalore, Kallakurichi and Kancheepuram districts will each have 150 MBBS seats once the executive committee gives its approval.

With this, the number of government medical colleges in the State will increase to 37. Tamil Nadu has the highest number of government medical colleges in the country.

An official source told Express that TEC has sent the file to executive committee, a meeting of which is scheduled for this week.

Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on December 2 had announced that the State had applied with Union Health Ministry for four more medical colleges and it was Amma (the late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa)s vision to establish one medical college in every district.

In October last, the Centre had approved six new medical colleges at Tirupur, The Nilgiris, Ramanathapuram, Namakkal, Dindigul and Virudhunagar districts.

In November, it gave nod to set up three medical colleges in Tiruvallur, Nagapattinam and Krishnagiri districts, taking the sanction of new medical colleges in the State to nine in one year.

Health Secretary Beela Rajesh, Director of Medical Education (in-charge) R Narayanababu and other senior officials attended the TEC meeting in New Delhi and convinced the committee with a detailed report seeking sanction of four new medical colleges.

The State Government is planning to lay foundation for the first sanctioned six medical colleges soon.

Where are the colleges?

The colleges are to be built in Ariyalur, Cuddalore, Kallakurichi and Kancheepuram districts.

They will have 150 MBBS seats each, once the executive committee approves. With this, the number of medical colleges in the State will increase to 37
CHINO, Calif., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Karat by Lollicup will be starting the new year celebrating their 20th anniversary. Karat by Lollicup has grown from being a pioneer in the bubble tea business to being one of the top manufacturers and suppliers of high-quality foodservice products in the North American region.

Karat by Lollicup continues to experience continued growth of sales due to their ability to adapt to their customers wants and needs in such an everchanging industry. In 2019, they broke a new sales record by reaching $225 million, a 28% jump from 2018's $175 million.

The company's top 5 products that helped contribute to their new sales record are the strawless sipper lid, bagasse dinnerware line, mineral-filled hinged containers, paper food containers, and PP microwaveable take-out boxes. All of whom belong to their own brand lines, Karat and Karat Earth.

Thanks to the company's recent grand opening of their 500,000 sq. feet manufacturing facility in Rockwall, Texas. Karat by Lollicup is expected to bring in more USA made products in 2020, ranging from eco-friendly products to custom print.

About Karat by Lollicup

Karat by Lollicup is a manufacturer and supplier of premium beverage and disposable foodservice products. The company's brands include Karat, Karat Earth, Tea Zone, and Total Clean. Karat has been in business for almost 20 years and employs 511 personnel at multiple locations throughout the United States. For more information, please visit www.Karatpackaging.com or email [email protected].

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Amid nationwide protests against the ruling BJP governments signature Citizenship (Amendment) Act, an elite university in the heart of Indias national capital grabbed headlines on late Sunday evening as a group of masked people ransacked its campus, brutally thrashed its students and left behind trails of inexplicable damage to the prestige of the University that has been the centre of anti-establishment protests in India.



Jawaharlal Nehru University is among Indias premier seats of education and has an unparalleled reputation in India and abroad. Its vibrant participation in issues of national concern is not something new as the university named after independent Indias first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru has been at the forefront of several social and political movements.

The ruling Indian dispensation with PM Modi at the helm has shown disdain for JNUs vibrant culture of critic and resistance. And the reasons are purely political although leading members of his party have often attempted to paint them in nationalistic fervours.

Modi hails from the BJP, whose ideological parent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is a right-wing fundamentalist organisation that was once banned by the Indian government for its alleged role in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the icon of peace and non-violence, who is regarded as Indias Father of the Nation.

JNU, on the other hand, is the epi-centre of leftist ideology. A clash of perceptions between the regime and the university, therefore, was expected and it began to surface within months of Modis rise in New Delhi in 2014. Over the past six odd years, there have been numerous instances of violence and arson in the campus but every time that something of the sort emerged, students against the dispensation were dubbed anti-nationals and traitors.

Riding on the wave of nationalism, and backed by the foot soldiers of the RSS, an atmosphere was created across the country to suggest that the University which has produced a slew of heavyweight writers, economists, scientists and more is the breeding ground of anti-India groups.

The universitys former student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, in a similar episode of lesser intensity, was earlier thrashed and arrested by Delhi Police but four years down the line, the government and the state machinery have not been able to produce an iota of evidence against him. Kumar is today a leading young politician in India and vehemently expresses his views.

As Modis policies began to seem more and more divisive with the introduction of controversial legislations, suppression of minorities, utter disregard for the national ethos and democratic norms, the protests and resentment of the students of JNU, with clever use of the arts, folk songs and slogans critical of the dispensation, became more intense too.

The regime, aware as it is that student uprisings have unseated the most powerful of leaders and governments, used clever tactics of not only defaming the students but also instigating them to create a pathway for their delegitimisation, which could then be used to suppress them.

But the introduction of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, and its hasty process of becoming a law, changed the scale of things.

As violence erupted in the northeastern flank -- in Assam and Tripura -- people began to hit the streets in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata and elsewhere, universities in Indias national capital became hotbeds for debates and discussions on the much controversial legislation that has left the country staunchly divided.

What else should the students do? Watch things unfold in silence and hand over their destiny to the whims and fancies of the regime? Because they are educated and well versed with the law of the land, and the intense process of the drafting of the Indian Constitution that placed the power in the hands of We the people, they rose in peaceful protests. These were not limited to JNU, but Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi University, Ambedkar University, and even Amity University witnessed peaceful demonstrations by students who alleged that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act was divisive and unconstitutional.

By then, several noted Indian personalities had outrightly rejected the act. At least six state governments had refused to implement it in their states while some former bureaucrats called for a civil disobedience movement against it.

Kagaz Nahin Dikhayenge by comedian Varun Grover became a popular chant but the Modi-dispensation fought back in the most unconstitutional way possible. Students of Jamia Millia Islamia were brutally thrashed by police personnel, who entered its campus and caused utter mayhem, which resulted in nationwide condemnation. Tear gas shells and bullets were fired at unarmed students and attempts were made to suggest that they were indulging in violence. Internet was frequently disrupted and Section 144, which prohibits peaceful demonstrations, was imposed in several cities across the country.

What the government thought would deter the spirit of students perhaps backfired as it unified students across the country against the states atrocities on students. What was till now a fragmented rebellion here and there became the cry of the land as thousands of people hit the street every day to protest against the legislation that they say goes against Indias commitment to equality as well as disregards the secular character of its Constitution.

Cut to the present and things become clear.

Peaceful demonstrations at Shaheen Bagh, which has become a symbol of resistance against the Citizenship Act, were disrupted by police on Sunday as urgent messages surfaced on social media, suggesting that a clampdown by authorities was expected soon.

Just when the entire attention of the country was drawn to the messages coming out from Shaheen Bagh, a group of masked people entered JNU and thrashed its teachers, students and security staff in the most brutal manner possible.

Notably, the police were in campus earlier on Sunday but disappeared mysteriously just before masked groups vandalised the campus and left many, including JNUSU president, heavily injured. SOS calls flooded social media platforms and concerned citizens urgently moved to JNU campus. Political leaders called for restraint and sent their representatives too.

By 8:30 PM on Sunday evening, several hundred people had gathered outside the main gate of JNU. At least a dozen of heavily injured students had to be taken to AIIMS for medical attention. But mysteriously, street lights went off in the lanes surrounding the campus, during which, students allege, the masked men were provided with a safe passage, escorted by personnel of the police.

Several students Indiatimes spoke to alleged that members of the ABVP, the student wing of the BJP and the RSS, were the attackers. ABVP, on the other hand, claimed that they had been attacked by left-wing students. And this is likely to undergo a judicial enquiry so that facts can be ascertained.

For now, we know that students who were protesting against a proposed hike in hostel fee by the administration, as well as the Citizenship Act, were at the receiving end of the mayhem that unfolded on Sunday. They faced the ire of the attackers who hid behind masks and attacked them like terrorists.

Who benefits? Whose purpose does the assault on students serve? Who is desperate to curb protests? Who has been delegitimising dissent of hundreds of thousands of Indians across the country? Who has the audacity to hide behind masks and threaten students, teachers, media on camera? Who are these goons not afraid of the police? What gives them the surety that the police will not act against them?

Hours after the attack, students across the country took to the streets to protest the incident. Hundreds of students and ordinary people of the city gathered outside police headquarters in New Delhi and accused officers of inaction.

In Mumbai, students from several educational institutions gathered at the Gateway of India and demanded that the government act against the assailants. Students at universities in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal held candlelight marches to protest the incident.

The role of Delhi Police needs to be probed and it is quite clear that the safety of students cannot be ensured under their watch. More importantly, the governments job is to maintain order and there can be no denying that it has failed on that front. The episode that surfaced in the heart of Indias capital should shame members of the ruling dispensation and people should make them accountable.

If theres no accountability, India will cease to be a democratic republic. With the Sunday assault, unfortunately, we have moved another inch closer.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc expressed his delight in the ongoing development of the close friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and Laos in all areas.

Lao PM Thongloun Sisoulith congratulated Vietnam on its impressive achievements in socio-economic development in 2019, especially the economic growth rate of 7%. He spoke highly of the results and benefits of the comprehensive cooperation between the two countries, expressing his belief the meeting will create a new momentum for the bilateral ties in 2020 when Vietnam and Laos are celebrating important events and preparing for the National Party Congress of each country in 2021.

Both sides expressed their pleasure with the implementation of cooperation programmes between the two governments in all areas over the past year. Notably, the political ties and cooperation in defence  security have been strengthened, contributing to maintaining political stability and social order and security in each country.

Regarding economic collaboration, the two-way trade between the two countries hit US$1.2 billion, up 12.5%. Vietnam continued to be a big foreign investor in Laos with nearly 430 projects with combined a capital of nearly US$5 billion.

Cooperation in education has been furtherd with an increase in the number of Vietnams scholarships awarded to Laos students. There are 17,000 Lao students studying in Vietnam.

The two sides agreed on cooperation orientations for 2020, with a focus on increasing pillar collaboration on politics, external affairs, defence, security; strengthening sharing experience in building policies on stabilising macro-economies and promoting sustainable development; while enhancing connectivity and supplementation between the two economies, especially in transport and energy.

Besides the above mentioned, the two nations will coordinate to improve their business and investment environment, as well as transport infrastructure connectivity, while creating more favourable conditions for businesses in order to strive for the expand two-way trade by at least 10% this year.

Vietnam and Laos will work together to build their cooperation strategy over the next decade while the two countries ministries, sectors and localities continue to promote substantial and effective cooperation in the fields of culture, science, social affairs, information and communications, sports, healthcare, internal and judicial matters.

The two sides agreed to strengthen coordination and mutual support at regional and international forums and join hands to further deepen the cooperation and connectivity of the ASEAN Community as well as promote the blocs solidarity, central role, and common voice in regional strategic issues, including the East Sea matter.

They were unanimous in making effective and sustainable use of water resources in the Mekong River. Laos affirmed to support Vietnams assumption of the roles of the ASEAN Chair 2020 and a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for 2020-2021 tenure.

Concluding the meeting, the two PMs stressed that they will direct ministries, sectors, localities and businesses of both countries to closely coordinate to realise effectively the freshly-reached agreements.

After the meeting, the two PMs witnessed the signing ceremony for important cooperation documents, including the agreement on th cooperation plan for 2020 between the governments of Vietnam and Laos, the minutes of the 42nd meeting of the Vietnam-Laos Inter-governmental Committee, the agreement on transfer of sentenced persons, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Vietnams Transport Ministry and the Lao Ministry of Public Works and Transport, and the agreement on the education cooperation plan between the two education ministries.
Masked armed men raided hostels of Jawaharlal Nehru University

NEW DELHI: Masked men armed with iron rods and hammers raided hostels of the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday and beat up students and teachers aligned with the left, reports said.



News portals carried pictures of profusely bleeding Aishe Ghosh, the leftist president of the JNU students union (JNUSU). TV grabs showed masked men roaming freely on the campus, and students said the police and security guards refused to respond to calls for help.



Reports said the masked men belonged to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), students wing of the Hindu fascist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS).



Several teachers independently confirmed ABVP members had entered the campus and were attacking students.



Female students have locked themselves up inside the girls wing in Sabarmati Hostel. These attackers are roaming the corridors armed with rods and stickswe are under attack, the JNUSU Twitter handle said.



A video of a bleeding Ms Ghosh was posted on Twitter while the JNUSU claimed in a statement that a large number of ABVP activists had entered the campus with iron rods and told to single out students representatives.



Characteristically, the ABVP offered a rival version. It said its members, including its JNU unit secretary, were attacked by members of the left-backed students outfits and 11 of the RSS-affiliated outfits members were missing.



The ABVP alleged that its members were brutally attacked by students affiliated to left student organisations  Students Federation of India, All India Students Association and Democratic Students Front. Elections are due for the Delhi Assembly in February, and students across the country have been leading protests against a controversial citizenship law that excludes Muslims from rights offered to others from three countries in South Asia.



Mr Modi needs to win the election to shore up his waning popularity and also to suggest that the communal citizenship law has popular support. The BJP has suffered significant losses in recent state polls to regional parties and to the Congress.



The assault on the left seemed to help bring the communists in West Bengal closer to their bets noir, the ruling Trinamool Party. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee spoke up vociferously. We strongly condemn the brutality unleashed against students/teachers in JNU. No words enough to describe such heinous acts.



A shame on our democracy. Trinamool delegation led by Dinesh Trivedi (Sajda Ahmed, Manas Bhunia, Vivek Gupta) headed to Delhi to show solidarity with #ShaheenBagh #JNU. Shaheen Bagh is where women-led anti-citizenship law protests have been raging since a month.



Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav said: Masked men attacking teachers and students in JNU shows the low to which the government will stoop in order to rule through fear. The BJP is using violence and hate to polarise society and stifle dissent. The ABVP are acting like the storm troopers of the BJP.
The owner of now-closed Louies Restaurant in Allentown admitted Monday he failed to pay $89,000 in Pennsylvania sales taxes.

Louis Belletieri pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts of theft and was sentenced to two years of probation, according to his attorney, John Waldron.

He was paying taxes on the bar but wasnt paying enough on the restaurant portion for approximately three years, Waldron said. He didnt pay taxes from September 2014 through April 2017, records say.

The Italian restaurant in Allentown was previously at 12th and Chew streets, then moved to 2071 31st St. The lease expired Dec. 31, Waldron said.

Belletieri will sell the liquor license at the now-closed restaurant to pay off his tax debt, Walrdon said. Waldron said Belletieri wants to open a new restaurant. Hes owned several restaurants during his long career, Waldron said. Its unclear where the new one would go.

Most of his restaurants have been in Allentown but he hasnt made a final decision yet, Waldron said.

Waldron said the 73-year-old Emmaus resident got understanding and fair treatment from the Pennsylvania attorney generals office. The sentence was handed down by Lehigh County Judge Maria Dantos, court records say.

Belletieri ran an unsuccessful campaign for Allentown mayor in 2005. Hes also known for his jarred pasta sauce.

Waldron said Belletieri is eager to put his crimes behind him and move on to his next eatery.

Its in his blood. He misses working and not seeing his customers," Walrdon said.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
40 years of not doing something real wasnt working

To the Editor:

Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979. Nothing done since then has changed that. Lets not fool ourselves and pretend something Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama and now Trump did or is doing started a war with Iran. Iran started the war by taking hostages and no act since changes or erases that.

Weve been passive toward Iran since 1979 and their behavior has changed: Its gotten worse. It has spread its terroristic ways throughout the region and world for the last four decades without remorse or concern for the innocent. Our policies through five changes in presidents did nothing to better Irans behavior. From sanctions to cash payments, Iran has only become more aggressive. It was time for a change. We stepped it up. We killed the leading terrorist in the world. We killed a man responsible for 800 American deaths. We told Iran no more. We realized that 40 years of not doing something real wasnt working.

After this action, nobody knows what will happen next. Without this action, everybody knew what would happen: more of the same. And more of the same isnt acceptable. The ball is now in Irans court, change your behavior or face actual penalties. Cause destruction and face destruction.

Alan Pack

Manlius

Katko brushes off Ukraine evidence, accepts flimsy Iran evidence

To the Editor:

Isnt it fascinating how our Congressman, John Katko, can listen to two weeks of expert testimony by persons who both heard the infamous call to the Ukrainian leader and others who supported their interpretation that President Donald Trump engaged in a clear transaction of information about Joe Biden and his son, and then state that he finds it unconvincing. Then, with the president simply declaring that there are some sinister plans afoot, he can declare that the strike against an Iranian government leader  based in another country allied with the U.S., which threatens all with more violence and possible war and has questionable legal validity  is both correct and justified! ("Katko: Killing of Irans top general necessary and justified, " Jan. 3, 2020).

His erratic, toady-like, and ignorant decision making is quite interesting and reflective of someone who, despite his self-proclaimed moderation, is truly in the Trumpian fold all the way.

This demonstrates just one of the many reasons why he is afraid to have open town hall meetings and needs to be replaced.

Dave Pasinski

Fayetteville

Leaders face no consequences for lying about grounds for war

To the Editor:

Last week the Unites States assassinated two top military leaders, one from a sovereign nation (Iran) and the other from our ally (Iraq).

Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a husband and father of four children, led the Iranian-backed militia which fought alongside U.S. troops in Iraqs 2014-17 war against Islamic State or ISIS, our common enemy.

Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was also assassinated, along with four other individuals, in the attack.

It is estimated the United States has spent a trillion dollars on a war justified by weapons of mass destruction which were never found.

Thousands of American soldiers were killed and countless soldiers committed suicide after they returned. The Unites States expended much blood and treasure.

Perhaps the justification for the execution of a top Iranian and an Iraqi military leader was fabricated just like the justification for the Iraq war. We will not know the truth for decades and perhaps never.

At the end of the day, it is all about United States geopolitical objectives. Having lived through the Vietnam and Iraq wars, it is naive to think that our government doesnt create false narratives and outright lies to justify their foreign policy objectives.

It is the common people both in the Middle East and the United States who pay the price with their lives while the politicians do not suffer the consequences of their action.

Peter Wirth

Fayetteville

Iran escalation a distraction from Trump impeachment

To the Editor:

President Donald Trump has single-handedly escalated the simmering relationship with Iran with one aggressive move last week. Taking out Iran's Gen. Qassem Soleimani was the spark that is setting off a seismic shift on the Middle East scene.

Why would Trump do this now? The answer is deceptively simple. The president desperately needs a distraction from the impeachment proceedings, which are ramping up as more information is unearthed. Additionally, the courts seem likely to dismiss his attempts to prevent key witnesses from testifying during the trial in the Senate.

The order to take out Gen. Qassem Soleimani was Trump's alone, with no outside consultation; a rash and possibly unconstitutional act of the type that fits perfectly with Trump's reactive style of dealing with "problem issues" in the past. I'm sure he thought "what better way to throw my impeachment off the tracks than to set off a possible war with Iran?"

Trump is recklessly betting that Americans will forgo his impeachment proceedings because he's set off a possible war with Iran. The problem is that he personally won't pay the costs of this move. However, our American troops will.

Kathleen S. DAmico

Cicero

See also:

House plans vote to limit Trumps military actions on Iran

Iran abandons nuclear limits; Iraqi Parliament calls for expulsion of US troops

US sending 3,000 more troops to Mideast after killing top Iran general

Katko: Killing of Irans top general necessary and justified
Delhi election dates LIVE updates: The Election Commissioner is holding a press conference to announce the Delhi poll schedule. The Delhi Assembly polls will determine if Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will hold on to the national capital for the next five years or if there is a new government. During his New Year greeting, Kejriwal told Delhiites that "we cannot afford any brake on this pace" at which Delhi was developing. "Delhi is now marching ahead with great speed and the New Year is very important for Delhiites... The pace at which Delhi is developing now, we cannot afford any brake on this pace," the Chief Minister had said.

"All two crore Delhiites need to press the accelerator for this forward march of development," he said. Delhi will be turned into number one city of the world, he had said ahead of Delhi election 2020. On the other hand, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has said that it is confident of forming the government in Delhi. Addressing booth-level workers in Delhi, Amit Shah said, "BJP is going to form the government in Delhi under the leadership of Narendra Modi." "One can mislead people once, it cannot do so again and again," he said attacking CM Kejriwal before the Delhi election dates were to be announced.

Follow the Delhi Election poll dates LIVE updates:

4:07pm: 90,000 policemen will be deployed for the smooth conducting of Delhi polls: CEC

4:00pm: Important dates of Delhi elections 2020:

Last date of nomination filing: Jan 21

Date of withdrawal of nomination: Jan 24

Delhi polls: Feb 8

Delhi poll counting: Feb 11

3:58pm: Term of current Delhi assembly expires on Feb 22, 2020: CEC

3:57pm: Date of withdrawal of nominations in January 24.

3:55pm: New concept of absentee voters introduced that enables those voters to take part in polls who are not able to come to polling stations due to physical circumstances or unavoidable reasons. PWDs and senior citizens above 80 years can either vote in person or vote through postal ballot: CEC

3:53pm: Scrutiny of nominations would be done on January 23.

3:50pm: Last date of filing nominations is January 21.

3:48pm: Model Code of Conduct applicable immediately.

3:45pm: Delhi election will be conducted on Feb 8, results will be announced on Feb 11.

3:40pm: Total electors in NCT of Delhi are 1,46,92,136; polling to be held at 13,750 polling stations: CEO

3:35pm: Total electors in the final electoral roll of the NCT of Delhi as on 6 January, 2020 are 1,46,92,136, says Chief Electoral Officer.

3:30pm: Election Commission starts adress to announce Delhi poll dates.

Also read: CM Arvind Kejriwal promises safer city for women, pure water, clean Delhi in election campaign

Also read: Delhi Assembly election 2020: CM Kejriwal promises to make city pollution-free in next five years
Amy Kennedy, education director of the Kennedy Forum, and wife of Patrick J. Kennedy, honoree, advocate, and former U.S. Representative from Rhode Island , speaks on stage at 2016 Many Faces Of Mental Health Gala at The Pierre Hotel in New York City on April 12, 2016. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images)

Patrick Kennedys Wife Launches House Campaign Against New Republican Jeff Van Drew

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), who left the Democratic party over House Democrats impeaching President Donald Trump, could face a Kennedy in the general election this year.

Van Drew represents New Jerseys 2nd Congressional District.

Amy Kennedy, the wife of former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), said on Jan. 6 shell run for the seat as a Democrat.

A former public school teacher and current education director of the Kennedy Forum, a group that advocates for mental health policies, Kennedy resides in Brigantine and was born in New Jersey.

Kennedy targeted both Van Drew and Trump, who welcomed Van Drew into the Republican party last month, in the video announcing her campaign.

Too many of our leaders have lost their moral compass, the mother of five said. Trump and Van Drew are symptoms of a bigger sickness infecting our country and our politics. Doing whats right shouldnt be complicated. Treat one another with respect, show some compassion, and look out for others.

Kennedy said the biggest public health emergency of our time is the mental health and addiction crisis. She said she felt she couldnt sit back and wait for things to change.

Three other Democrats have announced bids for the seat: Ashley Bennett, a member of the Atlantic County Board of Chosen Freeholders; West Cape May Commissioner John Francis II; and political science professor Brigid Callahan Harrison.

Three Republicans will be vying to win the Republican primary against Van Drew: businessman Brian Fitzherbert, former congressional candidate Bob Patterson, and David Richter, a CEO.

President Donald Trump meets with Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Dec. 19, 2019. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)

Van Drew got Trumps endorsement after switching to the GOP. The former Democrat decried the partys shift to the left and said he was disenfranchised by the push to impeach Trump.

Van Drew won the 2018 election by about 20,000 votes over Republican Seth Grossman.

The Kennedy family has a long history in politics. John F. Kennedy (JFK) was the nations 35th president until he was assassinated in November 1963. His brother, Robert F. Kennedy, was a U.S. Senator representing New York from 1965 until he was assassinated in June 1968. Their brother Ted Kennedy was a U.S. Senator as well, representing Massachusetts for nearly 47 years.

Their father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom in the late 1930s.

JFKs daughter, Caroline Kennedy, was U.S. Ambassador to Japan from 2013 to 2017.

Joe Kennedy III, Joseph Kennedy Sr.s grandson, is a U.S. Rep. representing Massachusetts. Hes vying for a Senate seat in 2020.
Staff from the Saudi Human Rights Commission have been taking part in an awareness training program in Switzerland. A number of employees visited the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in Geneva, to participate in field activities including lectures and training sessions.

The trip was part of a programme of initiatives, designed by the commissions training and development department, to introduce its workers to the international human rights system of operation.

The Saudi delegation was headed by the supervisor of the commissions international resources agency, Waleed Al Yahya, and its director general for human resources, Sameer Batiyah.

Day one saw the party join training sessions on the function of treaty bodies, universal periodic reviewing, the role of civil society organisations in interacting with the international human rights system, and national action planning.

On the second day, delegates attended presentations run by the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights titled, Bridging the governance gap: Lessons learned and National human rights institutions and access to remedies.

The function of the UN Human Rights Council and the role of related national institutions in protecting human rights, formed the basis of awareness training on day three, with the fourth day covering treaty bodies, including the work of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and its Committee Against Torture (CAT).
UPDATED AT 12:48 p.m. to include comments from Superintendent Jim Graham.

NAPOLEON TWP., MI  A social media threat targeting a Napoleon High School student did not cancel classes on the first day back from winter break on Monday.

Napoleon Community Schools officials learned about the social media post aimed at two people, one of whom is a student, on Sunday, Jan. 5, Superintendent Jim Graham said. The parents of the threatened student were notified of the situation, district officials said.

The threat was made by a Napoleon High School student, Graham said. It was determined there was no threat to the safety of students and staff and school resumed as planned on Jan. 6, the district reported in a Facebook post. There was no threat of violence at the school, contrary to rumors spread on social media, Graham said.

Napoleon Township Police Department and Jackson County Sheriffs Office investigated the post, officials said. The student who made the threatening post has been banned from school grounds, they said.

Due to the on-going legal aspect of the concern and investigative process, we are unable to disclose any further information at this time, the district said in its Facebook post.

There were five school threats at Jackson County schools in a two-week span last September.

The da Vinci Institute closed Sept. 26 after middle school students reported hearing another student threaten to shoot up the school.

The Columbia School District reported a 13-year-old made threats against the district on Sept. 24.

Concord Community Schools closed Sept. 17 after four students used Snapchat to threaten to shoot people at the high school.

Northwest Community Schools canceled classes Sept. 19 due to a threat from a middle school student. High school students made separate threats later that day.
Tankers depicted in the Strait of Hormuz  a strategically important waterway which separates Iran, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. ATTA KENARE | AFP | Getty Images

A critical gateway to the world's oil industry has been thrust back into the global spotlight, following a dramatic escalation in geopolitical tensions since the targeted killing of a top Iranian general. The death of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani at the end of last week has ratcheted up already-high tensions between Washington and Tehran, with many investors increasingly anxious that a widening conflict could disrupt global oil supplies. Analysts at Eurasia Group predicted the most likely outcome of Soleimani's death would be a months-long "escalatory cycle" of tit-for-tat responses in the Middle East, before mediation efforts eventually lead to de-escalating U.S.-Iran tensions.

But, as tensions continue to ramp up initially, analysts at the political risk consultancy said they would expect to see Iran harass commercial shipping in the Gulf  "and shipping in the Strait of Hormuz will be temporarily disrupted with navy drills." Situated between Iran and Oman, the Strait of Hormuz is a narrow but strategically important waterway that links crude producers in the Middle East with key markets across the world. It was the focal point of heightened U.S.-Iran tensions in May and June last year, when six oil tankers and a U.S. drone were attacked in, or near, the waterway.

Energy security in the Gulf

Oil prices were trading higher on Monday, extending gains following Friday's more than 3% jump. International benchmark Brent crude traded at $69.62 at around 12:15 p.m. London time, up around 1.5%, having briefly climbed above $70 a barrel earlier in the session. It was the first time since May that Brent futures had surpassed this psychologically important level. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) stood at $63.78 Monday morning, up more than 1.1% for the session. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) has previously described the Strait of Hormuz as the world's most important oil chokepoint. In 2018, daily oil flow in the channel  which is just 21 miles wide at its narrowest point  averaged at 21 million barrels per day. That's the equivalent of about 21% of global petroleum liquids consumption. The EIA defines a chokepoint as a narrow channel along widely used global sea routes that are critical to energy security.

Shutting off the Strait 'of no interest to anyone'

Samir Madani, co-founder of satellite tracking firm TankerTrackers.com, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Monday that shipping flows via the Strait of Hormuz had been little changed since the targeted killing of Soleimani. He emphasized that China was the biggest importer out of the Persian Gulf region. And, "as a result of that, the relationship between Iran and China needs to be maintained." "So, they are not going to shut off the Strait anytime soon," Madani said.
ATLANTAHeavenly maidens descended from the clouds and appeared in the flesh to thousands in Atlanta, Georgia on Sunday. No, this was not an Orson Welles-like media stunt: thanks to patented technology that Shen Yun Performing Arts employed at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center, theatergoers truly did see characters fly through celestial realms before appearing in their human forms on stage.

COO Amazed by Shen Yun

It has exceeded my expectations, said Dan Raatjes, who is Chief Operations Officer for Kings Hawaiian, a food manufacturing company founded in 1950 best known for its pull-apart Hawaiian sweet bread popular across North America.

Raatjes was floored by the overall experience of New York-based Shen Yun.

Its amazing. I havent seen anything like this. Its beautiful, he said.

The backdrop! Its so unique, right? Especially the one when the fairies came down, and all of a sudden the dancers popped up. That was amazing. Its so sharp, the background, the colors, and the contrast, is just so sharp. Every scene is new colors. Amazing, Raatjes said.

Engineer Is Taken along on the journey with the dancers in Shen Yun

Eric Conklin and Jewell Stone found Shen Yun Performing Arts absolutely amazing at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center, Jan. 5, 2020. (NTD Television)

Shen Yuns enchanting and colorful performance gained two new fans in Eric Conklin and Jewell Stone, husband and wife, who described how much they enjoyed it.

Its absolutely stunning. The choreography, the costumes are just amazing, Stone said, who is an engineer with the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT).

Very much so. The fluidity of the movements is so gentle and flowing. Its beautiful, said Conklin, who also works at the GDOT. Each and every [dance] had its own subtle message about the honesty, or the tranquility, or spiritual enlightenment, and others.

Shen Yuns mission is to restore Chinas 5,000-year-strong culture after the Communist Party of China ravaged it and nearly wiped it out due a fear that it would compete for the peoples loyalty and obedience. The stage show depicts this ongoing real-life struggle on stage in a select few of its storytelling dances.

Stone and Conklin pointed to these dances as being particularly touching and memorable.

I cant begin to capture it all, the costumes, the movementeach were conveying either the excitement, the highs or lows, or the drama as well as the passion and the angst. For instance, with the communist ruleeach movement, the choreography, the dancers the costumes, all brought it very well together and definitely portrayed each and every message. Its absolutely amazing, Stone said.

Shen Yun Performing Arts curtain call at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center, Jan. 5, 2020. (The Epoch Times)

A strong spiritual component runs through each piece in a Shen Yun performance. Be it an ancient legend, a folk dance, a song, or a modern scene of persecution, Shen Yun holds true to the authentic Chinese tradition of acknowledging the divines presence.

Stone said she absolutely picked up on this aspect of the show, and expounded on it.

Im taken along on the journey with the dancers. Its like theyre bringing you in and along with them as theyre presenting their stories, Stone said.

Youre able to feel the transition and the movement with them as they go through the different steps and scenes, Conklin added.

Stone spoke for the pair when she said that Shen Yun Performing Arts is absolutely a must-see.

With reporting by NTD Television, Roland Ree, and Brett Featherstone.

The Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time and has covered audience reactions since the companys inception in 2006.
CLEVELAND, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Federal Hose Manufacturing LLC, an operating company owned by Crawford United Corporation (OTC: CRAWA), today announced the purchase of Marine Products International (MPI), located in Eastlake, Ohio. The transaction became effective as of January 1, 2020. The acquired business, which will continue to operate under the name MPI, provides rubber and plastic hoses to the recreational marine industry.

The acquisition is expected to add approximately $18 million in annual revenue to the Industrial Hose business segment of Crawford United and be immediately accretive to earnings.

About Crawford United Corporation. Crawford United Corporation is a growth-oriented holding company providing specialty industrial products to diverse markets, including healthcare, aerospace, education, transportation, and petrochemical. The company currently operates three business segments. The Industrial Hose business is a premier manufacturer of flexible interlocking metal hoses and a distributor of a full line of branded silicone, hydraulic, plastic and rubber hose products. The Aerospace Components business specializes in highly complex precision components primarily for customers in the commercial aviation industry, offering complete end-to-end engineering, machining, grinding, welding, brazing, heat treat, and assembly solutions. The Commercial Air Handling business is a leader in designing, manufacturing, and installing highly customized, large-scale commercial, institutional, and industrial air handling solutions. For more information, go to www.crawfordunited.com .



Information about Forward Looking Statements. This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements made regarding the companys future results. Generally, these statements can be identified by the use of words such as guidance, outlook, believes, estimates, anticipates, expects, forecasts, seeks, projects, intends, plans, may, will, should, could, would and similar expressions intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Actual results and events may differ significantly from those anticipated as a result of risks and uncertainties, including deterioration of or instability in the economy, the markets the Company serves and the financial markets, developments and uncertainties in U.S. laws and policy, decreased availability or increased costs of materials used in producing the Companys products, contractions or growth rates and seasonality or cyclicality of markets the Company serves, competition, loss of any key customer, the Companys ability to successfully integrate the businesses it acquires and achieve the anticipated benefits of such acquisitions, the impact of divestitures and dispositions, the impact of the Companys debt obligations on its operations and liquidity, as well as the risks described from time to time in the companys reports as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of the Company and its forward-looking statements is included in its most recent Form 10-K and subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as may be required by law. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement.
Agartala, Jan 6 : The policing in the several centuries of princely rule in Tripura and its gradual transformation besides the sacrifice of the police martyrs during the decades of terrorism would be showcased at a giant permanent gallery, first of its kind in the northeastern region.

The northeastern state of Tripura, bordering Bangladesh, Assam and Mizoram, came under the control of the Indian government on October 15, 1949 following a merger agreement was signed between regent Maharani Kanchan Prabha Devi and the Indian Governor General after the end of the 1,355-year-rule by 184 kings.

"Since the princely rule, policing in Tripura has a long and shining history. Many of our colleagues have sacrificed their lives while fighting the decades-old terrorism in Tripura," Deputy Inspector General of Police Arindam Nath, who is looking after the setting up of the first ever police gallery, said.

While talking to IANS, Nath, an IPS officer, said that along with the pace of success, the Tripura police and its elite force -- Tripura State Rifles (TSR) -- bidding a farewell to its old weaponry and its obsolete infrastructure, the state's law enforcing agency now a modern force with qualified manpower.

"All the transformation of policing in Tripura, sacrifice of the policemen and their stupendous feat would be displayed in various forms at a permanent gallery inside the Ujjayanta Palace State Museum." The northeast India's biggest museum was set up in the Ujjayanta Palace in 2013 showcasing the traditional life, culture, history, diverse ethnic characters of the northeastern region largely Tripura.

Built in 1901 by then king Maharaja Radhakishore Manikya Bahadur, the huge castle Ujjayanta Palace, the erstwhile royal abode of Tripura's Manikya dynasty, had housed the Tripura assembly before setting up of the smart museum.

Nath, who himself wrote many books on numerous subjects, said: "With startling success of TSR in taming the decades-old terrorism, the Tripura police in 2012 received "President's Colours", till that time the fourth police force in India received the highest honour after Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Tamil Nadu.

"Through "Community Policing", a 24x7 platform for liasion between police and public, co-operation and mutual understanding between the two being enhanced and improved the service delivery of Tripura police in their crime control initiatives. Each police station area had been divided into several "Police Beats" consisting of a logical number of village panchayats and municipal wards by the officer in charge of the police station in close coordination with immediate senior level officials based on the crime pattern in the police station area.

Besides providing security during the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, the India Reserve (IR) battalions of TSR had earlier performed election duties in more than 16 states including Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and Jharkhand, Haryana and to the northeastern states, to provide security during the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. Trained in counter-insurgency operations, the TSR was raised in March 1984 to deal with the terrorism.

Seventy-five per cent of its personnel are from Tripura, while the remaining are from across the country. The TSR has 12 battalions, of which nine are IR battalions. The Union Home Ministry has recently sanctioned two more IR battalions of TSR and the Tripura government has started the process to recruit personnel for the two fresh TSR battalions sanctioned.

"The IR battalions can be posted anywhere in the country as and when the Union Home Ministry asks the concerned state government," a senior TSR commandant said.

The TSR has demonstrated excellent performance in Tripura in taming the four-decade-old terrorism in the northeastern state.Historian and writer Pannalal Roy, who wrote many books on royal history of Tripura, said that since the regime of king Birchandra Manikya Bahadur (1862 to 1896), the police and military force had given an initial shape.

"When the Biritish domination and supremacy started on the erstwhile kings in 1761, the kings had to take permission from the British ruler to purchase or to collect even a rifle. However, during the governance of Tripura's last king Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur (1923-1947), the police and military force turned into an organised force," Roy told IANS.

(Sujit Chakraborty can be contacted at sujit.c@ians.in)
The United States deployed additional troops to augment the defenses of its base in Kenya recently attacked by a local terrorist group, US Africa Command said in a statement on Monday.

"US Africa Command's East Africa Response Force (EARF) arrived at Manda Bay, Kenya, Jan. 5, to augment security to secure the airfield after an attack by al-Shabaab terrorists," the statement said.

On Sunday, the compound was attacked by Al-Shabaab (part of al-Qaeda terrorist organization, banned in Russia) terrorists, who killed one US soldier and two Pentagon contractors.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(Kitco News) - The gold market, pushing to within striking distance of $1,600, may look overbought, but will remain at current levels as long as geopolitical uncertainty dominates investor sentiment, according to one market strategist.

Escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran have pushed gold prices to their highest level since April 2013 and many analysts are now keeping their eye on the $1,600 an ounce level. February gold futures last traded at $1,565.5 an ounce, up 84% on the day.

The yellow metal has rallied more than 3.5% since the start of the new year; prices were propelled higher after the U.S. announced that it killed Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force in a military airstrike.

In a research note published Monday, Hussein Sayed, chief market strategist at FXTM, said that gold will continue to shine as the conflict in the Middle East remains. Sayeds comments come as technical indicators like the Relative Strength Index are at their highest level since September, well in overbought territory.

In times of political and market uncertainty, there is no better alternative to buying gold and despite looking overbought on the charts, the rally will continue as long as uncertainty stays high, Sayed said.

In initial retaliation to the U.S. airstrikes, the Iraq government voted to expel U.S. troops from their country, Iran announced that it would no longer adhere to the 2015 global nuclear deal, and three Americans were killed in Kenya after a jihadist group attacked a military base.

Unlike previous short-lived Middle East issues of 2019, Sayed said that that the latest conflict is not expected to deescalate anytime soon. Sayed added that the latest development could put pressure on the U.S. and global economic growth.

2020 was supposed to be the year where the global economy bounces back to life after the US and China trade tensions thawed and investors got more clarity around Brexit. Events over the last week have undoubtedly put this outlook at risk, he said. Investors will remain on the defensive as everyone now awaits a possible retaliatory response by Iran. This may not be an immediate one, but rather a protracted event which investors need to carefully calculate when determining their portfolio s risk.
Open source

In 2017, Cambridge Analytica company worked for a Ukrainian political party, while being under the investigation of U.S. Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller; the official looked into the interference with U.S. presidential election in 2017. Brittany Kaiser, the former worker of Cambridge Analytica said so as quoted by The Guardian.

"The release of documents began on New Years Day on an anonymous Twitter account, @HindsightFiles, with links to material on elections in Malaysia, Kenya and Brazil. The documents were revealed to have come from Brittany Kaiser, an ex-Cambridge Analytica employee turned whistleblower, and to be the same ones subpoenaed by Robert Muellers investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election", reads the article.

Kaiser passed the documents from her email and hard drives, and some were delivered to the U.S. Senate in April 2018.

Its so abundantly clear our electoral systems are wide open to abuse. Im very fearful about what is going to happen in the US election later this year, and I think one of the few ways of protecting ourselves is to get as much information out there as possible, Kaiser said.

"The unpublished documents contain material that suggests the firm was working for a political party in Ukraine in 2017 even while under investigation as part of Muellers inquiry and emails that Kaiser says describe how the firm helped develop a sophisticated infrastructure of shell companies that were designed to funnel dark money into politics, wrote the outlet.
A Multnomah County Circuit judge on Monday ruled that jurors in the upcoming trial of Jeremy Christian will walk through a MAX train car identical to the one where Christian is accused of fatally stabbing two strangers after he shouted slurs at two teenage girls, one who was wearing a hijab.

Judge Cheryl Albrecht, however, denied the prosecutions request that jurors visit the actual train car where the 2017 killings took place.

Christians attorneys had argued that allowing the jury to see train car No. 415 would amount to a weird and emotional funerary procession that would effectively place jurors in the shoes of Christian and the two dead men.

The defense attorneys also contended that a visit to any train car -- whether the actual car or not -- would be unnecessary because jurors will gain a good understanding of the cars layout through photos, video and witness testimony.

Prosecutors argued that viewing the space will add to jurors understanding of how the stabbings occurred.

Christians trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 21 with jury selection and conclude six weeks later in late February. Christian has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the stabbings of Ricky Best and Taliesin Namkai-Meche as the train pulled into the Hollywood MAX station on May 26, 2017. Christian also is accused of stabbing a third passenger, Micah Fletcher, in the neck. Fletcher survived.

If convicted, Christian would face sentences ranging from life in prison with a 30-year minimum to a true life term.

12 Jeremy Christian moves closer to trial

The judge didnt rule on Christians request to allow him to also visit the train car and didnt say when she will decide that.

The judge also didnt rule on a prosecution request to allow jurors to watch cellphone video taken of Christian the night before the fatal stabbings. The video was recorded on May 25, 2017, about 30 minutes after Christian allegedly struck an African American woman in the face with a Gatorade bottle. Some 16 hours after the video was recorded, he stabbed Best, Namkai-Meche and Fletcher, prosecutors said.

In the cellphone video, Christian is riding a different MAX train as he says in an expletive-laden diatribe that he wants to stab some people, including the trains operator, according to the prosecution.

Prosecutors contend that the video shows Christian was in a violent mood and out to hurt people.

The judge said shell need a few more days before she can announce her decision about the jury watching the video.

-- Aimee Green

agreen@oregonian.com

o_aimee

Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox.
By Kevin Martin - Regional head, Retail Banking and Wealth Management Asia-Pacific HSBC

The implication is often that incumbent banks are being caught by surprise by the changing environment and the foray of fintech startups, new virtual banks, or tech giants from the United States or mainland China into financial services. We have a more optimistic outlook. True, the financial sector is evolving rapidly, being reshaped by the potential offered by emerging technologies. But the banks-as-dinosaurs argument rests on the assumption that firms in financial services have ignored technologys potential to enhance the way customers are served with cheaper, faster, and more convenient services  or the need to build agile, digital working cultures.

The data tells a different story: over 90 per cent of HSBCs retail banking transactions in Hong Kong are already digital, and retail banks around the world are expected to invest some $13 billion in digital banking this year alone. HSBC and many other banks have been making significant investments in digital and technology for many years, and this will continue. We know what we need to do, and we are already doing it.

Trust and competence

The organisations that succeed in the new world of digital banking will be those that pass three criteria: their ability to provide customers with the service they want on the channel where they want to be served; how trusted they are as partners and as custodians of customers assets and data; and their ability to negotiate the increasingly complex matrix of global regulatory requirements.

We welcome competition, and new digital players will help spur innovation across the industry as a whole  the industry and our customers benefit as a result. But new digital players will face challenges against these criteria just like established players. Managing highly complex regulation in a rapidly changing, multi-faceted environment, for example, is an area where established banks are at an advantage. Similarly, customer trust: banks like HSBC have built up trust over a history of more than 150 years. Newer entrants will need to build this trust over time.

A survey by Boston Consulting Group and Capgemini underlines how important this is. The survey asked respondents what kind of company they trusted most to manage their data: more than 80 per cent said banks; less than 5 per cent said consumer tech.

Banks are in the front line in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing. Banking regulation needs to be extremely rigorous to ensure that weakness is not introduced into the overall economy to protect consumers. Banks have deep responsibility for peoples financial wellbeing. As fintech companies join the industry, they will have to sign up to the same regulatory and compliance frameworks  and bear the same costs  this stewardship requires.

Banks are also showing themselves capable of using technology to enhance the way they serve customers, by integrating digital capabilities efficiencies into all channels: branches are becoming more efficient, relationship managers are equipped with digital tools, and contact centres are increasingly using AI and chatbots to quickly and effectively meet customers needs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

New management methods

Meanwhile, as mobile banking becomes ubiquitous, the challenge is to build apps that customers cannot live without. At least, that is our goal with HSBCs HK Mobile Banking app, which is now the highest-rated banking app on the Hong Kong Apple App Store at 4.7 stars, a dramatic increase from just a few years ago. And we are rolling out the same technology to all our retail markets. If there is a gap between what established banks and tech players can deliver, the established banks are rapidly closing it.

In the long term, technology is only going to be part of what a good banking service looks like to customers. While many day-to-day activities such as payments, lending, and account opening will be efficiently managed through digital platforms, truly understanding individual customers needs and supporting them as they manage their wealth, take out a mortgage, or buy protection for the future remains a distant goal for technology.

Customers always want to talk to someone they can trust completely, particularly when it comes to bigger life decisions or complex situations that need empathy. It is too easy to paint a vision of a future where people are completely and easily removed from the banking equation.

A recent report by Bain & Company on the future of finance and banking paints a picture of hyper-personalisation of services delivered by a combination of advanced technology and branch networks, along with being staffed by re-skilled and highly motivated employees. We agree, and believe that the banking experience of the future will be multi-channel: part people, and part digital.

The leading established banks are already digital but this is not a reason for complacency. No one in the industry doubts that there is still substantial room to grow. This is one reason why we welcome new entrants into the market.

Yes, there will be competition, but there will also be partnerships between banks and fintech groups that will help the banking ecosystem evolve and us serve customers in new and as yet unimagined ways.
Only a week into 2020 and Anne Bradley of Manly is concerned that like the missing "L" from Austraya, the letter "T" is also in danger of being lost, if the onslaught of "twenny twenny" talk on TV and radio is any guide.

Happily, many "Ts" remain present and accounted for, as C8's recent talk of correct tea time etiquette attests. While some questions remain, Barbara Ryan of Caringbah has a new tea dilemma: "I was given some Melbourne breakfast tea for Christmas. Am I allowed to drink this in Sydney?" Being a Sydney morning veteran, Granny is sure Sydney won't mind.

Tom Cohen of Essendon makes an important distinction for "no-brainers" (C8): "The term makes absolute sense if you correctly apply it to the question, not the decision made. A no-brainer question is one where the correct answer is so obvious, you dont need a brain to answer it."

As C8 brains express admiration for the Auslan interpreters at the forefront of bushfire announcements, hopefully not too many are like Wendy Illingworth of Kiama, "so mesmerised watching the skill of the translators that they completely miss the important information in the press conference". NAATI interpreter Gary Logan of Bardia is not. NAATI is the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters and Gary's C8 missive is worthy of consideration: "One interprets the spoken language. A translator translates a written piece of work. Two different skill sets. Best not to confuse them. As for Auslan being economical in the choice of words, it must be understood that sign language does not interpret words by other words but by signed concepts. It may appear to be more economical but the meaning is always conveyed. In fact, no language, be it oral or sign, can be interpreted verbatim."

Jack Dikian of Mosman "without taking anything away from the ABCs coverage of the fires, wondered if they thought twice about dispatching their reporter Joanna Woodburn to the tiny north-east Victorian town of Smoko". While on the ability of flies to survive bushfires (C8), Don Bain of Port Macquarie asks: "Might they be fireflies?"
Ibrahim Muhammad, chief justice of Nigeria (CJN), has distanced himself from Shehu Sani, a former senator who is currently being inves...





Ibrahim Muhammad, chief justice of Nigeria (CJN), has distanced himself from Shehu Sani, a former senator who is currently being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over alleged extortion.





The EFCC had arrested Sani last week for allegedly collecting money from Sani Dauda, owner of ASD Motors, promising to pass it on to Ibrahim Magu, acting chairman of the anti-graft agency.





Sani, who represented Kaduna central senatorial district between 2015 and 2019, was also alleged to have said he could assist Dauda in influencing the outcome of some cases using his connection with the CJN and some other judges.





But in a statement on Sunday, the CJN who denied being involved in such unethical conduct, said he has never met Sani.

He wondered why some persons were out to damage his reputation in exchange for financial reward.





Vowing that perpetrators of such falsehood can never be allowed to walk away with the dastardly act, Muhammad said the lesson that those behind the defamation would learn will surely serve as deterrent to other potential name droppers and extortionists, who are apparently wanting in noble candor that may also be eagerly waiting in the queue to thread the same path of infamy.





Our attention has been drawn to the story making the round in some national dailies where it was reported that Senator Shehu Sani allegedly approached Alhaji Sani Dauda of ASD Motors and purportedly demanded for the sum of N4, 000,000 to give to the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Hon. Dr Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad, to settle some unnamed four Judges over a case he (Shehu Sani) allegedly claimed wont see the light of the day, the CJN said in a statement which Festus Akande, spokesman of the supreme court, issued on his behalf.





Let it be known that if the statement credited to Shehu Sani was actually made by him, it is simply a blatant lie, a figment of his imagination and an orchestrated falsehood immodestly concocted to malign, smear and disingenuously tarnish the good image and reputation of the CJN with a view to gaining financial reward.





Even though the veracity of the true source of the unsubstantiated statement has not yet been ascertained to know if it was really from the former Senator, it is, however imperative to keep the records straight by letting the public know that Justice Tanko Muhammad has never, in his entire life, seen or had any form of encounter or interactions, either directly or remotely with Shehu Sani, let alone giving him assurances of what is not only unethical but equally despicable and inglorious, to say the least.





The outcome of the ongoing investigations will determine the next line of action to be taken regarding the flagrant defamation of the character of the Chief Justice of Nigeria.




Oil prices rose a further 2 percent on January 6, pushing Brent above $70 a barrel, as rhetoric from the United States, Iran and Iraq fanned tensions in the Middle East after a U.S. air strike which killed a top Iranian military commander.

Brent crude futures soared to a high of $70.74 a barrel and was at $69.74 at 0940 GMT, up $1.14, or 1.66 percent, from Friday's settlement.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was at $63.92 a barrel, up 87 cents, or 1.38 percent, after touching $64.72, the highest since April.

The gains extended Friday's more than 3 percent surge after a US air strike in Iraq killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani on Friday, heightening concerns about an escalation in conflict in the Middle East and the possible impact on oil supplies.

The region accounts for nearly half of the world's oil production, while a fifth of the world's oil shipments pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

On Sunday U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose sanctions on Iraq, the second largest producer among the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), if U.S. troops were forced to withdraw from the country.

Baghdad earlier called on U.S. and other foreign troops to leave Iraq.

Trump also said that the United States would retaliate against Iran if Tehran were to strike back after the killing.

"The situation brings lots of uncertainty and geopolitical tea-leaf reading on reactions. While the closure of the Strait of Hormuz remains a very unlikely event, the deterioration in Iraq bears supply risks," said Norbert Rucker, head of economics at Swiss bank Julius Baer.

"Geopolitics tend to be a temporary force on oil markets and we believe this time is no different. We raise our near-term forecast to $65 per barrel, and maintain a neutral view".

Goldman Sachs analysts said the current risk premium embedded in Brent monthly price spreads is already elevated and an actual supply disruption is now necessary to sustain current oil prices.

"The precedent set by the Abqaiq attack (on Saudi oil facilities in September 2019) showed that the oil market has significant supply flexibility starting when Brent is at $70 a barrel, even before shale production needs to ramp up, suggesting only moderate upside from here, should an attack on oil assets actually occur," the bank said.

In the United States, U.S. crude stocks fell by their most since June as exports exceeded 4 million barrels per day for the first time in history, the Energy Information Administration said on Friday.

Elsewhere, bad weather shut all four oil export terminals in eastern Libya on Sunday and the closure could last three days, port sources said.
Have you ever considered the impact that your strengths and weaknesses can have on your life? Most people have a very good knowledge of what they believe to be their strengths and what they believe to be their weaknesses. However, is it possible that these can matter more than you realize and possibly in a way you may not have thought-about?

To help you understand this better, lets look at two characters from the Bible, Samson and Paul, and examine how they dealt with this issue.

Samsons Strength as a Weakness

Many are familiar with the story of Samson. You can read all about his life in Judges 13-16. Samson was born as the result of a miracle birth. His mom, who we only know as Manoahs wife, was unable to have children until an angel appeared to her and told her she would conceive and give birth to a son. He was to be raised as a Nazirite. This was a special separation to the Lord and two of the main tenants were that the Nazirite would not drink wine or other alcoholic drinks and they would never cut their hair. The full description of the vow is found in Numbers 6:1-21.

As a result of this vow, God used Samson as a judge over Israel and he ruled as a judge for twenty years. When the Spirit of God would come upon Samson, he would be endued with tremendous strength that would allow him to do great exploits for the Lord.

Samson had a weakness and an affinity for beautiful women. It was this that led to his downfall. The scene plays out in Judges 16, which I encourage you to read. The Philistines, who are tired of Samson defeating them and making them look silly, are using Delilah to attempt to discover the source of Samsons strength. As this cat and mouse game plays out Delilah would ask Samson, what is the source of your strength? Samson would lie to her. He would instruct her to do something he knew would not work.

Delilah would do what Samson told her and when the Philistines attacked, Samson would prove that what he told her was not true and he would drive them away. This cat and mouse game went on until finally Samson gave in to Delilah. I believe Samson allowed this scenario to continue because he depended on his great strength to rescue him from whatever he told her. Because he depended on his great strength it became his weakness. In fact, when he finally told Delilah the truth, the Bible tells us his strength had left and he didnt even realize it.

Leaning on Our Own Strengths

You and I are very similar to Samson. We too have strengths. If we are not careful, we may lean too heavily upon them. This problem can develop when you become really good at doing something. By the way there is nothing wrong with having strengths. Strengths are good. They only become a potential problem when you begin to trust your ability more than you depend on Gods ability to work through you. Its like you are telling God, dont worry, I got this one. I dont need your help anymore.

Think about any position you may serve in, any skills you may have. Maybe you are a leader in an organization. Remember when you first started? You were probably nervous. Maybe you were a little unsure if you could do the job. Your inexperience or weakness caused you to depend on God to help you every step of the way. However, over time you got better and what was unfamiliar was now feeling very comfortable. You became so good at what you were doing that what you once considered an area of weakness, you now look at as an area of strength. Because you felt strong, you no longer felt the need to seek Gods help like you used to. When this happens the thing that is your greatest strength can become your greatest weakness, because you leave God out. In John 15:5 Jesus said apart from me you can do nothing.

As you continue to grow regardless of your role  whether you are a parent, spouse, worker, manager, church leader, pastor, or in whatever capacity you serve or work  be mindful that as you get better you still need to depend on God to help you. If hes not helping you then you are operating in your own strength. When this happens you may not realize it at first, but like Samson, Gods strength has left you and you are actually becoming weaker.

Pauls Weakness as a Strength

In 2 Corinthians 12, the Apostle Paul is caught up to the third heaven and had the opportunity to see and experience things that few people on this earth experience this side of heaven. Here are Pauls own words about this encounter.

2 Corinthians 12:3-4 - And I know that this manwhether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.

I know in my life I have experienced the presence of God, and you probably have as well. However, I have never experienced the presence of God like that. As a result of this experience God did something very interesting.

2 Corinthians 12:6-7 - Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.

Paul recognized that encounters like these can impact the way people view you or see you. They can also impact the way you view or see yourself. When God begins to use you in ministry or service, or when he begins to give you a greater level of influence or impact in peoples lives, there can be this tendency to think you are greater than you are or more important than you are. To keep this from happening, God gave Paul a thorn in the flesh to help keep him humble and dependent on God. The Bible tells us that Paul pleaded with God three times to remove this thorn in the flesh and God did not do it. Instead, he told Paul the simple secret to maintaining and sustaining strength throughout life.

2 Corinthians 12:9  My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

Paul may not have realized when he first prayed. I am sure he realized it after but the thing that made him weak, the thing that made him depend on Gods grace for help is the very thing that became the source of his strength. In other words, his greatest strength flowed out of his weakness.

What About You?

As you look at these two men, I have a question for you, what about you? Are you depending on your own skills, abilities, wisdom, or knowledge and not trusting God enough? Or are you depending on Gods grace in spite of all of the skills, knowledge, and experiences you have had.

Whats fascinating about both men is that they both experienced things in their lives that very few people have ever experienced. They were both given a platform to have influence over the lives of Gods people. The difference is how they dealt with them. One relied on his strength and got weaker. One acknowledged his weakness and got stronger

I hope you see the irony here. The things that are your strengths if you become too confident in those things will actually make you weaker. However, the things that are your weakness, because you trust Gods grace to help you in those areas, can actually become your greatest strengths. I hope today that whether you feel weak or strong, that you would always rely on Gods grace. Ultimately, he is the source of your strength.

Photo credit: Getty Images/Bulat Silvia

Clarence L. Haynes Jr. is a rising speaker, teacher, author and co-founder of The Bible Study Club. He has spent more than 30 years serving the body of Christ in various capacities and has just released his first book called The Pursuit of Purpose. If you have ever struggled trying to find Gods will, this book will help you discover the different ways God leads you into his perfect will. To learn more about his ministry please visit clarencehaynes.com.
The 20 Indian fishermen, who were released from a Pakistani jail on Sunday in a goodwill gesture amidst tense bilateral ties, reached the Wagah Border on Monday. The Indian fishermen, most of whom hail from Andhra Pradesh, were handed over to the Border Security Force by the Pakistan Rangers, officials said.

WATCH: Cold Wave And Dense Fog Engulf Attari Wagah Border

The fishermen left for Lahore on Sunday by train after their release from the Malir District Prison in Karachi, Sindh province. "Upon their arrival, the Edhi Foundation received them at the Lahore railway station and took them to its centre where they were provided food and new clothes," a foundation official told PTI. An official of the Rangers confirmed the handing over of the fishermen to the Indian authorities.

Earlier talking to reporters on his release, fisherman Gir Somnath said, "We were arrested at sea by the Pakistan Coast Guard for crossing over to Pakistan waters in November 2018." District Jail Malir Superintendent Aurangzaib Kango said the released Indians were sentenced to six months imprisonment but their release was delayed because of the process of the completion of their documents and nationality confirmation.

He said some 200 Indian fishermen were still imprisoned in Pakistan of whom 189 are fishermen. Tension between India and Pakistan spiked following New Delhi's decision to abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution on August 5, revoking the special status given to Jammu and Kashmir. Following this, Pakistan downgraded diplomatic relations with India and also expelled the Indian high commissioner.
hand using ATM

The last five years have been tough for emerging markets amid fears of currency collapses, weak fiscal outlooks and softer commodity prices weighing heavily on their performance.

That has seen many emerging markets perform poorly, lagging the bourses of developed nations including the TSX and NYSE. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index gained around 15% during 2019, whereas the S&P500 shot up by 30% and the S&P/TSX Composite rose by 19%.

A range of recent events have sparked considerable speculation that 2020 will be the year where emerging markets will finally perform, delivering considerable value for investors.

Improving outlook

A key factor weighing on many emerging economies in 2019 was that a full-blown trade war would erupt between the worlds two largest economies; China and the U.S.

This weighed heavily on Chinas economy, which is highly dependent on industrial activity and exporting the goods produced to drive economic growth; according to the IMF, that saw Chinas 2019 GDP growth fall to just over 6%, impacting global growth and demand for commodities.

This triggered considerable fallout for many other developing economies because they are highly dependent on the extraction and export of base metals, crude and other commodities to drive economic growth.

The economies of Latin America, notably Colombia, Peru and Chile were hit particularly hard because of their dependence on commodity production to drive GDP.

It is for this reason that the MSCI Andean Index failed to perform, losing 7% over the last year compared to the broader MSCI Emerging Market Index rising by 18%.

Signs that the U.S. China trade war is deescalating bodes well for global growth, manufacturing activity in China and hence greater demand for commodities including oil, copper, zinc, lead, nickel and steel.

Oil has rallied solidly since August 2019 to see the international Brent benchmark up by around 36% over the last year to be trading at over US$68 per barrel.

Story continues

The performance of base metals so far has been mixed, while copper firmed by 4% over the last year, nickel surged by 26% and steel has gained around 4%, zinc is down 11% and lead has softened by 2%.

Nonetheless, the outlook for metals, like energy, in 2020 is upbeat and they are all expected to firm should the trade war come to an end. This, along with a more optimistic outlook for crude, will be a boon for the Andean nations of Chile, Colombia and Peru, creating an opportunity for investors to gain exposure to some of the regions fastest growing economies.

The easiest means of doing so is by investing in Bank of Nova Scotia (TSX:BNS)(NYSE:BNS). Canadas most international bank has invested considerable capital making a range of acquisitions in Chile, Colombia and Peru, which along with Mexico, form a trade bloc known as the Pacific Alliance.

This sees it ranked as a top five bank in those countries, meaning that its well positioned to benefit from an economic resurgence in South America as commodity prices improve.

Scotiabank reported some solid 2019 growth for its international division despite increased volatility and growing economic uncertainty. Adjusted net income for international operations shot up by a healthy 13% year over year, most of which was driven by a notable increase in loan and deposits in the Pacific Alliance countries.

While recent civil unrest in Colombia and Chile sparked concerns over Scotiabanks ability to perform in 2020, much of that fear now appears to have been overbanked.

An improving economic outlook for Latin America and recent concessions made by both countries governments has seen domestic tensions ease, boding well for further economic growth.

Foolish takeaway

Scotiabank has been one of the worst performers among the Big Six banks, but an improving economic outlook in Latin America bodes well for the banks performance in 2020.

When combined with a more upbeat outlook for Canadas economy and the domestic housing market, there is every indication that Scotiabank will deliver considerable value.

While investors wait for that to translate into a higher share price they will be rewarded by Scotiabanks sustainable dividend yielding a juicy 4.9%.

More reading

Fool contributor Matt Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends BANK OF NOVA SCOTIA. Bank of Nova Scotia is a recommendation of Stock Advisor Canada.



The Motley Fools purpose is to help the world invest, better. Click here now for your free subscription to Take Stock, The Motley Fool Canadas free investing newsletter. Packed with stock ideas and investing advice, it is essential reading for anyone looking to build and grow their wealth in the years ahead. Motley Fool Canada 2020
The secret lives of fish-eating, beaver-ambushing wolves of Minnesota National Geographic

How a mid-20th-century hunting guide may fill the gaps on climate change in Maine WaPo. Citizen science!

Australia commits billions of dollars to wildfire recovery AP

Lithium fever grips Portugal as mining project raises temperature FT

Fed focuses on repo market exit strategy after avoiding year-end crunch Reuters

The Fed Is a Political Institution That Pretends Not to Be Political (interview) William Greider, FAIR. From Counterspin in 2007; still germane.

William Greider memorial service: January 12, 2020 2 pm at Friends Meeting of Washington (RJ). Map.

Syraqistan

How To Avoid Swallowing War Propaganda Current Affairs

Venezuela: Guaido Replaced as Parliament Head in Disputed Vote Venezuelanalysis

Brexit

China?

Taiwan mourns chief of general staff, 7 other service members killed in Blackhawk emergency landing Taiwan Today. Odd.

A look inside the factory around which the modern world turns The Economy

Vietnam in deals to buy Laos electricity from 2021 Reuters. Theyll need the power to run desalination plants if the Mekong River delta keeps sinking.

India

Trump Transition

In a historic vote, the House authorizes a path to legal status for undocumented farm workers New Food Economy. But read the fine print.

Health Care

Drugmakers Hike 2020 Medicine Prices Despite Lawmakers Ire Bloomberg (dk). State of Health in the EU Companion Report 2019 (PDF) European Commission. In Germany self-employed individuals on a low-income risk to be uninsured due to unaffordability of State Health Insurance contributions or Private Health Insurance premiums. Some self-employed who could opt out from the statutory health insurance in Austria are uninsured. In Poland, people on some types of civil law contracts remain uninsured. For use next time somebody tells you Germany has universal coverage despite not having single payer. Math: Cost of tooth removal with anesthesia in SF: $1k (w/ no insurance)

Cost in Paris: $80 (in certain hospitals)

Round trip SF <> Paris: $300 (Norwegian Air)

Average cost / night in Paris: $100 So, spend $1k in SF, or $580 in France, including a weekend in Paris :)  Florent Crivello  (@Altimor) January 5, 2020

MMT

The FT has decided to embrace fiscal policy, but it needs to get its head around the politics of it as well Tax Research UK The MMT backlash takes a new form FT Alphaville (Furzy Mouse). A pricey, self-published book. Smiley interrogating Toby in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Ever bought a fake picture? I sold a couple once, said Toby with a flashy, nervous smile, but no one laughed. The more you pay for it, the less inclined you are to doubt it. Silly, but there we are.'

Class Warfare

Injecting the flu vaccine into a tumor gets the immune system to attack it Ars Technica (dk).

Helen Sharman: Aliens exist and could be here on Earth BBC. The first British astronaut.

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Two Australian former nightclub promoters have been sentenced to jail in Indonesia's toughest prison on cocaine charges.

William Cabantog and David Van Iersel were found guilty after being accused of having 1.12 grams of the drug at the Lost City nightclub in Canggu in July.

Both men were charged with cocaine possession, despite the amount they were accused of carrying being considered a traffickable amount in Indonesia.

Cabantog was sentenced to one year and Van Iersel to nine months in Kuta's Kerobokan prison, with both sentences minus time already served.

William Cabantog bows his head during his trial in Denpasar District Court on Monday

David Van Iersel was sentenced to nine months in Kuta's Kerobokan Prison

'David accepted the sentence, he admits his guilt, he felt remorse and apologises again for what he did,' Van Iersel's lawyer Danny Sedana said, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald.

The duo faced a maximum of four years in jail, but received reduced sentences for confessing, being polite and expressing their regret.

Prosecutor Made Ayu Citra Maya Sari told Denpasar District Court that the men were victims of the drug trade.

Cabantog previously told the court in December that he suffers from a variety of mental health conditions when he does not take cocaine.

William Cabantog is pictured with his girlfriend Wilma Johansson in March

'I used it because of my depression,' Cabantog said. 'It heightens your senses. It stimulates you. It's a stimulant. If I don't use it, I get depression, anxiety and panic attacks.'

The pair gave a urine sample after their arrest, with both testing positive for cocaine.

Both men had relocated to Bali in the past two years after working in popular nightspots in Melbourne, including Boutique, Eve and Captain Baxter.

The notorious Kerobokan Prison has previously housed famous Australian drug smugglers including Schapelle Corby, and Bali nine members Matthew Norman and Renae Lawrence.
On Sunday, roughly 25,000 people marched from Foley Square in Lower Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge to Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn, where a rally was held to stand in solidarity against anti-Semitism amid the recent spate of anti-Semitic attacks in New York.

Demonstrators of all faiths participated in the march, which included groups from Catholic churches, the Pentecostal Church of Jesus Christ in Brooklyn and the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, an organization made up of Muslim and Jewish women. Some marchers chanted no hate, no fear, some sang Hebrew songs and some sported Israeli flags. All appeared resolute in their desire to stomp out hate, violence and discrimination toward the states Jewish community.

Throughout the fourth week of December, during the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah, eight anti-Semitic attacks occured in New York City, that ranged from hurled insults to physical violence. On Dec. 28, the seventh night of Hanukkah, five people were stabbed at a Hasidic rabbis home in Rockland County. According to the New York Police Departments Hate Crimes Task Force, hate crimes are up 14% this year.

Numerous New York lawmakers turned up at the rally in Brooklyn, including U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, Attorney General Letitia Games, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, City Council members Brad Lander and Mark D. Levine, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, among many others.

Were facing an anti-Semitism crisis, and not just in this city. Its happening across our country and planet. We cant ignore it or hide from it  we have to confront it. We have to stand in solidarity with our Jewish community and reject hate with one clear voice. #NoHateNoFear pic.twitter.com/zqwsSb6PCO  Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) January 5, 2020

New York City knows that unity and diversity are strength, that all communities must stand together against all hatred, that we will reject anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and violence of any kind.



We showed that today on our march, and every day in our neighborhoods. #NoHateNoFear pic.twitter.com/Jve9qhifDb  Office of the Public Advocate (@nycpa) January 5, 2020

You know @AOC stands against xenophobia, against racism, against Islamophobia.



So its no surprise she was out on the Brooklyn Bridge against anti-Semitism today. Proud to stand with her against hatred & bigotry of every kind. Our liberation is bound up together.#NoHateNoFear pic.twitter.com/0xjiKoQIsR  Brad Lander (@bradlander) January 5, 2020

At the rally, Cuomo announced that the state would be allocating $45 million to protect religious institutions in New York and that there would continue to be a heightened state police presence in areas with large Jewish populations. Cuomo also said that the state has created a hotline for people to report discrimination. Schumer also announced federal proposals that would provide funding to protect religious institutions and allow police to better combat hate crimes.

New York Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein, however, claimed that the state had already budgeted $45 million to protect religious institutions and that additional funding is required.

Fool me once...@NYGovCuomo announced this same funding over and over as if its new.



This is the same $45 million that we passed in the budget last year.



We need additional security funding for schools and houses of worship. https://t.co/73WHrLMOah  Simcha Eichenstein (@SEichenstein) January 5, 2020

Few members of the citys Hasidic community, who were targeted in the recent attacks, were in attendance at the demonstration, according to The New York Times. Some leaders from the Hasidic community criticized a few of the Jewish organizations, such as J Street and Young Advocates for Fair Education, who helped organize and sponsor the event for not supporting the Hasidim in other aspects of their political agenda. The march and rally were organized and sponsored by the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, the Anti-Defamation League of New York and New Jersey, in addition to several other Jewish organizations.

We know our community is a complicated one, Eric Goldstein, chief executive officer of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York, told the Times. We need to recognize that despite differences we have, were here to show our solidarity with all Jews, including very much the visibly traditional Orthodox community.
The state of emergency in Samoa over the devastating measles epidemic ended on December 29, following a special cabinet meeting. The Pacific countrys government declared a so-called state of recovery, which requires the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to prepare a recovery plan.

The six-week emergency was called off after the government claimed that 95 percent of all eligible people in Samoa had been vaccinated against measles following an intensive month-long compulsory vaccination period. Before then, vaccination rates had been allowed to plummet, particularly among children. Last year, just 28 percent of Samoas population had the two required doses of the measles vaccine.

The official death toll stood at 81 at the end of December, with no new fatalities over the Christmas period. However, there are still 46 victims in hospital, including nine critically ill children and a pregnant woman.

Samoas Ministry of Health confirmed 5,655 measles cases had been reported since the outbreak started in October. The total number admitted to hospitals to date is 1,844.

The official figures, showing that nearly three percent of the countrys population caught the disease, may well be an underestimate. Television New Zealands Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver claimed that the notified deaths do not give a full picture of the tragedy. She reported last month from several isolated villages where some families, often too poor to travel and obtain medical help, had buried deceased infants without informing the authorities. The government could accurately gauge the final toll, Dreaver said, only by conducting a full nationwide investigation.

The lifting of the emergency could be premature. In the 24 hours preceding the governments announcement, 21 new measles cases were reported. Financial considerations are no doubt at play. Finance Minister Sili Epa Tuioti revealed in a supplementary budget last month that Samoas economy has been hit with at least a one percent drop in economic growth due to the outbreak.

The minister declared the National Provident Fund, the countrys compulsory savings scheme, would release $US3 million to finance a special dividend of 1.1 percent for the institutions 85,000 members, in a bid to generate spending and stimulate economic activity. The government also aimed to reboot the badly hit tourism industry by marketing a safe Samoa.

The Ministry of Healths mental health unit has warned of the growing psychological impact of the epidemic. Spokesman Dr George Leao Tuitama told media that the unit had so far assisted more than 600 families. The epidemic has pushed many peoples coping mechanisms to the breaking point, he said.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, in the face of deepening popular anger, has repeatedly attempted to defend his governments response to the entirely avoidable epidemic. Replying to a question posed at a press conference the week before Christmas, Tuilaepa flatly declared Samoa couldnt do more to prevent the outbreak.

In fact, Samoa was warned repeatedly to improve measles vaccination rates several months before the arrival of the epidemic. According to Radio NZ, as early as last March the World Health Organisation and UNICEF had identified Samoas extremely low vaccination rates as a key risk amid the global resurgence of measles.

A letter issued to all Pacific Island governments at the time urged them to take proactive measures to close immunity gaps and strengthen their systems to rapidly detect and respond to measles cases, a UNICEF spokesperson said. The messages were also delivered at an April meeting of Pacific health leaders in Fiji, and again at a Pacific Health Ministers meeting in French Polynesia.

Samoan Director-General of Health Leausa Dr Take Naseri had attended both meetings. At the April meeting, the threat posed to the Pacific by a measles outbreak in the Philippines was raised directly by officials, according to Dr Siale Akauola, the chief executive of Tongas Ministry of Health. Samoa did not begin its mass vaccination campaign in earnest until 15 November. By then, seven people were suspected to have died, and hundreds more were infected.

There are demands for a national inquiry into how the measles epidemic spread so quickly. Medical academic Toleafoa Dr Viali Lameko, from Oceania University of Medicine, said he believed most doctors were backing his call.

Toleafoa told the Samoa Observer that he was not here to attack anyone or any sector, but perhaps it is time to return to the drawing board and ask some serious questions about the health profile of our population. Tuilaepa only declared there will be an inquiry into the governments response in due time.

Equally culpable for the devastating crisis is New Zealands Labour-led government of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. On December 13, the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) issued a statement officially confirming New Zealand as the likely source of Samoas measles epidemic.

The Samoan government had reported the first measles case arrived from New Zealand in late August. International travel means that measles can spread quickly from country to country. It is highly likely that New Zealand is the main source for the outbreak in Samoa, a MFAT spokesperson admitted.

Leading health experts have condemned New Zealands role. Otago University public health professor Michael Baker told Radio NZ on December 16 there had been ongoing problems with leadership and applying effective immunisation systems.

Gaps in New Zealands health system led to its own measles outbreak that sparked the deadly epidemic in Samoa. From January to December 18 there have been 2,172 confirmed cases of measles notified. Of these, 1,726 are in the Auckland region, concentrated in the citys working-class suburbs with large Pacific Island populations.

Baker said the broader provision of public health needed better funding to fix current failings. New Zealand had to get its act together on public health policy, he declared.

Baker continued, We have wound down our national public health capacity hugely during my working life Thats been the real gap. New Zealand has no excuse for having big measles epidemics because we have all of the infrastructure we need to prevent these, and were just not using it adequately.

MFATs statement was the first public admission of responsibility for the epidemic, after government ministers either evaded questions on where the disease came from or categorically denied New Zealand was the source. When Radio NZ earlier asked Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters whether New Zealand gave Samoa measles, he retorted: That is speculation, the answer is most probably not.

The latest Pacific Community (SPC) health bulletin for the region meanwhile shows Kiribati confirmed its first measles case before Christmas, while the Marshall Islands has tightened its requirements for people entering and leaving the country. Fiji, Tonga, American Samoa and Hawaii are all currently reporting cases.

The author also recommends:

Research explains how the measles virus destroys immune memory

[27 December 2019]
Two-time Golden Globe nominee Rose Byrne bundled up in a leopard-print winter coat in Manhattan's Times Square on Monday to appear on Good Morning America.

The 40-year-old mother-of-two also dressed her waifish 5ft6in figure in a brown wide-leg pantsuit, matching scarf, and nude purse selected by stylist Penny Lovell.

Hairstylist Harry Josh coiffed Rose's ombre bob and she rocked a bright-red pout and brown eye shadow for the ABC morning show.

Feline fashion: Two-time Golden Globe nominee Rose Byrne bundled up in a leopard-print winter coat in Manhattan's Times Square on Monday to appear on Good Morning America

Busy Byrne also taped an episode of LIVE with Kelly and Ryan later that morning.

The two-time Emmy nominee was on GMA to promote her role as beauty company co-owner Mel Carter in Miguel Arteta's comedy Like A Boss.

The Paramount Picture - also starring Tiffany Haddish, Salma Hayek, and Billy Porter - hits US theaters this Friday and UK theaters February 21.

Rose also fondly recalled performing a karaoke duet of Lady Gaga's Oscar-winning 2018 hit song Shallow with pal Paul Rudd over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Suited: The 40-year-old mother-of-two also dressed her waifish 5ft6in figure in a brown wide-leg pantsuit, matching scarf, and nude purse selected by stylist Penny Lovell

Glam: Hairstylist Harry Josh coiffed Rose's ombre bob and she rocked a bright-red pout and brown eye shadow for the ABC morning show

Busy day: Byrne also taped an episode of LIVE with Kelly and Ryan later that morning

Up early: The two-time Emmy nominee was on GMA to promote her role as beauty company co-owner Mel Carter in Miguel Arteta's comedy Like A Boss

'We did three different versions - original, then like sort of a live version, and then the Miami remix,' Byrne laughed.

'That was interesting. That was fun. He's amazing. He's got a whole karaoke set-up, like the whole nine yards. They take that very seriously. But that's a hard song to sing. It's too hard.'

The Sydney-born Aussie then got serious while discussing the devastation of the Australian wildfires on her beautiful hometown, Lake Conjola.

Chick flick: The Paramount Picture - also starring Tiffany Haddish (R), Salma Hayek, and Billy Porter - hits US theaters this Friday and UK theaters February 21

'That's a hard song to sing!' Rose also fondly recalled performing a karaoke duet of Lady Gaga's Oscar-winning 2018 hit song Shallow with pal Paul Rudd (R) over the Thanksgiving holiday

Byrne laughed: 'We did three different versions - original, then like sort of a live version, and then the Miami remix. That was interesting. That was fun. He's amazing. He's got a whole karaoke set-up, like the whole nine yards. They take that very seriously'

'Please donate!' The Sydney-born Aussie then got serious while discussing the devastation of the Australian wildfires on her beautiful hometown, Lake Conjola

'It's the worst in recorded history. People are losing their homes. Over half a billion wildlife has been killed,' Rose said.

'If you have any means, a dollar, to donate, to help there's some incredible services out there. You can go to my Instagram page. Thank you to all the people doing all the work at home trying to stop this. It's really really bad.'

Byrne also revealed that 'previews begin in a week' for her and babydaddy Bobby Cannavale's off-Broadway play Medea, which runs January 12-February 23 at BAM's Harvey Theater.

Fourth collaboration as a couple: Rose revealed that 'previews begin in a week' for her and babydaddy Bobby Cannavale's off-Broadway play Medea, which runs January 12-February 23 at BAM's Harvey Theater

Family of four: Byrne and the 49-year-old Tony nominee - who are parents of two-year-old son Rafa - will celebrate their son Rocco's 4th birthday next month (pictured October 31)

The Jexi actress and the 49-year-old Tony nominee - who began dating in 2012 - previously acted together in Adult Beginners (2014), Annie (2014), and Spy (2015).

Rose and Bobby - who are parents of two-year-old son Rafa - will celebrate their son Rocco's 4th birthday next month.

Cannavale also has a 24-year-old son Jake from his nine-year marriage to Sidney Lumet's daughter Jenny.
Whereas Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut said that Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawars name should be considered by all political parties for the 2022 presidential election, the NCPs Majid Memon sent out a tweet saying The move to muster support for Shri Sharad Pawar to be next Rashtrapati may yield positive results and will bring all non BJP forces closer by 2022.... Meanwhile, at an event in Mumbai later in the day, state minister and key ...

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- Ghana's 1st female minister was a woman with a powerful life story called Susanna Al-Hassan

- Her leadership roles skyrocketed immediately she became a headmistress at Bolgatanga Girls Middle School

- Susanna comes from the Northern Region and was born in Tamale

Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

Susanna Al-Hassan was a powerful woman who became the first female minister in Ghana.

Ghanaianmuseum.com indicates that the brilliant woman who was born in 1927 was the mother of former GTV News anchor Selma Ramatu Alhassan who later became Selma Valcourt and also Victor Alhassan of Sky Petroleum.

Susanna started her journey to becoming a holder of great national portfolios in 1955 when she became the headmistress of Bolgatanga Girls Middle School.

READ ALSO: Story of Okomfo Anokye Sword and how Muhammed Ali couldn't remove it told

Immediately she signed off duty as a headmistress, Susanna Al-Hassan rose to become a Member of Parliament for the then Northern Region parliamentary constituency between 1960 and 1966.

Just one year after winning her parliamentary seat, the hard work of Susanna got her appointed as the Deputy Minister of Education in Kwame Nkrumah's republican government from 1961 to 1963.

From 1963 to 1966, and again in 1967, she was Minister of Social Affairs. In between that period in 1965, Nkrumah appointed her as Minister of Social Welfare and Community Development.

READ ALSO: Meet Salifu Dagarti the man who took a bullet for Kwame Nkrumah at the Flagstaff House

Susanna Al-Hassan was a writer as reports indicate that she eventually became an author as well.

The powerful woman was also known for her strong opinions about the issue of prostitution among young ladies that became rampant at the time.

She identified that solutions are targeted at school girls and young working girls especially.

Susanna who was born in Tamale and educated at Achimota School sadly died on January 17, 1997.

There have been amazing news reports about historical women in Ghana.

Not long ago, YEN.com.gh reported that Akua Asabea Ayisi was the first female journalist Ghana has had and served in various capacities in the country.

Per reports which were compiled by a grand-niece to Akua, she became a journalist and also a private secretary to the first president of Ghana Dr Kwame Nkrumah.

Before stepping up to the great title of the first journalist in Ghana, Akua Asabea, who was born in Mampong Akwapem, attended Presbyterian Primary Mampong.

Enjoy reading our stories? Download YEN's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Ghana news!

Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Source: YEN.com.gh
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Benson & Bingham Accident Injury Lawyers, LLC had an incredible year for being recognized as a top law firm in 2019. The firm was accorded several awards and honors, acknowledging their commitment to service and the aid their firm gives to their clients.

Birdeye.com

Best Business Award: Best Lawyers in Las Vegas, NV

Birdeye.com helps its clients acquire more online reviews, manage online presence, and get a better idea of what their customers are really looking for. In 2019, Birdeye named Benson & Bingham Accident Injury Lawyers, LLC, the "Best Lawyers in Las Vegas, NV," an acknowledgment of outstanding commitment and high reviews from satisfied clients.

Expertise.com

Best Car Accident Lawyers in Las Vegas

Expertise.com seeks to help its clients find the best of the services available in the local area. By naming Benson & Bingham Accident Injury Lawyers, LLC, among the Best Car Accident Lawyers in Las Vegas, the company acknowledges the law firm's commitment to excellence in serving its clients.

Best Personal Injury Lawyers in Las Vegas

In addition to satisfactorily handling car accident claims, Expertise.com recognized Benson & Bingham Accident Injury Lawyers, LLC, for how it handles a wide range of personal injury claims for anyone who suffers from the consequences of an accident due to another party's negligence.

Best Workers' Compensation Attorney in Las Vegas

Not only does the law firm handle personal injury cases and car accident cases with care, but Expertise.com also acknowledges the law firm's commitment to excellence in workers' compensation claims, which often vary drastically from typical personal injury claims.

Three Best Rated

Best Personal Injury Lawyers in Las Vegas

Three Best Rated puts together the top three providers in a wide range of industries, enabling its clients to quickly choose among the best providers in the area for their needs. Three Best Rated has named Joseph L. Benson II among the Best Personal Injury Lawyers in Las Vegas.

Esteemed Lawyers of America (ELOA)

Top Personal Injury Lawyers in Las Vegas

Esteemed Lawyers of America doesn't provide just another list of average attorneys who can accomplish their jobs. Instead, it provides a list of highly regarded lawyers who are a cut above the rest. This past year, ELOA named Benson & Bingham Accident Injury Lawyers, LLC, the Top Personal Injury Lawyers in Las Vegas.

Nevada Business Magazine

Legal Elite 2019 The Silver State's Top Attorneys

Nevada Business Magazine provides a look at the state as a whole, including many elements that can help individuals and businesses make decisions. In 2019, Nevada Business Magazine named Benson & Bingham Accident Injury Lawyers, LLC, to the Legal Elite: The Silver State's Top Attorneys.

Top Rated Local

Las Vegas Personal Injury Attorneys: Staff Favorite

Top Rated Local provides an excellent source for searching out the best doctors, lawyers, and other skilled providers in the area. Benson & Bingham Accident Injury Lawyers, LLC, makes the top of the list.

Las Vegas Product Liability Attorneys: Staff Favorite

In addition to making the Staff Favorite list for personal injury attorneys in general, Benson & Bingham Accident Injury Lawyers, LLC, also makes the list of the staff's favorite Las Vegas Product Liability Attorneys.

Super Lawyers

Top Rated Personal Injury Attorney in Las Vegas, NV

Super Lawyers provides an extensive rating system that makes it easy for clients to see at a glance exactly how their attorneys are rated and what they have the potential to accomplish. As a Super Lawyers Top Rated Personal Injury Attorney in Las Vegas, NV, Benson & Bingham Accident Injury Lawyers, LLC, has a high score when it comes to both success rating and client satisfaction.

About Benson & Bingham Accident Injury Attorneys

As 2020 begins, Benson & Bingham Accident Injury Attorneys, LLC, has received a lot of recognition for its quality client service and determination to reach the best possible outcomes for all of its clientsservice that will again be a primary goal at the four locations in Nevada moving into the new year.

Founded in 2003 by Joseph L. Benson II and Ben J. Bingham, our firm has secured more than $135 million in settlements and judgments for our clients. We've done that through a commitment to caring, personal service and responsive communication with our clients. Our full-service personal injury firm works to help people who through no fault of their own have suffered injuries in car, truck, hotel/casino, and workplace accidents, among others.

For more information, call Benson & Bingham at (702) 382-9797 or write to us online.

Media Contact:

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Phone: (702) 382-9797

Email: [email protected]

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From the big blockbusters and a new Bond movie to some strong Irish offerings, Esther McCarthy looks at the cinema highlights for the year ahead.

THE LIGHTHOUSE

January 31

Will there be anything more unique  or as strange  as The Lighthouse in our cinemas in 2020?

Robert Eggers follows his excellent horror The Witch by doubling down as a filmmaker with this tale, shot in black and white and on film.

Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe gamely signed up for the project, about two lighthouse keepers who struggle with the isolation, and their sanity, while doing a lengthy stint on a remote island in the 1890s.

Pattinson, once a mainstream heartthrob and young vampire, is excellent here and continues to impress with his left field choices.

ONWARD

March 6

A new Pixar is always something to be excited about, and Onward is the studios first non-sequel offering in more than two years.

The animators appear to be aiming for their blend of the hilarious and the heartfelt in their story of two elf brothers who bring their father back from the dead for a day so the youngest can meet him properly for the first time.

Unfortunately the magical spell goes drastically wrong.

VIVARIUM

March 27

Irish director Lorcan Finnegans sci-fi thriller, shot on location in this country, has been getting strong reviews on the international festival circuit ahead of its cinema release.

The Social Networks Jesse Eisenberg and English actress Imogen Poots play a young couple looking for a starter home in an anonymous suburb, only to gradually realise they are unable to escape the complex and keep being directed back to the same house.

Things get even stranger when a baby boy appears.

CALM WITH HORSES

March TBC

Another Irish movie garnering strong word of mouth ahead of its spring release by Element Pictures.

Shot on location in Connemara, Barry Keoghan, Niamh Algar, and Cosmo Jarvis head the cast of the feature debut from award-winning shorts director Nick Rowland.

It centres on an ex-boxer who is trying to tally being a good father to his autistic son with his role as an enforcer for a feared local crime family.

NO TIME TO DIE

April 8

Daniel Craig makes what could be his last appearance as the iconic spy  and Rami Malek makes his first as a Bond villain in 007s latest movie outing, the first in almost five years.

True Detective director Cary Fukenaga helms the latest adventure from the super sleuth which marks Bonds 25th outing in the movie.

Interestingly, Fleabags Phoebe Waller-Bridge is one of the co-writers of the strictly-under-wraps screenplay.

ARTEMIS FOWL

May 29

Its been years in development, but the big-screen adaptation based on Wexford author Eoin Colfers much-loved series of novels about a canny young criminal mastermind finally comes to cinemas in early summer.

The movie was shot on location in Northern Ireland and is directed by Kenneth Branagh, who told the Irish Examiner recently: We got some wonderful pictures that I think will make people feel as though theyre in a big and spectacular part of Ireland and so Im very very happy about that.

Its been a very enjoyable ride. Eoin came and visited and it was lovely working with him and lovely working with Conor McPherson who did a terrific contribution to the screenplay.

TOP GUN: MAVERICK

June 26

Can Tom Cruise pull off the ultimate feat of breathing new life into one of his biggest hits more than 30 years later?

Early trailers for this film certainly suggest so.

The movie was delayed for a year to allow filmmakers use the latest technology in stunt and arial shots.

While much of the story is being kept under wraps, Mavericks rival Iceman (Val Kilmer) will star, with Miles Teller starring as the late Gooses son.

TENET

July 16

What a cast  including John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, and Elizabeth Debicki  Christopher Nolan has assembled for his first movie since 2017s Dunkirk.

As with all his films, Nolan keeps details to a minimum, but we do know it returns to themes of both sci-fi and time travel that he has handled in the past.

The film was shot in seven different countries and revolves around the world of international espionage.

AFTER YANG

Late 2020

Our own Colin Farrell has several projects in 2020, including this sci-fi movie directed by Kogonada, whose last film, Columbus, was widely acclaimed.

Adapted from the Alexander Weinstein short story, the robot drama centres on a father and daughter as they try to save the life of their robot, who lives with them as a family member.

THE ETERNALS

November 6

He made a name for himself on Love/Hate but 2020 will see Barry Keoghan take on his biggest project yet, a new Marvel movie.

He will star opposite Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek in The Eternals, adapted from the comic-book story of the same name.

The actor is believed to be playing a villain with several superpowers in the film, which marks the beginning of the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Its the first comic-book role for the young Dubliner, who years ago tweeted the late Stan Lee asking him to make me a superhero.

Chloe Zhao (The Riders) is to direct.

DUNE

December 18

French/Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve follows up his stunning work on Blade Runner 2049 with a return to the sci-fi genre.

The film, which stars Rebecca Ferguson and Timothee Chalamet, is an adaptation of the 1984 film based on Frank Herberts 1960s novel.

Set in the near future, it revolves around a number of powerful intergalactic families.

Star Oscar Isaac said of the film: Theres just this kind of brutalist element to it. Its shocking. Its scary. Its very visceral.

WEST SIDE STORY

December 18

Two teenagers in 1950s New York fall in love in the eagerly awaited new take on the classic musical from Steven Spielberg.

The trouble is they are connected to opposite sides of the warring street fighters the Jets and the Sharks.

Spielberg is said to be planning to put his own stamp on the story, which he has wanted to adapt for years.

Baby Drivers Ansel Elgort and newcomer Rachel Zegler head the cast.
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido was re-elected on Sunday as president of the body after a bumpy day in which security forces prevented him from entering the legislative palace.

In an impromptu session held at the headquarters of the newspaper El Nacional, in east Caracas, 100 opposition lawmakers voted to keep Guaido as head of Congress for a second consecutive year.

"The dictatorship has once again committed another mistake," said Guaido shortly after being sworn in.

Earlier on Sunday, Guaido was violently blocked from presiding over a special session of congress where rivals proclaimed a substitute leader - moves opposition officials condemned as a hijacking of the country's last democratic institution.

Hours later, however, a majority of congress members held an emergency meeting at an opposition newspaper office and voted to re-elect Guaido as their leader.

Guaido  whose legal challenge to the socialist government has been based on his role as head of congress  headed a small group of lawmakers trying to access the neoclassical palace where the opposition-controlled National Assembly was set to elect its leader.

But they were pushed back by national guardsmen wielding heavy riot shields.

As scuffles broke out, the US-backed leader tried to mount an iron fence surrounding the legislature, only to be repelled again. His blue suit was ripped apart during the chaotic stand-off.

Inside, the scene was similarly rowdy, as a rival slate headed by lawmaker Luis Parra were sworn in as legislative leaders. Opposition leaders immediately denounced the session as a "show" carried out by a group of "traitors" paid off by President Nicolas Maduro.

They complained Parra's election was invalid on numerous grounds  arguing the session was never officially opened, no quorum count was taken and no formal vote was called  merely a rushed show of hands.

When they gathered later for an impromptu session at the El Nacional newspaper, the last major daily critical of the socialist government, 100 of the legislature's 167 members voted to reelect Guaido for the final year of the Assembly's 2015-2020 term. '

Several of the lawmakers who have been forced into exile were represented by alternates at the impromptu session.
Companies are solving problems in innovative ways. As such, if you're looking for who's going to make a big impact in the new year, these businesses are pretty safe bets. Here are seven startups to keep your eye on in 2020.

1. Solidia

When it comes to climate change, cement production is a major culprit, accounting for about 7 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. New Jersey-based Solidia uses a patented process to address this problem, replacing limestone with a synthetic material that requires lower temperatures and less energy than traditional methods. The cement absorbs CO2 as it hardens, all of which amounts to a production process with a 70 percent smaller carbon footprint. Solidia launched commercially in the U.S. in August 2019 through a partnership with paving company EP Henry.

2. Shape Therapeutics

Seattle-based Shape Therapeutics is developing technology that would modify human RNA to correct mutations or eliminate diseases. Founded in 2018 and based on the groundbreaking work of UC-San Diego bioengineering professor Prashant Mali, Shape raised a $35.5 million Series A round in November that will help the company build its staff and open a satellite office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2020. Some experts say the method that Shape is working on is more precise than the much-hyped Crispr-Cas9 process.

3. Better.com

New York City-based Better.com is trying to upend the antiquated mortgage application process by bringing it online. The company doesn't charge fees or commissions and instead makes its money only via interest. And whereas traditional mortgage applications can take weeks, getting pre-approved on Better.com takes just a few minutes thanks to a largely automated process. The company, which lent more than $4 billion to homebuyers in 2019, announced a $160 million funding round in August that brought its total funding to $254 million. Now approved in 44 states, it launches in the New York market in 2020 and expects to be in all 50 states by March.

4. Afresh

U.S. retailers throw out $18 billion worth of spoiled food every year, which is bad for both the bottom line and the environment. San Francisco startup Afresh creates software that uses algorithms and artificial intelligence to help stores optimize their fresh food inventories and cut back on waste. Founded in 2016, the company says it has secured partnerships with several billion-dollar grocery chains and is in talks with more. Some partner stores have reported that adopting the tablet-based app has helped them cut their food waste in half.

5. Understory

Madison, Wisconsin-based Understory builds weather sensors that collect 125,000 data points per second, tracking things like precipitation, wind, temperature, air pressure, and humidity. In 2019, the company partnered with insurance firm MSI GuaranteedWeather. The data it collects will help determine payouts for hail-related auto insurance claims--a new approach to insurance that could make payouts faster and more accurate. Next, the startup is looking to move into structural and agricultural insurance.

6. Movandi

The rollout of 5G, the fifth-generation wireless network, began in 2019 and will ramp up in 2020. But some experts worry that the technology, which has huge potential thanks to its ability to transfer large amounts of data quickly, won't be as accessible to those outside of high-density areas. Movandi, based in Irvine, California, aims to remedy that. The startup creates technology that broadens the reach of 5G spectrum bands. And while the wireless signal loses much of its potency if not in the recipient's line-of-sight, Movandi's tech can bend the signal around buildings and other obstacles. The startup, which has $30 million in funding, says it is in talks with major wireless providers about potential partnerships.

7. Petal

Forget credit scores: Petal determines whether you're eligible for a credit card using factors like your income and bank statements. Geared toward younger people who haven't yet established a solid line of credit, the company doesn't charge fees--including for missed payments--and offers cash-back rewards. The New York City-based company will expand its operations in a big way in 2020 thanks to a recent $30 million VC funding round, plus another $300 million in debt financing.

EXPLORE MORE Best in Business COMPANIES
A Japanese picture book about a Uyghur woman who says she was beaten and detained in China has gone viral.

The artist behind the work says she wants to use the simple power of manga comics to bring attention to the daily suffering that Uyghurs in China experience.

What Has Happened to Me is the work of manga artist Tomomi Shimizu. It is available in 10 languages - including Mandarin Chinese, Uyghur and English. It has been seen more than 330,000 times online.

Shimizu told reporters with the Reuters news agency, The Uyghur issue has been well known among people who are into politics. But little is known among the general public.

She added, I decided to use manga for this purpose because I believe manga has power to convey things to people in an easy-to-understand way.

In simple, black-and-white drawings, Shimizu tells the story of Mihrigul Tursun, a real Uyghur woman who now lives in the United States. Tursun says she was beaten and detained several times in Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The United Nations and rights groups estimate that between 1 million and 2 million people have been detained in so-called re-education camps across Xinjiang. Many of those detained are Uyghurs -- a Turkic speaking, mostly Muslim ethnic minority. Former detainees have said they were forced to renounce their way of life, religion and their native language inside the camps.

China has said Xinjiang faces a threat from Islamist militants and separatists. It says it is seeking to end extremism and violence in Xinjiang through education.

The Chinese government has accused Tursun of spreading lies and strongly denied her accusations of mistreatment.

Shimizu based her manga story on what she learned from watching video-recorded testimony from Tursun.

In the comic, Tursun is detained by Chinese police, even though she had not carried out any crime. She is separated from her three young babies and tortured with electric sticks.

When she is released, she finds out that one of her triplets died in government care. Later, she is detained again, in a room so crowded that detainees have to take turns lying down.

After a third detention, she asks why she has faced so much hardship. An official answers, It is because you are Uyghur.

Shimizu published What Has Happened to Me on her Twitter page on August 31. Soon, messages started coming in like a waterfall, she said. The post was retweeted 8,000 times in only a few hours.

Ilham Mahmut, the chairman of the Japan Uyghur Association, said Shimizus manga has played an invaluable role in letting the world know the Uyghur issue.

Lee Da-Ren, a Taiwanese living in Japan, volunteered to translate Shimizus work into Mandarin Chinese.

By taking the form of manga, Lee said, the story is so easy to read, and yet so penetrating.

Im Ashley Thompson.

The Reuters news agency reported this story. Ashley Thompson adapted it for VOA Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor.

_________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

viral - adj. spreading very quickly to many people especially through the Internet

manga comics - n. a style of Japanese comic books and graphic novels, usually aimed at adults as well as children

convey - v. to make (something) known to someone

drawing - n. a picture, image, etc., that is made by making lines on a surface with a pencil, pen, marker, chalk, etc., but usually not with paint

renounce - v. to say especially in a formal or official way that you will no longer have or accept (something) : to formally give up (something)

testimony - n. something that someone says especially in a court of law while formally promising to tell the truth

triplet - n. one of three babies that are born at the same time to the same mother

hardship - n. pain and suffering

penetrating - adj. able to understand something clearly and fully
: Students of different varsities here on Monday held protests condemning the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi, police said.

Expressing solidarity with the JNU students and teachers, the protesters comprising groups of students, teaching staff and citizens staged demonstrations, raised slogans and took out rallies at Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU), University of Hyderabad, Osmania University and other places.

The MANUU fraternity led a peaceful march on the alleged brutal atrocities and rampage conducted by masked goons on Sunday night on the students and teachers of JNU, a press release issued by MANUU Fraternity said.

Around 200 teaching, non-teaching staff and students of MANUU led a procession to the main gate of the university, holding placards and raised slogans of 'save students and teachers save university,' it said.

The family members of the staff also joined the march in large numbers.

The protesters condemned the 'shameful act conducted on JNU students and teachers,' the release said.

Condemning the violence, a group of students under the aegis of Progressive Democratic Students' Union (PDSU) held a protest on the campus of Osmania University here and burned an effigy protesting against the ABVP.

They raised slogans like We want Justice.

Earlier, a group of students and citizens gathered near Ambedkar statue on Tank Bund after midnight on Sunday andraised slogans like "Students Fraternity Zindabaad" and held placards that read "We are with you JNU".

They raised slogans andheld a candlelight protest and later dispersed, a senior police official told PTI.

The protesters also raised slogans against the Narendra Modi government over the CAA.

Similarly, a group of students under the banner of "HCU (Hyderabad Central University) Students Union" also protested against the violence in JNU.

Theytook out a rally late Sunday night on the campus of the University of Hyderabad (UoH) here condemning the "brutal attack on JNU students" and blamed the ABVP for the violence and demanded the arrest of the culprits.

Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Delana Isles

PNP leader C Washington Misick has called on the PDM Government to repeal the Turks and Caicos Islander Status Ordinance and all other supporting legislation.





The call came during the last sitting of the House of Assembly on December 18, during which an amendment to the principal ordinance was debated.





The bill seeks to amend the Turks and Caicos Islander Status (Amendment) Ordinance 2018 to make provisions to validate applications made in 2018 and to allow them to be considered along with the applications made in 2016 and 2017.





The PNP leader, who is also the leader of the Opposition, presented arguments to the effect that should the bill be passed, legislators run the risk of making Islanders "extinct.





He is therefore, now calling for a repeal of the legislation his Government - led by Dr Rufus Ewing - had passed through the House in 2016, and into law.





"Let today be the great wake-up-call for political maturity in our Turks and Caicos Islands and let the PNP and the PDM resolve to become co-responsible for a future that generations yet unborn can be proud of.





"Let us repeal the existing ordinances and with the benefit of hindsight over the last almost four years go back to the drawing board to come up with new legislation on terms that will better protect the long-term interest of heritage Turks and Caicos Islanders.





Hon. Misick said it should now be clear to every Islander that the country is heading in the wrong direction with regard to this matter.





"We have lost control of our heritage and yet we continue to buy into dependency theories that require us to exchange our rights for the phantom benefits of trickle-down economics.





"I cannot under any circumstances support this bill.





"The consequences of the operationalisation of this bill contrast and contradict the 2040 vision document that has had the input of both political parties and the public, the PNP leader stated.





He also reiterated the position voiced by the PNP last year, when a list of over 160 expatriates applying for Belongership was first exposed by his brother the former premier Michael Misick.





"The PNP takes the position that the Turks and Caicos Islander Status Ordinance in its current form should not be implemented.





"This is a position that we have not come to lightly given that the ordinance was passed while we were in government.





"Five years, however, is a long time and during those five years, despite economic growth and development, indigenous Turks and Caicos Islanders have become more marginalised than ever

before.





Hon. Misick added that the grant of Turks and Caicos Islanders Status must be reconsidered, bearing in mind the prevailing anxiety and confusion surrounding the matter.





"Under the circumstances there must be a wide-ranging public consultation as to who should enjoy the cherished status of being a Turks and Caicos Islander.





He stated that the public is justifiably dismayed by the recent publication of the list of nearly 200 persons to potentially be granted Islander Status in a single swift act.





Adding that, while as leader of the Opposition, he has, as the ordinance required him to do, recommended to the governor the names of two persons to be appointed to the TCI Islander Status Commission.





He stated that on reflection, the commission is not presently equipped to carry out a comprehensive examination of the applications for the grant of TCI Islander Status in order to make recommendations to the governor.





The party leader is now calling on the PDM Government to stand with them in repealing the ordinances.





"For those persons who have applied for Islander status, you have nothing to fear. You are aware that the status as a PRC holder and or a BOTC you have every right to be here and that will not change, Hon. Misick assured.





"The PNP believes that we cannot and should not bow to the pressure of special interest or accept the recommendations of external consultants when it comes to the issue of status in these islands - to do so will be to condemn us to shark infected red ocean where we will continue to be eaten.





"The governor was emphatic that he would care, listen and serve. His priorities in coming here he says was disaster preparedness, national security and crime.





"The reality on the ground belies that promise and clearly lines up with the agenda of the UK to broaden the franchise and change the definition of the traditional family, the Opposition leader emphasised.





The amendment bill

An explanatory note in the recently debated bill, states the following: "In 2018, the Turks and Caicos Islander Status Ordinance was amended and a special provision was inserted to validate and allow for applications made in 2016 and 2017 to be considered by the commission once appointed.





"The expectation was the commission would be appointed immediately to consider the applications.





"The secretary of the commission was also expected to be appointed in the same year. However, both the secretary and the commission were not appointed until this year (2019).





"The secretary has been appointed and has started the work of the commission, and the commission has been appointed to commence business on January 1, 2020.





"The amendment to the transitional provisions made in 2018 would allow the 2018 applications to be considered legally along with the other applications.





"The expectation is that the commission will consider all applications before them, including the 2019 applications which are within the timelines of the principal ordinance.





While the date for the commencement of consideration of the applications by the committee has passed - January 1 - the amendment bill is currently still in the debate stage in the House of Assembly.





Discussions on the bill from both the Opposition benches and the Government will continue on Monday, January 6.




The wave of reported thefts targeted wealthy people who left their homes for Christmas - REUTERS

Gangs likened to the Pink Panther have been blamed for a wave of reported thefts of luxury watches and other valuables in Paris as thieves target homes vacated by wealthy owners during the festive season.

Burglars reportedly swiped more than 1 million (850,000) worth of Rolex watches and other prestige timepieces in the French capital last weekend alone in targeted thefts of apartments where lights were off suggesting owners were away over Christmas and New Year.

According to Le Parisien newspaper, two break-ins took place in the upmarket 16eme arrondissement, western Paris, and a third theft in the same district when thieves ripped a watch from a victim in the street.

On Saturday night, a businessman returned from a holiday break to find his collection of 19 top watches, including 11 Rolexes, had been swiped from a safe with police blaming professional criminals.

They work the wealthy districts by scaling buildings and lighting. In a word, they pick out flats with no lamps lit, one detective specialised in such thefts told Le Parisien.

One climbs up and breaks in then lets the others in.

The Pink Panthers, a shadowy syndicate of jewel thieves, is believed to have carried out up to 400 heists in the past two decades Credit: Maxim Shemetov /REUTERS

Police sources said that in the past few years, international gangs, mainly from the Balkans, have homed in on watches and other valuables that are easy to sell.

Such gangs reportedly take inspiration from the Pink Panthers, a shadowy syndicate of jewel thieves hailing primarily from ex-Yugoslavia behind a string of spectacular heists over the past two decades and thought to have amassed riches surpassing 350 million.

They got their name in 2003, when London police found a stolen blue diamond ring inside a container of face cream - a subterfuge lifted from the Inspector Clouseau film series.

Members have been blamed for dozens of heists in France.

In the latest thefts, either the teams go for safes by taking them off the wall and carrying them off in a sheet or duvet or they grab anything of value they can find, said the police expert.

Story continues

In a second theft last weekend, bunglers stole five Hermes and 10 Chanel bags as well as three luxury watches valued at 140,000 from a flat in avenue Foch - one of the most expensive in Paris.

In the third theft, a group of thieves tore off a watch from their victim as the person came out of a chic restaurant in the same area. Such thefts are the work of teams from the suburbs, said the expert.

They target bars and nightclubs in search of drunken prey and are only interested in watches that are easy to spot and rip off.

Around 100 expensive watches were stolen in Paris last year either from homes or in muggings, according to police sources. Some turned out to be inside jobs in which the alleged victim was in on the act.
New photos show the interior of Jeffrey Epsteins jail cell just after his death. Photo: New York State Sex Offender Registry/AP/Shutterstock

On Sunday, 60 Minutes gave the public its first look inside the Manhattan jail cell where Jeffrey Epstein reportedly killed himself last year. 60 Minutes published the photos taken inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, along with photos taken during Epsteins autopsy, at the conclusion of a five-month investigation. The photos show a chaotic scene inside the cell, where at least two nooses made from orange bed sheets were found. As is the case with much of the reporting around Epsteins death, the story raised more questions than it answered.

Here are five takeaways from the 60 Minutes report:

Noose may not match official account of Epsteins death

Photos from inside Epsteins cell show a cluttered mess of orange bed sheets strewn across mattresses and the floor. Theres a bit of sheet hanging from a grate on the window, and other pieces are tied to Epsteins bed.

Two nooses were photographed in the cell and one was taken into evidence, presumably because it was thought to be the noose Epstein used to kill himself. But theres some doubt about whether the noose is the one Epstein used in his suicide. The guard who found Epstein reportedly cut him down, and the noose taken into evidence has two hemmed edges. Another noose photographed in Epsteins cell looks to have frayed edges, though.

But photos of the noose taken in as evidence and presumably thought to be responsible for killing Epstein show both ends of the noose folded and hemmed, not cut. Sources have told 60 Minutes that the guard who found Epstein cut him down before trying to revive him. pic.twitter.com/zGigVRxzTA  WarDamnEagle (@Wardamn5) January 6, 2020

Epstein had dangerous objects in his cell

Dr. Michael Baden, the forensic pathologist hired by Epsteins brother Mark, told 60 Minutes what hes been telling the media for months: that the evidence released so far points much more to murder and strangulation than suicide.

He raised doubts about why Epstein would have hanged himself with a sheet when there was a sleep-apnea machine, with an electrical cord, in his cell. Epstein also at one point had a ballpoint pen, which Baden said would never have been given to someone considered suicidal.

Epstein left a note

Its not a suicide letter, but there was a note found in Epsteins cell after his death. It included complaints about the jail conditions.

The first word on the note, as shown on 60 Minutes, is blurred out. But CBS News suggests its the name of a guard, who Epstein writes, kept me in a locked shower stall for 1 hour. The next line references Tova Noel, one of the guards on duty the night Epstein killed himself. Noel sent me burnt food, it says. Giant bugs crawling over my hands. No fun!!

84. Instead of a suicide note, what was found instead was evidence of #Epstein's expectation of future petition, a list of cruel and unusual punishment complaints: locked in the shower stall for 1 hour, served burned food, large bugs crawling on hands. #Epsteindidntkillhimself pic.twitter.com/vWDFnMBN3s  DocRock1007  (@DocRock1007) January 6, 2020

Concerns about how Epsteins body was handled

Baden told 60 Minutes about two problems he has with how Epsteins body was handled in the immediate aftermath of his death. First, Epsteins body was taken to an emergency room. Thats not normal protocol, he said. Baden, along with other forensic pathologists, also told 60 Minutes that Epsteins body should have been photographed as it was found, which would provide essential clues about how he died.

New questions about the wound on Epsteins neck

Baden revived the hyoid-bone theory that he talked about on Fox News last October. As he sees it, Epsteins broken neck bone is much more consistent with murder than suicide. Experts have pushed back against that claim since Baden first made it. And the New York City medical examiner, who has concluded that Epstein killed himself by hanging, disputed Badens theory.

On Sunday night, Baden also raised a new concern about Epsteins wounds: He suggested that the placement of the marks on Epsteins neck is not consistent with most hangings, which result in marks just beneath the jawbone. Dr. Baden says a wound straight across the neck is more common when a victim is strangled by a wire or a cord, 60 Minutess Sharyn Alfonsi said in the report.

Questions have been raised about Badens credibility and the fact that hes been hired by Epsteins brother. Asked about concerns over his impartiality, given his position on the Epstein family payroll, Baden told 60 Minutes, Thats a reasonable thing for some people to think.
The World Socialist Web Site categorically condemns the January 3 assassination of General Qassem Suleimani at Baghdads international airport.

The drone missile strike that killed Suleimani and nine others is a blatant act of murder, prosecutableif the criminal statutes were enforcedunder both international and US law.

The murder of Suleimani, the head of Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, widely regarded as the second most important figure in the Iranian government, has been met with massive demonstrations in both Iraq and Iran and is widely seen in the Middle East as a US declaration of war against the entire region.

The Iranian government has vowed retaliation. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Irans supreme leader, said that the country would take forceful revenge. Given the level of popular anger, to do less would risk losing control within Iran itself.

In Iran, the crowds gathering to honor Suleimani and the others killed in the attackin all, five Iranians and five Iraqis were murdered in the drone missile strikehave been estimated in the millions as the funeral cortege has made its way from Ahvas to Mashhad and finally Tehran.

In Baghdad, over 100,000 people marched in protest against the assassination, chanting Death to America! in what has been described as the largest public demonstration in Iraq since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958.

Under the weight of this immense outpouring of popular hostility, the Iraqi Parliament voted overwhelmingly Sunday for a resolution demanding the expulsion of US military forces from Iraq. While US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo indicated that Washington would ignore any Iraqi order to withdraw, the 5,000 US troops currently deployed have abandoned their ostensible mission of training Iraqi security forces, for fear the Iraqi soldiers will turn their guns on their instructors, and are preparing for attacks.

President Donald Trump has responded to Khameneis statements with a series of increasingly frenzied threats delivered via Twitter. He first claimed to have selected 52 targets in Iran, representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago. These included, he said, sites important to Iranian culture. Such an attack would add to the list of the US governments illegal acts.

In subsequent tweets, the US president vowed to hit Iran harder than they have ever been hit before, and declared that his Twitter pronouncements served as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any US person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!

Trumps wild threats are calculated to inflame the situation and leave the Iranian government, which is under immense popular pressure, no choice but to take violent retaliatory measures. This might appear to be sheer madness, given the consequences of a war with Iran. But it would be the height of political naivete to believe that the attack on Suleimani was ordered by Trump in a personal fit of anger.

The order was given by Trump with the deliberate intention of provoking war. There is a method to this madness. It is an attempt to find a way out of the increasingly desperate crisis of American capitalisminternational and domesticthrough spectacular acts of violence.

The Suleimani assassination is not an isolated event, but rather the start of a new war. It marks a dividing line between a before and an after not only in the Middle East, but internationally. Future historians will treat this state crime with the same significance as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914.

No one should make the mistake of underestimating the consequences of war with Iran. The development of the conflict will rapidly acquire global dimensions. It will be only a matter of time before the logic of the conflictwhich affects the vital interests of countless states on the vast Eurasian land massdraws numerous countries into the vortex of war. Neither the Russian nor Chinese government will be able to accept American control over Iran. The Indian government will not be able to stand by while Pakistan is totally destabilized by the American-Iranian conflict.

Moreover, the American militarydespite all the trillions of dollars that have been squandered on armamentsis not prepared for the mass resistance it will encounter. Having been unable to impose its will on Iraq and Afghanistan, even after decades of war, the United States will find that war with Iran leads to military and political catastrophe.

Why, then, has the Trump administration embarked on this disastrous course?

First, the decision to launch a war against Iran is bound up with the rolling out of a new strategic doctrine in 2018 based on a shift from the war on terrorism to the preparation for wars arising from great power competition. The imposition of a colonial-style puppet regime in Tehran and control over the Persian Gulfs energy supplies are seen by Washington as an essential preparation for war with Russia and China. Significantly, in the recently passed trillion-dollar military budget, a budget for world war, the Democrats and Republicans removed language that would have required the US president to seek congressional authorization before launching a military attack on Iran.

Second, and no less significantly, the reckless decision for war reflects the desperation of the American ruling class over the growth of class conflict within the United States. Its anxiety over the intensification of social anger and rise of anti-capitalist sentiment is compounded by the fact that the entire American economy is dependent on unlimited money-printing, known as quantitative easing, carried out to prevent a general collapse of the financial markets.

The American ruling class is well aware of the revolutionary implications of the crisis, and it is this sense of ultimate danger that underlies the reckless character of its actions. Faced with the accumulation of interacting and intractable economic, social and political crises, the Trump administration is gambling on war, not only to divert and distract the public, but also to legitimize the intensification of state repression and attacks on core democratic rights.

It is hardly an accident that within hours of the murder of Suleimani, heavily armed contingents of militarized police were patrolling the streets of major American cities.

The situation that now prevails in the United Statesand, for that matter, in all the major capitalist countries in Western Europeresembles that which existed in Nazi Germany on the eve of World War II. By 1938, Hitlers regime, having accumulated massive and unsustainable debts to keep the economy afloat and finance the military buildup, saw war as the only way out of the impending disaster. One historian described the situation confronting Hitler as follows:

The only solution open to this regime of the structural tensions and crises produced by dictatorship and rearmament was more dictatorship and more rearmament, then expansion, then war and terror, then plunder and enslavement. The stark, ever-present alternative was collapse and chaos, and so all solutions were temporary, hectic, hand-to-mouth affairs, increasingly barbaric improvisations around a brutal theme. [Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class, by Tim Mason (Cambridge, 1995), p. 51]

American recklessness has created division and consternation in Europe. Heads of state and foreign ministers all talk of de-escalation, even as their own governments are frantically building up their armed forces. The thuggish US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned the Europeans for not having been as helpful as I wish that they could be, adding, The Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did, what the Americans did, saved lives in Europe as well. Everyone, of course, knows that this is a lie and that the attack can only produce a new bloodbath. Nevertheless, despite their misgivings, European governments, mired in crisis, are lining up behind the Trump administration.

The US media is, as always, working to create a war psychology within the American public. Even those who express qualms about the implications of Trumps action invariably couch their timid criticisms in denunciations of Suleimani as a bad actor and even terrorist, supposedly responsible for killing hundreds of US troops.

This is all a pack of lies. Suleimani directed forces that defeated both Al Qaedas US-backed affiliates in Syria and ISIS, Washingtons Frankensteins monster, in Iraq. He is not implicated in the crimes that resulted from the US war of aggression in Iraq, which killed over a million people and produced such horrors as the massacre in Fallujah and the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib. As for American soldiers who died in Iraq, their blood is on the hands of the Bush administration and the Democrats who supported sending them into a war of choice based on lies.

In its New Years statement, the World Socialist Web Site wrote:

The movement toward a Third World War, which would threaten mankind with extinction, cannot be halted by humanitarian appeals. War arises out of the anarchy of capitalism and the obsolescence of the nation-state system. Therefore, it can be stopped only through the global struggle of the working class for socialism.

The new decade is not even a week old, but already this warning has been vindicated.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Having turned the table on the BJP in Maharashtra and installed a Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar could be the opposition's top choice for the Rashtrapati Bhavan in the next presidential elections.

The idea has been floated by Nationalist Congress Party MP Majid Memon who, in a tweet on Monday, said: "The move to muster support for Shri Sharad Pawar to be next Rashtrapati may yield positive results and will bring all non BJP forces closer by 2022.

The argument made by Memon is that ahead of 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the equation could change as Pawar takes the top post.

"It will also turn the tide against BJP to be defeated in 2024 Lok Sabha polls," he said in his tweet.

Pawar, who enjoys support across political lines, now also has support of the Shiv Sena. Sources say NCP could be testing waters before the final plunge.

The Congress, which is with Pawar but not much confident about him, may be forced to support his candidature if all the opposition parties come in support of the NCP supremo.

Pawar has good rapport with the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress and the DMK as well.

He can also muster support from the Janata Dal-United and the Rashtriya Janata Dal also.

It is also likely that by 2022, the situation in the assemblies will change and many states can see new political forces emerging.

The new election for the President will be in 2022, and the BJP has many potential candidate including current Vice President M Venkiah Naidu.
Technology is playing a major part in this years Delhi Assembly election. Not just QR code and booth app, the election commission has put the entire voter list online.

The website of Delhis Chief Election Office has a link on the homepage about the electoral roll published on January 6, 2020. If voters click on that link, it takes them to the list of rolls which is further sub-divided into two parts - Main Roll and Modification. While the main roll is a constituency-wise list of all the eligible voters in Delhi, the modification will include names and details of those voters which got them corrected.

Each link takes the user to a list of constituencies, and the various part numbers. When a voter click on the Part Number, it will display the constituency details like location, year of revision, identification etc. The page also contains the Google map location and photographs of the polling booth and a list of all the registered voters there.

Alternatively, voters can also check their names in the voter list of Delhi. The two criteria listed on the National Voters Service Portal are search by name and search by Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) number.

To search a name, the voter needs to provide details such as assembly constituency number and name, voters name, father name, house number voter identity card number, etc. If they cant find their name, the voters can send an SMS to get details on the registered mobile number.

If the voters choose EPIC number, they will have to give their voter ID number and all the details will be diplayed on the screen.

The Election Commission on Monday announced that assembly polls in the national capital will be held in on February 8. Briefing the reporters in Delhi, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said the counting of votes will take place on February 11.

He said the election notification will be issued on January 12. The last date of nomination of candidates is January 21. The scrutiny of nominations will take place on January 22. The last date of withdrawal of candidature is January 24.

The key contest in Delhi is between the ruling Aam Aadmi Party, BJP and Congress.

In 2015 assembly polls, AAP won 67 of 70 seats while the BJP could win only three. Congress, which was in power for 15 years in Delhi between 1998 to 2013, failed to get any seat.
The Presidential Committee on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a group set up by the South Korean government, has recommended that bitcoin should be listed directly on Korea Exchange (KRX), the countrys sole securities exchange operator.

The committee has also suggested allowing cryptocurrency products, such as bitcoin derivatives, in the country, according to a report from Business Korea on Monday.

The Korean government has also been advised to consider introducing business licenses or guidelines for cryptocurrency exchanges as it is no longer possible to stop crypto-asset trade.

"The Korean government has to gradually allow institutional investors to deal in crypto assets and promote over the counter (OTC) desks dedicated to institutional investors trade," said the committee. It has also recommended the government to introduce a Korean custody solution to avoid relying on foreign custodians for the storage of cryptocurrencies, per the report.

South Korea has been taking an increasing interest in the cryptocurrency space. The country's government recently said that it wants to start taxing residents cryptocurrency-related profits. Last week, South Korea's taxation authority levied withholding tax of ~$69.5 million on South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Bithumb.
Mr. Sinaga was already serving a life sentence with a minimum of 20 years before parole after being convicted in his earlier trials, which began in 2018. He was sentenced on Monday to life in prison and had his minimum term increased to 30 years.

Mr. Sinaga insisted on taking the case to trial and argued in court that the victims were only pretending to be asleep as part of a sexual role play. He accused the victims of being closeted gay men lying about the assaults, according to British news accounts of the trial.

Each of Mr. Sinagas four trials dealt with between 10 and 13 victims. In all, he was found guilty of 159 offenses, including 136 anal rapes.

He would no doubt still be adding to his staggering tally had he not been caught, Ian Rushton, a deputy chief crown prosecutor for the northwest of England, said in a statement. He said Mr. Sinaga appears to have derived further twisted pleasure from rewatching his films in court and putting victims through the trauma of giving evidence.

Born and raised in Indonesia, Mr. Sinaga came to Britain in 2007 on a student visa. He studied for a masters degree at Manchester University in sociology, and then began studying for a doctorate in human geography in 2012 at Leeds University.

Living off money given to him by his father, a banker in Indonesia, Mr. Sinaga fashioned a life of nights out and holidays that looked extravagant to his friends, according to British news accounts of trial testimony. He was openly gay, and he attended gay clubs in Manchester and used gay hookup apps, Mr. Sinaga testified.

Mr. Sinagas friends only hint of his nighttime campaign was the way he boasted of making heterosexual men realize their gay fantasies.
Press Trust of India

What German scientist Stefan Hell initially thought was a crazy idea later fetched him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014.

His work on breaking the diffraction barrier in microscopy could prove significant in finding remedies to incurable diseases like cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

At the 107th Indian Science Congress here on Friday, the Nobel laureate shared his experience. "Throughout the 20th century, scientists believed there is no way to get the highest spatial resolution that only was released," Hell told the audience.

"But now, the development of this microscopy, which I'm responsible for, showed that this is not true. You can go beyond that. You can have a higher spatial resolution, you can clearly see that here there are filaments of resolve that are not resolved in a normal mode."

The microscopy he developed is significant as it has the ability to peep deep into the cells to show how they function.

He said it would enable one learn how cells work even at a fundamental level. "And you don't forget every disease no matter what it is infection, cancer, whatever, neurodegenerative disease in the end, it's a malfunctioning of the cell."

Once it is understood how cells work and how the proteins are arranged inside a cell and what they do, it would become easy to understand why they malfunction, the scientist said.

"And I believe that over the coming years it will help us tremendously to understand diseases or to find remedies or to counteract them," Hell told the gathering.

Giving an interesting anecdote, he said he hit upon the idea while working for a start-up company that had developed light microscopes for the inspection of computer chips. His job was to measure the size of the computer chips.

Anxious to pursue fundamental physics, Hell ended up scanning the chips with microscopes of the 19th century, frustrating him, as he felt he was wasting his time. Before he could slip into depression, it occurred to him that there could be some fundamental problem left in this in microscopy, such as breaking the diffraction barrier.

"I realised that breaking the diffraction barrier, that would be worthwhile working on. This is how I got to think about the problem, the Nobel laureate said.

He said working on breaking the diffraction barrier was a crazy idea because textbooks said it never works.

To the audience of young students and budding scientists, Stefan Hell said people often ask him what the key to success is, to which his reply has always been: "Aim high, stay grounded. And if you are lucky and have a good idea, you might even hit the bullseye."
Cong demands judicial probe, CPM wants V-C to be sacked.

New Delhi: A day after shocking violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University, Opposition parties on Monday decided to seek a meeting with President Ram Nath Kovind on January 13 on the shameful incidents in the Central varsity of which the President is the visitor. There was widespread condemnation by the Opposition led by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who sought a judicial inquiry into the incident while the CPI(M) demanded that the JNU vice-chancellor be sacked.

The varsity will also hold an alumni march at 3 pm on Tuesday where all eminent persons who have studied in JNU would be asked to participate.

The meeting with the President is being coordinated by the Congress and Mrs Gandhi has asked party treasurer Ahmed Patel to speak to other parties, sources told this newspaper.

The Congress also constituted a fact-finding committee to look into the incident, which would be led by Mahila Congress chief Sushmita Dev. Apart from Ms Dev, the other members of the fact-finding committee are former NSUI president and Kerala MP Hibi Eden, MP Syed Naseer Hussain, and former president of JNU NSUI and Amrita Dhawan, a former NSUI president and ex-DUSU president.

Earlier in the day, Mrs Gandhi issued a statement in which she said: Sundays bone chilling attack on students and teachers in JNU, Delhi is a grim reminder of the extent the government will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent. The entire Congress Party stands in solidarity with Indias youth and students. We strongly deprecate the sponsored violence in JNU yesterday and demand an independent judicial inquiry, she added.

Former home minister P. Chidambaram said that the JNU incident was perhaps the most clinching evidence that the country was rapidly descending into anarchy. This is the gravest act of impunity that we have seen in recent times. Nothing can be more shocking and shameful, he said seeking the immediate arrest of the perpetrators of the violence.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said the role of the home ministry, JNU administration and the Delhi police should also be probed.

The manner in which youth is being attacked and their voices stifled, reminds us of the Nazi Germany of 1933 which seems to have come back under the rule of Modi and Amit Shah after 90 years, he told the media.

CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, a former JNUSU president, said: The vice-chancellor is also complicit in this attack. He must be sacked immediately.

The Trinamul Congress sent a three-member team to the JNU campus.
A television which can rotate into portrait orientation to properly display videos from social media has been shown off at CES by Samsung.

The Korean firms Sero TV can switch from the horizontal layout of traditional televisions to show the taller, thinner videos often captured on smartphones.

The device, which has already been launched in South Korea, is aimed at the social media generation, who consume more video content from social media platforms such as TikTok, the tech giant said.

The Sero, which means vertical in Korean, is set to be launched in a number of new countries this year.

Samsungs Sero TV (Samsung/PA)

The new television can connect to a users mobile device, Samsung says, and will mirror the orientation of their phone or tablet when showing video to present it in the way it was meant to be seen.

Sharing video captured on mobile devices to platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat has become increasingly popular in recent years, with younger internet users in particular said to spend more time on such platforms than using traditional video formats.

Grace Dolan, vice president of marketing communication at Samsung America, said: Consumers today expect TVs that can fully integrate into their individual lifestyles and Samsung is redefining the role of the screen, delivering new digital services and creating new designs to enhance your life.

The Sero was showcased alongside a number of other new Samsung televisions ahead of the opening of CES on Tuesday.

The tech giant unveiled a range of new 8K resolution TVs  double the resolution of 4K  a move also made by rival LG ahead of the annual technology convention, as the two Korean companies battle for attention in the TV market.
GUANICA, Puerto Rico  A 5.8-magnitude earthquake shook southwestern Puerto Rico before sunrise Monday, frightening people out of their beds, cracking house walls and destroying a photogenic beachside rock formation known as Punta Ventana.

The natural wonder in the town of Guayanilla, shaped like a round stone window with a stunning view of the ocean, had begun to look vulnerable after smaller temblors started to hit the area a week ago, Mayor Nelson Torres Yordan said. On Monday, he said, it finally fell.

The quake struck at 6:32 a.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was the strongest yet to be felt in the coastal towns west of the city of Ponce that have been trembling for more than a week. The rash of smaller temblors began with three shakes of 4.7, 5.0 and 4.7 magnitude in the space of three hours during the night of Dec. 28-29 and have continued since then, clustered in the same area a few miles offshore.

No one was seriously hurt, Gov. Wanda Vazquez said. Classes at local public schools, which were scheduled to resume Tuesday, were pushed back until Jan. 13 to give inspectors time to check the buildings for damages, she said. The schools will conduct earthquake drills the day that they reopen, the governor added. At least one school building in the town of Guayanilla was being used as a shelter Monday afternoon.

Jose Francisco Benitez, 48, said he was awakened by the quake at a beach resort in the town of Guanica, where some of the most serious damage was reported.

It started shaking a bit, but then, all of a sudden, we felt a jolt  Id never seen anything like it, he said. Everything shook.

He said he ran outside in a panic, along with everyone else. There were people in their underwear in the parking lot, everyone in pajamas, little kids, Benitez said. It looked like a movie.

A strong, 4.9-magnitude aftershock struck about four hours after the big quake, rattling nerves again.

Officials warned of possible mudslides and urged people to stay off the roads in the area to allow emergency personnel to assess the damage.

Monday is Three Kings Day, a holiday in Puerto Rico that is also known as the Feast of the Epiphany. Towns in the area went ahead with holiday parades Monday, though some attendees said they felt jittery. Benitez, who had traveled to Guanica for the long weekend, said he planned to quickly return to San Juan, the capital.

Several houses in Guanica were reported to have collapsed.

Supporting columns crumbled underneath Silvestre Aliceas elevated light green house with white trim, leaving the toppled structure perched at a precarious angle.

Look at my house, said Alicea, 66, who returned to Puerto Rico from New York City two years ago, moving in to the house he had built over the course of 30 years in preparation for his retirement. I was there, in there, he said.

Many of the houses in the Esperanza neighborhood where he lives were built elevated on columns to spare them from floods, on an island more accustomed to the threat of hurricanes than of earthquakes. Aliceas house survived Hurricane Maria in 2017 but not the quake Monday.

He said he planned to spend the night at his sisters house nearby, but could not think further into the future. I dont know what Im going to do, he said.

Early Monday afternoon, Hector Luis Rodriguez, 83, sat in his car, still paralyzed with fear following the quake and its aftershocks. His house had already been patched up with a blue tarpaulin after the hurricane. The tarp is still there. Now, so are huge cracks running up and across the green interior walls.

It cracked open everywhere inside, said Rodriguez, a retired bus driver.

The first cracks inside the house, where he has lived for 39 years, appeared a few days ago, after the first temblors. They worsened Monday and pipes in the bathroom broke, leading to some flooding.

I worry that Im going to be homeless, he said. Minutes later, the earth rumbled again.

In Guayanilla, emergency workers helped a couple and two children whose elevated house collapsed, burying three cars that had been parked underneath. The man who lived inside, identified only by his first name, Alan, described to NotiCentro the harrowing moment in which the earth trembled, waking him up as the floor gave way.

The house fell with us in it, he said, standing outside barefoot with two bloody scratches on his leg. The house collapsed, Boom! 

He picked up one of his children, his wife grabbed the other one, and they made their way out the door. The house had stood on 12 columns about 8 feet tall. The automobiles below appeared to stave off a complete collapse of the roof, he said.

Were alive, thank God, because of the cars, he said.

His wife said they would be unable to salvage the Three Kings Day gifts they had purchased for the children  a pair of bicycles, stowed in the trunk of one of the cars. The interview was dramatically interrupted by the strong aftershock, which made the woman and the reporter scream and rush off camera to a safer side of the street, away from power lines and poles.

Torres said the town planned to open a shelter for people whose homes were too badly damaged to occupy. He urged the islands government in San Juan to send social workers to the region to ease peoples nerves.

Things are really very tense about what has been going on, because this is not normal  so many tremors, he said.

Elizabeth Vanacore, a seismologist with the Puerto Rico Seismic Network, said people felt the recent quakes because they were shallow and occurred near land.

People can expect to feel more earthquakes over the next few days, especially given its location near the coast, Vanacore said.

Puerto Rico lies near the border of the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates.

Were just as likely to have earthquakes as a place like California, Japan, New Zealand, Alaska, Vanacore said.

The island has seen damaging quakes in the past, including one near the islands northwest coast in 1918 that triggered a tsunami and killed 118 people, according to the Geological Service. But major earthquakes in the southwestern part of Puerto Rico have been unusual in recent history. The last significant temblors recorded in that area, in 1991 and 1999, had a magnitude of about 4.1 on the Richter scale, according to the Seismic Network, whose data dates back to 1986.

While we cant predict earthquakes, what the public can do is prepare, Vanacore said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Stakes rise as Iran sheds nuclear limits

Two days after the U.S. killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in Baghdad, consequences rippled across the Middle East on Sunday. Among them:

Tehran all but abandoned the international agreement made in 2015 that was intended to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.

Lawmakers in Iraq voted to end the presence of American troops in the country, though it was unclear whether Iraqs current caretaker administration has the authority to take that step.

The American-led coalition in Iraq and Syria said it would pause its yearslong mission against the Islamic State.

A funeral procession in Iran for the slain general drew huge crowds of mourners.

President Trump, warning Iran not to attack, said that the U.S. had identified 52 targets in the country, including cultural sites. He also threatened Iraq with very big sanctions if it forced American troops to leave.

The situation is as volatile as it has been at any point in many years, one that will challenge an instinctive, combative and relatively inexperienced commander in chief, our chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, writes.

News analysis: With the 2015 nuclear deal effectively ended, the U.S. and Israel may again consider trying to cripple Irans production facilities, our correspondents write.

Related: Dozens of Iranians and Iranian-Americans were held for hours at the U.S. border with Canada over the weekend as America increased security.
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!)
[January 06, 2020] Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP Announces Investigation on Behalf of Mohawk Industries, Inc. Investors

Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP ("GPM") announces an investigation on behalf of Mohawk Industries, Inc. ("Mohawk" or the "Company") (NYSE: MHK) investors concerning the Company and its officers' possible violations of federal securities laws. If you are a shareholder who suffered a loss, click here to participate. On July 25, 2018, after the market closed, the Company announced disappointing financial results for second quarter 2018, disclosing that Mohawk "reduced [its] production volumes more than [the Company] had thought" and that it "came into the year with higher invntories than [it] wanted to have."



On this news, the Company's share price fell $38.06, or over 17%, to close at $179.31 per share on July 26, 2018, thereby injuring investors. Then, on October 25, 2018, after the market closed, Mohawk reported third quarter 2018 financial results that fell below the Company's guidance, stating that "[t]o improve [its] inventory turns, [Mohawk was] presently manufacturing fewer units than [it was] selling, which is negatively impacting [its] costs."

On this news, the Company's share price fell $36.04, or nearly 24%, to close at $115.03 per share on October 26, 2018, thereby injuring investors further. Then, on July 25, 2019, after the market closed, Mohawk reported that sales in its Flooring NA segment declined 7% year-over-year and that there was "big buildup in inventory in ceramic." On this news, the Company's share price fell $27.52, or nearly 18%, to close at $128.84 per share on July 26, 2019, thereby injuring investors further. If you purchased Mohawk securities, have information, or would like to learn more about these claims, or have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Charles H. Linehan, of GPM, 1925 Century Park East, Suite 2100, Los Angeles, CA (News - Alert) 90067 at 310-201-9150, Toll-Free at 888-773-9224, or visit our website at www.glancylaw.com. If you inquire by email please include your mailing address, telephone number, and the number of shares purchased. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005967/en/

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As visitor numbers and retail sales figures plunge due to protests, some Hong Kong shop owners stand their ground.

Hong Kong, China: Lo Bak Jun and his family have been running their successful tea house in Hong Kong for about three decades. He puts in approximately 70 hours a week, but despite the hard work, business is suffering.

Its gotten worse since June this year. Business this year is the worst in 30 years for the shop, Lo told Al Jazeera.

Los parents started the Kam Yuen Tea House in the early 1990s when Hong Kongs economy was booming. But now, the city is in recession, tipped over the edge by more than six months of unrest and a protracted trade war between the United States and China.

Small businesses like his are on the financial front line, as tourists stay away and retail sales plunge.

He sells traditional and specialist Chinese teas such as Jasmine, Tieguanyin and Puer at the teahouse. He warmly welcomes customers, inviting them to sample different brews, and is happy to host regulars for hours who sip and chat.

Some tourists will sit here all day and drink all the tea they are given.

In the past, at least one tour group would visit the shop a day. Now, days go past without a single foreign customer.

Government data shows Hong Kong visitor numbers were down 56 percent in November from a year earlier, after a 44 percent drop in October when tourism is usually thriving around Chinas national Golden Week holiday.

Lo misses his foreign customers but says he relies on locals for most of his business. For every 20 Hong Kong dollars ($2.57) spent by a tourist in his shop, a Hong Kong local would spend approximately 100 Hong Kong dollars ($12.85). Hong Kong people love tea, says Lo.

Kam Yuen Tea House is in the bustling residential and commercial neighbourhood of Sai Ying Pun, west of Hong Kongs central business district.

Beijings liaison office is on a parallel road nearby.

The area was the scene of some of the first provocative acts last year by protesters, who vandalised the Chinese emblem and threw eggs at the building. The police response was harsh, with liberal amounts of tear gas and mass arrests. It was the start of an escalation in violence that has seen protesters fighting and throwing petrol bombs while police use rubber bullets, bean bag rounds and even occasionally live gunfire to quell the unrest.

Lo says he had to close the shop twice when protesters passed by. But he is sympathetic. The students are polite, he continues, the government needs to do better.

It all started earlier in 2019, when the Hong Kong government tried to rush through a new extradition bill. People protested over concerns it would give Beijing a legal avenue for political persecution, but it also stoked deeper resentment over a lack of universal suffrage in Hong Kong.

Growing frustration, shrinking economy

There is also pent-up frustration over stagnating living standards in a city with some of the worlds most expensive real estate, making Hong Kong one of the least affordable places to live on the planet.

The protests against the bill evolved early on into five key demands including the release of protesters arrested during early demonstrations, an independent investigation into harsh police action against protesters and the right to fully vote for legislators and the Chief Executive, the head of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Anti-government protests in Hong Kong over the last six months have frequently turned violent [January 5: Tyrone Siu/Reuters]

After a tumultuous six months, the extradition bill is out, but Chief Executive Carrie Lam remains in.

The unrest has resulted in economic losses amounting to about two percentage points of Hong Kongs gross domestic product (GDP)  the sum of all finished goods and services produced in an economy  according to Financial Secretary Paul Chan.

The economy entered its first recession since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. Recent official estimates showed the economy contracted by 3.2 percent in the third quarter.

As the government sees it: Local social incidents dealt a very severe blow to an economy already weakened by a synchronised global economic slowdown and US-Mainland trade tensions.

Economists forecast the loss of tourism will have a significant impact on Hong Kongs annual GDP.

Iris Pang, Greater China economist with ING Wholesale Banking told Al Jazeera The direct impact of loss of tourism should amount to three percent of GDP. Indirect damage is that the impact of unemployment and underemployment due to the loss of tourism activities will appear in GDP data gradually. These impacts include fall in local consumption.

ING forecasts that Hong Kongs GDP most likely contracted by 2.2 percent in 2019, and will shrink by a further 5.8 percent in 2020.

Chief Executive Lam and her embattled government have drip-fed a series of initiatives to support the economy. The latest for small and medium businesses is four billion Hong Kong dollars ($514m) in stimulus measures including subsidies on water and sewage bills, an instalment system for profits and salaries tax, and training programs.

There are about 340,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Hong Kong, which employ approximately 1.3 million people  or 45 percent of the workforce  in the private sector. In a place known for ease of setting up a business, SMEs make up more than 98 percent of all business establishments.

The Trade and Development Council says government support is vital: The new round of measures will help ease the cash flow of SMEs, which will help restore confidence in affected industries by enabling them to continue their business.

Hong Kong-based Shanghai Commercial Bank Head of Research Ryan Lam told Al Jazeera his analysis shows the governments measures could help boost Hong Kongs GDP by 0.2 percent. It is meaningful, because SMEs are likely to spend funds instead of stashing them under the pillow during a recession.

But for small business owners, like Lo, the government subsidies are not making any difference, especially while there is no end in sight to the unrest: The students have made demands, but the government is not doing anything about it. So its not going to stop.

Tourists from near and far have frequented Lo Bak Juns tea house in Hong Kong for 30 years [Caroline Malone/Al Jazeera]

Hong Kongs entire retail sector is feeling the pinch with data showing overall sales fell 23.6 percent in November compared with the same month in 2018. It was the tenth consecutive month of falling sales, and was only marginally better than the record 24.4 percent year-on-year plunge in October.

Hardest hit were sales of jewellery, watches, clocks, and valuable gifts, which plummeted by 43.5 percent in November; medicine and cosmetics sales slumped by 33.4 percent while clothing fell by 31.9 percent. Even food, alcoholic drinks and tobacco sales dropped by 11 percent.

Chasing an elephant with a pop gun

Enzio von Pfeil, economist and financial adviser with St Jamess Place Wealth Management in Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera the lack of government action to address social ills  expensive housing, income disparity, antiquated education and a lack of competition  is the real problem.

Government measures are akin to chasing an elephant with a pop gun.

There is also the continued uncertainty with the US-China trade negotiations to consider.

Its all going to be pretty gloomy. The structural forces of Hong Kongs domestic problems, the cyclical forces with worsening economic times, and random forces of Trumps political antics, Pfeil said, referring to the US presidents negotiating tactics.

Kam Yuen Tea House, Hong Kong [Caroline Malone/Al Jazeera]

Tommy Wu, senior economist at Oxford Economics, told Al Jazeera: Retail sales and tourist-related sectors are experiencing their worst performance in over a decade and will remain under huge strain as a result of the plunge in inbound tourism and weak domestic sentiment,

This will lead to a spike in unemployment in 2020, said Wu.

Back at Kam Yuen Tea House, Lo says he understands people just do not have the same spending power they used to have.

If I had the money, I would leave Hong Kong. He adds: Just kidding, Im staying.

Lo may be staying but he is having to adjust to a new normal in Hong Kong that has made business and everyday life much harder.

Everyone is heartbroken about Hong Kong,  he says. Im not even going to look at the news today.
This is the terrifying moment a woman in China crashed her car into a hair salon after mistaking the throttle for the brake.

The female driver in the province of Guangdong had sped across a street and rammed another car into the store before her vehicle came to a halt in the thrashed space on New Year's Eve.

One customer who was sitting in a chair was hit while staff and other clients ran for their lives, footage released by local media shows.

Footage shows the woman's car speeding across a street before crashing into a parked car

The driver rammed the parked car through the door before her car came to a halt in the shop

The accident took place at around 7pm on December 31 in Dali town in the city of Foshan, according to Chudian News, an affiliation to Guangdong Broadcast and Television Station.

The woman's car slammed into another vehicle which was parked on the street and pushed the vehicle through the door of the beauty salon before smashing into the business herself.

One employee at the salon was injured, the report said.

The woman was trying to drive her car out of a car park when the blunder happened, according to Passion News, a state-approved news outlet affiliated to the Young Pioneers of China.

Police were investigating the case while the driver and the shop were negotiating compensation, the report said.

The video shows one customer sitting in a chair being hit while staff and other clients run away
The senior population continues growing at a time when the insurance market for senior living operations is under strain and both trends are expected to continue.

The population of Americans over age 80 will double, from 6 million to 12 million, in the next two decades, according to statistics from Harvards Joint Center for Housing Studies, and by 2035, one out of three U.S. households will be headed by someone over 65.

Some of these Americans will find themselves in need of senior living facilities equipped to provide health services ranging from minor services received in independent living facilities to acute care in skilled nursing facilities.

But senior living facility operators are facing challenges when it comes to insurance. Experts working in the sector note that professional liability and general liability premiums have risen in the past year or two and theres no end in sight. Property and commercial auto rates are increasing steadily.

A handful of carriers has left the senior living market and the industry overall is experiencing consolidation. At the same time, the industry is facing continued labor shortages while becoming a target of the plaintiffs bar.

To say the market is challenging is an understatement, according to John Atkinson, managing director, Willis Towers Watson.

Its a rapidly hardening market for the general liability and professional liability lines of business, he elaborated. Weve seen an exit from the marketplace of key carriers. Weve seen profitability issues driving venue constrictions and rate. Weve seen carriers reducing their excess capacity. Weve seen retentions going up and the carriers really trying to focus in on what they view as a rapidly deteriorating litigation environment.

According to M. Brant Watson, senior vice president, at Heffernan Insurance Brokers, even the very best accounts with no loss history are seeing pricing increases at minimum of 12% to 15% overall. But in the worst cases people owning and operating assisted living are looking at premiums doubled and tripled, Watson said.

Its just about every line of coverage, too. For the four major coverage lines (general liability, professional liability, property and auto) there is a lot of pain right now, he said, adding that the only major coverage line that seems to be stable and very competitive is workers compensation.

Were seeing rates continue to increase, retentions and deductibles are higher, said Hoppy Stauffer, senior vice president, Worldwide Facilities.

As an example of drastic change, she cites a market that used to offer a package for senior living facilities but withdrew. Several other markets have followed in similar ways, she said, while others will only write professional liability and general liability with a minimum self-insured retention (SIR) of $100,000 or more. Thats a drastic change, she said. Previously she would find package policies for smaller facilities with deductibles as low as $5,000.

Stauffer says she is also seeing reductions in limits for sexual abuse coverage. Its not all the time, but for some facilities they may have had $1 million/$1 million in coverage but are seeing a reduction in maximum coverage at renewals to maybe $100,000/$300,000.

She is also worried additional markets may exit the senior living space. Several agents and brokers shared their concerns with Insurance Journal about the number of carriers that have drastically reduced or altered their underwriting appetite for senior living risks in the past few years.

Risk Size

Smaller facilities are perhaps facing the biggest hurdles today, according to brokers.

Carriers prefer the larger risks that are willing and able to share more of the risk, according to Worldwide Facilities Stauffer. They want to secure more meat in their premium to offset the losses, she said. Thats smart business for them, but for us brokers, not every client has the ability to do that.

She said smaller senior living group homes are not typically able to secure up to $100,000 in SIR yet they are required to buy insurance. So, its that Catch 22 that were seeing right now, she said.

Dana Kocen, a 14-year veteran healthcare insurance broker, has had similar experience with smaller risks.

When I first started with Burns & Wilcox four years ago, we had a few markets out there who specialized within the smaller facilities world. We were able to place those, she said. But as of right now, for example, we only have maybe two markets who are looking at the smaller facilities, and its getting very, very hard to place them.

Its a rapidly hardening market for the general liability and professional liability lines of business.

Kocen says smaller risks with any claim activity should expect to see premiums triple or more.

The smaller risk, typically 50 beds or less, where businesses are just trying to make a living, potentially if they have one claim, markets wont even take a look at the risk, or theyll increase the premium from maybe an expiring premium of $6,000 to almost $30,000, Kocen said. Weve had a couple of those instances, due to a market completely re-underwriting their book assessment, and theyre taking huge increases on the small businesses.

Brian Lindahl, executive vice president at AssuredPartners, who has been helping senior living facilities secure insurance for more than 30 years, is stunned by the market transformation.

I havent really seen anything change as quickly as this market since around 2000-2001 when we went into a very hard marketplace nationally, particularly for nursing homes and to some extent for assisted living as well, said Lindahl.

While the rising rates are an issue, the real challenge is that markets have exited this space, he says.

A lot of them just feel like theres no way to make money anymore by writing this insurance so they literally pulled out, he said. In a typical year, senior living agents and brokers could count on at least a dozen or more insurance companies to go to. Id say right now at Assured Partners, we probably are down to maybe five companies and my guess is itll shrink from there even more, he said. Theres just not much competition and youve kind of got to take what you get.

Claims and Venues

Claim outcomes in the senior living market are similar across the country and at all levels of services, according to Blaine Thomas, vice president, industry leader for aging services at CNA, one of the largest providers of insurance to the aging services industry.

There is little differentiation between not-for-profit and for-profit facilities or by setting type, such as skilled nursing care, assisted living or independent living,

CNA has seen claims double in some sectors of the industry while average indemnity payments have increased by 60%.

Legal complaints against senior facilities are part of the problem and they are spreading, according to participants in the market.

Kentucky is by far the worst state in terms of senior living litigation, according to Willis Towers Watsons Atkinson. Right now, carriers are really scrutinizing whether or not they want to do business in Kentucky or not, he said.

Kentucky has a unique litigation environment and the patterns of settlements are much higher, Atkinson said. Also, the jury pool tends to be pretty aggressive so verdicts in the state have been really tough. Settlements are going for higher values and the plaintiffs bar in Kentucky is pretty organized so its challenging.

He said California and Florida also continue to be difficult legal venues for senior living litigation, while New Mexico is kind of a new in terms of a difficult venue, along with New York and Oklahoma.

Lindahl says that even the very best insureds fair poorly with insurance in these tough venues. You can take the best senior living facility community in the world and put it in one of those venues and it could still perform poorly just because of the environment, because of the laws, he added.

Lindahl says another driver of todays market is the unpredictable nature of claims in the sector.

Sometimes an insurance company might think, OK, well they did something wrong. This is probably a $50,000 claim. Then maybe it ends up being a $1 million claim. And then other times the same claim ends up being a $50,000 claim, he said. When the insurance carriers have a hard time really analyzing where the price should be, they dont like that. Its not actuarily determinable for what they should be charging.

Despite their rapid growth, Lindahl believes senior living operators today are better than hes ever seen. Regulation of the industry is great, and the oversight is great, he said. Its just the legal environment thats driving claims; not the quality of care.

Helping Operators

What can agents and brokers do to help their senior living accounts contend with todays market and legal conditions?

I think our job as brokers is really to help a client become more defensible, Lindahl said. Its not necessarily to go in and help them provide better care, although well do that in some way, too.

For example, agents can advise nurses in skilled nursing or assisted living facilities on how to better document a patients file, which may help them to be less of a target to the plaintiffs bar, he said.

Agents can help identify a senior living facilitys weaknesses and strengths so if they do face a claim, they are prepared to defend themselves. If we can help our clients prove that theyre giving great care, were helping them, he added.

Also agents can help facilities manage the current insurance cycle by making sure they are providing all the details when submitting accounts to market, according to Art Seifert, president, Glatfelter Program Managers.

When you get into a hardening market like today, more information is better, he said. If an account has any large loss, that loss needs to be well-researched and explained. You need to take the time to research those losses and to be able to tell a story about it in the most positive light possible, Seifert advised.

Maybe its that theres been a change in the director of nursing and ever since that director of nursing came on board, the last three years, the losses have been great, he said. Perhaps an old director of nursing was the culprit under past losses but that person was fired. Whatever it might be, you need to look at all the details carefully and come up with a story that can convince underwriters that the accounts worth looking at, Seifert said.

Every detail counts in todays hard senior living market because theres almost no incentive for underwriters to even look at business theyre afraid of, Seifert said.

Seifert added that todays industry is challenging especially for a younger generation of agents. A lot of agents have frankly never sold in a hard market, he said. That means learning how to have very difficult conversations with their insureds. For many years the market has been disingenuous in pricing risk, he said. And now all of a sudden were getting honest about where the risk needs to be priced.

Going Forward

All indications for 2020 point to a difficult senior living insurance market, says Matthew Wasta, vice president, APU Senior Care at AmWINS Group. Its a rapidly evolving market and several carriers have pulled out. Those that remain are taking a hard look at their rates, the limits they put out, and their participation in this market, he said.

Linda Stueber, vice president, middle market underwriting and business development, at Nationwide recommends that facilities also pay close attention to who they admit as residents going forward. That might help to reduce exposure to liability losses, she says.

Some folks are reluctant to do background checks on residents, but there have been situations where communities admit a resident who is a past sex offender and thats something to think about, she said. Were not advocating that they should deny residency or evict someone because of that but its something that they may want to consider.

Another area that in her view could be an issue is medical marijuana. Its a hot topic these days, especially in states where its legal, she said. Facilities have to look at that differently depending on the laws in the state and what the residents want.

Lastly, she recommends paying attending to acuity creep. That is where a residents cognitive or physical abilities decline to the point at which facility staff becomes unable to adequately care for them. Acuity creep has the potential to lead to claims activity, she says. Sometimes a community will stretch to keep folks in assisted living when perhaps they really need full nursing home care.

Most importantly, Wasta says agents should be cautious in such turbulent times when submitting new business. My best advice to agents would be to put forth the highest quality submission possible with the most detailed information they can obtain, he said. Carriers now are not giving a pass to folks that dont provide complete information. And youll get the best terms possible with the best information.

Republished from the Nov. 18, 2019 issue of Insurance Journal Magazine.

Topics Carriers Trends Agencies Profit Loss Market Kentucky
Kildare Council Chamber hosted the 2019 Liam OConnell memorial debate, chaired by local District Court judge Desmond Zaiden on Monday, December 2. Twenty-one students from seven local schools argued the proposition that: The legal age for the purchase of alcohol is perversely supporting the unhealthy drinking culture in our country.

This parliamentary-style debate was established in memory of the late educator and political activist Liam OConnell. Colleague and debate organiser Mayor Suzanne Doyle said that it is a fitting tribute given Liams focus was on encouraging young people to use their voice in relation to politics.

Councillor Carmel Kelly explained that our use of the Council Chamber provides students with an experience of what it is like to function in local democracy, especially the challenges around finding consensus through debate.

This style of debate simulated the experience of real parliamentary business and challenged speakers to think on their feet. Alcohol is always a contentious subject as demonstrated by the Public Health Alcohol Act which took over 1,000 days to get through the Houses of Oireachtas.

All the school teams formulated and delivered thought-provoking arguments on the night leaving an extremely tough job for the judges, who witnessed excellent demonstrations of humorous, well-researched and informative public speaking from all the teams that represented themselves, their schools and families with great distinction.

Judge Zaidan highlighted this in his address to the chamber; however he also used the opportunity to highlight the contributory role that alcohol plays in his courtroom and that it is enmeshed across criminal, domestic and juvenile law hearings. He went on to state that 75% of prisoners have a link to problematic alcohol or other drug use.

Teresa Murray, chair of the Regional Drug & Alcohol Task Force and co-sponsor of the debate, stated that young people need to be protected from the harms associated with alcohol, especially in light of HSE data that 74% of 15 to 16 year olds drink alcohol. Some 22% of these have become involved in a serious argument as a result, with 26% being harassed by a stranger while under the influence.

Applause greeted the announcement that the overall winning team of Sean Gallagher, Matthew Morrin, and David Burrowes take the Liam OConnell trophy back to Pipers Hill, while Caoimhe Reilly won the award for outstanding speaker representing Kildare Town Community School.

All the participants received a book, with thanks to Kildare Library Service, to acknowledge their participation and contribution to an excellent evening of informed debate.

The judging panel was Stephen OBrien, political editor with Sunday Times, Rioghnagh Bracken, solicitor, and Gavan McLaughlin, auditor of the Maynooth University Literary & Debating Society

Teams took part from Naas CBS, Gael Cholaiste Chill Dara, Pipers Hill, St Marys Community College, St Wolstans, Kildare Town Community School, Newbridge and Patrician Secondary School, Newbridge.

The participants and judges. Pictures: Aishling Conway
On Sunday, President Donald Trump's most senior national security advisers joined him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where Trump was beginning the second week of his holiday vacation. The officials told reporters that U.S. F-15 Strike Eagles had just attacked Iran-sponsored militia groups at their bases in Iraq and Syria, in response to a series of rocket attacks that had culminated in the death of an American contractor two days earlier.

But privately, a different topic had come up with an agitated president: whether to kill Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who military leaders described as responsible for the attack of an American citizen and likely to kill more.

Why Trump chose this moment to authorize the operation against the leader of Iran's Quds Force, after tolerating Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf for months, was a matter of debate within his own administration. Officials gave differing and incomplete accounts of the intelligence they said prompted Trump to act. Some said they were stunned by his decision, which could lead to war with one of America's oldest adversaries in the Middle East.

"It was tremendously bold and even surprised many of us," said a senior administration official with knowledge of high-level discussions among Trump and his advisers, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

On Friday, hours after a U.S. drone killed Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader at the Baghdad airport, senior State Department officials told reporters that Iran had been plotting "imminent attacks directed at killing hundreds of Americans" but declined to offer specifics. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told CNN on Friday that Soleimani "was actively plotting in the region to take actions, the big action as he described it, that would have put dozens if not hundreds of American lives at risk. We know it was imminent."

On Capitol Hill, officials briefed lawmakers and staff but didn't provide any details about the alleged Iranian targets or what made them imminent, according to people who were present.

Some analysts were skeptical about the need to kill Soleimani.

"There may well have been an ongoing plot as Pompeo claims, but Soleimani was a decision-maker, not an operational asset himself," said Jon Bateman, who served as a senior intelligence analyst for Iran at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "Killing him would be neither necessary nor sufficient to disrupt the operational progression of an imminent plot. What it might do instead is shock Iran's decision calculus" and deter future attack plans, Bateman said.

In a conference call with reporters, national security adviser Robert O'Brien said Friday evening that the strike on Soleimani happened after he recently visited Damascus and was plotting to target U.S. military and diplomatic personnel.

"This strike was aimed at disrupting ongoing attacks that were being planned by Soleimani and deterring future Iranian attacks through their proxies or through the . . . Quds Force directly against Americans," O'Brien said.

Defense officials described Soleimani's planning as part of a continuation of earlier Iranian provocations, including the mining of ships in the Persian Gulf in May. A month later, Trump called off an airstrike at practically the last minute - an attack that had been intended to retaliate for Iran downing a U.S. surveillance drone.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a meeting with reporters on Friday that Soleimani was killed after U.S. officials recently became aware of intelligence that showed that the "size, scale, scope" of what he was planning led them to conclude there was a greater risk in not taking action than in doing so.

"Is there risk? Damn right there's risk," Milley said of possible Iranian reactions to the killing one of the nation's most prominent leaders. "But we're mitigating, and we think we're taking appropriate mitigations."

"The ball is in the Iranian court," Milley said. "It is their choice what the next steps are."

It may be days or weeks before U.S. officials know how Iran will respond. But the rapid sequence of events that led to Soleimani's death made clear that a decades-old conflict has reached a fever pitch.

- - -

The immediate roots of the current crisis can be traced to the Friday after Christmas, when a barrage of missile fire exploded at K-1, a joint U.S.-Iraqi base on the southern edge of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Of about 30 rockets that American officials said were fired at the air base several hours after sundown, nine landed within the sprawling facility.

American officials quickly blamed Kataib Hezbollah, a powerful militia group they say receives funding and arms from Iran. In addition to wounding three U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi federal police, officials said the attack killed an American interpreter, whose identity has not been made public. That person had been working alongside a force of about 100 U.S. personnel on the base as part of the campaign against the Islamic State.

While the attack evoked the frequent rocket fire that rained down on U.S. troops in Baghdad and other locations in the years following the 2003 invasion, they have been uncommon in recent years. The United States has found itself in the odd position of fighting on the same side as Iranian-backed militias against the Islamic State. But the rocket attacks resumed in recent months as the Trump administration has continued its "maximum pressure" campaign of economic sanctions against Iran, growing in intensity until the Kirkuk attack.

"Thirty-one rockets aren't designed as a warning shot. That's designed to inflict damage and kill," Milley told reporters before the Soleimani strike.

U.S. officials were disappointed Iraq had not publicly condemned the Kirkuk attack and questioned the government's willingness to check militias loyal to their powerful neighbor.

Almost exactly 48 hours after the Kirkuk attack, American F-15 jets unleashed bombs on five militia sites. The targets included command nodes and weapons depots in Bu Kamal, Syria, and al-Qaim, Iraq, border outposts on either side of the Iraq-Syria border. Speaking later that day after meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the attack was successful but also hinted at discussion of "other options" being considered.

"We will take additional actions as necessary to ensure that we act in our own self-defense and we deter further bad behavior," he said.

The strikes created an immediate political crisis in Baghdad, where officials were given little notice of the plans by their chief Western ally to attack militias linked to their powerful neighbor.

The backlash was particularly fierce from militia leaders.

"The response will be harsh for the American forces in Iraq," warned Jamal Jaafar Ibrahimi, deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Forces, better known as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. (Also the founder of the Kataib Hezbollah militia, al-Muhandis was killed in the U.S. strike on Soleimani.)

Two days later, on Tuesday, thousands of militia supporters converged on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, throwing molotov cocktails and breaching the secure compound's walls before setting up a protest camp outside. As militiamen set fire to a reception area, smoke billowed out of the facility that had once symbolized U.S. influence and might in Iraq. Inside the compound, staff hunkered down in safe rooms. Military leaders immediately dispatched about 100 Marines to Baghdad, then sent another 750 troops to remain on standby in Kuwait.

Tensions appeared to subside the following day, when militia leaders issued instructions for the demonstrators to depart and the government appealed for calm. American officials, however, were exasperated that Iraqi leaders had responded slowly and government security forces stood by while the militiamen laid siege to the embassy.

- - -

At his resort in Florida, the president was told the Iranian leader was going to be coming to Baghdad; senior officials felt he was taunting the United States by showing up in the Iraqi capital, implying he could move around with impunity.

Calls between the national security principals were convened by the vice president throughout the week after initial discussions on Sunday to kill Soleimani, a senior administration official said.

Officials reminded Trump that after the Iranians mined ships, downed the U.S. drone and allegedly attacked a Saudi oil facility, he hadn't responded. Acting now, they said, would send a message: "The argument is, if you don't ever respond to them, they think they can get by with anything," one White House official said.

Trump was also motivated to act by what he felt was negative coverage after his 2019 decision to call off the airstrike after Iran downed the U.S. surveillance drone, officials said. Trump was also frustrated that the details of his internal deliberations had leaked out and felt he looked weak, the officials said.

The United States tracked Soleimani's movements for several days, keeping Trump apprised, and decided that their best opportunity to kill him would be near the Baghdad airport, the senior administration official said.

Trump also had history on his mind. The president has long fixated on Benghazi and the Obama administration's response to it, say lawmakers and aides who have spoken to him, and felt the response to this week's attack on the embassy and the killing of an American contractor would make him look stronger compared to his predecessor.

"Benghazi has loomed large in his mind," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in an interview, explaining the response this week.

Graham was at Mar-a-Lago on Monday and said the president told him he was concerned they "were going to hit us again" and that he was considering hitting the Iranians.

No specific plan was ready to kill him, but it was on Trump's mind, Graham said.

"He was more thinking out loud, but he was determined to do something to protect Americans. Killing the contractor really changed the equation," Graham said.

"He was saying, 'This guy is a bad guy, he's up to no good, we have to do something,' " Graham said.

After the attack, U.S. officials in Iraq braced themselves for a range of possible responses, from direct attacks by Iran to an Iraqi order that U.S. forces and personnel leave the country.

On Friday, Graham said the president described the job as "a tough business."

"I said, 'Yeah, it's a tough business, Mr. President,' " Graham said.

- - -

The Washington Post's Shane Harris and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.
A Starbucks logo is attached in front of a Starbucks store in Jongno, central Seoul. Korea Times file



By Kim Hyun-bin



Starbucks Korea, the country's largest coffee franchise, has been embroiled in controversy as it suggested introducing its already implemented coffee residue recycle program dubbed "coffee bak" as a new alternative social contribution initiative to help small businesses.



The coffee giant had been collecting coffee residue from most of its branches to process them into fertilizer, which was then given to local farmers as a social contribution project. However, controversy rose after Starbucks proposed the same plan to the Korea Federation of Micro Enterprise (KFME) offering to give small businesses the residue as part of a support measure to help them grow.

The move generated a strong backlash claiming the measures had no relevance in aiding small businesses.



"We have been implementing the coffee bak for over five years and it is one of our many campaigns, where we give coffee residue to local farmers to use as fertilizer. Then we buy produce from the farms," a Starbucks official said.



Starbucks has been collecting coffee grounds from most of its stores and partnered with a firm in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province that collects the residue and gives it to local farms in the area, according to the franchise.



Initially, Starbucks was to cooperate with KFME to unveil new growth strategies to aid small businesses.



"At the time, we met up with the KFME once and the coffee residue recycle campaign was not the only social contribution project we offered to small businesses  we have been offering scores of other projects to help local businesses," a Starbucks official said.



"Starbucks has been cooperating with the KFME to establish social contribution projects, we have been trying to cooperate with the group to establish measures to grow together," a Starbucks official said.



In October 2018, the Trade Industry Energy SMES and Startup Committee summoned Lee Seock-koo, then head of Starbucks Korea, to appear before them on claims of Starbucks franchises infringing on business operation regulations during the government inspection.





Lee Seock-koo, then head of Starbucks Korea
Iran's announcement on Sunday that it would abandon limitations on enriching uranium could be the first step towards the end of a 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Monday.

Iran had been expected to announce its latest stance on the deal this weekend. But its announcement coincided with a major escalation of hostilities with Washington following the U.S. killing of top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike on Friday in Baghdad.

"We will definitely talk to Iran again. What has been announced is, however, not consistent with the agreement," Maas told Deutschlandfunk radio, adding that German, French and British officials would discuss the situation on Monday.

"(The situation) has not got easier, and this could be the first step to the end of this agreement, which would be a big loss so we will weigh this up very, very responsibly now."

Iranian state television said Iran would not respect any limits set down in the pact on the country's nuclear work. These include limits on its number of uranium enrichment centrifuges, its enrichment capacity, the level to which uranium can be enriched, the amount of stockpiled enriched uranium and its nuclear research and development activities.

Iran has already steadily overstepped the deals limits on its nuclear activities in response to the United States withdrawal from the accord in 2018 and Washington's reimposition of sanctions that have crippled Irans oil trade.

Under the nuclear deal, Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of most international sanctions.

Asked about Iran's decision to pull back further from its commitments under the agreement, Maas said: "That is a decision that makes the already difficult situation even more difficult. Nobody wants Iran to acquire nuclear weapons."

"What Iran has announced is no longer in accordance with the agreement, so we will sit down today with France and Britain to decide on that - how we respond to that this week," he added. "We can't put up with that without reacting."

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As Australian authorities battle to tackle the bushfires raging across the country, reports of death of half a billion wild animals in the inferno in New South Wales made the Twitterati discuss the enormity of the situation, with fears that the situation may worsen.

#PrayForAustralia trended on Twitter with 1.07 million tweets.

One user listed the number of people and animals that had perished in the fires. He said that apart from 24 people, 8K koalas, 500M other animals were dead. More than 1,400 homes were destroyed, over 5.5 million hectares burned, and more than 10 million people faced toxic bushfire smoke, he added.

Twitterati posted pictures of animals burnt to death or those rescued by firefighters and others.

Humanity Is Living over Australia 



Epic Picture #PrayForAustralia pic.twitter.com/rz71MAJGMb  To Raina   (@Itz_TomVJ) January 5, 2020

I'LL PRAY FOR YOU,

STAY SAFE 

All animals, koalas kangaroos and all peoples #PrayForAustralia pic.twitter.com/XDsgfdsGkq  SYNOM34N (@synom34n) January 5, 2020

We want to give you guys an update on the state of the fires  affecting your Aussie mates & how you can help!! #PrayForAustralia pic.twitter.com/FbVTY8MOp4  Human Rights Defence (@HRDefence) January 5, 2020

A user wrote: This is just heartbreaking. Please pray for Australia.

One said: Lets pray together for rain in Australia.

A post read: Lets pray hard for them. There are not only humans, but also thousands of animals which are affected.

Some scary and hair-raising videos of the bushfires that has shocked netizens.

A fire front stretching for kilometres  Half a billion animals have been killed and the fires are no where near under control #PrayForAustralia pic.twitter.com/azzv8T6eMy  Human Rights Defence (@HRDefence) January 5, 2020

Damn, these Australian bush fires are crazy. pic.twitter.com/D0FWxRQjEA  Wawzh  (@Wawzh) January 2, 2020

#PrayForAustralia. Pray for heavy rain over there. God, please show us Your mercy. We realized that we dont take good care of this earth as you want us to do, read one tweet.

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Beginning New Years Day, it became a lot more expensive for Illinoisans to trade in a car and this has auto dealers, particularly in border areas, bracing for lost business.

Maybe a tax like this would make sense in someplace like Hawaii, where there arent any neighboring states. But for a state like Illinois in the middle of the country, it makes no sense at all, said Jamie Auffenberg, who owns auto dealerships in Belleville and OFallon.

Heres how the new tax works.

Lets say youre trading in a car valued at $20,000 to buy a new vehicle for $35,000. Right now, youd pay sales tax on the difference between the trade-in and the new car: $15,000. Applying Illinois average state and local sales tax rate of 8.74%, the sales tax on this deal is $1,311.

The sales tax bill on that same transaction will go up nearly $900 next year.

Under the new law, a maximum of $10,000 in trade-in value will be exempt from the sales tax. So, in our example, instead of paying sales tax on $15,000, youd have to pay sales tax on $25,000.

Its a basic law of economics that when something becomes more expensive, demand for it goes down.

So, under this new tax regime, fewer cars will likely be sold. This means auto dealers will earn less, employ fewer people and pay less in income taxes.

The most frustrating thing about this is that Illinois keeps raising taxes and it doesnt solve anything, Auffenberg said. The state keeps raising taxes and raising taxes and the state is in worse financial shape today than it was 10 years. Its time for state government to look for places to cut.

The new tax is expected to raise $60 million for Gov. J.B. Pritzkers infrastructure plan. But one thing that projection doesnt take into account is how innovative car buyers may be in avoiding the tax.

Illinois once taxed car leases at a much higher rate than neighboring states, Auffenberg noted.

In our area, 30 to 40 percent of the people work in Missouri. What we witnessed was people registering their cars under their business address in Missouri to avoid paying the tax in Illinois. People will do all sorts of things to avoid paying an extra $1,000 or $2,000 in taxes. I expect the same thing will happen with this tax. It may not happen as much in someplace like Springfield but in border areas, it will take place.

Joe McMahon, director of government affairs of the Illinois Car Dealers Association, said the tax is fundamentally unfair.

You already paid sales tax when you bought the vehicle the first time around, he said. And now they want to tax you for it again. Thats not right.

The trade-in tax is coupled with several other vehicle-oriented taxes that also were approved by the Legislature.

Residents wont just pay more to sell their car. Theyll also pay more to drive it, park it and get a license plate renewal sticker.

The registration fee for regular passenger vehicles jumped to $151 from $101 on Jan. 1. The Illinois motor fuel tax rose from 19 cents to 38 cents per gallon on July 1, making the Land of Lincolns gasoline tax No. 3 in the nation.

And lawmakers also imposed a new tax on private parking that also went into effect this week.

Legislative leaders agreed on the tax hikes behind closed doors and presented them to the General Assembly a day and one half before adjournment. Neither businesses nor ordinary citizens had much opportunity to weigh in on the proposal.

Thats not how democracy is supposed to work. But its business as usual in Illinois.

And thats unfortunate.

Scott Reeder is a veteran statehouse journalist and freelance reporter. He can be reached at ScottReeder1965@gmail.com.
Along with lobbing a few mortar shells, Irans regime has responded to the killing of General Soleimani by offering $80 million to anyone who delivers the head of President Trump:

The mullahs of Iran have placed an $80 million bounty on the head of President Donald Trump in revenge for the hit that killed Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani. Iranian state television announced the bounty, framing it as an offer on behalf of the Iranian people. If everyone anywhere in the world supports our initiative in Mashhad, on behalf of all of Irans people  80 million Iranians  and each puts aside $1 US, it would equal $80 million, the report said. And we would give this $80 million, on our own behalf, as a gift to anyone who brings the head of the person who ordered the murder of the grand figure of our revolution.

This is the emptiest of threats, of course. No one will do any such thing.

Further, Iran says that it is walking away from its commitments under the Obama/EU nuclear deal:

Iran effectively abandoned the nuclear deal between itself and world powers Sunday as the fallout from the U.S. killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani Friday intensified. Iran said it would no longer abide by any and all operational restrictions on its enrichment of uranium, a key part of the terms of the 2015 nuclear accord that prevented Iran from acquiring sufficient material to build a nuclear bomb.

This, too, is meaningless, as Iran got what it wanted from the nuclear deal up frontbillions of dollars and relief from sanctions. Its compliance thereafter has been strictly optional and Iran has always been prepared to walk away from the agreement at its convenience, putting aside the fact that it has been violating its undertakings from the beginning.

However, Iran said it was open to negotiation and would willingly return to full compliance with the deal if the U.S. lifts economic sanctions imposed against it.

Of course it would! If sanctions are removed, the mullahs are willing to enter into another unenforceable agreement! In other words, they would be happy to sell the same bridge twice.

Curiously, the Iranian regimes news outlet, FARS, says nothing about either the bounty on President Trumps head or the withdrawal from the nuclear deal. Instead, it applauded the Communist group ANSWER that held an antiwar rally in Times Square.

The mullahs also hailed the Iraqi Parliaments toothless vote on the presence of foreign troops. And they threatened to raze Israel, which as far as we know had nothing to do with killing Soleimani:

If the US takes any action after our military response, we will level Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground, Secretary of Irans Expediency Council Mohsen Rezayee said minutes into Monday.

Finally, in a bit of dark comedy, the mullahs protested bitterly against Instagrams deletion of posts honoring Soleimani:

Many people who have posted photos of the late commander on Instagram pages have later complained that the social media platform has removed their posts or photos under the pretext that they violated the rules of the community. The Iranian lawyers lambasted the move, describing it as clear violation of human rights. Ali Bahadori Jahromi, the head of lawyers center of the judiciary, told FNA that the Instagram and Twitter users who showed their sentiments towards General Soleimani after assassination faced automatic removal of their posts by the social media platforms. He described the move a violation of the freedom of speech and human rights.

The Iranian mullahs, principled defenders of free speech and human rights! You cant make this stuff up.

All of this bluster means nothing, obviously. Presumably the mullahs are mulling some sort of military response, but my guess is that they will ponder it for a while and probably, in the end, choose to de-escalate while also trying to save face.
Claims of age discrimination by workers who are forced to retire at 65 are set to skyrocket this year, according to an employment law solicitor.

Richard Grogan said his practice has seen the number of cases taken on these employment equality grounds more than quadruple over the past four years.

He said many workers have inadequate private pensions, while increases in the State pension age mean many need to work longer.

The Workplace Relations Commission does not publish details of the number of cases taken on this basis.

However, a number of recent cases have highlighted the issue. They include an unfair dismissal claim successfully taken by a lorry driver against Longford County Council who said he was forced to retire at 66. The council was ordered to reinstate him in his job and allow him work until 70 in a decision issued last year.

The previous year, the Workplace Relations Commission ordered RTE to pay former broadcaster Valerie Cox 50,000 for forcing her to quit her role when she turned 65.

Under Irish law, it is not illegal for employers to set a compulsory retirement age. But there has to be "objective justification" for it or they can face discrimination claims.

"Two years ago, age discrimination claims were very, very, rare," said Mr Grogan. "They were all about workers who didn't get a promotion and a younger person did.

"In the last two years there has been an exponential increase in the number of cases."

He said they are now being taken by workers who claim they were forced to retire.

"They're individuals coming to 65 and told 'it's January 3, you're 65, goodbye'."

Three or four years ago, it would have been about three or four cases a year, now there's someone every month.

"Other employment solicitors are all saying they are seeing a significant increase in this area of work. In my own view, in 2020 we're going to see these cases take off and skyrocket. I believe there is a huge build-up."

He said some people want to keep working and feel they are being thrown on the scrap heap, or their pension took a hit during the recession. He said others have no pension.

Mr Grogan said employers argue retirement is necessary to enable other careers to progress, or claim there are health and safety issues and they "cannot get insurance for 75-year-old scaffolders".

He said most employers settle claims due to fears about bad publicity.

He added that legislation needs to ensure compulsory retirement ages are not lower than the State pension age unless the employer can produce a documented and robust justification.
us troops plane

CAPT. ROBYN HAAKE/US ARMY/AFP via Getty Images

Iraq's parliament passed a resolution that told the government to end the presence of foreign troops in the country and restrict the use of its resources.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi called for the resolution "for the sake of our national sovereignty."

The vote was one of the first moves in the country's response to the US killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian military official.

Shortly after the vote, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly defended the ongoing presence of US troops in Iraq, saying he was "confident the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there."

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Iraq's parliament passed a resolution on Sunday that said the government should end the presence of foreign troops in the country, and restrict the use of its resources.

"The government commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting Islamic State due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory," the resolution read, according to Reuters. "The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason."

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi called for the parliament to move to end the presence of foreign troops in the country, saying Sunday that a vote was necessary "for the sake of our national sovereignty."

Though it is a non-binding resolution, it was an early move from the country in its response to the US airstrike that successfully killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian military official.

iraqi parliament

Handout via REUTERS

The strike set off concerns among American lawmakers and international authorities about a possible escalation in tensions with the Middle East, though President Donald Trump's administration has insisted the targeted mission was a necessary response and a move towards peace.

Story continues

Shortly after the special vote was reported, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly defended the presence of American troops in Iraq, saying on "Fox News Sunday" that he was "confident the Iraqi people" support a continued US presence and blamed the prime minister's close ties to Iran for the vote.

"The prime minister is the acting prime minister," Pompeo told host Chris Wallace. "He's under enormous threats from the very Iranian leadership that we are pushing back against and we're confident the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there."

As of March 2019, the US had an estimated 5,200 troops in Iraq.

Read more:

General Qassem Soleimani's body arrives in Iran as Trump issues new threats to target 52 Iranian sites 'VERY FAST AND VERY HARD'

Pentagon officials reportedly presented Trump with the option of killing a top Iranian commander, not thinking he'd actually do it

How Trump's decision to strike a top Iranian commander unfolded at Mar-a-Lago

Read the original article on Business Insider
KABUL (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 06th January, 2020) Zalmay Khalilzad, US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation at the State Department, has arrived in Qatar for the latest set of bilateral peace talks with the Taliban, a Sputnik correspondent reported on Sunday, with many leading Afghan officials hopeful that a binding agreement can be signed between the two sides.

The US special envoy to Afghanistan canceled previous peace talks in December after a Taliban attack on a US military base resulted in the deaths of two civilians and left more than 70 people injured.

Mawlawi Qalamuddin, head of the Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, told reporters that talks could now progress and result in the signing of an agreement between all parties.

The Afghan government is also hoping for a positive result from the resumed bilateral negotiations, despite ongoing clashes between Afghan National Army and the Taliban. Earlier on Sunday, the Afghan National Army thwarted a car bomb attack on a military base in Kandahar province, according to a police spokesman's statement seen by a Sputnik correspondent.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Peace Affairs, Najia Anwari, said in a video clip shared with reporters that the government is hoping that the upcoming peace talks will lead to eventual conclusions that will have a significant impact in Afghanistan.

The spokeswoman added that any agreement opens the door for further international dialogue.

The Afghan government has consistently reiterated that a ceasefire and intra-Afghan talks are its primal objectives. The Taliban has long refused to negotiate directly with the Afghan government.

The US held a number of peace talks with the Taliban throughout 2019 in a bid to encourage the group to cut the ties with terrorists and begin rapprochement with the Afghan government, paving the way for US troops to pull out. No significant results have so far been achieved during these talks.

Afghanistan has struggled to contain the Taliban movement for almost two decades. The conflict-stricken country continues to serve as a breeding ground for various insurgent and militant groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State terrorist organizations (both groups banned in Russia).
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NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2020 / Lanfranco Pescante is one of the two owners and managing partners of the Nocturnal Hospitality Group. At only thirty-three years old, Mr. Pescante has a vast Nightclub and restaurant hospitality background, stemming back to his childhood in Italy where he moved from at age seventeen, alone, to follow the American dream.Mr. Pescante began his journey as a dishwasher and worked his way up the ladder. He worked every single position in a restaurant and bar, moving up faster than anyone else in the industry. Along with his long time best friend David Anderson, he created the company that revolutionized events in central Florida and has produced countless events with artists ranging from Nelly to Avicii, in accordance with upholding profitable day to day venue operations.His fairy tale success story began with 1000+ guest house parties, dating back to the early 2000's. They became so popular and organized with bartenders, valet, security that they had more people than clubs. "Eventually, the club owners in town noticed and hired us. We rapidly progressed into bar and club promotions and further grew to large scale concert production and developing & managing bar-centric hospitality concepts. We brought numerous entertainers and celebrities to central Florida, huge renowned artists ranging from Avicii to Nelly. Then eventually we wanted to open our own concept and that is where the dream of Franklin Manor began," he recalls.From the very start, Mr. Pescante has always loved the industry, and knew that he wanted to form a part of it. "From the early days night clubs were my getaway. I LOVE PEOPLE, I love the night life, I love the thrill of it, I love everything about it. I love seeing guests happy enjoying their time at my venues, or when I used to throw concerts seeing 5000 people all cheering for their favorite artist and forgetting, for a short period of time, their troubles, sadness, and daily life problems," he shares.What sets Mr. Pescante apart are his people skills and ability to manage. He excels in the financial and operations side of the business, and is an ideal figure head of the company. People love him because he is genuine and humble and never forgets where he came from. He also is a strong leader for his team, willing to jump in for any position, if needed. He leads by example and rolls up his sleeves when the time is needed. But what sets him apart the most, is that no matter what, he doesn't give up."I just don't know how to give up, no matter if it is a huge business deal or a small chore I don't know how to give up or lose, never have never will. I am relentless in accomplishing goals whether personal or business wise," he says.When it comes to the question of what he wants his legacy to be, Mr. Pescante has the following to say, "Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to be the best at everything I did. I always had visions of grandeur, like I mentioned many times throughout this interview, I truly love to see others happy, its my biggest trait so I'd like people to remember me for always being the guy that brought a bunch of cool places to their town, who always threw the most insane best events/parties in town, and the guy that never gave up when everyone thought he couldn't do it. But honestly, it would be great to be known as a huge heart and someone that helped Tampa bay grow to a big city".He currently has two more top-notch projects opening in early 2020."An Asian fusion restaurant called Shibui opening in downtown Tampa & La Pergola an Italian high end restaurant opening in downtown St. Pete. I am also opening the first ever celebrity chef driven event and wedding venue in USA. Lately, my thrill has switched to creating new concepts for people to enjoy, the best part about it is transforming a dream on paper to the opening day when it actually opens," he says.Mr. Pescante is the definition of a leader. He has led himself and those around him to success through the widely successful Nocturnal Hospitality Group. He fought relentlessly for his American dream, and without ever giving up, made it happen.To follow this entrepreneur's journey, please click here.Contact Information:Paula Henderson202-539-7664phendersonnews@ gmail.com SOURCE: VIP-Media
Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan has insisted that a State commemoration for members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) who were killed during the War of Independence is not "a commemoration of the Black and Tans".

Mr Flanagan's comments come after Fianna Fail Mayor of Clare Cathal Crowe said he would not be attending the commemoration in Dublin Castle because he believed it to be a betrayal of those who fought for Irish freedom.

Speaking this evening, Mr Flanagan said that the event "is an acknowledgement of the historical importance of both the DMP and RIC".

He added that it is "in no sense a commemoration of the Black and Tans or the Auxiliaries".

Mr Flanagan said office holders like mayors and cathaoirligh have been invited as representatives of their county, city or party and not in a personal capacity.

He said there is "no question but that there are very real sensitivities involved here."

He said the RIC found itself "on the wrong side of history" and said it should be noted that the vast majority of Irish people that served as army or police officers "did so with honour and integrity".

Mr Flanagan said: "That is why it is disappointing to see some public representatives abandon the principles of mutual understanding and reconciliation in an effort to gain headlines.

"This attitude, combined with a distortion of the nature of the commemoration, is ill becoming of any public representative and represents a step backwards to a more narrow-minded past characterised by a hierarchy of Irishness."

He said there are complexities in Irish history which are highlight when many people research their family background and often discovering ancestors who served in the army or police as well as playing a role in the fight for an Irish Republic or Home Rule.

Mr Flangan said historian Diarmuid Ferriter and others have highlighted this in his writing noting that Michael Collins uncle served in the RIC while the author Sebastian Barry had one grandfather in the British Army and another who was an Irish Republican.

He added: "The actor Michael Fassbenders great grandfather was in the RIC while Fassbender is also related to Republican leader Michael Collins.

"So many other Irish families share this complex history and these facts should be explored and acknowledged as all the threads of our history, within families and as a nation, make us who we are today as a people."

Mr Flanagan said he is happy to endorse the recommendation of the Expert Advisory Group on Centenary Commemoration that the place in history of the RIC and DMP be remembered.

Meanwhile, the Mayor of Fingal County Council Cllr Eoghan OBrien has become the latest politician who says he will boycott a commemoration.

I feel that to commemorate these arms of British rule in Ireland that acted in opposition to the aims of Irish independence is wrong," he said.

The Fianna Fail councillor said he respects the rights of people that do want to attend.

But he added that from the feedback hes gotten the feeling is overwhelmingly that the Government has gotten this badly wrong.

The Sligo Cathaoirleach, Fianna Fails Tom MacSharry also said this evening that he wont be going to the event.

He said: I do not wish to be associated with any event that would indirectly commemorate the actions of the Black and Tans.

Earlier on Monday, the Lord Mayor of Cork City John Sheehan said he feels his attendance would be "inappropriate" as a former holder of his office, Tomas MacCurtain was shot dead by RIC members during the War of Independence.

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald has also called on the Government to cancel the event.

She said: "The Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police were not merely police forces - as the Minister for Justice seems to think - but they had a specific role in upholding what was oftentimes martial law and suppressing the will of the Irish people for self-determination and national independence.

"In no other State would those who facilitated the suppression of national freedom be commemorated by the State and I am calling on the government to cancel this proposed State commemoration."

Earlier today, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said it is a shame that some politicians have decided to boycott the State commemoration.

The Taoiseach said Irish members of the two police forces should be commemorated in the same way as Irish soldiers are remembered for their role in fighting with the British Army in World War One.

The Taoiseach said 10 or 15 years ago it was very controversial to commemorate the deaths of soldiers in World War One as some people believed they should not be remembered because they fought for the British.

That has changed, he said, before adding: Now we all accept, or almost all of us accept, that it is right and proper to remember Irish people, soldiers, who died in the First World War and I think the same thing really applies to police officers who were killed - Catholic and Protestant alike who were members of the RIC and the DMP.

Mr Varadkar said the families of the police officers who were killed are still alive and would like to remember them. I think it's a shame that people are boycotting it but the Government stands over the decision to hold it (the commemoration), he added

In a statement on Sunday, Mr Crowe, who is a Fianna Fail general election candidate, said he had no ill feeling towards those who served in the RIC, adding that many of them were decent people.

I do however think its wrong to celebrate and eulogise an organisation that was the strong-arm of the British state in Ireland. The RIC joined army and auxiliaries (Black & Tans) in search parties and raids that resulted in our country-people being killed / tortured or having their homes torched, he added.

Meanwhile, Mr Sheehan told Independent.ie that there will be events this year in Cork remembering Thomas MacCurtain and another mayor of the city, Terence McSwiney who died in 1920.

"The idea that I would go to a commemoration wearing the same chains that he [Mr MacCurtain] wore to commemorate the RIC would be totally inappropriate."

Mr Sheehan said that's not to take away from individuals who had family members who joined the RIC to "better themselves" or in the belief that they were serving their country.

"But to commemorate the RIC as an institution given its history in Cork I dont think would be appropriate," Mr Sheehan added.
06.01.2020 LISTEN

I personally think the time has come for the Ghanaian youth to help end the prophecies of Rev. Owusu Bempah. I say this because the Moslem youth has succeeded in ending the prophecies of Rev. Owusu Bempah on their Imams.

On December 31, 2019, Rev. Owusu Bempah prophesied that whoever is nominated as the running mate to HE John Mahama will die after the 2020 elections. I mean, which God will speak like that? What was the motive behind Rev Owusu Bempah saying that? What does he hope to achieve by instilling fear and panic into the NDC fraternity? Is he saying that so Nana Addo can win the elections because NDC went into the elections without a running mate?

It is five days into the new year but both the peace council and the Christian council have not come out to condemn this guy who continues to ridicule the name of their God. Just imagine what Rev Owusu Bempah would have said about the Imams on Dec. 31, had the Moslem youth not stopped him?

I think the time has come for Ghana to stop Rev. Owusu Bempah from prophesying once and for all. The principle of Boot for Boot should first be tested on Rev. Owusu Bempah. The youth should beat him to teach him a lesson that he cannot use the name of God to bring Ghana down. Ghana is for all of us and we need a peaceful handing-over on January 7, 2021.

Lawrence Appiah-Osei
New Delhi, Jan 6 : The National Convener of Delhi's ruling Aam Aadmi Party Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said his party will run a positive campaign for the February 8 Assembly elections and will not indulge in the politics of abuse.

Speaking to the media, he said the Assembly elections here will be fought on the basis of the AAP government's work.

He urged people to vote for him only if they think the party has done some good work in the last five years.

"Vote for us if you think that we have done work. If we haven't, don't vote for us. I am sure in the last 70 years, no Chief Minister in the country had said this," said Kejriwal.

He said this will be the first election in India where people will vote for schools, hospitals and roads.

"This will be the first time in the history of India that votes will be cast on the basis of improvement in schools, health scheme, roads, free travel for women and free electricity." He said the people have elected the AAP for the city and the BJP for the MCD and the Centre.

"Centre is responsible for the police and land, while the MCD is responsible for garbage," he said adding that people have seen the BJP's work at these levels.

He said his party has worked without discrimination.

"We will go to each house. We will tell them that if the government changes, the work started by us will be stopped. We worked without seeing the political affiliation of the people. We did not see if they are from BJP or Congress. We are not asking them to leave their parties," said Kejriwal.

He said Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who is campaigning for the BJP for the Delhi polls, can highlight issues which he feels the AAP has not addressed.

The 70-member Delhi Assembly will go to the polls on February 8 and the results will be declared on February 11, the Election Commission announced on Monday.
In the 1860s, a typical Texas classroom consisted of rows of desks that faced the front of a class where a teacher would stand and lecture. Student work, presentations and lessons all revolved around memorizing content. At that time in history, teaching students this way adequately prepared them for the limited set of manual, repetitive career opportunities available.

One hundred fifty years and two industrial revolutions later, many classrooms and curricula across Texas still look the same. But not in the El Paso Independent School District, home of the sixth largest city in Texas and 22nd largest city in the U.S. In 2013, the administrators, teachers, students and families decided we wanted something different.

The traditional education model that required students to study one subject one hour at a time and often based a students entire semesters worth of work on whether they passed or failed a single test was outdated. It also left students ill-prepared for todays workforce that requires employees to apply their knowledge concurrently and incorporate career-ready skills like agency, collaboration and oral communication. A true education isnt just what a person knows, its how people apply what theyve learned.

With this in mind, we sought a learning model that would give our students the ability to chart their own courses and get the jobs they dream about - including ones that may not even exist yet. But how would we as administrators and teachers provide our students with this type of education?

In the fall of 2014, we found our answer: project-based learning. We also found a new partner, New Tech Network (NTN), an innovator in school-wide project-based learning and a leading design partner for comprehensive K-12 school change.

Our goal was to move away from a test-driven instructional culture, shift toward assessing career-ready skills in addition to core content knowledge, and embrace this innovative model that aims for students to regularly engage in authentic, complex thinking and problem-solving. We theorized that by engaging students more in their own learning and assessing multiple student learning outcomes, they would be better prepared for a career field of their choice and also improve on end-of-course exams.

Our theory is proving true and the results have been incredible, including:

 Students continue to outperform on all end-of-course exams for both the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 academic years.

 The first middle school data from the 2018-2019 academic year shows strong outcomes including that NTN middle school students consistently outperform non-NTN students across all performance bands in reading and math for both sixth and seventh grades.

Now at nine elementary, middle and high school sites and growing, this model has emerged as a powerful force within the El Paso ISD, transforming both adult learning and engaged student learning. Since the first two academies opened in El Paso in 2015, we will soon have nearly 4,000 El Paso ISD students enrolled to participate in this effective school model focused on providing students with deeper learning experiences.

This type of holistic, innovative learning is a growing trend. El Paso ISD recently hosted superintendents from across Texas who are also finding success with this approach as an effective way to meet student needs and see strong academic growth, particularly for underserved and English-language learner communities.

And now, because of the recently passed transformational school finance reform in the Legislature, every Texas middle and high school has a chance to provide those same choices to students and parents in their districts.

House Bill 3 specifically offers a financial incentive for engaging in school design and professional development. In the Career and Technology Education section of HB 3, campuses that are NTN members qualify for an additional $50 per student allotment.

The old ways of educating students are not producing the results our economy needs or our children deserve. We at the EPISD encourage district and school leaders throughout Texas to take advantage of this historic legislation and prepare students for the careers of tomorrow by exploring all of the opportunies in HB 3, including additional Career and Technology Education courses or - as weve done here in El Paso - the creation of project-based learning schools that better equip our children to live their dreams and change the world.

Cabrera is the superintendent of the El Paso Independent School District.
Bookings for the BS6 Toyota Innova Crysta have begun. The petrol and diesel variants of the BS6 Innova Crysta will be available in both manual as well as automatic transmission options. Prices for the standard Innova Crysta start at Rs 15.36 lakhs while prices for the Touring Sport versions begin at Rs 24.05 lakhs (all prices, ex-showroom, Delhi).

Speaking on the occasion, Naveen Soni, Senior Vice President, Sales and Service, said, The Government, auto industry and oil industry have together worked tirelessly with full commitment to usher in the cleaner BS6 emission norms in record time. Under these norms, the regulatory vehicle emission limits for particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) will be the same irrespective of the size of the car as well as for cars that run on CNG, petrol or diesel. At Toyota, we are committed to bring advanced and environment-friendly technologies to the Indian market and align our concerted efforts with the Governments policies to create a greener and cleaner tomorrow. Since its launch, Innova Crysta has carved a niche for itself and maintained a leading position in the MPV segment. Often referred to as a segment creator for MPVs in India, it continues to be the most preferred MPV in the country with a segment share of 40%. It is indeed a proud moment for us to present BS6 Innova Crysta, as we open bookings for it today at a celebratory price for a limited time period and customer orders for a limited number.

All variants of the BS6 Innova Crysta will come equipped with Vehicle Stability Control (VSC), Hill Assist Control (HAC) and Emergency Brake Signal (EBS) as standard. Bookings for the model and the celebratory prices are valid for a limited period. Deliveries of the BS6 compliant Innova Crysta will begin in February 2020.

Following are the variant wise prices of the BS6 Toyota Innova Crysta:

Petrol



Innova Crysta 2.7 GX MT 7 seater, Manual: Rs 15.36 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.7 GX MT 8 seater, Manual: Rs 15.41 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.7 GX AT 7 seater, Automatic: Rs 16.58 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.7 GX AT 8 seater, Automatic: Rs 16.63 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.7 VX MT 7 seater, Manual: Rs 18.70 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.7 ZX AT 7 seater, Automatic: Rs 21.34 lakhs

Innova Crysta Touring Sport 2.7 VX MT 7 seater, Manual: Rs 19.23 lakhs

Innova Crysta Touring Sport 2.7 ZX AT 7 seater, Automatic: Rs 22.02 lakhs



Diesel



Innova Crysta 2.4 G+ MT 7 seater, Manual: Rs 16.79 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.4 G+ MT 8 seater, Manual: Rs 16.84 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.4 GX MT 7 seater, Manual: Rs 17.17 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.4 GX MT 8 seater, Manual: Rs 17.22 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.4 GX AT 7 seater, Automatic: Rs 18.17 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.4 GX AT 8 seater, Automatic: Rs 18.22 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.4 VX MT 7 seater, Manual: Rs 20.59 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.4 VX MT 8 seater, Manual: Rs 20.64 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.4 ZX MT (B) 7 seater, Manual: Rs 22.13 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.4 ZX MT (IV) 7 seater, Manual: Rs. 22.13 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.4 ZX AT (HB) 7 seater, Automatic: Rs 23.02 lakhs

Innova Crysta 2.4 ZX AT (IV) 7 seater, Automatic: Rs 23.02 lakhs

Innova Crysta Touring Sport 2.4 VX MT 7 seater, Manual: Rs 21.97 lakhs

Innova Crysta Touring Sport 2.4 ZX AT 7 seater, Automatic: Rs 24.06 lakhs

Toyota Innova Crysta  17.18 Lakh Onwards

Toyota | Innova Crysta | Toyota Innova Crysta
A judge has been urged to dismiss 'manufactured' fraud claims against Mike Lynch as the British tech tycoon's trial comes to a close.

The 54-year-old founder of software group Autonomy is accused of artificially inflating his company's value before it was sold to Hewlett Packard (HP) for 9billion in 2011.

But in the High Court yesterday, Lynch's lawyers told Mr Justice Hildyard the 'mishmash' of allegations against their client lacked 'merit and realism'.

Trial: Mike Lynch, the 54-year-old founder of software group Autonomy, is accused of artificially inflating his company's value before it was sold to Hewlett Packard for 9bn

They said: 'Before HP even completed its purchase of Autonomy, HP's board experienced buyer's remorse. The integration of Autonomy was mishandled.

'Since then, HP has been engaged on a witch hunt.'

Now called HP Enterprise (HPE), it says Lynch oversaw efforts to fraudulently inflate Autonomy's value, for example by selling hardware at a loss and booking the transactions as software sales.

It has also accused him of giving contradictory or dishonest evidence. HPE's lawyers claimed he told 'lie after lie' during the trial.

Robert Miles QC, for Lynch, however, questioned HP's 4billion damages claim.

He said: 'The figure was arbitrary and effectively plucked from the air. There was no basis for it.'
The US killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was meant to cripple Tehran's clout in the Middle East, but analysts see the allies of the Islamic Republic closing rank instead.

As the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, Soleimani oversaw Tehran's interventions in regional power struggles from Lebanon and Iraq to Syria and Yemen.

Washington had hoped his killing in a Baghdad drone strike Friday would deal a blow to Iran and its network of proxies -- but the plan appears to have backfired by uniting pro-Iran factions under an "axis of resistance".

"The strike unified the resistance forces and made combatting the United States a priority," said Qassem Qassir, a Lebanese expert in Islamic movements.

"The assassination was a strategic mistake, and the response will be across the region -- not just limited to Iraq," said Qassir. Indeed, pro-Iran factions in Iraq have seized on the strike to secure a political and popular revival.

Kataeb Hezbollah, a vehemently anti-American armed faction in Iraq, said the strike was "the beginning of the end of the US presence in the region".

Iraqi populist cleric Moqtada Sadr swiftly reactivated his Mahdi Army, the notorious militia that fought US troops after the American-led invasion of 2003.

"The Iraqi factions of the resistance must hold an immediate meeting to form the International Resistance Regiments," he tweeted, telling his fighters to "be ready".

Qais al-Khazali, a paramilitary leader and bitter rival of Sadr's, echoed his calls for fighting units to mobilise following the strike on Soleimani.

Khazali also threatened US troops who have been stationed across Iraq since 2014 as part of the global coalition battling the Islamic State group.

On Sunday, Iraq's parliament voted in favour of ousting US troops although the decision rests with the government. "If you don't leave, or if you procrastinate in leaving, you will find a strong Iraqi response that will shake the ground beneath your feat and turn the skies above you into hell," Khazali warned.

Even Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's highest Shiite authority, broke with standard protocol to mourn Soleimani.

In a first, Sistani sent a letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to offer his condolences.

Further afield in Lebanon, Iran-backed Hezbollah said the strike represented a threat to "all the movements, leaders and countries of the axis of resistance".

The killing of "Qasem Soleimani is not an Iranian issue. It concerns the axis of resistance -- it concerns the Muslim world," said the movement's influential head Hassan Nasrallah. Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, meanwhile, called for "direct and swift reprisals" to the strike.

Palestinian movement Hamas slammed it as an "American rampage," and its head Ismail Haniya travelled to Tehran for Soleimani's funeral.

And the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine also urged "a coordinated, comprehensive and continuous response from resistance forces".

"There could be a closing of rank and a reinforcement of the confessionalism," said Karim Bitar of the Paris-based Institute for International and Strategic Affairs.

He said Iran's allies in the region would set economic or political goals aside to prioritise the "emergency security situation" triggered by Soleimani's death.

"Soon enough, this decision by (US President) Donald Trump will be seen as counter-productive," Bitar predicted. Trump has threatened Iran with "major retaliation" if it responds to the strike, openly warning in a tweet on Sunday that US action may even be "disproportionate".

He had already threatened to bomb 52 unspecified targets in Iran if Tehran attacks US interests in the region. "Tehran has the sword of Damocles hanging over its head," Bitar told AFP.

"But the threat of foreign intervention will reunite Iranians of all social classes, both opponents and supporters of the regime," he said. Indeed, unprecedented crowds have turned out in Iran to mourn Soleimani and the four other Revolutionary Guards killed in the US strike.

Ultimately, the assassination could end up bolstering the Iranian government, which will benefit from a phenomenon of "rallying around the flag," Bitar said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Beirut

The consequences of the American assassination of a top Iranian general rippled across the Middle East and beyond on Sunday, with Iran ending commitments it made to limit its nuclear fuel production and Iraqi lawmakers voting to expel U.S. forces from their country.

Steeling for retaliation from Iran, a U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria suspended the campaign it has waged against the Islamic State for years, and hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the street to mourn the assassinated general, Qassem Soleimani.

Warning Iran not to attack, President Donald Trump said the United States had pinpointed 52 targets in Iran  including cultural sites. The sites, he said, represented the 52 American hostages held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, during the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Amid outrage in Iran, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif declared that "targeting cultural sites is a war crime" and predicted that the "end of U.S. malign presence in West Asia has begun."

Trump has said that the killing of Soleimani on Friday was aimed at preventing war. But so far, it has unleashed a host of unanticipated consequences that could dramatically alter where the United States operates. Increasingly, the killing appeared to be generating effects far beyond the U.S.' ability to control.

That may include Iran's nuclear future.

On Sunday, the Iranian government said it was abandoning its "final limitations in the nuclear deal," the international agreement intended to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons. The decision leaves no restrictions on Iran's nuclear program, the statement said, including on uranium enrichment, production, research and expansion.

Iran will, however, continue its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and return to the nuclear deal if the economic sanctions imposed on it are removed and Iran's interests guaranteed, the government said. U.S. sanctions have hit Iran's oil-based economy particularly hard.

Soleimani was a towering figure both in Iran and across the Middle East, where he cultivated proxy militias in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Since he was killed in a U.S. drone strike at the Baghdad airport Friday alongside a powerful Iraqi militia leader, Iran and its partners have stepped up calls for vengeance, although they have yet to follow through on the threats.

U.S. allies have largely kept quiet so as not to put themselves in the line of fire.

Lawmakers in Iraq voted Sunday to require the government to end the presence of U.S. troops in the country after the United States ordered the assassination on Iraqi soil.

The vote will not be final until it is signed by the prime minister, and it was unclear whether Iraq's current caretaker government had the authority to end the relationship with the U.S. military.

Few doubted, however, that the country would take whatever legal actions were necessary to compel a U.S. departure over the coming months. Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi of Iraq drafted the language and submitted the bill approved by Parliament on Sunday, leaving little doubt about his support.

Although the vote in Parliament was 170-0, lawmakers were more divided on the issue of ousting U.S. troops than that tally may suggest.

Many of the 328 members of Parliament, primarily those representing the country's ethnic Kurdish and Sunni Muslim minorities, did not attend the session and did not vote. Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority dominates the Iraqi government.

While groups that grew out of Shiite militia organizations have pushed hard for the expulsion, Sunni Muslim factions and the Kurds have wanted the United States to stay.

The legislation threads a fine needle: While using strong language demanding that the government "end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil and prevent the use of Iraqi airspace, soil and water for any reason" by foreign forces, it gives no timetable for doing so.

It would end the mission approved in 2014 that gave the United States the explicit task of helping Iraqi forces fight the Islamic State. That agreement gave the Americans substantial latitude to launch attacks and use Iraqi airspace.

But the measure would leave in place the Strategic Framework Agreement, which allows a U.S. troop presence in Iraq in some form, although only "at the invitation of the Iraqi government."

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

On Sunday, the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria said that it would pause its yearslong mission of fighting the Islamic State and training local forces in both countries.

A pullout of the estimated 5,200 U.S. troops in Iraq could cripple the fight against the Islamic State, or ISIS, and allow its resurgence. A smaller contingent of about 1,000 U.S. troops are in eastern Syria.

The general's killing unleashed calls for vengeance in both Iraq and Iran and reinforced solidarity among hard-liners and moderates in Iran against the United States. After the vote in Iraq calling on the government to expel U.S. troops, Iranian officials reacted with congratulatory messages.

Hesameddin Ashena, a top adviser to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, wrote on Twitter, "Expanding friendship with our neighbors and domestic unity are the best gifts for protecting our national security."

In Iraq, the attack was seen as a violation of the nation's sovereignty. On Sunday, Iraq's Foreign Ministry said it had summoned the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad. In Iran, it was viewed as tantamount to an act of war. Hossein Dehghan, a military adviser to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told CNN that Iran's response would include an attack on "U.S. military targets."

As the Middle East braced for Iranian retaliation, which analysts said was all but inevitable and U.S. officials said they expected within weeks, Iran and Washington ratcheted up the rhetoric.

Members of Iran's Parliament chanted, "Death to America!" en masse in the chamber Sunday in protest over Soleimani's killing, television footage showed.

The chants came as Trump fired off a series of Twitter ripostes to the growing anger, saying that the United States had already chosen 52 targets in Iran.

Iran summoned the Swiss envoy representing U.S. interests in Tehran on Sunday to protest Trump's threat that Washington would target Iranian sites. And Trump's tweet became a rallying cry among Iranians, many of whom shared it widely on social media with the message, "Attend the funeral for our cultural heritage."

Iran's information and telecommunications minister, Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi, denounced Trump as "a terrorist in a suit."

"Like ISIS, Like Hitler, Like Genghis!" Jahromi said on Twitter. "They all hate cultures. Trump is a terrorist in a suit. He will learn history very soon that NOBODY can defeat 'the Great Iranian Nation & Culture.'"

On Sunday, Kataib Hezbollah, the Iraqi armed group arguably closest to Iran, warned Iraqi troops on bases that also house U.S. forces that they should stay at least 3,000 feet from their U.S. counterparts starting Sunday evening and not allow themselves to be used as human shields.
Democratic Lawmaker Wants to Make Virginia Schools Ammunition-Free

A new law proposed by a Virginia legislator would make it illegal for individuals to possess not only firearms but also ammunition on school grounds.

Democrat Kaye Kory, a Virginia House delegate, is sponsoring House Bill 318, which would amend an existing state law that prohibits firearms on the property of any public, private or religious elementary, middle or high school, including buildings and grounds. Under the proposed law, possessing ammunition at those locations would become a Class 1 misdemeanor punishable by a $2,500 fine and up to a year in prison.

The proposed bill does not make it clear if it is still punishable for an individual who is found with only one round of ammunition, or if he/she had no means of utilizing the ammunition. It could mean that the mere possession of a single round of ammunition counts as a violation.

The current Virginia state law exempts the firearm ban on school grounds if the individual has a valid concealed handgun permit and possesses a concealed handgun while in a motor vehicle in a parking lot, traffic circle, or other means of vehicular ingress or egress to the school. It also states that an individual who possesses an unloaded firearm that is in a closed container, or a knife having a metal blade, in or upon a motor vehicle, or an unloaded shotgun or rifle in a firearms rack in or upon a motor vehicle.

The proposed bill does not specify whether those exemptions extend to a concealed firearm and its ammunition. In order to avoid violating the ammunition ban, a legally permitted concealed carrier might need to remove ammunition from his/her car before parking and leaving the car on school grounds.

Neither the firearm ban nor the proposed ammunition ban affects armed law-enforcement officers or school security personnel.

After the November 2019 election, Democrats successfully seized control of both the Virginia Senate and the House of Delegates. The shift in Virginias General Assembly is expected to result in a shift in the states gun control policy, giving Democratic governor Ralph Northam an opportunity to push forward a package of eight gun control bills he planned to discuss at a special session following the mass shooting in Virginia Beach. The then-Republican-led state legislature dismissed the session.

When I brought the legislature back on July the 9th, I put eight pieces of common-sense gun legislation, things like universal background checksGetting rid of bump stocks, high volume magazines, red flag laws, said Northam during an interview with CNNs John Berman after the November 2019 election. I will introduce those again in January. And Im convinced with the majority now in the House and the Senate, theyll become law and because of that, Virginia will be safer.

Several Virginia counties have proclaimed themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries, an effort to rebuff anti-gun Democrats who continue to push stricter gun laws.
PLANO, Texas, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Siemens Digital Industries Software today announced a partnership with global semiconductor IP leader Arm, that will bring leading edge IP, methodologies, processes and tools together to help automakers, integrators and suppliers collaborate, design and bring to market their next-generation platforms much faster. This partnership was formed to address the increasingly complex challenges facing the industry in developing platforms to realize active-safety, advanced driver assistance, in-vehicle infotainment, digital cockpits, vehicle-to-vehicle/vehicle-to-infrastructure and self-driving vehicles. Key advances in computing and sensor technology are enabling companies to redefine mobility beginning with the integrated circuits and software within automotive electronics systems. The combination of Siemens' and Arm's innovative technologies can help automakers and suppliers deliver tomorrow's electronic design and automotive solutions, today.

The combination of Siemens and Arms innovative technologies can help automakers and suppliers deliver tomorrows electronic design and automotive solutions, today.

Siemens' PAVE360 digital twin environment, featuring Arm IP, applies high-fidelity modeling techniques from sensors and ICs to vehicle dynamics and the environment within which a vehicle operates. Using Arm IP, including Arm Automotive Enhanced (AE) products with functional safety support, digital twin models can run entire software stacks providing early metrics of power and performance while operating in the context of a high-fidelity model of the vehicle and its environment, helping deliver a new future of mobility.

"Developing future transportation solutions requires collaboration across complex ecosystems," said Dipti Vachani, senior vice president and general manager, Automotive and IoT Line of Business, Arm. "Arm technology has been deployed in applications across the whole vehicle for more than two decades, and our collaboration with Siemens redefines what is possible in terms of safety-capable, scalable heterogeneous compute. We see this as an important catalyst for the next wave of automotive semiconductor innovation."

Using Siemens' PAVE360 with Arm automotive IP, automakers and suppliers can simulate and verify sub-system and system on chip (SoC) designs, and better understand how they perform within a vehicle design from the silicon level up, long before the vehicle is built. Arm's automotive IP is helping to democratize the ability to create safety-enabled silicon, bringing it within reach of the entire automotive supply chain. By rethinking IC design for the automotive industry, manufacturers can consolidate electronic control units (ECUs), leading to thousands of dollars in savings per vehicle by reducing the number of circuit boards and meters of wire within the vehicle design. This in turn reduces vehicle weight which can promote longer range electric vehicles.

"In all we do at Siemens, our goal is to provide transportation companies and suppliers the most comprehensive digital twin solutions, from the design and development of semiconductors, to advanced manufacturing and deployment of vehicles and services within cities," said Tony Hemmelgarn, president and CEO at Siemens Digital Industries Software. "Siemens believes collaboration with Arm is a win for the entire industry. Carmakers, their suppliers, and IC design companies all can benefit from the collaboration, new methodologies and insight now sparking new innovations."

Siemens' PAVE360 platform will be demonstrated in the Siemens Mobility booth at the Computer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, January 7  10, 2020. This demonstration of industry-leading technology will showcase Arm's automotive IP and technology from Siemens including Simcenter Prescan software, the Veloce hardware emulator, and Simcenter Amesim software.

Siemens Digital Industries Software is driving transformation to enable a digital enterprise where engineering, manufacturing and electronics design meet tomorrow. The Xcelerator portfolio helps companies of all sizes create and leverage digital twins that provide organizations with new insights, opportunities and levels of automation to drive innovation. For more information on Siemens Digital Industries Software products and services, visit www.sw.siemens.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Siemens Digital Industries Software  Where today meets tomorrow.

Siemens Digital Industries (DI) is an innovation leader in automation and digitalization. Closely collaborating with partners and customers, DI drives the digital transformation in the process and discrete industries. With its Digital Enterprise portfolio, DI provides companies of all sizes with an end-to-end set of products, solutions and services to integrate and digitalize the entire value chain. Optimized for the specific needs of each industry, DI's unique portfolio supports customers to achieve greater productivity and flexibility. DI is constantly adding innovations to its portfolio to integrate cutting-edge future technologies. Siemens Digital Industries has its global headquarters in Nuremberg, Germany, and has around 76,000 employees internationally.

Siemens AG (Berlin and Munich) is a global technology powerhouse that has stood for engineering excellence, innovation, quality, reliability and internationality for more than 170 years. The company is active around the globe, focusing on the areas of power generation and distribution, intelligent infrastructure for buildings and distributed energy systems, and automation and digitalization in the process and manufacturing industries. Through the separately managed company Siemens Mobility, a leading supplier of smart mobility solutions for rail and road transport, Siemens is shaping the world market for passenger and freight services. Due to its majority stakes in the publicly listed companies Siemens Healthineers AG and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, Siemens is also a world-leading supplier of medical technology and digital healthcare services as well as environmentally friendly solutions for onshore and offshore wind power generation. In fiscal 2019, which ended on September 30, 2019, Siemens generated revenue of 86.8 billion and net income of 5.6 billion. At the end of September 2019, the company had around 385,000 employees worldwide. Further information is available on the Internet at www.siemens.com.

Note: A list of relevant Siemens trademarks can be found here. Other trademarks belong to their respective owners.

SOURCE Siemens Digital Industries Software

Related Links

http://www.siemens.com


Ricky Gervais was pictured rubbing shoulders with famous faces at a Golden Globes after party - just hours after he eviscerated Hollywood during his opening speech.

The British comedian was pictured with the likes of Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang, who co-created Netflix series of Master of None, series star Lena Waithe and Netflix head of content Ted Sarandos at the Netflix After Party on Sunday night.

Another picture shows Gervais and Sarandos alongside author Jane Fallon - who is the comic's partner - and Nicole Avant, the former US ambassador for the Bahamas who has since turned film-maker.

Ricky Jervais rubbed shoulders with the likes of Aziz Ansari (second left), his Master of None co-creator Alan Yang (centre), series star Lena Waithe (right) and Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (far left) at a Golden Globes after-party

Gervais pictured alongside partner Jane Fallon (second left), former US ambassador to the Bahamas Nicole Avant and Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (right) at the after-party

It came after Gervais, hosting the award ceremony for the fifth and final time, launched a scathing attack on Hollywood during his monologue.

'Let's go out with a bang, let's have a laugh at your expense, shall we?' he joked.

What followed was eight minutes of no-holds-barred comedy that included jokes about Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew.

The MeToo movement and ISIS were also among Gervais's top targets.

The British comic mingled with celebrities just hours after attacking Hollywood and 'woke' culture during his speech

Perhaps the defining moment came when he attacked Hollywood's 'woke' culture while celebrities happily work and make money for corporations with deeply checkered records on rights issues.

'You say you're woke but the companies you work for in China  unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service you'd call your agent, wouldn't you?'

In a particularly blunt moment, Gervais advised those receiving awards to avoid making political speeches because 'you're in no position to the public about anything' before adding: 'If you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and f*** off.'

Social media lit up with posts praising Gervais's take-downs of the Hollywood establishment, relishing in the uncomfortable reactions from those in the room - though others found his jokes hard to stomach.

Following the controversy were the awards themselves - which saw Sam Mendes win best director for 1917, which also won best film.

Renee Zellweger and Joaquin Phoenix scooped the best actress and actor awards for Judy and Joker, while Once Upon a Time in Hollywood won in the best picture - musical or comedy category.

The British comic returned to hosting duties for the fifth - and final - time on Sunday, after vowing to attack the Hollywood community

Gwyneth Paltrow reacts with shock as Rick Gervais delivers his eviscerating opening monologue at the Golden Globes

It is the fifth time Gervais has emceed the gala, after previously fronting the show from 2010 to 2012 and once again in 2016.

The 58-year-old British comedian sat down for a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter as he discussed the difficulty in balancing comedy with political correctness and Hollywood egos.

Speaking about his hosting style, he said: 'I try and make it a spectator sport. I try and play the outsider.

'It would be nauseating for me to come out and go, "Hey, George, how you doing, thanks for letting me use your villa. Hey, Brad, see you tonight, yeah?"

'It's horrible. I've got to be the bloke sitting at home who shouldn't have been invited. That's who I've got to be.'

Robert De Niro (left) and Martin Scorsese (right) at the Golden Globes awards, where Gervais poked fun at their latest film The Irishman for being three hours long
Parents who have been included in Assams register of citizens but their children have not will not be separated for now, the Centres top law officer KC Venugopal promised the Supreme Court on Monday.

The top court was hearing a request filed by a non-profit that complained there were 60 children in detention centres because their citizenship was yet to be established. In these 60 cases, the application said, one or both parents had made it to the citizens register but the children were detained because they could not clear the citizenship test.

I cannot conceive children being sent to detention centres. Where parents have been given citizenship through National Register of Citizens, the children will not be sent to detention centres for now, Attorney General KK Venugopal told the Supreme Court.

A bench led by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde told the government to file an affidavit in four weeks.

A child born in India after 2004, when the citizenship law was amended, is considered an Indian citizen only if both his parents are citizens. In case only one of the parent is an Indian, the child will be considered a citizen if the other is not an illegal migrant at the time of his birth.

This means that if one of the parents is not able to prove his or her citizenship, the child would not be counted as an Indian citizen.
A new study published in the journal Brain Communications suggests that Gulf War Illness can be categorized into two distinct subtypes.

Gulf War Illness (GWI) is a chronic, multi-symptom condition affecting about 25-35% of military veterans who returned from the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War. Symptoms may include fatigue, muscle pain, insomnia, cognitive problems (often described as brain fog) and exhaustion after exercise. Many of these symptoms are similar to myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).

Through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center have demonstrated that GWI patients have one of two different types of changes after exercise when compared to healthy patients.

The results clarify that the illness leads to measurable physiological changes in the brain, suggesting multiple strategies for future treatments of these patients.

For the study, researchers in the laboratory of James Baraniuk, M.D., professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center, imaged the brains of veterans with Gulf War illness before and after moderate exercise. The next day, the participants completed a second stress test and a memory test during brain imaging.

No differences were found in fMRI scans between the veterans before exercise. The veterans were then divided into those who had previously shown racing heart rates after standing up and those who did not.

According to Stuart Washington, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow and lead author on the study, both groups of GWI veterans had differences in brain activity compared to healthy patients, but the type of abnormal brain activity could be broken down even further between the two GWI groups.

After exercise, the veterans prone to racing heart rates had a significant decrease in brain activity in the cerebellum, the part of the brain responsible for fine motor control, cognition, pain, and emotion.

On the other hand, the group not prone to racing heart rates had a significant increase in brain activity in a different part of the brain that is responsible for planning of body movements and is also associated with chronic pain.

The healthy patients showed no changes at all.

Gulf War illness remains a debilitating disease, but we are getting a better handle on the cognitive dysfunction, said Baraniuk. Now that different regions of the brain have been associated with two subtypes of GWI, we can study these regions through imaging and other techniques to improve diagnosis and, perhaps, to study future treatments.

We are grateful to the veterans who participated in this research because they are providing the answers to medical questions and leading the charge to new therapies for GWI.

Source: Georgetown University Medical Center
Dublin, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "U.S. Paperboard Market Analysis and Forecast to 2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The report provides on a detailed study of the U.S. paperboard market. It depicts the latest data of the market size and volume, domestic production, exports and imports, price dynamics and turnover in the industry. In addition, the report contains insightful information about the industry, including industry life cycle, business locations, productivity, employment and many other crucial aspects. The company profiles section contains current data on the biggest players in the industry.

The revenue of the paperboard market in the U.S. amounted to $26.1B in 2018, therefore, remained relatively stable against the previous year. This figure reflects the total revenues of producers and importers (excluding logistics costs, retail marketing costs, and retailers' margins, which will be included in the final consumer price).

Overall, paperboard consumption, however, continues to indicate a relatively flat trend pattern. The pace of growth was the most pronounced in 2014 when the market value increased by 4.2% y-o-y. Paperboard consumption peaked at $27.4B in 2015; however, from 2016 to 2018, consumption failed to regain its momentum.



Paperboard Production in the U.S.



In value terms, paperboard production stood at $28.2B in 2018. Over the period under review, paperboard production continues to indicate a relatively flat trend pattern. The growth pace was the most rapid in 2014 when production volume increased by 3.6% year-to-year. In that year, paperboard production reached its peak level of $29.7B. From 2015 to 2018, paperboard production growth remained at a somewhat lower figure.



Exports from the U.S.



In 2018, the exports of paperboard from the U.S. amounted to 4.4M tonnes, growing by 2.5% against the previous year. Over the period under review, paperboard exports, however, continue to indicate a relatively flat trend pattern. The growth pace was the most rapid in 2017 with an increase of 3.8% year-to-year. Over the period under review, paperboard exports attained their maximum at 4.5M tonnes in 2014; however, from 2015 to 2018, exports failed to regain their momentum.



In value terms, paperboard exports totaled $3.2B (estimates) in 2018. The total export value increased at an average annual rate of +1.6% from 2013 to 2018; the trend pattern remained consistent, with only minor fluctuations being observed throughout the analyzed period. The pace of growth appeared the most rapid in 2018 with an increase of 17% year-to-year. In that year, paperboard exports attained their peak and are likely to continue its growth in the immediate term.



Exports by Country



China (736K tonnes) was the main destination for paperboard exports from the U.S., with a 17% share of total exports. Moreover, paperboard exports to China exceeded the volume sent to the second major destination, Guatemala (318K tonnes), twofold. Italy (310K tonnes) ranked third in terms of total exports with a 7.1% share.



From 2013 to 2018, the average annual growth rate of volume to China totaled +7.9%. Exports to the other major destinations recorded the following average annual rates of exports growth: Guatemala (+7.1% per year) and Italy (-0.8% per year).



In value terms, China ($534M) remains the key foreign market for paperboard exports from the U.S., comprising 17% of total paperboard exports. The second position in the ranking was occupied by Costa Rica ($218M), with a 6.8% share of total exports. It was followed by Guatemala, with a 6.8% share.



From 2013 to 2018, the average annual rate of growth in terms of value to China amounted to +6.1%. Exports to the other major destinations recorded the following average annual rates of exports growth: Costa Rica (+4.7% per year) and Guatemala (+10.5% per year).



Export Prices by Country



The average paperboard export price stood at $732 per tonne in 2018, growing by 14% against the previous year. Over the last five years, it increased at an average annual rate of +1.7%. The most prominent rate of growth was recorded in 2018 when the average export price increased by 14% against the previous year. In that year, the average export prices for paperboard attained their peak level and is likely to continue its growth in the immediate term.



There were significant differences in the average prices for the major foreign markets. In 2018, the country with the highest price was Japan ($988 per tonne), while the average price for exports to Chile ($615 per tonne) was amongst the lowest.



From 2013 to 2018, the most notable rate of growth in terms of prices was recorded for supplies to Costa Rica, while the prices for the other major destinations experienced more modest paces of growth.



Imports into the U.S.



In 2018, the amount of paperboard imported into the U.S. stood at 1.2M tonnes, leveling off at the previous year. The total import volume increased at an average annual rate of +6.3% over the period from 2013 to 2018; however, the trend pattern indicated some noticeable fluctuations being recorded in certain years. The pace of growth appeared the most rapid in 2014 when imports increased by 15% y-o-y. Over the period under review, paperboard imports reached their peak figure in 2018 and are likely to see steady growth in the immediate term.



In value terms, paperboard imports amounted to $1.1B (estimates) in 2018. The total import value increased at an average annual rate of +4.8% from 2013 to 2018; however, the trend pattern remained consistent, with only minor fluctuations over the period under review. The most prominent rate of growth was recorded in 2014 with an increase of 15% against the previous year. Over the period under review, paperboard imports reached their maximum in 2018 and are likely to see steady growth in the near future.



Imports by Country



Finland (286K tonnes), South Korea (161K tonnes) and Sweden (152K tonnes) were the main suppliers of paperboard imports to the U.S., together accounting for 51% of total imports.



From 2013 to 2018, the most notable rate of growth in terms of imports, amongst the main suppliers, was attained by Sweden, while the other leaders experienced more modest paces of growth.



In value terms, the largest paperboard suppliers to the U.S. were Finland ($250M), South Korea ($153M) and Sweden ($146M), with a combined 51% share of total imports.



In terms of the main suppliers, Sweden recorded the highest growth rate of imports, over the last five-year period, while the other leaders experienced more modest paces of growth.



Import Prices by Country



The average paperboard import price stood at $918 per tonne in 2018, picking up by 6.3% against the previous year. Overall, the paperboard import price, however, continues to indicate a mild curtailment. The most prominent rate of growth was recorded in 2018 when the average import price increased by 6.3% year-to-year. Over the period under review, the average import prices for paperboard attained their peak figure at $986 per tonne in 2013; however, from 2014 to 2018, import prices stood at a somewhat lower figure.



There were significant differences in the average prices amongst the major supplying countries. In 2018, the country with the highest price was Germany ($1,082 per tonne), while the price for the Netherlands ($620 per tonne) was amongst the lowest.



From 2013 to 2018, the most notable rate of growth in terms of prices was attained by the Netherlands, while the prices for the other major suppliers experienced more modest paces of growth.

Key Topics Covered



1. Introduction

Making Data-Driven Decisions To Grow Your Business

1.1 Report Description

1.2 Research Methodology And AI Platform

1.3 Data-Driven Decisions For Your Business

1.4 Glossary And Specific Terms



2. Executive Summary

A Quick Overview Of Market Performance

2.1 Key Findings

2.2 Market Trends



3. Market Overview

Understanding The Current State Of The Market And Its Prospects

3.1 Market Size

3.2 Market Structure

3.3 Trade Balance

3.4 Per Capita Consumption

3.5 Market Forecast To 2025



4. Most Promising Products

Finding New Products To Diversify Your Business

4.1 Top Products To Diversify Your Business

4.2 Best-Selling Products Worldwide

4.3 Most Consumed Product Worldwide

4.4 Most Traded Product

4.5 Most Profitable Product For Export



5. Most Promising Supplying Countries

Choosing The Best Countries To Establish Your Sustainable Supply Chain

5.1 Top Countries To Source Your Product

5.2 Top Producing Countries

5.3 Top Exporting Countries

5.4 Low-Cost Exporting Countries



6. Most Promising Overseas Markets

Choosing The Best Countries To Boost Your Exports

6.1 Top Overseas Markets For Exporting Your Product

6.2 Top Consuming Markets

6.3 Unsaturated Markets

6.4 Top Importing Markets

6.5 Most Profitable Markets



7. Production

The Latest Trends And Insights Into The Industry

7.1 Production Volume And Value



8. Imports

The Largest Importers On The Market And How They Succeed

8.1 Imports From 2007-2017

8.2 Imports By Country

8.3 Import Prices By Country



9. Exports

The Largest Exporters On The Market And How They Succeed

9.1 Exports From 2007-2017

9.2 Exports By Country

9.3 Export Prices By Country



10. Profiles Of Major Producers

The Largest Producers On The Market And Their Profiles



Companies Mentioned



ASP Fibermark Holdings

Artistic Carton Company

Canal Corporation

Chesapeake International Holding Company

FMK Holdings

Fibermark North America

GPI Holdings

Graphic Packaging Holding Company

Green Bay Packaging

Greenpac Mill

Interstate Paper

Interstate Resources

Mafcote

Menasha Corporation

Multi-Wall Packaging

New-Indy Containerboard Hold Co

Norampac Industries

Packaging Corporation of America

Republic Paperboard Company

Rock-Tenn Converting Company

Sonoco Products Company

Stone Southwest

The Real Reel Corporation

Westrock Company

Westrock Minnesota Corporation

Westrock Mwv

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/lszgrp

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.
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Democrats have slammed Donald Trump saying he is not a 'dictator' after he warned that his latest tweet should serve as notification to Congress that the U.S. will 'strike back' if Iran launches a revenge attack.

Trump vowed on Sunday to retaliate if Iran should target the U.S. in any way following last week's deadly airstrike in Iraq that killed top general Qasem Soleimani.

'These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner,' Trump tweeted.

His comments prompted the Democrat-led House Foreign Affairs Committee to lash out in a follow up tweet, telling President Trump: 'You're not a dictator'.

'This Media Post will serve as a reminder that war powers reside in the Congress under the United States Constitution. And that you should read the War Powers Act. And that you're not a dictator,' they tweeted.

Donald Trump, pictured returning to the White House, vowed on Sunday to retaliate if Iran should target the U.S. in any way following last week's deadly airstrike in Iraq that killed top general Qasem Soleimani

His comments prompted the Democrat-led House Foreign Affairs Committee to lash out in a follow up tweet, telling President Trump: 'You're not a dictator'

It comes as Congressional Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen suggested that the White House manipulated intel before the airstrikes.

Several other politicians and pundits have also questioned whether the attack was warranted and have said they haven't seen enough intelligence to warrant the action.

Trump has said he ordered the killing because Soleimani posed an imminent threat and had ordered attacks on Americans in the Middle East.

'I think we learned the hard way in the Iraq War that administrations sometimes manipulate and cherry-pick intelligence to further their political goals, that's what got us into the Iraq War,' Van Hollen told Fox News Sunday.

'I'm saying that they have an obligation to present the evidence.'

He said everybody knew that Soleimani was a 'very bad, despicable guy' but the Trump administration hadn't supported its claim of an imminent threat.

'The claim of an imminent threat they have not supported and what we do know is this dramatic escalation is now putting Americans at greater risk,' he said.

'You have to look at what the consequences are; you don't go around killing all the very bad people in the world.'

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer agreed regarding the evidence and told ABC's This Week: 'We don't know the reasons that it had to be done now. They don't seem very clear.'

Sen. Chris Murphy said in an appearance on CBS's Face The Nation that it was 'incumbent upon the administration to present that evidence to Congress'.

Soleimani's body was returned to Iran on Sunday. People are seen carrying his casket upon arrival at Ahvaz International Airport in Tehran. The casket was greeted by chants of 'Death to America' as Iran issued new threats of retaliation

Following massive funeral marches in Iraq, his body was flown to Ahvaz, Iran. Military personnel carry Soleimani's casket in Iran. A tide of mourners packed the streets of the Iranian city of Ahvaz Sunday to pay respects to the top general

Trump's threats on Sunday came came as Iran announced it was further reducing compliance with a tattered international nuclear accord, ending limitations on numbers of centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

The latest blow to the accord, which was meant to ensure Iran did not develop a nuclear weapon under cover of its nuclear industry, deepened the regional crisis set off by the killing of Soleimani.

The killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, on Friday marks a major escalation in the standoff between the U.S. and Iran

Trump ordered a drone to fire a missile at Soleimani, one of the most influential people in Iran's government, when he was near the Iraqi capital's international airport.

Angry, black-clad mourners thronged the streets of Iran's second city Mashhad on Sunday to pay last respects to the remains of Soleimani and chant 'death to America'.

Trump bluntly warned Iran against taking vengeance, repeating his insistence that US bombing targets could include Iran's cultural heritage sites.

Critics say that would qualify as a war crime under international law.

'If they do anything there will be major retaliation,' Trump told reporters on Air Force One, as he flew back to Washington - and a looming Senate impeachment trial - from vacation in Florida.

Trump had already threatened bombing of 52 unspecified targets in Iran if Tehran attacks US troops and interests in the region.

In his latest comments, he was adamant that targets could include places of cultural significance in a country boasting an ancient heritage and two dozen UNESCO-listed sites.

Iranian mourners crowded in to touch the casket and express there grief at the death of the powerful general

An organizer for a funeral procession for Soleimani called on all Iranians to donate $1 each 'in order to gather an $80million bounty on President Trump's head'. The organizer made the remarks during the procession in Mashad

'Theyre allowed to kill our people,' a defiant Trump said. 'They're allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn't work that way.'

The situation in neighboring Iraq, a US ally, also deteriorated, with the future of some 5,200 American soldiers there in doubt.

Many Iraqis have expressed outrage over the killing of Soleimani, who masterminded deep Iranian influence in the country. A top Iraqi military figure Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was killed in the same US strike.

In Baghdad, unidentified attackers launched a pair of rockets on Sunday, hitting near the U.S. embassy in the high-security Green Zone for the second night in a row. That was just hours after Iraq's foreign ministry summoned the American ambassador over the drone strike.

And Iraq's parliament voted to request the government end an agreement with a US-led international coalition to fight the hardline Islamist group IS in the region.

If the government agreed, that would effectively require the departure of US soldiers supporting the local troops in the anti-IS fight.

Caretaker prime minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, who called the U.S. drone strike a 'political assassination,' indicated he would back the troops' ouster. He said the choices were immediate expulsion or withdrawal under a timeframe.

Trump told reporters that a forced departure of U.S. troops would prompt sanctions even worse than those already imposed, to devastating effect, on Iran's economy.

'If they do ask us to leave - if we dont do it in a very friendly basis - we will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before,' Trump said.

'It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.'

A US airstrike on Baghdad airport killed Soleimani, the head of Iran's powerful Quds force. Pictured is the burning remains of the car that was among a convoy he was traveling in

Trump said the main U.S. base in Iraq was 'very extraordinarily expensive.'

'We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it,' he said.

Earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sounded a softer note, saying 'the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there to fight the counterterror campaign.'

Soleimani was one of Iran's most popular public figures, seen as a hero of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

He was also the key figure behind Iran's effective network of proxy militias and alliances across a region where Iran is in often deadly rivalry with US allies Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed 'severe revenge.'

What that will look like is the subject of heated speculation in the Pentagon and the White House. Analysts say Iran may be limited in its room for maneuver if it wants to avoid full war with the far more powerful United States.

But a former head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards threatened on Sunday to turn the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv 'to dust' if the US attacks targets in Iran.

And Khamenei's military adviser, Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan, told CNN that Iran's response to the assassination 'for sure will be military and against military sites.'

The crisis comes as Trump is embroiled in his own domestic political turmoil. He was impeached by the House of Representatives for abuse of office and obstruction of Congress.

The Senate, where his Republican party has a commanding majority, is wrangling over when and how a trial will take place, as the clock ticks down on the November presidential elections.
T he mother of a British teenager found guilty of lying about being gang-raped in Cyprus has said her daughter is "terrified" of being sent to prison.

The 19-year-old woman will be sentenced on Tuesday at a court in Paralimni, where she could be jailed for up to a year and fined 1,700 (1,500).

She maintains she was raped and says she was forced to change her account under pressure from Cypriot police.

Her lawyers asked Judge Michalis Papathanasiou to consider a suspended prison sentence after she was convicted of public mischief last week.

And local media reports suggest she will be pardoned by Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades if the judge does impose an immediate jail term, allowing her to go home.

Demonstrators in London hold placards calling for a boycott on Cyprus as they march in support of a British teenager convicted of lying about being raped / AFP via Getty Images

But her mother said the teenager is "terrified" of being sent to prison, having spent a month behind bars before she was granted bail in August.

"She has been in Nicosia state prison before, she knows what it is like," she told ITV News.

"She's going to go in there for a conviction for this offence, and people will know what she has been saying about Cyprus.

"I can't even begin to describe how upsetting that is."

Her mothers comments came as protesters marched outside Downing Street in support of the teenager.

Her English lawyer, Michael Polak, from the Justice Abroad group, said a jail term could cause permanent damage to her mental health after she was diagnosed with PTSD.

"The best outcome I could hope for tomorrow is for her to get a sentence where she can come home," her mother said.

"She needs to be back in the UK for her treatment for PTSD and that is my number one priority."

The teenager, who has not been named, claimed she was raped by up to 12 Israeli tourists in a hotel room in the party town of Ayia Napa on July 17.

She was charged, while the young men, aged between 15 and 20, who were arrested over the incident, were freed after she signed a retraction statement 10 days later.

The woman maintains she was raped after having consensual sex with one of the Israelis but forced to change her account under pressure from Cypriot police.

The case hinged on a retraction statement signed by the teenager following hours of questioning alone and without legal representation.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said he has raised concerns over the treatment of the teenager with the Cypriot authorities after her conviction provoked outrage in Cyprus and the UK.

Her lawyers are poised to launch an appeal and hope to fast-track proceedings in Cyprus's supreme court, which could take three to four years.

Mr Polak said: "We think we have strong grounds for appeal. For example, the way the trial was conducted and the admission of the retraction statement, as well as the fact she didn't have a lawyer when the statement was taken.
by Bill Benzon

Mark Moffetts The Human Swarm: : How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall (Basic Books 2019) is nothing less than a comprehensive review and synthesis of the academic literature on social life in humans and a wide variety of animals, including, among many others, ants, whales, jays, wolves, and chimpanzees. While written for general readers, this book will repay academic specialists of various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.

It is at heart a work of natural philosophy, an old term not in much use anymore. Moffett is interested in what constitutes society: how do we differentiate between insiders and outsiders? To do so he surveys the animal world and follows the distinction in the evolution of human societies from hunter-gatherer groups to the current day. Though Moffett has the skills and credentials of an academic specialist (he has a Harvard Ph. D.), he has written the kind of book specialists are discouraged from writing. That is all the more reason why those specialists must join interested civilians in reading The Human Swarm. For it is in books like this that many narrow specialized understandings are combined and synthesized into a more comprehensive understanding, in this case, understanding of the critically important issue of social identity.

On a lava plain in Australia

Lets plunge right in by examining what was, for me, the most eye-opening passage in the book (122-23):

Between Mount Eccles and the sea in Victoria, Australia, on a lava plain laid down by a volcano eruption about 30,000 years ago, are the archaeological remains of hundreds of dwellings. The structures cluster in groups of a dozen or so, some so large they are partitioned into apartments. People by the thousands settled across that expanse in these small villages, members of settled tribes that jostled, fought, and forged lasting alliances.

The region around the villages was transformed into a vast, managed landscape, with streams and rivers variously dammed and diverted to create a labyrinthine yet integrated drainage system. The waterways, which extend for kilometers, are ancient, many dating back 8,000 years, with the system reaching its full glory 600 to 800 years ago. The canals were used to harvest wild gamea species of eelwith traps reaching a hundred meters long and constructed in some places of stone walls up to a meter high. The people also carved out artificial wetlands in which the young eels could thrive until they were large enough to eat, and caught the fish in such abundance that the excess could be preserved and stored for the off-season.

Like all the Aborigines elsewhere in Australia, the people at Mount Eccles lacked domesticated food. This entire elaborate infrastructure was the brainchild of hunter-gatherers. And yet the homes look to have been permanent, and some may have been occupied year-roundthe descendants of the original residents claim this was so. Indeed, the lesson of the Mount Eccles Aborigines is that, even before societies took up farming, people had the option to reside in what I call a settled hunter-gather society.

Theres the shock, the notion of a settled hunter-gatherer society. It may be familiar enough in certain academic circles, but so far as I know it hasnt entered the general discourse on the evolution of social organization.

In that discourse the simplest societies are hunter-gather societies where people live a small mobile bands consisting of, say 30 to 150 individuals. Then we have small village chiefdoms based on small scale horticulture and then on up to empires based on large scale agriculture. This Mount Eccles society doesnt fit that pattern.

It is in fact an extreme example of a fission-fusion society. In such societies individuals spend most of their time in small groups where they recognize and are known by every other member in the group. But those groups will gather together on various occasions for various purposes. Im thinking, for example, of the large bison hunts of the plains Indians of North America. It would be impossible for a single band to stampede a large herd of bison over a cliff, but a dozen of so bands working together could do it.

And so on and so forth, example by example, Moffett builds his argument.

And handful of propositions about society

As I worked my way through the book, various ideas would return time and again. This is an informal reckoning of them. Im imagining, however, is a more mature science of society this informal reckoning would be replaced by and handful of quasi-mathematical propositions about social existence. We could then use those propositions to construct models of whatever social phenomena interested us. Note that I make no special claim that these, and only these, ten ideas underlie Moffetts argument. I offer them, rather, and analytical pointers into the argument, as guides through the rich and complex tissue of mini-narratives that Moffett has gathered for our delectation.

1. Scale matters: Taken one by one, handful by handful, humans and ants are very different. Taken by the million, we are alike. Ants are so very different from us that one can reasonably wonder what they have to teach us. Moffets point is that, yes, individual humans are very different from individual ants, but when the numbers grow, to thousands, tens of thousands or millions or more, large groups of humans face problems similar to those faced by large groups of ants, and arrive at similar solutions: specialization and division of labor, even the use of slaves.

Whatever the spatial spread of an ant society, which can be miles and miles, their world is limited in scope. In that world, for example, the proximal sense of smell is HUGE, for that is how ants mark their trails and tell whether or not another ant is of their society. The world of even the smallest hunter gatherer band is, by contrast, much wider and more differentiated, with the distance senses of sight and hearing being very important.

Scale will come into play as human societies become larger and larger, necessitating social invention of various kinds.

2. Group vs. Society: Group members recognize one another as individuals. Mammals live in such groups; ants do not. But ants do recognize society, which divides the world in to US and THEM, as do all animals and humans. Ants demark social boundaries by scent: do you smell like us or not? Humans develop various ways of distinguishing between us and them. As societies grow in size, the variety of markers (see below) increases.

3. Identity: Think of it as the reflex of group and society. An individuals identity links them to a group and a society, though through different mechanisms.

4. Fission/fusion: This is a big one. Various animal societies, including humans societies, are of a fission fusion type. Individuals spend most of their time living in groups where each individual recognizes each other individual. The groups in a society, in both animals and humans, will however gather together on a occasion for whatever reason  hang out, find mates, a collective hunt. There is relatively little aggression between members of different groups within the same society. Where individuals are in different societies, thats a different and more dangerous matter.

Moffett has various remarks indicating that fission/fusion dynamics are likely very important in the emergence of societies of proto humans from societies of very clever apes. We know that apes, and other animals as well, have some form of culture. The idea is that fission/fusion dynamics pushes cultural invention over a tipping point so that apes become human, more or less. Whats being invented are markers.

5. Markers delimit societies: Markers delimit societies. Each society has it own marker or set of markers. Markers are almost exclusively human, though Moffett argues that certain pant-hoot cries among chimpanzees seem to serve this sort of function, as does some bird song. Humans, on the other hand, develop a wide variety of markers, not the least of which is language. Tattoos, hair styles, clothing, all can assume marker status. Among hunter gatherers the markers may be society-wide. In larger and more complex human societies one set of markers delimit sub-societies and groups within the larger society while another set of markers delimits the larger society from other such societies.

6. Drift: As societies become larger, the relative scope of individual contacts becomes smaller and smaller. This makes cohesion among groups within a society more and more difficult. Factions develop. At first theyre amicable, but as the society grows tension builds and the society begins to fracture.

7. Othering: At some point in the growth of a society factions drift too far apart. Conflicts multiply and factions will no longer consider one another as part of the same society. They have become Othered. At this point the society will fission into two (or more) separate societies. This can be a violent process.

Perhaps 6 and 7 should be subordinated to a more comprehensive concept.

8. No merging of societies: In both animals and humans it is not at all unusual for growing societies to splinter, giving birth to new societies (in the sense of the term that Moffett had developed). But it is very rare for separate societies in the same species to merge into a larger society. For the most part were concerned with human societies here.

On the one hand, this seems obvious. For separate societies to merge on equal terms they have to negotiate a common language and a common set of values, attitudes, etc. Thats very difficult. Its much easier for a more powerful society to annex a less powerful one (conquest) in a subordinate role. Thus empires are born. Etc.

This needs to be explicated at the neural level. This is not the place for me to even sketch it out. I note that Beethovens Anvil, my book on music, has conceptual equipment that would be useful here, and that this matter is closely related to the evolution of humans that I alluded to in my remarks about fission/fusion societies in 4 above.

9. Chiefdoms and conquest: Were now exclusively focused on human societies. The issue concerns the governance of ever larger societies. The emergence of chiefdoms, where particularly powerful individuals have influence over several villages within a society, allows for conquest. Its one thing to engage in war with another society which you then obliterate. Its another thing to conquer a society and assimilate its people into your own society. The emergence of chiefdoms allows for this.

10. Delegation: For a society to expand beyond the scope afforded by chiefdoms requires means of delegating authority. In a chiefdom the paramount chief has direct authority over the chiefs that rule other villages. It is very difficult to extend that authority beyond the distance one can travel in a day or so. To do so requires means of delegation: laws, hierarchy, taxes, bureaucracy, long distance communication, and so forth.

I apologize for the dry almost telegraphic exposition; most of the book is more like those Mount Eccles paragraphs. But I think it is important to realize that, in covering a wide range of social phenomena, Moffett has begun the process of sifting through a large body of knowledge to expose the underlying principles of social organization. For it is those principles that we most need to understand; our best chance of creating a better and more just world as we confront the accelerating reality of global climate change even as the world order that had existed in, say, the middle of the previous century, with its Cold War, crumbles amid rising tides of nationalist sentiment.

What about all of humankind uniting in a single harmonious society?

Heres the opening of Moffetts final chapter, The Inevitability of Societies (344):

Can we discard our societies, combine them into one, or at least make them secondary to a more universal union of humanity?

Here is a snippet of history that reads like a parable. For centuries, the Pacific island of Futurna, a low chunk of volcanic rock, at 46 square kilometers in size, offered space and resources for just two chiefdomsSigave and Alo. These societies, claiming opposite ends of the island, were in almost constant conflict, pausing only briefly now and then for island-wide ceremonies featuring a psychoactive drink made from a shrub native to the western Pacific. One wonders if this enabled their people to tolerate each other for the day. I can only imagine their spear-throwing clashes were a primary motivator in their lives, the Arab-Israeli conflict in a microcosm. One might expect that in such a confined space, and over the course of so much time, one chiefdom would have conquered the other. That this never happened might bear on the human craving for an outgroup, if not an outright opponent. Could Alo have continued on without Sigavea society in a vacuum? Would it, alone in the world, even be what we could call a society?

Is Moffett correct, that we need to define ourselves against an outgroup? I dont know. And, if so, does that condemn us to perpetual war? I hope not.

I am reminded of an essay written in 1947, written by the great Talcott Parsons, Certain Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of the Western World (Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes, Vol. 2, 171-181). Parsons argued that Western societies generate many aggressive impulses in their citizens that cannot be expressed. What, then, happens with those impulses? They become directed against at external Other. And, in time that will lead to war  I note that Parsons wrote that essay in the wake of the Second World War. While Moffett shows no interest in the psychoanalytic framework that Parsons used, he is lead to a similar conclusion, Our misfortune has been, and will be always, that societies dont eliminate discontent; they simply redirect it toward outsiderswhich paradoxically can include the ethnic groups within them (362).

Can we do better?

* * * * * *

Note: While working my way through the book I have written a serious of blog posts about it. You may read those posts here. I also intend to gather this review and those posts into a single document which you can download. That will take a day or two.
The general election is 11 months away in Pennsylvania. Im looking forward to the plethora of mailers, newspaper, television and radio ads. Theyll feature the usual pictures of legislative hopefuls looking busy, holding babies and shaking hands, along with a smidgen of finger pointing and a dash of personal attacks.

And promises about property tax relief. Again.

A simple search of co-sponsorship memoranda on the Pennsylvania State Legislature website will return a bevy of property tax proposals with awe-inspiring names.

Some examples? The Senior PropertyTax Relief Act. The Universal Property Tax Relief Rebate Program. The Optional Sales Tax for School Property Tax Relief and Municipal Assistance.

Recently, after months of grueling meetings, a working group (ahem) of lawmakers has come up with five plans that target the property tax dilemma. As if decades of meetings about property taxes werent enough.

Its obvious that the last property tax relief act has been such a success that lawmakers want to give Pennsylvanians even more relief. Lawmakers will be traveling around their districts touting the success of the Pennsylvania Race Horse Development and Gaming Act. You know, that gambling bill. Theyll tell you their hard work has returned millions of dollars in property tax relief. What they wont tell you is that the average statewide property tax reduction for each household in Pennsylvania was approximately $200 in 2019. Or $16.67 per month.

If the opportunity arises, ask those seeking office why they think another round of property tax relief will be successful.

Brian Fake

Upper Mount Bethel Township
A 23-year old Army Specialist based at Fort Rucker was among the three people killed in an attack on a U.S. military base in Kenya Sunday.

The family of Henry Mitch Mayfield Jr. confirmed to NBC Chicago that he died in the assault at Manda Bay Airfield. Two Department of Defense contractors were also killed. The Department of Defense has not confirmed the identifies of those killed in the attack. Mayfield was a native of Chicago who joined the Army in 2018.

Mayfields Facebook page lists him as being posted at Fort Rucker.

"He loved his family and spending quality time with his siblings," Carmoneta, Mayfields mother, told the Chicago station. "I last spoke with him New Years Day via FaceTime. We discussed him not having to go to Somalia and he told me everything was good and safe at his base.

He told me everything would be OK. Those were his last words to me, she said.

Sundays attack came from the militant group al-Shabab and followed a U.S. strike that killed Iranian Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
I have heard New York City being described as the financial center of the world. Interesting.

We just sent away our real estate tax check  to Newark, N.J. It is addressed to the NYC Department of Finance, care of a post office box in Newark, N.J.

Is it cheaper to sub-contract our own finances to New Jersey? City officials talk about the need for jobs, while at the same time we give work away to Newark.

Why?

(Joel Heffner is an Eltingville resident.)

Staten Island, NY 10312
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Five Pakistani drug smugglers were arrested on Monday when they were trying to sneak into Gujarat through the sea route, police said. The police confiscated 35 kgs of contraband worth about Rs 175 crore in the international market.

The arrested Pakistani nationals have been identified as Anees (30), Ismail Mohammed Kachchi (50), Ashhraf Usman Kutchhi (42), Kareem Abdulla Kutchhi (37) and Abubaqar Ashraf Sumra (55). They all are residents of Beet Zajeera in Karachi.

A senior IPS officer said that anti-terrorist squad (ATS) of Gujarat Police received intelligence that an illegal consignment of heroin is going to be smuggled into Gujarat through the coast.

"The information further revealed that the consignment is being sent in a Pakistani fishing boat from Pakistan," the officer said.

The Gujarat Police top officers approached the Indian Coast Guard and a joint operation was launched to apprehend the smugglers and seize the contraband.

A team of ATS and Indian Coast Guard started the operation with fast interceptor boats at Jakhau in Kutch.

"Commandos of marine task force were kept in boats in Indian waters to help in apprehending the smugglers," the officer said.

Continuous search operation was undertaken near the location located North West of Jakhau, which was indicated in the information available with ATS Gujarat.

"A suspicious Pakistani boat was identified at the said location in Indian waters. The Indian Coast Guard interceptor boats stealthily started following the boat, and at the opportune moment, officers and marine commandos and with ATS officers successfully boarded the suspicious boat," the officer said.

A search of the boat revealed 35 packets of contraband heroin.

"The interrogation of the apprehended accused persons is in progress jointly by all agencies," the officer said.
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Field trials in the Northwest and Southwest show that poplar trees can be genetically modified to reduce negative impacts on air quality while leaving their growth potential virtually unchanged, says an Oregon State University researcher who collaborated on the study.

The findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are important because poplar plantations cover 9.4 million hectares globally - more than double the land used 15 years ago. Poplars are fast-growing trees that are a source of biofuel and other products including paper, pallets, plywood and furniture frames.

A drawback of poplar plantations is that the trees are also a major producer of isoprene, the key component of natural rubber and a pre-pollutant.

Increases in isoprene negatively affect regional air quality and also unbalance the global energy budget by leading to higher levels of atmospheric aerosol production, more ozone in the air and longer methane life. Ozone and methane are greenhouse gases, and ozone is also a respiratory irritant.

Poplar and other trees including oak, eucalyptus and conifers produce isoprene in their leaves in response to climate stress such as high temperatures.

A research collaboration led by scientists at the University of Arizona, the Institute of Biochemical Plant Pathology in Germany, Portland State University and OSU genetically modified poplars not to produce isoprene, then tested them in three-year trials at plantations in Oregon and Arizona.

They found that trees whose isoprene production was genetically suppressed did not suffer any ill effects in terms of photosynthesis or "biomass production" - they were able to make fuel and grow as well as trees that were producing isoprene.

Steve Strauss, distinguished professor of forest biotechnology in the OSU College of Forestry, said there are a couple of possible explanations for the findings.

One is that, without the ability to produce isoprene, the modified poplars appear to be making "compensatory protective compounds."

Another is that most of the trees' growth takes place during cooler times of the year, so heat stress, which triggers isoprene production, likely has little effect on photosynthesis at that time.

"Our findings suggest that isoprene emissions can be diminished without affecting biomass production in temperate forest plantations," Strauss said. "That's what we wanted to examine - can you turn down isoprene production, and does it matter to biomass productivity and general plant health? It looks like it doesn't impair either significantly. In Arizona, where it's super hot, if isoprene mattered to productivity, it would show up in a striking way, but it did not. Plants are smart - they'll compensate and do something different if they need to."

In this study, scientists used a genetic engineering tool known as RNA interference. RNA, ribonucleic acid, transmits protein coding instructions from each cell's DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, which holds the organism's genetic code.

"RNA interference is like a vaccination - it triggers a natural and highly specific mechanism whereby specific targets are suppressed, be they the RNA of viruses or endogenous genes," Strauss said. "You can also do this with CRISPR at the DNA level, and it usually works even better."

CRISPR, short for "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats," targets specific stretches of genetic code for DNA editing at exact locations.

"You could also do the same thing through conventional breeding," Strauss said. "It would be a lot less efficient and precise, and it might be a nightmare for breeders who may need to reassess all of their germplasm and possibly exclude their most productive cultivars as a result, but it could be done."

Corresponding author Russ Monson of the University of Arizona said the study lays the groundwork for future isoprene research, including in different growing environments.

"The fact that cultivars of poplar can be produced in a way that ameliorates atmospheric impacts without significantly reducing biomass production gives us a lot of optimism," Monson said. "We're striving toward greater environmental sustainability while developing plantation?scale biomass sources that can serve as fossil fuel alternatives. We also need to keep working toward solutions to the current regulatory and market roadblocks that make large-scale research and commercial uses for genetically engineered trees difficult."

Sustainable forest management systems and their certifying bodies operate under the assumption that genetically modified equates to dangerous, Strauss said.

"If something is GMO, it's guilty until proven safe in the minds of many and in our regulations today," he said. "These technologies are new tools that require scientific research to evaluate and refine them on a case-by-case basis. We have a huge need for expanded production of sustainable and renewable forest products and ecological services, and biotechnologies can help meet that need."

###

Scientists from the University of California, Riverside, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and the Institute for Microbiology in Greifswald, Germany, also collaborated on the study.

The National Science Foundation, the German Ministry of Education and Research, Portland General Electric, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Portland State University, Oregon State University and the state of Arizona supported this research.
A day after violence by some armed men at New Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), some students at Panjab University disrupted the address of Haryana speaker Gian Chand Gupta, who alleged that it was a predetermined act by those trying to break the country.

Carrying banners, the students belonging to some Left-leaning student bodies, shouted slogans against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) when the Haryana speaker was speaking at a seminar on the topic, Womens participation in decision-making.

The protesting students were then taken out of the seminar hall by security personnel.

Later talking to the media, Haryana assembly speaker Gian Chand Gupta described the students protest a predetermined act. He, however, said, Everybody has the right to speak, but in a decent way. He said any effort to stop the seminar was not right. This was a predetermined act, said Gupta. To a question, Gupta said those trying to break the country organised this protest. The chairperson of the National Commission for Women, Rekha Sharma, who also attended the seminar, said, This is their wish. This is a free country. They (students) put forth their views.

Sharma said as far as the JNU violence was concerned, the Union home ministry had a taken cognisance of it. I will meet the girls injured in this incident, she said.

Earlier speaking to reporters, one of the protesting students, Kanupriya, slammed the Centre for the violence on the JNU campus.

The Vidhan Sabha speaker (during seminar) was saying that they want to promote beti padhao. Is this how they will teach girls, she asked.

Meanwhile, students owing allegiance to the ABVP BJPs student wing also held a demonstration against Left-leaning student bodies on the PU campus.

Heavy police force was deployed at the university to prevent any untoward incident. At least 28 people were injured in the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night when masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers besides damaging property.
Karen Reneau winced when the black water lapped over the top of her boots, chilling her legs from the shin down.

Her husband, Charlie, had waded into the waters weeks before in early December, plopping chopped up fish bits into a handful of traps spread across the familys 4,000 acres.

Now, Karen followed his footprints, faintly etched in wilted rice stubble, to see if the annual ascension of the crawfish had begun.

In the coming weeks, millions of the crunchy crustaceans will dig their way out of muck and into flooded fields across the Gulf Coast.

For some, the pilgrimage from mud to local restaurants already has begun.

The Shiloh Club in the Heights boiled its first sacks during the annual Lights in the Heights festival on Dec. 14.

Vincent Florio, a Crosby-area wholesaler, already has started importing hundreds of pounds of crawfish from Louisiana.

He delivered a couple of sacks to a restaurant in Kemah for its annual employee holiday party in mid-December.

Everybody in the restaurant just erupted, Florio said.

Crawfish have skyrocketed in popularity in Houston and Southeast Texas in recent years, and appetites for the bottom feeders have been spreading across the country for the past decade.

Crawfish production in the U.S. jumped by 27.7% from 2007 to 2017, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, rising from about 116 million pounds harvested to nearly 150 million pounds.

That growth is not just limited to the United States. One research firm estimates the global market for the critters will grow at an annual rate of more than 14% through 2023.

Texas is the second largest producer of crawfish in the United States, though still a distant second to Louisiana, which produces more than 90% of the nations annual haul of around 150 million pounds.

Crawfish in Texas is as big as its ever been, if not bigger, said Todd Sink, an associate department head and aquaculture extension specialist at Texas A & M University.

Weve added several hundred acres of new farms in past few years, Sink said. Theres one farm going up by Tyler, and one south of San Antonio.

By changing the way we produce and moving to more water efficient systems, thats allowed us to grow crawfish where we never had before.

Cash crop

For farmers across Texas and Louisiana, the 2020 crawfish season began this past June, when they took the relatively few mud bugs that survived the previous years season and plopped them in their flooded fields. Many already planted rice in the same plots the month or two before.

Rice long has been among the biggest staple crops in Southeast Texas, but production only lasts for about four months of the year.

By the late 1970s and the early 1980s, Sink said farmers were looking for ways to use their marshy land in the meantime.

The answer was crawfish, Sink said. Crawfish thrive in the same conditions as rice, and their production cycle is the opposite of rice.

Reneaus grandfather grew rice in Fannett. Her father took up the family business, and her husband grew up helping out at other rice farms in the area.

Even though Fannett is less than an hour from Louisiana, Reneau said she grew up viewing crawfish as a delicacy only to be enjoyed a few times a year.

That changed in the past decade or so, Reneau said, when more of her neighbors jumped on the trend.

In the past six years, how much its grown, Reneau said, shaking her head. Its just stupid how many people want to eat crawfish.

The craze came to her familys farm in 2013 after her son, Will, graduated from Texas A&M University.

He suggested the family start raising the bottom-feeders to satisfy an expanding market in Houston and Beaumont.

The family drained the land around August, and the crawfish buried themselves beneath the damp clay soil.

The Reneaus harvested the rice, leaving about a foot of stalks sticking out of the ground, and flooded the fields again in mid-fall.

By December or early January, the crawfish began crawling out of their holes, and their first season began.

The critters fed on the decaying rice stubble until they were harvested between January and May or thrown into another pond to start prepping for the next season.

Florio, the wholesaler, said the cycle shows how the two crops are inextricably linked.

Just like diesel is a product of gasoline, crawfish is a byproduct of rice, he said.

Reneau was eager to learn and spent the first two years in the boats with workers baiting and retrieving hundreds of wire traps, a cap covering her short silver hair and waders up to her thighs. She did not realize the process would involve so many snakes.

Theyll sun themselves on top of the traps, she said. And the guys would lift them on the boat because theyd just be in a trance. I used to keep a big stick in the boat to get them out.

Otters, wading birds and raccoons, although cuter, are also a hazard. They tip the traps and eat their contents.

2020 season, and beyond

Crawfish comprise only about 30% of the Reneaus business, with rice still making up the bulk of their income. They hope the divide will be closer to 50-50 in coming seasons.

Elsewhere, growers are looking at ditching rice altogether. They are flooding fields year long to cut back on water usage, which now means crawfish can be grown far from where commercial harvesting started.

The demand has really fueled it, Sink said. It grows when people move out of the south into areas like the Midwest and introduce it.

There have been major movements with the foodie movement, with people looking for more locally grown, locally sourced foods. Its big with that crowd.

Sink said good seasons are born out of mild, wet winters. It still is too early to predict how 2020 might shape up, Sink said. But supplies in Houston are showing up almost more than a month before they did last year.

As Reneau drove around her fields earlier this month, she stopped her truck to check the handful of test traps.

The first three were empty.

She squealed when she hoisted the fourth above the water line.

Oh, we have one! she said, holding up the trap and pleading with the creature to stay inside. Good little crawfish.

shelby.webb@chron.com
AUSTIN  Less than a week after he left the presidential race, Julian Castro on Monday endorsed U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president, a sign the former San Antonio mayor could be vying to be Warrens pick for vice president.

Theres one candidate I see whos unafraid to fight like hell to make sure Americas promise will be there for everyone, Castro said in a video in which he endorsed Warren, D-Mass.

Castro, 45, on Monday traveled to New York to campaign with Warren for a rally in Brooklyn.

In his endorsement video, Castro is seen knocking on Warrens door where Warren greets him with a big hug and Castro greets her dog Bailey by name like they are old friends.

You did so many things in this campaign and it continues to matter, Warren says as she pours coffee for the two in her kitchen. It's not just in the past tense. It matters.

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Castro said on social media that he and Warren see eye to eye on key issues that inspired him to run for president in the first place.

Elizabeth and I share a vision of America where everyone counts, Castro said on Twitter. An America where peoplenot the wealthy or well-connectedare put first. I'm proud to join her in the fight for big, structural change.

Castro, the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, ended his campaign for president on Jan. 2 amid lagging poll numbers and his struggle to raise money at the same pace as the front runners in the contest.

While Castro had notable dustups with other Democrats including fellow Texan Beto ORourke, Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden on the campaign trail, he and Warren were downright friendly on the campaign trail, making their alliance less of a surprise for those who have closely watched the candidates on the campaign trail.

For subscribers: Democratic presidential contenders turn attention to Texas

In May during one interview on MSNBC, Warren was asked about which other candidates running for the Democratic nomination had policy positions she liked.

Oh, I think Julian Castro, she said. His idea around immigration and about changing how we treat people who come here and who are not documented. I think hes got some really good ideas around this. I am very interested in his work. I admire it.

Warren later credited Castro for leading the Democratic presidential field with his proposal to repeal a section of federal law that would decriminalize unauthorized border crossings. In October she also praised Castro for speaking out against a Las Vegas ordinance that would have criminalized homelessness. That brought corresponding praise from the the Castro campaign directed at Warren for being a true class act.

Warren and Castros relationship goes back to his work as Secretary of HUD from 2014 to 2017. During that time he frequently worked with the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, which Warren is a member of.

When Castro dropped out last week, Warren was one of the first candidates on Twitter to praise Castro.

You made this race stronger and you will continue to be a leader in our party and our country for many years to come, Warren said last week.

Their frequent interactions have prompted many political watchers to speculate whether Castro could be a potential running mate for Warren if she were the nominee.
A n Instagram model has raised more than half a million dollars by sending naked selfies in return for a donation to the Australian wildfire crisis fund.

Kaylen Ward, who has dubbed herself "The Naked Philanthropist" on social media, has reportedly raised more than $700,000 in just two days after she asked fans to give $10 to charity pot in exchange for an x-rated photograph.

The 20-year-old model from Los Angeles said she had seen the horrific images emerging from the bushfires and did not think different funds were receiving enough international attention.

Ms Ward already has a business selling naked photographs of herself online and decided she would temporarily turn her talents to charity.

Kaylen Ward is selling nude photos for donations / Twitter/@lilearthangelk

Her tweet went viral and now has more than 71.2K retweets and 166K likes.

Hundreds of people sent their confirmation receipts to prove they had donated while Ms Ward struggled to keep up.

Instagram later deactivated her account, but she set up a new one while she tried to get the original one reinstated. Both Instagram accounts have now been disabled, she said on Monday.

Despite this, Ms Ward claims she has raised more than half a million dollars, writing in one post: "We have hit and estimated $500k...... guys I am crying.... this is f***ing crazy."

She later said: "An estimated $700K has been raised for the Australian Bush Fires in response to my tweet.... is this real life?"

Australia Wildfires & Heatwave: December 2019 - In pictures 1 /30 Australia Wildfires & Heatwave: December 2019 - In pictures A firefighter conducts back burning measures to secure residential areas from encroaching bushfires AFP via Getty Images A helicopter drops fire retardent AFP via Getty Images Tourists Julia Wasmiller (L) and Jessica Pryor take a selfie at Mrs Macquarie's chair, wearing face masks due to heavy smoke Getty Images Smoke haze from bushfires shrouds the harbour bridge and city skyline in Sydney AFP via Getty Images People flock to St Kilda beach as a heat wave sweeps across Victoria, Australia via Reuters Tourists take photos of a smokey Sydney Getty Images Smoke haze from bushfires shrouds the harbour bridge and city skyline in Sydney AFP via Getty Images Fire and Rescue personal watch a wildfire as it burns near homes on the outskirts of the town of Bilpin in Sydney, Australia Getty Images A property burns from bushfires AFP via Getty Images A farmer drives a tractor as he uses a hose to put out a fire burning in his paddock and near homes on the outskirts of the town of Bilpin, Sydney Getty Images A property burns from bushfires AFP via Getty Images An old car burns from bushfires in Balmoral, southwest of Sydney AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images A fireman fights a wildfire AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images Smoke haze from bushfires shrouds the city skyline in Sydne AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images Tourists take photos of a smokey Sydney Getty Images AFP via Getty Images AP AFP via Getty Images

Donators were asked to give directly to the NSW Rural Fire Service, Victorian Country Fire Service, Red Cross and certain koala hospitals across the nation.

It comes as Australias government said it is willing to pay whatever it takes to help communities recover from deadly wildfires that have ravaged the country.

A smoldering log is pictured in the Wingello State Forest / Getty Images

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government was committing an extra two billion Australian dollars (1 billion) towards the recovery effort in addition to the tens of millions of dollars that have already been promised.

The fires are still burning. And theyll be burning for months to come, Mr Morrison said.

And so thats why I outlined today that this is an initial, an additional, investment of two billion dollars. If more is needed and the cost is higher, then more will be provided.

Mr Morrisons announcement of the funds, which will go towards rebuilding towns and infrastructure destroyed by the fires, came as the death toll from the disaster rose with the discovery of a body in a remote part of New South Wales.

The body is believed to be that of a 71-year-old man who was last seen on New Years Eve moving equipment on his property on the states south coast, police said.
"The entire country witnessed "state-sponsored goondaism and terrorism" in the varsity yesterday where nearly 300 goons who were wearing masks and brandishing sledgehammers, rods, lathis and glass bottles created mayhem in JNU between 6 pm to 9 pm last night. They went hostel to hostel beating the students including the JNUSU president Ayesha Ghosh. They attacked teachers and hit them on their heads," said Surjewala addressing a press conference here."The entire goondaism happened under the watch of JNU administration and Delhi Police which is directly controlled by Union Minister Amit Shah. It seems democracy and law is no more in this country," he said.Questioning Prime Minister Modi and Shah over the attack, the Congress leader said: "The goons entered girls hostel -- Sabarmati, Kaveri and half a dozen hostels. They beat students calling them urban and anti-nationals. What were Modi ji and Shah doing? Why are you torturing, suffocating and subjugating the youth and students of India under your autocratic, despotic rule."He said that the manner in which students were attacked was seen during Hitler's rule in Germany."The manner in which youth and students are being attacked and their voice stifled remind us of the Nazi's Germany of 1933 which seems back to come under Modi-Shah rule after 90 years," he alleged."Why are you beating up students raising their voice against fee hike which students and parents can't pay, why are you stifling the voice of students and putting them in jails and throwing goondas at them just because they take out save constitution rally, why are you attacking students from Banaras University, IIT Madras, Hyderabad University, Jamia or JNU and so on. What does the police do?" he asked the Central government.He claimed that the JNU administration was complicit in the attack by Goondas in JNU campus."The JNU admin was complicit in the attack by Goonda in JNU campus, These Goondas belong to BJP and ABVP. Delhi police remained mute spectators and didn't intervene when the goons were breaking ambulance and beating up students and girls inside JNU campus. This was happening with the tacit support of Shah," he said.On Sunday evening, more than 18 students of the university, including JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, were injured and were taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered the JNU and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods.The JNU administration and political leaders, cutting across political lines, had condemned the attack on students and urged the police to take action against the perpetrators.Meanwhile, the situation remained tense but peaceful outside JNU on Monday morning as the university guards' maintained a strict vigil at the gate, checking I-cards of all those entering the university. (ANI)
Chinas People Liberation Army (PLA) has begun a major military exercise in the high-altitude border areas of Tibet, deploying latest weapons including a new lightweight tank and anti-aircraft missiles to check combat readiness of its troops and the efficiency of its weaponry, state media reported.

The PLAs Tibet military command has deployed helicopters, armored vehicles, heavy artillery and anti-aircraft missiles across the region from Lhasa, capital of Tibet, with an elevation of 3,700 meters to border defense frontlines with elevations of more than 4,000 meters, said China Central Television (CCTV).

Most of the disputed boundary between India and China falls in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), whose international borders include Nepal and Bhutan.

For China, it is the first major military exercise this year and was unveiled as President Xi Jinping, the head of the countrys military, told the PLAs top officers that armed forces must strengthen their sense of urgency and do everything they can to prepare for battle.

The PLA, according to the national broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), for the first time, deployed two new weapons: the Type 15 lightweight tank and the 155-millimeter vehicle-mounted howitzer, both designed to operate at high altitude plateaus and for border defence.

The weapons were specifically designed with advantages for plateau regions and can play important roles in safeguarding border areas, military experts told CCTV.

Both weapons were first revealed to the public at the National Day military parade on October 1, 2019 in Beijing.

Their deployment in the Tibet Military Command will enhance PLA combat capability in plateau regions. Both weapons feature powerful engines, enabling them to maneuver efficiently in Tibets terrains, a military expert who asked not to be named told the nationalistic tabloid, Global Times.

The Type 15 tank is the worlds only modern lightweight tank in service, Chinese military magazine Weapon had earlier reported, noting it is equipped with a 105-millimeter gun and advanced sensors that can devastate enemy light armored vehicles in regions not suitable for heavy main battle tank deployment.

On the new howitzer, this is what the military-today website had to say: This artillery system is highly mobile and can self-deploy over long distances. It can be airlifted by most medium transport aircraft. It is light enough to be airlifted by a Y-9 or similar military transport aircraft, making it a more flexible option for a Chinas growing rapid reaction units.

Last August, China had announced it had for the first time tested new weapons including battlefield robots and frontline tanks on a snow-covered plateau to be battle-ready for plateau warfare.

Those drills were conducted at altitudes of nearly 14000 feet and lasted several days.

In 2017  between June and August -- India and China were locked in a 73-day Himalayan military standoff near the Sikkim border in Doklam (Donglang in Chinese.)

It was eventually resolved through negotiations.

The India-China Line of Actual Control (LAC) covered 3,488 kilometres including the border along Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim.

Beijing claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of south Tibet.
Why wear a brand's logo on your shirt when you can spell it out with your body hair? At least that's what one creative fashion label proposed today down the runway at London Fashion Week Men's.

In the middle of their Fall 2020 show, which explored queer sensuality, a shirtless model emerged with the words "Art School" arranged neatly from the slicked hairs of its chest. This is no random student art school project, however: Art School is the name of British designers Tom Barratt and Eden Loweth's non-binary indie fashion label, which has slowly become one of the fastest-growing queer luxury brands in the world.

Since its launch in 2016, Art School's experimental and inclusive designs (many of which are made for trans bodies) have become a hit with nonbinary customers of all ages, as well as one very famous Kardashian. (Kim reportedly bought half of the duo's first collection in cash.) Rita Ora and Rihanna are fans, too, the latter of whom posted an image of herself in an "Art School Dropout" T-shirt that sold out instantly.

If you'll recall, the brand's last fashion show for Spring 2020 went viral after a model walked out in a deranged, frenetic pace that spawned countless drunken memes.
The daughter of the slain commander of Irans Quds Force, Zeinab Soleimani, told a huge crowd at his funeral ceremony in Tehran that the United States and its ally Israel faced a dark day for his death.

Crazy Trump, dont think that everything is over with my fathers martyrdom, Zeinab Soleimani said in an address broadcast on state television, after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an air strike on Friday that killed General Qassem Soleimani, Reuters reported.

Earlier, the military adviser to Iran's supreme leader, Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan said Iran's response to a U.S. strike will be military.
Weddings can be stressful for any couple as a lot of preparation and efforts are put into the events. But what if a couple is given just 48 hours to change their wedding venue?

Thats what reportedly happened when US resident Ashley Hall came to India with the plan of a wedding at a five star hotel in Kochi. However, upon reaching Kochi, Hall was told she would have to change the venue of her wedding for security arrangements for President Ramnath Kovinds stay at the same hotel. The disappointed bride took to Twitter and asked the Rashtrapati Bhavan for help. As it turns out, the Rashtrapati Bhavan did intervene and saved the couples wedding.

The entire incident was documented in tweets. It all started when Hall tweeted:

Sometimes you plan a destination wedding for 8 months at an elite hotel in India.



Sometimes the President of India makes an impromptu trip to that hotel on the day of the wedding.



Sometimes you get 48 hours notice to plan an entirely new wedding.  Ashley Hall (@hall_ash) January 4, 2020

The wedding was scheduled at Taj Vivanta Hotel in Kochi on Tuesday. The stay for the President was also arranged at the same hotel - he would arrive at the Navy port on Monday afternoon. To follow the strict security protocol security officials advised the wedding party to shift their venue to avoid inconvenience.

Giving it one last try, the bride tweeted to the Presidents office on January 5 hoping for some assistance.

Hey @rashtrapatibhvn- anything you can do to help us with your security team so that we dont have to move our wedding from the @Taj_Cochin in under 48 hours? https://t.co/0S5y9az9Hk  Ashley Hall (@hall_ash) January 5, 2020

While there was no reply from the official Twitter account of Rashtrapati Bhavan, action had been taken as was clear from Halls next tweet.

I want to thank the @Taj_Cochin and State Officials for working on this with us throughout the day. Hoping we can have a beautiful wedding with the blessings of The Honorable @rashtrapatibhvn. https://t.co/i6lR4D9YDQ  Ashley Hall (@hall_ash) January 5, 2020

Turns out, the Presidents security was scaled down and he was to leave Kochi on Tuesday morning itself to avoid any inconvenience to the wedding party, said security officials.

Later in a tweet, the President also conveyed his wishes to the couple.

We are glad the issues have been resolved. President Kovind conveys his best wishes to you on this joyous occasion read the tweet.

We are glad the issues have been resolved. President Kovind conveys his best wishes to you on this joyous occasion  President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) January 5, 2020

What do you think of this lovely gesture?
2019 was the fourth year of the 14th National Assembly and the first preparatory year for Party congresses at all levels towards 13th National Party Congress. Along with the common goals from the whole Party, people and the army, the NA continued to operate more democratically and effectively, leaving deep impressions in the hearts of voters and the people.

1. Many important laws, which met the requirements for the countrys socio-economic development, were considered and approved by the NA.

In 2019, the NA passed 18 draft laws and codes with a notably high approval rating, including several draft laws receiving a 100% approval rate from deputies. The adopted laws and codes are very important legal basis that can promptly solve problems arising from day to day life situations; contribute to the rapid and sustainable socio-economic development; improve the quality of the peoples lives; respect, protect and ensure human rights, the basic rights and obligations of citizens; build progressively, have harmonious and stable labour relations; enhance the reform of state apparatus in a streamlined and effective manner; and reform the regime for cadres and civil servants as well as corruption prevent and control.

In particular, there were notable important policies that attract the great attention of voters including the increase of the retirement age to 62 for men and 60 for women (in normal working conditions) as well as the harsher sanctions and punishment for traffic violations, which prohibit drivers with traces of alcohol in their blood or breath in order to help contribute to reducing traffic accidents across the country. The development of a unified general education curriculum throughout the country with each subject having one or several textbooks; and a stricter punishment for violations caused by retired officials and civil servants during their working time; were also notable policies set last year, among others.

2. Supervisory activities continued to be improved.

PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc answers NA deputies' questions during the Q&A session on November 8. (Photo: NDO/Duy Linh)



In 2019, the NA continued to improve the efficiency of question-and-answer sessions. Many deputies debated with Government members and ministers on many issues. The openness, democracy, innovation and professionalism in question-and-answer events have attracted the attention of numerous people and voters.

Following the success of the NAs re-questioning at its sixth session, last year, the NA Standing Committee for the first time put forward questions and answered questions on its implementation of resolutions on thematic supervision and conclusions from the beginning of the term to the end of 2018 for 15 ministers and leaders of the sectors. The feat showed the stability and comprehensiveness in the supervision of the NA, while highlighting the spirit and responsibility of the NA, NA bodies and deputies in monitoring and supervising supervised contents.

2019 was also the first year that thematic videos and images were used for the report of supervision results. The NA applied voice-to-text software during question-and-answer sessions, ensuring all questions were answered as well as helping the chairman formulate results easier.

3. The NA issued a Resolution on approval of the Master Plan on socio-economic development in ethnic minority and mountainous areas.

At its eighth session, the NA passed the Resolution No.88/2019/QH14, approving the Master Plan on socio-economic development in ethnic minority and mountainous areas, for 2021-2030 period.

This was the first time in the 14 tenures, the NA has made a resolution on the policies for the socio-economic development in ethnic minority and mountainous areas that were integrated into a national target programme on sustainability for the areas.

The resolution pointed out the criteria and focus points most in need of being prioritised. The national target was issued to avoid overlapping, duplication, loss, waste and transparency for inspection, examination and supervision during the process of implementation. The resolution has also created breakthroughs for ethnic-related policies to exploit untapped potential and advantages for the areas and localities; as well as promoted the self-reliance spirit of the ethnic minority people and gradually narrowed the gap of socio-economic development between the above areas and others in the country, while enhancing the great unity bloc of ethnic groups to contribute to a successful implementation of the Partys guidelines and States policies and laws on ethnic work.

4. Boosting the institutionalisation of the policy on continuing to renovate and organise the apparatus towards the streamlined, effective and efficient political system

Last year, the NA and NA Standing Committee issued many important decisions to institutionalise the policy on continuing to renovate and restructure systems towards a more streamlined, effective and efficient political system, under the Resolution No.18-NQ/TW by the 12th Party Central Committee.

The highlight of the contents were: the amendments and supplements to a number of articles of the Law on Organisation of the Government and the Law on Organisation of the local Government; the NAs Resolution on piloting the urban administration model in Hanoi; the NA Standing Committees adaptation of the Resolution No.653/2019/UBTVQH14 prescribing the arrangement principles and ways of administrative units at district and commune levels for 2019-2021 period.

5. Vietnam takes over the chair of AIPA 41

National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan (R) receives the AIPA chairmanship token for 2019-2020 from Speaker of the Thai House of Representatives Chuan Leekpai. (Photo: VNA)



On August 29, 2019, NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan receives the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) chairmanship token for 2019-2020 tenure. The event was one of many important marks in preparation for 2020  a special year for the country while taking on the role as a non-permanent member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, Chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Chair of the AIPA.

6. The NA issued a historical resolution on the management and development of Vietnam  Cambodia border line

At its eighth session, the NA issued a historical resolution on the ratification of the supplementary treaty to the 1985 Treaty on the Delimitation of National Boundaries and the 2005 Supplementary Treaty, as well as a protocol on land border demarcation and marker planting between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Kingdom of Cambodia.

The resolution formed a solid legal framework for the management and development of the Vietnam  Cambodia border line, ensuring the maintenance of security, national defence and social order and safety in the bordering region. The resolution also expressed the will and determination to cooperate in building a borderline of peace, solidarity, cooperation and development, on the basis of respect for each other's independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and legitimate interests, equality and mutual benefits, for the sake and prosperity of the two peoples.

7. Solemn ceremonies commemorating the 130th birthdays of late NA Chairmen Nguyen Van To and Bui Bang Doan

The Party Central Committee, NA, President, Government, Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee and Hanoi jointly held solemn ceremonies to mark the 130th anniversary of the births of the first NA Chairman Nguyen Van To (June 5) and late NA leader Bui Bang Doan (September 19). Speaking at the events, NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan underscored the achievements and great contributions made by the late NA Chairmen to Vietnamese revolution.

The ceremonies have contributed to inspiring patriotism, pride and deep gratitude to the Party, President Ho Chi Minh and predecessors among all people from all strata, particularly younger generations; as well as encouraging them to actively study, work and fight to contribute to the successful implementation of targets and tasks for national development and protection.

8. The application of information technology supported the NAs activities.

The NA deputies use smart devices at the session. (Photo: anninhthudo.vn)

The year 2019 marks a remarkable advance of the NA in the application of information and technology to serve its doings. Since the seventh session, an app supporting the NA deputies activities on smart devices (such as tablets and mobile phones) was put into operation for the first time. It had many smart features, including the provision of full documents, the quick search function of documents through voice, the reading of paper documents, online exchange and interaction, and following the topics related to the NA on the newspapers and social networks.

Besides the above mentioned, the application of artificial intelligence in voice recognition has significantly contributed to the effective and smooth operation of sessions, while serving the removal of audio tapes during the discussion of contents.

With the use of information and technological advances, the NA successfully organised paperless meetings for the first time in 2019, contributing to improving the efficiency and savings in its actions while receiving high appreciation of deputies and voters.
Johnny Sexton isn't likely to play for Leinster ahead of Ireland's Six Nations opener against Scotland on February 1. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Leinster senior coach Stuart Lancaster has revealed that Johnny Sexton is highly unlikely to play before the start of the Six Nations.

There had been a slight hope that Sexton could return from a knee injury in next week's final Champions Cup pool clash against Benetton, but it appears that will not be the case.

The out-half, who is the front-runner to take over as Ireland captain, damaged ligaments in his knee against Northampton last month and has since consulted a specialist in the UK over the injury.

Although Sexton's rehab programme is going well as he increases his training load this week, he is set to miss Leinster's next two games, which means that he will be coming into the Six Nations short on game-time.

The 34-year is no stranger to hitting the ground running after spells out and it seems that he will have to do so again, if he can prove his fitness in time for Ireland's opener against Scotland on February 1.

"He's making great progress but it's not an injury that you suddenly go from being not injured to fit again in two or three weeks," Lancaster said, at Leinster's UCD base today.

"It takes time to strengthen the ligament, to start running again and everything that goes into being back fit again and playing a robust game like rugby.

"So it's going to take some time but he has made some good progress but he is not going to be available to us this week."

Asked if Sexton could return against Treviso next week, Lancaster responded:

"Well, that's unlikely but that's not to say that he is a long way away from playing either.

"But we have got a Sunday game and a game again next Saturday so he would have to be on the training field playing full contact and training on Monday, Tuesday next week and that's not going to happen."

Meanwhile, Leinster will give James Ryan every chance to prove his fitness ahead of the clash with Lyon.

The Ireland lock suffered a calf injury in last weekend's thumping win over Connacht and was replaced in the first half.

Ryan will be monitored throughout the week before a final decision on his fitness is made.

"We'll see, we'll see," Lancaster said of Ryan's chances of featuring this weekend.

"It's certainly not a long-term injury by any stretch of the imagination. But he won't be training today and we'll obviously have to make a call by Wednesday really.

"It's a Sunday game, which gives us a longer lead-in time. We're hopeful but it's not for certain.

"We wouldn't take the risk. We've got Scott Fardy and Devin Toner, Ross Molony and Ryan Baird. We've got some good opportunities there if James isn't available."
The fight over the contours of President Donald Trump's trial before the Senate isn't only about whether he should be removed from office. It's also a battle over the balance of power between the executive branch and Congress. If Senate Republicans go along with the administration's refusal to share information, they will contribute to the increasing evisceration of Congress's oversight role - which they may come to regret.

The impending trial isn't just a trial: It's part of Congress's role overseeing the activities of the executive branch. An impeachment trial occurs once in a blue moon, but congressional oversight happens every day and is a cornerstone of our democracy.

If Trump gets away with unprecedented obstinacy in the face of a legitimate congressional oversight request on an issue of monumental importance, then what can't he - and his successors - get away with? If Congress cannot obtain highly relevant information in the impeachment context, where its powers should be at their zenith, then how can it do so in other circumstances?

The administration has responded with derision to the House's investigation of its dealings with Ukraine all along. On Oct. 8, White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote an astonishing letter announcing that the White House would not participate at all in what he termed a "constitutionally illegitimate" impeachment inquiry. The letter was so over-the-top that one law professor wondered whether "the White House counsel was sick the day they taught law at law school."

The harangue was perplexing for an additional, obvious reason: Congress need not be pursuing an impeachment inquiry to solicit and receive information from the executive branch. Even if Cipollone were correct that the impeachment inquiry was somehow invalid, the congressional committees conducting the investigation would be entitled to obtain information as part of their normal authority to oversee the executive branch.

Yet Cipollone waved that away, insisting that because Congress had announced an impeachment inquiry, it had somehow forfeited its preexisting oversight authority. This is nonsense.

True to its word, the Trump administration has not turned over a single page of records to Congress, despite the numerous subpoenas issued to the White House, the Office of Management of Budget and the departments of State, Defense and Energy. The only documents that the administration has released voluntarily are the call memorandums regarding Trump's two conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The administration has, belatedly, produced documents in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from private entities - in essence, declaring that the people's elected representatives are less entitled to receive information about the executive branch than random FOIA requesters.

Likewise, the White House tried to block all witnesses under its control from testifying, instructing current and former officials not to testify. Several did anyway, in some cases at apparent risk to their careers, but a full dozen complied with the president's instructions and stayed away - most notably acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

The outcome of such oversight clashes between Congress and the president depends in large part on norms, expectations and public pressure. Enforcing a subpoena against the executive branch isn't easy: Courts are loath to get involved and prefer to allow the political branches to hash it out if possible. Litigation rarely produces a timely resolution. In the dispute over whether Congress was entitled to certain documents related to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives's Operation Fast and Furious, it took nearly four years before a district court ruled in 2016 that Congress was entitled to certain records. Likewise, the House Judiciary Committee's attempt to enforce a subpoena for the testimony of former White House counsel Donald McGahn is unlikely to be resolved soon. McGahn and the Justice Department are appealing the district court's decision that he lacks "absolute immunity" from testimony; even after that is decided, there will still be a question as to whether executive privilege shields McGahn from answering questions about anything other than information already disclosed in the Mueller report.

Indeed, the very availability of such enforcement lawsuits is uncertain. In both the Obama and Trump administrations, the Justice Department has taken the position that courts lack jurisdiction to consider lawsuits by Congress to enforce subpoenas against the executive branch, and the increasingly conservative Supreme Court - which has never taken up a case involving a congressional oversight dispute with the executive branch - might one day agree.

Congress has other tools in its toolbox, such as conditioning items on the president's wish list (e.g., Senate confirmations and funding for programs) on compliance with oversight requests. But the effectiveness of such threats depends in no small part on the extent to which the public values what Congress is trying to do and approves of its efforts to play hardball.

If Trump is allowed to skate without any witnesses being called and without producing relevant documents, the Senate will be on record as not caring very much about White House stonewalling. As Americans become increasingly inured to the White House ignoring Congress, a future administration may face less pressure in the next showdown with Congress. While Trump would benefit now, the next beneficiary might be a Democratic president whom Republicans are trying to hold in check. Or it might be a reelected and emboldened Trump, with even less reason to heed Congress - a Frankenstein's monster who has escaped the lab.

Obviously, Trump is not the first president to stiff-arm Congress - indeed, the argument that top aides are entitled to "absolute immunity" is not new. But his administration's broad intransigence on a matter of such importance as the impeachment inquiry sets a high-water mark for disregarding Congress's oversight authority.

It is remarkable that Congress, entrusted with the grave responsibility of determining whether to remove the president, is being denied crucial information. While Senate Republicans may not care about the consequences in this instance, the reverberations will echo. The high-profile impeachment trial represents their best opportunity to push back on the White House and make clear that any future administration that acts like this one will pay a political price.

- - -

Eric Columbus served as senior counsel to the deputy attorney general in the Department of Justice and as special counsel to the general counsel in the Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration.
From Pondicherry University to Oxford University in London, anger over the violence in JNU resonated in varsities across the country and even abroad as students protested against the attack on students and faculty members by an armed masked mob.

In India, protests took place at Pondicherry University, Bangalore University, University of Hyderabad, Aligarh Muslim University, University of Mumbai, Delhi University, Ambedkar University, Banaras Hindu University, Chandigarh University, National Law University in Bengaluru, Savitri Bai Phule University in Pune, TISS Mumbai, Jadavpur University, Presidency University, Kolkata and IIT Bombay.

Students staged peaceful marches to register their protest against the violence on the JNU campus with hashtag "SOSJNU" trending on social media. "Today it is them, tomorrow it can be us. Violence in any form is condemnable. We stand by our friends in JNU," Raiza, a Pondicherry University student said.

Students at Oxford university, Columbia University and University of Sussex also staged silent marches holding posters demanding safety of students on campus. In Nepal, JNU alumni gathered at Maitighar Mandala in Kathmandu to protest against the violence on campus. In Mumbai, the protest by students at the Gateway of India that started at midnight continued with more people flocking at the iconic monument to express solidarity with students.

READ: NCP Reasons Out CM Uddhav's JNU Violence-26/11 Attack Equivalence, Cites Attackers' Masks

Maharashtra minister Jitendra Awhad of NCP joined the students at the protest and sat with them to discuss their demands. "When people begin to fear intellect, there is anarchy," the minister told reporters as students shouted slogans condemning the violence. Students of the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune also staged a demonstration outside the FTII gate, holding banners with messages like - 'FTIIstands with JNU, condemns the violence of ABVP Goons'.

A day after the violence in JNU, some students at Panjab University disrupted the address of Haryana Speaker Gian Chand Gupta. Carrying banners, the students belonging to some Left-leaning student bodies, shouted slogans against the BJP, RSS and the ABVP when the Haryana speaker was addressing during a seminar.

Students' unions of the Jadavpur University affiliated to the AISA and the SFI are slated to march towards the ABVP state office in Maniktala area of Kolkata on Monday while students of the Presidency University would also take out a procession from their campus.

Violence broke out at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police. Many were injured and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.

JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh suffered a head injury. All 34 students who were admitted to AIIMS trauma centre were discharged on Monday morning. The Left-controlled JNUSU and the ABVP blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours. A day after the incident, the Delhi Police registered a case against unidentified people for rioting and damage to property.
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Clinical Decision Support System Market: Global Size, Trends, Competitive, Historical & Forecast Analysis, 2019-2025- Growing demand for intelligent software solutions with the aim to efficiently manage rapidly increasing patient pool across the globe is expected to boost the growth of the market over the forecast period.

Global Clinical Decision Support System Market is valued at USD 1014.5 Million in 2018 and expected to reach USD 2187.2 Million by 2025 with the CAGE of 11.60% over the forecast period.

Scope of Global Clinical Decision Support System Market Report

Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) refers to a healthcare IT system designed specifically to assist clinical decision support for healthcare professionals and physicians. CDSS contains several tools, which helps to improve decision-making in the clinical workflow. It provides clinicians with a technological double check as they perform the challenging work of accurately assessing, diagnosing, and treating patients. These tools includes; computerized alerts and reminders to care providers and patients, clinical guidelines, focused patient data reports and summaries, diagnostic support, and documentation templates, among other tools. It can offer reminders for preventive care, give alerts about potentially dangerous drug interactions and alert clinicians to possible redundant testing their patient has been scheduled to undergo. CDS can potentially lower costs, improve efficiency, and reduce patient inconvenience. Currently, there is a global need for systems with advanced algorithms, interactive interfaces, and service oriented architectures to deal with the rapidly increasing prevalence of chronic diseases followed by increasing patient population.

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Global clinical decision support system market report is segmented on the basis of model, mode of delivery, component, product, application and regional & country level. Based on model, global clinical decision support system market is classified as knowledge-based CDSS and non-knowledge CDSS. Based upon mode of delivery, global clinical decision support system market is classified into cloud based and on-premise. Based upon component, global clinical decision support system market is classified into hardware, software and services. Based upon product, global clinical decision support system market is classified into integrated system, stand-alone system, standard-based, service model-based, other products. Based upon application, global clinical decision support system market is classified into medical diagnosis, alerts and reminders, prescription decision support, information retrieval, image recognition and interpretation, therapy critiquing and planning and other applications.

The regions covered in this clinical decision support system market report are North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World. On the basis of country level, market of clinical decision support system is sub divided into U.S., Mexico, Canada, U.K., France, Germany, Italy, China, Japan, India, South East Asia, GCC, Africa, etc.

Key Players for Global Clinical Decision Support System Market Report-

Global clinical decision support system market report covers prominent players like Wolters Kluwer Health, Hearst Health, Elsevier B.V., Cerner Corporation, McKesson Corporation, Epic Systems Corporation, MEDITECH, Philips Healthcare, International Business Machines (IBM), National Decision Support Company (NDSC), Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc. and others.

News-

Mayo Clinic and the National Decision Support Company are Developing CDS Tools for Point-Of-Care Lab Test Ordering.

On September 20th, 2017; Mayo Clinic recently partnered with the National Decision Support Company (NDSC) to develop a clinical decision support (CDS) tool comprising recommendations for lab test ordering. The tool will be available to healthcare providers through their EHR systems. The CDS tool CareSelect Lab collects clinical knowledge about a comprehensive selection of conditions and offers best practices recommendations to improve patient care and cut costs through more appropriate, accurate, and less redundant lab test ordering.

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Global Clinical Decision Support System Market Dynamics

The growing need for falling human errors, rising demand to reduce healthcare expenditure, need for improvement in the quality of healthcare, increasing chronic disease population, and growing adoption rate in emerging economies are the major factors that are likely to foster the growth of the clinical decision support systems market. According to world health organization (WHO), the burden of chronic diseases is rapidly increasing worldwide. It has been intended that, in 2001, chronic diseases contributed approximately 60% of the 56.5 million total reported deaths in the world and approximately 46% of the global burden of disease. The proportion of the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is expected to increase to 57% by 2020. Also, the growing adoption of cloud computing is the major driver for the expansion of cloud-based CDSS segment. According to a 2016 survey by RightScale, nearly 95% of organizations are running on cloud-based applications. However, lack of trust in the system as CDSS is in its initial stages of development, lack of skilled labor and suggestions from CDSS for unnecessary diagnostic testing may hinder the market growth.

Global Clinical Decision Support System Market Regional Analysis

The global clinical decision support system market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific Latin America and Middle East & Africa. North America is expected to dominate the global clinical decision support system market. This growth is primarily driven by the highly developed and technologically advanced treatment and research platform for the diagnosis of diseases in this region. In addition to this, the availability of favorable reimbursement policies is also helping the North American market to grow at a considerable pace. For instance, in 2018, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) publicized marketing clearance for Viz.AIs Contact application, the first artificial intelligence-based clinical decision support (CDS) solution cleared for sale in the United States. Viz.AI Contact is intended to analyze computed tomography (CT) results.

Asia Pacific is expected to emerge as the fastest growing regional market due to rapidly increasing patient pool and growing need for software assistance for managing this large patient population. In addition, increasing collaboration between healthcare institutions and information technology companies for developing new systems is also expected to boost the growth of clinical decision support systems in this region.

Key Benefits for Global Clinical Decision Support System Market Report

Global Clinical Decision Support System Market report covers in depth historical and forecast analysis.

Global Clinical Decision Support System Market research report provides detail information about Market Introduction, Market Summary, Global market Revenue (Revenue USD), Market Drivers, Market Restraints, Market opportunities, Competitive Analysis, Regional and Country Level.

Global Clinical Decision Support System Market report helps to identify opportunities in market place.

Global Clinical Decision Support System Market report covers extensive analysis of emerging trends and competitive landscape.

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Global Clinical Decision Support System Market Segmentation: 

By Model:

Knowledge-based CDSS

Non-Knowledge CDSS

By Mode of Delivery:

Cloud-based

On-premise

By Component:

Hardware

Software

Services

By Product:

Integrated System

Stand-alone System

Standard-based

Service Model-based

Other Products

By Application:

Medical Diagnosis

Alerts and Reminders

Prescription Decision Support

Information Retrieval

Image Recognition and Interpretation

Therapy Critiquing and Planning

Other Applications

By Regional & Country Analysis:

North America

U.S.

Mexico

Canada

Europe

UK

France

Germany

Italy

Asia Pacific

China

Japan

India

Southeast Asia

Latin America

Brazil

The Middle East and Africa

GCC

Africa

Rest of Middle East and Africa

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After violence broke out in the JNU campus on Sunday night, the students from the university gathered outside the Delhi police headquarters to protest against it.
An element of the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment has been ordered to the Middle East, joining other ground forces surging to the region as tensions escalate with Iran.

The contingent from the elite special operations raid force is deploying to the U.S. Central Command area of operations, a Pentagon official with knowledge of Special Operations Command forces told Military.com Sunday evening.

Politico was first to report that a company-sized element of the 75th was deploying as part of a special operations contingent heading to the region.

The deployment comes after a series of short-notice deployments in the last few days after the Iranian government pledged to retaliate against a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad killed Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force.

Military.com confirmed Saturday that the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan, carrying about 2,200 Marines of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, is moving to the Middle East.

Related: Thousands of Marines Head to Middle East on Navy Ship as Iran Pledges Retaliation

The Pentagon ordered about 3,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division's 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina to the region on Friday. An initial deployment of the 2nd Battalion, 504th boarded planes on New Year's Day and flew to Kuwait to beef up American forces in the region in the wake after hundreds of Iranian-backed militia members and their supporters stormed the U.S. Embassy compound Tuesday morning.

On Sunday, U.S. officials with Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve announced that the command is suspending its anti-Islamic State mission, which involves about 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, following calls from in Iraq's parliament for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country.

A series of rocket attacks on U.S. positions in Iraq, including two more Saturday night, "has limited our capacity to conduct training with partners and to support their operations against Daesh [another name for ISIS] and we have therefore paused these activities," the task force said in the statement.

In Tehran on Sunday, Hossein Dehghan, the former defense minister and now top military adviser to Khamenei, said the Iranian response would be limited to an attack on U.S. forces, but Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami warned of reprisals that would not be limited to attacks on the U.S. military.

-- Gina Harkins and Richard Sisk contributed to this story.

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.

Read More: US Suspends Anti-ISIS Mission in Iraq to Protect Against Iranian Reprisals
Q: We have a nativity set purchased in Sri Lanka in 1991 that was one of a handful of such sets made by students at a carpentry workshop. None of the student craftsmen were Christians, and the nativity story was new to them. They had an original interpretation as they carved the figures, each from a single piece of wood from the ruk aththana tree (Alstonia scholaris). For example, among those worshiping the Christ child were Hindu and Buddhist gods and goddesses: Krishna, Saraswati, Ganesha and Pattini. The set has three wise men and three kings. One of the kings was knocked off the table and his head came off. How can I have the head of the king put back on his shoulders and have a complete set?

A: This is a great time to begin working on getting the king repaired so you're sure to have him standing regally by the next Christmas season.

Because you value this set highly, and because there is a bit of mystery to it, you might want to start by consulting a conservator who specializes in repair of wooden folk objects. The American Institute for Conservation and the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation offer a "find a conservator" service on their website, culturalheritage.org, that allows you to search by Zip code.

Click through on the individual names to find conservators who are in private practice and do assessments and treatments. Many conservators have emails indicating that they are on the staff of institutions such as the Smithsonian, or they specialize in offering advice about how to display collections.

A conservator could help answer an intriguing question about how your set was made. The pictures you sent show a reddish interior that's puzzling because the type of wood you mention, from the Alstonia scholaris tree, is typically very light-colored. The tree, which is native to areas including India, southern China and Australia, produces wood with an even grain, one reason it is considered a good wood for carving. But the broken neck of the king has flecks of white. Adding to the mystery is that a tall figure would typically be carved with the wood grain running up and down. Wood is very strong in that direction, so it's unlikely a head would break off unless the figure, for some reason, was carved with the grain going crosswise.

Conservators are trained to identify the materials in the objects they evaluate, so if you take the pieces to a conservator, you may learn that the figures are made of something else entirely, such as clay or papier-mache.

Connie Stromberg, owner of Stromberg Conservation LLC in Bethesda, Maryland, looked at the pictures you sent. "Wood grain is visible at the broken ends, but there may also be some putty or fill material there. I also think there's some old adhesive residue on the broken ends so it's likely been previously repaired," she wrote in an email.

She also said "the figures could be made of wood or have some wooden parts with putty or papier mache over the core area," adding that she would need to see the pieces in person to be sure.

She isn't ruling out wood, though: "I've often repaired wooden pieces (such as masks) that break at short grain, in other words the wood grain isn't in the direction it should be for strength and thin areas such as necks are most vulnerable at short grain."

Anne Kingery-Schwartz, who is in private practice in Washington, D.C., as Kingery Conservation LLC, also stressed the need to evaluate the pieces in person. For the repair, she would probably recommend gluing the pieces together, without adding anything, such as a dowel, to strengthen the joint. "Typically, we try to avoid using dowels, as it requires drilling into original material," she wrote in an email. She said conservators have adhesives that are strong enough to repair a break without any reinforcement.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Whether you hire a conservator to make the repair or attempt to glue the parts together yourself, Kingery-Schwartz offered this suggestion: "The main thing to do is to keep the break edges in pristine condition. Don't try to repeatedly fit the two pieces back together - even that can damage the edges. The better the fit, the stronger the repair will be, and there's less of a chance that there will need to be a fill" to plug gaps along the break.

The cost of a professional repair will depend partly on how much touch-up work needs to be done to get the piece in the condition you want. Many conservators offer a quick, free evaluation if you bring an object to them. Before they do any work, they prepare a written evaluation and cost estimate.

Kingery-Schwartz said conservators in the Washington, D.C., area typically charge $110 to $140 per hour. Depending on the condition of the break edges, she estimated that repairing the king could take as little as three hours or as many as nine or 10. "It also depends on the goal of the treatment - to simply stabilize the piece or to address the aesthetic issues associated with the damage," she said.

Repairing one statue in a nativity set is a tiny job for a conservator in private practice. Stromberg noted that most of her work is for museums and private or governmental institutions. "I do small jobs for private clients when there's time around those bigger jobs, so it's difficult to say how long it would take," she said. "There's certainly enough time before next holiday season though."

But don't wait until November.
CLIMBING HILL, Iowa -- Two years ago, the Siouxland Paramedics group headquartered in Sioux City ceased operations, leaving rural Woodbury County residents in the lurch for coverage by paramedics around the clock.

It took extended financial and hiring machinations, but by the middle of 2018 the Woodbury County Emergency Services Department reached the goal of every day, 24-7 paramedics coverage, and the department leader now says people have been well served since.

"To provide quality emergency medicine is important to us," Woodbury County Emergency Services Department Director Gary Brown said.

As Siouxland Paramedics neared the end of its 911 service on Jan. 1, 2018, the Woodbury County Emergency Services Department had just one full-time paramedic to serve small towns and rural areas in responding to calls for heart attacks, strokes, vehicle collisions and falls. Brown at the time predicted failing to add more paramedics would set "the county back 35 years."

In a interview in the last week of December, Brown said, "It is working well. I've got some experienced people who know their stuff and are taking great care of people."

Jerry Kelley was first hired as the county formed a new team of experienced paramedics to serve rural residents, outside the metro of 100,000 people in Sioux City. A few months later, two other full-time workers and a part-time employee were added, and the current full-timers are Myles McCrea, of Correctionville, Iowa, has been a field paramedic since 2014, and Ronald Freemont, of Whiting, Iowa, who has been a paramedic since 2010.

Kelley said he's enjoyed serving the rural residents. Brown praised how well other officials, including sheriff's deputies, Iowa State Patrol and many county fire and ambulance volunteer departments, work together.

"We are not trying to replace volunteer systems, we are just trying to help them," he said. "It is amazing to see us work as a team."

Brown said the paramedics respond to about 1,300 incidents per year, or roughly four calls per day. It is rare but sometimes no calls come in over a 24-hour period, while sometimes it can be up to 15 a day.

"Yesterday, they ran their wheels off, one call after another," Brown said.

In 350 calls over the last year, the situations dictated that the county paramedics provide advanced medical care.

Brown noted the county is so far flung that many times an emergency run to a Sioux City hospital could mean a 40-minute trip. He said response times are critical so that the immediate problem doesn't result in a more extensive health problem.

Citing financial difficulties, Siouxland Paramedics in August 2017 announced that they would cease providing 911 services to Sioux City, North Sioux City and the county by year's end. The group had been providing those services for 35 years. (Sioux City Fire Rescue now runs a new city emergency medical services division to 911 ambulance calls in the city.)

With the changes, Brown and other people in the county knew they needed more paramedic coverage.

After four spending proposals, the county supervisors in late January 2018 agreed to hire paramedics at a cost of $146,267. The proposal to fund a second year for 2019-20 was approved without controversy, and Brown said he anticipates no problems with the next budget to keep funding the paramedics.

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Shiv Sena minister Abdul Sattar and former Aurangabad Lok Sabha MP Chandrakant Khaire had buried the hatchet and had promised to work together, said senior leader Eknath Shinde on Monday.

Sattar and Khaire were at loggerheads after the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi candidate, belonging to the Sena, managed to win the post of president in Aurangabad Zilla Parishad after a rebellion and draw of lots on Sunday.

Sillod MLA Sattar, who joined the party from Congress ahead of the October Assembly polls, has been accused of "sabotage" by a section of Sena leaders in Aurangabad, with Khaire calling him a "snake" and "traitor".

"They (Sattar and Khaire) have buried the hatchet. They have promised (chief minister) Uddhavji of working for the party together," Shinde, senior minister in the Thackeray government, said.

Khaire said, "I have said what I wanted to say earlier. As a loyal Sena worker, I will continue to work for the party. There is no personal grudge against Sattar."



Sattar, on his part, said, "I have promised Uddhavji there will full cooperation from my side for the party. I will work within the framework of the party.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Wyomings small population of about 50 common loons is related to those found in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, according to recent genetic results  not closer populations that nest in Montana or Washington, which are still more than 200 miles away.

Thats a little bit of a surprise, said said David Evers, executive director and chief scientist for the Biodiversity Research Institute, which published the results in a recent status update.

Thats just one of the amazing facts about common loons, a species that has attracted Evers attention during more than 40 years of research. His entire business, based in Portland, Maine, was built around evaluating loon populations and, by sampling their blood, determining the prevalence of mercury in the environment.

For me, Ive always had this love of loons, he said.

Unique

So its no wonder that the uniqueness of Wyomings common loons has also caught Evers attention. They are an unusual population. At some point between the receding of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age 11,700 years ago and Euro-Americans settlement of the West, those connections were severed leaving Wyomings loons all alone, which is not good.

Loons are very poor colonizers, Evers said.

Because of that, you can have the best habitat anywhere, but they will fly by it, he added.

So once that link to the north was snapped, other loons never moved in. As a result, the Wyoming loons nest farther south than any other western loon population. The majority spend their nesting season in Canada and Alaska with little fringes of the range that extend south into the U.S., Evers said.

Loon calling

Common loons are one of five loon species, all members of the Gaviidae family. All but one, the arctic loon, has been sighted in Montana. Montana has a fairly strong common loon population in the northwest corner of the state in places like Glacier National Park and the Swan Valley.

Loons are perhaps best known for their haunting calls which have been compared to yodeling, wailing or quavering laughter, according to Peterson Field Guides. In Minnesota  the land of 10,000 lakes  the common loon is the state bird.

The black and white fish-eating birds float low in the water. They can measure up to 3 feet long and have sharp beaks. Their back has a checkered black and white pattern. Some common loons have been known to survive 35 to 37 years.

Wyoming focus

In 2013 Evers company helped form the Wyoming Loon Working Group to catch, tag and monitor the small loon population in the state. The results of that work, which has included members of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department as well as Yellowstone National Park and two national forests, has been revealing.

The state now recognizes the bird as a species of greatest conservation need.

Its only in the past decade or so that the state of Wyoming has realized this is a very high priority species, Evers said.

The Caribou-Teton National Forest has instituted some seasonal trail closures to protect nesting loons from human disturbance. Thats probably the biggest threat to the isolated population, Evers said. With 4 million people a year now visiting Yellowstone National Park in the summer, keeping the birds protected from human disturbance wont be easy, he added.

This population is very sensitive to disturbance, said Zack Walker, of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

The birds typically nest in the month of June, but may nest earlier if its warmer, and they will re-nest if the first hatch is unsuccessful. That means keeping humans away from nesting areas may extend from May to July. Unfortunately, July is also one of the busiest times for travel to Yellowstone and its surrounding environs.

A lot of these (nesting) areas are on protected public lands, Walker said.

That's a blessing and a curse. The public likes access to such lands, but the agencies are also able to limit traffic during key nesting times.

Amazing feats

The birds fidelity to specific areas is nothing short of amazing. After fledging at 11 to 12 weeks, new chicks will stay behind a few weeks after their parents fly south for the winter. Without having ever flown to that location, the young birds will also fly south to the same area.

Theyre gone for three years, for the most part, staying on the ocean said Susan Patla, a retired WGFD biologist who participated in the common loon studies.

When they come back, most of the young loons are within 15 miles of their natal lake, despite never having flown there from the south before.

In 2015, a banded Wyoming loon from Wolf Lake was recovered. The geolocator on the bird indicated it had flown south to the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula, almost 1,500 miles. Whether all of the Wyoming birds winter that far south or in the same area is unknown. Its also unknown if their Canadian relatives migrate to the same area, since theyve never been tracked.

The young birds will wait until they are about 5 to 6 years old before picking a breeding territory. Because they are fond of certain areas, it can mean competition with other loons for the best spots.

So the loons worst enemy (in nature) is another adult loon, Evers said.

The birds will dive underwater and rocket upward to spear their opponent in the breast with their sharp beaks. They will also grab each other by the neck.

Its always a same-sex conflict, Evers said. If they win, the female will bond with that male.

So the female loons fidelity is to the nesting location, not the male mate.

Consequently, in their summer nesting habitat the birds are constantly on the lookout for underwater attacks by other common loons. Once they return to their wintering grounds the birds are much more social, congregating in groups of 30 to 40 birds, Evers said.

Threats

For now, the Wyoming common loon population is stable. Whether such a low population is a genetic concern for inbreeding is uncertain.

Genetic bottlenecks vary by species, Evers said.

Other threats the birds face are climate change that could raise or drop lake levels, deadly waterborne bacteria and the contaminant mercury that can accumulate in the fish they eat. Recent studies have already warned that Minnesotas loon population might abandon the state given warming trends.

Moving common loon chicks to a new area to increase the range of the birds in Wyoming has been a topic of discussion, said Walker, of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

The question now is: Can the population be increased in distribution and number? Patla said. In Minnesota they are actually moving chicks around to different parts of the state.

Recolonizing that Wyoming population would take a very long time, Evers said. So its important to protect these small populations.

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A police manhunt has been launched for a Mini Cooper driver after they mowed down an officer and then fled the scene.

The PC was rushed to hospital after he was hit by the car at about 12.10am on Sunday in Woodford Green, north east London.

A Mini was later found abandoned near the scene, where items of police uniform were left strewn across the road.

The police officer was taken to hospital but his injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.

A police manhunt has been launched for a Mini Cooper driver after they mowed down an officer (pictured is medical equipment and police clothing lying in the street)

A Mini was later found abandoned near the scene with what appeared to be a smashed headlight

A uniformed police officer collects evidence at the scene of the incident in Woodford Green, north east London early on Sunday morning

Police are yet to make an arrest as detectives launched a manhunt for the driver.

Redbridge MPS tweeted: 'An officer has been injured during an incident around 00.10hrs. He was hit by a car in Chigwell Road, E18.

'A search is being carried out for the driver which left the scene.'

The account later added: 'The officer's injuries are not life threatening & enquiries continue.'
[January 06, 2020] ProNovos Chosen by GLY as Long-Term Enterprise Partner for Construction Data Analytics

ATLANTA, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- One of the top contracting firms in the Pacific Northwest has chosen ProNovos as its enterprise partner for construction data analytics. GLY Construction formalized its relationship with ProNovos by signing a multiyear partnership agreement with the Atlanta-based tech startup, said Bruce Orr, ProNovos' Founder and Chief Data Scientist. "With a 53-year track record in Puget Sound, locally owned GLY makes smart use of technology to manage complexity, create value and mitigate risk," Orr said. "We're gratified that GLY is as bullish as we are about the power of construction data analytics to further advance those goals." "Over the past four years, the IT department at Bellevue, Washington-based GLY has stress-tested ProNovos' cloud-based data analytics platform as part of an initiative to streamline the company's labor-reporting process and glean new insights into its operations," said Joe Bonacci, CFO of GLY. "We now do all of our weekly labor reporting through ProNovos, and our project teams are using the platform to forecast labor, determine productivity rates and claim quantities, hours and costs," Bonacci said. "With respect to accuracy, ProNovos is superior to semimanual, spreadsheet-based approaches, which can be error-prone as a result of data-entry mistakes and broken formulas." In any given year, the CFO said, GLY completes anywhere from 80 t 120 projects. Examples, to name a few, include the Rufus 2.0 Block 21 Amazon HQ expansion in Seattle's Denny Triangle neighborhood; the six-phase FutureCare expansion of Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue; and Vulcan, Inc.'s Google-anchored mixed-use project in Seattle.



In addition to labor-reporting, GLY has partnered with ProNovos on data initiatives related to equipment-management and general ledger, said Andy Hough, IT Director of GLY. "We're now using ProNovos as our corporate dashboard," he said. "Bruce and his team are advising us as we build out our data warehouse and ramp up our data-cleanliness. By integrating more data streams into ProNovos' analytics engine, GLY will be able to make better decisions in the office and the field." Moving forward, the award-winning contractor will use ProNovos as the foundation for its efforts to revamp key internal systems and processes; in addition, a mobile app will give GLY's teams greater access to the platform. As Orr sees it, GLY is at the forefront of the data revolution in construction. "As evangelists for construction data analytics," he said, "we're excited to partner with this innovative and experienced contractor."

About ProNovos

ProNovos provides cloud-based business intelligence solutions and services that empower contractors to find new opportunities, make better decisions, save money and reduce risk. Founded in 2014, the Atlanta-based operations-management and data-analytics firm focuses exclusively on the specific needs of the construction industry. This actionable intelligence is accessible anywhere, anytime by superintendents, project managers, accountants, estimators, c-suite executives and other decision-makers. For more on ProNovos, visit ProNovos.com. About GLY Construction

Rooted in the Pacific Northwest culture of innovation and creativity, GLY is one of the most respected locally owned general contractors, celebrating 50 years in 2017. Projects span a wide range of markets, and the firm is known for adapting thoughtfully and purposefully, building on a strong foundation of smart technology, integrated delivery, LEAN practices and responsible sustainability. Collaborative teams have a diverse skill set comprised of design, engineering, architecture, construction management and strong field technical capabilities. For more on GLY Construction, visit GLY.com. Press Contacts: At ProNovos, Bruce Orr, (678) 908-0087, [email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pronovos-chosen-by-gly-as-long-term-enterprise-partner-for-construction-data-analytics-300981109.html SOURCE ProNovos

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NEW YORK, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Executives from Cornerstone Capital Group, Full Cycle, and Royal Park Stockholm, among others, will gather to discuss climate change, sustainability strategies, the circular economy, and more at the first-annual Green Debate and Gala Reception in Davos, Switzerland.

Logistical details of the event can be found below:

Green Debate Gala Reception



Date : January 23, 2020

Time : 5:00  7:00 p.m. CET

Location : Hotel Seehof Date : January 23, 2020

Time : 7:00  9:00 p.m. CET

Location : Hotel Seehof

Media looking to attend the Green Debate and Reception in Davos should contact Megan Carey from our global communications agency, M Group Strategic Communications, at [email protected] or call 646-853-5953.

The Green Debate, organised by In-Events, will bring together forward-thinking executives and CEOs who share a common interest in sustainable business and development. Panel participants include Erika Karp, Founder and CEO of Cornerstone Capital Group; Ibrahim Al Husseini, CEO of Full Cycle; Thimo V. Schmitt, Director of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability at Aurora Europe; Paula Schwarz, Founder of Cloud Nation.

The debate will be moderated by Gerry Van Der Sluys, Co-owner and CEO of Business Creation Investments and Sarah Backhouse, Managing Director of Sustainability 50 at World 50. Debate topics include: Responsible Investing, The Future of the Circular Economy, Developing Sustainable Strategies for Companies, Climate Change, Companies aligning with SDGs, Clean Energy, and Sustainability as a Business Opportunity.

Following the panel, In-Events, Cornerstone Capital Group, Fully Cycle and Royal Park will host a Gala Reception beginning at 7 p.m. CET. The reception will feature a welcome address by Ibrahim Al Husseini, CEO of Full Cycle. Additionally, Paula Schwarz, Founder of Cloud Nation, and Professor Dr. Christian Duve, Founder of V29 Legal, will deliver reception presentations.

"The Green Debate and Gala Reception offer companies the opportunity to showcase themselves and to connect with some of the world's most influential leaders and investors," said Zdenka E. Rezacova of In-Events. "Our goal is to inspire and to contribute to a scale mind shift in how we value and perceive our environment, economic growth, and development," said Rezacova.

About In-Events

In-Events.org is a boutique events agency specializing in C-level business events, fundraiser galas, and events promoting environmental and sustainability solutions. IN-EVENTS brings together global business leaders, investors, influencers, and citizens, to support environmental innovation, awareness, and sustainable practices.

About M Group Strategic Communications

M Group Strategic Communications is a global corporate public relations and integrated communications agency. Headquartered in lower Manhattan with 9 affiliate offices in six countries, our agency provides clients with an integrated approach to strategic communications including public relations, investor relations, social media, marketing, public affairs, and crisis communications. For more information about M Group Strategic Communications, visit www.mgroupsc.com.

Contact:

Megan Carey

M Group Strategic Communications

646-776-3567

[email protected]

To participate in the Green Debate in Davos please contact:

Zdenka E. Rezacova

In-Events.org

0030 - 69 43 105 811

[email protected]

SOURCE In-Events

Related Links

http://in-events.org


The University of Wyoming will likely appeal a Friday ruling in which a group of Wyoming news organizations largely prevailed over the school in a nearly yearlong effort to obtain records related to UWs decision not to renew former president Laurie Nichols contract.

The board has not made a final decision on whether it will appeal, but that is the intent at this point, UW spokesman Chad Baldwin said Monday in an email. Thats all I can say right now.

Albany County District Court Judge Tori Kricken ruled Friday that the vast majority of the records sought by the Star-Tribune and WyoFile should be released, albeit with redactions. Those documents had been withheld after repeated requests by WyoFile and the Star-Tribune dating back to April, just after Nichols was told she wouldnt continue. The news outlets had contended in their lawsuit that those records had been improperly withheld.

The judge also ordered that 18 documents that can be withheld should be described in a detailed log, so the outlets can better understand what the documents are and why theyre not being released. The university had previously argued that it didnt have to release such a log.

The lawsuit, filed by the Star-Tribune, WyoFile, the Laramie Boomerang and the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, sought to shake loose records related to UWs decision not to renew Nichols contract, a decision announced in a vague press release in late March. No explanation has yet been provided for that decision, though WyoFile and the Star-Tribune reported in September that it came just days after a quiet investigation into Nichols was completed by an outside law firm.

The Friday order wouldve forced the release of the documents in a matter of weeks. But in a conference call to attorneys Friday afternoon, Kricken said that the records would continue to be confidential until the University of Wyoming and Nichols can appeal. The former president joined the lawsuit in October and largely joined forces with the university to block the release of the records.

The university is likely to do just that. In an email, university attorney Robert Jarosh confirmed that the board has not yet made a final decision about an appeal.

Messages seeking comment from Nichols attorney and from UWs board chairman were not returned Monday. When the board will make a decision is unclear; the trustees have a meeting scheduled for Jan. 22, though no agenda had been published as of Monday.

In an interview with South Dakota Public Broadcasting on Monday, Nichols called the lawsuit an interesting situation. She steered clear of opining on the litigation and said that UW has 30 days to appeal.

I dont know what theyre thinking at this point, she told radio station of the schools plans to appeal.

The apparently imminent appeal did not surprise Bruce Moats, the Cheyenne attorney representing the news outlets. Moats is the retainer attorney for the Wyoming Press Association, which declined to support the lawsuit.

I expected it, Moats said. As hard as UW has prosecuted this case, yeah, it was not unexpected. ... Its unfortunate that itll drag out and the information will just get older and older, but theres not much that can be done about that.

Star-Tribune publisher Dale Bohren said he similarly wasnt surprised.

The public is anxious to learn why a popular president was demoted, he said. But we need to be patient and let the process work because the larger issues, like the publics interest in understanding how our top contracted employees behave in their professional capacities, even at risk of their professional reputations, is a vital point of the judges ruling with far reaching consequences for every citizen of our state. An indisputable ruling with clarity on the issues in this suit, regardless of the time that takes, will be most important in the long term.

Moats said if an appeal is filed, it will go to the states Supreme Court, which cannot decline to hear the case. He said he may choose to cross-appeal on the only part of the order that went against the news agencies: that attorney fees charged for examining records were reasonable. The Star-Tribune was charged several hundred dollars for one records request made in the spring.

Moats added that if the university appeals, the litigation would likely stretch on for six to 12 months. But he remained confident that the news outlets will prevail, especially given Fridays ruling, which largely dismissed the universitys arguments.

I can say that weve got a good decision below that will help us with the appeal, he said. A thorough decision below. It does make a difference.

The Nichols saga has dragged on for nearly a year. Unbeknownst to campus, Nichols and the broader public, UWs board began investigating Nichols in February 2019, and that examination ended just days before top board members flew to Arizona to inform Nichols she wouldnt continue. A source who was contacted as part of the investigation said the inquiry was into the presidents conduct.

Even as the investigation was unfolding, the board and Nichols were marching toward a contract renewal for the universitys first female president, who took over in spring 2016 and was broadly supported for her work to steady a campus reeling from cuts caused by Wyomings most recent economic downturn.. An email attached to court records suggested that an agreement of some kind may have already been signed before the announcement.

Nichols contract expired June 30. She took over as the interim president of Black Hills State University and was recently announced as the permanent president there. She has maintained, in interviews and in court filings, that she was never given an explanation for why her contract was allowed to run out.

She told the Star-Tribune in a June interview that she was not investigated and did not have an incident with an employee of the universitys foundation, as a foundation board member had said.

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(Newser)  Gunmen in northern Mexico opened fire on a family returning to the US on Saturday night, killing a 13-year-old girl and wounding her brother and parents. The family and other relatives were driving in two vehicles after spending the holidays in San Luis Potosi in central Mexico, CBS News reports. The attack took place on an isolated, two-lane highway south of Nuevo Laredo, the border city across from Laredo, Texas. The attackers passed the family's vehicles in an SUV and cut them off, causing a collision, and then opened fire, state officials said. The 10-year-old boy and his father and mother were taken to a hospital and reported to be in serious condition, per Reuters, which says the boy is a US citizen and cites a source who says the parents are legal residents of the US. Their names were not released.

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The attack took place near the town of Ciudad Mier, in an area where drug cartels have long battled over territory and smuggling routes. Mexican media reported that the gunmen were drug traffickers and that the back window of one of their vehicles bore the initials of their cartel. They got away, said the state security agency, which said an investigation of the attack has begun. (American Mormons were killed in an attack on a highway in northern Mexico in November.)
Nigerian songstress, Tiwa Savage has stated that she doesnt like flying. The 39-year-olds work as an entertainer makes flying a regul...

Nigerian songstress, Tiwa Savage has stated that she doesnt like flying.The 39-year-olds work as an entertainer makes flying a regular feature for her.Sharing a picture of herself in an airplane on Monday, Tiwa wrote on her Instagram page:My heart I actually beating fast cause I hate flyingDon Jazzy, her former label boss, wrote amusingly in the comments section in Pidgin English.At least the seat belt dey size you, he said.Recall that back in December 2019, Tiwa Savage said her relationship with Wizkid should not bug anyone.The last person I am going to introduce is special to me, she announced, with the fans screaming Wizkid in return even before she mentioned his name.Its not just any kind of relationship, it is a one-on-one relationship and I own him. I dont care what people say about us.I might be older but the older the berry, the sweeter the juice.
Sixty is the new 45, 80 is the new 60, and 100 is  well, really dang old. But even centenarians know that once you stop learning, you star...
The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is seen before an explosion, in this handout satellite image taken March 14, 2011 and released on December 24, 2019 by Maxar Technologies. (Photo : Reuters)

The local government unveiled its plan to make the Fukushima fully dependent on renewable energy.

Eleven solar and 10 wind farms will be constructed on an abandoned farmland and in mountainous areas starting on March 2024, Nikkei Asian Review reported. Once completed, the plant can produce 600 megawatts of electricity, about two-thirds of the output of an average nuclear power plant.

State-owned bank Development Bank of Japan and Mizuho Bank will fund the ambitious project that can cost up to 300 billion yen ($2.75 billion). The plant will also provide electricity to the Tokyo metropolitan area, which was once heavily dependent on its two nuclear power plants. Currently, only 40 percent of the total power generated in Fukushima came from renewable energy sources.

War Against Nuclear Power Plant

The prefecture situated in the north-east of Japan called the world's attention after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011. The said accident was triggered by a powerful earthquake and tsunami, forcing more than 150,000 residents to flee.

This disaster has been considered the world's worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl crisis. This also prompted Japan to shut down all but nine total reactors in the country. Despite that, the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that he wants to restart the 30 reactors by 2030. This has drawn a lot of criticism.

The recently appointed environment minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, said that nuclear reactors should be scrapped altogether to prevent another nuclear accident especially since Japan is known as an earthquake-prone country.

In September, Tokyo Electric Power announced that they have no choice but to release the radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean to dilute it. This sparked protest from local fishermen and neighboring South Korea.

Less Carbon Footprint?

Prime Minister Abe also said that he wants the atomic plants to comprise up to 22% of the overall energy mix by 2030. He claimed that it will help the country achieve its targeted carbon footprint through reducing its dependence on gas and oil, which made the campaigners frown and call it insufficient.

Koizumi's father, the former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, has accused Prime Minister Abe of being fooled by lobbyists' lies about the safety of nuclear plants. The older Koizumi, who has always been a vocal opponent of nuclear power, also said that the current federal leader made a false pretense that the situation in the disaster site is under control.

Japan ranked after India and China as the biggest coal importers in the world, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The country was also criticized after announcing at last month's UN climate change conference in Madrid that it will not discontinue its coal-fired power plants. The Climate Action Network called them the "fossil of the day" because of this.

Japan is a signatory of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

ALSO READ: Radiation in Parts of Marshall Islands is Higher than Chernobyl
Cate Blanchett thanked volunteer firefighters for their efforts during the ongoing Australian bushfires while on stage at Sunday's Golden Globes.

While presenting the award for Best Motion Picture - Drama, the Australian actress chose to highlight the tireless work by locals in a heartwarming message.

'I wanted to do a special call out to the volunteer firefighters who have been at the center of battling the climate disaster that is facing Australia,' the Carol star, 50, told the room of A-list attendees in Los Angeles.

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'I want to do a special call out to the volunteer firefighters battling the climate disaster facing Australia': Cate Blanchett, 50, broadcast a special message for the volunteer firefighters as she presented the award for Best Motion Picture at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday

'There are a lot of Australians in the room tonight, and I know we're all very grateful for the callouts to our fellow compatriots who are suffering under the bushfires, so thank you,' Cate began.

She added: 'When one country faces a climate disaster, we all face a climate disaster. So we're in it together, so thank you very much.'

The Australian bushfires have so far claimed the lives of 24 people, destroyed more than 1,500 homes and burned through more than six million hectares.

Cate's message about the devastating infernos was just one of many made by a number of Australian and international stars at the glitzy ceremony.

Echoing the thoughts of many: Her message, which has so far claimed the lives of 24 people, destroyed more than 1,500 homes and burned more than six million hectares, was one of many from a number of Australian and international stars at the glitzy ceremony

Russell Crowe, who won the Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television, decided not to attend the show to stay in Australia amid the ongoing crisis, but passed on a powerful message in a speech read by presenter Jennifer Aniston.

'Make no mistake. The tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is.'

The New-Zealand born actor opted to not attend the awards and stay in Australia to help with the wildfires.

'The tragedy unfolding is climate based': Russell Crowe (L), who won the Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television, decided not to attend the show to stay in Australia amid the on-going crisis, but passed on a powerful message in a speech read by presenter Jennifer Aniston (L)

Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres addressed the fires during her speech, where she was honoured with the Carol Burnett Golden Globe.

'My heart goes out to everyone in Australia, for all the animals you've lost,' the comedian said.

Earlier in the day, Cate certainly didn't disappoint fans when she arrived at the Golden Globes in Beverly Hills on Sunday.

The 50-year-old put on a showstopping display in a yellow column frock by Mary Katrantzou with frilled bolero sleeves adding a touch of old Hollywood glamour.

Her dress had an embroidered bralette forming the shapes of Greek goddess, and Swarovski crystals covered the bodice.
The Supreme Court on Monday held that the government can in national interest frame laws to regulate appointments of teachers to educational institutions regardless of whether they are run by majority or minority communities provided the intent is to ensure the standard of excellence.

A bench of justices Arun Mishra and U U Lalit gave the ruling while upholding the validity of the West Bengal Madrasah Service Commission Act, 2008. The law regulates the process of appointments of teachers to aided Madrasas recognised as minority institutions through a commission created by state government.

The bench set aside the judgment of the Calcutta high court, which struck down the commission created under the Act as unconstitutional in 2014.

When it comes to the right to appoint teachers, in terms of the law laid down in TMA Pai Foundation, a regulation framed in the national interest must necessarily apply to all institutions regardless whether they are run by majority or minority as the essence of Article 30 (1) is to ensure equal treatment between the majority and minority institutions, the court ruled. .. if merit is not the sole and governing criteria, the minority institutions may lag behind the non-minority institutions rather than keep in step with them.

The Contai Rahamania High Madrasa had filed a petition in the Calcutta HC challenging provisions of the Act under which the commission comprising a chairperson and four other members were empowered to make binding recommendations regarding the appointments.

It was submitted that the Act transgressed upon the rights of minority institutions in choosing their own teachers. A single-judge of the HC accepted the argument and allowed the plea. Some candidates, whose names were recommended by the commission to be appointed as teachers in aided Madrasas, filed an appeal before the division bench of the HC, which affirmed the judgment of the single judge and dismissed their appeal in 2015.

The Supreme Court relied on its 11-judge bench judgment in the TMA Pai Foundation case and held that the right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions under Article 30 of the Constitution is not absolute or above the law. It added conditions concerning the welfare of students and teachers must apply provided they do not interfere with right of administration of a minority institution.

The court noted that when framing a law, which interferes with minority institutions, a balance has to be kept between two objectives of ensuring the standard of excellence of an institution and the preservation of the right of the minorities to establish and administer their educational institutions.

The SC noted that the composition of the West Bengal commission empowered to make appointments to madrasas was such that it would ensure compatibility of the teachers, who would be selected to impart education.

Apart from the Chairman, there are four members who are to be appointed in terms of Section 4(iii) of the Commission Act. One has to be an eminent educationist, while the other two Members must have teaching experience inter alia as a teacher of a University, or a Principal of a College for a period of not less than ten years, the SC said.

In my view, this should not impact the overall right to make appointments of good teachers by other minority institutions through their committee of management by exercising their rights under Articles 29 and 30 of the Constitution of India, said advocate MR Shamshad, who appeared for teachers appointed by the commission.
Ryanair Holdings RYAAY posted impressive December 2019 traffic figures, primarily owing to solid air-travel demand. Traffic (including 0.5 million from its LaudaMotion unit in Austria) was up 9% year over year to 11.2 million in the month.

However, load factor (% of seats filled with passengers) remained unaltered at 95%. This European low-cost carriers passenger growth, excluding traffic from LaudaMotion unit, was 7% in the month. On a rolling annual basis, total traffic increased 9% to 152.4 million.

In fact, robust growth in passenger traffic has been hugely responsible for Ryanairs shares having an impressive run on the bourses lately. In the past six months, shares of this Irish carrier have gained in excess of 32% compared with its industrys mere 1% growth.

The impressive traffic report is a further positive for this Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stock. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Despite the impressive stock-price movement backed by strong demand for air travel, Ryanair is not bereft of headwinds. Notably, the company has been suffering due to the prolonged grounding of Boeing 737 MAX jets. In fact, these planes have been grounded since March 2019 following the twin air crashes in different parts of the world, over a span of five months, apparently due to software malfunctioning.

These woes are unlikely to be resolved any time soon as can be made out from the commentary of Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary. According to a Reuters report, O'Leary has noted that Ryanair is unlikely to receive its first 737 MAX delivery from Boeing before this October.

In fact, delivery delays are pushing up non-fuel costs, thereby hurting Ryanairs bottom line. Evidently, non-fuel unit costs are projected to flare up 2% in fiscal 2020 (ending Mar 31, 2020), primarily due to delivery delays of the Boeing 737 MAX planes.

Ryanair is not the only carrier to be suffering due to the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX jets. Its U.S. counterparts  Southwest Airlines LUV, American Airlines AAL and United Airlines UAL  have been equally affected by the issue. With no clarity available as to when the jets would resume flying, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines currently expect the Boeing 737 MAX jets in their respective fleets to remain grounded through Apr 7, Apr 13, and Jun 4, 2020, respectively.

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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.



Zacks has just released a Special Report that spotlights this fast-emerging phenomenon and 6 tickers for taking advantage of it. If you don't buy now, you may kick yourself in 2020.



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Click to get this free report Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV) : Free Stock Analysis Report United Airlines Holdings Inc (UAL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Ryanair Holdings PLC (RYAAY) : Free Stock Analysis Report American Airlines Group Inc. (AAL) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research
The Kenyan police have arrested three people suspected of making an attempt to break into a UK military base in the centre of the African country, media reported on Monday, adding that the malefactors are suspected of having links to terrorists, Trend reports citing Sputnik.

The incident occurred on Sunday in Nanyuki, a town in the Laikipia County, the Daily Nation newspaper said. The three suspects were caught on surveillance cameras during their failed attempt to penetrate into the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (BATUK).

BATUK circulated the footage to local police who tracked down the suspects and arrested them not far from the site. The arrested persons are suspected of spying for terrorists.

"They tried to force their way there but they could not. So they were tracked down. They just had cameras I think, but we are still interrogating them to find out the truth," local police chief George Natembeya said, as quoted by the Daily Nation.

Meanwhile, Al-Shabaab jihadist group staged an attack on a US military base in Kenya's Lamu County, on the coast of the Indian Ocean, on Sunday. One US serviceman and two contractors were killed as a result of the attack.
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Linkedin Duncan Graham (The Jakarta Post) Canberra  Tue, January 7 2020

It would be funny if it wasnt such a floundering for relevance.

Indonesian universities are staging international conferences headlined by overseas academics told to use English even when they are fluent in Indonesian. Often, theyre addressing a largely bewildered audience.

Its the response by some campus administrators to President Joko Jokowi Widodos demands that tertiary educators lift their game and make Indonesia a clever country.

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A domestic violence suspect holed up in an apartment with his ex-girlfriend points a so-called pirate gun at SWAT officers after they enter.

A woman who has a mental illness approaches deputies while armed with a knife.

A man points a gun at police after running away from a stolen vehicle in a residential neighborhood.

These are three of the 14 people law enforcement personnel shot at in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County in 2019.

In all, on-duty law enforcement shot at slightly fewer people in 2019 in the Albuquerque metro area than they did the year before, when they shot at 17 people. The tally does not include an incident in June in which a Utah veterinarian threatened his ex-girlfriend, an off-duty FBI agent, with a gun at a crowded brewery before her friend, another off-duty agent, shot and killed him.

Around the state, 42 people were shot at by law enforcement  16 of whom were killed  which is also a slight decrease from the 47 who were shot at  20 of whom were killed  in 2018, according to New Mexico State Police.

New Mexico had the highest per capita rate of fatal police shootings in the nation in 2018. New Mexico was No. 3 in 2019, behind Oklahoma and Alaska. The rates come from a database published each year by The Washington Post.

All eight people Albuquerque Police Department officers shot, or shot at, last year were armed with a gun  or a BB gun that closely resembled a real gun. That fact that stood out to Lt. Scott Norris of the Violent Crimes Section, who oversees criminal investigations into the shootings. Four people were killed, three were injured, and one was not struck.

It goes along with the same theme that were all experiencing  the gun violence in Albuquerque, Norris said in an interview late last month. It affects our officers just as much as it affects the citizens.

He said three of the guns involved had been reported stolen.

Bernalillo County Sheriffs deputies shot at four people: One was armed with a gun, two were armed with knives, and one was allegedly using a stolen vehicle as a weapon. Two of the people who were shot at were not hit. One of the two people who were hit was killed.

New Mexico State Police officers stationed in Albuquerque for an operation over the summer shot at two people in Bernalillo County. officers cited vehicles as the threat. One person was injured, and the other was not struck.

APD shootings

The number of shootings by APD officers has fluctuated over the years. The highest number was 15 in 2010; nine of them were fatal. The number has ranged between five and 10 since the city signed its court-approved settlement agreement in 2014. The agreement mandated reforms of the police department after a Department of Justice investigation found officers had a pattern of using excessive force.

However, there have been fewer high-profile shootings since the deaths of James Boyd  a mentally ill homeless man camping in the Foothills in 2014  and Mary Hawkes  a 19-year-old woman who was on the run through Southeast Albuquerque a month and a half later.

The consent decree does not prevent officers from shooting people who present a threat to them or a civilian, Norris said, but it does mandate de-escalation to try to prevent a situation from getting to that point.

Our use of force policy stresses de-escalation, he said. Slowing the situation down, calling on as many resources as you can, trying to figure out exactly whats going on and whats the best, most peaceful alternative or result that we can come up with relative to the threat this person is presenting.

Last year, the department implemented its retooled court-mandated Force Review Board, a body of deputy chiefs and other high-level officers, to review Internal Affairs investigations and look at gaps in policies and procedures.

If they see a policy deficiency, they bring up a concern, said Commander Cori Lowe of the Accountability and Oversight Division. Maybe we dont have it in policy, but we realize it probably should be so the board has the ability to make a referral to do that.

Lowe said the board started reviewing SWAT calls in August, and in December it moved on to use-of-force cases. So far, it has looked at three use-of-force cases, including one shooting by an officer, although Lowe couldnt say which one.

Paul Haidle, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico and a member of the APD Forward coalition, said coalition members overall have seen progress in the way officers are using deadly force, although there is still a way to go.

I think the police department is doing a good job at de-escalating a lot of situations and using force only as a last resort. Thats what we want them to do and what the consent decree outlines, Haidle said. I know there were a couple APD-involved shootings that come to mind where there were still questions about could the situation have been de-escalated further and was that the appropriate response.

BCSO shootings

Of the four people who were shot at by Bernalillo County Sheriffs deputies in 2019, one was killed, one person was injured, and two were not hit.

The death of Elisha Lucero  who was fatally shot in July when deputies responding to a misdemeanor battery call said she ran at them with a knife, screaming  renewed calls for deputies to be equipped with cameras. Her family said Lucero, 28 had a mental illness, and they, along with the ACLU, have been rallying for lapel cameras, or at least dashboard cameras. Sheriff Manuel Gonzales has resisted the use of cameras.

The shooting also prompted Bernalillo County commissioners to allocate $1 million for lapel cameras plus $500,000 in recurring annual funds; the sheriff has given no indication he will use the money.

BCSO homicide detective Samuel Rodriguez would not comment on the lapel camera issue, but in an interview last month he laid out the work that goes into investigating each case.

He said his investigators are paired with detectives from other departments in the Multi-Agency Task Force  which investigates all shootings by law enforcement in the metro area  and they interview witnesses and canvass the area for security camera video. The same protocol is followed for shootings by APD officers.

Rodriguez said he has the utmost confidence that the investigations are fair and impartial.

Im investigating a possible criminal prosecution for the suspect; Im also investigating a possible criminal prosecution for the deputy as well, Rodriguez said. We look at both. Once that case is complete we send everything  to (the) district attorney and Internal Affairs.

NMSP shootings

About a week after Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham ordered 50 New Mexico State Police Officers to patrol the streets of Albuquerque, two State Police officers in separate incidents shot at two suspects in vehicles, wounding one of them.

The shootings sparked criticism of the operation, as well as questions from the ACLU and APD Forward about the officers role in the city while it was undertaking a reform effort.

Haidle noted that the two shootings, at least on their face, appear to violate the court-ordered policies that forbid APD officers from shooting at moving vehicles except under limited circumstances.

The more nefarious part of all this is if NMSP and BCSO is allowed to come in and play by their own set of rules, what does that do to undermine the consent decree, he said.  That cant help but undermine the consent decree and undermine the officers faith in this long process that were engaged in that its the right thing to do.

Haidle said he hopes that as the governor, mayor and law enforcement find new strategies to curb persistently high violent crime in the area  including by ramping up the presence of state, federal and county officers  the city doesnt return to the same problems that led to the Department of Justice investigation in the first place.
'The CAA should be kept in abeyance without making it a prestige issue.'

'Laying down a clear policy on the future of illegal migrants will dispel anxieties and help in implementing the CAA, NPR and also the NCR,' suggests former Union home secretary Dr Madhav Godbole.

IMAGE: A protest against a Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Nagaon district, Assam, January 4, 2020. Photograph: Anuwar Hazarika/Reuters

India is witnessing a raging controversy over the eligibility of illegal migrants for citizenship.

The three issues in discussion are the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA), up-dating of the national population register (NPC), and compilation of a national citizens register (NCR).

Though independent of each other, in a sense, they are inter-related.

Importantly, resolving the issue of the status of illegal migrants is the key to finding a solution to the conundrum facing India.

Widespread Opposition

Eight state governments have declared that they will not implement the CAA and will not permit the NPC and NCR to be executed.

It seems to make no difference to them that the CAA has been passed by Parliament by a comfortable majority.

The Kerala legislature has even passed a resolution opposing the CAA.

According to entry 17 of the Union List in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, 'citizenship, naturalisation and aliens' are the sole responsibility of the Union government.

Further, Article 256 of the Constitution casts a specific obligation on the states that 'the executive power of every State shall be so exercised as to ensure compliance with the laws made by Parliament'.

Non-observance of these provisions will mean a breakdown of the Constitution, but no one seems to be bothered.

In the name of secularism, political parties are projecting the present controversy as a do or die battle of ideologies.

Those who were responsible for creating the problem are in the forefront agitating on these burning issues.

Are illegal migrants to be governed by the provisions of the Constitution?

If so, what is the distinction between the citizens and them?

Article 15 of the Constitution pertaining to prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth is applicable only to the citizens, and not the mere residents of India.

The position taken by some leading intellectuals takes the breath away.

Arundhati Roy, a Booker Prize-winning novelist and activist, wants a civil disobedience movement to be launched by not paying taxes.

She has even suggested that when the survey for NPR and NRC will be underway, respondents should deliberately give wrong information!

The Nobel Laureate couple, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, suggest that India should 'open its doors to all who sign up in our national mission of being democratic, open, tolerant and inclusive... We have 1.3 billion people -- a few more millions would disappear in a flash in that melting pot. And we would really be a loadstar for the world.' (The Indian Express, January 1, 2020, page 9)

The question is whether India should aim to be a lodestar or address its insurmountable problems of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, deprivation and unemployment, leave aside serious concerns of national security and integrity.

All I would say is that I am not on the same page with the Nobel Laureates.

Lost Perspective

In this highly polarised debate, the larger perspective is being lost sight of by all parties.

The primary responsibility for it must be placed at the door of the Union government which should have framed the question of citizenship in totality by addressing the gigantic problem of illegal migration over the last several decades.

Instead, by its classification of illegal migrants between Muslims and non-Muslims and giving preferential treatment to non-Muslim minorities from the three neighbouring Muslim countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan for grant of citizenship, the Union government has communalised the issue.

This has come handy to political parties like the Congress, the Communists, the Janata Dal-United and the other so-called secular parties to take cudgels on behalf of Muslims and side-track the main question of illegal migration, in the same way they had successfully done for years together.

Enormity of the Problem

IMAGE: BJP supporters display placards supporting the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Register of Citizens during Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi's rally at Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi, December 22, 2019. Photograph: Manvender Vashist/PTI Photo

Illegal migration from East Pakistan and later Bangladesh was consciously over-looked and encouraged for vote-bank politics.

Anyone who tried to speak or write on the subject was branded as being pro-RSS or pro-BJP and effectively silenced.

Even Lieutenant General S K Sinha (retd), then the governor of Assam, who studied this subject in depth and forwarded his report to then President of India K R Narayanan in 1998 was criticised as being communal.

General Sinha had warned, 'A silent and invidious invasion of Assam has been taking place for several decades and successive Governments have failed to stem this demographic onslaught.'

Although Bangladeshi illegal migrants had gone into several states, they are more numerous in West Bengal than in Assam.

The general had suggested that 'the National Register of Citizens should be updated and computerised. A separate register of Stateless citizens should also be maintained.'

No action was taken on both these recommendations by successive governments.

Then Union home minister Inderjit Gupta had stated in Parliament on May 6, 1997 that there were 10 million (1 crore) illegal migrants in India.

Gupta belonged to the Communist Party of India and, with his ideological orientation, would not have accepted this figure without scrutiny.

After the Kargil War, the Union government had appointed four task forces to examine national security issues.

I was the chairman of the task force on international border management which, in its reports submitted in 2000, had estimated that illegal migrants totalled 15 million (1.5 crore).

By 2020, this figure is likely to be over 30 million (3 crore).

This perspective seems to have been totally lost sight of in the acrimonious debate on CAA.

Before presenting the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in Parliament, the government should have examined the problem of illegal migration holistically and told the nation how it proposed to deal with it.

Merely giving citizenship to non-Muslim illegal migrants is not the answer.

Union Home Minister Amit Anilchandra Shah has been indulging in political grand-standing by calling the illegal migrants as termites and declaring that they would be deported.

This has understandably created widespread panic.

More importantly, it has created a sympathy wave for the infiltrators and illegal migrants!

Supreme Court decision

The subject of illegal migration came on the national agenda only after the Supreme Court decision in Sarbananda Sonowal vs Union Of India & Anr on July 12, 2005.

The top court had, in its ruling, referred to the internal displacement of locals as 'external aggression'.

The court had observed, 'Illegal immigrants from Bangladesh... enter surreptitiously and are able to mingle easily with the local population due to ethnic and linguistic similarities... Illegal immigrants from Bangladesh have also been using West Bengal as a corridor to migrate to other parts of the country...'

'As per 1991 census four districts (Dhubri, Goalpara, Barpeta and Hailakandi) have become Muslim majority districts. Two more districts (Nagaon and Karimganj) should have become so by 1998 and one district Morigaon is fast approaching this position.'

'The large-scale influx of illegal Bangladesh immigrants has led to large tracts of sensitive international borders being occupied by foreigners. This has serious implications for internal security.'

The apex court had relied on Entry 1 of List I of the Seventh Schedule pertaining to the defence of India and every part thereof, and Article 355 of the Constitution: 'Duty of the Union to protect States against external aggression and internal disturbance. It shall be the duty of the Union to protect every State against external aggression and internal disturbance and to ensure that the Government of every State is carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.'

The Supreme Court held that the provisions of the Illegal Migrant (Determination by Tribunal) (IMDT) Act, which was the instrument for declaring an illegal migrant a foreigner, clearly negated the above Constitutional mandate in Article 355, where a duty has been cast upon the Union of India to protect every State against external aggression and internal disturbance, and struck down the Act.

Action Taken -- A Cruel Joke

All that is being done in the name of evicting illegal migrants from Assam has become a joke, the Supreme Court had remarked on finding that precious little had been done by both the central and state governments to address the problem flagged as 'external aggression' by the 2005 decision.

With over 52,000 migrants declared as foreigners by foreigners tribunals in the last decade and 91,609 since 1985, the state claimed helplessness as almost 79 per cent of these persons were absconding by mingling with the local population.

Only 166 had been repatriated to their country of origin so far and almost 940 foreigners were being housed in the six detention centres in Assam.

There were 100 foreigner tribunals in the state but there has been no study to examine whether the tribunals were enough or more needed to be appointed. (DNA, 14 May 2019)

Available Options

Fears are being expressed that after the coming into force of the CAA, illegal Muslim migrants would be kept in detention centres till they are deported.

The Assam Accord signed in 1985 had provided in para 5.8 that 'Foreigners who came to Assam on or after March 25, 1971 shall continue to be detected, deleted and practical steps shall be taken to expel such foreigners'.

Clearly, this provision was made without adequate thought.

Expelling foreigners has been nearly impossible.

The General S K Sinha report had stated: 'International law does not provide for unilateral deportation in defiance of the views of the country to which the deportation is to take place. With the stand now taken by Bangladesh, it will not be possible for India to deport millions of illegal migrants to Bangladesh.'

'From 1993 to September 1998, the BSF (Border Security Force) tried to hand over 39,746 illegal migrants to the Bangladesh Rifles. The latter accepted only 9,253. The acceptance figures by Bangladesh declined from 5,799 in 1993 to only 55 in 1998 (up to 30 September).'

Considering their huge numbers, keeping them in detention centres is not a feasible options.

The recent Supreme Court order in Supreme Court Legal Services Committee v Union of India & Another, relating to detention centres in Assam has generated a lot of debate.

The order mentioned that those housed in detention centres in Assam who were awaiting deportation and had completed more than three years of detention should be released, subject to conditions such as the execution of bonds, providing a verifiable address of stay, recording biometric detail of the detenue, and regular reporting to foreigners tribunals.

The court also agreed that the Assam government should be given some more time to indicate the progress made on the diplomatic level, among others, with regard to deportation of declared foreigners and setting up of additional foreigners tribunals.

The Supreme Court had previously expressed its displeasure that 'foreign nationals' kept in detention centres in Assam were separated from their families, and asked the state government to look into the issue with some urgency to ensure families are not broken up. (Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, May 22, 2019)

Deportation does not appear to be feasible looking to the experience so far.

It is important to note that neither the Sinha report nor the report of the task force on border management had considered deportation a feasible option.

It is important to note that Bangladesh has consistently refused to accept the illegal migrants and has denied that they are Bangladeshi citizens.

A distinction must be made between refugees, and illegal migrants and infiltrators.

The task force on border management had recommended that a refugee law should be enacted and the scheme of work permits should be introduced.

But no action has been taken thereon though two decades have elapsed since the submission of the report.

The only feasible option is to declare the illegal migrants as stateless persons.

The 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on The Reduction of Statelessness are the key international conventions on statelessness.

An important provision of the 1961 convention establishes that children are to acquire the nationality of the country in which they are born, if they do not acquire any other nationality.

The Sinha report had recommended preparation of a register of stateless persons.

But this is only a temporary palliative as the international convention suggests that such persons should be assimilated in the given country within a period of ten years.

Further, it will be counter-productive to keep such a large section of humanity disgruntled and alienated.

This can have serious security implications.

At the most, such stateless persons could be legally deprived of voting rights and barred from voting for ten years (as laid down in the Assam Accord for those who were to be regularised), barred from holding sensitive posts having national security implications, and also barred from acquiring and holding immovable property.

To sum up

IMAGE: A protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in New Delhi, January 3, 2020. Photograph: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters

It is gratifying that Modi government has shown the political courage to address the problem of illegal migration, though only partially.

This needs to be taken to its logical conclusion.

The pros and cons and wide-ranging implications of the huge problem of illegal migrants not covered by the CAA and the options to deal with them need to be further examined carefully and debated calmly.

India has evaded to do it so far.

Laying down a clear policy on the future of such illegal migrants will dispel anxieties and help in implementing the CAA, NPR and also the NCR.

To create a proper atmosphere for the purpose, the CAA should be kept in abeyance without making it a prestige issue.

The Supreme Court may also be requested to defer the hearing of the cases till the issues are resolved politically.

It would be best if the government brings out a comprehensive white paper on the subject.

It will be impossible to get a complete picture of illegal migration in the country without a nation-wide NRC.

This question is important and must not be dodged any further.

Anxieties about the NRC can be reduced substantially by drawing lessons from the Assam NRC.

In a detailed report on the process of the NRC in Assam, Amnesty International India has criticised the judicial system for being 'complicit in perpetuating exclusion and abuse' and violating human rights.

The report, which studied in detail 16 cases of persons who were deprived of their citizenship by the foreigners tribunals, has stated that the process suffers from grave biases, prejudices and arbitrary decision-making.

Another fact-finding exercise, undertaken by members of Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression suggests that even minor discrepancies in names cost many a place on the list.

The report has also looked at the deep trauma, indebtedness, loss of lives and trust suffered by those who have fallen off the grid.

'The process has had a deeply damaging impact on the people of Assam... The fear of being detained in camps, deported to unknown lands, separated from friends and family, and attacked for being branded as foreigners have come to define everyday life for many in Assam,' the finding states. (The Wire, November 28, 2019).

Such inputs on genuine human problems must be taken into account in designing the NRC for the rest of the country.

Information which is available from other documents such as Aadhaar, NPR, and even the Census must be permitted to be used as much as possible to avoid troubling millions of persons in the country unnecessarily.

For this purpose, the concerned enactments may be amended, where necessary.

Additional questions proposed to be asked in the questionnaire of NPR 2020, which have raised unjustified controversy, should be retained as they are.

Looking at the NPR exercise with suspicion, which has happened as a fall-out of the CAA, is totally unjustified.

Before the NRC is launched, its purpose and modalities must be explained to the people fully.

This confidence-building effort must be undertaken with all seriousness and with an open mind to accept any reasonable suggestions which may come up.

The white paper on the CAA should also cover the NPR and NRC to build a national consensus.

In-built transparency will go a long way in making a success of these endeavours.

Pushing the problems under the carpet for years together has been responsible for the present country-wide turmoil.

It is time to resolve that this would not be permitted to happen again by postponing action on the NPR and NRC.

For, what is at stake is India's security, integrity, unity and communal harmony.

Dr Madhav Godbole is a former Union home secretary and secretary, justice. His two recent books are: The Babri Masjid-Ram Mandir Dilemma - An Acid Test for India's Constitution, and India's Governance.
Many species of rare turtles are in danger of extinction due to illegal trading in Vietnam.

Wild turtles traded publicly in Tam Nong Market in Dong Thap Province.VNA/VNS Photo Hung Vo

In the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta region, turtles are being sold as pets and for their meat, with many people thinking owning a turtle or eating one, brings good luck.

Turtles are openly traded at markets in Long An, An Giang and Dong Thap provinces.

In Tam Nong food market in Dong Thap Province, many species of turtles, including Mekong snail-eating turtles which are listed in the endangered Vietnam Red Data Book, are sold alongside snakes and wild birds.

Despite being close to the National Bird Sanctuary and Lang Sen Nature Conservation Area, trade is busy on the market with meat selling for VND500,000 (US$26) per kilo.

One seller even claimed the turtles were taken from a nature reserve.

These were rare turtles which were caught in the sanctuary, said a shop owner.

People bought small turtles to raise as pets and the bigger ones for cooking special dishes, she said.

"I could supply as many customers as I wanted. I also have a shipping service to other provinces and HCM City," she said.

Unlike people in the Cuu Long Delta, those in the northern region preferred using the reptiles for cooking a concentrated paste from bones.

Wild animal bone paste is a common traditional practice in Vietnam cooked from bones of tiger, lions, turtles, cobra, horse and deers.

Some people believe the paste is good for health, especially male virility, and could even cure some diseases.

The turtles used for this are sa nhan (scientific name: cuora mouhoti) and big-head (scientific name: platysternum megacephalum) which are both on the endangered list of reptiles.

Poachers use dogs to catch the reptiles in Ba Be National Park and Tat Ke-Ban Trung Nature Conservation Park in Tuyen Quang Province.

The act of catching and killing endangered animals may be criminally handled or administratively sanctioned depending on the value of material evidence, said Bui Thi Ha, vice director of Education for Nature  Vietnam (EVN), a non-government conservation and environmental protection organisation.

In cases worth more than VND150 million (US$6,500) or make a profit of VND50 million (US$3,170) or more, violators could be jailed for up to 12 years.

Anyone caught with less than those figures face fines of up to VND300 million (US$13,000), Ha said, adding that despite tough sentences, poaching is still rife due to high demand.

Between 2013 and 2017, only 15 cases were prosecuted.

Reptiles caught are not only sold in Vietnam, many are also shipped to China where turtle consumption is huge.

According to experts, the serious situation of the illegal trade of rare animals was due to legal loopholes.

The Vietnamese law does not allow hunting or trade of endangered animals, but it does allow turtles to be raised in commercial farms.

As a result, farm owners may trade animals which actually have been caught in wild but claim they are commercially bred.

The overlap of laws and decrees in the legal system of Vietnam also prevented enforcement agencies from taking action.

To confront the situation, conservation experts suggested it was necessary to change consumption behaviour and improve awareness.

Knowledge on natural conservation and wildlife protection should be provided to law enforcement staff at local levels.

And commercial farms should be encouraged to engage into rare animal breeding activities which help the wildlife conservation be sustainable.  VNS

Vietnam tries to protect sea turtles, the ocean envoys Sea turtles lay about 100 eggs a few times each year, but the survival rate of the species is approximately 1 out of 1,000.
External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Monday defended his alma mater, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), a day after its teachers and students were attacked by an armed mob, saying it was not home to any tukde tukde gang, at least when he was a student.

On Sunday, Jaishankar had condemned the systematic targeting of students and teachers in the hostels of JNU, which were attacked by masked men and women armed with sticks and iron rods.

The attackers assaulted students and caused widespread damage to the campus property for several hours.

I think what I have to say on JNU, Ive said yesterday. It was very clear, and I can certainly tell you when I studied in JNU... we didnt see any tukde tukde gang, Jaishankar said during a question and answer session at an event where he released a book.

The minister, who studied at JNU in the 1970s, took to Twitter on Sunday to criticise the violence: Have seen pictures of what is happening in #JNU. Condemn the violence unequivocally. This is completely against the tradition and culture of the university.

Tukde tukde gang is a colloquial term used by detractors of the JNU against the universitys students while leveling accusations of them being linked to efforts to divide the country.

Jaishankar used the event to launch the book Pax Sinica, which analyses the implications of Chinas rise, to criticise the former UPA governments lack of strategic clarity, which allowed the victim and perpetrator of terrorism to be on the same plane at meetings between India and Pakistan at Havana in 2006 and Sharm-el-Sheikh in 2009.

This was seen by some as criticism of former foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon, who said last week India faces diplomatic isolation because of the NDA governments action in Kashmir and a controversial citizenship law.

Menon was the foreign secretary during 2006-09.

Asked if the NDA government made the same mistake by allowing a Pakistani team to visit India as part of the probe into the 2016 Pathankot terror attack, Jaishankar said this was done to pressure Pakistan after it agreed to join the investigation.

When Pathankot happened, even the Pakistanis accepted who was the perpetrator, (then premier) Nawaz Sharif didnt deny it, there was an FIR actually filed against Pakistanis, he said. This government is very clear and consistent on whos the victim and whos the perpetrator, he added.

Jaishankar said India should learn from Chinas ability to tackle problems head on instead of brushing them under the carpet.

We have accumulated a legacy of problems that have caught up with us, he said, listing the citizenship issue that dated back 40 to 50 years, Article 370 of the Constitution that gave special status to Kashmir and was a temporary provision, and the Ayodhya issue and the delay in implementing GST.

The big [lesson] out of china is unless a society has the mindset to decisively address its current issues, youre not going to go up in the world, he said.

India should also make greater efforts to shape and control the agenda with China, especially issues that affect the countrys core concerns and were often brushed under the carpet in the past, he added.
Deployment aimed at backing GNA follows signing of agreements between Ankara and Tripoli-based government.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Ankara started moving military units to Libya to support the internationally-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli, one of the two rival administrations in the North African country.

Sundays announcement comes days after Turkeys parliament approved the deployment of troops in Libya after it received a request for military support from the GNA, headed by Fayez al-Sarraj.

The GNAs request came as it fends off a months-long offensive by renegade military commander Khalifa Haftars eastern-based forces, which have received support from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

There will be an operation centre [in Libya], there will be a Turkish lieutenant general leading and they will be managing the situation over there. [Turkish soldiers] are gradually moving there right now, Erdogan told private broadcaster CNN Turk during an interview.

He said Turkey would not be deploying its own combat forces. Right now, we will have different units serving as a combatant force, he said, without giving details on who and how many the fighters would be, as well as where they would come from.

The president said Turkeys objective was not to fight, but to support the legitimate government and avoid a humanitarian tragedy.

He said: Our soldiers duty there is coordination. They will develop the operation centre there. Our soldiers are gradually going right now.

Aim to avoid humanitarian tragedy

Libya was plunged into chaos after the toppling and killing of Muammar Gaddafi in a 2011 NATO-backed uprising. Since 2014, it has been split into rival eastern and western administrations.

The GNA currently controls Tripoli in northwestern Libya, and a parallel administration is holding the east of the oil-rich country, supported by Haftars self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA).

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Last week, Haftar had called on Libyans to take up arms in response to Turkeys expected military move.

We accept the challenge and declare jihad and a call to arms, he said in a televised address on Friday.

He urged all Libyans to bear arms, men and women, soldiers and civilians, to defend our land and our honour.

The GNA and Turkey signed security and maritime agreements in late November last year, opening the path to the Turkish troop deployment, and angering Mediterranean countries including Greece and Cyprus who also seek to exploit energy resources in the region.

On Saturday, Libyas eastern-based parliament voted unanimously against the deals the Tripoli-based government signed with Ankara.

On the same day, at least 30 people were killed and 33 others wounded in an attack on a military academy in the Libyan capital, according to the authorities on Tripoli.

Turkey condemned the attack and called for international steps to achieve a ceasefire.
Anyone who thinks their child will be safe from catching measles, even if they arent vaccinated, needs to think again.

More than 50 years after a safe, effective measles vaccine was invented, the highly contagious and potentially deadly disease is making a comeback around the world, including in countries where it was once thought to have been eradicated.

The World Health Organization says the resurgence was responsible for 10 million cases of measles and more than 140,000 deaths around the world in 2018. And by November of last year, numbers had tripled compared to the same period in previous years.

This is unacceptable and unforgivable considering that the disease, which can cause blindness, inflammation of the brain, pneumonia and even death, is completely preventable through the highly effective measles vaccine.

Indeed, the WHO says the vaccine saved 23 million lives between the years 2000 and 2018.

So why the resurgence? In part, because not every country has a public health system that is set up to vaccinate children.

But more incomprehensible is the fact it has to do with what the WHO calls backsliding in countries where people have become complacent or misinformed by an anti-vaccination movement about the importance of getting their children immunized.

The organization calls this vaccine hesitancy, and listed it last year as one of the top 10 threats to global health.

No wonder. The dangers of vaccine hesitancy for children are enormous. Not only is it driving down immunization rates for measles, but it is doing the same for everything from annual flu shots to HPV vaccinations, which protect against cervical cancer.

Anti-vax information is apparently as virulent as any disease. Spread through social media, it is now endemic in countries that had been declared measles-free, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, Romania and Russia.

North America is no exception. Though the United States was declared measles-free in 2016, the states of Washington and New York experienced outbreaks of the disease at the beginning of last year, leading Washingtons governor to declare a state of emergency.

Thats why Ontario should go further toward ensuring that as many children as possible are immunized against measles. The government should eliminate philosophical and religious exemptions for the vaccinations that children must have under the law to attend school, as has been done in Germany and several American states.

Ontarios health minister, Christine Elliott, has refused to take this step, despite a request to implement it from Torontos board of health.

That puts children who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons, such as those who are receiving cancer treatments, at risk of catching measles from other children who have not been immunized.

This is especially true because of the alarmingly large numbers of children who remain unvaccinated in this province.

In the Greater Toronto Area alone, for example, the proportion of kids who arent getting their shots is 30 per cent. That creates the risk for an outbreak of measles, since 95 per cent of the population must be vaccinated to create what is known as herd immunity.

Ontario is not alone in refusing to tackle this problem head-on. UNICEF reported last year that 287,000 Canadian children born between 2010 and 2017 have gone unvaccinated for measles.

Thats the seventh-highest rate of non-vaccination among comparable high-income countries.

As the WHOs director general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, says: The fact that any child dies from a vaccine-preventable disease like measles is frankly an outrage and a collective failure to protect the worlds most vulnerable children.

He is right.

The Ford government should rethink its policy on vaccination. The price to pay if it doesnt act could be the completely preventable deaths of children.

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President Donald Trump insisted Sunday that Iranian cultural sites were fair game for the US military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so would constitute a war crime under international law

Washington: President Donald Trump insisted Sunday that Iranian cultural sites were fair game for the US military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so would constitute a war crime under international law. He also warned Iraq that the US would levy punishing sanctions if it expelled American troops in retaliation for a US strike in Baghdad that killed a top Iranian official.

Trumps comments came amid escalating tensions in West Asia following last weeks strike on General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Irans elite Quds force. Iran has vowed to retaliate and Iraqs parliament responded by voting Sunday to oust US troops based in the country.

Trump first raised the prospect of targeting Iranian cultural sites Saturday in a tweet. Speaking with reporters Sunday as he returned to Washington from his holiday stay in Florida, he doubled down, despite international prohibitions.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, Trump said.

The targeted killing of Soleimani sparked outrage in West Asia, including in Iraq, where more than 5,000 troops are still on the ground 17 years after the US invasion. Iraqs parliament voted Sunday in favour of a nonbinding resolution calling for the expulsion of the American forces.

Trump said the US wouldnt leave without being paid for its military investments in Iraq over the years  then said if the troops do have to withdraw, he would levy punishing economic penalties on Baghdad.

We will charge them sanctions as theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, he said. If theres any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.

He added: Were not leaving until they pay us back for it.

Earlier Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US military may strike more Iranian leaders if the Islamic Republic retaliates. His comments came as other repercussions from the attack played out: the US military coalition in Baghdad suspended training of Iraqi forces to concentrate on defending coalition troops; and in Beirut, the Lebanese Hezbollah chief said US forces throughout the Mideast are fair targets for retaliation.

In Tehran, Iranian state television reported that the country will no longer abide by any limits of the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with the United States and other world powers. Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018 and stepped up economic sanctions on Tehran  actions that accelerated a cycle of hostilities leading to the Soleimani killing.

The State Department had no immediate comment on Iran reportedly abandoning the nuclear deal, a move that holds the prospect of Iran accelerating its production of materials for a nuclear weapon.

Trump had issued warnings to Iran by tweet Sunday afternoon. These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any US person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner," he wrote. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!

That tweet also appeared to serve as a warning to Congress  that Trump would respond quickly to any attack and without first gaining the approval of lawmakers. Democrats in Congress have complained that Trumps order to kill Soleimani took place without first consulting with or informing top lawmakers, noting that Congress still holds sole power to declare war. Trump did meet the 48-hour deadline required by the War Powers Act to notify Congress of the deadly drone strike, though the document provided Saturday was entirely classified and no public version was released.

The White House faced a barrage of questions about the killing's legality. Pompeo said the administration would have been culpably negligent in its duty to protect the United States if it had not killed Soleimani, although he did not provide evidence for his previous claims that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on Americans. Instead of arguing that an attack had been imminent, he said it was inevitable.

"We watched him continue to actively build-out for what was going to be a significant attack  thats what we believed  and we made the right decision, he said, adding later: We continue to prepare for whatever it is the Iranian regime may put in front of us within the next 10 minutes, within the next 10 days, and within the next 10 weeks.

Congressional Democrats were sceptical.

I really worry that the actions the president took will get us into what he calls another endless war in West Asia. He promised we wouldn't have that, said Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate's top Democrat.

Schumer said Trump lacks the authority to engage militarily with Iran and Congress needs a new war powers resolution to be a check on this president. To which Pompeo said: We have all the authority we need to do what weve done to date.

Senator Mark Warner, D-Va, said the administration violated the Constitution by not consulting with Congress in advance.

It's also important because one, you potentially get members of Congress to buy-in ahead of time, and two, they may ask that hard question that's not asked in an insular group, Warner said.

Congressional staffs got their first briefings from the administration on Friday, and members were expected to be briefed this week.

Pompeo's appearance on six news shows may have been aimed at dissuading Iran from launching a major retaliation for the Soleimani killing. The Iranians have said the US should expect a strong response. They have a range of options, from cyberattacks to military assaults.

It was unclear whether the administration would attempt a back-door communication with Iran in pursuit of its stated goal of de-escalation of tensions. Retired Gen. David Petraeus, an ex-CIA director and former commander of US forces in Iraq, said he believes the administration needs a strategy for tamping down the chances of all-out war.

I think the real question for the United States is, will there be a diplomatic initiative that says, OK, look, this is not headed in a good direction. We truly do want to de-escalate. Everyone is going to lose if this continues to ratchet upward. Can we now sit down and talk, Petraeus said.

Pompeo declined to say whether he had sought to communicate with Iran since Friday. He stressed the US resolve to hold Iran accountable for its interventions in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Mideast.

Pompeo said the Obama administration had tried to challenge and attack everybody who was running around with an AK-47 or a piece of indirect artillery. We've made a very different approach. We've told the Iranian regime, 'Enough. You can't get away with using proxy forces and think your homeland will be safe and secure.' We're going to respond against the actual decision-makers, the people who are causing this threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran."

He said the cost to Iran if it uses proxy forces to hit American targets will come down on no just those proxies, which are present in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and elsewhere.

They will be borne by Iran and its leadership itself, Pompeo said. "Those are important things the Iranian leadership needs to put in its calculus as it makes its next decision.

Pompeo tip-toed around questions about Trump's tweet Saturday threatening to attack Iranian cultural sites, a military action that likely would be illegal under the laws of armed conflict and the UN charter.

Trump wrote that if Iran were to strike any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD."

Pompeo said any US military strikes inside Iran would be legal.

We'll behave inside the system, Pompeo said. We always have and we always will.

One US national security official said Trumps threat had caught many in the administration off guard and prompted calls for others in the government, including Pompeo, to clarify the matter. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly to the issue, said clarification was necessary to affirm that the US military would not intentionally commit war crimes.

Oona Hathaway, an international law professor at Yale and a former national security law official in the Defense Department's legal office, said in an interview that Trump's threat amounted to a pretty clear promise of a commission of a war crime. She said the Soleimani killing likely also was illegal because the administration has not shown the threat he posed was imminent in the sense that it was so urgent that action was required without consulting Congress.

She cited legal problems with both of Trump's Saturday threats  the threat to hit 52 targets in Iran for symbolic reasons, and the threat to strike Iranian cultural sites. Both, she said, would be war crimes  the targeting of 52 sites because Trump justifies it on symbolic grounds of retribution for Iran's hostage-taking 40 years, and the hitting of cultural sites because that would be illegal under the 1954 Hague Convention for the protection of cultural sites.

The Pentagon's chief spokesman, Jonathan Hoffman, referred questions about the Trump tweet to the White House.

Some of the Democrats running to challenge Trump in November questioned whether he had a long-term plan for the Mideast.

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Trump was ill-prepared for the repercussions of the strike on Soleimani and had alienated allies by not alerting them of the plans. I think we need a president who could provide steady leadership on Day One, he said. The next president is going to inherit a divided nation and a world in disarray.

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. said: When you're dealing with West Asia, you need to think about the next and the next and the next move. This is not checkers. And I'm not sure any of us really believe that this president and the people around him'' are really going through all of the consequences of what could happen next.

And Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a juror in Trump's upcoming impeachment trial, wondered about the timing of the attack on the Iranian general.

"I think the question people reasonably ask is, `Next week Donald Trump faces the start potentially of an impeachment trial. And why now?' I think people are starting to ask, `Why now did he do this? Why not delay?' And why this one is so dangerous is that he is truly taking us right to the edge of war,'' she said.

Pompeo appeared on ABC's This Week," CNN's State of the Union, NBC's Meet the Press,' CBS' Face the Nation,'' Fox News Sunday" and Fox News Channel's Sunday Morning Futures. Schumer was on ABC, Warner and Warren were on NBC, Petraeus was on CBS, Buttigieg was on CNN and Graham was on Fox News Channel.
The RBI on Monday revised the Supervisory Action Framework (SAF) for to ensure expeditious resolution of financial stress being faced by some of them.

The move comes in the backdrop of the scam in Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank causing distress to over 9 lakh depositors.

"Keeping in view the experience gained, it has been decided to further rationalise the SAF to make it more effective in bringing about the desired improvement in the UCBs as also expeditious resolution of UCBs experiencing financial stress," said a RBI notifications.

The central bank also added that it will continue to monitor asset quality, profitability and capital/net worth of UCBs under the revised SAF.

As per the revised norms, a UCB may be placed under SAF when its net NPAs exceed 6 per cent of its net advances.

Depending upon the severity of the stress, the RBI may ask them to curtail their lending powers, among other safeguards.

An urban cooperative bank could also be placed under SAF when it incurs losses for two consecutive financial years or has accumulated losses on its balance-sheet.

Further, issue of show cause notice for cancellation of banking license may be considered by the Reserve bank "when continued normal functioning of the UCB is no longer considered to be in the interest of its depositors/ public", the notification said.

"Supervisory action already taken under the earlier SAF will be reviewed and revised instructions, if any, will be issued to the UCBs concerned," it added.

Following the exposure of scam in the PMC Bank, which has over 9.15 lakh depositors, the RBI imposed restrictions on withdrawals.

Statutory inspection of PMC by the RBI had revealed large group exposure of about Rs 6,226.01 crore to Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd (HDIL) Group companies.

Of the total exposure to the HDIL group, only Rs 439.58 crore was disclosed to the RBI, while Rs 5,786.43 crore remained undisclosed.
Imagine a fleet of 100 Hubble Space Telescopes, deployed in a strategic space-invader-shaped array a million miles from Earth, scanning the universe at warp speed.

With NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/wfirst-wide-field-infrared-survey-telescope), scheduled for launch in the mid-2020s, this vision will (effectively) become reality.

WFIRST will capture the equivalent of 100 high-resolution Hubble images in a single shot, imaging large areas of the sky 1,000 times faster than Hubble. In several months, WFIRST could survey as much of the sky in near-infrared light -- in just as much detail -- as Hubble has over its entire three decades.

Elisa Quintana, WFIRST Deputy Project Scientist for Communications at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is confident that WFIRST will have the power to transform astrophysics. "To answer fundamental questions like How common are planets like those in our solar system? How do galaxies form, evolve, and interact? Exactly how -- and why -- has the universe's expansion rate changed over time? we need a tool that can give us both a broad and detailed view of the sky. WFIRST will be that tool."

Although WFIRST has not yet opened its wide, keen eyes on the universe, astronomers are already running simulations to demonstrate what it will be able to see and plan their observations.

This simulated image of a portion of our neighboring galaxy Andromeda (M31) provides a preview of the vast expanse and fine detail that can be covered with just a single pointing of WFIRST. Using information gleaned from hundreds of Hubble observations, the simulated image covers a swath roughly 34,000 light-years across, showcasing the red and infrared light of more than 50 million individual stars detectable with WFIRST.

While it may appear to be a somewhat haphazard arrangement of 18 separate images, the simulation actually represents a single shot. Eighteen square detectors, 4096 by 4096 pixels each, make up WFIRST's Wide Field Instrument (WFI) and give the telescope its unique window into space.

With each pointing, WFIRST will cover an area roughly 1-1/3 times that of the full Moon. By comparison, each individual infrared Hubble image covers an area less than 1% of the full Moon.

The Advantages of Speed

WFIRST is designed to collect the big data needed to tackle essential questions across a wide range of topics, including dark energy, exoplanets, and general astrophysics spanning from our solar system to the most distant galaxies in the observable universe. Over its 5-year planned lifetime, WFIRST is expected to amass more than 20 petabytes of information on thousands of planets, billions of stars, millions of galaxies, and the fundamental forces that govern the cosmos.

For astronomers like Ben Williams of the University of Washington in Seattle, who generated the simulated data set for this image, WFIRST will provide a valuable opportunity to understand large nearby objects like Andromeda, which are otherwise extremely time-consuming to image because they are so big on the sky.

"We have spent the last couple of decades getting images at high resolution in small parts of nearby galaxies. With Hubble you get these really tantalizing glimpses of very complex nearby systems. With WFIRST, all of a sudden you can cover the whole thing without spending lots of time," Williams said.

The ability to image such a large area will provide astronomers with important context needed to understand how stars form and how galaxies change over time. Williams explained that with a wide field, "you get the individual stars, you get the structures they live in, and the structures that surround them in their environment."

Julianne Dalcanton of the University of Washington, who led the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT) program that the simulated data are based on, also believes that WFIRST's combination of ultra-telephoto and super-wide-angle capabilities will be ground-breaking. "The PHAT survey of Andromeda was a tremendous investment of time, requiring careful justification and forethought. This new simulation shows how easy an equivalent observation could be for WFIRST."

WFIRST could survey Andromeda nearly 1,500 times faster than Hubble, building a panorama of the main disk of the galaxy in just a few hours.

WFIRST's extraordinary survey speed is a result of its wide field of view, its agility, and its orbit. Williams explained that by covering more area in one field and being able to switch fields more quickly, "you're avoiding all those overheads that are associated with repointing the telescope so many times." In addition, WFIRST's orbit one million miles out will provide a view that is generally unobstructed by Earth. While Hubble is often able to collect data during only half of its low-Earth orbit 350 miles up, WFIRST will be able to observe more-or-less continuously.

Major Survey Programs

Because it can collect so much detailed data so quickly, WFIRST is ideally suited for large surveys. A significant portion of the mission will be dedicated to monitoring hundreds of thousands of distant galaxies for supernova explosions, which can be used to study dark energy and the expansion of the universe. Another major program will involve mapping the shapes and distribution of galaxies in order to better understand how the universe -- including galaxies, dark matter, and dark energy -- has evolved over the past 13+ billion years.

WFIRST will also play an important role in the census of exoplanets. By monitoring the brightness of billions of stars in the Milky Way, astronomers expect to catch thousands of microlensing events -- slight increases in brightness that occur when a planet passes between the telescope and a distant star.

WFIRST's ability to detect planets that are relatively small or far from their own stars -- as well as rogue planets, which don't orbit any star at all -- will help fill major gaps in our knowledge of planets beyond the solar system. Although microlensing will not give us the ability to see exoplanets directly, WFIRST will also carry a coronagraph, a technology demonstration instrument designed to block enough of the blinding starlight to make direct imaging and characterization of orbiting planets possible.

These large surveys are also expected to reveal the unexpected: strange, transient phenomena that have never before been observed. "If you cover a lot of the sky, you're going to find those rare things," explained Williams.

Open-Access Data

Further broadening its potential impact, all of the data collected by WFIRST will be non-proprietary and immediately available to the public. Dalcanton underscored the importance of this aspect of the mission: "Thousands of minds from across the globe are going to be able to think about that data and come up with new ways to use it. It's hard to anticipate what the WFIRST data are going to unlock, but I do know that the more people we have looking at it, the greater the pace of discovery."

Complementing Other Observatories

WFIRST's combination of talents will be a valuable complement to those of other observatories, including Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope. "With one hundred times the field of view of Hubble, and the ability to rapidly survey the sky, WFIRST will be an extremely powerful discovery tool," explained Karoline Gilbert, WFIRST Mission Scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland. "Webb, which is 100 times more sensitive and can see deeper into the infrared, will be able to observe the rare astronomical objects discovered by WFIRST in exquisite detail. Meanwhile, Hubble will continue to provide a unique view into the optical and ultraviolet light emitted by the objects that WFIRST discovers, and Webb follows up on."

WFIRST is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland; the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), also in Pasadena; and a science team comprising members from U.S. research institutions across the country, as well as international and industrial partners. WFIRST's Science Operations Center (SOC) will reside at the STScI, which also runs science operations for Hubble and will be SOC and Mission Operations Center for the James Webb Space Telescope. All of the data collected by the WFIRST mission will be held in the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at STScI.

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Fergus Wilson, 71, has been slapped with a restraining order after he allegedly threatened a council worker on the phone

A multi-millionaire landlord who once banned 'coloured tenants' because of their 'curry smell' has been slapped with a restraining order after he allegedly threatened a council worker on the phone.

Fergus Wilson, 71, previously pleaded not guilty to the charge, which was today dismissed in place of a restraining order.

He was acquitted today after an accusation of making a phone call which conveyed a threat that caused distress and anxiety to the recipient.

Wilson, of Boughton Monchelsea, near Maidstone, Kent, was accused of making a threatening phone call in October 2018.

The court heard that Wilson, a former maths teacher, allegedly told a council worker he wanted to 'punch his f****** head in.'

Magistrates in Maidstone, Kent were told that Wilson and the worker had previously 'crossed swords' over comments allegedly made about Wilson's wife.

Wilson sat in court dressed in a tartan blazer, blue striped shirt and black trousers.

Piers Restell, representing the crown, said: 'The allegation is that on October 1 2018 Mr Wilson called Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council about an outstanding issue with his council tax.

Fergus Wilson (left) was given a restraining order after threatening to 'punch council worker's f****** head in' over comments made about his wife Judith (right)

'The gentleman answered the phone and identified himself and Mr Wilson said are you the same gentleman I crossed swords with about 10 years ago?

'The gentleman replied yes and after further questions Mr Wilson said 'I wish you'd told me because I'd like to punch your f****** head in' and 'I think you and I need to meet to punch it out'.

'The call was then terminated by the council worker.

'It is the Crown's proposition is that this matter is dealt with with a non-conviction restraining order in two terms: the first that the defendant may not directly or indirectly contact the gentleman for any reason and secondly that the defendant may not refer to him on social media or any other publication.'

Representing Wilson, solicitor Jag Takk said: 'There is a background to this in that in January 2009 Mrs Wilson was due to come to court but she was unable to come because she was unwell.

'Mr Wilson attended on her behalf. He states that same council worker made some derogatory comments about Mrs Wilson in open court.

Magistrates in Maidstone, Kent, were told that Wilson and the worker had previously 'crossed swords' over comments allegedly made about Wilson's wife (right)

'That was back in 2009. By chance on October 1 he ends up speaking to him on the phone. He recalls it's the same man and lets his feelings get the better of him.

'They were empty comments, I think everyone knew that, but ten days later the council reported Mr Wilson to the police.

'Mr Wilson has no interest in causing the gentleman harm. He is a man in his 70s, he is retired.

'He owns property and rents to mainly the ethnic minority community. He wants to put the matter behind him.'

The landlord  who once owned a staggering 1,000 properties in Kent which helped him rack up an estimated 225million fortune  agreed to a restraining order for two years.

Chair of the bench, Gill Fryer, at Maidstone Magistrates' Court told Wilson: 'The court is going to make you subject to a non-conviction restraining order.

'That order will run or two years from today. During that time you must not contact the gentleman directly or indirectly for any reason.

'The purpose of the order is to protect him. To breach the order is a serious offence of which prison is a possibility.

'The allegation against you is therefore dismissed.'

In a previous incident, Wilson blasted Slovakian-born Zuzana Austin (pictured) after she slapped a 70 parking ticket on his estate car

Wilson's restraining order stops him from contacting the worker or referring to him in any publication or social media platform.

Hard of hearing Wilson, who was with his wife Judith in court, bought his first buy-to-let home in 1986 and at one point had around 750.

This is the second time Wilson has appeared in court recently, having been convicted of racially abusing a traffic warden in November.

Wilson blasted Slovakian-born Zuzana Austin after she slapped a 70 parking ticket on his estate car.

He told the 38-year-old: 'Don't touch me, don't touch me. Do you even speak English? Take your stupid f****** f***y back to your own place where you came from.'

Wilson was ordered to pay his victim 1,000 and made to carry out community service.

In 2014, Wilson was convicted of assaulting an estate agent, for which he was fined.

He prompted outcry in 2017 after advising letting agents: 'No coloured people because of the curry smell at the end of the tenancy.'

The row led to a ruling by the Equality and Human Rights Commission that landlords could not discriminate against ethnic minorities.

Speaking afterwards, Wilson said: 'Last year I was threatened with being stabbed by Albanian people on three different occasions and the police took no notice.

'I've been threatened to be shot and they took no notice.

'I'm a wee bit surprised they pursued something where the other party has been told they'd have their head boxed in - it seems a we bit minor compared to threats to kill.

'I didn't actually punch anybody.'
The Congress on Monday exuded confidence of forming the next government in Delhi on its own, saying the "honeymoon" of both AAP and BJP is over and people want the grand old party to return to power.

The Congress said the national capital lagged in development due to the power tussle between the AAP-led Delhi government and the BJP-led dispensation at the Centre.

The election to the 70-member Delhi Assembly will take place on February 8 and results will be declared on February 11, the Election Commission announced earlier in the day.

"The Congress party is well prepared and better equipped than the other two parties in Delhi. We are fairly sure that we will be able to form the government on our own. The honeymoon period of BJP and AAP is over and BJP is not taken seriously. The people now want the Congress to return to power," AICC in-charge for Delhi affairs P C Chacko said.

"We are quite sure of doing better than the Lok Sabha elections, where we were second in 43 constituencies in Delhi," he told reporters.

Chacko said the Congress had 23 per cent vote share in the Lok Sabha elections and expressed confidence that it would do better in the upcoming assembly polls.

"When we got so many votes a few months ago, why will we not get those votes now," he asked.

The senior Congress leader said the party will release its manifesto on Sunday and it will have solutions to a lot of Delhi's problems, including infrastructure, pollution and traffic.

The manifesto will include an unemployment allowance for youth, more free power for consumers that will benefit at least 60 per cent population, and a monthly pension of Rs 5,000 for senior citizens under the Sheila Pension Yojana, he said.

Asked whether the Congress will project a chief ministerial face, Chacko said the party has decided not to declare a name as was done in Jharkhand and Maharashtra assembly polls.

"The party is going to polls and not the individual," he said.

He said the screening of candidates for the polls would be complete by this week and thereafter a meeting of the Central Election Committee will be held to finalise the candidates.

At least eight to 10 candidates have applied for party tickets for each seat, he added.

On any possibility of an alliance with the (AAP), Chacko said "it cannot be a one-way traffic".

He said division of votes may take place in some places and that will help the (BJP) but one cannot help it sometimes.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said Delhi has been pushed behind in development because of the friction between the BJP and the AAP.

"Delhi wants a change and its only alternative now rests with the Congress. We hope that Delhi's people will bless the Congress this time," he told reporters.

On the party's chief ministerial face, he said whenever there is a sitting chief minister, he is projected as the candidate but the party contests under collective leadership wherever it is out of power.

Speaking to reporters, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram blamed the BJP for the violence at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night and said Delhiites should reject the party in the assembly polls.

"It is a grave act of impunity. Because we are ruling at the Centre, our members can get away with anything -- it is to send a message of intimidation, threat to the common people of Delhi.

"This is precisely the occasion when the common people of Delhi must rise and reject it log, stock and barrel, the BJP, in the Delhi elections," he said.
Today, Cengage announced the top colleges where students have saved the most with Cengage Unlimited. The list features schools that have achieved the highest overall savings and those that have the highest savings per student.

"The college affordability crisis is impacting students and colleges across the country. It's clear the entire ecosystem must pursue innovation to deliver students more value for their money," said Michael E. Hansen, CEO, Cengage.

"That's why we created Cengage Unlimited: to offer students affordable access to quality learning materials and other resources needed to excel in their studies, graduate and find a job. The number of subscribers and savings to date shows that Cengage Unlimited is making a real difference for them," continued Hansen.

After tuition, the cost of textbooks and course materials is the leading financial stressor according to a recent survey. A Cengage Unlimited subscription gives students access to more than 22,000 products for one price  $119.99 a semester ($179.99 a year), no matter how many materials they use. A subscription also includes free services for tutoring, test prep, college success and career support, such as resume-building, financial literacy, time management and more.

Top Five Schools for Total Cengage Unlimited Savings:

(Parenthesis denotes the estimated overall student savings at the named institution in using Cengage Unlimited)

University of Alabama  Tuscaloosa ( $1.8M ) Texas A&M University ( $1.7M ) North Carolina State University ( $1.1M ) Arizona State University ( $853K ) University of Houston ( $836K )

Top Five Schools for Average Student Savings with Cengage Unlimited:

(Parenthesis denotes the estimated average savings per student at the named institution for those students using Cengage Unlimited)

University of Illinois ( $256 /student) University of Findlay , OH ( $182 /student) University of Connecticut ( $179 /student) and Gaston College (NC) ( $179 /student) Saddleback College , CA ( $175 /student) Spokane Community College ( $172 /student)

"It's essential to save every dime you can, and by using Cengage Unlimited, I saved nearly $120 last semester. That's close to the same amount I've paid for a single access code before. I think Cengage Unlimited's impact on the University of Houston has been incredible, and I'm glad people are saving money," said Jacob Huling, Cengage Ambassador and student at the University of Houston.

"I couldn't believe that a publisher had come up with a subscription model that makes an even playing field for students of all backgrounds," said Kelly Hinson, Instructor, Gaston College. "It's not just saving money on books, because those savings spill into the lives of our students. Now they have more money for living expenses."

To learn more about the savings potential with Cengage Unlimited, students, faculty and administrators can visit the interactive Savings Map to see which courses use Cengage at their institution, as well as how much students at their institution have already saved.

To download the Cengage Unlimited savings infographic, click here.

For more information about Cengage Unlimited, or to purchase a subscription, visit: www.cengage.com/unlimited.

About Cengage

Cengage is the education and technology company built for learners. As the largest US-based provider of teaching and learning materials for higher education, we offer valuable options at affordable price points. Our industry-leading initiatives include Cengage Unlimited, the first-of-its-kind all-access digital subscription service. We embrace innovation to create learning experiences that build confidence and momentum toward the future students want. Headquartered in Boston, Cengage also serves K-12, library and workforce training markets around the world. Visit us at www.cengage.com or find us on Facebook or Twitter.

Media Contact:

Kristina Massari, Cengage

203.965.8694, [email protected]

Emily Featherston, Cengage

617.757.8035, [email protected]

SOURCE Cengage

Related Links

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Amit Shah said rumours were being spread about the number and noted that it belonged to his party and not to Netflix, as claimed in some posts.

New Delhi: After a controversy erupted regarding the BJPs public contact programme number in the social media, that it was linked to internet television providers or lurid phone chat services, BJP chief Amit Shah on Sunday clarified that a phone number which party leaders have shared on social media for people to call in order to show support to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act has nothing to do with streaming giant Netflix.

Since yesterday, rumours are being spread that the number belongs to some channel called Netflix. I would like to clarify that the number never belonged to Netflix. Rather it is BJPs toll free number, Mr Shah said at a rally in the national capital.

Amit Shah said rumours were being spread about the number and noted that it belonged to his party and not to Netflix, as claimed in some posts.

The BJP hit out at opposition parties after several memes and misleading posts emerged on social media about the number (8866288662). The BJP, facing protests over the citizenship law in several parts of the country, has asked supporters to give a missed call on the toll-free number. Several leaders have shared the number on Twitter.

Later in the day, noting that vulgar claims are also being made, such as people can speak to lonely girls by dialling this number, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said the exercise should not be reduced to ridicule. Opposition leaders are doing politics over such a positive step, Patra said, adding that the BJP has worked to fix a decades-old issue like citizenship for persecuted minorities from neighbouring countries by enacting the CAA.

The BJP leader also hit out at Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan over his tweets targeting the Modi government and the RSS.
CHICO, Calif. - The Chico Police Department's street crimes team says they arrested one person who was wanted for making terrorist threats in Yuba City.

Police say, Melvin Mikell, 56, was arrested for a felony warrant for Terrorist Threats. Mikell was wanted by Yuba City Detectives for an incident that occurred in their jurisdiction.

Chico PD D-Unit Officers conducted surveillance and authored and served a search warrant resulting in the arrest of Mikell and collection of evidence for the case.

During the CSU Chico and Butte College Winter Intersession, the Chico Police Department has deployed the Street Crimes D Unit to address the Quality of Life Crimes that adversely affect the residents of the City of Chico. The mission of this Street Crimes D Unit is to impact the street-level crime that affects the quality of life in this community.

The team is focusing on keeping our public spaces safe. During Week 3, the Street Crimes D-Unit was dedicated to locating and arresting a subject wanted by an outside agency for making terrorist threats.

From Dec. 19, 2019, to Jan. 5 2019, the Street Crimes Unit made 24 arrests within the City of Chico.
- Ghanaian humanitarian and entrepreneur, Stacy Amewoyi, has called on the government to pay attention to orphans

- According to her a system that ensures care, protection and education of the orphans to the university level is rare in Africa

- She added that most of them end up on the streets as hackers and criminals

Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

Ghanaian humanitarian, Stacy Amewoyi, has raised concerns about the apparent neglect of orphans in the country.

According to her, hardly does an African orphan gets free tuition to the tertiary level and even get a job after school.

She went on to say that about 70 percent of them do not live by their own will as they are turned into punching bags and sex machines.

Source: Stacy Amewoyi

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Ghanaians laugh uncontrollably as abochie tries to help firemen who attempt to quench fire

Amewoyi further reveals that the orphans future depends who becomes their caretakers.

Some of the children, she notes, go through the harshest of conditions and as a result of maltreatment and neglect, they often end up as hackers and armed robbers.

Amewoyi goes on to say that 95% of brilliant but needy orphans who really want to go to school have no means to do so.

She added that Ghanaians are ready to play important roles and they are therefore calling on the government and other stakeholders to wake up and give orphans a place they can call home.

Stacy, therefore, called for a system that works for orphans as it is done outside Africa.

She also advocated for a better society for orphans other than Sodom and Gomorrah and places in Agbogbloshie and Konkoma as she sees such places as no settlement for her people.

YEN.com.gh earlier reported that Stacy won two big awards in the United States. She was awarded for her tireless works of humanitarianism.

According to a news report, Stacy received her first big award as a Role Model. This was given during the 19th annual Ghanaian-Canadian Achievement Awards.

In another big surprise, Stacy bagged another award for Entrepreneurship Excellence as the 3G Author of the Year.

READ ALSO: Businessman drops hot photos about clients who bought phones but cannot pay

It was at the 2019 installment of the annual 3G Awards for her bestselling book, The King's Choice.

YEN.com.gh also reported that Stacy donated some items to the needy in society.

Wearing a black top, red skirt, sporting shoes, and sunglasses, she was seen arranging them for distribution.

Information available suggests that she is in the United States of America but it is however not immediately clear where exactly the distribution would take place or who the beneficiaries are.

It is however believed that she is doing this under the auspices of her foundation, the Stacy M. Foundation.

In other news, the minister of lands and natural resources, Kwaku Asomah Cheremeh, has been involved in an accident, YEN.com.gh has learned.

He subsequently impounded the truck which smashed into his official vehicle as it was loaded with illegal lumber.

The incident occurred at Sunyani in the Bono region and it has since been reported to the police.

Per a report by Ghana Web, the accident occurred as the minister was returning from a trip in the region.

He chanced upon the truck, which has its registration number as AS4955E, heading from Dormaa to Yeji in the Bono East.

READ ALSO: Owusu Bempah drops revelations about EC chair; says there is a plot to assassinate her

Read the best news on Ghana #1 news app. Install our latest app for Android and read the best news about Ghana

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish on YEN.com.gh? Please contact us on Facebook or Instagram now!

Source: YEN.com.gh
Turkey will send military experts and technical teams to support Libya's internationally recognised government, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday, a day after President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkish military units were moving to Tripoli.

Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj's Government of National Accord asked for Turkish support last month amid a campaign by forces led by eastern leader Khalifa Haftar, backed by Russia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.

Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkish military units had started moving to Libya to support the GNA. Asked to elaborate on Erdogan's comments, Cavusoglu said Turkey would send experts, advisers and technical teams under a military cooperation agreement signed with the GNA in November.

A bill passed by Turkey's parliament last week also allowed for the deployment of troops.

"How and when this will happen is to be decided by the government, under the president's leadership," Cavusoglu said.

On Sunday, Saudi Arabia condemned the "recent Turkish escalation in Libya" and the parliamentary approval for troop deployment, calling it a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The United Nations has imposed an arms embargo on both sides of Libya's conflict, which it says several countries have breached.

SYRIAN REBELS IN LIBYA

Cavusoglu's comments come a week after Turkish officials said that Ankara was considering sending Syrian rebel fighters to Libya as part of its planned military support.

Ankara has backed rebels fighting to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the almost nine-year civil war, and Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters spearheaded a Turkish military offensive in northern Syria in October.

A spokesman for the FSA denied that Ankara had requested that it send fighters to Libya, but a military source within the FSA said some fighters had signed up on an individual basis to work as "bodyguards" for a Turkish security company in Libya.

Flights were suspended at Tripoli's only functioning airport on Friday due to rocket fire and shelling, and at least 30 people were killed in an attack on a military academy in Tripoli on Saturday.

The U.S. Embassy in Libya said the violence "underscores the dangers of toxic foreign interference in Libya, such as the arrival of Syrian fighters supported by Turkey as well as the deployment of Russian mercenaries.

Cavusoglu denied that any FSA fighters had been deployed to Libya and said Turkey was against the deployment of mercenaries in Libya, referring to Russian and Sudanese fighters.

Libya has lacked stable central rule since dictator Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011 by rebel fighters with air support from NATO.

In recent years the country has had two governments, the GNA based in the capital Tripoli and a rival administration based in the east. Haftar, the most powerful figure in the east, has launched a campaign to unite the country by capturing Tripoli.

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A gang travelling in a dinghy have opened fire on a popular riverside bar.

The group of about four people shot at the Mr Percival business in Brisbane at 2am on Monday.

No one was injured in the attack but police are now investigating which boat ramp along the Brisbane River the dinghy was launched from.

A gang of three or four people shot at the Mr Percival business in Brisbane at 2am on Monday

Detectives are appealing to the public for any information.

It comes only two weeks after the popular bar was the target of an arson attack.

A man was seen walking into the building on December 21 around 5am dressed in high visibility clothing.

CCTV footage released by police showed the man carrying items covered in flammable liquids to throw into the popular bar.
MISSION VALLEY  Dr. Stella Selden plans to work as a doctor in northwest Montana. And that means making house calls.

On a December afternoon, the third-year medical resident in the Family Medicine Residency of Western Montana program joined Dr. Heather Jones on a drive down a narrow road southeast of Polson to the home of Lorna Tougas. Once they had stepped into Tougass sunlit living room, Jones introduced Selden and explained that she was a medical resident.

We train them in a rural setting, Jones told Tougas, whose 80-acre property with a postcard view of the Mission Mountains fit the bill. Selden spent part of her childhood about a mile from here. Now, shes planning to treat the areas residents  including the ones who might not be able to drive, or tread through snow, ice and mud, to make it to a checkup in town. For Selden, the Family Medicine Residency of Western Montana was a major draw.

I wanted to come back to this area (and) thought it would be amazing to come back here to train, she said. All of the rural opportunities was a huge, unique aspect of this program.

Rural Montanans may enjoy sweeping vistas and room to roam, but many of them struggle with medical access. As of 2014, 15 Montana counties had no practicing physicians. Lake County was relatively well off with 110 physicians per 100,000 residents, but it still lagged behind Flathead with 284 and Missoula with 287.

And more than a third of Montanas physicians are over age 60.

We knew that there was going to be a significant shortage of family physicians, recalled Steve Todd, CEO of St. Luke Community Healthcare, which operates five locations in the Mission Valley, and had been working with hospitals in Sanders and Mineral Counties to address the issue. Early in the 2010s, the regions medical community and the University of Montana identified residency  the required training period when newly minted MDs follow practicing doctors  as a way to anchor more physicians in Montanas communities and get new doctors into the medical care pipeline as older ones retire.

It's a well-known phenomenon nationally," said Missoula physician Rob Stenger. "It also was the case here with the other residency in Montana in Billings, that people tend to set up practice close by to where they ultimately finish their training.

"And so starting graduate medical education programs in doing that last little bit of training is one of the most effective ways to produce a workforce that's going to stay in that area.

Family Medicine Residency of Western Montana was launched in 2013 with University of Montana sponsorship as part of the University of Washington Family Medicine Residency Network. It has admitted about 10 residents each year for a three-year residency program.

We're basically building a training program, and a lot of educational experiences where there really haven't been any before, said Stenger, its program director.

Family physicians need to be versatile, he said, and the program aims to impart that trait. The residents need to deliver babies, they need to learn to spend time in the ICU, they need to do surgical rotations, they need to do all these things to come out as family docs at the end of it.

A lot of those teaching experiences require practicing docs in the community to be willing to teach, and so we had to partner with lots and lots of different physicians and people in other specialties to set up the program.

The program is now sponsored by Community Medical Center and Providence St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula and Kalispell Regional Medical Center. Residents spend their first year in Missoula, and some later go to Kalispell. All residents spend at least eight weeks on rural rotations, and the program has 16 training sites in western and central Montana.

Those sites include St. Luke Community Healthcares Ronan hospital and five clinics in the area, where Selden came on rotation last month.

Selden grew up in Ronan and Kalispell, but she completed medical school at the University of Utah.

They all thought I was, I think, a little bit crazy when I came back to Montana, she said. I would say maybe two other people ended up in smaller towns out of a class of 100 or 125  so it was pretty rare.

Even if her classmates werent keen on rural postings, entry into the Family Medicine Residency of Western Montana is competitive, with about 800 students vying for just 10 spots each year. Data from the American Medical Group Association suggest that rural physicians tend to be slightly better-compensated than their urban counterparts. Stenger estimates a rural clinic-based alum of the residency program might start off making $170,000 to $190,000 a year, compared to $160,000 to $175,000 for a new Missoula clinician.

And money aside, Selden relishes rural medicine's small-town community feel  as well as the heightened demands of rural medicine.

Her rotations, she said, have taken her to hospitals with fewer resources and specialists than their urban counterparts. You have to kind of figure out when you can take care of it versus when you need to refer for a specialist.

She faced one of those challenges on rotation in Plains, when a patient came in with blood pressure so high that it maxed out the cuff. She was in kidney failure, and the patient really wanted to stay in Plains, but  ultimately we talked to multiple kidney specialists in Kalispell and Missoula, and ended up transferring her to Missoula.

We kept her in Plains for quite a while, because she wanted to stay there, but we ended up eventually kind of just problem-solving with her and deciding it would probably be in her best interests to go to St. Pat's in a couple days and come back home.

She didnt face any calls quite so tough on a recent Tuesday morning on rotation with Jones. They listened to the breathing of one patient, Ingrid Roberts, in her hospital room, then checked in on Howard and Lorraine Pollock as they finished up breakfast in the nursing home next door. After deeming all three in a good state, they headed up U.S. Highway 93 to Lorna Tougass house.

Once they had met, Selden helped Tougas onto a walker. Those braces look like theyre helping, she said, looking at fabric straps around her patient's ankles. Tougas shuffled to the far end of the house and back, Selden right behind her.

Youre improving, Jones observed. And I feel great, said Tougas.

Montana has the highest median age of any state in the West, and Tougas live-in caregiver, Linda Hardy, saw plenty of demand for in-home health care services when she sought clients. You wouldnt believe how many people need help like this, she said.

Since 2017, 40 doctors have graduated from Family Medicine Residency of Western Montana. About three-quarters of them are still practicing in the state. One of St. Lukes emergency room doctors and four of its 11 doctors in family practice graduated from the program. One of them, Megan Vigil, has seen the difference even a few extra doctors can make.

When I came in September of 2016  two physicians had left or were in the process of leaving," she said, adding that she inherited a lot of their patients.

There's definitely a difference in workload, as more physicians come on, said Vigil. Even now if I compare my days  after these new physicians came on with before then  it's a normal scheduled day whereas before these people came on I used to have a lot of double bookings.

The program has also boosted the quality of care, said longtime nurse Andrea Ruhman. When doctors are being shadowed by a resident and theyre under a watchful eye, theyre putting on their A-game. Ruhmans also seen residents bring fresh perspectives  increased vigilance against antibiotic resistance, for instance, or new joint manipulations for pelvic pain  to the program.

The climate for teaching has helped the doctors bring up their level of excellence, she said.

These benefits dont come cheap. In Fiscal Year 2020, the Family Residency Medicine Residency of Western Montana expects to spend $8.4 million on salaries, benefits and other expenses, and take in $8.6 million in fees from its partner hospitals and clinics. And putting up aspiring physicians in small-town Montana brings its own challenges.

"How were you going to house these individuals who were up here anywhere from three weeks to four weeks at a time, and to give them some sense of connection to the community? St. Lukes CEO Todd remembers wondering. In that hospitals case, the answer was to work with its foundation to provide an apartment near the Ronan hospital where residents could stay for free.

A nearby place is vital for residents. On emergency room rotations, Selden would arrive at the clinic at 7:30 in the morning and not get home until 11 p.m. or midnight. On this latest Ronan rotation, her schedule was a tamer 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. For every high-stakes ER visit or milestone on a patients road to recovery, theres a lot of legwork in between.

This is not the most fun part of our job, she said, pausing to plug information into a patients digital file. We spend a lot of time on the computer  at least two hours, she estimates, for every one hour spent with a patient. She takes notes on each one for her preceptor, or mentoring physician, to review. Thats on top of mandatory lectures for the residents and a project she completed to streamline paperwork for children's checkups.

I'm in my third year, so I'm tired, she said.

But the work, no matter how tedious, is personal for Selden, who was born in this hospital and now hopes to build her career here. One of the coolest parts of being back here  is all these people that I grew up with, like that have known me since I was a little kid.

Working as colleagues with them is really cool, like treating friends, family, friends of friends.

It's a variety that Heather Jones, her preceptor that morning, took a liking to 18 years ago, when she started practicing here. "It's full spectrum family medicine," she said. "That's what makes it kind of fun. You're here, you're there, you're not just sitting in a clinic cranking out patients."

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Kozhikode : , Jan 6 (IANS) Kerala's IUML on Monday announced that one lakh workers of its youth wing, clad in black garments, will line the roads to "welcome" Union Home Minister Amit Shah on his visit here on January 15.

"All of them will be wearing black dress and the protest will be held between 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.," said the IUML, the second-biggest component of the Congress-led United Democratic Front.

Shah is to due to address a public meeting to defend the Citizenship Amendment Act and the Youth League workers will line up on one side of the 35 kms road from the airport to the meeting venue .

However, Shah, who will land at the Karippur airport, will reach the meeting venue about 35 km away, on a chopper.

The IUML was the first to file a petition in the Supreme Court against the Citizenship Amendment Act and since then has been strongly opposing it.
SHEBOYGAN, Wisconsin, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Nalini Rajamannan - a specialist for patients with valvular heart disease in Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Cardiology, Sheboygan, WI - confirms today that patients finally may get answers about whether medical devices placed in their bodies are tested and safe, as the Food and Drug Administration begins to allow access to volumes of previously shielded data from consumers.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1061361/Most_Sacred_Heart_of_Jesus_Cardiology_US_Capitol_Building.jpg

A recent investigation by Kaiser Health News has exposed a myriad of issues with the FDA's reporting laws for "exempt" medical devices. The decades-long practice of "filing for exemption" allowed medical device makers to conceal millions of device reports from the general public, according to a series of articles by Christina Jewett of KHN.

As outlined in KHN, the exempt FDA Database means that there was no public access to these exempt devices making it difficult to learn what kind of adverse events may have occurred in US Citizens who received these medical devices. Dr. Nalini Rajamannan was in the operating room in 2006 when that heart device was being implanted in patients at Northwestern University as confirmed by the Project of Government Oversight. She now works as a specialist for patients with valvular heart disease at Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Cardiology, in Sheboygan, WI. In 2007, the device manufacturer confirmed the exempt status in a two-line email to the hospital.

Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, Award-Winning former New York Times Reporter and now editor of Kaiser Health News highlighted the issues as they relate to the American health care system in her interview on the CBS Morning Show, Dec. 31, 2019.

Dr. Rosenthal's new book "An American Sickness" highlights the issues related to exempt medical devices in the chapter, "How to get into a Patient's Heart? Follow the Money." The chapter outlines the events summarized by eye-witness Dr. Nalini M. Rajamannan in the series "The Myxo Files a XXIV: A Tale of Three Rings" as published by Kindle Publishing on Amazon.com. The Myxo Files detail a doctor's personal journey towards understanding the FDA exemption laws allowing a device manufacturer to self-certify the FDA approval for a heart valve device, prior to sales of the device on the US market to the FDA.

After 911, until 2019, Chairman Charles Grassley initiated several investigations of predicate devices and reporting during clinical trials on and off the battlefield to understand more of the FDA exemption and 510(k) process while on the Senate Finance Committee. These decade-long investigations by the Senate Finance and Senate Judiciary Committees are now more clear due to the lifting of the exempt reporting laws. In March 2009, the FDA Congressional office wrote to the Senate Finance Committee's Chairman Grassley of the Finance Committee, classifying the device as not exempt from reporting the device to the FDA, and that the device manufacturer needs to submit a new approval application. (See Linked PDF of the FDA Congressional Letter.)

The FDA letter confirms "The Daily Northwestern's" comprehensive article in 2019, regarding the FDA's Congressional letter to Senator Grassley that there was no device approval at the time of the study and the University's decision to stop the study after three months was correct.

Releasing the FDA's Congressional letter today is now possible after the KHN news stories. The status of the device prior to 2009, and any information regarding adverse events related to this and other exempt devices prior to any FDA approvals, will provide important medical information to US Citizens.

The Senate Finance committee is involved in these investigations on behalf of Medicare and Medicaid because government dollars fund the use of medical devices in patients' health. More importantly, the new changes to the FDA reporting laws as outlined by Kaiser Health News will help patients know more about medical devices implanted into their bodies.

Dr. Nalini Rajamannan is a heart valve expert in the field of cardiovascular medicine. She earned her undergraduate science pre-professional degree from the University of Notre Dame, her Medical Doctorate from Mayo Medical School and her post-graduate training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at the Mayo Clinic and Research Fellowship on the NIH training Grant. She also worked at the Mayo Clinic as a staff consultant in Internal Medicine and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University and the Lakeside and Westside VA. Currently, she practices consultative valvular medicine and Osteocardiology at Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Cardiology and Valvular Institute, WI.

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Aliens exist and they could be living among us, the first British astronaut into space has said.

Dr Helen Sharman, who went into space 28 years ago, said it is without a doubt that all sorts of forms of life are alive in the universe - but perhaps we simply cant see them as they are so different to humanity.

Aliens exist, theres no two ways about it, Dr Sharman told the Observer Magazine. There are so many billions of stars out there in the universe that there must be all sorts of forms of life.

Will they be like you and me, made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not. Its possible theyre right here right now and we simply cant see them.

Helen Sharman became the first Briton in space in 1991 - Julian Simmonds

In 1991 Dr Sharman became the first Briton in space after hearing a call for astronaut applicants on the radio while driving home from work. Despite fitting the criteria she almost decided against applying for the programme, but decided to chance it.

Self-belief and a can-do attitude changed my life, explained Dr Sharman. I ticked all the boxes, but thought they wouldn't choose me so I wouldn't bother. By the time I got home I'd realised that if I didn't actually apply, then they couldn't choose me.

Dr Sharman beat over 13,000 others to earn a spot in Project Juno, which was partially designed to boost London-Moscow relations by sending a Briton to the Russian space station Mir.

Dr Sharman beat over 13,000 others to earn a spot in Project Juno Credit: PA

Her eight-day mission transformed the then 27-year-old into a national hero, yet according to Dr Sharman her achievement is sometimes forgotten.

In 2013, the UK Space Agency released statements describing Tim Peake - who travelled to the International Space Station in 2015 - as the UKs first official astronaut, seemingly forgetting Sharmans own trip into space.

Dr Sharman said: When Tim Peake went into space, some people simply forgot about me.

Ive never defined myself by gender, and I continue not to do so. People often describe me as the first woman in space, but I was actually the first British person. Its telling that we would otherwise assume it was a man.

Story continues

Throughout her life Dr Sharman has had to contend with the challenges often presented to females breaking the mould - but has always been adamant her gender wasnt going to stop her.

Although 28-years have passed since Dr Sharman went to space, she said she will never forget the view of the Earth from the space station.

There's no greater beauty than looking at the Earth from up high. I'll never forget the first time I saw it.

After take-off we left the atmosphere and suddenly light streamed in through the window. We were over the Pacific Ocean. The gloriously deep blue seas took my breath away.
Central Depository Services (India) Ltd, India's first listed depository, on Monday inaugurated its first branch at the GIFT City here, introducing delivery-based trading to the existing list of products traded at the IFSC, a senior official said.

This is the first depository to start its operations in the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City), said Nehal Vora, managing director and chief executive officer, CDSL.

Vora said the operation of CDSL at the IFSC has been launched following requisite approval from markets regulator Sebi.

He said that to start with, 2-3 depository participants have expressed interest to start operations in GIFT City, India's first international financial services centre (IFSC).

"Being a regulator ourselves, we are subjecting ourselves to higher level of transparency in terms of disclosures for these kinds of institutions. Opening an IFSC branch is the first of the many initiatives we propose in taking the entire business of CDSL to the next level," Vora said.

He also said CDSL also plans to launch initiatives such as depository receipts, listing of bonds and a variety of hybrid or combination products.

Vora added that a unified regulator for all financial market investments in the GIFT City as proposed by the government will be a facilitating mechanism, but business will be usual for existing regulators here until that happens.

GIFT City MD and Group CEO Tapan Ray said the presence of CDSL as the first depository in the GIFT City will complete the capital markets eco-system in the GIFT IFSC.

In IFSC, Sebi is the single touch contact, which coordinates with all regulators. All three market segments -- commodities, currency, and securities -- are one in IFSC.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Iran's announcement that it will not abide by the limits put on its nuclear program under a historic 2015 deal with six world powers has put the landmark accord on the verge of collapse.



But many analysts argue that Tehran's decision on January 5 to virtually exit the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) still provides a chance to salvage the wounded deal, which many argue has been on life support since the United States exited it in May 2018.



Iran's announcement increases the threat posed by the country's nuclear program, Kelsey Davenport, director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association, told RFE/RL.



But she added there was still a narrow window in which to preserve the deal under which Tehran agreed to curb its controversial nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.



"Announcing an end to adherence with the limits imposed by the Iran deal is not the same as restarting prohibited activities," Davenport told RFE/RL.



"Withdrawing from [limited] enrichment levels is ominous but leaves to the future what exactly they will do," said Mark Fitzpatrick, an associate fellow at the Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "This keeps alive hopes for a negotiated outcome that preserves the JCPOA."

Tehran's decision to pull further back from the JCPOA came on the heels of the January 3 assassination of top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike.



Iran's announcement -- the latest in a series of withdrawals from the agreement in recent months, has also increased tensions with the European signatories to the accord: Germany, France, Britain, and the European Union, which have put great effort into trying to keep the nuclear accord afloat.



German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on January 6 that Tehran's announcement "could be the first step to the end of this agreement."



"What Iran has announced is no longer in accordance with the agreement, so we will sit down today with France and Britain to decide on that -- how we respond to that this week," he added.

Room To Maneuver



An official January 5 statement by Iran said it will no longer observe limits on the level of enrichment, the amount of stockpiled enriched uranium, or research and development in its nuclear activities.



"From here on, Iran's nuclear program will be developed solely based on its technical needs," the statement said without elaborating.



But Iran's pronouncement said Tehran's cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has been monitoring the country's nuclear activities and sites, will continue as before.



Fitzpatrick, said Tehran's actions are "more measured" than he expected.



"Iran did not say it would raise the enrichment level to 20 percent, they didn't announce anything regarding the plutonium path to a bomb, and they didn't say they are pulling out of the deal," he said. "Most importantly, Iran left in place the IAEA inspections."

Davenport said that, by not stating specifically what steps it will take, Iran has left itself considerable room to maneuver.

"If Iran wants to quickly cut into the breakout time [the time needed to amass enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon], it could do so by rapidly reinstalling centrifuges and enriching uranium to higher levels," she said. "Alternatively, Iran could gradually chip away at the breakout time by slowly increasing its stockpile of low-enriched uranium."



Ali Vaez, the director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group (ICG), told RFE/RL that nuclear inspections are "an absolute redline even for" Russia and China, which are the other two signatories to the 2015 agreement.



"Once Iran reduces the IAEA's access [to its nuclear operations], it would signal its preparedness to abandon the JCPOA and even the [Treaty On the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons] altogether," he said.
The Jammu and Kashmir Youth Congress on Monday staged a demonstration here to condemn the killing of a 25-year-old Sikh man in Peshawar and vanadalisation of Gurdwara Nankana Sahib along with stone-pelting at pilgrims in Pakistan's Punjab.

Carrying Congress flags, hundreds of party activists held protest demonstration against incidents of persecution of Sikhs in Pakistan. The protestors also burnt effigies of Pakistani leaders.

Raising anti-Pakistan slogans, they demanded protection of minorities in Pakistan.

"We are angry and sad over what happened in Nankana sahib. They attacked Gurdwara and Sikhs. One Sikh youth was killed in Pakistan. we condemn it," J&K Youth Congress' vice president Aijaz Choudhary told reporters here.

On one hand, Pakistan is professing to open Gurdwaras for Sikh pilgrims but on the other, they are attacking Gurdwaras and killing Sikhs, he said.

Those involved in such crimes should be punished, he said, adding that Pakistan must protect Sikhs and minorities living there.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Celebrities used the Golden Globes to demand action against climate change while highlighting the devastating fires ravaging Australia. Jennifer Aniston read out a message from Russell Crowe about the fires (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Celebrities used the Golden Globes to demand action against climate change while highlighting the devastating wildfires ravaging Australia.

More than 20 people have been killed while there are also claims nearly 500 million birds, reptiles and mammals have died in the blazes.

During Sundays Golden Globes, stars including Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix and Cate Blanchett demanded action against climate change.

Make no mistake, the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it isRussell Crowe

Crowe, a New Zealander who lives in Australia, won an award on the night but did not travel to Los Angeles, instead choosing to stay home and make sure his family was safe.

The actor sent a message which was read out on stage by Jennifer Aniston.

It said: Make no mistake, the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is.

That way, we all have a future. Thank you.

Australian-born Blanchett took to the stage and thanked those who had highlighted the fires.

Expand Close At the Golden Globes, Cate Blanchett highlighted the plight of Australia as her native country is devastated by wildfires (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) / Facebook

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The 50-year-old said: I just want to amplify that by saying, I wanted to do a special call out to the volunteer firefighters who have been at the centre of battling the climate disaster that is facing Australia.

She added: When one country faces a climate disaster, we all face a climate disaster.

Nicole Kidman, who reportedly broke down in tears on the red carpet before the ceremony, thanked everyone for their incredible support as her native country was under enormous stress and duress with the fires.

Her husband, Keith Urban, added: Theres a lot of people who have lost so much down there already and theres more to come, too. Were not out of the woods; this is just really the beginning of summer. But people are doing amazing work down there. We want to thank everyone whos been working so hard.

Expand Close Joaquin Phoenix demanded action from Hollywood stars in the face of the climate crisis (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Joaquin Phoenix demanded action from Hollywood stars in the face of the climate crisis (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

After winning one of the biggest awards of the night  best actor in a drama  Joker star Phoenix delivered a powerful speech demanding change from Hollywood.

After praising the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for going meat-free for this years Golden Globes, he said: Contrary to popular belief, I dont want to rock the boat, but the boat is f***ed.

Its really nice that so many people have come up and sent their well wishes to Australia but we have to do more than that.

Its such a beautiful gesture and I have not always been a virtuous man. Im learning so much and so many in this room have given me multiple opportunities to get it right and Im deeply grateful, but hopefully together we can get unified and make some changes.

Its great to vote but sometimes we have to take the responsibility and make changes in our own life.

We dont have to take private jets to Palm Springs to the awards sometimes.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge won two awards on the night and, speaking to reporters backstage, revealed she was going to auction off the Ralph & Russo couture suit she wore for the Golden Globes, with the proceeds going towards the aid effort in Australia.

Patricia Arquette, another winner, used her acceptance speech to highlight Australias plight while former James Bond star Pierce Brosnan also shared his best wishes, telling Australia stay strong. Were with you, God bless.
Home Minister Amit Shah clarified on January 5, that a toll-free phone number shared by party leaders on social media has nothing to do with content streaming giant Netflix.

Amit Shahs comments came after the number floated by the Bharatiya Janata Party to register the number of Indians who support the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, was shared by multiple Twitter handles on random pretexts. One such fake tweet asked users to give a missed call to the phone number if they wished to get free Netflix subscription.

This had given rise to immense confusion among BJP workers and the partys IT cell was also rebuked by all and sundry over allegations of resorting to luring tactics to present an inflated figure of the number of citizenship law supporters.

Therefore, to drown the noise and to clarify the matter to the party workers, Amit Shah said: Since yesterday, rumours are being spread that the number belongs to some channel called Netflix. I would like to clarify that the number never belonged to Netflix. Rather it is BJPs toll-free number."

The government has been seeing a lot of pushback in the form of protests across the country against the citizenship law. While the proponents have been projecting the law as a way to fast-track the naturalisation of illegal immigrants of non-Muslim minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, the nay-sayers have labelled it discriminatory.

The BJP has blamed the Opposition parties for instigating the students. They have alleged that their opponents are spreading misinformation about the law even now and turning people against the law.

Hence, they felt the need to begin an outreach programme where the leaders of the party will inform the electorate about the merits of CAA.



This is absolutely fake. If you want free Netflix please use someone else's account like the rest of us. https://t.co/PHhwdA3sEI

 Netflix India (@NetflixIndia) January 4, 2020

Meanwhile, Netflix came out with a tongue-in-cheek reply to the fake tweet, that read:
 Flash

Former Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic won the second round of presidential election on Sunday, according to results from the State Electoral Commission.

With over 99 percent of votes counted, Milanovic scored 52.7 percent of the votes in Sunday's presidential runoff against the incumbent President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic who got 47.3 percent.

A total of 11 candidates competed in the first round of presidential election on Dec. 22, 2019.

Milanovic, who was running as the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and several other center-left parties, won in the first round with nearly 30 percent of the votes, while Grabar-Kitarovic, a conservative candidate supported by the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), came second with almost 27 percent. Since none of the candidates had obtained over 50 percent of the vote, a second round with the top two candidates was held on Sunday.

According to the State Electoral Commission, nearly 55 percent of over 3.8 million eligible voters had cast their ballots in the presidential runoff.

The Croatian president is elected once every five years.

In his victory speech on Sunday night, Milanovic promised that he will listen and represent all citizens.

Grabar-Kitarovic congratulated Milanovic on his victory. "I am giving my hand out to Zoran Milanovic to show the voters how a peaceful transition of the government looks like," she said.

Milanovic, 53, served as Croatian prime minister from December 2011 until January 2016.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-07 05:54:07|Editor: huaxia

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China's permanent representative to the United Nations Zhang Jun speaks to journalists at the UN headquarters in New York Jan. 6, 2020. The Chinese envoy said Monday that China is committed to playing a constructive role in maintaining peace and stability in the Middle East and the Gulf region. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy said Monday that China is committed to playing a constructive role in maintaining peace and stability in the Middle East and the Gulf region.

"China follows the situation very closely and the pressing task at the moment is to prevent the situation from further escalating and running out of control. As a permanent member of the Security Council, China is carrying out active diplomatic efforts," Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the United Nations, told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York.

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi has had phone conversations with Russian, French and Iranian foreign ministers in firm commitment to regional peace and stability, and China opposes arbitrary use of force in international relations, according to the envoy.

"The U.S. unilateral adventurist acts have violated basic norms governing international relations and led to aggravation of tensions," Zhang said.

"We urge the U.S. side not to abuse force and call on relevant parties to exercise restraint and seek solution through dialogue. At the same time, the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Iraq should be respected," said the envoy.

Noting that the Security Council shoulders the primary responsibility of maintaining international peace and security, Zhang said the international community, including the Security Council, should work for de-escalation of tensions.

China has noticed that the permanent representative of Iran presented a letter to the president of the Security Council, asking the council to pay close attention to U.S. actions and uphold the council's responsibilities, Zhang said.

"China is ready to keep close communication with relevant parties, uphold a just and objective position, stand for international law, fairness and justice, and maintain peace and stability in the Gulf region and the Middle East," he said.

"China firmly supports the protection of the safety of foreign missions in accordance with international law. The U.S. unilateral military action has led to drastic changes in the regional situation. Actions taken by the Security Council should reflect latest developments of the situation and help prevent escalation of tensions," he said.
Pakistan's current PM Imran Khan has broken the silence two days after the stone pelting at Nankana Sahib Gurdwara. Condemning this barbaric incident, he said on Sunday that this attack is against his vision and strict action will be taken against the culprits. During this period, despite constant criticism, Imran did not desist from his false rhetoric on the condition of minorities in India. He said that there is a great difference between the attack on Nankana Sahib Gurdwara and the attack on minorities in India. Imran and his government were severely criticized after the Nankana Sahib incident and questions were raised about his silence. Even after this, he did not agree.

Air strike on Libyan military school, painful death of 27 people

Imran's false statements are constantly troubling, but he is not refraining from his habit. Recently, he has faced embarrassment by sharing a fake video. He shared the 7-year-old video of Bangladesh on social media and told it to of India. After its disclosure, Imran became quite trolled on social media.

Sikh youth killed in Pakistan's Peshawar after Nankana Sahib attack

After the attack on the Nankana Sahib Gurdwara in India, there is a huge outrage in all parts of Punjab. On Saturday, there was a strong protest in Punjab, SAD-BJP and Sikh organizations burnt effigies of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and raised fierce slogans. BJP burnt effigies in Sangrur and Barnala. In Gurdaspur, protests were expressed against the government of Pakistan at several places.

Australia: Forest fire holds macabre form, 50 crore animals died so far
MUMBAI: Maharashtra Chief Minister and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Monday compared the Sunday`s violence in New Delhi`s Jawaharlal Nehru University with the 2008 terror strikes in Mumbai. "Why were the attackers face covered? Why are they hiding? I was reminded of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks... They are cowards," Thackeray said while condemning the violence strongly.

He said "those who indulged in the violence need to be unmasked and their faces must be known to the whole country", adding that in due course they are bound to be exposed. ''Students are feeling unsafe in this country," the Shiv Sena supremo said.

He also compared the masked attackers to ''cowards'' and demanded that their identity should be revealed.

Live TV

Meanwhile, Congress interim chief Sonia Gandhi too condemned the JNU violence and said, The voice of Indias youth and students is being muzzled everyday. The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on Indias young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi Govt is deplorable and unacceptable. Everyday campuses and colleges are raided across India, either by the police or lumpen elements with the support of the BJP government. Yesterdays bone-chilling attack on students and teachers in JNU, Delhi is a grim reminder of the extent the Govt will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent."

Meanwhile, JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar on Monday said that appropriate action will be taken and that those involved in the violence will not be spared. "The origin of the present situation in JNU lies in some agitating students turning violent and obstructing the academic activities of a large number of non-protesting students. The protesting students damaged the university communication servers to disrupt the winter semester registration," Kumar said.

"They prevented thousands of students from doing their winter registration. Their intent is clearly aimed at disrupting the functioning of the university. This is simply hooliganism and against the ethos of JNU. No such person will be spared and appropriate action will be taken," he added.

Kumar has also appealed to all students to maintain peace on the campus and stated that the top priority is to protect the academic interests of the students. The Vice-Chancellor`s statements come after unidentified masked goons entered the varsity on Sunday night and attacked students and teaching staff, leaving many severely injured.

"Would like to appeal to all the students to maintain peace. The university stands by all the students to facilitate their pursuit of academic activities. We will ensure that their winter semester registration will take place without any hindrance," Kumar said in a statement.

He also assured the students that there was nothing to be afraid of and necessary action will be taken to protect the interests of students.

"They need not fear about their process. The top priority of the university is to protect the academic interests of our students", Kumar added.

On Sunday evening, more than 30 students, including JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, were injured and taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered JNU and attacked them and some professors with sticks and rods.

The JNU administration and political leaders, cutting across political lines, have condemned the attack on students and urged the police to take action against the perpetrators.

(With Agency inputs)
(TNS)  Over the last decade or so, schools across the nation have started dropping a new set of resources on their students.The books and blackboards of decades past have been swapped for Smartboards, laptops and tablets that provide educational resources for students, but not without national concerns about issues like student privacy and screen exposure.Norman Public Schools is just one of the districts nationwide that have embraced educational technology, a way of teaching and learning ideally enhanced through the use of classroom technology. The district has been introducing technology  largely funded by school bonds in phases for 10 years.On a middle and high school level, Norman Public Schools provides 1:1 technology, meaning every student has their own laptop that they take home at the end of the day. After the 2014 school bond, the district started introducing the 1:1 technology, and began placing some iPads in elementary schools.At the start of the fall 2019 semester, NPS used part of its 2019 bond funding to increase the number of devices in elementary schools, providing an iPad for every elementary student, though the district says that elementary technology is not technically 1:1 because students dont have specific devices assigned to them in the classroom.The implementation of technology in schools follows a broader societal trend  teens tech use is creeping up. In 2015, 29% of teens said they used a computer for homework, but by 2019, 59% of teens said the same, according to a media census from Common Sense Media.The district didnt enter the world of educational technology with any measurable goals in mind, NPS superintendent Nick Migliorino said. Instead of aiming to impact test scores or specific learning outcomes, NPS wanted to provide more opportunities and exposure to relevant technology for all its students, he said.Call it a 1:1, (but) it was: what are we doing to expand opportunity for our students? Migliorino said. Technology is really becoming relevant in society, and continues to move forward. Our goal has always been to provide opportunities to expand the availability of information beyond the classroom, beyond a static textbook, beyond what a person sitting in front of you just knows. It's teaching strategies, one on one, being able to ask questions, giving people the opportunity to explore answers, and then come back and have conversations.Laptops and iPads are supposed to be tools that enhance students learning, but not create any immediate or drastic change, said district chief technology officer Peter Liesenfeld.The continued vision of Norman Public Schools is to create an environment where technology is not a thing that you go to attend at an event, Liesenfeld said. It's a seamless integration into the learning environment, where it's designed to enhance the instruction that's going on in the classroom. Not to replace, not to supplement in any way, it's to enhance what's currently going on to better prepare students for a global economy when they leave the high school.Funding short-term investments like technology with longer-term funding like bonds isnt unusual anymore, according to the Hechinger Report, which reports that the trend is becoming more common as districts become more cash-strapped and receive less reliable funding on a state level.Migliorino said funding technology through the districts operating budget (instead of using bonds) hasnt been feasible.There aren't the operational funds to do that, and there's not a district I know in Texas, Oklahoma, that hasn't done it through this process, Migliorino said.From the $186 million 2019 bond, about $20.7 million went toward technology, which included student devices, library technology and instructional technology district-wide as needed. While the bond was mainly promoted as a safety and security measure, Migliorino said the district made it very clear that technology upgrades would be included.While the 1:1 device rollouts in high school and middle school didnt begin until after 2014, Liesenfeld said the district has been slowly introducing classroom technology since the 2009 bond passed. According to the districts site, NPS spent about $9 million of the 2009 bond on Intelligent Classroom Technology, funding digital projectors, laptop carts, interactive white boards, document cameras and more.You dont start with in 2009, every kid has an electronic device at their current rate, Liesenfeld said. So in 2009, you start the process where kids are utilizing technology within the classroom, again with the goal of Norman Public Schools to create that seamless environment.While NPS didnt have a defined pilot program for educational technology, the rollout was done in planned phases, Liesenfeld said. In 2010, Longfellow Middle School received a nearly $1 million federal grant that allowed the schools seventh and eighth grade students access to their own laptops. Liesenfeld points to Longfellow as a test site for 1:1 technology, since teachers there received grant-mandated training and the school had the 1:1 technology about three years before the rest of the district.After the 2014 bond issue passed, the district started investing in personal devices for middle and high school students. The Macbooks rolled out in fall 2017.While other large Oklahoma school districts  including Edmond and Tulsa public schools  use Chromebooks, Noman schools rely on Apple devices with access to Google Classroom. Liesenfeld said the district's decision to use Apple products was based on the products longevity, attractiveness to students and eventual resale value compared to other brands (the district offers students the chance to purchase their device upon graduation).In giving each secondary student a personal device, Migliorino  who was chief technology officer when the 1:1 rollouts began  said the district was also looking to increase equitable technology access.According to the Census Bureau as of 2017 data, 84.8% of Norman households had a broadband Internet subscription, and 93.4% of homes had a computer.But inequitable device access is still a problem across the nation, especially among lower-income families. While teens from lower-income homes spend more time in front of a screen than students from higher-income homes, low-income teens are also far less likely to have a personal device or a computer in the home, according to Common Sense Media.Migliorino said while Internet access is a larger societal issue, cheaper Internet options and accessibility at schools and local institutions can help fill that gap.Migliorino and Liesenfeld said the district is flexible on allowing students to use devices they bring from home, as long as they have district-mandated filters on them.The district does not have any written policy that allows parents or students to opt out of technology use. Migliorino and Liesenfeld said NPS is willing to work with individual students and families to create technology use plans that are best for them, even if a plan involves a student not using technology at all.If a parent doesnt want their kid to have a device, well figure that out, absolutely, Migliorino said.Districts that go case-by-case on opting out also have to put in the effort to make sure that tech-less students are getting the same experience as students that are fully immersed in technology, said Sophia Cope, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.Opt out has to actually, in practice, result in a fundamentally similar if not same classroom experience, Cope said. If all the rest of the kids are logged into some math app with their real identities, and then some kid brings his family iPad and doesn't log into the math app, can he basically get the same experience?No matter schools intentions, Cope said it also may be difficult to protect the privacy interests of students, especially when student devices are loaded with third-party apps. Even Google  from which NPS uses the Google Classroom suite  has been caught tracking kids who used its products educationally in the past, Cope said.Let's say a math teacher downloads a math quiz app or something like that  there's no controversy on the face of that, Cope said. ...But you have to look at what the apps and the companies themselves are doing, because we know that they collect information. So the purpose may seem benign and legitimate, and obstentiably non controversial, but there might be some back end data collection that's going on.Liesenfeld said NPS has team members that vet apps that the district puts on students devices or makes available to classrooms. Teachers are free to download outside educational apps, but the district maintains a digital app kiosk on devices with vetted apps, he said.When districts are dealing with software and app developers, Cope said the onus is on school administrators and teachers  not the developers  to understand the privacy policies and implications theyre dealing with. Cope said districts should also be negotiating privacy terms with any companies they contract with to provide devices and software. There is room for districts to push back on developers with objectionable privacy policies, she said.Schools and the teachers should be reviewing the privacy policy of all third party app programs that they use in the classroom, because you might be surprised  that benign math quiz might be collecting all kinds of information from the device, Cope said. ...They collect your location from your mobile device, they can access your photo gallery, they can access your contacts and stuff. So the onus unfortunately is on the schools and districts to work through all the privacy policies of all of the apps and software, whether they're used under contract  like with Apple and Google  or whether it's just something that can be downloaded.Liesenfeld said while the district can see how students are using their devices, student information is not being shared with third-party groups. The district is in compliance with federal standards for protecting children online, but does not have a written policy dictating its privacy standards. NPS prefers to use practices over policy, Migliorino said.Whatever the legal standards, Cope said its best for districts to be open with parents and obtain their consent when data collection from minors is happening.Legal issues aside, we just think it's good practice to provide notice to parents and to get their consent if there is data collection going on, whether it's for commercial purposes or educational purposes, Cope said. The parents just need to know what data is being collected on the kids, and that might be when they're logged in with their real identities to an online account, or that might just be them not logged in, surfing around an app.Educational technology is hitting a new generation before the effects of screen time or devices is fully understood.Excluding the time they spend on devices for school, U.S. teens spend an average of 7 hours 22 minutes of time on screen media daily, while 8-12 year olds use just under five hours a day, according to Common Sense.The impact of added screen time in schools is not known, said Paul Shawler, chief psychologist at the Oklahoma Office of Juvenile Affairs. Shawler said while technology has become an integral part of many students lives and its necessary to help students understand it, schools should do so in a developmentally appropriate way.At school, we need to make sure that there's a balance between how electronics are used and the well being of children's education, Shawler said. That's also an area that is that is really understudied, but technology is very promoted within the school systems. So it is very important to think about at what age should electronics be introduced, in what format and for what duration, and right now we don't have a lot of good literature on the age.A 2018 Gallup poll found that while 42% of teachers find digital devices in classrooms mostly helpful  to their students educations, 69% of teachers also said those devices are mostly harmful to their students mental health. While there has been a rise in some problems in student mental health, it cant necessarily be tied to technology, said Jennifer Shields, a PhD who works with the University of Oklahoma Health Science Centers Department of Pediatrics.I think that that research is still up and coming in that area from a neuro-developmental perspective, but we've certainly seen a rise in things like depressive and anxiety symptoms in kids, Shields said. And certainly we could draw conclusions that that may or may not be solely from media, but we want to make sure that kids are getting good interaction with other peers and also with adults, that they're not spending all of their time on technology, and developing things like family media plan so that they have a kind of approach to how they manage media and their family.Beyond mental health effects, technology also opens a door to exposure to inappropriate content. Shawler said there are many more kids being exposed to pornography than what the community and parents schools want to talk about.Some of that exposure can come when students break through district filters on their school devices; some can come when students interact amongst themselves on personal devices, Shawler said.NPS does have filter devices in place on its devices, and representatives said the district recently revamped its filters to let families pick their students level of restrictions exposure to different software. Liesenfeld said the district will also work with families to control the amount of screen time students get on their school devices.Shawler and Shields said keeping students safe and healthy on technology will require communication between parents, teachers and administrators.Thinking back to how are teachers and parents coming together to make rules around media, and how is that handled? is very important, Shawler said. The supervision and use for all students in school is something that is continuing to evolve and needs to be explored in regards to how are we keeping our kids safe? but also, when students do find their way into inappropriate material, how are we managing that?
The size of Vietnamese e-commerce market is likely to hit 13 billion USD this year thanks to a large percentage of young residents and internet subscribers, according to insiders.

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E-commerce enjoys strong growth

Although the local e-commerce market witnessed several giants like VinGroup and Lotte pull the plug on their e-commerce platforms Adayroi and Lotte.vn in 2019, it remains attractive.

According to the report e-Conomy SEA 2019 announced by Google and Temasek, Vietnams e-commerce market is currently valued at 5 billion USD, with an explosive growth of 81 percent.

Notably, e-commerce traffic growth in Vietnam ranks second in Southeast Asia, just behind Indonesia. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT)s E-commerce White Book 2019 showed that the nations e-commerce market was growing at its fastest pace in the recent three years.

E-commerce is playing an increasingly important role in the economy as revenue from the e-commerce sector accounted for 4.2 percent of the total retail sales, up 0.6 percent from the previous year.

Head of the MoITs E-commerce and Digital Economy Department Dang Hoang Hai said that Vietnam is among the fastest growing e-commerce markets in the world with annual growth rate of 35 percent, which is 2.5 times higher than that recorded in Japan.

Last year, the MoIT successfully organised the Online Friday event to promote the development of e-commerce and digital economy in Vietnam. The programme attracted more than 11.9 million respondents and 1.6 million people scanning QR codes.

A study by the Institute for Global Leadership under the US-based Tufts University in 2018 showed that Vietnam ranked 48th out of 60 countries globally in terms of switching to a digital economy. Therefore, the countrys e-commerce sector has huge potential to further develop in the future.

However, several experts believed that there are many shortcomings of the e-commerce sector, including poor infrastructure, long delivery time, complicated customs procedures, high costs, and asynchronous order retrieval services, among others.

The MoITs survey revealed that 40 percent of online shoppers were not satisfied with e-commerce platform delivery services. Besides, the platforms management policies have not kept up with the development of new business models, particularly those based on digital technologies.

Furthermore, Hai said current legal frameworks fail to catch up with the development of technologies. Meanwhile, online business models are flourishing and management agencies have found it hard to manage their operations.

He described weak capacity of the management staff as a factor that hamper the development of the e-commerce sector.

Measures to boost e-commerce development

In a bid to promote trade via e-commerce platform, the MoIT has teamed up with Amazon Global Selling, giving Vietnamese sellers opportunities to ship their products abroad as well as access directly 300 million buyer accounts of Amazons international markets.

The ministry will work to complete institutions and pen comprehensive measures to build a sound eco-system for e-commerce and digital economy as well as support local firms to apply advanced technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh said that the ministry will promote the responsibility of e-commerce platform owners in the removal of fake products and those violating intellectual property rights in 2020.

It will submit to the Government a master plan on e-commerce development during 2021-2025, and encourage local enterprises to develop state-of-the-art technologies to improve their competitive edge.

Measures to manage, supervise and protect e-commerce consumers will be carried out comprehensively, Anh stressed, adding e-commerce infrastructure will be developed including national e-commerce payment system and payment centre.

In addition, the ministry will work to connect training facilities and enterprises to ensure sufficient supply of quality human resources for the e-commerce sector./.VNA
Turkey has begun to deploy troops and specialised equipment to Libya in an effort to thwart the ambitions of a renegade general to take control of the entire country, including the capital.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan disclosed late on Sunday that the first contingent of armed forces had already arrived in Libya to help the United Nations brokered-government in the country thwart a nine-month offensive on Tripoli by Khalifa Haftar.

The army officer, backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Russia, controls much of eastern and southern Libya but has been unable to take the capital and much of western Libya.

Sources with knowledge of the plans told The Independent that Turks have so far deployed no more than 50 members of the armed forces consisting mostly of special operations personnel.

The troops will help train and rally western Libyan armed forces and technicians to operate KORAL, a Turkish electronic warfare system meant to render useless the unmanned drones and precision weapons used by Mr Haftar and his backers to wreak havoc from the air.

The UN-backed authority in Tripoli accuses Mr Haftars forces of killing at least 30 cadets and injuring at least another 30 in an airstrike on Saturday on a military academy in the capital.

The government in Tripoli is suffering a lot from airstrikes that could be prevented with strong electronic warfare, said Tarek Cherkaoui, a north Africa specialist at TRT World Research Centre, a think tank affiliated with Turkeys state broadcaster. From the beginning, because [the Libyan government] relies on small units not working in a coordinated manner, they have needed a strong command and control structure that Turkey is going to help them build.

Protests against Turkey sending forces to Libya Show all 12 1 /12 Protests against Turkey sending forces to Libya Protests against Turkey sending forces to Libya A woman brandishing a rifle takes part in a demonstration held by Libyans and Syrians in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi to protest against Turkey's prospective military intervention AFP via Getty Protests against Turkey sending forces to Libya Reuters Protests against Turkey sending forces to Libya AFP via Getty Protests against Turkey sending forces to Libya AFP via Getty Protests against Turkey sending forces to Libya Turkish members of parliament vote to send Turkish troops to Libya. They passed a bill approving a military deployment to Libya aimed at shoring up the UN-backed government in Tripoli, at a time of intensifying international tensions over the conflict. The beleaguered Tripoli government has been under sustained attack since April by military strongman General Khalifa Haftar, who is backed by Turkey's regional rivals - Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates AFP via Getty Protests against Turkey sending forces to Libya Reuters Protests against Turkey sending forces to Libya Reuters Protests against Turkey sending forces to Libya AFP via Getty Protests against Turkey sending forces to Libya AFP via Getty Protests against Turkey sending forces to Libya AFP via Getty Protests against Turkey sending forces to Libya AFP via Getty Protests against Turkey sending forces to Libya Reuters

At stake is the future of the large oil-rich north African country, which has been embroiled in civil strife since a Nato-backed armed uprising toppled its longtime dictator nearly nine years ago. The country is now split into two rival authorities, each propped up by a collection of armed forces and foreign countries.

The messy, ongoing war, centred on the countrys most densely populated quarter, has had a devastating impact on civilians. Some 880,000 people are in need of humanitarian assistance in Libya, according to a report to be issued tomorrow by the International Rescue Committee. The United Nations Security Council is set to meet today to discuss Libya.

Turkeys foreign minister Mehmet Cavusoglu was scheduled to meet on Monday with counterparts in Libyas giant neighbour Algeria in an attempt to shore up support for the intervention and assure nervous generals in Algiers that Ankara had no intention of setting up a permanent north African beachhead.

Turkeys historic ties to north Africa stretch back to the 16th century, and mediaeval fortresses built by the Ottoman Empire continue to stand in Libya as far south as the Chadian border.

Turkey has already organised and dispatched about 1,000 Syrian former rebel fighters to Libya, and has recruited additional 1,700, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group.

Ankara last week authorised the deployment of troops to Libya and finalised a maritime security deal with the government in Tripoli that would project Turkish power deep into the Mediterranean. The deal angered Egypt, Greece, and Cyprus.

The rival government in eastern Libya backing Mr Haftar has disavowed the deal, and Mr Haftar in a televised appearance on Friday angrily called for jihad against Turkey.

Mr Erdogan, in an interview with a Turkish broadcaster late on Sunday, confirmed that there would be a gradual deployment of Turkish troops to Libya.

There will be an operations centre, there will be a Turkish lieutenant general leading and they will be managing the situation over there, he told CNN Turk. Our soldiers duty there is coordination. They will develop the operation centre there. Our soldiers are gradually going right now.

Mr Cherkaoui and other Turkish military specialists have said Turkey will deploy more than 2,000 troops to Libya.

KORAL, a land-based mobile electronic warfare system designed by Turkeys Aselsan defence contractor, is designed to jam and deceive radar systems. According to one insider, it can mimic the signals guiding precision missiles to direct them away from their targets.

Mr Haftars backers in Cairo, Abu Dhabi and Moscow have been covertly sending aid in violation of a UN embargo for years. But Mr Cherkaoui said Turkeys armed forces dont have the same covert capabilities, and lack a grey zone mercenary outfit like Russias Wagner Group.

They dont have any other choice, he said. Plus, they dont need to hide the intervention. The UN resolution, if you analyse it legally, has loopholes.
UN Libya Mission strongly condemns bombing of military academy, at least 30 dead

5 January 2020 - The UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), on Sunday strongly condemned the bombing of a military academy in the capital Tripoli, which according to news reports left at least 30 dead and more than 30 others wounded.

Saturday's bombing reportedly took place as cadets were gathering on a parade ground at the Hadaba academy in a southern district of the capital.

The forces of the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) have been laying siege to Tripoli since April, under the leadership of commander Khalifa Haftar, who is aligned with a rival administration in Tobruk, opposing the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) and allied forces, based in the capital.

Following an uptick in aerial attacks and shelling in recent weeks, which have killed at least 11 civilians since early December, the Secretary-General Antonio Guterres released a statement on Friday, renewing his call for an immediate ceasefire in Libya and a return to political dialogue.

'Dangerous' escalation must stop

Responding to Saturday's attack, where the majority of victims were reportedly cadets from cities across the country, UNSMIL stressed in a statement in Arabic on Twitter, that the escalation in military action "in this dangerous manner further complicates the situation in Libya and threatens opportunities to return to the political process."

According to news reports, forces allied with the GNA described the attack as an aerial strike, launched by the LNA, but a spokesperson for the eastern-based militia denied any involvement.

Offering its sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wishing a speedy recovery to the injured, UNSMIL added that the continuing indiscriminate shelling of civilians and civilian buildings such as hospitals, "may rise to the level of war crimes, and the perpetrators will not go unpunished no matter how long it may take."

Unhindered humanitarian access

In a statement on Friday, the deputy head of the Mission, Yacoub El Hillo, condemned the intensified airstrikes, saying he was "horrified by these senseless, indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas and civilian infrastructure that continue to take innocent lives."

He said 12 health facilities had been forced to close in the main areas of "active clashes" on the capital's outskirts, with another four facing imminent shutdown. More than 210 schools are closed leaving 113,000 children out of school.

Basic services must be provided to all civilians who are in desperate need and whose lives are at risk, added the UNSMIL deputy chief: "Unimpeded, safe and unhindered humanitarian access to civilians must be guaranteed, to allow concerned authorities, United Nations and humanitarian partners provide life-saving work...I call on all parties to the conflict to protect civilians and comply with the provisions spelt out in the Geneva Conventions  which must be fully respected and implemented in this conflict".

Concern is also rising over the prospect of further foreign intervention, with the rival administration in the east reportedly receiving backing from several countries including the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan and Russia.

Last Thursday, the Turkish parliament approved a bill to unilaterally send troops in support of the Tripoli-based Government.

In his statement on Friday, the UN chief warned that "any foreign support to the warring parties will only deepen the ongoing conflict and further complicate efforts to reach a peaceful and comprehensive political solution."



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BHUMIKA POPLI By

Express News Service

In the history of art, a lines function has often been discussed. The line is poignant and has the power to overturn a narrative. Out of Line, an exhibition ongoing in the capital city, explores its phenomenon. It has brought together 10 leading artists from Cambodia. The show, curated by Erin Gleeson, researcher and writer, aims to display someone or something out of place, and assumes the need for correction. The exhibition also points to the power of

a line.



What are the major highlights of this exhibition?

There are different generations and artists here who have shared teachers, schools, or influenced one another.

For example, Svay Kens confidence to work in styles and subjects outside the academy inspired much of the younger generation to practice their own aesthetic languages as well. Born in 1933, he began painting at the age of 60. It is also a pleasure to see Than Soks Srei Bun II exhibited for the first time as well, since in Cambodia it may be too sensitive to exhibit a patchwork of clerical garments that symbolically collapses religious-political hierarchies.

Could you talk about your curatorial process in this show?

Reena Lath invited the bringing together of Cambodian artists after hearing my talk at ECH in Kolkata in 2018, which reflected on practices in art, exhibition making and programming at SA SA BASSAC, a contemporary art center I co-founded in Phnom Penh in 2011 and which I directed and curated until 2018. Reena also felt the importance of learning with those outside of our immediate or habitual reach. I like to consider my host when making an exhibition and thus thought to honour Akar Prakars support for modernist Indian artists with a meditation on modernisms tool: the line itself, and how modernism and the abstraction of line in Cambodia has a different timeline and visual language than that of Indias.

How did you achieve this?

I used Akar Prakars three rooms to make three ways to consider abstraction in the Cambodian context: through the figure; through a classical design code known as kbach in the Khmer language; and through materiality.

Did you come across any similarities between Indian and Cambodian artists?

This is a good question for audiences to the exhibition. While I have encountered art and artists from India in my work elsewhere, I personally have not had enough time in artists studios on my two brief visits to India. While the purpose of the exhibition is not necessarily to update our knowledge of shared and divergent India-Cambodia art histories, it is inevitable that we question historical and current states and relations.

While Out of Line can easily be seen as a national show, seeing that all 10 artists were born in Cambodia, it is important to remember that being born between 1933-90 means being born into many different Cambodias. The languages spoken within this group of 10 artists include Khmer, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Russian, French, and English. In this way, Cambodian and Indian artists share, like artists living within any nation, similarities of being multi-vocal and irreducible to nationality.



Tell us about the two forthcoming books on the arts and your contributions in those.

One book is From A History of Exhibitions Towards a Future of Exhibition-Making: China and Southeast Asia, edited by Biljana Ciric. My contribution, Possibilities of the Unofficial, is a conversation with art historian and curator. From Daravuth, we learn both humorous and critical insights into the state of the visual arts in Cambodia just before the turn to this century.

The other book, edited by Brian McGrath and Pen Sereypagna, is Genealogy of Bassac, which presents a careful architectural study of an area in downtown Phnom Penh constructed on 24 hectares of landfill along the swampy floodplain of the Bassac River from the perspectives of artists and residents who have lived through five decades of genocide, exile, return, and eviction.

My contribution of autobiographical fiction uses nine images as portals to personal encounters and relational channels to and from the areas residential bloc, known as Building.



Could you introduce us to the contemporary art scenario of Cambodia? What kinds of challenges are faced by Cambodian artists?

The contemporary arts scene in Cambodia has a few geographical places  the most well known being the capital, Phnom Penh, where many small art spaces of differing natures nurture both emerging and established artists. It is also home to the Royal University of Fine Arts and National Museum. Battambang is another lively place, and is known for its painters as well as performance, and its many small galleries and festivals speak to this. Siem Reap is recently rising as an important destination for the exhibition of contemporary art, and lets see if there may be some artists moving from Phnom Penh to the quieter temple town.

There are always challenges, some that mirror challenges everywhere, while some are more specific to Cambodia. In light of there being zero national budget for contemporary arts education, grants, collections, exhibition, and publishing  artists often make things happen themselves. Private universities and other initiatives also take up this supportive role. Publishing is critically needed in Cambodia, especially after the government eviscerated its free press in 2018, closing of over a dozen outlets.

Till: January 10

At: Akar Prakar
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When it comes to dog beds, there is no one size fits all  Geat Danes and Chihuahuas have different needs, as do puppies and old-timers. To find the best bed for your dog, basic information like your pups age and weight will factor in. As well as the more particular stuff like your dogs sleeping style, if they run hot or need some warming up, whether they chew things, are a nervous pee-er, or love to track mud into the house. Like picking a human mattress, youll want to consider what makes your pup most comfortable. Dr. Lisa Lippman, a veterinarian at Fuzzy Pet Health, explains that dogs can sleep for up to 80 percent of the day, so choosing where they spend all that time is no small decision.

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Dr. Rachel Barrack, a veterinarian and the founder of Animal Acupuncture in NYC, suggests beginning your search with your dogs size. Measure from nose to tail, says Barrack, who recommends opting for a bed thats slightly too big, giving your pup room to spread out. Because there are so many different styles and brands to choose from, we talked to Lippman, Barrack, and nine other dog experts, including a dog acupuncturist, dog trainers, veterinarians, and one of the internets first dog-fluencer parents, about the best of the best in dog beds.

Best Overall Dog Bed

Casper Memory Foam Dog Bed

Of all the dog beds mentioned by our 12 experts, this Casper memory-foam dog bed is the one we heard about most. It comes recommended by five of our experts: Barrack, Lippman, Dr. Zay Satchu, co-founder and chief veterinary officer of Bond Vet, Logan Mikhly, co-owner of Boris and Horton, an off-leash dog cafe in Manhattan, and Yena Kim, creator and owner of Menswear Dog, a stylish Shiba Inu named Bodhi with over 300,000 Instagram followers. We tried a lot of dog beds and currently use a Casper, says Kim. Its got a memory-foam base, so Bodhi feels rested with full soft support. Mikhly loves that Casper beds are durable and easy to clean. And Barrack, whose clients rave about their Casper dog beds, says that because its engineered by Casper, its basically a human-grade mattress. She also likes that the cover is machine washable and the zippers are hidden so your dog wont be able to chew on them. Satchu says she recommends Casper dog beds after sitting on one herself. She likes that theyre nice-looking, easy to clean, and orthopedic for older dogs to aid with their achy joints.

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Though Casper is her current favorite (and Bodhis), Kim recognizes that not all dogs have the same needs and advises focusing on whats unique about your dog before purchasing a new bed. Youll know youve made the right choice when you hand your dog a treat and he takes it to his bed to enjoy it.

Best memory-foam dog bed for big dogs

Big Barker 7-inch Pillowtop Orthopedic Dog Bed

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Two of our experts, Erin Askeland, a certified dog behaviorist and training manager at Camp Bow Wow, and Devin Stagg of Pupford, a company specializing in dog training and healthy dog food, recommend Big Barker bolster dog beds for their durable and supportive foam, which is designed for extra-large dogs and older big dogs with joint pain. Askeland recommends these heavy-duty bolster beds (which Big Barker guarantees will hold their shape for ten years) for dogs who like to sprawl and rest their head. Stagg, whose two Labs sleep on Big Barker beds, is a fan of their machine-washable covers, saying, Even if your dog is potty-trained, stains and spills can ruin the integrity of a dog bed, so make sure you buy a bed with a cover you can remove and clean.

Best less-expensive memory-foam dog bed

PetFusion Memory Foam Dog Bed with Waterproof liner & removable cover

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Askeland has four dogs who sleep on several different beds, including this three-sided memory-foam bolster bed with a water-resistant cover. According to her, its an upscale bed with a sturdy, removable cover and very thick, dense foam that doesnt immediately flatten. The Petfusion Ultimate bed is around half the price and comparable in size to a Big Barker bed, making it a good choice for folks on a budget or buying in multiples.

Best less-expensive couch-style dog bed

La-Z-Boy Tucker Sofa Dog Bed

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Dr. Jeff Weber, a veterinarian in Culver City, California, says most healthy dogs are happy sleeping on the floor, so getting them a dedicated bed is already a slam dunk. But for dogs of all sizes with joint problems, you should look for an orthopedic bed. He recommends this sofa-style bed because its soft on pressure points yet firm enough to offer good support for achy joints. Though it comes in only one size. This La-Z-Boy sofa will run you less than half what the small-size Orvis sofa-style dog bed costs.

Best dog bed for skinny breeds

Pendleton Pet Classics Kuddler

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Both Mikhly and Dr. Whitney Miller, director of veterinary medicine at Petco, recommend this soft four-sided dog bed from Pendleton. Mikhlys dog and cat are both fans of the cushy bed. Miller says its a great option for the colder months because the recycled high-loft memory fiber keeps leaner breeds off the floor. It also provides cushioning for pressure points like elbows and hips, which if not properly protected can lead to pain, skin damage, and in some cases even skin wounds.

Best dog bed for older dogs

Jax and Bones Dottie Dozer Bolster

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Older dogs and dogs with less meat on their bones may not find extra-thick foam beds comfortable because they dont weigh enough to sink in at all. Instead, soft, pillowy beds tend to be cozier and easier on their joints. When Barracks dog, a 4.5-pound, 11-year-old Chihuahua named Eloise (a.k.a. Lil Weezy) isnt snuggling next to her owner in a human bed, she sleeps on a Jax and Bones bed. Its a soft, fluffy bed thats gentle on her older joints. Plus, its available in a small size for my little pup and comes in colors that work with my home. Askeland recommends the Jax and Bones bolster bed because, while its soft, its also sturdy, and you can remove the pillow and exterior bed cover for cleaning.

Best less-expensive bed for small dogs

Best Friends by Sheri Luxury Shag Faux Fur Donut Cuddler Pet Bed

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Jessica Gore, a CPDT-KA (certified professional animal behaviorist) in Los Angeles, recommends a shag donut-shaped bed for dogs who sleep curled up in a ball and need some support as well as some extra warmth. I just love, love, love the Shag Donut Cuddler from Best Friends by Sheri. Its great for warm snuggling and cuddling and provides just enough support and security for smaller body types. Gore also stresses that your dogs bed should be able to stand up to a lot of wear. Expect your dogs bed to get used. There may be circling, digging, scratching, dragging, and lots of repeat plopping, which can cause significant wear and tear in no time.

Best (and most stylish) mattress-style dog bed

Dusen Dusen Terra Embroidered Dog Bed

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Most of our experts suggest keeping several dog beds throughout your home so that your pup has a comfortable place to nap in every room. Most dogs need more than one bed, says Dr. Jennifer Coates, a veterinarian who serves on the Pet Life Today advisory board, adding, Dogs want to be where their people are, so make sure there are several in the areas where you spend most of your time and where you expect your dog to spend the night. Askeland and Mikhly both recommend Dusen Dusens flat dog bed, which doubles as a floor pillow because, according to Askeland, it has a nice removable cover that you can wash and could look nice as part of room decor. Mikhly says this dog bed is her personal favorite because of its bright colors and how well it blends in with non-dog decor, saying, It looks more like furniture than a pet item.

Best customizable mattress-style dog bed

Backup Design Indigo Shibori Pet Bed // Medium

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The most common misconception is that dog beds have to be ugly. says Kimberly Freeman, a dog trainer and canine-lifestyle expert in London. But if you cant find a dog bed that matches your living-room decor, Freeman suggests getting a custom cover made from a fabric you love. Mikhly recommends this customizable dog bed from Backup Design, which she calls beautiful, saying, I love the idea of using Etsy to find something unique to fit your personal style.

Best cave-style dog bed for burrowers

Snoozer Orthopedic Luxury Microsuede Cozy Cave Pet Bed

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Both Askeland and Lippman recommend this cave-style bed from Furhaven, which comes with a snuggly built-in cover (which you can remove in warmer weather) that Askeland says is essentially a blanket attached to the top of the bed that a dog can slide under to cuddle. Lippmans Rhodesian Ridgeback, Chloe, loves to burrow under the fleece-lined top. She says, Its the perfect bed for pups that love to burrow under the covers and get super cozy before they sleep.

The best cooling cot-style dog bed

K9 Ballistics Durable Chew Resistant Raised Dog Bed- Ballistic Fabric

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Some large dogs may prefer a cooler place to plop, like a Bernese mountain dog, so a giant fluffy bed may not be ideal, says Gore. K9 Ballistics offer durable dog beds for the larger or heavier types. Their cots are also a cooler option that provide dogs with support and are easy to clean. Satchus dogs use elevated cot-style beds when theyre not sleeping in their kennels. And Weber says his own dogs share his California-king bed with him most of the time, but if youre not into co-sleeping, he suggests prioritizing practical things like ease of cleaning when shopping for a dog bed. He likes cot-style beds because theyre practically dog-fluid proof  you can rinse them with a hose and theres no expensive foam core to worry about. If you want to add a little extra cushioning to your dogs cot, he suggests adding a soft washable blanket.

Best dog bed for travel or camping

Kurgo Waterproof Dog Bed

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This lightweight, waterproof, and packable mat is among the other dog beds in rotation at Askelands house. She loves that it can be rolled up and carried easily (its also machine washable), making it a perfect travel bed for the car or camping  or a cold-weather addition to the above nylon cot from K9 Ballistics.
SEATTLE, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Emily Program, a national leader in eating disorder treatment, has expanded its Seattle outpatient facility to include intensive programming for adolescents. The Emily Program in Seattle has provided adolescent outpatient care since it opened in 2011, but it has now added office space to its Seattle facility to accommodate intensive outpatient and partial hospitalization programs for adolescents.

"We have experience treating children, teens and young adults, so we know they have a totally different set of concerns than our adult clients. That's why we're thrilled to be able to offer intensive programs specifically tailored to the developmental needs of that population," said Kelsey Thomas, Site Director of The Emily Program's Seattle outpatient facility. "A young person can continue to live at home with the support of family and friends while also receiving the care necessary for long-term success."

The expanded adolescent services address a strong need in Washington. At least eight percent of adolescent females and 4 percent of adolescent males struggle with eating disorders, although those estimates are conservative and data does not provide a robust perspective across gender. Eating disorders often begin in adolescence, and early identification and treatment are key factors for preventing dangerous behaviors from continuing into adulthood.

"There's a common misconception that eating disorders in teenagers are a just a phase, but they will not spontaneously resolve if left alone," said The Emily Program's Chief Strategy Officer Jillian Lampert. "Early, intensive intervention is key for ensuring that dysfunctional eating patterns don't continue. Physical, psychological and social consequences increase as the illness goes on, making it more difficult to achieve recovery."

Clients in intensive outpatient programming typically spend up to 12 hours in treatment per week, while clients in partial hospitalization programming typically spend up to 35 hours per week in treatment. In contrast with a once-a-week intervention, these higher levels of care provide a structured environment in which clients can focus on the work necessary to interrupt eating disorder behaviors and develop healthy life skills.

The Emily Program has 15 locations in Minnesota, Washington, Ohio and Pennsylvania and offers all levels of eating disorder treatment, from outpatient to residential. To learn more, visit emilyprogram.com.

About The Emily Program

The Emily Program's vision is a world of peaceful relationships with food, weight and body image, where everyone with an eating disorder can experience recovery. The Emily Program was founded in 1993 by Dirk Miller, PhD, LP, after his sister Emily recovered from an eating disorder. Recognizing that one size does not fit all, The Emily Program provides exceptional, individualized care leading to recovery from eating disorders, incorporating individual and group therapy, nutrition, yoga and more. If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, call 1-888-EMILY-77 or visit emilyprogram.com.

Contact: Jillian Lampert

Phone: 651-645-5323 ext. 1133

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE The Emily Program

Related Links

http://www.emilyprogram.com


The protesters held placards and banners against the alleged violence by ABVP members, which read: Stop hooliganism in JNU campus. We denounce fascist attack on JNU.

BHUBANESWAR: Joining hundreds and thousands of people across the country, members of the civil society, student activists, journalists and citizens from different spheres in Odisha on Monday held a massive demonstrations against the attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students in Delhi on Sunday evening.

The activists, who also included members from various political parties, protested under a common banner Odisha JNU protest at Master Canteen Square here.

The protesters held placards and banners against the alleged violence by ABVP members, which read: Stop hooliganism in JNU campus. We denounce fascist attack on JNU.

Leaders of CPI state unit demanded Union home minister Amit Shahs resignation over the issue saying, the latter had failed to protect the students against the brutal attack by the hooligans.

Students of Rama Devi Womens University in Bhubaneswar also held a demonstration in front of the college condemning the violence at JNU. The students protest was led by AIDSO.

CPI national executive committee member Ram Krushna Panda said, We condemn the brutal attack allegedly by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi (ABVP) goons on JNU students. On Sunday, the goons of ABVP backed by home minister Amit Shah attacked JNU students. We condemn and demand a judicial enquiry and the culprits behind this attack should be punished.

Reports from Cuttack, Sambalpur and Berhampur said students of major colleges at three places took out protest rallies and condemned the attack on JNU students.
Companies in Vietnam will pay employees an average Tet bonus of VND6.71 million ($288) this year, a 7.1 percent increase from last year.

The average bonus to be paid by wholly state-owned companies is VND6.12 million ($264), the same as last year, according to a report by the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs following a survey of 25,000 companies and 3.15 million workers in 40 provinces and cities.

Domestic private enterprises will pay VND6.27 million ($270), up 0.5 percent, while foreign businesses will pay VND6.91 million ($298), up 11.1 percent.

Around 85.6 percent of companies also reported they paid a bonus to their employees for the Gregorian New Year. The average was VND930,000 ($40), or equivalent to only 73.2 percent of last years figure.

In Vietnam, bonuses are agreed between employers and workers, but the government encourages rewards based on performance.

Tet, the Lunar New Year festival, falls on January 25 this year.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 22:53:29|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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COLOMBO, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka's foreign ministry on Monday said it is deeply concerned over the growing tensions in the Middle East following the killing of a senior Iranian military officer.

In a statement, the foreign ministry said the island country urged all parties to act with utmost restraint and maintain peace and security through constructive dialogue in order to de-escalate the threat to the stability of the region.

Millions packed the streets of the Iranian capital Tehran for the funeral of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani who was killed in a drone strike in Iraq last Friday.

Reports said Iran has vowed "severe revenge" for the death of Soleimani and on Sunday pulled back from the 2015 nuclear accord.
The figure of Jesus Christ goes way beyond the image of him which hegemonic European Christianity imposed on the world.

Christians around the world are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Some do so on December 25 and others on January 7, depending on what church or liturgical calendar they follow.

Given the overwhelming hegemony of Western Christianity in Europe, the Americas, Australia and throughout the colonised world where European Christianity has been the vehicle of colonisation, the fact of celebrating the birthday of Jesus early in January has become something of an afterthought.

But why? The difference is not just liturgical, canonical or doctrinal. It is also cultural, historical and the prelude of decolonising Christ and Christianity.

Eurocentric hegemony over Christian practices and perceptions of its central figure, Jesus Christ, have systematically sidelined various other rites and conceptualisations of his figure. Shifting the point of emphasis from one branch of Christianity to another  or any other religion  points to the multiplicity of ways in which a religious figure such as Jesus has been celebrated.

As millions of Eastern Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, it is an opportune time to revisit how he has been imagined throughout time and across the world.

Revolutionary Jesus

For those familiar with Jaroslav Pelikans magnificent book Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (1999), this is not unusual for a different cultural milieu giving birth to a different figure of Christ.

In his study, we encounter a floating figure of Jesus which moves from a Jewish Rabbi in the first century after his birth, to the Light of Gentiles, and the King of Kings during the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries, the Cosmic Christ in the aftermath of encounter with Platonism, the Son of Man in St Augustines work in the fifth century, and the Prince of Peace during the Reformation in 16th-century Western Europe.

In more recent times, the figure of Jesus Christ has been used to bring Christianity closer to the dispossessed masses and to address their urgent political needs. In the turbulent 1950s and 1960s, for example, the so-called liberation theology emerged in Latin America, which re-emphasised Jesuss image as a revolutionary figure, fighting for social justice and rights for the poor and marginalised.

Within the context of right-wing dictatorships, unhinged capitalism and growing repression and exploitation, liberation theologians combined elements of Marxism with basic precepts of Christianity, thus rebelling against the politically and socially conservative Catholic Church.

They joined forces with a variety of political movements, including those for indigenous and labour rights. The figure of Jesus as a revolutionary re-invigorated faith in local communities and re-organised religious practices from top-down to bottom-up.

Issa ibn Maryam

Despite the political hegemony of Western Christianity, throughout the world various cultures have also embraced Jesus Christ and imagined him in different ways.

In Islam, the figures of Christ and his mother Mary appear endearingly in the Quran, where a whole chapter is named after her. But their presence in the Islamic culture goes beyond their mention in the Quran.

They figure prominently in Islamic literature (in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, etc), as Palestinian historian Tarif al-Khalidi demonstrated in his seminal work The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature (2001). Khalidi brought to the English-speaking world a wealth of information about the centrality of the figure of Christ in Muslim literary and poetic imagination, as well as in Islamic doctrinal debates and disputations.

Khalidis emphasis was the distinction between the Quranic Jesus and the Jesus that emerged in particular in the mystical tradition of Islam as a patron prophet of the ascetics. That distinction marks the space between the Quranic revelation and the long history of various peoples historically cultivating love and affection for a prophet they considered their own.

As Khalidis text shows the Muslim Christ is a central figure in a multiplicity of hermeneutic contexts different from the Christian context. Here Jesus becomes a figure of mystical reunion with divinity quite different from a theological premise of the Trinity.

In a beautiful Qasideh of the Persian poet and philosopher Naser Khosrow (1004-1088) we read:

When you have sword in your hand you should not murder people,

God will never forget evil deed

Jesus once saw a person murdered on his path

He wondered and he asked:

Whom did you kill so that you were killed in return?

And who shall kill the man who thus murdered thee?

Dont harass people tapping on their door with your finger,

So no one would bother you banging on your door with his fist!

Such references to Jesus Christ abound in Muslim sources in multiple languages. To poets and philosophers like Naser Khosrow, mystics like Rumi and Ibn Arabi, Christ was not an alien figure. He was one of their own.

The rise of the figure of Christ in the immediate historical vicinity of millions of Arab and Iranian Christians of various denominations, poses the inevitable question of the interface between the figure of Christ in the Gospels and in Islamic sources, as what some have called the Fifth Gospel  for if we collect all the references to Christ in poetic, literary, mystical and philosophical Islamic contexts, we will have a solidly Islamic Jesus.

Jesus of the East

Fascination with the life of Jesus Christ has not been confined to Europe and its immediate neighbourhood, the Middle East. In his book Jesus in Asia, theologian R S Sugirtharajah shows how the figure of Jesus was liberated from its Eurocentric confinements and assumed global dimension in various works.

In seventh-century China, with the permission of Emperor Taizong, missionaries of the Church of the East and local converts produced various texts on Jesus, positioning him within the Chinese context. Almost 1,000 years later, under the patronage of Moghul ruler Akbar, a Jesuit monk authored a distinct volume on the life of Jesus, trying to address various issues in 17th-century India and theological concerns of the local population.

Apart from these state-sponsored texts, which allowed Christian foreigners to openly engage in debate with local religions, various other works were produced in Asia in which Jesus occupied a central place, often in defiance of both official power and the colonial impositions of Western missionaries.

Consider the use the image of Jesus during the Chinese Taiping revolution, led by Hong Xiuquan, a Chinese convert to Christianity who wanted to impose a new theocratic rule in China in the mid-19th century; the centrality of his suffering and poverty in the Korean Minjung movement for democratisation and social justice in the 1970s and 1980s; or the reconstruction of his life and teachings, and their infusion with the Hindu tradition within the context of the Indian anticolonial struggle.

Indeed, the figure of Jesus Christ has come to represent many different visions and served various functions throughout time and across geography. As we mark the 2020th anniversary of his birth, amid global turmoil, tension and uncertainty, perhaps the multiplicity of meanings he has embodied should have us rethink dominant narratives among Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and other believers worldwide.

The question we face today is much more than remembering how historically we have loved and honoured Jesus, but whether his figure has a contemporary significance for us in our troubled day and age and if we can imagine a future through his life and example?

What would that Jesus look like, be like, feel like, when the reign of sectarian fanaticism, imperial hubris and colonial conquest has finally exhausted itself and the need for truth and reconciliation will commence from his birthplace in Palestine and spread around the world?

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.
Lincoln City is looking for a PR firm to position it as Oregon's top beach destination.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described the proposed increase in electricity tariff by the federal government as a toxic New Years gift to Nigerians.

In a statement on Sunday, Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP spokesperson, said the action will bring more suffering on Nigerians.

He said, It is lamentable that Nigerians, who are already suffering the devastating negative impact of the recent increase in the Value Added Tax (VAT) from 5 percent to 7.5 by the APC administration, are now being further suppressed with increased electricity tariff. 

Read Also: Atiku, PDP Represent Nigerias Wasted Past: APC

Our party holds that the increase in electricity tariff, under the prevailing harsh economic conditions, is injurious to the wellbeing of Nigerians as it will further stress the productive sector and lead to an upsurge in the cost of regular and essential goods and services, including food, medicine, housing, education and other critical needs.

This APC policy, if allowed, will worsen the suffering of Nigerians as it will put more stress on already overburdened families, cripple businesses, result in job losses and exacerbate the prevailing frightening unemployment rate under the Buhari administration.

Moreover, the PDP invites Nigerians to note that this toxic and distasteful new year gift by the APC administration, at a time Nigerians are coming back from yuletide festivities, shows that the APC is indeed unfeeling, insensitive and have no iota of regard for the sensibilities and wellbeing of our citizens.
Trump commits crime amount to 1953 Iranian coup d'etat: Larijani

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Sun / 5 January 2020 / 11:58

Tehran (ISNA)  By ordering the assassination of IRGC commander General Qassem Soleimani, US President Donald Trump committed a crime amounted to the 1953 Iranian coup d'etat, Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani stressed.

Speaking at the Parliament session on Sunday, Larijani described the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani as a "barbaric" move by Trump.

He also called the act a total disrespect to the Iraqi people.

"General Soleimani was a brave commander who played pioneering role in defending regional security," Larijani noted.

"US officials alleged that General Soleimani wanted to take measures against American forces in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon," he said, adding that their allegation is not valid but a lie.

"American people and House of Representatives should know that Trump's allegation against the Iranian commander is a lie to cover up a war crime and a terrorist act" Larijani emphasized.

"Iran will give a harsh response to those making a move against the country's national dignity," he stressed.

End Item





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About 60 firefighters are tackling a blaze at a historic north London nightclub.

The London Fire Brigade (LFB) said they were dealing with a fire at the Koko nightclub on Camden High Street after they were called shortly before 9pm on Monday.

Less than an hour later they said that 30% of the historic venues roof was alight and warned people to stay away from the area.

About eight fire engines are present at the club, which has hosted acts including Madonna, Ed Sheeran and Prince.

The LFB said they are working hard to save the rest of the building, which is close to Mornington Crescent underground station.

Leader of Camden Council Georgia Gould said: Heartbreaking watching the Camden Palace / Koko up in flames this evening, a building that holds so many memories and means so much to us in Camden.

MP for Holborn and St Pancras Sir Keir Starmer echoed Ms Goulds statement on Twitter.

Sir Keir said: Awful news in Camden tonight. Incredible response from our firefighters. As Georgina Gould says, we owe them so much.

Awful news in Camden tonight. Incredible response from our firefighters. As @Georgia_Gould says, we owe them so much. @LondonFire https://t.co/O9b6XwpC64  Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) January 6, 2020

Formerly known as the Camden Palace and the Camden Hippodrome, the venue had been closed for refurbishment and was covered in scaffolding at the time of the fire.

It was set to re-open in spring 2020 after a major state-of-the-art refurbishment, after the purchase of two adjacent buildings.
Mumbai, Jan 6 : Spot gold prices on Monday crossed Rs 42,000 per 10 gram for the first time owing to the escalating US-Iran tensions.

Prices of the safe haven asset surged as Iran on Sunday said it will no longer abide by any of the limits imposed by 2015 nuclear deal, sparking fears of a military conflict.

This comes following the US attack and killing of a top Iranian military Commander Qasem Soleimani. Besides, Iraq's parliament urged its leaders to expel US-led coalition troops from the country.

On the MCX, gold for February delivery touched a high of Rs 41,096 per 10 gram. In dollar terms, it touched the highest level in 7 years at $1,587 an ounce.

The yellow metal also drew support from the weakening rupee against the US dollar, as India is one of the biggest importers of gold. The rupee closed at Rs 71.94, lower by 13 paise, to a US dollar before falling as much as 72.11.

"Escalating tensions may dent market risk appetite and weigh down on riskier assets like global equity markets and commodities like base metals," said Ravindra Rao, VP and Head Commodity Research of Kotak Securities.
MANILA, Philippines  Malacanang is waiting for the recommendation from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on whether or not to extend the ceasefire the communist rebels, according to Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo.

We will defer that to the recommendation of the military, Panelo said.

On Tuesday (January 7) at 11:59 p.m., the unilateral ceasefire declared by the government and Communist Party of the Philippines- New Peoples Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) in relation to the holidays is set to lapse.

But according to NDF founding chair Jose Maria Sison, the truce may be extended if the Philippine government will release all sick and elderly political prisoners.  MNP (with inputs from Rosalie Coz)

The post Ceasefire extension depends on AFP  Palace appeared first on UNTV News.
Croatians shot down President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic's bid for a second term, electing the prime minister who led the nation into the European Union to rebalance politics in the bloc's newest member.

Zoran Milanovic, who ran the Adriatic state's government from 2011 to 2015, won 52.7% of votes in Sunday's presidential runoff. Kitarovic, a former NATO executive whose popularity unexpectedly plummeted in the last weeks of the campaign after she was tied to the scandal-plagued mayor of Zagreb, got 47.3%.

Kitarovic's defeat could spell trouble for her ally Andrej Plenkovic, the current prime minister, before general elections in the fall and just after his government took over the EU's rotating presidency. While she reached out to voters embracing anti-immigrant positions seen in fellow EU states Poland and Hungary, Milanovic vowed to reject extremism, fight graft, and stop the outflow of young people who have left Croatia to seek better lives in western Europe.

"This is the victory for everyone, not only for those who are ethnic Croats, but for all citizens," Milanovic told cheering supporters in Zagreb. "In my term, I'll try to listen to everyone, and try not to hurt anyone, because we're all different."

While the president's role is largely ceremonial, the office commands the armed forces and decides over foreign-policy appointments with the premier. It also provides a political platform and Milanovic's opposition-leading Social Democratic party is looking for any edge it can get over Plenkovic's conservative Croatian Democratic Union.

"The result is a big blow to right-wing voters," said Nenad Zakosek, political science professor at the University of Zagreb.

The rivals also differed on who the nation's biggest ally is. While Kitarovic said it was the U.S., and touted when she met President Donald Trump, Milanovic said Croatia depended most on ties with the EU.

But the main issue before the presidential vote was corruption, and Kitarovic's campaign suffered after she was filmed singing Happy Birthday and giving a cake to Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic. He's fighting graft accusations over the granting of preferential access to stalls at Zagreb's Christmas market.

The accusations, which Bandic denies, come at a sensitive time for former Yugoslav republic of 4.2 million, which joined the EU in 2013 and took over the EU's six-month rotating presidency on Jan. 1. During the term, it will organize meetings that may decide important issues including Brexit and the bloc's next seven-year budget.

The bloc is scrutinizing Croatia's readiness to adopt the euro and join Schengen, the EU's passport-free travel zone. Graft concerns delayed similar efforts in nearby Bulgaria, adding pressure to Croatia, which is ranked fifth-worst in the EU by Transparency International.

Turnout increased in the second round of voting to 55%, indicating that the general elections will be a tough battle between the nation's two main political parties.

"With Milanovic's victory, we now have a new situation, with a lot of uncertainty before parliamentary elections later this year," said Zakosek.
Smoke from bushfires blazing across vast tracts of Australia has drifted thousands of kilometres across the Tasman Sea, causing skies over New Zealand to darken eerily and turn orange in colour.

Satellite images show smoke smothering skies above fire-ravaged NSW and Victoria before gusty winds pushed the expansive brown haze more than 2000 kilometres to New Zealand's North Island on Sunday.

The New Zealand Met Service warned on Sunday that smoke from the bushfires was "making haste across the Tasman, driven by an upper level jet of westerly winds".

The "unprecedented plume of smoke" shrouded the upper half of the island, causing skies to turn "dramatic orange" and darken significantly in Auckland about 2pm, weather news website Weather Watch said.
The Philippines will be evacuated due to the situation in the Middle East

The President of the Philippines ordered the military to evacuate thousands of Philippine workers in Iraq and Iran. They will be evacuated at the vessels and planes as Associated Press reported.

President Duterte ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines to be prepared to deploy military assets to repatriate overseas Filipinos in the Middle East, particularly from Iran and Iraq, at any moments notice, the message said.

South Korea also discusses the issue of strengthening the protection of almost 1,900 South Koreans in Iraq and Iran.

On January 5, the Parliament of Iraq voted in favor of a resolution providing for cancellation of agreement with an international coalition led by the United States. The corresponding decision was made at an extraordinary session of parliament.

Suleymani was killed on January 3 on the order of U.S. President Donald Trump, as the missile hit Baghdad international airport. Soon, in a statement, Trump called Suleimani "the number one terrorist in the world."
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Black-clad mourners packed Irans second city Mashhad on Sunday as the remains of top general Qasem Soleimani were paraded through the streets after he was killed in a US strike.

Irans wearing black, revenge, revenge, they chanted as darkness fell and they followed a truck carrying Soleimanis coffin towards the floodlit Imam Reza shrine.

The mourners threw scarves onto the roof of the truck so that they could be blessed by the blood of the martyr.

Soleimani, who spearheaded Irans Middle East operations as commander of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, was killed in a US drone strike Friday near Baghdad airport. He was 62.

The attack was ordered by President Donald Trump, who said the Quds commander had been planning an imminent attack on US diplomats and forces in Iraq.

Soleimanis remains had been returned before dawn to the southwestern city of Ahvaz, where the air resonated with Shiite chants and shouts of Death to America during a procession.

People held aloft portraits of Soleimani, one of the countrys most popular public figures who is seen as a hero of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

The million-man turnout in Mashhad, northeastern Iran, forced the cancellation of a Sunday night ceremony in Tehran, said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who urged citizens instead to attend a memorial Monday at Tehran University.

In the face of growing Iraqi anger over the strike, the countrys parliament Sunday urged the government to oust the roughly 5,200 American troops in Iraq.

Soleimanis assassination ratcheted up tensions between arch-enemies Tehran and Washington and sparked fears of a new Middle East war.

Irans supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed severe revenge and declared three days of mourning.

Late Saturday Trump warned that America would target 52 sites important to Iran & Iranian culture and hit them very fast and very hard if American personnel or assets were attacked.

 Terrorist in a suit 

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that targeting cultural sites is a WAR CRIME.

Irans army chief said Trumps threat was an attempt to distract the world from Soleimanis unjustifiable assassination.

I doubt they have the courage to initiate a conflict, said Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi.

Irans communications minister, Mohammad Javad Jahromi, branded Trump a terrorist in a suit in a Twitter post.

Khameneis military adviser, Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan, told CNN that Irans response to the assassination for sure will be military and against military sites.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted there was a real likelihood of an Iranian attack on US soldiers, warning however it would be a big mistake.

In Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, insisted the price for Soleimanis killing would be attacks on US military bases, US warships, each and every officer and soldier in the region.

US-Iran tensions escalated in 2018 when Trump unilaterally withdrew from a landmark accord that gave Tehran relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear programme.

A year on, Iran began hitting back by reducing its nuclear commitments with a series of steps every 60 days, the most recent deadline passing on Saturday.

Foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said Tehran would finalise the fifth step in a meeting on Sunday night, noting the nature of its move was altered by Soleimanis killing.

In Tehran, deputies chanted Death to America for a few minutes during a regular session of parliament.

Trump, this is the voice of the Iranian nation, listen, said speaker Ali Larijani.

Soleimanis remains and those of five other Iranians  all Guards members  killed in the US drone strike had arrived at Ahvaz airport before dawn, semi-official news agency ISNA said.

With them were the remains of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraqs powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary umbrella group, who was also killed in the strike.

Soleimanis remains are due to be flown to the capital, where Khamenei is expected to pray over them at Tehran University on Monday before a procession to Azadi Square.

They will then be taken to the holy city of Qom for a ceremony at Masumeh shrine, ahead of a funeral Tuesday in his hometown Kerman.

 Cyber attack 

In neighbouring Iraq, pro-Iran factions ramped up pressure on US installations with missiles and warnings to Iraqs troops late Saturday.

In the first hints of a possible retaliatory response, two mortar rounds struck Saturday near the US embassy in Baghdad, security sources said.

Almost simultaneously, two rockets slammed into the Al-Balad airbase where American troops are deployed.

Iraq said there were no casualties. The US military also said no coalition troops were hurt.

In another possible act of retaliation, hackers claiming to be from Iran breached the website of a little-known US government agency and threatened more cyber attacks.
MUMBAI, Jan. 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- EuroSchool Airoli student Mr. Shlok Banerjee of grade 4 has secured 1st position in Thailand International Mathematical Olympiad 2019 (TIMO).

TIMO is an annual Mathematical Olympiad competition organised by the Thailand Mathematics Society. As the majority of Mathematical Olympiad competitions are only focusing on 0.1% of the elite students, TIMO provides an opportunity for all students with keen interest in mathematics to participate in Mathematical Olympiad competition.

At EuroSchool, students are encouraged to participate in competitive exams and activities to offer them the exposure to enable them to enhance their learning and skills further. The School provides unique Co-curricular and Experiential programs which focuses on building lateral and critical thinking, creativity, logical reasoning and essential life skills that help in the holistic development of the students. EuroSchool has its eye on the future, and it has set forth to equip students with the right skills for new-age careers.

Sudeshna Chatterjee, Principal EuroSchool Airoli, said, "Winning in this competition requires good knowledge of mathematics with strong problem-solving abilities. This success was the result of hard work and dedication of students, parents and mentors."

About EuroSchool:

In 2009, the Company ventured into K-12 education with EuroSchool, a network of 11 K-12 institutions today. The philosophy of 'Discover Yourself' further strengthens the belief that encouraging children to discover their true potential and skills is critical to thriving in the 21st-century. The school blends its 'Balanced Schooling' pedagogy with the Learn - Reinforce - Practice - Apply methodology. This paves the way for students to excel in academics, while co-curricular activities shape their creative, sporting and musical aspirations. EuroSchool operates on a DIRECT Academic Delivery Model with schools in urban locations across Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Surat.

For more information, please visit the website www.euroschoolindia.com

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/798038/EuroSchool_Logo.jpg

SOURCE EuroSchool
michael barbaro

From The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today: From Iraq to Washington, consequences are mounting after the United States assassinated Iranian General Qassim Suleimani. Helene Cooper on why President Trump chose to do it. Its Monday, January 6. Helene, what do we know about what led up to this extraordinary decision by the U.S. to take out General Suleimani?

helene cooper

Well, from what weve been able to piece together over the past few days, all of this started on December 27.

archived recording And just into Fox, an American contractor was just killed in northern Iraq in a rocket attack, and several U.S. troops were also injured.

helene cooper

When an Iranian-backed Shiite militia group launched an attack in Iraq that ended up killing an American contractor.

archived recording This is just the latest in a spate of similar rocket attacks, but its the first time that were actually seeing U.S. casualties.

helene cooper

Right after this happened, the Pentagon drew up the perennial list of options that the Defense Department is always keeping for the president to respond and decide what hes going to do in order to respond to the attack. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper both flew to Mar-a-Lago, where President Trump was spending the holidays, and met with him, presenting him this list of how do you respond to what the administration immediately determined was an Iranian-backed attack. One option included striking Iranian ships. Another option was striking, perhaps, a missile site or two, or looking for a way to launch airstrikes against the Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq that had started this. Also on the list was one extreme option, which was to launch an attack, which would really be a targeted assassination, actually, of General Qassim Suleimani, who is the head of Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corpss Quds Force, and its basically Irans very muscular, yet covert, arm of the Iranian military. Hes, in essence, the most senior military commander in Iran. This is something that the Defense Department often does, is they will put an extreme option on the table because they will always give all options to the president, but its almost their way of nudging the president toward an option that they prefer, right? If you put something that is viewed as a little bit crazy out there, then you get him to do what you want. President Trump, at the time, did not choose the nuclear option.

archived recording (mike pompeo) What we did was take a decisive response that makes clear what President Trump has said for months and months and months, which is that we will not stand for the Islamic Republic of Iran to take actions that put American men and women in jeopardy.

helene cooper

He went for, lets launch an attack on the Shiite militia group that launched the attack that killed the American contractor.

archived recording 1 The Pentagon says it carried out military strikes in Iraq and Syria, targeting a militia group. archived recording 2 A spokesman for the group says U.S. airstrikes killed at least 25 of their fighters and hurt more than 50 others. This happened in Iraq and Syria yesterday.

michael barbaro

So the president, in the end, chooses a pretty measured kind of tit-for-tat response. We were attacked by missiles, so we will attack with missiles.

helene cooper

Exactly, and well attack who attacked us.

michael barbaro

Got it.

archived recording (mark esper) I would add that, in our discussion today with the president, we discussed with him other options that are available, and I would note also that we will take additional actions as necessary to ensure that we act in our own self-defense, and we deter further bad behavior from militia groups or from Iran.

helene cooper

So then, a couple of days later, President Trump is still at Mar-a-Lago, and hes watching TV. Hes still angry about the initial Shiite militia attack that killed the American contractor, but now hes seeing, on TV, all of these video images of Iranian-backed protesters attacking the American Embassy in Baghdad.

archived recording 1 A chaotic scene as protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad today, scaling the walls, forcing the gates, and setting fires inside the heavily guarded compound while diplomats were trapped inside. Some protesters were chanting, Death to America. archived recording 2 [CHANTING]

helene cooper

And one of the first things that come to his mind is Benghazi and the attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi in 2011 that led to the death of four Americans, including the ambassador to Libya.

michael barbaro

Which was an attack of protesters 

helene cooper

Yes.

michael barbaro

 on an American, essentially, embassy-like building.

helene cooper

Yes.

archived recording How would you have handled that, if you were watching, in real time, Americans under fire at the American Consulate, and an ambassador under fire? archived recording (donald trump) Well, it would have never taken place, because I think 

helene cooper

President Trump, during his campaign, and for years after the initial attack in Benghazi, really went after Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, for not doing enough to prevent that. And this had been a rallying cry during his 2016 campaign, so this was a pretty big deal for him.

archived recording (donald trump) Horribly handled. A horrible leadership. Shes a horrible leader.

helene cooper

So hes watching, now, these attacks that are happening under his own watch, and hes thinking about Benghazi, according to his aides that we talked to. Hes also thinking about the 1979 attack on the American Embassy in Iran that led to the hostage crisis. Hes getting more and more angry, according to his aides, and then he calls for his menu of options again, and this time, he picks the extreme option.

michael barbaro

And so this is the moment when the president calls for the strike on Suleimani, this top general.

helene cooper

Thats right. Pentagon officials and administration officials were very surprised, because its one thing to give an option to a president. Its another thing for him to actually do it. They had put that option on the menu for President Trump, not thinking that he would take it, and now he has taken it. So the Defense Department went into action. This is something that the American Defense Department, quite tragically, almost, is very good at doing. We know how to kill people, and we have been tracking, for more than a decade, almost two decades, Qassim Suleimani. So intelligence-wise, we had intelligence reports that he would be flying into Baghdad International Airport that night. There was some question now, as the military is setting up, just sort of the mechanics of how this strike is going to be conducted. The Pentagon had determined that, if he was met, for instance, by Iraqi officials who were friendly towards the United States, they would not go ahead with the strike. If he was not, they would. When General Suleimanis plane landed, he was met by the head of one of Iraqs Iranian-backed Shia militias, who was viewed by the United States as somebody who  I think the phrase they used was a clean party, meaning its O.K. to kill him. Its kind of a weird way of saying it.

michael barbaro

So a clean party means somebody we dont mind killing?

helene cooper

Exactly. Exactly. And so they authorized the strike and blew up the two-car convoy as it was leaving Baghdad International Airport.

archived recording 1 In a dramatic escalation of tensions in the Middle East, a U.S. airstrike has killed Irans most important military commander. archived recording 2 This was a swift, precise military strike that has huge, unpredictable and possibly long-term consequences.

michael barbaro

So help us to understand the significance of this decision by the president. Why was this ever an option given to him, even if it was the most extreme option? And why do we think he chose it?

helene cooper

Its hard to explain why President Trump chose to take this option. I think many of us dont understand it ourselves. The administration will tell you that hes a very bad guy, and theres no denying that. The administration will also tell you that hes responsible for the death of hundreds of American troops. That is true as well. The issue, though  that has been true for years and years, as American troops have battled some Iranian-backed Shia militias in Iraq, and both Presidents Bush and Obama made the decision not to kill Suleimani because he was a general with the Iranian military, and the United States traditionally does not go around assassinating military generals. The last time we did this was in 1943 during World War II, when we took out a Japanese admiral. Iran is a sovereign state. Assassinating one of their officials is pretty much almost the same thing as assassinating the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or a high-ranking American official, and then own up to it and take credit for it. Its just not something that is normally often done in broad daylight. But we should also remember that, just a month ago, President Trump authorized the killing of Baghdadi that ISIS had, and he got a lot of very good and deserved credit for that. The administration now, today, will try to make the equivalent that General Suleimani is the same as Baghdadi, that hes a terrorist, and he has certainly been behind many proxy terrorist acts by Iranian-backed groups in Yemen, in Lebanon, in Iraq and in Syria. So that has been increasing in recent months as the United States has choked off Iran economically.

archived recording 1 Were following multiple breaking stories, including Irans seizure of at least one oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz today, and there are now conflicting reports about whether a second tanker was seized. Iran is clearly messaging that they hold cards here, but as this continues to go on, what will Iran continue to do? archived recording 2 Well, you know, Brianna, I think its important that we understand whats motivating Iran right now. Look, since the United States pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, and the administration imposed new sanctions on Iran, those sanctions have absolutely crippled Irans economy.

helene cooper

That led the Iranian regime to start, as a lot of people at the Pentagon say, acting out, and you saw an increase in attacks from Iran, which has been punching out because it was being punched. And that is one of the reasons that the administration has now given for why this strike was taken. The other big reason, though, leads back to this, which is that the administration is saying that Suleimani was planning additional, even more high-profile attacks on the United States and on American interests and assets in the region, and that this was eminent.

archived recording (mike pompeo) We could see that he was continuing down this path, that there were in fact plots that he was working on that were aimed directly at significant harm to American interests throughout the region, not just in Iraq.

helene cooper

You know, youre hearing that from General Milley, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You heard that on Sunday from Secretary of State Pompeo.

archived recording (mike pompeo) We wouldve been culpably negligent had we not taken this action. The American people would have said that we werent doing the right thing to protect and defend American lives.

helene cooper

Which is the argument that Suleimani was about to launch another imminent attack on American interests.

michael barbaro

Helene, of all the rationales that weve heard from the Trump administration, this seems to be the most important in terms of explaining why we would do this now, take out Suleimani. But of course, the U.S. has a very complicated history of using potential threats to American interests as a rationale for actions overseas, especially in the Middle East. So what does your reporting show about how we should be thinking about this explanation of an imminent attack?

helene cooper

Thats such an interesting and key question, how we should be thinking about the administration rationale for this attack. Do we believe them, or do we not? Our reporting shows that it depends on where you stand. There is no question that General Suleimani has planned, and was continuing to plan, attacks against the United States through these groups, but thats been going on for more than 15 years. So the question then becomes, why now? The administration says there was something imminent and big that was about to happen, and they appear to be basing that on intelligence reports that theyve received about General Suleimanis travels in the last few days leading up to the attack that took his life. But these same intel sources also say that he had been asked by Ayatollah Khamenei, whos the supreme leader of Iran, to come back to Iran, that Khomeini had not authorized anything. He had requested permission, and he was not given it, and he was told to come back to Iran. So that then belies the whole question of imminent. Does it become something that is happening in two days, or something that hasnt even been approved yet? So what the administration, then, will have to answer to the American people, if this leads to war, which it might, is whether or not this assassination was worth it.

[music]

michael barbaro

Well be right back. Helene, what has been the response in the Middle East in the days since the U.S. killed Suleimani?

helene cooper

The response since the U.S. killed Suleimani in the Middle East has been huge.

archived recording [YELLING AND CHANTING]

helene cooper

In Iran, where protesters had, two weeks ago, been protesting against the regime, they had now united, apparently, behind the regime, and had turned their ire on the United States.

archived recording [YELLING AND CHANTING]

helene cooper

Youre seeing these familiar views of American flags being burned in the streets.

archived recording [PROTESTORS SPEAKING]

helene cooper

This massive outpouring of mourners. Its certainly ramped up the anti-American sentiment in Iran.

archived recording [MOURNING PRAYER]

helene cooper

Meanwhile, in Baghdad, youre seeing similar outpourings of grief, but thats been accompanied by the Iraqi Parliament voting unanimously this morning to expel the United States from Iraq. They didnt put forth a timeline for withdrawal, so theres still some wiggle room there. But particularly the Shiites and the Iraqi government are very, very angry at the United States right now.

archived recording [YELLING AND CHANTING]

helene cooper

You have to understand that Iraq is made up of three very distinct groups  Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds  but it is predominantly Shiite. Iran is Shiite as well, and the Iraqi government is very close to Iran. The Shiites in Iraq are particularly close to General Suleimani and view him, in many ways, as one of their own. Theyre also upset, though, because this was a targeted killing in their country. So in much the same way that if something like this happened in the United States, the United States government would be upset. Thats another reason why the Iraqi government is so angry.

michael barbaro

Helene, can Iraq and its legislature do that? Can they kick the U.S. troops out of the country?

helene cooper

They can. Iraq can say, you are no longer welcome. Remember, we are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government, ostensibly to fight the Islamic State. That battle is largely over. So yes, the Iraqi government can kick the United States military out of Iraq. Whether they do or not, whether this is posturing, I dont know yet. Every couple of hours, you see something else. Right after the Iraqi Parliament voted, we saw the Pentagon announced that it was suspending the anti-ISIS coalition effort in Iraq. There are 4,000 American troops whove been there, and that the troops who are in Iraq will be focused on protecting the American citizens who are still in the country, but who are being advised to leave as soon as possible. Its like 2013 all over again, when the Obama administration ended combat and pulled troops out of Iraq. And you saw the rise of ISIS because once the United States is gone and out of the country, these other factions are given more room to maneuver and more room to thrive. And so you can see how these events could lead to a resurgence of ISIS if the ground becomes clear for them to move around more freely.

michael barbaro

And wasnt Suleimani also leading an Iranian militia that was an enemy of ISIS?

helene cooper

Yes, there was a de facto cooperation between Suleimani and the United States in the fight against ISIS. They were both opposed to ISIS, and they were both fighting ISIS on the same turf.

michael barbaro

Right, which would have made, in a very narrow and complicated way, Suleimani an ally in our fight against ISIS, even though hes our enemy in many other respects.

helene cooper

He was an ally in our fight against ISIS. That is correct.

[music]

michael barbaro

Helene, the ripple effects of all this are very complicated, but I wonder if theres a simple way of thinking about this, which is that after all these months of provocation and response between the U.S. and Iran, that President Trump felt it was time for the U.S. to remind Iran that, at the end of the day, we are the military superpower, and our advantages over them are extraordinary and represent the kind of deterrent that means, whatever Irans ultimate response to this is, it will not be all that severe  that, in a sense, we just called Irans bluff.

helene cooper

That would work if we hadnt started this to begin with by pulling out of the Iranian nuclear deal, which was signed in 2015 under the Obama administration, and which was hated by President Trump and many Republicans.

archived recording (donald trump) I have been in business a long time. I know deal-making, and let me tell you, this deal is catastrophic for America, for Israel, and for the whole of the Middle East.

helene cooper

They viewed it as too weak, and said that it gave Iran rewards, as it did, by lifting sanctions for stopping their uranium enrichment, but did not address Irans misbehavior, and this is the General Suleimani-type misbehavior, in other areas.

archived recording (donald trump) The problem here is fundamental. Weve rewarded the worlds leading state sponsor of terror with $150 billion, and we received absolutely nothing in return.

helene cooper

When we pulled out of the nuclear deal, we reimposed sanctions on Iran, and put even stiffer sanctions on the country. We started to punish companies and basically told the world, you either do business with Iran, or you do business with America. And of course, most of the world chose America. That had the result of completely putting a strangle on the Iranian economy, and that is kind of what has led to the Iranian regime then starting escalating attacks against the United States, because this is a hard-line regime, and they clearly believe that if theyre hurting, theyre going to pull the United States down into the mud with them.

michael barbaro

But doesnt it still stand to reason that if that is the situation that we are in, in a post-nuclear deal world, where Iran decides that the only way that it can operate is with attacks through militias that it organizes against the U.S., that taking out a person like Suleimani is a reasonable option, given our superiority over Iran? We have nuclear weapons. They do not. We have superpower military capabilities. They do not. That doesnt leave them with a whole lot of options. Does it?

helene cooper

Back in the 80s, there was this tanker war, where Iran, Iraq and the U.S. were all going after each other. And they made the Persian Gulf an impossible place, and the price of oil went way up. And it ended up with the United States, by mistake, shooting down an Iranian passenger jet. And Iran made a lot of noise after that happened, and then they quieted down. So there is precedent for that, but I think its easily as much of a chance that they dont quiet. Iran has a whole lot of options to make us hurt. Certainly, the United States is much better equipped, but unless were actually suggesting that were going to drop a nuclear bomb on downtown Tehran, its never that easy once you get into a conventional war. So we went to war in Iraq, which lasted years, and which we are still seeing some of the consequences from. A war with Iran would be so much worse than any kind of war with Iraq. Theyre way more sophisticated than Iraq ever was. They have the ability to make it hurt. So the question can be phrased as, is the United States willing to give up the blood and treasure it would take to subdue Iran? Which of course, it could, but its going to cost us something. So are we willing to pay that fee?

[music]

michael barbaro

Helene, thank you. Thank you for talking to us on a Sunday. Thank you.

helene cooper

Thank you, Michael.

michael barbaro

For everything. We appreciate it.

helene cooper

All right, bye-bye.

michael barbaro

On Sunday, Irans leaders and their allies began to openly discuss plans for retaliation against the United States, saying that they would target Americas military bases and its soldiers. In an interview with CNN, a high-level adviser to Irans supreme leader said, quote, The only thing that can end this period of war is for the Americans to receive a blow that is equal to the blow that they have inflicted. On Twitter, President Trump warned Iran against such a response, writing, quote, They attacked us, & we hit back. If they attack again, which I would strongly advise them not to do, we will hit them harder than they have ever been hit before! Well be right back. Heres what else you need to know today.

archived recording (elizabeth warren) Look, it was a targeted attack on a government official, a high-ranking military official for the government of Iran, and what its done has moved this country closer to war. We are not safer today than we were before Donald Trump acted.

michael barbaro

In interviews on Sunday, the leading Democratic candidates for president, including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, on CNN, challenged the Trump administrations rationale for killing General Suleimani and predicted that it could backfire on the U.S.

archived recording (pete buttigieg) Now, lets be clear, Qassim Suleimani was a bad figure. He has American blood on his hands. None of us should shed a tear for his death. But just because he deserved it doesnt mean it was the right strategic move. This is about consequences.

michael barbaro

In a statement, former Vice President Joe Biden said that the president, quote, just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox, and Senator Bernie Sanders, at a campaign stop, accused the president of violating his campaign pledge.

archived recording (bernie sanders) Trump promised to end endless wars. Tragically, his actions now put us on the path to another war, potentially one that could be even worse than before.

michael barbaro
 Flash

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang held talks with visiting Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith on Monday in Beijing, calling for further development of bilateral relations.

Hailing the friendly relations between China and Laos, Li said China attaches great importance to relations with Laos and is ready to work with Laos to carry forward their traditional friendship, deepen mutual political trust, implement the action plan on the building of a community with a shared future for China and Laos, and promote cooperation featuring win-win results.

Noting the huge potential for cooperation between the two countries, Li pointed out that the bilateral trade volume increased last year against all odds.

China stands ready to work with Laos to promote the construction of key infrastructure projects and deepen cooperation in finance and agriculture, and welcomes high-quality Lao agricultural products to enter the Chinese market, said Li, adding that China encourages its competitive and reliable enterprises to invest in Laos and supports Laos's efforts in improving its people's livelihood.

Li also voiced China's support for Laos in hosting the third Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) leaders' meeting and said China is willing to work with ASEAN countries including Laos to facilitate regional economic integration and promote the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) as scheduled this year to jointly cement regional peace, stability, development and prosperity.

Thongloun congratulated China on its development achievements and said the signing of the action plan last year on building a community with a shared future for both countries has laid a solid foundation for the two sides to enhance mutual political trust and deepen pragmatic cooperation.

Laos is ready to closely work with China for more mutually beneficial results, enhance experience exchanges on governance, and deepen cooperation in trade, investment, tourism and agriculture as well as the Laos-China railway project, he said.

Thongloun said his country will continue to promote trade facilitation, optimize its business environment and welcome Chinese enterprises to invest in Laos.

After the talks, Li and Thongloun witnessed the signing of several bilateral cooperation documents covering areas such as finance, information and e-commerce.

China's top legislator Li Zhanshu also met with Thongloun on Monday.

Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, said the NPC is ready to work with the Lao parliament to strengthen experience exchanges on governance, advance cooperation between legislative bodies, provide legal guarantees and policy support for cooperation between the two countries, jointly improve their abilities to cope with risks and challenges, and promote the modernization of their own system and capacity for governance.
Japans justice minister has vowed to strengthen border departure checks and review bail conditions after Nissans former chairman Carlos Ghosn fled the country.

Masako Mori told reporters at a news conference that the ministry has already acted to prevent a recurrence but declined to give details.

She was asked about reports that Mr Ghosn had hidden in a box and that baggage checks at a regional airport might have been insufficient.

Mr Ghosn skipped bail while awaiting trial on various financial misconduct allegations and later said from Lebanon that he did it to escape injustice.

Japans justice system allows investigating the facts while it ensures the individual basic human rights at the same timeMasako Mori

Ms Mori declined to say who might be held responsible for such a high-profile flight, stressing it was still under investigation.

She said Mr Ghosn left illegally, denouncing it as an unjustifiable crime.

Japans justice system allows investigating the facts while it ensures the individual basic human rights at the same time, Ms Mori told reporters at the ministry.

It is set with appropriate procedures and it is operated appropriately.

She acknowledged the case was being looked at under an ongoing review of the nations judicial system, including introducing electronic tethers to monitor those out on bail.

We are aware of the criticisms, Mr Mori said, referring to human rights advocates descriptions of Japans legal system as hostage justice.

Expand Close Justice Minister Masako Mori said border checks will be tightened (Koji Sasahara/AP/PA) / Facebook

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Mr Ghosn and others say Japans system takes too long and is inhumane.

He was banned from meeting with his wife while out on bail and preparing for his trial has taken about a year, and a date has not been set.

Mr Ghosn was detained, twice, for a total of 130 days before he was released on bail a second time.

Takashi Takano, one of Mr Ghosns lawyers in Japan, said he felt sad and betrayed that Mr Ghosn did not try to win a verdict of innocence in court, but also expressed an understanding at how he might have lost hope with the Japanese judicial system.

Mr Ghosn had been charged with under-reporting his future compensation and breach of trust in diverting Nissan money for his personal gain. He insists he is innocent.

His bail has been revoked and Interpol has issued a wanted notice. Japan does not have an extradition treaty with Lebanon but Ms Mori left open the possibility Japan could seek Mr Ghosns return.
Experts urge vigilance for cyber systems amid escalation with Iran originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

On the night that the airstrike that killed Iran's top military leader in Baghdad, the Department of Homeland Security's Cyber arm, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was already re-upping its guidance from the summer on the threat Iran poses to not only cities and towns, but also banks and other financial institutions.

They warned that it's important to sure up basic defenses during times when a cyber strike could be imminent.

Iranian regime actors and proxies are increasingly using destructive wiper attacks, looking to do much more than just steal data and money. These efforts are often enabled through common tactics like spear-phishing, password spraying, and credential stuffing, the statement says. What might start as an account compromise, where you think you might just lose data, can quickly become a situation where youve lost your whole network.

Wiping, according to Kiersten Todt, a former Obama administration cyber official and the managing director of the Cyber Readiness Institute, is when a company gets its computers completely wiped out with no trace of any data.

What they do in these wiping attacks is they destroy the computers. So it's complete data destruction, network destruction. So there's nothing left now, obviously, nothing subtle about it. There is no forensic analysis. It is complete destruction, Todt said.

Most recently, Todt pointed to when the Las Vegas Sands Corporation had its computers wiped by Iranians after its founder, Sheldon Adelson, called for a nuclear attack on Iran.

PHOTO: Iranian mourners fill the streets for a funeral procession in Tehran on Jan. 6, 2020, for Gen. Qassem Soleimani who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq. (Office of Iran's Supreme Leader via Getty Images)

In 2012, Iranian hackers targeted Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil producer based in Saudi Arabia.

The attack wiped out nearly 30,000 computers, however, the company said oil production was not affected by the cyberattack.

MORE: IUS cities ramp up security in wake of killing of Iran's top general

Story continues

The Federal Depository Library Program website was reportedly briefly shut down over the weekend, after the site displayed pro-Iranian, anti-U.S. propaganda, a CISA spokesperson confirmed.

We are aware the website of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), the website aimed at making government publications available to Americans, was defaced with pro-Iranian, anti-US messaging. At this time, there is no confirmation that this was the action of Iranian state-sponsored actors, the spokesperson told ABC News. The website was taken offline and is no longer accessible. CISA is monitoring the situation with FDLP and our federal partners.

These warnings from the government show the legitimate threat that the United States has from Iranian cyber actors.

The National Threat Assessment bulletin released on Iran specifically mentions the threat of cyber retaliation from Iran.

Iran maintains a robust cyber program and can execute cyber-attacks against the United States. Iran is capable, at a minimum, of carrying out attacks with temporary disruptive effects against critical infrastructure in the United States, the bulletin posted this weekend explains.

Iran's response will most likely include a cyber response, Sam Curry, CSO of Cybereason told ABC News. It would be foolish to think that Iran will simply ratchet up its offensive capabilities against the U.S. and other nations as a result of today's news. In fact, Iran is an intelligent cyber opponent with an army of people testing our systems every minute of every day. It is the ultimate game of cat and mouse. But in this instance, the consequences could be lasting.

A utility company source told ABC News there were ongoing conversations between government entities and critical infrastructure companies, as well as among critical infrastructure companies, to touch base regarding the heightened security status and the need for vigilance in the wake of the killing.

During any global event, the source said, there is a conversation between critical infrastructure partners to ensure the safety and security of information. Utility companies frequently talk to the DHS, FBI, and other critical infrastructure organizations about ongoing threats.

It is not just the private sector that is taking these threats from Iran seriously  government officials are too.

Certainly Iran as a nation-state, they have a cyber capability and they've certainly taken lessons from both the Russians and Chinese and North Koreans, Bryan Paarmann, a former special agent in charge of the counterterrorism division at the FBI's New York Field Office and current Senior Vice President at Brosnan Risk Consultants, told ABC News. Cyber is now a tool of warfare. I wouldn't put them as capable as the Russians or Chinese, but are they capable of doing targeted attacks against infrastructure? Absolutely.

In 2016, the Justice Department indicted seven Iranians, which they say were working on behalf of the government for hacking multiple financial institutions, including J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, as well as attempting to hack into a dam in upstate New York.

PHOTO: Iranians set a U.S. and an Israeli flag on fire during a funeral procession for Qassem Soleimani and other victims of a U.S. drone strike, in the capital Tehran on Jan. 6, 2020. (Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)

At points during the attack on the banking sector computers were hit with a flood of data, overwhelming their systems, and the Justice Department says hundreds of thousands of customers were cut off from their financial institutions  and their money.

MORE: Iranian Hackers Charged in Cyber Attacks Against US Targets

Alarmingly, the Department of Energy commissioned a report produced in 2018, which analyzed the threats of cyber-attacks. It found the hack into the New York state dam mightve been hacked into because it was the easiest target.

It is possible that the Iranian attackers selected the small Bowman dam simply because it was low-hanging fruit, researchers concluded. When critical infrastructure control systems are directly exposed to the internet, they become an easy target for any potential attacker to find. In this case, it turned out to be sophisticated threat actors from Iran.

The Office of the Director Intelligence also made clear in its latest Worldwide Threat Assessment report that Irans cyber capabilities are a real threat.

Iran uses increasingly sophisticated cyber techniques to conduct espionage; it is also attempting to deploy cyber-attack capabilities that would enable attacks against critical infrastructure in the United States and allied countries, the report says.

The report also says Iranian cyber actors are targeting US Government officials, government organizations, and companies to gain intelligence and position themselves for future cyber operations.

ODNI also warns that Iran is capable of disrupting "large corporate networks for days and weeks similar to its data deletion attacks against dozens of Saudi governmental and private-sector networks in late 2016 and early 2017."

Todt told ABC News that everyday government employees and the public could prevent a cyber-attack by being vigilant and aware.

Because of the interconnectedness that has been created as individuals, we actually have the ability to contribute to security. So it is time for individuals to be aware and hyper-vigilant around attacks and how they're vulnerable, Todt said. One of the tools that Iran has been using, that there is evidence of, is phishing and social engineering.
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A sailor lost at sea for nine days following a storm has described the moment he was forced to use mirrors to catch the attention of passing ship when his flare failed.

Pete Brown was reunited with his wife and his eight-year-old son in Hawaii on Friday after losing contact on December 20. They were rescued on December 29.

The Chattanooga, Tennessee native had been making his way from Osaka, Japan to the islands with two other crew, a fellow U.S. national and one Japanese national, when a storm dismantled their mast on board vessel Coco Haz III.

He told KITV4 of the moment they released their flare: 'The water was coming up, up, up, waist-high and were still upside down. And then it didnt see us. It just kept on going, we were thinking, "Oh God, this is terrible".'

Scroll down for video

Pete Brown has described the moment he was forced to use mirrors to catch the attention of passing ship when his flare failed

Pete Brown was reunited with his wife and his son, eight, in Hawaii on Friday

Tennessee native Brown had been making his way from Osaka, Japan to Hawaii. He was with two other crew when a storm dismantled their mast on Coco Haz III. They are seen above during their rescue

When another boat passed them days later Brown and the two other men used mirrors to catch its attention. When they were finally spotted Brown says they broke down in tears, adding: 'I was crying, all of us. We were just crying on the boat.'

Dramatic footage showed the moment the three men were rescued 656 miles west southwest of the Hawaiian Islands on December 29.

The last known position of the boat was 805 statute miles northwest of Oahu. Crew had 500 gallons of fuel, two weeks of food, one month of water on board, and an orange life raft aboard when they went missing.

Lt. Diane French, command duty officer, Coast Guard Joint Rescue Coordination Center Honolulu, said in a statement: 'We appreciate the support of the good Samaritans aboard the commercial vessels Nobility and Kalamazoo who made this rescue possible.

'This was a difficult case given the remote area of the search and a lack of communications with the crew.

'This case is a big win for the Automated Mutual-Assistance Vessel Rescue System, which the Kalamazoo subscribes to, the Safety NET message system, and the mariners out there willing to help each other.'

Pete Brown was reunited with his wife and his eight-year-old son in Hawaii on Friday after losing contact on December 20. They were rescued on December 29

Dramatic footage showed the moment the three men were rescued

Crews aboard a Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules and a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon airplanes had been carrying out searches in the days before the rescue.

The Coast Guard Cutter Joseph Gerczak (WPC 1126) also helped from Honolulu.

Lt. Diane French added: 'We appreciate the support of the Navy Poseidon aircrews who were more than willing to fly and assist us during the holiday season.

'While the sailing vessel crew had supplies for the voyage they did not have an electronic position indicating radio beacon. Such a device would have provided their location rapidly and accurately, significantly shortening the search. We recommend anyone undertaking voyages offshore take an EPIRB.'

The last known position of the boat was 805 statute miles northwest of Oahu. Crew had 500 gallons of fuel, two weeks of food, one month of water on board, and an orange life raft aboard when they went missing

'I definitely will have a new appreciation for my family and my friends', Brown now says

Brown added: 'It turns out, as soon as we got onto social media we saw that everybody had found out pretty quickly that we were missing.

'Any time I would look at these messages, I would cry, or just start looking through just the people who were telling stories about me, and a lot of love.

'A lot of love was going around, and a lot of prayer and a lot of faith. For me to hug my wife and my son again was just amazing. I definitely will have a new appreciation for my family and my friends.'
Gov. Tom Wolf has ordered the commonwealth flag to fly at half-staff on all commonwealth facilities, public buildings and grounds to honor EMS worker Matthew Smelser.

Smelser, of Rostraver West Newton Emergency Services, was killed Sunday while responding to a crash on Interstate 70 when his ambulance was struck by another vehicle.

Matthew Smelsers death is a tragic reminder of the risk taken by emergency personnel across the state each day to rescue Pennsylvanians in distress, Wolf said. We need to do our part to exercise caution while traveling, especially during winter weather or when approaching the scene of an accident.

The commonwealth flag shall be lowered to half-staff until sunset on Monday and on the day of interment, which has not yet been announced. The United States flag is to remain at full staff through this tribute.

All Pennsylvanians are invited to participate in this tribute.

Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.
Eason is buzzing to launch its 10th annual Eason Spelling Bee, as the nationwide search begins to find Irelands champion student speller. Primary schools across the country have until this Sunday, January 12, 2020 to register for this years competition to be in with a chance of winning the coveted title of Eason Spelling Bee Champion 2020.

Fionn OLeary from Gortletteragh NS was the 2019Eason All-Ireland Spelling Bee Champion, taking home the trophy following stiff competition from the three other finalists.

The Eason Spelling Bee provides the opportunity for students across Ireland to get off their devices, improve their spelling skills, make new friends and develop their vocabulary.

This year, over 800 schools around Ireland have already registered to take part, and schools yet to register must do so by this Sunday.

Eason are partnering with Today FM for a fifth year and, in early summer, presenter Alison Curtis will host the Provincial and All-Ireland Spelling Bees.

Marketing Manager at Eason, Elizabeth Blake said; Eason is delighted to announce the 10th Eason Spelling Bee. Each year, the amazing children who participate showcase an impressive level of spelling skill and its wonderful to see how much they enjoy it. We hope the 10th year of the Bee will be the biggest and best yet.

To participate in the Eason Spelling Bee and be in with a chance to win a library of books, registered schools must host their own in-school Bee among 5th & 6th class students to find their School Spelling Champion.

From there, the Eason Spelling Bee team will travel around the country to host County Final Bees, culminating in four Provincial Bees.

The champions from these will then go head to head in the 10th annual All-Ireland Final Bee in June, where the lucky winner will be crowned King or Queen Bee.

Along with the prestigious title of the 10th Eason Spelling Bee Champion, the winning speller will also take home a collection of books for their school library, worth 7,500 as well as a personal collection of books worth 500.

To register for the Eason Spelling Bee 2020, please visit www.easons.com/spellingbee

Follow #EasonSpellingBee or visit www.easons.com/spellingbee to keep a-buzz with all the action from this years Bee.
The cost of a professional repair will depend partly on how much touch-up work needs to be done to get the piece in the condition you want. Many conservators offer a quick, free evaluation if you bring an object to them. Before they do any work, they prepare a written evaluation and cost estimate. Kingery-Schwartz said conservators in the Washington area typically charge $110 to $140 per hour. Depending on the condition of the break edges, she estimated that repairing the king could take as little as three hours or as many as nine or 10. It also depends on the goal of the treatment  to simply stabilize the piece or to address the aesthetic issues associated with the damage, she said.
The Gateway Building at Titanic Quarter was bought for more than 34m by Citigroup in April

The sales of prominent shopping sites including Sprucefield Retail Park helped Northern Ireland's commercial property market end 2019 in a stronger position than anticipated, it's been claimed.

A report by agency CBRE said the investment market saw an increase in transaction volumes year-on-year, with almost 212m being invested across 32 separate transactions last year.

Notable investments include Sprucefield Retail Park in Lisburn, which was bought by NewRiver for 40m, and Crescent Link Retail Park in Londonderry, bought for 30m by Manchester-based firm David Samuel Properties.

The development was being sold by Lotus Group, a business controlled by local developer Ciaran Murdock.

The Gateway Building at Titanic Quarter in Belfast was also purchased for more than 34m by Citigroup in April.

The strong end of year position has "once again proven" the market's resilience, according to commercial property agency CBRE.

Gavin Elliott, capital markets director at CBRE, said it was "encouraging to see higher investment volumes being recorded than first anticipated at the beginning of 2019".

"With the UK likely to leave the EU on January 31, 2020, we believe that the unique position of Belfast as a pivot city between Dublin, London and Europe should begin to realise greater interest from real estate investors throughout 2020," he said.

CBRE added that office market take-up in Belfast had also performed much better than expected in 2019.

In total, take-up of 517,380 sq ft was secured over 64 transactions.

Key deals in the office market include Deloitte taking 80,000 sq ft at The Ewart at the former Ewart's Warehouse on Bedford Street.

Rapid7 signed up to 48,000 sq ft at Chichester House, while PwC took on an additional 46,000 sq ft of accommodation at Merchant Square, on top of the 155,000 sq ft agreed last year.

CBRE director David Wright said: "Over the past number of years, strong occupier activity, particularly from the technology/FDI and creative industries sectors, has helped reinforce the resilience of our office market amidst the wider economic and political challenges that Northern Ireland has faced.

"We are pleased that figures recorded in 2019 were up on the rolling five-year average, and with a number of large office requirements set to be announced," he added.
NEW MILFORD - A loan shark whose business dealings led to the brutal beating of a client by members of a Hells Angels motorcycle club has been sentenced to two years in federal prison.

James Broderick, 59, had plead guilty to extortion charges for his role in the brutal beating of a local man in January 2016, according to federal court documents.

The beating  with hammers and other instruments  was so severe the victim lost one of his eyes, his jaw was pulverized into minute fragments and his cheekbone was shattered to the point and became disassociated with the skull, documents state.

The ordeal began when Broderick loaned the victim $1,500 that was supposed to be paid back within a week with $500 interest, the documents state.

But the victim failed to repay the loan, claimed he was a leader of a New York Hells Angels chapter, and said he needed more time to pay the money back.

According to court documents, Broderick asked Howard Hammer, a member of the Charter Oaks Motorcycle Club affiliated with the Angels to threaten the victim, according to the court documents.

Word got back to members of the Bridgeport-based Hells Angels chapter who became enraged that someone was claiming to be a member of the club who was not. Gaining membership into the Angels is difficult and includes several levels of initiation.

Hammer and members of Hells Angels broke into the victims hotel room proclaiming themselves the real Hells Angels before the attack ensued, court documents state.

Investigators said they discovered Hammers fingerprints on the door of a Ford Explorer used by the attackers. They also found DNA belonging to Sean Oldroyd, who is president of the Bridgeport-based Hells Angels group, authorities said.

To date, only Hammer and Broderick have been arrested in connection with the beating.

After the attack, Oldroyd told Hammer that Charter Oaks are top notch, in our book, you know and for helping us out, you hold our card in your pocket.

Shortly before Hammer pleaded guilty to several federal charges, he sent a message to the president of the Charter Oaks stating that he was willing to take the fall for crime.

Im gonna be the fall guy, take the hit, which Im fine with, Hammer said, according to court documents. I dont want to see anyone else get in trouble. I dont want nothing, you know what I mean?

In June, Hammer was sentenced to more than two years in federal prison.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Deployed National Guardsmen and Reservists now have benefits parity with their active-component counterparts thanks to a bipartisan effort in Congress.

The fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes language that provides Guardsmen and Reservists mobilized under authority 12304b with a benefit they were previously denied  credit towards early retirement pay.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., were the driving forces behind the provision in the Senate. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, and Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Miss., the co-chairs of the House National Guard and Reserve Caucus, pushed it in the House.

"Equal work and sacrifice deserve equal pay and benefits," said retired Brig. Gen. J. Roy Robinson, the NGAUS president. "We applaud the four legislators for recognizing this and winning the support of their colleagues."

Congress worked hard in the early years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to close the longstanding benefits gap between the active component and the Guard and Reserve, Robinson said. However, the disparity reopened in 2012 with the creation of 12304b.

The new mobilization authority gave the services easy access to the Guard and Reserve for so-called preplanned missions, but it did not provide premobilization and transitional health care or credit toward GI Bill educational benefits and early retirement.

Those benefits are included under other mobilization authorities, and Guardsmen and Reservists and their families have come to rely on them to ease the burdens of overseas missions. Active-component members receive health care and credit toward the GI Bill and retirement even when not deployed.

Tens of thousands of Guardsmen and Reservists have mobilized for overseas duty under 12304b in recent years. Examples include peacekeeping mission in Kosovo and on the Sinai Peninsula.

Congress added education benefits and premobilization and transitional health care to 12304b in 2017, but the lack of credit toward early retirement remained. The early retirement program enables Guardsmen and Reservists with 20 qualifying years to receive their pension three months earlier than the traditional age of 60 for every 90 days mobilized since January 2008.

Until the president signed the fiscal 2020 NDAA on Dec. 20, service under 12304b did not count toward early retirement. Now it does, Robinson said, thanks in large part to Wicker and Coons in the Senate and Ryan and Palazzo in the House.

"I was glad to work with Senator Coons, the National Guard Association, and others to close the remaining gaps in benefits for our Guardsmen and Reservists who make the same sacrifices for our nation as their active-duty counterparts," Wicker said.

"Members of the Guard and Reserves in Delaware and around the country should have access to the full range of benefits they deserve," Coons said. "The defense authorization bill is critical to our national security and our service members, and I'm glad to see that this year's bill helps to ensure that Guardsmen and Reservists are fairly compensated."

"As the co-chair of the bipartisan National Guard and Reserve Caucus, I'm proud we finally closed the loophole that left some Guardsmen without the benefits they earned," Ryan said. "Retirement, GI Bill and TRICARE health care benefits will no longer depend on an arbitrary number on their orders."

"With passage of this year's NDAA, we can finally close the book on this injustice," Palazzo said. "Through multiple pieces of legislation passed over the years, we have successfully clawed back the benefits that our Guard and Reserve have rightly earned, and I am proud to have been part of that."

About NGAUS: The association includes nearly 45,000 current or former Guard officers. It was created in 1878 to provide unified National Guard representation in Washington. In their first productive meeting after Reconstruction, militia officers from the North and South formed the association with the goal of obtaining better equipment and training by educating Congress on Guard requirements. Today, 142 years later, NGAUS has the same mission.

SOURCE National Guard Association of the U.S.
Prince Charles and his son Prince William both have the environment in their sights this year.

Charles has just joined William in announcing a new initiative to help bring forward fresh ideas to tackle the worlds environmental issues.

Seeing 2020 as a year of action, as one palace aide calls it, Charles is launching his new Sustainable Markets Council at the World Economic Forums meeting at Davos in the Swiss Alps later this month.

The council was founded by the prince, 71, along with the WEF to bring together leading international figures from the private, public and philanthropic sectors, Charless office announced on Monday.

RELATED: Prince William Unveils Ambitious New Environmental Mission: The Earth Is at a Tipping Point and We Face a Stark Choice

James Veysey/Shutterstock

The council hopes to build an international coalition that can have significant impact and identify solutions to de-carbonizing the world and help the move towards a more sustainable footing.

There is now agreement on the problem, and the prince is really focused on solutions, deputy private secretary Scott Furssedonn-Wood said at a briefing at the princes London home, Clarence House.

The announcement comes a week after Prince William, 37, kicked off his search for leading innovators and reward new ideas via his Earthshot prize.

Both have the same aims  of finding solutions, so they dont clash, Furssedonn-Wood insisted.

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There is no monopoly on action. As long as everyone is pointing in the right direction on this, he said. The prince and [William] are delighted that they have parallel opportunities to pursue the same objectives.

Charles will attend Davos en route to Israel, to which he is traveling in a private chartered aircraft mainly for security reasons. The royal is determined not to add unnecessarily to any carbon footprint, so the prince is only doing so because he is able to stop off during his journey to Israel, palace sources said. They point out that he is planning on taking the drive from the airport to Davos in an electric car.


By Kim Yoo-chul



In 2011, the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs sued the then minor South Korean smartphone manufacturer Samsung in a San Jose court in California, asserting Samsung "intentionally copied" the look and feel of its flagship iPhone.



During the legal action taken by Apple, Samsung claimed the U.S. firm was hurting the best interest of consumers as its demand for a ban on the sale of Samsung smartphones in major markets would seriously limit consumer choice.



Their blockbuster patent battle continued over the next few years with Samsung expanding its legal front in key European markets as well as Apple's home-turf. Samsung paid a lot for the litigation by hiring top-level law-firms, but in doing so it benefited the most in terms of the substantial upside to its brand recognition and market share. The Samsung-Apple case came to a close when the two sides agreed to a secret settlement.



What SK Innovation, the battery affiliate of South Korea's SK Group, wants to do is follow Samsung's case by expanding its legal feud with LG Chem, LG Group's growth engine.



"Given the negligible market share in the global electric vehicle (EV) battery market, SK Innovation is apparently overplaying the firm's intellectual property (IP) hand because there's the possibility of growing its market recognition. This matters more than monetary damage," a patent expert told The Korea Times.



Market research firm SNE Research said SK Innovation had a 1.9 percent share in the global EV battery market as of October last year. LG Chem was the world's No. 3 supplier with 11.3 percent, followed by its long-time domestic rival Samsung SDI with 3.7 percent. With the small share, SK's balance sheet in the battery business was worsening  it reported a 196.7 billion won operating loss as of the third quarter of last year, according to data given to the financial authorities here.



LG Chem officials said the company was aiming to end the case but only after "conditions are met." Regarding the specifics of these and prerequisites for settling the feud, they declined to elaborate.



"The legal tussle with SK Innovation is more about LG's message to the growing number of budget Chinese EV manufacturers, as the global EV battery market is highly competitive," an official said. LG Chem said the feud could be negative for the global EV eco-system as it could possibly disrupt the launch of advanced EVs by major car manufacturers.



LG has asked a U.S. ITC investigative team for a quick and speedy ruling on the disputer, alleging that SK attempted to steal "confidential information" on battery specifics by "scouting" LG's renowned battery researchers.



Cheong Wa Dae has also apparently intervened in the dispute as one senior presidential aide arranged a meeting with top-level LG Chem and SK Innovation executives to persuade them to settle the case, an official said. Despite this, the LG and SK executives left the meeting with nothing resolved.



With regard to the Samsung-Apple dispute, the two consumer electronics giants put an end to their long-running patent litigation, but left a central question behind. Specifically, whether the South Korean smartphone heavyweight stole patents from Apple. The terms of the settlement, however, weren't disclosed.


The Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, is urging Ghanaians who are qualified to vote to take part in the planned compilation of new voters register by the Electoral Commission.

According to the Senior Minister, any qualified voter who fails to take part in the registration exercise will lose his or her right to vote in the 2020 polls.

It is this same year that the Electoral Commission says it is going to compile a new voters register. I am pleading with everyone to take part in the exercise because you cannot vote if your name is not captured in the register and if you dont vote it means you cant appreciate President Akufo-Addo for his good governance bringing development to your area.

Mr. Osafo-Maafo said this while addressing the Chiefs and People of Akuapem-Aprede on the occasion of the climax of Odwira Festival.

The Electoral Commissions intention to compile a new Voters register barely 11 months to the general elections with Ghc440 million to replace the less than Seven-year-old Voters Register, has been met with stiff resistance by some major opposition Political parties led the National Democratic Congress(NDC) who have served notice to embark on nationwide demonstration.

But EC argues that the current register, though credible, is overstretched hence the need to compile a new register to enhance its functionality.

The Senior Minister also urged the People of Akuapem-Aperede to take part in the upcoming Population and Housing Census which is critical to development planning and allocation of resources by the government.

The Population and Housing Census will come off this year make sure you are counted. Someone will complain that we have taken part in the Population and Housing Census for many time but nothing happens. What you must know is that it helps the government to know the population of people in a geographical area to help in the planning and distribution of national resources. so it is important everybody takes part in the exercise.

---Starrfm.com.gh
Hezbollah: U.S. forces in Middle East to go home in coffins Lebanon's Hezbollah supporters attend a funeral ceremony rally to mourn Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, who was killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Beirut's suburbs

By Laila Bassam and Nadine Awadalla

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday the U.S. military in the Middle East would pay the price for the killing of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, warning that U.S. soldiers and officers would return home in coffins.

In a speech marking the death of Soleimani and a top Iraqi militia commander in a targeted U.S. air strike, Nasrallah said responding to the killing was not only Iran's responsibility but the responsibility of its allies too.

But U.S. civilians should not be targeted, he said.

Founded by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in 1982, Lebanese group Hezbollah is a critical part of an Iranian-backed regional military alliance.

Soleimani, Iran's pre-eminent military commander, was killed on Friday in an attack that took long-running hostilities between Washington and Tehran into uncharted territory and raised the spectre of wider conflict in the Middle East.

"Fair punishment is (aimed at) the American military presence in the region: American military bases, American naval ships, every American officer and soldier in our countries and region," Nasrallah said.

"The American army is the one that killed them and it is the one that will pay the price," Nasrallah said, although U.S. civilians in the region "should not be touched" because this would serve the agenda of U.S. President Donald Trump.

"When the coffins of American soldiers and officers begin to be transported ... to the United States, Trump and his administration will realise that they have really lost the region and will lose the elections," Nasrallah said, referring to the 2020 U.S. presidential vote.

SUICIDE BOMBINGS

The United States holds Hezbollah responsible for the suicide bombing that destroyed U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut in October 1983, killing 241 servicemen, and a suicide bombing the same year on the U.S. embassy.

U.S. forces withdrew from Lebanon the following year.

Story continues

In an apparent reference to those attacks, Nasrallah said potential suicide attackers were present in the region in greater numbers than in the past.

Hezbollah has helped establish Iran-backed paramilitary groups in Syria and Iraq and inspired the Iran-aligned Houthis. Together with Palestinian groups and the Syrian government, they are part of what Iran calls the "axis of resistance". [L8N2982TH]

"We must all seek just punishment across the reach of our region and our nation," Nasrallah said during a rally by Hezbollah supporters in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut.

Some at the rally chanted "death to America", waved Hezbollah's yellow flag, and held aloft pictures of Soleimani.

Nasrallah said the killing marked a new chapter in the history of the Middle East. Attacks on the U.S. military in the region would force U.S. forces to withdraw "humiliated, defeated and in terror ... as they left in the past", he said.

(Reporting by Laila Bassam and Nadine Awadallah; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Kevin Liffey and David Holmes)
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  Influenza and flu-like symptoms were contributing to more visits to Indianapolis-area emergency rooms than at any point during the past decade, officials said.

The primary complaint of 6.2% of ER visits in the week ending Dec. 28 was flu-like symptoms, according to the Marion County Health Department. The previous high of the past 10 years was about 5.3% during the 2017-18 flu season, The Indianapolis Star reported.

Health officials have urged those with mild or minor symptoms to see their doctor or go to an urgent care center. They said the recommendation came after hearing from area ER departments.

Typical symptoms of a mild flu are cough, sore throat, fever, muscle aches, headaches, fatigue and gastrointestinal issues. Health officials have recommended a flu shot for anyone at least 6 years old.

Indiana flu activity last week was higher than at any time during the last year's flu season, according to a state report.
President Trump makes frequent references to MS-13 by its full name, La Mara Salvatrucha, including in his most recent State of the Union address, in which he said a border wall was needed to keep the savage gang out. The gang was formed in Los Angeles during the 1980s by Salvadorans and has taken over large swaths of Central America and found members in some regions in the United States, including pockets of the D.C. area.
The tumultuous personal life of left-leaning congresswoman Ilhan Omar has taken another turn  her ex-husband remarried just 37 days after she divorced him, DailyMail.com has learned.

Ahmed Hirsi, the father of the Minnesota representative's three children, tied the knot with pediatric nurse Ladan Ahmed, who had worked on Omar's election campaign.

'She's as Somali as they come,' one leader of the large Somali community in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area said about Hirsi's new wife.

DailyMail.com understands the couple are now on honeymoon in Saudi Arabia and made a pilgrimage to Mecca. Hirsi did not return DailyMail.com's requests for comment.

DailyMail.com also has acquired exclusive video of the ceremony that took place in an apartment in the Somali capital of Mogadishu.

Neither Hirsi, nor his bride were present. Under Islamic law they do not need to be. He was represented by an uncle, who sat at the right hand of the sheikh who presided.

Ilhan Omar's ex husband Ahmed Hirsi has married pediatric nurse Ladan Ahmed, who had worked on Omar's election campaign, DailyMail.com has learned. The couple are now on honeymoon in Saudi Arabia and made a pilgrimage to Mecca. Pictured: The newlyweds standing outside of The Kaaba, which is the center of Islam's most important mosque the Great Mosque of Mecca

Hirsi and Omar, 39, got engaged in 2002 and then had a faith-based marriage. They had two children before divorcing in 2008. She then married a British citizen Ahmed Elmi, but then reconciled with Hirsi and had a third child in 2012. Elmi and Omar formally divorced in 2017 and she remarried Ahmed the following year (pictured). The two were granted a divorce in November 2019

DailyMail.com has acquired exclusive video of the ceremony that took place in an apartment in the Somali capital of Mogadishu

Neither Hirsi, nor his bride were present. Under Islamic law they do not need to be. He was represented by an uncle, who sat at the right hand of the sheikh who presided

The Somali community leader told DailyMail.com the marriage was probably conducted in Somalia to avoid publicity.

The marriage is considered a 'faith-based' union and is not legally binding in the United States, just as Hirsi's first marriage to Omar was.

After the formal part of the ceremony the sheik shakes the hand of the uncle as they agree that Hirsi would have to pay Ahmed $20,000 if the marriage ends in divorce.

A page with pictures of the couple and congratulatory messages, mainly in Somali, has been posted on YouTube.

Even Omar wished the happy couple a congratulations, sharing a photo of the two on her Instagram story, writing: 'Mash Allah. Hambalyo boowe. Congratulations, may Allah accept your umrah and bless your union.'

Hirsi, 39, married Ahmed, on December 12. His final divorce from Omar was granted on November 5.

Hirsi and Omar, 39, first got engaged in 2002 and then had a faith-based marriage. They had two children before divorcing in 2008. She then married a British citizen Ahmed Elmi, but then reconciled with Hirsi and had a third child in 2012.

Elmi and Omar formally divorced in 2017 and she remarried Ahmed the following year, just in time for her first run for Congress. But the remarriage did not last.

'She's as Somali as they come,' one leader of the large Somali community in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area said about Hirsi's new wife

The Somali community leader told DailyMail.com the marriage was probably conducted in Somalia to avoid publicity. The marriage is considered a 'faith-based' union and is not legally binding in the United States, just as Hirsi's first marriage to Omar was

Timeline of Omar's two marriages: 1997: Omar and her family settle in Minnesota after fleeing war-torn Somalia 2002: She marries Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi in a religious ceremony but it is not recognized legally. The pair go on to have two children. 2008: She and Hirsi separate. Because the marriage was never recognized by law, neither is the separation 2009: Omar marries Ahmed Elmi in Minneapolis 2010: He enrolls at North Dakota State University to study fine art and lives with Omar as well as her first husband 2011: Omar claims she and Elmi split this year and he went back to the UK. She reconciles with Hirsi 2012: Omar and Hirsi have their third child. Elmi is still in the US according to college officials and social media 2013: Elmi starts working in London 2017: Omar divorces Elmi 2018: Omar marries Hirsi in a civil ceremony 2018: The marriage is brought up during Omar's campaign for congress She denies it and it is largely ignored because of the lack of proof around it July 2019: President Trump thrusts the rumor back into the spotlight July 2019: DailyMail.com reveals Omar and Hirsi have separated and she's moved into a penthouse apartment DailyMail.com also reveals Omar's secret relationship with her married aide Tim Mynett August 2019: Tim Mynett's wife files for divorce, claiming her husband had professed his love for Omar Early October 2019: Omar formally files for divorce from Hirsi November 2019: Omar is granted the divorce from Hirsi December 12, 2019: Hirsi marries pediatric nurse Ladan Ahmed December 19, 2019: Mynett is granted a divorce from his wife Beth Advertisement

News of Hirsi's marriage comes just two weeks after Omar's lover Tim Mynett's divorce was finalized, freeing him up to marry the controversial congresswoman.

DailyMail.com first revealed the affair in July last year when we reported how they had been holding hands over dinner at a romantic out-of-the-way restaurant in Los Angeles after she had given a speech there.

Mynett, who is in charge of Omar's fundraising efforts, was divorced by Beth Jordan, his wife of seven years. She filed claiming he had told her he was in love with Omar.

At a 16-minute hearing in Washington, D.C., Jordan attempted to read out a statement repeating her allegations of an affair, which Mynett has denied despite being seen leaving Omar's basement apartment in the capital early in the morning. But Judge Darlene Soltys shut her down before she could complete her statement.

Mynett, 38, left the court after the hearing grinning and clapping his hands in glee. He said he was happy with the proceedings but would not comment further.

His 55-year-old wife asked for her maiden name Beth Jordan to be restored. When Judge Soltys asked her why, she replied: 'I no longer want to have Mr. Mynett's name attached to me.'

Details of a settlement drawn up to cover alimony, child support and the split of marital property were kept secret and are not included in the court record. The couple have a 13-year-old son.

The Mynetts split in April last year. In papers filed in August Mynett claimed he had only agreed to marry Jordan  then his live-in girlfriend  when she threatened to kick him out of their Washington home and make it difficult for him to see their then-six-year-old son.

At the time of their 2012 marriage he was 25 and she was 42. They had been living together for more than six years.

The marriage had been 'a rollercoaster of highs and lows,' Mynett said in the papers filed in D.C. Superior Court. But while he listed plenty of 'lows' he failed to mention any 'highs.'

'On multiple occasions, due to the unhappy and unfulfilling nature of their relationship, the parties discussed separation and divorce,' he claimed in papers written by his attorney Sarah Mancinelli.

'Throughout the marriage, the parties had numerous discussions about the problems in their relationship and Mr. Mynett repeatedly voiced to Ms Mynett that he was unhappy and believed she was likewise unhappy,' Mancinelli wrote.

'He stated repeatedly that they needed to find a way to improve their relationship. Unfortunately, those conversations never resulted in meaningful improvements in their marriage.'

News of Hirsi's marriage comes just two weeks after Omar's lover Tim Mynett's divorce was finalized, freeing him up to marry the controversial congresswoman. Pictured: Omar with Mynett in May 2019

Omar's campaign fundraiser strategist and lover Tim Mynett, 38, (left) left the courthouse in high spirits after officially divorcing Beth Jordan, 55, (right). He was grinning and clapping his hands in glee. He said he was happy with the proceedings but would not comment further

In his papers, Mynett, now 38, said he had never really loved his wife  and told her so in their final heart-to-heart. 'Mr. Mynett told Ms Mynett that he had been unhappy for the better part of their relationship,' Mancinelli wrote in the court documents.

'During their conversation in April 2019, and after struggling for the better part of a year to find a path to preserve their union and be happy, Mr. Mynett informed Ms Mynett that he was no longer able to remain in the marriage.'

He said he told her he had not been unfaithful. Jordan nevertheless ordered him out of the house, he said

But Jordan said he had told her that he was in love with the freshman congresswoman. In papers she filed, Beth said the marriage collapsed when he announced he was 'romantically involved with and in love with another woman, Ilhan Omar.

'Although devastated by the betrayal and deceit that preceded his abrupt declaration, (Jordan) told (Mynett) that she loved him and was willing to fight for the marriage,' she said.

'(Mynett), however told her that was not an option for him. He provided no other explanation for his sudden change of heart.'

In October, DailyMail.com revealed that Omar and Mynett were not only dating, but living together 'on and off' at a secret DC apartment, while plotting romantic vacations to Jamaica and making plans for a long-term future together

Mynett was seen whisking mom-of-three Omar around DC in his bright blue Ford Mustang. Insiders have gone so far as to suggest the pair will get married when their respective separations are finalized

The source added: 'The suspicion is that when their divorces are finalized they will quietly decide to make it official. Maybe then the lies, the hypocrisy, all the sneaking around will finally come to an end.' Pictured: Mynett with his arm dangling a cigarette out of his window while Omar hops into his waiting car on September 26

Jordan attacked her husband's judgment for taking their son to meet Omar formally over dinner at the family's favorite neighborhood restaurant in D.C. while she was out of town.

She described how Omar gave the boy a gift and was even invited inside the Mynett marital home afterwards.

Mynett went to an event with Omar the following night but never came home, Jordan further alleged.

'Most concerning is that (Mynett) put his son in harm's way by taking him out in public with Rep. Omar who at the time had garnered a plethora of media attention along with death threats, one rising to the level of arresting the known would-be assassin that same week.'

That was a reference to a New York man arrested by federal agents in April for threatening to 'put a bullet in [Omar's] f***ing skull.'

Jordan said she was not only a 'devoted' wife but was the primary breadwinner throughout their marriage, complaining that her husband dumped her just as he stood to make substantially more income through his growing firm.

She also claimed that Mynett has a 'history of emotional instability that can cause him to become easily angered and rageful.'
Top Pentagon Brass Stunned By Trump Decision to Assassinate IRGC Commander Soleimani - Report

Sputnik News

06:00 05.01.2020

The assassination of the commander of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Qasem Soleimani, has prompted fears in the Middle East and across the globe that US President Donald Trump's reportedly spontaneous decision could ultimately spawn a full-scale military conflict which could affect the entire world.

As tensions rise, the US media is digging for details on the assassination that could reportedly become a pivotal moment in modern history for humanity.

Days before Soleimani was targeted, US senior military officials reportedly offered to Trump the option of killing him. The Washington Post broke the news on Saturday, citing sources, that top Pentagon officials were "stunned" when the US president picked the most extreme option as a response to recent Iranian-led violence in Iraq.

According to the media report, senior military officials did not think Trump would take it, citing a practice reportedly introduced after the 11 September 2001 attacks which enables the US Department of Defence to offer improbable options to presidents just to make other more peaceful scenarios appear more palatable.

Trump reportedly became infuriated with media images showing Iranian-backed attacks on the American embassy in Baghdad, The Washington Post said, citing sources. The aggressive protest - which came as a response to the US strike against Kataib Hezbollah's forces killing about two dozen of its fighters - triggered the extreme option.

Senior US officials said, cited by the media outlet, that Trump authorized the assassination of Soleimani despite dispute in the administration about the significance of received intelligence warning of alleged threats to American assets in the Middle East.

US officials were reportedly divided, as some sources claimed that Soleimani had allegedly completed a tour - checking his proxy forces in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq - and was planning an attack that could claim hundreds of lives, according to The Washington Post. Others reportedly doubted a direct strike against Soleimani as other intelligence indicated that the top Iranian general's recent traveling amounted to "business as usual".

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated that Tehran will exact revenge for what it characterizes as a terrorist attack.

Trump tweeted at Tehran that the Pentagon had identified "52 sites" in Iran for possible military airstrikes in the event that Iran retaliates over the killing of its IRGC commander.

 Sputnik

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SHANGHAI, Jan 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- CARsgen Therapeutics, a clinical-stage company committed to developing Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cell therapies for cancer, today announced appointment of Yong Fan, MD, as Senior Vice President, Global Regulatory Affairs. Dr. Fan, will be responsible for CARsgen global regulatory strategy, leading U.S. and China regulatory affairs team, working closely with clinical, medical and process development team, striving to achieve CARsgen global strategic objectives for immunotherapies.

"Dr. Fan's insights and rich experiences of regulatory strategy consulting, FDA review and regulatory inspection, cell and gene therapy research & development, and related policy implementation is a precious asset as CARsgen is developing its global strategy," said Dr. Zonghai Li, Founder and CEO of CARsgen. "In the near future, CARsgen aims to submit several INDs, BLAs to US FDA, China NMPA and other regulatory agencies for our advanced CAR-T cell programs. We are delighted to have Dr. Fan joined, together with more and more global top talents to deliver our commitment to cancer patients".

Prior to join CARsgen, Dr. Fan served as A2Z Reg Solutions Senior Consultant and owner, Member of ISCT Legal and Regulatory Affairs North America Committee, Senior Reviewer in the FDA Office of Tissues and Advanced Therapies (OTAT/Previous OCTGT), Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), mainly responsible for review, evaluation and inspection for cellular and gene therapies' pre-IND, IND and BLA. Prior to FDA career, she served several roles as Staff Scientist at the Cell Processing Section of National Institute of Health, Laboratory Supervisor of Cellular Activities in the Gene Transfer Core Facility at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Cell Processing Laboratory Supervisor for New York Presbyterian Hospital-University Hospital of Columbia and Weill Cornell.

Dr. Fan earned her Bachelor of Medicine (equivalent to US Medical Doctor) from Jilin Medical College in Jilin, China, and Master of Medicine from the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing, China. She completed her post-doctoral training in cancer immunotherapy, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation at The New York Blood Center. Dr. Fan is based in Fredrick, Maryland.

About CARsgen Therapeutics, Inc.

CARsgen Therapeutics is a clinical-stage immune-oncology company committed to the development and commercialization of CAR-T and monoclonal antibody therapeutics for unmet medical needs. The company has collaborated with top hospitals in China to launch several First-in-Human studies such as CAR-GPC3-T for hepatocellular carcinoma and squamous lung cancer, CAR-EGFR/EGFRvIII-T for glioblastoma multiforme and CAR-Claudin18.2-T for gastric and pancreatic cancer.

For more information, please visit: www.carsgen.com

SOURCE CARsgen Therapeutics Co. Ltd.

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Hyderabad: Union Minister of State for Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy has reiterated that the Opposition was trying to mislead and spread false rumours over the issue of Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019. "The Opposition is trying to mislead and spread false rumours regarding the CAA. They are trying to divide the society by discriminating people on the basis of their religion," said Reddy while speaking to media on Sunday.

Earlier on Sunday, Reddy along with state BJP President Laxman and city president Ramachandra Rao inaugurated the `Sampark Abhiyan Program` in Hyderabad to raise awareness on the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Asserting that CAA doesn`t discriminate on religion basis, Reddy urged the people to believe in the government and support the Act.

Live TV

"Different leaders on different occasions have tried to pass the Citizenship Bill but it got cleared in the Parliament under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This government has given shelter to the homeless, constructed toilets in every village, allotted domestic gas cylinders to every house and bank account to every person. We have worked towards development irrespective of caste and creed," the Union Minister said.

Protests have erupted across the country over the CAA, which grants citizenship to Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Parsi, Buddhist, and Christian refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, who came to India on or before December 31, 2014. Some protestors had argued that the CAA violates the secular identity of the country while others feared that it will endanger their linguistic and cultural identity.
Overcrowding continues to worsen at St Luke's Hospital in Kilkenny according to today's figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO).

They show 15 patients on trolleys and 17 on wards, giving a total of 32 people waiting on a bed. It's up from a total of 30 on Friday.

Visiting restrictions remain in place at the local hospital, where staff are currently caring for a number of patients with flu.

In order to protect other patients and members of the public from further infection, hospital management is advising that the hospital is closed to visitors. The public is asked not to visit the hospital at this time unless absolutely necessary and not to bring children if at all possible.

Management would ask that, where possible, patients with flu-like illness / cold symptoms telephone their GP/or pharmacist in the first instance to seek the best advice, rather than presenting at the hospital. In addition, people due to attend the hospital for an outpatient clinic appointment during the current week who may have symptoms of flu are advised to check with the hospital before attending as an appointment may need to be rescheduled in order to prevent the further spread of flu to both patients and staff.
Beirut, Jan 6 : Ousted Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn will appear in public for the first time on Wednesday at a press conference her after his escape from Japan to Lebanon last week, a representative said on Monday.

The meeting will take place at 3 p.m. on Wednesday at the Lebanese Press Club in Beirut, Ghosn's spokespersons in France, who did not reveal further details, told Efe news.

Ghosn, 65, was last seen on December 31 in Beirut, two days after escaping Tokyo - where he was under house arrest awaiting trial for various financial misconduct charges.

His whereabouts in Lebanon have been unknown since.

Ghosn escaped from Japan on a private plane and after a stopover in Turkey, arrived in Beirut, where he made statements criticizing the Japanese judicial system.

He did not provide details on how he was able to escape the country or the kind of surveillance he was subjected to. He has denied being helped by his wife Carole.

One of Ghosn's properties located in the affluent Beirut neighbourhood of Achrafieh has garnered attention in recent days. However, it remains uncertain whether the former Nissan executive was residing there.

Lebanon's General Security Directorate said the businessman entered the country legally as he has Lebanese citizenship, in addition to Brazilian and French ones.

In a statement, the directorate added there was no ground for taking any measure or legal action against him.

Ghosn had two French passports, one of which he was in possession and could have used to legally enter Lebanon, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK.

The Lebanese public prosecutor's office has also received an Interpol red notice, requesting authorities to preventively arrest Ghosn while he awaits extradition or other similar judicial action.

Japan does not have an extradition treaty with Lebanon, therefore Lebanese law will be applicable in Ghosn's case.

If Beirut receives an extradition request from Japanese authorities, it could possibly be considered on the basis of bilateral relations.
Here is Degeneress speech in its entirety.

Wow. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. You never know where life takes you, huh? Before I say anything: Australia, I love you; my heart goes out to everyone who is suffering in Australia, all the animals that weve lost.

Kate, youre incredible, and thank you so much. I know how hard, I hate being asked to do things like this, so thank you for doing this. Thank you for flying here, thank you for writing something, thank you for the amazing, the words that you said. Thank you so much, I love you. Thank you so much to the Hollywood Foreign Press, I feel humbled and honored to receive this. The first person after Carol Burnett is quite an honor, so thank you so much.

Its a prestigious award, and what I like most about it is I knew coming in I would win. Because I mean, theres nothing worse than sitting there, like most of you, waiting and wondering if youre going to win, and politely acting like, oh, Im going to listen to everyones speeches, like its nice, and its not. Those people just go on and on and on and on and on, and on and on and on and youre like, aah. Im not going to do that; Im going to be quick. Although I dont have to, because its a special award, and they dont play me off. I mean, I dont have to end at all, because its a special award. But they said they were going to give me a sign at 25 minutes, but thats for my reference just to see where I was. But I could go on. Im not. Im going to keep it quick.

I was born in New Orleans in 1958, Jan. 26. Dr. Swanson delivered me at 8:43 in the morning. A rainy, rainy, and not  I mean, Louisiana heavy rain. My parents drove me home in a Buick. I think it was a Buick. It could have been a Ford or a Chrysler. It was a Buick. I think it was a Buick. The point is they brought me home in a car, and before I knew it I had a successful sitcom, and I came out, and then I lost that sitcom, and then I got another sitcom, and I lost that sitcom, too. And then I got to do something that I had never been able to do before, and that is make my own whiskey. And after that, I got a talk show and I was able to be myself. And that was 17 years ago. And I feel like youve all really gotten to know me over the past 17 years. I am an open book. And I couldnt have done it without my husband, Mark. Mark, you are my rock. Thank you for supporting me through this crazy journey. I know it wasnt easy for you, or the kids: Rupert and Fiona, go to bed, I love you. Thats funny, because theyre in college now.

But the point is you all know me, and obviously you know me or else you wouldnt have laughed at all that. I feel like we all think we know someone; theres a connection when we watch someone on TV for as long as they are on TV, and thats what it was like for me with Carol Burnett. I felt like I knew her, I felt like she showed us who she was every week. She was larger than life. We counted on her to make us feel good, and she delivered. Every single week, she never let us down. She was hilarious in all the sketches that she did, and when she did the Q. and A. with the audience, she was just genuine and personal, and I always felt like she was speaking to me. At the end of the show, every time she pulled her ear, I knew she was saying, Its O.K. Im gay, too. Television, it inspired and influenced everything that I am today. Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore, Marlo Thomas, Dick van Dyke, Bob Newhart  theres a little bit of all of them in me. That didnt sound right, but you know what Im saying.

All I ever want to do is make people feel good and laugh, and there is no greater feeling than when someone tells me that Ive made their day better with my show, or that Ive helped them get through a sickness or a hard time in their lives. But the real power of television for me is not that people watch my show, but that people watch my show and then theyre inspired to go out and do the same thing in their own lives: They make people laugh or be kind or help someone that is less fortunate than themselves. And that is the power of television and Im so, so grateful to be a part of it. Thank you so much, everybody.
(Newser)  Ricky Gervais hosted the Golden Globes for what he said would be the final time Sunday nightand he out-Ricky Gervaised himself with a barrage of scathing jokes about celebrities and the hypocrisy of Hollywood. Gervais, hosting for the fifth time, told the audience he didn't care if they were shocked or offended. "Let's have a laugh at your expense, shall we?" he said. "Remember, theyre just jokes, were all going to die soon, and there's no sequel." Some of his targets:

Jeffrey Epstein . Gervais joked about Epstein and his Hollywood connections while plugging his own Netflix show, After Life, the Daily Beast reports. "OK, spoiler alert, season two is on the way, so in the end obviously he didnt kill himself," he said. "Just like Jeffrey Epstein." After groans from the audience, Gervais said: "Shut up! I know hes your friend, but I don't care. You had to make your own way here on your own plane, didnt you?"

. Gervais joked about Epstein and his Hollywood connections while plugging his own Netflix show, After Life, the Daily Beast reports. "OK, spoiler alert, season two is on the way, so in the end obviously he didnt kill himself," he said. "Just like Jeffrey Epstein." After groans from the audience, Gervais said: "Shut up! I know hes your friend, but I don't care. You had to make your own way here on your own plane, didnt you?" Felicity Huffman. "I came in a limo tonight and the license plate was made by Felicity Huffman." He also zinged Huffman's husband, William H. Macy, saying Huffman going to jail in connection with the college admissions bribery scandal "must be the most embarrassing thing thats ever happened" to her daughter. "And her dad was in Wild Hogs."

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"Woke" celebrities . Gervais mocked celebrities for lecturing about morals while working for big companies with dubious records, reports the Washington Post. "You say youre woke but the companies you work forApple, Amazon, Disneyif ISIS started a streaming service, you would call your agent, wouldnt you? So if you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech, right? Youre in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world."

. Gervais mocked celebrities for lecturing about morals while working for big companies with dubious records, reports the Washington Post. "You say youre woke but the companies you work forApple, Amazon, Disneyif ISIS started a streaming service, you would call your agent, wouldnt you? So if you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech, right? Youre in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world." Leonardo DiCaprio . Targeting DiCaprio's reputation for dating younger women, Gervais quipped that the actor attended the premiere of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, "and by the end, his date was too old for him. Even Prince Andrew's like, 'Come on, Leo, mate, you're nearly 50-something.'"

. Targeting DiCaprio's reputation for dating younger women, Gervais quipped that the actor attended the premiere of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, "and by the end, his date was too old for him. Even Prince Andrew's like, 'Come on, Leo, mate, you're nearly 50-something.'" Hollywood execs and #MeToo . Gervais joked that the room was full of important TV and movie execs from all kinds of backgrounds, "but they all have one thing in common: theyre all terrified of Ronan Farrow. Hes coming for you. He's coming for you."

. Gervais joked that the room was full of important TV and movie execs from all kinds of backgrounds, "but they all have one thing in common: theyre all terrified of Ronan Farrow. Hes coming for you. He's coming for you." Martin Scorsese . Gervais poked fun at the Irishman director, though he agreed with his remarks about superhero movies being more like theme park rides than cinema. Scorsese "made the news for his comments about Marvel," said Gervais, per the Hollywood Reporter. "I agree. Although I don't know what he's doing hanging around theme parks. He's not big enough to go on the rides. He's tiny."

. Gervais poked fun at the Irishman director, though he agreed with his remarks about superhero movies being more like theme park rides than cinema. Scorsese "made the news for his comments about Marvel," said Gervais, per the Hollywood Reporter. "I agree. Although I don't know what he's doing hanging around theme parks. He's not big enough to go on the rides. He's tiny." The Hollywood Foreign Press Association . "Many talented people of color were snubbed in major categories," Gervais said. "Unfortunately, theres nothing we can do about that: The Hollywood Foreign Press are all very, very racist."

. "Many talented people of color were snubbed in major categories," Gervais said. "Unfortunately, theres nothing we can do about that: The Hollywood Foreign Press are all very, very racist." Harvey Weinstein. The Independent reports that there were gasps after Gervais said. "Our next presenter starred in Netflixs Bird Box, a movie where people survive by acting like they dont see a thingsort of like working for Harvey Weinstein." After the audience reaction, he added: "You did it! I didntyou did it!"

(Read more Golden Globes stories.)
EE Rising Star nominees.

Golden Globe-winning The Farewell star Awkwafina and Blue Story's Micheal Ward have been included in a list of nominees for an award that recognises rising stars in the world of film.

Booksmart's Kaitlyn Dever, Fighting With My Family actor Jack Lowden and Kelvin Harrison Jr from the film Waves are also on the list for the EE Bafta Rising Star Award. Previous winners include James McAvoy, Kristen Stewart, Tom Hardy and Black Panther star Letitia Wright who won in 2019.

The winner will be selected by a public vote after being put forward by a jury featuring radio DJ Edith Bowman and actress Vanessa Kirby.

Revealed by actor Tom Hiddleston, broadcaster Edith Bowman and BAFTA Chief Executive Amanda Berry, the nominees consist of five actors and actresses who have each shown truly outstanding talent on the big screen in the past year and captured the imagination of both the public and film industry.

Read more: Graham Norton to host the BAFTAs

The accolade, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, is the only award at the Bafta film ceremony to be voted for by the public.

Awkwafina poses in the press room with the award for best performance by an actress in a motion picture, musical or comedy for "The Farewell" at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Awkwafina, commenting on her nomination, said: Its truly an honour to be nominated for the EE Rising Star Award. Im grateful to BAFTA and the jury for the nomination and that I am able to share this recognition with so many other talented actors and actresses.

Actor Jack Lowden poses for photographs upon arrival at the Uk Premiere of the film, 'Fighting with my Family' at a central London cinema , Monday, Feb. 25, 2019. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Jack Lowden said: I would like to thank both BAFTA and the jury panel for nominating me for the 2020 EE Rising Star Award. Its a huge honour to be included amongst such talent  what a way to kick off the year. Thank you!

This Nov. 6, 2019 photo shows Kaitlyn Dever posing for a portrait in New York. Dever, the star of the Netflix series "Unbelievable," and the film "Booksmart," was named one of the breakthrough artists of the year by the Associated Press. (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)

Unbelievable star Kaitlyn Dever said: "I am overjoyed to be recognised by BAFTA and the jury as an EE Rising Star nominee. I am so excited to be acknowledged for an award that celebrates the achievements of young talent who are also contributing to film in an impactful way. Its so incredible to be included in the group of talent nominated today as well as those recognised as an EE Rising Star over the years. Its quite an honour and one that I wont ever forget.

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Kelvin Harrison Jr. attends the Independent Filmmaker Project's 29th annual IFP Gotham Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on Monday Dec. 2, 2019, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Kelvin Harrison Jr., commenting on his nomination, said: For the last few years Ive followed this award and the nominees have always been made up of artists whose work challenges me and inspires me. I feel honoured to be counted among them.

LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 14: Micheal Ward attends the World Premiere of "Blue Story" at Curzon Cinema Mayfair on November 14, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images for Paramount)

Blue Story star Micheal Ward, commenting on his nomination, said: The last two years have been unbelievable, and now to find out that my industry has recognised my work and put me up for the EE Rising Star Award, really is the most amazing thing to happen.

This years EE Rising Star Award jury panel were tasked with selecting the five nominees from a comprehensive list of talented actors and actresses. The jury was chaired by Andrew Orr, managing director of film production company Independent, and included actors Vanessa Kirby, Cynthia Erivo and Gemma Whelan, film broadcaster Edith Bowman, film critic Anna Smith, producers Uzma Hasan, Marc Samuelson and Georgina Lowe, casting directors Nina Gold and Lucy Bevan, and other leading film industry experts.

The nominations for the 2020 EE British Academy Film Awards will be announced on Tuesday, 7 January. The ceremony takes place on Sunday, 2 February, and will be hosted by Graham Norton.
The daughter of Iran's top general Qassem Soleimani has asked Iranian President Hassan Rouhani who will avenge the death of her father.

Gen. Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds force and a mastermind of its regional security strategy, was killed in an airstrike near Baghdad's international airport early Friday.

Footage showed Zeinab Soleimani, the daughter of Soleimani, posing the question of vengeance to Rouhani during a meeting in Tehran on Saturday.

Rouhani replied by vowing revenge for the killing, telling Zeinab Soleimani "don't you worry about that."

Iran has pledged harsh retaliation in the aftermath of the killing, raising fears of war.

US President Donald Trump said Soleimani posed a threat to the American people and that he ordered the strike to prevent a conflict.
Bengaluru, Jan 6 : Hundreds of students from colleges and universities in this tech city staged a massive protest demos against violent attacks allegedly by unidentified goons on their counterparts at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi on Sunday, an organiser said on Monday.

"Hundreds of students from various colleges and universities skipped classes and descended at Town Hall in the city centre to protest against the central government and the Delhi police for the violence unleashed on JNU students and faculty on Sunday by goons," a member of the National Students of India (NSUI) told IANS here.

Raising anti-government slogans in English, Kannada and Hindi and seeking "azadi" (freedom), the students chanted "Inqilab Zindabad", "Down, Down CAA & NRC" and "No Violence" in unision.

"The Modi government cannot suppress our voice. There is no place for goonda raj in democracy. The government should arrest the culprits behind the mayhem in JNU and take action against the Delhi police for failing to prevent violent attack on student leaders and their teachers," the member asserted.

Young professionals and civic and social activists from other organisations have also joined the students and expressed their solidarity with the JNU students and condemned the Delhi police for its inaction against the masked attackers.

"We are seeing a pattern in violent attacks against the student fraternity, which started from Aligarh Muslim University, spread to Jamia Millia University and now to JNU. If we don't protest and resist the anti-democratic actions of the NDA government, we will also not be spared soon," asserted the student leader.

Seeking the arrest of the perpetrators for the violence in the JNU campus, the students demanded the immediate repeal of the Citizen Amendment Act (CAA), which has caused unrest across the country and fear of being persecuted by the BJP-led NDA government for not toeing its right wing agenda.

Waving the tricolour, holding placards and singing patriotic and revolutionary songs, young men and women also took out a protest rally to freedom park and addressed the gathering against the violent attacks of students in AMU, Jamia, JNU and other universities across the country.

JNU Student Union leader Aishe Ghosh and faculty member Sucharita Sen were among the scores of youth who were injured in the violent attack on them by masked men and women.
The chief of staff to the US defence secretary is standing down  the sixth senior civilian Pentagon official to leave their post in recent weeks.

Eric Chewning, the right hand man to Mark Esper, will end his job at the end of the month.

Reports suggest he will be replaced by Jen Stewart, the top Republican member of staff on the House Armed Services Committee, and a former adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Im grateful for Erics professionalism, judgment, and leadership over the last seven months as I moved into the secretary of defence role, Mr Esper said in a statement.

In an incredibly demanding job, Eric has been a source of calm and tireless work. He will be missed by all. We wish him all the best upon his return to the private sector.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

Politico, which was the first to report the news, did not suggest Mr Chewnings departure was in any way linked to Donald Trumps decision to order the targeted killing of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani.

It is known, however, the option of killing the Quds Force leader was among the extreme options presented to Mr Trump when asked for options on how to respond to the killing of a US contractor by a rocket attack on a base in Iraq by Iraqi militia.

 Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei weeps at Soleimani prayers

Reports said Mr Trump first chose to respond by attacking five militia bases. But when he subsequently saw attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad by Iran-backed militia members, he decided to order the strike on Soleimani.

The New York Times said that top Pentagon officials were stunned.

Fox News said Mr Chewnings departure had been expected, and claimed it was not related to the current Iranian conflict.

However, Mr Chewning, who is said to be joining the private sector, is the latest in a succession of senior civilians to depart the defence department.

Among those who have also left was director of Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, the acting undersecretary for personnel and readiness, the principal deputy undersecretary for intelligence, and the assistant secretary for Asian and Pacific security affairs.
Supreme Leader Khamenei's Adviser Says Iran Will Target US 'Military Sites' - Report

Sputnik News

19:13 05.01.2020(updated 00:03 06.01.2020)

The world waits in anticipation after Iran pledged to respond with a "vengeance" to the killing of top ranking General Qasem Soleimani in a US airstrike on Friday. The killing came after the US claimed that the Iranian commander was going to put US lives at risk in a series of planned attacks.

Iran will respond to the killing of General Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike by targeting "military sites", an advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's said on Sunday.

While speaking to CNN former Iranian defence minister Hossein Dehghan said: "The response for sure will be military and against military sites".

Dehghan reiterated the position that Iran "will not be seeking war".

"It was America that has started the war. Therefore, they should accept appropriate reactions to their actions. The only thing that can end this period of war is for the Americans to receive a blow that is equal to the blow they have inflicted," he told the network. "Afterward they should not seek a new cycle."

Dehghan also used the opportunity to respond to a threat by US President Donald Trump on Saturday night that any Iranian retaliation would be met by the targeting of 52 unspecified Iranian sites, describing them as "ridiculous and absurd."

Many of the areas which the US plans to target may be culturally important or UNESCO protected sites.

"Trump doesn't know international law. He doesn't recognize U.N. resolutions either. Basically, he is a veritable gangster and a gambler. He is no politician he has no mental stability," Dehghan told CNN, citing United Nations Resolution 2347, which makes illegal the destruction of cultural heritage under international law, which the US itself is a signatory to since 2017.

Dehghan warned that if Trump were to carry out his threat: "for sure no American military staff, no American political center, no American military base, no American vessel will be safe. And they are accessible to us."

While speaking to ABC on Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo softened the presidents remarks claiming that the US would "act lawfully".

The attack which killed Soleimani in Baghdad was approved by Trump in Mar-a-Lago last Thursday.

The operation took place in Baghdad in the early hours of Friday as Soleimani and as well as Iraqi officials of Iranian-backed militias were leaving Baghdad airport.

Several missiles were launched from a drone killing at least seven people including Soleimani and his comrades.

Iran has pledged to respond to the attack, vowing "harsh vengeance" against the US for the liquidation of one of their top commanders and beloved officials.

"Harsh vengeance awaits the criminals that got his and other martyrs' blood on their evil hands in last night's incident", said Iran's supreme leader in a statement following the event on Friday.

US officials claim that it was a preemptive strike in response to planned attacks by Soleimani on American targets but have yet to provide any details.

The strike followed a storming of the UN embassy in Iraqi after US airstrikes were launched against Iranian-backed militia groups in Iran which killed 25 people.

A Sputnik

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Canadian Tire Corporation, Limited (TSE:CTC.A), which is in the multiline retail business, and is based in Canada, received a lot of attention from a substantial price movement on the TSX over the last few months, increasing to CA$157 at one point, and dropping to the lows of CA$140. Some share price movements can give investors a better opportunity to enter into the stock, and potentially buy at a lower price. A question to answer is whether Canadian Tire Corporation's current trading price of CA$140 reflective of the actual value of the mid-cap? Or is it currently undervalued, providing us with the opportunity to buy? Lets take a look at Canadian Tire Corporations outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if there are any catalysts for a price change.

See our latest analysis for Canadian Tire Corporation

What is Canadian Tire Corporation worth?

The stock seems fairly valued at the moment according to my relative valuation model. Ive used the price-to-earnings ratio in this instance because theres not enough visibility to forecast its cash flows. The stocks ratio of 12.45x is currently trading in-line with its industry peers ratio, which means if you buy Canadian Tire Corporation today, youd be paying a relatively fair price for it. Furthermore, Canadian Tire Corporations share price also seems relatively stable compared to the rest of the market, as indicated by its low beta. This may mean it is less likely for the stock to fall lower from natural market volatility, which suggests less opportunities to buy moving forward.

What kind of growth will Canadian Tire Corporation generate?

TSX:CTC.A Past and Future Earnings, January 6th 2020

Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Buying a great company with a robust outlook at a cheap price is always a good investment, so lets also take a look at the company's future expectations. With profit expected to grow by 24% over the next year, the near-term future seems bright for Canadian Tire Corporation. It looks like higher cash flow is on the cards for the stock, which should feed into a higher share valuation.

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What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? It seems like the market has already priced in CTC.As positive outlook, with shares trading around its fair value. However, there are also other important factors which we havent considered today, such as the track record of its management team. Have these factors changed since the last time you looked at CTC.A? Will you have enough confidence to invest in the company should the price drop below its fair value?

Are you a potential investor? If youve been keeping tabs on CTC.A, now may not be the most advantageous time to buy, given it is trading around its fair value. However, the optimistic forecast is encouraging for CTC.A, which means its worth further examining other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to take advantage of the next price drop.

Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters  the fundamentals  before you make a decision on Canadian Tire Corporation. You can find everything you need to know about Canadian Tire Corporation in the latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in Canadian Tire Corporation, you can use our free platform to see my list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Shah speaks to Delhi L-G, police FIR against unnamed people.

New Delhi: Strong support from all quarters across the country and abroad poured in for students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) who were victims of a brutal attack by masked goons on Sunday evening. While students from colleges and universities across the country and in the UK and US held protest marches and took out rallies in support of JNU students, many political leaders and Bollywood stars too rallied behind the injured students, demanding strict action against the perpetrators and the sacking of the JNU vice-chancellor, M. Jagadesh Kumar.

Around 34 students and teachers from JNU, who were admitted to the AIIMS trauma centre on Sunday night following attacks by masked men in the campus, were discharged early on Monday.

Two senior wardens of JNU hostels  Periyar and Sabarmati  resigned on Monday on moral grounds for failing to protect students during the attack, while Shiv Sena leader and Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray stirred the political caldron by equating the attack on JNU students to Mumbais 26/11 terror attacks.

Demanding an independent judicial inquiry into the shocking and brazen violence, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said, The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on Indias young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi government is deplorable and unacceptable. Everyday campuses and colleges are raided across India, either by the police or lumpen elements with support of the BJP government.

Students of JNU, that has become a battleground of Left versus Right politics ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power at the Centre, also reveived support from several other quarters. I think any Indian who cares about the nations image in the world should worry. This has too many echoes of the years when Germany was moving towards Nazi rule, said Nobel prize winner and JNU alumnus Abhijit Banerjee.

Pushed on the back foot over allegations that its student wing, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), had planned and carried out the attack on students, the BJP, and the JNU administration tried to give a spin that the violence was a result of a clash between two factions of students and blamed students affiliated to the Left, led by Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) president Aishe Ghosh, for it.



However, throughout the day evidence on social media emerged indicating alleged role of the ABVP with screen-shots of WhatsApp chats indicating its hand in the pre-planned attack.

According to reports, when media organisations called the telephone numbers on the WhatsApp group, they got vague answers saying the numbers were being misused. However, NDTV claimed some people in the WhatsApp group accepted they were from ABVP and that they had indeed participated in the violence in JNU.



The ABVP on its part has denied its hand in the attack and instead blamed the Left students of violence and accused JNUSU leader of leading the mob of masked goons. The JNU administration too has tried to portray the matter as a clash between two groups of students, largely blaming the Left JNUSU for the ruckus in the campus.



But Ms Ghosh on Monday categorically accused the ABVP for the murderous attack on her, other students and professors saying among the attackers were a few ABVP students of JNU and some outsiders.



Yesterdays attack was an organised attack by goons of RSS and ABVP. Since past four-five days violence was being promoted in the campus by some RSS affiliated professors and ABVP The answer to every iron rod used against the students will be replied to, through debate and discussion. JNUs culture will not be eroded... JNU will uphold its democratic culture, said Ms Ghosh.



Total of 34 people, including Prof. Sucharita Sen and Ms Ghosh, were injured in the attack on JNU students by masked men and women carrying iron rods, hammers and stones. The JNUSU president was hit with rods and hammers leading to roughly 15 stitches on her forehead. She also suffered a fracture in her left hand and other injuries.



Even though minor incidents have been taking place for the last couple of days in the campus where JNUSU is protesting fee hike and preventing allegedly ABVP-backed students from registering for the second semester, the shocking mob attack happened around 6.30 pm on Sunday when a masked group entered JNU campus from the back gate and left after beating and threatening students for almost 90 minutes according to some accounts. The masked group, which included some girls, also allegedly molested girls.



Ms Ghosh claimed that she made a phone call to Delhi Police at around 6.30 pm Sunday, seeking protection and intervention. However, the police landed at around 8 pm after JNU administration made a PCR call at 7.45 pm. What is baffling is that despite JNU students and teachers crying for help, the Delhi Police was missing in action and it registered an FIR after more than 15 hours.

Much before 7 pm on Sunday, social media was abuzz with video clips of masked goons beating students and photographs of hurt students and professors, including Ms Ghose who was bleeding from the head and a photograph of Prof. Sucharita Sen in a wheelchair at AIIMS with her head bandaged. Twitter was also flooded with SOS messages from JNU students, alumni and concerned citizens expressing shock and asking people to rush to help the students who were trapped. The hashtags #JNUHorror and #SOSJNU were trending.

Delhi Police though has rejected charges of delay in response and said the police held a flag march in the campus late Sunday evening. Close to 700 police personnel remained deployed outside JNU gates on Monday.



We responded to PCR calls, and law and order situation professionally. FIR has been lodged in the matter. Investigation is underway. Footage is being collected. The case is with Crime Branch now. Besides, Delhi Polices joint CP western range, Shalini Singh, is the head of separate fact-finding committee, said Delhi Police PRO, M.S. Randhawa. He added that some vital clues have been found and the Crime Branch is working on it.



Union Home minister Amit Shah on Monday spoke with Delhis Lt Governor Anil Baijal about JNU violence, while the secretary of ministry of human resource development called JNU administration and sought a report on Sundays incident. JNU vice-chancellor Jagadesh Kumar was not present in the meeting.



Union HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, who is in Orissa, said educational institutions cannot be allowed to become political adda and promised to take strong action against the perpetrators of violence at JNU.

Students from universities and colleges across the country and abroad staged protests in solidarity with JNU even as JNU Teachers Association and JNUSU demanded removal of the vice-chancellor. In some cities, including Mumbai, citizens began peaceful protests on Sunday night itself.



On Monday, apart from the protest by JNU students themselves, students of Jamia Milia Islamia, Delhi University also marched to Delhis India Gate, while students of institutes in Mumbai, Punjab, Guwahati, Hyderabad (Maulana Azad National Urdu University), Central University Hyderabad, Osmania University, Jadavpur University (Kolkata), Aligarg Muslim University, IIT Mumbai, IIT Delhi, IIM Bangalore, and FTII Pune also held protest marches in solidarity with JNU students.



Students at Oxford university, Columbia University and University of Sussex also staged silent marches holding posters demanding safety of students on campus.

Opposition parties, apart from expressing solidarity with JNU students, sought the intervention of President Ramnath Kovind in the matter. Joining the chorus of support for JNU students were actors and actresses from Bollywood and South India. Several in the film industry reacted sharply backing JNU students with several actors joining the protest on Mumbais Carter Road.



Human rights organisation Amnesty International India criticised the Delhi Police for repeatedly failing to protect students protesting peacefully. The Delhi Police remained shameful bystanders to mob brutality on students, its all-India executive director Avinash Kumar said in a statement.



The Indian Medical Association too issued a statement condemning the attack on its doctors who were stationed in JNU. How does that reflect on the nation, if it cannot protect its doctors and nurses reaching to the injured? Is this a civil war? What is the message that goes pout to the world? IMA said in a statement.



In an interesting comment that is open to interpretation, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar, an alumni of JNU, said on Monday, When I was in JNU, we did not see any tukde-tukde gang there.

The tukde-tukde term and theory, along with urban Naxals has been floated by his party, the BJP, to paint Left-wing students as anti-nationals. These terms have been used by Mr Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in their speeches.

On December 26, Mr Shah had, in his campaign speech for Delhi elections, said it is time to punish the tukde-tukde gang in Delhi for anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests and violence.

On January 3, the Home minister had said, JNU mein narey lagtey hai, Hindustan tere tukde 1000, Inshallah, Inshallah. Aap mujhe bataiye desh ke tukdey chahney walo ko, is tukde tukde gang ko jail mein dalna chaiye ya nahi dalna chaiye?
Pastor Tony Evans shares funeral details for wife Lois, how to best support family

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Pastor Tony Evans shared how people can best help his family as they mourn the death of his wife, Lois Evans, and thanked supporters for their continued love and prayers.

Evans, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, wrote on Instagram that many people have asked how they can help the Evans family. Lois who founded the Pastors' Wives Ministry, died of biliary cancer on Monday. She was 70.

"We are grateful for your thoughts and prayers," he wrote. "Many have asked how to help during this time. In honor of Lois, I would also love for you to consider sending flowers this week to your pastor's wife. Lois loved receiving flowers but she also loved giving them. Because her passion was ministering to pastors' wives and making sure they felt loved and cared for, your gift of flowers in her memory would be a gift to us as well."

Evans said his wife's funeral arrangements have been made and a 9 a.m. viewing and an 11 a.m. funeral are scheduled for Jan. 6 at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship Church.

In lieu of flowers, he suggested "continuing the ministry to pastors' wives that was dear to Lois' heart" by contributing to The Urban Alternative's Pastors' Wives Ministry.

Thank you for loving us, the Evans family, and thank you for your ongoing prayers, he wrote.

Evans revealed Monday that Lois was with him and their four children when she died.

"Just before the sun came up this morning, the love of my life, Lois Irene Evans, transitioned from earth and watched her first sunrise from Heaven, he wrote at the time.

"I had the privilege of holding her hand as she was lulled into eternity. Our four children surrounded her as well. As she slipped away, we told her how much we love her, how proud we are of her, and how thankful we are for the life she has lived."

We are what we are because of her, he continued.

In the days following Lois death a number of pastors and Christian celebrities took to social media to remember her life and impact.

Priscilla Shirer, best-selling author, actress and the Evanses' daughter, tweeted, "Goodnight my beautiful, beloved Mommy. I'll see you in the morning."

The Evanses' son, Christian music artist Anthony Evans Jr., posted, "I love you forever, Mommy."

Christian artist Kirk Franklin, who attends Evans' church, shared a photo of Lois on his Instagram page along with the caption, Well Done. Still hurts...Mamma Lo.



Franklin Graham, head of Samaritans Purse and son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, wrote on Twitter: Our deepest sympathy to @DrTonyEvans and his family in the passing of his wife, Lois Irene Evans. I know they would appreciate our prayers during this time. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. (Psalm 116:15).

The Evans family is still grieving the death of Tony Evans father in November, the unexpected loss of Evans' sister, Beverly Johnson, who died in January 2019, along with his niece, Wynter Pitts, who also died last year, and his brother who died six months before that.
(Bloomberg) -- Every year during the second week of January nearly 200,000 people gather in Las Vegas for the tech industrys most-maligned, yet well-attended event: the consumer electronics show.

The conference, officially known as CES, takes over the city, occupying numerous hotels and airplane hanger-sized halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Swarms of mostly male attendees, big plastic badges swinging from their necks, wander among the exhibition booths of some 4,500 companies showcasing everything from toilets that can talk to flying cars that cant actually fly yet.

For years though, the biggest companies in tech have held back, opting for a more muted presence at CES and announcing their newest products in separate events. Apple Inc., whose slick product keynotes have since been copied by almost every other hardware company, started the trend years ago. Now its fashionable for tech journalists to brag about avoiding CES altogether. Without big announcements, and amid a broader backlash against the tech giants, some wonder why the event still exists.

And yet, people go in droves. Executives from the big names can meet suppliers and negotiate partnerships. For individual attendees, its also valuable for keeping up with the ever-changing landscape of bigger screens, longer battery life and internet-connected everything.

Even if Apple or Amazon.com Inc. arent dropping new world-changing devices, it still matters to a manufacturer from Shenzhen, China, or a Best Buy Co. merchandising manager what the latest trends in consumer tech are, regardless of how incremental they might seem. Technology has infiltrated peoples lives and gadgets from small drones to mobile phones are now accessible to millions of people around the world, not just the rich, early-adopters of 20 years ago.

And CES continues to show off the proliferation of devices for every conceivable purpose, sold at every single price point, meaning a legion of product reviewers, who can easily reach huge audiences through YouTube, are needed to help consumers sift through their options. For them, CES is D-Day, the week where they work 20-hour days shooting dozens of videos to roll out during the year.

Story continues

CES has also branched into industries that wouldnt have been considered tech a few years ago. Walking through the exhibition halls, one could be forgiven for mistaking it for a car show. As the auto industry leans in to self-driving technology, voice-connected software and electric cars, companies like Mercedes-Benz AG and Honda Motor Co. have come to CES in force with the hopes of getting some high-tech press. This year, Hyundai Motor Co. claims to have a flying car (or rather small helicopter) it wants to show off. CESs colonization of the auto world was partly why the Detroit Auto Show -- that industrys flagship event -- moved to June from January.

Other firms trying to re-brand themselves as tech companies are pouring in too. Delta Air Lines Inc. says it will be the first airline with a major announcement at the show as it plans to showcase the future of travel.

CES has also become one of the top events for the advertising world, much of which now revolves around interpreting moves made by Alphabet Inc.s Google and Facebook Inc. Executives from the holding companies of the big advertising agencies camp out in the upscale Aria hotel and rarely venture further afield for fear of the infamous hour-long taxi lines. Its almost as if theyre holding a totally separate conference.

The latest trend to hit CES stretches the definition of tech beyond recognition. Last year, Impossible Foods Inc.s unveiling of the meatless Impossible Burger 2.0 was the shows fan favorite, winning awards from numerous tech blogs. Now that rival Beyond Meat Inc. has seen its stock shoot up 200% after a wildly popular initial public offering, Impossible Foods looks to be planning something major this year too.

Weve got big news coming your way, the food company said on its Instagram last week. Were back.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gerrit De Vynck in New York at gdevynck@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

2020 Bloomberg L.P.
The Northern Youths Assembly (NYA) has advised Zamfara State Government to shelve its proposed N7 billion Government House project in the best interest of the people.

This is contained in a statement signed by Mannir Haidara the states NYA Chairman in Gusau on Monday.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Secretary to the State Government, Bala Bello, had last week announced plans for the project in the 2020 budget.

But Haidara noted that the project had no value for the state.

I think that Zamfara doesnt need a new Government House because, all our past governors do not stay there.

Even the current governor resides in his private residence, so why dont the government leave the project for the future.

l can recall during the campaign of Gov. Alhaji Bello Matawalle that he promised various intervention programmes for the people of the state.

As we are all aware, our state is currently bedevilled with serious security challenges, let us therefore propose projects that will have direct bearing on the people, especially victims of security challenges in the state, he said.

Mr Haidara said NYA is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working towards ensuring transparency and accountability in all Northern States.

He urged the state government to focus on identifying ways to improve revenue generation in the state instead of proposing unnecessary projects.

(NAN)
The killing of one of Irans top generals has left the landmark 2015 nuclear deal severely undermined.

The European Unions diplomatic chief on Monday voiced regret at Tehrans latest step away from the beleaguered 2015 Iran nuclear deal, as the Islamic republic seethes over the killing of one of its top commanders in a US air strike.

Josep Borrell, the EUs high representative for foreign affairs, tweeted that the accord, which has been teetering on the brink of collapse since US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States, was now more important than ever.

European-led efforts to keep Iran in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)  which curbed Tehrans nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief  have borne little fruit since the US withdrew in May 2018 and reimposed punishing sanctions.

In line with the usual EU policy, Borrell said the bloc would wait for further details of any Iranian breaches from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) before deciding how to respond.

Deeply regret Irans latest announcement on #JCPOA. As ever we will rely on @iaeaorg verification, tweeted Borrell, Spains former foreign minister.

Full implementation of #NuclearDeal by all is now more important than ever, for regional stability & global security. I will continue working with all participants on way forward.

190707051824231

Breaking the deal

On Sunday, Iran said it would forego the limit on the number of centrifuges it had pledged to honour in the 2015 agreement, casting doubt on an EU push for talks to salvage the deal.

Borrell spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the weekend and issued a personal invitation to come to Brussels, but Iran has not given a public response.

EU spokesman Peter Stano said there was a lot of activity going on as the EU seeks to help defuse tensions that heightened dramatically on Friday when a US drone strike killed Qassem Soleimani, the veteran commander of the Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps foreign operations, at Baghdad airport.

191203194345906

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to make a statement on the situation later on Monday, while NATO has convened an extraordinary meeting of its ruling North Atlantic Council to discuss the crisis  in particular on the future of its training mission in Iraq.

Germany has suggested EU foreign ministers should meet in Brussels later this week. A decision on this could be made at a regular gathering of EU ambassadors on Tuesday.

Irans 2015 nuclear accord with the United Nations Security Councils five permanent members  Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States  plus Germany, has been hanging by a thread since Trump withdrew.

Tehran said it would continue cooperating as before with IAEA inspectors, but the leaders of Germany, France and Britain reacted by urging Iran to rethink its announcement.
The Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT), alliance partner of ruling BJP began their indefinite sit-in-demonstration on Monday in protest against the implementation of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and demanding a separate state of Tipraland for the indigenous people.

The sit-in demonstration started at Dukmali Bazaar in Khumulwng, headquarters of Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC).

Revenue minister and IPFT president NC Debbarma said, The interests of the indigenous people would be compromised if CAA is implemented in Tripura and allowing foreign nationals to settle here.

Tripura shares a border with Bangladesh.

On December 9, the IPFT observed a 24-hour strike seeking Tripuras exemption from the CAA.

Later, they met Union Home Minister Amit Shah in New Delhi on December 12 to discuss the issue. But they are yet to get a call for a second round of discussion.

When asked about Tipraland, Debbarma and other leaders said they feel that fulfillment of their separate statehood demand would solve all problems and crisis of the indigenous community.

Joint Movement Against Citizenship Amendment Act (JMACAA), a forum of Tripuras few political parties and social organizations of indigenous people will hold a demonstration on Tuesday protesting against the CAA.
SWARTZ CREEK, MI-- The parents of Kevin Bacon, who is believed to have been killed on Dec. 24, addressed the gruesome details police revealed Monday, Jan. 6 regarding their sons death.

Michigan State Police found Bacons naked body hanging from a ceiling after searching the Bennington Township home of Mark Latunski on the morning of Dec. 28. Bacon was stabbed in the back, his throat was slit and parts of him were eaten, according to 66th District Court records.

Court documents reveal gruesome details of Kevin Bacons slaying

Karl and Pamela Bacon thanked all the authorities involved in bringing Kevin Bacon home to his family so that he could be given the dignified burial that he deserves.

Its gut-wrenching to hear the details and were beside ourselves, Karl Bacon said. Im going to remember him how everyone else remembers him, that hes a good person who was passionate and cares for people.

Michelle Myers, Kevin Bacons former roommate and best friend, was the last person to see him on the evening of Dec. 24. Myers said the details about Kevin Bacons murder are overwhelming.

It has been difficult to not only process my best friends death, but the details that lead up to his death, Myers said. My beautiful friend was put through things that shouldve never happened. Kevin just wanted to feel loved and was working so hard on loving himself.

Myers said she hopes Kevin Bacon is remembered for the person he was and not the details that ended his life.

I hope that, even without him being here with us, we can celebrate his life by remembering all the great things about Kevin and the happy memories we had with him. I hope that justice is served for Kevin, Myers said.

Karl Bacon also said the details revealed on Monday, Jan. 6 show that Kevin had a dark side.

I understand that what was released today shows that Kevin has a dark side. Those who knew and loved Kevin did not know that side, Karl Bacon said. They knew he loved and cherished everyone that he touched. Unfortunately, his dark side is what took his life and he met the wrong people that way and it took him too soon from us.

Kevin Bacon, slain Swartz Creek man, remembered at candlelight vigil

Kevin Bacon didnt know what he was getting into that night, his parents said. Karl Bacon said finding his car and belongings at a Family Dollar General in Swartz Creek and not at Latunskis home was alarming.

I dont think he was prepared for it, Karl Bacon said. He had used (his) phone and vehicle to get out of bad situations in the past. So to leave it behind was very concerning to us and other people that know him. That wasnt like him.

Karl and Pamela Bacon asked the public not to destroy their sons reputation.

Evil does exist and it touched us. When you use these apps, just let other people know who youre meeting and where youre going to be at, Karl Bacon said.

The family said they are still processing the loss of Kevin Bacon.

He got himself into something he wasnt prepared for and we all make mistakes, Pamela Bacon said. He loved everybody. (We havent had the time) to process everything.

Kevin Bacon's parents said they will be present at court as the case moves forward.

Itll be hard but its what we have to do for Kevin, Pamela Bacon said.

Karl Bacon said there has been a tremendous outpouring of support from the community.

I think our efforts, they may not have saved him, but it did help. It helped prevent further catastrophe. I was afraid the suspect may have done more harm to (Kevin Bacon) than he already did if we didnt push as hard and search as hard as we did," Karl Bacon said.

Michigan State Police received a call for assistance from Clayton Township Police Department to conduct a welfare check at the home, according to the court documents. Officers conducted an interview with Latunski after he allowed them to enter and search his home. Latunski admitted to killing Kevin Bacon by stabbing him in the back and then slitting his throat, the documents said.

Latunski also admitted to tying a rope around Kevin Bacons ankles and hanging him up from the rafters on the ceiling, then using the knife to cut off Kevin Bacons testicles and later eating them, according to the police officers testimony.

Divorce, custody and criminal records show a history of complaints about the mental health of Latunski. He was known to stop taking the medication prescribed to treat his mental health illnesses, according to records from the 66th District and 35th Circuit courts.

Suspect in Kevin Bacon murder case has long history of mental illness, records show

Jamie Arnold, Mark Latunskis husband of more than three years, previously told MLive-The Flint Journal he wasnt aware of Mark Latunskis mental illnesses until July, when he was arrested for failing to pay child support. A July 22 court order states Mark Latunski spent four days in jail for the offense.

Arnold declined to comment about the details that were released by police.

The last time Arnold saw Latunski was Dec. 25, the day after Bacon went missing. Arnold said he had a friend over on Christmas Eve and wasnt with Mark Latunski the night the alleged murder is believed to have taken place.

Kevin Bacon's parents said they're going to try and move on as much as they can and plan on starting "scholarships in his honor."

If anyone else has had an unusual encounter with the suspect please let the state police in Owosso know about it, Karl Bacon said.

Kevin Bacons funeral was held on Friday at Sharp Funeral Homes, Miller Road Chapel at 8138 Miller Road in Swartz Creek. A candlelight vigil was held later that night.

Mark Latunski is held in jail without bond. He is to appear for a probable cause in court at 8:15 a.m. on Jan. 8.

Candlelight vigil for Kevin Bacon to be held in Swartz Creek

Man wearing only leather kilt ran from murder suspects rural Michigan home in November

YouTuber Jeffree Star donates $20k toward funeral expenses for Swartz Creek man

Murder and mutilation charges filed in death of Swartz Creek man

Parents of slain Swartz Creek man talk about son, homicide investigation

Police confirm location of where missing Swartz Creek mans body was found

Missing Swartz Creek man found dead; one arrested on murder charge
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 10:39:15|Editor: xuxin

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LUANDA, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Angolan President Joao Lourenco on Sunday called for support for his country's fight against corruption during a meeting with his counterpart of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Felix Tshisekedi.

According to a press release by the Angolan presidency, Lourenco briefed Tshisekedi, who was on a working visit to Angola, on the country's latest actions concerning the fight against corruption and impunity, in Angola's western Benguela province.

The actions included an arrest on Dec. 30 of assets of Isabel dos Santos, daughter of former Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and also ex-head of a state-owned oil company, said the press release.

Lourenco noted that after a grace period, Angola has all the "legitimacy to take legal, judicial, diplomatic and other actions" to ensure the effective repatriation of funds illegally taken abroad.

Both presidents agreed that a six-month grace period for money repatriation, which is approved by a law passed on June 26, 2018, is a "great magnanimity."

The Law on Coercive Repatriation and Extended Loss of Assets, approved by the Angolan parliament, establishes procedures to coercively repatriate the lost assets to the country, in a bid to fight against endemic corruption and impunity.
ELSAH  As the presidential primary season heats up, correspondents from The Christian Science Monitor will meet at Principia College for a dialogue about the global effects of the American voters struggle with truth and opinion in selecting a leader.

The 19th annual Monitor Night Live is planned at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 6 in Wanamaker Hall on the Principia College campus. Falling the same week as the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, the program features a panel of journalists from the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper telling stories of their personal intersections with the American elections  whether that be interviewing a supporter of President Trump in a Minnesota cornfield or speaking with an Afghan warlord.
MILFORD - A 31-year-man who died in police custody early Sunday has been identified as Justin Griffin of Bridgeport.

On Saturday afternoon, officers from Milford Police Department conducted a traffic stop and identified the operator of the vehicle as Griffin.

During the course of the traffic stop, Officers discovered that Griffin was the subject of an outstanding arrest warrant. Griffin was taken into custody without incident and transported to Milford Police Department for processing.

During the processing procedures, officers observed Griffin to be lethargic and requested medical evaluation.

Griffin was then transported to Milford Hospital via ambulance and observed at the hospital for approximately five hours. Upon discharge, Griffin was transported back to Milford Police Department and placed in a holding cell.

During a prisoner check at approximately 5:13 a.m. on Sunday, officers discovered that Griffin was not breathing.

Officers began CPR and Griffin was subsequently transported to Milford Hospital where he was pronounced deceased shortly after 6 a.m.

At the request of the Milford States Attorneys Office the Connecticut State Police - Central District Major Crime Squad detectives were requested to assume the untimely death investigation.

Arlene Bender, Griffins grandmother, told WTNH that Griffin had fallen from a ledge and hit his head the day before he was arrested. She declined to answer questions from the Register Monday.

Justin had a long road in his life, Bender reportedly said to WTNH. He did the best he could. Were very sad. Justin was a good person. He had a good heart.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner directed a request for Griffins cause of death to state police and Milford police Monday afternoon. Milford police directed a subsequent request to state police.

CSP Trooper Josue Dorelus said he did not believe the medical examiners office had concluded its investigation, then directed the inquiry to the departments legal affairs unit.

Officials with the legal affairs unit did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

A request seeking comment was left with officials at Milford Hospital Monday as well.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 11:02:17|Editor: xuxin

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BAGHDAD, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi parliament on Sunday passed a draft law requiring the government to end the presence of foreign forces in Iraq and prevent them from using Iraqi airspace and water.

In an extraordinary session, Iraqi lawmakers voted with majority in favor of passing a law requiring the government to cancel the request for assistance from the international coalition to fight the Islamic State (IS) group due to the end of military operations and war in Iraq.

"The Iraqi government should work to end the presence of any foreign forces in the territories and prevent them from using the Iraqi airspace for any reason," said the parliament decision.

In addition, the Iraqi government should "file a complaint against the United States for its violations and grave breaches of Iraqi sovereignty and security."

Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi also attended the televised parliament session and addressed the lawmakers, saying "the departure of the U.S. forces from Iraq will be in the benefit of Iraq and the United States, especially after the latest developments."

The parliament session came two days after a U.S. drone strike against a convoy at Baghdad International Airport killed Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of Iraq's paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces.

After the airport attack, Abdul Mahdi called on parliament to hold an extraordinary session to fix the Iraqi official position and take necessary legislative decisions to preserve the dignity, security and sovereignty of Iraq.

The United States said later Sunday it was disappointed by the Iraqi parliament's decision to end the presence of all foreign troops in the country.

The U.S. State Department strongly urged "Iraqi leaders to reconsider the importance of the ongoing economic and security relationship between the two countries" in a statement.

Over 5,000 U.S. troops have been deployed in Iraq to support Iraqi forces in the battles against IS militants, mainly providing training and advising to the Iraqi forces.

Arab League (AL) Secretary General Ahmed Aboul-Gheit expressed on Sunday his growing concern about the recent developments in Iraq, the Cairo-based, pan-Arab body said in a statement.

"The region is in a dire need of calm not escalation, and of settling conflicts not igniting and sustaining them," said the AL statement.

"The developments in recent days show the size of foreign interventions in Arab affairs and their high political, security and economic costs," the AL statement said.

Also on Sunday, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said it has filed a complaint against the U.S. government to the United Nations Security Council over U.S. airstrikes against the paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces in western Iraq and near Baghdad International Airport.

It said that the U.S. attacks "constitute a serious violation of Iraqi sovereignty and violate the conditions for the presence of the American forces in Iraq."

In its latest move, Iran announced on Sunday that it is taking the final step to end its commitments to the landmark nuclear deal inked with the U.S. and other world powers in 2015, from which the United States withdrew in May 2018.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that the mounting tension in the Middle East should be controlled before it reaches a point where all parties will be harmed.

The Turkish leader said he would discuss the issue in detail with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during his visit to Istanbul on Jan. 8.
CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico - An American family returning to the U.S. after a holiday visit to Mexico came under attack just south of Texas on Saturday night, with armed gunmen killing a 13-year-old and wounding three other people.

The attorney generals office in the state of Tamaulipas said the child was a U.S. citizen and that the parents were permanent residents of the U.S. They did not release the victims names.

The family was travelling in a Chevrolet SUV with Oklahoma state plates, returning from a holiday visit to relatives in the state of San Luis Potosi.

The highway on which they were shot is considered high risk. It runs through an area thats disputed by criminal groups, including the Gulf Cartel and Zetas. The road connects the city of Mier with Nueva Ciudad Guerrero, on the banks of the Rio Grande across the USMexico border from Falcon Heights, Texas.
U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged President Donald Trump to let Americans know why he targeted a top Iranian military commander.

Menendez, D-N.J., and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York made the request in a letter to Trump on Monday, urging him to declassify the notice he sent to Congress about the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani.

It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner, the two senators wrote. An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society, and there appears to be no legitimate justification for classifying this notification.

Soleimanis killing by an American drone has ratcheted up tensions between the U.S. and Iran as Trump awaits a Senate trial after becoming only the third president ever impeached by the House.

Menendez has said that Congress must approve a war with Iran. The House version of legislation setting defense policy through Sept. 30 blocked Trump from attacking Iran unless Congress weighs in first, but the provision was removed from the final law after Senate Republicans objected.

If the Trump administration cant prove that the attack in Iran was because of an imminent threat, we see a gradual march to military action with Iran that has not been authorized by Congress, Menendez said on Twitter.

On MSNBC, he said he wanted to see the intelligence that led to the decision to kill Soleimani, noting how the last Republican president, George W. Bush, took the U.S. to war over false claimsthat Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

We need to have the intelligence behind this because in a different administration we heard that there were weapons of mass destruction and therefore authorization to act quickly, Menendez said. We didnt get any weapons of mass destruction in the Iraq conflict.

Menendez said he wasnt mourning the loss of Soleimani, who he called a terrorist who was the cause of the lost of hundreds of American lives of civilians in Iraq and of the destabilization of the region, so no one is going to lament his death."

He said he wanted to know why Trump ordered the attack now and what plans he made to handle an expected Iranian response.

What brought us to this moment? Menendez said. What is the intelligence behind that decision?"

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who also sits on the Foreign Relations panel, said the Trump administration needed to provide details about the killing to committee members.

Many questions remain and must be answered on the intelligence reports that led to this action, what steps were undertaken to prepare our personnel and partners in the region, and the consequences of an escalatory attack with no clear endgame, said Booker, who is seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

This president has no long-term strategy for dealing with Iran, bringing stability to the Middle East, or avoiding military conflict with Iran, he said.

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, said Menendez and Schumer were "chest thumping," according to White House pool reports.

They know Congress will be briefed, she said.

Trump, meanwhile, said Sunday that his Twitter account would serve as the official notification to Congress of any future U.S. response to an attack by Iran in retaliation for Soleimanis death.

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2020

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.

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Nora Quoirin's parents are suing the Malaysian resort where their 15-year-old daughter disappeared for allegedly failing to provide adequate security.

Her unclothed body was discovered in August after a massive hunt through dense rainforest, not far from the resort where the London-based family had been on holiday.

Her parents say they believe there was a 'criminal element' in the case as the teen had learning difficulties and would not have wandered off alone, but Malaysian police insist there was no sign of foul play.

The family's lawyers have filed a civil suit against the Dusun Resort, not far from the capital Kuala Lumpur, seeking at least 182,000 ringgit (34,000) in damages, according to court documents seen on Monday.

Meabh Quoirin the mother of a missing Nora Quoirin using a megaphone to call out to her daughter on August 10 (Nora's father Sebastien Quoirin stands behind her)

Nora Quoirin, 15, from London, disappeared while on holiday with her family in Malaysia over the summer

The couple, Meabh and Sebastian Quoirin, claim the entrance gate to their jungle cottage was left open at all times, no guards were stationed outside and there was no CCTV installed at the premises.

They also say the latch of a window was broken and it could be easily opened by anyone from outside.

The teen's parents argue that her disappearance and death were 'caused directly by the defendant's negligence and/or recklessness,' the documents said.

They are seeking damages for bereavement, funeral expenses and other costs, as well as any other damages as assessed by the court.

A representative from the resort told the official Bernama news agency their legal team were examining the suit.

The 15-year-old was on the 'trip of a lifetime' to the Dusun Resort (pictured) near Seremban on the edge of the Malaysian rainforest

A map shows the Dusun Resort near Seremban in Malaysia where Nora disappeared yesterday

The teen disappeared on August 4, a day after arriving at the Dusun, triggering a 10-day hunt involving hundreds of people, helicopters and sniffer dogs.

The results of an autopsy found she likely starved and died of internal bleeding, with police saying there was no indication she was abducted or sexually assaulted.

But her parents said last month they still suspect foul play.
P hoebe Waller-Bridge announced that she will be auctioning her Golden Globes outfit and donating the profits to the Australian bushfire relief effort.

Sunday nights ceremony saw numerous stars use their time on stage to shine a light on the ongoing crisis, paying tribute to those who have lost their lives and commending firefighters working to contain the blazes.

More than 20 people have been killed while there are also claims nearly 500 million birds, reptiles and mammals have died in the blazes.

Speaking backstage after winning two awards for Fleabag, Waller-Bridge told reporters about her plan, calling the trouser suit the most extraordinary thing Ive ever worn.

Golden Globe Awards 2020: Show winning moments - In pictures 1 /85 Golden Globe Awards 2020: Show winning moments - In pictures Olivia Colman accepting the award for best actress in a drama series for "The Crown" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ricky Gervais speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 202 AP Beyonce and Jay-Z Renee Zellweger accepting the award for best actress in a motion picture drama for her role in "Judy" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Jason Momoa wears a vest at the Golden Globes NBC Paul Rudd and Nicole Kidman gatecrash Laura Dern's Golden Globes red carpet interview E! News Elton John reacts as Taron Egerton wins a Golden Globe for Rocketman NBC Reese Witherspoon, and Jennifer Aniston at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tom Hanks NBC Laura Dern accepting the award for best supporting actress in a motion picture for "Marriage Story" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tom Hanks accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award from presenter Charlize Theron at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Phoebe Waller-Bridge accepts the award for Best TV Series, Musical or Comedy for "Fleabag. Reuters Joaquin Phoenix accepting the award for best actor in a motion picture drama for his role in "Joker" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Sam Mendes accepting the award for best motion picture drama for "1917" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Patricia Arquette accepting the award for best supporting actress in a series, limited series or TV movie for her role in "The Act" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Stellan Skargard, winner of Best Supporting Actor - Series/Limited Series/TV movie for "Chernobyl." Reuters Jason Momoa and Zoe Kravitz at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ramy Youssef accepting the award for best actor in a TV series, comedy or musical for "Ramy" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Elton John, and Bernie Taupin at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tom Hanks accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Phoebe Waller-Bridge accepting the award for best actress in a comedy series for "Fleabag" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Brad Pitt accepting the award for best supporting actor in a film for his role in "Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Olivia Colman accepts the award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama for "The Crown" from Zoe Kravitz onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Olivia Colman accepting the award for best actress in a drama series for "The Crown" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ricky Gervais speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Jesse Armstrong and the cast of "Succession" accept the award for Best Television Series - Drama for "Succession" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sienna Miller and Kit Harington speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Ellen DeGeneres accepts the Carol Burnett TV Achievement Award at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 Amy Poehler and Taylor Swift speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Quentin Tarantino accepts the award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture for "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Charlize Theron at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Sacha Baron Cohen speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Ewan McGregor and Margot Robbie at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Gwyneth Paltrow at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Sam Mendes accepts the award for Best Director - Motion Picture for "1917" onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Helen Mirren and Antonio Banderas at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Michelle Williams accepts the award for Best Actress - Limited Series or Motion Picture Made For TV for "Fosse/Verdon." Reuters Wesley Snipes and Da'Vine Joy Randolph speak onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Taron Egerton accepting the award for best actor in a motion picture comedy for his role in "Rocketman" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Paul Rudd and Jennifer Lopez speak onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sam Mendes accepting the award for best director for the film "1917" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Glenn Close at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Rami Malek speaks onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sandra Bullock speaks onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Cate Blanchett at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tiffany Haddish and Salma Hayek at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson speak on stage during the 77th Golden Globe Awards on January 5, 2020 Reuters Awkwafina accepting the award for best actress in a motion picture comedy for her role in "The Farewell" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Nick Jonas speak onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Annette Bening speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sir Elton John and Bernie Taupin accept the award for Best Original Song - Motion Picture for "I'm Gonna Love Me Again" in "Rocketman" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Pierce Brosnan, center, with his sons Dylan, left, and Paris at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ansel Elgort and Dakota Fanning at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Matt Bomer and Sofia Vergara at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Kate McKinnon at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Kate McKinnon, embracing Ellen DeGeneres as she accepts the Carol Burnett TV Achievement Award at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Jesse Armstrong accepting the award for best drama TV series for "Succession" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Chris Butler and Arianne Sutner accept the award for Best Motion Picture - Animated for "Missing Link" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Ted Danson and Kerry Washington speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Bong Joon Ho accepts the award for Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language for "Parasite" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) President Lorenzo Soria speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Jared Harris and Craig Mazin, second right, accepting the award for best limited series for "Chernobyl" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Pierce Brosnan and Will Ferrell at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP

The first mention of the fires came when Russell Crowe won the Best Actor in a Limited Series prize for The Loudest Voice.

Jennifer Aniston, who was presenting the accolade, explained that Crowe was not at the ceremony as he was at home in Australia, protecting his family from the devastating bushfires.

He had sent a message though, saying: Make no mistake, the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is.

That way, we all have a future. Thank you.

Fellow Aussie actor Cate Blanchett praised firefighters, saying the fires are a climate disaster.

I just want to amplify that by saying, I wanted to do a special call out to the volunteer firefighters who have been at the centre of battling the climate disaster that is facing Australia," she added. When one country faces a climate disaster, we all face a climate disaster.

Getty Images

Nicole Kidman, who reportedly broke down in tears on the red carpet before the ceremony, thanked everyone for their incredible support as her native country was under enormous stress and duress with the fires.

The appeals came as rain offered a little relief to embattled communities in New South Wales battling the bushfires on Monday.

TODO: define component type apester

After winning for The Act, Patricia Arquette echoed their statements - and urged young people to vote.

I am so grateful to be here and celebrate this, she said. Also I know tonight, January 5, 2020, were not going to look back on this night in the history books.

We will see a country on the brink of war, the United States of America, a president tweeting out a threat of 52 bombs including cultural sites.

Young people risking their lives travelling across the world, people not knowing that bombs are going to drop on their kids heads and the continent of Australia on fire.

Winning speech: Patricia Arquette called for action / AP

Arquette added: I love my kids so much. I beg of us all to give them a better world.

Joaquin Phoenix was one of the evenings final winners, taking home the Best Actor in a Drama prize for his title role in Joker, and gave a rallying cry for more action on climate change.

He began by expressing his appreciation for the fact guests at the event were served a vegan meal, saying: Thank you for recognising the link between animal agriculture and climate change, it was a bold move making tonight plant-based and sends a powerful message.

He added: Contrary to popular belief, I dont want to rock the boat, but the boat is f***ed.

Its really nice that so many people have come up and sent their well wishes to Australia but we have to do more than that."

Joaquin Phoenix put his award on the floor to concentrate on his speech / AP

He continued: Its such a beautiful gesture and I have not always been a virtuous man. Im learning so much and so many in this room have given me multiple opportunities to get it right and Im deeply grateful, but hopefully together we can get unified and make some changes.

Its great to vote but sometimes we have to take responsibility and make changes in our own life.

We dont have to take private jets to Palm Springs to the awards sometimes.

A raft of British stars were triumphant at the 77th Golden Globes, which were held at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.

Waller-Bridges Fleabag co-star Olivia Colman was victorious in the Best Actress in a TV Drama category, after her starring role in The Crown, and Sir Sam Mendes, who was given a knighthood in the New Year honours, was named Best Director for his war epic 1917 and the film was named Best Picture (Drama).
Deval Patrick, the former Massachusetts governor debuted Monday his first TV ad in his Democratic presidential campaign, targeting early-state voters.

The 30-second spot addresses his late entry into the 2020 presidential election.

I planned on announcing a year ago, but life had other ideas, Patrick said in the ad.

His wife, Diane, who appears by his side in the ad, cited her health. I was diagnosed with cancer and we decided to put politics on hold."

The former first lady of Massachusetts said their family fought through it and shes well now. She said theyre now fighting for the future of our democracy and that she encouraged her husband to restart his campaign plans.

The campaign is spending low-six figures on air time in New Hampshire and an additional $60,000 in South Carolina, Politico reported.

Its not too late to build a campaign that fights to renew the American Dream for everyone, everywhere and a movement that can defeat Donald Trump. Today were up with our first TV ad. Watch and share: pic.twitter.com/b97tWIvBQe  Deval Patrick (@DevalPatrick) January 6, 2020

Speculation of a 2020 presidential bid floated in 2018. Former President Barack Obama reportedly encouraged him to consider running, as did David Axelrod, the chief strategist for Obamas presidential campaigns, Politico reported at the time.

He announced in January 2019 that he would not seek a 2020 presidential bid following months of speculation. He cited the cruelty of the election cycle.

After a lot of conversation, reflection and prayer, Ive decided that a 2020 campaign for president is not for me, Patrick wrote. Ive been overwhelmed by advice and encouragement from people from all over the country, known and unknown. Humbled, in fact. But knowing that the cruelty of our elections process would ultimately splash back on people whom Diane and I love, but who hadnt signed up for the journey, was more than I could ask.

He announced his 2020 bid for president in November.

In weeks following, Patrick has struggled to standout in the already crowded field. Many of his closest campaign staff and supporters have committed to other 2020 presidential campaigns, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

The late campaign start has caused setbacks on the ballot. Election officials in Michigan announced last month that he will not appear on the ballot after he fell short of the required signatures.

He and former Republican Gov. Bill Weld will appear in the top spots on the Massachusetts ballot in their respective parties primaries following a random drawing by Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin.

Patrick made history as the first black governor of Massachusetts, overseeing the states implementation of health care reform, significant raises in the minimum wage and an 1.25% increase in state sales tax.

Following his second term as governor, Patrick joined Bain Capital - a firm founded by his gubernatorial predecessor Mitt Romney. He largely stayed out of the public spotlight since leaving office.

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Hong Kong can follow Israels example of nurturing start-ups, and position itself as a leading financial technology and blockchain centre, an official with Tel Avivs municipality has said.

Michal Michaeli, director of international economic development at Tel Aviv Global, a municipal company dealing with tourism and economic development under the mayor's office at the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality, said in a recent telephone interview that Hong Kong could have been an amazing place, if it leveraged its financial hub status and exposure to trade to fund and groom more start-ups in commerce and trade.

A lot of start-ups [and] a lot of ventures need funding, and theyre definitely in the early stages. When you have access to funding, this can also be very important for an ecosystem to grow and mature, she said.

Israel has 5,850 start-ups, or one start-up per 290 residents. The country is home to well-known start-ups such as website development platform Wix and web advertising platform Outbrain. We do not have oil. We do not have coal, we do not have any special natural resources other than our minds. So we have to make the most of it, Michaeli said, drawing a comparison with Hong Kong.

Why not go and be the leading fintech centre, for example, or the leading blockchain hub. The government should do at least basic research to understand what does it really have already, she said, adding that fintech was more than just mobile banking, and could include fields such as security and data centres.

Michal Michaeli, director of international economic development at Tel Aviv Global. Photo: Handout

Michaeli said she could hardly find any information about Hong Kongs start-up ecosystem. This suggested the city might need to do more to promote it internationally, even though it had signed agreements on cooperation with the United Kingdom and Thailand.

She highlighted Israels experience with developing cybersecurity and artificial intelligence start-ups, and the role an influx of immigrants as well as its military had played.

Story continues

Michaeli said a boom in Israels innovation start-up ecosystem began with a wave of immigrants from former Soviet Union countries in 1990s. Over a million people moved to Israel at that point. Many did not have jobs despite being educated, and Israel encouraged them to use their knowledge and experience to boost its technology sector.

There were eight programmes  and these have been widened to 20 programmes  around the country that gave you funds just to sit, think and come up with good ideas, she said.

Currently, Israels innovation authority has a lot of grants for opening offices and factories and starting new studies, for start-ups as well as established companies in different stages. If you do not have money in the beginning, [an incubator] will give you the space and an envelope of services around it, like mentors, like connections with companies, which will meet your needs, she said.

Israels compulsory military service has played its part by providing its citizens with technological experience as well as leadership and management skills.

The army is one of the best computer and technology schools [in Israel], Michaeli said. You [also] need to go to all kinds of combat units and get leadership and management skills from a very young age.

She said a culture of learning from failures had boosted Israels start-up ecosystem. It has also allowed start-ups to try and be flexible, and to be open to changing their ways.

Hong Kong must find out exactly what its specific needs are, as being a smart city is not only having cameras everywhere and monitoring things, but also finding solutions for social problems, such as challenges its elderly community faces, Michaeli said.

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From land jihad to Islamic jihad: Why we must rejoice the return of illegal Bangladeshis

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Jan 06: The fear has set in and the charges are up. There is a major exodus of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants back to their home country. The touts are in demand and are today demanding Rs 6,000 to send these persons back to Bangladesh.

The enhanced activity along the border had forced Bangladesh to turn off the mobile services for a day last week. Looking at the demand to get back to Bangladesh, the touts have upped their fee from Rs 3,000 to Rs 6,000.

Intelligence Bureau officials tell OneIndia that it is the fear of the NRC that is forcing these persons back.

Reverse migration continues: Several more illegal Bangladeshis expected to flee India

At least 450 persons have been arrested by the Bangladesh police when they crossed over from India.

Most of the reverse migration is taking place by those who have settled in South India. These are the newer illegal migrants, who have come to India and have no documents. Illegal immigrants from Karnataka and Hyderabad have been returning to Bangladesh.

They land in Bengal, following which with the help of touts have been crossing over to Bangladesh. In the past one year nearly 1,000 such cases have been reported. However, in the past two months, there has been a major surge and at least 445 illegal immigrants have crossed over into Bangladesh.

Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) Director General Maj Gen Md Shafeenul Islam disclosed the figure during a press briefing here. "About 1,000 people were arrested in 2019 for illegal border crossings from India to Bangladesh, with 445 of them returning home in November and December," he said.

Land jihad to violence:

Indian officials say that they are not alarmed by the situation. They came in illegally and are returning. It is better if they get back on their own as they have started posing a problem now.

In several parts of the country, illegal immigrants have become so powerful that they mingle with the local Muslim population and indulge in crimes. In West Bengal instances of land, jihad has been reported. These illegal immigrants have earned a lot of money through counterfeiting and drug trade and have forcibly snatched land from the poor Hindus in Bengal.

Reverse migration to Bangladesh would only increase: Intelligence Bureau sources

The illegal immigrants have also played a role in acts of terror, be it at Burdwan or Bodhgaya. They have been roped in by terror groups such as the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh.

Recently the Delhi Police found that illegal Bangladeshis had been instrumental in fanning the violence at Seelampur Delhi. It has now come to light that there were several Illegal Bangladeshi migrants who were part of this mob and had fanned the violence. They were involved in rioting and destruction of public property.

Illegal immigrants and Bengals land jihadis mandates we need an NRC now

In Seelampur, the police had found bags of stones at the protest site. Who comes with stones for a peaceful protest, the Delhi Police official asked. The case was similar in both UP and Mangalore. While in Mangalore the rioters had come with stones, in UP, the police released images of a man brandishing a gun during the protest.

During the protests at the Jamia Millia and Seelampur, the police had found that there were several hidden mobs, which came out and incited the violence. IB sources say that members of the SIMI had infiltrated into Delhi from UP and the other neighbouring states.
Sinn Fein has called on the PSNI Chief Constable to review its approach to policing in south Armagh after a Christmas Day tweet in which he posed with heavily armed officers in Crossmaglen.

Simon Byrne was widely criticised for posting the photo, taken outside a police station in the republican heartland. He said it demonstrated the stark reality of policing in certain parts of Northern Ireland.

After meeting Mr Byrne on Monday, Conor Murphy MLA said he urged him to urgently change the PSNI approach to policing in south Armagh.

The Christmas Day photo stunt in Crossmaglen made headlines, but is only symptomatic of a much wider problem with policing in the area, he said. Over 20 years after Patten and the Good Friday Agreement, the police approach to the community in south Armagh has barely changed.

The SDLP's policing spokesperson Dolores Kelly and Crossmaglen Councillor Pete Byrne will also meet with the Chief Constable on Tuesday at Ardmore Station in Newry.

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Mr Byrne praised police after his Christmas Day visit to the republican heartland in his tweet.

"I take my hat off to colleagues policing such a unique part of [NI]. Their sense of duty and optimism is inspiring. Stay safe and thank you," he tweet.

Following a barrage of criticism he acknowledged his tweet "has caused some emotion". He said he looked forward to meeting politicians and community representatives "to discuss how we can move forward together, and I look forward to a time when we no longer have to police in such a high security environment".

"This was a visit by me on Christmas Day to support local officers who do work in unique and often difficult circumstances," he said.

"The officers are carrying weapons and, sadly, this is the stark reality of the policing environment they work in, tackling the severe terrorist threat.

"This is no reflection on the local community who work daily with their local police officers to create a safe community.

"There is no doubt that much progress has been made in the towns and villages of south Armagh and my Christmas Day visit to officers who are working really hard to contribute to this progress is an indication of my commitment to build safer communities and tackle the terrorist threat."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 20:26:14|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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MANILA, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday voiced concern over the "evolving crisis" in the Middle East and the danger it poses to approximately 3 million Filipinos working in that region.

"We do not know what would be the end result of this crisis. It could lead to a protracted war. It could be a wide-scale strife. But whatever it is we Filipinos are really in great peril," Duterte said in a speech at the presidential palace.

On Sunday, Duterte convened a security meeting attended by military and police commanders to discuss "the gravity of the situation" in the Middles East.

Filipinos in Saudi Arabia and Israel will be at risk if Iran takes retaliation, he added.

"If that happens, then we have a trouble because of our overseas Filipino workers are stationed, majority of them are in Saudi Arabia," Duterte said.

Already, Duterte ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines "to prepare its air and naval assets to evacuate and bring home (the Filipinos) if and when open hostilities erupt in the Middle East that may endanger their lives."

Tensions heightened in the Middle East following the U.S. killing of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. airstrike near Baghdad's International Airport days ago.
Before the US assassinated its most senior general, Iran had contended with protests at home and resentment for its presence in Iraq. Not anymore, writes Abbas Milani.

The assassination last week,by the United States, of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Irans Quds Force, was a major escalation in the two countries long-running conflict.

But it need not beget World War III (as some pundits are predicting).

Moreover, while the US might have achieved a short-term tactical advantage, the Iranian regime could yet benefit.

Iran has been taking drastic steps to ameliorate its severe regional and domestic challenges. For example, it recently confronted a sudden upsurge in nationalist fervour in Iraq over Irans influence there.

Irans diplomatic outposts were burned, and its goods boycotted.Even the Iranian-born Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraqs highest Shia cleric, has spoken out against foreign (meaning Iranian) interference in Iraqi affairs.

To divert this anti-Iranian sentiment, Soleimanis allies in Iran  particularly the newspaper Kayhan, a mouthpiece for Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei  suggested, in October, that Iraqis should occupy the US embassy in Baghdad.

Iran needed to change the discourse in Iraq by redirecting nationalist fervour toward the US. And the conversation in Iraq has indeed changed, following the drone strike on Soleimani: many Iraqis are now wondering not when Iran will leave, but when the US will.

Meanwhile, Iran also has a significant domestic challenge.

The regime has moved with shocking brutality to repress massive demonstrations against deteriorating economic conditions. Several hundred people have been killed and thousands more arrested.

Since then, Khamenei has been besieged, criticised even by his traditional base for his mishandling of the situation.

As with the explosion of discontent in Iraq, he needed a way to change the story, and the US has now temporarily obliged.

To the outside world, Soleimani was the mastermind of the regimes terrorist activities outside Iran, and the puppet master of its proxies across the region, not least Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Yet to Iranians, he was a more complicated figure. While regime hardliners regarded him as a hero, many Iranians, who have lost loved-ones in peaceful demonstrations, or who object to the regimes attacks on Iranian dissidents in the diaspora, saw him differently.

Nonetheless, over the past few years, the regime has pushed a clever public relations campaign to depict Soleimani as a Napoleon- or Caesar-like warrior-poet.

And as one of the few Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders not tainted with allegations of corruption, he was mooted as a likely presidential candidate in the next election.

Thus, inasmuch as there was public sympathy for Soleimani, it will now extend to the regime, at least in the short run.

Before these latest developments, Iran, increasingly isolated internationally, was looking for ways to flex its muscles on the world stage.

In December, it held its first-ever joint naval operations with Russia and China, and officials have announced plans to lease the Persian Gulf port of Bushehr to Russia.

It is hard to overstate the long-term strategic implications of robust Russian and Chinese naval presences in thePersian Gulf, given that these two countries are the most likely to challenge the US in the years and decades ahead.

With the change in mood following Soleimanis death, the Iranian regime has a window in which to consolidate its ties with both.

To be sure, in prodding its Iraqi proxies to swarm the US embassy,the regime overplayed its hand and underestimated US president, Donald Trumps willingness to respond with force.

But by targeting Soleimani, the US, too, might have miscalculated, by underestimating Irans own ability and willingness to retaliate.

Given the state of the economy and the level of discontent in Iran, Khamenei must keep the IRGC and loyal militias firmly on his side.

And right now, those forces are clamouring for revenge.

For Khamenei, then, the key will be to find a response that is forceful enough to satisfy his base, but not provocative enough to incite full-scale escalation.

For its part, the Trump administration has been operating under the assumption that the Iranian regime is so bereft of legitimacy, and so enfeebled by domestic discontent, that it could never countenance a major war with the US. And this dangerous assumption has been reinforced by Trumps own oft-stated belief that a war with Iran would be very short.

But, in fact, the Iranian regime has deep cultural, economic, and intelligence ties throughout the region, and particularly in Iraq. It has mastered the art of asymmetrical war, and it now has no choice but to respond in some way to Soleimanis death.

One hopes that their domestic woes, and deep desire for self-preservation, will lead Khamenei and his government to embrace symbolic acts of retaliation, rather than escalatory measures.

And one hopes that the US, too, will act with strategic prudence in responding to Irans next move.

Otherwise, we could end up with a war that almost no-one wants, and for which the endgame would be highly unpredictable.

Abbas Milani, research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution, is director of Iranian studies at Stanford University.
michael barbaro

From The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today: In the streets of Tehran, Iranians are mourning the loss of General Qassim Suleimani. My colleague Farnaz Fassihi on what they feel theyve lost. Its Tuesday, January 7.

archived recording [CHANTING]

farnaz fassihi

Monday morning was the start of the official state funeral for General Qassim Suleimani.

archived recording [SINGING]

farnaz fassihi

By 8:00 a.m., there were millions of people out in downtown Tehran. He was being celebrated as a national hero, but also as a religious martyr and a saint.

archived recording [SINGING AND DRUMMING]

farnaz fassihi

There were families. There were men, women, children. They had the symbolic Shia ritual symbols out  feathers, swords, drums, music, eulogies, songs.

archived recording [CHANTING]

farnaz fassihi

And the crowd also had a very anti-American and defiant mood. People were sad, but they were also very angry, and we heard a lot of revenge, revenge, and no more negotiations with the U.S., its time for battle, chanted by the crowd.

archived recording (ayatollah ali khamenei) [SPEAKING]

farnaz fassihi

Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recited the Muslim prayer of the dead on General Suleimanis coffin.

archived recording (ayatollah ali khamenei) [SPEAKING]

farnaz fassihi

In the middle of the prayer, several times he paused and openly cried.

archived recording (ayatollah ali khamenei) [SPEAKING] [CROWD MOANING]

farnaz fassihi

And the crowd also wept very loudly with him. As a reporter whos covered Iran for over 25 years, what struck me was that the people who had attended were not just supporters of the regime, but a lot of people who were generally very critical of the regime.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

farnaz fassihi

To be clear, there are plenty of Iranians who did not love or respect General Suleimani. But there were activists, there were opposition figures who had been jailed by the regime who attended. And when I asked them, why are you there? Why are you going? The response was, General Suleimani protected our national security. He transcended politics. He was a national hero. And I was talking to some young people who had attended his funeral, and I spoke to a 22-year-old young man, a university student, and I asked him, why are you at the funeral? And he said, knowing General Suleimani was out there made me feel safer. He was like a security umbrella above our country. And thats a sentiment that I heard over and over.

michael barbaro

You know, what youre describing feels like the kind of unified national outpouring that is reserved for a small handful of figures in any country, right? I mean, a beloved president, a civil rights leader like Martin Luther King in the United States, not for what our colleagues have described as a general who specializes in covert operations in Iran.

farnaz fassihi

I think its difficult for most people in the United States and outside of Iran, and perhaps the region, to grasp the unique place and role that General Suleimani played in Iran and in regional politics. He was singlehandedly the most revered and influential character in Iran.

michael barbaro

So how did Suleimani cultivate that role? How did he make Iranians feel that way? Where does that story start?

farnaz fassihi

In many ways, General Suleimanis story begins with the story of Irans revolution in 1979.

[music]

farnaz fassihi

He was a young man working construction jobs in the small city of Kerman in the southwest, from a low-income family.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

farnaz fassihi

His education was high school diploma level, and he got swept up in the revolution, in the promise of Islam becoming the foundation of a government, and of promises to empower the oppressed and low-income class in Iran, which had been neglected and sidelined under the pro-Western monarchy of the shah. So General Suleimani gets a job at the local water plant and volunteers for the local chapter of the Revolutionary Guards, and quickly rises up and shows a lot of promise as a military man. When the war with Iraq happened in the 1980s, he was a commander for eight years. And after the war ended, he was named the commander of the Quds Forces. And that was really the beginning of the Quds Forces, and the Islamic Republics ambition to create a paramilitary in the region, and to kind of export the idea of an Islamic revolution of Shia dominance outside of the borders of Iran.

michael barbaro

And why does Iran, and someone like Suleimani, want to export this revolution?

farnaz fassihi

The Islamic Republic theocracy was the first time that a Shia government had come to power in the Middle East. The Islamic faith is divided along Sunnis and Shias, and the division and rivalry go back all the way to the early days of Islam and the succession of Prophet Muhammad. And Shias have always been a minority in the faith. With Saudi Arabia sort of as the custodian of the Sunni faith, Iran has, for centuries, wanted to establish itself as the protector of the minority Shias. And the theocracy of the Islamic Republic gave them the foundation and the structure to do that. And as soon as they had established their government in power in the country, they started looking externally. And General Suleimani was pivotal in expanding the ambitions of Irans military and political apparatus in the Middle East.

michael barbaro

And how exactly does he do that?

farnaz fassihi

So General Suleimani was instrumental in elevating Irans strategy in the region through the proxy militia groups that it had created. And he started in Lebanon, where Iran had already created two Shia militia groups, Amal al-Islami and Hezbollah, and he helped them in their fight with Israeli soldiers that were occupying Lebanon, and later on in the battles that Hezbollah and Lebanon fought. General Suleimani also becomes very involved with Palestinian militant groups  Hamas, Islamic Jihad  who also see an alliance between their ideologies and Islamic Republic of Iran.

michael barbaro

And when you say that Suleimani becomes involved in these groups, what does that actually mean? What is he doing?

farnaz fassihi

He helps them come up with battlefield plans, and he dispatches his underlings to go and train and fund and form these groups, providing them with weapons, providing them with money, and providing them with strategy. And he gains this reputation of being the shadow commander, the man whos everywhere but nowhere. If General Suleimani is present on the ground, then Iran is present.

michael barbaro

So under Suleimani, Iran is making itself felt across the Middle East through these relationships to these militias. Does that strategy succeed?

farnaz fassihi

Irans strategy succeeds, but its limited to the shores of the Mediterranean with Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. But that changes in 2003 with the United States invasion of Iraq.

[music]

michael barbaro

Well be right back.

archived recording U.S. warships and planes launched the opening salvo of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The attack came in waves 

michael barbaro

So Farnaz, how exactly did the U.S. invasion of Iraq provide an opportunity for Suleimani and for this strategy that hes pursuing for Iran?

farnaz fassihi

Until the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the country was ruled by Saddam Hussein and Sunnis, and Shias who were aligned to Iran were marginalized. When the United States toppled Saddam Hussein, Shias rose to power, and many of these Shia leaders and political and religious figures had very close ties to Iran. And Iran really seized that opportunity. It used these contacts and networks and relationships to gain influence and penetrate Iraqi society. And General Suleimani once again becomes the pivotal character in helping realize this strategy and this aspiration.

michael barbaro

So an unintended consequence of America invading Iraq is that it ends up empowering Iran.

farnaz fassihi

When I was living and working in Iraq in those early days after the invasion, most of the Sunni Iraqis that we would meet and interview would say that the U.S. invasion delivered Iraq on a golden platter to Iran.

michael barbaro

Wow. So what does Suleimani do with this opening that he sees in Iraq?

farnaz fassihi

General Suleimani uses the opening to further expand Irans influence in Iraq and in the region. He helps create Shia militia. He recruits allies, a network of politicians, religious men and militant groups who were loyal to Irans ambitions in Iraq. The Shia militia that he helped create were also responsible for attacks on U.S. soldiers, for the killing of U.S. soldiers, and for civilian deaths. When the Civil War started in Syria in 2011, Iran vowed to keep President Bashar al-Assad in power. Mr. Assad and his constituents are an offshoot of Shia Islam, and religiously and politically aligned with Iran. This is where Iraq comes in. Because of the relationships and networks and influence that General Suleimani had in Iraq, he was able to use Iraq by land and by air to funnel support for Syrias war. Weapons, missiles, even soldiers that were trained in Iran were shipped to Syria by way of Iraq.

michael barbaro

So Suleimanis strategy in Iraq  it doesnt just fend off the Americans who have invaded there. It means that Iran and Suleimani could use Iraq to assist allies like Assad in Syria and in all these other battles throughout the region.

farnaz fassihi

Exactly. Iraq becomes a geographic extension of Iran and its interests in the region. And by the time ISIS takes over parts of Syria in Idlib and parts of Iraq in Mosul, the Iraqi government and even the Americans were at wits end on what to do to battle this growing threat of ISIS.

michael barbaro

So what does the rise of ISIS mean for Iran, and what does that mean for Iranian influence and for Suleimanis role?

farnaz fassihi

The rise of ISIS was a threat to Iran. It was an existential threat to the Shia government of Iran, because ISIS represented the most extreme version of Sunni faith. And again, General Suleimani mobilizes. He goes to Iraq and he repeats a true and proven formula once again by recruiting volunteers, the instrumental ground force in helping the United States and Iraqs army to battle ISIS. Therefore, Mr. Suleimani, although hes seen as a foe of the United States, in the battle of ISIS actually becomes a default ally. For General Suleimani, the rise of ISIS was a turning point. He went from being a commander in the shadows, a mystery figure, to being a household name.

michael barbaro

Hmm. And why is he suddenly a public figure because of ISIS?

farnaz fassihi

Because Iran wanted to counter ISISs propaganda machinery.

archived recording 1 ISIS is using its cash and media-savvy Western militants to recruit and radicalize. archived recording 2 The branded content. Theyre mixing graphics, moving images, music, chants, all the  archived recording 3  cataloging and posting in near real time their war crimes.

farnaz fassihi

They utilize social media and Twitter and Facebook to recruit, to spread their propaganda to target their messaging.

archived recording And this is a mujatweet, a short, promotional video which shows a softer side of jihad. Here, a Belgian hands out ice cream to excited Syrian children.

farnaz fassihi

And they create a personality around their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the same way that Al Qaeda had created a personality around Bin Laden. So in response to ISISs very successful propaganda campaign, Iran decides to turn General Suleimani into the public face of the so-called resistance, and somebody that Shias could love and emulate and respect.

archived recording Enter Qassim Suleimani. Here he is, celebrating gun in hand.

farnaz fassihi

His pictures began appearing in public in battlegrounds, videos of him visiting soldiers unannounced.

archived recording Hes been up and down the country in the North, in the South, in the capital, checking up on the defenses, mobilizing the Shia militias, making sure that the Iraqi states are able to confront the threat from ISIS.

farnaz fassihi

Videos of him reciting poetry, saying that he wants to become a martyr, the highest honor in Islam, and join his friends.

archived recording General Suleimani is increasingly being elevated and recognized as a key player on the world stage as Iranian influence in the region grows.

farnaz fassihi

So by 2014, Mr. Suleimani is so well-known that his pictures are being printed on T-shirts, and his posters are sold in shops in Damascus and Beirut and Tehran.

michael barbaro

Wow.

farnaz fassihi

And that summer, his mother passed away, and the funeral of his mother in Tehran became the whos who event of every militant group in the Middle East. From the head of Hamas, to Islamic Jihad, to senior members of Hezbollah, all showed up to pay respects to the general that they saw as the patron of their cause and movement.

michael barbaro

Hmm. So this is vivid evidence that he is very much the source of power in the Middle East  that all these groups owe him. Theyre literally showing up at his door.

farnaz fassihi

It was like watching a king hold court. And that was really the first public glimpse that we got of his status regionally, and what he means to these groups.

michael barbaro

So at this point in 2014, how is Suleimani viewed by the U.S.? Im struck that all of these figures and groups that youre describing as turning out to pay respects to Suleimanis mother at this funeral, they are all pretty much mortal foes of the U.S.

farnaz fassihi

So the U.S. was watching him, but not really taking action. And that was really in line with the previous administrations policies of engagement with Iran, and not escalating confrontation. That changed with the election of Donald Trump as president.

michael barbaro

Right, and the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal that President Trump ordered.

farnaz fassihi

Yes. Since the withdrawal of the Iran nuclear deal by the U.S., Iran and the U.S. have been on a collision path, increasingly taking provocative actions and policies toward one another.

archived recording The past 48 hours saw a dangerous escalation in the feud between Washington and Tehran.

farnaz fassihi

Culminating these past few weeks of violence in Iraq 

archived recording 1 An American contractor was killed on an Iraqi base. archived recording (mark esper) The Department of Defense took offensive actions by launching F-15 Strike Eagles against five targets. archived recording Protesters stormed the American Embassy, and the U.S. says Iran is responsible.

farnaz fassihi

 that ultimately led to the decision by President Trump to assassinate General Suleimani.

michael barbaro

Right. Because in the minds of U.S. officials, Suleimani is very much responsible for those actions.

farnaz fassihi

Exactly.

michael barbaro

And Farnaz, how much do you think that the very public role that Suleimani occupied, and that Iran created for him and wanted for him  how much do you think that that played a role in the Trump administrations decision to take him out, the understanding of what it was he represented to Iran?

farnaz fassihi

I think the Trump administration may have not known what he represented to Iran.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

farnaz fassihi

I think that they miscalculated the level of admiration, perhaps, or nationalistic sentiment that weve seen pouring out of Iran. I think the White House probably thought that it was taking out a military commander, that it may not be very popular with ordinary Iranians, that theres been a lot of discontent in November against the government, and maybe Iranians would support this decision. For sure, we have voices in Iran, outside and inside Iran, among Iranians, who think that taking Mr. Suleimani out is justified, and they didnt like him, but what weve seen is that the U.S. has effectively turned General Suleimani into a martyr.

michael barbaro

So this response that we saw at the funeral on Monday  are you saying that the United States may not have expected this? Because it sounds like the U.S. understood one aspect of Suleimanis role in Iran, as the leader of this military strategy, but perhaps they didnt understand something thats equally as important, which is what he meant in the hearts of Iranians.

farnaz fassihi

I think thats absolutely right. And I think, you know, we have to remember Iran has been an island of stability in a region ablaze with terrorism and car bombs and beheadings and kidnappings and women being sold by ISIS. And Iranians have, like, watched the whole region unravel around them  refugees and displacement  for the past 20 years. And by and large, they credit General Suleimani for that. They say that they trusted him and respected him for protecting Iran, for keeping Iran safe. And I think the outpouring of emotion we see is related to that sentiment.

michael barbaro

Help me understand this idea, because the strategy that you have described over the past decade of violence and provocation that Suleimani oversaw and he came to personify, it doesnt feel protective. Why did it feel that way to Iranians in a way that the U.S. might not have understood?

farnaz fassihi

You know, Michael, thats a really good question, and its one that Ive struggled to understand myself. This is a man who was responsible for a lot of violence and a lot of mayhem in the region, and a lot of activity that most Iranians may not agree with, that do not like. But because they felt that it gave them a buffer between their day-to-day lives inside Iran and the instability and violence happening all around the Middle East, they came to respect him and view him as a protector.

[music]

michael barbaro

What does Suleimanis meaning to people in Iran  what does that mean for the response we should expect from the government there?

farnaz fassihi

The public momentum is building, and pressure is building, on Irans leadership to take action. At the funeral this morning, millions of people were out.

archived recording [CHANTING]

farnaz fassihi

They were carrying the red flag of Shia Islam, which is a call to battle. They were chanting, No to negotiations, no to a deal, only war with the United States.

archived recording [CHANTING]

farnaz fassihi

And the combination of the publics defiant mood and calls for revenge, and the rhetoric were seeing from Iranian officials, increases the possibility that in the next few days or next few weeks, Iran will respond and retaliate. How it will do it, what it will do, we dont know.

michael barbaro

Farnaz, thank you very much.

farnaz fassihi

Thank you so much for having me, Michael.

michael barbaro
PR-Inside.com: 2020-01-06 17:00:36

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California Court Rules in Favor of Kira Kerkorian and Damien HurleyLOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2020 / The Los Angeles Superior Court recently ruled that Kira Kerkorian and Damien Hurley will have access to the trust established by Dr. Peter Bing. This ruling was determined after Judge Daniel Juarez reviewed petitions filed by Trustee William Stinehart as well as oppositions filed by Keystone Law Group regarding the children's right to inherit. The original petition was based on claims by Peter Bing that his son, Steve Bing, had never lived with either of his children, as both of them were born out of wedlock.Peter Bing is a multi-millionaire, partly due to the success of his father, Leo Bing. Leo was a wealthy New York real estate developer in the 1920s and left Peter a hefty inheritance.In 1980, Peter established six trusts for the benefit of his future grandchildren. Because he did not have grandchildren at that time, he did not identify any by name in the trusts. Beneficiaries were instead identified as "first-born grandchild", "second-born grandchild", "third-born grandchild" and so on - all the way to the "sixth-born grandchild".Peter Bing had two children - Mary and Steve. Mary had two children born into a traditional marriage. Steve never married and had two children out of wedlock. Steve's first child is Kira Kerkorian, who was born to Lisa Bonder Kerkorian. His second child is Damian Hurley, who was born to Elizabeth Hurley.In 2019, Kira attempted to obtain a copy of Peter Bing's grandchildren trusts, as she believed that she held a beneficial interest. In response to this request, Dr. Bing's trustee filed petitions in the probate court asking the court to determine that the term "grandchild" should not include Kira or Damian.Oppositions were then filed by Keystone Law Group - a probate law firm in California specializing in inheritance disputes in LA County. The oppositions filed by Los Angeles trust attorneys argued that the term "grandchild" is not ambiguous and it clearly refers to any grandchild who is biologically related to Peter, regardless of their parents' decision to marry or live together.After hearing the arguments, Judge Juarez ruled in favor of Kira and Damian without the need for a trial. He determined that the word "grandchild" offers no ambiguity, stating, "These restrictive, limiting, further definitions unreasonably distort the term's clear and plain use in the Trusts. The Trusts contain no conditions, limitations, qualifications, or restrictions on the term grandchild.' The term, as used in the Trusts, is not reasonably susceptible to any alternate meaning." Mary's children have filed an appeal to the ruling. It is currently pending.Additional Information:Keystone Law Group has a distinguished reputation in Los Angeles and across Southern California. Focusing exclusively in probate, estate and trust litigation and administration, the Los Angeles probate lawyers routinely work with trustees, executors, heirs, beneficiaries, guardians and conservators.Media Contact:Ana Delatorre310.444.9060ana@ keystone-law.com Additional LinksProbate, Trust & Estate AdministrationTrust Litigation in Los AngelesSOURCE: Keystone Law Group, P.C.
Nicole Kidman was seen crying during the Golden Globe Awards nighton Sunday. She left the show after 15 minutes.

The Golden Globe Awards night has not started yet, but tears have already been shed. However, it is not about the overwhelming emotion of receiving an award or a special citation. After all, there hasn't been any announcement of the winner yet when Nicole Kidman was seen in tears at the event.

The actress was stressed over the news of the wildfires that killed thousands of species in Australia where Nicole shares a home with her husband, Keith Urban. Sadly, her tears are truly understandable.

According to Us Weekly who first reported of the incident, Nicole claimed to have only known of the fire a few minutes before touching down for the event on Saturday

"She was crying as she walked in," the source added.

As she went about the interview, Kidman allegedly told a reporter how distracted she was at the moment. She also told the same reporter that it was because of what was happening in Australia.

The actress was worried about the status of the fire in Australia. Although her home is currently okay at the time being, a representative of hers reached out to Us Weekly and said Nicole's home is under threat and that they are keeping a close eye on it.

Despite the truly tragic news, Nicole appeared at the Golden Globe red carpet looking collected and calm. She was seen posing for photos and talking with Josh Dallas and Joey King.

"She looked very poised," the sources said. There was a whole crowd around her and nobody could tell what she is going through.

It was sad to see how bad the situation was that made the actress cry, but it was professional of her to still be there. She showed up to do what everyone expected her to. But when she left 15 minutes later, everyone knew that the situation was really bad.

Nicole, with her husband, Kieth, announced a day before that they will be donating $500,000 to help everyone who has been affected by the fire.

"Our family's thoughts, support, and prayers are with everyone whose lives have been affected by the fires in Australia," they wrote on their Instagram post. The couple is giving the money to the Rural Fire Services, the organization that is looking into the incident.

Nicole Kidman, like any other mother and wife, becomes emotionally vulnerable at times when it seems as if their home is put in some kind of risk or danger. And yet, even if she had a lot in her mind, she still came to the Golden Globe Award's night because that is part of her job.

As soon as she was able to, she made an exit to deal with the more pressing concern at that time.

The fires in Australia have already killed a lot and it continues to put a lot of lives in danger. Animal and plant species have been believed to be wiped out because of the fires. The present concern is its effect on the overall health of the people in the communities near the fires.

Kidman left the Golden Globe crying because of the wildfires in Australia. She is not the only one concerned about what was happening. And yet, at some point, she is one of those beautiful faces in Hollywood that reminds everyone of their realities. It is okay to be vulnerable at times. Everyone can do their share to help.

READ MORE: Nicole Kidman Worried About Husband Over Alarming Issue
Investors wealth tumbled by a whopping Rs 3.11 lakh crore in two successive sessions of decline in the equity market following escalation in tensions in the Middle East

New Delhi: Investor wealth tumbled by a whopping Rs 3.36 lakh crore in two successive sessions of decline in the equity market following an escalation in tensions in the Middle East.

Equity markets fell for the second consecutive session, with the 30-share key BSE index plummeting 787.98 points, or 1.90 percent, to close at 40,676.63, on Monday. During the trade, it dropped 850.65 points to 40,613.96.

The Sensex had ended 162.03 points, or 0.39 percent, lower at 41,464.61 on Friday as well.

Led by the weakness in equities in two consecutive trading sessions, the market capitalisation of BSE-listed companies plunged by Rs 3,36,559.82 crore to Rs 1,53,90,312.60 crore.

"Indian markets started the week on a negative note amid an escalation of geopolitical tensions between the US and Iran. Rising crude oil prices and adverse rupee movement too impacted the sentiments," Religare Broking Ltd VP - Research Ajit Mishra said.

"Amongst the broader markets, BSE midcap and smallcap underperformed. All the sectoral indices witnessed heavy selling pressure and ended with losses wherein auto, banking and metals were the top losers," he added.

US President Donald Trump on Sunday vowed "major retaliation" if Iran tries to avenge the killing of its key military commander Qasem Soleimani.

Brent crude oil futures surged nearly 2 percent to $69.81 on Monday, while the rupee depreciated 24 paise against the US dollar to 72.04 (intra-day).

On the Sensex chart, Bajaj Finance was the top loser, dropping 4.63 percent, followed by SBI, IndusInd Bank, Maruti and HDFC.

At the BSE, 1,944 stocks declined, while 604 advanced and 181 remained unchanged.

The S&P BSE Smallcap index closed 1.96 percent lower, while the BSE Midcap index fell 2.31 percent.
After a traumatic labour which was then followed up by a bout of sepsis Natasha thought she'd never get her fitness back. [Photo: SWNS]

A woman who was left throwing up 40 times a day due to a pregnancy condition has bounced back and won a bodybuilding contest less than a year later.

Natasha Gilson, 35, suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum during her pregnancy with daughter, Anais.

Hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), is a pregnancy condition associated excessive nausea and vomiting. The Duchess of Cambridge required hospital treatment for the same condition while pregnant with Prince George.

Prior to her pregnancy, Gilson was a frequent gym goer. But, once pregnant she was unable to exercise at all.

Her vomiting condition began just 72 hours after she found out she was with child.

READ MORE: Woman fears for unborn baby after botched tummy tuck left her battling sepsis

Gilson said: I didn't know how I was going to get any level of fitness back.

Literally 72 hours after finding out I was pregnant the sickness started and it absolutely floored me.

Every single day I was sick, multiple times. I was sick 40 times in one day.

Natasha Gilson, 35, suffered from hyperemesis during her pregnancy with daughter, Anais as the weight dropped off her. [Photo: SWNS]

Natasha Gilson, 35, has bounced back from a traumatic pregnancy and a bout of sepsis, to become a superfit bodybuilder. [Photo: SWNS]

While Gilson had expected she would visit the gym regularly throughout her pregnancy, it soon become clear she would not be able to.

She added: When I fell pregnant I thought I could still go the gym a few times a week but I was just sick all the time.

People kept saying when you get to three months it will be alright but it just wasn't.

I would be on the bus going to work and I'd have to get off because I feel sick and then wait for the next bus. At work I'd be on my hands and knees being sick in the toilets.

READ MORE: Mum gives birth to healthy baby boy 10 weeks after her waters broke

Natasha Gilson with her daughter Anais. [Photo: SWNS]

Natasha Gilson was sick 40 times a day during a traumatic pregnancy. [Photo: SWNS]

I couldn't believe how a baby could grow and survive in an environment where I could barely eat or drink without throwing up.

I just kept thinking: Please do not let anything happen to this child.

Seven months later, in April 2013, Gilson went into labour.

But, this was far from the end of her ordeal.

She had to stay in hospital for a fortnight due to birth complications including sepsis and was advised by doctors to avoid exercise for the next 12 weeks.

Story continues

When her daughter was eight months old, Gilson auditioned for the Fit Factor event at BodyPower Expo in Birmingham before a panel of four people.

I told them: I've probably got the worst body there but six months ago I was fighting for my life and this is how far I have come. In another four months what could happen in that time?

I still had a dark line on my stomach and a stone of baby weight to lose.

Walking in was so nerve wracking, all the girls had custom-made bikinis and I just had my Topshop bikini. I think if I lived round the corner I would have went [sic] home.

READ MORE: Transgender man who gave birth says it was 'f***ing awful'

In May 2014, just over a year after giving birth, she was crowned the winner of the competition.

She now runs her own company, called Miss Motivator UK, to inspire others.

She said: Helping other people is what I love and seeing them progress is amazing.

I want to inspire people to send a message that they can do anything if they want it enough and I want to be the best role model I can be for my daughter.

Watch the latest videos from Yahoo Style UK:
Abuja, Nigeria (PANA)  Governor of Borno State, Northeast Nigeria, Professor Babagana Zulum, on Monday afternoon accused personnel of the Nigeria military and Police involved in the anti-Boko Haram/Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorism fight of collecting bribes of N1,000 from travellers who do not have National Identity cards
Judge Andrew Freiberg has signed an order dismissing a secondary charge against Hamilton County Commissioner Tim Boyd, 14 months after the judge threw out an extortion charge brought by Hamilton County District Attorney Neil Pinkston on behalf of former East Ridge Mayor Brent Lambert.

After a day of testimony in a jury trial on Oct 31, 2018, Judge Freiberg dismissed the extortion charge as Boyd attorney Lee Davis argued that the basis for the charge  three phones calls former mayor Lambert secretly taped in February 2018  were part of a campaign strategy by Mr. Lambert and his supporters. The jury deadlocked on the secondary and lesser charge of attempted extortion, and Judge Freiberg, of Bradley County, declared a mistrial on Nov. 1, 2018.



It took DA Pinkston 441 days to dismiss a charge that should have dismissed within weeks of the mistrial, but the district attorney didnt act, said Commissioner Boyd. From the beginning, in my view, District Attorney Pinkston weaponized the judicial system for political purposes.



The case never had any merit, the jury saw that it had no merit and the district attorney had many chances to do the right thing, but he didnt. You cant help by wonder why.



Commissioner Boyd has continued to serve on the Hamilton County Commission. He said Brent Lambert "resigned from the Tennessee Railroad Museum, which my attorney argues was complicit in the political strategy, and he has moved to Townsend, Tn."

The secretly taped phone calls between Commissioner Boyd and initiated by Mayor Lambert occurred in February 2018 as Mayor Lambert was preparing to challenge Commissioner Boyd in the May 1 Republican primary for the District 8 commission seat.

Commissioner Boyd said, "Lamberts plan to use the recordings as part of a strategy to defeat me began on March 19, 2019, when Lambert and his team used the Pachyderm Club weekly meeting to ambush me on the existence of the tapes."

Commissioner Boyd was indicted on April 10, 2019, one day after he said "Lambert used the local Republican Party to send out a fundraiser invitation. The sponsors of the event featured several high-profile members of the Chattanooga Convention & Visitors Bureau, an organization I had exposed for reckless spending of taxpayer dollars."

Indicted three weeks before an election, Commissioner Boyd said he used digital media, direct mail and earned media "to explain the orchestrated political strategy using the judicial system and the 'political payback' sought by Lamberts financial backers.

"The orchestrated plan by Lambert and his team continued April 13 when Lambert announced that he would make the tapes public, and then followed with a press conference on April 16 to play the tapes for the media. More than a dozen Boyd supporters were barred from attending the press conference."

Commissioner Boyd said he "subsequently crushed Lambert in the May 1, 2018, Republican primary for the commission seat. The Boyd campaign routed the East Ridge mayor in all four East Ridge precincts and won 11 of 12 precincts in winning, 1,203-714, a 63-37 percent margin of victory.

To this day, the overwhelming support that I received in that election is one of the most gratifying days of my professional and political life. The people saw right through what Lambert and his supporters were trying to do.



He added, It is an incredible relief to my family to have this behind us. My family and friends supported me for an entire year with the possibility of another trial hanging over us. The district attorney could have prevented that, but he chose not to act.

Commissioner Boyd also said, The weaponizing of the judiciary as a means for political gain is a dangerous trend in our country. In this case, sound political advice from a senior Republican elected official to an inexperienced local politician in a friendly conversation was secretly recorded.

Then, the words were twisted and distorted by political forces to gain political advantage in an upcoming election, using the local judiciary as the tool. That should be chilling to anyone who is paying attention. I am very pleased, however, that voters could see through the charade.


Authorities in South Carolina are investigating the fatal shooting of an airport public safety officer officer in Florence.

A man shot and killed the officer Sunday morning during a traffic stop at Florence Regional Airport, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said in a news release.

Florence County Coroner Keith von Lutcken identified the victim as Jackson Ryan Winkeler, 26, of Dillon, WPDE-TV reported.

The suspect, 37-year-old James Edward Bell, initially fled but was later captured by Florence County deputies, officials said.

The investigation into Winkeler's slaying is ongoing.

The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division plans to summarize the information it gathers into a case file report to be submitted to prosecutors.
Washington always disrespects its political, legal, moral commitments: Rouhani

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 05 January 2020 3:52 PM

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani says Washington's aggressiveness has always been there through violating the rights of nations by keeping away from commitment to any of its political, legal and moral obligations.

In a phone call with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Sunday, Rouhani reiterated that the United States has never been trustworthy.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has never triggered any trend of aggression or tension, even against the US, and Tehran always acts in response to the US aggressive behavior," the Iranian president said.

Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), was assassinated in an inhumane operation by the US military upon an order from Donald Trump, the president of the United States, during the early hours of Friday.

It was a heartbreaking incident for the Iranian nation, Rouhani stated, and a crime the like of which Washington had never committed before.

"We expect our friendly and neighboring countries to unanimously condemn this criminal and evil act."

General Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), were martyred outside the Baghdad International Airport.

In all, 10 people, five Iraqis and five Iranians, were assassinated. Soleimani's flight had arrived from Syria, which led to speculations that Israeli intelligence had a hand in the assassination.

The Afghan president, for his part, offered his condolences and expressed sympathy of the Afghan government and nation with the Iranian people.

Ghani stressed the importance of preserving common interests of the two countries in the region. "Iran's security is our security and Afghanistan's government and nation are trying to establish peace and stability."

In a meeting with Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in Tehran on Saturday, President Rouhani said the United States is accountable for any consequences of its act of terror, stressing that Washington will pay a heavy price.

"The Americans have unfortunately taken a new path that can be very precarious for the region. So, closer consultations and coordination among friendly countries are necessary," Rouhani said.

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Iran's Cyberwar Response To Its General's Killing

Following the US assassination of General Qassem Soleimani (pictured) on Friday January 2nd by a deadly drone strike, it looks like the United States and Iran are at war. Over the following weekend, the cyber war began with threat actors defaced the website of the US Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP).

This could be only the first Iranian state-sponsored cyberattack in retaliation for the US drone strike that killed the Iranian military commander at Baghdad airport in Iraq. The FDLP website was taken down after the defacement, which according to the DHS involved pro-Iranian, anti-US messaging.

The US Department of Home Security (DHS) on Saturday 3rd issued a rare National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) alert warning about possible Iranian terror and cyber campaigns in retaliation for the US drone strike that killed Soleimani. He was the commander of the Quds Force, the extraterritorial operations branch of Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The Iranian government and various allied organisations have warned that they plan to retaliate against the US over Soleimanis death.

The DHS warns that Iran maintains a robust cyber program and can execute cyber-attacks against the United States, adding that such an attack may come with little or no warning.

The killing of another countrys most important military official is tantamount to a formal declaration of hostilities. While the US and Iran had been exchanging blows indirectly and through proxies in Iraq and Yemen, the Trump administration has brought this long-running shadow conflict with Iran out into the open.

For years, US tensions with Iran have held to a kind of brinksmanship. But the drone assassination of Soleimani, widely understood to be the second most powerful figure in Iran, has dangerously escalated tensions. The world now awaits Iran's response, which seems likely to make new use of a tool that the country has already been deploying for years: its brigades of military hackers. When the Iranian response comes, and it will come, though it may not be immediate, there will be intense pressure on the Trump administration to respond in kind. The scenarios experts are floating are dire, including both direct attacks on the US and strikes on its allies.

In the wake of strike, military and cybersecurity analysts caution Iran's response could include, among other possibilities, a wave of disruptive cyberattacks.

The country has spent years building the capability to execute not only the mass-destruction of computers but potentially more advanced, albeit far less likely, attacks on Western critical infrastructure like power grids and water systems.Iran has ramped up its cyberwar capabilities ever since a joint US-Israeli intelligence operation deployed malware called Stuxnet in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in 2007, destroying centrifuges and crippling the country's nuclear efforts.

Iran has since put serious resources into advancing its own hacking, though it deploys them more for espionage and mass disruption than Stuxnet-like surgical strikes.

Expect more network-enabled spying and possibly destructive cyber-attacks in the wake of the killing of one of Irans most important military commanders, experts said. We will probably see an uptick in espionage, primarily focused on government systems, as Iranian actors seek to gather intelligence and better understand the dynamic geopolitical environment.

We also anticipate disruptive and destructive cyberattacks against the private sphere, said John Hultquist, director of Intelligence Analysis at FireEye, in a recent statement.

Like a lot of smaller state actors, Iran has been growing its cyber capacity over the last several years. Clumsy distributed-denial-of-service attacks and website defacements in 2009 led four years later to the manipulation of search query commands in an attack on the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. In 2013, an Iranian national allegedly breached the control systems of a dam in Rye, New York. Two years after that, Iran actors used Wiper malware to delete files from some 35,000 computers owned by Saudi Aramco, one of the most disruptive attacks to date.

Iranian cyber actions spiked ahead of the 2015 signing of the multinational deal that limited Irans nuclear activities. Targets included US financial organisations and even the a casino in Las Vegas whos networks were wiped clean, doing $40m in damage.

Iranian cyber activity dropped off somewhat after the signing of the nuclear deal. But in 2017, a threat group that FireEye dubbed APT33 attacked aerospace and petrochemical targets across the United States, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea.

The group created domain names to send convincing emails pretending to be from Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and various joint ventures.

The methods, targeted spear-phishing and domain-name squatting, suggest that the intent was industrial espionage, not destruction. And in December 2018, a series of dramatic wiper attacks targeted Italian, Saudi and UAE oil interests in the Middle East, attacks that experts to Iran.

Whats Next

The past year brought various warnings of a new spike in malign network activity. A January 2019 Report indicated that Iran had been attacking domain name service providers, aiming to set up fake domain names that could facilitate a new wave of spearphishing operations.

The following month, Crowdstrikes 2019 Global Threat Report noted that despite some short-term gaps in attributable incidents this year, Iran based malicious cyber activity appeared to be fairly constant in 2018, particularly involving incidents targeting other countries in the [Middle East and North Africa] region Additionally, it is suspected that Iranian adversaries are developing new mobile malware capabilities to target dissidents and minority ethnic groups.

In June, Christopher Krebs, the director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, at the Department of Homeland Security, said CISA is aware of a recent rise in malicious cyber activity directed at United States industries and government agencies by Iranian regime actors and proxies..... We will continue to work with our intelligence community and cybersecurity partners to monitor Iranian cyber activity, share information, and take steps to keep America and our allies safe.

DefenseOne: Wired: Vox: Oodaloop: ZDNet: Image: akkasemosalman.ir

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If you live with or work with someone who suffers from migraine, theres something very important you should know: A migraine is not just a headache, as many seem to think. Nor is it something most sufferers can simply ignore.

And if you are a migraine sufferer, theres something potentially life-changing that you should know: There are now a number of medications available that can either prevent or alleviate many attacks, as well as a newly marketed wearable nerve-stimulating device that can be activated by a smartphone to relieve the pain of migraine.

Migraine is a neurological disorder characterized by recurrent attacks of severe, often incapacitating headache and dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, which controls the bodys myriad automatic activities like digestion and breathing. The throbbing or pulsating pain of migraine is often accompanied by nausea and vomiting.

Translation: Migraine is a headache, all right, but with body-wide effects because the brain converses with the rest of the body. It is often severe enough to exact a devastating toll on someones ability to work, interact with others, perform the tasks of daily life, or even be in a normal living environment. When in the throes of a migraine attack, sufferers may be unable to tolerate light, noise, smells or even touch.
Back in November 2018, America experienced the excitement of Announcement Eve. Mayors, economic development leaders and residents felt the anticipation levels of kids at Christmastime: Wouldcity be selected for Amazon's second headquarters?Thousands of public officials nationwide had dedicated countless taxpayer-funded hours to the HQ2 sweepstakes. Each bid included a treasure trove of information on strategies for workforce development, transportation, housing, education and infrastructure. But the real winner that day was Amazon. It now has intimate knowledge of 238 communities' development plans, which it acquired nearly effortlessly and for free.The data in the HQ2 proposals was amazingly powerful. But that doesn't mean that the effort that went into collecting it was for naught for the communities that lost out in the HQ2 competition. Building on that trove of data can inform and enrich economic development efforts going forward  efforts that should focus less on luring one big employer and more on supporting the real engine of job growth, entrepreneurship.Many communities will never totally comprehend Amazon's Great Data Caper. But Cleveland's residents do: Thanks to an investigative reporter who filed a lawsuit, a court disclosed that city's glossy 220-page document offering $3.5 billion in incentives. What Amazon pulled off was Shakespearean. Cleveland poured resources into an unachievable dream with a glorious pitch  a tale told by a consultant, full of data made pretty, signifying nothing.Cleveland's extravagant proposal was hardly unique, of course. Economic developers habitually chase corporate behemoths with massive incentives, even though small businesses create nearly all net new jobs. Despite frequent paeans to American innovation, the red carpet is most often rolled out (and red tape is cut) forAmazon, not tomorrow's.The fact is, U.S. entrepreneurial activity is nearing a 40-year low, and the post-recession recovery has not been evenly distributed nationwide . Most places between the coasts never felt substantial gains. Since 2011, nearly 60 percent of new businesses were formed in only 25 percent of the most prosperous ZIP codes . Everywhere else, there are more companies shutting down than being started.Months before the HQ2 bid, the Economic Innovation Group (EIG) named Cleveland as America's most economically distressed big city and deemed the decade since 2008 "the startup-less recovery." This research informed EIG's work on the federal Opportunity Zones incentive , which passed with bipartisan support in December 2017 as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.Many early Opportunity Zone investors have focused on low-risk real-estate deals ( which likely would have happened anyway ). But there is so much more potential for impact, as many local leaders have already realized. Through my research, I have identified 63 OZ prospectuses prepared by American cities, totaling 2,147 pages and showcasing 857 deals. It's no surprise that Cleveland's all-in OZ approach rises to the top. Reminiscent of its HQ2 bid, the city has created a new coalition, Opportunity CLE , which boldly calls itself "a cohesive economic development ecosystem unlike any other in the nation." As someone who studies public-private partnerships and entrepreneurship for a living, I can attest that it truly is.Leaders across Cuyahoga County have bought into a new cross-sector vision for community investment backed by local housing and economic development organizations, major foundations and funds, and an array of community partners. It's a great start. But bringing together various leaders, organizing sundry efforts and collaborating in common cause  the same approach taken during HQ2  should be just the start.We can invert the Amazon paradigm for Opportunity Zones by using and creating data that benefits communities, as the companies participating in the U.S. Census's Opportunity Project Sprint have done. At the Census demo day in December, for example, Citi launched City Builder , which maps the characteristics of each OZ with population, demographic, education, mobility score and other data. Mastercard debuted its Inclusive Growth Map with aggregated and anonymized purchasing in OZs. And Public Democracy Inc. (whose board I chair) announced the results of its partnership with Birmingham, Ala. : Mayor Randall Woodfin's team reached over half of the city's OZ residents via email, generating hundreds of survey responses and opening up communication lines among residents, government and investors.As a result of these efforts, businesses and fund managers can now begin shifting plans to better meet the community's needs  not out of some charitable inclination but because they now have data showing they could make money doing so. Equipped with better insights on community behavior and market demand, city leaders can also go beyond the federal incentive by layering on additional programs and incentives to advance local priorities. Such OZ investments could become even more profitable than shovel-ready real-estate projects.Think about what the $3.5 billion that Cleveland offered to Amazon could have meant for small businesses and other local priorities. For that sum, the city could have made equity investments, provided low-interest loans or even given straight-up grants of over $6,500 to every single new business in theon a yearly basis for the next quarter century.In their efforts to land HQ2, business and civic leaders proved their ability to go beyond individual interests and truly collaborate. What resulted was the privatization of all their data and plans by a single company. Now they should put those resources and data to work for entrepreneurs and other community priorities.
A British Columbia judge has ordered a social media influencer to pay $200,000 to an ex-boyfriend after she spread rumors online about him giving sexually transmitted diseases to other women.

Supreme Court Justice Elliott Myers handed down what is considered to be a landmark ruling against fashion blogger Noelle Halcrow.

In 2015, Halcrow, who boasts more than 17,000 followers on Instagram, began an on-again, off-again relationship with Brandon Rook, a business consultant who lives in the Vancouver area, according to court documents.

After he ended the relationship, Halcrow posted dozens of internet messages on various sites accusing Rook of knowingly infecting other women with herpes and of being unfaithful.

Brandon Rook, known cheater, proud of it! read one message posted by Halcrow.

A Canadian judge has ordered social media influencer Noelle Halcrow (left) to pay ex-boyfriend Brandon Rook (right) $200,000 in damages after she accused him of knowingly spreading sexually transmitted diseases to other women

Halcrow posted scores of messages online defaming Rook after he ended their yearlong off-again-on-again relationship

Halcrow boasts more than 17,000 followers on Instagram. A British Columbia judge ruled that she waged a 'relentless' campaign online against Rook 'out of spite'

Has STDs spreads them to people, read another post.

Halcrow, who splits her time between Los Angeles and Vancouver, also accused Rook of being an alcoholic and of being uncaring and a loser.

She went on and published time and time again, over many days - actually a year, or maybe more than that - various versions of the same statement that the guy was a dog, basically, Bryan Baynham, a defamation lawyer, told CTV.

In his ruling, Myers found that Halcrow was lying and that she had conducted a relentless campaign out of spite.

In his ruling, the judge cited dozens of online posts accusing Rook of infidelity, alcoholism, misogyny, abusive behavior, and spreading STDs

Myers listed 100 posts that he determined to be defamatory.

Halcrows unusually large social media following means that the penalty she was given was higher than it would be for most other online users.

It's like publishing a defamatory statement to the world, Baynham said.

It's worse than publishing it in a newspaper in many cases. It's very serious and you better have the facts to back it up.

Halcrow denied she was the author of the posts, but forensic experts managed to trace the content back to her IP address.

The Instagram accounts used were of names and handles that included brandonrook.baterogold; br._rook_; and brandon.rookbatero.

Batero refers to Batero Gold, a mining company that once employed Rook as chief executive officer.

Halcrow also wrote posts on web sites alleging he was guilty of infidelity and of transmitting sexually transmitted diseases.

In his ruling, Myers also cites text messages from Halcrow to Rook in which she threatens to write more incriminating posts.

One text message read: I told you second I posted pics. This time you need to search for them and figure how many people I tag.

Stupidly I took down but easy get back and I own this account names.

And only thing you can get deleted on Instagram is porn.

My account people say bad things I own it so I can take down two seconds and alerts my phone.

DailyMail.com has reached out to Halcrow for comment.
#BCRP: A fines de 2019 el nivel de Reservas Internacionales Netas (RIN) ascendio a US$ 68,3 mil millones, el mayor nivel historico anual registrado. pic.twitter.com/MP0HVqtTd3
The head of government was speaking at conference regarding the plan for business surveys in 2020 on January 6.

He said the that statistic data are the fundamental basis for Party and government leaders at all levels as well as authorities who are concerned with making well-informed policies.

Highlighting the importance of statistics, the PM stated that thanks to the statistical system from central to grass-roots levels, Vietnam has been able to promptly announce its impressive economic performance in 2019.

Last year, Vietnams economic expansion surpassed its expectations with a rate of 7.02% to reach US$262 billion, with GDP per capita estimated at nearly US$2,700.

Concerning the GDP revision, PM Phuc said the General Statistics Office (GSO) had worked closely with international organisations such as the IMF and UNDP to re-assess the GDP in a more accurate and scientific method.

The PM also expressed his delight that Vietnam ranked 19 in a list of 145 countries by the World Banks statistical capacity indicator in 2018.

In 2020 Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc urged the GSO to continue to enhance the quality of statistical data and announce the revised GDP for 2018, 2019 and 2020 to serve local Party congresses towards the 13th National Party Congress.

He also asked for greater connectivity and better utilisation of statistical databases as well as administrative data from sectors such as taxation, customs, finance and banking towards sharing socio-economic data through the national information system.
The plans would create a Traditionalist Methodist denomination, where tho-se opposed to the acceptance of same-sex marriages would migrate, with the existing Methodist Church set to accept homosexual union, including marriage.

Hyderabad: The Methodist Church, which has the worlds highest number of members attending it, is split wide open over recognising the marital rights of homosexuals.

A traditional Protestant church founded by John Wesley and Charles Wesley in 19th century, the Methodists, with presence in 187 countries, are on the verge of a split worldwide over the issue of same-sex marriages. On January 3, 2020, the denominations leadership announced a plan to split the church over what is being officially described as fundamental differences.

The churchs general conference is expected to vote on the plan in May later this year in the United States. Though the debate, and the split, is currently confined only to the United Methodist Church in the USA, it is reported that there is a lot of opposition from churches in Africa.

The plans would create a Traditionalist Methodist denomination, where tho-se opposed to the acceptance of same-sex marriages would migrate, with the existing Methodist Church set to accept homosexual union, including marriage. While some of the Anglican churches have reformed with changing times to accept, recognise and even perform same-sex marriages in their churches, the Methodist has remained a traditional church which is not accepting of the marital union of homosexuals.

There are 2,460 congregations under the Methodist denomination with over 6,48,000 members in India, of which, over 350 churches come under the Hydera-bad regional conference.

When asked to speak about the development, M.A. Daniel, bishop, Methodist Church, Hyder-abad regional conference, said, As a Methodist, we will go in accordance with the Bible. As a Christian believer, we will not go away from what the holy scripture of God says. I have not gone through the news of the United Methodist Church on this issue, so it is not proper for me to comment on this.

Dr Rev. Gloria Ananda, advocate, High Court, said, This is not permissible. The Methodist church should not allow such activities (as same sex marriages). I know that legally it is acceptable, when it comes to church, the Bible is the ultimate guide for Christians. The words of Jesus Christ are our only doctrine. It is written that man should be partnered with women. If this practice of same-sex marriage enters the church, it is immoral and unacceptable. The traditions of the church are holy and should not be compromised upon.

Susanna Sulekha, MNC employee, said, Being a gay or transgender is not ones fault. Neither are they defected. It is Gods own creation. As a Christian, I believe God made everything with total perfection. Now regarding the question of their life and dreams, we should respect it. Society has already been unjust to them for ages. When gays form a union outside of marriage, we call it sin. Yet, when they are openly coming forwards, we hesitate to grant the respect of a legal marriage to that relationship. Christianity is a religion of love and compassion. When we fail to show a fellow human being respect, love and care, how can one face God on the judgement day?

Ms Sulekha further said, Let me remind you of an Indian Barrister when he went to Africa. He would attend a church as he had read many of Christs teachings, which deeply to-uched and inspired him.

Church has seen schisms over doctrines

Noticing that the barrister was not a white man, an usher asked him to leave the church. The young barrister questioned him  if Jesus came to earth for the downtrodden, for outcasts, then why are you showing racial discrimination?

The lawyer thrown out of the church was Mahatma Gandhi. I can sense a similar scenario here. I strongly feel that the church should support gay marriages. If not church, who else will?

John Wycliffe, a social worker, said, This proposal to allow a more traditionalist church to be birthed is novel. Instead of going to courts over how to split assets, there is an upfront plan to provide seed money to a new church. This is a very good way to amicably part, as opposed to in the past, when both sides used to rake up a lot of muck and bad mouthing of each other. This is not an issue for local churches in India, and whatever happens in America will remain in America.

Mr Wycliffe further said, Recently, we have seen the Anglican church split over ordination of gay pastors. Though the issue of LGBTQ was discussed in the United Methodist Church earlier, only a traditionalist position that does not condone the practice of homosexuality found sanction. This has made a lot of liberal members uneasy.

Unity is a very difficult ideal to maintain. The church, down the ages, has seen schisms over doctrines and scriptural interpretations. Some splits have also happened over mundane issues like egos and disputed practices, he added.

Rev Dr D.H. Paul, chairman, Board of Eccumenism, said, Same-sex marriages are against Gods will and against Gods creation. Creation itself shows the creation of male and female. Man and womens unity, that too within the institution of marriage, is holy. Apart from true Christian faith, even other faiths would not advocate same sex marriages.
(TNS)  The start of spring semester classes at Wallace State Community College in Alabama has been delayed by two days as the schools Information Technology office works to bring its networked systems back online following a cyberattack this week.Instead of beginning the spring semester on Monday, Jan. 6, the first day of class for all students has been postponed until Wednesday, Jan. 8, the college announced on a public-facing web page set up on Friday to address the matter. Registration also has been extended through Jan. 15.Kristen Holmes, the schools director of communications and marketing, said late Friday that no student data  including student records, transcripts, financial aid, and other personal information  had been compromised in the attack, and that Wallace State had notified appropriate law enforcement agencies to investigate the attacks origin.Its very important to stress that no personal data was breached, said Holmes. Out of an abundance of caution to prevent a limited attack from spreading further, a lot of systems outside the origin of the attack also have been temporarily taken down.That means that, until further notice, student-facing features like the Blackboard student portal, as well as school-hosted email services, are not available. The schools informational website pertaining to the incident, located at wallacestate.edu/cybersecurity , will update over the next few days with the latest on when those online services will again be accessible. The site also provides a link whereby students wishing to access their myWallaceState accounts may still do so, allowing them to continue registering for classes, check account balances, and make tuition payments.Holmes said the college also will send out updated information via social media, as well as Wallace States Lion Alert emergency and notification system, as the need arises. Faculty and staff also will report to campus on Monday, and will be available to meet with students to share information and address any concerns they may have. Instructors will work with students to make provisions for assignments and coursework that may be affected by the delay.Networked systems like Blackboard, which students access via password and serve as a one-stop platform for everything from academic lesson materials to grades and more, have become so vital to the operations of a modern college  whether on campus or remotely  that conducting classes and administrative functions is difficult, if not impossible, when those systems go offline.In order to serve students most effectively, especially at the start of the semester, these online systems are so important  for accessing Blackboard, email, online coursework, and other features  and that is the impetus for the delay, said Holmes.Any large entity that relies as heavily on technology as we do is vulnerable to such attacks, she added. Malware attacks are increasingly common nationwide, and they affect personal computers as well as businesses. Wallace State has sophisticated tools and training in place to prevent such attacks. But nothing is foolproof, as the goal of the perpetrators of these attacks is to stay one step ahead of even the most advanced technology.The attack appears to have occurred sometime overnight between Thursday and Friday. There were some computers that were acting a bit suspiciously, and IT [the schools Information Technology department] was contacted. They determined that there had been a malware attack, said Holmes.Our IT department is working around the clock to restore previously backed-up, unaffected versions of our systems. Theyve already started that recovery process, and it may take several days.
This Bengaluru-based band makes music that addresses social issues while also keeping things light and airy.

In recent years, Indie artists have managed to express their soul through their music which has been gaining momentum these days. Bands and artists are constantly in the loop of releasing new music. This is done with the hope of getting their work and message out into the world. And Bengaluru based band The Shubham Roy Collective who are in on the action and are all set to release a new song -- Kaise Kahu in the last week on January. We get the inside story...

The band first came together during the making of their first song - Aankhi which was released on MTV Roots. Since then I have been collaborating with many artists from both Bengaluru and Shillong, finding the right elements and people for each song,  starts Shubham Roy who is personally inspired by John Mayer, Beatles and lot more. Giving music a touch of individuality with a blend of quintessential Western genres, Shubham believes, (Though) Folk tunes form the base of the band however we are a fusion band in essence and incorporate elements from Blues Jazz reggae and Indian Classical music.

Their next - Kaise Kahu talks about the ever-changing nature of love. Shubham shares, While libraries in music stores are filled with love stories and emotions that are experienced with the feeling of love, this song talks about how one can never explore every aspect of love. The inspiration for the song comes from the visualisation of mysteries and multitude of emotions shared between elderly couples. Shubham explains, This song is an attempt to talk about all that has not been said about old love. The song is a silent dialogue between an old couple. The band plans to promote the song mostly using social media and music streaming platforms.

For a multilingual band as such, sticking together through thick and thin is essential. Speaking about what binds the band together Shubham says, Love for music keeps us together and a typical jam session is focused on the needs of an upcoming gig where we are all trying to put our best foot forward to make each song sound even better. The story behind every song they make has a purpose, he elaborates, While we keep exploring different themes for our songs. Ones like Cherrapunjeem talks about the rains in Meghalaya, Lori addresses the issue of female infanticide and Wings of Fire is a praise to our late President APJ Abdul Kallam and Aankhi is a love song.
A project which aims to keep calves with their mothers for longer has been awarded over 60,000 to make Scotland a leader in high animal-welfare dairy.

Farmers David and Wilma Finlay have ambitions to turn the high welfare dairy system into a successful, commercial operation.

At Rainton Farm, in Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway, dairy cows and their calves are kept together for five months.

Standard modern practices involve separating the cow and calf within 24 hours of birth.

But the Finlays' 'cow with calf' project aims to use the 'ethical dairy' as a model to characterise the cow with calf system and on-farm rearing.

The project's overall purpose is to improve environmental and social aspects of farming.

Their farm will now be used as a model with the intention of extending this to farmers wishing to make Scotland a leader in ethical dairying.

The Finlays have been awarded through the Scottish government's Knowledge Transfer and Innovation Fund (KTIF).

Colleen McCulloch of Soil Association Scotland helped set up the Rural Innovation Support Service (RISS) group that brought the project together.

She said: Keeping calves with their mother has benefits beyond welfare, for example for rose veal and beef supply, as well as grassland management and biodiversity, but is commercially challenging.

The KTIF funding will allow Dr Marie Haskell of Scotlands Rural College to run a years pilot project to track the progress of the Finlays operation and trial it on several other farms, with the aim of establishing a blueprint that could be adopted by any interested farm.

The KTIF is delivered through the Scottish Rural Development Programme (SRDP) 2014-20. The scheme will fund eligible innovation projects under the European Innovation Partnership.

Other newly approved projects

Pleurisy Reduction in Scottish Pigs - Wholesome Pigs - 47,300

This project aims to better understand the environmental, health and management conditions that impact on the incidence and severity of pleurisy, and to share experiences with the entire Scottish pig sector.

It includes investigations and interventions to improve environment and health on 12 farms and disseminate the information through meetings, written material and three video case studies.

Grass Roots  Scotland's Rural College (SRUC) - 53,073.18

The aim of this project is to deploy novel participatory and crowd-sourcing methods to close the gap described by farmers between them and grass breeders.

They hope this will better inform and drive innovation in the variety and seed mixes sector, and in the management systems the farmers deploy.

The project expects to target 2,000 farmers and link them in a virtual group so that peer-to-peer experiences can be shared, data on preferences and performance gathered.

Scottish Organic CANola  SRUC - 29,982.99

A group which is developing a reliable system of organic canola production in Scotland to fulfil an as-yet untapped market.

They wish to demonstrate the viability of growing organic canola under Scottish conditions in order to open up a new potentially lucrative source of income and provide alternative, locally produced livestock feed or feed supplement, as well as the potential for supplying even more valuable human markets.

Digital Farms  Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society (SAOS) - 54,675

This project uses is using a form of low power, wireless communication to allow whole farms to be digitally connected.

This offers a simple, low cost way for farmers to collect data. SmartRural, SNH and RSABI are also involved.

The project aims to equip farmers with the data and insights required to tackle the key challenges the industry face, issues such as: improving productivity, inefficiency and waste, improving environmental management, dealing with a shrinking labour force and extreme weather events, meeting climate change targets, and the lack of profitability.

Scotch Beef Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) Traceability and Performance  Quality Meat Scotland - 94,800

This project is designed to prove several concepts around the use of DNA analysis for meat traceability and integrity and cattle performance development.

The potential impact of this project is around 12,000 cattle holdings in Scotland. The wide reach of this project offers to deliver value for money, potential return on investment and securing the confidence of the consumer and the farmer by providing full DNA traceability to the Scotch beef brand.
Something to look forward to: Acer has introduced a slew of new products at CES. Alongside new Spin 3 and Spin 5 convertible laptops packing Ice Lake CPUs, the company has unveiled its largest monitor to date: the 55-inch Predator CG552K.

Acer has announced three new Predator monitors at the Las Vegas event. The first and most expensive of these is the 32-inch X32 (below), which boasts a 4K resolution, mini-LED backlighting for 1,152 zones of local dimming, DisplayHDR 1400 certification, and 1440 nits of brightness. Its panel covers 99 percent of the AdobeRGB color space and 89.5 percent of the Rec. 2020 color gamut. With G-Sync and 144Hz refresh rate, this monitor will cost a whopping $3,599 when it arrives in April.

Next is the 55-inch CG552K (top of page), which features Adaptive Sync support with HDMI Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and is G-Sync compatible. The OLED panel has a 0.5ms gray-to-gray response time, supports 120Hz refresh rates with overdrive, is DisplayHDR 400 certified, and can reach 400 nits. It also covers 98.5 percent of the wide DCI-P3 color space, has two built-in 10W speakers, a light sensor for automatic brightness adjustments, and a proximity sensor that wakes it up when someone enters a room. The CG552K will cost $2,999 when it launches in the second quarter.

The final of the three Predators is the X38. This 37.5-inch QHD (3,840 x 1,600) display has a 2300R curve, a 175Hz refresh rate, and 1ms GtG response time. It also supports 98 percent of the wide DCI-P3 color space and is DisplayHDR 400 certified. The X38 will cost $2,399 when it arrives in April.

Elsewhere, the company also announced its new Spin models, which use a 360-degree hinge that allows them to be used in tablet, notebook, display, or tent mode.

The Spin 5 has a 13.5-inch 2K touch display and up to 15 hours of battery life. Its price will start at $899 when released in June. The Spin 3, meanwhile, has a 14-inch full HD display and a 12-hour battery life with fast charging. It will start at $699 at launch in April.

In addition to featuring Intels latest 10-gen Ice Lake CPUs, both Spin models come with Wi-Fi 6, USB-C with Thunderbolt, and an Active Stylus that can be stored and fast-charged in the storage slot.
Demonstrators attend a protest against attacks on the students of New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University - REUTERS

Delhi police have been accused of being behind a violent attack on students by a Right-wing mob at a university on Sunday, which left over 20 people hospitalised.

Students at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) claim police joined forces with over 100 masked assailants  belonging to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a right-wing youth group linked to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)  who were armed with sticks, metal rods and sledgehammers.

They claim they saw police allowing the mob to enter campus and turning a blind eye to attacks on medical professionals and journalists who came to the students' aid. Since the implementation of a new anti-Muslim citizenship law on December 11 protests and accusations of police brutality have flared up across India.

The police has admitted lynching and firing at peaceful protesters at Jamia Millia Islamia (JMU) University in New Delhi and is accused of attacking crowds with tear-gas and bullets in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh.

At least 26 people have been killed nationwide during demonstrations while thousands more have been detained for protesting.

According to reports, a masked mob entered the JNU university campus on Sunday night Credit: JAGADEESH NV/EPA-EFE/REX

New Delhi police are investigating said on Monday they were investigating how Sunday's attack was able to happen.

It is believed the ABVP stormed the JNU campus after becoming frustrated with students continuing to protest vocally against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

We were begging for help to the police but instead they entered the campus at around 7pm and began beating us with sticks for no reason along with members of the ABVP, said a third-year student.

He claims over 50 students say they were attacked by police.

I was coming inside the entrance gate and a student was being beaten up, said another third year student. I tried to help them, and the thugs began attacking me too. The police just stood and watched.

Amit Shah, the president of the BJP, has ordered a senior police team to carry out an inquiry into the three-hour long attack.

Protesters took to the streets of Delhi on Monday with renewed vigour, staging large demonstrations at JMU and Shaheen Bagh.

There were also protests in Calcutta and Ahmedabad while several Bollywood stars joined a demonstration at the Gateway of India in Mumbai.
Bhoomi Shetty, Vasuki Vaibhav, and Shine Shetty are seen packing their friend and evicted contestant Chandana Ananthakrishnas personal belongings in the storeroom. Everyone else is seen discussing with Priyanka that she hasnt been nominated for more than five weeks. Day 85 on Bigg Boss Kannada 7 begins with music and a message from BB radio.

Harish decides to drape a saree and enact a fictional role of Seshamma for the day. She is seen fooling around and making the housemates laugh with his antics. Soon Bigg Boss announces the captaincy task for the week. Each nominee must convince the housemates and gain their votes to be elected as the captain. All the contestants, unanimously vote for Kishen Bilagali. Bigg Boss congratulates the new captain, he also receives an audio message from his brother as a gift.

Bhoomi Shetty is mighty upset and breakdowns as she wasnt even considered by a single housemate for the role. Shine and Vasuki try to make her understand the reason begin choosing Kishen. Meanwhile, the new captain is seen discussing the house duties and how he would want everyone to participate this week.

Later, Bigg Boss announces the commencement of the nomination process for eliminations. But he doesnt inform that the process will be nullified as BB plans on making week 13 a no elimination week. Instead, the coming week will witness double elimination on the show.

Most housemates end up taking Deepika Das, Bhoomi, Harish, and Chandan Achars name. But the captain gets to save one contestant from the nominations and Kishen decides to save Harish.

ALSO READ: Bigg Boss Kannada 7 - Chandan Achar Gets A Surprise Visit From His Mother
Mudslides and power blackouts hampered the search for people missing in massive floods in Indonesias capital Jakarta, where more than 60 people are confirmed dead and thousands of evacuees are living in damp, cramped emergency shelters.

More than a thousand soldiers and health workers sprayed disinfectant in hard-hit areas on Sunday to fend off diseases that could spread in the floods.

Monsoon rains and rising rivers submerged a dozen districts in the greater Jakarta area after extreme New Years Eve rains, causing landslides in hilly areas on the outskirts of the capital that buried scores of people.

Its the worst flooding in the area since 2007, when 80 people were killed over 10 days. More rain is forecast, and the potential for more extreme rainfall is possible for the next month.

National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Agus Wibowo said on Monday the death toll from flash flood and landslides in and around Jakarta had risen to 66.

In Lebak district, where flash floods and mudslides damaged more than 2,000 houses in several villages, some were swept away, rescuers were still searching for a 7-year-old boy reportedly dragged away by flash flooding that killed at least nine people, said Zainal Arifin, a local search and rescue agency chief.

He said mudslides that covered much of the area, blackouts and lack of telecommunications were hampering the search efforts.

About 11,000 health workers were deployed to provide medical care for people affected by the flooding, Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto said in a statement. He said there had been no recorded cases of serious waterborne diseases, after disinfectant spraying started Sunday.

Waters have receded in most parts of greater Jakarta, allowing many residents to return and clean up, but scores of tightly packed settlements close to rivers that often suffer from floods during the rainy season remained inundated or covered in mud and debris.

Government data on Monday showed some 35,500 people were unable to return to their homes, with the receding floodwaters still two feet high in places.
U.S. Ambassador John Bass left Kabul on Monday as his two-year tenure as America's top diplomat in war-torn Afghanistan ended.

His departure comes as U.S. tensions with neighboring Iran have soared following a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed Iran's top general.

Until Bass' replacement is decided, Washington is appointing a charge d'affaires to the post, according to a statement from the U.S. State Department.

Ross Wilson, who has served as America's ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan, is expected in the Afghan capital in the coming weeks.

The statement said Bass 'skillfully advanced the Trump Administration's goal of reaching a political settlement in Afghanistan that ensures terrorists can never again threaten the United States from Afghan soil while leading a large diplomatic mission in the face of numerous security threats.''

In a tweet bidding Afghanistan farewell, Bass said: 'My earnest hope is for leaders and citizens across this country to find strength in unity, put aside their differences, and work together to negotiate a political settlement with the Taliban. Afghans and this beautiful country deserve nothing less.'

Leaving: John Bass is ending his two year-tenure as ambassador to Afghanistan, where he was seen in June with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

Blood and treasure: The coffin of Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael Goble was taken off a plane from Afghanistan at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, on Christmas Day, the latest casualty of U.S. forces in Afghanistan

The on-again off-again talks between the United States and the Taliban appear to have again stalled. The negotiations are a key pillar in Washington's goal of reaching a political settlement in Afghanistan.

The latest hiccup in the talks appears to be the issue of what a cease-fire or reduction of violence might look like if the insurgents agree on a truce.

The Taliban's ruling council earlier announced that it would agree to a temporary lull in fighting to allow a peace agreement to be signed, according to Taliban officials. They have said that a reduction in violence is on the table as a topic.

But the fighting continues unabated as the insurgents stage near-daily attacks targeting Afghan security forces and their allies, while the U.S. and Afghan forces conduct airstrikes and anti-Taliban operations.

Washington's peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has been working for more than one year to get a deal signed with the Taliban that would allow Washington to withdraw an estimated 13,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

The deal would also include negotiations between the Taliban and representatives of the Afghan government, opposition figures and other prominent Afghans. The Taliban however, refuse to negotiate with the Kabul government.

Mourning: Thousands of people gathered in Tehran for the second day of Qassem Soleimani's funeral after he was killed in a US drone strike on Friday

But the government side is hampered by its own unclear future, as definitive results of the Afghan presidential election in September have still to be announced, although Afghan President Ashraf Ghani claims to be the winner, according to preliminary results.

Also, the Afghan government and opposition politicians, as well as some prominent Afghan figures, have so far been unable to agree on a negotiating team.

The negotiations, according to Khalilzad, will decide the future face of a post-war Afghanistan and would tackle thorny issues such as constitutional reform, women's rights, free speech and the fate of thousands of Taliban fighters as well as militias loyal to Kabul's powerful warlords.
Delhi BJP leader Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga challenged Bollywood actress Konkona Sen Sharma for her allegations that the anti-CAA protest video shared by Bagga on Twitter is doctored. Bagga challenged her to prove that the video is doctored, otherwise quit acting.

Challenge accept kro. If video is doctored I will leave Politics and Twitter otherwise you will leave Movies if you are still acting https://t.co/Ppd0Aen66f  Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga (@TajinderBagga) January 6, 2020

READ | CAA Not Against Indian Muslims, Modi Government Is For All: Minister

Bagga's tweet, sharing the video of Anti-CAA protest

The BJP leader had shared a video on Twitter of a protest organized in Mumbai against the amended Citizenship Act. Bagga claimed that slogans such as 'freedom from Hindus' were raised in the protest, to which Konkona claimed that the video is doctored and she was present at the protest and claimed that it was peaceful and without hate-mongering.

Muslim and Leftists students in Mumbai again Raised Slogans "Hinduo se Aazadi" but this time not in Jamia or JNU , they raised Hinduo se Aazadi Slogans at Gateway of India Mumbai. Will @MumbaiPolice @OfficeofUT take action or support this goons Silently ? pic.twitter.com/7Cq9ci8tE5  Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga (@TajinderBagga) January 6, 2020

READ | Two Bangladeshi, Among Five, Arrested For 'involvement' In Seemapuri Violence During Anti-CAA Stir

Konkona Sen Sharma reacts to Bagga's tweet

You are spreading lies! This is a doctored video! We were there and it was a peaceful protest which spoke of unity, not hate mongering.  Konkona Sensharma (@konkonas) January 6, 2020

READ | CAA Issue: BSP Team Meets UP Guv, Seeks Jailed Protesters'

About CAA and the protests

The CAA seeks to give citizenship to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian refugees who came to India on or before December 31, 2014, due to religious persecution in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

However, after the bill was passed in both houses of Parliament followed by the Presidents assent, protests erupted across the country against the Act. The protests which began in Assam had spread across the country and in universities like Jamia Millia, JNU and Aligarh Muslim University which took a violent turn with stone-pelting and damaging public property. The clash between police and protesters resulted in alleged lathi-charging, tear gas and rubber pellet action by police and vandalism by protestors. Many sections of the nation criticized the alleged brutal police action. Several protestors and police personnel were injured and died in the protests.

READ | Petition Filed In SC Seeking Mamata Banerjee's Removal Over 'UN-monitored CAA Vote' Demand
HOLYOKE  Ward 7 Councilor Todd McGee secured a second term as City Council president shortly after the citys inaugural ceremony Monday, winning a unanimous 13-0 vote from his colleagues.

No other councilor challenged or offered a nomination for the top spot.

McGee placed an elephant sculpture on the podium at the start of his address. The elephant, which he said signified no political affiliation, was offered as a sign of unity and to remind councilors who they serve  the people of Holyoke.

In this chamber, issues come up. We get passionate about them. Dont ever lose your passion, McGee told the council. Do what you think is right on that issue.

McGee pointed to the inscription behind him, which reads, The Makers of Laws  The Makers of History. He said people of Holyoke look to the City Council for answers.

When he first ran for office, McGee said, he asked his neighbor, retired Holyoke police officer and former City Councilor Pat Higgins, for his support.

Higgins advised McGee to listen to both sides of an issue, conduct research, dont make or take anything personal, and put the citys interest first. Thats the true outcome, what is best for the city. If you do that, youll be fine, he said.

The presidents gavel is in memory of Higgins. I am truly honored to be here, he said. McGees wife, City Clerk Brenna McGee, administered the oath, followed by an embrace.

He was first elected to the council in 2005, initially serving Ward 6. McGee and his wife have three children.

Under council rules, McGee could serve another two-year term as president. The council implemented a rule that allows a member to serve three, two-year terms as president.

The member is allowed to run again after a two-year break from the position.

McGee works as a tax attorney at MassMutual in Springfield. He attended Holyoke Community College and Northeastern University, later earning a law degree at Western New England University and a masters in tax law at Boston University.
S cientists have developed a new method for detecting oxygen on far-flung planets which could speed up the search for extraterrestrial life.

The technique will see researchers use Nasas James Webb Space Telescope to examine exoplanets to detect a strong signal that oxygen molecules produce when they collide.

This signal could help scientists distinguish between living and non-living planets outside of our solar system.

Thomas Fauchez, of Nasas Goddard Space Flight Centre, and lead author of the study, said: Before our work, oxygen at similar levels as on Earth was thought to be undetectable with Webb.

This oxygen signal is known since the early 1980s from Earths atmospheric studies but has never been studied for exoplanet research.

Nasa's stunning images of eclipse from International Space Station 1 /16 Nasa's stunning images of eclipse from International Space Station The stunning pictures were posted on social media by astronaut Paolo Nespoli They reveal a new perspective of the eclipse that swept across the United States as millions of Americans watched in wonder on Monday. NASA He posted them on social media with the caption Voila!... no words needed. As millions of people across the United States experienced a total eclipse as the umbra, or moons shadow passed over them, only six people witnessed the umbra from space Nasa Flight Engineer Randy Bresnik took still images of the eclipse as seen from the unique vantage of the Expedition 52 crew. This image made from seven frames shows the International Space Station, as it transits the Sun during a partial solar eclipse on Monday, August 21. NASA/Joel Kowsky The Moon is seen passing in front of the Sun during the solar eclipse from Ross Lake, Northern Cascades National Park, Washington NASA The Bailey's Beads effect is seen as the moon makes its final move over the sun NASA An image of the Moon transiting across the Sun during the eclipse The last glimmer of the sun is seen as the moon makes its final move over the sun during the total solar eclipse on Monday (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani) This full-disk geocolor image from GOES-16 shows the shadow of the move covering a large portion of the northwestern US An image of the moon travelling across the face of the Sun during Monday's spectacle

University of California Riverside astrobiologist Edward Schwieterman originally proposed a similar way of detecting high concentrations of oxygen from nonliving processes.

He was a member of the team that developed this technique.

Dr Schwieterman said: Oxygen is one of the most exciting molecules to detect because of its link with life, but we dont know if life is the only cause of oxygen in an atmosphere.

This technique will allow us to find oxygen in planets both living and dead.

When oxygen molecules collide they block parts of the infrared light spectrum from being seen by a telescope.

The scientists say that by examining patterns in that light, they can determine the composition of the planets atmosphere. Though they state that an abundance of oxygen on an exoplanet may not necessarily mean abundant life.

Their work has been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Iran announces decision to take fifth step to scale back JCPOA commitments

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 05 January 2020 6:09 PM

The Iranian government has issued a statement announcing its decision to take the fifth and final step in reducing its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with world powers, which is officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The Iranian government announced in the statement on Sunday that from now on, the country will observe no operational limitations on its nuclear industry, including with regard to the capacity and level of uranium enrichment, the amount of enriched materials as well as research and development.

"By taking the fifth step in reducing its commitment, the Islamic Republic of Iran eliminates the last key operational restriction it faced under the JCPOA, which is the limitation imposed on the number of centrifuges," it said.

The statement emphasized that following this decision, Iran will continue its nuclear program only on the basis of its "technical needs."

The Iranian government, however, emphasized that it will continue to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as was the case in the past.

According the statement, Iran is ready to resume fulfilling its commitments under the landmark nuclear deal if sanctions imposed on the country are removed and it can avail itself of the JCPOA's benefits.

The statement concluded by obligating the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to take all necessary measures within framework of this decision in coordination with President Hassan Rouhani.

US President Donald Trump, a stern critic of the historic deal, unilaterally pulled Washington out of the JCPOA in May 2018, and unleashed the "toughest ever" sanctions against the Islamic Republic in defiance of global criticism in an attempt to strangle the Iranian oil trade.

In response to the US unilateral move, Tehran has so far rowed back on its nuclear commitments four times in compliance with Articles 26 and 36 of the JCPOA, but stressed that its retaliatory measures will be reversible as soon as Europe finds practical ways to shield the mutual trade from the US sanctions.

As a first step, Iran increased its enriched uranium stockpile to beyond the 300 kilograms set by the JCPOA.

In the second step, Tehran began enriching uranium to purity rates beyond the JCPOA limit of 3.76 percent.

In the third phase, after the Europeans failed to meet a 60-day deadline to meet Iran's demands and fulfill their commitments under the deal, Iran started up advanced centrifuges to boost the country's stockpile of enriched uranium and activated 20 IR-4 and 20 IR-6 centrifuges for research and development purposes.

In November, Iran began injecting gas into centrifuges at the Fordow plant as part of its fourth step away from the JCPOA under the supervision of the IAEA.

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We have nothing. We dont have that kind of money they are asking for.

Those were the words of one of the nephews of couple Narine Maraj, 62, and Mattie Maraj, 52, who were kidnapped on Saturday evening after leaving their Madras, St Helena, home to tend to their animals at a family-owned farm in Piarco.
The Iraqi parliament approved a draft bill Sunday requiring the government to ask Washington to withdraw American troops from the country. The move is largely symbolic, as it sets no timetable for withdrawal and is subject to Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdis approval. But it reflects mounting volatility facing U.S. forces in the region, and the uncertainty of U.S. strategic interests there in the wake of the American drone strike that killed a top Iranian official Thursday.

During the Iraqi parliaments emergency session, in which some members repeatedly chanted no to America, Mahdi revealed new information about the run up to the American drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, a prominent Iranian military leader who commanded the countrys elite Quds Force. Mahdi said President Donald Trump called him and asked him to mediate with Iran even as the American president was secretly ordering Soleimanis killing. Mahdi also said he was set to meet Soleimani, who was carrying a response to an initiative from Saudi Arabia intended to deescalate tensions.

Mahdi urged parliament to rescind its 2014 invitation to U.S. forces, which was made when ISIS was embarking on a lightning offensive across Iraq and Syria that ultimately resulted in the militant group capturing territory roughly the size of Britain. He stressed that a timetable be established so an orderly withdrawal could be carried out.

But parliaments resolution amounts to a symbolic measure, as the current caretaker government doesnt have the legal power to carry it out, Farhad Alaaldin, former advisor to Iraqi President Barham Saleh tells TIME. It would be up to the new government to take this forward, said Alaaldin, now chairman of Baghdad-based think tank Iraq Advisory Council. Mahdi has been a caretaker prime minister since he resigned after weeks of mass protests over government corruption this past fall.

Story continues

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo shrugged off the vote as that of a resigned prime minister under enormous threats from the very Iranian leadership that we are pushing back against. We are confident that the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there to fight the counter-terror campaign, he said on Fox News Sunday.

But the symbolic vote nevertheless matters as a sign of the uncertainty and volatility sweeping the region in the wake of Soleimanis death.

Kurdish and Sunni politicians sat out the vote. Those two groups fear a U.S. troop departure would result in other allied countries withdrawing, and would trigger a flight of Western investment. If the U.S. training mission leaves, you can expect a fairly quick departure of other foreign missions including NATO, for a host of reasons, among them, force protection, says Barbara Leaf, a former U.S. ambassador now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Most factions also fear a U.S. departure could produce a resurgence of ISIS. While ISIS has largely been defeated in Iraq, thousands of fighters remain and continue to launch attacks in Iraq and Syria. American forces remain in both countries to ensure the surviving militants do not regain power and territory.

Even before the Iraqi vote Sunday, the U.S.-led military coalition said it has paused training and operations to counter the terror group in Iraq in order to protect bases from outside attack. The announcement came after the drone strike against Soleimani.

Iranian officials have promised harsh revenge for Soleimanis assassination, which Trump responded to by threatening to target 52 Iranian sites, including some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture. Irans Foreign Minister Javad Zarif counter-tweeted that targeting sites of cultural significance is a war crime.

A U.S. military official said on Sunday that he was unfamiliar with any list of exactly 52 targets. There are different lists, depending on the nature of the possible targets  missile bases, nuclear facilities, naval bases, airfields, et cetera  but I dont know of a list that adds up to that number or one that includes cultural or historic sites like Persepolis.

The decision to kill Soleimani, carried out on Trumps order, caught U.S. military and intelligence officials by surprise. One senior military official familiar with the proposed retaliatory actions for further Iranian-backed attacks on U.S. or coalition forces said the only more severe measure would have been strikes on Quds Force bases or leaders inside Iran, which some officials warned would have been a clear act of war.

Intelligence officials also had warned of an Iraqi popular and political backlash against stepped-up U.S. strikes on Shiite militias, especially against a backdrop of previous civilian casualties. But on Saturday and Sunday three officials said it was not clear whether Trump had considered that warning and others about Iranian retaliation in making his decision. Many Iraqis, especially among the majority Shiites, dont think of us as liberators, but as occupiers, said one former military intelligence officer who served multiple tours in Iraq.

Over the past six months, Iranian-backed proxy forces has been accused of several attacks in the region, including a recent rocket attack on a military base in Iraq, which killed an American contractor and injured four U.S. service members working to fight ISIS, also known as Daesh. Our first priority is protecting all Coalition personnel committed to the defeat of Daesh. Repeated rocket attacks over the last two months by elements of Kataib Hezbollah have caused the death of Iraqi Security Forces personnel and a U.S. civilian, the U.S.-led coalition said in a statement. As a result we are now fully committed to protecting the Iraqi bases that host coalition troops. This has limited our capacity to conduct training with partners and to support their operations against and we have therefore paused these activities, subject to continuous review.

The coalition issued its statement before the Iraqi parliamentary vote, but added: We remain resolute as partners of the Government of Iraq and the Iraqi people that have welcomed us into their country to help defeat ISIS, the statement said. We remain ready to return our full attention and efforts back to our shared goal of ensuring the lasting defeat of Daesh.

with reporting by John Walcott/Washington
Voters in the 48th state senatorial district will have the opportunity to go to the polls on Jan. 14 and elect someone to serve as their senator for the better part of three years.

The two men vying for that seat are Lebanon County District Attorney Dave Arnold and Lebanon Valley College associate history professor Michael Schroeder. The district includes parts of Dauphin and York counties and all of Lebanon County.

The seat is open following the resignation of Lebanon County Republican Mike Folmer, who stepped down after he was arrested and charged with possessing child pornography in September.

The 48-year-old Arnold, the Republican nominee, is no stranger to politics, having held his elective office for the past 14 years. Schroeder, 61, the Democratic nominee, is making his first run at public office but counts his community and environmental activism along with study of politics and government from his work as a history scholar as qualifying him for the position.

Both men reside in Lebanon County and admit running for a seat in Pennsylvanias Legislature was an idea each had entertained over the years. After Folmers resignation, both decided it was time to run.

Arnold was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in October and immediately underwent surgery to remove it. He said he has been given the thumbs up from his team of doctors to carry on with his district attorney duties and his run for Senate. If elected, Arnold said he can serve as a state senator without any restrictions.

To a person, everyone has agreed with that assessment, said Arnold, the married father of one daughter.

For the record, Schroeder, who is also married and has two grown children and three grandchildren, said he has no health conditions that would impact his abilities to serve.

I feel I could make a bigger difference in Harrisburg as a state senator than I can as a college history professor and a local community and environmental activist," Schroeder said.

He said he feels he could bring a fresh voice to Harrisburg with no political debts to pay. I am an independent thinker and committed to the public good. Schroeder said the purpose behind public offices is to serve the public good and he believes state legislators on the whole are largely failing in pursuit of that fundamental purpose of government.

Arnold, on the other hand, said he loves being a district attorney and making a positive impact on peoples lives through the service provided to crime victims and the public.

When I saw this opportunity to step up and sort of do a different level of public service, that really appealed to me, he said. I think I have done a good job serving the public and I think Im going to do an even better job serving the public in Harrisburg.

Here is a sampling of their views on some key issues:

Retroactive window for child sexual abuse victims to sue

The Senate in November approved a House-passed bill proposing a constitutional amendment arising from the clergy sex abuse scandal.

If approved, the amendment would create a two-year window allowing adult victims of child sexual abuse to sue perpetrators, employers and institutions, even if they are beyond the statute of limitations. Because it is a proposed constitutional amendment, it requires the House and Senate to vote on identical bills in the next legislative session. So the winner of this contest may have a say in whether to send this question to voters for ratification.

Schroeder said to count him as a yes vote on this proposed constitutional amendment.

The ripple effects of this kind of trauma extend through a persons lifetime, he said. He personally doesnt think a two-year window is long enough but said, half a loaf is better than none so yes, I am in favor of that.

Arnold said he is undecided about how he would vote on this.

I support anything we could possibly do to benefit our victims of abuse, he said. From a legal perspective, obviously we need to be careful that we follow the law so thats something that really needs to be thoroughly vetted before we make a final decision on how we want to go with that.

Redistricting reform. Is it needed?

The candidates are seeking to represent one of the more oddly configured senatorial districts, which starts in Lebanon County and stretches over Dauphin County into northern York County.

Both candidates said when it comes to redrawing senatorial district maps they would hope to see something a little more compact  or as Arnold said, set up in a maybe a little bit more common-sense fashion.

But the candidates differ on how that should be done.

Arnold said he tends to lean toward making no changes to how congressional and legislative district boundary lines are drawn.

Im always open to any ideas if they make sense and can make an improvement but my initial thought would be it would remain with legislative leaders, he said. Input from other individuals by all means is certainly important. Dont get me wrong on that. But I think the decision-making needs to come down to the Legislature.

Schroeder, who is involved with the redistricting reform group Fair Districts PA, said he opposes gerrymandering and would support putting an independent citizens commission in charge of the task of drawing the maps.

This district as it currently exists was gerrymandered in a way to favor the Republican Party and I dont think politicians should be choosing their voters, he said. Im in favor of an independent citizens commission but barring that, Im in favor of a fair redistricting process that takes partisanship and politics out of it and seeks to most effectively represent the people of each district.

Top issue on voters minds

Pocketbook issues appear to be major issues on the minds of voters.

For Schroeder, its the cost of health care and prescriptions that the folks he spoke with are struggling with and he has an idea for addressing it.

The state needs to play a more active role in funding health care, he said. We need to create a robust public option so that ordinary people have a choice between private insurance and a public option. I think over time people would gravitate toward the public option.

He said he also would like to see Pennsylvania adopt a law similar to one adopted in Colorado that put a $100 cap on insulin copays and other steps to make sure prescription drugs are affordable.

Arnold said a lot of people have complained to him about rising school property taxes. He said its an issue that he would like to work on to find a solution.

There are a lot of different theories out there on what we can do and how we should go about eliminating and reducing property taxes, he said. Im not suggesting that I have all the answers on how were going to do that but its an important one to me. Its important that we are able to keep our property taxes down for our working class and for our senior citizens who are on fixed incomes and at the same time, make sure we get the best education we can for our students

Why should folks from other party vote for you?

Republicans hold a roughly 50% to 35% registration edge over Democrats in the 48th district and the remaining 15 percent are registered to other parties, according to the Department of State statistics.

Given that, Schroeder knows to win he has to present himself in a way to draw support from Republicans and non-affiliated voters, who are eligible to vote in the special election for this seat.

I offer a kind of fresh perspective and a sense of integrity in serving the public good, he said. I know many Republicans are disenchanted with the process by which my opponent Dave Arnold was selected through this kind of closed process with hand-selected delegates that voted. He also has very close ties to Harrisburg lobbying firms. I come into this with no political debts. I dont know any lobbyists. I am not tied to big money in Harrisburg or elsewhere as my opponent is.

Arnold refuted his opponents claim that he owes a political debt to anyone. He admits he knows lobbyists and believes they play a key role in policy-making by bringing issues to lawmakers attention.

However, he added, Ive never been been influenced in any way, shape or form by any lobbyists over the last 14 years and thats certainly not going to change once I go to Harrisburg.

As for convincing Democrats and non-affiliated voters to support his candidacy, Arnold said he is banking on his track record as a district attorney and as a leader in the statewide district attorneys association to help him on that front. Ive always worked well with Republicans, Democrats, independents and otherwise on all the issues related to law enforcement. Theres no reason to suggest I cant do the same in the Legislature. So Im a common-sense, solutions kind of guy.

Legislative pay and pension

The $90,335 salary that comes with being a state senator would be a pay raise for Schroeder but a pay cut for Arnold.

Arnold said it would be his intention to have a private law practice on the side as other lawyer-legislators do to make up the $95,000 difference between his DA salary and the senatorial pay.

Schroeder said he is obligated to teach this spring semester but if elected, he would ask Lebanon Valley College to place him on leave while serving in the Senate. He said he and his wife are financially secure and would not need to earn another penny and they would still be financially fine so his candidacy is not in any way about the money.

It also isnt about the money for Arnold. He said, Anyone who runs for public office because of the salary shouldnt be running for public office.

Both candidates said they would not sign up for the traditional defined benefit pension plan that new lawmakers can still choose. Most new state government and school employees arent eligible to sign up for the traditional pension plan.

I think we need to eliminate that for new employees going forward, period," Arnold said. "I think its too much of a burden on our state in general and I definitely would not opt into that.

I would reject any benefit package that would put me as a legislator in a different category from any other state worker," Schroeder said. "Whats fair is fair. I would reject any kind of special treatment.

What others say about Schroder:

Public school teacher Faith Mumma of Mount Gretna has worked with Schroeder on redistricting reform and on pipeline issues. She believes his working class background has provided him the knowledge, listening skills, and integrity, among other characteristics, to be a good senator. He values educating yourself on an issue. I know when he got his degrees he didnt go through the channel that many people get to go right after high school. He went later and worked as a laborer and put himself through college. He knows how to face issues that are daunting.

Lebanon Valley College chemistry professor emeritus Owen Moe of Annville said he too has gotten to know Schroeder through their joint work on many local community projects and thinks his passion for pursuit of the common good in Pennsylvania governance gives him an advantage. Mike is strongly drawn to community service. He is a clear thinker, indefatigable in pursuit of goals, and he possesses an engaging personal dynamism that will propel him forward as an effective leader.

What others say about Arnold:

Daniel Wright has known Arnold professionally for 14 years  first as captain of the City of Lebanon Police Department and later as its chief and then in 2016 came to work for him as chief county detective. Throughout those years, he said Arnold has proven himself to be a dedicated and hard worker who cares about the people he works with and for. Hes passionate about his job and making sure the victims in the case get justice. I think that passion and dedication to his people hes serving will carry over well. Hes a good guy."

Joya Morrissey of Jackson Township, who along with her husband owns the Lebanon Farmers Market, said she got to know Arnold while working as an intern in the county detectives office as well as during her time as a Republican committeewoman. She said she found him to be respectful and sincere in his views. He has been consistently conservative in the job that he does and I believe he will continue to be conservative as a senator. His public service record is available for everyone to see where his opponents is not.

The district

Heres a municipal breakdown of the 48th District: all municipalities in Lebanon County; Conewago, Londonderry, Swatara and Lower Swatara townships and Highspire, Middletown, Paxtang, Royalton, and Steelton, in Dauphin County; and Conewago, East Manchester, Newberry and Springettsbury townships and Goldsboro, Lewisberry, Manchester, Mount Wolf, and York Haven in York County.

Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.

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Human rights organisation Amnesty International India on Monday criticised the Delhi Police for "repeatedly failing" to protect the students peacefully protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

The Delhi Police remained "shameful bystanders to mob brutality on students", its all-India Executive Director Avinash Kumar said in a statement.

"The authorities have failed in their duty to ensure the safety of the students, signalling a shameful complicity of the state machinery.

"Whether it be JNU or Jamia Millia University, the Delhi Police have repeatedly failed to protect the students peacefully protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Tamaulipas state police officer died and another one was wounded in an ambush suspected cartel members carried out on Thursday afternoon in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, authorities said.

READ MORE: Cuellar says gun battles still brewing in Nuevo Laredo

Shots fired were reported at about 5:15 p.m. at an overpass on Carretera Aeropuerto and the Nuevo Laredo-Monterrey Highway near S-Mart in Colonia Colinas del Sur.

No other information was available.

Even Laredo police alerted people on its Facebook about the shooting in the Sister City where the state police officer was killed..

There are currently reported violent confrontations happening in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, at this time. We strongly recommend against unnecessary travel into Mexico due to the high potential of continuing violent clashes, LPD said in a statement.

Laredo police said they are closely monitoring the situation as it develops and will continue to collaborate with all area law enforcement to maintain the safety and security of the city.

We are informing you to bring awareness to the situation and not to cause undo concern or panic. Laredo, Texas, remains a safe city, LPD stated.

This was the third gun battle reported in three days in Nuevo Laredo. In total, five gunmen, one state cop and one civilian have died, according to authorities. On Thursday, Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco Javier Garcia Cabeza de Vaca said in a statement that cowardly attacks were carried out by the Cartel Del Noreste, which is the criminal group that operates in Nuevo Laredo.

On Friday, LPD released a message encouraging paisanos to return the United States through other international bridges.

It appears that the situation remains unstable and for safety, we encourage any paisanos returning from Mexico to avoid bridges in the Nuevo Laredo area. Colombia Bridge to the north and international bridges south of Laredo may present a safer alternative for travelers attempting to cross back into the United States, authorities said. Travelers are recommended to monitor any information released by the U.S. Consulate General of Nuevo Laredo and the State Department of the United States for any travel advisories in Mexico.

READ MORE: New Years firefights in Nuevo Laredo leave suspected cartel members dead

A Mexico Travel Advisory issued by the State Department warns citizens not to travel to Tamaulipas due to crime and kidnapping.
While Australia has been absorbed in the tragedy of the bushfires, the rest of the world has been transfixed by fear that the assassination of Irans most senior general on the orders of US President Donald Trump might start a new Middle East war.

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There is no need to shed tears for Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force who was killed in a US drone attack on Iraqi soil last week. He masterminded - and was the public face of - a violent campaign to spread Irans influence around the region in Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and Iraq that included committing war crimes against civilians.

The killing of General Soleimani on Friday followed an attack on the US embassy in Baghdad last week, which Mr Trump blamed on Iran. The embassy attack came after US air strikes on Iran-backed militia in Iraq and Syria.

Mr Trump may have thought such tough action could teach the Iranians a lesson while conveniently distracting attention from impeachment proceedings.
Two women were killed Friday morning when a New Jersey Transit train collided with their car at a railroad crossing in central New Jersey.

The accident occurred around 8:10 a.m. at the Cedar Avenue crossing in Middlesex, a NJ Transit spokeswoman said. The Raritan Valley Line train had departed from Newark and was headed to High Bridge when the collision occurred.

NJ Transit identified the victims as 73-year-old Florence Obado of New Brunswick, the driver, and 44-year-old Susan Mazurek of Middlesex.

The train was carrying roughly 30 people, including passengers and crew. No one aboard the train was hurt, but service on the Raritan Valley Line was suspended in both directions between Plainfield and Raritan while the investigation was ongoing.

An NJ Transit spokeswoman said a preliminary investigation found the safety equipment at the crossing was working properly.

The cause of the accident remains under investigation.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Editors note: State police corrected an earlier press release. The 9-year-old killed in the crash was a girl.

Two central Pennsylvania UPS employees are among the dead from a massive crash that killed five people and injured about 60 on the Pennsylvania Turnpike early Sunday.

Westmoreland County Coroner Kenneth A. Bacha has identified the central Pennsylvania fatalities as Dennis L. Kehler, 48, of Lebanon, and Daniel J. Kepner, 53, of Lewistown. Both were UPS employees and were traveling out of Harrisburg, a company spokeswoman said.

Also killed in the crash were bus driver Shuang Quing Feng, 58, of Flushing, N.Y., and two of his passengers, Eileen Zelis Aria, 35, of Bronx, N.Y., and 9-year-old girl, the coroner said.

The crash occurred around 3:30 a.m. at mile marker 86.1 in the westbound lanes in Mount Pleasant Township. The Turnpike was closed until about 6 p.m.

State police said the bus, which was filled with passengers, was heading downhill when Feng wasnt able to make a turn and hit an embankment. The bus rolled and was hit by three tractor-trailers and a passenger vehicle.

The 52-passenger bus owned by Z&D Tour Inc. of Rockaway, N.J., was bound from Rockaway to Cincinnati, Ohio.

The National Traffic Safety Board, state police and the Turnpike Commission all are investigating the crash.
H eroic firefighters pulled a Chihuahua from a burning building and resuscitated him in a miraculous rescue.

The dog, named chopper, was saved from the blazing maisonette in Brixton on Monday morning.

Firefighters found him lying at the top of a set of stairs as they battled the flames, before pulling it from the building and bringing it around.

Station commander Paul Sadler, who was at the scene said: "Two firefighters wearing breathing apparatus found the dog laying on the floor at the top of the stairs. The Chihuahua called Chopper was brought out of the property and fire crews started giving chest compressions and administered oxygen."

Officers saved the dog from the building then gave him medical treatment / London Fire Brigade

He added: "Chopper thankfully came round and was taken to the vets for a precautionary check up. The firefighter's actions undoubtedly saved the dog's life and he is now doing ok."

Photos from the scene showed the dog cradled in the arms of a firefighter, with an oxygen mask over his face.

A woman and a child had also been in the building, in Loughborough Road, but escaped the building uninjured.
New Delhi:

A researcher at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi has developed a "fabric feel tester" at a cost nearly 100 times cheaper than the ones presently available in market. According to officials, a patent has also been filed for the instrument which has been developed by professor Apurba Das and his team with support from the government's Department of Science and Technology.

The instrument measures the subjective fabric feel perception and expresses it by an objective numerical value.

Fabric feel is a generic term for textile sensations associated with fabrics. "The existing Kawabata Evaluation System of Fabrics (KESF) system used in the clothing industry is very complex and requires four different modules. The new instrument will not only measure fabric softness and feel directly but also help in selecting the optimum fabric finish treatment by comparing the feel," a senior IIT-Delhi official said.

"The instrument will help check change in fabric feel after chemical or mechanical treatment and thus help in developing newer fabrics and finishings with better feel. The cost of the new fabric feel tester is around Rs 1.75 lakhs as compared to the cost of complete KESF equipment which is more than Rs 1.5 crore," the official added. According to the official, the device finds its usage broadly in dyeing and finishing in textile and apparel industries, weaving industries, garment manufacturing units and testing laboratories.

"It will be helpful for industries who are dealing with the production, evaluation and application of textile fabrics for process, quality and quick decision making," the official said.

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US soldiers, officers will go home in coffins after Soleimani assassination: Nasrallah ICH & Agencies Note to ICH Community; If you have a link to a better video and audio of this speech. please post in the comment section. Thank you. January 05, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - The secretary general of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has severely condemned the assassination of Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps' Quds Force, and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units' deputy commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, say that US soldiers and officers would return home in coffins in retaliation.



When the coffins of American soldiers and officers begin to be transported ... to the United States, (President Donald) Trump and his administration will realize that they have really lost the region and will lose the elections, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech broadcast live from the Lebanese capital city of Beirut as he addressed his supporters on Sunday evening. Marwa Haidar Stressing there is no figure equivalent to General Qassem Suleimani in terms of retaliation; Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said the response to his blood must be the expulsion of US forces from the region. In a memorial service for General Suleimani, Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis and other martyrs who fell in the US strike on Baghdad airport early Friday (January 3, 2020), Sayyed Nasrallah said the US will get out of the region humiliated. The minimal retaliation to assassination of General Suleimani is to liberate Iraq from US forces, his eminence addressed crowds at Sayyed Shuhadaa Complex in Beiruts southern suburb, Dahiyeh. He stressed that when this goal is achieved then the liberation of Palestine and Al-Quds will be imminent. Sayyed Nasrallah affirmed, meanwhile, that fair punishment of General Suleimani killers means that US forces, warships and bases must pay the price. We are neither angered nor afraid, but we consider that there is a chance to get rid of the US occupation and hegemony. Assassination and Martyrdom Sayyed Nasrallah paid tribute to General Suleimani as a worldwide great Islamic commander, stressing that the date of his assassination, alongside Iraqs Hashd Shaabi Deputy Commander Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, represents a new stage not only for Iran and Iraq but for the entire region. He also praised Al-Muhandis as a dear and great commander. Suleimani has achieved his personal goal. Embracing martyrdom was his wish since he was young In the last years he spent many nights weeping while remembering martyrs as he was missing them. His eminence offered condolences to the families and relatives of the two commanders. Martyrdom is one of two glorious things. Its either victory or martyrdom. The day of martyrdom of General Suleimani and Al-Muhandis is another sample of victory of blood over sword. In the school of Imam Hussein (a.s) and Sayyeda Zeinab (a.s.) we adore martyrdom and we dont see but beauty. Hezbollah S.G. then elaborated what happened early Friday, saying that General Suleimani left Lebanon for Damascus on Thursday and then to Baghdad, where he was received by Al-Muhandis. As they rode the cars they were brutally targeted by US precise missiles that led to total destruction of the vehicles, Sayyed Nasrallah said, noting that all people in the cars turned into body parts that were hard to be identified. Few hours, Pentagon claimed responsibility for the strike, and US President Donald Trump himself said that he ordered the attack, Sayyed Nasrallah added. We are before a clear crime and not a mysterious one, something which indicates two things: The first is that all previous attempts to covertly assassinate General Suleimani have failed, and the second is related to conditions our region has been witnessing especially in Iraq. Trumps Foreign Policy a Failure We are before a clear crime and not a mysterious one, something which indicates two things: The first is that all previous attempts to covertly assassinate General Suleimani have failed, and the second is related to conditions our region has been witnessing especially in Iraq. Sayyed Nasrallah then talked about failure of Trumps foreign policy, noting that the US President is confused as his term nears its end. Throughout three years of his administration Trump has failed to reach the goals he set at the beginning of his term. All forms of pressure by Trump have failed to subdue Iran. All what he wanted is to get Iran into negotiation table. And now his term will end without achieving this goal. In Syria, there is a clear confusion, the latest of which is abandoning Trumps allies (the Kurds). In addition to the unclear decision, whether he wants to withdraw troops or redeploy them in a bid to protect oil fields there. In Lebanon, and despite all money spent in a bid to distort the Resistance image the US administration failed to dictate its conditions on the country. He noted, meanwhile that the same thing applies in Yemen, Afghanistan and Palestine, Sayyed Nasrallah added. Iraq and Attempts to Create Strife with Iran He (Trump) is so transparent since he is arrogant and doesnt recognize international community. He repeatedly said that the US wants to take over the Iraqi oil. And when he was asked about the state in Iraq he used to say there was no state there. He added that Washington used the Takfiri group, ISIL, as a pretext to return to Iraq and reestablish bases there. This scheme has been foiled as ISIL was defeated, Sayyed Nasrallah said, underlining the major role played by General Suleimani and Al-Muhandis in confronting the terrorist group. After ISIL defeat, national Iraqi factions won the parliamentary elections and a new government was formed by Mr. Adel Abdul Mahdi, and they refused to be part of the anti-Iran campaign, as it also refused the deal of the century. Therefore the Americans felt that they would lose Iraq. Sayyed Nasrallah added that Washington then tried to sue discord between Iraq and Iran and to drag Iraq into civil war. Hezbollah S.G. also talked about US administration failure in Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. In his new election campaign all what he talks about are the $400 Billion he took from Saudi Arabia, arms deals with Arab states which worth tens of billions of dollars, and transferring the US embassy from Tel Aviv into Al-Quds (Jerusalem). Suleimani Central Figure in Axis of Resistance Returning to assassination of General Suleimani, Sayyed Nasrallah stressed that the US strike which killed the top Iranian commander is not isolated incident and represents the beginning of a new approach adopted by Trump administration. They (Trump administration) settled on assassinating Suleiman who is a central figure in the Axis of Resistance, Sayyed Nasrallah said, noting that he warned the Iranian general of attempts to kill him. Sayyed Nasrallah underlined the major role played by General Suleimani across the region countries from Palestine to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan, noting that he has posed an existential threat to the Zionist entity. Israel considers Suleimani as the most dangerous man. But it couldnt dare to kill him. So it resorted to the US to do so. Retaliation The retaliation for the assassination of Suleimani has already started in both Iran and Iraq, Sayyed Nasrallah said. The US goal behind assassinating Suleimani was to terrify Iran and subdue it. However the confrontation has already started since Imam Khameneis speech in which the Supreme Leader vowed severe revenge. Meanwhile, in Iraq the US was hoping to create atmosphere of fear and strife with Iran, Sayyed Nasrallah said, noting that tis goal was foiled as the Iraqis took to streets and held joint funeral for both Iraqi and Iranian martyrs. In this context, Sayyed Nasrallah said that now there are calls in Iraq for US withdrawal, noting that the eyes are now on the Iraqi parliament. He hoped that the Iraqi parliament will approve a bill to get the US troops out of the Arab country. The minimal retaliation for assassination of General Suleimani and Al-Muhandis is to expel foreign forces from Iraq and liberate it from US troops. Sayyed Nasrallah said. His eminence noted, meanwhile, that the responsibility of the Axisi of Resistance now is to go forward in face of US goals to terrify us, and to coordinate between each other and come closer in a bid to strengthen our capabilities. Suleimani is not only an Iranian figure. He is all of the Axisi if Resistance: Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan and every country which has Resistance supporters. Iran can retaliate as it pleases, but this doesnt exempt the Axis of Resistance from retaliation on its behalf, Sayyed Nasrallah said, stressing that such retaliation is not at the request of the Islamic Republic. Fair Punishment Referring to the word fair punishment Sayyed Nasrallah had earlier used in his statement shortly after the martyrdom of the two commanders, his eminence stressed that there is no equivalent figure to General Suleimani. Suleimanis shoe is worth more than Trumps head. Fair punishment means that US forces, bases and warships must pay the price. In this context, Sayyed Nasrallah noted that US civilians must not be targeted because such move serves the interests of Trump. The US forces will leave our region humiliated, defeated and terrified. The martyrs who blew themselves up and forced the US troops out of the region in the past, are now many more. Avenging Suleimani and Al-Muhandis must be through the expulsion of all US forces from our region. When we accomplish this goal, then we dont need a battle to liberate Palestine, and the Zionist will pack their bags and leave. If the people of our region head in this direction When US coffins come back to their country When the US officers who came to the region vertically will return back horizontally, at that time, Trump and his administration will realize that they lost the region and lost the elections. Those idiots dont know what did they do!  The fair punishment in sake of Suleimani will also be a fair punishment in sake of Imad Mughniyeh, Mustafa Badriddine, Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis and all other martyrs. At the end of his speech, Sayyed Nasrallah reiterated that he is happy for General Suleimani because he fulfilled his wish of martyrdom, noting that we are neither angry, nor afraid, but we consider his blood an opportunity to expel the US from the region. O most honorable people We will continue the path and triumph at last, his eminence concluded his speech. Source: Al-Manar English Website Do you agree or disagree? Post your comment here



The original source of this article is Information Clearing House - Press TV contributed to this report
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Global medical robotic systems market revenue is expected to reach USD 17.89 billion by 2022, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Key drivers of this market include the increasing demand for robotic surgeries, constant improvement in healthcare infrastructure in emerging economies, improving reimbursement policies and increasing awareness levels amongst healthcare establishments, and practitioners.

According to data published by the U.S. FDA in 2012, approximately 450,000 robotic assisted surgeries were performed. The increase in prevalence of cancer, neurological disorders, spinal disorders, and prostate disorders are expected to further propel the demand for minimally invasive surgeries and consequently boost market growth.

Further key findings from the report suggest:

The introduction of new generation robotic systems integrated with advanced data recorders, remote navigation systems, HD microscopic cameras, data analytic systems, motion sensors; 3D-Imaging and robotic controlled catheters are further expected to boost demand over the forecast period

Surgical robots was the largest product segment at over 60.0% in 2014, owing to the increasing number of robotic surgeries performed and increase in patient acceptance pertaining to assisted minimally invasive surgeries.

Non medical hospital robotic systems are identified as the fastest growing product segment. Key factors accounting for this rapid growth include growing interest in telemedicine robots and cart robots which improve the automation in the hospital sector and also improve the patient care.

On the basis of application, laparoscopy enabled systems accounted for the largest revenue share at 80.0% in 2014. Increase in geriatric population and rise in the prevalence of neurological disorders such as brain tumors, strokes, and spinal disorders are some factors expected to drive segment growth over the forecast period.

In 2014, North America was the largest regional market with revenue share valued at over 40% owing to, the presence of advanced healthcare infrastructure, increasing demand for robot assisted surgeries, better reimbursement policies and the increasing geriatric population.

Asia Pacific market is the most lucrative in terms of future growth. The presence of high unmet medical needs, growth in public and private healthcare investment, improving reimbursement framework, and the increasing healthcare expenditure levels.

The global industry share is majorly dominated by companies such as Intuitive Surgical Inc., Mazor Robotics and Hansen.

Other players like Accuray, S.R.L, Health robotics Varian, Reninshaw Plc. have developed products and applications catering to certain niche areas to establish market domination.

Request a Sample Copy of the Global Medical Robotic Systems Market Research Report @

www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/medical-robotic-systems-market/request/rs1

Grand View Research has segmented the Medical Robotic Systems market on the basis of product, application and region:

Product Outlook (Revenue in USD Million, 2012 - 2022)

Surgical Robots Orthopedic Surgical Robots



iBlock surgical system Robodoc surgical system Navio PFS surgical system MAKO RIO surgical system Stanmore Sculptor surgical system Neurosurgical Robotic Systems Pathfinder surgical system NeuroMate surgical system Renaissance surgical system Laparoscopy Robotic Systems FreeHand endoscope holder system Da Vinci robotic surgery system Telelap ALF-X surgical system Steerable Robotic Catheters

Rehabilitation Robots Assistive Robots Prosthetics Orthotics Therapeutic Robots Exoskeleton Robotic Systems

Noninvasive Radiosurgery Robots TrueBeam STx radiosurgery system CyberKnife robotic radiosurgery system Gamma Knife Perfexion radiosurgery system

Hospital and Pharmacy Robots Telemedicine Robots I.V. Robots Pharmacy Robots Cart transportation robots

Emergency response robotic systems LS-1 robotic system Auto Pulse Plus robotic system



Application Outlook (Revenue in USD Million, 2012 - 2022)

Neurology

Orthopedics robotic systems

Laparoscopy

Special Education

Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2012 - 2022)

North America U.S. Canada

Europe Germany UK

Asia Pacific Japan China

Latin America Mexico Brazil

MEA South Africa



Access full research report on global medical robotic systems market:

www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/medical-robotic-systems-market
Instagrammers are openly selling banned anabolic steroids to body-conscious men who desire the muscular 'Love Island' look.

The Class-C drugs can be bought via the app by simply searching for the word 'steroids' or by looking up the names of brands.

Various hashtags are used to advertise the drugs, including 'performance enhancement' and 'anabolic'.

Instagrammers are openly selling banned anabolic steroids to body-conscious men who desire the muscular 'Love Island' look (there is no suggestion any Love Island contestants used steroids)

Hashtags such as 'bodybuildingmotivation' and 'backdayworkout' are used by sellers advertising Dianabol which can be either ingested or injected, analysis by The Times found.

One seller urged his 4,000 followers to message him to buy the drugs via pictures of the injectable liquids and pills he was selling.

Anabolic steroids can cause major health problems including liver malfunction, heart problems and skin infections.

The Class-C drugs can be bought via the app by simply searching for the word 'steroids' or by looking up the names of brands (stock image)

They also increase the risk of baldness, developing prostate cancer, severe acne and stomach pain.

HOW DO STEROIDS WORK? Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS), also known as image and performance-enhancing drugs (IPEDs), are synthetically produced versions of the naturally occurring male sex hormone testosterone. The term 'anabolic' refers to muscle-building whilst 'androgenic' refers to increased male sexual characteristics; 'steroids' refer to the class of drug. Male hormones such as testosterone and its metabolite di-hydrotestosterone are responsible for the developmental changes that occur within the male body through adolescence such as increased body mass, facial and body hair, oily skin, acne and mood swings. Whether AAS are injected or taken orally they work by mimicking testosterone. When they enter the blood stream they attach to specific receptors at cell level. This allows them to enter the nucleus of the cell, which in turn helps the cell to create and retain more protein. This process is called protein synthesis. It is this construction of new proteins that is associated with increased muscle size and strength. Steroids can also support muscle growth by other means i.e. increasing levels of free androgens, increasing human growth hormone production and insulin-like growth factor. They may also stop the body entering a catabolic state where muscle would be broken down and size diminishes. Source: IPED Info, Public Health Wales Advertisement

They can cause psychological disturbances too, such as dependence, depression and body-image disorders.

But the drugs are popular as they enable users to train harder and bulk up with instant results.

The drugs - which can only be sold by pharmacists if the patient has a prescription - can be imported and exported for personal use but only if a person carries them, meaning they cannot be posted.

The penalty for supplying or selling anabolic steroids is an unlimited fine, or even a prison sentence.

Figure from the NHS showed that hospital admissions for poisoning related to steroids has increased to 132 between 2018 and 2019 - from 101 in 2014 to 2015.

Clinical senior lecturer at Imperial College London Dr Channa Jayasena told The Times that the 'Love Island effect' has put young men under pressure to attain muscular bodies.

He said: 'The tragedy is that the users who are often taking steroids for complex personal reasons related to body dysmorphia, they're not happy with their own self-image.

'But they have no idea about the doses. There is clearly a need for greater controls on social media.'

Ian Hamilton, a lecturer in addiction at the University of York, told MailOnline in 2017: 'The effect of social and mainstream media is incremental, in that for many young people these images can become their normal point of reference as to how they should look and, more importantly, steroids offer a quick way to achieve this look.

'It's no coincidence that we've seen a rise in people using it as social media has become more popular. The concern is that for that for this generation it becomes their main source of information and point of reference.

Anabolic steroids, which can only be sold by pharmacists if the patient has a prescription, can cause major health problems (stock image)

'Particularly for more marginalised people these virtual social media accounts become the norm, so vulnerable young men (and women) will use them.

'It's a really nasty drug as it produces all sorts of unwanted effects. Although it allows users to bulk up, that comes at a high cost. It causes liver damage, cardiovascular problems, mental health problems, mood swings, increased aggression and even sexual abuse.

'Initially men get bulkier and see their sex drive go up but then it reduces and so does the sperm count, and sperm count quality.'

It is possible to purchase the drugs freely online without needing to go on the dark web.

Steroids are a prescription only drug in the UK but is not an offence to possess or import steroids for personal use.

Mr Hamilton said this 'needed to be looked at' and said young people should be made more aware of the dangers of the drug.

A Facebook company spokesperson said: 'We dont allow the sale or purchase of illegal or prescription drugs on Instagram and we work closely with the police to detect and keep illegal material off our platform.

'We encourage anyone report this kind of content immediately so we can review and take appropriate action.'
The ex-national security adviser came to the decision after careful consideration and study.

US President Donald Trumps former national security adviser, John Bolton, said on Monday that he is willing to testify in the expected Senate impeachment trial of the president in a surprise development that could complicate a weeks-long dispute over how the trial would play out.

If the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify, Bolton said in a prepared statement. He declined further comment.

Democrats have been pressing for Bolton and three senior administration officials to testify as part of the Senate trial. Trumps fellow Republicans have held firm that any decision on witness testimony at the Senate trial must wait until after opening statements are heard.

I have posted a brief statement regarding testimony on the Ukraine impeachment matter before the Senate at: https://t.co/Q3TwI2BzBp  John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) January 6, 2020

John Bolton should testify, Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said on Twitter.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi  the top Democrat in Congress  has yet to send the House-approved articles of impeachment to the Senate, putting a question mark over the schedule for a trial and buying time for Democrats to try to build the case for witnesses.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, whom Pelosi accuses of working to protect the president, has said a trial cannot begin until the charges are formally sent to the chamber, although another senior Republican called on Sunday for the rules to be changed if Pelosi does not act soon.

Were not going to let Nancy Pelosi use the rules of the Senate to her advantage, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, told Fox News Channel.

Without the articles in hand, McConnell said on Friday that senators would focus on ordinary business  in Mondays case, a nomination for a new head of the Small Business Administration.

The earliest the House could take any action would be on Tuesday when it reconvenes, but top Democrats have given no sign they are set to move this week.

I dont think its going to be indefinite, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a Democrat, told CNN on Sunday when asked about the delay in transmitting the impeachment articles.

The Democratic-led House has charged Trump with abusing his power for personal gain by asking Ukraine to announce a corruption investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic nomination to face Trump in Novembers presidential election.

It also charged the president with obstructing Congress by directing administration officials and agencies not to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.

Trump says he did nothing wrong and has dismissed his impeachment as a partisan bid to undo his 2016 election win.

The Senate, which is controlled by Republicans 53-47, is unlikely to vote to find the president guilty and remove him from office, an act that would take a two-thirds majority.

Democrats have been hopeful they could persuade a few Republicans to side with them on their push for witnesses, which would require only a simple majority and could unearth evidence damaging to Trump.
The police in Ondo State have confirmed the abduction of a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Sunday.

James Ajulo was kidnapped at his residence in Ibaka quarters in Akungba Akoko, Akoko South West Local Government Area.

It was gathered that after ransacking his house, the hoodlums drove Mr Ajulo away in his own car.

Mr Ajulo is the factional chairman of the APC at Ward 13, Akoko South-West LGA of the state.

His friend, Tolu Babaleye, who witnessed the incident, explained that kidnappers laid an ambush for him near his house.

They ransacked his house after which they took him away in his own car, Mr Babaleye said. They used the Toyota Sienna car they came with as a backup to escape from the scene.

They shot sporadically in the air to scare away residents which aided their escape from the town, he added.

He stated that the kidnappers were yet to establish any contact with the victims family, but the matter had been reported at the Akungba Police Division.

Meanwhile, the Police Public Relations Officer, Ondo State Police Command, Femi Joseph, said investigation had begun into the development as police detectives had been mobilised towards rescuing the victim.

Kidnapping has become so regular in the state and its environs to the extent that some have gone unreported.

READ ALSO:

PREMIUM TIMES observes that reactions to reports of kidnapping are beginning to die down with every new case.

Two catholic priests were recently kidnapped while on their way to a wedding along Owo-Akoko road.

Also, a child was kidnapped at a popular church in November in Akure. The police are yet to find him, even though some persons are currently being prosecuted.
F1 could soon add Saudi Arabia to the race calendar.

That is the news from Flavio Briatore, who some years ago helped to broker the deal that took the sport to Azerbaijan.

Referring to Saudi Arabia, the former Renault boss told Rai radio: "It is a country that has had an incredible evolution in the last two years.

"It is opening up in an extraordinary way and there are now great opportunities for investment. As far as I know, they are already talking," Briatore added.

(GMM)
MOSCOW - Some of the loudest critics of President Donald Trump's order to kill a senior Iranian commander - other than Iranians - are Russian officials, who have denounced it as an illegal assassination and a politically motivated election-year decision.

But might Russia benefit from a move that analysts say could see the United States leaving Iraq, much as it benefited in Syria after Trump ordered a troop pullout there last fall, a step that was later partly reversed?

Speaking to French President Emmanuel Macron Friday, President Vladimir Putin warned Friday's targeted killing of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani would seriously destablize the region. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cast it as illegal and counter-productive to his counterparts in China, Turkey and Iran, as well as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet Putin in Moscow Saturday at his invitation, to discuss the crisis.

The strike could see the United States pulled deeper into Iraq to defend against threatened Iranian reprisals, despite its plans to draw down forces there and elsewhere. But the opposite could also happen: U.S. forces might pull out if the Iraqi government demands it, as Iraq's parliament called on it to do Sunday. Or Trump might decide he does not want to risk a dangerous quagmire in an election year.

A hasty U.S. departure would give Iran what it has sought for years, analysts said. But they noted that it could also create a void for Russia to exploit, although it is more likely to do so through diplomatic overtures, trade deals and arms sales than by taking up any military slack.

"Under the circumstances of a forced and precipitous U.S. withdrawal, a power vacuum would emerge that would benefit Iran and Russia the most," said Michael Carpenter, managing director of the Penn-Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement and a former Pentagon deputy assistant secretary on Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia.

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations tweeted that the strike would see U.S. military and diplomats leaving Iraq, either because Iraq demanded it or they were too much of a target or both. "One sure result of the US strike is that the era of US-Iraq cooperation is over," he wrote Friday, adding Monday that Trump's "Truly counter-productive" threats against Iraq made it more likely U.S. forces would have to leave.

For Russia, there is a major difference between Syria, its decades-long ally, and Iraq, where the Kremlin's footprint has been limited since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad asked Putin to intervene as the Islamic State and anti-government rebels threatened his power. When Putin agreed, many warned Russia could be bogged down in an intractable, expensive war that could make it more of a target for the extremists.

The man who argued Assad's case to Russian defense and security officials - and convinced them the war was still winnable - was Soleimani, who traveled to Moscow in July 2015, unfurled a map of Syria on the table and explained what could be done to prevent Assad's regime from falling, according to a Reuters report at the time citing a senior regional official. The following April, Reuters cited a senior Iranian official reporting that Soleimani met with Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow to discuss deliveries of Russian missiles to Syria. According to media reports from 2015 to 2017, he traveled numerous times to Moscow in breach of a U.N. travel ban.

Moscow officials have never admitted that such meetings took place. But Soleimani's mission paid off for Russia, saving its strategic naval base in Tartus on Syria's Mediterranean coast. Russia also expanded its military foothold on Europe's doorstep, gaining use of the nearby Hmeimim air base and establishing what some in NATO see as an air defense zone in the region.

Russia's Defense Ministry sent condolences to Iraq on Soleimani's death and paid tribute to his "well-deserved authority and significant influence" in the region. "His personal merits in the fight against ISIS in Syria are undeniable," it said in a statement.

Carpenter said Russian security officials worked well with Soleimani because they had values in common with him.

"They shared the same beliefs in neo-imperialism and power politics. Soleimani didn't really fit the mold of a religious zealot or mullah," he said. "The Russian intelligence and military apparatus could thus relate to him, and they also admired him for his shrewd strategic outlook and mastery of hybrid warfare."

Putin's strategic goals include rebuilding Russian power after its retreat in the 1990s; creating global alliances designed to counter U.S. influence; and inserting the country in strategic regions such as the Middle East as the party no one can afford to ignore.

He has shown willingness to take surprising risks to widen Russia's geopolitical clout, moving into regions abandoned or neglected by the United States. But he is considered to be wary of trying to repeat his Syrian triumph in Iraq, even if invited. The United States' long unhappy Iraq mission illustrates the challenges.

Moscow's relations with Baghdad have warmed in recent years. Diplomats meet regularly, announcing energy and arms deals. Russian energy giants Lukoil, Gazprom and Rosneft all operate in Iraq.

Eugene Rumer, former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia and director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Russia and Eurasia program, is skeptical that Russia would intervene militarily, even if U.S. forces do suddenly leave Iraq.

"If there was a fundamental breach between the United States and Iraq, I think it's more likely they would use that moment diplomatically," he said. "They might send in military advisers. They have sold weapons to Iraq and they might sell more. They might sign some trade deals."

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Russia would not be slow to exploit tension between Washington and Baghdad over the Soleimani killing, Carpenter said.

"A weakened U.S. relationship with Iraq allows Russia to cement its already-warming ties to Baghdad and augments Russia's role as the premier power broker across the Middle East," he said.

Russia's view is that the strike was illegal under international law, because it took place without the permission of the host country and involved the killing of a senior official in a U.N. member state. The subtext of its message is about U.S. hypocrisy when it condemns Russian breaches of international law, for example in its 2014 annexation of Crimea. According to Anatol Lieven, an expert on global terrorism and the former Soviet Union based at Georgetown University's campus in Doha, the argument has traction in many places.

"Already across most of the world, including virtually all my own students from the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, people see no difference between U.S. and Russian international behavior when it comes to aggression, illegality and immorality," he said.

Russian officials have also suggested that Trump's real motive was political, as he faces impeachment in an election year.

"For the moment at least it takes the attention of the American media and international media away from things like Ukraine and Russian meddling and it puts the spotlight on President Trump as this erratic, not very responsible loose cannon who is prepared to do whatever it takes, not so much to protect the United States but to take away the spotlight from the impeachment trial and to change domestic dynamics. So I think this plays well for the Russians," Rumer said. "It raises the question of the real rationale behind the strikes and it makes Putin look like the more responsible leader."

If there is a regional crisis, Russia stands to benefit from increased global oil prices, although Lieven said Russia would not want to see prices go too high for too long.

"Assuming that Iran does strike back, then Saudi refineries, ports and tankers will definitely be targets," he said. "The question is whether . . . Iran now has the capacity to inflict such massive damage that oil prices will rocket and stay high for a prolonged period, producing another global recession."

Lieven said that higher oil prices would benefit Russia in the short term but added: "The lessons of the 1970s and 80s would tend to suggest that in the longer run, global recession brings prices down again very radically. Moreover, another oil shock would increase further moves in Europe and China to reduce dependence on oil."
As Bahrain celebrates the centenary of the establishment of the banking sector, the contributions of Bahraini women have become more salient in various areas of this sector that includes traditional and Islamic banks and retail banks.

Bahraini women have also asserted a prominent presence in the non-banking financial sector, which includes insurance, banking, finance, market brokers, capitals, other non-banking companies and the financial services support sector.

Women working in the banking sector receive attention from the Supreme Council for Women headed by Her Royal Highness Princess Sabeeka bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa, the wife of HM the King.

Bahraini Women's Day in 2015 was dedicated to celebrating women in the financial and banking sector, during which the reality of women in the sector was highlighted through several activities and events. The spotlight was also put on the contributions of Bahraini women in the field of financial and banking work, highlighting their successes and applauding their accomplishments since they entered the sector more than 50 years ago, continuously accomplishing outstanding achievements.

The percentage of Bahraini women in the total Bahraini workforce in the financial sector has now reached 39 per cent in, up from 38 per cent in 2016, according to the last annual survey of the Bahrain Central Bank.

The number of Bahrainis in the financial services sector is 9,285 employees, representing 65.6 per cent of the total number in the sector.

The survey showed that the total number of Bahraini female employees in the financial sector has increased by 79 jobs, or 2.2 per cent compared with 2016.

The number of Bahraini women employees reached 3,621 employees at the end of 2018 compared with 3,542 in 2017. The percentage of Bahraini women holding administrative positions was 33.2 per cent of the total number held by Bahrainis at the end of 2018, up from 32.2 per cent at the end of 2017.

The number of male and female Bahrainis who hold senior management positions including general managers, executive managers, managers and assistant managers reached 3,156 at the end of 2018.

The number of Bahrainis holding supervisory positions was 1,839 in the same year, while 409 Bahrainis (377 men and 32 women) were board members of financial institutions (47 per cent of the total).

The increasing presence of women in the banking sector clearly demonstrates that they are steadily assuming greater roles normally and without obstacles or discrimination. In fact, their ratio puts the financial and banking sector at the forefront of the national economic sectors attracting women.

According to a study, commissioned by the Supreme Council for Women in 2015, the percentage of Bahraini women on boards of directors was about 10 per cent of the total members of Bahraini board directors in the financial and banking sector.

Women held 12 per cent of positons as senior executive positions, 17 per cent as department heads, 32 per cent as assistant directors, 38 per cent as assistant directors and 45 per cent as senior officials, according to the 2015 data.

The figures show that Bahraini women have hold a large number of leading positions in the financial and banking sector in Bahrain.

This study concluded that the financial and banking institutions in Bahrain do not discriminate between men and women in terms of benefits and opportunities offered to employees.

It showed that 67 per cent of the financial and banking sector institutions are committed to implementing the principle of equal opportunities and the integration of women's needs in the regulations and laws, and specifically in policies and recruitment procedures.

Bahraini women have managed to accomplish long-standing achievements in the financial and banking sector. They have actively contributed to the consecration of Bahrain's role as a leading regional and global financial center thanks to their numerous achievements and success stories.

Bahraini women have proven that they are able to take on important and pioneering roles in the financial and banking sector, through performing their duties efficiently.

This competence coupled with a strong determination has empowered them to reach leadership positions in their companies within the principle of equal opportunities, which is an indication of positive changes in any society.

The dedicated endeavors to integrate Bahraini women as commendable partners in the nation-building and modernization processes have led to positive results.

Bahraini women have been able to achieve many honorable accomplishments in every area of the financial and banking sector.
Oil prices added to recent gains on Monday, with Brent nearly at $70 a barrel as escalating tensions in the Middle East fanned worries about disruptions to supplies.

Brent crude futures rose to a high of $69.95 a barrel and were at $69.65 a barrel at 0016 GMT, up $1.05, or 1.5%, from Friday's settlement.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was at $63.86 a barrel, up 81 cents, or 1.3%, after touching an intraday high of $64.27.

Oil prices jumped more than 3% on Friday after the United States killed a top Iranian commander in an air strike on Baghdad airport.

The Iraqi government on Sunday called on American and other foreign troops to leave Iraq, heightening concerns of a widening Middle East conflict that may disrupt oil supplies from the region.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened "major retaliation" against Iran if Tehran were to retaliate for the killing.

"The assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani will trigger a long cycle of regional escalation with significant risks to U.S. assets and Mideast energy infrastructure that nevertheless stop short of war," Eurasia Group analyst Ayham Kamel said in a note.

"But the risk of limited conflict is real. It would include substantial Iranian attacks on Gulf energy targets and direct naval clashes between the U.S. and Iran."

The Middle East accounts for nearly half of the world's oil production, while Iraq is the second largest producer among the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Making Democracy Work: What's Ahead for 2020?

Advocacy has expanded behind testifying at the legislature to also include ballot proposals and lawsuits. What does this mean for local Leagues? Sue Smith, vice president for advocacy of the LWV of Michigan, will explain advocacy in 2020 at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 14 at Creative 360, 1517 Bayliss St., Midland. This program is presented by the LWV of the Midland Area.

The League of Women Voters is a national political organization that encourages the informed and active participation of citizens in their government, works to increase understanding of major public policy issues, and influences public policy through education and advocacy. The League is non-partisan and as an organization does not endorse or oppose candidates or political parties.

For more information contact Kim Steinke at 989-488-2296.
A bitter experience on a train in 1974 in Nis, a border town between what is now Serbia and Bulgaria, turned N R Narayana Murthy into a "compassionate capitalist", leading him to create Infosys, the country's IT bellwether.

Recalling the incident, Murthy said he was engaged in a conversation with a girl, who could only understand French, but it landed him in trouble.

"We were talking about life in Bulgaria. I think the boy, who was accompanying the girl, got upset with us for some reason. So, he went and brought the police," Murthy said on Sunday while addressing the audience at a tech fest organized by IIT, Bombay, through a video link.

The Bulgarian guards took Murthy's passport, luggage and dragged him on the platform. He was kept in an 8X8 room, with primitive toilet facilities, for a few days.

"I thought they would open the door in the morning and get me some breakfast since I was the state guest, but nothing happened. I lost all hope of eating anything," he said.

The next morning, police took Murthy to the platform and pushed him into the guard's compartment of a departing freight train. At this point, Murthy had not had anything to eat or drink for five days in a row.

The guards said, "Look, you are from a friendly country called India, so we are letting you go but we will give you your passport when you reach Istanbul."

If a country treats friends like this, Murthy thought to himself, he would not want to be part of a communist country ever.

"That cued me from being a confused leftist to a determined compassionate capitalist," he said.

That incident pushed Murthy towards taking the plunge into entrepreneurship.

He said his first attempt at entrepreneurship was a company called Softronics focused on providing IT services to the domestic market, in Pune, which he closed as he could not see any future prospects.
New rules for Torontos Uber and Lyft drivers are now in effect, yet one of the most vital changes meant to improve public safety is still in development  and wont be fully implemented until next year.

When council amended the vehicle-for-hire rules last July, it made it mandatory for all drivers to complete a city-approved training program, a requirement it highlighted in a Jan. 2 press release, among other major changes.

The city, however, has yet to complete the requirements of the course, meaning its not yet available to drivers and likely wont be until at least February.

The revisions to the bylaw state new drivers dont have to prove theyve taken the course until June 1 and drivers who are already licensed have until the end of the year.

The really critical part of that whole package is the training, said Cheryl Hawkes, whose son, Nicholas Cameron, 28, was killed while travelling in an Uber vehicle in 2018.

Hawkes son and his girlfriend were en route to Pearson airport when their driver, Abdihared Bishar-Mussa, 23, pulled over on the Gardiner Expressway after his cellphone fell to the floor. While pulling back into a live lane, the car was struck by another vehicle.

It was Bishar-Mussas second day driving for Uber. He lost his licence for a year after pleading guilty to careless driving and was also ordered to take a remedial driving course, sentenced to two years of probation and fined $1,000.

Hawkes has pushed for safety training and other measures following her sons death.

Its a plan to do something and theyre being very slow to develop it, she said. I dont know if our roads are going to be safer.

The training will also be mandatory for taxi drivers, after council scrapped training for those drivers in 2016 in an attempt by Mayor John Tory to level the playing field as companies such as Uber, already operating in the city, were brought under a regulatory regime.

Fiona Chapman, the citys director of business licensing and regulatory services, told the Star in an email the city is working with Centennial College to develop a training requirement package that would see courses administered by third parties approved by the city with the help of an expert review panel.

Chapman said the city expects to release that package to any interested vendors in February. Its not clear when drivers would be able to begin taking the course.

The training will be in-depth and will need to cover a range of topics  including transporting passengers in a safe manner; driving in an urban setting; providing accessible service; anti-racism, diversity and sensitivity; and legal requirements, Chapman said.

When asked how the city will keep track of training compliance, Chapman said the city has an audit system that will allow officials to verify who has completed training on a random or selected basis.

As for why the training program was not ready to roll out Jan. 1 when the new rules took effect, Chapman said city staff are following councils direction.

Some of the amendments can be implemented fairly quickly, while other changes need more time to be done correctly, she said.

To ensure that new drivers have enough lead time to take the training before applying for a vehicle-for-hire driver or private transportation company drivers licence, the report recommended that new drivers will need to provide proof of training from June 1, 2020, onwards.

Beck Taxis Kristine Hubbard, who says they havent been consulted about the training, was critical of the citys approach.

Its a hands-off, non-caring, uninterested effort, she said.

After council cancelled training for taxi drivers in 2016, Beck, on its own initiative, created mandatory training for its drivers in collaboration with Centennial College, including an in-car defensive driving component.

She said that standard should be in place for all drivers.

Other rules effective as of Jan. 1 include an increase in the years of experience drivers require  now a minimum of three years up from one  and that drivers need to securely mount all hand-held devices.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Uber said the company has been working closely with the city to ensure we are in compliance with the requirements that are taking effect in 2020.

Along with working with cities to ensure were compliant with municipal regulations, we are continuously investing in safety at Uber through our policies, practices and the product features we offer on our platform for riders and drivers, said the email.

Lyft did not respond to questions from the Star.

Both companies made significant lobbying efforts in the lead-up to the July 2019 vote that saw the regulations amended, but lobbying after the vote has been non-existent as the city develops a training program.

When council approved the updated rules for vehicle-for-hire drivers in July, one member, Coun. Gord Perks (Ward 4, Parkdale-High Park), unsuccessfully moved to ban Uber and similar companies, saying the proposed changes didnt go far enough.

Their business model depends on being able to get a precarious workforce in and out as quickly as possible and that doesnt work if you require that precarious workforce to be well trained in how to operate safely, he said.

At the same meeting, Coun. Paula Fletcher (Ward 14, Toronto-Danforth) said she knew Cameron through her kids and witnessed the devastation his friends felt after his death.

We let them all down. We let him down, she said of councils original decision to approve the regulation of private transportation companies like Uber without certain safety measures in place.

I think we are taking a few steps in the right direction, but for me its not fast enough, strong enough or sharp enough.

Hawkes told the Star she worries about what form the new safety training will take  how long the course will be and whether there will be an in-person component or if it will be solely online.

Any concern that requiring more rigorous training would degrade services such as Uber doesnt sit well with her. She recently saw the clip of her sons crash on the news again.

I look at a video of my son in the car and I dont know how you could degrade it any further, she said. Thats the bottom line for me.

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The Top 100 Symposium invites the New York wine community to meet the winemakers and to taste the top-scoring wines from the Top 100 Wineries of 2019.

After 16 years hosting the Top 100 Tasting in San Francisco, Wine & Spirits Magazine now brings the best of the best to New York City.

On January 14th, 2020, the Top 100 Symposium invites the New York wine community to meet the winemakers and to taste the top-scoring wines from the Top 100 Wineries of 2019. To match these remarkable wines, chefs from the Wine & Spirits WSNY restaurants will serve delicious pairings throughout the event. Wine amateurs, trade members and media are welcome at Union Park Events, on East 17th Street at Fifth Avenue in New York.

The Top 100 Symposium will feature tasting and discussions with winemakers from participating Top 100 Wineries around the world. All will be pouring their top-scoring wines of 2019, selected from 11,500 wines through a rigorous double-blind tasting process. Through the afternoon and evening tasting, Wine & Spirits editors will partner up with attending winemakers to take event attendees on ten-minute explorations of individual wines, sharing discussions of how the wine ties back to its vineyard.

Meet some of the winemakers who will be pouring their wines at the Top 100 Symposium:

1. Vittore Alessandria, Fratelli Alessandria

2. Darel Allwine, Col Solare

3. Ben Casteel, Bethel Heights Vineyard

4. Gavin Chanin, Chanin Wine Co.

5. Marty Clubb, LEcole No 41

6. Ross Cobb, Cobb Wines

7. Cathy Corison, Corison Winery

8. Ryan Deovlet, Deovlet Wines

9. Jonatan Garcia Lima, Suertes del Marques

10. Zorik Gharibian, Zorah

11. Jeff Lindsay-Thorsen, W.T. Vintners

12. Jeff Mangahas, Williams Selyem

13. Paolo Meroi, Paolo Meroi

14. Andrea Mullineux, Mullineux

15. Jean-Francois Ott, Domaines Ott

16. Ken Pahlow, Walter Scott

17. Alice Paillard, Champagne Bruno Paillard

18. Luis Pato, Luis Pato

19. Marco Ricasoli, Rocca di Montegrossi

20. Roland Velich, Moric

The event will not only feature highly acclaimed wineries but also the best places to eat and drink in NYC right now. Wine & Spirits magazine invites the chefs behind our current favorite restaurants to showcase delicious food, especially matched to the wines at the event.

Our WSNY restaurants serving food at the Top 100 Symposium include Batard, Camperdown Elm, GAUDir, Jungsik, LAccolade, Nice Martin, Noreetuh, The Dutch and The River Cafe.

Guests can also enjoy oysters from Grand Central Oyster Bar, artisan breads from Lost Bread Co and Orwasher Bakery, and a dish from the International Culinary Center.

In keeping with Wine & Spirits Magazines mission to raise awareness of water conservation issues, proceeds from this event will be donated to NY/NJ Waterkeeper.

Thank you to our sponsors: Willamette Valley, Wine Australia, Morgan Manhattan, Dr Konstantin Frank and Topo Chico.

Tickets to the Wine & Spirits Top 100 Symposium are now available for purchase and include a one-year subscription to the publication. Click here to get yours today.

TICKETS:

VIP Early Entry  5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.: $169 (plus fees)

Top 100 Symposium  6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.: $119 (plus fees)

Trade & Media Session  3:00 p.m.: $80 (plus fees)

Must register first to access discounted trade ticket by clicking here.

For additional information regarding the Top 100 Symposium or to arrange interviews with Editor Joshua Greene, please contact Dana Bruneau at Cuvee & Co. at dana.bruneau@gmail.com or at (907) 306-7094.

____

About Wine & Spirits Magazine

Founded in 1982, Wine & Spirits is published seven times a year and read by over 200,000 members of Americas wine community. Consumers and wine professionals read the magazine for information on established and up-and-coming regions and producers, the art and science of viticulture, industry happenings and food and wine pairing. Wine & Spirits, the only wine publication to win the James Beard award five times for excellence in wine writing, evaluates more than 11,500 bottlings every year.

About NY/NJ Baykeeper

Since 1989, Baykeeper has been the pollution watchdog for the NY/NJ harbor estuary where the Hudson, Hackensack, Passaic, and Raritan rivers meet the ocean. The Top 100 Symposium raises money and awareness for NY/NJ Baykeeper, helping to protect water resources in the most densely populated region of the US, supporting initiatives to fight water pollution. Visit baykeeper.org for more information.
GREENWICH  A Lyft driver had a car window smashed by stones Sunday afternoon, and the Greenwich man who called the ride-sharing service and allegedly threw the stones is now facing two charges, according to police.

An argument arose when the Lyft driver showed up at Flower Lane, and he declined to provide the ride, according to the police report.
The remains of Favour Daley-Oladele, a final-year LASU student who was allegedly murdered for money rituals by her boyfriend, Adeeko Owolabi, at a church in Ikoyi-Ile in Osun State, on December 8, will be buried in Lagos on Tuesday, January 7th.

Her family took the decision to give her a befitting burial after her remains were exhumed by the police for further investigations over the weekend.

Favour, who was in a relationship with Owolabi, was lured to a church at Ikoyi-Ile in Osun State and murdered by Owolabi and his herbalist, Segun Williams.

READ ALSO  The Spirit Did Not Bring Any Money  Prophet Who Aided In The Killing Of LASU Student

The herbalist who disguised as a prophet to aid the killing, urged them to cut her vital organs from her body which was used to prepare concoctions that Owolabi and his mother, Ruth, allegedly drank.

They have all been arrested by the police and would be arraigned to court soon.
Okoi Obono-Obla, former chairman of the Special Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property (SPIP), says he has not been s...





Okoi Obono-Obla, former chairman of the Special Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property (SPIP), says he has not been served a suspension letter.





The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) had declared Obono-Obla wanted after he refused to honour an invitation to answer to allegations of forgery and financial impropriety.





In a letter addressed to him through Boss Mustapha, secretary to the government of the federation in August, President Muhammadu Buhari suspended the former SPIP chairman, pending the conclusion of investigations by the ICPC.





The probe of alleged wrongdoings in the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF) led to Obono-Oblas sack.

But in a Facebook post on Saturday, the ex-SPIP chairman said he is yet to receive an official letter notifying him of his suspension.





He said the federal government sentenced him to a media trial, and that he has not been given fair-hearing on the allegations against him.





I was purportedly suspended as Chairman of the now disbanded Special Presidential Investigation Panel for Recovery of Public Property through an announcement in the media! Until this moment I am yet to be served a letter to that effect, he wrote.





Prior to my suspension there had been two failed attempts to remove me because I was seen as uncompromising, uncontrollable and a non-team player by some people in the upper rung of government. For example on the 25 January, 2019, I received a letter from the Deputy Chief of Staff to the Vice President directing me to suspend the activities of the Panel.





But I simply decided to ignore the letter because the Panel was only answerable to the President and Commander in Chief by virtue of the provisions of the Recovery of Public Property (Special Provisions) Act, 2004 (not to the office of the Vice President). However, I want to state that my purported suspension was indeed a breach of the dictates of fair hearing and the procedure laid down in the Public Service Rules regarding the suspension of a public officer.





Obono-Obla also said the procedure for removing a public servant was not followed in his sack.





In my own case, I was informed in the media of my purported suspension and directed to report myself to ICPC! This is absurd! he wrote.





Under our constitutional/criminal jurisprudence a suspect is presumed innocent till the contrary is proved! Directing me via the media to report to ICPC to prove my innocence tantamounts to prejudging me even before commencement of the investigation of the allegations made against me.





Abubakar Malami, the attorney-general of the federation (AGF), had accused Obono-Obla of carrying out 50 illegal investigations while he was chairman of SPIP.




NASHVILLE, Tenn., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Onsite Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit public charity, today announced its new 2020 initiatives which include educational tools, resources, and workshops for survivors and those affected by mass shootings. The announcement includes a first-of-its kind workshop titled 'Triumph Over Tragedy' that will provide tools, support, trauma-informed therapies and access to top-of-the-line trauma therapists and clinicians, through full scholarships, for survivors of mass shootings to find hope and healing in community.

Beginning today applications open for Triumph Over Tragedy, a six-day workshop taking place March 12-18, 2020 at Onsite in Tennessee. The weeklong workshop will include a number of integrative therapeutic trauma modalities and will be customized for the needs of attendees.

The program has been curated with help from the Foundation's Survivor Advisory Council, a six-person team comprised of mass shooting survivors representing the Columbine, Parkland, Thurston, Charleston, Las Vegas, and Aurora tragedies. Crystal Miller, the Survivor Advisory Council Chair says, "As a survivor of the shootings at Columbine High School, I know firsthand how very few services and resources are available. Survivors are often left alone to not only find good counseling but bear the burdensome costs. It is one of the highest honors of my life to be a small part in offering tangible tools and resources for ongoing mental wellness and support through The Onsite Foundation's Triumph Over Tragedy program."

The Onsite Foundation is also opening applications today for their Life After Loss program, which provides hope and healing for bereaved parents who have lost children to mass shootings, gun violence, suicide, illness, or other tragedies, also available through full scholarship, and helps address the often-overlooked ripple effect of trauma. The Life After Loss program will take place at Onsite in Tennessee April 2-8, 2020. The Onsite Foundation's third program Support in Service, with dates yet to be announced, will focus on first responders and veterans.

According to The Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit that tracks every mass shooting in the country, there has been only one full calendar week without a mass shooting since 2013.

"Due to the overwhelming volume of mass shootings, many of us have sadly become desensitized. Survivors don't have that option," said Miles Adcox, CEO of Onsite. "They often re-experience the pain every time the news cycle reports on the latest tragedy. This underserved community deserves the transformational gift of hope and healing through world-renowned therapeutic resources. It is an honor for Onsite to support The Onsite Foundation's Triumph Over Tragedy program."

The Onsite Foundation has also curated an Advisory Council of leading experts in trauma therapy to advise on best-in-class therapeutic modalities and provide ongoing resources to expand the Foundation's offerings. Led by Adcox, the Council includes Dr. Rebecca Bailey, Ph.D, Director of Transitioning Families; Courtney Leak, social worker, therapist, podcaster, and empowerment speaker; Rokelle Lerner, author and Senior Clinical Advisor for Crossroads Recovery Center; Kathleen A. Murphy, LMFT, Executive Clinical Director of Breath Life Healing Centers; Dr. Kenneth Tullis, award-winning psychiatrist and founder of Suicide Anonymous; Sean Walsh, CEO of The Meadows Behavioral Healthcare; and Cindy Westcott, LCSW, VP of Clinical Services Milestones Trauma Recovery Center.

"After experiencing the ripple effect of these types of traumas in my personal life and professional life, I understood the need to create a safe refuge for survivors to process and heal," says Laura Hutfless, The Onsite Foundation Board Member and Co-Founder of FlyteVu. "Unfortunately, society moves on after the headlines stop, but the pain and trauma last a lifetime. There is hope, and we can ensure every person affected, regardless of race, religion, or socio-economic status, has access to care."

Austin-based social networking app Bumble is donating $25,000 to provide resources for Texas survivors of mass shootings including, but not limited to, Sutherland Springs, Fort Hood, Sante Fe High School, and Odessa-Midland.

Triumph Over Tragedy was inspired and funded in part by the Austin Eubanks Memorial Fund to honor the life of Austin Eubanks, who was a survivor of the 1999 Columbine shooting and a champion for trauma-based causes and programs. Austin's sister Hayley Eubanks says, "Austin's wish was to create a safe community for survivors of mass shootings to offload pain. He often said, "you have to feel it to heal it" and this program will provide survivors a safe place to process, connect, and heal."

As The Onsite Foundation continues to raise additional support and funding, the Foundation plans to launch a phased approach of ongoing offerings and resources for survivors and victims' families during every phase of trauma, including: the Acute Phase (1-3 months post event) and an Intermediate Phase (6-12 months post event). Survivors and parents of victims of mass shootings are eligible for Triumph Over Tragedy and Life After Loss in the Long-Term Phase (12 months post event).

Applications for Triumph Over Tragedy and Life After Loss close February 6, 2020. For more information on how to apply, please visit www.theonsitefoundation.org.

About The Onsite Foundation:

The Onsite Foundation provides trauma-informed counseling and emotional health education that transforms individuals and communities. The Foundation provides free tools and resources, along with full scholarships to best-in-class trauma-informed workshops, to ensure all persons have access to therapies and services regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or socio-economic status. The Onsite Foundation's efforts are focused on vulnerable and underserved populations including survivors of mass shootings, survivors of sex trafficking, refugees, veterans, first responders, and bereaved parents. The Onsite Foundation exists to ensure all persons affected by trauma, abuse, stress, or mental health issues receive the gift of emotional freedom. For more information, visit www.theonsitefoundation.org.

Media Contact

Natalie Logan

[email protected]

SOURCE The Onsite Foundation

Related Links

https://theonsitefoundation.org


Creative cheapskates, rejoice: Nvidia says it will give three free months of Adobe Creative Cloud to people who buy qualifying new RTX Studio PCs.

Nvidia said the offers will begin on January 13 for folks who purchase RTX Studio laptops and desktops such as HPs Envy 32 AiO; Lenovos Legion Y740 Studio Edition; and Acers ConceptD 7 Ezel, ConceptD 7 Ezel Pro and ConceptD 700.

And its not just big OEMs. Nvidia said its also adding system builders such as CyberPowerPC, MainGear, Origin PC and NZXT in the US, along with Scan and MIFCOM in Europe, and Colorful, iPason, NINGMEI and Raytine in China.

Nvidia has been on a tear to build up support for its RTX Studio initiative since introducing it last year at Computex. Its since added 10-bit driver support for GeForce (long overdue), and has received support for RTX Studio from Adobe and AutoDesk.

To score the three free months of Adobe Creative Cloud, Nvidia said consumers have to buy a qualifying desktop or laptop that will come with a code that can be redeemed for the offer. And, yes, if youre already an existing Adobe Creative Cloud customer, you can stack the offer on your plan to net three free months extra. By our estimates, that could be up to $53 a month, or a $159 value if youre on an annual subscription. Thats pretty good, given that most creators are likely planning on buying or already paying for Creative Cloud. It gets sweeter if youre the kind of person who goes month-to-month, which costs $79 a month.

If youre wondering if you can get the offer if you buy a new GeForce RTX card or already own one, the answer is no. Nvidia officials said it must be on a new PC, not a component.
A bizarre accident in Florida has sparked a flurry of reactions on Facebook. The pictures, posted by The West Palm Beach Police Department, show a car submerged in a hotel pool. The bizarre incident and pictures have prompted a barrage of some concerned and some hilarious reactions among netizens.

In case youre wondering what happened, the post explains that the driver accidentally drove the car into the pool at Holiday Inn while reversing it.

Thankfully, no one was injured. The adult driver and passenger escaped after accidentally backing into the hotel pool, says the caption.

Posted on January 4, the photos have invited a lot of funny comments as people find it hard to believe that an adult driver ended up with the car in the pool.

How adult are we talking? 18 or 98? How do you accidentally back through a fence and end up in a pool, asks a Facebook user. At what point do you finally hit the break? Hitting the fence wasnt enough? questions another puzzled user. Gives new definition to car pooling, jokes a third. Amateurs. I totally could have made it to the other side, writes a fourth.

What do you think of this weird car accident?

Also read | Florida driver accidentally steers car into swimming pool. Pics are making a splash

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Apple Maps launch was met with heavy criticism, and the iPhone maker has done a lot over the past few years to improve its mapping and navigation solution. However, it is still lagging in a few areas, and this new UI concept shows how Apple Maps can have an edge over Google Maps.

Ayman Jaddaa, a product designer, has published his UI concept for Apple Maps, and it trumps what Apple currently has in store for us. In his blog post, the designer has published an extensive case study of how Apple Maps can benefit from an improved design interface and a few new features.

Starting off with improvements to the main screen has, it has a three-tab design, featuring Search, Commute, and Me. It makes intent-based browsing a whole lot easier. The Commute tab shows various routes and transport options, and a user can favorite their preferred routes and transport options. The status section while commuting also seems more logically designed.

Then theres a tweaked design for the Ratings & Reviews section of Apple Maps, complete with third-party app integration and an ability react to reviews. Places can also have a verified badge for making it easier for users to select the right place with more confidence. Movie showtimes can be displayed for places like theatres along with an option to book tickets.

The Directions screen in the concept UI also has an option to plan routes with more options. The Hey Siri command doesnt take up the whole screen in the concept UI while commuting with Apple Maps. Users can make their collection of places private, shared, or archived. And theres a bit of gamification to make people post more reviews.

The designer spent a lot of time reading Apples Human Interface Design guidelines, a lot of comments, subreddits, and forums to improve the interface design. Everything in the concept UI seems darker, less transparent, and more rounded. He also used the San Francisco font all over the app. He also changed the color of the Go button from green to blue, and the effect is a less jarring experience for your eyes.

Ayman says that while Google has over a billion users and information about more places when compared to Apple Maps, the Cupertino-based firm has a better UI design. With more improvements, it can trump Google Maps, according to the designer. You should really head over to Aymans blog to see more images of the concept UI.

Our Take

Aymans concept of UI for Apple Maps is definitely better and has a more logical design. However, only better design cant help Apple in defeating Google Maps. More POIs (points of interest) are of great importance for any mapping and navigation solution. Plus, we think that Apple Maps should be released for a wider variety of platforms, and it should be easier to crowdsource data for the service.

Apple Maps also needs to improve a lot in terms of POIs and integrations for markets outside of developed countries if Apple wants to one-up Google.

[Via AymanJaddaa
His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa commended the pivotal role of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in advocating the issues that concern the Islamic nation, strengthening solidarity between member countries, coordinating their stances, unifying their efforts and defending the true image of Islam, based on tolerance and moderation.

He made the statement as he received yesterday, at Al Safriya Palace, OIC Secretary-General Dr Yousef bin Ahmad Al Othaimeen, marking his visit to the Kingdom of Bahrain. HM the King welcomed Dr Al Othaimeen and congratulated him on the OIC 50th anniversary, lauding the pan-Islamic organisations important achievements.

He also commended Dr Al Othaimeens dedicated efforts to enhance the OIC work procedures and performance and strengthen co-operation between Islamic countries in the economic, cultural, scientific and religious fields. HM the King reiterated Bahrains unwavering support to the organisation and commitment to its noble principles to continue its role in consolidating joint Islamic work towards achieving the goals and serving the interests of its member countries and peoples.

The meeting focused also on reviewing aspects of cooperation between the Kingdom of Bahrain and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in addition to other key Islamic and regional issues. Dr Al Othaimeen expressed deepest thanks to HM the King for the warm welcome and good hospitality, hailing Bahrains pivotal role, led by HM the King, as well as its contributions to Islamic issues and the OIC activities on all levels.

He lauded Bahrains initiatives to nurture the values of tolerance and moderation and build bridges between the followers of different religions and cultures.
Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Lightning II Robert Sullivan | FlickrCC

Shares of defense companies outperform the broader market in the six months after a crisis event in the Middle East, according to an analysis by CNBC. Defense stocks have risen since a U.S. airstrike killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, Iran's top military commander, last week. The broader market has slipped, however, with the major indexes all dropping at least 0.6% on Friday and opening in the red again Monday. That outperformance by defense stocks should continue if the market follows trends from the past three decades.

CNBC used hedge fund analytics tool Kensho to analyze market returns after major events in the Middle East, dating back to the start of the 1990 Gulf War. The analysis found that defense stocks earned double the return of the S&P 500 in the six months after a crisis event.

The price of oil is also up following the airstrike, and the analysis shows that it remains elevated over time. Gold, which has also hit recent highs since the attack, tends to return to normal after similar events. The top-performing defense stock was shipbuilding company Huntington Ingalls, with an average gain of more than 15%. Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, both of which have market caps above $60 billion, also made the top five.

Several analysts, including Citi's Jonathan Raviv, said in client notes after the airstrike that the heightened tensions with Iran did not necessarily mean another increase in the U.S. defense budget. Trump signed a $738 billion National Defense Authorization Act last month, $21 billion bigger than the previous year's bill. But even without Congress increasing spending, defense stocks could still rise, Raviv said. "Heightened risk perceptions tend to support defense multiples across the board," Raviv said in a note to clients Friday.
Its a new year and a time to put any differences in the past, which seems to be exactly what Kate Middleton has planned. In her recent New Years Instagram post, shes shared a secret message to Meghan Markle that hints at extending an olive branch and moving forward in 2020.

Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle | Karwai Tang/Getty Images

There has been tension between Prince William and Prince Harry

Last year, Prince Harry confirmed that the rumors of a feud between him and his brother Prince William were true.

In October, during an interview for the documentary, Meghan and Harry: An African Journey, Prince Harry revealed there was tension between him and William, as he admitted, We are on different paths at the moment. He assured, but I will always be there for him and, as I know, he will always be there for me.

Persistent rumors of feuding between the duchesses, however, was pretty well shut down when the two appeared at Wimbledon in high spirits, with their body language indicating that things are very good between them.

Prince William and Kate Middletons New Years message is hopeful

As a new year begins, Prince William and Middletons Instagram post for their year in review left royal fans hopeful that things will continue to improve between the royal couples.

Their two-minute video included footage from their 2019 engagements, as well as photos of Prince Harry and Markle, including the first public photos of baby Archie.

The photo of Middleton and Markle sharing a laugh at Wimbledon was definitely a highlight, proving that the duchesses relationship will continue to be strong in the new year.

The inclusion of Prince William and Prince Harry with Sir David Attenborough at a screening of the documentary Our Planet also showed a hopeful glimpse at the brothers, perhaps as a nod that they will mend their fractured relationship in 2020.

The Cambridges noted in their message: To all the fantastic organisations and inspirational people we met and worked with in 2019: Thank you for a wonderful year, and see you in 2020!

Royal fans found the inclusion of Prince Harry, Markle, and Archie to be a touching gesture, with one person noting: I love this. I love the fact that you guys include images of Harry and his family. Its beautiful.

Another fan commented: This is lovely. So nice to see inclusion of @Sussexroyal in this too.

Another person agreed, commenting: says a lot about their love for Harry, Meghan and Archie.

Still another fan shared: Thank you for including your brother and his family @sussexroyal in this. You didnt have to, but you did, and this shows your wonderful character. None of us on the outside knows what really has been going on, but family is everything. Thank you for showing this.

Inside Kate Middletons secret message for Meghan Markle

Did Middleton send Markle a secret message? According to a report from Express, royal blogger Kate Disick explained: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge uploaded a clip showing their highlights and favorite moments of 2019. Some of their favorite moments depicted in the video would possibly surprise many royal fans given their [Kate and Meghans] turbulent relationship.

She continued: Including the images of baby Archie could be a way for the Cambridges to extend an olive branch to the Sussexes. This is such a subtle and elegant way of showing them [The Sussex royals] that they want things [their relationship] to be better between them, next year.

Disick added: I think this truly shows that they care about them and want them to know that also.
A fisherman has described the terrifying moment he was stalked by a great white shark off the Esperance coast, just seven miles from where Gary Johnson was mauled to death.

Darren Fissioli was fishing when he found himself being hunted by the five-metre-long monster with a 'stomach as big as a truck tyre'.

The shark was so big, he initially thought it was a 'small whale' as it hunted him for three miles.

A five-metre great white shark (pictured) stalked a fisherman's boat for more than an hour just seven miles from where diver Gary Johnson was mauled to death

Ms Milligan said she and her husband Gary (pictured together) shared a passion for diving and did so most weekends

It comes after Mr Johnson's wife revealed how she desperately tried to fight the predator off as it mauled her husband.

An experienced diver, was taken by the monster shark off Cull Island in Esperance, south-east of Perth, at 1.30pm on Sunday.

Now fisherman Mr Fissioli has described his own terrifying encounter with the predator just a week before on December 27.

'We were just fishing out at Beagle Reef coming back in from about 30 miles and this great white has just popped out of nowhere,' he told the West Australian.

A monster great white shark (pictured) stalked a fisherman's boat just eight days before Gary Johnson was attacked off the coast of Western Australia

Karen Milligan (pictured, right) revealed she tried to fight off a great white shark before it mauled her husband Gary Johnson (left) to death on Sunday

The attack happened at about 1.30pm off Cull Island in Esperance (pictured), south east of Perth, on Sunday

The nerve-wracking encounter was just seven miles from Western Australia's Cull Island, where Mr Johnson was killed.

'He (the shark) was in no hurry to leave the boat,' he said. 'It was very placid, wasnt afraid of anything, even played with the drift anchors rope.

'Thats what got me a bit antsy because he should have taken off.'

The sighting was later reported sighting on the SharkSmart website, the SharkSmartWA app and the Twitter feed of Surf Life Saving WA.

An experienced fisherman in the area, Mr Fissioli also called for better monitoring for great white sharks, and even a potential cull saying 'too many people' died in the area.

The victim's wife Karen Milligan has told her own heart-wrenching story of how she watched her husband - a diver - killed by the vicious shark.

Ms Milligan (pictured, left) said Mr Johnson (right) was wearing a shark shield at the time of his death - but it is not known if it was turned on

Mr Johnson (pictured) was a recreational diver who loved to share his passion for the ocean

'We were both in the water when it happened, I tried to hit the tail of the shark but it did nothing,' she told The Australian.

Ms Milligan said she and her husband were both wearing shark shields, which emit electrical currents intended to scare the animals away, when he died.

It is unclear whether Mr Johnson's was switched on when the shark pounced.

About 4,500 Western Australians own a shark shield, which can be strapped to a surfboard or ankle, after they were subsidised by the state government.

This is the second fatal shark attack in three years in the region (pictured), a popular diving spot off the coast of Western Australia

In a social media post from November 2017, Mr Johnson said he wore a shark protection device because it gave him peace of mind.

'In my nine years diving in Esperance (most weekends - weather permitting) I have only seen one shark - a bronze whaler who showed absolutely no interest in me,' he wrote.

Fisheries Minister Peter Tinley said shark shields were useful, but 'not fail-safe'.

'They are no different than anything else that we put around ourselves for protection, like a motorbike helmet. About nine out of ten times it does work,' he said.

'Gary was my rock,' his wife continued.

'He was a kind, gentle, strong man. He only ever saw the best in people.

Ms Milligan said her husband loved his family with all his heart. Pictured: Mr Johnson with his mother, brother and sister

'He will be so truly missed by me, by his family and his friends and the world will be a poorer place without this most beautiful man.

The couple ran the Esperance Dive Club together. It was their shared passion for the water that saw their relationship blossom.

'He loved diving. He loved squash. He loved his work. He loved Esperance. Most of all he loved his friends and families,' she said.

'He and I were at home in and on the ocean. We would go out diving in our boat whenever we could, most weekends.

'We took photos, not fish. We were always aware of the risks, and often told each other that if we were attacked by a shark, that would just be unlucky.'

Emergency services arrived at the scene on Sunday (pictured) but are still searching for Mr Johnson, while his wife was treated for shock.

Western Australian Police are still searching for Mr Johnson's body off the coast of Esperance (pictured)

Emergency services are still desperately searching to find Mr Johnson's body, with diving teams (pictured) searching nearby waters

Ms Milligan said she and her husband were animal lovers and was staunchly anti-shark culling.

'We were completely against shark culling, and I still am. We have watched with dismay the reduction of fish stocks over the years,' she said.

'We believed that if fish stocks were better protected, then the risk to people in the water would be reduced.'

She said her husband's dream was to turn Esperance into a marine park.

There has been no sign of Mr Johnson since the attack, but his flippers were found as was part of his wet suit.

The tragic incident marks the second fatal shark attack in three years in the region after a 17-year-old died in 2017.

Laeticia Brouwer was attacked by a great white at Wylie Bay when she was holidaying with her family over the Easter long weekend.

Sean Pollard was attacked in 2014 by two great white sharks in the area and he lost his left arm and right hand.
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Rain has brought some relief to fire-ravaged Australia but could actually hamper efforts to stamp out the raging bushfires ahead of temperatures soaring again this week.

Monday's rains down the east coast from Sydney to Melbourne cooled temperatures but experts said it would make lighting strategic fires more difficult with the heat returning on Thursday.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said there was no room for complacency. 'Unfortunately, overnight, it's become apparent that we have two people unaccounted for in New South Wales,' she said at a news conference.

It comes as experts described how two colossal infernos raging in Victoria and New South Wales could meet to form a 'mega blaze.'

The bushfires, currently blazing on either side of the border of NSW and Victoria, have already razed their respective states and are just six miles apart.

Firefighters are working to stop them but the extreme temperatures they have created will make them difficult to fight.

A dead kangaroo is seen on Kangaroo Island after the fires which have burned for several days, Monday, January 6, 2020. A convoy of Army vehicles, transporting up to 100 Army Reservists and self-sustainment supplies, have arrived on Kangaroo Island as part of Operation Bushfire Assist at the request of the South Australian Government.

A long exposure picture shows a car commuting on a road as the sky turns red from smoke of the Snowy Valley bushfire on the outskirts of Cooma on Saturday. Up to 3,000 military reservists were called up to tackle Australia's relentless bushfire crisis over the weekend, as tens of thousands of residents fled their homes amid catastrophic conditions.

'Its very concerning,' Victorias State Response Controller David Bruce told news.com.au this morning.

'Obviously we have some conditions on Thursday and Friday which will increase the fire danger ratings and, with the potential of these fires joining up, will create some weather conditions that will be very unpredictable and very challenging to fight.'

On Kangaroo Island, a refuge off the coast of South Australia for some of the country's most endangered creatures, teams had arrived to help euthanize livestock and wild animals injured in the blazes.

Hundreds of millions of animals are believed to have died already in the fires across the country.

Today Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government was committing an extra 2 billion Australian dollars (1 billion) toward the recovery effort in addition to the tens of millions of dollars that have already been promised.

A woodchip mill burnt by bushfires is seen as smoke rises in Eden in Australia's New South Wales state on January 6, 2020. - Reserve troops were deployed to fire-ravaged regions across three Australian states on Monday after a torrid weekend that turned swathes of land into smouldering, blackened hellscapes

Royal Australian Navy MH-60R Seahawk 'Romeo' helicopters departing HMAS Adelaide (L01) as part of bushfire relief operations on Sunday

This week: Cool conditions will give way to hot weather hitting the low 40s (purple) on Friday - with the heatwave increasing fire danger in the central west of New South Wales

The current location of fires in eastern and southern Australia. Blue icons indicate fires which have been brought under control, while red indicates newer blazes

'The fires are still burning. And they'll be burning for months to come,' Morrison said.

'And so that's why I outlined today that this is an initial, an additional, investment of $2 billion. If more is needed and the cost is higher, then more will be provided.'

Today Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government was committing an extra 2 billion Australian dollars (1 million) toward the recovery effort in addition to the tens of millions of dollars that have already been promised

Morrison's announcement of the funds, which will go toward rebuilding towns and infrastructure destroyed by the fires, came as authorities said two more people were missing in remote parts of New South Wales.

Nationwide, at least 24 people have been killed and 2,000 homes destroyed by the blazes, which have so far scorched an area twice the size of the U.S. state of Maryland.

Fire crews told reporters of the difficulties Monday's rain would bring Shane Fitzsimmons, commissioner of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, said: 'With the more benign weather conditions it presents some wonderful relief for everybody, the firefighters, the emergency services personnel, but also the communities affected by these fires.

He added: 'But it also presents some real challenges when it comes to implementing tactical and strategic back-burns and other techniques to try and bring these fires under control.'

More than 135 fires were still burning across New South Wales, including almost 70 that were not contained. Officials have warned that the rain won't put out the largest and most dangerous blazes before conditions deteriorate again.

Victoria state Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville said at least 200 millimeters (8 inches) of rain would need to fall over a short period of time in order to snuff out the fires - around 20 times what has fallen across the region in the past day.

A military helicopter flies above a burning woodchip mill in Eden, in Australia's New South Wales state on Monday - some rainfall in New South Wales and neighbouring Victoria state brought milder conditions, but some communities were still under threat from out-of-control blazes, particularly in and around the town of Eden in New South Wales

Dead cattle are seen on Kangaroo Island on Monday. A refuge off the coast of South Australia for some of the country's most endangered creatures, teams had arrived to help euthanize livestock and wild animals injured in the blazes. Hundreds of millions of animals are believed to have died already in the fires across the country.

A dead wallaby pictured in the Wingello State Forest on January 06, 2020 in Wingello, Australia. Cooler conditions and light rain has provided some relief for firefighters in NSW who continue to battle bushfires across the state. 14 people have now died in the fires in NSW, Victoria and South Australia since New Year's Eve

An RFS Crew attempts to put out a smoldering pile of railway sleepers. The sleepers measured over 600 degrees on a thermal temperature gauge 2 days after the fire front had passed through on Monday

A horse grazes in front of a burnt house after an overnight bushfire in Cobargo in Australia's New South Wales state on Monday

And officials warned that the country's wildfire season - which generally lasts through March - was nowhere near its end.

'No one can be complacent. We've got big fire danger coming our way toward the end of this week,' Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters in Melbourne. 'We are by no means out of this. And the next few days, and indeed the next few months, are going to be challenging.'

Australia's capital, Canberra, had the worst air quality of any major city in the world on Monday. The Department of Home Affairs, which is responsible for coordinating the country's response to disasters, told all non-critical staff to stay home because of thick smoke choking the city.

The prime minister said the military was attempting to get food, fuel and water to burned-out communities, and engineers were working to reopen roads and resupply evacuation centers.

A Royal Australian Navy MRH-90 helicopter crew member looks out over fires burning near Cann River, Australia. The wildfires have so far scorched an area twice the size of the U.S. state of Maryland

An RFS Crew attempts to put out a smoldering pile of railway sleepers. Army Reserve forces and other specialist capabilities have been called in to help with firefighting efforts across Australia, along with extra Defence ships and helicopters

A smoldering log is pictured in the Wingello State Forest on Monday. Monday's rains down the east coast from Sydney to Melbourne cooled temperatures but experts say this will make lighting strategic fires more difficult with the heat returning on Thursday.

The burnt out remains sits on a plot of land after a bushfire went thought the area, in Wingello, New South Wales on Monday

Heavy smoke, meanwhile, was hampering the navy's efforts to airlift people out of Mallacoota, a coastal town in Victoria cut off for days by fires that forced as many as 4,000 residents and tourists to shelter on beaches over the weekend.

Around 300 people were still waiting to be evacuated on Monday.

The prime minister's announcement of relief funds comes as he finds himself under siege for what many Australians have viewed as his lax response to the crisis.

On Saturday, he announced he would dispatch 3,000 army, navy and air force reservists to help battle the fires and committed 20 million Australian dollars ($14 million) to lease firefighting aircraft from overseas.

But the moves did little to tamp down the criticism that he had been slow to act, even as he has downplayed the need for his government to address climate change, which experts say helps supercharge the blazes.

Ash from bushfires washes up on a beach in Merimbula, in Australia's New South Wales state on Sunday. Australians on January 5 counted the cost from a day of catastrophic bushfires that caused 'extensive damage' across swathes of the country and took the death toll from the long-running crisis to 24.

Residents commute on a road through thick smoke from bushfires in Bemboka, in Australia's New South Wales state on Sunday

Smoke raises to the sky as a woodchip mill burns in Eden, in Australia's New South Wales on Monday

Wildfires are common during the southern hemisphere summer, and Australians generally take a pragmatic view of them.

But this year's fires arrived unusually early, fed by drought and the country's hottest and driest year on record.

Scientists say there's no doubt man-made global warming has played a major role in feeding the fires, along with factors like very dry brush and trees and strong winds.

Environmental group Greenpeace said the relief funds announced by Morrison were 'a drop in the ocean,' given the widespread devastation from the fires.

'Every single cent of that money should be contributed by the coal, gas and oil companies whose carbon pollution has caused the climate crisis that has created these extreme fire conditions, right across the country,' Greenpeace Australia Pacific Head of Campaigns Jamie Hanson said in a statement.

'Slugging everyday taxpayers with the bill for this just adds insult to injury. These big polluters have become rich by trashing our climate and it's time that they started coughing up for the repair bill.'
ALTON  The Alton Police Department is investigating an apparent homicide at 1129 Highland Ave. after a deceased man was found around 8 a.m. Monday.

The house and surrounding areas were cordoned off Monday morning, with police and Madison County Coroners Office investigators at the scene. At about 9:30 a.m., Alton Police Chief Jason Simmons said they were waiting for the Illinois State Police Crime Scene Unit, adding that he had asked that the Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis be activated to assist in the investigation.

Shortly before noon, Alton Police released a statement that the suspicious death investigation was being investigated solely by Alton Police Department detectives and administration, who are active and current members of the Major Case Squad.

Alton Police Department detectives, all of whom are current members of the Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis, are investigating the death as suspicious, the statement read. They are being assisted by numerous Alton Police Department administrative and patrol officers, all of whom are either current or past investigators with the Major Case Squad.

They are currently conducting interviews, collecting evidence, and following up on all available leads, the statement read. The Madison County Coroners Office and Illinois State Police crime scene unit are assisting the Alton Police Department in this investigation.

On Monday morning, crowds had gathered in yards and on the sidewalk on either side of the house and, occasionally, someone came up to talk to officers. At one point a main who identified himself as the occupants nephew was taken aside by detectives; he later sat in a yard across the street and watched the scene before a detective escorted him away.

Several others also were taken from the scene but were not in custody.

Alton Police said they were notified shortly after 8 a.m. Monday when the victim, who has not been identified by authorities, reportedly missed a dialysis appointment. The medical office called Alton Police requesting a welfare check.

When the officer arrived, he noticed the front door of the residence was apparently kicked in and noticed the deceased subject inside, Simmons said. At that point he secured the scene and contacted the detectives.

According to Alton Police, the deceased man was determined to be a resident of the home. The coroners office and the Illinois State Police crime scene units are helping Alton Police with the investigation.

Simmons confirmed the house had been the subject of several investigations and incidents over the past couple of years.

But Id rather not comment as to what those investigations are at this point, he said. Simmons added that the department pulled two of its detectives off the investigation into the Major Case Squads murder of Edwardsville attorney Randy Gori who was found dead in his home Saturday night.

Anyone with information about the suspicious death in Alton is asked to contact Alton Police at 618-463-3505 or through its anonymous tip line at 618-465-5948. Tips also may be provided via social media on the Alton Police Departments Facebook or Twitter accounts.

Reach reporter Scott Cousins at 618-208-6447.
Melbourne's air quality has deteriorated to "very poor" as smoke again billows into the city from bushfires raging in the state's east.

East Gippsland was still choking in hazardous smoke pollution on Monday with bushfires continuing to tear through the disaster zone.

Point Ormond in Elwood on Monday morning as smoke haze settled into Melbourne. Credit:Penny Stephens

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Michael Efron said visibility was down to about 2 to 3 kilometres in Melbourne because of the smoke.

Melburnians have reported being able to smell the smoke from inside their homes and offices.
New Delhi: External Affairs minister S. Jaishankar on Sunday spoke to the US Secretary of State and the Foreign Ministers of Iran, UAE and Oman, expressing concerns about the ongoing crisis and sharing India's interest in the security and stability of the Gulf. The region has been tense since the US killed Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, Major Gen Qasem Soleimani and other military officials in an air strike in Baghdad on Thursday. Iran has called it a state terror act and threatened to retaliate.A

Interestingly, the US has asked around a dozen countries to negotiate peace with Iran and deescalate the tensions. It is not clear whether India is one among the mediators even as the External Affairs Minister's tweets suggested that he was talking to all the key players involved in the conflict.

In a series of tweets, Jaishankar said that while speaking to the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "on the evolving situation in the Gulf region" he highlighted India's stakes and concerns.

Secretary Pompeo, in a tweet, acknowledged the phone conversation between him and Jaishankar but pointedly blamed Iran. "Dr S Jaishankar and I spoke just now regarding Iran's continued threats and provocations. The Trump Administration won't hesitate to act to keep American lives, and those of our friends and allies, safe," he tweeted hinting that the US was taking into consideration India's stakes.

In his conversation with Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, Jaishankar "noted that the developments have taken a very serious done." India, he said, remains deeply concerned about the levels of tension in the region and is going to stay in touch with Iran.

Separately, he had a "warm conversation" with the Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates on the developments in the region. He "affirmed India's shared interest in the stability and security of the Gulf" during his telephonic exchange with the Foreign Minister of Oman about the tense situation. He appreciated his perspectives on the current situation, Jaishankar tweeted.

Meanwhile, the Embassy of Iran in New Delhi in a statement expressed gratitude to India for expressing sympathy and solidarity with Iran. While condemned the US attack, the embassy said: "Despite its strategic restraint which stems from the Irani and national and religious values and principles," Iran considered "safeguarding its national and security interest its legitimate right and on the basis of its inevitable right to self defence it shall take appropriate retaliatory action in the suitable time and place."

To ensure global peace and stability, the embassy said, "all the governments of the region and the world are expected to condemn this terrorist act in the strongest possible terms."

On Sunday, however, the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia issued a security alert about heightened risk of missile and rocket attacks especially for those living and working near military bases and oil and gas facilities and other critical civilian infrastructure.

Incidentally, the parliament in Iraq voted on a resolution to terminate security agreement with the US and sought withdrawal of the US troops from the war-torn country.
Representative Image

SNM Abdi

The violent protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), spearheaded by the All Assam Students Union (AASU), resulting in six deaths  four in police firing plus two stir-related fatalities  has petered out but not before unleashing a powerful civil disobedience movement which can potentially alter the political landscape in Assam and beyond.

Now in the New Year, buoyed by growing support for the anti-CAA agitation, the AASU is all set to launch a political party to fight the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its coalition partner, the Asom Gano Parishad (AGP), which ironically was fathered by the AASU 35 years ago. Local media reports have dubbed the party in the offing AGP 2.0, underlining its political and electoral significance in the current tumultuous scenario.

From 1979, the AASU led the anti-foreigners movement against Bangladeshi immigrants, proudly signed the Assam Accord with then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in August 1985, and then gave birth to the AGP in October 1985. Subsequently, the AGP ruled for two full terms: 1985-1990 and 1996-2001, followed by Congress regimes.

In 2016, Assam elected a BJP-AGP government, which the AASU is accusing of betraying the Assamese people. The situation, according to the AASU, which claims to be the true representative of Assamese people, can be retrieved only by establishing a new political formation to evict the BJP-AGP combine from power in 2021.

Assam is the most vocal among North-Eastern states bitterly opposing the granting of Indian citizenship to several hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi Hindus so far living illegally on their soil. Which is hardly surprising as the CAA is without a doubt the anti-thesis of the AASUs anti-foreigners movement and the feather in its cap  the Assam Accord.

Importantly, the political party the AASU launches is capable of spawning similar outfits to take on the BJP in neighbouring states, via the North East Students Organisation (NESO) of which the AASU is a key part.

Besides the AASU chief Samujjal Bhattacharya who is the NESO advisor, other AASU bigwigs such as Dipanka Kumar Nath and Lurinjyoti Gogoi are close to NESO chairman Samuel Jyrwa who is vehemently anti-CAA and has a pan North-East presence.

As the conflict between the BJP-AGP and the AASU intensifies, it is pertinent to note that Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal who has ordered the police and the BJP cadre not to show any mercy to anti-CAA protestors, is a former AASU president who was in the AGP before joining the BJP.

Sonowal typifies the AASUs frustration over leaders forged in the AASU-AGP crucible executing New Delhis agenda. To stem the rot, the AASU has decided to replace traitors with a new political party to save Assamese people, land, culture and language.

The AASUs new-found assertiveness, bordering on belligerence, has ramifications for regional economy and development projects. Its agitation scuttled the Narendra Modi- Shinzo Abe summit scheduled to be held in Guwahati from December 15 to 17. The cancellation of the meet came as a big and embarrassing blow to New Delhis Act East Policy whose objective is to involve ASEAN nations and Japan in developing Assam and other North-Eastern states.

Last month Assam witnessed attacks on government properties, the BJP and the AGP offices and homes of leaders belonging to the ruling coalition. Sonowals convoy has been targeted many times. Pushed against the wall, in a video which went viral, BJP MLA Mrinal Saikia exhorted cadre: If someone comes to burn down your house, you burn their house too. If they put their hand on one of you, put your hands on 10 of them. People are with us. We have more people with us. In such a volatile situation, violence could recur.

To intimidate the AASU, the Assam government has threatened to take a leaf out of Uttar Pradesh and name those injured in the violent protests as accused in FIRs and make video-graphed agitators literally pay for damage to public properties.

The AASU has thrown down the gauntlet in Assam which enjoys a special place in the BJPs success story in the North-East. In 2015, the BJP was in power only in Nagaland and that too as a junior partner. However, after wresting Assam in 2016, the BJP has tasted success after success. Today there are BJP CMs in Assam, Tripura, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, while Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya are governed by regional parties which are constituents of the BJP-led North Eastern Democratic Alliance (NEDA).

The AASU has lit a fuse in a region where the BJPs stakes are sky high. If the ruling BJP wishes it can still pull the rug from under the AASUs feet by simply announcing that each and every Bangladeshi Hindu in Assam who is naturalised by the CAA will be shifted out of Assam to, say, Gorakhpur, Ahmedabad or Nagpur. That will upset the AASUs apple-cart.
Costco, America's beloved wholesale behemoth best known for its bulk goods and Kirkland Signature private label, has long been one of the country's favorite one-stop shops. Here, you can get high-end perfume and camping gear. Although most people know that Costco has great deals on household paper goods, they may not realize that Costco has been in the travel business since 2000. Costco Travel offers members discounted rental cars, cruises and guided group trips, as well as domestic and international vacations.

Because Costco Travel is a division under the regular Costco umbrella, its users can expect the same benefits shopping for a vacation as they would shopping for chicken. Here's how it works: Costco Travel is made up of buying teams, just like the dealmaking foot soldiers who work for regular Costco. These buyers work with travel vendors to negotiate lower prices on a limited number of goods (i.e., hotel rooms or cruise fares), then offer those discounted rates and packages to the many millions of Costco members. Buyers don't work on commission or incentives; their job is simply to secure the best value.

Perhaps the nicest part of booking with Costco Travel is that it's straightforward. The prices advertised on the website already include taxes, so you don't end up with a completely different estimate at the end of the process, unlike other online travel agencies (like Booking.com or Hotels.com).

Intrigued? Before you book a trip with Costco Travel, here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. There's something for everyone

There isn't one kind of Costco Travel vacation. The most popular itineraries usually involve Hawaii, Mexico, the Caribbean and cruising, but there's much more out there to book. Costco Travel has trips for adventure-seekers, for young people ages 18 to 35 who want to travel with fellow young people, or people who want to drink a bunch of wine in a new place.

The prices vary, too. Travelers can hunt for packages around $300 in the Under $499 category or splurge on one of the "Costco Vacations of a Lifetime."

You don't have to book a big blockbuster vacation to reap the Costco Travel benefits, either. You can use the service to book an individual hotel room, or a hotel and flight. And according to insiders, one of the best-kept secrets is its rental-car business.

2. Look for Buyer's Choice vacations or cruises, or Kirkland Signature vacations

Costco Travel insiders say that where the real savings lurk are in Kirkland Signature vacations, Buyer's Choice vacations and Hot Buys, or limited-time deals that are advertised online and in Costco email newsletters. These trips will offer added value and amenities beyond what regular Costco Travel experiences already deliver.

3. Take advantage of flexible payment options

Costco members have options when it comes to how to pay, like setting up recurring payments to cover the whole cost. You'll probably have to pay a deposit on packages or pay for your airfare upfront, and some payment requirements may depend on the time of year. People who are able to pay early may be eligible for bigger savings.

4. Do your research on airfare before you book

Shalen Fairbanks, a Costco member who lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, first started using Costco Travel six years ago. She has booked five trips for her family to Mexico, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. Her advice to potential Costco Travel users would be to shop around for flights before booking a trip, because she has occasionally found better airfare deals than what Costco offered.

"You pick where you want to go, [Costco Travel] gives you a bunch of different options of hotels and packages, and then I do look at airfare separately," Fairbanks says. "Sometimes it's cheaper to go buy your own flight and then book the rest of the package" through Costco Travel.

If you do go with Costco Travel's airfare option, which often comes with airport transfers, make sure you book any upgrades ahead of time. Charleston, South Carolina, resident Michael Fanning booked an African safari through Costco Travel when he noticed that it cost drastically less than what he had seen elsewhere.

"The trip was fantastic," Fanning says. "I mean, it really was extraordinary."

But one thing he would've done differently: "The one part that was not as fun was the 14-hour plane ride on African Airways from JFK to Johannesburg," Fanning says. "That's a tough trip. We would have preferred to have upgraded our seats, but we weren't allowed to do that through the package."

5. Get cash back on your vacation purchase

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Depending on your membership level, you may be able to get even better deals on a vacation when you book with Costco Travel. Executive Members (whose annual fee is $120) earn 2% cash back on their Costco Travel purchases.

Members who book their travel with a Costco Anywhere Visa Card by Citi credit card (a card with no foreign transaction fees, by the way) earn 3% cash back.

6. Costco Travel trips come with perks

Executive Members are treated to benefits like food and beverage credits, spa credits, room upgrades and more for the primary cardholder booking the trip. The extras that get thrown into vacation packages are one of Fairbanks's favorite parts of using Costco Travel.

"They'll give you a $250 Costco Rebate Card," she says. "The [trips] we've been on have a $100 or $200 spa credit per room. The one to Jamaica, we had a spa credit per room, plus we got $200 to use toward the local activity" company.

That Jamaica trip also included access to a VIP departure experience at the airport that got the Fairbankses through customs quicker. Accounting for the perks her family of five earned, Fairbanks estimates she saved the cost of one person's trip.

7. Costco can't control everything

While the planning and booking can be seamless, keep in mind that Costco Travel trips can have hiccups, like any travel experience. For example, the Fairbankses' airport transfer didn't show up for their scheduled pickup. "But that's a problem on the company that made this transfer," she says - not Costco's. "Their driver didn't show up that day."

In the event that anything goes awry, pick up the phone and contact a Costco Travel representative to assist with any issues.
Samsung has been working on a new project called 'Neon' and the company been teasing it left, right and center on social media. From what it looks like, Neon appears to be some kind of a mysterious 'artificial human' project wherein we'll see digital humans.

Obviously it's hard to tell what Samsung has been cooking for us behind the scene, but some of the latest teasers and leaked videos have made it easier for us to understand what's going on.

A few hours back, the lead of Neon, computer-human interaction researcher Pranav Mistry, sent out a tweet saying that he's flying to CES 2020 in Las Vegas. The tweet was accompanied by an image showing one of the project's avatars. Mistry noted that their Core R3 tech can now autonomously create new expressions, new movements, new dialog (even in Hindi), completely different from the original captured data.

Flying to CES tomorrow, and the code is finally working :) Ready to demo CORE R3. It can now autonomously create new expressions, new movements, new dialog (even in Hindi), completely different from the original captured data. pic.twitter.com/EPAJJrLyjd  Pranav Mistry (@pranavmistry) January 5, 2020

Looking at Mistry's tweet, it certainly looks like they've built some kind of a digital avatar that can act as, say, your digital assistant or even beyond that.

Not just his, but an unlisted video taken out from Neon's website also revealed even more similar human figures. You can watch the video below and see how real these digital humans look. They certainly don't look like computer-generated graphics.

The video has left us with more questions than before. Are these computer-generated humans or are these real humans? Can they be programmed to do anything? Will we be able to talk to them? Will they stay on your computer and phones or will they be out in the real world in the form of a robot?

Quite honestly, nobody has answers to those questions except Samsung. But thankfully, we won't have to wait too long since Samsung will be showcasing Neon at CES in less than 48 hours. So keep your eyes peeled. You might want to stay tuned for this one.
M ichelle Williams marked her Golden Globes win with a powerful speech in support of reproductive freedom for women.

The actress, 39, received the award for Best Actress in a TV Limited Series or TV Movie for her role as dancer and choreographer Gwen Verdon in Fosse/Verdon.

Williams, who is currently expecting a child with fiance Thomas Kail, used her acceptance speech to advocate for abortion rights.

I am grateful to live in a moment in our society where choice exists, because as girls and women, things can happen to our bodies that are not our choice," she said.

Choice: The star stressed the importance of reproductive rights / AP

The star, who is also mother to 14-year-old daughter Matilda from her previous relationship with the late actor Heath Ledger, explained that her career would have been different if she had not been able to choose when to have my children and with whom, when I felt supported.

TODO: define component type apester

I know my choices might look different to yours," she said, before imploring women to vote "in [their] own self-interest" this year.

She added: Women aged 18 to 118, when its time to vote, please do so in your own self-interest.

Golden Globe Awards 2020: Show winning moments - In pictures 1 /85 Golden Globe Awards 2020: Show winning moments - In pictures Olivia Colman accepting the award for best actress in a drama series for "The Crown" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ricky Gervais speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 202 AP Beyonce and Jay-Z Renee Zellweger accepting the award for best actress in a motion picture drama for her role in "Judy" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Jason Momoa wears a vest at the Golden Globes NBC Paul Rudd and Nicole Kidman gatecrash Laura Dern's Golden Globes red carpet interview E! News Elton John reacts as Taron Egerton wins a Golden Globe for Rocketman NBC Reese Witherspoon, and Jennifer Aniston at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tom Hanks NBC Laura Dern accepting the award for best supporting actress in a motion picture for "Marriage Story" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tom Hanks accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award from presenter Charlize Theron at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Phoebe Waller-Bridge accepts the award for Best TV Series, Musical or Comedy for "Fleabag. Reuters Joaquin Phoenix accepting the award for best actor in a motion picture drama for his role in "Joker" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Sam Mendes accepting the award for best motion picture drama for "1917" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Patricia Arquette accepting the award for best supporting actress in a series, limited series or TV movie for her role in "The Act" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Stellan Skargard, winner of Best Supporting Actor - Series/Limited Series/TV movie for "Chernobyl." Reuters Jason Momoa and Zoe Kravitz at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ramy Youssef accepting the award for best actor in a TV series, comedy or musical for "Ramy" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Elton John, and Bernie Taupin at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tom Hanks accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Phoebe Waller-Bridge accepting the award for best actress in a comedy series for "Fleabag" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Brad Pitt accepting the award for best supporting actor in a film for his role in "Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Olivia Colman accepts the award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama for "The Crown" from Zoe Kravitz onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Olivia Colman accepting the award for best actress in a drama series for "The Crown" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ricky Gervais speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Jesse Armstrong and the cast of "Succession" accept the award for Best Television Series - Drama for "Succession" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sienna Miller and Kit Harington speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Ellen DeGeneres accepts the Carol Burnett TV Achievement Award at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 Amy Poehler and Taylor Swift speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Quentin Tarantino accepts the award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture for "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Charlize Theron at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Sacha Baron Cohen speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Ewan McGregor and Margot Robbie at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Gwyneth Paltrow at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Sam Mendes accepts the award for Best Director - Motion Picture for "1917" onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Helen Mirren and Antonio Banderas at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Michelle Williams accepts the award for Best Actress - Limited Series or Motion Picture Made For TV for "Fosse/Verdon." Reuters Wesley Snipes and Da'Vine Joy Randolph speak onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Taron Egerton accepting the award for best actor in a motion picture comedy for his role in "Rocketman" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Paul Rudd and Jennifer Lopez speak onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sam Mendes accepting the award for best director for the film "1917" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Glenn Close at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Rami Malek speaks onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sandra Bullock speaks onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Cate Blanchett at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tiffany Haddish and Salma Hayek at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson speak on stage during the 77th Golden Globe Awards on January 5, 2020 Reuters Awkwafina accepting the award for best actress in a motion picture comedy for her role in "The Farewell" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Nick Jonas speak onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Annette Bening speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sir Elton John and Bernie Taupin accept the award for Best Original Song - Motion Picture for "I'm Gonna Love Me Again" in "Rocketman" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Pierce Brosnan, center, with his sons Dylan, left, and Paris at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ansel Elgort and Dakota Fanning at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Matt Bomer and Sofia Vergara at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Kate McKinnon at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Kate McKinnon, embracing Ellen DeGeneres as she accepts the Carol Burnett TV Achievement Award at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Jesse Armstrong accepting the award for best drama TV series for "Succession" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Chris Butler and Arianne Sutner accept the award for Best Motion Picture - Animated for "Missing Link" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Ted Danson and Kerry Washington speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Bong Joon Ho accepts the award for Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language for "Parasite" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) President Lorenzo Soria speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Jared Harris and Craig Mazin, second right, accepting the award for best limited series for "Chernobyl" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Pierce Brosnan and Will Ferrell at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP

Its what men have been doing for years, which is why the world looks so much like them. We are the largest voting body in this country, lets make it look more like us.

She concluded by mentioning Kail and Matilda, saying: Tommy and Matilda, I cant wait to come home to you.

Williams' speech received a warm reception from fellow attendees at the ceremony, with her close friend Busy Phillips moved to tears by her words.
An American Instagram model raised more than $500,000 for Australian bushfire victims by sending nude images of herself in exchange for donations to charities.

However, Kaylen Ward, 20, claims her generosity has seen her Instagram account deactivated.

The influencer, from Los Angeles, said she wanted to help after seeing the devastation the bushfires had caused and thought her x-rated images would be the best way to raise funds.

Instagram model Kaylen Ward was sending nude photos to people who donate to fires

Ms Ward, 20, claims her generosity has seen her Instagram account deactivated

Within minutes of posting her offer on social media, her private messages on Instagram and Twitter were bombarded by hundreds of people sending in their receipts to prove they had donated.

But when the post went viral Ms Ward's Instagram was deactivated, and she was forced to start a new account while she worked on reinstating her original account.

On Monday she shared that both accounts had been deactivated.

'My IG got deactivated, my family disowned me, and the guy I like won't talk to all because of that tweet but f*** it, save the koalas,' she said.

Despite her accounts being deleted, Ms Ward claims she still managed to raise half a million dollars.

'We have hit and estimated $500k...... guys I am crying.... this is f***ing crazy.'

To receive a 'personalised' nude image, people had to provide proof of a donation of more than $10 being pledged to an Australian charity.

She listed some of the official organisations her followers could donate to which would help the fire efforts

Ms Ward said she was moved to contributing to the fire cause after she saw harrowing photographs online

She asked her followers to donate directly to a list of charities she suggested, which included NSW Rural Fire Service, Victorian Country Fire Service, Red Cross and certain koala hospitals across the nation.

Ms Ward hoped her post would attract 'a few thousand dollars'.

Within one day, she had about 20,000 messages in her inbox with receipts.

Ms Ward said now some of her other friends in the industry have followed suit, and together they're all continuing to raise money for the cause.

'When I first started I was nervous, super anxious. But five minutes later, my inbox was flooded and those thoughts went out the window,' she said.

She will now consider doing the same for future natural disasters.
I am very grateful that my parents are still alive. I am so thankful for this beautiful moment, smiles Zequelina Soares, 48, whose given name is Arsica, while sitting next to her mother. She arrived a few days earlier, on 11 November 2019, from Indonesia for an emotional reunion with her family in East Timor after having been separated for 41 years. I cried when I saw her. I embraced her, says her mother Anita Soares, now 65, her eyes lighting up for a moment. Not one single day has passed that I didnt think about my daughter. I remember her so well. She was such a cute, lively, happy and healthy girl, Anita recalls while her husband, Marcelino Soares, 68, sits quietly in a chair and nods.

In 1975 Indonesia invaded East Timor with extreme violence. The population was bombed, terrorised, killed, tortured, raped, uprooted and starved. Marcelino joined the East Timorese Fretilin guerrilla fighters, while Anita fled like hundreds of thousands Timorese to the mountains hoping to be safe, but suffering violence, hunger and disease, as the Indonesian army wreaked havoc.

In 1978, out of despair, Anita and her family surrendered. The Indonesian military forced them down the mountain. We arrived at a river, recalls Anita, while taking her daughters hand. An Indonesian commander grabbed Arsica. He said: She is mine, not yours. I cried and fought back so he could not take my child. The little girl started crying out of fear. Then the commander hit Anita with a gun and forced her to the ground. She hit him back. Twice. I was so angry. The commander wanted to shoot me. When I was about to be shot, another soldier calmed the situation down to draw the attention away. Then the commander took my child. It was the last time Anita Soares saw her daughter.

The Truth Commissions findings and forgotten recommendation

During an historic referendum in 1999, the Timorese voted for independence. In 2005, the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR), tasked to investigate human rights violations between 1974 and 1999, published its final report Chega! (a Portuguese word that translates as: no more, stop, enough). The CAVR stated that during the Indonesian occupation, at least four thousand children were forcibly removed from their families and taken illegally to Indonesia. Military abducted children from their families to break the resistance, to use them as child soldiers or servants at home. Islamic organisations converted children to Islam. Even if institutions and individuals had more charitable motives or if permission was requested from families, not much effort was made to maintain contact, which resulted in most children losing their roots. The separation of a child from its true identity, culture, ethnicity, religion or language is a grave breach of the fourth Geneva Convention and constitutes a war crime, the Chega! report concluded.

The stolen children are part of a wider crime of forced disappearances in East Timor. The Chega! report stated that 18,600 East Timorese citizens were killed or disappeared during the conflict. Both the CAVR and the Commission on Truth and Friendship (CTF)  another truth commission jointly set up by Indonesia and East Timor in 2005  compelled the two governments to create a special commission to search for the missing. This, however, did not happen. There is no political will, particularly from the Indonesian side, to materialize the recommendation to set up this commission, says Sisto dos Santos, the outreach director of HAK Association, a human rights organisation in East Timor.

Indonesia signed but didnt ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. East Timor didnt even sign it. Our government says it is easier for East Timor to follow if Indonesia first ratifies, says Dos Santos. Politically we are independent, we have a national flag and a president. But with regard to the issue of past crimes by Indonesia, our politicians are still influenced by the Indonesian government. The struggle to find the truth still goes on.

A continuing crime

While governments remained inactive, in 2010 East Timorese and Indonesian activists took the initiative to work together to find the stolen children, often using their own money and resources. In 2013 a working group was established by Timorese and Indonesian NGOs and organisations. The efforts of the group are supported by East Timor, but not by the Indonesian government. So far we have traced 138 children. We have reunited about eighty of them with their families, explains Dos Santos.

Their work can be challenging. When Indonesian colleagues were trying to trace some children, several Indonesian military tried to stop them as they were directly involved in the disappearances, says Dos Santos.

The fate of most of the stolen children is not known. Enforced disappearance is a continuing crime as long as the families dont know what happened to the children, stresses Dos Santos. As time passed, several Timorese families assumed their lost children had died and made symbolic graves. If stolen children are found alive and reunited with their families, the children have to do a ceremony to be taken out of the grave, which again is very traumatising, Dos Santos says. East Timor brought my daughter back, pleads Marcelino Soares, Arsicas father, but I want the governments to help other families with information as well, in order to bring all the lost children back home.

Living apart

Immediately after 7-year old Arsica was violently abducted, Anita Soares searched for her daughter. But while the stolen girl initially stayed not far in a military camp in the town of Aileu, it was impossible for Anita to find her. After some time Arsicas abductor, commander Nampoleaun, took her to the Indonesian province of Sulawesi, where the stolen girl lived for one year alone with him, while he was still unmarried, in military barracks. When Nampoleaun got married and had children, Arsica became part of the family. I dont know why my stepfather took me from East Timor, Arsica says. But he took good care of me. I was not abused. I had a normal life, she says. When she is asked to spell the name of her stepfather, however, she admits she is illiterate. A painful silence follows, which she immediately breaks. I didnt want to go to class and I always ran away from school, Arsica smiles. But thats something I now regret.

Arsica got a new name: Yanti. The Catholic girl became Muslim. But my stepfather never hid from me that I was Timorese, she says. The only thing that makes me feel bad is that I did not grow up with my own parents. I feel the emptiness. It makes me very sad now.

While Arsica grew up in Sulawesi, her Timorese family was living in fear. The CAVR established that the Indonesian occupation claimed at least 102,800 lives mostly because of hunger and illness, though the death toll could be as high as 183,000, on a population of about 600,000 people. Two daughters of Anita and Marcelino died of hunger. Despite the hardship, the couple still managed to get their six other children to school.

In all those years only twice they received notice that their abducted daughter was still alive. In 1989, unexpectedly, there was a message from the commander who was back in East Timor, in the town of Ainaro. When I met him, he told me: Your child is with me, and she is fine, says Marcelino. But I was sad because she was so far away. He gave me their address and telephone number in Sulawesi. But I never heard anything from her.

Then in 1991 Marcelino sent a letter to his daughter through the Indonesian Red Cross. I replied, says Arsica, who was helped to write her letter. Marcelino wrote back, but his letter ended up with a corrupt person. To be able to receive the letter, the [Indonesian] Red Cross asked 8 million rupiah [now some 500 dollars], Arsica says. She refused to pay. The contact with her family ended.

Lack of will, lack of funds

Arsica was only found last July by the NGOs. In November she travelled to East Timor as part of a group with thirteen other stolen children. Seven such grouped reunion trips have been organised thus far. But Indonesia still doesnt show any goodwill, says Dos Santos. The central government in Jakarta only gave 3,000 dollars for the last trip, while East Timor paid 37,000 dollars. NGOs, the International Red Cross and the Red Cross in East Timor paid the rest.

During the welcome ceremony in November, the current Indonesian ambassador to East Timor said he objected to the word stolen children and preferred the term separation. Dos Santos says that semantics are part of the distortion. They create a new narrative which is a perversion of the truth itself. We see this happening for all the crimes committed by Indonesia, including the stolen children. They dont want to recognize their past and make sure they never have to apologize.

Dos Santos calls on the international community to support the quest for justice. There is impunity and there havent been reparations for the survivors, he says. Recently the Centro Nacional Chega (CNC), an independent institution in East Timor tasked to facilitate the implementation of the recommendations of the CAVR and CTF, established a support program for the most vulnerable victims of the occupation to which donors, individuals and other states can financially contribute. The parents of the stolen children, many of whom live in poverty, are one of the beneficiary groups, says the outreach director of HAK.

The reunion, at long last

Immediately after Arsicas arrival in East Timor, her family took her to their home in Aileu. To welcome her and bring back her soul, her uncle sprinkled water on her. The family wrapped her in tais, a coloured traditional woven cloth. It never even crossed their minds to make a grave for her, says her mother. They always kept the hope alive that one day she would return.

Communicating, however, was difficult. Arsica has forgotten her mother tongues, Tetum and Mambai. She speaks Indonesian, a language her mother understands but cannot speak. They mostly smiled and held hands. The fact that she wears a hijab was not a problem. There is only one God, says Marcelino.

While Arsica was in East Timor the commander phoned Marcelino. I thanked him for looking after my daughter for many years. The commander thanked me too, Marcelino says.

But when Anita was asked about the commander, her eyes couldnt hold the anger. He hit me and almost shot me. He took my child by force. He promised to look after my child, but she never went to school. I dont forgive him.

The pain of the upcoming farewell was palpable. For a week Arsica felt the warm embrace of her Timorese family. But her life is in Indonesia, where she has two children and grand-children. Every day her Indonesian family has been calling her. They ask me not to stay in East Timor, but to get back as soon as possible, she says.

Arsica says she will come back to see her Timorese family, although she has no money for the journey. Her mother Anita fears the worst. With tears in her eyes she says: I am afraid I might never see her again.

This article was published in a slightly different version in Tempo Timor (in english) and in Dutch language in Amnesty International Netherlands magazine.
Six persons have been arrested with arms and ammunition and one kilogram of charas (a form of cannabis) in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district, police said.

Acting on a tip-off that the accused were plotting to commit a dacoity, a police team on Sunday nabbed them from under an overbridge near a hospital in Muzaffarpur town, Senior Superintendent of Police Jayant Kant said.

Five pistols, nine live cartridges and one kilogram of charas were seized from their possession, he said.

All the accused are residents of Muzaffarpur district, Kant said, adding a case has been registered against them under sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Arms Act with Ahiyapur police station.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi Congress president Subhash Chopra on Monday demanded the resignation of Union Home Minister Amit Shah for the attack on students and teachers at the Jawaharlal Nehru University a day ago, saying the country "did not witness" such violence even during the British rule.

Addressing a public meeting at Patparganj, Chopra claimed that people of Delhi were living in fear after masked men attacked JNU students and teachers on Sunday evening.

Chopra also alleged that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal did nothing other than posting a few tweets when violence erupted at the Jamia Millia Islamia and the JNU.

"Amit Shah should take moral responsibility for the attack on students... and tender his resignation. The country did not witness such violence even during the British rule," he said in a statement.

"Shah is responsible for this violence as Delhi Police comes under the (Home) Ministry and it remained a moot witness when students were being beaten up," he said.

On Sunday, a mob of masked young people stormed the JNU campus in south Delhi and systematically targeted students in three hostels, unleashing mayhem with sticks, stones and iron rods, hitting inmates and breaking windows, furniture and personal belongings.

The attack triggered protests across India on Monday as the clamour grew for the resignation of the vice chancellor, who is being blamed for inaction during the violence that left 34 people injured.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Popular beaches in on Australia's east coast have been smothered by an unusual 'cornflake' seaweed.

The plant made its way to Miami Beach in the Gold Coast over the weekend, where swimmers were shocked to see mountains of the weed piling up.

Swimmers have been warned to steer clear as highly venomous sea snakes, bluebottles, jellyfish and sea lice can hide under the weeds.

Piles of algae nicknamed 'cornflake' weed have piled up on beaches along New South Wales and Queensland (pictured: 'cornflake' weed in Palm Beach on the Gold Coast)

The weed, colpomenia sinuosa, gets its nickname name from its soggy, flake-like consistency.

Due to northerly winds, the weed is expected to stick around for at least another month.

In December, the algae piled up at Palm Beach on the Gold Coast, proving difficult for some beachgoers after a woman got stuck going for her morning run.

Nathan Fife, the Services Coordinator for the Gold Coast Live Saving club told Noosa News the weed often had sea life in it and swimmers needed to take care.

'You don't know what's in it, what's been washed up. It could be fishing hooks, anything sharp, I'd be very careful,' Mr Fife said.

'The seaweed attracts sea snakes, jellyfish and bluebottles.'

Swimmers have been warned to steer clear of the weed as it can attract jellyfish, blue bottles and sea snakes

Savaad Wells was swimming at Byron Bay a few weeks ago when he was also bogged down by the weeds.

'Have you ever swum in porridge? It's a bit like that,' he told the ABC.

'I had difficulty seeing may hands under the water, but I could see as far as my elbow.

'The flaky cornflake thing, it sort of hits your face like pins and needles.'

The algae is harmless to humans and after it breaks down other sea life such as crabs will eat it.
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By Associated Press

FLORENCE (US): Authorities in South Carolina are investigating the fatal shooting of an airport public safety officer officer in Florence. A man shot and killed the officer on Sunday morning during a traffic stop at Florence Regional Airport, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said in a news release.

WPDE-TV reported that Florence County Coroner Keith von Lutcken identified the victim as Jackson Ryan Winkeler (26) of Dillon. Officials said that the suspect, 37-year-old James Edward Bell, initially fled but was later captured by Florence County deputies.

Winkeler also volunteered with the Latta Fire Department, which lowered its flag to half staff Sunday. "He lost his life doing what he loved the most. Helping people. Jackson was one of the best firefighters that you could ever have on a fire scene. No matter what time of the day it was, Jackson was willing to help," Dillon Count Fire Lt. Nic Bethea told WPDE.

The investigation into Winkeler's slaying is ongoing. SLED plans to summarize the information it gathers into a case file report to be submitted to prosecutors.
PUNE National and international experts from various streams of biology, cancer and DNA damage, immunology and memory formation in the brain have gathered in Pune to discuss deep research into the common fruitfly at the 5th Asia Pacific Drosophila Research Conference (APDRC5) and Indian Drosophila Research Conference that began here today.

Two Nobel laureates, Eric Wieschaus and Michael Rosbash, renowned for their work in development biology and chronobiology respectively, are among the 100 international and 330 Indian participants in this five-day conference, being held in the country for the first time.

Organised by the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, IISERs Professor (Biology) Sutirth Dey said, This meeting is special for us because the Indian scientific community is very strong in Drosophila. This is one of those meetings in which, absolutely, the whos who of drosophoila biology from all over the world are coming. They are not only going to meet other scientists but also the post-doctoral, PhD students and under-graduates, he said.

Dey, who is using Drosophila for research in Ecology and Evolution said this common fruitfly has a very different kind of immune system from humans and yet, some pathways are common.

It has been one of the most widely-used model organism in the world for research in life sciences over the last 100 years because its genome has been entirely sequenced and there is enormous information available about its biochemistry, physiology and behaviour, he said.

The entire process of development from a cell to a full-fledged organism has been studied in Drosophila. Scientists have found that many similarities exist between Drosophila and higher organisms and therefore this research is very useful, said Dey.

One of the highlights of the Pune conference is the participation of under-graduate, post-graduate and PhD students from top institutes across the country. Fifty six under-graduate students from nine institutes across India and 13 students from nine foreign institutes in the US, Japan, China and Taiwan are participating in this conference.

Drosophila brings together a range of experts such as developmental biologists, neurobiologists, evolutionary biologists, molecular biologists and others, all of who discuss their insights into the drosophila system.

Some of the top scientists participating are K Vijayaraghavan, developmental biologist and principal scientific advisor to Government of India, Developmental biologist LS Shashidhara; evolutionary biologist Amitabh Joshi; Subhash Lakhotia, a specialist in Chromosome Biology and Rakesh Mishra, an expert in Genomics and Epigenetics.

Trudi Schupbach, an expert on cancer and DNA damage from Princeton University; Gines Morata, an expert on formation of body patterns and gene functions from Spain; Kenji Matsuno, from Osaka University, and Ann Shyn Chiang, an expert on memory formation in brain from the National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, are among those participating at the event.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle 2010

The year 2019 brought massive change for San Francisco restaurateur Traci Des Jardins. In the spring, she closed her seminal Hayes Valley restaurant Jardiniere, and last week, she quietly shuttered Mijita after 15 years in business.

It was the end of our lease  simply put, that was the reason, she said.
[January 06, 2020] Teledyne Acquires OakGate Technology

Teledyne Technologies Incorporated announced today that its subsidiary, Teledyne LeCroy, Inc., has acquired OakGate Technology, Inc. ("OakGate"). OakGate, headquartered in Loomis, California, is a leading provider of test, validation, and benchmarking products for the Electronic Storage Industry and Data Centers. Flash memory controller suppliers, solid state and rotational drive vendors, and storage system OEMs use a broad range of Teledyne LeCroy's protocol analysis solutions to test and validate their designs. These OEMs and their customers also need to benchmark product performance, individually and in systems which emulate the end user's environment. This is where OakGate's value is most compelling, offering the ability to emulate traffic flows to do performance, error recovery, fail-over, regression and production testing of devices, and providing deep insight into avenues for system and device performance improvement. "Test appliances and services offered from OakGate are a nice fit with our existing rotocol test tools, enabling us to offer more complete solutions to the market," said Kevin Prusso, General Manager of Teledyne LeCroy.



OakGate President and Chief Executive Officer, Anil Gupta said, "We're excited to join Teledyne LeCroy as their wide range of storage protocols test solutions will combine well with our system and performance test products, and provide a more comprehensive solution to the benefit of our customers." "Teledyne LeCroy is already a market leader in protocol test solutions used primarily by design engineers for well-known serial data standards like PCI Express, NVMe, SAS (News - Alert), Gigabit-Ethernet and Fibre Channel," said Al Pichelli, President and Chief Executive Officer of Teledyne. "The OakGate acquisition will extend our reach to system test engineers, quality assurance labs, production lines and data centers for test, evaluation and acceptance."

About Teledyne LeCroy Teledyne LeCroy is a leading manufacturer of advanced oscilloscopes, protocol analyzers, and other test instruments that verify performance, validate compliance, and debug complex electronic systems quickly and thoroughly. Since its founding in 1964, the Company has focused on incorporating powerful tools into innovative products that enhance "Time-to-Insight". Faster time to insight enables users to rapidly find and fix defects in complex electronic systems, dramatically improving time-to-market for a wide variety of applications and end markets. Teledyne LeCroy is based in Chestnut Ridge, N.Y. For more information, visit Teledyne LeCroy's website at teledynelecroy.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005383/en/

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BERKELEY, Calif. and BROOMFIELD, Colo., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Sovos Brands announced that Jason Vieth has joined the company as Senior Vice President, General Manager of noosa yoghurt , a premium yoghurt manufacturer. Mr. Vieth brings extensive experience in the food and beverage industry, most recently as CEO of poppi, a beverage startup funded by CAVU Venture Partners.

Prior to joining poppi, Mr. Vieth was President of Life Time Fitness' Life Cafe, leading the company's growth strategy and opening more than twenty new restaurant locations. Before Life Time Fitness, he spent nine years at WhiteWave Foods, most recently as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the company's yogurt business that included Horizon Organic, Wallaby Organic, Silk and So Delicious. Mr. Vieth shepherded the growth of the business through a combination of new brands, products and acquisitions.

"Jason brings a proven and long-standing track record of overseeing business and brand growth to Sovos Brands," said Todd Lachman, President and CEO of Sovos Brands. "At Sovos Brands, we have been able to unlock profitable growth as a result of our tenacity for finding and building one-of-a-kind brands, fostering a collaborative culture and leaning into our collective industry expertise. But most importantly, our people and the talent we bring -- like Jason -- are the reason why we're able to continue delivering exceptional results."

noosa was co-founded in 2009 by Koel Thomae, an Australian expat, and Rob Graves, a Colorado dairy farmer, who set out to bring the Aussie-style yoghurt with a creamy texture and sweet-tart flavor profile to the U.S. market. noosa boasts impressive consumer loyalty with premium positioning, and is made with whole milk, a touch of wildflower North American honey and real fruit purees on a family farm in Bellvue, Colorado.

"I am incredibly honored to join Sovos Brands during this exciting time of growth and transformation for the company, and I'm personally thrilled to lead noosa, a brand which I have long admired and which I believe has an incredibly bright future," said Mr. Vieth. "I look forward to working with the noosa team to unlock the brand's potential as we continue to delight consumers and exceed the expectations of our retail customers."

Mr. Vieth is based in Sovos Brands' Broomfield, CO office. The company also has office locations in Montclair, NJ and Berkeley, CA; and manufacturing sites in Austin, TX and Bellvue, CO.

About Sovos Brands

Sovos Brands is a food company with a mission to acquire and build one-of-a-kind brands that bring consumers delicious food for joyful living. Sovos Brands acquires brands that have exciting growth potential, combining industry expertise with fresh thinking to bring its products into more homes across America. The brands in its portfolio include Rao's Homemade, a producer of super-premium pasta sauces and other Italian specialty foods; noosa yoghurt, a producer of yoghurt made with whole milk and a touch of honey; and Michael Angelo's, a leading producer of premium, authentic frozen Italian entrees. Sovos Brands has the experience of an industry leader, and the financial backing of Advent International, one of the world's largest private equity firms. Find out more about Sovos Brands at www.sovosbrands.com, Rao's Homemade at www.raos.com, noosa at www.noosayoghurt.com, and Michael Angelo's at www.michaelangelos.com.

MEDIA CONTACT

Alex Terwilliger

203.921.6739; [email protected]

SOURCE Sovos Brands

Related Links

http://www.sovosbrands.com


A viral picture of a bride-to-be having tied her newborn baby to her wedding gown before walking down the aisle has re-emerged online. The picture was shared on Reddit, and in it, the woman can be seen amid their other guests, her newborn baby tied to the hem of her wedding dress, seemingly being dragged along behind. As the woman walked to the dais, guests at the wedding could be seen staring intently at what was unfolding before them

Read: WWE Fans Stunned After Discovering Lars Sullivan's Adult Film Clip Which Goes Viral

Truth behind the viral picture

The picture has gone viral ever since it was shared on a group 'r/wedding shaming' that has more than 70,000 members. According to reports, the picture was taken at Tennessee Nuptials in 2014 but it attracted a lot of eyeballs after it was reshared on Reddit three days ago. The picture outraged many on the platform, with many wanting to know the reasoning behind thinking that this was appropriate.

Read: Pakistan Minister's Bizarre & 'inappropriate' Video Call With TikTok Star Goes Viral

A user on Reddit commented, "Oh God, this is so many years old. I think that it keeps coming up because it is just so horrifying to think of doing this to a one-month-old. Ok, any age really, but at one month???" While another user wrote, "I remember this story. She said she wanted to include the baby in a creative way. Which is an odd way of saying "Im desperate for social media attention".

Read: Caroline Flack Old Tweet About Lamp Goes Viral After Shes Accused Of Hitting Boyfriend

According to reports that cite the bride's cousin, the baby was not dragged and was laid there for a photo. The infant was picked up after the photo of the couple coming into the Church was taken. After the post went viral on social media, Shona Carter-Brooks, the woman in the picture, issued a statement where she insisted that the one-month-old baby was awake and secure on her train. Shona also took a jibe at trolls who judged her without having full information about the viral picture.

Read: Photo Of Tarantula Hawk Wasp Dragging Huntsman Spider On Its Back Goes Viral
Throughout his presidency, President Donald Trump has repeatedly attempted to distinguish between the "wonderful Iranian people" and their "hostile," "brutal and corrupt" leadership.

But as he suggested the possibility of retaliatory strikes against Iran on Saturday, he resorted to a threat that - in prior conflicts - has deliberately blurred the distinction between countries' regimes and their people.

By suggesting strikes on "52 Iranian sites," including some that are important to "the Iranian culture," Trump threatened a way of waging war that has drawn growing outrage in recent decades, critics argued Monday.

Such attacks have been condemned as "cultural cleansing" by Irina Bokova, a former director general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). "The deliberate destruction of heritage is a war crime," she told the U.N. Security Council in 2017, adding that "it has become a tactic of war to tear societies over the long term."

Bokova was primarily referring to the destruction of cultural sites by militant groups at the time, but to some, her words now appear eerily relevant for Iran, which has 22 cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the ancient ruins of Persepolis with its palatial buildings and terraces.

"A nation that willfully destroys another country's heritage would be no better than the criminals who have destroyed irreplaceable sites in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in recent years," Sara C. Bronin, a lawyer and specialist in historic preservation, wrote in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times in response to Trump's threats to target cultural sites in Iran.

"Targeting civilians and cultural sites is what terrorists do. It's a war crime," tweeted Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In Britain, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson cautioned that "there are international conventions in place which prevent the destruction of cultural heritage."

In a statement, UNESCO said its director general, Audrey Azoulay, received the Iranian ambassador, Ahmad Jalali, on Monday to discuss the protection of cultural heritage. "Ms. Azoulay stressed the universality of cultural and natural heritage as vectors of peace and dialogue between peoples, which the international community has a duty to protect and preserve for future generations," the statement said.

In response to the mounting criticism, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Monday that "Iran has many military, strategic military sites" that could also be considered cultural sites, even though she later clarified that she was not saying Iran was camouflaging military targets within cultural sites.

The United States for decades helped shape what some believed to be a new consensus on the destruction of cultural heritage: that this form of war and destruction is not only a crime against another warring party but also a crime against humanity that endangers civilian lives and dignity.

In March 2017 - only weeks after Trump's inauguration - the U.N. Security Council, with the United States as a permanent member, unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the "unlawful destruction of cultural heritage, inter alia destruction of religious sites and artefacts" in armed conflicts.

Attacks on cultural heritage sites have been a frequent feature of armed conflicts throughout the history of civilization. In 149 B.C., for example, the Romans began their siege of Carthage, a North African city in what is now Tunisia. The assault ended in the destruction of the city in what some researchers argue was an attempt by the Romans to eradicate their enemies' culture.

Much later, the 20th century's brutality reinforced calls for attacks on heritage sites to be more forcefully condemned. World War II not only put a spotlight on the Nazis' attempts to attack opponents' dignity and national identity; it also raised questions about some Allied attacks. The Allied forces' bombardment of the eastern German city of Dresden - which came late in the war and surprised many who had not previously perceived the historic city to be a key military target - triggered a debate that continues to this day.

The international community appeared determined to take international treaties more seriously going forward.

According to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, warring parties should take all possible steps "to protect cultural property," which includes "monuments of architecture, art or history, whether religious or secular," among other examples. (Under certain circumstances, the convention allows for cultural property's special protection to be withdrawn in case of "unavoidable military necessity.")

Those commitments were also codified in the differently worded Geneva Conventions, which protect "historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples" from acts of hostility.

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In the 1990s, the wars that broke up Yugoslavia became a brutal reminder of why such treaties had been drafted - and how they were ignored. Starting in 1991, Yugoslav People's Army forces besieged the historic city of Dubrovnik in Croatia, leading to the destruction of parts of its center. In the city of Sarajevo, in Bosnia, the Vijecnica city hall was set on fire in 1992, destroying its sizable library.

In the aftermath, former prosecutors and researchers with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia assessed more broadly that during conflicts, "it is increasingly evident that cultural property is not simply at risk from incidental harm, but is being intentionally attacked as part of cultural cleansing campaigns."

They specifically referred to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq that were underway by the time of their assessment's publication in 2016. Militants in those countries - including Islamic State fighters - had waged a campaign against historic cultural artifacts and buildings that reverberated across the region.

As a result, the international community moved closer to ostracizing such acts.

In 2016, North African militant Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi was convicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of "intentionally directing attacks against historic monuments and/or buildings dedicated to religion" in the ICC's first such trial, focusing on the destruction or damaging of cultural property. Mahdi was sentenced to nine years in prison for his role in attacking nine mausoleums and one mosque in Timbuktu, Mali, in 2012.

The ICC's message to the world at the time appeared to be: Attacks on cultural heritage will no longer go unpunished.

But with a U.S. president now threatening to attack cultural sites in Iran, the narrative that the United States helped to advance now appears in doubt.

"They're allowed to kill our people," Trump told reporters Sunday, attempting to justify his threat. "They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn't work that way."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-07 05:43:06|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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LIMA, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- At least 16 people were killed and another 40 injured when a bus crashed on Monday morning into a number of other vehicles near the town of Caraveli in the Arequipa region of Peru, said Dember Munoz Lozada, head of Regional Health Management for Arequipa.

The official said that the accident occurred at 00:41 a.m. local time (0541 GMT) on Monday, when the bus, which was heading from Lima toward the city of Arequipa, crashed into several other vehicles.

According to Munoz Lozada, two people severely injured in the accident were taken to Nazca Hospital near Arequipa, where they received emergency care.

There were four foreign tourists among the injured, including two Brazilians.

The manager of the Superintendency of Ground Transportation of People, Cargo and Merchandise, Jorge Beltran, said that a possible cause of the accident was the driver's excessive speed, as the vehicle was travelling at over 100 km per hour.

Peru's highways have seen frequent fatal accidents as many of the nation's roadways pass through the dangerous Andes Mountains.
US Ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass attends a press conference during the U.N. Conference on Afghanistan in Geneva on Nov. 27, 2018. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

US Ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass Steps Down After 2 Years in Kabul

John Bass, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, stepped down in an expected departure, the State Department said on Monday.

Bass confirmed the news, releasing what he described as a farewell video after spending two years in Kabul.

As diplomats, we rarely stay long enough in the country to see and experience a whole story. We arrive in the middle of a tale. We learn about the chapters we missed. And sometimes we become part of the story, Bass said in the video.

None of us knows how this story, this chapter in the large tale of this country and its people, will end, he added.

His wife, diplomat Holly Holzer-Bass, said she and her husband would choose an ending that had Afghanistan in peace, with itself and its neighbors.

1/3 It is time for Holly and I to leave #Afghanistan. We will cherish our memories of the Eid holiday in 2018 when peace fell over the whole country and Afghans saw it was possible for both sides to stop the violence.  John R. Bass (@USAmbKabul) January 6, 2020

In a statement on Twitter, Bass said: It is time for Holly and I to leave Afghanistan. We will cherish our memories of the Eid holiday in 2018 when peace fell over the whole country and Afghans saw it was possible for both sides to stop the violence.

My earnest hope is for leaders and citizens across this country to find strength in unity, put aside their differences, and work together to negotiate a political settlement with the Taliban. Afghans and this beautiful country deserve nothing less, he added. Holly and I look forward to returning to a peaceful Afghanistan.

Bass is a career senior foreign service officer whose previous roles include serving as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and U.S. Ambassador to Georgia. He started as a diplomat in 1988, the State Department said.

Until a replacement for Bass is decided upon, Ross Wilson, who has been Americas Ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan, will be appointed to the post temporarily, the department said in a statement.

Bass skillfully advanced the Trump administrations goal of reaching a political settlement in Afghanistan that ensures terrorists can never again threaten the United States from Afghan soil while leading a large diplomatic mission in the face of numerous security threats, the statement said.

President Donald Trump and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani speak to American soldiers during a surprise Thanksgiving day visit at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan on Nov. 28, 2019. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

Bass leaves amid peace talks between the United States and Taliban.

The Taliban said after President Donald Trump visited the country for Thanksgiving that it was ready to restart peace talks. Trump said that the two sides both wanted a ceasefire.

Washingtons peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, is working on a deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

The Taliban in late December disputed reports that it had agreed to a ceasefire. The fact is, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has no ceasefire plans, the group said.
A 39-year-old man was tried this Monday morning for owning a large sum of counterfeit money.

The defendant did not appear in court in person. The 39-year-old stands accused of owning the counterfeit money and trying to put it into circulation.

A police officer told the court this Monday morning how the defendant was stopped by police around 13 months ago as he was suspected of having been involved in a break-in in Hesperange. He was then found to carry the large sum of counterfeit money.

He carried fake 50, 100, and 200 notes amounting to a total sum of approximately 22,000. The suspect told police that he had found the money in a garbage can near Luxembourg Central station. The police officer explained that he recognised that the bills were fake and consequently contacted the public prosecutor's office. The latter ordered the arrest of the suspect. At the police station, the defendant later told officers that he had given one of the fake notes to a friend to scam a drug dealer.

The representative of the public prosecutor's office used this statement to prove that the defendant had been well aware of the fact that the money he allegedly found was fake. He stressed that, from the prosecution's viewpoint, it did not matter how the suspect acquired the counterfeit money and demanded a 30-month prison sentence as well as a 5,000 fine for the accused. He added that the court should not settle for a suspended sentence because the defendant did not even appear in court in person.

The verdict will be passed on 16 January.
The seventh 'Advantage Maharashtra Expo 2020', showcasing the regional industrial strength, will be held here from January 9, an organiser said.

Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray will inaugurate the event while Union minister Nitin Gadkari will attend the valedictory function on January 12, the exhibition's convener Sunil Kirdak told reporters here.

Nearly 445 stalls will be set up by various companies to exhibit their products, he said, adding that conferences and seminars will be held during the four-day event, organised by the Marathwada Association of Small Scale Industries and Agriculture.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Referring to violence inside Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, Union Miniser Smriti Irani on Monday said campuses should not be made a "political battlefield".

"I had said it earlier and reiterating it now that educational institutions should not be made 'rajiniti ka akhada' (political battlefield) as it affects the life and progress of our students," Irani told reporters here when asked about the violence in the campus.

"I hope students will not be used as 'rajnitik mohre' (political tools)", the Amethi MP said.

"A probe has started in the matter and it is not justified for me to comment on it as I am in a constitutional post," she added.

On Sunday night, violence had broken out inside JNU when masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours.

Incidentally, Irani was the Human Resource Development Minister in 2016 when the premier university was embroiled in a row over "anti-national" activities in which then JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested for charges of sedition.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WASHINGTON  A fourth Republican candidate has entered the 2020 race to challenge U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5.

A businessman and veteran, Ryan Meehan, 37, filed paperwork to make his candidacy official on Monday.

His announcement comes six months after other Republicans launched campaigns against Hayes, a factor that could impact Meehans fundraising, name recognition and support ahead of a possible four-way primary.

Meehan recently moved to Litchfield from Greenwich with the goal of representing the district where he grew up in Congress.

When I decided to go to West Point after Sept. 11, before I made that decision, I had a sense of feeling if not me then who? So I raised my hand and I said Im going to step forward and Im going to serve my country, said Meehan in an interview. Im at a place in my life now where I am able to do that again.

He has taken a leave of absence from his role as director of Operations for Unison Energy, a mid-size sustainable energy distribution firm, to run for Congress.

Meehan completed two tours in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2012, achieving the rank of captain. He commanded two bases and lead troops in combat, he said.

When he left Congress, he completed a dual degree program for his masters in Business Administration and a masters in international relations at the University of Pennsylvania. He focused his studies on business and Latin America and speaks fluent Portuguese and some Spanish and Italian, he said. He then worked at J.P. Morgan Chase trading oil and gas.

Meehan grew up in Bethlehem and attended the University of Connecticut, before transfering to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, following the Sept. 11 attacks. He has never previously held or campaigned for elected office.

I'm going to win by being the most qualified candidate for the position, said Meehan. I will show over the course of the next several months that I'm the only candidate that can beat the incumbent and unify the district by securing votes across party-lines in the general election.

If elected, Meehan would make economic and military policy his top priorities. He described himself as a fiscal conservative who backs deficit spending only to promote economic growth and endorsed the administrations economic agenda.

He supported President Trumps strong stance against Iran with a recent airstrike that killed the countrys top general, he said.

Appeasement has not worked. Theyve become increasingly belligerent in the region, he said. At some point, we need to take a stand and we certainly took a stand by getting this leader off the battlefield. There comes a point where we need to understand what the potential repercussions of our actions are, which I trust the administration and our military leaders to have already considered.

On guns, Meehan said he backs expanding background checks for firearm purchases and red flag laws, but is wary abou banning individual weapon types.

Meehan supports Trumps re-election and called impeachment an incredible distraction.

We have an election coming up. An abundance of information has gotten out to the public, he said. Its now time for Congress to move foward and the American people will make their decision at the polls.

David Xavier Sullivan, a former assistant U.S. attorney from New Fairfield, Ruben Rodriguez, a meter technician for the City of New Britain, and Robert Hyde, a public relations representative, have all declared their candidacy to the Federal Election Commission.

Sullivan leads the race in fundraising with about $60,000 raised at the end of September, according to the most recent data available.

Hyde faced calls to drop out of the race from state Republican leaders after posting making a vulgar comment about a presidential candidate on Twitter. He confirmed Monday that his campaign is continuing.

J.R. Romano, chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party, said he is happy many Republicans have decided to make the sacrifice of running for office in the 5th District.

I think there are a lot of Republicans who recognize that Jahana Hayes is part of the most extreme wing of the Democratic party in Congress, Romano said. I think that there are many people in the district who feel that the direction that this extreme wing wants to go in is not the right direction.

Hayes is a first-term Congresswoman and former National Teacher of the Year who has made education and agriculture her signature issues on the hill.

Hayes said her voting record was anything but extreme.

The most disappointing thing about the chairmans statement is that it is based on the premise that all Democrats are a monolith and lack the capacity for independent thought, Hayes said Monday. If they were willing to look beyond the surface, they would see a wide variety of leaders in the Democratic Caucus, each with their own ideas and objectives for improving the lives of their constituents.

She added that she was eager to debate the Republican nominee after the primary.

emilie.munson@hearstdc.com; Twitter: @emiliemunson
Destek.oyna.la scored 42 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 2/5.0 Stars by Social Team

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Newspapers on Monday, January 6, paint a picture of high security alertness in the country following recent attacks by al-Shabaab militants.

The dailies also delve into financial struggles of parents as learners resume school for the first term.

READ ALSO: KFS withdraws ill-fated MV Harambee ferry after DPP Haji refused to board it

Newspapers paint a picture of high security alertness in the country. Photo: UGC.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: US confirms 3 Americans killed in Manda Bay attack

1. People Daily

Jubilee Party Secretary General Raphael Tuju is a man under siege as the ruling party prepares for its internal elections in March 2019.

Party members allied to Deputy President William Ruto have vowed to remove Tuju from the seat arguing the SG has been making remarks deemed as disrespectful to the second in command.

The Team Tanga Tanga leaders want Tuju's position to be occupied by a person who is in sync with Ruto's 2022 State House bid.

They have fronted National Assembly Majority Whip Benjamin Washiali to take up the chairman's position in place of Nelson Dzuya.

READ ALSO: Netizens welcome Miguna Miguna as he boards plane to Kenya

2. The Standard

A recently released study has revealed Nairobi and Mombasa have the highest cases of mental illness.

The report by Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) showed Nairobi had 20,353 cases in 2018, of which at least 18,846 were patients aged five and above.

The second county was Murang'a (4,881), Kiambu (4,793), Mombasa (4,620), Tharaka Nithi (3,957), Uasin Gishu (3,817) and Meru (3,394).

Lowest numbers were recorded in Isiolo (176), Wajir (467), Turkana (471), Mandera (494) and Tana River (519).

READ ALSO: Mtangazaji Ghost Mulee amtambulisha mwanawe mtanashati kwa mara ya kwanza

Nairobi had 20,353 cases in 2018, of which at least 18,846 were patients aged five and above. Photo: The Standard.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Woman who cheated with former Tahidi High actress Jackie Matubia's baby daddy emerges

3. Taifa Leo

The daily tries to demystify circumstances that led to formation of Jubilee Party after merger of Uhuru Kenyatta's TNA and DP Ruto's URP parties.

According to Taifa Leo, the decision to have the union was informed by Uhuru's campaign strategy team Cambridge Analytica.

It has, however, emerged the move turned Ruto into a flower girl and gave Uhuru easy time in clinching the presidency.

Much of the work done during the campaigns, the Swahili daily says, was executed by Cambridge Analytica and attributes this to recent remarks by Uhuru allies that they do not have a debt to pay to Ruto.

READ ALSO: Mombasa pastor stabs wife, takes own life during church service

Taifa Leo demystifies circumstances leading to formation of Jubilee Party after merger of Uhuru Kenyatta's TNA and DP Ruto's URP parties. Photo: Taifa Leo.

Source: UGC

4. Daily Nation

Nairobi County Assembly Speaker Beatrice Elachi has called city MCAs for a Kamukunji on Tuesday, January 7.

Elachi, in a letter, said the meeting will help the 122 lawmakers brainstorm on the situation of the county following a court's decision to bar Governor Mike Sonko from office.

The meeting will be held before a special sitting slated for Thursday, January 9.

This comes even as ODM-allied MCAs continue to push for Sonko's impeachment, arguing the executive has been rendered useless since the governor cannot perform key functions.

Photo: Daily Nation.

Source: UGC

5. The Star

Government Spokesman Cyrus Oguna has said exiled lawyer Miguna Miguna is free to return to Kenya.

Oguna said Miguna's return will not be met by any interference from the State.

The lawyer is expected back in the country on Tuesday, January 7, since his deportation in February 2018.

Earlier, President Uhuru Kenyatta had also hinted that he was okay with Miguna's return.

However, a showdown is still expected between the lawyer and Immigration Department which recalled his Kenyan passport.

Spokesman Oguna said Miguna's return will not be met by any interference from the state. Photo: The Star.

Source: UGC

Do you have a groundbreaking story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690. Contact Tuko.co.ke instantly.

Did Steve Ogolla lie about Dorcas Sarkozy | Tuko TV.

Source: TUKO.co.ke
Dumo Lulu-Briggs, son of the late philanthropist Olu Lulu-Briggs has accused his fathers widow, Seinye, of deliberately delaying his fathers burial, which is fixed for January 25.

Lulu-Briggs died on December 27, 2018.

Dumo, through his spokesman Sotonye Ijuye-Dagogo, said: Asked to release her husbands body for burial, Seinye refused, and it is more than a year now. The Ghana Police Service instituted an autopsy and obtained an order of the coroner to conduct an autopsy, amid severe opposition from Seinye.

Eventually, Seinye managed to smuggle in a stranger pathologist, Dr. Lawrence Edusei, to bungle and render unacceptable an autopsy process that was not only a police initiative, but also a coroners order. Dr. Edusei walked out the Ghana Police pathologist and the Nigeria Police pathologist from the autopsy theatre and refused to give tissue samples to the parties.



By this act, Seinye ended up orchestrating an autopsy that breached the terms of a consent order of the high court which her lawyers obtained, in which it was clearly stated that Col. Attoh of the 37 Military Hospital, Accra, should perform the autopsy.

On September 6, 2019, Mrs. E.K. Barnes-Botchway, the magistrate and coroner, concluded that events following the death of High Chief O.B. Lulu-Briggs, including statements of persons on the flight, and the doctor that examined his body on arrival at the Kotoka International Airport Clinic, Accra, shows that Chief Lulu-Briggs did not die a natural death. The coroner, therefore, ordered an inquest into his death, but Seinye runs to a court with a certiorari application to stop the inquest.

What is Seinye hiding? How did her husbands dead body get to Ghana from Nigeria?

What has Seinye done that she does not want an inquest into the death of High Chief O.B. Lulu-Briggs? It looks like she is terrified of an inquest or a transparent autopsy, because she may not be able to compromise the pathologists again.

Shamelessly, Seinye is reported to have said the January 25 burial date is achievable. This is against the fact that the Ghana Appeal Court will begin to hear her appeal on January 24. What kind of woman is she?

Seinye claimed to have given two preconditions  that she would have two of her representatives to attend the burial plans meetings; and the family would promise and undertake before a judge that she would not be put through any form of crude burial practices. None exists in Kalabari customs; Seinye is only casting Kalabari tradition in bad light, in pursuit of her evil plans.

But Seinye, through her spokesman, Oraye St. Franklyn, described Dumo as confused and lying.

Seinye insisted that she and the deceaseds seven children  Senibo, Dumo, Sofiri, Solate, Rachael, Dateim and Iyowuna  must play active roles during the funeral, which Governor Nyesom Wike assured will be a state burial.

Seinye said: whose body did Dumo identify and sign out of the mortuary for the autopsy? The autopsy was completed and the report was filed. Whose body did he identify and sign back into the mortuary after the autopsy?

If Dumo has a problem with the autopsy, then the family should call a leading expert to review the report. On December 27, 2019, he blocked the release of the autopsy report. Why has Dumo gone to court to block that? Dumo is certainly now confused

The widow added that she was ready for her husbands burial on January 25, thereby putting an end to the avoidable crisis.

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Dublin City Councillors have voted not to participate in an upcoming RIC and Dublin Metropolitan Police commemoration event.

At a meeting this evening, councillors backed the emergency motion by a majority of four to one.

It comes as a number of politicians said they will not be attending the Dublin Castle event on Friday week.

The Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan has insisted the event is not a celebration.

Minister Flanagan said: "The approach to the Decade of Centenaries has made clear that there is no hierarchy of Irishness and that our goal of reconciliation on the island of Ireland can only be achieved through mutual understanding and mutual respect of the different traditions on the island.

"As part of the Decade of Centenaries (2012-2023), under the guidance of the Expert Advisory Group on Centenary Commemoration, I, on behalf of the Government, will host an event to commemorate the place of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police in Irish History,

"This event is one of a large number of events taking place during this decade to acknowledge and commemorate significant events or developments in the history of our island one hundred years ago.

"It is not a celebration. It is an acknowledgement the historical importance of both the DMP and the RIC, and is in no sense a commemoration of the Black & Tans or the Auxiliaries," he said.
Iran ends commitment to nuclear deal amid raising tensions

Iranian top commander Qassem Soleimani's death has led to a dramatic escalation in tensions between the US and Iran.

Iran announced Sunday that it will no longer comply with any commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal signed with several world powers.

THE COUNTRY WILL CONTINUE WORK WITH IAEA

"By taking the fifth step in reducing its obligations, Iran is abandoning the last key practical limitation under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which deals with the number of centrifuges," the government said in a statement.

The government noted, however, that it will continue to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It added that if US sanctions are lifted and benefits are provided, Tehran is ready to return to the agreement.

The decision comes after Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds force, was killed early Friday in a US airstrike in Baghdad.
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Let us know if you'd like to brainstorm together. Wed be delighted to help!
Croesus-Democrat Michael Bloomberg, with a net worth of $55 billion, could pay the entire tab of the Democrats' 2020 election effort if he wanted and notice no dent in his pocketbook.

Buying an election, so they say.

He's doing something quite a bit sneakier: he's buying a government. Seriously, in the manner of privateers of old, he's offering "gifts" of "free" left-wing lawyers to state attorney general offices with the express purpose of undercutting President Trump on greenie regulations. Naturally, only Democrats among them accept.

According to the Daily Caller, which found the news on some New York University alumni booster brag sheet:

Bloomberg Philanthropies financed a group that is planting private attorneys into state attorneys general offices for the explicit purpose of pushing back against Trump's regulatory rollbacks. "What's problematic is the arrangement through which a private organization or individual can promote an overtly political agenda by paying the salaries of government employees," Indiana Attorney General (AG) Curtis Hill, a Republican, told the Daily Caller News Foundation, citing a common criticism of New York University's State Energy and Environmental Impact Center (SEEIC). Bloomberg's philanthropy supported the center with a $6 million grant. The NYU School of Law launched the group in 2017 to "identify and hire NYU Law Fellows who serve as special assistant attorneys general in state attorney general offices, focusing on clean energy, climate and environmental matters," according to the NYU Law website.

From their government perches, these left-wing lawyers paid for by Bloomie and pals have filed more than 300 state lawsuits to gum up the agenda of the Trump administration. Much easier to file it from the state than the private sector, see. The Caller notes that Bloomberg has "seeded" the government with these renta-leftist lawyers as a means of priming his own entrance to the presidency with Deep State operatives waiting for him.

So when you hear about a state like California launching another lawsuit against Trump over some reasonable or popular decision he's made  say, on getting rid of unreasonable fuel standards  you can rest assured that it wasn't someone you elected, even if you voted Democrat, who's doing this; it's quite possibly the work of a far-left presidential candidate seeding the offices with his own "people" to do his bidding over that of the currently elected president.

It's an army of mercenaries, paid for by some outside actor. This is why Republican attorneys general are questioning and suing about the measure. If the government is supposed to be of, by, and for the people, why should left-wing billionaires be free to embed "their people" in to take action from a non-accountable basis? Would it be OK if the Saudi king or Vladimir Putin decided to offer similar "gifts" to advance their own interests, too? How about Trump himself, or Charles Koch? The whole thing strikes at the heart of representative government and replaces it with a government of billionaire minions, mercenaries loyal only to the billionaire paying their salaries and calling the shots. Since most of these billionaires practicing this now are lefties seeking to pull up the drawbridge on millionaires and other upstarts who'd also like to get rid  Bloomberg certainly is  it's a direct conflict of interest with the will of the people, and it can only get worse.

Call it privateering.

The Daily Caller reports that this isn't going over well with GOP attorneys general, who are suing to end it:

"Democratic state AG offices are taking on seasoned attorneys being paid by a radical liberal Democratic Presidential primary candidate," he said before suggesting the special assistants "wield state police power" to lay the ground work for Bloomberg's climate agenda. Republican Georgia AG Christopher Carr is also expressing concerns about the optics of such a mission. "AG Carr has serious concerns about this program and the ability of these lawyers to represent a state in an unbiased manner," Katie Byrd, a spokeswoman for Carr's office, told the DCNF. Georgia doesn't accept private money when it employs such assistants, she noted. Other officials inside the Republican ecosphere want media to do more to flesh out Bloomberg's work.

The other thing they can do, besides sue to block Trump, is block law enforcement operations against leftist groups and the Bloomberg operation itself. Bloomie has already demonstrated that he's willing to use his own companies to shield himself from scrutiny, ordering the company he founded, Bloomberg News, not to cover his campaign, focusing only on President Trump instead. You can bet those A.G.s embedded in state attorney general offices are not going to "notice" anything amiss with operations affiliated with Bloomberg, either. They know who writes their paychecks, and it's not the locals they lord it over for their own good on Mike's dime.

It comports with a lot of sleazy rigging practices Bloomberg has also been caught doing. The Caller notes the media rigging  Bloomberg's blocking of his own reporters from covering him, of course, but also that Bloomberg took a large number of Bloomberg News operatives into campaign operatives, effectively on the Fusion GPS model. Worse still, he founded "Hawkfish," a shadowy company with no website that secretly collects information on voters by collecting every keystroke. I commented on that earlier here.

This is an amazing corruption of representative democracy for personal ends. It's the sort of thing Hugo Chavez or Nicolas Maduro would do to rig their own Venezuelan government with partisan operatives. It's not democracy, it's plutocracy. The GOP attorneys general in other states launching the lawsuit are right to want it stopped right now.
IMAGE: Police personnel baton charge supporters of Left, BJP during a protest against JNU violence in Kolkata on Monday. Photograph: PTI Photo

Protests against the attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University students rocked various parts of West Bengal on Monday as police had to baton charge supporters of the Left and the Bharatiya Janata Party when the two sides engaged in a face-off in south Kolkata.

Several students organisation, civil society groups and parties cutting across political lines took out rallies in various parts of Kolkata and the state to protest against the violence that rocked the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi on Sunday night.

Earlier in the day, students of Jadavpur University joined the nationwide protests by raising slogans, burning tyres and singing songs against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and BJP government at the centre.

Beginning at the JU campus, the rally proceeded towards the Jadavpur Police Station, took a U-turn and again moved towards the Sulekha More.

Several eminent personalities like filmmaker Anik Dutta and music director Debojyoti Mishra joined the rally.

Shouting slogans like 'Nathuram Godse in your heart while (revolutionary) Khudiram Bose is in our heart', the students slammed the RSS-affiliated ABVP for allegedly attacking the JNU students, including students' union president Aishe Ghosh and professor Sucharita Sen.

"Yesterday (Sunday) was the darkest day of Indian democracy because of what happened inside the JNU campus.

"Beating up of students and teachers by goons and attacking girls' hostel by ABVP activists brought shame to our democracy.

"But, such attacks will not deter us from continuing our fight against fascist forces," a JU student said.

Later in the evening, Communist Party of India-Marxist and other Left parties also took out a rally from Jadavpur 8B Bus stand to Sulekha More.

The students of Jadavpur University, activists of the SFI and members of other Left outfits took out a rally from 8B Bus Stand to Sulekha More in the evening.

A march was taken out by the BJP from Bagha Jatin More to Jadavpur Police Station over the JNU issue and also ransacking of its party office in the area on Sunday night.

The two sides came face to face at Sulekha More, leading to a brawl.

BJP activists allegedly pelted stones at the Left activists, prompting them to burn the flags of the BJP and ABVP.

Police put up barricades and blocked both the rallies, but abuses were allegedly hurled and slogans and counter-slogans raised.

Students' Federation of India supporters claimed that BJP workers used expletives against women activists.

After repeated attempts to calm the situation, police baton-charged supporters of the Left and the BJP as the two sides engaged in a face off, in order to disperse the protesters.

Police personnel were seen brutally beating up the protesters, including students and women.

Later on, South Suburban Division Deputy Commissioner of Police Sudip Sarkar said the intention of the baton charge was not to beat up the students.

"Our intention was not to beat up the students. It was due to a confusion that some students were hurt. We wanted to disperse the BJP and ABVP supporters. If any student is hurt, we are ready to apologise," Sarkar told reporters.

Students of the Presidency University took out a rally on College Street expressing solidarity with the JNU students.

"We condemn such violence inside the JNU campus, which is a cradle of free and liberal thinking. The ABVP and BJP want to curb free thought and want to impose their fascist ideology on us. But we will continue our fight till the last breath," a Presidency University student said.

The Congress students' wing, Chhatra Parishad , burnt effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on College Street.

The Trinamool Congress student's wing -- Trinamool Chatra Parishad -- also took out rallies in various parts of the state.

College and university students took out rallies across the state condemning the attack on JNU campus.

Earlier in the day, West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, termed the attack on students and teachers at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University as a 'fascist surgical strike' by the BJP.

The saffron camp was quick to return fire and asked Banerjee to stop shedding 'crocodile tears'.

On Sunday, a mob of masked young people stormed the JNU campus in south Delhi and systematically targeted students in three hostels, unleashing mayhem with sticks, stones and iron rods, hitting inmates and breaking windows, furniture and personal belongings. They also attacked a women's hostel.

The attack triggered protests across the country on Monday and the clamour grew for the resignation of the vice chancellor, who is being blamed for inaction during the violence that left 34 people injured.

Edited by Utkarsh Mishra
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 22:33:51|Editor: huaxia

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Ran Guanghui carries goods at Chaotianmen in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, Jan. 5, 2020. Ran Guanghui, 50, has earned his living as a "bang bang", literally "stick men", in Chongqing for ten years. In a mountainous city as Chongqing with an abundance of hilly roads and ladder pathways, stick men have assisted people by carrying luggage and heavy things. Hauling goods on bamboo poles balanced on their shoulders, the stick men earned bread by the sweat of their brows. Ran became one of them in 2009 when he left his home town Dianjiang, a village under Chongqing. Over the decade, Ran has worked really hard as a bang bang, keen to make a good living for his family. Not afraid of hardship, he went out to work early and came back late everyday. Sometimes he worked deep into the night, and once even worked for 24 hours on end. He has shouldered goods as heavy as 235 kg, despite his light body weight of 65 kg. With his great strength, honesty and diligence, Ran has been favored by more and more customers and gained some success. In 2016, Ran was able to buy an apartment on mortgage in Chongqing, located close to the Chaotianmen area where he worked. When they moved into the new home, his wife Qu Guangfang smiled with happiness and then cried for the hardship her husband had suffered. However, Ran said he did not feel much suffering, as he had achieved his goal by his own "shoulders". (Xinhua/Wang Quanchao)
By Mateusz Morawiecki



The 20th century brought the world inconceivable suffering and the death of hundreds of millions of people killed in the name of sick, totalitarian ideologies. The death toll of Nazism, fascism and communism is obvious for people of our generation. It is also obvious who is responsible for those crimes  and whose pact started World War II, the most murderous conflict in the history of humankind.





Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, left, accused Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, over lying about outbreak of World War II. / AFP-Yonhap
MILL VALLEY, Calif., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Glassdoor , one of the world's largest job and recruiting sites, today announced that Christian Sutherland-Wong is leading the company as chief executive officer. Sutherland-Wong was previously Glassdoor president and chief operating officer. Glassdoor co-founder and former CEO Robert Hohman is remaining with Glassdoor as chairman. The leadership change, which was announced last year, comes as Glassdoor reaches a milestone of more than 1,000 employees across ten offices .

Sutherland-Wong was named Glassdoor president in early 2019 after being appointed as the company's first COO in February 2018, overseeing day-to-day operations, strategy and business for Glassdoor. He joined the company in 2015 as vice president and general manager of monetization. Previously, Sutherland-Wong held roles at LinkedIn and Bain & Company. He currently sits on the board of Toolworks, an organization that helps people with barriers to employment successfully enter the job market. Sutherland-Wong is especially passionate about helping people grow their careers, acquire new skills and innovating around the candidate experience.

"It is an honor and privilege to take the reins at Glassdoor as we embark on the next chapter of our mission to help people everywhere find a job and company they love," said Christian Sutherland-Wong. "I remain laser focused on building upon our strong foundation with innovation, expansion into global markets, and increased collaboration among our talented employees, who are at the core of Glassdoor's success."

In 2007, Robert Hohman co-founded Glassdoor, launched it online in 2008 and has since served as Glassdoor CEO. He has led the company to become the second largest job site in the U.S.,1 and one of the largest in the world. Hohman helped pioneer greater transparency in the workplace by building a platform that aims to provide job seekers with powerful, relevant information to help them make more informed decisions about where to go to work. Hohman transitions from CEO to chairman with a 93 percent CEO approval rating among Glassdoor employees.2

Today, Glassdoor welcomes more than 60 million people worldwide each month,3 offering them access to the latest jobs paired with more than 55 million reviews and insights for more than one million companies.4 In addition, Glassdoor currently employs more than 1,000 employees across ten offices in seven countries . To better support Glassdoor's growing needs, the company will relocate its global headquarters to San Francisco from Mill Valley, CA in Fall 2020.

Learn more about Glassdoor and its executive team .

1. Based on unique users, custom job list sites % Change Media Trend Report, Comscore Sept 2019 Media Metrix, US

2. Based on more than 540 CEO approval ratings by Glassdoor employees as of 1/2/20

3. Google Analytics, Unique users represents peak monthly unique users in CQ3'19

4. Glassdoor Internal Data, Sept 2019

About Glassdoor

Glassdoor combines all the latest jobs with millions of reviews and insights to make it easy for people to find a job that is uniquely right for them. The company is on a mission to help people everywhere find a job and company they love. In pursuit of the mission, Glassdoor helps employers hire truly informed candidates at scale through effective recruiting solutions like job advertising and employer branding products. Launched in 2008, Glassdoor now has reviews and insights for more than one million companies located in more than 190 countries. For more information, visit glassdoor.com.

Glassdoor is a registered trademark of Glassdoor, Inc.

SOURCE Glassdoor

Related Links

https://www.glassdoor.com


Quietly, the states housing crisis is beginning to take its toll on Californias 1.4 million family businesses.

Heres an example. Nina Kingsley-Keller was an outstanding employee for my family-owned business, Holt of California. A manager in Modesto overseeing multiple Central Valley stores, she recently moved to a small town in northeastern Oregon, largely due to Californias soaring housing costs.

We sold our 1,310-square-foot house on a 10,000-square-foot lot for $335,000. In Oregon we purchased a 1,408-square-foot home on two-thirds of an acre for $168,000. More house, more property, no sales tax, much lower gas taxes, similar property tax rates. The decision was a no-brainer, she said.

We had to work very hard to subsist in California. Now living in Oregon, I work part time, and (my husband) is retired and our quality of life is better than in California. We have more spending money to do the things we want.

I realize that by Bay Area standards, a $335,000 home seems like a dream. But my company has locations in the Central Valley. I can only imagine what my fellow family business owners and their employees are going through in the Bay Area and Southern California.

Nina is not the only Holt employee who left California. Weve had more than a dozen valuable employees move to other states in the past few years. Some who owned homes cashed out and bought larger homes. Others struggled to find an affordable place to live here.

The number of people leaving Holt has been a trickle, but that may not be for much longer because many of our employees are talking about moving. Thats consistent with recent polling showing 53% of Californians are considering moving because of the high cost of living here. More troubling, 63% of Millennials want to leave. If they leave, who will be left in the workforce when the Baby Boomers retire?

Lawmakers must come up with real-world solutions to clear the way to building the millions of new homes and apartments our state desperately needs. Gov. Gavin Newsom has made this a top priority. But 2020 must be the year serious housing reforms are enacted for California to remain the worlds fifth-largest economy.

Lawmakers must realize that government isnt going to build the 3.5 million housing units the governor has set as his goal. The private sector  and their thousands of employees  are going to build them. What government officials can do is recognize that their actions over the past 40 years, no matter how well-intended, are a major reason for our shortage.

Housing experts agree there are several things the state could do to encourage the construction of more homes and apartments. To start, reform the California Environmental Quality Act, which is shamelessly misused to tie up housing projects for years in hopes the developer will simply give up. Former Gov. Jerry Brown called CEQA reform the Lords work. Its time lawmakers got religion.

Local governments need to roll back the tens of thousands of dollars in fees and permit costs imposed on the construction of each new unit. If housing is a priority, lets work to reduce costs, not increase them.

Legislators must stop adding new mandates that drive up costs. The new law that requires all new homes to have solar panels will add $9,000-$10,000 to the cost of that home.. And this is just the most recent mandate that has come out of Sacramento. There have been many others.

Finally, government should do no harm. Nearly every economist across the political spectrum agrees that rent control discourages apartment construction, yet lawmakers just imposed it statewide. Lets stop the bleeding, not keep opening up new wounds.

Family businesses want to continue being cornerstones for our communities. We want a healthy environment and economy. But for those things to happen, we must have housing opportunities for our employees  starting today.

Ken Monroe is chairman of the Family Business Association of California.
Find a restaurant. Book a hotel. Choose a product to buy. Online ratings and reviews from other customers can help with making decisions on all of these, and their use has exploded in the past decade.

But online ratings of physicians? A new poll suggests they don't yet hold as much sway with the Americans who use the most health care: people over age 50.

In all, 43% of people between the age of 50 and 80 said they had ever looked up a doctor online to see how others rated him or her, or what was said in their reviews.

One-third of them had done so at least once in the past year, according to new results from the National Poll on Healthy Aging. And two-thirds of them had chosen a doctor due to good online ratings and reviews.

When it comes to choosing a physician, online reviews matter about as much as what an older person hears from family and friends through word of mouth - but only one in five poll respondents called either source of information "very important."

The poll, carried out by the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation with support from AARP and Michigan Medicine, U-M's academic medical center, involved a national sample of more than 2,200 adults aged 50 to 80. They answered questions about many aspects of online physician ratings.

"People of all ages are turning to the web to find information, so it is not surprising that older Americans are looking up physician ratings online," says David Hanauer, M.D., M.S., an associate professor at the University of Michigan, IHPI member and specialist in clinical informatics who worked on the poll. "But it is a bit of a surprise that these online ratings now carry as much weight as recommendations from family and friends."

What mattered more to older Americans than the number of stars a doctor received online? According to the poll, 61% of all those polled said the wait time for an appointment was very important, and about 40% said that about recommendations from other doctors or the physician's level of experience.

Meanwhile, only 7% of those polled said they had actually posted a review or rating of a doctor online -- even though older adults are much more likely than most younger people to see more than one physician, or to see physicians and other providers multiple times in a year.

Finding a new doctor can be stressful. Online rating might be one of many sources of information that can help older adults navigate this process." Preeti Malani, M.D., director of the poll and a professor of internal medicine at U-M

No matter what, the new poll results suggest that the stereotype of older adults as not Internet-savvy is outdated.

"This survey makes it clear that although online physician reviews and ratings are important to older consumers, they are savvy about information gathered on the internet and have a healthy dose of skepticism around them, too," says Alison Bryant, Ph.D., senior vice president of research for AARP.

Among those who did look at reviews, 69% said they wouldn't select a doctor who had mostly negative reviews. Meanwhile, 71% said that a few bad reviews among a large number of positive reviews wouldn't keep them from choosing a physician.

Just over half of those polled said they thought physicians influence their ratings to make themselves look good. And in fact, 17% of those who posted a review said they did so because the staff at their doctor's office encouraged them to.

Most older adults don't appear to be using a longstanding source of information: state medical boards.

Hanauer, who has faculty positions in the Department of Pediatrics at the U-M Medical School and at the U-M School of Information, is the Program Director for Clinical Informatics at the Michigan Institute for Clinical & Health Research. He is a member of IHPI and of U-M's Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation and Research (CHEAR) Center.

The National Poll on Healthy Aging results are based on responses from a nationally representative sample of 2,256 adults aged 50 to 80 who answered a wide range of questions online. Questions were written, and data interpreted and compiled, by the IHPI team. Laptops and Internet access were provided to poll respondents who did not already have them.

A full report of the findings and methodology is available at http://www. healthyagingpoll. org, along with past National Poll on Healthy Aging reports.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 23:50:37|Editor: huaxia

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Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with visiting Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 6, 2020. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said Monday that as good neighbors, friends, comrades and partners, China and Laos enjoy a shared future.

Xi made the remarks when meeting with visiting Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Xi said the leadership of the communist parties and socialist systems of the two countries define their political nature.

He called on the two countries to work "hand in hand and side by side" to maintain close high-level exchanges, enhance exchanges on governance, jointly improve the ability to govern and safeguard the common interests of both countries and the developing world.

"China will continue to firmly support Lao efforts to safeguard its sovereignty and dignity," said Xi. "Next year is the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Laos, and therefore the bilateral relationship will enter a critical stage."

Xi said China is willing to work with Laos to promote the building of a community with a shared future between the two countries, advance the alignment of development strategies, accelerate the construction of the China-Laos economic corridor, advance major cooperation projects in areas such as railways and economic parks, and strengthen people-to-people exchanges as well as coordination and collaboration in international and regional affairs, so as to lift bilateral ties to new heights.

Thongloun conveyed to Xi the greetings of Lao President Bounnhang Vorachit, who is also general secretary of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party Central Committee, and congratulated the People's Republic of China on its achievements since its founding 70 years ago.

Thongloun expressed the belief that under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee with Comrade Xi at the core, the Chinese people will definitely achieve the first centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

He also offered his congratulations for the success of the fourth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee held in October, saying that China's experience in upholding and improving socialism with Chinese characteristics and modernizing governance is worthy of study.

Thongloun said the action plan reached by the two sides on building a community with a shared future pointed out the direction for bilateral ties, and Laos is implementing the plan seriously.

Thongloun added that Laos will actively work for the completion of important Belt and Road projects such as the Laos-China railway as scheduled, and thus contribute to the economic development and improving people's livelihood of Laos.
Researchers have demonstrated a new all-optical technique for creating robust second-order nonlinear effects in materials that don't normally support them. Using a laser pulse fired at an array of gold triangles on a titanium dioxide (TiO2) slab, the researchers created excited electrons that briefly doubled the frequency of a beam from a second laser as it bounced off the amorphous TiO2 slab.

By widening the range of optical materials useful for micro- and nanoscale optoelectronic applications, the work could give optical engineers new options for creating second-order nonlinear effects, which are important in such areas as optical computers, high-speed data processors and bioimaging safe for use in the human body.

"Now that we can optically break the crystalline symmetry of traditionally linear materials such as amorphous titanium dioxide, a much wider range of optical materials can be adopted in the mainstream of micro- and nanotechnology applications such as high-speed optical data processors," said Wenshan Cai, a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The proof-of-concept findings were reported January 2 in the journal Physical Review Letters. The research received support from the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

A majority of optical materials tend to have a symmetric crystal structure that limits their ability to create second-order nonlinear effects such as frequency doubling that have important technological applications. Until now, this symmetry could only be interrupted by applying electrical signals or mechanical strain to the crystal.

In the laboratory, Cai and collaborators Mohammad Taghinejad, Zihao Xu, Kyu-Tae Lee and Tianquan Lian created an array of tiny plasmonic gold triangles on the surface of a centrosymmetric TiO2 slab. They then illuminated the TiO2/gold structure with a pulse of red laser light, which acted as an optical switch for breaking the crystal symmetry of the material. The amorphous TiO2 slab would not naturally support strong second-order nonlinear effects.

"The optical switch excites high-energy electrons inside the gold triangles, and some of the electrons migrate to the titanium dioxide from the triangles' tips," Cai explained. "Since the migration of electrons to the TiO2 slab primarily happens at the tips of triangles, the electron migration is spatially an asymmetric process, fleetingly breaking the titanium dioxide crystal symmetry in an optical fashion."

The induced symmetry breaking effect is observed almost instantaneously after the red laser pulse is triggered, doubling the frequency of a second laser that is then bounced off the titanium dioxide containing the excited electrons. The lifetime of the induced second-order nonlinearity generally depends on how fast electrons can migrate back from the titanium dioxide to the gold triangles after the disappearance of the pulse. In the case study reported by the researchers, the induced nonlinear effect lasted for a few picoseconds, which the researchers say is enough for most applications where short pulses are used. A stable continuous wave laser can make this effect last for as long as the laser is on.

"The strength of the induced nonlinear response strongly depends on the number of electrons that can migrate from gold triangles to the titanium dioxide slab," Cai added. "We can control the number of migrated electrons through the intensity of the red laser light. Increasing the intensity of the optical switch generates more electrons inside the gold triangles, and therefore sends more electrons into the TiO2 slab."

Additional research will be needed to build on the proof of concept, which showed for the first time that the crystal symmetry of centrosymmetric materials can be broken by optical means, via asymmetric electron migrations.

"To approach the practical criteria detailed on the essence of our technique, we still need to develop guidelines that tell us what combination of metal/semiconductor material platform should be used, what shape and dimension would maximize the strength of the induced second-order nonlinear effect, and what range of laser wavelength should be used for the switching light," Cai noted.

Frequency doubling is just one potential application for the technique, he said.

"We believe that our findings not only provide varieties of opportunities in the field of nonlinear nanophotonics, but also will play a major role in the field of quantum electron tunneling," Cai added. "Indeed, built upon the accumulated knowledge in this field, our group is devising new paradigms to employ the introduced symmetry breaking technique as an optical probe for monitoring the quantum tunneling of electrons in hybrid material platforms. Nowadays, achieving this challenging goal is only possible with scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) techniques, which are very slow and show low yield and sensitivity."

###

This work was performed in part at the Georgia Tech Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology, a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure, which is supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. ECCS-1542174). This material is based upon work partially supported by the Office of Naval Research under Grant No. N00014-17-1-2555, by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ECCS-1609567 and by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Solar Photochemistry Program under Grant No. DE-FG02-12ER16347. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsoring organizations.

CITATION: Mohammad Taghinejad, Zihao Xu, Kyu-Tae Lee, Tianquan Lian, and Wenshan Cai, "Transient Second-Order Nonlinear Media: Breaking the Spatial Symmetry in the Time Domain via Hot-Electron Transfer." (Physical Review Letters, 2020). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.013901
A day after violence by some armed men at New Delhi's JNU, some students here at Panjab University disrupted the address of Haryana Speaker Gian Chand Gupta, who alleged that it was "a predetermined act" by those trying to "break the country".

Carrying banners, the students belonging to some Left-leaning student bodies, shouted slogans against the BJP, RSS and the ABVP when the Haryana speaker was addressing during a seminar on the topic, "Women's Participation in Decision-Making".

The protesting students were then taken out of the seminar hall by security personnel.

Later talking to the media, Haryana Assembly Speaker Gian Chand Gupta described the students' protest "a predetermined act".

He, however, said, "Everybody has the right to speak, but in a decent way."



He said any effort to stop the seminar was not right.

"This was a predetermined act," said Gupta.

To a question, Gupta said those trying to "break the country" organised this protest.

The chairperson of the National Commission for Women, Rekha Sharma, who also attended the seminar, said, "This is their wish. This is a free country. They (students) put forth their views."



Sharma said as far as the JNU violence was concerned, the Union home ministry had a taken cognisance of it.

"I will meet the girls injured in this incident," she said.

Earlier speaking to reporters, one of the protesting students, Kanupriya, slammed the Centre for the violence on the JNU campus.

"The Vidhan Sabha speaker (during seminar) was saying that they want to promote beti padhao. Is this way they will teach girls," she asked while protesting against violence at the JNU against women students.

Meanwhile, students owing allegiance to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP)-- BJP's student wing-- also held a demonstration against against Left-leaning student bodies on the PU campus.

Heavy police force was deployed at the university to prevent any untoward incident.

At least 28 people were injured in violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night when masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers besides damaging property.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As congressional leaders try to come to a deal on rules for Trumps trial, these senators votes may become crucial.

The impeachment trial against Donald Trump kicked off on Thursday as mangers from the House of Representatives read the formal charges against the United States president in front of the Senate.

The Democratic-led House impeached Trump last month for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power related to his dealings with Ukraine. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, labelling the impeachment process a sham and witch-hunt.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initially stalled on transmitting the articles, saying she was waiting until there was a guarantee from the Republican-held chamber that a fair trial would be held. She decided to finally move ahead amid mounting pressure from Republicans and some Democrats.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he has the votes needed to pass a resolution laying out the rules begin the trial without addressing the question of witnesses before opening arguments are heard.

Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer in the Senate, have provided a list of four people to be called as witnesses. The Republican majority, led by McConnell, have signalled they want swift proceedings with no witnesses.

Although Trump is expected to be acquitted in a trial, several senators may prove crucial in shaping the upcoming proceedings in the 100-member Senate, where 53 seats are currently held by Republicans and a simple majority will have the final say on all procedures and rules.

In addition to McConnell and Schumer, here are 10 senators to watch:

Republicans

Susan Collins

Open to witnesses

Senator Susan Collins is known as a moderate Republican and could be a swing vote on a rules package for the trial.

Collins has said she wants to adhere as closely as practical to former President Bill Clintons impeachment trial, which included closed-door witness testimony, and has been working with a small group of Republican lawmakers to make that happen.

She told the Bangor Daily News in early January that Republicans should be completely open to calling witnesses.

I am hopeful that we can reach an agreement on how to proceed with the trial that will allow the opportunity for both the House and the presidents counsel if they choose to do so, she said.

Days later, she told reporters: My position is that there should be a vote on whether or not witnesses should be called.

Collins is up for re-election this year in Maine, where Hilary Clinton won in the 2016 presidential election.

Collins has also criticised McConnell and other Trump allies, telling local mediait is inappropriate  for senators on either side of the aisle to prejudge the evidence before they have heard what is presented to us. She has said she would oppose a motion to dismiss.

Senator Susan Collins [File: J Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press]

Lisa Murkowski

Disturbed by McConnells approach

Senator Lisa Murkowski is also considered to be a moderate Republican.

The Alaska senator made headlines last month when she said she was disturbed when McConnell said he was working in total coordination with the White House for the trial.

To me, it means that we have to take that step back from being hand in glove with the defence, and so I heard what leader McConnell had said, I happened to think that that has further confused the process, she told local media.

US Senator Lisa Murkowski [File: Leah Millis/Reuters]

She said she thought House Democrats should have gone to the court to compel witnesses who refused to testify to appear.

However, she, along with Senator Mitt Romney, are reportedly part of the effort lead by Senator Collins to allow witnesses in the trial. She previously told local media she is curious about what the testimony of former National Security Advisor John Bolton would contain, but would not pre-judge the need for his testimony until the proceedings began.

She has not indicated how she will vote on impeachment, but has said she will vote against a motion to dismiss case. She has voted against Republican leaders before, including the confirmation of Trumps controversial Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.

Lamar Alexander

Trumps actions inappropriate but impeachment a mistake

Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander is retiring next year. Ahead of the House vote in December, he called Trumps actions inappropriate, but labelled the impeachment inquiry a mistake.

Senator Lamar Alexander [File: Brendan Smialowski/AFP]

Its inappropriate for the president to be talking with foreign governments about investigating his political opponents, but impeachment would be a mistake, he said in a statement in October, according to The Associated Press news agency.

Alexander told Politico in January that its important a vote is held on whether or not witnesses can be called during the trial. He added he would need to hear the case to decide if he would vote for witnesses, saying he would if I needed to. Or I might not. Or I might.

He has also said he wants the trial to be fair.

We have a constitutional responsibility to have a fair trial and be impartial in our decision making and it would help if the two leaders could agree on what the procedure should be, CNN quoted Alexander as saying in December.

He has said he would vote against a motion to dismiss the case.

Rand Paul

Id advise Republicans not participate in anything that doesnt allow defence witnesses

Senator Rand Paul has defended Trump on impeachment, but has also indicated that he may not support a rules package that does not include defence witnesses, including the whistle-blower, whose complaint led to the impeachment inquiry, and Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden whose work with a Ukrainian gas company has loomed large over the investigation.

Id advise Republicans not to participate in anything that doesnt allow defence witnesses, the Kentucky senator was quoted by the Hill news site as saying in November.

He tweeted on January 14: I look forward to forcing votes to call Hunter Biden and many more!

Rand Paul participates in a TV interview outside his office at Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill [File: Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP]

Paul has called for the name of the whistle-blower to be made public. He has also criticised Democrats for delaying sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate.

Take Nancy Pelosi (please). I dont know if I can stop laughing long enough to air my grievances with Nancy. Her new plan is great  she is going to punish the president by NOT sending his impeachment to Senate? Next, maybe shell threaten to NOT send us anymore legislation? he tweeted last month.

Mitt Romney

Completely open mind

Senator Mitt Romney has been no stranger to criticising Trump. He slammed the president for calling on Ukraine and China to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, who is also a 2020 Democratic presidential frontrunner. Trumps demand for a Ukrainian investigation of Biden by Ukraine is at the centre of the impeachment.

Senator Mitt Romney was one of only two Republicans to vote in favour on introducing new evidence in the trial [J Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press]

Romney is the only Republican senator who has publicly said he would vote in favour of hearing Boltons testimony, and along with Senators Collins and Murkowski, is working to assure the trial allows for motions to hear witnesses.

He has been tight-lipped on what his final vote on impeachment will be, vowing to keep a completely open mind during the Senate trial.

I am doing my very best to keep an open mind and Im going to wait to make any comments on evidence until we see all evidence, all the facts are laid out, he told CNBC in October.

Martha McSally

Take a serious look

Martha McSally is another vulnerable senator heading into the 2020 election season. She lost her Arizona Senate race in 2018, but was appointed to her current seat after her predecessor resigned. Arizona is shaping up to be a battleground state in the 2020 elections.

Senator Martha McSally during a Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing [File: Erin Scott/Reuters]

Her office said she has not been convinced that Trump should be removed from office after a recording surfaced of her suggesting to Republican activists that the president had not abused his power. She has since pledged to review the facts objectively and to work closely with the White House on the process for impeachment.

Americans want us to take a serious look at this and not have it be just partisan bickering going on, she told local media.

Cory Gardner

Political circus

Senator Cory Gardner has been more cautious than many of his Republican colleagues when talking about impeachment. He is seeking re-election in Colorado, a swing state historically, where recent polling suggests Trump is losing support.

Senator Cory Gardner arrives for a Republican caucus meeting on Capitol Hill [File: Joshua Roberts/Reuters]

A recent poll found that 54 percent of residents in his state support impeachment.

Gardner has criticised the impeachment process, calling it a political circus, according to local media. But he has been largely silent on whether he would support having witnesses.

He also stayed mum on rumours that he is working with the small group of Republican senators pushing to allow motions for witnesses in the trial.

Democrats

Doug Jones

Every trial is a pursuit of the truth. Thats all I want

Senator Doug Jones faces re-election this year in the conservative state of Alabama.

Jones has described the charges against Trump as serious but said he is keeping an open mind when it comes to the Senate impeachment trial.

Senator Doug Jones has said he will vote to convict the president [File: Andrew Harnik/The Associated Press]

In a Washington Post op-ed last week, Jones said he wants to hear from the four witnesses Democrats have said they want to call in the trial.

If [Trump] chooses to maintain his blockade, however, the Senate needs only a simple bipartisan majority to issue subpoenas for witness testimony and relevant documents. A full, fair and complete trial demands nothing less, Jones wrote.

Every trial is a pursuit of the truth. Thats all I want. Its all each of us should want, he added.

Krysten Sinema

Approach it with no bias

Krysten Sinema, a freshman senator from Arizona, has emerged as one of the more moderate Democrats.

She won a Senate seat by a tight margin and has since voted with Republicans on several issues, including the confirmation of William Barr. She also voted against the Green New Deal.

Kyrsten Sinema speaks after being declared the winner in Arizonas US Senate race [File: Rick Scuteri/AP Photo]

Sinema has remained largely tight-lipped about how she plans to vote on impeachment.

If the Senate receives articles of impeachment, it is our duty to hold a trial and we will do that, she told local media last month. As a juror, it will be my constitutional duty to approach it with no bias and to listen to the arguments presented by both sides and make a decision.

Joe Manchin

I am very much torn

Senator Joe Manchin from the conservative state of West Virginia has voted with Trump more than any other Democratic senators in office.

Manchin was the only Democrat to vote in favour of confirming Kavanaughs Supreme Court nomination.

He has supported the idea of having witnesses, but told CNN in December he was torn on whether he would vote to convict Trump.

Senator Joe Manchin during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [File: Alex Brandon/AP Photo]

We have a divided country. On the other hand, we have equal branch of governments, responsibilities in the constitution. There are a lot of things at stake here, he said.

The future of our country. And the future of how were able to do our business depends on how we handle this, he added. Im very much torn on it. I think it weighs on everybody.
GREENWICH  Traffic headaches are worsening in central Greenwich, as work continues on a new Eversource substation and the infrastructure related to the project.

Greenwich police are urging motorists who drive through central Greenwich to seek out detours in the area of Bruce Park Drive, which is closed for the near future from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays.

Eversource has been building a new substation at 290 Railroad Ave., and it is laying down 2.3 miles of transmission lines from the Cos Cob substation to the new facility just off Greenwich Avenue.

The utility says the work beginning in early January will involve excavation work and rock removal on Indian Harbor Drive and Davis Avenue during the daytime. Sections of Bruce Park Drive will also be closed for the work.

Night work will also continue in the area, and an access ramp and one lane of traffic on I-95 near exit 4 in Cos Cob will be closed until 5 a.m.

Motorists and commuters who drive through central Greenwich would be wise to check with the Eversource closure plans, which are posted online at the companys website at Eversource.com, Greenwich police spokesman Lt. John Slusarz said. Detour signs are also going up in the area.

It can be stressful when youre detoured. Were trying to do our part, making people aware so they can plan accordingly, Slusarz said.

Its a major project, it needs to be done, he said, and motorists need to be patient as the work is completed.

The Eversource project has been unpopular with the community since it was finalized in April 2019, with Town Hall leaders trying to mitigate the worst aspects of its impact on traffic. The work is expected to be completed by early this year, though a final deadline has not been released.

We are committed to being a good neighbor and doing our work with respect for our residents and their properties, Eversource spokesman Frank Poirot said.

The utility said the new substation is necessary to upgrade the electrical infrastructure in town and boost system reliability.

A traffic problem arose on lower Field Point Road in early November, when an operation to deliver a large piece of equipment at Railroad Avenue went awry, shutting down the road overnight.

Eversource said anyone with questions or concerns can call 800-793-2202, or email the utility at ProjectInfo@eversource.com.
After a meeting of Jawaharlal Nehru University authorities with the secretary of the Ministry of Human Resource Development on Monday, the Chief Proctor of the university, Dhananjay Singh said that efforts are on to normalise the situation in the campus.

"It is very unfortunate that there have been unabated violent incidents in JNU over the last two days which aggravated yesterday. We are very concerned and that is why we had a meeting today with the secretary of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD)," Singh said.

"As a member of the administration, I am extremely pained at the injuries caused to the students yesterday. We are doing everything to restore peace on the campus. I appeal to everyone in the university campus to help us in maintaining calm and peace on the campus," he added.

A professor at the university, Chintamani Mahapatra, who also attended the meeting with the MHRD, made an appeal to political leaders to not politicise the issue in JNU.

"I sincerely appeal to all political leaders from across the party divide and from across the spectrum that the issue in JNU should not be politicised," Mahapatra said.

On Sunday evening, more than 30 students, including JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, were injured and taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered JNU and attacked them and some professors with sticks and rods.

The JNU administration and political leaders, cutting across political lines, had condemned the attack on students and urged the police to take action against the perpetrators.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The vital circus arts of the 20th century were parades, acrobatics, shows of skill, equestrian shows, clowns, wild animal acts, and musical performances. The freak shows which were popular in previous centuries slowly faded into the background. The circus families, however, continued their long history of art and their never-ending journeys across the world.

Lillian Leitzel

The early 20th century is called the Golden Age of circus, and one of its crown jewels was Lillian Leitzel, a German-born aerialist. Her unique act was a combination of stunts and acrobatic tricks performed on the Roman rings 50 feet above the arena. For her grand finale, she pinwheeled on a rope, spinning head over heels while holding onto the ring with one hand. She could pivot so rapidly that her arm was dislocating and snapping back into the shoulder socket with each turn.

The Wallendas

In 1922, Karl Wallenda created the Great Wallendas, a daredevil group who performed acts of skill on high-wire, bicycles, and human pyramids. Soon enough, they got a new name: during their performance in Ohio, the group fell from wire and were saved by the grace of luck. A reporter later said, "The Wallendas fell so gracefully that it seemed as if they were flying." Since that moment, the group became Flying Wallendas.

The Schumanns

The Danish Schumann family, who created their first circus in 1914, were the world-famous equestrian performers. They brought both the high-school riding and the liberty-horse acts to the next level. The Royal Families of Sweden and Denmark always attended the Schumanns' opening nights in Stockholm or Copenhagen. In London, Queen Elizabeth II never missed their performances, always visiting the stables after the shows.

Paulina Schumann

Paulina deserves a special mention: she started as an acrobat and variety dancer, became an equestrian circus legend. Utilizing her prior experiences, she completely renewed the conservative concept of circus horse presentation in the '50s and '60s by adding advanced choreography, staging, and design aesthetics. She brought sophistication in lighting, music, and thematic performances in costumes.

Con Colleano

The Australian-born Con Colleano, known as "The Wizard of the Wire" or "The Toreador of the Wire," was one of the most highly paid and continuously rewarded circus performers of his time. He set a record as the first somersault on a tightrope. His outstanding acrobatic skills, combined with the charm of the Spanish cadence and toreador moves performed on the wire, kept the American audiences thrilled from 1925 to his retirement in 1959.

Oleg Popov

Oleg Popow performing with the Russian State Circus in Worms, Germany. Credit: Patrick Glanz

The Russian clown Oleg Popov became famous in both Europe and the US by his Auguste-styled performances with the Moscow Circus. Wearing a minimum of makeup and a slightly unconventional wardrobe, he brought the laughter to the audience by his comedian acting as a Moscovite streetwise character who is forever trying to mimic the legitimate performers.

Mabel Stark

Marvelous Mabel Stark was the leading female big cats trainer and performer Ringling's world starting the 1920s. Mabel was known for her resilience and fearlessness: in 1928, she slipped at the arena, and two of her tigers attacked her, leading to severe injuries. She needed almost 400 stitches and several weeks in bandages but was back to the ring right after. She spent 57 years in the lights of the arena.

Clyde Beatty

An American cat trainer who remained popular for over 45 years, once performed with over 40 "black-maned African lions and Royal Bengal tigers". He used the noise of the whip and shots fired from the blank gun, following the American cat shows tradition of scaring and beating animals into submission as a representation of human dominance. That approach, however, sped up the fading of the tradition's glory: public sentiment was shifting towards compassion to the circus animals over the thrill of subjugating them. By the end of the 20th century, cruelty-free circuses such as Cirque du Soleil and Cavalia largely outgrew traditional ones in popularity.

David Larible

David Larible as "Maestro Mortale" Credit: Bettina Reinisch

A famous clown, who descends from seven generations of Italian circus performers, is one of the most celebrated modern clowns. He was using pantomime and audience interaction to create an engaging comedy act without traditional clown costumes or makeup.

The Flying Cranes

Eastern Europeans performers were especially celebrated for acrobatics and tumbling. "The Flying Cranes" was a dramatic show with trapeze and various acrobatic devices telling a story of fallen Russian war heroes. As heroes' souls ascend, they turn into white cranes: the acrobats fly through the air in white costumes, highlighted by theatrical lighting, effects, and dramatic music.
The Monday said fugitive economic offender cannot use pendency of his plea in the apex court to stall insolvency proceedings initiated against him by lenders in other countries.

A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde passed the order after the Centre told the court that Mallya used pendency of his plea to stall the UK court from delivering verdict in insolvency proceedings.

Pendency of the case is not a ground for holding any case anywhere in the world, the apex court said.

"In view of the letter circulated by Advocate-on-Record for the petitioner, list these matters on January 10, 2020...subject to the condition that the pendency of these special leave petitions shall not be used as a cause for seeking adjournment in any matter before any Tribunal, Court or Authority anywhere," said the bench, also comprising Justices B R Gavai and Surya Kant.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, informed the court that proceedings in the UK in an insolvency case filed by SBI against Mallya, have been concluded and the order reserved.

Mallya's lawyers have asked the UK court not to pass any order contending that settlement proposal is pending in the apex court here, Mehta said and asked the court to clarify the position.

Mallya, currently in the UK, has been charged by the Enforcement Directorate of defaulting on bank loans amounting to Rs 9,000 crore. He is facing extradition trial in the UK.

Mehta told the court that Mallya has been assuring the consortium of banks since 2013 that he will repay the money and not a single rupee has come from him till date.

Mallya had earlier moved the apex court challenging the confiscation of properties belonging to the companies owned by him and his family members.

He said in the plea that no property other than that of Kingfisher Airlines, facing cases of alleged irregularities, should be attached.

On July 11, last year the Bombay High Court had refused to grant stay on proceedings before a special court on confiscation of Mallya's properties.

The division bench of the court had dismissed an application filed by Mallya last month, seeking a stay on the proceedings before the special court hearing cases pertaining to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

On January 5 last year, the special PMLA court here declared Mallya a fugitive economic offender. The court then started proceedings for confiscation of his properties.
The Hungarian government will double the number of soldiers patrolling the borders in light of increasing migration pressure, Szilard Nemeth, state secretary at the defence ministry, told a press conference on Sunday.

Nemeth spoke at the border police base at Madaras, in south-eastern Hungary, and said that last year, the number of illegal entrants had grown almost tenfold, to 3,299. He added that the authorities expected that number to grow further.



Nemeth said that Hungarian soldiers had been patrolling the borders with police officers since 2015.



Lieutenant general Gabor Borondi, deputy commander of the Hungarian Army, said that the number of soldiers in the border control mission would increase from 50 to 100 on Monday.



With auxiliary staff included, the move will bring the total number to 500, he said. He added that the measure would be in force as long as necessary.



MTI Photo: Molnar Edvard
President Donald Trumps policy toward Iran is in deep crisis. The presidents approach has the support neither of Americas allies nor of its strategic rivals, China and Russia. And his policy  made even more confrontational by the shooting of a high-ranking Iranian official  has boxed him into a situation where, short of dramatic reversal, Washington and Tehran are edging close to war.

By failing to forge policies in cooperation with allies, the U.S. was robbed of advice and expertise in how to tackle the problems posed by Iran. Above all, it led to the dangerous deterioration of relations between the U.S. and Iran after the U.S. became the sole country to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. That deal was painstakingly negotiated by the Obama administration in cooperation with five other world powers.

Instead of Trumps harsh policy imposing maximum pressure on Iran, Iran has turned the tables and has put pressure on a freshly impeached U.S. president whose reelection is by no means assured and whose international diplomatic isolation and weakness is no secret in the region.

And once again, Trump took unilateral action early on Friday morning. The killings of Irans revered and powerful military commander, General Qassem Soleimani, and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in a U.S. drone strike on Baghdad airport has further escalated tension in the region.

The killings immediately caused huge anti-American protests in Iran and led to the rise of global oil prices and the fall of stock markets around the world.

Iran has vowed harsh revenge for the assassination of Soleimani, the strategic mastermind behind Tehrans entire ambitious Middle East policy. He also coordinated Irans widespread covert operations program and provided much of the strategic expertise for President Bashar Assads war in Syria.

Wishful thinking?

Since coming to office in January 2017, President Trumps approach to resolve Americas longstanding quarrel with Iran has consisted of two stages.

The politics of maximum pressure  imposing stiff economic sanctions  combined with harsh rhetoric toward Tehrans leaders was to be followed by a second stage of intense personal diplomacy that would culminate in the signing of a great new deal of cooperation with longtime enemy Iran.

It would turn Trump into one of Americas greatest foreign policy presidents and might even, or so he hoped, earn him a Nobel Peace Prize.

As an international relations scholar and former diplomatic and foreign policy adviser at the German embassy in Beijing, I believe this approach consisted of a lot of wishful thinking.

Irans Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei simply refused to engage with Washington on the conditions laid down by Trump. Those conditions included Iran halting all uranium enrichment and ceasing support for the regions militant groups.

Tables turned

Trumps unorthodox idea  conducting the nations diplomacy singlehandedly and without asking for much advice from experts in the State Department or from his allies  has been revealed as untenable .

Trumps withdraw al from the 2015 multi-party nuclear deal with Iran was caused by his unhappiness that the deal was not meant to restrain Irans aggressive politics in the region. Trump also believed it would not effectively prevent Tehrans ability to manufacture nuclear weapons in the long run.

But his policy toward Iran appears not to have contained and intimidated the countrys leaders. It has instead emboldened the country to aggressively challenge U.S. policies in the Middle East.

U.S. withdrawal from the deal was deeply resented by both Iran and the international community. And it started the rapid deterioration of relations with Tehran.

The recent siege of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad by violent protesters who were clearly directed by the Tehran regime recalled the Iranian hostage crisis 40 years ago that decisively contributed to President Jimmy Carters electoral defeat.

The shooting down of an expensive American drone by Iran in June as well as Tehrans open support of the Assad regime in Syria and the Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon were further indications of Irans challenge to the U.S.

It appears that Trumps airstrike on the Baghdad airport was an attempt to demonstrate Americas power and to break out of a largely self-inflicted foreign policy failure.

New tack

I believe that President Trumps diplomacy toward Iran requires urgent course corrections.

The only option left  and one not yet seriously considered by the Trump administration  is to fall back on cooperation with other great powers, not least with Washingtons many allies, such as the U.K., France and Germany, who are still anxious for American global leadership. The Trump administration has little option but to return to the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran, though perhaps it could be somewhat modified to enable Trump to save face.

The administration could then embark on a unified Western policy to restrain both Iranian leadership ambitions in the Middle East and Tehrans nuclear ambitions.

The killing of Soleimani and the angry reaction to his death, however, has made this almost impossible in the short run. But tempers may cool.

Despite recent joint Russian-Chinese-Iranian naval maneuvers, Moscow and Beijing are also still interested in containing Iranian ambitions. Iranian dominance in the Middle East and the resulting further tension and escalating rivalry with Saudi Arabia for regional control would hardly benefit the great powers and the stability of the region.

Whether or not the Trump administration is capable of and willing to embark on such a major change of course is unclear. But I believe it is the only way out of a crisis largely caused by Trumps unilateral policies.

Klaus W. Larres is Distinguished Professor; Adjunct Professor of the Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This commentary is from the website The Conversation.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: A day after they were attacked in what they believed was their safe refuge, many students in Jawaharlal Nehru University on Monday were both angry and fearful with some demanding that the guilty be booked and others saying they were going home.

There was an uneasy calm in the campus where there was a massive deployment of security personnel and authorities only allowed students with valid ID cards inside.

However, these measures did not assuage the concerns of students over their safety.

Shreya Ghosh, a resident of Shipra Hostel, asked how could goons enter the campus with rods and sticks and said, "The attack could not have happened without the connivance of the administration and police."

She claimed that she had to hide in Sabaramati Hostel after the masked men chased her and some other people.

Akarsh Ranjan from Periyar hostel said students had received threats that they should not come out of their rooms.

According to other residents of Periyar hostel, a group of masked people had entered their hostel around 4:30 pm and banged on doors, forcing many students to flee the hostel from back door exits.

Many of them went without food on Sunday night as the food had to be thrown away.

"The food was prepared by 4:30 pm on Sunday. After we heard that students were barging in, we locked the mess and went upstairs. They broke open the mess door. They did not touch the food but we did not feed it to students because we were scared they might have mixed something in it," said OP Tiwari, a mess employee.

He said the food was prepared for 550 students, including for those living in Godavari Hostel, where some renovation is going on.

A resident of the hostel, however, alleged that glass pieces had been mixed in the food.

Aman Kumar, a PhD scholar said a mob had vandalised the mess around 4 pm.

"They were banging on the door but my roommate and I pushed one of the beds against it so that they could not enter. We left from a back-door. I had food at Koyna Hostel and spent the night at Lohit Hostel. I came to collect some things at my hostel around midnight but all the rooms were locked," he said.

Kumar claimed many students had left Godavari Hostel out of fear.

Another student, Ram Kishore, alleged that people wearing masks and banged on the doors.

"I went to Kishangarh to stay at my cousin's place where I had dinner," he said.

A Kashmiri student, requesting anonymity said, he was also chased by the mob along with other students and he had to jump from the first floor of the hostel to save himself.

"We were 3-4 friends inside a room. Suddenly, some of our friends came running and said, 'The ABVP is coming with lathis and rods'. We latched the room but within a few seconds, they started banging on it with lathis. They also broke glass windows on top of the door. Scared, we opened the balcony door and jumped from the first floor. Otherwise, they would have killed us," the student said.

He said he is planning to go home after registering for the semester.

Surya Prakash, a visually challenged student, said he was scared after being attacked in Sunday's violence.

"They came to my room and beat MEwith rods. I told them I am blind but they continued the assault. I have been hit badly and I will have to go for an X-ray. I'm scared after yesterday's violence," Prakash said.

He claimed that he was getting phone calls from his attackers threatening him to not talk to the media.

Masood, a student pursuing PhD in Urdu, claimed that he was attacked because he was from Kashmir.

Several students were also seen leaving the campus.

A student, Pancham, who did not reveal her last name, said she was leaving the hostel because her parents feared for her safety.

Mallika Sinha, a computer science student from Nepal who lives in the Yamuna Hostel, said she received a call from her parents asking her to leave the campus.

At Sabarmati Hostel's girls' hostels many rooms were found locked. A woman student said that many women had left the campus after Sunday's incident.

Students also said that as the masked people attacked students on Sunday, many fled to the Sabarmati hostel to save themselves.

The residents had latched the gate to prevent their entry but the attackers carrying rods and sticks broke the door and entered the boys' wing.

They tried to enter the girls' wing but the women formed a human chain to prevent their entry.

They even took the male residents of the hostel to their rooms to shield them from the attackers.

A student claimed that when the rampage took place, there were no security guards around.

"There are almost 250 security guards on the campus. Usually, two are deployed at hostels, but when the mob went on a rampage, there were no security guards there, not even at the women's hostels --Shipra and Koyna," the student claimed.

At the entrance of Sabarmati Hostel, the premises was littered with shards of glass and some students were seen clearing the debris.

The hostel mess was also damaged in the violence on Sunday evening when the mob had gone on a rampage, vandalising property and attacking the staff and students, including the JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh.

The mob also entered two other hostels -- Periyar and Koyna -- where they took to vandalism.
Researchers have developed a new model which simulates the effects of key factors controlling the interactions between complex molecules, an advance that may lead to the development of novel therapies for diseases like cancer, HIV, and autoimmune diseases.

The study, published in the journal PNAS, looked at three main parameters playing a role in the interactions between molecules -- binding strength of each of the chemical's site, rigidity of the linkages between sites, and the size of the linkage arrays.

As part of the study, the researchers, including those from the University of Minnesota in the US, assessed how these three parameters can be "dialed up", or "dialed down" to control how molecule chains with two or three binding sites interact with each other.

"The big advance with this study is that usually researchers use a trial-and-error experimental method in the lab for studying these kinds of molecular interactions, but here we developed a mathematical model where we know the parameters so we can make accurate predictions using a computer," said study co-author Casim Sarkar from the University of Minnesota.

According to the researchers, many diseases can be traced to a molecule not binding correctly.

Understanding how to manipulate these 'dials' controlling molecular behaviour, they said, may lead to the development of a new programming language which can be used to predict how molecules will bind.

"This computational model will make research much more efficient and could accelerate the creation of new therapies for many kinds of diseases," Sarkar said.

Even when the interacting molecule chains have just three binding sites each, there are a total of 78 unique binding configurations, most of which cannot be experimentally observed, the researchers said.

Hence, they believe there is a need for a mathematical framework to decode this programming language.

By feeding input parameters in the new mathematical model, scientists can quickly understand how these different binding configurations are affected, and tune them for a wide range of biological and medical applications, the study noted.

"We think we've hit on rules that are fundamental to all molecules, such as proteins, DNA, and medicines, and can be scaled up for more complex interactions. It's really a molecular signature that we can use to study and to engineer molecular systems. The sky is the limit with this approach," said Wesley Errington, another co-author of the study from the University of Minnesota.
An Oklahoma man and his teenage girlfriend have been charged with murder after the pair allegedly killed a 17-year-old girl as 'payback' for a sexual transmitted disease.

Andrew Hall, 30, and Cheyenne Blalock, 17, were arrested on New Year's Day and charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Kirstan Patterson.

Mayes County Sheriff Mike Reed said the victim knew both suspects and was a schoolmate of Blalock's in Chouteau.

Suspects: Andrew Hall, 30 (left), and his girlfriend, Cheyenne Blalock, 17 (right), have been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Kirstan Patterson, also aged 17

Patterson was found shot in the head on New Year's Day in Chouteau, Oklahoma

Her body was recovered in the Spring Creek Recreation Area south of Locust Grove

Pattersons body was found on January 1 south of Locust Grove with a gunshot to the head not long after the teenager had been reported missing.

According to court documents obtained by KOTV, following their apprehension, Blalock and Hall turned on each other and implicated one another in Patterson's murder.

Under questioning, Blalock claimed that Hall had talked about killing Patterson as 'payback' for allegedly giving him an STD.

According to the documents, Blalock told investigators that her boyfriend had considered several ways to take Patterson's life, and on New Year's Eve he instructed her to text the victim inviting her to take a ride with him.

The teenage suspect told detectives that Hall had her hide in the backseat of his car under a blanket when they went to pick up Patterson.

Blalock denied witnessing Patterson's slaying, but said she heard two gunshots.

Meanwhile, Hall told investigators it was Blalock who killed Patterson with two rifle blasts.

Patterson (left and right) attended high school with Blalock and played volleyball

Blame game: Court records reveal that Blalock and Hall have implicated one another in Patterson's killing in the wake of their arrests

Courts documents indicate the man told detectives that Blalock was angry with Patterson over the STD and some unspecified conflict at school.

Hall allegedly claimed he thought Blalock, who was armed with two knives while hiding in the backseat, was 'only going to physically assault' Patterson.

The 30-year-old suspect told cops he went along with his teenage girlfriend's directions because he was afraid she would become violent and hurt him.

Court records allege that the pair drove Patterson out to the Spring Creek Recreation Area, where either Hall or Blalock pulled a hunting rifle from the trunk and shot the girl, killing her.

Blalock admitted to touching her schoolmate's lifeless body to make sure she was dead, according to the court papers, reported Tulsa World.

Blalock's mother, Karry Patterson (right), wrote of the girl that she was her 'heart and soul'

She said her boyfriend then poured bleach over Patterson's body and dragged it into the water 'in some effort to destroy evidence.'

In Hall's version of events, however, it was Blalock who moved the body into the water.

Both suspects are being held in the Mayes County Jail on $1million bail each. They are due back in court on Thursday.

Patterson attended Chouteau High School and was on the school's volleyball team.

Her mother, Karry Patterson, has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for her daughter's funeral.

'My precious baby girl was taken from me,' she wrote in the description. 'She was only 17 years old and taken for no reason. She is my world my heart my soul and now my heart is broken into pieces.'
US President Donald Trump. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Investors continued to flock to oil and gold on Monday amid the escalation of tension between the US and Iran following Donald Trumps administrations assassination of one of the Islamic Republics most powerful generals.

The oil price (CL=F; BZ=F) continued to trade upwards of 2% to $70 per barrel mark due to huge supply concerns should the tension between Iran and the US escalate. The last time oil spike to this degree was in April 2019 when it reached $74 per barrel due to the US saying that investors of Iranian oil should stop buying the commodity by 1 May or face sanctions and in September when Saudi production facilities were attacked, which erased 5% of global output.

However, Goldman Sachs (GS) said in a note that for oil to stay at this current level, there would have to be an actual disruption to supply, rather than fearful sentiment.

Chart: Yahoo Finance

Meanwhile, other investors sent gold (GC=F) prices up again as it moved up 1.5% to $1,576.20 (1,205.27) after the US airstrike on Baghdad triggered a rush to safe-haven assets.

Chart: Yahoo Finance

Last week, the US assassinated Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad  one of the countrys most powerful political chiefs and regarded as a terrorist by the US.

Iran vowed "severe revenge" and it has to settle a score with the US. The new head of Iran's Quds force, which Soleimani led, has pledged to remove US from the Middle East.

"We promise to continue martyr Soleimani's path with the same force ... and the only compensation for us would be to remove America from the region," said Esmail Qaani on state radio.

President Trump has since threatened severe sanctions against Iraq and said hes prepared to strike in a disproportionate manner and attack more than 50 sites if Iran retaliates against the assassination.

"We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there. It cost billions of dollars to build. We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," he said.
The Post company 'knew they could not meet obligations for deliveries' but continued to offer services anyway

Mordechai Alon say the service gives unfair preference to Amazon packages causing other items to miss delivery deadlines

The Israeli Postal Company has been sued over claims it is prioritising Amazon packages to the detriment of thousands of small businesses.

A 50.6 million NIS ($14.5 million) class action lawsuit was filed yesterday in Haifa District Court over ongoing delays in its delivery of packages.

Mordechai Alon, the owner of an online auction company that requires the use of the post's courier service, made the claim.

The small business runner said that the service has caused thousands of companies like his to suffer due to the post's preference for Amazon package.

The Israeli Postal Company has been sued over claims it is prioritising Amazon packages to the detriment of thousands of small businesses

He said the services' actions are a breach of contract between the postal service and consumers, as preferential treatment is forbidden.

Mr Alon claims that since October 2019 he has had complaints from hundreds of customers who did not receive packages he sent to them, according to business news website The Marker.

In his case he also claims that the postal service knew it could not meet its obligations for deliveries to customers other than Amazon, but continued to sell its services.

He estimates that there are some 100,000 business owners who have suffered similar problems.

Mordechai Alon, the owner of an online auction company that requires the use of the post's courier service, filed the $14 million claim. Picture: Israel Post Company's main post office of Jerusalem, Israel

Postal service workers last month admitted that they received instructions to prioritize packages being shipped by Amazon over other companies, due to Amazon's purchasing power in Israel, the Kan public broadcaster reported.

In response to reports of the lawsuit, Israel Post said: 'The claim has not yet arrived at our offices. When it arrives, we will examine it and respond within the court system.'

In November last year, Amazon announced it would provide free shipping to Israel for orders of over $49, much to the delight of American expats living in the country.

But the postal service, which has existed in its current privatised form since 2006, was swamped by the tide of orders, especially during the holiday season.

Israel Post would not comment on its bid for business with Amazon, but stated that the company is 'dealing with unparalleled activity in the logistics market, as two packages are received every second by the postal service.'
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is said to have groaned at the prospect of Joe Biden being elected president, and said that in any other country they would not be members of the same party.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez, 30, the youngest woman elected to Congress, is among a group of progressive members of the Democratic Party to have one of endorsed Mr Bidens rivals, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.

In an interview with New York magazine, the congresswoman was asked about the former vice president, who currently leads national polls in the race to select a 2020 challenger to Donald Trump, and said Democrats can be too big of a tent.

Asked about the prospect of Mr Biden entering the White House again, albeit as president, she is said to have groaned.

Oh God, she added. In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez greets fellow lawmakers ahead of the State of the Union address Getty Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez participates in an event with Democratic members of Congress EPA Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures The Democrat senator speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol January 30, 2019 Getty Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and fellow Democrat Rashida Tlaib AP Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Senate chamber to watch two votes on January 24, 2019 Getty Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez arrives with Chellie Pingree at a House Democratic Caucus meeting Getty Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Ocasio-Cortez during Donald Trump's State of the Union address Reuters Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures New York State Assembly member Catalina Cruz with Ocasio-Cortez AFP/Getty Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Nydia Velazquez talks with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Reuters Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Ocasio-Cortez casts her vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House EPA Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez poses with a campaign worker during a whistle stop in the Queens borough of New York Reuters Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Ocasio-Cortez outside the US Capitol AFP/Getty Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Ocasio-Cortez after casting her ballot in the 2018 midterm general election at a polling site in New York EPA Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez looks on during a march organised by the Women's March Alliance in Manhattan Reuters Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Ocasio Cortez looks on at the Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 16, 2019 AFP/Getty

Mr Biden, 77, has sought to present himself as a moderate Democrat, who can work with Republicans to get things done, suggesting the nation is not seeking a radical overhaul.

By contrast, Ms Ocasio-Cortez, Mr Sanders, 78, and 70-year-old Elizabeth Warren, represent the partys progressive wing. Ms Warren has said the nation needs big, structural change to solve the deep, systemic problems we face as a country.

This is not the first time Ms Ocasio-Cortez had clashed with Mr Biden.

 AOC cut-out choked and groped by grinning Republican campaigners

Last year, she said his plans to confront climate change were insufficient.

I will be damned if the same politicians who refused to act then are going to try to come back today and say we need a middle of the road approach to save our lives, she said, at a rally for her Green New Deal policy.

Mr Biden hit back: Ive never been middle of the road on the environment. Tell her to check the statements that I made, and look at my record and shell find that nobody has been more consistent about taking on the environment and a Green Revolution than I have.

While the former vice president has praised the energy of politicians such as the congresswoman from New Yorks 14th congressional district, after she and other progressives were targeted by Mr Trump, he also criticised the media for suggesting they were representative of the Democratic Party as a whole.

You all thought that what happened was the party moved extremely to the left after Hillary,  he told Axios. Shes a bright, wonderful person. But wheres the party? Come on, man.
A Superior Court judge has mostly reaffirmed state and local restrictions on seawall construction in Solana Beach, though the battle over the controversial structures is far from over.

A group of coastal property owners sued the city in 2013, claiming its coastal Land Use Plan unfairly prohibited them from protecting their bluff-top homes. Similar lawsuits have been filed by other Southern California property owners, including in neighboring Encinitas.

In a ruling issued Friday in the Solana Beach case, Judge Timothy M. Casserly upheld several of the citys restrictions on seawalls, including requirements that all seawall permits eventually expire under certain conditions, that no shoreline protection can be built for new development, and that private stairways must add public access as a condition of future permits.

However, the judge overturned the citys prohibitions on new seawalls needed to protect existing accessory structures and restrictions on the care and maintenance of private stairways to the beach.

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The two challenges upheld by the judge are significant, said Encinitas attorney Jon Corn, co-counsel with the Pacific Legal Foundation. The foundation represents The Beach & Bluff Conservancy, the group of coastal property owners who filed the suit.

We feel very gratified that he ruled in our favor on the two, Corn said, adding that  if it stands  the ruling could have a statewide impact.

Solana Beach City Manager Greg Wade declined to comment Wednesday on the decision, saying, Its a preliminary ruling in ongoing litigation.

Seawalls have been a contentious issue in Solana Beach for decades. The city is built along two miles of coastline atop fragile bluffs of soft sandstone more than 60 feet tall. Erosion steadily eats away at the bluffs, and property owners want the right to build structures that will protect their homes. Dozens of seawalls and other bluff protection devices already exist, and owners often apply for permits to expand, reinforce, rebuild, or build new ones.

Environmental groups and the California Coastal Commission, however, argue that armoring the bluffs prevents the natural erosion that eventually widens the beach and creates more public property.

As a result, the city through its Land Use Plan and the state through its Coastal Act restrict the construction of bluff protection devices.

The property owners are likely to appeal parts of the ruling that were in the citys favor, said Larry Salzman, another attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation.

He said an appeal is likely to target the judges support of a prohibition on seawalls for new development.

The city plan requires you to waive your right to a future seawall if you ask for a permit to build, he said, adding that a similar requirement was struck down earlier this year in Orange County Superior Court.

Salzman said the plaintiffs may also appeal the prohibition on new seawalls for homes that are rebuilt or improved, and the citys requirement that owners give public access to private staircases as a condition of development permits.

If the city really needs public access to the beach, they can pay compensation, Salzman said.

Still, he said, the ruling is a step in the right direction because it allows seawalls for existing structures and allows the repair of damaged beach stairways.

The Land Use Plan approved by the city in February 2013 is a key element of its proposed Local Coastal Program, which, if approved by the Coastal Commission, would give the city more local control of coastal development. Solana Beach is the only coastal city in San Diego County without an approved Local Coastal Program.

Litigation has been a big obstacle to approval of a Local Coastal Program for Solana Beach, the city manager said.

Pacific Legal Foundation is a nonprofit that promotes property rights and limited government.

It also represents two Encinitas families in a lawsuit against the California Coastal Commission over the 20-year time-limit on seawall permits issued in that city. That case will be decided by the California Supreme Court.

philip.diehl@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @phildiehl
The City of Houston would pay $1.2 million to the family of an unarmed man who was fatally shot by a Houston police officer in 2014, under a settlement scheduled to be considered by city council Wednesday.

The potential settlement comes five years after HPD narcotics officer Juventino Castro was cleared of all wrongdoing by a Harris County grand jury in the shooting death of Jordan Baker, who was unarmed.

The shooting  and decision not to bring charges against Castro  came amid a national wave of highly publicized shootings of unarmed black individuals by police officers, many of whom avoided criminal investigations.

In Houston, Bakers killing was a rallying point for local Black Lives Matter activists. Some applauded the proposed settlement on Monday.

I am happy that Janet Baker is getting some justice, even though she cant bring her son back, said Ashton P. Woods, of Houstons BLM chapter. She deserves this peace.

The settlement would be among the largest payouts related to a fatal police shooting in recent Houston history. In 2008, the city agreed to pay $1.5 million to the family of Eli Escobar, a 14-year-old who was fatally shot by a rookie officer five years earlier.

Bakers mother filed the federal lawsuit in 2015 alleging the wrongful death of her 26-year-old son, as well as several violations of his constitutional rights.

Billy Mills, a Chicago-based attorney who represented the Baker family, said Monday that the settlement further proves the importance of civil rights litigation in fostering transparency or accountability, particularly in police shootings that often are investigated internally.

Absent lawsuits, Mills said, public disclosure would be in the hands of the very government that employs or collaborates with the police officer who committed a wrong.

In a brief statement, Mayor Sylvester Turners office said the settlement was reached after court-ordered mediation and reflects all parties election to prudently resolve disputed claims.

Castro, a 10-year Houston Police Department veteran at the time of the shooting, was working an extra security job at a strip mall in the 5700 block of West Little York that had been the site of several robberies. Police said Castro pursued Baker because he matched the suspect in the break-ins, after which Baker became belligerent and charged the officer.

Bakers family maintained that he was targeted because of his race.

In the suit, the family said Baker was unlawfully detained and was left with multiple cuts and abrasions. He was shirtless and wearing flip flops when he began protesting the encounter, the lawsuit said, and was shot as he was trying to flee from Castro.

He was shirtless, unarmed and posed no threat to the officer, the familys attorneys wrote. This is not an isolated incident for the Houston Police Department.

In 2018, U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Johnson in Houston ruled that Bakers family had a viable case that Castro had used excessive deadly force and failed to administer medical care.

Johnson also noted that, from 2009 to 2014, HPDs internal affairs division found that each of the 194 intentional shootings of civilians, including 80 who were unarmed, over that period were justified.

Since taking the departments helm in 2016, Police Chief Art Acevedo has instituted several reforms intended to increase transparency, including requirements that body cameras start recording when officers exit their vehicles.

Acevedo also created a specialized unit for investigating officer-related shootings or other potential misconduct.

The rate of HPD officer-involved shootings generally has been trending downward since Bakers death. Last year, the department recorded 20 shooting incidents that left seven people dead, including the deadly Pecan Park raid that killed a couple, prompted federal charges against multiple officers and renewed scrutiny of the departments oversight procedures.

Still, activists and lawyers say HPD needs to do more. Woods, of Houstons Black Lives Matter chapter, said the potential settlement was a good first step, adding that HPD should do more training to combat implicit bias, and be more proactive in releasing body camera footage of shootings.

The family deserves to know right off the bat what happened, Woods said.

Houston Police Officers Union Vice President Doug Griffith noted that state law prohibits agencies from immediately disseminating body camera footage without a court ruling unless police officials determine that it would further a law enforcement purpose.

Unless there are going to be riots in the street, you dont release it, Griffith said.

Griffith said body camera footage would not have changed the Baker shooting because most off-duty officers are not required to wear them unless they work second jobs at bars and clubs.

On Monday afternoon, for example, an off-duty HPD sergeant opened fire on a man allegely pistol-whipping and robbing a homeless person in Midtown, according to police. Acevedo said at a press conference that there is no footage of the shooting.

robert.downen@chron.com
Dozens of Iranian Americans and Iranians were detained and questioned at a border station connecting Washington state and Canada, a nonprofit said Sunday.

But a Customs and Border Protection official said reports that the agency is detaining Iranian Americans and refusing them entry into the U.S. because of their country of origin are false.

"Those detained reported that their passports were confiscated and they were questioned about their political views and allegiances," said the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization in the U.S.

The Washington state chapter of CAIR said more than 60 people were detained and others were refused entry due to Customs and Border Protection's capacity levels.

One 24-year-old woman was allegedly held for more than 10 hours with her family, according to the group.

Customs and Border Protection said reports that it issued a directive about detaining people are also false. The agency was asked for more information and has yet to provide further details.

"Deeply disturbed by reports that Iranian Americans, including U.S. citizens, are being detained at the Canadian border with WA State," U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, of Washington, said on Twitter.

Video: Thousands gather for Soleimani funeral procession

The organization also said that other Iranian Americans had attended an Iranian pop concert in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Saturday and were preparing to return to their homes in the U.S.
US President on Sunday vowed "major retaliation" if Iran tries to avenge the killing of its key military commander Qasem Soleimani and doubled down on a threat to bomb Iranian cultural sites.

"If they do anything there will be major retaliation," Trump told reporters.

Trump, speaking on Air Force One on his way back to Washington from a vacation in Florida, also said he would impose "very big sanctions" on Iraq if it follows through on a parliament vote calling for the expulsion of US troops based in the country.

The president's rhetoric added to already spiraling tensions in the Middle East following the killing by the United States of Soleimani -- one of the most important figures in the Iranian government -- in a drone strike near Baghdad's airport.

Trump had already threatened widespread bombing of Iran if Tehran carries out its own threats to attack US troops and interests in the region.

In his latest comments, he dismissed strong criticism of his earlier warnings that targets could include unspecified cultural sites in Iran -- a country with an ancient heritage.

"They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn't work that way," he said.

Trump's reaction to the Iraqi parliament vote urging the departure of US troops also illustrated the widening fallout from the decision to kill Soleimani last week.

He said that Iraq, a US ally, would be treated like foe Iran, whose economy has been devastated by US-led sanctions, if the troops were made to exit on unfavorable terms.

"If they do ask us to leave -- if we don't do it in a very friendly basis -- we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before," Trump said.

"It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame." Trump said the US base in Iraq was "very extraordinarily expensive." "We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," he said.
After a picture of Bashar al-Assad was reportedly torn up in a classroom, the regime raid schools and homes arresting children reports Alsouria Net.

The Assad regime security agencies arrested 56 Palestinian children in the town of Yelda south of Damascus after a picture of Bashar al-Assad was torn up during classes at al-Jermaq School.

On its official page on Sunday, the Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS) said that members of the Patrols Branch had raided the school and arrested 20 students.

The security branch also raided civilian homes, arresting 36 Palestinian students between the ages of 10 and 16, according to the group.

After the arrests, the group said that the area saw mobilizations by residents and notables in the Yarmouk camp to intervene, with mediators getting involved to find out the reasons for the arrests and working to secure the release of the children.

The group said that the Patrols Branch had responded to these intermediaries saying that the children had belonged to the Islamic State (ISIS), commonly referred to as the Cubs of the Caliphate.

The towns and cities south of Damascus are entirely under the control of Assads forces and the allied militias after battles against the ISIS, which had controlled positions there, most prominently in Yarmouk camp.

AGPS said there was a major state of fear and worry among Palestinian families south of Damascus due to the arrest of their children and their involvement in charges that have no basis in reality.

The fate of the children is still unknown, and they remain detained by the Patrols Branch in Damascus.

The towns south of Damascus are inhabited by more than 5,000 Palestinian refugees living in difficult humanitarian and security conditions in light of increasing rents and weak financial resources, in addition to the arrest campaigns carried out by Assad regime security agencies from time to time.

In a previous report, AGPS said that there had been 3,989 Palestinian victims in Syria, 563 of them who died under torture in Assad regime prisons.

The Assad regime has carried out arrest campaigns in the towns of Babbila, Beit Sahem, and Yelda south of Damascus, despite the reconciliation agreements they signed in 2018.

This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
Many bacteria no longer respond to their once go-to antibiotics. [Photo: Getty]

Antibiotic resistance means a growing number of bacteria no longer respond to once effective drugs, turning harmless infections into deadly diseases.

The World Health Organization calls it one of the biggest threats to global health, with no one being immune to the crisis.

READ MORE: What is antibiotic resistance?

In an attempt to combat the issue, drug companies are investing in the development of new antibiotics.

The new drugs compete with older, established medicines, which patients typically only take for a week or two.

With doctors prescribing new drugs sparingly, the pharma firms behind them are going bust, stunting antibiotic development, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.

Antibiotics are unlike many other drugs in that the more they are used, the less effective they become.

Use was up 6.5% in England alone between 2011 and 2015, government data shows.

In the US, at least 30% of prescribed antibiotics are unnecessary, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

While an antibiotic-resistance crisis may sound like something out of a sci-fi film, its effects are already underway.

More than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections arise every year in the US, killing over 35,000 people, according to the CDC.

Pharma companies are looking for solutions, but struggle in existing market conditions.

READ MORE: Honey 'dressings' could ward off infections

Achaogen Inc. collapsed in April last year, less than a year after launching the antibiotic Zemdri for hard-to-treat urinary tract infections.

The drug reportedly racked up $16m (12.1m) in sales, but cost $300m (228.3) to develop.

In December, leading antibiotic manufacturer Melinta Therapeutics Inc. filed for bankruptcy, citing slow sales.

This has left many doubting whether new antibiotics will be around in the near future.

We dont know the fate of those drugs for our patients, Helen Boucher, chief of infectious diseases at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, said.

Story continues

As a physician, thats my biggest concern.

The US government is encouraging antibiotic development, investing $1bn (760m) in the field since 2010.

Yet with small pharma companies responsible for more than 90% of the research, firms struggle to cover their costs.

New antibiotics need to make at least $300m (228.2m) a year to break even, according to Patrick Heron, general partner at venture-capital firm Frazier Healthcare Partners.

With antibiotic resistance fuelled by the misuse of drugs, doctors are rightfully told not to dole them out unnecessarily.

Hospitals also tend to give out the cheaper option, namely older drugs, WSJ reported.

This is particularly true in the US, where insurers pay hospitals a fixed fee for treating an infection, regardless of the drug used.

What wasnt predicted was how little new antibiotics, once they reached the market, would be used, and how much hospitals and providers would stick to the existing generic products, Mr Heron said.

The partner, whose firm has backed antibiotic companies before, added he would not make any new investments until the situation changes.

This attitude is impacting drug development, with the firm Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals stopping all its research programmes last year, focusing only on approved drugs.

Suggested solutions include a Netflix style subscription agreement, where companies are paid a set sum for access to their drugs, regardless of the quantity used.

The UK reportedly plans to pilot this model this year.

An alternative idea is giving a one-off payment to pharma companies so they can launch a new antibiotic.

Whatever the solution, experts fear the longer we wait, the more firms will die, delaying drug development.

More than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections arise every year in the US. [Photo: Getty]

What causes antibiotic resistance?

Antibiotics are only effective against bacteria, however, many doctors have mistakenly doled them out to people battling viruses.

Antibiotics only work against bacteria, through actions such as disrupting their cell wall to kill them or suppressing their division and growth while your own immune system fights them off, Dr Sarah Brewer, medical director of Healthspan, previously told Yahoo UK.

Viruses have a very different biology and do not respond to these actions.

Antibiotics also become less effective over time.

Random mutations take place within bacteria at a rapid rate. Exposure to an antibiotic selects for mutations that protect the bug, including good ones in our gut, from destruction.

Bacteria can then pass this genetic advantage to future generations or horizontally to other bugs.

READ MORE: Antibiotic resistance 'could wipe out humanity before climate change does

Even when antibiotics are correctly given out for bacterial infections, many fail to take them as prescribed, coming off the drugs when they start to feel better.

This could mean they stop treatment before the pathogen has been completely eradicated from their body, giving it a better shot of developing resistance.

Farmers in the US and parts of Asia also routinely give healthy animals antibiotics to promote growth and prevent disease.

An estimated 80% of antibiotics sold in the US are used in animals, according to scientists from the University of California, San Francisco.

Research suggests antibiotic-resistant bacteria could reach humans via meat.

This is banned in Europe, where farm animals are only given the drugs if struck down with a bacterial infection.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Former Union minister and Congress leader P. Chidabaram said that Sunday's JNU violence shows that "we are descending into anarchy." Chidambaram while addressing a press conference said, "This incident is perhaps the most clinching evidence that we are rapidly descending into anarchy." The Congress leader demanded the perpetrators of violence be identified and arrested within 24 hours and brought to justice. "We also demand that accountability on officers be fixed and action taken immediately" "The incident has taken place in the national capital in India's foremost university under the watch of the central government, the Home Minister, the LG and the Commissioner of Police," he said.

"This is the gravest act of impunity that we have seen in recent times. Nothing can be more shocking and shameful," said Chidambaram.

He said it is a failure on the part of the Delhi Police and questioned if the police had mandatory intelligence.

"If they did not, their intelligence gathering was pathetic, if they did, it was an atrocious failure of responsibility. In either event, the Commissioner of Police must be held accountable."
Hollywood carnivores may have noticed something missing from their dinner plates during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards.

And actor Joaquin Phoenix is to thank - or to blame - for the prestigious night's fully vegan dinner service, as revealed by fellow animal-rights activist, Moby, in an interview with Page Six.

This comes just as it was shared that Phoenix claimed he was 'tricked' into conducting a backstage interview after winning for the Joker.

It was me: Joaquin Phoenix who waged the fight for an all vegan dinner service during the 77th Golden Globe Awards on Sunday; Phoenix photographed accepting his award

Moby, the mind behind Los Angeles vegan restaurant Little Pine, spilled the beans on Joaquin's 'vegan mafia' agenda, but wasn't exactly sure to what extent the actor was involved.

The pair have been friends 'for decades' having both been involved in the Hollywood animal-rights circuit.

Moby went on to say that 'Joaquin and Rooney Mara sort of organized [the vegan dinner service].'

The actor and his actress fiancee have been vocal vegans for years.

'I don't know if it was predominantly him or with other people, but he had mentioned to me a while ago that he was working on it,' Moby claimed about the actor's involvement in the meat-free, dairy-free dinner.

Spilling the beans: Moby, famous animal-rights activist, confirmed the news of Phoenix's involvement and shared that the two have been friends 'for decades'; Moby photographed at The Art Of Elysium's 13th Annual Celebration in Los Angeles

But, it turns out Joaquin was the figurehead behind the award show's first stab at an entirely plant-based event.

Phoenix confirmed the news, himself, in a statement released to Page Six:

'By acknowledging animal agriculture's role in the degradation of our planet and boldly taking measures to do its part to reduce harm, the [Golden Globes organizers, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association] have shown great leadership.'

He also went on to thank Lorenzo Soria, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, along with the many chefs and service workers who made the plant-based evening possible.

'[and thank you to] the brilliant chefs, and everyone working so hard to confront the environmental perils we face by supporting a plant-based 77th Golden Globes celebration. We look forward to this Sunday,' concluded the Joker star.

Vegan couple: Phoenix and his fiancee Rooney Mara worked together to bring the plant-based dinner service to life for the evening's show; The pair are pictured in front of one of the night's vegan meals at the 77th Golden Globe Awards

The 45-year-old took home a Golden Globe Award during last night's show for his lead performance in Todd Phillip's Joker.

Not only did he thank the Hollywood Foreign Press in his statement, but he actually included a thank-you in his acceptance speech.

He praised them for making the 'bold move' to cater an entirely plant-based meal.

But his speech didn't just revolve around his passion for veganism.

He also used his platform to bring attention to the climate change crisis - and the catastrophic fires in Australia.

'Contrary to popular belief, I don't want to rock the boat. But the boat is [EXPLETIVE] rocked'

He also took a jab at his famous friends by suggesting they not take 'private jets to Palm Springs.'

Winner: Phoenix photographed on the red carpet at the Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles just before taking home the best actor in a dramatic motion picture for his performance in Joker

After winning, he was taken backstage in the press room.

Once in front of reporters he said he was 'tricked' into doing interviews.

'I didn't know I was gonna be up here,' he said. 'Someone tricked me, he said to come take a picture in this room. So what's going on?'

When asked how he got ready to play the Joker, he said he has already relayed that many times before.

'Isn't this old news?' he said. 'I feel like I talked about this for six months. I've answered this question, do you want to hear a different version of the answer?'

But then he caved in and talked.

'It was a long process, I think the way I worked on this was quite erratic,' Phoenix noted. 'I didn't attack it linearly. I was most curious about the medication that he was taking and the effects and side effects of the medication. That led us to realize that we had to have this fluctuation of weight.

'I dug into understanding medication and the side effects of what he was taking so that was the beginning,' he added, according to People. 'I read several books about political assassins that share a similar personality type.'
Making it clear that parents of government employees continue to be dependants even after their marriage, the Madras High Court has quashed a communication rejecting reimbursement claim of Rs 5.72 lakh under a health insurance scheme by an employee for his father's surgery.

Justice Anand Venkatesh said a clause in the Tamil Nadu government's June 30, 2016 order that the parents of an employee would be treated as a 'family member' under the new health insurance scheme only till the marriage of the employee and not thereafter sounded illegal and illogical.

The parents of an employee would not cease to be parents after the marriage of the employee, the judge said.

"Unfortunately, even though this society is moving towards a state where the parents are disregarded after marriage, this court does not expect the government to give a similar treatment for the parents of employees, who get married," he said.

Noting that the clause cannot be read in isolation and cannot be given a literal meaning, since it would end up with disturbing consequences, the judge said the only way to read it is that parents would remain family members till they continue to be the dependants of the employee.

If not, the poor parents would be left in the lurch during the evening of their life, more particularly, considering the cost of medical care prevailing at present, he said.

Quashing the April 25, 2019 letter of Perambalur district treasury officer, the judge directed him to reconsider the insurance claim and reimburse it within four weeks.

According to the petitioner R Kathiravan, working as an assistant agricultural officer, he has paid a private hospital bill of Rs 5.72 lakh for a surgery his father underwent for the removal of a tumour in September 2018.

However when he submitted his reimbursement claim, it was rejected on the ground that the father of the petitioner is not entitled for any medical reimbursement because the employee was married.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday defended the NDA government's decision in 2016 to allow a Pakistani probe team including officials from spy agency ISI to visit the Pathankot air force base to probe a terror attack.

Speaking at a book release event, Jaishankar also said that no country has been battered by terrorism the way India has been and that efforts to "normalise" terror must be defeated.

Jaishankar also appeared to take a dig at former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon when he said agreements with Pakistan like at Sharm El Sheikh and Havana lacked "strategic clarity" and had done "harm" to India.

Last week, Menon slammed the government over the Citizenship Amendment Act, saying India had "isolated" itself at the global stage by enacting the law.

Jaishankar also said India allowed issues like citizenship, Article 370, Ayodhya and GST to fester for a long time, adding China was impressive in looking for solutions to problems and it "is a big learning opportunity" for India.

In a clear reference to Pakistan, he said India should never ever allow terrorism to be normalised.

"The perpetrators of terrorism will try to normalise terrorism, will try to pass it as another instrument and as 'one more thing we do'.... They are playing a game, but we should not ever play their game," Jaishankar said.

"So, sometimes, when we don't have strategic clarity, and we have had occasions like Sharm-al-Sheikh and Havana, where we have allowed victim and perpetrator to try and come on the same plane. I think we have done ourselves harm," he said.

He said the NDA government did not put the victim of terror and perpetrator of terrorism on the same plane by allowing the Pakistani team to visit the Pathankot air base as part of the joint investigation into the Pathankot terror attack case.

"I do not think Pathankot put the two (victim and the perpetrator) on the same plane. It was very clear. And this government is very clear on who is the victim and who is the perpetrator. That has been a consistent narrative and it stays that way," said Jaishankar.

"The investigation that happened was to pressurise the Pakistanis so that they did not have an excuse to say that 'well, we made an offer and you did not accept it and therefore, it trailed away'. The idea was: Look, you ask me anything reasonable, I will agree and now you go and act," Jaishankar said.

The opposition Congress had attacked the Modi government for allowing the visit by Pakistani probe team, alleging it had betrayed the country's national interests and its security.

The External Affairs Minister appeared to be critical of past government for not making adequate attempts to find solution to long-pending problems.

"We look at a problem, and we think a problem is a problem, and I wish the problem would go away. Our instinct is not to hone in on the solution. Our instinct is to kick it down the road," Jaishankar said.

"To me, the big concern I have is, after years of doing it (kicking can down the road), today we have accumulated a legacy of problems. And if you see what is happening today in this country, these problems have caught up with us," Jaishankar said.

"The last two years have been very active years of debate, argumentation and decision-making. We tend to see them as individual issues and with some reason. But I want to see them as a trend," he added.

He said a lot of complex issues being resolved by the current government were accumulated over a period of time.

"Look at the citizenship issue. Citizenship issue started 40-50 years ago. Rajiv Gandhi did an agreement in Assam in 1980. You look at (Article) 370. I mean, 370 was a temporary article if you look through the Constituent Assembly papers," said Jaishankar.

"The general sense then was that within a few years we will resolve the issue of 370, but not for 70 years.

"Look at Ayodhya, show me where in the world would you have an unresolved problem for 150 years. So, we have let problems be there for 50 years, 70 years and 150 years," he said.

Talking about GST, he said it was obvious that India needed a single-tax system, but people kept kicking it down the road.

"Even our social problems and economic problems, a lot of it - we tended - to put it off. So, to my mind, the big learning out of China is unless a society has a mindset to decisively address its current issues, you are not going to walk the world (confidently)," he said.

He said China's systemic mindset has been to decisively address its current issues.

The Indian instinct is to not look for a solution, but let it be someone else's problem, Jaishankar said adding China's instinct to look for a solution is a big learning opportunity for India.

"In order to articulate the rise of China and what it means for India and the world- we need to look at how the Soviet Union and United States became global powers," he said.

They accomplished it over a large time period whereas China's rise has been significantly faster, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Representative Maxine Waters was duped into thinking she was speaking with Greta Thunberg after two Russian pranksters posed as the climate change activist and her father Svante in a video shared online.

The House Financial Services Committee Chairman (D-CA) was the first to feature on Vladimir Kuznetsov (Vovan) and Alexey Stolyarov (Lexus)'s international project 'Stars Save the Earth' and in the 10-minute-long clip posted to YouTube Thursday, she is heard responding in shock as the supposed Swedish teenager recounts a fictional story about bumping into President Trump at the UN Summit in New York.

'You'll never achieve your goals like those congressional fools who accuse me,' Vovan says in the voice of Thunberg emulating Trump. 'I'll tell you the truth: I really wanted to push the Ukraine president to put my competitor on trial. And he will go to trial with you, with [a bunch of] Democrats. . . . I would have a separate cage for all of you.'

It prompts Waters to probe: 'Oh my god, he mentioned the Ukrainian president?'

Representative Maxine Waters (right) was duped into thinking she was speaking with Greta Thunberg (left)

Pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov (Vovan) and Alexey Stolyarov (Lexus) voiced Thunberg and her father Svante in the clip. They have denied links to the Kremlin in the past and the new video could undermine US security

A prankster claiming to be the teenager's father even claims they have an audio recording they could share with the congresswoman.

The hoax call includes Waters responding: 'If the public knew he talked to Greta like that, and that she will never achieve - that will go against him, too.'

It's unclear when the phone call took place.

The Russian duo say in a caption for the animated video posted Thursday that it's part of a 'project dedicated to global problems of modern society'.

'Vovan and Lexus discuss them with celebrities and politicians in order to find a solution together and save our planet,' the description reads, adding that in this episode they 'discuss the topic of harassment'.

Waters played down the wind-up which included the suggestion of a climate strike in support of the Chon-go-Chango island and began with a joke about Waters' nickname 'Auntie Maxine'.

The call was dubbed likely to undermine US security.

'This was just another stupid prank by the same Russian operatives who have targeted many U.S. elected officials, including Rep. Adam B. Schiff, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, Sen. Mitch McConnell, and late-Senator John McCain, and international heads of state such as Emmanuel Macron. The end,' Waters told the Washington Post on Saturday.

The impersonator claims that Trump made Thunberg cry at the UN Summit in New York in September

One claims Trump told Thunberg in the corridor at the UN summit in September 2019: 'I really wanted to push the Ukraine president to put my competitor on trial. And he will go to trial with you, with Democrats'

The claim about Trump and Thunberg prompts Waters to probe: 'Oh my god, he mentioned the Ukrainian president?'

A prankster claiming to be the teenager's father even claims they have an audio recording they could share with the congresswoman

Waters adds in the video shared online Thursday: 'If the public knew he talked to Greta like that, and that she will never achieve - that will go against him, too'. Waters believes she is speaking to a crying Thunberg

The wind-up included the suggestion of a climate strike in support of the incorrect reference to the Chon-go-Chango island and began with a joke about Waters' nickname 'Auntie Maxine'

The House Financial Services Committee Chairman (D-CA) was the first to feature on the duo's international project 'Stars Save the Earth'

The duo has denied they are agents of the Kremlin after past pranks went viral. In 2016 they told the Guardian they work for themselves, 'nobody else'.

In February 2018, it was revealed that the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, was the victim of a prank phone call by the Russian comedians who offered to give him 'compromising' dirt on Donald Trump  including nude photos of the president and a Russian reality show star.

On an audio recording of the prank call posted online, Adam Schiff can be heard discussing the committee's Russia investigation and increasingly bizarre allegations about Trump with a man who claimed to be Andriy Parubiy, the chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament.

After the prank from a year before it was reported, his staff engaged in correspondence with what they thought was a Ukrainian politician to try to obtain the 'classified' material promised on the call.

In May 2018, then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson spent 18 minutes on a phone call with the pranksters pretending to the Armenian Prime Minister.

Conservative Johnson sounded particularly startled when the pranksters claimed Vladimir Putin had revealed he was influencing Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn.

In August 2019, Lindsey Graham fell victim to the Russian pranksters pretending to be the Turkish defense minister.

Graham told the notorious cold callers in the call shared October that the Kurds are a 'threat' - contradicting his public statements that week condemning Trump.

Swedish schoolgirl climate activist Greta Thunberg (center) and her father Svante (left) are imitated in the video. Pictured, they attend the weekly general audience in Saint Peter's Square, Vatican City, April 17, 2019
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday called for a meeting of its top ministers and Aam Aadmi Party leaders at his residence, a day after masked individuals attacked the students at Jawaharlal Nehru University here.

The meeting is underway at his residence, according to sources.

Violence swept the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus on Sunday as several masked individuals thrashed students and teachers inside the campus with wooden and metal rods.

Kejriwal on Sunday said police, which come under the jurisdiction of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, should immediately stop violence and restore peace.

He also spoke with Delhi Lt. Governor Anil Baijal and urged him to direct police to restore order.
Many Vietnamese people are already using smartphones, and are thus more likely to use digital payment methods

Over the last couple of years, there has been an expansion in the forms of digital payments in Vietnam including the likes of credit cards, internet banking, mobile wallets, and digital payment apps among others. Thus, Vietnamese consumers are increasingly embracing digital payment as a faster and more convenient way to pay, with consumers using cashless payments more often for in-store and online purchases.

People, businesses, and institutions thrive when barriers to progress are low and trust is high. Preserving that trust requires driving innovation and choice, and redoubling our commitment to security. There has never been a better time to lead and drive change in payment security which can be a catalyst for growth. Paul Fabara - Chief risk officer, Visa

Meanwhile, the Vietnamese government has also targeted reducing the ratio of transactions made with cash from 90 per cent in 2016 to below 10 per cent by the end of 2020. About two-thirds of the population are online and by 2018, 72 per cent of the population already owned smartphones. E-commerce has grown at a phenomenal rate of 25-30 per cent in recent years, as the expanding affluent class is more willing to click and spend. All signs are pointing to Vietnams remarkable potential to go cashless.

Market research firm Statista found that Vietnams total transaction value in the digital payments segment amounts to $8.52 billion in 2019. Total transaction value is expected to show a compound annual growth rate of 12.7 per cent between 2019 and 2023, resulting in the amount of $13.74 billion by 2023.

However, the increasing number of cashless transactions is also a major factor behind the rising demand for payment security. Visas Consumer Payment Attitude study points out that security remains a key consideration for Vietnamese consumers to go cashless. When asked specifically about their top three concerns when using their mobile phones to make payments, the majority of consumers in Vietnam responded with losing a phone or having it stolen, it being hacked or intercepted, and malware or viruses being installed on it.

To strengthen payment security in support of Vietnams cashless transformation, Visa launched its Future of Security Roadmap for Vietnam in March 2019. The roadmap focuses on a number of key initiatives which will enable security to evolve at the same pace as the technologies changing the way consumers pay.

As of present, the digital payment industry has seen significant advances in risk scoring for fraud prevention, encryption, and industry specifications for securing new ways to pay to help protect the billions of transactions made by consumers. As the end of a decade approaches, the continued expansion of digital payments in Vietnam and around the world will continue to present challenges and opportunities for the industry. Visa, a leading payment technology company has made predictions for payment security to keep in mind for the next decade.

Seeing the future

Data breaches will continue to happen, forcing the adoption of smarter and more dynamic security to protect data and manage fraud. The best defence is to assume the organisation is a target and take proactive steps to avoid falling victim or prevent the use of stolen data in the systems.

According to Visa, we will see significant growth in the adoption of payment tokens and the updated EMV 3-D Secure specification globally. Payment tokens help make transactions safer by eliminating the transfer of actual payment data for e-commerce and mobile payments, and can deliver a seamless yet secure digital payment experience. Meanwhile, the updated 3-D Secure specification enables the real-time exchange of 10 times more contextual data between merchants and financial institutions to improve decision-making so both parties can better manage fraud in digital channels while optimising sales.

Another global trend is digital identities which can be used to deliver a better customer experience. It is clear that traditional approaches to online payment like manually entering static passwords and payment credentials for every purchase offer incremental security for digital channels. Fortunately, digital identities make payments faster, easier, and more secure when using computers, mobile devices, apps, wearables, and future IoT devices.

As fraud threats persist, digital identities can end the use of passwords so consumers can shift to more secure methods of authentication such as face, fingerprint, or voice recognition. European consumers will begin to experience Strong Customer Authentication, European Union requirements for multiple layers of consumer verification for digital transactions. As many thousands of financial institutions and merchants meet these requirements in Europe, global companies may look to extend the most innovative authentication solutions to other markets, including Vietnam.

As consumers globally also demand greater speed, merchants and financial institutions will have to respond with faster and safer ways to pay. This is one reason why Visa is exploring innovations ranging from biometric payment authentication and wearables to new mobile applications like digitally-issued cards at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics Games.

Real-Time Payments (RTP) is another global initiative that has gained momentum over the past few years. However, this payment method will require a new approach to fraud prevention. It is worth noting that consumer expectations of speed and convenience have extended to business-to-business payments and disrupted wire transfers and check payments with instant payments. However, speed and convenience cannot come at the expense of security.

As payment volumes grow among RTP networks and peer-to-peer applications, the seen and unforeseen vulnerabilities in the systems will have to be addressed as quickly. Therefore, RTP providers and financial institutions will need to think differently and will likely collaborate with trusted partners in payment security to address the challenge.

In the right hands

Furthermore, the growing use of AI will continue to fuel new products and services in payments and have a significant impact on society. However, it will also introduce tremendous challenges due to its potential use by threat actors. History shows that good intentions can be manipulated by nefarious individuals and groups. For example, the internet splintered to become the surface web, dark web, and deep web; and social media is being used beyond its original intent to simply connect friends and family. The challenge of AI next year and beyond will require a collective effort across industries to limit the darker side of the technology to ensure it is used to deliver opportunities and improvements to society.

Above all, users will continue to be the weakest link in the digital process. Technology has been trying to solve this issue for a long time  from spell check in word processors and email applications to automatic braking in some of todays cars. Advancements in payment security will continue to help drive down fraud as the EMV chip did for counterfeit fraud but technology can only do so much as it still needs to be implemented by people and people make mistakes.

More importantly, social engineering continues to evolve as it preys on the unsuspecting or those with their guard down. All it takes is one person to fall prey to put an entire organisation or network at risk. The industry needs to empower users with education and tools since they are often the first line of defence.

People, businesses, and institutions thrive when barriers to progress are low and trust is high. Preserving that trust requires driving innovation and choice, and redoubling our commitment to security. There has never been a better time to lead and drive change in payment security which can be a catalyst for growth. By drawing on the lessons from past years, we can both address future challenges and capitalise on the opportunities stemming from our increasingly digitised society.
Libyan mourners carry the coffin of army cadets who were killed in an airstrike on a military school, during their funeral in the Martyrs Square of Libya's capital Tripoli on Jan. 5, 2020. (Mahmud Turkia/AFP via Getty Images)

Dozens Killed in Airstrike on Military School in Libyan Capital

At least 30 people have been killed in an attack on a military academy in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, as fighting over control of the city between rival armed groups escalates, Reuters reported.

Since the 2011 fall of Muammar al-Qaddafi (Gaddafi), Libya has been in chaos with two governments and different militia groups, including ISIS, vying for control.

A further 33 people were left wounded in the attack, which took place on Jan. 4, as cadets gathered on a parade ground at the Hadaba academy in a southern district of the capital, the health ministry of the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli said on Sunday.

The majority of the victims were cadets from cities across the country aged between 18 and 22 who were left severely burned or torn apart during the attack, according to Al Jazeera.

Medical sources at public hospitals in the city said they had struggled to identify many of the bodies due to their acute injuries.

It is the latest in a string of airstrikes and shelling since the Libyan National Army (LNA), led by the anti-Islamist military commander and former general in al-Qaddafis army Khalifa Haftar, launched a ground and aerial offensive in April to take Tripoli.

The GNA in Tripoli blamed the airstrike on Hafters army, which is supported by the rival LNA administration based in the eastern city of Tobruk.

However, a spokesman for the LNA, Ahmed al-Mesmari, denied launching airstrikes on the military academy, and instead blamed the attack on Islamic extremist factions active in Tripoli and Misrata, including the Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries, Shura Council of Mujahideen in Derna, and the al-Qaeda-linked Libya Shield Force.

Neither side is yet to provide evidence to support their claims.

In a statement on Twitter, the U.N. Support Mission in Libya condemned the attack and warned that escalating military action in this dangerous manner further complicates the situation in Libya and threatens opportunities to return to the political process.

Meanwhile, the GNAs Foreign Ministry called for Haftar and his aides to be referred to the International Criminal Court and tried on charges of committing alleged crimes against humanity.

It added that it will be calling for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss the alleged crimes.

Violent clashes have escalated in Tripoli in recent weeks after Haftar declared a final offensive to seize the capital. It followed Tripoli authorities signing a military and maritime agreement with their ally Turkey calling for the deployment of Turkish troops to Libya. The GNA receives support from Qatar, Turkey, and Italy.

Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, announced on Jan. 5 that Turkish troops have begun deploying to Libya to support Fayez al-Serrajs GNA.

Turkeys parliament approved a bill on Thursday allowing for the deployment of troops in the country in a bid to protect Ankaras interests in North Africa and the Mediterranean and to help achieve peace and stability in Libya.

He told CNN Turk on Sunday: Our soldiers duty there is coordination. They will develop the operation center there. Our soldiers are gradually going right now.

Erdogan also condemned the recent attack in Tripoli and called on the international community to take steps to achieve a ceasefire.

However, there are growing fears that Turkeys involvement in Libya may serve to escalate fighting within the country.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement that President Donald Trump had warned Erdogan during a phone call just hours after the made the announcement that foreign interference is complicating the situation in Libya.

Mohamed Aboelfadl wrote in a May op-ed for the The Arab Weekly that Tehran has seen political instability in Libya as an avenue for the expansion of its interests in the region, so far through cooperation with Turkey and Qatar. He alleged that Tehran alliances with extremist groups in Libya who sow chaos could escalate tensions to provide the regime an excuse to intervene. However, he added that international forces that have been working tirelessly to undermine [Irans] presence in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen would continue to condemn such actions.
Harry and Meghan are to make their first public appearance today since embarking on a six-week hiatus from royal duties  to thank the people of Canada for hosting their private holiday.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced in a formal Buckingham Palace press release last night that they would be visiting Canada's High Commissioner in London, Her Excellency Janice Charette.

They wanted to meet her and other staff to 'thank them for the warm Canadian hospitality and support they received during their recent stay'.

Harry and Meghan are to make their first public appearance today since embarking on a six-week hiatus from royal duties  to thank the people of Canada for hosting their private holiday

It is unheard of for a member of the Royal Family to undertake a Court Circular-documented engagement to thank a country that wasn't officially 'hosting' them. The trip was classed as private and no official engagements took place.

But Harry and Meghan have always made clear they like to cast aside convention and do what is least expected.

The couple were last seen in public together on Remembrance Sunday in November when they joined other royals in London. Harry also undertook a subsequent solo public engagement.

Harry and Meghan will meet with Janice Charette, High Commissioner in Canada to the UK as well as staff to thank them for the warm Canadian hospitality and support they received during their recent stay in Canada. The couple are pictured here in March receiving baby gifts from Janice

They then disappeared from view with son Archie, now eight months, with a spokesman saying they were taking 'extended family time' after a year in which both admitted struggling with their royal roles.

It meant that they missed the Queen's pre-Christmas dinner and the Royal Family's annual festivities at Sandringham.

A spokesman said that after spending the last two Christmases with the royals in Norfolk, new mum Meghan was keen to spend time with her own mother, Doria Ragland.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced in a formal Buckingham Palace press release last night that they would be visiting Canada's High Commissioner in London

They stressed the decision was in line with precedent set by other members of the Royal Family  including the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge  and had the support of the Queen.

Palace officials declined to discuss where the couple were staying. Shortly before Christmas, however, the Mail revealed they were spending their holiday in Canada.

Buckingham Palace later confirmed: 'They are enjoying sharing the warmth of the Canadian people and the beauty of the landscape with their young son.'

LA-born Meghan lived in Toronto when she was working as an actress and has described Canada as a second home.

It was revealed that the trio were staying at a 10.7million waterfront mansion during their festive break, in one of the most idyllic spots on Vancouver Island (pictured), and were seen out hiking with friends

Following their meeting with the High Commissioner, their Royal Highnesses will visit the Canada Gallery and view a special exhibition by Indigenous Canadian artist, Skawennati. The couple are pictured at Canada House in March

It was later revealed that the trio were staying at a 10.7million waterfront mansion in one of the most idyllic spots on Vancouver Island, and were seen out hiking with friends.

On New Year's Eve they posted a picture on Instagram of Harry cuddling Archie.

After meeting the High Commissioner today, Harry and Meghan will visit the Canada Gallery and view a special exhibition by indigenous artist Skawennati, born in a Mohawk reserve in Quebec.

It is believed the couple are almost certain to undertake an official tour of Canada, possibly this year.
UPDATE: Building destroyed in Slate Belt blaze; search for cause gets underway, chief says

INITIAL POST: A blaze on Sunday night gutted a building as it tore into a commercial property that has at least three structures in Portland.

The fire was reported at 7:32 p.m. at 394 Delaware Ave., at a location known as Portland Steel, a Northampton County emergency dispatch shift supervisor confirmed.

There were no initial reports of injuries, the supervisor said.

A live stream from the scene showed a building near the road being destroyed by fire. Other nearby buildings didnt appear damaged.

The commercial property is right next to a borough fire station.

County property records show there are three buildings on the Portland Steel property -- two built in 1920 and one in 1960. Records state one building is used for retail and two for lumber storage. Reports indicate the space once held a Cramers home improvement business, but it had been converted to another use in recent years. An online listing says Portland Steel was founded in 2017 and is involved in the single-family housing construction business.

The two-alarm blaze was clearly visible from Warren County. Firefighters from Knowlton Township were called in to assist, as well as firefighters from throughout the Slate Belt. The Portland department is heading the effort, the supervisor said.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Iran has said it will no longer abide by any limits of an international nuclear deal after the US assassination of top general Qassem Soleimani.

In a statement broadcast on state TV, the government said it would no longer respect restrictions on enrichment of uranium, or research and development, representing another major blow to any hopes of restoring relations between the Washington and Tehran on a day that saw hundreds of thousands take to the streets of cities and towns across Iran to mourn Soleimani and demand retaliation.

The foreign ministry spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, said it would announce as early as tonight what steps it would take, suggesting that it was considering more drastic resumption of its nuclear programme following the assassination.

Decisions had been made about the fifth step but due to the current situation, an important meeting will be held tonight on the fifth step that can affect the previous decisions, he said.

The announcement marks the end of a 2015 accord, agreed between Iran and a group of world powers known as the P5+1 - the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany - that aimed to prevent Tehran from building an atomic weapon by imposing restrictions on its sensitive nuclear activities and allowing inspections by international experts in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.

It was considered a triumph by the Obama administration after years of tension over Iran's nuclear capabilities and intentions, but President Trump abandoned the deal in May 2018 in favour of a policy of 'maximum pressure' against Tehran, with crippling sanctions against its financial and oil sectors.

The other parties disagreed and tried to keep the deal in place, but the new US sanctions undermined the accord and its credibility was gradually eroded away.

The announcement came hours after Iraqs parliament voted to oust US and other foreign troops fighting Isis, delivering a blow to efforts to fight the jihadi group following Washingtons decision to assassinate Soleimani in an airstrike.

Story continues

Iraqs parliament convened and quickly passed the preliminary vote not only for the removal of foreign troops but also to submit a complaint to the United Nations against the US for violating the countrys sovereignty, marking a nadir in relations between Washington and Baghdad  where the airstrike took place in the early hours of Friday.

Despite the domestic and international challenges that we may face, this choice remains the best for Iraq, Iraqs caretaker prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, told lawmakers.

Iraq lived without foreign forces in the period between 2011 and 2014 and its relationship with the US and any other party did not deteriorate.

US forces in Iraq issued a statement saying they had paused anti-Isis efforts over the tensions with Iranian-backed forces a day after Nato nations declared they were pulling all troops out of the country.

A pullout of US and other international troops currently training and providing support to Iraqi forces could jeopardise efforts against Isis remnants attempting to stage a comeback. The group took over a third of the country during the three-year period when US troops were absent, sacking the number two city of Mosul after Iraqi forces crumbled.

The UK government urged Iraq to allow soldiers to remain in the country to continue the fight against Isis to stop any resurgence by the terror group.

Some 400 UK troops are stationed in Iraq to counter the threat from Isis, while the US has 5,200, prompting fears that a withdrawal could seriously harm the battle against the extremist group.

The Ministry of Defence was believed to be waiting for the decision of the Iraqi government before taking action over the soldiers, based there as part of a US-led coalition.

"We urge the Iraqi government to ensure the coalition is able to continue our vital work countering this shared threat," a MoD spokesperson said.

The killings, ordered by Mr Trump in response to attacks on US sites in Iraq by Iranian-backed militias, have roiled the already volatile Middle East and upped preparations for a long-dreaded war as diplomats frantically sought to defuse the crisis.

Iraqis carry a mock coffin as they march in a symbolic funeral procession (AFP)

The bodies of Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes were transported to the Iranian eastern shrine city of Mashhad on Sunday for burial.

Video footage showed thousands of emotional, grieving Iranians swarming around a white truck carrying their bodies through the centre of the city in scenes reminiscent of the death of Irans revolutionary founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, some three decades ago.

Mashhad is the city where a late 2017 uprising against the government that turned into a nationwide series of protests began. Soleimani, a pillar of the establishment, was celebrated even in anti-regime hotspots gripped only weeks ago by protests demanding political change.

Earlier video footage from a helicopter showed a lengthy procession of Iranians dressed in black gathering stretched along a long boulevard through the streets of central Ahvaz, capital of a largely ethnic Arab southwestern Iranian province that has been the scene of scores of anti-government protests since late 2017.

City officials renamed Ahvazs international airport after the martyr Soleimani.

The commander of Irans clandestine overseas service was regarded as a popular figure in Iran, credited by many for helping to defeat Isis and respected for publicly declining to use his celebrity to pursue political office.

It remains unclear whether his killing will quell the nascent movement against the regime that Washington hawks who have Mr Trumps ear had been counting on to topple it.

But for now, few inside Iran were speaking of the economic troubles that had sparked an uprising in November that left scores of people dead, as Iranian officials and some segments of the public sought revenge, and officials spoke of war.

As Irans parliament opened, scores of Iranians lawmakers who gathered for an emergency session waved their fists in the air and chanted Death to America.

Shia Muslims march to protest against the US strike that killed Soleimani (AFP)

But Iranian leaders also went out of their way to insist they did not seek to harm American citizens.

Iranian leaders appear to have a sophisticated understanding of US domestic political issues, and state media has highlighted comments by Democratic Party officials criticising Trumps Iran policies, including his 2018 decision to abruptly abandon a nuclear deal with Iran that had been forged by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

We have zero problems with the American people, Hesameddin Ashena, an adviser to President Hassan Rouhani, wrote on Twitter. We even achieved deals with previous US administrations. Our sole problem is Trump. In the event of war, it is he who will bear full responsibility.

One hardline Iranian lawmaker, Abolfazl Aboutorabi, said that Iran can attack the White House itself, in retaliation for the killing. We can respond to them on American soil, he was quoted as saying.

But more senior Iranian officials sought to place limits of any response, even after Mr Trump threatened to destroy 52 Iranian targets including cultural sites important to Iranian people in a bizarre and angry tweet on Saturday.

Iranians gather in the northeastern city of Mashhad (AFP)

The response will definitely be military and against military sites, Hossein Dehghan, a military adviser to Irans supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, told CNN. It was America that started the war. Therefore they should expect appropriate reactions to their actions.

In a speech from Lebanon broadcast on television, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, a staunch ally of Iran and close friend of Soleimani, threatened US troops but cautioned against any attacks that would harm American civilians.

When the coffins of American soldiers and officers begin to be transported ... to the United States, Trump and his administration will realise that they have really lost the region and will lose the elections, he said, adding US civilians in the region should not be touched because this would serve Trumps agenda.

Iranian hardline lawmaker Mojtaba Zonnour said: If they target our cultural centres, we will hit their vessels and their bases.

Diplomatic attempts to defuse the crisis continued. Oman, an Arabian peninsula nation with strong ties to both Iran and the US, urged the countries to turn to diplomacy.

Russia and China, both permanent veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council, issued a statement condemning the US assassination and cautioning that military adventurism is unacceptable, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Mr Dehghan, speaking to CNN, suggested that US restraint in the face of a face-saving Iranian counter-response could prevent the outbreak of a widespread armed conflict. The only thing that can end this period of war is for the Americans to receive a blow that is equal to the blow they inflicted, he said. Afterward, they should not seek a new cycle.

Read more

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LOS ANGELES, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Levine Leichtman Capital Partners ("LLCP"), a Los Angeles-based private equity firm, announced that it has acquired Resolution Economics, LLC ("Resolution" or the "Company") in partnership with the existing management team. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Resolution is a specialty consulting firm that provides economic and statistical analysis as well as expert testimony to leading law firms and corporations in labor & employment and commercial litigation matters. Resolution specializes in highly complex class action lawsuits and, as such, employs a highly technical workforce, including 14 with PhDs and 23 with master's degrees. In addition, the company has over 70 SAS programmers, and 17 Resolution professionals have served as expert witnesses. Founded in 1998, Resolution is headquartered in Los Angeles and has additional offices in Washington, DC, Chicago, IL, and New York, NY.

Matthew Rich, Managing Director at LLCP, stated, "We have been very impressed by the industry-leading business the Resolution management team has built over the years. The Company's history of solving complex issues has enabled it to become a critical partner to many of its blue-chip clients. We are excited to partner with the management team to continue to grow Resolution for the mutual benefit of all stakeholders."

Ali Saad, Managing Partner of Resolution Economics, added, "Resolution has developed into a world-class consulting firm by always putting the interests of our clients first, constantly innovating, and identifying new opportunities to create value. Our partnership with LLCP provides our firm the resources to invest in the human capital and technology needed to expand the services we offer to our clients. LLCP has a long history of being a value-added partner to its portfolio companies, and I look forward to our collaboration contributing meaningfully to the continued growth of our business."

The investment in Resolution follows a number of prior investments made by LLCP in the legal information industry, including Law Business Research and Best Lawyers. It will be the seventh investment from LLCP Lower Middle Market Fund, L.P.

Kirkland & Ellis served as legal advisor to LLCP. Houlihan Lokey served as financial advisor to Resolution.

For more information, visit www.resecon.com and www.llcp.com.

About Levine Leichtman Capital Partners

Levine Leichtman Capital Partners, LLC is a middle-market private equity firm with a 36-year track record of successfully investing across various targeted sectors, including franchising, professional services, education and engineered products. LLCP utilizes a differentiated Structured Equity investment strategy, combining debt and equity capital investments in portfolio companies. This unique structure provides a less dilutive solution for management teams and entrepreneurs, while delivering growth and income with a significantly lower risk profile.

LLCP's global team of dedicated investment professionals is led by six partners who have worked together for an average of 22 years. Since inception, LLCP has managed over $10.7 billion of institutional capital across 14 investment funds and has invested in over 80 portfolio companies. LLCP currently manages $6.4 billion of assets  including its most recent flagship fund, Levine Leichtman Capital Partners VI, L.P., which closed in 2018 with $2.5 billion of committed capital  and has offices in Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Chicago, Charlotte, London, Stockholm and The Hague.

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Turkish security forces arrest 11 FETO suspects

The police continue the hunt for the remaining suspects.

Turkish police on Monday arrested at least 11 people for their suspected links to Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), the group behind the 2016 defeated coup, security sources said.

The arrests came after the countrys prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 27 suspects.

ANTI-TERROR OPERATIONS WILL CONTINUE

The Chief Public Prosecutors Office in the capital Ankara issued warrants for a serving soldier and four former soldiers -- who either resigned, retired or were expelled. In northern Samsun province, prosecutors issued warrants for two expelled soldiers and 20 military students.

Police conducted anti-terror operations in the capital Ankara, Istanbul, eastern Erzurum, northern Trabzon and Kastamonu provinces and arrested 11 suspects.

Meanwhile, four terrorists were also arrested in an operation against PKK and FETO terror groups in southeastern Sirnak Province, according to the provincial governorate.

Later, one of the suspects was remanded in custody, while three were released under judicial control.
A day after several students and teachers of Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University were injured in an attack by a gang of masked men, Union human resources development minister Ramesh Pokhriyal said Monday educational institutions in the country would not be allowed to become political hubs.

Pokhriyal who was in Bhubaneswar for the launch ceremony of next months Khelo India University Games, told reporters that educational institutions like JNU are for academic purposes only and should be used for pursuit of education.

I have said this earlier also that these autonomous institutions cannot be allowed to become political adda (hubs).Anyone found guilty in the JNU violence would not be spared, said Pokhriyal.

He also said that the HRD secretary has spoken to the officials of JNU.

Ahead of Pokhriyals engagement, hundreds of people gathered at Bhubaneswars protest site - Master Canteen Square  near the state assembly to denounce the violence at JNU. The protesters including leaders of CPI (M), CPI, the Forward Block, CPI (ML) and activists of several organisations.

Former secretary of the CPI (M)s Odisha unit Janardan Pati demanded that the Supreme Court should suo motu order a probe to bring out the truth into the JNU violence. CPI leader Ramakrushna Panda alleged that violence was sponsored by the ABVP and BJP.

In Rama Devi Womens University of Bhubaneswar, a group of activists of the All-India Democratic Students Organisation staged a demonstration holding placards saying Stop hooliganism on JNU campus.

Similarly, in Utkal University, Odishas biggest and oldest university, members of Biju Chhatra Janata Dal staged protest holding placards condemning the alleged role of the ABVP in the JNU violence.

Chief minister Naveen Patnaik also expressed his shock and outrage at the violence at JNU. Violence has no space in democracy and such attacks on students must be condemned unequivocally. Appeal law enforcement agencies to take swift action to apprehend the culprits and wish the injured students a speedy recovery, he tweeted.

Reacting to the JNU violence, vice-chancellor of Utkal University, Prof Soumendra Mohan Patnaik said that there is no place for violence in any academic place.

Utkal University has adopted Gandhian approach and experimented it in the campus. We have built a citadel of non-violence called Ahimsa Sthal inside the campus. Universities are free spaces and everyone should have the freedom to express their ideas. Universities are the places where we cultivate the next generation which includes political leadership, industries, administration, academics, civil society and judiciary. It is a miniature society.

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I have my suspicions, I don't want to say that because other people have those suspicions also.

It is a tragic thing when I see that, it's a tragic thing but someone could have made a mistake on the other side.

It was flying in a pretty rough neighbourhood and somebody could have made a mistake.

Some people say it was mechanical. I personally don't think that's even a question, personally. So we'll see what happens.
Police intervene as protesters and counter-protesters clash outside the offices of state broadcaster WDR

German grandmothers protested outside the offices of state broadcaster WDR in Cologne on Saturday after the station posted a satirical video about old peoples environmental carelessness.

The demonstrations, which police estimate attracted more than 1,000 protesters and counter protesters, follow several days of death threats against prominent journalists from the German network who have spoken out in support of the video.

On Saturday a man, who was later found to be carrying a knife, was arrested for attacking counter protesters, while on Sunday five members of far-Right groups were detained after climbing onto the roof of the WDR building.

The video, which is set to the tune of a well-known childrens song, satirises older generations attitude to the environment and climate change, including the provocative refrain my grandma is an environmental pig.

The video, which features a group of around 30 children from the Dortmund Childrens Choir singing the satirical lyrics, was taken down just days after being posted  but not before attracting more than 40,000 social media comments which were mainly critical of its content.

In the video, the children also sing that their environmental-pig grandma cooks discount meat every day, drives an SUV and takes frequent cruise trips. The song closes with a sample of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg saying we will not let you get away with this.

Members of Germanys post-Second World War generation have been particularly critical of the video, arguing that it criticises the countrys rubble women (Trummerfrauen) who rebuilt the country after the conflict. They argue that the video should not have been made with public funds.

Armin Laschet, the Minister President of Germanys largest state of North-Rhine Westphalia and a member of Chancellor Angela Merkels Christian Democrats, said that the video used children for political purposes.

Mr Laschet said the video sought to drive a wedge between younger and older generations. The debate about the best way to protect the climate is increasingly being escalated by some into a generational conflict, he said.

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Also prominent in the furore have been members of Germanys far-Right, who say that the video attacks traditional German values and is an example of the public broadcasters political brainwashing of children.

Counter protesters have argued that the videos removal shows the tenuous nature of freedom of speech in the country. They have been particularly critical of WDR director Tom Buhrow, who took down the video and apologised unreservedly to those who had been offended.

Mr Buhrow told Germanys Der Spiegel that he did not buckle to far-Right threats, but instead realised the widespread negative impact of the video.

We were able to distinguish between what is orchestrated (by far-Right groups) and what are the real expressions of emotions from otherwise well-meaning listeners, he said.

We really had hundreds of senior citizens and their grandchildren on the phone. It was immediately obvious to us that these people were not part of an orchestrated campaign.

WDR journalist Danny Holleck has been widely criticised for tweeting grandma isnt just an environmental pig but a Nazi pig. Mr Holleck removed the tweet and apologised, but has since been the subject of protests outside his home.

The head of the choir who sang the song said protesters who focused on the age or gender of the grandma were missing the point as the oma in the song, thats all of us.
Protests were already taking place in the state over the killing of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani and also the attack on Nankana Saheb Gurudwara in Pakistan. Resentment over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is also yet to die down completely.

Lucknow : Uttar Pradesh has been put on high alert after the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in the national capital witnessed a night of unprecedented violence.

Top officials have already asked district police chiefs to remain alert and closely monitor activities on campuses of educational institutions in the state.

Most of the universities and institutions, barring the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) which has been indefinitely shut, were scheduled to open on Monday.

These are the institutions that witnessed protests against the police action on the students of the Jamia Milia University in Delhi last month.

AMU has particularly been in the eye of storm after the students' protest in support of Jamia students.

Student trouble was also continuing in the Allahabad University where Vice Chancellor Professor Ratan Lal Hangloo was forced to resign four days ago. The proctor and PRO of the university also resigned from their posts.

"It has become a very dangerous cauldron of community politics. In almost every district we are facing discontent over multiple issues. The resentment over CAA is continuing. Shia Muslims and Sikhs are restive over the killing of the Iran army general and the attack on Nankana Saheb Gurudwara in Pakistan, respectively. Students are also upset over the recent action against the anti-CAA protests. The situation is, undoubtedly, volatile at present," explained a senior police official.

Uttar Pradesh DGP O.P. Singh said: "We are stepping up vigilance and have asked all district police chiefs to remain on high alert in view of the prevailing situation."

On Sunday night, several masked individuals, both male and female, thrashed students, including girls, and teachers inside the JNU campus with wooden and metal rods, injuring many.

While the number of the injured in the various clashes which occurred through the day was not yet known, at least 20 students were admitted to the AIIMS with severe injuries, including Jawaharal Nehru University Students Union President Aishe Ghosh - who was reportedly hit over the eye with an iron rod.
Graphic photographs from Jeffrey Epstein's autopsy have revealed for the first time his bloody neck wound - as other images taken inside his New York prison cell show several nooses fashioned from bed sheets, pills and electrical cords.

The images, which were obtained by 60 Minutes and shown publicly for the first time on Sunday, were taken by the New York City medical examiner's office after Epstein killed himself in his cell last August.

The millionaire pedophile's death at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center - while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges - was officially ruled as a suicide by hanging.

His death prompted widespread conspiracy theories and speculation that he had instead been murdered.

The photos from inside his cell reveal that fragments of material were found hanging from a window, while a large strip of bedding was also looped through a hole on the top bunk bed.

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES

The images, which were obtained by 60 Minutes and shown publicly for the first time on Sunday, were taken by the New York City medical examiner's office after Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in his federal prison cell

Multiple nooses fashioned from the orange bedding were found on the floor of Epstein's cell

The photos from inside his cell reveal that fragments of material were found hanging from a window, while a large strip of bedding was also looped through a hole on the top bunk bed

Multiple nooses fashioned from the orange bedding were found on the floor, as well as a handwritten note complaining about prison conditions.

The photos from inside the cell also showed multiple prescription pill bottles, several electrical cords and enough bed sheets for several inmates dumped on the floor.

Dr Michael Baden, who was hired by Epstein's brother to investigate the death and was present during the autopsy, said there was no image taken of the 66-year-old inside his cell.

He said that without that photo it was difficult to determine Epstein's cause of death and said the official ruling was 'premature judgment'.

Dr Baden believes the forensic evidence released so far in Epstein's death points more to murder and strangulation rather than suicide.

He pointed out that the noose found in Epstein's cell did not appear to have any blood on it despite the image from his autopsy showing a wound around his neck.

Dr Baden said the wound across Epstein's neck was more common with someone who has been strangled with a wire instead of a hanging.

He said that in most hangings, it was common for the ligature to slide up towards the jaw bone and not rest in the middle of one's neck.

He also pointed to the multiple fractures Epstein sustained in his neck.

Graphic photographs from Epstein's autopsy have revealed for the first time his bloodied neck wound after he killed himself on August 10

Epstein's autopsy report found his neck had been broken in several places, including the hyoid bone located near the Adam's apple

Epstein's autopsy report found his neck had been broken in several places, including the hyoid bone located near the Adam's apple. Pictured above is his broken hyoid bone

Epstein's autopsy report found his neck had been broken in several places, including the hyoid bone located near the Adam's apple.

Forensic experts have previously said that breakages to that specific bone could occur when people hanged themselves but were more commonly seen in victims who had been strangled.

The millionaire pedophile's death at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center - while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges - was officially ruled as a suicide by hanging

'I have never seen three fractures like this in a suicidal hanging,' Dr Baden told 60 Minutes.

'Going over a thousand jail hangings, suicides in the New York City state prisons over the past 4050 years, no one had three fractures.'

Dr Baden said the injuries on his body also showed contusions on both wrists, muscle hemorrhaging in his left shoulder and an abrasion of his left arm.

Epstein also had a cut on his lip and burst capillaries on his face, mouth and eyes, according to the autopsy.

The handwritten note found in Epstein's cell, which was found alongside a ball point pen, contained complaints he seemingly had about prison conditions.

Among the complaints were that one guard had 'kept me in a locked shower stall for 1 hour' and another 'sent me burnt food'.

Epstein also wrote: 'Giant bugs crawling over my hands. No fun!!'

The handwritten note found in Epstein's cell, which was found alongside a ball point pen, contained complaints he seemingly had about prison conditions including that a guard had kept him locked in a shower stall for an hour

The photos from inside the cell also showed multiple prescription pill bottles and food on the top bunk

Prescription pill bottles with Epstein's name on them were also found inside his cell

Another noose that appeared to be made out of bed sheets was found elsewhere in Epstein's cell after his death

The procedures that should've been followed in Epstein's jail unit: The two guards were required to jointly conduct institutional counts at 4pm, 10pm, 12am, 3am and 5am of the prisoners in the unit. Both officers are required to walk the six levels of the unit to count and observe every inmate. They then have to each fill in and sign a form with the date and time the counts were performed. The slips are then collected and taken to the prison's control center where officers double check them to make sure every inmate is accounted for. In addition to the count, officers assigned to the unit Epstein was in are required to walk around every 30 minutes to ensure inmates are 'alive and accounted for', according to the indictment. They are also required to sign forms saying they carried out these 30-minute checks. In total, the two guards were required to carry out five institutional counts. Prosecutors say surveillance video shows the officers did not conduct a single count despite them logging that they did. They are also accused of falsely signing off that they had carried out more than 75 separate 30-minute checks. Advertisement

The circumstances surrounding Epstein's death continue to raise questions about protocol at the federal prison.

The two prison guards who were responsible for checking in on Epstein the night he hanged himself have since been charged with falsifying records and conspiracy.

Tova Noel, 31, and Michael Thomas, 41, - who have pleaded not guilty - were allegedly shopping online for furniture and napping instead of checking on the millionaire pedophile in his jail cell just 15 feet away from them.

After they discovered Epstein dead, the officers allegedly told a supervisor they had 'messed up' and 'didn't do any checks' in the hours before he killed himself, according to a criminal complaint.

Noel and Thomas, who were assigned to Epstein's Special Housing Unit at the federal jail, are accused of failing to check on him every half-hour, as required, and of fabricating log entries to claim they had.

The two guards were required to jointly conduct institutional counts at 4pm, 10pm, 12am, 3am and 5am of the prisoners in the unit. They were supposed to walk the six levels of the unit to count every inmate.

In addition to that count, officers assigned to the unit Epstein was in were required to walk around every 30 minutes to ensure inmates are 'alive and accounted for', according to the indictment.

Prosecutors said surveillance video showed the pair did not conduct a single count despite them logging that they did.

The two prison guards who were responsible for checking in on Epstein the night he hanged himself and ultimately found him dead have since been charged with falsifying records and conspiracy. Pictured above is Epstein's jail cell after his death

The two guards were allegedly shopping online for furniture and napping instead of checking on the millionaire pedophile in his jail cell just 15 feet away from them. Pictured above is the gate that separated the guards from the hallway where Epstein's cell was

After they discovered Epstein dead, the officers allegedly told a supervisor they had 'messed up' and 'didn't do any checks' in the hours before he killed himself, according to a criminal complaint

The charges brought against the two officers were the first in connection with Epstein's death while awaiting trial on charges of sexually abusing teenage girls.

Epstein had been on suicide watch after he was found July 23 on his cell floor with bruises on his neck.

He was taken off suicide watch about a week before his death, which meant he was less closely monitored but still supposed to be checked on every 30 minutes.

The city's medical examiner ruled Epstein's death a suicide but that didn't stop the conspiracy theories from swirling.

Both Epstein's brother and the lawyers who represented him in his criminal case expressed doubts about the medical examiner's conclusion.

Epstein's death ended the possibility of a trial that would have involved prominent figures and it sparked widespread anger that he wouldn't have to answer for the allegations.

He had pleaded not guilty to sexually abusing girls as young as 14 and young women in New York and Florida in the early 2000s.

Epstein had once counted the rich and powerful, including U.S. President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew, among his associates.

The two prison guards - Tova Noel, 31, (right) and Michael Thomas, 41, (left) - who were responsible for checking in on Epstein the night he hanged himself have since been charged with falsifying records and conspiracy

The circumstances surrounding Epstein's death continue to raise questions about protocol at the federal prison, including how the high-profile inmate was allowed to have such items in his cell
D onald Trump has ramped up threats of war against Iran after the country promised "harsh revenge" for the US killing of General Qasem Soleimani.

Mr Trump ordered an airstrike on Friday when the military leader's convoy was spotted leaving in Baghdad airport in Iraq.

Tensions have been rising across the Middle East since the assassination took place and Iran has publicly vowed to take revenge on the US.

Once again, the US President has turned Twitter as his main communication platform - this time warning Iran against attacking Americans and telling Congress that the US will strike back in a "disproportionate manner" if attacked.

This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad / AP

So what has the US President said about Iran?

First cryptic tweets after the airstrike

Shortly after the general's death was announced, Mr Trump posted a picture of the American flag.

Then Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced that "harsh revenge awaits the criminals" behind the attack.

Declaring three days of public mourning, Mr Khamenei pledged to ramp up military action against the US.

A few hours later Mr Trump returned the somewhat cryptic line: "Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation!"

He showed no sign of backing down and a series of tweets followed saying Soleimani "should have been taken out many years ago".

He wrote: "General Qassem Soleimani has killed or badly wounded thousands of Americans over an extended period of time, and was plotting to kill many more...but got caught!

"He was directly and indirectly responsible for the death of millions of people, including the recent large number of PROTESTERS killed in Iran itself."

Trump warns Iran against revenge attack

The next day, after the initial fallout, the president returned to Twitter to warn Iran against a revenge attack.

He said Iran had been "talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets".

He also called General Soleimani "their terrorist leader" before claiming that the Iranian had recently killed an America as well as hundreds of protesters during his lifetime.

"Let this serve as a WARNING," Mr Trump added.

Trump promises to "hit back" if US attacked

On Sunday, Mr Trump told Iran that if they retaliated, the US would "hit them harder than they have ever been hit before!"

He went on to brag about two trillion dollars he claims the US has spent on military equipment, calling the armed forces "the biggest and by far the BEST in the World!"

"If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way... and without hesitation," he added.

The US president went on to tell Congress that he will order a quick response in a "disproportionate manner".

"Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless," he added.

Who has he retweeted?

Besides his own posts, Mr Trump has retweeted several people who have highlighted the crimes of General Soleimani.

CNN news anchor Jim Sciutto spoke about the general's role in the war in Iraq while journalist Sam Dagher flagged up his role in the Assad regime's crackdown on protesters in 2011.

Mr Trump also shared posts from former CIA analyst Buck Sexton and Mike Glenn, a Washington Times reporter and former US soldier.

He retweeted the US Embassy's travel warning to Iraq as well as the White House's video of his speech after the airstrike.

What did he tweet about Obama and Iran?

Mr Trump has now been accused of hypocrisy after a series of tweets emerged from 2011 in which he says former president Barack Obama would start a war with Iran in order to get re-elected.

Between 2011 and 2015, Mr Trump tweeted multiple times that Mr Obama was vying to start a war with Iran because of his inability to negotiate.

In a 2011 video he said: "Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate - he's weak and ineffective.

Trump calls Obama 'weak and ineffective' in 2011 video predicting he would attack Iran

"So the only way he figures that he's going to get re-elected, and as sure as you're sitting there, is to start a war with Iran."

In 2012, Mr Trump tweeted: Dont let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected  be careful Republicans!

He has drawn criticism from social media users who have called him a hypocrite for risking a military escalation with Iran after his repeated accusations towards Mr Obama.

In July last year, Mr Trump tweeted that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani must NEVER EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN.

He said: YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.

The threat came after Mr Rouhani cautioned the president against pursuing hardline policies against Tehran with the warning: War with Iran is the mother of all wars.
Three months before he was killed by a U.S. drone, Qassem Soleimani reminisced about his involvement in the war between Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Iran's most prominent general recalled how he traveled to Lebanon from Syria on July 12, 2006, partly on foot through back roads because the main highway was unsafe. He took off his military jacket one night in Beirut's southern suburbs, traditionally a Shiite stronghold loyal to Iran, before he and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah took shelter under a tree.

"There was total unity in the Islamic Republic over supporting Hezbollah and ensuring its victory," Soleimani said in an interview with Khamenei.ir, the official website of Iran's supreme leader, published on Oct. 1. It was his first in 20 years.

The account by the commander of Iran's expeditionary Quds Force, who was killed in Iraq last week, highlighted how instrumental he had become in the quest to infiltrate Arab countries. The focus is now on the void he leaves behind as the proxies he nurtured in the Middle East to do that job face unprecedented economic, political or security challenges.

It was Soleimani's presence-on the fronts in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq-that helped the seemingly unchecked rise of Iran's loyalists in the region since Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003. At the time of his death, though, things had changed and he was dealing with one crisis after the other in those countries.

This time last year, Hezbollah dominated politics and a lot of society in Lebanon despite mounting U.S. sanctions. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Iran's closest Arab ally, had regained control of most of his country. Iraq had declared a major victory against Islamic State with the help of Iran-backed Shiite militias.

Now there are protests in Iraq that have called for an end to Iranian intervention, demonstrations in Lebanon that have challenged Hezbollah's dominance in the country and a dire economic situation in Syria, where Russia is asserting itself as the main power. A series of attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf and a brazen assault on an oil facility in Saudi Arabia stood out as minor victories.

The question is whether the U.S. has now dealt a knockout punch, said Kamran Bokhari, founding director at the Center for Global Policy in Washington. "Iran has reached a point where in this moment the curve is now downward," said Bokhari. "Will it continue to go downward is another question."

Indeed, much depends on how Iran responds. Soleimani's death robs the country of the man with the most experience to handle these issues. It now falls on Esmail Ghaani, his replacement and a veteran of Middle East conflicts, to lead those proxies that are struggling.

Among the thousands that attended his funeral were representatives of organizations listed as terrorist groups by the U.S. and Europe. Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Palestinian group Hamas, said Soleimani's efforts helped strengthen the resistance and enhanced its power, according to Hezbollah-run Al-Manar TV.

"The resistance project in Palestine will continue," Haniyeh vowed in a speech at Tehran University. "It will not be weakened. It will not retreat."

Nasrallah's deputy, Naim Qassem, led Hezbollah's delegation to offer condolences to Soleimani's family, Al-Manar said. The axis of resistance will become more powerful, he told the TV station.

"Hezbollah will bear greater responsibilities and continue to follow this honorable path," he said.

A veteran of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, Soleimani was a household name in Iran where he was celebrated for helping to defeat Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and countering U.S. influence.

The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq that led to the fall of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim who persecuted Shiites and Kurds, removed a big hurdle that constrained Iran's outreach efforts.

Soleimani's role grew as Iran became more entrenched in the Arab world. He cultivated militias in Iraq and sent Shiite fighters to beef up government troops in Syria. In 2006, he helped Hezbollah recover from the war to dominate politics and effectively hand pick a Lebanese president.

In Yemen, Houthi rebels still prevailed despite a sustained Saudi-led campaign to defeat them, one that gained increasing international scrutiny and put pressure on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

In recent years, news, pictures and videos of Soleimani emerged. He met Nasrallah in Lebanon, was seen at the front checking on allied militias in Iraq, and shared in celebrations following the defeat of Islamic State in a Syrian city as fighters jostled to take selfies with him.

"These are not accidental photos," said Bokhari. "They embellished him, made him mythical deliberately."

Iran's biggest success then and now has been Hezbollah, which the Islamic Republic established in the 1980s.

On Sunday, Soleimani's daughter, Zainab Soleimani, appeared on Al-Manar TV, sitting next to a framed picture of Nasrallah and another photo of her father. She sent her regards to "our uncle, the master of resistance" Nasrallah "whom I know will avenge my father's blood."

A few hours later, Nasrallah vowed that American soldiers would be targeted in response, adding when Americans started going home in coffins U.S. President Donald Trump will understand that he has lost the region.

Indeed, the Shiite country of 80 million people is weakened economically, battling its own domestic unrest and its proxies are all in poor shape, but it's dangerous to suggest Iran's influence will wane, according to Paul Salem, president of the Middle East Institute in Washington. It all depends on the regime staying in tact, he said.

"If it survives, it will still have significant hegemony in the Levant-even in an impoverished and chaotic Levant," said Salem. "Until there is enough national power in Iraq, Lebanon or Syria to contest the embattled Iranian hegemony or there are external powers eager to take advantage of Iranian weakness by moving in themselves-an unlikely and unattractive scenario-Iran power in its proxy lands will remain."

Trump and his top aides are arguing that the taking out of Soleimani was designed to deter future attacks and make the Middle East safer. The president stated it was aimed at preventing war rather than starting one.

Back in July 2018, Soleimani had taunted Trump after he threatened Iran with dire consequences if it stood against Washington. The general said in a speech that the U.S. had committed crimes in Afghanistan and that the Americans and Israelis had suffered a "humiliating defeat" in the 33-day war against Hezbollah in 2006.

"Gambler Trump! I alone stand against you," Soleimani said, according to Iran's Tasnim news agency. "We, the Iranian nation, have gone through tough events. You may begin a war, but it is us who will end it."

- - -

Bloomberg's Reema Al Othman contributed.
The Hope College Knickerbocker Winter Film Series will continue the colleges long tradition of showing current independent and international films. The series will show four films, each for a week-long run, beginning with Give Me Liberty on Jan. 13-18; Midnight Family on Feb. 3-8; and Up There on Feb. 24-29. A final film, yet to be chosen, will show on March 9-14.

Give Me Liberty, showing Monday-Saturday, Jan. 13-18, is an American comedy written and directed by Russian emigre Kirill Mikhanovsky. Medical transport driver Vic (Chris Galust) risks his job to shuttle his Russian grandfather, other seniors and a Russian boxer to a funeral. When a protest disrupts the route, he drags regular clients like Tracy (Lauren Lolo Spencer) a young woman with ALS, along for a freewheeling ride. The award-winning film has been called a wild and ultimately joyous ride by the Hollywood Reporter, while Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com has said that it is the debut of a fresh vision of the all-American crowd-pleaser.

A documentary film from Mexico that captured numerous fans at the Sundance Film Festival, Midnight Family, will run on Monday-Saturday, Feb. 3-8. In Mexico City, the government operates fewer than 45 emergency ambulances for a population of nine million. This has spawned an underground industry of for-profit ambulances often run by people with little or no training or certification. An exception in this ethically fraught, cutthroat industry, the members of the Ochoa family struggle to keep their financial needs from jeopardizing the people in their care. When a crackdown by corrupt police pushes the family into greater hardship, they face increasing moral dilemmas even as they continue providing essential emergency medical services. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times has said, By turns terrifying and exhilarating, Midnight Family unfolds with such velocity that it may take a while for your ethical doubts to catch up to whats happening. When they do, they leave you gasping and Variety has called it a gripping doc. The film has been nominated for more than 40 international awards and has won 20 awards from a variety of film festivals. The film is in Spanish with English subtitles.

On Monday-Saturday, Feb. 24-29, the series will feature Up There, a drama filmed in Norway, Michigan. Journalist Jack Cohen (Daniel Weingarten) is desperately searching for the big story that will change his career. His current underwhelming assignment lands him in a sleepy mining town in Michigan where nobody speaks to strangers, especially reporters. When a local girl, Emma (Zoe Kanters), offers to help, Jack begrudgingly accepts. Unbeknownst to her, Jack uncovers details of her tragic past, and with it, the story he has been looking for all along. Gaining Emmas trust, he writes a story, exploiting her tragedy for his own gain. Emmas instability, threats from her veteran brother, and Jacks own ambitious treachery send him hurtling towards an explosive conclusion. The Los Angeles Times has said that A lovely performance by Zoe Kanters elevates Up There. The film is not rated.

Tickets for the individual films, which all begin at 7:30 p.m., are $7 for regular admission and $6 for senior citizens, Hope College faculty and children, and will be sold at the door.

The Knickerbocker Theatre is located in downtown Holland at 86 E. Eighth St., between College and Columbia avenues.
The Prince of Wales will go ahead with his historic visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories despite the Iranian crisis.

Clarence House said yesterday the security situation was being monitored closely, but Charles still intends to become the most senior British royal to pay an official visit to Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Aides also revealed that Charles will honour those who died in the Holocaust during his two-day visit on January 23 and 24.

The Prince of Wales will go ahead with his historic visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories despite the Iranian crisis

Officials yesterday faced questions about the safety of the trip, given threats at the weekend by Iranian officials that they would strike US targets in places including Tel Aviv.

The princes deputy private secretary, Scott Furssedonn-Wood, confirmed the visit would go ahead, but added: We always keep our plans under review for security reasons.

The Foreign Office said: We are monitoring the situation very closely. Our posts are well practised at managing security for these kinds of visits and are able to adapt to changing circumstances very quickly.
Italys La-Luce newspaper has named former and late Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi personality of the year 2019 for his sacrifice for democracy.

The media last week published the picture of the former leader on its cover with the description: Uomo Dell Anno 2019 (The man of year 2019).

The paper said it handed the recognition to Morsi because he has been able to keep his promise until his death, citing in this connection his statement: If the price of protecting democratic legitimacy is my blood, then I am ready to offer my blood for the sake of salvation and justice in this country [Egypt].

It also praised Egypts first democratically elected President for allowing demonstrations and for promoting freedom of speech.

Despite Egypts poor economic conditions and its broken, corrupt national system after the 2011 revolution, Morsi had exerted notable efforts to revive the country from its crisis, the newspaper pointed out.

He did not arrest any opponents, did not shoot protestors crowds, did not suppress demonstrations, the paper added.

Morsi died in June last year in court. Elected in 2012 and Toppled in July 2013 by incumbent Fattah al-Sisi, the member of the Mulism Brotherhood was put on trial on multiple charges.

Al Sisis regime is blamed by rights groups for thwarting human rights and freedom of speech. Hundreds of activists, journalists have been reportedly locked up on trumped charges.
The performance of airline stocks depends to a great extent on crude oil prices. As a matter of fact, airlines have an inverse relationship with oil prices (lower fuel prices bode well for the industry). This is because fuel expenses comprise a major chunk of total airline expenditures.



While market experts forecast a stable outlook for oil prices in 2020, the rising Middle East tensions might turn things awry soon. Following the U.S. drone strike near the Baghdad international airport that killed Irans top commander General Qassim Soleimani, oil prices jumped more than 3%. Brent crude is said to have touched $68.6 a barrel on Friday, marking its highest level since the drone attack on Saudi Arabian oil field in September 2019.



This sudden oil price leap coupled with speculations of a further rise in the price of this commodity in case of an Iranian retaliation, pulled down the airline stocks. American Airlines Group AAL, United Airlines Holdings UAL, Delta Air Lines DAL, Alaska Air Group ALK, JetBlue Airways Corporation JBLU and Spirit Airlines SAVE saw their shares sinking 4.9%, 2.1%, 1.7%, 1.8%, 1.7% and 2%, respectively, at the close of business on Jan 3. Consequently, the NYSE Arca Airline Index slid 1.9% at the close of Fridays trading session.



While Delta and Spirit carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), United Airlines, Alaska Air Group and JetBlue carry a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



Meanwhile, American Airlines carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).



Long-Term Impact Unlikely



During Septembers drone strikes on crude oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, there was an initial spike in oil prices by over 14%. However, prices quickly stabilized owing to the restoration of crude production capabilities.



Despite Irans warning of severe retaliation, some market watchers believe that the Iranian retaliation (if at all it occurs) might just have a short-term impact on crude oil prices and thereby on airlines. Based on past events, Tortoise Capitals portfolio manager Rob Thummel feels that the political turmoil would likely only be temporary and hence might not affect oil prices much.



Boeing 737 MAX-Related Woes Linger



Besides the oil price uncertainty, the Boeing 737 MAX-related woes continue with no clarity in sight regarding the aircrafts return to service. The Boeing 737 MAX jets have been grounded since last March following two fatal air crashes in different parts of the world over a span of only five months, apparently due to software malfunctioning. The grounding of this aircraft resulted in reduced capacity and escalation of non-fuel unit costs, thereby limiting bottom-line growth of carriers with such jets in their fleet.



For instance, Southwest Airlines with the largest (34) exposure to the MAX jets among the U.S. carriers saw its operating income decline by $435 million in the first nine months of 2019. Additionally, American Airlines (with 24 MAX aircraft) expects its capacity to have increased only about 1% in 2019 (over 2018 levels) compared with its previous projection of a rise of 2-3%. This contraction in capacity is primarily due to the grounding of the companys 737 MAX aircraft. Moreover, the carrier anticipates its full-year pre-tax income to have been hurt by roughly $540 million on account of grounding issues.



More Stock News: This Is Bigger than the iPhone!



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Click to get this free report American Airlines Group Inc. (AAL) : Free Stock Analysis Report JetBlue Airways Corporation (JBLU) : Free Stock Analysis Report Delta Air Lines, Inc. (DAL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Spirit Airlines, Inc. (SAVE) : Free Stock Analysis Report Alaska Air Group, Inc. (ALK) : Free Stock Analysis Report United Airlines Holdings Inc (UAL) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
As I stood in line at the security checkpoint at Houstons Intercontinental Airport, I wasnt sure my plan would work. I prepared for the possibility that security might confiscate my precious cargo. I had stowed the item in question in a nondescript plastic container, sealed it in a plastic bag and tucked it in my shoulder bag.

I neednt have worried, though. We made it through  me and my chile con queso.

I dont remember now which restaurant the queso came from, but it was excellent queso left over from my prior nights dinner. I wasnt about to throw out all this melty, cheesy goodness. How could I bring it back to California? My solution: freeze it in hopes that in this temporary solid state it would bypass security without scrutiny.

This is what you do when youre a Tex-Mex-loving Texan living 1,600 miles from home.

Whenever I return to Texas, the food I most look forward to eating is Tex-Mex. Its not my mothers cooking. (Sorry, mom.) This might surprise some people who look at my East Asian face and assume I hunger for the foods of my Chinese heritage. The truth is that where my family ended up shaped me as much as where they came from. (The other truth is that Im from a family that cant really cook, so theres not much there to miss.)

Of course there are times when I seek comfort in the Cantonese foods that my family mostly ate. Some days I just want a simple meal of steamed whole fish with scallions in soy sauce, eaten with a side of greens and a small bowl of rice. I dreaded this dish as a child but have come to appreciate it as an adult. Theres a sense of ritual in eating it with others, picking one side of the fish clean and then flipping it over to reveal the other side, untouched.

But while I can find decent Cantonese food in California, its harder to find good Tex-Mex. And Tex-Mex  with its efficient breakfast tacos delivering scrambled eggs in neatly folded hand-held packages, its enchiladas drenched in sauce and cheese, and its combo plates of plenty  is what I want to eat in times of celebration.

People trash Tex-Mex in the same way they put down Chinese American food. Its not authentic, they say. Excuse me. These foods are authentic to me, a Chinese American raised in Texas. Authentic eats from my childhood include the egg foo young sandwiches my mother packed in my school lunches  a mini omelet with a Kraft single between two slices of bread. They include quesadillas, which my mother charmingly called chile tortillas, made with store-bought flour tortillas, home-made shredded chicken, jarred salsa, green onions and cheddar cheese.

What does authentic mean, anyway, when cuisines migrate and adapt with people? Culture is not static, but a living, changing thing.

Tex-Mex isnt some kind of fake Mexican food. Its a regional cuisine rooted in Tejano culture, going back to when Texas was part of Mexico. Yes, sometimes cuisines adapt to prevailing tastes. Americanized Chinese food was made sweeter and boneless by Chinese restaurateurs serving non-Chinese clientele. But sometimes cuisines morph because of the ingredients at hand. This is how processed cheese became integral to Tex-Mex and how broccoli beef came to be in Chinese American food. (Early Chinese immigrants didnt have access to the vegetable theyd normally use, gai lan.)

So, my love of Tex-Mex isnt just about how much I love cheese, though it is true that I love cheese so very much. My love of Tex-Mex is the story of my familys journey and the hardships they faced, what they lost and what they gained. It is a story that begins in a riverside village in rural Guangdong province in southern China, long before I am born.

My grandfather grows up barefoot in this riverside village, one of eight children. When his education is interrupted in his childhood by the Second Sino-Japanese War, he works farming rice and harvesting fruit trees with his father. Like everyone in the village, they are poor. So in 1950, when he gets a chance to leave for America, he takes it. This is one year after the Communists have come to power, and just weeks after the birth of his first child, my mother.

To immigrate to America from a poor country means to have a chance at changing the trajectory of your family. But this comes at a cost, a life lived apart from loved ones. My grandfather does not know it when he leaves, but seven years will pass before hes reunited with his wife, nearly 20 before he sees my mother again. He will never see his father again.

My grandfather makes his way to Texas because this is where his relatives live. His grand-uncle had come to America to labor on the railroads. His son, my grandfathers uncle, had spent some time in the U.S. Army, which took him to Fort Bliss in El Paso. He liked El Paso so much that he settled there, opening a grocery store. My grandfather goes to work for his uncle to pay off the debt he owes him for bringing him to America. This is how my family from a coastal village ends up in the dry desert heat of west Texas.

If you know nothing about El Paso, know that it is a border town where lives are lived in two countries, where it is normal to have breakfast on one side of the border and do your shopping on the other. After seven years apart, my grandmother joins her husband, leaving my mother in the care of others in Hong Kong. But lacking paperwork to prove their marriage, she migrates first to Mexico, where they marry again. For the next two years, my grandfather crosses the border daily, one year by foot, the next by car, because he works on the American side but lives with my grandmother on the Mexican side.

When my mother finally arrives in 1970, she is 19. By this time, my grandparents have three American-born daughters and have established their own small neighborhood grocery store. They speak three languages: Cantonese, Spanish, English. They send my mother to a Catholic school to learn English. The foods in El Paso are nothing like the foods my mother is used to eating in Hong Kong. Her parents warn that she wont like Mexican food. So, in her high school cafeteria, where lunch trays are passed out indiscriminately to students, then traded, my mother dutifully trades away any Mexican meals.

But one day, no one will trade. She is stuck with a plate of flautas. When youre hungry, youll eat anything, my mother recalls. I ate them for survival. But when I ate them, I liked it.

Flautas lead to tacos, which lead to tamales made by a neighbor. She eats avocados daily for a snack. She even likes cheese, which is so foreign to Chinese cuisines that theres no real word for it. In Cantonese, we just add a suffix to the English word cheese. We call it cheese-zee.

In a few years, my mother moves to Austin for college, where she meets my father at a party for Chinese students who have gathered to cook the foods they miss. They marry in El Paso, throwing a Chinese banquet reception at one of the restaurants where my grandparents are lifelong customers, and they settle in Houston.

Every summer of my childhood, we visited El Paso, staying in the small house connected to the rear of the store where my grandparents lived and raised their family. We always made a pilgrimage to my mothers favorite Mexican restaurant. With arched walls and a tiled fountain, the dining room resembled a courtyard.

I loved the restaurants menu, which seemed to anticipate my inability to make a decision by offering a generous combo plate with six items: an enchilada, hard-shell taco, tamale and chile relleno with rice and refried beans.

But the thing we most anticipated was the basket of sopapillas that arrived at the end of the meal. Pliable triangles of fried dough puffed with warm air, they were served nearly naked with a light dusting of sugar and a squeeze bottle of honey. As we ate our sopapillas, wed place a second order to go, to bring back to our grandmother who was minding the store.

It has been more than 20 years since Ive visited El Paso. Though it is not the city where I grew up, I consider it a home of sorts. It is a place that my family comes from among the various places that we come from. I have eaten other sopapillas in the years since, but none have come close to these golden sopapillas of my memory.

My parents recently moved from the house where I spent my adolescence to a Houston suburb an hours drive away. On my last visit home in October, I was afraid Id have to get my Tex-Mex fix at a mediocre chain restaurant. Silly me. Google revealed a family-run restaurant five minutes from their new home.

My parents, who are not in the habit of using Google, were thrilled with this news. Though they dont eat Tex-Mex often, they crave it, too, sometimes. My mother lamented that it had been too long since shed eaten tamales. That evening, they studied the vast menu online, all the permutations of combo plates, the seafood section, the specialties. The next day, we went there together for lunch. We smiled as the waiter brought our meals out on a large tray  plates of comfort and abundance.

Melissa Hung is a freelance writer in San Francisco.
POLICE arrested Monday morning, January 6, one of the persons accused in the Maguindanao massacre.

Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (Barmm) director Brigadier General Marni Marcos said Faisal Dimaukom, alias Kagi Faizal, was arrested at 5:05 a.m. Monday in Barangay Kabinge, Datu Saudi Ampatuan.

Recovered from Dimaukom was an F1 fragmentation hand grenade. He was turned over to Parang Municipal Police Station for proper documentation and disposition.

Fifty-eight people, including over 30 media workers, were killed in the Maguindanao massacre that happened on November 23, 2009. It was tagged as the most violent election-related incident in the country.

On December 19, 2019, two members of the Ampatuan clan, who allegedly architected the massacre along with 25 other accused, were convicted to life imprisonment over the incident.

At least 80 suspects in the massacre remain at large. (SunStar Philippines)
Central trade unions on Monday urged civil society to take part in the nationwide strike called jointly by them on January 8 against the "anti-labour policies" of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre.

The 24-hour strike called by all major trade unions will start at 12 AM on Wednesday, Elamaram Kareem, state general secretary of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions said.

"National trade unions and organisations of government employees, bank, insurance employees jointly have called for a national strike... This is against the anti-labour policies of the Modi government.

We are raising many demands including fixing of minimum wage for all workers at Rs 21,000 per month," Kareem said.

At a joint press meet here, trade union leaders of all parties other than BMS, which is affiliated to the BJP, claimed that all labour laws were being amended in favour of the employers.

Kareem said the strike was also against privatisation of all major public sector undertakings of the country.

Trade unions INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF, UTUC along with various sectoral independent federations and associations are taking part in the nation-wide srike.

Kareem claimed that "anti-labour" policies of the Central government were affecting around 80 crore people of the country working in the organised and unorganised sectors.

The leaders also urged workers in shopping malls also to express solidarity with the strike.

"The country is going through a major crisis.We request everyone to close shops and join the protest," Kareem said.

Essential services including the press besides tourism industry and Sabarimala devotees have been exempted from the purview of the strike, they said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
German prosecutors have filed terror charges against a Syrian man accused of commanding a unit of Islamic State group fighters in his homeland.

Prosecutors in Frankfurt said Monday that the 33-year-old, whose name they didn't release, was charged with membership in a foreign terrorist group and violating weapons laws.

They said that the suspect entered Germany in June 2015 and was initially granted refugee status, which was revoked in June last year.

He was arrested in the central city of Kassel in November 2018 and has been in custody since then.

The man was a member of IS from 2013 to 2015 and allegedly commanded a unit of at least 20 men, prosecutors said in a statement.

He also is alleged to have been the commander of one or two city districts in Raqqa for at least part of the time.

Prosecutors said the man is also accused of capturing two men, who were either Shiites or members of the Alawite minority, and holding them as hostages before handing them over to a high-ranking IS commander. It is not known what happened to the men.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Iran has condemned Donald Trump labelling him a "terrorist in a suit" after the US president threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites, as a conflict between the US and Iran escalated dramatically over the weekend.

In a series of social media posts Monday morning (AEST), president Trump said the US would attack perhaps in a disproportionate manner if Tehran hit American assets in retaliation for the killing of military commander Qassem Soleimani.

Soleimani, Iran's pre-eminent military commander, was killed on Friday in a US drone strike on his convoy at Baghdad airport, an attack that took long-running hostilities between Washington and Tehran into uncharted territory and raised the spectre of wider conflict in the Middle East.

At a televised funeral for Soleimani, watched by millions, the eulogist put a $US80 million ($A115 million) bounty on the head of the US president.

We are 80 million Iranians, if each one of us puts aside one American dollar, we will have 80 million American dollars, and we will reward anyone who brings us [Trump]s head with that amount, he said, addressing a large crowd in Irans north-eastern city of Mashha, according to Saudi free-to-air network Al Arabiya.

Following the killing, Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed severe revenge against the US.

Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani was killed by the US on Friday. Source: Getty

Iranians gather in the northeastern city of Mashhad on January 5 to pay homage to top general Qasem Soleimani and others after they were killed in a US strike. Source: Getty

Iran steps further back from nuclear deal

Tensions are set to rise over Irans potential to build nuclear weapons as it backs further away from a 2015 deal struck with the Obama administration to limit the amount of uranium it can enrich.

It was Trump's withdrawal of the United States from the deal in 2018 and reimposition of sanctions on Iran that touched off a new spiral of tensions after a brief thaw following the agreement.

The deal as a whole was designed to increase the time Iran would need to obtain enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb, if it wanted one.

John Blaxland, a professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies at the ANU, says the world must brace for Irans pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Story continues

Theres some compelling national security imperatives in Iran to proceed down that path, he told Yahoo News Australia. I think its only reasonable that we assume thats where theyre heading and theyre not far off.

While Iran has played it relatively cool over the last year or so, I think the bottom line is that they are not feeling secure enough without it.

The obtainment of such weapons would likely be more about gaining leverage, rather than a genuine intent to deploy them.

You look at North Korea, and you see the enormous leverage that it gains from having nuclear weapons, Prof Blaxland said.

The best way to respond (the killing of Soleimani) is to proceed with its nuclear weapons program as surreptitiously as it can.

A view of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Iran. Source: Getty

Iranian state television cited a government statement on Sunday as saying Iran would not respect any limits set down in the pact on the number of uranium enrichment centrifuges it could use.

Iran insisted that it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program and did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldnt seek a nuclear weapon.

However the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the pact and it further raises regional tensions, as Irans longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

While it does not possess uranium enriched to weapons-grade levels of 90 per cent, any push forward narrows the estimated one-year breakout time needed for it to have enough material to build a nuclear weapon.

While recent breaches of the deal made by Iran made little difference to that so-called break-out time, a growing number of advanced centrifuges are coming online, which could have a more significant impact if Iran pursues nuclear weapons.

Ultimately, Prof Blaxland doesnt see major escalations playing out, but believes Iran and its allies will continue to seek irritants against the US through small attacks and proxy wars.

Both the US and Iran retain vey strong imperatives to avoid escalation, he said.

President Donald Trump has threatened Iran over retaliation. Source: Getty

The threat of cyber war ratchets up

In 2010, a then unknown actor managed to disrupt a uranium enrichment plant in Iran by using an unprecedented and incredibly powerful cyber virus.

That virus has since become known as Stuxnet, a computer worm that targets industrial control systems that are used to monitor and control large scale industrial facilities like power plants, dams, waste processing systems and similar operations.

It is now known that the US was behind the attack which sabotaged a nuclear plant and thousands of centrifuges reportedly stopped production as a result.

The cyber weapon was first commissioned under the Bush administration and then again during the Obama years and highlighted the important role of cyber warfare  an increasingly important battleground in the ongoing conflict.

It is now much more difficult for the United States to play that game, Prof Blaxland said. The Iranians have been actively looking to harden their systems since then.

Shiite Muslim children stand on the US flag as they hold pictures of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani during a protest Sunday. Source: Getty

On Sunday, a US federal website was hacked and defaced with images of the Iranian flag and a picture depicting a bloodied Donald Trump being punched in the face. Iranian hackers took credit for the act, saying it was only a small part of Irans cyber ability.

Cybersecurity firm FireEye said it expects a ramp up in Iranian espionage activities targeting government systems as well as disruptive and destructive cyber attacks against the private sphere, the companys director John Hultquist said in a statement.

In November, Irans Telecoms Minister claimed it had foiled a major cyber attack on its infrastructure that was launched by a foreign government.

Earlier in October the US reportedly carried out a secret cyber strike on Iran following September 14 attacks on Saudi oil facilities, which Washington and Riyadh blamed on Tehran.

Iraq votes to expel the US military

The US military presence in the Middle East has been thrown into jeopardy, as Iraq's parliament voted to expel US troops from their country while the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah group warned the US will 'pay the price' for killing Iranian and Iraq military officials.

Hassan Nasrallah said that US bases, warships and soldiers in the Middle East were all fair targets after the US drone strike that killed General Qassem Soleimani, the architect of many of Iran's regional military campaigns including in Iraq.

"When American troops ...come vertically and return horizontally to the United States of America, then Trump and his administration will know that they lost the region and will lose the elections," Nasrallah said.

Nasrallah spoke from an undisclosed location, and his speech was played on large screens for thousands of Shi'Ite followers in southern Beirut, interrupted by chants of "Death to America!"

His stark warning came as Iraq's parliament voted in favour of a non-binding resolution calling for the expulsion of US troops from their country.

The resolution asks the Iraqi government to end the agreement under which Washington sent forces more than four years ago to help fight the IS extremists.

In a speech in Iraq's parliament, Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi called for "urgent measures" to remove foreign forces  including the estimated 5,200 US troops.

The United States said it was disappointed in the result.

With AP, Reuters

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play.
DUBAI/WASHINGTON: Iran`s supreme leader wept in grief with hundreds of thousands of mourners thronging Tehran`s streets on Monday for the funeral of military commander Qassem Soleimani, killed by a US drone on the orders of US President Donald Trump.

As the coffins of General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who also died in Friday`s attack in Baghdad, were passed over the heads of mourners, Soleimani`s successor vowed to expel US forces from the region in revenge.

The killing of Soleimani, the architect of Iran`s drive to extend its influence across the Middle East, has stoked concern around the globe that a broader regional conflict could erupt.

Trump has listed 52 Iranian targets, including cultural sites, that could be hit if Iran retaliates with attacks on Americans or U.S. assets, although U.S. officials sought to play down the president`s reference to cultural targets.

General Esmail Ghaani, the new commander of the Quds Force, the elite unit of Iran`s Revolutionary Guards charged with overseas operations, promised to "continue martyr Soleimani`s cause as firmly as before with the help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to rid the region of America".

"God the Almighty has promised to take martyr Soleimani`s revenge," he told state television. "Certainly, actions will be taken."

Other political and military leaders have made similar, unspecific threats. Iran, which lies at the mouth of the key Gulf oil shipping route, has a range of proxy forces in the region through which it could act.

The crowd in Tehran, which state media said numbered in the millions, recalled the masses that gathered in 1989 for the funeral of the Islamic Republic`s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

NATIONAL HERO

Soleimani was a national hero in Iran - even to many who do not consider themselves supporters of Iran`s clerical rulers. Aerial footage showed people packing thoroughfares and side streets and chanting "Death to America!", a welcome show of national unity for Tehran after anti-government protests in November in which many demonstrators were killed.

Iran`s demand that U.S. forces quit the region gained traction on Sunday when Iraq`s parliament backed the prime minister`s recommendation for foreign troops to be ordered out. Iraq`s rival Shi`ite leaders, including ones opposed to Iranian influence, have united since Friday`s attack to call for the expulsion of U.S. troops, who number about 5,000.

Soleimani, widely seen as Iran`s second most powerful figure behind Khamenei, built a network of proxy forces that formed a crescent of influence - and a direct challenge to the United States and its regional allies led by Saudi Arabia - stretching from Lebanon through Syria and Iraq to Iran. Outside the crescent, Iran nurtured allied Palestinian and Yemeni groups.

He notably mobilised Shi`ite Muslim militia forces in Iraq that helped to crush Islamic State, the Sunni militant group that had seized control of swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2013-14.Washington, however, blames Soleimani for attacks on U.S. forces and their allies.

Live TV

Prayers at Soleimani`s funeral in Tehran, which moves to the general`s southern home city of Kerman on Tuesday, were led by Khamenei, who wept as he spoke.

His daughter Zeinab Soleimani told mourners the United States would face a "dark day" for her father`s death. Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, on his first trip to Iran since taking up his role in 2017, said "resistance against America" would continue.

NUCLEAR DEAL

Iran adding to tensions on Sunday by dropping all limitations on its uranium enrichment -- another step back from commitments under a landmark deal with major powers in 2015 to curtail Iran`s nuclear programme that Trump abandoned in 2018.

European Union foreign ministers plan to hold an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss ways to save the deal, two diplomats said.

After quitting the deal, the United States imposed new sanctions on Iran, saying it wanted to halt Iranian oil exports, the main source of government revenues. Iran`s economy has been in freefall as the currency has plunged.

Trump`s adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Monday that Trump was still confident he could renegotiate a new nuclear agreement "if Iran wants to start behaving like a normal country".

Tehran has said Washington must return to the existing nuclear pact and lift sanctions before any talks can take place. Trump stood by remarks that cultural sites were potential targets, despite criticism from US politicians that this amounted to a threat to commit war crimes.

"They`re allowed to kill our people. They`re allowed to torture and maim our people. They`re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we`re not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn`t work that way," Trump said.

Democratic critics of the Republican president have said Trump was reckless in authorising the strike. Republicans in the U.S. Congress have generally backed his move.

Trump also threatened sanctions against Iraq and said Baghdad would have to pay Washington for an airbase in Iraq if U.S. troops were required to leave. It was not clear if Washington had advised its allies of its plans before killing Soleimani. Britain, which also has troops in Iraq, said it understood why the United States had acted but called for de-escalation to avoid war.
Prince Charles will commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz 75 years ago when he visits Jerusalem later this month, his office said on Monday.

He will be the most senior British royal to pay an official visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

Charles will attend the World Holocaust Forum at the Holocaust remembrance centre Yad Vashem on January 24 to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in southern Poland.

It is the largest Nazi death camp in World War Two.

He will also meet British Holocaust survivors, who will be travelling to Israel for the event.

The prince is honoured to be among the small number of international leaders, who have been invited to address the event, Scott Furssedonn-Wood, the princes Deputy Private Secretary, said.

During his two-day visit, Charles will meet Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem.

Full details of the trip were still being finalised but he hoped to visit his grandmothers grave in Jerusalem and might visit other holy sites, his office said.

The heir-to-the-throne has visited Jerusalem twice before in a private capacity for the funerals of Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

READ MORE:

In 2018, Charless son Prince William became the first British royal to visit Israel and the Palestinian Territories in an official capacity in 2018.

En route to the Middle East, Charles will stop off at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to launch the Sustainable Markets Council.

The markets council was designed to bring together the private, public and philanthropic sectors to find ways to decarbonise the global economy.

Given that we understand the problem, the prince believes we must now focus on the solutions, said Furssedonn-Wood.

The 71-year-old royal, who has campaigned on environmental issues for decades, feels strongly that we are at a crucial point in human history when there may still be time to prevent irreversible damage to our planet, he added.

(Reuters/NAN)
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 6)  The synchronized polio vaccination campaign in parts of the country will continue until April 2020, the Department of Health said Monday

In a statement released Monday, the DOH said "Sabayang Patak Kontra Polio" will go on in Mindanao and the National Capital Region this year.

Two more rounds are scheduled in NCR, from January 27 to February 7, and again on March 9 to 20.

In Mindanao, a limited response round will be conducted in Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Zamboanga City, Isabela City, and Lambayong, Sultan Kudarat on January 6 to 12. An additional two rounds for all regions in Mindanao are also scheduled on February 17 to March 1 and March 23 to April 4.

In September last year, the DOH declared a polio outbreak in the country  19 years after the World Health Organization cleared the Philippines of the disease.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said a 3-year-old girl in Lanao del Sur was the first confirmed case of Type 2 polio in the country.

Duque said a single confirmed case in a polio-free nation automatically calls for a declaration of an outbreak.

RELATED: Filipinos told to get polio vaccine before traveling to Indonesia

According to the DOH, the synchronized polio vaccination campaign started in October 2019 in several areas in Mindanao and NCR.

In the statement, Duque said, "We need the participation of everybody to successfully end this outbreak  other government agencies, the local government units, partners, our local health workers and bakunators,"

The extension of the vaccination program aims to cover at least 95 percent of all areas in each round to ensure no children will be missed.
Ellen DeGeneres has recieved an incredible award at the 2020 Golden Globe awards in honour of her iconic and trailblazing work in television.

The award Ellen recieved is the Carol Burnett Award, which is given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for "outstanding contributions to television on or off the screen."

Ellen is only the second person ever to receive the award aside from its namesake.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky met with Executive President of the State General Reserve Fund (SGRF) of the Sultanate of Oman Abdulsalam Al Murshidi, the press service of the head of state has reported.

"During a meeting, the parties discussed trade, economic and investment cooperation between Ukraine and Oman. They noted that the current level of bilateral investment cooperation did not correspond to the existing potential, in particular compared to the dynamic growth of trade relations, and agreed on the need to intensify it," reads the report.

The Omani side expressed interest in enhancing cooperation in the investment sector and accepted the invitation of President Zelensky to visit Ukraine to familiarize themselves with promising projects and areas of cooperation.

As reported, on Sunday, January 5, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky met with the Sultanate of Oman's Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs, H.E. Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah. The parties discussed issues of strengthening relations between the two countries, in particular, they stressed the importance of expanding trade and economic cooperation.

ish
(Newser)  Looks like Iran has struck backonline, at least. As the world awaits the country's military response to the killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, images of an Iranian flag and President Trump getting punched in the face appeared Sunday on a US federal website. "Hacked By Iran Cyber Security Group HackerS," reads an accompanying message, per TMZ. "This is only a small part of Iran's cyber ability! We're always ready." Another message explicitly links the hack to Soleimani's death, saying in part that "his work and path will not cease," and "severe revenge awaits those criminals who have tainted their filthy hands with his blood."

story continues below

The hacked site, belonging to the Federal Depository Library Program, was quickly taken downbut US authorities aren't saying who's behind the intrusion, per USA Today. "We are aware the website of the Federal Depository Library Program was defaced with pro-Iranian, anti-US messaging," says the cybersecurity arm of the Department of Homeland Security. "At this time, there is no confirmation that this was the action of Iranian state-sponsored actors." In related news, Al Jazeera reports that six rockets have landed in Baghdad, two of them close to the US embassy. Six people were apparently injured in the attacks. (Earlier Sunday, Iran pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal.)
Ryan Ermey: Sandy and I are back and ready to begin a new decade's worth of timely, money-smart advice for our listeners, and what better way to start things off than with my stock picks for the next 10 years, the subject of our main segment. On today's show, we tell you why you should return that ugly sweater sooner, rather than later, and a new edition of Deal Or No Deal delves into 529 plans and prescription assistance programs. That's all ahead on this episode of Your Money's Worth. Stick around. Episode Length: 00:31:23

Links and resources mentioned in this episode

SUBSCRIBE: Apple Google Play Spotify Overcast RSS Ryan Ermey: Welcome to Your Money's Worth. I'm Kiplinger's associate editor Ryan Ermey, joined as always by senior editor Sandy Block. Sandy, how are you? Sandy Block: I'm okay, Ryan. Just so listeners know, I didn't start smoking during the holidays. I just have a lingering cold but happy New Year to you. Ryan Ermey: Yes, we've both come back with a little bit of a bug here, but we won't let something like that keep us from bringing you timely personal finance advice. We're talking, in this first episode of the new year, about returns because a lot of people received all kinds of well-intentioned gifts for the holidays, but maybe not something that they like or they wanted, or if it's clothes, that fits. So what should people be keeping an eye on here?

Sandy Block: I've been working on this for an upcoming issue, Ryan, and the most important thing I want to say is if you want to exchange something, do it now. We've kind of gotten lulled into complacency because a lot of big retailers in the past have loosened their policies. Some of them will let you return things forever. But in recent months, according to Consumer World, which is a consumer advocacy website, a lot of big names have actually tightened their policies. In some cases, you may, if you wait until March, that may be too late to get your money back. Ryan Ermey: Right. So we're telling you to act soon here. Like you said, a number of major retailers have reduced the period over which they'll accept returns. Sometimes they went from unlimited, they cut it to a year. Some have cut it to 180 days, some have cut it to 90 days or less. So wherever you have a gift receipt from, make sure you go check before you stick it in the back of your cause it and save it for later. There are a few prominent ones that we wanted to highlight. Sandy Block: Right. The other thing we want to mention, too, Ryan is that this is particularly important. The policies can differ tremendously depending on what you want to return. Ryan Ermey: Yes. Sandy Block: Electronics have the shortest... I don't know if this is because I know back in the day, they didn't want you playing video games and getting tired of them and returning them, but just in general, electronics have shorter return times then sweaters or pants or something like that.

Ryan Ermey: Right. Sandy Block: So if you got electronics for Christmas, as soon as you, or the holidays or whatever, as soon as you are done listening to us, return it because you could be running out of time. Here's a good example of that. Target gives you 90 days for most items, but the deadline for electronics is 30 days, and 15 days for most Apple items. Ryan Ermey: Right, which are always popular gifts. Amazon is where I do an enormous amount of my holiday shopping, and they will give a full refund for most items returned within 30 days. Items returned later may be subject to a 20% restocking fee, and certain items actually can't be returned. Sandy Block: Right. Ryan Ermey: So food, wine, I mean some of these, right, like pet food, no one's getting pet food as gift. But wine certainly is a popular gift. Sandy Block: Oh, yeah. Ryan Ermey: Some of these items might not be returnable, but they might be refundable. We actually have a slideshow on what can and can't be returned at Amazon. So we'll be sure to put that up in the show notes. Sandy Block: Just a couple of other examples of some big retailers. Macy's is 90 days for most items. Target, 90 days for most items. Walmart, 90 days, Costco, 90 days for electronics, TVs, computers, cameras. No deadline for other items. So again, one of the thing we want to point out is retailers have gotten really wise to people who are multiple returners.

Ryan Ermey: Right. Sandy Block: Wardrobers or whatever. So be prepared to answer some questions. Many stores will ask to see your ID when you return an item. Sometimes they will require you to bring your ID and the original form of payment, which you may not have, if it was a gift. So you might actually have to go back to the giver... Ryan Ermey: ... with your aunt, bring her with you to the store. I haven't been an extra large in years. Sorry about that. So yeah, the real upshot here is act now. Read the policy because maybe you've been shopping at the Target for years and years, and you think you know what the return policy is. But according to our friends at Consumer World, a number of major retailers are, as you said, tightening their policies. So they may not be as lenient as they used to be. So go, read the policy, and act as quickly as you can. Coming up, I'll look at a few of my favorite stocks to buy now and hold for the next decade. Don't go anywhere. Ryan Ermey: We're back and in lieu of an interview today, since we are headed into the next decade or we're here right at the beginning of the twenties, that I would do a main segment interview on some of my stock picks for the next decade. So in the January issue of Kiplinger's, our colleague Nellie Huang detailed the best 10 stocks of the last 10 years. Be sure to check out that story. I wrote about the best 10 stocks for the next decade.

Sandy Block: So I think readers are going to want to know what criteria you use to make such a bold prediction. Ryan Ermey: Yeah. So I tried to really talk to a wide variety of mutual fund managers who invest in companies. Ryan Ermey: A wide variety of mutual fund managers who invest in companies with a mix of styles. So we wanted some growth stocks, stocks that we expect to grow faster than the broad market, and value stocks, undervalued companies. Then we also wanted a mix of sizes. We wanted some bigger companies, some smaller ones, some in the middle. I put a special emphasis on talking with people who tend to hold stocks over long periods of time, which we believe investors should do it well. I wanted a mix of companies from different industries, as well as a mix of well known firms and some that you've likely never heard of. Ryan Ermey: So I encourage anyone listening to go read the whole story. I have 10. We're going to talk only about a few here. In this case, I'm going to stick to some that are a little bit easier to explain over the air, rather than ones that have kind of tricky business models that were easier to tackle in writing. Just a few quick caveats, and we've said over and over, and this is really the most important thing, that most investors should have a diversified core portfolio of low cost mutual funds.

Sandy Block: Right. Ryan Ermey: Most people don't have the time and wherewithal to spend researching stocks to the level of depth that they would need to build a portfolio solely of individual stock. So that's one thing. Another is that as you know, I don't think that the 10 stocks I mentioned in this story or the three that I'm going to talk about here, are the best of the next decade. That would be really going out a limb. Sandy Block: You could just leave right now and quit, if you want the three best stocks of the next decade. Ryan Ermey: ... I'd be rich. But I do think that they are all, and all 10 of them are poised to outperform the broad stock market over the next decade. Finally, and this is true for all of my stock picks, that I'm not a financial advisor. I'm not a stock broker. You should never buy a stock just because I say so. You should always do thorough research on your own, but I'm giving you stocks to consider, a starting point. Places that you should... companies that I think are interesting that you should be looking into. Sandy Block: So with those caveats... Ryan Ermey: Yes. Sandy Block: Hit me. Ryan Ermey: Okay, so the first one I want to talk about is Bayer, and Bayer is a company that you probably know because you've seen it engraved on your...

Sandy Block: Aspirin. Ryan Ermey: ... aspirin tablets. That's right. Bayer is a company really that operates in two businesses and is basically 50/50. Half of it is pharmaceutical, and half of it is agricultural technology. The agricultural technology side has been making news recently because in 2018, Bayer acquired Monsanto, which is... Sandy Block: A huge company. Yeah. That's a huge merger. Ryan Ermey: Yeah, another huge agricultural tech company. In doing so, it opened itself up to what turned out to be quite a lot of legal risk because Monsanto manufactured Roundup, the weed killer, which people have been alleging in court have caused harmful health side effects. That caused a lot of people to dump Bayer stock, which is now, in my humble estimation, dirt, dirt cheap. So the shares trade in the US is an American depositary receipt. It just means that you can buy... Sandy Block: It's a German company. Ryan Ermey: It's a German company. That just means that you can buy it on an American exchange this way. In terms of price to earnings ratio, which is a measure that a lot of people use to determine the valuation of a stock, it's trading at only 10 times estimated earnings for 2020, which is a significant discount to the share's five year average annual price to earnings ratio. So these lawsuits are hanging over the company's head, but they're likely to settle them for a lot less than investors first anticipated, according to the sources that I talked to. In fact, the EPA and the justice department recently said that a federal appeals court, and this is an... friend of the court brief, said that the U.S. appeals court should reverse a lower court verdict finding Bayer liable in the California case in which they accused Roundup of causing cancer.

Ryan Ermey: So essentially, investors have beaten down the stock more than we think they should have. In the meantime, this company has the best agricultural technology on the market. They are the market leader in producing seeds, pesticides, monitoring systems that enable farmers to yield more from their harvests. The point that my source made to me, and this was David Herro, who runs a fantastic international fund, Oakmark International, essentially made the argument that we have a global growing population, and we're going to need agricultural technology in order to feed a hungry world. Sandy Block: Right. Hungry. There you go. Ryan Ermey: On the other side of the business, about 48% of sales is in the health care. They have a couple of blockbuster drugs. Xeralto is a blood thinner that you've probably seen advertised on TV. Sandy Block: Commercials every night, yeah. Ryan Ermey: They have a macular degeneration drug that's very popular. Sandy Block: Aging population's going to need that. Ryan Ermey: They have a really robust pipeline of drugs behind it. So all around, it's a really good business trading at a pretty steep discount. Sandy Block: Okay. How about another one? Ryan Ermey: So Burlington stores is an interesting one because... Sandy Block: Ooh, the coats! Ryan Ermey: Exactly, and it used to be called Burlington Coat Factory. They changed their name in 2015 because they wanted to really broaden the business model. So they sell brand name, clothing, home goods, gifts, beauty products, toys. They have about 700 stores. It's a model that you probably, listening to it probably sounds familiar, because it is. It's the same idea that Ross stores have and that...

Sandy Block: ... which, I think are the only retailers that are doing well in this environment. Ryan Ermey: TJX, as well. TJ Maxx. Exactly right. You know, there are certain pockets within retail that have still done really well and that are more or less immune. I won't say immune, but kind of maybe inoculated against intrusion from the big eCommerce players because they sell these... in this case, they're selling discounted goods and operate in a niche that way. For one thing, the model is such that people like to hunt. Sandy Block: They like to hunt. Ryan Ermey: Exactly. Sandy Block: They love the hunt. Ryan Ermey: It's something that a business model like Amazon's doesn't do a very good job replicating. So why Burlington stores? Well, the reason is because they're very similar to Ross and TJ Maxx, but earlier in that process, earlier in this kind of transformation into the business models that Ross and TJ Maxx have been so successful with. Just to give a little context, over the last 10 years, Ross stores stock returned an annualized 28.6%. Sandy Block: My goodness. Ryan Ermey: TJX, which is the... Sandy Block: TJ Maxx. Ryan Ermey: ... company for TJ Maxx. 21.9% per year. Burlington, at the moment, trades at a premium to those two stores. In fact, it's gone. I recommended it at 192. It is now trading at 229. Sandy Block: Oh, word's out.

Ryan Ermey: ... after a recent run-up. Now it might be worth noting that maybe this is something that you should consider buying on a dip. Sandy Block: Yeah, you watch it. You put it on your watch list. Ryan Ermey: You have it on your watch list. This is a recommendation for the next decade, and we're only a couple of days into the decade. So I think that this has a lot of room to grow. It's growing. New stores and same store sales and earnings faster than the competition. Analysts at William Blair expect the retailer to boost earnings by 13% in 2020, more than its competition. So this is still, I think, a good time to look at the stock, but maybe consider adding to your watch list and buying on a tip. Sandy Block: Buy it on sale like everything else you buy there. Ryan Ermey: Before I get into next thing I should just note, I recommended Bayer at $19 and as of this recording, it's trading right in that neighborhood. $20, 21. Sandy Block: Okay. Got one more? Ryan Ermey: I do have one more I wanted to talk about. This one is one that people are probably a little bit less familiar with. It's called Medallia. Now I recommended it at about $29. It's now sitting at about $31 and it's one of the, call it a longer shot or a more speculative bet among the stocks that I picked in this story. It had an IPO, an initial public offering, in July 2019, and it really doesn't have any earnings to speak of and probably won't for another two years. It's one of these smaller tech firms that is investing heavily in itself and in its growth. Ryan Ermey: It's the leader in a kind of emerging industry called experience management. Now what is that? It's if a company wants feedback from its customers, traditionally the company would have a call center or an automated survey, and they would say, "Hey, would you like to take this survey and tell us how your experience with our company was?" No one likes doing that.

Sandy Block: No. No one does that. Ryan Ermey: So the new way is having this cloud-based software that Medallia provides, which uses artificial intelligence to help these companies. We're talking insurance companies, hotels, auto firms, media firms, assess customer and employee satisfaction by culling data and language from social media, from travel blogs, from interactions with the internet of things. So this is still really, to use a little bit of jargon an under-penetrated market. What I mean by that is industry experts expect this business, not Medallia, but the entire experience management business to represent something like $68 billion in potential annual revenues, but only about 1% of the market is currently being served. Ryan Ermey: So that's what you call a TAM, right? A total addressable market, a huge addressable market that Medallia can expand into. So the sources I have, Baron Discovery Fund manager Laird Bieger, was nice enough to chat with me about this stock, which he owns in his fund. The company is still investing heavily in sales and marketing. Sandy Block: So not all profits is what you're saying. Ryan Ermey: Not yet, but the revenue growth has been really robust, and he expects sales to grow at a high twenties percentage clip annualized for the next five years or so. So we're talking about an opportunity for real hyper growth. Sandy Block: Getting in on the ground up. Yeah. Ryan Ermey: Exactly. So you're going to have to probably deal with some volatility. It's definitely a speculative bet, but investors could be rewarded big with a stock like this.

Sandy Block: Sounds like a plan. Ryan Ermey: Yeah, exactly. So that's just three of them. We're going to put all 10 up in the show notes. Be sure to go check those out. Once again, my stock picks, it's in my Twitter profile actually. My stock picks aren't gospel, only my bar pics are. If you're in D.C., my bar picks are bulletproof. My stock picks aren't. So do your own research. But those are three companies that I'm particularly excited about, heading into the next decade. Sandy Block: Okay. Ryan Ermey: If you resolve to save for college in the new year, listen up, your state might pay you to get started. Deal Or No Deal is next. Ryan Ermey: We are back, and before we go, another edition of Deal Or No Deal. Sandy, you're talking about something that we've talked about a little bit before in 529 plans, but with a bit of a new angle. Sandy Block: Right. Basically, I'm saying 529 plans are a deal, which shouldn't come as a surprise. But what sort of peaked my interest today, I noticed there was a tweet that the Massachusetts 529 plan will give $50 to anyone who opens up a 529 account for a baby born or adopted after January 1st. So I thought well, that's pretty good. Ryan Ermey: That's nice. Sandy Block: But then I sort of started researching, and I found out about a dozen states actually match or just give you money outright just for having the plans. Some of these are income-based and there's other rules, but they can really be quite generous. Colorado, for example, they're college invest matching grant program matches contributions up to 500 each year for up to five years.

Ryan Ermey: Wow. Sandy Block: So that's serious money. You always want to look at your own state's plan any way because most states, if they have an income tax, do give you a tax deduction. So that's fairly well-known. But I don't know that a lot of people know that they can actually just get money for investing in a state 529 plan. So certainly if one of your resolutions was to save for college, I think this is an additional little giddy-up to do it. So it's definitely deal. Ryan Ermey: Yeah, we'll link to the list of those states in the show notes and be sure to listen. We've talked about it on previous episodes, the advantages of saving in a 529 plan. So go back and check that out as well. Sandy Block: So what's your deal, Ryan, or no deal? Ryan Ermey: What's my deal? Sandy Block: What's your deal? Ryan Ermey: What's your deal? My deal is a deal, and it's a deal that I think is worth the headache of jumping through a lot of hoops for. That is pharmaceutical patient assistance programs. This is something that I talked about. I had a column in the February issue of Kiplinger's (see How to Pay for Pricey Prescriptions). But this really goes for a lot of people because it goes for anyone who might be in a high deductible health plan. Sandy Block: Which is a lot of people. Ryan Ermey: Which is a lot of people, and it's a growing number of people. What can happen to someone, and it happened to me, is you could be healthy all year long and not even come close to hitting your deductible, at which point your coverage kicks in, which is how these plans work. But then you're prescribed something very expensive.

Sandy Block: Right. Which is very, very common. I'm always shocked when I have to fill a prescription at how much it costs. Ryan Ermey: It's really crazy. So we've talked a little bit about some of the preliminary solutions when you get prescribed an expensive drug. The first one... so I talked to a bunch of people about this. I talked to doctors, I talked to health insurers, I talked to people at the advocacy group, lots of people. The first thing to do, and this was something that I guess I thought I knew, but it hadn't really even been a fully formed thought in my head, was that you really need to get all of your doctors on the same page. Ryan Ermey: So if you have a primary care person, and then in my case, I needed an ophthalmologist to prescribe me something. These people should all be on the same page, because it could be that whatever expensive treatment you've been prescribed could be for... first of all, you could be having symptoms that are caused... Sandy Block: ... by something else. Ryan Ermey: ... by something else, like Dr. A prescribed you something that Dr. B doesn't know about or doesn't realize it could be causing certain symptoms. It could also be that you could come up with and you can talk to your doctor about cost. You know, you can come up with a treatment plan that isn't so onerous.

Sandy Block: Maybe generic or something like that yet. Yeah. Ryan Ermey: Or one doctor told me that some drug that he had been prescribed that was really expensive was actually just a combination. This was a prescription drug and was actually just a combination of two over-the-counter drugs. Sandy Block: Right. Ryan Ermey: So he went and picked them both up. Sandy Block: This is why Bayer is on our buy list. Right? Because the... Ryan Ermey: Right. So these are all... that's really your first line of defense. After that, look for coupons. This is something you can talk to your pharmacist about. You can log on to GoodRx.com, which has these coupon programs. WellRx, as well, they have these copay assistance programs. So when I was prescribed, I have a treatment for "chronic dry eye" eye drops. I was prescribed in the sticker price. Well, I'm looking at the coupon first. It says up to $250 off. Sandy Block: Which sounds really great. Ryan Ermey: I'm thinking great. I'm going to get these for free. But then it turns out these things are well over $580 for a month supply. Sandy Block: You need to invest in that company. Ryan Ermey: Yeah, exactly. Even with my up to $250 coupon, I still wasn't going to be able to afford to pay over $200 a month for eye drops. It's crazy. Sandy Block: Not a deal.
Stepping up the partys campaign for the Delhi Assembly elections, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president and Union home minister Amit Shah on Sunday asked party workers to go door-to-door and hold mohalla meetings or corner meetings to expose the ruling Aam Aadmi Party and tell people about Centres welfare schemes.

The BJP chief announced that he will launch the campaign by addressing mohalla meetings in the national Capital.

Elections to the 70 Assembly constituencies in Delhi are due in February.

We have to fight elections by reaching out to every house and conducting small mohalla meetings. I myself am going to start mohalla meetings and as your president, will conduct 50, 100 or 150 such meetings [as required].Delhi elections will not be fought merely by rallies, big hoardings and posters but the workers will require to contact each household to spread the message and achievements of Modi government, and expose (chief minister Arvind) Kejriwals lies and betrayal and (Senior Congress leader) Rahul Gandhis anti-national policies, Shah said while addressing BJPs grassroots workers from 13,750 polling booths, who attended a convention organised by the Delhi unit of the party.

In context of the BJPs drubbing in the 2015 Delhi assembly polls, Shah said he was confident of the BJPs victory since Kejriwal could mislead people once but not all the time.

The media asks me what will happen in Delhi. Delhi is going to have a BJP government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Shah said.

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal later tweeted that Shah did not say much except abusing him. He said Shah did not point out any shortcomings in the work done by the Delhi government.

I heard the entire speech of home minister, Amit Shah ji. I thought he would point out the shortcomings of our work and talk about the development of Delhi. He did not say anything else except abusing me, he said in a tweet.

If they [BJP] have suggestions for Delhi, then they should let us know and we will implement them in the next five years, Kejriwal said.

Training his guns at the Delhi chief minister, Shah said the ruling party has not fulfilled its promises.

Kejriwal had promised 20 colleges, I cannot see any even with binoculars. He had promised about constructing over 5,000 schools but they are not seen even with spectacles. He had promised to construct hospitals but at the end (of the tenure) he just presented a photo of a model of hospital building. You conspired to fail the three municipal corporations by stalling the grant of Rs 10,000 croreYou wanted to mislead Delhi people, Shah alleged.

Shah also listed work done by the central government for the national Capital in the last five years. Accusing Kejriwal of misleading people, Shah sought to know whether the AAP government had completed any work in the last five years.

With the protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act going on in various parts of the country and the violence reported in Delhi, the BJP president accused Kejriwal and Congress Rahul Gandhi of misleading people on the CAA [Citizenship Amendment Act].

Kejriwal misled people, Congress, specially Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra misled people and instigated riots (in the pretext of CAA protests). I want to ask Delhi people if you want a government in Delhi which instigates riots due to its politics, Shah alleged.

Responding to Shahs allegations, Delhi Congress chief Subhash Chopra said, We are against any kind of violence and we truly believe that the guilty must not be spared. However, we are against what happened in Jamia when the police entered the library and misbehaved with students. What does Mr Shah have to say about it? Why was no action taken against them?

Even today [Sunday], after what happened in JNU, the police just stood outside and watched. Why didnt they enter the campus just like in Jamia when students were being harassed by goons? Chopra added.

The Congress leader was referring to the violence against students in Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday evening.

BJPs working president JP Nadda also attended the event and said that the party would register victory in assembly polls through the dedication and hard work of its workers.

The convention was attended by Union ministers Prakash Javadekar, Hardeep Puri , Harsh Vardhan , Nityanand Rai, along with Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari and other senior leaders from the party.
Independent TD and former minister Denis Naughten said he will only support the Government on a case-by-case basis, should a vote of confidence be called.

Amid heightened tensions between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, the role of Independent TDs such as Mr Naughten, Noel Grealish, and Michael Lowry has come into focus as their votes are needed to keep the Government in office.

Mr Naughten told the Irish Examiner: My position remains the same as it was for the last 14 months. I will support the Government on a case-by-case basis. Over the 14-month period [since resigning as communications minister], Ive voted with them on some issues, tabled counter-motions and amendments on some issues, and voted against them on other issues.

His failure to guarantee support heaps further pressure on Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who, according to some ministers, has toyed with the idea of calling the election before the Dail resumes on January 15.

Queries sent to Mr Lowry and Mr Grealish went unanswered.

Tensions between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have been running high in recent days.

A call from Dara Calleary, Fianna Fails deputy leader, for Fine Gael to reciprocate the confidence and supply deal should the numbers require it, was branded as arrogant by Fine Gael TD Colm Brophy.

Several ministers rounded on Fianna Fails Michael McGrath after he described Fine Gaels targeting of Lisa Chambers as sinister, while Health Minister Simon Harris called on Mr McGrath and Fianna Fail to apologise to former tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald for hounding her out of office.

A meeting between Mr Varadkar and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin is expected to take place before the Dails stated date of return, sources have said.

Mr Martin has not responded in writing to a letter from Mr Varadkar, sent on December 23, which sought to agree a programme of work for the upcoming session before a general election takes place.

Mr Varadkar has insisted on reaching agreement on property tax reforms with Mr Martin before agreeing a date for the forthcoming general election, reported the Sunday Independent.

Sources have said the proposal was just one of a number of matters raised by Mr Varadkar in the letter.

Since freezing the property tax, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said he plans to introduce a modest property tax increase next year by broadening the housing valuation bands and cutting the rates at which it is paid. He has been reluctant to give details of how much property owners will pay.

In the letter to Mr Martin, Mr Varadkar said he is open to dissolving the Dail after Easter, as suggested by the Fianna Fail leader, if he agreed to an ambitious legislative programme for the coming months.

Mr Varadkar said agreeing to reform of the property tax system should be central to any deal struck between the party leaders.
CONCORD TOWNSHIP, Ohio  Detectives have not established a motive for a double homicide that led to a SWAT standoff late Saturday in Concord Township, the Lake County sheriff said.

Blake E. Sargi, 27, was arrested in the fatal shooting of a man and a woman as they sat in an SUV parked on Andrea Drive. Sheriffs deputies arrested him about a mile away at his home on Oakridge Drive, Lake County Sheriff Frank Leonbruno said during a news conference Monday morning.

Sargi is charged with two counts of murder. He is scheduled to appear at an arraignment hearing Monday afternoon by video in Painesville Municipal Court, Leonbruno said.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiners Office has not yet identified the man and woman killed in the shooting. Detectives believe they might hail from Euclid, and notified possible family members while awaiting the identifications, Leonbruno said.

We believe we know who they are, but we cant confirm that, Leonbruno said.

Detectives have not established any connection between Sargi and the man and woman. Its unclear whether they had a prior relationship.

Sargis mother learned of the shooting when Sargi arrived home late Saturday. She called her ex-husband, and Sargis stepmother called 911, Leonbruno said.

The stepmother notified a 911 call-taker that two people had been shot, but she could not provide many details, according to a copy of the 911 recording released Monday.

Theres two people in a parked [SUV] who have been shot, the stepmother said in the recording.

An edited version of the 911 recording is included in the video below.

Sheriffs deputies found the man and woman dead in the front seats of a 2019 GMC Yukon.

Deputies also went to Sargis home on Oakridge Drive. Sargis father came outside and told deputies that Sargis mother was inside and trying to get Sargi to surrender.

Deputies learned Sargi had several weapons in the home, so they called a SWAT team in to negotiate with him. He surrendered without incident after about 45 minutes, Leonbruno.

Investigators recovered a 9 mm handgun they believe was used in the shooting, Leonbruno said. They also towed a Chevrolet TrailBlazer from Sargis home, and are in the process of obtaining a search warrant for the SUV. The SUV was towed to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiners Office.

Sargi does not have a felony criminal history in either Lake or Cuyahoga county, according to court records.

He is being held in the Lake County Jail while awaiting his arraignment.

To comment on this story, visit Mondays crime and courts comments page.

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Head of military alliance says new conflict would be in no ones interest as US-Iran tensions peak.

All members of the Atlantic alliance stood behind the United States in the Middle East after it briefed NATO on its drone attack that killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday.

Speaking after a rare NATO meeting on Iran and Iraq in which the United States briefed its allies about last Fridays drone attack, Stoltenberg also called for a de-escalation of tensions, echoing the statements of some European leaders.

We are united in condemning Irans support of a variety of different terrorist groups, Stoltenberg said. At the meeting today, allies called for restraint and de-escalation. A new conflict would be in no ones interest. So, Iran must refrain from further violence and provocations.

Despite anger last year among European NATO allies over US strategy in the Middle East under President Donald Trump, two diplomats present confirmed that the two-hour meeting at NATO headquarters went smoothly.

They said that no envoy challenged US State Department and Department of Defense officials, who briefed via video conference, over the merits of Fridays drone raid.

There was also no discussion or criticism of Trumps list of targets, that include cultural sites, if Iran were to retaliate with attacks on Americans or US assets, the diplomats said.

The meeting, which took place on a day of a huge outpouring of national grief for Soleimani in Iran, centred mainly on NATOs decision to suspend its training mission in Iraq, after an Iraqi parliamentary resolution called on foreign troops to leave.

While there was concern that the killing of Irans second-most powerful man could trigger a conflagration in the Middle East, France, Germany and others said they wanted the Iraq mission to continue.

It would send the wrong signal if we withdraw, one NATO diplomat said.

The NATO Iraq mission, made up of several hundred trainers, advisers and support staff from both countries of the 29-member alliance and non-NATO partner countries, includes military and civilian personnel.

Established in Baghdad in October 2018 after three years of war against ISIL (ISIS) fighters, the mission is a non-combat train-and-advise mission to help Iraqi security structures and institutions fend off future insurgencies. Its personnel do not deploy with Iraqi forces during operations.

Its still not clear what will happen with NATOs mission in Iraq, said Al Jazeeras Natacha Butler, reporting from Brussels.

NATO forces  suspended training operations for security reasons on Saturday. Iraqi lawmakers have requested foreign troops to leave the country.
Scott Taylor had his chance and failed, he said. The issues that plagued his 2018 campaign will cause him to lose again. He also failed to stand up for conservative principles, often voting with lobbyists and Washington Democrats over the interests of his own constituents.
Robert Kubica will have an important role at Alfa Romeo in 2020, the Polish driver's sponsor PKN Orlen has announced.

On New Year's Day, it was revealed that Orlen, the Polish oil company, would switch from Williams to a major sponsorship role at Alfa Romeo for 2020.

"We were not a title sponsor before, but now we are," Orlen president Daniel Obajtek told TVP Sport.

"The car will be in red and white, making Orlen more recognisable and this is good also for Poland."

Kubica, who looks set to combine his Alfa Romeo role with a race seat in the German touring car series DTM, will be reserve driver.

"Robert was involved in these negotiations and the contract was done with his approval," Obajtek said.

"This is a proposal he agrees with, but we also have other ideas that we want to implement in 2020. This is not our last announcement."

It is believed he could be referring to Friday morning driving duties for Kubica, but Obajtek also suggested Orlen could one day set up its own F1 team.

"Everything is within our dreams," he said. "It depends on economic successes but it is possible that the time will come for us to undertake such a project."

Obajtek admitted that Orlen negotiated with "three teams" for 2020. The other two have been reported as being Racing Point and Haas.

"The negotiations showed us that we are a company that matters. The interest was high but Alfa's offer was the most optimal for us," he said.

"It has a business nature, but I cannot reveal too much. But through the agreement, we have the opportunity for Polish drivers to be trained by the Alfa academy so that we can find Robert's successors."

(GMM)
A member of one of Americas most storied political families has joined the field of candidates vying to challenge U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, the New Jersey congressman who recently switched from the Democratic to Republican parties and openly declared his support for President Donald Trump.

Amy Kennedy  yes, of those Kennedys  announced Monday shes entered this years increasingly crowded primary for the Democratic nomination for the seat serving the states 2nd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives, which Van Drew currently holds.

Kennedy, 41, is a South Jersey native and a former public school teacher in Atlantic County. Shes also the wife of former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, the one-time chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the son of late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Van Drew announced last month he joined the Republican Party and appeared alongside Trump at the White House, vowing undying support for the Republican president. The freshman congressman is up for re-election in November.

Kennedy took direct aim at both Van Drew and Trump in a video clip announcing her campaign.

Too many of our leaders have lost their moral compass, she said. Trump and Van Drew are symptoms of a bigger sickness infecting our country and our politics. Doing whats right shouldnt be complicated."

Kennedy, the daughter of former Atlantic County Freeholder Jerry Savell, also touted her Jersey heritage.

She said South Jersey families are struggling to find good jobs, to break free of addiction, to find reason to hope again."

As a fourth-generation South Jerseyan, I will never turn my back on the people of this district," Kennedy added. "Ill be an independent voice in Congress and work to get us back on the right track.

The 2nd district includes the southern tip of New Jersey, stretching from Atlantic City to Cape May to the Philadelphia suburbs.

At least six other candidates have either filed to run or announced theyre running in the June primary for the Democratic nod in the district: Brigid Callahan Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University; Atlantic County Freeholder Ashley Bennett; Will Cunningham, a former staffer for U.S. Sen. Cory Booker; West Cape May Commissioner John Francis III; former FBI agent Rob Turkavage; and retired banker Frederick John LaVergne.

Harrison has received the endorsement of top Democratic leaders in the district, including state Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester.

But Kennedy will have instant name recognition.

Kennedy, a mother of five, is currently the education director of the Kennedy Forum, which advocates to change health care policy in the U.S.

She was previously a middle school teacher in Northfield.

Kennedy and her husband own property in Northfield in Atlantic County, and she is registered to vote in Brigantine in Atlantic County.

The district is notoriously purple. Republican Frank LoBiondo represented it for 24 years before retiring last year. Van Drew succeeded him in 2018.

Democrat Barack Obama carried the district in the 2008 and 2012 presidential races, but Trump took it in 2016.

Van Drew switched parties after being one of only two House Democrats to vote against impeaching Trump. Numerous local leaders pulled their support of Van Drew in the wake of his stance.

NJ Advance Media Research Editor Vinessa Erminio contributed to this report.

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01.

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Harvey Weinstein arrives at criminal court in New York last month: Getty Images

The criminal trial of Harvey Weinstein is set to begin in New York today, more than two years after allegations of rape and sexual assault were first made against the Hollywood film producer.

Jury selection is scheduled to start this week, with the 67-year-old facing charges of predatory sexual assault, a criminal sexual act and rape. He denies all charges and has pleaded not guilty.

Since the allegations against Mr Weinstein were first revealed by the New York Times in 2017, helping to launch the #MeToo movement, more than 75 women have come forward to accuse the American of sexual misconduct ranging from harassment to assault.

Many of these women are expected to attend the hearings, which are being held at New Yorks Supreme Court.

The case against Mr Weinstein centres on the charge that he raped a woman, who has not been identified, at a New York hotel in March 2013, and the allegation he forced a production assistant into a sex act at his Manhattan apartment in 2006.

If he is convicted of the most serious charges against him  two counts of predatory sexual assault  the disgraced businessman faces a mandatory life sentence.

For that to happen, prosecutors must demonstrate Mr Weinstein had a habit of violating women. They plan to call upon actress Annabella Sciorra, who says the movie mogul forced himself inside her Manhattan apartment in 1993 or 1994 and raped her after she starred in a film for his movie studio.

Other accusers, whose allegations have not been brought to trial, will be permitted to take the stand as witnesses to illustrate an alleged pattern of abusive behaviour.

Publicly, Mr Weinstein has largely ignored the allegations made against him but last December complained that his work has been forgotten.

I made more movies directed by women and about women than any film-maker and Im talking about 30 years ago, he said in the New York Post. Im not talking about now when its vogue. I did it first. I pioneered it.

Story continues

More recently, the American told CNN that the past two years have been gruelling and have presented me with a great opportunity for self-reflection.

In a joint statement released through Times Up, 25 of Mr Weinsteins accusers addressed the significance of the upcoming trial, which is expected to run for two months.

This trial is critical to show that predators everywhere will be held accountable and that speaking up can bring about real change, their statement read in part. We refused to be silenced and will continue to speak out until this unrepentant abuser is brought to justice.

Mr Weinsteins lawyer, Donna Rotunno, has argued the case is weak and said she plans to aggressively cross-examine the accusers. She added that her client would be the first one to say he did bad things, but that he is not a criminal.

Picking a jury for the trial is expected to be a difficult process, in part because immense media attention on the case could mean some potential jurors have already made up their minds. Mr Weinsteins legal team attempted to get the trial moved out of Manhattan, but a court rejected that.

Read more

Harvey Weinstein believes he can rebuild his Hollywood career
Getty

Nato has suspended ongoing efforts to fight Isis in Iraq amid demands by Iran and its allies for revenge against the US following the assassination of an Iranian leader by American forces.

Thousands of supporters of Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani and Iraqi Shia militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes gathered in Tehran, Baghdad and other cities to beat their chests and chant religious slogans to mourn the two men, who were killed in a US airstrike outside the Iraqi capital on Friday.

A witness described shops putting up portraits of Suleimani, and funereal banners hung neighbourhoods in Tehran.

Hes seen as a guy who has fought terrorists and brought security for Iranians at home, said Abas Aslani, a researcher at the Centre for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, in a phone call from the Iranian capital.

Several Iranian officials reiterated longstanding warnings on Saturday that Tehran could target US ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which a significant chunk of the worlds energy reserves travel, with one noting that Irans missiles could reach Israel.

Atop the dome of the mosque at Jamkaran, a major pilgrimage destination outside the Iranian seminary and shrine city of Qom, a red flag signalling an impending battle was unfurled.

"The Americans really did not realise what a grave error they have committed, Irans president Hassan Rouhani said during a meeting with the family of Suleimani.

They will feel the impact of such a criminal act  not only today  but for years to come."

The fallout of the Suleimani assassination had the world and much of the region on edge with concerns about an Iranian response, as well as a potential US counter-response that could lead to a widespread armed conflict.

Suleimani was despised by many Iranians as a pillar of the hardline establishment, and he was hated by Syrians and other Arabs for his role in helping Bashar Assad violently suppress a popular uprising against his dictatorship.

Story continues

But he remains a hero to Iranian regime supporters and some Iraqis for his role in organising the battle against Isis in 2014.

Supporters of the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force and Iraq's Hezbollah brigades attend the funeral (AFP)

Western officials worry that the Iranian state or its surrogates could carry out attacks to avenge his killing.

The Americans did something that was unthinkable, said Mr Aslani. The repercussions and consequences will be unthinkable as well. It can work both ways.

The Nato pullback from Iraq is a blow to efforts to keep Isis from regrouping. Hundreds of western soldiers from a broad coalition of countries are in Iraq training local armed forces to take on jihadis in the countrys northern mountains and western desert. Denmark and Sweden had already announced they were withdrawing military personnel.

Iranians tear up a US flag during a demonstration in Tehran (AFP)

Nato's mission is continuing, but training activities are currently suspended," said Nato spokesman Dylan White.

Attempts at defusing the crisis continued. The Foreign Minister of Qatar, which maintains cordial relations with Iran and hosts a US military base, flew to Tehran Saturday to confer with Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister in a likely attempt to defuse tensions.

Revolutionary Guard deputy commander Ali Fadavi claimed in a television interview on Friday that the US had passed on a message urging Iranians not to escalate.

"They resorted to diplomacy among other things on Friday morning and even said that if you want revenge, do it proportionately to what we did, he said. But they are in no position to determine anything."

Iran gave few clues about its intentions, but the spokesman for its army insisted on Saturday it would not give a hasty response.

One Revolutionary commander, a little-known figure in Irans security establishment, said in an interview that dozens of US targets are within range of Iranian firepower.

Thirty-five vital American positions in the region are within the reach of the Islamic Republic, and Tel Aviv - the USs heart and life - is also within our reach, said Gholam Ali Abu-Hamzeh, the Revolutionary Guard commander for Suleimanis hometown province of Kerman, according to the Tasnim News Agency.

Iran has for years had missiles with ranges up to 1,200 miles that could reach Israel and the Arabian Peninsula, where many US troops are based, and it has fired rockets that struck eastern Syria following an Isis attack in 2017.

But most experts say that Irans relatively weak naval and air forces would be no match for Israeli air power or US battleships at sea, even though Iran could wreak havoc with guerilla tactics that could send oil prices skyrocketing.

Its not clear what the response will be, said Mr Aslani. It will not be less than what the Americans have done.

Read more

General Qassem Suleimani: Feared by foes and fiercely admired at home

Neither Iran nor Trump will want a conflict over Soleimanis death

Iraq releases dramatic images of flaming wreckage from US airstrikes

Irans allies promise revenge for US killing of top general

Assassination of Iran general is likely to weaken Trumps hand in Iraq
To know about the road ahead, ask those coming back-Chinese proverb.

Each time I read African historians account on how civilization and development got to Africa, and compare same with that of many Europeans scholars, I often marvel at the fundamental differences, To the European authors, Africa was a dark continent lit only by the flashes of foreign penetration and has contributed nothing to world civilization. But to African historians, civilization means improvement in culture. And Africans have had remarkable improvement in their culture and civilization before the coming of the Europeans.

Politically, such description of Africa as a dark continent could be characterized as harsh and uncharitable. But looking at the current happenings within the continent, fair-minded and well-foresighted Africans understand that there is something bracing about such description. Indeed, Africans may have overtly shown remarkable improvement in their culture and civilization. That notwithstanding, for the fact that after almost 60 years of independence, African countries continually look up to China for aid, covertly tells a story of a continent lacking in capacity for taking responsibility for its actions and intiatives for values.

For a better understanding of this piece, the Chinese development aid to Africa, going by reports totaled 47% of its total foreign assistance in 2009 alone, and from 2000 to 2012 it funded 1,666 official assistance projects in 51 African countries. Also, the Brookings InstitutionAidData study found that at least 70% of China's overseas aid was sent to Africa from 2000 to 2014.

Some of these projects includes but not limited to; the African Union building in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which cost $200 million to build and was handed over in 2012. Recently also, China announced its willingness to give the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a $31.6 million grant to build a new headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria. China's scarves have found their largest African market in Egypt, which imported supplies worth $45 million in 2014. The nations also have a healthy exchange of carpets, with multi-million dollar supplies traveling in both directions.  Dozens of African hospitals have been built with Chinese funds in recent years. China's largest commitments in Africa are to infrastructure projects, such as Nigeria's $8.3 billion Lagos-Kano rail line, largely funded through Chinese loans.

Admittedly, there is nothing wrong with exploring the concept of corporation in business, infrastructure and resource development from other nations. Notably also, China is a country that has just experienced a period of economic growth, the likes of which the world had never before seen. Its model, says a report blazes a new trail for other developing countries to achieve modernization and offers a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development. And China daily defends and describes its aid practices on the grounds of neutral and respect for recipient nations' sovereignty.

Despite these virtues and attributes, mountains of evidence point to the fact that Chinese money; interventions/donations (infrastructural supports) are not wholly unpolitical and its leadership style undemocratic making it unworthy of emulation.

Essentially, apart from being ruled, increasingly dictatorially by an unelected communist party that puts people in prison for their convictions and limits all forms of free expressions and associations, it was equally in the news that Europes biggest powers- Germany, France and the United Kingdom-along with Poland, Spain and the Scandinavian countries, maintain/ believe that China is undermining human rights, democratic ethos, rules and standards. Africa must not lose sight of these real and lasting concerns or allow such lessons go with political winds.

Observably, the historical roots of the Chinese development are well understood, their strategies are common knowledge. But there is in my views a need to step beyond development and strategy. And take a look at the countrys fundamental obstacles-its governments reluctance to appreciate development plans and reform programs from a rights-based perspective.

Directly and indirectly, it adversely affects the infusion of human rights principles of participation, accountability, transparency and non-discrimination towards the attainment of equity and justice in development initiatives. As clarified by the United Nations Independent Expert on the Right to Development, for a programme to be tagged development, it must require a particular process that allows the realization of economic, social and cultural rights, as well as civil and political rights, and all fundamental freedoms, by expanding the capabilities and choices of the individual.

Even as this piece centre on the non- infusion of human rights principles, there is one account that probably did more than anything else to capture the frustrations, disappointments and sins of China against Europe, and will go a long way to convince African leaders to look differently at their relationship with China than the report by two seminal writers, Julianne Smith and Torrey Taussig.

While writing on the well considered topic; The Old World and The Middle Kingdom-Europe Wakes Up to Chinas rise, they noted that Chinese president xi Jinpings consolidation of power has shaken Germanys confidence in Chinas future political stability. And explained that in the name of national security, the Chinese government detained over one million Muslim Uighurs in the western province of Xinjiang in reeducation camp.

To many in Germany and across Europe, these developments raise troubling questions over what a Chinese-led world would look like.

German industry, the report added, is growing concern about Chinese technological progress. German business leaders who have long supported deeper economic ties with China are now apprehensive about Chinas state-led quest for technological supremacy at the expense of German companies. In January, the Federation of German Industries released a widely cited report cautioning companies to reduce their dependence on the Chinese market. Then there is the long-standing issue of Chinese hackers stealing foreign industrial and technological secrets.

In December, the heightened frequency of Chinese hacking led the German governments cyber security agency to warn German companies about the growing risk of Chinese cyber-espionage. That came on top of a 2017 case in which German intelligence agencies accused China of creating fake LinkedIn accounts to connect with more than 10,000 German citizens, including lawmakers and government officials, in order to gain information, recruit sources, and infiltrate the Bundestag and government

Germany is not alone in its awakening.

French president Emmanuel Macron, recently declared an end to European naivete on China. Macron also invited Merkel and jean-Claude junker, the president of the European commission, to join his meetings with Xi in order to present a united front. The message was clear: Europe will resist Chinas attempts to divide it.

Many European countries are experiencing what one senior EU official described as China fatigue, the report noted. These grievances are having a mounting effect on German policy toward China. Merkel, now refers to China as a systemic competitor,

Similarly, Several European countries have tightened up their screening of Chinese investments. In 2018, the German government, citing national security, blocked a Chinese investor from buying Leifeld Metal, a leading German producer of metals for the automobile, space, and nuclear industries. It was the first time that the German government had voted a Chinese takeover.

The move was followed by a new law giving the government power to block a non-european investor from buying a ten percent or higher stake (down from 25 percent) in a German business. The law includes media companies, a sign that Germany is worried about Chinese information influence. A number of other European countries have adopted similar measures.

Some European countries have grown disenchanted with chinas behaviour; they have started to push for a more coherent EU wide strategy. A recent EU white paper on china labeled Beijing a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance and called on the EU to pursue a more reciprocal relationship with china and to strengthen its own industrial base.

Whatever the true situation may be, I believed and still believe that there are of course, ingrain lessons for Africa to learn from the above revelations by Julianne Smith and Torrey Taussig. First, Africans must not fail to remember that authoritarianism may do well in the short term, but experience clearly shows that only democracy produces good government over a long haul.And as a continent; we cannot be professing democracy and fraternizes with a nation that has no regard for human rights. Africa urgently need to ask Europe why they are kicking against Chinese development styles and strategies.

Jerome-Mario Utomi ( [email protected] ) writes from Lagos.
Man pretends to be sheriff to intimidate contractors working on his home, police say originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

A New Jersey man was arrested last week for impersonating a sheriff in an attempt to intimidate contractors who were working on his new home.

Several contractors had placed a lien on 51-year-old Todd Geigers new home being built in Sarasota County, Florida, for non-payment.

MORE: Deaths of Florida civilians in police shootout call procedures into question

Donning a black bulletproof vest and a police-style badge, Geiger drove to a contractors home asking neighbors for information about the contractor, while identifying himself as "the Sheriff," according to a court affidavit.

Geiger also called other contractors and a construction company involved with the lien, the sheriffs offices statement said.

Neighbors grew suspicious since Geiger was driving a white Maserati with New Jersey plates, reported Sarasota ABC News affiliate, WWSB.

"Sheriffs are not driving around in Maseratis with New Jersey license plates," said Lt. Jason Mruczek in WWSB's report.

PHOTO: Todd Gieger in a police booking photo. (Sarasota County Sheriff's Office)

Geiger was in dispute with the contractors over $33,000 of work done on his home, a condo, reported WWSB.

MORE: Police warn that abbreviating 2020 on legal documents could lead to fraud

Facing two counts of false impersonation of law enforcement, Geiger was released from the Sarasota County Jail on a $3,000 bond.

"In today's world, it is more crucial than ever for communities to know and trust their law enforcement," Sheriff Tom Knight commented on the agencys website. "Lucky for us, our residents are smart and in this incident, they knew something wasnt right. Credit goes to both cognizant witnesses and great detectives for getting this guy off our streets and out of our community."
WILMINGTON, Del., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Following news that civil right activist Reverend Al Sharpton penned a letter to Skadden Arps calling for more diversity at the firm and others like it, Citizens for a Pro-Business Delaware Campaign (CPBD) Manager Chris Coffey released the following statement:

"For generations, Delaware's justice system has been plagued by the institutional disenfranchisement of people of color from the top down. The inequities caused by a court system run by mostly white, mostly male judges is a direct result of firms like Skadden Arps denying opportunities to people of color. We can't possibly expect the judges in our courts to accurately reflect the racial, ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic diversity of this state if they aren't given the opportunity to gain the relevant experience.

Of 282 law partners listed in Wilmington, not even 5% are racial minorities. Per their own reporting, Skadden Arps epitomizes the problem  out of 10 partners, nine are white. Meanwhile, despite hollow promises to change their legacy on this, just one of their summer associates was black.

Lacking diversity in our justice system is a national and systemic issue. But in a state that's home to the country's busiest corporate courts, where judges are handpicked to join an old boys' club from the top firms, it's critical we end the status quo.

Reverend Sharpton's letter cut to the core of this issue, and we support him and his call for action on this matter in every way. We look forward to working with him to enact real change that make Delaware's courts more responsive and accountable to those they represent."

Contact: Chris Coffey, [email protected]

SOURCE Citizens for a Pro-Business Delaware
Bright Now! Dental Team

In partnership with the Smiles for Everyone Foundation, Bright Now! Dental will provide free dental services for low-income, underinsured individuals at its Mesa, Arizona office on February 16th.

Dental services provided include same-day procedures such as exams and x-rays, fillings, cleanings and extractions. For more information, please visit the Bright Now! Dental website.

About Bright Now! Dental

Bright Now!  Dental provides general dentistry, childrens dentistry and, in select locations, specialty care services such as orthodontics, oral surgery, periodontics and endodontics at over 150 offices across Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Washington. Bright Now! Dentals Mesa office is operated by Modern Dental Professionals - Arizona, Inc., P.C. (the Group). The Group is affiliated with Smile Brands Inc., one of the largest providers of business support services to dental groups in the United States. Smile Brands Inc. provides comprehensive business support services through exclusive long-term service agreements with affiliated dental groups, so dentists can spend more time caring for their patients and less time on the administrative, marketing and financial aspects of operating a dental practice. Smile Brands is a portfolio company of Gryphon Investors (Gryphon), a leading middle-market private equity firm based in San Francisco, CA. For more information, visit http://www.smilebrands.com.

About the Smiles For Everyone Foundation

The Smiles for Everyone Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with the mission of delivering smiles for everyone by providing free dental care for those in need, both at home in the U.S. and around the world. Since 2011, the Smiles for Everyone Foundation has delivered over 24,000 smiles and $18 million in donated dentistry. The foundation currently supports programs which provide free dental care to those in need in Cambodia, Ghana, Laos, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Thailand, and the United States. For more information or to make a donation, visit http://www.smilesforeveryone.org.

Contacts:

Bright Now! Dental

Jody Martin

PR@smilebrands.com

714.427.1299

Smiles for Everyone Foundation

Crystal Strait

crystal.strait@smilesforeveryone.org

714.824.5037
A 13-year-old boy has died after armed gunmen possibly affiliated with a drug cartel shot him and his family over the weekend as they traveled home to the US from a vacation in Mexico.

The boy, his mother, 42, father, 48, and another boy, ten, were shot as they drove in a minivan from Mexico to the U.S. border on Reynosa-Nuevo Laredo Highway, Los Arcos, on Saturday night.

It is believed they had been visiting relatives in the state of San Luis Potosi from their home in Oklahoma, reports The New York Post.

The attorney general's office in the state of Tamaulipas said the boy was a US citizen and that the parents were permanent residents of the US. They did not release the victims' names.

The 13-year-old boy and his parents, mother, 42, father, 48, and another boy, ten, were shot as they drove in a minivan from Mexico to the U.S. border on Reynosa-Nuevo Laredo Highway, Los Arcos, on Saturday night

Investigating officers and military personnel who attended the scene found three cars with 'crash impacts'

One car was abandoned with Tamaulipas plates, and two belonged to the family with Oklahoma plates - bullet holes can be seen in the windshield

Multiple local news reports have identified the deceased 13-year-old as Oscar Castillo Lopez and his injured parents as Juanita Castillo Lopez and Jose Silva Mendoza.

Reports from El Diario have described the attackers as drug traffickers with the Cartel del Noreste.

It is unclear at this time why the family from Oklahoma was targeted by the assailants.

Reynosa-Nuevo Laredo Highway, Los Arcos, connects the city of Mier with Nueva Ciudad Guerrero, on the banks of the Rio Grande across the US-Mexico border from Falcon Heights, Texas

Gunmen are said to have collided with the family's Chevrolet Traverse SUV with Oklahoma license plates after they refused to stop. The victims were accompanied by another relative in a car behind who was not injured.

After being forced to pull over, the mother, father and two young boys were shot - fatally injuring the 13-year-old.

Investigating officers and military personnel who responded to the scene found three cars with 'crash impacts,' one abandoned with Tamaulipas plates, and two belonging to the family with Oklahoma plates.

Attackers are said to have collided with the family's Chevrolet SUV

Attackers are believed to have fled in another van.

The family was taken to a hospital in Cerralvo, Nuevo Leon, where the mother, father and ten-year-old are said to be in a stable condition, reports El Universal.

The highway on which the American family were ambushed is considered high risk. It runs through an area that's disputed by criminal groups, including the Gulf Cartel and Zetas.

The road connects the city of Mier with Nueva Ciudad Guerrero, on the banks of the Rio Grande across the US-Mexico border from Falcon Heights, Texas.

The fatal attack on the family comes two months after nine women and children belonging to an American Mormon family were ambushed and killed in the northern Mexican state of Sonora.
The first lung transplant in Florida using this system was performed at Tampa General Hospital on October 22, 2019. The new Organ Care System (OCS) technology allows a donated heart to keep beating for several hours outside a human body as it is transported to the hospital. This process, called normal temperature perfusion, keeps organs functioning almost as if they were still inside human bodies. During this process, hearts beat, livers produce bile and lungs breathe, all inside portable machines.

"We can maintain the organs for longer periods, which means we can retrieve them from a wider geographic area," said Dr. John Dunning, surgical director for Heart and Lung Transplantation at Tampa General Hospital and a professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine. "And, the condition of the organs at the time of transplant is better," compared to traditional methods.

Tampa General Hospital is the only hospital in Florida and among a handful in the United States to be using or formally studying the process for all three of these organs using the Organ Care System technology. TGH is one of the busiest transplant centers in the nation, having performed more than 10,000 transplant operations. The OCS machines are manufactured by TransMedics, Inc., of Massachusetts.

"At TGH, we use technology and innovation to meet the needs of our community," said Dr. Kiran Dhanireddy, executive director of the TGH Advanced Organ Disease and Transplantation Institute. "OCS allows us to expand the organ pool by having access to a wider geography of donors, which allows us to save more lives through transplantation."

The normal temperature perfusion process has already been approved by the FDA for use in lung transplant patients. TGH has conducted five liver perfusion transplants as part of a clinical trial.

"We are continually innovating to provide our patients with optimum care, and cutting-edge technology such as the OCS machine allows us to do that," said Dr. Amy Lu, a transplant surgeon who is the principal investigator on the TGH clinical trial.

At times, organs are transported to Tampa General from other cities. The traditional method is to use medical coolers for these journeys, which can sometimes take hours. The organs do not perform their normal functions while being transported in cold storage, but their health is preserved for several hours.

The OCS uses a different approachtransporting organs at near body temperature.

In OCS machines, blood, oxygen and nutrients constantly flow through the organs, just as they would inside a human body. So instead of merely being preserved, the organs continue functioning inside the machines. The flow of blood through the heart prompts it to continue beating. The liver produces bile  one of its essential activities. A ventilator puffs air into the lungs. A computer tablet-like device allows surgeons to monitor the health of the organs en route to the hospital.

Organs can survive longer in OCS machines than in traditional coolers. All organs must have blood flowing through them in order to continue as living, functioning organs. While a heart can survive in a medical cooler without a blood supply for roughly four hours, muscle cells will start to die as time goes on. But in the OCS, the heart still pumps and receives blood, so cells can survive longer.

The process has been shown to reduce the number and severity of rejection episodes in lung transplants, and organs in some cases actually get healthier after being placed in the OCS machines. For example, a potential donor who is on a ventilator in a hospital might develop fluid in their lungs as a side effect. But this can clear up when the lung is placed in the OCS. This improvement means more organs are likely to become medically suitable for transplantation. "We can actually monitor their function on the machine and see their function improving prior to transplantation," Dunning said.

The new technology increases organs available for donation. Currently, lungs are transplanted from patients who have become brain dead. But the OCS also allows transplants from patients whose deaths are classified as cardiac death, which has the potential to expand the donor pool by about 25 to 30 percent.

TGH's overall goal is not only to provide more life-saving transplants to meet the needs of our community by expanding the available donors, but also to continue to deliver the highest quality of care.

Tampa General has now performed more than 10,000 transplant operations, placing it among the top 10 busiest transplant centers in the nation. Numerous studies have shown that patients do better when they undergo surgeries in large surgical centers where the teams perform complex procedures more often.

Organ Care System (OCS) Fact Sheet

Heart, liver and lung transplants:

Lungs

People who need transplants include those with emphysema, cystic fibrosis, interstitial lung disease or other severe conditions. Traditionally, lungs come from deceased donors who have suffered brain death. The OCS also allows the use of lungs from those who have suffered cardiac death.

In the OCS machine, air is ventilated into the lungs while they are being transported, allowing them to "breathe" almost as if they are inside a body.

The FDA has approved the use of the OCS for lung transplants. And Tampa General Hospital performed the first such lung transplant in Florida on Oct. 22.

Livers

People who need transplants include those with diseases that prevent the liver from performing its essential body functions. Livers come from deceased donors who have suffered brain death or cardiac death. Partial liver transplants sometimes come from living donors.

In the OCS machine, blood, oxygen and nutrients flow through the donated liver and it produces bile, one of its essential functions, almost as if it is inside a body.

Tampa General Hospital is participating in a multicenter national clinical trial to evaluate efficacy of the OCS for liver transplantation. After the conclusion of the study, the results will be used to obtain FDA approval for clinical use.

Hearts

People who need transplants include those who have advanced heart diseases but are healthy enough to be well with a transplanted heart.

Currently, hearts come from deceased donors who have suffered brain death. The OCS is being used to explore the potential for using hearts from patients who have died a cardiac death.

In the OCS machine, blood is sent into the heart, which prompts the heart tissue to activate electrical impulses and begin beating.

Tampa General Hospital will participate in a clinical trial on the use of OCS for heart transplantation.

ABOUT TAMPA GENERAL HOSPITAL

Tampa General Hospital, a 1007-bed non-profit academic medical center, delivers world-class care as the region's only center for Level l trauma and comprehensive burn care. It is one of the nation's busiest adult solid organ transplant centers and is the primary teaching hospital for the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine. With five medical helicopters, Tampa General Hospital transports critically injured or ill patients from 23 surrounding counties to receive the advanced care they need. Tampa General houses a nationally accredited comprehensive stroke center and its 32-bed Neuroscience Intensive Care Unit is the largest on the West Coast of Florida. It also is home to an 82-bed Level IV neonatal intensive care unit, and a nationally accredited rehabilitation center. Tampa General Hospital's footprint includes 14 Tampa General Medical Group Primary Care offices, TGH Family Care Center Kennedy, TGH Brandon Healthplex, TGH Virtual Care and 15 outpatient Radiology Centers. Tampa Bay residents also receive world-class care from the TGH Urgent Care powered by Fast Track network of clinics, and they can even receive home visits in select areas through TGH Urgent Care at Home, powered by Fast Track. As one of the largest hospitals in Florida, Tampa General Hospital is first in the state to open a command center in partnership with GE Healthcare. For more information, go to www.tgh.org.

ABOUT TRANSMEDICS

TransMedics was founded to address the growing need for healthier organs for transplantation. We are focused on transforming the standard of care  increasing organ utilization, improving patient outcomes, and reducing transplant costs.

The Organ Care System (OCS) platform is a revolutionary technology for preserving organs used in the treatment of end-stage heart, lung, and liver failure.The OCS is the first and only multi-organ platform to leverage proprietary core technologies across multiple organs.The OCS Lung, OCS Heart and OCS Liver are all CE marked devices.

The OCS Lung is an FDA-approved device for standard and expanded criteria donor lungs.

The OCS Heart and OCS Liver devices are investigational devices and, therefore, are limited by federal law to investigational use in the US.OCS is the only technology that can be utilized with multiple organs.

Media Contact: Curtis Krueger

Senior Public Relations Editor

(o) (813) 844-7322

(c) (727) 580-1813

[email protected]

SOURCE Florida Health Sciences Center, Inc. d/b/a Tampa General Hospital

Related Links

http://www.tgh.org


People in the Chinese city of Fuyu welcomed the New Year with three times more light than usual. They were stunned this week when they were greeted not by a sunny morning owing to one sun, but three. Yep. Three suns appeared in the skies over the Chinese city of Fuyu on December 31, 2019.

The sun was flanked by two large glowing orbs on either side, making it star seem dwarfed in the skies above the countrys northeastern Jilin Province.

Gopherboy6956

The artificial suns graced the sky for about 20 minutes before disappearing altogether. Now some of you might be wondering, how come two random stars came to shine in China alongside the sun and how did it not completely burn up the entire place?

That is because the two suns were not real; they appeared in the sky because of a scientific phenomenon.

The extra suns in the sky appeared because of an atmospheric optical phenomenon known as a sun dog, also called a parhelion.

Three "suns" appear on the sky over northeast China



This spectacular view is caused by a natural phenomenon called "sun dog," also known as mock suns or parhelia, as a result of light refraction through ice crystals. https://t.co/N31a8Um6B2 pic.twitter.com/ZbBJLYu8gB  CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) January 2, 2020

The sun dog is a phenomenon that is caused by the refraction of sunlight by ice crystals in the Earths atmosphere, which usually create glowing orbs in the sky roughly 22 degrees to left and right of the sun, at the same altitude above the horizon, reports rt.com.

For the phenomenon to occur, the temperature needs to be quite cold, roughly 20 degrees below zero Celsius, when the Sun is still quite low in the sky, for the spectacular if mildly terrifying phenomenon to occur.

So yeah, the two suns were as real as the social life you project on social media.
New Delhi: A day after shocking violence in the premier Jawaharlal Nehru University, Opposition parties on Monday decided to seek a meeting with President Ram Nath Kovind on January 13 on the shameful incidents in the Central varsity of which the President is the Visitor. There was widespread condemnation by the Opposition led by Congress president Sonia Gandhi who sought a judicial inquiry into the incident while the CPM demanded that the JNU vice-chancellor be sacked.

The varsity will also hold an alumni march at 3 pm on Tuesday where all eminent persons who have studied in JNU would be asked to participate.

The meeting with the President is being coordinated by the Congress and the party has asked its treasurer Ahmed Patel to speak to other parties, sources told this newspaper.

The Congress also constituted a fact-finding committee to look into the incident, which would be led by Mahila Congress chief Sushmita Dev. Apart from Dev, the other members of the fact-finding committee are former NSUI president and Kerala MP Hibi Eden, MP Syed Naseer Hussain, and former president of JNU NSUI and Amrita Dhawan, a former NSUI president and ex-DUSU president.

Earlier in the day, Sonia Gandhi issued a statement in which she said, Sundays bone chilling attack on students and teachers in JNU is a grim reminder of the extent the government will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent.

The entire Congress stands in solidarity with Indias youths and students. We strongly deprecate the sponsored violence in the JNU and demand an independent judicial inquiry, she added.

Former home minister P. Chadambaram said that the Jawaharlal Nehru University incident was perhaps the most clinching evidence that the country was rapidly descending into anarchy. This is the gravest act of impunity that we have seen in recent times. Nothing can be more shocking and shameful, he said seeking the immediate arrest of the perpetrators of the violence.

Congress Chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said the role of the home ministry, JNU administration and the Delhi Police should also be probed.

The manner in which youths are being attacked and their voices stifled, reminds us of the Nazi Germany of 1933 which seems to have come back under the rule of Modi and Amit Shah after 90 years, he said.

He alleged that goondaism had happened under the watch of the JNU administration as also the Delhi Police which is directly controlled by home minister Amit Shah.

CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury, a former JNUSU president, said, The vice-chancellor is also complicit in this attack. He must be sacked immediately.

The Trinamul Congress sent a three-member team to the JNU campus, led by Dinesh Trivedi who claimed that they were not allowed to enter the campus.

BSP chief Mayawati too took to Twitter to seek a judicial inquiry into the incident.

Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) which is also a part of the NDA in Bihar, has also sought an inquiry by a Supreme Court judge and the removal of all Jawaharlal Nehru University top office-bearers including the vice-chancellor.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 23:35:35|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- With the newly appointed power utility Eskom's CEO Andre de Ruyter starting his tenure on Monday, he is urged to urgently resolve rolling blackouts problems because of the disastrous effects they have on the economy, said a South African expert.

Jannie Rossouw, head of School of Economic and Business Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, said Eskom's power shut-offs were costing South Africa's businesses millions daily.

"The first issue is to figure out why South Africa is load shedding again and what must be done to prevent power cuts. Our economy will really suffer severely if load shedding continues, resolving load shedding must be the one priority," he said.

When South Africa's gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 3.2 percent in the first quarter of last year, economists blamed Eskom's power cuts for the decline. The implementation of load shedding intensified last year when stage 4 and 6 load shedding kicked in.

The GDP growth for 2019 is expected to be below 0.8 percent.

Local media reported that Eskom staff were also demanding at least 1.8 billion rand bonus (126 million US dollars).

"He must restore confidence in Eskom's management and clarify things that are in the media," Rossouw said.

Other serious issues that de Ruyter should tackle include Eskom's heavy debt. He is also expected to lead the unbundling of the company into three different business units.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued warnings about the possibility of cyber-attacks launched by Iran-linked hackers.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued warnings about the possibility of cyber-attacks launched by Iran-linked threat actors. The attacks could be the response of Teheran after Maj. Gen . Qassim Suleimani was killed by a U.S. drone airstrike at the Baghdad airport in Iraq.

The order to kill Soleimani was issued by President Trump that said Soleimani was planning an imminent attack on US personnel in Baghdad.

Christopher C. Krebs, Director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned of a potential new wave of cyber attacks carried out by Iran-linked hacker groups targeting U.S. assets .

Given recent developments, re-upping our statement from the summer.



Bottom line: time to brush up on Iranian TTPs and pay close attention to your critical systems, particularly ICS. Make sure youre also watching third party accesses! https://t.co/4G1P0WvjhS  Chris Krebs (@CISAKrebs) January 3, 2020

Krebs is warning operators of critical infrastructure to remain vigilant because the risk of cyber attacks is increasing hour after hour.

On Saturday, the DHS issued a new National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin.

The DHS is confirming that Iran has cyber capabilities to carry out attacks against US infrastructure, it is also warning that Iran has the capability to conduct operations in the United States.

Previous homeland-based plots have included, among other things, scouting and planning against infrastructure targets and cyber enabled attacks against a range of U.S.- based targets. reads the bulletin. Iran maintains a robust cyber program and can execute cyber attacks against the United States. Iran is capable, at a minimum, of carrying out attacks with temporary disruptive effects against critical infrastructure in the United States.

In the last hours, numerous websites were defaced and displayed messages wowing revenge against the US. During the weekend, a group of Iranian hackers claimed to have breached the website of a US government agency, the Federal Depository Library Program, vowing revenge for the killing of commander Qasem Soleimani.

Pierluigi Paganini
(Alliance News) - Bahamas Petroleum Co PLC said Monday that it has established a Bahamian domiciled mutual fund which is now open for receipt of initial subscriptions.

The mutual fund will exclusively hold Bahamas Petroleum shares and is intended "to provide Bahamians with an opportunity to invest in the company's nationally significant project".

The company, which owns four exploration licences in the southern territorial waters of the Bahamas, said initial subscription period will end on February 7, whereby the proceeds received from investor subscriptions will then be utilized for the purchase of ordinary shares in Bahamas Petroleum.

Bahamas Petroleum has agreed to issue up to 100 million new ordinary shares to the fund 2 pence per share, thereby providing relevant investors in the Bahamas equal pricing to that offered to other shareholders.

Simon Potter, chief executive officer of the company, said: "It has long been the company's intention to provide Bahamians a means of investing directly in this nationally significant project."

"Whilst the royalty regime under which Bahamas Petroleum Company operates ensures economic value for the people of the Bahamas via government revenues, the mutual fund initiative will allow Bahamian individuals to hold a stake in the outcome of this exciting and potentially transformational project, and thus to personally benefit should the project be successful," Potter added.

Bahamas Petroleum shares were down 2.1% in London at 2.06 pence each on Monday.

By Loreta Juodagalvyte; loretajuodagalvyte@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
BEIRUT  Twitter has blocked the accounts of several Lebanese journalists and activists over the past two weeks. The commentators and activists are in favor of the protests that began in Ocbober and have been tweeting about the demonstrations on a daily basis. Most of them believe their accounts were reported by Twitter users who support the authorities and oppose the protests.

Among those whose accounts have been blocked are Salman Andary, Michel HajjiGeorgiou, Sabine Youssef, Nicole Najjar, Jay Rahmeh and Roger Edde.

The protests broke out Oct. 17, as demonstrators took to the streets across Lebanon to protest the deteriorating economic and social conditions and claim basic human rights. Ever since, social media platforms have been used as a source of information in the absence of coverage by traditional media outlets.

A journalist told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, While covering the tense demonstrations on the evening of Dec. 15, I was surprised to see that my account was blocked. Dozens of other accounts supporting the popular protests were also blocked at the same time! This raises questions about Twitters policy. An explanation is in order. Is this the websites policy, or are there campaigns against us? Some people have not been able to recover their accounts yet, he said.

This journalist criticized Twitter's practices, saying it only blocks the accounts of people expressing support for the demonstrators and conveying the voice of protesters while it overlooks those who spread hate and incite against others.

Andary tweeted Dec. 16, We are back on Twitter after were blocked yesterday evening.  Our voices shall prevail in the face of thugs.

Abed Qattaya is the head of digital content at SMEX, a Lebanese non-governmental organization that has been working since 2008 to defend digital rights in the Arab region. He told Al-Monitor, We cannot know exactly how many Twitter accounts have been blocked given the large number of such accounts. A lot of activists are telling us that their accounts are still getting blocked.

He added, As an organization, we have contacted the policy team at Twitter to ask about these accounts. We believe the issue is technical and probably due to excessive activity and tweets since the start of the uprising. This is unfair.

According to several journalists and activists, the blocking is part of a campaign of systematic intimidation by supporters of the ruling parties to thwart the demonstrations, muzzle activists and suppress freedom of opinion and expression in Lebanon.

There are accounts that are still getting blocked on a daily basis, said Qattaya.

The repression suggests that alternative media platforms have played an important role since the start of the protests, conveying the rhetoric of the demonstrations directly while the coverage of TV stations and local newspapers is controlled by political agendas that lead them to focus on a specific angle.

Megaphone, established in 2017 by activists and young journalists to review and analyze local news, has emerged as one of these alternative platforms.

Editor Jean Kassir told Al-Monitor that Megaphone provides daily summaries of the most prominent events and publishes the authorities reactions to such events on social media. It also shares videos that cover the events on the ground and convey peoples opinions. In addition, it analyzes the speeches of prominent political figures, including Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and Lebanon's Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, and posts videos analyzing certain concepts related to the economy such as that of capital control, which has been recently raised in Lebanon."

Kassir added, Megaphone started as a platform that published weekly or monthly content but it was not long before it started publishing daily posts that include a wide range of critical topics within the framework of a very clear analytical and political line. We try to convey the opinions of various groups and demonstrators on the ground and we offer opinion articles, analysis and videos.

He went on, What mainly distinguishes us from traditional media outlets is that we emerged on social media right from the start and were suitable for the age groups looking for such content. We are independent and do not belong to any political party, unlike the traditional media outlets that mostly belong to ruling parties and are thus influenced by political money. The editorial line of the platform is opposed to that of the ruling authorities. We work as volunteers to provide material that tackles complex matters in an accessible way so that people can develop their opinions and be able to later hold officials accountable.

Legal Agenda, a non-governmental organization that covers legal developments in Lebanon from a critical point of view, has played an important role in covering the events of the protests and has held seminars and conferences bringing together experts and researchers.

Joelle Boutros, a researcher for Legal Agenda, told Al-Monitor, Our work as a specialized research center has marked a quantum leap in the production of knowledge. Before the uprising, we would only publish articles on our website, but when the uprising started, in addition to publishing articles, we started making videos that explain laws such as the general amnesty law and the rights of protesters upon their arrest by the security forces. We comment on issues related to mental health due to the increasing cases of suicide in Lebanon and we conduct interviews with economists to understand the financial crisis the country is going through.

She explained, There is a huge difference between our modest capabilities and those of traditional media. But what makes Legal Agenda special is its clear line that has not changed since the beginning of the uprising." Legal Agenda "only works to protect and assist society by covering the events on the ground, studying laws and discussing and clarifying many issues.

Layal Bahnam, the program director at Maharat Foundation, a non-governmental organization concerned with media issues and freedom of opinion and expression, told Al-Monitor, Social media websites have played a fundamental and positive role since the start of the uprising on Oct. 17. We have been able to watch events on social media websites as they happened on the ground through the lens of journalists and activists. It is thanks to these websites and their posts that traditional media learns about certain events and goes to cover them.

However, Behnam stressed the need to identify credible social media sources. At a time when some activists and journalists proved to be really credible, some pages published falsities such as accusing activists of receiving foreign funding in exchange for participating in the protests.
The call starts innocently enough: Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., warmly greets the voices on the line, whom a staffer identifies as Greta Thunberg and her father, Svante. They share a laugh about Waters's nickname, "Auntie Maxine." The congresswoman praises her young caller for her climate change activism.

"You have made quite a big, big, big, big thunder on this issue. I am really, really very proud of you and the work that you're doing," Waters is heard saying.

The congresswoman and her staff thought they had connected with Thunberg, the 17-year-old Swedish climate activist who was recently named Time magazine's "Person of the Year." In reality, two 30-something Russians, Vladimir "Vovan" Kuznetsov and Alexei "Lexus" Stolyarov, were on the other end of the line. The duo describe themselves as comedians and pranksters, but they are widely suspected of having ties to the Russian government.

Audio from the call with Waters was posted to the pair's YouTube page on Thursday, along with a cartoon animating the approximately 10-minute interaction as part of their comedy video series called "Stars Save the Earth."

It's unclear when exactly the call took place. Waters' office did not respond to questions seeking details about how the call was arranged or whether her office has screening or security protocols for phone calls. Waters waved off the incident on Saturday, telling The Washington Post in an email statement:

"This was just another stupid prank by the same Russian operatives who have targeted many U.S. elected officials, including Rep. Adam B. Schiff, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, Sen. Mitch McConnell, and late-Senator John McCain, and international heads of state such as Emmanuel Macron. The end."

But security experts warn that what's being passed off as prank-call mischief is really Russian misinformation meant to undermine the United States.

Kuznetsov and Stolyarov deny they're Kremlin-backed agents with ties to Russian security forces, despite their pattern of frequently targeting people critical of Russia or the fact that, as two supposed pranksters, they're able to reach powerful world leaders directly by phone.

"We work for ourselves, for nobody else," Stolyarov told the Guardian in 2016.

Whether the pair are agents of the Russian government, the kind of ruse they pulled on Waters can accomplish two goals for Russia, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the 2018 book, "Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President."

"The first [goal] is adding info. to a political dialogue in which discrediting one side is useful to Russia," Jamieson told The Post by phone. "The second is being able to make the argument to the rest of the world that U.S. leaders are easily duped. Putin's interests are served when U.S. leaders are made to look foolish in the eyes of the world."

Kuznetsov and Stolyarov started pranking their own rich and famous countrymen around 2014, before moving on to targets like Elton John, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and, more recently, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. The men pose as prominent figures their targets would be keen to speak with, engage them in conversation and then post the audio to their YouTube channel.

The call to Waters includes a mix of the absurd - the Thunberg impersonator mentions a climate strike in support of "Chon-go-Chango island" - and the overtly political.

Halfway through the call, the impersonators detail a fictional exchange between President Donald Trump and Thunberg that they claim happened when both attended the U.N. climate summit in September. In it, they tell Waters that the president made Thunberg cry when he said, "You'll never achieve your goals like those congressional fools who accuse me," and "I'll tell you the truth: I really wanted to push the Ukraine president to put my competitor on trial. And he will go to trial with you, with [a bunch of] Democrats. . . . I would have a separate cage for all of you."

"Oh my god, he mentioned the Ukrainian president?" Waters is heard asking.

The caller impersonating Thunberg's father offers that they have an audio recording of Trump's remarks to Greta that they can provide to the congresswoman.

Waters is heard assuring the callers that her colleagues are working diligently to gather facts in the impeachment case against Trump. "[I]f the public knew he talked to Greta like that, and that she will never achieve - that will go against him, too," she said.

Waters ends the call by offering to arrange a meeting as quickly as possible, to which the callers agree.

Schiff, Waters' congressional colleague and the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, received a similar call from the two men in April 2017, when one posed as the speaker of Ukraine's parliament, Andriy Parubiy, the Atlantic reported in 2018. On the call, the impersonator told Schiff they had compromising material on Trump, including nude photos of the president.

"We will try to work with the FBI to figure out, along with your staff, how we can obtain copies," Schiff reportedly responded. A spokesman for Schiff later told the magazine that they suspected the call was "bogus" and had alerted security and law enforcement before agreeing to take it and after.

Despite those precautions, Republican opponents like Rep. Devin Nunes of California pointed to the existence of the call as evidence Democrats were being cavalier and incautious in gathering evidence against Trump for the impeachment hearing.

"The point at which this enters the dialogue and can be used for a political attack has real consequences," said Jamieson.

Not all targets have been Democrats, but Jamieson said it matters if the "pranksters" are reaching out to people involved in an ongoing investigation. She also advised watching to see whether reports of the stories are picked up and amplified by Russian government-controlled websites like RT and Sputnik.

"At that point, this is no longer a prank; this is engaging in disinformation," she said.

A lingering question for Jamieson - and perhaps many lawmakers' offices - is whether voice recognition or other technology can advance to the point where it can help verify who is on the other end.

"There's a real vulnerability when you're talking to someone you can't see. You wouldn't want the president of the U.S., or someone who has the capacity to make significant leadership decisions, to be tricked by someone who isn't who they allege they are," Jamieson said.

Trump already fell victim to such a prank in 2018 when U.S. comedian John Melendez, a.k.a. Stuttering John of "The Howard Stern Show," claims to have reached the president on Air Force One by pretending to be Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J.
Sisters Nina and Nicole Horne are native New Orleanians with Iranian roots who grew up eating their grandmothers Persian cooking. In order to share their family recipes with local diners, the Horne sisters teamed up with Haley Rowe-Kadow, who runs local meal prep and catering business SZN. The result is the Persian cuisine pop-up Sabzi, which means herbs or greens in Farsi (Persian). Its next event is Jan. 22 at Second Line Brewing (433 N. Bernadotte St., 504-248-8979; www.secondlinebrewing.com).

Gambit: How did you arrive at Sabzi?

Nina Horne: I am half Iranian, and my grandmother always cooked for us. I love Iranian food and sharing it with people, and I noticed there was not a lot here in New Orleans. Me and my sister Nicole Horne had kicked around the idea of using my grandmothers recipes and doing a pop-up just to spread the food to New Orleans. Haley and I are dating, and she is a professional food person, and she got involved to help us out.

G: How would you describe your food?

Haley Rowe-Kadow: Its hard to get recipes out of Ninas grandmother  you have to follow her around with a pen and paper. Were using Nina and Nicoles tastes and their memories of the food, along with some recipes weve found in old and new Persian cookbooks to recreate the feeling. Its not necessarily the exact recipes of grandma.

Theres the show-stopping tahdig, which is the rice dish cooked in a special Persian rice cooker with the crunchy bit on the bottom  thats the most coveted part. Were trying to do a lot of hearty stews with ingredients people arent necessarily expecting to be the main ingredient. We are doing a celery stew that was the No. 1 hit at a party we had the other day.

Persian food has very distinct flavors that you dont see as pronounced in other types of food. Its very sour  every dish has got some sort of sour molasses or lemon or dried limes. That flavor I think is new (here) and to be developed  and is fun and cool and fresh.

H: For Iranians, the rice is the main attraction. They take very delicate care in preparing rice. Usually thats with stew, or sometimes you can make a rice mixed with herbs or beans. There are variations, and different seasons will call for different ones. We made one recently with dill and lima beans and in the future may make one with green beans and tomatoes.

G: Whats next for Sabzi?

H: Our vision is to do pop-ups at bars and breweries  and catering as well. We decided to start off with a party to showcase the food, to get on peoples radar and give them a palate for it and to practice doing these dishes. Weve made them for ourselves, and Ive eaten them plenty with my grandmother, but Its a whole other thing to make them in large batches.

Iranians like to say Iranian food should be served and eaten in the kitchen, meaning it sometimes doesnt translate to restaurants. I know thats not true because Ive been to plenty of great Iranian restaurants, especially in Los Angeles. But youve got to put a lot of care into the food, and we wanted to make sure we could get that right.  REBECCA FRIEDMAN
D onald Trump has increased his threats against Iran, warning the US may act in a "disproportionate manner" if the country attacks American people in retaliation for the killing of general Qasem Soleimani.

There has been rising tensions in the Middle East since the assassination took place in Iraq, and Iran has publicly vowed to take revenge on the US.

The President made the remark in a tweet he posted on Sunday evening, writing: "These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner.

"Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!"

It followed his tweet the day before which read: "The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World!

Tens of thousands of people turn out in Iran for general's funeral to chants of "death to America" / AP

"If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way...and without hesitation!"

Mr Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed in a round of interviews on Sunday that the US military is prepared to strike more Iranian leaders if the Islamic Republic retaliates.

Democrats in Congress complained about the administrations failure to consult with legislative leaders before conducting the drone attack Friday against Soleimani, and the White House faced a barrage of questions about the killings legality.

Mr Pompeo said the administration would have been culpably negligent in its duty to protect the United States if it had not killed Soleimani, although he did not provide evidence for his previous claims that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on Americans.

Instead of arguing that an attack had been imminent, Mr Pompeo said it was inevitable.

We watched him continue to actively build out for what was going to be a significant attack, thats what we believed, and we made the right decision, he said.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the country is ready for retaliation / AFP via Getty Images

He added later: We continue to prepare for whatever it is the Iranian regime may put in front of us within the next 10 minutes, within the next 10 days, and within the next 10 weeks.

Both Mr Trump and Mr Pompeo's words come during a day when the Iraqi parliament called on the 5,200 US forces in the country to leave.

Iraq's foreign ministry denounced the US drone attack as a "blatant" violation of sovereignty and a breach of the agreement between Iraq and the US-led coalition.

The US military coalition in Baghdad - which conducts operations against ISIS - also announced it had suspended training of Iraqi forces to concentrate on defending coalition troops.

Thousands of anti-war protesters have marched on the White House in recent days / AFP via Getty Images

In Beirut, the Lebanese Hezbollah chief said US forces throughout the Middle East are "fair targets" for retaliation

In Tehran, Iranian state television reported that the country will no longer abide by any limits of the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with the United States and other world powers.

Tens of thousands of mourners flooded the streets in Iran as the general's body was carried through south western Ahvaz.

Sunday evening, multiple rockets were fired into Baghdad's Green Zone, where the US Embassy is located. Three fell inside the zone and three outside, injuring six people.

And news broke that three Americans had been killed in a terrorist attack on a Kenyan airbase used by US forces.
Police on Saturday, arrested and fined two Russian couples who were filmed having sex on Pattaya Beach, Thailand in broad daylight.

The incident took place in front of stunned onlookers during the early hours of 28 December near the entrance to Soi 13.

The clip was then shared to social media with locals calling on police to locate the foreigners involved.

Following that, the police announced the arrest of a 26-year-old man Roman Grigorenko and his 19-year-old girlfriend Daria Vinogradova after tracking them down.

Police said the couple, who admitted to being the people in the clip, were tracked down to a hotel in the city and brought to the Pattaya police station.

READ ALSO  Police Arrest Man For R*ping Russian Tourist

They were charged with conducting an embarrassing and pornographic act in public and fined 5,000 baht each  the highest possible fine for the offence.

Speaking in their defence, the couple hinted that they were heavily intoxicated.
Iraqs Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) have become involved in an open confrontation with the Iraqi protesters who have been demonstrating since Oct. 1 and calling for major reforms. Over the last three months, the PMU have been accused of participating in a crackdown on protests.

On Jan. 5, Dhi Qar province in southern Iraq witnessed the killing of two protesters who were among others protesting a symbolic funeral procession held by a group of armed men for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Cmdr. Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated at Baghdad International Airport Jan. 3.

When we refused the gunmen [entrance to] the protest square, they threatened to open fire at us. They fired live bullets at us in the skirmish with the protesters, a protester in Dhi Qar told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. In response to the shooting, as shown in video footage, the protesters burned the PMU headquarters in the province.

Dhi Qar incurred the most deaths in the war between the Islamic State and the PMU and Iraqi security forces. Also, the province had the biggest share of victims in the Camp Speicher massacre in June 2014, when IS killed 1,700 people.

On the same day of the armed attack against the protesters during the symbolic funeral for Soleimani, PMU supporters burned down protesters' tents in Basra province, in the south, for the same reasons.

A YouTube account that seems to belong to a PMU member or a supporter having a photo of Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis  a top PMU leader who was killed in the same drone strike as Soleimani  shared a video of the burning tents in Basra, saying it was punishment for protesters who celebrated the death of the two men.

The protesters objected to the funeral procession of Soleimani and Muhandis, which prompted the Hezbollah Brigades to fire live bullets at them and burn down their tents, killing one man and wounding another, Hussam al-Khamisi, a Basra activist told Al-Monitor.

Khamisi, who has been participating in Iraq's protests since 2015, believes the PMU will further crack down on protests in the coming days.

While the PMU have been widely accused of participating in the crackdown, a PMU source denied these claims in an interview with Al-Monitor.

Telegram channels close to the PMU have been sharing information within groups, which Al-Monitor was able to check, about the possibility of Iraqi protesters burning PMU headquarters in some provinces. This could portend some major open confrontations between the armed PMU and the protesters.

The demonstrators in Baghdads Tahrir Square said they were innocent of the attack on the US Embassy Dec. 31, which seemed to have provoked the PMU, which accused the protesters of betraying their homeland.

Liqaa Makki, a researcher at Al-Jazeera Center for Studies, told Al-Monitor, What happened in Dhi Qar and Basra is an indication that the PMU are now ready to use their arms freely and without accountability, since there is no authority to deter them except for meager local influence.

The protesters are being accused of treason, which for the PMU is a valid excuse to attack them. I think the PMU will also take advantage of the tense situation with the United States to further suppress the protests, Makki added.

The US statements on the protests in Iraq are provocative for the PMU factions that claim Washington orchestrates the ongoing demonstrations.

David Schenker, assistant secretary of Near Eastern Affairs at the US State Department, also implicated PMU leaders in the killing of Iraqi protesters.

Aqeel Abbas, an assistant professor at the American University of Sulaimaniyah, told Al-Monitor, Some PMU leaders and members believe this would be the right time to squash the protests given the critical situation in the country. The protesters should hold their breath for a little longer to overcome this phase.

There is a real danger that the most radical PMU groups would seek to dismantle the demonstrations, Abbas added.

A video showed a member of the coordination committee of the protests in Karbala province accusing PMU gunmen of harassing and killing protesters in the last two days of December, calling on demonstrators to ready their sticks and rods to repel any attacks.

It appears this is a favorable opportunity for the PMU to crush the ongoing protests, especially with the media blackout on the demonstrations after the attempt to storm the US Embassy and the death of Soleimani and Muhandis.

In sum, the accusations of treason against Iraqs protesters since the outbreak of the demonstrations are likely to serve as a valid religious and political justification to suppress them. This is true despite the fact that some PMU leaders have previously stated the protests were justifiable and understandable.

Some radical PMU groups, however, are openly opposed to the protests, which have seen 600 protesters killed and nearly 22,000 wounded over the past three months.
TEHRAN  Irans supreme leader wept Monday over the casket of a top general killed in a U.S. airstrike, his prayers joining the wails of mourners who flooded the streets of Tehran demanding retaliation against America for a slaying thats drastically raised tensions across the Middle East.

The funeral for Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani drew a crowd said by police to be in the millions in the Iranian capital, filling thoroughfares and side streets as far as the eye could see.

The outpouring of grief was an unprecedented honor for a man viewed by Iranians as a national hero for his work leading the Guards expeditionary Quds Force. The U.S. blames him for the killing of American troops in Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before his death Friday in a drone strike at Baghdads airport. Soleimani also led forces in Syria backing President Bashar Assad in a long war.

His slaying already has pushed Tehran to abandon the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as his successor and others vow to take revenge.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over the caskets of Soleimani and others at Tehran University after a brief mourning period at the capitals famed Musalla mosque.

On Monday, two top Senate Democrats called on Trump to immediately declassify the administrations reasoning for the strike on Soleimani, saying there is no legitimate justification for keeping the information from the public.

And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would introduce and vote this week on a war powers resolution to limit the presidents military actions regarding Iran. In a letter to House Democrats, Pelosi called the strike provocative and disproportionate and said it had endangered our servicemembers, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran.

Congress, which has the sole power to declare war, has complained that Trump did not provide advance notice of the strike. Trump did meet the 48-hour deadline required by the War Powers Act to notify Congress after the deadly drone strike, though the document was classified and no public version was released.

In their letter to Trump, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and the Senate Foreign Relation Committees Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey said the White Houses classified notification sent to Congress late Saturday was insufficient and inappropriate.

An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society, they wrote. They asked that the notification be declassified in full.

Nasser Karimi and Jon Gambrell are Associated Press writers.
Democratic Senators Ask Trump to Declassify War Powers Notification After Generals Death

Top Democrats in the Senate have asked President Donald Trump to declassify the war powers notification that he submitted to Congress after the United States killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq last week.

In a letter submitted on Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asked Trump to take immediate action to declassify the notification.

Immediately declassify in full the January 4, 2020 war powers notification you submitted to Congress following the U.S. military operation targeting Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani, they requested of Trump in their letter.

It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner, the two Democrats said. An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society.

On Saturday, the White House sent the notification of the drone strike to Congress under the 1973 War Powers Act that requires the president to tell the legislative body of incidents that require the introduction of the military within 48 hours.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway responded to their letter, saying that Congress could be briefed by the weeks end.

They know that Congress will be briefed. It could start as recently as this week. But thats up to the Pentagon, she told reporters on Monday. They will be briefed, but they also should calm down and celebrate, not denigrate, the fact that the worlds greatest terrorist, who is single-handedly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans  they should celebrate not denigrate that Soleimani was killed, she said.

In defense of Trumps strike, which drew backlash from Democrats in Congress about them not being notified, Conway said that hes the commander in chief, and he did what a responsible, strongnot weakcommander in chief does when faced with the opportunity to take out one of the, if not the worlds most wanted terrorist.

Following the Trump administrations notification on Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who led the Houses impeachment of the president, said it raises more questions than it answers.

The highly unusual decision to classify this document in its entirety compounds our many concerns, and suggests that the Congress and the American people are being left in the dark about our national security, she said Saturday, noting that it prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner and justification of the Administrations decision to engage in hostilities against Iran.

President Barack Obamas Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson disputed the notion that Trump needed to first ask Congress before the strike.

If you believe everything our government is saying about General Soleimani, he was a lawful military objective and the president, under his Constitutional authority as commander-in-chief, had ample domestic legal authority to take him out without additional Congressional authorization, Johnson told MSNBC. Whether he was a terrorist or a general in a military force that was engaged in armed attacks against our people, he was a lawful military objective.
HOMER, La., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Barbara F. Willis M.D., is being recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Pinnacle Lifetime Achiever in the field of Medicine for Adolescent and Child Psychiatry.

Dr. Willis cares for the child and adolescent population of Homer, Louisiana at her private psychiatry practice where quality of life, individualized care and attention are her practice's forefront standards. At her private practice, Dr. Willis evaluates patients through childhood and adolescence using innovative and modern procedures in order to determine what treatments must be carried out in order to properly assess their symptoms, ensuring a successful course of treatment. Dr. Willis's practice boasts over two decades of exceptional care.

Beginning her education at Gambling State University, Dr. Willis earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. Dr. Willis then went on to receive a Medical Degree from Louisiana State University School of Medicine in 1985. Her residency was completed in Internal Medicine at St. Francis Hospital and a resulting fellowship in Adult Psychiatry followed at Louisiana State University. Dr. Willis completed another two years of training at the University of Texas Southwest in Child Psychiatry. Double board certified in Psychiatry and Neurology, Dr. Willis is a distinguished member of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Dr. Willis has been named Top Psychiatrist in Homer, Louisiana, multiple years in a row. She is certified in medical management and individual family therapy. Dr. Willis currently cares for patients, locum tenens which gives her elite clinical experience and positions her as an esteemed medical practitioner in the field of psychiatry.

When Dr. Willis is not caring for patients or performing medical management duties, she enjoys attending concerts and theatrical performances.

Dr. Willis dedicates this recognition to Dr. Roscoe Brown, Dr. Franklin Hill, and her mentor Dr. Graham Emslie.

For more information, please visit http://www.thewaitingroommagazine.com/barbara-willis-md/

Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected]

SOURCE Continental Who's Who

Related Links

http://www.continentalwhoswho.com


Bengaluru, Jan 6 : Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) Director General Trilochan Mohapatra on Monday said the initiation of Farmers' Science Congress, a part of the ongoing 107th Indian Science Congress, is a big encouragement for the farming community.

"Traditionally farmers have been innovating and discussions on those innovations at a Congress like this has many advantages," he said at the first-ever Farmers' Science Congress.

ICAR Deputy Director General Ashok Kumar Singh has played an instrumental role in creating the Farmers' Science Congress platform.

Outlining fourfold benefits for farmers from such a platform, Mohapatra said different innovators can deliberate to learn from each other, discussions can lead to large scale validation of innovations, scientist-farmer interactions can propel innovations to the next level and the wider world will get awareness of the developments.

"As many students, including school children, are attending the Farmers' Science Congress, interest in agriculture can be created right from the school level through interactions," he said.

Mohapatra also said farmers' interaction with fellow farmers at the Congress is a great way to transfer knowledge, and highlighted that the farmers are conserving the biodiversity and local germ plasma.

"If we can give some support to their innovations by way of financial support, innovation validation and market linkage, farmers will be encouraged to continue that," he said.

Mohapatra said many farmer innovations get validated at ICAR institutes across the country, including the 760 Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVK).

"KVKs have been supporting farmers' innovations and documenting them. Once we provide the support, newer avenues can be opened," he said.

The 107th edition of the Indian Science Congress scheduled from January 3-7 is currently underway at the University of Agricultural Sciences here.
On the surface, it made not one iota of sense. The murder of a foreign military leader on his way from Baghdad airport, his diplomatic status assured by the local authorities, evidently deemed a target of irresistible richness. General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region. The words from the Pentagon seemed to resemble the resentment shown by the Romans to barbarian chiefs who dared resist them. This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.

The killing of Major General Qassem Soleimani of Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force in a drone strike on January 3, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraqs Popular Mobilisation Forces, or Hash a-Shaabi and PMF Kataib Hezbollah, was packaged and ribboned as a matter of military necessity. Soleimani had been, according to the Pentagon, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more. He was behind a series of attacks on coalition forces in Iraq over the last several months including attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad on December 31, 2019.

US President Donald J. Trump had thrown caution to the wind, suggesting in a briefing at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that an option on the table would be the killing of Soleimani. The Iran hawks seemed to have his ear; others were caught off guard, preferring to keep matters more general.

A common thread running through the narrative was the certainty  unshakable, it would seem  that Soleimani was on the warpath against US interests. The increased danger posed by the Quds Force commander were merely presumed, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was happy to do so despite not being able to talk too much about the nature of the threats. But the American people should know that the Presidents decision to remove Soleimani from the battlefield saved American lives. (Pompeo goes on to insist that there was active plotting to take big action that would have endangered hundreds of lives.) How broadly one defines the battlefield becomes relevant; the US imperium has decided that diplomatic niceties and sovereign protections for officials do not count. The battlefield is everywhere.

Trump was far from convincing in reiterating the arguments, insisting that the general had been responsible for killing or badly wounding thousands of Americans over an extended period of time, and was plotting to kill may more but got caught! From his resort in Palm Beach, Florida, he claimed that the attack was executed to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.

Whatever the views of US officialdom, seismic shifts in the Middle East were being promised. Iraqs prime minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi demanded an emergency parliamentary session with the aim of taking legislative steps and necessary provisions to safeguard Iraqs dignity, security and sovereignty. On Sunday, the parliament did something which, ironically enough, has been a cornerstone of Irans policy in Iraq: the removal of US troops from Iraq. While being a non-binding resolution, the parliament urged the prime minister to rescind the invitation extended to US forces when it was attacked by Islamic State forces in 2014.

Iranian Armed Forces spokesman Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi promised setting up a plan, patiently, to respond to this terrorist act in a crushing and powerful manner. He also reiterated that it was the US, not Iran, who had occupied Iraq in violation of all international rules and regulations without any coordination with the Iraqi government and without the Iraqi peoples demands.

While the appeals to international law can seem feeble, the observation from the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard was hard to impeach. The targeted killings of Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi Al-Humandis are most [likely] unlawful and violate international human rights law: Outside the context of active hostilities, the use of drones or other means for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal. To be deemed lawful, such targeting with lethal effect can only be used where strictly necessary to protect against an imminent threat to life.

The balance sheet for this action, then, is not a good one. As US presidential candidate Marianne Williamson observed with crisp accuracy, the attack on Soleimani and his companions had little to do with whether [he] was a good man any more than it was about whether Saddam was a good man. Its about smart versus stupid use of military power.

An intelligent use of military power is not in the offing, with Trump promising the targeting of 52 Iranian sites, each one representing an American hostage held in Iran at the US embassy in Tehran during November 1979. But Twitter sprays and promises of this sort tend to lack substance and Trump is again proving to be the master of disruptive distraction rather than tangible action.

Even Israeli outlets such as Haaretz, while doffing the cap off to the idea of Soleimani as a shadowy, dangerous figure behind the slayings of Israelis in terrorist attacks, and untold thousands of Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese and others dispatched by Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Quds Force, showed concern. Daniel B. Shapiro even went so far as to express admiration for the operation, an impressive feat of logistics but found nothing of an evident strategy. Trumps own security advisers were caught off guard. A certain bloodlust had taken hold.

Within Congress, the scent of a strategy did not seem to come through, despite some ghoulish cheers from the GOP. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and chairman of the House Intelligence panel, failed to notice some broad strategy at work. Michigan Democrat Rep. Elissa Slotkin, previously acting assistant secretary of defence and CIA analyst, explained why neither Democratic or Republic presidents had ventured onto the treacherous terrain of targeting Soleimani. Was the strike worth the likely retaliation, and the potential to pull us into protracted conflict? The answer was always a resounding no.

By killing such a high ranking official of a sovereign power, the US has signalled a redrawing of accepted, and acceptable lines of engagement. The justification was spurious, suggesting that assassination and killing in combat are not distinctions with any difference. But perhaps most significantly of all, the killing of Soleimani will usher in the very same attacks that this decision was meant to avert even as it assists Iranian policy in expelling any vestige of US influence in Iraq and the broader Middle East. It also signalled to Iran that abiding by agreements of any sort, including the international nuclear deal of 2015 which the US has repudiated, will be paper tigers worth shredding without sorrow.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
We have much to be grateful for and many reasons to be ecstatic about continued human progress

The 2010s have been the best decade ever. The evidence is overwhelming.

Those are the words of Cato Institute senior fellow Johan Norberg, penned in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal.

Norbergs words seem hyperbolic at first glance, but he may be right. In many ways, the world is getting better every day, and at an explosive rate. This is contrary to mainstream sentiment, where pundits clamor about democracy falling apart, climate catastrophe threatening our very existence, and capitalism failing us.

Yet, the proof is in the pudding, as they say. Data show the past decade has been a story of human flourishing and progress. Here are six facts about human progress that give us reason to be optimistic heading into 2020:

1. Extreme Poverty Is Plummeting

Extreme poverty rates, defined as living on less than $1.90 per day, continue to fall. From 1990 to 2015, the global extreme poverty rate fell from 36 percent to 10 percent. In 2018, it fell to 8.6 percent. This means more than 137,000 people escape extreme poverty every day.

2. More Than Half the World Is Middle Class

This might not shock you at first, but consider that September 2018 was the first time in human history that more than 50 percent of the global population was considered middle class, which amounts to about 3.8 billion people. One huge benefit of this is the demand the middle class places on the global economy, resulting in more entrepreneurial opportunities and increased commerce.

To put this in perspective, only 1.8 billion were considered middle class in 2009. Thats only 26 percent of the global population, meaning proportionally, the percentage of total global population considered middle class grew 92 percent from 2009 to 2018.

3. Global Life Expectancy Is Rising

As Norberg also states in his WSJ column:

Global life expectancy increased by more than three years in the past 10 years, mostly thanks to prevention of childhood deaths. According to the U.N., the global mortality rate for children under 5 declined from 5.6 percent in 2008 to 3.9 percent in 2018. A longer perspective shows how far weve come. Since 1950, Chad has reduced the child mortality rate by 56 percent, and its the worst-performing country in the world. South Korea reduced it by 98 percent.

4. Climate-Related Deaths Are Falling

Norberg also addresses the question, Hasnt this all come at the cost of a despoiled environment? No, he says. At a certain point developed countries start polluting less. To make the point, he cites the falling rate of climate-related mortalities:

Death rates from air pollution declined by almost a fifth world-wide and a quarter in China between 2007 and 2017, according to the online publication Our World in Data. Annual deaths from climate-related disasters declined by one-third between 2000-09 and 2010-15, to 0.35 per 100,000 people, according to the International Database of Disastersa 95 percent reduction since the 1960s. Thats not because of fewer disasters, but better capabilities to deal with them.

5. Life Is Getting Better in the Worlds Poorest Countries

Data from the World Bank show continued progress in the worlds poorest countries, especially in the past two decades. Access to basic drinking water has increased, as has electricity, sanitation, and clean cooking fuel. Data also show decreasing rates of poverty and childhood mortality.

6. The Cost of Starting a Business Has Plummeted in Developing Economies

Burdensome and onerous regulations can prevent individuals from starting their own business, which is one of the best ways to alleviate poverty. Not only is it tricky for the entrepreneur to navigate around excessive red tape, it also ends up costing them more. Thankfully, the cost of starting a business has drastically declined, especially in developing economies. In low- and middle-income economies, the average cost of starting a business was 141.76 percent of income-per-capita in 2004. In 2019, it was just 30.85 percent.

Tyler Brandt is an associate editor at the Foundation for Economic Education. He holds a bachelors in political science from the University of WisconsinMadison. In college, he was an FEE campus ambassador, president of his campus Young Americans for Liberty chapter, and research intern at the John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy. This article was originally published by the Foundation for Economic Education.
Franco-Nevada (FNV)  my top conservative investment idea for the coming year  is a leading royalty company in the gold space, suggests resource sector specialist Adrian Day, editor of Global Analyst.

Despite a consistently strong stock price in recent years, through thick and thin in the gold mining business  the stock is up from under $40 at the end of 2015  we are returning to Franco for the simple reason that it is best-of-class, a true sleep-well-at-night investment.

More from Adrian Day: Fortuna's Fortunes from Argentina to Peru

Francos business model gives it upside exposure but downside protection in the notoriously challenging and volatile mining industry. It acquires royalties (and their cousin, the stream) from mining companies. The mining company might need development capital, or it could want to repair its balance sheet.

In short, Franco makes an upfront payment and in return receives a percentage of the production that comes form the mine. It has been a very successful business, with another record of GEOs (gold equivalent ounces) received.

Although primarily holding gold assets, Franco also generates revenue from other resources, including silver and even oil.

Significantly, Francos newest and largest stream investment, Cobre Panama, a copper mine from which Franco receives the gold by-product, made first deliveries after announcing commercial production September 1st, ahead of guidance. This removes lingering caution on the $1 billion plus recent investment.

Franco has the best management in the mining business. There is currently a changing of the guard at the top, with CEO David Harquail becoming chairman of the board in May, while founder Pierre Lassonde becomes chairman emeritus. Paul Brink, president and chief operating officer, will become CEO.

Both Lassonde and Harquail have outstanding reputations in the gold industry, and will still be heavily involved with the company, while Mr. Brink has certainly proven himself over the years with the very strong transactions he has supervised.

Story continues

See also: Welcome to the Top Picks 2020: 125 Investment Ideas for the New Year

Franco may not be the top-performing gold stock over the next 12 months, but in a positive environment, I envision returns that will satisfy any conservative investor, while the downside for the low-risk business model remains far lower than for the typical gold stock.

Any conservative investor wanting exposure to the gold sector  and I believe this is a good time to be buying gold  should look no further than Franco-Nevada.

(Editor's Note: Adrian Day's Top Pick for conservative investors in 2019 was Gladstone Investment (GAIN) which rose 60% plus a 9.7% yield. He continues to hold the stock noting that insiders are buying, and the stock is an attractive investment for an above-average and growing income stream.)
New Delhi: Delhi Police though has rejected charges of delay in response and said the police held a flag march in the campus late on Sunday evening. Close to 700 police personnel remained deployed outside JNU gates on Monday.

We responded to PCR calls, and law and order situation professionally. FIR has been lodged in the matter. Investigation is underway. Footage is being collected. The case is with Crime Branch now. Besides, Delhi Polices joint CP western range, Shalini Singh, is the head of separate fact-finding committee, said Delhi Police PRO, M.S. Randhawa.

He added that some vital clues have been found and the Crime Branch is working on it.

Union Home minister Amit Shah on Monday spoke with Delhis Lt Governor Anil Baijal on JNU violence, while the secretary of ministry of human resource development called JNU administration and sought a report on Sundays incident. JNU vice-chancellor Jagadesh Kumar was not present in the meeting.

Union HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, who is in Orissa, said educational institutions cannot be allowed to become political adda and promised to take strong action against the perpetrators of violence at JNU.

In an interesting comment that is open to interpretation, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar, an alumni of JNU, said on Monday, When I was in JNU, we did not see any tukde-tukde gang there.

The tukde-tukde term and theory, along with Urban Naxals has been floated by his party, the BJP, to paint Left-wing students as anti-nationals. These terms have been used by Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in their speeches.
Yves here. While youve been preoccupied with the cray-cray in Iraq, Trump has some seriously bad ideas for Afghanistan too.

By Nick Turse a fellow at the Type Media Center and the author most recently of Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan and of the bestselling Kill Anything That Moves. Originally published at TomDispatch

On February 4, 2002, a Predator drone circled over Afghanistans Paktia province, near the city of Khost. Below was al-Qaedas founder Osama bin Laden  or at least someone in the CIA thought so  and he was marked for death. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put it later, both awkwardly and passively: A decision was made to fire the Hellfire missile. It was fired. That air-to-ground, laser-guided missile  designed to obliterate tanks, bunkers, helicopters, and people  did exactly what it was meant to do.

As it happened, though (and not for the first time in its history either), the CIA got it wrong. It wasnt Osama bin Laden on the receiving end of that strike, or a member of al-Qaeda, or even of the Taliban. The dead, local witnesses reported, were civilians out collecting scrap metal, ordinary people going about their daily work just as thousands of Americans had been doing at the World Trade Center only months earlier when terror struck from the skies.

In the years since, those Afghan scrap collectors have been joined by more than 157,000 war dead in that embattled land. Thats a heavy toll, but represents just a fraction of the body count from Americas post-9/11 wars. According to a study by the Costs of War Project of Brown Universitys Watson Institute, as many as 801,000 people, combatants and noncombatants alike, have been killed in those conflicts. Thats a staggering number, the equivalent of the Rwandan genocide of 1994. But if President Donald Trump is to be believed, the United States has plans that could bury that grim count in staggering numbers of dead. The method of war he suggested employing could produce more than 20 times that number in a single country  an estimated 20 million or more Afghans, almost all of them civilians.

Its a strange fact of our moment that President Trump has claimed to have plans (or a method) for annihilating millions of innocent people, possibly most of the population of Afghanistan. Yet those comments of his barely made the news, disappearing within days. Even for a president who threatened to unleash fire and fury on North Korea and usher in the end of Iran, hinting at the possibility of wiping out most of the civilian population of an ally represented something new.

After all, Americas commander-in-chief does have the authority, at his sole discretion, to order the launch of weapons from the vast U.S. nuclear arsenal. So it was no small thing last year when President Trump suggested that he might unleash a method of war that would kill at least 54% of the roughly 37 million inhabitants of Afghanistan.

And yet almost no one  in Washington or Kabul  wanted to touch such presidential comments. The White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department all demurred. So did the chief spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. One high-ranking Afghan official apologized to me for being unable to respond honestly to President Trumps comments. A current American official expressed worry that reacting to the presidents Afghan threats might provoke a presidential tweet storm against him and refused to comment on the record.

Experts, however, werent shy about weighing in on what such plans, if real and utilized, would actually mean. Employing such a method (to use the presidents term), they say, would constitute a war crime, a crime against humanity, and possibly a genocide.

A Trumpian Crime Against Humanity

Massive Soviet military forces have invaded the small, nonaligned sovereign nation of Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter announced on January 4, 1980. Fifty thousand heavily armed Soviet troops have crossed the border and are now dispersed throughout Afghanistan, attempting to conquer the fiercely independent Muslim people of that country. Nine years later, the Red Army would finally limp out of that land in the wake of a war that killed an estimated 90,000 Mujahideen fighters, 18,000 Afghan troops, and 14,500 Soviet soldiers. As has been the norm in conflicts since World War I, however, civilians suffered the heaviest toll. Around one million were estimated to have been killed.

In the 18-plus years since U.S. forces invaded that same country in October 2001, the death toll has been far lower. Around 7,300 U.S. military personnel, contractors, and allied foreign forces have died there, as have 64,000 American-allied Afghans, 42,000 opposition fighters, and 43,000 civilians, according to the Costs of War Project. If President Trump is to be believed, however, this body count is low only due to American restraint.

I have plans on Afghanistan that, if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth. It would be gone, the president remarked prior to a July 2019 meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just dont want to kill 10 million people. In September, he ramped up the rhetoric  and the death toll  further. Weve been very effective in Afghanistan, he said. And if we wanted to do a certain method of war, we would win that very quickly, but many, many, really, tens of millions of people would be killed.

If Americas commander-in-chief is to be believed, plans and methods are already in place for a mass killing whose death toll could, at a minimum, exceed those of the Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Hundred Years War, and the American Revolution combined  and all in a country where the Pentagon believes there are only 40,000 to 80,000 Taliban fighters and fewer than 2,000 Islamic State militants.

President Trump claims hed prefer not to use such methods, but if he did, say experts, his Senate impeachment trial could theoretically be followed by a more consequential one in front of an international tribunal. Of course, any method of war that would kill 10 million people or tens of millions of people in a country where the fighting force consists of 40,000 to 80,000 would be a blatant violation of the laws of war and would render President Trump a war criminal, Daphne Eviatar, director of the Security with Human Rights program at Amnesty International USA, told TomDispatch.

Max Pensky, the co-director of the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at the State University of New York at Binghamton, agreed. Carrying out such a plan would certainly be a war crime because of the context of the armed conflict in Afghanistan, he said. And it would absolutely be a crime against humanity. He noted that it might also constitute a genocide depending on the intent behind it.

The United States has, of course, been a pioneer when it comes to both the conduct and the constraint of warfare. For example, General Orders No. 100: Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on April 24, 1863, represents the first modern codification of the laws of war. The principle has been more and more acknowledged that the unarmed citizen is to be spared in person, property, and honor as much as the exigencies of war will admit, reads the 157-year-old code. All wanton violence committed against persons in the invaded country, all destruction of property not commanded by the authorized officer, all robbery, all pillage or sacking, even after taking a place by main force, all rape, wounding, maiming, or killing of such inhabitants, are prohibited under the penalty of death, or such other severe punishment as may seem adequate for the gravity of the offense.

More recently, however, the United States has set the rules of the road when it comes to borderless assassination. In asserting the right of the military and the CIA to use armed drones to kill people from Pakistan to Yemen, Somalia to Libya, through quasi-secret and opaque processes, while ignoring previous American norms against targeted killing, questions about national sovereignty, and existing international law, the U.S. has created a ready framework for other nations to mimic. In October 2019, for example, Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted that he would assassinate Mazloum Kobani, the head of the Syrian Democratic Forces and a key U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria. Some countries eliminate terrorists whom they consider as a threat to their national security, wherever they are, Erdogan said. Therefore, this means those countries accept that Turkey has the same right.

Historically, the United States has also pioneered the use of weapons of mass destruction. While a White House spokesperson would not address the question of whether President Trump was alluding to the use of nuclear weapons when he claimed that Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth, its notable that the United States is the only country to have used such weaponry in an actual war.

The first nuclear attack, the U.S. strike on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, left that city uniformly and extensively devastated, according to a study carried out in the wake of the attacks by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. The surprise, the collapse of many buildings, and the conflagration contributed to an unprecedented casualty rate. Between 60,000 and 80,000 people were killed instantly. The final death toll, including those who later perished from the long-term effects of radiation sickness, was estimated at 135,000 to 150,000. An atomic attack on Nagasaki, carried out three days later, was calculated to have killed another 50,000 to 75,000 people.

Theoretical War Crimes and Real Civilian Deaths

Just days before mentioning the possibility of annihilating tens of millions of Afghans, President Trump took the Taliban to task for killing 12 people, including 10 Afghan civilians and one American soldier, in a car bombing while peace talks with the militant group were underway. At the time, he tweeted: What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position? Weeks later, he would clear three military service members of war crimes, one of them convicted of murdering two Afghan civilians, another charged with the murder of an Afghan man.

Amnestys Daphne Eviatar believes that the presidents disregard toward the lives of civilians may have led to less precise American attacks in recent years. Weve seen a dramatic rise in civilian casualties from U.S. military operations since Trump took office, including in Afghanistan, she told TomDispatch.

An October report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), analyzing the war from July to the end of September 2019, documented the highest number of civilian casualties it had recorded in a single quarter since it began systematically doing so in 2009. During the first nine months of last year, in fact, UNAMA tallied the deaths of 2,563 civilians and the wounding of 5,676 more  the majority by anti-government forces, including the Taliban and ISIS. UNAMA found, however, that pro-government forces, including the U.S. military, killed 1,149 people and injured 1,199 others in that period, a 26% increase from the corresponding timeframe in 2018.

Of course, such numbers would be dwarfed were Donald Trump to decide to win the Afghan War in the fashion he hinted at twice last year, even as peace talks with the Taliban were underway. Johnny Walsh, a senior expert on Afghanistan at the United States Institute of Peace and a former lead adviser for the State Department on the Afghan peace process, chalked Trumps purported plans up to a rhetorical flourish and doubts they actually exist. I am not at all aware of any plan to escalate the conflict or use nuclear weapons, he told TomDispatch.

Whether or not such plans are real, civilian casualties in Afghanistan continue to rise, prompting experts to call for additional scrutiny of U.S. military operations. Its tempting to dismiss some of the Presidents more provocative statements, said Amnestys Daphne Eviatar, but we do need to take very seriously the exponential increase in civilian casualties from U.S. military operations since 2017 and ensure every one is thoroughly and independently investigated, and the results made public, so we can know if theyre the result of an unlawful Trump administration policy or practice.

As 2020 begins, with Americas Afghan war in its 19th year and progress as nonexistent as ever, a beleaguered president continues to mull over just how to end Americas endless wars (while seemingly expanding them further). Under the circumstances, who knows what might happen in Afghanistan? Will 2020 be the year of peace or of Armageddon there  or will it simply bring more of the same? With a president for whom plans may be more figurative than literal, all of this and the fate of perhaps 20 million or more Afghans remain among the great unknown unknowns of our time.
Irans clerical leadership, under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamenei, is expected to make rapid, significant, and symbolic responses to the targeted killing in Baghdad on January 3, 2019, of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Maj.-Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

It seems unlikely that the Iranian response would initially be to launch a military assault on Israel, which it has been planning, but, rather, something which could target the oil production and exports of the US key allies in the region: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, in particular (but not exclusively). The event was not only decisive for the US-Iranian dynamic, but it will also have long-term structural effects on the supply of oil and gas.

This will particularly impact (negatively) the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and, positively in the short-term, Russia. This comes at a time when the PRC economy is already suffering severe degradation, so the net effect of a significant rise in oil prices would be to accelerate the PRC recession, which would, in turn, significantly impact the global economy as 2020 progressed.

This could, then, have an impact on the US November 2020 Presidential and Congressional elections, although the decline in the PRC economy was always going to have an impact on the US during the year in any event. The pivotal event of the killing of Soleimani seems likely, therefore, to ensure that the US and the PRC will now work to cement a trade resolution as quickly as possible.

Certainly, in the short-term, there is likely to be a significant uptick in the ongoing Iranian-directed attacks by Shia militia units against US military facilities in Iraq, as well as the mobilization of terrorist and subversive actions against US bases and facilities in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere.

It is increasingly evident that the Iranian clerical leadership under the ailing Ayatollah Khamenei had, until the shock of the decisive US attack which killed Soleimani and several other key officials, completely misread the resolve and intent of its two major nemeses, the US and Israel, and had been preparing to act on those faulty perceptions.

Misreadings of the situation have contributed to the belief within the Khamenei circle that it was now possible to militarily confront and destroy Israel, as Yossef Bodansky described in a report on October 21, 2019. Some Iranian clerical leaders have stated that it was also possible to see the removal of the US from the Persian Gulf and wider Middle Eastern region, even as a precursor to minimizing the engagement in the region of Russia, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), and current Iranian ally Turkey.

Khamenei appeared at the beginning of 2020 to believe that he could resolve his dramatically worsening domestic problems by a major political-military demarche which would somehow overturn Irans strategic fortunes. Lt.-Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri similarly sought  and failed  to reverse his Argentine military governments fortunes by invading the Falkland Islands in 1982, as an eleventh-hour bid to cling to power.

It has become clear that the formal Government of Iran, under Pres. Hojjat olEslam Hasan Fereidun Rouhani, had, probably by mid-2019, become completely sidelined in terms of actual policymaking.

Supreme Leader Khamenei, supported by key leadership elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC: Pasdaran) has, since around mid-2019, been increasingly contemplating some form of unprecedented foreign adventurism, based on a misreading of the regional and global strategic situation, as a means of compensating for a declining internal security situation. Perceptions of Iranian military successes in Yemen, which were, in reality, failures of the Saudi-led coalition fighting there, created in Tehran the belief that Iranian forces could sweep all before them.

In basic terms, clerical Tehran seems unwilling to take the necessary measures to satisfy domestic political-economic problems  which are, admittedly, difficult  while at the same time allowing itself to believe that the doorway is open to it to successfully undertake great military successes outside of Irans borders. It thinks the domestic challenges are too hard (and, anyway, it fears to show weakness to a domestic audience), and the foreign opportunities are too easy. Related: Protect The Oil: Trumps Top Priority In The Middle East

The Iranian Government-orchestrated attack  using combatants of the Hashd alShaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces)  on the US Embassy compound in Baghdad, Iraq, on December 31, 2019-January 1, 2020, seemed to have been an attempt by the Tehran leadership to probe the strength and willpower of the US Government in the region; or, conversely, it may have been a reflection of a growing lack of realism in Iranian strategic decision making. The Iranian government denied involvement in the attack on the US Embassy, but the clear linkage between the Hashd al-Shaabi leadership and Gen. Soleimani was evident in the airport strike on January 3, 2019.

Either way, the US response to the attack on its embassy was not the one Tehran was hoping to see. Whether or not it was a probe of US response or a lack of realism in Tehran, the attack highlighted a growing tendency by the clerical Administration under Supreme Leader Khamenei to seek an external distraction from the growing domestic unrest in Iran. As French statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord was reputed to have said (on an entirely different matter) to Napoleon I: It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder. But, realistically, what options did Tehran have to break out of the strategic straight jacket the US had placed on it?

Clearly, the Iranian domestic situation would not have become so pressing had the increasingly-isolated clerical leadership of the country undertaken more effective economic and political management, but, in the short-term, Tehran opted to break out where it could, and that was in the soft-target areas among US allies in the region. And, indeed, the clerical leadership had, by January 3, 2020, predictably begun to attempt to exploit the killing of Gen. Soleimani as a full US war against Iran.

The Baghdad Embassy attack did not, of course, lead to a US backdown, but rather to an increase in US force commitment to the region, albeit a response which had been as carefully as possible measured to avoid allowing the Iranian clerical leadership to lure the US into a direct confrontation with Iranian forces.

There is persuasive evidence that Ayatollah Khamenei would welcome a direct US-Iranian military confrontation, given the precedent set in 1980 when Khameneis predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was facing overthrow by a discontented Iranian populace only a year or so after he seized power.

The September 22, 1980, Iraqi attack on the Iranian city of Khorramshahr, across the Shatt al-Arab river began the eight-year Iran-Iraq War which cost Iran as many as 500,000 dead and another 400,000 wounded, and a cost to the treasury of Tehran of some $561-billion in direct terms (and much more in long-term damage to the Iranian economy). But, for Khomeini, it was worth the price: his clerical leadership was saved because the Iraqi attack diverted domestic attention toward the patriotic endeavor of saving Iran from outside forces.

Moreover, the Iran-Iraq war made it clear that the ultimate defeat of Iran by purely military means was a difficult objective for any power, whether Iraq or the US. It remains so. Terrain issues (size and topography), coupled with a deeply-rooted sense of Persian national pride, mean that any military adventure against Iran could only succeed as a cost-effective measure if it was aided by internal collapse or weakness.

Even the 19th Century loss of Persias northern lands of Daghestan, eastern Georgia, much of Azerbaijan, and northern Armenia to Russia (under the Treaty of Gulistan) was not merely the result of the Russo-Persian War of 1804 to 1813, but also because of the reality that the then-ruling Qajar dynasty in Persia was in decline. Even Russia did not contemplate a full-scale invasion and occupation of the core of Iran where geography and the tenacity of the local tribes would have made such a conquest difficult.

Persian collapse or defeat, historically, has (as with most countries) been the result of internal failure rather than military action from abroad, and, in the case of Persia or Iran only when its core strengths have been sidelined. Those core strengths are the identity given to the populace by Zoroaster (core religion or ethical values, prevailing since pre Islamic times), Cyrus the Great (sense of martial prowess and national identity), and Ferdowsi, the poet (culture, and the creation of Persian epic greatness with Shahnameh, the Book of Kings).

What is significant is that the Khamenei clique  very much including his son, Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, who led the Basij militia to suppress Iranian voters in the 2009 election  have built their hopes on strategic distractions which have not appealed to these core Persian tenets, but, rather, have opposed them.

So what was evident by late 2019 and the beginning of 2020 was pressure by the Iranian clerical leadership (and therefore also the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps: Pasdaran) to actually seek military confrontation with the US and/or Israel on terms which could be portrayed to the Iranian population as an external aggression on the Iranian motherland. Equally, US Pres. Donald Trump is at pains to deny the clerics this opportunity. And the Israeli national security community is equally at pains to avoid a strategic first strike to avert the prospect of an Iranian strategic strike.

The attack on the Baghdad US embassy compound by militia groups associated with the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) appeared to be aimed at accelerating a US withdrawal from Iraq and the Persian Gulf, and was clearly modeled on the November 4, 1979, attack by Iranian students on the US Embassy in Tehran. How then-US Pres. Jimmy Carter responded  or failed to decisively respond  to that event gave the Khomeini Administration its license to proceed further against its domestic opponents.

The Baghdad Embassy event was well-orchestrated but was clearly not generating the response which the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad was seeking. The Iranian Ambassador to Iraq is the former Deputy Commander of the Quds Brigade of the IRGC, Brig.-Gen. Iraj Masjedi, who continued to work closely with Quds Brigade Commander Maj.-Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Maj.-Gen. Soleimani was known to be close with Ayatollah Khamenei, so the Baghdad Embassy operation was clearly orchestrated from the top of the clerical administration.

There is, then, little ambiguity in the Iranian ruling clerics position. Khamenei pointedly stood down Pres. Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on May 14, 2019, from any negotiations with the US, a week after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had visited Baghdad and reportedly met with a senior Iranian official.

The only question is whether Khamenei will pull the trigger on a major confrontation, possibly with Israel, before domestic Iranian security concerns deteriorate to the point of no return. What is significant is that, as with the Argentine gamble to invade the Falkland Islands in 1982, little thought has been given to the second- and third-tier effects of launching a major conflict against Israel.

There is no question that the IRGC, and possibly the Iranian Armed Forces, are basing their hope of destroying Israel on their ability to saturate the Israeli Rafael/Israel Aircraft Industries Iron Dome national air defense system. And, indeed, Iran has done much to upgrade its available technology toward this end. Firstly, it has dramatically increased the numbers of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles based in Lebanons Beqaa Valley and in Iraq hard up against the Syrian border.

Secondly, it has increased the quality and lethality of those missiles. As Yossef Bodansky has described in reports by this Service (see, particularly, the report of October 21, 2019), precision guidance modification kits have been provided to many of the ballistic missiles and rockets being used by Iranian-controlled HizbAllah forces in Lebanon and HAMAS forces in Gaza.

HAMAS forces fired some 450 rockets from Gaza into Israel during November 2019, and Iron Dome intercepted some 86 percent of them. Clearly, as the HAMAS and HizbAllah forces add precision guidance to their systems, an 86 percent kill rate  assuming that could be sustained through a protracted saturation strategy  would be insufficient to protect Israel. The Israeli Defense Forces are aware of that. Moreover, the reality is that Iran is now ready for another attempt at overwhelming Iron Dome. The system became operational on March 27, 2011, and by late October 2014 had intercepted more than 1,200 rockets.

The new approach by Iran would depend on more than just ballistic missiles and rockets, and would certainly include the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which Iran successfully employed against Saudi air defenses, particularly in the September 14, 2019, strike against the oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais in eastern Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the movement of heavier Iranian ballistic systems onto the Iraq-Syria border holds the implication that Iran is considering deployment  or has already deployed  strategic (nuclear) warheads, with the option that a saturation of Iron Dome could provide an opening for the use of counter-city weapons against Israel.

What this thinking ignores is that any use of strategic weapons by Iran or Iranian proxies against Israel would be countered by an Israeli second-strike capability, quite apart from Israels own first-strike weapons. Iran does not have a material second-strike capability and would suffer significantly if it escalated to a nuclear exchange. So the only option being considered by Iran is that an Iranian first strike against Israel would be sufficient to destroy all Israeli combat capabilities.

This would be a true gamble for Tehran, and, as tensions built, it would be likely that the US would bolster Israeli air defense capabilities through the deployment of offshore-based Aegis assets and associated anti-ballistic missile capabilities. Iran has probably already attempted to deploy some of its Russian-built S-300 air defense missile systems to protect Irans forward-deployed offensive ballistic systems against pre-emptive Israeli strikes. [Israel launched targeted missile strikes on December 22, 2019, against Iranian targets in Syria, allegedly killing the Commander of the IRGCs Aerospace Force, AmirAli Hajizadeh. Iranian reports said that Syrian air defense batteries intercepted Israeli missiles, but clearly not all.]

What is known is that Iran had, by late 2019, deployed its Bavar-373 to T-4 (Tiyas Military Air Base; The Syrian Arab Air Forces largest base) in Homs Governorate, in Central/Western Syria, to protect its forward deployment. Some key components of the batteries are positioned far too close to Russian facilities for Israel to attempt to destroy them. The Russians are not happy. The Bavar-373, tested initially in August 2016, is claimed by Iran to be comparable to the Russian S-300 air defense system. It was only formally unveiled on August 22, 2019.

So a big question mark is held over the question of where Russia would stand in all of this. Or the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).

Almost certainly, Moscow would not support such Iranian adventurism, and is already aware that Iran is escalating regional tensions to a degree unacceptable to Russia. The bottom line is that Russia cannot afford to lose any of its allies in the region: Iran, Turkey, or Syria. Neither, however, can Moscow realistically control Iran; it has in some respects more leverage over Turkey and Syria, although Turkey is anything but an easy management task.

Turkish Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdo?an keeps ignoring Russian Pres. Vladimir Putins advice mainly on the matter of Libya, Syria, Central Asia/Xinjiang/Afghanistan, and the Caucasus/Crimea. And while Russia has some means of pressuring Erdo?an, the reality is that the economically-embattled Pres. Erdo?an knows that Moscow cannot afford to break with Ankara at this time. Similarly, the matter of who needs who the most impacts Russian relations with Iran, as well as Beijings relations with both Iran and Turkey.

But a severe degradation of Israel would be as detrimental for Russia as for the US, giving dominance in the Eastern Mediterranean to Turkey and Iran. Russia has already expressed its concern over Turkish plans expressed by the Turkish-Libyan maritime agreements concluded on November 27, 2019, with the rump pseudo-government  the Government of National Accord  of Libya under Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj. Russia supports (as does Egypt) the essentially anti-Turkish and far more nationally representative Administration of Tobruk-based Gen. Khalifa Haftar.

Another scenario is possible: Irans slide into domestic chaos may preclude an opportunity for the Khamenei team to launch a diversionary conflict with Israel. It could call for all forces to focus on the maintenance of domestic stability, possibly invoking a martial law edict. This, as we have noted before, could possibly have seen the rise of Quds Force Commander, Maj.-Gen. Qasem Soleimani, entering Iran  crossing the Rubicon, in a sense  to act as martial law administrator.

That, in itself, could start to see the end of the clerical era in Iranian governance. Soleimani is now gone. Is there another military leader who could emerge to galvanize a transition from the clerics? Related: IEA: An Oil Glut Is Looming

GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Senior Editor Yossef Bodansky noted in the hours just before the target-killing of Maj.-Gen. Soleimani:

The key recent decision in Tehran was regarding the latest attacks against the US airbases in Iraq, and these few attacks were driven by domestic developments in the Shiite community of Iraq.

Oversimplified: There is a growing schism among the Shiites over their identity as part of the Iran-led Shiite World (the Fatah movement, the Hashd al-Shaabi, etc.) or a distinct leading part of the Shiite World on the basis of the erstwhile glory of Najaf and Karbala (Muqtada Sadr leads this trend).

The imminent death of Iraqi Shia leader Ayatollah Ali Husseini Sistani, 89, escalates the struggle between these factions over who will succeed him. In September 2019, Soleimani brought Sadr to Khameinei in Tehran to discuss a deal whereupon Tehran would accept the ascent of Shiite Arabism in return for greater control over Iraqs strategic/energy. Sadr accepted but then sent his minions to riot in the streets in order to gain more concessions from Tehran, but lost control over them. Hence, Tehran ordered the provoking of a crisis with the US in order to mobilize and unify the Shiite community against the Great Satan (starting with the siege on the US Embassy over the December 31, 2019-January 1, 2020 timeframe).

While Tehran did not expect, and does not relish, the extent of the US response, and while both Beijing and Moscow criticize the anti-US crisis while they improve strategic cooperation with Iran (such as the four-day naval exercise held between Russia, the PRC, and Iran, beginning on December 27, 2019, in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Oman), Tehran cannot project weakness and cannot lose dominance over Shiite Iraq.

Hence, the anti-US/anti-Israel incidents will keep coming and escalating. How far? Who knows 

Clearly, Iran can be expected to lash out significantly and relatively quickly. Tehran needs to sustain the momentum of the perception that the US represents an existential threat to the Iranian state, and not just to the clerical Administration. And what the clerics fear most is that the West may well turn to appealing to the tribal interests of various Iranian populations, who persist in seeing the clerics as their main adversary.

By Gregory R. Copley and Dr Assad Homayoun, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs

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She held her head to one side, sending her blonde tresses cascading down to one side and went makeup free for the holiday picture.

Amber's poolside fun was hampered during her getaway by a foot injury that left her forced to wear a thick support boot on Friday.

On Monday she captioned her post: 'Never let a boot get in the way of your dreams.'

It is not known how Amber hurt herself, but she went straight to the doctors after landing back in Canada.

Doctors: Amber's poolside fun was hampered during her getaway by a foot injury that left her forced to wear a thick support boot on Friday

She later posted a video bemoaning the end of her holiday to her Stories.

Amber said: 'If you squint your eyes it's almost like Hawaii again, right?'

It comes as Amber's next TV miniseries The Stand, based on the Stephen King post-apocalyptic epic, is due out this year.

Style: It is not known how Amber hurt herself, but she went straight to the doctors after landing back in Canada

She will play Nadine Cross, opposite Alexander Skarsgard and Whoopi Goldberg, among others.

Her romantic thriller Run Away With Me, also due out this year is in pre-production and Aquaman 2 has been announced for 2022.

Amber remains embroiled in a defamation lawsuit with her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, 56.

'Oh Vancouver': She later posted a video bemoaning the end of her holiday to her Stories. Amber said: 'If you squint your eyes it's almost like Hawaii again, right?'

He sued Amber earlier this year for $50 million for defamation over an op-ed that she wrote in The Washington Post in December 2018.

They married in 2015 and Amber filed for a divorce in May 2016 before it was finalised in January 2017.

Amber and Johnny met in 2011 while filming The Rum Diary together.
I love creativity, and one of the most fruitful uses of creativity is landing a job. You have to set yourself apart from the crowd.

Over the years, I've encountered some very creative ways people have found jobs, and I would like to share some of my favorites with you.

Social media is a great way not only to meet potential employers, but also a place to post some of your work or start a blog. How about creating your own website?

Enhance your resume by adding images, graphs, color and design. Make a video. One person even wrote a song.

Send some extra special items with your cover letter and resume, such as cupcakes, cookies, a box of chocolates or doughnuts that spell out your name. As hokey as that may sound, it can work.

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I really get a kick out of crazy stunts. Like sending a potential employer a shoe with a resume and a note, "Just wanted to get my foot in the door." One guy took out a billboard touting his qualifications. I've heard people doing radio ads and creating an imaginative brochure or direct-mail piece. Still another sent a singing telegram praising her skills.

One reader shared with me that when she was looking for a job, she went to the Atlanta airport and passed her resume out to dozens and dozens of business travelers. She thought this would be a good idea, since a high percentage of travelers during the week are on business. As she passed out her resumes, she told the recipient to please give it to a decision-maker.

"It was incredible how many phone calls I received!" she said. She had several interviews and got a "great job in medical sales."

Another individual I personally counseled was zero for 100 in trying to crack the advertising ranks right out of college. She went to one of the top ad agencies in Minneapolis and offered to work for free for six months to get her foot in the door. It ended up in a permanent job.

One woman who had been out of work for four months saw an ad for her dream job with a local TV station. The standard tactic -- a cover letter and her resume -- netted absolutely nothing. So she launched a more imaginative campaign, which included letters from the fellow she was dating, from her lawyer, from her 80-year-old mother, even from her priest, who wrote, "I'm enclosing this in hopes that you will hire" the woman. "It's depressing to look at her sad face, and besides, we haven't had a donation from her in months." She got the job.

Steve Schussler, founder of Rainforest Cafe and a good friend, had a dream of working in sales for a radio station in Miami. He went to a container company and purchased a wooden barrel large enough for him to fit in. Then he went to a costume shop and rented a Superman outfit, complete with blue tights, red shoes and cape. He paid two friends to deliver him in the crate to the radio station manager's office. As it turned out, the manager was in a board meeting, but they insisted he come out, which he did with the entire board. When they finally slid the lid away, Steve flew out of the crate like a jack-in-the-box, gasping for breath. He smiled at everyone and announced, "I'm your new super salesman." One of the board members said, "Son, you are the sickest person we've ever met. You're hired."

One of my all-time favorite job stories happened years ago, when my youngest daughter was graduating from the University of Michigan. Seated up in the rafters, I watched thousands of graduates parade across the stage collecting their sheepskins. Suddenly, a roar went up from the crowd. A female student was walking across the stage with a placard on top of her graduation cap. In huge white letters were the words, "I need a job." After the program ended, businesspeople were falling all over themselves to give her their cards.

Did she land a job because of her creativity? I don't know, but I do know that 8,333 graduates without jobs sure wished they had thought of it first.

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Mackay's Moral: Creativity has no script; it is inspired ad-libbing.
The representatives of the Delhi-based Buddhist outfit, Bhartiya Baudh Sangh on Monday, January 6, met BJP working president JP Nadda at his residence in support of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Along with them, representatives of the Christian community were also present at the meeting.

Representatives of Christian and Buddhist communities met BJP National Working President Shri @JPNadda in support of Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, in New Delhi. #IndiaSupportsCAA pic.twitter.com/RSX9e9JzwD  BJP (@BJP4India) January 6, 2020

BJP's CAA awareness rallies

Amid the protests around the CAA and the National Population Register (NPR), BJP has planned to undertake an outreach program to clear the "misconceptions" of the same. This was decided after BJP's top brass met in a high-level meeting chaired by working president JP Nadda.

As per sources, BJP's top leadership including Home Minister and party president Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will take part in the awareness campaigns from January 1 to January 15. On Sunday, Amit Shah and Smriti Irani held a door-to-door campaign to spread awareness about CAA.

Read: Hold investigation, arrest those responsible for JNU violence: Union Minister Athawale

The party's first rally to spread awareness about the CAA was carried out on Friday, December 27 in Mumbai of which former Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis and other leaders were a part of it.

Read: What is the JNU truth? As videos help piece together what transpired, here's Arnab's view

Protests against CAA

The Citizenship Act was passed in the Lok Sabha on December 9 and then by the Rajya Sabha on December 11. The Act seeks to grant Indian citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. Through this bill, Indian citizenship will be provided to the members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities, who have come from the three countries to India till December 31, 2014, and put an end to them being treated as illegal immigrants in the country.

Read: BJP slams 'political sultan' Asaduddin Owaisi; accuses him of hiding truth about CAA & NRC

Several protests erupted after the passing of the bill and ended up taking a violent turn. The protests initially erupted across Assam, West Bengal, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, following the violence at Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi where over 50 students were detained by police during the protests. The anti-CAA movement has spread to more places like Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pondicherry, Patna and so on.

Read: Tajinder Bagga challenges Konkona Sharma to 'prove anti-CAA protest video is doctored'

(WITH ANI INPUTS)
US Official Claims Iran Missile Forces Across Country Are On Heightened State of Alert - Report

Sputnik News

23:51 05.01.2020(updated 01:29 06.01.2020)

On Friday, a US drone attack killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) elite Quds Force in Baghdad, prompting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to state that Tehran will take revenge for what it views to be a terrorist action by Washington.

An unnamed US official claimed that Iranian missile forces across the country were on a "heightened state of alert", noting that the US military have been closely watching for further moves by Tehran, Reuters reported.

According to the report, the official said that "it was unclear whether the higher readiness level was defensive in nature or not".

"They're clearly at a heightened state of alert. Is that heightened state of alert to be better prepared defensively or to be better prepared offensively? That can't be determined at this point," the official said, cited by Reuters.

The report comes on the heels of a rocket attack that targeted the Green Zone in central Baghdad, where government buildings and diplomatic facilities are located.

According to an Iraqi military statement, six katyusha-type projectiles late on Sunday hit the area, with three shells hitting the heavily-fortified Green Zone and three others striking the nearby Jadriya area.

Tensions in the Middle East sharply escalated following the assassination of Soleimani, the IRGC commander of the Quds Force, as well as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of an Iraqi Shia militia group, in a targeted US attack on Friday.

US President Donald Trump claimed the recent strikes were a preemptive, defensive move to prevent war, although later boasted that Washington had identified 52 Iranian military and cultural targets at which US forces were ready to strike. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated that Tehran will take revenge for what it views to be a terrorist action by the US.

A Sputnik

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Iran ends nuclear limits

The consequences of the American killing of a top Iranian general rippled across the Middle East and beyond on Sunday, with Iran all but abandoning a landmark nuclear agreement and Iraqi lawmakers voting to expel American forces from their country.

Steeling for retaliation from Iran, an American-led coalition in Iraq and Syria suspended the campaign it has waged against the Islamic State for years, as hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the street to mourn the general, Qassem Soleimani .

Warning Iran not to attack, President Trump said the United States had pinpointed 52 targets in Iran  including cultural sites. Mr. Trump also directed his anger at Iraq, warning it not expel American forces, and pointing to an air base the United States built there. Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it, he said. (New York Times)

Featured stories

Killing of Soleimani follows long push from Pompeo for aggressive action against Iran, but airstrike brings serious risks (Washington Post)

Pelosi says House will vote on war powers resolution this week (CBS News)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection denies detaining Iranians, Iranian Americans (ABC News)

Graham threatens to take matters in our own hands if Pelosi doesnt send articles of impeachment to Senate (NBC News)

Jeffrey Epsteins death looks like murder, not suicide, forensic expert tells 60 Minutes (CBS New York)

National news

Solidarity march against anti-Semitism: Thousands rally in New York after attacks (New York Times)

Tour bus involved in deadly multivehicle crash on Pennsylvania Turnpike was coming to Ohio (cleveland.com)

South Carolina airport officer dies in shooting (Fox Charlotte)

Boeing has uncovered another potential design flaw with the 737 Max (CNN)

One Mississippi prison escapee still at large, one in custody after days of riots, bloodshed (USA Today)

Shooting that killed 1-year-old, wounded man in South Dallas was targeted and deliberate, police chief says (Dallas Morning News)

Vehicle runs over seagulls in Maryland parking lot after theyre lured by popcorn (cleveland.com)

Pa. police want to find person who released bed bugs inside Walmart store (pennlive.com)

Mother gives birth to twins born on different days, months, years and decades (ABC News)

World news

1 U.S. service member, 2 DOD contractors killed in terror attack on U.S. base in Kenya (ABC News)

Blood-red skies loom over southeast Australia after deadly bushfires bring one of worst days ever (CNN)

Libya conflict: Turkey sends troops to shore up UN-backed government (BBC)

Japan in principle could press Lebanon to extradite ex-Nissan boss Ghosn: Japan minister (Reuters)

U.S. plans for Venezuela hit turbulence as Maduro tries Assembly takeover (Politico)

Six dead after car plows into German tourists in northern Italy (CNN)
City workers clean out a tent encampment Monday where people who are homeless had been staying at 18th and Vine Streets. Read more

A homeless encampment that began two years ago on the walkway along Vine Street between 17th and 18th Streets was cleared away on Monday morning, a tiny community razed in 40 minutes with rakes, shovels, and a garbage truck.

Workers from Philadelphias Department of Parks and Recreation removed 18 tents from the space  technically park land stretching about two-thirds of a block and consisting of dirt, trees, and gray paving stones  located between the I-676 trench and the rear of a building that is part of the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul.

Eight people were asked to leave the site Monday morning; 14 had vacated in previous weeks.

The move was one of three carried out Monday by the city, which also swept away tents on grassy areas near I-676 ramps at Fifth and Wood Streets and 16th and Wood. About a half-dozen people were living at those locations, city officials said.

Met with consternation by Vine Street encampment residents and conflicted feelings by advocates for the homeless, the citys actions were undertaken with sensitivity as well as ample warning periods, officials said. Further, tents were taken down with the knowledge that beds were available for everyone being displaced.

Encampments in Center City have increased in the last year, according to Sister Mary Scullion, executive director of Project HOME, the homelessness advocacy agency. Rents are increasing and income is not," she said. About 900 people live on Philadelphia streets, Scullion said.

The Vine Street encampment had grown from two or three tents in 2018, according to advocates for the homeless. For about a month, they and city officials had been cautioning tent residents that the encampment would be taken down. A sign placed at the spot by city workers said the clear-out would occur Monday.

Of the eight people who had slept in the tents between Sunday night and Monday morning, six were relocated to shelters or other housing, city officials said. The other two walked off.

No camping

The city evicted the people who had been living there based on laws prohibiting camping in city parks. Jennifer Bennetch, a protester who was once homeless, showed up with a poster reading, They are not camping. They are existing.

She also pointed out, as did others, that the Parks and Recreation sign, which was meant to serve as the validating reason for clearing the site, also referred to a rule prohibiting "discrimination against persons based on their economic status in the use of public property.

Thus, Bennetch said, the city was evicting homeless Philadelphians using a law that cautioned against prejudice aimed at those in poverty.

The sign is hilarious, said Marsha Cohen, executive director of the Homeless Advocacy Project, which offers legal services to people who are homeless. Youd think the city would have reviewed it.

Put up around Thanksgiving, the sign was augmented by a new one on Dec. 2, which cited city codes that didnt clear things up. Taken together, the signs essentially describe the strip of land on which the encampment sat as both a park and a sidewalk.

The city wasnt sure which it was, Cohen added.

City officials are looking into the confusion.

But, Cohen stressed, the muddled message did not detract from what she and other advocates described as the good job the city did in finding living quarters for those who were evicted.

David Holloman, chief of staff for the citys Office of Homeless Services, said, The goal here is to help those in need. Its not criminalizing people. Its an effort led by social services. Its winter, and its important to get people inside.

The city has shut down similar encampments over the last several years, many of them in Kensington and marked by heavy opioid use.

That was not the case on Vine, according to Carol Thomas, director of homeless services for Project HOME, which partners with the city and other nonprofits to perform street outreach.

Most people were not using drugs, and quite a few were couples, Thomas said.

I dont have a lot

Mark Jones, 54, a widower and former barber who had lived in a tent at the site for two months, said he wasnt upset about having to leave. I dont have a lot here to begin with," he said. "Just a bag of laundry Ill be taking with me to live with my aunt in North Philadelphia.

Others were not so sanguine.

Its horrible to move us, said a woman who had lived in a tent and did not want to be identified. These are really poor people.

A man who called himself B.K. said hed been thriving at the encampment, adding that his doctor had been impressed with his physical condition since B.K. had been living outdoors.

We were doing good," he said, "but then the city comes and takes your stuff. Im upset.

Cohen said that days like Monday make her feel conflicted.

We are opposed to moving people along because of complaints from the public, she said. But people need special services. And do we really want them living outside in 30-degree weather?"

City officials said any personal items that the Vine Street homeless residents wanted to keep will be stored in lockers for 60 days. The tents, most of which were destroyed, did not belong to the people sleeping in them, officials said.

Homelessness has become more of a national issue since President Donald Trump said in September that Americans, especially in California, are fed up with people living on the streets. Trump has suggested that those who are homeless should be rounded up and warehoused.
By Trend

Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov has approved the Turkmen side's composition of Hungary-Turkmenistan intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation, Trend reports with reference to the president's decree.

On January 20-21, the meeting of the Turkmenistan-Hungary intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation will be held in Budapest. Turkmen Minister of Finance and Economy Batyr Bazarov will participate in the meeting.

More than ten representatives of the Turkmen Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs will attend the event.

As was reported earlier, businessmen involved in agriculture, textile industry, agriculture, bread baking and poultry keeping will discuss the spheres of cooperation with Hungarian partners.

Hungary is interested in increasing import of chemical products, oil and gas processing products from Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan is learning from Hungarian experience in improvement of irrigation systems and water resources management.

Turkmenistan and Hungary signed an intergovernmental convention on the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of tax evasion in respect of taxes on income and capital in June 2016.

The diplomatic relations between the countries were established in 1992.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Paniak noted the case of a 5-year-old suburban Chicago boy, Andrew "A.J." Freund, who died despite having a long history of contact with the agency. He was found last year beaten to death in a shallow grave not far from the family's Crystal Lake home. His parents have been charged with murder, a federal lawsuit has been filed and two state employees have been fired amid an ongoing internal investigation.
Five people were killed and about 60 were injured on the Pennsylvania Turnpike early Sunday morning, when a loaded bus went out of control on a hill and rolled over, setting off a chain reaction that involved three tractor-trailers and a passenger car.

The injured victims, ranging from 7 to 67 years old, are all expected to survive, though two patients remain in critical condition, authorities and hospital officials said Sunday afternoon. The crash, which happened at 3:40 a.m. on a mountainous and rural stretch of the interstate about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh, shut down the highway in both directions for several hours before it reopened Sunday evening.

The bus, operated by a New Jersey-based company called Z & D Tours, was traveling from Rockaway, N.J., to Cincinnati, Ohio, Pennsylvania State Police spokesman Stephen Limani told reporters.

He said the bus was traveling downhill on a curve, careened up an embankment and rolled over. Two tractor-trailers then struck the bus. A third tractor-trailer then crashed into those trucks. A passenger car was also involved in the pileup.

Photos from the scene show a mangled collision of multiple vehicles including a smashed FedEx truck that left packages sprawled along the highway.

"It was kind of a chain-reaction crash," Limani said.

FedEx did not provide any other details besides that they are cooperating with authorities. A message seeking comment was left Sunday with the bus company.

Limani would not identify those killed or say which vehicles they were traveling in.

"I haven't personally witnessed a crash of this magnitude in 20 years," Pennsylvania Turnpike spokesman Carl DeFebo told WTAE, calling it the worst accident in his decades-long tenure with the turnpike. "It's horrible."

Excela Health Frick Hospital in Mount Pleasant said it treated 31 victims, transferring a child and three adults to other facilities.

Hospitals brought in teams of social workers and psychologists to deal with the mental trauma, said Mark Rubino, president of Forbes Hospital, which treated 11 victims.

"The people coming in were not only physically injured but they were traumatized from a mental standpoint as well," he said. Most were covered in diesel fuel when they arrived. The hospital treated fractured bones, brain bleeds, contusions, abrasions and spinal injuries.

The victims included students and people returning from visiting family in New York City. Many traveling on the bus were from outside the United States, Limani said, some of whom do not speak English and who lost their luggage and passports in the wreckage.

The Tribune-Review reported Leticia Moreta arrived at a hospital about 11:30 a.m. to pick up her children  Jorge Moreta, 24, and Melanie Moreta, 16  who were on the bus.

She said her children, returning from visiting their father in New York, were in stable condition.

"I was devastated," she said.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Exactly what caused the crash remains unknown, and Limani said it could take weeks or months to determine. The National Transportation Safety Board dispatched a team to investigate.

Officials said it was too early to determine if weather was a factor in the crash.

Angela Maynard, a tractor-trailer driver from Kentucky, said the roads were wet from snow but not especially icy. Maynard was traveling eastbound on the turnpike when she came upon the crash site and called 911.

"It was horrible," she told The Tribune-Review. She saw lots of smoke but no fire. She and her co-driver found one person trapped in their truck and another lying on the ground.

"I tried to keep him occupied, keep talking, until medical help arrived," Maynard said. "He was in bad shape. He was floating in and out of consciousness."

The crash left families terrified and scrambling.

"I was crying," said Omeil Ellis, whose two brothers were on the bus. "I was like crazy crying. I'm still hurt."

Ellis, from Irvington, N.J., told The Tribune-Review that his brothers were traveling to Ohio for work. He was planning to meet them a few days later. But both of his brothers, one of them 39 years old and one 17, were sent to hospitals.

"I'm just weak right now," he said.
Iran: Prime Minister calls for de-escalation of crisis

Boris Johnson has warned the Iranians not to attempt retaliation or reprisals against America following the assassination of Qassim Soleimani. In his first intervention in the crisis, the Prime Minister said he will be speaking to all sides to urge calm and de-escalation, setting Britain up as a mediator between the United States and a more cautious Europe. It came as three rockets landed near the US embassy in Baghdad. Donald Trump said the United States would quickly and fully strike back, possibly in a disproportionate manner if any US person or target was hit. If they do anything there will be major retaliation, Mr Trump told reporters later on board Air Force One, doubling down on a threat to bomb Iranian cultural sites.  Daily Telegraph

Johnson consults with Merkel and Macron  FT

He adds that he does not lament death of general  The Sun

Zaghari-Ratcliffes husband seeks urgent meeting  The Guardian

More:

Iran says the nuclear deal is dead  The Times

Trump threatens Iraq with sanctions  Daily Mail

Opposition:

McDonnell demands that Johnson condemn drone strike  The Sun

London protesters say Trump is the terrorist  The Times

>Today: ToryDiary: We need strategic clarity. What poses the greater danger to Britain  Iranian aggression abroad or Sunni extremism here?

>Yesterday: ToryDiary: Trump and Iran. Whats the plan?

as Raab warns US that strike could make terrorism worse

Dominic Raab today defended Americas decision to kill Iranian military chief General Qasem Soleimani and warned that a war will only make terrorism worse. The Foreign Secretary called for calm in the region after a series of frantic phone-calls with Iraq, the US and other European allies in the wake of the crisis. But he said he was sympathetic with President Trump ordering a drone attack on him in Baghdad on Friday, and described him as a regional menace The Foreign Secretary said he was working to try and stabilise tensions in the Middle East, and stressed that a war is in no ones interest. The only people who would gain would be Daesh, he said. No one wants, I dont think anyone benefit from a war in the Middle East.  The Sun

But adds that UK is on the same page over killing  The Guardian

Ministers summoned to crisis meeting  Daily Mail

More:

Tehran threatens to kill British troops  The Times

UK is soft target for revenge attacks  Daily Telegraph

Regime tried to kidnap British journalist  Daily Express

Analysis:

Iran is on the back foot  David Patrikarakos, Daily Telegraph

Regime fears onslaught but must respond  Catherine Philp, The Times

>Today: Ruth Edwards MP in Comment: The Iran crisis should spur us to upgrade our cyber defences

>Yesterday:

Ex-mandarin tells Cummings to shift stance on civil servants

Dominic Cummings should stop denigrating senior civil servants by lumping them together as part of the same Oxbridge-educated, dinner party elite if he wants to build the necessary support in Whitehall for ambitious reforms to the government machine, one of the countrys most respected former mandarins has warned. Sir David Normington served as permanent secretary at the Department for Education and then the Home Office between 2001 and 2010; from 2011 to 2016 he was first civil service commissioner, in charge of ensuring the effective working and neutrality of Whitehall. He told the Observer success for the prime ministers chief adviser would depend on building support across government, not alienating key players within it.  The Guardian

If Cummings picks fights hell misfire badly  Clare Foges, The Times

Work for Cummings at your peril, but his take on the states flaws is not without merit  John Naughton, The Guardian

Johnson to press Von der Leyen for swift trade talks

Boris Johnson will urge the president of the European Commission this week to push on with trade talks as he seeks to secure a deal with the EU by the end of the year. The prime minister will host Ursula von der Leyen in No 10 for opening talks on Britains post-Brexit trade deal with the EU on Wednesday. Mr Johnson is being urged by some ministers, including Liz Truss, the trade secretary, and Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, to hold trade talks with the EU and the US in parallel. They argue that doing so will give Britain more leverage in negotiations with the EU. Other ministers, however, feel that doing so could jeopardise chances of getting a deal by December.  The Times

Senior Tories urge him to pursue parallel talks with the US  Daily Mail

Percy says decision on HS2 must be made as soon as possible

Boris Johnson must make a decision on HS2 as soon as possible in the wake of a report that suggested the whole project should be scrapped, a former Northern Powerhouse minister has said. Andrew Percy, who served in Theresa Mays Government, yesterday urged a decision on the rail link to provide certainty for people in the North of England. A review into HS2 was postponed before the election but a leaked draft of its report suggests it will recommend the project is continued. Writing in yesterdays Sunday Telegraph, Lord Berkeley revealed he had conducted his own review into the project and concluded that it will make the taxpayer a 40bn loss. Mr Percy said HS2 should not be scrapped in favour of other investment in northern rail, as Lord Berkeley suggests, but Mr Johnson must make the decision quickly.  Daily Telegraph

Official who quit warns it will top 100 billion  The Times

Figure rejected by other officials  FT

Ministers warned that taxpayers could lose 40 billion  The Sun

Parliament misled over cost, says Labour peer  The Guardian

>Yesterday: Video: WATCH: Lord Berkeley claims that HS2 is out of control financially  and that figures have been fiddled

Jo Johnson advises against cutting tuition fees

The prime ministers brother, Jo Johnson, has warned against a proposal to cut university tuition fees. The younger, remain-supporting Johnson  who was universities minister until September when he resigned from government citing an unresolvable tension between his family loyalty and the national interest  argued that lowering student fees would do grave damage to higher education finances. The former Tory MP, who stepped down at the election and is now chairman of the group that owns the Times Educational Supplement, said cutting fees would also be very bad politics. The Conservative manifesto pledged to consider a review by former financier Philip Augar last year that recommended reducing fees from 9,250 to 7,500.   The Guardian

Carlaw readies Scottish Tories for policy pivot as leadership race begins

Jackson Carlaw has warned the Scottish Tories they will have to ditch some of their keystone policies to seize the political centre ground as nominations for the party leadership open on Monday. Mr Carlaw, the partys interim leader, said that some even well established positions will have to be abandoned as he set out a leadership platform based on blue-collar Conservatism. He also warned the Tories that attacking the tired, uninspiring and vainglorious SNP government is not enough, and his party must raise our game, with less than 18 months to the next Holyrood election. In a reference to the upcoming Alex Salmond trial for alleged sexual offences, which he denies, Mr Carlaw warned the party cannot rely on sensational events which we all know are coming and it must craft an alternative offer for Scotland.  Daily Telegraph

Dr Dan Poulter: Johnson must satisfy new Tory voters by unifying NHS and social care systems

More than that, to build trust with its new voters, the government will need to show a sceptical public that it has a genuine and enduring commitment to our public services and to valuing those who work for them. It will need to show voters that it is on their side and understands their daily concerns, many of which centre around public services such as the NHS. All this is not to say that the Conservative government should not seek value for money, efficiency savings and productivity gains where they can be found. But holding on to its new voters requires a fundamental recognition that the free market is sometimes the problem, not the answer, and that voters want and need a government to deliver for them through the arm of the benevolent state and properly funded public services.  The Guardian

Starmer splits with Phillips over another EU referendum

Sir Keir Starmer declared that the election result blew away the chance of a second EU referendum as he launched his campaign for leadership of the Labour Party yesterday. Sir Keir, the frontrunner in the race, brought the partys Brexit divisions to the fore, as his rival Jess Phillips said that she would be willing to fight for Britain to rejoin the European Union. I have a Leave seat but I campaigned for Remain because I thought it was the best thing for the people I represent and the best thing for the country. Im not going to change my mind on that, Ms Phillips said In contrast, Sir Keir insisted that Labour must move on from Brexit and on to the discussion about Britains future relationship with the EU. Sir Keir said Labour should have taken a stronger position one way or the other on Brexit and that people wanted clarity on the issue.  The Times

Party could campaign to rejoin if she wins  Daily Telegraph

or has she already backed off the idea?  Daily Express

Comment:

Every candidate for Labour leader must play to the hard left  Denis MacShane, The Times

Candidates problems are their values, not their accents  Nick Timothy, Daily Telegraph

>Yesterday:

as hard left warned not to skew leadership playing field

Jeremy Corbyns allies have been warned not to skew Labour leadership rules to block supporters of moderate candidates from having a say in the partys succession. Labours ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) will meet on Monday to set the timetable for the race to replace Mr Corbyn, which is expected to formally start the following day. MPs last night voiced fears the hard-Left of the party will launch a bid to rig the leadership contest by changing the rules for new members and preventing moderate entryism. It came amid reports moderates within the party were urging tens of thousands of people to join  or to return to the party after quitting since Mr Corbyn came in. Some of their techniques echo the campaign group Momentums efforts in the run up to Mr Corbyns victory in 2015.  Daily Telegraph

Moderates fear stitch-up by Corbyns allies  The Times

Candidates distance themselves from the leader  Daily Telegraph

and the manifesto  Daily Telegraph

More:

Khan blames Corbyn for election defeat  Daily Express

Nandy says Labour patronised voters  The Sun

>Today: Richard Holden MPs column: The Red Wall. My part in its downfall. How I won North West Durham  Labour since its creation.

>Yesterday:

News in Brief:
A Maharashtra minister on Monday joined the protest by students at the Gateway of India here against the JNU violence, which state Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said reminded him of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.

Maharashtra minister Jitendra Awhad of NCP joined the students at the overnight protest and sat with them for a while. "When people fear intellect, there is anarchy," the minister told reporters.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar said JNU students were subjected to a cowardly and planned attack.

"JNU students and professors were subjected to a cowardly but planned attack," he said. "Use of violent means to suppress democratic values and thought will never succeed," Pawar added.

Asserting that students in Maharashtra were safe, Thackeray said he will not tolerate any move to hurt them.

"The attack on JNU students on Sunday night reminded me of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack. I will not allow anything like JNU to happen here in Maharashtra...students are feeling unsafe in the country," he told reporters here.

Terming the masked attackers at JNU as "cowards", Thackeray said their identity should be revealed.

"If Delhi Police fail to find out perpetrators of the attack, then they will also be in the dock," he said.

At the Gateway of India in south Mumbai, students shouted slogans condemning the violence.

After the protest began on Sunday midnight, a group of students held a candlelight vigil to show solidarity with the JNU students.

Youngsters, mostly students from different colleges in Mumbai, assembled on pavement across the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel near the Gateway of India to condemn the violence.

It was an "impromptu assembly at a short notice", a student said.

Meanwhile, NCP workers staged a protest outside the BJP office in Mumbai to show solidarity with JNU students. They shouted slogans against Home Minister Amit Shah. They were taken into custody, police said.

Violence broke out in JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
"Initial casualties indicate that 28 students of the military academy were killed and 18 others were injured as a result of an airstrike by foreign air force supporting the war criminal Haftar (commander of eastern-based army)," the UN-backed government's forces said in a statement.

The UN-backed government's forces posted photos on their official Facebook page showing bodies and injured students, as well as ambulances rushing to the academy's headquarters in Tripoli.

The eastern-based army has not committed on the airstrike so far.

The eastern-based army, led by General Khalifa Haftar, has been leading a military campaign in and around Tripoli since early April, trying to take over the city and topple the UN-backed government.

Thousands have been killed and injured in the fighting, and more than 120,000 people fled their homes from the violence.
At least 28 people, including JNU Students Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured.

People protest against the alleged attack on JNU students at Gateway of India on Monday. (Photo: Debasish Dey)

Mumbai: Several hundred people on Monday assembled at Hutatma Chowk in Fort to protest against the alleged attack on the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi.

Violence had broken out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, after which the police conducted a flag march. At least 28 people, including JNU Students Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured.

At Hutatma Chowk, police maintained a strong presence and were seen asking protesters to not spill onto the massive junction that leads to important areas like Mantralaya, Cuffe Parade, Colaba, Churchgate and Marine Drive in south Mumbai.

Besides, hundreds of students and activists carried out a march from Hutatma Chowk to Gateway of India on Monday. Aazadi slogans were raised at the protest, officials said. Protesters were carrying placards and shouting slogans condemning the violence they claim was perpetrated by the RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and other outfits linked to the ruling BJP.

Students also carried out a candlelight march. Youngsters, mostly students from different colleges in Mumbai, assembled on the pavement across the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel near the Gateway of India to condemn the violence.

It was an impromptu assembly at a short notice, a student said.

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) minister Jitendra Awhad also joined the students at the protest and sat with them discussing their demands.

When people begin to fear intellect, there is anarchy, the minister told reporters.

I am going to convey the feelings of the students to the government. When students agitate, one should understand that this is a serious issue, he said.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar said JNU students were subjected to a cowardly and planned attack.

JNU students and professors were subjected to a cowardly but planned attack, he said. Use of violent means to suppress democratic values and thought will never succeed, Mr Pawar added.

Meanwhile, NCP workers staged a protest outside the BJP office in Mumbai to show solidarity with JNU students. Th-ey shouted slogans again-st Home Minister Amit Shah. They were taken into custody, police said.
The Patna High Court on Monday directed the Bihar government to submit a report with detailed description of the measures taken to ensure learning and of visually impaired students in the state.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Anil Kumar Upadhyay gave the direction on a PIL filed by Raj Kumar Ranjan, seeking direction to the government to open a school for visually impaired girl students at Jagdishpur block of Bhagalpur district.

The petitioner's counsel, Brisketu Sharan Pandey, submitted that a single-room centre for the visually impaired was currently operational at Jagdishpur, which could accommodate around 30 students.

The counsel further contended that the petitioner had donated land for a school, but the state took no initiative in this regard.

Underlining the significance of the matter, the court extended the ambit of the petition to the whole of the state, in the interest of public, and asked the chief secretary to file a counter affidavit within three weeks, stating the measures taken by the government for the of visually challenged students.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dubai will play host to SiTL Middle East, a brand-new trade show focused on providing the latest developments in the transport and logistics sector. to be held at Dubai South from November 16 to 18.



Organised by Reed Exhibitions, the event is set to provide an effective platform for government and industry stakeholders from across the Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA) to access leading technologies that increase efficiency and reduce costs in logistics operations.



The debut edition of SiTL Middle East is set to welcome over 120 exhibitors and more than 2,000 visitors, including regional distribution managers and logistics professionals keen to take advantage of the latest trends in innovations and solutions that could boost business efficiency and profitability.



In addition, the event will be an important venue for key officials from various countries to hold bilateral discussions, while the UAE Government and other leading commercial entities will highlight the countrys major efforts in building a global hub supported by world-class facilities and services.



Khalifa Al Zaffin, executive chairman of Dubai Aviation City Corporation (DACC) and Dubai South, said: Dubai South is committed to make significant contributions towards expanding the capabilities and strengths of the Middle East as an important hub for global logistics and e-commerce. Our vision is in line with Dubais and the UAEs strategy for sustainable growth and continued global leadership.



Through SITL ME, we will be gaining new insights and opportunities to grow in terms of technology and innovation, which is essential in the drive towards efficiency and sustainability in business operations and management. We are confident the event will bring about these key focus areas which are highly important for both the government and private sectors.



Nadia Abdul Aziz, president of Dubai-based National Association of Freight and Logistics (NAFL), said: The UAEs logistics sector has been an early adopter of modern technologies which positioned the Arab worlds second biggest economy as a world-class business hub. Dubai had taken a proactive role in planning its development in terms of logistics facilities, zones and investments. We have the best connectivity in the region to reach out to more than three billion population via our both air and sea/rail connectivity.



Trade/e-commerce is part of the governments strategy for the future. Logistics passport has been launched, a first of its kind initiative, and also a reward scheme for logistics and freight companies by Dubai Customs World. Under the Dubai Plan 2021, logistics-related targets are prominent. The strategy has an economic component that aims for the city to become one of the top five logistics centres in the world. Dubai has also launched a new Silk Road Strategy aiming to establish the emirate as a global trade and logistics hub, she said.



SiTL Middle East will feature seven major segments, including intra-logistics, robotics and automation; packaging and pallet; technologies, IOT and information systems; new energy and transport equipment; real estate and logistics infrastructures, and safety and cybersecurity.



It will also hold a conference supported by key partners from Reeds global networks in its logistics events, including a Demo Zone where one can experience world-class equipment and solutions, including customised tours. Reed Exhibition also brings to the region its highly acclaimed BusinessConnect, a dedicated buyers and matchmaking programme which will host over 100 top buyers from the region and arrange pre-scheduled meetings for exhibitors to optimize business opportunities.



Daniyal Qureshi, Group Exhibition director, Reed Exhibitions, commented: SiTL ME is poised to bring a valuable portfolio of activities to the well-established SiTL Europe which leverages the global recognition of the SiTL brand and shares their best practice in the Middle East.



Across its current portfolio of market leading events in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Reed Exhibitions brings nearly 4,500 exhibitors and over 109,000 visitors from 170 countries to the UAE and SiTL ME will be a major new event that would boost the countrys global position as a strategic venue for major events.



According to the World Banks Logistics Performance Index 2018 ranking, the UAE stands 13th out of 160 countries, outstripping Canada, France, Finland, Denmark and Australia. The Middle East logistics market is seen to reach $66 billion by end of 2020, according to Swisslog Middle East, the robotic, data-driven and flexible automated solutions provider.



The UAEs e-commerce sector alone is currently worth $17.8 billion, representing 45.6 per cent of the total value of the Middle Easts e-commerce market. A thriving e-commerce industry in Mena is expected to be worth $28.5 billion by 2022, while the global logistics industry will touch the $726 billion mark by 2020.



A Technavio report highlighted that the global logistics market between 2020 and 2024 is poised to grow by $287.1 million, progressing at a CAGR of nearly five percent, driven by consumer goods, automotive, food and beverage and healthcare.  TradeArabia News Service
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Now, Hyderabadis need not visit police stations to lodge complaints. This New Year, the Hyderabad police have introduced a citizen-friendly and hassle-free initiative, wherein people can lodge complaints with the patrolling vehicle staff in their respective localities.

Hyderabad Commissioner of Police Anjani Kumar, on Sunday, said that citizens can lodge written complaints along with their addresses and mobile numbers to the patrolling car officers in their respective areas to get a case registered. "For the registration of FIRs, people need not come to the police station anymore. We have started a new initiative this New Year," Anjani Kumar said.

Hyderabad police started this initiative to avoid unnecessary issues that usually crop up in stations when complainants approach the police. The new rule will be applicable to all the police limits in the city.
7th Pay Commission: When will the new DA hike be effective from

7th Pay Commission: After DA hike, HRA likely to go up

7th Pay Commission: This would be their last hope

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Jan 06: The Central Government employees may get some good news on the 7th Pay Commission.

Reports state that ahead of the Budget Session, the government may announce a pay hike or increase in Dearness Allowance for the CG employees.

The last assurance regarding a hike in the basic minimum pay was made in the year 2016. Talks have not progressed since then. Following the assurance, the CG employees had hoped that some announcement would be made in the Cabinet meeting.

While the Cabinet had only announced a hike in the DA, there was no news regarding the increase in basic minimum pay or fitment factor.

7th Pay Commission: What to expect in 2020

There is however no confirmation that the salaries would be hiked. The CG employees have been demanding that their basic minimum pay be hiked to Rs 26,000. The 7th Pay Commission had recommended a pay hike of Rs 18,000, which the CG employees had said was not sufficient.
An investigation is underway after a man was shot to death Monday in Kingston.

Birmingham police responded to the 4400 block of Ninth Avenue North about 11:15 p.m. when Shot Spotter indicated gunfire in the area. As officers were responding to the area, they received another call of a person shot.

Officers arrived on the scene and found a man wounded inside his vehicle at 11:20 a.m. He was pronounced dead on the scene in the back of the Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service rescue truck.

Birmingham police identified the victim as Douglas Paige. He was 34 and from Fairfield.

Sgt. Johnny Williams said the preliminary investigation shows that there was an altercation between four people, including the victim. The victim retreated to his car when someone fire shots into the sedan. At least two shots were fired.

Williams said they do not have any suspects in custody but have possible identities on some or all of those involved. Detectives are going door to door in the neighborhood.

Multiple family members were at the scene, including Paiges mother.

The slaying comes just more than 12 hours after the citys first homicide of 2020. A woman was shot to death Sunday night in the first homicide for the new year countywide.

East Precinct officers were on patrol when they heard shots fired about 10 p.m. As they were investigating, they received a call about a person shot. They found the victim on the front porch of a home at 3838 39th Court at 10:21 p.m. The woman was taken to UAB Hospital where she was pronounced dead at 11:09 p.m. Her identity has not been released but authorities said she is an adult white female.

This is a developing story and more information will be released as it becomes available. Anyone with information is asked to call Birmingham homicide detectives at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.
The remains were found at Pima Canyon in the Coronado National Park, south east of Tucson, Arizona: Getty/iStockphoto

A 21-year-old man has been arrested in Arizona on suspicion of stealing a car belonging to a person reported missing last year  and local police believe the case could be connected to a grizzly incident in which mountain lions were found devouring unidentified human remains on a nearby hiking trail.

Daylan Jacob Thornton was picked up by the Pima County Sheriffs Department on 3 January after being found in possession of the vehicle registered to Steven Mark Brashear, 66, who left his home in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, on 7 December and subsequently disappeared.

Brashear was last seen visiting a restaurant in Oro Valley, Arizona, according to local police, before being picked up by an unknown person in a different vehicle to the grey Audi SUV he had set out in and has not been seen since.

His mobile phone was reportedly traced to the area but never recovered.

The authorities now say Thornton is a person of interest in the Brashear case and believe the body found being eaten by the lions on New Years Eve in Pima Canyon  part of the Coronado National Park lying south east of Tucson  could be that of the missing man.

The animals are not believed to have killed the person themselves but were nevertheless shot by game wardens who considered them a danger to the public after they proved fearless when confronted by officers seeking to reclaim the remains, which were subsequently submitted for autopsy and analysis.

The decision to kill the lions, following consultation with experts, provoked a public outcry but was deemed necessary given they had torn the clothes from the corpse and could be expected to regard humans as food from now on.

We thought the risk was too great and we had to take action, Mark Hart of the Arizona Game and Fish Department told CBS News. Mountain lions are not routinely scavengers. Mountain lions prefer live prey and theyre very good at killing live prey. And theres abundant javelina and deer in the Catalina foothills so why it happened in this case, were just not sure.

The Pima Sheriffs Departments said its investigation into Thorntons possible connection to Brashear is in the early stages and more information will be released as it becomes available.
- President Rodrigo Duterte had an emergency meeting with officials of concerned government agencies regarding the rising tension between the United States and Iran

- According to the Armed Forces of the Philippines, President Duterte ordered the military to prepare for the possible repatriation of OFWs in Iran

- Reports claimed that there are about 1,600 Filipinos in Iran and 6,000 OFWs in Iraq

- It was also reported that the attack against Iran was ordered by US President Donald Trump

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Recently, President Rodrigo Duterte conducted an emergency meeting with concerned government agencies over the rising tension between the United States and Iran.

KAMI learned that President Duterte ordered the military to prepare for the possible repatriation of thousands of overseas Filipino workers (OFW).

In a report by the Manila Bulletin (authored by Argyll Cyrus Geducos), President Duterte met with the officials of the Philippine National Police (PNP), Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Department of National Defense (DND), Philippine Army, Navy, and Air Force.

President Duterte discussed with the officials the countrys contingency plans to ensure the safety of the OFWs in the Middle East.

The President has tasked the AFP to prepare its air and naval assets to evacuate and bring home our countrymen if and when open hostilities erupt in the Middle East that may endanger their lives, the AFP said in a statement.

It has been reported that there are about 1,600 Filipinos in Iran, while there are 6,000 Filipinos in Iraq.

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According to the Philippine Star, the tension between Iran and the US began when the head of Irans Quds Force, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, was killed at the Baghdad airport. As per the US Department of Defense, the strike was ordered by US President Donald Trump.

It was also reported that the Iraqi group Kataib Hezbollah was blamed by the US for launching a rocket attack that killed a US civilian contractor in Iraq.

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Source: KAMI.com.gh
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 17:55:57|Editor: Yurou

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TOKYO, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday encouraged a deescalation of tensions in the Middle East, calling on all parties involved to step up diplomatic efforts.

Expressing his "deep concern" over a recent spike in tensions after the United States conducted an airstrike on Baghdad killing a top Iranian general last week, with Iran vowing retributions, Abe said parties involved should "exhaust diplomatic efforts" to ease tensions.

"With heightened tensions in the Middle East, I'm deeply concerned about the current situation. A further escalation of the situation should be avoided and I ask all parties involved to exhaust diplomatic efforts to ease tensions," Abe said during his first press conference of the year.

Abe said that Japan will continue to try and mediate between its U.S. ally and Iran, the latter of which Japan maintains friendly ties with, as part of its own diplomatic efforts.

The Japanese leader mentioned no change in its decision made last month to dispatch the nation's Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) personnel to the Middle East, despite rising tensions and public opposition, as well as concern over post-war military constraints restricting the nation's military activities constitutionally.

Japan has decided to conduct its information-gathering and security operations independent of a U.S.-led coalition to ensure maritime security in the Strait of Hormuz, saying that the MSDF will stay away from the strait near Iran in a bid to maintain its friendly ties with Tehran.

Under the current plan, the MSDF could be deployed to the region for around one year, with the duration being extended if approved by the Cabinet.

The strait is a key gateway for oil from the Middle East to reach resource-poor Japan.

Japan relies on the Middle East for the majority of its oil.
Reports Monday that the U.S. would soon withdraw all its forces from Iraq were turned on their heads minutes later when U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters there were no plans to pull up stakes.

'There's been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq, period,' Esper said, adding that he and his staff were 'trying to figure out' the meaning of a letter signed by a brigadier general that suggested the opposite.

'There are no plans to leave,' he emphasized, suggesting discussion of a massive troop movement could be merely a signal that forces are being repositioned inside Iraq's borders.

Separately, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told reporters that the letter was 'a draft. It was a mistake. It was unsigned. It should not have been released.'

The draft was 'poorly worded' and 'implies withdrawal. That is not whats happening,' Milley declared.

The U.S. military had appeared to inform Baghdad that it was preparing for 'movement out of Iraq,' a day after the Iraqi parliament urged the government in a non-binding resolution to oust foreign troops.

The head of the Pentagon task force in Iraq, Brigadier General William Seely, sent a draft letter to the head of Iraq's joint operations command.

'Sir, in deference to the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq, and as requested by the Iraqi Parliament and the Prime Minister, [the coalition] will be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement,' Seely wrote. He added: 'We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure.'

Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters Monday that the U.S. had not decided to withdraw forces from Iraq, despite a letter saying otherwise written by a general in charge fo the anti-ISIS coalition there

Some 5,200 U.S. soldiers are stationed across Iraqi bases to support local troops preventing a resurgence of ISIS

The Pentagon said this letter, informing an Iraqi military leader the the U.S. and other coalition forces are pulling up stakes, was a draft and should never have been sent

While the letter was real, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told reporters that it was only a draft that should never have been released; Milley is pictured last week at President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort

President Donald Trump said Sunday aboard Air Force One that troops would not leave Iraq unless the country compensated the U.S. for the costs associated with building and maintaining military facilities there.

'We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time,' he said. 'We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it.'

Trump also said he would punish Baghdad economically if U.S. troops were evicted.

'We will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame,' he warned.

Yet Iraqi premier Adel Abdel Mahdi met with the U.S. Ambassador Matthew Tueller on Monday, telling him it was 'necessary to work together to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq.'

A Pentagon official said Monday evening he was not surprised Seely was working on a draft of the letter that was released prematurely.

The official explained that military commanders who are stationed inside foreign countries routinely inform their host nations about troop movements.

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he would only withdraw troops if Iraq paid the U.S. for building and maintaining the main air base the coalition uses

Seely's letter, he said, was likely part of a contingency plan initiated when the Defense Department first contemplated the possibility of a troop pullout.

The president ordered a withdrawal from Syria in October with little notice, catching commanders in the field by surprise.

The Pentagon source said that experience has weighed on some generals' minds and informed their decisions about executing practical tasks, like notifying local officials about near-term plans, that go along with tactical movements in the field.

Seely's letter was designed mainly to alert Iraqi commanders about nighttime helicopter flights that would ferry Marines and soldiersout of Baghdad in the event the White House were to order a mass evacuation.

On Sunday, Iraq's parliament voted in favor of the Baghdad government rescinding its permission for all foreign troops to remain in the country.

That came in reaction to a U.S. precision drone strike on Baghdad that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and top Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, among others.

The resulting chaos has made some in Iraq fear a new civil war, and drew millions to crowd streets in Tehran to see Soleimani's coffin paraded through the city.

Iran is considering its options against America in retaliation for the killing of Quds commander Qassem Soleimeni in Baghdad. The conflict could quickly spiral out of control, dragging in other world powers including Russia, Turkey and China

Key figure: The letter from the Marine general in charge of coalition forces fighting ISIS and training the Iraqi army comes after the drone strike which killed Iran's Qassem Soleimani, its most senior commander who the U.S. designated a terrorist

And tensions betweeen Washington and Tehran aren't going away: The U.S. will send six B-52 bombers to the Diego Garcia air base on an island in the Indian Ocean, accordign to CNN, to prepare for the possibility of military action against Iran.

Gen. Seely wrote on Monday in order to reposition thousands of troops elsewhere, 'Coalition Forces are required to take certain measures to ensure that the movement out of Iraq is conducted in a safe and efficient manner.'

The letter was signed by a U.S. official on Pentagon letterhead, making it unclear whether it applied to forces from the 76 countries which make up the international coalition.

An Iraqi defense official confirmed the letter was real and had been delivered.

Officials said helicopters would be traveling in and around the Green Zone as part of the preparations.

Reporters could hear helicopters flying low over Baghdad throughout the night on Monday.

Some 5,200 U.S. soldiers are stationed across Iraqi bases to support local troops preventing a resurgence of the ISIS terror group.

They make up the bulk of the broader coalition, invited by the Iraqi government in 2014 to help combat the jihadists.

Soleimani's death has galvanized Iranians around revenge for the 'martyr'; Hundreds of thousands crowded into Tehran streets to see his coffin on Monday

Ending America's 17-year military presence in Iraq is a risky undertaking for the country.

Iraq was barely starting to recover from a devastating four-year war against ISIS when the mass uprising against the country's ruling elite erupted on Oct. 1, forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi two months later. He hasn't been replaced.

A pullout of U.S. troops could cripple the fight against ISIS militants and allow the extremists to make a comeback.

Militants affiliated with ISIS routinely carry out attacks in northern and western Iraq, hiding out in rugged desert and mountainous areas. Iraqi forces rely on the U.S. for logistics and weapons in pursuing them.

An American withdrawal could also enable Iran to deepen its influence in Iraq, which like Iran is a majority Shiite country.

'It is not that simple,' Lebanese political analyst Ibrahim Bayram said. 'This will increase the complications inside Iraq, the conflicts and contradictions ... and the clash, both political and non-political, between the Iranians and Americans.'
The Incredible Dr. Pol is a tremendous success on NatGeo WILD and no one is more surprised than Dr. Pol himself. At the age of 77, the last thing he ever thought he would be at his age is famous. But he and his wife, Diane, have taken the fame and attention in stride and with great grace.

Dr. Jan Pol and his wife, Diane, of The Incredible Dr. Pol | The Walt Disney Company/Image Group LA via Getty Images

Part of fame for the large and small animal doctor is dealing with those people who supposedly seek out medical attention for their pets, simply for the opportunity to be on television.

Find out how the Michigan veterinarian handles these delicate moments, plus how hes learned to live with his life on display.

Fame was not at all what the Pols were looking for

The Pol family was just minding their own business in 2011 when their son Charles approached Dr. Pol and his wife, Diane, about the possibility of their practice being featured in a reality show.

In addition to being a show producer, Charles is also a cast member.

At the time, I was working in Los Angeles at Nickelodeon and trying to sell ideas for reality shows, he explained to NatGeo WILD in 2014. My first idea was turned down, and I was advised to find an idea with a larger than life character. I immediately thought of my dad. I pitched the project to a production company, we filmed a sample episode, and my idea became reality.

Dr. Pol says hes grateful that people enjoy the show and learn about animals from it. The show makes people happy, he told Parade in 2018. My wife, Diane, and I treat others like we want to be treated: honestly and fairly. I think it comes through how we have positive attitudes. My glass is half full, never half empty.

Dr. Pol on having his life on display

Imagine going from your current life today to having cameras and lights following your every move tomorrow? Thats an enormous adjustment to make, but one that Dr. Pol and his staff have gotten used to in their practice. Its just another day on the farm or in the office for them.

Parade asked the doctor if he was comfortable having so much of his personal life on display for all the world to see. Yes, because I think that is part of the show, too. Through this show, we are helping so many people, Im completely in awe about it. We have had so many people that come to us. . .

People that have cancer, that are on chemo, a mother came from Kentucky to visit us. We didnt know we were on the bucket list. Three months later, she died and they sent us a note saying, Thank you so much for seeing us.'

As a veterinarian, you try to help the animals and make the people happy. Through this show, we are making people happy, and thats my goal in life.

Dr. Pol on how he handles clients wanting to be in front of the camera

And then there are those fans of the show, who Dr. Pol is grateful for, but who show up at Pol Veterinary Practice with a pet that isnt exactly sick, hoping to make it into the final cut of an episode.

There are people who are like, I dont personally want to be on TV. The film crew is respectful of the client, Dr. Pol explained to the Chicago Tribune in 2018.

And then we have the opposite, where they want to be on TV. I find out pretty quick and I just look at the cameraman, shake my head, the camera goes down and he walks out. They dont come because they have a sick animal, they come because they want to be on TV.

His wife interjected, We had a couple of ladies who came in and the dog actually had bad teeth, [but] you could tell they had no intention of getting that done. They just wanted to be on TV. So that scene didnt make it into the show.

Read more: The Incredible Dr. Pol: 1 of the Hardest Things Dr. Pol Has Had to Film on the Show
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Linkedin Riska Rahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020

A liquidity problem will likely continue to haunt local banks, especially small and medium lenders in 2020 as many will invest their money in the governments high-yield bonds instead of making deposits in banks, analysts have said.

Despite complaints from the banking sector, the government is expected to continue its strategy of issuing high-yield bonds to balance out a deficit in the state budget.

Bank Mandiri chief economist Andry Asmoro said on Dec. 19 that the liquidity problem would continue because of a lack of funding sources in the local banking industry.

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Phil Sheppard watched with trepidation as a giant blaze approached his beloved Hunter Valley property outside Laguna, near Cessnock.

The 66-year-old had poured his heart and soul into Ngurrumpaa - an isolated 160-acre bushland property with a main house and several huts, offering cultural camps for tourists and Indigenous youth.

The fire came within metres of the main house on Leanne King and Phil Sheppard's property in the Hunter Valley. Credit:Rhett Wyman

Three weeks ago, he and other owners were forced to evacuate, helplessly watching online as the Gospers Mountain fire converged with the Little L Complex fire and appeared to engulf the property.

To his amazement, when he returned two days later, traversing the long gravel driveway on foot after fallen trees blocked vehicle access, most structures remained perfectly intact.
"Beauty Has Its Own Rules" by Helga Rekanaty. "I feel honored to help men and women learn about and embrace the best treatments for them. - Helga Rekanaty

The skincare industry is currently experiencing a significant spike in popularity as consumers and influencers begin to embrace bare faces, natural looks and organic products. Helga Rekanaty, cosmetologist, author and owner of Helga Rekanati Aesthetics Center in Israel, wants to help people navigate and learn how to better take care of themselves throughout life with her new book Beauty Has Its Own Rules: Everything There Is to Know on the New World of Beauty Treatments.

In this vibrant and detailed guide to cosmetic health and self-care, Rekanaty draws from her 30 years of experience and research in cosmetology, Chinese medicine and nutrition to educate readers on ways to care for themselves inside and out by changing nutrition habits and taking advantage of traditional and new beauty and anti-aging treatments on the market.

Rekanaty covers a wide range of topics including the different types of skin and function of the skin, superfoods to fight aging, how to correct skin problems such as cellulite and acne, how to identify and treat skin damage, common skin-related surgeries and benefits of aesthetic treatments. She also takes a whole-body approach to cosmetic wellness by discussing care of the feet, nails, body and hands.

Rekanaty was inspired to pursue cosmetology after she overcame an illness that nearly took her life. When I was diagnosed with Castleman disease, I felt like Id lost control of my health, she said. After enduring four surgeries to remove tumors, I decided if I could overcome my disease and live, I would make a drastic change and devote myself to learning all about medicine and wellness. Now that I am well, I feel honored to help men and women learn about and embrace the best treatments for them.

Beauty Has Its Own Rules: Everything There Is to Know on the New World of Beauty Treatments

By Helga Rekanaty

ISBN: 9781543751147 (softcover); 9781543751161 (hardcover); 9781543751154 (electronic)

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the author

Helga Rekanaty is a Chinese medicine expert, shiatzu master, cosmetologist and owner of Helga Rekanati Aesthetics Center, based in Israel. There, she has helped transform lives through traditional and advanced cosmetic and anti-aging treatments delivered by doctors and plastic surgeons for over 30 years. She is the founder of Helgas 3-Step Methodology, a graduate of chemistry indoctrination and advanced peelings and holds a bachelors degree in Jewish philosophy. To learn more about Rekanaty and the book, visit HelgaRenakatyBeautyRules.com. To learn more about the services Rekanaty offers at the Center, visit her at http://www.helga.co.il.

For Review Copies and Interview Requests:

LAVIDGE  Phoenix

Kalin Thomas

480-648-7540

kthomas(at)lavidge(dot)com
Despite a new state law, the New York State tax department has declined to produce records that identify the partners in limited liability companies that buy and sell real estate across the state.

A law signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in September requires a list of LLC members to be filed each time they buy or sell property. The new law clearly intended for the information to be made public, according to the legislators who sponsored it in the Assembly and Senate.

Still, Cuomos tax department denied a Freedom of Information request filed in December by Syracuse.com/The Post-Standard. Brian McCann, the records access officer, said in his denial letter that the documents are protected by the secrecy provisions of state tax law.

Syracuse.com has appealed the decision.

In September, Cuomo signed a bill sponsored by two downstate legislators who were tired of anonymous LLCs buying real estate and letting it fall into disrepair.

Its a problem all over the state, including Syracuse. When city and county officials try to fine landlords for code violations or failed lead paint inspections, they have to do some investigative work to find out who owns the properties.

The anonymity goes beyond landlords. LLCs also use generic names to protect the names of buyers of high-end condominiums and lakeside mansions.

Neighbors have a fundamental right to know who owns the home next door to them, Sen. James Skoufis, D-Woodbury, said in a press release when the bill was signed into law. Likewise, municipalities are desperate for this disclosure when they seek to hold property owners accountable for illegal building, code violations, and fines.

The bill was sponsored in the Assembly by Ken Zebrowski, D-New City. Zebrowski said in a December interview that he would start talks with the tax department if they denied disclosure.

The new law requires an LLC to disclose the individual members of the company when it buys or sells one- to four-family residential real estate. The LLC is required to identify all members, managers and any other authorized persons of the company.

The disclosure is supposed to be filed as an attachment to a transfer tax return.

The law specifically says The identification of such names and addresses shall not be deemed an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy pursuant to Article Six of the Public Officers Law.

That means the information should be considered a public document, according to Kristin ONeill, assistant director of the states Committee on Open Government, a state agency that offers guidance on the states Freedom of Information Law. Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard has asked the agency for an official advisory opinion on the issue.

The records are collected by county clerks across the state, along with the deed and the transfer tax form when a property changes hands.

The deed becomes an official county record, immediately available for public inspection at the courthouse or online.

But county clerks consider the tax forms and the new attachments to be confidential. They say they are governed by another state law that requires tax forms to be private.

Cuomos staff did not respond to a question about his understanding of the new law.

Contact the author: Michelle Breidenbach | mbreidenbach@syracuse.com | 315-470-3186.

Search residential and commercial real estate purchases each week on Syracuse.com. Records for Cayuga, Madison, Onondaga and Oswego are updated each week.

Thanks for visiting Syracuse.com. Quality local journalism has never been more important, and your subscription matters. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work
By Associated Press

TEHRAN: Weeping amid wails from a crowd of hundreds of thousands of mourners, Iran's supreme leader on Monday prayed over the remains of a top Iranian general killed in a US airstrike in Baghdad, an attack that's drastically raised tensions between Tehran and Washington.

The assault killing Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani already has seen his replacement vow to take revenge as Tehran has abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in response to the slaying. Separately, Iraq's parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil.

The three developments could bring Iran closer to building an atomic bomb, set off a proxy or military attack launched by Tehran against America and enable the Islamic State group to stage a comeback in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.

ALSO READ| NATO ambassadors to meet on US-Iran crisis after general Soleimani's killing: Official

Adding to the tensions, US President Donald Trump threatened to demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iraq or impose "sanctions like they've never seen before" if it goes through with expelling US troops.

Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened an attack on the US military in the Mideast while speaking to a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Tehran that stretched as far as the eye could see. "The families of US soldiers in the Middle East will spend their days waiting for death of their children," she said to cheers.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself prayed over the caskets of Soleimani and others slain in the attack. Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani, Khamenei wept at one point during the traditional Muslim prayers for the dead. The crowd and others wailed. Ghaani stood near Khamenei's side, as did Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other top leaders in the Islamic Republic.

While Iran recently faced nationwide protests over government-set gasoline prices that reportedly killed over 300 people, Soleimani's mass processionals have seen politicians and leaders across the Islamic Republic's political spectrum take part, temporarily silencing that anger.

Ghaani meanwhile made his threat in an interview with Iranian state television aired on Monday. "God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken," he said.

ALSO READ| Donald Trump threatens Iraq with sanctions 'like theyve never seen before'

Ghaani now serves as the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force, an expeditionary arm of the paramilitary organization answerable only to Khamenei. As Soleimani's longtime deputy, Ghaani has been sanctioned by the US since 2012 for his work funding its operations around the world, including its work with proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Those proxies likely will be involved in any operation targeting US interests in the Mideast or elsewhere in the world. Already, the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans "of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks."

In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimani's killing made US military bases, warships and service members across the region fair game for attacks.

A former Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader suggested the Israeli city of Haifa and others could be targeted should the US attack Iran. "We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region," Ghaani said.

ALSO READ | Soleimani killing: Iran ex-Guards chief vows to turn Tel Aviv 'to dust'

On the nuclear deal, Iranian state television cited Sunday a statement by President Hassan Rouhani's administration saying the country would not observe the nuclear deal's restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities. "The Islamic Republic of Iran no longer faces any limitations in operations," a state TV broadcaster said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson specifically urged Iran to "withdraw all measures" not in line with the 2015 agreement that was intended to stop Tehran from pursuing its atomic weapons program.

Iran insisted that it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldn't seek a nuclear weapon. However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions.

It further raises regional tensions, as Iran's longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb. Iran did not elaborate on what levels it would immediately reach in its program.

Tehran has already broken some of the deal's limits as part of a step-by-step pressure campaign to get sanctions relief. It already has increased its production, begun enriching uranium to 5% and restarted enrichment at an underground facility.

ALSO READ| Iran abandons limits in 2015 nuclear deal after US kills top army general Qassem Soleimani

While it does not possess uranium enriched to weapons-grade levels of 90%, any push forward narrows the estimated one-year "breakout time" needed for it to have enough material to build a nuclear weapon if it chose to do so.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations watchdog observing Iran's program, did not respond to a request for comment. However, Iran said that its cooperation with the IAEA "will continue as before."

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi earlier told journalists that Soleimani's killing would prompt Iranian officials to take a bigger step away from the nuclear deal.
Brewnuts | Photo: Brittany S./Yelp

Looking to sample the best doughnuts around town?

Hoodline crunched the numbers to find the best doughnut outlets in Cleveland, using both Yelp data and our own secret sauce to produce a ranked list of the best spots to venture next time you're on the hunt.

1. Jack Frost Donuts

Photo: michael u./Yelp

Topping the list is Jack Frost Donuts. Located at 4960 Pearl Road in Old Brooklyn, the spot is the highest-rated doughnut spot in Cleveland, boasting 4.5 stars out of 317 reviews on Yelp. Doughnut flavors include pumpkin pie, German chocolate, salted caramel, apple cinnamon and more. The shop also offers coffee and tea.

2. Yum Yum's of Cleveland

Photo: Karla M./Yelp

Next up is downtown's Yum Yum's of Cleveland, situated at 512 Euclid Ave. With four stars out of 38 reviews on Yelp, the breakfast and brunch spot has proven to be a local favorite. The shop offers doughnuts, bagels, muffins, croissants and breakfast sandwiches.

3. Brewnuts

Photo: Senedra N./Yelp

Finally, Detroit Shoreway's Brewnuts, located at 6501 Detroit Ave., is another top choice, with Yelpers giving the affordable beer bar and doughnut spot four stars out of 270 reviews.

Brewnuts specializes in handmade doughnuts made with a variety of craft beers from local breweries, like the Linus, which is pumpkin spice-flavored and made with a pumpkin ale.

This story was created automatically using local business data, then reviewed and augmented by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, John Bass, left Kabul on January 6 as his two-year tenure at the post ended.



The U.S. State Department says Washington is appointing a charge daffaires to serve as a temporary replacement for Bass until a new ambassador is agreed upon.



In a statement, the State Department said Bass "skillfully advanced the Trump Administrations goal of reaching a political settlement in Afghanistan that ensures terrorists can never again threaten the United States from Afghan soil while leading a large diplomatic mission in the face of numerous security threats.''



The on-again off-again talks between the United States and the Taliban currently appear to have stalled.



The latest problem in the talks appears to be the issue of what a cease-fire or reduction of violence might look like if Taliban fighters agree on a truce.



In a tweet bidding Afghanistan farewell, Bass said he hoped "leaders and citizens" across Afghanistan will "find strength in unity, put aside their differences, and work together to negotiate a political settlement with the Taliban."



"Afghans and this beautiful country deserve nothing less," Bass said.



The departure of Bass from Afghanistan comes amid heightened tensions between Iran and the United States since a U.S. air strike in Baghdad on January 3 killed Iran's top military general, Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters
After a political row over the deaths of over 100 infants reported last month at a state-run hospital in Rajasthans Kota, a fresh war of words erupted between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday after data showed that 111 infants died at a civil hospital in Rajkot district in BJP-ruled Gujarat in December.

As per official records, 111 infants died at Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Hospital in Rajkot in December, 71 in November and 87 in October last year, the hospitals medical superintendent, Manish Mehta, told reporters.

He said the rise in infant deaths at the hospital in December was mainly due to an increase in the number of referral patients with serious ailments. More infants with low birth weight was also among the reasons for the rise in number of deaths, Mehta said.

We hold monthly meetings to assess facilities available at the hospital and meet the requirements urgently, he added.

In Ahmedabad, health minister Nitin Patel, who shared the data, said cold weather in December was one of the reasons for higher number of deaths, and added that overall infant mortality had declined in Gujarat.

Launching an attack on the BJP, Congress state president Amit Chavda asked: Should the government not worry about this, especially when both the prime minister and Union home minister are from Gujarat?

There have been 219 infant deaths in two government hospitals in Rajkot and Ahmedabad, and the number could be in thousands when hospitals across the state are taken into account, he said.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala questioned the Gujarat government in a tweet. ...When questioned, CM runs away! Will PM dare to dismiss Vijay Rupani? he asked. The Congress government in Rajasthan has recently faced flak from political rivals over infant deaths, prompting chief minister Ashok Gehlot to urge parties not to politicise the issue. At Kotas JK Lon Hospital, 110 infants have died since December 1, 2019.

Confronted by reporters in Vadodara over the issue, Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani walked away, without giving any reply. Of the 388 infants admitted to the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay General Hospital in Rajkot in December last year, 111, or 28%, died.

As many as 87 and 71 infants died in October and November last year, which was 19.3% and 15.5% of the infants admitted to the hospitals Sick Newborn Care Unit (SNCU), according to news agency PTI.

At Ahmedabad civil hospital, 88 infants died in December, which was 21.2% of the 415 infants admitted there.

As many as 91 (18.4% of those admitted) and 74 (16.4% of those admitted) infants died in the hospital in October and November.

Sharing the figures, Patel said notwithstanding the higher number of deaths in December, the infant mortality in the state had dropped over two decades, from 62 per 1,000 in 1997 to 30 in 2017, with further drops recorded in 2018 and 2019. Infant mortality rate is a matter of concern. The number of deaths rose in December due to winter season. Lack of public awareness, malnutrition among mothers and pre-natal complications are other reasons, the minister said.

We have set up 41 SNCUs and increased number of seats and colleges for medical education, as shortage of doctors remains a nation-wide problem. The government also provides a monetary incentive to private childrens hospitals in remote areas with no SNCU facility, he said.

He also attacked the opposition Congress.

Theyre trying to divert attention from Rajasthan. I would like to ask the Congress governments in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh why patients from these neighbouring states come to Gujarat hospitals for treatment, he said.
New Delhi :

Protests against the attack on JNU students rocked various parts of West Bengal on Monday as police had to baton-charge supporters of the Left and the BJP when the two sides engaged in a face-off in south Kolkata.

Several student organisations, civil society groups and parties cutting across political lines took out rallies in various parts of Kolkata and the state to protest against the violence that rocked the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi on Sunday night.

Earlier in the day, students of Jadavpur University joined the nationwide protests by raising slogans, burning tyres and singing songs against the RSS-affiliated ABVP and BJP government at the centre. Beginning at the JU campus, the rally proceeded towards the Jadavpur Police Station, took a U-turn and again moved towards the Sulekha More. Several eminent personalities like filmmaker Anik Dutta and music director Debojyoti Mishra joined the rally.

Shouting slogans like "Nathuram Godse in your heart while (revolutionary) Khudiram Bose is in our heart", the students slammed the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for allegedly attacking the JNU students, including students' union president Aishe Ghosh and professor Sucharita Sen.

#WATCH West Bengal: Police lathicharge on Jadavpur University students, near Sulekha Mor in Kolkata, during protest against JNU violence. pic.twitter.com/mJKV2D3gXF  ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

"Yesterday (Sunday) was the darkest day of Indian democracy because of what happened inside the JNU campus. Beating up of students and teachers by goons and attacking girls' hostel by ABVP activists brought shame to our democracy.

"But, such attacks will not deter us from continuing our fight against fascist forces," a JU student said.

Later in the evening, CPI(M) and other Left parties also took out a rally from Jadavpur 8B Bus stand to Sulekha More.

The students of Jadavpur University, activists of the SFI and members of other Left outfits took out a rally from 8B Bus Stand to Sulekha More in the evening.

A march was taken out by the BJP from Bagha Jatin More to Jadavpur Police Station over the JNU issue and also ransacking of its party office in the area on Sunday night.

The two sides came face to face at Sulekha More, leading to a brawl.

BJP activists allegedly pelted stones at the Left activists, prompting them to burn the flags of the BJP and ABVP.

Police put up barricades and blocked both the rallies, but abuses were allegedly hurled and slogans and counter-slogans raised. SFI supporters claimed that BJP workers used expletives against women activists.

After repeated attempts to calm the situation, police baton-charged supporters of the Left and the BJP as the two sides engaged in a face off, in order to disperse the protesters. Police personnel were seen brutally beating up the protesters, including students and women.

Later on, South Suburban Division Deputy Commissioner of Police Sudip Sarkar said the intention of the baton charge was not to beat up the students.

"Our intention was not to beat up the students. It was due to a confusion that some students were hurt. We wanted to disperse the BJP and ABVP supporters. If any student is hurt, we are ready to apologise," Sarkar told reporters.

Students of the Presidency University took out a rally on College Street expressing solidarity with the JNU students.

"We condemn such violence inside the JNU campus, which is a cradle of free and liberal thinking. The ABVP and BJP want to curb free thought and want to impose their fascist ideology on us. But we will continue our fight till the last breath," a Presidency University student said.

The Congress students' wing, Chhatra Parishad , burnt effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on College Street.

The Trinamool Congress student's wing -- Trinamool Chatra Parishad -- also took out rallies in various parts of the state. College and university students took out rallies across the state condemning the attack on JNU campus.

Earlier in the day, West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, termed the attack on students and teachers at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University as a "fascist surgical strike" by the BJP.

The saffron camp was quick to return fire and asked Banerjee to stop shedding "crocodile tears".

On Sunday, a mob of masked young people stormed the JNU campus in south Delhi and systematically targeted students in three hostels, unleashing mayhem with sticks, stones and iron rods, hitting inmates and breaking windows, furniture and personal belongings. They also attacked a women's hostel.

The attack triggered protests across the country on Monday and the clamour grew for the resignation of the vice chancellor, who is being blamed for inaction during the violence that left 34 people injured.
The chairman of the Tata group N Chandrasekaran has said the steel conglomerate cannot have a situation where India keeps funding the mounting losses at its struggling Port Talbot steelworks in the UK.

He emphasised that the Port Talbot steelworks in Wales, one of the largest in Europe, needed to be "self-sustaining" in an interview with the Sunday Times.

The head of the 84 billion-pound turnover conglomerate that also owns



British luxury automaker Jaguar Land Rover, refused to commit to continuing to make UK steel, the report said.

Chandrasekaran, 56, said, "I need to get to a situation where at least the plant (Port Talbot) is self-sustaining."



"Whether it is in the Netherlands or here, we can't have a situation where India keeps funding the losses just to keep it going," he told the British newspaper.

Tata Steel's pre-tax losses were 371 million pounds last year, up from 222 million pounds in 2017-18. In November, Tata announced plans to cut 3,000 jobs across Europe.

Just under half of Tata's 8,385-strong UK workforce are based in Port Talbot, the BBC reported on Sunday.

Paul Evans, the Unite labour union's regional officer for Wales, said: "This interview just adds more pressure on the Tata workers at Port Talbot. The site is obviously key to the future of the other Tata plants in Wales.

"The workforce at Port Talbot have for many years proved they are the producers of world class quality steel and Wales and the UK can't afford to lose the expertise and commitment they have shown over the years."



A spokesman for Tata Steel's European operations said: "What our chairman said in the interview has already been communicated to colleagues through our transformation programme.

"That programme is about building a stronger and more sustainable European steel business by improving profitability so we can pay for investments necessary to secure our long-term future," the BBC report quoted the company spokesman as saying.

"The plans include productivity improvements, reduced bureaucracy and increased sales of higher-value steels, as well as employment cost savings," he added.

Tata has two large steelworks in Europe - Port Talbot, and one near Ijmuiden in the Netherlands, about 30km north-west of Amsterdam. Tata Steel acquired the Anglo-Dutch steel-giant Corus in 2007 for 6.2 billion pounds.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In 2019 Alton Main Street adopted three Transformation Strategies as the guiding principles of our work.

First is The Outdoor Experience. We collaborated with the City of Alton on the Great Streets grant application which resulted in $500,000 for planning resources to improve the safety and aesthetics of our roadways. We also raised funds for new holiday decor in the 3rd Street area and coordinated 1,200 hours of volunteer litter removal and 400 hours of public landscape maintenance to keep the district looking its best.
On Sunday night, 60 Minutes took a deep dive into Jeffrey Epsteins death, which included pictures from inside his cell after his hanging, and graphic photos from the autopsy.

Epsteins death last August was ruled a suicide, but his autopsy photos tell a different story according to former New York City Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Baden, who observed the autopsy at the behest of Epsteins family. The photos from inside Epsteins cell show bed sheets fashioned into two nooses. Photos from the autopsy show a thin, bloodied line across the middle of Epsteins throat. Its these images that dont add up to suicide in Badens mind.

60 Minutes reviewed hundreds of graphic photographs from the autopsy of Jeffrey Epstein and inside his cell. Here are the known facts. **This video contains graphic images that some viewers may find disturbing.**https://t.co/oVeiCRd8A6 pic.twitter.com/QOwq8Eqiah  60 Minutes (@60Minutes) January 6, 2020

This noose doesnt match the ligature furrow mark. Its wider than this, Baden said, later adding, Most hangings, especially free hangings, the ligature slides up to beneath the jawbone, the mandible. Here its in the middle of the neck.

It was also pointed out the noose in the cell appeared to not have any blood on it, and there were electrical wires in the cell that would have worked much better for anyone wanting to commit suicide.

60 Minutes also showed a picture of Epsteins broken hyoid bone, a small bone in the neck. According to Baden, this is another indicator that Epstein did not kill himself.

I have never seen three fractures like this in a suicidal hanging, Baden said, adding, Going over over a thousand jail hangings, suicides, in the New York state prisons over the past 40, 50 years, no one had three fractures.

Story continues

Badens conclusion will only fuel the conspiracy theory that Epstein, a convicted sex offender who was associated with some of the worlds most powerful people like President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton, was murdered. But the New York City Medical Examiners Office stands by its ruling, and despite what some may glean from the autopsy photos, others wholeheartedly disagree with Baden.

When asked if theres any way Epstein could have been murdered, former federal prison warden Cameron Lindsay replied, Absolutely, unequivocally not.

60 Minutes airs Sundays at 7 p.m. on CBS.

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Oil prices fell about 1% on Tuesday, surrendering some recent gains as investors reconsidered the likelihood of immediate supply disruptions in the Middle East after the United States killed a top Iranian military commander last week.

Brent crude fell 70 cents, or 1%, to trade at $68.21 per barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude shed 57 cents, or 0.9%, to settle at $62.70 per barrel.

Prices surged during the previous two sessions on fears of escalating conflict and potential Middle East supply disruptions after a Jan. 3 Baghdad drone strike killed Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran's elite Quds Force, and Iran vowed revenge. Brent reached its highest since September while WTI rose to its strongest since April.

"The expansion in geo-risk premium related to Iran appears to be running out of steam as the complex seems to be taking a 'wait and see' attitude ahead of possible Iranian retaliation to last week's events," Jim Ritterbusch, president of trading advisory firm Ritterbusch and Associates, said in a note.

Consultancy Eurasia Group said Iran probably would focus on U.S. military targets rather than energy targets.

"That's not to say it won't continue low-level harassment of commercial shipping or regional energy infrastructure, but these activities will not be severe," it added.

Julius Baer analyst Carsten Menke said the Iranian regime was "quite rational and strategic."

"The costs of direct military confrontation are prohibitive, and disrupting oil flows would alienate loose allies such as China and India," he said.

"The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key choke point of global oil flows, remains a very unlikely event."

However, the United States Maritime Administration website renewed its warning about threats to U.S. commercial vessels from Iran and its proxies in the Gulf and surrounding area.

Prices also fell despite higher compliance among the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on meeting production quota curbs aimed at reducing supply.

OPEC members pumped 29.5 million barrels per day (bpd) last month, down 50,000 bpd from November's revised figure, according to a Reuters survey published on Monday.

U.S. crude oil stockpiles likely fell for the fourth straight week last week, though refined products stocks were expected to have risen, a Reuters poll showed on Monday ahead of weekly data.

The average estimate by six analysts was for crude stocks to have fallen by 3.6 million barrels in the week to Jan 3.
Iraqi foreign ministry summons US envoy over 'violation of sovereignty'

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 05 January 2020 5:23 PM

The Iraqi foreign ministry has summoned US ambassador Matthew Tueller to condemn recent American strikes in the capital Baghdad that resulted in the assassination of Iran's top military commander, Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

In a statement released on Sunday, the ministry strongly denounced repeated airstrikes as a "blatant violation of sovereignty and break of agreement with the US-led coalition" which was purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorists on the ground.

The ministry further stated that the act was also "a flagrant breach of all international laws and norms that regulate relations between countries and prohibit the use of their lands to carry out attacks on neighboring countries."

In all, 10 people -- five Iraqis and five Iranians -- were assassinated in the US strike on their motorcade just outside Baghdad airport in early hours of Friday shortly after Gen. Soleimani's flight had arrived from Syria, leading to speculation that the Israeli intelligence apparatus might have played a role.

Observers say the assassination would come back to haunt US President Donald Trump, on whose direct orders the drone strike was carried out,

The assassination prompted calls for revenge from various resistance groups across the region with Iranian officials also vowing a crushing response to this act of terrorism by the US. The assassination also triggered a wave of outrage among Iranians and Iraqis, and further aligned the two neighbors with vociferous calls for revenge for what they view as "state terrorism."

On Sunday, Iraqi lawmakers used an extraordinary parliamentary session to push for a vote on a resolution requiring the government to press Washington to withdraw US troops from Iraq. The legislators unanimously approved a bill, demanding the withdrawal of US military forces from the country. A total of 170 legislators signed a draft bill, demanding the withdrawal of US military forces from the country.

On Saturday, the leader of a powerful political coalition in Iraq's parliament said US forces will be driven out of Iraqi territory following the vicious, cowardly US operation.

Iraq complains to UN Security Council over US strike

Iraq's foreign ministry also lodged official complaints with the United Nations Secretary-General and the Security Council over unlawful US air strikes on Iraqi soil

The complaint is about "American attacks and aggression on Iraqi military positions and the assassination of Iraqi and allied high level military commanders on Iraqi soil," the ministry said in a statement.

It described the attacks as "a dangerous breach of Iraqi sovereignty and of the terms of US presence in Iraq." It called on the Security Council to condemn the attacks.

US-led coalition pauses training for Iraqi security forces

The US-led international coalition, purportedly fighting the Daesh, also said on Sunday it had paused its training and support of Iraqi security forces due to repeated rocket attacks on bases housing its troops.

"As a result we are now fully committed to protecting the Iraqi bases that host Coalition troops. This has limited our capacity to conduct training with partners and to support their operations against Daesh and we have therefore paused these activities, subject to continuous review."

The US, backed by the United Kingdom, invaded Iraq in 2003 claiming that the former regime of Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

No such weapons, however, were ever found.

The invaders withdrew from Iraq, after nearly nine years of a military campaign that cost tens of thousands of Iraqi lives.

Leading a new coalition of its allies, the United States returned to Iraq in 2014, when Daesh unleashed a campaign of destruction in the Arab country. Widespread reports, however, said the Washington-led operations largely spared the terrorists and led, instead, to civilian deaths and inflicted damage on the Iraqi infrastructure.

Iraq's army troops, backed by volunteer Hashd al-Sha'abi forces, managed to liberate all Daesh-held areas thanks to military advisory assistance from neighboring Iran.

Baghdad declared the end of the anti-Daesh campaign back in 2017.

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Capital City BBQ might have been the only barbecue and Vietnamese restaurant for miles when it opened in 2015 inside a cellphone store in Lansing, Michigan. Linh Lee and her now-ex-boyfriend had toyed with their recipes for three years, testing 50 sauces and 20 kinds of macaroni and cheese before settling on the combinations of ingredients that they felt confident would make customers smile.

Then their romantic relationship fell apart, and things went south.

Lee, 48, told the Lansing State Journal that her ex co-opted the restaurant's phone number in December and recorded a message saying that the business would be closed for months. Except, she said, that wasn't true.

"Happy holidays from Capital City BBQ," a male voice on the answering machine says. "Due to the holidays, we will be taking an extended leave until March 1. We look forward to your business and seeing you after March 1. Have a happy holiday. Thank you."

The restaurant's business tanked in the days after the new message was recorded, Lee told the State Journal. She said she made $2,800 in the four days after the change - less than half of her usual sales. Lee got a new phone number in late December, the State Journal reported, but the original is still on the building's signs and on websites such as TripAdvisor.

"I am not closing," Lee told the newspaper. "I am moving forward. I keep going."

Capital City BBQ, which serves a pulled-pork sandwich called the Awesome Mess alongside several types of banh mi, was featured in 2017 on Guy Fieri's popular Food Network show, "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives." Back then, Lee's ex was making the restaurant's barbecue, while she prepared food from her home country of Vietnam, the State Journal reported.

The pair met in 2011 when Lee said she paid her ex-boyfriend, a contractor, $67,000 to build a restaurant on one side of her now-shuttered cellphone store. He eventually claimed co-ownership of the restaurant, although Lee told the State Journal that she disagreed with that assessment because she was the only one who contributed capital to the project.

He registered the restaurant's phones to his construction business, and Lee does not have the passwords, she told the State Journal.

The couple broke up in July. In December, Lee noticed that the restaurant's phones suddenly were not ringing, WLNS reported. She said she assumed that Comcast was having issues.

On Dec. 18, Lee wrote on her restaurant's Facebook page to urge customers to ignore the business' answering machine. It had been "disrupted," but the business was open, she said. She listed a new phone number where people could put in their orders for takeout and catering.

A more blunt message written in all caps appeared three days later. "Our phone line has been stolen by an unethical person who is not apart of our restaurant," Lee wrote. "He is trying to hurt our business any way that he can." Dozens of fans posted encouraging comments and reassured Lee that nothing could get between them and the restaurant's brisket.

Lee told the State Journal that she hired an attorney to resolve the dispute. She also contacted law enforcement, WLNS reported.

Restaurant employees told WILX that Capital City BBQ was Lee's dream and that watching someone try to ruin it was "devastating" and perplexing. Lee told WILX that she often works 12 or 13 hours a day.

"To take something like this away from me, it takes away my spirit," she told the TV station.

After several news stories about the debacle, there's at least one sign that the restaurant's fate may be on the upswing: An employee who answered the phone Saturday said Lee might not be available to talk to reporters anytime soon.

The restaurant, he said, was "slammed" with customers.
Witty comebacks from the Pune police on banter about drugs by some smart alecs on Twitter on the eve of New Year had netizens in praise.

It all started after the police tweeted on their official handle asking people to stay away from "charas, ganja and meow-meow".

"Charas, Ganja, Meow Meow. #NewYearResolution 2020 madhye he sarv nako bhau !! #SayNoToDrugs," Pune police had tweeted.

A user soon picked up a "loophole" in the police's tweet and announced "Guys, LSD is Allowed" since it was not one of the contraband listed by the police. LSD is a hallucinogenic drug.

Playing along, the police replied with another tweet, "Tell us where to find it?"



Another user jumped into the conversation with a tweet that went "Agar maine app logo ko Adda bataya toh 10 pudiya meri ? Chalega na Sir? (if I tell you the den, I'll keep ten pouches, is the deal fine?).

Hitting him and some others who tweeted in his support out of the park, the police replied, "Aap saare rakh lena. Hum bas aapko rakh lenge. Chalega na sir? (You keep the drugs, we keep you in jail).

The reply, which got described as "savage" and "epic" by netizens, won the Pune police the duel on Twitter.

The police also cautioned people against driving under the influence of alcohol.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
On 6 January 2020, the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach officially welcomed Vice-Admiral Louise Dedichen as NATO Military Representative for Norway, and as the first woman to serve on the Committee.

Appointed in June 2019, Vice-Admiral Dedichen takes over from Vice Admiral Ketil Olsen as the NATO Military Representative for Norway. Welcoming the Admiral, the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee highlighted the historical significance of the appointment. NATO and its Allies recognise the importance of a more gender-balanced military. Across the Alliance, we are seeing an upward trend and more women are being appointed to decision-making positions. More women in national high-level positions translates into more women in NATO military high-level positions. It is important to strengthen womens voices everywhere  from our meetings to our missions, emphasized Air Chief Marshal Peach.

Thanking the Chairman, Vice-Admiral Dedichen highlighted the great honour of being appointed to the NATO military committee. It is essential in a large and powerful organisation like NATO to see the big picture. The world situation is not identical to everyone and so increasing the number of woman at NATO makes the Alliance stronger and better prepared to deal with the security challenges it faces, she added.

Vice-Admiral Dedichen was also the first woman appointed Vice-Admiral and Commodore in the Norwegian Navy. For the last 12 years, she has been serving as the Commandant for the Norwegian Defence University College. Prior to this, she held a variety of positions such as Head of Section for Logistics, Public Relations Officer, Contract Negotiator and Teacher in Economics. This is not Vice-Admiral first foray into the NATO environment, from 19951998, she was the aide-de-camp to the then NATO Military Representative for Norway.

Since its creation in October 1949, the Military Committee has been the most senior military authority in NATO and the essential link between the political decision-making process and the military structure. It is the primary source of consensus-based advice to the North Atlantic Council on military policy and strategy, and recommends measures considered necessary for the defence of the NATO area and the implementation of decisions regarding military operations.

With each new accession, the Military Committee as grown to include representatives from each new nation. Today, all 29 Allied Nations have an equal voice at the table. The Republic of North Macedonia is also represented but under an observer status until its official accession.
Editors note: This story was updated to correct the day the lawsuit was filed.

New Mexico is going after four corporations for allegedly peddling talcum powder that contained hazardous and carcinogenic asbestos to unwitting consumers for decades.

State Attorney General Hector Balderas on Thursday filed a lawsuit in 1st Judicial District Court in Santa Fe against Johnson & Johnson, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies Inc., Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Corp. and Valeant Pharmaceuticals North America LLC.

The lawsuit alleges the companies sold talcum powder products  such as Johnsons Baby Powder, Johnsons Medicated Powder and Shower-to-Shower Talcum Powder  despite knowing for over forty years that the products contained hazardous asbestos known to increase some types of cancer.

Our office will take immediate action any time a corporation misleads a New Mexican consumer or endangers the health and safety of our families, Balderas said in a statement. These products have been targeted at minority groups, especially black and Hispanic women and children, with false messages about their safety, and I will hold these companies accountable.

According to the release, the companies actively worked to conceal the asbestos risk from consumers and government regulators, instead marketing the products as safe and healthful.

The state is one of the first in the nation to file a lawsuit against the companies as a result of the hazardous talcum powder.
[January 06, 2020] TP-Link launches new HomeCareTM Pro With Avira-powered IoT Security for the Smart Home TP-Link is pleased to release the new HomeCareTM Pro powered by Avira. Consumers can now ensure the privacy of their smart homes with this combination of TP-Link's router experience and Avira's best-in-class device security. No privacy or security in a smart home Smart homes, with their assortment of unmonitored and unsecured devices, are a privacy and security nightmare. Invasive devices siphon out user details and hijacked devices/routers launch Mirai-inspired DDoS attacks. The risks are compounded by devices being rushed to market with vulnerabilities that users are not aware of or able to patch. Even the American FBI has warned about the hacking and privacy risks that come with smart TVs. Routers, from their position as the gateway of smart homes, have an absolutely critical role. A role that makes them a major target for cyberattacks. Today, they are a channel through which hackers infiltrate to exploit vulnerable IoT devices. The Avira research team has found that routers make up more than 75% of the infected devices in IoT attacks. The second most commonly attacked device - with a device share of just over 25% - are IP cameras. Given that these attacks either go through or directly target routers, it is mission critical that the security positioning of routers is reinforced. On the hunt for the vulnerable and exposed Cybercriminals sense every opportunity and are constantly on the hunt for unprotected and exposed smart devices - a quest made even easier by devices with hard-coded or difficult-to-change credentials. A honeypot set up by Avira threat researchers recorded its first attacks within five minutes of being connected to the internet. Even worse, many of these attacks were not sophisticated ones. Attacks targeting devices with blank or empty credentials made up 25.6% of the total, followed by 23.4% targeting weak or default credentials such as "support | support." Parallel to this, a quarter of the IoT malware attacks showed hackers zeroing in on known vulnerabilities - mirroring a common malware strategy for computers. Privacy and security sized for your smart home TP-Link has been committed to improving customers' internet experience, stability, speed, and security for 24 years. Awareness of vulnerabilities built nto smart homes drew TP-Link and Avira together as they developed the HomeCareTM Pro security suite. This solution is sited at the router level - the best place to ensure gateway security for an entire host of smart devices. Powered by Avira's "engineered-in-Germany" AI technology and deep antivirus experience, HomeCareTM Pro starts by securing the Wi-Fi gateway to the home and continues to protect the home network and all devices. HomeCareTM Pro protects all connected devices in the home network against external and internal attacks and blocks incoming threats with its malicious content filter. Within the network, HomeCareTM Pro identifies and blocks suspicious behavior from individual devices and flags invasive tracker activity. Its DDoS protection prevents devices from joining malicious botnets and being misused to knock targeted sites off the internet. These extensive features are driven by advanced machine learning techniques to give users a nearly hands-free secure online experience. Drive faster, drive even more securely Combining TP-Link's router expertise with Avira's security experience is a clear win-win situation for users. "We are thrilled to bring these new security solutions to market with networking devices designed to transform the user experience with their new speed and connectivity features. It's more than speed, as HomeCareTM Pro makes the smart home safe by closing vulnerable security windows," said Pingji Li, VP & GM of TP-Link Networking BU. "Avira is honored to work with TP-Link to bring faster, more secure Wi-Fi routers to market that are targeted for both consumers and ISPs. The connected world is moving faster than ever - and by combining Avira SafeThings technology with TP-Link's router expertise, we can protect people more effectively," said Travis Witteveen, CEO of Avira. Hi-resolution screenshots of HomeCareTM Pro powered by Avira are available here. About TP-Link Founded in 1996, TP-Link is a global provider of reliable networking devices and accessories involved in all aspects of everyday life. The company is consistently ranked by analyst firm IDC (News - Alert) as the No. 1 provider of WLAN and broadband CPE devices, supplying distribution to more than 170 countries and regions and serving billions of people worldwide. With a proven heritage of stability, performance, and value, TP-Link has curated a portfolio of products that meets the networking needs of all individuals. Now, as the connected lifestyle continues to evolve, the company is expanding today to exceed the demands of tomorrow. For more information about TP-Link visit www.tp-link.com. About Avira Avira protects people in the connected world - enabling everyone to manage and secure their digital lives. Avira provides a consumer-focused portfolio of security and privacy solutions for Windows and Mac computers, Android (News - Alert) and iOS smartphones, home networks, and smart devices (IoT). All Avira features are available as licensed SDKs and APIs. Working together, Avira and its partners protect more than 500 million devices globally. Avira solutions consistently achieve best-in-class results from independent security tests. Avira is a privately held company headquartered near Lake Constance, Germany, with additional offices in the EU, the United States, and Asia. A portion of Avira's sales support the Auerbach Foundation, which assists education, children, and families in need. For more information about Avira visit www.avira.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005321/en/

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Over the last 15 years, the Cork region has been transformed with the region having developed significant clusters in information technology, cybersecurity, marine, energy, financial services, as well as a growing creative industry sector.

In the period from 1996 to the 2016 Census, the population of Cork City and County increased by 122,000 people, with the vast majority of the growth taking place in suburban Cork.

Places like Douglas, Ballincollig, Carrigaline, Carrigtohill, Midleton have all seen their populations increase very significantly.

By the time of the next census, it is probable that the population growth figures will have accelerated and the Cork region will remain, by far, the largest growth centre outside of Dublin.

The figures in relation to jobs growth are equally encouraging and the region has an exemplary record of retaining and growing key employers in key sectors.

Significant growth is taking place in the city centre core: Cork City had the largest percentage population increase outside of Dublin and the greatest rate of inward migration in the country.

However, the ability of the construction and property development industry in Cork to deliver even more growth is more dependent than ever on a functioning public sector.

Unfortunately, we have witnessed delays in delivering infrastructural projects such as the Dunkettle Interchange, the M28, and the Events Centre.

In the Construction Industry Federation offices, we hear stories of project delays, frustration with the interpretation of new regulations, a lack of adequate wastewater facilities, housing density guidelines that effectively seek to build apartments in locations where they are not viable, and no facilities to take crushed concrete or no regulations to allow the reuse the material onsite.

It is glaringly obvious to everyone that we simply have to construct more roads, public transport infrastructure, schools, hospitals, houses, apartments, and hotels.

It is simply not acceptable anymore that people are stuck for hours in traffic gridlock, that we cannot get the right public policy mix for our residential construction sector, and that people cannot find homes.

There are also issues about the slow development of plans for a light rail system in Cork to cater for an increasingly urban population and around flood protection measures. The list goes on.

The Cork region needs 3,500 residential units per annum and existing new infrastructure projects, such as roads, foothpaths, cycleways, water and wastewater services, is at risk unless we start to invest heavily.

More importantly, we also need to allow greater regional flexibility to cater for growth. Local authorities must be given the appropriate funding and powers.

Centralised policymaking in housing provision is also not working and it is not appropriate to adopt the same housing policy for South County Dublin as it is to towns outside of Dublin.

We have centralised planning through the Strategic Housing Development process, a centralised model of residential construction, taxation, a centralised model of infrastructural provision though Transport Infrastructure Ireland and Irish Water and an inability to compulsory purchase lands by local authorities.

Cutting taxes and charges associated with residential development will increase supply immediately.

We look forward to 2020 being a year in which infrastructural investment takes place where it is needed.

Conor OConnell is director of the southern region at the Construction Industry Federation
No arrests made in JNU campus violence case in over 1.5 years: Govt informs Parliament

JNU to impose night curfew in campus between 10 pm-5 am

'Free Kashmir' poster raised at Mumbai protest against JNU violence

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, Jan 07: Amid outrage over the violence at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, a poster with an open anti-India message 'Free Kashmir' was seen at the Gateway of India. This has evoked strong reactions on social media.

The pictures and video of the protests underway at Gateway of India, tweeted by ANI, show a woman holding 'Free Kashmir' banner.

BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis hit out at Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray for not taking any action against it.

Protest is for what exactly?

Why slogans of Free Kashmir?

How can we tolerate such separatist elements in Mumbai?

Free Kashmir slogans by Azadi gang at 2km from CMO?

Uddhav ji are you going to tolerate this Free Kashmir Anti India campaign right under your nose???@OfficeofUT https://t.co/zkWRjxuTqA  Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) January 6, 2020

Violence had broken out at JNU on Sunday night as masked people armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers that left more than 30 injured.

NEWS AT NOON, JANUARY 7th, 2020

The JNUSU and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) sparred over each other after masked men entered the university campus and attacked students brutally.

The JNU students union claimed that the ABVP members, with their faces masked, were moving in the campus with lathis, rods and hammers and beating up students. The Union has dubbed it as an emergency situation.

"Students are trying to save themselves while being chased by ABVP goons while the police is complicit in the crimes, forcing students to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' slogans," the JNUSU said on Twitter.

However, the ABVP claimed that Left activists were behind the violence in JNU.

It blamed Leftist student organisations SFI, AISA and DSF for the attack where 25 students were injured in the attack.

Free Kashmir is a Pakistani propaganda



Free Kashmir from whom? Kashmir and POK is part of India



Sonam Kapoor, Kokana Sen, Anurag Kashyap should be ashamed of themselves@TarekFatah https://t.co/QXe998287e pic.twitter.com/1TmM6Idt4K  Priya Kulkarni (@priyaakulkarni2) January 6, 2020

What is a 'Free Kashmir' poster doing at a protest against JNU violence in Mumbai? Only criminal separatist thugs can carry such a poster in a free democratic secular republic of India. https://t.co/y2mmuZ0frL  Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) January 6, 2020

It's been 5 months or more of Kashmir Clampdown and this man's audacity to outrage on a poster with *Free Kashmir* is seething.



Fuck you BJP! https://t.co/9V6Yp1uDjH  Ganesh Mantravadi #ResistCAA_NRC #FuckHindutva (@ganeshmantra) January 6, 2020

The protest for violence in JNU in Mumbai was instantly turned into Free Kashmir . Don't forget, Bollywood is standing with this tukde tukde gang.pic.twitter.com/2QG8Iq7YX3  Rishi Bagree   (@rishibagree) January 6, 2020

Why should a poster reading 'Free Kashmir' be seen at Gateway of India, Mumbai?? Isn't this a protest against yesterday's violence at JNU?? How are the two even connected?? #LeftKillingJNU pic.twitter.com/AsRCbPrjfB  Priti Gandhi (@MrsGandhi) January 6, 2020
Lagos, Monday, 6 January 2020: Media Rights Agenda (MRA) today inducted the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) into its Enhanced Freedom of Information Hall of Shame for the agencys dismal performance in the implementation of the FOI Act and pledged to take legal action against the institution to compel it to comply with its obligations under the Act.

In a statement in Lagos, MRAs Programme Officer, Mr. John Gbadamosi, said as an agency established by the Federal Government to regulate health insurance and provide easy access to healthcare for all Nigerians through various prepayment systems, the NHIS had apparently chosen to take a back seat in the implementation of the FOI Act and had accordingly failed to comply with most of its duties and obligations under the Act, resulting in unwarranted secrecy over many aspects of its operations.

The NHIS was established by the National Health Insurance Scheme Act 35 of 1999, with the objectives of ensuring easy access to healthcare services for every Nigerian and protecting Nigerian families from financial hardship in the form of huge medical bills; ensuring universal health coverage in Nigeria as well as regulating and managing all stakeholders of the scheme.

According to Mr. Gbadamosi, Being an agency responsible for the provision of critical public services to citizens, the NHIS should be open and transparent by default so that those it is intended to serve will know what services it provides, how they can access those services, the costs at which the services are provided and other such information that will enhance its operations and the delivery of its mandate to the Nigerian public.

He said: It is totally unacceptable that the NHIS, particularly given its public service delivery mandate, would deliberately disregard a Law validly enacted by the National Assembly to ensure that it is transparent in its business, operations and activities and accountable to the Nigerian public which it is supposed to serve, adding that the situation is now extremely concerning in the light of the fact that the agencys conduct had been transformed into one of lawlessness as it has continued to undermine the provisions of the law for nearly a decade.

Mr. Gbadamosi noted that the NHIS has ignored its proactive publications obligations under Section 2 of the FOI Act, which requires all public institutions covered by the Act to publish and periodically update certain categories of information, for the nine years that the Law has been in existence. He added that besides the fact that the agencys website does not contain the categories of information that it is required to proactively publish, itmakes no reference to the FOI Act in any context.

In addition, he said, the NHIS has failed to comply with the provisions of Section 13 of the Act, which requires it to ensure the provision of appropriate training for its staff and officials to sensitize them on the publics right of access to information and records held by it and to enable them to effectively implement the Act.

Mr. Gbadamoinoted that there was no indication that the NHIS had provided any such training for its personnel and officials over the last nine years.

He also accused the NHIS of being in breach of Section 2(3)(f) of the Act which requires it to proactively publish the title and address of the appropriate officer to whom applications for information under the Act should be made by members of the public, adding that this stipulation is also contained in the Implementation Guidelines for the FOI Act issued by the Attorney-General of the Federation to assist all public institutions in their implementation of the Act.

Mr. Gbadamosi stressed that records available from the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation show that since the FOI Act was enacted in 2011, the NHIS has not submitted any annual report on its implementation of the FOI Act to the Attorney-General of the Federation as required by Section 29 of the Act, when its ninth report is due in less than four weeks.

Observing that the NHIS was first inducted into the FOI Hall of Shame on November 6, 2017, he said it was regrettable that more than two years later, the agency had shown no sign that it is willing to mend its ways as it has continued to conduct its activities in secrecy in total disregard for the Law.

Mr. Gbadamosi said MRA had no choice but to take legal action against the NHIS to compel it to perform its statutory obligations and tow the path of law and order.

For further information, please contact:

Idowu Adewale

Communications Officer

Media Rights Agenda

Email: [email protected]
Rule Britannia! It was supposed to be Netflixs big night at the 2020 Golden Globes, but it ended up being a soaring success for the United Kingdom instead as Brits ruled the roost.

Picking up major awards across a range of categories, British talent won eleven awards on the night across the film and TV categories, making it our best showing at the Globes in years.

PA isn't counting Chris Butler's win for Missing Link, as the film won, not the director. (PA)

The number of wins has dipped as low as one in 2014 and none at all in 2010. This year's tally of 10 is up four on last year.

The Golden Globes were first awarded in 1944, but the line-up of categories has changed several times, as have the rules for eligibility.

Heres who brought it home for the Brits in 2020.

Best Motion Picture - Drama: Producers Pippa Harris and Sam Mendes, 1917

Dean-Charles Chapman, Sam Mendes, George MacKay, Pippa Harris, Callum McDougall, Krysty Wilson-Cairns, and Jayne-Ann Tenggre of the film '1917,' winner of the Best Motion Picture - Drama award. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Recently knighted director Sam Mendes collected the gong and said: "This is a huge huge thing for this movie, its difficult to make movies without big movie stars in the lead and get people to come and see it in a movie theatre."

Read more: Ricky Gervais most scathing Globes gags

Best Motion Picture - Comedy: Producer David Heyman, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

David Heyman accepts the award for BEST MOTION PICTURE  MUSICAL OR COMEDY for "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" onstage. (Photo by Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal Media, LLC via Getty Images)

Harry Potter producer David Heyman collected the honour for Best Motion Picture Comedy with director Quentin Tarantino. Heyman thanked the films patron Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group chairman Tom Rothman, before paying tribute to Maestro, Mr. Quentin Tarantino.

Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy: Taron Egerton, Rocketman

Taron Egerton poses in the press room with the award for best performance by an actor in a motion picture, musical or comedy, for "Rocketman" at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Welsh-born actor Taron Egerton appeared emotional as he was named best actor in a comedy/musical for playing Sir Elton John in Rocketman, saying: "This role has changed my life, it's been the best experience of my life, it's been such a joyous thing." He also thanked David Furnish for believing "I could play your husband" and added: "To Elton John, thank you for the music, for living a life less ordinary and thank you for being my friend."

Best Animated Film: Director Chris Butler, Missing Link

Story continues

The winning team behind Best Animated Film Missing Link discusses how many years they put into their movie and get out some more thank yous that they didnt make it to on stage. pic.twitter.com/w7EFFk7Bkr  Golden Globe Awards (@goldenglobes) January 6, 2020

Speaking backstage, Lancashire-born Butler said he was "shocked" to win.

"Ive been making animated movies for a long time," Butler added. "We try to tell more irreverent stories, try to do things other studios wouldnt do. Walking around our studio is like walking around Santas workshop, all kinds of artists."

Best Director: Sam Mendes, 1917

Congratulations to Sam Mendes - Best Director - Motion Picture - 1917 (@1917). - #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/cpigklE3Ee  Golden Globe Awards (@goldenglobes) January 6, 2020

Mendes said: "That is a big surprise. There is a not a director in this room, not in the world, that is not in the shadow of Martin Scorsese." He dedicated the prize to his grandfather Alfred, who inspired the film saying: "He signed up for the First World War aged 17 and he is looking down on us and I fervently hope it never happens again."

Best Original Song: Elton John, Bernie Taupin '(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again', Rocketman

Elton John, right, and Bernie Taupin pose in the press room with the award for best original score in a motion picture for "I'm Gonna Love Me Again" from "Rocketman" at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Sir Elton John took to the stage with his writing partner Bernie Taupin as they won the best original song prize for I'm Gonna Love Me Again from Rocketman.

Taupin said the prize honoured a song about their "52 year marriage", while Sir Elton said the film was "one of the most emotional moments of my life".

He added: "It's the first time I've ever won an award with him (Taupin), we never won a Grammy, we never did anything together, and I'm so happy."

Best TV Drama: Jesse Armstrong, writer and creator, Succession

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 05: Jesse Armstrong attends HBO's Official Golden Globes After Party at Circa 55 Restaurant on January 05, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)

British creator Jesse Armstrong, who also created Peep Show, said: "It's a team show and I am here as a representative to accept it on behalf of all of us, so if you've ever appeared on the call sheet or in the titles, congratulations, we have won a Golden Globe."

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series  Drama: Olivia Colman, The Crown

Olivia Colman poses in the press room with the award for best performance by an actress in a television series, drama for "The Crown" at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Colman, whos currently in production on S4 of the Netflix show, said: "I had money on this not happening. For the last year I feel I've been living someone else's life and now I feel I've won someone else's award.

"I've had the loveliest time doing this. To all my fellow nominees, I don't really know what to say because I already got a little bit boozy because I thought this wasn't going to happen."

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series  Drama: Brian Cox, Succession

Brian Cox poses in the press room with the award for best performance by an actor in a television series, drama for "Succession" at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Speaking to reporters backstage, Cox, 73, said his Golden Globe win was one of the best nights of his career. "I never thought I'd make it," he said. "I thought my sell-by date had come quite some time ago."

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series  Musical or Comedy: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag

Phoebe Waller-Bridge poses in the press room with the award for best performance by an actress in a television series, musical or comedy, for "Fleabag" at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

During her acceptance speech Phoebe Waller-Bridge paid tribute to her co-star Andrew Scott, also known as the "hot priest".

"This really comes down to Andrew Scott," Waller-Bridge said. "There was a lot of talk about the chemistry of us in the show but he could have chemistry with a pebble.

"I loved being Andrew's pebble in this. Thank you so much for bringing so much fire to this season."

Best Television Series  Musical or Comedy: Creator and writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag

Brett Gelman, from left, Sian Clifford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Andrew Scott, from the cast of "Fleabag," pose in the press room with the award for best television series, musical or comedy, at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Waller-Bridge returned to the stage, this time accompanied by her cast and creative team and said: "A huge thank you to everyone for supporting us so much. It's all a bit gross but we all became best friends, which is ironic, because the show is about such a lonely lady."
At holiday seasons end, theres gift wrap on the floor, confetti on the streets and its time for news leftovers.

Reuters reports police arrested an Arizona man for shooting at the moon with a handgun. The guys a total loser. The moon is 2,159 miles wide and he missed.

The record for oldest cake belongs to a cake found in an Egyptian tomb after 4,176 years. It must be a fruitcake. Fruitcakes last forever, are completely inedible and require no mummification.

Omaha, Nebraska, has many potholes and theyre big. Theyre so big, an ambulance hit a pothole and stopped a mans heart attack.

In McComb, Mississippi, local residents decorated a pothole with tinsel, a star and a traffic cone. Some residents wanted to protest with lights and presents.

So, what do you give a pothole that has everything? Asphalt.

In non-news, a hotel receptionist offers the Better Half and me bottled water then asks, How do you want your water  shaken or stirred?

As an electric airport courtesy cart passes us, an angry woman passenger, with arms crossed and wearing a deep scowl, glares at the back of the drivers head. Unfazed, the driver says, Lady, next time you drive.

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One US Soldier, Two Pentagon Contractors Killed in Daesh Attack in Kenya - Command

Sputnik News

23:01 05.01.2020(updated 23:42 05.01.2020)

Earlier in the day, Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) stated that four members of Somalia's Islamist group, Al-Shabaab, were killed on Sunday after they attacked a military base in Lamu county used by both US and Kenyan forces.

The United States Africa Command issued a statement on Sunday, saying that "one (1) US service member and two (2) Department of Defense contractors were killed at a Kenya Defense Force Military Base in Manda Bay, Kenya".

According to the statement, two more DoD members who were wounded "are currently in stable condition and being evacuated".

"At this time, the names of the fallen and the wounded are being withheld as part of the next of kin notification process. Out of respect for the families of the fallen and injured, we ask that everyone respect their privacy during this difficult time. The Department of Defense is fully committed to providing the families of the fallen dedicated care, service, and support", according to the statement.

Earlier in the day, the Somali-based Islamist group, Al-Shabaab - affiliated to al-Qaeda - attacked a military base in Kenya's Lamu county.

The news comes after a deadly terrorist attack struck Kenya earlier this month, allegedly carried out by Al-Shabaab militants.

A bus carrying over 40 passengers, en route to Kenya's second-largest city of Mombasa from the town of Lamu, was attacked by a group of militants who appeared from the forest and tried to stop the bus. When the driver refused to slow down, the assailants fired at the vehicle, killing at least three and leaving many injured.

Washington said that the Pentagon carried out several air raids in the region targeting Al-Shabaab militants following the deadly attacks.

* Daesh (Islamic State, ISIL, ISIS, IS) Al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda are terrorist groups banned in Russia and many other countries.

 Sputnik

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What a fresh fine New Year it is and what a stalwart attitude will be required of us in the topsy-turvy decade to come. I base my good humour of course on the first day of 2020, right up to President Donald Trumps Jan. 2 attempt to start a war with Iran.

But the humans I have faith in  distracted by the intolerably stormy seasons of the coming decade  wont vote for Trump just because he started a war. Americans do love their bombing wars but wading into another protracted one  Vietnam-like in that most Americans cant distinguish between North and South, Iran and Iraq, Sunni and Shiite  is perhaps wearing thin.

Here in Canada we will move from strength to strength. Fully 77 per cent of Canadians believe that human-caused global heating has arrived. Carbon pricing has already gone national, building codes are being updated, and green energy will become attractive and profitable, if only because it has to.

Heres some advice for 2020, directed to myself as well as readers.

Dont vape. Its not my understanding that vaping brings on euphoria. I am trying to be gracious about the fact that I am in unrelieved pain right now because my doctor works with intermittently euphoric drug addicts and thus wont prescribe painkillers. I do understand why fragile people like risky pleasures, but vaping? Young people know theyll never die, but surely its more thrilling to risk death by climbing office towers in bare feet than by emitting a personal cloud of silly smoke. Smokers die decades later. Vapers might die next week.

Consider Amazon Prime with care. Pleasant as it was to direct a shower door strip and a unit of peach-flavoured Slime to my doorstep, I asked for two-day delivery on Monday rather than Saturday and basked in smugness. The strip and slime didnt arrive till Thursday. Im glad the courier didnt risk an ice storm for Jeff Bezos but the strip doesnt fit, and a certain child hasnt collected her slime.

I turn for comfort to 2 Corinthians 4:16 For which cause we faint not [complain to Amazon]; but though our outward man perish [damp and slimeless], yet the inward man is renewed day by day. Thats you, dear reader, renewing your inward man 365 days a year.

Tone down the wokeness, as former president Barack Obama has already suggested. On New Years Eve, I received an extraordinarily abusive email from a Toronto self-proclaimed feminist raging at me for having attended a feminist event for work. She accused me of being an accessory to a recent murder and ended with I cant wait til youre no longer given space in the pages of a major newspaper, you fake feminist.

Heres some 2020 advice. Dont attack journalists for leaving the newsroom, dont attack the free speech you are exercising in this column, and dont go all Judean Peoples Front vs. Peoples Front of Judea on other feminists. Im afraid I went nuclear, stowing the email in a truly dire file titled Unfortunates but I wish her a blissful New Year renewing her inward man, etc.

Upcycle your stuff instead of binning it. I left 25 per cent of everything I own on the curb or donated to charity and I still have two couches too heavy to drag outside. Passersby will take anything, the reason being that they have devised a second use for single-purpose objects like towel rails and roller blinds.

No one wanted a canvas print of the great artist Paula Rego  It isnt nice in my mind  in her studio but she did look a bit glum, always deplored in a woman. I still have a dozen huge marble tiles that look like chocolate bars and if I can haul them out, theyre yours.

Be generous. In 2002, David Frum dreamed up the simple-minded phrase Axis of Evil that so entranced global village idiot George W. Bush. The New Yorker has rerun a devastating 2013 piece by Dexter Filkins explaining how the insult to Iran derailed a productive and life-saving rapprochement between it and the U.S. How many died as a result?

I admire Frum now, for offering brave, principled and intelligent commentary in the Trump debacle. He has redeemed himself.
The firearms were found in Swords on Friday

Ballistic examinations will be carried out on 10 firearms recovered in north Dublin to determine if they have been used in any previous shootings or murders.

The significant cache, which includes two assault rifles and eight handguns, was recovered in a holdall in Swords on Friday evening as part of a major intelligence operation.

Gardai have linked the firearms to the Kinahan cartel, which has been involved in a deadly feud with the Hutch crime gang that has resulted in up to 18 murders.

While there has been no killing linked to the dispute in 18 months, detectives believe the firearms were being stored in the remote location for pot- ential future attacks.

Threat

However, gardai do not believe there was an imminent threat to life.

The weapons are undergoing tests at garda headquarters to establish if they have been used in previous attacks.

They will also be tested for DNA in a bid to link them to any person in the hope of making arrests.

Around 1,000 rounds of ammunition were recovered, and a source said all of the weapons appeared to be in good working condition.

"The seizure shows the amount of firepower that is out there to any one gang and what gardai are up against," the source said.

"These guns weren't there for show - they were in the possession of criminal gangs to use at some stage, but thanks to this successful operation, 10 lethal weapons are off the streets."

The find was made by gardai from the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (DOCB) as part of an intelligence operation.

Detectives had kept surveillance on the weapons' location, but a decision was made to recover them.

Assistant Garda Commissioner John O'Driscoll, of Special Crime Operations, said the operation highlighted the force's efforts in tackling serious crime.

"The undertaking of the operation, leading to the discovery of a significant quantity of firearms and ammunition, reflects the fact that An Garda Sioch- ana's unrelenting efforts in tackling serious and organised crime will continue unabated into 2020," Mr O'Driscoll said.

The seizure is one of the biggest in recent years.

In January 2017, a garda operation at the Greenogue Industrial Estate in west Dublin led to 16 firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition being recovered.

That investigation also targeted the Kinahan cartel and led to significant gang members receiving lengthy jail terms.
More Americans back Donald Trump's decision to conduct an airstrike that took out Iranian General Qassem Soleimani than those who disapprove, according to a poll released Monday.

The Huffington Post/YouGov poll shows 43 per cent of Americans surveyed between January 3-5 approve of the president's decision to direct the drone strike while 38 per cent are against the move.

Trump directed an airstrike on an airport in Baghdad, Iraq, which took out Soleimani on Friday. The move came after demonstrators who back pro-Iranian Shia militia raided on New Years Eve the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which has never been breached before.

HuffPost/YouGov conducted a poll of 1,000 American adults in the three days following Soleimani's death.

More American adults approve of Donald Trump's decision to launch an attack that took out Iranian General Qassem Soleimani than those who disapprove

Soleimani (pictured) was killed Friday after Trump ordered a drone strike on an Iraqi airport where the Iranian military leader was located  and 43 per cent of Americans say they agree with the move while 38 per cent disagree

Party affiliation also seems to have correlated to the responses, with the majority of Democrats disapproving and majority of Republicans siding with Trump's move.

Sixty-nine per cent of Democrats said they did not agree with the president's decision to order the strike against Iran while 86 per cent of Republicans agreed with the attack.

Trump threatened on Saturday that if Tehran decided to retaliate against the U.S., either at home or abroad, he would target 52 Iranian sites in a counter strike.

A majority of Americans  57 per cent  say they think the strike has escalated tensions and makes further military conflict between Iran and the U.S. more likely. Only 8 per cent say they feel the move will act as a deterrent from further action from Tehran.

Thirty-five per cent of respondents in the weekend poll said they felt Trump prepared carefully for the attack, while 43 per cent said they did not feel as though the president adequately prepared to take action.

Democratic lawmakers have lambasted the president for failing to notify congress before taking action, and several politicians have claimed they don't think Trump had adequate intelligence to order the drone strike.

Donald Trump warned Sunday that if Iran retaliates against the U.S. he will take 'disproportionate' action against them. He also said he did not need to notify Congress if he decides to issue another attack

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in a 'dear colleague' letter released Sunday night that the Democratic-led chamber would introduce a War Powers Resolution this week to limit Trump's ability to take military action in Iran.

Trump sent an angry tweet Sunday insisting his tweets should serve as informing Congress of action.

'These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!' Trump tweeted.

When the poll participants were asked if Trump should have sent a preemptive notification to Congress, 44 per cent say he should have gotten authorization from the legislative branch  and 34 per cent say they felt the opposite.
When the building on 2121 Franklin Street in Oakland was sold in order to be converted into shared tech offices, it not only meant the end of an era for one of Oaklands last LGBTQ+ bars, but also the sudden eviction of Oakland Prides headquarters.

Last month, owner Carlos Uribe announced Club BNB and its sister nightspot, Club 21, would close after nearly two decades in their current space. During that time, the basement of the building also reportedly housed the headquarters of Oakland Pride at no cost to the nonprofit organization, effectively saving them thousands of dollars per year in rent.

MORE: Oakland LGBTQ nightclub reportedly closing to make way for tech offices

In an email, Club 21 said they would move Latin Explosion and La Bota Loca  two of their most popular dance parties  to Level 13 in Oakland. But Uribe, who also serves as the co-chair of Oakland Pride, said he isnt sure where the organizers of the volunteer-led nonprofit will go next.

To lose the space to gentrification, to office spaces, when the reality is we have a lot of space like that already in Oakland, its a real tragedy, Uribe told CBS, later adding, Its forcing a lot of long-term businesses, long-term residents and unfortunately the queer community out.

San Francisco real estate firm Ellis Partners reportedly bought out the building, and marketing materials shared by CBS show its future as a four-story, 23,000 square foot office space with an open floor plan.

The harsh reality of the forthcoming loss rippled throughout the community, and hundreds have signed a petition written by Uribe to Keep Oakland Queer: Allow Club 21/BnB to Stay since he shared it via the Oakland Pride Facebook page on Saturday.

The loss of the ONLY POC focused and Queer nightclubs in Oakland will leave a gaping hole in both night life and the LGBTQ community, wrote Uribe.

Others signing the petition called the building a safe haven, a place advocating for performers of color and furthermore, a gathering space that provided continual support for its community, especially when some of them said they had nowhere else to go.

ALSO: SF Pride Parade 2019: The most colorful costumes and creative signs

The Oakland Pride Parade, reportedly the second largest in Northern California with 60,000 attendees, recently celebrated its 10 year anniversary. In spite of the uncertain future of their space, Uribe said they plan on holding another parade this year on Sept. 13.

Amanda Bartlett is an SFGATE associate digital reporter. Email: amanda.bartlett@sfgate.com | Twitter: @byabartlett
Press Release

January 6, 2020 Philippine gov't to ensure security of Filipinos amid tensions in the Middle East President Rodrigo Duterte met today with top officials of the Department of National Defense (DND) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to assess the likely impact of the increasing tensions in the Middle East on the country, especially on affected Filipinos overseas. "Nagpatawag na si Pangulong Duterte ng meeting kasama ang chief of staff ng AFP kung ano ang magiging epekto nito sa ating bansa at sa ating seguridad," Senator Christopher Lawrence "Bong" Go said on Sunday, January 5. According to Go, who was present during the meeting, President Duterte ordered the AFP to be prepared to deploy military assets to repatriate overseas Filipinos in the Middle East, particularly from Iran and Iraq, at any moment's notice, in coordination with the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and other concerned agencies. "Hindi na makaantay ang Pangulo na sa Martes pa pag-usapan sa Command Conference ang sitwasyon sa Middle East kung kaya siya nagpatawag ng emergency meeting ngayon. Mabuti na prepared tayo mag-repatriate ng ating mga kababayan if necessary, iyan ang prayoridad ng Pangulo," Go explained. Go added that concerned agencies were also instructed to prepare contingency measures and identify other nearby safe countries where affected overseas Filipinos can be repatriated and all other contingencies in case it will be too difficult to bring them back to the Philippines. The senator assured the public that the government will take all steps possible to ensure the security of Filipinos in the country and overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), especially in the Middle East. "Patuloy nating minamanmanan ang sitwasyon sa Middle East, lalo na sa Iran. Nasa interes ng Pilipinas na panatilihin ang peace and stability in the region. Our concern clearly is on the safety and security of Filipinos in that country and the region," Go said. According to Go, the President considers the situation with utmost concern and hopes that things will stabilize, with the support of all regional and global stakeholders. "The President has directed relevant agencies to prepare for any eventuality and possible impact on the country. As your Senator, I will support all efforts of PRRD to safeguard and protect our national interests in the Middle East," Go said. Very recently, relevant government agencies, including the DFA, were instructed to closely monitor and report developments in Iraq, Iran and other parts of the Middle East.
[January 06, 2020] Telit's LM960A18 Gigabit LTE Data Card Certified Globally

LONDON, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Telit, a global enabler of the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced that the LM960A18 PCI Express Mini Card (mPCIe) is certified by the major global mobile network operators, including the largest operators in North America. Launched in February 2018, Telit's state-of-the-art 4.5G data card remains the only 1Gbps-class LTE mPCIe module in the industry and is now available to be deployed worldwide. Supporting a wide range of frequency bands, the LM960A18 delivers 5G-like high-speed data rates via Advanced LTE and offers a cellular connection for products in network appliance environments. The LM960A18 Gigabit LTE data card offers a seamless 5G evolution path to Telit's FN980m 5G Sub-6 and mmWave data card. For more information about Telit's mobile broadband modules and data cards, visit https://www.telit.com/m2m-iot-products/cellular-modules/data-cards/. The industry's first in the mPCIe form factor to support category 18, Telit's rugged LM960A18 delivers significant flexibility and a competitive edge for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) looking to quickly deploy next genration products delivering carrier broadband-like user experience. The LM960A18 is also the world's first mobile broadband card to support the Citizens Broadband Radio System (CBRS)  band 48. This makes it ideal for OEMs that want to serve the emerging private LTE market with routers, gateways and other devices connecting to LTE access points, small cells and other CBRS infrastructure. As the first top-tier IoT and mobile broadband module vendor to join the CBRS Alliance, Telit is committed to help drive innovation and adoption of private LTE networks and 5G, giving enterprises new options for site, campus and office wireless networking.



LM960A18 Key Benefits: Standard Mini PCIe Data-card form factor

LTE Cat 18: Exceptionally high-speed with data rates of up to 1.2G bps download and 150 Mbps upload

Full GNSS support

Support of UL with 2xCA and up to 5xCA DL with 4x4 MIMO

Very wide LTE frequency bands support

Up to 4 independent firmware images selectable at boot to support different network operator requirements

3G fallback technology

Support for FirstNet, CBRS, Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) and other new bands, all in a Single SKU. "Telit's award-winning LM960A18 is well-suited for products that demand high throughput to provide the most advanced connectivity," said Manish Watwani, chief marketing and product officer at Telit. "Ensuring a rich and seamless user experience, it allows customers to integrate a single module and deploy the end product nearly anywhere in the world. With a long list of firsts, the LM960A18 underscores our commitment to enabling IoT device designers, manufacturers and their customers to take advantage of the latest and greatest network technologies and beyond."

To learn more about the award-wining LM960A18 and the FN980m, visit Telit during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, located in Tech East, Westgate stand 2701. About Telit

Telit (AIM: TCM), is a global leader in Internet of Things (IoT) enablement, with an extensive portfolio of wireless connectivity modules, platforms, virtual cellular IoT operator services, and professional services, empowering hundreds of millions of connected 'things' to date, and trusted by thousands of direct and indirect customers, globally. With nearly two decades of IoT innovation experience, Telit continues to redefine the boundaries of digital business, by delivering secure, integrated end-to-end IoT solutions for many of the world's largest brands, including enterprises, OEMs, system integrators and service providers across all industries, enabling their pursuit of enterprise digital transformation. Copyright  2020 Telit Communications PLC. All rights reserved. Telit, Telit OneEdge and all associated logos are trademarks of Telit Communications PLC in the United States and other countries. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. Media Contacts Leslie Hart

Telit

+1 919-415-1510

[email protected] Gaby Lechin

Valerie Christopherson

GRC for Telit

+1 949-608-0276

[email protected] View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/telits-lm960a18-gigabit-lte-data-card-certified-globally-300981324.html SOURCE Telit

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DENVER, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Gov. Polis has recognized School Choice Week (Jan. 26-Feb. 1) with an official proclamation. During Colorado School Choice Week, parents, schools, and other community members will participate in 690 events and activities to raise awareness about educational opportunity.

Nationwide, School Choice Week will be celebrated with more than 50,000 independently planned events and activities. Dozens of governors and hundreds of city and county leaders nationwide have issued proclamations for the week.

The proclamations and activities, which include pep rallies, roundtable discussions, open houses, school fairs, and more, aim to spark conversations about the educational opportunities parents have, or want to have, for their children. In Colorado, large celebrations include a school fair at the Space Foundation Center and a civics day at the Capitol.

"We're excited for this year's celebration and look forward to seeing the hard work of Colorado school leaders, teachers, parents, and other event planners come to fruition," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We thank Gov. Polis for issuing the proclamation and encourage all parents to use this week to explore their school options."

As a nonpartisan, nonpolitical public awareness effort, National School Choice Week shines a positive spotlight on effective education options for students, families, and communities around the country. From January 26 through February 1, 2020, more than 50,000 independently-planned events will be held in celebration of the Week. For more information, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com.

For more information, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com , or visit www.facebook.com/schoolchoiceweek .

SOURCE National School Choice Week

Related Links

www.schoolchoiceweek.com


El presidente @MartinVizcarraC sostuvo una reunion con ciudadanas de colectivos y organizaciones que luchan contra la violencia hacia las mujeres. El jefe de Estado recibio sus propuestas para fortalecer las politicas de prevencion y proteccion frente a la violencia de genero. pic.twitter.com/Z2pT31CjJt
About 300 people have been moved through a fire zone in Western Australia where a blaze has closed the Eyre Highway for several days.

Authorities organised a convoy on Monday to ferry vehicles through the fire ground where a watch and act warning remains in place.

The Department of Fire and Emergency Services said the convoy to Norseman and Esperance was considered the safest way to help those stranded at Caiguna.

About 300 people have been moved through a fire zone in Western Australia where a blaze has closed the Eyre Highway (pictured) for several days

The Department of Fire and Emergency Services said the convoy to Norseman and Esperance was considered the safest way to help those stranded at Caiguna (roadhouse pictured)

Previously those stopped in cars and trucks at the town had been advised their best option was to return east.

At that stage supplies in the town were running low.

DFES said supplies were also limited in Norseman, west of the fire, and there was no accommodation available.

Only those considered self-sufficient were advised to stay in the town.

In response to the growing number of people stopped by the fire, St John Ambulance recently established first aid posts at Norseman and Caiguna to offer assistance.

The fire has been burning since December 20 with the watch and act warning extended partly because of worsening weather conditions over the coming days.

Temperatures will push into the 40s on Tuesday and Wednesday ahead of a cool change with strong winds.

The blaze is still considered out of control and unpredictable and is impacting the Eyre Highway on both sides at a number of locations.
Danish home retailer JYSK is expanding its presence in Ireland planning to open seven new stores this year aiming for 70 million in turnover over the next five years.

Having opened five stores last year, JYSK will open new premises in Waterford and Limerick in February and March.

The company said it also plans to open stores in Sligo, Carlow and Dublin, along with two stores in Cork city, during summer 2020 creating more than 70 full-time jobs.

JYSK announced last year it would open 15 stores across Ireland but said that their success so far means they now plan to open 40 stores over the next three to five years.

This is despite the company highlighting obstacles they have faced in opening new premises.

"It has been very difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to open new stores in Ireland.

We have noted that in other parts of Europe we can issue and sign a lease contract within two to four weeks, whereas in Ireland, this is taking up to 16 weeks in some cases," Poul Erik Larsen, Expansion Director at JYSK said.

Despite these difficulties, Roni Tuominen, Country Manager at JYSK Ireland, said: Our goal is to establish new JYSK locations in towns and cities all over Ireland, so we can contribute to the local economy, especially in smaller communities where our job creation will be extremely valuable."

Founded in Denmark in 1979 by Lars Larsen, JYSK has expanded to 51 countries, with more than 2,700 stores worldwide employing 23,000 people.

The five stores already operating in Ireland are located in Youghal, Portlaoise, Naas, Navan and Drogheda.
Ghanaian snap chat celebrity, Queen Farcadi, has been confusion on social media since she shot to fame some years ago.

Queen Farcadi confirmed that her only source of wealth is by sleeping with men for cash.

Recently news went viral that she has finally settled down with a man as photos and videos of her marriage popped up.

READ ALSO: Popcaan breaks down in tears at the entrance of Door of No Return at Cape Coast Castle

However, it turns out that Queen Farcadi wasn't the person who got married but her big sister.

Putting everything aside, Queen Farcadi is really beautiful and her hot photos have been proving that.

1. Queen Farcadi wore a beautiful smile here:

2. She displayed her cute backside:

READ ALSO: Wanlov accuses Fella Makafui of copying everything Sister Derby does (video)

3. Queen Farcadi flaunts her tattoo:

4. Black looks good on her:

5. She is really a queen:

6. Bedroom pose:

READ ALSO: Sarkodie beats Shatta Wale, Stonebwoy to become the most mentioned Ghanaian celebrity on Twitter

7. Beachside mood:

Despite her current job as a 'night worker', Queen Farcadi is a mother of one.

The beautiful Ghanaian has a beautiful daughter but the identity of her baby daddy is yet to be revealed.

Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition? Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Enjoyed reading our story? Download YEN's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Ghana news!

Source: YEN.com.gh
WomenShelter of Long Beach will have new leader in new year
Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot have condemned the violence in JNU, saying fascists are afraid of the voices of brave students.

Violence broke out at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police.

"The brutal attack on JNU students and teachers by masked thugs, that has left many seriously injured, is shocking.The fascists in control of our nation, are afraid of the voices of our brave students. The violence in JNU is a reflection of that fear," Gehlot said in a tweet on Sunday night.

He condemned the attack on students saying, students, teachers were beaten, hostels were vandalised but there was no police inside the campus to stop it.

"It is shocking, Why police is not doing anything to protect students? BJP's divisive politics is ruining the universities," he charged.

Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot described the attack as shameful and cowardly.

"I strongly condemn the violence and vandalism at the JNU campus in Delhi causing injury to students and damaging property. Such acts are shameful and cowardly, strict action must be taken against the culprits," Pilot said in a tweet.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)




Trump perceived the death of the U.S. military as crossing the red line and ordered senior advisers to begin planning the operation. U.S. President Donald Trump has decided to liquidate the commander of the El Quds special forces Lieutenant General Qassem Suleimani shortly after the death of an American contractor during a rocket attack on an American military base in northern Iraq.Trump perceived the death of the U.S. military as crossing the red line and ordered senior advisers to begin planning the operation.



Together with the US president, several members of the National Security Council (NSC) monitored the operation. The White House did not notify any of the foreign governments of the impending attack, nor did they notify supporters of the Democratic Party in the US Congress.
A Labor MP has called for school leavers to undertake a year of mandatory civil service in disaster response, saying bushfires demand a "mobilisation of will" akin to during World War II.

The radical proposal floated by Labor backbencher Mike Kelly, whose electorate encompasses much of the fire-ravaged South Coast, suggested high school graduates spend a year in a Civil Defence Corps - an umbrella organisation under which all existing volunteer disaster response services would sit.

ACT Rural Fire Service members at a bushfire near Adaminaby. Labor backbencher Mike Kelly has raised concerns about the number of volunteers in fire services nationally. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

In a lengthy Facebook post, which he stressed was only his personal view, Dr Kelly said lengthening bushfire seasons as a result of climate change "demand the same sort of national mobilisation of will as we required in World War II".

Dr Kelly, who is a former Australian Defence Force officer and the Member for Eden-Monaro, said Australia should establish a Civil Defence Corps with members paid by the Commonwealth like army reservists. They would receive medals that would entitle them to march on ANZAC Day, and get special discounts for their service.
Denver-based Frontier Airlines announced Monday it was making a difficult decision to suspend all operations at the Downtown Mobile Airport in April based on a lack of sufficient demand to support the service, a company spokeswoman said.

We greatly appreciate and support the partnership we have received from the airport and community in bringing service to Mobile and will continue to evaluate the potential for future opportunities, said Jennifer de la Cruz, a spokeswoman at Frontier.

Frontier is the only airline providing flights from the brand-new passenger terminal at the Downtown Mobile Airport that is located within the Brookley Aeroplex south of downtown Mobile. The $8 million terminal, finance through the Airport Authoritys cash reserves and opened on May 1, is named Terminal One and is situated inside a 50,000-square-foot building that partially serves as an Airbus logistics center.

The Mobile Airport Authority, in a news release, said the Frontier service will end on April 22, and likely would not return to Mobile any sooner than 2021. The airline is currently providing flights to Denver. Last year, it offered flights to Chicagos OHare International Airport before suspending that service on Nov. 13.

The authority, in its news release, called the Frontier experience a success story. Since the airport opened on May 1, the airline has served more than 40,000 passengers providing non-stop direct seasonal service," to Denver and Chicago, and that the planes were full, according to the authoritys news release.

The authority said the business strategy for Frontier is to pursue opportunities recently presented at airports in large metro areas such as Los Angeles, Newark and Miami.

The suspension of service from the Downtown airport is not expected to hinder ongoing efforts to analyze the potential relocation of the citys commercial air services from Mobile Regional Airport to the Downtown Mobile Airport. Due this summer is a master plan that will serve a guide for relocating all commercial air service to the Downtown Airport.

We remain committed to the downtown airport at Brookley," said Jen Zoghby, spokeswoman for Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson, who said the administration is disappointed with Frontiers decision. "Its an opportunity for another carrier to come to Mobile.

Frontier, meanwhile, said will begin providing flights from Huntsville International Airport to Denver starting on May 1. The low-cost airliner already provides service from Huntsville to Orlando. Frontier, in September, announced it had suspended service at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. The airliner had provided fights from Birmingham to Philadelphia, Denver and Orlando.

This story was updated at 2:50 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 6, 2020, to include statements from the Mobile Airport Authority.

This story was updated at 4:35 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 6, 2020, to include a statement from Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson spokeswoman Jen Zoghby.
Australia has been burning since September and an end to the catastrophic destruction does not appear to be in sight. Officials believe the fires could take months to extinguish.

The wildfires have already claimed more than two dozen lives and destroyed over 2,000 homes, according to The Associated Press.

Wildlife conservation group WWF in Australia is now also estimating that 1.25 billion animals have died.

As of Wednesday, estimates said as much as 15.6 million acres of land had burned. That's greater than twice the size of Maryland. New South Wales is getting hit the hardest with about 130 fires still burning across the state as of earlier this week.

For the first time in Australian history, thousands of army, navy and air force reservists have been thrown into the fight against the fires. U.S. officials said Tuesday they're planning to send 100 firefighters to the country next week, joining the 159 U.S. firefighters already there.

The fires started several months earlier than is typical for Australia's annual wildfire season as the country suffers through its hottest and driest year on record.

Here's a look at some of the devastation:
Thousands of people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge on Sunday as part of an anti-hate rally amid a spate of attacks against the Jewish community. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at the march that he planned to propose a new state law that would label hate crimes as domestic terrorism, CBS New York reported.

"These are terrorists and it should be punished as such," Cuomo said.

There were a series of anti-Semitic attacks in the New York area at the end 2019 and on December 28, a man stabbed five people as they gathered at a rabbi's home north of New York City to celebrate Hanukkah. Grafton Thomas, 37, was arraigned last week and pleaded not guilty to five counts of attempted murder and one count of burglary.

Cuomo said Sunday that there would be an increase of the state police force and a higher presence of the hate crimes task force in vulnerable communities.

New York state is also making an additional $45 million available to non-public schools and religious institutions for security.

Jewish Solidarity March Held In Response To Rise In Anti-Semitism

People participate in a Jewish solidarity march across the Brooklyn Bridge on January 5, 2020, in New York City. The march was held in response to a recent rise in anti-Semitic crimes in the greater New York metropolitan area. Jeenah Moon / Getty

"While we're here today in the spirit of solidarity and love, government must do more than just offer thoughts and prayers. Government must act. This is illegal and it is government's responsibility to protect the people of the state of New York, and the state government will be doing just that," Cuomo said.

Senator Chuck Schumer also spoke before the march and rally, saying, "We will not only speak and march, but we will act."

The senator announced he is introducing legislation that would protect houses of worship.

"They need to be protected, and so our proposal, we were able to get a $30 million increase in a grant to protect houses of worship last year. I am now proposing that it quadruple to $360 million," Schumer said. "That will allow our houses of worship to fortify themselves with cameras and gates and strong doors and will allow them to hire security so that they can protect themselves."

Story continues

Schumer said he is also proposing that the federal government spend $100 million to help coordinate with local police groups to fight .

US-POLITICS-RELIGION

Senator Charles Schumer, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo attend protests in support of the Jewish community called No Hate No Fear at the Brooklyn Bridge on January 5, 2020. Kena Betancur / Getty

"Many of our local police groups don't have the expertise that the federal government has to do just that, and if we fight hate crimes and we can go after those who perpetrate them and those who encourage them and act on them, we can do a lot of good," he said.

The NYPD says there have been at least 14 reported anti-Semitic attacks in the last two weeks.

Officers are now looking into another possible hate crime in Brooklyn. Police say a group of three people walked into a kosher bagel store on Friday and made threatening anti-Semitic remarks. The suspects were taken into custody, but no one has been charged at this time.

The NYPD hate crime unit is now investigating.

Meanwhile, police say there were 423 hate crimes in the city in 2019.

The majority of those hate crimes were anti-Semitic in nature, but many groups were targeted for reasons including religion and sexual orientation.

The march concludes with a rally in Columbus Park.

Australian Prime Minister faces criticism for fire crisis response

U.S. service member and 2 contractors killed in attack on Kenyan military base

Tensions escalate between Iran and the U.S.
Meghan Markle's close friend - and Christmas card photographer - Janina Gavankar took her own turn in front of the cameras on Sunday night when she stepped out onto the red carpet at the 77th annual Golden Globes.

The 39-year-old Morning Show actress, who has known the Duchess of Sussex for many years, made quite the chic impression in a black figure-hugging Georges Chakra Couture gown that featured a saucy sheer lace panel from the knee down, as well as large puffy blue sleeves.

Janina accessorized her look with a simple pair of hoop earrings from Memoire and a diamond Hearts On Fire bracelet, and she had her dark hair slicked back in a low updo, in order to maintain maximum focus on her stunning gown.

Strutting her stuff: Meghan Markle's close friend Janina Gavankar wowed on the red carpet at the Golden Globes - after revealing she took the royal's family Christmas card photo

Chic: The 39-year-old actress looked stunning in a black gown that featured puffy blue sleeves as a beaded lace train

All angles: At one point, she turned around to show off the low-cut back of the frock

The actress attended the event alongside her co-stars from The Morning Show, which is nominated for several awards, including Best Drama Series - while stars Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon both earned nods for Best Actress in a Drama Series.

And while Janina might not have been nominated herself, she didn't let that stop her from taking center stage as she strutted her stuff on the red carpet.

Janina happily turned this way and that for the cameras, showing off the low-cut back of her dress, as well as the stunning blue sleeves.

As well as beaded lace detailing from the knees down, the dress also featured a long train that flowed behind Janina and she made her way inside the award ceremony.

Her appearance at the Golden Globes is one of her first major public outings since she revealed on Twitter that she was responsible for taking the sweet family snap that Meghan and Prince Harry chose to use for their Christmas card this year - their first holiday season with baby Archie.

The Duchess of Sussex's long-time friend took to Twitter on Christmas Eve in order to share the original image, which shows proud parents Harry and Meghan sitting in front of a Christmas tree while their son Archie crawls inquisitively towards the camera.

Glam: Janina wore her dark hair pulled back in a slicked low updo, and she kept her accessories simple, wearing Memoire earrings and a Hearts on Fire diamond bracelet

Swish and flick: Her glam team created a perfect cat eye for the evening

Bow down! The actress joked around on the red carpet with actors Lee Jeong-eun, Cho Yeo-jeong and Song Kang-ho

'So proud to have taken the Christmas photo for one of my best friends and her family. Heres the original that was sent out,' Janina wrote alongside the image, which also included some animated sparkles in the tree, as well as a Merry Christmas message from the Sussexes.

She shared the image amid a host of claims on social media that the image had been 'Photoshopped' before being released to the public.

The card was not officially published through any official royal channels, and first appeared on an unverified Twitter account called The Queen's Commonwealth Trust.

Initially shared as a moving GIF image, with the lights on the tree twinkling, the account said: 'Just sharing the sweetest Christmas Card from our President and Vice-President, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Very Merry Christmas, everyone!'

Meanwhile the Duke and Duchess shared a written greeting on their official Instagram account, which read: 'Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas - Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Sussex'

Twitter users first began speculating that the Christmas card image of the Sussex family might have been digitally altered after it was initially posted.

Sharing: On Christmas Eve, Janina shared the image that she had taken of Meghan, Prince Harry and baby Archie, which was used on their holiday card

Close: She also defended Meghan against claims that the image had been Photoshopped

In that version of the photo, Meghan's face appeared significantly more in focus than that of Prince Harry in the picture appearing online, despite them both being roughly the same distance behind Archie.

The black and white festive image shows Harry and Meghan sitting by a Christmas tree smiling as the seven-month-old gazes into the camera in the foreground.

One possible reason is that the image of her face was taken in another similar photograph in the same shoot, and then added onto the picture they released.

The images may also have appeared different because the Sussex's Christmas card was initially shared as a moving GIF image - but was seemingly sharpened when sent out as a still image.

It is not suggested that the Duke and Duchess edited the image.

It is believed that copies of the image were emailed to friends and staff on Monday and hard copies sent to family.

Joyful: Her post came as the Duke and Duchess wished their Instagram followers a Happy Christmas on their Instagram account

Questions: After the image was shared on an unverified Instagram account, some suggested that it might have been digitally altered

A spokesman for the Sussexes has confirmed the card's authenticity. Harry and Meghan are currently spending a six-week break over the festive period in Canada.

The duchess, a former actress, lived and worked in Toronto during her time starring in the popular US drama Suits.

The couple were famously pictured together when Meghan joined her then-boyfriend Harry at the 2017 Invictus Games in the Canadian city.

The Sussexes are likely to have spent the US Thanksgiving celebrations, which this year fell on November 28, with the duchess' mother Gloria Ragland.

It is already been revealed they will not be joining the Queen and other members of the Royal Family at Sandringham on Christmas Day, as they are taking a break.

The Queen is said to be supportive of the Sussexes' plans and it follows the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's past decision to spend Christmas with Kate's parents.

Golden Globes 2020: Winners TELEVISION Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television Christopher Abbott, Catch-22 Sacha Baron Cohen, The Spy Russell Crowe, The Loudest Voice - WINNER Jared Harris, Chernobyl Sam Rockwell, Fosse/Verdon Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television Kaitlyn Dever, Unbelievable Joey King, The Act, Helen Mirren, Catherine the Great Merritt Wever, Unbelievable Michelle Williams, Fosse/Verdon - WINNER Michelle Williams won Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television for her role in Fosse/Verdon Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television Catch-22, Hulu Chernobyl, HBO - WINNER Fosse/Verdon, FX The Loudest Voice, Showtime Unbelievable, Netflix Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television Alan Arkin Kieran Culkin, Succession Andrew Scott, Fleabag Stellan Skarsgard, Chernobyl - WINNER Henry Winkler, Barry Best Television Series  Musical or Comedy Barry, HBO Fleabag, Amazon - WINNER The Kominsky Method, Netflix The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Amazon The Politician, Netflix Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television Patricia Arquette, The Act - WINNER Helena Bonham Carter, The Crown Toni Collette, Unbelievable Meryl Streep, Big Little Lies Emily Watson, Chernobyl Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series  Musical or Comedy Michael Douglas, The Kominsky Method Bill Hader, Barry Ben Platt, The Politician Paul Rudd, Living with Yourself Ramy Youssef, Ramy - WINNER Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series  Musical or Comedy Christina Applegate, Dead to Me Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Kirsten Dunst, On Becoming a God in Central Florida Natasha Lyonne, Russian Doll Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag - WINNER Talented: Phoebe Waller-Bridge portrays the titular character in the groundbreaking series, which she adapted from her award-winning play - as it follows a young woman trying to cope with life in London while coming to terms with a recent tragedy Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series  Drama Brian Cox, Succession - WINNER Kit Harington, Game of Thrones Rami Malek, Mr. Robot Tobias Menzies, The Crown Billy Porter, Pose Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series  Drama Jennifer Aniston, The Morning Show Olivia Colman, The Crown - WINNER Jodie Comer, Killing Eve Nicole Kidman, Big Little Lies Reese Witherspoon, The Morning Show Olivia Colman won for The Crown as she portrays Queen Elizabeth II in the Netflix series Best Television Series  Drama Big Little Lies, HBO The Crown, Netflix Killing Eve, BBC America The Morning Show, Apple TV Plus Succession, HBO - WINNER Succession was named Best Television Series - Drama FILM Best Motion Picture  Foreign Language The Farewell, A24 Pain and Glory, Sony Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Pyramide Films Les Miserables, BAC Films, Amazon Parasite, CJ Entertainment - WINNER Best Original Score  Motion Picture Daniel Pemberton, Motherless Brooklyn Alexandre Desplat, Little Women Hildur Gunadottir, Joker - WINNER Thomas Newman, 1917 Randy Newman, Marriage Story Best Original Song  Motion Picture Beautiful Ghosts, Cats (Im Gonna) Love Me Again, Rocketman - WINNER Into the Unknown, Frozen II Spirit, The Lion King Stand Up, Harriet Best Actor in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes Al Pacino, The Irishman Joe Pesci, The Irishman Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - WINNER Handsome: Pitt led Once Upon A Time In Hollywood to three wins throughout the night Best Actress in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell Annette Bening, The Report Laura Dern, Marriage Story - WINNER Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers Margot Robbie, Bombshell Best Actor in a Motion Picture  Musical or Comedy Daniel Craig, Knives Out Roman Griffin Davis, Jojo Rabbit Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Taron Egerton, Rocketman - WINNER Eddie Murphy, Dolemite Is My Name Rocketman star Taron Egerton won Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy Best Screenplay Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won, Parasite Anthony McCarten, The Two Popes Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - WINNER Steven Zaillian, The Irishman Best Motion Picture  Animated Frozen II, Disney How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Universal Missing Link, United Artists Releasing Toy Story 4, Disney The Lion King, Disney Best Director  Motion Picture Bong Joon-ho, Parasite Sam Mendes, 1917 - WINNER Todd Phillips, Joker Martin Scorsese, The Irishman Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Best Actor in a Motion Picture  Drama Christian Bale, Ford v Ferrari Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory Adam Driver, Marriage Story Joaquin Phoenix, Joker - WINNER Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes Best Actress in a Motion Picture  Musical or Comedy Awkwafina, The Farewell - WINNER Ana de Armas, Knives Out Cate Blanchett, Whered You Go, Bernadette Beanie Feldstein, Booksmart Emma Thompson, Late Night Best Actress in a Motion Picture  Drama Cynthia Erivo, Harriet Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story Saoirse Ronan, Little Women Charlize Theron, Bombshell Renee Zellweger, Judy - WINNER Judy star Renee Zellweger won Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama Best Motion Picture  Musical or Comedy Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Sony - WINNER Jojo Rabbit, Fox Searchlight Knives Out, Lionsgate Rocketman, Paramount Dolemite Is My Name, Netflix Best Motion Picture  Drama The Irishman, Netflix Marriage Story, Netflix 1917, Universal - WINNER Joker, Warner Bros. The Two Popes, Netflix Advertisement
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 20:01:11|Editor: mingmei

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BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A team of Chinese doctors have successfully conducted the country's first robot-assisted brain angiography in a Beijing hospital, Science and Technology Daily reported Monday.

The doctors accurately performed a brain angiography surgery on a female patient by remotely commanding "Luban," China's self-developed minimally-invasive vascular interventional surgery robot.

Angiography is an X-ray examining technique that injects contrast media into arteries to dynamically reveal the condition of major blood vessels in the brain, usually exposing medical staff to radiation throughout the surgery. A surgery robot could protect medical staff from radiation risks.

Developed by researchers from the Beijing Tiantan Hospital and Beijing Institute of Technology, the surgery robot will soon be applied in clinical practice, which will ease the shortage of high-quality medical resources in minimally-invasive interventional treatments.

With the development of 5G technology, Luban will be able to perform trans-regional surgeries in the future, according to Li Youxiang from Beijing Tiantan Hospital, one of the researchers.
A Rochester man has pleaded guilty to illegally possessing a firearm or ammunition in an October shooting at a local fast food restaurant.

George Earl Oliver, 28, pleaded guilty in Olmsted County District Court on Jan. 3 to felony possession of ammo/any firearm-conviction or adjudicated delinquent for crime of violence. Oliver turned 29 on Jan. 7 while being held on $75,000 conditional bail. He has been held since his arrest on Nov. 5.

A second man, Luke Benson Giwa, 20, was charged with two felony counts of aiding and abetting second-degree assault. Judge Lisa Hayne set unconditional bail at $150,000 and conditional bail at $75,000. Court records indicate Giwa posted non-cash bond on Dec. 9. His next court appearance is scheduled for Jan. 16.

Police said Oliver was involved in an Oct. 23 incident at Kentucky Fried Chicken, 717 12th St. SE. Two 16-year-old males were injured. According to police, a teenager and his friend were at the fast food restaurant getting food and were sitting in a car when someone appeared at the window of the car and started shooting. One of the teenagers was shot in the leg and the other suffered a graze wound.

Investigators found three spent shell casings, a mixture of Sig and Blazer brand ammo, at the scene of the shooting.

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Police later learned that one of the injured teenagers had been involved in a fight with the alleged shooter at a gathering at China Hall on Sept. 28, according to court documents. The teen reportedly "beat the s--- out of" Giwa, the complaint states.

Oliver was working security at China Hall the night of the fight, which court records indicate was part of a larger "riot incident." Oliver told police that he was jumped by unknown males.

In the weeks between the shooting and the arrests of Oliver and Giwa, police gathered surveillance footage from at least two places. Police also executed a search warrant at Giwa's residence, where they reportedly found an empty box of Blazer 9 mm ammunition under Giwa's bed.

A gun magazine was also found in the residence, and a second magazine was found in a vehicle in the driveway, according to the complaint.

While officers were executing the search warrant, Oliver pulled up to the house and police briefly detained him for questioning before allowing him to leave. He was later arrested at his place of employment.
Aartii Naagpal, who was working with Kushal Punjabi on a web series called, r.p.m, said she is ashamed to hear about the suicide. The television actress recently talked up about her own brush with depression and said, she wished Kushal would have opened up to her. During an interview with Free Press Journal, she revealed she too had attempted suicide in the past.

Many celebrities expressed their disbelief, as the news of Kushal's suicide hit the internet. Actor Arjun Bijlani also opened up about how mental health is looked at in the television industry. As a dialogue started about the actors and their mental health in the industry more started to speak up.

Aartii Granddaughter filmmaker Vithhaldas Panchotia, said, since she grew up in the film industry, "I have seen umpteen cases of suicide of film and non-film personalities. The fact is, I too have been through this internal torture for many years."

She also revealed about her four suicide attempts in the past, which were due to toxic relationships, she added, "I was very weak and vulnerable. I had forgotten my inner strength and that I have two children. Going through a divorce since the last eight years, fighting 40 false cases, it all took a toll on me."

Kushal Punjabi recently gained fame after winning the reality show, Zor Ka Jhatka, he then was seen in several other reality shows as well, Fear Factor, Paisa Bhari Padega and Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa. Kaushal had also been part of big films like Lakshya, Kaal, Salaam-e-Ishq, Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal and Crazy Cukkad Family. According to the police's statement, the actor committed suicide at his house in Mumbai by hanging himself from a fan with a nylon rope.

Arjun Bijlani Feels One Cannot Open Up About Depression In The Television Industry
H arvey Weinstein has been charged in Los Angeles with rape and sexual assault.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a news release that Weinstein has been charged with raping one woman and sexually assaulting another in separate incidents.

These incidents allegedly occurred over a two-day period in 2013.

"We believe the evidence will show that the defendant used his power and influence to gain access to his victims and then commit violent crimes against them," Ms Lacey said in a statement.

"I want to commend the victims who have come forward and bravely recounted what happened to them.

"It is my hope that all victims of sexual violence find strength and healing as they move forward."

He could face up to 28 years in prison if convicted following the charges / AFP via Getty Images

Weinstein allegedly raped a woman in a hotel room on February 18, 2013, after he pushed his way inside her room, prosecutors said.

The next night, he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel suite.

He faces up to 28 years in state prison if he is convicted of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery by restraint.

His arraignment has not yet been scheduled and prosecutors will recommend $5 million bail.

The Los Angeles district attorney's task force is still investigating sex crime allegations against Weinstein from three women.
When artist and writer Vivek Shraya started her own mentorship and publishing program in 2017, she initially did it with younger writers in mind.

Id always centred the idea  around wanting to support youth, around supporting BIPOC youth, she says in an interview ahead of the launch of the third VS. Books mentoring program.

But this time, things are different. While the first two rounds focused on young writers, the first year writing short stories, the second one writing poetry, this time shes aiming at BIPOC writers over 50 writing a novel or memoir.

Right out of the gate, she and the writer she selected for the first mentorship in 2017, Tea Mutonji, was extremely successful. Mutonjis book of short stories Shut Up Youre Pretty, was nominated for the 2019 Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize. The winner of the second round, launched in 2018, was Cicely Belle Blain, whose book of poetry will be out in fall 2020.

Shraya says that when she and Mutonji were doing a promotional tour together, she was stopped in her tracks by an older woman in the crowd at the FOLD festival in Brampton asking about mentorship. The woman wondered about the age limit.

I sort of made a respectful joke  What could I possibly teach you?  and she looked me straight in the eye and said The truth is theres many of us who are here because we want to learn from you. 

It was the beginning of a rethink for Shraya. Many programs, she notes, are geared at youth meaning so theres often a cutoff age, even if it can go as high as age 40. But if you get your start when youre a little older, youre often out of luck.

I started to really embrace my queerness when I was 27, 28, Shraya says. Even at that still young age, she says, a lot of the resources for LGBTQ youth I found I couldnt access because I was too old.

The definition of an emerging writer has different definitions depending on who you talk to.

Shraya quotes a tweet from Indigenous writer Tracey Lindberg that stated Please remember: emerging writers includes old birds who stopped fearing and started writing.

While theres clearly a need to encourage and mentor younger writers, Shraya says her experience with the older woman made her realize: here was a group we dont often think about. Why not? Largely because of ageism and because of certain expectations or assumptions we make around class that people at a certain age are stable, have the resources, have the skills  and I dont think thats, in fact, true.

This has created a gap in storytelling. Younger BIPOC writers in recent years have been receiving more attention from publishers and the media, and there is a momentum around and increased visibility of diverse authors. However, Shraya says, there are plenty of older writers who paved the way but who havent received the same kind of attention or assistance.

Ive seen so much change in the past ten years in the way that diverse stories and diverse writers have been taken up, Shraya says. I look at older writers who are 50 and above and they havent been able to reap those quote-unquote benefits.

Shraya also sees this as a chance to teach a new writer some of the things shes learned herself  about writing grant applications, or giving a reading, for example  but also for her to learn from them. Ive been lucky to have informal mentoring throughout my career but Ive never had a close, formal mentorship, so Im curious about what it means to be in, hopefully, a reciprocal mentorship relationship with an older artist of colour.

She says informal mentors have led the way for her, including the poet Amber Dawn  without whom I wouldnt have written my book of poetry  and Farzana Doctor, who I admire a lot.

Potential mentees will have to submit a synopsis of their book, a bio, and a one-pager about what they are looking for from their relationship  and a full manuscript draft of around 50,000 to 60,000 words. If you dont have a manuscript ready yet, dont fret  the call for applications was released Monday Jan. 6, 2020 and closes on Jan. 4, 2021.

Sometimes in choosing a manuscript its less about this is the best manuscript and more about this is a manuscript I can see myself supporting,  Shraya says. I think thats common for publishers. Publishers often turn down books not necessarily because they dont like the book but because they dont know how to support it or take it to the next level.

This year, shes out with a new novel with ECW Press titled The Subtweet  its about online culture but also female friendship, visibility, jealousy, its very plot-driven which is something I havent really done before so were excited about that  and its the 10th anniversary of her first book, God Loves Hair, which was initially self-published. And so its particularly meaningful, marking the beginning of her own foray into publishing. But even as shes celebrating her own increased success, she doesnt see her writing and career as something she does alone.

I feel such a such a responsibility to be able take a step forward but to bring marginalized people along with me.
Jim Davidson has been accused of telling a black train conductor he isn't 'welcome in our country' - and police will speak to him 'this week', the witness in the case has said

Jim Davidson will be grilled by police over claims he told a black train attendant 'you aren't welcome in this country' in a row over the star's over-60s rail pass, a key witness claimed today.

The comedian, 66, admitted he was involved in a row at Euston station in October but insisted the Virgin worker was white and that his comments were 'sarcastic'.

Author Paul Blanchard saw it unfold and made the complaint about the star's behaviour - telling police the man was black.

He told The Sun: 'I've been asked to provide further statements and the police officer handling the case said they're pulling Jim in to speak this week.

'It's been three months but I'm glad they are doing something'.

Mr Davidson previously admitted to telling the train attendant to 'f*** off' but claimed he was a South African white man and had acted in a threatening manner.

Davidson added: 'I wasn't racist and the man was white. I've spoken to the police and told them what happened.

'I did say: ''Welcome to our country'', in a sarcastic manner, because I couldn't help myself.'

Bur Mr Blanchard insisted the man was black and added: 'Jim repeatedly used the same kind of dismissive and abusive language.'

The incident took place at Euston station in London, on a train headed to Milton Keynes - but there is a row over whether the alleged victim is black or white

British Transport Police said in a statement: 'British Transport Police are aware of a report of racial abuse on board a Virgin Trains service travelling to Milton Keynes Central'.

It is not the first time Davidson has faced allegations of racism after he vowed in June to never visit London again.

He accused the capital's mayor Sadiq Khan of having 'f***** up' his home town.

Davidson was forced to clarify his comments after fellow social media users accused him of racism.

He said wrote: 'To all you twitter (sic) moaners re my coment (sic) on my home town. It is purely the congestion and traffic I cannot bare but all you lefties can still call me racsist (sic) if if (sic) gets you off Charlton? You can bypass London and go through Kent.'

Davidson, who was popular in the 1980s, had earlier been accused of making homophobic and racist jokes.

His humour was also very critical of the working class during Margaret Thatcher's time in Downing Street.
Mr. Sanders views his consistent diplomacy-over-conflict stance  dating to his opposition to the Vietnam War and his anti-interventionist foreign policy as mayor of Burlington, Vt.  as an advantage with working-class Americans who are frustrated with the countrys involvement in costly and distant wars.

I know that it is rarely the children of the billionaire class who face the agony of reckless foreign policy  it is the children of working families, he said on Friday, reading from prepared remarks at an event in Anamosa.

Aides to Mr. Sanders view him as well positioned against Mr. Biden  who in many ways embodies the centrist Washington establishment Mr. Sanders dislikes  and they have urged him for months to go after the former vice president more directly. With foreign affairs, Mr. Sanderss campaign sees an opportunity not just to call attention to the senators consistent resistance to war but also to draw an easy-to-grasp contrast between the two candidates.

Even before the airstrike in Iraq last week, Mr. Sanderss aides had been eager to highlight his foreign policy views. But though he speaks on the trail about his opposition to Americas support for Saudi Arabias war in Yemen, foreign policy has so far taken a back seat in his campaign to domestic policy proposals like Medicare for all and tuition-free public college.

At an event in Dubuque on Saturday, however, Mr. Sanders called on Congress to take immediate steps to restrain President Trump from plunging our nation into yet another endless war.

His foreign policy views have struck a chord with voters in Iowa like Peggy Ross, 67, a bookseller from Decorah. I think he has the right idea, she said after seeing Mr. Sanders speak. No one likes war.

Yet Mr. Sanderss dovish stances and his emphasis on domestic matters could also prove to be liabilities with voters who want a firmer response to foreign aggression than he appears to promote. They could also weaken his standing among Americans who are clamoring for an experienced hand in the international arena at a moment of global turmoil.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Golden Globes suit will be auctioned for Australia fire relief originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com

Fans of "Fleabag" creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge's ensemble at the Golden Globes will have a chance to own it.

Backstage at the awards show, Waller-Bridge told reporters that her couture suit, by designer Ralph & Russo, will be auctioned off with the proceeds going toward fire relief in Australia.

Waller-Bridge donned the suit, which she called "the most extraordinary thing I've ever worn," as she accepted the Golden Globes for best comedic television actress and best comedic television series.

MORE: Golden Globe winner Russell Crowe skips show to be in Australia during bushfires

Since the Australian wildfires began in September, they have burned more than 22,393 square miles of land and destroyed more than 1,630 homes, according to the Australian Department of Home Affairs.

At least 24 people have died, and ecologists from the University of Sydney estimate that about half a billion animals have been killed.
The assessment report is then given to the prosecutor, the judge and a defense attorney, who speaks with each inmate to get more information. A public defender is on hand to speak with inmates who may not yet have counsel.

That information is then presented to the court to help the judge determine whether a lowered bond or release is appropriate and, if so, what type of pretrial monitoring the defendant should face while out of jail.

Clark County Circuit Court No. 4 Judge Vicki Carmichael said the practice has already shown a more meaningful exchange within courtrooms. She said that it's really going to make a huge difference in our ability to assess the individual and not (just) the crime."

"The idea is that we have had over the years a number of people who have been incarcerated pretrial who simply couldn't post a $250 bond," Carmichael said. "And then you have somebody who has a $25,000 bond because they're higher risk and they post it because they have the money.
Any US military action against Iran will be in line with international law, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday after President Donald Trump threatened to attack cultural sites.

Trump was accused of threatening a war crime after he tweeted that sites which were important to Iranian culture were on a list of 52 potential US targets should the regime in Tehran make good on its pledge to avenge the killing of a top commander.

Asked in a television interview why Trump was threatening Iran with a war crime, Pompeo said: Well behave lawfully. Well behave inside the system.

We always have and we always will, Pompeo told the ABC networks This Week program.

Pompeo refused to give any details on the potential targets but said Trump would never shy away from protecting America.

Ive seen what we are planning in terms of the target set. Im sure the Department of Defense is continuing to develop options, he said.

The American people should know that every target that we strike will be a lawful target, and it will be a target designed with a singular mission, of protecting and defending America.

Trumps threat late Saturday sparked widespread accusations from Democrats that he would be in breach of the Geneva Convention which says any targeting of cultural sites constitutes a war crime.

You are threatening to commit war crimes. We are not at war with Iran. The American people do not want a war with Iran, Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the top Democrats hoping to challenge Trump in Novembers election, wrote on Twitter.

Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also tweeted that targeting cultural sites is a WAR CRIME.
New York (AFP) - Former Mexican public security minister Genaro Garcia Luna, accused of taking huge bribes to allow the notorious Sinaloa cartel to ship drugs into the US, pleaded not guilty Friday in a New York court.

The once-powerful Garcia Luna entered the federal courtroom in Brooklyn stooped over and looking crestfallen, to hear Judge Peggy Kuo read the charges against him.

The arrest December 9 in Dallas of the man who was an architect of Mexico's war on drug trafficking was a stunning development.

The US government accuses Garcia Luna of accepting millions of dollars in bribes from the cartel to look the other way as it smuggled tons of drugs into the US between 2001 and 2012. He is also accused of lying to investigators.

Asked by Kuo if he understood the charges, Garcia Luna -- dressed simply in beige pants and a gray sweater -- replied "Yes." Asked how he pleaded, he said, "Not guilty."

Garcia Luna's son, daughter and wife were in the courtroom. When he looked their way, they raised their fists in solidarity. Later, his daughter broke into tears and hugged her mother.

Judge Kuo told Garcia Luna he can still avoid a trial if he reaches a plea agreement with the prosecution and agrees to cooperate. She set a hearing for January 21.

If tried and found guilty, he faces from 10 years in prison to a possible life sentence.

The Mexican government has sought his extradition, but the US is not expected to comply.

Late last month, Mexican officials said they were investigating several possible charges against him. It said he might have diverted more than $200 million in public funds to his family's businesses.

From 2001 to 2005, Garcia Luna headed the now-defunct Federal Investigation Agency, before serving for six years in the cabinet-level position of secretary of public security, in charge of fighting corruption and organized crime.

In the New York trial last year of Sinaloa drug lord Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, a former cartel member named Jesus Zambada testified that he had twice met Garcia Luna in a restaurant to hand over suitcases holding bribe money totaling at least $6 million.

Garcia Luna denied the allegations.

Guzman was sentenced in July to life in prison for trafficking hundreds of tons of drugs to the US.
(Newser)  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the military to prepare to deploy its aircraft and ships "at any moments notice" to evacuate thousands of Filipino workers in Iraq and Iran, reflecting Asias growing fears for its citizens amid a potential outbreak of violence in the Middle East. Other Asian nations with large populations of expatriate labor may face similar decisions amid the rapidly escalating tensions between the United States and Iran following last week's US airstrike that killed Irans Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, the AP reports. South Koreas Foreign Ministry said last week it would work to increase the security of about 1,600 of its nationals in Iraq, where they work mostly in construction sites.

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Duterte held an emergency meeting with his defense secretary and top military and police officials Sunday to discuss the evacuation plans. "President Duterte ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines to be prepared to deploy military assets to repatriate overseas Filipinos in the Middle East, particularly from Iran and Iraq, at any moment's notice," said Sen. Christopher Lawrence Go, a close ally of Duterte who was at the meeting. Military chief of staff Lt. Gen. Felimon Santos Jr. said Philippine forces have identified possible evacuation routes not only in Iraq and Iran but other hotspots, like Israel. (Iraq's Parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil.)
OAKLAND (BCN)

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, along with members of the Oakland City Council and other city officials, will on Monday discuss annual crime data in the city, and discuss the mission of the city's newly created Department of Violence Prevention.

Joining Schaaf at the 10 a.m. gathering in the Mayor's Office, Large Conference Room, on the third floor of 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland, are expected to be Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, Oakland City Administrator Sabrina Landreth, Oakland police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick and Guillermo Cespedes, chief of the Department of Violence Prevention

Cespedes was tapped in July to be the city's first permanent chief of violence prevention, and started work in Oakland in September.

The Oakland City Council created the city's Department of Violence Prevention last year to better align, amplify and elevate Oakland's violence prevention efforts. The department' mission is to work directly with victims of violent crime, and those who are most likely to be future victims or perpetrators of violent crime, in order to prevent and reduce such crimes.

Copyright  2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
Armenian authorities have placed under custody a man over a Facebook post that claimed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian congratulated U.S. President Donald Trump for assassinating Iran's top military commander.

The National Security Service (SNB) on January 5 posted a video of the man being detained, saying the authorities had identified social-media users who had spread false information and harmed Armenia's national-security interests.

The claim was made on a Facebook page set up by a man who used the false identity of Diana Arutyunian, the SNB said.

The false claim about Pashinian congratulating Trump was posted after the assassination of Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani by a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad International Airport on January 3.

The SNB said the claim was "aimed at inciting national, racial, and religious hostility." It also said that the claim had been quoted by media in Azerbaijan and Iran.

The SNB said a criminal case had been launched. But the identity of the man arrested and held responsible for hosting the page was not revealed.

In the video released by the SNB, the man being detained admits that he created the page in 2018 and was responsible for the false claim about Pashinian.

Pashinian denied the claim in his own Facebook post, calling it "fake news." The Armenian leader also called on both the United States and Iran to exercise restraint amid rising tensions following Soleimani's assassination.

Armenia maintains close ties with both Iran and the United States.

On January 3, Armenia's Foreign Ministry said recent incidents between Iran and the United States risked "further undermining regional security and destabilizing the situation in the Middle East and beyond."

It called on both sides to de-escalate tensions "exclusively through peaceful means."
A street sweeping crew works near at 24th and York, in Philadelphia in October as part of the city's street cleaning pilot program. Mayor Jim Kenney promised that citywide street sweeping will be in place by 2023. Read more

Street sweeping is coming to every Philadelphia neighborhood in the next few years, Mayor Jim Kenney said Monday  and that could mean masses of residents having to regularly move their cars.

If citywide street sweeping becomes a reality, Kenney would fulfill a campaign promise he made when he ran for his first term in 2015.

We will continue to ramp up illegal dumping enforcement and build on our successful street sweeping pilot program by expanding street cleaning to every neighborhood and commercial corridor by the year 2023, Kenney said after he took the oath of office and began his second term.

Specifics were unclear Monday. But Kenneys inaugural speech included a few hints: Unlike a pilot program last year in some neighborhoods, the mayor said residents will need to move their cars for the new program.

Yes, you heard that right, every neighborhood, Kenney said, which will even require folks to move their cars.

Kenneys announcement was met with applause, and some audience members laughed as he noted that residents would need to move cars, a sore subject in neighborhoods with tight street parking.

If you dont want to move your car, tough, Kenney told reporters after the inauguration ceremony.

 READ MORE: Filthadelphia mapped: See how trash in your neighborhood stacks up

Weeks before the primary election last May, Kenney announced a pilot program for sweeping in six areas of the city. That program ended in November, and city spokesperson Kelly Cofrancisco said last week that a final report is scheduled for release in February.

The pilot program drew some criticism for its use of leaf blowers to move trash from sidewalks and underneath cars because they kicked up dust and debris. The blowers were used as an alternative to requiring residents to move their cars on street sweeping days.

Under the pilot program, sweeping crews cleaned neighborhoods the day after trash collection, covering Strawberry Mansion, Logan, Kensington, West Philadelphia, Southwest Philadelphia, and South Philadelphia.

Administration officials said leaf blowers would still be used in some places, and some streets may be cleaned once a month rather than once a week.

The Kenney administration said the report on the pilot program will include ideas for designing an effective street cleaning program, such as New Yorks alternate side parking, which requires residents to park on only one side of a street during sweeping.

Weve made some dent in the problem with the handheld blowers and the sweepers in the middle of the street. It just isnt enough, and people need to move the cars, Kenney said. They move their cars in Manhattan every week, they can move their cars in Philly.

Kenney said a more comprehensive approach would be announced in the spring.

This is just the first day of the second term, Kenney said. I dont have all the plans yet.

The city already was planning to set aside money. The current budget includes $4.3 million for mechanical street sweeping, and theres $21.5 million envisioned for it in the five-year plan.

City Council budgeted an additional $10 million in November to clean commercial corridors across the city. The legislation authorizing the program was sponsored by Councilmember Cherelle L. Parker and based on a program that began last year in her district.
Scientists have developed a new method for detecting oxygen in exoplanet atmospheres  an important indication of alien life.

US astronomers are using NASA's James Webb Telescope to detect changes in light signals caused by oxygen molecules when they collide.

The James Webb Space telescope provides incredible sensitivity for light readings compared to its predecessor, according to NASA, which has worked with Astronomers at UC Riverside in California to develop the technique.

The signals could help scientists distinguish between exoplanets inhabited by extra-terrestrial life and those without.

Exoplanets are too far away to travel to, but may hold the answers to whether there is other life in the universe.

'Oxygen is one of the most exciting molecules to detect because of its link with life, but we don't know if life is the only cause of oxygen in an atmosphere,' said UC Riverside astrobiologist Dr Edward Schwieterman, who is also a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

'This technique will allow us to find oxygen in planets both living and dead.'

Exoplanets are planets outside our own Solar System that circle a star other than our sun.

When oxygen molecules collide with each other, they block parts of the infrared light spectrum being observed by the telescope.

By examining patterns in that light, astronomers can determine the composition of the planet's atmosphere and how much of it is made up of oxygen.

On Earth, oxygen is generated by living organisms such as plants, algae and cyanobacteria.

Conceptual image of water-bearing (left) and dry (right) exoplanets with oxygen-rich atmospheres. Crescents are other planets in the system, and the red sphere is the M-dwarf star around which the exoplanets orbit. The dry exoplanet is closer to the star, so the star appears larger

On Earth, oxygen is generated when organisms such as plants, algae, and cyanobacteria use photosynthesis to convert sunlight into energy

The presence of oxygen on other planets can indicate the activity of similar forms of life.

Some researchers propose, however, that oxygen can accumulate in a planet's atmosphere without any life activity.

This can occur when an exoplanet is too close to its host star or receives too much star light, causing the atmosphere to become warm and saturated with water vapour from evaporating oceans.

This water could then be broken down by strong ultraviolet radiation into hydrogen and oxygen.

Because hydrogen atoms are very light, they can escape from a planet's gravitational force into space, leaving oxygen behind.

Therefore, abundant oxygen could also indicate a history of water loss  in itself an important finding to learn more about planets outside our solar system.

'It is important to know whether and how much dead planets generate atmospheric oxygen, so that we can better recognise when a planet is alive or not,' said Dr Schwieterman.

The much-maligned James Webb telescope (pictured) was intended to replace the long-serving Hubble telescope but has been plagued with issues and delays

Last month, another team of astronomers who used data from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes found that water is often in the atmosphere of exoplanets, but in low amounts.

The closest exoplanet is called Proxima Centauri, around 4.2 light years away from our sun.

As the technology doesn't exist to visit these planets, astronomers can use instruments such as the James Webb Space telescope that can gauge changes in light from exoplanets, allowing them to estimate characteristics such as size, atmospheric composition and distance from Earth.

When launched in 2021, the much-delayed Webb telescope will study the history of exoplanets and the origins of the universe's first stars.

'Before our work, oxygen at similar levels as on Earth was thought to be undetectable with Webb,' said Thomas Fauchez, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, and lead author of the study, which was published in Nature Astronomy.

'This oxygen signal is known since the early 1980s from Earth's atmospheric studies but has never been studied for exoplanet research.'
Akon (right) in a pose with Bola Ray

06.01.2020 LISTEN

Aliaume Damala Badara Akon, known in the world music as Akon, has announced plans of hosting a major musical concert in Ghana in March this year.

The venue of the concert, date as well as Ghanaian and other international artistes to be featured would be announced soon.

The concert  which is being organised to entertain fans of the Senegalese artiste in Ghana and Africa  would be used to officially launch Akon's 'Akonda' album.

After the March concert, Akon would embark on a music tour to some selected African countries, which is aimed at projecting Africa and highlighting business opportunities in Africa to the rest of the world.

The rapper, who is promoting his 'Akonda' Afrobeat album, was in Ghana in December as part of the 'Year of Return', which has seen many African-Americans in Ghana.

Speaking at a press conference held at the Movenpick Hotel in Accra, Akon stated that he would continue to promote and spearhead developments across Africa and also invest in artistes from Africa.

He urged Africans in the Diaspora to invest their talent and resources in Africa to help rebuild the continent.

The 'Year of Return' adopted by Ghana was a good initiative that would strengthen ties with the Africans in the Diaspora and also mark new beginnings that would trigger growth of Ghana and the continent as whole.

It's feels good to be back and it's more exciting to realise that the United States is paying more attention to Africa. Sometimes as an African-America you feel something is missing until you come back to Africa to find that missing puzzle and know your true history, he said.

He, however, lauded the efforts of Hollywood star Boris Cudjoe who has played a crucial role in making the 'Year of Return' a great success.

He also advised Ghanaians to make a conscious effort in supporting and promoting artistes from the country to the rest of the world.

If Ghanaians don't promote their own artiste like how Nigerians promote their own artistes, it's no secret if you stay silent and you keep it within Ghana, it's going to stay in Ghana. So, you got to promote your artiste, people that you believe in that can represent your country, let everybody know about that person, he added.

Daily Guide
Washington, Jan 6 : The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has denied reports alleging that its agents were detaining Iranian-Americans and refusing their entry into the country.

"Social media posts that CBP is detaining Iranian-Americans and refusing their entry into the US because of their country of origin are false," the agency tweeted on Sunday.

It also said that neither the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) nor the CBP, a subordinate of the DHS, has issued a related directive, reports Xinhua news agency.

The statement was in response to a viral tweet alleging that "more than 60 Iranians & Iranian-Americans of all ages were detained at length and questioned" at a border crossing in Blaine, Washington state.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee on Sunday that the DHS has informed his office that they did not issue an order to detain or refuse entry to Iranian-Americans.

"However, we are continuing to seek answers from federal officials and talk to those caught at the border," Inslee said in a tweet.

"My office is closely tracking reports that Iranian Americans, including US citizens and lawful permanent residents, have been detained at the WA-Canada border." Tensions between Washington and Tehran are running high after The January 3 US airstrike in Iraq killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani.

The killing has sparked outrage in Iran which has vowed to retaliate.

While US cities are ramping up security in the wake of the situation, authorities have said that there was no specific, credible threat against America.
By 5pm today, bosses of the UKs biggest companies will have earned more in 2020 than the average worker will take home in 12 months.

Chief executives in the FTSE 100 are paid, on average, about 3.5 million  or 117 times the 29,559 salary of ordinary employees.

At about 900 per hour it will take them just 32 hours and 48 minutes behind their desk to reach that level  or 4.48pm today, the third working day of the year  according to the Chartered Institute Of Personnel And Development (CIPD), the professional body for human resources experts.

Chief executives in the FTSE 100 are paid, on average, 117 times the 29,559 salary ofworkers

For employees feeling downcast about paying off Christmas debts and the start of another year in the office, it will be little consolation that this so-called High Pay Day falls a few hours later than usual.

This is thanks to a reduction in bonuses awarded last year that reduced the bosses pay ratio from 133 times the typical workers salary.

High pay will be a key issue in 2020 as this is the first year that publicly listed firms with more than 250 UK employees will be forced to disclose the ratio between the pay of the chief executive and an average worker.

The bosses will have to accompany this with an explanation of why they deserve their pay.

A small number of firms took the decision to disclose this ratio a year early.

Paul Polman, the boss of consumer giant Unilever, earned 250 times more than the median employee.

Dave Lewis, the chief executive of Tesco who will step down next year, earned 226 times as much as an average employee.

Jeff Fairburn, the former chief executive of housebuilder Persimmon, was the FTSE 100s best-paid boss in the last reporting period, taking home 45.7 million  more than 1,000 times the average workers wage.

Critics have argued that excessive executive pay packets undermine trust in business and fuel concerns that workers are getting a raw deal.

Peter Cheese, chief executive of the CIPD, said: Pay ratio reporting will rightly increase scrutiny on pay and reward practices. We need businesses to step up and justify the very high levels of pay for top executives.

The High Pay Centre, a think-tank that monitors pay packets, has argued that the role chief executives play in a businesss success is over-stated.

Director Luke Hildyard said last night: Hopefully new reporting requirements will lead to a more sensible balance between those at the top and everyone else.
Dentsu India Slingshot, a marketing solutions outfit from Dentsu India - a Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) agency, has bagged the creative and media duties for Harman Kardon and JBL. As part of the mandate, the agency will now handle marketing communications, campaign design and media planning for the brands won.

Simi Sabhaney, CEO, Dentsu India said, It was music to my ears to hear the news of winning the communication and media mandate for both Harmon Kardon and JBL. We are proud to associate with them.

In a joint statement, Kunal Dubey, VP & Head of Business, and Lucky Saini, VP Digital & Marketing Solutions, Dentsu India Slingshot added, Harman Kardon and JBL are both iconic brands from the house of HARMAN. Winning the end-to-end media, communications and strategy mandate of both these brands is a big victory for us. It enables us to think holistically on brand building. We are extremely excited to partner with them on this journey. Our aim is to create iconic work that not just builds the brand but also propels the business forward.

Speaking on the partnership, Yogesh Nambiar, Head, Marketing, HARMAN India commented, We were on the lookout for an integrated agency that could manage the end-to-end marketing mandate for our key brands  Harman Kardon and JBL. In Dentsu Slingshot, we found a team that had the capabilities and unique business model to effectively manage these requirements. Our outlook for the coming future is bullish and we are excited to partner with Slingshot while we seek exponential growth for our business in India."
Iraq will respond with "legal action" if U.S. President Donald Trump follows through with a threat to impose sanctions on the country, Iraqi lawmaker Anaam al-Khizaee said.

"My next response to the American violation of Iraq sovereignty will be by criminalizing the American troops" with legal action, al-Khizaee said in a post to Twitter.

Responding to the vote, Trump threatened: If they do ask us to leave, if we dont do it in a very friendly basis. We will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever.

"It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame," CNN cited him as saying.

Trump said the costs of maintaining an American troop presence in the country over the past many years should be repaid by Iraq if the country chooses to rescind the agreement allowing them to stay.
Australia has overtaken Qatar to become the world's top exporter of liquefied natural gas, shipping 77.5 million tonnes in 2019 with an export value of $49 billion as the fuel becomes increasingly important in the global energy mix.

The figures, released on Monday by energy consultancy EnergyQuest, show Australia's liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments for the 2019 calendar year increased 11.4 per cent on the previous year's exports, primarily due to the growth in the Ichthys project operated by Japan's INPEX in the Timor sea.

LNG became a $49 billion export earner for Australia in 2019. Credit:Michele Mossop

The surge follows a succession of massive LNG projects to begin production in Australia in the past decade including by ASX-listed Woodside Petroleum and Santos and other global operators such as Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron.

"We have previously achieved the global title in some individual months," EnergyQuest chief executive Graeme Bethune said.
The Indian Medical Association (IMA), in a statement released on January 6, condemned an attack on the medical personnel, who had rushed to treat injured students, following the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi.



IMA, Worlds largest association of doctors strongly condemns violence on doctors & nurses in JNU. They also pointed out the current situation of India as total anarchy & breakdown of law & order. Medical facilities are safe even in war zones but not under Modi Shah. #JNUViolence pic.twitter.com/YeIjPBsIjG

 Harjit Singh Bhatti (@DrHarjitBhatti) January 6, 2020

Dr Harjit Singh Bhatti of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) shared the statement released by IMA via his Twitter handle. He highlighted the medical body's opposition to the current situation, calling it a "total anarchy and breakdown of law and order". He noted that medical facilities which are supposed to safe even in war zones, are not protected under the current regime.

"The situation in the country smacks of total anarchy and breakdown of law and order is complete. If doctors and nurses are not safe in the capital of the country it speaks volumes about the governance and lack of it," the IMA said in the release.

On the night of January 5, several unidentified people entered the JNU campus and attacked students and teachers. Many who were injured during the violent attack, including JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) President Aishe Ghosh and a professor, were rushed to AIIMS.

Reiterating its stand that doctors and nurses have the right of way to treat the injured, the medical body pointed out to the "conscious decision of the Home Ministry to block a central law against violence against doctors and hospitals". IMA demanded that the Home Ministry ensures safety and security of doctors who are reaching out to the injured and the wounded.

The statement was signed by the National President, IMA, Dr Rajan Sharma and its Secretary General Dr RV Asokan.

Dr Bhatti told CNBC-TV18 that after he received a call from a PhD student at JNU, he saw about 10 to 15 students at the AIIMS Trauma Centre.

Following up on information that they received about other students being beaten up at JNU, he said that AIIMS sent ambulances to the university campus. However, only after thorough checking did the police let the ambulances pass.

He added that their doctors were humiliated and prevented from entering the campus, where they had arrived to offer medical assistance.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said his AAP will fight the upcoming Assembly polls on the basis of the work it has done in its tenure.

"This election will be based on the work done," he tweeted in Hindi, soon after the Election Commission announced that elections for the 70-member Delhi Assembly will be held on February 8 and votes counted on February 11.

The Aam Aadmi Party is confident that it will be re-elected for the work it has done in the city in the last five years.

Cabinet minister and party's Delhi chief Gopal Rai also echoed Kejriwal's statement and said the party will contest the elections based on its work.

AAP has swept the 2015 Assembly polls by bagging 67 seats, while the BJP got the remaining three.
 When the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, And our tongue with singing. Then they said among the nations, The Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us, And we are glad. - Psalm 126:1-3

The captivity is not the physical dislocation into a foreign land but the remembered glory of a lived experience as a free people, otherwise known as Zion. Bringing this back is possible only when they regain their freedom, their Self-Determination, which, once again, will restore their experienced glory.

When their captors demanded they sing to them a song of Zion, to express this glory in a song, the obvious question to them was, how this can be possible when they live under a foreign authority?

So, they sat down by the rivers of Babylon and wept, when they remembered Zion.

Bringing back their captivity is a demand and pursuit of their Self-Determination.

Remembrance is therefore a fundamental necessity to the well-being of a Nation; carried away or not. This is also why God always reminds Israel about what He has done for them.

A Nations glory can be lost even when not carried away as the Yoruba Nations experience in Nigeria shows.

A Yoruba Christian leader, Pastor Tunde Bakare, a very good friend of the current President, once stated that the Yoruba must be grateful to Britain for bringing about Nigeria, for, according to him, the notion of a Yoruba Nation is a myth, for there was no Yoruba Nation prior to the creation of the Nigerian State, which we must celebrate and strengthen.

This concept is also applied to other Nationalities in Nigeria in furtherance of denying Self-Determination for the Nations in Nigeria.

But Glory be to God, who enjoined His creation, to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven. (Ecclesiastes 1:13)

So, we know that what separates a Nation from just a group, is the commonality of expectations manifested through Cultural, Lingual, Political and Economic prisms which forms Yoruba existentialism: from the recognition of Ile-Ife as the source laying the basis for an unwritten Constitutional order, to wit: Ile-Ife must not be attacked, the violation by Owu which led to the city being destroyed by an array of Yoruba forces, to the forms of government (Obaship), to the Cosmogony (despite introduction of Christianity and Islam) and more importantly, the war to end all wars in Yorubaland and which ultimately pitted Yoruba Unitarists against Yoruba Federalists.

There would not have been such an internal conflict if there was no sense of Yoruba Nationhood.

These ensured the future development of an economic infrastructure based on a welfarist economic philosophy fashioned around freedom for all, life more abundant, the product of a Political Autonomy resulting from the Federalist form of Geo-Political Architecture of the emerging post-colonial State.

Military and civilian central governments commenced systematic destruction of all the Regions Welfarist Political Economy by destroying these critical infrastructures upon which social and economic development of the Region rested such that the pride of place of the Regions economic development are now objects of lamentation.

This renders null the proposition of a viable, sustainable, social and economic development without Geo-Political Autonomy.

When therefore the Buhari Regime pursues infrastructural development only as a function of its physical manifestation, it fails to recognize the centrality of an overall economic philosophy of development, itself a function of the nature of its State and without which no economy can develop. This is why the Nigerian experiment had been going around in circles.

Nigerias architecture of State is Prebendal; a political economy based on an inherent right to resources by office holders for the benefit of their geo-political supporters and which is now being carried to the next level in its fundamentalist form.

It was not so in the Western Region.

Its political system was influenced by the cultural realities of the Region, which in turn fed the economy. We were a People coming into being by ourselves.

One example will suffice.

The Action Group party in power in the Region lost the 1954 Regional Elections because a section of Yorubaland opposed the partys education policy. Two years later, when the effects of the policy became manifest, the section reversed course.

This would have been impossible had the Regions political economy been Prebendal; for the Prebend can only reproduce itself. It cannot transform itself.

This is the reality of Nigeria.

So, today, we remember Zion and weep because we are living through the attempts to obliterate our Zion through a centralist, anti-Federalist Regime, a clear and present danger to our existence.

And a 2023 Yoruba Presidency is expected to be the final nail in the coffin of Self-Determination and Federalism, more so when such a Presidency will be unattainable without accommodation with the anti-Federalists.

Therefore, the only acceptable trajectory of any 2023 political mission must be Self-Determination.

As always, Glory be to God in the Highest, Amen! He calls into Remembrance the necessity and creates the opportunity to restore our Zion; and return that which we have lost.

Despite Nehemiahs high placement in captivity, he remembered Zion. His answer to King Artaxerxes question as to the reason for his sad countenance was instructive, to wit: Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers tombs, lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire?

Indeed why should the Yoruba not be sad, when our patrimony is up in flames, and another Yoruba Christian leader, Femi Adesina, the Special Adviser on Media to the president, once asked us to choose between losing our lives or ancestral land to rampaging herdsmen terrorists!!!

Nehemiah stood up to the situation of his People, and King Artaxerxes empowered him so he could mobilize and organize his People along a line of action that rebuilt Judah, defended it when it became necessary and ensured necessary social and economic reforms.

King Artaxerxes recognized the Jews as a Nationality; the Nigerian post-colonial State, now being run by the Buhari Regime, denies the Yoruba as a Nationality. It will therefore be safe to assume that his Regime may not accommodate the necessity of returning to our Zion.

Yet, return we must.

Otherwise, we become a footnote in history and would have turned up our noses at God who created us as a Nation, regardless of our evangelization and winning of souls.

The 1960 Independence Constitution recognized the Nations, even as they were represented by the political parties of the time. Efforts to formalize the recognition through the creation of more Regions were truncated by the anti-Federalists.

The 1999 Constitution consummated anti-Federalism and must be rejected and replaced.

Aspiring to the Presidency in 2023 with whatever justifications must not be the Yoruba priority. Our Self-Determination must be.

The road is the Referendum Law, which is being placed before the Houses of Assembly in Yorubaland.

Nehemiah mobilized the people for effective rebuilding as well as injecting righteous forms of civil governance among the Jews.

Yoruba Political leaders must do no less. They are to mobilize the Yoruba people for the Referendum.

By this, we shall be able to ask God to Remember us, concerning this, and spare us according to the greatness of His mercy!

That is the only solid ground to tread. Any other road will be washed away by a flood.

Fear Not! Says the Lord of Hosts.

When the Referendum route is taken,  Muhammadu Buhari and his security agencies shall not come into Yorubaland, Nor shoot an arrow there, Nor come before it with shield, Nor build a siege mound against it. By the way that Muhammadu Buhari and his security agencies came, By the same shall Muhammadu Buhari and his security agencies return; And Muhammadu Buhari and his security agencies shall not come into Yorubaland, Says the Lord. For the Lord will defend Yorubaland, to save it For HIS own sake and for HIS servants sake .

All the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.
Wales to ban use of combustible cladding on high rise buildings next week

This article is old - Published: Monday, Jan 6th, 2020

The use of combustible cladding on the external walls of high rise buildings in Wales will be banned from next week Housing Minister Julie James has announced.

The move comes following the Grenfell Tower fire in London in June 2017.

Following the fire, Dame Judith Hackitts independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety, published in May 2018, made recommendations for significant changes in the treatment of high risk residential buildings of 10 storeys or more from their construction through to occupation.

As an immediate response to the report, Ministers made a commitment the Welsh Government would move to ban the use of combustible materials in cladding systems on high-rise residential buildings in Wales (18m or more).

The Minister has now approved the Regulations that will put a ban in place.

The ban will apply to combustible cladding on all new residential buildings (flats, student accommodation and care homes) and hospitals over 18m in height. The ban covers the entire height of the building, and will apply to the complete wall assembly and certain attachments to the external wall, including balconies and solar panels.

The ban will also apply to existing buildings where relevant building work is being carried out which falls within the scope of the Building Regulations, unless the building works have started on-site or an initial notice, building notice or full plans have been deposited and work has started on site within a period of 8 weeks.

Housing Minister, Julie James said: The fire at Grenfell Tower in London was a tragedy that will live long in the memories of so many of us in this country.

Our homes should be the safest of places. The action I have taken today will help ensure we make people safer in their homes, and leaves no room for doubt as to what is suitable for use on external walls of relevant buildings 18m or more in height.

In Wales, we have a proud track record of achieving high standards of fire safety. We have a record low number of dwelling fires, and in 2016, we became the first country in the world to make it compulsory for all new and converted homes to have sprinklers installed.

But we know there is still much more we need to do to ensure that there is greater clarity across the life cycle of a building as to the roles and responsibilities of those designing, constructing and managing buildings. I intend to publish a White Paper in 2020 setting out the detail of my plans.

The ban comes into place on 13th January.
Deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar gets finance, Anil Deshmukh to handle home.

Mumbai: More than a month after Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray was sworn in as chief minister of Maharashtra along with six ministers, state Cabinet portfolios were finally announced on Sunday.

While the Shiv Sena has managed to lay claim to the all-important top post, it is the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) that is dominating the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in the state by successfully securing plum portfolios such as the home, finance and housing ministries.

In the earlier allocation, the Sena had kept the home department with itself. NCP chief Sharad Pawar, however, sprang a big surprise by allotting the home portfolio to his trusty lieutenant Anil Deshmukh, overlooking the claims of many senior party leaders.

The home department is considered very crucial to the maintenance of law and order in the state. The 69-year old Mr Deshmukh, a five-time MLA from Katol in Nagpur district, has considerable experience of being a minister.

Deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar was given charge of the finance department. In an attempt to promote a second-rung leadership, Sharad Pawar has allotted the housing and rural development berths to his loyalists Jitendra Awhad and Hasan Mushrif respectively.

Senior Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat has got the revenue ministry while his party colleague, former chief minister Ashok Chavan, got the public works department (PWD)  ex-cluding public undertakings, the official added.

The Sena leaders, on the other hand, have received less important departments. Mr Thack-eray has kept the general administration, information technology, public relations and law portfolios with himself, while Eknath Shinde has been given urban development and public works (public undertakings). Mr Thackeray has allocated the environment and tourism departments to his son Aaditya, which reflect the latters interests. Senior leader Sub-hash Desai has been entr-usted with industries, mining and Marathi language departments, wher-eas Anil Parab will be the new transport minister. Uday Samant was allocated the higher and technical education, while Dada Bhuse has been handed the responsibility of the agriculture department.

As far as the Congress is concerned, Amit Deshmukh, son of former CM Vilasrao Deshmukh, was given charge of the key medical education and cultural affairs portfolios. The women ministers  Yashomati Thakur and Varsha Gaikwad  have, meanwhile, been allocated the departments of women and child welfare and school education respectively.
The 2020 Golden Globes awards wasnt just a fairly entertaining shebang, it was two shows in one. For the most part, the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards on NBC was a better-than-average awards show, with surprise winners, humorous touches and some heartfelt speeches.

But then there was that other show, the one with Ricky Gervais as the supposed host of the festivities. Back in 2010, when he first hosted the Golden Globes, Gervais was a breath of fresh air, thanks to irreverent jokes about the rich and famous. But the novelty wore off with subsequent hosting gigs, and in this, his fifth time doing the dishonors, Gervais kept insisting that he didnt care about offending people, because this was his last time doing it (hes said that before, by the way).

Instead of delivering a bracing dose of rude humor, Gervais instead came off like the guy sitting at the back of the auditorium whos had one too many, and keeps yelling out unfunny, sarcastic remarks. When the show ended -- at a bit past its scheduled three-hour running time -- Gervais told everyone to (bleep) off, and the feeling by then was likely mutual.

Beyond that, there were some definite highlights and lowlights. Heres a list of notable moments:

Politics made a late appearance: The big TV awards show audience has proven irresistible to stars and others who want to speak out about political or social issues. But during his monologue, Gervais took aim at that ritual.

If you do win an award tonight, dont use it as a political platform to make a political speech. You're in no position to lecture the public about anything, you know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So, if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your God and (bleep) off. OK?

Surprise winner Ramy Youssef, who took home a Globe for best actor in a TV comedy for Ramy, his Hulu series about, as he said, an Arab Muslim family living in New Jersey, took Gervais advice, which led to an early highlight.

I would like to thank my God, Youssef said. Allahu akbar. Thank you, God.

As the night wore on, the devasting fires in Australia and the need to recognize the dangers of climate change were mentioned by several celebrities. But it wasnt until Patricia Arquette, who won a best supporting actress trophy for her role in the Hulu series, The Act, that a winner made reference to the current turmoil, as she cautioned against, as she said, a country on the brink of war, a president tweeting about targeting cultural sites and other obvious references to the unrest between Iran and the United States. Arquette encouraged people to vote in 2020, in the interests of a better world.

Michelle Williams, who has established a record for making eloquent speeches at awards shows, took home another trophy for her role in FXs miniseries, Fosse/Verdon. She used her time on stage at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles to make the case for allowing women to choose when to have children, and who to have them with. Williams also encouraged women, in particular, to vote, as a matter of self-interest, adding that men have been doing that for years.

Were getting choked up: No matter how foolish Gervais seems to find awards shows, stars still get emotional when theyre recognized or when they have a chance to honor those they admire. Kate McKinnon, of Saturday Night Live, held back tears as she talked about how seeing Ellen DeGeneres on TV helped her overcome her fears about coming out as gay.

DeGeneres, who received the Carol Burnett Award for excellence in television, was in wonderful form. She made fun of overlong award speeches by jokingly talking about when she was born, then pivoted to thanking her imaginary husband and children, than paid tribute to the power of television.

Tom Hanks continued the more tearful speech trend, as he accepted the Cecil B. DeMille award for lifetime achievement. Hanks started his remarks by noting that the tribute montage included some less-than-memorable roles, including his guest spot on The Love Boat.

Then Hanks said he was suffering from a bad cold, and had been chugging a savagely orange drink (DayQuil?) which left him a little jittery. He got choked up talking about his family, and what their love meant to him, then earnestly talked about acting, and how important it is to get the fundamentals right (i.e, showing up on time).

Olivia Colman enjoys awards shows: After being seen on camera happily reacting to yet another batch of wins by Fleabag (Colman is a member of the cast), Colman won a Golden Globe for her role as Queen Elizabeth II in Netflixs The Crown.

Id already got a little bit boozy, because I thought this wasnt going to happen, she said, adding, and Fleabag  yay!

An Oregon connection to the nights biggest upset: The night had plenty of upset wins, but perhaps the biggest shocker was Missing Link winning best animated motion picture. The feature from Hillsboros Laika Studios won appreciative reviews, but was a box-office flop. Nevertheless, the animated feature about a Sasquatch-like creature triumphed over such favorites as Frozen 2, Toy Story 4, The Lion King, and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.

Chris Butler, writer and director, was just as amazed as everyone else. Im flabbergasted, he said, and went on to than the 450 people who worked on the film, and Travis Knight, Laikas president and CEO.

Thats a wrap: After some star power  Brad Pitt winning best supporting actor in a movie for Quentin Tarantinos Once Upon a Time in Hollywood  and more weird speeches, thanks to Joaquin Phoenix (best movie drama actor for Joker) and Renee Zellweger (best movie drama actress for Judy), the show closed with another surprise, as the World War I drama 1917 won.

Gervais then came back onstage, exuding Im-done-with-this boredom. Thats it, Gervais said, asking the audience to Please donate to Australia, and wrapping it up with, (Bleep) off.

Lets hope Gervais means it this time when he says hes done hosting.

-- Kristi Turnquist

kturnquist@oregonian.com 503-221-8227 @Kristiturnquist

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We are very proud of all the winners and especially the past and future Best of the Best Award winners

The Roofing Alliance, the foundation of the National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA), announces the winners of the 2019-2020 Most Valuable Player (MVP) Awards. The winners are invited to the 2020 International Roofing Expo (IRE) in Dallas, Texas, where they will be recognized at the NRCAs Industry Awards Ceremony and Cocktail Reception, February 5, 2019, 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Celebrating its 20th year, the MVP Awards program honors leadership in the field. Contractors nominate field workers including roofing crew workers, foremen or superintendents. Distributors and supplier firms may nominate warehouse employees, warehouse foremen, drivers or equipment operators. Individuals can be nominated for their outstanding on-the-job performance and workmanship or their philanthropic contributions outside the workplace. Since the programs inception 20 years ago, 674 employees have been nominated and 255 winners and finalists have been recognized.

2019-2020 Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award Winners include:

Chris Bower  Outstanding On-the-Job Performance and Workmanship

Superintendent

Exterior Solutions of Georgia, dba Bone Dry Roofing Company

Bogart, GA

Jimmy Lefty Cobb  Outstanding On-the-Job Performance and Workmanship

Superintendent

Graham Roofing Incorporated

West Point, MS

Todd Dunlap  Outstanding On-the-Job Performance and Workmanship; Other Noteworthy Contributions Outside the Workplace

Superintendent, Warehouse Foreman, Equipment Operator

Frost Roofing, Inc.

Wapakoneta, OH

Piotr Lis  Outstanding On-the-Job Performance and Workmanship

Superintendent

KPost Company

Dallas, TX

Corey Morris  Outstanding On-the-Job Performance and Workmanship

Foreman

Spann Roofing and Sheet Metal

Conway, SC

Heriberto Rodriquez  Outstanding On-the-Job Performance and Workmanship

Superintendent

Exterior Solutions of Georgia, dba Bone Dry Roofing Company

Bogart, GA

Michael Ryan  Outstanding On-the-Job Performance and Workmanship

Equipment Operator

OMG, Inc.

Agawam, MA

On Wednesday, February 5, during NRCAs Industry Awards Ceremony, one winner will be announced as Professional Roofing's Best of the Best, a recognition co-sponsored by OMG Roofing Products, Agawam, Mass. and Professional Roofing magazine. Josh Kelly, Roofing Alliance President and Vice President of Product Development & Innovation at OMG stated, The Roofing Alliances MVP Task Force determines the Best of the Best Award winner after a thorough evaluation of MVP winners using criteria such as on-the-job safety, on-the-job performance, recruiting new workers, community service and other noteworthy contributions to determine the Best of the Best. We are very proud of all the winners and especially the past and future Best of the Best Award winners.

Previous Best of the Best Award winners include:

2008: Rodney Griffith, foreman, Centimark Corp., Pelham, Ala., and Teri Stallion, field superintendent, Innovative Roofing Group, Atlanta, Ga.

2009: Eugena Madeley, yard/receiving/truck driver, Gooding, Simpson & Mackes Inc., Ephrata, Pa.

2010: Richard Heilinger, service specialist, Gooding, Simpson & Mackes Inc., Ephrata, Pa.

2011: George Denton, superintendent, Supreme Roofing Systems Inc., Dallas, Texas

2012: David Baytosh, superintendent, Advanced Roofing Inc., Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

2013: Dan Pastore, superintendent, Upstate Roofing and Painting Inc., Rochester, N.Y.

2014: Ryan Watts, foreman for Jurin Roofing Services Inc., Quakertown, Pa.

2015: Scott Luck, foreman at CentiMark Corp., Canonsburg, Pa.

2016: Curtis Purvis, superintendent for Chamberlin Roofing & Waterproofing, Farmers Branch, Texas

2017: Narcisco Alarcon, superintendent, Antis Roofing + Waterproofing, Irvine, Calif.

2018: Alan Baird, foreman for Core Contractors Inc., Denver, Colo.

2019: Brandon Reese, foreman at Korellis Roofing, Hammond, Ind.

To learn more about the Most Valuable Player (MVP) Awards, visit http://www.roofingalliance.net or contact Bennett Judson, the Roofing Alliances executive director, at bjudson@nrca.net. To learn how to attend NRCAs Industry Awards Ceremony to see the Best of the Best Award presentation, visit http://www.theroofingexpo.com.

About the Roofing Alliance

The Roofing Alliance is committed to shaping the industrys future by funding education, research, scholarships and philanthropic initiatives, all for the purpose of securing the industrys future excellence. Composed of 170 members representing extraordinary leaders from the contracting, manufacturing, distribution and service provider communities, the Roofing Alliance has committed $13 million to enhance the performance and long-term viability of the industry and allocated more than $5 million to fund 48 research, education, technical and philanthropic programs and projects. Serving as the foundation of the National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA), Roofing Alliance members are focused on giving back and supporting high-quality educational programs and ensuring timely and forward-thinking industry responses to major economic and technological issues. For more information about Roofing Alliance initiatives, visit http://www.roofingalliance.net.


A new provision in the I-T Act, likely to be announced in the upcoming Union Budget, will enable authorities to seize a trustee's assets if norms related to charitable trusts are violated, according to a report in Business Standard.

The provision is likely to be included in the Finance Bill, 2020.

Currently, only the charitable institutions, and not the individual trustees are held accountable in the event of a tax violation.

The government is also mulling placing a cap on foreign donations made by charitable trusts and non-profit organisations, restricting it to 5-10 percent of the income, the report said.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report.

"Public trusts have become the easiest route to launder money due to lack of governance and proper monitoring. The operation of trusts is mostly opaque and theres no system to track them," a source told the publication.

There are charitable trusts that are holding on to investments made before 1973, a source told the paper.

Such a move would curb the tax exemption currently enjoyed by charities based on their year of establishment. The I-T Act has different dates for modes and forms of investment made on or before 1952, 1973, 1982, etc.
BAGHDAD, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said on Sunday it has filed a complaint against the U.S. government to the United Nations Security Council over U.S. airstrikes against the paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces in western Iraq and near Baghdad airport that killed an Iranian commander and a commander of Hashd Shaabi.

A statement by the ministry said that "two identical letters have been sent to president of the Security Council and the secretary-general of the United Nations about U.S. attacks against Iraqi military bases, and the assassination of high-level Iraqi and friendly military leaders on the Iraqi soil."

It said that the U.S. attacks "constitute a serious violation of Iraqi sovereignty and violate the conditions for the presence of the American forces in Iraq."

The ministry also called on the Security Council to condemn the bombing and assassinations carried out by the U.S. forces, the statement added.

The ministry statement came as the Iraqi parliament held an extraordinary session and passed with majority a resolution requiring the government to end the presence of foreign forces in Iraq and prevent them from using Iraqi airspace and water.

The resolution also required the government to cancel the request for assistance from the international coalition to fight Islamic State (IS) group due to the end of military operations and war in Iraq.

In addition, the Iraqi government, represented by the foreign minister, should "file a complaint against the United States for its violations and grave breaches of Iraqi sovereignty and security," according to the resolution.

The parliament session came two days after a U.S. drone strike on a convoy at Baghdad airport which killed Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of Iraq's paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces.

Over 5,000 U.S. troops have been deployed in Iraq to support the Iraqi forces in the battles against IS militants, mainly providing training and advising to the Iraqi forces.
Needling India, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Monday alleged that the attack on students and teachers at the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is "yet another reminder of growing intolerance" in the country.

Nearly 35 students were taken to hospitals on Sunday evening after a violent mob ran amok, attacking students and damaging property on the varsity campus in New Delhi.

"Chilling attack on students & teachers at #JNU yesterday is yet another reminder of growing intolerance in India. Campuses in India now face unchecked wrath of RSS mobs while the police collude with their insanity. This is what happens when you empower fascist ideology," Qureshi tweeted.

He also said that Pakistan wants peace, stability and security in region, and it was very clear on its position.

"We stand for peace, stability & security in region. I've reiterated this to all stakeholders in my recent conversations. Active diplomacy to de-escalate tensions is the need of the hour. Violence must be avoided. We'll continue with efforts," he said.

Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated after a suicide bomber of Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed killed 40 CRPF personnel in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on February 14.

Also, the Foreign Office (FO) on Monday called on the Indian government to protect its minorities from what it called "saffron terror".

The FO remarks came a day after India on Sunday strongly condemned the "targeted killing" of a minority Sikh community member in Peshawar, an incident that took place in the backdrop of an attack on Nankana Sahib Gurdwara in Pakistan.

In a statement, the FO said the BJP government was using incidents of alleged persecution of minorities in Pakistan to divert attention from the situation in "Kashmir and discrimination against minorities within India."



"The RSS-inspired BJP government has absolutely no credentials even to pretend that it is a protector of minorities," the statement read.

"Rather than feigning any dishonest concern for minorities elsewhere, the BJP government would do better by focusing on the ongoing human tragedy at home and protecting India's minorities from 'saffron terror'," it added.

Unknown gunmen shot dead 25-year-old Sikh man, identified as Rowinder Singh of Shangla district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, weeks before his marriage in the northwestern city of Peshawar, drawing sharp condemnation from India which demanded exemplary punishment to the perpetrators of the crime.

The killing of Singh came a day after a mob attacked Gurdwara Nankana Sahib in Lahore where Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev was born.

The FO termed them "isolated law and order incidents" and said such incidents are part of a "smear campaign against Pakistan".

"Pakistan completely rejects these fabrications, which will in no way shield the BJP government from opprobrium by the international community on its illegal actions" in Kashmir and the adverse fallout of the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC), the statement said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
" " Foie gras is often served sauteed, like this dish of foie gras on napoleon of dashi-braised daikon radish. lucydphoto/Getty Images

For a small-plate dish, foie gras causes quite the stir. This buttery French delicacy of fattened duck or goose liver can sell for as much as $125 for 2 pounds (0.9 kilograms). But it's not the hefty price tag that makes foie gras controversial.

Foie gras production requires force-feeding birds to enlarge their livers  up to 10 times the normal size. Many animal rights activists describe the process as cruel and torturous; government decision makers have been listening.

New York City is currently home to about 1,000 restaurants that serve foie gras, but on Oct. 30, 2019, the City Council voted to ban the dish beginning in 2022. New York will join California, Australia, India and numerous other places that prohibit foie gras for animal rights reasons. Whole Foods took foie gras off its shelves in 1997.

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What Makes Foie Gras a Delicacy?

Foie gras is a duck or goose liver fattened through a labor-intensive force-feeding process known as gavage. The process dates back to ancient times when Egyptians force-fed domesticated geese upon discovering that "waterfowl developed large, fatty livers after eating large amounts in preparation for migration," according to the Artisan Farmers Alliance, a group representing foie gras farmers.

The gavage practice spread across the Mediterranean then into France in the late 16th century. French chef Jean-Joseph Clause is credited with creating the first pate de foie gras in 1779. He patented the dish in 1784. He received 20 pistols from the food-loving King Louis XVI as a "thank you" for his culinary genius, according to The Spruce.

Foie gras  now a staple in France's gastronomical heritage  has a smooth texture and rich taste. It's most commonly served as a pate with brandy, seasonings and truffles; pureed and spread atop toast; cooked in a terrine; or seared whole. It's mega-pricy due to the force-feeding labor and massive amount of feed needed to create the end product. In some cases, ducks and geese eat 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) of corn feed per day.

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What's So Controversial About a Plump Goose Liver?

The debate over foie gras cruelty centers on the invasive practice of gavage.

In this process, farmers force ducks and geese to eat "fatty, corn-based feed through a tube inserted into their throats." Their livers grow up to 10 times the original size, hence the name "foie gras" (a French term for fatty liver)  and hence the concern from animal rights activists. That's why the Big Apple's animal activists celebrated big when the foie-gras ban passed.

"New York has sent a clear message to foie gras producers that shoving a pipe down a duck's throat and force feeding them large amounts of grain for the sole purpose of diseasing and enlarging their liver is cruel and has no place in our compassionate city," Matt Dominguez, a political adviser for NYC-based Voters for Animal Rights (VFAR), says via email. Members of VFAR surrounded Mayor Bill de Blasio when he signed the foie gras ban into law Nov. 25, 2019.

According to the VFAR website, gavage can cause ducks to hyperventilate and bleed, and they're often shackled and have their throats cut during slaughter. That's why the group led a coalition of over 50 nonprofits who rallied for bill 1378, which prohibits "storing, maintaining, selling or offering to sell force-fed products or food containing a force-fed product," according to the bill. Once the ban takes effect in 2022, violators will pay from $500 to $2,000 for each offense.

" " Foie gras is the enlarged liver of a goose or duck that is produced by a force-feeding the birds in a process known as gavage. Luis Davilla/Getty Images

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Foie Gras Farmers Are Fighting Back

While Dominguez and other animal rights activists celebrated the foie-gras ban as a victory, those on the other side of the aisle are taking a stand. The Catskill Foie Gras Collective, which includes the main producers of NYC's foie gras, is challenging the city's ban. The group and farmers say it's unconstitutional, and that NYC does not have jurisdiction over the state of New York's protected agricultural businesses.

According to Catskill Foie Gras Collective President Marcus Henley, animal rights activists are the only ones who consider foie gras production inhumane.

"The idea that the small tube for feeding the ducks causes discomfort is the most misunderstood area of foie gras farming," Henley says. "Ducks are not like people. Their physiology is very different and the tube causes no discomfort."

The collective's ducks are cage free, fed via small rubber tube (versus traditional metal), and individually inspected by a government food safety officer, Henley says. Collective members stand by their approach to foie gras production, and aren't the only ones voicing their disapproval of the ban.

David Chang, esteemed chef and founder of NYC's wildly popular Momofuku restaurant, sides with the collective. "This is idiocracy," he wrote in a tweet (along with a few choice F bombs). "Stupid, short sighted, and a misunderstanding of the situation."

While the war wages on over foie gras ethics, longtime food critic Adam Platt wrote in a Grub Street article he thinks the once-trendy foie gras was already on its way out.

"When you start to consider all of the forbidden delicacies over the centuries that have gone in and out of fashion  terrapin soup, peacock tongues, the fabled ortolan  even the most avowed Francophile carnivore would probably admit that after a long and impressive run, the age of foie gras may be soon coming to an end," he wrote.

NOW THAT'S INTERESTING In France, scientists recently introduced an alternative to gavage that stimulates the liver's natural fat buildup through a bacteria. Baby geese ingest the bacteria via serum; the birds can live up to twice as long, with a life span of six months instead of three, according to a Reuters report.

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Originally Published: Jan 6, 2020
Australias Prime Minister Scott Morrison has committed A$2 billion over the next two years to a bushfire recovery fund for local governments and farmers.

The fund will support local governments, farmers and primary producers, and deliver mental health supports to first responders.

Read More Bushfire Recovery Agency Established: Australian PM

The fires are still burning and they will be burning for months to come, Scott Morrison told reporters on Monday.

If more is needed and the cost is higher, then more will be provided.

The prime minister said he will put his policy of a surplus budget on the backseat for now and make allowances in the federal budget for bushfire recovery.

The surplus is no focus for me, Morrison said. What matters to me is the human cost and meeting whatever cost we need to meet.

The bushfire recovery fund will operate alongside three levels of existing disaster relief payments available through the Commonwealth.

Twenty Service Australia pop-ups will open in fire-affected communities to help people access disaster payments.

We have taken a number of decisions to streamline those payments to make sure cash gets into peoples hands as soon as possible, Morrison said.

Welfare debt recovery and mutual obligation requirements in bushfire-affected regions are also being suspended for at least two months.

The consumer watchdog will set up a hotline for people to report any bogus charities using the bushfire crisis to rip people off.

The tax office will not chase up returns in bushfire-affected areas for two years, giving people in those areas some breathing space.

So far, 497 Army reservists have been called to help in the bushfire response.

New Zealand has committed three helicopters and an engineering team, while Singapore is sending two Chinooks to East Sale in Victoria.

France has offered firefighting assistance as well as engineering and environmental support.

By Daniel McCulloch
NATO's ruling committee will meet Monday to discuss the future of the alliance's training mission in Iraq as Middle East tensions mount after US forces killed a top Iranian general.

Ambassadors from the 29 allies will gather at their Brussels headquarters at 3.00 pm (local time) with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expected to brief journalists afterwards.

US officials are due to give an update on the situation after Washington killed Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran's Middle East operations as commander of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, in a US drone strike at Baghdad airport.

"The North Atlantic Council will address the situation in the region," a NATO official said.

"The secretary general decided to convene the meeting of NATO ambassadors following consultations with allies." Stoltenberg had spoken by telephone with US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper since Friday's strike, but the killing of Soleimani surprised many of Washington's allies and triggered calls for de-escalation.

The situation has also deteriorated in Iraq, where lawmakers have called for the 5,200 US soldiers deployed there to leave.

NATO maintains a 500-strong training mission in Iraq, preparing local forces to take on Islamic State group extremists, but this would be in doubt if coalition forces pull out.

"The big issue is the future of the NATO mission in Iraq after the demand of the Iraqi parliament yesterday to remove US-led coalition and foreign forces. We have to see what we will do now," a NATO diplomat told AFP.

On Saturday, a NATO spokesman said the mission, which involves several hundred allied personnel, was continuing "but training activities are currently suspended". Another diplomat said the alliance would have to "wait and see" how Baghdad responds in the coming days.

"From our point of view the parliament resolution is not binding. We take note of it, but have to wait what the government is going to do," the diplomat said.

"We still think that the presence of international troops in Iraq should be continued in order to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State. But we have to respect what the Iraqi government will eventually decide." Tehran has vowed to avenge the commander, and US President Donald Trump has threatened "major retaliation" if any American targets are hit.

Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement late on Sunday urging Iran to "refrain from further violent action or proliferation" and criticising the "negative role" Tehran played in the Middle East through Soleimani's forces.

Iran was also warned not to flout the 2015 nuclear deal, which Washington pulled out of in 2018, after announcing further steps away from the beleaguered accord.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
D owning Street has spoken out against the threat from Donald Trump to target Iranian cultural sites.

After the US President tweeted that he would go after such targets, a Downing Street spokesman said: There are international conventions in place that prevent the destruction of cultural heritage.

"Well as I say, you can read the international conventions for themselves. It is the 1954 Hague Convention for the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict."

He added that there would be a meeting of the National Security Council on Tuesday to address the situation.

A meeting of the National Security Council will take place on Tuesday / AP

It comes after the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani on Friday. The Iranian general was the head of Quds, a part of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

President Trump tweeted on Sunday evening to say that the US had targeted Iranian sites at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture.

Oona Hathaway, an international law professor at Yale and a former national security law official in the Defence Departments legal office, said Mr Trumps threat amounted to a pretty clear promise of commission of a war crime.

Downing Street also insisted Britains security partnership with the US remained very close despite Mr Trump not informing the UK of its plans to assassinate Mr Soleimani.

A destroyed vehicle on fire following the US strike on January 3 (IRAQI MILITARY/AFP via Getty Images) / IRAQI MILITARY/AFP via Getty Ima

The official spokesman added: We have a very close security partnership with the United States, we are in regular dialogue at every level.

Asked if Mr Johnson was convinced the US drone strike was legal, the spokesman said: States have a right to take action such as this in self defence and the US have been clear that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on American diplomats and military personnel.

Mr Johnson spoke to the Iraqi prime minister on Monday morning, the spokesman continued.

Qasem Soleimani funeral in Iran 1 /24 Qasem Soleimani funeral in Iran An Iranian man reacts during a gathering to mourn General Qasem Soleimani VIA REUTERS Mourners wave flags as they gather during the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani AFP via Getty Images Mourners gather during the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (image), Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani and eight others in the Iraqi central city of Karbala AFP via Getty Images Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" today as they mourned an Iranian commander and others killed in a US drone attack AFP via Getty Images Mourners gather in the Iraqi central city of Karbala AFP via Getty Images Mourners take part in the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani AFP via Getty Images Iranians gather to mourn General Qasem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, who was killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran VIA REUTERS A mourner holds up a picture AFP via Getty Images Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" today as they mourned an Iranian commander and others killed in a US drone attack AFP via Getty Images Mourners chant slogans against the U.S. during the funeral of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani, AP Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the US airstrike near Baghdad's airport AP Mourners carry the coffins of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani AP Mourners carry the coffin of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis AFP via Getty Images People attend a funeral procession for Iranian Major-General Qasem Soleiman VIA REUTERS An aerial view shows mourners attending a funeral ceremony for Gen. Qasem Soleimani AP Qassem Soleimani and his comrades who were killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike, are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners AP Mourners carry the coffins of Iran's top general Qasem Soleiman AP Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad's airport AP

Number 10 said Irans announcement that it will abandon the limits in the unravelling nuclear deal on fuel enrichment, its uranium stockpile and research activities was extremely concerning.

Irans announcement is clearly extremely concerning  its in everyones interest that the deal remains in place, the PMs spokesman said.

It makes the world safer by taking the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran firmly off the table.

Weve always said the nuclear deal is a reciprocal deal and in light of Irans announcement we are urgently speaking to partners about next steps.

Iranian leaders and Mr Trump have both escalated tensions despite the efforts by Mr Johnson, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron to calm down the two sides.

The daughter of Soleimani told mourners her father was a martyr and that America would suffer a dark day in punishment.

Mr Trump responded to Iranian threats of vengeance with a tweet vowing that the US would quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner.

Donald Trump / AFP via Getty Images

The growing tensions were a setback for the three European leaders who issued a joint statement overnight urging utmost restraint and responsibility by Tehran and Washington.

There is now an urgent need for de-escalation, they said. We call on all parties to exercise utmost restraint and responsibility. The current cycle of violence in Iraq must be stopped.

But Tehran appeared to be using the funeral to raise tensions.

Mourners gather to pay homage to Qasem Soleimani / AFP via Getty Images

America and Zionism should know that my fathers martyrdom will ... bring about a dark day for them and flatten their homes, Zeinab Soleimani, the commanders daughter, said in her address to mourners.

Crazy Trump, dont think that everything is over with my fathers martyrdom, she added.

Iranian state media claimed millions poured on to the streets to honour the countrys second most powerful figure, a hardliner who commanded the Quds Force and led Irans strategy of dominating the region and using terrorist allies.

The scale of the funeral appeared to rival the 1989 ceremony for the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The crowds chanted Death to America. One poster held aloft by a mourner read: It is our right to seek a harsh revenge.

Listen to today's episode of The Leader:
GettyImages 1191422519

Atta Kenare/Getty

Qassem Soleimani was on a not-so-secret trip to Iraq to meet with politicians and military allies when the US assassinated him in Baghdad last week.

We now know his trip likely had a secret component: coordinating an intensifying campaign of rocket strikes to maim and kill some of the 5,000 American troops based there.

In Iraq, Soleimani had recently taken on a larger political role. He met with Iraqi political figures to secure support for the country's embattled prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, whom he planned to meet on the day he was killed.

One of the leaders also killed in the drone strike was the commander of the militia that Soleimani had ordered to coordinate the rocket attacks on Americans at Iraqi bases.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Qassem Soleimani had recently arrived at Baghdad's airport early on Friday when a Hellfire missile blew up his convoy, killing him and nine others, courtesy of US President Donald Trump.

Why was the Iranian major general in Iraq, a country that Iran had fought in a bitter war three decades earlier?

Soleimani was on a not-so-secret trip to Iraq to meet with politicians and military allies. And we now know that it likely had a secret component: to coordinate an intensifying campaign of rocket strikes to maim and kill some of the 5,000 American troops based there.

Soleimani was Iran's most powerful military figure, a leader of commandos and spies across several countries tasked with achieving the aims of Iran's supreme leader through whatever means necessary. His operatives fought adversaries like ISIS, trained insurgents like the Houthis in Yemen, and provided support to terrorist groups like Hezbollah. In 2007, the US declared the Quds Force that Soleimani led a state sponsor of terrorism.

quds force partners in the middle east iran iraq

Skye Gould/Business Insider

In Iraq, Soleimani had recently taken on a larger political role. He met with Iraqi political figures to secure support for the country's embattled prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi; the widespread protests that started in October were in part a reaction to Soleimani's presence.

Story continues

Mahdi said he planned to meet Soleimani later on the day he was killed by the US MQ-9 Reaper drone. Mahdi called it a "political assassination" and said Soleimani's trip was intended to de-escalate tensions with Saudi Arabia.

It's also likely that the trip had a more lethal purpose. In mid-October, Soleimani secretly met with Shiite militia leaders to coordinate attacks against the US in hopes of triggering a US reprisal that would refocus public anger from Iran to the US, Reuters reported on Friday. Soleimani delegated this campaign to Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a head of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces and the commander of the Kataib Hezbollah militia.

iraq airstrike map

Skye Gould/Business Insider

On December 27, Kataib Hezbollah rocket strikes killed one US contractor and wounded several troops, prompting US airstrikes against the militia group, which reacted by storming the US Embassy in Baghdad on New Year's Eve. The Trump administration was forced to rapidly deploy US Marines to defend the compound.

Muhandis was killed in the same strike that killed Soleimani.

Read the original article on Business Insider
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Tense relations between the United States and Iran worsened on Friday when the Trump administration killed Soleimani, Commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Deputy Chief of Iraq's paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces in a targeted airstrike.

After the attack, a series of tweets by US President Donald Trump acted as a teeter on a knife edge and it won't take much more to knock them off.

US President Wrote, "Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently hundreds of Iranian protesters." "He was already attacking our Embassy, and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets", he mentioned.

Trump added the US has "targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & Athe Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!", he added.

Responding to Donald Trump's tweet about targeting 52 Iranian sites, Iranian Information and Communications Technology Minister MJ Azari Jahromi called the US President "terrorist in a suit".

"Like ISIS, like Hitler, Like Genghis! They all hate cultures. Trump is a "terrorist in a suit". He will learn history very soon that NOBODY can defeat "the Great Iranian Nation & Culture", Jahromi tweeted.

The attack has led to widespread condemnation in Iran. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani has vowed revenge on the US.

Earlier on Sunday, Iranian MP Abolfazl Aboutorabi threatened to attack the heart of American politics.

"We can attack the White House itself, we can respond to them on the American soil," mirror.co.uk quoted Aboutorabi as saying.

"We have the power... We will respond in an appropriate time," he said, adding: "This is a declaration of war, which means if you hesitate you lose."
(Alliance News) - Premier Oil PLC has hired investment bankers as a battle with lenders escalates, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

The newspaper said lender Barclays PLC has offloaded USD90 million of debt owed to it by Premier to a group of hedge funds, including Asia Research & Capital Management.

ARCM has built up a GBP130 million bet against Premier's share price, the Telegraph continued, which it said is one of the biggest in UK corporate history, at the same time as buying some of Premier's GBP1.8 billion of debt.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/01/04/premier-oil-hires-rothschild-2bn-debt-battle-lenders/

Premier shares were 0.2% lower on Monday in London at a price of 100.97 pence each.

By George Collard; georgecollard@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2020 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Russell Crowe was lauded for his performance as Roger Ailes, the late chairman of Fox News, in Showtimes The Loudest Voice, Sunday at the Golden Globes. But it was Jennifer Aniston who gave his acceptance speech.

Aniston, who presented the award for best actor in a limited TV series or TV movie with Reese Witherspoon, announced that Crowe was not in attendance because of the wildfires near his home in Australia. She read a statement that Crowe sent, in case he won.

Russell Crowe missed the 2020 Golden Globes, because of the fires in Australia. (Photo: Don Arnold/WireImage)

Russell Crowe could not be here with us tonight because he is at home in Australia protecting his family from the devastating bushfires, Aniston said.

She then delivered a statement that Crowe had sent: Make no mistake, the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based, Aniston read. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy, and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is. That way we all have a future.

Soon after, Crowe posted on social media to thank his The Loudest Voice co-stars and also share video of the truck he has ready and prepared to battle wildfires on his property. He talked about it having a 1,000 liter water cube, dirt buckets and shovels, spare hoses, fire blankets, gloves, respirators and all the things you need to fight fires. As a nod. to the night, he panned to box on the front seat with a Golden Globe in it. (He also won for A Beautiful Mind in 2002.)

Fires across Australia, sparked late last year, have scorched 12 million acres of land so far, and theyre not expected to stop anytime soon.

The Gladiator star has posted social media photos of fires near his property in the country in November.

Days before Christmas, he shared a photo of himself with fellow Aussie Nicole Kidman, who were seated together on a flight back to the country.

Story continues

Actress Cate Blanchett, another Australian native, also mentioned the brush fires onstage, as she presented.

I wanted to do a special call-out to the volunteer firefighters who have been at the center of battling the climate disaster that is facing Australia, the Globes-nominated star of Whered You Go, Bernadette? said. And of course, when one country faces a climate disaster, we all face a climate disaster, so were in it together.

Celebrities were thinking of the fires behind the scenes, too. British star Phoebe Waller-Bridge announced in the press room, after winning best actress in a comedy for Fleabag, that she will auction offer her suit and donate the proceeds to fire relief, according to The Hollywood Reporters Kirsten Chuba.

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The majority of women who underwent abortions in Pennsylvania in 2018 were unmarried, and most were between the ages of 25-29. Half of all women who had abortions were white.

Thats according to the latest abortion statistics report out of the state Department of Health.

The report shows that there were 30,364 abortions performed in Pennsylvania in 2018.

The majority of abortions - 88 percent - were performed to unmarried women; women between the ages of 25-29 accounted for 9,252 - or 30.5 percent - of all abortions.

The abortion statistics report was released in December, and reflects data from the previous year.

The latest count reflects a slight increase from the previous numbers: In 2017, there were 30,011 abortions performed in Pennsylvania.

The latest count comes in the wake of an unprecedented legislative wave in Pennsylvania to enact restrictions on abortion.

State legislators in 2019 pushed for an array of bills seeking to restrict abortions and reproductive rights, including fetal heartbeat proposals, fetal remains bill and legislation that sought to ban abortions because of a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome.

Gov. Tom Wolf in November vetoed the Down syndrome legislation, which passed the Senate on a near party-line vote. The Democratic governor has steadfastly vowed to oppose any restriction on womens reproductive rights. In 2017, Wolf vetoed a bill that would have narrowed the window on how long women have to get a legal abortion from six months to five months.

Pennsylvania law allows abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy for any reason except to choose the gender. The 2017 bill would have banned abortion at 20 weeks or later; it also would have criminalized the most common procedure used in second-trimester abortions  a procedure medical professionals call dilation and evacuation.

The Pennsylvania House of Representatives in November approved legislation requiring hospitals to either bury or cremate fetal remains after a miscarriage or death. The bill would continue to allow patients the ability to handle their disposition on their own.

NARAL considers Pennsylvania to have severe restrictions on abortion and other reproductive rights.

The number of abortion providers has continued to decrease: 2017 saw a 10 percent decrease in the number of facilities providing abortion in Pennsylvania. Some 85 percent of Pennsylvania counties have no clinics that provide abortions, and 48 percent of Pennsylvania women live in those counties.

Last year, 250 restrictions were introduced in 41 states, including full-out abortion bans. Over a third of American women now live in communities without an abortion provider.

According to the Department of Health report, residents of other states, territories and other countries accounted for 2,124 abortions in 2018.

Of the abortions performed in 2018 in Pennsylvania, 87 percent were performed in six counties: Allegheny, Dauphin, Delaware, Montgomery, Northampton and Philadelphia. More than 40 percent of Pennsylvania residents receiving abortions were residents of Philadelphia County.

Patients under age 20 accounted for 8.6 percent of all abortions, and patients under age 18 accounted for 2.7 percent.

In a statement released to the media, the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference cited encouragement over the fact that the latest total is significantly less than the previous highest count.

The latest total is less than half of the all-time high of 65,777 abortions in 1980.

These numbers show that abortion remains a serious problem in Pennsylvania, as well as across the entire United States, said Eric Failing, the executive director of the organization. Were grateful that the number of abortions has decreased significantly in recent decades, but there are still way too many. Even one is too many.
MATTOON  A Glik's men's and women's clothing store is scheduled to return to the Cross County Mall this spring.

Mall property owner Rural King of Mattoon has announced that renovations will start immediately at the former Hallmark storefront with the goal of Glik's being able to open there in March.

Rural King reported that the new store will be Granite City-based Glik's 13th location in Illinois. Glik's originally had a store in the Mattoon mall until about 15 years ago. The retailer has a total of approximately 65 locations, including stores in Effingham, Taylorville, and Terre Haute, Ind.

Joseph Glik founded this retailer in 1890. Rural King reported that this fourth generation, family owned company is now the 14th oldest retailer in the United States.

Glik's carries apparel brands such as North Face, Silver Jeans, Roxy, Elan, Love Stitch, Everly, and more.

Other additions to the Cross County Mall in the last 12 months have included Rural King's newly relocated Mattoon store, Marshalls department store, McQuarters Pub, and C & C Kettlecorn.

From the archives: Vintage Cross County Mall ads

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T he husband of jailed mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has asked Boris Johnson to meet him and other families with relatives detained in Iran.

Richard Ratcliffe said his wifes mood was desperate amid escalating tensions and he begged all sides to calm down.

We are looking to the Prime Minister to make really clear that the protection of citizens like Nazanin and the others who are held is top priority for him, he said.

He also urged Mr Johnson to tell President Donald Trump that his policy needs to be an awful lot clearer strategically.

Donald Trump / AFP via Getty Images

Mr Ratcliffe said his wife was following the news from jail on TV and was desperate, really worried as to what was happening.

He added: We have always been a chess piece in this game and this chess game has just changed radically.

"This is not a case where you can stand on the sidelines and just wait quietly. I think there needs to be a real clear clarity of priorities.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her husband Richard Ratcliffe and their daughter Gabriella, before her arrest in 2016 / PA

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe is serving five years for spying, which she denies.
Trumbull health inspectors issued failing grades to two local eateries in December. Failing was Charleys Philly Steak for holding food at improper temperatures and Parker Steaks & Scotch for having deeply dented cans on the shelf. The cans were discarded during the inspectors visit, according to the report.

Although seemingly a minor violation, dented cans are a significant health concern. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends discarding any can with a dent more than a finger-width deep, and any can with a dent on any seam.
Regulus Consultancy has announced that its client, a 37.5% shareholder in Sharjah-based Horizon Group, has agreed to sell its entire equity interest in Horizon to Royal Boskalis Westminster NV.

Earlier this year, Boskalis had acquired 62.5% of the shares in Horizon. This new transaction would mark the completion of acquisition of 100% of Horizon by Boskalis, said a statement.

Regulus acted as the financial advisor while Clyde & Co acted as legal counsel to the selling shareholder on the transaction.

Following this transaction, Boskalis will be able to optimise its successful and expanding position in the marine geophysical and geotechnical survey market. Horizon will continue to focus on its traditionally strong market position in the Middle East and Northwest Europe with opportunities to expand into the emerging offshore wind market in the Far East making it highly complementary to the position already held by Boskalis through Gardline in Northwest Europe and on the East Coast of the United States, it said.

Horizon was established in 2004 and is located in Sharjah, UAE. Its activities are largely based in the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea and an increasing presence for offshore wind in the Far East. Its clients range from national and international oil companies as well as reputable international EPCI contractors to the oil and gas industry as well as offshore wind farm developers.

We are delighted to have been involved in this successful transaction, and we believe the outcome has been a win-win for all parties, said Shailesh Dash, board member of Regulus.  TradeArabia News Service
The tea industry has expressed concern over the possibility of exports to Iran taking a hit in the wake of spiralling tensions between the US and the Persian country

Kolkata: The tea industry has expressed concern over the possibility of exports to Iran taking a hit in the wake of spiralling tensions between the US and the Persian country.

Iran's Major General Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US drone attack on Friday, which ratcheted up acrimony between the arch-enemies and sparked fears of a new war in the Middle East.

"There will be an impact if there is a conflict between the US and Iran. Orthodox tea exports will suffer," Tea Board Chairman P K Bezbaruah told PTI.

Iran has emerged as the single largest importer of Indian orthodox tea after the CIS countries.

Till November 2019, exports to Iran stood at 50.43 million kg, while shipments to the CIS block was at 52.80 million kg, Tea Board data showed.

"Last year, the orthodox tea exporters switched over to the Iranian market in a big way because of higher value realisation," he said.

Former Indian Tea Association (ITA) chairman and MD & CEO of Goodricke Group Atul Asthana said, "If there is a conflict, there will be no exports of tea to Iran".

Officials, however, said that if exports to Iran do suffer, then the industry can take a relook at the CIS countries, but at a lower price realisation.

India Tea Exporters' Association chairman Anshuman Kanoria said the industry is still hopeful about future exports to Iran.

"Iran is an important market for Indian tea. At present, exporters are worried and monitoring the situation. We are still optimistic about future exports to that country, Kanoria said.
Canada generates more food waste per capita than any other country in the world. Every year, close to 60 per cent of food produced in Canada is wasted. Thats more than 35 million tonnes of food.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 6/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

Canada generates more food waste per capita than any other country in the world. Every year, close to 60 per cent of food produced in Canada is wasted. Thats more than 35 million tonnes of food.

Considering the energy and resources required to produce this food, the link between food waste and our climate challenges is becoming more obvious  and politicized.

About 10 per cent is unavoidable waste  inedible products, such as bones, parts of produce or unwanted scraps, for example. But the avoidable waste is massive.

The average Canadian consumer throws out an estimated 170 kilograms of food a year. On a national scale, thats the equivalent of 61 CN Towers. Every time a shopper leaves the supermarket, almost 40 per cent of whats in the cart will go to waste. Thats real food and real money.

Food waste is no longer just a trivial subject we think about from time to time. Its about the planet. According to a recent survey conducted by Angus Reid, 53 per cent of Canadians intend to reduce waste as much as possible in 2020. It was the top new years resolution for Canadians regarding food  more popular than cooking, losing weight, or even eating more fruits and vegetables. Our collective focus on food waste is clear.

For decades, food waste was largely ignored or invisible. Now, many of us are concerned about it. Indulgence and affordability were once the biggest food issues for most of us, and our food economy never really considered the negative externalities that came with our focus on abundance.

At one time, food waste was just an issue for organizations working on the margins of our food industry. Second Harvest in Toronto and other non-profits were committed to food rescuing way before the food waste issue went mainstream. Most of these organizations have been successful in repurposing food to feed those in need, but their capacity is always cruelly limited.

But food companies have realized that tackling waste can be beneficial and profitable.

Weve seen the ugly fruit and vegetable campaigns come and go, with varying levels of success.

Large grocers have been selling esthetically imperfect produce at a discount, giving the naturally imperfect products a fighting chance to reach market. Some claimed consumers could get a 30 per cent discount. But given how volatile and unpredictable pricing can be in that section of the grocery store, consumers werent sure discounting really occurred. While the idea had merit, the initiative hasnt shown that it reduces food waste all the way along the food supply chain.

Weve also seen the trays of food close to its due date set up in some dodgy corner of the grocery store. But recently, those displays have become more visible and more frequently visited by consumers.

But grocers are hardwired to make money selling high-quality, fresh products. From a business sense, retailing rescued food is almost counterintuitive, which is why retailers reluctance is so painfully understandable.

More consumers now look for ways to reduce food waste and save money. Theyre also expecting substantial results and grocers know it.

Loblaws opted for an app called Flashfood, and IGA and Metro in Quebec have recently launched a new initiative in partnership with an app called FoodHero. Its a simple solution for shoppers: they use the app to buy unsold items that are still perfectly good to eat, at prices marked down by 25 to 60 per cent. Consumers bid on items approaching their best-before date.

Its a great concept but the business case is still in progress. Neither app has made a profit yet but the uptake appears to be promising. Time will tell.

Were also seeing how food waste can serve another completely different economic purpose. Torontos newest bio-gas facility is a perfect example. Organic waste, or compost, will be diverted to an anaerobic digester to produce bio-gas. Starting in March 2020, several Toronto garbage trucks will be partially fuelled by renewable natural gas made from food waste.

Food waste is not only the food industrys responsibility. We can only gain by seeing more municipalities and other organizations getting involved in such initiatives.

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As food rescuing receives greater focus, we can expect the industry to look for more ways to address the issue  and very publicly.

But given modern lifestyles and the fact we eat out more often than at home, it may be that we simply buy too much food at the grocery store. This is certainly not something the industry wants to hear but our way of life has changed dramatically over the years.

We go to the grocery store without a plan about what and how to cook, and we dont think about how to repurpose leftovers after a large meal. That scenario was repeated again and again during the recent holiday season.

Thats food for thought!

Sylvain Charlebois is senior director of the agri-food analytics lab and a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University.

 Troy Media
The Delaware man who was arrested on multiple weapons offenses in June outside a Westfield elementary school accepted a plea bargain Monday after admitting to having a permit for the gun police found on him out of his home state, but not in New Jersey.

Thomas J. Wilkie, 46, pleaded guilty in Superior Court of Union County to a second-degree count of unlawful possession of a weapon. He was originally indicted on six charges, including fourth-degree possession of hollow-point bullets and possession of weapons at an educational institution.

Westfield police responded to Tamaques Elementary School on June 13 on a report from New Castle County police in Delaware that Wilkie was en-route to the school and possibly armed, authorities previously said. Classes had already let out for the day when police responded at 3:55 p.m., authorities said, and the school was placed on lockdown as a precautionary measure.

Wilkie responded no when his attorney, Whitney McCann, asked if he had any intention of going inside the school with the Glock handgun that was found on him. He responded yes when his attorney asked him if the gun was registered in Delaware but not New Jersey.

Police said they arrested Wilkie after they found him sitting in the front seat of his 2019 Mitsubishi SUV in the schools parking lot.

He was holding a .45-caliber handgun loaded with hollow-point bullets, authorities previously said. Authorities claimed they found a folding knife, two loaded clips of ammunition on Wilkie and 130 rounds of ammunition the vehicles trunk.

Wilkies father, George, previously said one of Wilkies siblings called police in Delaware to inform them that he was at the school. His father also previously told NJ Advance Media that Wilkie, who is from Bear in New Castle County, may have been at the school to find a current or former girlfriend.

His father had said his son was living in Bear since his divorce a few years ago. He didnt believe Wilkie was reacting to the end of the marriage.

He has some issues, some medical issues, that weve been working with, Wilkie previously told NJ Advance Media after his sons arrest. This is kind of off the wall. I dont know what would drive it, but it is what it is.

The maximum sentence that can be given for second-degree unlawful possession of a weapon is 10 years in prison. Union County Assistant Prosecutor Theresa Hilton asked for the minimum sentence as part of the plea deal: five years.

Union County Superior Court Judge William Daniels scheduled Wilkies sentencing for Feb. 21.

Rebecca Panico may be reached at rpanico@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @BeccaPanico.

Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips.
A high alert was sounded on Sunday in five districts along the India-Nepal border, in eastern Uttar Pradesh, after intelligence inputs suggested that two terror suspects were trying to enter the state to escape to Nepal, said a senior police official at the state police headquarters in Lucknow on Sunday.

The alert, he said, was not from any central intelligence agency but was local intelligence input in Gorakhpur zone.

It initially came from independent sources of local authorities as well as Shashtra Seema Bal, which guards the 599.3 km open international border that UP shares with Nepal, said the official.

While the Nepal border runs long the states seven districts, the alert has been sounded in five districts, including Bahraich, Shravasti, Maharajganj, Kushinagar and Siddharthnagar.

We are taking no chance as the input has come closer to Republic Day (January 26). The direction has been issued to the check movement of suspicious elements along the Nepal border, he added.

It has come to our knowledge that two wanted terrorists, both from southern states of the country, can escape to Nepal from Uttar Pradesh, inspector general (IG) of police, Basti range, Ashutosh Kumar confirmed.

Kumar said the suspects photographs have been circulated so that they could be identified and intercepted in case of any possible movement towards Nepal border.

He said the intelligence input also suggests that the two suspects were last spotted in West Bengals Silliguri district on December 16.
The main group pushing for regime change in Iran lobbied the head of the hawkish United Against Nuclear Iran on the sidelines of his organizations annual event in New York last fall, new lobbying filings show.

The disclosure raises new questions about ties between United Against Nuclear Iran CEO Mark Wallace and the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a Paris-based umbrella group dominated by the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq. The council also met twice with President Donald Trumps personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani around the time of the UN General Assembly, drawing renewed attention to Giulianis unregistered advocacy on behalf of the group.

The council's US office disclosed meeting Sept. 23 with Wallace to discuss developments in Iran  the first time the group has reported meeting with the United Against Nuclear Iran CEO since registering to lobby in May 2013. The next day, Wallace hosted a gathering of Iranian opposition groups dominated by the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, raising criticism from some Iran watchers distrustful of a group that the State Department designated a terrorist organization until 2012.

United Against Nuclear Iran sought to distance itself from the event at the time, saying Wallace had convened it in his personal capacity on the eve of the groups official annual summit Sept. 25. Al-Monitor, however, reported at the time that the program for the event was listed as United Against Nuclear Iran, something the group said was in error.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran and United Against Nuclear Iran share similar views on Iran. Both applauded last weeks US airstrike that killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, with United Against Nuclear Iran calling it a significant blow to Irans military power while the council labeled it a fatal blow to the regime in Tehran.

United Against Nuclear Iran did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The US office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran also disclosed meeting with Giuliani, the keynote speaker at Wallaces event, to discuss the human rights situation in Iran and developments in Iran on Sept. 23 and Sept. 25. The group previously disclosed lobbying Giuliani in September 2018.

Giuliani has long been plagued by accusations that he is taking money from the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq and affiliated groups without properly registering as a foreign lobbyist. He told Bloomberg last year that he was paid by a US organization of Iranian-Americans rather than the France-based National Council of Resistance of Iran to speak at the council's rallies. Such grasstops lobbying of influential figures who have the ear of government officials is fairly common, legal experts say, and would only require an intermediary to register as a lobbyist if he or she is shown to be acting on behalf of a foreign principal rather than simply providing a favor.

The filing of the US office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran is also notable for revealing that Washington law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld is serving as legal counsel to the council's US office. In a statement to the Justice Departments Foreign Agents Registration Act unit, the firm argues that the donors to the National Council of Resistance of Iran should be kept anonymous to avoid retaliation by Iran.

Akin Gump notably lobbies for the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Irans biggest rivals in the Gulf. Neither Akin Gump nor the National Council of Resistance of Iran replied to a request for comment about how long the firm had represented the council as legal counsel.

Akin Gump previously lobbied on behalf of the Iranian American Community of Northern California  which has been linked to the National Council of Resistance of Iran  to get the State Department to delist the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq. The firm reported $620,000 in lobbying-related payments for those efforts in 2011 and 2012.

The council's US office reported receiving more than $123,000 from June 1, 2019, through Nov. 30, 2019, from about 100 donors. The group reported spending more than $120,000 during that timeframe.
When Anna Karina first arrived in France at the age of 18, having hitchhiked all the way from Denmark, she spoke not one word of French. But having caught the eye of a Parisian casting director, the young Danish actor was soon rubbing shoulders with the likes of Coco Chanel, who helped to choose her stage name.

Then she captivated French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard. By the end of the 1960s, Karina  who has died of cancer aged 79  was considered a cinematic icon and a French national treasure.

Karina was born Hanne Karin Bayer in Solbjerg, Denmark. Hers was an inauspicious start to life. Her father left shortly after she was born and her mother, who owned a dress shop, sent her to live with her maternal grandparents. That arrangement lasted until Karina was four, at which point she was taken into foster care. She returned to live with her mother at the age of eight but their subsequent relationship was always going to be difficult.

By the time she was a teenager, Karina was already acting in commercials. She made her film debut at 14, in a prize-winning film by Danish director Ib Schmedes. Not long after that, she left for Paris where after a period of living on the streets she eventually found modelling work for several big designers including Chanel.

Jean-Luc Godard first noticed Karina in 1960 in a series of ads for Palmolive soap, which pictured her posing in a bath tub. When he offered her a small part in his first film, Breathless, she refused upon hearing she would be expected to go naked. When Godard raised the Palmolive ads, Karina chastised him. I was wearing a bathing suit: it was in your mind that I was nude.

Karina stuck to her guns and did not act for Godard until he cast her in Le Petit Soldat (The Little Soldier), his film about the Algerian war, made in 1960 but not released until 1963. It was while they were working together on that film that Karina and Godard fell in love and married, becoming one of the It couples of international cinema. Karina told Vogue: We had something very special that you couldnt get away from. It was magnetic.

Karinas career took off after she won the Best Actress award at the 1961 Berlin Film Festival for her performance in A Woman Is a Woman, in which she played a stripper longing for a child. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she starred in a dazzling array of films, including seven directed by Godard. She also worked for Luchino Visconti, Tony Richardson and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who wrote Chinese Roulette especially for her.

Karina and Michel Subor in Godard's Le Petit Soldat, made in 1960 (Films Beauregard/Rex)

At the same time, she had a successful singing career, with hits including Roller Girl by Serge Gainsbourg and Sous le Soleil Exactement. She recorded two albums: Une Histoire DAmour and Chansons de Films, which came much later in 2005.

Not content with being in front of the camera, in 1972, Karina launched Raska, her own production company, with whom she made her directorial debut with Vivre Ensemble, based on her novel about an ill-fated relationship between an uptight history teacher and a free-spirited hippie. She published three other novels.

Karina continued to work into her late sixties, directing and starring in her last film, Victoria, about a woman with amnesia travelling across Canada, in 2008.

Her relationship with Godard was fraught and they divorced in 1965 after four years together, though she was generous about his role as a mentor, saying: Jean-Luc gave me a gift to play all those parts. It was like Pygmalion, you know? I was Eliza Doolittle and he was the teacher.

She subsequently remarried three times: to actors Pierre Fabre and Daniel Duval and American director Dennis Berry. She is survived by Berry.

Anna Karina, actor, born 22 September 1940, died 14 December 2019
The political action committee of the Alabama Farmers Federation has endorsed Dothan businessman Jeff Coleman in the race for Congress in Alabamas 2nd District.

Coleman, owner of Coleman Worldwide Moving, is making his first run for public office. The race is to fill the seat now held by U.S. Rep. Martha Roby, R-Montgomery, who decided not to run for a sixth term.

Agriculture is important in the district, which runs from the Montgomery area across the southeast portion of the state.

Farmers Federation National Affairs Director Mitt Walker said in a news release that Coleman has met with farmers and federation leaders across the district over the last few months.

His success as a fifth-generation businessman and commitment to growing the economy while protecting individual liberty resonated with our members, Walker said. He understands the importance of agriculture and forestry to our state and nation. We are confident Jeff Coleman will fight for farmers and rural families as well as our military and veterans.

Others running for the Republican nomination include former Attorney General Troy King, former state Rep. Barry Moore of Enterprise, and Prattville attorney and business owner Jessica Taylor. Additional candidates are Thomas W. Brown Jr., Terri Hasdorf, and Bob Rogers.

Democrats who qualified to run for the 2nd District seat are Phyllis Harvey-Hall and Nathan Mathis.

The primary is March 3.
Just before he was shot to death by Limestone County deputies on Sunday evening, 57-year-old George Dison racked a shotgun round and pointed his weapon at the deputies, the authorities said.

Its unfortunate this situation had to end with a death," said Sheriff Mike Blakely at a press conference this morning. But by all appearances, the deputies were forced to make that decision.

Two deputies  whose names havent been released  were called to the Dison family home on Sugar Way in a rural area of Elkmont. Dison tried to break in, menaced his family and threatened to burn down the home, Blakely said.

When deputies got to the scene around 5:15 p.m., Dison came out of the woods carrying a shotgun, said Stephen Young, a sheriffs office spokesman. Dison ignored deputies orders to drop the gun, the authorities said, so they fatally shot him.

Limestone County Coroner Mike West said Disons body is at the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences lab in Huntsville for autopsy.

Video footage of the deadly shooting was captured on body-worn cameras, Blakely told reporters. The sheriff said he hasnt watched the footage and declined to release the videos. He referred questions about the video footage to the State Bureau of Investigation, which is probing the deadly shooting. An SBI spokesman didnt immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

A man was killed by Limestone County deputies on Sunday night. The sheriffs office is giving an update. Heres our initial story: https://www.al.com/news/2020/01/man-killed-by-sheriffs-deputies-in-limestone-county.html Posted by al.com on Monday, January 6, 2020

The SBI will submit the findings of its investigation to Limestone County District Attorney Brian Jones for review. Jones will be tasked with determining whether the deputies actions were legally justified.

The deputies will have access to counseling, the sheriff said, but they will not be put on mandatory leave. Both deputies will be off work today and Tuesday, as was already scheduled before the deadly shooting.

If they need to take off other time, that will definitely be allowed, Blakely said. But were a small department. Two officers off of one shift is a pretty big vacuum to fill."

The sheriff added: Im kind of old school. If you get throwed off a horse, the quicker you get back on, the better off you are. In my opinion, and from past experiences, to get back in the saddle and get started back working sometimes is the best therapy for you.

Blakely said his office is awaiting the findings of the SBI investigation but sees no indication of wrongdoing by the deputies.

Its pretty obvious as to what happened, he said.

Blakely invoked the recent killings of Alabama law enforcement officers  including Lowndes County Sheriff Big John Williams and Huntsville policeman Billy Fred Clardy III  to illustrate the hazards deputies face each day.

This job sometimes has an element of danger that forces law enforcement to make a decision that can be the difference between the suspect not going home at night or even the officers or the deputies not returning home, he said.

Little is known about Dison. The sheriffs office has had numerous encounters with him through the years, records show. Hours before the deadly shooting, deputies had been called to investigate a report that Dison was armed and threatening his family, according to dispatch records and officials. During that incident, Dison fled the scene and deputies were unable to find him, Blakely said. It was when deputies were again called to the home  about six hours later  that Dison was killed.

At the time of his death, Dison was out of jail on bond for charges of possessing drug paraphernalia, meth and a pain pill, plus a charge of resisting arrest. That encounter with the sheriffs office happened in October of 2019 near the home on Sugar Way, court records show. Court records dont show any prior felony convictions in Alabama or in the local federal court district.

We sincerely sympathize with Mr. Disons family, Blakely said. I know those people; theyre good people. Its unfortunate something like this had to happen.

Im just so thankful our officers did an outstanding job and were able to go home last night and will be able to continue working here."
As Iranian officials warn of severe revenge for the recent U.S. killing of their countrys most powerful military commander, Afghan officials are seeking reciprocal assurances from Tehran that their country will not be harmed in a confrontation with Washington.

We have assured Iran that Afghanistans soil will not be used against it, Javed Faisal, a spokesman for Afghanistans national security council, told Radio Free Afghanistan on January 6. Similarly, we expect that neighbors will not be used against us.

On January 5, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani called his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, to assure him that based on Afghanistans Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the United States, his country will not be used against other nations.

According to a statement by the Afghan presidential palace, Ghani also offered his condolences regarding the January 3 killing of Qasem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike outside the Baghdad airport.

The 2014 BSA stipulated that the United States does not seek a presence that is a threat to Afghanistans neighbors, and has pledged not to use Afghan territory or facilities as a launching point for attacks against other countries. The agreement provides the basis for the presence of some 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

According to Irans Tasnim News, in his telephone conversation with Ghani, Rouhani said Tehran expects our neighbors and friendly governments to unanimously condemn Soleimanis killing.

Afghans worry that escalating tensions between Washington and Tehran might turn their country into a battlefield between a global superpower and a regional power that shares a 900-kilometer-long border with western and southern Afghan provinces.

This prompted Ghani to call on Iran and the United States to refrain from increasing tensions in his initial reaction to Soleimanis killing.

We call on the Islamic Republic of Iran, our big neighbor, with whom we have extensive common language, religious, historic, and cultural [values], and we call on the U.S., who is Afghanistan's strategic and fundamental partner, to prevent conflict escalations, and we hope that both sides solve their differences through negotiations, he said in a January 3 statement.

In his telephone call with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo the same day, Ghani reiterated that the BSA requires his countrys soil not be used against another country.

Iran became one of the first Muslim countries to condemn the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States that killed more than 3,000 people. As the leader of the elite Quds Force, Soleimani quietly helped the U.S. attack that overthrew the Taliban in December that year.

But the Iranian special forces general turned into a leading American adversary after President George W. Bush declared Tehran to be part of an axis of evil in 2002. The U.S. invasion of Iran the next year eventually pushed Tehran and Washington into a proxy war in Iraq, where Saddam Hussains overthrow empowered Shiite factions allied with Tehran.

Around that time, Soleimani extended covert support to his countrys erstwhile Taliban enemies. The Iranian cooperation with the hard-line Sunni Taliban deepened over the years and resulted in preventing the ultra-radical Islamic State from establishing a foothold in provinces bordering Iran after its emergence in eastern Afghanistan in early 2015.

The demise of the Taliban regime also paved the way for a greater Iranian role in Afghanistan. In the years following the outbreak of a civil war in Syria, Soleimani established the Fatemiyoun Division. The militia estimated to number up to 20,000 fighters, mainly recruited from Afghanistans Shiite Hazara minority. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of its members have been killed in Syria.
WASHINGTON  The Pentagon's top two officials distanced themselves Monday from an American general in the Middle East whose letter to Iraq's government announced the U.S. "will be repositioning forces" in response to its demand that the U.S. leave the country.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said no decision has been made to pull U.S. troops from Iraq.

Esper was responding to an unsigned letter from Marine Corps Brig. Gen. William H. Seely III, addressed to Iraqs defense ministry, saying the U.S.-led coalition is preparing to reposition troops in "deference to the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq.

On Sunday, the Iraqi parliament voted to expel U.S. military forces from the country.

"We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure," said Seely's letter, dated Monday. It said forces would be moved in the "coming days and weeks," which would result in increased military helicopter traffic around Baghdad's international zone.

But no such decision has been made on removing U.S. troops from Iraq, Esper said. Period.

Tensions rise: What you need to know about the death of Gen. Soleimani and the escalating situation with Iran

Withdrawal would be a sudden reversal for Trump

The issue further clouded rapidly changing circumstances following the missile strike Thursday in Baghdad that killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

Esper appeared before reporters with Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to downplay Seely's letter and to stress that Soleimani had been killed to prevent imminent attacks on U.S. troops.

After the briefing, Milley returned to tell reporters Seely's letter was a draft circulated for review and was a mistake.

A U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be a surprise reversal for President Donald Trump, who less than 24 hours earlier criticized the Iraq parliament's vote to expel U.S. forces and vowed to keep American troops in Iraq unless the government repays the U.S. for the cost of a military installation.

Story continues

"We've spent a lot of money in Iraq," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. "We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base thats there. It cost billions of dollars to build. ... Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it."

The Pentagon announced just last week it was sending as many as 3,000 additional soldiers to the Middle East to bolster existing forces.

More: Donald Trump threatens Iraq with sanctions, says US won't leave unless 'they pay us back' for air base

A demonstrator holds a sign during a protest against war in Iraq and Iran outside the White House on January 4, 2020 in Washington, DC. Demonstrations are taking place in several U.S. cities in response to increased tensions in the Middle East as a result of a U.S. airstrike that killed an Iranian general last week.

Seely's letter came after Iraq's leaders expressed outrage over a U.S. airstrike that killed Soleimani, who led Iran's elite Quds Force, near Baghdad International Airport last week. Iraq said the strike was a violation of its sovereignty.

The Iraqi expulsion resolution passed Sunday is nonbinding, and it's not clear if the government will take further steps to force U.S. troops out. About 5,000 American military personnel are stationed in the country.

Pentagon says Soleimani was planning to attack U.S.

Milley defended the attack that killed Soleimani, saying intelligence reports showed he was planning significant combat operations against U.S. forces.

Milley said he would have been culpably negligent by not acting to stop Soleimani before the attacks occurred.

Milley refused to describe the nature or timing of the attacks, saying that would expose intelligence collection methods. He said he would describe them to Congress in the appropriate setting.

I stand by the intelligence I saw, Milley said.

Hundreds took to Iranian streets to mourn Soleimanis death Sunday and protest the U.S. strike, with some chanting death to America.

Tehran announced it would no longer abide by the restraints put in place with several world powers under a landmark nuclear deal, from which the Trump administration withdrew in May 2018.

Tehran has repeatedly vowed retaliation for the strike, sparking fears that the U.S. could be brought to the brink of war with Iran.

Trump ordered last weeks strike on Soleimani, which also killed Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, without notifying top congressional members.

The U.S. military announced Sunday it would halt military operations against the Islamic State to focus on protecting American military bases across the region in case of any Iranian response.

More: Iran official on Soleimani killing: 'The response for a military action is military action'

U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be a 'catastrophic success' for Iran

Middle East experts say a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could be disastrous  creating a power vacuum for both Iran and the Islamic State terrorist group to fill.

"That would be the fulfillment of Soleimani's lifelong ambition," said Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based research institute that supports a hard line on Iran.

That would greatly facilitate Irans expansionist designs, he said.

Naysan Rafati, an Iran analyst with the International Crisis Group, said Iran would have free rein in Iraq if the U.S. leaves. Soleimani supported and trained pro-Iranian militias.

I think Iran would view it as a catastrophic success for them, Rafati said  a success because Iran wants U.S. troops out of the region, and a catastrophe because a destabilized Iraq could allow the Islamic State to rise up again.

Iran wants Iraq to be weak enough not to threaten Iran and strong enough not to fall apart, he said.

More: Trump defends Soleimani killing in formal notice to Congress, warns Iran against retaliation

President George W. Bush announced U.S. military involvement in Iraq in 2003, ostensibly to locate weapons of mass destruction the administration said Saddam Hussein could use on other countries. Hussein was killed in 2006, and the weapons were never found.

Despite the initial shock and awe campaign that the president and administration officials said would lead to a quick victory, the war dragged on for years. After Bush announced a surge in 2007, the number of U.S. military personnel on the ground in Iraq peaked at nearly 158,000 a year later, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Contributing: David Jackson, John Fritze, Courtney Subramanian

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pentagon says no decision on Iraq withdrawal after Soleimani backlash
Chief executive of the Road Safety Authority Moyagh Murdock has announced she will leave the job in March.

She has been in the role since 2014 and is leaving to take up the position of Chief Executive at Insurance Ireland.

Chairperson of the RSA, Liz O'Donnell, paid tribute saying they are disappointed to lose Ms Murdock.

She added that in light of this development, the board will now commence the formal process to select a new chief executive.

Ms O'Donnell said: "As Chairperson of the Board I acknowledge the important contribution Moyagh has made over the past six years. Since becoming its Chief Executive in 2014, Moyagh steered the RSA through a period in which has seen road deaths reduce by 25%.

"In particular, her advocacy and work with Government and other key stakeholders in leading the implementation of the Government Road Safety Strategy as well her support for the introduction of various policy and legislative changes that have taken place during her tenure, have helped ensure Irelands road safety performance is now 2nd in the EU.

"As CEO of the RSA, she has guided the RSA through a period of organisational restructuring and modernising of services through the use of technology such as Online Driver Licences, Commercial Vehicle Road Worthiness CVROI, as well as improving Driver Test wait times to their lowest levels ever.

"Moyagh has certainly enhanced the reputation of the RSA both in Ireland and internationally and the Board and I are confident that she leaves the RSA pointed on a strong positive trajectory for further improvements in road safety.

"The Board and I wish Moyagh all the very best as she takes up her new position with Insurance Ireland. While we are disappointed to lose Moyagh, the Board and staff of the RSA are united in our common goal of working to save lives on Irelands roads."
Police have warned luxury watch owners in Paris after more than 20, mostly Rolex, timepieces were stolen in the capital over the weekend.

Some have been targeted in burglaries of chic apartments in the 16th arrondissement, while other victims have been stepping out of restaurants and bars.

On Saturday evening one businessman arrived home from holiday to find 19 of his watches, 11 of them from Rolex, had been taken from his safe, Le Parisien reported. The jewellery was worth more than 850,000.

Police have warned luxury watch owners in Paris after more than 20 - mostly Rolex - timepieces were stolen in the capital over the weekend (pictured: a Perpetual GMT-Master II worth around 15,000)

Another victim was leaving an upmarket restaurant not far from the Arc de Triomphe when she was attacked by several people who ripped off a watch from her valued at a few hundred thousand euros (file photo of the Arc de Triomphe)

According to police it represents sophisticated organised crime, going for homes with the lights off and climbing in through windows.

The break-ins are understood to be inspired by the Pink Panthers, a Balkan crime syndicate which takes it name from its use of feline acrobatics during burglaries.

In another similar raid, a gang broke into a home on the exclusive Avenue Foch, where five Hermes and ten Chanel bags, as well as three watches, including a Rolex, were stolen.

The goods had an estimated value of 120,000.

The Rolex Oyster Perpetual. Gangsters will often scout out bars and nightclubs to pick out those affected by alcohol

According to the paper the criminals come into town from the Parisian banlieues to go after lucrative opportunities.

'They will scout bars and nightclubs for alcohol-affected victims, and are only interested in watches that are easily snatched,' an investigating officer told Le Parisien.

Meanwhile another victim was leaving an upmarket restaurant not far from the Arc de Triomphe when she was attacked by several people who ripped off a watch from her valued at a few hundred thousand euros.
(CNN)  The fate of the only opposition-controlled political institution in Venezuela was left hanging on Sunday, as pro-government lawmakers claimed to swear in a new president of the National Assembly.

Shouts and fistfights erupted inside and outside the legislative palace, as security forces in riot gear prevented several opposition congressmen from entering the legislative palace, including opposition leader Juan Guaido, the incumbent national assembly president.

Guaido, who last year declared illegitimate the rule of Nicolas Maduro and swore himself in as the country's chief executive, had been expected to be re-elected as chief of the legislature. Instead, inside the palace, a little-known congressman named Luis Parra, was named to the role by a skeleton assembly of pro-government lawmakers. The decision came amid chaos inside the chamber, and without the session being formally declared open.

Constitutional experts and members of the Venezuelan opposition supporting Guaido have said Parra's appointment is a sham. They cite National Assembly rules which require a quorum for the body to open for business. In the absence of a minimum number of lawmakers  many of whom were blocked from entering the building  procedure requires the National Assembly to form a "Preparatory Commission" to find ways to reactivate a voting session.

Parra was a member of the pro-Guaido opposition party Primero Justicia (Justice First) until December 2019, when a corruption scandal saw him ejected from the party.

Guaido later tried to force his way into the legislative chamber by jumping on top of a fence, but was blocked by members of the National Guard branding plastic shields and batons.

Speaking to CNN, Guaido urged the international community to take action, saying: "This is yet another proof that we live under a dictatorship, as if anyone had any doubt. Nevertheless we are going to do what we need to do and install the sole legitimate national assembly." The opposition leader is expected to hold an alternate session late Sunday in El Nacional's headquarters, one of Venezuela's oldest newspapers.

In a publicly televised address later on Sunday, embattled president Maduro recognized Parra and called for new elections for all seats of the National Assembly in 2020. "We aspire to recover the National Assembly with votes and we will achieve it," he said, alluding to the fact that the chamber is dominated by opposition lawmakers.

But dozens of other countries, including neighboring Colombia, have said they will not recognize Parra as president of the legislative body. And the US, which recognized Guaido as the country's legitimate leader last year, has vowed to support him, with Michael Kozak, the US State Department's Acting Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, tweeting Sunday that Guaido "remains Venezuela's interim president under its constitution. This morning's phony national assembly session lacked a legal quorum. There was no vote."

Venezuela's Foreign Minister, Maduro loyalist Jorge Arreaza, responded to the US, tweeting: "We reject the Trump Administration's vulgar interventionism in Venezuela's internal affairs & institutions. They still don't understand that we're an independent and sovereign country."

This story was first published on CNN.com. "Guaido blocked from Venezuela's National Assembly vote."
Reynhard Sinaga, 36, convinced many of his victims he had done them a favour by offering them a floor to sleep on for the night.

He targeted lone young men who were worse for wear from alcohol after being separated from friends or on their way home.

He then invited them back to his Manchester city centre apartment where he would drug his victims before filming himself assaulting therm.

Reynhard Sinaga has been jailed / CPS

Greater Manchester Police have linked Sinaga to more than 190 potential victims in total.

However, they are unable to identify 70 of them, and have asked potential victims to come forward.

None of his victims realised what had been done to them, and none of them wanted to know the details after they were contacted by the police.

Bottles of alcohol which were used to spike victims / PA

Two attempted to commit suicide as a result of severe depression.

Home Secretary Priti Patel has now called for an urgent review into whether more stringent controls are needed for date rape drugs such as GHB.

The Conservative minister urged the independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to expedite a review into whether current controls are tough enough.

Her intervention comes following the sentencing of serial rapist Reynhard Sinaga to at least 30 years in jail after he was convicted of offences against 48 men.

It is thought he laced alcoholic drinks with a drug such as Gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), also known as liquid ecstasy.

The powerful depressant is a class C drug that is unlawful to possess for yourself or supply  except under a Home Office licence.

Because of its potency, it has become a tool to spike drinks and has been linked to rapes and other sexual assaults.

The bedroom floor, where dozens of rapes took place, in the home of Sinaga / PA

Ms Patel said: Sinaga committed truly sickening crimes and it is right that he has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

I extend my heartfelt sympathy to his victims and my gratitude to the police and prosecutors who worked on this case and put him behind bars.

Im deeply concerned by the use of illegal drugs like GHB to perpetrate these crimes and have asked the independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to expedite a review looking at whether our controls for these drugs are tough enough.

GHB is used recreationally to reduce inhibitions, produce feelings of euphoria and increase the intensity of sex.

But the risks are high, because the difference between the amount that will achieve the desired effects and overdosing is very small.

This can lead to unconsciousness, coma and death.

It does not always have a noticeable taste or smell, but can taste salty, and is particularly dangerous when mixed with alcohol or other depressants and sedatives.

CCTV of the serial rapist Reynhard Sinaga on Princess Street, Manchester / PA

Sentencing Sinaga, Judge Suzanne Goddard QC said: Buying such drugs on the black market and giving surreptitious doses to strangers creates a huge risk of serious harm as there is a narrow margin between a euphoric high, unconsciousness and death.

Giving such drugs to men who have drunk large quantities of alcohol is obviously risky as such drugs have an effect on the levels of consciousness. It was a risk you were prepared to ignore to satisfy your perverted desire to have sex with unconscious heterosexual men and film your activities.

Such drugs in sufficient doses leave the victim with a complete blackout of what has happened, but can also carry a risk ultimately of serious injury or death should anything go wrong.

She added that mercifully none of the victims suffered any lasting serious physical effects from the druggings.

Anyone who believes they may have been a victim of Sinaga should contact Greater Manchester Police or specialist support agencies on:

- Support Line: 0800 056 0154 (calls made from within the UK)/0207 158 0011 (international calls)
Gov. Ned Lamont will make several public appearances this week to take questions from constituents over his proposed transportation plan, which includes controversial highway tolls.

Lamont will take call-in questions on WNPRs Where We Live at 9 a.m. Tuesday, and on WTIC 1080 AM at 8 a.m. Thursday. The governor and Transportation Commissioner Joseph Giulietti will also attend a town hall forum in Westport Sunday.

The forum, hosted by state Sen. Will Haskell, D-Westport, and state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, was scheduled following a weekend uproar over an email from a pro-tolls activist group that suggested their members keep the forum, originally in the works for Tuesday, a secret. Tolls opponents have accused Lamont of conspiring with the local group to keep opponents away from the forum, but they have not cited any evidence.

The Tuesday forum was postponed due to scheduling conflicts, Haskell and Lamonts office said over the weekend.

Improving our infrastructure is a top concern for my district. Thats why Im so excited to host Governor Lamont and leaders from his administration to hear directly from my constituents at this town hall meeting, Sen. Haskell said in an emailed statement Monday morning. After finally finding a date to work around busy schedules, I hope constituents of all political opinions will come to share their thoughts on how we should build faster trains and safer roads.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, is also slated to attend the newly-scheduled forum, which will take place at 4 p.m. Sunday at Bedford Middle School, 88 North Avenue, in Westport.

The House and Senate Democratic caucuses will meet Tuesday at the state Capitol to discuss Lamonts latest plan, among other legislative issues for the upcoming session.

Lamont publicly promised late last year to hold town hall meetings across the state about his CT2030 transportation plan. An earlier version of the plan, calling for 14 toll gantries that would levy charges of 50 cents to $1, failed in the fall after Democrats balked at it. Under the latest plan, Lamont returns to a version of his 2018 campaign plan, tolling trucks only, at 12 locations.

Tolls opponents, including Patrick Sasser, founder of No Tolls CT, have repeatedly and publicly requested a schedule for the public discussions.

kkrasselt@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2563; @kaitlynkrasselt
(@fidahassanain)

Tamgha-i-Imtiaz Mehwish harshly responded to Amir Liaqat Hussain when he called her item girl and asked her to refrain from making statements on foreign policy.

LAHORE: (Urdu Point/UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News-Jan 6th, 2020) Iconic figure of Pakistani film industry Mehwish Hayat has responded harshly to Air Liaqat for calling her item girl here on Monday.

Mehwish Hayat who is celebrating her 37th birthday had made a comment over the middle East crisis on Jan 3, 2020, saying that Cant believe that just 72 hours into 2020 & the world is already teetering on the edge of war. I guess this is wht happens when the "leader of the free world" takes unilateral decisions without regard for international laws. This isnt just abt Iran &USA.God protect us #Soleimani,.

On her tweet, Aamir Liaquat criticized the actress and asked her to stay away from making irrelevant comment on foreign policy.

And he called her an item girl.

At this, Tamgha-e-Imtiaz Mehwish harshly responded him This "item girl" is exercising her democratic right to have an opinion whereas you keep stoop to making personal jibe and nothing more. Man up!

The actress also said: BTW whatever happened to the case you were filing against me for Load Wedding? I have been waiting with bated breath ....

It may be mentioned here that Aamir Liaquat had warned to sue Load Wedding for allegedly defaming him.
Trump Threatens Iranian Cultural Sites

By VOA News January 05, 2020

U.S President Donald Trump is threatening to hit Iranian cultural sites if Iran retaliates for last week's assassination of its top general Qassem Soleimani.

"They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people and we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One Sunday night.

He did not specify what targets he has in mind. But some legal experts say bombing a cultural site would violate international law, as well as his earlier tweet Sunday in which he said the U.S. could respond to an Iranian attack "in a disproportionate manner."

The president also told reporters he "may discuss" releasing the intelligence he used to justify ordering Soleimani's death.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is staunchly defending the drone attack outside Baghdad International Airport that killed Soleimani. But Pompeo has so far refuse to publicly share the evidence backing the administration's claim that Soleimani was planning imminent attacks on U.S. forces and officials in the Middle East.

"There are simply things we cannot make public," Pompeo told Fox News. "You've got to protect the sources providing the intelligence."

On CNN, Pompeo said U.S. officials would continue to disclose information about the drone attack, but only "consistent with protecting our sources and methods and importantly our capacity to continue to understand what's going on in presenting threats. You don't want to risk that intelligence."

Trump claimed Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, Iraqis and Iranians, saying the longtime Iranian general "made the death of innocent people his sick passion" while helping to run a terror network that reached across the Middle East to Europe and the Americas.

Many Republican lawmakers back Trump's order to kill Soleimani.

Democrats say there is no doubt Soleimani was rotten and a killer. But they say Trump's action increases the threat of a U.S.-Iran war.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen told Fox, "We're now headed very close to the precipice of war," adding "you just can't go around and kill" world figures the U.S. opposes. "The president is not entitled to take us to war" without congressional authorization.

Trump doesn't seem to agree.

He posted a tweet Sunday, saying his "media posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly and fully strike back and perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required but is given nevertheless!"

Yale University law professor Oona Hathaway tells VOA the president cannot notify Congress of his intent to go to war by tweet and said he would be breaking several laws.

"Any time the president involves the armed forces into hostilities, he must -- at a minimum -- notify Congress within 48 hours," she said.

Hathaway added that a president is obligated to consult with Congress before putting the armed forces into any hostilities. She said a "disproportionate" response would break international law, which says any action taken in self-defense must be proportionate to the threat.

"That any of this has to be said suggests just how insane this situation has become," Hathaway said, wondering where are the lawyers from the White House, Pentagon, and State Department.

Also Sunday, Iran said it is no longer limiting the number of centrifuges used to enrich uranium-- a virtual abandonment of the 2015 nuclear deal.

"Iran's nuclear program will have no limitations in production including enrichment capacity and percentage and number of enriched uranium and research and expansion," a government statement said.

Iran did not make any explicit threats to build a nuclear weapon, something it has always denied it wants to do. It also said it will still cooperate with the International Atomic Agency.

Iran has been gradually backing down from a promise made in the 2015 deal since U.S. President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Iran. The European signatories -- Britain, France, and Germany -- have been urging Iran not to pull out.

Also Sunday, Iraq filed an official complaint with the United Nations secretary-general and the Security Council over the missile strike on Soleimani which was carried out on Iraqi soil.

The foreign ministry called the attack "a dangerous breach of Iraqi sovereignty and of the terms of the U.S. presence in Iraq." It is asking the Security Council to condemn the action.

Kenneth Schwartz, Patsy Widakuswara, Steve Herman contributed to this report.

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SEATTLE  An apartment building at 5705 Phinney Ave. N. has sold for almost $7.2 million, according to King County records.

The seller was Clouston Properties, a family group that had owned the property for decades.





. . .
Nick Ngwanyam St. Louis

Dr. Nick Ngwanyam, MD, CEO of St. Louis University Institute Douala and Bamenda has said by settling for a Special Status for Anglophones at the end of the Major National Dialogue, Chief Dr. Dion Ngute Joseph, Prime Minister, Head of Government missed the chance to solve Cameroons greatest problem.

His words: The PM had a chance to be the greatest and he lost it for ever. You are the greatest if you solve the greatest problem. That opportunity was solving the Anglophone Problem and he went off a tangent into space singing a chorus with no acceptable rhythm. He engineered the Special Status for Anglophones. This is a tool to continue the assimilation of Anglophones. He forgot that H. E. President Paul Biya stated in Paris recently that Anglophones would no longer be assimilated as they the Francophones have been trying to do in the past 58 years. Going against the instructions of the President in this regard is not good news.

Ngwanyams remarks came on the heels of the first anniversary of Chief Dr. Dion Ngute Joseph as Prime Minister, Head of Government. He was appointed January 4, 2019 by a presidential decree.

Ngwanyam posits that H.E. Prime Minister Dion Ngute has had a very rough time from the moment he was appointed because the nation had too much shit on her hands that he had to clean up.

He took over the post of PM coming into these big shoes from a position of a junior minister. Besides some ministers think they are more entitled than others and they perceive Anglophones no matter their ranks as beggars and slaves. He had to be proving to everyone that he is not an underdog. He has done that in style.

He has had to work very hard at this image boasting exercise because the former occupants 'feared' the francophone masters with a morbid type of fear and that gave francophone masters the opportunity and misguided opinion of treating to death and servitude of the 6 or 8 million West Cameroonians with a lot of contempt. Marginalization has been a way of life for us.

He has worked as hard as he can to change that perception and suffering of his yoked brothers and sisters in his own way. Up until now, Anglophones in government were too shy speaking in English and identifying with their roots.

If the former PM had been people friendly, he would have defused the crisis of the lawyers and teachers on time and there would never have been a war. Students would never have been beaten up at the University of Buea and no one would have been killed on the Commercial Avenue in Bamenda on the 8th of December 2016 or so following a programmed CPDM meeting.

He and his advisers were too ashamed to identify with their people and preferred to trade them off for a plate of beans. Arrogance and disrespect has caused death and untold suffering to unsuspecting victims who were asking just for good governance and fair treatment. Endemic over-the-ceiling corruption and impunity has made a bad situation worse.

I am still trying to figure out how he will deal with lies telling in Cameroon in low and high places; even many prophets and elected officials are champions at this evil. Old habits die hard. When the oldest senator stood in the general assembly of the MND and lied in the presence of the PM Dion Ngute about the nonexistence of a relationship over the years between people of the North West and those of the South West, the PM did not correct such gross errors. I felt a pain in my heart.

I thought the old man's mind was failing until some delegates of SW origin at the MND chorused that they all wanted a ten state federation so as to get away from North Westerners whom they perceive as predators.

I understand that all the delegates were locked up in a room prior to that and this position was dictated to them. I know that PM Dion Ngute is too mature to be this xenophobic and could not have engineered such a thought nor encouraged it in any form, manner or way. For that I must congratulate him. I still have to ask him for his own version of the truth one on one.

I gave him my blue print on the confederation as a form of state that will solve the Anglophone problem. Amongst some of the things said, I drew his attention to the fact that the name of the country should be changed. As a two state confederation, the post of Vice President would have been introduced.

In so doing the Presidency would alternate between Anglophones and and Francophones. The Anglophones will breathe a little more oxygen. And the whole nation would benefit for an Anglo-Saxon leadership and management style. This would have dispelled unfounded rumours that France has rejected the possibilities of an Anglophone ever becoming a President in Cameroon. I know these are lies meant to intoxicate an unsuspecting people, because Cameroon is a sovereign state and only Cameroonians can chose their leaders.

I guess he threw my documents into the dust bin as soon as I turned my back and left. After all, why should he care when he even turned down the request of H.E. Christian Cardinal Tumi who wanted to have a general Anglophone Conference before the MND. If he and his ministers and mayors have no regard for the Cardinal then we are a lost people.

The PM had a chance to be the greatest and he lost it for ever. You are the greatest if you solve the greatest problem. That opportunity was solving the Anglophone Problem and he went off a tangent into space singing a chorus with no acceptable rhythm. He engineered the Special Status for Anglophones. This is a tool to continue the assimilation of Anglophones. He forgot that H. E. President Paul Biya stated in Paris recently that Anglophones would no longer be assimilated as they the Francophones have been trying to do in the past 58 years. Going against the instructions of the President in this regard is not good news.

Good luck Mr. Prime Minister. I will encourage you to create 2 million jobs for youths in two years. Stop importation of fish and rice and grow your own. Reduce the excessive consumption of alcohol and build markets and public toilets in your cities and towns. Provide skills and capacities for our youths.

Empty political speeches with little or no truth in them is only hurting the nation the more. God be with you as you start the second year in office. You can only succeed if you embrace the truth and work in Love. If you depend on human wisdom and seek to protect your post by sacrificing the youth and your people then you are history.
As 2020 takes hold, about half of Americans say theyre committed to saving more for retirement this year, according to a recent Fidelity survey.

Thats good news because many are woefully behind. In fact, more than 1 in 2 Americans admit theyre not saving enough, and 38 percent say they still dont have a retirement account.

Experts applaud the renewed enthusiasm for saving and offer important tips for getting on track to a more secure retirement, no matter where you are financially.

Be proactive.

We are seeing millennials joining 401(k) plans at greater levels, said Dave Stinnett, principal of Vanguards strategic retirement consulting group. But its not as much of an intentional thing.

More companies are automatically enrolling new employees in their 401(k) plans, helping to increase participation levels. But workers are forgetting to check on their progress and increase their contributions.

If you miss out on your 20s, it will really hurt you when you retire. (Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Coombs)

People are having professionals manage their money, and so they feel less inclined to go in and check their account, said Anne Lester, head of retirement solutions at JPMorgan Asset Management.

But its important to know whats going on in your account and if youre invested in low-fee funds. Otherwise, you could have management fees eating away at your return.

Cant maximize your 401(k)? Its okay.

The ideal is to maximize your 401(k) contributions and save 15% of your income. But thats a tough ask for younger employees who may have other financial obligations that take priority, such as paying off student loans.

Dont let that discourage you. You can start out small and then gradually increase your contributions. If anything, try putting away enough to get your companys match, if one is offered. With each raise, increase your contribution by 1 percent.

Earlier is better.

Starting to save as early as possible is key because you reap the benefits of compound interest. If you miss out on your 20s, Stinnett said, it will really hurt you when you retire.

Story continues

If you don't start saving for retirement in your 20s, you're giving up thousands of dollars in compounded interest. (Photo: Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Say your employer fully matches your contributions up to 3 percent of your salary each year. If you make $50,000 at age 25 and contribute 5 percent, youll save $638,981 with the company match by the time you hit 65  given a 6-percent annual rate of return.

But if you dont start contributing until five years later at 30, youll only save $460,092 in the same period, a difference of $178,889.

Open another account.

Another way to supercharge your retirement savings is to contribute to a Roth IRA, which is funded by post-tax dollars. Use your tax refund or year-end bonus to start this account.

If your income exceeds the maximum income limits for Roth IRAs, consider a traditional IRA instead. These offer better tax benefits for those in higher tax brackets.

Instead of funding a Roth IRA with post-taxes now  at a higher tax rate  you pay taxes on withdrawals from traditional IRAs in retirement, when your tax bracket is likely lower, said Brandon Renfro, a finance professor at East Texas Baptist University.

Just to push taxes away until later, he said.

You don't need a financial adviser to set up a Roth IRA. There are a variety of platforms online that make it easy to do so on your own. (Photo: Autumn Payne/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Make it automatic.

To make retirement saving even easier, you can automate contributions to a Roth IRA in the same way as your company deducts your 401(k) contributions. Simply direct deposit part of your paycheck into your Roth IRA as well as your bank account each pay period.

Time your contributions.

If your company offers a 401(k) match, find out how your employer deposits that match. If its on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis, you could be missing out on the full match.

Thats because if you max out your contributions early  say by June  then your employer doesnt have any contributions from you to match against for the paychecks after that.

You definitely dont want to front load so quickly, Renfro said. That match is what makes the 401(k) such a big plan. Its kind of a cliche, but thats free money.

Your match is safe if your company matches in a lump sum once a year.

If you max out your contributions early, you could be missing out on your employer's match. (Photo: Dave Cruz / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

Know how the law has changed.

If youre in line to inherit an IRA from your parents, know how new legislation will impact you.

Under the SECURE Act, those who inherit traditional IRAs as non-spouse beneficiaries have only 10 years to take all required minimum distributions from the plan. Before, these non-spouse beneficiaries could take smaller distributions based on their life expectancy and watch the remaining funds grow more.

This also means higher taxes for you.

If youre inheriting an IRA in your 40s and 50s from your parents, those are your high-earning years, said Kevin Busque, CEO of Guideline, a 401(k) provider. Youre going to be paying a larger tax rate, since theyre forcing you to take it out over those years.

Dont get attached.

When it comes to inherited investments from loved ones, dont let your heart guide you. Sometimes, its better to sell off those assets, so you can diversify your retirement portfolio, Renfro said. But some people may become so emotionally attached to inherited assets that they hold on to it  to their financial detriment.

They say: These were Dads stocks so Im going to own them, he said.

Dhara is a writer for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @dsinghx.

Read more:

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Grupo Ezentis, S.A. (BME:EZE), which is in the communications business, and is based in Spain, saw significant share price movement during recent months on the BME, rising to highs of 0.52 and falling to the lows of 0.40. Some share price movements can give investors a better opportunity to enter into the stock, and potentially buy at a lower price. A question to answer is whether Grupo Ezentis's current trading price of 0.42 reflective of the actual value of the small-cap? Or is it currently undervalued, providing us with the opportunity to buy? Lets take a look at Grupo Ezentiss outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if there are any catalysts for a price change.

View our latest analysis for Grupo Ezentis

What is Grupo Ezentis worth?

The stock seems fairly valued at the moment according to my valuation model. Its trading around 15% below my intrinsic value, which means if you buy Grupo Ezentis today, youd be paying a fair price for it. And if you believe the companys true value is 0.49, then there isnt much room for the share price grow beyond what its currently trading. So, is there another chance to buy low in the future? Given that Grupo Ezentiss share is fairly volatile (i.e. its price movements are magnified relative to the rest of the market) this could mean the price can sink lower, giving us an opportunity to buy later on. This is based on its high beta, which is a good indicator for share price volatility.

Can we expect growth from Grupo Ezentis?

BME:EZE Past and Future Earnings, January 6th 2020

Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Buying a great company with a robust outlook at a cheap price is always a good investment, so lets also take a look at the company's future expectations. With revenues expected to grow by a double-digit 25% over the next couple of years, the outlook is positive for Grupo Ezentis. If the level of expenses is able to be maintained, it looks like higher cash flow is on the cards for the stock, which should feed into a higher share valuation.

Story continues

What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? It seems like the market has already priced in EZEs positive outlook, with shares trading around its fair value. However, there are also other important factors which we havent considered today, such as the track record of its management team. Have these factors changed since the last time you looked at the stock? Will you have enough conviction to buy should the price fluctuates below the true value?

Are you a potential investor? If youve been keeping tabs on EZE, now may not be the most optimal time to buy, given it is trading around its fair value. However, the positive outlook is encouraging for the company, which means its worth further examining other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to take advantage of the next price drop.

Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters  the fundamentals  before you make a decision on Grupo Ezentis. You can find everything you need to know about Grupo Ezentis in the latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in Grupo Ezentis, you can use our free platform to see my list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Jimtown Stores survival was seen as somewhat of a silver lining in the midst of tragedy.

The mom-and-pop cafe and country store poised against the rural backdrop of Alexander Valley in Sonoma County was not only a local landmark since its alleged 1895 beginnings, but also an indispensable stop for cyclists passing through on a long journey and a gathering space for families within the community. When the Kincade Fire blazed through nearly 78,000 acres of California soil last fall destroying at least 352 structures in its path including the Soda Rock Winery just a mile and a half up the road  it was a shock to owner Carrie Brown that her business wasnt one of them.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday directed Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal to call representatives from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and hold talks, a day after masked individuals attacked the students at the campus here.

According to official sources, Shah spoke to Baijal over the phone on Monday morning.

The Home Minister had also inquired on Sunday from the Delhi Police about the situation in the campus.

According to officials, Shah spoke to Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik late on Sunday to find about the situation as the police were deployed in the campus to restore peace.

Several masked individuals thrashed students and teachers inside the campus here with wooden and metal rods on Sunday.

A number of students were admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) with severe injuries, including the Students Union President Aishe Ghosh, who was reportedly hit over the eye with an iron rod.
Fernando Pope (pictured above) has been found guilty of the murder of 18-year-old Cheyon Evans

A 21-year-old man has been found guilty of the murder of an 18-year-old who he 'brutally and horrifically' killed in a London street.

Cheyon Evans was stabbed by Fernando Pope on Friday 14 June last year in the Wandsworth area of London.

Pope, of no fixed address, was today convicted of murder at the Old Bailey and is set to be sentenced on February 7.

Police were called to Deeside Road at 4.42pm on 14 June last year after reports of a stabbing.

Cheyon was found in a critical condition and died at the scene a short while after police and the air ambulance service arrived.

The cause of death was a stab wound to the chest and detectives from the specialist crime unit launched an investigation, which found that Pope had used a large knife to repeatedly stab his victim.

Pope was arrested on Thursday 20 June after he was identified on CCTV from the estate.

Cheyon Evans (pictured above) was repeatedly stabbed. His family described him as 'the man of the house'

The motivation for the attack has never been established and the lead on the investigation Detective Chief Inspector Helen Rance, said: 'Pope is clearly a dangerous man who was intent on causing serious harm that afternoon in broad daylight on a busy residential estate.

'Cheyon's family have been left completely devastated by their loss and our thoughts remain with them at this time.'

Cheyon's family have since described him as 'the man of the house' and an amazing person, the Evening Standard reported.

Police officers near to the scene in Deeside Road in Wandsworth, south-west London

In a statement they said the family 'couldn't find the words' to describe how they felt'.

'Losing Cheyon has affected so many of his family and friends. It has torn their world apart and changed the family dynamic forever. It has truly been the most devastating, traumatic and surreal thing that could've happened.'

Cheyon's mother added: 'My heart will forever be broken and I can't picture a day where I won't grieve the loss of my son.

She said she had a 'permanent hole in her heart'.

'My only hope is that Cheyon, like many others that were brutally and horrifically murdered on the streets of London in 2019, will be a name, a story that inspires the government to create change, a better future and better opportunities for the children of yesterday, today and tomorrow.'

Aymen Mansouri, 18 and Mohammed Nadir Dafallah, 18, were found not guilty of murder.
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang's Regular Press Conference on January 6, 2020

2020/01/06

Q: Tensions in US-Iran relations are escalating. The US claimed it has targeted 52 Iranian sites, which will be hit if Iran strikes any Americans or American assets. Iran said some 35 US targets in the region are within reach. How does China see the current situation?

A: China is highly concerned about the current situation in the Middle East. Worsening of tensions in the Middle East and the Gulf region is the last thing anyone wants to see. Ensuring peace and stability in the region is of vital importance to the whole world.

Power politics is always resented and short-lived. The US military adventurism goes against basic norms governing international relations and aggravates tensions and turbulence in the region. China consistently opposes the use of force in international relations. Military actions will lead nowhere, nor will maximum pressure.

China holds that all sides should earnestly abide by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and the basic norms governing international relations. All countries' independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity should be respected. Peace and stability in the Middle East and the Gulf region should be upheld. We urge the US not to abuse force and call on relevant parties to exercise restraint to prevent a spiral of escalation. Efforts should be made to resume dialogue and consultation as soon as possible to cool off tensions.

China will continue to uphold an objective and just position and play a constructive role in maintaining peace and security in the Middle East and the Gulf region.

Q: A follow-up question on Iraq and US situation. US President Trump on Sunday threatened to impose harsh sanctions on Iraq after the country's parliament passed a resolution, urging the government to expel foreign troops from the country. "If they do ask us to leave, if we don't do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever." Trump tweeted. I wonder what the Chinese government thinks about it?

A: We saw the reports. In state-to-state relations, countries need to observe the purposes and principles of the UN Charter as well as the basic norms governing international relations. We oppose the arbitrary use or threat of sanction, not to mention the imposition of unilateral sanctions. Iraq's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity should be earnestly safeguarded. We hope relevant countries, certain non-regional major country in particular, will contribute to peace and stability instead of escalating tensions in the Middle East.

Q: Iran announced on Sunday a new rollback of it commitments to the JCPOA. Is China concerned about this move? Who do you think should be held responsible, Iran or the US?

A: China noted Iran's announcement of taking the fifth step to cut its JCPOA commitments. As we also noted, according to Iran, that would be its last step to reduce commitments. Iran will continue its cooperation with the IAEA and resume its compliance with the deal under certain circumstances. We believe that despite its reduction in commitments due to external reasons, Iran has demonstrated a restrained attitude and its political will to implement the JCPOA effectively and in full. It has not violated its obligations under the NPT.

At present, the situation in the Middle East is becoming more complex, posing grave challenges to the JCPOA. The US has unilaterally withdrawn from the JCPOA, ignored international law and its international obligations, imposed maximum pressure on Iran, and obstructed other parties in keeping their commitments. Such practices are the root cause of current tensions and should be the first thing for all parties to consider if we want to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue objectively and fairly. All parties to the JCPOA should remain calm and rational, stick to the right direction of a political and diplomatic settlement, resolve differences on the implementation of the deal through consultations under the JCPOA Joint Commission, stay focused, avoid taking any measure that may complicate the situation, and strive to preserve the JCPOA.

I want to stress that the hard-won JCPOA, endorsed and adopted by the UN Security Council, is an important outcome of multilateral diplomacy, an important pillar for the international non-proliferation system and peace and stability in the Middle East, and a significant part of the international order based on international law. The international community should have the bigger, long-term picture in mind, firmly uphold the JCPOA, and work for amelioration in the Iranian nuclear issue and the situation in the Middle East. China will continue to remain in close communication and coordination with relevant parties and make tireless efforts to this end.

Q: Yesterday Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that Iran has appealed to the UN Security Council over the assassination of commander Soleimani. He said that the Foreign Ministry already initiated political, legal and other measures including at the level of the UN Security Council. I wonder if China thinks this issue should be brought to the Security Council?

A: China noted that the Iranian permanent representative to the UN sent letters to the Security Council president and the Secretary-General. The military adventurism of the US has breached the basic norms governing international relations and triggered greater tensions and turbulence. As the Security Council has the primary responsibility to uphold international peace and security, it should earnestly fulfill its duties enshrined in the UN Charter. As a permanent member of the Security Council, China will, in an objective and fair spirit, continue to work with other parties to uphold international law, international justice as well as peace and security in the Middle East and the Gulf region.

Q: In light of increasing tensions between the US and Iran, is China planning to increase its security presence in the region?

A: As I said earlier, China is highly concerned about the current situation in the Middle East. No one wants to see deterioration of the situation. It is of vital importance to the world that peace and stability is ensured in the region.

China opposes the abuse of force in international relations. We call on relevant parties to exercise restraint to avoid a spiral of escalation, and return to dialogue and consultation as soon as possible in order to de-escalate tensions.

With an impartial and fair stance, China will continue to make constructive efforts for peace and security of the Gulf regionin in the Middle East.
During the last fiscal, India exported basmati rice worth Rs 32,800 crore, of which nearly Rs 10,800 crore worth rice was shipped to Iran

New Delhi: India's basmati rice exports to Iran are likely to be affected because of rising tensions between the US and the Islamic republic, with domestic trade body AIREA asking exporters not to undertake any shipment till the situation improves.

Iran is an important export destination for India and if shipments get affected then it will impact domestic prices and in turn farmers' income, the All India Rice Exporters Association (AIREA) said.

During the last fiscal, India exported basmati rice worth Rs 32,800 crore, of which nearly Rs 10,800 crore worth rice was shipped to Iran.

"In the current situation, it is not possible to export basmati rice to Iran. We have issued an advisory to our members to be cautious and not to execute further shipments till the situation gets clearer," AIREA President Nathi Ram Gupta told PTI.

Tensions in the Middle East ratcheted up on Friday after top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq.

Basmati rice exports to Iran were hit last year as well following US sanctions on the country.

About Rs 900 crore payment is still pending from basmati rice exported till June 2019, Gupta said.

Non-export of basmati rice to Iran will lead to surplus stock in the country, pulling down the rates and affecting the farmers, he added.

Normally, basmati rice exports start from November onwards when the fresh crop arrives. So far, not much has been exported, he said.

The shipments placed by the Iranian government through the issue of letters of credit (LCs) have also been kept on hold. "Some quantity is lying at ports," Gupta said.

Annually, the Iranian government issues LCs for purchase of 2 lakh tonnes of basmati rice from Indian private traders. The rest of the trade is done by private parties from both nations.

In its advisory, AIREA said: "In view of growing uncertainty, exporters members should take extreme caution not to execute any further shipment to Iran till the situation gets clearer."

"If exporters choose to ship basmati rice to Iran, they will do so entirely at their risk," the advisory added.

During April-November period of the current fiscal, India exported 23.64 lakh tonnes of basmati rice worth about Rs 17,700 crore, of which nearly Rs 4,500 crore exports went to Iran.

A rice exporter said that about Rs 1,500 crore payments could be stuck from Iranian importers.
[January 06, 2020] Harris Williams Advises Ontellus on its Investment from Aquiline Capital Partners LLC

Harris Williams, a global investment bank specializing in M&A advisory services, announces that it advised Ontellus, a portfolio company of The CapStreet Group (CapStreet), on its majority investment from Aquiline Capital Partners LLC (Aquiline). The transaction was led by Derek Lewis, Anthony Basmajian, Bryce Walker and Maury Nolen of the Harris Williams Business Services Group. As part of the transaction, CapStreet will remain an investor in the company. "We're thrilled to have worked with CapStreet and the Ontellus management team on this transaction, which adds to our firm's track record of advising leading legal and insurance services companies," said Derek Lewis, a managing director at Harris Williams. "We look forward to seeing what Ontellus, Aquiline and CapStreet accomplish together in their new partnership." "Ontellus is an industry leader in technology, expertise and comprehensive security," said Anthony Basmajian, a director at Harris Williams. "We continue to see investor interest in the professional services sector, especially for top-quality assets like Ontellus."



Ontellus empowers insurance carriers, self-insured corporations and law firms to reduce costs, make informed decisions and accelerate claims resolution. As one of the nation's largest, privately-held data retrieval and claims intelligence providers, Ontellus leverages decades of experience and cutting-edge technology to deliver impactful products and client-centric services within industry-leading turnaround times. The CapStreet Group is a Houston, Texas-based private equity firm that invests in owner-managed, lower-middle market companies. CapStreet targets companies operating in the industrial and outsourced business service sectors, including tech enabled services and software businesses. CapStreet's approach is to partner with strong management teams with the goal of building out corporate infrastructure, accelerating growth and profitability, and creating long term sustainable businesses.

Aquiline, founded in 2005, is a private equity firm based in New York and London that invests in businesses across the financial services sector in banking and credit; insurance; investment management; and financial technology and services. Harris Williams, an investment bank specializing in M&A advisory services, advocates for sellers and buyers of companies worldwide through critical milestones and provides thoughtful advice during the lives of their businesses. By collaborating as one firm across Industry Groups and geographies, the firm helps its clients achieve outcomes that support their objectives and strategically create value. Harris Williams is committed to execution excellence and to building enduring, valued relationships that are based on mutual trust. Harris Williams is a subsidiary of the PNC (News - Alert) Financial Services Group, Inc. (NYSE: PNC). The Harris Williams Business Services Group has experience advising companies that provide a range of commercial, industrial and professional services. For more information on the firm's Business Services Group and other recent transactions, visit the Business Services Group's section of the Harris Williams website. Harris Williams LLC is a registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA and SIPC. Harris Williams & Co. Ltd is a private limited company incorporated under English law with its registered office at 5th Floor, 6 St. Andrew Street, London EC4A 3AE, UK, registered with the Registrar of Companies for England and Wales (registration number 07078852). Harris Williams & Co. Ltd is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Harris Williams & Co. Corporate Finance Advisors GmbH is registered in the commercial register of the local court of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, under HRB 107540. The registered address is Bockenheimer Landstrasse 33-35, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany (email address: [email protected]ms.com). Geschaftsfuhrer/Directors: Jeffery H. Perkins, Paul Poggi. (VAT No. DE321666994). Harris Williams is a trade name under which Harris Williams LLC, Harris Williams & Co. Ltd and Harris Williams & Co. Corporate Finance Advisors GmbH conduct business. For media inquiries, please contact Katie Langemeier, associate brand manager, at +1 (804) 648-0072. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005934/en/

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London: The Morrison government is urging the Iraqi government to defy growing momentum to kick Australian troops out of the war-torn country, as the high-stakes stand-off between Donald Trump and Iran triggers a partial evacuation of embassy staff.

The Australian government is alarmed by the dramatic escalation in the Middle East following the US President's decision to assassinate Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in an air strike at Baghdad International Airport last week.

Soleimani was a US-declared terrorist and architect of destabilisation and destruction in the region for many years. The significance and potential ramifications of his killing have been compared to the death of September 11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

Tehran has vowed to avenge the assassination, prompting Trump to warn any attack on American troops or installations would automatically trigger a wave of targeted strikes on Iranian targets.
A woman shared a heartbreaking image of her firefighter father asleep on their front lawn after his tenth 12-hour day battling fires as the family protected their home.

New South Wales Woman Jenna O'Keeffe posted the picture of her beloved father who took five minutes to rest before helping to protect the family property.

'This is a picture of my Dad getting five minutes sleep on our front lawn, while my brother keeps watch over the fire burning at the top of our farm, after he finished his 10th 12 hr+ day in a row fighting voluntarily in the community with the RFS NSW,' Miss O'Keeffe said.

A New South Wales woman has shared a heartbreaking picture of her firefighter father so exhausted from battling bushfires he fell asleep exhausted on their front lawn (pictured)

'My family have been fighting these fires on our farm and our community nonstop for over a month. They are tired, they are sore, and they are running out of resources.'

Miss O'Keeffe said her father finally broke down on Sunday after spending over a week in the front lines of the bushfire battle.

'Today I heard my Dad cry, he said Jen I have never seen anything like this, its never ending', Miss O'Keeffe said.

'We still have over 50 days of summer left we arent even half way and there is currently no end in sight.'

She urged people not to become numb to the carnage of the bushfires.

'Dont get caught up in the negativity, the politics, the Facebook news, the drama!' she said.

'Australia is on fire and there are brave people all over the country voluntarily fighting day in, day out to keep our lives and homes safe.'
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 11:28:20|Editor: xuxin

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CARACAS, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday recognized the newly elected board of directors of the National Assembly, and president of the legislative body, Luis Parra.

"The National Assembly has made a decision and there is a new opposition board of directors headed by Deputy Luis Parra," said Maduro.

Parra's election is a blow to opposition leader and self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido, who was hoping to be re-elected head of the National Assembly, which began its 2020-2021 legislative period on Sunday.

Parra signalled the opposition was "taking a new tack," and pledged to work to overcome Venezuela's political deadlock between the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela and conservative groups through dialogue and conciliation.

"For us, Juan Guaido is the past and we must open the doors to the future," he told reporters.

Rejecting Guaido and voting in a new leadership was "a rebellion by the legislative assembly's opposition deputies themselves," noted Maduro.

"The country repudiated and repudiates Juan Guaido as a puppet of North American imperialism," Maduro said. "No one should be surprised by what happened today."

Guaido declared himself interim president in January 2019, after the opposition refused to recognize Maduro's re-election, and was immediately recognized by Washington and its allies.

Maduro also said conciliation talks between the government and opposition parties were ongoing.

On the agenda was the renewal of the National Electoral Council, the country's electoral watchdog, in the run-up to legislative elections later this year, said Maduro.
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Hundreds of thousands of Iranians in Tehran on Monday mourned the assassination of senior general Qassem Soleimani.

The black-clad mourners flooded to the Enghelab (Revolution) and Azadi (Liberty) streets of Tehran to pay their tribute to Soleimani. They shouted anti-U.S. slogans in rage and carrying placards calling for "immediate departure" of U.S. forces from the region.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei performed the official religious ritual for Soleimani's body.

Senior Iranian officials, including President Hassan Rouhani, Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani and Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Reisi, attended the funeral ceremony.

Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani, who was appointed by Khamenei as the new commander of Quds Force of the IRGC, vowed to take revenge.

Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force of Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), was killed in a U.S. raid in Iraq's capital Baghdad on Friday.

Soleimani's assassination triggered an escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran.

On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites if Iran retaliates for the strike.
LINCOLN - Spring turkey hunting permits for 2020 will be available from the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission beginning Jan. 13.

Nebraska offers birds in every county of the state. The state also offers plentiful and affordable permits, long seasons, great public access and $8 permits for youth.

Wild turkey hunters in Nebraska enjoy high success rates. In the spring, hunters can purchase as many as three permits, with a bag limit of one turkey per permit.

The spring archery season opens March 25, youth shotgun on April 11, and the regular shotgun on April 18. All spring turkey seasons close May 31.

Visit OutdoorNebraska.org or Game and Parks permitting offices to purchase permits starting Jan. 13. For more information on turkey hunting in Nebraska visit OutdoorNebraska.gov/wildturkey.

Meanwhile, there's much talk in the Husker state about the mystery drones that have plagued northeast Colorado and southwest Nebraska are moving east  and the Federal Aviation Administration is on their tail.

Nighttime flights by unidentified drones were reported in Hall, Buffalo and Adams counties Sunday evening, less than a week after they lit up the skies above Chase, Perkins, Hitchcock and Lincoln counties.

Grand Island Police Capt. Jim Duering said the drones flying over Grand Island and spotted by officers didn't appear to be involved in criminal activity, but they aren't registered locally, so it remains a mystery who is flying them. They appeared to be large, commercial models that would require a license to operate, he said.

Hastings Police Capt. Mike Doremus said a pilot reported seeing several drones flying in a grid formation about 2 miles west of Hastings at about 9 p.m. Sunday.

Buffalo County Sheriff Neil Miller said three reports of drones flying in his county came in between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Sunday. Deputies were tracking the locations of the reports to try to identify who is flying the drones, he said.

The drones reportedly have 6-foot wingspans and fly in grid-like patterns hundreds of feet in the air in groups of six to 10, officials say. The Federal Aviation Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army Forces Command have said they do not have information about the aircraft. Sheriff's officials say it appears that no laws are being broken.

The FAA met with law enforcement agencies and other government officials Monday in Colorado, and said it was trying to determine who is piloting the drones, and why.

We take every drone-sighting report seriously," the FAA said in a statement after Monday's meeting. Multiple FAA divisions are working closely with federal, state and local stakeholders to try to determine whether the reported sightings in Colorado and Nebraska are drones and, if so, who is operating them and for what reason."

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While much of the world is fearing a potential escalation in tensions between the U.S. and Iran, a former American ambassador has warned that violence within Iraq could also become a major source of instability in the Middle East. That comment by Douglas Silliman, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2016 to 2019, came after a American airstrike last week killed top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani. Silliman pointed out that along with Soleimani, the strike also took out a powerful Iraqi militia leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis  a detail that escaped much media coverage. "What worries me the most is that much of the world press and much of the world, as they're looking at an American-Iranian potential conflict, the impact on Iraq could be huge," the ambassador told CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" on Monday. "I think that the loss of Soleimani and Muhandis could be very dangerous inside Iraq," he added.

What you might see is less experienced, less well-trained militias who are angry, feeling they can take it upon themselves to make these decisions to use violence and that could be dangerous for Iraq. former U.S. ambassador to Iraq

Soleimani led the Iranian Quds Force  the foreign operations wing of the elite paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, while al-Muhandis oversaw Iran-backed Iraqi militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Al-Muhandis was at Baghdad's international airport on Friday to receive Soleimani who had just arrived by plane when the U.S. airstrike occurred, the Associated Press reported. The two men had "alternately acted as an accelerator for violent actions against American forces, against their rivals and into Syria," said Silliman, who's now president of Washington-based think tank The Arab Gulf States Institute. On the other hand, they also prevented escalation in violence when they felt the moves were not in the interest of Iran or Shia militias, the ambassador added.
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Linkedin Elrika Hamdi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020

Expert analyses of Indonesias plan to relocate its capital have been floating around since President Joko Jokowi Widodo announced the intended location. The capital will be moved from densely populated Jakarta to the forested environment of North Penajam Paser and Kutai Kartanegara, East Kalimantan.

The 10-year relocation process is expected to move about 1.5 million people, including key civil servants and their families. The impact will be similar to moving the entire population of Semarang in Central Java out of Java.

This would be a monumental project for any government, with complex, overlapping planning requirements.

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Five people were killed and at least 60 were injured on the Pennsylvania Turnpike early Sunday, when a tour bus lost control on a hill and rolled over, setting off a chain reaction that involved three tractor-trailers and a passenger car.

The injured victims, ranging from 7 to 67 years old, are all expected to survive, though two patients were in critical condition, authorities said. The crash, which happened at 3:40 a.m. on a mountainous stretch of the highway about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh, shut down the highway in both directions.

The tour bus, operated by Z & D Tours, was traveling from Rockaway, N.J., to Cincinnati, State Police spokesman Stephen Limani said. He said the bus was traveling downhill on a curve, careened up an embankment and rolled over. Two tractor-trailers then struck the bus. A third tractor-trailer then crashed into those trucks. A passenger car was also involved in the pile-up. Photos from the scene show mangled vehicles including a smashed FedEx truck that left packages sprawled along the highway.

Two UPS drivers, Daniel Kepner and Dennis Kehler, were killed in the crash, company spokeswoman Kristen Petrella said. Both were driving together in a tractor-trailer. State police have not identified the other three who died.

I havent personally witnessed a crash of this magnitude in 20 years, Pennsylvania Turnpike spokesman Carl DeFebo told WTAE, calling it the worst accident in his decades-long tenure with the turnpike.

Excela Frick Hospital in Mt. Pleasant treated 31 victims, nine of them children, hospital spokeswoman Robin Jennings said.

Hospitals brought in teams of social workers and psychologists to deal with the mental trauma, said Mark Rubino, president of Forbes Hospital, which treated 11 victims.

The victims included students and people returning from visiting family in New York City. Many traveling on the bus were from outside the United States, Limani said, some of whom do not speak English and who lost their luggage and passports in the wreckage. Limani said the Red Cross was working with those patients to find housing and resources.

Exactly what caused the crash remains unknown, and Limani said it could take weeks or months to determine. The National Transportation Safety Board dispatched a team of more than a dozen agents to investigate.

The National Weather Service forecast for Westmoreland County listed light precipitation and temperatures just below freezing.

Mark Scolforo and Claire Galofaro are Associated Press writers.
Union minister Smriti Irani on Monday warned against using campuses and students for political means amid an attack by the opposition on the BJP-led government at the Centre for the unprecedented violence inside Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

The Bharatiya Janata Party has been under fire from opposition parties after more than 20 people, including JNU students union president and a teacher, were injured in the unprecedented violence unleashed by a mob of masked people on Sunday.

The Congress party has accused leaders of the BJP of instigating violence inside JNU and its president Sonia Gandhi said the bone-chilling attack was a grim reminder of the extent the government will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent.

Smriti Irani seemed to deflect some of that criticism on Monday.

I had said it earlier and reiterating it now that educational institutions should not be made rajniti ka akhada (political battlefield) as it affects the life and progress of our students, the Union minister said while speaking to reporters.

I hope students will not be used as rajnitik mohre (political tools), Irani said.

A probe has started in the matter and it is not justified for me to comment on it as I am in a constitutional post, she added.

The JNU students union (JNUSU) has blamed members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the youth wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The RSS is also the ideological mentor of the ruling BJP.

ABVP denied they had instigated the violence and said they were first attacked by the left-leaning students.

Students at JNU have also alleged that the police had given masked goons a free run to target students and teachers. The JNUSUs president Aishe Ghosh and Sucharita Sen, a teacher, were among the 23 people who were taken to hospitals after being injured in the attack.

They have said the masked attackers went inside hotels as they checked rooms, where students locked themselves in, and vandalised property in the violence that lasted more than two hours.

The violence broke out inside JNU in the afternoon and the administration called in police hours later, students have accused.

Protests against JNU violence started on Sunday night after the news trickled out and have spread across the country on Monday.

Thousands of students across university campuses and outside have assembled to register their solidarity with their counterparts in JNU.
An Army colonel has filed a federal lawsuit against Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hyten, who formerly led U.S. Strategic Command, grew up in Huntsville.

Col. Kathryn A. Spletstoser is seeking more than $5 million in damages in a federal civil jury trial, Air Force Times reported. The suit was filed in late November in California.

Spletstoser alleges Hyten subjected her to sexual contact during multiple incidents between February 2017 and February 2018. She also alleges her career was impacted when she rejected Hytens alleged advances.

The allegations became a central focus of Hytens confirmation hearings, despite findings by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations that failed to corroborate the claims.

Hyten has denied the allegations.

I am intensely aware of the allegations made against me concerning one of the most serious problems we have in the military, sexual assault. It has been a painful time for me and my family, but I want to state to you and to the American people in the strongest possible terms that these allegations are false, Hyten said during his confirmation.

Hyten was confirmed as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs in September 2019.
US President Donald Trump is confident he could still renegotiate a nuclear deal with Tehran, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Monday, a day after Iran announced it would retreat further from the 2015 nuclear pact.

Asked if Trump believes he can still get Iran to negotiate a new nuclear agreement, Conway told reporters at the White House: "He said he's open. If Iran wants to start behaving like a normal country... sure, absolutely."

Trump later took to Twitter to reiterate the White House stance that "Iran will never have a nuclear weapon" but gave no other details.

Conway also defended Trump's decision last week to kill one of Iran's top military commanders, saying the president "did what a responsible, strong - not weak - commander-in-chief does when faced with the opportunity to take out one of the - if not the - world's most wanted terrorists."

Iran has said it will not renegotiate the nuclear deal, which Trump abandoned in 2018, triggering a sharp decline in relations between Tehran and Washington.

Tehran has already breached many of the deals restrictions on its nuclear activities and on Sunday said it would abandon limitations on enriching uranium. But it said it would still continue to cooperate with the U.N. nuclear watchdog and could quickly reverse its steps if U.S. sanctions are removed.

Trump's administration has pursued a "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran that it said could help pressure Tehran to come to the negotiating table. Trump has previously said he is open to talks with Tehran.
US lying about Iran's attack plans to justify assassination: Larijani

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 05 January 2020 10:18 AM

Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani says US officials' claims that General Qassem Soleimani was developing plans to imminently attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and elsewhere are lies.

A US airstrike killed the top anti-terror commander along with nine Iranians and Iraqis at the Baghdad airport early Friday morning, with the Pentagon claiming that the attack aimed to deter Iranian plans to target American interests in the region.

"This claim is nothing but a lie. The American people and lawmakers should know that the US president tells lies in order to cover up a war crime and a terrorist act," Larijani told a parliament session Sunday.

The Iranian speaker said President Donald Trump and other US officials were only trying to deceive the Americans, and challenged them to reveal any evidence they had about the alleged Iranian plans.

The assassination came after Pentagon chief Mark Esper said Thursday the US saw indications that Iran and Iranian-backed groups might be planning strikes on US forces in the Middle East, and threatened "pre-emptive" military action.

Larijani said the United States is using "pre-emptive" action as an excuse to "benefit from the law of jungle."

"Apart from the fact that this arbitrary action is nothing more than the law of the jungle, they have said things in that context which are not true. What plans were there in the making which prompted you to take pre-emptive action?" he exclaimed.

Last May, the US cited without evidence threats of an imminent Iranian attack to deploy additional troops, an aircraft carrier strike group, bombers and Patriot missiles to the Persian Gulf, escalating tensions to dangerous new levels.

Larijani noted that by ordering Gen. Soleimani's assassination, Trump had committed a crime similar to the 1953 CIA-engineered coup in Iran and the US downing of an Iranian airliner in 1988 which killed all 290 people on board, including 66 children.

"The brutal act of the American president is a terrorist military operation, which contains at its core the ultimate insult to the people of Iraq, where they surreptitiously carried out this act at night without any authorization," he said.

"That American forces use helicopters and planes to martyr high-ranking Iranian and Iraqi officials at an international airport of a country is inconsistent with any international law," he added.

Iran will deliver "a crushing response" to the assassination, Larijani said, adding the US "will have to endure painful consequences."

"The Iranian nation will not forgive you and you will taste the punishment for this brutal boldness of yours. You have endangered the security of the region and you must be responsible for that," he added.

His remarks were welcomed with "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" chants by black-clad lawmakers.

The parliament speaker also called on Trump not to threaten Iran after the US president pledged Saturday to target 52 Iranian sites, including those important to the Iranian culture.

"Mr. Trump, do not threaten the Iranian nation! You are a government which is now fawning for mercy from a group such as the Taliban which once you considered terrorist," he said.

"Today, you are trapped in a quagmire against Iran that is several times larger than the European continent. You have risked the lives of Americans in this vast region because of your ignorance; you had better pick up your hat and flee," Larijani said, using a famous Persian catchphrase.



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GRAND RAPIDS, MI  A family photo of Ashley Young, the woman who was killed and dismembered by Jared Chance, will not be shown to jurors hearing the case against his father on charges of perjury and being an accessory after the fact.

After a jury was seated Monday, Jan. 6, in Kent County Circuit Court, defense attorney Laura Joyce said the proposed prosecution exhibit had no evidentiary value and would potentially inflame jurors.

James Chance, who son, Jared Chance, killed and dismembered Ashley Young, is on trial charged with accessory after the fact and perjury. (John Agar|MLive.com)

She suggested the prosecution sought to seek sympathy from the jury.

I dont think its relevant, I dont think it proves anything, she told Judge Paul Denenfeld.

Assistant Kent County Prosecutor Lawrence Boivin, noting that jurors will view gruesome photos of the victims body parts, said he wanted to jurors to be able to put a face to her name.

He said that James Chance, 77, worked to help his son get away with her mutilation.

The judge said the case against James Chance was not a murder trial and that the photo, the prosecutions proposed first exhibit, will not be shown to jurors.

The trial is to resume Tuesday with opening statements by the attorneys.

Before jury selection began in the fathers trial, his wife, Barbara Chance, 64, also scheduled for trial, pleaded no contest as charged to perjury and being an accessory after the fact.

The judge said calculations of advisory sentencing guidelines, at least at this point, show the mother faces a maximum penalty of one year in jail. She can withdraw her plea and go to trial if that changes.

Attorneys spent several hours seating a jury, asking potential jurors about their knowledge of the high-profile case and ability to view disturbing photos. The defense was also concerned about jurors holding James Chance to a higher standard because he is a retired Illinois police officer.

Jared Chance and Young, a 31-year-old who lived in the Kalamazoo area, were once friends. They were together early on Nov. 29, 2018, before he killed her at his rented home on Franklin Street SE in Grand Rapids.

Her family reported her missing that day. On Dec. 2, 2018, a man living in the lower unit at Chances home, saw blood in the basement and called police. Grand Rapids police found Youngs torso in a tarp.

Her limbs were found on the landing outside of Chances door but her head, hands and feet are still missing.

His parents, who live in Holland, picked him up the day before the body parts were discovered. He brought boxes containing the body parts, along with a reciprocating saw used to cut her body, in his parents car. He brought most of the items back to Grand Rapids the next day.

Police found the saw days later under the couch in his parents living room.
Another Philadelphia radio veteran is taking over the midday slot at 102.9 WMGK-FM following former host Debbi Caltons retirement from the station after 26 years.

Matt Cord will now be on the air from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on WMGK with The Matt Cord Show, parent company Beasley Broadcast Group announced. Cord, who also works as the 76ers in-arena announcer, hosted mornings on fellow Beasley station 95.7 BEN-FM in a slot previously held by current 98.1 WOGL host Marilyn Russell.

Im so thrilled to continue Debbi Caltons incredible legacy with the WMGK workplace audience, Cord said of his move. I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to work side-by-side with Philly radio legend John DeBella and longtime afternoon drive personality Andre Gardner.

Cord himself is a longtime Philadelphia radio personality whose career in the area stretches back to the heyday of Y-100, where he worked as an afternoon drive host. In 2005, he joined the on-air staff as an evening and afternoon host at WMMR, where he remained up until his move to BEN-FM in 2016. A Glen Mills native, Cord began working in radio in 1988 at Long Island, New York, station WBLI-FM.

While Cords move to WMGK was made official Monday, the host began teasing his new gig via social media last week, writing that he was taking test rides until the mountain opens up.

Cords move to Caltons former time slot comes more than six months after WMGK announced her impending retirement. Station program director Bill Weston said it was fortunate that the station was able to replace one radio legend with another.

Matts personality, combined with his passion for classic rock, love of radio, and dedication to our loyal fans, made him the perfect choice to take over middays on the station, Weston said.
President Donald Trump listens during a roundtable with governors on government regulations in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington on Dec. 16, 2019. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)

Trump Threatens Harsh Sanctions on Iraq If US Troops Forced Out

President Donald Trump has threatened harsh sanctions against Iraq on Jan. 5 if U.S. troops are expelled from the country, according to White House media pool reports.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, the president said that if troops were made to leave, Baghdad would have have to pay Washington for the cost of the air base the United States funded there and the country would face strict sanctions.

If they do ask us to leave, if we dont do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before, ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, he said.

We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base thats there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time. Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it.

Trump added that If theres any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.

The presidents warning comes after the Iraqi parliament voted in support of a resolution to ban foreign forces from using Iraqi land, water, and airspace for any reason in a move to expel U.S. troops and their allies from the country.

Lawmakers backing the non-binding resolution asked the government to end a 2014 agreement with Washington to station an estimated 5,200 troops in Iraq to help in the fight against ISIS. They act mainly as advisors.

The government commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting Islamic State due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory, the resolution read.

The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace, or water for any reason.

Iran-backed militia groups also fought alongside the United States during Iraqs war against ISIS that lasted between 2014 and 2017, during which time they were formally integrated into Iraqs armed forces.

The volunteer militia groups, called the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), were led by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis who founded the Iranian-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah (also Kataib Hizbollah). Kataib Hezbollah was said by U.S. intelligence to be working with top Iranian military General Qassem Soleimani to carry out rocket attacks on Americans housed at Iraqi military bases.

Strike on Soleimani

Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, center, attends a meeting in Tehran, Iran on Sept. 18, 2016. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File)

The Iraqi Parliaments resolution follows the death of Soleimani on Jan. 3, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdads international green zone. Nine others were killed, including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis who the United States designated a terrorist. In 2007, a Kuwaiti court sentenced him to death in absentia for his involvement in the 1983 U.S. and French embassy bombings in Kuwait.

Before the attack, the U.S. intelligence community said it had reason to believe that Soleimani was involved in late stage planning to strike Americans in multiple countries, including Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to draw the United States into military action and take attention away from the mass protests in Iraq against Irans growing influence in the country.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has defended the U.S. militarys presence in Iraq following the passing of the resolution.

As for the activity today with respect to Iraq, weve been in their country, weve been supporting Iraqi sovereignty, weve been continuing to take down the terrorist threat against the Iraqi people, Pompeo told Fox News Sunday.

We are confident that the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there to fight the counterterror campaign, and well continue to do all the things we need to do to keep America safe, he added.

Last week, Pompeo also defended the airstrike that killed Soleimani, saying that it disrupted an imminent attack that would have endangered American lives.

I think any reasonable person who saw the intelligence that the senior American leaders had in their possession would have come to the same conclusion that President Trump and our leadership team did about the fact that there would have been more risk to Americamore risk through inaction than there was through the action that we took, he said.

Iraq Protests

Tensions have been running high in Iraq since anti-government protests erupted in October 2019, as thousands of people, mostly young, demand an overhaul of the political system and condemn the influence of the Iranian regime on local politics and militia groups.

Iranian-backed militias are accused of killing more than 500 people. At the height of the unrest in November, protesters threw firebombs at the Iranian consulate in Najaf.

A further 17,000 have been injured since the protests began, according to the BBC.

A protester gives the victory sign as thousands of anti-government protesters gather in Tahrir Square during ongoing demonstrations in Baghdad, Iraq, on Oct. 31, 2019. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

In response to the demonstrations, Iraqs prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi resigned, but has remained in office in a caretaker capacity as the country elects a new prime minister.

The recent death of Soleimani, who had visible political power in Iraq, may now influence the future path of Iraq, Sam Bazzi, a Middle East analyst and the founder of the Islamic Counterterrorism Institute and Hezbollah Watch told The Epoch Times.

Soleimani ran the pro-Tehran politicians in Iraq. He had carried a lot of political weight and influence among the Iranian regimes regional proxies and political allies, he said.

Soleimani was often seen holding talks with politicians in Baghdad to promote the formation of an Iraqi cabinet that would have Irans approval.

Reuters contributed to this article.
'Of the 202 debates, 79 were around attacking Pakistan and 66 attacking the Opposition and Nehru.'

'The PMC Bank scam where thousands of depositors lost their savings got just one,' points out Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

It was a bloody week for India.

Assam, West Bengal, Tripura, Kerala, Delhi, Mumbai among others saw protests against the pointless Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

Sadly, some of these turned violent.

The why and how of it seems to be lost in the babble of noises on television, newspapers and social media.

And that brings me to the point of this column -- the complete failure of media, especially TV, to inform the debate around the bill, to educate and calm the rising tempers.

What will the Bill do? What does proving your citizenship mean?

Except for newspapers, a couple of news channels and half a dozen excellent news Web sites, most media outlets have done an abysmal job of reporting on it.

This is truer of television which reaches more than 836 million Indians against the Internet (660 million) or newspapers (400 million).

Of these, 836 million news channels reach more than 260 million people says Broadcast Audience Research Council data.

Add the 50 to 100 million unique visitors most of the large news broadcasters get online.

From just over 10 news channels in 2000, India now has a world-beating 400 plus.

About half of these are owned by real-estate barons, politicians and their affiliates and random people who have no business owning a news outlet.

This oversupplied market is completely dependent on advertising that goes to channels with the highest viewership.

As a result, the last decade has seen a race to the bottom on quality.

In this race, everything from communalising rapes and murders to inciting violence is kosher.

The ignorance and pusillanimity of Indian news channels on the issues that really matter -- say a sinking economy or rising income inequality -- stands out.

Ramit Verma's YouTube channel Peeing Human shines a torch on media and current affairs.

His analysis of debates on four key shows of four leading Hindi news channels till October 19 this year is telling.

Of the 202 debates, 79 were around attacking Pakistan and 66 attacking the Opposition and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.

The PMC Bank scam where thousands of depositors lost their savings got just one.

There was nothing on education, healthcare, environment, mob lynchings, the economy or farmer distress.

News television's obsession with an irrelevant country like Pakistan could be dismissed as puzzling, but its impact is real.

The rubbish it spouts is amplified on social media and in WhatsApp forwards.

It is then quoted at conferences and in dining rooms becoming the stuff that informs and moulds our political and social decisions.

The resulting polarisation, the damage to our collective sense of Indian-ness and levels of knowledge is evident when people cheer the police as they beat up unarmed students.

What many Indians now fail to appreciate is that they are cheering the death of the last few vestiges of a democracy that was won and nurtured with great difficulty.

Financially, none of this has had much impact.

News television remains a small Rs 3,000 core to Rs 4,000 crore market of a Rs 74,000 crore television industry.

Barely a couple of players make a profit.

But socially, it has destroyed the India the world has appreciated for its ability to assimilate diversity.

You could argue rightly that many other factors are at play.

True, but news channels have actively helped India's slide downwards.

What then can be done? Three are critical.

One, set Prasar Bharati Corporation that runs Doordarshan and All India Radio, free of the central government financially and administratively.

Let it use the taxpayer money it gets to become a world-class public service broadcaster, a la the BBC.

In the UK, the BBC sets a benchmark for standards which private brands are forced to follow.

Two, push the foreign investment levels in news broadcasting from 49% to 100%.

Most foreign news broadcasters don't seem interested.

But if a few choose to come and invest in training and reportage, it will be great.

One of the biggest issues with rapid growth has been the death of on-ground reporting in a system that thrives on anchors.

Three, tweak ownership norms.

These are key to how owners behave if it comes to a choice between quality journalism and other pressures.

Globally, some of the best and most profitable news brands are owned by companies that have a trust in charge -- The Economist, The New York Times, Financial Times.

If Indian cinema has done us proud globally by becoming a marker of our soft power, Indian news television has shamed us by becoming a marker for the worst form of journalism.

It is time to fix it.
Update: Family, friends react to grisly details in Kevin Bacon slaying

Editors note: This story contains graphic content.

CORUNNA, MI -- Kevin Bacon was stabbed in the back, his body hung from his ankles, his throat cut and parts of him were eaten, say police who searched the house of the man accused of killing him, possibly on Christmas Eve or early Christmas Day.

On Monday, Jan. 6, The Flint Journal-MLive obtained court transcripts from the hearing where police officers have to offer information on the case to a judge in order to obtain an arrest warrant. The transcripts reveal details about of the killing of Bacon, a Swartz Creek man.

Bacon went missing on the evening of Dec. 24 and was discovered four days later at Mark Latunskis Bennington Township home, near Morrice in Shiawassee County. Details of Bacons gruesome slaying were given to the 66th District Court for his arraignment, by responding Michigan State Police officers.

Michigan State Police received a call for assistance from Clayton Township Police Department to conduct a welfare check Dec. 28 on Kevin Bacon, who was thought to have been at Latunskis house the evening of Dec. 24.

Bacon was found dead hanging from the ceiling of Latunskis home. Officers conducted an interview with Latunski on the morning of Dec. 28. Latunski allowed them to enter and search his home. Latunski admitted to killing Bacon by stabbing him in the back and then slitting his throat.

After, Latunski admitted to tying a rope around Bacons ankles and hanging him up from the rafters on the ceiling. He also admitted to using the knife to cut off Bacons testicles and later eating them, the police testimony says.

Long history of mental health issues

Divorce, custody and criminal records show a history of complaints about the mental health of Latunski.

Latunski was known to stop taking the medication prescribed to treat his mental health illnesses, according to records from the 66th District and 35th Circuit courts.

A motion filed Aug. 22 by former wife Emily Latunski to suspend Mark Latunskis parenting time states he was diagnosed with major depression, paranoid schizophrenia and traits of a personality disorder in 2010 and 2012.

"(Mark Latunski) has a history of mental illness and has been hospitalized in the Owosso Mental Stress unit, according to the Aug. 22 motion. (Mark Latunski) has a history of going off his medication.

Jamie Arnold, Mark Latunskis husband of more than three years, prevously told MLive-The Flint Journal he wasnt aware of Mark Latunskis mental illnesses until July, when he was arrested for failing to pay child support. A July 22 court order states Mark Latunski spent four days in jail for the offense.

"To my knowledge, I couldn't force him to see a therapist or take medication," Arnold said. "Never in a million years did I think he'd be capable of doing such a horrendous crime."

Arnold said he didnt think Mark Latunski could seriously harm or kill anyone. Arnold said he left Latunski in September and he did not live at the Morrice-area house.

In hindsight, its easy to sit back and speculate but at the time youre going through it there are emotions and feelings involved. You dont want to think that the person you fell in love with is some crazy homicidal maniac, Arnold said. I pray that God is there for Kevin Bacons family in their time of need and that He helps us all get through this, one day at a time."

The victims family, however, feels Mark Latunski might try using his history of mental illness to elude justice.

Karl Bacon, Kevin Bacons dad, said he felt like Mark Latunski was playing the mental health card at the arraignment on Dec. 30. When asked if his name was Mark Latunski at the arraignment, Mark Latunski said that was not his name, that his name was Edgar Thomas Hill and that Mark Latunkski was his nephew.

He has used the mental health card to get out of situations in the past and hes attempting to use it again, Karl Bacon said. I would like to see him locked up for the rest of his life in some form or another.Suspect in

Kevin Bacon murder case has long history of mental illness, records show

A colorful, vibrant being both inside and out

Bacon was a hairstylist who specialized in vibrant coloring at Uniquely U Salon in Swartz Creek and studied psychology at the University of Michigan-Flint.

Michelle Myers, Bacons best friend and roommate, called him compassionate, caring and loving. The two met in fourth grade. Bacons openness and transparency always comforted Myers.

Kevin was a colorful, vibrant being both inside and out. He did what he wanted to, when he wanted to, and let very little hold him back, Myers said. He was attentive and could remember all the small details  even all the ones that you forgot.

He was known for his colorful tattoos, Myers said, which he got because they made him love himself in his own skin.

Bacons dreams ranged from being a hairdresser working runways to a clinical therapist, Myers said.

I really could not have asked for a better friend. I was incredibly lucky to call him my friend, Myers said.

Myers was the last person to see Bacon alive on the evening of Dec. 24. Bacon told Myers he was meeting up with a guy hed met on Grindr. At 6:12 p.m. that night, Bacon texted Myers that hed be out for a while and he wasnt sure when hed be back.

Karl Bacon called police the evening of Dec. 25 after his son missed Christmas breakfast.

Police soon found Kevin Bacons car at a Family Dollar in Clayton Township, inside which they found Kevin Bacons phone, wallet, and some clothes.

He passed away some time (late) Christmas Eve, early Christmas morning, Karl Bacon previously said. The medical examiner is not sure of the exact time as of right now.

Kevin Bacons body was recovered from Mark Latunskis home on Tyrrell Road after police were led there on Dec. 28. Police didnt divulge Kevin Bacons cause of death, saying that wont be revealed until autopsy results are completed.

The last time Arnold saw Mark Latunski was Dec. 25, the day after Bacon went missing. Arnold said he had a friend over on Christmas Eve and wasnt with Mark Latunski the night the alleged murder is believed to have taken place.

I had some friends over and I didnt want him to be alone on Christmas. When you love someone, you dont just stop caring about them, Arnold said. He came over late in the afternoon and his behavior was normal, as normal as he can be.

Kevin Bacons funeral was held on Friday at Sharp Funeral Homes, Miller Road Chapel at 8138 Miller Road in Swartz Creek. A candlelight vigil was held later that night.

Mark Latunski is held in jail without bond. He is to appear for a probable cause in court at 8:15 a.m. on Jan. 8.

Candlelight vigil for Kevin Bacon to be held in Swartz Creek

Man wearing only leather kilt ran from murder suspects rural Michigan home in November

YouTuber Jeffree Star donates $20k toward funeral expenses for Swartz Creek man

Murder and mutilation charges filed in death of Swartz Creek man

Parents of slain Swartz Creek man talk about son, homicide investigation

Police confirm location of where missing Swartz Creek mans body was found

Missing Swartz Creek man found dead; one arrested on murder charge
Immediately after General Qassem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. airstrike on January 3 local time, near Baghdad airport, the Islamic Republic Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed the dead general's deputy, Esmail Qa'ani (Ismail Ghaani), as his successor in charge of commanding Qods (Quds) Force.

By doing so, Khamenei was relaying a message that was also reflected in his directive appointing General Qa'ani. "The business in Qods Force goes on as usual, and as planned by the 'martyr' General Soleimani," he insisted.

But who are Qa'ani and other commanders assigned to follow the footsteps of the fallen General? Do they have the caliber to fill the gap left by their ambitious former boss?

Radio Farda's Morad Veisi has tried to answer these questions.

On paper, Qods Force is a subdivision of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), along with Naval, Aerospace, Ground Forces, and Baseej (Mobilisation Resistance) Organization.

Nevertheless, in practice, the Chief Commander of the Qods Force is only and directly accountable to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic.

Responsible for the Islamic Republic extraterritorial military operations, the Qods Force specializes in unconventional warfare and army intelligence.

Meanwhile, it supports non-state groups in many countries, including the Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Yemeni Houthis, and Shia militias in Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, and Afghanistan.

Washington has designated most of these groups as terrorist organizations.

The Qods Force recently extended its presence in some African countries, as well. Its ambitious operations in African led to its addition to the U.S. list of international terrorist entities.

To orchestrate their foreign operations, the leaders of the Islamic Republic decided in 1988 to place all active groups outside Iran under a single military umbrella. That is how the Qods Force was born. An IRGC commander, Ahmad Vahidi, was appointed as the Chief Commander of the newly founded entity.

Vahidi, later a Defense Minister (2009-2013), was the only IRGC member present at the controversial secret talks between the Islamic Republic representatives and a U.S. delegation headed by the former White House Security Advisor, Robert Carl "Bud" McFarlane, in 1986.

However, the Qods Force remained in the shadows under the command of Vahidi (1988-1997).

The Ascendance of Soleimani

As soon as Qassem Soleimani replaced Vahidi in 1997, the Qods Force started to flourish and extend its influence in and outside Iran. As one of the Supreme Leader's favorite IRGC commanders, Soleimani succeeded in establishing himself as a decisive figure across Iran.

He divided the structure of the Qods Force based on separate departments supervising different countries where his forces used to operate. Each department had its commander only accountable to him.

Furthermore, he created five new branches with separate commanders, independent of each other, including Intelligence, Finance, Politics, Sabotage, and Special operations. While separated, all these departments interacted with each other under a "Council of Commanders" headed by Soleimani.

Nonetheless, the Qods Force and its new commander avoided media exposure until the civil war broke out in 2011, in Syria.

Describing Syria as the Islamic Republic's "strategic depth," Soleimani convinced Khamenei to intervene in favor of Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war. Soon, thousands of Qods Force and its trained Iraqi Shiite militiamen poured into Syria, fighting anti-Assad forces.

In the meantime, under Soleimani's direct supervision, the Qods Force specialists started to train Shi'ites from Afghanistan and Pakistan, preparing them to join the war in favor of Bashar al-Assad in war-torn Syria.

The New Commander

Soleimani's successor, Brigadier General Esmail Qa'ani (Ghaani), 62, was born in Iran's second-largest city, Mashhad, the capital of Khorasan province, where the IRGC trains Shi'ite Afghans for fighting in Syria and Iraq.

He is an Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) veteran, commanding Nasr-5 and Imam Reza-21 brigades. The latter was later expanded into a division.

Qa'ani has been a member of the Qods Force since its establishment in 1988. In the past twenty years he served as an intelligence official and deputy Chief Commander under Soleimani.

Upon Qaani's appointment, Khamenei praised him as "one of the most distinguished Islamic Revolution Guard commanders."

On March 27, 2012, the U.S. Department of the Treasury listed Qa'ani as a "Specially Designated National" for his role in supervising financial disbursements and weapons shipments to the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Qods Force elements in both the Middle East and Africa, particularly the Gambia.

As the name of the members of the Qods Force Council of Commanders has not yet been disclosed, it isn't easy to say who will replace Qa'ani as the deputy Chief Commander.

Nonetheless, a candidate to replace Qa'ani could be Brigadier General Ahmad Sabouri, who is currently deputy coordinator in the Qods Force.

One of the more known commanders of the Qods Force, and a candidate to replace Qa'ani, is Brigadier General Iraj Masjedi, currently Tehran's ambassador to Baghdad.

For long, Masjedi has had close ties with Iraqi officials, especially with the Kurds. While representing Tehran in Baghdad, Masjedi is practically in charge of the Qods Force Special Department for Iraq Affairs.

With Soleimani's elimination, Masjedi might be promoted to higher positions.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 23:37:36|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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HONG KONG, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A senior officer of Hong Kong police on Monday refuted again accusations by a Hong Kong lawmaker that undercover officers disguised as rioters and committed violent acts on the New Year's Day.

"Such accusations were utterly false and founded on fake news," Chief Superintendent Kwok Ka-chuen of Police Public Relations Branch said in a letter to Claudia Mo, a member of the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Mo claimed that the police sent two undercover officers to vandalize shops in Wan Chai with the intention to use the incident to halt the protest on Jan. 1 in a live Sky News broadcast.

In response, the police made a prompt clarification that police officers did not commit crime of any sort on Jan. 1 and elaborated on the matter on the next day.

Kwok said in the letter that it was the violence of rioters, including blocking roads and trashing banks and shops, that led to an early conclusion of the public event, and stressed that the use of force of the police was appropriate and only reactive.

"The Hong Kong Police Force respect all citizens' right to assembly and association, and to express their opinion freely and without fear," Kwok said.
In the backdrop of violence that took place inside the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus on Sunday, JNU Students Union has demanded the resignation of Vice-Chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar.

Earlier on Sunday evening, more than 26 students of the university, including JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, were injured and were taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered JNU and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods.

"This Vice-Chancellor is a cowardly vice-chancellor who introduces illegal policies through the backdoor, runs away from the questions of students or teachers and then manufactures a situation to demonise JNU," said a statement from JNUSU.

"For nearly seventy days now, the students of JNU have been fighting a courageous battle to save their university from the clutches of privatisation and greed. The VC is adamant that by sending a message that a fee hike has happened in JNU, he can prove that accessible education is not possible," it added.

The JNUSU holds the Vice-Chancellor responsible for the violence.

"He is using henchmen to perpetrate violence on students and vandalise the university," said JNUSU.

"The JNU community has a single point of demand. That either this VC resign or the human resource development ministry as the competent authority remove him! Those who are trying to malign and destroy this university will not succeed," demanded JNUSU.
Christian Bale, who is nominated for his hit biopic Ford Vs. Ferrari, has fallen ill and cannot attend the Golden Globes on Sunday night.

The British-born actor does currently live in Los Angeles, but he was out of town on vacation when he fell ill.

Also sick with the flu is Octavia Spencer, who while not nominated was due to attend and shared a picture of her unworn Globes wig to Instagram.

No Globes: Both Christian Bale and Octavia Spencer missed Sunday night's Golden Globes after falling ill with the flu

Not feeling well: Octavia shared a picture of her wig to Instagram tagged 'flu season'

'Someone (uh me) is congested, coughing and in full blown sweat mode.' she wrote. 'We thought we'd wish all nominees the best time tonight especially first timers!!!'

She hashtagged her post '#fluSeason.'

According to Variety, Bale came down with a bad case of the flu on his vacation, though it is not known where he was holidaying.

The actor was advised against flying for medical reasons, leading to him not attending the awards ceremony, for which he is nominated for Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama.

Flu: The 45 year old actor reportedly came down with a bad case of the flu on his vacation, though it is not known where he was vacationing

Also skipping the Globes is Russell Crowe, who elected to stay in his native Australia, due to the massive fires in his home country.

Crowe owns a property in Australia that is being threatened by the raging wildfires that have ravaged his country.

Crowe is nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television for his work as former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes in the Showtime seven-part limited series The Loudest Voice.

The 55 year old actor will be going up against Christopher Abbott (Catch-22), Sacha Baron Cohen (The Spy), Jared Harris (Chernobyl) and Sam Rockwell (Fosse/Verdon).

Russell stays: Crowe owns a property in Australia that is being threatened by the raging wildfires that have ravaged his country

Bale is going up against Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory), Adam Driver (Marriage Story), Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) and Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes) in the Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama category.

Bale portrays race car driver Ken Miles in Ford Vs. Ferrari, who was enlisted by legendary auto designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to build a car for Ford to beat Ferrari at the iconic 24 Hours at LeMans race.

Ferrari had won five straight LeMans races in a row before Ford entered the fray with the car Shelby designed and Miles drove, the Ford GT40, as they won the 1966 race and the next three races in a row after that.

Bale's role: Bale portrays race car driver Ken Miles in Ford Vs. Ferrari, who was enlisted by legendary auto designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to build a car for Ford to beat Ferrari at the iconic 24 Hours at LeMans race

Bale's nod for Ford Vs. Ferrari is his fifth Golden Globe nomination, having previously nominated for Vice, The Big Short, American Hustle and The Fighter.

Bale has won two Golden Globes, his first for The Fighter and his second just last year for Vice.

Crowe has been nominated five other times, for Cinderella Man, Master and Commander: Far Side of the World, his only win for A Beautiful Mind, Gladiator and The Insider.

Globe vet: Bale's nod for Ford Vs. Ferrari is his fifth Golden Globe nomination, having previously nominated for Vice, The Big Short, American Hustle and The Fighter
A Nigerian man, Marvel Chidiebere has taken to Facebook to recount how a woman cheered her husband while he was beating his nephew mercilessly.

The web user shared a photo of the boy who had scars and bruises on his head, with a backstory which reads;

This boy was battered by his uncle this morning with a twisted cable wire. The wicked wife who is the engineer of the beating was laughing and encouraged the man to flog him to death until kind neighbours came to the boys rescue, It happened in Umuelibe Okworji at Awo-mmama Imo State. His uncles name is Nnamdi Ibe in Awo-Omamma. Plss share

Read Also: Kano Hisbah Arrest Fresh Graduates Planning Gay Party

See the full post below:
Motorcycle enthusiasts brace yourselves, because the 2020 Honda Air Blade scooter is scheduled to be unveiled in the Philippines this weekend.

First unveiled in Vietnam last December 18, the new Air Blade boasts a complete redesign that upholds practicality above all else.

From the large capacity utility box under the seat to the fuel lid positioned outside above the main pipe instead of under the seat like most bikes, the new Air Blade is designed to provide bikers with a more convenient and comfortable ride.

No wonder fans have been waiting its arrival with bated breath. Check out the vast aesthetic improvements for yourself:

doisongvietnam.vn

The fifth generation Air Blade comes powered by two single-cylinder liquid cooled enginesa 125cc and 150cc. The 125cc does 11.3 horsepower and 11.68 Nm torque, while the 150cc dishes out 12.9 hp and 13.3 Nm.

Hopefully, both variants will be released in the country, but if we have to pick, we would love to see the higher-speced Airblade, just because it would be more fun to drive.

Each engine comes with smart tech in the guise of an Intelligent Low Friction for smoother rides, Electronically Controlled ACG Starter, Complete Combustion, and Programmed Fuel Injection.

The Honda website describes the benefits of the aforementioned tech:

Intelligent Low Friction : For reduced friction and vibration during acceleration

Complete combustion : Made possible by a new combustion chamber that enhances complete combustion and engine performance, for better riding performance.

Electronically controlled ACG starter : Helps to start and re-start the bike much more easily and quietly, so idling stop system works smoothly and effectively.

PGM-FI (Programmed Fuel Injection): ECU (Engine Control Unit) enhances fuel injection, engine performance, combustion, fuel efficiency, and cleaner exhaustion.

Aside from the engine choices, buyers also get to choose between a single-channel anti-lock braking system (ABS) or combined braking system (CBS). Both choices are available for both engines.

Story continues

Other nifty features include a multi-function key shutter with LED, integrated switches for the fuel tank lid and utility box, a USB charger, and remote response key system (Deluxe and Magnet variants only).

With the Honda Air Blades launch not yet confirmed, its only a matter of time before the bike reaches Hondas dealerships nationwide.

If youve been awaiting the bikes arrival on air local shores since it was announced, then chances are you cant wait any longer. Hopefully, this teaser video is enough to whet your appetite in the meantime.

Also read:

The post Honda 2020 AirBlade Scooter to Arrive in PH This Weekend appeared first on Carmudi Philippines.
Logan Roy, played by Brian Cox, at his daughter's wedding reception on season 1 of HBO's Succession. Colin Hutton | HBO

Netflix may have scored the most nominations for the 2020 Golden Globes, but it was AT&T, Disney, Sony and ViacomCBS that won the night. The streaming service garnered 17 nominations, the most of any single studio, including four best picture nominations, but it only garnered two trophies during the Sunday ceremony. Olivia Coleman won for best actress in a drama TV series for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in "The Crown" and Laura Dern won best supporting actress for her role in "Marriage Story." HBO, which had the second highest number of nominations with 15, earned four awards. Its show "Succession" won best drama TV series and Brian Cox was awarded the best actor trophy in the same category for his turn as the fictional Logan Roy, the patriarch of the Roy family and the head of Waystar Royco, an international media conglomerate. Additionally, HBO's "Chernobyl" won the prize for best limited series / TV movie and Stellan Skarsgard won for best performance in a limited series for his portrayal of Boris Shcherbina, the Council of Ministers' deputy chairman during the Chernobyl disaster.

Joaquin Phoenix portrays Arthur Fleck in Warner Bros. "Joker." Warner Bros.

Adding the best score and best actor in a drama wins for "Joker," AT&T, which owns both HBO and Warner Bros., took home six awards during the ceremony, the most of any media company. Despite having three films up for best animated feature, Disney did not take home that top prize. Instead, it won three awards for shows on Hulu and the FX network. Patricia Arquette took home the best supporting actress in a limited series prize for "The Act," Ramy Yousef won for best actor in a comedy for "Ramy" and Michelle WIlliams won best actress in a limited series for "Fosse/Verdon." Sony won three awards for "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," including best picture in the comedy/musical category, best screenplay and the best supporting actor award went to Brad Pitt. ViacomCBS also garnered three awards. Russell Crowe won best actor in a limited series for his role in "The Loudest Voice," Taron Egerton won best actor in a musical or comedy for his turn as Elton John in "Rocketman" and "I'm Gonna Love Me Again" from "Rocketman" won best original song.

Still, Netflix's numerous nominations underscore the changing Hollywood landscape. While theaters balk at the streaming services short theatrical windows, critics have embraced its quality content. "Marriage Story," "The Two Popes," and "The Irishman" were all nominated in the best picture drama category and "Dolemite is My Name" nabbed a best picture nomination for the comedy or musical category. Additionally, the studio was up for awards in the directing, screenplay and best score categories. Streaming services like Netflix have broken into the television industry awards circuit, too. Rival Amazon Prime Video won two awards during the evening for its show "Fleabag," both going to writer and actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
About 60 firefighters are tackling a blaze at a historic north London nightclub.

The London Fire Brigade (LFB) said they were dealing with a fire at the Koko nightclub on Camden High Street after they were called shortly before 9pm on Monday.

Less than an hour later they said that 30% of the historic venues roof was alight and warned people to stay away from the area.

About eight fire engines are present at the club, which has hosted acts including Madonna, Ed Sheeran and Prince.

Lily Allen has also performed at the venue (Yui Mok/PA)

The LFB said they are working hard to save the rest of the building, which is close to Mornington Crescent underground station.

Leader of Camden Council Georgia Gould said: Heartbreaking watching the Camden Palace / Koko up in flames this evening, a building that holds so many memories and means so much to us in Camden.

MP for Holborn and St Pancras Sir Keir Starmer echoed Ms Goulds statement on Twitter.

Sir Keir said: Awful news in Camden tonight. Incredible response from our firefighters. As Georgina Gould says, we owe them so much.

Awful news in Camden tonight. Incredible response from our firefighters. As @Georgia_Gould says, we owe them so much. @LondonFire https://t.co/O9b6XwpC64  Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) January 6, 2020

Formerly known as the Camden Palace and the Camden Hippodrome, the venue had been closed for refurbishment and was covered in scaffolding at the time of the fire.

It was set to re-open in spring 2020 after a major state-of-the-art refurbishment, after the purchase of two adjacent buildings.
We may check IDs, Legg said. Normally, the gate is not manned by anyone, but Legg said that when it is manned, visitors may be asked to show a photo ID. The open entrance might also be changed from Buckley Road to the one on Green Bay Road depending on circumstances.
[January 06, 2020] Get SAT Deploys Dual SAT Terminal Solution With Inmarsat Global Xpress Service to Multiple U.S. Government Agencies

Fully automated dual antenna system ensures secure and reliable high-bandwidth satellite communications (SATCOM) for land, air and maritime C4ISR applications REHOVOT, Israel and LONDON, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Get SAT, an innovator in small, lightweight satellite communication terminals for airborne, ground, and maritime applications and Inmarsat, a world leader in global, mobile satellite communications, today announced a successful demonstration and deployment of a unique Dual SAT terminal solution for U.S. government agencies. The innovative solution employs Get SAT's lightweight micronized Milli SAT LM terminals using Inmarsat's worldwide Global Xpress Ka-band network. The solution significantly reduces installation costs and efficiently manages communications-on-the-move. Dual SAT provides an antenna diversity solution for mobility platforms where obstructions such as ship's superstructures would cause blockage for a single antenna system. A fully automated software switching system that requires no external components, Dual SAT's two terminals operate redundantly as a single system to ensure complete high-speed connectivity. When the primary antenna is blocked, the alternate antenna is switched seamlessly to provide services. This solution is ideal for the roll on, roll off requirements of Special Operations and Executive Staff onboard Afloat Forward Staging Bases (AFSB). Based on the micronized, ruggedized and portable Milli SAT terminal replacing large and bulky alternatives consisting of multi-modem and control units, the solution leverages Get SAT's highly efficient flat panel antenna technologies to enable fully autonomous operation for high bandwidth data rates. Following certification, the roll on, roll off solution is truly a one-person operation. According to Get SAT CEO Kfir Benjamin, "Get SAT's Dual AT solution proves that there is no obstacle that can hold back any SATCOM-on-the-move application. Our miniaturized package enables true, un-blocked, constant, crisp communications. Our solution drastically cuts back on installation time and costs while easily integrating with pre-existing on-board systems."



"Global Xpress has established itself as the de-facto solution for reliable, interoperable high-throughput communications across the government sector for mobile connectivity nearly anywhere. The Get SAT terminals, including the Dual SAT solution, are the lightest and most compact all-in-one 'on-the-move' solutions serving the Global Xpress network. We are proud to be part of a solution that delivers government users access to reliable, redundant, assured wideband capability on terminals that have been proven to operate in the world's harshest environmental conditions," said Steve Gizinski, Chief Technology Officer, Inmarsat Government. Global Xpress is the world's first and only, globally available, seamless mobile wideband service. In U.S. government operation since July 2014, Global Xpress has established itself as the gold standard for reliable communications across land, air and sea for assured mobile connectivity and interoperability with government satellite systems.

Get SAT's micronized communications terminals are based on the company's patented fully-interlaced InterFLAT panel technology that transmits and receives signals on the same panel. Meeting the demanding requirements of full-time usage in harsh environments, these rugged satellite on the move (SOTM) terminals offer significant savings in size, weight, and power usage. About Get SAT A privately held company located in Rehovot, Israel, Get SAT Communications provides portable and extremely efficient antenna and terminals that offer high-data-rate communications for ground, air, and maritime applications. Get SAT provides services for government and military use, enterprises, first responders, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and humanitarian groups. For more information, visit www.getsat.com About Inmarsat Inmarsat is the world leader in global, mobile satellite communications. It owns and operates the world's most diverse global portfolio of mobile telecommunications satellite networks, and holds a multi-layered, global spectrum portfolio, covering L-band, Ka-band and S-band, enabling unparalleled breadth and diversity in the solutions it provides. Inmarsat's long-established global distribution network includes not only the world's leading channel partners but also its own strong direct retail capabilities, enabling end to end customer service assurance. The company has an unrivalled track record of operating the world's most reliable global mobile satellite telecommunications networks, sustaining business and mission critical safety & operational applications for 40 years. It is also a major driving force behind technological innovation in mobile satellite communications, sustaining its leadership through a substantial investment and a powerful network of technology and manufacturing partners. Inmarsat operates across a diversified portfolio of sectors with the financial resources to fund its business strategy and holds leading positions in the Maritime, Government, Aviation and Enterprise satcoms markets, operating consistently as a trusted, responsive and high-quality partner to its customers across the globe. For further information, follow us on LinkedIn or on Twitter @InmarsatGlobal. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1061788/Dual_SAT_System.jpg Media Enquiries: Get SAT Josh Shuman, S&A Communications

+972-54-498-5833

[email protected] Ayala Pinhasi

+972-77-5300-700 #122

+1-571-501-5150

[email protected] Inmarsat Matthew Knowles / Jonathan Sinnatt

Corporate Communications

Tel: +44-(0)20-7728-1355 / 1518

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Just before the start of the new year, Jenna Gaidusek logged into a Zoom video conference with nearly 50 e-designers to explain the new developments that would be rolling out on her fledgling platform, eDesign Tribe. The independent network offers a way for e-designers to gain exposurean alternative to major players in the space like Havenly or Decoristwhile also providing behind-the-scenes tools to boost their businesses.

Jenna Gaidusek Courtesy of eDesign Tribe

Gaidusek, an e-design vet with an interior design degree herself, had a foot in the space long before she launched the platform in spring 2019she had quit her job managing Arhaus stores and developing the brands New York trade program when she started getting projects with Laurel & Wolf in 2015 (I was getting good jobs and getting paid, she recalls). She has had a front-row seat to the changing realities of e-design, including diminishing financial returns and pressure to use certain products. In 2018, from her home in Gainesville, Florida, she founded eDesign U, a series of courses that help e-designers develop and grow their businesses, covering topics like how to use Pinterest, Tailwind and Canva to market an e-design company; how to collect email addresses and establish a passive income stream; and how to create concept boards with Photoshop.

Yet she quickly realized that even if her courses were setting e-designers up for success, their primary access to jobs was through major platformscompanies that were increasingly pressuring designers to do more for much less. These companies started degrading what we do and how we do it, she said to the designers assembled on the video conference. Remote design has taken a cheaper name in this market, and I have been pursuing a way to get it back and give you guys the integrity and respect you deserve.

More than 150 designers have been using the software since eDesign Tribe launched last year. The updated offerings, which will roll out in early February, include a new do-it-yourself rendering tool and a dashboard that includes, among other features, an e-shopa growing library of products that pay out a 10 percent affiliate commission, with links that can be shared on Pinterest, in a blog post or with a client.

The new-and-improved eDesign Tribe will provide services at two levels: a basic membership with access to the programs back-end tools, or a featured designer option, which also buys inclusion in a directory that helps clients discover e-design talent. Both membership levels cost less than $600 a year.

As part of Gaiduseks mission to elevate e-designs reputation, eDesign Tribe has established standards required to be featured on the siteincluding having a website that the network can direct clients to for pricing. One of the results of driving clients to an e-designers site is that designers can set their own rates and customize their own set of offerings.

Jenna has developed something that doesnt require the e-designer to sell their soul financially, says Houston-based design consultant Leslie Carothers, the CEO of custom publishing venture Savour Partnership. She developed a custom course with Gaidusek on how designers can create, structure and market their own online coursesand has mentored the entrepreneur as she developed the platform. (The two will also speak together in a panel at KBIS later this month about the importance of developing passive income streams.) Platforms give people who dont have other options a place to go, but [also] take advantage of that and pay as little as they can. Designers have a lot of artistic vision, and Jenna is trying to acknowledge that and help people raise their rates. She has developed a platform that gives designers ownership and control.

Becoming a featured designer on the platform also means not contributing to what Gaidusek calls the race to the bottom in pricing for online design. For a standard packagea concept board and a shopping listfeatured eDesign Tribe designers can charge no less than $299. I created that package because its the standard [offering] right now on other platforms, she explains. The price is comparable to other sitesbut no one can go lower than that, and they should be charging way more if they offer a rendering. Prices for the standard package range from the $299 minimum to upwards of $700.

In the same room as the rendering above, Gaidusek swapped the neutral upholstery for a teal sofa and a Fabricut print on the chairs. Courtesy of eDesign Tribe

She hopes luxury designers will be interested in offering a scaled-back option on their sites for $1,000 or more. Im trying to show designers that theyre worth more, and my goal is to take over every part of the industry, she says. Maybe youre a kitchen and bath person, but dont want to be anymore. Or youre hybrid, offering half in-person and half online. I have home stagers that do virtual staging [with the software], people with stores who want passive income options, and in-person designers making a switch. Thats whats so exciting.

With eDesign Tribes software, Gaidusek aims to offer designers freedom and a plethora of options. She continues to bring new vendors onto the platform, with a focus on brands that have drop-ship capabilities or offer white-glove delivery in the United States and Canada. She has plans to launch eDesign Tribes own customizable, American-made upholstery line by 2021. And the sites new e-shop includes a partnership that gives designers access to more than 19,000 products on Design Kollective, an online platform for brick-and-mortar furniture retailers. But the software also allows designers to incorporate their own productsincluding furniture, fabrics and accessories they procure outside of the site.

For all the platforms offerings, Gaidusek has her work cut out for her. The major e-design platforms are all well-funded enterprises: Decorist is owned by Bed Bath & Beyond, Havenly has raised $57 million, and Modsy $71 million. These companies have sunk considerable capital not only into their tech platforms, but also into marketing and advertising to attract a stream of clients. For many e-designers, the appeal of steady work on a big platform may outweigh the potential rewards of going independent.

Throughout, Gaidusek has funded the entire operation herself, and with eDesign U course fees and early eDesign Tribe memberships. Her team recently swelled to seven employees, but for most of the companys life, she has been working with only a developer and a virtual assistant to create the platform.

Funding this without investors was important to me, because working for other e-design companies, I watched as they took on investors and started taking away from designersusing their info and not paying them what they deserved, she says. I knew I had to do this when I could barely pay my rent working for e-design companies. There was nothing to help me grow and advance, and I thought, Ill forever be here making $1,000 a month. I built this to give other designers the financial freedom they want.

Homepage photo: A room design from eDesign Tribes new rendering program | Courtesy of eDesign Tribe
Deconnexion - Antoine Jacques:

Crystallize:

Reilly Horan - ''Keep It Real'' Segment:

Burke Process:

Huck Brexit Trip:

BlazeTech Best Of 2019:

Agua Grande De Nuevo:

Back To Speed With Bodhi Kuhn:

Supafriendz:

Ray George - No Cigar:

Nathan Williams - ''Still United'' Full Part:

Above/Below - Nathan Williams:

Nathan Williams - Signature Sessions:

Sunland:

Form:

Keep On Pushin'

Frozen Mind:

The Fifty - Peak Obsession - A Fifty Project Short Film - with Jeremy Jones:

The Fourth Phase - Action Cut w/ Travis Rice:

Live Fast, Draw Yung:

Disconnect from your phone and ride! Rider: Antoine Jacques. Video: Alex Poirier. Produced by: Peartree Productions.Lucy Mackie takes a ride down Dark Crystal.Reilly Horan absolutely throwing down.Stephen Pope and Ryan McEvoy test out their new Kona Process 153's on home soil.As with every serious video, here is a pointless description: since the people on the other side of the pond want to leave us we thought we should pay them a last visit before they leave. Keep it real and HUCK BREXIT!A year in review from all the edits and antics we released throughout 2019. Thank you for all the support.Back in the desert, hitting jumps other people built, riding lines we've done before, having a good old time drinking beer and ripping pit bikes.Video shot by Dad (aka @cycleye) and edited by Bodhi (@bodhi_kuhn). Special thanks to John Gibson of Gibson Photography for the images (@gibbymtbphoto).Talus Turk and Spencer Arps are Bellingham locals that have quickly made a name for themselves in the bike scene. It seems like every week these guys are either learning a new trick or filming a new edit. Tenet is pumped to be supporting these two buddies as they continue to shred their bikes and not take it too seriously.Video footage by Calvin Huth and Keegan Quiroz. Editing and production by Ray George.Well, here it is folks, the final section from the instant classic that is the 'Still United' DVD and it's none other than ultimate savage, Nathan Williams. Nathan Williams is genuinely one of our best to ever do it, both on and off the bike. We salute you!We are still very unsure as to which way Nathan Williams grinds and spins, it's a master class in BMX street riding.You know this is what you want to see, fresh footy of the dude Nathan Williams that'll make your head spin.School days with the New Balance Numeric team. Director: Russell Houghten.Featuring legendary skateboarders: Kenny Anderson, Ray Barbee, Mike Carroll, Danny Garcia, Scott Johnston, Eric Koston, Brian Lotti, Daewon Song, and Jeremy Wray.Keep on Pushin' represents what skateboarding means to me, it is my way of thanking skateboarding for all that it has given me.In Frozen Mind, the pro snowboarder and freeride world champion Victor de Le Rue is testing the limits of what is possible and challenges himself against unforgiving, ice-covered slopes in Chamonix, France.Cody Townsend has set out on an audacious goal to climb and ski all 50 lines chronicled in the book, "The Fifty Classic Ski Descents of North America". Peak Obsession is a stand alone film premiered at film festivals around the world and dives into the depths of the mindset behind the project told through the story of two of the more challenging lines in the book, Meteorite Mountain and Pontoon Peak near Valdez, Alaska. Joined by legendary snowboarder Jeremy Jones, along with cameraman Bjarne Salen, they set out on an adventure rife with challenge, exhaustion and a bevy of lessons to learn along the adventure. This short film made in collaboration with Teton Gravity Research and Team 13 Productions. This is Episode 19 and line 17 and 18 completed for The FIFTY, a project following Cody Townsend as he attempts to climb and ski all fifty of the lines and mountains chronicled in the book, "The 50 Classic Ski Descents of North America." The series documents Townsend's journey's, travels, challenges and each line and mountain listed in the book. It's a journey through the most majestic mountains and ski lines in North America along with a unique insight into how skiers make decisions in the backcountry, how they plan, navigate and safely move through the mountains and the peopleFrom the backcountry of Wyoming to the snowy Japanese Alps, the volcanoes of Russia, and a spectacularly remote area of Alaska, Travis Rice and crew reinvent what is considered possible on a snowboard. Witness 18 minutes of pure shredding from The Fourth Phase featuring Rice, Mark Landvik, Eric Jackson, Bryan Iguchi, Pat Moore, Mikkel Bang, Cam FitzPatrick, Shin Biyajima, Bode Merrill, Jeremy Jones, Victor de Le Rue, Ben Ferguson, and more.The story of Yung Lenox: Rap's most prolific (7-year-old) portraitist. Described by LA Weekly as the 'Foremost Doodler of Rap', this hilariously endearing film follows Seattle's 7-year-old rap portraitist, Yung Lenox, and his Dad, Skip - an unconventional artistic duo simultaneously navigating the tumultuous worlds of rap and modern-day-parenting. Through Lenox's eyes, ears and encounters with rappers such as Kool Keith and Cam'ron, the film presents an innocent entry point into the idolized and often explicit world of hip hop. It reconsiders the age-old parental advisory debate and the realities of a kid growing up in an adult world. As Skip confronts criticism about his intentions and parenting, Lenox remains unfazed. In his world, art is 'medium important' compared to school, Lego's and Minecraft. And that's why the kid is everyone's favourite artist.Photo: Matt Delorme To check out videos submitted by fellow Pinkbike members that didn't quite make Movie Mondays here
Today we are going to look at Lam Soon (Hong Kong) Limited (HKG:411) to see whether it might be an attractive investment prospect. Specifically, we'll consider its Return On Capital Employed (ROCE), since that will give us an insight into how efficiently the business can generate profits from the capital it requires.

First up, we'll look at what ROCE is and how we calculate it. Next, we'll compare it to others in its industry. Last but not least, we'll look at what impact its current liabilities have on its ROCE.

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What is it?

ROCE is a metric for evaluating how much pre-tax income (in percentage terms) a company earns on the capital invested in its business. In general, businesses with a higher ROCE are usually better quality. In brief, it is a useful tool, but it is not without drawbacks. Author Edwin Whiting says to be careful when comparing the ROCE of different businesses, since 'No two businesses are exactly alike.

So, How Do We Calculate ROCE?

The formula for calculating the return on capital employed is:

Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT)  (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)

Or for Lam Soon (Hong Kong):

0.15 = HK$354m  (HK$3.1b - HK$715m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2019.)

So, Lam Soon (Hong Kong) has an ROCE of 15%.

View our latest analysis for Lam Soon (Hong Kong)

Does Lam Soon (Hong Kong) Have A Good ROCE?

ROCE can be useful when making comparisons, such as between similar companies. Lam Soon (Hong Kong)'s ROCE appears to be substantially greater than the 10% average in the Food industry. We consider this a positive sign, because it suggests it uses capital more efficiently than similar companies. Independently of how Lam Soon (Hong Kong) compares to its industry, its ROCE in absolute terms appears decent, and the company may be worthy of closer investigation.

You can click on the image below to see (in greater detail) how Lam Soon (Hong Kong)'s past growth compares to other companies.

Story continues

SEHK:411 Past Revenue and Net Income, January 6th 2020

When considering this metric, keep in mind that it is backwards looking, and not necessarily predictive. ROCE can be deceptive for cyclical businesses, as returns can look incredible in boom times, and terribly low in downturns. This is because ROCE only looks at one year, instead of considering returns across a whole cycle. How cyclical is Lam Soon (Hong Kong)? You can see for yourself by looking at this free graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

Lam Soon (Hong Kong)'s Current Liabilities And Their Impact On Its ROCE

Short term (or current) liabilities, are things like supplier invoices, overdrafts, or tax bills that need to be paid within 12 months. Due to the way the ROCE equation works, having large bills due in the near term can make it look as though a company has less capital employed, and thus a higher ROCE than usual. To check the impact of this, we calculate if a company has high current liabilities relative to its total assets.

Lam Soon (Hong Kong) has total assets of HK$3.1b and current liabilities of HK$715m. As a result, its current liabilities are equal to approximately 23% of its total assets. A fairly low level of current liabilities is not influencing the ROCE too much.

Our Take On Lam Soon (Hong Kong)'s ROCE

Overall, Lam Soon (Hong Kong) has a decent ROCE and could be worthy of further research. Lam Soon (Hong Kong) shapes up well under this analysis, but it is far from the only business delivering excellent numbers . You might also want to check this free collection of companies delivering excellent earnings growth.

If you are like me, then you will not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has launched a scathing attack on Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg at the Golden Globe Awards, calling him a 'naive, misguided child who spreads Nazi propaganda'.

This is the second time Baron Cohen has attacked the Facebook CEO after accusing him of profiting off the spread of hate speech on the social media platform.

On Sunday night, Baron Cohen had been tasked with introducing the film Jojo Rabbit - a satirical movie about a German boy enrolled in the Nazi youth whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler.

The 48-year-old Borat star said: 'The hero of this next movie is a naive, misguided child who spreads Nazi propaganda and only has imaginary friends. His name is Mark Zuckerberg.'

As gasps and awkward laughter broke out among the audience, the comedian continued: 'Sorry, sorry. This is an old intro for the Social Network. I'm actually talking about JoJoRabbit. It's nominated for two Golden Globes and it's directed by its star, the brilliant and groundbreaking Taika Waititi.'

Baron Cohen's latest scathing rebuke of Zuckerberg follows a 28-minute speech he gave at the Anti-Defamation League's Never is Now summit in November, in which he described Facebook as 'the greatest propaganda machine' for hate groups in history.

British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has launched a scathing attack on Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg at the Golden Globe Awards, calling him an 'naive, misguided child who spreads Nazi propaganda'. Mark Zuckerberg has been on the receiving end of Baron Cohen's attacks, with the comedian accusing the Facebook CEO of profiting off hate speech spread on the platform.

During that speech, Cohen singled out Zuckerberg and five other tech executives - that he dubbed the 'Silicone Six' - for facilitating and profiting off the spread of hate speech and misinformation across the world.

'All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history,' Cohen said during his keynote speech, adding that the sowing of such information has led to 'surging' hate crimes and a rise in 'murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities.'

'The Silicon Sixall billionaires, all Americanswho care more about boosting their share price than about protecting democracy,' Cohen said.

'This is ideological imperialism - six unelected individuals in Silicon Valley imposing their vision on the rest of the world, unaccountable to any government and acting like they're above the reach of law.'

Cohen saved most of his criticisms specifically for Zuckerberg.

He went on to suggest that if Facebook was around in the 1930s, considering Zuckerberg's hands-off policy for fact-checking political ad campaigns, Adolf Hitler would have been able to post political ads against Jewish people uninhibited.

'It's like we're living in the Roman Empire, and Mark Zuckerberg is Caesar,' the Ali G funnyman continued.

'At least that would explain his haircut.'

'The hero of this next movie is a naive, misguided child who spreads Nazi propaganda and only has imaginary friends,' the 48-year-old said at the mid-way point of last night ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. 'His name is Mark Zuckerberg'

Cohen then took Zuckerberg and Google to task for refusing to ban Holocaust deniers from the social network.

'[Zuckerberg] said that he found posts denying the Holocaust 'deeply offensive,' but he didn't think Facebook should take them down 'because I think there are things that different people get wrong',' Cohen said.

'At this very moment, there are still Holocaust deniers on Facebook, and Google still takes you to the most repulsive Holocaust denial sites with a simple click.

'One of the heads of Google once told me, incredibly, that these sites just show 'both sides' of the issue.

'This is madness.'

Cohen also rejected Zuckerberg's claim that he could not act as a censor to limit what people can say.

'Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach,' Cohen said.

'Sadly, there will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites and child abusers. But I think we could all agree that we should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims.'

Cohen's scathing rebuke of Zuckerberg comes just weeks after the comedian described Facebook as 'the greatest propaganda machine' for hate groups in history during a powerful speech at the Anti-Defamation League's Never is Now summit in November

Cohen said that social media sites and internet search engines have the legal right to ban hate speech.

'If a neo-Nazi comes goose-stepping into a restaurant and starts threatening other customers and saying he wants kill Jews, would the owner of the restaurant be required to serve him an elegant eight-course meal?' he asked rhetorically.

'Of course not! The restaurant owner has every legal right and a moral obligation to kick the Nazi out, and so do these internet companies.'

Similar to how his ADL speech received, Cohen's satirical takedown of Zuckerberg at the Golden Globes has been widely praised online.

'Thank you @SachaBaronCohen for continuing to call out Mark Zuckerberg for his active role in destroying our democracy,' tweeted Ryan Knight.

'All hail Sacha Baron Cohen for saying what we are all thinking about spineless Mark Zuckerberg,' echoed another user.

Sleeping Giants, an online organization campaigning against bigotry and sexism as waded into the debate.

'Mark Zuckerberg is, without question, one of the most destructive forces in our society today. We cannot affect his horrendous decisions. We cannot vote him out.

'We can only speak out and more people like Sacha Baron Cohen should be doing it.'

During the speech for the ADL, Cohen singled out Zuckerberg and five other tech executives - dubbed the 'Silicone Six' - for facilitating and profiting off the spread of hate speech and misinformation across the world

The conclusion of 2019 brought an end to a dogged year for Zuckerberg and Facebook, which was hit by a series of high-profile scandals including Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook was also forced to pay $5 billion to the FTC after breaching its users' privacy, fiercely scrutinized by politicians over its Libra digital currency plans, criticized over its role in failing to fact-check political advertisements and Zuckerberg himself was summoned into front of Congress for a second time.

To add to its woes, the Federal Trade Commission announced in late December that it's considering seeking a preliminary injunction against the social media giant over mounting antitrust concerns into how the company's apps interact with each other and work with rivals.

The injunction would be sought under the grounds that Facebook is breaking inter-operability rules, which regulates how digital platforms interact.

FTC officials are concerned by how Facebook integrates its apps - including Instagram, Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger - and allows them to work with potential rivals, sources told the outlet.

The FTC could file for an injunction early this month.
A mother has told how her son almost died and was left permanently disabled after NHS hospital doctors misdiagnosed a serious infection that led to sepsis.

Emma Holt, 37, said she was initially told to give Calpol to son Harley at one hospital  and at another was made to feel like an 'overprotective, neurotic' parent after repeatedly insisting that there was something seriously wrong.

But doctors dismissed her mother's intuition and instead insisted that Harley was simply suffering from a virus. Mrs Holt, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, said: 'I was made to feel like a nagging mother when I took my son to hospital.

Emma Holt, 37, said she was initially told to give Calpol to son Harley (pictured in a coma) at one hospital

'Harley was deteriorating rapidly in front of my eyes. I went to two hospitals with Harley screaming in pain but I was made to feel like an overprotective, neurotic mother. Thankfully, I knew something wasn't right and trusted my mother's intuition.'

It was only when Harley was rushed by ambulance to A&E at North Manchester General Hospital that doctors diagnosed a serious bacterial infection, which had developed into suspected meningitis and sepsis, causing his body to shut down.

The youngster was placed in an induced coma and he was transferred to intensive care at Manchester Children's Hospital, where surgeons battled to save his life and told Mrs Holt to prepare for the worst.

He spent four weeks in intensive care and then two months in hospital before finally being discharged in April 2015. But Harley has been left with limited use of his right hand and a condition known as 'left foot drop' which requires him to wear a splint.

It was only when Harley (pictured with mother Emma) was rushed by ambulance to A&E at North Manchester General Hospital that doctors diagnosed a serious bacterial infection

The Mail's End The Sepsis Scandal campaign aims to raise awareness of symptoms. It was triggered by the death of 12-month-old William Mead, from Cornwall, in 2014.

Mrs Holt had originally taken Harley, now aged seven, to A&E after taking him to see his GP with a high temperature, sore throat, earache and a red rash all over his body.

But at the Royal Oldham Hospital, he was diagnosed with a respiratory virus and sent home and Mrs Holt was told to give him Calpol. When he failed to improve, Miss Holt took him to North Manchester General Hospital.

The youngster (pictured) was placed in an induced coma and he was transferred to intensive care at Manchester Children's Hospital

Sally Leonards, from JMW Solicitors, who is representing Harley (pictured), said: 'It's very saddening... a basic level of treatment would have prevented this'

But despite Harley screaming in pain when his legs were touched, a doctor recorded 'nothing too concerning at present' about his condition and he was sent home again.

The Northern Care Alliance NHS Group, which runs Pennine Acute Hospitals Trust, has now accepted the treatment it provided to Harley at the North Manchester General Hospital was negligent and he would have avoided 'all injury' had he received antibiotics. It denies any wrongdoing at the Royal Oldham Hospital.

Sally Leonards, from JMW Solicitors, who is representing Harley, said: 'It's very saddening... a basic level of treatment would have prevented this.'
Cedar fever might not be an actual fever, but the knowledge that it's a misnomer will not comfort those suffering from its effects this week.

Mountain cedar levels reached a season-high on Monday and forecasts call for them to remain high over the next few days. Common symptoms of the "fever" include sneezing, congestion, runny nose, and itchy and watery eyes.

Dr. John Dice, of South Texas Allergy and Asthma Medical Professionals, noted the allergen "doesn't actually cause a fever," though the doctor recognized people feel so bad battling its symptoms that they misdiagnose it.

Mountain cedar season begins in early December and usually peaks Christmas week through the first week of January. Monday's count (28,160) stands slightly above the typical 10,000 to 20,000 range, according to Dice, but well below the heights of 50,000 to 60,000 he's seen in the past.

READ ALSO: Things that 'infuriate' people about living in San Antonio

The symptoms are a reaction to pollen produced by the Ashe Juniper tree, commonly known as mountain cedar. While the tree is present in San Antonio, much of the allergen arrives from the Hill Country. Dice noted that pollen can travel for hundreds of miles on a strong breeze.

People can reduce their exposure to the allergen by keeping windows and doors closed, as well as spending less time outside when there's an elevated pollen count.

For treating the allergy, Dice recommended starting with over-the-counter relief like Zyrtec or Allegra before moving to a nasal spray or an allergy shot, if necessary. He advises people with known allergies to start using their nasal sprays a couple weeks before mountain cedar season kicks off.

Relief, however temporary, could also come from above. Rain washes pollen out of the air, but as soon as it settles and dries, the wind picks it right back up again. That wind, of course, could change and shift back toward the Hill Country.

Dice expects the mountain cedar season to end in early February.

Mark Dunphy is a breaking news reporter and general assignment writer. Read him on our breaking news site, MySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | mark.dunphy@express-news.net | @m_b_dunphy
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 23:14:33|Editor: ZX

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BANGKOK, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on Monday orders the Thai police to beef up security at the United States and Iranian embassies in Bangkok, after a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian military leader Qasem Suleimani on Friday and Tehran vowed revenge.

The Royal Thai Police on Monday said that it has been instructed by Prayut to strengthen security, including round-the-clock patrols, at the U.S. and Iranian embassies, the respective ambassadors' residences, and homes of other important foreign figures living in Thailand.

Meanwhile, the Thai embassy in Amman, Jordan, has issued warnings for Thai nationals in Iran and Iraq to exercise precaution and avoid travelling to protest sites.

The Thai embassy has also warned Thai people against visiting Iran and Iraq until further notice.

National Police Chief Pol General Chakthip Chaijinda has ordered all police units to impose security surveillance and stay on high alert.

Gen. Chakthip said other than deploying security measures at embassies and residences of important foreign figures, mosques and churches will also see security forces at venues.

The police chief said that although Thailand is not directly linked to the U.S.-Iran conflict, police need to remain on high alert, should untoward incidents occur.
Students and workers' unions on Monday held protests in parts of Tamil Nadu against the violence at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, which left 34 people injured.

Holding placards, a section of students of University of Madras staged a demonstration near the varsity entrance.

They also raised slogans against the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC).

DMK MP Kanimozhi met the students and offered her party's support to the protest.

"Attack on students is something like an attack on democracy. This should not continue," she told reporters.

Later in the evening, members of multiple student welfare organisations along with Confederation of Central Government Employees and Workers Union took part in a candlelight vigil near Valluvar Kottam here to protest the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

About 200 people participated in the vigil and raised slogans. Many held placards that read "Pens are not Lathis" and "We Stand with JNU".

Police personnel were deployed in large numbers at the venue to prevent any untoward incident.

Students of a government college in Thanjavur also staged a protest and demanded a ban on right-wing students' union Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and its parent organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

On Sunday, a mob of masked young people stormed the JNU campus in south Delhi and systematically targeted students in three hostels, unleashing mayhem with sticks, stones and iron rods, hitting inmates and breaking windows, furniture and personal belongings. They also attacked a women's hostel.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ukraine's military has said that two of its soldiers were killed during the previous 24 hours while on a combat mission in the country's eastern Donbas region.

According to a post on Facebook by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, one of its soldiers was killed as Russia-backed separatists violated a cease-fire deal four times since January 5.

Another soldier was killed inside a military truck that ran over an explosive device near the frontline town of Khutir Vilniy in the eastern Luhansk region.

Another soldier traveling in the vehicle also was seriously wounded, the statement said.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said cease-fire violations by separatists also included the firing of 82-millimeter mortar rockets, grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, and different types of firearms at Ukrainian positions in the conflict zone.

Ukrainian forces liberated the town of Khutir Vilniy, also known as Zolote-5, in late September 2018 in the Luhansk region.

Russian-backed forces had often fired on Ukrainian positions from the town, Kyiv had said. It currently has less than 20 civilian residents.

Nearly 14,000 people have been killed in the conflict and 1.5 million more have been displaced.
The challenge for Marianos, which has 44 stores in Illinois, has been to maintain its unique brand identity while staying price competitive, said Zain Akbari, an equity analyst at Chicago-based Morningstar who covers the grocery industry. While it continues to invest in many of the premium experiences that drive customers into stores, it has sacrificed some of the envelope-pushing innovation that initially put it on the map, he said.
Too many mouths to feed, but very little food to go around.

This may sound like a rather harsh analogy, but sums up the state of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress coalition government in Maharashtra.

The much-delayed expansion of the Maharashtra cabinet, which took place over a month after Uddhav took charge as the chief minister, has seen the eruption of large-scale dissent from those left out.

The squabbling over lucrative portfolios has seen the government hold back the distribution of departments for almost a week. This was despite Uddhavs claim on December 30 (the day 36 ministers, including his son Aaditya, were sworn in) that this would be done in a day or two.

That it will be a tough act to pull off was evident soon after the expansion took place, where revolts broke out across all three parties. The otherwise monolithic Shiv Sena, where the writ of the party leadership continues to be enforced with an iron fist, is also not exempt from this disgruntlement and infighting.

Shiv Sena legislator Bhaskar Jadhav, a veteran Shiv Sainik, who quit the party in 2004, after being denied a nomination by Uddhavs confidantes and later joined the NCP, voiced his anger at being ignored. Jadhav had returned to the party fold just before the assembly elections and was said to be in the reckoning for a cabinet berth.

In the Sena, the most significant development has been the exclusion of Sunil Raut, MLA and the younger brother of Shiv Senas Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut.

Sanjay Raut, the executive editor of the Sena mouthpiece Saamna, was seen as the man of the match by successfully pushing for a break with the partys ties with the BJP, and subsequent post-poll alliance with the Congress and NCP.

Senior Shiv Sena leaders like Ramdas Kadam, environment minister in the previous Devendra Fadnavis-led regime, and Tanaji Sawant, an import from the NCP who controls a string of educational institutions and rose to being a cabinet minister in the previous government, have also been dropped.

Shiv Sena legislators are also upset at three Independents -- Bacchu (Omprakash) Kadu, Shankarrao Gadakh and Rajendra Patil Yadravkar -- and a recent entrant to the Sena, Abdul Sattar, being taken into the cabinet from the partys quota, overlooking claims of loyalists.

Revolts by Shiv Sena legislators Anil Babar and Sattar ensured that the party lost out on crucial posts in elections to the Sangli and Aurangabad Zilla Parishads (district councils), respectively.

Miffed at being left out, NCP leader and former minister Prakash Solanke, who is a legislator from Beed district, threatened to quit, but was placated by the leadership.

Supporters of Congress legislator from Bhor in Pune, Sangram Thopte, attacked and vandalised the Congress Bhavan in Pune, which was once the epicentre of the partys activities during the freedom struggle. Elsewhere, supporters of Congress legislators like PN Patil (Kolhapur) have threatened to quit the party en mass to protest his exclusion.

Muslim leaders from the Congress want another minister from the community to be part of the ministry considering the communitys support to the party. Now, Aslam Shaikh, a Congress MLA from Malad in Mumbai, has been drafted into the cabinet as the textiles minister.

Within the ministry, the distribution of portfolios has been a bone of contention. While the Shiv Sena was insisting on holding charge of the powerful home department, which comes with its control over the police machinery, and sweeping powers of surveillance, the NCP has wrested it for its surprise pick, Anil Deshmukh, a legislator from Nagpur district.

BJP leaders claim that this was the opportunity they have been waiting for.

The government, which is made up of disparate allies united not by ideology but the expedient need to gain power and keep the BJP away from it, will totter and fall under the weight of these differences, they state. The three parties, especially the Shiv Sena and the NCP, have been at loggerheads in local politics, and a truck between them at the state level comes with its own share of contradictions.

BJP sources claim disgruntled elements from the three parties can be lured into its fold like in the case of Operation Kamala in Karnataka that saw the BS Yediyurappa government come to power.

However, a Shiv Sena minister countered this, claiming that if the government continued successfully for six months and beyond, there was a chance that BJP leaders, many of whom have a background in the Congress and NCP, may choose to dump their party for power. This experiment of three parties with ideological variance successfully joining hands to form and run a government may also lead to similar experiments in other states.

The Shiv Sena is being compelled to navigate a minefield over its position on contentious issues like the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens, the demand for a Bharat Ratna for VD Savarkar and senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhis disparaging comments against this Hindutva icon. The ideological disparities between the Shiv Sena and its two alliance partners on such issues will come to the fore as the BJP will ensure it can raise such contentious issues and exploit them to the hilt to make the Sena lose face among its core voters.

However, a Congress minister claimed that these rumblings would be calmed soon. He attributed this eruption of anger among leaders from the three parties as a tactical attempt to flex muscles and gain sinecures to state-run corporations, which have the rank of a cabinet minister or minister of state.

This Congress leader claimed that the defeat of Udayanraje Bhosale, the scion of the royal family of Satara, and the descendant of warrior-king Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, in the Lok Sabha bypolls, would serve as a deterrent for any potential rebels and deserters.

Udayanraje, a three-term NCP MP from Satara, quit soon after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections to join the BJP. NCP chief Sharad Pawar put up his college friend, former bureaucrat and ex-governor of Sikkim, Srinivas Patil Marulkar against Bhosale.

Patil trounced Bhosale by a margin of around 87,000 votes. It was during this election that photos and videos of Sharad Pawar addressing a public meeting in pouring rain went viral, positioning him as the last man standing up to the BJPs juggernaut, which then seemed invincible. This outpouring of sympathy saw the NCP corner the anti-incumbency vote.

The Congress minister explained that many political turncoats from the Congress and NCP, who had joined the BJP or Shiv Sena on the eve of the assembly polls, had been defeated, making it clear that voters did not stand by those with shifting loyalties.

Shiv Sena leaders admit that the party is trying to lay down its line of succession by promoting Aaditya, who became the first Thackeray to contest and win a public election, and also create and nurture a second rung of leadership in the government. This, they admit, will lead to some veterans being side-lined in favour of fresh blood, leading to frayed tempers. But, despite the bravado of leaders from the parties, the question is, will they manage to keep things under control?

As the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi gets down to the business of governance, will it come apart due to infighting, disgruntlement and inherent contradictions in this political equation? Or will it be like a great Indian wedding where arrangements seem to be coming undone, but fall in place when the ceremonies begin?

Only time will tell.

(The writer is a journalist and author of the book The Cousins Thackeray: Uddhav, Raj and the Shadow of Their Senas, which is the first political biography of Uddhav and Raj Thackeray. Views are personal)
Until recently, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) was largely unknown to many. But today, the Director General of the Commission, Babatunde Irukera, in this interview, says the agency has achieved a lot and looks forward to ensuring robust enforcement and wider consumer education in 2020.

Mr Irukera spoke to PREMIUM TIMES in an interview.

Excerpts:

PT: The impact of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) seems to be appreciated more by Nigerians. What has changed?

IRUKERA: A lot! But lets start by saying that 2019 was a very active year. Despite the fact that the resource base of the commission has not increased, we knew that must never be the excuse for failure or non-performance. The commission has continued to do what it has to do in the circumstances to resolve consumers complaints.

On my assumption, the commission was receiving about 700 to 1,000 complaints per annum. At that time, the most intense aggravation with the commission was responsiveness and resolution of complaints. But today, the commission is receiving approximately 1,000 complaints in a week. The dynamics have changed.

Today, the commission is receiving complaints from multiple channels, including Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, telephone lines, complaints resolution portal online, emails. But, the criticism about our responsiveness and ability to resolve complaints has gone down significantly.

While we count that a great success, we do not see it as an incredible accomplishment. What we hope to leave behind is not a help desk, a multi-company customer service technical support desk. A consumer ombudsman may be where consumers of goods and services may take their complaints to meet the people they are complaining about, but it should be a part of the role of a consumer regulator.

If we are doing better and people are seeing us as more reliable for doing 1,000 complaints per week to 2,000, can your capacity to do that be sustained as regulator?

For increasing your capacity to resolve complaints, there will be some other parts of the commissions mandate that will suffer.

The unit that has the highest number of operatives in the commission today is Complaints Resolution. What we want to see is for the operatives and the resources we deploy in resolving complaints go down to the barest minimum, not because there are no complaints, but because service providers and companies get better at resolving consumer complaints.

The commissions most important role in complaints resolution must be to get service providers or producers to more actively and timely resolve complaints, because the commercial contract is between them and their customers and not with the federal government.

When prices of goods are introduced, they have factored into it the cost of satisfying the consumers. So, its an obligation that they have to ensure they have robust mechanisms for a feedback, including dissatisfaction. The commission is not supposed to be policemen in respect of resolving complaints, rather monitor the industry.

When companies have to resolve complaints themselves, they deploy more resources and get a lot more feedback about what is going wrong; they carry the headache of unresolved complaints. That is what will make them better and truly reduce complaints at a real and dramatic level.

PT: Whats the update on the DSTV issue about upward price adjustment?

IRUKERA: The Commission went to court to restrain the DSTV from going ahead with the price adjustment. But, the judicial process is not within our control. The court ordered in favour of the Commissions request to stop DSTV from going ahead. DSTV did not comply. So, that judicial process to hold them accountable to the court is still on.

But, aside from that, an outcome of what the dispute was about was that we now have a regulator and operator in the dispute. It modifies the behavior of the operator. Save for some very sensitive issues that they felt very strongly about from a legal interpretation standpoint of view, the commission proceeded with all the other things we wanted to do by entering an order.

What people saw in court seemed to be a dispute with respect to their price. But, that was not what it was at all. There were a bunch of consumer violations, and we said they have must fix all of them, and while they were fixing that, they will not materially change the term of their subscription agreement with the subscribers.

But, before the consent order was signed, DSTV decided to move the price and the material term of the subscription agreement. And so the consent order was never signed. As far as the commission was concerned, DSTV exercised bad faith.

So, what we did was to say the commission will go ahead and enter the final orders on all other things, except the question of pricing, which they felt strongly about, that only a court can interpret whether the commission was right or wrong about the terms of consumer agreement.

From the commissions internal monitoring assessment, complaints in respect of DSTV have reduced significantly.

Exactly what we thought was the problem is playing out. What we said was that peoples aggravation about DSTV service was linked to the quality of its service. Agreed, it is possible for a service to cost too much, no matter how good it is. But, one is not going to be able to know whether the cost or charge is the fairest without giving the best at that cost. Do the best you can at that cost and see how the market behaves. Then, lets see if there is additional intervention required.

All that the commission sought to do was not to reduce DSTV price but, to address the subscribers complaints that the quality of DSTV service was poor. Half of the people that said the DSTV cost was too high might not feel that way anymore when they get value through good quality service.

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So, the service failure complaints by DSTV subscribers have reduced dramatically. Before now, we used to receive about 500 complaints from DSTV subscribers. Now, we have about two or three every other week. People still think it costs a lot, but the complaints about how much it cost have also reduced. This is how a sound regulatory system should work.

After the operator eliminates what it can, lets see what is left of the problem and how to move forward with that. So, the commission feels it has achieved something, even though the judicial part of the dispute remains unresolved.

Again, prior to the commissions intervention, DSTVs change in cost of service was almost routinely annual. Its been over a year since the dispute started, no price has changed yet. One is not saying they will not change their price. As regulators, thats not our role. But, certainly that confrontation, and how it can play out in the future has now become a consideration in their business decisions.

That regulatory intervention is working. Whether the desired outcome was achieved or not, the commission has seen some of the effects of the intervention.

PT: What about the issue with MTN?

IRUKERA: The commission has no issue with MTN, apart from the telecom industry issue we have about consumers complaints about unsolicited messages. We are working closely with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to get that resolved.

It took a while for the two regulators to agree on the regulatory framework for inquiry. Just about when we were coming to that agreement, a new law came, requiring us to sign a memorandum of understanding with other regulators about work sharing.

So, NCC suggested that we resolve the memorandum of understanding, which will include the framework for addressing the issues. That has proceeded. But, in the interim, the NCC has gone ahead to direct the industry against unsolicited subscriptions by telecom operators.

Again, without the final outcome, the commissions regulatory intervention is yielding some results. People have expectations on how things must go. The only time people question why things did not go that way is when it does not happen the way they expected.

There are still a long way to travel. As long as people are selling things and people are buying and using things, there will always be new complaints to resolve.

PT: Whats the situation with the Patients Bill of Right?

IRUKERA: This was created for the industry, and not for the Commissions regulation. What the Patients Bill of Right was meant to do was to energise the respect for the ethical, professional responsibilities that existed in the healthcare value chain and for patients to know their rights.

The commission is doing a lot, but what will make it work is the ownership that the industry will make of it. The one area where everybody is a consumer is healthcare.

Prior to when the Bill came into being in July 2018, there was no complaint received against any medical facility for violation any patients right. But, between then and now, there has been at least 20 reports. That in itself is stimulating a whole demand for the protection of patients rights.

Again, for over eight years before the Bill, not one doctor in Nigeria has been subjected to discipline by the professional regulatory authority. But, since the Bill came, four doctors have been prosecuted for professional misconduct.

PT: How many people has the FCCPC prosecuted in court?

IRUKERA: The structure of the regulatory work at the commission is not for people to be taken to the court. Unless a part of the law enforcement agencies, like the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), ICPC or Nigeria Police, the commission will not have a record of taking many people to court, because we are (not) prosecutors. We only do regulatory work and take regulatory decisions. When people have done wrong, we analyse them administratively.

The vast majority of the court cases are with those who disagree with the powers of the commission to take decisions.

However, under the new law, the powers the commission had to report things to the Ministry of Justice for them to decide whether to prosecute or not are now for the commission to go to court itself. So, apart from EFCC or other law enforcement agencies, the commission is in court the most.

For instance, we took the unprecedented decision of taking an operator to court. That is why the DSTV matter is in court. The commission is one of the few that are bold to seek judicial interpretation of their decisions. Hopefully, it will become a tradition to go to court.

What each of these cases does is to send a clear message that there is a regulator who has both the desire and the will to hold people accountable by enforcing compliance to the fullest extent of the law, including criminal prosecution. Conduct in commerce should rarely end up in criminal court. So, we are not likely to be fairly judged by how much cases we have been initiating or prosecuting.

PT: Is the Commission thinking about a special court to handle consumer complaints cases?

IRUKERA: The Federal Consumers and Competition Protection Commission Act actually establishes the Competitions and Consumers Protection Tribunal established by law.

But, like I said, everything in in a transition process. The tribunal will have a panel of judges that will take decisions on consumer protection issues. At the initial stage, there will be contentions and questions about judicial clarifications and jurisdictions between Federal High Court and the tribunal. Just as we have the Investments and Securities Tribunal, over a period of time, that will be clarified.

PT: Whats the impact of the FCCPC Act on the commission and Nigeria?

IRUKERA: The commission was already in transition about how our work is done before the law. About the impact in the country, we must understand that whether it is in the police force, civil service, or market, the serious problems we have in terms of violations of the law, theft, armed robbery, herdsmen killing, cattle rustling, kidnapping, hijacking, police brutality, bribery, etc, are not always by ghosts but by some people who violate the law.

So, just having legislation alone modifies the behaviour of the people. Because the commission was in transition before the law came, the industry itself recognises that the new law gives the commission a new impetus to regulate, bark and bite, if need be. Their perception of the commission to exercise its powers in the law to regulate and enforce has also modified behavior.

There is Ride Early Company (like Uber, Taxify) in Lagos that required its drivers to take insurance from a particular insurance company. The commission wrote to them and stopped that. That opened the window to other insurance companies.

The kind of connivance that has been existing in transport companies in fixing transport fares during festive seasons is no more, because they know there is a law against such practices and a regulator who is ready to enforce it and send people to jail for violations. They know there is a regulator who knows what it is doing and is ready to enforce the rule.

The impact is tremendous. We are doing mergers and acquisitions already. When we see two big companies wanting to come together, we will say its not going to happen, because for that to happen, they squeeze the small ones. For them to come together, we will say they must do A, B, C, D, or they cant come together at all.

Things are happening, but on a framework that is protecting the market and eliminating combinations that will distort the market and providing choices, innovation, fair pricing and quality to consumers.

PT: What legacy would you be leaving behind at the commission?

IRUKERA: We want to succeed in leaving a legacy of better performance of companies resolving consumer complaints themselves than the regulator.

This is more important now that the responsibilities of the commission have been expanded. The commission cannot take its eyes off the ball. The commission must focus on how the market is operating far more than what goes on with an individual.

At the commission, we are about 240. So, if they are to be dealing with individual issues of about 200 million consumers in the country, no matter how well we master or how much time we put at it, the commission will always remain buried below the ground, even with the best technology.

PT: Going forward, what should we expect?

IRUKERA: In 2020, the commission is embarking on a voyage to improve the mechanisms for enforcing consumer rights in Nigeria. Some of the stops on this cruise will be some of the things the commission has mastered to do, including the resolution of complaints, as well as places we have not gone yet.

The structure of society makes the work of the commission very challenging. In 2020, the commission should focus on two things, namely robust enforcement and wider consumer education. If we can accomplish these better than we have done before, we would say we have done something for this nation.

Our approach to better enforcement is holding companies accountable in how they respond to consumers, and devising mechanisms that put the companies on their toes to prevent what can create dissatisfaction. We seek to perfect the process.
Helen brings decades of experience to the organization with a proven track record of outstanding growth at multi-faceted luxury brands by balancing strategic and operational excellence. Her vast industry knowledge, focus on brand positioning, merchandising and product driven strategies combined with Karan's creative vision for the future of Urban Zen, create a unique platform that will not only dress women, but address them.

Aboah will also oversee the groundbreaking Urban Zen Integrative Therapy (UZIT) program that integrates Eastern healing modalities with Western science. Today, the UZIT network is made up of over 900 certified therapists of varying levels working across the country.

The shared mission of Karan and Aboah is to build and expand upon the founding three pillars of Urban Zen: preservation of culture (past), healthcare (present) and education (future). Aboah's appointment is a clear reflection of the global growth plans for Urban Zen; filling a role that has been vacant for 2 years.

"It's exciting to be joining forces with Donna Karan to lead Urban Zen through the next phase of growth. Donna is not only an icon but a visionary that has always been ahead of her time with concepts that have changed the way consumers dress, shop, and live: from her original seven easy pieces, buy-now-wear-now, wellness and yoga and now conscious consumerism. Through Urban Zen we have the opportunity to connect the dots between Donna's timeless aesthetic, artisan craftsmanship, and philanthropic efforts."

 Helen Aboah, CEO, Urban Zen

"I'm so excited to have Helen Aboah join Urban Zen, as a woman for women, understanding women today. Her expertise in building brands and leading teams while also being a wife, mother, friend, and visionary is what makes her an incomparable leader."

Urban Zen is a philosophy of living, a platform to create, connect, collaborate, communicate and change while dressing and addressing people in preservation of culture, healthcare, and education. Helen and I share this vision. Her experience leading creative organizations will drive my dream of commerce and philanthropy to a global level.

I'm so looking forward to continuing this journey with Helen."

 Donna Karan, Founder & Chief Creative Officer, Urban Zen

ABOUT URBAN ZEN: Urban Zen is a luxury lifestyle brand based on the philosophy of its founder, Donna Karan. Inspired by the cultures of the world, Urban Zen is a destination offering ready-to-wear, accessories, furniture and home decor and soulful global artisan treasures. Available in-season. The brand supports the Urban Zen Foundation, dedicated to preservation of culture, integrative healthcare and education. Urban Zen has three stand-alone stores located in New York City, Sag Harbor, LA as well as www.UrbanZen.com.

ABOUT URBAN ZEN FOUNDATION: The Urban Zen Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness and inspiring change in the areas well-being, preserving cultures and empowering children in mind, body, and spirit. Founded by Donna Karan in 2007, UZF believes that creating, connecting, communicating and collaborating is the key to change. To achieve our mission, we partner with like-minded organizations and leaders to offer forum and events so that together, we can truly affect change.

ABOUT DONNA KARAN: Fashion icon and philanthropist Donna Karan believes through creativity, collaboration, connection and community one can change the world. This conviction lies at the heart of Urban Zen. The foundation is dedicated to three initiatives: preservation of culture (past), and bringing mind, body and spirit to healthcare (present) and education (future.) The Urban Zen Center in New York is the Foundation's home, a place and space where like-minded individuals come together for forums, educational lectures and fundraisers. In 2010, Urban Zen launched Hope, Help & Relief Haiti in collaboration with leaders in music, fashion, film, finance and art. Karan works with The Clinton Global Initiative to develop and support sustainable opportunities in Haiti by bringing artisan products to a global market. To further advance that goal, in 2015, Karan collaborated with her alma mater, Parsons School of Design, to open the Haitian vocational education center called D.O.T. (Design Organization Training).

Urban Zen Foundation is, in part, supported by the Urban Zen brand and stores, a harmony of philanthropy and commerce, an idea Karan cultivated through her leadership on Seventh on Sale, CFDA AIDS benefit, Kids for Kids carnival for Pediatric AIDS, and Super Saturday, an annual Hamptons tag sale, Karan founded with Liz Tilberis to benefit Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.

Karan's fashion fame is legendary. Mentored by Anne Klein, whose line Karan designed for ten years after Klein's death in 1974. In 1985, Karan founded Donna Karan New York with her late husband Stephan Weiss, where she revolutionized the way women dressed with her Seven Easy Pieces: an interchangeable wardrobe that took women day into night with ease and sophistication. Four years later came DKNY, the street chic sportswear line that has become synonymous with New York City the world over.

A world traveler, lifelong yogi, mother and grandmother, Karan considers Urban Zen an extension of her desire to find the missing link in the areas she cares most about. It is the realization of Karan's dream not just to dress people, but to address them. Karan candidly shares her personal and professional story in her autobiography, My Journey (Ballantine/Random House.)

For Additional Information Please Contact:

Kate Bartle

[email protected]

646.391.5063

SOURCE Urban Zen
Governor Banwarilal Purohit on Monday picked holes in the 14th Finance Commission's devolution formula to say that it resulted in a net loss of Rs 4,073 crore to Tamil Nadu and urged the Centre to release that sum.

In his address to the Assembly, Purohit said there has been a diminution in the overall flow of Central funds to Tamil Nadu, adding that the State faced a very severe adverse impact due to the horizontal distribution formula of the 14th Finance Commission.

The State eagerly awaited the 15th Finance Commission recommendations and the government "is hopeful of a fair and equitable distribution of resources, which rewards efficiency and performance," he said.

This year, Tamil Nadu has so far received Rs 7,096 crore as GST compensation and Central grants of Rs 17,957.31 crore.

However, a few outstanding issues in the release of dues to Tamil Nadu were being followed up closely, he said.

Citing the GST, he said in 2017-18, the first year of its implementation, instead of distributing 50 per cent of the unallocated IGST (Integrated Goods and Services Tax) in proportion to SGST (State Goods and Services Tax) collection in various States, the Centre "incorrectly" handled it.

"The Government of India incorrectly appropriated the entire unallocated portion of IGST to the tune of Rs 88,344.22 crore to the Consolidated Fund of India and distributed 42 per cent of this to States as per the 14th Finance Commission's devolution formula," he said.

Such a handling "resulted in a net loss of Rs 4,073 crore to Tamil Nadu and we are insisting on the immediate release of this amount due to our State."



The issue has been referred to the Group of Ministers by the GST Council and "we seek an early favourable decision."



The government repeatedly raised such issues with the Centre in multiple fora and at the highest level, he said, adding, "I once again urge the government of India to settle the dues of Tamil Nadu at the earliest."Purohit also urged the Centre to accord early approval for its participation in the Phase-II Chennai Metro Rail project on the 50:50 equity sharing model adopted for Phase-I.

Stating that the sugar industry crisis was affecting cane farmers, he wanted financial restructuring of the sugar mills.

"I request the Union government to announce a special financial package to assist the revival of the sugar sector in Tamil Nadu."



Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised a tourism development package for Mamallapuram and a Rs 563.30 crore proposal has been sent to the Centre for approval he said and urged speedy sanction.

In connection with the commemoration of the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, he wanted the Centre to upgrade the Gandhigram Rural Institute near Madurai as a Centre of Eminence for Rural development and Gandhian philosophy.

The Tamil Nadu government has decided to provide a one- time grant of Rs two crore to Tiruchengode based Gandhi Ashram founded by Rajaji in 1925, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
CHICAGO, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Typenex Medical, an innovative fluid waste management supplier, announced today it has been awarded a three-year group purchasing contract with Premier, a leading healthcare improvement company. The national contract, effective as of March 1, 2020, includes Typenex Medical's market-leading portfolio of fluid waste management products.

Typenex Medical's floor fluid management solutions include Absorbent Floor Mats, available with a double-sided feature or waterproof backsheet. The product line also consists of mat rolls and varying folded sizes. For floor fluid suction, Typenex Medical offers three types of mobile suction discs and a patent pending suction mat  the first of its kind in the market. The full portfolio delivers quality performance at an affordable price.

"Improving patient care and achieving better patient outcomes has always been a goal for Typenex Medical. We believe we bring the most complete line of floor fluid management products to Premier members' operating rooms," said Keith Gavin, National Director of Sales. "Adding options to the contract will provide Premier members with more choices and more efficiency for fluid intensive procedures."

With this contract, Premier members can secure enhanced savings on Typenex Medical's full line of absorbent floor mat configurations and suction devices. "Typenex Medical will remain focused on assisting the members with standardization and selecting the right products for the job," added Gavin. "We look forward to helping members minimize spend and maximize the value they gain from fluid management solutions."

About Typenex Medical, LLC

Typenex Medical is a medical device and supply company founded by entrepreneur and investor, John Fife. The Typenex Medical advantage is connecting with customers to understand their process needs, then delivering simple, high-quality products that streamline workflows. Thinking about patient safety and comfort is a strength, along with efficiency and cost-effectiveness  all while providing a quality product. For more information please visit www.typenexmedical.com.

Contact: Brad Palmer

Director

(312) 888-4088

[email protected]

SOURCE Typenex Medical, LLC

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The HRD Ministry met officials from the JNU administration on Monday and took stock of the situation on the campus following Sunday's violence, even as Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar skipped the meeting.

It was attended by the JNU registrar, proctor and other admin officials who briefed the ministry officials on the sequence of events that unfolded on the campus and the measures taken to restore normalcy.

"HRD Secretary Amit Khare held a meeting with team of JNU authorities, including Pro-VC Chintamani Mahapatra, Registrar Promod Kumar, Rector Rana Pratap Singh and Proctor Dhananjay Singh, today. The secretary held detailed discussion with them and was also briefed about the current situation in JNU," a senior HRD Ministry official said.

The ministry had on Sunday sought an immediate report from JNU Registrar Pramod Kumar after the violence broke out and students and teachers were attacked.

There was heavy deployment of police on Monday outside the Shashtri Bhawan here which houses the HRD Ministry.

"A detailed report has been sent to the HRD Ministry about the sequence of events. The top administration officials are at the ministry to provide all details leading to present situation," JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar told PTI.

Violence broke out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as a group of masked people armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.

Many sustained injuries and were admitted to AIIMS Trauma Centre here. They were discharged on Monday. JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh suffered a head injury.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the ABVP blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.

Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' had urged JNU students to maintain the dignity of the university and peace on campus.

JNU Proctor Dhananjay Singh appealed the students to not panic and leave the campus.

"We appeal to students to not panic and leave the campus. Measures are being taken to normalise situation on the campus and ensure safety of everyone," he said after the meeting at the HRD Ministry.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The mother of a British teenager found guilty of lying about being gang-raped in Cyprus has said her daughter is terrified of being sent to jail.

The 19-year-old woman, who has not been named, will be sentenced at Famagusta District Court in Paralimni on Tuesday, where she could be jailed for up to a year and fined 1,700 euro (1,500).

Her lawyers asked Judge Michalis Papathanasiou to consider a suspended prison sentence after she was convicted of public mischief last week.

And local media reports suggest she will be pardoned by Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades if the judge does impose an immediate jail term, allowing her to go home.

But her mother said the teenager is terrified of being sent to prison, having spent a month behind bars before she was granted bail in August.

The best outcome I could hope for tomorrow is for her to get a sentence where she can come home. She needs to be back in the UK

She has been in Nicosia state prison before, she knows what it is like, she told ITV News.

Shes going to go in there for a conviction for this offence, and people will know what she has been saying about Cyprus.

I cant even begin to describe how upsetting that is.

Her English lawyer, Michael Polak, from the Justice Abroad group, said a jail term could cause permanent damage to her mental health after she was diagnosed with PTSD.

The best outcome I could hope for tomorrow is for her to get a sentence where she can come home, her mother said.

She needs to be back in the UK for her treatment for PTSD and that is my number one priority.

The teenager claimed she was raped by up to 12 Israeli tourists in a hotel room in the party town of Ayia Napa on July 17.

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She was charged, while the young men, aged between 15 and 20, who were arrested over the incident, were freed after she signed a retraction statement 10 days later.

The woman maintains she was raped after having consensual sex with one of the Israelis but forced to change her account under pressure from Cypriot police.

The case hinged on a retraction statement signed by the teenager following hours of questioning alone and without legal representation.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said he has raised concerns over the treatment of the teenager with the Cypriot authorities after her conviction provoked outrage in Cyprus and the UK.

Her lawyers are poised to launch an appeal and hope to fast-track proceedings in Cypruss supreme court, which could take three to four years.

Mr Polak said: We think we have strong grounds for appeal. For example, the way the trial was conducted and the admission of the retraction statement, as well as the fact she didnt have a lawyer when the statement was taken.

We are confident we will succeed on appeal if not in Cyprus then at one of the European courts.
PHOENIX  Triplets in one Phoenix family are joining the Marines at the same time.

Hayley, Ian and Andrew Mase, who were born a minute apart, will be separated for an extended period for the first time, their parents told ABC15.com.

I know being apart will be kind of hard, but once we get back together its like there was no time apart, said Hayley Mase, the oldest of the three. More of like a See you later.'

The teens joined ROTC in high school and all wanted to enlist in the Marine Corps. Andrew Mase, the youngest, is already in combat training. Hayley Mase, the oldest, will leave in February for boot camp. Ian Mase is looking to go to boot camp in March.

Larry and Carrie Mase, who have two other children, say they are worried the triplets will get deployed to a combat zone in the Middle East.

Knowing that this is their decision and that its really their dream, it helps a little, Larry Mase said.
Pennsylvania State Police are investigating after someone reportedly released bed bugs inside a Walmart store in Washington Township in Erie County.

A manager at the Walmart, located at 108 Washington Towne Boulevard, found a closed pill bottle that had live bugs inside tucked in a boys jacket, according to WENY News. The manager called police Thursday to report the incident.

Store officials contacted Ecolab, according to GoErie.com. An Ecolab employee on Friday observed bed bugs actively crawling around in the mens fitting rooms, police reported to the media outlet.

A second closed pill bottle containing several dead bugs was found by a store employee on the floor in the mens department near belts, police reported, according to GoErie.

Bed bugs are small, flat, parasitic insects that feed solely on the blood of people and animals while they sleep, according to the CDC. They are reddish brown and roughly the size of an apple seed.

Most bedbug bites are painless at first, but later turn into itchy welts, according to WebMd.

Bed bugs do not carry disease and are not considered to be dangerous; however, an allergic reaction to several bites could require medical attention. Getting rid of bed bugs from a home or business can be complicated and expensive.

State Police in Girard are in charge of the investigation. The Walmart store said they were working with a pest control company.

This isnt the first report of bed bugs inside a Walmart store. Last February, a woman in Sand Springs, Oklahoma reported finding a bed bug in a store. There also was a similar report in Phoenix in 2016.

READ: U.S. astronaut gives Philadelphia Eagles a shoutout from International Space Station
"I think the feeling is, if we make a change here, we're opening ourselves up to have this brought in in other land developments, and it's not something we really want to see in the village overlay district," said board...
The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has asked the Directorate General of Foreign Trade to make the accreditation system for star exporters more robust to curb tax fraud

New Delhi: The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has asked the Directorate General of Foreign Trade to make the accreditation system for star exporters more robust to curb tax fraud.

"Since an exporter enjoying 'star' status is allowed many facilities, including reduced customs inspections, it makes for a strong case for DGFT to continuously (or annually) seek a compliance and verification report from other regulators or obligate the exporters to produce statutory records of compliance, including certifications from the banks of No NPAs," the CBIC said in a letter to the DGFT earlier this month.

The move comes following investigations into the mis-availment of IGST refunds by certain exporters holding 'star' status.

In its drive to check fraudulent availment of IGST refunds, the CBIC has extensively used data analytics and matched data with income tax, GST and customs to identify risky exporters.

"Ongoing investigations have thrown up at least 9 star export houses as 'non-traceable' at their premises declared on record. All these star export houses have availed IGST refund, which is now being questioned by the tax officers," sources said.

There are instances where an exporter with over Rs 50 crore of exports of readymade garments has taken refund of Rs 3.90 crore while the entity's total GST payment in cash was a merely Rs 1,650.

Investigators are of the view that all such cases involve fake invoicing and fraudulent tax credits, which have been encashed through the facility of IGST refunds, sources said.

The present ongoing exercise by CGST field formations has revealed serious issues in compliance behaviour in some cases.

Besides, sources said, nine-star exporters were not traceable at the addresses on record.
T housands of beleaguered Waterloo main line commuters recovering from the month long strike suffered further today after two major signal failures caused huge disruption to and from the UKs busiest station.

It came as South Western Railway (SWR) launched its new timetable aimed at providing 80 new services a week promising improved journey opportunities.

SWR warned train services running to and from London Waterloo would be disrupted until at least 10am.

Passengers at Vauxhall Station wanting to travel south are being advised to travel into London Waterloo and to get another train back out again.

Trains will be unable to stop at Platform 8 at Vauxhall. If you are at Vauxhall please travel to London Waterloo to board trains to stations beyond Vauxhall on our suburban line, SWR said in a statement on their website.

The Windsor, Reading and Hounslow services are not affected.

Trains from London Waterloo that terminate at Guildford and Woking will run non stop between Waterloo and Surbiton.

Disruption lasted throughout the morning peak and into the afternoon.

Passengers took to Twitter to complain of cancelled and delayed trains during the morning rush hour.

One person wrote there was no clear information on what was happening with the trains.

Just keeps getting later / delayed and never an announcement at Thames Ditton about what is happening, they said.

Another said they were unsure how they would be able to get to work.

How am I meant to get to work today? Why has the train been cancelled to Byfleet and Hawe from Wimbledon.

One passenger said the service was appalling.

Why are the trains on the twickenham line delayed AGAIN this morning? Your service is absolutely appalling, they said.

A second signal failure in the Earlsfield area added to the problems with further trains cancelled and others forced to run at reduced speed; trains were non-stopping at the busy commuter station.

Tickets were being accepted on buses between Clapham Junction and Wimbledon.

An SWR spokesperson apologised for the disruption which was the responsibility of Network Rail. He said Engineers are working hard to fix this issue as soon as possible.

We are very sorry for the disruption this may cause to your journey.

The month long strike by RMT union train staff in a long running dispute over changes to the role of the guard and driver-only operation (DOO) ended last Wednesday.
A Northampton County jury will decide if a man on trial in the execution-style murder of a 19-year-old woman in Bethlehem was the gunman, or if his cooperating co-defendant pulled the trigger.

Teayahe Glover was shot multiple times in the early morning of Feb. 8, 2017, and died on a Southside street.

Prosecutors say Kasheem Aiken and Xavier Snyder plotted together to kill the teen, in response to a separate shooting six days earlier of Glovers boyfriend and a suspected theft of his drugs and money.

The 37-year-old Aikens trial on homicide and conspiracy charges began Monday, with jury selection in the morning and opening statements in the afternoon in Northampton County Court.

The case involves love, jealously, friendships and loyalty, Northampton County Chief Deputy District Attorney William Blake told the jury.

Its a case about street life, he said. This is a case about revenge.

Snyder is the prosecutions key witness in the case.

He will testify Aiken forced him to lure Glover out of her house, but that Aiken shot Glover multiple times, including in the face, Blake said.

Synder pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in November, and is awaiting sentencing in his case. In exchange for Snyders testimony, Blake has agreed to a 16- to 32-year prison sentence for him.

Thats a good deal that will see Snyder leave prison a relatively young man, defense attorney Chris Shipman told the jury.

Snyder has told police different versions of what happened that night, and has lied about virtually every important point in this case, Shipman argued.

Youre going to see your killer. Hes going to come in and testify ... Youre going to see a killer, right there, Shipman said as he pointed to the witness stand in the courtroom. Youre going to see the man that killed her, right there.

In 2017, Glover was dating Alan Young, part of the Hoover 74s gang, and Tariq Page, a member of the Grape Street Crips, Blake said.

On Feb. 2, Young reached out to Page to talk man-to-man about Glover, and guess who brought a gun to the party? Tariq Page, Blake said.

The two men struggled over the gun, and Young ended up getting shot in the abdomen. His injuries were so severe, Young was placed in a medically-induced coma, Blake said.

After the shooting, word started to spread that Glover stole drugs and money from Young after he was injured, Blake said.

Aiken reportedly told Youngs father We got this, and later called Glovers mother to ask for Youngs stuff back.

The night Glover was killed, Blake said, Aiken and another man tried to lure her out of her house, but she didnt leave.

Back at their home, Aiken allegedly grabbed Snyder, then 17, threatened to shoot him and told him, Youre going to help me get this girl.

Snyder messaged Glover via Facebook, and the two met up to smoke pot, Blake said.

As they are walking on the Southside, Aiken walked up behind Snyder, pointed a gun over his shoulder and shot Glover in the face, prosecutors said.

Glover fell to the ground, but was not dead. Aiken allegedly then walked up and shot her at close-range, Blake said.

Aiken and Snyder split up and ran away, but met up later and travelled to Wilson Borough, before visiting Alan Young at St. Lukes University Hospital.

While at hospital, Aiken told Alan Young he shot Glover, Blake said.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Timelines: a story about the known, unknown, visible, and invisible, a tale about the war of God and evil juxtaposed over the war between man against man and mans impaired ability to discriminate between the wars. Timelines is the creation of published author Darrel Dillon, a man who joined the U.S. Navy in 1966 and served 10 years of active duty on three destroyers. During that time he was on four six-month tours of duty in the South China Sea and Vietnam. He has also been an avid reader since childhood, a fan of authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Michael Crichton, Clive Cussler, and Frank Herbert.

Dillon writes, The story opens as David Mark is resurrecting his life from the depths of disillusionment with humanitys moral decay. After meeting a mysterious man named Lewis Chester, he gets a thought-recording device implanted in his brain, the first step in the process of leaving planet Earthand then the global rains begin.

Its his twin sister, Darla, who unravels the story of Davids fantastic space adventure as she transcribes his DTRIS file a year later. She was transported to the Logos Station, a spherical sanctuary at the edge of a void, shortly after her brother disappeared.

Through this intriguing tale, youll learn how events of Earths past, present, and future are tied to invisible forces and secret agendas, as the actions of the Nobel, the Sangar, the Earing, the Ictol, and other alien species are unveiled.

This first book in a compelling new science-fiction saga, The DTRIS File: Timelines narrates the spellbinding story of how the universe arrives at the precipice of all-out intergalactic war in the not-so-distant future.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Darrel Dillons new book is a wholesome science-fiction that tells a story of how the wickedness of man and the spread of indecency brought the time of galactic reordertime when man, blinded to his dark ways, would not turn back.

With this purpose, Dillon aims to bring the readers into an extraordinary experience, as this book unveils the war between good and evil enabling to see how the past, present, and future are connected to the concealed forces and hidden agendas.

View a synopsis of Timelines on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase Timelines at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Timelines, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Iran announced Sunday that it is ending all its commitments under the nuclear deal, effectively marking the complete demise of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The state terror sponsor said it will no longer abide by the restrictions on uranium enrichment or nuclear research and development. However, Iran assured that it would be willing to rejoin the nuclear deal if the U.S. lifts sanctions against the country.

The Islamic Republic of Iran will end its final limitations in the nuclear deal, meaning the limitation in the number of centrifuges, the Iranian government said in a statement. Therefore Irans nuclear program will have no limitations in production including enrichment capacity and percentage and number of enriched uranium and research and expansion.

The move is part of Irans retaliation to a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad on Thursday that killed general Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards elite Quds Force. U.S. officials said Friday that they believed Soleimani had been plotting imminent attacks on U.S. facilities in the surrounding region that could have killed hundreds of Americans, though multiple reports citing senior diplomatic and military officials have contradicted the claim that an imminent threat had emerged in the days before the airstrike.

The deadly U.S. drone strike, which also killed terrorist Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, came after Iran-backed militiamen attacked and destroyed parts of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

Iran has moved steadily away from the requirements of the nuclear deal since May of last year when President Trump pulled out of the agreement, which was signed by the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, China, and Russia and gave Tehran billions of dollars in relief from sanctions in exchange for a promise to curb its nuclear program.

The war-torn country, which insists it is not working towards building a nuclear arsenal, announced the first major breach of the deal in July when it boosted uranium enrichment to upwards of 4.5 percent, exceeding the JCPOAs 3.67 percent limit while remaining far short of the 90 percent required to construct a nuclear weapon.

More from National Review
The entity should work as a mechanism to safeguard the countries' interests and enable them to collectively face challenges in their shared waterways.

Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and his Arab and African counterparts have signed the founding charter for the Council of Arab and African States Bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The signing came during a meeting of Arab and African foreign ministers in Saudi Arabia's Riyadh.

King Salman of Saudi Arabia had previously suggested creating an entity bringing together the countries bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The entity should work as a mechanism to safeguard the countries' interests and enable them to collectively face challenges in their shared waterways.

Along with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Djibouti, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen are participating in the meeting.

Earlier, Shoukry met with Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal Bin Farhan Al Saud on the sidelines of the ministerial meeting.

The Egyptian and Saudi ministers discussed the cooperation between the two countries as well as the rapid developments in the region, including in Libya.

The ministerial meeting of the African and Arab States bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden is being held today to tackle political, economic and security issues.

The ministers will also discuss ways of confronting foreign interference in the strategic waterway.

Shoukry met with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Al-Safdi upon his arrival in Riyadh yesterday, and discussed issues of mutual interest and methods of boosting bilateral relations between the two countries.

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White House adviser Conway made the remarks after Iran said it would no longer abide by enrichment limits under the deal

US President Donald Trump is confident he could still renegotiate the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, despite the killing of Tehrans top general in a US air raid last week, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Monday.

Conway made the comment to reporters at the White House on Monday, a day after Iran announced it would retreat further from the 2015 nuclear pact following the killing of its top general in a US air raid at the Baghdad international airport last week.

Iranian officials said they would no longer abide by enrichment limits under the agreement, representing the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Tehran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in May 2018 and implemented a policy of maximum pressure sanctions against Iran. The announcement was decried by European officials trying to salvage to the flagging deal.

Asked if Trump believes he can still get Iran to negotiate a new nuclear agreement, Conway told reporters at the White House: He said hes open. If Iran wants to start behaving like a normal country  sure, absolutely.

Trump later took to Twitter to reiterate the White House stance that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon but gave no other details.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington escalated after Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the 2015 nuclear agreement, which was reached between Iran, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany. Under the agreement, Iran agreed to curb its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.





Iran has repeatedly said it will not renegotiate the nuclear deal.

Tehran has incrementally moved away from its commitments under the agreement, saying the European parties have failed to find a workaround to the US sanctions. However, while announcing they would no longer abide by the enrichment limits, Iran said it would still continue to cooperate with the United Nations nuclear watchdog and could quickly reverse its steps if US sanctions are removed.

On Monday, Conway also defended Trumps decision to kill top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, an act that has threatened to bring long-simmering tensions between the two countries to a head.

The president did what a responsible, strong  not weak  commander-in-chief does when faced with the opportunity to take out one of the  if not the  worlds most wanted terrorists, Conway said.
Nashik/Mumbai, Jan 6 : Activists of Nationalist Congress Party and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad clashed here prompting the local police to use force to separate and disperse them, here on Monday, officials said.

The incident happened when a large number of NCP activists staged a noisy protest outside the Nashik branch of ABVP - the youth wing of Bharatiya Janata Party - to condemn the Sunday's violence in the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus in New Delhi.

The NCP activists carrying the Indian Tricolour and party flags, raised loud slogans attacking the BJP and ABVP and holding them responsible for the JNU campus hooliganism which left around 35 students and professors injured.

Retaliating by shouting slogans, the ABVP activists and NCP workers soon got physical, pushing each other around and indulging in fisticuffs, leading to a tense situation.

The police, present in strength at the venue immediately intervened, forcibly separated them and dispersed them, and also rounded up a few activists.

This afternoon, Nationalist Youth Congress Party (NYCP) President Mehboob Shaikh and other activists staged a protest outside the BJP state party office in Nariman Point.

They waved banners and posters with photos of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the National Tricolour and raised slogans against the BJP-ABVP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah for yesterday's violence.

In Aurangabad, a group of NYCP attempted to storm the local BJP office but were thwarted by a large police posse present there.

In Mumbai, NCP senior leader and Housing Minister Dr. Jitendra Awhad joined a protest rally organised by various students unions, NGOs and collegians at the Gateway of India this afternoon.

Several protests are on in Mumbai, Pune, with more planned today in these cities and in Wardha's Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya to condemn the JNU violence.
US soldiers, officers will go home in coffins after Soleimani assassination: Nasrallah

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 05 January 2020 4:28 PM

The secretary general of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has severely condemned the assassination of Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps' Quds Force, and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units' deputy commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, saying that US soldiers and officers would return home in coffins in retaliation.

"When the coffins of American soldiers and officers begin to be transported ... to the United States, (President Donald) Trump and his administration will realize that they have really lost the region and will lose the elections," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech broadcast live from the Lebanese capital city of Beirut as he addressed his supporters on Sunday evening.

Nasrallah said the response to the assassination of General Soleimani was not only Iran's responsibility, but also that of the entire axis of resistance.

Nasrallah added that attacks on US military forces in the Middle East will be "fair punishment" for the crime, listing US bases, naval ships and military personnel.

The Hezbollah chief further noted that US act of terror marks the start of a new phase for the entire Middle East.

"The targeted killing of General Soleimani and Muhandis is the begging of a new era not for Iraq or Iran, but for the whole region," Nasrallah said.

The leader of Hezbollah movement added that the two top military commanders attained their ultimate goals by embracing martyrdom, extending his deepest condolences to their families.

"The martyrdom of General Soleimani and Muhandis marks another victory of blood over sword," Nasrallah said.

The Hezbollah head added, "We are witness to a heinous crime whose perpetrators are well-known. US President Donald Trump said he had ordered the (drone) strike (on the airport in Baghdad, Iraq)."

"More than three years into his presidency, Trump has failed to accomplish the goals he had defined at the beginning of his tenure. Previous US attempts to assassinate General Soleimani had ended in failure. All of Trump's forms of pressure to subdue Iran have also failed to realize that goal.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Nasrallah said, "US scenarios in Syria have been foiled. Trump has abandoned the Kurds and his decision concerning the withdrawal of American troops represents his confusion. All attempts to undermine the resistance front in Lebanon and Yemen have been unsuccessful as well."

The Hezbollah secretary general went on to note that Trump did not manage to impose the "deal of century" thanks to the Palestinian nation's steadfastness.

"Trump was very clear. He wanted to wrest control over the Iraqi oil. Trump had been using Daesh (terror group) as a pretext to control Iraq and its wealth. Such a scheme failed, thanks to General Soleimani and Muhandis, who fought Daesh," Nasrallah said.

He underlined that the US was about to lose control of Iraq following the defeat of Daesh and parliamentary polls in the country.

"Washington then sought to drag Iraq into civil war, and sow the seeds of discord between Baghdad and Tehran. The US is heading to elections with no real achievements secured by Trump."

"The US wanted to hit a central figure in the axis of resistance, so they targeted General Soleimani," Nasrallah commented.

The Hezbollah chief highlighted that the top Iranian general posed a real threat to the Tel Aviv regime, but Israeli officials did not dare to assassinate him.

"The retaliation for General Soleimani's assassination has already started in both Iran and Iraq. Eyes are now on the Iraqi parliament to approve a resolution on US troops withdrawal from the country. Iraqis won't leave US troops there alone. The minimal retaliation is to liberate Iraq from the presence of US forces," Nasrallah said.

"The martyrdom of General Soleimani and Muhandis will provide new incentive to press ahead with resistance in the face of the US and the Zionist regime.

"Assassination of Soleimani means targeting the entire axis of resistance. In terms of retaliation, there is no figure in the opposite front to match General Soleimani and Muhandis," the Hezbollah chief underlined, noting that Soleimani's shoe was more valuable than Trump's head.

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Reverse migration to Bangladesh would only increase: Intelligence Bureau sources

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Jan 05: The sudden rise of Bangladeshis being arrested in Bangladesh could just be the beginning of a major exodus. At least 450 persons have been arrested by the Bangladesh police when they crossed over from India.

Most of the reverse migration is taking place by those who have settled in South India. These are the newer illegal migrants, who have come to India and have no documents.

Illegal immigrants from Karnataka and Hyderabad have been returning to Bangladesh.

Intelligence Bureau officials informed OneIndia that there has been a sudden surge in the number of people speaking Bengali in the Bangladesh dialect who have boarded trains to Bengal.

Cops establish role of illegal Bangladeshis in violence against citizenship law

They land in Bengal, following which with the help of touts have been crossing over to Bangladesh. In the past one year nearly 1,000 such cases have been reported. However, in the past two months, there has been a major surge and at least 445 illegal immigrants have crossed over into Bangladesh.

Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) Director General Maj Gen Md Shafeenul Islam disclosed the figure during a press briefing here. "About 1,000 people were arrested in 2019 for illegal border crossings from India to Bangladesh, with 445 of them returning home in November and December," he said.

After verifying their identities through local representatives, BGB came to know that all the intruders are Bangladeshis, Islam said, adding that 253 cases were lodged against them for illegal trespass, while initial investigations found that at least three of them were human traffickers.

The BGB Director said the trespassing did not create any tension between the border forces of Bangladesh and India.

Last week, Islam visited India where he said that the creation of the NRC is completely an "internal affair" of India and the cooperation between the border guarding forces of the two countries is very good.

Reverse migration continues: Several more illegal Bangladeshis expected to flee India

He said the BGB will continue to do its work of preventing illegal border crossings as per its mandate. A BGB delegation, led by Islam, was on a bilateral visit to India to hold DG-level border talks with its counterparts, the Border Security Force (BSF).

The talks took place from December 26-29, during which a host of issues related to cross-border smuggling and activities of criminals and others along the 4,096-km-long front were discussed.

Responding to a question, Islam said, "No discussion was held at the conference over the (NRC) issue". He said during the five-day talks held in New Delhi, the BGB demanded that the BSF should take effective steps to prevent killings of Bangladeshis on frontiers as casualty figures sharply rose in 2019.

NEWS AT NOON, JANUARY 6th, 2020

"The number of border killings in 2019 was highest in the last four years. As per our calculation, the number of such unexpected deaths was 35," the BGB chief said. However, the BSF estimate of the casualty figure is much lower than our calculation, he said.

Islam said the BSF is following the policy of maintaining maximum restraint and minimal use of force even after being attacked by "armed border offenders".

Bangladesh seeks list of illegal Bangladeshis in India

A statement issued by the BSF last month in New Delhi after the conclusion of the DG-level talks said, "On the concern of the BGB regarding the death of Bangladeshi nationals on borders, it was informed to them that a non-lethal weapon policy is strictly followed by BSF personnel on borders.

"Firing is resorted to only in self-defence, when BSF patrols are gheraoed and attacked by dah' (a sharp-edged weapon) etc. It was specified that the BSF does not discriminate between criminals based on nationality," it said.
It was indeed a manic Monday for D-Street! The S&P BSE Sensex plunged nearly 800-points to register its biggest single-day fall in a year while Nifty50 breached 12,000 levels to post its biggest one-day fall in six months.

Volatility index surged over 16 percent, its biggest single-day gain in a year while the India Gold hit a fresh record high buoyed by risk-off sentiment. India Gold February futures broke above 41,000 to hit a fresh record high 41,096 on January 6.

This was the biggest fall in Sensex since July 8, 2019. On August 24, 2015, Sensex took a beating of 1,625 points or 5.94 percent, which was the biggest fall in points in the last five years.

In fact, in the last five years, there have been 40 such sessions (including today) in which Sensex plunged over 500 points, 20 sessions in which Sensex cracked over 600 points, and 11 sessions in which the market benchmark suffered a loss of over 700 points.

Rising Middle East tensions wiped out almost Rs 3 lakh crore in terms of market wealth, pushed crude oil prices towards $70/bbl, and rupee to its lowest level since November 14.

The market capitalisation of BSE-listed companies stood at Rs 153.86 lakh crore, down nearly Rs 3 lakh crore from Fridays close of Rs 156.87 lakh crore, data showed.

The rupee hit the lowest level since Nov. 14 and was hovering around to Rs 72 against the dollar mark as oil prices surged more than 2 percent towards $70/bbl fueling concerns of large current account deficit.

Lets look at the final tally on D-Street  the S&P BSE Sensex plunged 787 points to 40,676 while the Nifty50 dropped 233 points to 11,993. Sectorally, profit-taking was seen in sectors like Metals, public sector, realty, banks, Energy, and Oil & Gas.

Looking at the global setup  rise in geopolitical concerns will give markets the excuse to sell at higher levels. On January 2, Nifty was just 4 points away from hitting a fresh record high.

So what should investors do? Historically, correction on account of external factors such as geopolitical concerns is usually regarded as the best time to get into quality stocks which might be available at a discount.

But, it (geopolitical concerns) is unlikely to derail the bull market, suggest experts. Long-term investors should use dips to get into stocks while traders might have to battle the volatility in the short term.

Geopolitical concerns will certainly not derail the bull market rally but if there is any knee-jerk reaction then this will be a buying opportunity for investors, Ajit Mishra, VP  Research, Religare Broking Ltd told Moneycontrol.

Geopolitical concerns are short-term triggers which cause corrections in the market but the broader trend will remain intact. The Indian bull market will take its own sweet time correcting on the way up. In general, 2020 will be far better than 2019, he said.

The market, which was in bullish momentum, got hit by a geopolitical storm, but experts feel that the halt in momentum is temporary and could see a rebound if the situation stabilised. If not, the texture of the market in the near term may become weak.

The market is in bullish momentum but geopolitical tension acting as a speed breaker for the market where if this geopolitical tension doesn't escalate further then we can expect the market to resume its uptrend in next week, Amit Gupta, Co-Founder, TradingBells told Moneycontrol.

But, if the situation becomes worse than near term texture of the market may become weak, he said.

Where are markets headed?

Technically, Nifty is consolidating in the range of 12,000-12,300. The crucial support for the market is placed at Mondays low of 11,974, and a break below this level could take the index towards 11,850-11,500 levels.

After showing a rising wedge or a triangle type pattern within a narrow high low range in the last 5-6 sessions, the Nifty witnessed a sharp weakness today and closed the day lower 233 points.

Nifty formed a long bear candle on Monday with a gap-down opening. Technically, this pattern indicates a sharp reversal pattern in the market, Nagaraj Shetti, Technical Research Analyst, HDFC Securities told Moneycontrol.

The initial support of 12150 (ascending trend line) has been broken on the lower and the Nifty closed below it. The daily 14 period RSI has turned down from near 60 levels, he said.

Shetty further added that the overall chart pattern of Nifty looking weak and the next lower supports to be watched at 11800 levels. The near term downside targets to be watched for Nifty at 11500, which could be achieved in the next 3-4 weeks.

: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts on moneycontrol.com are their own and not those of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.
Dollar symbol and Canadian flag on keyboard

The Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) is becoming increasingly popular among Canadian families. Theres plenty of reason for that. The tax-free account allows a significant number of Canadians to save money and secure a better financial future for themselves.

One of the key advantages of the account is its tax-sheltered status. With assets stored in the TFSA, your earnings  interest payments, capital gains, and dividends  will be tax-free for the duration of the investment. It ensures that Canadians can save a significant amount of money through protection from taxes on their investment returns.

Many Canadians think the tax-sheltered status of their TFSAs protects them from the hands of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) entirely just by keeping within the contribution limit. The TFSA was made to help Canadians save more money by dampening the effects of taxes. It was not intended to be a free ticket for professional day traders who trade stocks to make a lot of money already.

I am going to discuss a couple of crucial tax errors many Canadians are making that effectively nullify the tax-free status of the TFSA.

Storing stocks with U.S. dividends

The TFSA is an ideal financial vehicle for storing stocks from dividend-paying companies. Any capital gains you earn are free of tax, and dividend payments from the company accumulate in the form of cash in your TFSA as well. A lot of Canadians make the mistake of holding dividend-paying stocks from U.S. companies in their TFSAs.

The TFSA is not a retirement account. Despite a tax treaty between the U.S. and Canada, if you earn U.S. dividends in your TFSA, you are liable to pay 15% U.S. withholding tax. If you are looking for a high-yield foreign stock, it is better to consider storing it in your Registered Retirement Savings Plan instead of your TFSA.

Overtrading

Remember that the TFSA is a tax-free savings account and not a tax-free trading account. A lot of Canadian investors are making the mistake of assuming it for the latter. Many Canadians are utilizing TFSAs for day trading, switching between stocks frequently to earn a lot of money. They are enjoying all the benefits of full-time trading free of the taxes they would have to pay with regular trading activities.

Story continues

The CRA will keep an eye on the activity of your TFSA. If you are found to be trading more than a dozen times in a year, it is possible that you can lose your tax-exempt status in your TFSA. If you make any profits using your TFSA as a day trading account, the CRA can treat the income as taxable since it is more like business income than purely investment income.

What to do instead

Holding foreign dividend-paying stocks and overtrading in your TFSA will both make you lose the tax-free status in your TFSA. I can tell you that there is a better way to leverage the advantages of your TFSA, and it can be a more straightforward affair. Look for high-quality dividend-paying stocks traded on the TSX like Sun Life Financial Inc (TSX:SLF)(NYSE:SLF).

SLF is an exciting pick for investors who want to earn dividend income and enjoy healthy capital gains to accrue substantial wealth in the long term. Sun Life is a financial services company that gets the bulk of its earnings through Canadian and U.S. insurance and wealth management operations. The company also holds the potential for immense growth moving forward.

SLF has established subsidiaries in major Asian market segments like Vietnam, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. As the middle class expands in these markets, the demand for wealth management services and insurance will increase. The large population in all these segments opens up doors for Sun Life to see immense growth in revenue.

Foolish takeaway

Avoiding the two mistakes and supplementing your TFSA with stocks from Sun Life Financial can allow you to grow your wealth and enjoy all the benefits of the account type. The share prices for SLF gained more than 32% in 2019 alone. Additionally, the company is paying shareholders a dividend yield of 3.69% at the time of this writing. I think it could be a stock worth looking at closely.

More reading

Fool contributor Adam Othman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned.

The Motley Fools purpose is to help the world invest, better. Click here now for your free subscription to Take Stock, The Motley Fool Canadas free investing newsletter. Packed with stock ideas and investing advice, it is essential reading for anyone looking to build and grow their wealth in the years ahead. Motley Fool Canada 2020
A Northampton County woman is facing a slew of charges after allegedly driving drunk and crashing three times before she was caught.

Washington Township police said 47-year-old Pennie Ann Fischer was driving a white Jeep Compass the night of Nov. 27, with a 13-year-old boy in the front passenger seat, on Second Street.

Fischer, of the 800 block of Birch Avenue in Pen Argyl, struck a Chevrolet Spark parked along Second Street, then she reversed, hitting a black Volkswagen Jetta, police said.

Fischer kept driving back and forth until she was free from both vehicles, and then sped off toward Pen Argyl, police said. Witnesses reported the boy yelled for Fischer to stop before she fled.

Fischer then hit a utility pole and Slate Belt Regional police found her at Davey and East Main streets in Pen Argyl, police said. Witnesses from the crash followed and stopped Fischer, according to township police.

Fischer smelled like she had been drinking, and was unsteady on her feet, police said. Fischer was taken to Easton Hospital for treatment, and a blood draw was taken.

Police said Fischers blood-alcohol level was .28 percent; penalties begin for most drivers at a BAC of .08 percent.

Charges against Fischer were filed Dec. 31, and she was arraigned that night on charges of child endangerment, reckless endangerment, and two counts of DUI, as well as four summary traffic citations.

District Judge Roy Manwaring II set Fischers bail at $25,000 unsecured in the case. Efforts to reach Fischer Monday were not successful.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Leo Varadkar is to meet Micheal Martin to discuss a date for the general election (PA)

Leo Varadkar and Micheal Martin are expected to meet this week to discuss a date for the general election.

The Taoiseach said after reflecting on possible dates over the Christmas period he hopes to meet with the Fianna Fail leader in the coming days.

Mr Vardakar sent a letter to Mr Martin shortly before Christmas detailing a number of issues he wants to address before he agrees to a date.

Speaking to the media on Monday, Mr Varadkar denied the demands in his letter were too high.

Obviously he set out his position in his letter and I set out my position in mine, which I sent just before Christmas, he added.

The next step is for us to meet and discuss it and its intended that will happen this week.

Its not my priority today as you can imagine, my priority today is the situation in our hospitals and of course, the events in Northern Ireland, which Im following very closely and the events in Wexford and I have been in touch with the Coast Guard, so thats my concern for today.

I did reflect on it over the Christmas break. Ive responded in writing to Micheal Martin and we hope to meet later this week to follow up on that.
Dr Marian Dover is training to be a general practitioner with a difference. She is training to be a rural generalist, so as well as training in general practice she must also have emergency medicine skills and one advanced area, and shes chosen obstetrics.

I get really great fulfilment from that continuity," said Dr Dover, who is living and working in Taree on the Mid North Coast of NSW. "I get to know women through their pregnancy, I deliver their babies and then see them at the shops."

Dr Marian Dover is a rural GP in training who 'feels passionately' about supporting the health of regional communities.

But Dr Dover is slightly unusual in her love for rural practice, as there is a national shortage of junior doctors applying to rural generalist training programs.

Nowhere in Australia, NSW included, are we getting enough new or younger doctors into the regional areas. Its extremely challenging, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said.
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Linkedin Kharishar Kahfi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020 16:09 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c3210cf8d 1 National novel-baswedan,acid-attack,Jakarta-police,questioning Free

Jakarta Police investigators summoned Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) investigator Novel Baswedan on Monday to question him as a witness over an acid attack on him in April 2017.

Novel was questioned as a witness for the first time since the police arrested two of their active officers for allegedly carrying out the attack.

The KPK investigator went to the Jakarta Police headquarters in South Jakarta at 10:20 a.m. on Monday. He was accompanied by a number of lawyers

"I will wait for the investigators' questions first," Novel said upon arriving for the questioning.

As of 1:30 p.m., the questioning was still ongoing.

Read also: Two active police officers charged with throwing acid on Novel Baswedan

Two people attacked the senior investigator in April 2017 by throwing acid on his face, causing serious injuries to his eyes. At the time of the attack, Novel was leading KPK investigations in several major cases, including the e-ID graft case that implicates a number of House of Representatives and high-ranking government officials.

After two-and-a-half-years of investigation, the National Police arrested two active police officers, identified only as RM and RB, as suspects in the attack.

RB told journalists on Dec. 28 that he committed the crime due to his resentment against Novel. "I don't like Novel because he's a traitor," the suspect said as quoted by kompas.com.

One of Novel's lawyers, Saor Siagian, said the statement contradicted findings made by a National Police-led fact-finding team earlier last year.

"Investigators should look more into the statement," Saor told journalists on Monday. He added further investigation on the statement should take place to prevent irresponsible people from disrupting the entire investigation.
Detectives investigating a burglary at a house in north Belfast are appealing for witnesses

Detectives investigating a burglary at a house in north Belfast are appealing for witnesses.

It happened in Jamaica Street shortly before 8.30am on Saturday.

Detective Sergeant Corrigan said: "The burglary, which was reported to us shortly before 8.30am yesterday (Saturday) is believed to have occurred during the early hours, between 4am and 5.30am.

"Damage was caused to a television set while an Amazon Fire Tablet (7ins display), a pair of reading glasses, a sum of money and an internet router were stolen.

"I am appealing to anyone who may have been in the Jamaica Street area between 4am and 5.30am and who noticed anything unusual, including any suspicious persons, or anyone with information about this crime to call us.

"I would urge anyone who is offered any items for sale in suspicious circumstances similar to those reported stolen to call our detectives on the non emergency number 101, quoting reference number 376 of 04/01/20."
SEATTLE, Washington, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- New Zealand continues to expand its market share in China, supplying 39% of the total import volume in the 3Q/19, up from 32% five years earlier. Russia and North America suffered the largest declines in the Chinese market share from 2015 to 2019, with Russia's share falling from 28% to 12%, and North America from 21% to 13% during the same period.

In the 3Q/19, log imports from Russia were at their lowest levels in almost 20 years. The only other major change in the Chinese market over the past few years has been an increase in pine log shipments from Uruguay.

These have increased from just a few thousand cubic meters in 2016 to almost 2.5 million m3 last year, making Uruguay the fifth largest log supplier to China in 2018. Startlingly, shipments from Uruguay to China fell to less than 200,000 m3 in the 3Q/19, when prices

for logs plummeted to the point where it no longer made financial sense for Uruguayan exporters to ship logs.

Interestingly, a number of countries in Europe, although some still small suppliers, have begun to expand their presence in the Chinese market over the past 12 months, reports the WRQ. This can be attributed to an oversupply of logs in their domestic markets. In the 3Q/19, the European supply of softwood logs totaled over two million m3 (see chart).

Supplying countries included Germany, Czech, Poland and France (in descending order), all countries impacted by storms and insects in 2018 and 2019. The European share of imported softwood logs has increased from just three percent in the 3Q/18 to as much as 20% in the 3Q/19.

Wood Resource Quarterly (WRQ). This 56-page report, established in 1988 and with subscribers in over 30 countries, tracks prices for sawlog, pulpwood, lumber & pellets worldwide. The WRQ also reports on trade and wood market developments in most key regions around the world. For more insights on the latest international forest product market trends, please go to www.WoodPrices.com

CONTACT:

Wood Resources International LLC

Hakan Ekstrom

[email protected]

www.woodprices.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/wood-resources-international-llc/r/europe-has-rapidly-become-a-major-supplier-of-softwood-logs-to-china--while-russia-and-north-america,c2999520

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/1902/2999520/1168265.pdf Europe has rapidly become a major supplier of softwood logs to China https://news.cision.com/wood-resources-international-llc/i/screen-shot-2019-12-29-at-5-13-42-pm,c2731944 Screen Shot 2019-12-29 at 5 13 42 PM https://news.cision.com/wood-resources-international-llc/i/screen-shot-2019-10-11-at-12-06-41-pm,c2731945 Screen Shot 2019-10-11 at 12 06 41 PM

SOURCE Wood Resources International LLC
Well, well, well  if it isnt our dear, very much wanted friend Jho Low, showing his shiny, round, not un-bao-like face to give an exclusive interview to a Singaporean paper, lamenting the purported widespread misrepresentation of his role in the 1MDB financial scandal.

You know, the one where he was alleged to have pocketed billions, bought fancy gifts for celebrity interlopers and supermodels who we hoped would have known better (looking at you, Miranda Kerr), and scored himself a US$350 million yacht that was later confiscated by the Feds.

Earlier today, Singapores Straits Times published a tete-a-tete with Jho, in which he claimed that instead of being the mastermind behind the billion-dollar sovereign wealth fund siphon, as is commonly suggested, he was only a middleman in the whole debacle.

People and companies act as introducers or intermediaries all the time, Low said.

This is not a unique situation. I was requested to assist because of my good relationships with influential foreign businessmen and decision makers.

Low maintained that his years-long flight from justice was not because he was guiltier than a racoon in a trash can, but that Malaysias government had victimized him and his family, ignoring basic human rights and fair judicial processes.

Lol.

Wed like to take this opportunity to remind you that Low is wanted not only in Malaysia, but also by the U.S. Department of Justice  oh yeah, and he also faces a litany of charges in both Singapore and Switzerland.

But hey, maybe everyone does have it wrong, and the poor fella who spent years sweating on the decks of a luxury yacht he claimed wasnt his (but which he certainly seemed to spend a lot of time on) was just an unwitting patsy. Then again, maybe not.

Low cited his professional connection with government officials in the Middle East and in Malaysia as the reason for his high profile. He also went on to list his principal achievement not as showering Paris Hilton with champagne at Avenue in New York, but instead as helping boost Haj pilgrimage quotas for Malaysian Muslims and developing investment opportunities in the country.

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Refusing to reveal where he was currently residing, he confirmed that the country gave him asylum in August of last year.

Last November, Jho made headlines across the world when it was revealed that he had successfully obtained an E.U. passport from the Mediterranean nation of Cyprus. Following a local Greek-language papers expose, the countrys leadership said they would be revoking Jhos documents.

Despite being offered refuge, an Interpol red notice on Jho Low still stands, and he remains wanted in Malaysia, the United States, Switzerland, and Singapore for his role in the sovereign wealth fund financial scam, in which an estimated US$4.5 billion was allegedly siphoned off for the benefit of Low and his cronies.

Aiyo, Jho. Chinese New Year coming up, lah. Faster, come home already for that yee sang and ang pow.

This article, Straits Talk: Jho Low tells Singapore paper he was just a middleman, originally appeared on Coconuts, Asia's leading alternative media company. Want more Coconuts? Sign up for our newsletters!
Kennedy Kwasi Kankam, MP Nhyiaeso Constituency

06.01.2020 LISTEN

The Member of Parliament for Nhyiaeso Constituency in the Ashanti Region, Kennedy Kwesi Kankam has charged on former President John Dramani Mahama to boast of a common legacy he left during his term as Vice President and as President of Ghana. He said unlike President Akufo- Addo whos Free SHS initiative has been well executed and well impacted on Ghanaian children and their families, John Mahama s SADA and Guinea fowls legacy only reminds Ghanaians of pain.

The Nhyiaeso MP was reacting to the former presidents recent comment made during the 31st December revolution celebration that, demands of money and material things in exchange for political support, and monetisation made politics more expensive and continued to fuel corruption in the country.

Former President Mahama shared these views at the 38th anniversary of the 31st December Revolution in Winneba on Tuesday on the theme, Monetization of Elections in Ghana: A threat to National Development and Genuine Democracy.

Kennedy Kankam said even a child in Ghana can lament on the good things embarked upon by the NPP government which also includes the restoration of teacher and nursing training allowances.

The legislator said he will not even credit the former President as the originator of the statements made about monetization in politics since those statements were the words of former President JJ Rawlings. He urged Mr Mahama to learn how to be innovative and create his own statements devoid of plagiarism.

Honourable Kennedy Kankam delivered his strong attack on the former President, during a political discussion with Kofi Marfo (Sir Richie) on a London based Ghanaian radio station, Hot digital online, yesterday, monitored by Sirrichie.com.

The MP said, President Kwame Nkrumah left a legacy, Prime Minister Busia left a legacy, President Rawlings left a legacy, President Kufuor introduced the NHIS, free maternal health care, National School Feeding Programme, (YEA), and Metro Mass amongst others, but former President Mahama ruled Ghana with predatory elite that prioritises personal accumulation over public interest and service.

He added that prior NPP legitimately taking control of the economy, Ghana was teetering on the edge of economic catastrophe under the watch of John Mahama.

He said Ghanaians know that Nana Addos humour was presented as an example of his humanity and vision hence the need to give him another 4-year mandate during the 2020 elections.

In his new year address to Ghanaians, the legislator said As I prepare for another busy year, both here and in the (House of Records) Parliament of Ghana, you have my commitment that I will always have Nhyiaeso Constituencys best interests at heart.

As we join together to celebrate this special season of goodwill, let our thoughts reach out to those who are lonely, worried about their marriage or relationship or bereaved, which is far from being the best time of the year.

Let us hope for more peace, harmony and development for the New Year, 2020. 

Source: Sirrichie.com
The Congress on Sunday blamed the BJP government for the attack on JNU students by masked miscreants, terming it a 'state-sponsored mayhem'

New Delhi: The Congress on Sunday blamed the BJP government for the attack on JNU students by masked miscreants, terming it a "state-sponsored mayhem", with Rahul Gandhi saying that it was a "reflection of fear" that "fascists in control of our nation" have of the students.

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra met injured JNU students at AIIMS and alleged that "goons" of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah were rampaging through universities' campuses and spreading fear among the students.

"The brutal attack on JNU students and teachers by masked thugs, that has left many seriously injured, is shocking. The fascists in control of our nation, are afraid of the voices of our brave students. Today's violence in JNU is a reflection of that fear," Congress leader Rahul Gandhi tweeted.

The brutal attack on JNU students & teachers by masked thugs, that has left many seriously injured, is shocking. The fascists in control of our nation, are afraid of the voices of our brave students. Todays violence in JNU is a reflection of that fear. #SOSJNU pic.twitter.com/kruTzbxJFJ  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) January 5, 2020

On Twitter, the Congress retweeted a tweet of the BJP where it condemned the violence, saying: "Condemnation means nothing when the actions of this govt have allowed this carnage to take place." "Why are the PM & HM still silent? Why did the Delhi Police not take action faster? Why are violent thugs able to act with such impunity?" the Congress asked. "The BJP govt must answer for #JNUAttack"

The BJP must explain and reveal to the country the identities of all those being used to create violence in our campuses.  Congress (@INCIndia) January 5, 2020

Violence broke out at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday evening as masked men armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.

At least 18 people were injured and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). JNU students' union president Aishe Ghosh suffered a head injury. The Left-controlled JNUSU and the ABVP blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.

Priyanka Gandhi alleged that it was "deeply sickening" about a government that allows and encourages such violence to be inflicted "on their own children." "Wounded students at AIIMS trauma centre told me that goons entered the campus and attacked them with sticks and other weapons. Many had broken limbs and injuries on their heads. One student said the police kicked him several times on his head," she tweeted.

Wounded students at AIIMS trauma centre told me that goons entered the campus and attacked them with sticks and other weapons. Many had broken limbs and injuries on their heads. One student said the police kicked him several times on his head.  Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (@priyankagandhi) January 5, 2020

The Congress leader accused the BJP leaders of "pretending" before the media that it was not their "goons who unleashed violence" at the JNU. "India has an established global reputation as a liberal democracy. Now Modi-Shah's goons are rampaging through our universities, spreading fear among our children, who should be preparing for a better future," Priyanka Gandhi said on Twitter.

"To add insult to injury, BJP leaders are all over the media pretending that it wasn't their goons who unleashed this violence. The people are not deceived," she added.

In a tweet, Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said, "Students beaten up in JNU. Teachers were beaten up in JNU. Goons vandalising women's hotel. Brutality and beatings unleashed. No Police anywhere, No JNU Administration! Is this how Modi Govt seeks revenge against students and youth?"

Students beaten up in #JNU Teachers beaten up in #JNU Goons vandalising womens hotel. Brutality & beatings unleashed. No Police anywhere,

No JNU Administration! Is this how Modi Govt seeks revenge against students & youth?#SOSJNU https://t.co/V6itsIQuR8  Randeep Singh Surjewala (@rssurjewala) January 5, 2020

"Enmity of Modi Govt to JNU is well known. Delhi Police is at the gate of JNU. Despite this, goondas brandishing lathis & rods beat up students and teachers in Sabarmati & other hostels. Is this state-sponsored mayhem being unleashed(sic)?" he posed in another tweet.

Surjewala wondered what "animosity" does the Narendra Modi government have against students and the youth of the country as "they were earlier attacked during their agitation to save the constitution and this time for protesting against hostel fee hike".

"All limits have been crossed now after armed goons entered the JNU campus and attacked the students, teachers as well as the JNUSU president," the Congress spokesperson said.

"What is the Delhi police which is under (Home Minister) Amit Shah doing? PM Modi and Shah should not persecute the youth and students so much that the entire nation stands up against this government. Arrest the goons and take action against them, otherwise what will happen to the future of the country?," he said.

Congress leader P Chidambaram said it is shocking and horrifying to see live telecast of "masked men entering JNU hostels and attacking students" and alleged that such an "act of impunity can only happen with the support of the government".

"What we are seeing on Live TV is shocking and horrifying. Masked men enter JNU hostels and attack students. What is the Police doing? Where is the Police Commissioner?" the former finance minister tweeted.

"If it is happening on live TV, it is an act of impunity and can only happen with the support of the government. This is beyond belief," he wrote on the microblogging site.

If it is happening on live TV, it is an act of impunity and can only happen with the support of the government. This is beyond belief.  P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) January 5, 2020

Senior Congress spokesperson Anand Sharma said, "The violent attack on students and faculty by organised gangs of thugs and lumpen elements is outrageous and unacceptable."

The violent attack on students & faculty by organised gangs of thugs and lumpen elements is outrageous & unacceptable. Democracy cannot be held hostage by fascist forces. Delhi Police should do its duty. Urging all rise to save JNU and democracy. #JNUViolence  Anand Sharma (@AnandSharmaINC) January 5, 2020

"Democracy cannot be held hostage by fascist forces. Delhi Police should do its duty. Urging all democratic forces to rally and rise for JNU and democracy," he said.

Congress general secretary KC Venugopal said that after Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University, now JNU was "under attack". "The miscreants supported by the regime at the Centre is turning our prestigious universities into battlefields. BJP-sponsored violence being unleashed on innocent students to silence and terrify them" he alleged.
Thank you for publishing the column "Universal preschool works for everyone (Dec. 29). I am a child-care worker in the Portland area. My colleagues and I work passionately to give children the best care possible. Most of us work for very little pay and no resources for professional development. Turnover in our field is high, and as a result, the children are the ones who suffer the most. Multnomah County residents: Please work to pass a ballot measure to fund universal preschool with living wages for workers.

Kate Eaton, Portland
 Close Who will replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader?

Boris Johnson has warned Donald Trump against any attempt to target Iranian cultural sites  with the PMs official spokesperson citing international conventions that prevent destruction of heritage.

It comes as Labours National Executive Committee (NEC) decided the rules for electing Jeremy Corbyns successor, and confirmed a new leader will be announced after a three-month long contest on 4 April.

Meanwhile Labour MP Angela Rayner, launching her own bid for the partys deputy leadership, has said she is backing Rebecca Long Bailey for the leadership if her friend decides to join the contest.

This live blog has now closed
After falling 60 points on the open, the S&P/ASX 200 climbed steadily higher across on Monday to close 2.2 points higher at 6735.7 points.

While 120 companies ended the day lower or unchanged, there was enough momentum in the remaining 80 companies to lift the index to a neutral position. Most of the gains were in energy, materials, and communications stocks.

Newcrest Mining added the most points with a rise of nearly per cent to $31.37. Newcrest reached a high of $38.87 on August 8, then dropped nearly 30 per cent to around $28 in December. But since the increase in tensions between the US and Iran in the past few days gold prices have spiked. Evolution Mining ended the day up by 6.8 per cent at $3.92, and Northern Star closed 1.5 per cent higher at $12.10.

Telstra also had a good day with gains of 0.8 per cent to $3.62, while Wesfarmers gained 0.9 per cent to $42.20.

Santos hit the highest price in five years at $8.65, boosted by rising oil prices. However the rising oil price weighed on airlines with Qantas falling 2.6 per cent to $7. And Domain Holdings (which is majority owned by Nine, publisher of this blog) hit its highest ever price of $3.82 today.

And Bega Cheese closed at $3.92, the lowest closing price since December 13. Other food producers were hit today with Costa Group falling 3.2 per cent to $2.41, while companies linked to farming also fell. Elders dropped 3.1 per cent to $6.28, Nufarm fell 2.8 per cent to $5.93, and GrainCorp dropped 2.5 per cent to $7.68.
U.S. defense stocks started 2020 on a strong note, following escalated cross-border tensions between the United States and Iran over the weekend. The situation between these two nations, which have been at loggerheads for long, worsened after an early-hour U.S. airstrike at Baghdad airport killed Irans top general Qasem Soleimani on Jan 3.

The latest strike has raised risk of military escalation between the United States and Iran, thanks to President Trumps repeated remarks of threatening to hit Tehran, if needed. On the other hand, Iran has vowed to take severe revenge.

Will Iran Retaliate?

General Soleimanis death has significantly increased the possibility of a war between the United States and its adversaries in the Middle East, particularly Iran and Iraq. The nuclear deal negotiated by the international community with Iran, after years of hurdles, is the first victim of the crisis. Irans government announced on Jan 5 that the country will no longer observe limitations on uranium enrichment, stockpiles of enriched uranium or nuclear research and development.

The Iranian government has been harboring a lot of anguish against America, following the latters repetitive attempts to establish its influence on Irans economy through the nuclear deal signing along with last Junes sanction that prevented Irans top military officials from accessing U.S. financial instruments.

The killing of Soleimani seems to have served as the last nail in the coffin. Ayatollah Khamenei, another Iranian leader, has vowed that the nation will now take a direct military action against the United States. Adding to the woes of the geo-political situation in the Middle East, Iraq is also ready to make a move, having lost one of its commanders in the same airstrike.

In retaliation, Iraqs parliament has voted to expel U.S. troops, which may consolidate Irans influence in Baghdad.

It is evident from the above discussion that the cross-border situation between the United States and the Middle East is quite delicate right now and the possibility of Iran and Iraq militants separately attacking U.S. troops, if not jointly, is high.

Story continues

Defense Stocks Gain

Per a BBC report, in response to Irans threat of revenge, America has sent 3,000 more troops to the Middle East and advised its citizens to leave Iraq. This indicates the chances of a conflict, which could prove to be beneficial for U.S. defense stocks.

Herein we have mentioned a few defense majors, which witnessed an uptick following the U.S. airstrike at Baghdad airport and also outperformed the broader market. These stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) or Rank #3 (Hold) and have strong fundamentals and thus should find place in an investors watchlist. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Lockheed Martin LMT: This Zacks Rank #3 stock gained 3.6% following the U.S. airstrike at Baghdad airport while the S&P 500 slipped 0.7%. The company surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in four consecutive quarters, delivering average surprise of 14.41%. Its long-term earnings growth rate is 7.1%.

Northrop Grumman NOC: This Zacks Rank #2 stock gained 5.4% following the U.S. airstrike. The company surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in four consecutive quarters, coming up with an average surprise of 11.48%. Its long-term earnings growth rate stands at 13.1%.

Raytheon Company RTN: This Zacks Rank #2 stock gained 1.5% following the U.S. airstrike. The company surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in four consecutive quarters, with an average surprise of 8.6%. Its long-term earnings growth rate is 10.7%.

General Dynamics GD: This Zacks Rank #3 stock gained 1% following the U.S. airstrike. The company surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in four consecutive quarters, with an average surprise of 4.14%. Its long-term earnings growth rate is 8.6%.

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Defence secretary Mark Esper chief of staff will leave at the end of the month: Getty

The chief of staff to the US defence secretary is standing down  the sixth senior civilian Pentagon official to leave their post in recent weeks.

Eric Chewning, the right hand man to Mark Esper, will end his job at the end of the month.

Reports suggest he will be replaced by Jen Stewart, the top Republican member of staff on the House Armed Services Committee, and a former adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Im grateful for Erics professionalism, judgment, and leadership over the last seven months as I moved into the secretary of defence role, Mr Esper said in a statement.

In an incredibly demanding job, Eric has been a source of calm and tireless work. He will be missed by all. We wish him all the best upon his return to the private sector.

Politico, which was the first to report the news, did not suggest Mr Chewnings departure was in any way linked to Donald Trumps decision to order the targeted killing of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani.

It is known, however, the option of killing the Quds Force leader was among the extreme options presented to Mr Trump when asked for options on how to respond to the killing of a US contractor by a rocket attack on a base in Iraq by Iraqi militia.

Reports said Mr Trump first chose to respond by attacking five militia bases. But when he subsequently saw attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad by Iran-backed militia members, he decided to order the strike on Soleimani.

The New York Times said that top Pentagon officials were stunned.

Fox News said Mr Chewnings departure had been expected, and claimed it was not related to the current Iranian conflict.

However, Mr Chewning, who is said to be joining the private sector, is the latest in a succession of senior civilians to depart the defence department.

Among those who have also left was director of Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, the acting undersecretary for personnel and readiness, the principal deputy undersecretary for intelligence, and the assistant secretary for Asian and Pacific security affairs.

Story continues

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Urging the central and Delhi governments to stop indulging in blame games over the attack on JNU students by masked hooligans, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday sought strict action against perpetrators of violence irrespective of their party links.

Singh sought the action saying the spate of violence in various university campuses recently has marred India's image internationally and has caused "irrevocable damaged" to the country's education system.

"The Centre and Delhi government should stop blame games over the attack on JNU students and ensure urgent restoration of law and order in the premier university of the country," he said in a statement here.

Terming attacks on JNU students on Sunday evening as "unparallel in independent India", Singh questioned the Delhi police for its absence from the scene of trouble.

Where was the Delhi Police when armed goons had a free run at the university campus, indulging in brutal attacks on students, staff and teachers? he asked.

Why did the police force, which had been ruthless in its actions when the trouble had broken out in Jamia (Milia Islamia) some days back, suddenly decide to stay back in the case of JNU? Whose orders were they acting on? he demanded to know.

The Punjab chief minister also sought to know from his Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal as to why did he merely tweet his "anguish" over the incident and make no "effective intervention" to contain the situation.

How could he not rush to the spot? Was it enough for him to simply tweet his anguish? As chief minister, and more importantly as someone who claims to be the custodian of the welfare of Delhi's citizens, why did he not intervene personally? Singh asked.

"The shocking lawlessness that emerged from JNU last night made a mockery of India's claim to be a mature democracy, and marked the total failure of every institution responsible for the safety of the people of Delhi, he said.

He blamed both the Centre and the Delhi government as well as the Delhi police for being merely "mute spectators while India's future was under such a brazen and shameless assault".

Endorsing the demand, raised by various quarters, for the Supreme Court to take suo motu cognizance of the violence on JNU campus, Singh said, "It is necessary to identify and act against not just the assailants behind what appeared to be a pre-planned attack but also those who became co-conspirators by virtue of allowing it to continue unabated."



"If this kind of incident goes unpunished in the national capital, one can only imagine what could happen in educational institutions in other parts of the country," he said.

Singh said "such an attack on students in an educational institution marks an ugly turn for the nation, which, if unchecked, could trigger India's eventual downfall from its exalted position as a global symbol of democracy and upholder of the law".

Is this the nation for which our freedom fighters gave up their lives? Is it the country of which our forefathers and grandfathers laid the foundation stone with their blood and sweat? he asked.

The chief minister called upon all like-minded people to rise to the occasion and fight against the forces that he said are "hell-bent on destroying India's glorious status as a progressive and liberal democracy, founded on the Constitutional principles of unity, amity and secularism".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
[January 06, 2020] Zyxel to Showcase 5G/LTE and 10G Broadband, WiFi6 and Cyber-Security Solutions for Service Providers at CES 2020

Zyxel Communications, a leading provider of secure broadband networking, Internet access and connected home products, will showcase its comprehensive portfolio of 5G/CBRS/LTE (News - Alert) fixed wireless broadband solutions, 10G fiber solutions, 802.11ax (WiFi6) whole-home managed WiFi, and home cybersecurity solution bundles for service providers at CES (News - Alert) 2020, Jan. 7-10, 2020. Service providers interested in meeting with Zyxel at CES 2020 to view the live product demos and receive insight into the company's 2020 product roadmap can request a meeting time here. Award-Winning Whole-Home WiFi6 Solutions Zyxel's growing family of WiFi6 solutions provides seamless performance and mobility to all areas of the home to provide fast, reliable, secure connectivity to computers, mobile devices, streaming media appliances, wearable technology, and smart IoT devices. Zyxel, a leader in whole-home mesh-powered WiFi systems, is among the industry's first to have a WiFi6 WiFi Extender with an 8x8 (News - Alert) 5GHz antenna configuration. The WiFi6 product line also features the CES 2020 Best of Innovations award-winning Zyxel Halo Light Gateway, a powerful 10G XGS-PON WiFi6 whole-home EasyMesh gateway and WiFi6 extender system. The innovative Halo Light system incorporates several intelligent features including smart self-monitoring, gateway-based cyber-security and parental control. The premium WiFi6 (11ax) MPro Mesh solution includes the EX5510 WiFi (News - Alert) 6 Multi-Gigabit Router and WX3310 Dual-Band WiFi 6 Extender. Zyxel's whole-home mesh WiFi systems are accompanied by easy-to-use, intuitive self-help mobile apps that help subscribers manage and monitor their home networks, reducing support calls and costs for service providers. Award-winning 5G / LTE - A Comprehensive CPE Portfolio Zyxel offers a comprehensive porfolio of 5G/LTE CPE solutions for Fixed Wireless Broadband deployments. The product line includes the new Halo Air 5G WiFi Intelligent Whole-Home Wi-Fi system, a 2020 CES Innovation Awards Honoree in the Smart Home category. Halo Air is a 5G fixed wireless broadband gateway and WiFi6 WiFi extender system that delivers broadband speeds up to 2 Gbps throughout the home to provide a complete WiFi6, EasyMesh whole-home WiFi solution.



Zyxel's family of LTE products also includes the LTE7480 Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) Outdoor Router and LTE7461 Multiple Licensed Band Outdoor Router which combine LTE network technology and high-gain antennas to provide lightning-fast Internet connectivity to hard-to-reach customers. Zyxel's 5G products also include the 5G New Radio Outdoor Router and 5G NR Sub 6GHz Portable Router, which deliver greater performance, spectrum efficiency and latency compared to current LTE standards. Zyxel's LTE solution is further enhanced with Band Pilot, Zyxel's cloud-based LTE management system which makes it easy for service providers to remotely configure, monitor, manage, and diagnose CPE for optimal performance while saving truck-roll expenses.

eHomeShield, Cyber-Security Service Solution eHomeShield powered by F-Secure (News - Alert) is a suite of cybersecurity products that enables service providers to offer their subscribers comprehensive gateway security with Smart-home cyber-threat protection, privacy protection, content filtering and parental control services. eHomeShield also gives service providers the option to provide anti-virus and malware protection services for their subscribers' mobile devices as well. The service is accompanied with an easy-to-use mobile app that allows subscribers to manage their secure network. Multi-Gig Broadband CPE Zyxel will also display their top-of-the-line 10G XGS-PON WiFi6 gateway, Amendment 3 G.Fast CPE and multi-gig Ethernet WiFi6 gateways for fiber deployments offering their service provider customers the most complete line of broadband CPE in the industry. DAS solutions Zyxel's DAS (Distributed Antenna System) solutions utilize CAT5 technology to provide solution providers with a highly functional, easily installable and affordable indoor cellular solution for the middle market. The Zyxel DAS solution, which includes the ZoneDAS Base Unit, extender and remote unit, supports multiple independent 20 MHz-wide channels/bands/operators and multiple coverage zones. The system scales to support environments ranging from 2,500 to 80,000 square meters making it ideal for deployments in environments such as warehouses, high-rise buildings, hospitals, and shopping malls. For more information about Zyxel and its connectivity solutions, visit www.zyxel.com/us and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. About Zyxel: Zyxel, a pioneer in IP technology for over two decades and trusted brand for over 30 years, provides a complete portfolio of multi-service LTE, fiber and DSL broadband gateways, home connectivity solutions, smart home devices and enterprise-class Ethernet switches, security and Wi-Fi equipment for small to mid-size businesses. Zyxel offers integrated, interoperable network solutions based on open standards. Headquartered in Anaheim, California, Zyxel offers its partners service-rich solutions backed by a domestic team of logistic, sales, and technical support professionals. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005462/en/

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Carnell Elementary in Philadelphia, Pa. on Friday, Dec. 20, 2019. The school was closed because of asbestos. Read more

Carnell Elementary School will remain closed this week as Philadelphia School District officials scramble to fix damaged asbestos in dozens of locations throughout the building.

The decision came after district personnel and officials with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers spent several hours Monday walking through the Oxford Circle building. On the walk-through, they discovered new areas of damaged asbestos that will require attention, union officials said.

The school, on Devereaux Avenue, was closed on Dec. 20 when damage to asbestos-containing pipe insulation was flagged.

Carnell students will have missed eight school days if they return to class as planned Monday, Jan. 13, a date that depends on testing and inspection. Students can still come to the school building this week to pick up free breakfast and lunch between 8:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., district officials said in a news release.

Carnell is the sixth Philadelphia school that has been temporarily shut because of asbestos. A seventh building  an early childhood education center  was also closed because of imminent hazards from asbestos.

 READ MORE: Read more: Missed asbestos, dangerous dust

Jerry Roseman, the PFTs environmental scientist, said the teachers union and the district were working on a plan to handle asbestos cleanup jobs going forward. That plan would, among other things, ensure that areas of damaged asbestos be identified and assessed in a uniform way; mandate the sharing of up-to-date information with the union; and focus on removing damaged asbestos instead of patching or containing it whenever possible.

Roseman, who spent most of the day at Carnell, said he and district representatives found another couple dozen areas of damaged asbestos, most small but some more significant, that had not been noted anywhere else.

Were looking harder now, and we start to see more, Roseman said, noting increased public awareness of the risks posed by asbestos.

Asbestos is present in roughly 175 of the districts 200-plus buildings. Undamaged, it poses no health risks; disturbed, however, it can release tiny fibers that can cause cancer and other ailments if ingested.

 READ MORE: After 28 years Philly classrooms, this teacher was diagnosed with mesothelioma.

The widespread presence of asbestos has been an ongoing headache for the district, particularly this school year, beginning with the announcement of a district teachers diagnosis with mesothelioma, the asbestos-linked cancer, then with the discovery of damaged asbestos at the building housing Benjamin Franklin High and Science Leadership Academy.

The district has taken heat from parents, teachers, and others for its handling of asbestos cleanup. Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. has pledged quicker action and better response time.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020 16:15 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c3210e4b9 1 World Natuna,South-China-Sea,fisheries,defense,China Free

Indonesia is to send some 120 fishers from Java's coasts to operate in the waters surrounding the Natuna Islands in Riau Islands province, its chief security minister said on Monday, in the latest attempt to defend against China's illegal incursions into the nation's exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Mahfud MD said the government aimed to counter China's claim over parts of its EEZ by mobilizing a fleet of fishing vessels to occupy and exercise their exclusive rights in waters where authorities have spotted Chinese coast guard vessels still operating.

"We want to mobilize fishermen from Pantura [Java's northern coast] and maybe eventually from other areas outside of Pantura to explore marine resources, go fishing and so on [in Natuna]," Mahfud was quoted by kompas.com as saying as he received representatives of fisher groups at his office on Monday.

Mahfud said the fishers would also help protect Natuna waters from foreign vessels encroaching the area, although it is unclear if they would be armed.

"You will, in addition to exercising your rights as citizens, also make good on your duty to help defend the country, to show that these waters are ours," he said, reassuring them that the state would increase patrols and protect their well-being. "The important thing is that you are comfortable there. The state will oversee your activities there."

The office of the coordinating minister is also setting up meetings with other stakeholders from the marine and fisheries industry this week.

The Indonesian Navy revealed at end of last month that Chinese coast guard and fishing vessels were repeatedly encroaching on Indonesia's EEZ waters and illegally poaching there over the Christmas holiday, prompting the government to summon the Chinese envoy in Jakarta last week to lodge a formal protest with Beijing.

However, China seems undeterred and has kept its ships in the area. Up until Sunday, the commander of the recently minted Joint Defense Area Command (Kogabwilhan) I said the vessels had remained and had been spotted fishing in waters only 130 nautical miles (209 kilometers) from Ranai, the capital of Natuna regency.

China claimed that, based on its historical rights in the South China Sea, its activities in Natuna waters were meant to assert its sovereignty over the Spratly Islands as well as its sovereign rights and jurisdiction over "relevant waters" nearby. China has never made its legal case to support its claims.

Jakarta rejected the asserted historical claims, with the Foreign Ministry saying they were "unilateral, have no legal basis and have never been recognized by the 1982 UNCLOS [United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea]".

"We are entitled to explore and exploit the wealth of the sea there, including 200 meters down from the bottom of the waters. That is according to the law," Mahfud said.

An EEZ covers waters 200 nautical miles out from a nation's coastline, and confers it the exclusive right to exploit marine resources in the column of water within this designated area, according to UNCLOS.

Indonesia previously built a marine and fisheries hub at Selat Lampa Port on Natuna Besar Island, the outermost island in the Natuna Islands chain.

Led by then-maritime affairs and fisheries minister Susi Pudjiastuti, the facility was built to accommodate fishing activities in Fisheries Management Area (WPP) 711, which includes the Karimata Strait, the Natuna Sea and the North Natuna Sea. It is equipped with cold storage systems and other facilities to support export activities and help develop the local economy. (dis/tjs)


ASUS VivoBook 15

An ideal laptop for those on a budget but don't want to sacrifice quality. The VivoBook 15 has a full HD LED display and a frameless Nano edge screen so you can see everything clearly. Internally, it's powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 processor, with 8GB of Ram and 256GB of storage. Battery life could be better however, as it only offers up to 6 hours on a full charge.

479, currys.co.uk

HP Pavilion

This 23.8 inch desktop computer has a full HD display and a sleek white monitor, whilst inside it is powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 processor, handy for using complex editing software, along with 8GB of Ram and 1TB of storage. Don't forget the inbuilt B&O speakers which make it ideal for watching videos or streaming Netflix.

599, currys.co.uk

Lenovo IdeaCentre A340-24IWL

An all-rounder for the family, this Lenovo desktop has a rather contemporary appearance with its 23.8-inch full HD screen. The computer is made up of an 8th generation Intel Core i3 Processor with 8GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage plenty for all those family photos.

599, johnlewis.com

Microsoft Surface 3 Laptop

Heralded as the best laptop Microsoft has made yet. Ideal for the on the move, it weighs a mere 1.25kg and boasts 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage as standard. The battery is amazing too, which Microsoft claims can last nearly a full day when charged.

899, microsoft.com

HP Envy 13

The HP Envy is a serious contender against Apple's Macbook. With a 13.3-inch gorilla glass touchscreen to protect from scratches, it also has a fingerprint reader so there's no need to worry about passwords. Inside the laptop is powered by an Intel Core i7 processor, along with 8GB of Ram and 512GB of storage at its disposal.

929, currys.co.uk

By Jack Prescott
Kenyan police say they have arrested three men who tried to force their way into a British Army training camp on the same day that al-Shabab extremists attacked a military base and killed three US military personnel.

The internal police report said the three 'terrorist suspects' were arrested Sunday after trying to enter the British Army Training Unit in Laikipia county.

It occurred around the same time as the al-Shabab assault on the base in Lamu county.

The British government was not immediately available for comment.

Al-Shabab's assault at the Manda Bay Airfield lasted several hours and destroyed several US aircraft and vehicles. The airfield is adjacent to Camp Simba, a key Kenyan military base used by US counterterror forces.

An undated image taken from the British Army Training Unit in Laikipia county's Facebook shows a British soldier outside the training centre

Smoke rises as flames ravage the American base at Manda Bay Airfield in Lamu County, Kenya yesterday

An image distributed by al-Shabab shows one of the extremists holding the al-Shabab flag aloft while planes burn, said to be at the American Manda Bay Airfield in Manda, Lamu, Kenya yesterday

No Kenyans died in the attack, Kenya's military spokesman Paul Njuguna said Monday.

The two Sunday attacks come days after a US airstrike killed Iran's top military commander and Iran vowed retaliation, but al-Shabab is a Sunni Muslim group and there is no sign of links to Shiite Iran or proxies.

Iran has vowed to avenge his death Soleimani, and a senior commander has issued a chilling warning that British forces could be hit.

'Our forces will retaliate and target US troops in Middle East without any concern about killing its allies, including UK troops, as this has turned into a fully fledged war with much collateral damage expected,' the unnamed commander told The Times.

'No, this attack was no way related to that incident' in the Middle East, an al-Shabab spokesman said. He spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

One analyst, Rashid Abdi, in Twitter posts discussing the attack agreed, but added that Kenyan security services have long been worried that Iran was trying to cultivate ties with al-Shabab.

An image distributed by al Shabaab after the attack on an American military base in Kenya shows Somalia's al Shabaab militant group's flag, said to be at the Manda Bay Airfield in Manda, Lamu, Kenya yesterday

A 2011 file photo taken on the outskirts of Mogadishu shows Somalian al-Shabab fighters in military training

'Avowedly Wahhabist Al-Shabaab not natural ally of Shia Iran, hostile, even. But if Kenyan claims true, AS attack may have been well-timed to signal to Iran it is open for tactical alliances,' he wrote, adding that 'an AS that forges relations with Iran is nightmare scenario.'

Kenya is a key base for fighting al-Shabab, one of the world's most resilient extremist organizations. A plume of black smoke rose above the US airfield Sunday after residents said a car bomb had exploded.

The al-Shabab claim of responsibility said Sunday's attack was part of its 'Jerusalem will never be Judaized' campaign, a rarely made reference that also was used after al-Shabab's deadly attack on a luxury mall complex in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, in January 2019.
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Even as several Opposition parties and Left-backed organizations blamed the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for the violence in Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), the BJP defended the students body.

Since Sunday evening, when hoodlums attacked students of the varsity, BJPs IT wing released videos and pictured of what they claimed was attack by Left wing organizations on ABVP students.

There is a motley group of Left leaning activists drawn from art, literature and Bollywoood, lapsed academicians and failed politicians, who cant win a municipal poll but are ideological mercenaries. Backed by Opposition parties, they are the ones fomenting trouble on campuses, tweeted BJP IT cells Amit Malviya.

There is a motley group of Left leaning activists drawn from art, literature and Bollywood, lapsed academicians and failed politicians, who cant win a municipal poll but are ideological mercenaries. Backed by opposition parties, they are the ones fomenting trouble on campuses...  Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) January 6, 2020

On Sunday, Malviya had put out several videos of injured students claiming that many from the ABVP had been targeted in the attack. He had also questioned the presence of Opposition leaders at the campus shortly after the incident.

How come some Left activists who are neither students nor professors of JNU always land up at the campus every time violence breaks out?, Malviya said in a tweet on Sunday.

How come some Left activists, who are neither students nor professors of JNU, always land up at the campus every time violence breaks out?  Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) January 5, 2020

The official Twitter handle of the BJP also blamed the attack on what it called the forces of anarchy.

We strongly condemn the violence on JNU campus. This is a desperate attempt by forces of anarchy, who are determined to use students as cannon fodder, create unrest to shore up their shrinking political footprint. Universities should remain places of learning and education, the BJPs official Twitter handle said.

Senior BJP leader and party general secretary Muralidhar Rao defended the ABVP on charges of violence.

Both the BJP and the ABVP are ideological organizations that are committed to democratic discourse. They will never indulge or initiate any violence, Rao said.

Several BJP sympathisers made hashtag #LeftAttacksJNU trend on social media and claimed that an attempt to create a false narrative was being made.

We have videos to prove that JNUSU members were beating up students and preventing them from registering for exams. They are creating a fake narrative. The protest started as a demand for fee roll back, that happened and now they dont want any academic activity on the campus. They are trying to create a Jan Andolan, but if they dont want to sit for exams, how can they prevent others too? said ABVPs national media convenor Rahul Chaudhary.

Significantly, the violence in JNU has come at a time when the Delhi Assembly Elections are round the corner. They also come in the aftermath of the police action in Jamia Millia Islamia where those protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act were lathicharged.

The chief of Delhi BJP Manoj Tiwari claimed that the disappointment of those who were rejected by the people in general elections was coming to the fore in the form of violence on campuses.

He demanded a free and fair inquiry and strict punishment for the culprits.
We're at that weird point in the week where CES simultaneously has and hasn't started, and it's already becoming clear Samsung isn't sticking to business as usual in 2020. That's partially due to the hype surrounding its curious Neon project, but also because Samsung just revealed two modest versions of its most popular smartphones. The Galaxy S10 Lite and Note 10 Lite are exactly what their names suggest, and while I'm always in favor of phone makers crafting high-powered devices that don't cost a ton, Samsung is being surprisingly tight-lipped about them. That said, we did learn a few things after a bit of Vegas hands-on time.

Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite hands-on Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite hands-on

For one, they have plenty in common. Both devices, for instance, pack 6.7-inch Super AMOLED Infinity-O displays, which in Samsung-speak means "they have hole-punch camera cutouts." Both of those screens run at 2,400x1,080, and are as easy on the eyes as you'd expect from Samsung, arguably the best smartphone display makers in the business. Both run Android 10 out of the box, both come with either 6GB or 8GB of RAM, both have in-display fingerprint sensors and 128GB of internal storage and 4,500mAh batteries. You get where I'm going with this.

Obviously, though, these phones aren't carbon copies of each other. The Note 10 Lite has a standard headphone jack and (obviously) an S Pen. While both phones have triple cameras around back, the Note 10 also arguably gets the better end of the deal -- it packs a 12MP wide camera with dual pixel autofocus, OIS and an f/1.7 aperture, along with a 12MP, f/2.2 ultra-wide and another 12MP f/2.4 telephoto camera. That doesn't just mean it feels more like a traditional, premium Samsung phone; I'd argue that also means it's much more flexible. The S10 Lite, by contrast, has a 48MP main camera, the same ultra-wide, and a 5MP macro camera. Ask yourself: When's the last time needed to shoot a macro photo?

Story continues

Oh, and while the Note 10 Lite we played with used an octa-core Exynos chipset, the S10 Lite actually just contained a Snapdragon 855. If I were a betting man, I might take that to mean the S10 Lite will be the only model to wind up in the US, but Samsung wouldn't say much on the matter.

Another lesson learned today: The compromises Samsung had to make here don't feel as dramatic as you might think. Both of these devices feel flagship-fast, and while the Note 10 Lite has the nicer camera setup, the S10 Lite's cameras certainly aren't stinkers. And while neither of these screens are as pixel-dense as the high-end versions launched last year, I honestly don't have much to complain about. Colors looked a little off to me at first, but that was mostly because I don't use Samsung phones' default color mode. Look a little closer, though, and Samsung's changes become more apparent.

Going into this, I just sort of assumed the Note 10 Lite would use the regular Note 10's S Pen, but that's not actually true -- this version of the stylus doesn't seem to have a gyroscope, so you can't use some of the magic-wand-y Air Actions Samsung introduced last year. That's far from ideal, sure, but I honestly stopped using those Harry Potter gestures pretty quickly anyway. For people new to the Note experience, this won't feel like a big loss. Not when writing on the Note 10 Lite's spacious screen feels as good as it always did.

Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite hands-on Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite hands-on

So, yeah, there's quite a bit to like about both of these phones. If nothing else, they're clear attempts on Samsung's part to make sure people who can't afford to spend thousands on smartphones benefit from modern performance. Even so, I can't say I love how many lingering questions surround these things. For example: I can't tell you whether either of them are good deals because Samsung hasn't told us how much they cost. They haven't even really ballparked a number to us. (Granted, they're bound to vary a bit as these things go on sale around the world.)

Without those crucial numbers, it's hard to get a sense of how these devices fit into Samsung's line-up. The S10 Lite is especially tricky in this way -- Samsung already has a cheap version of the Galaxy S10 called the S10e, which I reviewed last year and mostly loved. Is that phone still going to represent floor for Samsung's swath of premium devices. Or will Samsung give up on the E-series and focus on these Lite models from now on. Your guess is as good as ours. For now, we'll just have to wait until Samsung starts selling these devices -- another mystery! -- before we render our verdicts.
MBABANE - The Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) has revealed why the four members of the civil and political organisations are now people of interest to them.

According to the police, the quartet is suspected to have been the architects of the banner with inscription calling for the fall of the countrys authorities and introduction of multiparty in the Kingdom of Eswatini. This is the banner which was displayed during a recent march by members of the Political Party Assembly (PPA) in Mbabane. The exact wording of the banner cannot be repeated as it is suspected to be of seditious nature. According to the law enforcers, they received information from their (police) Intelligence Department that the homesteads or residences of the four were places where suspected explosives, seditious documents and information were being kept.

The four who are being investigated by the police are Sibongile Mazibuko, Musa Nkambule, Jan Sithole and Wandile Dludlu. Mazibuko is the leader of the Ngwane National Liberatory Congress (NNLC) while Nkambule is the Chairman of Sibahle Sinje National Movement. Also, Dludlu is the General Secretary of the proscribed Peoples United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) and Sithole is the President of the Swazi Democratic Party (SWADEPA). They all belong to the PPA, which is an association formed by different political, civil and human rights groups.

Challenging

However, they each approached the court in their personal capacities as they recently filed an urgent application challenging the constitutionality and lawfulness of the warrants of search and seizure. These warrants saw a contingent of police officers descending at their various homesteads where they conducted raids with the hope of finding incriminating material. The police took a number of the leaders belongings which mostly consisted of electronic gadgets and documents. Judge Nkosinathi Maseko, who heard the application, found that it would not be proper to allow the police to act on the strength of the warrants while the matter was still pending in court.

The applicants are seeking an order declaring to be unlawful and setting aside the search warrants that were issued against them dated November 25 and December 19, 2019. During the argument of the matter, Assistant Attorney General Mbuso Simelane, informed the court that criminal investigations against the quartet were 95 per cent complete. Meanwhile, in his answering affidavit, Deputy National Commissioner of Police, Sam Mthembeni Mthembu, denied that the search and seizure warrants against the applicants were unlawful and unconstitutional.

He averred that the items that were seized from the applicants were taken to the respective magistrates who issued the warrants. Mthembu alleged that the magistrates then ordered that the items should be detained for purposes of assisting the police in furthering their investigations to the suspected acts of alleged sedition by the applicants. I have been advised by the officers who executed the search warrants that none of the applicants challenged the warrants, contended the senior police officer. According to the deputy commissioner of police, the searches and seizures were conducted on a reasonable ground of suspecting that there was upon the premises of the applicants anything to which there were reasonable grounds for believing that it would afford evidence as to the commission of the offence or anything intended to be used for the purposes of committing the offence.

Warrants

He also told the court that the application to set aside the search warrants was academic as the search had been conducted. I deny that the applicants right to privacy has been unlawfully infringed upon. On contrary, the issue and execution of a search and seizure involves a statutorily authorised invasion and taking by the State of private property, averred Mthembu.

Mthembu further submitted that there were remedies for any party aggrieved by the issuance of a warrant, which is to institute judicial review proceedings for an order to quash or set aside the warrants. The matter is still pending in court and it will be argued on Wednesday. The State is represented by Assistant Attorney General Mbuso Simelane and Principal Crown Counsel Bheki Tsabedze while appearing for the applicants is renowned Human Rights Lawyer Thulani Maseko.
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Central Depository Services (India) Ltd, India's first listed depository, on Monday inaugurated its first branch at the GIFT City here, introducing delivery-based trading to the existing list of products traded at the IFSC, a senior official said.

This is the first depository to start its operations in the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City), said Nehal Vora, managing director and chief executive officer, CDSL.

Vora said the operation of CDSL at the IFSC has been launched following requisite approval from markets regulator Sebi.

He said that to start with, 2-3 depository participants have expressed interest to start operations in GIFT City, India's first international financial services centre (IFSC).

"Being a regulator ourselves, we are subjecting ourselves to higher level of transparency in terms of disclosures for these kinds of institutions. Opening an IFSC branch is the first of the many initiatives we propose in taking the entire business of CDSL to the next level," Vora said.

He also said CDSL also plans to launch initiatives such as depository receipts, listing of bonds and a variety of hybrid or combination products.

Vora added that a unified regulator for all financial market investments in the GIFT City as proposed by the government will be a facilitating mechanism, but business will be usual for existing regulators here until that happens.

GIFT City MD and Group CEO Tapan Ray said the presence of CDSL as the first depository in the GIFT City will complete the capital markets eco-system in the GIFT IFSC.

In IFSC, Sebi is the single touch contact, which coordinates with all regulators. All three market segments -- commodities, currency, and securities -- are one in IFSC.
New Delhi [India], Jan 6 (ANI): No violence was reported from inside and outside Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus on Monday and deployment of police forces will continue till the situation improves, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southwest) Devender Arya said on Monday.



"The situation both inside and outside the JNU campus is completely under control. Police deployment will continue until the situation normalizes. No violence reported today from both inside and outside the campus," Arya told ANI.

On Sunday evening, more than 18 students of the university, including JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, were injured and taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered the varsity and attacked them and teachers with sticks and rods. (ANI)


Americans woke last Friday to news that our military had killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. I was in Jerusalem at the time, leading a study tour of the Holy Land.

It was fascinating to see the response in Israelgratitude that one of the enemies of the Jewish state was dead coupled with expectations of Iranian response and the possibility that Israel might be targeted.

Some in our group asked if Israel would raise its threat level in response to Soleimanis death. My answer was that they live every day at the highest level of preparation. When youre a country the size of New Jersey surrounded by enemies who want to exterminate your nation, expecting the unexpected becomes a way of life.

This is a lesson I brought with me when I returned home yesterday, and one Id like to explore with you today.

Remembering Lois Evans, a true faith hero

A memorial service for Lois Evans will be held at 11:00 this morning at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas. Lois was one of the most godly and effective Christian leaders of our generation. She and her husband, the revered pastor Dr. Tony Evans, have built a ministry that spans the world with biblical truth.

My wife, Janet, worked with Lois on several projects over the years. Janet considers Lois one of her heroes in the faith. For Lois to end her earthly life at only seventy years of age points to the fact of mortality for all people, even those who follow Jesus most closely and serve him most effectively.

Our mortality is illustrated by catastrophic fires sweeping Australia and by tragic accidents such as the death of a pastor who drowned trying to save two of his children at a Spanish resort over Christmas. The children died as well.

Early yesterday morning, a tour bus in Pennsylvania struck an embankment and rolled over. It was then struck by two semi-trucks before a third truck collided with the other two semis. A total of six vehicles were involved. At least five people were killed; around sixty more were injured.

Closer to home for me, a one-year-old boy was killed in a targeted shooting in Dallas early Sunday morning. Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson tweeted later: A shameless act of gun violence has taken the life of yet another innocent child in our city.

Standing at Armageddon

We should grieve for those we lose and do all we can to prevent suffering and tragedy in the future. At the same time, we should recognize that mortality is a fact for us all.

Last Tuesday, our tour group stood atop Megiddo, the ancient fortress city that overlooks the valley of Armageddon. We remembered the battles that have been waged over the centuries in this ancient place and noted the fact that Armageddon can come any day for any one of us.

As Scripture notes, We are but of yesterday and know nothing, for our days on earth are but a shadow (Job 8:9). Wise King Solomon observed, No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death (Ecclesiastes 8:8). Thats why now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2). Tomorrow is promised to no one.

I dont know when the Lord will come for us or we will go to him. But I do know that we are one day closer to eternity than ever before.

Three countercultural truths

Lets close with three biblical principles that will redeem mortality for us today.

One: Death can help us value life.

Jesus came that we may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). In December 1776, Thomas Paine wrote in The American Crisis, Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. He added: What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

Do you esteem this day as the gift of God?

Two: Our limits can lead us to Gods best for us.

Scripture teaches that this is the will of God, your sanctification (1 Thessalonians 4:3). In this light, consider this reflection by Jonathan Maury of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist: Vocation is not a goal to be achieved but a gift to be received. Every life experience becomes a vehicle for Gods call to be realized in vocation. In learning our limits and embracing failures, we can begin to recognize Gods particular gifts for us, which infuse our very being and form in us our unique vocation.

Are you fulfilling your unique vocation?

Three: Our identity is not found in this world but in the next.

Jesus prayed: This is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (John 17:3). Henri Nouwen: The great spiritual task facing me is to so fully trust that I belong to God that I can be free in the worldfree to speak even when my words are not received; free to act when my actions are criticized, ridiculed, or considered useless; free also to receive love from people and to be grateful for all the signs of Gods presence in the world. I am convinced that I will truly be able to love the world when I fully believe that I am loved far beyond its boundaries.

Will you be able to love the world today?

Publication date: January 6, 2020

Photo courtesy: Pixabay

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Trump Again Eyes Iranian Cultural Sites, Says Iraq Faces Sanctions Over Possible U.S. Troop Withdrawal

By RFE/RL January 06, 2020

After a 17-day sojourn at his Florida estate, U.S. President Donald Trump returned to Washington on January 5 facing the fallout from the strike he ordered to kill a powerful Iranian general.

According to White House media pool reports, Trump threatened Iraq with sanctions, reiterated a warning to bomb Iranian cultural sites, and vowed "major retaliation" if Iran to tries to avenge the killing if its top military commander Qasem Soleimani.

Responding to a decision by Iraqi's parliament for the expulsion of U.S. troops after Soleimani was killed last week at the Baghdad airport, Trump said, "we're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," referring to a U.S. air base.

"We've spent a lot of money in Iraq," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. "We have a very extraordinary air base there. It cost billions of dollars to build."

Should Tehran retaliate for Soleimani's killing, the U.S. president said he wouldn't rule out striking Iranian cultural sites, dismissing concerns within his own administration that such an action would constitute a war crime under international law.

If Iran is "allowed to kill our people. They are allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way," Trump said.

Retaliation from Iran would be met with "major retaliation," he added.

Trump said that if Iraq asked U.S. forces to leave and it was not done cordially, "we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame."

Iraqi lawmakers on January 5 passed a resolution that said the country's government "commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting [the Islamic State (IS) extremist group] due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory."

The government of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi "must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace, or water for any reason," they added.

The United States has some 5,000 military personnel in Iraq, mainly as advisers.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said more Iranian leaders will be targeted if Tehran avenges the killing of Soleimani.

Speaking on numerous television news shows over the weekend, Pompeo said if Iran uses its proxy forces -- in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and elsewhere -- to strike U.S. targets, a response won't be limited to them.

"They will be borne by Iran and its leadership itself," Pompeo said. "Those are important things the Iranian leadership needs to put in its calculus as it makes its next decision."

Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, the foreign arm of Iran's hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), was killed on January 3 as he left Baghdad's airport in a convoy amid a regional tour.

The attack marked a significant escalation between Iran and the United States, with Tehran promising "harsh revenge."

In a series of January 4 tweets, President Donald Trump said he had ordered the strike on Soleimani because the Iranian commander had organized attacks on U.S. and Iraqi targets and that he was "preparing for additional hits in other locations."

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the killing of Soleimani was a breach of international law and that any targeting of cultural sites would constitute a war crime.

"Those masquerading as diplomats and those who shamelessly sat to identify Iranian cultural & civilian targets should not even bother to open a law dictionary," Zarif wrote in a January 5 tweet. "Jus cogens refers to peremptory norms of international law, i.e. international red lines. That is, a big(ly) 'no no'."

With reporting by Reuters, dpa, AFP, The New York Times, and AP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/trump- again-eyes-iranian-cultural-sites- says-iraq-faces-sanctions-over-possible -u-s-troop-withdrawal-/30362062.html

Copyright (c) 2020. 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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In the diplomatic circles in Kabul, the chatter was that Mr. Bass was leaving at the completion of his two years for personal reasons. His parents were ill, and repeated difficult postings abroad had kept him away from family for long stretches.

The Trump administration has been negotiating with the Taliban for most of the last year in hopes of winding down a war that began with an American invasion of Afghanistan in the weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The two sides were close to striking a preliminary deal last September, but President Trump called off the talks after a suicide car bomb attack in Kabul killed an American soldier and 11 others. But in an unannounced visit to Afghanistan over Thanksgiving, the president said the diplomatic effort was back on track, and called for an ambitious cease-fire that has long been demanded by the government in Kabul, if spurned by the Taliban.

In recent weeks, Taliban officials and American diplomats had neared announcing some form of a cease-fire across Afghanistan, albeit a brief one. Details of the plan, however, were denied by Taliban officials, and it remains unclear what derailed the announcement.

In December, the diplomatic talks had again paused after the Taliban carried out a brazen attack on Bagram Air Field, the largest American base in Afghanistan. More recently, Taliban negotiators have temporarily suspended the talks to consult with their leaders, but they are expected to resume as soon as this week in Qatar.
Racing Point can finish fourth overall in 2020, according to Sergio Perez.

The Mexican has re-committed to the newly Lawrence Stroll-owned team for the coming seasons, despite the fact that last year was "tough".

"When my contract expires, I always get offers, which is nice to know," Perez told Auto Motor und Sport.

But he decided to sign up for 2020 and beyond, acknowledging that 2019 was "a transition year" for the former Force India team.

"We knew that from the start, but it's still tough in such a long season," Perez said.

"We didn't improve as much as we wanted, as we were late and had too much to catch up. But we have put a lot of effort into 2020.

"I think this can be the first season under the new leadership where we can be very strong. We want to finish fourth. That is our main goal.

"The team is now stable and I hope that in 2020 we will not only attack McLaren but also be significantly closer to the top teams," Perez added.

(GMM)
Senior Congress leader Tarun Gogoi Monday decried the attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University students and said it points to BJP's policy of repressing protests by youths.

The attack indicate that the Narendra Modi government has no concern for democratic norms and the democracy in the country is under threat, he told newsmen here.

"We condemn this act. Such actions will bring further misfortune to the country as the very fabric of the nation's unity and integrity has been threatened.... The protests against the CAA started in Assam and the movement against it strengthened in the state. But soon it spread across the country with the government adopting repressive measures to repress it," the Congress leader said.

The protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens across the country have made it clear that Indians do not want the kind of Hindutva that the BJP and the RSS want to bring in the country, he said.

Continuing his attack, the Congress veteran said "The prime minister alleges that we(Congress) are talking the language of Pakistan, but it is he who has reduced himself to the level of the neighbouring country. He is following Jinnah's two-nation theory on the basis of religion and has emerged as an avatar of India's Hindu Jinnah," Gogoi said.

"We are Hindus but we don't want our country to become a Hindu Rastra. The majority of the people who are protesting and even those killed are Hindus. They do not want the Hindutva the BJP and RSS are propagating," he said.

But the Modi government is so arrogant that it will go to any extent to ensure that its agenda is imposed on the people and will not budge an inch as far as the implementation of the Act is concerned, the former Assam chief minister said.

He said in Assam five unarmed innocent youths were killed during the protests against the CAA, but the BJP governments at the Centre and the state sing the same tune saying that Congress and the Left are involved in the violence.

"Are we so powerful that we can instigate AASU, AJYCP, KMSS and all other regional organisations to come out on the streets to protest.... There is no conspiracy. But the BJP has no political knowledge and are not interested in listening to the voice of the people," Gogoi said.

He challenged the BJP to call an election immediately in Assam and claimed that they will not win even 25 seats.

"The BJP must go from power and all parties must ensure its defeat at the polls.

It is only if the BJP is defeated in Assam that we can ensure that the CAA is not implemented in the state," Gogoi added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said on Monday that all Egyptians should be united and to not allow anyone to divide them.

El-Sisi was speaking at the Coptic Christmas mass in Cairo on Monday while he was congratulating Egyptian Coptic Christians on Christmas.

"We should always be together," El-Sisi said at the new Nativity of Christ Cathedral, stressing that Egyptians should not be worried about the tensions in the region.

"As long as we are together, united, we should not be worried, yet we should take care of what is going now around us," he said.

"No one can drag us here or there," the Egyptian president said. "Egypt was dealing with the world in honour at a time of 'no honour.'"

The Egyptian president gave Pope Tawadros II a flower bouquet on behalf of Egyptians, greeting him before leaving the mass.

El-Sisi has been attending the Coptic Christmas mass for the past four years.

Egyptian ministers, MPs and top state officials attended the mass, which was broadcast on Egyptian TV channels.

The Nativity of Christ Cathedral is the largest church in the Middle East, with a capacity to accommodate 8,200 worshipers. It was inaugurated in 2018.

Coptic Orthodox Egyptians, who make up around 90 percent of all Christians in the country, celebrate Christmas on 7 January. Non-Orthodox Christians observed the holiday on 25 December.

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A plug-in hybrid electric model of the Jeep Compass was showcased at the Geneva International Motor Show in March 2019.

DETROIT  Three new hybrid electric Jeep models are making their domestic debuts at the annual CES technology conference in Las Vegas this week as part of Fiat Chrysler's plans to electrify all vehicles of the iconic SUV brand by 2022.

The Italian-American automaker is showing off plug-in hybrid electric versions of the Jeep Wrangler, Jeep Compass and Jeep Renegade, which all feature a new "4xe" badge  a play on Jeep's reputation as a 4x4 off-road brand.

"Electrification, including the upcoming no-compromise Jeep 4xe vehicles, will modernize the Jeep brand as it strives to become the leader in 'green' eco-friendly premium technology," Fiat Chrysler said Thursday.

The vehicles are expected to assist Fiat Chrysler in meeting U.S. fuel economy standards and help in reshaping the brand's gas-guzzling SUV image.
Russell Crowe was absent as he was announced as the winner of Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television award at The Golden Globes on Sunday.

The 55-year-old actor was given the honour for portraying controversial Fox News executive Roger Ailes in miniseries The Loudest Voice.

But he chose not to attend the gala and instead stayed in his native Australia to help with the wildfires that have ravaged the country.

In absentia: Russell Crowe (pictured) was absent as he was announced as the winner of Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television award at The Golden Globes on Sunday. Pictured on May 22, 2017 in Sydney

He did, however, send a very pointed statement about climate change, which presenter Jennifer Aniston read aloud on stage.

The statement read: 'Make no mistake. The tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is.'

Australia's wildfires have burned about 12.35 million acres of land and destroyed more than 1,400 homes. The death toll has reached 24 people.

Stand-ins: He did, however, send a very pointed statement about climate change, which presenter Jennifer Aniston (left) read aloud on stage. Pictured with Reese Witherspoon

Crowe was up against against Sam Rockwell (Fosse/Verdon), Christopher Abbott (Catch-22), Jared Harris (Chernobyl) and Sacha Baron Cohen (The Spy).

Before handing the honour to the Gladiator star, Jennifer and Reese had also presented the night's first award, Best Actor in a Comedy Series, which was given to Ramy Youssef for his role in Ramy.

The first-time nominee joked that he was not only unrecognisable to anyone in the audience, but his mother had wanted him to lose to The Kominsky Method's Michael Douglas, who was also on the shortlist alongside Bill Hader, Paul Rudd and Ben Platt.

Having his say: Russell's statement read, 'Make no mistake. The tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is'

He said: 'My mom was rooting for Michael Douglas. For some reason Egyptians like Michael Douglas!'

In The Loudest Voice, Crowe portrayed the now-late Ailes who founded Fox News and focuses on the decade in which he arguably became the Republican Party's de facto leader.

Sexual harassment accusations ended Ailes' career in 2016 and he died by subdural hematoma that was aggravated by his hemophilia the following year.

The Loudest Voice and Ramy are now streaming on Stan.
The Great Lakes Bay Economic Club invites the community to a special edition luncheon on Friday, Jan. 17 at Curtiss Hall Banquet Rooms at Saginaw Valley State University with Michigan's Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Registration will take place from 11:30 a.m. to noon with lunch to follow. The program will take place from 12:20 to 1 p.m.

Whitmer will be presenting a Lansing update as she provides a preview of her "State of the State" address.

Whitmer is a lifelong Michigander. She is a lawyer, an educator, former prosecutor, state representative and senator. She was the first woman to lead a Senate caucus. Inspired by her family, she has devoted her life to building a stronger Michigan for everyone.

Whitmer was elected to the House of Representatives in 2000 and elected to the Michigan State Senate in 2006, where she served as the senate democratic leader. In the 2018 gubernatorial election, Whitmer won all 83 counties in the primary and won the general election with 53% of the vote. Since taking her oath of office, she has put together the most diverse cabinet in the state's history. She has signed executive directives to clean up our drinking water, end discrimination in state government based on sexual orientation and gender identity, secure equal pay for equal work, and expand opportunities for small and disadvantaged businesses.

Whitmer said she is committed to solving the problems Michiganders face every day, including ensuring every Michigander has an excellent public education and a path to a good-paying job, and that every community has clean, safe drinking water.

Whitmer and her husband Marc Mallory live in Lansing with her two daughters, Sherry and Sydney. Her three stepsons, Alex, Mason and Winston, all live in Michigan as well. Whitmer earned a bachelor's degree and a law degree from Michigan State University.

Space will be limited for this event and walk-up registration will not be permitted. RSVPs are due by Thursday, Jan. 9. To secure a spot, visit

https://glbec.wufoo.com/forms/m15gzt241w2yeoa/ Admission is $25 for GLBEC members and $35 for guests.
In Monsey, New York, a man was charged with slashing five Jews with a machete as they were celebrating Chanukah at a rabbis home. The same man is suspected of stabbing an Orthodox Jew on his way to synagogue, the police said.

Earlier this month, two shooters killed three civilians at a kosher supermarket in New Jersey after fatally shooting a police officer at a nearby cemetery.

In Massachusetts, Jewish centers in Arlington and Needham were targeted by apparent arson attacks in May.

Theres no question that the Jewish community is feeling vulnerable, along with many others who are victims of and experiencing hate crimes and other forms of discrimination, said Rabbi Marc Baker, the president of Combined Jewish Philanthropies. The rise of anti-Semitism is making many in our community feel vulnerable and wonder about our place in this country.

On Monday, Gov. Charlie Baker held a ceremonial bill signing to call attention to $1 million in funding for security for nonprofits included in a recently passed supplemental budget bill. Past grants from the program have been awarded disproportionately to Jewish institutions.

The rabbi called it powerful for the Jewish community knowing that the government has our back.

The money is part of a state program founded in 2017 that pays for security upgrades at nonprofits that are at high risk of terrorist attacks. That year, lawmakers allocated $75,000. This year, in fiscal 2020, between the regular budget and the supplemental budget bill, the program has $1.5 million.

The grant money can be used for security infrastructure  things like making doors and windows more impenetrable; upgrading loudspeakers, lighting and security systems; installing locks or video cameras; buying screening systems; or buying first aid equipment.

Rabbi Elaine Zecher of Temple Israel of Boston said institutions do not want to reveal their security plans. But, she said the money will help religious institutions strike the balance between being welcoming and being secure.

Baker signed the budget bill Dec. 15, and his decision to highlight the funding now comes amid a spate of religiously-motivated attacks, particularly against Jews.

Thousands of people turned out in New York this weekend for a No Hate No Fear rally against anti-Semitism.

The governor said he attended services at a synagogue last Friday to deliver the message that theres no place for this stuff in Massachusetts.

We have the backs of those who are here to practice their faith, to live their lives without worrying about being assaulted or in some cases severely injured or even maimed or killed because of those beliefs, Baker said.

Asked for his opinion on what is contributing to the rise of hate crimes, Baker pointed to language and social media. I think people have forgotten that language is a weapon, Baker said. I also think frankly, social media is a very coarse and incredibly aggressive environment, and I think people say things all the time on social media that they would never say to someones face.

According to FBI data compiled by the Anti-Defamation League, there were 7,120 hate crimes in 2018, a number that has been increasing since 2014, when there were 5,479 hate crimes.

Of those, more than 4,000 were race-based and 1,400 were based on religion, including 835 incidents against Jews.

There were 373 hate crimes reported in Massachusetts in 2018, including 200 based on race and 86 based on religion.

The deadliest attack on Jews on American soil happened in October 2018, when 11 worshippers were killed in a mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

In April 2019, a man opened fire at a Chabad synagogue in Poway, California, killing one and injuring three.

Sen. Eric Lesser, D-Longmeadow, said he was in synagogue with his wife and two daughters, ages six and three, when he heard about the Pittsburgh shooting. I remember how vulnerable I felt, Lesser said. And I also thought about the other communities around our state, they were feeling vulnerable as well.

Several Jewish community leaders who attended the bill signing said they were heartened by governments response to the incidents.

Jeremy Burton, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, said Jews talk a lot about their history of persecution, expulsion and pogroms. But Burton said in the past, government was responsible for the persecution.

What we know today, what we see here, what we see in this country, is that government has the back of communities, communities of faith, communities of minorities, communities under attack, communities that are being persecuted, Burton said. And that gives us the resiliency to continue to gather, continue to meet, continue to celebrate our culture.
by Michael Liss

I have an awful confession to make. I havent made up my mind about whether President Trump should be convicted and removed from office.

I know that sounds deranged. I am troubled by what Trump apparently did. Disturbed by the scorched-earth defense strategy put together by the Trump team. Deeply concerned about the continuous violations of norms and the virtual certainty they will continue.

All of these things are true, and Im not even a moderate Republican trying to show my independence to the folks back home before voting to acquit. Im a Democrat, and every day of the Trump Regime is an excruciating day. Nothing would make me happier than a landslide repudiation of Trump by a thoroughly repulsed electorate. I want him out, and I believe that, applying a probable cause standard, the House voted appropriately to Impeach and send it to the Senate. Nonetheless, Im not sure that, if I were a Senator, I would vote to convict.

I need evidence. Old fashioned, I admit, but I need it anyway. I need a credible process with witnesses being called and a case being presented in a formal way. I need a sense that the system actually works, as opposed to just being a two-party rumble where few seem to care about facts, and fewer about process.

Three simple questions: What did the President do? Did he have the authority to do it? And, if so, did he abuse that authority beyond the breaking point?

First, be careful how you answer what did Trump do? Eliminate the tweeting, the coarseness, the insults, the self-enrichment, the sheer noise of any of the other antisocial pathologies that Trump exercises in real time and in public view. They dont matter, and the only way to clean those particular stables is on Election Day. The Constitution does not require a President to be Presidential. Only the voters can decide whether character counts.

Of course, a President is not a deity. In December, I argued that, when the Framers were dragging people (some kicking and screaming) away from the Articles of Confederation and toward a new form of government, they had with them (literally) an exemplary model of ability and decorum for a Chief Executive: George Washington. They also had a well-considered fear that whoever sat in the chair after Washington very likely wasnt going to be his equal. That knowledge shaped their drafting approach in deciding the breadth of the Constitutional grant of power they gave to the office itself. It also impelled them to create a deliberative, evidence-based mechanism for a Presidents removal for High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

So, what did Trump do beyond Noise that might have been High Crimes and Misdemeanors? For better or worse, the House-passed Articles of Impeachment have been narrowed to cover just two thingsthe Ukraine matter, and blocking the House from investigating the Ukraine matter. There is much we dont know about Ukraine, as the White House has done everything in its power to keep us from knowing it. There are things, though, that we do know, and they are not flattering. We know he sent Rudy Giuliani over to see if he could dig up dirt on potential political opponents, and we know Rudy has been hanging around with some questionable pals who happen to have large wallets. Thats pretty gross. We also know there was clearly some quid-pro-quo discussions going on in which Trump and his emissaries were threatening to withhold aid until dirt on Joe was delivered and a public announcement of a Biden investigation was made by Ukrainian authorities. We know the President was using taxpayer dollars as leverage (and compromising recognized American security interests) to obtain personal political gain. We know he was withholding those dollars despite a Congressional mandate, was told by his national security team it was illegal to do so, and then kept demanding a different answer until he found an ambitious lawyer at OMB to give it to him. And, finally, we know those dollars were eventually released, although the pressure continued on Ukraine.

None of this is good, but is enough to remove a President from office? Well, its a harder question than it seems, because first you have to define the scope of Presidential Power. If hes acting within his authority, even if its a bit of dirty pool, it is harder to convict than if he exceeded it.

To answer the question of whether he has the power, we should review the thoughts of his most tenacious and effective defender, Attorney General William Barr. In The General and the Attorney General I talked about parts of Barrs November 15th, 2019 speech before the Federalist Society, but I want to look at it again in the context of President Trumps impeachment. Barr, its fair to say, is a bit of a situational Monarchist and even a Fabulist when it comes to Executive Power, and in this speech, he lays out his theories. Read it carefully; imagine him advising the President; and you can understand why Trump may think hes entitled to do whatever he wants.

Here is the Attorney General selectively editing history:

[T]he Framers had come to appreciate that, to be successful, Republican government required the capacity to act with energy, consistency and decisiveness. They had come to agree that those attributes could best be provided by making the Executive power independent of the divided counsels of the Legislative branch and vesting the Executive power in the hands of a solitary individual, regularly elected for a limited term by the Nation as a whole. As Jefferson put it, [F]or the prompt, clear, and consistent action so necessary in an Executive, unity of person is necessary.

Opportunistic supporters of the Unitary Executive theory love the Jefferson quote, but its a peculiar one. Remember that Jefferson did not participate in the Constitutional Convention, so he cannot speak with first-hand knowledge. Look, also, at the contextan exchange of letters between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1796 (nearly a decade after the Constitutional Convention, so hardly binding), planning for the next Presidential electionand, more importantly, clearly reflecting Jeffersons experiences in Paris during the French Revolution. He is not reaching for an Imperial Presidency. More likely, hes referring to the superiority of having a single-person Executive to carry out Executive functions, rather than the hydra-headed, yet dictatorial, approach of both The Committee of Public Safety and its successor, The Directorate.

Be that as it may, Im not going to argue with the concept of an energetic, consistent, and decisive Executive, so long as hes acting within the scope of the authority granted to him. The problem is Barr wants a lot more. Hes also in favor of an Executive who can operate on his own, in secret, and without meaningful oversight, and insists that was the intent of the Framers.

How does he get there? By using a kernel of an actual, enumerated power, building on that, and creating much of the rest by inference.

He begins with a reference to essential sovereign functions such as war and foreign relations which by their very nature cannot be directed by a pre-existing legal regime but rather demand speed, secrecy, unity of purpose, and prudent judgment to meet contingent circumstances. This is quite clever. Barr is taking specific Executive powers referenced in Article II and expanding that authority by adding a manner in which they be carried out.

Then he adds exigent circumstances in which the Executive feels he has to act quickly. Barr cites a plague or national disaster, but could just as easily be referring to any perceived emergency (a Wall comes to mind). Where is this Strict Constructionists scholarly support for exigent circumstances giving enhanced authority to a Chief Executive? Not in the text of the Constitution, and in fact, Congress has had to pass a number of legislative acts granting additional Emergency authority. Bear in mind that the Necessary and Proper Clause applies to Congress, and not the Chief Executive. So, Barr has to reach back a century before the Constitution to draw from the writings of the English philosopher John Locke. Locke is a giant, but he also wasnt in Philadelphia.

We arent done yet. Barr extends his grasp further, to something made entirely out of whole clothhis so-called Executives powers of internal management. These include the powers necessary for the President to superintend and control the Executive function, including the powers necessary to protect the independence of the Executive branch and the confidentiality of its internal deliberations.

There it is. Not only do we have an uber-powerful Unitary Executive who can do pretty much what he wants, but can also use his powers to resist any oversight by Congress or the Courts.

What about all those checks and balances we read about? Barr doesnt much care for them, except as they may constrain the other two branches of government. He fumes over Congressional harassment (hmmm). He goes on at some length to deplore the Judiciarys review of Presidential motives (he refers to the Travel Ban, but you do wonder if Chicken Kiev was on the menu). He blames mushy thinking everywhere, particularly as it may lead to involvement of the federal courts to referee disputes between Congress and the Executive Branch.

The Framers did not envision that the Courts would play the role of arbiter of turf disputes between the political branches. As Madison explained in Federalist 51, the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. By giving each the Congress and the Presidency the tools to fend off the encroachments of the others, the Framers believed this would force compromise and political accommodation.

How the Madison quote fits into the litany of Barr grievances, and exactly which tools Congress retains to force compromise and political accommodation, Barr doesnt say. What he did was more importanthe sent DOJ lawyers in House Judiciary Committee v. McGahn to argue for absolute testimonial immunity, i.e., the President alone can determine who can be compelled by Congress to testify.

Think about that one for a second. And then consider what U.S. District Judge Jackson said in her decision rejecting those claimsciting the same language from Madison in Federalist 51, and going on to write, In short, DOJs implicit suggestion that compelled congressional process is a zero-sum game in which the Presidents interest in confidentiality invariably outweighs the Legislatures interest in gathering truthful information, such that current and former senior-level presidential aides should be always and forever immune from answering probing questions, is manifestly inconsistent with a governmental scheme that can only function properly if its institutions work together.

So, where are we? We have a President who did what he wanted, supported by attorneys and advisors who reassured him that he had unlimited power in the foreign policy area, including to feather his own nest politically, as his motives were irrelevant. All in the context of hearing from the nations top lawyer that he had every right to essentially shut down any investigation.

The fish really stinks, but is it an impeachable fish?

I still dont know, but heres what is going to happen: Nancy Pelosi will relent and send the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate. Mitch McConnell will bury them. We will never get any important testimony, as the White House clearly fears a perjury trap. If McConnell is particularly deft, he will find a way to keep every GOP Senator in line, while giving them plausible deniability. In sum, we will learn nothing, except that a President can do what Trump did, then stonewall an investigation. Barrs strategy of maximum resistance will have succeeded, as will have his plan to exalt Presidential power well beyond anything the Founders could have envisioned. Those who think Trump, or some successor President, wont try this again are kidding themselves.

And this frustrates me. It doesnt have to be this way. There was no possibility the Senate would have ever convicted Trump, but at least the process could have been vindicated and the public informed. A Senate committed to a proper allocation of power among the three branches of government would have defended its turf. It would have pushed back on testimonial immunity. It would have, at the very least, reminded everyone that what the Framers painstakingly assembled 243 years ago has value beyond ritualistic bows coupled with aggressively disingenuous reinterpretations.

In Federalist 65, Hamilton asked Where else than in the Senate could have been found a tribunal sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent? What other body would be likely to feel CONFIDENCE ENOUGH IN ITS OWN SITUATION, to preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the necessary impartiality between an INDIVIDUAL accused, and the REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE, HIS ACCUSERS?

Id like to mull that one over while considering what Chief Justice John Roberts said in his just-issued annual report. We have come to take Democracy for granted.

Roberts is right. And maybe its time we stopped. Thats my utterly biased opinion.
NEW YORK - The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research (MFCR) has awarded six grants to promising early career scientists for projects aimed at addressing unmet needs in cancer research. The Emerging Leader Award program aims to empower early career investigators to take on innovative, risky projects that have significant potential to improve outcomes for cancer patients.

The 2020 MFCR Emerging Leaders are pursuing diverse aims in areas of basic, translational, and early clinical cancer research, including a new way of detecting cancer using tumor biomarkers found in lymph, novel combination therapies to treat the aggressive brain cancer, glioblastoma, and machine learning algorithms to improve clinical care for prostate cancer patients.

"One of our top priorities as a foundation is to support the exciting work of the next generation of cancer research leaders," said Michele Cleary, PhD, CEO of MFCR. "We look forward to sustaining long-term partnerships with these exceptional scientists and are very eager for the results of their research to bring substantial benefits to cancer patients."

Since its founding in mid-2017, MFCR has already awarded over $15 million to over 30 early career scientists of the U.S. including two cohorts of Emerging Leaders, postdoctoral fellows across the U.S., and recipients of other MFCR grants.

The recipients of MFCR's 2020 Emerging Leader Awards are listed below with their project titles:

Greg Delgoffe, PhD, University of Pittsburgh: "Improving Cancer Immunotherapy through Metabolic Modulation"

Philip Kranzusch, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute: "Mechanism of cGAS-STING Inactivation in Antitumor Immunity and Disease"

Amanda Lund, PhD, New York University: "Exploiting Lymphatic Transport for Early Detection"

Mario Suva, MD, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital: "Targeting Cellular States and Plasticity in Glioblastoma"

Jeffrey Tyner, PhD, Oregon Health & Science University: "Drug Combinations to Preempt Resistance in AML"

Eliezer Van Allen, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute: "Convergence of Machine Learning and Translational Genomics for Prostate Cancer Precision Medicine"

Awardees were determined through a highly competitive process led by MFCR's Scientific Advisory Committee chaired by Ross L. Levine, MD of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Other members of the Scientific Advisory Committee include Scott A. Armstrong, MD, PhD of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Catherine Bollard, MBChB, MD of Children's National Health System; Curt I. Civin, MD of the University of Maryland School of Medicine; Elaine R. Mardis, PhD of Nationwide Children's Hospital Institute for Genomic Medicine; Jeroen Roose, PhD of the University of California, San Francisco; Victor E. Velculescu, MD, PhD of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; and E. John Wherry, PhD of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

In 2019, MFCR granted Emerging Leader Awards to eight scientists. Read more about all of the Emerging Leader research projects here: https://themarkfoundation.org/awardees/investigators/

###

About the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research

The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research supports scientists tackling the toughest challenges in cancer research.

Launched in 2017, The Mark Foundation pursues its mission by funding a global portfolio of groundbreaking research that will lead to new and better ways to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer. Since its launch in 2017, the Foundation has awarded over $80 million in grant funding to over 50 institutions across 19 U.S. states and 4 countries.

Recognizing the obstacles that can prevent scientific advances from improving patient outcomes, The Mark Foundation maintains a nimble, high-impact approach to funding research that encompasses grants for basic and translational cancer research, as well as venture philanthropy investment in companies that bridge the gap between the bench and the bedside. To learn more about the work of The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, visit: https://themarkfoundation.org/.
PHOENIX  A lawsuit alleging the state of Arizona failed to update voter registration addresses for certain people ended with a settlement Monday.

Voting-rights advocates filed a motion in federal court to have the suit against the secretary of states office dismissed. The dismissal is contingent on the state providing more effective voter registration services for people updating their information at motor vehicle offices or online.

Groups including the League of Women Voters of Arizona and Promise Arizona sued in 2018, arguing a lack of automatic updates to match updated motor-vehicle addresses caused voters to be registered at incorrect addresses.

With this agreement, all qualified voters in Arizona can be certain that their address for voter registration has been updated when they change their address through the Motor Vehicle Department, Robyn Prudhomme-Bauer, former co-president of the League, said in a statement.

Advocates also said the inability to update voters addresses violated the federal National Voter Registration Act.

The lawsuit was brought in 2018 when Michele Reagan was the secretary of state. State elections officials at the time said they were making changes. But it would be a year before they were complete.

There was no need to drag out the litigation at taxpayer expense, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said in a statement. Providing a way for voters to update their registration information while completing MVD transactions is both more efficient and convenient. It makes it easier for voters to ensure their records are current and will help keep the states voter registration list more accurate, which is a vital component of election security.
Campus News

UB dentist spends Christmas in Lebanon providing free care to refugees

During a previous mission to Lebanon in October, UB professor Othman Shibly led nearly 50 volunteers in the treatment of 2,600 children and refugees. Photo: Othman Shibly

By MARCENE ROBINSON

Peoples needs dont stop when there is unrest. 

UB dental faculty member Othman Shibly spent the holidays in Lebanon providing dental care to nearly 2,000 child refugees.

Following the weeklong mission, his fifth trip this year to Lebanon and Kurdistan, Shibly has treated more than 11,000 patients, nearly all women and children  a feat it takes the average dentist 10 years to accomplish.

Undeterred by the rising civil unrest in Lebanon, this marks the first year Shibly traveled alone without volunteers from the U.S. or other nations.

Peoples needs dont stop when there is unrest, Shibly, clinical professor and assistant dean for diversity and inclusion in the School of Dental Medicine, told UBNow before his departure on Dec. 24. If we cannot recruit outside volunteers, we have to be creative. I contacted local organizations and arranged for more than 20 local dentists and volunteers.

The mission ran from Dec. 25-30 in refugee camps in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. He performed treatments that ranged from filling cavities to extractions.

Since 2012, Shibly has helped open and support more than 20 dental clinics for Syrian refugees in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and the Kurdish region of Iraq.

Through the UB Miles for Smiles program  with support from the Henry Schein Cares Foundation, Colgate-Palmolive and Syrian American Medical Society  Shibly has created dental clinics in these countries, founded schools and developed housing programs.

He also formed a community health care worker training program in Lebanon to carry on his work while he is away. The program has hired six full-time health care workers from refugee communities.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are set to take on more work in Canada this year after the country provided them with the chance to 'genuinely switch off' on their extended break, a royal expert has claimed.

Speaking to OK magazine, Omid Scobie, BAZAAR.com's royal editor at large, also said the couple's packed work schedule in 2020 means another baby is not a 'priority' right now, but would be a 'wonderful surprise'.

He added that their recent six-week break from royal duties, which culminated in a glamorous trip to Vancouver Island, gave the Duke and Duchess of Sussex a chance to 'recharge' and spend some 'uninterrupted' quality time as a family-of-three.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, pictured after the birth of their son Archie, are set to take on more work in Canada this year after the country provided them with the chance to 'genuinely switch off' on their extended break, a royal expert has claimed

'[Canada] is a safe place for the couple - they were able to go unnoticed there for a while,' Omid told the publication.

'It's an important place for Meghan and she has family and friends there. It's also part of the Commonwealth. We'll see them take on more work there, perhaps even a tour, but I don't think they're house-hunting yet.'

He went on to say they'll return to work with 'renewed energy' and will be 'safeguarding their mental health' more in 2020, having endured a challenging 12 months.

In September Meghan admitted to feeling vulnerable on ITV documentary Harry and Meghan: An African Journey, while the duke revealed he still struggles with the anguish caused by his mother's death and said he and his brother are on 'different paths'.

Omid Scobie said the couple's packed work schedule in 2020 means another baby is not a 'priority' right now, but would be a 'wonderful surprise'. Pictured: Prince Harry with baby Archie in Canada

Meghan told how pals she would like to welcome their second baby in her hometown because being pregnant in the UK away from her friends and family made her feel 'incredibly lonely and uncomfortable', according to another royal commentator. Pictured on their royal tour of South Africa last year

Another royal commentator recently claimed Meghan told how pals she would like to welcome their second baby in her hometown because being pregnant in the UK away from her friends and family made her feel 'incredibly lonely and uncomfortable'.

However, Omid - who runs the HeirPod podcast - put paid to any rumours of a reconciliation between the duchess and her father Thomas Markle, claiming she 'closed the door on that chapter'.

That means it's unlikely he'll get to meet his grandson Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, who turns one in May.

While we may expect Harry and Meghan to throw a big party for their son's first birthday, judging by the duchess' elaborate New York baby shower, Omid claims their home life is very 'low key' and he expects the 'indoorsy couple' to enjoy a quiet affair at home.

The duchess allegedly wants to give birth to their second child in Los Angeles, after feeling 'lonely' while pregnant in the UK with Archie. Pictured on a visit to the National Theatre in London in January last year

Omid said Meghan's work as vice president of the Queen's Commonwealth Trust will play a huge part of her 2020 schedule. Pictured at the annual Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall in London in November

One of their current key concerns will be finding the right nursery for their little boy, with the couple having been thinking about his education since 'the second he was born', according to Omid.

But while Frogmore Cottage is their current home, the royal expert said he believes the couple haven't ruled out spending time in a few other place throughout the year like the Clooneys.

In terms of their work, Omid said Meghan's work as vice president of the Queen's Commonwealth Trust will play a huge part of her 2020 schedule, while the couple will also be focusing on launching the Sussex Royal Foundation and making it 'their own franchise'.

He claimed Meghan will focus on launching a lot of new initiatives from the second quarter of the year, jumping from project to project to make 'as much impact as possible'.

Omid put paid to any rumours of a reconciliation between the duchess and her father Thomas Markle, claiming she 'closed the door on that chapter'. Pictured: the 2019 Christmas card of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex with their baby son

Last month it was revealed Meghan has trademarked her Sussex Royal brand on more than 100 items, from teaching materials and emotional support groups to newspapers.

Also on the list were several items of clothing including footwear, headgear, T-shirts, coats, jackets, anoraks, trousers, sweaters, dresses, pyjamas, suits, hooded tops, hats, bandanas, headbands, socks, scarves, gloves and sportswear.

Last week the couple shared a sweet photo of Prince Harry cuddling baby Archie, believed to have been taken in Canada by Meghan.

Omid claimed Meghan will focus on launching a lot of new initiatives from the second quarter of the year, jumping from project to project to make 'as much impact as possible'. Pictured at a roundtable discussion on gender equality with The Queens Commonwealth Trust (QCT) and One Young World at Windsor Castle in October

The pair also reportedly stopped to take a photograph of a couple struggling with a selfie stick while hiking with Meghan's former Suits co-star Abigail Spencer.

Asymina Kantorowicz, who recounted the tale, said the ex-actress was 'super friendly'.

The royal pair struggled through a tumultuous year in 2019, in which they were criticised for their 'hypocritical' preaching on environmental issues despite travelling the globe on private jets, and their plans to 'modernise' the Royal family.
2 Bulgarians held for trying to rig ATM in Goa

Panaji, Jan 5 (UNI) Two Bulgarians were arrested for allegedly trying to steal customer data by attaching a skimmer to an ATM of a nationalised bank in Mapusa town in North Goa on Sunday.

According to police, the duo identified as Ivo Metchenov and Milne Davranski were arrested when they were trying to attach a skimmer to an ATM of Bank of India (BoI).

Both the accused were booked under Section 380 (Theft) of Indian Penal Code (IPC), police said, adding further investigation was underway.
(CNN) -- Iran's vow to strike the US military in retaliation for the killing of its top general presents the Pentagon with a massive force protection problem that events of the past 48 hours -- and past 40 years -- illustrate in American blood.

In an exclusive CNN interview on Sunday, Maj. Gen. Hossein Dehghan -- the military adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- said that Tehran's response to the drone strike on Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad last week would be to hit back directly on American "military sites."

From Singapore to Djibouti and Bahrain to Brazil, today the US operates about 800 military bases and logistical facilities outside its sovereign territory -- more than any other nation. Hundreds of other installations, large and small, exist on US territory.

Every US installation -- even every soldier, sailor, airman or Marine -- could be a target. Presumably that could also include US Navy ships at sea, US Air Force planes at airports or in the world's skies, or even US troops enjoying themselves off base and off duty.

"There are many ways to hit US personnel, and you can't protect them all," said Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command's Joint Intelligence Center.

Iranian-trained allies

The threat could come from Iranian forces themselves or proxies deeply tied to Tehran.

"Iran has a worldwide reach through their clandestine networks," said Christopher Costa, the former senior director for counter-terrorism at the National Security Council under the Trump administration who now heads the International Spy Museum in Washington.

One of those proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon, is thought to be behind the attack on the US Marine Barracks at Beirut airport in 1983, a suicide truck bombing that killed 241 US service personnel including 220 Marines. It remains the deadliest attack against Marines since the battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific during World War II.

A Hezbollah group was also blamed for the 1996 bombing in Saudi Arabia of Khobar Towers, a US military housing complex, that left 19 airmen dead.

And the group's leader in Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, said Sunday it is ready to mete out "just retribution" for Soleimani's death.

"The US military presence in the region, US military bases, US military vessels, every US officer and soldier in our region and in our countries and on our lands. The US military are the ones who killed (Soleimani) and they are the ones who will pay the price," Nasrallah said in a televised speech.

Hezbollah has reach across the Middle East and into Africa, Schuster said, including in Kenya -- where three Americans were killed at the weekend in an attack by the al-Shabaab terror group.

Though al-Shabaab is not allied with Hezbollah, Sunday's attack at a remote airstrip near a US military installation shows just how exposed US forces can be to foes with hostile intent.

The naval threat

The US Navy has 293 deployable ships. While only about a third of those are at sea or based in foreign ports at any one time, each still presents a possible target.

For instance, in October 2000, the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole was attacked while in port in Aden, Yemen, for refueling.

The blast -- from suicide bombers in a small boat laden with explosives -- blew a hole in the side of the 8,500-ton ship, killing 17 US sailors. While those terrorists were linked to al Qaeda, the attack showed the vulnerability of high-tech warships to a relatively simple bomb.

Then-Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said that with US force protection measures at the time, the attack could not have been prevented. Ultimately the Navy implemented new measures to protect its ships in port, including exclusion zones around US ships.

But Schuster said that in foreign ports, protection is only as good as the host country enforcing it.

"It creates an international incident if we enforce it in someone else's sovereign territory," he said.

While the US has added security measures, adversaries are evolving too.

Schuster said Iran has thought to have developed skilled divers who can swim under and around ships and attach mines to their hulls, something that even the tightest security can have difficultly detecting.

Another low-tech threat to US ships is mines, like an Iranian one that almost broke a US frigate in half in 1998.

The USS Samuel B. Roberts struck the mine in the Persian Gulf, wounding 10 of its crew, blowing a 15-foot hole in its hull and breaking the frigate's keel -- damage that almost always sends a ship to the bottom. However the crew of the Roberts was able to save the vessel, in part by using heavy steel cables to tie cracked portions of the ship's superstructure together.

Schuster said that mine used World War I technology, simple explosives with a percussion detonator, and is likely still in the Iranian arsenal to this day.

Security fatigue

While the US military will be on heightened watch after the latest Iranian threats, it's hard to stay on constant alert.

"Tight security tends to impede your operations," Schuster said, citing the need to resupply bases or ships and the movement of personnel in or out. "You can't guard them all the time for a very long period of time."

And Iran has the patience for that moment of weakness to come, he said. "They are waiting for someone to relax," he added.

A California police chase in 2016 even illustrates how difficult it is to predict every threat.

In that incident at Naval Air Station Lemoore, two people in a Jeep Cherokee fleeing a California Highway Patrol stop traveled 7 miles (11 kilometers) inside the base and slammed into a $60 million F/A-18 fighter jet.

Base officials said that all exit and entry points had been properly manned with security personnel when the incident occurred. They did not reveal how the vehicle still managed to get past both them and barriers designed to prevent such entries.

At the time, all homeland US military bases were under what the Pentagon calls Force Protection Condition Bravo, which is defined as an "increased and predictable threat of terrorism" -- the third-highest of the five-tier rating.

The threat within

Other types of threats linger in US homeland bases as well. Just last month, shootings inside Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii left a total of five people dead.

Both shooting suspects -- a US Navy sailor at Pearl Harbor and a Saudi military officer training in the US at Pensacola -- were authorized to be on the bases, and neither has been linked to terrorism.

But the shootings show the difficult task of looking into the minds and history of the millions of people who have access to US military facilities worldwide.

"Tight security tends to impede your operations," Schuster said, citing the need to resupply bases or ships and the movement of personnel and contractors in or out. "You can't guard them all the time for a very long period of time."

And even if you could, he said, it probably wouldn't be enough.

"Iran is not deterred by tight security," he said. "What deters them is the probability of failure. They focus on success."

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Iran's military threat: The US can't protect everything all the time"
To the editor:

I have been in pain, affliction and agony since I was a child. These have come from the Lord for making me a strong man. The Lord selected me for a special duty. Therefore, I have been living in fear and hope for several years. I have been living in Iran in two periods of Pahlavi and Islamic Republic of Iran. I have faced a lot of difficulties in two periods. I had a scholarship for MIT and permission to go to the U.S.A. for further experience. I should tell you I have been taught the secrets of the universe since I was a child. When I went to the U.S.A, the Islamic Republic of Iran cut my scholarship because of my political situation.

Now, I am a faculty member of University of Tehran in Iran. Before I took my job, I attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was discriminated against on the basis of national origin, which caused me to get get my doctorate from MIT.

A cultural group in Canada, because of my effort for pursuing my way in higher competition, selected me to contribute in the essay contest with the value of $100,000 about practically creating a peaceful, sublime and energetic world.

The [resulting idea of a world council] is the result of 38 years of research about world peace. The council is a new pattern for world peace. Creating spiritual hospital in every place of the world in this pattern is necessary. This pattern is in my theory that is under review for publication. I am not working for any organization except the University of Tehran. I wish I could create the council, but I could not get any support from any country until now. I am trying to show that spiritual hospital is the only way for salvation of people. This is the reason I am getting your time. I am looking for an opportunity to show my theory is correct. I am going to contact with physical doctors until I prove my theory is correct. My intention is to find a person who can achieve the truth. The truth is a person whom God can tell the secret of the universe. If someone knows the secret of the universe, he/she can treat the illnesses of people easily because he/she knows the real reason of illnesses. By helping you, I can continue my way by your support. I believe I am not alone in this global movement, because every wise person can understand I am right in this way.

Mohammad Farnush

Tehran, Iran
A n officer is lucky to be alive after he was mown down by car in a hit-and-run in north east London, police said today.

The officer, aged in his 30s, was seriously injured by a car that failed to stop in Woodford Green just after midnight on Monday, Met Police said.

Detective Sergeant Jose-Paulo Qureshi said: The officer was simply doing his duty when he was struck by the vehicle and was seriously injured  hes lucky not to have been killed.

The suspects fled the scene, despite knowing they had hit an officer, leaving him seriously injured in the road.

Police said officers had indicated for a grey Mini Cooper to stop in Chigwell Hill, near Saint Barnabus Road, and began a pursuit when it failed to stop.

Officers waited for the vehicle at Chigwell Road near Gaynes Hill Road and the M11 overpass.

As it approached one officer attempted to deploy a stinger but was struck by the car, police said.

The force added that the vehicle, which had false 67 year plates, then sped away from the scene. It was located just before 1am abandoned at Woolhampton Way in Chigwell.

A police officer was taken to hospital where he remains in a serious but stable condition.

Police said they are still trying to trace the driver.

Mr Qureshi added: We are working around the clock to find the people responsible. I would appeal to those who were involved to do the right thing and hand yourself in.
(TNS)  Coconino Community College plans to offer at least three new career and technical education (CTE) programs in areas throughout Coconino County beginning this fall.The Veterinary Technician, Marine Maintenance Technician and Cybersecurity programs were all approved by the colleges governing board during its December meeting. An Automotive Technician program is also in the works.CCC administrators will spend the coming months building curriculum, hiring faculty and establishing partnerships with other local organizations.We cant do these programs on our own. The local employers cant do these programs on their own, said Provost Nate Southerland. It requires all of us working together to bring these up and keep them sustainable in the long term.Each of the programs will accept about 12 to 15 students per year and will have one director and one full-time faculty member. They will also be included in CAVIAT (Coconino Association for Vocations, Industry and Technology), allowing local high school students to begin these courses before graduating.Southerland said new CCC programs are chosen based on three main criteria: community interest, employment data from the Arizona Department of Economic Security and local job force agencies, as well as interest from employers and students. Income is also a factor.We dont want to burden people with student debt to put them into jobs that only make minimum wage. Were really looking for something where we can give the student a return on their investment, Southerland said.Each program has an advisory committee made up of local members of the industry and other community members, who explained that if someone leaves the county for their training, they often do not return.All of these programs are based on helping put people to work and economic development, said CCC President Colleen Smith. We have not only had employers contact us, but Ive had parents contact me.  The need is there. We do see it as being an important part of our mission to help with economic development.To do so, CCC will also expand its hospitality, service and tourism trainings, especially in Williams, where it was most requested. Though the short classes are not for credit, those who complete it will receive a certificate of participation that some companies use for continuing professional education points, Southerland said.Students completing the new veterinary classes will receive both an associate degree and certification through the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA).It will become the first veterinary technician program in the region; according to the AVMA, which accredits veterinary programs, the next closest program is held at Pima Medical Institute in Phoenix.The High Country Humane animal shelter will lend CCC the use of its facility for the new veterinary classes and several local veterinarians have offered to be clinical placement sites for students, to allow them to work with animals, a requirement to become certified.At this point, were not looking to have animals on campus. Instead, we would access and utilize all the resources in the entire county, said CTE Dean Jeff Jones, explaining that students will be trained in working with animals of all types, including pets and livestock.A local veterinarian has also offered to act as a volunteer faculty member to teach fulltime and help develop curriculum for the program.Though CCC officials said it may take longer and cost more for this particular program to begin, due to needed equipment and state and national approvals, they plan to have students start taking their prerequisites in the fall.Kay Leum, Executive Director of Extended Learning, said the marine maintenance program, which will be located at CCC in Page, will address both an aging population of technicians looking to retire as well as individuals impacted by the closure of the Navajo Generating Station.Because of the nearby Antelope Point Marina and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, she said immediate boat repair needs as well as general maintenance provide plenty of work in this industry year-round.The program will not only become the first in the state, but also one of only a handful in the western part of the country.There are so few of them that we really have the opportunity to build a niche program that would attract people from all over the country, Leum said.Local technicians have agreed to not only donate shop space where classes can be taught, but have also offered to employ CCC students to do on-the-job training.As students complete the marine maintenance certificate, they will earn several stackable credentials like certification from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), United States Coast Guard, American Boat and Yacht Council, as well as training in apartment maintenance, for use on houseboats.The new Cybersecurity program, which will focus on penetration testing and incident response, will join four existing emphases within CCCs Associate of Science Degree in Computer Technology: Computer Technician, Desktop Support, Graphics and Web Design and Network Administrator.It will also serve as a transition program to Northern Arizona Universitys developing undergraduate and graduate programs in cybersecurity, for which NAU is currently hiring lecturers.Cybersecurity is one of those areas of training where, as long as theyve got good, robust Internet connectivity, people can do a lot of their work from home and serve the world, Jones said.CCC faculty are working to establish internships with local organizations for these new students, as well as opportunities for participants to share computer skills with community members.The three programs, in addition to the Early Childhood Education program that began in September, were created using one-time funding the state allocated in its 2020 fiscal year budget for eight rural community colleges.CCC received $1 million for its CTE programs  funds that will sustain these four programs, plus the automotive program if it is approved, for three years.Southerland estimated it will cost $100,000 to $200,000 annually to maintain these programs. By partnering with local agencies for classroom space instead of building new ones, the college will save at least $500,000.To support the programs after the state funding has run out, Steve Peru, Chief Development and Government Relations Officer, said the college will be advocating to the state legislature to make such funding recurring.If secured, grants from organizations like the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Security Agency could also help to sustain the programs, alongside donations and partnerships from additional community members.Its kind of like a financial jigsaw, Peru said of program funding. You have to put the pieces in place, but you have to have all the right pieces on the table.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 11:28:20|Editor: xuxin

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HEFEI, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The Kangmei Chinese medicinal material price index, a barometer of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) material market, rose 0.01 percent to 1,246.12 points Monday.

Covering more than 500 TCM materials including herbs and minerals from six major markets nationwide, the closely-watched index reflects the overall price trend in the country's TCM material market. It is released daily by Kangmei Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, one of China's major TCM companies.

The index was approved by the National Development and Reform Commission of China in 2012 to offer more timely and accurate reference for TCM material growers, traders and pharmaceutical companies.

Traditional Chinese medicines, often given as oral liquid, granule and pills, typically use the combination of a number of medicinal materials, mostly herbs, to address health problems.
" " NPR decided to drop its comment sections. Saul Loeb/AFP/Yuoak/Getty Images

Most of us are familiar with the trope of online comments. They are antagonistic. They are ill-informed. They are  like the ubiquitous "first!" that is actually the third comment  often just plain wrong.

Of course, that's the ugly side of commenting. There's also the hope that comments provide a community, a discourse and a way of challenging and continuing discussion.

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Some news organizations  those that champion the importance of community engagement and conversation with the press  have grown weary of commenting sections in recent years, and multiple high-profile sites have deleted them entirely. Popular Science, The Chicago Sun-Times, CNN.com, some Vice sites  all have decided in one way or another that comments just weren't working. (HowStuffWorks turned off its comments in 2014.)

So when NPR.org decided to drop their comments in August 2016, it wasn't a revolutionary idea. But as a prominent, publicly funded news organization, it does signal that the commenting systems in place since the dawn of the internet might need some modification. Or in this case, moderating.

Gina Chen is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, and she's working on a book titled "Online Incivility And Public Debate: Nasty Talk" about online commenting. She says that research has shown there are a few ways to improve comments and discussion on public news forums, without throwing the whole commenting system out.

One solution? "Moderation works," says Chen. After analyzing comments from different news organizations, she found that The New York Times had the most civil comment streams, even though the paper allowed anonymity for commentators. "Part of that is because they really vigorously moderate," she says. "They have dedicated staff. The problem is, not every news organization can afford to do that."

NPR management certainly cites cost as a problem in their commenting system, but also says there's another reason they abandoned the comments: Only 0.06 percent of NPR.org users are the ones who are making comments.

Chen says that's actually a typical representation of the commenting population and argues it's not a strong reason to disable all comments.

"That's not ever going to change," Chen says. "You're never going to have 100 percent or even 10 percent participation in comment streams." She also points out that speaking out is only one form of participation: "I think we do derive something from reading what other people have to say. It doesn't mean that no one is reading them."

And although NPR and other organizations may cite a plethora of reasons, including a more engaged audience on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, let's not forget why many of us roll our eyes at comments and even want them gone. "I suspect it really has to do with incivility," says Chen.

The journalism professor does point out there are ways to counteract that incivility. Beyond a strong moderating presence, she points out that a specialized technological platform that allows for easy flagging and up voting can help elevate discourse. And research done by Chen and colleagues suggests that when journalists are actively engaging in comments, it sets a better tone. And, in fact, some news organizations do turn on comments selectively for stories where they feel a spirited, quality debate can be had.

In general, Chen thinks it's unfortunate that news organizations are disabling comments. "I think there's a legitimate problem with comments, but it's a fixable problem," she says. And although she acknowledges that the discussions aren't always pretty, "there is value in having those discussions. I'd rather err on the side of speech than not-speech."

NOW THAT'S INTERESTING One interesting wrinkle in NPR's disabling of comments is that when the commenting platform was removed, all the comments went with them. It's a sticky point in journalism to remove stories, and deciding whether comments are in a private or public space is going to be an ongoing issue.
The BJP is pulling out all the stops to make up for its crushing defeat in Delhi five years ago and the loss of power in two states after delivering a stunning performance in May last year when it won an unprecedented 303 members.

It had failed to retain control of Maharashtra, where it made an attempt to form a government with a breakaway faction of the Nationalist Congress Party after its former ally Shiv Sena walked out of the alliance over the power-sharing pact and in Jharkhand where its outreach to the tribal communities failed to yield dividends.

The only solace for the party which went to state assembly polls riding high on issues such as the surgical strikes was its success in retaining Haryana, where it overrode anti incumbency and a patchy caste arithmetic.

All eyes are now on Delhi, where the BJP had shrunk to just three members in 2015.

Senior party functionaries who spoke to HT said the party has a formidable opponent in Arvind Kejriwals Aam Aadmi Party, but it is banking on its development work and people-friendly policies to reverse its electoral fortunes in Delhi.

The Union government took initiatives that benefit people from across classes. From in-situ houses for the slum clusters to regularisation of unauthorised colonies, from relief to small-scale industries that operate from households to the expansion of instructive like roads and metro, there has been something for everyone, a senior BJP functionary said.

Listing these people-friendly initiatives, the functionary said, the policy of offering relief to small-scale non-polluting units that could earlier employ only up to 5 workers now allows the employment of up to 9; 10 lakh shopkeepers have benefited from the policy of converting their 30year lease to freehold...there are several such initiatives that have helped the people in the capital city.

In December, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the partys campaign for Delhi in the backdrop of giving residents of 1,731 unauthorized colonies ownership rights. The party is hopeful that the measure will be useful in countering the AAPs sops of providing cheap electricity and water.

The BJP has been out of power in Delhi for over two decades, and the party is yet to announce its face for the Delhi election. It also has to work its way through the challenge of reaching out the matrix of castes and communities.

Will it pick a Punjabi or a Purvanchi face, or will the party gamble by bringing in a dark horse candidate such as Kiran Bedi, who was the partys chief ministerial candidate in the last election?

There are challenges you face when you have been out of power for so long, but the performance of the Modi government at the centre and the vision that it has for the future, will override these concerns of which community should the CM candidate be from, said a second BJP functionary.

The second functionary went on to add that the party is gearing for a bipolar contest between the AAP and the BJP, and feels it will have an edge over the opponent.

A third functionary, however, said that the party may not announce a chief ministerial face, a policy that was followed in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.

BJP leaders said it was unlikely that the ongoing protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA will cast a shadow on the partys fortunes.

There is a concerted effort to mislead and confuse the people especially minorities. The CAA has nothing to do with the citizenship rights of the Indian people, it only provides citizenship to those in need. Even the minority communities have now begun to understand this, minority affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told HT earlier this week.

It is a point that Home Minister Amit Shah had also made when he addressed a public meeting on Monday just before the Election Commission announced the election dates.

The party has redoubled its efforts to reach out to people to clarify its position on CAA and the proposed National Population Register. Senior leaders of the party have been asked to participate in the outreach campaign, which includes attending rallies and making door to door visits.

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The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) here signed an agreement with AIIMS- Bhubaneswar on Monday for collaborative research and academic interaction among their faculty and scientists.

The memorandum of understanding was signed between the two premiere institutes in presence of Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhariyal 'Nishank' who also held an interaction with officials of central institutes.

The agreement will facilitate sharing of research information, and joint supervision of doctoral and post-graduate students of the two institutes for research programmes.

The minister stressed that there is a void in the form of interdisciplinary research work and said that he is looking forward to fruitful outcomes from the collaboration.

All institutes should complement each other's work as a team and collaborate for meaningful outcomes in the interest of the society and an agreement between the IIT and the AIIMS is a good start, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Abhijit Mulye By

Express News Service

MUMBAI: Comparing the attack on students of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi to the 26/11 terror strikes in Mumbai 12 years ago, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday said that the real face behind the violence needs to be exposed.

Why were the attackers faces covered? Why are they hiding? I was reminded of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks... They are cowards, Thackeray said condemning the violence strongly.

Those who indulged in the violence need to be unmasked and their faces must be known to the whole country, he added.

ALSO READ | Violence has no space in democracy: Political leaders condemn JNU attack, seek strict action

Saying that students were feeling unsafe in the country, Thackeray asserted that students in Maharashtra were safe and that he will not tolerate any move to hurt them.

If Delhi Police fail to find out perpetrators of the attack, then they will also be in the dock, he said.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar too condemned the violence saying that the JNU students were subjected to a cowardly and planned attack.

Use of violence to suppress democratic values wont succeed, he said.

Politicians in Maharashtra expressed solidarity as students protested against the violence at several places across the state. NCP leader and Maharashtra housing minister Jitendra Awhad joined the protesting students at Gateway of India on Monday noon.

ALSO READ: Expressing solidarity with students, hundreds stage protests across India

When people begin to fear intellect, there is anarchy. I am going to convey feelings of the students to the government. When students agitate, one should understand that this is a serious issue, he said after participating in the protests for a brief period.

NCP MLA Rohit Pawar too met the agitating students at the Gateway to express solidarity with them on Monday evening, while cabinet minister and Yuva Sena leader Aditya Thackeray put up a post on facebook terming the masked attackers at JNU terrorists.

The attackers have tarnished Indias image in front of the whole world. They should be called terrorists as they came with masks on their face like terrorists, Thackeray said adding that if there is no quick action against such violence, the foreign students wont come to Indian institutions.

SEE PICS | Bruised faces, vandalised campus: Here's how JNU looks in the aftermath of violence

In an impromptu assembly at a short notice, students gathered on pavement across the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel near Gateway of India on Sunday midnight after they held a candlelight vigil to show solidarity with the JNU students. The protests grew larger as it continued on Monday and students from various colleges joined them. The students shouted slogans condemning the violence at JNU.

There were several other protests at several places across the city and the state. While students at IIT Powai held protests on Sunday night, NCP workers staged a protest outside the BJP office in Mumbai on Monday to show solidarity with JNU students. They shouted slogans against Union Home Minister Amit Shah after which they were taken into custody.

In Pune, students held protests at FTII. They put up posters condemning the attack and demanding strict action against the attackers and also condemned the government for failure to stop violence.

Sunday evening saw several masked intruders barge into JNU campus and create havoc among students, assaulting them with sticks, metal rods and stones. The injured have accused the ABVP activists for the attacks, while the ABVP activists on campus have also pointed fingers at the Left student activists.

The president of JNUSU Aishee Ghosh suffered a severe head injury and was seen bleeding heavily. More than 34 others were released from the hospital after treatment for injuries following the violence.

The FIR filed with the Delhi Police by both the ABVP and the left party was on Monday transferred to its Crime Branch for investigation.


The Chinese government has warned America to stop aggravating tensions in the Middle East. The warning was issued through the Chine...





The Chinese government has warned America to stop aggravating tensions in the Middle East.





The warning was issued through the Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Geng Shuang,





China further warned America against the abuse of its force and urged all parties to exercise restraint to ensure peace and stability.





Recall that the head of Irans elite Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani was killed along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis the deputy commander of Iraqs Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) on Friday.

The death of the army chief resulted to a series of war threats from both America and Iran with the Middle East countrys latest threat to retaliate the assassination of their general.





Chinas Spokesman, Shuang said at a daily briefing that Power politics are neither popular nor sustainable, according to Al Jazeera.





The USs risky military behaviour in recent days goes against the basic norms of international relations.





We call on the US not to abuse its force, and appeal to relevant parties to exercise restraint to avoid the situation worsening, he said, adding that China is highly concerned about the standoff between Iran and the United States.





Also Turkey has raised the alarm that Soleimanis killing poses serious risk for peace in the region.





We will work with other countries to reduce tensions between the US and Iran, Turkeys Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters at the Directorate for EU affairs in the capital Ankara.
Dog thieves strike out at police in central Vietnam

Police in central Nghe An Province have caught two knife-wielding dog thieves, currently facing criminal charges.

Last Friday night, police apprehended Nguyen Dinh Quang, 28, and Nguyen Quang Trung, 29, while selling stolen dogs to an unidentified local in Nghi Loc District.

Pulling knives, the thieves commenced attacking officers in an attempt to escape. As a result, one sub-lieutenant had his hands badly cut while another officer suffered injuries to his knee, investigators revealed Sunday.

Nguyen Dinh Quang (L) and Nguyen Quang Trung at a police station in Nghe An Province. Photo courtesy of Nghe An Police.

Following the scuffle, and eventual arrest of both suspects, police seized seven dogs weighing 120 kg, three knives and stun guns used to paralyze the animals.

Police are expanding their investigation.

Vietnam consumes an estimated five million dogs per year, second only to China, which ingests roughly 20 million. Many dogs that make it to the frying pan are stolen pets sold to small, unregulated abattoirs and killed in brutal ways.

In 2018, Hanoi government called on residents to stop eating cats and dogs, saying the practice was undermining the capital's image in the eyes of international tourists and expats.

The Food Safety Management Board of HCMC made a similar call last year.
SPRINGFIELD  As he looked at his daughters  who were just 6 and 9 years old when he took office in January 2008, and are now in college  Mayor Domenic J. Sarno reflected on his administrations achievements over the past 12 years.

This is the fifth time I have taken this oath and as of today I am the longest serving mayor in the city of Springfields 384 year history, he said during an inauguration ceremony at Springfield Symphony Hall Monday. I never imagined that I could achieve this milestone. The significance of my long tenure is not lost on me.

Sarno said the city has seen several significant developments during his time in office, including the opening of the MGM Springfield casino, the CRRC MA rail car factory and Union Station  and with them, 5,000 new jobs.

We have fully recovered from the worst fiscal crisis in our history and now have $49 million in reserve and the highest bond ratings in the citys history. We have made substantial gains in the quality of our public education, the improvement in our graduation and dropout rates are the best in the commonwealth, he said. I could cite many other significant achievements, but this is not the time for a long laundry list, and notice I didnt even mention a tornado."

Sarno said his goals for the new term include continued progress in education, public safety, economic development, financial stability, the delivery of municipal services and improvements in quality of life.

Let us remember we are a city of some 155,000 people. It is our responsibility to be certain that all of our citizens share in an equitable fashion in our progress, he said.

Denise R. Jordan, executive director of the Springfield Housing Authority and Sarnos former chief of staff, served as master of ceremonies for the inauguration.

Mayor Sarno will be serving his third four-year term after already serving two (separate) two-year terms as Springfields mayor, Jordan said. He has honorably and nobly served our city. Through natural disasters and fiscal challenges this mayor, the peoples mayor, has been here for our city.

Hampden County Sheriff Nick Cocchi called the inauguration to order and Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield; Wissam Abdel Baki, imam of the Islamic Society of Western Massachusetts; Rabbi Noach Kosofsky, director and principal of Lubavitcher Yeshiva Academy; the Rev. Eli Serrano of Restoration Worship Center; and the Rev. Calvin J. McFadden Sr. of St. Johns Congregational Church in Springfield all offered prayers for Sarno and the city.

Sarno was sworn in by Judge John M. Payne Jr., first justice of Springfield District Court, and City Clerk Tasheena Davis.

Sarno thanked his wife Carla and his daughters Cassandra and Chiarina Sarno for their love and support.

Having a mayor in the house isnt easy by any means. It is a 24/7 job, but just to keep me humble you have made it abundantly clear that I am not the mayor of 109 Carroll Street. I love you all, he said.

He also took a moment to remember his mother Clara Sarno, who died in 2018, and his ailing father Alfonso Sarno.

"My parents bet their future on America when the courageously set sail from Italy many years ago. Working tirelessly as a seamstress and a barber they raised three children in Springfield. It is a reflection of the great American dream that one of their children grew up to be the mayor of their new home city, he said. My parents always said they were proud of me, but the reverse is true and I say from my heart that I am so very proud of them and Im profoundly grateful for their boundless love and support.

Asked if he will run again in four years, Sarno said, You never say never, but if this is the last elected office I ever hold I will be happy. So long as my health and my family are OK and the people of Springfield will have me I am honored and privileged to be mayor. I live this job, I love this job and I will be running for reelection in 2023."
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Lifelong Staten Islander Joan Illuzzi-Orbon has prosecuted some high-profile cases over the years, though in terms of media attention theres been none bigger than her current assignment.

Jury selection began Monday in Manhattan state Supreme Court for the sex-assault case levied against Oscar-winning Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. A slew of accusations over the years against Weinstein led in large part to the #MeToo movement.

Members of the media lined the street early Monday morning outside the courthouse, hours before Weinstein arrived.

Illuzzi-Orbon of Grasmere was appointed as lead prosecutor of the case last year by the Manhattan district attorney, nearly half a year into the law enforcement investigation.

The 57-year-old attorney isnt new to the national spotlight.

In 2007, she prosecuted a weapons case against rappers Ja Rule and Lil Wayne. The celebrity defendants accepted a plea deal.

In 2015, she campaigned as a Republican against Democrat Michael E. McMahon for Richmond County district attorney. At the time, she spoke to the Advance about growing up with her siblings in Midland Beach, where her family provided the nativity scene at St. Margaret Marys R.C. Church. for about 50 years.

In 2016, she was in the national spotlight again as senior trial counsel in the Manhattan D.A.'s office, when she prosecuted the kidnapping and killing of 6-year-old Etan Patz. After an initial mistrial, a second jury issued a guilty verdict for the defendant, Pedro Hernandez, who was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

In a previous interview with the Advance, she said her philosophy as a prosecutor was to make sure she was convinced a defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt before I would walk into a courtroom and ask 12 people to decide if somebody was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

She said putting an innocent person in jail is a "prosecutor's worst nightmare" and if someone is incarcerated wrongly and new evidence comes out to exonerate, "the good prosecutor is that person's best friend."

During her high school years at St. Joseph Hill Academy, her parents couldnt afford the tuition at the all-girls parochial school in Arrochar, so to pay half of it she cleaned classrooms after school along with another student.

She also was involved in school theater productions and she did community theater until a few years ago.

In the days leading up to the Weinstein travel, veteran prosecutor-turned-defense attorney Evan Krutoy told the Hollywood Reporter that the cases which best exemplify Illuzzi-Orbons career are those involving victims who struggled with drug use, poverty or lived on the fringes of society.

Said Krutoy: It would not be uncommon for victims who Joan worked with to visit her or call her years later to thank her  not simply because she did her job well but also because it was clear she cared deeply.
By legalizing recreational marijuana, Maryland is likely to face a host of costly education and other problems. Scientific evidence tells us that being high on marijuana results in immediate impaired attention, memory and learning. For teenagers who toke up or munch on edibles before or after class, residual but very real effects can last much longer. Mounting data show the deleterious and potentially long-term effects of marijuana on the developing adolescent brain. One landmark study, which tracked more than 1,000 adolescents in New Zealand between early adolescence and middle age, found that individuals who habitually smoked marijuana before turning 18 lost up to eight IQ points by the time they turned 38.

Marijuana use during adolescence also has been linked to mental health issues later. A 2019 meta-analysis of over 23,000 participants published in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry found that individuals who began using marijuana at least weekly before the age of 18 were almost 40% more likely to develop depression in adulthood. This early, regular usage also significantly increased the likelihood of suicidal behavior in later years.

Let patients have pot for pain OUR VIEW: It's far less dangerous than opioids and proving effective in other states as medicine
Hungarys government could wait until as late as October of this year to reduce the payroll tax by another two percentage points, state secretary for tax affairs Norbert Izer said at a press conference on Thursday, state news wire MTI reports.

The plans are to reduce the payroll tax by a further two percentage points from July or October, Izer said.



Employers had earlier pressed the government to bring forward the planned payroll tax cut to the start of the calendar year rather than July 1, when last years reduction took effect. But the government rejected the request, citing fiscal reasons, according to one business association leader.



Under a deal the government sealed with employers and unions late in 2016 linking payroll tax cuts to wage rises, the payroll tax was reduced from 27% in 2016 to 22% in 2017 and 19.5% in 2018.



From 2019, the agreement stipulates that the payroll tax will be reduced a further four times by two percentage points on each occasion as long as the gross average private-sector wage rises at least 6% year-on-year in the first quarter of the given year.



Izer said the payroll tax cuts made since 2016 had saved businesses HUF 2.600 trillion.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 6)  After managing to evade arrest for over a decade, authorities finally caught on Monday in Datu Saudi Ampatuan, Maguindanao a suspect in the gruesome 2009 Maguindanao massacre which killed 57 people, including 31 media workers.

Police in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao said they arrested Faisal Dimaukom, a 42-year-old-man also known as Kagi Faizal and recovered from him an F1 fragmentation hand grenade.

Dimaukom was turned over to the Parang Municipal Police Station after his arrest, police added.

"No one said its going to be easy, but personally I think its just a matter of time before the long arm of the law catches up with them. It may even take some time to put all of them under custody, but eventually, justice will prevail as we have seen in the first batch of suspects," Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Martin Andanar said in a statement of Dimaukom's arrest.

Dimaukom is among the 80 out of nearly 200 suspects in the Maguindanao massacre who were at large by the time the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 221 handed down last month its verdict on the mass killing.

All of the accused were acquitted of murder in connection with the death of photojournalist Reynaldo Momay, whose body was never found. Prosecutors and his family insist Momay was the 58th victim and the 32nd journalist in the group.

The massacre was the single deadliest attack on journalists in history and the worst case of electoral violence in the Philippines.

CNN Philippines Gerg Cahiles and Xave Gregorio contributed to this report.
The Punjab government on Monday approved a Rs 650-crore project for the rejuvenation of highly polluted Buddha Nullah in Ludhiana.

The nod was given by Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, who asked the Local Government Department to ensure the completion of the project within two years.

Singh directed Additional Chief Secretary (Local Government) Sanjay Kumar to take all necessary steps for the rejuvenation of the 47-km drain, of which 14 km passes through Ludhiana, a government statement said.

Kumar said of total Rs 650 crore, Rs 342 crore will be spent by the state government; Rs 208 crore by the Centre and Rs 100 crore by private players.

He said under the first phase, augmentation and refurbishment of the sewage treatment facility and dairy effluent treatment among other tasks would be carried out.

The second phase will include the reuse of treated effluent besides the landscaping and beautification along the drain.

The chief minister also called for maximum public participation of people.

He asked the local industry, NGOs, religious and social organisations to come forward to carry out this project in a mission mode.

The CM also lauded the contribution of the Namdhari sect head Satguru Thakur Uday Singh for the cleaning of the drain in coordination with the Municipal Corporation, Ludhiana.

The city discharges 711 million litres of waste per day, which includes 610 MLD of domestic and 86 MLD of industrial discharge.

At present, the city has an installed sewage treatment capacity of 466 MLD and another 105-MLD capacity effluent treatment plant for industrial waste is under installation, the release said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WILMINGTON, Del., Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP today announced that David B. DiDonato and Jaclyn C. Levy have been elected partners of the firm, and Stephanie E. O'Byrne and Andrew H. Sauder have been promoted to counsel, effective January 1, 2020.



Were excited to be starting the year with four promotions that further strengthen our Corporate and Litigation Groups, said Kathleen Furey McDonough, Potter Anderson chair. Dave, Jackie, Stephanie and Andrew are known for providing outstanding client service, and we look forward to them taking on even greater responsibility for our clients complex legal issues.

DiDonato, a member of the Corporate Group, focuses his practice on mergers and acquisitions, issues of internal governance, commercial transactions involving Delaware corporations and other business entities. He advises boards of directors, special committees of boards of directors, and officers regarding their fiduciary and other duties under Delaware law. He received his B.A. from Moravian College in 2008 and his J.D., summa cum laude, from Widener University School of Law in 2011.

Levy, a member of the Corporate Group, focuses her practice on corporate and commercial litigation in matters involving Delaware corporations and alternative entities. Her experience includes stockholder class and derivative actions, actions for appraisal, indemnification and advancement actions, and demands to inspect books and records. She also has experience counseling boards of directors and corporate clients on their rights and obligations under Delaware law. She received her B.A. from Emory University in 2008 and her J.D., magna cum laude, from Villanova University School of Law in 2011.

OByrne, a member of the Litigation Group, focuses her practice on intellectual property litigation in the Delaware District Court. She is a registered Patent Attorney and formerly served as the law clerk to the Hon. Sue L. Robinson of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware from 2006 to 2012. She received her B.S. in Biochemistry from The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey in 2000 and her J.D. from Rutgers School of Law - Camden in 2003.

Sauder, a member of the Corporate Group, focuses his practice on corporate and commercial litigation in Delawares state and federal courts, including the Court of Chancery. He received his B.A. from the College of William and Mary in 2004 and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2010. After attending law school, he served as a clerk for the Honorable Myron T. Steele, Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court.

About Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP

Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP is one of the largest and most highly regarded Delaware law firms, providing legal services to regional, national and international clients. With more than 80 attorneys, the firms practice is centered on corporate law, corporate litigation, intellectual property, commercial litigation, bankruptcy, labor and employment, and real estate.

For more information, contact:

Heather Pearson / Matter / 978.518.4828 / potteranderson@matternow.com
Jail House: A Hilton Anatole meeting space was creatively converted into a make-shift jail house. EventPrep franchisees are shown dialing for bail money. We are very grateful to the EventPrep team as the monies they raised will help several hospitality professionals who are facing dire situations. said, Gary Schirmacher, CMP, Chairman, The Meetings Industry Fund.

EventPrep recently held their annual business meeting (EventPrep Exchange 2019) at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas. At the onset of their meeting, EventPrep franchisees hosted a creative fund-raising event to benefit the Meetings Industry Fund called The Great Escape.

Upon check-in, each EventPrep franchisee was served a very official looking summons to appear at a designated place and time, and was subsequently greeted by the event prison warden, Steve Davis, President / COO, EventPrep, Inc. It was at this time they learned their fate: Each franchisee was sentenced to serve time in a make-shift jail until such time they could raise enough bail money to bust them out.

Donned in prison attire, complete with a plastic ball and chain ankle bracelet, each franchisee was armed only with their cell phones, their contact list and a pledge sheet. Their task was to call their friends, family and business contacts to raise as much bail money they could within 60 minutes; with 100% of every donation going directly to The Meetings Industry Fund.

The hospitality industry is relationship driven, so we couldnt think of a better way to leverage our relationships to benefit such a worthy cause, said Paul Trapp, founder and CEO of EventPrep. We chose The Meetings Industry Fund because they do so much to help our industry brothers and sisters in need.

Time passed quickly with one phone call after another, pledges pouring in, with only minutes left on the one-hour clock. When it was all done and said, the EventPrep franchisees proudly raised a grand total of $5,000!

We are very grateful to the EventPrep team as the monies they raised will help several hospitality professionals who are facing dire situations, said Gary Schirmacher, CMP, Chairman, The Meetings Industry Fund. Supporters like, EventPrep, are critical to our mission of helping those in desperate need.

About EventPrep

Founded in 2016 by military veterans, EventPrep is a full-service event and meeting planning management company headquartered in Central Florida with franchise owners located throughout the U.S. EventPreps focus is to eliminate the anxiety and frustration of researching, planning, and delivering conferences by making the business of event planning and management streamlined, simple and efficient for the client. EventPreps sister company, FederalConference.com, has been ranked No. 2 on the Inc. 500 list and delivers more than 3,000 events per year. For more information on EventPrep, visit http://www.eventprep.com.

About the Meetings Industry Fund

The Meetings Industry Fund is a non-profit 501c3 organization that provides confidential financial assistance for meetings professionals during times of crisis like a disaster, medical illness, or an emergency causing an unforeseen financial crisis involving basic living necessities. Requests are generally approved that enable recipients to put food on their tables and have a roof over their head. Funds are granted to individuals based on their unique situation and available resources.
Russian Prime Minister Russian Dmitry Medvedev has approved a national action plan for the first phase of adapting to climate change.

Medvedev's order, dated December 25, was published on the government's website on January 4.

It outlines "economic and social measures taken by federal and regional executive entities to reduce the vulnerability of Russia's population, economy and national objects to the results of climate change, as well as to use possible favorable opportunities coming out of such change."

It says Russia's federal government must adopt measures to cope with climate change by the end of September 2021. Regional authorities were told to do so by May 10, 2022.

According to the document, dangers posed by climate change to Russian regions include an increased frequency of droughts, floods, and wildfires, deteriorating permafrost in the northern regions, and the spread of infectious and parasitic diseases."

It says potential "positive" short-term outcomes of climate change include reduced energy consumption for heating, improved cargo transportation in the Arctic due to melting ice, easier access to the continental shelf of Russia in the Arctic Ocean, and the expansion of crop cultivation and livestock production in some areas.

With reporting by Interfax
Has the Bay Area housing market finally priced itself out of reach for, well, everyone?

According to a new survey of more than 100 economists and real estate experts, the answer is yes.

The panelists, who assessed the nations housing markets as part of a price expectations survey for the real estate website Zillow, said they expected the nations hottest real estate markets in 2020 to be in the South. Austin, Texas, took the top honor  a whopping 83% of experts believe it will outperform the national average of 2.8% housing price growth in 2020.

As for the nations worst real estate market in 2020?

The winner of that unfortunate designation is the Bay Area. San Francisco was at the top of the list for expected underperformers  64% of experts believe it will underperform in 2020. It was closely trailed by San Jose: 61% of experts believe that citys housing market will underperform.

A large proportion of those experts believed that the Bay Area will not just underperform, but actually see declining home values: 57% expect home values to fall in San Francisco, and about half expect the same for San Jose.

After the last several years of torrential real estate growth, underperforming or even falling home values in the Bay Area wouldnt necessarily be a bad thing.

High home prices have placed homeownership out of reach for all but the wealthiest in the Bay Area. They also influence the cost of rent, which has grown far faster than the average Bay Area residents wages.

They affect construction and development costs, too. The Bay Area experienced 6.7% growth in construction costs in 2018: According to Turner & Townsends 2019 survey of international construction markets, San Francisco was the worlds most expensive place to build.

Local housing prices flattened out last year, and construction costs slowed, too. The question is, will the Bay Area experience slower growth for the right reasons?

Unfortunately, the answer is no.

In a well-functioning housing market, housing prices would be falling because increases in demand would result in increases in new construction.

In the Bay Area, a major reason for the slowdown is that people are leaving  and taking their need for housing with them.

According to the state Department of Finance, California lost about 197,600 people to net domestic migration during the year that ended July 1. Its no accident that Texas, one of the states to which California is losing the most residents, has historically had ample housing development at a much lower cost.

Losing these residents means losing their ideas, energy and contributions to the economy. High housing prices have also meant that fewer people can move here, where theyd have access to the Bay Areas specialized jobs and markets  a situation that has exacerbated income inequality and will eventually eat away at our relative economic advantages.

The Bay Area housing market may also be suffering from the Trump administrations ill-considered cap on state and local tax deductions, which have disproportionately affected home price appreciation in states with higher property taxes and mortgage interest deductions.

In both instances, flattening or even declining home prices in the Bay Area are the result of flawed public policy and unnecessary restrictions on growth. Without solutions, a pause in home appreciation might give the Bay Area a breather  but well still be stuck with the problems that brought us to this place.

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.
Donald Trump lambasted Democrats Monday morning for the timing of impeachment, claiming he is 'so busy,' in an apparent reference to the mounting crisis with Iran.

'The reason they are not sending the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate is that they are so weak and so pathetic.' @LindseyGrahamSC @MariaBartiromo,' Trump quoted Republican Senator Lindsey Graham from an appearance on Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News Channel Sunday morning.

'The great Scam continues,' he wrote in his tweet Monday. 'To be spending time on this political Hoax at this moment in our history, when I am so busy, is sad!'

The Democratic-controlled House voted last month to approve two articles of impeachment against Trump  abuse of power and obstruction of Congress  but Nancy Pelosi not yet sent them to the Senate for trial.

Republicans control the Senate and the GOP has made it clear it wants a speedy trial without witnesses so the upper chamber could swiftly acquit the president.

His tweets came after Democrats began to question whether ordering the killing of Qassem Soleimani was an attempt to draw attention and political energy away from his impeachment.

And Pelosi said late Sunday that she would introduce a resolution in the Democratic-controlled House to limit Trump's powers to wage war against Iran, a symbolic measure which the Republican-held Senate is highly unlikely to follow.

Donald Trump blasted Democrats Monday for the timing of impeachment, claiming it is happening 'when I am so busy.' He kept up the theme later, claiming 'we got 3 Dems.' In fact only two voted against impeachment entirely, one of whom then left the party to become a Republican, while the third voted for one article of impeachment but against the other

The criticism from the president came after Elizabeth Warren suggested Trump's actions were made to be a distraction from impeachment. 'We know Donald Trump is very upset about this upcoming impeachment trial. But look at what he's doing now. He is taking us to the edge of war,' she said

Trump directed an attack last week on an airport in Baghdad, Iraq that took out Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Trump returned to the White House from Mar-a-Lago Sunday night, with his wife Melania and their son Barron, 13

The partisan split linking impeachment to Iran came into the open Sunday morning.

Massachusetts Senator and 2020 contender Elizabeth Warren suggested over the weekend that Trump ordered an airstrike on Iran to distract from impeachment.

'We know Donald Trump is very upset about this upcoming impeachment trial. But look at what he's doing now. He is taking us to the edge of war,' the Democratic candidate said on Meet the Press Sunday morning.

Trump directed the attack on the airport in Baghdad, Iraq, killing Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.

The Friday attack was in part a response to a raid on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, which has never been breached before, on New Year's Eve by protesters who support Iran-backed Shia militia amid growing escalations between the U.S. and Iran.

Warren accused Trump on Sunday of ordering strikes on Iran and taking the country to the edge of war to distract from his impeachment trial.

'We've been at war for 20 years in the Middle East and now he's talking about expanding that war. This has been something that has cost thousands of American lives...The job of the president is to keep us safer. The job of the president is not to move us to the edge of war,' Warren told NBC anchor Chuck Todd.

Besides Warren, other Democratic figures like Joe Biden and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, decried the president for his Saturday tweet where he threatened to target 52 Iranian sites if Iran retaliates for the U.S. taking out Soleimani.

'Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!' Trump tweeted Saturday.

'You are threatening to commit war crimes. We are not at war with Iran. The American people do not want a war with Iran,' Warren said regarding the president's tweet.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (fourth from left) wept over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (fourth from left) wept over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral

WATCH: Sen. Elizabeth Warren says that "people are asking" why the Iran strike took place now. #MTP #IfItsSunday@ewarren: "We know Donald Trump is very upset about this upcoming impeachment trial. But look what he's doing now. He is taking us to the edge of war." pic.twitter.com/ChR29Usv6x  Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) January 5, 2020

'Your threats put our troops and diplomats at greater risk. Stop,' she ordered.

Former Vice President Joe Biden shared Trump's tweet and slammed him as 'irrational'.

'The more the walls close in on this guy, the more irrational he becomes,' the front runner Democratic candidate tweeted Saturday evening.

Iran threatened to strike 35 U.S. targets in the region as retaliation for the American drone strike that killed Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Solemani early Friday.

It is not entirely clear what Trump meant by targets 'important to Iran & the Iranian culture', and a White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com.

If Trump were to carry out his warning, it would violate The Geneva Convention Protocol 1.

The move to limit war powers was announced by Pelosi announced Sunday night who said that the House would introduce a formal War Powers Resolution this week to limit Donald Trump's ability to take military action following the attack that killed Soleimani.

'[The resolution] reasserts Congress's long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administration's military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days,' Pelosi wrote in a 'dear colleague' letter Sunday.

Democratic leaders expressed outrage over the weekend for the president's failure to notify Congress ahead of the strike on Soleimani, a top Iranian military commander who was classified as a terrorist during the Obama administration.

'As Members of Congress, our first responsibility is to keep the American people safe,' The House Speaker continued in her letter. 'For this reason, we are concerned that the Administration took this action without the consultation of Congress and without respect for Congress's war powers granted to it by the Constitution.'

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Sunday in a letter to Democratic colleagues that they would introduce a War Powers Resolution this week to limit Donald Trump's military action in Iran

'[The resolution] reasserts Congress's long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administration's military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days,' Pelosi wrote in her letter

'It is critical that national security matter of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner,' Democrats in the Senate led by minority leader Chuck Schumer wrote

The resolution comes after Trump directed an airstrike on an airport in Baghdad, Iraq, killing Soleimani. The attacked followed a raid on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, which has never been breached before, on New Years Eve by protesters who support Iran-backed Shia militia amid growing escalations between the U.S. and Iran.

Lawmakers and politicians lament that the president did not inform Congress of the planned attack, but the president asserted Sunday he did not have to tell Congress.

'These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!' Trump tweeted over the weekend.

Lawmakers have few options for tamping down any escalation by the president.

As members of Congress return to Capitol Hill Monday from their year-end holiday recess, Democrats said they will attempt quickly to pass legislation to bar him - or any future U.S. commander-in-chief - from conducting a campaign against Iran without obtaining Congress' approval.

Pelosi said the Democratic-led chamber would introduce and vote this week on a War Powers Resolution that would force Trump to stop military action against Iran within 30 days.

The resolution is being led by Democratic Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA and Department of Defense analyst who specialized in in Shia militias. The resolution, however, is expected to fail with little inclinations that the Republican-controlled Senate would stray from Trump.

Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei weeps over Soleimani's coffin at 'million-strong' Tehran funeral as assassinated warlord's daughter warns that families of US troops are 'waiting for the death of their children'

Iran's supreme leader today wept over the coffin of the Iranian general who was killed in a US airstrike, as the warlord's daughter swore revenge on US troops despite Donald Trump's threats of a fearsome response.

A tearful Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral.

Speaking to the wailing crowds which stretched as far as the eye could see, Soleimani's daughter Zeinab directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region.

'The families of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East will spend their days waiting for [the] death of their children,' she said to cheers.

Warning of a 'dark day' looming for the United States, she said: 'Crazy Trump, don't think that everything is over with my father's martyrdom.'

Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport on Friday, shocking the Islamic republic and sending tensions spiraling in the Middle East.

His remains were flown back to Iran last night, carried in a cardboard box which had its own row of seats on a passenger jet.

Iran has vowed 'severe revenge' and yesterday abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal in response to the airstrike, while Trump has threatened a 'disproportionate response' targeting cultural sites.

Adding to the tensions, Trump has warned of sanctions against Iraq if it goes through with expelling US troops from the country - a move which could spark an ISIS resurgence there.

Mourning: Thousands of people gathered in Tehran for the second day of Qassem Soleimani's funeral after he was killed in a US drone strike on Friday

A tearful Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left) prayed over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral today

The general's daughter Zeinab Soleimani (pictured today) spoke to mourners during the funeral procession in Tehran and directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region

Coffins of Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were seen resting on passenger seats on a jet heading to Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran last night

Iranians set a US and Israeli flag on fire during Monday's funeral procession for military commander Qasem Soleiman

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (centre) and president Hassan Rouhani (immediately to his right) lead prayers over Soleimani's coffin. On Khamenei's left is chief justice Ebrahim Raisi, and to his left is the slain general's successor Esmail Qaani

Protesters staged a symbolic 'execution' of a Donald Trump effigy during the funeral ceremony of Qassem Soleiman

Today the supreme leader was flanked by Soleimani's son, his military replacement Esmail Qaani and Iranian president Hassan Rouhani at the funeral in Tehran.

Mourners prayed together with Khamenei whose voice cracked as he prayed over the flag-draped coffin.

Some mourners shouted 'Death to America' and burned US and Israeli flags as the coffins of Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader who also died in the drone strike were passed over their heads.

Iranian state TV put the crowd size at 'millions,' although that number could not be verified.

The scale of the crowds in Tehran mirrored those who turned out in 1989 for the funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic.

Soleimani will lie in state at Tehran's famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him. He will eventually be buried in his hometown of Kerman.

Mourners marched towards the university, a key artery in Tehran, and formed a sea of black along Enghelab Street dotted with red Shiite flags and white signs.

The coffin of Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was also killed in Friday's attack, was draped in the Iraqi flag and passed over the crowds alongside Soleimani's casket.

'We must give a crushing response,' said one of the mourners, a 61-year-old businessman who gave his name as Afkhami.

'We must target whatever military base they have in the region. We must attack all that are in the range of our missiles.'

One poster held by a mourner read: 'It is our right to seek a harsh revenge,' echoing comments by Iranian military and political leaders.

Washington regards Soleimani as a terrorist leader who was plotting against Americans and had the blood of thousands on his hands through his work with Iranian proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

But many Iranians considered Soleimani, a decorated veteran of the eight-year war with Iraq, a national hero, particularly for mobilising Shi'ite Muslim groups in Iraq to help crush the militant Sunni jihadists of ISIS.

Soleimani was also close with Khamenei's children and the supreme leader had been photographed embracing him in public. The Ayatollah made a rare visit to Soleimani's home the day he was killed to offer condolences to his grieving widow and grown children.

The flag-draped coffin of Qassem Soleimani is passed over the heads of mourners at his funeral in the centre of Tehran today

Mourners gather in Tehran to pay their respects to a military commander who was hailed as a hero by many Iranians

Soleimani (pictured) was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport on Friday, shocking the Islamic republic and sending tensions spiralling in the Middle East

Thousands of mourners line the streets of Tehran for the funeral procession today, with people waving Iranian and Iraqi flags

Iranian state media said 'millions' of people had gathered in Tehran to mourn Soleimani's death in scenes not witnessed since the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989

Soleimani's successor Esmail Qaani cries over the coffin of his assassinated predecessor during the funeral in Tehran today

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and Soleimani's long-time lieutenant and successor Esmail Qaani stand by the coffin of the military commander who died on Friday

One funeral organizer has called on every Iranian to donate money towards an $80million bounty on Trump's head, according to Iranian television.

On Friday Khamenei vowed 'severe revenge' as he declared three days of mourning.

Esmail Qaani, who has succeeded Soleimani as commander of the Revolutionary Quards' powerful Quds Force, also swore revenge in an interview with state TV which was aired today.

'God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken,' he said.

'We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region.'

American forces are braced for retaliation and the US-led coalition against ISIS said in a statement yesterday that it was pausing its fight against the jihadists to shore up its own defences.

US bases in the region are shoring up their defences and there are also fears that Iran will harass shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which is critical to the world's oil supply.

The global benchmark for crude oil rose above $70 a barrel on Monday for the first time in over three months, with jitters rising over the escalating military tensions.

One Iranian MP also warned of an attack on the White House while an adviser to Hassan Rouhani posted a list of Trump-owned properties in a hint of a possible reprisal.

A former head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards also threatened on Sunday to turn the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv 'to dust' if the US attacks targets in Iran.

Last night Iranian state TV said the country would no longer respect any of the nuclear limits in the 2015 deal, which Trump abandoned last year but which European powers are desperately trying to preserve.

Under the deal, Tehran had pledged to reduce its nuclear capacities for several years, including by capping its enrichment of uranium at 3.67 percent, far below the more than 90 percent required for a nuclear weapon.

Iran has already overstepped some of the limits since Trump pulled out of the deal last year, which include restrictions on Iran's supply of centrifuges and the level to which uranium can be enriched.

Last night two rockets landed near the US embassy in Baghdad, the second night in a row that the heavily fortified Green Zone was hit and the 14th time over the last two months that US installations have been targeted.

Iranian troops parade behind a smoke screen from buring incense as crowds gather in Tehran today to pay homage to slain military commander Qasem Soleimani

Khamenei stands at the front of mourners in Tehran today as hundreds of thousands of Iranians turned out to pay tribute

Iranians set a US and an Israeli flag on fire during a funeral procession in Tehran today

Huge crowds of mourners in the streets of Tehran today where Iranians wailed over the death of the general who was killed

Iranian revolutionary guards surround the coffins of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and others who died in Friday's drone strike

Mourners line the streets of Tehran during Soleimani's funeral today. Iranian state TV claimed that 'millions' were there

Mourners burn flags of the U.S. and Israel during a funeral ceremony for Iranian general Qassem Soleimani today

Friday's drone attack was ordered by President Donald Trump, who said Soleimani had been planning an 'imminent' attack on Americans in Iraq.

In a series of sabre-rattling tweets, Trump has warned that the US will 'quickly and fully strike back, and perhaps in a disproportionate manner' if Iran aims fire at US targets.

The president said America had lined up attacks on 52 targets 'important to Iran and the Iranian culture', representing the number of Americans held hostage at the US embassy in Tehran after a raid in 1979.

Talking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington last night, Trump stood by his targeting of cultural sites despite claims of potential war crimes.

'They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way,' Trump said.

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, who is running for her party's presidential nomination, said Trump was 'threatening to commit war crimes'.

The president's critics have also accused him of launching the attack on Soleimani to boost his popularity before he faces an impeachment trial in the coming weeks.

In Britain, a spokesman for prime minister Boris Johnson issued a warning over Trump's plans, saying there were international conventions in place to stop the destruction of cultural heritage.

Trump has also warned he will demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iran's neighbour Iraq or impose 'sanctions like they've never seen before' if Baghdad goes through with expelling U.S. troops.

The sanctions would make those on Iran look 'tame', Trump said, adding: 'We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there... we're not leaving unless they pay us back for it.'

Iranians carry the coffin during the funeral ceremony of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Forces, who was killed in a U.S. drone airstrike in Iraq

Mourners gather in Tehran today to pay homage to top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, after he was killed in a US strike in Baghdad ordered by Donald Trump

Iranians burn US and Israeli flags during the funeral ceremony in Tehran today, three days after the military leader's death

Iranian army cadets hold up posters of military commander Qassem Soleimani as they march during his funeral in Tehran

Yesterday the Iraqi parliament backed a recommendation by the prime minister for all foreign troops to be ordered out - a move which Washington fears could allow an ISIS resurgence.

Iraq's rival Shi'ite leaders, including those opposed to Iranian influence, have united since Friday's attack in calling for the expulsion of U.S. troops.

There are around 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, deployed after ISIS seized Mosul in 2014.

Today German foreign minister Heiko Maas said threatening Iraq was 'not very helpful'. Germany has a small contingent of troops there training Iraqi forces.

Monday's procession in Tehran comes after Soleimani's remains were returned to Iran on Sunday.

The Iranian general's body was marched through the streets of Baghdad, before it was flown to the city of Ahvaz in southwest Iran, where around one million mourners gathered to pay their respects.

A video of the journey posted on social media on Sunday five cardboard boxes resting on seats in the cabin of a passenger jet rather than being loaded into the cargo or baggage compartments.

The Revolutionary Guards said the overwhelming number of mourners in Mashhad forced the cancellation of a ceremony that had been planned in Tehran on Sunday night.

Mourners carry mock coffins with images of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Iranian revolutionary guards surround the coffins of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and others who were killed in the US attack

Speaking to the crowds which stretched as far as the eye could see (pictured), Soleimani's daughter Zeinab directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region

Soleimani had long been considered a lethal foe by US lawmakers and presidents, with Trump saying he should have been killed 'many years ago.'

Tensions between Iran and the West had been ratcheting up for months, peaking last summer when a series of Gulf tankers were hit by mysterious explosions which Washington blamed on Iran.

The last straw was an attack by a pro-Iran mob on the US embassy in Baghdad this week, where demonstrators burned the entrance to the compound and besieged diplomats inside.

Tributes have poured in from across the Middle East and beyond for Soleimani, who was seen as the Islamic republic's second most powerful person after the supreme leader.

Iraq's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on Sunday offered his condolences to Khamenei, according to the supreme leader's official website.

'Soleimani's martyrdom caused great sorrow,' said the statement.

'His unique role over the years in fighting with Daesh elements in Iraq, and the great pains he endured in this path is unforgettable,' it said, referring to the Islamic State group.

President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan also paid his respects in a telephone call to Rouhani.

A statement from the Afghan presidential palace said Ghani assured Rouhani that 'Afghan soil will never be used against any other country'.

Iran could fall back on its regional militant allies or proxies to launch a retaliatory attack, such as Iraqi militiamen, Lebanon's Hezbollah or Yemen's Houthi rebels.

The Revolutionary Guard also routinely harasses U.S. Navy vessels in Persian Gulf and surrounding waterways, while Iran has surface-to-sea missile batteries along its coast as well.

Last night the leaders of Britain, France and Germany appealed for a de-escalation.

'We call on all the players involved to show utmost restraint and responsibility,' they said in a joint statement.

Boris Johnson is gathering key ministers for crisis talks today as the Iran standoff threatens to spiral out of control - with threats from Tehran to kill British troops.

The PM is back in Downing Street after his Caribbean break, but finds himself walking a tightrope between Donald Trump and other allies who want to ease tensions.

Following massive funeral marches in Iraq, his body was flown to Ahvaz, Iran. Military personnel carry Soleimani's casket in Iran. A tide of mourners packed the streets of the Iranian city of Ahvaz Sunday to pay respects to the top general

Iranian mourners crowded in to touch the casket and express their grief at the death of the powerful general

The scale of the crowds in Tehran today (pictured) matched those who turned out in 1989 for the funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic

Breaking his silence last night, Mr Johnson said Britain 'will not lament' the death of Qassem Soleimani, saying the genreal had played a role in the deaths of thousands of innocent people and was a 'threat to all our interests'.

But he also appealed to both Trump and Iran for calm, urging both sides to encourage de-escalation, after a senior Iranian commander Iranian issued a chilling warning that British forces could be hit.

Today the PM's spokesman called Iran's move away from the 2015 nuclear deal 'concerning' and cautioned against the destruction of cultural heritage but said countries such as America a right to act in 'self-defence'.

A former US ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria said Iranian general Qassem Soleimani 'deserved' to die - but criticised the decision not to inform Britain about the strike.

Ryan Crocker told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Literally hundreds of coalition soldiers and marines, mostly Americans, were killed by improvised explosive devices that were manufactured in Iran, used by the Iraqi Shia militia trained by Soleimani, in very deliberate targeting.

'Britain too lost a number of soldiers in the same attacks. If anybody out there deserved killing, it was Qassem Soleimani.'

But Mr Crocker said he was 'concerned' about the White House's failure to warn allies of its controversial decision to kill Mr Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad last week.

He said: 'Britain is and has been for a number of years our foremost ally. When we take an action like this it can have great consequences for our allies. We, I think, owe it to them to consult in advance.'

Mar-a-Lago in the firing line: Iranian presidential adviser posts list of Donald Trump's properties in chilling hint of an attack on his real estate empire - after Iran put an $80million bounty on his head

An adviser to Iranian president Hassan Rouhani last night dropped a chilling hint of an attack on Donald Trump's property empire in revenge for the death of military commander Qassem Soleimani.

Hesameddin Ashena shared a link to a Forbes article listing all of Trump's properties in New York, his hotels and resorts across America and golf courses in the US and Britain.

The list included the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where the president was staying when he ordered the hit on Soleimani, as well as the Trump International Hotels in Washington and Las Vegas and his New York tower with its Fifth Avenue entrance.

Iran has already threatened the White House and the Rouhani adviser declared yesterday that Tehran's 'sole problem is Trump' rather than the American people - dropping another hint of a direct reprisal against him.

Tehran has sworn revenge for Soleimani's death and yesterday announced it was abandoning its remaining nuclear limits under the 2015 deal.

Today Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wept over Soleimani's coffin as hundreds of thousands joined a funeral march in Tehran.

Speaking to the crowds, the military commander's daughter Zeinab declared that 'families of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East will spend their days waiting for the death of their children'.

Trump has threatened his own retaliation if Iran hits US targets, warning of a 'disproportionate response' including cultural sites.

Today the president vowed in a capital-letters tweet that 'IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON' despite Tehran's latest move away from the nuclear deal.

In the firing line? Donald Trump's resort at Mar-a-Lago, Florida (pictured), where he was holidaying when he ordered the hit against Soleimani

Hesameddin Ashena shared a link to a Forbes article listing all of Trump's properties in New York, including these four Manhattan skyscrapers

The tweet by an Iranian presidential adviser made a veiled threat against Trump Organization properties including a series of Trump International hotels (pictured)

The Mar-a-Lago estate where Trump spent the Christmas holidays is also on the list, along with a winery in Virginia and golf courses in America, Britain and Ireland

With tensions mounting today:

Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif mocked Trump by boasting about the 'sea of humanity' at Soleimani's funeral;

Trump defended his plans to target 52 cultural sites in Iran despite Democratic claims that he was preparing to commit war crimes;

The president warned of sanctions against Iraq over its plans to expel US troops, but Germany called the threats 'unhelpful';

A former head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards threatened to turn the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv 'to dust';

Oil prices jumped to their highest level since September, surpassing $70 per barrel, amid fears that Iran could harass ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

'We have ZERO problems with the American people. We even achieved deals with previous US administrations,' Rouhani's adviser Ashena said on Twitter last night.

'Our sole problem is Trump. In the event of war, it is he who will bear full responsibility.'

The list of properties on the article he shared included Trump Tower as well as other New York City residences including Trump Parc East.

Elsewhere in America, the properties include hotels in Washington, Chicago and Las Vegas as well as a winery in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Mar-a-Lago estate where Trump spent the Christmas holidays is also on the list, along with golf courses in Britain and Ireland.

The location of the properties is no secret, and many of them are named after Trump, but the post by a senior Iranian adviser was a clear hint of a possible strike against Trump's real estate empire.

Ashena has previously spoken of 'unseating' Trump from office, writing in July that 'we'll make sure he stays a one-term President' if he continued to listen to Mike Pompeo.

'We have unseated an American President in the past. We can do it again,' he said, presumably referring to Jimmy Carter who was brought low by the Iran hostage crisis which began in 1979.

One Iranian MP has already threatened explicitly to target the White House, warning of an attack on the US mainland in retaliation for Soleimani's death.

'We can attack the White House itself, we can respond to them on the American soil,' Abolfazl Aboutorabi told a session of parliament.

A 2014 file photo shows the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Manhattan, New York City

The Trump International Hotel in Washington, which was once the Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue

Headquarters: The Fifth Avenue entrance of Trump Tower, the headquarters of the Trump Organization and the president's 2020 re-election campaign

Pictured: A 2015 file photo of the Trump hotel and tower in Las Vegas

One funeral organiser has called on every Iranian to donate money towards an $80million bounty on Trump's head, according to Iranian television.

Among a series of Iranian threats, Soleimani's daughter Zeinab directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region as she spoke to wailing crowds in Tehran.

'The families of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East will spend their days waiting for [the] death of their children,' she said to cheers today.

Warning of a 'dark day' looming for the United States, she said: 'Crazy Trump, don't think that everything is over with my father's martyrdom.'

Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif today shared pictures of the huge 'sea of humanity' at the funeral - taunting Trump who is famously attentive to crowd sizes.

'Do you still want to listen to the clowns advising you on our region?,' he asked. 'And do you still imagine you can break the will of this great nation and its people?'

Esmail Qaani, who has succeeded Soleimani as commander of the Revolutionary Quards' powerful Quds Force, also swore revenge in an interview with state TV which was aired today.

'God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken,' he said.

'We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region.'

A former head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards also threatened on Sunday to turn the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv 'to dust' if the US attacks targets in Iran.

Pictured: Par 3, 15th hole on the Ailsa Course at the Trump Turnberry Resort on July 15, 2019 in Turnberry, Scotland

Hesameddin Ashena (left) last night dropped a chilling hint of an Iranian attack on Donald Trump 's property empire after the death of military commander Qassem Soleimani (right)

The head of the Guard's aerospace program, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, suggested Iran's response wouldn't stop with a single attack.

'Firing a couple of missiles, hitting a base or even killing Trump is not valuable enough to compensate for martyr Soleimani's blood,' Hajizadeh said on state TV.

'The only thing that can compensate for his blood is the complete removal of America from the region and taking away their evil from the oppressed people of the region.'

In a more bizarre pronouncement, cleric Shahab Moradi said Iran could not strike back in kind because all of America's 'heroes' were fictional characters.

'Think about it. Are we supposed to take out Spider-Man and SpongeBob?,' he wondered aloud on Iranian TV.

Nonetheless, American forces are braced for a real-life retaliation and the US-led coalition against ISIS said in a statement yesterday that it was pausing its fight against the jihadists to shore up its own defences.

There are also fears that Iran will harass shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which is critical to the world's oil supply.

The global benchmark for crude oil rose above $70 a barrel on Monday for the first time in over three months.

In a series of sabre-rattling tweets, Trump has warned that the US will 'quickly and fully strike back, and perhaps in a disproportionate manner' if Iran aims fire at US targets.

Talking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington last night, Trump stood by his targeting of cultural sites despite claims of potential war crimes.

'They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way,' Trump said.

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, who is running for her party's presidential nomination, said Trump was 'threatening to commit war crimes'.

The president's critics have also accused him of launching the attack on Soleimani to boost his popularity before he faces an impeachment trial in the coming weeks.

In Britain, a spokesman for prime minister Boris Johnson issued a warning over Trump's plans, saying there were international conventions in place to stop the destruction of cultural heritage.

Mourners gather in Tehran to pay their respects to a military commander who was hailed as a hero by many Iranians

Protesters staged a symbolic 'execution' of a Donald Trump effigy during the funeral ceremony of Qassem Soleimani

The Rouhani adviser declared yesterday that Tehran's 'sole problem is Trump' rather than the American people (Trump is pictured on Friday after Soleimani's death was announced)

Hesameddin Ashena shared a link to a Forbes article listing nine of Trump's properties in New York as well as hotels and golf courses elsewhere in America

Trump has also warned he will demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iran's neighbour Iraq or impose 'sanctions like they've never seen before' if Baghdad goes through with expelling U.S. troops - which could spark an ISIS resurgence.

The sanctions would make those on Iran look 'tame', Trump said, adding: 'We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there... we're not leaving unless they pay us back for it.'

Today German foreign minister Heiko Maas said threatening Iraq was 'not very helpful'. Germany has a small contingent of troops there training Iraqi forces.

Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport on Friday.

His remains were flown back to Iran last night, carried in a cardboard box which had its own row of seats on a passenger jet.

Tensions between Iran and the West had been ratcheting up for months, peaking last summer when a series of Gulf tankers were hit by mysterious explosions which Washington blamed on Iran.

The last straw was an attack by a pro-Iran mob on the US embassy in Baghdad this week, where demonstrators burned the entrance to the compound and besieged diplomats inside.

Iranians carry the coffin during the funeral ceremony of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Forces, who was killed in a U.S. drone airstrike in Iraq

Soleimani's successor Esmail Qaani cries over the coffin of his assassinated predecessor during the funeral in Tehran today

A tearful Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left) prayed over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral today

In a further sign of tension, Iran yesterday abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal in response to the airstrike.

Under the deal, Tehran had pledged to reduce its nuclear capacities for several years, including by capping its enrichment of uranium at 3.67 percent, far below the more than 90 percent required for a nuclear weapon.

Iran has already overstepped some of the limits since Trump pulled out of the deal last year, which include restrictions on Iran's supply of centrifuges and the level to which uranium can be enriched.

Tehran insisted that it remains open to negotiations with European countries and maintains that it is not seeking a nuclear weapon.

Russia today urged parties to the Iran nuclear deal to treat salvaging the agreement as a 'priority', calling on European partners to fulfil their obligations.

Germany also joined France and Britain in urging Iran to refrain from taking 'further violent actions or support for them'.

'It is crucial now to de-escalate,' Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson said in a joint statement last night.

EU foreign ministers will hold emergency talks on the Iran crisis on Friday, diplomats said today.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 6)  The country's troops are preparing for the possible repatriation of Filipino workers in the Middle East amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on Monday said the country's top security officials are already devising a plan following the orders from President Rodrigo Duterte on Sunday.

"The President has already expressed his instructions, his guidance. The AFP have planned for it. We're going to give him the details as soon as possible so he'll be able to give us and tell us what date and time to execute our plan," AFP spokesperson BGen Edgard Arevalo told CNN Philippines.

He said a Navy asset and three Air Force planes are ready to bring home Filipino workers in the area in the wake of heightened tensions between the US and Iran.

AFP acknowledged the repatriation will be a challenge as this will be the first time the troops will carry out such mission that far away from the Philippines. Commercial planes are typically tapped for repatriation efforts.

"With distance this far, I don't have in my recollection of such repatriation missions executed... If what is at stake is the welfare of fellow Filipinos then we're going to embark on this mission and we'll get this done," Arevalo said.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said the government will not forcibly evacuate or repatriate Filipino workers in the Middle East as tensions between the United States and Iran escalated after Washington launched an airstrike that killed Tehrans top general, Qasem Soleimani, in Iraq.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the United States committed a grave mistake in killing Soleimani and that Americans "will face the consequences of this criminal act not only today, but also in the coming years."

But US President Donald Trump said on Twitter that Washington has targeted 52 Iranian sites for attacks in case Tehran strikes any American or American assets.

There are 1,006 registered Filipinos in Iran, who are mostly permanent residents with their family members, according to the DFA. It added there are also 50 documented Filipino workers in the country.

The DFA has warned Filipinos against going to Iraq until further notice and told Filipinos who were already in the country to coordinate with the Philippine embassy and their employers in the event there is a need for mandatory evacuation.

The crisis alert level for all areas in Iraq is currently in Alert Level 3 or voluntary repatriation, except in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region which is still under Level 1 or the precautionary phase. There is also an existing ban on deployment of new workers and household workers to Iraq.

There are currently 1,190 documented and 450 undocumented Filipinos in Iraq, according to DFA which cited the Embassy's latest figures. More than half are in the Kurdistan region while 847 are in the Baghdad area. Most of those in Baghdad are working with US and other foreign facilities, while others are in regular commercial establishments, particularly in Erbil  over 300 kilometers from Baghdad.

Meanwhile, Philippine National Police Officer-in-Charge Archie Gamboa said they have been tasked by Duterte to monitor possible retaliatory actions from sympathizers in the country.
[January 06, 2020] Textron Aviation Adds Three Company-Owned Service Centers in APAC With Premiair Aviation Acquisition

Textron Aviation Inc., a Textron Inc. (NYSE:TXT) company, is strengthening its Asia Pacific (APAC) service offerings with the Textron Inc. acquisition of Premiair Aviation Maintenance Pty Ltd, an Australian Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) service provider. Previously named an Authorized Service Facility (ASF), Premiair now joins the Textron Aviation company-owned global support network to service Beechcraft, Cessna and Hawker products at service center locations strategically located throughout Australia. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005784/en/ Textron Aviation and Premiair Aviation Maintenance leaders celebrate the acquisition of the Australian service provider. The Premiair team joins Textron Aviation's Global Customer Support organization, led by Kriya Shortt. Left to Right: Premiair Engineering Manager Andrew Ross, Premiair Managing Director Paul Montauban, Textron Aviation Senior Vice President of Global Customer Support Kriya Shortt, Textron Aviation Vice President and General Manager of APAC Service Gabriel Massey (Photo: Business Wire) "Textron Aviaton has been steadily investing in service options for the Asia Pacific region to ensure customers flying all Textron Aviation aircraft receive the exceptional support they expect," said Kriya Shortt, senior vice president of Global Customer Support at Textron Aviation. "Throughout the past year, we substantially increased our regional footprint, capabilities and parts availability. The Premiair team demonstrated their commitment to quality, relationships and customer care as an ASF, and now we are excited to welcome them to Textron Aviation."



Premiair operates in strategic locations across Australia, including Melbourne, Gold Coast (Coolangatta), and Western Australia (Jandakot). The company's footprint spans major markets in Australia and will allow Textron Aviation customers in the region close access to industry-leading aircraft maintenance and support, including avionics services and upgrades, scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, structural and component repair and overhaul and refurbishment. The acquisition of Premiair follows other Textron Aviation investments in APAC, including a service and parts room expansion at the Singapore Service Center, an increase in the number of regional field service representatives, the opening of a new parts warehouse in Australia, and the establishment of a new service location in Manila. The company also continued to invest in mobile service units (MSUs) and grew the specially outfitted fleet of maintenance trucks to 75 units worldwide.

About Textron Aviation Inc. Textron Aviation Inc. is the leading general aviation authority and home to the Beechcraft, Cessna and Hawker brands, which account for more than half of all general aviation aircraft flying. The Textron Aviation brands represent unrivalled innovation, performance and leadership in the industry, and offer an unmatched value proposition rooted in the total ownership experience. Leveraging unparalleled speed-to-market, Textron Aviation provides the most versatile and comprehensive business and general aviation product portfolio in the world through five principal lines of business: business jets, general aviation and special mission turboprop aircraft, high performance piston aircraft, military trainer and defense aircraft and a complete global customer service organization. Textron Aviation has delivered more than 250,000 aircraft in over 170 countries. Its broad range of products include such best-selling aircraft as Citation business jets, King Air and Caravan turboprops and T-6 military trainer aircraft, all of which are backed by the industry's most capable global service network. For more information, visit www.txtav.com. About Textron Inc. Textron Inc. is a multi-industry company that leverages its global network of aircraft, defense, industrial and finance businesses to provide customers with innovative solutions and services. Textron is known around the world for its powerful brands such as Bell, Cessna, Beechcraft, Hawker, Jacobsen, Kautex, Lycoming, E-Z-GO, Arctic Cat, Textron Systems, and TRU Simulation + Training. For more information, visit: www.textron.com. Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking statements which may project revenues or describe strategies, goals, outlook or other non-historical matters; these statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005784/en/

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 14:40:35|Editor: huaxia

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by Xinhua writers You Zhixin, Ma Yujie, He Xinrong

SHANGHAI, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- On the first day of 2020, Xu Jin, from Shanghai, received a business license for the company "Shanghai Zunyun Consultancy and Management Co., Ltd" he co-founded with his American partner.

Xu is among the first Chinese nationals to receive the business license for a foreign-funded company, after the foreign investment law, passed by the country's top legislature in early 2019, took effect on the same day.

The new law, granting more flexible market access to foreign firms in China, is hailed as a boost to their confidence in expanding investment in the world's largest developing economy.

In addition to the new law, cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou also rolled out supportive laws and regulations.

In the 3.0 version of its business environment reform plan, Shanghai vows to take Hong Kong SAR and Singapore as benchmarks to optimize the business environment and simplify government service procedures.

"Compared with the two previous versions, the new plan focuses on drawing advanced experience to foster a favorable business environment aligned with the highest international standards and best practices," said Eddie Yan, Deloitte China Government & Public Services partner.

Kelly Fan, the corporate communication manager of Asia with General Mills, a leading global food company that set its Chinese headquarters in Shanghai, is also impressed by the newly released Shanghai plan.

"We've operated business in China for more than 13 years, and we've received strong support from local governments such as the 'door-to-door service,' which enabled us to actively address market challenges and increase market share and sales," said Fan. She believes that the new version will help Shanghai attract more investment from home and abroad.

Guangzhou, capital of southern China's Guangdong Province, also published a 3.0 version plan to improve the business environment. The plan incorporates 82 specific reform measures aiming to simplify formalities and improve efficiency.

Headquartered in Guangdong's city of Dongguan, Hsu Fu Chi International Ltd., a leading snack and confectionery producer, is confident in its market outlook.

"Encouraged by the tangible progress the local government has made to improve the business environment, such as lower tax rate and electricity price, fewer restrictions on business registration, we are confident of our market performance this year," said Su Qiang, Hsu Fu Chi's CEO in an interview with Xinhua.

A newly released report from The International Monetary Fund warned that global economic growth is expected to slow down in the next two years amid rising uncertainties.

But to Yan and his peers, the series of new moves China has taken underpin the nation's resolution to further nurture an attractive and open business environment, to help China cope with the uncertainties of the international environment.

China jumped 15 places to 31 out of 190 countries and regions for ease of doing business in the World Bank Group's Doing Business 2020 study, making it one of the most improved economies in terms of doing business.

In the first 11 months of 2019, the number of foreign-funded projects with an investment of over 100 million U.S. dollars in China reached 722, up 15.5 percent year on year.

Wei Jianguo, vice chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, expected that through the implementation of the new foreign investment law, China would remain an investment hotspot and attract an estimated foreign investment amounting to 140 to 150 billion U.S. dollars in 2020.

"Given the fact that 2019 was a year full of uncertainties, China's biggest achievement is its resilience and stability proven in its economy," said Zhu Ning, a professor with the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. "It's crucial for China to face uncertainties and stick to its path to further promote reform and opening up."
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Ahead of the Union Budget, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday met India's top 10 business leaders which included bosses of India's largest conglomerates like Reliance Industries, Vedanta, Tata Group, Mahindra & Mahindra, Adani and Bharti Enterprises, as they brainstormed on reviving the economy and business sentiments, creating jobs and pushing growth.

Sources said the meeting was held at the Prime Minister's Office in the afternoon and Modi listened patiently to the who's who of India Inc including Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, Bharti Enterprises Chairman Sunil Mittal, Mahindra Chairman Anand Mahindra, Tata Sons Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata, Tata Group Chairman N. Chandrasekaran, Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani, TVS Chairman Venu Srinivasan, Vedanta Chairman Anil Agarwal, and L&T Chairman A.M. Naik, among others.

The over two-hour meeting discussed the current economic scenario and measures needed to boost growth, consumption, employment, and reviving economy, sentiments and industrial growth from the slowdown. The advance estimates for 2019-20 GDP numbers will be released on Tuesday.

India's gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the three months ending September 2019 (Q2FY20) fell to 4.5 per cent, down from 5.0 per cent in the previous three months and 7 per cent for the corresponding period of 2018 as consumer spending and private investment weakened further and a global slowdown impacted exports growth. This was the lowest reading since 4.3 per cent recorded for the January-March quarter of 2013. With this reading, India's economic growth fell for the sixth straight quarter.

The output of eight core infrastructure industries contracted for the fourth consecutive month in November by 1.5 per cent, showing no signs of improvement. Since August, the eight core industries are recording negative growth.

The output of coal, crude oil, natural gas, steel, and electricity declined by 2.5 per cent, 6 per cent, 6.4 per cent, 3.7 per cent and 5.7 per cent, respectively, according to the data. The eight core sectors had expanded by 3.3 per cent in November 2018.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Budget 2020 in February.
It has been a while since Israel had a new evil enemy threatening its very existence. The Dec. 20 announcement by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Fatou Bensouda, that she had found reasonable basis to suspect Israeli war crimes were and are being committed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and was seeking the courts ruling on opening an investigation has turned both the Gambian-born jurist and the court itself into our sworn enemies.

This was not always the case. The idea of establishing an international framework to try those suspected of violating international law first arose after World War I. Article 14 of the 1919 Versailles Treaty stated that the League of Nations would approve plans for the establishment of a Permanent Court of International Justice that would try individuals  not states. But the plan fell by the wayside, and Article 14 was not implemented. Germany tried after World War I some of its soldiers for international crimes, but the German court acquitted almost all of them. These trials were conducted in Leipzig in 1921 (hence the name "the Leipzig Trials"). The allies mocked these trials because they were pathetic, and the Germans were angry over them, because they considered them a humiliation and as being forced upon their judicial system.

In the wake of World War II, the same demand resurfaced. A demand for an international court that would directly try suspects in severe crimes, which the countries involved could not or did not want adjudicated in their own courts. The renewed effort was more concerted, and appeared to be succeeding.

Jewish jurists were prominent among the advocates of a permanent tribunal, one of them being Shabtai Rosenne, an Israeli diplomat and professor of international law. Years ago, Rosenne told me Jewish jurists sought to ensure that criminals who committed atrocities during the war would not escape prosecution. The Nuremberg and Tokyo trials were the first in history in which judges of different nationalities tried suspected international criminals, highlighting the need for an international criminal court. However, the move was shelved once again, this time due to the Cold War.

The horrific massacres in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s led to the establishment of ad hoc tribunals to try the perpetrators, once again highlighting the need for such a permanent framework. In-depth discussions ensued regarding the courts jurisdiction and authority, with American and Israeli legal scholars as prominent participants. The 1998 UN vote on the covenant establishing the court (known as the Rome Statute) was supported by 120 nations, with 21 abstentions and seven states voting against, among them the United States and Israel. The United States was opposed mostly because the statute stipulated that individuals would be tried by the court even if their own countries opposed the move. Israels opposition stemmed mostly from the treatys determination that the transfer of citizens from the territories of an occupying power to occupied territory constitutes a war crime for which those involved can be prosecuted.

Ironically, Israel, whose representatives pushed for years for the establishment of an international court to try criminals whose countries had defended them and provided them with immunity for their actions, voted against its establishment. People like the late Rosenne and others who had been involved in the process were hugely frustrated by the Israeli vote, seeing it as undermining their persistent efforts. They hoped that the Israeli government would eventually come to its senses and support The Hague courts founding treaty.

Their hopes were fulfilled after the 1999 elections in which Labor leader Ehud Barak defeated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I myself was appointed justice minister, and together with professor Shlomo Ben-Ami who had been appointed foreign minister we submitted a proposal to the government on Dec. 31, 2000, for Israel to sign the treaty. The date was the deadline for states to join the treaty but put off its ratification; signing the Rome Statute after that date would also require immediate ratification by the signatory state. In essence, this meant that Israel adopted the principles of the covenant, but deferred its commitment to change its laws in order to adapt them to the treaty. The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which came to power in March 2001, did not even consider ratifying the treaty. Israel, like the United States, is thus a signatory to the treaty but not among the majority of world nations that have ratified it and enshrined their commitment to it.

The ICC accepted the Palestinians as members following the UNs 2012 recognition of Palestine as a non-member observer state, paving the way for the Palestinian Authority to seek prosecution of Israelis for war crimes stemming from the transfer of Israeli citizens to settlements in the occupied territories, in violation of international law. If the court authorizes Bensoudas request for such prosecution, many Israelis could be arrested once they leave Israel and taken to the ICC in The Hague. Israels main argument against prosecuting its officials by the ICC is procedural, not germane, arguing that Palestine is not a state and thus not authorized to make such demands of the ICC.

The Palestinian leadership, for its part, rightly sees Bensoudas decision as a tremendous achievement and proof that Israel can be confronted and embarrassed by diplomatic tools, not necessarily violence. This is a victory for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas over Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which seeks to crush Israel through the use of violence. However, the Palestinian achievement need not come at Israels expense.

Israel can solve the problem with relative ease: It only needs to go back almost 20 years and ratify the Rome Statute. Any state that ratifies the treaty is authorized to receive a seven-year deferral of action on any part of the document that it finds particularly troubling. If Israel chooses to cite the settlement issue, the ICC will not be authorized to arrest any Israeli on that count until 2028. Ratification would do justice to historic Jewish-Israeli efforts to establish the court and to try individual criminals, and on the other hand would avoid the arrest threat to decision-makers involved in the settlement enterprise. Regardless of the ICC issue, in the coming years, and especially if a different government is formed, Israel will have to make a supreme effort to reach agreement with the Palestinians. Such agreement would address the settlement issue, too. Once an agreement is reached, the issue will be removed from the international agenda, in general, and from that of the ICC.
Does the January share price for Sydney Airport Limited (ASX:SYD) reflect what it's really worth? Today, we will estimate the stock's intrinsic value by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to today's value. I will use the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. Don't get put off by the jargon, the math behind it is actually quite straightforward.

Companies can be valued in a lot of ways, so we would point out that a DCF is not perfect for every situation. If you want to learn more about discounted cash flow, the rationale behind this calculation can be read in detail in the Simply Wall St analysis model.

View our latest analysis for Sydney Airport

Crunching the numbers

We are going to use a two-stage DCF model, which, as the name states, takes into account two stages of growth. The first stage is generally a higher growth period which levels off heading towards the terminal value, captured in the second 'steady growth' period. To start off with, we need to estimate the next ten years of cash flows. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren't available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years.

Generally we assume that a dollar today is more valuable than a dollar in the future, so we need to discount the sum of these future cash flows to arrive at a present value estimate:

10-year free cash flow (FCF) forecast

2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 Levered FCF (A$, Millions) AU$913.6m AU$1.00b AU$1.04b AU$1.07b AU$1.10b AU$1.12b AU$1.14b AU$1.16b AU$1.17b AU$1.19b Growth Rate Estimate Source Analyst x3 Analyst x2 Est @ 3.8% Est @ 2.98% Est @ 2.41% Est @ 2.01% Est @ 1.73% Est @ 1.54% Est @ 1.4% Est @ 1.3% Present Value (A$, Millions) Discounted @ 7.3% AU$852 AU$871 AU$842 AU$808 AU$772 AU$734 AU$696 AU$658 AU$622 AU$587

("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St)

Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = AU$7.4b

Story continues

We now need to calculate the Terminal Value, which accounts for all the future cash flows after this ten year period. The Gordon Growth formula is used to calculate Terminal Value at a future annual growth rate equal to the 10-year government bond rate of 1.1%. We discount the terminal cash flows to today's value at a cost of equity of 7.3%.

Terminal Value (TV)= FCF 2029  (1 + g)  (r  g) = AU$1.2b (1 + 1.1%)  7.3% 1.1%) = AU$19b

Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= AU$19b ( 1 + 7.3%)10= AU$9.6b

The total value is the sum of cash flows for the next ten years plus the discounted terminal value, which results in the Total Equity Value, which in this case is AU$17b. In the final step we divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. Relative to the current share price of AU$8.7, the company appears around fair value at the time of writing. The assumptions in any calculation have a big impact on the valuation, so it is better to view this as a rough estimate, not precise down to the last cent.

ASX:SYD Intrinsic value, January 5th 2020

Important assumptions

We would point out that the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate and of course the actual cash flows. If you don't agree with these result, have a go at the calculation yourself and play with the assumptions. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at Sydney Airport as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 7.3%, which is based on a levered beta of 1.142. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business.

Next Steps:

Although the valuation of a company is important, it shouldnt be the only metric you look at when researching a company. The DCF model is not a perfect stock valuation tool. Rather it should be seen as a guide to "what assumptions need to be true for this stock to be under/overvalued?" If a company grows at a different rate, or if its cost of equity or risk free rate changes sharply, the output can look very different. For Sydney Airport, There are three further factors you should further examine:

Financial Health: Does SYD have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis with six simple checks on key factors like leverage and risk. Future Earnings: How does SYD's growth rate compare to its peers and the wider market? Dig deeper into the analyst consensus number for the upcoming years by interacting with our free analyst growth expectation chart. Other High Quality Alternatives: Are there other high quality stocks you could be holding instead of SYD? Explore our interactive list of high quality stocks to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!

PS. The Simply Wall St app conducts a discounted cash flow valuation for every stock on the ASX every day. If you want to find the calculation for other stocks just search here.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Donald Trumps threat of sanctions on Iraq was not very helpful, Germanys foreign minister said on Monday.

The United States president had warned Baghdad could be hit by sanctions like theyve never seen before if US forces were forced to leave.

I dont think it works to convince Iraq with threats, but with arguments, Heiko Maas told Deutschlandfunk public radio.

Fridays targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani, one of Irans leading military figures, in a US air strike in Iraq, has led the countrys parliament to urge the removal of all foreign troops  a move aimed at the estimated 5,000 US troops in Iraq as part of the international anti-ISIL (ISIS) coalition.

Maas said Germany, the United Kingdom and France would discuss the Iran nuclear deal on Monday and would react this week to Tehrans recent announcements.

200105193124737

Iran said on Sunday it would abandon limitations on enriching uranium, taking a further step back from commitments to a 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers.

The E3 group of countries  France, Britain and Germany  have all called on Iran to refrain from any retaliation to the US killing one of its top military commanders, and urged Tehran to return to the terms of the JCPOA 2015 nuclear deal agreed with world powers  a landmark diplomatic agreement from which Trump unilaterally withdrew the US in 2018.

The three countries also highlighted the importance of de-escalating tensions in Iraq and Iran, and reaffirmed their determination to fight ISIL.

We reaffirm our commitment to continuing the fight against Islamic State, which remains a priority. It is essential that we keep the coalition, in this regard. We call on the Iraqi authorities to continue to supply the necessary support to the coalition, the E3 group said in a statement on Monday.

We are ready to continue talks with all parties in order to contribute to de-escalating tensions and re-establishing stability in the region, added the E3 group.

There are grave fears for the future of the nuclear deal.

We will definitely talk to Iran again. What has been announced is, however, not consistent with the agreement, Maas said.

[The situation] has not got easier, and this could be the first step to the end of this agreement, which would be a big loss so we will weigh this up very, very responsibly now.

Europe now has an important role in view of the menacing escalation of the conflict between the United States and Iran Heiko Maas, German foreign minister

Germanys foreign minister has also proposed bringing forward a regular meeting with counterparts from other European Union countries amid escalating tensions in the Middle East.

Europe now has an important role in view of the menacing escalation of the conflict between the United States and Iran, Maas said in a statement on Sunday. EU foreign ministers should quickly agree on a common approach, he added.

Europe has reliable channels of communication to all sides that should be used to the full extent in the current situation, Maas said.

Germany has about 130 soldiers in Iraq as part of an international assistance and training mission. The German defence ministry said on Sunday that a regular rotation of troops replacing some of those currently in Iraq had been suspended.

Maas said Germany stood ready to continue to provide assistance in Iraq if it is requested and the situation allows it, adding that the fight there against ISIL is not over.





In order to discuss this with our international partners there should be a meeting of the anti-IS coalition as soon as possible, he said.

Maas said he had spoken with his counterparts in France, Britain, Italy and the EU, as well as the head of NATO and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Earlier on Sunday, the foreign ministry confirmed that the charge daffaires of the German embassy in Tehran had met Iranian foreign ministry officials, but provided no details.

Trump, meanwhile, spoke with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday, discussing the current situation in Iraq and Iran, the White House said in a statement.

The release offered few details of the specifics of the call, noting only that the two leaders reaffirmed the close alliance between the two countries.
A$AP Rocky Clarifies Ferguson Quotes: I Used to Think it Was Inappropriate to Rap About Things I Didnt Help With Torry Threadcraft Torry Threadcraft is a writer who covers music, sports, and

In an interview with Kerwin Frost, the Harlem MC gave more context to his controversial quotes from 2015.

A$AP Rocky recently sat down with Kerwin Frost for a lengthy interview. During the Q&A, he finally broke his silence on some heavily-scrutinized quotes from 2015.

That September, Rocky did an interview with TimeOuts Eve Barlow. Barlow asked Rocky about his experience speaking at Oxford University, where a student challenged his decision to not rap about police brutality and the Ferguson protests. Rocky responded to Barlow, quoting lyrics from his song Dreams.

Why would I feel compelled to rap about Ferguson? he replied, Im not about to say that I was down there throwing rocks at motherfuckers, getting pepper-sprayed. Id be lyingI live in fucking Soho and Beverly Hills. I cant relate.

The quotes resurfaced on social media when Rocky was briefly incarcerated in Sweden. Speaking with Frost, however, Rocky attempted to clarify what he meant back in 2015.

In those old interviews, I used to say I think its inappropriate for me to rap about things I didnt help with,' he said. I felt like when it came to Ferguson, J. Cole went down there and he actually was on the news and he helped. I felt like he deserved to rap about it. So when someone [asked] me that in 2015 Im like: I just feel, personally, if Im in SoHo or Im here I cant even talk on that Thats appropriating.  Its not sincere. Its pretentious.

Watch the full interview above.

H/T: VIBE
Mumbai, Jan 6 : Tata Motors did not even produce a single unit of its entry-level offering, Nano, during 2019, while it managed to sell just one unit during the year.

According to data collated from regulatory filings, the company did not produce a single Nano from January-December 2019, while it had rolled-out 516 units during 2018.

The data showed that only one unit was sold during the entire year in February 2019, while 518 were sold during 2018.

Export-wise, no Nano was shipped out during the January-December 2019 period.

Aasked about the future of the car, a Tata Motors spokesperson said: "The Nano in its current form will not meet the new safety and emission norms and may need infusion of fresh investments." "No decision has been made yet in this regard." The vehicle was launched in 2008. It was dubbed as the people's car and the world's cheapest car.
An employee picks up a Juul Labs device kit for a customer at a store in San Francisco.

Juul tapped its brand new chief financial officer to run the embattled e-cigarette maker's $1 billion restructuring effort, the company confirmed to CNBC on Monday.

Guy Cartwright, who became Juul's CFO in October, will become the company's chief transformation officer, according to a Juul spokesman. Cartwright joined the company in July as transformation and operations officer, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Juul accounting chief Saurabh Sinha is taking over as interim CFO, the company said.

"Our overall goal is to save 1 billion dollars in the near-term so that we could continue to invest in key areas," Cartwright said in an email shared with CNBC. "Through everyone's efforts, we are approaching that goal, but there is still more work to do."

Several top executives left the company last year amid a management shake-up. Chief Administrative Officer Ashley Gould and Chief Financial Officer Tim Danaher, two veteran employees at the young start-up, are gone. Craig Brommers, chief marketing officer, and David Foster, senior vice president of advanced technologies, left as well.

Juul also abandoned its chief marketing officer position.

The leadership changes come as Juul faces mounting litigation and scrutiny over a surge in teen vaping. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration issued a ban on most fruit- and mint-flavored nicotine vaping products in an effort to curb a surge in teen use.

Juul in November halted the sale of its flavors in the U.S., excluding menthol, Virginia tobacco and classic tobacco.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Todays archive page is from Feb. 1, 1983.

The Staten Island Ferry has made fewer rush-hour trips on time, and carried fewer passengers, than anticipated in July through October, according to the annual Mayors Management Report.

The report does not reveal the number of passengers, stating that the total number was 15% lower than anticipated between July and October.

In addition, according to the report, during rush hours in that same timeframe, 85% of the ferryboats were on schedule -- which is 6% worse than planned.

However, Mayor Edward Koch says that New York City services as a whole have improved in the last eight years.

If you wish to view additional historic pages, click the links below.

Advance historic page from Dec. 7, 1951: Carlton Cleaners opening new location

Advance historic page from Sept. 12, 1929: Fight the menace in your kitchen

If you have trouble viewing the below page from Feb. 1, 1983, click here to enlarge it.
Bangladesh's high court ordered the government Monday to introduce steps by next year broadly banning single-use plastics following a landmark case brought by environmental groups.

Pollution from single-use plastics is a major problem in Bangladesh, where nearly 170 million people live in a tiny sliver of low-lying land criss-crossed by hundreds of rivers and tributaries.

Waterways are frequently clogged by plastic garbage, leading to frequent flooding during the monsoon and causing widespread damage to the sensitive coastal mangroves.

"The high court has directed the government to prohibit the use of single-use plastic items in hotels, motels and restaurants throughout Bangladesh within a year," said Rizwana Hasan, a top environmental lawyer who moved the public interest litigation through the court.

"The government has also been directed to make all coastal areas free of polythene bags and single-use plastic items within the same period," Hasan told AFP.

The court also ordered the government to fully implement a landmark 2002 order to ban the use of polythene bags.

Two decades ago Bangladesh became one of the first countries to ban polythene bags, but the order was never enforced -- owing partly to lobbying by plastic bag manufacturers.

Still, Hasan called Monday's ruling an "important" step.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) today, announced that Oliver Alawuba has been appointed as CEO of UBA Africa, overseeing the banks 20 African country operations, ex-Nigeria.

He succeeds Victor Osadolor, who retires from the Group Board, after nine years of service working at UBA. UBA Africa serves over 19 million customers across the African continent, providing retail, commercial and institutional banking services, leading financial inclusion and implementing cutting edge products including the first ever banking chat bot in Africa, LEO.

Mr Alawuba has close to three decades of banking industry experience. He was once the CEO of UBA Ghana and rose to become Regional CEO, UBA Africa before returning to Nigeria to run UBAs East Bank. Under his leadership, UBAs Nigerian East Bank division became the fastest growing regional bank in the Group.

The board further appointed Senegalese national, Abdoul-Aziz Dia, as Executive Director for Treasury and International Banking, subject to the approval of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Mr Dia becomes the first non-Nigerian Group Executive Director of the Bank, bringing a wealth of multi geographical experience to the Group. Mr Dia will be responsible for UBAs global network of operations in New York, London and Paris, together with Group Treasury, where UBA offers a sophisticated suite of products to multinationals, international institutions and African clients.

Chukwuma Nweke, currently the Executive Director Operations, was confirmed by the Board as the Group Executive Director, Retail and Payments, demonstrating the Groups commitment to its retail offering. Mr Nweke has close to three decades of banking experience spanning Banking Operations, Finance, Technology, Audit and Strategy.

The board also announced the appointment of Chiugo Ndubisi as Group Executive Director and the Group Chief Operating Officer, subject to the approval of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Mr Ndubusi is a professional with almost three decades of banking experience that includes the role of Chief Finance Officer(CFO) and Executive Director on the board of a financial institution. His in-depth understanding of banking and finance industry dynamics will bring a lot of value to the Group Board of UBA.

Speaking on the appointments, Group Chairman Tony Elumelu said: These appointments emphasise the Groups commitment to our pan-African and global network, our huge retail client base and our operational infrastructure. We are focused on improving our efficiency and further strengthening our pan-African mission, using the extraordinary pool of talent and experience available in the Group.

READ ALSO:

Mr Elumelu thanked both the outgoing Deputy Managing Director/CEO, UBA Africa, Victor Osadolor, and the former Regional CEO for UBA in East and Southern Africa, Emeke Iweriebor, who just retired from the board, for their contributions to the Bank. Victor and Emeke were key players during the merger of Standard Trust Bank and UBA and have been valuable contributors to the growth of the Bank. We wish them well.

The board appointments underline UBAs broader commitment to investing in the highest quality human capital. The bank recently reformed its grade structure and technology teams, having reduced its grade structure from 16 to 12 levels, at the end of 2019. The bank welcomed 3,000 new staff members in 2019 and promoted over 5,000 employees. UBA is the largest employer in the Nigerian banking sector, with a staff strength of close to 20,000 employees group-wide.
At least 30 cadets dead in airstrike on Tripoli military school: Government

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 05 January 2020 7:43 AM

The Tripoli government says dozens of people have been killed and injured in an airstrike on a military academy in the Libyan capital.

Amin al-Hashemi, spokesman for Libya's internationally-recognized government, said the raid took place on Saturday as the cadets in the military school  situated in al-Hadba al-Khadra neighborhood of Tripoli  were gathered on a parade ground before being sent to their dormitories.

The Health Ministry in Tripoli said the raid killed 30 cadets and injured 33 more. Reuters cited Health Minister Hamid bin Omar as saying that the number of fatalities was still rising.

Forces allied with the Tripoli-based government  known as the Government of National Accord (GNA)  said the raid had been carried out by their eastern rivals backed by renegade general, Khalifa Haftar, who has been pressing ahead with an offensive on the capital since April 2019.

However, one source with the camp based in the eastern city of Tobruk denied any role, according to Reuters.

Hafter's forces have stepped up their offensive since November 2019, when the rival Tripoli camp inked a military and security cooperation deal with Turkey, angering the power base in the east.

There have been concerns of even further escalation between rival Libyan forces after Turkey's parliament voted on January 2 to allow a troop deployment in support of the GNA as part of their military deal.

In response, the rival parliament in Tobruk voted on Saturday to cut ties with Turkey in protest at the agreement. Haftar has also urged all Libyans to take up arms against the foreign intervention.

More than 280 civilians and over 2,000 fighters have been killed since the start of Haftar's assault on Tripoli, according to the United Nations. The fighting has also displaced some 146,000 people.

On Friday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated a call for an immediate ceasefire in Libya, warning that the delivery of foreign support to warring parties would "further complicate efforts to reach a peaceful and comprehensive political solution."

A day later, Saudi Arabia  which is reported to be funding Haftar's offensive on Tripoli  condemned "the recent Turkish escalation in Libya," saying the Turkish parliament's approval of military deployment was a violation of UN Security Council decisions.

A Wall Street Journal report in April 2019 revealed that Haftar had direct support from Saudi Arabia in his campaign to seize Tripoli. The powerful general had been ensured of massive funds from Riyadh during a trip to the kingdom before he started his offensive.

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Senior Pentagon leaders have said the US has no plans to withdraw troops from Iraq, despite a draft letter from a senior military officer that appeared to suggest plans for withdrawal were under way.

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the US is "moving forces around" Iraq and neighbouring Kuwait.

He said a draft letter circulated internally by a US Marine commander was a "poorly written" honest mistake that should never have got out.

The draft letter appeared to suggest the US was preparing to pull troops out of Iraq in response to a vote by the Iraqi parliament over the weekend.

The draft said troops would be "repositioning over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement", and warned of an increase in helicopter travel around the Green Zone in Baghdad. It added: "We respect your sovereignty decision to order our departure."

Gen Milley and defence secretary Mark Esper said the US has been repositioning troops, largely due to increased security threats from Iran. The letter was meant to co-ordinate with the Iraqi military on an increase in US helicopter and troop movements as they shift positions around the country.

"There's been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq," Mr Esper said. "There's no decision to leave, nor did we issue any plans to leave or prepare to leave."

Gen Milley acknowledged that some language in the letter "implies withdrawal", but that "is not what is happening".

"The long and the short of it is, it's an honest mistake," he said, adding that he had just got off the phone with the US commander in the Middle East, who explained the effort.

Mr Esper said the US remains committed to the campaign to defeat the so-called Islamic State group in Iraq and the wider region.

Pro-Iran factions in the Iraqi parliament have pushed to oust American troops following the killing of a top Iranian general in Baghdad in a US drone strike last week.
Poroshenkos party stated that allegedly Ukraines former president has allegedly freed 3,000 people from occupied Donbas. But this is a lie

Open source

We have received accurate data on the release and exchanges of detainees from occupied Donbas (some regions of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, controlled by Russia-backed militants).

A few days ago, Poroshenkos party stated that allegedly Ukraines former president has allegedly freed 3,000 people from occupied Donbas. But this is a lie.

In 2014-2017, the Ukrainian side did find 3221 people in Donbas - 1571 security officials, 69 fighters of volunteer battalions, 1581 civilians, including 40 volunteers, and 28 journalists! BUT!

From May 7, 2014, to December 31, 2019, only 925 people were released from occupied Donbas.

During this period, 744 people were freed from occupied Donbas, in particular:

May 7, 2014  January 13, 2017  632 people,

December 27, 2017 - January 57 and 21, 2018  2 people,

June 27, 2019  2 people,

December 29, 2019 - 51 people.

During this period, 181 people were released from occupied Donbas, in particular:

May 7, 2014  January 13, 2017  138 people,

December 27, 2017  16 people,

June 27, 2019  2 people,

December 29, 2019  25 people.

The remaining 2,000 people have disappeared first, but later they were found. For example, someone disappeared for several days and then was found. They have no relation to captivity in occupied Donbas. But surely, they brightened up the statistics of Poroshenko's achievements in Donbas.

Read the original text at PavlovskyNews Telegram channel.
Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Sunday said India is the only shelter for religiously persecuted Hindus, Sikhs and other minorities who come from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan, for the safety of their life and honour.

"India owes responsibility towards the minorities living in these countries which proclaim Islam as their state religion," Singh said here while launching the BJP's countrywide 10-day mass contact drive to spread awareness about the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

Accompanied by senior party colleagues, including former deputy chief minister Kavinder Gupta and former minister Sat Sharma, he began by visiting the house of veteran columnist, writer and Padmashri awardee K L Pandita, where he spent time with them discussing the Act.

Later, he visited prominent social activist Amjad Mirza, eminent Sikh religious leader Baba Swaranjit Singh, retired High Court judge Justice G D Sharma, veteran journalist and former bureau head of Hind Samachar group Gopal Sachar, retired principal of Jammu government medical college Subhash Gupta, social activist and president of Peoples' Forum Ramesh Sabharwal, among others.

During his interaction with them, the Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office claimed that Congress leaders and their allies protesting against the Act are doing so without "conviction".

He opined that if a "survey" was conducted among the family members of these Congress leaders, then, even they would not support their "anti-CAA stand".

"The tragedy of Congress party and contemporary leaders of Congress is that either they do not read their own history or are blissfully ignorant of the statements made by their own party patriarchs and former prime ministers," he said.

The minister recalled that the Nehru-Liaquat Pact of 1950 was inspired by the realisation on the part of the then Congress government headed by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru that minorities, particularly Hindus, were not getting a fair deal in Pakistan.

"In 1949, Nehru had written a letter expressing concern about people coming in from then East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh, and while doing so, he had referred to Hindus coming from there as 'refugees' and Muslims arriving here as 'immigrants'," Singh said.

Further, Nehru had stated that India owed a "responsibility" to these refugees, the minister said.

Referring to the opposition of senior Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi to the amended legislation, the minister said someone should show them records of proceedings of the winter session of Parliament in 1950 when their great-grandfather (Nehru) had himself said that they deserved to be given citizenship and if the law was inadequate for it, then, the law should be changed.

"PM Modi should actually be given credit for showing courage and conviction to carry forward the task, which the Congress government lacked, to accomplish this," the minister opined.

Singh reiterated that a false fear psychosis against Muslims is being sought to be manufactured when there is no place as safe and comfortable to live for the community as India.

Turning the tables on the opposition to the National Population Register(NPR) and proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC), Singh pointed out that PM Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah have been stating that the exercise on NRC is yet to begin.

He also said that it was then Union home minister P Chidambaram, who had stated in Parliament in 2010 that NPR could be a basis for NRC.
NEW DELHI  Dozens of masked men in New Delhi stormed one of Indias most prestigious universities on Sunday, attacking students and professors with rods and bricks, vandalizing dormitories and injuring at least 42 people, some of them seriously, officials said.

Some students accused the police of complicity, and videos posted on social media appeared to show officers standing by as students were beaten in front of them.

The attack, which was described by students and witnesses and recorded in videos posted on social media, happened at Jawaharlal Nehru University, a leafy campus in New Delhi. Students at the university said the attackers belonged to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a Hindu nationalist student organization. The group denied involvement.

Witnesses said the attackers rushed the campus between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. They shattered windows, attacked medics and yelled, Hail Lord Ram!  a reference to a Hindu god that has become a battle cry for far-right Hindu nationalists as India has grown more polarized under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Next year, were excited to announce African Enterprise will be rolling out a new, universal training program for our staff and local evangelists.

Since our founding in 1962, the social landscape has understandably evolved, and with it, the needs of our teams and those they serve. Over our 57 years weve consistently adapted our approach to missions, and this latest iteration of training will further equip evangelists to confidently share the Gospel message to diverse communities around the globe.

Bringing a unified approach to missions, the training program will teach from 3 key pillars: preparation, proclamation and preservation. Enabling leaders to set up a missions event well both spiritually and logistically, and to walk with new believers from salvation through to their maturity in Christ. That final stage is imperative, as African Enterprise seek to strengthen local churches capacity to maintain relationship and facilitate the growth of those impacted by missions.

Trainees will undertake a two day initial intensive before advanced training, graduating with an African Enterprise Advanced Certificate of Evangelism & Missions. Motivating them to approach the process with excellence, and an appreciation for their work as a professional vocation.

Teams will be briefed in a new reporting structure that brings additional accountability to all projects, enhancing our ability to be the most faithful and effective catalyst for holistic urban evangelism in Africa.

Theyll also be unified in their understanding of Gods heart for the lost though the course, along with studying Apologetics and discipling new Christians.

African Enterprise CEO Ben Campbell says, This training material consolidates the significant evangelistic experience and partnership between us and many contributing organisations.

This new training blueprint for the African Enterprise missions process promises a much clearer focus, and opportunity to consistently and effectively reach out to more people throughout Africa in partnership with the church.

Follow the upcoming African Enterprise missions via www.africanenterprise.com.au/missons
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 19:39:08|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said here Monday that as good neighbors, friends, comrades and partners, China and Laos enjoy a shared future.

Xi made the remarks when meeting with visiting Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith.

He called on the two countries to work "hand in hand and side by side" to jointly safeguard the common interests of both countries and those of the developing countries.
History was made Monday morning as Readings first Latino mayor was sworn in.

Eddie Moran, a Democrat, was sworn in as Readings 47th mayor in front of 300 to 400 city residents and city and county officials at the Santander Performing Arts Center.

Moran, standing on the stage with his wife, Ruthie, and sons Danny and Tyler by his side, took the oath of office from Berks County Judge Scott Lash.

In the November election Moran garnered 6,699 votes to easily defeat Republican Louis R. Perugini, who received 1,603 votes.

I look out at you all today and I see a proud city, Moran said. I stand here as your mayor, humble and hopeful.

Moran never made promises during his campaign but made one Monday.

We will build a better Reading and leave it stronger, fairer and more equitable than we found it, he said

Moran also thanked the people who did not vote for him and vowed to be their mayor, too.

Mi gente (my people), we are and must be in this together if we are to face and confront the challenges that lay ahead of us, he said. These challenges can only be overcome together. We cannot fail. We will not fail.

Before walking off the stage, Moran made a few more comments.

Now, something that has never happened before, Moran said. The mayor will address the community in Spanish.

Moran planned later Monday to sign executive orders, name interim department directors and nominate a managing director, according to a press release sent out by his administration.

Four pillars

Moran laid out the four pillars of his administration and what will lead to a better Reading: safety; education and workforce development; economic development and stability; and leadership and integrity.

Moran said he wants to create a citywide plan that analyzes crime and implements a crime prevention strategy.

He wants to create a task force that brings together city government, the public sector, the nonprofit sector, the Reading School District, business leaders and faith communities.

I look forward to being that bridge that brings all these stakeholders together, Moran said. And together we will find creative solutions to what I believe is the root cause to many issues of crime we face in our city. And that is poverty.

Moran also plans to work with the school district to implement an education and workforce development task force.

He said that group would work on a comprehensive plan to educate children and prepare them and the city for the jobs of the future.

The task force would also connect students with the option to pursue vocational and technical training for jobs.

They will also be tasked with working with businesses and unions to set up apprenticeships for those who want to learn a trade, he said.

In terms of economic development, Moran said he will promote small businesses and big businesses to bring family sustaining jobs to the city.

Our approach is bigger than just focusing on Penn Street and revitalizing that corridor, he said.

Moran said the final pillar of his administration would be leadership and integrity.

I make a commitment today to be a partner with you all, he said. I hope you all work closely with me to turn this thing around. Our residents deserve it.

Right to work

Moran wasted no time getting to work in City Hall after his inauguration.

He placed Managing Director Osmer Deming on administrative leave by 1:10 p.m and named Administrative Services Director Jamar Kelly as acting managing director.

Moran also named Elizabeth Kraft as acting city solicitor, a spot held by Fred Lachet. Lachet will remain with the citys law department, Moran said.

The biggest change came in terms of the Reading Parking Authority.

Moran removed all of former Mayor Wally Scotts appointments: Chairwoman Linda Burns-Glover, Misael Marmolejos, Larry Miller and Bill Murray. He appointed Timothy Profit, Frank Denbowski, Nate Rivera, Danny Laws and Julie Domena.
More than two years and a lifetime ago, Hollywoods open secrets about Harvey Weinstein finally spilled into public view.

Few back then could have predicted all that would follow or where the #MeToo movement would go. Now, for Weinstein, a reckoning is at hand: His criminal trial, on five felony counts, including predatory sexual assault and rape, is scheduled to begin on Monday in state court in Manhattan. Jury selection could last two weeks, the trial six more.

The proceedings will mark an extraordinary moment in the still-unfolding story of harassment and abuse by powerful men and the implications for every corner of society. For some in the movement, simply seeing Weinstein facing a jury, and charges that could send him to prison for life, will be a victory.

The fact that this has made it this far is remarkable in its own right, said Tina Tchen, the chief executive of the advocacy group Times Up.

Most rape accusations dont make it to court. Much has changed since the New York Times and the New Yorker reported that dozens of women had accused Weinstein of rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse, unleashing a torrent of similar claims against others as the MeToo hashtag went viral and developed into an international movement. But the legal challenges remain.

Such cases can be difficult to try because there are often no witnesses. For the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., prosecuting the former movie producer could be complicated by the fact the charges are based on allegations about long-ago events. The more memories fade, of course, the easier they are to challenge.

Weinstein, 67, is accused of raping one woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and of performing a forcible sex act on another in 2006 in his apartment in the city. He pleaded not guilty, maintaining any sexual activity was consensual.

The hurdle of an extended time between an alleged assault and charges being filed isnt always insurmountable for prosecutors. After one trial ended in a hung jury, Bill Cosby was convicted in 2018 of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in 2004. At the second trial, prosecutors called five other women as so-called prior bad acts witnesses to testify about how the comedian allegedly assaulted them.

The Weinstein prosecutors will follow a similar strategy, indicating in court filings that they plan for at least four Weinstein accusers, beyond the two in the indictment, to testify in an attempt to show a pattern of behavior by the defendant. The district attorneys office declined to comment.

Members of Weinsteins defense team also declined to comment for this story. One of his lawyers, Donna Rotunno, said in an interview with CBS This Morning in September that the many accusations leveled against Weinstein, in civil cases and in the media, arent relevant to jurors, saying that frankly, those allegations dont matter in the context of the criminal case.

Weinstein and the board of his bankrupt film studio, Weinstein Co., reached a tentative $47 million settlement last month with dozens of his accusers. Other civil complaints against Weinstein remain active.

Eric Bachman, a lawyer in Chevy Chase, Maryland, who has represented employees in discrimination cases for two decades, said the criminal trial will encourage more victims of abuse and harassment by other powerful people to come forward. And if Weinstein is acquitted? Still, the fact that these complaints were taken seriously and vetted and pursued will have a very positive impact on encouraging people to speak up.

As it is, the Times Up Legal Defense Fund said it receives some 80 new requests daily from women asking for help finding legal counsel or advice. In the last two years, hundreds of men, and some women, have lost their jobs or faced professional repercussions after being called out for sexual misbehavior. Companies have changed outdated policies and 15 states amended or updated workplace-harassment laws. One in five workers is now required to go through sexual harassment training, up from one in 100 before the MeToo movement.

Peoples perceptions about sexual assault and rape of women have evolved, said Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer who represents a Weinstein accuser who may testify at the trial, and two other women who have made claims against the former producer. Now people understand that its not something that happens just at knife point or at gun point, and women dont necessarily run to the police immediately. There are power dynamics also at play.

That is progress that wont be stopped if Weinstein should walk free of the criminal charges, Times Ups Tchen said. I firmly believe the outcome of the trial does not affect momentum, either way, because this was never about just one person.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Fraud Abuse Molestation
Chandigarh, Jan 6 : Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday approved a Rs 650 crore project for the rejuvenation of the highly polluting Budah nallah in Ludhiana.

The Chief Minister asked the Local Government Department to ensure timely completion of the project within two years.

Presiding over a high-level meeting here, Amarinder Singh directed Additional Chief Secretary (Local Government) Sanjay Kumar to take all necessary steps for the rejuvenation of Budah nallah, having total length of 47.55 km, of which 14 km passes through Ludhiana city.

The city has been heavily polluted by the industrial and domestic waste thrown into the nallah, causing a major threat to public health and environment.

Amarinder Singh called for maximum public participation and also asked the local industries, NGOs and religious and social organisations to come forward to carry out this project in a mission mode.

Accompanied by Local Government Minister Brahm Mohindra, the Chief Minister lauded the contribution of Namdhari Sect head Satguru Thakur Uday Singh for taking personal initiative for the cleaning of Budah nallah in coordination with the Municipal Corporation of Ludhiana.
In his first detailed comments on the killing of Irans most celebrated commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike on Jan. 3, Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized the move, saying it aggravated regional tensions and that his death had come as a shock. The Turkish leaders messages during an hour-and-a-half-long interview aired Sunday on the government-friendly CNN Turk were cautiously worded but left no doubt that he doesnt want his country embroiled in a conflict between the United States and Iran.

Erdogan said, Soleimani is an individual who proved himself and one who was accorded extraordinary value by [Irans Supreme Leader] Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. I believe that the killing of a states commander cannot go unanswered. The choice that [the United States] made was ill advised and has increased tensions.

Today, Erdogans Justice and Development Party spokesman Omer Celik reaffirmed Turkish disapproval, saying, With this attack a phase of greater violence has begun. Despite everything, Iran was talking to the European Union to [salvage] the nuclear agreement.

Iran announced on Sunday that it that it will no longer be bound by the uranium-enrichment limits under the terms of the nuclear deal from which the Donald Trump administration withdrew in 2017. Many believe the move triggered the spiral of hostility that resulted in Soleimanis assassination.

Erdogan said he had counseled Trump not to escalate tensions with Iran in a telephone conversation that took place around five hours before Soleimani was struck near the Baghdad airport together with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Tehran-backed deputy leader of Iraqs Popular Mobilization Units. Muhandis also perished in the attack.

Erdogan stated that Trump had made no mention of his plans to assassinate Soleimani during the call. I was shocked, he said.

Turkey is in a delicate position. Its relations with Iran are complex. The countries are historical rivals, as witnessed most recently in Syria, where Turkey unsuccessfully sought to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, and Iran fought alongside him with Shiite militias organized by Soleimani. Yet with restive Kurdish populations of their own, both regional powers have a shared interest in preventing the United States Syrian Kurdish allies from winning political autonomy and are now part of the Russian-driven Astana process to keep Syria territorially intact.

The issue has become Ankaras top priority in Syria, where Erdogan said Turkey has cleansed 8,200 square kilometers of terror. He was referring to territory occupied by Turkish forces to dislodge the Islamic State and the Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG). Turkey calls the group a terrorist organization and has vowed to eradicate its presence from along its border with Syria because of the YPGs close relationship with another Kurdish group that has been waging a 35-year insurgency within Turkey.

During the CNN interview, Erdogan huffed at the United States over its continued military assistance to the YPG, saying the Pentagon had provided the militia with 33 truckloads of weapons for free. How could the United States help a terrorist organization while targeting an Iranian official for being a terrorist, he asked.

Yet Erdogan was careful not to critique Trump personally. The US president is virtually Erdogans sole friend in Washington, where congressional calls to sanction Turkey over a variety of its perceived misdeeds, most notably its purchase of Russian-made S-400 missiles and its latest assault against the YPG in northeastern Syria, have been growing louder by the day. A multi-billlion-dollar oil-for-gold scheme facilitated by Turkey's state lender Halkbank to help Iran evade sanctions is another source of ire. Allegations that Turkey's spy boss Hakan Fidan passed Iran information on Israeli spies haven't helped.

Erdogan acknowledged that a sympathetic Trump wants to help block sanctions against Turkey.

But he may now expect payback, reckons Gulriz Sen, an assistant professor of international relations at Ankaras TOBB University. Trump will pressure Erdogan to side with him against Iran. Turkey is already complying meticulously with US sanctions and not buying any Iranian oil," Sen told Al-Monitor. Some speculate the next demand may be for Turkey to halt natural gas imports from Iran, though Sen believes this is unlikely in the near term.

Irans President Hassan Rouhani reportedly exhorted Turkey to pick sides in a Jan. 4 telephone call with Erdogan and allegedly called upon him to fight together against Americas insolent moves. The government did not comment on the claims carried by Russias Sputnik but a Turkish official denied that Erdogan had referred to Soleimani as a martyr when presenting his condolences to Rouhani.

Some analysts suggest that the Soleimani affair may prove an opportunity for Turkey to trade its spotty international image as a regional bully for one of regional peacemaker in a replay of its 2010 effort with Brazil to broker a deal with Iran over its nuclear program that was rebuffed by the Barack Obama administration. It may also restore Turkeys strategic value in Americas eyes, observed prominent political scientist Mensur Akgun.

The importance of Incirlik and Kurecik may be better appreciated. The administration and the Senate may be better disposed to address Turkeys interests and expectations, Akgun opined in a column for the mildly oppositionist daily Karar. Incirlik is a Turkish base used by the United States and NATO for missions in Iraq, Syria and Aghanistan and Kurecik is a radar installation that helps monitor Iran.

But the situation is dramatically different now and Turkey is not enough of a heavyweight to play peacemaker between Washington and Tehran, argued Sen. Iran would prefer to have a more influential actor like Russia, she said. In any case, many of the same people in Washington who have been exhorting Trump to get tough with Iran have been urging the same for Turkey as a defiant Erdogan, seemingly bent on restoring his countrys erstwhile Ottoman glory, keeps putting down boots in the Middle East.
22-Year-Old Hunter Rescues 9 Koalas From Victoria Bushfires in Mallacoota

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Jules Robinson has thrown her hat into the fundraiser ring in an effort to raise cash for the bushfire crisis.

The Married At First Sight star will return to the venue where she married co-star Cameron Merchant in November, Sydney's Beta Bar, to hold the Brunch Bush Bash, with all proceeds going to the NSW Rural Fire Service.

The 36-year-old announced the event - for which tickets are $100 each - via a press release promising a morning of grazing platters and fine wines.

Helpful: MAFS' Jules Robinson will return to the venue where she married co-star Cameron Merchant to host $100 a head fundraiser, the Brunch Bush Bash, with all proceeds going to the NSW Rural Fire Service. The pair are pictured at the wedding, held at Beta Bar in November

The charitable brunch held on Sunday, January 12 at 11am will raise much-needed funds for the NSW Rural Fire Service.

Jules will play host, 'leading the party, and the dance floor' according to the press release, and will be joined by 'a stellar selection of Sydney's local musicians'.

The musical lineup includes Sam Jake, Amy Chase, Ron Maran, Dan Maher, Nikki, Niz and more.

Back to the scene: The 36-year-old announced the event - for which tickets are $100 each - via a press release promising a morning of grazing platters and fine wines

The event includes, 'four hours of Australian-themed grazing platters by Platter Wonderland, a welcome drink and raffles/auctions to be won'. The raffle prizes are said to include, 'luxurious getaways, Champagne magnums and much more'

The event includes, 'four hours of Australian-themed grazing platters by Platter Wonderland, a welcome drink and raffles/auctions to be won'.

The raffle prizes are said to include, 'luxurious getaways, Champagne magnums and much more'.

Guests 'will be able to treat themselves to wines on tap from bushfire-affected regions in Adelaide' during the morning.

Party! Jules will play host, 'leading the party, and the dance floor' according to the press release, and will be joined by 'a stellar selection of Sydney's local musicians

Guests 'will be able to treat themselves to wines on tap from bushfire-affected regions in Adelaide' during the morning

Jules and Cameron were married at the same venue late last year, with a special on the happy event airing on A Current Affair soon after.

The special was criticised for feeling more like an advertisement for wedding services, with a number of brands showcased throughout the hour.

A number of viewers took to Twitter hit out at what appeared to be product placement on the show.

'Seems like an advertisement for wedding services,' one viewer wrote while another raged, 'The fact that I am seeing the A Current Affair logo at the bottom left hand corner makes me sick.'
The Chief seated (right) receiving one of the citations.

06.01.2020 LISTEN

The Manhean Zongo Chief, Sarki Abdul-Kadir Ahmed Abdul-Kadir has been recognised for his efforts and contribution towards the development, peace, unity and youth empowerment within Amasaman Municipality and beyond.

The Chief was presented with two citations from two different Youth Associations within the Amasaman Municipality.

The Associations were the Manhean Zongo Youth and Upper West Youth and Development Associations respectively.

The two citations of honour were presented to him during a colorful and well organized naming ceremony at his resident in Manhean, a suburb of Accra on December 28, 2019.

Sarki Abdul-Kadir is a successful businessman who has acquired a lot and has played major roles to bring improvement into the lives of many in society.

Sarki Abdul-Kadir with his tenacity, courage and hard work was installed as the legitimate Manhean Zongo Chief in November 27, 2016 and since then he had advanced the Manhean community to the admiration of other neighboring communities.

Among the success chalked by the chief included settling of disputes within the people, ensuring peaceful coexistence between other tribes and religion in Manhean and the neighboring communities, contribution towards construction of Mosques, lobbying for government developmental project for the Manhean community which include roads and drainages, organizing clean up exercise, free health screening, enrollment of over 270 on National Health Insurance Scheme, scholarship for orphans within the Manhean community, among others.

The show of exemplary leadership by the chief caught the attention of the two Associations to recognized his efforts and surprised him during the naming ceremony of his new born baby, Islam Abdul-Kadir Ahmed.

Sarki Abdul-Kadir Ahmed Abdul-Kadir is a member of the National Council of Zongo Chiefs, the Communications Director of the then Ga West and North Council of Zongo Chiefs and a member of Manhean Chief's Palace.

Sarki Abdul-Kadir Ahmed Abdul-Kadir in his response expressed gratitude to the two Youth Associations for the honour done him.

He encouraged his Council members not to rest on their oars, but support him to do more so that the respect that Manhean Zongo had attained in the neighboring communities would be sustained for further development of the community.

In a related development, the outgoing Assembly Member for the area, Hon. Malik Abass was also honoured with a citation by the Manhean Zongo Youth Association for his selfless leadership and some developmental project he brought to the Manhean Electoral Area during his tenure as the Assemblyman.

The outgoing Assemblyman, used the occasion to wish his successor well in his new endeavour as the Assemblyman elect for Manhean Electoral Area.

The incoming Assembly Member for Manhean Electoral Area, Hon. Nathaniel Nii Lomotey Tetteh also expressed his readiness to bring massive development to areas under his jurisdiction and pledged to continue the good works of the outgoing Assembly member.

The citation of the Manhean Zongo Youth Association was presented by Manhean Mantse Nii Ayi Kortor and his Traditional Council whilst the second citation was also presented on behalf of Upper West Youth and Development Association to the Manhean Zongo Chief by Member of Parliament for Wa Central Hon. Dr Rashid Pelpuo together with Hon. Rashid Malik Issah, Aspiring Member of Parliament for Okai Kwei Central, Hon. Sedem Afenyo, Aspiring member of Parliament for Amasaman, Hon. Akwasi Afrifa Mensah, the New Patriotic Party (NPP's) Parliamentary Candidate for Amasaman Constituency and representatives of Amasaman Municipal Assembly.

Hon. Dr Rashid Pelpuo and the representative of the MCE used the opportunity to introduced their aspiring Members of Parliament for Amasaman constituency Hon. Sedem Afenyo and Hon. Akwasi Afrifa Mensah respectively to the people at the gathering.

Source: Muhammed Faisal Mustapha
Prasanta Mazumdar By

Express News Service

GUWAHATI: The Supreme Court has sought an explanation from the Assam government over allegation that Hitesh Dev Sarma, the state coordinator for National Register of Citizens (NRC), had made communal statements on the social media.

He should not be saying all this. You (Assam government) have to explain this a bench, headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde, observed on Monday.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal had drawn the courts attention to the alleged communal statements. Earlier, separate petitions were filed by some organisations seeking Dev Sarmas removal as the NRC state coordinator.

Opposition Congress welcomed the courts observation.

Mr. Dev Sarma is a senior officer who is seated on the hot chair. Where did he get the right and power from to make such irresponsible comments? It is the governments failure. We welcome the courts observation on the matter, senior Assam Congress spokesman Apurba Bhattacharya told this newspaper.

Dev Sarma had replaced Prateek Hajela who was transferred to his home state Madhya Pradesh following an order by the SC.

The first to register a protest against Dev Sarmas statements was Assam Congress MP, Abdul Khaleque. He had written to Assam Governor Prof Jagdish Mukhi alleging that the NRCs new state coordinator, prior to his appointment, had shared several controversial posts on the social media against a particular community.

From the various posts, the biasness of Mr. Dev Sarma is quite apparent and palpable. His conducts and views regarding this matter prima facie show a high degree of biasnessTherefore, Mr. Dev Sarma is not a fit person to handle such a sensitive post, Khaleque wrote in the letter after Sarma had taken over charge.

If Mr. Dev Sarma is in the helm of affairs, there is a likelihood that the process of such re-verification and other incidental activities would be done in a biased manner, the MP had written.

Meanwhile, Assam Public Works (APW), an NGO which had first moved the SC seeking the updation of the NRC, said the court sought a reply from the Assam government on its plea for 100% re-verification of NRC documents.

The court heard our petition and directed the Assam government to give a reply. We will get a picture on the matter after four weeks, APW chief Abhijeet Sarma said.


At least nine chief executives in the FTSE 100 index will leave their jobs in 2020 as blue chip firms shake up their top teams.

The bosses of household names including BP, Tesco, Auto Trader, British Gas owner Centrica and tobacco giant Imperial Brands are all standing down.

Publisher Pearson, insurance company Phoenix Group, miner BHP and property company Land Securities have also already announced that there will be change at the top this year.

Checking out: BP boss Bob Dudley is among at least nine chief executives in the FTSE 100 index who are set to leave their jobs in 2020

The exodus follows the departure of 13 chief executives in the FTSE 100 index in 2019, including at Unilever, BT, Aviva, HSBC, B&Q owner Kingfisher and Royal Bank of Scotland.

But with the 20 longest-serving Footsie bosses in post for eight years or more, analysts predict there could be even more departures in 2020.

Among those tipped to go are Jes Staley at Barclays, Ivan Glasenberg at Glencore and Willie Walsh at British Airways-owner IAG.

Other long-serving bosses who could be moving on include Antonio Horta-Osorio at Lloyds and Chris Grigg at British Land.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said: Some bosses go because they go on their own terms, to either retire, seek a fresh challenge or leave what they see as a positive legacy, even getting out while the going is still good.

Others go because they are booted out by frustrated shareholders or disappointed colleagues on the board.

There is every chance that we will see more chief executives go in 2020, voluntarily or not, thanks to pressure from investors to deliver good performance in terms of governance, financial results and the share price, especially if the global economy unexpectedly takes a leg down next year.

Mould said Staley could come under fresh pressure from activist Sherborne Investors, one of its biggest shareholders with a 5.5 per cent stake.

Sherborne chief Ed Bramson has clashed with Staley over the investment bank, arguing that it should be shrunk.

Glasenberg has hinted he is looking to promote the next generation of managers at mining giant Glencore.

The firm suffered a setback when the Serious Fraud Office recently announced an investigation into its operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

And Walsh has said he wants to stand down in the next two years  prompting a major shake-up at IAG. He is the third longest-serving boss in the FTSE 100 having run the company since January 2005.

The longest-serving chief executive is Simon Wolfson who took over at Next in May 2001. He is followed by Tim Steiner who has run Ocado since January 2002.
T he family of a junior doctor who was killed on a zebra crossing by a motorist blinded by a frosty windscreen launched a campaign with the Met today to encourage safer winter driving.

Dr Jasjot Singhota, 30, was on her way to work when she was mown down in Tulse Hill by student Alexander Fitzgerald, 26, who had not defrosted the Ford Fiesta he was driving while uninsured.

Dr Singhota was hit at 30mph and suffered a traumatic brain injury. She was taken to hospital after the collision in January 2017 but died the next day.

Her sister Neha Santasalo, 35, told the Standard the family were living a life sentence as it emerged that Fitzgerald, who was jailed for 10 months last year, has been released.

She has teamed up with the Mets Roads and Transport Policing Command for a #ReadyForTheRoad initiative designed to make motorists think twice before starting journeys.

People wont drive with their eyes closed so why do it when you cant see out the windscreen?

Ms Santasalo said. I dont want any other family to go through what we are. Jasjots death continues to impact our lives, every single day.

There will always be a huge gap in family occasions. Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries are just days now. I wont be able to enjoy Jasjot getting married, travel the world or for our children to play together.

It takes less than a few minutes to clear a car window but some people make a conscious decision not to do it.

Dr Singhota, a trainee anaesthetist at St Thomas Hospital in Lambeth, had volunteered in childrens hospitals in New Zealand.

After her death, the doctor saved five lives through organ donation. A bursary has been set up with the Royal College of Anaesthetists.

Ms Santasalo said her sister often worked overtime because she didnt believe in handing over and walking away, adding: Her life was about giving and making an impact. She was a positive light who just did good things.

Fitzgerald was leaving his girlfriends house to go to work in his fathers car but did not clear frost from the passenger side of the windscreen, Kingston crown court heard.

Less than a minute later he struck Dr Singhota as she looked through her handbag in Thurlow Park Road.

Fitzgerald admitted causing death by careless driving and driving while uninsured. He was banned from driving for 23 months and must take a test to regain his licence.
Opposition leader Juan Guaido and a rival lawmaker, Luis Parra, both claimed to be Venezuela's parliament speaker on Sunday following two separate votes and accusations of a "parliamentary coup."



Guaido was re-elected speaker by opposition lawmakers in a session held at a newspaper office after police blocked him from entering the National Assembly legislature.

In his absence, corruption-tainted Parra proclaimed himself speaker after claiming to have been elected with 81 votes in the 167-member chamber.

Guaido, who a year ago declared himself acting president in a direct challenge to the authority of socialist leader Nicolas Maduro, received the votes of around 100 lawmakers, including several forced last year into exile or to take shelter in foreign diplomatic missions due to a regime crackdown.

The 36-year-old Guaido vowed to "enforce" the constitution in his dual role as parliament speaker and "acting president."



But in a televised address, President Maduro gave his backing to Parra as the new speaker, adding that "Guaido was kicked out of the National Assembly by the votes of his own opposition."Venezuela's opposition earlier denounced Parra's move as a "parliamentary coup." "Without votes, nor a quorum PSUV (socialist party) deputies are trying to swear in a false leadership," said the National Assembly, the only government branch in opposition hands, on its Twitter account.

Guaido and around a dozen lawmakers had been prevented from entering the assembly by police claiming to be carrying out a security operation, but deputies from Maduro's party and opposition ones that have rejected Guaido were allowed in.

Guaido, wearing a blue suit, attempted to climb over the railing around the National Assembly premises to gain entry to its compound, only to be pushed back by police with riot shields.

Images of Parra declaring himself head of the chamber by megaphone were shown on state television channel VTV.

After spending four hours outside parliament, Guaido and allied lawmakers went to the offices of El Nacional newspaper where they held their own session.

"This is unprecedented!" Guaido told a member of the security forces with whom he had a heated exchange. "What operation? Who ordered it?" "Those who help to prevent the legitimate installation of the Venezuelan parliament are converting themselves into accomplices of the dictatorship," Guaido wrote on Twitter.

Guaido has led the National Assembly for the last year and used that role to declare himself acting president on January 23, 2019 after parliament had branded Maduro a "usurper.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In their search for a presidential nominee, Democrats have argued about all manner of things.

Theyve debated Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. Theyve weighed a wealth tax and free college tuition. Theyve clashed over campaign donations from millionaires.

But their most important dispute isnt about ideology or policy. Its about a more elusive quality: electability.

Who is most likely to defeat President Trump in November? Many Democratic voters say thats their top priority  not whether they agree with a candidates positions.

So far, the electability primary has a clear winner: former Vice President Joe Biden.

Bidens campaign hasnt been inspiring or error-free  far from it. Hes clung to first place in national polls with support from about 28% of Democratic voters, but hes running behind other candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire, where the first votes will be cast.

Nevertheless, when voters are asked who they think is most electable against Trump, Biden wins. Even some voters who prefer other candidates say Biden has the best shot.

In a CNN Poll released last week, 40% of Democrats nationwide said they believe Biden has the best chance of winning a general election, well ahead of his rivals. Other surveys have shown similar results.

Polls like that help explain why Biden, who launched his campaign with a soaring promise to save the soul of America, now focuses on a blunter, more practical message.

We all have big progressive plans, he said at the Democrats debate in Los Angeles on Dec. 19. The question is  who has the best chance, the most likely chance, of defeating Donald Trump?

Hes hoping to persuade voters desperate to win in 2020 to back him in the primaries, whether they like his moderate positions or not.

That pitch appears to have helped stabilize Bidens campaign after a series of gaffes and uninspiring debate performances that sent voters shopping for alternatives.

First, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) rose in the polls, only to fall back to Earth and withdraw from the race. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also soared, only to lose altitude after unveiling a big, costly proposal for government-run health insurance.

Warren has fallen because Democrats, especially liberal democrats, believe she has an electability problem, Stanford political scientists David Brady and Brett Parker reported last week.

They suggested Warrens proposal for a single, government-run health insurance plan cost her support. Other surveys have found many voters, including women, fear female candidates are less electable than men.

Biden turned in his best performance in the most recent debate  crisp, combative and gaffe-free. For once, he sounded like Fighting Joe Biden, not Befuddled Joe Biden.

Asked about his earlier promise that Republicans would become more moderate if he were elected  a forecast that seemed out of sync with political reality  he offered a tougher-sounding formula.

If anyone has reason to be angry with the Republicans and not want to cooperate, its me  the way theyve attacked me, my son and my family, he said. But the fact is, we have to be able to get things done. And when we cant convince them, we go out and beat them, like we did in the 2018 election.

The real world test of electability starts with the Iowa caucuses Feb. 3. Polls suggest a tight race among Biden, Sanders, Warren and Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind.

If (Biden) just finishes close to first in Iowa  I think that he will be well on his way to being the nominee, predicts David Axelrod, the former strategist for President Obama. The danger for him is if he drops to fourth or fifth.

Biden may get help once the Senate starts President Trumps impeachment trial, probably in early January. It will tie down Democratic senators in the race, including Warren and Sanders, for weeks.

Trump was impeached for trying to muscle Ukraine into investigating Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who took a lucrative job with a Ukrainian energy company. House Republicans argued as vice president, Biden intervened inappropriately in Ukraine to protect his son. Democrats have largely ignored the allegation, which is not supported by evidence.

Biden argues Trumps attacks on him prove hes the candidate the president fears most. In other words: electability.

Electability is an odd burden for voters to assume. It asks them to guess how millions will vote in November, and how a candidate will perform in a heated showdown with Trump.

I just try to imagine how each of them would do in a debate against Trump, a woman in Fort Dodge told me last month.

At the time, Biden was stalled in the polls. I wrote that his caravan felt like a zombie campaign. I forgot one thing: Zombies never expire.

None of this means Biden is on his way to the nomination. Iowa caucuses are notoriously unpredictable. And hes still an imperfect candidate.

But he doesnt have to be perfect, especially against Trump. Under this years rules, he just needs to appear electable.

Our memorable stories of 2019

Doyle McManus is a Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times and director of the journalism program at Georgetown University.

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Lenovos Yoga 5G may finally deliver what Microsofts Surface Pro X could not: a power-sipping Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx chip and a massive battery, combining for up to 24 hours of battery life. Announced Monday at CES in Las Vegas, Lenovo is also touting the Yoga 5G as the first 5G PC, though we imagine therell be others vying for that title at the show.

Lenovo announced the ThinkPad X1 Fold at CES, together with the ThinkBook Plus, a ThinkBook with an interesting external E Ink display.

Lenovo

We first saw the Yoga 5G at Computex in 2019, when it was known as Project Limitless. The 14-inch clamshell notebook boasts a surprisingly bright display, at 400 nits, though it tamps down the resolution to 1080p to preserve battery life.

Lenovo Yoga 5G The Lenovo 5G is a 360-degree convertible PC,

One of the Qualcomm chips selling points is always-on connectivity, and the Yoga 5G not surprisingly contains a nanoSIM card slot as well as eSIM capability. Lenovos not telling us much about the modem inside of it, though the company confirms it will support 5G millimeter-wave technology for ultra-high-speed, short-range wireless bursts. At CES, Qualcomm executives said that it will include long-range sub-6GHz technology, too.

Lets be clear: Because theres a Qualcomm chip inside, Lenovos Yoga 5G will still suffer from the compatibility and performance issues noted in our Surface Pro X review and other reviews of devices that use Qualcomm chips. Some of those drawbacks are forgivable if the device offers a capability other dontin this case, long battery life.

What were not seeing, however, is a price: Lenovo hasnt released one, although reports from Qualcomms press conference at CES put it at $1,499. The companys also being a bit vague about a release date other than spring 2020. Still, Lenovos traditionally married Qualcomms low-power processors with its own top-notch keyboards, providing an excellent companion for long-haul or multi-day conferences. It appears well be seeing more of the samesometime soon?

Lenovo Yoga 5G A handy closeup of the Lenovo Yoga 5Gs ports, together with a wireless toggle that is pretty unusual.

Qualcomm is also offering an optional digital pen, though the company didnt announce a price on that, either. We do have a list of the basic specs, which follows.

Lenovo Yoga 5G basic specs
NEW HAVEN  Occupation is a crime! U.S. out of Iraq! Hands off Iran! Money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation!

Those were some of the chants that rang out from the intersection of Chapel and Church streets, where roughly 100 people braved frigid temperatures to protest U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

On Friday, Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad. According to the Associated Press, Soleimani was the architect of Irans proxy wars across the Mideast and was blamed for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in suicide bombings and other attacks. The killing led Iran to announce Sunday that it would no longer abide by the limits of a 2015 nuclear deal.

Also on Sunday, Iraqs Parliament called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqs soil.

But the protesters gathered on Sunday said the drone strike was nothing more than a provocation solely intended to bring about war. The event was one of many held across the country to protest Soleimanis death and war in the Middle East. Connecticuts protest was organized by the state chapter of the ANSWER Coalition, a national protest organization.

Event co-chair Tanya Burley, speaking at the event, said the government routinely lies to bring about wars. She said it happened with the conflicts in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and other actions.

They lied about Iraq, Burley said. They said they were hiding nuclear weapons and they werent.

She said, not only does the government lie to bring about war, it then mistreats its soldiers.

I live in Middletown, Burley said. And no one who lives in Middletown (can) walk down Main Street and without seeing veterans begging for change.

Others who spoke at Sundays protest included Fahd Syed, of the Connecticut chapter of The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization. Like others gathered at the event, he had strong words about U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

War kills people, Syed said. It slaughters people. No one wants war. No one wants to be killed. No one wants their country invaded.

Another of the events co-chairs, Chris Gonsalves, said wars are often motivated by racism  in this case against Muslims and people from the Middle East. Gonsalves said he was in high school when the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened, and he remembers how many people were demonized for their race and religion.

That is how (people in the government) get away with these wars, he said.

Burley, meanwhile, said she was pleased to see a fairly robust turnout for the protest, given that it was windy and temperatures hovered around the low 40s Sunday afternoon.

I feel that, obviously, its pretty cold out and Im excited people came, she said.

As she spoke, protesters cheered and chanted behind her.

You can hear people are pretty excited about ending war, Burley said. I think this could start a larger movement.
While firefighters are celebrating a reprieve this week from some of the most devastating infernos in Australian history, there is foreboding about what's to come with a grim long-range forecast.

Fire season typically peaks with the so-called 'February Dragon' - the hottest and driest month when the nation has been hit by the likes of Black Saturday and Ash Wednesday.

But it's only January 6 and 23 people have already died this season, six more are missing and at least 1500 homes destroyed, and six million hectares of land razed.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Meteorology's (BOM) long-range climate outlook predicts above average temperatures and below average rainfall - horrible fire conditions - for much of the east through until at least the end of March.

This week: Cool conditions will give way to hot weather hitting the low 40s (purple) on Friday - with the heatwave increasing fire danger in the central west of New South Wales

Isn't this enough? Thick plumes of smoke tower into the sky as fires ravage East Gippsland at the weekend, via the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's Challenger jet

Weatherzone meteorologist Tom Hough said: 'Warmer than average and drier than average is the trend that looks to be continuing.

'Based off the climate outlooks it doesn't look like we're going to see any significant rainfall.'

A BOM graphic shows virtually the entire east coast shaded in red, showing the region has a greater than 80 per cent chance of topping the median temperature.

A separate graphic shows New South Wales and Queensland are expected to experience below average or average rainfall.

Long-range temperature forecast: It's very likely to be hot on the east coast through to March, with a four in five chance the median maximum temperature will be exceeded

Long range RAIN forecast: While the west and south coasts of Australia are predicted to get some relief, the east coast is likely to be dry or receive about average rain

The outlooks are not gospel, and given the long big dry, another expert has warned of the risks of floods should notoriously unpredictable drought-breaking rain hit.

In a piece for The Conversation, Monash University emeritus professor Neville Nicholls wrote that big deluges, such as the ones that broke the Millenium Drought, tend to hit between January and May.

'We all hope the rain arrives sooner rather than later, and eases the fire situation. But rain will bring other risks,' Prof Nicholls wrote.

'Continental-scale droughts such as that experienced over the past few years are often broken by widespread heavy rains, leading to an increased risk of flooding including potentially lethal flash floods.'

Prof Nicholls, who worked for the Bureau of Meteorology for 35 years, said that, perversely, the devastating blazes would make flooding worse.

'The flood risk is exacerbated by the bare soil and lack of vegetation caused by drought, and by bushfires that destroy forest and grassland,' he wrote.

Perversely, the devastating bushfires will create better conditions for floods if drought-breaking rain hits, a climate expert says

1500 homes have destroyed in this season's blazes - this one the recent victim of the devastating Gospers Mountain fire near the New South Wales central coast

Monash University emeritus Professor Neville Nicholls is a 35 year veteran of the Bureau of Meteorology

He also warned the traditional summertime risk of cyclones hasn't gone away and there is the further risk of heatwaves.

Prof Nicholls said Australia has already suffered through severe heatwaves this summer, but it may get worse.

'However they usually peak in the middle and end of summer, so the worst may be yet to come.'

Temperatures have cooled across the eastern seaboard, but are expected to hit the high 30s and low 40s in New South Wales's central west, the state's Rural Fire Service (RFS) said on Monday.

'The more benign weather conditions ... presents wonderful relief for everybody, the firefighters, emergency services personnel but the communities affected by the fires also,' commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said.

Mr Fitzsimmons said the worsening conditions later this week will create a severe fire risk on the west side of Great Dividing Range. Thankfully, firefighters do not expect severe or worse fire danger ratings for the NSW south coast this week.

At the same time, Tropical Cyclone Blake has formed off the north-west coast of Australia - in a development expected to help bring rain across the country's west and south in the coming weeks.

Now a CYCLONE: Tropical Cyclone Blake, a category two storm, has formed off the north-west coast of Australia near Karratha
UPDATE: Authorities have identified the deceased man found over the weekend as Terry E. McMurray, 26, of Bristol, Tennessee, according to a Monday morning news release from the Bristol Tennessee Police Department.

The investigation is ongoing and authorities have not found any evidence of criminal activity surrounding McMurray's death, the release states.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Chris Odle at 423-989-5530 or codle@bristoltn.org.

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BRISTOL, Tenn.The Bristol Tennessee Police Department is investigating after a person found a body in the woods.

The Police Department received a call Saturday from a person walking in the area reporting a possible dead body in the woods between Shankle Mill Road and Grove Park Drive. The first responding officers located the body of what appeared to be a deceased white man.

No evidence of criminal activity was discovered and detectives were clearing from the scene around 5 p.m., police said. The Sullivan County Coroner collected the body and it will be transported to the medical examiner's office in Johnson City for an autopsy.

Capt. Terry Johnson said information regarding the person's identity would not be released pending notification of next of kin.

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Harvey Weinstein Photo: Kena Betancur/Getty Images

A jury of five women and seven men have now been selected for Harvey Weinsteins rape and sexual-assault trial in Manhattan court, including one woman who wrote a novel involving predatory older men. Three alternates (who are substitute jurors in the event that a regular juror can no longer serve) were also selected. Seven jurors were selected Thursday, among them were three black women, one black man, and three white men. Friday morning three white men and two white women were added. The alternates include one white man, one Hispanic woman, and one black woman. The jurors and alternates selected were from four groups of 20 potential jurors, out of a pool of about 140. Each of the groups were put in the jury box to answer questions from Justice James Burke and lawyers from the prosecution and the defense.

In the final moments of jury selection (when the last panel left the room so lawyers could tell the judge who they wanted to keep and who they wanted to boot) there was drama over a white woman on the panel who had penned a book involving predatory older men. Prosecutors did not oppose this woman being on the jury. Defense lawyers challenged including her on the jury for cause, claiming she was wishy-washy when questioned about her book.

On questioning, she made some comments that I think raise the issue on whether or not she can be fair and impartial, Weinstein lawyer Damon Cheronis said to Burke.

The fact that an author who has a book coming out about predatory older men  and was respectively wishy-washy about her answers  [is] exactly the type of juror who should not sit on this jury, Cheronis said.

She was not forthcoming about the book, about the subject of the book, he argued. She lied about it all.

Prosecutor Joan Illuzzi, who repeatedly alleged that defense lawyers were trying to keep white women off the jury, said she believed the woman was forthcoming. She said that the womans description of her book  that it was about womens empowerment, not predatory men  was precisely accurate. Burke shot down the defense teams request, and so she was selected.

I think we got the best jury that we could under the circumstances, said Donna Rotunno, a Weinstein defense attorney, but added that the team was unhappy with the judges ruling on the female juror. I think that was an absolutely ridiculous decision, Rotunno said. I think it was clear that one of the last jurors lied on her questionnaire and omitted some very important information.

Rotunno said that the defense has asked Burke for a mistrial.

Day 9: January 16, 2020

Seven jurors were picked for Harvey Weinsteins rape and sexual-assault trial in Manhattan court on Thursday; five more jurors and six alternates (basically, substitute jurors in case one of them cant keep serving for some reason) still need to be selected. The jurors selected so far include three African-American women, one African-American man, and three white men. They were selected from two groups of 20 potential jurors, out of a pool of approximately 140; the groups were placed in the jury box to answer questions from the judge and lawyers on both sides of the case.

After Justice James Burke asked them general questions, such as which neighborhood they lived in, what they did for a living, and whether they could be impartial, prosecutors and defense lawyers asked more direct questions.

With the first group, one of the questions prosecutor Joan Illuzzi asked dealt with Weinsteins appearance. (As Weinsteins case has progressed, he has looked increasingly unwell, and he has been showing up to court with a walker since December. Around 11 a.m. today, Weinsteins ankle monitor chirped in court.)

Is there anything about the way Harvey Weinstein looks in court that negates in your mind that he could be violent, [be] a rapist? or This person couldnt possibly have been guilty of this crime, without hearing any evidence? One man indicated that he felt that way.

When it was defense attorney Donna Rotunnos turn to ask questions with the first group, one of the things she brought up was that women are the main focus of the case. Is there anyone sitting here, she said, who are going to give women more credence or believe that they are more believable, more reliable, because they are women?

No one seated in the jury box at that time raised their hand.

The questioning got far more intense with the second group of 20, as did lawyers arguments over who should be a juror and shouldnt.

Does anyone think an individual would have sex with someone they find unattractive for reasons other than love? asked another Weinstein attorney, Damon Cheronis.

Does anybody think somebody could have consensual sexual relations with someone and then years later, can change their story, and turn someone into a pariah and say what was once consensual was not and then say its something different? he also asked.

When it came time for the lawyers to tell Burke who they wanted on the jury, Illuzzi accused Weinsteins team of using their peremptory challenges  the ability to dismiss a potential juror without citing a reason  to exclude young, white women from the jury.

They have now peremptorily challenged every young, white female on this panel, Illuzzi said. They just have systematically eliminated every young, white female on the prospective jury.

Rotunno insisted, Were trying to pick a fair jury, and insisted the womens backgrounds made them potentially biased. This is not some conspiracy against the state.

Day 8, January 15, 2020:

Supermodel Gigi Hadids surprise appearance as a potential juror for Harvey Weinsteins rape and sexual-assault trial only contributes to the carnival-like atmosphere surrounding the case, his lawyer argued in a court filing Wednesday. Hadids role as a prospective juror emerged Monday, when she entered court as one of nearly 120 possible panelists; she is expected to return Thursday for additional questioning.

Weinsteins lawyer, Arthur Aidala, invoked Hadids name in yet another attempt to get his trial moved out of Manhattan; he has claimed that extensive press presence will prevent a fair trial. In mentioning Hadid, Aidala also cited her friendship with model Cara Delevingne, who has alleged that Weinstein asked her to kiss another woman, and then tried to kiss her himself.

On January 13, 2020, the model and celebrity Gigi Hadid was called as a prospective juror in this case. The presence of Ms. Hadid, who informed the Trial Court that she is able to be a fair juror even though she has met Mr. Weinstein before and is a noted friend of Weinstein accuser Cara Delevingne, only contributes to the carnival-like atmosphere, Aidala wrote. Ms. Hadid attracts her own press and her presence also increases the number of spectators and protesters outside of the courthouse.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, it was revealed that the wife of a potential juror was apparently on Project Runway All Stars with Weinsteins ex-wife, Georgina Chapman. This potential panelist, Milk Makeup co-founder Mazdack Rassi, was ultimately excused from serving on the jury. Rassis connection to Weinstein was revealed in court Wednesday during jury selection in the case. I know Harvey and his family, his wife and children, Rassi said. I dont think I can [be fair and impartial].

Rassi is reportedly married to Zanna Roberts Rassi  a fashion editor who also co-founded the cosmetics line. According to Entertainment Weekly, she and Chapman were both on Project Runway All Stars. Host Alyssa Milano will return alongside judge alums Isaac Mizrahi and Georgina Chapman. For the first time on All Stars, the judges will be critiquing blind runways. Marie Claires Zanna Roberts Rassi will mentor the designers, the website reported. Photos of the two women and listings on IMDb.com suggest that they appeared on multiple seasons at the same time.

Another potential juror said, I worked for the Weinstein Company on contract. These two jurors were among yet another pool of 120 potential jurors brought in for preliminary screening in Weinsteins trial. Since Tuesday, January 7, Justice James Burke has asked more than 600 prospective panelists basic questions  such as whether they knew anyone in the courtroom, whether they could be fair, and whether they had any scheduling conflicts. At least 180 of these people have already been dismissed after telling Justice James Burke they couldnt be fair. Others were dismissed for reasons such as scheduling. Potential jurors who havent been cut will return Thursday morning, where attorneys on the case will question them.

Day 7: January 14 2020

A potential juror in Harvey Weinsteins rape and sexual-assault case told a Manhattan judge that he couldnt be impartial because he had seen the disgraced movie mogul on the phone screaming at someone. I dont know the defendant directly, but I live across the street from the Tribeca Film Center, and Ive seen him several times over the years, the man explained, then saying he couldnt be fair and impartial in this trial.

Because you have seen him across from the Tribeca Film Festival? asked Justice James Burke, who has seemingly become annoyed that so many potential jurors want off the case. On several occasions, Ive seen him on the phone screaming at someone the juror replied.

Later, when Burke asked whether anyone felt they couldnt be a fair and impartial juror in this case, the same male juror who mentioned the alleged screaming lifted his hand and stood. Burke quickly cut him off, pointing out that he had already said he couldnt be impartial. Burke then said that a random remark by a prospective juror, you know, is obviously not testimony or evidence or has anything to do with the case. This man was ultimately excused from serving on the jury.

One week into jury selection for Weinsteins trial, Burke asked a pool of prospective jurors basic screening questions, such as whether they knew anyone involved in the case and whether they could remain fair and impartial. Another potential juror said he knew Weinstein, but did not elaborate.

One woman said she knows actress Rosie Perez a bit. We did a reading together, she said. It was previously revealed in court that Perezs name might come up at trial, or that she might be a witness. The Sopranos star Annabella Sciorra discussed her allegation that Weinstein raped her around late 1993 with Perez, according to Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker. Asked whether she should be a juror on the case if Perez testified, this woman said, I feel like Id be partial to her.

As Weinstein left the courtroom for the day, Vulture asked what he thought of someone seeing him yell on the phone. Weinstein answered with a smile.

I asked #harveyWeinstein what he thought about a potential juror who said he saw him yelling at someone on the phone. HW smiled. pic.twitter.com/J4xkdrPnEW  Victoria Bekiempis (@vicbekiempis) January 14, 2020

Day 6: January 13, 2020

Supermodel Gigi Hadid made a surprise appearance at Harvey Weinsteins rape and sexual-assault trial on Monday  as a prospective juror in his high-profile case. Hadid raised her hand when Justice James Burke asked the pool of approximately 120 possible jurors whether they knew anyone in the courtroom. A few moments later, a court officer handed Hadid a microphone. I have met the defendant, she said. When Burke asked whether she could remain impartial, Hadid answered yes. Later, Burke read through a list of people who might be witnesses or whose names might come up in court, and asked whether anyone in the courtroom knew those on the list. Hadid stood once more and said she had met Salma Hayek. Read Vultures full report on Hadids jury service here.

Day 5: January 10, 2020

A prospective juror in Harvey Weinsteins rape and sexual-assault trial tweeted about serving on the case to promote his new novel, the former movie moguls lawyer claimed Friday in a new court filing. The revelation was part of defense attorney Arthur Aidalas request to hold the next phase of jury selection in secret. This next phase of selection is when the potential jurors who werent dismissed this week return to court to answer more probing questions. At least one juror has expressed an ulterior financial motive for serving on Mr. Weinsteins jury and that he would find him guilty, Aidala wrote in his motion to Justice James Burke.

At 2:05 p.m. on January 7, 2020, after jurors completed the written questionnaires in court, a prospective juror in this case tweeted to his/her nearly 7,000 followers: If anyone knows how a person might hypothetically leverage serving on the jury of a high-profile case to promote their new novel, [REDACTED], which [REDACTED] called a darkly funny book and a witty black comedy, dm me, please. You can see the post here.

Over the course of the day, the tweet prompted several comments, Aidala also wrote, saying they included: I dont know if this counts as jury-tampering but hes guilty. This comment was liked by the juror, Aidala wrote. Aidala further claimed that this juror is already prepared to find Mr. Weinstein guilty, has tweeted about the case, and is considering how to profit from it.

Another juror posted to Facebook about jury service in this case. When a friend messaged the juror if s/he had been paneled for Weinstein, this juror reacted with a laughing emoji.

Besides the fact that the juror was discussing the case on Facebook, making light of jury service in a case where the defendant faces life in prison suggests that this juror lacks the seriousness and diligence required for jury service in this case, Aidala wrote.

After we conclude this type of whittling down of the jury pool, we think its in both sides best interest to do what has been done in other high profile cases  individual sequestered jury selection, he said in court.

Denied, Burke said plainly. If this is inconsistent with having a transparent, open jury selection, this is going to be denied.

While nearly 120 prospective jurors in Weinsteins rape and sexual-assault case were seated in the courtroom, approximately 60 protesters gathered across the street and chanted the rapist is you! The courtrooms windows were open. While many present in the courtroom could hear chanting, its unclear if they could make out the words. (Vulture had to go downstairs to hear exactly what the protesters were saying.)

As Weinstein left court for the day, Vulture asked him what he thought about protesters saying the rapist is you!

He shrugged.

Day 4: January 9, 2020

On Thursday morning, the judge presiding over Harvey Weinsteins rape and sexual assault trial once again found himself talking about Weinsteins cell-phone use, explaining with exasperation that his comment about throwing the disgraced ex-producer in jail for using his mobile in the courtroom was meant to scare him enough for him to discontinue using his phone.

Justice James Burkes comments came in response to the fact that Weinsteins lawyers pushed for his recusal on Wednesday, citing in filings the judges comment in court: Is this really how you want to wind up in jail the rest of your life, by texting and violating a court order? Burke made this comment Tuesday after Weinstein was seen using his phone in the courtroom. This was at least the third time court authorities spotted Weinstein using his phone in the courtroom; Burke had repeatedly told him not to do this.

First, the motion is denied, Burke said, sarcastically continuing, I enjoyed your motion, especially the interesting photographs. I dont often get illustrations in my motions. (The motion included photos of the press at court, which also complained about the extensive media coverage preventing a fair trial.)

More seriously, thank you for making the motions so I could have an opportunity to clarify, he continued. Let me first just state the obvious: There is nothing prejudicial or inflammatory about scolding a recalcitrant defendant for repeated violations of court orders.

Your client was defiant and noncompliant and challenging to court officers when asked not to use his phones, Burke said.

Ironically, I was concerned that there might be a perception that Mr. Weinstein was getting better treatment and more chances than other defendants, but I didnt worry about that too much because judges seem to always give at least three strikes and then one final, final transgression, Burke said. I certainly never actually meant that I was going to put your client in jail for life, Burke continued. All I meant to do was scare him enough for him to discontinue using his phone.

Day 3: January 8, 2020

Over 45 potential jurors were excused Wednesday from serving on the jury in Harvey Weinsteins sexual-assault trial after saying they couldnt be fair, including one woman who claimed a friend had had an encounter with him. I have a very close friend who had an encounter with the defendant, the woman said. She did not provide additional information on the alleged encounter in court. Outside the courtroom, after the woman had been excused, she declined to comment on her statement. Another woman had worked for one of Weinsteins ex-wives or knew someone who did, court proceedings revealed. These disclosures came in the early stages of juror screening.

As in Tuesdays selection process, Justice James Burke read out the names of people who might come up in court or be witnesses in the case and asked if potential jurors knew them and whether they had already made up their minds about Weinstein. Todays prospective jurors were far more candid about why they couldnt be fair or impartial. In addition to the purported Weinstein encounter and the mention of one of his ex-wives, many explained that trauma and media coverage would inevitably sway their decision. The majority of those who said they couldnt be fair were women.

I read all the news, I have my mind made [up], and I dont think Id be a fair juror, one woman said. Another said, I read every article, and its gonna be very hard for someone whos been assaulted multiple times. Later, another woman said, I was assaulted in my past, so I dont think I can be a fair juror. I have my mind made up, a fourth woman said.

There were 120 prospective jurors this morning; these were different from the pool of 120 jurors that had been brought in on Tuesday. In addition to those excused today on fairness grounds, dozens were excused because of logistical issues such as their schedules. In total, some 30 jurors were sent home with questionnaires and told to return next week.

After jury proceedings ended for the day, Weinsteins legal team filed paperwork asking Burke to recuse himself from the case, citing the prejudicial and inflammatory comments made by the Court to Mr. Weinstein yesterday morning, which received widespread press attention, in which the Court admonished Mr. Weinstein for using his cell phone in the courtroom before it was in session.

Burke had threatened Weinstein with jail before jury selection began on Tuesday morning for using his cell phone despite being told not to.

Burke will decide on this request later.

Day 2: January 7, 2020

The names of more than 80 people who might come up during Harvey Weinsteins rape and sexual assault trial, either as witnesses or merely mentioned in court, were revealed Tuesday and include Salma Hayek, Charlize Theron, and Rosie Perez. Their names emerged during jury selection, when the judge told potential jurors that he was going to read a list of names of people who might testify or be discussed at some point, as well as several businesses, such as Weinsteins former film studio, The Weinstein Company, and would ask if they knew them and if so, whether they would be able to remain impartial.

Hayek has accused Weinstein of sexual harassment. Theron has accused Weinstein of lying to people about them sleeping together. Mimi Haleyi, whose sexual-assault allegation is the subject of some of the charges against Weinstein, was also mentioned, as was Annabella Sciorras name.

Sciorra has accused Weinstein of raping her around late 1993 and is poised to testify against him in the most serious charge, predatory sexual assault. According to Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker, Perez was a friend who was among the first to discuss Sciorras allegations with her. These names were revealed as jury selection began. During trials, potential jurors are asked to say whether they know people whose names might come up.

#harveyweinstein declines to comment as he leaves courteoom for lunch break pic.twitter.com/846pUGd0pu  Victoria Bekiempis (@vicbekiempis) January 7, 2020

When 120 potential jurors walked into the courtroom shortly before 11 a.m., Justice James Burke announced that this case is  People of the State of New York Against Harvey Weinstein. None of the jurors appeared to react when Burke said Weinsteins name.

I noticed that there was not too much reaction when the defendants name was read and I must tell you that having heard of Harvey Weinstein and even being familiar with the allegations against him are not by themselves disqualifying and does not mean that you are not permitted to sit as a juror in this case, Burke said.

Burke then said Both sides want a fair and impartial jury if thats an issue let us know  Your verdict must only be based on the sworn evidence  you will simply have to follow the rules and base your verdict on what you learn inside the courtroom.

He then asked whether anyone had already reached a decision in the case. Ten hands shot up right away. A total of 40 people wound up telling Burke that they couldnt be fair or impartial.

That group of 40 people were dismissed from jury duty in the case, as well as three more people who said they had health issues.

Earlier in the morning, Weinstein was threatened with jail before his rape and sexual-assault trial kicked off Tuesday morning for using his cell phone in court yet again.

Justice James Burke, who is presiding over the trial, grilled one of Weinsteins lawyers immediately after taking the bench about the disgraced producers repeated cell-phone use in the courtroom, despite repeated warnings to refrain from doing so.

Burke told one of Weinsteins lawyers, Arthur Aidala, that he would hear arguments on bail regarding cell-phone use in the face of repeated cautions and texting a moment ago.

Are you going to pretend you dont know about this? said Burke, whose obvious annoyance suggested that he was already fed up with the courtroom theatrics that have characterized the case.

Mr. Aidala, would you like to say, for the record, what I told you regarding your client and electronic devices in the courtroom? Burke said.

You said you never want to see a cell phone in my clients hand and to bring a book, Aidala said.

I encouraged him to bring a book, Burke said. What did I say would happen, Burke continued, since there had been repeated violations of this, including some on the record?

Your honor 

What did I tell would happen? Burke pressed.

I dont know, Aidala initially answered.

Burke insisted that Aidala sum up his prior discussion of cell phones.

That you would hear arguments on bail, Aidala said.

Because it was my intention to do what?

To change his bail conditions, Aidala said.

To what?

I believe you said remand, Aidala answered, referring to when a defendant is detained during case proceedings.

Burke later said to Weinstein, Is this really how you want to wind up in jail the rest of your life, by texting and violating a court order?

After the cell-phone discussion, the Manhattan district attorneys office asked Burke to remand Weinstein following new sexual-assault charges in Los Angeles.

L.A. prosecutors announced on Monday that Weinstein was charged in relation to two alleged sexual assaults; in court papers, they requested that his bail be set at $5 million.

Weinsteins bail in his New York City case was recently increased from $1 million cash to a $2 million insurance company bond following allegations of violations with his ankle monitor.

Burke ultimately did not change Weinsteins bail.

When court resumed after the lunch break, it appeared he had heeded Burkes advice on bringing a book to court. Weinstein was carrying a copy of The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics. The book is about Herman J. and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, siblings who wrote, produced, and directed over 150 pictures, according to Amazon.com.

Weinstein once again used a walker at the courthouse.

Day 1: January 6, 2020

On Monday morning, an unwell-looking Weinstein appeared increasingly dejected during a proceeding in Manhattan court as defense lawyers and prosecutors discussed details about his upcoming trial  including the possibility that jurors might see potentially embarrassing photos.

There are other issues regarding specific exhibits in this case, said lead prosecutor Joan Illuzzi. The defense is particularly sensitive about some exhibits.

It is not the practice of the district attorneys office to ever  humiliate [a] defendant, she also said.

Whether and how the photos will be shown to jurors is poised to become an object of debate.

Regarding the photographs that Ms. Illuzzi mentioned, we wanted to either file a motion or discuss that on camera with the court, said Weinstein lawyer Damon Cheronis, referring to the legal process where lawyers can discuss the issue with the judge behind closed doors.

There were 72 photographs taken, and were going to be asking for the admission of 7 of them, Illuzzi later said, saying they had taken steps to minimize any undue prejudice toward Weinstein.

We believe the photographs  we do think theyre very, very important for the jury to see, she said.

Justice James Burke will decide on how the photos are handled at a later date.

Lawyers for Weinstein also asked the judge to sequester the jury, in the event something may happen, during the trial related to an investigation elsewhere. While this request came before Los Angeles prosecutors announced charges, the Los Angeles Times had previously reported that authorities were investigating alleged misconduct.

Burke denied their request to sequester the jury.

In a major setback to the defense, Burke also said that at this point, Weinsteins legal team would not be allowed to call New York Police Department Detective Nicholas DiGaudio  who had led the investigation  as a witness.

One of the six sexual-assault-related counts Weinstein had initially faced was thrown out in October 2018, after it was disclosed that DiGaudio didnt tell prosecutors about inconsistencies between accuser Lucia Evanss allegations and a witnesss.

The defense may not call Detective DiGaudio on their case, which is not to say that they may not vigorously cross-examine a witness about their dealings with him, Burke said.

When Burke said this, Weinstein put his head in his hands.

Prosecutors also said that Black Cube, a security firm hired by Weinstein, contacted a witness and misrepresented who he was.

Actress Rosanna Arquette, who said Weinstein thwarted her career after she rejected him at a hotel, told Vulture that the disgraced producers accusers are not going anywhere.

People need to focus on Harvey Weinstein; hes the predator. This is a criminal case, and they need to really look at this because this is happening all the time, she said. This case sets a precedent for future cases. Its very important.

Paula Williams and Sarah Ann Masse, who have both accused Weinstein of misconduct, also spoke with Vulture about the trial and said the fact that he is going before a jury is a step forward. It means a lot, its very encouraging, Williams said.

The more than two dozen Weinstein accusers  who refer to themselves as the Silence Breakers  all feel a personal sense of justice, just the fact that he is on trial, Williams said.

Again, it is an opportunity for us to keep talking about this and hopefully change this culture, she said.

Masse said the trial is the first step in a path that will bring us to a greater sense of justice  Even the fact that hes gone to trial, that hes facing criminal charges, she said, is a sign weve made progress.

It means that theres an opportunity now to see a dangerous man end up behind bars, Masse said.

Some protesters gathered outside the courthouse where Weinsteins trial will take place, holding posters with phrases like Justice for survivors and Listen to survivors.

Weinstein also used a metal walker to enter what became a packed courtroom Monday. He shook his head when the photos were discussed.

Weinstein was arrested in New York City last May, following New York Times and New Yorker exposes in fall 2017 that detailed accusations of sexual abuse and assault against him.

Weinstein has maintained his innocence.

This is an ongoing news story and will be updated accordingly.
Larry Emdur's daughter is no stranger to racy Instagram snaps.

And on Sunday, Tia Emdur showcased her sensational bikini body yet again while on holiday in Bali, Indonesia.

In a short clip shared with her 3,000 followers, the 20-year-old brunette flaunted her jaw-dropping figure in a mismatched two-piece.

Looking good! On Sunday, Tia Emdur showcased her sensational bikini body yet again while on holiday in Bali, Indonesia

Tia wore a canary yellow bikini top, showcasing her chest and washboard abs.

And she teamed the top with a pair of tiny white bottoms, which highlighted her toned legs and thigh gap.

She completed her look with a lightweight cardigan which she wore unbuttoned, and a pair of chic sunglasses.

Slender: In a short clip shared with her 3,000 followers, the 20-year-old brunette flaunted her jaw-dropping figure in a mismatched bikini

In the video, Tia flirtatiously twirled for the camera.

Perhaps hinting she is single and ready to mingle, she wrote in the caption: 'Waiting for Tarzan to get back to our tree house.'

Tia has certainly been making the most of her time in Bali, where she has showed off her slender figure in several skimpy bikinis.

All the right moves: In the video, Tia flirtatiously twirled for the camera

Me Tarzan, you Jane? Perhaps hinting she is single and ready to mingle, Tia wrote in the caption: 'Waiting for Tarzan to get back to our tree house'

The graphic design student took to Instagram last week to share a sizzling snap of herself lounging around her luxury villa.

In the photo, she shielded her face from the sun while flaunting her gym-honed abs.

Tia also took to her Instagram Story to share another snap, in which she displayed her figure while posing in her hotel room.

White hot! Tia showed off her figure yet again in a barely-there bikini last week

She has been keeping her followers up to date by regularly posting photos while on holiday in Seminyak.

Last Monday, Tia displayed her sensational body in another daring snap shared to social media.

She posed in a teal bikini while soaking up the sun at the Mrs Sippy pool club.

Bikini babe! The 20-year-old graphic designer regularly flaunts her fit physique on Instagram

Fun in the sun! Tia has been keeping her followers up to date by regularly posting photos while on holiday in Seminyak. Pictured at the Mrs Sippy pool club last Monday

The glamazon accessorised her look with a straw brimmed hat and a cream-coloured scrunchie on her wrist.

Tia is the youngest child of Australian TV presenter Larry Emdur and his wife, Sylvie.

She has an older brother, 24-year-old model and real estate agent Jye Emdur.

In April 2018, Tia's parents helped her buy a $1.08million three-bedroom apartment in Sydney's exclusive Bellevue Hill.
[January 06, 2020] DATA Communications Management Corp. Announces Closing of Over-subscribed Rights Offering Raising Maximum Gross Proceeds of $4.95 Million

DATA Communications Management Corp. (TSX: DCM (News - Alert)) ("DCM" or the "Company") has closed its previously announced rights offering (the "Rights Offering"), raising gross proceeds of $4.95 million. The Rights Offering was over-subscribed and will result in the issuance of the maximum number of common shares ("Common Shares") of the Company available under the Rights Offering. "Our Rights Offering received strong support from both insiders and many long-standing shareholders," said Gregory Cochrane, Chief Executive Officer of DCM. "The additional subscription privilege was significantly over-subscribed, indicating market confidence in our direction." Details of the Rights Offering Under the terms of the Rights Offering, each eligible securityholder was entitled to subscribe for one Common Share for every one right (a "Right") held upon payment of the subscription price of $0.23 per Common Share. The Company issued 21,523,515 Common Shares or 100% of the Common Shares available under the Rights Offering for gross proceeds of approximately $4.95 million. The Company distributed a total of 16,020,009 Common Shares pursuant to the basic subscription privilege under the Rights Offering. To the knowledge of DCM after reasonable inquiry, 5,381,493 Common Shares were distributed to persons who were insiders of DCM before the distribution and 10,638,516 Common Shares were issued to the remaining subscribers under the basic subscription privilege. The Company distributed a total of 5,503,506 Common Shares pursuant to the additional subscription privilege under the Rights Offering. To the knowledge of DCM after reasonable inquiry, 2,818,790 Common Shares were distributed to persons who were insiders of DCM before the distribution and 2,684,716 Common Shares were issued to the remaining subscribers under the additional subscription privilege. As the additional subscription privilege was over-subscribed, no Common Shares were required to be issued pursuant to the stand-by commitment entered into between the Company and the standby purchasers. To the knowledge of the Company after reasonable inquiry, directors, officers, and other insiders of the Company exercised subscription privileges, including subscription privileges associated with additional rights acquired in the market, to acquire 8,200,283 Common Shares under the Rights Offering representing total gross subscription proceeds of approximately $1.9 million. To the knowledge of the Company, after reasonable inquiry, no person that was not an insider became an insider of the Company as a result of the Rights Offering. Upon closing the Rights Offering, the Company has 43,047,030 Common Shares outstanding. DCM retained Kingsdale Advisors as the information agent in connection with the Rights Offering. Use of Proceeds The Company will use the net proceeds from the Rights Offering to reduce its outstanding indebtedness, by repaying amounts drawn on its revolving credit facility (the "Revolving Credit Facility") and repaying up to $1.5 million of outstanding promissory notes, as more fully described in the Company's rights offering circular dated November 26, 2019. Repayments of borrowings made under the Revolving Credit Facility increase the borrowing base available to the Company under that credit facility, thereby enhancing the Company's available liquidity. Early Warning Reporting Information The following information is being provided in respect of Michael G. ifton, a director of the Company, in accordance with National Instrument 62-103 - The Early Warning System and Related Take-Over Bid and Insider Reporting Issues.



Pursuant to the Rights Offering, Mr. Sifton acquired beneficial ownership of, or control over, a total of 2,508,485 Common Shares (the "Acquired Shares") at a price of $0.23 per Common Share and an aggregate purchase price of $576,952. Immediately prior to the acquisition of the Acquired Shares, Mr. Sifton and his joint actors had beneficial ownership of, or control over, 1,687,504 Common Shares, stock options to acquire up to 499,377 Common Shares at a price of $1.41 per share and stock options to acquire up to 40,000 Common Shares at a price of $1.50 per share (collectively, the "Options"), representing 10.09% of the outstanding Common Shares. After giving effect to the acquisition of the Acquired Shares and the completion of the Rights Offering and assuming the exercise in whole of the Options, Mr. Sifton and his joint actors have beneficial ownership of, or control over, 4,735,366 Common Shares, representing 10.86% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares. Details of the allocation of Common Shares under the additional subscription privilege became available on January 3, 2020. Mr. Sifton acquired the Acquired Shares for investment purposes. Other than the possible exercise of the Options, Mr. Sifton and his joint actors do not have any present plans or intentions to acquire or dispose of Common Shares. Depending upon the circumstances, including but not limited to the Company's business and prospects, market and general economic conditions and other available investment opportunities, however, Mr. Sifton and his joint actors may, in the future, acquire additional securities or related financial instruments of the Company or dispose of all or a portion of the securities or related financial instruments of the Company previously acquired. A copy of the report required to be filed by Mr. Sifton pursuant to the early warning requirements of applicable securities laws, once filed on SEDAR, may be obtained from the Chief Financial Officer of the Company at the telephone number set out below.

No Offering in the United States This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities of the Company in the United States. The securities described in this news release have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from registration is available. About DATA Communications Management Corp. DCM is a communication solutions partner that adds value for major companies across North America by creating more meaningful connections with their customers. DCM pairs customer insights and thought leadership with cutting-edge products, modular enabling technology and services to power its clients' go-to market strategies. DCM helps its clients manage how their brands come to life, determine which channels are right for them, manage multimedia campaigns, deploy location-specific and 1:1 marketing, execute custom loyalty programs, and fulfill their commercial printing needs all in one place. DCM's extensive experience has positioned it as an expert at providing communication solutions across many verticals, including the financial, retail, healthcare, consumer health, energy, and not-for-profit sectors. As a result of its locations throughout Canada and in the United States (Chicago, Illinois and New York, New York), it is able to meet its clients' varying needs with scale, speed, and efficiency - no matter how large or complex the ask. DCM is able to deliver advanced data security, regulatory compliance, and bilingual communications, both in print and/or digital formats. Additional information relating to DATA Communications Management Corp. is available on www.datacm.com, and in the disclosure documents filed by DATA Communications Management Corp. on the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) at www.sedar.com. The Company's head office address, and Mr. Sifton's address for purposes of this press release, is 9195 Torbram Road, Brampton, Ontario, L6S 6H2. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements in this press release constitute "forward-looking" statements that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance, objectives or achievements of DCM or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance, objectives or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. When used in this press release, words such as "may", "would", "could", "will", "expect", "anticipate", "estimate", "believe", "intend", "plan", and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements reflect DCM's current views regarding future events and operating performance, are based on information currently available to DCM, and speak only as of the date of this press release. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions and should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results will be achieved. Many factors could cause the actual results, performance, objectives or achievements of DCM to be materially different from any future results, performance, objectives or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in this press release as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Unless required by applicable securities law, DCM does not intend and does not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005323/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Los Angeles, Jan 6 : Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" was named as the Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy at the 77th Golden Globe Awards ceremony.

The film beat out "Dolemite Is My Name", "Jojo Rabbit", "Knives Out" and "Rocketman" for the honour.

Producer David Heyman accepted the prize on the stage, after being put in front by director-writer Tarantino, Margot Robbie and other team members. The film's leading stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt remained seated.

"Quentin is nothing if unpredictable," Heyman said, adding: "A few seconds ago he told me I was going to speak." Heyman thanked everyone who contributed to the film on-screen and off.

"Also a big thanks to maestro, Mr. Quentin Tarantino. Quentin said before we started filming, 'I want you to have such a good time on this film that the next will be miserable'. He wasn't wrong. Thank you, Quentin," he said.

The movie follows the fictional actor Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) as he navigates 1960s Hollywood, while trying to stay relevant as an actor. Pitt is seen as his stunt double and close friend, while Margot Robbie plays Sharon Tate. Tarantino has woven real life stories into the plot with the infamous Charles Manson murders, including actress Sharon Tate, as a backdrop to make it more intriguing.

Tarantino also won Best Screenplay - Motion Picture. He was pitted against Noah Baumbach ("Marriage Story"), Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won ("Parasite"), Anthony McCarten ("The Two Popes") and Steven Zaillian ("The Irishman").

He dedicated his win to Robert Bolt, "the dean of screenwriters". He also congratulated himself for solely writing the script of the film as he said "I did it".

The director went on to thank the film's "fantastic" cast, saying that they took the script "from the page and added a slightly different layer from the pagea.

Giving shout-outs to Pitt, DiCaprio, Julia Butters and Margot Robbie, he said that they brought "more goodness than a movie I had ever been involved in".
The facade of the Social Support Center in Ho Chi Minh City's Binh Thanh District. Photo by VnExpress/Huu Cong.

The director of Social Support Center in HCMC, Vo Thi Thanh Kim, has been demoted after an employee was caught molesting teenage girls.

The decision was announced Monday by the citys Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, which oversees the center. It came two months after Nguyen Tien Dung, an employee of the center, was accused of molesting at least six teenage girls in an incident that triggered a public outcry.

Kim will now function as deputy director of the center.

Pham Dinh Luong, deputy director of the center, was given an official warning, while some other officials of the center were "strictly disciplined" after the molestation scandal came to light.

Last November, two of the victims filed a complaint with local authorities, accusing Dung of coercing them to let him touch their breasts or genitalia if they wanted to smoke or visit their relatives.

When police launched a criminal investigation, at least six girls aged between 13 and 15 raised their voices and claimed they were victims, too, with some suffering from mental trauma as a result of their experiences.

Dung is facing charges for "molestation of a person under 16," a crime punishable by six months to three years in prison under the Penal Code.

The victims were vagrants living in a local park brought to the center by authorities.

The Social Support Center in Saigon's Binh Thanh District receives vagrants, beggars and homeless people. After three months, those who have families, are allowed to go home while the rest are moved to shelters.

Around 700 children in Saigon have been sexually harassed, molested or abused in the last five years, according to official figures. Many of them were injured, mentally scarred, pregnant, or even killed.

Vietnam recorded 1,547 child sex abuse cases in 2018, down 2.8 percent from a year ago, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

In most cases, the perpetrators have been found to be people familiar with the children, such as teachers, school security officials, relatives and neighbors, prompting lawmakers and non-governmental organizations to call for Vietnamese parents to be more alert and pay more attention.
The Prominent Civil Rights Advocacy group- HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has faulted the Chief justice of Nigeria Muhammad Tanko for the haste with which he dabbled into the swirling allegations made by the Kaduna businessman Alhaji Sani Dauda of ASD Motors against the immediate past Senator who represented Kaduna Central Senatorial District in the 8th Session of the National Assembly Senator SHEHU SANI just as the Rights group said the unnecessary interjection through the media space by the jurist in a matter that at best is still at the level of unproven allegations made by only one man does not dignify the high office that he (Tanko Muhammad) currently holds.

HURIWA said in a statement by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf that the media statement alleging and describing Senator SHEHU SANI as a 'liar' as reportedly attributed to the Chief justice of Nigeria Muhammadu Tanko, amounted to an attempt from the backyard to confer credibility to these sets of contested accusations against the Kaduna born Senator SHEHU SANI as made by the businessman Alhaji Sani Dauda whose allegations have been strenuously and vigourously denied and are been contested by the accused(SHEHU SANI) and who in indeed in the eyes of the law is ABSOLUTELY INNOCENT until a contrary determination is reached by the Competent Court of law (36(5) of the Nigerian Constitution (of 1999 as amended) and not the media court of Public opinion which is the arena that the Nigeria's current Chief justice has now decided to join the bandwagon of lynch mob justice choristers.

HURIWA said the Chief justice of Nigeria was totally wrong to have jumped into the media arena at this point in time when the matter was only at an elementary stage of investigations just as the Rights group regretted that his (Tanko Muhammad) position as the head of the nation's judiciary would have afforded him the discretion to have known that his statement against a citizen of Nigeria being accused of an unproven allegations is harmful and illegal because he (the accused) should be granted fair hearing in accordance with section 36(1) of the Nigerian Constitution.

"The media statements authorised by the Chief justice of Nigeria against Senator SHEHU SANI was done in bad faith and may adversely affect the exercise of his constitutionally guaranteed freedoms enshrined in the Constitution with specific reference to FAIRNESS of the judicial process that may be activated if the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) finds merits in the allegations made against Senator SHEHU SANI. The CJN should have waited until his own side of the story is requested privately by the investigators which he could still do without media grandstanding", HURIWA affirms.

HURIWA recalled that the Nigerias chief justice, Justice Tanko Muhammad, had denied knowing a former senator being investigated for alleged extortion disclosed in media claims credited to the spokesman for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission who said Senator Shehu Sani was arrested for collecting $10,000 from a businessman, Sani Dauda, owner of ASD Motors who has a case pending with the anti-graft agency.

Dauda claimed Sani told him he needed the money to bribe Tanko and four other judges to influence the case in favour of Dauda.

HURIWA recalled that the the Chief Justice of Nigeria Muhammad Tanko had through his media chief Festus Akande made the following statements to the media:

Senator Shehu Sani is not known to the CJN, Justice Tanko Muhammad has never, in his entire life, seen or had any form of encounter or interaction, either directly or remotely with Shehu Sani, let alone giving him assurances of what is not only unethical but equally despicable and inglorious, to say the least.

Let it be known that if the statement credited to Shehu Sani was actually made by him, it is simply a blatant lie, a figment of his imagination and an orchestrated falsehood immodestly concocted to malign, smear and disingenuously tarnish the good image and reputation of the CJN with a view to gaining financial reward."

HURIWA however stated that the statement by the Chief justice of Nigeria Tanko Muhammad was HASTY and ill-timed and could be misconstrued as another angle of the larger conspiracy to rope in the vocal critic of the current President Muhammadu Buhari into the alleged charges just so he can be death with by the system through the instrumentality of the prosecution to be waged by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). "These weighty statements by the CJN has added salt to injury against one of the parties in the legal cum possible criminal trial. This is now a conundrum. Honestly, silence is golden by the Chief Justice of Nigeria because the way it is now with some media houses giving these statements different interpretative meaning most of which have graphically concluded that the accused person who has denied all the allegations is guilty even before he has had any opportunity to explain his own side of the story to a competent court of law. Those who hold the sacred task of being custodians and ministers in the temple of justice should not be seen doing things or saying things that casts aspersions on the integrity and independence of the judiciary."
We have not been nominated for an Oscar yet, but as of now, we are eligible for one, said acclaimed actress Neena Gupta, about the chef Vikas Khanna produced and directed The Last Color, which has been winning hearts and accolades, ever since its release last year. There are 344 films that are eligible for the Oscars this year, from which 50 will be chosen on January 11, as officially-nominated for the prestigious award.

The film which addresses the age-old Indian taboo, forbidding widows to partake in the festival of Holi, has been Khannas magnum opus, adapted from his book of the same name, and for which he has put all of his own money. All the credit goes to Khanna for this, says Gupta, adding, This must be the first time that an independent film has managed to come this far. There are many rules and stipulations for a film to be even considered eligible for the awards  like for instance, it must have a commercial release in Los Angeles, etc  and he has really worked very hard on meeting all of them.

Besides the Last Color, the actress says she has a host of other releases to look forward to. I have just finished a very beautiful film called Shubh Mangal Zyada Savdhaan, which will release next month, she says, adding, Then theres Panga, in which I have a small role. But it is an important film, releasing this month. I have also finished 80% of the work for Nikhil Advanis unnamed film, in which I have a very challenging role. Theres also Panchayat, based in a village, which might be released on Amazon, and then theres the Masaba Masaba Netflix series on my daughter  designer Masaba Gupta  in which she has also starred. 

About the Oscar possibility for Last Color, Gupta though chuffed, is sanguine. It is a big thing to even be eligible for the Oscars, and Im very proud of it, and of course, keeping my fingers crossed, she said.

One thing is for sure though. If the film does get nominated and Gupta makes it to the Academy Awards ceremony, there are no prizes for guessing which designer she will wear for sure!

Roaring Rohmance

Sushmita Sen and Rohman Shawl.

Everyone loves a lover, and by that measure, love (lots of it) is certainly in the air for actress, beauty queen and mother of two young girls, Sushmita Sen, who brought in the 28th birthday of her beau model Rohman Shawl, with a series of love-struck posts on Saturday. Referring to him as her Babushhhh, Sen posted, You are my Rohmance with life, TO the birthday boy, adding, You must know just how loved you are by your three angels... today and always.

Hes quite loved by my family; in fact, pretty much by everyone he meets! said the besotted actress, who has never shied away from wearing her heart on her sleeve, when we spoke yesterday, adding, Hes a special soul.

But for now, the virtual messaging will have to suffice, as the two, she informs, were unable to spend the day together, owing to their separate commitments.

Rohman is in Nainital for his sisters wedding, and I am filming in Mumbai, informed Sen, adding, So we had a long distance birthday celebration. Incidentally, Sen had taken to social media a month ago, to announce her return to the big screen after the 10-year hiatus she had taken to bring up her younger daughter Alisah Sen.

Tweet Talk

Shocking to see masked vigilantes with rods walking about as @DelhiPolice merrily watches them go by. Elsewhere, cops have opened fire with lethal consequences for lesser provocation. Top cops and their political bosses need to explain why police took no action against goons.

-TV anchor Rahul Kanwal on the JNU violence

The Hiranandani Run

Niranjan Hiranandani, co-founder and managing director of Hiranandani Group, with state minister Aaditya Thackeray.

Niranjan Hiranandani appears to take not only his own health and fitness seriously, but that of his eponymous township too. This Sunday, the Indian billionaire realtor, co-founder and managing director of Hiranandani Group, was out at the crack of dawn to partake in the annual Hiranandani run at Powai. We have the run in three formats  21kms, 10kms and 4kms, he said about the event, which saw 10,500 registered and another 500 unregistered individuals participate this year.

The Hiranandani Run, which was started nine years ago for community bonding, good health awareness and a social commitment, was witness to the presence of Maharashtras newly-minted minister for tourism and environment, Aaditya Thackeray. Aaditya spoke on how he was pleasantly surprised to see such a large turnout on a Sunday morning, and that too on the first Sunday of the year, said Hiranandani, adding, He also remarked on the energy, enthusiasm and passion displayed by the participants, and the importance of a fit Mumbai and a fit India.
Exciting next step in ADTs strategy to drive capital efficient growth; elimination of dealer margin reduces cost to acquire new customers and improves return on capital going forward

Direct control of greater portion of ecosystem accelerates rollout of innovative security and home automation services

Opportunistic transaction expected to be modestly beneficial to 2020 free cash flow before special items and to accelerate growth in subsequent years

BOCA RATON, Fla., Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ADT Inc. (NYSE: ADT), a leading provider of security, automation, and smart home solutions serving consumer and business customers in the United States, announced today it has acquired Defenders, its largest independent dealer and only Authorized Premier Provider, for a purchase price of approximately $381 million1. As part of the transaction, Defenders founder David P. Lindsey and Jessica A. Lindsey received approximately 16.3 million shares of ADT common stock for 100% of their ownership in Defenders, while the remaining $260 million of consideration was paid in cash to retire existing Defenders debt, fund other liabilities, and pay transaction expenses. The cash consideration was partially funded from existing revolving credit facilities.

Were excited to officially join forces with the impressive Defenders team after successfully partnering with them for nearly 22 years so that, as one company, we can create a unique and simplified platform, said Jim DeVries, ADTs President and Chief Executive Officer. This opportunistic acquisition creates numerous strategic, financial and operational advantages for ADT, and is consistent with our stated goal of driving down the capital intensity of the business as we seek to drive long-term, profitable growth.

Mr. DeVries continued, Together, we will have greater marketing efficiency through unified brand messaging, enhanced control of the customer experience, and the ability to provide a full suite of innovative security and home automation products, including consumer financing, to a complementary geographic footprint. Over time, we also expect lower subscriber acquisition costs, an improved revenue payback period, and new account gains from the optimization of our combined ecosystem.

We have built our business by partnering with ADT to sell and install state-of-the-art security systems, helping to protect more than 2.2 million families through our best-in-class marketing team and expert knowledge of the industry, said David Lindsey, Chairman and Founder, Defenders. Given this longstanding and productive relationship, we are proud that this transaction will integrate us even closer into the ADT team, and I am excited to be a significant shareholder and see the benefits we are able to deliver to customers as a combined company.

We are thrilled to join the ADT team, said Jim Boyce, President & CEO, Defenders. This acquisition brings our direct response marketing capabilities, best in class sales expertise, and national reach to a leading provider of security, automation, and smart home solutions. Together, we will be better positioned to leverage the trusted ADT brand, improve the combined companys go-to-market operations and deliver an enhanced customer experience.

Strategic and Financial Benefits of Transaction

Enhances Customer Experience: Provides ability to drive a unified brand message and premium customer experience to the majority of ADTs residential customers.



Provides ability to drive a unified brand message and premium customer experience to the majority of ADTs residential customers. Simplifies Operating Ecosystem: Establishes a single party focused on the customer experience and lifetime value, and reduces channel conflict and potential for customer confusion.



Establishes a single party focused on the customer experience and lifetime value, and reduces channel conflict and potential for customer confusion. Improves Marketing Prowess: Leverages Defenders strengths in customer acquisition to drive optimized spend across channels and enable more effective marketing messaging and customer segmentation.



Leverages Defenders strengths in customer acquisition to drive optimized spend across channels and enable more effective marketing messaging and customer segmentation. Increases Go to Market Efficiency: Significantly enhances ability to bring new initiatives to a broader customer base more quickly, including consumer financing, DIY, and innovative equipment and service offerings.



Significantly enhances ability to bring new initiatives to a broader customer base more quickly, including consumer financing, DIY, and innovative equipment and service offerings. Drives Capital Efficiency: Results in a more capital efficient ADT through the elimination of dealer margin. Expected to be modestly beneficial to 2020 net cash provided by operating activities and free cash flow before special items and to create synergies to further drive net cash provided by operating activities and free cash flow before special items in subsequent years.

Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Indianapolis, Defenders has approximately 2,900 team members across more than 130 field branch locations, and has developed a best-in-class direct marketing skillset, currently generating more than 6 billion ADT advertising impressions annually. Through its rigorously trained and certified technicians and its full suite of home security and automation products, including an 85 percent interactive take rate, Defenders currently helps more than 2.2 million families improve their lives and safety.

Financial Advisor

Citi served as the financial advisor to Defenders.

About ADT Inc.

ADT is a leading provider of security, automation, and smart home solutions serving consumer and business customers through more than 200 locations, 9 monitoring centers, and the largest network of security professionals in the United States. The Company offers many ways to help protect customers by delivering lifestyle-driven solutions via professionally installed, do-it-yourself, mobile, and digital-based offerings for residential, small business, and larger commercial customers. For more information, please visit www.adt.com or follow on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

Investor Relations:

Jason Smith - ADT

investorrelations@adt.com

Tel: 888-238-8525

Media Inquiries:

Paul Wiseman  ADT

paulwiseman@adt.com

Tel: 561-356-6388

NON-GAAP MEASURES

To provide investors with additional information in connection with our results as determined in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (GAAP), we disclose Free Cash Flow and Free Cash Flow before special items as non-GAAP measures. These measures are not financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP and should not be considered as a substitute for net income, operating income, cash flows, or any other measure calculated in accordance with GAAP, and may not be comparable to similarly titled measures reported by other companies.

Free Cash Flow

We believe that the presentation of Free Cash Flow is appropriate to provide additional information to investors about our ability to repay debt, make other investments, and pay dividends.

We define Free Cash Flow as cash flows from operating activities less cash outlays related to capital expenditures. We define capital expenditures to include purchases of property, plant, and equipment; subscriber system asset additions; and accounts purchased through our network of authorized dealers or third parties outside of our authorized dealer network. These items are subtracted from cash flows from operating activities because they represent long-term investments that are required for normal business activities.

Free Cash Flow adjusts for cash items that are ultimately within managements discretion to direct, and therefore, may imply that there is less or more cash that is available than the most comparable GAAP measure. Free Cash Flow is not intended to represent residual cash flow for discretionary expenditures since debt repayment requirements and other non-discretionary expenditures are not deducted. These limitations are best addressed by using Free Cash Flow in combination with the cash flows as calculated in accordance with GAAP.

Free Cash Flow before special items

We define Free Cash Flow before special items as Free Cash Flow adjusted for payments related to (i) financing and consent fees, (ii) restructuring and integration, (iii) integration related capital expenditures, (iv) radio conversion costs, and (v) other payments or receipts that may mask the operating results or business trends of the Company. As a result, subject to the limitations described below, Free Cash Flow before special items is a useful measure of our cash available to repay debt, make other investments, and pay dividends.

Free Cash Flow before special items adjusts for cash items that are ultimately within managements discretion to direct, and therefore, may imply that there is less or more cash that is available than the most comparable GAAP measure. Free Cash Flow before special items is not intended to represent residual cash flow for discretionary expenditures since debt repayment requirements and other non-discretionary expenditures are not deducted. These limitations are best addressed by using Free Cash Flow before special items in combination with the GAAP cash flow numbers.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

ADT has made statements in this press release and other reports, filings, and other public written and verbal announcements that are forward-looking and therefore subject to risks and uncertainties. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included in this document are, or could be, forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are made in reliance on the safe harbor protections provided thereunder. These forward-looking statements relate to anticipated financial performance, managements plans and objectives for future operations, business prospects, outcome of regulatory proceedings, market conditions and other matters. Any forward-looking statement made in this press release speaks only as of the date on which it is made. ADT undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise. Forward-looking statements can be identified by various words such as expects, intends, will, anticipates, believes, confident, continue, propose, seeks, could, may, should, estimates, forecasts, might, goals, objectives, targets, planned, projects, and similar expressions. These forward-looking statements are based on managements current beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management. ADT cautions that these statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, many of which are outside of ADTs control, and could cause future events or results to be materially different from those stated or implied in this document, including among others, risk factors that are described in the Companys Annual Report on Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the sections entitled Risk Factors and Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations contained therein.

___________________________

1 Based on ADTs closing stock price of $7.45 on January 3, 2020.
By PTI

KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday termed the attack on students and teachers at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) as a "disturbing and fascist strike" by the BJP.

Banerjee, who is also the TMC supremo, said she had begun her political career as a student leader but never before witnessed such "brazen attack" on educational institutes.

"Whatever is happening across the country is very disturbing, I, too, was involved in student politics at one point in time, but never before have I witnessed this sort of an attack on students and educational institutions.

ALSO READ: Delhi Police files FIR, case transferred to Crime Branch; Registrar, Pro-VC meet LG

"Yesterday's was a fascist strike on the student community," Banerjee told reporters, before leaving for her three-day trip to Gangasagar. Whoever raised voice against the BJP was dubbed an "anti-national" or a Pakistani", she claimed.

"India is a democracy and we have our right to protest. How can someone be branded anti-national or Pakistani for his or her protest against the government," Banerjee questioned.

ALSO READ: Violence has no space in democracy - Political leaders condemn JNU attack, seek strict action

On Sunday, too, the CM had condemned the violence on JNU campus, terming it a "heinous act".

A four-member Trinamool Congress (TMC) delegation is visiting JNU on Monday to express solidarity with the students and teachers, she said.

Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged properties on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.
Norsemen in exile from Iceland sailed to the shores of Greenland in the 10th century and survived thanks to the ivory of a unique species of walrus on the island.

The precious material was traded throughout Europe in exchange for wood and iron and it allowed the Vikings to thrive in their desolate home.

But just as swiftly as they arrived at the distant island in the Atlantic ocean, all signs of their occupation vanished in the 15th century.

Experts now believe that their penchant for hunting walruses was ultimately their downfall as they forced the species to extinction, destroying their source of income.

Scroll down for video

Scientists did not wish to destroy the rare tusks themselves so instead analysed parts of the walrus skull attached to the tusks.A total of 67 of these skull fragments - known as rostra (pictured) - were taken from sites across Europe, dating from between the 11th and 15th century

Norse people settled in Greenland in 950AD after Erik the Red was sent there in Exile. By this point, much of Iceland's native walruses had already been hunted to extinction, and the new inhabitants in Greenland found they had stumbled upon the next hunting ground (stock)

Norse people settled in Greenland in 950AD after Erik the Red was sent there in exile.

By this point, much of Iceland's native walruses had already been hunted to extinction by Vikings, and the new inhabitants in Greenland had inadvertently stumbled upon the next hunting ground.

'Our story starts where the Icelandic story ends. In Iceland, there are walrus finds in early Viking age sites,' says Dr James Barrett, an academic from the University of Cambridge who led the study into the disappearance of Greenland's Vikings.

'But later, they are described as a rarity. Previous research shows that the population of walruses in Iceland was hunted to depletion quite quickly after the Viking settlement.'

And it seems the Vikings did not learn from the lessons of Iceland, as a new study published in the scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews reveals the same thing happened again.

The demise of the Norse folk in Greenland was the very thing that helped them thrive  hunting walrus ivory.

Academics at the universities of Cambridge, Oslo and Trondheim found that almost all ivory traded throughout Europe in Medieval times came from Greenland walruses.

After Iceland slaughtered its own populations of walruses, Greenland was, for centuries, the only source of the the valuable material.

Norse settlements in the south-western region of the island held a monopoly on the material, which was in vogue throughout Europe.

But as demand soared for the popular material, supply was dwindling and the Vikings forced further north in search of the animals they were overly reliant upon.

At its peak, walrus ivory was a valuable medieval commodity, used to carve luxury items such as ornate crucifixes or the Viking game hnefatafl.

The famous Lewis chessmen are made of walrus tusk. They showcase how the marbled effect of the ivory can be sculpted into various artefacts.

The chessmen are thought to have been made in Trondheim shortly before 1200AD and discovered in the 1830s on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.

Scientists did not wish to destroy the rare tusks themselves so instead analysed parts of the walrus skull attached to the tusks.

Pictured, a Walrus carving from medieval Trondheim. Academics at the universities of Cambridge, Oslo and Trondheim found that almost all ivory traded throughout Europe in Medieval times came from Greenland walruses

The famous Lewis chessmen are made of walrus tusk. They showcase how the marbled effect of the ivory can be sculpted into wonderful artefacts. The chessmen were probably made in Trondheim shortly before 1200AD and discovered in the 1830s on the Isle of Lewis

HOW WERE WALRUS TUSKS REMOVED FROM THE SKULL? Dr James Barrett was able to identify a surprisingly consistent way of removing the valuable rostrum or snout, that holds the tusks, from the rest of the skull. 'In most of the cases, the cutmarks are all from the same angle,' he says. 'They tell us that the hunter each time stood over a dead walrus laying on its left side and chopped off the rostrum with an axe or a large knife. 'Later, the tusks were modified and decorated. We found that almost all the skulls had been prepared in the same way, and the likely explanation is that the work was done by people living in the same settlements.' Advertisement

A total of 67 of these skull fragments - known as rostra - were taken from sites across Europe, dating from between the 11th and 15th century.

Ancient DNA (25 samples) and stable isotopes (31 samples) extracted from samples of bone provided clues to the animals' sex and origins.

It revealed that the Vikings became desperate for ivory and their journeys became longer, more arduous and less fruitful as numbers of mature male walruses dwindled.

Scientists found that the hunters switched from hunting large males to settling for females and smaller animals.

To compound the misery of the Pagan warriors, changing fashions and an emerging market for elephant ivory saw a rapid decline in demand of walrus ivory in the 15th century.

Dr James Barrett said: 'Walrus ivory was very popular and valuable especially early in the Middle ages, particularly for use in Romanesque art.

'But later, in the 1200s, there was a shift in popularity from walrus to elephant tusks around the time when Gothic art developed.'

With this major financial artery severed, the long-term habitation of Greenland was forced to an abrupt end, academics now believe.

With no leverage in trades with Europe, Greenland was abandoned following what researchers are calling a 'perfect storm'.

At its peak, walrus ivory was a valuable medieval commodity, used to carve luxury items such as ornate crucifixes or the Viking game hnefatafl (pictured)

Dr James Barrett added: 'Norse Greenlanders needed to trade with Europe for iron and timber, and had mainly walrus products to export in exchange.

'We suspect that decreasing values of walrus ivory in Europe meant more and more tusks were harvested to keep the Greenland colonies economically viable.

'Mass hunting can end the use of traditional haul-out sites by walruses.

'Our findings suggest that Norse hunters were forced to venture deeper into the Arctic Circle for increasingly meagre ivory harvests.

'This would have exacerbated the decline of walrus populations, and consequently those sustained by the walrus trade.'

It is thought that the lack of walruses was not the only issue but it at least played a significant role in the Viking withdrawal from Greenland.

Other theories the collapse of the civilisation include climate change with the dawn of the 'Little Ice Age', unsustainable farming and the emergence of the Black Death.

'An overreliance on walrus ivory was not the only factor in Norse Greenland's demise. However, if both the population and price of walrus started to tumble, it must have badly undermined the resilience of the settlements,' says co-author Bastiaan Star of the University of Oslo.

'Our study suggests the writing was on the wall.'
The reckless decision to kill Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, along with several other Iraqi and Iranian officials, cannot be undone. But it can be an impetus for the belated exit of U.S. forces from Iraq, who may still avoid needless trouble.

Iraqs parliament passed a resolution calling for the U.S. military forces (along with other foreign units) to be expelled. Washington should accept the invitation.

Even critics of killing Soleimani note he was a murderer, who had U.S. blood on his hands. While this is true, its largely beside the point. U.S. foreign policy does not exist to dispense global justice by punishing the wicked. It exists to serve U.S. security and prosperity, and protect our liberties here at home. Talk of justice distracts from consideration of consequences. Soleimanis death is likely to lead to bad ones, possibly including broader war, especially if we insist on leaving relatively small numbers of forces nearby to absorb the trouble this weeks strike set off.

Soleimani was not a rogue outlaw, but a military official of a sovereign government we were not at war with, making his killing an assassination. His actions, however evil, served Iranian policy. Even Iranians with no love for his ilk now bridle with nationalist outrage. Iranians rally around the flag, too. Adding to the outrage will be Saturdays news the U.S. strike was a long-planned punitive measure aimed at punishing Iran for actions taken by the Kataeb Hezbollah militias it supports in Iraq  and not a means to stop an imminent attack on U.S. forces as Trump administration officials claimed.

An Iran with nuclear weapons is a real, frightening possibility

Iran is unlikely to directly attack U.S. forces, given the consequences. But they are now substantially more likely to resume their nuclear weapons program. That is not only because of the political boost U.S. action has given to hardliners there, but also because of President Donald Trumps bellicosity. Subjecting Iranians to taunts and threats to destroy their cultural heritage  with U.S. forces stationed around them in Iraq and Afghanistan  reminds them of their weakness and the deterrent value of nuclear weapons.

Story continues

Demonstrators in Basra, Iraq, on Jan. 5 2020.

The more direct consequences are likely to take place in Iraq, where the Iran-linked Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) militias are likely to escalate their attacks on U.S. military forces and other personnel. That could spark a broader conflict with Iran, given the Trump administrations belligerence.

U.S. forces should have left Iraq already. Once the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group's caliphate was defeated, the U.S. military mission in Iraq became murky. And as the Trump administration pulled out of Iran deal and ratcheted up economic pressure on Iran over the last several years, U.S. forces became a magnet for trouble, more bait for a disastrous war with Iran than a means to U.S. security.

The right decision: Donald Trump showed restraint, then resolve, in killing of Iran's Qassem Soleimani

With the drone strike, which killed not only Soleimani but Mahdi al Muhandis, Deputy Commander of Iraqs PMF and several of his colleagues, stationing U.S. forces in Iraq became even less tenable. The PMF forces are a collection of Shiite militias, officially but in fact loosely subordinated to the Iraqi government, that include as many as 500,000 fighters by some estimates. Many of those militiamen, who recently and quite brutally helped fight IS, as did Soleimani, are now likely to turn on the U.S. forces  especially if they are kept in Iraq in the face of Iraqi demands they go. Whatever their quality, the militias manpower makes them a formidable threat.

The people of Iraq don't and will not want us there

Popular anger against the United States in Iraq, not only from the drone strike, but the airstrikes days before, which Iraqs government opposed  not to mention to the botched occupation and civil war it set off  is inescapable now. That makes it difficult for any Iraqi government to back the U.S. force presence or work energetically to suppress renewed Shiite resistance to U.S. forces.

Violence directed against U.S. forces in Iraq is not likely limited to there. Trump officials insist they will blame militias attacks on Iran, even when its not clear they are doing Tehrans bidding. However unintentionally, they have created a circumstance where U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria face increased attacks, which might then draw them into war with Iran. That is the policy that has brought us to this precipice. No U.S. security goal justifies that risk.

This is personal: War with Iran is terrifying prospect for Americans with family in the Middle East, like me

The idea that U.S. forces have to remain in Iraq to defeat the remnant of IS ignores the evident will of Iraqis to do that themselves, the historical lesson that U.S. forces have helped spark rather than quell renewed insurgency, and the ability to return to strike IS in extremis. Continuing the mission would be a bad idea, even if didnt risk a massive and utterly counterproductive war with Iran.

Rather than send more U.S. forces to the region where they will join in vulnerability with those already there, the United States should remove its forces from Iraq and begin exiting the broader region. As the events of the last two weeks underline, the smattering of U.S. forces in the region are not accomplishing anything useful, but are enough to pull the United States into another needless war.

Benjamin H. Friedman is Policy Director at Defense Priorities. Follow him on Twitter: @BH_Friedman

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Gen. Qassem Soleimani death: Time for America to leave Iraq
One of Qatars most highly anticipated residential facilities  the contemporary designed Hilton Doha The Pearl Residences - has officially opened in the Qatari capital.

Owned by the Kuwaiti-backed First Qatar Real Estate Development Company (1st Qatar), the property, the largest Hilton in Qatar and the companys first serviced residence in the country, has been hailed by 1st Qatars chairman and CEO, Fahad Khalid Al-Ghunaim, as a watershed moment for his organisation.

This is our first hospitality development and one which demonstrates our confidence in the Qatari market and its sustainability while sending a clear signal of our commitment to the very highest of quality build and outfitting, he said.



The opening represents a milestone for Hilton, strengthening its presence and its commitment to sustainable travel across Qatar, according to Etienne Gailliez, Hilton country general manager, Qatar. The moment that weve all been waiting for has finally arrived, he said. Hilton has fantastic properties in Qatar across three brands, and Hilton Doha The Pearl Residences is an exciting addition to our portfolio in the country. This opening will play a key role in Qatars growing tourism proposition and we look forward to welcoming residents and international travellers to this exciting new hotel.



The stunning 38-storey, world-class property is just 30 minutes away from Hamad International Airport and stands within The Pearl Qatars Qanat Quartier at the gateway to the island. The smart building, where guests have digital keyless access, features 414 stylish, fully furnished accommodation choices and comprises a series of high-end fine dining options, a temperature-controlled outdoor pool, soon-to-open private beach, and a kids club. It also houses the Signature eforea spa & health club using Elemis & Sothys Spa products, a 24hour business centre and six hi-tech meeting rooms.



The residential unit features signature studios, 1-2-3-bedroom serviced apartments and duplex townhouses, all beautifully outfitted with the optimum in-home comforts, including modern kitchens, living rooms with a sofa, designated dining areas, and private bathrooms in every suite. Sun-drenched openable windows, stylish gold accents and sophisticated lighting fixtures fill the vast open spaces with light, and with balconies and sea views in every room, all guests can enjoy amazing orange-red sunsets over the sparkling waters of this magical island.



The residences appeal will go well beyond the hardware structure, according to Hassan El Wahidi, general manager, Hilton Doha The Pearl Residences. We intend to establish a strong reputation for superior and uncompromising products and services across Qatars leisure and business tourism offerings. We aim to make this breakthrough property a preferred choice for long and short stay guests by offering everything you could want in a hotel filled with everything you need in a home, as well as a local social hub and an exceptional business and events option, he explained.



The residences are complemented by a range of restaurants which feature innovative dining options including The Kitchen for exquisite international cuisine, the warm Mulberry Tavern for more casual fare, and the culturally authentic Levantine Restaurant with the menu featuring popular and creative Lebanese dishes curated by the Lebanese Terroir Culinary Artist and international Master Celebrity Chef, Joe Barza.



El Wahidi has confirmed that the residences will be committed to sustainability. We are striving to ensure these are eco-conscious residences through the implementation of fully biodegradable and plastic-free policies. As a company, Hilton is committed to sustainable travel and tourism. This commitment is evident at Hilton Doha The Pearl Residences which will avoid plastic bottles and pens; while using take away cups with compostable lids, biodegradable coffee capsules and linen napkins in lieu of paper napkins and much more all in line with Hiltons goal to cut its environmental footprint in half and double its social impact investment by 2030, he explained.



El Wahidi also emphasised the propertys commitment to a diverse and inclusive workforce. We are committed to total workplace inclusivity and gender diversity. Our staff will represent numerous different cultures and backgrounds from over 46 countries, of which 50% are women. All these efforts are in line with Hiltons Travel with Purpose corporate responsibility strategy. - TradeArabia News Service
BAGHDAD - A push led by pro-Iran factions to oust U.S. troops from Iraq following the U.S. airstrike that killed a top Iranian general is gaining momentum, bolstered by a Parliament vote calling on the government to remove them.

But the path forward is unclear, and in Iraqs deeply divided terrain, with a resigned prime minister and raging proxy war between Iran and the U.S., ending Americas 17-year military presence in Iraq is a risky undertaking.

Iraq was barely starting to recover from a devastating four-year war against the Islamic State group when a mass uprising against the countrys ruling elite erupted on Oct. 1, forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi two months later. He hasnt been replaced.

A pullout of U.S. troops could cripple the fight against Islamic State militants and allow the extremists to make a comeback. Militants affiliated with IS routinely carry out attacks in northern and western Iraq, hiding out in rugged desert and mountainous areas. Iraqi forces rely on the U.S. for logistics and weapons in pursuing them.

An American withdrawal could also enable Iran to deepen its influence in Iraq, which like Iran is a majority Shiite country.

It is not that simple, Lebanese political analyst Ibrahim Bayram said of any withdrawal. This will increase the complications inside Iraq, the conflicts and contradictions ... and the clash, both political and non-political, between the Iranians and Americans.

U.S. Defence Secretary Mark Esper, meanwhile, said Monday the United States has made no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq, adding that the U.S. remains committed to the campaign to defeat the Islamic State group in Iraq and the region.

The Iraqi parliamentary vote Sunday calling for the ouster of the 5,200 American troops in Iraq requires Iraqi government approval. But it highlights the sharp deterioration in relations between Washington and Baghdad amid soaring tensions between the U.S. and Iran following the U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad airport .

American forces withdrew from Iraq in 2011 but returned in 2014 at the invitation of the government to help battle the Islamic State group. The extremists had seized vast areas in the north and west of the country after Iraqs armed forces collapsed, including the second-largest city, Mosul. A U.S.-led coalition provided crucial air support as Iraqi forces, including Iran-backed militias, regrouped and drove IS out in a costly three-year campaign.

Unlike the previous U.S. deployment, which was governed by the Status of Forces agreement that clearly spelled out the rules of termination, American troops in Iraq are now in the country based on a less formal request by the then prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

Pressure has been escalating for a U.S. troop withdrawal since the defeat of IS in 2017, particularly among factions loyal to Iran. But calls for their removal grew louder amid outrage over the U.S. strike last week that killed Soleimani along with senior Iraqi militia leaders.

Abdul-Mahdi asked parliament on Sunday to take urgent measures to ensure the removal of foreign forces from the country. In a sign of the divisions, the parliament session was boycotted by many Sunni and Kurdish legislators who oppose abolishing the deal with the Americans, and most of the lawmakers who voted were Shiite.

It was not clear what steps Abdul-Mahdi would take following the parliamentary vote. Experts were split on whether, as a resigned prime minister, he has the authority to request the termination of the U.S. presence.

Thafer al-Aani, a Sunni lawmaker, said Abdul-Mahdi doesnt want to risk aggravating the Americans too much by acting alone, which is why he turned to Parliament for backing, adding that the vote was mostly for a domestic audience.

He feels that America isolated his government by siding with the protesters. ... He decided to side completely with the Iranians after the killing of Soleimani and because of the U.S. position toward the protests, he said.

The U.S. government repeatedly called on the Iraqi government to stop using excessive force on peaceful protesters. Nearly 500 people were killed by security forces in three months of protests against the countrys top political and religious leaders. The protests have also turned into a revolt by the countrys Shiites against Iranian influence in the country, with protesters burning Iranian interests in the southern provinces.

On Monday, Abdul-Mahdi met with U.S. Ambassador Matthew H. Tueller and stressed the need for the two countries to work together to execute the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq, according to a statement from his office.

In their meeting, Abdul-Mahdi said relations with Washington must be built on a sound basis. He didnt elaborate, but said the situation in Iraq was critical and that all efforts were being exerted to prevent sliding towards an open war.

Speaking in Washington, Esper said the U.S. was not pulling troops out of Iraq.

Theres no decision to leave, nor did we issue any plans to leave or prepare to leave, the defence secretary said. He spoke to reporters in response to a letter from a senior U.S. commander that seemed to suggest a withdrawal was underway.

The Iraqi parliament vote angered President Donald Trump, who promptly warned Iraq that he would levy punishing sanctions if the government expelled American troops. He said the U.S. wouldnt leave without being paid for its military investments in Iraq over the years

We will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before, ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, Trump said.

The alarming rhetoric by the two allied nations comes amid a recent series of unclaimed attacks targeting military bases that host U.S. troops in Iraq. One attack killed an American contractor in Kirkuk late last year, and was blamed on an Iran-backed militia. That attack sparked a deadly U.S. airstrike targeting that militia, which in turn led to a New Years Eve assault by militias loyal to Iran on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Abbas Kadhim, head of the Washington-based Atlantic Councils Iraq Initiative, said because Abdul-Mahdi has resigned as prime minister, he didnt want to give the impression that he was acting unilaterally and wanted Parliament to be on board, although he has the right to approve the U.S. troop removal himself.

He said there was no reason the Americans should stay now that the mission to defeat IS is over.

The troops are there and its called the coalition to defeat ISIS not the coalition to re-occupy Iraq, Kadhim said. ISIS was defeated and they have no reason to be there now. Kadhim added that an agreement could be worked out whereby some U.S. trainers can stay behind.

Bayram, the Lebanese analyst, said, however, that Trumps reaction shows that the Americans have no intention of exiting smoothly from Iraq.

The United States considers its presence in Iraq fundamental, especially since it rid Iraq in 2003 from Saddam Hussein. America also considers itself an essential partner in Iraq, he said.

___

Karam reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers A.J. Naddaff in Beirut and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.
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Four days after dropping out of the Democratic race, Julian Castro has endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president.

Castro tweeted:

Today I'm proud to endorse @ewarren for president. Elizabeth and I share a vision of America where everyone counts. An America where peoplenot the wealthy or well-connectedare put first. I'm proud to join her in the fight for big, structural change. pic.twitter.com/xDvMEKqpF3  Julian Castro (@JulianCastro) January 6, 2020

Castro made himself more well known and was missed at the most recent Democratic debate. His endorsement comes at a great time for Sen. Warren as her campaign has sagged in recent months. Sen. Warren has struggled to defend her Medicare For All plan and other proposals.

Warren was on the upswing until she was put on the defensive, and has been back on her heels as the Iowa caucuses draw closer. Pete Buttigieg has passed her in Iowa, and Sen. Warren sits third in fourth in national polls. Warren made a rare appearance on the Sunday news shows this past week in what was a clear effort to boost her visibility ahead of Iowa.

Julian Castro didnt draw much support as a candidate, but he did develop and national name in a platform that will only help Elizabeth Warren.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.

Follow Jason Easley on Facebook
New Delhi: B-Town stunner Deepika Padukone is gearing up for the release of her upcoming biggie 'Chhapaak'. The film is based on the real-life incident of acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal.

While movie promotions are in full swing and the actors are leaving no stone unturned in making it a big hit, Deepika and Laxmi posed for Femina cover. The two ladies look breathtaking as they twin in white for the cover shoot of the magazine.

Deepika shared it on Instagram. In the caption, she wrote: Truly unstoppable! Presenting the January Cover of Femina!

Deepika Padukone has turned producer for 'Chhapaak' which is helmed by 'Raazi' filmmaker Meghna Gulzar.

The film is hitting the screens on January 10, 2020. It will be clashing with Ajay Devgn and Kajol's period drama 'Tanhaji: The Unsung Hero'.

'Chhapaak' is written by Atika Chohan and Meghna Gulzar. Vikrant Massey plays an activist named Amol in the movie who helps Malti (Deepika Padukone) in her fight against the open sale of acid in shops.

The trailer of the film received a thunderous response from viewers and now all eyes are set on the release of 'Chhapaak'.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today issued a "Know Your Rights" community advisory for Iranian-Americans, Syrian-Americans, Iraqi-Americans, and others who may be impacted by the threat of war of between the United States and Iran.

CAIR issued the advisory as a result of unsubstantiated speculation about possible Iranian attacks on American targets, including vague allegations about the threat of "sleeper cells" and the reported targeting of Iranian-Americans for special scrutiny at the U.S. border.

CAIR's Washington state chapter (CAIR-Washington) is currently assisting Iranian-Americans who were reportedly detained at a border crossing this weekend and asked inappropriate questions about their political views on the situation in Iran.

NYT: U.S. Stops Dozens of Iranians Returning from Canada

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/05/us/politics/iranian-americans-border.html

Video: CAIR-WA Assists Iranian-Americans Detained at U.S. Border

https://youtu.be/28JzCgwAsFY

CBP: Iranian-Americans, Iranians Subjected to 'Secondary Screenings' at Canadian border Crossing

https://www.kptv.com/news/cbp-iranian-americans-iranians-subjected-to-secondary-screenings-at-canadian/article_515e215e-307d-11ea-a663-e7db474b415d.html

In a statement, CAIR Senior Litigation Attorney Gadeir Abbas said:

"Policy-makers and opinion leaders should exercise caution at this tense and critical moment. We must not allow fear-mongering war rhetoric to endanger our fellow Americans, whatever their faith or heritage.

"Any Iranian-Americans or others who experience harassment, travel delays, inappropriate law enforcement questioning, or other difficulties as a result of the rising tension between the United States and Iran should immediately contact CAIR for legal assistance."

In November of last year, CAIR published "Know Your Rights" materials online in English, Arabic, Somali, Urdu, Farsi, Bengali, and Bosnian. The multi-language civil rights materials may be printed out for personal use or for distribution at local events.

SEE: Download "Know Your Rights" Guides in Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, Farsi, Somali, Urdu, and English

https://www.cair.com/KnowYourRights

CAIR recommends that community members follow advice offered in its "Your Rights with Law Enforcement" booklet, including:

"If you are visited by federal law enforcement agents, remember:

"You have the legal right to have a lawyer present when speaking with federal law enforcement agencies. This is true even if you are not a citizen or have been arrested or detained. This is your legal right. Refusing to answer questions cannot be held against you and does not imply that you have something to hide. Answering a question incorrectly can hurt you more than not answering at all. An attorney is best able to protect your rights.

"You do not have to permit any law enforcement officer to enter your home or office if they do not have a warrant. Law enforcement agents must have a search warrant, except in emergency situations, in order to enter your house. If they say they have a warrant, politely ask to see it before allowing them to enter. If they have a warrant, be courteous and polite, but remember that you are under no obligation to answer questions without a lawyer present. You should tell the agents that you do not consent to the search so that they cannot go beyond what the warrant authorizes.

"You should never lie or provide false information to any law enforcement agency. Lying to law enforcement agents under any circumstance is a federal crime."

CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, protect civil rights, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.

La mision de CAIR es proteger las libertades civiles, mejorar la comprension del Islam, promover la justicia, y empoderar a los musulmanes en los Estados Unidos.

CONTACT: CAIR Litigation Director Gadeir Abbas, 720-251-0425,[email protected]; CAIR Government Affairs Director Robert McCaw, 202-742-6448, [email protected]; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, [email protected]

SOURCE Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

Related Links

https://www.cair.com


In November, the state issued a catastrophic fire danger rating for the first time in the decade that the current warning system has been in place.

Former New South Wales Fire and Rescue chief Greg Mullins said that beginning in April he and 22 other former fire and rescue workers tried to warn Prime Minister Scott Morrison that this fire season would be an especially difficult one and it would be wise to get more water bombers. The fire chiefs were not able to get a meeting with the prime minister, Mr. Mullins said.

Last week, angry residents of the Bega Valley township of Cobargo confronted Mr. Morrison when he visited.

Are major cities, including Sydney and Melbourne, safe from fires?

Although the fires havent ravaged Sydney or Melbourne, and have mostly been in rural areas, smoke and ash have reached coastal suburbs more than 50 miles away, causing the air quality to severely decline.

The bush fires have created toxic pollution and choking smoke, causing the air quality index in Victoria to rise to more than 999  the worst in the world on Thursday. Any air quality index over 200 is considered hazardous to health. In Sydney heavy smoke has discolored the sky on many days, and the air quality there has at times been among the worst in the world. In Canberra, the nations capital, the air quality rating was over 340, leading some businesses to remain closed on Monday. Beijings rating was 170.

The Australian Medical Association warned people who are sensitive to smoke, and those with pre-existing heart and lung conditions, to take extra care during the fires. In Melbourne, people rushed to buy P2 and N95 smoke masks. People traveling to Australia should consider bringing their own.

What should I do if Im planning to visit one of the affected areas in the next few weeks?

U.S. Embassy officials said on Thursday that tourists on the South Coast of New South Wales should leave because of extreme fire danger.
A day after brutal attacks on students and professors in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus, MS Randhawa, Delhi Police PRO, on Monday (January 6) told media that probe has been launched into the attack on JNU students and professors by some masked goons on Sunday (January 5).

He added that a total of four FIRs have been registered in connection with this case, out of which three FIRs were registered on Sunday. Delhi Police sources said that students from both ABVP and Left groups had called people from outside the campus and these outsiders were involved in violence inside the JNU campus. According to Randhawa, Delhi Police's Joint CP Western range, Shalini Singh, will lead a fact-finding committee formed to probe this matter.

Randhawa said that the crime branch will investigate the matter. He also informed the media that 34 people got injured in the mayhem and all of them have been discharged after proper medical attention.

Talking to media, Randhawa said that Delhi Police had received a call at around 5 PM and police immediately responded to the call. He noted that some policemen are always present at the Admin Block of the varsity but cops are not deployed in hostels.

Live TV

Randhawa said that Delhi Police has collected the CCTV footage from JNU administration and is currently examining the footage to find out the people who were involved in Sunday's violence. He added that police is also monitoring social media and some WhatsApp groups to nail the perpetrators of the attack.

Meanwhile, JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, who was also brutally attacked by the goons, claimed that since past 4-5 days violence was being promoted in the campus by some RSS affiliated professors and ABVP. Every iron rod used against the students will be given back by debate and discussion. JNU's culture will not be eroded anytime soon. JNU will uphold its democratic culture.
Part of the land in Nha Be District that the state-owned Tan Thuan Company sells to private property developer Quoc Cuong Gia Lai. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran.

Tran Cong Thien and Nguyen Van Minh, ex-leaders of a firm under the HCMC Party Committees Office, were arrested Monday for land-related violations.

Thien, 55, former general director of the Tan Thuan Investment and Construction Company, and Minh, 63, former chairman of the company, are facing charges of violating regulations on the management and use of state-owned property that led to "losses or squander."

They are the first two individuals to be arrested following the investigation into the illicit transfer of a 32 hectare (80 acre) plot of public land in Nha Be District by the state-owned company to private property firm Quoc Cuong Gia Lai in June 2017.

Thien was held mainly responsible for directing and operating Tan Thuan Company while the serious violation was committed.

In July 2018, Thien was dismissed from all his positions in the HCMC Party Committee and the company. In March last year, he was expelled from the Communist Party. Meanwhile, Minh received a Party reprimand.

The Party has four modes of punishment for misconduct by official members: reprimand, warning, demotion and expulsion.

The Tan Thuan Company first signed a contract to transfer the plot of public land, which lies by the Saigon River, to Quoc Cuong Gia Lai in June 2017.

Concerns that the transaction was not transparent arose as the land was sold at an unusually low price of VND419 billion ($18.1 million), while its market price was estimated to be up to VND2 trillion ($86.3 million).

The HCMC Party Committees leaders in December 2017 ordered the transfer to be suspended for renegotiation after a reevaluation of the land by the municipal Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

In its reevaluation, the department put the land's value at over VND574 billion ($24.8 million), and also said that only 480 square meters of it was residential land, and the rest was agricultural land. It concluded that the Tan Thuan Companys decision had caused losses of over VND150 billion ($6.5 million) to the state exchequer.

The contract was eventually ordered to be terminated in April last year, and the Party unit's leaders ordered an inspection into the failed deal.

Following the investigation, several city leaders have lost their positions for involvement in this murky land deal. In December 2018, Tat Thanh Cang, 47, was dismissed from several positions including deputy Party chief of HCMC.

In March last year, former deputy head of the HCMC Party Committees Office, Pham Van Thong, lost his Party titles.

Vietnam has been cracking down strongly on violations by both government and Party officials. Many high ranking officials including top leaders of Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang, two of the country's largest cities, are among those who have been found guilty and punished.

Communist Party General Secretary and President Nguyen Phu Trong said at a meeting in April last year that the country is determined to push ahead with more major corruption cases involving power abuse violations by top defense and police officials.
FLINT, MI  A group of friends slathered paint on brushes late Sunday morning to leave a tribute for Kevin Bacon on the iconic Flint Rock.

Days after learning her friend had died at a Shiawassee County home after going missing on Christmas Eve, Tiara Hill said it still feels unreal.

It still really hasnt settled in, said Hill, who worked alongside Bacon for several months at Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy in Flint. I dont know if it ever will. It really just feels like hes going to come back, honestly. Even doing all this it doesnt feel real.

Hill was joined Jan. 5 by several other friends of Bacon, 25, a 2013 Swartz Creek High graduate.

Mark Latunkski, 50, of the Morrice area has been charged with open murder and mutilation of a body in Bacons death. Latunski is being held without bond in the Shiawassee County Jail.

Man arraigned on murder, mutilation charges in Kevin Bacon case

Sitting next to Bacon at Diplomat in the contact center, Hill said he became her roommate for a short time during which We got very close, very quickly.

He was a light in so much darkness. He never judged another person, said Hill. He loved to give and was always making others smile.

Those sentiments have been echoed by countless people since Bacons death, from family to friends.

Having met Bacon in 2017 in class at the University of Michigan-Flint, Emily Gibbs laughed that they had a forced friendship while she painted a cat on the side of the Rock.

Bacon owned two cats, Smokey and Fuzzy.

I was very shy and it was a public speaking class so I kind of wanted to fly under the radar, said Gibbs. He sat behind me and started talking to me and he would make comments about the speeches with me. He was so special.

Bacon ended up cutting Gibbs hair and her fiances hair.

Gibbs had not spoken with Bacon in a while, but she said: I just cant believe this and he didnt deserve this.

I want his spirit to be honored and remembered forever, added Gibbs, while painting a rainbow-striped tail on the cat alongside Hannah Baker.

Bacon also styled Hills hair a few times.

He was an amazing hairstylist and was so passionate about it. Trying new colors, new styles and cuts, making people feel good about themselves, she said.

Hill began receiving text messages on Dec. 28 telling her they were sorry and instantly knew why they were being sent.

Id say I was in shock, I didn't want to believe it was true, she said, spending several days in the aftermath of the news shedding tears and reminiscing about her friend. I really thought he would be found safe and alive.

Parents of slain Swartz Creek man talk about son, homicide investigation

The painting of the Rock is a way to help those impacted by Bacons death to share something about him, Hill said.

LeRae Johnson looked on from the near the intersection of Hammerberg Road and 12th Street as Katie Hensley painted Bacons face in the center of a rainbow of colored stripes.

He was simply an amazing person. He really was, said Johnson, who also got to know Bacon through working at Diplomat. Every time I came into work. If I was having a bad day or stressed, Id just hear the Hi. He really knew how to brighten your day.

Johnson said Bacon had his bad days as well.

We all tried to be there, as friends, she commented. I just wish his lightit didnt have to happen like this. He was such a great person, so young.

Bacon funeral was Friday, Jan. 3 followed by a candlelight vigil that evening that drew approximately 100 people outside Swartz Creek High School.

Johnson shared her hopes that the situation brings a little more awareness to everybody that this can happen.

It can happen in your community, to your friend, to someone who definitely didnt deserve it, she said, adding I hope everybody just remembers how great he is. You know how things die down after a while. I just want him to stay relevant, stay in peoples hearts which I know he will.

Kevin Bacon, slain Swartz Creek man, remembered at candlelight vigil
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 6) Vice President Leni Roberedo released Monday her list of recommendations to improve the Duterte administration's ongoing war against illegal drugs.

Her recommendations, detailed in a 40-page report, were based on her findings during her short stint as the co-chair of the Inter-Agency Committee Against Illegal Drugs, the government's multi-clustered agency fighting drug trafficking and use of illegal drugs in the country.

Below are her main recommendations to the government to create "strong policies and synchronized programs."

1. Maximize ICAD by designating the Dangerous Drugs Board as lead

Robredo proposed moving the leadership from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency to the Dangerous Drugs Board. She said DDB is the policy-making and strategy-formulating body in the planning and formulation of policies and programs on drug prevention and control. She said the current situation of PDEA as lead gives a "lopsided" priority to law enforcement.

She also urged proactive and balanced participation from the enforcement, justice, advocacy, and rehabilitation and reintegration clusters of ICAD.

Robredo suggested adding relevant private sectors and local government representatives members as part of ICAD.

2. Establish accurate and updated baseline data on the number of drug users, pushers

The Vice President hit Duterte's and government agencies' differing data of the number of drug users in the country. Government data shows around 6,000 deaths in anti-illegal drugs operations, a figure that local and international human rights groups believe is just the tip of the iceberg. She said the government should update the list in order to carry out a successful, evidence-based and data-driven campaign against illegal drugs.

3. Scrap "Oplan Tokhang," focus on arrest of drug lords

She recommended the abandonment of the flagship "Oplan Tokhang" campaign, where authorities visit suspected drug users homes and ask them to stop using illegal drugs. She said this term now has a negative connotation for its association with the deaths of drug suspects allegedly at the hands of the police, and should be replaced by a "reinvigorated policy" that ensures accountability and transparency. She said the PNP and other law enforcement agencies should also focus on curtailing the supply and trade of illegal drug.

Robredo also criticized the government's "disproportionate" focus on arresting street-level users and pushers compared to jailing and persecuting high-profile drug lords and drug suppliers.

"Kung gusto talaga nating tapusin ang salot ng iligal na droga, ang malalaking supplier, at hindi lang ang maliliit na pusher, ang kailangan nating habulin," she said in her speech.

The drug war has been tagged by rights groups as anti-poor because most of the recorded deaths are of small-time drug users and peddlers, while drug lords roam free.

She added that the entire Project Tokhang of the Philippine National Police should be revamped to eliminate potential abuse of police officers.

4. Separate users and pushers in processing arrests

Robredo said the PDEA, PNP, Interior Department, Health Department, and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology should implement stricter measures to delineate users from pushers. She said lumping them together in jail only creates a wider drug network.

There should be a uniform process for tracking all subsequent actions and interventions regarding those who surrendered or were arrested, she added.

5. Institute evidence-based drug prevention programs

She said the proliferation of illegal drugs is rooted in poverty, so government should create programs that target both the poverty-stricken and drug-infested areas.

Robredo also told the administration to realign the budget of law enforcement to drug rehabilitation. She noted the "imbalance" in the budget. As an example, she said that only 1.24 billion was allotted to the DOH and DILG for rehabilitation, while law enforcement agencies were given 11.40 billion  89 percent more than the amount for helping drug users heal.

6. Strengthen the role of AMLC

The Vice President said the Anti-Money Laundering Council plays a crucial role in stopping the flow of illegal drugs in the country. She said the tecnhical expertise of the council in the field of financial surveillance can be tapped to intercept money that funds the supply and trafficking of drug syndicates.

Despite the bevy of solutions proposed by Robredo, the Duterte administration refused to heed them.

Presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said she is not in the position to give recommendations on how to conduct the drug war because she's an outsider  despite the fact that she held the post for 19 days.
Our focus is always on the end user, empowering our clients and their employees to achieve more and we plan to continue that approach in the decade to come.

6th Street Consulting was named Partner of the Decade by the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners of Southern California (IAMCP SoCal), the largest chapter of IAMCP in the United States. This honor was bestowed at the IAMCP SoCal Tenth Anniversary party, celebrating ten years of bringing Microsoft partners together for peer-to-peer interaction, member advocacy, and community outreach.

This is an incredible honor to receive from our peers and other professionals in our field, said Michelle Hollis, President of 6th Street Consulting. Our focus is always on the end user, empowering our clients and their employees to achieve more and we plan to continue that approach in the decade to come.

The IAMCP SoCal Partner of the Decade award honors the company in the Southern California area, including the LA North, SoCal, and San Diego chapters of IAMCP, that has proven to be an ongoing leader in the Microsoft partner community over the past ten years through their business expertise, community leadership and service to the IAMCP SoCal.

6th Street Consultings successful partnerships with businesses of all sizes implementing Microsoft-based solutions to challenges and their innovative business before technology mindset have made them invaluable to the community of Microsoft partners. This honor recognizes their track record of stellar customer service and industry leadership, both locally and nationwide.

6th Street Consulting has been a trusted partner of mine for many years, across multiple companies. The 6SC team is very easy to work with, hardworking and resourceful. They have excellent domain knowledge and expertise across the Microsoft platform; coupled with their business acumen and willingness to go the extra mile for their customers, I know I can always count on 6SC, said long-time customer Henry Ong of Quest Software

The award was given during the IAMCP SoCal Tenth Anniversary party which brought together Microsoft partners from across the country including Microsoft executives, field sellers, and OCP team members. The day-long event was full of opportunities for education for Microsoft partners, feedback for Microsoft, a focus on diversity and inclusion, and a fundraising drive which raised over $100,000 for the Childrens Hospital of Orange County and Ronald McDonald House.

This is not the only Microsoft Partner award received by 6th Street Consulting. Their passion for what they do, and the results they achieve for their clients, has resulted in numerous industry honors for the firm, including:



Top one percent of Microsofts SharePoint partner ecosystem

Among RCPs Top 200 Microsoft Solution Providers of 2017

Microsoft Partner of the Year for Collaboration & Content in 2013

Microsoft Managed Partner with both a Gold competency in Collaboration & Content and a Silver competency in Cloud Productivity.

Based out of Redondo Beach, California, 6th Street Consulting is a Microsoft Gold Partner and is trusted by global businesses to deliver intranets, portals and experiences that truly engage. For more information about the company please visit http://www.6sc.com or email at info@6sc.com.
A visibly frustrated firefighter from New South Wales (NSW) used expletives for Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison as the deadly bushfires ravaging the country. Paul Parker, a resident of Nelligen, noticed reporters and stopped asked if they were from media. Parker told an Australian news channel to tell the Prime Minister to and get f****d from Nelligen.

Morrison, who has been accused of inaction, announced the establishment of a national bushfire recovery fund with an initial $2 billion. The fund will be used to coordinate a national response to rebuild communities and livelihoods in the aftermath of a catastrophic bushfire. Morrison said that the initial fund is to ensure support to families, farmers and business owners hit by bushfires.

Its a long road ahead and we will be with these communities every step of the way as they rebuild, said Morrison.

The agency will ensure the work of state and territory governments is being supported and act as a one stop shop central team to coordinate the response. We will do whatever it takes, said the Prime Minister in a statement.

Read: Australian Man Refuses To Leave His 60 Dogs Until They Are Evacuated From Bushfire Area

Supplies run out in fire-ravaged region

Lack of supplies is evident in many parts of Australia where bushfires have ravaged the region. A remote roadhouse in Western Australia got cut off for three days from the rest of the region, leaving hundreds stranded there with limited supplies. The Caiguna Roadhouse, supporting more than 120 people, reportedly ran out of toilet papers and a helicopter dropped it on New Years Day.

Read: New Zealand Skies Turn Orange From Australian Bushfires, Netizens Post Pictures

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said that the initial $2 billion investment help to get communities back on their feet by assisting with restocking and replenishing, rebuilding roads and telecommunications infrastructure, and mental health support.

An unprecedented joint effort with the states, territories and local government will be required to assist with the recovery, rebuilding and future resilience of these communities, the Treasurer said.

Read: Pray For Australia': Netizens Stand In Solidarity Amid Raging Bushfires

Read: Australia: Young Kangaroo Seeks Help From Boy After Being Burnt In Bushfires
Enel Energia and Melita Italia have signed a partnership to offer new services to domestic customers, who will be able to combine the supply of electricity and gas with a fiber connection using FTTH (Fiber To The Home) technology. The collaboration between the two companies brings together the capillarity and quality of Enel Energia's service with the technology of Melita Italia.

Through this agreement, Enel Energia is the only point of reference for electricity, gas and fiber, allowing internet service to be included in the same bill and making the usual assistance channels available to customers also for connection requests. Melita Italia will supply the service through the high-speed Fiber To The Home technology, using only the optical fiber to the homes and ensuring better connection stability. The first offer born of the collaboration, "Enel in Fibra by Melita", will be launched on January 9th, 2020.

"High-speed connection is an enabling factor to fully benefit from smart home innovations and the advantages that derive from the digitization of the energy sector," said Nicola Lanzetta, Enel's Head of Market Italy. "Thanks to this collaboration with a partner like Melita, which has a consolidated experience in the telecommunications sector, we will provide customers with a third commodity that is taking on an increasingly central role in daily operations."

Riccardo Ruggiero, Executive President of Melita Italia, said: "This is a very positive agreement for Melita, which allows us to combine our offer, exclusively in fiber optics, to the homes (Fiber To The Home), to the light and gas services of the main Italian player. This partnership can also be a stimulus for the further development of FTTH technology in Italy, which today is constantly growing but not yet in line with other European countries."

"Enel in Fibra by Melita" will offer a connection up to 1 Gigabit per second in download and 300 Megabit per second in upload for 27 euros per month; this cost will be charged directly to Enel Energia's electricity or gas bill to which the internet service will be associated.

Enel Energia is the Group company that operates in the free market, with over 12 million customers, including residential and business. Its offer is wide and flexible, a wide range of light and gas offers designed to meet every consumption need of families, companies, professionals, condominiums and public administrations.

Melita Italia operates on the Italian market with an Ultralarga Bandwidth offer using exclusively FTTH. It is 100% owned by Melita Ltd, a company founded in 1992 and market leader in Malta in the provision of internet, TV, fixed and mobile telephony services for retail and business customers. Melita Ltd is a full digital company, has a national gigabit network, latest-generation data centers and is the first operator in Europe to have completed a national 5G-ready network.
[January 06, 2020] Ed-Tech Startup MagniLEARN Recognized as Promising AI Startup in China's Innoweek Conference

BEIJING, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- MagniLEARN, an Ed-Tech company using artificial intelligence and Natural Language Processing, received second prize for innovation in Artificial Intelligence and was recognized as a promising AI Startup in the third annual China  Israel Innoweek Conference held in Beijing, China. "Combining Natural Language Processing (NLP) with Artificial Intelligence (AI) allowed us to turn the computer into a language-aware personal tutor for each student," said MagniLEARN CEO Howard Cooper in accepting the award. "Our difference lies in presenting personalized exercises that the student answers with free-form responses. Just like a personal tutor teaching language to a child, we understand what is correct, what is nearly correct, and provide feedback and then reinforcement as the student learns proper English. We gave the computer enough language awareness to become an intelligent and efficient language tutor for each student," he concluded. In a whirlwind tour of four Chinese cities conducted by the Israel Innovation Authority and led personally by Israel's Chief Scientist Dr. Ami Applebaum, MagniLEARN was among 20 Israeli startups that met with key partners and investors in Beijing, Changzhou and Shanghai. MagniLEARN is currently planning pilots in conjunction with Mitrelli, Ltd. and Atid Colleges in Africa, and with half-a-dozen after-school tutorial corporations in South-East Asia. According to a recent report on China's education sector by UBS Securities, consolidation of China's K-12 after-school tutoring market is underway as revenue rises fom 497 billion yuan ($75B) in 2016 to 1,082 billion yuan in 2021. A report by Deloitte stated that investment capital is pouring into the sector and fueling innovation as new companies enter the arena, receive capital and partner with large Education Corporations.



MagniLEARN sees itself positioned to serve China's burgeoning need for English language training by selling into the consolidating tutorial network industry. Tutorial school corporations are competing for dominance by extending their reach, reducing costs and partnering with learning technology companies such as MagniLEARN that harness Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing. Led by Professor Ari Rappoport, a world-renown leader in the fields of AI and NLP, MagniLEARN was founded by three PhD researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the fields of Computer Science, Cognition, Learning and Science Education.

About MagniLEARN: MagniLEARN uses advanced AI, Linguistic Algorithms and NLP technologies to completely personalize any student's second language acquisition experience. MagniLEARN's unique engine allows it to autonomously and dynamically generate student-appropriate lessons while constructively correcting any errors made. Using MagniLEARN speeds up language acquisition by at least a factor of 3 when compared to existing methods. The lead investor in MagniLEARN is OurCrowd/Labs02 of Jerusalem. About OurCrowd Labs/02: OurCrowd Labs/02 is Jerusalem's seed-stage incubator, centered at the heart of the city's innovation scene. The incubator's core mission is to advance cutting-edge technology that will shape the future in innovative areas including AI, deep learning, autonomous transportation and smart cities. Labs/02 invests in outstanding and highly motivated founders, and leads them with a hands-on, mentorship-driven approach. The incubator's program is designed with a boot camp feel to help founders jumpstart their companies towards success. OurCrowd Labs/02 is a partnership between OurCrowd, Motorola Solutions, Reliance Industries and Yissum (the Technology Transfer Company of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem). The incubator is part of the Israeli incubator program administered by the Israel Innovation Authority (formerly the office of the Chief Scientist). For more information visit: www.labs02.com or email [email protected]. Contacts

MagniLEARN

Howard Cooper

[email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ed-tech-startup-magnilearn-recognized-as-promising-ai-startup-in-chinas-innoweek-conference-300981486.html SOURCE MagniLEARN

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2020 just kicked off, but investors arent wasting any time. Rolling up their sleeves and getting straight down to business, they know the race is on to find the stocks ready to speed past the rest in the year ahead. To spot these investment opportunities, Wall Street pros recommend taking a step back and focusing on the bigger picture, telling investors to pay close attention to both upside potential and what the analyst community has to say.

With this strategy in mind, whats the next step? For us, it was to take advantage of TipRanks investing tools. The platforms Stock Screener tool let us filter our search results by analyst consensus, price target upside and Smart Score (TipRanks numerical score made up of 8 metrics to measure the strength of an investment).

As a result, we were able to pinpoint 3 stocks flagged by the Streets analysts as potential winners, with each boasting a Strong Buy consensus rating. Not to mention each has a top Smart Score, at least an 8 out of 10. Heres the scoop.

BioMarin Pharmaceutical (BMRN)

With seven products currently on the market as well as an impressive development pipeline, BioMarin has cemented its status as a biopharma heavyweight. While 2019 saw the company falter, this could be BMRNs year according to some members of the Street.

Part of the excitement surrounding the company is based on the recent positive Phase 3 study data for its vosoritide therapy in achondroplasia, a disorder characterized by dwarfism, which was announced on December 16. During the study, the drug was able to meet the primary endpoint for growth velocity after one year, with it demonstrating an increase of 1.6 cm/year compared to the placebo. On top of this, vosoritide was generally well tolerated and the results were consistent across the study.

According to Cantor analyst Eliana Merle, the news puts BMRN in a solid position going into 2020, noting, We think this sets up for 2020-2021 to be a key inflection for BMRN with two regulatory submissions/potential product launches between vosoritide and valrox (hemophilia A gene therapy).

Story continues

Should the drug receive approval, Merle estimates about $700 million in peak unadjusted sales. While pointing out that the question of reimbursement has been raised, she argues that the clean data, coupled with the building body of evidence from long-term Ph2 data and younger patient studies will help support reimbursement discussions. Bearing this in mind, the analyst left the Overweight rating and $129 price target unchanged. (To watch Merles track record, click here)

Like Merle, Wedbushs Liana Moussatos sees vosoritide approval as very likely. However, she attached a more aggressive price target along with her Outperform rating. Lifting the target by $1 to $158, the analyst thinks an 88% twelve-month gain could be in the cards. (To watch Moussatos track record, click here)

In general, the rest of the Street appears to echo the analysts sentiment. With 13 Buys and 3 Holds assigned in the last three months, the verdict is that BMRN is a Strong Buy. Based on the $111.71 average price target, the upside potential lands at 33%, with the stock also sporting an 8 Smart Score. (See BioMarin stock analysis on TipRanks)

GoDaddy Inc. (GDDY)

GoDaddy provides an all-in-one solution with everything customers need to design the perfect website, from domains to hosting and online marketing. On the heels of its solid Q3 performance, some analysts are placing their bets on GDDY.

During the quarter, the company impressed with its $851 million in gross bookings, surpassing the $828.7 million consensus estimate. Not only did the figure beat the estimate, but growth accelerated 180 basis points from the second quarter. Adding to the good news, its customer count increased by 140,000 sequentially and 4.6% year-over-year to reach 19.1 million. While uFCF came in below the estimate, one analyst tells investors that he remains fully onboard.

Piper Jaffrays Michael Olson cites GDDYs long-term growth and sticky revenue, along with opportunities for up/cross-selling and M&A as putting it on the path to success. To this end, the five-star analyst decided to stay with the bulls, keeping the rating as Overweight along with a $91 price target, which leaves room for possible upside of 32%. (To watch Olsons track record, click here)

Meanwhile, Brent Thill of Jeffries cites his meeting with new CEO Aman Bhutani as the reason for his optimism. Calling the company one of his favorite mid-cap names, the analyst believes Bhutanis strong product background should help GDDY become a more comprehensive software provider with higher ARPU. Additionally, he notes that the CEO wont sacrifice margins even as the speed of product innovations accelerates. Following the meeting, Thill reiterated the Buy recommendation and $95 price target, implying 38% upside potential. (To watch Thills track record, click here)

Looking at the consensus breakdown, its clear that the broader analyst community is on the same page. Out of 8 total analysts covering the stock, 100% were bullish, making the consensus a unanimous Strong Buy. If that wasnt enough, GDDY boasts an 8 Smart Score and upside potential of 31% thanks to the $89.86 average price target. (See GoDaddy stock analysis on TipRanks)

Mimecast Ltd. (MIME)

In an age in which cyberattacks have become a very real and prevalent threat, Mimecast wants to protect customers by offering email security and compliance solutions through its integrated cloud-based platform. Following a strong 2019 performance, one analyst believes an encore could be in store.

Berenberg Banks Joshua Tilton is singing MIMEs praises because of its consistent execution and best-in-class product. He argues that the company has been able to produce consistent results as its customer count grew by 800 new logos and its net retention rate stayed at 110%. In addition, he sees its new strategy as a key point of strength.

We believe the new security 3.0 strategy, with its zone-based approach, will help new mid-to-large organizations adopt more products faster. Current ARPU stands at $37. If this new approach can drive increased adoption of IEP, Awareness Training, and Web Security, we estimate the TAM will double for each of these new customers, Tilton noted.

MIMEs progress with regards to its enterprise segment also plays into the analysts bullish thesis. During its most recent quarter, 30 transactions were above six figures and average order value rose to 11,700, up 14% year-over-year. Tilton added, Supported by a technologically superior offering, we expect MIME to continue its penetration of the enterprise base as management reallocates resources from the lower end of the market.

Its no surprise, then, that Tilton reiterated the Buy rating and $59 price target. At this target, shares could climb 32% higher in the coming twelve months. (To watch Tiltons track record, click here)

What does the rest of the Street have to say? As it turns out, other analysts are in agreement. 7 Buys and a single Hold add up to a Strong Buy consensus rating. The $56.43 average price target puts the upside potential just below Tiltons forecast at 26%. However, it should be noted that MIME earns a perfect 10 Smart Score. (See Mimecast stock analysis on TipRanks)
The Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie (FHH), with the support of its partner brands and the Miami Design District Associates (MDDA), is pleased to announce that the next edition of Watches & Wonders Miami will take place February 12-14, 2021. The move to postpone the 2020 event reflects a strategic decision taken by the FHH to focus all efforts on the debut of the new Watches & Wonders Geneva concept which is scheduled for this coming April 25  29.

 Watches & Wonders

With Miami continuing to grow as a global hub for art, culture and luxury overall, the FHH remains committed to the city, and the Miami Design District in particular, as an ideal setting for the Watches & Wonders concept. The timing, which will coincide with the popular Presidents Day weekend, will enable the FHH to deliver the optimal experience for attendees and partner brands, as well as allow for continued partnership with the Miami Concours and Miami Yacht Show.

We were thrilled with the resonance of Watches & Wonders Miami 2019, and we look forward to continuing the celebration of fine watchmaking in 2021 in the Miami Design Districtthis time with a new look, and even more Wonders, stated Fabienne Lupo, Chairwoman and Managing Director of the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie.

 Watches & Wonders

Watches & Wonders is set to become the hallmark of excellence; a place for professionals to meet and be inspired, and for the public to learn more about, and marvel at, watchmaking and countless wonders.
The Indian Government on Monday summoned Pakistan's High Commissioner Syed Haider Shah to lodge a strong protest against the recent acts of vandalism and desecration of the holy Gurudwara Sri Janam Asthan at Nankana Sahib in Pakistan, and also the targeted killing of a Sikh community member in Peshawar, Pakistan.

The government also shared strong concerns raised by the members of civil society, parliamentarians and others over the continued persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in Pakistan. The Government of Pakistan was also called upon to ensure the safety, security and welfare of the members of the minority communities on its soil, including their places of worship. The Indian government strongly urged Pakistan to take immediate measures to expeditiously bring the perpetrators of such despicable and heinous acts to justice.

READ | Union Min Hardeep Puri Calls Nankana Sahib Attack 'shameful', Highlights Need For CAA

Nankana Sahib attacked

On Friday, a video had emerged of a mob of 400 people pelting stones in the Nankana Sahib Gurudwara in Pakistan. Visuals showed the mob surrounding the Gurudwara and pelting stones at what is the birthplace of Guru Nanak Dev. Sources also reported that the mob was led by Mohd. Imran Attari -the brother of Mohammed Hassan who was responsible for the forcible conversion of a Pakistani Sikh girl - Jagjit Kaur. No arrests have been made till now.

Sources report that the protestors, comprising residents of Nankana Sahib had proclaimed that they will soon change the name from Nankana Sahib to Ghulaman-e-Mustafa. Moreover, the mob allegedly claimed that 'no Sikh will remain in Nankana'. Reports suggest that several Sikh devotees were stranded inside the Gurdwara which was attacked by the mob on Friday evening.

Thanking thousands of people from all walks of life and religions who joined us today for a peaceful protest outside Pak Embassy against mob attack on Nankana Sahib Gurdwara, Pakistan

 pic.twitter.com/caaGuc9Bnk  Manjinder S Sirsa (@mssirsa) January 4, 2020

READ | Imran Khan Breaks Silence On Nankana Sahib Attack; Drags RSS, Preaches 'zero-tolerance'

Imran Khan breaks silence

Breaking his silence on the shocking mob attack on Nankana Sahib, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday said that the attack is against 'his vision' and will 'find zero tolerance'. Dragging Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the RSS, Khan once again accused the Indian government of perpetrating violence against Muslims and other minorities. This brazen attack by the Pakistani PM comes even as he faced humiliation after posting a fake video alleging Police excesses on Muslims in UP - the video was actually from Bangladesh.

Imran Khan went on to say, in his tweet, that there is a 'major difference' between the Nankana incident and what minorities face in India. He alleged that the Indian government including police and judiciary are in cahoots to unleash violence against minorities. He claimed that the RSS vision support minorities' oppression and targets Muslims.

READ | Shiv Sena Slams Pak PM Imran Khan Over Nankana Sahib Attack, Calls It 'deplorable'

READ | Punjab CM Amarinder Singh Asks Pak PM To Intervene Over Nankana Sahib Mob Attack
By Trend

Another cargo ship, produced at Iran's Qeshm Free Trade Zone (FTZ), which is located on the Qesm island in the Persian Gulf, has been exported to one of the Gulf countries, General manager of Industry, mine and production facilitation at Qeshm FTZ Mohammad Mehdi Berenji said, Trend reports with reference to the website of the trade zone.

The cost of the vessel, made from fiberglass, is $15,000, Berenji said, adding that the vessel was built according to the investor's order.

According to Berenji, the length of the vessel is 33 meters, the beam - 9.6 meters, the draft - 4.3 meters.

The vessel can carry 157 tons of cargo, he added.

Twenty manufacturing companies of Iran's shipbuilding industry operate in the free zone.

A ship with the capacity of carrying 150 tons of cargo, constructed by Qeshm Azin Negin Boum company, was exported to the UAE from the Qeshm Free Trade Zone on December 7.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Spanish leader's 1st bid to form left-wing government fails: Spain's interim prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, failed on the first of two chances to win the endorsement of parliament to form a left-wing coalition government. He received 166 votes, 10 short of the required absolute majority. The Socialist leader will have a second opportunity on Tuesday, when the threshold for success is lower  only a simple majority of more votes for than against is required  and he hopes to have the support needed to constitute a government of his center-left Socialists and the anti-austerity United We Can party. Sanchez has been leading a caretaker government for almost a year.
WASHINGTON - John Bolton complicated Senate Republicans' impeachment strategy on Monday, declaring his willingness to testify and upping the pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his party to summon the former national security adviser as a witness in President Donald Trump's trial.

Bolton last fall rebuffed House impeachment investigators' entreaties to testify about his concerns about Trump's demands that Ukraine investigate his political rivals as the administration delayed military aid. Bolton's surprise announcement changed the political calculus for McConnell's no-witness strategy and appeared to increase the likelihood of additional testimony that could embarrass the president.

"Since my testimony is once again at issue, I have had to resolve the serious competing issues as best I could, based on careful consideration and study," Bolton said. "I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify."

The announcement was a major boost for congressional Democrats, who have delayed transmission of the articles of impeachment for more than two weeks while seeking guarantees about the scope of the trial, including witnesses. Democrats have pressed for testimony from Bolton, as well as acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and several other of the president's men.

At least one Senate Republican, Mitt Romney of Utah, agreed Monday that it was imperative that Bolton testify, while Democrats insisted that Republicans' refusal to allow him to tell his story would be tantamount to a "coverup."

Bolton has firsthand knowledge of internal White House deliberations, and according to testimony in the House probe, reacted angrily to Trump's pressure on Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, now a 2020 candidate, and a debunked theory about Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election.

The Bolton announcement came as lawmakers returned to Washington from a two-week congressional recess, with leaders still at loggerheads over the parameters of the impeachment trial.

Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has been holding the two charges - abuse of power and obstruction of Congress - in hopes of strengthening Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's hand in negotiating with McConnell, R-Ky., for witnesses. Bolton's statement seemed to create a shift in leverage in Democrats' favor.

"Will the United States Senate conduct a fair impeachment trial of the president of the United States? Will we search for all of the facts, or will we look for a coverup, a sham trial, on one of the most important powers the Founding Fathers gave the American people?" Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor.

McConnell, for his part, made clear that once the articles are transmitted to the Senate, he will move ahead on the first phase of the trial - opening arguments - without a decision on witnesses.

"That was good enough for President Clinton, so it ought to be good enough for President Trump," McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor, citing the impeachment trial 21 years ago. "Fair is fair."

Two moderate Senate Republicans - Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska - have said they're open to hearing from witnesses. And Romney threw his support behind calling Bolton, increasing the likelihood that moderates may force McConnell's hand eventually.

"I would like to be able to hear from John Bolton," the 2012 GOP presidential nominee told reporters. "What the process is to make that happen, I don't have an answer for you. The leaders are trying to negotiate that process right now. . . . What's important is that we hear from him."

Still, the same centrist Republican senators signaled that they were willing to start the trial without a deal for Bolton's testimony, keeping McConnell in firm control for now as he works to delay any decision on additional witnesses until after House Democrats present their case and the president's defense team rebuts it.

"There are a number of witnesses that may well be appropriate for the stage three, of which he would certainly be one," Collins said of Bolton.

When Bolton emerged as a potential witness in the fall, he indicated that he was willing to defy the White House and testify in the House impeachment inquiry - but only if issued a subpoena and if a federal court cleared the way. His statement Monday that he would participate in the proceedings without a court decision marked a shift in his position.

The Bolton development comes just days after McConnell had used the holiday break to persuade Trump to back a quick, no-witness trial. The president, known for his scorched-earth approach, had wanted to use the proceedings to go after Biden.

But McConnell, according to aides who were not authorized to speak publicly, explained that if Trump called his own witnesses, Democrats would insist on theirs. "Mutual assured destruction," he called it, warning against summoning anyone.

The major question for McConnell is whether he can hold the line - particularly after Bolton says he's ready to tell his story. A subpoena requires a simple majority of 51 votes, and Democrats would need just four Republicans to break ranks.

Bolton's testimony could be damaging to Trump politically, according to a person close to him who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private conversations. People familiar with Bolton's tenure at the National Security Council expect him to corroborate other impeachment witnesses' testimony that he was aghast that U.S. military aid was being held back as the president and his allies pressured Ukraine to open politically advantageous probes, according to people familiar with his views.

In recent months, Bolton has confided to friends that he was deeply troubled by his time at the White House and the president's behavior, but has declined to offer many details, the person said, adding that Bolton's support for Trump's hard line on Iran would not influence any possible testimony.

"Those are different issues. One doesn't affect the other," the person said.

Still, other Bolton associates have privately said that he wants a future in Republican politics and does not want to be seen as a turncoat on Trump or someone who is trying to ingratiate himself with the president's critics. They noted, for instance, that his statement Monday came from his political action committee's office as an example of how he's trying to build out his operation even as he deals with legal issues.

Additionally, people close to him note that Bolton also has an expansive view of presidential power. As a result, it is unclear whether he would testify that he believes Trump overstepped his constitutional authority in his dealings with Ukraine.

Democrats have sought Bolton's testimony for months, particularly after former National Security Council aides told impeachment investigators of his concerns regarding Trump's conduct toward Ukraine. Russian affairs director Fiona Hill testified that Bolton exploded in frustration after a White House meeting July 10 in which Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, pressed Ukrainian officials to open investigations into Biden and the 2016 campaign.

Bolton, Hill said, equated the discussions to a "drug deal" - and told her to immediately report it to John Eisenberg, the top lawyer for the National Security Council.

Additionally, William Taylor, the then-acting ambassador to Ukraine, testified that Bolton was "very sympathetic" when he expressed concerns to the then-national security adviser that military aid to Ukraine was being leveraged for political favors. Bolton recommended that Taylor send a "first person" cable to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about his worries to document the issue. And Taylor later heard from other State Department officials that Bolton was working to get the aid to Ukraine.

Senate Republicans appeared divided on the possibility of hearing from Bolton.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who is close with McConnell, told Guy Benson, the political editor for conservative Townhall.com, that Bolton's testimony could be "helpful to the president" and that he'd like to know more about what he'd say. Other Republicans, including Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, suggested that the Senate should only consider the evidence already gathered in the House, thereby precluding Bolton.

"I just don't think we're under any obligation to consider anything outside the record of what was created for the articles they sent us," Rubio told reporters.

Democratic officials last week predicted Pelosi would deliver the articles to the Senate as soon as this week, though the speaker has kept her plans close and her office has refused to detail her timeline.

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and several other Republicans introduced a resolution Monday to dismiss the impeachment articles without a trial since Pelosi has yet to deliver the documents, though the measure appears unlikely to get a vote.
'He should not be saying all this', a bench headed by CJI SA Bobde observed after senior advocate Kapil Sibal drew attention to alleged statement

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday sought an explanation from the Assam government over the allegation that the state coordinator for National Register of Citizens (NRC) was making communal statements.

"He should not be saying all this. You (Assam government) have to explain this. Whatever you want. He should not be saying all this," a bench headed by chief justice SA Bobde observed after senior advocate Kapil Sibal drew the attention to the alleged statement made by the state NRC coordinator.

The bench was hearing the petition which also sought removal of the state coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma. Several other petitions have been filed relating to the NRC in Assam and the bench issued notices to the Centre and Assam government and sought response within four weeks.

A petition was also heard in which it was stated that around 60 children have been excluded from the NRC but their parents have been granted citizenship through NRC. Attorney General KK Venugopal and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre and the Assam government, said such children will not be separated from their parents.

In the order, the bench also comprising justices BR Gavai and Surya Kant said children whose parents have been granted citizenship through NRC will not be sent to the detention centre. The response on the petition has to be filed in four weeks.
In the wake of US President Donald Trumps illegal drone murder of top Iranian General Qassem Suleimani on Thursday, millions of people took to social media to express their opposition to the growing threat of a third world war.

Google Searches for World War 3 and conscription spiked within hours of the airstrike. Google Trends continues to record Iran as the second most searched term in the United States, with more than 500,000 searches for the topic.

On Friday, hundreds of thousands of people concerned about the reinstatement of the draft flooded the official website of the Selective Service System, which maintains a list of Americans eligible for the draft. The staggering level of traffic led to the temporary shutdown of the site.

The incident prompted the mainstream media to run a series of articles reassuring people that the draft was ended in 1973 during the Vietnam War. Some of the articles also falsely noted that the US Congress would likely not reinstate it because of overwhelming opposition from the public. Only 15 percent of American adults support the return of the draft.

Since news reports of the drone attack broke, trending hashtags on Twitter have included #WWIII, #WorldWar3, #WW3memes, #NoWarWithIran, #NoWarOnIran, #IranAttack, #TrumpSwore, and #FranzFerdinand. The latter refers to the parallels drawn between Trumps drone strike of Suleimani with the Serbian assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand that sparked World War I.

Many Twitter users grappled with the idea of being sent to a war through memes, images and videos, some with comedic captions. Some of the posts have received as many as tens of thousands of likes and shares.

One user, @salmaanoooo, joked about their dreams being shattered by the prospect of a third world war: Me: This decade I'm gonna get married, have kids, buy my first car, travel the worl-#WWIII: followed by a gif, saying, Im not going to let you get the chance.

@EDuksie wrote WWIII gone be like with a short edited video of a man jumping out of a plane and dropping a massive bomb on a city that appears to be London, obliterating it.

Tweet by @EDuksie showing the devastating impact WWIII would cause

Another user, @6bigdaniel6, posted a photo of hundreds of peoples bitmojis, or emoticons that can be designed to look like the user, concentrated in Iran on a location-based Snapchat map.

Many of the darkly humored posts portrayed different ways users would try to avoid a draft, such as fleeing the country or faking illnesses and injuries.

Tryna decide wheres the best place to hide when WWIII starts, wrote @Rocky_6, a young man from Ireland, posting this caption to a short video of a man pointing to different countries on a world map. Another user, @PlayoffNugs, shared a video with the caption Me meeting my homies in prison after we all refused the draft for WWIII.

@PlayoffNugs shared a video expressing opposition to a draft

Notably, the antiwar sentiment has come from social media users around the world. Users from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Brazil, Uruguay, South Korea, Russia, Turkey and countries across the Middle East have spoken out in opposition to the impending war, often supportively engaging in each others posts. In some cases, Americans were speaking directly to Iraqi and Iranian people to solidarize themselves with the fight against war.

A user from Iraq, @mahmoudkenny98, posted on Twitter saying, FIGHT YOUR WARS AWAY FROM US!! YOU MADE MY COUNTRY A BATTLEFIELD FOR YOUR OWN WARS THAT WE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH!! I NEVER LIVED A DAY IN MY LIFE WITHOUT BEING IN A WAR.

One user, @DudesterThe, responded saying, When I heard about the Baghdad airport strike, my immediate first thought was about you, my friend. They continued, We, the People, did not want this. Another user, @aquaponicdave, responded, Unfortunately our oligarchs want your oil. We will defeat them from both directions.

One young persons post from Hingoli, India, read, Please maintain the peace in world and say no to #WWIII. While he only had 34 people following him, his post received over 2,000 likes and more than 500 retweets.

A similar tweet received an even larger response. World is already burning, we dont want any more war. #Iranattack #WWIII, wrote @tnawazkhan, with an illustration depicting the horrific fires raging across Australia right now. The post has received 14,500 likes so far and nearly 5,000 retweets.

The eruption of anti-war sentiment on social media from workers and youth around the world is a powerful demonstration of the revolutionary implications of modern technology and its potential to unify the working class on a global basis.

There is clearly no shortage of determination in the working class to fight against the drive to World War III. The critical question, however, is one of political perspective. The WSWS fights to arm the growing antiwar sentiment with a strategy that unifies the struggles of the working class in a worldwide movement for socialism.

The World Socialist Web Site encourages all workers and youth who want to fight against war to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, join our movement, and take up the fight for socialism.

This author also recommends:

The murder of Qassem Suleimani and assassination as state policy

[4 January 2020]
Abuja, Nigeria (PANA)  The Nigerian Navy has set up a Board of Inquiry to ascertain the circumstances in which four Naval ratings, who were part of a six-man Naval rescue squad, were killed in a gun duel between them and suspected sea pirates
New Delhi [India], Jan 6 (ANI): Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Monday condemned the acts of violence against students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi and said that judicial inquiry of the incident can be done to ascertain facts about the incident.



Taking to micro-blogging site twitter, Mayawati wrote, "Violence with students and teachers in JNU is highly condemnable and shameful. The central government should take this incident very seriously. Also, it will be better if there is a judicial inquiry into this incident."

Meanwhile, Delhi Police has received multiple complaints in regard to yesterday's incident and officials would be registering the FIR soon.

Earlier on Sunday evening, more than 18 students, including JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, were injured and taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered the JNU and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods.

The JNU administration and political leaders, cutting across political lines, had condemned the attack on students and urged the police to take action against the perpetrators. (ANI)
More than 120 people working for the Defence Forces are on such low pay they have to rely on benefits to make ends meet.

According to the Department of Welfare, 124 people working in the Defence Forces receive the Working Family Payment.

Of these, 54 are public servants employed by the Defence Forces and the balance - 70 - are described as army, navy or Air Corps personnel.

The president of the Defence Forces representative body Pdforra Mark Keane said last night: One member of the forces on the Working Family Payment is too many.

But the fact that there are more than 120 on it speaks volumes.

Its absolutely ludicrous that one arm of the State is paying our members, while another arm of the State is used to supplement those wages.

It is just another illustration that our members are not being paid sufficiently.

While the figures stand at 124, you van be sure there are probably as many again - if not more - who simply dont qualify because they fall outside the net by a few Euro.

Why the government just doesnt pay our members a decent wage in the first place is just ridiculous.

A spokesperson for the Department of Welfare said: The Department regards the Working Family Payment as being a very useful financial support specially aimed for working families.

Up to June this year, there were just over 52,000 low-income families with at least one child in receipt of the WFP.

They received an average tax-free payment of around 135-a-week.

Members of the Defence Forces who receive it can also be eligible for other benefits.

Some of them have said in the past they are living in poverty and claim many are paid less than the minimum wage.

They have also said they are forced to top their wages up with benefits and sleep in their cars to save petrol.

Others couch surf in friends flats to also avoid a daily commute to work because they cant afford the cost of fuel.

And they say they are so sick and tired of the poor pay and treatment that many are now just leaving or about to leave the Defence Forces.

A number are now also opting for jobs stacking shelves and working behind a till in supermarkets rather than be part of the countrys Defence Forces.

Earlier this year, two soldiers recently landed jobs in the supermarket chain ALDI.

And those who dont leave, are helping make ends meet by taking on a second job as, for example, taxi drivers or bouncers.

The Department of Defence agreed last November to pay financial compensation and provide extra days leave to soldiers after it was alleged they worked excessive hours which breached the EU Working Time Directive (WTD).

A Department of Defence spokesperson told the Irish Examiner:Working Family Payment (WFP) is a payment which is available across all sectors of society. Eligibility for payment is determined by average weekly family income and family size.

The net assessable earnings are calculated after deducting tax, PRSI and USC.

The payment is available to support families in particular financial situations.

Salaries in the Defence Forces and the broader public service are based on job requirements and not individual family circumstances.
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An Egyptian court has ruled that Coptic citizens should be governed by Christian inheritance norms, including gender equality, a lawyer told AFP on Sunday.

"Until now, Islamic law (which provides that men should inherit twice as much as women) was applied to Coptic citizens, even though Orthodox rules guarantee equality between men and women," said lawyer Hoda Nasrallah, who brought a test case.

Nasrallah said she was forced to go to court to ensure her father's estate was "fairly shared" between her and her two brothers.

The court decision was based on article three of Egypt's 2014 constitution, which said Christian inheritance rules govern Christian citizens.

Previous rulings by the Coptic Orthodox church guarantee gender equality in inheritance matters.

Coptic Christians, the largest non-Muslim religious minority in the Middle East, make up about 10-15 percent of Egypt's predominantly Sunni Muslim population of 100 million.

Up until now, a law dating from the 1940s has continued to apply Islamic inheritance law to Coptic citizens.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
MANILA, Philippines  Ten local chief executives across the country are facing charges of gross negligence of duty and grave misconduct before the Office of the Ombudsman.

The issue stemmed from the LGUs failure to respond to the call of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) regarding the local governments clearing operation project.

According to the Interior Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya, the 10 mayors were just the first batch from the total of 97 local chief executives who failed the DILG directives.

Sana ma-suspend kaagad itong 10 mayor na ito (I hope these 10 mayors would be suspended soon), Malaya said.

The 10 concerned mayors were from the following cities and municipalities:



Pili, Camarines Sur;

Ginatilan, Cebu;

Pagsanghan, Samar;

Aurora and Lapuyan, Zamboanga Del Sur;

Sagay and Guinsiliban, Camuigin;

Manticao, Misamis Oriental

Caraga Sa Davao Oriental

Sa amin kasi (for us, it ) is more of a message, Malaya noted.

Mensahe sa lahat ng LGU na may batas na kailangang gawin ninyo ang trabaho ninyo (The message to all LGUs is that there is a law that orders you to do your job), he added.

The DILG is set to begin next week another round of clearing operation which will run for 75 days.

Malaya said this will include clearing of roads and passageways within the barangays.

Alongside the announcement of the schedule of clearing operation, the DILG will also reveal the names of heads of barangays who the Department is filing cases against in line with the project.  MNP (with details from Rey Pelayo)

The post 10 mayors face suspension for failing DILGs clearing ops appeared first on UNTV News.
Eight people were injured after a major fire broke out in a commercial building in Kamathipura area of central Mumbai on Monday, a fire official said.

One of the injured persons was reported to be critical, he said.

The blaze erupted around 9.15 am in the ground plus one-storey 'China Building' located in Baghdadi compound of Kamathipura locality in Nagpada area, he said.

A portion of the building collapsed after the fire, the official said, adding some cracks were also noticed in the structure.

The building has various commercial units and some people were also residing in it.

Those residing in the premises were evacuated after the fire broke out, he said.

"Eight people were rushed to Nair Hospital. It was a level-3 (major) fire," he said, adding the blaze was almost brought under control and cooling operations will start later.

A 70-year-old man, who was among those injured, was reported to be in a critical condition, the official said.

The injured also included a two-year-old child.

Ten fire engines and 11 jumbo tankers were engaged in fire-fighting. Besides, a quick response van and ambulance were also at the site for assistance, the official said.

"The fire was confined to electric wiring, electric installations, household articles, a leather godown on first floor and a cloth godown on ground floor of the commercial structure spread in an area about 2,500 sq ft," chief fire officer P S Rahangdale said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At the current toll of 3,066 Trinidad and Tobago now has the highest number of Covid-19 deaths in the Caricom region, both numerically and number of deaths per million people.

This unenviable standing could quickly change, depending on when new variants take hold and the impact they have on any given country.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : The Centre on Monday decided to provide additional assistance of Rs 5,908.56 crore to seven disaster-hit states - Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tripura and Uttar Pradesh, officials said.

The states were affected by floods, landslides and cloudburst during south west monsoon 2019.

A High Level Committee (HLC), chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, approved the additional assistance to seven states from National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF)-- Rs 616.63 crore to Assam, Rs 284.93 crore to Himachal Pradesh, Rs 1869.85 crore to Karnataka, Rs 1749.73 crore to Madhya Pradesh, Rs 956.93 crore to Maharashtra, Rs 63.32 to Tripura and Rs 367.17 crore to Uttar Pradesh.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was present in the meeting along with senior officers of the Ministries of Home Affairs, Finance, Agriculture and NITI Aayog.

Earlier, the Central government had released an interim financial assistance of Rs 3,200 crore to four states -- Rs 1,200 crore to Karnataka, Rs 1,000 crore to Madhya Pradesh, Rs 600 crore to Maharashtra and Rs 400 crore to Bihar. In addition, during 2019-20, till date, the Centre had released Rs 8,068.33 crore to 27 states as Central share from the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF).

"The Central government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been providing full support to the state governments by providing timely logistics and financial resources to supplement the efforts of the state governments to deal with the situation effectively in the wake of natural calamities," a Home Ministry statement said.
While Quantico, Fort Bragg, Fort Belvoir and Naval Base San Diego have tightened security since Iran's threats Friday, U.S. Northern Command has yet to publicly announce whether it will increase security nationwide.

Tensions between the United States and Iran have grown since the U.S. killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani on Jan. 2. Iran has vowed revenge for the death of the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force.

The Force Protection Condition system, or FPCON, includes five levels of specific security measures set by the commander after considering, among other things, the threat level and current events. It ranges from Normal to Delta, which is usually used in an area where a terrorist attack has occurred or when there's an "imminent" terrorist action against a person or location.

"While we will not discuss specifics, U.S. Northern Command is implementing additional force protection condition measures to increase security and awareness for all installations in the U.S. NORTHCOM area of responsibility," a NORTHCOM spokesman said via email. "This includes all installations and facilities in the United States, Canada and The Bahamas."

Individual bases, however, have announced specific enhanced security measures. Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia announced via its social media accounts that its law enforcement personnel would conduct 100% identification checks and increased vehicle inspections in light of the threat, warning personnel the added security would likely result in longer wait times and traffic lines.

Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the largest Army base on the East Coast, announced via social media that it was changing traffic patterns, requiring visitors and those bringing a guest to check in at the base visitors center for a pass before continuing onto the base.

Fort Belvoir, Virginia also announced a move to 100% ID checks Monday.

"Please be advised to plan for traffic delays and adjust arrival times accordingly," officials said in a social media post.

On the West Coast, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California also moved to full ID checks, as did Macdill Air Force Base in Florida, home of U.S. Central Command's headquarters.

The current FPCON level for all U.S. bases overall is Bravo, which is third on the FPCON list and is used when there is an increased or more predictable threat of terrorist activity. The threat level has been at Bravo since 2015.

Related: Army Sky Soldiers Prep for Middle East Deployment as US Buildup Continues

Though the Defense Department said the 2015 increase was not due to a specific threat, the level was raised around the time Islamic State-related threats were in the news.

Over the weekend, bases across Europe also announced enhanced security measures including 100% ID checks, resulting in traffic advisories via Facebook and Twitter.

"Due to recent world events, expect to see an increase in security measures at [U.S. Army Garrisons] Bavaria at Grafenwoehr, Netzaberg, Vilseck, Hohenfels and Garmisch," USAG Bavaria posted Saturday. "As a matter of force protection policy, we will not comment on the specific security measures. Though there are no known threats to U.S. personnel or assets, we ask for your cooperation."

The command further asked soldiers not to release operation details on social media and to remain vigilant on bases.

-- Dorothy Mills-Gregg can be reached at dorothy.mills-gregg@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @DMillsGregg.

Read more: US Military Response Force Arrives in Kenya After Terrorist Attack
Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has said the introduction of the National Identification Card will soon erase all arguments about the use of voters register for elections in the country.

According to him, the card will automatically replace the voters ID since the Electoral Commission (EC) will extract details of all those who have turned eighteen and above and are eligible to vote with ease.

Speaking at the 88th Annual National Convention of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission in Gomoa Pomadze in the Central Region, Dr. Bawumia indicated that the completion of the National Identification database will also save the nation money.

One of the beautiful things about the National ID card registration is that after it is done this year, we will no longer have any argument about the voters register anymore because the National ID will be the voters register and nobody will go and do voters registration because when it is time for voting, EC will just extract the data of anybody who is above 18 from the national ID database. So it will save us money in these registrations which are expensive. But, for us, this is the last time we going to get involved in the election registration.

He again added that digitization will be introduced at the Lands Commission to tackle the high levels of corruption that characterize land registration and acquisition.

Also, the NHIA is not going to be issuing out NHIS cards because the National ID card can also act as your NHIS card. We are introducing digitization at the Lands Registry because of the corruption there. But we have begun a process to digitize land registration which will become a major breakthrough in the country, he added.

Dr. Bawumia has always maintained that with digitization, government will be introducing new, and more efficient ways of doing business to help attract investors.

He believes that the instant issuance of biometric ID cards will serve as the bedrock for all digital initiatives such as tax collection and business registration.

---citinewsroom
New York, NY--January 6, 2020--Spinal cord injuries (SCI) can cause devastating damage, including loss of mobility and sensation. Every year, there are an estimated 17,000 new SCIs in the US alone, a rate higher than in most regions of the world. In addition, the rate of SCIs in people 65-years or older is expected to rise in the US, from 13.0% in 2010 to 16.1% by 2020. Data also shows a high survival rate for these patients, who need to function in everyday life but find sitting to be a major challenge.

A Columbia Engineering team has invented a robotic device--the Trunk-Support Trainer (TruST)--that can be used to assist and train people with SCIs to sit more stably by improving their trunk control, and thus gain an expanded active sitting workspace without falling over or using their hands to balance. The study, published today in Spinal Cord Series and Cases, is the first to measure and define the sitting workspace of patients with SCI based on their active trunk control.

"We designed TruST for people with SCIs who are typically wheelchair users," says Sunil Agrawal, the project's PI and professor of mechanical engineering and of rehabilitation and regenerative medicine. "We found that TruST not only prevents patients from falling, but also maximizes trunk movements beyond patients' postural control, or balance limits."

TruST is a motorized-cable driven belt placed on the user's torso to determine the postural control limits and sitting workspace area in people with SCI. It delivers forces on the torso when the user performs upper body movements beyond the postural stability limits while sitting.

The five subjects with SCI who participated in the pilot study were examined with the Postural Star-Sitting Test, a customized postural test that required them to follow a ball with their head and move their trunk as far as possible, without using their hands. The test was repeated in eight directions, and the researchers used the results to compute the sitting workspace of each individual.

The team then tailored the TruST for each subject to apply personalized assistive force fields on the torso while the subjects performed the same movements again. With the TruST, the subjects were able to reach further during the trunk excursions in all eight directions and significantly expand the sitting workspace around their bodies, on an average of about 25% more.

"The capacity of TruST to deliver continuous force-feedback personalized for the user's postural limits opens new frontiers to implement motor learning-based paradigms to retrain functional sitting in people with SCI," says Victor Santamaria, a physical therapist, postdoctoral researcher in Agrawal's Robotics and Rehabilitation Laboratory, and first author of the paper. "We think TruST is a very promising SCI rehab tool."

Agrawal's team is now exploring the use of TruST within a training paradigm to improve the trunk control of adults and children with spinal cord injury. "The robotic platform will be used to train participants with SCI by challenging them to move their trunk over a larger workspace, with TruST providing assist-as-needed force fields to safely bring the subjects back to their neutral sitting posture," says Agrawal. "This force field will be adjusted to the needs of the participants over time as they improve their workspace and posture control."

###

About the Study

The study is titled "The robotic Trunk-Support-Trainer (TruST) to measure and increase postural workspace during sitting in people with spinal cord injury."

Authors are: V. Santamaria 1, T. Luna 1, M. Khan 2, S. Agrawal 1, 3

1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia Engineering

2 Department of Radiology at BWH, Harvard Medical School

3 Department of Rehabilitation and Regenerative Medicine, Columbia University

The study was supported, in part, by New York State research funding, DOH01-C31290GG.

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

LINKS:

Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41394-019-0245-1

DOI: 10.1038/s41394-019-0245-1

Columbia Engineering: http://engineering.columbia.edu/

Sunil Agrawal: https://engineering.columbia.edu/faculty/sunil-agrawal

Agrawal's Robotics and Rehabilitation (ROAR) Laboratory: https://roar.me.columbia.edu/

mechanical engineering: https://me.columbia.edu/

Columbia Engineering

Columbia Engineering, based in New York City, is one of the top engineering schools in the U.S. and one of the oldest in the nation. Also known as The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School expands knowledge and advances technology through the pioneering research of its more than 220 faculty, while educating undergraduate and graduate students in a collaborative environment to become leaders informed by a firm foundation in engineering. The School's faculty are at the center of the University's cross-disciplinary research, contributing to the Data Science Institute, Earth Institute, Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Precision Medicine Initiative, and the Columbia Nano Initiative. Guided by its strategic vision, "Columbia Engineering for Humanity," the School aims to translate ideas into innovations that foster a sustainable, healthy, secure, connected, and creative humanity.
The number of people who are 80-years-old and older is on the rise, and will account for nearly 10 percent of the whole U.S. population by 2050. Since the lifetime chance for developing high blood pressure is at least 70 percent by age 80, more and more people will be at risk for the health problems that high blood pressure can cause.

High blood pressure, or hypertension, is sometimes called the "silent killer" because it produces few, if any, symptoms. In fact, you might not even realize you have high blood pressure. But if it's not treated, this condition can lead to heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease, and other serious problems, including a risk for dementia.

The 2017 American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association blood pressure guidelines recommend that most people aged 65 or older maintain their systolic blood pressure (the first number in a blood pressure reading) at less than 130 mmHg. But, people 80 years or older often also have multiple chronic health conditions, can be frail, take several medicines, and could have cognitive problems. Because of this, it's still unclear whether the risks and benefits of lowering systolic blood pressure to less than 130 mm Hg are the same for people aged 80 years and older as they are for people aged 65 to 80.

Given this knowledge gap, a team of researchers focused on this group of older adults within a large randomized trial called the Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT). They published their findings in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. In their analysis of SPRINT data, the researchers focused on people aged 80 and older, who had reported heart disease events (such as heart attacks or strokes), changes in kidney function, cognitive impairment, quality of life, or death. The researchers also explored whether impairments in cognitive or physical function had any effect on intensive blood pressure control.

The analysis included 1,167 participants. Most were around 84 years old, and about 3 percent were 90 or older. Their baseline systolic blood pressure was around 142 mmHg. Most of the participants had at least three chronic health conditions. More than half were taking at least five medications and about 27 percent had a history of heart disease.

The participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group received "intensive" treatment targeting to lower their blood pressure to less than 120 mmHg. The other group received treatment to target lowering their blood pressure to less than 140 mmHg.

The people who received treatment to lower their blood pressure to less than 120 mmHg experienced a lower risk for heart disease events, as well as less risk for mild cognitive impairment and death from all causes. However, people in this group also experienced an increased risk of small, but meaningful, declines in kidney function as well as hospitalizations for short term kidney damage (from which most people recovered). Attempting to lower systolic blood pressure to less than 120 mmHg did not increase the risk for injury-causing falls. This is important, since falls raise the risk for death in older adults and low blood pressure can result in falls.

While the rate of developing dementia was similar in the two groups, participants in the intensive 120 mmHg group were 28 percent less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment.

The researchers also reported that people with better cognitive function (remembering, thinking, and making decisions) at the beginning of the study benefited the most from intensive blood pressure control. They also experienced less heart disease and fewer deaths. This same benefit was not seen in participants who had poorer cognitive function at the beginning of the study. However, there was not strong evidence of intensive blood pressure control having a harmful impact on death rates or developing heart disease for those with poorer cognitive function.

The researchers concluded that, for adults aged 80 years or older, intensively controlling systolic blood pressure to less than 120 mmHg lowers the risk of heart attacks, stroke, death, and mild cognitive impairment, but increases the risk of declines in kidney function. Benefits related to the risk for heart disease and death were highest in people with higher cognitive performance at the beginning of the trial.

###

This summary is from "Intensive versus Standard Blood Pressure Control in Adults 80 years or Older: A Secondary Analysis of the Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial." It appears online ahead of print in the December 2019 issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The study authors are Nicholas M. Pajewski, PhD; Dan R. Berlowitz, MD, MPH; Adam P. Bress, PharmD; Kathryn E. Callahan, MD; Alfred K. Cheung, MD; Larry J. Fine, MD; Sarah A. Gaussoin, MS; Karen C. Johnson, MD, MPH; Jordan King, PharmD; Dalane W. Kitzman, MD; John B. Kostis, MD; Alan J. Lerner, MD; Cora E. Lewis, MD, MSPH; Suzanne Oparil, MD; Mahboob Rahman, MD; David M. Reboussin, PhD; Michael V. Rocco, MD; Joni K. Snyder, RN; Carolyn Still, PhD; Mark A. Supiano, MD; Virginia G. Wadley, PhD; Paul K. Whelton, MD; Jackson T. Wright Jr., MD, PhD; and Jeff D. Williamson, MD, MHS.

About the Health in Aging Foundation

This research summary was developed as a public education tool by the Health in Aging Foundation. The Foundation is a national non-profit established in 1999 by the American Geriatrics Society to bring the knowledge and expertise of geriatrics healthcare professionals to the public. We are committed to ensuring that people are empowered to advocate for high-quality care by providing them with trustworthy information and reliable resources. Last year, we reached nearly 1 million people with our resources through HealthinAging.org. We also help nurture current and future geriatrics leaders by supporting opportunities to attend educational events and increase exposure to principles of excellence on caring for older adults. For more information or to support the Foundation's work, visit http://www.HealthinAgingFoundation.org.

About the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society

Included in more than 9,000 library collections around the world, the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS) highlights emerging insights on principles of aging, approaches to older patients, geriatric syndromes, geriatric psychiatry, and geriatric diseases and disorders. First published in 1953, JAGS is now one of the oldest and most impactful publications on gerontology and geriatrics, according to ISI Journal Citation Reports. Visit wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/JGS for more details.

About the American Geriatrics Society

Founded in 1942, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) is a nationwide, not-for-profit society of geriatrics healthcare professionals that has--for 75 years--worked to improve the health, independence, and quality of life of older people. Its nearly 6,000 members include geriatricians, geriatric nurses, social workers, family practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, and internists. The Society provides leadership to healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the public by implementing and advocating for programs in patient care, research, professional and public education, and public policy. For more information, visit AmericanGeriatrics.org.
JNU students on Monday carried out protest march from Sabarmati hostel to the campus's main gate raising "Delhi Police go back" slogans. At least 35 people, including JNU Students' Union chief Aishe Ghosh, were injured in violence. Initial reports suggested the matter pertained to a tussle between left and right-wing students at the university. The first round of skirmishes happened post noon, which escalated after 5 pm when "outsiders" entered the campus. In some visuals, women with faces covered were also seen carrying sticks. The attackers not only trashed students and faculty members, but also destroyed properties, including cars and hostel window panes. After police were called in, a flag march was conducted on the campus. Delhi Police PRO MS Randhawa also held a meeting with a delegation of students and teachers and assured probe into the incident. Meanwhile, home minister Amit Shah has ordered a probe into the violence at JNU.

Also read: JNU violence Live: JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh under observation at AIIMS after head injury

Follow BusinessToday.In live blog for all the latest updates on violence at JNU campus

4.56 pm: Over 700 police personnel deployed outside JNU gates

Around 700 police personnel were deployed outside the gates of JNU campus following Sunday's attack on its students and faculty members. The police said the large deployment has been made to maintain law and order.

4.45 pm: Jadavpur University students protest against Sunday's violence at JNU

Students of Jadavpur University in Kolkata carried out protests on Monday following yesterday's attack on JNU students and teachers.

Kolkata: Students of Jadavpur University protest against yesterday's violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). #WestBengalpic.twitter.com/ZPJAkQGckL - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

4.35 pm: JNU incident was like a terror attack, says Sanjay Nirupam

Talking about Sunday's attack on JNU students and teachers, Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam said, "What happened in JNU was like a terror attack. The students and teachers were beaten up by masked goons. The way the student power is being suppressed is not good for the country. Every person in Delhi is feeling unsafe."

4.25 pm: Prasar Bharti tweets video in support of JNU VC's claim that students against anti-fee hike beat up students

"Video bears witness to #JNU VC @mamidala90's statement that those opposing registration for Winter session of #JNU are behind violence to scuttle the academic process of varsity," Prasar Bharti said on Monday. JNU VC had issued a statement on Sunday saying that the students who are against the fee hike had been beating up other students since January 3.

Video bears witness to #JNU VC @mamidala90's statement that those opposing registration for Winter session of #JNU are behind violence to scuttle the academic process of varsity. pic.twitter.com/JWr4n81GbW - Prasar Bharati News Services (@PBNS_India) January 6, 2020

4.10 pm: DCW chief issues summons to JNU Registrar

Delhi Commission for women (DCW) chief Swati Maliwal Monday issued summons to JNU's registrar pertaining to assault on students inside the university campus.

3.45 pm: JNU students protest outside campus gate, raise 'Delhi Police go back' slogans

JNU students on Monday carried out protest march from Sabarmati hostel to the campus's main gate raising "Delhi Police go back" slogans.

3.24 pm: JNU teachers' association demand VC's removal

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA) Monday sought removal of Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar following Sunday's attack on students and faculty members by armed miscreants. Addressing a press conference, JNUTA also demanded a detailed inquiry into the violent attack.

3.15 pm: Students organisations in Chandigarh protest over JNU violence on Sunday

Students' Federation of India (SFI), All India Students Federation and other organisations staged protest over Sunday's violent attack on JNU students and teachers.

Chandigarh: Students' Federation of India (SFI), All India Students Federation and other organisations protest over yesterday's #JNUViolence. pic.twitter.com/Ozq9cIAtWC - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

3.07 pm: Addition forces deployed outside Banaras Hindu University

Varanasi: Additional forces deployed outside Banaras Hindu University also https://t.co/1VpzMcLXaNpic.twitter.com/eyKzMzVEd8 - ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) January 6, 2020

3.03 pm: Inside pics of Sabarmati Hostel, JNU following Sunday's attack

The damaged insides of the Sabarmati Hostel, JNU that was ransacked by armed miscreants. Broken furniture, rods and shattered glass lie on the hostel's floors now.

2.57 pm: Campuses should not be made a political battlefield, says Smriti Irani

Speaking on the JNU violence on Sunday, Union Minister and Amethi MP Smriti Irani said, "I had said it earlier and reiterating it now that educational institutions should not be made 'rajiniti ka akhada' (political battlefield) as it affects the life and progress of our students," Irani told reporters here when asked about the violence in the campus. "I hope students will not be used as 'rajnitik mohre' (political tools)."

2.45 pm: Will file FIR against ABVP, says JNUSU chief Aishe Ghosh

"I'll be recording my statements with the Delhi Police as soon as I'm in a better condition. We're planning to file a combined FIR against the ABVP members. I can recognise some faces who attacked students with rods. Some masks were off. Other students and myself, who were injured, their MLCs have already come and they will reveal the intensity of the injuries," Aishe Ghosh, JNUSU president, tells India Today TV.

2.36 pm: Buck starts with Delhi Police commissioner, stops with Amit Shah: P Chidambaram

Speaking on JNU violence Congress leader Chidambaram said that the buck starts with Delhi Police commissioner and stops with Home Minister Amit Shah.

2.20 pm: JNU violence horrifying, voice of India's youth muzzled: Sonia Gandhi

"The voice of India's youth and students is being muzzled every day. The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on India's young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi govt is deplorable and unacceptable," said Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi.

1.57 pm: JNU Violence Live: Masked men in campus reminded me of 26/11, says Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray likened the JNU campus attack on Sunday to 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008. Condemning the violent attacks Thackeray said this is the first time he is witnessing scenes similar to the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.

1.43 pm: PM Narendra Modi's effigy being burnt inside the Rajasthan University

1.34 pm: Breaking: Scuffle has broken out between NSUI and ABVP at Rajasthan University

1.27 PM: What can Kejriwal do when police is inactive, says Mamata Banerjee

"Delhi's police is not under Arvind Kejriwal rather it is under Central Govt. On one side they have sent the BJP goons and on the other side they made the police inactive. What can Police do if they are directed by higher authority. This is a fascist surgical strike," said West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

#WATCH West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on #JNUViolence : It is very disturbing, it is a dangerous planted attack on democracy.Anyone who speaks against them is labelled a Pakistani and an enemy of the country. We never saw such a situation in the country before this. pic.twitter.com/79oegFnMeA - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

1.26 pm: Bollywood actor Kriti Sanon slams JNU violence

Actor Kriti Sanon speaks out against JNU violence. "It breaks my heart to see what happened at JNU! What's going on in India is horrifying!! Students & teachers being beaten up & terrorized by masked cowards!! The constant blame game!Stooping so low for political agendas!Violence is NEVER a solution! How have we become so inhuman?" Sanon tweeted on Monday.

It breaks my heart to see what happened at JNU! What's going on in India is horrifying!! Students & teachers being beaten up & terrorized by masked cowards!! The constant blame game!Stooping so low for political agendas!Violence is NEVER a solution! How have we become so inhuman? - Kriti Sanon (@kritisanon) January 6, 2020

1.14 pm: Inside visuals from JNU after Sunday's attack

Inside visuals from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) where violence broke out yesterday evening in which more than 30 people were injured.

Delhi: Inside visuals from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) where violence broke out yesterday evening in which more than 30 people were injured. pic.twitter.com/CHjuBtp7FU - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

12.58 pm: Can't tolerate armed, lawless goons as an Indian, says Anand Mahindra

"It doesn't matter what your politics are. It doesn't matter what your ideology is. It doesn't matter what your faith is. If you're an Indian, you cannot tolerate armed, lawless goons. Those who invaded JNU tonight must be traced & hunted down swiftly & given no quarter...," tweeted business tycoon Anand Mahindra.

It doesn't matter what your politics are. It doesn't matter what your ideology is. It doesn't matter what your faith is. If you're an Indian, you cannot tolerate armed, lawless goons. Those who invaded JNU tonight must be traced & hunted down swiftly & given no quarter... - anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) January 5, 2020

12.53 pm: There should be time-bound action on goons who attacked JNU students, says Aditya Thackeray

"Due to these attacks, the image of our country is getting spoiled in the entire world. These goons should be called terrorists because they too come in masks hiding their face. There should be time bound action on these otherwise students from abroad will not come here to study," said Shiv Sena leader and minister Aditya Thackeray.

12.36 pm: DCW Chief summons Delhi Police over assault on female students at JNU

Delhi Commission for Women Chief Swati Maliwal issues summons to Police over assault on female students inside the JNU campus yesterday.

12.26 PM: Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) Secretary's meeting with JNU Registrar, Proctor and other University officials is underway. -- ANI

12.15 PM: "I condemn this violence. There is no doubt these ppl were given the green signal by the powers that be. They had covered their faces in a cowardly way and were allowed to enter JNU with rods&sticks.Worst is there is a video which shows Police allowed them safe passage," says AIMIM chief Assadudin Owaisi.

Also read: JNU violence timeline: Here's how the events unfolded on January 5

11.57 am: BJP's MP Meenakshi Lekhi attacks Left union for JNU attack

"First and foremost, who is going to benefit from yesterday's incidents. Who is stopping the registration process on the campus for the new semester. AVBP is in favour of reopening of the campus. I know that at least one dozen AVBP students have been injured, 5 suffered head injuries, one has collar bone injury," said BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi.

11.53 am: JNU violence needs to be investigated, says Union Minister Prakash Javadekar

"We condemn the violence in JNU. This needs to be investigated. Congress, Communists, AAP and some elements want to create environment of violence in universities across the country," said Union Minister Prakash Javadekar

Union Minister Prakash Javadekar: We condemn the violence in JNU. This needs to be investigated. Congress, Communists, AAP and some elements want to create environment of violence in universities across the country. #JNUViolencepic.twitter.com/jfh4wtDkh6 - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

11.50 am: PDSU activists protest in Osmania University, Hyderabad against JNU violence

Hyderabad: Progressive Democratic Students Union(PDSU) activists protest in Osmania University against yesterday's #JNUViolence

Hyderabad: Progressive Democratic Students Union(PDSU) activists protest in Osmania University against yesterday's #JNUViolencepic.twitter.com/un69Gtl3vU - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

11.47 am: Protests in Karnataka against Sunday's JNU violence

Protest held at Town Hall in Bengaluru against yesterday's violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

Karnataka: Protest held at Town Hall in Bengaluru against yesterday's violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). pic.twitter.com/hQvo086yAo - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

11.42 am: JNU administration complicit in the attack on JNU students: Congress

The Congress on Monday blamed the government of harbouring enmity with the youth of the country and said that the violence at the JNU campus was a reminiscent of the Nazi rule. Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala also accused the JNU administration of being complicit in the violent attack on JNU students on Sunday night. The party also alleged that the Delhi Police was a mute spectator when the attacked was being carried out by armed miscreants.

11.36 am: Delhi Polic DCP enters JNU campus; locks the main gates

Delhi Police DCP entered the JNU campus on Monday morning and locked its main gates.

11.32 am: India witnessed state-sponsored goondaism and terrorism at JNU campus: Congress

"The entire country witnessed state-sponsored goondaism and terrorism yesterday on the campus of JNU. All this happened under the watch of JNU administration and also Delhi Police which is directly controlled by Home Minister Amit Shah," said Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala.

11.30 am: Ongoing situation due to students turning violent, obstructing registration process

"Origin of the present situation in JNU lies in some agitating students turning violent and obstructing academic activities of a large number of non-protesting students. They damaged university communication servers to disrupt the winter semester registration," says JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar.

11.25 am: Amit Shah speaks to Delhi LG; requests him to call JNU reps for talks

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday spoke to Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal and requested him to call JNU representatives for talks, officials said. Shah had a telephonic conversation with the Delhi LG. "The home minister spoke to the LG and requested him to initiate discussions with representatives from the JNU," an official said.

11.20 am: Sabarmati hostel warden resigns; HRD ministry summons JNU admin

JNU's Sabarmati hostel's senior warden R Meena has resigned following Sunday's violent attack on the hostel where students fled after a group of masked men and women barged in and started attacking the students with sticks and rods. Meanwhile, the HRD ministry has summoned the JNU administration in the matter.

11.15 am: Registrar, Pro-VC meet Delhi LG Monday morning; informs him about the JNU situation

Registrar and Pro-VC of JNU met Delhi L-G Anil Baijal on Monday morning and informed him about the ongoing situation at the JNU campus. The violence case has been transferred to Crime Branch. Police officials have began collecting evidence and will also talk to students about the violence that erupted at the campus on Sunday.

11.06 am: Overnight protests in Mumbai continue on Monday morning

Several hundreds of students and members of civil society protesting against the JNU violence (on Sunday) at the Gateway of India, Mumbai continued with their agitation on Monday morning.

10.54 am: All 34 injured JNU students admitted to AIIMS discharged

AIIMA Trauma Centre Chief Dr Rajesh Malhotra has said that all 34 JNU students who were admitted to hospital for treatment on Sunday have been discharged.

10.49 am: Delhi Police responded in time, says DCP Devender Arya

Delhi Police, DCP, South-West, Devender Arya has said that the police responded well in time with the help of social media and videos related to the JNU incident.

10.36 am: JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar appeals to students to maintain calm; says winter semester registration will happen

"Would like to appeal to all students to maintain peace. University stands by all the students to facilitate their pursuit of academic activities. We will ensure that their winter semester registration will take place without any hindrance. They need not fear about their process. The top priority of the University is to protect the academic interests of our students," says JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar.

JNU Vice Chancellor M. Jagadesh Kumar: They need not fear about their process. The top priority of the University is to protect the academic interests of our students. https://t.co/OIvnMlgMZf - ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

10.28 AM: India Today reports the Delhi Police will likely transfer the JNU violence case to crime branch. A total of 28 students and faculty members were injured in violence at the JNU campus on Sunday.

10.20 AM: Congress leader Kapil Sibal blames the JNU V-C for violence: "How were masked people allowed to enter the campus? What did the Vice Chancellor do? Why was Police standing outside? What was the Home Minister doing? All these questions are unanswered. This is a clear conspiracy, investigation needed."

Achhe Din !



With the police as collaborators :



Masked men : Destroying the idea of a " university "



Masked agendas : Destroying the idea of " India "



And the " chowkidar " watches , unfazed ! - Kapil Sibal (@KapilSibal) January 6, 2020

10.13 AM: Union Minister Giriraj Singh blames left students for violenceat the JNU campus. They are defaming JNU and have turned the University into acentre of hooliganism, says the Union Minister.

9.52 AM: An FIR has been registered in connection with violence in Jawaharlal Nahru University yesterday. A total of 23 students and some faculty members were injured in the violence.

9.43 AM: The JNU administration strongly condemns any form of violence on the campus, says V-C Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar

The JNU administration feels great pain and anguish for the students who have sustained injuries in the violence that took place in JNU campus. The JNU administration strongly condemns any form of violence in the campus. pic.twitter.com/Quk3Zc7wN0  Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar (@mamidala90) January 5, 2020

9.37 AM: ABVP people were directed as henchmen of V-C to beat up students, says JNUSU

"The violence that happened today is the result of the desperation and frustration of the VC and his cronies. But the chronology of events that unfolded today is a shameful episode for the Delhi Police who gave a safe passage to ABVP goons imported from outside. For days now the administration has been unable to break our protest. Since 4th January, ABVP people were directed as henchmen of the VC to come and beat up students. They used lathis and pipes on that day," JNUSU has said in its statement on Monday.

9.34 AM: JNUSU says V-C, his cronies responsible for attack on students

"The JNUSU would like to make the following statement. The Vice-Chancellor of the university M Jagadesh Kumar is behaving like a mobster who perpetuates violence in the university he is supposed to administer. He uses all means and manner to see to it that students, teachers, Karmacharis and the entire JNU community faces violence by criminals imported from outside using iron rods, stones and lathis. Even as we speak, the JNUSU president is in the trauma centre of AIIMS after she was hit by an iron rod on the head in the ABVP assault," a JNUSU statement says.

9.31 AM: India Today reports that many students are leaving the JNU campus with packed bags after a night of violence and rampage at the university, in which a total of 28 people were injured.

9.15 AM: Brutal attack on JNU students & teachers by masked thugs is shocking, says Rahul Gandhi. "The fascists in control of our nation are afraid of the voices of our brave students," he tweets.

The brutal attack on JNU students & teachers by masked thugs, that has left many seriously injured, is shocking.



The fascists in control of our nation, are afraid of the voices of our brave students. Todays violence in JNU is a reflection of that fear.



#SOSJNUpic.twitter.com/kruTzbxJFJ  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) January 5, 2020

8.57 AM: Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), calls the Registrar, Proctor and Rector of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to his office, today.

8.48 AM: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan: "The attack on students is an onslaught by intolerance. The people who have unleashed Nazi model attack on students and teachers in JNU are the ones who are instigating violence and insecurity in the country. The Sangh Parivar should refrain from this dangerous battle of bloodshed at educational institutions. It will be better if they realise that the voice of the students are the voice of this nation."

8.44 AM: Protests have erupted across the country after violence at JNU. Apart from Mumbai, students in Hyderabad also staged a protests condemning attack on students and faculty members at the university in Delhi.

8.37 AM: Author Chetan Bhagat condemn the violence at JNU. "Deeply, deeply concerned about the #JNUAttacks. They are Indian students. In an Indian college. It's not ok to attack or make any Indian college feel unsafe. That doesn't change even if the college is AMU, Jamia or JNU. We destroy our nation if we do or secretly condone this," tweets Bhagat.

Deeply, deeply concerned about the #JNUAttacks.



They are Indian students. In an Indian college.



Its not ok to attack or make any Indian college feel unsafe.



That doesnt change even if the college is AMU, Jamia or JNU.



We destroy our nation if we do or secretly condone this.  Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhagat) January 6, 2020

8.35 AM: The Delhi Police have gathered CCTV recordings from the JNU campus. At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union chief Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours on Sunday.

8.32 AM: Latest visuals from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) main gate. Violence broke out at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

Delhi: Latest visuals from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) main gate. Violence broke out in the campus yesterday evening in which more than 20 people were injured. pic.twitter.com/45Zmv8Pnm2  ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

9.25 AM: List of students injured in the JNU clash

Sarthak, 31-year-old

Kamlesh Mandrijo, 30-year-old

Soori krishnan, 23-year-old

Gaurav, 24 -year-old

Shambhavi, 21-year-old (female)

Velentina, 26-year-old

Shivam Chaurasia, 27-year-old

Manish Jangid,25-year-old

Sheshmanee Sahu,22-year-old

Aise Ghosh, 23-year-old

Ameet Parmeswaran,37-year-old

Sucharita, 45-year-old

Nikhil Mathew,24-year-old

Ayush singh,19-year-old

Ashwarya pratap,25-year-old

Shokat,28-year-old

Ujjwal,22-year-old

Deepshikha,19-year-old

Sbimit,21-year-old

Kamran,22-year-old

Mrs Sucharita is the faculty

8.15 AM: Shiv Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray says the goons responsible for attack must face action. "Students mustn't face brutal force! Let them be!"

The violence and brutality faced by students, while protesting, is worrisome. Be it Jamia, be it JNU. Students mustnt face brutal force!

Let them be!

These goons must face action. They must be brought to time bound and swift justice.  Aaditya Thackeray (@AUThackeray) January 5, 2020

8.00 AM: Students from various colleges in Mumbai held a protest at the Gateway of India on Sunday midnight to condemn the JNU violence. Former JNU students Umar Khalid and Kunal Kamra were part of the group, which also held a candlelight vigil to show solidarity with JNU students. Youngsters, mostly students from different city colleges, assembled on the pavement across Hotel Taj near the Gateway of India to condemn the violence.

Mumbai: Students continue to protest outside Gateway of India against yesterday's violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). #Maharashtrahttps://t.co/6uNb1f9iZRpic.twitter.com/6p2sikQLgl  ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

7.50 AM: Home Minister Amit Shah spoke to the Delhi Police chief and has ordered a probe into the incident.
In an interview with VNA in New York, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General in charge of peace activities, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, applauded Vietnams contributions in efforts to preserve security and peace.

Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix.

Vietnam has been a member of the UN for 42 years. What is your opinion on Vietnams contributions to peace and security at the UN, especially after Vietnam joined peacekeeping operations (PKO) in 2014?

Vietnam is a strong supporter of the UN in general, and especially when it comes to UN peacekeeping.

We also received very strong support and encouragement from Vietnam in two ways. First of all, Vietnam has been supporting peacekeeping initiatives.

Second, Vietnam has also engaged with troops on the ground in Mali and now in South Sudan. We very much appreciate these efforts, because we really need that kind of engagement from our member states.

One of Vietnams priorities during its term as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council in 2020 is to contribute more to PKO. What do you suggest Vietnam do to deliver the best service possible?

The UN Security Council is the UN body whose main function is to ensure security and peace for the world, so Viet Nam's role as a selected non-permanent member of the Security Council in the next term is important because it will have a crucial role in carrying out this mandate.

We also need the Security Council to support us to improve peacekeeping activities, especially the Action for Peacekeeping initiative which started in March 2018. Since then there have been regular debates, discussions and events to talk about issues relating to peacekeeping operations. The Security Council also hears regular reports from force commanders about their activities. So, theres a lot we expect from the UNSC. I am sure that Vietnam will be a very active member in this very important organisation.

In regards to PKO, what do you see as new challenges facing the Security Council in the future?

I think the biggest challenge for us now is that most peacekeeping operations take place in very difficult environments. The situations can be dangerous.

Our peacekeepers and UN staff have become targets for armed forces and hostile actors, so we have to deal with them to improve security and ensure the safety of UN soldiers and officials.

The second challenge is that while peacekeeping operations are the tool to support the progress of political solutions, peacekeeping alone is not enough. We do not achieve political goals without the support of the parties themselves. And we need the strong support and involvement of the Security Council to push for political solutions. We need a united and determined Security Council willing to support political solutions and encourage the parties to make their best efforts.

Five permanent members of the Security Council are often divided on global politics, including on PKO. How do you think non-permanent members of the Security Council can play a role in finding solutions for these challenges?

It is true that we have a UN Security Council that is less united than we would want it to be, but I think UN peacekeeping operations still benefit from a relatively high degree of support from the member states.

The founding document for international peacekeeping activities has been signed by 152 signatories, including Vietnam and the five permanent members of the Security Council.

I think one of the important roles for non-permanent members, such as Vietnam, is as a bridge builder, helping forge consensus and smooth divisions that exist among Security Council members.

I think this is a very important contribution that any elected Security Council member can bring to the body.-VNS

Military doctor takes pride in UN peacekeeping mission It was 1am on May 11, and Doctor Lai Ba Thanh at Vietnams level-2 field hospital in South Sudan and his colleagues were preparing to perform emergency surgery on a Mongolian soldier.

UN lauds Vietnams contributions to peacekeeping missions United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix has lauded Viet Nams contributions to the UN, especially via peacekeeping missions.
Today, the United States, Israel, the Sunni Arab nations, and the free Western world should sleep a little easier, knowing that one of the world's most notorious terrorists, Qassem Soleimani, has been eliminated from the face of the Earth. Known as the "shadow commander," Soleimani was a major general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the commander of the notorious Quds Force and their clandestine external terrorist operation.

This is a major, significant development and indicates that the United States under President Trump can and will take bold, decisive, and precise moves when it comes to our national security interests. It came about immediately after our men were attacked in Iraq and when hordes of Shiite forces were storming the U.S embassy in Iraq.

Soleimani was the master architect and chief implementer of a grand geostrategic design for exporting the Iranian revolution and for creating a Shiite religious theocracy and Iranian-controlled dictatorship throughout the Middle East, where he created a network of paramilitary terrorist organizations. He sowed the seeds for the extreme chaos in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza.

In Syria, he helped to cement the brutal reign of Bashar Assad during its ongoing civil war and was instrumental in brokering the "axis of evil" among Iran, Russia, and Syria. In Lebanon, he has armed, equipped, trained, and mobilized Hezb'allah and has, unfortunately, helped make it into the dominant force in Lebanon's government. In Yemen, he has armed and trained the Houthis and helped them launch an attack on the Saudi oil fields.

He has been seen in photos embracing Hamas's Khalid Mishaal and has laundered tremendous amounts of Iranian money, which came about as a result of the $151.5-billion bequest from the Obama administration as a sweetener for signing the disastrous nuclear deal with us. The missiles emanating from Gaza that have been used to terrorize Israelis would not have been possible without this Iranian largess and the imprint of this terrorist mastermind.

Thousands of U.S. troops serving in Iraq came home in body bags with IEDs with Farsi imprints on them. Qassem Soleimani had his bloody signature on this.

There is a good possibility that Iran will retaliate, but it is obviously beneficial for free men and women everywhere that this evil genius who cannot be replaced easily has been eliminated.

It is patently absurd that the politicians  such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who enthusiastically applauded the elimination of Osama bin Laden at the hands of President Obama  are apoplectic about the elimination of Qassem Soleimani. Their criticism is grounded in the fact that President Trump did not come to Congress for consultation before killing this terrorist mastermind. However, President Obama never consulted with Congress before eliminating Osama bin Laden.

When Osama bin Laden was killed, Republicans and Democrats alike praised the move by President Obama. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney had called it "a great victory for lovers of freedom and justice everywhere," and Governor Mike Huckabee exclaimed, "Americans and decent people the world over cheer the news that madman, murderer, and terrorist Osama bin Laden is dead."

What is missing today in our political culture are people with enough integrity to rise beyond their deep-seated animosity for President Trump, their intense party affiliations, and their fervent personal political aspirations to acknowledge that the world is a great deal safer today because of this action by the Trump administration.

When honesty and integrity trump these three factors, America can once again prove to have the unity it takes to lead the world with moral clarity, with precision, with the mettle and the resolve it takes to defeat the great menace of Iran that has been one of the most destabilizing factors in the world today.

Sarah N. Stern is founder and president of the Endowment for Middle East Truth, EMET, an unabashedly pro-American and pro-Israel think-tank and policy shop in Washington, D.C.
About two dozen Iranian Americans danced, sang and chanted in San Franciscos Union Square on Sunday afternoon to celebrate the death of Irans top military commander, Qassem Soleimani.

Wearing red and waving large Iranian flags, demonstrators bid farewell to a man they said is responsible for the bloodshed of thousands of people in the Middle East and during the decades-long oppression of citizens in Iran.

Mitra Rahmat, of Cupertino, couldnt stop dancing as she held a poster with Soleimanis picture that read, in part, rot in hell. Rahmat, who grew up in Tehran, said her best friend was tortured and killed by the Iranian regime at 16 during student demonstrations in 1981.

She called Soleimanis death the best gift she has received in 40 years.

Im celebrating the death of this criminal that killed so many children in Syria, so many children in Iran and Iraq and Afghanistan, Lebanon, you name it, she said. Were so happy that hes gone, and we know that peace is going to come to the Middle East because hes not there.

The group sang and danced to Persian songs and passed around loz  a Persian sweet made of almond and saffron  as tourists rushed through the busy intersection at the corner of Geary and Powell streets.

Tensions in Iran have steadily escalated since 2018, when President Trump pulled the United States out of an international deal to limit Irans nuclear capabilities and imposed harsh economic sanctions on the country. The killing of Soleimani and five other military leaders in a drone attack near the Baghdad airport pushed things to a new stress level.

Thousands rallied in downtown San Francisco on Saturday in an anti-war demonstration organized in response to the air strike ordered by President Trump.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Iran has vowed to retaliate and many fear it will lead to war. But demonstrators brushed off those concerns Sunday and said they hope it leads to a free Iran.

Were hoping that Iranian people are capable of changing the Iranian regime. That will be the greatest day in my entire life, said Rahmat.

Hamid Azimi, a spokesman for the Iranian American Community of Northern California, a Bay Area-based nonprofit representing Iranians in the region, said Soleimanis death is a big blow to the government in Iran and will help the people of Iran rise against the government. He dismissed concerns about a potential war.

The danger of getting into a war like the kind that we had in Iraq is really not there, he said. Everything is different  geography is different, the politics are different. People need to understand the real war is the one going on inside Iran. We need to side with the people of Iran, helping them, empowering them.

Tatiana Sanchez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tatiana.sanchez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TatianaYSanchez.
Beauford Delaney, Self-portrait, 1944. Photo: Estate of Beauford Delaney by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire, Court Appointed Administrator; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

Fame, at least lasting fame  the your-work-goes-down-in-history kind, often accompanied by fat royalty payments  is a club that thinks of itself as an unbiased meritocracy, blind to everything but aesthetic innovation and popular success. Its never quite worked out that way. When we look at the past, we still see generations of great talents who never quite got their due critically or commercially, many of them left relatively unsung. In this ongoing series, our critics pick artists they feel remain underappreciated and tell their stories and sing their praises.

He is amazing  this Beauford, the novelist Henry Miller wrote of his lifelong friend Beauford Delaney in a 1945 essay that helped make the painter (whom Miller called a black monarch capable of making the great white world  grow smaller) a legendary attraction in Greenwich Village. So much so that people often gathered outside Delaneys building at 181 Greene Street, where he lived and worked on the top floor  a walk-up lit only by a wood-burning potbellied stove.

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1901, Delaney migrated north to Boston in 1923 to study art, then moved to New York in November 1929, days after the onset of the Great Depression. That first day in New York, he slept on a Union Square bench, where someone stole his shoes. The next morning, he set out on foot, in newly bought shoes, to walk uptown to Harlem. When he reached Central Park, he stopped because of his severely blistered feet.

Things had never been tougher for American artists  let alone black ones. Art schools didnt take black artists, and independent-studio classes banned black artists from figure-drawing sessions with white models. Undaunted, Delaney began drawing at a midtown dance studio. Somehow, his career took off almost overnight. Four months after he arrived in New York, an article appeared in the New York Telegraph about portraits Delaney had done of dancers and society figures.

Beauford Delaney Artist (190179) Currently, MoMA has Composition 16 (195456) on view, a glowing bioluminescent yellow abstraction kitty-corner across the gallery from that other (until recently) missing modernist, Hilma af Klint. Both are in the company of de Kooning, Kline, and the other giants of mid-century painting.

He met and charmed everyone. A list of his friends and acquaintances includes Stuart Davis  his closest painter compatriot  W.E.B. Du Bois (whose portrait he did), Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Jacob Lawrence, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia OKeeffe (who did a portrait of him), Edward Steichen, Dorothy Norman, Anais Nin (who intimidated him), Jackson Pollock, and Jean Genet. His closest lifelong friend, however, was James Baldwin  who, while fleeing a strict father at 16, looked up Delaney in the Village. He later called the artist his principal witness. Delaney was a kind of surrogate nurturing father to the writer. Judging by his 1941 Dark Rapture (James Baldwin), a steamy nude portrait of the 16-year-old writer (as well as from subsequent Baldwin portraits over the decades), Delaney seems to have been in love with the lithe young man 22 years his junior.

In October 1938, more than a decade before Pollock graced the same pages, Life magazine featured Delaney, picturing him beatifically smiling at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit. The caption read, One of the most talented Negro painters. Yet by the time he died in 1979, Delaney was alone, alcoholic, hallucinating, paranoid, and penniless in a Paris psychiatric hospital. What started as a great American story is now a near absence in the history of American art and an American Dream forestalled.

A 1941 portrait of James Baldwin by the artist Beauford Delaney. Photo: Beauford Delaney (19011979), Dark Rapture (James Baldwin), 1941, oil on Masonite, 34 x 28, signed;  Estate of Beauford Delaney by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire, Court Appointed Administrator; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

I love his work  especially his highly colored, optically intense, dense figurative paintings. He is almost an exact contemporary of, and the New York counterpart to, another great painter-portraitist, an artist who captured the power and magic of being poor stylishly, who lived on the margins but eventually came to be recognized as a visionary: Alice Neel. Delaney should be regarded as such as well.

Through the 1930s and 1940s, while most American artists were either being fifth-rate Cubists, regionalists, or academics or desperately looking for ways around Picasso via Surrealism, Delaney made his own thoroughly contemporary way. In street and park scenes, still lifes, and portraits, he built upon the work of his good friend Davis, arriving at his own compact, flat fields of creamy, opaque color. His sense of visual, jigsawing geometry and strong, graphic distillation of structure is second only to Daviss. Delaneys work, however, has a much more human aura, atmosphere, and arc, almost to a mystical degree, seen only in Marsden Hartley.

So why has Delaney been disappeared from collective memory? Partly, it is the racial bias of art history, which, among other things, meant that even while he was celebrated, it was less as a painterly equal to his contemporaries than as some kind of Negro seer or spiritual black Buddha. And in 1953, at the age of 51, Delaney left New York at perhaps the worst possible time. When other American artists, like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham, were meeting and staying up late together (many of them open and uncloseted in their sexuality), Delaney was in Paris, where Baldwin had told him he could escape the long American night of racism. Baldwin was right, but Delaney struggled with French and became even more isolated. Twombly, Baldwin, and Miller returned often to New York, while Delaney never did. So he never got to rejoin the conversation.

By the 1960s, Delaneys abstraction was more connected to the French Art Informel  a primarily European response to Abstract Expressionism  and his paintings, influenced as they were by Monets Water Lilies and Turners glowing color, had few of the ironic, systemic, direct qualities of Pop Art and minimalism. At a distance, Delaneys work seemed passe  an artist painting in a void, outside the canon.

*This article appears in the January 6, 2020, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!
France, Britain and Germany have told the grieving Iran to refrain from any violent action and respect arrangements laid out in the JCP...







France, Britain and Germany have told the grieving Iran to refrain from any violent action and respect arrangements laid out in the JCPOA 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.





Iran on Sunday threatened to attack the US White House, following warning of retaliation by President Donald Trump.





Just last night, multiple rockets were launched near the US embassy in Baghdad Iraq.





This is coming few hours after Trump had vowed to attack 54 important sites in Iran if they attacked any US assets or citizens, and also declared readiness for war.

France, Germany and Britain also highlighted the importance of de-escalating tensions in Iraq and Iran.





The three countries reaffirmed their determination to fight Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS).





We reaffirm our commitment to continuing the fight against Islamic State, which remains a priority. It is essential that we keep the coalition, in this regard.





We call on the Iraqi authorities to continue to supply the necessary support to the coalition, the trio said in a statement, according to Al Jazeera.





We are ready to continue talks with all parties in order to contribute to de-escalating tensions and re-establishing stability in the region.





The office of French President Emmanuel Macron added that he was expected to hold talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the coming days.





The killing of Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian army chief and some other top officials of the countrys military by the US government has generated a wide range of reactions from world leaders.




The antimicrobial preservatives market size is poised to grow by USD 723.51 million during the period 2019-2023, according to the latest market research report by Technavio. Request a free sample report

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Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled global antimicrobial preservatives market 2019-2023 (Graphic: Business Wire)

The demand for antimicrobial packaging is increasing substantially due to the growing consumer awareness about health-related issues, rising consumption of packaged foods, and increased use of novel food-grade materials for packaging. Antimicrobial packaging is a system that is designed to incorporate antimicrobial substances into the packaging films to inhibit the growth of microorganisms that are involved in contaminating products. It helps extend the shelf life and safety of packaged products. For instance, bacterial cellulose is one of the preservatives used in packaging that exhibits efficient water retention and mechanical properties. Hence, the growing use of antimicrobial packaging will drive the sale of antimicrobial preservatives during the forecast period.

To learn more about the global trends impacting the future of market research, download a free sample: https://www.technavio.com/talk-to-us?report=IRTNTR30983

As per Technavio, the increasing demand for clean-label products will have a positive impact on the market and contribute to its growth significantly over the forecast period. This research report also analyzes other important trends and market drivers that will affect market growth over 2019-2023.

Antimicrobial Preservatives Market: Increasing Demand for Clean-Label Products

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in demand for clean label products due to growing awareness about health concerns. Products certified as clean label are free from all artificial ingredients and allergens, which is driving the demand for organic preservatives from the food and beverage industry. For instance, In 2017, Naturex developed organic and taste-free antimicrobial ingredients to prevent the spoilage of meat products. The development of such products will drive the demand for antimicrobial preservatives.

"Rising demand for antimicrobial preservatives in construction materials and increasing use of silver as an antimicrobial agent will have a significant impact on the growth of the antimicrobial preservatives market value during the forecast period," says a senior analyst at Technavio.

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Antimicrobial Preservatives Market: Segmentation Analysis

This market research report segments the antimicrobial preservatives market by application (F&B, pharmaceuticals, and others) and geography (APAC, Europe, MEA, North America, and South America).

The APAC region led the market in 2018, followed by North America, Europe, MEA, and South America, respectively. The growth of the antimicrobial preservatives market share in APAC can be attributed to the growing demand for antimicrobial preservatives from the packaged food industry in the region.

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report, such as the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more.

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Some of the key topics covered in the report include:

Market Landscape

Market ecosystem

Market characteristics

Market segmentation analysis

Market Sizing

Market definition

Market size and forecast

Five Forces Analysis

Market Segmentation

Geographical Segmentation

Regional comparison

Key leading countries

Market Drivers

Market Challenges

Market Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Competitive scenario

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 17,000 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.

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Samsung has revealed a host of new TVs  including one that can rotate sideways.

The company says that the television will be able to be used in portrait mode while watching videos from social media, such as those from TikTok or Instagram.

It can then rotate back into landscape mode for normal viewing.

The TV is called "Sero", Korean for "vertical". It was one of a range of new TVs shown off by the company ahead of the CES gadget show in Las Vegas.

They also include a new 8K TV, known as "Q950TS" which is almost entirely screen, with none of the bezel that normally frames TVs. Samsung says it has a 99 per cent "screen-to-body ratio", as well as a range of other technologies.

Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty

It can also show 8K content, a QLED display, and artificially intelligent technologies that allow the screen to adjust where it is and what people are watching.

The company also showed off new MicroLED displays, which it says are the future of high-end screens.

Samsung said the various TVs were made as part of a philosophy called "Screen Anywhere", that means the televisions will be able to play whatever content people want.

The rotating Sero, for instance, is able to connect straight to people's phones and allow them to watch videos from their social media feeds.

"The Seros display orientation technology connects seamlessly with users mobile devices to smoothly and naturally display content in traditional horizontal formats, as well as vertical formats designed for mobile consumption," Samsung said in a release.

"Consumers can expect to enjoy a variety of content  including social media, YouTube and other personal videos  in whatever display orientation mirrors their mobile device."

It looks like a normal television when it is in its landscape mode:

But rotating it turns it into a long screen ready for portrait videos:

A range of companies from giants like Samsung to smaller new firms are releasing products at CES, and many companies use the show to launch their ranges for the coming year.
This year could herald significant moments in space exploration: NASA astronauts flying from United States soil for the first time since 2011, the first paying tourists traveling to the edge of space, rockets sending hundreds of satellites into Earth orbit to beam the Internet to remote parts of the globe, and the first serious steps toward returning a human being to the surface of the moon.

But as 2020 begins, the rosy promise of those developments could quickly be overruled by gravity and engineering issues. Already, NASA finds itself struggling with a technical problem - a software issue that marred the maiden flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft just before Christmas and prevented it from reaching the International Space Station. It is a reminder of the many things that can go wrong when attempting to punch through the atmosphere.

This year is born full of hope and enthusiastic predictions of triumph, despite 2019's catalogue of calamity, a one-step-forward-two-steps-back year, marked as much by failure as by success - by stuck valves, failed parachute systems and faulty onboard computers.

Yet hope remains for triumph. NASA will celebrate 20 continuous years of humans living in orbit aboard the International Space Station, and there are other records likely to be set.

SpaceX intends to break its record of 21 launches in a single year. The United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, plans to fly about a dozen times, including Boeing's first mission with astronauts to the space station. Northrop Grumman has three launches planned.

Despite the recent problems that have plagued Boeing and SpaceX, which lost its spacecraft when it blew up last year during an engine test, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine remains confident that those companies will boost astronauts into space in 2020, ending an ignominious nine-year hiatus of human spaceflight from the United States that began when the space shuttle fleets was retired in 2011.

Other key moments in space set for 2020: as many as four missions to Mars by several countries, including China, and a key test of the monster rocket Boeing and others are building that NASA hopes will put astronauts on the moon by 2024.

Then again, space is costly, dangerous and exceedingly difficult - and what looked like a sure thing in January could fall to pieces by summer.

The space industry has had a nice run over the past several years, attracting millions of dollars of private investment, but now is headed to a turning point, said Carissa Christensen, the CEO of consulting firm Bryce Space and Technology.

"Now that's moving to a phase of: Prove it," she said. "Companies are having to prove they're viable and their business model flows and some are succeeding and some are not."

- - -

Human spaceflight

SpaceX was scheduled to start the year Monday night with a launch from Cape Canaveral to put 60 more satellites into low Earth orbit, part of a constellation that eventually could reach thousands that it hopes would beam the Internet to remote parts of the globe without broadband.

Assembling that architecture in space will require dozens of launches, which many think could have the California-based company break its record for the most launches in a single year, 21 in 2018. SpaceX's next launch is set to come as soon as Jan. 11, when it is scheduled to again test the emergency abort system of its Dragon spacecraft - this time in flight. A Falcon 9 rocket would blast off from launchpad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Then, shortly thereafter, the abort motors would fire, demonstrating that it has the ability to get crews away safely in the event of an emergency.

If it goes well, SpaceX is hoping to follow that with its first flight with people in the coming months.

Boeing is also moving aggressively, despite the problems that hampered the first test flight of its Starliner spacecraft. Officials said the spacecraft's onboard timer was off by 11 hours and, as a result, the engines that would have propelled it on a trajectory to the space station never fired.

The company, which fired its chief executive Dennis Muilenburg in the wake of the 737 Max airplane crisis, is still investigating what caused the problem. But company officials said that they were preparing the spacecraft for its next mission and that its life support system had performed well. The spacecraft "shows little scorching from the heat of atmospheric re-entry," the company said.

When it comes to human spaceflight, no one has made more overly optimistic pronouncements than Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Galactic. For years, the British-born billionaire has predicted that his company would soon ferry legions of paying tourists to the edge of space and back, but he has had to delay again and again.

Now, having reached what many consider the edge of space twice - once at the end of 2018, and then again early last year - the company says it is poised to finally begin flying the hundreds of people who've put down as much as $250,000 for a ticket.

The company, which recently went public after merging with a New York investment firm, projects flying 66 customers this year, more than 700 in 2021 and nearly 1,000 the following year, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, has also said it intends to fly humans for the first time in 2020. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.) But unlike Branson, Bezos has been relatively quiet about his space tourism plans. The company has announced no price for the missions in its reusable New Shepard vehicle, which would offer a few minutes of weightlessness.

In December, it launched its latest test without astronauts, a mission it said helped it move "closer toward verifying New Shepard for human flight."

- - -

Small satellites

Virgin Orbit, another Branson venture, also could reach a significant milestone this year when it plans to launch its rocket, LauncherOne, for the first time. Instead of taking off vertically, the craft would be dropped from the wing of a 747 jet before its engines would fire to carry it into space.

The company's plan is to join in the competition to send small satellites into space inexpensively and quickly. A leader in that market has already emerged - Rocket Lab, a New Zealand company that operates out of California. It's already launched 10 times, with six missions last year. It plans to launch a dozen times this year, including the maiden flight from the launchpad it is taking over at NASA's facility on Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

Rocket companies hope a number of small satellite constellations, designed to beam the Internet to remote corners of the world, could fuel a demand for increased launches. SpaceX has already put up about 120 satellites as part of its Starlink program, and Monday's launch would add 60 more. It hopes to achieve moderate coverage by this year, which would require several more launches.

Other companies, such as OneWeb and Amazon, also are planning to put up hundreds of satellites of their own, which many fear could create a traffic jam in space. Last year, the European Space Agency complained that it had to move one of its satellites to avoid a collision. Astronomers have also said the increased number of satellites could clutter space and interfere with their views of the cosmos.

- - -

Moon and Mars

In addition to flying its astronauts from the Florida Space Coast, NASA's biggest priority for 2020 is to continue to work toward meeting the White House's mandate to return humans to the moon by 2024.

The next big step is to award the contract to build a lander capable of taking astronauts to the lunar surface. Boeing is vying for the contract, as is a team led by Blue Origin that also includes Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper.

It's not clear, however, whether the money will be there to meet the 2024 deadline. Congress has been reluctant to pay for a moon mission without seeing a specific breakdown of the total cost, and there are many other pressing needs in the budget in an election year. And the Space Launch System rocket that prime contractor Boeing is building for the NASA missions has never flown.

Still, NASA remains optimistic.

The SLS rocket is about to undergo a series of tests to fire its engines and stress the avionics systems to ensure that the rocket will be ready for its first launch in 2021.

"I refuse to go ahead and use funding as a crutch for not making it to the moon by 2024," Doug Loverro, NASA's new associate administrator for human exploration and operations told SpaceNews recently.

India will try again to reach the moon after its spacecraft, carrying no astronauts, crashed into the lunar surface last year. But its unclear when the upcoming Chandrayaan-3 mission would launch.

NASA is planning to launch a rover carrying a small helicopter to Mars this summer. In December, the Mars 2020 rover passed a key milestone, completing its first driving test, which "unambiguously proved that the rover can operate under its own weight and demonstrated many of the autonomous-navigation functions for the first time," said Rich Rieber, the lead mobility systems engineer for the mission.

Other nations are eyeing the Red Planet as well. Russia and the European Space Agency are planning to send a rover and a lander there as well this year in a joint mission. So is China, which plans to send a spacecraft that would orbit Mars. The country, which last year landed on the far side of the moon, a historic first, plans as many as 40 launches in 2020, and saw the return to flight of its massive Long March 5 rocket late last year after a failure in 2017.

And the United Arab Emirates is also planning to fly an uncrewed spacecraft to orbit Mars that would be launched by Japan later this year.
In Noida, petrol is retailing at Rs 76.79 a litre, while diesel price is Rs 68.95 a litre. The price of petrol in Gurugram is Rs 74.99 a litre while diesel was selling at Rs 67.56 a litre. (Photo Credit: File Photo)

New Delhi:

Fuel Rates Today: Petrol and diesel prices rose for the fifth straight day on Monday as global oil prices jumped after the US killed a top Iranian general, fanning fresh fears of conflict in the crude-rich Middle East. According to the Indian Oil website, the price of petrol increased by up to 10 Paise per litre. Whereas, the price of diesel increased by up to 25 paise per litre. As per the revised prices, the petrol rates are Rs 75.69 per litre in Delhi, Rs 81.28 per litre in Mumbai, Rs 78.28 per litre in Kolkata, and Rs 78.64 per litre in Chennai, respectively. On the other hand, the diesel prices in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai remained at Rs 68.68, Rs 72.02, Rs 71.04, and Rs 72.58 per litre, respectively.

In Noida, petrol is retailing at Rs 76.79 a litre, while diesel price is Rs 68.95 a litre. The price of petrol in Gurugram is Rs 74.99 a litre while diesel was selling at Rs 67.56 a litre.

India is 84 per cent dependant on imports to meet its oil needs and any spike in global prices has a direct bearing on its economy. Not just imports but even domestic crude oilwhich forms the raw material for making petrol, diesel and other petroleum productsis priced according to international benchmarks.

Middle East accounts for more than two-thirds of the countrys oil imports, with Iraq and Saudi Arabia being the top suppliers. Even though the import basket has been sought to be diversified with oil being contracted from nations such as the US, pricing in all the regions is governed by international benchmarks and rates went up everywhere following Fridays strikes.

Officials said there is no immediate threat of any supply disruption to India and the only impact would be felt in prices.

Why Petrol, Diesel Prices Change Every Day?

The fuel prices are in India are revised daily. Petrol and diesel prices are revised every day at 06:00 am to sync it with the variation in global oil prices. Oil marketing companies (OMC) review the global fuel prices and decide petrol and diesel daily. Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum release the new rates at 6 am every morning. Generally, when international crude oil prices gain, prices in India move higher. Other factors also impact the price of fuel like rupee to US dollar exchange rate, cost of crude oil, global cues, demand for fuel, and so on.

Why Fuel Prices Differ In Every City?

The price of fuel includes excise duty, value-added tax (VAT), and dealer commission. As VAT varies from state to state, the price of fuel is different in every city.

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A screening tool developed by Bay Area pediatricians to identify adverse childhood experiences, ranging from homelessness and food insecurity to physical and sexual abuse, will now help doctors statewide address trauma affecting patients health.

The California Department of Health Care Services approved the tool  called PEARLS, for Pediatric ACEs and Related Life-Events Screener  last month. As of Jan. 1, its use is covered by Medi-Cal, and it will be available to pediatricians at 8,800 California clinics.

Researchers and public health advocates have known for more than 20 years that traumatic childhood experiences are associated with greater risk of certain diseases such as asthma, diabetes and depression. But only in the past decade or so have doctors begun to understand just how closely connected trauma is to long-term health outcomes, and what they can do to protect their patients.

The tool, say those who created it, is an important step in confronting childhood trauma and preventing the illnesses associated with it.

As a pediatrician, I am inadequately doing my job if Im simply refilling asthma medicine without addressing the cause of the stress, said Dr. Dayna Long, director of the UCSF Benioff Childrens Hospital Oakland Center for Child and Community Health. A crisis is happening in our communities, and if we really want to improve health we have to address trauma.

We cannot make all the bad things go away, Long added. But with a screening tool, we can change our response to them and we can actually build resilience within ourselves and our families.

Long and Dr. Neeta Thakur of UCSF led development of the PEARLS tool, working with doctors and researchers at the Center for Youth Wellness in San Francisco. Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, who was appointed California surgeon general in February, helped test the tool while she headed the Center for Youth Wellness and worked with children in Bayview and Hunters Point.

Burke Harris said in an interview that approval of the tool for statewide use feels pretty profound. Shes spent her career working with children who experienced multiple adverse events but thrived through resiliency and family and community support.

Handing pediatricians a means to identify children who need that support, and teaching doctors and their patients how to build resiliency, will transform health care, she said.

I feel like this is a turning point in modern medicine, to recognize and respond to trauma as a root cause of acute and long-term health problems, Burke Harris said. This work is truly historic.

Adverse childhood experiences  often referred to as ACEs  describe a range of stress-inducing situations, such as abuse and neglect; family dysfunction due to violence or substance use; hardships like food insecurity and homelessness; and a variety of other stressors such as the death of a caregiver, community violence and discrimination.

Studies have found that nearly two-thirds of all adults in the United States have at least one adverse childhood experience, and more than 15% of adults have four or more. Women and people of color are more likely than other groups to have more adverse experiences.

High ACE scores are associated with greater risk of developing depression, asthma, kidney disease, stroke, heart disease, cancer and diabetes. People with higher adversity scores are also more likely to engage in risky behaviors such as smoking and heavy drinking. The health risks are heightened independent of the behavior risks.

The PEARLS tool is designed to be used in a regular office visit with a pediatrician. Parents answer a series of questions for young children, and teens answer for themselves. The doctor can then use the score to talk to parents or teenage patients about trauma and associated health risks.

It may be beyond pediatricians to fix problems like community violence and discrimination, but they can provide resources to help families dealing with abuse, neglect, food insecurity and homelessness. Thats one way the screening tool can be applied in doctors offices, say the developers.

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But just as important: Studies have shown that simply identifying a stressor and developing strategies for facing it can improve resiliency, which in turn can improve health outcomes, said Dr. Gena Lewis, medical director for Oakland Childrens Hospital primary care clinic. Lewis said shes used the screening tool in her clinic and patients have expressed gratitude just for being asked about the challenges their children are facing.

A loving parent who is raising their child with positive parenting undoes the trauma of a violent neighborhood to a great extent. It actually takes away the inflammation, said Lewis. Yes, we havent fixed the problem of the violence in your neighborhood, but youre being this loving parent and Im going to give you some tools to do even more. And the children are going to be OK.

Oakland resident Iesha James, 39, was reluctant at first to confront the trauma affecting her cousins two sons when James became their primary caretaker, in addition to raising her own biological son. She took the boys to Long for their chronic asthma and eczema care, and Long talked to her about the association between adverse childhood experiences and health.

Long explained that James could help her cousins boys become stronger and more resilient by giving them opportunities to talk about their feelings and work through their anxiety. Eventually James agreed to participate in a resiliency clinic to teach her skills for helping the boys thrive. She also participated in early studies to develop the screening tool.

Im going to be honest, I wasnt open to it. I didnt want to change, James said. I come from a time period where kids are seen, not heard.

I realized I cant raise my boys like that, she said. The study allowed me to be open to the idea of them expressing themselves in different ways. It gave me a whole different perspective on how to interact with my boys. It allowed me to see that you have to be open to other options.

Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: eallday@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @erinallday
TOKYO - Japan's justice minister vowed Monday to strengthen border checks and review bail conditions after Nissan's former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, fled the country despite supposedly stringent surveillance.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 5/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Lebanese woman with her puppy, passes by the house of ex-Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020. Ghosn earlier this week jumped bail in Japan and fled to Lebanon rather than face trial on financial misconduct charges in a dramatic escape that has confounded and embarrassed authorities. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

TOKYO - Japan's justice minister vowed Monday to strengthen border checks and review bail conditions after Nissan's former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, fled the country despite supposedly stringent surveillance.

Masako Mori told reporters at a news conference that the ministry has already acted to prevent a recurrence but declined to give details. Ghosn skipped bail and showed up in Lebanon a week ago, saying he could not get a fair hearing in Japan, where he was awaiting trial on financial misconduct allegations.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Michael L. Taylor, a former Green Beret who has previously rescued hostages, was among those involved in Ghosn's escape plan.

A private security guard stands outside the house of ex-Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020. Ghosn earlier this week jumped bail in Japan and fled to Lebanon rather than face trial on financial misconduct charges in a dramatic escape that has confounded and embarrassed authorities. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

The team that spirited Ghosn out of the country made numerous trips to Japan to scout out possible escape routes, the newspaper reported, citing sources it did not identify. It said they settled on Osaka's airport, where cargo X-ray scanners were not big enough to handle the man-sized concert equipment box apparently used to get Ghosn aboard a private flight. He flew from there to Istanbul, then switched to a different plane to fly to Beirut, according to the Turkish airline company MNG Jet, which said its planes were used illegally.

Mori declined to say who might be held responsible for such a high-profile escape, stressing it was still under investigation.

While out on 1.5 billion yen ($14 million) bail, Ghosn was living in a home in an upscale part of Tokyo under strict surveillance as part of the conditions for his release. That raises questions about how he left undetected.

Security cameras at his home operated 24 hours a day, but the footage only had to be submitted to the court on a monthly basis, according to lawyers' documents. Security footage showed he simply walked out of the house alone around noon on Dec. 29, NHK TV reported.

FILE - In this May 12, 2016, file photo, then Nissan Motor Co. President and CEO Carlos Ghosn speaks during a press conference in Yokohama, near Tokyo. Japanese Justice Minister Masako Mori vowed Monday, Jan. 6, 2020 to strengthen border departure checks and review bail conditions, given the flight of Ghosn. Mori told reporters at the ministry action has already been taken to prevent a recurrence, while declining to give details. Ghosn skipped bail while awaiting trial on various financial misconduct allegations and appeared in Lebanon. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

Lebanon has said he entered legally with a French passport on Dec. 30. He has not been seen since, but has promised to speak to reporters on Wednesday.

Mori denounced his escape as an unjustifiable" crime.

Japans justice system allows investigating the facts while it ensures the individual basic human rights at the same time," Mori told reporters at the ministry. It is set with appropriate procedures and it is operated appropriately."

Critics say Japan's justice system is too slow and is inhumane. Ghosn was banned from meeting with his wife while out on bail. Preparing for his trial has taken more than a year, and a date has not been set. He was detained, twice, for a total of 130 days before he was released on bail a second time.

Japanese Justice Minister Masako Mori speaks about Nissan's former Chairman Carlos Ghosn during a press conference at her ministry in Tokyo, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. Mori vowed to strengthen border departure checks and review bail conditions, given the flight of Ghosn. Mori told reporters at the ministry action has already been taken to prevent a recurrence, while declining to give details. Ghosn skipped bail while awaiting trial on various financial misconduct allegations and appeared in Lebanon. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

Referring to human rights' advocates descriptions of the Japanese legal system as hostage justice," Mori said, We are aware of the criticisms.

Ghosn, formerly chairman of Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi, was first arrested in November 2018. He is charged with under-reporting his future compensation and breach of trust in diverting Nissan money for his personal gain. He insists he is innocent.

Mori said each nation has its own judicial system and arrests are rarer in Japan than in other countries, suggesting arrests are made only when the authorities are fairly confident they have a case.

Simple comparisons are misleading, she said.

Japanese Justice Minister Masako Mori speaks about Nissan's former Chairman Carlos Ghosn during a press conference at her ministry in Tokyo, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. Mori vowed to strengthen border departure checks and review bail conditions, given the flight of Ghosn. Mori told reporters at the ministry action has already been taken to prevent a recurrence, while declining to give details. Ghosn skipped bail while awaiting trial on various financial misconduct allegations and appeared in Lebanon. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

French authorities are also investigating Ghosn and the automakers. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Monday that he was surprised by Ghosns escape and wants a broader investigation into 11 million euros ($12.3 million) in questionable expenses under Ghosn's watch at the Netherlands-based headquarters of the alliance between Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors.

Le Maire wouldnt say where Ghosn should be prosecuted, but said that as Renaults biggest single shareholder, the French government wants to ensure the struggling automaker prospers again.

When you are an individual subject to laws, you dont escape justice. And Carlos Ghosn is an individual like any other, Le Maire said Monday on France-Inter radio. He should answer before the justice system.

Members of Ghosn's legal team say they did not know about his escape plan. Takashi Takano, one of his lawyers, said he felt sad and betrayed that Ghosn didn't try to prove his innocence in court. He also said he understood how Ghosn might have lost hope not only with the prosecutors but with the entire Japanese judicial system.

Yuichi Kaido, another of Ghosn's lawyer, said he was troubled by public support for denying bail to all foreign suspects. He said in an online statement he feared Japan might react to international criticism of its legal system by becoming more insular and rigid in its views.

Ghosn's bail has been revoked, and Interpol has issued a wanted notice. Japan does not have an extradition treaty with Lebanon, but Mori left open the possibility Japan could seek Ghosn's return.

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Such a return so far appears unlikely, and Japan's options are limited.

Mori stressed that any retaliatory action, such as economic sanctions, must be decided on very carefully. She would not say if Japan has contacted the U.S. or France for help.

It is indeed possible to ask for extradition of criminals based on the principle of reciprocity," she said, replying to a question about Lebanon.

But, upon doing that, we need to carefully study whether it is possible to guarantee this principle of reciprocity and their internal justice system.

___

Follow Yuri Kageyama at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
In the weeks after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the American press realized it had failed. Nearly every major media outlet had spectacularly guessed wrong on the outcome, had failed to see the rise of the electorate that would elect Trump, and had not covered Trump as a serious candidate. Those sins, along with an obsession with Hillary Clintons emails and a wrongful dismissal of Russian involvement in the American election, pumped oxygen into the toxic political environment that helped produce the Trump presidency.

This time around, the press has pledged to do better. Yet, with eleven months to go before Americans go to the polls again, there already are signs that journalists will repeat the mistakes of 2016.

Once again, CJR and The Guardian have teamed up to talk to journalists who cover the election, and to some of the people who monitor what they do. What follows are excerpts from those conversations.

We fight the last war

An awareness of the stakes of the election and its effects on journalism.

Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for The Washington Post: The press is under assault and democracy is under assault right now, and these two things are related.

One of the things we didnt do well covering the presidential election last time was that we failed to distinguish between the serious and not so serious  the term false equivalency comes to mind. So Trump and his financial situation, sexual assault claims, business record, history of racism  all those things were made equal to Hillary Clintons emails. Today were calling it a little better. When things are racist were willing sometimes to use that word. Were willing to use the word lie. Weve come a ways in that sense, but Im still not particularly positive about how were going to deal with 2020.

Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times: In 2016 I think the media got the country wrong. I dont think we got Trump. We didnt understand how much the country was angry at elites, upset about the fallout from the economic crisis. And I dont think we understood quite how much the country just wanted to shake things up. We covered it as usual, the way we always cover elections, as a clash of two ideologies, and I think it was much, much deeper.

Chris Hayes, host of All In with Chris Hayes, MSNBC: To me, the biggest sin of 2016 was proportionality. Particularly vis-a-vis Hillary Clinton and the email story, and then the Wikileaks story. When you look at the word cloud of what people heard from the news, theres one huge word in the middle and thats (Hillary Clintons) emails. Theres no justification whatsoever for the proportion of coverage devoted to that story. And sometimes I think people want to defend the coverage by using the strawman of, it was news. Yeah, it was news. It was a news story when it turned out Ivanka Trump was using unsecured communications at the White House, it was a news story when it turned out Nikki Haley was using unsecured communications as UN Ambassador, in some senses. The president uses unsecured communications. Those have all been news stories. Then everyone moves on to something else because its not that big of a story. The proportionality is one of the key challenges here.

Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News: The media has this incredible quadrennial habit of learning all the lessons of four years ago and applying them when the medium has already moved on. Things keep changing, yet we fight the last war. So I think the media is totally prepared not to repeat the mistakes of the last cycle, like giving Trump endless livestreams and letting him use provocative tweets to dominate the conversation, but Im sure we will fuck it up in some new way we arent expecting.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay, executive editor of Teen Vogue: People are worried and we dont have an answer. The US president is openly attacking journalists. He has convinced a third of the country that The New York Times is fake news. We can criticize the Times all we want for substantive reasons, but its not fake news. We have to have some general understanding: outlets like the Guardian, The New Yorker, these are not fake news.

Jorge Ramos, Univision news anchor: In 2016 there were 27 million Latinos eligible to vote and 13 million of them decided to stay home. In 2020, according to Pew research, there will be 32 million Latinos eligible to vote and Im very concerned that the story might repeat itself again: that Latinos decide to stay home because they dont like President Trump but dont trust the Democrats either. That would be terrible for Latinos. So my main concern right now is the lack of participation in the fastest-growing block in the United States.

Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist: The environment is tough. The Economist has traditionally been hard to pigeonhole in the partisan geography of American politics because weve been socially liberal and pro-free markets. That ground is ever harder to occupy in this environment as theres a tendency of both sides to pigeonhole the other. In such a polarised environment theres a kind of tribalism coming out.

Charlie Sykes, editor-in-chief of The Bulwark: Going back to 2016, when I was part of what youd consider to be the conservative media, its difficult to remember that there was still a lot of diversity of opinion in conservative media. There were a lot of conservative commentators and talk show hosts who were very critical of Donald Trump. Whats really changed is how increasingly tribalized the media has become. I always thought of our talk radio show as the other side of the story, with the assumption that people would hear one side of the story and then hear our point as well. And somehow it morphed into these alternative reality silosone step beyond an echo chamber or a bubblebecause theyre impenetrable.

Steve Adler, editor-in-chief of Reuters: Theres a critiquea pretty serious critiqueof trying to be objective and trying to be dispassionate, and that critique essentially says that in reality if youre on the right or the leftthen the other side is destroying the country, and that to take any other position is wishy washy and non-courageous. We take the opposite position. We exercise a craft, and our craft is digging out information when the average person doesnt have the skill to do that, and sorting accurate from inaccurate information, then providing the background and the context and the knowledge base that helps people figure out where they stand. We dont take the position that somebodys definitely, absolutely, for sure right, and the other side is definitely, absolutely, for sure wrong. We are not just doing he said, she saidwere trying to provide accurate information with context.

Jill Abramson, former executive editor, The New York Times: The stakes for democracy in the outcome of this election are incredible. We have a president who flouts the core principles of our democracy. And seems not only to violate but be ignorant of the basic principles of the founders. He needs to brush up on reading the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. So for the health of this country, theres that, and theres the whole failure of the Republicans and the Congress to carry out their function for checking the abuse of power by the executive. Thats just been abandoned. Its just been terrible.

Try not to get caught up in the theater

Weaning off of a Trump media obsession

Frank Bruni, columnist, New York Times: Theres a real tension in the media as we go into 2020, and a real challenge. We are an industry that is hardly swimming in revenue, we are competing fiercely for the eyeballs we need to stay alive. And weve learned that if you write a story about the ridiculousness of Trumps latest tweet  whether that story is riveting to his fans or to his foes who cannot marinate enough in their distaste of him  it gets a lot more traffic than an analysis of Elizabeth Warrens Medicare-for-all plan. Trump understands what news catches peoples interest, he has a very acute sense of what people will click on. So Im concerned that we are going to end up giving Trump more than the lions share of media time all the way up to election night.

Susan Page, Washington bureau chief, USA Today: I make no apology for the amount of coverage we give President Trump, because I think he warrants it. Hes the president. If he says something thats incredibly provocative or does something that has far-reaching ramifications, we have an obligation to report it. I do think one of the things that weve tried to learn is to not be distracted by a bright shiny object. So if the president tweets something provocative, its not that were going to ignore it. Were going to write about it. The key is not to let that distract you from doing things about far-reaching implications of policy toward NATO or his plan on addressing homelessness in California.

Hayes, MSNBC: The old cliche of man bites dog is true: dog bites man is not news, man bites dog is news. But if theres a man who bites a dog everyday, the news value of that diminishes. Outrageous tweets, things like that, theyre just not newsworthy. Trump rallies were more newsworthy in 2015, 2016 than they are now. They were more novel, they were more surprising. Now theyre dog bites man. Donald Trump just did a rally and he said a bunch of crazy stuff. Thats what he does. There are two poles: normalizing behavior that is abnormal and aberrant, particularly if the standard was applied to anyone else, and allowing yourself to be sucked into a constant attentional vortex on the other.

Ramos, Univision: This is not 2015. When Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 and when he ejected me from a press conference, we told everyone, Listen, this is someone whos making racist remarks, hes attacking the press. Yet very few people pay attention. Today I believe its a completely different story. Things are changing. Journalists are being much more aggressive than they were in 2016 and I think thats very positive. We have many reporters who are making sure Trump is accountable for all the lies.

Adler, Reuters: You dont run away from the viral story because you think youre superior to it. But on the other hand, it shouldnt deflect you from focusing on important issues that you think actually matter in peoples lives. Its just the big question in journalismhow much you lead and how much you follow. I think you have to do a bit of both.

Olivia Nuzzi, Washington correspondent, New York magazine: Trump is sort of blowing everything up. And the way he has done that has provided more opportunity for reporters to be creative. In the Trump White House, nothing works like its supposed to. And so I think theres opportunities that you can skillfully take advantage of, or that you just happen to be lucky and stumble into. I guess theres more room for serendipity.

Baquet, New York Times: When you cover a theatrical politician you must try not to get caught up in the theater. Having said that, Im one of those people who thinks theatrics are still worth covering  they are part of the way he leads the country. And we have to cover that.

Adrienne Shih, audience engagement editor, Los Angeles Times: Because we have such a small staff, its actually worked in our favor because were not able to catch everything that the president tweets. Its not always a number one priority to get on that, because we dont have the bandwidth to, because we dont have that many reporters, so in strategizing for our coverage, we can only focus on the things that really resonate with our readers.

Kara Swisher, tech journalist and founder of Recode: Donald Trump is really quite good at Twitter. Its gross. I mean, he uses it quite effectively. Hes campaigning by Twitter, and hes governing by Twitter  Hes perfectly created discord, confusion and lying. The press just runs after it. You kind of have to cover it. I think you have to treat the tweets like theyre press statements. He puts a little bit of truth in there. Its propaganda, putting a little kernel of truth in a lie. The dumb tweet of the day is like, really? What is it? Okay. It sucks. Its devastating to our civility, but lets stop obsessing on it. You know, if I see Chris Cuomo one more time, going, Can you believe what he said? Im like, I believe it! I believe what he said. Tomorrows going to be some person without a leg. Hell make fun of them. And then theres a fat person that hes going to fat shame and then theres this and youre going to be like, yes, hes an asshole! I want to talk about actual policy and how it affects real people.

Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology, Columbia University: It may not be easy for journalists as individuals to stand against the corrupted norms. It may be necessary to take some sort of collective action. During the first Gulf War, the Washington bureaus of major news organizations  spearheaded by Harpers together with the networks and a number of major news organizations  said, Were not going to go along with the minders scheme. Such collective action is not beyond the bounds of the imagination for 2020. What would be required is for news organizations to understand that this president has declared war on them, that it wont do to let him pick them off one at a time. They would have to understand they have a civic duty to act on behalf of a public good, which they are rather reluctant to do.

Beddoes, The Economist: I think there is some debate in certain quarters about whether the media should be taking one side or another  stand in opposition to Trump  and thats in part what is feeding the sense of polarisation and people living in two entirely different ecosystems in the US.

Abramson: Ive gotten off of every social media platform, and I feel much more clearheaded and informed than when I was on. Ive even abandoned Instagram, which I used to somewhat enjoy. But certainly if I was covering the campaign, Id have to be monitoring Twitter because its where news first breaks now. Thats just the reality.

When he lies, its complicated

Covering untruths, and the future of facts

Glenn Kessler, editor of The Fact Checker, Washington Post: The database of Trumps false claims is a very depressing duty. It just drags you down to have to go through it, like reading one of the presidents rally speeches. Just one speech will have 60 false and misleading claims, most of which youve already fact-checked and said were false. Just to see it there again, over and over again, its incredibly depressing.

Hayes Brown, senior editor and reporter, BuzzFeed: When you look back at the Nixon impeachment situation, people only had a few news sources at that time. They had their local paper, they had the big three networks. And that was it. Maybe if you were very fashionable in the middle of the country, you somehow got the New York Times delivered. And you read the news magazines, but that was really it in terms of media. Now people can go to wherever they want to find the facts that they agree with. On the one hand, this breakdown, this splintering, that has allowed for the rise of new voices, allowed for more diversity, allowed for more opinions to come forward, without having this, you know, establishment system saying, Well, these are the stories we care about. On the other hand, its made it much harder for the average person to look out there and figure out what is the objective truth.

Page, USA Today: There is much more impressive fact-checking than there was in 2016. One of the things that weve seen happen is not to let something that we know is inaccurate stand unchallenged. I dont think we understood in 2016 how much you have to make sure you do that in ways in which readers are seeing. A lot of people read a tweet but never read the story. So we dont let inaccuracy or untruth stand unchallenged in a tweet.

Tanzina Vega, host of The Takeaway, WNYC: We have to say what the president is saying. On the other hand, if what the president is saying is clearly not true, then the burden is on us to make sure were clear about that. And thats where the press has got to rid itself of the idea of a false equivalency. What has gotten caught up in this moment is basic fact. Thats something I worry a lot about. If we cant look at a red car and agree that its a car and that its redwe can talk about whether its fast, or well made, or how much it should costbut if we cant agree that the red car is red and that its a car, then we have a problem. Were grappling with that. Its a serious issue that journalists have, to not just repeat what the president says, but give it some sort of context. Its not easy.

Ramos, Univision: Ive covered Latin America for many decades and i think that has prepared me for what Im seeing here in the United States. To have someone leading the country who is an authoritarian, who is not telling the truth, whos constantly lying in a country that is completely divided.

Betsy West, Columbia journalism professor and co-director of the documentary RBG: One of the scariest developments in our political landscape is that disinformation is moving from print to video. We saw this foreshadowed this year with two different videos of a supposedly drunken or stammering Nancy Pelosi that were crudely faked. These videos were quickly revealed to be phony but not before millions of viewers saw and shared them on social media. You can just imagine the potential havoc created by a video showing a candidate doing or saying something inappropriate that comes out on the eve of an election.

Its one thing to write a false story that gets disseminated. Its something even more powerful to create a video that appears to be real.

Errin Haines, Associated Press: I think that the issue of voter suppression is hugely important heading into 2020 because I think that what we saw in 2016, and again in 2018, was that voter suppression is definitely alive and well.

I spent most of my career covering the legacy of the civil rights movement and talking to a lot of people who were active in that movement and fought for the expansion of the franchising of rights for black people to vote. And I mentioned that because I think that having that experience definitely helps me to recognize those pressures when I see it today. And I think back to just the midterm election. I was doing a story down in Randolph County, Georgia, where the black community there noticed a newspaper ad, saying that, you know, theyre going to be closing precincts in their county. And you know, this is going to be much harder for them to get access to vote.

Nicholas Johnston, editor-in-chief, Axios: What makes me somewhat optimistic is that four or six years ago we didnt even have the vocabulary to talk about deep fake, fake video and audio, misinformation, the manipulation of social media, the end of truth. Now we know that these are things, we can talk about it and help voters identify what is true and what is not.

Kessler, Washington Post: Ive covered just about every presidential administration since Reagan and this administration has the least fidelity to truth and honesty of any Ive encountered. Theyre generally uncooperative in terms of responding to inquiries. Theres not even an effort or a pretense to have a daily briefing. The president sets the tone and this president has little adherence at all to keeping the facts straight and it just extends throughout the US government. In some ways it makes it easier because they dont respond. Were always willing to take into account the commentary of people that were fact-checking and look at their evidence and see where it came from. The Obama people hated getting Pinocchios and they would send you the names of 10 different professors to back them up, and they would be calling up until 11:30 at night making their case to prevent the president from getting the Pinocchio. They were very, very active in terms of responding to this stuff.

Steve Brill, co-CEO and founder of Newsguard: The metaphor I always use is, if you walk into a library, the books are arranged by subjects. Theyre on shelves. You can look at the book jacket, read something about the author, who the publisher is. Best of all, theres a librarian who can tell you, you know, read this. If you want a conservative viewpoint about the minimum wage, heres this magazine or this book to read. If you want a progressive viewpoint, theres this. If you want something down the middle, theres this. Imagine if, instead, you walk into the library and there are just 2 million pieces of paper flying around. You grab one and start reading. Who wrote it? Who is financing it? Is it by a Nobel economist? Some crackpot? Who knows? Thats the internet

Swisher, Recode: If you look at the discussion and debate about political ads [on Facebook], the heart is that a small group of unelected, homogenous people who have never experienced a day of fear in their lives are causing all kinds of problems and propagandas and allowing autocrats to survive without any gatekeepers, editing, or respect for facts.

If youre not scared when Mark Zuckerberg says its okay for politicians to lie, especially in the context of a system that iterates and iterates and iterates and is so viral compared to any other media, you should be afraid. This is a person with a lot of power who cannot be fired, but who has no idea what freedom of the press means. What Mark and others have tried to do is conflate paid speech with free speech. Its intellectually bereft. Paid speech is not free speech. This is targeted-advertising-free-speech.

Sullivan, Washington Post: The Sunday TV talk shows will bring on people like Kellyanne Conway, Trumps White House counsel, who is just an inveterate liar. By having her on, she is allowed to say things that arent true and although she can be challenged, its still a very strong message having her on air. My feeling is, dont have her on, you know shes going to lie her way through every broadcast. Thats not censorship. Censorship is government action that disallows things being said, but judgments made by editors and producers are not censorship.

Abramson: There are so many traditions of journalism that Trump has sort of made impossible to fulfill. And the tradition is we cover what the president says. But when he lies, its complicated  Its migraine-producing for an editor.

Im seeing more reporters who are not believing the polls

Reckoning with the mistakes of 2016 and searching for a new model

Larry Sabato, pollster and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics: All of us pollsters got to eat a large, bitter, humble pie after election night in 2016, which came as a tremendous shock. Wed all expected Hillary Clinton to win by three points or so, giving her over 300 electoral college votes. When Trump won we were forced to relearn that polling is not the word of God or handed down on the Mount to Moses.

Baquet, New York Times: All of us in the media were just so convinced Trump couldnt win. But he was outside of the paint-by-numbers game we have developed.

Sabato, pollster: The polling industry has tried to correct itself after it was so badly caught off-guard. We used not to weight by educational level and it turned out that if we had done so we might have been more accurate in 2016. So now everybody is weighting by education. We also had our fingers burned over the electoral college. The polls got the popular vote more or less correct, with Clinton winning the popular vote by two percentage points. We should have thought more about the profound electoral college impact that gave Trump his victory.

Daniel Arnall, executive editor, MSNBC: One of the things that we are doing differently than in the last cycle is focusing more on issues, and coverage of issues that folks across the country are interested in. That is going to be driving our coverage. Were going to be substantially less interested in taking live candidate events.

I will tell you that I still am hesitant on polling, and I think theres been a real reluctance by a lot of major organizations to come to terms with the failures of that through the last cycle. I think thats a potential weak point that a lot of people should be focused on and pushing their organizations on. Im still like, What are we doing differently this time? I was in the briefing three days before the election where Republican and Democratic and independent pollsters were telling every organization that its statistically impossible (for Trump to win). Its not like it was just our internal people. And so I think there is a real danger in polling because I think its probably not what it should be.

Maryann Wolfe, named one of the best 50 high school teachers in the nation by NPR: I remember in 2016 the kids coming into class (this was after the election), heads down, some of them crying, and we just kind of sat there in the room and didnt say anything, for I dont know how many minutes. And it was because we read all those articles. We looked at all those polls, and everyone was so certain the Democrats were going to win. All these kids have gone out and done their civic engagement projects, most all of them were supporting the Democrats. The pollsters tend to do these national polls. They were not really honing in on certain states to enable us to know just how close the election was. The national polls might tell you that Hillary Clintons ahead, but might not tell you what the results in the electoral college are going to be.

Page, USA Today: You have to rely both on quantitative and qualitative interviews. Polling is really valuable, but it doesnt tell you everything. You dont want to go to a town, go to a diner, interview six people, and pretend like you know what people are saying. You want some quantitative data that enables you to say, Hey, Pete Buttigieg is doing really well among older voters, then go out and talk to older voters about why that might be.

In the USA Today/Suffolk poll, which is our big national poll, Joe Biden continues to do very well in the Democratic horse race. But we always do call-backs to people we polled to talk to them, to gather quotes. Theres just a different quality to the information you get in a conversation as compared to the data you get in a poll. And one thing weve noticed is that people who tell us they support Biden do not have the fervor of people who are supporting other candidates. And so by doing the callbacks, it makes us realize that that number is softwe dont know that it is going to change, but it might change. When you talk to Bernie Sanders voters in callbacks, theyre with Bernie. Theyre not going anywhere. When you talk to Biden voters, they would go someplace else if they had somebody they liked better or somebody they thought as more electable. I think people who do one thing or the other are mistaken. You really need to do both.

Ramos, Univision: Im seeing more reporters who are not believing the polls and doing their homework. I personally am listening to conservative radio stations in Miami that I didnt listen to in 2016 trying to understand Trump voters, specifically Latino Trump voters.

Sabato, pollster: As for forecasting models, they need to be dropped entirely. Most readers didnt understand what probability really means. It just confuses people, and to do it again next year would be to plant a bomb that could explode in your face. Is it really worth it? The answer is no.

Caitlin Byrd, political reporter, Charleston Post and Courier: What we may hear at a campaign event really may be limited to that campaign event or the fact that were running into certain people more. We want to make sure that our anecdotes arent just anecdotes, but that they can be rooted in fact. So polling is still one of the closest barometers we have of that until an Election Day actually happens.

Horserace coverage is dead

The press once again struggles with covering a big, diverse field

Sullivan, Washington Post: I see sexism in the coverage of women candidates. Its improved since Hillary Clinton ran but its still not great. The disappearance of Kamala Harris has some of that wrapped into it, and the constant discussions about whether Elizabeth Warren is likeable enough to be elected reflects inherent sexism that we havent really dealt with. Theres research that shows that women who are seen as ambitious have a strike against them. Well, if youre running for president, guess what? Youre ambitious.

Vega, WNYC: Kamala Harris, as one of the few women of color on the campaign trail, and the only black woman on the campaign trail, had often both from the left and to a certain extent from the right, had been criticized for her role as a former prosecutor in California. At the same time, Amy Klobuchar, her competitor, also was a prosecutor. And somehow the media narrative wasnt as focused on that particular issue.  Now, the front-runners are all white. Well see how Elizabeth Warren, for example, is portrayed. Warren has had inconsistencies in how shes tried to explain her Medicare for all plan. Thats a valid criticism. At the same time, shes been portrayed as being professorial, and being unlikeable in the eye of the voter. I think that really represents a certain narrative that woman candidates across the board have to fight. And I think that often comes from the media and its way of thinking. Its reflective of the way these media narratives have taken hold.

Page, USA Today: On the day that Donald Trump announced, my assumption was that he was not going to be nominated for president. And it took a while for me to realize what voters were saying, which was that he would be. So that is a lesson that I think we tried to apply this time, by looking at the Democratic field and not making assumptions about whos going to be in the top tier of the bottom tier, who could possibly end up rising to the top. Even today, so close to the primary caucuses, were trying not to make assumptions about who you ought to take seriously. Its not up to us. Its up to voters.

Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: I am worried about this many candidates and their ability to hold everyones attention. One thing were seeing with young people is that they are having trouble following the deep nuances between candidates. Its kind of boring to really point out some of these policy differences because theyre not really that different.

Gitlin, Columbia University: Talking to individual voters is valuable, but you cant use it as a proxy for American sentiment. I think about this when news outlets write Nation mourns after a celebrity dies. I walk around outside my house, and people are relatively cheerful. Its a bit of an absurd example, but theres both a myth of a single public consciousness and a laziness to the sort of reporting that could reveal something interesting about a particular group of the people that make up our country. For example, wheres the reporting on voter suppression? Thats a huge part of the story. Were not all one thing.

Sykes, The Bulwark: There are people who are trying to figure out what this political moment is  very, very uncomfortable with the extremes and really liking the fact that we can talk to one another. So in the typical feedback that I get, I would say 80% of them begin with something like I am a liberal Democrat, but I dont like or there will be other people who say Ive been a lifelong Republican, but I cant stand whats happening. I consider myself kind of a political orphan.

Smith, BuzzFeed: Horserace coverage is dead. Our audience actively hates it. We have to think about a way to replace it in a way that is compelling and that cares about the personalities and the policies and all the revealing and strange things that elections provide, while always keeping in mind that there are real things at stake. Now its kids in cages. I mean, who cares that somebody fires his political consultant? And I say that as somebody who has broken a lot of stories in my time about people firing political consultants.

Shih, Los Angeles Times: Our reporters are doing a lot more listening on the ground. Because of things that happened in 2016, we realized that we cant necessarily be focusing and reporting on things like polls. A good example is something that one of our reporters, Matt Pearce, did. He basically just started a Google form where he asked people that are following him on Twitter, What do you want to know about during this election cycle? And we manually parsed through thousands of responses, and we saw that California readers were very interested in [immigration and climate]. A lot of people werent as interested in things like the state of the horse race, they wanted more profiles of candidates.

Adler, Reuters: Sometimes, what journalists focus on as news is an incomplete understanding of what people care about. People care about politicians characters, they care about people as human beings. They care about human stories. That is part of the fabric of what news entails. If you strip that out and you say youre only interested in policy papers, youre missing an important dimension of the story. Clearly, people vote based on a combination of things. And one of them is their assessment of how good a leader and decision-maker a president is likely to be. So thats partly about what the policies are, and partly about how they present themselves, how intelligent they seem and thoughtful they seem, so all of those things are important.

Hayes, MSNBC: Horserace coverage is fine. It is interesting in the context of covering a race if a candidate is struggling with African American voters or has gone down considerably after being attacked over Medicare for all. Those are news stories. Its not that thats not a thing to cover, its just that that is not all you cover.

Byrd, Post and Courier: Horserace journalism really isnt our goal  Were more interested in how issues are evolving on the trail and what it means when the trail stops in South Carolina, as opposed to whos doing really well. Otherwise wed be writing the same story every week.

Everybodys a regular person

How to cover America between the coasts

Sarah Kendzior, author of The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America: National media is making the same mistakes as in 2016. The midwest has become the sort of stand-in region for what the national media think of as the forgotten voter. What a lot of these coastal outlets are doing is parachuting in here with the narrative pre-written trying to find people who fit their preconceptions of what people in the midwest are like. None of this authentically captures whats going on, and it really does a disservice to this whole region. Its diverse demographically, racially, ideologically. Honestly the best way they could fix this problem would be to hire people who actually live in these states.

Al Cross, director, University of Kentucky Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues: Its not just boots on the ground. You cant have a parachute mentality. You have to have some rural sensibility or an appreciation of rural sensibility. You deal with them as people and you have an appreciation for how they live their lives, and be respectful of that. And if you show that to them they will show that to you.

Sykes, The Bulwark: Im in Wisconsin and I do a lot of work on the coast as well. Ill be on an MSNBC show, and people on the panels start talking about Wisconsin voters as these strange throwback figures, saying rural Wisconsinites are nostalgic for a time when men were able to slap women around and it was like, Wait, no. First of all, understand that these are people who have their own values, their own communities, and every time you talk about them in this way, you deepen this red, blue divide, this thing. I mean, I am as frustrated by some of these folks as anybody, but there is this culture of contempt thats easy, I think, for people in the media to fall into. And I think its dangerous, because once you are contemptuous with somebody, youre not going to take them seriously, and youre not going to listen to them, and therefore, youre going to miss things.

Gitlin, Columbia University: There was a sense after 2016 that we werent listening to enough people in diners in Ohio. That wasnt so much misguided as it was inflated. The average Trump voter has above-average income. Overallto generalizenews media went from not noticing people whose life chances are impacted by the rustification of the Midwest to thinking that they are now the central story. Its an absurd overcompensation. This is another instance of pack journalism, from ignoring a population to doubling down on a population. And in both cases, its a stampede reaction, not grounded in sociological knowledge or political science knowledge, but rather in a kind of feeling of having failed to get the odds right during the campaign. [Reporters felt] that it was incumbent upon them to find a simple solution or simple remedy. Simple compensation. Okay, we blew that. Were going to do it better this time. Except its a false solution. Its a solution on the cheap. It doesnt come to grips with the way in which a career racketeer got away with presenting himself as a plausible politician.

Astead Herndon, political reporter, The New York Times: I think there was a conventional wisdom that Trump was a metaphoric political figure, not a literal one, and that the voters were not actually taking his word seriously and voting based on that. And thats just something that I found hard to believe, and now that Im in a position to go talk to these folks, I dont find that to be true. I think the throughline between primary and general in 2016 was a real over-reliance on top-down beltway reporting, and not bottom-up grassroots stuff that wouldve made you see the increased energy in Sanders, or that Trump was relating to the Republican base on culture and things like that. And that also wouldve led us to really understanding what was going on in the general election. Washington does not have a monopoly on political thought. And more so than that, theyve been proven pretty incorrect in recent times. Your reporting should take that view into consideration, but counterbalance it with voices on the ground, because I think thats the only way we get a more full political picture.

Swisher, Recode: I think everybodys a regular person. Thats one thing I hate when reporters go, were going to talk to regular people now. Im a regular person. Its weird that thats the way [journalists] think of these people, like creatures in a zoo or something.

Rachel Stassen-Berger, political editor, Des Moines Register: The national media have certainly made an effort to recognise the need to go to the center of the country, much more than in 2016. And sometimes they hit the mark and sometimes they miss the mark, and they certainly have the resources to explore some of the stories where Ive seen the result of that. There is great political parachute journalism where they really can find themes that we are too close to see. But I think that when you are there every single day and covering these issues and these people for years, you get a deeper breadth of understanding. I think theres certain assumptions that journalists make for the sake of time that if you dont pressure test youre going to be proved wrong. And I think thats a mistake that has been made since time immemorial.

The problem is when you decide what your story is before you talk to the people who are involved in your story. Its very hard to just go and listen. But if you go to a place with a specific narrative in mind, and without pressure testing it, it may be a great read but it wont reflect the reality on the ground.

Nuzzi, New York: Generally speaking, I havent found there to be much room for changing hearts and minds on the subject of media fairnessfrom people who are skeptical of the media and distrust the mediaif were defensive about it. Totally anecdotally, the only times that Ive had any luck talking to people who are skeptical of the media about whether or not they ought to be is when like Ive been honestYeah, I definitely lean to the left on issues that are important to voters. And I would never endeavor to hide that. But obviously Im not motivated by any kind of partisan objective in my work. That shouldnt be controversial to admit. And I think most people in newsroomsby virtue of being from the coast or living on the coast, or coming from elite universitieskind of share a similar world view. But I feel like when people dont feel like youre like bullshitting them, at least in my, again, very anecdotal experience, Ive been able to have more honest, less confrontational conversations than when Ive been like, No, the medias fair! What are you talking about? Everyones objective! Nobodys biased!

Byrd, Post and Courier: I think growing up in the South, you start to seeeven as a young person, I started to see the same descriptors used to talk about places where I was from: Backwoods, dirt road, small town, quiet, Mayberry-like. You see these same tropes over and over and over again. But one thing Im appreciating more this cycle is it seems that more national reporters in particular are really realizing that the South is more complicated. And it cannot be limited to one short descriptor.

Abramson: I think the biggest problem in 2016 was obviously the failure to recognize that Donald Trump was a very durable candidate who had huge popularity in the red parts of the country. And that was because reporters had not spent enough time in the red parts of the country interviewing voters. Journalists were, in 2016, too out of touch with red America, basically, and the well of anger towards elites that had been building during the Obama years.

News media feel more comfortable now in calling Trump a racist

While the coverage of Trump and race has improved, diversity inside newsrooms largely has not

Ramos, Univision: It took a while for reporters and news organizations to say, Hey listen, thats a racist statement. So when Trump said in June 2015 that Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists, that was a racist statement but many people were not comfortable calling him out on that. Since then hes made many other racist remarks like saying that people from Haiti and African countries come from shithole countries, and I do feel that reporters and news media feel more comfortable now in calling Trump a racist.

Haines, Associated Press: I am really seeing a lot more people of color on the campaign trail this cycle than were around, you know, even four or eight years ago. The reality is two thirds of the people who cover political journalism are white men. I think that is not just the right thing to do. To me, it seems to be a journalistic imperative.

To have as diverse a politics team as possible is really to be best positioned to talk about who and where we are in the country as journalists. So that, to me is about having a diverse politics teams. As we head into 2020, I am still on the campaign trail, quite frequently, as the only black woman in a room. Sometimes the only black person. But sometimes, I certainly do have quite the company. So to be able to walk into the campaign event and see several of my colleagues of color also on the ground, I know that theres going to be a different perspective.

Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: I felt a lot of the conversations after 2016 were Oh no! we focused so much on getting all these women in the newsroom we alienated all these white men. It was like after the election editors felt they needed less diverse newsrooms because they were concerned they had gone too far left or had incorporated identity politics too much and were alientating this white base that was all riled up for Trump. People didnt say it explicitly, but there was a shift towards going back to what was seen as objective reporting  that we can only count on reporters that are objective.But objectivity is not even possible; everybody brings something to what theyre reporting on whether they realize it or not.

Herndon, New York Times: Political reporting has danced around identity for too long, and always framed it around how people of color feel, and over-extrapolate that they only vote based on identity, whereas whiteness is seen as something that doesnt play into peoples voting patterns or doesnt play into how theyre viewed in the political system, when thats not really true. You have to go [to some white Trump voters], and you have to connect to get them to really express [their views]. But you have to be clear-eyed. You need to not be afraid of confronting the openly xenophobic or racist views or whatever they can be, but at the same time, you need to understand that theres a context here, and lay out that context. I really think thats what journalism is. Sometimes I think that the problem with a lot of this stuff is a failure of imagination on the part of political reporting, not thinking that we can go to these places and ask these questions and do these things. And I think that once you free yourself of that, then theres a lot of really interesting stories that are told, and frankly, that are undertold.

Ramos, Univision: I do see changes. A Latino reporter can change the dialogue. The first presidential debate among Democratic candidates was organised by NBC and Telemundo. By just having Jose Diaz-Balart as one of the moderators, Spanish was spoken in that debate, immigration was addressed, and Hispanic issues were talked about. I happened to be one of the moderators in the second debate organised by Univision and ABC News and I did exactly the same thing. For the first time not only did we talk about Latino issues and immigration but I brought in Latin American issues  we talked about Cuba, Venezuela and Central America.

Byrd, Post and Courier: One of the challenging things for us is we are the oldest daily paper in the South. Not just South Carolina, the South. And sometimes Southern newspapers havent always done the best job of representing African American readers. I am a white journalist but I think our job really is to make sure that were listening to those concerns and that were not afraid to ask those questions.When were talking about Emanuel [AME Church], were not only talking about a church that was devastated by a hate crime in 2015. The church in the South, and the black church in the South, isnt just a place of worship. Time and time again, its the place where we see a break between white and black happen. And its also a place where the Civil Rights Movement really took root here. History is so important in trying to connect the dots of what does that mean now.

Abramson: [If I were working as an editor, my priority] would be first and foremost to have a diverse political reporting staff, because I think thats the only way you can get the true pulse of the country and the voters. And Im not talking about gender here, Im talking about I think that balance has had lots of improvement in the amount of women covering the campaign, but too few blacks, way too few Latinos.

Dwight Watkins, editor, Salon: Its kind of unfortunate but Ive been seeing the same people, same representatives, get out there and basically tell similar stories and make assumptions about whole groups of people. They talk about the Black vote as if its just one thing. So I think when you utilize the same players and the same people, they take their biases and they apply these biases to our whole group.

Get out of the house

Thinking beyond the Twitter bubble

Johnston, Axios: My social media policy for the newsroom would be: delete your Twitter account and dont use that as your window on the world; its a journalists echo chamber. Okay, thats a joke. But I do think its important in newsrooms to talk about the impact that it has. You can sit at your desk all the time with your nine Tweetdeck columns open and think you are on the ball and informed but you are not. Instead, we tell our reporters to call people on the telephone, get out of the house, go wander the halls of Congress, fly someplace and talk to people.

Hayes, MSNBC: I think there are definitely some ways in which Twitter anchors perception of things that are distortionary. The fact that all of us in this industry have medical-level addictions to it is probably not awesome and probably has some deleterious effects. But for me, the massive upside is I could not synthesize the raw amount of information I need to without Twitter, particularly once RSS died.

Brown, BuzzFeed: Twitter is an absolute cesspool. But I think as a journalist, you come to have a sense of who in your mentions is just yelling at you randomly and who you can actually have a conversation with. And I think actually more journalists should engage in those actual conversations with people who just seem kind of confused, not the people who are, you know, in your mentions screaming at you, calling you a liar, etc. But the people who are like, well, what about this thing? I know its not exactly replicable. But I have had conversations on Twitter where I had someone come at me with something thats just not correct. And talk them out of it. I know, its weird. Its wild, but its doable.

Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: If you looked at Twitter after the recent Democratic presidential debate, my entire timeline was filled with criticism of Pete Buttigieg. Meanwhile hes polling really well. That discrepancy reminds me of something  we thought Trump couldnt win in 2016 because we all hated him and thought he was a joke. Im seeing the same thing happening with the Democratic candidates today. That to me indicates that we havent learned anything.

Nuzzi, New York: Sometimes it feels like the whole world is reacting one way to a candidate or to something that happened during a debate or to a specific story thats come out because of how loud a certain faction of society is on Twitter. So I do try to remind myself that the entire electorate is not represented in these couple hundred Twitter accounts. But its not like I have my group of regular folks who I check in with when something like that is happening, to see if the regular folks agree. But I do think some of the Twitter is not real life stuff has been overblownTwitter is part of real life. And its also very influential in terms of how the media seems to talk about whats happening in politics. And in that sense, it can become real life pretty quickly, when it colors how the news is talked about. I dont really have a definitive way to think about this, but its something that I am actively thinking about and trying to not be stupid about, especially going into 2020.

Herndon, New York Times: There are populations that are over-represented online: young people, college educated folks, a certain class of white folks. If you only extrapolate from there, I think people overdo that stuff from the left and underdo that stuff from the middle. And there are a lot of Never Trump views online that dont have a constituency in caucus. I think that it is true that Twitter isnt real life, but Im pretty sure that a study said that the people who were most underrepresented on Twitter in the Democratic electorate were black people in the South who are not college educated  that is not the demographic that people who say Twitter isnt real life are talking about. I think thats a reason we should go to those communities and reflect their concerns. Thats the conversation I wish came out of Twitter isnt real life is one thats about representing the full diversity of the electorate. But its usually not.

Haines, Associated Press: I think a lot about the intersection of race and this election, and what I realized is a few things. One, I think we say all the time as journalists, or black journalists, that black voters are not a monolith, you know, but I think it goes even beyond that. A lot of times the shorthand for black voters is the urban vote. And this kind of follows up into this kind of monolithic narrative.

That does not mean that they are not also issues voters, right. So when you think about black voters in those term, that means reframing who youre talking about when you talk about women, when we talk about educated voters, when we talk about blue collar workers, or talking about Midwestern voters, faith voters, voters who care about the Supreme Court, voters who care about abortion. We often get into the default setting in thinking issues voters means white voters. And frankly that is missing huge swaths of the electorate who are highly influential in our primary and general election process.

Johnston, Axios: Political journalists tend to get swept up in the day-to-day drip, drip, drip of coverage. Amid the myopia of so much election coverage, big trends and big stories are overlooked. Thats why we identified the themes we want our journalists to think about in 2020 and then get them to go force the campaigns to talk about them. We picked seven issues that we think are very important and we plan to spend the election year going out on the trail and talking to the campaigns and voters about these issues. What if we find a candidate doesnt have a policy on climate change, or China or the future of capitalism? Thats great, lets go call and ask him to make one because we think this is an important topic that the next leader of the United States should have a position on.

Vega, WNYC: The fact that this is an administration that has been explicit about wanting to undo the legislative gains that communities of color have made in this country, including things like the Fair Housing Act and asylum policy and others, that is absolutely newsworthy.

Adler, Reuters: We want to be very issue-oriented. One of our tenets is to cover what matters in peoples lives, rather than a lot of the noise that occurs. We picked as our main election themesin part because they are of wide global importance as well as domestic importancethe economy, immigration, climate change, effects of the trade war with China, and the upcoming US census to define the electorate. Were going to try to look hard at all those issues and look at how they affect people, both in the US and elsewhere. Were obviously going to cover the race. You cant not cover the race. But again, were going to try to look at whats going on from the context of how it affects not only the US but the rest of the world.

Page, USA Today: Weve always listened to voters, but you have to listen to voters in a way that doesnt make assumptions about what they mean or what theyre going to say. That is something we are trying really hard to do, and the framework of our coverage for 2020 involves a bigger effort to make sure that were talking not only to campaigns but also to voters, and that we are prepared to hear what it is voters are telling us. Ill give you an example of something I failed to do in 2015I would do interviews at rallies, and people would tell me things that I knew were untrue, and I thought they were just fringey or just wrong. I did not understand that there was a disinformation campaign going on. So for example, I interviewed somebody at a rally and they said they were supporting Donald Trump. And I said, Well, why are you supporting Donald Trump? He said, Well, the Pope has endorsed Donald Trump. And I said, You know what, Im pretty sure that Pope has not endorsed Donald Trump. And this voter said, Oh, yeah he had. I read it. And I just let it go, because I knew that the Pope had not endorsed Donald Trump. But what I should have heard wasmaybe theres a campaign to put out that information.

Nuzzi, New York: Its very easy to get in the weeds on stuff that we feel like everybody knows, thats actually not something that any normal human being would know and it would be interesting if you were to stop and explain it.

Brill, Newsguard: Most people dont understand that if youre doing a story about X, hours and hours and hours of work went into it. Because the only other time they see journalists is when theyre sitting on Fox or MSNBC or CNN just pontificating. Every time a news site links to something else that a journalist has done, whether its their notes or the text of an interview or anything like that, it really drives home the point that a lot of work went into this and we believe in our work and we want you to see our work.

Herndon, New York Times: I think if you avoid bad faith-ness and avoid talking downits the same level of engagement I would give to a source if they didnt like something that was in the story, or a politician that has disagreed with the characterization. I think that there are things that, if I am willing to give that to someone of means who can call the paper and get their concerns heard out, I can do that for regular folks who are tweeting that. I cant respond to every single one, but I do think its an opportunity to just say what the thinking was. It doesnt mean backing down from the reporting, it means telling folks that this is my role.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.
Speaker of the Council of Representatives, Fawzia Zainal, has affirmed that the deep-rooted Bahraini-Egyptian ties are a distinguished role model for relations between countries.

In an interview with the Egyptian Al Akhbar newspaper, the speaker stressed that Bahraini women are lucky because the kingdoms leadership believes in the importance of their role and influence in society, and therefore paved the way for them to assume their responsibilities in building the nation.

They are also lucky because the Bahraini citizens have a long history of civilisational and cultural awareness, which helped women to participate in public life with confidence and competence, she added.

She indicated that Bahraini women had joined public education as early as the 1920s, and then obtained the right to political participation, stressing that after His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifas Accession to the Throne in 1999, HM the Kings Reform Project was launched, and provided Bahraini women with all the legislative and legal tools that have consolidated their role, and contributed to their success in attaining multiple national achievements.

The speaker asserted that the Bahraini Womens Day is celebrated every December 1 to highlight the Bahraini womens achievements across various fields, noting that Bahraini women have become basic partners in the kingdoms sustainable development march, alongside men.

She affirmed that Bahrain has become a leader in ensuring women their full rights thanks to the National Action Charter which guaranteed their effective participation in public life, which enabled them to prove their distinguished abilities, citing the election of the first woman at the helm of the Council of Representatives, the success of six women to win six seats at the elected Representatives Council, and the appointment of nine women as members of the Shura Council.
Moroccos Raja Casablanca Saturday made a giant stride towards the semi-finals of the Arab Cup also known as the Mohammed VI Cup after beating Mouloudia Club of Algiers during the first leg of the quarter-finals.

The visiting side carried day with a 2-1 score line largely in favor of Moroccans.

Dominated during the first half, Raja leveled the score thanks to penalty kick by Mouhssine Moutouali. The Casablanca-based outfit stepped the play and sealed victory after Ben Malango netted the second goal to give the lead.

The home side took the early lead from Samy Friouis boots. Mouloudia were reduced to 10 after Chamseddine Harrag was sent off the pitch following a hard challenge on Soufiane Rahimi.

The two teams will meet in Casablanca in February for the second leg.

The away win and the two goals provide Raja with a comfortable lead to march towards the semi-final of the tournament.

To advance to the quarter-finals, the Moroccan side got rid of domestic league and city rival Wydad Casablanca following a thrilling second leg match. The Greens came from behind to draw 4-4 during the match for an aggregate rule showing 5-5 on the score in favor of Raja.
Carlos Ghosn claimed Thursday he organised his dramatic escape from bail in Japan alone as the disgraced auto tycoon enjoyed his first days of freedom in Beirut despite an Interpol arrest notice.

The exact circumstances of the former Renault-Nissan bosss escape from a case he said was rigged were unclear but media reports described a plot that had all the trappings of a spy novel. Turkey said seven people had been detained for questioning, including four pilots, over how the wanted tycoon was able to transit through Istanbul.

Ghosn, who had been under house arrest in Tokyo since April, was believed to be holed up his central Beirut residence, where visitors filed in and out under the scrutiny of TV cameras.

Private operatives

A Lebanese judicial source has already said however that Lebanon and Japan do not have an extradition agreement under which Ghosn -- who holds Lebanese, French and Brazilian nationalities -- could be sent back to Tokyo.

Ghosn stands accused in Japan of deferring part of his salary until after his retirement and concealing this from shareholders, as well as syphoning off millions in Nissan cash for his own purposes.

According to Japans Kyodo news agency, Ghosn was smuggled out with the help of two private security operatives who pretended to be part of a music band for a Christmas party at his residence.

Quoting a Lebanese consultant in Tokyo, Kyodo said Ghosn hid in an instrument case before boarding a private jet -- a scenario a member of Ghosns entourage has previously denied.

One of the operatives was a former Marine employed by a US security firm while the second worked for a Lebanese firm, Kyodo said.

Turkey arrests

Ghosn denied through the Paris-based agency handling his PR that his family had anything to do with his escape. The media reports saying my wife Carole and other family members played a role in my departure from Japan are falsehoods. I alone organised my departure, he said.

Meanwhile Turkey also announced that it was holding seven individuals in connection with Ghosns extraordinary escape. The investigation is focused on two flights. The first, a Bombardier labelled TC-TSR, flew from Osaka in Japan, landed in Istanbul at 5:15 am and parked in a hangar.

The second was a private jet to Beirut, a Bombardier Challenger 300 TC-RZA, which left 45 minutes later, according to the Turkish news agency DHA. Ghosn was able to enter Lebanon on a French passport, according to airport documents seen by AFP.

NHK reported that the court in Tokyo had allowed Ghosn to keep a second French passport so long as it was kept in a locked case with the key held by his lawyers.
A pair of New Years Eve pocket vetoes by Mayor Jim Kenney left Philadelphias poorest taxpayers and residents with little to celebrate. The mayor declined to sign, thereby allowing to expire, two recently passed City Council bills to raise the annual property tax exemption for homeowners and to provide a wage tax rebate for lower-income individuals who live and/or work in Philly. Kenneys Dec. 31 letter to Council President Darrell L. Clarke offered general support for these goals but expressed concerns about the timing as well as the fiscal, administrative, and other impacts of the two bills.

In a city where one in four residents, or about 400,000 people, are living in profound poverty, ironing out budgetary and bureaucratic kinks ought to matter far less than expediting assistance to people whose struggles are exacerbated by the high costs the city imposes on pretty much everyone who lives, works, or does business here. Despite what is widely described as a robust national and local economy, the percentage of Philly residents in deep poverty only declined from 25.7% in 2016 to 24.5% in 2018.

The wage tax measure Councilmember Allan Domb sponsored, and the homeowner exemption increase Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson introduced on Clarkes behalf, went through the customary legislative process  unlike, say, the unilateral pocket veto deployed on the last day of a four-year mayoral term. The legislative process at least provided opportunities for interested parties to ask questions and get answers.

Kenneys 2019 budget raised the homeowner exemption  the amount of property value that is untaxed  by $10,000 in the 2019 budget and another $5,000 in the 2020 spending plan. Clarkes office said the vetoed bill would have increased it another $5,000, from $45,000 to $50,000. If the estimated 220,000 eligible homeowners all availed themselves of the exemption it would cost Philadelphia about $15 million annually. Domb, in a Dec. 31 letter to Kenney, said his wage tax bill would have provided an average $800 annual refund for about 60,000 households, or 150,000 residents. The yearly cost would be $25 million, he said.

 READ MORE: Council reached consensus on ten-year-tax abatement reform. They should show their work to the public. | Editorial

 READ MORE: New federal report surprises: Philadelphia poverty down, income up

That combined $40 million is hardly an inconsequential loss to the city treasury. The real estate development boom that for a decade has helped replenish the citys coffers and brighten its reputation undoubtedly will be impacted in some fashion by the mayors signing into law a plan to reduce Phillys controversial 10-year property tax abatement on new residential construction. Downsizing the abatement program should generate an additional $265 million for the city and the school district  not an inconsequential sum  in the next decade. Thats on top of a city budget that has increased by $1 billion during the first term of Kenneys administration.

Its odd that a mayor who has expressed interest in acting faster in doing something about the citys poverty rate would skip the opportunity that these two bills offer. The modest but potentially meaningful tax relief embodied in the two vetoed bills should become law sooner rather than later. Fortunately, the rejected initiatives can be taken up again in the councils new session. Even with four new members on board, the citys legislative body ought to be able to provide the mayor with something he is willing to sign.
: Students of Raja Serfoji Government Arts College here staged a protest on Monday, condemning the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, police said.

The students raised slogans against the attack and staged a demonstration, police added.

Indian Students Federation secretary Aravindswamy presided over the demonstration.

Security was beefed up in the area, police said.

Violence broke out at the JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ceremony was full of surprises, as favourites were beaten and winning performers gave impassioned political speeches.

World War I movie 1917 and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, set in 1960s Tinseltown, won the top prizes at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday as the Hollywood awards season got underway.

The Sam Mendes-directed 1917 took Best Motion Picture  Drama and Best Director, beating favourites The Irishman and Marriage Story, both from Netflix.

The nostalgic Once Upon a Time in Hollywood from Sony Pictures won the Best Motion Picture  Musical or Comedy, and had the biggest Golden Globe haul, with three awards.

Martin Scorseses high-profile and costly gangster epic for Netflix went home empty-handed on a disappointing night for the streaming service that could affect its Oscar chances in February.

Netflix won just a single Golden Globe in the movie race, for Laura Derns supporting role as a ruthless divorce lawyer in Marriage Story.

Awkwafina won Best Actress in a Motion Picture  Musical or Comedy for her performance in The Farewell. [Mike Blake/Reuters]

British director Mendes expressed surprise when he was named Best Director for 1917, an immersive film based on his grandfathers experiences in the trenches.

That is a big surprise, said a stunned Mendes. I really hope this means people will turn up and see it.

Joaquin Phoenix, who played a terrifying Joker, and Renee Zellweger, who portrayed Judy Garland in Judy, took the drama movie actor honours. Taron Egerton (Rocketman) and Awkwafina (The Farewell) were first-time winners in the comedy/musical field.

We all know there is no  competition between us, Phoenix told his fellow nominees, praising their beautiful, mesmerising work.

Tarantino won for the screenplay of his love letter to the industry, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, while Brad Pitt was a popular winner for playing a laid-back stunt double in the film.

Political mood

British comedian and actor Ricky Gervais, hosting the awards ceremony for the fifth time, threw caution to the wind with expletives and jabs about the dominance of streaming platforms, diversity and Hollywoods sexual misconduct scandal, which drew mostly nervous laughter from the room of celebrities.

Gervais was not the only celebrity at the boozy dinner to get political.

Michelle Williams gave an impassioned speech on womens rights as she accepted the award for her work on Fosse/Verdon [Paul Drinkwater/NBC Universal via Reuters]

Michelle Williams, who was named best actress in a limited TV series for Fosse/Verdon, gave an impassioned speech about reproductive rights and encouraged women to vote.

She said she had built a career of her choosing and wouldnt have been able to do this without employing a womans right to choose. To choose when to have my children and with whom.

Others, including absent winner Russell Crowe, for television series The Loudest Voice, spoke of the devastating bushfires in Australia and the dangers of global warming.

Patricia Arquette, winning for limited TV series The Act, expressed fears over heightened tension in the Middle East following the US killing of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani.

In the television competition, HBOs media dynasty show Succession and Amazon Studios quirky British comedy Fleabag were the big winners.

British performers took multiple prizes. In addition to Mendes, they included Succession and Fleabag stars Brian Cox and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Olivia Colman for The Crown, Rocketman actor Taron Egerton, and music duo Elton John and Bernie Taupin for original song (Im Gonna) Love Me Again.
Australian brands are donating 100 per cent of their profits to those who have been directly affected by the bushfires, with some of them pledging all of their earnings for the month of January.

Big name brands like Christopher Esber and Alex Perry, as well as smaller retailers like Status Anxiety, Acler Woman and Restated Vintage, are all jumping on board, posting about the devastation - and their humane response - on social media.

With an estimated 23 people dead, 576 homes razed to the ground since New Year's Eve and half a billion animals decimated, there has never been a better time to shop until you drop.

Faithfull the Brand have been raising funds and encouraging others to purchase its whimsical fashion on Instagram

International namesakes like Christopher Esber (left) and Alex Perry, as well as smaller retailers like Status Anxiety (right), Acler Woman and Restated Vintage, are all jumping on board

BEAUTY

When it comes to skincare essentials and wellness tonics, Frank Body is leading the charge with 100 per cent of January sales of their A-Beauty scrub going to Wires, the Country Fire Authority and the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS).

Carla Oates' The Beauty Chef will be doing the same for 48 hours with money going to the Red Cross, Wires and the NSW RFS and the sales from every lipstick sold by Mellow Cosmetics this month will be donated in the same way.

Nutrition brand Welle Co, which was founded by supermodel Elle Macpherson, will donate 100 per cent of its profit to the RFS, ending at 8pm on January 7.

Australian-owned Alya Skin will also be donating 100 per cent of their profits to the bushfire foundation.

Mecca has already donated $100,000 to the Red Cross bushfire recovery and The Body Shop Australia have done the same but with a $25,000 contribution.

Frank Body is leading the charge with 100 per cent of January sales of their A-Beauty scrub going to Wires, the Country Fire Authority and the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS)

FASHION

Iconic designer Alex Perry has pledged 100 per cent of sales to the NSW RFS from January 5 to 11 and between January 1 to 7 Faithfull the Brand will be donating to the RFS and Wires.

Which brands have already donated? Bared Footwear: Donated $15,000 to Salvation Army Country Road: $100,000 donated to the Australian Red Cross Spell: $20,000 donated to Country Fire Authority MECCA: $100,000 to the Red Cross bushfire recovery The Body Shop Australia: $25,000 donated to Australian Red Cross Advertisement

Fashion label Christopher Esber, known for styling the likes of Candice Swanepoel and Emily Ratajkowski, will be giving all of its sales to the NSW RFS between January 5 and 12.

Soho Boutique have opted to give all of its profits on January 6 to Wildlife Victoria and the Celeste Barber Fundraising Trust.

Jewellery brands Margot Mai and Amber Sceats are similarly involved, with the former running for this week and the latter online until January 7.

Leather goods in the form of bags and wallets from Status Anxiety will also be sold, with sales given to the Australian Red Cross.

Restated Vintage are selling a $50 t-shirt with all money going directly to the bushfire relief funds.

Between January 1 to 7 Faithfull the Brand (pictured) will be donating to the RFS and Wires

SWIMWEAR

It's summer Down Under meaning many of our favourite brands swimwear brands would ordinarily be seeing a boost in sales at this time of year.

Many of them are now generously donating their profits to the bushfire appeal, with Lahana, SheMadeMe and LilandEmm all donating 100 per cent of sales made.

Seafolly Australia has expressed its deepest sympathies to the victims and volunteer firefighters still at war with the blazes, sharing links for the necessary donation pages.

Alex Perry (his post pictured) is donating 100 per cent of his profits to the RFS
Retail chief Aodhan Connolly has welcomed clarification from the Department for Infrastructure around the introduction of a new Belfast parking system after it gave three days notice of a major change in payment options.

The department announced on Friday it would be switching from the Parkmobile application to pay for on-street parking in Belfast, Lisburn and Newry to new partner JustPark.

The application allows the public to pay for parking through their mobile phones.

The move prompted criticism after it was announced the switch would be made by January 6, with just three days between the announcement and the implementation date.

Director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium (NIRC) Mr Connolly said the news was important for shoppers and workers.

"Three days notice? Really?" he said, posting on Twitter.

"If you had worked with us we could have let shoppers and biz know about this."

Other Parkmobile users hit out at the changeover, with one saying it was "no doubt a commercial decision".

Another said: "Three days notice is poor. Plenty of people use this app and will no doubt feel the wrath of parking wardens because of this poorly communicated info."

Mr Connolly later said the Department for Infrastructure had been in touch with him regarding the issue.

"There is a two week overlap [between providers] and people will be let know by text."

He said there would be a reduction in transaction charges from 15p down to 8p.

Consumers would be required to download the Just Park app before January 16.

The Department for Infrastructure said Parkmobile customers would be informed by text of the change.

"There is a two week overlap period, when it will still be possible to use both the Parkmobile and JustPark Apps," a spokesman said.

"If customers wish to continue using Cashless Parking they will need to register their vehicle and method of payment details with JustPark or download their app.

"Once registered, they can pay for and manage their parking using a mobile phone, mobile app or online. The change to JustPark will benefit customers by reducing the cost of the transaction fee from 15p per parking session to 8p.

"Existing Cashless Parking stickers on Pay and Display machines, which indicate how to pay, are being removed and replaced with JustPark stickers."

For more information on cashless parking visit www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/street-and-street-parking or www.justpark.com.
Lenovo has taken to CES 2020 to release the worlds first detachable Chromebook in the budget segment with the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook. As its branding suggests, the new gadget falls into Lenovos affordable lineup at under $300. Its also not the most powerful Chrome OS laptop as a result. But it does bring quite a lot to the table.

In terms of design, the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook is remarkable in that it doesnt necessarily look cheap. The company has given the tablet-style device a dual-tone aluminum build in a silvery-blue and gray finish. That sits within a kick-stand-enhanced casing so that it can be easily used at least partially hands-free. An evenly-spaced but not insubstantial bezel houses the 10.1-inch display.

As mentioned above gadget is detachable. That means that it connects to and disconnects from a keyboard as needed. In this case, that keyboard accessory ships with the device  which weighs under a pound with the keyboard detached. Stylus support is part of the package but those accessories will be sold as an optional device.

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Under the hood, Lenovo equipped its IdeaPad Duet Chromebook with a respectable octa-core Mediatek chipset. Up to 4GB RAM and 128GB storage back that up.

Not just a first for Lenovo in the budget detachable Chromebook market

The performance of the new Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook should be impressive for the price bracket. But this device isnt just impressive as the first sub-$300 detachable Chrome OS gadget either.

Not only did Lenovo give the tablet an impressive-looking keyboard in a frame that should last for a long time. The company is also holding up a statement on the software side that not many Chrome OS OEMs have ever made if any. Lenovo says its IdeaPad Duet Chromebook will receive as many 8 years of automatic updates. That means this Chrome OS tablet should last around two years longer than its competitors on that front.

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The average Chromebook is given a shelf-life of up to six years after launch as per Google policy. Support for up to eight years means that buyers have just that little bit extra value-added to consider.

Specs

The specs in the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook arent anything to write home about in but thats not always a bad sign for a Chromebook. Thats especially true where portability takes precedence over raw power. The operating system is exceptionally efficient with even low-levels of memory and storage with this Chromebook is respectable, as laid out in the specifications provided by Lenovo.

Display 10.1 (19201200), 400-nits Processor Mediatek Helio P60T (Octa-core: 4xA73 2.0GHz) Graphics ARM G72 MP3 RAM Up to 4GB LPDDR4x Storage Up to 128GB eMMC Cameras Front: 2MP FF + LED Indicator

Rear: 8MP AF Audio Dual speakers, dual-array microphones Battery 7180 mAh Charging Up to 10 hours usage Connectivity Wi-Fi Inputs/Outputs 1x Type-C (USB 2.0+DP) OS Chrome OS Colors Just Black, Not Pink Dimensions Length: 9.44 in (239.8 mm)

Width: 6.29 in (159.8 mm)

Height: 0.29 in (7.35 mm) Weight 430g (w/o keyboard set), 0.94lbs Materials Dual-tone design with Aluminum Keyboard Set One-piece Trackpad, 88.5mm x 52mm

18mm key pitch

1.3mm key travel

Stand cover with 0-135 free stop

Pricing and availability

Now, Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook isnt slated to hit the market until May 2020. Thats just a few months away but theres no exact launch date. Lenovo hasnt said precisely where its budget-friendly detachable Chrome OS tablet will become available as of CES.

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Pricing will start out at just $279.99, helping the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook squeeze its way into the budget category. But it will certainly go up from there to land at the highest specs available, as listed above. Lenovo hasnt revealed how much the top model will cost just yet.
KB Home (NYSE:KBH), which is in the consumer durables business, and is based in United States, saw significant share price movement during recent months on the NYSE, rising to highs of US$36.80 and falling to the lows of US$32.54. Some share price movements can give investors a better opportunity to enter into the stock, and potentially buy at a lower price. A question to answer is whether KB Home's current trading price of US$34.91 reflective of the actual value of the mid-cap? Or is it currently undervalued, providing us with the opportunity to buy? Lets take a look at KB Homes outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if there are any catalysts for a price change.

See our latest analysis for KB Home

What is KB Home worth?

The stock seems fairly valued at the moment according to my valuation model. Its trading around 10% below my intrinsic value, which means if you buy KB Home today, youd be paying a reasonable price for it. And if you believe the companys true value is $38.92, then theres not much of an upside to gain from mispricing. Is there another opportunity to buy low in the future? Since KB Homes share price is quite volatile, we could potentially see it sink lower (or rise higher) in the future, giving us another chance to buy. This is based on its high beta, which is a good indicator for how much the stock moves relative to the rest of the market.

What does the future of KB Home look like?

NYSE:KBH Past and Future Earnings, January 6th 2020

Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Although value investors would argue that its the intrinsic value relative to the price that matter the most, a more compelling investment thesis would be high growth potential at a cheap price. KB Homes earnings over the next few years are expected to increase by 32%, indicating a highly optimistic future ahead. This should lead to more robust cash flows, feeding into a higher share value.

Story continues

What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? KBHs optimistic future growth appears to have been factored into the current share price, with shares trading around its fair value. However, there are also other important factors which we havent considered today, such as the financial strength of the company. Have these factors changed since the last time you looked at the stock? Will you have enough conviction to buy should the price fluctuates below the true value?

Are you a potential investor? If youve been keeping an eye on KBH, now may not be the most advantageous time to buy, given it is trading around its fair value. However, the optimistic prospect is encouraging for the company, which means its worth further examining other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to take advantage of the next price drop.

Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters  the fundamentals  before you make a decision on KB Home. You can find everything you need to know about KB Home in the latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in KB Home, you can use our free platform to see my list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
LONDON, ONT.Police say a 31-year-old man found inside a burning home in London, Ont., has died.

Emergency crews were called to the home around noon on Sunday.

Police say the man was treated at the scene then taken to hospital, where he died.

The mans name is not being released at this time.

The fire marshal has been called in to investigate.

It is not yet clear what caused the blaze.
Spike Lee (Credit: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Netflix has revealed details of its 2020 slate of movie releases, and it's a star-laden affair indeed.

Key among the titles is forthcoming biopic Mank, helmed by David Fincher, and focusing on Herman J. Mankiewicz and the writing of Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane.

Read more: The most exciting movies coming in 2020

Shot in black and white, Gary Oldman plays the iconic writer, with a supporting cast including Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance and Lily Collins.

The screenplay has been penned by Fincher's father, Howard 'Jack' Fincher.

British director Ben Wheatley will also be debuting his latest on the streaming service, an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, famously made into a movie by Hitchcock in 1940.

Ben Wheatley (Credit: Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)

Playing the married couple at the centre of the tantalising mystery will be Call Be By Your Name's Armie Hammer and Baby Driver's Lily James.

Meanwhile, veteran Oscar winner Ron Howard helms Hillbilly Elegy, adapted from J.D. Vance's memoir of the same name about an family in the Appalachians, starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close.

Spike Lee's latest will come via Netflix too, Da 5 Bloods, about a group of army veterans who return to Vietnam to try and find out what happened to their squad leader and also find buried treasure.

Read more: The most popular Netflix movies of 2019

Black Panther's Chadwick Boseman stars, alongside Norm Lewis and Delroy Lindo.

Other highlights include Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams' comedy Eurovision, and Charlie Kaufman's road trip thriller I'm Thinking Of Ending Things, starring Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette and David Thewlis.

You can check out a full round-up on this Twitter thread...
Mainland China equity market finished session lower after giving up early gains on Monday, 06 January 2020, with investor sentiment dampened by declines in New York shares late last week amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran, shrugging off positive cues such as progress in US-China trade talks and Beijing's policy support to prop up the economy. At closing bell, the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index eased 0.01%, or 0.38 point, to 3,083.41. The Shenzhen Composite Index, which tracks stocks on China's second exchange, added 0.44%, or 7.83 points, to 1,768.68. The blue-chip CSI300 index was down 0.38%, or 15.66 points, to 4,129.30.

Investors were concerned about worsening U. S.-Iran relations after news that the U. S. military had killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force. The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Forces, which is an umbrella for dozens of militias that are part of the Iraqi security apparatus but include factions that swear allegiance to Iran's supreme leader.

Tensions in the Gulf region escalated with Tehran vowing to avenge the death of General Soleimani and its allies in Iraq pressing to expel US troops from the country.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi condemned the overnight strike, calling it a flagrant breach of the terms underwriting the presence of US forces in the country. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared three days of mourning for Soleimani's death and said that a hard revenge awaits criminals, responsible for the attack.

On the trade front, the South China Morning Post reported on Sunday a Chinese delegation plans to travel to Washington on Jan. 13 for the signing of the US-China Phase 1 trade deal.

Gold miners pocketed most of the gains, with Gansu Ronghua Industry Group (600311 CH) and Chifeng Jilong Gold Mining (600988 CH) both soaring by 10.08%. Shandong Gold Mining (600547 CH) jumped by 9%.

Energy shares rallied as oil prices gained, with index heavyweight PetroChina rising as much as 5.5%.

ECONOMIC NEWS: China Private Sector Growth Eases In December- China's private sector growth eased in December as both manufacturing and services logged weaker growth, survey data from IHS Markit showed Monday. The Caixin composite Purchasing Managers' Index fell to 52.6 from 53.2 in November. However, a score above 50 indicates expansion. The Purchasing Managers' Index for the service sector dropped to 52.5 from a seven-month high of 53.5 a month ago. Manufacturing output rose solidly at the end of the year, despite the rate of increase easing to a three-month low.

CURRENCY NEWS: The yuan was quoted at 6.976 per U. S. dollar, 0.16% weaker than the previous close of 6.965.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A leftist challenger won Croatia's highly contested presidential election on Sunday, beating a conservative incumbent - a rare victory by a liberal in recent votes in central Europe. With 99% of the vote counted, Zoran Milanovic - a former Croatian prime minister - had 53% while Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, the country's first female head of state when she won five years ago, had 47%.

The result is a blow for the ruling conservatives while Croatia holds the European Union's rotating presidency, and before a parliamentary election later this year.

Milanovic sends a message of reconciliation and unity

Addressing his supporters at campaign headquarters, Milanovic sent a message of reconciliation and unity and promised he would be willing to work with any government in power.

Read: Incumbent Grabar Kitarovic votes in Croatia runoff

Prone to populist outbursts while prime minister, Milanovic lost popularity after the ouster of his government in 2016, but convinced his voters on the campaign trail that he has learned from the experience and matured. Even though Croatia's presidency is largely ceremonial, the election is seen as an important test before a parliamentary election expected later this year.

Read: EU chair Croatia votes in the tight presidential runoff

Although Croatia is a member of the EU, it still has corruption problems and economic woes  issues not resolved since its devastating 1991-95 war to break free of the Serb-led Yugoslav federation. It also comes at a crucial time for Croatia in the EU stage, as the country assumed the EU's rotating presidency on January 1 for the first time since joining the bloc in 2013.

This means that the EU's newest member state will be tasked for six months with overseeing Britain's divorce from the bloc on January 31 and the start of post-Brexit talks.

Read: EU chair Croatia votes in the presidential runoff
The first time Ryan John Smith threatened to blow up the Monroe County Courthouse he was remorseful about it, according to the county district attorneys office.

Authorities didnt charge the 23-year-old former Pocono Township resident with a crime because he claimed he was drunk and upset when he sent the threatening Facebook message in June, according to a news release from the district attorneys office.

So police decided not to extradite him from California.

But he allegedly sent a second message to the county sheriffs offices Facebook page on Dec. 22. In this message he claimed again he would blow up the courthouse, records say.

So he was charged with threats to use weapons of mass destruction, harassment and three counts of making terroristic threats for crimes stemming from both incidents.

According to the news release, Smith learned authorities were looking for him and he sent a third message Jan. 2 threatening to kill every judge and person who works in that court house and claiming police would never catch him.

Authorities caught him Saturday in Menifee, California, the news release says. He lives in Hemet, California. He remains in custody pending extradition to Pennsylvania. Charges are pending for the alleged Jan. 2 threats, the news release says.

His message sent June 13 said I am going to bomb the courthouse Friday, court records say. Smith told police he was upset due to an outstanding warrant for a shoplifting charge in East Stroudsburg, according to the news release.

The Dec. 22 message allegedly said Im going to bomb the court house.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
Obsessive TV viewing is taking over some people's lives. [Photo: Getty]

People are being treated for binge watching addiction, it has emerged.

In the first therapy of its kind, staff on Londons prestigious Harley Street are reportedly helping those whose reliance on TV shows is taking over their lives.

Obsessively watching crime shows nearly cost a 35-year-old man his job, with the patient glued to his screen for up to seven hours a day, The Telegraph reported.

READ MORE: Being a shopaholic 'should be considered a mental illness'

Adam Cox, a psychotherapist at Harley Street who treated three patients for binge watching addiction last year, said: All three had fallen into a dangerous loop where they felt unable to switch off.

They just had to watch the next episode, and the one after that and the one after that.

A gripping storyline is thought to release the feel-good hormone dopamine, which regulates the brains reward and pleasure centre.

The same chemical is also released after drinking or taking illicit drugs.

While users may get a buzz initially, they eventually require more of a dopamine fix for the same effect, setting the groundwork for addiction.

With a bank of episodes at your disposal, viewers of streaming services no longer have to wait to find the answer to a cliff hanger, leading to instant gratification.

Netflix, Amazon Prime and some other streaming services also automatically take viewers to the next episode in a series, encouraging them to spend hours glued to screens.

Some also worry the accessibility of streaming services on iPads and phones means TV watching is no longer restricted to your lounge.

READ MORE: Men with drug or alcohol addiction are 'more likely to commit domestic violence'

The aforementioned 35-year-old patient reportedly started on Breaking Bad, before moving onto the true crime documentary Making a Murderer.

He would watch until he was too exhausted to keep his eyes open, finally falling asleep around 4am, Mr Cox said.

The patient, like others on Harley Streets books, was treated via counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

Story continues

CBT is a talking therapy that helps patients manage their problems by changing how they think and behave, according to the NHS.

Netflix has skyrocketed in popularity, from 44m global subscribers in 2013 up to an estimated 166m last year.

The average Brit reportedly spends two hours a day watching Netflix, soaring to four or more hours in those aged 18-to-34, Ofcom figures show.

Compulsive viewing seems to be encouraged by big wigs at Netflix, with its CEO Reed Hastings famously citing sleep as its biggest competitor in 2017.

READ MORE: Up to one in four children are 'addicted to smartphones'

TV bingeing is not the only unusual addiction to arise in recent times.

The NHS announced last year those addicted to gaming would be able to get support at the UKs first specialist clinic.

This came after the World Health Organization classified it as a mental health disorder.

Binge watching addiction can only be treated privately.

There is also calls for shopping addiction to be recognised as a real condition, Yahoo UK previously reported.

Netflix declined to comment on The Telegraphs article. Yahoo UK has approached the company.
COLUMBIA, S.C., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Jan. 26-Feb. 1 will officially be South Carolina School Choice Week, thanks to an official proclamation from Gov. McMaster. Hundreds of city, county, and state leaders across the U.S. have issued similar proclamations recognizing School Choice Week.

An impressive 1,049 events and activities, planned by parents, teachers, community leaders, and other event organizers, will take place in South Carolina during the Week. Nationwide, 51,300 pep rallies, festivals, school fairs, legislative breakfasts, movie screenings and other events have been independently planned. These events aim to raise awareness about educational opportunity and spark conversation about the diversity of choices parents want for their children.

"We are grateful that Gov. McMaster issued this proclamation," said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "We are excited for South Carolinians to use this time to talk about what kinds of education work best for them. It is our hope that families in South Carolina, and everywhere, can find the educational setting that helps their children thrive in 2020."

As a nonpartisan, nonpolitical public awareness effort, National School Choice Week shines a positive spotlight on effective education options for students, families, and communities around the country. From January 26 through February 1, 2020, more than 50,000 independently-planned events will be held in celebration of the Week. For more information, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com.

For more information, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com , or visit www.facebook.com/schoolchoiceweek .

SOURCE National School Choice Week

Related Links

www.schoolchoiceweek.com


The 25th edition of Carpet Oasis, which aims to attract thousands of tourists, especially rug lovers, opened in Dubai yesterday (January 5) at Marina Port Rashid.



Inaugurated by Sultan bin Sulayem, DP World Group chairman & CEO and chairman of Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation (PCFC), the exhibition is organized by Dubai Customs and runs until February 16 in conjunction with the Dubai Shopping Festival.



Over its 25 years of age the Carpet Oasis exhibition saw a number of remarkable achievements. In 1990, 40 exhibitors from different parts of the world participated in the exhibition, and in 1998, more than 90,000 unique carpets and rugs were exhibited. In 2004, the tallest artwork (100m) in the Gulf region was exhibited.



In 2008, the exhibition sold carpets for Dh27 million ($7.4 million), and in 2009, the most expensive carpet, which dated back to 1847, was sold for a record Dh5 million. In 2016, 250,000 carpets and rugs, worth Dh2.5 billion, were exhibited.



Sultan bin Sulayem said: There is more than one thing that makes this exhibition different than any other, which is the uniqueness of the carpets coming from different famous countries along the silk road. The Carpet Oasis exhibition is an annual event that promotes Dubai as a world tourist and business hub in line with the eight principles of governance launched by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai and in fulfilment of the 50-Year Charter development plan. Organizing these events reflects the efforts of PCFC in encouraging and facilitating legitimate trade and supporting the national efforts in hosting the Expo 2020.



Ahmed Mahboob Musabih, director general of Dubai Customs said: The Carpet Oasis has made noticeable success for 25 consecutive years since its launch for the first time in 1996. The exhibition, a key event of the Dubai Shopping Festival, is among a few exhibitions in the world to focus on handcrafted silk and wool carpets.



The exhibition will help towards more economic diversity in the emirate following the directives and wise vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai.



He noted that the carpet trade sector in the Middle East, Africa and Asia is growing, and more companies are now involved in manufacturing hand-made carpets and rugs.



Farida Fadhil, head of Carpet Oasis organizing committee said: A large number of renowned exhibitors take part in this years edition of the Carpet Oasis. We chose the Mina Rashid Marina to be the venue of the exhibition, which, on its own, is a tourist attraction, and for that we are expecting heavy footfall this year from rug lovers and cruise tourists.



Big space is also another advantage which will enable visitors to shop freely with convenience and choose from thousands of different exquisite and delicate rugs and carpets. Not only this, visitors can learn more about the carpet industry thanks to the book corner and the carpeting platform available in place.  TradeArabia News Service
The last time an astronaut walked on the moon was over 50 years ago. Now, NASA has a plan to get back - and help humanity set its sights on even farther destinations in the process.

The Artemis program is the agency's first crewed moon mission in decades.It carries some historic weight on its shoulders.

In Greek mythology, Artemis is the goddess of the moon. She also is the twin sister of Apollo, the god of the ancient Greeks and Romans after whom NASA named its first moon missions. The sister symbolism is doubly intentional: NASA expects the program to bring the first woman to the moon.

The plan is to get her there by 2024 - a date that complies with White House pressure. But budget and timing concerns have plagued the mission. Despite those challenges, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has said the agency can find a way to get a mission to the moon within the deadline.

Artemis has multiple goals and a massive to-do list. NASA plans to use U.S. companies to deliver payloads to the moon's surface in preparation for human missions. Then, it will use the Space Launch System, the most powerful rocket ever made, to send the Orion spacecraft on a test mission into lunar orbit and beyond. Afterward, NASA plans to send a crew into orbit and eventually to the moon itself. There are plans for a moon-orbiting command module, the Gateway, too.

All that activity is designed to help scientists learn more about the moon, including its never-explored South Pole, which is thought to be home to ice deposits the agency hopes to study and eventually use.

The project focuses on lunar exploration, but it has an even larger goal. NASA aims to use the moon as a proving ground. The plan is to use the technology and science tested during Artemis to propel a future crewed mission to Mars.

It's an intriguing prospect - but funding and timing will determine Artemis's fate. NASA received less money than it asked for in 2020 appropriations, and it recently clashed with contractor Boeing over whether to fast-track an upper stage of the rocket that will take astronauts to the moon. As a result, it's unclear whether Artemis will unfold according to plans.
Let me build on Hearst Connecticut Media columnist Dan Haars insightful analysis under the recently published headline: Connecticuts Lost Decade.

First, the numbers speak for themselves  regional and national underperformance in job creation, GDP growth and home price appreciation. Most of this economic underperformance goes back even longer than the last decade, as Connecticut has not added net new jobs in a generation. Our addiction to debt, specifically underfunded pension liabilities, began in 1939. Regardless of when it started, what people care about is what we are going to do to change the direction and restart our growth engines.

Everyone is an expert at describing the problems; Dan is constructive by offering some broad solutions which deserve attention. He notes that Connecticuts relentless recession is in part driven by tax increases to pay for decades-old debts. Our three previous governors each increased the income tax, something I have refused to do; holding the line on tax rates sent a message to the business community that turning Connecticut around means living within our means.

Living within our means also means taming spending by addressing the underlying growth in fixed costs, including reducing our borrowing, thereby lowering the costs of paying back what we have borrowed, which increased by well over 50 percent in the last decade.

My efforts to reduce our borrowing, reducing our overall debt burden and a continued effort to build upon on our historically high savings is drawing positive attention by investors, credit ratings agencies and news outlets, in addition to reduced borrowing costs for all taxpayers.

Other significant costs include state employee and retiree health care, and our current budget includes millions in savings by better bidding and more outcome-based payment systems. The underfunded pension liability is real, but it is worth noting that over 70 percent of the underfunding at the State Employees Retirement System is with retirees, and all new employees are covered under a hybrid defined contribution/benefit plan  very similar to what large employers in the private sector provide to their employees. Simply put, weve stopped digging the hole and weve begun climbing out. Approximately 30 percent of state employees are retirement eligible by 2022, which provides state government with an opportunity to redesign itself  streamline processes, leverage modern technology and adopt private-sector best practices to reduce cost while improving services. Weve already begun initiatives to centralize business functions that will help reduce the states cost structure.

Dan correctly points out that there is more room for efficiencies in government, especially in cities and towns. I may have been premature in pushing my voluntary regionalization efforts, making it easier for our towns and cities to share back-office services, joint purchasing and regional delivery of some services. I want to work collaboratively with the mayors and first selectmen, since reducing the overhead and advancing joint service delivery models associated with 169 towns and cities is a key to reducing property taxes. In the meantime, I will lead by example. I recently worked collaboratively with our neighboring states to bid for wind power at the same time and we achieved the lowest cost bids in the country. Our state government has started joint purchasing across a statewide online platform operated by Amazon, making it easier and cheaper to buy many products, a system and opportunity we will be rolling out to our towns and cities this year.

As regards to economic growth and jobs, Dan is absolutely right when he states that Connecticut has lost some of its entrepreneurial mojo  we led the nation in start-ups in the 19th and 20th centuries. We were not a leader in IT and computer science, which drove much of the economy over the last generation, but our amazing colleges and universities are leaders in quantum computing and life sciences, which positions us well for the 21st century economy. Just last week, the Connecticut Post headlined States start-ups hit best venture totals in five years, which is nearly two times where it was the year before  another tangible example of our growing venture ecosystem.

Connecticut is the Silicon Valley of advanced manufacturing with the most sophisticated jet engines, helicopters and nuclear subs made right here with multi-year contracts and thousands of unfilled jobs. Dan is right that Connecticut must step up its game in workforce development; we cannot afford to leave anyone behind in training for the 21st century economy, and our Workforce Council led by the private sector in collaboration with our high schools, colleges and labor unions is making sure that companies looking for the best workers can find them right here.

Attracting and keeping the next generation of talent has been tough for Connecticut since we still lack a true magnet city with enough critical mass to attract millennial college graduates, as Dan emphasized. But the turnaround is beginning and all you need to do is look at the recent articles in the Hearst papers: In southwestern CT, apartment boom continues; Stamford has seen thousands of new units built over the last decade, thousands more in the offing, with commercial towers under construction or soon to be built in the downtown area. This is not unique to Stamford  the New Haven Independent recently documented the impressive boom in New Haven real estate development, and Hartford is growing, as well.

Dan points out that Connecticut has missed much of the housing boom over the last decade; by the same token our housing is up to 40 percent less expensive than Boston and New York, with great schools and easy access to parks and beaches. Companies and young people are giving Connecticut a second look.

Dan headlines that Connecticut has to keep working on cities and transportation. The two are closely related  cities as major transportation hubs, with nearby affordable housing, with easier access to New York and Boston (nice places to visit, wouldnt want to live there) are key to our economic future. Easier public transportation interconnecting Waterbury or Hartford or New London via New Haven as the transit center of the state makes our location a key strategic asset. If Bridgeport is one hour by rail away from midtown Manhattan at less than 50 percent of the cost, it is an absolute game changer.

Dan yearns for centrist politics, as evidenced by Massachusetts with a Republican governor and a Democratic legislature or Connecticuts 50/50 Senate split two years ago and the resulting bipartisan budget. It was, however, the most recent Democratic budget, which was passed on time, that contributed to Standard & Poors improved outlook for the state  the first time in 18 years. Connecticut and Massachusetts have both had Republican and Democratic governors, but that was not the differentiator. Rather, Massachusetts has had governors with a business background, while Connecticut has had governors with a political background, until now.

Dan adds that Connecticut needs a solid dose of attitude changes. I truly believe in our great state and in our future, and I hope there is accumulating evidence that you should, as well.

Ned Lamont is beginning his second year as governor of Connecticut.
Nasrallah: Martyrdom of Lt. Gen Soleimani marks new phase in Middle East

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Beirut, Jan 5, IRNA -- Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary-General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday that the day of the martyrdom of Lieutenant General Qasem Soleimani marks a new phase in the Middle East history.

He made the remarks on Sunday evening at the Sayyed al-Shohada Assembly in the southern district of Beirut on the magnificent ceremony and commemoration of the former commander of the Quds Force, along with thousands of his supporters as well as religious leaders, political figures, media and parliamentarians and ministers of the interim Lebanese government.

Condemning the US terrorist act, Nasrallah noted that Haj Qasem Soleimani achieved his greatest goal of being a martyr because his martyrdom was a dream of his youth days.

Hezbollah secretary-general said that January 2, 2020, the day of the martyrdom of Gen. Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, commander of Iraqi Popular Forces (al-Hashed al-Sha'abi), is a unique date not only for Iran and Iraq but for the entire Middle East region and today's glorious ceremony was held in the southern district of Beirut to commemorate the two great regional and global commanders.

Haj Qasem Soleimani spent many nights in Syria crying and telling me that his heartbeats to meet God, he added. "I extend my condolences to his wife and his children saying: Your father achieved his wish and love and joined his martyr friends.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah also extended his condolences to the Abu Mahdi family, noting that Abu Mehdi al-Muhandis met with me 2 months ago and said that the ISIS war is over and my friends are martyred and pray for me for martyrdom.

Hezbollah's secretary-general made the remark that the operation was ordered by US President Donald Trump and he confessed to this blatant crime. Therefore, there is no doubt about the terrorist and criminal nature of these operations.

According to Hezbollah Secretary-General, the reason for the US blatant and terrorist operations in Baghdad is the failure of its previous attempts to assassinate it secretly. Not long ago in Kerman, eastern Iran, security forces arrested a group whose plot was to assassinate Soleimani. However, Trump was forced to order his assassination in public.

Nasrallah noted that after three years of Trump's election as president, he and his rivals know that there is nothing but defeat in his foreign and Middle East policy record.

He said Trump's big goal was to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran or at least bring it to its knees and a new agreement on various issues. So it imposed heavy sanctions on the country and relied on economic pressure. However, Trump cannot now say that he has defeated Iran, nor can he say that his pressures have worked.

Hezbollah's secretary-general highlighted that the US program in Syria also failed and the last act of Trump's betrayal was over the Kurds and Kurdish regions and announcement of withdrawal of troops from these areas. Part of his remaining force is to steal oil from those areas.

Trump's attempt to provoke the Lebanese against each other has also failed, he said. During their trips to Beirut, US officials threatened Lebanese officials that they would sanction if it did not dismantle the resistance centers in Bekaa, and Israel would bomb Lebanon.

9455**1430

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WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump threatened to impose deep sanctions on Iraq if it moves to expel U.S. troops and said Sunday he would not withdraw entirely unless the military is compensated for the "extraordinarily expensive air base" there.

Trump's remarks came on the same day that Iraq's Parliament voted to support expelling the U.S. military from its country over mounting anger about a drone strike the president ordered last week that killed Iran's Qasem Soleimani and earlier U.S. airstrikes in the country. The vote was nonbinding.

"We've spent a lot of money in Iraq," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington after spending the holidays at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. "We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base thats there. It cost billions of dollars to build. ... Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it."

Retaliation: Trump threatens 'disproportionate' military response if Iran launches attack

The president added that if Iraqi officials try to kick the United States out the country it would not leave on a "very friendly basis." The U.S. invasion of Iraq took place in 2003.

"We will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever," Trump said. "Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame."

Iraq's Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi told lawmakers that a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops, including those from the U.S., was required "for the sake of our national sovereignty." About 5,000 American troops are in various parts of Iraq.

Mahdi described the strike authorized by Trump as a "political assassination" and said it was "time for American troops to leave." Withdrawing U.S. troops from the Middle East has been a central component of Trump's foreign policy; however, he has been forced to deploy additional soldiers to region to respond to several crises.

Story continues

Iran has promised 'severe revenge': Iraq votes to expel US troops after Iran Gen. Qasem Soleimani's killing

"So with Iraq, I told you, Iraq, was the worst decision, going into the Middle East was the worst decision ever made in the history of our country," Trump told reporters on Sunday. "But we went in and we're there and we're pulling out, pulling out of a lot of different areas."

Trump did not specify which air base he was referring to, but the president flew into Al Asad Air Base during a surprise visit with troops there in 2018.

Iraq has been caught in the middle of increasing tensions between Washington and Iran. The U.S. Embassy in Iraq was the site of violent protests last week following a series of U.S. airstrikes ordered in retaliation for the death of an American civilian contractor killed in a rocket attack last month.

Those tensions were further inflamed by the killing of Soleimani near the airport in Baghdad. Iran has promised retaliation and Iraq has said the U.S. attacks violate their sovereignty.

Trump also reiterated a threat to target Iranian cultural sites if Tehran launches an attack in retaliation for Soleimani. The president has said a U.S. response to such an attack could be "disproportionate."

Contributing: David Jackson, Courtney Subramanian and Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump threatens Iraq sanctions after vote to expel US troops
Two men repeatedly robbed workers delivering pharmaceutical supplies from a warehouse in Cherry Hill and then sold fentanyl and other supplies they stole, authorities said.

Philadelphia residents Darryl Goodman, 55, and Nieem Cann, 26, showed up at TXX Services warehouse multiple times last year and then followed the delivery van along its route, the U.S. Attorneys Office in Pennsylvania said.

Goodman and Cann then attacked the driver while a delivery was being made before carjacking the vehicle and later re-selling the supplies they stole, officials said.

The drivers were attacked in New Jersey, Philadelphia as well as in Montgomery and Delaware counties in Pennsylvania from February to May 2019, authorities said.

In one incident, Goodman and Cann robbed a TXX delivery worker at Mercy Catholic Medical Center in Darby, Pennsylvania and stole $140,000 worth of drugs and hospital supplies, including many vials of fentanyl citrate, an opioid pain medication, according to prosecutors.

The allegations here are appalling, as the defendants ruthlessly stalked their victims before violently assaulting them, said U.S. Attorney for Pennsylvania William McSwain said in a statement. The TXX employees were simply doing their jobs, delivering much-needed medicine and supplies to healthcare centers, and, of course, should not have had to worry about having a gun pointed at them. It takes a special kind of depravity to steal medicine and hospital supplies in this manner."

Both Goodman and Cann are charged by indictment with Hobbs Act robbery, brandishing a firearm, carjacking, and possession of fentanyl with intent to deliver. Each faces life in federal prison if convicted.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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This should be a great year for new-car buyers, fans of new technology and exciting designs.

New vehicles ranging from Americas perennial best-seller, the Ford F-150, to luxury SUVs, electric sports cars like the Porsche Taycan and affordable entry-level models will all go on sale over the next 12 months.

The years bonanza got an unexpected boost from GMs strike last fall, which pushed sales of the remarkable 2020 Chevrolet Corvette and the CT5, Cadillacs latest swing at the sport sedan market.

Heres a quick survey of some of the best, most interesting and important vehicles going on sale this year.

Want to invest in electric vehicles?: Start with their parts

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Cadillac Escalade, CT5 and CT4

This is a huge year for Cadillac. The Escalade SUV, the brands flagship and by far most profitable vehicle, must show luxury buyers the brand can raise the bar for luxury, design and technology.

Cadillac CT5 sport sedan

Theres some reason for optimism. The new Escalade will offer an independent suspension for a smoother ride and better handling. Adaptive shocks and an air suspension will be available.

The interior must raise the bar for Cadillac, which was embarrassed by the style and luxury of Lincolns Aviator and Navigator SUVs. A big OLED display for instruments, navigation, audio and other functions is a start. The 38-inch screen stretches essentially from the drivers door to the middle of the dashboard.

Cadillacs remarkable Super Cruise system, which allows hands-free driving on limited access roads like interstate highways, will reportedly get an update that allows it to change lanes and pass slower vehicles without the driver doing anything.

While Cadillac can be counted on to pull out all the stops for a new Escalade, theres more skepticism about the CT5 and CT4 sport sedans, which replace the CTS and ATS, respectively.

Nothing in advance information on the pair suggest Cadillac is about to jump ahead of vehicles like the Mercedes C-class or BMW 3-series.

Story continues

The Escalade should go on sale in late 2020 as a 2021 model. The CT5 arrives early this year. The CT4 is sandwiched in between.

Chevrolet Corvette, Tahoe, Suburban and Trailblazer

Chevrolet aims to have something for everybody, and thats never been more true than in 2020. From a new entry-level SUV to the breathtaking Corvette convertible and massive Suburban, the brand has never reached farther and more ambitiously than it will this year.

2021 Chevrolet Suburban

The Trailblazer SUV fits between the subcompact Trax and compact Equinox, but its the price that matters: Starting under $20,000, its the answer to people who feared Chevy would abandon entry-level buyers when it stopped selling small cars. Sales should begin this spring.

The Tahoe and Suburban SUVs are anything but small. Theyre 6.7 inches and 1.3 inches longer, respectively, than the models they replace. More room will be welcome, as long as it doesnt make the pair unmanageable in parking lots. An independent rear suspension improves ride and room for passengers in the third-row seats. Expect it in dealerships around midyear.

2020 Chevrolet Corvette

The Corvette coupe was supposed to hit dealerships late in 2019. The strike delayed that, an unbearable delay for enthusiasts who have already waited decades for a mid-engine Corvette. The new layout promises better acceleration and the ability to build even more powerful Corvettes going forward, but the launch models 495-hp 6.2L V8 and sub 3-second zero-60 mph time are nothing to sneer at. The Corvette coupe goes on sale early in 2020. The convertible should arrive in spring or summer.

More: 2020 Chevrolet Corvette first drive

Ford Mustang Mach-E, Bronco and F-150

If CEO Bill Ford is sleeping soundly these days, the man either has sublime faith in his team or the guts of a cat burglar. Maybe both.

Ford Motor Co.s two towering icons, the Mustang and F-150 pickup, both undergo fundamental changes this year. Not to mention a new version of the Bronco, an SUV that became a six-figure collectors item while nobody was watching.

The Ford Mustang Mach-E goes on sale late in 2020.

The Mustang Mach-E, an electric SUV with handling developed by the Mustang team, and looks that consciously echo the original pony car, has the makings of a hit, but its production launch will be critical. Its quality, performance and value are Fords best hope of establishing itself as a leader in the emerging market for electric vehicles.

The F-150 will get its first taste of electrification with a hybrid model this year. Hybrid pickups have been ho-hum affairs so far, more akin to towing a portable generator than adding excitement and value to Americas favorite vehicles. There are reports a 4.8L V8 will replace the current 5.0L Coyote engine, producing more power with better fuel economy.

The new F-150 needs to change that, while also stepping up comfort, convenience and capability across the whole model line in the face of strong new competitors from Chevrolet, GMC and Ram.

The new Bronco is expected to have square, upright sides and a long hood for a look that recalls the original. Based on the Ranger midsize pickup, expect it to offer a wide range of advanced features including trail control, which manages throttle and brakes in tough off-road conditions so the driver can concentrate on steering.

The Mach-E goes on sale late in 2020. Timings for the F-150 and Bronco are not clear.

Genesis GV80 and G80

Hyundais luxury brand has delivered good vehicles, but not much excitement so far. That needs to change when its first SUV, the midsize GV80, debuts in the spring. The GV80 will land in a popular, but crowded part of the luxury market, competing with models like the Jaguar F-Pace, Mercedes GLE and Cadillac XT5. Expect plenty of features and value-pricing, but the GV80 may need a surprise up its sleeve to make an impression.

The Genesis GV80 is expected to go on sale in the U.S. in summer, 2020.

The G80 replaces the sport sedan thats been Genesiss best vehicle so far. Look for features similar to the GV80.

Spy photographs indicate Genesis will debut a more flamboyant styling theme on both vehicles. The G80 goes on sale in April, the GV80 June.

Honda Civic and HR-V

Honda is expected to replace to of its best vehicles this year, the Civic compact car and HR-V subcompact SUV.

Expect evolutionary changes from the powertrains and styling. While an HR-V hybrid is sold in other parts of the world, the new model isn't like to include that goody in the U.S.

Honda will probably continue its recent record of making more safety and driver assistance features standard.

Hyundai Tucson

Hyundai encouraged its designers to take chances on the striking Sonata sedan that went on sale late in 2019. Expect a similar approach, along with an emphasis on value and plenty of standard features, from the new Tucson compact SUV, which should arrive in the second half of 2020. It's expected to look like the Vision T concept Hyundai revealed at the Los Angeles auto show. A plug-in hybrid model is possible.

The Hyundai Vision T concept hints at the looks of the new Tucson SUV.

Despite reports Hyundais long-awaited Santa Cruz midsize pickup will arrive in 2020, a 2021 launch appears more likely. The Santa Cruz is expected to be based on a front-drive architecture, like the Honda Ridgeline.

Kia Optima and Seltos

We havent seen hide nor hair of Kias new Optima midsize sedan yet, but you can bet its coming because its corporate cousin, the Hyundai Sonata, is about to go on sale.

Based on the 2020 Sonata, the 2021 Optima will be loaded with features and a good value.

The most intriguing question about the Optima will be whether Kia can adapt styling cues from its striking Telluride three-row SUV, which was just named Free Press Utility Vehicle of the Year.

The Kia Seltos small SUV goes on sale in the spring.

Thats an easier task with Kias new Seltos small SUV, which goes on sale early in 2020. The five-passenger Seltos will have all-wheel-drive models starting under $22,000. Features will include Bose audio, wireless charging, 10.25-inch touch screen, adaptive cruise control, collision alert, pedestrian detection and automatic front braking.

Land Rover Defender

The new Defender marries a name steeped in heritage to modern styling, an unusual combination. While SUVs like the Jeep Wrangler and Mercedes G-class carefully maintain visual connections to their past models, the new Defenders appearance is more in line with contemporary models like the Discovery than the boxy original 1948 model.

The Land Rover Defender revives the name of a previous model.

Land Rover will offer two- and four-door models called the Defender 90 and 100, respectively. Excellent off-road capability is a given, as are options like an opening fabric roof and lockable, waterproof exterior boxes to carry your gear.

Prices will start in the mid-$40,000s when the full line is available this fall, but sales begin in with pricier launch editions in the spring.

Nissan Rogue and Sentra

Nissan will replace its best-selling vehicle, the Rogue five-passenger SUV, this year and add a well-equipped new Sentra compact sedan.

Making its world debut at the 2018 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, the six-passenger, three-row Nissan Xmotion (pronounced cross motion) concept fuses Japanese culture and traditional craftsmanship with American-style utility and new-generation Nissan Intelligent Mobility technology.

The Rogue is expected to raise the bar for standard driver-assist and safety features in a mainstream vehicle. It will be one of the first vehicles built on a new platform developed with Nissans partners Renault and Mitsubishi. Likely to be slightly larger than the current model, its styling will reportedly draw from the Xmotion concept vehicle Nissan unveiled at the 2018 Detroit auto show. The new Rogue is expected late in 2020.

The Sentra compact sedan goes on sale in January. It will emphasize value, with standard features including a 7-inch touch screen, Bluetooth, automatic emergency braking, pedestrian detection and blind spot alert.

The Sentra is two inches lower and two inches wider than the previous model for a sportier profile. Options include two-tone paint.

2020 Nissan Sentra sales should begin i January

Prices will start at $19,090.

Porsche Taycan

Porsches Taycan electric sport sedan, one of the most eagerly awaited vehicles of the decade, goes on sale in the spring. The sleek Taycan has an electric motor on each axle for all-wheel drive. The base model should hit 60 mph in 3.8 seconds and top out at 155 mph.

U.S. sales of the Porsche Taycan should begin in spring 2020.

Theres already a fly in the ointment, though: the EPA rates the Taycans range on a charge at a very pedestrian 201 miles. Thats less than Ford promises for the base model of its Mustang Mach-E, which will have a sticker about $60,000 below the Taycan 4S's $103,800.

The name is pronounced Tie-con, and while were at it, correct pronunciation of the brand requires two syllables: Pour-sha, like the womans name and Shakespearean character Portia.

Contact Mark Phelan at 313-222-6731 or mmphelan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mark_phelan. Read more on autos and sign up for our autos newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Cadillac Escalade, Ford Mach-E, F-150 among 2020's top new vehicles
CLEVELAND, Ohio  When those seemingly ubiquitous Amazon boxes arrive on Northeast Ohio doorsteps, most customers focus on whats inside, but give little thought to the workers who filled the orders.

Should they? A recent series, Behind the Smiles, by Reveal, part of The Center for Investigative Reporting based in San Francisco, found that Amazons obsession with speed has turned its warehouses into injury mills. The nonprofit news organization based its finding on internal injury records from more than 20 of Amazons 110 fulfillment centers nationwide.

(T)he rate of serious injuries for those facilities was more than double the national average for the warehousing industry: 9.6 serious injuries per 100 full-time workers in 2018, compared with an industry average that year of four, states the Reveal series.

If there are any injury records from Northeast Ohio centers, including fulfillment centers in North Randall and Euclid, they are not included in the findings, possibly because the facilities are new.

The Plain Dealer is seeking any injury records for Amazon fulfillment centers in Northeast Ohio. If you are a current or former Northeast Ohio Amazon employee, I need your help.

The company is required to keep injury logs as part of Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations. By law, the company must share these injury records with current and former employees who request them. The law allows current and former employees to share these records with others. The Plain Dealer is requesting that workers or former workers, who receive the injury logs, share them with us.

Former and current fulfillment center employees can contact human resources to receive the records at the facility where they currently or used to work.

Send an email to [your fulfillment center code]-hr@amazon.com, saying youre a current or former employee and youd like to request all current and stored OSHA 300 logs and 300A reports, states the online Reveal article.

Additional information on making a request may be found at: revealnews.org/article/help-us-share-your-amazon-warehouse-injury-records

If you are a current or former employee at an Amazon fulfillment center in Northeast Ohio, Id like to talk to you about any injuries, as well as the overall workplace environment.

The best way to reach me is by email at operkins@plaind.com or you may leave a message for me at (216) 999-4868. You can also find me on Twitter and (facebook.com/olivera.perkins).
In an attempt to curb President Trumps power to strike Iran, the House of Representatives will vote on a war powers resolution this week, according to Financial Times.

What Happened

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a letter on Sunday that the House will introduce and vote on a War Powers Resolution to limit the Presidents military actions regarding Iran.

This resolution is similar to the resolution introduced by Senator Tim Kaine in the Senate, said Pelosi in the written statement.

It reasserts Congresss long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administrations military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days, she added.

Why It Matters

Pelosis announcement comes as President Trump escalated his war rhetoric against Iran and threatened attack on 52 targets if Iran retaliates for the killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani on Friday.

Trump also threatened Iraq with sanctions after Iraqi lawmakers voted to expel U.S. troops from the country on Sunday.

Pelosis Concern

Pelosi expressed her concerns over the escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

Last week, the Trump Administration conducted a provocative and disproportionate military airstrike targeting high-level Iranian military officials. This action endangered our service members, diplomats, and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran. Pelosi said in her letter.

As Members of Congress, our first responsibility is to keep the American people safe. For this reason, we are concerned that the Administration took this action without the consultation of Congress and respect for Congresss war powers granted to it by the Constitution, she added.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia

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ARMENPRESS, JANUARY 6, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his spouse Anna Hakobyan attended the Aladdin musical performance together with their two daughters in the Gabriel Sundukyan National Academic Theater in Yerevan.

Weve come to the Sundukyan National Academic Theater to watch Aladdin, the PM said on Facebook and posted a video from the performance.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
Highlights:

Reanalysis of patient samples from 3 U.S. labs shows most tests didn't adequately analyze more than a quarter of genes.

Chance of detecting a disorder varied widely depending on which genes the lab completely analyzed in a given sample.

DALLAS - Jan. 6, 2020 - Children who undergo expansive genetic sequencing may not be getting the thorough DNA analysis their parents were expecting, say experts at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

A review of clinical tests from three major U.S. laboratories shows whole exome sequencing routinely fails to adequately analyze large segments of DNA, a potentially critical deficiency that can prevent doctors from accurately diagnosing potential genetic disorders, from epilepsy to cancer.

The reanalysis by UT Southwestern shows each lab on average adequately examined less than three-quarters of the genes - 34, 66, and 69 percent coverage - and had startlingly wide gaps in their ability to detect specific disorders.

Researchers say they conducted the study because they believe vast differences in testing quality are endemic in clinical genetic sequencing but have not been well documented or shared with clinicians.

"Many of the physicians who order these tests don't know this is happening," says Jason Park, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of pathology at UT Southwestern. "Many of their patients are young kids with neurological disorders, and they want to get the most complete diagnostic test. But they don't realize whole exome sequencing may miss something that a more targeted genetic test would find."

Whole exome sequencing, a technique for analyzing protein-producing genes, is increasingly used in health care to identify genetic mutations that cause disease - mostly in children but also in adults with rare or undiagnosed diseases. However, Park says the process of fully analyzing the approximately 18,000 genes in an exome is inherently difficult and prone to oversights. About half the tests do not pinpoint a mutation.

The new study published in Clinical Chemistry gives insight into why some analyses may be coming back negative.

Researchers re-analyzed 36 patients' exome tests conducted between 2012 and 2016 - 12 from each of the three national clinical laboratories - and found starkly contrasting results and inconsistency with which genes were completely analyzed. A gene was not considered completely analyzed unless the lab met an industry-accepted threshold for adequate analysis of all DNA that encodes protein, which is defined as sequencing that segment at least 20 times per test.

Notably, less than 1.5 percent of the genes were completely analyzed in all 36 samples. A review of one lab's tests showed 28 percent of the genes were never adequately examined and only 5 percent were always covered. Another lab consistently covered 27 percent of the genes.

"And things really start to fall apart when you start thinking about using these tests to rule out a disease," Park says. "A negative exome result is meaningless when so many of the genes are not thoroughly analyzed."

For example, the chances of detecting an epileptic disorder from any of the 36 tests varied widely depending on which genes were analyzed. One lab conducted several patient tests that fully examined more than three quarters of the genes associated with epilepsy, but the same lab had three other patient samples in which less than 40 percent were completely analyzed.

Three tests from another lab came in at under 20 percent.

"When we saw this data we made it a regular practice to ask the labs about coverage of specific genes," says Garrett Gotway, M.D., Ph.D., a clinical geneticist at UT Southwestern who is the corresponding author of the study. "I don't think you can expect complete coverage of 18,000 genes every time, but it's fair to expect 90 percent or more."

The findings build upon previous research that showed similar gaps and disparities in whole genome sequencing, a technique that examines all types of genes, regardless of whether they produce proteins.

Gotway says he hopes the findings will prompt more physicians to ask labs about which genes were covered and push for improved consistency in testing quality. He also encourages physicians - even before ordering the test - to consider whether whole exome sequencing is the best approach for the patient.

"Clinical exomes can be helpful in complex cases, but you probably don't need one if a kid has epilepsy and doesn't have other complicating clinical problems," Gotway says. "There's a decent chance the exome test will come back negative and the parents are still left wondering about the genetic basis for their child's disease."

In those cases, Gotway suggests ordering a smaller genetic test that completely analyzes a panel of genes associated with that disease. He says they're less expensive and just as likely to help physicians find answers.

###

About the study

Park is medical director of the Advanced Diagnostics Laboratory at Children's Medical Center Dallas. Gotway is assistant professor of pediatrics and internal medicine. Both are members of UT Southwestern's Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development.

About UT Southwestern Medical Center

UT Southwestern, one of the premier academic medical centers in the nation, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institution's faculty has received six Nobel Prizes, and includes 22 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 members of the National Academy of Medicine, and 15 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators. The full-time faculty of more than 2,500 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UT Southwestern physicians provide care in about 80 specialties to more than 105,000 hospitalized patients, nearly 370,000 emergency room cases, and oversee approximately 3 million outpatient visits a year.
Eason is buzzing to launch its 10th annual Eason Spelling Bee, as the nationwide search begins to find Irelands champion student speller.

Primary schools across the country including in Offaly have until Sunday January 12, 2020 to register for this years competition to be in with a chance of winning the coveted title of Eason Spelling Bee Champion 2020.

The Eason Spelling Bee provides the opportunity for students across Ireland to get off their devices, improve their spelling skills, make new friends and develop their vocabulary.

This year, over 800 schools around Ireland have already registered to take part, and schools yet to register must do so by Sunday 12th January 2020. Eason are partnering with Today FM for a fifth year and, in early summer, presenter Alison Curtis will host the Provincial and All-Ireland Spelling Bees.

Marketing Manager at Eason, Elizabeth Blake said; Eason is delighted to announce the 10th Eason Spelling Bee. Each year, the amazing children who participate showcase an impressive level of spelling skill and its wonderful to see how much they enjoy it. We hope the 10th year of the Bee will be the biggest and best yet.

To participate in the Eason Spelling Bee and be in with a chance to win a library of books, registered schools must host their own in-school Bee among 5th & 6th class students to find their School Spelling Champion. From there, the Eason Spelling Bee team will travel around the country to host County Final Bees, culminating in four Provincial Bees.

The champions from these will then go head to head in the 10th annual All-Ireland Final Bee in June, where the lucky winner will be crowned King or Queen Bee.

Along with the prestigious title of the 10th Eason Spelling Bee Champion, the winning speller will also take home a collection of books for their school library, worth 7,500 as well as a personal collection of books worth 500.

To register for the Eason Spelling Bee 2020, please visit www.easons.com/spellingbee before the 12th of January 2020. Follow #EasonSpellingBee or visit www.easons.com/spellingbee to keep a-buzz with all the action from this years Bee.
In the January 6 episode of In The News, host Anvita Bansal chats with Atharva Pandit, Ruchira Kondepudi and Shraddha Sharma to find out all the top news from India and around the world.

Pandit talks about the violence that took place on January 5 at the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus. On Sunday night, a group of masked men with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers inside the campus.

He also talks about the announcement of Delhi election dates. The national capital will go to polls on February 8, while the counting will take place on February 11.

Kondepudi gives details on the tensions between the US and Iran post the killing of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani.

Finally, Sharma describes the situation in Australia, where bushfires have been raging on since September last year.
By PTI

MUMBAI: Equity benchmark BSE Sensex extending early losses to plunge over 700 points in the afternoon session on Monday as an escalation in tensions in the Middle East fuelled intense selloff in global equities.

The 30-share BSE index was trading 699.31 points or 1.69 per cent lower at 40,765.30. Similarly, the broader NSE Nifty cracked 209.50 points or 1.71 per cent to 12,017.15.

ALSO READ: Investors wealth tumbles over Rs 3 lakh crore in two days of market fall

Bajaj Finance was the top loser in the Sensex pack, diving up to 4 per cent, followed by SBI, HDFC, Maruti, Asian Paints Hero MotoCorp and IndusInd Bank. On the other hand, Titan and Tech Mahindra were trading in the green.

According to traders, the domestic market witnessed heavy selloff as global stocks slumped after US President Donald Trump vowed "major retaliation" if Iran tries to avenge the killing of its key military commander Qasem Soleimani and doubled down on a threat to bomb Iranian cultural sites.

He also threatened to impose "very big sanctions" on Iraq if it follows through on a parliament vote calling for the expulsion of US troops based in the country.

Following the news Brent, oil prices surged nearly 3 per cent to USD 70.59. Bourses in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and Seoul were trading up to 2 per cent lower. Meanwhile, the rupee depreciated 30 paise to 72.10 against the US dollar (intra-day).
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, on Monday, called on Iran to refrain from further violence and provocations after Tehran threatened retaliation over a U.S. airstrike that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

At our meeting today, in Brussels, allies called for restraint and de-escalation following an urgent meeting of NATO ambassadors.

New conflict will be in no ones interest. So, Iran must refrain from further violence and provocations.

For years all NATO allies have expressed concern about Irans destabilising activities in the wider Middle East region.

READ ALSO:

We agree Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon.

We share concern about Irans missile tests, and we are united in condemning Irans support for a variety of different terrorist groups, Mr Stoltenberg said.

(dpa/NAN)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 13:56:31|Editor: ZX

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WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- No Chinese nationals have been reported killed in a multi-vehicle crash that occurred in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania on Sunday morning, said the Chinese Consulate General in New York.

The crash, which happened at approximately 3:33 a.m. local time (0833 GMT) on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Mount Pleasant Township, Westmoreland County, left five people dead and 57 hospitalized, according to U.S. authorities.

In a press release, the Chinese consulate general said it has not received any reports of Chinese nationals killed in the incident after it contacted local police and hospitals.

Among the injured, there are five overseas Chinese and Chinese studying in the United States, according to the release.

The consulate general said it has got in touch with four of them, who are all in stable condition. The other reportedly left with family.

The consulate general added it will stay in contact with relevant parties concerning the incident and provide necessary assistance for Chinese nationals concerned.

Pennsylvania State Police said in a press release that the crash involved a tour bus, three tractor trailers loaded with parcels and one private passenger vehicle.

"A tour bus was traveling on a downhill curve and struck an embankment. Commercial vehicles traveling behind, then struck the tour bus," the release said.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf tweeted that he was saddened to learn of the fatal pileup crash and that he was keeping victims and their families in his prayers.

Wolf also said efforts by police and responders prevented further loss of life.

The Red Cross is assisting the patients and their families at the hospitals.

The National Transportation Safety Board tweeted it was investigating the incident.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike, a toll highway, runs 579 km across Pennsylvania.
Three of the Final Four coonhounds in the 55th Grand American Coon Hunt early Sunday morning also won their casts during the Saturday Nite Hunt just hours earlier in the event, hosted at the Orangeburg County Fairgrounds.

The other won the Friday Nite Hunt in earning the honor.

After rain stopped mid-morning on Saturday, coonhounds and their handlers had to mostly deal with windy conditions through the night in the rest of the competition. But, winds died down before the final cast sent their coonhounds searching for treed raccoons.

Patrick Cribb of Whiteville, N.C. and 3-year-old male Treeing Walker coonhound PR Hypersonic Wipeout Danger scored their way to become the Overall Hunt Winner. They were the lone duo in the Final Four to score plus points in the final cast. Danger is a Palmetto State dog, owned by Bruce and Christy Rabon of Galivants Ferry.

According to Cribb, the wind got bad during the Saturday Nite Hunt, but it settled down considerably for the final cast, which hunted land off Highway 301 between Orangeburg and Bamberg.

Finishing second was PR Mountain Valley Shorty, a 4-year-old male Treeing Walker coonhound, handled by Jonathan Long of Taylors.

Finishing third was GRNITECH GRCH PR Eastridges Tar Heel Tina, a 7-year-old female Treeing Walker coonhound, handled by Anthony Hammonds of Kingsport, Tennessee.

Finishing fourth - and in the Final Four for the second time in 3 years - was GRNITECH GRCH PR The Tree Slamming Judge, a 4-year-old male Treeing Walker coonhound, handled by Frankie Card of Johnsonville. Judge and Card won the Friday Nite Hunt the night before, setting them up well for the Final Four competition on the final morning of the event.

Judge and Card made the Final Four in 2018 and missed the 2019 final cast by a single dog in the standings.

Of the Top 20 cast winners in the Saturday Nite Hunt, 17 were Treeing Walker coonhounds.

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Press Release

January 6, 2020 Bong Go to push for passage of proposed disaster resiliency measures; aids fire victims in Manila In a visit to fire victims in Santa Ana, Manila, on Sunday, January 5, Senator Christopher Lawrence "Bong" Go said that he is pushing for the passage into laws in 2020 of the bills that he filed last year, especially the ones that seek to address disaster resiliency related problems in the country. "Meron po akong mga na-file na bills na isinusulong ko. Isa rito ang pagtatatag ng Department of Disaster Resilience. Huwag na nating hintayin na magkaroon ng mga sunog, baha, at lindol (bago umaksyon). Dapat meron na tayong departamentong nakatutok talaga," Go said during an interview after he gave assistance to the fire victims. Go's Senate Bill (SB) 205 or the Department of Disaster Resilience (DDR) Act seeks to create an empowered, highly specialized and responsive DDR with clear unity of command and primarily responsible in ensuring safe, adaptive and disaster-resilient communities. The department shall concentrate on three key result areas, namely: disaster risk reduction, disaster preparedness and response, and recovery and building forward better. Presently, various government agencies dealing with disaster risk reduction and management are scattered in several departments and offices and the current lead National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) is merely a coordinating body. The bill also includes the construction of permanent evacuation centers in disaster-prone areas. "(Aside from natural disasters,) kailangan rin itong permanent evacuation centers tuwing may nasusunugan," he explained. Another bill that mandates the establishment of safe, permanent and dedicated evacuation centers was also filed by Go last December. SB 1228, also known as the Mandatory Evacuation Center Act, will require every city, province and municipality to construct such centers that will be equipped with emergency packs, medicines and other basic necessities. Cognizant of the need to modernize the country's fire protection bureau, the Senator also filed last July 2019 the Fire Protection Modernization bill (SB 204). The measure seeks to modernize the Bureau of Fire Protection with the adoption of a Fire Protection Modernization Program, which shall include the hiring of more personnel, acquisition of modern fire equipment, trainings for firefighters, among others, all designed to suppress all kinds of destructive fires and prevent deaths and injuries. "Isa rin sa mga bill ko ang modernization ng Bureau of Fire Protection para may modernong kagamitan ang mga firefighter natin para naman maging safe sila sa kanilang trabaho," he said. "Masakit at masyadong mahirap po ang masunugan ng bahay at mawalan ng mga minamahal sa buhay dahil sa mga sunog," Go admitted in previous interviews emphasizing the need for government to strengthen measures in preparing and protecting communities for such unfortunate situations. Moreover, even before a series of strong earthquakes hit Mindanao late last year, Go already saw the need to update the National Building Code in order to ensure the safety and structural integrity of infrastructures in the country. Before the Senate went on its holiday break, Go filed the Philippine Building Act (SB 1252), seeking to update the existing building code which took effect on February 19, 1977 when then president Ferdinand Marcos issued Presidential Decree 1096. "Halos kalahating siglo na ang nagdaan mula na nagkaroon tayo ng National Building Code noong 1977 pa. Napapanahon nang kailangang ma-update ang lumang batas na ito. Kailangang sumabay ang ating mga batas sa mga pangangailangan ng modernong panahon, lalo na ngayon na mas dumadami at mas tumitindi ang mga kalamidad sa bansa, katulad ng lindol at bagyo. Huwag nang hintayin na may gumuhong gusali at may mamatay muli," Go explained. A pioneering measure that tries to replicate the Davao 911 model was also filed by Go on his first month in the Senate. SB 394 or the Emergency Medical Services Systems Council (EMSS) Act, mandates all local government units to establish an emergency medical service system for their area of jurisdiction as well as dispatch centers where constituents can call in cases of emergencies. An Emergency Medical Services Systems Council (EMSS) to be created shall develop minimum requirements such as the need for emergency medical vehicles and ambulances. "Ang EMSS ay magsisiguro na merong sapat na mga personahe, pasilidad, kagamitan at transportasyon na magagamit para sa epektibo, organisado at agarang paghahatid ng mga health and safety services para sa mga kailangang masaklolohan kaagad," Go explained. It can be recalled that in 2019, the two laws that were signed by the President during the 18th Congress were based on the bills that Go initially filed. The Malasakit Center Act and the law postponing to December 2022 the May 2020 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections were also campaign promises of Go. Go also filed a bill that became a basis of the Salary Standardization Bill, which both the Senate and the House of Representatives have passed on the third and final reading. "Inaasahan natin na malapit na itong pirmahan ng Pangulo," Go said. Meanwhile, during his visit in Manila, Go distributed financial and relief assistance to 572 families, comprising 1,963 individuals, affected by a fire that occurred on January 1 on Pasigline, Sagrada Familia and Araullo Streets in Santa Ana district. The Senator also told the victims, who were staying at Ignacio Villamor High School, that he would pay for the uniforms and school supplies of the affected children. He then offered help in the financial needs of those who need to undergo medical procedures, such as dialysis. "Kami na pong bahala sa pamasahe at pagkain ninyo," he said, adding that their medical bills may be covered by the Malasakit Center, a one-stop shop for medical and financial assistance from the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), Department of Health (DOH), Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO). Aside from the assistance extended by Go, the affected families received help from various agencies such as the DSWD, National Housing Authority (NHA), Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor (PCUP) and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), among others. Before going to Santa Ana, the Senator also distributed financial and relief assistance early in the day to the victims of a fire that occurred on December 31 at Barangay Vasra in Quezon City. Go spent the first weekend of 2020 providing much needed assistance to fire victims, first in Pasay City, then in Tondo and Pandacan, Manila on Saturday, January 4. He then visited two more communities in Brgy. Vasra in Quezon City and in Santa Ana, Manila City on Sunday, January 5.
Australian shoplifter charged for stealing B28k drone, police suspect B100k of brand-name goods also stolen

PHUKET: A 38-year-old Australian man has been charged with theft after he stole a drone valued at more than B28,000 from a store at Central Festival shopping mall, Phuket Tourist Police have reported.

tourismcrimepolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Monday 6 January 2020, 04:43PM

Other brand-name goods seized  also believed to have been stolen  were together valued at more than B100,000, said police. Photo: Phuket Tourist Police

Other brand-name goods seized  also believed to have been stolen  were together valued at more than B100,000, said police. Photo: Phuket Tourist Police

Other brand-name goods seized  also believed to have been stolen  were together valued at more than B100,000, said police. Photo: Phuket Tourist Police

The stolen drone, valued at more than B28,000. Photo: Phuket Tourist Police

Police search the house in Rassada as Ayden Depp, 38, of Australia, looks on, Photo: Phuket Tourist Police

The Australian was recorded on CCTV in the mall. Image: via Phuket Tourist Police

Tourist Police Region 3 Commander Maj Gen Krissak Songmoonnak announced the arrest of the Australian  named by police as Ayden Depp  at a press conference held at Phuket Tourist Police headquarters in Phuket Town yesterday (Jan 5).

Gen Krissak explained that Depp was arrested at Phuket International Airport on Saturday (Jan 4) as he re-entered the country from a trip to Yangon, Myanmar.

Depp was wanted according on arrest warrant no. 213/2019 issued on Dec 31 for the charge of theft, Gen Krissak said.

Police received a report from staff at a store, which Gen Krissak did not name, in the Central Floresta shopping mall on Dec 27, reporting that man had stolen a drone on Dec 26.

The man was recorded on CCTV in the mall, Gen Krissak said.

He stole the drone while there were a lot of customers in the shop, he said.

Depp initially denied stealing anything from the mall, but after he was taken to Wichit Police Station for questioning he later confessed that he had and was keeping it at his rented accommodation in Rassada, Gen Krissak explained.

Officers searched the home in Rassada yesterday, with the home owner Kan Kaewthanong present, and found a Parrot drone matching the description of the one reported as stolen from the shop.

Mr Depp confessed that before stealing the drone, he bought a shaving machine from the shop, but it did not work well. He brought it back to the shop to get his money back, but the staff refused, so he stole the drone, Gen Krissak said.

The drone was valued at B28,990, Gen Krissak added.

At the home, police also seized seven other brand-name goods, including handbags and sunglasses, which Gen Krissak said were valued together at more than B100,000.

The goods were seized as Depp could not provide receipts to prove that he bought them, Gen Krissak said.

Gen Krissak explained that Depp arrived in Thailand on Nov 4 on a 30-day visa as a tourist, which allowed him to stay until Dec 3. He then extended his stay at Phuket Immigration to allow him to stay until Jan 2.

On Dec 26, Mr Depp stole the drone at Central Phuket, and on Dec 29 he flew to Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok in order to fly to Yangon.

Mr Depp returned to Phuket on Jan 4 with new 30-day visa which will expire on Feb 2, Gen Krissak noted.

Gen Krissak urged any shop owners to report any items missing believed to have been stolen.

Please come to check at Wichit Police Station, and those who own or manage rental properties must file a TM30 report to Immigration because the tenants might be wanted people, he said.

The TM30 is the official notification required by landlords to report to Immigration within 24 hours of the arrival of any foreign tenants, as required under Section 38 of the Thailand Immigration Act of 1979.

Despite much conjecture last week over whether the TM30 was still required by the Immigration Bureau, as of late last week Phuket Immigration confirmed to The Phuket News that the filing of TM30 reports was still required in Phuket. (See story here.)
President Donald Trump on Sunday said that his tweets would serve as prior notification to the US Congress if he did decide to strike against Iran again. (Photo Credit: File Photo)

New Delhi:

President Donald Trump on Sunday said that his tweets would serve as prior notification to the US Congress if he did decide to strike against Iran again. These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any US person or target, the United States will quickly and fully strike back, and perhaps in a disproportionate manner, Trump said in a tweet.

Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless! said the president making it clear that he does not need Congressional approval about his any potential strike against Iran.

Top Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have criticized the US administration for not consulting with Congress before launching the strike that killed top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.

Soleimani, 62, the head of Irans elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was killed when a US drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the Baghdad International Airport early on Friday. The strike also killed the deputy chief of Iraqs powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force.

In the aftermath of Soleimanis killing, Trump has warned Iran that the US has identified 52 possible targets in the country and will hit it harder than ever before if Tehran, which has vowed severe revenge, carries out any attack against America to avenge the killing of top military commander Qasem Soleimani.

On Sunday, Iran announced that it will no longer abide by the 2015 Nuclear deal. According to the 2015 Nuclear Deal, which is offcially called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed between Iran and five permanent members of the security council plus Germany, Iran had agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium. It also was required to cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98%, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of its gas centrifuges for next 13 years.

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The Pakistan government on Sunday said it ordered the release of 20 Indian fishermen from Malir District Jail in Landhi town in Sindh province.

The Indian fishermen, who were in jail for the last one year, were put on a train bound for Lahore from where they will be taken to the Wagah border and handed over to Indian authorities.

Superintendent of Malir District Jail Aurangzeb Khan said the orders to release the Indian fishermen came from the Interior Ministry.

"We still have some 237 Indian fishermen in our jail who were sent to prison for illegally fishing in Pakistan's territorial waters," he said.

Faisal Edhi, who runs social welfare trust Edhi Foundation, said the Indian fishermen were given money and some necessary items before they boarded the Lahore-bound train.

Incidents of Indian fishermen being arrested by Pakistan's Maritime Security Forces for illegally fishing in Pakistan's territorial waters have eased since August last year when 34 Indian fishermen were arrested and six boats seized.
As the American film and television industry gathered to celebrate the Golden Globe awards, it was Australia's bushfire crisis that took centre stage.

At the awards ceremony on Monday morning, Australian actor Russell Crowe won best actor in a limited series or TV movie for The Loudest Voice. But instead of being present to collect his award Crowe was at home protecting his property on NSW's Mid North Coast, and his absence resonated with the audience.

Jennifer Aniston spoke at the Golden Globes on behalf of Russell Crowe, who called to leaders to take action over climate change. Credit:Nine

Fellow actor Jennifer Aniston read out an acceptance speech on Crowe's behalf, and it didn't mince words.

"Make no mistake: the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate-change based," read Aniston. "We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is. That way, we all have a future."
Moodify White is the harbinger of the digital scent revolution

Valeo and Moodify, an Israeli company that develops advanced scent solutions for improved personal performance and well-being, are announcing their first collaboration. Together, they will bring to market a ground breaking solution to car malodor.

The solution is based on the smart diffusion of a special scent, Moodify White, based on 10 years of research at Israels top technology research institute. Moodify White is especially attractive because it effectively masks the perception of foul smells in cars, including cigarettes, mold, and decay. Moodify White is made entirely of environmentally friendly, hypoallergenic, and non-intrusive compounds. The first version of Moodify White will be released in early 2020, and will be available in samples in Valeo and Moodifys exhibit area at CES.

Prof. Dr. Georges de Pelsemaeker, Health and Wellbeing Director at Valeo, commented: Combining Valeos deep knowledge of the automotive industry, and its expertise in cabin air quality solutions, together with Moodifys technological capacity, enables us to bring to market an ultimate solution to bad smell in cars, a problem that pains the entire automotive supply chain.

Moodify White is the harbinger of the digital scent revolution. For hundreds of years, scent problems were addressed with a simple add-more-perfume approach. We bring neuroscience and chemo-signals to the table. With our unique technology, any scent solution could be tailor-made as easily as printing documents, said Yigal Sharon, CEO of Moodify. I am fortunate to collaborate with Valeo, which gave its indispensable automotive domain expertise and professionalism, and thankful to our investors Toyota AI Ventures and Next Gear Ventures that back us and make this happen.

About Moodify

Co-founded in 2017 by Yigal Sharon and Dr. Yaniv Mama, Moodify develops unique active scents that enable people to improve their performance, enhance their well-being and increase their safety. Based on more than a decade of research at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, Moodifys scents affect the olfactory sense in a non-invasive and safe manner. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, Moodify is backed by Next Gear Ventures and Toyota AI Ventures.

About Valeo

Valeo is an automotive supplier, partner to all automakers worldwide. As a technology company, Valeo proposes innovative products and systems that contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions and to the development of intuitive driving. In 2018, the Group generated sales of 19.3 billion euros and invested 13% of its original equipment sales in Research and Development. At December 31, 2018, Valeo had 186 plants, 21 research centers, 38 development centers and 15 distribution platforms, and employed 113,600 people in 33 countries worldwide. Valeo is listed on the Paris Stock Exchange.
GYSS 2020 gathers new and returning eminent scientists and talented young researchers worldwide to convene in Singapore, to spark new ideas and innovations

National Research Foundation Singapore will be organizing The Global Young Scientists Summit 2020 (GYSS 2020) in Singapore from January 14 to 17, with the theme of Advancing Science, Creating Technologies for a Better World.

The world is facing a litany of challenges, from growing antibiotic resistance to a looming shortage in data storage capacity.

GYSS 2020 gathers new and returning eminent scientists and talented young researchers worldwide to convene in Singapore, to spark new ideas and innovations.

To develop the solutions to these problems, young researchers need the help of their more experienced colleagues, and vice versa. Collaborations across disciplines and nations are also vital to spark new ideas and innovations. It will provide a platform for such conversations on science and research, technology innovation, and potential answers to global issues.

The event enables 320 outstanding young scientists to interact with 17 eminent leaders in science and technology, who gather in Singapore from across the world and from a wide variety of research fields, including physics, chemistry, medicine, mathematics, computer science and engineering.

Members of the public will have the opportunity to hear from the distinguished speakers at a series of free public lectures, meanwhile the delegates participate in plenary lectures, panel discussions and interactive group sessions.

The GYSS 2020 speakers include world-renowned recipients of the Nobel Prize, Fields Medal, Millennium Technology Prize and Turing Award.

Participating as speakers for the first time at the Summit are Sir Konstantin Novoselov (Nobel Prize in Physics, 2010), and Dr Kees Immink (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honor, 2017).

Sir Novoselov and his colleague, Sir Andre Geim, who participated at GYSS 2017, isolated and mapped the properties of graphene, a wonder material that consists of a single layer of carbon atoms and is many times stronger than steel, lighter than paper, and an excellent conductor of heat and electricity.

Dr Kees has been one of the most prolific contributors to the field of consumer electronics in the late 20th century.

The GYSS 2020 will also feature a special guest speaker: Professor Alain Fischer, Chair of Experimental Medicine at the College de France in Paris.

Professor Fischer has been a pioneer in the fight to understand and treat genetic diseases that are related to the immune system, uncovering many genetic defects that disrupt the human immune system.

He was also one of the first scientists to successfully use gene therapy to treat a rare form of severe combined immunodeficiency, often called the bubble boy disease, after a wellknown patient who lived for years in a plastic bubble filled with filtered air.

The GYSS 2020 is the eighth edition of the event, and will span 15 plenary lectures, panel discussions and interactive small group sessions.

The participants will also go on site visits and engage in dialogue sessions with principal investigators and researchers to better understand the research opportunities in Singapore.

Ashish Rauniyar, a PhD research fellow at the Oslo Metropolitan University who will be attending GYSS 2020, said he is looking forward to meeting talented young researchers from around the world and engaging with the distinguished speakers: The opportunity to talk to them about their scientific experiences is an amazing opportunity.

As part of the summit, panel discussions among the eminent scientists will take place at public forums at local universities and schools, and at the National Library.
The Real has featured four hosts for years, but it looks like things are about to change. On Jan. 6, multihyphenate Amanda Seales was announced as the new co-host of the immensely popular daytime television show.

While Seales has been around for years, shes just started to break out on the scene and garner mainstream attention. So, its no surprise that some people arent familiar with her. If youre also out of the loop, heres everything you need to know about Amanda Seales  from her life and career to her net worth.

Amanda Seales on the red carpet | Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Amanda Seales early life

Seales was born on July 1, 1981 in Los Angeles. She told Man Repeller that she was raised by her mother, a nurse who hails from Grenada. The outlet refers to Seales father as irrelevant.

Searching for better educational opportunities, Seales mother moved them to Florida when the artist was in third grade. When Seales wasnt in school, she kept busy with extracurricular activities, including art, tap dancing, and drama classes.

It wasnt that I was the kinda kid who was all over the place, she told Man Repeller. I just had a lot of interests and when I would get into something, I would really dive in. [My mom] picked up on that early and went the distance with allowing me to inhabit a number of different spaces.

As a preteen, Seales booked her first roles. Her first onscreen appearance was in the 1993 buddy-cop comedy, Cop and a Half, which received overwhelmingly negative reviews but at least gave her some exposure.

The next year, Seales made her television debut. She appeared on the Nickelodeon show, My Brother and Me, as Deonne Wilburn. The show ran for one year before its cancelation in 1995.

Amanda Seales rise to stardom

By her 20s, Seales had turned her attention to spoken word. She worked on the underground scene while pursuing an undergraduate degree at SUNY Purchase.

Her big break came in 2002 when she was selected to appear on the Russell Simmons-produced show Def Poetry Jam. Using the stage name Amanda Diva, she delivered at least two performances before its cancelation in 2007.

After the show, Seales enrolled in a masters program at Columbia University, pursuing a degree in African-American studies. She also found work as a host on MTV2s Sucker Free Countdown.

I would have to skip class to go interview Outkast, she told The Undefeated of those times. In my essay to get into Columbia, I said I hope to one day to be able to speak to and on behalf of my community. It was my hope to be able to empower black folks. Thats why I felt like I should be in the Columbia program, because it would give me the knowledge and the insight to be able to do that at the highest level possible.

Seales added to The Los Angeles Times that she wanted work that exists in [her] voice across many platforms, so her eventual foray into music makes sense. In the late 2000s, Seales replaced Natalie Stewart in the R&B group Floetry, which is best known for the song Say Yes. However, her tenure was not long.

Seales told The Breakfast Club in 2017 that fans did not connect with her and that shed also had some problems with fellow group member, Marsha Ambrosius, prompting her to leave the group.

Amanda Seales career breakthrough

In 2011, Seales started using her birth name again.

I was trying to get closer to myself, she told Man Repeller of the decision.

She also returned to comedy  which she called her purpose in a 2018 interview with Forbes.

She had a major breakthrough after landing a role on the hit HBO series, Insecure. Seales also hosts a live game show, Smart Funny & Black, and a podcast, Small Doses. In 2019, she starred in her first comedy special, I Be Knowin, which premiered on HBO.

And now, shes a host on The Real. Seales had briefly served as a guest host before she got hired.

What is Amanda Seales net worth?

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Seales net worth is $3 million, at the time of this writing. And its seemingly only going up from here.

Interested in more net worth posts? Read more here.
Mumbai, Jan 6 : After filmmaker Anurag Kashyap changed his Twitter profile picture to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah in masks, director Anubhav Sinha said he condemns the action.

Sinha took to Twitter, where he shared the image and sarcastically wrote: "I sincerely condemn the use of this picture by @anuragkashyap72 as his DP. The aspect ratio is absolutely inappropriate." Several social media users commented on Sinha's tweet.

One wrote: "Can't identify them by clothes :D" Another tweeted: "They look familiar." Several masked individuals thrashed students and teachers inside the JNU campus in the National Capital with wooden and metal rods on Sunday.

While the number of the injured in the various clashes which occurred throughout the day was not yet known, at least 20 students were admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences with severe injuries, including the Students Union President Aishe Ghosh, who was reportedly hit over the eye with an iron rod.
Lenovo has announced a long list of new devices, including refreshed ThinkPads, a ThinkCentre, and an eGPU.

Its CES 2020 week and Lenovos new product announcements have just landed on us like a sack of hot potatoes. The popular Chinese electronics manufacturer has got a lot in store for us this time, like a couple of refreshed ThinkPad models, a new gaming laptop, a business communication solution called ThinkSmart View, a wide array of business and gaming monitors, new keyboards, andfor the first time everan external GPU called Legion BootStation. With the intro out of the way, lets dig into the list:

ThinkSmart View, ThinkSmart Manager

Lenovo has a new smart display thats designed specifically for personal business communications such as audio and video calls on Microsoft Teams. Powered by a Qualcomm APQ8053 SoC, the ThinkSmart View incorporates a touchscreen display, a webcam that can physically be opened and closed , and a user-facing loudspeaker. Lenovo says in its press release that it can be deployed and managed easily in large enterprises with the help of the ThinkSmart Manager software. Lenovo also says the ThinkSmart View can help users join conference calls in seconds rather than minutes. The ThinkSmart View is expected to go on sale in the US later this month for a starting price of $349 (Rs 25,000 approx.).

Legion BootStation

With the introduction of the Legion BootStation, Lenovo has officially entered the world of external GPUs. Sporting an aluminium build and a transparent side panel, the Legion BootStation is home either to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card, depending on the variant purchased. Weighing less than 9.07 kilogrammes, it can be hooked up to supported PCs using Thunderbolt 3 for boosted gaming performance. According to the press release, the Lenovo Legion BootStation will go on sale from May 2020 for a starting price of $249.99 (Rs 18,000 approx).

Legion Y740S

Billed as Lenovos thinnest and lightest Windows 10 gaming laptop yet, the Legion Y740S is a thinned-down version of the existing Legion Y740 gaming laptop. It comes powered by up to an Intel 10th Gen Core i9 CPU but features no discrete graphics card on board. However, it can be hooked up to a Legion BootStation using Thunderbolt 3 for serious gaming. The display on the Legion Y740S is a 15.6-inch 4K IPS LCD panel with a maximum brightness of 600 nits. System RAM goes up to 32GB storage and maxes out at 1TB on a PCIe NVMe solid-state drive. According to Lenovo, the laptop has dedicated Performance and Quiet Modes, 100-per cent anti-ghosting keys, and an eight-hour battery life. The Lenovo Legion Y740S starts at $1099.99 (Rs 79,200 approx) and will be sold as a configure-to-order product.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ThinkPad X1 Yoga

In addition to the slim new Legion Y740S gaming laptop, Lenovo has announced two refreshed ThinkPad models, namely the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and ThinkPad X1 Yoga. Lenovo says the eight-generation ThinkPad X1 Carbon is part of Intels Project Athena initiative, which should ideally ensure faster resume times and a longer battery life. Both models now get dedicated call answer and end keys in the function row along with the ThinkPad PrivacyGuard and ThinkPad PrivacyAlert technologies, which ensures that only the user can view the screen contents. The new ThinkPad X1 Carbon and ThinkPad X1 Yoga are expected to go on sale later this year for a starting price of $1,499 (Rs 1,08,000 approx) and $1,599 (Rs 1,15,270 approx), respectively.

ThinkCentre M90a AIO

The ThinkCentre M90a AIO is a new all-in-one desktop with Intels 10th Gen Core series CPU and a 23.8-inch Full HD display. Like its ThinkPad cousins, it gets an IR camera with the ThinkShutter physical webcam slider for added privacy. It also gets Dolby Atmos Audio and a hidden cable management system. According to Lenovos press release, the ThinkCentre M90a AIO is expected to go on sale from June this year for a starting price of $1099 (Rs 79,225 approx).

ThinkVision monitors, ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II

Lenovo has announced four ThinkVision monitors, one of which is called the ThinkVision Creation Extreme. Its a 27-inch HDR1000-compatible display with 10,368 dynamic local dimming-supported LEDs. According to Lenovo, its designed specifically for creators and has 99-per cent DCI-P3 colour coverage along with up to 90W power delivery support for other devices. Its expected to be available from April this year for a starting price of $2,499 (Rs 1,80,150 approx). Lenovo also launched three other monitors, namely the ThinkVision T34w-20, ThinkVision P27h-20, and ThinkVision T24v-20. This range starts at $264 (Rs 19,000 approx). Finally, Lenovo has launched the ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II, a wireless keyboard for the ThinkPad keyboard loyalist. Available from May this year for $99.99 (Rs 7,200 approx), it mimics the popular ThinkPad keyboard and offers TrackPoint navigation. Connecting via 2.4GHz wireless or Bluetooth, it has a two-week battery life and USB-C charging.

Legion gaming monitors, accessories

Lenovo has used this opportunity to announce three gaming monitors, including the Legion Y25-25 24-inch Full HD IPS LCD monitor, which has up to 400 nits of brightness, AMD FreeSync support, and a 240Hz refresh rate. Lenovo also announced the Lenovo G32qc and Lenovo G27c gaming monitors. This new range starts at $219.99 (Rs 15,860 approx). Lastly, the company announced two gaming mice and a gaming keyboard, namely the Lenovo Legion M600 Wireless Gaming Mouse and Lenovo Legion M300 RGB Gaming Mouse along with the Lenovo Legion K300 RGB Gaming Keyboard. This range starts at $29.99 (Rs 2,160 approx).
In Australia, we face some of the highest energy costs in the developed world and increasing energy prices are taking a toll on small businesses. In fact, energy costs and management has become one of the most significant challenges small businesses face.

The problem is so pervasive that the Federal Government introduced an $11 million package to provide small businesses with one-on-one energy consultations and online bill comparison tools, to help them get a better deal.

Happily, there are a lot more options available and accessible to small businesses to help them manage and optimise their energy use today than there were ten years ago. The advancement of technology and internet of things (IoT) means a range of connected devices and software can give businesses more visibility over their energy use and assets than ever before.

This has huge benefits for the business, for the economy and for the environment. It may sound counter-intuitive, but accelerating digitisation of a business can actually result in lower energy consumption.

At one end of the spectrum there is the every-day optimising of energy use and then at the other, there are systems and processes to help manage the unexpected incidents that impact supply; the power outages and mechanical failures that can be a big cost to small businesses. Such outages can be a significant disruption for retailers in particular, with power loss equating to lost profits; from the cost of spoiled stock on account of a lack of refrigeration to the loss in sales if the point of sale is affected.

But it can be hard to know where to start.

Businesses have many different needs and use energy in different ways. Lets take the example of a coffee shop and a 24-hour fast-food restaurant. Both businesses are fundamentally food and beverage retailers, however, there are differences in the scale and use of equipment that set them apart.

The coffee shop, which is open eight hours or less a day, wont have the same rate of resource consumption as the restaurant which functions for 24-hours each day.

However, installation of smart energy management systems has become more cost effective, with solutions that can be scaled to fit any size business, and are easily installed and monitored from a smartphone. The solution could include a range of innovations, from powertags that enable the wireless tracking of energy use across store appliances, to sensors in the fridge that automate refrigeration checks and alert you when the appliances are not operating correctly.

Outside of the economic drivers of adoption, there are a range of other factors encouraging small business to adopt smart energy management, mostly centred around the customer in an increasingly competitive operating environment.

Customer experience is more important than ever before and control over the HVAC within a store is a great example of an unexpected driver of customer experience. Happy and comfortable shoppers are more likely to stay in your store and spend more money. Another driver to consider is sustainability.

According to Nielsens Global Corporate Sustainability Report, 66% of consumers would spend more on a product if it came from a sustainable brand.

Implementing clear and visible measures, such as energy management systems that help reduce the overall energy consumption of the business and environmental footprint of a small business can help demonstrate a commitment to sustainability and increase positive consumer sentiment toward the brand.

Technology is faster than ever, and now is the best time for SMEs to invest and reap the many rewards that can be found through the integration of these innovations.The integration of technology can result in significant savings, positive brand interaction and improved customer/employee experiences. This technology, which was once only available to the top end of the retail food chain, is now accessible for small businesses.

Over time affordability has improved making installation more achievable but software has also improved, opening up access to intuitive apps and monitoring systems that make the technology user-friendly, even for beginners.

Laetitia Odini is the Segment Manager, Retail, at Schneider Electric.
Investors monitor a screen with stock information at the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Dec. 11, 2019. (Ahmed Yosri/Reuters)

US-Iran Tensions Roil Markets as Saudi Credit Default Swaps Spike

The cost of insuring against a potential debt default by Saudi Arabia has soared by over 16 percent since the killing by a U.S. drone of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani.

International bonds issued by Saudi Arabia and its state oil giant Aramco were yielding around 10 basis points more on the long end of the curve when compared to their levels before the strike.

The price of Saudi credit default swaps, also known as their spread, was at 64 basis points early on Monday, up from 55 bps on Jan. 2, according to IHS Markit, via Reuters.

Rating agency Moodys said on Monday the credit implications of a military conflict between Iran and the United States would depend on factors like duration and scope, but that Iraq and debt issuers in the Gulf and potentially Lebanon could be affected.

The main channels of credit transmission would be the immediate effect of the shock to exports and fiscal revenue should hydrocarbon production capacity be impaired significantly and durably, it said.

President Donald Trump ordered a strike last week against Soleimani, the architect of Tehrans overseas military operations, including ones targeting Americans. The Iranian general was killed early on Jan. 3 by a drone-fired missile that struck his convoy at Baghdads airport.

Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani (C) attends a meeting in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 18, 2016. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File)

Before the attack, the U.S. intelligence community said it had reason to believe that Soleimani was involved in late stage planning to strike Americans in multiple countries.

Iranian officials responded to the strike by threatening to retaliate.

Some 35 U.S. targets in the region, as well as Tel Aviv, are within our reach, Senior Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Gholamali Abuhamzeh was quoted by Tasnim news agency as saying. He also raised the prospect of possible attacks on U.S. destroyers and other warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump then cautioned that the United States had targeted 52 Iranian sites in response to the retaliatory threats and warned Iran not to attack any Americans or American assets or targets would be hit very fast and very hard.

The mounting tensions have impacted markets.

Gulf Stocks Tumble Amid Rising Tensions

Stocks in the Persian Gulf plunged in trading on Jan. 5, with shares of oil giant Saudi Aramco falling 1.7 percent to their lowest level since listing last month in a record initial public offering.

The Kuwaiti index, the best performer in the region in 2019, fell almost 4.1 percent, while Saudi stocks plunged 2.2 percent.

A U.S.-Iran war could shave 0.5 percentage points or more off global GDP, mainly due to a collapse in Irans economy, but also due to the impact from a surge in oil prices, Jason Tuvey, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, said in a note last week.

Oil prices jumped to $63.05 a barrel on Jan. 3, their highest level in more than three months, after Soleimanis killing sparked fears that conflict in the region could disrupt global oil supplies.

Circle of Violence

The killing of Soleimani came following months of attacks by Iran-backed militias on U.S. forces in Iraq.

The hostilities that targeted U.S. troops included the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad by Iranian-backed protesters and their supporters on Dec. 31, 2019, and the death of a U.S. military contractor in a rocket attack a few days earlier. Several U.S. and Iraqi soldiers were also wounded in the attack, which the United States has attributed to Kataib Hezbollah.

According to State Department officials, the killing of Soleimani was in response to the years of deadly attacks that he had personally orchestrated in the region. They stressed that another major attack in Iraq had been imminent, but its now not likely to happen.

We cannot promise that we have broken the circle of violence, a senior State Department official told reporters on Jan. 3. What I can say from my experience with Qassem Soleimani is, it is less likely that we will see this now than it was before, and if we do see an increase in violence, it probably will not be as devilishly ingenious.

President Donald Trump told reporters in Florida that afternoon that the strike was carried out to stop a war.

Experts and others familiar with the situation told The Epoch Times that Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is unlikely to order attacks on U.S. assets while the nation is mourning Soleimani.

Khamenei is unlikely to go to war during the coming days, as hes scheduled to pray over Soleimani on Monday at Tehran University, said Sam Bazzi, Middle East expert and founder of Hezbollah Watch.

The airstrike that killed Soleimani also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (or al-Mohandis, or Jamal Jaafar Ibrahimi), the deputy commander of Iraqs Popular Mobilization Forces.

Thats an umbrella grouping of paramilitary forces, mostly Iran-backed Shiite militias that were formally integrated into Iraqs armed forces amid efforts to defeat the ISIS terrorist group.

Allen Zhong and Reuters contributed to this report.
An 18-year-old rugby player has revealed how he helped to stop the world's most prolific serial rapist after he woke up while being molested and fought him off - before giving police a phone filled with sickening footage of the man's attacks.

Reynhard Sinaga, 36, is believed to have attacked at least 195 men and was convicted of drugging 48 of them and filming himself sexually violating them while they were unconscious in his Manchester flat.

The gay Christian student was jailed for 60 years and must serve a minimum of 30 years in custody before he can be considered for parole.

He was finally caught when one of his victims regained consciousness on the bathroom floor and fought him off before he went to the police and crucially handed in Sinaga's phone.

The six-foot tall, 13-stone teenager told the court how he woke up with his trousers around his ankles with Sinaga molesting him.

He battered the rapist, beating him so badly he suffered a bleed on the brain and had to be taken to hospital.

Initially the 18-year-old victim was mistakenly arrested for assault, but Sinaga left an iPhone 4 in his back pocket which contained sickening videos of him raping drugged men.

Police have linked Reynhard Sinaga to more than 190 potential victims in total - 70 of whom they have not yet been able to identify

Officers searching Sinaga's flat found another mobile 'propped to side' to capture rapes 'in profile' and also found a hard drive containing a chilling online library of videos of the rapes plus still images of the victims as they lay naked and unconscious on his floor.

They also discovered Sinaga, 36, had looked victims up on Facebook and stored their details.

He further kept victims' belongings as sick souvenirs of the encounters, including a phone, watch, driving licence and a restaurant Tastecard.

Police inquiries began after the 18-year old man, who had been to the nearby Factory club on June 2, 2017, became separated from his friends and was approached by Sinaga outside.

Sinaga suggested the man should try contacting his friends from his flat.

The rugby player said Sinaga 'seemed like a friendly guy' so he agreed to go back with him.

He added that he remembered the rapist pouring two shots of 'red liquid' and a 'shot of clear liquid' before he 'blacked out' and woke hours later and found himself being assualted.

A map of Manchester city centre shows where Sinaga's flat (in red) is located along with the nightclubs Factory and Fifth Avenue, which many of the complainants had earlier been to

The victim told jurors: 'I had to defend myself to get out of there.'

In a 999 call, the victim said: 'I tried to push him away. I've got blood on me because I tried to hit him to get away from me.

'He's trapped me in his house for most of the night. I've had to, I know it's violent, but I've had to hit him a few time just to, to stop him from attacking me, been on top me.

'I've had to. I've got blood on my hand if you want to see? Cut, I think he might be busted so, if you have to you might have to phone an ambulance 'cause I've, I've had to hit him a few times to get him away from me.'

Iain Simpkin, prosecuting, said: 'The defendant suggested he should try to contact his friends from the nearby flat. The complainant agreed but can recall nothing else at all, until he woke up several hours later.

'As he awoke he was lying face down with his jeans and boxer shorts around his knees with the naked defendant in the act of sexually attacking him. The complainant pushed Sinaga off him and once the defendant realised he was conscious he started to scream words like, 'intruder' and, 'help'.

'I want him to suffer for what he has done': Victims respond to the rapist's crimes A series of harrowing statements from different victims in the case of Reynhard Sinaga were given. Some victims told how their life had changed 'forever', while others said they wanted him to 'spend the rest of his life in prison'. A third has 'periods where I can't get up and face the day'. Here is what the victims said as they responded to the rapist's crimes: 'I felt numb; I was totally shocked, embarrassed, betrayed and very angry.'

'His actions were disgusting, unforgiveable, he has massively abused my trust in humanity.'

'The events of the night have a lasting impact on me, it affects my confidence in being able to trust people or to approach people in a normal public setting.'

'I was very anxious giving evidence, it was very traumatic for me because I knew I had to face up to reality of what had happened. I also knew I was going to get asked questions that would make the night a reality and that would haunt me.'

'I want Sinaga to spend the rest of his life in prison. Not only for what he has done to me but for what he has done to the other lads and the misery and stress he has caused them.'

'I remember the day the police contacted me, it is a day I will never forget because it changed my life forever.'

'I could recall the events of the evening the police were talking about but had no memory of any offences committed against me due to a complete lack of memory.'

'I know I have the support I need in place to help me no matter how long it takes.'

'I would like to thank the police, they couldn't have dealt with me any better.'

'I want Reyhnard Sinaga to suffer for what he has done to me and the other victims.'

'I don't think I will ever be OK with what has happened.'

'I have had the support of my ISVA from St. Mary's and I really could not have got through it without her. I have periods where I can't get up and face the day.'

'I wish the worse for him, I want him to feel the pain and sufferance I have felt. He has destroyed a part of my life.'

'No prison sentence is long enough for what he did to me.'

'I would like Sinaga to get an indefinite prison sentence because it has had such a big effect not only on my life but my friends and family and the other victims.'

'I have never been in such a bad place in my life and I didn't know how to get out of it. I was diagnosed with severe depression and put on anti-depressants, I also started counselling.'

'I will never forget the day the Police attended my home address. I did not know why they needed to see me, but I was devastated when I was told that I had been a victim of serious sexual offences, also that I have been drugged and the appalling sexual act was filmed.'

'I hope he never comes out of Prison and he rots in hell.'

'This assault has had a serious impact on my mental health and my relationships.'

'The perpetrator has taken a part of me that I will never get back, and deserves the largest sentence possible.'

'I will never forget the day the Police came to see me, I did not know why they needed to see me but I can say I was absolutely devastated to hear that I had been a victim of rape, after being drugged and this sexual act was filmed by a man, I now know to be Sinaga.' Advertisement

'What followed next was a fight with the defendant repeatedly biting the complainant and the complainant striking the defendant several times. Ultimately, the complainant managed to escape from the flat and once outside contacted the Police.

'Sinaga was stretchered out of his flat by the paramedics, and at this stage, the complainant was initially arrested and interviewed for assault. But it soon became clear to the police that it was he who was the complainant and in due course Sinaga was arrested.

'All of the complainants were either inside or near to one of the night spots and all have suffered varying degrees of memory loss.

'Almost none of the men who the police had tracked were even aware they had been involved in a sexual interaction with the defendant.'

Police have linked Sinaga to 195 potential victims - 70 of whom they have not yet been able to identify. He went out in the early hours of the morning, hunting for lone, drunk young men around nightclubs near his flat.

Sinaga was jailed today for 159 offences committed from January 2015 to May 2017, with details of his horrific crimes finally revealed as it emerged that:

Police have appealed for more potential victims to come forward amid fears Sanaga could have been active for more than a decade

Prosecutors had to hold four separate trials due to the sheer number of victims involved

His wealthy Indonesian parents bankrolled his ten years of study in the UK

Police had to wade through the equivalent of three miles of lorries filled with A4 paper to bring Sanaga to justice

The slightly-built Indonesian student posed as a Good Samaritan who offered them a floor to sleep on or promised them more drink, Manchester Crown Court heard.

His victims - who were mainly heterosexual - had little or no memory of the hours that followed as Sinaga filmed the assaults on his mobile phone, and they later left the apartment unaware they had been violated.

Sinaga - who was condemned for showing no remorse - was born into a relatively wealthy family in Indonesia and arrived in the UK on a student visa in 2007 financed by his parents, before studying at Manchester and Leeds universities.

Police believe his offending could stretch back well over ten years, but Sinaga was convicted of 159 offences committed from January 2015 to May 2017 across four separate trials - with the case split up due to the number of victims involved.

Sinaga is believed to now be world's worst convicted rapist ahead of Joji Obara, 67, from Japan, who is known in the UK for killing British flight attendant Lucie Blackman in 2000 and is thought to have raped between 150 and 400 women.

Sinaga claimed many of the victims appeared to be asleep as they 'were playing dead' as he has sex with them.

Judge Suzanne Goddard QC told the court his total number of potential victims was 195.

Sentencing, she told Sinaga: 'You are an evil serial sexual predator who has preyed upon young men who came into the city centre wanting nothing more than a good night-out with their friends.

'One of your victims described you as a monster.

'The scale and enormity of your offending confirms this as an accurate description.'

The judge continued: 'Rarely, if ever, have the courts seen such a campaign of rape as this, covering so many victims over a prolonged period.'

She said the true scale of Sinaga's offending may never be known but that police appeared to have established 195 men were filmed by the defendant while unconscious.

Judge Goddard went on: 'It is ironic that were it not for the films that you took of your evil crimes it seems that most of these offences would not have even been discovered, let alone prosecuted.

'Your actions show you as a dangerous individual with no sense of reality.

'In my judgment you are a highly dangerous, cunning and deceitful individual who will never be safe to be released.

'That is for the Parole Board.'

Sinaga had shown 'not a jot of remorse', she continued, and noted at times he appeared to be 'actually enjoying the trial process'.

Details of the case - the UK's largest ever rape prosecution - can be made public today after reporting restrictions were lifted following the end of four trials.

Sinaga hunted for drunk young men around nightclubs near his flat in Manchester (above)

Spirit bottles at Sinaga's flat are pictured. He is thought to have drugged the men when giving them a drink from his selection of alcohol

How police trawled through the equivalent of three miles of lorries filled with A4 paper Senior Investigating Officer Detective Inspector Zed Ali, of Greater Manchester Police, said Sinaga's prosecution follows a long and complex investigation by his team. Detectives had to examine hours and hours of graphic and disturbing photographs and videos taken by Sinaga. In total they trawled through 3.29 terabytes of information  the equivalent of three miles of lorries filled with A4 paper. Officers also had the unfortunate task of knocking on doors to explain to victims that they believed they had been targeted by the rapist. All were devastated by the revelation. Many of the men were traced using Facebook profiles, wallets, and identity cards which Sinaga stole from his victims and kept in a box by his bed. Advertisement

The Crown Prosecution Service was forced to split the prosecution into four separate trials of 10 to 13 victims such were the numbers involved in the case.

Sinaga claimed the men consented to being recorded playing a sex game in which they pretended to be dead to fulfil his fantasies - a defence labelled 'preposterous' by prosecutor Iain Simkin as jurors saw footage of some victims snoring.

He was found guilty of a total of 159 offences committed between January 2015 and May 2017 - 136 counts of rape, 13 counts of sexual assault, eight counts of attempted rape and two counts of assault by penetration.

Many of the complainants had earlier been to the city centre nightclubs Factory and Fifth Avenue.

Sinaga's apartment, situated next to Factory in Princess Street, provided a perfect vantage point from which to identify his targets.

The court heard that none of the victims - many in their late teens or early 20s - wanted to know details of what had happened to them when traced by police and some have chosen not to tell their family or close friends of the trauma.

A large part of Sinaga's offending took place in the bedroom but some did take place in the living room. The final victim was raped in the bathroom before he woke up during the ordeal

The living room at the home of Sinaga, who has been jailed at Manchester Crown Court for life

The front door and the hallway at the home of Sinaga, who has been jailed for life, is pictured

Sinaga (left) claimed the men consented to being recorded playing a sex game in which they pretended to be dead to fulfil his fantasies at his flat (right, where blood was seen on the door)

Sinaga tested negative for HIV after he was arrested.

Jurors had to watch the mobile phone footage as Sinaga persisted with his defence and all were later uniquely offered counselling.

'A dangerous individual with no sense of reality': Judge's sentencing comments Sentencing, Judge Suzanne Goddard QC told Sinaga: 'You are an evil serial sexual predator who has preyed upon young men who came into the city centre wanting nothing more than a good night-out with their friends. 'One of your victims described you as a monster. The scale and enormity of your offending confirms this as an accurate description. 'Rarely, if ever, have the courts seen such a campaign of rape as this, covering so many victims over a prolonged period. 'It is ironic that were it not for the films that you took of your evil crimes it seems that most of these offences would not have even been discovered, let alone prosecuted. 'Your actions show you as a dangerous individual with no sense of reality. 'In my judgment you are a highly dangerous, cunning and deceitful individual who will never be safe to be released. That is for the Parole Board.' Advertisement

Last June, Sinaga was jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years for the convictions from his first two trials.

Reporting restrictions were put in place to avoid prejudice to subsequent trials and to avoid the possibility of potential victims and witnesses being deterred from giving evidence or coming forward.

A number of personal statements were read out in court from victims of offences which Sinaga was convicted of in the third and fourth trials.

One said: 'That night was just like any night out with my mates. What I didn't know was that there was a monster lurking in the background waiting to take advantage of my drunken state.

'I want Sinaga to acknowledge what he has done to me and show some remorse but I doubt that will ever happen.'

Another victim said: 'I genuinely thought he had helped me. How wrong could I be?

'The day I gave evidence was the hardest day of my life. I have a message to you, Sinaga. I am not going to let your ruin my life. I am going to fulfil my career plans and live a happy, content life.'

Prosecutor Iain Simkin told the court today that a common feature of many of the victims was the defendant's search for their social media details and that he was 'collating or cataloguing his victims in some way'.

The collection 'greatly assisted' the police in identifying the victims, he said.

He added that Sinaga bragged about one of his victims to a friend in a phone conversation and paraphrased the Little Mix song Black Magic.

He said: 'Take a sip of my secret potion, I'll make you fall in love.'

Richard Littler QC, defending Sinaga, submitted that the legal authorities did not support the passing of a whole life sentence in his client's case.

Timeline of Reynhard Sinaga's sexual assaults January 2015 to May 2017: The period over which Reynhard Sinaga was said to have committed sex assaults against 48 men in Manchester June 1 to July 10, 2018: Sinaga goes on his first trial which sees him convicted of 31 counts of rape, three counts of attempted rape and six counts of sexual assault. April 1 to May 7, 2019: Sinaga goes on trial for the second time and is convicted of 49 counts of rape, five counts of attempted rape and one count of sexual assault. He is jailed for 20 years after the first two trials. September 16 to October 4, 2019: Sinaga goes on his third trial and is convicted of 26 counts of rape, one count of assault by penetration and five counts of sexual assault. December 2, 2019 and December 20, 2019: Sinaga goes on his fourth trial and is convicted of 30 counts of rape and two counts of sexual assault. Today: Sinaga is jailed for at least 30 years over the third and fourth trials. In total, he was found guilty across all four trials of 159 offences - 136 rapes, eight attempted rapes, 14 sexual assaults, and one by penetration. Advertisement

He said this was not a mandatory life sentence case and that the Court of Appeal has never imposed a whole life order for a discretionary life sentence and, to date, whole life terms had not been passed in non-homicide cases.

Mr Littler said: 'This was a carefully executed sex crime by a defendant where the victims were targeted, tricked, drugged and all, it would appear, oblivious to the sex acts inside the flat.

'This could be accurately described as an evil crime but in fact it cannot accurately be described as a violent crime.'

Mr Littler said 36-year-old Sinaga would no longer have the ability to commit such age-specific offences when released.

Ian Rushton, North West Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor, said: 'Reynhard Sinaga is the most prolific rapist in British legal history.

'His extreme sense of sexual entitlement almost defies belief and he would no doubt still be adding to his staggering tally had he not been caught.

'Sinaga's unthreatening demeanour duped these young men - many of whom thanked him for his kindness in offering them a place to stay - into thinking this monster was a Good Samaritan.

'But once back at his flat he used victims as objects purely for his own gratification - then appears to have derived further twisted pleasure from re-watching his films in court and putting victims through the trauma of giving evidence.'

Reacting to Sinaga's sentencing, Home Secretary Priti Patel has asked for a review of whether controls of drugs such as GHB, which is currently class C, were 'tough enough'.

Sinaga's iPhone 4 (left) and iPhone 6 Plus (right) are pictured in CPS evidence photos

Sinaga (centre) is pictured in a sketch of him appearing at Manchester Crown Court today

BREAKDOWN OF OFFENCES REYNHARD SINAGA HAS BEEN CONVICTED OF Number of victims Rape Attempt Rape Assault by Penetration Sexual Assault Total Trial 1 12 31 3 0 6 40 Trial 2 13 49 5 1 0 55 Trial 3 10 26 0 1 5 32 Trial 4 13 30 0 0 2 32 TOTAL 48 136 8 2 13 159

Home Secretary calls for urgent review into GHB controls Home Secretary Priti Patel (right) has called for an urgent review into whether more stringent controls are needed for date rape drugs such as GHB. The Conservative minister urged the independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to expedite a review into whether current controls are tough enough. Her intervention comes following the sentencing of serial rapist Reynhard Sinaga to at least 30 years in jail after he was convicted of offences against 48 men. It is thought he laced alcoholic drinks with a drug such as Gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), also known as liquid ecstasy. The powerful depressant is a class C drug that is unlawful to possess for yourself or supply - except under a Home Office licence. Because of its potency, it has become a tool to spike drinks and has been linked to rapes and other sexual assaults. Ms Patel said: 'Sinaga committed truly sickening crimes and it is right that he has been sentenced to life imprisonment. 'I extend my heartfelt sympathy to his victims and my gratitude to the police and prosecutors who worked on this case and put him behind bars. 'I'm deeply concerned by the use of illegal drugs like GHB to perpetrate these crimes and have asked the independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to expedite a review looking at whether our controls for these drugs are tough enough.' GHB is used recreationally to reduce inhibitions, produce feelings of euphoria and increase the intensity of sex. But the risks are high, because the difference between the amount that will achieve the desired effects and overdosing is very small. This can lead to unconsciousness, coma and death. It does not always have a noticeable taste or smell, but can taste salty, and is particularly dangerous when mixed with alcohol or other depressants and sedatives. Advertisement

She said: 'Sinaga committed truly sickening crimes and it is right that he has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

'I extend my heartfelt sympathy to his victims and my gratitude to the police and prosecutors who worked on this case and put him behind bars.

'I'm deeply concerned by the use of illegal drugs like GHB to perpetrate these crimes and have asked the independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to expedite a review looking at whether our controls for these drugs are tough enough.'

Councillor Nigel Murphy, Deputy Leader of Manchester City Council, said: 'We pay tribute to the courage of those who have testified in these cases and the painstaking work of Greater Manchester Police in bringing this monster to justice.

'Support is available for anyone who is affected by the issues raised in this case.

'While it's deeply shocking that these crimes happened in our city, their long shadow should not distort perceptions of Manchester.

'Tens of thousands of people safely enjoy the city's famous nightlife every week.

'These were the actions of one depraved predator acting in isolation - they do not reflect or represent any gender, race, religion, sexuality or community.'

Detectives from Greater Manchester Police say they are keen to speak to about 70 of the potential victims who have not yet been identified from Sinaga's videos to ensure they have any support needed.

Earlier, Judge Goddard said police had established there are 195 different males who appear to be unconscious while Sinaga sexually assaulted them on film.

Bev Hughes, Greater Manchester's Deputy Mayor for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice, said: 'The police, St Mary's Sexual Assault Referral Centre, Survivors Manchester, Victim Support, the National Probation Service and other partner agencies have worked together to provide victims and survivors with the best possible support throughout the trials.

'I also want to echo GMP's appeal for further victims of Sinaga to come forward, so we can ensure they get the support they need.

'I also want to urge anyone who has been a victim of any rape or sexual assault to come forward and report it to police, confident that they will receive the help and support they need.

'Greater Manchester is a resilient place. We have undergone traumas in the past and, together, come through them. Sinaga is an appalling individual, who acted alone and is now off our streets.

Jurors had to watch the mobile phone footage as Sinaga persisted with his defence and all were later uniquely offered counselling

'He is in no way representative of our city-region and people should not be fearful of enjoying all that Manchester city centre has to offer.'

Sinaga acted as Good Samaritan before attacking victims Manipulative serial rapist Reynhard Sinaga convinced many of his victims he had done them a favour by offering them a floor to sleep on for the night. From the vantage point of his Manchester city centre apartment, he targeted lone young men who were worse for wear from alcohol after being separated from friends or on their way home. None of his victims suspected the malevolent intentions of the 36-year-old mature student as he approached them in the street. And none of his victims felt intimidated by Sinaga - slight in stature and friendly by appearance. One said Sinaga was 'really nice' and 'looked after him' after he lost his friends and his phone battery had ran out. Another thought the defendant had acted as a Good Samaritan after Sinaga said he looked after him when he found him lying on the ground near a hotel. Manchester Crown Court heard one complainant was sitting on the kerbside after the battery on his mobile phone was drained and he was approached by Sinaga. The defendant invited him to his apartment to charge the device but instead went on to drug and sexually violate him on camera. He too believed Sinaga had acted as a Good Samaritan and was grateful before he eventually learned the full horror of what had happened to him when the police called. A third man fell victim to Sinaga's phone charge ruse as he attempted to flag down a taxi when he was unable to order an Uber journey. Several of his victims felt guilty when they awoke the next day for troubling a stranger who they thought had provided them with somewhere to stay or for being sick in his flat. Others felt they had undergone a 'weird experience' but none had any real concerns or suspicions, with one complainant telling the court: 'I thought briefly he might have done something, but I thought stuff like that doesn't happen.' None of the victims, of whom 45 were heterosexual and 26 were students, when contacted by the police wanted to know the detail of what happened to them. Two attempted to commit suicide as a result of severe depression. Advertisement

Specialist police officers and victim support services are on standby to hear from anyone who believes Sinaga may have approached them on a night out.

Greater Manchester Police established there may be at least 190 potential victims of Sinaga, but of that figure they were unable to identify 70 of those individuals.

And it is suspected the serial rapist may have committed offences elsewhere in the city as images from some video clips recovered from his phone did not match the Manchester city centre address where he lived when he was arrested.

Assistant Chief Constable Mabs Hussain said: 'My first appeal would be to anybody who may think they have had contact with Reynhard Sinaga, the circumstances as reported have brought back some memories and they suspect they have been on a night out and met somebody like Reynhard Sinaga to contact the police.

'We have specialist officers waiting, we have a helpline where the numbers are available and we are working with specialist victim support services including St Mary's Sexual Assault Referral Centre, Survivors Manchester and Victims' Services.

'At the forefront of this investigation and our primary objective throughout has been to provide the support to the victims and I would encourage them to come forward. We have the specialist services to provide that support.'

He went on: 'We believe Reynhard Sinaga is the UK's most prolific rapist and the reason I say that is because on the information and evidence we suspect there are in total 190 victims approximately who have been involved.

'We can't give you a definitive figure for obvious reasons. Forty-eight of them have supported a criminal prosecution.

'Of that 190 there are approximately 70 that we are still yet to identify and the reason we have still yet to identify them is despite our best efforts, and the investigation team working tirelessly to piece together the information, we have been unable to identify who each individual is to speak to them. There is still some work for us to do.'

He said officers had undertaken a 'very very difficult' investigation with almost three terabytes of data pored over - the equivalent of watching 1,500 DVD films.

Mr Hussain explained: 'One of my officers described it as like putting together a jigsaw without the picture because it was not apparent which parts were from which offence.

'Each visit to each of these victims has had to be carefully and meticulously planned, and their welfare and wellbeing was at the forefront of our mind in dealing with the victims.'

The Factory club in Manchester where Sinaga watched and picked up men that he later raped

Fifth nightclub in Manchester where Sinaga watched and picked up men that he later raped

He said Sinaga was a 'depraved sexual predator' who had taken advantage of trusting young men, but he added: 'I think we need to concentrate less on Reynhard Sinaga as an individual and focus much more on each individual victim who has either supported the prosecution or provided evidence and information.

Anyone who believes they may have been a victim of Sinaga should contact Greater Manchester Police or specialist support agencies on: - Support Line: 0800 056 0154 (calls made from within the UK)/0207 158 0011 (international calls) - Police Line: 0800 092 0410 (calls made from within the UK)/0207 158 0124 (international calls) Reports relating to Reyhard Sinaga can also be made online via the major incident public portal by clicking here Advertisement

'I cannot begin to imagine what they have had to endure, what they have had to go through and what they are still living with today.'

In a statement, the Diocese of Manchester said: 'Reynhard Sinaga is guilty of the most appalling crimes. We utterly condemn his actions and our thoughts and prayers today go out to his victims.

'Clergy, and others in our churches who work with those affected by abuse, are ready to offer support to any affected by these horrific revelations.

'We can confirm that Reynhard Sinaga did worship occasionally at a city centre church and it appears that nobody who came into contact with him had any inkling of his crimes.'

'Cunning rapist' worked on thesis about gay and bisexual men in Manchester

Churchgoer Reynhard Sinaga lived in Manchester city centre for more than a decade while studying various university courses.

A gay man who looks younger than his age of 36, he chose to live close to the gay village and the Canal Street area where attitudes to homosexuality were very different than in his home nation of Indonesia.

Sinaga is said to have had a small, close-knit group of friends who believed him to be friendly and good-natured.

Specialist police officers and victim support services are on standby to hear from anyone who believes Sinaga (pictured) may have approached them on a night out

Born in the Jambi province of Indonesia into a relatively wealthy family, Sinaga arrived in the UK on a student visa in 2007 financed by his parents and remained in the country on those terms for the next 10 years.

Sinaga graduated from the University of Manchester in 2009 with an MSc degree in Planning and again in 2011 with an MA degree in Sociology.

No concerns of a sexual nature, or of any other matters, were ever raised with the university, confirmed officials.

From 2012 he commuted monthly to the University of Leeds as part of his studies for a PhD.

Sinaga attended regular supervision meetings to help with his thesis entitled 'Sexuality and everyday transnationalism. South Asian gay and bisexual men in Manchester'.

The university said he did not appear to spend much time in the city, other than for the monthly supervision sessions, and did not take an active part in research groups or societies.

In June 2017 he was suspended immediately after his arrest and his student status was officially rescinded following conviction.

Greater Manchester Police said there is no indication that his research was used as a basis for his crimes.

During a previous sentencing hearing the court received references from Sinaga's mother and sister but Judge Suzanne Goddard QC said both knew nothing of 'the cold, cunning and calculated rapist'.

A character testament was also received from St Chrysostom's Church, in Victoria Park, Manchester - an Anglican church of the Catholic tradition - where Sinaga had attended.

The judge said: 'It is almost beyond belief that someone who could profess some Christian faith could at the same time have been committing such wicked and evil crimes.'
Trump said that if Iraq asked U.S. forces to leave and it was not done on a friendly basis, "we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever."

U.S. President Donald Trump threatened sanctions against Baghdad on Sunday after Iraq's parliament called on U.S. troops to leave the country, and the president said if troops did leave, Baghdad would have to pay Washington for the cost of the air base there.

Read alsoUN secretary-general "deeply concerned" about escalations in Gulf

"We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there. It cost billions of dollars to build, long before my time. We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," Trump told reporters on Air Force One, as reported by Reuters.

Trump said that if Iraq asked U.S. forces to leave and it was not done on a friendly basis, "we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame."
VISAKHAPATNAM: Crude vessel, MT Nave Constellation along with its crew sets, which set sail for Visakhapatnam Port from Bonny Terminal in Nigeria on December 2, was hijacked by pirates in mid sea on December 3.

The armed pirates later abducted 19 of the 26 crew members and left the vessel. The ship, however, continued onward journey along with replacement staff and seven members of the crew.

Meanwhile, the release of 19 kidnapped crew members, including 18 Indians and one Turkish man, was secured on December 21. The vessel, belonging to Anglo Eastern Tankers, was carrying 254 TMT light crude. The vessel along with its crew members reached Visakhapatnam on January 5 and they were given a warm welcome by Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) officials.
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RICHARDSON, TX / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2020 / Optex Systems Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB:OPXS), a leading manufacturer of precision optical sighting systems for domestic and worldwide military and commercial applications, today announced a multi-year Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) award from Defense Logistics Agency Land and Maritime for periscopes for up to $2.3 million over a five-year period.Danny Schoening, CEO of Optex Systems Holdings Inc., commented, "Optex continues to be the supplier of choice for periscopes by the Department of Defense and the major prime contractors producing Armored Vehicles. Optex continues to support our customers with product for new production and spares for those units in the field or currently undergoing refurbishment." With this order, Optex's current backlog stands at over $22 Million.ABOUT OPTEX SYSTEMSOptex, which was founded in 1987, is a Richardson, Texas based ISO 9001:2015 certified concern, which manufactures optical sighting systems and assemblies, primarily for Department of Defense (DOD) applications. Its products are installed on various types of U.S. military land vehicles, such as the Abrams and Bradley fighting vehicles, Light Armored and Armored Security Vehicles, and have been selected for installation on the Stryker family of vehicles. Optex also manufactures and delivers numerous periscope configurations, rifle and surveillance sights, and night vision optical assemblies. Optex delivers its products both directly to the military services and to prime contractors. For additional information, please visit the Company's website at www.optexsys.com Safe Harbor StatementThis press release contains certain forward-looking statements, as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including those relating to the products and services described herein. You can identify these statements by the use of the words "may," "will," "could," "should," "would," "plans," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "project," "intend," "likely," "forecast," "probable," and similar expressions. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, continued funding of defense programs and military spending, the timing of such funding, general economic and business conditions, including unforeseen weakness in the Company's markets, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, delays in completing engineering and manufacturing programs, changes in customer order patterns, changes in product mix, continued success in technological advances and delivering technological innovations, changes in the U.S. Government's interpretation of federal procurement rules and regulations, changes in spending due to policy changes in any new federal presidential administration, market acceptance of the Company's products, shortages in components, production delays due to performance quality issues with outsourced components, inability to fully realize the expected benefits from acquisitions and restructurings or delays in realizing such benefits, challenges in integrating acquired businesses and achieving anticipated synergies, changes to export regulations, increases in tax rates, changes to generally accepted accounting principles, difficulties in retaining key employees and customers, unanticipated costs under fixed-price service and system integration engagements, changes in the market for microcap stocks regardless of growth and value and various other factors beyond our control.You must carefully consider any such statement and should understand that many factors could cause actual results to differ from the Company's forward-looking statements. These factors include inaccurate assumptions and a broad variety of other risks and uncertainties, including some that are known and some that are not. No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed and actual future results may vary materially. The Company does not assume the obligation to update any forward-looking statement. You should carefully evaluate such statements in light of factors described in the Company's filings with the SEC, especially on Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K. In various filings the Company has identified important factors that could cause actual results to differ from expected or historic results. You should understand that it is not possible to predict or identify all such factors. Consequently, you should not consider any such list to be a complete list of all potential risks or uncertainties.Contact:IR@ optexsys.com (972) 764-5718SOURCE: Optex Systems Holdings, Inc.
The Israeli suspects leaving court earlier this year. (Getty)

One of the 12 Israelis accused of raping a British teenager in Cyprus last year has announced plans to sue her after she was convicted of fabricating the claims.

The 19-year-old woman was found guilty of public mischief by a Cypriot court last week after claiming to have been raped by up to 12 Israeli tourists in a hotel room in the party town of Ayia Napa on July 17.

Following the incident, the dozen young men, aged between 15 and 20, were arrested but later freed after she signed a retraction statement 10 days later.

One of the men accused of taking part in the gang-rape, Yona Golub, told The Mail On Sunday that the group were preparing to sue her.

The British teenager was convicted of falsely claiming she was raped by the men. (Getty)

We deserve compensation for what we went through. I dont know how much I should get, he told the newspaper.

They need to put her in prison and only afterwards should they deal with the compensation.

The 18-year-old claims he was in a different hotel room, but was arrested because he was on holiday with two friends who had been in the same room.

READ MORE FROM YAHOO NEWS UK:

The young woman maintains she was raped but forced to change her account under pressure from Cypriot police.

She could face up to a year in jail and a 1,700 euro (1,500) fine upon sentence after being found guilty of public mischief at Famagusta District Court, in Paralimni.

It comes as Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the Government is careful of aggravating authorities in Cyprus ahead of her sentencing.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the government would be careful of aggravating authorities in Cyprus ahead of her sentencing this week. (Getty)

Mr Raab conveyed concerns to his Cypriot counterpart over the treatment of the woman and warned that the case now needs to be handled very sensitively to prevent doing anything counter-productive between now and the teenagers sentencing on Tuesday.

Mr Raab told Sky: I have conveyed our concerns about her treatment and the case to my Cypriot opposite number.

Story continues

I did that on Friday, and I also have also spoken to the young ladys mother to see what more support we can provide to her.

So we also need to be careful that we dont do anything which aggravates the situation between now (and) the date of sentencing, which is on Tuesday.

But the concerns that we have and that I have, have been squarely and firmly and categorically registered with the Cypriot authorities.
The Twitter account for The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical has more than 50,000 followers. Ashlee Latimer knows them better than most.

She knows their names and handles, their inside jokes, their favorite Percy fan theories. She knows which follower is a massive Taylor Swift fan, and she knows that a delegation of Norwegians loves the musical. When she posted a tweet with a pair of cryptic emojis, a wink to a lyric on the then-unannounced cast album, she knew exactly which sleuthing follower would reply within minutes and crack the code.

But the shows fans know next to nothing about Latimer.

Theyre plenty familiar, though, with her alter ego: Mx. Thief, the gender-neutral alias posting memes and motivational notes on the @LTMusical account since the shows run Off Broadway in 2017. Mx. Thief has become a carefully crafted and recognizable voice  in some posts mysterious and teasing; in others, urging followers to spread kindness. Sometimes, Mx. Thief is straight sass, a camp counselor crossed with an older sibling, calling out trolls, or professional theater critics.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-07 04:41:01|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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JERUSALEM, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli planning authority advanced the building of 1,936 new homes in settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank during a two-day meeting ending Monday, a settlement watchdog said.

A total of 786 housing units received the final approval needed before the building works could start, while 1,150 housing units received phase-one approval of the planning process, according to a statement by Peace Now, an Israeli group that follows the expansion of the settlements.

The approvals come at a sensitive time when the International Criminal Court (ICC) is discussing whether it has jurisdiction ahead of opening a formal investigation into Israeli violation of international law in the Israeli settlements.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned the move, saying the ICC has no jurisdiction in the case.

The settlements are located in the West Bank and East Jerusalem which were seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war along with the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians hope to build their future state on these lands.

The Palestinians and the majority of the international community condemn the settlements as an obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians and a violation of international law.
Of the top contenders for the White House, Pete Buttigieg has had perhaps the smallest campaign operation in Texas.

While other campaigns have been opening offices, hiring staff, and visiting Texas regularly, Buttigieg drilled down on other early voting states in need of a breakthrough in Iowa or New Hampshire to get his campaign rolling. And polling has shown its starting to work as he has vaulted into the lead in some early polls in Iowa. While the former South Bend Indiana Mayor still hasnt invested a ton of resources in the Lone Star State, he kicked off a 3-day run through Texas on Monday night with a fundraiser in Houston.

The 37-year-old Democrat told several dozen people at a private home in The Heights that he sees Texas as critical to the presidential primary. Its never been more important for us to be organizing our friends and allies here knowing that the race is unpredictable, he said.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

With just 43 days until early voting, Buttigieg told the crowd the nation needs the next president to be a unifier and warned that whoever it is will possibly face and even more divided nation.

Were going to need a president that prioritizes unifying the American people and bringing us together, Buttigieg said.

More Information Texas Presidential Primary Feb. 3 - Deadline for voters to be registered in order to vote in the election. Feb. 18 - First day of early voting March 3 - Election day See More Collapse

Besides serving two terms as a mayor, Buttigieg is a former intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve and was a formerly a consultant for McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm based in New York City.

Buttigieg has presented himself as a centrist compared to other more progressive candidates in the field. He has opposed Medicare for All programs, calls his current health care proposal Medicare for all who want it and has moved toward the center on issues including gun control when he opposed Beto ORourke proposal for a mandatory gun buyback of AR-15s and AK-47s.

Buttigieg said his Medicare-for-all-who-want-it is a better way to make sure all Americans have health insurance.

We take a version of Medicare and make it available for anyone who wants to participate, but in the name of freedom, were going to trust you about whether you want it, he said.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Buttigieg appeared to be the longest of longshot candidates when he first jumped into the presidential race in early 2019.

During his stop in Houston he acknowledged seeing some people in the crowd who were with him when his chances seemed somewhere between improbable and preposterous.

But over the last two months, Buttigieg has surged in both fundraising and in polling in the early states.

Two consecutive Iowa polls have shown Buttigieg in first place or tied for first place in Iowa. And his campaign announced last week it had raised $24.7 million in the final three months of 2019. That was a better fundraising run than anyone in the Democratic field except for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who raised almost $35 million during that same period.

Buttigieg has now raised a total of $76 million.

While Buttigieg is doing well in Iowa, he has not moved voters in Texas so far. Early polling before Texas votes on March 3 shows Buttigieg well behind Vice President Joe Biden. The last Texas poll, released in early December by CNN, showed Buttigieg with the support of 9 percent of likely Democratic primary voters, compared to 35 percent for Biden.

His fundraising run \comes as other top contenders drill down on Texas, which holds its presidential primary on Super Tuesday on March 3 along with 13 other states.

Last weekend Mike Bloomberg campaigned in Fort Bend County, upped his Houston television buy to $4 million, and named Ashlea Turner, who worked on then-Houston Mayor Bill Whites 2010 campaign for governor, as state director of his presidential bid.

Biden was in San Antonio just last month for a campaign rally and fundraiser, and is planning to be back in Texas next week for more events. He previously hired Dallas-based Democratic strategist Jane Hamilton to be his Texas state director.

Warren opened a pair of campaign offices in Austin and San Antonio last month and has plans to open more offices in Dallas and Houston, according to her staff. She hired veteran San Antonio Democratic activist Jenn Longoria to be her Texas state director and has brought on two dozen senior staffers and organizers.

Sanders has hired Houstons Chris Chu de Leon, a former political adviser on ORourkes presidential campaign, to be his Texas field director. Sanders campaign has also trained up more than 1,000 volunteers who are already phone banking and canvassing voters ahead of the March 3 primary.

Buttigieg has no campaign offices in Texas and has largely relied on his friendship with Austin Mayor Steve Adler to help him navigate Texas.
GCB Bank Ltd invested a total of GH378 million in the cocoa and the agricultural sectors of the Ghanaian economy in the past year.

Of the amount, GH370 million went into the cocoa industry in the form of Overdrafts, Term Loans and Seed Fund Guarantees for the funding of cocoa purchases to licensed buying companies.

The remaining GH8 million was utilized in funding the purchase of over 40 vehicles, tractors and heavy-duty trucks for the transportation of cocoa from the hinterlands to the various ports.

The Managing Director of GCB, Mr Anselm Ray Sowah, who announced this, gave the assurance that the Bank would from the year 2020 extend its support to fish farming and poultry.

Speaking at GCBs encounter with its Corporate Clients in the cocoa and agriculture sectors in Accra, the MD also revealed that the Bank has partnered with some vehicle dealerships with over GH12 million to set up a franchise for reputable vehicle brand.

In line with this arrangement, we have developed flexible credit facilities to enable individuals to purchase brand new vehicles, he said.

Additionally, the Bank has also made significant gains in the Insurance and Financial Services Industry by integrating its systems to make transactions more fluid and convenient.

The Acting Head of Corporate Banking Department of the Bank, Nana Antwi Boasiako, said the Bank in 2020 would offer superior products and excellent services, adding that GCB offers stability and liquidity for corporate businesses.
Colorado: 1,350%

Nevada: 733%

New Mexico: 663%

Wyoming: 600%

Oklahoma: 578%

Montana: 514%

Arizona: 450%

Utah: 360%

California: 325%

Alaska: 311%

(TNS)  The 2013 flood that swamped Boulder County is just one of many natural disasters that pushed Colorado into ranking at the top nationally for the rate of increase in natural disasters over the past 40 years, according to a new study culled from Federal Emergency Management Agency data.And second place wasnt even close.Colorado showed a 1,350% increase in natural disasters over that span, jumping from just four during the span of 1980 to 1999, to 58 in the years 2000 to 2017.Nevada was a distant second with a 733% increase, and New Mexico third, at 663%. Despite the headlines it has earned with apocalyptic megafires in recent years, California was ninth with an increase of 325%.The 14 highest rates of increase occurred in states that all lie west of the Mississippi River, underscoring the degree to which wildfires helped drive some of the numbers. The data were compiled by QuoteWizard.com , an insurance comparison shopping and research tool that enables consumers to compare agent and carrier quotes locally and nationally.Although QuoteWizard.com presented its numbers as having been derived from FEMA data, FEMA itself expressed reservations about the end product.A spokesman for the agency in a statement noted that FEMA was not contacted for QuoteWizards study and does not know which data was used or how it was analyzed.Comparing the raw number of disaster declarations, emergency declarations and Fire Management Assistance Grants (FMAG) declarations is not a good method for determining insurance damage, as it is not an accurate measure of disaster severity, the FEMA statement noted.FEMA responds to disasters at the respective governors request when their state emergency managers are unable to meet survivors needs  and the President declares a disaster declaration. Because states have different disaster response capabilities, FEMA response will not evenly capture event severity across the nation.A QuoteWizard spokesperson replied by stating that its report reflects a sheer total and rate of increase in the frequency of natural disasters and has nothing to do with losses or severity of the disaster.Overall, the United States registered $485 billion in estimated property loss in natural disasters from 2000 to 2017, the QuoteWizard report stated. The years 1980-1999 had a total of 751 natural disasters, while the years 2000-2017 saw 1,997 for a 62% average national increase. The nation as a whole saw a 165% increase in natural disasters this century.The massive rate of increase in natural disasters in the fire prone states is due to a number of climate and man made causes, a QuoteWizard.com news release stated.Wildfires in the western United States are not only becoming more frequent, but larger in size and death. Californias five largest fires on record have occurred since 2010. The Mendocino Complex fire in 2018 burned over 495,000 acres and is the largest fire in state history by a large margin. The Camp Fire in 2018 was the states deadliest fire on record accounting for 85 deaths.Boulder environmental writer Michael Kodas, author of the 2017 book Megafire, which predicted an increased frequency of such events, stressed the importance of knowing how data from the insurance industry has been developed.And, Kodas said, It would not be a disaster if we didnt have homes and infrastructure and lives in front of something that is actually a natural phenomenon that has always occurred in this landscape. Otherwise, we would see this as just a wildfire. When we suddenly have homes and lives getting affected by all of that, then its a natural disaster and not just a natural phenomenon.Setting aside the question of QuoteWizards methodology, Kodas said, I think Colorado has become very vulnerable to a variety of natural events. Certainly, the Boulder flood is a great example of that, and a lot of the fires. It really highlights to me the difference between communities that are preparing for climate change and for natural hazards that threaten communities  even if they are not necessarily driven by climate change  and those that have not.The largest fire by area in Colorado history, the Hayman Fire, burned over 137,000 acres in Pike National Forest in 2002, claiming the lives of five firefighters, destroying 133 homes and 600 total structures.The most destructive Colorado wildfire also struck since 2000. That was the Black Forest Fire in 2012, which leveled 488 homes and killed two people.Boulder County residents remember all too well the Fourmile Fire of September 2010 , which scorched 6,000 acres and torched 169 homes. And it was just three years later that excessive rain was the grim story, with the September 2013 flood that killed four people in Boulder County, ruining 345 homes and damaging another 557.2020 the Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.)Visit the Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.) at www.dailycamera.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Australia's bushfires are so intense that satellites thousands of miles above Earth can easily spot their flames and smoke from space.

Actor Arjun Rampal on Monday took to Instagram to express his concern over the bushfires in Australia.

He wrote, "Infrared pictures taken from space, as Australia burns. What are we doing to our planet??? How many more devastating disasters will it take for governments and citizens to make that change? Let's make 2020 that turning point to do our bit and give back to Mother Earth. Prayers for all in Australia. May it rain and please let this end now. #australia #bushfiresaustralia." A user commented, "So true!!! Each one of us has equal responsibility of saving Mother Earth!!! Less wastage and minimalistic living is the need of the hour....unfortunately I feel actors are the ones who spends/waste lots of resources...be it your cloths, plastic bottles, fuel etc..." A fan wrote, "My heart is crying, what a nightmare."One post read, "There's a lot going on in our country as well. Please react on that too!! Please..." A user remarked, "Where us UN ? For war n dispute's UN comes first, not for this cause."
President Donald Trump speaks during a 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held at the King Jesus International Ministry on January 03, 2020 in Miami, Florida.

President Donald Trump threatened Sunday to slap sanctions on Iraq after its parliament passed a resolution calling for the government to expel foreign troops from the country.

Tensions in the Middle East spiraled last week after Trump called for a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed a top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, the U.S. president said: "If they do ask us to leave, if we don't do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame."

"We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time. We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," Trump said.

The president added that "If there's any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq."

Soleimani, the head of a special forces unit in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was the key architect of Iran's military operations overseas.

He was killed late Thursday while leaving Baghdad airport, when his convoy was struck by a drone, ordered by the U.S. president. One of those killed with him was a key Iraqi militia leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.

The Iraqi government has accused Washington of violating its sovereignty.

"The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason," read the resolution passed by the Iraqi parliament, which convened in an extraordinary session on Sunday.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq is set to meet a Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi on Monday to talk about the future of American military troops in Iraq, two U.S. officials familiar with the matter told NBC News. They said the U.S. was expecting Mahdi to inform the ambassador of its decision to expel U.S. troops in Iraq.
Top Story Read More Common Questions About the COVID-19 Outbreak Cancer patients, their caregivers, and others need to take precautions to lower their risk of getting COVID-19, which is caused by a type of coronavirus. Learn what you can do to help protect yourself and others. Share

Read More Six Plan-ahead Tips to Eat Smarter This Holiday Season Have a jolly, festive time at holiday parties this month while sticking to your healthy eating goals. Follow our tips to enjoy the season without having to pay for it later. Share

Read More Get a Healthy Back-to-School Start Put health on your back-to-school planning list this year. Vaccinations, nutritious lunches, and sleeping right are all part of the equation. Share

Read More Impact Ratings Show Cancer Journal Continues to Outperform The annual scientific and clinical Journal Impact Factors were released on June 30, and the American Cancer Societys CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians outperformed. The CA impact factor climbed from 292.3 last year to a staggering 508.7 and remains the highest-rated oncology journal in the world. Share

Read More Smoking Rates Historically Low, but Other Cancer-related Behaviors Need Improvement The latest statistics about the major cancer risk factors and screening test use in the United States are now available in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention and in the American Cancer Society Report Cancer Prevention and Early Detection, 2021-2022. Share

Read More American Cancer Society Urges People to Get Screened The American Cancer Society (ACS) has launched a Get Screened campaign that encourages people to schedule regular cancer screening tests. Share

Read More Patient Navigators Can Help When Life Disrupts Cancer Care Patient navigators are trained laypeople who can help ensure that a patient receives timely cancer care. Learn more. Share
Sinn Fein TD Jonathan O'Brien has announced he will not be running in the general election expected in the coming months.

The 48-year-old TD for Cork North Central denied to local media that there was any conflict between him and his party.

"This has been a difficult decision for me to make and it is one that I have made after several months of consideration," he said last night.

"I have had the great privilege and honour to serve the people of Cork for 20 years as a Sinn Fein elected representative, first as a member of Cork City Council for 11 years and the last nine years as a TD.

"In that time I have contested seven elections on behalf of Sinn Fein and I want to thank the voters for giving me the opportunity to represent them."

Speaking to the website of 'The Echo' newspaper in Cork, Mr O'Brien dismissed any rumours of him falling out with the party.

"If there was any issue between me and the party, I would be the first person to say it," he said.

"I've been critical of the party in the past. I say it as I see it, and I think the party is in a strong position under Mary Lou (McDonald).

"After the election I'll still be a party member. I'll be an active member of the party until the day I die," he said.

Mr O'Brien said being a TD was "extremely frustrating, because there's only so much an Opposition TD can do". He added: "I wish I was in government. I wish I could implement change, but it's difficult."

In a statement, Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald thanked Mr O'Brien for his "massive contribution to Sinn Fein locally and nationally".
Being a U.S. soldier in a fast-response force sometimes means being sent halfway across the world within a day, leaving no time to say goodbye to those staying behind. That's what happened to Suuey Lamar when her husband, a member of the 82 Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, got the call on New Year's Eve.

"Not knowing how long it's going to be until I see him, that's the hardest part," said Lamar. Her husband was among hundreds of U.S. soldiers deployed last week from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Kuwait to serve as reinforcements in the Middle East amid rising tensions following the U.S. killing of a top Iranian general.

Lt. Col. Mike Burns, a spokesman for the 82nd Airborne Division, told The Associated Press 3,500 members of the division's quick-deployment brigade, known officially as its Immediate Response Force, will have deployed within a few days.

The most recent group of service members to deploy will join about 700 who left earlier in the week, Burns said. A loading ramp at Fort Bragg was filled Saturday morning with combat gear and restless soldiers.

Read: Pentagon to deploy hundreds of troops in Kuwait after Baghdad protests

Some tried to grab a last-minute nap on wooden benches. Reporters saw others filing onto buses. The additional troop deployments reflect concerns about potential Iranian retaliatory action in the volatile aftermath of Friday's drone strike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force who has been blamed for attacks on U.S. troops and American allies going back decades.

President Donald Trump ordered the airstrike near Baghdad's international airport. Iran has vowed retribution, raising fears of an all-out war, but it's unclear how or when a response might come. "I'm extremely proud of my husband. I'm going into this knowing this is what he wants. He loves his job," Lamar said.

Read: Baghdad protesters call for US troops to leave

Burns said the soldiers within the Immediate Response Force train constantly to be ready to respond quickly to crises abroad.

When called by their superiors, they have two hours to get to base with their gear and must maintain a state of readiness so that they can be in the air headed to their next location within 18 hours.

Similarly, Bri'anna Ferry's husband got the call on New Year's Eve, and she said he was on a plane to the Middle East within hours. "I told him, don't worry about us. We'll be fine," she said. "Focus on your mission."

Read: 90-year-old Kuwait ruler admitted to US hospital, cancels Trump visit

Read: Trumps hits back at Iran with a new warning after rockets hit Baghdad Green Zone
Two powerful Democrats in the Senate are demanding that Donald Trump publicly release the notification he sent to Congress after the killing of a top Iranian general, which has raised concern of major armed conflict between the US and Iran in the Middle East.

In a letter to the president on Monday, senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Menendez urged Mr Trump to release the notification, which is required under the US War Powers Resoluation.

"It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner," the pair wrote. "An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society, and there appears to be no legitimate justification for classifying this notification."

More follows...
Zoran Milanovic waves next to his wife after first results were announced during the run-off of Croatia's presidential election in Zagreb, Croatia on Jan. 5, 2020. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)

Croatias Former PM Milanovic Wins Presidential Vote

ZAGREBFormer Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic, candidate of the top opposition party the Social Democrats, will be Croatias next president, the results of the presidential election showed on Sunday.

In the second and final round of the election, Milanovic won 52.7 percent of votes. At the same time, the incumbent Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, candidate of the ruling center-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), garnered 47.3 percent of the votes.

Zoran Milanovic, presidential candidate casts his ballot at a polling station during a run-off of Croatias presidential election in Zagreb, Croatia on Jan. 5, 2020. (Antonio Bronic/Reuters)

The presidents role is mostly ceremonial in Croatia. The head of state cannot veto laws but has a say in foreign policy, defense, and security matters.

Milanovic, who served as prime minister from 2011 to 2015, ran his election campaign on a promise to fight corruption, which he said had increased since he lost power to the conservatives.

Milanovics victory is a wind in the sails of the Social Democrats and will strengthen the party ahead of a parliamentary vote (due in the autumn), political analyst Branko Caratan told state television.

In the first round of the election two weeks ago, Milanovic beat 11 other candidates to come first with 29.6 percent of votes, with Grabar-Kitarovic in second place with 26.7 percent.

For me (from now on), each party will on the formal level be the same. I will cooperate with everyone who will have the executive power. I will not make divisions among the Croatian citizens, Milanovic told his cheering supporters in the party campaign headquarters.

The outgoing president Grabar-Kitarovic in her speech, wished Milanovic a successful five-year term in office, which begins in February.

It is in the interest of our country which needs to preserve stability, she said.

While some analysts said Milanovics victory could hurt the standing of Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic in his HDZ party, ahead of the party leadership election this year, others said he would be able to manage the challenge.

I think that Plenkovic is a skilled politician who will know how to balance in the new situation, Smiljana Leinert Novosel told state television.

Croatia took over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union on Jan. 1.

By Igor Ilic
Intense heat and winds over the weekend fanned the fires that have been engulfing ever-increasing tracts of Australia since September. The south east of the continentincluding the Gippsland and North Eastern districts of the state of Victoria and the South Coast, Southern Highlands and Snowy Mountains districts of the state of New South Wales (NSW)have been the most severely impacted in recent days, along with Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia.

Raging blazes forced tens of thousands of people to seek safety in emergency centres or on the waterfront, while exhausted fire crews focused on saving properties in the face of unpredictable and volatile fires so large that they generate their own weather. Inland rural communities and coastal towns, best known as either popular summer tourist destinations or productive agricultural areas, have been cut off by road closures and the loss of electricity and mobile phone reception.

In NSW, the Rural Fire Service (RFS) commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons stated on Sunday evening that there had been a lot of damage and destruction. He announced that at least 60 homes had been lost but warned that property losses over the weekend could run into the hundreds. In Victoria, at least 110 properties were lost, a figure that is also expected to soar as assessments are made in currently inaccessible areas.

Boats are pulled ashore as smoke and wildfires rage behind Lake Conjola, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2020. (Robert Oerlemans via AP)

The number of deaths attributed to the protracted 20192020 fire season currently stands at 24. Two men were killed on Kangaroo Island and another died fighting fires in southern NSW on the weekend. At least 1,600 homes have been destroyed, along with hundreds of farm buildings and vehicles. The Insurance Council of Australia has reported that its member institutions have so far received 5,850 bushfire claims, totally some $375 million, and expect thousands more claims. Stock losses are likely to be very high in some of fire ravaged agricultural areas.

Around seven million hectares of bushland have now been burnt out, with the most severe summer months of the fire season just beginning. By comparison, approximately one million hectares were burnt out in the Amazon fires in mid-2019 and some 765,000 hectares during the wildfires that ravaged California in 2018, and 105,000 hectares in 2019.

Conditions have eased slightly at the beginning of the week, with lower temperatures and a small amount of rainfall in some areas, though far from enough to extinguish the fires. By the end of the week, however, heat and winds will soar. Andrew Crisp, the Emergency Management Commissioner in Victoria, stated bluntly to journalists yesterday that the fires will take off again.

A large proportion of the Australian population is breathing hazardous air due to the sheer volume of smoke blanketing much of the country. Canberra, the national capital, was ranked last week as the most polluted city on earth as smoke blew in from fires to its north, south and east. Government departments sent notices last night to thousands of public servants not to come to their offices for the next 48 hours. The National Art Gallery and universities have closed.

The fire crisis is unprecedented and is the scientifically predicted outcome of long-term global warming. The rise in temperatures and related climatic shifts have resulted in the south of the Australian continent experiencing hotter conditions, reduced rainfall and more frequent and severe drought over the past three decades.

2019 is now officially the hottest year on record in Australia, meaning the 10 hottest years on record have been in the 14 years since 2005. On Saturday, the north-western Sydney suburb of Penrith was one of the hottest places on earth, with a temperature high of 48.9 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit). The previous high in the sprawling working-class area was 47.3C in January 2018.

The increased impact of heat, drought and fire in the south of Australia is just one consequence of the change brought about by global warming. In the tropical north, communities are once again preparing for a catastrophic wet season, which now brings historic levels of rainfalls as well as the prospect of larger and more destructive more intense cyclones. The flooding in north Queensland in JanuaryFebruary 2019 was the worst on record.

A discernable shift is underway in how masses of people view the political parties and institutions that have downplayed or denied the reality of climate change. Successive governments, both conservative and Labor, have responded with indifference and inaction to the increasingly strident warnings and the expert appeals for stepped-up preparations. Committed to the interests of the Australian capitalist elite, they have sought to defend the corporate profits that derive from fossil fuel use, while meeting the selfish demands for tax cuts by the wealthy. Vast resources have been allocated to building up the military, while even the pretense of international cooperation to stem global warming has been increasingly cast aside.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his conservative Liberal-National Coalition government is the current focus of burgeoning popular anger. As recently as December, Morrison and members of his cabinet were continuing to insist that there was no need for anxiety as Australia has always experienced fires. As the country burned, Morrison left for a holiday in Hawaii. National Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack labelled those linking the conditions to climate change as inner-city raving lunatics.

Morrison spent the weekend in face-saving efforts to ward off criticism of his government. On Saturday, he announced the largest call-up of part-time military reservistssome 3,000 in totalto assist the firefighting effort. The decision provoked a public outburst of frustration from the NSW RFS Commissioner Fitzsimmons, who only heard of the decision from the media. He was forced to allocate staff to establish what type of military personnel were being mobilised and whether they could even be of use.

The military call-up, moreover, has served only to underscore the extent to which the civilian fire, health and other services have been denied the funding, equipment and staffing necessary to respond to the type of conditions they now face. Billions are being spent on the preparations for war as the expense of essential services.

In April 2019, the Morrison government was warned in a letter sent by 23 former top fire and other emergency services officials that the coming fire season would be catastrophic. They called for a national summit to discuss preparations, including urgent moves to increase the number of firefighting aircraft that would be operational over Australia before the fire season began.

Despite being the most fire-prone continent, Australia does not have its own substantial national, professionally-staffed fleet of water-bombing planes and helicopters. Instead, a joint federal-state government authority, the National Aerial Firefighting Centre (NAFC), contracts aircraft from private companies, many from the US, depending on their availability and price of hire. The NAFC has been requesting greater funding since at least 2016 and received only token additional resources.

The state services responsible for fighting fires outside of the metropolitan areas are largely made up of volunteers. As recent days have demonstrated again, community-based fire units with intimate knowledge of the local terrain and conditions are irreplaceable in the midst of fires. However, the personnel and equipment available to bodies such as the Rural Fire Service in NSW and Country Fire Authority (CFA) in Victoria is inadequate.

The indifference shown by the Morrison government towards the bushfire crisis and its victims is simply the sharpest expression of the attitude of the political establishment as a whole, including the Labor Party opposition. Governments at the state and federal level, Labor and Liberal, are responsible for the lack of funding for fire services, the lack of disaster planning and, along with governments around the world, for the climate change that is a major factor in creating the conditions for the widespread bushfires.

All of them defend the profit system that places profits ahead of the lives and well-being of masses of ordinary working people. Socialism, and the vast economic, political and social change that is necessary on a world scale to address climate change, will come about only as the byproduct of an international and independent movement of the working class.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) South Africa has introduced a new parental leave policy for employees.

As part of its HPE Work That Fits Your Life programme, employees can now receive 26 weeks of paid parental leave.

HPE employees in South Africa are now benefiting from the introduction of 26 weeks of paid leave for new parents  both mothers and fathers  as well as parental transition support, retirement transition support, and wellness Fridays, said HPE.

This will include flexible working arrangements in recognition of the importance of equal parenting.

Leave policy

The parental leave policy applies to new parents with at least one year of HPE service.

The 26 weeks of paid leave must also be taken within the first 12 months after the birth or adoption of a child, said the company.

HPE has also implemented parental transition support, which is a flexible work arrangement policy that offers new parents the opportunity to work part time for up to 36 months after the birth or adoption of a child.

Additionally, employees are encouraged to take wellness Fridays, which allows them to leave the office three hours early one Friday each month to volunteer, focus on physical or emotional health, or spend time on personal or career development.

At HPE in South Africa, we want all of our employees to be reaching their full potential in their careers. That means supporting them as they grow their families as well, said President Ntuli, Managing Director of HPE South Africa.
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A Greek Orthodox worshipper nearly drowned today after he plunged into an icy river to retrieve a crucifix in a traditional Epiphany ceremony to celebrate the end of the 12 days of Christmas.

The man lost consciousness in the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul, Turkey, and had to be fished out by fellow worshippers and police scuba divers.

He was carried to a nearby ambulance and is believed to have been revived.

The man was one of thousands of Orthodox Christians taking part in the annual ceremony in several countries including Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic where priests throw wooden crosses into rivers and lakes for believers to dive in and retrieve.

Whoever manages to get hold of the cross is said to be freed from evil spirits and will be healthy throughout the year.

After the cross is fished out, the priest sprinkles believers with water using a bunch of basil.

In Istanbul, dozens jumped in despite earlier heavy rain and veteran pilgrim Nikolaos Solis, 31, from Agrinio in Greece retrieved the wooden cross - the fourth time he has done so.

The man lost consciousness in the Bosphorus river in Istanbul, Turkey, and had to be fished out by fellow worshippers and police scuba divers.

The man was carried to an ambulance where he is believed to have been revived

A man shouts as he retrieves a cross from the sea during the traditional blessing of the waters marking the Orthodox Epiphany Day in the village of Pachi near Athens

Participants take part in the traditional Three Kings swim to celebrate Epiphany in the Vltava River in Prague, Czech Republic

The religious holiday of Epiphany is also celebrated in some Western Christian churches as Three Kings Day, which marks the visit of the Magi, or three wise men, to the baby Jesus and closes out the Christmas season.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis urged the faithful to reject 'the god of money' as well as consumerism, pleasure, success and self.

In his Epiphany homily in St. Peter's Basilica, Francis encouraged people to focus on serving others, not themselves.

He urged the faithful to concentrate on the essentials by getting rid of what he calls 'useless things and addictions' that numb hearts and confuse minds.

Francis said believers should aid those suffering on life's margins, saying Jesus is present in those people.

In Milan, city officials served a hotel lunch to 200 homeless people to mark the day.

Cypriots attending the traditional 'Blessing of the Sea' ceremony release a white dove in the eastern port city of Famagusta

Military divers pull a boat to the shore as a man who retrieved a wooden cross from the waters of the Black Sea gets out from the water during the Epiphany celebration in Constanta, Romania

In Istanbul, dozens jumped in despite earlier heavy rain and veteran pilgrim Nikolaos Solis, 31, (pictured) from Agrinio in Greece retrieved the wooden cross - the fourth time he has done so.

Worshippers wear paper crowns at the traditional Epiphany parade in the Polish capital Warsaw

In the sleepy mountain city of Kalofer in central Bulgaria, dozens of men dressed in traditional white embroidered shirts waded into the icy Tundzha River on Monday waving national flags and singing folk songs.

Led by the town's mayor, inspired by bass drums and bagpipes and fortified by homemade plum brandy, they performed a slow 'mazhko horo,' or men's dance, stomping on the rocky riverbed.

Braving sub-zero temperatures, the men danced for nearly half an hour, up to their waists in the freezing water, pushing away chunks of ice floating on the river.

The town of Kalofer has applied to the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO for this traditional ritual to be inscribed as part of the 'intangible cultural heritage of humanity.'

Faithfuls try to catch a cross thrown, during the traditional blessing of water marking the Orthodox Epiphany Day at a beach in a suburb of Athens

A woman kisses a wooden crucifix after it was retrieved from the sea during the traditional blessing of water marking the Orthodox Epiphany Day in Thessaloniki, Greece

A wooden cross is retrieved from the Bosphorus River in Istanbul, Turkey

Believers brave the rain to watch as Greek Orthodox faithful Nikolaos Solis retrieves a cross from the water in Istanbul, Turkey

A swimmer kisses a wooden cross after catching it in the freezing water in Thessaloniki, northern Greece

Participants arrive for the traditional Three Kings swim to celebrate Epiphany at the Vltava River in Prague, Czech Republic

swimmers join the traditional Three Kings Swimming in the Vltava river in Prague, Czech Republic
The 13-year-old Fort Bragg girl who went missing Friday afternoon near the UCSF Mission Bay campus was found Sunday evening, according to the Mendocino County Sheriffs Office.

Sienna Carter, who was visiting the hospital with her family so her sibling could receive medical treatment, left the hospital around 3:30 p.m. and was not seen for more than 48 hours. Mendocino County Sheriff Capt. Gregory Van Patten said she was found around 6 p.m. Sunday in the San Francisco area.

I just received notification that Sienna Carter has been located and recovered by the UCSF Police Department in the San Francisco area, Van Patten said in an email.

Siennas family shared her disappearance on social media and photos of the girl went viral. Van Patten said Sienna was seen with a younger male in his teens or early-20s during the time she was gone and it appeared they had some type of familiarity.

It appears they had some internet contact with each other, Van Patten said.

Sienna would often travel with her family to routine medical appointments with her family to San Francisco and often would kill time relaxing in the car. Surveillance video showed Sienna leaving the hospital and leaving with the young man, Van Patten said.

She was spotted again at a nearby restaurant where she met someone matching the mans appearance and after a waitress learned of her disappearance she phoned police, Van Patten said.

Her grandfather Bart Buckner, who had been spreading news on his granddaughters disappearance throughout the weekend, expressed joy late Sunday on his Facebook page.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Just got call they found her, he wrote. Me and my wife are crying with joy. Thank you very much everyone.

Matthias Gafni is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: matthias.gafni@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mgafni
O ver the weekend the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) issued warnings to British tourists travelling to the UAE, Turkey, Oman and several other countries.

These warnings come amid escalating tensions with Iran launching an airstike against coalition military bases in Iraq in retaliation for the assasination of General Qasem Soleimani.

The UAE, Turkey and Oman FCO pages have been updated with the statement: Following the death of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in a US strike in Baghdad on January 3, the incident has led to increased tensions in the region.

Around 2.3 million British nationals visit Turkey each year and 1.5 million visit the UAE  but is it safe to visit after the new warnings? We asked Nicky Kelvin, Head of Content at travel expert The Points Guy, our key questions below.

The Foreign Office has issued warnings against Dubai and Turkey  should I cancel my holiday?

While the FCO has issued warnings, it hasnt advised against travel to these nations. Currently the only no-go countries bordering the Persian Gulf are Iran, Iraq and Yemen.

In a statement, it said that Brits travelling to Turkey, Dubai and the UAE more generally should "remain vigilant and keep up to date with the latest developments."

"There is a possibility of an increased threat against Western interests and the security situation could worsen with little warning," it added.

Kelvin adds: "US President Trump last week ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qassim Suleimani, who was killed at the Baghdad International Airport. Iran has promised retaliation, and some analysts have warned travellers to be especially cautious whilst overseas.

"The Foreign and Commonwealth Office now advises British Nationals against all travel to Iraq, except for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, where the FCO continues to advise against all but essential travel. When it comes to Iran, the FCO advises all British nationals against all travel to within 100 kilometres of the entire Iran/Afghanistan border, within 10 kilometres of the entire Iran/Iraq border, the province of Sistan-Baluchistan and the area east of the line running from Bam to Jask, including Bam.

"There is currently no explicit advice not to travel to the United Arab Emirates (including Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Ras al Khaimah), Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman."

I have a stopover through the UAE soon, should I re-book my flight to avoid this route?

Airlines that stop in the Gulf are operating as normal and there has been no advice against stopping over at airports in the Gulf. If you elect not to travel on your original flight you will not be refunded for it - and the FCO hasnt warned against flying over these countries. If you want to avoid flying over the Gulf, book with an airline going via Russia or eastern African nations.

Kelvin says: "No major airlines have issued flight waivers to the region. TPG also spot-checked a selection of major resorts in the region, and none have issued advisories for tourists at this time."

The FCO has also warned that, "terrorists are likely to try to carry out attacks in the UAE."

Are there any parts of Turkey that should be avoided?

According to the FCO, most areas of Turkey are okay to travel to bar the border with Syria and Iraq  where all travel is advised against. Some border cities like Hatay, Sirnak and Hikkari are also advised not to travel to as well as Tunceli and Diyarbakir in the east.

In a statement the FCO said it advises "against all travel to areas within 10 km of the border with Syria, except the city of Kilis."

It also said: "Following an incident on 7 January 2020, there are cancellations and disruptions to flights arriving at and departing from Sabiha Gokcen Airport in Istanbul.

"If youre travelling via Sabiha Gokcen, you should contact your airline for updated information."

"Terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Turkey," the FCO also warns.

What about my Turkish cruise, will that still be okay?

In August last year, P&O cancelled its entire Gulf cruise itinerary until the end of 2020. A spokesperson said at the time: Itineraries are due to resume at the end of 2020 but we will take advice from authorities and if changes are necessary then we will advise guests as soon as possible.
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC ("KSF") and KSF partner, the former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., remind investors that they have only until January 6, 2020 to file lead plaintiff applications in securities class action lawsuits against Quad/Graphics, Inc. (NYSE: QUAD), if they purchased the Companys securities between February 22, 2017 and October 29, 2019, inclusive (the Class Period). These actions are pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.



What You May Do

If you purchased securities of Quad/Graphics and would like to discuss your legal rights and how these cases 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 (lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com), or visit https://www.ksfcounsel.com/cases/nyse-quad/ to learn more. If you wish to serve as a lead plaintiff in these class actions by overseeing lead counsel with the goal of obtaining a fair and just resolution, you must request this position by application to the Court by January 6, 2020 .

About the Lawsuits

Quad/Graphics and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws. On October 29, 2019, the Company disclosed a cut to its dividend, in half to $0.15 per share, and its plans to divest its book business, which it stated generated $200 million in annual sales, with an accompanying reduction to 2019 net sales guidance to approximately $3.9 billion from the previous range of $4.05 billion to $4.25 billion to reflect the divestiture. On this news, the price of Quad/Graphics shares plummeted.

The first-filed case is Born v. Quad/Graphics, Inc., 1:19-cv-10376.

About Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

KSF, whose partners include former Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., is one of the nations premier boutique securities litigation law firms. KSF serves a variety of clients  including public institutional investors, hedge funds, money managers and retail investors  in seeking recoveries for investment losses emanating from corporate fraud or malfeasance by publicly traded companies. KSF has offices in New York, California and Louisiana.

To learn more about KSF, you may visit www.ksfcounsel.com.



Contact:
Agartala/UNI: With the beginning of indefinite sit in demonstration by ruling BJPs ally in Tripura government Indigenous Peoples Front of Twipra (IPFT) against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), on Monday, Joint Movement Against Citizenship Amendment Act (JMACAA), a common platform of tribal parties and indigenous organisations, announced an anti-CAA protest rally here tomorrow.

The JMACAA had launched an indefinite road and rail blockade programme last month demanding to keep Tripura out of the ambit of CAA. After three days of blockade, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had called them to Delhi for discussion and the movement was withdrawn.

The JMACAA leaders claimed that Shah had asked them to reconsider their demands in the backdrop of the argument that large scale influx of non-tribals from erstwhile East Pakistan and later on from Bangladesh since 1947 has altered the demographic profile of Tripura and tribals became minority in their own land.

We have been assured by Shah that he would take the appropriate call soon to protect the interest of the indigenous people of Tripura. We were happy that the sufferings of the indigenous people of the state will end and peaceful co-existence of tribal and non-tribal will continue in a manageable situation but in the past three weeks there is no initiative from the Centre. So, we have no other option but to resume our movement against CAA, said JMACAA convener Anthony Debbarma.

JMACAA will relaunch the movement with a rally tomorrow in front of Rabindra Shatabarshiki Bhawan in the city. A day after on Jan 8 next, they will hold a protest demonstration at Madhabbari in the eastern part of Agartala to mark the first anniversary of police firing and alleged state sponsored attack on the anti-CAB protestors last year. The day will be observed as as a black day.

Tripura Pradesh Congress Committee has also said it will observe Jan 8 as black day.

The JMACAA leadership, however, said that the Union Home Minister had hear them in detail and assured to meet the leaders once again with a detailed demand draft, but no action has been taken even after almost a month has passed.

Besides JMACAA, all other tribal based parties of Tripura, including royal scion Pradyot Kishore Debbarman, have also opposed CAA and announced continuation of protests.

Meanwhile, Revenue Minister of Tripura government and President of IPFT N C Debbarma and its General Secretary and Tribal Welfare Minister Mevar Kr Jamatia took part in the beginning of indefinite demonstration today at Dukmali Hati in ADC headquarters Khumlung and addressed the protestors against CAA.

They apprehended that CAA would further increase the number of infiltrators in Tripura, which would subsequently mount pressure on limited opportunities and resources of the state. In addition to creation of full-fledged separate state Tipraland in VI scheduled areas of the state, exemption of the CAA in Tripura, Introduction of NRC all over India is also on the list of demands of tribal outfits.

Apart from VI scheduled areas, Tripura has 3000 sq kilometres area of the state where the indigenous population is dominant. We cant only think of the ADC, the entire state needs to be kept out of CAA purview, Debbarma said, adding that IPFT wants to ensure peaceful co-existence among people of all communities but CAA will disturb it.

He further added the tribal parties of Tripura have been demanding the suitable amendment for more financial and administrative powers for the betterment of the people living in the ADC areas of Northeast. About 68 per cent of total geographical area of Tripura has fallen under VI schedule that covers almost all the eight districts of the state.

On the other hand, BJP parliamentarian Pratima Bhowmik launched a door-to-door campaign from Sunday to explain the reality and facts against the vicious campaign launched against the Act as part of BJP's national outreach programme on CAA.

She claimed the amended Citizenship Act had been passed for a larger national interest. None of the Indian citizen will be affected by this legislation, asserted Bhowmik.
Somalia's al-Shabaab terror group killed a US military service member and two contractors yesterday in an attack on a secret military base in Kenya.

Two Americans from the Department of Defence were also wounded.

The US forces in Kenya came under attack when terrorists destroyed American reconnaissance aircraft and army vehicles. An unknown number of jihadist militants struck at Camp Simba, a US military facility at a Kenyan naval base, shortly before dawn.

Kenyan military officials said the attack was quickly brought under control before it could do much more damage and that five militants had been killed. US Africa Command was more circumspect, saying the situation remained "fluid" and that it had yet to conduct an assessment to see whether all other personnel could be accounted for.

There were said to have been fewer than 150 American soldiers at Camp Simba in Manda Bay, near the tourist resort of Lamu, when the attack took place.

Although militants were unable to penetrate Camp Simba itself, they succeeded in overrunning an adjacent airfield where they set fire to at least two planes, one of which was an American intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft used for missions in Somalia. Whether successful or not, the brazen nature of the attack - more than 80km of the Somali frontier - represented a notable escalation in al-Shabaab cross-border operations.

The group has frequently carried out attacks on Kenyan troops in retaliation for the Kenyan army's military incursion into southern Somalia.

But until now it has shied away from attacking US troops in Kenya. It did mount a failed operation against American forces stationed in Somalia last September. Camp Simba, established in 2004, is one of the largest American military installations in Africa. It is frequently used by US special forces mounting covert operations in Somalia. ( Daily Telegraph, London)
Sena targets NCB: Officers trying to extort money by framing youngsters must be arrested

Opposition front not possible without Congress: Shiv Sena leader Raut after meeting with Rahul Gandhi

Sanjay Raut on chopper tragedy: We claim to have modernised armed forces, how could this happen?

Campaign curbs should apply to all, PM Modi must lead by example: Sena's Raut

Accused of sabotage, why Sena is upset with Abdul Sattar

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Mumbai, Jan 06: Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray is "disappointed" with newly-inducted minister Abdul Sattar in connection with the Aurangabad Zilla Parishad polls where the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi managed to win the president's post after a rebellion and draw of lots, a senior Shiv Sena leader said on Sunday.

Sattar, who joined the Sena from the Congress ahead of the October Assembly polls, has been accused of "sabotage" by a section of Sena leaders in Aurangabad who claimed his supporters did not throw their weight behind the MVA-backed Congress candidate in the poll for the ZP's vice president.

Since coming to power, the three parties have decided to fight such local elections in tandem to keep the BJP out of power.

Amid rumours of discord, Abdul Sattar's 'alternative' in Aurangabad irks Uddhav Thackeray

"Sattar has some plans for his supporters so was considering an alternative in the ZP poll. However, Uddhavji has communicated clearly to him on the importance of the MVA remaining intact," a senior Sena leader said on condition of anonymity.

"Uddhavji is disappointed with Sattar and has made it clear to the minister," the leader added. Sattar, who met Uddhav on Sunday, on his part, claimed all was well.

"I have informed Uddhavji my side in this whole episode. I am very much part of Sena and am not leaving the party. I am meeting Uddhavji tomorrow (Monday) evening," the MLA from Sillod in Aurangabad district said.

NEWS AT NOON, JANUARY 6th, 2020

There was intense speculation on Saturday that Sattar had resigned, with several Aurangabad Sena leaders, prime among them being former Lok Sabha MP Chandrakant Khaire, coming out openly against him.

Upset Shiv Sena MLA Abdul Sattar quits Maharashtra cabinet

Khaire called Sattar a "snake" and a "traitor". On Sunday, Meena Shelke of the MVA was appointed president of Aurangabad ZP after a draw of lots following a tie with Sena rebel Devyani Dongaonkar, who was the outgoing president.

Lahanu Gaikwad of the BJP was elected vice president.
Kody Browns decision to move to Flagstaff nearly two years ago left many fans flabbergasted. After all, the Brown family, famed for their TLC show, Sister Wives, seemed to have a pretty good setup in Las Vegas. The city is known for its progressive nature, and the family homes were nothing if not spacious. The sudden move left fans concerned about the familys finances, and it looks like there may be a good reason. The shows newest season premier has made it pretty clear that the Brown family is strapped for cash. So, what decisions have led to so much financial strife?

The Browns inexplicably bought property in Flagstaff

When the Browns left Las Vegas, they decided to purchase property in Flagstaff. Along with a massive swath of land, they also made the decision to buy a property for Christine Brown as soon as they landed in town. Initially, the family claimed they had to buy a home because a rental property willing to take Christines pets was not available. Fans are not entirely sure thats the case.

The property the family plans to build on was purchased for $820,000 in June 2018, according to Radar Online. As of the current day, there still doesnt appear to be a home built on the property, and no forward progress has been made. Christines home, a house within the Flagstaff city limits, was purchased on Sept. 1, 2018, for $520,000.

More recently, while the massive plot of land sits untouched, the family purchased two more properties in Flagstaff. In July 2019, Kody and his fourth, and now legal wife, Robyn Brown, purchased a property for $890,000. The decision came after Robyn was asked to vacate her rental property. They also acquired the property next door on the same date, according to public property records.

The Browns fled Las Vegas before their homes sold

The Browns are not strangers to fleeing a state quickly. When Sister Wives premiered, the family promptly fled Utah, when they believed they were going to be prosecuted for their plural lifestyle. The way they left Vegas felt oddly similar to their quick departure from Utah, the only difference is the law wasnt breathing down their neck this time.

The quick departure left four houses empty, with mortgages that still needed to be paid. It took several months for the Vegas homes, all situated on a cul-de-sac, to sell. The last house, which belonged to Christine and Kody, took more than a year to close. With at least six mortgages to be paid at once, the Brown family was desperate for cash, and many fans believe the familys show is not long for the TV world.

Is Sister Wives on the chopping block?

Sister Wives ratings have not been high for a few seasons, claim insiders. According to In Touch, TLC was ready to ax the show in 2018, but Kody, the familys patriarch, allegedly renegotiated his contract to buy a bit more time. If the insider is to be believed, Kody and his four wives took a massive pay cut to continue working on the series.

Meri Brwon, Janelle Brown, Kody Brown, Christine Brown and Robyn Brown | Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

It is rumored that each adult was earning $180,000 each year for their commitment to the series. The renegotiated contract is rumored to pay out $180,000 for the entire unit, meaning the familys earnings were slashed by 80%. While Kody clearly managed to keep his family on the air through 2020, there is no guarantee that any additional seasons will be filmed. It actually seems like that this will be the last fans hear from the Brown family for a while, at least on TLC. The crew is rumored to have run into filming issues in the familys new home state.

Without TLCs income and the possibility that Meri Brown, Kodys first wife, will cut ties with the clan, things could go terribly wrong relatively quickly. Meri is currently earning the majority of the familys income outside of Sister Wives. She is a consultant for LuLaRoe and is also the owner of Lizzies Heritage Inn in Parowan, Utah.
A sixth form pupil at St.Columb's College in Derry says he has been removed from A-Level classes for growing a beard.

An online petition launched by Carrick McClean has now been signed over 2,063 times, which isn't far off its 2,500 target.

The latest person to publicly support the petition is Theoretical Astrophysicist, Peter Coles. He is a professor in, and Head of, the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University in Ireland. He carries out research in the area of cosmology and the large-scale structure of the Universe.

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has also rallied behind Carrick. The group says, "the pogonophobic rules of the school do not allow students to have a beard."

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, this is not the 1950s and we fully support Mr McClean. "There is a petition that can be signed and we expect a change of mind by the school."

However, other members of the public have backed the school, saying its clean shaven policy is fully justified.

Mr McClean's petition reads as follows: "As a young adult I work, drive, pay tax and national insurance, and I am registered to vote. But whenever I enter the school I am treated like a child, being forced to be clean shaven.

"As the school website states 'The aim of St Columb's is to enable its pupils to realise their full moral, social, intellectual, physical and aesthetic potential.' I see this policy as limiting me in my potential to be myself and by being placed in the study for my choice of growing a beard has the possibility in limiting my achievement academically as I cannot attend my classes.

"The amount of pressure on pupils at the minute is astronomical, from getting the best grades, meeting deadlines and a range of other factors school can play a huge affect on someones mental health (which is a huge concern in Derry) By giving pupils the freedom to have facial hair if they desire I believe we would be much happier in our learning environment which is paramount to a more fulfilling educational experience.

"As a socialist and believer in equality I hope that 2020 will be a year of significant change for the better, and I aspire that St.Columbs College will be apart of this, allowing me and my fellow pupils to be ourselves."

https://www.change.org/p/principal-abolish-st-columb-s-college-clean-shaven-policy?recruiter=1032337550&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_petition&recruited_by_id=73a35830-2e69-11ea-91c0-a5605b0b219c&utm_content=starter_fb_share_content_en-gb%3Av13
Bazaar Corporate Radar | Feb 22, 2021, 12:00 AM IST

Bazaar Corporate Radar

Bazaar Corporate Radar is your window into the minds of top CEOs, Boardrooms, global economists, fund managers and sector analysts. If it?s making news, you?ll find it on Bazaar Corporate Radar.
European leaders beg for US and Iran to step back from the brink

Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron have made a joint appeal for all sides to show restraint as tensions continue to escalate in the Middle East.

The European leaders also said they were committed to ensuring the current crisis following the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani did not undermine years of efforts to stablilise Iraq.

However, US President Donald Trump has this morning insisted Iranian cultural sites will be fair game for the US military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so could constitute a war crime under international law.

He also warned Iraq he would levy punishing sanctions if it expelled American troops in retaliation for the US airstrike in Baghdad that killed General Soleimani.

Phoebe and Olivia golden girls in Hollywood again

Golden Globe Awards 2020: Show winning moments - In pictures 1 /85 Golden Globe Awards 2020: Show winning moments - In pictures Olivia Colman accepting the award for best actress in a drama series for "The Crown" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ricky Gervais speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 202 AP Beyonce and Jay-Z Renee Zellweger accepting the award for best actress in a motion picture drama for her role in "Judy" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Jason Momoa wears a vest at the Golden Globes NBC Paul Rudd and Nicole Kidman gatecrash Laura Dern's Golden Globes red carpet interview E! News Elton John reacts as Taron Egerton wins a Golden Globe for Rocketman NBC Reese Witherspoon, and Jennifer Aniston at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tom Hanks NBC Laura Dern accepting the award for best supporting actress in a motion picture for "Marriage Story" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tom Hanks accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award from presenter Charlize Theron at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Phoebe Waller-Bridge accepts the award for Best TV Series, Musical or Comedy for "Fleabag. Reuters Joaquin Phoenix accepting the award for best actor in a motion picture drama for his role in "Joker" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Sam Mendes accepting the award for best motion picture drama for "1917" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Patricia Arquette accepting the award for best supporting actress in a series, limited series or TV movie for her role in "The Act" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Stellan Skargard, winner of Best Supporting Actor - Series/Limited Series/TV movie for "Chernobyl." Reuters Jason Momoa and Zoe Kravitz at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ramy Youssef accepting the award for best actor in a TV series, comedy or musical for "Ramy" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Elton John, and Bernie Taupin at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tom Hanks accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Phoebe Waller-Bridge accepting the award for best actress in a comedy series for "Fleabag" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Brad Pitt accepting the award for best supporting actor in a film for his role in "Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Olivia Colman accepts the award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama for "The Crown" from Zoe Kravitz onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Olivia Colman accepting the award for best actress in a drama series for "The Crown" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ricky Gervais speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Jesse Armstrong and the cast of "Succession" accept the award for Best Television Series - Drama for "Succession" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sienna Miller and Kit Harington speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Ellen DeGeneres accepts the Carol Burnett TV Achievement Award at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 Amy Poehler and Taylor Swift speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Quentin Tarantino accepts the award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture for "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Charlize Theron at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Sacha Baron Cohen speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Ewan McGregor and Margot Robbie at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Gwyneth Paltrow at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Sam Mendes accepts the award for Best Director - Motion Picture for "1917" onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Helen Mirren and Antonio Banderas at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Michelle Williams accepts the award for Best Actress - Limited Series or Motion Picture Made For TV for "Fosse/Verdon." Reuters Wesley Snipes and Da'Vine Joy Randolph speak onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Taron Egerton accepting the award for best actor in a motion picture comedy for his role in "Rocketman" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Paul Rudd and Jennifer Lopez speak onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sam Mendes accepting the award for best director for the film "1917" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Glenn Close at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Rami Malek speaks onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sandra Bullock speaks onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Cate Blanchett at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tiffany Haddish and Salma Hayek at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson speak on stage during the 77th Golden Globe Awards on January 5, 2020 Reuters Awkwafina accepting the award for best actress in a motion picture comedy for her role in "The Farewell" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Nick Jonas speak onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Annette Bening speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sir Elton John and Bernie Taupin accept the award for Best Original Song - Motion Picture for "I'm Gonna Love Me Again" in "Rocketman" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Pierce Brosnan, center, with his sons Dylan, left, and Paris at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ansel Elgort and Dakota Fanning at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Matt Bomer and Sofia Vergara at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Kate McKinnon at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Kate McKinnon, embracing Ellen DeGeneres as she accepts the Carol Burnett TV Achievement Award at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Jesse Armstrong accepting the award for best drama TV series for "Succession" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Chris Butler and Arianne Sutner accept the award for Best Motion Picture - Animated for "Missing Link" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Ted Danson and Kerry Washington speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Bong Joon Ho accepts the award for Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language for "Parasite" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) President Lorenzo Soria speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Jared Harris and Craig Mazin, second right, accepting the award for best limited series for "Chernobyl" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Pierce Brosnan and Will Ferrell at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP

Fleabag writer and star Waller-Bridge won best actress in a TV comedy, while the sitcom was named best TV series for a musical or comedy during this morning's star-studded ceremony in Los Angeles.

Colman delivered another memorable speech after picking up the best actress in a TV drama prize for The Crown, an award many thought would go to Jennifer Aniston for The Morning Show.

Other winners included Sam Mendes, who won best director for his war epic 1917, and Quentin Tarantino, won the best screenplay Globe for Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood.

Rain falls in bushfire-devastated New South Wales

Two more people are missing in remote parts of New South Wales as rain and cooler temperatures has brought some welcome relief to Australian communities battling wildfires.

However the rain also brought challenges for fire crews as they attempted to complete strategic burns in preparation for higher temperatures forecast for later in the week.

More than 135 fires are still burning across New South Wales, including almost 70 that were uncontained, and the death toll stands at 24.

Labour NEC to decide on date for replacing Corbyn

Other factors that could potentially affect the outcome, such as who is eligible to vote, will also be ruled on during the meeting expected to be attended by the outgoing leader in London.

MPs hoping to take the helm of the party by the end of March spent much of yesterday setting out their stalls, with widespread criticism of the scale of Mr Corbyn's radical proposals.

Burger King joins plant-based meal trend

A plant-based version of Burger Kings Whopper will be available in UK restaurants from today.

But the Rebel Whopper, which is made from soy, is not suitable for vegans or vegetarians because of the way it is cooked.

Instead it is being aimed by the fast food chain at flexitarians  people who eat meat but are cutting down on the animal-based food they eat.

On this day

1066: Harold Godwinson is crowned King of England. He ruled to October 14, 1066, when he was killed at the Battle of Hastings.

1540: King Henry VIII married his fourth wife Anne of Cleves.

1838: Samuel Morse first successfully tested the electrical telegraph.

1907: Maria Montessori opened her first school and daycare centre for working-class children in Rome.

1912: New Mexico was admitted as the 47th US state.

1929: Mother Teresa arrived in Calcutta and started her legacy of work among the poorest people of India.

1977: Music publisher EMI ended its contract with the Sex Pistols because of their notorious behaviour in public.

1994: US ice skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed and injured on the right leg by associates of skating rival Tonya Harding.
The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq is set to reposition forces throughout the country, but it will not withdraw. The Iraqi parliament urged international troops to leave over the weekend after President Donald Trump approved a drone strike that took the life of top Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani.

In due deference to the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq, and as requested by the Iraqi Parliament and the Prime Minister, CJTF-OIR will be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement, Marine Brig. Gen. William Seely wrote in a letter to Iraqs Ministry of Defense, as first reported by the Washington Post.

A US defense official confirmed to Al-Monitor the letter was authentic, which indicated that there would be an increase in helicopter travel as US and coalition forces moved throughout Iraq. US forces had already increased force protection measures over the weekend.

Theres been no decision made to leave Iraq. Period, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters at the Pentagon this afternoon. Esper said the United States would follow the laws of armed conflict in selecting targets against Iran.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said the letter was a draft released by mistake after it was shared with Iraqi officials, indicating that the United States meant to communicate that the Pentagon would be moving forces throughout the country, but was poorly worded.

There will be no onward movement by US troops, Milley said, which could indicate a US withdrawal. The official who spoke to Al-Monitor said there is no timeline for the extraction of US forces. In the draft letter, Seely, the US commander, said troops will leave during hours of darkness to offset any perception that we may be bringing more coalition forces back into Iraq.

Seely wrote to his Iraqi counterpart that the decision was made to respect your sovereign decision, a reference to Sundays nonbinding vote that was endorsed by caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who resigned in November amid ongoing anti-government protests.

But amid todays miscommunication, a former top commander of the effort to defeat IS told Al-Monitor on Sunday, before the letters release, that the United States and Iraq could have had a chance to come to an accommodation sooner about a smaller US presence to manage the terror threat.

This is where they need to sit across the table from each other and have a conversation about how much is acceptable versus how much is required, retired Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, who commanded the defeat-IS campaign until 2016, told Al-Monitor on Sunday. I think that they could have probably found a reasonable accommodation if they were really interested in that.

Iran had launched a series of attacks on American forces in recent weeks, culminating in the Dec. 27 rocket strikes that killed a US contractor at a base in Kirkuk, Iraq. The attack prompted Trump to approve the drone attack that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Soleimani.

Mahdi, the Iraqi prime minister, called those strikes an illegal act and a violation of Iraqs sovereignty.

I think the Iraqi people dont want us to leave, Esper said. Iran wants to control it as a proxy state, suggesting intimidation played a role in Sundays parliamentary vote. Many Shiite lawmakers, he said, voted at the point of a gun.
The main dining room at La Veranda, at Pier 3 on Columbus Boulevard. Read more

La Veranda, the white-tablecloth Italian restaurant on Penns Landing known for both its stunning marina view and a massive antipasto station, closed over the weekend, just a few months shy of its 30th anniversary.

Michael Petrogiannis, who owned La Veranda for nearly 20 years, said it was time. Ive had enough, he said, adding that he wanted to focus on his core business: eight diners in the region, including the Mayfair, the Country Club, and the Melrose.

A new restaurant  a steak-seafood house called Riverstone  is targeting a late-spring opening at Pier 3, just south of the Ben Franklin Bridge.

Roberto Centofanti opened La Veranda in spring 1990, rolling the dice with a swank, Old World setup after two restaurants, Splash! and Windows on the Water, came and went.

The restaurants heyday was at least a decade ago, though it managed to hang on amid keen competition and limited parking options on Columbus Boulevard.

In a 1999 review, Inquirer critic Craig LaBan enjoyed the outdoor dining and praised the rustic aroma of its wood-burning grill, whose flames greet you at the entrance, to the impressive selection of fresh whole fish and aged meat chops that are deftly cooked each evening.

Post has been updated to reflect the name of the restaurant opening in La Verandas space.
The Tata steel works in Port Talbot, Wales. Photo: PA

The Indian owner of the Port Talbot steelworks has warned it cant keep funding the losses just to keep it going, sparking fresh fears over the future of the plant.

Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chair of Tatas holding company Tata Sons, is said to have refused to commit to continued steel production in Britain.

His comments in the Sunday Times are likely to sound alarm bells for thousands of workers at Tatas biggest UK steelworks in south Wales.

Tatas steel division (TATASTEEL.NS) had already announced plans to axe around 3,000 jobs in Europe in November, suggesting office workers would be hit hardest but declining to give further details on where the axe would fall.

Last September it also confirmed the planned closure of its Orb Electrical Steels plant in Newport, South Wales, putting 400 jobs at risk.

The European steel industry has struggled in recent years under the strain of US tariffs on EU steel, Chinese competition, and high energy bills. The decline of sterling since the Brexit referendum has also affected the UK industry.

READ MORE: Chinese firm to buy British Steel for 70m

British Steel, which runs the main Scunthorpe steelworks and was sold by Tata for 1 in 2016, collapsed into administration in May. It was sold on to Chinese industrial conglomerate Jingye for 70m in November.

Paul Evans, Wales officer for the Unite union, said the remarks add more pressure on the Tata workers at Port Talbot.

He told the BBC: The site is obviously key to the future of the other Tata plants in Wales.

"The workforce at Port Talbot have for many years proved they are the producers of world class quality steel and Wales and the UK can't afford to lose the expertise and commitment they have shown over the years."

Chandrasekaran had told the Sunday Times: I need to get to a situation where at least the plant [Port Talbot] is self-sustaining.

Whether it is in the Netherlands or here, we cant have a situation where India keeps funding the losses just to keep it going.

Everyone will tell you the Tatas have gone way beyond to keep this going. Anybody else would have walked away.

He also said of a possible sale of its European steel operations: If youre not going to be performing...who is going to be interested?
Following the killing of Qassim Soleimani, Iraqi authorities are now questioning the crew of the civilian plane which carried Soleimani writes Asharq Al-Awsat.

Iraqi authorities have launched an investigation into the recent killing of Irans Quds Force commander Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a powerful Iraqi militia leader, a spokesman for the Iraqi Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief told Sputnik on January 4.

According to the spokesman, Abdul Karim Khalaf, Iraqi authorities are now questioning the crew of the civilian plane which carried Soleimani on his last voyage from the Syrian capital, Damascus, to Baghdad.

The investigative committees have started work, and we will investigate all those we believe were aware of some facts and information inside the airport, Sputnik quoted the spokesman as saying.

However, local sources reported to Asharq Al-Awsat that the Popular Mobilization Forces is conducting its own investigations into the incident. That has led to the precautionary arrest of two people who were on board the plane that transported Soleimani.

Sources confirmed that the two arrested were an Iraqi national and a Syrian national suspected of collaborating with the US for targeting Soleimani and al-Muhandis.

Another group of employees and officers was arrested at Baghdad airport, who are believed to be linked to the incident, sources added.

The Iranian commander arrived in the Iraqi capital aboard a commercial flight of the Sham Wings, a Syrian private carrier, according to several sources.

The New York Times, quoting US military and intelligence officials, reported that the airstrike hit the convoy immediately after it left the Baghdad International Airport.

The New York Times also reported that present and former US commanders and intelligence officials said the attack specifically relied on classified informants, electronic intercepts, reconnaissance aircraft and other surveillance.

According to TRT World, a US Department of Justice declassified legal brief revealed that the White House can order a drone strike on a target only with near certainty of their presence.

The fact that the strike took place as the cars left the airport suggests that the drones were already in a holding pattern in the skies, waiting for the moment to strike.

There are no operational US drone bases in the area, with only three drone bases having a history of making strikes in Iraq. Specifically, these are the Ali al-Salem airbase in Kuwait, al Udeid airbase in Qatar, or the Al Dafra airbase in the UAE.

Even if the drones took off from the closest airbase in Kuwait, thats nearly 570 km of travel time to be made before his landing, and manageable for the MQ-9 Reaper drone, with a range of over 1800 km and a top speed of 480 km/h.

The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
Protesters demonstrate outside the US Embassy in London over the killing of General Qassem Soleimani (Gareth Fuller/PA)

Boris Johnson and his French and German counterparts have called for all sides to work towards an urgent easing of tensions in the Persian Gulf.

The Prime Minister, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel said that while they were concerned by the negative role Iran has played in the region  including through forces directed by Qassem Soleimani  there was now an urgent need for de-escalation.

Gen Soleimanis assassination by the United States last Friday sparked the crisis, and prompted retaliation threats from the Iranian regime.

In a joint statement released late on Sunday, the three leaders said: We call on all parties to exercise utmost restraint and responsibility. The current cycle of violence in Iraq must be stopped.

We specifically call on Iran to refrain from further violent action or proliferation, and urge Iran to reverse all measures inconsistent with the JCPOA (the Iran nuclear deal).

We recall our attachment to the sovereignty and security of Iraq. Another crisis risks jeopardising years of efforts to stabilise Iraq.

We also reaffirm our commitment to continue the fight against Daesh (the so-called Islamic State), which remains a high priority. The preservation of the Coalition is key in this regard. We therefore urge the Iraqi authorities to continue providing the Coalition all the necessary support.

We stand ready to continue our engagement with all sides in order to contribute to defuse tensions and restore stability to the region.

Expand Close British forces in the Middle East (PA Graphics) Press Association Images / Facebook

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Around 400 UK troops are stationed in Iraq in the fight against IS, while the US has 5,200, prompting fears of a withdrawal that could cripple the battle against the terror group.

Mr Johnson is to assemble key ministers to discuss the spiralling crisis on Monday afternoon, and is also likely to continue diplomatic discussions with world leaders.

Middle East Minister Andrew Murrison called on players involved to cool it, telling Sky News: I think the Americans are trying to make sure this doesnt escalate in the sense of Iran taking measures which are disproportionate and which may cause, inevitably, this thing to go on and on and get worse.

The problem with this is there is a risk of miscalculation and reaching a point which is very difficult to reverse.

So I would urge all concerned to cool it and that has been the consistent refrain of the UK Government trying to dial down the temperature on this and urge de-escalation.

Expand Close Protesters demonstrate over the killing outside the US Embassy in London (Gareth Fuller/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Protesters demonstrate over the killing outside the US Embassy in London (Gareth Fuller/PA)

Elsewhere, a former US ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria criticised the decision not to inform Britain about the strike.

Ryan Crocker told BBC Radio 4s Today programme he was concerned about the White Houses failure to warn allies before it took action.

Britain is and has been for a number of years our foremost ally, he said. When we take an action like this it can have great consequences for our allies. We, I think, owe it to them to consult in advance.

After speaking to the US President on Sunday, Mr Johnson broke his silence to say the UK will not lament the death of the leader who he said was a threat to all our interests.

Urging de-escalation from all sides, Mr Johnson said calls for reprisals will simply lead to more violence in the region and they are in no ones interest after the killing in Baghdad on Friday.

But a short while later, Mr Trump threatened to retaliate perhaps in a disproportionate manner if Iran strikes a US citizen or target.

Meanwhile, Iran announced it will abandon the limits in the unravelling nuclear deal on fuel enrichment, its uranium stockpile and research activities in a move that could bring it closer to assembling an atomic bomb.

And The Times quoted an unnamed senior commander in the elite Quds Force, which Gen Soleimani commanded, as warning British soldiers could be fatally attacked as collateral.

Our forces will retaliate and target US troops in (the) Middle East without any concern about killing its allies, including UK troops, as this has turned in to a fully-fledged war with much collateral damage expected, the commander said.

The PM said he will be speaking to Iraq to support peace and stability after its parliament called for the expulsion of foreign troops, including British soldiers working against IS.

Mr Johnson spoke to President Macron and Chancellor Merkel after arriving back in the UK on Sunday morning from his Caribbean holiday amid mounting criticism.

Meanwhile, Iraqs parliament passed a non-legally binding bill calling for the expulsion of all foreign forces.

The Ministry of Defence was understood to be awaiting the decision of the Iraqi government before acting over UK soldiers based there as part of the US-led coalition.

A UK Government spokesman said: We urge the Iraqi government to ensure the coalition is able to continue our vital work countering this shared threat.
Irans leaders join massive crowds in the capital for the funeral procession of top commander assassinated by the US.

Huge crowds of mourners have poured onto the streets of Tehran to pay their respects to Qassem Soleimani, the countrys most powerful military commander who was assassinated in a US air attack in Iraq.

State television said on Monday there was a several million-strong turnout for the funeral proceedings for Soleimani, who was the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corpss (IRGC) overseas forces.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has pledged severe revenge for the killing, presided over prayers for the slain general.

Standing next to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Irans Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, Khamenei wept at one point beside the flag-draped coffins containing the remains of Soleimani and five other martyrs killed in Fridays strike in Baghdad.

The scenes that we saw included a very emotional supreme leader, which is something that we dont see very often, Al Jazeeras Dorsa Jabbari, reporting from Tehran, said.

There were very intense emotions on display by the highest-ranking officials in the Islamic Republic, she added.

Iranians are very angry at the way he [Soleimani] was killed They feel that this is a very unjust act that was carried out.

Irans semi-official news agency ISNA reported that the streets of the capital were so full of mourners that many were unable to emerge from underground metro stations.

There are large crowds at metro stations but as there is also a huge crowd at the street level, it isnt possible to evacuate passengers, metro chief Farnoush Nobakht was quoted as saying.





Dark day

In freezing early morning temperatures, women dressed in black walked alongside men holding up flags bearing the names of Shia imams as they walked down Enghelab (Revolution) Street towards the university.

Addressing the huge crowd, Soleimanis daughter, Zeinab, said the US and its ally Israel faced a dark day for her fathers assassination.

Crazy [Donald] Trump, dont think that everything is over with my fathers martyrdom, she said in an address broadcast on state television, referring to the US president.

The families of US soldiers in the Middle East will spend their days waiting for the death of their children, she said to cheers.

Brigadier-General Esmail Qaani, the new commander of Quds Force, during the funeral prayer for Qassem Soleimani [Official Khamenei website/Reuters]

Brigadier-General Esmail Qaani, the new commander of Quds Force and Soleimanis successor, was also in attendance.

We promise to continue martyr Soleimanis path with the same force  and the only compensation for us would be to remove America from the region, state radio quoted Qaani as saying.

The funeral was also attended by officials from some of Irans allies in the region, including Ismail Haniya, the senior political leader of Palestinian group Hamas.

I declare that the martyred commander Soleimani is a martyr of Jerusalem, Haniya said.

Tens of thousands of people have poured onto the streets of Ahvaz and Mashhad in Iran for the funeral procession of assassinated general, Qassem Soleimani. pic.twitter.com/mbMfjbjXb3  Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 5, 2020

Pledges of retaliation

The funeral procession in the capital came a day after hundreds of thousands of mourners accompanied the coffin carrying Soleimanis remains in the cities of Ahvaz and Mashhad. The multi-city ceremony will continue with Soleimanis remains going to the holy city of Qom before his burial on Tuesday in his hometown of Kerman.

Several others were also killed in Fridays attack on a convoy at Baghdad airport, including Iranian-backed Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

The attack was ordered by US President Donald Trump, who said the elite Quds Force commander had been planning an imminent attack on US diplomats and forces in Iraq.

The Islamic Republics supreme leader pledged severe revenge while other pro-Iran figures in the region, including the head of Lebanons Hezbollah movement Hassan Nasrallah, have also promised retaliation.

Though it is unclear how or when Iran may respond, any response is likely to come after the conclusion of a three-day mourning period.

The assassination of Soleimani triggered a dramatic escalation of tensions in the region and marked the most significant confrontation between the US and Iran in recent years.

The friction is rooted in the 2018 US decision to pull out of a nuclear deal signed in 2015 between Iran and world powers.
The abortion debate was big in 2019 and will become even larger in 2020. In 2019, eleven state legislatures approved measures to limit abortion, including many who signed "heartbeat" laws, which prohibit abortion after a heartbeat is detected.

While this was happening in more conservative states, liberal-leaning states were moving the other way. New York passed a law to decriminalize abortion. Vermont passed legislation making abortion a fundamental right. Massachusetts, Illinois, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Maine, Nevada, and Hawaii are all in different stages of working on bills that would protect abortion.

Many of the restrictive laws have been challenged, and the courts have blocked them thus far.

The politics of abortion is heating up. The clash between the pro-life worldview and the pro-abortion one is going to be a factor in the 2020 election. The battlefield is taking shape.

First, there's a sharp contrast between President Trump and his Democrat challengers.

President Trump is pro-life and has not been shy about saying so. In his 2019 State of the Union address, he railed against the New York law, asserting, "Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother's womb moments from birth." He called on Congress to "to prohibit the late-term abortion of children who can feel pain in the mother's womb."

Trump has been called "the most prolife president in American history." Not a single Democrat running for president is pro-life.

Joe Biden, in a move that indicates the firmness of his convictions, changed his position on the Hyde Amendment and no longer supports a ban on government funding for abortion. This puts Biden in the mainstream of Democrat political thinking. Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to support legal abortion in all or most cases.

Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders are also firmly in the pro-choice camp. Sanders pledges to "oppose all efforts to undermine or overturn Roe v. Wade, and appoint federal judges who will uphold women's most fundamental rights." Warren has promised to wear a Planned Parenthood scarf to show support for that organization at her inauguration if she becomes president. In New Hampshire, at the end of 2019, Buttigieg affirmed a woman's right to an abortion to a seven-year old child who asked him about it.

The difference between the two sides couldn't be any clearer. Is abortion a fundamental right, or is it the taking of a life? How that question is answered is huge and will shape the character of our nation. If those who hold to the sanctity of life don't vote for Trump in 2020, the left will appoint judges who will codify abortion as the law of the land for a long time.

Second, the Supreme Court is poised to address abortion.

On January 2, 2020, more than 200 members of Congress signed an amicus brief supporting a contended Louisiana abortion law and urged the Supreme Court to reconsider the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade.

The Court will take up the Louisiana law in early 2020. There's likely to be a decision announced at the end of June, and both sides recognize what's at stake.

"What's on the line is the continued protection by the Supreme Court of access to abortion services," says Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing the Hope clinic in the Louisiana case.

Benjamin Clapper, director of Louisiana's Right to Life chapter, said, "We look forward to the Supreme Court reviewing Louisiana's 2014 Unsafe Abortion Protection Act. Abortion facilities should not be provided loopholes when it comes to health and safety standards that apply across the board to outpatient surgical facilities."

If the Court sides with Louisiana, states will have the ability to regulate and moderate abortion practices within them. It may be the beginning of the end of the abortion industry as we know it. The Supreme Court is possibly more conservative than it has been in years. No one, though, knows how it will rule. Regardless of the decision, abortion will be in the headlines just before the general election begins, stirring passions on both sides.

The 2020 election will determine who gets to appoint future justices. Several are older and in declining health. The winner of the presidential election in 2020 could appoint two or three more justices. The Democrat candidates have indicated that their choices will be pro-abortion. Trump's have been pro-life. Those who hold a pro-life view cannot afford to sit out 2020.

There are a lot of issues that dominate the political discussion today. While no one knows what will be in the headlines in the middle of 2020, it seems all but certain that abortion will be a big issue. Depending on the outcome of the election, it might be that the silent cry from the womb will, at last, be heard.
Former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said Monday he would testify at President Donald Trump's impeachment trial if the Senate subpoenas him, potentially giving Democrats key behind-the-scenes testimony about Trump's efforts to get Ukraine to launch investigations to benefit himself politically.

Bolton, a tough advocate for U.S. power across the globe, served for 17 months as Trump's third top security aide until the president ousted him last September amid increasing rancorous disagreements over how the U.S. should handle its contentious relations with Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan.

In the run-up to the House of Representatives vote last month to impeach Trump, investigators decided to not subpoena Bolton, fearful of a long legal battle in U.S. courts over whether he would have to testify or could adhere to Trump's directive banning testimony by key aides, some of whom honored the president's edict while others did not.

A tandem case with the same issues involving the potential testimony of a Bolton aide, Charles Kupperman, was left unresolved as Democratic lawmakers advanced their case against Trump, approving two articles of impeachment.

But as Trump's impeachment trial looms in the Senate, even though no date has been set in a congressional stalemate over the trial's parameters, Bolton said in a statement he had to "resolve the serious competing issues as best I could, based on careful consideration and study."

He said, "I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify."

FILE - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks in Kyiv, Dec. 4, 2019.

Bolton was at the center of significant White House foreign policy debates, including Trump's efforts to press Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open investigations of one of Trump's top 2020 Democratic challengers, former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter's work for a Ukrainian natural gas company and a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine attempted to undermine Trump's 2016 election campaign.

At one point during the House impeachment investigation, Bolton's lawyer said that his client had "personal knowledge" of relevant Ukraine-related meetings and conversations "that have not yet been discussed in testimonies thus far."

Bolton is one of four Trump White House aides that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer says should be called to testify at the impeachment trial. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is coordinating trial strategy with Trump's White House lawyers, has balked at calling any witnesses in hope that after the Senate hears the House arguments against Trump and the president's defense, it would then vote quickly to acquit him.

U.S. lawmakers have returned to Washington after their holiday recess, but they are no closer to deciding when and how Trump's impeachment trial would be staged.

Key lawmakers remain stalemated over impeachment, now complicated by congressional debate over the merits of Trump's approval of the drone attack that killed a key Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, last week outside the Baghdad airport.

FILE - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., smiles as she holds the gavel as the House votes on articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump by the House of Representatives at the Capitol in Washington, Dec. 18, 2019.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democrat-controlled House, is refusing to send two articles of impeachment to the Senate until she believes it would conduct a fair trial. One article accuses Trump of abusing the power of his presidency to pressure Ukraine to launch an investigation into the Bidens, while the other alleges he obstructed congressional efforts to investigate his Ukraine-related actions.

As Trump and aides pressed Ukraine for the Biden investigations, Trump was temporarily withholding $391 million in military aid Ukraine wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Trump eventually released the military assistance to Ukraine last September without Zelenskiy opening the Biden investigations. Republicans say that is proof Trump did not engage in a reciprocal quid pro quo deal with Ukraine.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks to reporters in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 3, 2020.

McConnell says the Senate cannot hold an impeachment trial without receiving the impeachment allegations from the House, although some Republican senators looking to acquit Trump as quickly as possible now say the Senate should start the trial anyway.

Schumer has sparred with McConnell to try to win assurances that key Trump White House aides will be allowed to testify at the impeachment trial, which would be only the third such impeachment proceeding in U.S. history.

But McConnell, advocating Trump's quick acquittal, has refused so far to guarantee that acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Bolton and others would testify.

Schumer said Sunday he remains "hopeful" that four Republican senators will vote against McConnell and join with the minority bloc of 47 Democrats to vote to hear testimony from the Trump aides.

Meanwhile, Trump again ridiculed the impeachment effort on Monday, which was approved with near unanimous Democratic support in the House.

"To be spending time on this political Hoax at this moment in our history, when I am so busy, is sad!" he said on Twitter.

The reason they are not sending the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate is that they are so weak and so pathetic. @LindseyGrahamSC @MariaBartiromo The great Scam continues. To be spending time on this political Hoax at this moment in our history, when I am so busy, is sad!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2020

He added, "The Impeachment Hoax, just a continuation of the Witch Hunt which started even before I won the Election, must end quickly. Read the Transcripts, see the Ukrainian Presidents strong statement, NO PRESSURE - get this done. It is a con game by the Dems to help with the Election!"

The Impeachment Hoax, just a continuation of the Witch Hunt which started even before I won the Election, must end quickly. Read the Transcripts, see the Ukrainian Presidents strong statement, NO PRESSURE - get this done. It is a con game by the Dems to help with the Election!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2020

"Congress & the President should not be wasting their time and energy on a continuation of the totally partisan Impeachment Hoax when we have so many important matters pending. 196 to ZERO was the Republican House vote, & we got 3 Dems. This was not what the Founders had in mind!"

Congress & the President should not be wasting their time and energy on a continuation of the totally partisan Impeachment Hoax when we have so many important matters pending. 196 to ZERO was the Republican House vote, & we got 3 Dems. This was not what the Founders had in mind!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2020

When a trial finally occurs, the Senate will almost certainly acquit Trump.

A two-thirds majority in the 100-member Senate would be required to convict Trump to remove him from office, meaning at least 20 Republicans would have to turn against the president if all 47 Democrats also vote to convict him.

Some Republican lawmakers have voiced objections to Trump's request to Zelenskiy for the investigation of former Vice President Biden, who leads national polls to oppose Trump in the November presidential election. But no Republican lawmakers have called for Trump's conviction and removal from office.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  A 66-year-old man found unconscious after an attack inside his trailer suffered from prostate cancer and several other health issues.

A relative found the man unconscious about 11 p.m. Friday inside his trailer home on Russell Lane and 1st Street in the citys Old Brooklyn neighborhood. An updated condition was not available on Monday.

No arrests have been made in the case and police have not said what they believe led up to the incident. The mans relative reported someone stole $1,800 and the mans prescription painkillers.

The woman called police after finding the man on the floor, wearing only his underwear and with a blanket covering him.

The trailer appeared ransacked, according to police reports. The woman told police the man was battling several health issues and used a walker.

She said he typically leaves the home unlocked for people who come to the trailer to check on his health.

The woman told police she found several text messages on the mans phone, including one from someone who asked if he could grab some change from him. The woman called the phone number but the man who answered denied sending the text messages.

An ambulance took the man to Cleveland Clinics Fairview Hospital.

To comment on this story, visit Mondays crime and courts comments page.

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We continue to ignore the biggest public health emergency of our time  the mental health and addiction crisis that affects virtually every family, she said.

She added, People in South Jersey cant find good jobs, but the richest corporations pay almost no taxes.

Ms. Kennedy, who lives north of Atlantic City in Brigantine, could not be reached for comment.

If Ms. Kennedy were to win the nomination, she would not be the only Kennedy campaigning for Congress. Representative Joe Kennedy III, the grandson of the former attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, is running for the Senate from Massachusetts.

Four other Democrats have already entered the primary race in the Second Congressional District, which cuts across New Jerseys southernmost counties and stretches from Cape May to the Pennsylvania border.

Brigid Callahan Harrison, a professor who teaches political science at Montclair State University, announced her candidacy the same week Mr. Van Drew said he would join the Republicans, a shift that prompted most of his staff members to quit.

Professor Harrison was quickly endorsed by many of the Democratic Party leaders in the district who hold sway over whose name will appear on the partys coveted ballot line in the June primary.

Ashley Bennett, a freeholder representing Atlantic County who appeared on a 2018 cover of Time magazine with other progressive women, also has announced she is running for the Democratic nomination for the congressional seat.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Diane Ford, the mother of Ontario Premier Doug Ford and the late Toronto mayor Rob Ford, has died at the age of 85.

The premier's office said the Ford matriarch died in her Etobicoke home on Sunday, surrounded by family.

"Mrs. Ford was an active member of her community who supported numerous charitable causes," spokeswoman Ivana Yelich said in a written statement. "But most of all, she was the rock for her family, especially her 10 grandchildren."

She said Ford had been diagnosed with cancer.

Yelich said the family was grateful for the outpouring of support in recent weeks, and thankful for the compassion Ford's caregivers showed.

Diane Ford had long been in the public sphere, with her late husband Doug Sr. serving in the Ontario legislature in the 1990s, but she rose to prominence during her youngest son's turbulent years as Toronto mayor.

She was a fierce defender of Rob Ford as he publicly battled addiction and substance abuse.

"My heart breaks for my son. It really, really does, because he's been attacked," she said in an exclusive 2013 interview with local TV station CP24.

She went on to say that while she didn't condone his behaviour, she felt he had been treated unfairly.

"It's not acceptable behaviour. He is the mayor of the city, but he knows that better than anyone now. But, you know, to err is human, but to forgive is divine and we all err, but here there is no forgiveness...Forgiveness isn't in the eyes of the media right now," she said.

She also told interviewers that her son didn't have a drug problem  he had a weight problem.

Just a year later, Diane Ford was yet again in the news. This time, she and several family members donated tens of thousands of dollars to Humber River Hospital, where Rob Ford was then receiving cancer treatment.

"After 42 years of having my children here and using emergency services ... doctors have been wonderful, and it's our hospital," Diane Ford said at the time.

Then, in 2018, Doug Ford launched his campaign for premier from his mother's home. The same house had long been the setting of the annual Ford Fest barbecue, to which the whole public is invited.

The event became a destination for members of Ford Nation, the legion of devotees who admire the family's for-the-people brand of politics.
Macys at the Harrisburg Mall in Swatara Township is closing later this year, according to the chain.

In a statement, Macys said the department store will hold a clearance sale starting in May for about 10 to 11 weeks.

The decision to close a store is always a difficult one, but Macys is proud to have served the Harrisburg community over the past 25 years, and we look forward to continuing to do so at Macys Capital City Mall store and online at macys.com, read the statement.

Macys said it had shared the information with its employees.

According to Fox43, about 70 employees will be impacted. Regular and non-seasonal employees will be eligible for severance, including outplacement resources, if Macys is unable to place them at a nearby department store.

The Macys opened at the mall along Paxton Street in 2006. Harrisburg Mall management told PennLive it has no comment at this time.

The store is not the only Macys proposed to close this year.

A landmark Macys in Seattle is scheduled to close in February, according to Moneywise. Meanwhile, several news outlets are reporting announcements of Macys store closings including Rivergate Mall in Goodlettsville, Tennessee and Westfield Meriden in Connecticut.

In fact, the retailer has been closing stores since making an announcement in 2016 that it was shuttering 100 stores. Macys grew out of a small dry goods outfit that opened in New York City in 1851.

Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.
This article, Australian fires keep Russell Crowe from picking up his Golden Globe, originally appeared on CNET.com.

Australian actor Russell Crowe missed one of Hollywood's biggest award shows this year. Instead of attending the 2020 Golden Globes, he's back in Australia protecting his family and rural properties from the devastating fires currently ravaging the country.

Early in the evening, Crowe picked up the Golden Globe for "Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture made for Television" thanks to his starring role as Fox News chairman Roger Ailes in The Loudest Voice.

Though he was not present, he sent a speech to be read in case of his win. Jennifer Aniston, who presented the award, read the statement in his absence.

Russell Crowe, in absentia, with perhaps the most poignant statement you'll hear tonight pic.twitter.com/Tx0H5RruoU  Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) January 6, 2020

"Make no mistake," the statement began, "the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change based. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is. That way, we all have a future. Thank you."

Russell Crowe wasn't the only one. Upon accepting the Carol Burnett award, Ellen DeGeneres made mention of the Australian bushfires, Pierce Brosnan and Patricia Arquette also mentioned the fires onstage.

The fires in Australia have burnt over 15 million acres of bush (about twice the size of Belgium), destroyed thousands of homes and killed at least 21 people.

Later in the evening, Australian-born actress Cate Blanchett thanked those at the Globes for raising awareness of the fires, shouting out the volunteer firefighters battling the blazes.

"I just wanted to ... do a special call out to the volunteer firefighters who have been at the center of battling the climate disaster that is facing Australia," Blanchett said.

"Of course, when one country faces a climate disaster, we all face a climate disaster -- so we're in it together."

Phoebe Waller-Bridge mentioned she would be auctioning off her suit to raise money for the relief efforts during an interview shortly after accepting Golden Globe for Best Television Series -- Musical or Comedy.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge reveals she'll be auctioning off her #GoldenGlobes suit to raise money for Australian wildfire relief https://t.co/PP78mtA9ix pic.twitter.com/J6mA40dRua  Variety (@Variety) January 6, 2020

Originally published Jan. 5, 5:36 p.m. PT.

Correction Jan. 5, 6:58 p.m. PT: This article originally stated Australian fires burnt over 15 million hectares. The actual measurement is acres.
"Do you think that we don't like Jesus? We like Jesus," he said. "We are not an enemy of you."
Pro Guaido lawmakers struggle with the national guard to enter the National assembly as Luis Parra swears in at the assembly building session as the new leader of the National Assembly in Caracas, Venezuela on January 05, 2020.

The leader of Venezuela's internationally-recognized government was violently blocked from entering parliament, as the embattled administration of President Nicolas Maduro installed a new head of Congress.

Juan Guaido, who had used his position as leader of the opposition-controlled National Assembly to declare himself as the country's rightful interim president in early 2019, was prevented from entering parliament by Maduro's Bolivarian National Guards on Sunday.

He had been due to attend a parliamentary session for what was expected to be his re-election as head of Congress.

At one stage during chaotic and at times violent scenes in central Caracas, Guaido was seen trying to climb over an iron fence in order to try to get into the building.

National guards with riot shields ultimately repelled Guaido's efforts, who appeared to rip his blue suit during the melee.

Tweet 1

The blockade, which was condemned by the U.S., European Union and a dozen Latin American countries as an assault on democracy, allowed Maduro's regime to hand the post to Luis Parra  a former ally to the opposition before he was recently expelled from the party over corruption allegations.

Opposition lawmakers quickly held an impromptu session to re-elect Guaido at the headquarters of El Nacional, a pro-opposition newspaper.

It has resulted in two competing leaders of parliament, at a time when the oil-rich, but cash-poor, country is the midst of a long-running political stand-off.

"I regret the embarrassing show of the dictatorship to try to prevent the inevitable: that despite persecuting and imprisoning, they have not broken the fighting spirit of the deputies and that of all Venezuela," Guaido said via Twitter during the early hours of Monday morning.
Editor's Note: 2020 is expected to be another year of significant uncertainty and turmoil. But the question is what asset will emerge the victor when the dust settles from the global trade war, Brexit, recession threats, negative bond yields. It's a showdown of global proportions, so don't miss all our exclusive coverage on how these factors could impact your 2020 investment decisions.

(Kitco News) - Credit Suisse looks for gold to remain underpinned by the factors supporting the metal even before the recent escalation in U.S.-Iran tensions, calling for gold to average around $1,570 an ounce in 2020.

The metal early Monday hit its highest level since 2013, drawing a flight-to-safety bid on geopolitical jitters due to growing tensions between the U.S. and Iran. As of 12:36 p.m. EST, spot gold was trading at $1,562.30 an ounce after backing down from earlier highs.

Gold has moved up significantly over the past month, with this weeks surge due to escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran following the U.S. assassination of Irans top general Qassem Soleimani, Credit Suisse said in a research report Monday. However, gold was rallying even prior to this and for reasons that appear less short-lived.

In particular, Credit Suisse cited a weaker U.S. dollar, as well as lingering concerns surrounding the U.S.-China trade war. While a phase one trade pact is supposed to be signed this month, the details and timing of a more comprehensive agreement  if one materializes -- are uncertain, Credit Suisse pointed out. Other factors that are constructive for gold include mixed U.S. economic data, dovish central-bank policies globally and volatility in equities.

We expect these factors to persist and maintain our view of gold averaging ~US$1,570/oz in 2020, Credit Suisse said.

At current gold prices, analysts said they do not expect a material change in the corporate strategy for senior gold producers to prioritize free cash flow and return of capital to shareholders, such as higher dividends and buybacks.

Newmont's announcement today of a 79% higher dividend is indicative of this trend, the bank said. For intermediate producers, we continue to expect consolidation as they look to achieve scale.

However, analysts said they do not see a return to the costly merger-and-acquisition announcements and expansion projects seen during the last bull market for gold, given investor focus on capital discipline. Further, they pointed out that gold is still far below its record 2011 price, when the metal topped $1,900 an ounce.

Credit Suisses favored gold stocks are Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. (NYSE:AEM, TSX:AEM) and Newmont Corp. ( (NYSE: NEM, TSX: NGT).

We like Agnico Eagle for its best-in-class operational track record, organic production growth, and FCF [free-cash-flow] profile, Credit Suisse said. We like Newmont on improving operations at the legacy Goldcorp assets, which should lead to a re-rating, along with FCF generation.

We highlight that in a rising gold environment, intermediate producers tend to have the most torque, followed by senior producers, and then royalty companies.
Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, part of Einstein Healthcare Network, has been waiting since September 2018 to complete its merger with Thomas Jefferson University. Read more

Thomas Jefferson University signed on the dotted line to buy Fox Chase Cancer Center from Temple University a few weeks ago. But another piece of the vast network that Jefferson chief executive Stephen K. Klasko is trying to assemble has not yet fallen into place.

Jeffersons acquisition of the Einstein Healthcare Network, first announced in March 2018, has been pending since September of that year, when they signed a definitive agreement. That is longer than it took from a so-called definitive agreement to completion for any Jefferson deal since 2015  the start of a phase of rapid expansion for the nonprofit from three hospitals in Philadelphia to 14, stretching from Lansdale in Montgomery County to Washington Township in Gloucester County.

Jefferson officials said last month that the Federal Trade Commission and the Pennsylvania attorney general are still reviewing the merger, which may be getting heightened regulatory scrutiny because it will significantly increase Jeffersons share of inpatients in neighborhoods served by Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia.

In a statement Jan. 3, Jefferson said: Jefferson and Einstein are two academic medical centers committed to helping solve the fundamental problems of caring for the under-served in our community. This merger makes sense, given our 20-year academic partnership, and our belief that we can build a better future.

In a 2018 interview, Klasko described Einstein, which has three hospitals with 965 licensed beds, as the missing piece in what he described as a bid to create a health system with the kind of scale where we could become the place that starts to get care out to where people are.

The acquisition of the financially struggling Einstein would fill a geographic gap between Abington Hospital and three former Aria hospitals spread from Frankford in lower Northeast Philadelphia up to Langhorne in Bucks County. More important, it will help prepare Jefferson for a time, anticipated by Klasko and others, when hospital systems will be required to bear financial risk for the health of the populations they serve. In such a model, serving a larger population dilutes the risk for hospital chains such as Jefferson.

Concentrated market power

A spokesperson for the attorney general confirmed that the office is looking at the proposed merger but said she could not comment on the status. An FTC spokesperson said the agency does not comment on mergers. One of the federal agencys tasks is to preserve competition.

That the deal is getting a long regulatory review does not surprise health-care consultant Dan Grauman.

By combining Einsteins strong presence in North Philadelphia with the former Aria hospitals in Northeast Philadelphia and lower Bucks County, as well as Abington Hospital in Montgomery County, you begin to, I am sure, push up against the limits in terms of concentrated market power, said Grauman, chief executive of Veralon, a Philadelphia firm that advises hospitals and health-care systems.

Honestly, I always thought it was going to be a challenge, Grauman said of the prospects of getting regulatory approval for Jeffersons acquisition of Einstein, which also owns MossRehab in Elkins Park, the regions largest rehabilitation hospital.

The FTC measures health-care concentration in specific geographic areas, with the goal of preventing unfairly raising prices after eliminating competition. The trick is in defining the market. The smaller the market, the quicker youre going to run up against a problem, Grauman said.

How Jefferson defined its relevant market to the FTC is not public information.

In a June bond-offering statement, however, Jefferson said its primary service area covers Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties in Pennsylvania and significant portions of Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, and Salem Counties in New Jersey.

The bond statement said Jefferson had 19.3% of discharges of patients from that nine-county area in 2017. Adding Einstein in that year would have increased Jeffersons share to 25.3%.

But narrowing the relevant market to the core service areas of Abington Hospital, Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, and the three-hospital Jefferson Health-Northeast creates a far different picture.

The core markets for those five hospitals include 68 zip codes that the hospitals identified in their most recent assessments of community health needs as core markets. That combined region stretches from Harleysville down to Philadelphias Fishtown neighborhood and back up through Northeast Philadelphia to Yardley and Newtown in central Bucks County.

The Einstein deal would increase Jeffersons market share of hospital inpatients there from 33% to 47%, an Inquirer analysis of state data on hospital inpatient discharges in 2018 found. The region accounts for at least 70% of each of the hospitals inpatients and is home to an estimated 1.7 million people, according to the hospitals and census data.

A bigger jump in market share would happen in the neighborhoods surrounding Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, which is in Logan and draws large numbers of patients from Olney, Germantown, and West Oak Lane.

Jefferson already has a 20% market share there, the state data show. Add that to Einsteins 28% and the combined entities would have a share of 48%, far more than Temple University Health System, which in 2018 had the second-largest share: 24%.

In the core areas served by Einstein Medical Center Montgomery, in East Norriton, and Abington Lansdale Hospital, Einstein had 26% of inpatients and Jefferson had 25% of inpatients in 2018. The area is home to about 350,000 people.

An increasing portion of health-care services is shifting to outpatient settings, but data to measure market share in that growing arena were not available.

Some Philadelphia-area health-care professionals have speculated that regulators may be concerned about the consolidation of Einsteins MossRehab and Center Citys Magee Rehabilitation Hospital (which Jefferson acquired in January 2018) under one corporate parent.

If Jeffersons acquisition of Einstein goes through, Jefferson would control 51% of the inpatient rehabilitation beds in Southeastern Pennsylvania. The other players are St. Mary Rehabilitation Hospital in Langhorne (50 beds), Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital in Malvern (148 beds), and Good Shepherd Penn Partners in Philadelphia (58 beds).

I would be surprised if that were something that trips them up, Grauman said, because inpatient rehabilitation is so inconsequential to the overall health-care spend.

Although it is impossible to know the sticking point in the regulatory review of the Einstein acquisition, its clear that the deal is taking far longer to close than Jeffersons previous health-care acquisitions.

The Einstein deal has been pending for well over 470 days. Thats longer than the 402 days it took Jefferson to get its acquisition of Kennedy Health System through the regulatory review process. New Jersey requires some acquisitions to undergo a review under the Community Health Care Assets Protection Act.

Jefferson officials are hanging in there.

We have not received an adverse decision by the FTC. They are thoroughly reviewing the information submitted on behalf of both organizations, and our leadership is working collaboratively with the FTC and the Pennsylvania Attorney General through their process. We appreciate the comprehensive review and anticipate a decision in the near future, Jefferson officials said in a Dec. 17 email.

What the FTC is looking at is not public. Generally, the FTC only shows its hand when it sues to block a deal, as it did in 2015 in Central Pennsylvania, when Penn State Hershey Medical Center tried to acquire Pinnacle Health System. Penn State gave up the next year, and not long after, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center swept in to acquire Pinnacle.

What happens to Einstein if the Jefferson deal doesnt get across the finish line?

Einstein said the statement above from Jefferson represented both would-be merger partners.

I dont see it going anywhere other than where they were headed before Jefferson, which is some kind of arrangement with Temple, said Grauman, the heath-care consultant.

Or it gets broken up  the regional medical center, a nice community hospital  would go one way, he said, and maybe Einstein and Temple get put together and rationalized and economized and made as efficient as possible.
When Pam Webbs luxury spa flooded, she was horrified to find her insurer had changed her policy  leaving her high and dry.

A resident of badly-hit Fishlake in South Yorkshire, Miss Webb needed thousands of pounds to fix major water damage and feared she would go bust. But the mother-of-two refused to give up  and took her fight to the top by calling 10 Downing Street.

Now, thanks to the help of staff, friends and locals  and the Prime Minister himself  Truffle Lodge spa reopened yesterday.

Pam Webb received a call from Boris Johnson a week before the general election, regarding her flooded spa in Fishlake, Yorkshire. He called her 'persistent Pam' and she then rang No 10 to explain her dilemma, leading to a call with the chairman of the Association of British Insurers

Miss Webb, 49, said: I got a phone call from Boris Johnson a week before the election to ask how I was getting on. He calls me persistent Pam. The leader of the local council has another name for me!

The divorcees crusade began two months ago when her village hit the headlines after flooding due to heavy rainfall.

Engulfed: Floods caused major damage to Truffle Lodge in Fishlake, South Yorkshire, in November. Homeowner Pam Webb was horrified to find her insurer had changed her policy and removed flood protection

She rang her insurer to seek help, only to find it had removed her flood protection in pages of small print. The company also refused to renew her policy following the floods.

Miss Webb then rang No 10 to explain her dilemma, leading to a call with the chairman of the Association of British Insurers. Within days she had new cover for her spa and adjoining home, albeit with higher premiums.

The spa was devastated by floods (pictured) two months ago. The husband of one of her therapists even moved in, along with a few family members, to clean and redecorate every room

It has now been restored to its chic interior, using 3,200 in grants to replace oak and tile floors

Miss Webb, who became an unofficial spokesman for the Fishlake community, then turned her focus to repairing the filthy mess left in the sauna, steam rooms, hot tub, pool and treatment rooms, using 3,200 in grants to replace oak and tile floors.

The husband of one of her therapists even moved in, along with a few family members, to clean and redecorate every room.

Pete Sanders took just two days off over Christmas. Miss Webb said he is letting her pay him back at very reasonable rates when cash is available.

Two cleaning firms also offered their services for free. Now I just need customers to start booking again, Miss Webb said.
New Delhi:

In his first press briefing after the announcement of the Delhi Assembly poll date, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal urged the people of Delhi to vote for his party if they feel that the AAP government has worked for them in the last 5 years. "If I have done work, then vote for me. If I have not done work, then don't vote for me," Arvind Kejriwal said. "This time vote for Delhi, not for your political party... We will ask for votes from BJP supporters and Congress supporters," he added.

He also emphasised that his party will fight the upcoming poll on the work done by Delhi government in the last 5 year. Assuring to run a positive campaign, Aam Aadmi Party convenor also said that Delhi dont want to make the city another MCD. "Police, MCD, DDA are controlled by the BJP. Their work will be compared with that of AAP government. People of Delhi dont want to make city another MCD,"Arvind Kejriwal said.

During his press conference, Arvind Kejriwal also took dig at Home Minister Amit Shah and said,"Our campaign will be a positive campaign, we dont know how to do dirty politics. Home Minister only abused me in his rally speech but we wont abuse someone back."

BJP President Amit Shah on Monday criticised Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for not granting sanction to prosecute those who raised anti-India slogans. Some students shouted anti-India slogans, said Bharat tere tukde honge. Tell me should not they be sent to jail?, alleged Shah. But Kejriwal is not granting sanction to prosecute them.

Who do you want to save, Kejriwal ji? he said. Shah had on Sunday too accused the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener of favouring the tukde tukde gang by not giving sanction to prosecute Kanhaiya Kumar, the former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU), in the JNU sedition case. Shah further said that the AAP government had done nothing to improve the lives of the people of the national capital and had only deceived them by publishing advertisements.

Kejriwal had promised to install 15 lakh CCTV cameras for the safety of residents of Delhi. People are looking all over but cant find any camera, Shah said. The AAP government had also promised free wifi, however, your phones battery will drain while searching for wifi signals as they are nowhere to be found, he said.
China on Monday slammed what it called US "adventurism" which aggravated tensions in the Middle East and urged all parties to exercise restraint, saying Beijing was "highly concerned" over the worsening situation following the killing of a top Iranian general by America.

While sharply critical of US actions including threats of sanctions against Iraq, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang, however, hinted that Beijing plans to go ahead with the signing of the phase one deal with US next week to end the ongoing trade war.

The killing of Maj Gen Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was the most dramatic escalation yet in spiralling tensions between Iran and the US.

"China is highly concerned about the situation in the Middle East," Geng said when asked about US and Iran tensions.

"Worsening of the tensions in the Gulf region is the last thing anyone wants to see Power is unpopular and unsustainable. The US adventurism goes against the basic norms governing international relations and aggravates tensions and instability in the region," he said.

China opposes the use of force in international relations, he added.

"Military means will lead nowhere and maximum pressure won't work either. We believe all sides should earnestly abide by the purposes and principles of the UN charter and basic norms governing international relations" he said.

"We urge the US not to abuse its force," Geng said as he called on the relevant parties to exercise restraint to prevent spiral of tensions and escalation.

He also hinted that China will go ahead with its phase one trade deal with the US expected to be signed on January 15 to end the trade war despite its strong stand on American actions against Iran.

"China and the US reached phase one trade deal. The two sides are in close communication to follow-up the matter," he said.

US President Donald Trump had launched the trade war against China last year demanding Beijing to reduce massive trade deficit.

Trump is also demanding an intrusive verification mechanism to supervise Beijing's promise to protect intellectual property rights (IPR) technology transfer and more access to American goods to Chinese markets.

Geng skirted direct reply to a question whether China plans to increase its military presence in the Gulf region in view of the tensions.

The air strike killing Iranian General Soleimani took place days after the trilateral joint naval exercises between China, Iran and Russia in the Gulf of Oman. The exercises were held from December 27 to 30.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif visited Beijing and held talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi just ahead of the Friday US air strike.

Geng also criticised Trump's threat to impose harsh sanctions on Iraq like it has seen "never before" if US troops are expelled from Baghdad.

"We oppose the wanton use of sanctions and threat of sanctions. We also oppose unilateral sanctions and so called long arm jurisdiction. Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity should be upheld," he said.

Iraqi lawmakers on Sunday approved a resolution asking the Iraqi government to end the agreement under which US sent troops more than four years ago to help fight ISIS.

Geng defended Iran's plan to rollback its commitments on the nuclear deal. "We believe Iran is being forced to reduce its commitments due to certain external factors. At the same time, it is exercising restraint and clearly stated its political will for effective implementation" of the nuclear deal, he said.

"Now there is growing complexity in situation in the Middle East," he said, adding that the Iranian nuclear deal is facing severe challenges due to unilateral withdrawal by US' ignoring its international obligations which is the root cause of tensions in the Gulf region.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
This New Year of 2020, one will hear the drone from the far left that our President, Donald Trump, must be removed from office because hes an existential threat to our nation. Most with an ounce of common sense know better. Chief among our threats is the fact weve graduated more than three million students from high schools and colleges, including those whove endured the rigors of professional studies in dentistry, engineering, law and medicine, according to the National Center for Education, 2018 statistics, who havent a clue of the actual threat. How can one estimate, not their productivity or contribution, but their support of our Republics founding documents and first principles, that make our country the envy of the world? For the sake of making a case, lets assume half of those graduates, thats wildly generous, understand and support this remarkable Republic, possessing a whit of understanding of the value and innumerable benefits of our roots in Western Civilization. Assume they too believe socialisms inimical to all that make America exceptional in this orb. Many may agree that the God of the Old and New Testament had His hand on us since our nations beginning. It begs the question: What about the other half? Doesnt that represent an imminent threat to our national stability?

Are we undermining our own stability by being duped by a leviathan education process that churns out a horde of students with heads full of facts, but souls bereft of those long-held values that have been systematically denigrated, marginalized or lost by recent graduates who cant recall what they never knew? It raises the scepter of how morally strong are we internally? Weve been warned by sage historians that countries crumble and perish from within primarily by moral decay, and unrestrained prosperity. One may halt regarding multiple exterior threats around us such as Iran and North Korea saber rattling, launching rockets, and that boiling cauldron in the Middle East stoked by Iranian and Russian proxies. Communist China, who, until President Trump called their bluff, was eating our economic lunch.

Since WWII and the Korean conflict, weve had few credible threats in terms of an external attack on our soil, except during the Cold War when Russia breathed ominous threats, and the Cuban Missile Crisis was a seriously closer call than most citizens knew at the time. President Trump, contends our militarilys stronger than ever in terms of readiness. Internally, porous borders continue to threaten national security and sovereignty. Statistics are sketchy, and likely inaccurate, regarding Isis jihadist infiltration of our fifty states, and equally alarming, their menacing presence on social media, despite al-Baghdadis death. According to the RAND Corporation threat assessment, China has already invaded us with their products and cyber espionage warfare for nearly thirty years. Asian experts and pundits claim its better to fight over tariffs than in a military encounter where China, capable of marshaling up to 3.3 million troops-three times our active military. Russias continued meddling into our voting vex many. However, analyst at RAND advise us to keep those two powers separate in terms of our strategies and risk assessments.

Back to the original premise that the potential threats from outside our borders, are less ominous and dire as the internal one, while millions of students, whove rarely considered or understand the menacing consequences of those wholl occupy teaching classrooms, social agencies, legislatures, military, hospitals, news media and social platforms; theyre unlikely to advance longstanding verities, values, traditions, and moral underpinnings thatve served as a linchpin for our society for over two centuries. Those whove gone before them secured each graduate the benefit of relative freedom to choose their educational path.

Hoover Institute scholar, Victor Davis Hanson distinguishes between economic vibrancy and the modern universitys dismal failure of preparing students to function with degrees that are marketplace relevant. He maintains theyve failed on four fronts. First, generally students are unable to reason inductively and deductively, absent a rigorous undergraduate liberal arts curriculum. Second, the loss of legitimate diversity of thought and vigorous exchange of ideas. Third, a four year degree once trained students for a career with some assurance that it was a wise investment is no longer true. Fourth, universities at one time werent monopolistic price gougers, and sought affordability to permit access to a broad middle class that had neither federal subsidies or unbridled wealth. Davis claims theyve lost their way on all four. Socially universities now resemble greenhouses where fragile adults are coddled as if they are hothouse orchids, constantly warning of micro-aggressions that are imperceptible to the average feet-on-the-ground citizen. Institutions hide landmark authors like Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad and William Golding, and cover paintings of Christopher Columbus. This desultory masqueradings an extension of safe spaces shielding snowflake students from topics or issues that threaten their implacable reverie. This reveals the educational elites endless attempts to pamper Generation X, Y and Z sensibilities, juxtaposed by students actively listening to endless coarse rap lyrics, engaging in sordid spring break indulgences, sexual promiscuity, epidemic drug and alcohol abuse, and often turning a four year trip into a six year excursion, or more.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports campuses have a higher administration-to-student ratio than ever before. Bloated at the top. Counter-intuitively, staff actively involved in teaching are a decreasing minority. The outlook is bleak. Most prominent on the agenda are equity and gender studies, minority and race studies, social justice and VPs of Diversity and Equity, all of which bear no measurable relationship to educational outcomes. Another compelling reason for a new emphasis on affordable vocational education; many states recognize that master mechanics, paramedics or skilled electricians and welders are at least as valuable as cultural anthropology.

Consider these bewilderingly absurd credit courses at major colleges; Demystifying the Hipster, What if Harry Potter is Real, and Sociology of Miley Cyrus. Too many university boards of trustees are nearly as daft as the presidents running the institution. Political persuasion of the institutions presidents no longer a mystery. Public university speakers shouldnt be dis-invited because theyre too conservative or God forbid, a notable Evangelical. Many liberal campuses are havens for malcontents. The only unforgivable sin is disagreeing with them-civility and tolerance are campus folklore. Conservative faculty remain on the endangered species list.

Any solutions? Ironically, most institutions demand performance tests like the SAT or ACT to get in the door. What about instruments to accurately assess outcomes when students exit these bastions of learning? Most public university boards are appointed by governors. Parents must be engaged in their investment. Push colleges to publish employment rates of their graduates. Did students and parents get a good deal for their money? Recent admission scandals remind us were dealing with a burgeoning elitism that rears its ugly head when confronted about transparency and outcomes. Donors, legislatures and tax payers must be vociferous, demanding transparency and accurate outcome metrics.

Its uncanny how some colleges perform extremely well with the fraction of the resources of elite ones. Harvards thirty billion dollar endowments no guarantee ones offspring wont sacrifice their soul on the altar of elitism. Hillsdale College and Liberty University are notable exceptions for fanning the flame of learning, while inculcating the values and wisdom of our Founding documents. Its the social sciences that are most susceptible to mischief in academe. Parents shouldnt deposit their offspring at the student union, and remain un-engaged. We arent called to proffer more quixotic ideas. Our calling is to uphold permanent things with Godly diligence, while unambiguously speaking truth into the public square, by championing the merit of first principles in education. Will this threat jeopardize our internal security? What do you think?

Mike Pyatts a Ravalli County resident. His emails roderickstj@yahoo.com

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Editors note: This story has been updated with additional comment from Grubhub.

SYRACUSE, N.Y.  One of the most popular items on the menu at Toss & Fire Wood-Fired Pizza is the Cuse Salt Potato pizza.

Owner Nick Sanford charges $18 on Grubhub ($17 if you eat-in) for the large potato, bacon and cheese-topped pizza.

Order it through Grubhub and youll still pay $18plus tax and a delivery fee that might be as much as $9.99but Toss & Fire will see just $14.85 of that, while Grubhub takes $3.15. Get it delivered and Grubhubs cut jumps to $4.95.

Add in the order process fee and in the end, Toss & Fire is left with about $12.50.

That commission17.5% marketing commission on orders, an additional 10% on deliveries, plus an order process fee of 30 cents plus 3.05%is common for restaurants that use Grubhub and other mobile delivery apps. But with around 30% of the proceeds potentially going to the company, restaurants around Syracuse are looking for alternatives.

"With Grubhub, youre pretty much paying your employees to make food to keep them busy, Sanford said.

14 The Brine Well Eatery

Our mission is to connect hungry diners with local restaurants, Katie Norris, senior manager of corporate communications for the company, said in a statement. We are proud to help news diners find new delivery options and help restaurants grow their businesses  without the internal cost and insurance of having their own delivery service.

Devon Hubbard, who opened The Brine Well Eatery at 128 E. Jefferson St. in downtown Syracuse in April, said he enjoys Grubhub as a marketing platform, but the fees associated with using it for food delivery are putting pressure on his bottom line. Hubbards restaurant specializes in variations of garbage plates, the iconic Rochester dish that typically consists of home fries and macaroni salad, topped with burgers or hot dogs, meat sauce, chopped onions and mustard, made with locally-sourced ingredients.

Garbage plates are often thought of as a late-night food enjoyed in varying levels of sobriety, so its not surprising that theyre a popular delivery option. Hubbard said about 30% of his overall business comes from Grubhub, with fellow delivery app DoorDash accounting for another 3% to 5%.

Grubhubs marketing commission varies, but the average is around 15 to 17%, said Katie Norris, senior manager of corporate communications for the company. Restaurants can choose to pay a slightly higher rate in exchange for better visibility on the platform. Both the order process fee and delivery commission, which Norris said is a pass-through expense that covers that cost of the driver, are non-negotiable.

Hubbard paid additional money in targeted promotions, including a coupon for $5 off a diners first Grubhub order, the savings of which comes out of the restaurants bottom line. With around a third of the cost going to ingredients, as is standard in many restaurants, and another third going to a delivery app, that leaves little for the restaurant.

While restaurants are allowed to charge more for delivery orders versus eat-in orders, Grubhub asks that restaurants charge the same for Grubhub orders as it would for in-house delivery or another delivery service.

In mid-October, Hubbard posted a Grubhub invoice on Facebook. The invoice showed the restaurant made about $921 on 40 Grubhub orders that week, or around $23 per order on average. Deduct the marketing commission, delivery commission, order processing fees and the costs associated with his coupons/targeted promotions and youre left with $526, or $13.15 per ordera 43% decrease.

"Grubhub is a necessary evil, Hubbard said. I just want people to sway away from it.

Toss & Fire Wood-Fired Pizza in North Syracuse.

After operating as a food truck only for around two years, Nick Sanford opened Toss & Fires brick-and-mortar restaurant at 315 N. Main St. in North Syracuse in October 2016. At first, he used Grubhub for deliveries. But Grubhub was still fairly new in Syracuse at the timewhile the app launched in Syracuse in 2011, it wasnt until 2016 that Grubhub added a fleet of delivery drivers. Sanford said he experienced fewer available drivers and longer wait times. Unhappy with the service, Sanford shifted his delivery to an in-house driver. About three months ago, after having trouble keeping dependable drivers and tabulating the costs of labor, insurance and other fees associated with having an in-house delivery person, he switched back to Grubhub.

About 10 to 15% of Toss & Fires business comes from delivery apps, of which about 90% is from Grubhub. Sanford said he couldnt afford to have the delivery apps take up a bigger chunk of his business.

I wouldnt be able to sustain that, Sanford said.

Toss N Fire Wood-Fired Pizza debuted five new pies at the 2019 New York State Fair, including this Poutine Pizza, which features shoestring fries, Yancey's Fancy cheese curds, gravy, garlic and parsley. Katrina TullochKatrina Tulloch

But even then, problems happen. In the 10 months Sanford has used Grubhubsix months when the shop first opened and four months since he returnedhes seen drivers show up 90 minutes late, while others take taken the food and never delivered it. Both restaurant owners said they believe theyve had Grubhub drivers eat the food themselves.

Theyre beating down the restaurants, Sanford said. "Their sales pitch is that [restaurant owners] wouldnt be getting the orders without Grubhub.

We always want for our restaurants and diners to have the best experiences possible," Norris, the Grubhub spokesperson, said. "The vast majority of our orders are completed without incident or complaints, but when things dont go as planned, we appreciate hearing feedback and work hard to make it right. We have zero tolerance for this type of behavior from our delivery partners, and we work to immediately resolve. Our drivers sign a contract before partnering with us that makes it clear that misconduct isnt tolerated, and we would terminate the contract of any driver who tampers with an order. We also give restaurants the option to specify that a certain driver should no longer be able to pick up from their restaurant if theyve had a bad experience with the driver.

Grubhub drivers are given instructions on what to do if the customer is not immediately available, Norris said. First, the driver should call or text the customer using the Grubhub for Drivers mobile app. If the customer cannot be reached, the driver selects in the app that the diner is not available. The driver is then asked to wait for eight minutes.

If the diner still doesnt arrive after eight minutes, the driver is given two options: Leave the food at a designated location and text the diner where it is, or take it with them. Norris said in both cases, the driver and restaurant are paid as usual.

Hubbard said he once had a Grubhub driver tell him that he threw out an $80-plus order because the customer didnt meet him within 10 minutes of arrival. But Hubbard said that it took a fight with the company in order to get his money back after the customer complained to Grubhub, who refunded their order.

Grubhub requires that drivers use insulated delivery bags when making deliveries, which the company does provide to drivers. If a driver shows up at Toss & Fire without a hot bag, Sanford refuses to give them the food. Hell wait for a new driver to arrive, even if it means remaking the order.

Because when someone receives a cold pizza or garbage plate and leaves a negative review on Grubhub, its the restaurant that takes the hit to its rating and reputation, not the delivery service.

The Rochester plate includes home fries, mac salad, two burgers or hot dogs or one of each, meat sauce, chopped onions and yellow mustard.Jacob Pucci

Hubbard sat in the dining room of his restaurant one late afternoon in between the lunch and dinner rush, scrolling through the reviews on Brine Wells Grubhub page. He stops to read two reviews in particular:

I wouldnt know the grub hub driver ate my food." One star.

The customer service rep was great. The driver needs to be fired, always an issue with this person. One star.

Hubbard responded to both comments, but that doesnt change the rating.

Who is this person? Hubbard said, referring to the ever-changing stream of delivery drivers that come through his doors everyday. "Thats the scariest part of it.

The Brine Well Eatery and Toss & Fire are two of hundreds of restaurants in the Syracuse area on Grubhub. Nationwide, the company fulfills around 450,000 orders a day and handed more than $5 billion in sales in 2018 alone.

Is Grubhub a necessary evil, or is there a viable alternative? One downtown Syracuse restaurant is going to find out.

Otro Cinco, Syracuse, N.Y. (Jared Paventi | jaredpaventi@gmail.com)

On Oct. 19, the Mexican-Spanish restaurant Otro Cinco, 206 S. Warren St., released its own mobile app for customers to place pick-up and delivery orders. The app also tracks purchases made both on the app and in the restaurant for a loyalty club that allows diners to redeem reward points for discounts.

We always wanted to have that connection with our customers. general manager Keith Litman said.

Litman said the process of developing the app started in the spring. All told, it cost around $1,000 to make the app, but without any commission fees for orders, he expects the restaurant to break even on the investment after the first year, followed by a pretty substantial savings.

Unlike Toss & Fire and The Brine Well, Otro Cinco makes its own deliveries, so it only has to pay the marketing commission, which Litman said was around 15 to 20%.

About 25% of Otros business comes from take-out and delivery, of which 50% comes from mobile apps like Grubhub. Litman said the restaurant will continue to use Grubhub, though will lessen its dependence on it.

A mobile app for Alto Cinco, Otros sister restaurant in Westcott, is planned in the near future.

What can diners do to make to-go orders friendlier to the restaurant? For Toss & Fire customers, Sanford said to visit the restaurant website. Unlike orders placed through the Grubhub app or website, orders placed by clicking the Grubhub button on the Toss & Fire website do not incur the 17.5% commission. Norris confirmed that Grubhub charges little to no marketing commission on orders placed through a button on the restaurants website, with the belief that the restaurant generated the demand for those orders.

Hubbard said its easy. Dine in the restaurant, or just pick up the phone.

Everyone involved would save money, he said.

Jacob Pucci finds the best in food, dining and culture across Central New York. Contact him by email at jpucci@syracuse.com.

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If Syracuse was a food, it would be a salt potato
The Prince of Wales is to visit Israel and the Palestinian Territories (Victoria Jones/PA)

The Prince of Wales will visit Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, and honour those who died in the Holocaust during his first official tour of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Clarence House has announced.

Charles tour  the highest-level visit by a member of the monarchy to Israel and the Palestinian areas  will mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The heir to the throne will deliver a speech at the World Holocaust Forum being staged at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem, on January 23, joining around 40 world leaders and other dignitaries.

This month, The Prince of Wales will attend the World Economic Forums Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, to launch his Sustainable Markets Council and deliver a keynote address. #wef20



Read more  https://t.co/zNgf08nzlR  The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall (@ClarenceHouse) January 6, 2020

The prince has been invited to the major event by Israels President Reuven Rivlin and will meet the statesman during his two-day visit and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has invited Charles to visit the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Before arriving in the Middle East, the prince will launch an ambitious project to help financial markets become more sustainable during a visit to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

Charles will highlight his Sustainable Markets Council during a brief visit to the Swiss town of Davos on January 22.

Scott Furssedonn-Wood, the princes deputy private secretary, said about the World Holocaust Forum: The prince is honoured to be among the small number of international leaders who have been invited to address the event and have the opportunity on behalf of the United Kingdom to honour the memory of all those who were lost in the Holocaust.

Security around the trip is likely to be tight, especially following US President Donald Trumps decision to assassinate the Iranian military chief Qassem Soleimani, which has heightened tensions in the region.

Asked if recent events in the Middle East have affected the royal visit, an FCO spokesman said We are monitoring the situation very closely adding staff in the region were extremely well practised at managing security for these kinds of visits.

Charles visit has added significance as the Queen has never made an official visit to Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories during her 67-year reign.

The ministerial jet Voyager is believed to be undergoing scheduled maintenance and Charles will be travelling by a chartered plane during his brief visit to Switzerland and on to the Middle East.

World leaders and leading business figures have faced criticism in the past for flying to Davos by private jet.

Mr Furssedonn-Wood said: We always look at a range of options, we take a number of factors into account when we decide how to travel, we weigh up things like cost of course with environmental impact as youd expect, but also efficiency of time, size of delegation and crucially safety and security.

He highlighted a number of recent trips including Charles official visits to Japan and India where he flew by commercial airlines, but for this tour he said all of their considerations could not be satisfied by scheduled flights.

Charles will make the two-hour car journey from the airport to Davos by electric vehicle, rather than helicopter, a Clarence House spokesman said.

The prince hopes his Sustainable Markets Council, which is supported by the World Economic Forum, will bring together leading individuals from the public and private sectors, charitable organisations and investors to identify ways to rapidly decarbonise the global economy and make the transition to sustainable markets.

Details about Charles full itinerary have yet to be announced but it is likely the prince will pay his respects at the resting place of his grandmother Princess Alice of Battenberg in Jerusalems Church of St Mary Magdalene.

She was honoured by the Jewish people for hiding and saving the lives of Jews in Nazi-occupied Athens during the Second World War.

The heir to the thrones forthcoming visit will follow one made by his son the Duke of Cambridge who toured Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories in 2018.

Charles travelled to Jerusalem to attend the funerals of president Shimon Peres in 2016 and prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
FAIRFIELD, Conn. (AP)  Connecticut and AT&T have signed a deal designed to improve cellular service on the Metro-North commuter rail line.

The agreement, announced Friday, gives the telecommunications company access to the right-of-way along the rail line, where the company plans to install a series of small cell nodes.

Gov. Ned Lamont says that will provide better cellular coverage and higher data speeds for train passengers.

The Democratic governor also announced that 132 recently purchased rail cars will be designed in partnership with industry experts and equipped with roof-top antennas that amplify 4G and 5G signals in the train.
Paris, Jan 7 : UNESCO's Director General Audrey Azoulay reminded the United States President Donald Trump that his country was committed to multiple international conventions that meant respecting cultural heritage in the case of conflict.

The warning from the head of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation came in response to Trump's threat on Saturday to attack 52 sites in Iran, some of which pertain to the culture of the country, if Tehran were to retaliate over the killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in a US airstrike on Friday, Efe news reported.

On Monday, Azoulay met with Iranian Ambassador to UNESCO, Ahmad Jalali, to address the situation in the Middle East and threats against its heritage, according to a statement released by the organisation.

The UNESCO boss recalled that both the US and Iran had signed conventions to protect cultural property in case of conflict and world heritage that meant that they could not "deliberately" take any measures to damage the cultural and natural heritage of other signatory countries.

She also pointed out that UN Security Council resolution 2347, which was adopted unanimously in 2017, condemns acts of destruction of cultural heritage.

In a message posted on Twitter, Trump had said that if Iran attacks US interests his country has "We have ... targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture." "If Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets... Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD," the US President had said.

On Sunday, the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denied that the President intended to strike Iran's cultural heritage and said that Washington would only act against Iran under the protection of the law.

In October 2017, the US announced its withdrawal from UNESCO, claiming it needed to be reformed and was dominated by an alleged anti-Israeli trend.
The authorities are investigating the discovery of pill bottles filled with bedbugs inside a Walmart in Pennsylvania.

A manager at the store, in Washington Township, about 25 miles south of Erie, reported that an employee found a closed pill bottle containing live bugs on Thursday inside the mens changing room, according to the Pennsylvania State Police, which is investigating.

The bottle was inside a boys jacket that was for sale, the police said.

Walmart disposed of the jacket and bottle, and contacted Ecolab, a hygiene and energy technologies company, which sent an employee to the store on Friday, the police said.

The employee reported finding bugs crawling around the mens fitting room, the police said. The insects were identified as bedbugs.
UCSF and CDC study finds millions of 'outdated' tests being performed on healthy females 15 to 20 years old

Pelvic examinations and cervical cancer screenings are no longer recommended for most females under age 21 during routine health visits, but a new study has found that millions of young women are unnecessarily undergoing the tests, which can lead to false-positive testing, over-treatment, anxiety and needless cost.

Researchers at UC San Francisco and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that 1.4 million pelvic examinations and 1.6 million Pap tests performed on U.S. females 15 to 20 years old in a single year may have been medically unnecessary.

The findings suggest that despite professional guidelines and recommendations against routine pelvic examinations and Pap tests in this age group, there's a critical lag in clinical practice. The estimated cost of these unnecessary exams was approximately $123 million a year.

The study appears Jan. 6, 2020 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

"Recent media reports have called attention to inappropriate gynecologic examinations in young women," said senior author George F. Sawaya, MD, professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at UCSF and director of the UCSF Center for Healthcare Value.

"Parents of adolescents and young women should be aware that cervical cancer screening is not recommended routinely in this age group. Pelvic exams are not necessary prior to getting most contraceptives and are often not needed to screen for sexually transmissible infections," Sawaya said.

Cervical cancer screening is not recommended for individuals under age 21, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Cancer Society. Additionally, leading professional organizations recommend against performing pelvic examinations in asymptomatic women who are not pregnant.

The new analysis was intended to estimate how often pelvic examinations and Pap tests occurred among young women in the U.S., as well as the proportion that were potentially unnecessary. The population-based study used data from 2011 to 2017.

Researchers classified the pelvic examination into two types: medically indicated or potentially unnecessary. Pelvic examinations were considered medically indicated if performed during pregnancy or in association with use of an intrauterine device, or in the context of treatment for a sexually transmitted disease.

The investigators estimated that of approximately 2.6 million young women who received a pelvic exam during the previous year, more than half (54.4 percent) were potentially unnecessary, representing an estimated 1.4 million young women.

Additionally, the researchers found that nearly a fifth of females younger than the recommended age had a Pap test within the past year. Because 72 percent were performed as "part of a routine exam," they were potentially unnecessary, representing an estimated 1.6 million young women. Almost all of the pelvic examinations were performed at the same time as the Pap test.

Young women who had been screened for a sexually transmitted infection were 3.8 times more likely to receive a Pap test and 60 percent more likely to receive a pelvic examination, compared with those who had not been screened.

Similarly, young women who used a hormonal contraception other than IUD were 75 percent more likely to receive a Pap test and 31 percent more likely to receive a pelvic examination, compared with those who did not use those contraception methods.

"This study suggests that healthcare providers and young women need to communicate clearly and often about the best time for these tests," said first author Jin Qin, ScD, an epidemiologist with the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We want to ensure that guidelines are followed, and lives are saved."

###

Authors: Co-authors are Mona Saraiya, MD, and Gladys Martinez, PhD, who are with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. No disclosures were reported.

About UCSF Health: UCSF Health is recognized worldwide for its innovative patient care, reflecting the latest medical knowledge, advanced technologies and pioneering research. It includes the flagship UCSF Medical Center, which is ranked among the top 10 hospitals nationwide, as well as UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals, with campuses in San Francisco and Oakland, Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics, UCSF Benioff Children's Physicians and the UCSF Faculty Practice. These hospitals serve as the academic medical center of the University of California, San Francisco, which is world-renowned for its graduate-level health sciences education and biomedical research. UCSF Health has affiliations with hospitals and health organizations throughout the Bay Area. Visit http://www.ucsfhealth.org/. Follow UCSF Health on Facebook or on Twitter.
A man has tried to abduct a woman in her 60s in Dublin.

Gardai have said that the woman was assaulted during the attempted abduction on the Martins Grove/Blackhorse Avenue area of Dublin 7 at around 7.30am this morning.
In this newly created position, Mr. Treadway will be responsible for the management of all of the bank's digital channels, including ATMs, online and mobile banking, as well as collaborating closely with key internal business partners to ensure the bank has a shared and cohesive digital strategy that is integrated and aligned.

"I am thrilled to add Todd to our team. He understands what it takes to deliver a best-in-class online and mobile banking experience for consumers," said John Kamin, Executive Vice President, Chief Information Officer. "His expertise will be a welcome addition as we look to rollout enhanced digital and mobile solutions for our customers in the first quarter," added Kamin.

Mr. Treadway has more than 20 years' experience in banking technology, and digital and mobile delivery channels. Prior to joining Provident, he was Vice President, Digital Channels Manager with Old National Bank, Evansville, Ind., where he was he was instrumental in delivering world class digital experiences to their customers. Mr. Treadway holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems from the University of Southern Indiana, Evansville.

About Provident Bank

Provident Bank, a community-oriented bank offering "Commitment you can count on" since 1839, is the wholly owned subsidiary of Provident Financial Services, Inc. (NYSE: PFS), which reported assets of $9.92 billion as of September 30, 2019. With $6.96 billion in deposits, Provident Bank provides a comprehensive suite of financial products and services through its network of branches throughout northern and central New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. The Bank also provides fiduciary and wealth management services through its wholly owned subsidiary, Beacon Trust Company. For more information about Provident Bank, visit www.provident.bank or join the conversations on Facebook (ProvidentBank) and Twitter (@ProvidentBank).

SOURCE Provident Bank

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Enel, through its US renewable subsidiary Enel Green Power North America, Inc. ("EGPNA"), has started operations of its 450 MW High Lonesome wind farm in Upton and Crockett Counties, in Texas, the largest operational wind project in the Group's global renewable portfolio. Enel also signed a 12-year, renewable energy power purchase agreement (PPA) with food and beverage company Danone North America, a Public Benefit Corporation, for physical delivery of the renewable electricity associated with 20.6 MW, leading to an additional 50 MW expansion of High Lonesome that will increase the plant's total capacity to 500 MW. The construction of the 50 MW expansion is currently underway and operations are due to start in the first quarter of 2020.

"The start of operations of Enel's largest wind farm in the world marks a significant achievement for our company and reinforces our global commitment to accelerated renewable energy growth," said Antonio Cammisecra, CEO of Enel Green Power. "This milestone is matched with a new partnership with Danone North America to support their renewable goals, a reinforcement of our continued commitment to provide customers with tailored solutions to meet their sustainability goals."

The agreement between Enel and Danone North America will provide enough electricity to produce the equivalent of almost 800 million cups of yogurt1 and over 80 million gallons2 of milk each year and support the food and beverage company's commitment to securing 100% of its purchased electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

Mariano Lozano, president and CEO of Danone North America, added: "This is an exciting and significant step as we continue to advance our 2030 renewable electricity goals. As a public benefit corporation committed to balancing the needs of our business with those of society and the planet, we truly believe that this agreement makes sense from both a business and sustainability point of view. We're delighted to be working with Enel Green Power to expand their High Lonesome wind farm and grow the renewable electricity infrastructure here in the US."

In addition, the energy produced by a 295 MW portion of the project will be hedged under a Proxy Revenue Swap (PRS) with insurer Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, Inc.'s Alternative Risk Transfer unit (Allianz), and Nephila Climate, a provider of weather and climate risk management products. The PRS is a financial derivative agreement designed to produce stable revenues for the project regardless of power price fluctuations and weather-driven intermittency, hedging the project from this kind of risk in addition to that associated with price and volume.

Under the PRS agreement, High Lonesome will receive fixed payments based on the expected value of future energy production, with adjustments paid depending on how the realized proxy revenue of the project differs from the fixed payment. The PRS for High Lonesome, which is the largest by capacity for a single plant globally and the first agreement of its kind for Enel, was executed in collaboration with REsurety, Inc.

The investment in the construction of the 500 MW plant amounts to around 720 million US dollars. The wind farm is due to generate around 1.9 TWh annually, while avoiding the emission of more than 1.2 million tons of CO2 per year.

In Texas, Enel currently operates the 63 MW Snyder wind farm, located in Scurry County and is building one of the largest solar plants in the state, the 497 MW Roadrunner solar farm.

Enel Green Power North America, part of Enel Green Power, is a leading owner and operator of renewable energy plants in North America with projects operating and under development in 24 US states and two Canadian provinces. The company operates around 100 plants with a managed capacity of more than 5 GW powered by renewable hydropower, wind, geothermal and solar energy. The company is currently the largest wind operator in Kansas.

Enel Green Power is the Enel Group's company dedicated to the development and operation of renewables across the world, with a presence in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Enel Green Power is a global leader in the green energy sector with a managed capacity of around 46 GW across a generation mix that includes wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower, and is at the forefront of integrating innovative technologies into renewable power plants.

1 One cup: 250 g.

2 One gallon: around 3.785 liters.



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T +39 06 8305 5699

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The worst known sex offender in the countrys history has been jailed for life for drugging and assaulting 48 men.

Reynhard Sinaga, 36, was sentenced at Manchester Crown Court on Monday and must serve at least 30 years in prison.

He has now been found guilty of 159 offences across four separate trials, including 136 anal rapes he filmed on two mobile phones.

The Indonesian student, who is already serving a life sentence at HMP Manchester, saw his minimum term increased to 30 years for crimes committed between January 2015 and June 2017.

Reynhard Sinaga has been found guilty of more than 100 offences across four trials. (CPS)

It was the largest prosecution of its kind by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in history.

North West deputy chief crown prosecutor Ian Rushton said: Reynhard Sinaga is the most prolific rapist in British legal history.

His extreme sense of sexual entitlement almost defies belief and he would no doubt still be adding to his staggering tally had he not been caught.

Sinagas unthreatening demeanour duped these young men  many of whom thanked him for his kindness in offering them a place to stay  into thinking this monster was a Good Samaritan.

Locating victims

Sinaga would approach intoxicated young men in central Manchester and lure them to his flat in Princess Street  strategically located near the citys nightlife hotspots.

He would spike them with sedatives  which the CPS said was probably a GHB-laced shot  and make them unconscious before filming himself raping them.

Sinaga on Princess Street. (CPS)

In many cases, the rape was carried out repeatedly for hours.

He would keep mens belongings as trophies and search for them on Facebook, and once texted a friend about a victim: He was straight in 2014. 2015 is his breakthrough to the gay world hahaha.

Another said: Take a sip of my secret poison, Ill make you fall in love.

He is believed to have attacked scores more men since he arrived in the UK in 2007, the CPS said, making him the worst known sex offender in the countrys history.

Investigation launched

Most of his victims were unaware what happened to them until one man woke up while Sinaga was raping him.

Story continues

The man, an 18-year-old, fought Sinaga off and took his white iPhone 4.

Greater Manchester Police examined the the phone, which has 3.29 terabytes of extremely graphic material  the same as 250 DVDs or 300,000 photos.

The material included sexual assaults, one of which lasted for eight hours.

If the victims roused, Sinaga would snatch away his phone or push them back to the floor to continue the assault.

The drink collection Sinaga would spike. (CPS)

The human geography student claimed the victims, who were both heterosexual and gay, were actually enjoying acting out his sexual fantasy of playing dead during sex.

But juries across four trials at Manchester Crown Court have rejected his defence, described by Mr Rushton as ludicrous.

He said: The issue for us as prosecutors was largely one of proving a lack of consent. Our case essentially rested on the evidence Sinaga himself had provided through his videos, photos and keeping of trophies. This involved analysing hours of distressing and graphic recordings.

Despite the weight of evidence showing victims unresponsive, snoring and even vomiting, Sinaga tried to persuade four juries his actions amounted to consensual sex.

I am pleased we have been able to overcome this ludicrous defence and achieve unanimous guilty verdicts on all 159 charges we have brought.

READ MORE FROM YAHOO UK:

Reynhard Sinaga: the 'Peter Pan' student who raped scores of men

How serial rapist posed as a good samaritan to lure victims

Most prolific rapist in British history

The CPS had to split the trial into four due to the number of victims.

Sinaga's bedroom, where the dozens of rapes took place. (CPS)

Mr Rushton added that once back at his flat, he used victims as objects purely for his own gratification  then appears to have derived further twisted pleasure from re-watching his films in court and putting victims through the trauma of giving evidence.

I would like to pay tribute and express my gratitude to all of these men for their incredible resilience, bravery and strength in helping us bring these harrowing cases to court.

They have suffered severe and life-changing psychological trauma but should feel very proud that thanks to them this highly dangerous predator may never walk our streets again.

We hope this will at least bring them some comfort as they come to terms with what has happened and move on with their lives.

Investigation continues

Mr Rushton said: Working closely with Greater Manchester Police from the offset, we have now charged every victims case referred to us that met our evidential test and have set out the appropriate charges before four juries.

Thanks to these efforts the offender has been handed one of the strongest ever sentences in a non-homicide case, concluding this prosecution phase.

With a police investigation still ongoing, we will keep the matter under review. If any more files are referred to us we will consider them under the Code for Crown Prosecutors, as with all cases.

Anyone affected by the case, or who believes they have been a victim of Sinaga, can call Greater Manchester Police on either 0800 056 0154 for support or 0800 092 0410 for police.
New Delhi:

In a shocking development, a plea was filed in the Supreme Court on Monday demanding removal of Mamata Banerjee as the Chief Minister of West Bengal. News Nation has learnt that a journalist named Varaaki had filed the petition in the top court on Monday. the petition filed in the Supreme Court seeking a direction to West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankar to remove Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The plea said that Banerjee should be removed from the post for demanding a United Nations-monitored referendum on CAA, NRC. The plea said that such a demand was in violation of her oath of office and showed the Chief Minister ceases to believe in the sovereignty and Integrity of India.

On December 19, at a rally, Banerjee had said that, "If BJP has guts, it should go for a UN-monitored referendum on the amended Citizenship Act and NRC". "If the BJP loses this mass vote, then it should step down from the government," she added. Addressing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minster Amit Shah, she said, "Let's have a vote. Just because you are majority, you can't do just about anything. You are terrorising all, the pillars of society".

While the petition in the Supreme Court may be new, Banerjees scathing attack against the Centre over the CAA is old. The West Bengal Chief Minister has been one of the most vocal critic of the citizenship law. At a rally on January 3 in Siliguri, Banerjee had asked why PM Modi frequently compares India with Pakistan. India is a big country with a rich culture and heritage. Why does the PM regularly compare our nation with Pakistan? Are you the prime minister of India or the ambassador of Pakistan. Why do you refer to Pakistan in every issue," the Chief Minister asked.

"On one hand the prime minister is saying there will be no NRC but on the other, the union home minister and other ministers are claiming that the exercise will be conducted across the country," she added. The statement added to the showdown between Bengal and the government at the Centre.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- An upstate woman who was on a date with a Staten Island man on Friday reported she was raped to police, according to an NYPD spokesman.

Sources told the NY Post that the man told the 21-year-old woman he was a police officer. Police told the Advance the investigation is ongoing as to the circumstances under which the rape occurred. No arrests have been made, said the spokesman.

According to the report, the woman said the date started at bars in Astoria, Queens before they arrived on Staten Island, possibly to the mans home at 4 a.m. That is where the rape allegedly occurred, the report said.

After the alleged rape, the man allegedly drove her to a friends house in the Bronx and she then went to Montefiore Medical Center, the NY Post reported.

Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPDs Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).

The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM, on Twitter @NYPDTips.
[January 06, 2020] Toyota to Build Prototype City of the Future

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at CES, Toyota revealed plans to build a prototype "city" of the future on a 175-acre site at the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan. Called the Woven City, it will be a fully connected ecosystem powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Envisioned as a "living laboratory," the Woven City will serve as a home to full- time residents and researchers who will be able to test and develop technologies such as autonomy, robotics, personal mobility, smart homes and artificial intelligence in a real-world environment. "Building a complete city from the ground up, even on a small scale like this, is a unique opportunity to develop future technologies, including a digital operating system for the city's infrastructure. With people, buildings and vehicles all connected and communicating with each other through data and sensors, we will be able to test connected AI technology... in both the virtual and the physical realms ... maximizing its potential," said Akio Toyoda, president, Toyota Motor Corporation. Toyota will extend an open invitation to collaborate with other commercial and academic partners and invite interested scientists and researchers from around the world to come work on their own projects in this one-of-a-kind, real-world incubator. "We welcome all those inspired to improve the way we live in the future, to take advantage of this unique research ecosystem and join us in our quest to create an ever-better way of life and mobility for all," said Akio Toyoda, president, Toyota Motor Corporation. For the design of Woven City, Toyota has commissioned Danish architect, Bjarke Ingels, CEO, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). His team at BIG have designed many high-profile projects: from 2 World Trade Center in New York and Lego House in Denmark, to Google's Mountain View and London headquarters. "A swarm of different technologies are beginning to radically change how we inhabit and navigate our cities. Conneted, autonomous, emission-free and shared mobility solutions are bound to unleash a world of opportunities for new forms of urban life. With the breadth of technologies and industries that we have been able to access and collaborate with from the Toyota ecosystem of companies, we believe we have a unique opportunity to explore new forms of urbanity with the Woven City that could pave new paths for other cities to explore," said Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Creative Director, BIG.



Design of the City The masterplan of the city includes the designations for street usage into three types: for faster vehicles only, for a mix of lower speed, personal mobility and pedestrians, and for a park-like promenade for pedestrians only. These three street types weave together to form an organic grid pattern to help accelerate the testing of autonomy.

The city is planned to be fully sustainable, with buildings made mostly of wood to minimize the carbon footprint, using traditional Japanese wood joinery, combined with robotic production methods. The rooftops will be covered in photo-voltaic panels to generate solar power in addition to power generated by hydrogen fuel cells. Toyota plans to weave in the outdoors throughout the city, with native vegetation and hydroponics. Residences will be equipped with the latest in human support technologies, such as in-home robotics to assist with daily living. The homes will use sensor-based AI to check occupants' health, take care of basic needs and enhance daily life, creating an opportunity to deploy connected technology with integrity and trust, securely and positively. To move residents through the city, only fully-autonomous, zero-emission vehicles will be allowed on the main thoroughfares. In and throughout Woven City, autonomous Toyota e-Palettes will be used for transportation and deliveries, as well as for changeable mobile retail. Both neighborhood parks and a large central park for recreation, as well as a central plaza for social gatherings, are designed to bring the community together. Toyota believes that encouraging human connection will be an equally important aspect of this experience. Toyota plans to populate Woven City with Toyota Motor Corporation employees and their families, retired couples, retailers, visiting scientists, and industry partners. The plan is for 2,000 people to start, adding more as the project evolves. The groundbreaking for the site is planned for early 2021. Interested in partnering with Toyota on the development of Woven City? Visit: woven-city.global About Toyota

Toyota (NYSE:TM) has been a part of the cultural fabric in the U.S. and North America for more than 60 years, and is committed to advancing sustainable, next-generation mobility through our Toyota and Lexus brands.?During that time, Toyota has created a tremendous value chain as our teams have contributed to world-class design, engineering, and assembly of more than 38 million cars and trucks in North America, where we have 14 manufacturing plants, 15 including our joint venture in Alabama (10 in the U.S.), and directly employ more than 47,000 people (over 36,000 in the U.S.).?Our 1,800 North American dealerships (nearly 1,500 in the U.S.) sold 2.8 million cars and trucks (2.4 million in the U.S.) in 2018. Through the Start Your Impossible campaign, Toyota highlights the way it partners with community, civic, academic and governmental organizations to address our society's most pressing mobility challenges. We believe that when people are free to move, anything is possible. For more information about Toyota, visit?www.toyotanewsroom.com. MEDIA CONTACT

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A wheel fell off a plane during take-off in Canada, forcing the flight to turn back.

The Air Canada Express flight, operated by Jazz Aviation, was flying from Montreal-Trudeau airport on 3 January when the incident occurred.

The dramatic moment the wheel detached was captured on camera by passenger Tom, who wrote: So, well, Im currently on a plane that has just lost a wheel... 2020 starting off pretty well.

After the aircraft lost a wheel, the service to Bagotville, 230 miles north, had to turn around and land at Montreal.

During take-off from Montreal enroute to Bagotville (flight AC8684), one of the two wheels on the left main landing gear became detached, a Jazz Aviation spokesperson told The Independent.

The Dash 8-300 aircraft is equipped with six tires  two on the right landing gear, two on the left, and two on the nose wheel landing gear. 

The experienced pilots maintained complete control of the aircraft. Our pilots are well trained to deal with such situations and responded according to our standard operating procedures.

After burning some fuel, the aircraft returned to Montreal and landed safely.

They added that emergency vehicles were called to the airport as a precautionary measure.

World's safest airlines 2020 Show all 20 1 /20 World's safest airlines 2020 World's safest airlines 2020 Qantas Check up: the Qantas fleet of Boeing 737-800 aircraft are being examined Qantas World's safest airlines 2020 Air New Zealand Air New Zealand Getty Images World's safest airlines 2020 Eva Air Eva Air Getty Images World's safest airlines 2020 Etihad Etihad Getty Images World's safest airlines 2020 Qatar Airways Qatar Airways Heathrow Airport World's safest airlines 2020 Singapore Airlines Singapore Airlines Getty World's safest airlines 2020 Emirates Emirates AFP/Getty World's safest airlines 2020 Alaska Airlines Alaska Airlines Getty Images World's safest airlines 2020 Cathay Pacific Cathay Pacific Getty World's safest airlines 2020 Virgin Australia Virgin Australia Getty Images World's safest airlines 2020 Hawaiian Airlines Hawaiian Airlines Hawaiian Airlines World's safest airlines 2020 Virgin Atlantic Virgin Atlantic Virgin Atlantic World's safest airlines 2020 TAP Portugal TAP Portugal Getty Images World's safest airlines 2020 SAS SAS AFP/Getty World's safest airlines 2020 Royal Jordanian Royal Jordanian Bjorn Strey/Wikimedia World's safest airlines 2020 SWISS SWISS Getty Images World's safest airlines 2020 Finnair Finnair Getty World's safest airlines 2020 Lufthansa Lufthansa Reuters World's safest airlines 2020 Aer Lingus Aer Lingus AFP/Getty World's safest airlines 2020 KLM KLM Getty

The Dash 8-300, which had 49 passengers and three crew members onboard, managed to land safely. No one was injured in the incident.

Its not the first time this issue has occurred onboard an aircraft.

A plane had to make an emergency landing in Kenya after one of the aircrafts wheels fell off during take-off in October 2019.

The flight, operated by domestic Kenyan airline Silverstone Air, was departing Lodwar in northwest Kenya when the incident occurred.

It was due to land in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, but the pilot made the decision to touch down in Eldoret in west Kenya instead.

We would like to confirm that our flight Dash 8-300 from Lodwar to Nairobi experienced an incident during takeoff and as a result, lost the number 3 wheel assembly, the airline said in a statement.

The safety of our customers and crew is always our top priority. The captain of the flight decided to divert to Eldoret International Airport in the interests of the continued safety of the passengers and the crew.

This was a precautionary action and the aircraft landed safely.
amphotora/iStock(FLORENCE, S.C.) -- A 26-year-old police officer was gunned down on Sunday after attempting to make a traffic stop at a South Carolina airport, marking the first law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty in the United States in 2020, authorities said.



The fatal shooting occurred at the Florence Regional Airport in Florence, about 80 miles east of Columbia, police said.



The shooting happened just before 6 a.m. when Jackson Ryan Winkeler, a Florence Regional Airport officer, attempted to make a traffic stop on airport property, according to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, which is investigating the incident.



After allegedly shooting Winkeler, the suspect, James Edward Bell, 37, fled the scene, officials said.



Bell was later captured in a car lot near Effingham, about 12 miles south of Florence, by Florence County Sheriff's deputies following a brief chase, a source close to the investigation told ABC affiliate station WPDE-TV in Florence.



Bell was booked Sunday afternoon at the Florence Detention Center, Tommy Crosby, a spokesman for the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, told ABC News. Bell is expected to be charged with murder.



It was not immediately clear why Winkerler was attempting to stop the suspect.



A man who works at a car wash across the street from the airport told WPDE that he heard the gunshots.



"I thought it was like somebody doing fireworks because of the New Year's and all that. I thought it was fireworks. As I come around the corner, I saw all the police and yellow tape, then I knew it was gunshots, real gunshots," said the man, who did not want to be identified.



Winkeler was the first police officer killed in the line of duty in the United States 2020, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page website.



In 2019, 134 U.S. law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty, including 47 who were shot to death, according to the memorial page.



"This morning our community has been again shocked by an act of violence directed at one of our local Law Enforcement officers," the Florence County Sheriff's Department said in a statement posted on its Facebook page.



"We ask that the community please keep Jackson Winkelers family, friends, and coworkers in their prayers as they process what has occurred," the statement reads. "They have our deepest sympathy and we will be assisting them in any way possible."



Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
Ray Takeyh is a center left political analyst and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He specializes in Iran, where he was born.

In this article for Politico, Takeyh argues that the killing of Gen. Soleimani, contrary to what many observers are warning, could very likely temper the clerical oligarchs, who tend to retreat in face of American determination. Takeyh cites past instances of their tendency to retreat, as I did in this post. He writes:

When a truculent Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency, Iran hastily released the American diplomats it had held hostage for 444 days. When George W. Bushs shock and awe campaign quickly displaced the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Iran responded by suspending its nuclear program. The mullahs relish assaulting America but are circumspect when facing a tough-minded, unpredictable president. The Islamic Republic had already pledged to retreat further from its nuclear obligations by next week. A move in that direction seems more likely at this point, as opposed to blowing up American diplomatic and military outposts.

The first part of this prediction has already come to pass. Iran has just renounced its nuclear treaty obligations, a move that was already in the offing. And so far, it hasnt blown up any U.S. diplomatic or military outposts. Rather, as John notes in this post, Irans response has been rather lame.

This doesnt mean that Irans response will continue to be lame. However, theres reason to hope that it wont be dramatic. Takeyh observes:

The sanctions reimposed by the Trump administration after its abrogation of the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal have depleted Irans economy, calling into question its foreign policy imperatives. In November, Iran was rocked by massive demonstrations as the regime had to curtail its onerous fuel subsidies. An uneasy path lies ahead for the clerical oligarchs. The last thing they need is a costly confrontation with a president willing to do things they once considered unimaginable.

Thus, it may turn out that, as John predicts, the regime will choose to de-escalate while also trying to save face.
On April 21, 1937, Ukrainians leafing through the newspaper Communist may not have noticed anything remarkable. That day the state paper printed reports from the Spanish Civil War, an update on the construction of Kyivs parliament building, and the latest speech from Soviet ruler Josef Stalin.



But one unknown reader noticed -- or thought they noticed -- something suspicious in a photograph on Page 3. Amid a tangle of branches above a heating plant lurked what someone took to be the sharply featured profile of Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

Trotsky had been a prominent political leader during the early days of the Soviet Union, but soon won the undying hatred of Stalin. By 1937, Trotsky was living in exile in Mexico under the constant threat of murder by Stalins agents, one of whom would eventually kill him with an ice pick in 1940.



In the atheist Soviet Union, Trotsky became a kind of stand-in for the devil and was blamed by Stalins state media for failures -- great and small -- of the Soviet system.



An investigation into the photograph was soon escalated to the Soviet secret police (NKVD) in Moscow. The NKVD at the time was headed by Nikolai Yezhov, one of the U.S.S.Rs most bloodstained political operatives. The report that arrived on Yezhovs desk noted: In the picture among the trees above the roof of the building, the face of counterrevolutionary fascist Trotsky is clearly visible on the left side.



Two weeks after the publication of the image, photographer Vsevolod Skamandr and photo retoucher Vladimir Tsetnarovsky were arrested.



The evidence collected by the authorities included the negative film from Skamandrs camera and a print that had been altered by Tsetnarovsky before publication. The media outlets publishing Soviet propaganda commonly employed retouchers to sharpen the contours of images before printing on low-quality newsprint. They were also required to erase inconvenient details and, sometimes, inconvenient people from photos.



As the newspapermen languished in prison, experts at the Kyiv Institute of Forensic Science studied the negatives and prints to see whether either of the men were to blame for the face of Trotsky that some saw in the photo.



Although the situation seems comically absurd today, for the imprisoned Skamandr and Tsetnarovsky it could not have been more grave. Soviet society at the time was being terrorized by a wave of political murders carried out -- sometimes personally -- by Yezhov, the same top communist official who was following the strange case of the "Trotsky in the trees."

The investigation found that the photo negative was unaltered, but on the print made from the negative a likeness of Trotsky was exacerbated by retouching.

In a close-up of the print that RFE/RL photographed in Kyivs SBU archives, white retouching ink can clearly be seen in the area of the face, but both white and black paint was also used on surrounding branches, patches of sky, and the edges of the building.

From May until August, Tsetnarovsky was hauled out of his cell to be interrogated three times. Transcripts of the interviews record variations of the same back and forth between the prisoner and his captors: -- "Do you acknowledge that you intentionally used retouching to enhance a likeness of Trotsky, the enemy of the Soviet people?"



-- "I declare that I never saw any likeness of Trotsky; therefore, I could not retouch with such an intent." Then the investigation widened to Tsetnarovskys wife and colleagues, some of whom reported his vaguely anti-Soviet faux pas in the past, including the time he was handed a photo of celebrated Soviet workers that Tsetnarovsky said look like idiots.



Then, a miracle.



In February 1938, Tsetnarovskys case was allowed to go to trial -- an extreme rarity for political cases at the time.



The retoucher and his lawyer were able to offer a compelling defense that included a Polish-language, Soviet newspaper that had run the same photograph without Tsetnarovskys brushstrokes. Tsetnarovsky's lawyer noted that the face in the trees was virtually identical, yet no one at the Polish-language newspaper had been investigated.

Finally, after nearly a year of imprisonment and interrogations, Tsetnarovsky was allowed to return home to his wife. But there was no Hollywood ending for this Soviet story.



Although freed without charges by the communist authorities, the management of the Communist newspaper was less forgiving and he was fired. In 1939, he was registered as a freelance artist.
Tehran, Jan 6 : Hundreds of thousands of mourners, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gathered in Tehran on Monday to pay tribute to Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a targeted US drone attack in Baghdad last week.

From the early hours of Monday, Iranians walked toward the University of Tehran near Enghelab Square, where the funeral rites began among chants against the US and Israel, reports Efe news.

People in the funeral procession carried photographs of Soleimani, Iranian flags and banners with anti-US slogans.

While addressing the crowd, General Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, said: "The name Haj Qasem Soleimani is now shaking the nest of Zionism, Takfirism, and the order of hegemony.

"America and Zionism should know that my father's martyrdom has awakened more human instincts on the resistance front. It will make life a nightmare for them and shatter their spider houses," the Tehran-based Press TV reported.

Due to the huge number of expected mourners, police were deployed in the area hours beforehand to control traffic and ask residents to remove their vehicles from the streets.

The authorities have reinforced security measures in the capital, which helicopters have been flying over since Sunday afternoon.

Khamenei led a mass prayer service, with high-ranking government and military officials also to attend the funeral.

Soleimani's remains, along with those of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy leader of the Iraqi militia Popular Mobilization Forces who was also killed in the attack, arrived in Iran on Sunday.

Muhandis's remains were brought to Iran where it will undergo DNA testing.

Funeral ceremonies were also held on Sunday in Ahvaz, the main city in the country's eight-year battle against the forces of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein which shaped Soleimani's future as an austere military tactician.

Later in the day, processions were also held in the holy city of Mashhad, which hosts the tomb of Imam Reza, the eighth Shia imam.

The funeral rites will continue on Tuesday in Soleimani's southern hometown of Kerman, where his remains will be buried on Wednesday.

Soleimani, 63, was the elite Quds Force chief in charge of IRGC operations outside Iran, and has been on the ground in Syria and Iraq supervising militias backed by Tehran.

The Quds Force holds sway over a large number of militias across the region ranging from Lebanon to Syria and Iraq.

The Iranian authorities have called for "harsh revenge" over the killing of the commander and believe that the incident marks a turning point and will lead to the withdrawal of the US troops from the region. However, Washington has begun deploying hundreds more personnel to the region.

Amid threats of retaliation from Iran, US President Donald Trump on Sunday warned in a tweet that "the US will quickly and fully strike back, and perhaps in a disproportionate manner".
Injecting patients with supercharged white blood cells could be the key to fighting sepsis, according to researchers.

Scientists managed to 'significantly' reduce bacteria in the blood of mice within a day of giving them the experimental treatment.

The bacteria was destroyed with a second dose of the donated white blood cells, which had been edited to have extra infection-fighting abilities.

Sepsis is a a common complication for hospital patients and is extremely deadly  late-stage sepsis may kill up to 60 per cent of patients who get it.

This therapy is aimed at late-stage sepsis, for which the researchers said there hasn't been a new effective treatment for several years.

People with sepsis do not have enough white blood cells and the ones they do have don't work properly, which means their immune system is unable to fight off infection and also damages the body's own organs (stock image)

'Sepsis remains the leading cause of death in hospitals,' said Professor Yizhou Dong, from Ohio State University, who led the study.

'There hasn't been an effective treatment for late-stage sepsis for a long time. We're thinking this cell therapy can help patients who get to the late stage of sepsis.

WHAT IS SEPSIS? Sepsis occurs when the body reacts to an infection by attacking its own organs and tissues. Some 44,000 people die from sepsis every year in the UK. Worldwide, someone dies from the condition every 3.5 seconds. Sepsis has similar symptoms to flu, gastroenteritis and a chest infection. These include: S lurred speech or confusion

lurred speech or confusion E xtreme shivering or muscle pain

xtreme shivering or muscle pain P assing no urine in a day

assing no urine in a day S evere breathlessness

evere breathlessness I t feels like you are dying

t feels like you are dying S kin mottled or discoloured Symptoms in children are: Fast breathing

Fits or convulsions

Mottled, bluish or pale skin

Rashes that do not fade when pressed

Lethargy

Feeling abnormally cold Under fives may be vomiting repeatedly, not feeding or not urinating for 12 hours. Anyone can develop sepsis but it is most common in people who have recently had surgery, have a urinary catheter or have stayed in hospital for a long time. Other at-risk people include those with weak immune systems, chemotherapy patients, pregnant women, the elderly and the very young. Treatment varies depending on the site of the infection but involves antibiotics, IV fluids and oxygen, if necessary. Source: UK Sepsis Trust and NHS Choices Advertisement

'In the clinic, we believe this could be used in combination with current intensive care treatment for sepsis patients.'

Sepsis is an illness in which the body overreacts to an infection and the immune system starts to destroy its own organs.

Although curable, it can be hard to spot because of its general flu-like symptoms and can also progress to a deadly stage in just a matter of hours.

In England there are around 123,000 cases of sepsis every year and some 36,800 deaths. In the US there are around 1.7million cases and 250,000 deaths annually.

In sepsis patients, the body does not have enough white blood cells and the ones they do have don't work properly.

The Ohio State University researchers took donated white blood cells from healthy mice's bone marrow and genetically edited them in the lab.

They transformed these into a specific type of cell  a macrophage, which essentially eats invading bacteria and viruses  to replace the ones missing in the bodies of the mice with sepsis.

The scientists also edited the genes in the cells to make them build up larger amounts of antibacterial substances called peptides inside them, essentially supercharging their ability to destroy bacteria.

In tests, the researchers gave each mouse four million of these engineered macrophages per treatment.

One treatment 'significantly' reduced the amount of infection-causing bacteria in the blood, while a second destroyed what was left in those which still had bacteria.

Scientists use mice in experiments because their body processes are so similar to humans.

Professor Dong: 'Macrophages have antibacterial activity naturally.

'So if we add the additional antibacterial peptide into the cell, those antibacterial peptides can further enhance the antibacterial activity and help the whole macrophage clear bacteria.'

The research was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 7: DJ Koh, president and CEO of Samsung Electronics. Drew Angerer

Samsung announced on Saturday evening that it will hold its next phone announcement event on Feb. 11 in San Francisco. Samsung typically announces its new Galaxy flagship phones in February, so the company is likely to unveil the successors to its family of Galaxy S10 phones that launched last year. But this year will present an important test for Samsung, the world's largest seller of phones by volume. According to IDC's latest figures in November, Samsung's phone shipments rose 8.3% during Q3, when it sold 78.2 million phones. IDC attributed the growth to sales of its new Galaxy Note 10 devices, showing that there is a market for expensive and premium Android phones. The Galaxy S11 could continue that momentum and will give Samsung a chance to sell millions of 5G phones before Apple. Here's what to expect from the event.

Galaxy S11/Galaxy S20

The Galaxy S10 family. CNBC

The focus of Samsung's announcement will probably be the new Galaxy S flagship phone. Some rumors have suggested it may be named the Galaxy S20 instead of the Galaxy S11 to represent the year 2020. Last year, Samsung announced four models: the flagship Galaxy S10, the larger S10+, the more affordable S10e and the S10+ with 5G. It's possible Samsung does something similar this year. In November, Evan Blass, known for accurately leaking details on upcoming phones, said Samsung will sell three models of the Galaxy S11 including the smallest with either a 6.2-inch or 6.4-inch screen, a midsize model with a 6.7-inch screen and a large model with a 6.9-inch screen. "Smaller two will come in both 5G and LTE variants," Blass said on Twitter. "Only 5G for the largest." He said the phones will launch in late February. tweet The phones are expected to ship with new cameras. Another well-known phone leaker who goes by @OnLeaks on Twitter published renders that suggest the phone will have 5 different camera sensors on the back. It's unclear what these may be for, but Samsung and Apple have started to include more lenses for things such as ultra-wide angle and zoom. Additional lenses can also improve effects from so-called "Portrait" photos, which blur the background of the photo behind the subject, such as another person or a dog, giving the impression it was taken with a professional camera. tweet Also expect the latest, most colorful OLED screens from Samsung. Some phone makers including Google and OnePlus have launched screens with faster refresh rates that make scrolling much smoother, and Samsung may do the same. Fast charging and fast wireless charging, as well as standard IP68 water resistance, are also probably included, since Samsung has made those features standard over the past several years.

Galaxy Fold 2

Samsung showed off a new concept for a foldable phone at its developer conference on October 29, 2019. Samsung

The website XDA-Developers recently discovered code inside a Samsung software upgrade that mentions a phone code-named the "bloom," which is largely believed to be the successor to the original Galaxy Fold. It could be called simply the Galaxy Fold 2. Instead of opening and closing like a book along a vertical axis, XDA-Developers' Max Weinbach said in November, it will fold along a horizontal access, much like an older clamshell phone and similar in style to the new Moto Razr folding phone. This means you should expect a device that looks like a regular phone when it's open, but folds down to a smaller square-sized device. tweet Several pictures of the apparent design appeared on Chinese social network Weibo and were reshared by Ice Universe, another popular Twitter account with accurate information on phone launches. They show a small front display for notifications and a design that opens up into what appears to be a traditional phone. It looks almost identical to the design Samsung shared in October. tweet The first Galaxy Fold is still available and costs nearly $2,000. With a smaller screen and what appears to be a less premium design, Samsung has a chance to make this a more affordable folding phone.

5G

Samsung Galaxy S10 5G Benjamin Hall | CNBC

Samsung may be the first phone maker to launch 5G devices in the U.S. with support for all of the 5G networks rolling out right now. In early December, Qualcomm said every high-end Android phone in the U.S. will support 5G this year. Samsung traditionally uses Qualcomm chips in the U.S., which means the new phones will probably run on its new Snapdragon 865 chip. There aren't any phones in the U.S. that currently support all of the 5G technologies being rolled out by U.S. carriers. They either support more widespread but slower 5G, or faster but limited range mmWave 5G. Samsung's phones seem likely to be the first to support both, which means you'll get the fastest speeds when available. A report from Susquehanna on Monday suggested Apple's phones that support all of the latest 5G networks may not launch until December 2020 or January 2021, giving Samsung almost a year-long lead. But, the fastest 5G networks are very limited right now, so there's no need to upgrade solely for this reason right now.

Galaxy Buds+

Samsung Galaxy Buds Magdalena Petrova | CNBC
TRUMBULL  Owners of Chips Family Restaurant say they are moving their Trumbull restaurant because of unresolved parking issues with their landlord.

While we understand some people may be inconvenienced by the closure of the Trumbull location, we look forward to serving our customers at our other restaurants until we open the doors to our new facility, said Chips owner George Chatzopoulos in a Monday press release.

The restaurant at 57 Monroe Turnpike has been open six years and was an anchor tenant at the Monroe Turnpike Plaza along with Edge Fitness. The two popular sites have caused a flood of cars to the area over the years, according to previous interviews with the developers of the center.

The parking lot shared by the restaurant and gym has long had an overcrowding problem, which has caused safety concerns from Trumbull officials and pedestrians.

The state Department of Transportation approved plans to put a traffic light at Chips shopping center intersection in March 2019. The traffic light is being funded through a DOT grant that the town submitted in 2018.

The traffic light is meant to address the safety concerns of vehicles using the shopping center and of thousands of pedestrian and bicycle users of the Pequonnock River Trail at Route 111 which crosses the road nearby. The approved plan would redirect users to cross at the traffic light.

First Selectman Vicki Tesoro has said that improving safety at the intersection was a top priority of her administration.

I am pleased the new light will address the safety concerns for both the shopping center and the trail to continue to make Trumbull a safe place to live, work, and play, she said in a past interview with Hearst Connecticut Media.

Town officials declined to comment for this article.

Chips unexpectedly closed Saturday, notifying customers and wait staff with a sign on the front door that also confirmed plans to find a newer and larger location.

While a new address hasnt been named yet, Chatzopoulos told Hearst Connecticut Media that while he wants to stay in Trumbull, he isnt ruling out moving the location up Route 111 into Monroe.

We are excited about the opportunity to offer a new and expanded facility for our customers in the Trumbull area and look forward to making an announcement soon, he said, adding the chain has outgrown its space in the Monroe Turnpike Plaza since opening in 2013.

He said he has been talking with property owners in both towns about opening a new facility that would provide more parking and amenities.

Chatzopoulos has been operating the Connecticut-based chain since 2003. The chain has five other locations in Orange, Fairfield, Milford, Southbury and Southington.

jordan.grice@hearstmediact.com
The federal governments announcement Friday denying aid to property owners who suffered damage from last Halloweens rain and windstorm could prevent dozens of local homeowners from getting low-interest loans to help rebuild and repair.

State officials pledged to appeal the Federal Emergency Management Agencys denial of individual assistance to the hundreds of property owners around the state who had home, business and property damage from the Oct. 31 storm.

More than 5 inches of rain fell in parts of the southern and central Adirondacks in a matter of hours, causing massive flooding that destroyed homes, roads and bridges around upstate New York.

FEMA announced last month that 18 counties, including Warren, Saratoga, Essex and Hamilton, will qualify for reimbursement of costs to repair public infrastructure that was damaged.

But the state had also sought individual assistance for residents of the counties who had damage to their personal real property or businesses. That assistance would include low-interest loans to help rebuild or repair damage, said Amy Drexel, Warren Countys deputy emergency services director.

But late Friday, FEMA announced that individual assistance would not be coming for the storm.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state planned to appeal, saying that over 300 homes were damaged, 18 of them destroyed, and that the denial was unacceptable.

Essex County Emergency Services Director Don Jaquish said over 50 homes in Essex County were damaged. He said news of the denial was just becoming known Monday.

People are going to be upset, he said.

Drexel said Warren County did not have the home or business damage that would normally have qualified it for individual assistance. But by being contiguous to Essex County, which had more damage to personal property, the county would have piggybacked onto the declaration and property owners would have received assistance.

FEMA generally requires that there are 25 properties damaged in a county to qualify for an individual assistance claim, and Warren County had 23, four or five of them homes, she said.

We were hopeful that if the state got IA (individual assistance), Essex County would have qualified and Warren County would have been eligible as a contiguous county, Drexel said. It would have been a helping hand to get people moving in the right direction.

Roads and bridges in Warren County sustained an estimated $4.5 million in damage, and the FEMA disaster aid will reimburse for 75 percent of the repair costs.

Don Lehman covers police and court matters, Warren County government and the outdoors. He can be reached at 518-742-3224 or dlehman@poststar.com

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EDWARDSVILLE  A Bill Murray comedy and a Humphrey Bogart classic will start the 2020 slate of $2 Tuesday movies at the Wildey Theatre.

The schedule for the new year kicks off on Tuesday, Jan. 7 with the 1981 military comedy, Stripes, starring Murray.

The film, which is directed by Ivan Reitman, also stars Harold Ramis, Warren Oates, P.J. Soles, Sean Young and John Candy. Several actors including John Larroquette, John Diehl, Conrad Dunn and Judge Reinhold were featured in their first significant film roles. Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas, Timothy Busfield and Bill Paxton also appeared early in their careers.

Stripes is about a hard-luck cabbie (Murray), who after being fired from his job and dumped by his girlfriend, enlists in the U.S. Army with his close pal (Ramis). After his barely satisfactory performance in basic training, he emerges as the figurehead for a ragtag band of Army misfits.

However, his hijinks threaten to cause an international scandal when he inadvertently commandeers a military assault vehicle behind enemy lines.

Its a goofy story about life in the military and it has some other big names besides Bill Murray, Wildey manager Al Canal said. When we show movies like National Lampoons Christmas Vacation and some of the other 1980s and 1990s comedies, people seem to like them and theyre always well-attended. We wanted to start the year off with a laugh.

On Tuesday, Jan. 14, the Wildey will switch gears to the classics with The African Queen from 1951.

The film, directed by John Huston and starring Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1994.

The plot revolves around a religious spinster (Hepburn) whose missionary brother is killed in World War I Africa and the steamer captain (Bogart) who offers her safe passage. Shes not satisfied, so she persuades him to destroy a German gunboat.

The two spend most of their time fighting with each other rather than the Germans. Time alone on the river leads to love.

The African Queen earned Bogart an Academy Award for Best Actor  his only Oscar. Hepburn was nominated for Best Actress and Huston was nominated for Best Director, while Huston and James Agee were also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.

On the second Tuesday of the month, we always try to show a classic movie, and that movie is one of the best, Canal said.

As of Friday, the Wildey hadnt announced its $2 Tuesday selections for Jan. 21 and Jan. 28, but Canal is asking for input from local movie fans.

If anybody has a suggestion for a movie they would like to see, theyre more than welcome to email it to me (at alcanal@cityofedwardsville.com), Canal said. Its the same thing for music acts or other types of shows. If its something that makes sense for us, well see if we can figure out how to do it.

For more information on any event at the Wildey Theatre, 252 N Main St., call 618-307-1750 or go to wildeytheatre.com.

Reach reporter Scott Marion at smarion@edwpub.net
When you came on 

Yeah, that was hard.

There was enormous entrance applause, and it looked like you got a little bit 

I did. That caught me a little bit by surprise. And that of course is very meaningful. Many, many, many celebrated people have played Tevye, and Im basically an unknown. And to me thats who Tevye is. I was so happy and used to no entrance applause, because Im just a guy. No ones coming to see me. Theyre coming to see Joel Greys Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish. But of course, tonight was different. I was indeed moved by it, yeah. I have no idea what the future is going to hold for me, but I cant imagine anything better than this.

Really.

I really cannot. The only thing is, in the best-case scenario, if Steven Spielberg thought, Lets do a film version of this production. For right now, at this moment in time, this is the apex of my career.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 09:50:10|Editor: xuxin

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WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- A massive crash on a highway in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania on Sunday morning left five people dead and dozens of others hospitalized, said authorities.

The crash happened at approximately 3:33 a.m. local time (0833 GMT) on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Mount Pleasant Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania State Police said in a press release.

"A tour bus was traveling on a downhill curve and struck an embankment. Commercial vehicles traveling behind, then struck the tour bus," the release said.

It said the involved vehicles include the tour bus, three tractor trailers loaded with parcels and one private passenger vehicle. Five people were killed and a total of 57 others were taken to several hospitals.

The identities of the victims have not been released.

The Red Cross is assisting the patients and their families at the hospitals.

The National Transportation Safety Board is assisting investigation into the crash.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike, a toll highway, runs for 579 km across Pennsylvania.
Brussels (AFP) - Tehran should avoid "further violence and provocations", NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned Monday, as tensions mount in the Middle East after US forces killed a top Iranian general.

The warning came as the EU called an extraordinary meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels on Friday to discuss the fallout from the killing of Qasem Soleimani, head of Tehran's Middle East operations as commander of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force.

At a hastily-convened emergency session of NATO's ruling council on Monday afternoon, US officials explained the thinking behind the decision to kill Soleimani at Baghdad airport on Friday -- an operation that caught many of Washington's allies by surprise.

Stoltenberg stressed that the drone strike, which killed at least 10 people, was a "US decision" but said the other 28 NATO members had repeated their longstanding concerns about Iran's destabilising activities in the Middle East.

Asked twice whether any member states criticised the US strike, Stoltenberg stressed their unity and their concern about Iran's behaviour.

"We have recently seen an escalation by Iran, including the strike on a Saudi energy facility, and the shoot-down of an American drone," Stoltenberg said.

"At our meeting today, Allies called for restraint and de-escalation. A new conflict would be in no-one's interest, so Iran must refrain from further violence and provocations."

Tehran has vowed to avenge Soleimani, one of Iran's most popular public figures and a key player in its network of alliances and proxy forces around the Middle East, while US President Donald Trump has threatened "major retaliation" if any American targets are hit.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU was talking to all parties to try to defuse tensions, calling for restraint and urging gains made in Iraq since the defeat of the Islamic State group to be preserved.

Story continues

"After recent developments in Iraq, now it is important to halt the cycle of violence so that one more action does not give rise to the next one, and instead space is again created for diplomacy," von der Leyen said.

Friday's meeting of foreign ministers will also address the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, which curbed its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief but is now teetering on the brink of collapse.

EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell tweeted that the accord, which has been unravelling since US President Donald Trump pulled out in May 2018, was "now more important than ever".

And he criticised Tehran's latest steps away from the accord, after it said it would forego the "limit on the number of centrifuges", casting doubt on an EU push for talks to salvage the deal.

Borrell spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif at the weekend and issued a personal invitation to come to Brussels, but so far Iran has not given a public response.

- Training mission suspended -

At Monday's NATO meeting the US "provided the rationale behind the action against General Soleimani", Stoltenberg said but refused to give further details.

The situation has also deteriorated in Iraq, where lawmakers have called for the 5,200 US soldiers deployed there to leave.

NATO maintains a 500-strong mission in Iraq, preparing local forces to take on Islamic State group extremists, but its core training activities have now been suspended until the security situation improves, Stoltenberg said.

A NATO diplomat told AFP the alliance would have to "wait and see" how Baghdad responds in the coming days.

"From our point of view the parliament resolution is not binding. We take note of it, but have to wait what the government is going to do," the diplomat said.

"We still think that the presence of international troops in Iraq should be continued in order to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State. But we have to respect what the Iraqi government will eventually decide."

Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement late on Sunday urging Iran to "refrain from further violent action or proliferation" and criticising the "negative role" Tehran played in the Middle East through Soleimani's forces.
Seven seasons of stews, deckhands and Captain Lee Rosbach from Below Deck have arrived in New York City for the big 100th episode reunion.

Kate Chastain, Eddie Lucas, Kelley Johnson, Ben Robinson, Kathleen Held, Andrew Sturby, Amy Johnson, Captain Lee Rosbach, Jennice Ontiveros | Tommy Garcia/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

Bravo announced crew member favorites would appear in the Watch What Happens Live Clubhouse to celebrate 100 episodes of nautical docudrama. Several crew members are sharing videos and posts as they arrive, with some traveling from overseas. While it is impossible to pack every crew member into the tiny Clubhouse, many fan favorites will be on hand to celebrate and (hopefully) answer fan questions.

So which crew members are in the city and who has already gotten together before the big Below Deck reunion?

Kate Chastain already partied with these crew members

Chief stew Kate Chastain relocated from Florida to Manhattan and is meeting and greeting some of the crew. Chastain shared a video to her Instagram story detailing who will appear for the reunion. Guess where Im going, Chastain shared. To a Below Deck, kind of reunion of all seasons. Im going to see Ben, and Kat and Jen and Amy and Connie and Captain Lee and Nico and Josiah. In like five minutes.

Even though the crew is officially meeting in the Clubhouse, Chastain met up with some of the crew the night before. Its kinda weird, its kind of like Im throwing a party where you invite all your friends but a lot of them dont know each other. Should be fun.

Indeed the gathering did look fun. Chastain shared a video with stew Amy Johnson, stew Jen Howell, deckhand Connie Arias, and bosun Eddie Lucas. Howell is rocking dark locks and Lucas is sporting a beard. Gangs all here, Chastain announced. Howell also shared a video to her Instagram story. Hello New York, she exclaimed.

Who else is in town?

Rosbach shared the hotel welcome package that greeted him when he arrived. Nice welcome gift from The Royalton on Park Ave Ny, NY. I love this place, he commented along with a photo of a special Below Deck cookie and club sodas.

Other crew members are also staying in the same hotel as they shared photos of their welcome package too. Stew Rocky Dakota posted a photo of her airplane ticket to her Instagram story. She also added a video singing about the reunion after shed taken a few bites of the cookie.

Stew Josiah Carter shared his long journey from abroad. His Instagram story shows his flight and arrival. So I just got to my hotel and look how cute this is, he said when he saw his welcome package. Awww. A little note from the Royalton. Thanks Josh! And a little cookie. Im going devour that tonight. Carter also shared a video showing that it started to snow in New York City too.

Bosun Nico Scholly enjoyed a quiet dinner in the city with his girlfriend and took in the sights and sounds of the city. Stew Kate Held shared a photo of her cookie along with a comment on Twitter. I [heart] NYC.
By NASSER KARIMI and JON GAMBRELL Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran  Irans supreme leader wept Monday over the casket of a top general killed in a U.S. airstrike, his prayers joining the wails of mourners who flooded the streets of Tehran demanding retaliation against America for a slaying thats drastically raised tensions across the Middle East.

The funeral for Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani drew a crowd said by police to be in the millions in the Iranian capital, filling thoroughfares and side streets as far as the eye could see. Although there was no independent estimate, aerial footage and Associated Press journalists suggested a turnout of at least 1 million, and the throngs were visible on satellite images of Tehran taken Monday.

Authorities later brought his remains and those of the others to Iran's holy city of Qom, turning out another massive crowd.

The outpouring of grief was an unprecedented honor for a man viewed by Iranians as a national hero for his work leading the Guard's expeditionary Quds Force. The U.S. blames him for the killing of American troops in Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before his death Friday in a drone strike at Baghdad's airport. Soleimani also led forces in Syria backing President Bashar Assad in a long war.

His slaying already has pushed Tehran to abandon the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as his successor and others vow to take revenge. In Baghdad, the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, something analysts fear could allow Islamic State militants to mount a comeback.

In this image taken from video, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, left, openly weeps as he leads a prayer over the coffin of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike on Friday, at the Tehran University campus, in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020.Iran Press TV via The Associated Press

Soleimanis daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened the U.S. military in the Middle East while also warning President Donald Trump, whom she called crazy.

"The families of the American soldiers ... will spend their days waiting for the death of their children," she said to cheers.

Her language mirrored warnings by other Iranian officials who say an attack on U.S. military interests in the Middle East looms. Iranian state TV and others online shared a video that showed Trump's American flag tweet following Soleimani's killing turn into a coffin, the "likes" of the tweet replaced by over 143,000 "killed."

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over the caskets of Soleimani and others at Tehran University after a brief mourning period at the capital's famed Musalla mosque, The mosque was where prayers were said over the body of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, after his death in 1989.

Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani and referred to him as a "living martyr," broke down in tears four times while offering Muslim prayers for the dead.

"Oh God, you took their spirits out of their bodies as they were rolling in their blood for you and were martyred in your way," Khamenei said as the crowd wailed. Soleimani will be buried Tuesday in his hometown of Kerman.

Mourners attend a funeral ceremony for Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and his comrades who were killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike on Friday at the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) square in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. The processions mark the first time Iran honored a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such a processional with his death in 1989. Soleimani on Monday will lie in state at Tehran's famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)AP

Soleimanis successor, Esmail Ghaani, stood near Khameneis side as did President Hassan Rouhani and other leaders of the Islamic Republic. While Iran recently faced nationwide protests over government-set gasoline prices that reportedly led to the killing of over 300, Soleimanis death has brought together people from across the countrys political spectrum, temporarily silencing that anger.

Demonstrators burned Israeli and U.S. flags, carried a flag-draped U.S. coffin or displayed effigies of Trump. Some described Trump as a legitimate target.

Mohammad Milad Rashidi, a 26-year-old university graduate, predicted more tension ahead.

"Trump demolished the chance for any sort of possible agreement between Tehran and Washington," Rashidi said. "There will be more conflict in the future for sure."

Another mourner, Azita Mardani, warned that Iran "will retaliate for every drop of his blood."

"We are even thankful to (Trump) because he made us angry and this fury will lead to shedding of their blood in the Persian Gulf and the region's countries," Mardani said. "Here will become their graveyard."

Ghaani made his own threat in an interview shown Monday on Iranian state television. "God the Almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken," he said.

Markets reacted Monday to the tensions, sending international benchmark Brent crude above $70 a barrel for part of the day and gold to a seven-year high. The Middle East remains a crucial source of oil, and Iran in the past has threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all the world's oil traded passes.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, chairing emergency talks with the alliance's ambassadors in Brussels, called for "restraint and de-escalation," adding: "A new conflict would be in no one's interest."

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned global political tensions were "at their highest level this century." He added: "stop escalation. Exercise maximum restraint. Re-start dialogue. Renew international cooperation."

Ghaani, a longtime Soleimani deputy, has taken over as the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds, or Jerusalem, Force, answerable only to Khamenei. Ghaani has been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2012 for his work funding its global operations, including its work with proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Those proxies likely will be involved in any operation targeting U.S. interests in the Middle East or elsewhere.

Already, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans "of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks." In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimani's killing made U.S. military bases, warships and service members across the region fair game for attacks.

"We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region," Ghaani said.

The head of the Guard's aerospace program, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, suggested Iran's response wouldn't stop with a single attack.

"Firing a couple of missiles, hitting a base or even killing Trump is not valuable enough to compensate for martyr Soleimani's blood," Hajizadeh said on state TV. "The only thing that can compensate for his blood is the complete removal of America from the region."

On the nuclear deal, Iran now says it won't observe the accord's restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities. That's a much-harsher step than they had planned to take before the attack.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have urged Iran to "withdraw all measures" not in line with the deal.

Iran insisted it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldn't seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions last year. It further raises regional tensions, as Iran's longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Edith M. Lederer contributed from the United Nations.
Seismologists of the GFZ have for the first time observed processes in the upper mantle before the formation of an enormous underwater eruption

A new submarine volcano was formed off the island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean in 2018. This was shown by an oceanographic campaign in May 2019. Now an international team led by the scientist Simone Cesca from the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ has illuminated the processes deep inside the Earth before and during the formation of the new volcano.

It is as if the researchers had deciphered a new type of signal from the Earth's interior that indicates a dramatic movement of molten rocks before the eruption. With their specially developed seismological methods, the researchers are reconstructing the partial emptying of one of the deepest and largest active magma reservoirs ever discovered in the upper mantle. The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Since May 2018, an unusual sequence of earthquakes has been recorded off-coast the island of Mayotte in the Comoros archipelago between Africa and Madagascar. Seismic activity began with a swarm of thousands of 'seemingly tectonic' earthquakes, culminating in an earthquake of magnitude 5.9 in May 2018. Mostly since June 2018, however, a completely new form of earthquake signal has emerged that was so strong that it could be recorded up to a thousand kilometres away. These 20 to 30 minute long signals are characterized by particularly harmonic, low frequencies, almost monochromatic, similar to a large bell or a double bass, and are called Very Long Period (VLP) signals. Although the centre of the seismic activity was located almost 35 kilometres offshore the east of the island, a continuous lowering and eastward motion of the earth's surface at Mayotte had begun at the same time as the massive swarms of VLP events started, accumulating to almost 20 centimetres to date.

Although there was no evidence of earlier volcanic activity in the epicentre of the seismic activity, GFZ scientists had suspected magmatic processes from the beginning, as quake swarms in the upper earth crust often arise as a reaction to the rise of magma and VLPs in earlier years were associated with the collapse of large caldera volcanoes. The special frequency content of the VLP signals is caused by the resonance oscillation of the buried magma chamber. The deeper the vibrations, the larger the magma reservoir. However, the earthquake swarms under the ocean floor were much deeper than with other volcanoes and the resonance tones of the VLPs were unusually low and strong.

An international team led by GFZ scientist Simone Cesca analysed seismological and geodetic data from the region to study these observations and their evolution over time. However, the investigations were complicated by the fact that there was no seismic network on the ocean floor and therefore only measurements were available at great distances on Mayotte, Madagascar and in Africa. "We tried to improve the unfavourable initial situation by developing special new analytical methods such as cluster and directional beam methods," says Cesca.

The team identified different activity phases within the sequence of events from May 2018 to today. The initial swarm phase indicated a rapid upward movement of magma from a deep mantle reservoir more than 30 kilometres below the Earth's surface. Once an open channel had formed from the Earth's mantle to the seabed, the magma began to flow unhindered and form a new underwater volcano. A French oceanographic campaign recently confirmed the formation of the submarine volcano, whose location coincides with the reconstructed magma rise.

In this phase, the apparent tectonic earthquake activity decreased again, while the lowering of the ground on the island of Mayotte began. Likewise, long-lasting monofrequency VLP signals started. "We interpret this as a sign of the collapse of the deep magma chamber off the coast of Mayotte," explains Eleonora Rivalta, co-author of the scientific team. "It is the deepest (~30 km) and largest magma reservoir in the upper mantle (more than 3.4 cubic kilometres) to date, which is beginning to empty abruptly."

"Since the seabed lies 3 kilometres below the water surface, almost nobody noticed the enormous eruption. However, there are still possible hazards for the island of Mayotte today, as the Earth's crust above the deep reservoir could continue to collapse, triggering stronger earthquakes," says Torsten Dahm, Head of the section Physics of Earthquakes and Volcanoes at the GFZ.

###

The study was funded by the German Research Foundation DFG.
Gannett headquarters in McLean, VA.

Gannett Co. said Monday that Alison Ali Engel is stepping down as chief financial officer of the media and marketing solutions company at the end of the first quarter to pursue other opportunities.

Gannetts board of directors has begun a process to identify someone to fill the role. Mark Maring, currently treasurer of Gannett, is expected to lead the companys finance function after Engels departure until a new CFO is appointed, Gannett said.

Gannett, which was formed in November from the combination of New Media Investment Group Inc. and Gannett Co., operates USA TODAY and 260 local media properties in the United States. It also operates digital marketing services companies ReachLocal, WordStream, and ThriveHive, and U.K. media company Newsquest. Prior to the close of the transaction forming the new company, New Media operated its media properties as GateHouse Media. Maring served as treasurer of GateHouse Media for 10 years prior to the merger.

Nov 7, 2019; McLean, VA USA; Paul Bascobert and Alison Engel speak during a company Town Hall.

When New Media and Gannett announced the transaction and key executives, it said it expected Engel, who had served as Gannett's chief financial officer prior to the deal, to continue as CFO of the combined company.

On behalf of our board and leadership team, we thank Ali for her dedication and invaluable contributions over the past five years, Paul Bascobert, chief executive of the companys operating subsidiary, Gannett Media Corp., said in a media release. She has been a tireless leader and advocate for our mission and helped us to successfully navigate both a proxy fight and merger this past year. We wish her all the best as she considers her next adventure.

Gannett declined to comment further Monday.

The company's stock price edged down 0.2% to $6.25 as of Monday afternoon as investors absorbed the news.

Doug Arthur, a stock analyst at Huber Research Partners who tracks Gannett, said executive turnover is not uncommon in the early going for a newly combined company.

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Gannett executives are under pressure to execute the companys plan to cut $275 million to $300 million in costs per year within 18 to 24 months in a variety of areas, including facilities, corporate functions and news operations.

Im not surprised  given the work they need to do, the execution intensity to get to the goals theyve set out, the pressure on the business and the stock price performance that there are changes at the top, Arthur said.

Engel joined Gannett in 2015 and was named CFO in June 2015. She formerly was chief financial officer and treasurer of A. H. Belo Corp., and served that company following its spin-off in 2008 from Belo Corp.

I greatly enjoyed my time at Gannett and wish the company nothing but success in the future, Engel said in a media release.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Gannett CFO Ali Engel to step down, Treasurer Mark Maring to fill role
The head of Libya's UN-recognised government visited Algeria on Monday to discuss the heightened tensions in his country, ahead of a visit by the Turkish foreign minister whose country has sent troops.

Since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that killed longstanding dictator Moamer Kadhafi, Libya has been plunged into chaos. It is now divided between the Government of National Accord and rival authorities based in the country's east.

Tensions escalated last year when eastern-based strongman Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive to capture the capital Tripoli, seat of the GNA.

The GNA has sought help from Turkey, whose parliament passed a bill allowing the government to send troops to Libya to shore up the Tripoli government.

On Sunday, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that its soldiers had begun deploying in the North African country.

The Algerian presidency said GNA premier Fayez al-Sarraj arrived at the head of a high-ranking team to "discuss ways to resolve the difficult situation" in Libya.

He was to meet Algeria's newly-elected President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the official APS news agency reported.

Algerian state television said the GNA's foreign and interior ministers met their Algerian counterparts.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was also due in Algiers on Monday, according to his ministry, to "exchange views on the regional situation and international issues".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Tebboune on Monday to invite Algeria to an international conference on Libya to be held in Berlin, his office said in a statement.

The European Union, for its part, expressed concern about an "imminent" escalation of violence around Tripoli.

"The European Union calls on all sides to engage in a political process under the leadership of the United Nations," said the EU high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell.

Last Thursday, Algeria announced "several initiatives in favour of a peaceful solution to the Libyan crisis" and reaffirmed its opposition to foreign interference in Libya.

Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia back Haftar, while the GNA is supported by Turkey and Qatar.

After taking office in December, Tebboune convened Algeria's top security body to discuss the situation at its borders, notably with Libya.

Algeria shares nearly 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) of border with Libya.


An unrelated file photo.

BEIJING (PTI): The Chinese army has begun major military exercises in the high-altitude Tibet bordering India, deploying latest weapons including the Type 15 light battle tank and the new 155-MM vehicle-mounted howitzer, a media report said on Sunday.



The People's Liberation Army (PLA) Tibet Military Command started its New Year exercises in which it has deployed helicopters, armoured vehicles, heavy artillery and anti-aircraft missiles across the region from Lhasa, capital of Tibet, to the border defence front lines with elevations of more than 4,000 metres, state-run Global Times reported.



India-China Line of Actual Control (LAC) covered 3,488 kilometres, including the border along Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim.



China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of South Tibet.



Both the tank and howitzer, which were revealed to the public on the National Day military parade on October 1 last year, are specifically designed with advantages for plateau regions and can play important roles in safeguarding border areas, the report said.



Their deployment in the Tibet Military Command will enhance PLA combat capability in the plateau regions, it quoted a military expert as saying.



Both were equipped with powerful engines, enabling them to manoeuvre efficiently in Tibet's terrains, a military expert was quoted as saying in the report.



Heavier hostile weapons cannot reach the oxygen-depleted border areas, and, if lighter, they do not have enough firepower, he said.



The Type 15 tank is the world's only modern lightweight tank in service and it is equipped with a 105-millimeter gun and advanced sensors that can "devastate enemy light armoured vehicles in regions," the report quoted the Chinese military magazine Weapon as reporting.



The six-wheeled, 155-millimeter vehicle-mounted howitzer is of high calibre, reacts fast and can be easily deployed, it said.


The government had hosted an "interactive meeting" with members of the Hindi Film industry. What for? To discuss the much-talked about Citizenship Amendment Act, that led to violence last night at JNU and and left 34 students injured.

The situation is still quite grim and tensed. While the meeting was supposed to happen at 5 pm, violence broke out in JNU around 7 pm after some "masked men" armed with iron rods and sledgehammers attacked the students and teachers inside the campus.



The invitation to Bollywood celebrities was sent out on a couple of days ago apparently. It was sent on behalf of Minister of Railways and Commerce, Piyush Goyal and National Vice President of BJP, Baijayant Jay Panda.

The invite, however, was not extended to actor Swara Bhasker, filmmakers Anubhav Sinha and Anurag Kashyap -- all of whom have been vocal about their stand against the controversial citizenship law.



Did everyone attend the meeting? Not many of the celebrities did. Karan Johar, Farhan Akhtar, Kabir Khan and Siddharth Roy Kapur who were invited for the discussion, did not turn up.



CBFC chief Prasoon Joshi, producers Ritesh Sidhwani and Bhushan Kumar, director Abhishek Kapoor and actor Ranvir Shorey were among the Bollywood personalities that attended a special meeting with Union minister Piyush Goyal on Sunday for a discussion on the contentious Citizenship Act.



The meeting, followed by dinner, was hosted at a suburban hotel in Mumbai amid heavy police security and also saw the presence of BJP vice president Baijayant Jay Panda.



wikipedia

"It was a good meeting. It's great to see the government reach out to clear the air regarding the CAA," Shorey told PTI.



"We were told that more such meetings are being organised with people from different walks of life. I already had no issues with the CAA and I hope more people are not misled about it affecting any Indian citizen," he said.



I think we should boycott the movies of every bollywood star who attends Modi's CAA dinner. If these stars don't care about the common people why should we put money in their pockets? #Modi #BoycottBolleywood https://t.co/6auSwf5pcR  Maria Iqbal (@blob_of_butter) January 4, 2020

SO this how the Protesters are now threatening the sane voices? "protesters say Bollywood we are watching"  Amish Maske (@hiamish) January 6, 2020

While the meeting was going on, there were several protesters who held up placards that read, "Bollywood we are watching. #MumbaiAgainstCAA" and "Dont disappoint yours fans. Reject CAA NPR NRC, according to Hindustan Times.



The invitation sent out to celebrities read, Would love to have you for this Important meeting - Dialogue over CAA with Govt. An interactive meeting on the 5th of Jan', 2020 at 8 P.M in Grand Hyatt with Piyush bhai Goyal, Railways and Commerce Minister of India. The idea behind the meeting is quite inclusive in approach and we request a participation of all the rational thoughts and different points of views pertaining to the Citizenship Amendment Act. We strongly believe in a healthy discussion around all the possible dimensions of the issue. Your inputs will enlighten the discussion. It will be followed by a scrumptious dinner. Please come over. See you.


DuRocher called her supervisors to complain, and Rieland got back at him by practicing the entire next day. So I just fixed him next time I saw him, she said.

Im ready. Ive got this down, just watch me, she told him. And we just played back and forth like that for a few months and all of a sudden months turned into years.

They took many trips together in Rielands car, including driving as far as they could into northern Ontario until they ran out of road.

They also traveled to the Rosebud Indian reservation in South Dakota delivering computers.

DuRochers death didnt come from a specific cause, said Rieland, who went to the hospital with DuRocher Saturday night and was with him when he died. She said he had pneumonia-like symptoms, but that his death came from lifelong complications of polio.

It was a serious case. He probably lasted longer than anybody else in this area who had polio as bad as his was, said Rieland, noting that his treatment as a child in tiny Coleman, Wisconsin, north of Green Bay, included traveling by himself to polio centers around the country and using an iron lung.
You are here: China

China has successfully completed its national groundwater monitoring project, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources.

The project was initiated in June 2015 with a total investment of 2.2 billion yuan (about 316 million U.S. dollars). Jointly built by the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Water Resources, the project includes 20,469 groundwater monitoring stations, creating an automatic monitoring network of groundwater.

The network generates more than 89 million pieces of data on water levels and water temperatures every year.

Monitoring data has been applied to serve groundwater protection, land space planning and water resources management, providing data basis for scientific research on groundwater resources and environment.

The network can automatically collect, do real-time transmission and conduct analysis of the monitoring data. It will facilitate groundwater monitoring in some key areas including densely populated areas, major national engineering areas and subsidence areas.




One day after armed troops blocked opposition legislators from entering Venezuela's parliament, opposition leader Juan Guaido on Monday accused Nicolas Maduro's socialist government of 'militarizing' parliament.

Guaido was expected to be re-elected as head of Congress, but instead that post now goes to legislator Luis Parra, who was hand picked by President Nicolas Maduro's Socialist party to fill the position. Parra was recently expelled by an opposition party over corruption allegations.

At one point, security physically forced Guaido off the compound's iron railings after he tried to get across a security gate.

(SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION LEADER JUAN GUAIDO SAYING:

"Yesterday, dignified lawmakers, who represent the people of Venezuela, showed how not to be corrupt. We showed our faces to our people. And today, we're getting together to find solutions."

Opposition legislators quickly re-elected Guaido as president of the National Assembly -- who is also recognized by dozens of nations as Venezuela's rightful leader - in a session at the headquarters of a pro-opposition newspaper.

The military seizure of parliament was quickly denounced by Washington as the work of a quote "thug" regime, with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo adding "no bribery or intimidation can subvert the will of the Venezuelan people."
[January 06, 2020] HistoSonics Robotic Sonic Beam Therapy Platform Wins 2019 Frost & Sullivan Innovation Award

SAN ANTONIO, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Frost & Sullivan, a leading global research and analysis firm, announced that it has awarded HistoSonics its prestigious 2019 North American Technology Innovation Award for the development of the company's new breakthrough platform, designed to destroy solid tumors and diseased tissues without ever entering a patient's body. HistoSonics' new non-invasive platform, Edison, combines advanced robotics and imaging with proprietary sensing technology to deliver personalized treatments, and uses the science of histotripsy and focused sound energy to generate pressures strong enough to liquify and destroy targeted tissues at sub-cellular levels. The novel procedure, termed Robotically Assisted Sonic Therapy (RASTSM), utilizes HistoSonics' proprietary technology to provide potentially significant advantages, including the unique ability for physicians to monitor the destruction of tissue under continuous real-time visualization and with unparalleled control. Neeraj Jadhav, Senior Research Analyst with Frost & Sullivan, comments on HistoSonics non-invasive approach as a key potential benefit for patients and physicians, "HistoSonics' Edison robot and RAST procedure provides mechanically induced cellular destruction of a target tumor site while limiting the damage to adjoining healthy tissues, an innovation that addresses a key area of concern among health professionals, with regards to post-procedure complications in paients."



Recently released clinical data from a Phase I study performed in Barcelona, Spain demonstrated acute technical success and safety in 100% of targeted liver tumor treatments. Additionally, although not the aim of this study, two of the eight patients demonstrated marked decrease in tumor biomarkers and stabilization or reduction in the volume of non-treated tumors in the liver. "It is an honor to be recognized by Frost & Sullivan with this prestigious innovation award," said President and CEO of HistoSonics, Mike Blue. "HistoSonics' mission is rooted in providing clinical and economic value to patients and their physicians, and this award further validates the tremendous progress our team is making."

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry. About HistoSonics HistoSonics is a venture-backed medical device company developing a non-invasive robotic platform and novel beam therapy, Robotically Assisted Sonic Therapy (RASTSM). RAST uses the science of histotripsy and the pressure created by focused sound energy to liquify and destroy targeted tissue, including diseased tissue and tumors, at sub-cellular levels. The company's new platform is designed to deliver personalized, tissue-specific treatments with precision and control. Histotripsy was developed at the University of Michigan and is exclusively licensed to HistoSonics. The company has offices in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Minneapolis, Minnesota. The information and data described above has not been reviewed by the U.S. FDA. Statements related to evidence of safety and/or effectiveness will need to be reviewed by FDA prior to inclusion in official labeling. The HistoSonics RAST System has not yet been cleared by the U.S. FDA and is not available for sale in the United States. For more information please visit: www.histosonics.com/ View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/histosonics-robotic-sonic-beam-therapy-platform-wins-2019-frost--sullivan-innovation-award-300981288.html SOURCE HistoSonics, Inc.

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The event to remember the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) will be 'modest and solemn' and is not a 'celebration' of the Black & Tans, according to Laois TD and Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan.

Minister Flanagan issued a statement in the wake of the controversy sparked by the decision of the Mayor of Clare not to attend. Defending the event has also brought Hollywood star and Irish actor Michael Fassbender into the row.

The Laois TD also hit out at critics of the event labelling their views as headline-grabbing and a "step backwards to a more narrow-minded past".

The approach to the Decade of Centenaries has made clear that there is no hierarchy of Irishness and that our goal of reconciliation on the island of Ireland can only be achieved through mutual understanding and mutual respect of the different traditions on the island, he said.

He says that under the guidance of the Expert Advisory Group on Centenary Commemoration, he, on behalf of the Government, will host an event to commemorate the place of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) in Irish history on January 17.

It is not a celebration. It is an acknowledgement of the historical importance of both the DMP and the RIC, and is in no sense a commemoration of the Black & Tans or the Auxiliaries, he said.

Minister Flanagan responded to opposition to the event which has included some from Sinn Fein representatives in his own constituency. The Fianna Fail Mayor of Clare Cathal Ruane said it is "wrong to celebrate and eulogise" the RIC, "an organisation that was the strong-arm of the British state in Ireland".

It is disappointing to see some public representatives abandon the principles of mutual understanding and reconciliation in an effort to gain headlines. This attitude, combined with a distortion of the nature of the commemoration, is ill becoming of any public representative and represents a step backwards to a more narrow-minded past characterised by a hierarchy of Irishness, he said.

He said the event is one of a large number of events taking place during this decade to "acknowledge and commemorate significant" events or developments in the history of our island one hundred years ago.

"The Decade of Centenaries has, to date, been characterised by an open-minded non-partisan factual approach to our history. It has provided us with the opportunity to remember all of those who died over the period.

"The office-holders invited to the modest and solemn commemoration on 17 January are invited in their capacity as representatives of their county, city or party as the case may be. They have not been invited in a personal capacity," he said.

The Laois TD said sensitivities are not the preserve of one side.

"There is no question but that there are very real sensitivities involved here. I acknowledge that. But there are sensitivities on both sides. The RIC has found itself on the wrong side of history.

"The intolerance that was often characteristic of Ireland in the past sometimes forced people to deny their own family histories and airbrush parents, grandparents and siblings out of the picture for doing no more than serving as an army officer or police officer to support their families. It should be noted that the vast majority of Irish people who served as army and police officers did so with honour and integrity," he said.

Minister Flanagan said the complexities of Irish history has been highlighted and many people have explored their family history, often discovering ancestors who served in the army and/or police as well as playing a role in the fight for an Irish Republic and/or Home Rule.

He said the historian, Diarmuid Ferriter, among others, has highlighted this in his writing noting that Michael Collins uncle served in the RIC while the author Sebastian Barry had one grandfather in the British Army and another who was an Irish Republican.

He also referenced a Hollywood star in his statement.

"The actor Michael Fassbenders great grandfather was in the RIC while Fassbender is also related to Republican leader Michael Collins. So many other Irish families share this complex history and these facts should be explored and acknowledged as all the threads of our history, within families and as a nation, make us who we are today as a people," he said.

Minister Flanagan said the centrepiece of the Decade of Centenaries was 1916 Rising but there have also been commemorations of the First World War, the Labour movement, female suffrage and the struggle for Home Rule. He said the Government commemoration in 1916 acknowledging the 125 British Army officers who lost their lives in the Rising while a Necrology Wall of Remembrance in Glasnevin Cemetery lists all those who died in the Rising, including rebel combatants, civilians, police officers and members of the Army.

"These commemorations are about our history, not our mythologies, and as Minister for Justice and Equality, I am happy to endorse the recommendation of the Expert Advisory Group that we commemorate the place of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police in Irish History," said the Minister.

The Department of Justice said the roots of the Dublin Metropolitan Police stretch back into the eighteenth century and it was merged with An Garda Siochana in 1925. The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) was founded in 1836. By 1870 it has 12,000 members, most of them Catholic. It operated all over Ireland but not Dublin and was disbanded in 1922.

The event, which will be held at Dublin Castle, will be attended by Garda Commissioner Drew Harris.
Chef David Guerreros Andes Cafe served its last meals over the weekend after the six-year-old restaurant in Houstons east side unexpected closed on Sunday.

Guerrero announced the closure on Facebook, posting that it was with a broken heart that he decided the cafe, serving the cuisines of South America, would close on Jan. 5. Business has been slow since the restaurants landlord at 2311 Canal reclaimed the parking space, Guerrero said, adding that he decided it was easier to cease operations.

But, as Guerrero optimistically said, When one door closes, another opens.

The chef already had that open door. As the Chronicle first reported, Guerrero will be opening a new pan-Latin restaurant in the former Drexel House space at 3974 Westheimer. The restaurant, which could open as soon as the week of Jan. 13, will be called Alma, Spanish for soul.

TOP HOUSTON BARBECUE: Texas Monthly's list of best barbecue bites of 2019 includes these Houston-area joints

As Houston foodies will recall, Guerrero briefly operated a Peruvian restaurant in the Energy Corridor in 2012 called Alma Cebiche + Bar. The new restaurant, however, will not be anything like the previous Alma. It will be totally different, he said, more high-end South American food. Nor will any of Andes Cafe dishes be on the Alma menu, he added. Expect a menu featuring a raw bar with oysters, tiradito and ceviche, as well as a wood-fired oven to cook steaks and whole fish. Guerrero also plans to offer four- and six-course tasting menus.

The 40-seat Andes Cafe, which opened in 2014, was lauded by Chronicle restaurant critic Alison Cook, was among the citys best restaurants and made cooks annual Top 100 list from 2015 to 2018.

While Alma will continue to explore Guerreros love for South American fare, he has not given up on his Andes Cafe concept. He said he currently is looking for investors and another site to open a restaurant dedicated to the flavors of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.

Greg Morago writes about food for the Houston Chronicle. Follow him on Facebook or Twitter. Send him news tips at greg.morago@chron.com. Hear him on our BBQ State of Mind podcast to learn about Houston and Texas barbecue culture.
The Democratic charge that the Trump administration has no strategy for the Middle East is obviously false. It has elaborated a strategy that includes Russia and Turkey. The problem the administration has faced is that Russia as an issue has been so aggravated by Democratic myth-makers, with the (presumably) inadvertent cooperation of some congressional Republicans, that it has been very difficult for Trump to deal with Russia sensibly without exciting partisan hysteria and crowding the Democratic television news networks with the tiresome faces and voices of Obamas now-discredited intelligence chiefs (James Clapper and John Brennan), beating the old tambourines about Russia determining U.S. elections. The basic American conceptual problem with this whole complex of issues is that the United States has legitimate interests in the Middle East and has reasonable ambitions for a civilized relationship with Russia and Turkey, but the president has also pledged to extract the country from, and stay out of, permanent wars in the region. These are valid objectives that can be reconciled, but not easily.

Nothing could have more perfectly illustrated the stark bankruptcy of George W. Bushs Iraq War than the Iraqi parliaments vote over the weekend to tell the United States to withdraw its forces from Iraq. It is a non-binding resolution, taken without the Kurdish and Sunni legislators present, and the next government will presumably not act on it, but it does indicate that in the Middle East, as in Europe, the states patched together after World War I have all failed. Czechs and Slovaks have split Czechoslovakia; Yugoslavia now consists of the sovereign states of Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Montenegro; and Syria and Iraq have cracked up also, and as in Yugoslavia, violently. Britain and France fanned Arab nationalism against the Turks, Britain promised Palestine to the Jews and the Arabs at the same time, and France took over Syria and Lebanon as colonies while Britain helped itself to what are now Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. Nation-building at a distance among ethnic groups that are antagonistic to each other is hazardous.

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The United States has to find a way to defend its legitimate national interests in the Middle East without being on call, like firemen, for constant interventions there, with high resultant expenses, significant casualties, and an excessive commitment of American military resources to that region. The first step was to eliminate American dependence on Middle East oil, something all presidents starting with Eisenhower have decried. This has been to some extent a bipartisan effort: U.S. oil imports declined from 15 million barrels a day under President Clinton to 10 million under George W. Bush, to 5 million under President Obama, and now the United States is a net energy exporter for the first time since the days of President Truman. The second step is to put together local balances of the correlation of forces that promote comparative stability. This effectively requires inviting Turkey and Russia to exercise influence in the region on a tolerable basis of respect for human rights, while ensuring that they are rigorously opposed to any propagation of terrorist activity and dont endanger Israel. Any such ambition runs afoul of the current Democratic hysteria about Russia, which arose in their shock at being defeated in the 2016 election and their instant conjuration and brainwashing of their obedient media (it could have been done with an eye-dropper) that Russia had colluded with Trump to win a bogus presidential mandate.

The European Unions rejection of Turkey (completely unlike the relatively generous treatment in trade and political matters accorded by the United States and Canada to Mexico) pushed Turkey back toward the Arab world, from which it had been expelled in World War I. Arab nationalism flickered on after World War I and flared up after World War II when the colonial powers withdrew and the artificial states become unstuck. The Iranian revolution, assisted by the Carter administration, which overthrew the shah and replaced him with an extremist Islamic regime that is still riveted on the back of Iran, has been virulently anti-Western and anti-Israel and is encroaching on the Arab world, sponsoring terrorist organizations in many Arab countries, while Turkey, having no better alternative, is also focusing on the Arabs. The Arabs do not remember flatteringly and gratefully their previous experiences of Persian and Turkish domination.

Pressure from Iran and Turkey and the disintegration of Iraq and Syria (thanks largely to the United States, though its policymakers had not sought that objective) have effectively caused the leading Arab powers to abandon their hostility to Israel, which was always essentially just a distraction of the Arab masses from the misgovernment their rulers were inflicting on them. The fluidity of changing ambitions and affinities and the collapse of several other countries in the region (Libya, Sudan, and Yemen as well as Syria and Iraq, and a terrible civil war in Algeria that seems now to be generally under control), and an immense humanitarian crisis with many millions of refugees, have all added to the sanguinary confusion. The United States should be aware of its responsibility for some of this, as should the British. The British pledge of Palestine as a Jewish homeland without compromising the rights of the local Arabs could be foreseen to generate the problems it has, and there has never been any alternative but to divide the territory between the two claimants. The American undermining of the shah, the second Iraq War and its repurposing of Iraq as a democracy, and the Iranian nuclear agreement led by the Obama administration have all been unlimited catastrophes.

And the danger posed by Russia is not the one raised by Democrats or Russia-preoccupied Republicans such as Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Russia is a great nation and civilization, but it is not now a great power like the U.S. and China; it is an economic paper tiger with a GDP smaller than Canadas and no political institutions of any credibility or value. It is an overwhelmingly corrupt country that has never had one day of good government, wallowing in the frustrations of having gambled everything built up in 300 years from Peter the Great to Stalin in a relatively bloodless world struggle with the United States and its allies (when the U.S. had useful allies because of their self-interest), and of having lost. The danger Russia presents now is that if the United States adds to Russias humiliations, it could drive Russia into the arms of China, and millions of people from Chinas surplus manpower could exploit the untapped resources of Siberia on a royalty basis. The resulting geopolitical threat to the United States and the whole world would be very serious.

President Trump senses all this, and what he seeks is to reach a modus operandi with Russia, without the Democrats and their media parrots shrieking Treason! at him, that gives Russia some stabilizing role in the Middle East  cooperating with Turkey, whose return to Syria would be welcome, and with both of those powers countering Iran, which the United States will in any case force back into itself with the current policy of severe sanctions and reprisals to outrages. Iran can bluster and threaten all it wishes, but even its deluded theocracy must now realize that the free lunch of appeasement in Washington is over. It should now be clear to everyone that the U.S. could not interpose itself with 400 of its special forces between the Turkish army and the PKK Kurdish militia. Egypt and Saudi Arabia can make it clear that the Palestinians can have an autonomous state if they end their violence and accept Israels right to exist as a Jewish state, along the lines of the 2001 Taba discussions with a narrower West Bank and deeper Gaza Strip for Palestine and a connection between them.

Syria and Iraq should ultimately be regrouped in a loose confederation of largely autonomous zones, including Kurdistan. The inner stability and integrity from outsiders of this arrangement could be sponsored by Turkey, Russia, the U.S., Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and a respectable regime in Iran when one emerges. It is generally in this direction that the administration is going, and it is a sensible path. The Democrats are going to lose badly by championing Obamas green light for Iran to have nuclear weapons just six years from now, with its $150 billion signing bonus to promote terrorism and kill Americans. It was a terrible agreement and should be unmourned.

More from National Review
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 19:02:04|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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MAIMANA, Afghanistan, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Eight Taliban militants have given up fighting and surrendered to local authorities in northern Faryab and the neighboring Sari Pul provinces, a spokesman from the army in the northern region, Mohammad Hanif Rezai, said Monday.

A five-member group of the Taliban fighters under Mullah Nazim laid down arms and surrendered to security forces in Qaisar district of Faryab province on Sunday.

Similarly, three more armed militants surrendered to local authorities in Balkhab district of Sari Pul province on the same day on Sunday, Rezai asserted.

The Taliban outfit, which has been fighting the government to regain power, has yet to make comments.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday bought Rs 10,000 crore of three long-term securities while selling the same amount of three short-term bonds in the third special open market operation in three weeks.

It got bids worth Rs 64,505 crore for the three bonds but choose to accept only Rs 10,000 crore of bids under the OMO purchase auction. It got 198 bids for 7.32 per cent-2024 but accepted 12 bids and for 7.27 per cent-2026 bonds, received 163 bids but accepted only two.

The RBI received 224 bids for 6.45 per cent-2029 security but accepted only 22 bids.

It offered to sell four government securities-6.65 per cent-2020; 7.80 per cent-2020; 8.27 per cent-2020 and 8.12 per cent-2020 through OMO sale.

These securities were offered by the central bank in the previous two OMO sale auctions too. It received Rs 47,540 crore of bids but accepted to sell Rs 10,000 crore of bids.

In terms of number of bids, the RBI received 26 bids for 6.65 per cent-2020, 40 for 7.80 per cent-2020 and 35 for 8.27 per cent-2020 but accepted 7, 3 and 4 bids, respectively.

For 8.12 per cent-2020 bond, it received 41 bids but did not accept any of them. In the previous two similar auctions, the RBI had purchased Rs 20,000 crore and sold Rs 15,326 crore of bonds.

These special OMO auctions are similar to the US Federal Reserve's Operation Twist aimed at faster transmission of policy rates.

The RBI has reduced the repo rate by 135 basis points between February and October 2019 but there has been a delay in passing on the cut in repo rate by lenders.

The RBI had announced to simultaneous purchase and sale of government securities (G-Secs) under open market operations (OMOs) for Rs 10,000 crore each last week.
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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was today accused of threatening America with another Lockerbie after he tweeted a veiled reference to the 1988 bombing that killed 270 people.

Rouhani tweeted that America should 'never threaten Iran' after warning the US should 'remember the number 290' in reference to an incident when the US Navy accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger jet in the Persian Gulf in July 1988, killing 290.

Some Middle East experts have taken this as a veiled reference to the Lockerbie terrorist attack, which saw a bomb destroy Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in December 1988 killing 270 - months after the downing of Iranian flight 655.

Libya has always been blamed for the Lockerbie bombing, and one of their intelligence agents was jailed in Scotland for the terror attack. But Western spies believe Tehran played a role in the attack and executed it in revenge for the downing of the Iranian passenger jet - now Rouhani's sinister return to the episode and threatening of consequences has fuelled those suspicions.

Rouhani was responding to a tweet from Donald Trump in which the president threatened to strike 52 sites in Iran if Tehran retaliated against Washington following the assassination of Major-General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike near Baghdad airport on Friday.

It comes as incredible pictures from space showed crowds of up to a million Iranians on the streets of the capital, Tehran, for Soleimani's funeral today.

President Hassan Rouhani, responding to President Trump's threat to attack 52 Iranian targets, warned the US about the 'number 290', a reference to the 290 people killed when an Iran Air passenger flight was downed in 1988

Enghelab Square in Tehran, Iran, today amid a mass processional for the funeral of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US airstrike in Baghdad on Friday

The funeral for Soleimani drew a crowd said by police to be in the millions in the Iranian capital (above), filling thoroughfares and side streets as far as the eye could see

Middle East expert Kyle Orton suggested President Rouhani was admitting Iran had a role in the 1988 Lockerbie terror attack when he threatened the US in a tweet referencing the downed Iran Air flight 655

Crowds walking along the Azadi Street during the funeral of elite Iranian general Soleimani in Tehran today

Mourners gather in Tehran to pay their respects to a military commander who was hailed as a hero by many Iranians. Pictured (above) is an aerial view of thousands of mourners gather in the capital today

Lockerbie terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight that killed 270 people Pan Am Flight 103 travelling from Frankfurt to Detroit was brought down over Lockerbie in December 1988, killing 270 people. The jet was destroy by a bomb detonated as it flew over Scotland. All 243 passengers and 16 crew members were killed, along with 11 people on the ground as falling wreckage destroyed 21 houses. The bomb, built with the odourless plastic explosive Semtex, was hidden in a cassette player that was stored in a suitcase. Passengers on board the plane came from 21 countries, although the majority of those who died were Americans. Investigators believed two Libyan intelligence agents were responsible for the bombing. Many believed the attack had been revenge for a 1986 US bombing campaign against Libya's capital, Tripoli. Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libya's leader, refused to turn over the two suspects, until in 1998, after stringent UN sanctions Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah were handed over. Megrahi was sentenced to 20 years in jail, later increased to 27, while Fhimah was acquitted. In 2009 Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds and allowed to return to Libya after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Intelligence agencies in the US and UK believe Iran may have been behind the terrorist attack as retaliation for the downing of Iran Air flight 655 bu the US Navy just six months earlier. Advertisement

He warned that the US should 'remember the number 290', and with a hashtag of the Iran Air flight which was downed six months before 270 people were killed when a bomb was detonated on a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, Scotland.

'Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290. #IR655,' Rouhani tweeted today, referring to the 1988 shooting down of an Iranian airline by a US warship in which 290 were killed.

'Never threaten the Iranian nation', Rouhani added in the same post.

Iran Air flight 655 jet was due to travel from from Tehran to Dubai in July 1988, but was shot down over Iranian territorial waters over the Persian Gulf, killing all on board.

A guided cruise missile fried from the USS Vincennes shot down the jet, believing the Airbus was a fighter jet, the US government said at the time.

Months later, in December the same year, the Pan Am 103 jet travelling from Frankfurt to Detroit was brought down over Lockerbie, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew as well as 11 people on the ground.

Although Libya was officially blamed for the Lockerbie bombing, most intelligence experts believe the order came from Tehran.

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson, said many in the US and UK intelligence believe Iran was behind the bombing.

He wrote: 'Colonel Gaddafi's Libya got the blame, but many people in the American and British intelligence community believe that Iran gave the original instructions for the attack, to avenge the shooting down of the Airbus.'

Fatima Alasrar, an Middle East analyst from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, linked Rouhani's tweet with the Lockerbie disaster.

She tweeted: 'Rouhani is basically reminding @realDonaldTrump of the #Iranian Air Flight 655 carrying 290 passengers which was downed by a US navy warship the Vincennes in 1988. Though it was deemed a human error, Tehran worked covertly to exact its revenge. How? #Lockerbie.'

Alasrar also claimed Rouhani's tweet effectively saw him admit the Islamic Republic's role in the 1988 attack.

She added: 'Boeing 747 airline Pan Am exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 and was assumed to be an operation conducted by the #Lybians when it was #Iran who orchestrated the downing of the plane and paid the Libyans to do it. After years of denying, Rouhani just admitted to it!'

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians flooded Tehran today to pay their respects to the slain general Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike.

What happened to Iran Air Flight 655 which was accidentally shot down by the US Navy six months before Lockerbie? Iran Air Flight 655 jet was travelling from from Tehran to Dubai in July 1988, but was shot down over Iranian territorial waters over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 on board. A guided cruise missile fried from the USS Vincennes shot down the passenger plane in the worst aviation disaster in Iran's history. The US government at the time said the sailors believed the Airbus was a fighter jet when they opened fire in a confusion over transmission signals. The US warship was said to have believed the plane was an attacking F-14 Tomcat, which was used by the Iranian air force at the time. Although the US never accepted legal liability or formally apologised for the incident, America agreed a settlement at the International Court of Justice of $61.8 million to the Iranian families. Advertisement

Satellite images show the centre of the Iranian capital filled with people as his coffin was paraded through the streets.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wept over the coffin of Soleimani as lead prayers for the leader of the country's elite Quds Force.

Speaking to the wailing crowds which stretched as far as the eye could see, Soleimani's daughter Zeinab directly threatened an attack on US forces in the region.

In response to the airstrike that killed Soleimani, Iran vowed 'severe revenge' and yesterday abandoned the remaining limits on its uranium enrichment set by the 2015 nuclear deal, which the US pulled out of two years ago.

Trump threatened a 'disproportionate response' in targeting Iranian cultural sites and said his administration had identified 52 sites - a reference to the number of US nationals he says Iran is responsible for killing.

Some mourners chanted 'Death to America' and burned US and Israeli flags as the coffins of Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who also died in the drone strike were passed over their heads.

Iranian state TV put the crowd size at 'millions,' although that number could not be verified.

General Esmail Ghaani, Soleimani's successor as commander of the Quds Force, the elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards charged with overseas operations, promised to 'continue martyr Soleimani's cause as firmly as before with the help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to rid the region of America.

'God the Almighty has promised to take martyr Soleimani's revenge,' he told state television. 'Certainly, actions will be taken.'

Other political and military leaders have made similar, unspecific threats. Iran, which lies at the mouth of the key Gulf oil shipping route, has a range of proxy forces in the region through which it could act.

Middle East analyst Fatima Alasrar said President Rouhani was making a veiled threat to America using the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. She also claimed the Iranian leader's tweet was effectively an admission to being behind the attack, something Tehran has always denied

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (centre) leading a prayer as President Hassan Rouhani (fifth right) perform the prayer over the caskets of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis at Tehran University today

When Pan Am flight 103 was downed over Lockerbie in December 1988, 270 people were killed. The bombing was blamed on Libya, but many in the intelligence community believe Iran was behind the attack

In a tweet directed at President Trump, President Rouhani threatened the US in a reference to the 290 victims (pictured above) of a US Navy missile attack on an Iranian passenger jet in 1988

Foreign Office enters 'crisis mode' and reduces staff at Iranian and Iraqi embassies to minimum level The British Foreign Office has entered 'crisis mode' and has reduced staff at its embassies in Iran and Iraq over security fears. Employees at the UK embassies have reportedly been reduced to a minimum level as tensions between Iran and the US continue to escalate. Staff working on the tense situation are operating out of a crisis centre at Foreign Office headquarters, according to Sky News. A Whitehall source said, 'we are going into crisis mode', describing the response for now as being, 'pretty light touch'. Advertisement

The crowd in Tehran, which state media said numbered in the millions, recalled the masses that gathered in 1989 for the funeral of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The United States on Monday warned its citizens in Israel and the Palestinian territories to be vigilant, citing the risk of rocket fire.

As a US ally against Iran, Israel is concerned about possible rocket attacks from Gaza, ruled by Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamists, or major Iran proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Soleimani was a national hero in Iran - even to many who do not consider themselves supporters of the clerical leadership.

Aerial footage showed people, many clad in black, packing boulevards and side streets.

Iran's demand for US forces to withdraw from the region gained traction on Sunday when Iraq's parliament passed a resolution calling for all foreign troops to leave the country.

Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Abdel Abdul Mahdi told the US ambassador to Baghdad on Monday that both nations needed implement the resolution, the premier's office said in a statement. It did not give a timeline.

The United States has about 5,000 troops in Iraq. Trump said US forces would not leave unless Iraq paid for an American base Washington built in the country.

Mr Simpson believes Iran will need to retaliate in a way that matches the agony many in the country feel over the slaying of the revered military commander.

He wrote: 'Irans religious leaders believe their authority and the reputation of Iran now depend on getting specific retribution for President Trumps ordering of the assassination of General Soleimani and his companions.'

Mr Simpson also warned current and retired US generals to up their security in the wake of the Iranian threats, citing the example of Captain Rogers of the USS Vincennes in 1988 when the Iran Air jet was downed.

His wife was driving their minibus in San Diego, southern California, when she stopped at a red light and was targeted by a pipe-bomb. The incident has never been resolved, but many feel it was connected to the Iranian jet disaster.

Mourners surround a truck carrying the flag draped coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and his comrades in the holy city of Qom south of the capital Tehran today

Iran Air flight 655 jet was due to travel from from Tehran to Dubai in July 1988, but was shot down over Iranian territorial waters over the Persian Gulf

Newly appointed as Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Lieutenant General and Commander of the Quds Force Esmail Ghaani weeping as he prays over the coffin of slain Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Lieutenant General and Commander of the Quds Force Qasem Soleimani and of other victims during their funeral ceremony in Tehran today

Soleimani, widely seen as Iran's second most powerful figure behind Khamenei, built a network of proxy militia that formed a crescent of influence - and a direct challenge to the United States and its regional allies led by Saudi Arabia - stretching from Lebanon through Syria and Iraq to Iran. Outside the crescent, Iran nurtured allied Palestinian and Yemeni groups.

He notably mobilised Shi'ite Muslim militia forces in Iraq that helped to crush Islamic State, the Sunni militant group that had seized control of swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

Washington, however, blames Soleimani for attacks on US forces and their allies.

Prayers at Soleimani's funeral in Tehran, which moves to the general's southern home city of Kerman on Tuesday, were led by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wept as he spoke.

Soleimani's daughter Zeinab told mourners the United States would face a 'dark day' for her father's death.

Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, on his first trip to Iran since taking up his role in Gaza in 2017, said 'resistance against America' would continue.

Iran stoked tensions on Sunday by dropping all limitations on its uranium enrichment - another step back from commitments under a landmark deal with major powers in 2015 to curtail its nuclear programme that Trump abandoned in 2018.

In response, European signatories may launch a dispute resolution process against Iran this week that could lead to a renewal of the United Nations sanctions that were lifted as part of the deal, European diplomats said on Monday.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wept over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral

Iranian mourners seen (above) taking part in a funeral procession in Tehran for slain Iranian general Qasem Soleimani

The Azadi (freedom) tower is seen (above) in the foreground in Tehran today as thousands of mourners gathered for the funeral of slain general Soleimani

Diplomats said France, Britain and Germany could make a decision ahead of an EU foreign ministers meeting on Friday that would assess whether there were any ways to salvage the deal.

After quitting the deal, the United States imposed new sanctions on Iran, saying it wanted to halt Iranian oil exports, the main source of government revenues. Iran's economy has been in freefall as the currency has plunged.

Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Monday that he was still confident he could renegotiate a new nuclear agreement 'if Iran wants to start behaving like a normal country'.

Tehran has said Washington must return to the existing nuclear pact and lift sanctions before any talks can take place.

Democratic critics of the Republican Trump have said he was reckless in authorising the strike on Soleimani. Republicans in the US Congress have generally backed his move.

Trump also threatened sanctions against Iraq and said Baghdad would have to pay Washington for an air base in Iraq if US troops were required to leave.

Qassam Soleimani's funeral stretches into the night as he is flown to holy city for more mass expressions of grief in Iran - and there's another DAY to go

Crowds mourning the death of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani continued to flood the streets of the capital as his funeral procession dragged into the night.

Earlier in the day hundreds of thousands of people swamped central Tehran to express their outpouring of grief at the death of the revered leader of the elite Quds Force, who was assassinated in a US drone strike in Iraq on Friday.

After following his casket through the capital, Soleimani's body was transported to the holy city of Qom where a ceremony at Masumeh shrine will be held ahead of his burial in his hometown tomorrow.

Pictures from the procession route showed huge numbers following his body through the streets as mourners surround a truck carrying the flag-draped coffins of Soleimani and his comrades ahead of the general's burial in Kerman.

Before arriving in Qom, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wept over the coffin of Soleimani in Tehran during the second day of the general's funeral, as the warlord's daughter swore revenge on US troops despite Donald Trump's threats of a fearsome response.

Iranians gathering around a vehicle carrying the caskets of slain military commander Qasem Soleimani and others during a funeral procession after the bodies arrived in the northeastern city of Qom

Coffins of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani and others who were killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike, are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners during a funeral procession today in Tehran

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (fourth from left) wept over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral

Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport on Friday, shocking the Islamic republic and sending tensions spiralling in the Middle East.

His remains were flown back to Iran last night along with four other Revolutionary Guard top brass killed alongside him, carried in a cardboard box which had its own row of seats on a passenger jet.

Footage from the flight showed five cardboard coffins laid across rows of seats in what appeared to be the economy section of the plane as video tributes to Soleimani play on the in-flight video screens.

Following the massive funeral marches in Iraq and the Iranian city of Ahvaz, where protesters chanted 'death to America', Soleimani's body was taken to the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad before being flown to Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran on Sunday night.

Iran has vowed 'severe revenge' and yesterday abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal in response to the airstrike, while Trump has threatened a 'disproportionate response' targeting cultural sites.

Adding to the tensions, Trump has warned of sanctions against Iraq if it goes through with expelling US troops from the country - a move which could spark an ISIS resurgence there.

Speaking to the wailing crowds which stretched as far as the eye could see, Soleimani's daughter Zeinab directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region.

'The families of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East will spend their days waiting for [the] death of their children,' she said to cheers.

Warning of a 'dark day' looming for the United States, she said: 'Crazy Trump, don't think that everything is over with my father's martyrdom.'

Today the supreme leader was flanked by Soleimani's son, his military replacement Esmail Qaani and Iranian president Hassan Rouhani at the funeral in Tehran.

Coffins of Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were seen resting on passenger seats on a jet heading to Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran on Sunday night

Mourning: Thousands of people gathered in Tehran for the second day of Qassem Soleimani's funeral after he was killed in a US drone strike on Friday

The general's daughter Zeinab Soleimani (pictured today) spoke to mourners during the funeral procession in Tehran and directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region

Mourners prayed together with Khamenei whose voice cracked as he prayed over the flag-draped coffin.

Such public displays of intense grief are common among Shiite Muslims, who hold martyrs in the highest esteem. It also signals deep respect for the deceased.

The funeral showcased the depth of the bond Khamenei had with the slain general and gave insight into how Soleimani's death is being felt personally by the supreme leader.

Some mourners shouted 'Death to America' and burned US and Israeli flags as the coffins of Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader who also died in the drone strike were passed over their heads.

Iranian state TV put the crowd size at 'millions,' although that number could not be verified.

The scale of the crowds in Tehran mirrored those who turned out in 1989 for the funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic.

Soleimani will lie in state at Tehran's famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him. He will eventually be buried in his hometown of Kerman.

Mourners marched towards the university, a key artery in Tehran, and formed a sea of black along Enghelab Street dotted with red Shiite flags and white signs.

The coffin of Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was also killed in Friday's attack, was draped in the Iraqi flag and passed over the crowds alongside Soleimani's casket.

'We must give a crushing response,' said one of the mourners, a 61-year-old businessman who gave his name as Afkhami.

Iranians set a US and Israeli flag on fire during Monday's funeral procession for military commander Qasem Soleiman

Mourners gather in Tehran to pay their respects to a military commander who was hailed as a hero by many Iranians

The flag-draped coffin of Qassem Soleimani is passed over the heads of mourners at his funeral in the centre of Tehran today

'We must target whatever military base they have in the region. We must attack all that are in the range of our missiles.'

One poster held by a mourner read: 'It is our right to seek a harsh revenge,' echoing comments by Iranian military and political leaders.

Washington regards Soleimani as a terrorist leader who was plotting against Americans and had the blood of thousands on his hands through his work with Iranian proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

But many Iranians considered Soleimani, a decorated veteran of the eight-year war with Iraq, a national hero, particularly for mobilising Shi'ite Muslim groups in Iraq to help crush the militant Sunni jihadists of ISIS.

To Iran's supreme leader, Soleimani was a loyal aide who conferred with him often and cemented Tehran's footprint far beyond the country's borders, helping to preserve and advance the principles of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought the Shiite leadership to power.

Soleimani was also close with Khamenei's children and the supreme leader had been photographed embracing him in public. The Ayatollah made a rare visit to Soleimani's home the day he was killed to offer condolences to his grieving widow and grown children.

Their relationship was so close that Khamenei was photographed more than once embracing Soleimani in ways that are customary in Iran for fathers and their beloved sons.

Unlike other military commanders in the Revolutionary Guard Corps., the 62-year-old general answered only to the 80-year-old Khamenei.

Khamenei so revered him that he awarded the general Iran's highest military order in March. IWhen pinning the medal on Soleimani, the Iranian leader said he hoped God would reward the general and help him live a blissful life that ends with martyrdom.

Protesters staged a symbolic 'execution' of a Donald Trump effigy during the funeral ceremony of Qassem Soleimani

Iranian state media said 'millions' of people had gathered in Tehran to mourn Soleimani's death in scenes not witnessed since the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989

Soleimani (pictured) was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport on Friday, shocking the Islamic republic and sending tensions spiralling in the Middle East

'Of course, not any time soon,' Khamenei said, adding that the 'Islamic Republic needs him for years to come.'

And in death, Soleimani has received what no man before him has in modern Iran. His funeral processions have been spread over several days and cities, marking the first time Iran has ever honored a single man with such ceremonies. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such an honor after his death in 1989.

One funeral organiser has called on every Iranian to donate money towards an $80million bounty on Trump's head, according to Iranian television.

On Friday Khamenei vowed 'severe revenge' as he declared three days of mourning.

Esmail Qaani, who has succeeded Soleimani as commander of the Revolutionary Quards' powerful Quds Force, also swore revenge in an interview with state TV which was aired today.

'God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken,' he said.

'We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region.'

American forces are braced for retaliation and the US-led coalition against ISIS said in a statement yesterday that it was pausing its fight against the jihadists to shore up its own defences.

US bases in the region are shoring up their defences and there are also fears that Iran will harass shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which is critical to the world's oil supply.

The global benchmark for crude oil rose above $70 a barrel on Monday for the first time in over three months, with jitters rising over the escalating military tensions.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and Soleimani's long-time lieutenant and successor Esmail Qaani stand by the coffin of the military commander who died on Friday

Soleimani's successor Esmail Qaani cries over the coffin of his assassinated predecessor during the funeral in Tehran today

Khamenei stands at the front of mourners in Tehran today as hundreds of thousands of Iranians turned out to pay tribute

One Iranian MP also warned of an attack on the White House while an adviser to Hassan Rouhani posted a list of Trump-owned properties in a hint of a possible reprisal.

A former head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards also threatened on Sunday to turn the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv 'to dust' if the US attacks targets in Iran.

Last night Iranian state TV said the country would no longer respect any of the nuclear limits in the 2015 deal, which Trump abandoned last year but which European powers are desperately trying to preserve.

Under the deal, Tehran had pledged to reduce its nuclear capacities for several years, including by capping its enrichment of uranium at 3.67 percent, far below the more than 90 percent required for a nuclear weapon.

Iran has already overstepped some of the limits since Trump pulled out of the deal last year, which include restrictions on Iran's supply of centrifuges and the level to which uranium can be enriched.

Last night two rockets landed near the US embassy in Baghdad, the second night in a row that the heavily fortified Green Zone was hit and the 14th time over the last two months that US installations have been targeted.

Friday's drone attack was ordered by President Donald Trump, who said Soleimani had been planning an 'imminent' attack on Americans in Iraq.

In a series of sabre-rattling tweets, Trump has warned that the US will 'quickly and fully strike back, and perhaps in a disproportionate manner' if Iran aims fire at US targets.

The president said America had lined up attacks on 52 targets 'important to Iran and the Iranian culture', representing the number of Americans held hostage at the US embassy in Tehran after a raid in 1979.

Talking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington last night, Trump stood by his targeting of cultural sites despite claims of potential war crimes.

Iranians set a US and an Israeli flag on fire during a funeral procession in Tehran today

Iranian troops parade behind a smoke screen from buring incense as crowds gather in Tehran today to pay homage to slain military commander Qasem Soleimani

'They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way,' Trump said.

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, who is running for her party's presidential nomination, said Trump was 'threatening to commit war crimes'.

The president's critics have also accused him of launching the attack on Soleimani to boost his popularity before he faces an impeachment trial in the coming weeks.

In Britain, a spokesman for prime minister Boris Johnson issued a warning over Trump's plans, saying there were international conventions in place to stop the destruction of cultural heritage.

Trump has also warned he will demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iran's neighbour Iraq or impose 'sanctions like they've never seen before' if Baghdad goes through with expelling U.S. troops.

The sanctions would make those on Iran look 'tame', Trump said, adding: 'We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there... we're not leaving unless they pay us back for it.'

Yesterday the Iraqi parliament backed a recommendation by the prime minister for all foreign troops to be ordered out - a move which Washington fears could allow an ISIS resurgence.

Iraq's rival Shi'ite leaders, including those opposed to Iranian influence, have united since Friday's attack in calling for the expulsion of U.S. troops.

There are around 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, deployed after ISIS seized Mosul in 2014.

Today German foreign minister Heiko Maas said threatening Iraq was 'not very helpful'. Germany has a small contingent of troops there training Iraqi forces.

Monday's procession in Tehran comes after Soleimani's remains were returned to Iran on Sunday.

The Iranian general's body was marched through the streets of Baghdad, before it was flown to the city of Ahvaz in southwest Iran, where around one million mourners gathered to pay their respects.

A video of the journey posted on social media on Sunday five cardboard boxes resting on seats in the cabin of a passenger jet rather than being loaded into the cargo or baggage compartments.

The Revolutionary Guards said the overwhelming number of mourners in Mashhad forced the cancellation of a ceremony that had been planned in Tehran on Sunday night.

Soleimani had long been considered a lethal foe by US lawmakers and presidents, with Trump saying he should have been killed 'many years ago.'

Tensions between Iran and the West had been ratcheting up for months, peaking last summer when a series of Gulf tankers were hit by mysterious explosions which Washington blamed on Iran.

Iranian army cadets hold up posters of military commander Qassem Soleimani as they march during his funeral in Tehran

Following massive funeral marches in Iraq, his body was flown to Ahvaz, Iran. Military personnel carry Soleimani's casket in Iran. A tide of mourners packed the streets of the Iranian city of Ahvaz Sunday to pay respects to the top general

The last straw was an attack by a pro-Iran mob on the US embassy in Baghdad this week, where demonstrators burned the entrance to the compound and besieged diplomats inside.

Tributes have poured in from across the Middle East and beyond for Soleimani, who was seen as the Islamic republic's second most powerful person after the supreme leader.

Iraq's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on Sunday offered his condolences to Khamenei, according to the supreme leader's official website.

'Soleimani's martyrdom caused great sorrow,' said the statement.

'His unique role over the years in fighting with Daesh elements in Iraq, and the great pains he endured in this path is unforgettable,' it said, referring to the Islamic State group.

President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan also paid his respects in a telephone call to Rouhani.

A statement from the Afghan presidential palace said Ghani assured Rouhani that 'Afghan soil will never be used against any other country'.

Iran could fall back on its regional militant allies or proxies to launch a retaliatory attack, such as Iraqi militiamen, Lebanon's Hezbollah or Yemen's Houthi rebels.

The Revolutionary Guard also routinely harasses U.S. Navy vessels in Persian Gulf and surrounding waterways, while Iran has surface-to-sea missile batteries along its coast as well.

Last night the leaders of Britain, France and Germany appealed for a de-escalation.

'We call on all the players involved to show utmost restraint and responsibility,' they said in a joint statement.

Boris Johnson is gathering key ministers for crisis talks today as the Iran standoff threatens to spiral out of control - with threats from Tehran to kill British troops.

Mourners carry mock coffins with images of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Iranian mourners crowded in to touch the casket and express their grief at the death of the powerful general

The PM is back in Downing Street after his Caribbean break, but finds himself walking a tightrope between Donald Trump and other allies who want to ease tensions.

Breaking his silence last night, Mr Johnson said Britain 'will not lament' the death of Qassem Soleimani, saying the genreal had played a role in the deaths of thousands of innocent people and was a 'threat to all our interests'.

But he also appealed to both Trump and Iran for calm, urging both sides to encourage de-escalation, after a senior Iranian commander Iranian issued a chilling warning that British forces could be hit.

Today the PM's spokesman called Iran's move away from the 2015 nuclear deal 'concerning' and cautioned against the destruction of cultural heritage but said countries such as America a right to act in 'self-defence'.

A former US ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria said Iranian general Qassem Soleimani 'deserved' to die - but criticised the decision not to inform Britain about the strike.

Ryan Crocker told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Literally hundreds of coalition soldiers and marines, mostly Americans, were killed by improvised explosive devices that were manufactured in Iran, used by the Iraqi Shia militia trained by Soleimani, in very deliberate targeting.

'Britain too lost a number of soldiers in the same attacks. If anybody out there deserved killing, it was Qassem Soleimani.'

But Mr Crocker said he was 'concerned' about the White House's failure to warn allies of its controversial decision to kill Mr Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad last week.

He said: 'Britain is and has been for a number of years our foremost ally. When we take an action like this it can have great consequences for our allies. We, I think, owe it to them to consult in advance.'
Angela Rayner launched her deputy leadership campaign in Stockport this morning (pictured) by declaring her support for Rebecca Long Bailey to become leader

Jeremy Corbyn's successor as Labour leader will be unveiled on April 4 - as Rebecca Long-Bailey announced she would run.

The party's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) ruled that voting for the new leader would run until April 2.

The move fires the official starting gun in the race to replace Mr Corbyn after he last month oversaw Labour's worst general election defeat since 1935.

It also means the hard Left veteran, 70, will remain a lame duck leader for the next three months.

In contrast the Tory leadership campaign last year lasted six weeks.

A Labour Party spokesman said: 'Our national executive committee has agreed the timetable and process for the leadership and deputy leadership elections.

'The ballot will run from February 21 to April 2, with the results announced on Saturday April 4.

'We are by far the largest political party in the UK with well over half a million members. We want as many of our members and supporters to take part, so it has been designed to be open, fair and democratic.'

Sir Keir Starmer, Lisa Nandy, Jess Phillips, Emily Thornberry and Clive Lewis have already declared they will stand for the top job.

Rebecca Long Bailey confirmed last night she would also stand.

Announcing her bid in the socialist magazine Tribune, she said the election result was devastating and the party needs a proud socialist leader.

Miss Long Bailey also threw her support behind policies trumpeted by Jeremy Corbyn. I dont just agree with the policies, Ive spent the last four years writing them.

Shadow education secretary Ms Rayner, 39, (right) officially endorsed her London flatmate, who is seen as the current hard Left leadership's choice of successor

Mr Corbyn, arriving for the NEC meeting this morning, is standing down in March after overseeing Labour's worst election result since 1935

Salford and Eccles MP Ms Long Bailey has yet to confirm she is standing and is facing a late challenge from party chairman Ian Lavery to be the left-wing candidate

Despite Labours crushing defeat, she said: Under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn weve drawn upon the collective knowledge and experience of that movement to develop a radical, ambitious socialist vision for the future.

She added: With the climate crisis spiralling and the far-right on the march, we must regroup for the struggles ahead. Our task is to build a winning vision of a socialist future, and this task has never been more urgent.

But former minister Yvette Cooper ruled herself out of the race, saying that 'I recognise there are many in our party who wont see me as the person to pull all sides of the party together following Jeremys departure,' in an article for the Guardian.

How does the Labour leadership election work? Under the terms of the contest, candidates need to secure the nominations of least 10 per cent of the party's MPs and MEPs - which is now 22 after the general and European election defeats last year. Those who succeed will then go forward to the second stage when they must win the nominations of five per cent of the almost 300 constituency Labour parties (CLPs) OR three Labour affiliates - of which at least two must be trade unions - comprising at least five per cent of the fully paid-up affiliate membership. Applications to become a registered supporter open at 5pm on January 14 and close at 5pm on January 16. The freeze date for new members to join and be eligible to vote will be January 20 in the postal ballot. Under the timetable set out by the NEC, nominations from MPs and MEPs will open on January 7, closing at 2.30pm on January 13. The second stage of nominations from constituency parties and affiliates then opens on January 15 and runs to February 14. The ballot of members and registered supporters opens the following week on February 21, closing at noon on Thursday April 2. A special conference will be held two days later to unveil the new party leader. Advertisement

It came as Angela Rayner appealed for Labour Party unity as she officially backed her friend Ms Long Bailey to replace Mr Corbyn - a move which could further fragment the troubled opposition.

Shadow education secretary Ms Rayner, 39, officially endorsed her London flatmate, who is seen as the current hard Left leadership's choice of successor as she made her own pitch to run for deputy leader.

Salford and Eccles MP Ms Long Bailey has yet to confirm she is standing and is facing a late challenge from party chairman Ian Lavery to be the left-wing candidate.

But her emergence as the Corbynista choice has sparked fears among party moderates that the ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) could try to skew the leadership race in her favour when it meets this afternoon.

The meeting is believed to have decided that the new leader will be unveiled on April 4, giving Mr Corbyn three more months in the top job.

Launching her deputy leadership campaign in Stockport this morning, Ashton-under-Lyne MP Ms Rayner rejected the idea put forward by former deputy leader Tom Watson that the pair were a 'continuity Corbynism' ticket and that Ms Long Bailey was 'her own woman'.

Ms Rayner added: 'I believe this deputy leadership election is our chance to debate what went wrong, and that a core role of the next deputy leader will be to put it right.

'It is why I want the leadership of our party to be a team effort. I will be quite straightforward: I will be voting for my friend Rebecca Long-Bailey if she stands for the leadership.

'But our collective leadership must go far wider than simply who is elected to these positions. It is why I want us to have an honest, but friendly, conversation with each other. And at the end of it, a united party that starts winning elections for us all.'

She later told Sky News: 'Divided parties don't win general elections. We have to come together and heal these divisions and really take it to the Tories.'

Ms Long Bailey later returned the love on Twitter, writing: 'Great to see my good friend Angela Rayner launch her campaign for Deputy Leader.

'A committed trade unionist and fighter for equality, she's got my full support.'

The NEC met in central London this afternoon to hammer out the rules and timetable for the contest.

Rayner lashes out at the Westminster establishment for telling her 'I didnt know my place' Angela Rayner highlighted her humble roots today as she launched her deputy leadership bid on the housing estate where she grew up. The straight-talking Mancunian told a select audience in Stockport of the hard time she received when she was elected, accusing people of telling her 'I didnt know my place'. Ms Rayner has previously drawn heavily on her time as a one-time struggling teenage mother. The married mother-of-three was just 16 when she had her first son, Ryan, and has told how becoming pregnant so young 'saved' her. Her teenage relationship with Ryan's father ended quickly and she later married Unison official Mark Rayner. She proudly welcomed her own granddaughter at the age of just 37 with a tweet jokingly referring to herself as 'Grangela'. Speaking today she said: 'I wanted to make this speech here, on the estate where I grew up and lived for most of my life. 'I talk about my background because for too long I felt I wasn't good enough; I felt ashamed of who I was. It took me time for that shame to turn into pride. 'I want children growing up here now to know they are worth as much as anyone else. 'And I want the world of Westminster politics to hear that too.' Advertisement

It's believed that new members will be able to join the party in the next two weeks and vote in the election, after paying a joining fee of 25.

There had been fears that the NEC - a body which is controlled by allies of the current Labour leader - could move to 'stitch up' the contest.

The committee could do that by making it more difficult for new members to join the party by increasing the cost of doing so or by imposing a tight or even retrospective deadline for joining to stop new members from being eligible to vote.

Moderate candidates in the race like Sir Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips believe new members - or returning ones who quit under Mr Corbyn's leadership - who have joined Labour since its general election defeat could be crucial to the outcome.

Ms Long Bailey, the shadow business secretary is yet to formally announce her candidacy for the top job but she is believed to have the backing of the current leadership and is viewed as the candidate most likely to continue with so-called Corbynism.

Mr Watson, who frequently found himself at odds with Mr Corbyn and his allies, warned Labour members against the prospect of choosing another leader from the party's Corbynite left.

'The one that I worry about - but I don't know what she stands for - I mean, when I look at Rebecca Long-Bailey, she's really the continuity candidate,' he told Sky News.

'She sort of stands for Corbynism in its purest sense and that's perfectly legitimate but we have lost two elections with that play.

'But she hasn't said anything yet; as far as I know she has not formally announced and it might be that she chimes a different note in her opening bid and that she wants to take the party in a different direction and she's very candid about what went wrong.'

She later told Sky News: 'Divided parties don't win general elections. We have to come together and heal these divisions and really take it to the Tories'

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott arriving at Labour headquarters in Westminster today ahead of the NEC meeting

Ian Lavery, who is considering running for leader, said he expected the NEC to come up with the 'right solution' during its discussion on the leadership contest

Opposition chief whip Nick Brown, who attends the NEC but does not vote, said 'No' when asked whether he feared a 'stitch-up'

Jeremy Corbyn, pictured after he retained his Islington North seat at the election, will step down as Labour leader in the coming months after leading his party to a crushing defeat

Jess Phillips, pictured on The Andrew Marr Show yesterday, has warned Labour's NEC against trying to skew the leadership contest in favour of a hard-Left candidate

Ms Phillips, the MP for Birmingham Yardley, earlier warned the NEC against stopping new party members from voting in the leadership contest.

Shamed ex-MP Keith Vaz returns to play role in the Labour election Shameless ex-MP Keith Vaz returned to Westminster to play a role in shaping the upcoming Labour leadership battle today, weeks after quitting the Commons in disgrace over a cocaine and rent boys scandal. The 63-year-old (above) attended today's meeting of the party's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC), which is due to decide on the rules and format of the battle to replace Jeremy Corbyn. Mr Vaz did not run in his Leicester East seat in the December 12 general election, having been handed a six-month suspension from the Commons after he was caught offering to buy Class A drugs for male sex workers. But he is understood to have retained his seat on the NEC as a representative of ethnic minority party members. Former Europe minister Mr Vaz, was found by the House of Commons Standards Committee last year to have committed a 'very serious breach' of code of conduct for MPs. The Sunday Mirror reported in September 2016 that Vaz, posing as an industrial washing machine salesman called Jim, invited two male prostitutes into his flat to engage in paid-for sex and offered to pay for cocaine for another man to use. Advertisement

Asked yesterday if she trusted the committee not to stitch up the contest, Ms Phillips said: 'Do you know what? I absolutely do trust because the reality is is that at the moment there is a huge amount of buzz around this contest, for lots of different reasons and some of it is nice things being said online and not so nice things being said online.

'But I think that actually in the public glare, lots of people joining the Labour Party, for the NEC to then say we are not interested in you [being included in the leadership contest] that would look so incredibly bad for the Labour Party in a time when it needs to stop looking just inside itself and look outwards.'

Mr Corbyn announced his intention to stand down as leader in the immediate aftermath of Labour's disastrous election results which saw the party sink to just 202 MPs.

He will remain in post until his successor is appointed with the NEC expected to announce that the contest will start tomorrow and then conclude in late March.

Meanwhile, there could be a second showdown at the NEC today amid reports that allies of Mr Corbyn want to shake-up the structure of the party to further secure the hard-Left's grip on the Labour machine before Mr Corbyn leaves his post.

The candidates who have announced they will stand in the contest have tried to stress how they would be different to Mr Corbyn.

Ms Phillips yesterday would not commit to re-nationalising all key utilities and said the party's free broadband proposal was unbelievable.

She also told The Andrew Marr Show she would 'wait and see' how Brexit turns out, but hinted a return to the EU would be possible under her leadership.

Sir Keir, the shadow Brexit secretary, told the same programme that Labour lost the public's trust over a lack of clarity on Brexit, anti-Semitism, and a 'feeling that the manifesto was overloaded'.

Sir Keir Starmer, pictured in Stevenage yesterday, is the current favourite to be the next Labour leader

Rebecca Long-Bailey is yet to announce her candidacy but she is viewed as Mr Corbyn's preferred choice for the top job

But he insisted that 'we shouldn't retreat from the radical' as he outlined his vision for the future.

Ms Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, said the 'dreadful' election result was partly because the manifesto 'just wasn't convincing because their was too much in it'.

Ms Nandy, the MP for Wigan, also said the main factor in Labour's failure was a lack of trust from voters.
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London: Police are braced for dozens of fresh victims to come forward after an Indonesian student was unmasked as Britain's most prolific rapist, responsible for attacks on at least 195 men in Manchester.

Reynhard Sinaga, 36, preyed on young straight men in bars and clubs close to his city centre apartment, spiking their drinks with the party drug GHB before attacking them while they slept and filming the rapes on his mobile phone.

Following four trials - which could only be reported for the first time on Monday - Sinaga was convicted of 159 sex attacks, including 136 rapes on 48 victims.
Eric Chewning, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, poses for his official portrait in the Army portrait studio at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., Feb. 2, 2018.

WASHINGTON  Eric Chewning, chief of staff to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, is stepping down at the end of the month, the latest in a series of high-profile Pentagon departures.

Chewning, a former Army intelligence officer and combat veteran, managed the day-to-day operations in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. During his three-year tenure, he worked for four Pentagon chiefs.

"I'm grateful for Eric's professionalism, judgment, and leadership over the last seven months as I moved into the Secretary of Defense role," Esper said in a statement. "In an incredibly demanding job, Eric has been a source of calm and tireless work. He will be missed by all. We wish him all the best upon his return to the private sector."

He'll be replaced by Jen Stewart, the top Republican staffer on the House Armed Services Committee, according to a statement from Pentagon press secretary Alyssa Farah.

Stewart also served as a senior advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, and as the national security advisor to Speakers of the House Paul Ryan and John Boehner.

"I have known Jen for years and I'm excited to bring her into the Department," Esper wrote. "Her deep expertise on national security issues will be a great addition to our team as we continue implementing the National Defense Strategy."

Chewning's move to leave the Pentagon comes on the heels of several other high-profile departures, including that of the director of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the acting undersecretary for personnel and readiness and the assistant secretary for Asian and Pacific security affairs.

Chewning was named in recent unredacted emails showing Pentagon officials' concern over the legality surrounding the White House's action to withhold military assistance to Ukraine, the focal issue of President Donald Trump's impeachment.

The emails, published by Just Security, a blog associated with the New York University School of Law, have not been verified for their authenticity by CNBC or NBC News.

The emails showed that Chewning informed acting Pentagon comptroller Elaine McCusker on Aug. 27 that defense contractors were asking questions about the delayed Ukrainian funds. Two days later, Chewning wrote that Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were going to discuss the aid money with Trump.

"We should wait on communicating anything more privately," he wrote in an Aug. 30 email to McCusker.
Ten central trade unions on Monday said around 25 crore people will participate in a nationwide strike on January 8 to protest against the government's "anti-people" policies.

Trade unions INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF, UTUC along with various sectoral independent federations and associations had adopted a declaration in September last to go on a nationwide strike on January 8, 2020.

"We expect participation of not less than 25 crore of working people in the forthcoming National General Strike on January 8, 2020, to be followed by many more actions seeking reversal of the anti-worker, anti-people, anti-national policies of the Government.

"The Ministry of Labour has failed to assure on any of the demands of workers which called a meeting on January 2, 2020. The attitude of the government is that of contempt towards labour as we construe from its policies and actions," the 10 central trade unions (CTUs) said in a joint statement.

About 60 organisations of students and elected office bearers of some universities have also decided to join the strike with an agenda to raise voice against increased fee structure and commercialization of education, it said.

The trade unions condemned the JNU violence and similar incidents in other university campuses and expressed their solidarity with students and teachers all over India.

The unions also expressed displeasure over no Indian Labour Conference being held since July 2015, codification of labour laws and privatisation of PSUs.

"As many as 12 airports are already sold out to private hands, 100 per cent sale of Air India is already decided, decision to sell BPCL taken, BSNL-MTNL merger announced and 93,600 telecom workers already thrown out of jobs under the garb of VRS (voluntary retirement scheme)," it added.

The unions are also against privatisation in railways, corporatisation of 49 defence production units and forced merger of banks.

Joint platform of more than 175 farmers and agricultural workers unions will extend its support to workers' demands and observe January 8 as Gramin Bharart Bandh along with their charter of demands, they added.
US, Iran Trade Threats Following Iran General's Killing

By VOA News January 05, 2020

The leaders of the U.S. and Iran lobbed threats at each other following the death of a top Iranian general who was killed Friday in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq's capital.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promised harsh revenge following the killing of Qassem Soleimani.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to attack multiple Iranian locations if Iran takes retaliatory measures for Soleimani's death.

Trump tweeted that the U.S. has identified 52 sites in Iran that the U.S. would strike "very fast and very hard" should Iran attack any U.S. personnel or assets. The number 52 represents the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago.

"This is not how America should behave and would likely violate international conventions and norms," Larry Pfeiffer, the director of the Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security at George Mason University, told VOA. Pfeiffer, who is a former senior director of the White House Situation Room said Trump's threats "sound like something that would be issued by an autocratic regime like North Korea."

"When the U.S. president makes it open season on cultural sites, he offers false justification to adversaries to do the same," Pfeiffer said.

Trump spoke Friday about the killing of Soleimani for the first time since U.S. defense officials confirmed the Iranian general had been killed in a U.S. airstrike.

Trump said Soleimani's killing was long overdue.

"We took action last night to stop a war," Trump said at his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. "However, the Iranian regime's aggression in the region, including the use of proxy fighters to destabilize its neighbors must end and it must end now."

Trump maintained Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, Iraqis and Iranians, saying the longtime regime general "made the death of innocent people his sick passion" while helping to run a terror network that reached across the Middle East to Europe and the Americas.

Iraqi officials said another airstrike early Saturday hit a convoy of Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary network, killing at least five people. Iraqi state media blamed the strike on the U.S., which has not confirmed the attack.

Analysts say any moves that Iran would take would likely come after the three days of mourning that were declared Friday.

On Saturday, the White House formally notified Congress of Friday's drone strike, two senior congressional aides told Reuters. Under the War Powers Act, the notification is required within 48 hours of introducing U.S. forces into an armed conflict that could lead to war.

The classified document was sent to congressional leadership, the aides said. It would likely describe the Trump administration's justifications for the strike against Soleimani, as well as intelligence information behind the decision and the expected scope of the military involvement. It is not known if the information will be released to the public.

Many Democrats in Congress have criticized the strike, saying Trump failed to notify lawmakers ahead of time or seek approval for the attack.

U.S. Democratic lawmakers question whether the attack was intended to deflect attention from Trump's expected impeachment trial.

Amid the escalating tensions in the region, the Pentagon said more than 3,500 additional U.S. troops would be dispatched to Kuwait, joining some 14,000 U.S. troops already in the region.

NATO, which has been training Iraqi security forces on how to prevent the Islamic State militant group from regaining strength, has suspended its training missions in Iraq.

A U.S. military official told VOA that the military is aware of reports of Hezbollah warning Iraqi forces to pull back from U.S. forces, but they have not seen any changes to Iraqi positions.

Soleimani's body arrived in Iran Sunday. Thousands of people took to the streets of the southwestern city of Ahvaz to mourn the general who was the leader of Iran's elite Quds Force. He was Iran's most distinguished military commander and the architect of Iran's growing influence in the Middle East.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Baghdad Saturday to mourn the deaths of Soleimani and the Iraqi military leaders, who were killed in the airstrike, which has significantly increased tensions in the volatile Middle East region.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi joined marchers in the funeral procession, many of whom chanted slogans such as "Death to America" and "America is the Great Satan."

Soleimani's body is scheduled to go to Iran's holy Shi'ite city of Mashhad and then to Tehran Sunday, before he is buried Tuesday in his hometown of Kerman.

VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.

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Khloe Kardashian has offered her support as Australia's bushfire crisis rages on.

Taking to Instagram Stories on Sunday, the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star, 35, said her 'thoughts and prayers' were with the country.

She also highlighted the devastating effects of the fires, including the lives lost and damage to the ecosystem.

'Thoughts and prayers go out to Australia': Khloe Kardashian, 35, (pictured) took to Instagram Stories on Sunday to offer her support as the Australian bushfires continue to rage

'Our thoughts and prayers go out to Australia. We pray to my almighty Lord to extinguish the horrific fires,' Khloe wrote alongside an image of the country on fire.

'We pray for all those who are helping control the fires, who have donated and for the recovery of the ecosystem.'

Khloe also shared statistics including homes destroyed and animals killed, adding that the 'world needs to wake up' with regards to climate change.

Support: 'Our thoughts and prayers go out to Australia. We pray to my almighty Lord to extinguish the horrific fires,' Khloe wrote alongside an image of the country on fire

Devastating effects: Khloe also shared statistics including homes destroyed and animals killed, adding that the 'world needs to wake up' with regards to climate change

Australia continues to battle raging fires across New South Wales and Victoria.

An 'unprecedented' state of disaster was declared in Victoria giving the government special powers - used for the first time ever - to impose forced evacuations and give emergency services the right to take over properties.

Neighbouring New South Wales also announced a week-long state of emergency on January 2.

Crisis: Australia continues to battle raging fires across New South Wales and Victoria. Pictured: A firefighter battling a blaze in Shoalhaven, NSW

Devastation: The national bushfire death toll has reached 24, while more than 1,500 homes have been destroyed. Pictured: Lake Conjola, NSW on December 31

The national bushfire death toll has reached 24, millions of animals have been killed and more than 1,500 homes have been destroyed.

The conditions prompted Prime Minister Scott Morrison to send in 3,000 Australian Defence Force reserves to help in the bushfire recovery.

Celebrities Pink, Selena Gomez and Nicole Kidman have all pledged donations.

If you'd like to donate to the Australian Red Cross Disaster Relief, click here.

To donate to the St Vincent de Paul Society appeal for bushfire victims, click here.

For donations to Victoria's Country Fire Authority click here and here for the NSW Rural Fire Service.

To donate to Foodbank click here and here for the World Wildlife Fund.
Hundreds of thousands of Iranians poured onto the streets yesterday to mourn General Qasem Soleimani as Iraq's parliament voted to expel US forces from the country over his assassination in Baghdad.

The momentous Iraqi vote came as Iran said it would ditch all limitations on its uranium enrichment programme under the 2015 nuclear deal in response to the killing.

The US-led coalition fighting Isil in Iraq halted operations because of fears of revenge attacks by Iranian-allied groups.

Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Iraq's acting prime minister, told an extraordinary session of parliament that the killing of General Soleimani was an "unacceptable" violation of sovereignty and asked for MPs' backing to end the US-led coalition's stay in the country.

The resolution passed despite a boycott by most Kurdish and Sunni MPs.

The coalition is in Iraq on the basis of a letter of request from the Iraqi government in 2014 to help fight Isil. It was not immediately clear how quickly the troops would be asked to leave.

Yesterday's vote will be seen as a posthumous victory for General Soleimani, who had directed a proxy war against Western forces in the Middle East for years.

The influential leader of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was killed on Friday in a US airstrike as his convoy left Baghdad airport.

Expand Close FEARED LEADER: Qasem Soleimani in his IRGC uniform. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File / Facebook

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Whatsapp FEARED LEADER: Qasem Soleimani in his IRGC uniform. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File

American officials say they killed the general, who was in charge of Iran's main expeditionary covert warfare unit and is believed to have co-ordinated terrorist attacks across the region, to prevent attacks he was allegedly planning against US personnel.

Iran has described the attack as the illegal murder of a national hero and has vowed to retaliate, raising fears of a regional war with the US and its allies.

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An honour guard paraded as General Soleimani's remains were flown to the south-western Iranian city of Ahvaz, a key battlefield in the Iran-Iraq war in which he first rose to prominence, early yesterday morning.

The flight also carried the bodies of other Iranian Revolutionary Guards and an Iraqi militia commander.

State television showed vast crowds of people, many dressed in black and beating their chests, thronging the caskets as they were driven slowly through the city.

General Soleimani's body was flown to Mashhad, a shrine city in north-east Iran, for another public procession later yesterday. It will be taken to Tehran and the holy city of Qom today before being finally buried in his hometown of Kerman tomorrow.

The scale of the crowds, which clogged streets for miles, was said by witnesses to dwarf anything seen in Iran since the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, in 1989.

Although Iran's regime is known to order people on to the streets for pro-government demonstrations, they seldom muster a few thousand.

Military tensions continued to rise across the region over the weekend as Iranian officials and allied groups vowed to take revenge.

Mohsen Rezaei, a former commander of the IRGC, said yesterday that Iran's retaliation would also include the Israeli city of Haifa and Israeli military installations.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, of the Iran-allied Lebanese militant group Hizbollah, told a memorial service in Beirut that US military assets were "fair targets".

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A rocket fell on Saturday evening inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, where the US Embassy is located, and two were fired at the Balad airbase north of the capital, where US troops are stationed.

Mr Trump said the US would hit back if Americans or US assets were targeted by Iran.

But he was immediately accused of planning to commit war crimes when he said on Twitter that he had drawn up a list of 52 Iranian sites "at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD."

He stirred further controversy with a tweet threatening "disproportionate" retaliation. "These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any US person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!" ( Daily Telegraph, London)
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Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Monday that as good neighbors, friends, comrades and partners, China and Laos enjoy a shared future.

Xi made the remarks when meeting with visiting Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith in Beijing.

He called on the two countries to work "hand in hand and side by side" to jointly safeguard the common interests of both countries and those of the developing countries.
A round-the-clock security presence has been introduced at a cemetery on the northside of Cork city after a shocking vandalism attack caused heartbreak for families.

Security guards will patrol St Catherines graveyard in Kilcully 24-hours a day for the foreseeable future as gardai continue their investigations into the desecration of several graves at the historic cemetery overnight last Thursday.

Up to 20 graves were targeted  several headstones were kicked over, statues were beheaded, and various grave ornaments and vases were smashed. Most of the headstones can be repaired.

Detectives are closely examining CCTV footage from cameras which cover the cemetery car-park and gates in a bid to identify the culprit or culprits. They are exploring a possible connection between last weeks attack and a string of previous targeted attacks over recent months on a handful of graves and plots owned by members of the Travelling community. The previous attacks are believed to be linked to a local feud.

However, last weeks incident is considered to be a serious escalation of the suspected feud with headstones and plots completely unconnected to Traveller families targeted and damaged.

Crowds of people have been visiting the cemetery in recent days to check on their loved ones graves and to assess any possible damage. Many expressed the hurt and outrage on local radio yesterday, including one caller to the Neil Prendeville Show on Corks RedFM who said her brother has offered a 5,000 reward for information that could lead to the identification of the vandals responsible.

Elderly rights campaigner, Paddy O'Brien, whose wife is buried in the cemetery, visited the graveyard over the weekend and said he has never seen so many people upset: "It's an awful sight. The place was packed. I'm going to hundreds of funerals here and I've never seen so many cars. I've never seen so many people upset, crying with tears."

"It's appalling. I was looking at one grave, I spoke to the family. Her wish was that she would be buried under a tree. The whole thing is gone, destroyed. They've taken away the stone. There are families here crying. My own wife is buried here. I spoke to a man who came down from Dublin to see his aunt's and uncle's grave. He was a fine man, in his 50s, but the poor man was upset," he added.

A spokesperson for the City Council, which manages the cemetery, said they have provided CCTV footage to the gardai to assist in their investigation and a 24-hr fixed security presence will be in place at the cemetery for the foreseeable future.

He said: There have been a number of smaller incidents of vandalism of graves in that cemetery over recent months but we have never seen anything on the scale of damage that we witnessed last Friday morning. It is very regrettable and understandably very upsetting for the families involved.
The assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Suleimani at Baghdad Airport by the Trump administration last Friday has brought Boris Johnsons UK Conservative government face to face with the real cost of aligning their post-Brexit strategy with Washington.

Whatever the qualms and concerns in British ruling circles as to its grave implications of war in the Middle East, the UK is already involvedas the closest ally of the USin a potential war against Iran.

Despite echoing statements from European leaders on the need to de-escalate the situation, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has confirmed that the UK will march in lockstep with Trumps war drive. Raab confirmed to Sky News Sunday that he would be meeting personally with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington this week. When asked if he would be taking a tough message in opposition to Iran, he replied, Were on the same page with our American partners; well continue to talk to them.

Lets be very clear: he [Suleimani] was a regional menace, and we understand the position that the Americans found themselves in, and they have a right to exercise self-defence. They have explained the basis on which that was done, and we are sympathetic to the situation they found themselves in, he added.

Britain has signed up to support the US in its latest reckless military adventure despite not even being consulted beforehand that the US was about to assassinate Suleimani.

The US State Department issued a statement Friday saying that Pompeo had phoned Raab and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to discuss the "defensive action to eliminate" Suleimani. He thanked them for their "recent statements" recognizing the continuing aggressive threat from Iran and its Quds force that Suleimani commanded.

However, Pompeos subsequent tweet confirmed that Raab was only told after the event, saying he had discussed with @DominicRaab the recent decision to take defensive action to eliminate Qassem Suleimani. [emphasis added]

Johnson has spent the last 12 days on vacation in Mustique and was not told about Trumps plans. The Sunday Mirror reported, Britain was given no advance notice of the attackand reportedly only became aware it was underway because British troops are stationed alongside US forces in Baghdad.

It added that Boris Johnson reportedly uttered an abrupt, four-letter response when he was told of Donald Trump s drone strike on a top Iranian general: F***.

In Johnsons absence, the government has held three meetings of its emergency Cobra Committee, with warships and soldiers, including special forces, and other military resources being sent to the region and readied for war.

Defence secretary Ben Wallace authorised two Royal Navy warships already located in the Persian Gulfdestroyer HMS Defender and frigate HMS Montroseto begin close escort of oil tankers and other vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. The Times reported that upon the prime ministers arrival back in the UK Sunday, Defence chiefs will ask Johnson to decide whether to deploy up to eight RAF Typhoon jets based in Cyprus, a Sentinel spy plane and drones used over Syria to protect Britons from retaliatory attacks.

Newspapers noted that among the UKs military arsenal permanently stationed in the region is a Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarine armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Johnson will be presented with plans to send the soldiers heavier weapons and move them to secure the British embassy in Baghdadamid fears that Iranian proxies could storm the enclave to kill or abduct British citizens, the Sunday Times wrote.

Already 400 UK soldiers involved in training the Iraqi army have been moved into force protection mode, with intelligence officers warning Johnson that Britain could be soon dragged into an accidental war.

The Times cited a senior figure who said We have a plan A and a plan B and a break the glass plan if it all kicks off. Our forces in the region have been told to reorientate towards force protection. The troops could be asked to secure the embassy or the green zone in Baghdad.

It revealed that Soldiers from the Cyprus garrison of the Mercian Regiment and the Princess of Waless Royal Regiment are on standby for emergency operations across the Middle East.

The Mirror reported Saturday, It is understood around 50 members of the Special Air Service and the Navys Special Boat Service along with the Special Forces Support Group will be sent to Iraq to help any possible evacuation of Britons in the region.

It noted, There are at least 1,400 military and UK government civilian personnel in Iraq as part of Operation Shader which is the UK mission to help train Iraqi and Kurdish forces defeat Islamic State.

Raabs expression of support for the US came after Pompeo said on Saturday of Washingtons allies in the Middle East Theyve all been fantastic. And then talking to our partners in other places that havent been quite as good Frankly, the Europeans havent been as helpful as I wish that they could be. The Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did, what the Americans did, saved lives in Europe as well.

French President Emmanuel Macron went as far as telephoning Iraqs acting prime minister to state his support for its sovereigntya de facto statement opposing the US action that took place without Iraqs government being informed.

Pompeos was whipping into line figures within ruling circles in Britain and the media who urged de-escalation following the assassination.

Among these was Tory MP and former chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat, who said there was a pattern in the US administration not sharing information with its allies. Stating this was a matter of concern, he added, I have long believed the purpose of having allies is so we can surprise our enemies, not each other.

Tugendhat expresses the fear that Britains substantial interests in the Middle East are threatened by the US war plans. In Baghdad and the southern Iraqi city Basra, UK firms with substantial interests include the energy conglomerates BP and Shell, security company G4S and professional services operation Ernst & Young.

The divisions in the British ruling class was glaring in the conflicting editorials in the Financial Times, Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Telegraphthe latter a pro-Tory newspaper that advocated leaving the European Union and closer economic and military ties to the US post-Brexit.

The FT commented, The drumbeat of conflict between the US and Iran has become suddenly deafening Tehran will see it [the assassination] not just as a military body blow but tantamount to a declaration of war. Americas allies are disconcerted. Every move on the Middle East chessboard will now carry with it the serious risk of triggering a broader conflagration.

The Mail on Sunday warned, Americansand not just Americansare weary of being bogged down in blood and sand in Afghanistan and Iraq, for little obvious gain. Must we now prepare for a new confrontation in Iraq, or even in Iran itself? Could this conflict, in which Russia is very much on the other side, spill into Europe?

In contrast, the Telegraph, for which Johnson was a columnist before becoming prime minister, wrote, Britain should use the assassination of Qassm SuleimaniIrans terrorist-in-chiefto break away from EU foreign policy and cease legitimising this corrupt regime. Trump should have acted sooner and taken tough action last year when the Iranians downed a US drone.

Unlike the EU, An independent Britain, by contrast, will be free to fly the flag for democracy and be a constructive partner [with the US] in holding the line against Iranian terrorism.
By Olivia Rose

YOUTHS across the country are being urged to participate in a spoken word, written poetry and song writing competition on how gun violence is affecting their lives.





The competition is aimed at raising awareness on the appalling surge in gun violence across the territory and its effects on the populace.





The challenge is being organised by Lucy Mott Lee in memorial of her godson Jefferson Seide.





The 27-year-old father of two was brutally murdered outside his home during a robbery on October 13, 2019.





Seide, a beloved bartender, was targeted by the robbers who trailed him from the In the Pink cancer awareness event.





As the young husband and father of two was about to enter his Blue Hills home, three masked men pounced on him and demanded money.





Seide, who refused the gunmen when they requested cash, was fatally shot at about 2.46am.





No arrests have been made in connection with his murder to date.





Mott Lee told the Weekly News that it is time for the voice of youths to be heard on this scourge that continues to plague the nation.





She said: "This is my country and it is breaking my heart to see where we are going. The youth are the future and now is the time for them to speak up and be heard.





"I am doing this in honour of my godson Jefferson Seide who was murdered, shot dead on October 13, and for every other family who has suffered this unspeakable pain.





Mott Lee said: "Somebody has to take a stand up and speak out. Speak out about the gun violence that is ravaging our country.





"Ive been told that the situation is hopeless, but I hold hope for us all.





She explained that she comes from a long line of activists.





"Lucretia Mott fought for the vote for women in the 1800s, my aunt worked with Margaret Sanger on her campaign for free access to birth control in the 1920s, and my mother campaigned for clean food and early childhood education.





"I cannot remain silent, she said.





She called on residents to be courageous enough to speak out against the incessant crime that is quickly eroding the countrys "peaceful reputation.





"I want you, all of you, to wake up and see what is happening to our beautiful by nature country.





"Gun violence is violating your rights, our rights to live in a safe peaceful and prosperous environment it is violating your right to a future because as we all know tourism is the mainstay of our economy.





"Whoever is doing this who is jeopardising your future, it aint the old people nor is it to school children.





"Brothers and sisters, are making terrible choices, choices that have consequences and repercussions they never considered.





"Imagine having the death of another person on your conscience forever and knowing the pain that you have caused all the people who loved that person whose life you stole.





"I want to hear your voices, the voices of those whose lives are impacted by this scourge.





"Stand up! Speak up for your rights. It is your future. Let everyone hear the childrens voices throughout the land, Mott Lee implored.





Competition criteria

The theme of the Jefferson Seide memorial competition is: How gun violence is affecting my life, violating our rights to a safe environment and jeopardising our future livelihoods.





Participants are encouraged to write in the language (English, Creole, Spanish) in which they are most comfortable.





All entries will be translated into the other two languages to capture a wider audience.





All entries must be submitted in written form, with spoken word clips, written poetry and recorded songs or videos welcome.





There is a time limit of five minutes for spoken word and songs and 750 words maximum for written poetry.





They should be submitted to [email protected] by January 6. Prizes will be awarded on January 15. At least $2,300 in cash and prizes will be awarded to the winners.




Update for 10:30 pm ET: SpaceX has successfully launched 60 Starlink satellites on its Starlink-2 mission and set a record for the biggest satellite constellation in orbit today. Read our full story here.

Original story:

The private spaceflight company SpaceX will launch 60 new Starlink internet satellites to join its growing megaconstellation in orbit today (Jan. 6), and you can watch it live online.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Starlink mission from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Liftoff is scheduled for 9:19 p.m. EST (0219 GMT Tuesday).

You can watch the launch webcast live on Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, beginning at about 9:04 p.m. EST (0204 GMT). You can also watch the launch directly from SpaceX here.

Related: SpaceX Tests Rocket for 60-Satellite Starlink Launch, the 1st of 2020

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 60 satellites for the company's Starlink broadband internet constellation stands atop Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida ahead of a Jan. 6, 2020 launch. (Image credit: SpaceX)

This is SpaceX's first launch of the year and the third Starlink launch to date. The mission will also mark the second time SpaceX has flown a Falcon 9 first-stage booster for the fourth time; this booster previously hoisted another batch of Starlink satellites as well as the Iridium-8 and Telstar 18 VANTAGE missions.

The goal of SpaceX's Starlink project is to provide constant high-speed internet access to users around the world through a massive constellation of broadband internet satellites operating in low-Earth orbit. Users on the ground would then only need a small terminal, no bigger than a laptop to gain internet access.

"Starlink will provide fast, reliable internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable," the company wrote in its Starlink mission description.

The majority of SpaceX's missions in 2020 will consist of Starlink launches as the company works to expand its fleet of internet-beaming satellites, including at least one more batch of 60 Starlink satellites scheduled to launch before the end of January. SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk has said the company will need at least 400 Starlink satellites in orbit to offer "minor" broadband coverage, and at least 800 to provide "moderate" coverage.

SpaceX plans to operate its initial batch of 1,584 satellites 341 miles (549 kilometers) above the Earth, hovering much lower than traditional communications satellites that operate out of geostationary orbit. Those satellites are too far away to provide the kind of lower-cost coverage SpaceX aims to establish, Musk has said.

But SpaceX is not the only one; several companies (including OneWeb, TeleSat, and Amazon) are planning to build similar satellite constellations that would provide internet to the masses. OneWeb launched its first six satellites in 2019. With today's launch, the number of Starlink satellites in orbit will increase to 180, putting SpaceX on a path to be the first to provide extensive coverage.

Related: SpaceX's 1st Starlink Megaconstellation Launch in Photos!

According to the company, Starlink commercial internet services could debut in parts of the U.S. and Canada after about half a dozen more launches, with global coverage after 24 launches. SpaceX's Gwynne Shotwell has said that coverage could begin sometime this year, but the company has not yet announced pricing for its new service.

Weather conditions are favorable for launch tonight during the planned 20-minute window, which opens at 9:19 p.m. EST (0219 GMT Tuesday). The only weather-related concern noted by the 45th Weather Squadron is the potential for cumulus clouds.

If SpaceX is unable to launch its new Starlink mission today, the company has a backup launch opportunity on Tuesday (Jan. 7) at 8:57 p.m. EST (0157 GMT on Jan. 8).

Visit Space.com today for complete coverage of SpaceX's Starlink launch.

Follow Amy Thompson on Twitter @astrogingersnap. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
With 2021 concluded and the 20th anniversary of the ModDB's Mod of the Year Awards wrapped up, we take a stroll down history lane and look back at all the winners over the last two decades.
Mike Pompeo

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended President Donald Trump's decision to kill Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, as Democratic lawmakers questioned whether the action was justified and the United States braced for retaliation.

Democrats in Congress said it was not clear why the Iranian military leader, long seen as a threat by U.S. authorities, had to be killed now. They said Trump does not have the authority to go to war without congressional approval, and that his actions put the country at greater risk.

Trump's fellow Republicans in Congress have generally backed his decision.

Pompeo, Trump's top diplomat and a trusted adviser, made the administration's case during multiple television interviews on Sunday, saying there was "no skepticism" among senior U.S. leaders who had access to all the intelligence on Friday's targeted killing.

He deflected questions about the "imminent attack" he had cited on Friday as justification for the strike, and described the threat posed by Soleimani as long-term and wide-ranging.

"We would have been culpably negligent had we not taken this action," Pompeo said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"It's never one thing. ... It's never one moment. It's never one instance," he said. "It's a full situational awareness of risk and analysis."

U.S. Representative Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Soleimani had been plotting against the United States for decades and that lawmakers had not received enough information on the alleged threat to convince him the killing was warranted.

"So the question is, why now?" he asked on CNN's "State of the Union."

"I don't think the intelligence supports the conclusion that killing a top Iranian official is going to either stop (the) plotting or improve American security."

Pompeo repeatedly said Soleimani's killing made Americans safer, but he also tallied the steps the United States is taking to guard against Iranian retaliation, including warning Americans to leave the region, boosting the U.S. military presence and shoring up cybersecurity systems.

LONG-RUNNING HOSTILITIES

The attack that killed Soleimani at Baghdad airport took long-running hostilities between Washington and Tehran into uncharted territory and raised the specter of wider conflict in the Middle East.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a candidate for the Democratic nomination to face Trump in November's presidential election, noted the strike came as Trump faced a Senate trial after his impeachment by the Democratic-led House of Representatives. Democratic Senator Mark Warner said Trump's "taunting tweets" to Iran did not help de-escalate tensions, a stated goal of the Trump administration.

In a series of Twitter warnings to Iran on Saturday, Trump said Washington had identified 52 targets, including some "important to Iran & the Iranian culture," that would be hit hard and fast if Tehran attacked Americans or U.S. assets.

Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, also said he was not yet convinced there was an imminent threat that justified the strike.

"I accept the notion that there was a real threat. The question of how imminent is something that I need more information on," Warner told NBC's "Meet the Press."

"We do not need this president either bumbling or impulsively getting us into a major war," added Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, on ABC's "This Week."

Pompeo said intelligence justifying the Soleimani strike has been shared with leaders in Congress and he expects they will be briefed again this week. He bolstered Trump's promise to respond forcefully to any Iranian attack.

"We've told the Iranian regime: enough. You can't get away with using proxy forces and think your homeland will be safe and secure. We're going to respond against the actual decision-makers - the people who are causing this threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran," Pompeo said on ABC.

In a statement on Saturday, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, said the strike was "provocative, escalatory and disproportionate."

She said a classified notification lawmakers received on Saturday prompted "serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner and justification of the administration's decision to engage in hostilities against Iran."

White House national security adviser Robert O'Brien said on Saturday the operation was legal and that Justice Department lawyers had signed off on it.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Calibre Mining Corp. (TSX: CXB; OTCQX: CXBMF) (the Company or Calibre) announces the resignation of Dale Craig, the director nominee for B2Gold Corp. (B2Gold), from the Board of Directors effective January 1, 2020. Mr. Craig has been replaced as B2Golds nominee by Randall Chatwin, Vice President and Associate General Counsel for B2Gold.



As contemplated in the purchase agreement an Advisory Committee to the Board of Directors has been established comprised of two members each from B2Gold and Calibre. Dale Craig will join Steve Jensen as the appointed members from B2Gold, with Honourable John D. Reynolds, P.C. and Leslie Coe as the appointed members from Calibre.

Russell Ball, Chief Executive Officer of Calibre stated: I would like to welcome Randall Chatwin to the Board and look forward to his contributions as the nominee of our largest shareholder. The new Advisory Committee will provide management and the Board with access to significant experience and institutional knowledge and I look forward to their involvement going forward.

Randall Chatwin has more than 15 years' experience in the mining industry and joined B2Gold in September 2019 as Vice President, Associate General Counsel, where he is responsible for legal and governance matters. Mr. Chatwin had previously served as Vice President, Assistant General Counsel of Goldcorp Inc., one of the worlds leading gold mining companies, from May 2015 to May 2019. Mr. Chatwin was instrumental in the execution of Goldcorp's US$12.5 billion merger with Newmont Mining Corporation in April 2019. Prior to joining Goldcorp, Mr. Chatwin was a partner at the law firm of Lawson Lundell LLP, where he spent 11 years practicing corporate commercial and corporate finance law, with a specific focus on the mining industry. Mr. Chatwin holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and Juris Doctor (law) degree from the University of Saskatchewan.

Steve Jensen, P. Geo, is currently Exploration Manager, Americas for B2Gold. Steve has worked in mineral exploration for three decades with the last twenty-five years in Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Colombia and Nicaragua. In Peru for Teck Corp., he was instrumental in the exploration discoveries of the Poracota high-sulphidation gold mine and the Zafranal porphyry copper-gold deposit. For B2Gold in Colombia, Steve managed successful exploration programs that included outlining a NI 43-101 compliant resource of 2.4 million ounces of gold at Gramalote that is currently in a Feasibility Study, and in Nicaragua guided the program that resulted in a NI 43-101 compliant resource of 812,000 ounces of gold at Limon. Mr. Jensen holds a Bachelor of Science (Geology) degree from the University of British Columbia and is a professional member of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of the Province of British Columbia (APEGBC).

John Reynolds career includes substantial experience in venture capital development, consumer products marketing, resource sector development and elected political office, both federal and provincial. Mr. Reynolds began his career in the sales and marketing field but has spent the last 35 years in the political arena, with a career that includes the positions of Member of Parliament; Minister of the Environment for BC; and Official Opposition House Leader for the Conservative Party, to name a few. John was appointed as a Senior Strategic Advisor to McMillan LLP law firm in Vancouver and has been appointed as a member of the Queens Privy Council for Canada.

Leslie Coe is currently President of CXB Nicaragua S.A. and Calibre Mining Nicaragua S.A. He previously served as a Director and President of HEMCO which operates the Bonanza Gold mine. He was the founder and President of Desarrollo Minera de Nicaragua S.A. which operates the La Libertad mine. Mr. Coe is an industrial engineer with 25 years experience in the mining sector in Nicaragua.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Russell Ball

Russell Ball, Chief Executive Officer

For further information, please contact:

Ryan King

Vice President, Corporate Development & IR

Calibre Mining Corp.

T: 604.628.1012

E: calibre@calibremining.com

W: www.calibremining.com

About Calibre Mining Corp.

Calibre Mining is a Canadian-listed gold mining and exploration company with two 100%-owned operating gold mines in Nicaragua. The Company is focused on sustainable operating performance and a disciplined approach to growth.
Rudy Giuliani began blurring the lines between his White House role and personal business interests long before Ukraine, an investigation has revealed.

In 2017, just days before Trump took office, the new president made Giuliani the White House adviser for cybersecurity, a field that he had little experience of.

Giuliani said at the time that his role was that of a facilitator, bringing the administration into contact with private-sector representatives.

The private companies would then work with the White House to find solutions to their cybersecurity-related problems.

The new position was informal, unpaid and was without a committee for Giuliani to head.

According to an investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle, Giuliani has not disclosed any information about his earnings after taking the position.

US President Trump's personal lawyer is pictured speaking to the press at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida on New Year's Eve

This meant he wasn't forced to declare his financial connections and how much money he earned in the 'unofficial' role.

Positioning the former New York mayor in the shadowy job was a 'non-starter in terms of ethics', according to Richard Painter, a White House ethics official under President George W. Bush.

As the White House adviser on cybersecurity, there was plenty of opportunity for Giuliani to rack up mammoth sums for speaking engagements.

According to his website, Giuliani can still provide a 'resolute voice' in the 'new reality of cyber warfare'.

Back when Giuliani disclosed fees, he was reported to have made more than $16 million from 108 paid speeches around the globe. That was without travel expenses.

President Donald Trump (centre) is pictured walking with First Lady Melania Trump (right) and son Barron as the family returns from their Christmas holidays in Florida to the White House yesterday

Rudy Giuliani, pictured in May 2018, locked himself out of his iPhone in February 2017, just a few weeks after President Donald Trump made him his cybersecurity adviser

Event organizers contacted by the Chronicle declined to comment on sums exchanged.

Despite introducing himself as an expert, experts in the field know little about what Giuliani has done in the field apart from speaking engagements and meetings, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Similarly, according to people familiar with a cybersecurity executive order published in the Spring of 2017, Giuliani had little input.

Giuliani is pictured at the New York Yankee stadium in May 2018. Giving the former New York mayor the unofficial job was a 'non-starter in terms of ethics', according to Richard Painter, a White House ethics official under President George W. Bush

Giuliani declined to comment on the Chronicle's findings, saying that he had 'no time'.

Giuliani spent the months around Trump's election beefing up his expertise in the cybersecurity field, marketing himself as someone who 'leads a group of private sector representatives who share information about cybersecurity with President Trump and the Administration,' according to his Greenberg Traurig profile.

Giuliani's company, Giuliani and Partners teamed up with Blackberry to provide a security platform to its clients, which it listed as companies and governments.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen said during a 2017 interview that Giuliani brought 'a rich client base across the world', though he avoided giving a direct answer on the financial return on the deal.

In October 2019, Giuliani told the Washington Post that he had teamed up with Qatar to work on 'solving a hack' but failed to give any more details.

When Giuliani was made Trump's personal lawyer in 2018, his duties as cybersecurity adviser largely ended.

Giuliani enriched himself while representing Trump in America's foreign affairs with Ukraine, filling the pockets of his own companies with hundreds of thousands of dollars while negotiating with Ukrainian officials on US matters, investigations by the New York Times and the Washington Post have alleged.

He claims that he never made any money from the deals as they were never finalized.
Moroccan chef Zeinab Mustafa specialises in Moroccan cuisine and pastry. Mustafas interest in cooking peaked at an early age. She smiled saying: The kitchen has always been a lot of fun.

My mother taught me the different ingredients and names of dishes, she added.

Gradually, cooking became hobby. After graduating from the faculty of commerce and business administration, she joined one of the Moroccan academies specialised in culinary arts to obtain a professional certificate in cooking. Mustafa commented: I always believed this hobby ought to be developed through academic study.

Mustafa derived her inspirations from her mother, sons, and the beauty of nature. She said, nature brought to my mind creative cooking ideas for recipes and dishes.

Mustafa has a successful Egyptian cooking show, Bel Seha Wel Raha (Health and Comfort) aired on CBC Sofra TV channel. Mustafas will soon launch season 4 of the show.

Mustafa shares two yummy Moroccan recipes for Christmas celebrations.

Santa's hat cake

Ingredients:

Big, rectangular sponge cake

Cake decorating:

Butter cream

1kg red sugar paste or rolled fondant

1kg white sugar paste

Silver food glitter

Method:

Cut and carve the cake in a triangular shape like Santas hat. Before applying the red fondant, spread a thin layer of butter cream over the entire cake with an offset spatula.

Use non-stick rolling pin to roll the red fondant out on a large sheet. Clean the cake board from any crumbs. Drape fondant over the cake. Use your hands softly to smooth fondant onto the top and both edges of the cake. Make sure to remove air bubbles and sticking fondant to the buttercream. Gently stretch the fondant at the edges of the cake and trim any excess.

Roll a ball of white fondant to make pompom for the hat. Cut a piece of white fondant and place a long strip for the band to go around the hat. Apply buttercream to glue around the bottom rim and the tip of the hat. Spray some silver glitter on the pompom and long strip. Then add coconut flakes to give a fluffy effect. Sprinkle coconut around the edges and use a mix of decorations of white pearl sprinkles, coloured chocolate candy balls, Christmas trees, bells and gifts.

Chicken with olives tagine

Ingredients:

1kg skinless chicken thighs

 kg onion slices

 kg onion finely chopped

9 minced garlic cloves

1 stalk of chopped oarsley

1 stalk of chopped fresh coriander

2 lemons (Moroccan preserved lemon)

Red olives without pits

2 broth cubes

Saffron threads

Turmeric

Ginger

Salt

Black pepper

 cup water

Mixture of 2tsp vegetable oil and olive oil

Samn (Moroccan clarified butter) or ghee (samna baladi)

1 lemon (Moroccan preserved lemon) for garnish

Method:

In a large pot or tagine, put a mixture of vegetables and olive oil on high heat on the stove, sauteing the chopped onions for a few seconds. Then add samn and chicken thighs. Season with turmeric, ginger, salt and black pepper. Put the stock cubes and garlic. Add preserved lemon and saffron threads, parsley, coriander and stir. Leave the mixture to saute for 5-7 minutes.

Add sliced onions, Moroccan preserved lemon slices and red olives. Do not stir and cook few minutes. Then, pour  cup of hot water over the mixture and leave it to cook for 20-25 minutes. Place on a serving platter and sprinkle with lemon slices and nuts.

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Los Angeles, Jan 6 : Oscar-winning star Gwyneth Paltrow says she is semi-retired from acting.

At the red red carpet at the 77th Golden Globe Awards here, Paltrow confessed that her lifestyle company, Goop, is now her top priority in her career.

"I'm sort of semi-retired a bit from acting because I have a company (Goop) that I do," Paltrow told E! News.

At the ceremony, the actress looked stunning in a sheer rustic gown.

She also admitted that she had no intention of diving into another serious acting role like "The Politician".

"But I'm married to the writer (Brad Falchuk), and he asked me to do the show. He said he was writing it for me," she said.

When pointed out that she surprised people that she found the time to co-star in "The Politician", she responded: "I'm Goop from head-to-toe, (Brad) is very charming, he's very convincing."
The main accused in the recent vandalism at the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib in Pakistan's Punjab province was arrested and charged with a non-bailable section of the stringent anti-terrorism act and blasphemy, a senior police officer said on Monday.

Gurdwara Nankana Sahib, also known as Gurdwara Janam Asthan, is a site near Lahore where the first Guru of Sikhs, Guru Nanak, was born.

The suspect, identified as Imran Chisti, is the elder brother of Mohammad Hassan who married a teenage Sikh girl in September last after allegedly abducting and converting her to Islam, triggering a controversy.

Chisti, a government employee working in the Fisheries Department, was arrested on Sunday for his role in the violent incident at the Gurudwara, Nankana police station Inspector Muhammad Jamil told PTI on Monday.

"We have arrested Imran Chishti, a government employee, under terrorism and blasphemy charges. He has been booked under sections 295A, 290, 291, 341,506, 148 and 149 of Pakistan Penal Code and 7-ATA (anti-terrorism act)," the officer said.

According to the FIR, Chishti incited a mob on Friday in the name of religion and threatened to destroy a worship place of a minority community (Gurdwara Janam Asthan) to build a shrine there.

"The suspect incited the sentiments of Muslims in order to have settled his family issue and created a law and order situation in the Nankana city," it said.

A large number of people, led by Chishti on Friday, held a day-long sit-in outside Gurdwara Janam Asthan against the alleged police harassment and arrest of their family members over the abduction and conversion issue. He also vowed to build a Muslim shrine in the place of the Gurdwara.

Chishti claimed that his brother Hassan was beaten up by police for "lawfully and consensually" marrying the daughter of the Gurdwara's granthi.

Police officer Jamil said that Chishti had deliberately misled Muslims in the area against the Sikhs. He also said police patrolling has been increased around all the holy places of the Sikhs in Nankana Sahib.

When asked Hassan and any other member of his family are detained too, Jamil said: We have only arrested Chishti as he is the main suspect misleading the people in the name of religion.

Interestingly, earlier neither police nor Evacuee Trust Property Board which looks after the minority places in Pakistan admitted that Gurwara Janam Asthan came under attack/threat by the local Muslims.

The arrest of Chishti came after Prime Minister Imran Khan Sunday broke his silence on the incident and said it goes against his "vision" and the government will show "zero tolerance" against those involved in it.

India has strongly condemned the incident of vandalism at the revered Gurdwara and called upon the Pakistan government to take immediate steps to ensure the safety and security of the Sikh community there.

Pakistan's Foreign Office on Friday rejected the media reports that the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib was desecrated in a mob attack, saying the birthplace of founder of Sikhism remains "untouched and undamaged" and the "claims of destruction" of one of the holiest Sikh shrines are "false".

-PTI

Also Read: Violence in JNU was organised attack: JNUSU
DOHA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 07th January, 2020) Bahraini Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa talked over the phone with US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and discussed the importance of security in the middle East amid escalated tensions between Washington and Tehran, media reported on Monday.

The sides reaffirmed their commitment to the strategic relationship and noted the importance of efforts to enhance regional stability, according to the Bahraini news agency BNA.

The situation in the region became tense on Friday when strikes by US drones in Baghdad took the lives of Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, who led the Revolutionary Guards' elite Quds Force.
BAGHDAD  At an extraordinary session in the absence of all Kurdish and most Sunni parliament members, the Iraqi parliament passed Jan. 5 a decision urging the government to cancel the request for assistance submitted by it to the international coalition to fight the Islamic State (IS). Parliament called to end the presence of any foreign forces on Iraqi territory and prevent them from using Iraqi land, water and air for any reason whatsoever.

The decision came in the aftermath of the killing of Qasem Soleimani, chief commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units, by US forces Jan. 3.

The Iraqi parliament called on the government to urgently submit to the United Nations and the Security Council a complaint against the United States for its serious violations and breach of Iraqi sovereignty and security. It further pressed, the Iraqi government must conduct investigations at the highest levels into the circumstances of the US bombing and report back to parliament within seven days.

The fresh decision, however, failed to meet the calls by the political parties loyal to Iran and the armed Shiite factions to terminate the security agreement signed between Baghdad and Washington in 2008, shut down the US Embassy in Baghdad and sever diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Many reasons could be behind this, most notably because the agreement binds the Iraqi government to submit a termination request to the United States through the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. Under the agreement, this request would be executed one year from the date of its submission.

Meanwhile, the current Iraqi government is a caretaker government, as Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi resigned Nov. 29. Under the Iraq Constitution, his government cannot conclude or cancel international agreements and treaties or propose laws. Furthermore, the Iraqi forces need US support, especially in terms of airspace reconnaissance activities and training of local forces. Kurdish and Sunni parties had invoked this reason for justifying their refusal to terminate the agreement with the United States.

The Iraqi prime minister, who recommended parliament expel US troops from Iraq during his speech at the extraordinary session, also hinted at the existence of significant consequences for this decision. He said, If this (expelling US forces) turns into a confrontation and some see it as a hostile act rather than a corrective and reform measure  there may be political, economic, monetary and security costs at the level of international relations not only with the United States but with many of the countries of the international coalition.

Therefore, parliaments decision was limited to pushing the government to seek an end to foreign presence without addressing the security agreement with Washington. However, the caretaker government has the right to negotiate with external parties, and the legislative authority does not obligate the executive authority to take any decision. Its work, under the constitution, is limited to monitoring and legislating, and accordingly, one may say the recent parliament decision is a mere recommendation or an expression of a position.

Meanwhile, Article 61 of the Iraq Constitution reads as follows: Regulating the ratification process of international treaties and agreements shall be by virtue of a law, to be enacted by a two-thirds majority of the members of parliament.

The constitution did not tackle parliament or the governments powers to cancel treaties or agreements. The only solution, in this case, would be to refer to the terms of the agreement, which only specified a cancellation and withdrawal mechanism that may only be implemented on year after either of the parties submits a written termination request.

Regarding the US response to the Iraqi parliament decision, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview with Fox News Jan. 5 that Abdul Mahdi, who asked parliament to set a timetable for the ouster of all foreign forces from the country, is just the prime minister, the resigned prime minister; he is the acting prime minister [and] is under enormous threats from the very Iranian leadership that we are pushing back against.

He added, We are confident that the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there to fight the counterterror campaign. We will continue to do all the things we need to do to keep America safe.

Each of the parties to the crisis is trying to interpret the Iraqi parliaments decision to expel foreign forces in its own way.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani described it in a telephone conversation with Iraqi President Barham Salih as an important step that will contribute to strengthening security and stability in the region.

Some Iraqi factions saw it as a clear breakthrough, with the exception of the leader of the Sadrist movement, Muqtada al-Sadr, who expressed his dissatisfaction with the parliaments vote on the US presence in the country.

Sadr asked parliament in a tweet Jan. 5 to shut down the US Embassy in Iraq and criminalize dealing with Washington. He labeled parliaments position as meager and unfulfilling in the face of the US violation of Iraqi sovereignty, He also warned of taking further actions if his demands are not met.

For its part, Washington is well aware that ending the military presence of its forces in Iraq needs a political majority that is not currently available in Iraq and legislation that the resigned government in Baghdad will not be able to pass in light of the prevailing circumstances. The United States knows that what is happening is an attempt by the Iraqi parties opposing the US presence to relieve themselves of their obligation ensuing from the assassination of Soleimani and Muhandis.

This complicated scene suggests the continuation of the security escalation on the ground and rising tensions between the Iraqi government and the US administration.

The targeting of the US Embassy in Iraq with missiles and mortar shells is likely to continue if Baghdad's government fails to put an end to the security spill and political parties fail to fill the constitutional void and nominate a new prime minister that meets the demands of the protesters in the streets.

Iraqis have been calling for early legislative elections that would produce a parliament capable of taking difficult and firm decisions regarding relations with Washington and Tehran and the policy of disassociation of Iraq.
BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkels governing coalition is starting the new year with a new bout of strife  this time over a conservative allys call for new faces in the Cabinet.

Markus Soeder, the leader of the smallest party in Merkels coalition, said in a weekend interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that we should rejuvenate and renew the government team by the middle of the year to give it new momentum.

The call was unexpected and apparently unwelcome to his allies. Merkels spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said Monday that the chancellor works well and gladly with all of her ministers  though he did concede that the government could increase the speed or dynamism of its work in some places.

Soeder didnt specify who he thought should go, though he said that innovation and business should be at the top of conservatives priorities.

That was interpreted as a dig at Economy Minister Peter Altmaier and Science Minister Anja Karliczek, both members of Merkels Christian Democratic Union. Soeder heads that partys Bavaria-only sister, the Christian Social Union, which is a close but sometimes awkward ally.

German political convention holds that each party gets to decide itself who represents it in the government.

Soeders CSU holds only three of the 16 Cabinet seats. Soeder is Bavarias governor and not part of the federal government.

The CDU and CSU run Germany in a coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats. It remains uncertain whether that alliance will hold until the scheduled end of the parliamentary term in the fall of 2021.
Exxon Mobil Corporation XOM expects a gain of $3.4-$3.6 billion from the divestment of Norwegian assets. This will likely give a boost to its fourth-quarter 2019 results. The companys recent regulatory filing showed that the gains from this divestment can offset lower margins from chemicals and refining businesses.

Divestment

The Norway divestment deal of September included ownership interests in more than 20 producing fields, with total production of around 150,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2019. The buyer was Var Energi, owned jointly by private-equity firm Hitecvision and integrated energy firm Eni SpA E. Notably, Var Energi had earlier bought resources in Norway from ExxonMobil in 2017.

Per reports from last November, ExxonMobil is looking to divest around $25 billion of hydrocarbon assets through 2025 in order to focus on more profitable projects. The assets to be sold  which are located in Asia, Africa and Europe  are expected to increase competitiveness of the companys portfolio. Its latest reported divestment program targets $15-billion asset sell-off by 2021.

Operating Highlights

The recent regulatory filing reflected the largest publicly-traded energy companys decline in profits from the chemicals business. It is further expected to take a hit from a global glut in polyethylene. While the segment recorded a $200-million profit in third-quarter 2019, it is expected to be impacted by $500-$300 million in the fourth quarter and result in $100-$300 million loss.

Similarly, the downstream business  which generated $1.2 billion in profits in third-quarter 2019  is expected to take a $800-$600 million hit in the fourth quarter. The segment might be affected by continued pressure on refining margins and the impact of derivatives on diesel, gasoline, and other products.

However, operating profits from its upstream activities may reach to $2.3 billion in fourth-quarter 2019 from $2.2 billion a quarter earlier, based on the midpoint of its estimates in the filing.

Story continues

Trend in Estimate Revision

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the companys fourth-quarter earnings per share is pegged at 71 cents, indicating a 53% decline from the year-ago period. In the past 60 days, it has witnessed one upside estimate revision but no movement in the opposite direction.

Price Performance

ExxonMobil has lost 1.7% in the past year compared with 2.8% decline of the industry it belongs to.

Zacks Rank and Stocks to Consider

Currently, ExxonMobil has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the energy sector include CNX Resources Corporation CNX and Repsol SA REPYY, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

CNX Resources earnings for the current year have witnessed four upward revisions in the past 60 days versus no movement in the opposite direction.

Repsols bottom line for 2020 is expected to rise 51% year over year.

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A teenager has been charged in connection with the fatal stabbing of Eduardo Fernando Castro, 18, who was found dead New Years Eve on a roadway in the 12200 block of Saint Francis, according to the Harris County Sheriffs Office.

Christopher Coronado, 17, was arrested at his home 1:15 a.m. Sunday on a capital murder charge. Bond details have not yet been made public, but he is currently booked in the Harris County Jail.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-07 06:22:09|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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by Burak Akinci

ANKARA, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inaugurated on Monday in the capital Ankara the new high-tech headquarters of the country's intelligence agency which has seen its assets and powers grow amid international operations.

Dubbed the Castle by state officials, the new 500-hectare massive compound located in the Etimesgut district will house all services of the secretive National Intelligence Organization (MIT).

The single complex is surrounded by a three-meter-high concrete wall and barbed wire fences, and designed to withstand unauthorized access and infiltration, semi-official Anadolu news agency said.

During the inauguration of the complex, Erdogan said his government intends to "continue to grow (MIT's) international role while decreasing its domestic operations."

"In an era when the Internet is effectively used by terrorists and spies, it is inevitable for Turkish intelligence to focus more on cyberspace," he noted in a speech.

The Turkish leader said his country aims to conduct more covert operations abroad in the period ahead and have a better technical and cyber intelligence infrastructure.

Following a failed military coup attempt in 2016, Erdogan used his emergency powers and issued a decree attaching MIT to the presidency, and the National Intelligence Coordination Board was formed.

As MIT's institutional power grew with the new presidential board, its budget surged from 410 million U.S. dollars in 2010 to almost 2 billion dollars in 2017. The organization's asset value is higher than most of country's ministries, according to press reports.

The intelligence service came under fire in the aftermath of the coup and its credibility was tarnished.

The powerful spy network was reshaped with more civilian personnel than army officers to coordinate with different state entities in post-coup period and young bureaucrats were appointed to key positions.

Since the failed coup that Ankara accuses U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen of being behind, MIT agents snatched from around 20 foreign countries scores of members of the Gulen movement which is listed as a criminal and terrorist organization by the Turkish judiciary.

Hakan Fidan, MIT chief, is a close ally and confidante of Erdogan and has taken part in all major overseas visits alongside him.

MIT took an active role in the Syrian conflict unfolding at Turkey's southern borders by organizing rebel forces against the Syrian government. It also prepared for the three Turkish cross-border operations in Syria.

Turkish agents are also reportedly active in Iraq, another neighbor of Turkey where armed rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) have base camps.

PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Turkish forces conduct regular operations against the senior members of the PKK in Iraq with the help of MIT operatives and armed drones.

Meanwhile, Erdogan confirmed that MIT agents were already deployed in Tripoli, capital of Libya.

On Sunday, Erdogan announced that the deployment of troops to Libya has begun in order to support the internationally-recognized government in Tripoli which is under the siege of rival forces based in the eastern part of the North African nation.

"Our soldiers are gradually going there right now. They will develop the operations center there," he told CNNTurk news channel.
The Peoples Bank of China (PBoC), the countrys central bank, has said that its digital currency is progressing smoothly.

The development was announced by the central bank at its annual work conference held in Beijing last week. The PBoC, however, did not announce the launch date yet.

We will continue to steadily advance the development of legal digital currencies in 2020, said the central bank.

China's digital currency has been in the works for at least five years, with the PBoC having started the initiative in 2014. The much-anticipated digital yuan will be first distributed to commercial banks and then users and businesses can register digital wallets with these commercial banks, the PBoC stated recently.

The first cities to pilot digital currency will reportedly be Shenzhen and Suzhou. The PBOC is said to have partnered with seven state-owned commercial banks and telecoms - the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank and the Agricultural Bank of China, China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom - to roll out the test.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: The HRD Ministry met officials from the JNU administration on Monday and took stock of the situation on the campus following Sunday's violence, even as Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar skipped the meeting.

It was attended by the JNU registrar, proctor and other admin officials who briefed the ministry officials on the sequence of events that unfolded on the campus and the measures taken to restore normalcy.

"HRD Secretary Amit Khare held a meeting with team of JNU authorities, including Pro-VC Chintamani Mahapatra, Registrar Promod Kumar, Rector Rana Pratap Singh and Proctor Dhananjay Singh, today.



ALSO READ | JNU violence: Left outfits, ABVP in blame game as worried students leave campus

The secretary held detailed discussion with them and was also briefed about the current situation in JNU," a senior HRD Ministry official said.

The ministry had on Sunday sought an immediate report from JNU Registrar Pramod Kumar after the violence broke out and students and teachers were attacked.

There was heavy deployment of police on Monday outside the Shashtri Bhawan here which houses the HRD Ministry.

"A detailed report has been sent to the HRD Ministry about the sequence of events. The top administration officials are at the ministry to provide all details leading to present situation," JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar said.

Violence broke out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as a group of masked people armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.



VIEW GALLERY | Bruised faces, vandalised campus: Here's how JNU looks in the aftermath of violence

Many sustained injuries and were admitted to AIIMS Trauma Centre here.

They were discharged on Monday.

JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh suffered a head injury.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the ABVP blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.

Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' had urged JNU students to maintain the dignity of the university and peace on campus.





JNU Proctor Dhananjay Singh appealed the students to not panic and leave the campus.

"We appeal to students to not panic and leave the campus. Measures are being taken to normalise situation on the campus and ensure safety of everyone," he said after the meeting at the HRD Ministry.
The Modi government has undertaken a number of measures to arrest the growth slowdown.

Further stimulus measures are expected in the upcoming Budget where the focus is likely to be on reforms, including some structural measures such as reducing red tape and boosting foreign direct investment.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the interaction with business leaders to discuss ways to improve growth and job creation in the country, in New Delhi on Monday. From L-R: Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal, RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani, Tata Group patriarch Ratan Tata, chairman of the Mahindra Group Anand Mahindra, Adani Group chairman Gautam Adanii and retired Larsen & Toubro chairman Anil Manibhai Naik. Photograph: ANI Photo

Ahead of the annual Union Budget presentation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday interacted with top business tycoons to discuss issues facing the economy and measures needed to boost growth and create jobs.

Richest Indian Mukesh Ambani, Tata group patriarch Ratan Tata, telecom czar Sunil Bharti Mittal, billionaire Gautam Adani, Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra, and mining baron Anil Agarwal were among those present at the discussion.

Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran, TVS chairman Venu Srinivasan, L&T head AM Naik were also present, according to a photograph of the meeting released in New Delhi.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present her second Union Budget on February 1 with an eye to reviving growth.

The latest GDP data for the July-September quarter showed a significant further moderation in the pace of economic growth to 4.5 per cent - the weakest in six years, with a key contributory factor being a slump in manufacturing output.

The Modi government has undertaken a number of measures to arrest the growth slowdown.

In September 2019, it announced a cut in the corporate tax rate to 22 per cent from 30 per cent.

The government also lowered the tax rate for new manufacturing companies to 15 per cent to attract new foreign direct investments.

The tax rate reductions bring India in line with rates in other Asian countries.

The government's other initiatives include bank recapitalisation, the mergers of 10 public sector banks into four, support for the auto sector, plans for infrastructure spending, as well as tax benefits for startups.

But experts say none of these measures directly address the widespread weakness in consumption demand, which has been the chief driver of the economy.

Also, financial sector fragilities continue to weigh on the economic growth momentum, with the high level of non-performing loans on the balance-sheets of the public sector banks, constraining their fresh lending.

Furthermore, there are also risks from potential contagion effects from troubled non-bank financial companies (NBFCs) to the balance-sheets of some commercial banks, which could further weigh on the overall pace of credit expansion.

In response to the growth slowdown, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has eased policy rates significantly during 2019, with a series of rate cuts since February 2019.

Further stimulus measures are expected in the upcoming Budget where the focus is likely to be on reforms, including some structural measures such as reducing red tape and boosting foreign direct investment.

The meeting with industrialists is in the series of discussions that Modi has had during the last couple of weeks to seek suggestions to revive growth.

In the previous meetings, he met Kotak Mahindra Bank CEO Uday Kotak, State Bank of India head Rajnish Kumar, HDFC Bank managing director Aditya Puri, IT industry veteran TV Mohandas Pai; former finance secretary Hasmukh Adhia; Tech Mahindra CEO CP Gurnani, Intel India general manager Nivruti Rai and Tata Consultancy Services chief executive Rajesh Gopinath.

He also reportedly has held one-on-one meetings with sectoral experts.

Modi has so far met over 60 entrepreneurs and businessmen from sectors such as FMCG, finance, renewable energy, diamond, retail, textiles, MSMEs and startups and technology.

Edited by Nandita Mallik
An electronic hardware and a defence park in Kerala are among 18 mega projects the state government will highlight at the on January 9 and 10.

The government will highlight among others a Kochi- to-Palakkad integrated manufacturing cluster, a defence park at Ottapalam and an electronic hardware park in Ernakulam district.

Also, the focus would be on a medium density fiberboard plant in Perumbavoor and integrated solid waste management systems at Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur and Malappuram.

The meet - ASCEND 2020 here will also see organisers showcasing 70-odd other projects classified as large, medium and small in the descending order of their capital investment and capacity to provide jobs, organisers said in a release here on Monday.

Mega projects are those which require an investment of more than Rs 100 crore and gives direct employment to at least 500 people, according to the Department of Industries that is convening the high-profile event at the Lulu Bolgatty International Convention Centre, Grand Hyatt, here.

The proposed mega projects further include a Propylene Oxide manufacturing plant of 2,00,000 MPA capacity in the vicinity of BPCL-Kochi Refinery, a PVC manufacturing facility of capacity 150,000 TPA and a Rs 1,864-crore KINFRA-initiated Petrochemical Park of international standards at Ambalamugal in Ernakulam district.

KINFRA (Kerala Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation) is also keen to set up a Rs 400-crore logistics hub (in Palakkad) with warehousing facility, while thrust will also be given to set up a Rs 300-crore cryogenic warehouse in Kochi's Puthuvypeen next to the existing LNG terminal.

The Rs 131-crore Defence Park at 60 acres in Ottapalam of Palakkad district will have central government assistance under the Modified Industrial Infrastructure Upgradation scheme.

ASCEND 2020 comes amid a paradigm shift Kerala is experiencing in harnessing industrial investments, according to state Industries Minister E P Jayarajan.

Set to showcase at ASCEND is the Invest Kerala Portal (https://invest.kerala.gov.in) as a single-window facilitator for hassle-free investment promotion launched under its Ease of doing business initiatives, the release said.
There are often twists and turns of fate that happen during wartime. Some of those took place on Jan. 6, 1945. That day was also the 33rd anniversary of the admission of New Mexico as the nations 47th State. World War II had been raging for more than three years and the state was playing an integral role in the war effort. This included the top-secret Manhattan Project that would ultimately force the surrender of Japan. Half a world away, the states namesake battleship, the 32,000-ton USS New Mexico (BB-40), was engaged in a fierce and bloody battle to retake the Philippine island of Luzon.

The naming of a Navy warship after New Mexico was an important tribute to the newly admitted state, which had joined the Union on Jan. 6, 1912. USS New Mexico was launched on April 23, 1917, and commissioned on May 20, 1918. The new battleship incorporated numerous advances, including a revolutionary turbo-electric system of propulsion and an improved main battery of twelve 14-inch guns that fired 1,400 pound shells.

The loss of the Philippines had brought the war painfully home to New Mexico early in the conflict. In what turned out to be a fateful decision, 1,816 soldiers of the New Mexico National Guard 200th and 515th Coast Artillery had been deployed to the Philippines in September 1941. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and the next day invaded the Philippines. Nearly half of the New Mexico National Guard soldiers would not survive to return home, with many perishing in the infamous Bataan Death March.

Three years later, the tide of the war had turned dramatically against the Japanese. The Americans under the command of Douglas MacArthur were engaged in a campaign to retake the Philippine island of Luzon and its capital, Manila. In another twist of fate, the USS New Mexico was in the thick of the action to retake Luzon, site of the Bataan Death March.

The USS New Mexico was assigned to provide pre-invasion bombardment at Lingayen Gulf on the morning of Jan. 6, 1945. Using her 14-inch guns to shell Japanese positions, USS New Mexico delivered a measure of retribution against the Japanese forces responsible for the Bataan Death March.

Desperate to turn the war in their favor, the Japanese had unleashed swarms of kamikaze attacks to defend the Philippines. One of those kamikazes hit the USS New Mexico around noon on Jan. 6, 1945. It struck the ships bridge on that statehood day, at what would have been around 9 p.m. Mountain War Time in New Mexico. British Lt. General Herbert Lumsden was on the bridge to observe U.S. amphibious tactics, along with Bill Chickering, a veteran Time magazine correspondent. Lumsden and Chickering were both killed, as was the skipper of the USS New Mexicos, Capt. Robert Fleming and 27 others. Despite the damage to the USS New Mexico, the ships 14-inch guns continued to pound Luzon, paving the way for Gen. Douglas MacArthur to retake the Philippines.

New Mexico was present for the formal surrender of Japan in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945. The atomic bombs that ended the war had been dropped less than a month earlier. The B-29 Superfortresses that bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki took off from Tinian, which the USS New Mexico had helped liberate. The atomic bomb had been developed in Los Alamos and had been tested at the Trinity Site near Alamogordo. The victory was made possible by the contributions of millions of men and women who served in the military and on the home front, including those who paid the ultimate sacrifice 75 years ago on the USS New Mexico.
By ANI

MADURAI: Madurai bench of the Madras High Court on Monday granted anticipatory bail to two journalists in connection with conducting an interview in a Sri Lankan refugee camp over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

A reporter and a photojournalist identified as named Sindhu and Ramkumar from Vikatan Weekly had allegedly gone to seek views of the Sri Lankan Tamil refugees on the newly-amended law.

The Tamil Nadu Police then slapped them with a case under non-bailable sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for offences such as trespassing and disobedience.

The citizenship law grants Indian citizenship to Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Parsi refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, who entered India on or before December 31, 2014.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: India on Monday summoned Pakistan's Charge d'affaires Syed Haider Shah and lodged a strong protest over desecration of Gurudwara Nankana Sahib near Lahore and killing of a minority Sikh community member in Peshawar.

The External Affairs Ministry said Shah was conveyed that India wants immediate measures to expeditiously bring the perpetrators of such "despicable and heinous acts" to justice.

"Shah was summoned today to lodge strong protest at the recent acts of vandalism and desecration of the holy Gurdwara Sri Janam Asthan at Nankana Sahib, and the targeted killing of minority Sikh community member in Peshawar," the ministry said.

ALSO READ: Sikh man gives discounts to Muslims to promote peace in Pakistan

According to reports, a mob attack took place last week at the shrine where the founder of Sikhism Guru Nanak Dev was born.

A 25-year-old Sikh man was also shot dead in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar last week.

The MEA said Pakistan was called upon to ensure safety, security, and welfare of the members of the minority communities including their places of worship.

"India also shared strong concerns raised by members of civil society, parliamentarians and others at the continued persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in Pakistan, including the recent despicable and heinous acts," the ministry said.
A 22-year-old man police allege to be a "prolific" high-speed motorcycle rider has been charged over more than 50 speeding notices after a number of "life-endangering offences".

The Stafford Heights man was arrested last week after an off-duty police officer spotted a motorcycle bearing the distinctive stolen plate, RUNIT, in an Alderley hotel car park, bringing a months-long investigation to a close.

Police say the man was found with a backpack allegedly containing drugs and a number of driver licences and passports. Credit:Queensland Police Service

The arrest is one of two made by the specialised Road Policing Investigations Unit targeting motorcycles travelling at high speeds in and around the city last year.

Among the man's alleged offences are 55 speeding notices, of which police say 30 were for speeds more than 40km/h above the speed limit.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 10:18:13|Editor: ZX

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TIANJIN, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Grid live working robots have been put into service in north China's Tianjin Municipality, replacing humans in the dangerous work on high-voltage power lines.

Zhang Liming, head of emergency repair team of Tianjin Binhai Power Supply Company of the State Grid, presided over the development of the robots.

He said the robots can carry out "minimally invasive surgery" on the grid to effectively solve the problems that are difficult and dangerous in manual repairs.

The robots have been put into service in 10 power supply units of Tianjin Electric Power of the State Grid on a pilot basis.

Zhang said the robots have the abilities of visual recognition, motion control and electromagnetic interference, which give them the functions of accurate positioning, independent path planning in line with technical standards.

The State Grid Corporation has signed an agreement with the Tianjin municipal government in the construction of an industrialization base for the research, development, production, sales and maintenance services of grid live working robots.

Liu Zhaoling, of the Tianjin electric power equipment department of the State Grid, said that the robot industrialization base will further develop the robots' functions to promote the integration of the Internet of Things technology and the robot technology in the service of the power grid maintenance.
Kempczinski said three things about McDonald's make him proud: It creates opportunity, builds community and collaborates on solutions.

"When I started in this role, my commitment to you was to listen and learn across the System," Kempczinski said in a message to employees obtained by CNBC. "In the past 9 weeks, I have been doing just that."

McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski is trying to restore a more professional culture, starting with feedback from key stakeholders and applying the chain's core values across the system of franchisees, suppliers and employees.

"All of this is underpinned by our core values, which are the bedrock of our company," Kempczinski said. "We must now champion and apply them more evenly across the three-legged stool to be even stronger."

The New Year's message follows a Wall Street Journal report published Sunday that alleged that under Kempczsinki's predecessor, Steve Easterbrook, the company's culture tolerated late-night socializing between senior managers and rank-and-file employees. Easterbrook and McDonald's Chief People Officer David Fairhurst often partied with staffers after work hours, according to the Journal. Previous and current McDonald's employees also told the Journal that Easterbrook allegedly had a reputation for flirting with female employees.

The fast-food giant's board fired Easterbrook in November because he had a consensual relationship with an employee, which violated the company's fraternization policy. Fairhurst departed the company the day after Easterbrook's firing became public knowledge. The Journal said Fairhurst couldn't be reached for comment and a representative for Easterbrook told the newspaper he wasn't available to comment.

After taking over as CEO in mid-November, Kempczinski asked employees for feedback. More than 1,000 McDonald's employees have responded via a survey. In Kempczinski's message Monday, he said he was "impressed by the candid feedback."

Kempczinski has also heard from other stakeholders about McDonald's culture and ethics through meetings with corporate officers, marketing managing directors and the franchise leadership of the chain's International Development Licensed markets. He also held in-person town halls with employees in the United Kingdom and Germany in late December.

Read the full memo below:
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland man pleaded not guilty Monday to criminal charges that accused him of impersonating a police officer and kidnapping a teenage girl on her way home from school last month.

Adam Rodriguez, 28, stopped the 14-year-old girl Dec. 16 as she walked near West 87th Street and Madison Avenue, shoved her into his 2003 Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor and threatened to kill her if she didnt hide in the front seat, according to a Cleveland police report.

The girl later told police that Rodriguez had a gun and walkie-talkie and claimed that he was a police officer, police said. She escaped when she opened the passenger door and jumped out of the car while it was moving.

A grand jury handed up an indictment on Dec. 27 that charged him with kidnapping, aggravated robbery, impersonating certain officers and possessing a gun with felony record. A judge on Monday set his bond at $250,000 and assigned his case to a specialty docket for defendants diagnosed with mental health issues.

Rodriguezs attorney, Daniel Misiewicz, could not be reached for comment Monday.

Police arrested Rodriguez two days after the incident.

The girl told police Rodriguez stopped her and asked her to get in his car while she was crossing the street, according to the report. He was wearing a black T-shirt with camouflaged pants. She told Rodriguez that she doesnt get in cars with strangers, the report says.

He responded by telling her he was a police officer, and that he would take her home, the report says. She again refused, and Rodriguez got out of the car, walked over to her, grabbed her and shoved her into the front passenger seat, the report says. The girl said she saw a handgun on the floor near the seat.

Rodriguez told the girl he would killer her if she didnt keep her head down, the report says.

The girl jumped out of the car and ran to a nearby house. A woman gave the girl a ride home, and her family called police.

Police searched Rodriguezs Crown Victoria and seized a specialty license plate that says Ohio COPS, a siren box, a police badge clip, body camera, dashboard camera, a police radio, two sets of handcuffs, pepper spray, a police-style hat, two tactical vests, a laser sight, two gun holsters, a cellphone, a black T-shirt and a pair of camouflage pants, according to court records.

Rodriguez is currently on parole. He was released from prison in 2018 after serving two years on a burglary conviction. He also has a prior conviction for breaking and entering, court records say.

To comment on this story, please visit Mondays crime and courts comments page.

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Cleveland man dumped womans body on the street after fatal fentanyl overdose, records say
By Trend

At this time, Turkeys export to Azerbaijan amounted to $158.1 million, and import from Azerbaijan to $30.9 million, the ministry said.

From January through November 2019, Turkeys trade with Azerbaijan increased by $106.5 million compared with the same period of 2018, exceeding $1.7 billion.

In the first 11 months of 2019, Turkeys export to Azerbaijan amounted to $1.4 billion, and import from Azerbaijan to $353.4 million, a source in the ministry said.

In November 2019, Turkeys foreign trade amounted to $33.2 billion.

During this month, Turkeys export increased by 0.1 percent compared with November 2018, amounting to $15.5 billion.

At this time, import to Turkey increased by 9.7 percent compared with November 2018, and reached $17.7 billion.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
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Oklahoma prosecutors charged two people on Friday for the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old girl in what is reportedly a case of payback over a sexually transmitted disease.

Andrew Hall, 30, and Cheyenne Blalock, 17, were charged with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Kirstan Patterson, 17, according to court documents.

Pattersons mother and stepfather reported the teenager missing on New Years Day and her body was found hours later near the Spring Creek boat dock on the Neosho River in Mayes County, with a gunshot wound to the head, deputies said.

The Mayes County Sheriffs Office arrested Hall and Blalock later that day and they are being held on a $1 million bond. Their next court appearances are set for Jan. 9.

How This Cops Dream About a Murder Reopened a Cold Case

Blalock said that Andrew Hall, her boyfriend, had talked about killing Kirstan before because of a transmission of a sexually transmitted disease and wanted to payback, a Mayes County Sheriffs Office detective wrote in a probable cause affidavit.

Interviews with both Hall and Blalock revealed that Hall had discussed several ways of killing Patterson, according to investigators.

Sheriff Mike Reed said the two suspects and the victim all lived in Chouteau and previously knew each other. Blalock and Patterson reportedly attended the same school in the Oklahoma town.

Authorities said that Blalock hid under a blanket in the back of Halls car on New Years Day when he picked up Patterson and drove to the Spring Creek Recreation Area.

Hall allegedly told detectives that Blalock had knives on her and thought she was only going to physically assault Patterson, according to the affidavit, and that he complied with her demands because he feared that she would hurt him.

Deputies said that both Hall and Blalock claim the other procured a rifle from Halls truck and shot Patterson in the head. Blalock told detectives that she did not see the shooting but heard two shots, and subsequently touched Pattersons body to confirm she was dead.

Story continues

Blalock said Hall poured bleach on the body in some effort to destroy evidence, and then Hall moved the body into the water, the affidavit reads. Both suspects reportedly told investigators that Hall hid the rifle under his bed at his Chouteau residence.

Mayes County Sheriffs Office Maj. Rod Howell said Blalock and Hall have pointed the blame at one another for the homicide.

Our heart goes out to the family, said Howell. Ive met with them, visited with them in depth, and I just cant understand what theyre going through. Ive got kids, and I just couldnt even fathom, he added.

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The Supreme Court on Monday asked Bombay Dyeing Chairman and Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, to sit together and resolve their differences in a defamation case.

Wadia filed a criminal defamation case against and other directors of Tata Sons in 2016 after being voted out of the boards of some Tata Group companies.

You both are mature people. You both are leaders of industry. Why don't you both settle the matter? Why dont you sit together and resolve your differences? Do you all need to pursue litigation like this? said a Bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde.

The Bench, also comprising Justices B R Gavai and Surya Kant, which was initially inclined to dispose of the matter while upholding the finding of the Bombay High Court that there was no intention of defamation, adjourned the matter for January 13, after counsel for Wadia said he would like to seek instruction from his client on the separate suit filed in the case.

Senior Advocate A Sundaram, appearing for Wadia, said he had nothing against the Tata group and was not claiming any defamation caused to him by his removal from the board. I am not against the company, which removed me. I am against those people who requisitioned for the resolution, which was eventually leaked to the media, he said, adding that they should withdraw the allegations. The Bench told Wadia that Tata and others had some grievances against him and questioned as to how that amounted to defamation.

Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Ratan Tata, said Wadia had given a statutory notice seeking the response. He said there was a finding by the Bombay High Court that there was no intention to defame and the court should record this and dispose of the petition.

As soon as the Bench finished dictating the order, that it was upholding the findings of the high court, Sundaram said he had instruction from his client that he would like to pursue the defamation suit filed in the matter. To this, the Bench said that it did not understand as to why he (Wadia) was going to pursue the suit. It asked Sundaram to seek instruction from his client by January 13 and inform the court as to whether he wanted to pursue the suit.

Wadia moved the apex court, challenging the high court order of last year, quashing proceedings initiated by a Mumbai local court against Tata Sons' former chairman Ratan Tata, its current chief N Chandrasekaran, and eight directors in a criminal defamation case filed by him.

On December 15, 2018, a magistrate court in Mumbai had issued notices to and the others in the defamation case. Wadia had filed the case in 2016 after he was voted out of the boards of some Tata Group companies, and claimed that Tata and others made defamatory statements against him after they removed Cyrus Mistry on October 24, 2016 as the group chairman of Tata Sons. Tata and others had then approached the high court, seeking to quash and set aside the proceedings initiated against them.
Takbir! Ramy Youssef just won the first Golden Globe of the night, for best actor in a comedy series for Ramy, and then got on stage and said this: I would like to thank my God. Allahu akbar. Thank you, God.

Thats major. Ill admit Ive got a dumb smile on my face at least partly because both Youssef and I are Egyptian Americans from New Jersey, and it felt like our whole block was up there with him. For the longest time, the only channel that had images of folks who looked like us was the news. But now? Were walking past Bill Hader and Paul Rudd to collect our Golden Globes.

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But this is special for another reason. Wearing his fancy maroon suit and ivory white kicks, Youssef strutted up the stage, hugged Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, and then said what Id already been chanting for him at home: Allahu akbar. Thank you, God. He said it gently and redundantlypraising God in first English, then Arabic, so as not to cause alarm at the Beverly Hilton Ballroombut that made a world of difference for us Muslim fans watching from home.

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The phrase Allahu akbar is a normal one for Muslims all over the world. We say it when we do our daily prayers, when Mohamed Salah scores a goal, and at weddings and funerals. Its as common as Thank God and as complex as Aloha. But for me, Youssef sneaking in that phrase is political, easy to read as a deliberate protest against the ways non-Muslims have been programmed to believe Allahu akbar is a threatening war cry. Hearing him say it, in his fancy suit alongside beaming actresses like Witherspoon and Aniston, was his way of thrusting his uncompromised identity into the Hollywood elite diaspora.

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We hear a lot of talk about assimilating. The right demands that we Muslims fit in and weave ourselves into the fabric of America. Ive always thought of that as a threatas if the only way to assimilate is to strip myself of what made me different. Ramy is a show about negotiating Youssefs specific slice of American Muslim identity, and in his brief and elegant speech, he showed that real assimilation happens when ideas that on the surface seem to clash begin to appear together, and become normal. I usually avoid praising God in Arabic when Im in places too public. If its a regular sight at the Golden Globes, maybe that could change. Thats what assimilation truly looks like for Muslims in America.

Youssef isnt the first Muslim or even the first Ramy to win a Golden Globe, but this award is unique, not least for how he celebrated. Hes currently working on Season 2 of Ramy for Hulu, with help from another Muslim who won a Golden Globe, Mahershala Ali. I believe theyre working on something much bigger than TV.
France's foreign minister said Monday that Tehran must not retaliate over the killing of top general Qasem Soleimani in a US air strike, amid an escalating war of words between Iranian officials and President Donald Trump.

"It is essential that Iran renounce any reprisals or retaliations," Jean-Yves Le Drian told BFM television, adding that "there is still a place for diplomacy, fortunately."

"In all the talks I've held with other officials, no one wants a war," he added, while deploring "bad choices on all sides" for the "dangerous escalation" of tensions between Tehran and Washington.

Le Drian said any counterstrikes against the US would jeopardise the viability of the coalition fighting the Islamic State group threat in Iraq and Syria, which he said must remain the region's priority.

He also urged Tehran to refrain from further steps to undo the 2015 accord curtailing its nuclear activities, ahead of an emergency meeting by EU foreign ministers on the Iran crisis this week.

Paris will decide "in the coming days" whether it will renew sanctions against Iran for walking away from the deal, Le Drian said, after months of trying to uphold the deal despite Trump's decision to abandon it.

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Seven years ago, the TaxPayers Alliance reported that in the last year, five times more Labour people were appointed to public bodies than Tories.

Since then, the figures have varied, and some Conservative members or supporters have been selected to fill important posts.

Nonetheless, it remains the case that, since it took office in 2010, our Party has punched beneath its weight when it comes to public appointments. One of the reasons seems to be that Tories simply dont apply in the same number as Labour supporters.

To help remedy this, every week we put up links to some of the main public appointments vacancies, so that qualified Conservatives might be aware of the opportunities presented.

         

Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy  Groceries Code Adjudicator



The Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA) is a corporation sole which is operationally independent of Government. The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is responsible for appointing the GCA. The GCA will carry out the following functions: advise large retailers and suppliers on the Groceries Code; publish guidance on when and how investigations will proceed, how enforcement powers will be used and the criteria it intends to adopt in deciding the amount of any financial penalty; investigate possible breaches of the Groceries Code by large retailers; where an investigation finds that a large retailer has breached the Groceries Code, decide whether to make recommendation to the retailer, require it to publish information about the investigation or impose a financial penalty on the retailer

Time: 2-3 days per week.

Remuneration: 125,000 to 135,000, pro rata.

Closes: 05 January

         

West Midlands Police & Crime Commissioner  Independent Panel Members



David Jamieson, elected Police and Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands is seeking to appoint Independent Panel Members to join the list of people able to sit on the Panel for police misconduct hearings. These hearings preside over serious misconduct cases in what is an important aspect of the disciplinary rules that govern the police in England and Wales.Successful candidates will also join the list of people for Panels in West Mercia, Staffordshire and Warwickshire, and the work will therefore be varied across the entire region. Police and Crime Commissioners have the challenging role of ensuring that the people of the West Midlands are served by an efficient and effective police force. Transparent, fair and robust arrangements for police officer discipline are an important way of inspiring public confidence in the high professional standards and ethical values of our police.

Time: Contract will run until 2021.

Remuneration: 215 per diem, plus expenses.

Closes: 06 January

         

Homes England  Chair

The Chair will be responsible for the proper running of the Homes England Board. They will guide and influence the Agency at a strategic level providing confident, clear and consistent leadership. They will also lead the Agencys relationship with the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, who they will meet on a regular basis. The Chair will act as an ambassador for the Board and for Homes England, helping to build and develop collaborative strategic partnerships that support and promote Homes Englands core mission. The successful candidate will influence and network with key decision makers and stakeholders and explain how the organisation is transforming

Time: Up to two days per week.

Remuneration: 95,000 per annum.

Closes: 08 January

         

VisitEngland Advisory Board  Chair



Our national tourist board, the British Tourist Authority (BTA), plays an important role in delivering the Governments tourism agenda, including the Sector Deal. The BTA Board is advised on English tourism by the VisitEngland Advisory Board (VEAB), with the VEAB Chair also sitting on the BTA Board. The Chair of the VEABs term ends in March 2020 and the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport wishes to appoint a new Chair. The BTA Board Chair public appointment process is being run in parallel with this position. The Chair will be supported by a non-executive Board in providing expert advice to the Chair and Board of the BTA, and in representing English tourism to the tourism sector and public.

Time: Maximum of 4 days per month on average.

Remuneration: 340 per day. Up to 16,320 per annum plus reasonable expenses.

Closes: 08 January

         

British Tourist Authority  Chair



The chief responsibilities of the new BTA Chair will be to: ensure that any statutory or administrative requirements for the use of public funds are complied with, that all expenditure is in accordance with Treasury rules for the management of public money and that the BTA maintains high standards of corporate governance at all times. The BTA Chair has an important role to play in supporting the organisations Accounting Officer in delivering high standards of regularity and probity; provide effective leadership of the Board and support to the Chief Executive to deliver on the aims and objectives agreed with DCMS; Act as an ambassador for British tourism, working across Government to further the promotion of Britain as part of the GREAT campaign and through commercial partnerships

Time: Average of two days a week.

Remuneration: 40,000 per annum plus reasonable expenses.

Closes: 08 January

         

Greater Lincolnshire Local Enterprise Partnership  Chair



The Greater Lincolnshire LEP works with the public, private and voluntary sectors to drive sustainable economic growth. We help our businesses increase productivity and innovation, create new employment opportunities, and develop infrastructure solutions that support this. We are the voice of the local business community, ensuring that the economic interests of the area are properly represented. We believe that Greater Lincolnshire is alive with opportunities and a truly great place to live, work and do business and is emerging as the intelligent choice for investors.

Time: Around four days per month.

Remuneration: None.

Closes: 20 January

         

Construction Industry Training Board  Board Trustee



CITB is the statutory skills body for the construction industry in Great Britain and its purpose is to make better provision for the training and maintenance of skills in the industry. CITB raises around 200m annually via a training levy, and works closely with employers and the Government to ensure national construction skills needs are met. CITB seeks to create the culture and conditions that will deliver new ways of working, embracing new technologies, creating a demand in construction for more skills, new skills and higher level skills. CITB aspires to be at the forefront of effective commissioning and grant practice and is undertaking a high-profile transformational reform programme in order to achieve this.

Time: Around 16 hours per month.

Remuneration: Expenses.

Closes: 28 January
Orfarm utilises a four-step process to ensure its organic food meets the highest quality of standards

Organic products have been on the market for some time, but they have yet to make significant inroads into the shopping habits of the average Vietnamese family. Comparing the selling price of normal foods with organic foods, there is a large difference. However, there is a limited supply of organic foods in comparison to products which are grown and bred under the industrial model.

The stance is explained by Bui Bich Lien, owner of organic food production and distribution chain Orfarm. Food demand is expected to increase massively by 2050, which will shape agricultural markets in ways not seen before. Farmers worldwide will need to increase crop production, either by increasing the amount of agricultural land to grow crops or by enhancing productivity on existing land through fertiliser and irrigation, and adopting new methods like precision farming, according to Lien.

Thus, traditional livestock and cultivation methods supply limited products to the market because there is no involvement of any harmful factors to enhance productivity. For example, says Lien, it takes four months to increase the weight of a baby pig to 100kg under the industrial breeding method. This time is doubled under the organic method. The traditional system has yet to create mass products to meet demand, but it does have massive advantages. The first one is safety. Because this farming model is on a smaller scale, farmers or investors can carefully monitor the livestock and cultivation process, from selecting and developing seeds, to making feed and fertiliser.

Controlling the risk of environmental pollution is a factor resulting in limited production. The breeding and cultivation process is a circular model. There is no smell of animal manure and discharge of untreated wastewater into the environment, because the manure is used to create fertiliser, with a portion of the crops used for animal feed.

Lien said, At our farms, animals and crops are grown by natural methods but methodically, with a highly limited use of weight gainers, fertiliser, and antibiotics. Orfarm goods are produced according to three main criteria: zero waste, no insecticides, and no stimulants or harmful chemicals, she added.

Using advanced methods, effective microorganism technology creates farming conditions whereby putrefactive microorganisms are suppressed and organic materials are enhanced through the process of fermentation as opposed to putrefaction, said Lien. In addition, living organisms, as well as inorganic materials are equipped with the means to impede deterioration.

In terms of the noticeable difference in price, Lien stated that if customers weigh up the nutritional value of organic food versus the health risks posed by conventionally-grown food, they will recognise the clear benefits offered by organic products.

ORFARM chicken was cooked and served by French Michelin-star chefs at the Culinary Festival in the Embassy of France in Hanoi.

For example, ultra-processed foods can carry the threat of disease, especially cancer, due to the residues of antibiotics and drugs in animals bodies. In addition, if children eat meats containing undigested weight gainers, they may experience puberty earlier than normal.

Organic nutrition that suits cellular needs will help the body to easily absorb nutrients and convert them into energy, while helping the immune system and accelerating the elimination of toxins, said Lien. This is especially important for prepubescent children as their cells are still developing, affecting their physical and intellectual growth.

Animals and crops need to be given enough time to grow and reach an acceptable nutritional value. Therefore if they are harvested early or forced to eat weight gainers to reach the standard growth in a short time, their nutritional value will be nearly zero, continued Lien. For instance, the oil of perilla leaves can be used as a medicine. It should take two months for the perilla tree to produce oil. However, if people use fertiliser to shorten the trees development time, the leaves are no more nutritious than grass. This means that we should buy a few organic products of high nutritional value instead of wasting money on large quantities of food with little nutritional benefit and other health risks.

ORFARM special "Chung" cake is an indispensable gift for family, partner and friends during the Vietnamese Lunar New Year

The abuse of fertiliser has a serious detrimental effect on arable land and biodiversity. In the long run, future generations may face a lack of good agricultural land due to the impact of inorganic fertilisers.

Reducing the price gap between conventional and organic foods on the market, including those produced by Orfarm, may represent a perfect opportunity for customers to approach a more healthy food lifestyle.
Demonstrators outside the Houses of Parliament in central London (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

Dozens of protesters chanted Boycott Cyprus outside the Cypriot High Commission in London as part of a march in support of a British teenager convicted of lying about being gang-raped.

Demonstrators gathered in front the High Commission Of The Republic Of Cyprus in St Jamess Square on Monday before setting off to march through the streets past Downing Street and the Foreign Office to Parliament Square.

The protesters were calling for justice for the 19-year-old woman, who was found guilty of public mischief and is due to be sentenced on Tuesday.

Placards saying I believe her and The rapist is you were held aloft, while people chanted We believe her, we want justice and Boycott Cyprus.

Expand Close The teenager and her mother leaving Famagusta District Court in Paralimni, Cyprus (PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp The teenager and her mother leaving Famagusta District Court in Paralimni, Cyprus (PA)

Verity Nevitt, co-founder of the Gemini Project, which organised the march, told the PA news agency that it was to stand in solidarity with the teenager against the injustice she is facing.

She added: The aim of today is to put pressure on the Government and (Foreign Secretary) Dominic Raab to intervene and do something.

Theyve said a few words about being concerned but they havent taken any action. They should be out there they should be doing something.

Why are you allowing this gross miscarriage of justice to be inflicted upon a British citizen?Lucy Nevitt

The demonstrators marched through the streets of central London before stopping outside Downing Street.

There the crowd of around 100 protesters chanted that they wanted justice for the teenager and that Yes means yes and no means no.

They then continued to Parliament Square, where they held a rally.

Speaking to the protesters, Ms Nevitts twin sister, Lucy Nevitt, branded the womans treatment a gross miscarriage of justice.

She called on Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Government to take action, and added: Why are you silent? Why have you chosen the side of the oppressor?

Expand Close Demonstrators walk past the Houses of Parliament in central London (Stefan Rousseau/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Demonstrators walk past the Houses of Parliament in central London (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

Why are you allowing this gross miscarriage of justice to be inflicted upon a British citizen, be that one that is vulnerable and one that has already experienced unimaginable trauma?

The teenager said she was raped by up to 12 Israeli tourists in a hotel room in the party town of Ayia Napa on July 17.

But she was charged and the dozen young men, aged between 15 and 20, who were arrested over the incident were freed after she signed a retraction statement 10 days later.

She maintains she was raped but forced to change her account under pressure from Cypriot police.

The teenager could face up to a year in jail and a 1,700 euro (1,500) fine upon sentence after being found guilty of public mischief at Famagusta District Court in Paralimni.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has conveyed concerns to his Cypriot counterpart over the treatment of the 19-year-old woman.

But Mr Raab, appearing on Skys Ridge On Sunday, warned that the case now needs to be handled very sensitively to prevent doing anything counter-productive between now and the teenagers sentencing.
Teenagers' opinions of how privileged they are are more important than the reality, according to research.

A study of more than 2,000 young people in England and Wales found a link between a teenager's opinion of their family and their own success.

This appeared to be a more solid connection than their true wealth or social status, and there were even differences seen in the lives of twins who had differing opinions of the same parents.

Young people who viewed their parents as more successful were less likely to have been convicted of a crime and tended to be more educated, more likely to have a job and have fewer mental health problems.

Researchers suggested helping children to see their own families in a more positive light could help them overcome inequality.

Researchers said children who thought more highly of their parents were less likely to have mental health problems even than siblings who had a lower view of the same family (stock image)

THE SIGNS YOUR CHILD MAY BE DEPRESSED AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT Signs of depression in children can include: Prolonged sadness

Irritability

Lack of interest in things they used to enjoy

Fatigue and exhaustion

Insomnia or sleeping too much

Poor concentration

Indecisiveness

Lack of confidence

Eating too much or too little

Inability to relax

Feeling guilty or worthless

Numb to emotions

Thoughts about suicide or self harming

Self harming Some also have physical symptoms, like headache or abdominal pain. Older children may misuse alcohol or drugs. Depression in children can occur due to family issues, bullying, other mental-health problems, or physical, emotional or sexual abuse. It can be triggered by one event, such as a bereavement, or a build-up of things. If you suspect your child is depressed, try to talk to them about how they are feeling. Let them know you are concerned and you are there if they need you. If they will not talk to you, encourage them to reach out to another relative, teacher or family friend. If this does not help, contact your GP, who may refer your child to a specialist mental-health service. Source: NHS Advertisement

A team from King's College London and the University of California, Irvine, studied 2,232 same-sex twins born in the UK.

The participants were quizzed about their family's social ranking when they were 12 and then again at the age of 18.

Although no link was seen at 12 years old, by the time the child was 18 a link had emerged between their views on their family and their own success in life.

'The amount of financial resources children have access to is one of the most reliable predictors of their health and life chances,' said Professor Candice Odgers, author of the report and member of staff at UCI.

'But these findings show that how young people see their family's place in a hierarchical system also matters.

'Their perceptions of social status were an equally good, and often stronger, indicator of how well they were going to do with respect to mental health and social outcomes.'

A twin with a higher estimation of their family's social status was more likely to have a job than their sibling, the study showed.

'Siblings grew up with equal access to objective resources, but many differed in where they placed their family on the social ladder - which then signaled how well each twin was doing,' said Joshua Rivenbark, a PhD student at Duke University.

However, physical health and intelligence did not appear to be linked to someone's perception of their family  this was more likely to be tied to the reality of the family's financial situation.

UCI's Professor Odgers added: 'Targeting adolescents' views of where they stand in society alone will never fully combat larger inequalities.

'But as the gap between the rich and the rest grows, creative solutions focusing on both societal and individual factors are needed to help young people to overcome unprecedented obstacles to social mobility and move their way up the social ladder.'

The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
TCL will plow forward with plans to popularize its own company-branded smart phones, including a novel folding phone with three separate hinges.

The Chinese company, which is mostly known for selling capable TVs, announced its intentions at the Consumer Electronics Show on Monday, detailing a new line of phones called the TCL 10 Pro, TCL 10L, and TCL 10 5G.

While the company has long manufactured devices for other companies, including Blackberry, this will be among the first phones released under its own name.

Scroll down for video

TCL has announced one of the first premium 5G smartphones available for the non-premium price of $499

Its high-end 5G device, the TCl 10 5G, will cost less than $500 - a price that drew several wows from the audience - among the first 5G phones to be sold in that range.

TCL says It will boast an in-screen fingerprint reader and a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

All three of the phones will be released in February starting in Barcelona, Spain and will use customized version of the Android operating system.

The phones will all have a rear-mounted camera array that with four sensors aligned in a horizontal formation.

Displays on each of its new devices will use TCL-made displays and employ NXTVISION visual technology - a proprietary display optimization and camera technology, that enriches color, clarity and contrast enhancement in real-time.

Other than its 5G phone costing less than $500, TCL didnt elaborate on the eventual pricing.

The audience at TCL's CES 2020 presentation was wowed by the company's announcement of a sub-$500 price for a premium 5G phone

All of TCL's newly announced phones will use the company's NXTVISION visual technology - a proprietary display optimization and camera technology, that enriches color, clarity and contrast enhancement in real-time

Perhaps the flashiest member of all of its new mobile devices, however, will be the companys nascent folding phone, which has yet to receive an official name.

The phone, a prototype of which was unveiled in October, has three hinges and is capable of various configurations and sizes. When collapsed the phone folds onto itself to configure the device into a book-like shape.

While the device didnt get a lot of airtime during TCLs media conference on Monday, the company said it will turn to its expertise in display technology to enable its folding capabilities.

The unnamed folding device will reportedly not have a screen on the outside and is still very much in prototype phase.

Its unclear when, if ever, it will join the ranks of other folding phones like the Samsung Galaxy Fold or Huaweis Mate X.

Earlier this year, the company was also rumored to have at least five folding devices in the works, including two tablets, two smartphones, and a type of wearable that swivels around one's wrist.

TCL promised a new folding phone that will be bend into three different, unique configurations

TCL didnt mention when or if those devices would be released.

For the Chinese company, a new line of company-branded smart phones will mark a major step forward and its first real foray into the mobile market.

The company is clearly looking to fill in gaps in the market for phones that boast premium features without a premium price tag.

TCL will contend with other purveyors like Google, which allegedly plans to release a budget version of its flagship Pixel phone, and Apple which is expected to release multiple versions of its iPhone SE 2 - expected to cost around $399 - next year.
We often see insiders buying up shares in companies that perform well over the long term. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of examples of share prices declining precipitously after insiders have sold shares. So we'll take a look at whether insiders have been buying or selling shares in HomeServe plc (LON:HSV).

What Is Insider Selling?

Most investors know that it is quite permissible for company leaders, such as directors of the board, to buy and sell stock in the company. However, most countries require that the company discloses such transactions to the market.

Insider transactions are not the most important thing when it comes to long-term investing. But logic dictates you should pay some attention to whether insiders are buying or selling shares. As Peter Lynch said, 'insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons, but they buy them for only one: they think the price will rise.

Check out our latest analysis for HomeServe

HomeServe Insider Transactions Over The Last Year

Over the last year, we can see that the biggest insider purchase was by insider Stella David for UK325k worth of shares, at about UK11.45 per share. That means that an insider was happy to buy shares at around the current price of UK12.85. Of course they may have changed their mind. But this suggests they are optimistic. While we always like to see insider buying, it's less meaningful if the purchases were made at much lower prices, as the opportunity they saw may have passed. Happily, the HomeServe insider decided to buy shares at close to current prices. The only individual insider to buy over the last year was Stella David.

You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by individuals) over the last 12 months, below. By clicking on the graph below, you can see the precise details of each insider transaction!

LSE:HSV Recent Insider Trading, January 6th 2020

There are always plenty of stocks that insiders are buying. So if that suits your style you could check each stock one by one or you could take a look at this free list of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them).

Story continues

Does HomeServe Boast High Insider Ownership?

I like to look at how many shares insiders own in a company, to help inform my view of how aligned they are with insiders. We usually like to see fairly high levels of insider ownership. It's great to see that HomeServe insiders own 13% of the company, worth about UK546m. Most shareholders would be happy to see this sort of insider ownership, since it suggests that management incentives are well aligned with other shareholders.

So What Do The HomeServe Insider Transactions Indicate?

It doesn't really mean much that no insider has traded HomeServe shares in the last quarter. On a brighter note, the transactions over the last year are encouraging. It would be great to see more insider buying, but overall it seems like HomeServe insiders are reasonably well aligned (owning significant chunk of the company's shares) and optimistic for the future. If you are like me, you may want to think about whether this company will grow or shrink. Luckily, you can check this free report showing analyst forecasts for its future.

If you would prefer to check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt.

For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We currently account for open market transactions and private dispositions, but not derivative transactions.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Baldessari labored in near anonymity as an artist and teacher until 1970, when he hauled most of his pre-1966 works to a crematorium and burned them in a documented performance. By then, his text-and-image paintings had caught the eye of fellow artists and a few dealers, as well as Paul Brach, dean of CalArts, who hired him as an instructor at the fledgling, experimental school. Baldessari moved to Los Angeles and set up the school's post-studio art course, which he described as "all the kind of art you didn't need a studio to deal with."
In 2015, the United States and its allies negotiated a deal with Iran that would lift many of the economic sanctions that have been placed on the country to curb its nuclear program. Congress approved the deal, but in 2018, President Trump backed out of it and resumed economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Then, on Jan. 2, 2020, U.S. forces killed a top Iranian military general with a done strike, igniting concerns about how and when Iran and its allies might retaliate. Oil prices spiked in response given Iran's massive oil reserves and its role in the global petro-economy.

Iran's Oil Production Capacity Has Diminished in Recent Years In 2018, Iran accounted for only 4% of total daily oil production, producing just over four million barrels per day, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Iran, which is a member of the cartel, sits upon 13% of global oil reserves. It produces over four million barrels per day, accounting for 4% of total global production. However, economic sanctions by the U.S. and other countries have diminished the Republic's exports in recent years.

Chart courtesy FRED.

World Oil Supply and Demand

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), total production, measured in barrels of oil produced daily, is around 94.7 million barrels. That's slightly lower than the 96.3 million barrels per day in 2015. Total global consumption is around 99 million barrels per day. Iran is the seventh largest producer if crude oil in the world.

When supply surpasses demand, the price of oil falls. When demand is higher than supply, prices rise. Each country and producer decides how much oil to produce, which is why alliances like the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, can change the price of a barrel of oil by deciding to increase or limit production. In 2019, OPEC members and its allies, OPEC+, agreed to cut production by 500,000 barrels per day to boost prices, which had been on a downward trend since October of 2018.

Iranian Production Capacity

Due to the sanctions, Iran's ability to produce oil has declined over time. Oil production requires expensive equipment that is slow to deploy and expensive to maintain, and the aging oil infrastructure in Iran has severely limited production capacity.

Iran is believed to have stored around 25 million barrels of oil, but that amount is not enough to flood the market and drive a steep decrease in prices. If the sanctions are lifted, production will slowly ramp up to pre-sanction levels, which by itself still will not cause a significant change in the market.

One expert estimates that it will take a full year to add 500,000 barrels per day to current production. Iran does have large oil reserves, but it will take some time to access them.

Influence on Oil Prices

When the nuclear deal with Iran was announced in 2015, oil prices fell about 2%, but the decline was only temporary. While traders initially feared that Iran could flood the market, we now know that it simply does not have the ability to do so immediately.

Furthermore, countries like the U.S. and China have become more efficient producers of their own oil. In 2018, the U.S. became a net exporter of oil given the increase in shale production and other methods.

The Bottom Line

Iran does not have the global influence on oil prices it once had in the 1970s and 1980s. Economic sanctions have hurt its ability to produce at capacity just as other developed countries have improved and increased their own oil production. Recent tensions between Iran and the U.S. are also likely to put more pressure on Iran's production capabilities despite the recent rise in the price of crude oil.
Charlotte Crosby spoke about her 'pretty bad break-up' with ex-boyfriend Joshua Ritchie during Monday's I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! Australia.

Speaking to campmate Ryan Gallagher, the 29-year-old hinted that her work schedule had caused tensions with Joshua, 25, as she was much busier than he was.

'I recently split up with my boyfriend of two years and it has been a pretty bad break-up,' Charlotte began, while discussing their split in November.

It's over: Charlotte Crosby (right) spoke about her 'pretty bad break-up' with ex-boyfriend Joshua Ritchie (left) during Monday's I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! Australia

She added: 'I'd go to work every day, have late nights and travel around everywhere, and he would be sat playing on his PlayStation [at home].'

Trying to cheer her up, comedian Ryan joked in response: 'Why do you want a guy who pumps Botox in his face [and] straightens his hair every five minutes?'

Charlotte then defended Joshua, clarifying that he doesn't use Botox - but admitted she had once 'tried to make him' fix the 'deep wrinkles' on his forehead.

'Pretty bad break-up': Speaking to campmate Ryan Gallagher (left), the 29-year-old hinted that her work schedule had caused tensions with Joshua, 25, as she was much busier than he was

Lazy boy? 'I'd go to work every day, have late nights and travel around everywhere, and he would be sat playing on his PlayStation [at home],' said Charlotte

Reflecting on her tumultuous love life, Charlotte later said: 'Ryan thinks that I always pick the wrong kind of people - and I do think that is kind of true.

'I think that I'm my own worst enemy - I'm dangerous to myself. I'll be walking out of [the jungle] with a baboon by the end of this and trying to marry it!'

Despite having spent just 48 hours in the South African jungle, Charlotte has already confessed to having a crush on Ryan, who launched a stand-up career after starring on the Australian version of Married At First Sight two years ago.

The pair have admitted to exchanging flirty messages on Instagram in the past, but didn't meet face to face until Sunday's season premiere.

Sore subject: 'I recently split up with my boyfriend of two years,' Charlotte began, addressing her split in November

'My own worst enemy': Reflecting on her tumultuous love life, Charlotte later said: 'Ryan thinks that I always pick the wrong kind of people - and I do think that is kind of true'

Charlotte and Joshua - who is best known for starring on Love Island UK and Ex on the Beach - announced their split in November, after a two-year romance.

At the time, it was reported that he 'wasn't ready to settle down' but she wanted to 'get married and have kids'.

A month before their break-up, Charlotte had left her $1.9million (1million) Newcastle home and moved into a $850,000 (450,000) pad in Bolton, Greater Manchester, with Joshua.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Joshua's representatives for comment.
:A group of students and citizens staged a protest here condemning the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, police said.

Expressing solidarity with the JNU students, the protesters gathered near Ambedkar statute on Tank Bund after midnight on Sunday and raised slogans like "Students Fraternity Zindabaad" and held placards that read "We are with you JNU".

They raised slogans andheld a candlelight protest and later dispersed, a senior police official told PTI.

The protesters also raised slogans against the Narendra Modi government over the CAA.

Similarly, a group of students under the banner of "HCU Students Union" also protested against the violence at JNU.

Theytook out a rally late Sunday night on the campus of University of Hyderabad (UoH) here condemning the "brutal attack on JNU students" and blamed the ABVP for the violence and demanded the arrest of the culprits.

Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police which conducted a flag march.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The main accused in the recent incident of vandalism at Gurdwara Nankana Sahib in Pakistan has been arrested and charged with anti-terrorism act, a top official said on Monday

Lahore: The main accused in the recent incident of vandalism at Gurdwara Nankana Sahib in Pakistan has been arrested and charged with anti-terrorism act, a top official said on Monday. Gurdwara Nankana Sahib, also known as Gurdwara Janam Asthan, is a site near Lahore where the first Guru of Sikhs, Guru Nanak, was born.

According to media reports, a violent mob had attacked the Gurdwara and pelted it with stones on Friday. A team of police had to intervene briskly to control the situation.

The accused, identified as Imran, was arrested on Sunday for his role in the incident, Geo News reported.

Azhar Mashwani, the Focal Person (Digital Media) to Punjab Chief Minister, took to Twitter to announce the arrest.

The main culprit in #NankanaSahib incident Imran has been arrested FIR # 6/2020 u/s 295A/290/291/341/506/148/ 149, 6 sound system /7ATA has been registered at Nanakan Police Station pic.twitter.com/v1LYzO7ACI  Azhar (@MashwaniAzhar) January 5, 2020

He further said that the "7 ATA is a non-bailable section under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Breaking his silence on the incident, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday condemned the recent incident of vandalism at the Nankana Sahib, saying it goes against his "vision" and the government will show "zero tolerance" against those involved in it.

India has strongly Attack on Nankana Sahib: of vandalism at the revered Gurdwara and called upon the Pakistan government to take immediate steps to ensure the safety and security of the Sikh community there.

On Saturday, Indian leaders cutting across party lines and various outfits condemned the mob attack on the historic Gurdwara, terming it as "cowardly" and "shameful".

Hundreds of protesters thronged the streets near the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi demanding that Islamabad provide adequate security to Sikh shrines and community members there.

Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhandhak Committee (SGPC), the apex body which manages Sikh shrines in India, said it will send a four-member delegation to Pakistan to take stock of the situation and urged the Pakistan government to take stringent action against the culprits who attacked the gurdwara - one of the holiest sites in Sikhism.
New Delhi: B-Town celebrities on Sunday raised concern over the immense loss of wildlife due to blazing bushfires in the Australian state of Victoria, which is destroying the flora and fauna of the area inch-by-inch. The actors shared awakening pictures of the destruction of wildlife destruction on social media.

Shilpa Shetty Kundra took to Twitter and shared the pictures of enormous fires. The caption to the pictures read, "Heart-wrenching news...It's been estimated that almost half a billion animals have been killed by the bush fires in Australia. Such a devastating calamity."

Heart wrenching news...

Its been estimated that almost half a billion animals have been killed by the bush fires in Australia. Such a devastating calamity #PrayForAustralia #AustraliaBushfires pic.twitter.com/BOhwMqh1fY  SHILPA SHETTY KUNDRA (@TheShilpaShetty) January 5, 2020

Alia Bhatt took to Instagram to share posts showing the wildlife destruction and the extinction of Koala bears due to the enraging fires.

Alia Bhatt's Instagram story.

Preity Zinta raised her concern for the wildlife destruction and the inhabitants helping the wild animals survive in a collage on Instagram. The caption to her post reads, "The Australian fires have not only killed people but displaced thousands of families from their homes as over 1400 homes are destroyed and taken the lives of a billion animals. As the fires rage on, it's time for all of us, all over the world to get together and #PrayforAustralia For all the #Firefighters that are working tirelessly to control this fire for all the people and animals displaced and for the loss of life. #PrayforRain #RIP #Australianfires."

Manoj Bajpayee took to Twitter and shared a Twitter user's post which showed rising fire flames in the forest. He tweeted, "This is horrific!!!"

'Taare Zameen Par' actor Tisca Chopra reposted a picture of the fires shared by Hollywood actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio on her Instagram account. The post reads, "Looks like #Apocalypse to me .. different parts of the earth burning up."

'London Paris New York' actor Ali Zafar also raised his concern over the environmental calamity as he tweeted, "The world needs to be aware of the catastrophe that's happening in Australia right now. Over 1/2 a BILLION animals have been burnt 10,000 houses destroyed. It will cause irreversible damage to the environment. Thoughts & prayers with people of Australia. #prayersforaustralia"
A Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) delegation, led by its president Sukhbir Badal, urged External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday to seek a categorical assurance from Pakistan that those responsible for a "hate attack" on Sikhs as well as the stoning of Gurdwara Janam Asthan in Nankana Sahib would be given an "exemplary punishment."



Badal also urged Jaishankar to raise the issue of atrocities being committed by Pakistan against minorities in the United Nations, the party said in a statement.

Claiming that from 40,000 Sikhs as per the 2002 census, the number of the community members had come down to around 5,000 in Pakistan, Badal said, "This itself is proof of forced conversions."



Citing the recent incident of stoning and attack by a mob on Gurdwara Nankana Sahib, the birth place of first Sikh guru Guru Nanak Dev, the SAD chief said if anybody could attack and stone the holy shrine, then no minority was safe in Pakistan.

"The delegation requested the External Affairs minister to seek a categorical assurance from Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan that assets and lives of minorities would be protected and that all those responsible for the hate attack on Sikhs as well as stoning of Gurdwara Janam Asthan in Nankana Sahib would be arrested and awarded an exemplary punishment," the statement quoted Badal as saying.

The SAD delegation said the Pakistani government should be asked to take prompt and exemplary action if any minority community was targeted in any manner.

The delegation members also told Jaishankar that the recent events in Pakistan had hurt the sentiments of the Sikh community worldwide and the Sikhs living in Pakistan had already stated that they were feeling insecure.

Later in the day, the external affairs ministry summoned Pakistan's Charg d'affaires Syed Haider Shah and lodged a strong protest over the alleged desecration of Gurdwara Nankana Sahib, near Lahore, and killing of a Sikh in Peshawar.

The ministry said Shah was conveyed that India wanted immediate measures to expeditiously bring the perpetrators of such "despicable and heinous acts" to justice.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Castro, the former U.S. housing secretary and San Antonio mayor, will join Warren for a joint rally Tuesday in Brooklyn, according to his campaign.

The endorsement is not entirely a surprise. Castro built a particularly friendly relationship with Warren while running, with the two trading compliments about their plans and sharing embraces on the campaign trail.

In the video, which is nearly three and a half minutes, Castro appears to visit Warren at her home and the two swap praise for one another while seated at her kitchen counter.

Castro ended his campaign Thursday after struggling for months to gain the traction needed to be a top-tier candidate, despite often being the first in the field to champion certain progressive causes. In the video, Warren tells Castro, "You did so many things in this campaign, and it continues to matter."
In Maykop, the sculptural composition Cinderella's Shoe was unveiled in the central park of culture and leisure. It is the first dedicated to Yevgeny Schwartz art object in the city, where he spent his childhood and youth, the head of the tourist information center Pleasure Mountains, Olga Ivanova informed.

Maikop residents and guests of Adygea should know that the city has a great and interesting pre-revolutionary history. Not only Russians but also world level figures lived here. Among them is the playwright, storyteller and screenwriter Evgeny Schwartz, she said.
An Instagram-famous model and firefighter has filmed the moment he rescued a baby joey from flames, as he pleads with followers for donations.

Sam McGlone, 24, posted the video on Thursday near his hometown of Braidwood, an hour east of Canberra in New South Wales, as bushfires threatened the area.

The volunteer firefighter immediately got to work extinguishing spot fires and managed to rescue an orphaned joey hiding from encroaching flames under a log.

Sam McGlone, 24, rescued an orphaned joey from flames around his hometown Braidwood

He wrapped the joey in a blanket and took it to the vet, but pleaded with his social media followers to donate to injured wildlife

Mr McGlone issued a desperate plea on social media for donations.

'Australia is on fire! '500 million animals have been killed,' he wrote.

'I saved this little baby kangaroo it was left by its self! This is heart breaking. 10 Million acres burned. Please spread. Please donate. We need your help.'

The YouTuber and Instagrammer, who has more than 100,000 followers, set up a Go Fund Me campaign to raise money for injured wildlife.

McGlone is a volunteer firefighter and has been fighting blazes around the south Coast with his brothers

McGlone took to social media to tell his followers how he rescued the baby kangaroo and fed it water from a bottle cap

Mr McGlone volunteers with his brothers and has been fighting blazes around the South Coast since late-December.

Braidwood was under threat in late November last year with flames reaching 100 feet.

But the community was on high alert last week when the nearby blazes around Palerang threatened the area.

The Palerang fire was under control as of Monday morning.

It is estimated that more than half a billion animals have been killed in the bushfires pushing some species to extinction.
Simon Zebo limped off eight minutes into Racing 92s Top 14 victory over Clermont at the weekend, giving boss Laurent Travers an injury headache ahead of Sundays Champions Cup return against Munster.

The full back watched the rest of the 27-19 win from the sidelines with an ice pack on his right ankle, before leaving La Defense Arena on crutches.

Despite starring in the 21-21 Champions Cup draw against Munster at Thomond in November, Zebo has endured a difficult second season in France and, until Saturdays brief return to action, had not featured for his club since early December.

Clermont rested Morgan Parra, but otherwise fielded a near-full strength side against a Racing side that, for all their riches and star power, can be frail at home. They have lost three times at La Defense Arena this season.

Racings win was more convincing than the eight-point difference in the scoreline suggested.

Remarkably, given some of their commanding performances in Europe, Clermont  who will want revenge against Ulster on Saturday  have yet to pick up a bonus point in the Top 14 this season.

La Rochelles dreams of a European rugby knockout return have long been dashed, but they could still have a decisive role in Pool Two, with matches against Sale, on Friday, and Exeter to come. There was enough in their five-try 44-13 win at Pau on Saturday to indicate that Ronan O'Garas efforts to create a Super Rugby-Top 14 hybrid might even succeed.

Toulouse will be in a foul mood for Saturdays trip to the Sportsground to face Connacht. A late try from the returning Cheslin Kolbe last night was not enough to stop them losing for the first time since October 19, beaten 30-18 by Stade Francais.

Connachts other French Pool Five rivals, Montpellier, were made to work for their 29-26 home win over Brive in their final outing before Saturdays match at Gloucester.

For the second season in a row, Europe has cursed Lyon. Before the Champions Cup kicked off in November, Pierre Mignonis side had won eight from nine in the Top 14, and were five points clear of second-placed Bordeaux, and 14 ahead of the chasing pack.

Since then, they have won three from eight, including one in four Champions Cup games, and slipped to second in the Top 14. Their latest outing was a scarcely deserved 13-12 victory at Agen.

It came at a price. Centre Pierre-Louis Barassi became the 14th to join Lyons injury list when he went off for an HIA in the first half and did not return. He was later taken to hospital with a suspected broken cheekbone, and looks certain to miss out on the weekend trip to Dublin to face already-qualified Leinster.

Bordeaux scored all their points in the first half to ease past Bayonne 22-3, while Toulon won an ill-tempered game against Castres 43-3 to extend their unbeaten streak to six.
Iran-backed militias hide among civilians to avoid US attacks

Iranian militias in Syria are hiding among civilians to avoid possible US airstrikes, amid rising tensions, local sources reported.

Soleimani, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards' elite Quds force, was killed in a US drone airstrike outside Baghdad airport on Friday.

MILITIAS VACATED THEIR BASES

Sources said that Iran-backed militias in Syria have made major movements following Soleimani's killing.

"Iranian militias in eastern city of Deir ez-Zor have hid their sites and military checkpoints in the towns of Al-Bukamal and Al-Mayadin," one of the sources said. "Militias that vacated their bases are now hiding inside houses in residential neighborhoods," the source added.

Meanwhile, US forces in Deir ez-Zor are reported to have reinforced security measures and erected new checkpoints in the wake of Soleimani's death.
Trevon Logan, whos black, was called boy while seeking his first job as an economist. Economics professor Cecilia Conrad, also black, had three of her white male students complain about being taught by an obvious affirmative-action hire. Black people are less represented in economics than in STEM fields-science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. And their share has trended down since the mid-1990s.

That economics has a problem with race isnt even in doubt, Janet Yellen, former chair of the Federal Reserve, said on Jan. 3 at a panel where Logan and Conrad spoke during the American Economic Associations annual meeting in San Diego. The only question, Yellen said, is what to do about it. The panels blunt title: How Can Economics Solve Its Race Problem?

The aspirations for black women and men in economics were higher half a century ago. At the height of the civil rights struggle, in April 1969, a National Black Economic Development Conference meeting in Detroit issued a manifesto demanding $500 million in reparations from churches and synagogues, because racist white America has exploited our resources, our minds, our bodies, our labor. Some of the money was to go for research on the problems of black people. All roads must lead to revolution was one of the manifestos slogans.

Black economists were less prone to call for revolution, but they did want change. That December, those attending the American Economic Associations annual meeting, held in New York City, formed a caucus and issued a statement of concern about the gross underrepresentation of black economists in the life of the Association and the profession.

Many of the problems identified in the statement of the Caucus of Black Economists sound familiar today. The statement pointed out that the underrepresentation of black economists has been taken to mean an absence of ability. It said form and technique have been favored over substance and value, and that in its apolitical zeal, the Association has remained silent on issues involving racial minorities. By design and default the economic well-being of large numbers of the minority population is being sacrificed for the illusion of neutrality on social and political questions, said the statement, which was included in the conferences official papers and proceedings.

Caucus members debated in the following years whether to become an advocacy organization or to focus on academic research and increasing the supply of black economists. Given limited resources, they chose the latter course, reorganizing in 1974 as the National Economic Association, recalled Margaret Simms, an early member of that association whos a nonresident fellow of the Urban Institute, at a Jan. 4 luncheon honoring the 50th anniversary of the caucuss founding. This year the NEA sponsored panels at the conference in San Diego on such topics as Race, Ethnicity, and the 2020 Election and Discrimination in Labor Markets and Educational Settings: Experimental Evidence.

Progress for black economists has been slow despite a variety of efforts by the National Economic Association as well as the American Economic Association. The AEA has an active Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession, which was founded in 1968 and covers Hispanics and American Indians as well as black people. It sponsors mentorships for Ph.D. candidates and a summer program for talented undergraduates to develop the technical skills they need to pursue a Ph.D. About a fifth of minorities whove earned economics doctorates in the past two decades were graduates of the summer program.

The share of Ph.D. degrees awarded to black students remains strikingly low, Yellen said, with survey participants reporting both overt acts of discrimination and more subtle forms of marginalization. While black graduates share of degrees in all subjects has risen from less than 8% in 1995 to more than 10% in 2017, their share of economics degrees has fallen from 6.4% to 5.3%, according to a 2018 report by the Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession.

I dont have to tell anyone in this room that far more needs to be done, Bernard Anderson, the first black professor to earn tenure at the University of Pennsylanias Wharton School, said at the NEAs anniversary luncheon. He was one of five founding members of the Caucus of Black Economists to speak at the event. Another was Theodore Spratlen, professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Washingtons Foster School of Business. Spratlen said he found out 20 years after the caucuss founding that the leadership of the American Economic Association had New York City police officers standing by that day in 1969 in case the group became disruptive. When all we wanted, he said, was to be economists.
President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One Sunday the U.S. wouldn't leave the joint U.S. air base with Iraq "unless they pay us back," and he doubled down on his threat to target 52 Iranian sites.

If they do ask us to leave, if we dont do it in a very friendly basis. We will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame."

Why it matters: Iraq's parliament passed a resolution earlier Sunday urging the government to expel U.S. troops from the country over the killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani and the leader of an Iraqi militia on its soil.

Per Axios' Dave Lawler, the vote does not formally revoke Iraq's invitation for the U.S. to have a presence in the country, but it is a step along that path.

Trump's threat to attack cultural sites could be considered a war crime under the 1954 Hague treaty.

What he's saying: "We've spent a lot of money in Iraq," Trump told reporters, according to a pool report.

"Iraq, was the worst decision, going into the Middle East was the worst decision ever made in the history of our country ... We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," he said of the joint air base.

On the targeting of cultural sites, Trump said, "Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people; theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesnt work that way."

Go deeper:
Lovot stole our hearts at last year's CES. Coming from Japanese company Groove X, Lovot is a pint-sized rolling robot that's designed to bring cheer into people's lives, acting as a kind of mechanical pet. It has big eyes, a button nose and two flipper-like arms that wave around when Lovot wants to dance, be picked up, or otherwise interact with its owners (or other Lovots). It also coos. It's the most adorable thing.

lovot

However, last year, Lovot was only a prototype. At CES 2020, Groove X is showing off the retail version of its cuddlebot, which is available now in Japan. The final Lovot connects to an app, which allows owners to customize its eyes and interactions, and track its behavior. Once Lovot has rolled around enough, the app also shows a rough outline of the Lovot's living space -- AKA, your home. With this, users can remotely direct Lovot to snap a picture of any accessible room, acting as the world's cutest security guard.

Lovot has a solid base and head, and a soft, huggable body. It's warm -- all of the electronics powering its insides heat up, and internal fans cool everything to a temperature that's best described as "sun-warmed puppy belly."

Lovot

The robot comes in a few different colors, and Groove X even sells a handful of outfits for it. Speaking of consumerism: Lovot is only available in Japan, where it sells for $2,776 (299,800 yen), including a base station. There's also a monthly fee to use Lovot, since Groove X updates the robot every month. The lowest-priced subscription tier is $83 per month, while the highest is $185. The basic tier grants users access to all of Lovot's features and software updates, while the top option adds data backup and no-cost upgrades in the future.

The price and subscription fee make Lovot a luxury item, for now. Groove X wants to sell Lovot outside of Japan, but it'll need investors to make that happen, a spokesperson said. That's why the company is at CES, after all.
[January 06, 2020] INVESTOR ALERT: Law Offices of Howard G. Smith Announces Investigation on Behalf of Mohawk Industries, Inc. Investors

Law Offices of Howard G. Smith announces an investigation on behalf of Mohawk Industries, Inc. ("Mohawk" or the "Company") (NYSE: MHK) investors concerning the Company and its officers' possible violations of federal securities laws. On July 25, 2018, after the market closed, the Company announced disappointing financial results for second quarter 2018, disclosing that Mohawk "reduced [its] production volumes more than [the Company] had thought" and that it "came into the year with higher inventories than [it] wanted to have." On this news, the Company's share price fell $38.06, or over 17%, to close at $179.31 per share on July 26, 2018, thereby injuring investors. Then, on October 25, 2018, after the market closed, Mohawk reported third quarter 2018 financialresults that fell below the Company's guidance, stating that "[t]o improve [its] inventory turns, [Mohawk was] presently manufacturing fewer units than [it was] selling, which is negatively impacting [its] costs."



On this news, the Company's share price fell $36.04 , or nearly 24%, to close at $115.03 per share on October 26, 2018, thereby injuring investors further. Then, on July 25, 2019, after the market closed, Mohawk reported that sales in its Flooring NA segment declined 7% year-over-year and that there was "big buildup in inventory in ceramic."

On this news, the Company's share price fell $27.52, or nearly 18%, to close at $128.84 per share on July 26, 2019, thereby injuring investors further. If you purchased Mohawk securities, have information or would like to learn more about these claims, or have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Howard G. Smith, Esquire, of Law Offices of Howard G. Smith, 3070 Bristol Pike, Suite 112, Bensalem, Pennsylvania 19020 by telephone at (215) 638-4847, toll-free at (888) 638-4847, or by email to [email protected], or visit our website at www.howardsmithlaw.com. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005919/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Defence Minister Linda Reynolds says the Australian government is "strongly concerned" about increased tensions in the Middle East after Iraq's Parliament voted to expel American troops and its allies following the killing of a top Iranian general.

In a new backlash from Friday's killing of General Qassem Soleimani and a number of top Iraqi officials at Baghdad International Airport, the Parliament called for the expulsion of Coalition troops from the country in a move that could trigger a resurgence of the Islamic State terror group.

But Coalition troops, including Australia's, are likely to stay put for now as the Trump administration "strongly" urged Iraqi leaders to reconsider the security relationship in the fight against IS.

Senator Reynolds said Australia remained steadfast in its effort to counter IS and its support network in the region, which posed a major threat to regional and global security.
The new 2020 "decade of hope" was barely two days old when in blundered US President Donald Trump with a drone attack that killed Iranian army general Qasem Soleimani in Iraq, along with other leading military personnel. Thus the powder keg that is the Middle East was given yet another abrupt injection of flint.

Mr Trump argued that his action was aimed at saving lives, especially those of US citizens in that troubled region. He said he ordered the attack "to stop a war - not start a war".

Few will mourn the death of Soleimani, who left a trail of destruction across the Middle East furthering Iran's ambition to have extensive influence there. But many will fear the consequences of this assassination via that US drone strike.

More considered observers of the events in recent days fear that the move will have the direct opposite effect, risking a new phase of terrorist attacks in many different countries. US citizens have now been advised to leave Iraq as thousands more American troops are deployed and the Department of Homeland Security has stepped up precautions all across the US, especially in the bigger cities.

The US Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, a noted friend of Ireland, remarked ruefully: "One reason we don't generally assassinate foreign political officials is the belief that such action will get more, not fewer, Americans killed."

The world in 2020 is a small place indeed. Ireland, and Irish citizens at home and across the world are as much at risk as any other people. The economic fallout of events in a region which is the world's oil well is an ever-present threat to our current prosperity.

Our thoughts immediately turn to the 385 Irish troops currently serving on peace-keeping duty in Lebanon, many of them close to the Israeli border. The persistent risk to their security is now intensified and there is also anxiety about the many other Irish citizens living and working in other centres around the Middle East.

Ireland, as a small nation, can only have a small say in what occurs on the global stage. But we must not underestimate our potential to punch above our weight in international matters and our moral obligation to speak out for what is right.

Ireland's long history of participation in international peace-keeping gives us a certain credibility within the United Nations. At times of dangerous actions such as this, the UN seems rather toothless and irrelevant. But the UN is among the few hopes the world has of some kind of sanity being brought to bear on a dangerously volatile situation.

In June of this year, UN member states will vote on Ireland's bid to take a two-year stint on the guiding UN Security Council. Because it involves an expensive campaign, the effort has wrongly been castigated as "a vanity project".

The reality is events such as these emphasise the need for small nations to remain as active as possible in international discourse. The catastrophic consequences of events like the US lethal drone attack emphasise the need for Ireland to remain involved with the United Nations.
(Natural News) Ordinarily, liberal academics who long ago infiltrated and dominated Americas college and university campuses try to conceal the fact that politically speaking, they are to the Left of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.

But recently one UCLA law school professor not only came out and admitted that his institution is dominated by Left-wing political thought, but that it is that way at the expense of conservative students who are even persecuted for their views.

In a very honest blog post, Prof. Stephen Bainbridge, the William D. Warren Distinguished Professor of Law, published his diversity statement that he had to submit as part of the process of being evaluated for a pay raise.

As regular readers know, Im up for a merit raise at UCLAW this year and am now required to submit a statement of how I contribute to the Universitys goals in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. I have just emailed the statement to the administration, he began.

Although I am aware and respectful of the many dimensions within which a university properly seeks a diverse faculty and student body, I have long been particularly concerned with the lack of intellectual diversity at the law school, he continued.

In particular, he said, a survey of law school professors from across the country found that the vast majority of them were white Democrats (both male and female), Jewish, or non-religious. Those groups account for most (or all) of the overrepresentation among racial, gender, religious, and ideological groups teaching law on American campuses.

The most underrepresented groups include Republicans (both male and female) Protestants, and Catholics.

The need for more conservatives is obvious and apparent

The UCLA professor noted that the disparities existed though religion and political diversity and are, in his view, more likely to be important than gender and racial diversity. (Related: Liberals at Christian college attack black pro-life speakers, claiming the truth about black genocide makes them feel unsafe.)

At UCLA, he wrote, we know that the campus as a whole leans substantially to the left. Citing research data, Bainbridge said the ration of liberals to conservatives at Cornell University was 166 to 6, while it was 141 to 9 at his university and 151 to 17 at Stanford University.

The ration was 166 to 5 at the University of Colorado, he noted.

But its worse for conservatives than simply being outnumbered by a wide margin. Bainbridge said that conservative students have been harassed, stalked, and threatened, he said, citing data.

In performing some of his own research, Bainbridge said he discovered that 36 people who claimed the law school as their employer donated exclusively to Democrats, one person to both parties, and only three exclusively to Republicans. And the most recent hire date for two of the three was 1997, he noted. In all, nearly 93 percent of the political donations he tracked went to Left-wing groups and Democratic politicians.

For his part, though, Bainbridge said hes made an effort to reach out to conservative students.

Because conservative students and students of faith often feel alienated and estranged in an environment that is so relentlessly liberal and secular, I have made particular efforts to reach out to and support such students, he wrote, adding that he has served as a mentor for leaders of The Federalist Society and the Christian Law Students Association.

And, he said, hes attempted to lead by example, including as a volunteer with local Catholic Churches and organizations. But, he warned, if university officials dont stop shutting out political, cultural, and academic conservatives, the school will completely lose all of the diversity officials claim they want.

We think Bainbridges pleas will fall on deaf ears, but kudos to him for making the effort.

Sources include:

ZeroHedge.com

NewsTarget.com
A criminal court in the UAE ordered a 43-year-old Sudanese man to 10 years in prison for killing a fellow countryman and assaulting an Indian woman and her minor daughter in an elevator in Sharjah in 2019, according to a media report on Monday.

The accused was also ordered to pay Dhiram 200,000 (USD 54,450) to the family of the deceased, identified as Naggi Shaikh Edriss, 46, as blood money, the Khaleej Times reported.

The Sudanese man, who was not named in the report, was sentenced seven years in jail for the murder and three years for the assault on the Indians. He will be deported to Sudan after completing the prison term, the report said.

The alleged murder and assault took place on January 16, 2019.

The 35-year-old Indian woman, who was not named, said she was attacked when she was returning to her home in Sharjah's Al Butaina area with her daughter, 7.

She said the accused attacked them in the elevator, stabbing her several times in the shoulder, back and hand, the report quoted the woman.

Hearing her screams for help, Edriss tried to intervene but received a stab wound in the chest, leading to his immediate death, the report said.

The police, which reached the spot based on an emergency call, found the accused with a knife, the report said.

During questioning, the accused confessed to the murder and attacking the Indians.

The accused said he committed the crimes due psychological factors and family issues, the report said.

The deceased's wife Fadwa said her husband was a graduate from the University of Baroda, India, and was working as an accountant in a Dubai free zone firm.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Citigroup plans to recruit 2,500 programmers this year for the unit that houses its traders and investment bankers, bulking up on coders and data scientists as technology reshapes the business.

Roughly three-quarters of the company's trade orders last year were electronic, according to Stuart Riley, global head of operations and technology for the bank's Institutional Clients Group. The ICG arm will add programmers in locations from New York to Chennai, India.

The hires reflect "what we are building in technology and why we are focused on making salespeople and traders more effective at servicing our clients," Riley said in an interview at Citigroup's Canary Wharf office in London. "Technology is augmenting what humans do by making better use of data."

Global banks are investing billions in a race to apply technologies that make front-office staff more efficient and keep clients trading. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are among other firms that are hiring as computer specialists change the face of trading floors across Wall Street.

JPMorgan spends $11 billion on technology every year, while New York-based Citigroup budgets roughly $8.5 billion, or about 20% of total expenses. Bank of America Corp. has said it spends approximately $10 billion on technology, with about $3 billion of that going to new projects.

Citigroup has started reaping the benefits of those investments in recent years, saying they'll help save as much as $600 million in 2020. The bank, which already has 23,000 technology specialists in its ICG business globally, said the new roles will be in London, New York, Shanghai, Toronto, Dublin, Tel Aviv, Pune and Chennai in India, and Tampa, Florida.

Tech giants are already waging a battle for talent in Citigroup's hometown. Facebook Inc. said it's planning to hire more than 3,000 people over the next three to five years in New York City, while Amazon.com Inc. announced plans to lease space in Manhattan that will house 1,500 workers.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

Citigroup's new recruits will work on projects including solutions in equities and fixed income, according to Riley. The bank has already used its tech teams to automate news, analytics, pricing and trade ideas for salespeople by drawing on their message exchanges with clients, Riley said.

About two years ago, the bank had 30 spaces for a Python coding class and was inundated with requests, according to Riley. It now has 1,600 front-office staff trained in the computer language.
The Jammu and Kashmir Students Association on Monday condemned the attack on JNU students, including JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, and demanded action against the perpetrators.

"Thrashing of students and teachers at JNU without any rhyme and reason is strongly condemnable. We condemn it in the harshest of words," Nasir Khuehami, the spokesperson of the Association, said.

"JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh was brutally beaten up. This is totally horrible. The heinous masked attack on professors and students is shocking and appalling," he said.

We demand action against the perpetrators of the violence, he said.

Violence broke out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as a group of masked people armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.

The Delhi Police has registered a case against unidentified people in connection with the violence but said no arrests have been made. It said the case has been transferred to the Crime Branch, who claimed to have found "vital clues.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
What harvest can the Washington region hope to reap from the Virginia and Maryland General Assembly sessions starting Wednesday?

In Virginia, in particular, it's a promising year. Northern Virginia has become a Democratic bastion, and the Democrats' takeover of both the state Senate and House of Delegates in the November elections means the party controls the entire legislature and the governorship for the first time in a generation.

That will mean passage of a host of statewide measures favored by northern Virginia but previously blocked by conservative downstate interests. These will include new gun-control laws, passage of the U.S. Equal Rights Amendment and repeal of the requirement that women seeking an abortion first have an ultrasound.

"It's just been a while since northern Virginia values have been reflected in policies out of Richmond," said Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, who is vice chairman of the chamber's Democratic caucus.

The new majority also will bring bread-and-butter benefits for northern Virginia, such as more funding for roads and transit, possibly financed in part by a gasoline tax hike. There will be more money as well for affordable housing, although not nearly enough to meet the need in the region.

The Democrats are expected to approve in-state tuition and driving privileges for undocumented immigrants. Northern Virginia's large immigrant population would welcome that measure, but the GOP is likely to strongly oppose it.

In Maryland, where school funding will dominate the legislative agenda, Democratic legislators will be wrestling with Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, and, to some extent, other parts of the state.

The Maryland suburbs hope to get more funding by approving the plan put forward by the Kirwan Commission, which would increase spending on K-12 schools by $4 billion a year by 2030.

But the local jurisdictions are also concerned about how much they'll have to pay for it. Montgomery County is particularly wary, as its affluent residents risk being asked to cover more than their share to support lower-income jurisdictions such as Baltimore City.

Even in Prince George's County, which stands to benefit overall from Kirwan, leaders are worried about how the tax-averse county will raise the revenue to cover the portion of school funding that the state doesn't pick up.

"For the county and for Baltimore City, who would be the big winners in Kirwan . . . the big issue is how do you pay for it," said David Harrington, a former state senator who now is president of the Prince George's Chamber of Commerce. "If the formula can be weighted more to the state than the county, there's nobody [in Prince George's] who's going to be against that."

Local legislators also will try to wrest more control from Hogan over transportation, such as over his ambitious plan to add express toll lanes on the Capital Beltway and Interstate 270, and to rebuild the American Legion Bridge.

Here's more detail on the region's priorities for the two legislative sessions:

- - -

Virginia

High on the list for Northern Virginia is restoring tens of millions of dollars for roads and transit that was taken from the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority in 2018 to help pay for Virginia's share of the historic Metro dedicated funding agreement.

The authority estimates that it lost about $102 million a year in the Metro deal, of which it is already scheduled to get back $20 million. It is pleased that Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, has proposed giving back an additional $45 million.

"Priority number one for us is restoration of the funds that were diverted for Metro," NVTA Executive Director Monica Backmon said.

The additional money, which legislators say is very likely to be approved, will mean NVTA can keep moving ahead with several high-priority transportation projects. One is widening the Richmond Highway (Route 1) in Fairfax County and adding bus-rapid transit there. Another is widening Route 28 in Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties, and improving interchanges there. A third is building the Duke Street Transitway, a bus-rapid transit project for the city of Alexandria.

Area legislators said the high numbers of immigrants in northern Virginia made it imperative for them to extend tuition and driving benefits to individuals who are undocumented, even though they expected to draw criticism over the hot-button issue.

"This is a constituent service for my undocumented constituents," Del. Danica Roem, D-Prince William, said. "I don't care about getting attacked for it."

Northern Virginia's newfound clout in Richmond is evident in its dominance of legislative leadership positions. Fairfax legislators will hold the top posts in both chambers, as Del. Eileen Filler-Corn will be House speaker and Sen. Richard Saslaw will be Senate majority leader. Northern Virginians also are heavily represented in committee chairmanships.

- - -

Maryland

The situation is different in Annapolis, where Baltimore-area legislators will hold the two top positions in the General Assembly. They are House Speaker Adrienne Jones, D-Baltimore County, who assumed the office in May, and incoming Senate president Bill Ferguson, D-Baltimore City.

Baltimore's dominance has spurred speculation that the Washington suburbs might suffer as a result. But local legislators say Jones and Ferguson are well aware of the importance of Montgomery and Prince George's, the state's two most populous counties, to the state Democratic Party.

There appears to be strong support both within the legislature and with Hogan for a big increase in state funding for school construction, to be financed by bonds backed by casino revenue. Montgomery alone is expected to get an additional $70 million a year for 10 years, more than doubling the $60 million it has been receiving.

But the consensus breaks down over the much larger sums required by the Kirwan panel's plan to increase teacher salaries and pay for new K-12 programs.

Both the Montgomery County Council and Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat, have expressed concern about being stuck with too much of the cost.

On the transportation front, area legislators may try to change the law regulating public-private partnerships as a way to influence Hogan's plan to use such agreements to widen area highways. And Montgomery is hoping to persuade the state to revive plans to build the Corridor Cities Transitway project linking Gaithersburg and Clarksburg.
I wanted to love Greta Gerwigs Little Women, which has opened to rave reviews and netted an impressive $37 million. But despite fine acting, lovely choreography and an innovative, non-linear narrative, I merely appreciated the film. It didnt speak to me. And I felt frustrated.

I have a hard time believing that if I was a poor or nonwhite girl in America today, this eighth remake of Louisa May Alcotts classic book about four sisters in 19th century Massachusetts would seem relevant or urgent. Why tell this story now when many others beg for big-screen treatment?

Contrary to praise for the filmmakers fresh and modern take, much felt outdated, safe and aimed at the largely white audience I watched alongside.

While the March sisters (Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy) have fewer luxuries than wealthier counterparts and struggle against gender inequities, they possess far more privileges than many girls. They have access to enlightened and educated parents, art, travel and an inheritance. Within Orchard House they remain nestled in a warm cocoon of family love and stability and sport sumptuous new costumes with each scene change.

Given Gerwigs talent and rising star power, this Little Women feels like a missed opportunity to reach more girls growing up today. Teen Vogue reviewer Natalie de Vera Obedos points out the squandered chance for greater inclusivity by not casting a nonwhite actor as the love interest Laurie, described by Alcott as a half-Italian young man with curly black hair and brown skin.

I dont expect one film to cater to all audiences. But even with increasing representation, Hollywood stories and directors that take seriously womens hopes and dreams remain precious and few. And I expect more than I did at 14, when the last adaptation hit theaters in 1994.

My sisters and I grew up with Gillian Armstrongs excellent adaptation and saw snatches of ourselves in the four on-screen sisters, especially in the dark hair of Winona Ryders Jo and Latina actress Trini Alvarado as Meg. Oddly, the cast from 25 years ago felt more diverse than 2019s mix of Irish, Australian and English actors in the sister roles.

As the eldest of four sisters with writing ambitions of my own, I identified with the March sisters struggles to help their mother maintain the family home as their father serves as a chaplain in the Civil War. We sought comfort in repeated VHS viewings as our family faced sickness, death, poverty and hunger.

My tenderhearted sister, Erica, survived multiple disabilities, unlike Beth. But our loving mother, principled and tough like Marmee, died at 53 of cancer. Our father worked long hours. Due to his emotional volatility, his absence brought relief. Our Meg, my sister Joelle, sought security in a family of her own. Pregnant with her fifth child, she cannot return for a college degree that would provide better job prospects. Ive pursued my writing but remain indentured to student loans from my MFA degree; long ago I gave up on affording children and a writing career. Our Amy, my sister Shauna, didnt take loans to attend the School of Visual Arts. Instead, she serves as a personal assistant and nanny to rich people in Hollywood and remains at the mercy of their whims. We are no longer little women but grown and still finding our way.

What might Little Women look like today? Two recent books imagine the Marches as a biracial, blended family and a Pakistani family. Innumerable possibilities exist for revisioning Alcotts themes of generosity, loss and resilience for todays diverse audiences.

A story awaiting retelling is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smiths autobiographical novel adapted for film once in 1945. The book tells a darker story of adolescent survival and grinding poverty through the eyes of 11-year-old Francie Nolan, born into a family of Austrian-Irish immigrants in the early 20th century. A reworking could shift the narrative to a present-day Latin family facing gentrification and immigration enforcement.

Jacqueline Woodsons poetic novel Another Brooklyn is also ripe for film adaptation. The story follows four black girls as they navigate the crepuscular, dangerous time between girlhood and womanhood in the 1970s. These sister-friends strive to protect each other in a world that preys on growing girls.

Spoiler alert: Not all of them make it.

Little Women gets some things right. Womens dreams and hopes matter, and disparities in power and money persist, not only between men and women but among different women. I look forward to Greta Gerwigs next film, but also Lulu Wangs, Chinonye Chukwus and Ava DuVernays. How will the next generation of women filmmakers, perhaps girls themselves, find their inspiration and backing? Where is their Little Women?

Stacy Torres is an assistant professor of sociology at UC San Francisco.
The State Of Education In Kansas City In 2020 The KCUR news staff presents the State of Kansas City series as a look ahead to 2020 on topics of importance to the region. Find the State of Kansas City report on other topics in the series as they are published each weekday, Jan. 6-Jan. 20.

An education series that will be cut short given very little public interest in schools other than the tax cash they require . . . Checkit:
Bengaluru: Karnataka CM BS Yeddyurappa on Sunday challenged opposition leaders to prove that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) would have an adverse effect on the Muslim community. Yeddyurappa has said that due to the Citizenship Amendment Act, our Muslim brothers in the country will not be affected. He said that Muslim brothers need not have any fear of this.

Actually, the Congress and other opposition parties are trying to create confusion among the Muslim brothers due to malfeasance. To explain this, the BJP has decided to go door-to-door in support of the Citizenship Amendment Act. Yeddyurappa has said that the party has set a target of reaching three crore people across the country and 30 lakh houses in the state.

CM Yeddyurappa of Karnataka has challenged the opposition leaders to prove to the people of the country that it will have a bad effect on the Muslim community. He said that we will also visit places where the Muslim community lives in large numbers. Let us tell you that under the CAA, there is a provision of granting Indian citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists and Christians coming to India with religious persecution from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

Also Read:

Onion prices also makes Bangladesh cry, Know why prices suddenly increased

Uddhav Thackeray's big statement on JNU violence, compared to 26/11 'Terror Attack'

Akhilesh's big statement on JNU violence, says, "Conspiracy to ruin..."

CM Yogi targeted SP leaders, says, 'Father-grandfather did not earn money..'
Joaquin Phoenix and Cate Blanchett have spoken out about Australias ongoing wildfire crisis at the Golden Globes.

The fires in Australia have killed a total of 24 people so far, and have destroyed more than 1,300 houses in the state of New South Wales alone.

On Sunday evening, Blanchett spoke about the fires before she presented an award.

There are a lot of Australians in the room tonight, she said. I know we are all very grateful for the call-outs to our fellow compatriots who are suffering under the bushfires, so thank you.

I wanted to do a special call-out to the volunteer firefighters who have been at the centre of battling the climate disaster that is facing Australia.

Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A firefighter hosing down trees and flying embers in an effort to secure nearby houses from bushfires near the town of Nowra in the state of New South Wales on 31 December 2019 AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Smoke billows from a huge bushfire that has torched over 200,000 acres of land in East Gipplsand, Victoria on 2 January EPA Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Residents look on as flames tear through bushland in Lake Tabouriee, Australia on 4 January on 4 January Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Boats are pulled ashore as smoke and wildfires rage behind Lake Conjola on 2 January Robert Oerlemans via AP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A firefighting helicopter tackles a bushfire in East Gippsland, Victoria on 31 December EPA Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A firefighter gives water to a parched koala in Cudlee Creek, South Australia AP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Firefighters tackle a blaze as it tears through a farm in New South Wales on 21 December AP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures The sky is turned red over East Gippsland as fires continue to rage through Australian bushland on 4 January Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A kangaroo near bushfires in Nowra AFP/Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures An aerial view of a bushfire near Bairnsdale State Government of Victoria/EPA Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Firefighters work to tackle a blaze on the outskirts of Sydney on 31 December 2019 Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A firefighting helicopter dumps water on a bushfire on the outskirts of the town of Bargo near Sydney Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Children play at the showgrounds in the southern New South Wales town of Bega where they are camping after being evacuated from nearby sites affected by bushfires AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A satellite image of the Batemans Bay showing smoke and fire from wild bushfires European Union, Copernicus Sentinel Data via REUTERS Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures The afternoon sky glows red from bushfires in Nowra AFP/Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Burning embers cover the ground as firefighters battle against bushfires around the town of Nowra AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures The sky glows red as bushfires continue to rage in Mallacoota, Victoria Jonty Smith via Reuters Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures The remains of burnt out buildings along a main street in the New South Wales town of Cobargo AFP/Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Firefighters try to protect homes around Charmhaven, New South Wales NSW Rural Fire Service/AP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Wildfires rage under plumes of smoke in Bairnsdale Glen Morey via AP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Business owners stand in front of their shop which was destroyed by a bushfire in Cobargo EPA Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A helicopter dumping water on a fire in Victoria's East Gippsland region Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning/AFP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Nowra AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Think smoke from bushfires fills the air in eastern Gippsland Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures "Carmelised" snow caused by dust from Australian bushfires is seen near Franz Josef glacier in the Westland Tai Poutini National Park, New Zealand Reuters Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Firefighters hose down trees as they battle against bushfires around the town of Nowra AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Smoke billowing from a fire burning at East Gippsland, Victoria. More than 800,000 hectares have been burnt in East Gippsland EPA/DELWP Gippsland Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Smoke billowing from a fire burning at East Gippsland EPA/DELWP Gippsland Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures LIFES.A.BREEZE via Reuters Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Smoke and wildfire rage behind Lake Conjola Robert Oerlemans via AP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A house and van are seen destroyed after bushfires ravaged the town of Bilpin, west of Sydney AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A helicopter fighting a bushfire near Bairnsdale in Victoria's East Gippsland region State Government of Victoria/AFP Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Fire and Rescue personal run to move their truck as a bushfire burns next to a major road and homes on the outskirts of the town of Bilpin Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Amy, left, and Ben Spencer sit at the showgrounds in the southern New South Wales town of Bega where they are camping after being evacuated from nearby sites affected by bushfires AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures A firefighter sprays foam retardant on a back burn ahead of a fire front in the New South Wales town of Jerrawangala AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Two bushfires approach a home located on the outskirts of the town of Bargo Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Property damaged by the East Gippsland fires in Sarsfield, Victoria EPA Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Nowra AFP via Getty Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures Property under threat from the East Gippsland fires in Sarsfield EPA Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures The main street of the New South Wales town of Bombala is pictured shrouded in smoke from nearby bushfires AFP via Getty

And of course, when one country faces a climate disaster, we all face a climate disaster, so were in it together, so thank you very much.

Meanwhile, Phoenix, who picked up the award for Best Actor in a drama, used his speech to demand change in order to support those battling the fires in Australia and fight the climate crisis.

Its really nice that so many people have come up and sent their well wishes to Australia but we have to do more than that, the Joker star said. Its such a beautiful gesture and I have not always been a virtuous man, he said. Im learning so much and so many in this room have given me multiple opportunities to get it right and Im deeply grateful, but hopefully together we can get unified and make some changes.

The actor teased that celebrities, including himself, dont have to take private jets to Palm Springs to the awards sometimes. Golden Globes Awards: best dressed celebrities on the red carpet

Another Golden Globes winner to use their speech to highlight the Australia wildfires was Russell Crowe, who was awarded Best Actor in a Limited series for his role in The Loudest Voice. Crowe did not attend the ceremony but provided a message that was read out for him by Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon.

Russell Crowe could not be here with us tonight because he is at home in Australia protecting his family from the devastating bushfires, said Aniston before reading the note.

Make no mistake, the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based, the note stated.

We need to act based on science, move our global work force to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is. That way, we have a future. Thank you.

Other stars including Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Ellen DeGeneres also spoke about the Australian wildfires at the award ceremony, while Patricia Arquette used her acceptance speech to highlight the fact that the continent of Australia is on fire.

Australian actors Margot Robbie and Nicole Kidman urged their fans to donate to Australian firefighters ahead of the ceremony.

Robbie used Instagram TV to film a clip in which she shared photographs from her childhood and urged followers to please donate anything you can.

Whatever you would spend on your next cup of coffee, even a dollar would help, she added. Lets give future generations the kind of childhood I was so lucky to have.
Rocket Grants Director Julia Cole has vacated her position after a decade in that role. Launched in 2009, The Rocket Grants program is "a partnership between the Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, MO and the Spencer Museum of Art at KU in Lawrence, KS, with funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Fleabag creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge arrives at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards. Credit:AP

Phoebe Waller-Bridge is already heralded as a goddess for the 21st century and at Monday's Golden Globes she was elevated to saint after revealing she would auction her red carpet look to aid the bushfire crisis relief effort.

According to Variety, the Fleabag creator pledged to auction her suit, by Australian expatriate brand Ralph & Russo, with proceeds going to the fundraising effort, which has been heavily supported by celebrities including Celeste Barber and Nicole Kidman.

"Its a beautiful idea from the team, so Im really excited to be a part of that, Waller-Bridge reportedly said backstage.

While the on-stage action was high on politics, the red carpet was high on drama, with exaggerated sleeves the standout trend of the night. Not that anyone should have been surprised, given the Globes are the first awards show of the year and in prime position for celebrities to cherry-pick the best of the spring-summer catwalks from Paris, New York and Milan.
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey will work to de-escalate tensions between Iran and the United States and has been in contact with both parties after U.S. forces killed a top Iranian military commander last week, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday.

Since the U.S. killing of Qassem Soleimani, Tehrans most prominent military commander, Cavusoglu said he has held phone calls with his Iranian and U.S. counterparts to discuss it.

Asked if Turkey would be open to mediating between Tehran and Washington, Cavusoglu said Turkey would support any steps to ease tensions in the region. We will continue to work with other countries to solve this problem or de-escalate tensions in the coming days, he said.

The issue of Iran-U.S. tensions would be on the agenda during Russian President Vladimir Putins visit to Turkey on Wednesday, he said, adding President Tayyip Erdogan had discussed the issue with Iranian, French, Iraqi and Qatari counterparts.

Our common concern is Iraq turning into a conflict zone for other, third-party countries. This is a very serious risk for Iraq and our region, Cavusoglu said. Therefore, we will continue to do whatever we can to reduce the cycle of violence.

The United States last week killed Soleimani, the architect of Irans growing influence in the Middle East, in an overnight attack in Baghdad authorized by President Donald Trump.

Iran has promised vengeance and on Friday condemned Trump as a terrorist in a suit.

Iraqs parliament called on Sunday for U.S. and other foreign military forces to leave amid a growing backlash against the Soleimanis killing, which has heightened fears of a wider Middle East conflict.

Cavusoglu said the parliaments decision was not binding, adding that Erdogan had urged his Iraqi counterpart to act with reason.

The killing of Soleimani didnt just shift the balances in Iraq, it also did so in Iran. This may lead to radical groups gaining strength, he said.

Cavusoglu said he have also discussed the issue with his Russian, British, Qatari and Pakistani counterparts, and with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Chennai, Jan 6 (IANS) The principal opposition party in Tamil Nadu, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) on Monday boycotted Governor Banwarilal Purohit's customary address to the State Assembly in the New Year.

When Purohit began his address, the Leader of the Opposition and DMK President M.K. Stalin and other members of his party tried to raise various issues.
As residents from South Coast towns who evacuated the area last week began making their way home on Monday, the death toll from the bushfires climbed to 20 with the discovery of a man's body on a property near Narooma.

With bushfire conditions easing, NSW Rural Fire Service community safety officer Marty Webster told residents at the Bega Valley Showground on Monday the rain that had fallen in the area had allowed firefighters to get on the "front foot".

"We are not out of the woods yet, but conditions have eased over all the fire grounds. It has given us the opportunity to get on the front foot rather than just defensive fire fighting," he said.

"We've been developing strategies all along, but we haven't had the opportunity to really push those strategies hard. This reprieve in the weather will give us the opportunity to really get stuck in to make sure we are ready for the next bad weather set."
Last week, Indore took a lead in the cleanliness survey 2020 in the country. (Photo Credit: File Photo)

Indore:

Indore, which has been adjudged the cleanest city in the country three times in a row, has been earning about Rs four crore annually by putting garbage to good use, an official said on Sunday. A private company has invested Rs 30 crore under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode by setting up a plant to process 300 tonnes of dry waste through artificial intelligence, Asad Warsi, the Centre's Swachh Bharat Abhiyan's adviser for Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC), told PTI. With its robotic technology, the plant, spread over an area of four acres, segregates dry waste items like plastic, glass and metal.

"As per an agreement, the firm has been paying Rs 1.51 crore premium from its profit to the IMC," he said. The IMC has been producing compost and bio-CNG fuel from the wet waste, Warsi said.

"Besides, the construction and demolition waste is being turned into bricks, tiles and other stuff, which fetches the civic body Rs 2.5 crore annually," he added.

The IMC has given the task of garbage collection to three NGOs. In the first phase, these NGOs have started collecting dry waste from 22,000 households by paying Rs 2.5 per kg of waste to the house owner, Warsi said.

Besides, these NGOs have been paying a premium to the IMC as per the terms and conditions on which they have been handed over the work, he said.

Nearly 1,200 tonnes of waste, comprising 550 tonnes of wet waste and 650 tonnes of dry waste, was being disposed of daily in Indore, which has population of about 35 lakh. Last week, Indore took a lead in the cleanliness survey 2020 in the country.

The survey's final and decisive lap started on Saturday and will complete this month-end, in a prelude to rank the country's cleanest city next year.

Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri announced results of the Swachh Survekshan League 2020 (Quarter 1 and Quarter 2) on December 31. In the two surveys (Swachh Survekshan Leagues) carried out between April and June and between July and September last year, Indore emerged as the cleanest city of India.

The result of the survey conducted from October to December is yet to be announced.
[January 06, 2020] FourThought Private Wealth Launches as an Independent Registered Investment Advisor

FourThought Private Wealth, previously known as Pinkerton Private Wealth, today announced its launch as an independent Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) and related rebrand. Headquartered in Venice, FL, the firm will continue to provide comprehensive wealth management services to its high-net worth families, foundations and endowments. It will also expand the company into new business lines. The team is led by managing partner Scott Pinkerton, CFP, AIF, CIMA (News - Alert), CPWA and partner William Mehserle, Jr., CFP, AIF. In 2019 Pinkerton appeared on lists including Barron's 1,200 Top U.S. Financial Advisors, Forbes Best-In-State Wealth Advisors and Financial Times (News - Alert) Top 400 Financial Advisors. Mehserle was named to Forbes' Top Next-Gen Wealth Advisors list in both 2018 and 2019. The management team also includes partner Patrick Baumann, CFA, CTP, former treasurer of Harris Corporation (News - Alert), who serves as the chief investment officer, and chief operating officer/chief compliance officer Donna Guinta, former chief operations officer of Cadaret, Grant, a large broker-dealer based in New York state. "Our team draws on more than 50 years of experience to provide individuals and families with tailored solutions to meet their financial goals, as well as extensive resources to support family offices, foundations and endowments," said Pinkerton. "This move will give us a flexible platform to help clients experience our motto: better decisions - less stress. Being an RIA means that we are always functioning as fiduciaries and are aligned with our clients' interests." Mehserle noted that the transition was the right time to change the firm's name to FourThought, which is a reflection of its planning orientation and four planning principles. In addition to FourThought Private Wealth, the company includes FourThought Signature, wich offers family office services, and FourThought Institutions, which serves businesses and nonprofits.



FourThought Private Wealth has formed strategic relationships with some of the leading providers in the industry, including Fidelity Clearing & Custody Solutions, which will act as the primary custodian for their clients' investment assets. "The team at FourThought Private Wealth understands the benefits of going beyond investment management by building deep relationships with clients and preparing plans built around the needs clients face today and their goals for supporting future generations," said David Canter, head of the RIA segment for Fidelity Clearing & Custody Solutions. "We're excited to support the team as they explore what the future holds for them as an independent firm and pursue new avenues of growth."

Throughout FourThought Private Wealth's transition, Fusion Financial Partners provided strategic consulting, project management and planning, including counterparty due diligence, vendor selection and negotiation services. Fusion is also working with FourThought Private Wealth on its forward growth strategy and expansion into new business lines. "We are seeing a trend of advisors from IBDs such as FiNet or LPL seeking greater autonomy, control and growth potential by launching their own RIAs. Going independent will allow FourThought to leverage technology, gain access to financial planning strategies and develop new service lines that were not possible on an IBD platform," said Mike Papedis, CEO and founder of Fusion Financial Partners. "FourThought Private Wealth's clients stand to benefit as the firm gains greater flexibility to expand and enhance its service offerings." FourThought Private Wealth's focus is to help their clients reduce stress and make better decisions by helping them work through two critical questions: "are we going to be okay?" and "have we forgotten anything?" The firm offers unique financial planning, comprehensive wealth planning and investment strategies that are aligned with their client's needs and the way they think. Prior to launching as an independent RIA, the team operated through Wells Fargo (News - Alert) FiNet, the independent contractor division of Wells Fargo. About FourThought Private Wealth

FourThought Private Wealth, FourThought Signature and FourThought Institutions are subsidiaries of FourThought Financial, formerly known as Pinkerton Private Wealth, a financial planning firm originally founded in 1968 under A.G. Edwards. The company serves approximately 600 households in Florida and throughout the U.S., with assets under management of $800M. For more information, please visit fourthought.com. Fidelity Investments and Fidelity Clearing & Custody Solutions (together "Fidelity") is an independent company, unaffiliated with FourThought Private Wealth. Fidelity is a service provider to FourThought Private Wealth. There is no form of legal partnership agency affiliation, or similar relationship between FourThought Private Wealth and Fidelity, nor is such a relationship created or implied by the information herein. 910923.1.0 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005156/en/

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Over one hundred thousand protesters, many carrying the Indian tricolor flag, took part in a peaceful march in the southern city of Hyderabad on Saturday, chanting slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new citizenship law.

The protest, dubbed the "Million March," was organized by an umbrella group of Muslim and civil society organizations. More than 40 percent of Hyderabad's estimated population of nearly 7 million are Muslims.

Demonstrators were still pouring into the protest site late on Saturday afternoon, according to a Reuters witness, despite police saying no march would be allowed and that permission had only been granted for a 1,000-person gathering.

The Indian government has faced weeks of acrimonious and, at times, violent protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which was passed by Modi's government in December. The Hyderabad protesters held placards with slogans including "Withdraw CAA immediately," and "India's only religion in Secularism."

The Reuters witness said the protest remained peaceful, and estimated that more than one hundred thousand people were in attendance.
Despite claims from mainstream media and keyboard warriors that the Church has no place in modern society, the reality is that most people continue to tolerate the presence of Christianity.

There is little doubt that in Western countries, an attitude of post-modern or post-Christendom is setting in. But the question of how Christians can be effective in influencing society that is seeming increasing hostile and politically correct ought to be at the forefront of every believer.

Advent of political correctness

Whether we like it or not, society changes along with language and acceptable norms. What was once seemingly commonplace could now be viewed as questionable, and in recent decades the boundaries of traditional Western and Judeo-Christian values have undoubtedly narrowed.

Under the premise of promoting diversity and equality, political correctness has become mainstream to the extent that a good friend (and church youth leader) was asked to lead a discussion on the topic at a recent Sunday gathering.

I may or may not have been helpful with her preparation by offering my two cents, but I honestly think many Christians and non-Christians from both sides of politics get caught up in arguing about words instead of looking at the actual issue.

For example, being politically correct nowadays would be to say your husband/wife is your partner to reduce the emphasis on their gender because of the marriage equality movement. And some countries such as Canada have made it illegal to call transgender persons by the pronoun of their birth sex.

It is a common Christian doctrine to believe that God made man and woman, and marriage is to be between a man and a woman. Therefore, many Christians would find political correctness as going against Christian values.

Many conservatives and Christians also say that political correctness is a form of censorship against our right to free speech. To a large extent that's the chilling effect of political correctness, so much so that some people go the extreme by using this issue to say offensive things in the name of free speech.

Speaking the truth...

Not being able to acknowledge God created differences between the sexes and genders is concerning but also using the notions of free speech and anti- political correctness to vilify others is wrong too. Ultimately Christians ought to be able to and act to speak the truth (such as about sex and marriage) but to do so with love and gentleness.

The truth may be offensive, and that is okay because the world was offended at Jesus presence as this world is one of sin and Satan. Christians ought not to get caught up in worldly political squabbling, we are in but not of this world...

...but preferring love

A practical example of a Christian approach that shines Jesus love is with the LGBT community: I come to your church as a transgender person who asks to be referred to as she/her  having to refer to me as she/her is politically correct. Even though it's clear that I am a man, the church ought not to get caught up with political correctness debates because, at this very moment, you're dealing with a real human being, not a political forum. Nor ought prayer be used as a weapon of human judgement.

If I ask to be referred to as she/her then out of Christs love, be politically correct as Christians and churches are the meetings of imperfect sinners regardless of whatever identity a person is.

But the big thing that many churches fail to grasp is that regardless of how much a person's lifestyle and identity is different to Christian beliefs, everyone needs Christ. The Christian challenge is not to be constrained by secular politics or how the world thinks about words. The Bible tells us to have a transformation of the mind and seek after Christ's likeness.

Just because you call me, she/her doesn't mean you compromise on Christian teaching. Churches need to be more welcoming of LGBT people and realise that it's not Christians vs political correctness/LGBT/censorship but that the victory has been already won through Christ.

If you turn away a transgender person by offending them, you might be turning them away from their willingness to engage with the Church. So, don't let our own political views hinder the preaching and proclamation of God's truths!

Remember our understanding is limited

Remember when God was chasing down Jonah, it wasnt just because he was disobedient for refusing to go to Nineveh. But rather God pursued Jonah because he allowed his and the Israelites disdain to step in the way of the opportunity for the Ninevites to repent.

Jonah even said he wanted to die because God who is slow to anger, merciful and compassionate wanted to save the people of Nineveh. God was clearly upset with Jonah for trying to use his own limited understandings of the worlds politics in deciding who deserved Gods redemption.

And as we advocate for the truth, we should tread carefully not to add stigma to those who are suffering. Our goal ought not to be encouraging or advocating for a detransitioning towards their birth sex but to present them like every other person with the importance of coming or continuing to live under Gods authority.

Adding to the pain experienced by transgender people will undermine the Christian testimony and make it harder to live in accordance with an identity vested in Jesus Christ.

Roydon Ng is a Christian writer from Western Sydney.

Roydon Ngs previous articles may be viewed at: http://blog.roydonng.com.au
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The weekend's events were dominated by the recent assassination of the Iranian military commander of the al-Quds forces, Qassem Soleimani. Catch up on everything that happened.

The killing of the Iranian military commander of the al-Quds forces, Qassem Soleimani, is another example of the deep divisions between the Syrian people.

On Friday, Syrians in opposition held areas celebrated the death of a man they hold responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. During a weekly Friday protest in the northwestern city of Idleb, one demonstrator held a placard that read: We rejoice in the death of the terrorist Qasem Soleimani. Thank you Trump. AFP referred to this person as Mohamed Shkeib and quoted him as saying, This piece of good news will encourage us to keep advancing, God willing, the revolution will continue and the revolution will triumph. Several displaced Syrians told Middle East Eye that they were celebrating because under Soleimanis instruction, pro-regime government forces besieged a number of rebel-held towns and cities, starving them into capitulation. We ate cats during the siege and residents exchanged their cars for a couple kilograms of rice, said Burhan, a civilian who fled the city of Zabadani in the Damascus countryside to Idleb. At a refugee camp near the border with Turkey in Aleppo province, another group of men on Friday had a sign saying Thank You Trump next to a tray of sweets set up for people to pick from. Soleimani was considered the architect of Irans deployment and policy in Syria, where he backed Syrian government troops in the nine-year conflict. On Facebook, posts flared with rejoice. An activist and writer, Khalil Haj Saleh, wrote on his page, I wish he was killed by a Syrian; I wish he was killed in Aleppo or Deir ez-Zor. Another writer, Khidr al-Agha, wrote, This is a victory for justice, a nice breeze that blows to cool the souls of the Syrian martyrs, a third commentator wrote, Qassem Soleimani is on his way to hell. He has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Iraqis, Iranians, and Americans. He is not going to be missed.

Meanwhile, the Syrian regime condemned the killing of top Iranian and Iraqi commanders in a US strike, which was hailed by the countrys opposition. Syria is, certain that this cowardly US aggressionwill only strengthen determination to follow in the path of the resistances martyred leaders, a Foreign Ministry official was quoted as saying by SANA. The official described the killings as a serious escalation of the situation in the region and accused the United States of resorting to the methods of criminal gangs. The unnamed official said the strike was, part of the [US] policy aiming to create tensions and fuel conflict in countries in the region. President Bashar al-Assad lamented Soleimani in a cable to Irans supreme leader saying, the martyr Soleimani will remain immortal in the consciences of the Syrian people, who will not forget his standing by the Syrian Arab Army in its defense of Syria against terrorism and its backers. The Syrian people, will not forget that he stuck by the side of the Syrian Arab Army, Assad said. The memory of the martyr Soleimani will remain immortal in the conscience of the Syrian people, he added.

Over the weekend, SANA almost exclusively covered and mourned Soleimani. Published stories covered, statements of condolences from politicians, funeral processions in Iran and Iraq, anti-war demonstrations in US cities, the end of the US presence in the region and the funeral of Soleimani.

This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
Capital to witness triangular fight between AAP, Congress and BJP.

NEW DELHI: The battle for the nations capital will commence on February 8 and its results will be announced three days later, on February 11, the Election Commission said on Monday. A total of 1.46 crore voters can exercise their franchise in the elections, which is set to witness a triangular contest between the ruling Aam Aadmi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress.

The much-anticipated Delhi Assembly elections, to be held in a single phase, is a prestige war for chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his party which is seeking re-election after an electrifying victory in 2015 when AAP won 67 of the 70 seats in the Assembly.

The Congress drew a blank, while the BJP had won three seats.

According to a Cvoter survey, the BJP may suffer its third consecutive setback after the Maharashtra and Jharkhand rout. The Aam Aadmi Party looks set to clinch 59 seats in the 70-seat Assembly, while the BJP is likely to slump at 8 seats. The Congress is likely to save some face this time with three seats, as against its previous zero, the survey said.

Announcing the poll dates on Monday, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said that the Model Code of Conduct comes into effect in Delhi immediately. He said the notification for the polls will be issued on January 14 while the last date

of withdrawal of candidature is January 24. The nomination process will commence with the issuance of the notification.

Major campaign planks for Delhi elections are likely to be the National Register of Citizens (NRC), Citizenship (Amendment) Act, air pollution and womens safety. The demand for full statehood for Delhi will also be part of the AAPs election narrative.

The announcement of the poll schedule comes days after the city witnessed incidents of violence and protests against the amended citizenship law and the proposed countrywide NRC. Responding to a question on the law and order situation in the national capital, the CEC said, I wont say we (the commission) are very sanguine, but we are hopeful that they (police) will be able to control the situation (and make it) conducive for polls.

This time Delhi will have 13,659 polling stations as compared to 11,763 in 2014, a jump of 16.89 per cent. The EC has decided to extend the facility of postal ballot for absentee voters, people with disability and those above 80 years of age in all

the Assembly constituencies.

In October last year, the government had amended election rules to allow absentee voters to vote by postal ballot. Electors on duty in polling station, those above 80 years of age and voters marked as Person with Disabilities in the electoral rolls will have the option of sending their vote by post. The facility of absentee voter status was provided for the first time in the country in seven Assembly constituencies in Jharkhand that went to polls recently.

Delhi chief electoral officer Ranbir Singh said there are no instructions regarding registration of refugees covered under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in the electoral rolls.

Mr Kejriwal, who is trying to keep the focus of the electoral battle on his governments development work, such as Mohalla clinics and model schools, had earlier said his party would win all 70 seats. Taking a cue from West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, Mr Kejriwal has roped in election strategist Prashant Kishors political consultancy firm I-Pac in his quest to return as Delhi chief minister for another term, though the firm has too short a period to deliver.

The AAP launched its election campaign last month with the slogan Ache beete 5 saal, lage raho Kejriwal (Past 5 years have been good, keep going with Kejriwal).

The BJP too launched its campaign last month with star campaigner Prime Minister Narendra Modi leading a rally at the Ramlila Maidan. Mr Modi used the occasion to target Opposition parties over the nationwide protests against the amended citizenship law.

In 2013, the AAP had entered into an alliance with the Congress to form the government that lasted for just 49 days. Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress was engaged in long deliberations with the AAP for an alliance to take on the BJP in Delhi, but to no avail. The Congress, that ruled the city for 15 consecutive years but failed to win even a single seat in the last Assembly polls, is now sure of its victory. Its Delhi unit chief Subhash Chopra claims that this time his party will definitely get a clear majority.

Soon after the poll schedule was announced, Mr Kejriwal said the AAP would seek votes on the work done by its government in the last five years. If I have done work, then vote for me. If I have not done work, then dont vote for me, he added.

Union minister Prakash Javadekar, who is BJP in-charge for the Delhi polls, accused Mr Kejriwal of failing to fulfil any major promise he had made in the 2015 polls. This will also be a major election issue, he said.

His party supreme Amit Shah accused the AAP government of misleading the people of Delhi for five years and said after the Assembly polls, a new dispensation under the leadership of Mr Modi will take over and accelerate development in the national capital.
Seeking to ensure expeditious disposal of applications for a no-objection certificate (NOC) to carry out an aerial survey, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh launched a portal on Monday to facilitate the process, officials said.

The portal -- www.modnoc.ncog.gov.in -- would facilitate the process of obtaining permissions for undertaking an aerial survey, with the final nod coming from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), they added.

Singh suggested that an internal mechanism should be developed to monitor the time taken to issue an NOC. The portal will be used by the various vendors engaged by the state governments or public sector undertakings or autonomous bodies in seeking an NOC from the defence ministry.

Defence Secretary Ajay Kumar explained the salient features and benefits of the portal, hosted on the National Informatics Centre platform.

He said through this initiative, the ministry will be able to "considerably reduce" the time usually taken in issuing an NOC.

"Among other benefits, this initiative will help in speeding up developmental projects undertaken by various agencies. Further, this will also ensure expeditious disposal of applications for carrying out aerial survey, besides bringing in more transparency and accuracy," the defence ministry said in a statement.

The defence secretary also requested the DGCA to issue a suitable notification to all concerned so that the applicants or vendors could submit their applications online on the newly-developed web portal.

To facilitate the applicants and vendors, an e-book has also been uploaded on the portal.

Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Bipin Rawat, Army chief Gen. Manoj Mukund Naravane, Navy chief Admiral Karambir Singh, Air Chief Marshal R K S Bhadauria and senior officials of the defence ministry, ministry of electronics and information technology and DGCA were also present on the occasion.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Ram Nath Kovind's office has come to the rescue of a foreign bride and directed officials to ensure her wedding planned at a star hotel here on Tuesday is in no way affected owing to his coincidental stay there.

Not only that, the woman, who took to Twitter to seek help from the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Sunday, also got the Presidential wishes for her marriage to be held at the Taj Vivanta on Tuesday.

Ashley Hall sent out the SoS tagging @rashtrapatibhvn after her planned wedding apparently ran into trouble in view of the overnight stay of Kovind at the hotel en route to Lakshadweep on an official visit on Tuesday.

Kovind's secretariat swung into action and directed officials that his security drill should not affect the wedding of Hall, who had chosen the port city in Kerala for it, official sources here said.

According to sources, the woman is from the US.

The wedding was some months ago planned to be held at the hotel. They came to know later that Kovind will be staying at the samehotel on Monday night.

The bride posted a tweet seeking help for the smooth conduct of her marriage.

"Hey @rashtrapatibhvn- anything you can do to help us with your security team so that we dont have to move our wedding from the @Taj_Cochin in under 48 hours?"



Hall had also tagged an earlier tweet of her's which indicated they had been asked to reschedule the wedding.

"Sometimes you plan a destination wedding for 8 months at an elite hotel in India. Sometimes the President of India makes an impromptu trip to that hotel on the day of the wedding. Sometimes you get 48 hours notice to plan an entirely new wedding."



The Rashtrapati Bhavan, which saw her tweets, intervened.

The top cops of the city analysed the situation and made the arrangements ensuring that the visit of the President and the wedding of the foreigner goes without interference.

In its reply via Twitter, the Rashtrapati Bhavan said: "We are glad the issues have been resolved. President Kovind conveys his best wishes to you on this joyous occasion".

The woman in turn thanked the state officials and the hotel staff for the help and expressed hope the wedding would take place with the blessings of the 'honourable' President.

"I want to thank the @Taj_Cochin and State Officials for working on this with us throughout the day. Hoping we can have a beautiful wedding with the blessings of The Honorable @rashtrapatibhvn", she tweeted in reply to the gesture of the President's office.

The hotel declined to divulge any detail about the woman and her marriage.

The President arrived here in the afternoon on Monday at the Naval Air station here.

He was received by Governor Arif Mohammad Khan, Minister G Sudhakaran, top Navy officials and senior officials of the state government.

He will leave for Lakshadweep at 9.30 am on Tuesday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
London:

Britain will not lament the death of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Sunday, though he warned that reprisals would lead to greater violence. The United States killed top military leader Soleimani outside Baghdad airport in a drone strike on Friday.

In his first intervention on the escalation of tensions in the Middle East, Johnson said he had spoken Sunday with US President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He said he would speak to other leaders in the coming days.

"General Qasem Soleimani posed a threat to all our interests and was responsible for a pattern of disruptive, destabilising behaviour in the region," Johnson said in a statement. "Given the leading role he has played in actions that have led to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and Western personnel, we will not lament his death.

"It is clear however that all calls for retaliation or reprisals will simply lead to more violence in the region and they are in no one's interest." Johnson said that following ministerial meetings and further international calls, MPs would be updated on the situation on Tuesday.

Meanwhile London has urged Baghdad to allow international coalition soldiers to stay in Iraq, where the parliament on Sunday pressed the government to oust foreign troops. The cabinet would have to approve any such decision.

British troops are part of an international coalition of forces stationed in Iraq -- invited by the government in Baghdad in 2014 -- to help fight against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.

A British government spokesman said: "The coalition is in Iraq to help protect Iraqis and others from the threat from Daesh (IS), at the request of the Iraqi government.

Also Read: Will Impose Very Big Sanctions, Says Trump After Iraq Parliament Votes For Expulsion Of US Troops

"We urge the Iraqi government to ensure the coalition is able to continue our vital work countering this shared threat." Some 5,200 US soldiers are stationed across Iraqi bases to support local troops preventing an IS resurgence.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
To the Editor:

A recent letter to the editor Trump: Not evil, just a failure, DCDT Dec. 31, 2019, demonstrates that he needs a primer on the Constitution and a lesson in logic.

Trump has been an unprecedented success as president, and he has upheld the Constitution. He is not taking any actions not permitted to the duly elected president under the Constitution.

The House Democrats articles of impeachment include: 1. Abuse of Power; and 2. Obstruction of Justice.

Obstruction of Justice means obstruction of Congress. Article 1 of the Constitution establishes the Legislative branch of government; Article 2 the Executive branch; and Article 3 the Judiciary branch. They are independent, each having its own powers.

President Trump does not have the right to demand copies of the notes between Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler. Likewise the House of Representatives has no right to subpoena the presidents advisers. If they had that right, the presidency would be an impotent. They could set up perjury traps and other tricks to embarrass the president and make his branch ineffective. Present Trump was entirely within his legal rights to deny the subpoenas. It would have set a terrible precedent if he had given into the request

If the Democrats had a legal right to interview the presidents advisers , they could have filed a petition with courts. The judiciary referees disputes between the two branches of the government. Why did that not happen? There was not time? No time to follow legal procedures? We both know the answer. They did not do it, because they knew that the courts would turn them down.

Abuse of power: One can make a persuasive case that Trump was using the presidency to force Ukraine to investigate a potential political enemy. One can also make a persuasive argument that he was exercising his executive authority. The only way to settle the dispute is to give Trump his constitutional rights under the principle of due process. Democrats love to say, No one is above the law. They forget due process requires that No one is below the law. Democrats like to say that Trump had a fair trial, saying so does not change the truth.

The initial House of Representatives meetings were held in the Intelligent Committee. Those meetings are secret because they review classified information. The committee was chosen because Chairman Schiff could refuse to take questions from Republican members, and after the meeting the Republican members were prohibited from revealing what actually transpired. After the meeting, Schiff gave a distorted report of the media to establish political support for the impeachment.

When the House conducted public meetings, the Trump supporters were not permitted to call witnesses. Does the Constitution permit a trial where the prosecution calls witnesses, but the defense is denied the right to call witnesses?

So much for the Constitution, let us look at the other assertions. Trumps economy has resulted in all-time lows in unemployment. Democrats make the assertion that this was the result of the Obama administration, as if the economy was on self-pilot, and subsequent drops in unemployment rates were automatic. Where is the economic or statistical support for such an assertion? Secondly unemployment rates for blacks and in females are at all-time lows. Income for middle-class families have increased $5,000 a year. There are more jobs and the jobs pay better.

The GDP growth was a meager 1.5% the last six quarters of the Obama administration. Trump tax cuts and cutting of government regulations permitted the times we are all enjoying.

An unsupported statement is made that Trump has been a failure as a diplomat and a world leader. What a failure! Trade treaties with Japan, USMCA Canada/Mexico, and a monster treaty with China in the works.

World leader: Europe is reluctantly starting to pay their fair share of the NATO defense expense. Trump negotiated an agreement with Mexico to hold asylum-seekers in their country while the cases are being reviewed. ISIS is no longer cutting off the heads of Christians, nor raping Christian women. When Russia was trying to annex Ukraine, Obama sent them blankets. Trump sent them javelin missiles to defend himself.

One closing point. Democrats like to call Trump a racist and assert their moral superiority over the rest of us. In my opinion a moral person obeys the 10 Commandments, including the Eighth Commandment: Thou shall not bear false witnesses. Calling Trump a racist without a scintilla of evidence is a clear violation of the Eighth Commandment.
The Somali government on Sunday condemned a foiled terror attack that targeted Kenyan and U.S. forces based at a military airfield in the coastal county of Lamu, Trend reports citing Xinhua.

The government said the repelled dawn attack from the crumbling al-Shabab terror group aimed at defense personnel and property will not hinder the joint efforts to eliminate those against the peace and stability of the region.

"The Federal Republic of Somalia joins the rest of the world in condemning the cowardly attack that targeted joint Kenyan and U.S. forces based at Manda Bay Airfield, Kenya earlier today," the Somali government said in a statement issued in Mogadishu.

The statement came hours after the militant group staged a daring dawn attack at Manda Bay Airfield which is adjacent to Camp Simba military base where U.S. forces provide training and counter-terrorism support to East African partners.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, saying its fighters killed 17 U.S. and nine Kenyan soldiers, destroying seven aircraft and five military vehicles.

However, Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) spokesman Paul Njuguna who confirmed that the joint forces of the U.S. and Kenya killed five al-Shabab militants in the attack, said the terror group is known for "propagating false and misleading information in an attempt to grab headlines and feed their egos."

The Somali government also lauded the KDF and the U.S. Africa Command for swiftly repulsing the attack, thus inflicting a heavy defeat on the al-Shabab terror organization.

The Somali government assured full support in the ongoing efforts to rid the region of terrorism and vowed to continue collaborating with regional and international partners to attain peace and prosperity in the region and beyond.
Students of the Jadavpur and the Presidency universities on Monday took out rallies in the city to protest the violence inside the JNU campus in New Delhi.

The AISA and SFI organised a protest march from the varsity campus to nearby 8B Bus Stand and shouted slogans against the BJP government at the Centre and RSS-affiliate Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

They carried posters and placards condemning the JNU violence and demanded immediate arrests of the people involved in the incident.

Violence broke out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police which conducted a flag march.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours.

"Yesterday (Sunday) was the darkest day of Indian democracy because of what happened inside the JNU campus. Beating up of students and teachers by goons and attacking girls' hostel by ABVP activists brought shame to our democracy.

"But, such attacks will not deter us from continuing our fight against fascist forces," a JU student said.

Referring to the Jadavpur University fracas on September 19, he said, "The way the ABVP workers had vandalised the campus in September and JNU campus yesterday (Sunday) reflects the fascist mindset of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar," he said.

Students of the Presidency University took out a rally on College Street expressing solidarity with the JNU students.

"We condemn such violence inside the JNU campus, which is a cradle of free and liberal thinking. The ABVP and BJP want to curb free thought and want to impose their fascist ideology on us. But we will continue our fight till the last breath," a Presidency varsity student said.

The Congress students' wing, Chhatra Parishad burnt effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on College Street.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
He changed the shape of the Syrian civil war and tightened Iran's grip on Iraq. He was behind hundreds of American deaths in Iraq and waves of militia attacks against Israel. And for two decades his every move lit up the communications networks  and fed the obsessions  of intelligence operatives across the Middle East.

On Friday, Major General Qassem Soleimani, the powerful and shadowy 62-year-old spymaster at the head of Iran's security machinery, was killed by a US drone strike near the Baghdad airport.

Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani. Credit:AP

Just as his accomplishments shaped the creation of a Shiite axis of influence across the Middle East, with Iran at the centre, his death is now likely to prove central to a new chapter of geopolitical tension across the region.

Soleimani was at the vanguard of Iran's revolutionary generation, joining Iran's Revolutionary Guard in his early 20s after the 1979 uprising that enshrined the country's Shiite theocracy.
Drivers from motorcycle taxi service app Angkas were apprehended in Cagayan de Oro City.

The government move was made for operating as Taxi Service outside of the designated Motorcycle Taxi Service Pilot Implementation Study area.

In a Facebook post last Friday, the Department of Transportation (DoTr), showed that assigned from the apprehension, the motorcycle units used were also impounded.

According to the social media posting, the action was done following several complaints that the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board  Region 10 office in Cagayan de Oro.

The transportation department cited that under current transport laws, motorcycles are strictly prohibited from being utilized as public transportation.

The exception now is the ongoing MC Pilot Study program being implemented by the TWG in Metro Manila and Metro Cebu only, which is being run to help Congress formulate a new law which would enable MCs to be considered as a new public transportation mode, they stated in their Facebook page.

To see the Facebook post, click here.

Also read:

The post LTFRB Nabs Angkas Riders in CDO appeared first on Carmudi Philippines.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has thrown down the gauntlet on President Donald Trumps ability to strike Iran, vowing to hold a vote this week to limit the presidents military actions against Iran following the assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani last week.

Al-Monitor has learned that Democratic leaders are also considering holding votes on two other provisions that they had dropped from a compromise defense authorization bill last month amid opposition from the White House and Senate Republicans.

Anti-war activist groups are lobbying Democrats to revive legislation defunding offensive military action against Iran and to repeal the 2002 military authorization that allowed President George. W. Bush to invade Iraq.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., agreed to drop both provisions from the National Defense Authorization Act last year after negotiations with Republicans, but the recent strike on Soleimani and escalating military tensions with Iran have revived Democratic interest in both initiatives.

Congress has been asleep at the wheel for a very long time on war powers, said Stephen Miles, the director of Win Without War, a coalition of anti-war activist groups lobbying Congress to limit Trumps ability to attack Iran. What were beginning to see is Congress really exercising this muscle.

Pelosi wrote a letter to the Democratic caucus announcing a vote on legislation similar to a bill introduced last week by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., under expedited procedures laid out under the 1973 War Powers Resolution. Kaine introduced the bill alongside Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., but Pelosi has instead designated Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., a former CIA and Defense Department analyst specializing in Shiite militias, to introduce the bill.

Separately, Win Without War is also pushing House Democrats to pass legislation introduced by presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., to cut off funding for offensive military action against Iran absent congressional authorization.

Win Without War is also pushing for a repeal of the 2002 Iraq military authorization. While Democrats and anti-war groups note that Congress did not authorize the Soleimani strike, the White House maintains that it was legal as a self-defense measure under the 2002 authorization.

The Trump administration claims that Soleimani was planning an imminent attack but has refused repeated requests to make the evidence public. The New York Times has reported that several Trump administration officials have questioned the claim that an attack was imminent  or that Soleimanis death would have thwarted it.

Democrats are also sparring with the White House over its refusal to publicly disclose its notification to Congress for the Soleimani strike. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Bob Menendez, D-N.J., penned a terse letter to Trump arguing that an entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society, and there appears to be no legitimate justification for classifying this notification.

The 1973 War Powers Resolution requires the White House to report to Congress within two days after the president introduces US forces into hostilities, including an assessment of the scope and duration of such hostilities or situation. But it does not specify whether the notification should remain unclassified.

For his part, Trump incorrectly claimed that a legal notification to Congress is not required, and inaccurately asserted that his media posts on Twitter could serve as the legally mandated requirement should Iran strike any US person or target. Trump also threatened to retaliate in a disproportionate manner and over the weekend threatened to strike 52 sites in Iran, including cultural targets  raising the possibility of war crimes under international law.

And while an August Gallup poll found that only 18% of Americans support military action against Iran, Trumps allies in the Republican-held Senate have largely supported the strike on Soleimani. The staunch support for Trump dims the prospects of the Senate passing any House legislation to constrain the president on Iran.

Nonetheless, anti-war activists still maintain that the legislation is necessary to send a message to the president.

The American public is firmly against war with Iran, Miles told Al-Monitor. We want to make sure their voice is heard. We want to make sure that President Donald Trump hears their voice and understands thats not what the public wants.
New Delhi:

Extrenal Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday said when he was in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) there was no 'tukde tukde' gang there. "I can certainly tell you, when I studied in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), we didn't see any 'tukde tukde' gang there," Jaishankar said.

#WATCH "I can certainly tell you, when I studied in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), we didn't see any 'tukde tukde' gang there," EAM Dr S Jaishankar at an event in Delhi. pic.twitter.com/9IgIZKQolx  ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

After the violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University campus on Sunday, Jaishankar, a JNU alumnus, had swiftly condemned the incident, saying it is completely against the tradition and culture of the university. "Tukde-Tukde" is a term often used by the right-wing parties to attack the opposition, particularly Left and Left-backed outfits as well as those who support them.

At a book release event, Jaishankar also said that unlike China, India allowed issues like Article 370, Ayodhya and GST to fester for a long time.

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After the assassination of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, Washington said the US strategy towards Iran would not change and the practice of imposing tough sanctions against Iran would continue. Meanwhile, in Tehran, it was considered that the assassination of a general is tantamount to starting a war.

Inews in the article US and Iran: A brief history of relations, from the nuclear deal to Donald Trump's sanctions reminds that early relations between Iran and the US showed few signs of the tense conflict which would emerge. The last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, maintained a strongly pro-American foreign policy and was viewed as friend of the US.

Friend of US

In 1953, Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq was overthrown in a coup organised by US and UK intelligence agencies after he had tried to nationalise the country's oil industry. The Shah was reinstated and received backing from the US, helping the nation create its nuclear program. But the Iranian revolution of 1979 saw the Shah deposed and two weeks later Islamic religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini returns from exile and the Islamic Republic of Iran is declared. The same year the US embassy in Tehran was seized and the American hostages inside were held for over a year. In 1980, the US severed diplomatic relations with Iran, a status which has remained. Four years later, it listed Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism. US President Ronald Reagan revealed a secret arms deal with Tehran had taken place in the mid-1980s in violation of the US arms embargo.

Severed diplomatic relations

By 2002, US president George W. Bush had declared Iran, Iraq and North Korea an "axis of evil". Under Barack Obama's administration there was a thawing of relations. In 2009, he told Iranian leaders he would extend a hand if they unclenched their fist and by November 2013 Iran and six major powers agreed the Joint Plan of Action nuclear deal, curbing Iran's nuclear work in return for limited sanctions relief.

Unclenched fist

President Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal and re-imposed sanctions in 2018 which saw the tension return to the region. Last year, the US designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a "terrorist organisation" a month later Iran said it increase enriched uranium production.
Six German tourists died when a suspected drunk driver crashed his car into a group of people in a town in northern Italy.

Eleven others were injured, some seriously, during the early hours in the small town of Luttach in South Tyrol.

The 27-year-old driver of the car failed a breath test for alcohol, registering more than four times the maximum level, police said. He was arrested on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter.

According to the website of Italian daily 'Corriere della Sera', when told in hospital of the scale of the incident the driver said he wanted to commit suicide.

The victims, all in their early 20s, were on a group skiing holiday and were mostly from the north-west German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The tourists were close to a parked bus that had brought them back from a night out when the car crashed into them, sending bodies flying into the air.

"It was like a scene from a battlefield," one fireman said.

Meanwhile in the US, a deadly crash involving a passenger bus, trucks and several other vehicles in Pennsylvania left at least five dead and dozens injured.

Officials said at least 60 people, ranging in age from seven to 52 years, were hospitalised during the crash in the early hours in Westmoreland County, around 50km east of Pittsburgh.
Canadas Liberal government has effectively endorsed the illegal and provocative assassination by the United States of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, which amounts to a declaration of war against Tehran. Just hours after US President Trump ordered a drone strike to exterminate the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force at Baghdad international airport, the Canadian government issued a statement denouncing Iranian aggression in the Middle East and cynically appealing for de-escalation.

Washingtons calculated murder of Soleimani, who is widely seen as the second most powerful figure in Tehran, and seven other people was a war crime and reckless act of state terrorism. Reflecting the descent into criminality of American foreign policy, which is driven by its deepening geostrategic crisis in the Middle East, Trump openly boasted of having terminated Soleimani, who he alleged was the number one terrorist anywhere in the world. Over the weekend, he issued a chilling threat of further attacks, declaring that the US has selected 52 Iranian targets to be obliterated, including cultural institutions.

The reality, as the long-suffering population of the entire Middle East knows only too well, is that the greatest acts of terror over the past two decades have been perpetrated by US imperialism, which has laid waste to entire societies and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians in one illegal war after another, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and, through its support for its Saudi allies, Yemen.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who never loses an opportunity in highly choreographed appearances to publicly tout his progressive credentials, has not uttered a single word about the state murder of a senior foreign military and political official by Canadas closest ally, one, moreover, which was carried out in blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty.

In a cowardly and cynical statement released just hours after Soleimanis murder, Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne avoided directly addressing Soleimanis killing. Instead, Champagne declared, Canada has long been concerned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, led by Qasem Soleimani, whose aggressive actions have had a destabilizing effect in the region and beyond.

Striking a hypocritical pose of diplomacy and neutrality, Champagne went on, We call on all sides to exercise restraint and pursue de-escalation. Our goal is and remains a united and stable Iraq.

Champagnes statement turns reality on its head. For a start, it is the military interventions and war-mongering of the United States and its allies, Canada included, rather than the defensive response by the bourgeois-clerical regime in Tehran that have destabilized the entire Middle East. Washington has been attempting since the 1990s to offset its accelerating economic decline and consolidate its unchallenged control over the energy-rich region through virtually uninterrupted wars. Each conflict has been aimed at pushing back Iranian influence and blocking the expansion of the Russian and Chinese presence in the Middle East and Central Asia.

With Canadian support, Washington has brought together an alliance of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Gulf sheikdoms to prepare for war with Iran. As well as deploying troops and military equipment to the region, the US and Canada have sold tens of billions of dollars in military hardware to the region in preparation for military conflict. Washington has now effectively triggered all-out war with Tehran with the murder of Soleimani.

Canada will inevitably be a direct participant in the impending war with Iran. Close to 1,000 Canadian troops are deployed in Iraq and across the Middle East alongside US and NATO forces with the twin aims of subordinating war-ravaged Iraq to neo-colonial imperialist occupation and laying the groundwork for a regionwide war with Iran that would rapidly draw in the major powers.

The Liberal government all but acknowledged the imminent war danger over the weekend with the issuing of a travel advisory warning all Canadians in the Middle East to practice a high degree of caution. In the warning, issued for Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, the Canadian government stated, The security situation could worsen with little warning. There is an increased risk of attacks in general.

Canada has 955 troops serving in six missions across the Middle East. It currently has military personnel deployed in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Qatar.

The Canadian government followed NATO in announcing the suspension Saturday of NATO Mission Iraq, a training operation that has been led by 250 Canadian troops since its inception in the fall of 2018. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan declared that the mission, ostensibly aimed at training Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State, was being suspended to protect the safety of those involved. A separate training mission being carried out by Canadian special forces troops with militants in northern Iraq was also suspended.

The NATO decision undoubtedly reflects the fear among the Western military alliance that its forces could face a vicious backlash from the local population and military forces they are training to the USs murderous act. While Iran has vowed vengeance against the United States, the Iraqi parliament, in an indication of the popular hostility to the presence of foreign troops in the country, felt compelled to adopt a resolution calling for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.

The Trudeau governments tacit endorsement of the US assassination of Soleimani was broadly welcomed within Canadas political establishment. The opposition Conservatives only criticism was that the Liberals failed to declare their explicit agreement with Trumps illegal drone strike. As Shivaloy Majumdar, who served as director of policy for foreign affairs in the Harper Tory government, put it, Canada failed to state its full-throated support for the US. I think de-escalation is certainly an appropriate call, but to somehow insinuate that American foreign policy has unnecessarily escalated the situation is not the best way to frame it, added Majumdar.

In a cynical attempt to exploit widespread popular opposition to war and the thuggish actions of the Trump administration, New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh criticized Soleimanis killing. The assassination, Singh wrote on Twitter, has brought us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East. He appealed to Trudeau to act quickly with other countries to de-escalate the situation and not be drawn into the path that President Trump is taking.

These empty bromides will have no impact on the NDPs steadfast support for Trudeaus minority Liberal government, as shown by the NDPs recent backing for the Liberals in their first parliamentary confidence vote. The NDPs support for the Trudeau government is based on the partys endorsement of Trudeaus vast rearmament program, which includes an increase in military spending of more than 70 percent by 2026. The ruling elite views the strengthening of Canadas armed forces as essential if Canadian imperialism is to share in the spoils of US-led military aggression around the world, including in the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, and Eastern Europe.

Moreover, Singhs preposterous portrayal of Trudeau and Canadian imperialism more generally as honest brokers in the war-ravaged Middle East is a deliberate political trap aimed at bolstering the Canadian ruling elites tattered humanitarian credentials. Workers and young people across Canada seeking to oppose the danger of war cannot afford for one moment to have any illusions whatsoever in Canada, or any other country, functioning as a pacifist brake on the drive to war. Instead, they must strive to unite their struggle against military conflict with the widespread opposition to war among working people around the world in an international anti-war movement based on a socialist program.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has joined a number of political leaders across the world in calling for restraint amid rapidly rising tensions between Washington and Tehran after the United States killed Iran's top military commander.



"The New Year has begun with our world in turmoil," Guterres said at the UN headquarters in New York on January 6.



"We are living in dangerous times. Geopolitical tensions are at their highest level this century. And this turbulence is escalating," he added, urging world leaders to "stop escalation, exercise maximum restraint, restart dialogue, renew international cooperation."



Earlier in the day, huge crowds packed the streets of Tehran for the funeral of General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq on January 3 on the orders of President Donald Trump.



Iran has vowed revenge for the commander's death and pulled back from the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, while Trump threatened to strike Iranian sites -- including ones of cultural significance -- should Tehran carry out attacks on U.S. interests.

As head of the Quds Force, the foreign arm of Irans hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the 62-year-old Soleimani helped orchestrate Tehrans overseas clandestine and military operations.



Trump said Soleimani was plotting "imminent" attacks on U.S. diplomats and military personnel, without providing evidence of specific threats.



The Quds Force has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.



During the funeral ceremonies in the Iranian capital ahead of Soleimani's January 7 burial at his hometown of Kerman, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wept as he led prayers over Soleimani's casket.

Iranian state television broadcast live footage of the funeral procession, which included a prayer for the dead at the University of Tehran and passed along a three-kilometer route to Azadi Square in western Tehran.



Major streets were closed to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of mourners.



In a speech broadcast by state television, the Quds Force commander's daughter, Zeinab Soleimani, criticized Trump for ordering the assassination of her father. She told mourners that the assassination would bring a "dark day" for the United States.



"Crazy Trump, don't think that everything is over with my father's martyrdom," Soleimani told the funeral procession.

Click Image To Open Gallery

Meanwhile, Iranian President Hassan Rohani warned his U.S. counterpart on Twitter to "never threaten the Iranian nation," while Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed the United States had created "global anti-US fury and a worldwide rancor."



On January 5, Iran's government said it would no longer abide by any of the restrictions imposed by the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which Trump abandoned in 2018.



The pact limited Irans nuclear capacities in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

Trump, who wants to force Iran to renegotiate the nuclear agreement, arguing that the terms were not tough enough to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons, tweeted on January 6: "IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!"



Iran has refused to renegotiate the accord, insisting that its nuclear program was strictly for civilian energy purposes.

\The so-called E3 group of countries comprising France, Britain, and Germany -- which have maintained the nuclear deal along with Russia and China -- have called on Tehran to respect the accord.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said early on January 6 that "this could be the first step to the end of this agreement, which would be a big loss, so we will weigh this up very, very responsibly now."

The Russian Foreign Ministry urged all parties in the deal to treat it as a "priority" and called on European partners to fulfill their obligations to ensure Iran stays committed to it.

In a statement, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc was "deeply concerned" by Iran's announcement.



"From a European viewpoint, it is important for Iran to return to the nuclear deal. We have to convince Iran that it's also in its own interest," Von der Leyen said.

EU foreign ministers are to hold an extraordinary meeting in Brussels on January 10 to discuss the situation in the Middle East.



As Tehran and Washington engaged in heated rhetoric, Iraqi lawmakers on January 5, passed a resolution calling for foreign troops to leave the country, prompting a furious response from Trump.



Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said that if U.S. troops are forced to leave Iraq "we will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before, ever."

The United States military wrote to Iraq on January 6 saying the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State extremist group "will be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement."



"Coalition Forces are required to take certain measures to ensure that the movement out of Iraq is conducted in a safe and efficient manner," said the letter signed by Brigadier General William Seely, the commanding general of Task Force Iraq, according to AFP and Reuters.



They said the letter was addressed to the Iraqi Defense Ministry's Combined Joint Operations Baghdad.



However, Defense Secretary Mark Esper later told reporters in Washington that the United States had made "no decision whatsoever" about withdrawing troops from Iraq.



There are roughly 5,000 U.S. troops in the country.



During a meeting with Chinas ambassador in Baghdad earlier in the day, Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi said: We do not accept that Iraq becomes a scene to settle scores.



Abdul-Mahdi also held talks with the U.S. ambassador and told him that Iraq and the United States should work together on implementing the Iraqi parliamentary resolution.



"The prime minister stressed the importance of mutual cooperation on implementing the withdrawal of foreign troopsand to set relations with the United States on a proper foundation," according to his office.

After NATO ambassadors met in Brussels for emergency talks on the growing crisis in the Middle East, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the allies were "united in condemning Iran's support of a variety of different terrorist groups."



"At the meeting today, allies called for restraint and de-escalation. A new conflict would be in no one's interest. So Iran must refrain from further violence and provocations," Stoltenberg added.

NATO maintains a training mission in Iraq that involves several hundred personnel. The mission has been suspended since the strike on Soleimani.

'Still A Place For Diplomacy'

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed with the Iraqi prime minister on the need to "de-escalate tensions" in the region and agreed to "work together to find a diplomatic way forward" when they spoke by phone on January 6, according to a statement from Johnson's office.

France's Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian urged Iran to "renounce any reprisals or retaliations" after Soleimanis killing.



"There is still a place for diplomacy, fortunately," Le Drian told BFM television.



In Riyadh, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal appealed for calm as the Middle East region faced a "very dangerous moment."



"We hope that all actors take all the steps necessary to prevent any further escalation and provocation," he told reporters.



Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara would work to de-escalate tensions between Tehran and Washington.



Amid fears of sectarian violence, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said his country would not take sides in the confrontation between neighboring Iran and the United States.



"Pakistan's soil will not be used against any other state, and nor will Pakistan become a part of this regional conflict," Qureshi told the upper house of parliament.



The Middle East "is volatile and this region cant afford another war. We are part of this region and when a fire erupts there, Pakistan can't escape," he said.



Pakistan -- an ally of Saudi Arabia, Tehran's arch regional foe -- is majority Sunni but has a large Shi'ite minority.



Thousands of Shi'a marched in several Pakistani cities on January 5 to show solidarity with Iran.



Some demonstrators clashed with police in the southern city of Karachi when they attempted to march on the U.S. Consulate.

Appearing on several U.S. television programs on January 5, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended Trump's actions and issued a further warning to Iran.

He said if Tehran used its proxy forces -- in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and elsewhere -- to strike U.S. targets, the United States could attack Iran's leaders.

"They will be borne by Iran and its leadership itself," Pompeo said. "Those are important things the Iranian leadership needs to put in its calculus as it makes its next decision."

In a series of January 4 tweets, President Donald Trump said he had ordered the strike on Soleimani because the Iranian commander had organized attacks on U.S. and Iraqi targets and that he was "preparing for additional hits in other locations."



Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the killing of Soleimani was a breach of international law and that any targeting of cultural sites would constitute a war crime.



"Those masquerading as diplomats and those who shamelessly sat to identify Iranian cultural & civilian targets should not even bother to open a law dictionary," Zarif wrote in a January 5 tweet. "Jus cogens refers to peremptory norms of international law, i.e. international red lines. That is, a big(ly) 'no no'."

With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and dpa
An Iranian general who replaced the leader killed by a US airstrike in Baghdad vowed Sunday to take revenge as Tehran abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in response to the slaying.

Esmail Ghaani's threat comes as the blowback over the U.S. killing of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani mounted Sunday with Iraq's parliament calling for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil.

The three developments could bring Iran closer to building an atomic bomb, see an proxy or military attack launched by Tehran against America and enable the Islamic State group to stage a comeback in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.

Adding to the tensions, President Donald Trump threatened to demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iraq or impose sanctions like they've never seen before if it goes through with expelling U.S. troops.

Ghaani made his remarks in an interview with Iranian state television aired Monday.

"God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken," Ghaani said.

Ghaani now serves as the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force, an expeditionary arm of the paramilitary organization answerable only to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

As Soleimani's longtime deputy, Ghaani has been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2012 for his work funding its operations around the world, including its work with proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Those proxies likely will be involved in any operation targeting U.S. interests in the Mideast or elsewhere in the world.

Already, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks.

In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimani's killing made U.S. military bases, warships and service members across the region fair game for attacks.

A former Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader suggested the Israeli city of Haifa and others could be targeted should the U.S. attack Iran.

"We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region," Ghaani said.

On the nuclear deal, Iranian state television cited a statement by President Hassan Rouhani's administration saying the country would not observe the nuclear deal's restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities.

The Islamic Republic of Iran no longer faces any limitations in operations, a state TV broadcaster said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson specifically urged Iran to withdraw all measures not in line with the 2015 agreement that was intended to stop Tehran from pursuing its atomic weapons program.

Iran insisted that it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldn't seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions. It further raises regional tensions, as Iran's longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

Iran did not elaborate on what levels it would immediately reach in its program.Tehran has already broken some of the deal's limits as part of a step-by-step pressure campaign to get sanctions relief. It already has increased its production, begun enriching uranium to 5% and restarted enrichment at an underground facility.

While it does not possess uranium enriched to weapons-grade levels of 90%, any push forward narrows the estimated one-year breakout time needed for it to have enough material to build a nuclear weapon if it chose to do so.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations watchdog observing Iran's program, did not respond to a request for comment.

However, Iran said that its cooperation with the IAEA will continue as before.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi earlier told journalists that Soleimani's killing would prompt Iranian officials to take a bigger step away from the nuclear deal.

In the world of politics, all developments are interconnected, Mousavi said.

Soleimani's killing has escalated the crisis between Tehran and Washington after months of back-and-forth attacks and threats that have put the wider Middle East on edge.

Iran has promised harsh revenge for the U.S. attack, while Trump has vowed on Twitter that the U.S. will strike back at 52 targets VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. He doubled down on that threat Sunday, dismissing warnings that targeting cultural sites could be a war crime under international law.

They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way, Trump told reporters.

On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of mourners accompanied the coffin carrying Soleimani's remains in the Iranian cities of Ahvaz and Mashhad. A similar procession was expected in Qom and Tehran on Monday. Tens of thousands already filled the streets of the Iranian capital early Monday morning.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
[January 06, 2020] IAA, Inc. Announces Participation in the 2020 ICR Conference

IAA, Inc. (NYSE: IAA) today announced that the Company is scheduled to present at the 22nd Annual ICR Conference held at the JW Marriott Orlando Grande Lakes in Orlando, Florida. John Kett, Chief Executive Officer and President, and Vance Johnston, Chief Financial Officer, are currently scheduled to present on Tuesday, January 14, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. The audio portion of the presentation will be webcast live over the internet and can be accessed on the Company's Investor Relations website, https://www.iaai.com/. An online archive will be available on that site following the presentation.



About IAA IAA, Inc. (NYSE: IAA) is a leading global marketplace connecting vehicle buyers and sellers. Leveraging leading-edge technology and focusing on innovation, IAA's unique multi-channel platform processes approximately 2.5 million total-loss, damaged and low-value vehicles annually. Headquartered near Chicago in Westchester, Illinois, IAA has over 3,600 talented employees and over 200 facilities throughout the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. IAA serves a global buyer base and a full spectrum of sellers, including insurers, dealerships, fleet lease, rental car companies, and charitable organizations. IAA offers customers a comprehensive suite of services aimed at maximizing vehicle value, reducing administrative costs, shortening selling cycle time and delivering customers the highest economic returns. Buyers have access to industry leading, innovative vehicle evaluation and bidding tools, enhancing the overall purchasing experience.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005888/en/

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TEHRAN, Iran - Irans supreme leader wept Monday over the casket of a top general killed in a U.S. airstrike, his prayers joining the wails of mourners who flooded the streets of Tehran demanding retaliation against America for a slaying thats drastically raised tensions across the Middle East.

The funeral for Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani drew a crowd said by police to be in the millions in the Iranian capital, filling thoroughfares and side streets as far as the eye could see. Although there was no independent estimate, aerial footage and Associated Press journalists suggested a turnout of at least 1 million, and the throngs were visible on satellite images of Tehran taken Monday.

Authorities later brought his remains and those of the others to Irans holy city of Qom, turning out another massive crowd.

The outpouring of grief was an unprecedented honour for a man viewed by Iranians as a national hero for his work leading the Guards expeditionary Quds Force. The U.S. blames him for the killing of American troops in Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before his death Friday in a drone strike at Baghdads airport. Soleimani also led forces in Syria backing President Bashar Assad in a long war.

His slaying already has pushed Tehran to abandon the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as his successor and others vow to take revenge. In Baghdad, the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, something analysts fear could allow Islamic State militants to mount a comeback.

Soleimanis daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened the U.S. military in the Middle East while also warning President Donald Trump, whom she called crazy.

The families of the American soldiers ... will spend their days waiting for the death of their children, she said to cheers.

Her language mirrored warnings by other Iranian officials who say an attack on U.S. military interests in the Middle East looms. Iranian state TV and others online shared a video that showed Trumps American flag tweet following Soleimanis killing turn into a coffin, the likes of the tweet replaced by over 143,000 killed.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over the caskets of Soleimani and others at Tehran University after a brief mourning period at the capitals famed Musalla mosque, The mosque was where prayers were said over the body of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, after his death in 1989.

Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani and referred to him as a living martyr, broke down in tears four times while offering Muslim prayers for the dead.

Oh God, you took their spirits out of their bodies as they were rolling in their blood for you and were martyred in your way, Khamenei said as the crowd wailed. Soleimani will be buried Tuesday in his hometown of Kerman.

Soleimanis successor, Esmail Ghaani, stood near Khameneis side as did President Hassan Rouhani and other leaders of the Islamic Republic. While Iran recently faced nationwide protests over government-set gasoline prices that reportedly led to the killing of over 300, Soleimanis death has brought together people from across the countrys political spectrum, temporarily silencing that anger.

Demonstrators burned Israeli and U.S. flags, carried a flag-draped U.S. coffin or displayed effigies of Trump. Some described Trump as a legitimate target.

Mohammad Milad Rashidi, a 26-year-old university graduate, predicted more tension ahead.

Trump demolished the chance for any sort of possible agreement between Tehran and Washington, Rashidi said. There will be more conflict in the future for sure.

Another mourner, Azita Mardani, warned that Iran will retaliate for every drop of his blood.

We are even thankful to (Trump) because he made us angry and this fury will lead to shedding of their blood in the Persian Gulf and the regions countries, Mardani said. Here will become their graveyard.

Ghaani made his own threat in an interview shown Monday on Iranian state television. God the Almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken, he said.

Markets reacted Monday to the tensions, sending international benchmark Brent crude above $70 a barrel for part of the day and gold to a seven-year high. The Middle East remains a crucial source of oil, and Iran in the past has threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all the worlds oil traded passes.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, chairing emergency talks with the alliances ambassadors in Brussels, called for restraint and de-escalation, adding: A new conflict would be in no ones interest.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned global political tensions were at their highest level this century. In a letter, Iraqs U.N. Ambassador Mohammed Hussein Bahr Aluloom called on the U.N. Security Council to condemn the U.S. airstrike that killed Soleimani and ensure that Iraq is not dragged into international and regional crises.

Ghaani, a longtime Soleimani deputy, has taken over as the head of the Revolutionary Guards Quds, or Jerusalem, Force, answerable only to Khamenei. Ghaani has been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2012 for his work funding its global operations, including its work with proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Those proxies likely will be involved in any operation targeting U.S. interests in the Middle East or elsewhere.

Already, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks. In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimanis killing made U.S. military bases, warships and service members across the region fair game for attacks.

We promise to continue down martyr Soleimanis path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region, Ghaani said.

The head of the Guards aerospace program, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, suggested Irans response wouldnt stop with a single attack.

Firing a couple of missiles, hitting a base or even killing Trump is not valuable enough to compensate for martyr Soleimanis blood, Hajizadeh said on state TV. The only thing that can compensate for his blood is the complete removal of America from the region.

On the nuclear deal, Iran now says it wont observe the accords restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities. Thats a much-harsher step than they had planned to take before the attack.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have urged Iran to withdraw all measures not in line with the deal.

Iran insisted it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldnt seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions last year. It further raises regional tensions, as Irans longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Edith M. Lederer contributed from the United Nations.
Sri Lankan police will record former president Maithripala Sirisena's statement on the Easter bombings this week, a court was told on Monday as it took up the case against former police chief and defence secretary over allegations that they failed to prevent the island's worst terror attack that killed nearly 270 people.

The police's Criminal Investigation Department (CID) will record the statement of Sirisena on Tuesday or Wednesday, Deputy Solicitor General Dileepa Peiris said this when the case against former police chief Pujith Jayasundera and former defence secretary Hemasiri Fernando was taken up before Colombo Additional Magistrate Priyantha Liyanage on Monday.

The two former top officials have been accused of failing to take measures to prevent the Easter Sunday attacks despite having prior intelligence of the attacks.

Meanwhile, the Colombo Magistrate's Court ordered to extend the remand of Fernando and Jayasundara until January 22. They were arrested for their alleged failure to prevent the attacks. Both have denied criminal negligence.

The state attorney appearing for the CID told the court that statements have been recorded from former state defence minister Ruwan Wijewardena - who was serving at the time of the incident and former minister Rishad Bathiudeen over the incident.

Sirisena was also the defence minister when nine suicide bombers from a local extremist group struck three churches and three luxury hotels in Colombo on April 21 last year.

The then Opposition alleged that prior Indian intelligence on the attacks were ignored due to an internal power struggle between Sirisena and his then prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

After the attacks, Sirisena said that senior officials did not share the intelligence with him. Wickremesinghe also said that he was not privy to the intelligence reports.

A series of panels were appointed by both factions of the government to probe lapses in ignoring warnings for the attacks which crippled the country's tourism industry.

Sirisena's probe resulted in the unprecedented jailing of the then police chief and the top defence ministry administrator while a parliamentary probe pinned the president's shortcomings in handling the security apparatus.

The Easter Sunday bombings had a devastating effect on the electorate, clearing the way for Gotabaya Rajapaksa for his November 16 presidential election victory.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Rajapaksa announced his candidature projecting him as the strong leader the country needed to deal with the rising Islamic extremism.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Carlos Ghosn

New reports emerged Monday on how fugitive former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn jumped bail in Japan, as the country's justice minister said border controls would be bolstered after the escape.

The 65-year-old executive skipped bail nearly a week ago, fleeing Japan where he was awaiting trial on multiple counts of financial misconduct that he denies.

The details of his escape remain spotty, with Japan saying it is still investigating how he slipped past strict security measures imposed as part of his bail conditions.

Citing people involved in the investigation, Nippon Television Network (NTV) said Monday that Ghosn boarded a "shinkansen" bullet train from Tokyo's Shinagawa station on December 29.

He got off at a station in western Osaka, arriving around 7:30pm and taking a taxi to a hotel near Kansai Airport, NTV said.

He is thought to have taken a private jet the same day from the airport, bound for Istanbul, where he switched planes and continued to Beirut.

Last week, local media reported Ghosn was caught on security camera leaving his Tokyo home by himself around noon on December 29.

But the exact circumstances of his departure from Japan are still shrouded in mystery.

The justice ministry said it did not have records of Ghosn departing Japan.

"It is believed that he used some wrongful methods to illegally leave the country," Justice Minister Masako Mori said at a press conference on Monday.

"I have instructed the immigration agency to further tighten the departure process," she added.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Ghosn was loaded onto the flight from Osaka in a large case for audio equipment, which was later found at the back of the cabin.

The newspaper cited unnamed sources close to the investigation in Turkey as saying that holes had been drilled into the bottom of the container to ensure the businessman could breathe.

Japan's transport ministry told AFP that luggage checks are not mandatory for private jets.

"Operators of private jets decide if luggage checks are necessary or not while airline operators are obliged to conduct security checks under Japan's aviation law," a ministry official told AFP.

"The security checks are carried out to prevent danger such as bombs, and to prevent hijacks," he said, adding such risks are considered less likely for private jets.

Ghosn, who has French, Brazilian and Lebanese nationalities, was able to enter Lebanon on a French passport, according to airport documents seen by AFP.

A court in Tokyo had allowed Ghosn to keep a second French passport as he needed one to travel inside Japan, a source close to the matter has told AFP.

Japan has launched a probe into the humiliating security lapse and prosecutors said they would "coordinate with the relevant agencies to swiftly and appropriately investigate the matter."

Ghosn has vowed to give his own account at a hotly awaited press conference in Beirut this week.
(CNN)  US President Donald Trump reiterated his threat to target Iranian cultural sites on Sunday evening in a conversation with reporters aboard Air Force One.

"They're allowed to kill our people, they're allowed to torture and maim our people, they're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people, and we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way," Trump said, according to a pool report.

Trump was speaking on his return flight to Washington from Florida where he was staying at Mar-a-Lago for the holidays.

Asked about the prospects for retaliation from Iran for the US strike that killed Iran's top military commander, Trump said "If it happens it happens."

"If they do anything there will be major retaliation," Trump said.

Trump's comments Sunday night come after two senior US officials described widespread opposition within the administration to targeting cultural sites in Iran should the United States launch retaliatory strikes against Tehran, despite Trump saying a day before that such sites are among dozens the US has identified as potential targets.

"Nothing rallies people like the deliberate destruction of beloved cultural sites. Whether ISIS's destruction of religious monuments or the burning of the Leuven Library in WWI, history shows targeting locations giving civilization meaning is not only immoral but self-defeating," one of the officials told CNN.

"The Persian people hold a deeply influential and beautiful history of poetry, logic, art and science. Iran's leaders do not live up to that history. But America would be better served by leaders who embrace Persian culture, not threaten to destroy it," they added.

"Consistent with laws and norms of armed conflict, we would respect Iranian culture," the second senior US official said.

Earlier Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended Trump, arguing on CNN's "State of the Union" that such an action would not violate international law and instead suggested it would be a continuation of the administration's attempt at deterrence and defense.

"If we need to defend American interests, we will do so. What President Trump said last night is consistent with what we have said all along," he told Tapper.

Trump threatens to sanction Iraq

The President also threatened sanctions on Iraq should US troops be expelled from the country.

"If they do ask us to leave, if we don't do it in a very friendly basis. We will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever," Trump said aboard Air Force One, according to a pool report. "It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame."

Trump said the costs of maintaining an American troop presence in the country over the past many years should be repaid by Iraq if the country chooses to rescind the agreement allowing them to stay.

"We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time. We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," Trump said.

Earlier Sunday, the Iraqi Parliament voted to obligate Iraq's government "to work towards ending the presence of all foreign troops on Iraqi soil," according to the media office of the Iraqi Parliament.

White House 'may discuss' releasing Iran intelligence

Trump on Sunday also wouldn't rule out releasing some of the intelligence that led to the US killing of Iran's top commander Qasem Soleimani.

"We may discuss that," Trump said when questioned aboard Air Force One about the possibility of releasing the intelligence.

Top US national security officials have continued to defend the Trump administration's claim that it killed Soleimani in response to an impending threat to American lives, but the lack of evidence provided to lawmakers and the public has fueled lingering skepticism about whether the strike was justified.

Questions have continued to swirl in recent days over the timing, whether the administration fully considered the fallout from such a strike against Soleimani, and if an appropriate legal basis was established for the presidential authorization of lethal force.

A Republican congressional source familiar with the administration's decision to strike Soleimani acknowledged that in the past, the President "has been reluctant to take military action." In this case, the killing of an American contractor, the wounding of others, and the subsequent embassy protests "crossed his line." His advisers also pointed out to the President that if he "didn't respond now, they (Iran) will continue to cross it."

"I am very confident he was not reluctant," said the source. When Trump finally gets ready to act, they added, "you can't out escalate him."

Trump, Pompeo and top military officials have offered similar explanations for targeting Soleimani, citing an "imminent" threat from his plans to carry out what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley called a "significant campaign of violence" against the US in the coming days, weeks or months.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Trump reiterates threat to target Iranian cultural sites"
Pakistan and Chinese naval forces on Monday began their sixth joint maritime exercises in the Arabian Sea near Karachi to enhance the strategic partnership between the all-weather allies.

Titled 'Sea Guardians 2020', the exercises are aimed at sharing professional experiences on contemporary and non-traditional threats at sea, improve security cooperation and promote safe and sustainable maritime environment in the region.

The drills are a reflection of strong bilateral military cooperation between the Pakistan Navy and China's People Liberation Army (Navy) and will foster greater bilateral cooperation between the two navies, according to Pakistan Navy.

The Pakistan Navy said the opening ceremony of the exercises was held at Pakistan Navy Dockyard in Karachi.

Deputy Commander of Southern Theatre Command People Liberation Army (PLA) Vice Admiral Dong Jun was the chief guest. Commander Pakistan Fleet Vice Admiral Asif Khaliq was also present on the occasion.

Vice Admiral Khaliq welcomed the Chinese officers and personnel, alluding to the evergreen, warm and eternally cordial relations between the two countries in general and navies in particular, the Pakistan Navy said.

Khaliq hoped that the exercises will prove to be another stepping stone in augmenting interoperability and strategic cooperation between both the navies, it said.

Dong thanked the Pakistan Navy for hosting the drills and hoped to have a mutually benefiting and professionally rewarding experience from the joint exercises, it added.

The exercises boasts Chinese warships and fleet tanks as their marine forces participate as well.

During the exercises, frontline destroyers/frigates along with air and other assets and marines/special forces from Pakistan Navy and PLA (Navy) will carry out advance level joint drills and naval maneuvers in the Arabian Sea.

Also, during harbour phase, various professional and social activities will be conducted. The exercises will also be witnessed by senior officials from both the navies.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Pakistan formally offered to mediate in ME crisis 06 January, 2020



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Hand Wash and Toiletries in Pakistan And the Role of DUPAS in Reshaping the Industry

Woke Bingo ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Sunday reaffirmed its resolve not to become a part of any conflict in the region and renewed its offer for mediating in the Middle East crisis.



The offer was formally conveyed by Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi during a telephonic conversation with his counterparts from Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.



This was the first contact of Foreign Minister Qureshi with the Iranian leadership after the assassination of Irans Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Iraq on Friday.



Mr Qureshi made the telephone calls to Irans Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on the day anti-US protest demonstrations were held in many Pakistani cities, including Karachi and Islamabad.



Earlier, army spokesman and director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor declared in categorical terms that Pakistan would not allow its soil to be used against anyone and would continue to play its role in establishing durable peace in the region.



According to an official announcement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there was a wide-ranging exchange of views between Mr Qureshi and the foreign ministers of four Muslim countries on the unfolding situation in the region. Highlighting Pakistans deep concern over recent developments, the foreign minister underscored the imperative of avoidance of conflict, exercise of maximum restraint and de-escalation of tensions.



Mr Qureshi renewed the call on the parties concerned to abide by the United Nations Charter and principles of international law to settle differences through peaceful means. He also reaffirmed that Pakistan would neither let its soil be used against any other state nor become part of any regional conflict.



Sharing Pakistans perspective, the foreign minister expressed the hope that the progress made in the Afghan peace process would be preserved and further advanced.



He reiterated Pakistans readiness to continue to play a role in preventing further escalation and maintaining regional peace and stability.



The foreign minister is expected to make a policy statement on the Middle East situation in the National Assembly or the Senate on Monday (today).



During an interview with ARY News TV channel, Maj Gen Ghafoor asked the nation not to pay heed to rumours on social as well as main media regarding the countrys role in the Middle East situation. Commenting on the recent escalation of tension between Washington and Tehran after the killing of Maj Gen Soleimani, he acknowledged that the incident had changed the situation in the region, saying Pakistan desired that the region does not go towards another war.



The ISPR chief termed the talks in social media about Pakistans possible support for the United States in the present Middle East situation part of the propaganda campaign by anti-state elements. I request the Pakistani people and the media to rely only on authentic source in this regard. Do not pay heed to the rumours being spread by anti-state elements, he said, adding that India is playing a lead role in spreading these rumours.



Maj Gen Ghafoor said he had recently read an Indian article reporting that Pakistan had ditched Iran and linked the development with resumption of Pakistans participation in a US military training and educational programme. In our bilateral relations with America, training cooperation was suspended. For the past four to five months, America had been talking about restoring this because training engagement in military-to-military cooperation goes on, he said, clarifying that the development had nothing to with the recent situation in the Middle East.



Linking something that has been going on for quite a few months to this incident is part of that propaganda campaign, he declared.



Responding to a question about the telephonic conversation between Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he said the army chief had stressed the need for exercising maximum restraint and constructive engagement following the killing of the Iranian general.



He said Gen Bajwa had said two things. Firstly, he said, the region was improving from very bad conditions, adding that the Afghan reconciliation process was very important for this improvement. He said Pakistan would play its role in this regard and wanted the focus to remain on the Afghan reconciliation process.



Secondly, he said, the army chief had told Mr Pompeo that tensions in the region should be reduced and that Pakistan desired that the region should not go towards any war.



Maj Gen Ghafoor said the region had been facing problems due to security reasons for the past four decades, starting from Russian invasion of Afghanistan to the war on terror in the aftermath of the 9/11 and the recent escalations between India and Pakistan which had even brought the two countries to the brink of war. Pakistan, he said, successfully defeated terrorism in the country, secured Pak-Afghan border, played a positive role in the Afghan reconciliation process and presented itself as a responsible state with a fully capable army despite provocative actions by India.



He said peace had been achieved in Pakistan after a lot of sacrifices, adding: We will not be part of any process that can ruin this peace.



The ISPR chief said both Prime Minister Imran Khan and Gen Bajwa had been making efforts to reduce tensions in the Middle East and had undertaken foreign visits and talked to the world leaders. He said Pakistan was a relevant country and held an important position in the region. He said both PM Khan and Gen Bajwa had clearly stated that Pakistan would not allow its soil to be used against any country and would do whatever possible for peace in the region.



Speaking about the threatening statements by the newly appointed Indian army chief against Pakistan, the ISPR chief said Lt Gen Manoj Mukund Naravane was not new to the Indian army and he knew the capabilities of the Pakistan Army very well. He [the Indian army chief] was part of the Indian force on Feb 27 as well. So hes not new, he said in an apparent reference to the shooting down of two Indian aircraft by the Pakistan Air Force last year.



The Pakistan armed forces know how to defend the country and India also knows this, he said, adding that Pakistan desired peace in the region, but will make no comprises when it comes to safeguarding its security.



The Indian army chief should, instead of giving threats, end the siege of occupied Kashmir, end oppression there, and play his role in ending the ongoing protests and tyranny in India due to the Hindutva thought, he said.
Georges Duboeuf, a highly influential French wine merchant who gave Beaujolais Nouveau its lettres de noblesse, has died at the age of 86.

Duboeuf suffered a stroke on Saturday afternoon in his home in Romaneche-Thorins, near Lyon in France, and died soon after, his daughter-in-law Anne told AFP on Sunday.

He became famous for turning an ordinary red wine known as "Beaujolais nouveau" into a global phenomenon in the 1980s.

Thanks to his relentless promotion of the wine its release date on the third Thursday of November came to be known and celebrated worldwide as Beaujolais Nouveau Day.

This earned him the nickname of "the Pope of Beaujolais". Top French chef Paul Bocuse tweeted about his "everlasting sadness" saying Beaujolais wine had lost its finest ambassador".

Georges Duboeuf began his career as a wine merchant in the 1950s when he set up L'Ecrin Maconnais-Beaujolais, a collective of wine producers, to help promote local wines.

Then in 1964 he founded his own winery, Georges Duboeuf Wines, using traditional methods of winemaking.

The winery expanded into other regions and in 1993 Duboeuf opened a shop, museum and wine tasting bar in the village of Romaneche-Thorins.

When he retired in 2018 and handed over the business to his son Franck, the company was producing 30 million bottles a year.

"This makes me very sad. We will miss him. He was a partner and a loyal friend", the Michelin-starred chef Georges Blanc told AFP, adding that Duboeuf was a "tireless ambassador for Beaujolais".

Duboeuf was also known for the splendid celebrations he organised around Beaujolais Nouveau in the 1980s, attended by celebrities, famous chefs and politicians.

Dominique Piron, president of the Inter Beaujolais group, said Duboeuf raised the Beaujolais flag worldwide.

"He had a nose, intuition, and was a step ahead of his time," he said.

The Duboeuf family has been in the wine industry for four centuries.

(with AFP)
A woman who is accused of having her new husband murder her former partner was sent a letter in jail by a third man who offered to retract his statement against her in exchange for access to one of her children.

Biannca Edmunds, 33, is charged with murder. She allegedly had her husband of two weeks, Glen Cassidy, visit the Westmeadows home of her ex-partner, Michael Caposiena, on March 12, 2016, and kill him.

The hearing, which will determine whether Biannca Edmunds stands trial, will continue at Melbourne Magistrates court on Tuesday. Credit:Justin McManus

Prosecutors say Mr Cassidy had a gun when he forced his way into Mr Caposienas home and shot him during a struggle. During the fight, Mr Caposiena stabbed Mr Cassidy. Both men died from their injuries.

Mr Caposienas girlfriend was also in the house that night and was injured.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 16:52:49|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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DHAKA, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh's total exports in the first half of the current 2019-20 fiscal year (July 2019-June 2020) reached over 19 billion U.S. dollars, down 5.84 percent year on year, official data showed Monday.

According to the country's Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) data, Bangladesh fetched 19,302.16 million U.S. dollars from exports in the first six months of the current fiscal year.

The EPB data showed export performance for December was 3.53 billion U.S. dollars, 2.89 percent lower than that in the same month a year ago.

An EPB official said overall export income plunged as earnings from garment items have been experiencing slowdown for months.

Readymade garment exports from Bangladesh fell by 6.21 percent to about 16 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of the current 2019-20 fiscal year, said the official who declined to be named.

Bangladesh set its export target in 2019-20 fiscal year at 45.50 billion U.S. dollars, including 38.20 billion U.S. dollars from ready-made garment products, the EPB data showed.
After a 17-day sojourn at his Florida estate, U.S. President Donald Trump returned to Washington on January 5 facing the fallout from the strike he ordered to kill a powerful Iranian general.



According to White House media-pool reports, Trump threatened Iraq with sanctions, reiterated a warning to bomb Iranian cultural sites, and vowed "major retaliation" if Iran to tries to avenge the killing of top military commander Qasem Soleimani.



Responding to a decision by Iraqi's parliament for the expulsion of U.S. troops after Soleimani was killed last week near the Baghdad airport, Trump said, "We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," referring to a U.S. air base.



"We've spent a lot of money in Iraq," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. "We have a very extraordinary air base there. It cost billions of dollars to build."



Should Tehran retaliate for Soleimani's killing, the U.S. president said he wouldn't rule out striking Iranian cultural sites, dismissing concerns within his own administration that such an action would constitute a war crime under international law.



If Iran is "allowed to kill our people. They are allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way," Trump said.



Retaliation from Iran would be met with "major retaliation," he added.



Trump said that if Iraq asked U.S. forces to leave and it was not done cordially, "we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame."



Iraqi lawmakers on January 5 passed a resolution that said the country's government "commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting [the Islamic State (IS) extremist group] due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory."



The government of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi "must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace, or water for any reason," it added.



The United States has some 5,000 military personnel in Iraq, mainly as advisers.



Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said more Iranian leaders will be targeted if Tehran avenges the killing of Soleimani.



Speaking on numerous television news shows over the weekend, Pompeo said if Iran uses its proxy forces -- in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and elsewhere -- to strike U.S. targets, a response won't be limited to them.



"They will be borne by Iran and its leadership itself," Pompeo said. "Those are important things the Iranian leadership needs to put in its calculus as it makes its next decision."



Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, the foreign arm of Irans hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), was killed on January 3 as he left Baghdads airport in a convoy amid a regional tour.



The attack marked a significant escalation between Iran and the United States, with Tehran promising "harsh revenge."

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has prayed over Soleimani's casket during a mass funeral ceremony in Tehran.



State television showed tens of thousands of Iranians gathered in the capital to pay their respects to the Quds Force general and others killed in a U.S. air strike in neighboring Iraq on January 3.



Supporters throughout the country have honored Soleimani as his casket has been moved through various cities on its way to the general's hometown of Kerman, where his body will be interred on January 7.

WATCH: Hundreds of thousands of Iranians attended government-organized funeral rallies for Qasem Soleimani in Ahvaz, near Iran's border with Iraq, and in the Shi'ite holy city of Mashhad on January 5.



The Iranian general who replaced Soleimani also vowed to take revenge in an interview with Iranian state television on January 6.



Ismail Qaani, who until January 3 was the longtime deputy head of the Quds Force, said: "God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly, actions will be taken."

Qaani was the source of a 2012 interview that was later scrubbed from an official news agency's website in which he touted Iran's presence in Syria -- "physically and non-physically" -- as preventing "big massacres."



In a series of January 4 tweets, President Donald Trump said he had ordered the strike on Soleimani because the Iranian commander had organized attacks on U.S. and Iraqi targets and that he was "preparing for additional hits in other locations."



Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the killing of Soleimani was a breach of international law and that any targeting of cultural sites would constitute a war crime.



"Those masquerading as diplomats and those who shamelessly sat to identify Iranian cultural & civilian targets should not even bother to open a law dictionary," Zarif wrote in a January 5 tweet. "Jus cogens refers to peremptory norms of international law, i.e. international red lines. That is, a big(ly) 'no no'."

With reporting by Reuters, dpa, AFP, The New York Times, and AP
Editors note: This is the first in a series about historic houses of worship under threat of erasure in Jersey City and Hudson County.

Sunday morning  and the voices and vespers that drifted out of the open oak doors of Grace Lutheran Church for over a hundred years onto the Summit Avenue sidewalk, in the Heights section of Jersey City, are no more.

Instead, an empty lot, neatly graveled with the rubbled fabric of a leveled landmark and fenced in tightly with chain-link, is all that remains.

PRESERVATION UNRAVELING

When Grace was demolished a few weeks ago  after being closed and desacralized by the regional Lutheran synod and subsequently sold to a developer  no one in the Heights protested. Why would they when, years earlier, as Graces stained-glass memorials were, one by one, being extracted, crated, hauled away and auctioned off on eBay for upwards of $10,000 each, no one in the community cried out?

What can explain such silence? Has the real-time image of a historic building coming down in the Heights become so common as to create a heavy cloud of indifference, detachment, numbness? Are residential developments so ubiquitous in the Heights that the churning and cacophony of huge cranes, drivers, drills and mixers have become as accepted and commonplace as the daily street sweeper?

This is how historic preservation unravels. When monuments drop, local politicians shrug, proclaim it as progress, a sign of a finer future. Not everything can be saved, goes the usual explanation and excuse.

But Grace was everything.

As one of the first German-immigrant Lutheran parishes to conduct English-speaking services in the early-20th-century city and, at the closing of the same century, as a pioneer in providing faith-based and social services to people with HIV and AIDS, not to mention its unfettered support for the LGBTQ community, the church held a truly distinct position in local cultural history  a living cultural history.

With its Tudor-esque chapel, exposed-timber ceilings that were low and close enough to almost touch, and family-commissioned memorial stained-glass windows manufactured by the famed J. & R. Lamb Studios, Grace was one-of-a-kind and stood at the center of the Heights historical narrative.

In its heyday, Graces holiday decorations at the altar were the decorations to out-do among all area denominations. Dark oak rails, tables, stalls, podiums and pews were, every Christmastime, festooned from floor to rafter with evergreens, poinsettias and wrapped gifts for area families. A small organ would boom in the intimate space, enveloping it with haunting and serene medieval music. Live chamber pieces would be played, with elders joined by young players and interspersed with somber choir songs. Incense smoke would be suspended in the glow of the stained-glass windows.

Now erased  all of it.

HERITAGE IN THE CROSSHAIRS

When I wrote about Grace Lutheran Church in 2004, and again in 2005, celebrating its artistic treasures and importance to the Heights culture and community, I could not have imagined that, years later, I would be standing in front of the same property, staring dumbfounded into a pit brimmed with architectural ashes.

I should have known better. I should have recognized that a precious architectural jewel like Grace seems to always end up in the 21st-century developers crosshairs, its days numbered.

In truth, what happened here points to a broader issue in the Heights and other susceptible sections of Jersey City and its neighboring Hudson County municipalities: anything-goes, build-at-any-cost development, none of it truly meant for locals, and nearly none of it regardful of the past.

Walk or drive through the Heights to witness this unmistakable and troubling trend. Historic houses along Palisade, Central and Baldwin avenues  and across and up and down side streets  are vanishing in virtual swaths, the titles of the responsible limited liability companies prominently displayed on fencing. If old buildings are not being taken down outright, they are being renovated and morphed into strange monochromatic shells of their former selves.

Looking around, there is no reason to doubt that this destruction will continue, unabated and without sincere concern. As a preservation advocate in Hudson County for over 25 years, I wish it were otherwise  I wish these quick and quiet tear-downs could, instead, become a resounding reckoning for the Heights, which prides itself on its old-neighborhood feel in the ever-growing urban environment.

ETERNAL VOICES

Christmas has just passed. Houses in the Heights are still strung from porch to cornice with blinking lamps and projecting holograms.

And although the euphoric chorale voices, light-infused stained-glass imagery and myrrh-like mists that all made Grace Lutheran Church so memorable every holiday season are gone, they will somehow  at least in the eyes of the historian, the preservationist  be here at this same Summit Avenue spot, even after new buildings have risen.

Editors note: John Gomez, a life-long Jersey City resident, is the founder of the non-profit Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy and author of Legendary Locals of Jersey City. He holds a master of science in historic preservation from Columbia University and teaches urban architecture at St. Peters University.

Email him at preservationtv@gmail.com.

NEXT: Erasure on Avenue E
The Nigerian Diaspora Commission has said a campaign dubbed Door of Return that has been trending on social media does not have authorisation from it.

The Commission said in a post on Twitter that it disassociates itself from the campaign that has been criticised widely for copying Ghanas successful Year of Return campaign.

President Akufo-Addo launched the Year of Return In Washington, D.C., in September 2018 for Africans in the diaspora, giving fresh impetus to efforts to unite Africans on the continent with their brothers and sisters in the diaspora.

In the Twitter post, the Nigerian Diaspora Commission said together with the Lagos State Government, the African Door of Return Experience and the African Renaissance Foundation, it has been organising the Door of Return in Badagry, Lagos for the past three years since 2017.

For the avoidance of doubt, the 2019 edition took place in October 15th to 20th 2019, and the program was held in Badagry, Lagos with the theme: "A *PILGRIMAGE TO THE MOTHERLAND, THE THIRD COMING* with participants from across the globe, the Commission explained in a lengthy Twitter post.

Myjoyonline.com
GCC Secretary General Calls for Calm and Dialogue in Iraq

Saudi Press Agency

Sunday 1441/5/10 - 2020/01/05

Riyadh, Jan 5, 2020, SPA -- GCC Secretary General Dr. Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani said in a statement that the GCC countries have followed with great concern the serious events and developments in the brotherly country of Iraq.

Dr. Al-Zayani called on the concerned parties to calm down, de-escalate, and prioritize political solutions to the crises in order to spare the region, which is already tensed, and its people of any negative repercussions on their security and stability.

The Secretary General called on the international community to assume its responsibilities to reduce escalation in this vital region of the world.

--SPA

22:12 LOCAL TIME 19:12 GMT

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THE WOODLANDS, Texas, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Summit Midstream Partners, LP (NYSE: SMLP) announced today that, effective March 1, 2020, it will relocate its corporate headquarters from The Woodlands, Texas to downtown Houston, Texas. In addition to relocating corporate teams from The Woodlands, this move will also include a relocation of Summit's Finance and Accounting functions currently located in Atlanta, Georgia, where the company was founded. This decision represents an opportunity to enhance Summit's corporate culture and effectiveness by bringing its employees together in a single location while significantly reducing the cost associated with operating multiple corporate office locations.

Heath Deneke, President and Chief Executive Officer of SMLP, commented, "We are very pleased to have the opportunity to consolidate our corporate headquarters to a premier downtown Houston office location that brings our employees closer to many of our customers, vendors, lenders and investors. Our new office location provides ample space to accommodate our current and future office needs while broadening our access to a deep pool of experienced energy professionals. In addition to the cultural and organizational effectiveness gains, the move will also provide an immediate and significant source of cost savings for SMLP going forward."

The new headquarters will be located on the 41st and 42nd floors in One Shell Plaza, located at 910 Louisiana Street.

About Summit Midstream Partners, LP

SMLP is a growth-oriented limited partnership focused on developing, owning and operating midstream energy infrastructure assets that are strategically located in the core producing areas of unconventional resource basins, primarily shale formations, in the continental United States. SMLP provides natural gas, crude oil and produced water gathering services pursuant to primarily long-term and fee-based gathering and processing agreements with customers and counterparties in six unconventional resource basins: (i) the Appalachian Basin, which includes the Utica and Marcellus shale formations in Ohio and West Virginia; (ii) the Williston Basin, which includes the Bakken and Three Forks shale formations in North Dakota; (iii) the Denver-Julesburg Basin, which includes the Niobrara and Codell shale formations in Colorado and Wyoming; (iv) the Permian Basin, which includes the Bone Spring and Wolfcamp formations in New Mexico; (v) the Fort Worth Basin, which includes the Barnett Shale formation in Texas; and (vi) the Piceance Basin, which includes the Mesaverde formation as well as the Mancos and Niobrara shale formations in Colorado. SMLP has an equity investment in and operates Double E Pipeline, LLC, which is developing natural gas transmission infrastructure that will provide transportation service from multiple receipt points in the Delaware Basin to various delivery points in and around the Waha Hub in Texas. SMLP also has an equity investment in Ohio Gathering, which operates extensive natural gas gathering and condensate stabilization infrastructure in the Utica Shale in Ohio. SMLP is headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes certain statements concerning expectations for the future that are forward-looking within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements contain known and unknown risks and uncertainties (many of which are difficult to predict and beyond management's control) that may cause SMLP's actual results in future periods to differ materially from anticipated or projected results. An extensive list of specific material risks and uncertainties affecting SMLP is contained in its 2018 Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 26, 2019, and as amended and updated from time to time. Any forward-looking statements in this press release, including forward-looking statements regarding 2019 financial guidance or financial or operating expectations for 2019, are made as of the date of this press release and SMLP undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect new information or events.

SOURCE Summit Midstream Partners, LP

Related Links

http://www.summitmidstream.com


A father has ranked the most popular takeaway coffees in a 'definitive' list.

Bruno Bouchet, from Sydney, included 14 hot beverages in what he believes to be the ultimate ranking - naming Starbucks as number one and Pie Face as 'cat vomit'.

The self-proclaimed 'List King' and former Kyle & Jackie O radio show producer said he spent 'weeks' ordering long blacks from cafes, petrol stations, convenience stores and fast food chains for his 'research'.

A Sydney father has ranked the most popular takeaway coffees in his 'definitive' list

Controversially, the managing director crowned Starbucks and 7-Eleven.

'To their credit, Starbucks repeatedly nailed the best long black of all the takeaway coffee joints. I know Australians love to rip on Starbucks, but I have to be honest when I do these lists... they killed it,' he said.

Mr Bouchet said one of the best things about 7-Eleven coffee was the very affordable $1 price tag and the beverage's 'consistency'.

'It's the best thing on earth you can get for a buck. I went there several times in the past month and it was consistently one of the best long blacks I'd ever had. I know it'd look cool if I was a snob who didn't dig it but I have to be real: it's great,' he said.

'I'd take a bullet for 7-Eleven coffee. Whenever I get one, there's a special "hell yeah we know what's up" look that all the people at the machine give one another.'

In the Royalty Tier, Mr Bouchet picked Coffee Club, Wendy's and Gloria Jean's.

Bruno Bouchet (pictured), from Sydney, said he spent 'weeks' ordering long blacks from cafes, petrol stations and fast food chains for his 'research'

Poll What's YOUR favourite takeaway coffee? Starbucks 7-Eleven Coffee Club Wendy's Gloria Jean's McCafe Jamaica Blue Donut King Soul Origin Michel's Patisserie BP Pie Face Caltex Shell What's YOUR favourite takeaway coffee? Starbucks 57 votes

7-Eleven 116 votes

Coffee Club 23 votes

Wendy's 3 votes

Gloria Jean's 44 votes

McCafe 62 votes

Jamaica Blue 25 votes

Donut King 16 votes

Soul Origin 30 votes

Michel's Patisserie 9 votes

BP 8 votes

Pie Face 3 votes

Caltex 7 votes

Shell 8 votes Now share your opinion





In the centre of his rankings, Bruno put McCafe, Jamaica's Blue and Donut King in the 'Adam Sandler tier', or what he describes as 'take it or leave it' category.

'McDonald's to be fair, I worked for a few months at McCafe... so I feel like I'm a very, very strong authority on this,' Mr Bouchet said.

'Looking back at my notes, the most expensive (oddly enough) was Donut King at $4.50... and it didn't come with a free doughnut.'

For the second last Tier, titled 'Pleb', he named Soul Origin, Michel's Patisserie and BP.

And lastly, Mr Bouchet said Pie Face belonged in the 'Cat Vomit Tier', along with Caltex and Shell.

While many agreed with his list, others were furious to see Starbucks and 7-Eleven leading the pack.

'This list is 100 per cent accurate. Every single coffee below the 7-Eleven coffee tastes like an old woman has crawled in the machine and let loose on her diarrhea,' Gordie said.

'You really have gone out of your way to upset me again. Now I think you have an agenda against me. This list needs to be revised TOUT SUITE [right now],' Project IV said.

'I'm usually a big supporter of your lists... But this entire list should be under the vomit tier,' Mason said.

Angela said: 'Starbucks coffee is not God Tier. 7-Eleven Yes. Good coffee for an unbelievably cheap price.'

And Joe said: 'I'd have to disagree with you on. The 7-Eleven one would be a vomit tier for me. Outta all of them I'd take the Gloria Jeans to be my number one.'
MANATEE -- A toe-sucking burglar broke into a Bradenton home on Christmas Eve and got into a fight with a resident, according to the Manatee County Sheriffs Office.

Deputies who responded to a home on 60th Avenue West were told that the victim was sleeping in his bedroom when he was awakened by the suspect sucking on his toes, according to an incident report.

The victim asked the suspect what he was doing and the suspect simply stated he was there to suck toes, according to the report.

Deputies say a fight ensued and during the fight the suspect attempted to grab his genitals and then threatened the victim saying he had a gun.

According to the report, a gun was never seen, but the victim managed to force the suspect out of the home. The suspect then smashed out a window to the home and then destroyed the victims car windshield.

Deputies tried to track the suspect with a K9 but were unsuccessful in locating the suspect. DNA swabs were taken from the victims toes, according to the report.

The sheriffs office said the case is still under investigation.

--By Mark Young, The Bradenton Herald
President Donald Trump View Photo

President Trump addressed the United States military killing of Qasem Soleimani.

Trump was Mondays KVML Newsmaker of the Day. Here are his words:

As President, my highest and most solemn duty is the defense of our nation and its citizens.

At my direction, the United States military successfully executed a flawless precision strike that killed the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world, Qasem Soleimani.

Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him.

Under my leadership, Americas policy is unambiguous: To terrorists who harm or intend to harm any American, we will find you; we will eliminate you. We will always protect our diplomats, service members, all Americans, and our allies.

For years, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its ruthless Quds Force  under Soleimanis leadership  has targeted, injured, and murdered hundreds of American civilians and servicemen.

The recent attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq, including rocket strikes that killed an American and injured four American servicemen very badly, as well as a violent assault on our embassy in Baghdad, were carried out at the direction of Soleimani.

Soleimani made the death of innocent people his sick passion, contributing to terrorist plots as far away as New Delhi and London.

Today we remember and honor the victims of Soleimanis many atrocities, and we take comfort in knowing that his reign of terror is over.

Soleimani has been perpetrating acts of terror to destabilize the Middle East for the last 20 years. What the United States did yesterday should have been done long ago. A lot of lives would have been saved.

Just recently, Soleimani led the brutal repression of protestors in Iran, where more than a thousand innocent civilians were tortured and killed by their own government.

We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.

I have deep respect for the Iranian people. They are a remarkable people, with an incredible heritage and unlimited potential. We do not seek regime change. However, the Iranian regimes aggression in the region, including the use of proxy fighters to destabilize its neighbors, must end, and it must end now.

The future belongs to the people of Iran  those who seek peaceful coexistence and cooperation  not the terrorist warlords who plunder their nation to finance bloodshed abroad.

The United States has the best military by far, anywhere in the world. We have best intelligence in the world. If Americans anywhere are threatened, we have all of those targets already fully identified, and I am ready and prepared to take whatever action is necessary. And that, in particular, refers to Iran.

Under my leadership, we have destroyed the ISIS territorial caliphate, and recently, American Special Operations Forces killed the terrorist leader known as al-Baghdadi. The world is a safer place without these monsters.

America will always pursue the interests of good people, great people, great souls, while seeking peace, harmony, and friendship with all of the nations of the world.

Thank you. God bless you. God bless our great military. And God bless the United States of America. Thank you very much. Thank you.

The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.
'The bigger challenge and dilemma for Pakistan would be if the US and Saudi Arabia go full throttle against Iran and enforce regime change in Tehran.'

'That would be bad news for Pakistan, especially with the current instability in Balochistan,' notes Brigadier Narender Kumar (retd).

IMAGE: Mourners attend the funeral of General Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis who were killed in a US air strike at Baghdad airport on January 3, 2019. Photograph: Thaier al-Sudani/Reuters

The Middle East has been plunged into uncertain security situation with the killing of Major General Qassem Suleimani, Iran's most powerful military commander.

General Suleimani made Iran a pioneer in developing capabilities to fight conventional and high technology war by employing asymmetric means.

General Suleimani, who led the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps's Quds Force, a special forces unit responsible for Iranian operations outside Iran's borders, was long a figure of intense interest.

The Quds Force has footprints across Asia, Africa, Europe, even North America.

Quds Force members have presence and capabilities to undertake operations in Turkey, Europe, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and other South Asian countries.

There are reports that some Iranian diplomats are members of the Quds Force and used to report to General Suleimani.

The Quds has offices or 'sections' in many Iranian embassies which are closed to most embassy staff.

He had challenged the US military when he sent a message to General David H Petraeus, the then American commander in Iraq in 2007, saying, 'You should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan.'

He had also threatened US President Donald J Trump that 'You may start the war, but we will end it.'

General Suleimani's death is a big blow to Iran, especially the Quds Force that currently operates in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon.

The Iranian-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq and the Quds Force are most likely to retaliate since the assassination of General Soleimani and PMF commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis has hurt the core of Iran's military and irregular warfare capabilities.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, has already warned of severe retaliation.

There is a likelihood of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, even the UAE, getting involved in the conflict.

'It is hard to imagine that Iran will not retaliate in a highly aggressive manner,' Robert Malley, president and chief executive, International Crisis Group, said after the general's assassination.

What can Iran target to retaliate?

Iran has options to target US assets deployed in West Asia or in the Arabian Sea, major terror strikes against US troops deployed in Syria, Iraq, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

In addition, Iran may also launch cyber-attacks on the US.

There is also a possibility of attacks on US consulates spread across Asia and even beyond.

If Iran retaliates, the region is likely to get destabilised and it will certainly impact energy security. Oil prices are set to rise, thereby putting a strain on global economies.

If the escalation does take place, the Gulf of Oman and the Straits of Hormuz will become the graveyard of global economies. It will impact approximately 25% of global oil supply.

Iran may use Houthi militias to disrupt sea lines of communication in the Red Sea. Drones/missile attacks against Saudi Arabia will intensify.

IMAGE: US President Donald J Trump justifies the US airstrike against General Soleimani, January 3, 2020. Photograph: Tom Brenner/Reuters

There is a possibility of Saudi Arabia being dragged into the conflict.

That will force Pakistan to support the US and Saudi Arabia in its against Iran and Iranian-backed militias.

There could be a demand from the US to use Pakistan air and naval facilities to execute operations against neighbouring Iran.

The bigger challenge and dilemma for Pakistan would be if the US and Saudi Arabia go full throttle against Iran and enforce regime change in Tehran.

That would be bad news for Pakistan, especially with the current instability in Balochistan.

At the same time, China would not like Pakistan to support either the US or Saudi Arabia given the close ties between Iran and China.

How the Gwadar port in Pakistan will be used by Pakistan or China will be a matter of immense interest to Saudi Arabia and the US on the one side and China, Iran and Russia on the other.

The big question is on whose side ISIS and Al Qaeda will operate. They have exploited wars, State collapses and geopolitical upheaval in the Middle East, gained new footholds in Africa and pose an evolving threat elsewhere.

Violent extremist groups have always considered disorder as an opportunity to gain access to new regions.

Both ISIS and Al Qaeda will see the current upheaval as an opportunity to spread its influence in the Arabian peninsula.

Since the Islamic world will be busy building alliances either against Iran or in support of Iran, there will be hardly anyone that will heed Imran Khan's rhetoric over Kashmir.

In such an atmosphere of uncertainty, there is an opportunity for India to have a breather from the international community over Kashmir.

At the same time, India will have to look for alternative oil supplies so that there is no further slowdown to the already slowing economy.

India should start planning how it would extricate approximately the five million Indian Diaspora from the Middle East in the event of conflict.

The government would be required to establish camps, build up logistics, identify routes of evacuation leading to air heads or seaports, work out availability or road transport, and identify airports and sea ports that may be available even during conflict for safe evacuation of Indian nationals.

India should also be careful, considering the Quds Force's reach and ability to target the US and its allies in India.

The Delhi police had concluded that the suspects who planted a bomb to kill the wife of an Israeli diplomat in February 2012 were members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

If a war in the Gulf breaks out, West Asia will never be the same again.

The world may witness collapse of regimes, intended or otherwise.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation is likely to see three way split, a faction loyal to Saudi Arabia that may include the UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait, a faction led by Turkey that may be supported by Malaysia and a few Central Asian republics, and a Shia faction led by Iran.

If Pakistan aligns with the Saudis, it may risk escalation of instability in Balochistan through covert operations by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. If it remains neutral, it will pay in terms of Saudi and US annoyance.

In the end, the main winners in a war will be the extremists. It may lead to the revival of ISIS and Al Qaeda with much greater spheres of influence.

Brigadier Narender Kumar (retd) is a Distinguished Fellow at the United Services Institute of India and a frequent contributor to Rediff.com.
Attorney Douglas Wigdor, who has two clients suing Weinstein and represents one of the supporting witnesses expected to testify, said #MeToo rang in a new era in terms of how women are treated when lodging sexual assault accusations. The jurors who will be called in Weinsteins case know that victims arent necessarily raped in dark alleys at gunpoint, that women often know their perpetrator, that women often speak to their perpetrator after the crime has been committed.
Lock and load her up.

President Donald Trump's eldest son Donald Trump Jr. posted a photo on his Instagram account boasting about his new assault rifle magazine, which features an image of Hillary Clinton's face behind jail bars.

That magazine is inserted into the well of the AR-15, which has been modified to resemble the helmet of a Christian crusader, with a Jerusalem Cross.

The Jerusalem Cross or Crusader Cross was the symbol of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, a crusader state established in the 11th century after Jerusalem was seized from its then-Muslim rulers.

"Nice day at the range," Trump Jr. wrote on the Instagram post Sunday. "@rarebreedfirearms and @spikes_tactical adding a little extra awesome to my AR and that mag."

Trump Jr.'s father defeated Democratic nominee Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. During that campaign, crowds at the elder Trump's rallies often chanted, "Lock her up!" in reference to Clinton.

Trump Jr.'s post came three days after a U.S. airstrike authorized by President Trump at Baghdad's airport killed top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, whose nation is an Islamic republic.

Trump Jr. is an avid gun enthusiast and hunter. Since his father entered the White House, he and his brother Eric have run the Trump Organization.

An Axios.com poll last week indicated that 29% of Republican voters would consider Trump Jr. for president. A total of 16% in the same poll said they would consider his sister Ivanka, who currently is a senior White House advisor, to succeed their father as president.

A spokesman for Trump Jr., when asked about the Instagram post, said, "Anyone claiming that the Jerusalem Cross is some sort of political statement, couldn't be more ignorant. Symbols depicting various historical warriors are about as common in gun culture as hating President Trump is in the oped pages of the New York Times."

"Don's instagram post was strictly about him using a famous meme to mock Hillary Clinton, as he and many others have done on numerous occasions and will surely do again in the future, so long as it continues triggering humorless liberals," the spokesman said.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-05 19:58:09|Editor: huaxia

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Dong ethnic women communicate on tapestry skills at a relocated residential area in Guyi Township in Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County of Liuzhou, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Nov. 27, 2019. The unique traditional embroidery and tapestry of Dong ethnic group has a long history. In recent years, local authorities have been expanding market for this intangible cultural heritage so that Dong ethnic women will have more job opportunities to shake off poverty and preserve the cultural heritage. (Xinhua/Gong Pukang)

China has provided 35.71 million yuan (about 5.13 million U.S. dollars) in financial support for the establishment of 263 intangible cultural heritage workshops for boosting employment.

BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- China made solid progress in reducing poverty through the promotion of culture and tourism in poor areas in 2019, said the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

A series of programs have been implemented such as funding cultural activity facilities in poor villages and bringing traditional Chinese opera performances to the countryside to enrich villagers' lives, according to a national meeting on culture and tourism held from Friday to Saturday.

The country has provided 35.71 million yuan (about 5.13 million U.S. dollars) in financial support for the establishment of 263 intangible cultural heritage workshops for boosting employment.

The scenery at the Haokun Lake scenic area in Lingyun County of Baise City, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Nov. 24, 2019. Taking advantage of the natural beauty around Haokun Lake, authorities in Lingyun have been striving to develop ecological tourism in a bid to shake off poverty and boost the income of local residents. At present, ecological tourism has become a pillar industry to help people here bid farewell to poverty. (Xinhua/Zhang Ailin)

Tourism plans have been made for 240 poor villages and around 3.3 billion yuan has been allocated for the construction of 329 tourism infrastructure projects in poor areas.

Nearly 6,000 people have received training to promote tourism and intangible cultural heritage in rural areas.

China has set 2020 as the target year to eradicate absolute poverty. The ministry urged more efforts in tapping the cultural and tourist resources and making new achievements in poverty reduction. 
Abortionrights activist gathered outside the U.S. Supreme Court to protest against the recent abortion laws passed across the country in recent weeks. Tuesday, May 21, 2019. Washington, D.C. (Photo by Aurora Samperio/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Aurora Samperio | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Changes at the state and federal level made 2019 a volatile year for abortion access. But for activists, the fight is just heating up. Reproductive rights experts anticipate the abortion landscape to change even more dramatically in the year ahead, thanks to an onslaught of expected court rulings and new laws. Many of the battles in the coming year stem from policies implemented and struck down in prior years. Republican-led states, emboldened by the Supreme Court's new conservative majority and the Trump administration's anti-abortion policies, passed 59 abortion restrictions in 2019. Among those restrictions was a wave of state-led abortion bans that were temporarily blocked from going into effect last year. The Trump administration in February instituted the "gag rule," which bars the use of Title X money "to perform, promote, refer for, or support abortion as a method of family planning." Title X helps fund birth control and reproductive health care for low-income individuals, according to Planned Parenthood. Experts, citing these factors, expect the new year to continue to be challenging for abortion rights. Here are the major events in 2020 that could bring drastic change to abortion policy:

Louisiana abortion case hits the Supreme Court

In March, the Supreme Court will take up its first major case relating to abortion with both of President Donald Trump's appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, on the bench. The high court will review a controversial Louisiana law from 2014 that requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility where the abortions are provided. Opponents said it would effectively limit the state of about 4.5 million to one abortion provider. The court struck down a nearly identical Texas law in the 2016 case Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt. Diana Kasdan, director of judicial strategy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, an activist group that brought the Louisiana case, warned that the court could use the case to "effectively ban abortion" even if it doesn't overrule its longstanding abortion precedents, known as Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. "If this law were to be upheld, without overruling Roe v. Wade, without overruling Casey, a state like Louisiana could effectively ban abortion because they're going to be down to one clinic," Kasdan said. Opponents are also worried that the ruling could have broader implications for abortion rights, arguing it might undermine the "undue burden" standard applied by the Supreme Court to determine whether laws restricting abortion are constitutional. This case involves a potential regulation that's "measured against" that standard, said Eric Scheidler, executive director of Pro-Life Action League. "Here in this case, the court has the opportunity to further define that undue burden, maybe even overturn the Hellerstedt case," he said.

2020 candidates on the Hyde Amendment

Experts on both sides are going to pay attention to 2020 Democratic candidates and their stance on the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funding for abortions except in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the person giving birth is at risk. Opponents of the Hyde Amendment are reproductive rights groups seeking its repeal, arguing that women of color make up more than half of the population enrolled in Medicaid that's subject to abortion coverage restrictions. "Restrictions on abortion coverage disproportionately hurt low-income people, especially women of color, immigrant women, and young women, meanwhile anti-choice lawmakers continue to wage unprecedented attacks on reproductive freedom on all fronts," said Amanda Thayer, deputy national communications director at nonprofit NARAL Pro-Choice America. "The moment we're in shows how support for reproductive freedom, including repealing the Hyde Amendment, is no longer negotiable, and all the Democratic presidential front-runners understand that  something unthinkable a few years ago," Thayer said. Most of the Democratic candidates indicated they support the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, but haven't specified whether they'd sign a budget that included the Hyde Amendment. Lawmakers since it was passed in 1977 have voted for the Hyde Amendment every year as part of a larger spending bill. Former Vice President Joe Biden said he supports its repeal, after having been the subject of criticism for flip-flopping on the matter in June. The Democratic front-runner has shifted his stance multiple times since announcing his candidacy for president. Scheidler from the Pro-Life Action League said he "wouldn't be surprised to see [Biden] flip again if he wins the nomination, when he realizes that most Americans, even those who support legal abortion, don't believe in forcing Americans to pay for it."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has scared liberals with a flurry of recent health concerns. The 86-year-old sat out of Supreme Court arguments in November due to a stomach bug. Last year, Ginsburg underwent treatment for what likely was pancreatic cancer, according to a statement from the Supreme Court. In late 2018, she was treated for cancerous growths on her lungs. Ginsburg is the oldest justice and is considered the leader of the Supreme Court's liberal wing, which is outnumbered by conservatives 5-4. She was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993. With the addition of Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, the Trump administration is believed to have shifted the Supreme Court's balance on the topic of abortion to favor conservative policies. Previously, Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate Republican appointee, had been the deciding vote on several issues that were split on an ideological vote. "We suspect Brett Kavanaugh is going to have an anti-choice streak," said Destiny Lopez, co-director of All* Above All, a coalition that unites organizations to build support for lifting abortion coverage restrictions. "We knew with Gorsuch that this was a problem. So there's concern that this could be a further erosion of Roe v. Wade."

More states might adopt abortion bans
President Donald Trump on Monday vowed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons as it announced the suspension of its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal. He had earlier threatened Iraq with sanctions if it expelled US forces, as called for by its parliament, without paying compensation for the extraordinarily expensive air-base built and operated there by Americans.

The President has also defended his earlier threat to attack Iranian cultural assets as reprisal for strikes from Iran carried out in retaliation against the killing of General Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian military commander, in a US drone strike outside the Baghdad international airport. Trump has come under severe criticism at home on this score.

President Trump communicated his resolve to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, in a tweet on Monday morning, a day after Tehran announced it had suspended its commitments under the nuclear deal, the six-nation Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in the immediate aftermath of the killing of Soleimani.

IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON! Trump wrote, in all-caps, which he uses for emphasis or in anger. But he did not explain.

Trump pulled the United States out of the deal in 2018 and snapped back sanctions in force before the signing of the agreement in 2015, and ratcheted it up several notches in a strategy to apply maximum pressure to force Tehran to give up its nuclear programme altogether and also abandon its ballistic missiles programme and cease nefarious activities in the region. The US has put out a 12-condition demand for resuming talks with Iran.

The Islamic Republic of Iran will end its final limitations in the nuclear deal, meaning the limitation in the number of centrifuge, Iran had said in a statement about its JCPOA reversal. Therefore Irans nuclear program will have no limitations in production including enrichment capacity and percentage and number of enriched uranium and research and expansion.

Talking to reporters on his way back to Washington from holidays, he threatened to sanction Iraq after its parliament voted a non-binding resolution to expel US forces stationed there to combat the Islamic State. We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base thats there, he said, adding, Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it.

If the Iraqis insisted and did not do it on a very friendly basis, the president said, reeling out his sanctions threat. We will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.

Responding to questions about his tweet targeting Iranian cultural assets, the president said, Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesnt work that way.

Trump, Democrats squabble over war powers

In related developments in the United States, the president and Democrats locked horns on his authority to take military action. Trump shot off a tweet on Sunday, in which he said his Media Posts (tweets in other words) should be treated as his notice to Congress about any military actions he may take with regard to Iran.

Democrats dismissed it outright, and the House of Representatives, which they control, announced a vote soon on a resolution to curb the presidents war powers. A similar legislative measure was introduced by Democrats in the Senate, which they dont control, last week.
South Australia (SA) has been warned that the catastrophic fore conditions could persist, Trend reports citing Xinhua.

According to a long-range prediction released by the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), much of South Australia is expected to endure above-average heat and below-average rainfall for months.

"Daytime temperatures for January to March 2020 are likely to be warmer than average for almost all of Australia," it said.

"February to April is also likely to be warmer than average Australia-wide... with warmer January days likely for the north and east, and along much of the coastline of SA and WA (West Australia)."

The bureau forecast a wetter January in "the western half of SA" but said that the rest of the state can expect little or no rain.

South Australia has been one of the states hit hardest by the ongoing nationwide bushfire crisis.

More than 160,000 hectares of Kangaroo Island, one third of which is a protected wildlife reserve, has burnt so far and two people were confirmed to have been killed on the island on Saturday.

"People are traumatized - wives, husbands and kids walked out of their houses on Friday, and came back to nothing," Michael Pengilly, mayor of Kangaroo Island, told reporters on Sunday.

"They've just got nothing, it's all gone."

Grave fears are held for the koalas of Kangaroo Island, with 25,000 - half the population there - feared dead.

Research published by the University of Adelaide in July 2019 revealed that koalas on Kangaroo Island were crucial to the long-term survival of the iconic species because they are entirely free of chlamydia.

The disease, which affects 46 percent of koalas on the mainland, causes blindness, infertility and death.
Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan want to thank Canada for the hospitality they received during their Christmas vacation in the Great White North.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 6/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In this Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2019 file photo, Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex arrive to attend the WellChild Awards Ceremony in London. Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan want to thank Canada for the hospitality they received during their Christmas vacation in the Great White North.THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth

Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan want to thank Canada for the hospitality they received during their Christmas vacation in the Great White North.

A statement from Buckingham Palace says the royals will meet with Canada's high commissioner to the United Kingdom at Canada House on Tuesday.

The statement says the Duke and Duchess of Sussex want to express their gratitude to Janice Charette and staff "for the warm Canadian hospitality and support they received during their recent stay in Canada."

Afterwards, the duo will visit the Canada Gallery and view an exhibition by Indigenous artist, Skawennati, born in Kahnawake Mohawk Territory and based in Montreal.

Prince Harry, his wife Meghan and their son Archie sent royal watchers on high alert by announcing they would spend Christmas and ring in the New Year in Canada with Meghan's mother, Doria Ragland.

Official details were not released, but several reports suggested they spent time in British Columbia.
DEWITT, N.Y. -- State police say a Canadian truck driver crashed into the back of a state-owned snow plow that a Cicero man was operating Sunday night on the Thruway.

The driver of the tractor trailer, Miroslaw Skoczylas, 59, of Whitby, Ontario, lost control of a 2009 Freightliner tractor-trailer at about 11:05 p.m. as he traveled in the right lane of Interstate 90 East near Exit 34A, the Interstate 481 exit in DeWitt, state police said in a news release.

After striking several posts, Skoczylas drove into the back of the state Thruway Authority snow plow, also in the right lane, troopers reported.

The impact of the crash caused the plow to rotate, facing the wrong direction, state police said in the release.

Thruway employee, Leonard M. Cage, 61, of Cicero, suffered non-life threatening injuries to his arm and leg in the crash. State police say Cage was driving the snow plow in the area of mile marker 276.5 in the town of DeWitt when the tractor-trailer hit the plow from behind.

Skoczylas suffered non-life threatening facial injuries, troopers said.

EAVES and Minoa ambulances took Skoczylas and Cage to Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse for treatment.

State police say they have issued Skoczylas traffic tickets, but they did not specify which vehicle and traffic violations he is facing. State police also have not yet commented on why Skoczylas crashed into the snow plow.

State Department of Environmental Conservation crews spent several hours overnight cleaning a fuel and oil spill from the crash, troopers said. East Syracuse firefighters also responded to the scene.

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Autonomous Vehicles

Electronic Voting

Policing/Surveillance

Consumer Hardware/Internet

Y2K/Security

Citizen Engagement/Social Media

Technology predictions made in 2000 describe city streets awash in autonomous vehicles, citizens voting online from the comfort of their homes, and police solving crimes and thwarting terrorist attacks with facial recognition software, DNA databases and drones.Some of these tech predictions became reality, while others never came close or were only adopted in a limited fashion. And some  especially in the area of policing  exceeded expectations. And on the eve of the year 2000, the world held its collective breath, anticipating a massively disruptive Y2K computer crash. But that never happened at all, in large part because governments prepared for it. Nevertheless, Y2K hype changed the way governments view and secure digital systems.Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said technological advancement sometimes can be too fickle to predict.People tend to overestimate the rate of technological change, said Atkinson, though there are exceptions.Stephen Goldsmith, director of the Innovations in Government Program and Data-Smart City Solutions at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, said that in some areas, technological advancements have exceeded expectations made in 2000. But governments have not kept up with the pace of change to the degree that could assist their missions even more, he added.We still are operating in command control silos and hierarchical systems which tamp down the ability to dramatically use the technological changes, said Goldsmith.Here we look at where we were technologically 20 years ago, where we thought wed be today and where we are in the year 2020.In 2000, technology watchers predicted that by 2020, hundreds of thousands of autonomous vehicles (AVs) would be cruising streets throughout the U.S. The technology has advanced, experts say, but today, only a few thousand AVs are in use in 10 test sites throughout the nation.Tech engineers, transportation officials and auto industry executives have long eyed AVs as a way to reduce auto accidents and fatalities by eliminating human error. AVs, also known as self-driving vehicles, are also viewed as possible mini-urban transit systems that can pick up a person, drop them off across town, then pick up another rider.Google and several car manufacturers have invested heavily in AV technology. But Chris Urmson, who worked on AV technology at Google before founding Aurora, a company that makes self-driving car software, said he expects it will take 30 to 50 years before the cars are ubiquitous on U.S. streets. In five to 10 years, he expects modest adoption. The reason for the slow rollout? People need assurances AVs are safe and the industry needs to learn how customers want to use the technology, Urmson said. A recent survey by AAA revealed that 77 percent of U.S. drivers are afraid of the technology, an increase from 63 percent at the end of 2017, probably due to some highly publicized crashes.Still, governments are setting policy for the vehicles. Some 29 states and the District of Columbia have enacted AV legislation. Governments have set levels of autonomy for the vehicles  ranging from zero automation to level 5, where an automated system performs all driving tasks.Atkinson said he doesnt believe the U.S. will get to level 5 for a long, long time.There are certain problems that may be unsolvable, Atkinson said, such as developing sensitive enough artificial intelligence to pick up a child dressed in white winter wear during a blizzard.After the 2000 hanging chads election debacle in Florida, computerized voting was viewed by many as a panacea to slow, sloppy elections. Adoption of electronic voting technology spread quickly, and by the 2016 election, according to the Pew Research Center, 47 percent of voters across the U.S. voted with optical scanners, 28 percent with touchscreens and 19 percent with a combination of both. A small handful of jurisdictions used paper only.But confidence in electronic voting has waned, in large part because of concerns over Russian interference in the 2016 election. Many jurisdictions are now adopting back-up paper trails  which some view as moving backward technologically.Weve moved back to paper ballots due to security issues, said William Eggers, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Government Insights. The progress has been much, much slower [than expected], even reversed.By 2020, many experts predicted not just widespread electronic voting, but also online voting from home. In fact, a 1997 Wired article predicted that the majority of Americans would be voting online by 2008. Online voting is offered by only a small number of jurisdictions to some military personnel and expatriates living abroad. The voting uses advanced blockchain technology via an app made by the company Voatz. Voters are assigned a unique ID number and a digital receipt of their votes is sent to a ballot tabulation center. The technology is not without critics, however. The Democratic National Convention, for example, would not approve the use of the technology in next years primary in Alaska.Atkinson said he doesnt see online voting happening en masse anytime soon, in part because the U.S. government lacked the courage to put in place digital signatures for residents that would make them recognizable to online security systems. The small northern European country of Estonia, often viewed as the poster child for digital government, uses such signatures and employs online voting almost exclusively in its elections.The digital shift in policing and surveillance in the last 20 years has been tectonic, experts say, although like all tech changes, those agencies with the greatest financial resources have transformed the most. And the changes have amplified thorny issues of privacy.In 2000, community policing was viewed as an antidote for crime-ridden neighborhoods. Police officers hit the streets  on foot and in cars  to drill down into communities to learn the players  good and bad  so they could disrupt patterns of crime. Now, community policing is aided by things like drones, facial recognition technology, and CCTV cameras and microphones that are monitored in real time. Advances in mapping software and analytics allow police departments to pinpoint hot spots  something known as predictive policing. Arrays of microphones combined with spatial mapping allow police to respond more rapidly to violent incidents. Gunshot detection technology allows more accurate responses to gunshot calls by more closely pinpointing their origins. Chatbots allow police officers to run profile checks and license plate numbers, bypassing dispatchers altogether. And body cams aid in investigations of suspected police abuse or suspect assault on officers. New records management systems also allow officers to make comparisons across cases, and in some cases across jurisdictions.But these new technologies require humans to make sense of the streams of data. The Chicago Police Department created six high-tech police hubs  Strategic Decision Support Centers  to cull through data using a blend of human and computer analytics to develop police response. Other cities have similar centers.The surveillance technologies also open up difficult issues of privacy. Throughout the nation, cities are enacting laws to place parameters around police surveillance. Seattle has enacted a law to review and place restrictions on use of the technology in all its city departments. San Francisco is among a small group of cities that have banned the use of facial recognition technology in all its municipal buildings, and other cities are considering similar bans.Few people in 2000 imagined that by 2020, millions of people across the planet would carry a mini computer in their pockets that could be used as a phone, camera, TV, stereo, security system activator and portal for millions of computer applications that can do everything from locate your airplane boarding pass to fetch you a ride on a freelancer-driven taxi. High-tech consumer hardware and applications have exploded over the past two decades, and not just because of the smartphone. From Bluetooth devices to virtual reality headsets, smart refrigerators and drones  not to mention the wide range of devices connected through the Internet of Things, or IoT  consumers have massive connectivity and convenience through an array of gadgets unimagined 20 years ago.Part of the reason weve made such progress [in this area], said Atkinson, is there is no role for government and no opposition.The Internet also has exploded beyond expectations. From 2000 to 2010, the number of Internet users increased 500 percent, from 361 million worldwide to almost 2 billion. Now, close to 4 billion people throughout the world use the Internet. People go online for everything from buying groceries and clothes to finding a date. They can register their cars online, earn a college degree, shop for houses and apply for a mortgage.But the increase in online traffic spawned an increase in cyberbullying, scamming and people just generally behaving badly in the comments sections of articles and other forums. Darker forces lurk online as well, from bad actors looking to victimize youth for human trafficking to racist zealots looking to spew hate and spread their ideology. As awareness has grown of potential dangers online, organizations have sprung up to teach online safety, with schools playing an important role in educating kids about digital dangers. But the attack surface is vast, and the nature and scope of threats seem to evolve ever more quickly.At 12:00 a.m. on Jan. 1 in the year 2000, computer systems throughout the world were predicted to crash due to outdated programming that could not read years ending in 00. That debacle was avoided, in large part because of massive reprogramming efforts by governments large and small. Y2k was a wake-up call on computer upgrades and cybersecurity. It helped spawn a massive industry in firewall and anti-virus software  but some experts say governments still have a long way to go to keep up with cyberthreats.This needs to be much, much higher on the priority list for governments, mayors and legislative bodies, said Eggers.Cyberattacks are growing for governments large and small. Data shows that in the past year theyve spiked dramatically, particularly ransomware. There is no central authority that officially tracks cyberattacks, but cybersecurity firms do. An analysis of data shows 47 reported ransomware attacks on government in 2016, compared with 77 in 2019, just through Sept. 30.To shore up cybersecurity, governments are working with big data analytics to understand trends and patterns to reveal larger threats, including those coming from the inside. Theyve employed ethical hackers to search for vulnerabilities. Employees unknowingly clicking on a link or downloading an attachment have brought down entire networks, leading to massive increases in staff cybersecurity training programs. Cybersecurity has grown from a basic systems administrations function to one of the largest sectors in IT, estimated to be worth more than $155.74 billion in 2019.Still, said Eggers, the level of sophistication in government is not high enough.On and around the year 2000, governments started to come online with websites that offered citizens information about services, public meetings and government leaders. But the sites were static, offering little interaction with users. Over time, governments retooled their websites to allow for citizen signup for city services and other programs, but the progress was slow. In his book Delivering on the Digital, William Eggers argued that the glitch-ridden launch of the federal Affordable Care Act website in 2013 woke governments up to the failings in their digital presences from a user perspective. Large-scale reimaginings got underway.Now, governments digital presence is greatly expanded as they strive to create Amazon-like experiences for citizens online. In addition to offering more service enrollments online, governments have opened up huge troves of data for citizens to mine, map and otherwise visualize whats happening in their communities.Open data and open government was on the way in 2000, but not anything like what we see today with the tools that are available and the third-party use, said Goldsmith.Social media outreach also has evolved into a staple form of government communication. Jurisdictions use various channels to advise community members in real time about events, natural disasters, public service disruptions and other issues. Elected officials also communicate directly with their constituents via social media.But Goldsmith argues that governments could be doing more sentiment mining, or consuming of residents social media feeds to identify problems earlier or pinpoint concerns about governance that could inform official decisions.What is immature is the mining of social media so they can better understand the trends of their residents  digest the information and make it into policy, said Goldsmith.
Kathy looked at my passport. She looked back at me pausing for a moment. For a second I had that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Was there something wrong with my passport? Had an alert flashed up on her computer screen that I couldnt see?

Would I be able to travel onwards? Would customs officers soon appear behind me and whisk me away into a small holding room?

Its amazing the thoughts the smash through your head while checking into an international flight.

Thankfully it was none of these.

Kathy asked, Are all your family home and safe?

I replied, Sure, theyre at home probably watching Peppa Pig.

I thought she was talking about my wife and son in the UK. And yes, there was a very good chance at that given moment Peppa was streaming on the TV.

Download now: Three ASX fintech stocks taking on the banks (and winning)

But after a second it clicked. Kathy was referring to my family in Australia. And she was talking about the Aussie bushfires.

Not wanting to appear like an idiot, albeit it was probably too late for that, I replied again. Oh you mean back in Australia? Yes, for now they are all safe. Thanks for asking.

What Kathy didnt know was where my family were from. All my passport said was Australia and issued in Melbourne. They could have lived in the city or one of several places nowhere near fires.

But the severity and significance of the devastation hit a nerve across the world. And the abhorrent behaviour of the political elites wasnt far off their minds either.

Here I was at Heathrow Airport about to check into a flight to Las Vegas with an Aussie passport, and people were offering genuine concern for the safety of complete strangers. Times like that give me greater optimism about our future.

On the balance of things, most people care about others. And given a chance and the resources, would help complete strangers. Its that optimism that excites me about our future and the opportunities that will come over this next decade.

Its this kind of optimism about what society can achieve that makes me so excited about the week Im about to have

A couple of times around the world

For what its worth, I do have family near the bushfires in Victoria. I check on the Victorian emergency notifications website probably more than my family does.

This is one of the downsides of what I do. Being away a lot, living and travelling around the world means not being around when I would like to be. Thankfully I can check up on things daily via sites like the emergency site and just message them incessantly on WhatsApp.

And when I say travel a lot, I mean it.

In the space of just over a month, I will have completed 84,622 km in flight distance. Thats more than twice the circumference of the Earth.

Its also a bit over 113 hours in flight time on planes. Thats more than four and a half days crammed into what I sometimes like to call a giant flying germs bus.

I will have crossed into and through 18 different time zones, several times each. Ask me what day it is? It might take some time to figure it out. Ask me what time zone my body is on? I wont be able to give a definitive answer.

This is the not so enjoyable part of what I do. Long times spent in transit, at airports, on planes, in cars, on trains, travelling. Its not glamorous, its not easy. Its hard graft. A sleep-deprived existence.

But its not like this all year at least. January 2020, the start of a new decade, is just a crazy month. And right now, Im just halfway through it all. Still loads of distance to go, endless hours crammed into economy seats not designed for someone who is 63 and 100 kilos.

But its so I can get to the places where I need to be to do what I do best. And thats hunting down, uncovering and delivering to you (and to my paying subscribers) the best investment opportunities I can find on the planet.

And thats exactly what this week is all about.

The CES trade show and conference

Im writing todays piece from the Las Vegas strip. Im about to pack up and head over to the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino. Its the first set of events that kicks off the CES trade show and conference.

The worlds leading and most pioneering technology will be on display this week. I hope to get around the 2.9 million square feet of exhibition space and see as many of the 4,400 exhibitors as I can.

I will be attending media events, company announcements, keynotes, and conference streams. I will be diving head first in tech like AR/VR/XR, autonomous vehicles, breakthrough connectivity, cryptocurrency, drones, consumer devices, medtech, healthtech, babytechmaybe even a little sextech!

In the past CES has unveiled some of my biggest and most successful ideas and opportunities. I expect this week to be no different. And thanks to my co-Editor Ryan Dinse being on holiday this week, Im going to bring you everything I see, every day, right here in Money Morning.

But as its Sunday in Las Vegas, almost a full day behind Melbourne time, theres not much to give you today. The good stuff kicks off tonight with the CES Unveiled event.

Make sure to keep an eye out for Money Morning every day this week for all the excitement, the real stories, and the opportunities that CES will deliver in 2020.

I think this could be the biggest one yet, and the perfect start to the new Roarin 20s.

Regards,

Sam Volkering,

Editor, Money Morning

PS: Our publication Money Morning is a fantastic place to start on your investment journey. We talk about the big trends driving the most innovative stocks on the ASX. Learn all about it here.
After more than a month of silence following the October federal election, the Liberal government finally mapped out its intended policy directions for Canadas 43rd parliament. The Speech from the Throne and mandate letters to cabinet ministers both made clear that responding to climate change will be a defining priority of this government.

Rightly so.

Climate change is already having a major impact on health, migration and social and economic well-being the globe over  including in Canada. All Canadians, including our politicians, business owners and educators, must be committed to devising solutions that enhance our ability to respond.

So far, the Liberals have committed to making Canada carbon-neutral by 2050; building charging infrastructure to support the wider adoption of electric vehicles; using more renewable fuels; producing cleaner oil and gas; investing in skills training to ensure there are enough qualified workers to support energy audits, retrofits and net zero home construction; and then some.

All these goals are laudable, but government cannot do it alone. Achieving this ambitious agenda will require buy-in and partnership from across all sectors of the economy and it will require more than a moderate carbon tax. To achieve its climate agenda, the federal government is going to have to make significant investments in both innovation and talent development.

Sitting at the intersection of innovation and talent development are Canadas polytechnics  large, degree-granting colleges with robust capacity in applied research. Polytechnics are natural partners in Canadas fight against climate change.

They are working with businesses and non-profits in all industrial and social sectors, aiding in the adoption and commercialization of new technologies that reduce our carbon footprint. At the same time, they are developing the workforce with the know-how to put these new technologies into practice.

In Vancouver, BCITs applied research in micro-grid technology is helping remote indigenous communities transition off diesel and at the same time, developing technology making it easier to install electric vehicle charging stations in urban areas.

At Winnipegs Red River College, research is being undertaken to develop electric vehicle charging stations that run on repurposed batteries, and at George Brown College in Toronto, a research centre is being established to investigate the use of wood as a sustainable building material.

On talent, in Alberta, NAIT and SAIT have joined forces to create a training course for servicing heavy-duty electric vehicles  including industrial trucks used in the oilsands. Humber College in Toronto has developed an advanced diploma in sustainability to prepare learners to lead Canadas sustainable infrastructure transition by giving them the skills to design and implement off-grid renewable energy systems.

Nearly all institutions have targeted sustainability as a broad learning outcome, ensuring that graduates in all fields enter the labour market with a sustainability mindset.

As the federal government seeks to implement its climate agenda, it should be looking to Canadas polytechnics as a partner in delivery, and not shying away from making significant investments in innovation and talent. Our future depends on it.

Daniel Komesch is director of policy at Polytechnics Canada.

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Upstate-bound Amtrak passengers know the drill. Find their gate, usually 6E, at Penn Station and get in line.

They may wait half an hour or more before the gate opens, typically just minutes before the train is actually scheduled to leave. The train comes in from a nearby yard, they board, and it departs.

Penn Station's track capacity hasn't changed since 1910, when the station first opened. The "head house," as the building that sat above the tracks was called, was demolished in the early 1960s so that the land could be redeveloped. After all, trains really didn't have much of a future, the thinking went.

Today, 1,300 trains use the tracks each day. Trains don't come into the station until the last possible moment. The goal is to keep dwell time in the station to an absolute minimum.

On Monday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in a speech to the Association for a Better New York, outlined a plan to expand Penn Station capacity by 40 percent, adding eight additional tracks to the south end of the station. In his 30th proposal for the upcoming State of the State message to be delivered Wednesday in Albany, the governor will propose acquiring the block south of Penn Station, creating a transit complex -- The Empire Station Complex -- that would encompass Amtrak, NJ Transit, Long Island Rail Road, and the city's subway network.

The project would expand Penn's ability to handle additional trains while helping ease traffic congestion in Manhattan. In a PowerPoint, Cuomo even suggested that it might be cars not having much of a future. "Remember purpose," one slide read. "Get out of cars and into better mass transit."

Drivers, meanwhile, will face a congestion charge slated to take effect next year. The proceeds could help pay for the improvement projects. The Moynihan Train Hall in the Farley Post Office building is expected to open at the end of 2020 while other projects to expand capacity also are under way.

Additional revenues would come from real estate development and from increased income and sales taxes, according to the governor's PowerPoint. Amtrak also would participate in the financing.

Amtrak Chairman Anthony Coscia welcomed Cuomo's announcement.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Under Governor Cuomos leadership, New York has already invested in transformative projects at Penn to improve the passenger experience at the station  including Moynihan Train Hall and an expanded LIRR Concourse  and these soon-to-be-completed projects will drastically enhance the transit hub," Coscia said. And today, the Governor leads the way to fundamentally increasing rail service capacity by jump starting the process to add more tracks and platforms to the south of the existing station and, in turn, create a station complex that will give riders the experience and mobility they deserve."

The project is one of a number of infrastructure initiatives under way across the state, including new train stations, airport terminals, and bridge and highway projects.

The governor also previously announced plans for a panel to examine a proposed high-speed passenger rail corridor across the state.

The 2020 State of the State will be delivered at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center in Albany.
Key indicators on industry, trade, integration, and administrative reform reached and exceeded the plan for 2019, illustrating strong momentum for 2020 and beyond.



Export figures underpin strong 2019 for Vietnam - illustration photo

Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh reported at the annual review conference in Hanoi last week that Vietnams foreign trade for the first time reached over $500 billion in 2019, up 7.6 on-year, with a record trade surplus of $9.94 billion.

Under that, the total export turnover is estimated at $263.45 billion, up 8.1 per cent on-year, exceeding the targets set by National Assembly and the government. Meanwhile import has been well controlled at $253.5 billion. It is the fourth year in a row that Vietnam has recorded a trade surplus.

The recent efforts of the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) to negotiate and open markets through free trade agreements have helped enterprises reach positive results. Exports to the ASEAN hit $23.4 billion, up 2 per cent on-year, while those to Japan reached $18.6 billion and South Korea $18.4 billion, up 7.6 and 10 per cent, respectively.

The number of commodities joining the $1 billion export club increased from 20 in 2010 to 31 in 2019.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc applauded the achievements, stating, In the context of the global downturn, even larger countries being unable to reach a growth high. We recognise objectively the comprehensive achievement of 2019 as a direct and great contribution across the whole of industry and trade.

The main driving force for economic growth is still the industrial sector, the PM added. This is especially true for processing and manufacturing and trade, reflected in the high consumption demand of the economy.

In comparison with other countries in the region, Thailand witnessed 4 per cent of export growth, while Malaysia and Indonesia were estimated to see an export growth reduction in 2019 by 1.8 and 5.7 per cent, respectively.

Along with a bright spot in import and export activities, the production index of the whole industry is estimated to increase by 9.1 per cent, exceeding the set target of 9 per cent.

The highlight is that the manufacturing and processing industry maintained growth momentum, up 10.5 per cent on-year, creating solid motivation to achieve the overall growth plan of the whole industry.

The positive contribution to industry growth includes the part played by major projects in operation, including the Formosa Ha Tinh steel complex working at full capacity through two blast furnaces and with expected output of 6.7 million tonnes per year; and the VinFast automobile factory, which was inaugurated and officially put into operation in June, three months earlier than initially planned.

The year has also seen completion and official operation of the Vinh Tan 2 solar power plant, with expected annual supply to the national electricity system of about 68.4 million kilowatt hours.

As the leading auto manufacture, assembly, and distribution company, Truong Hai Auto Corporation, known for THACO, earned $14.5 million from exports of components and spare parts this year. In 2020 we seek to export 1,026 cars of all types to foreign countries, said THACO chairman Tran Ba Duong.

The group plans to expand reach further into Southeast Asian nations such as the Philippines, in an attempt to hit $21 million in exports in the upcoming year.

However, the year to come remains challenging due to the ongoing trade dispute between the United States and China, as well as trade fraud and global trade estimated to grow slowly.

In 2020, Vietnam has set a target that the countrys total import-export turnover will increase by 7-8 per cent on-year.

Ten significant events in industry and trade in 2019

- Vietnams total import-export turnover is again flying high, exceeding the $500 billion threshold. The impressive performance reflects the continuous efforts of the Vietnamese government, along with relevant ministries and localities, amid global trade tensions and lingering recession worries;

- Vietnam has been making spectacular strides in its international integration thanks to free trade agreements. The country is showing its strong commitment to keep an open, highly-integrated economy. Within the first year of enforcement of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the deal has ushered in an outlook for Vietnam to boost exports to a double-digit figure in various sectors and types of goods, particularly in Vietnams export strengths such as seafood, textiles, and machinery equipment, among others;

- Vietnamese regulators are ramping up their efforts to mitigate the phenomenon of trade fraud through labelling of the origin of goods and stabilise the market. Local authorities emphasised they have instructed provincial and municipal departments to step up inspection and verification of certificates of origin, a document that accompanies all international shipments. In 2019, the prime minister issued Decision No.824/QD-TTg approving a project which is part of the Strengthening State Management over the Circumvention of Trade Remedies, and Fraudulent Acts of Origin scheme;

- The Ministry of Industry and Trade is the first to connect with the National Public Service Portal;

- Vietnam has become one of the most promising markets in Southeast Asia thanks to breakthroughs in the e-commerce sector. The country has been assessed as one of the regional fastest expanding e-commerce markets with growth rate of more than 25 per cent, and will hit $13 billion in market value by 2020;

- The Vietnamese people give priority to using Vietnamese goods programme;

- The electricity approach index keeps improving. The Doing Business 2019 report, published by the World Bank, pointed out that Vietnams electricity approach index has continued to rise for the sixth year with 88.2 points, up 0.26 points on-year, and ranked fourth in the ASEAN-4 and is one of the top four best-performing members of the CPTPP;

- Vietnam succeeded in manufacturing the 500kV backed-up power transformer with capacity of 467 megavolt amperes;

- The process of restructuring market management forces has achieved positive results;

- Vietnam has achieved breakthrough development in solar energy with an installed capacity of nearly 5,000MW. The governments incentive mechanism for developing solar power has created strong motivation to attract investors to participate in solar power production. This is a signal of the positive effects due to the governments incentive mechanism for solar power development.



Nguyen Xuan Phuc - Prime Minister



It is said that a country cannot prosper without industrial development and cannot be dynamic without trading. Therefore, the role of industry and trade is important for the contribution to the countrys GDP. In the context that the global economy is on a downward trend, the GDP growth of more than 7 per cent this year comes from a significant contribution from industry and trade, as well as enterprises managed by and operating in the sector.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) covers many areas with complicated tasks, so the ministry should focus on five vital points. First, the sector should perfect a consistent legal framework and policies to create a favourable business environment, as well as improve productivity, quality, and competitiveness of the sector.

Second, productivity must be improved without depending on natural resources which should be replaced by processing and manufacturing, based on innovation, and sci-tech. Industry 4.0 should be considered a major driver to realise the aspirations of a prosperous Vietnam.

Third, businesses need to be put at the centre of innovation and development. So, the MoIT should issue mechanisms to attract innovative companies here.

Fourth, the industry should be restructured profoundly to improve productivity and strengthen the supporting industries. Moreover, it is necessary to develop strong local brands, and not lose the retail market to foreign competitors.

Fifth, the MoIT has to facilitate export and import, focusing on post-inspection and anti-corruption.

In 2020, the MoIT has to achieve four specific targets, namely raising the growth of the processing and manufacturing sector by 12 per cent, reaching an export turnover of $300 billion, a trade surplus at 2 per cent of GDP, and growth of the retail market by 12 per cent.

Tran Tuan Anh - Minister of Industry and Trade



Industry and trade have fulfilled the targets in 2019 against global and regional fluctuations.

The MoIT has done its utmost to innovate, perfect institutional processes, build mechanisms, remove business conditions, and organise the general department of market surveillance.

Numerous conferences were held in 2019, focusing on boosting exports, strengthening development of the mechanical industry, and others related to regulations and commitments of Vietnams many free trade agreements.

The domestic market will be further developed in 2020. It recorded a remarkable growth of 18 per cent, which confirms the potential. The MoIT will issue policies to further stabilise and develop this sustainably while protecting the rights of businesses and customers.

In the new year, the MoIT aims for significant changes in the process of improving the productivity and quality of the economy, especially by applying science and technology in production and trade.

The digital transformation of the local industry will play an important role to overcome the middle-income trap. The MoIT will also promote the digital economy to further expand local markets online and abroad. VIR



Phuong Thu

Vietnam's export of main agricultural products down 5.3% in 2019 The combined export value of main agricultural products was estimated at 18.5 billion USD in 2019, down 5.3 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Experiments to study the operations of commercial drones, which operate beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) range, would be carried out in January and aviation regulator DGCA will subsequently issue draft regulations for them, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Monday.

The minister also said the Centre will start registering drones - BVLOS and others - within a few weeks time.

Potential use of drone technology for commercial purposes is very high, Puri said, adding that the Centre "is moving ahead on the BVLOS front".

Currently, India does not permit BVLOS drones to fly in its sky. If the drone can fly within the line of sight, it is permitted by the DGCA after due process.

"Experiments (to study) would be carried out later this month. Draft CAR (Civil Aviation Requirements) would be developed by the DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) and shared with the stakeholders for feedback.

"CAR 2.0 will revolutionise and commercialise the BVLOS drone operations," he said during his speech at "Drone Festival of India".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Emma Hunt was transforming her life.

After battling drug addiction for years, the 32-year-old felt it was time for change, and had been clean for months. Hunt, a mother of two, told her family she planned to enter a residential treatment program on Monday, with plans to move out of San Francisco, where temptation seemingly lurked everywhere.

But those plans ended in the small hours of Sunday morning when a man suspected to be in his 20s opened fire at approximately 3:51 a.m. in the area of Larkin and OFarrell streets, killing Hunt, according to San Francisco police and the San Francisco Medical Examiners Office.

Although authorities have released scant information about the killing, which marked the citys first homicide this year, they told the family they were investigating a dispute between Hunt and a man she hit with a plastic crate. Police believe the man took out a gun and shot her one time in the neck and three times in the chest, her parents told The Chronicle.

She was a really nice person. She just had her demons she was fighting, but she was winning this time, said Sherree DeYoe, who adopted Hunt and her younger sister, Mary, in the 1990s.

San Francisco police said a suspect remained at large, but did not disclose a description or any additional details about the circumstances that led to the shooting, which remained under investigation.

Those who knew Hunt remembered her as a resilient and resourceful woman who once survived on the streets of Ethiopia, caring for herself and her sister for about a year after their mothers death from starvation. An enthusiastic learner, Hunt read voraciously and had a vibrant smile that seared itself in the memory of anyone she met.

When you met Emma, you didnt forget Emma, said Sherrees husband, David DeYoe. She was just one of those people that when you were around her you could sense she was good-hearted.

Sherree DeYoe adopted Hunt and her sister with her husband at the time and raised the two girls in Manteca (San Joaquin County) among other siblings. Initially communicating through a form of charades, Hunt soon grasped English and started reading whatever sparked her interest.

Around 2005, DeYoe moved to Florida and Hunt moved to Pinole to live with the biological father of her first child, according to her family.

David DeYoe said thats when Hunts struggles with substance abuse began.

She shuffled through treatment programs and stayed in touch with her family, and persisted as a kind and caring individual.

A few months ago, Hunt gave birth to a daughter, Angelica, maintaining sobriety through the pregnancy and since the birth. With a newborn to care for, she started talking about the future with more positivity.

It was just a healthy change, David DeYoe said. She didnt want Angelica to be brought up in the city. She wanted to start out her life out here.

Lizzette Dukes-Blake met Hunt through a self-help program, and also had noted the recent change. She witnessed Hunt educate herself and get a job. She was a good friend and a better mother, Dukes-Blake said.

Anytime you see a mother taking care of her baby, you know the maternal instincts have kicked in, Dukes-Blake said.

Dukes-Blake last saw Hunt about two weeks ago, and they spoke of where Hunt wanted to take her life. Since the shooting, Dukes-Blake said she has not heard many details about what led to the altercation in the Tenderloin.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Near the scene of the slaying in front of the cocktail lounge 800 Larkin on Monday, a white poster with two pictures of Hunt hung on a concrete wall. More than two dozen candles flickered every time a light gust of wind blew by.

Someone wrote a real Balla Queen, with real underscored with two lines across the bottom of the poster.

Sel Negede stopped to light candles on Monday. He said he met Hunt at the club the night of the shooting when she introduced herself to him and his friends.

She was very bubbly, very happy, he said.

Negede decided to smoke a cigarette around 4 a.m. Sunday outside of the bar, on the OFarrell Street side, when a worker from the establishment rushed outside. He told everyone hanging around to get inside because they had heard a person was carrying a gun in the area.

He heard four pops, and thought someone had set off fireworks. Then he saw police rushing to the intersection. The incident disturbed him, he said, though he did not know what led to the killing.

Thats sick, Negede said he thought to himself. Life is too short.

Alejandro Serrano is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alejandro.serrano@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @serrano_alej
An international team of astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to create the most detailed image yet of the gas surrounding two supermassive black holes in a merging galaxy.

400 million light-years away from Earth, in the constellation of Ophiuchus, two galaxies are crashing into each other and forming a galaxy we know as NGC 6240. This peculiarly-shaped galaxy has been observed many times before, as it is relatively close by. But NGC 6240 is complex and chaotic. The collision between the two galaxies is still ongoing, bringing along in the crash two growing supermassive black holes that will likely merge as one larger black hole.

To understand what is happening within NGC 6240, astronomers want to observe the dust and gas surrounding the black holes in detail, but previous images have not been sharp enough to do that. New ALMA observations have increased the resolution of the images by a factor of ten - showing for the first time the structure of the cold gas in the galaxy, even within the sphere of influence of the black holes.

"The key to understanding this galaxy system is molecular gas," explained Ezequiel Treister of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica in Santiago, Chile. "This gas is the fuel that is needed to form stars, but it also feeds the supermassive black holes, which allows them to grow."

Most of the gas is located in a region between the two black holes. Less detailed observations taken previously suggested that this gas might be a rotating disk. "We don't find any evidence for that," said Treister. "Instead, we see a chaotic stream of gas with filaments and bubbles between the black holes. Some of this gas is ejected outwards with speeds up to 500 kilometers per second. We don't know yet what causes these outflows."

Another reason to observe the gas in such detail is that it helps to determine the mass of the black holes. "Previous models, based on surrounding stars, indicated that the black holes were much more massive than we expected, around a billion times the mass of our Sun," said Anne Medling of the University of Toledo in Ohio. "But these new ALMA images for the first time showed us how much gas is caught up inside the black holes' sphere of influence. This mass is significant, and therefore we now estimate the black hole masses to be lower: around a few hundred million times the mass of our Sun. Based on this, we think that most previous black hole measurements in systems like this could be off by 5-90 percent."

The gas also turned out to be even closer to the black holes than the astronomers had expected. "It is located in a very extreme environment," explained Medling. "We think that it will eventually fall into the black hole, or it will be ejected at high speeds."

The astronomers don't find evidence for a third black hole in the galaxy, which another team recently claimed to have discovered. "We don't see molecular gas associated with this claimed third nucleus," said Treister. "It could be a local star cluster instead of a black hole, but we need to study it much more to say anything about it with certainty."

ALMA's high sensitivity and resolution are crucial to learn more about supermassive black holes and the role of gas in interacting galaxies. "This galaxy is so complex, that we could never know what is going on inside it without these detailed radio images," said Loreto Barcos-Munoz of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia. "We now have a better idea of the 3D-structure of the galaxy, which gives us the opportunity to understand how galaxies evolve during the latest stages of an ongoing merger. In a few hundred million years, this galaxy will look completely different."

###

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

Media contact:

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This research was presented at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, Hawaii, and in two papers:

"The Molecular Gas in the NGC 6240 Merging Galaxy System at the Highest Spatial Resolution," by E. Treister et al., accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. Link to PDF: http://bit.ly/37zNgaD

"How to Fuel an AGN: Mapping Circumnuclear Gas in NGC 6240 with ALMA," by A. M. Medling et al., The Astrophysical Journal Letters. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab4db7

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI).

ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
Six prisoners fought off two prison guards, killing one of them, before breaking out of a jail in Colombia.

Surveillance footage showed the moment the group of men stormed out of their opened jail cell and attacked the guards.

The brutal assault happened on Monday at 1am at the CAI Champagnat temporary detention facility in Ipiales, a city in the southern department of Narino near the border with Peru.

Corrections officer Edwin Landazuri, 26, was immediately pushed towards a corner wall as one of the prisoners attempted to take his service weapon.

Heimar Mauricio Benavides, 28, attempted to come to his partner's defense and pointed his weapon at the group before three of the inmates were able to slam him to the ground and disarmed him.

Six detainees attacked two prison guards at a temporary holding facility in Ipiales, Colombia, on Monday and escaped from the jail. However, in the attack one of the inmates shot dead Corrections officer Edwin Landazuri and wounded a second guard, Heimar Mauricio Benavides

Three prisoners inside a jail in Colombia fought and disarmed correction officer Heimar Mauricio Benavides (circled with the yellow jacket) Monday at the CAI Champagnat detention facility in Ipiales, a city in the southern department of Narino near the border with Peru.. Benavides was wounded and his partner Edwin Landazuri was shot dead

Edwin Landazuri, a prison guard in southern Colombia, was shot dead early Monday after six inmates attacked him and another correction officer at a temporary detention facility

One of the inmates stopped another from shooting Benavides as he was lying on the ground.

A short while later, a bearded prisoner wearing a hat was spotted in the video snatching the firearm from the prisoner as Benavides was backtracking towards Landazuri.

The inmate then shot Benavides as he guard stepped through the gate. He then fired the second shot at a defenseless Landazuri, who was declared dead at the scene.

The fallen correction officer had two years on the job.

Three of of the six prisoners, who escaped from the jail, eventually ganged up correction officer Edwin Landazuri moments before another inmate walked over and shot the guard dead

Benavides was transported to a local hospital and was listed in critical condition.

Authorities were still searching for Colombian nationals Jeferson Mera Pinchao and Roberto Carlos Yandun. Alvaro Vimele Delgado, Jhoniel Eduardo Ibarra and Anibal Padron - all three from Venezuela - were also on the run.

Junior Arce Dios, a native of Peru, was captured by the police.

A $3,000 reward was offered for information leading to the arrest of the five fugitives.
Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged properties on the campus. (Photo Credit: File Photo)

Kolkata:

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday condemned the assault on students and teachers of Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), terming it a heinous act and a shame on democracy. A four-member Trinamool Congress (TMC) delegation will visit JNU to express solidarity with students and teachers, she said.

We strongly condemn brutality unleashed against students/teachers in JNU. No words enough to describe such heinous acts. A shame on our democracy, Banerjee, also the TMC supremo, said in a tweet.

The TMC delegation comprising of senior party leader Dinesh Trivedi and MPs Sajda Ahmed, Manas Bhunia and Vivek Gupta will go to Delhi to express solidarity with the students and teachers, she said.

Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged properties on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students Union (JNUSU) president Aishe Ghosh, were injured in the violence.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the RSS-affiliated ABVP blamed each other for the violence.

Later in the day, Arts Faculty Students Union (AFSU) of Jadavpur University took out a protest rally against the attack on female students and a teacher in JNU, students body leader Somasree Choudhury said.

Over 300 students participated in the rally.

The Students Federation of India (SFI) on Sunday said it will take out rallies here on Monday against the barbaric attack on JNU students.

The rallies will be organised in Jadavpur University and Presidency University, said leaders of the SFI, the students wing of the CPI(M).

Students will take out a protest rally within the campus against the fascist attack, said Jadavpur University leader of SFI Debraj Debnath said.

We will also decide if protests will be held outside the campus and our future course of action against the ABVP and saffron forces, he said.

An SFI leader of Presidency University said students will gather at the varsitys portico on Monday and take out a protest rally.

We will intensify our movement against the BJP and the ABVP and give a call for their boycott, he said.

The Jadavpur University Teachers Association and the All Bengal University Teachers Association also issued statements condemning the attack on JNU students.

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AP

As jury selection for Harvey Weinsteins criminal trial began in New York, actors Rosanna Arquette and Rose McGowan joined a group of women outside the court to speak out against the disgraced Hollywood producer, who has been accused of sexual assault by dozens of women.

In a statement, Ms McGowan addressed the former producer, saying that no matter what lies you tell yourself, you did this.

She said: You have only yourself to blame ... I came here to see this through, to stand side by side with these women who youve also harmed, and be a voice for the voiceless ... The silence breakers will never give up. Survivors will never give up.

Following investigative reports revealing decades of his alleged abuse, more than 80 women have accused Mr Weinstein of assault, serving as a catalyst for the #MeToo movement and shining a light on the behaviour of powerful men in the media.

In a landmark sexual assault case amid the #MeToo movement, Mr Weinstein faces criminal charges stemming from two different allegations in New York: one that he raped a woman in 2013 in a hotel room and that he performed a forcible sex act on a different woman in 2006 in his apartment.

Ms McGowan alleges that Mr Weinstein raped her in 1997, then paid her $100,000 for her silence.

Among women interviewed for a 2017 New Yorker investigation, Ms Arquette alleged that Mr Weinstein threatened her career because she rejected him when he tried to force her to touch his penis.

Mr Weinstein has denied the allegations.

We arent going anywhere, Ms Arquette said. Times up on sexual harassment in all workplaces, times up on blaming survivors, times up on empty apologies without consequence, and times up on the pervasive culture of silence that has enabled abusers.

The women warned against Mr Weinsteins alleged attempts to retaliate against those who refused his advances and spoke out against his abuse, and urged the public to support survivors and create a culture that allows victims to come forward without fear of retaliation.

Story continues

Ms Arquette said the group wants to ensure that Mr Weinsteins criminal trial focuses on the perpetrators actions and not his victims.

She added: Whether in this trial or in the future, Harvey will be held accountable for his actions.

Ms McGowan said that if hes acquitted, Mr Weinsteins accomplices will get no rest.

She said: I hope what will stop them is that they have an asterisk next to their name ... We know them, we will out them.

Weinstein arrives at New York Criminal Court for the first day of his trial on sexual assault charges (Getty)

The actors were joined by Dominique Huett, Sarah Ann Masse, Lauren Sivan, and Paula Williams, all of whom have accused Mr Weinstein of abuse.

Ms Sivan, a television reporter who accused Mr Weinstein of forcing himself on her, said: This is a dangerous predator. Even if he is acquitted in this trial, lets hope hes never able to go back to doing what he was doing.

The 67-year-old producer appeared frail as he walked up the steps of New York State Supreme Court on Monday.

Ms Arquette said he looked like a very broken man as he leaned on a walker.

I think hes taken some good acting tips, Ms McGowan added.

Jury selection will take up to two weeks, and a six-week trial is expected to follow. If convicted, Mr Weinstein faces up to 25 years in prison.

Read more

Harvey Weinstein arrives at court for long-awaited criminal trial

Everything you need to know about Harvey Weinsteins trial

Male power and Harvey Weinsteins reaction to his lost reputation

Harvey Weinstein accusers say hes trying to gaslight society

A $25m settlement deal with Harvey Weinstein isnt justice
Karl Anderson / Staff photo by Karl Anderson

The Texas A&M Forest Service is planning prescribed burns for Jones State Park over the next several weeks.

According to information from the Forest Service, the areas for the burn are predominately pine forest. Considered a standard forest management tool for endangered species habitat restoration, undergrowth vegetation reduction, and providing for community safety, the prescribed burning will take place as weather permits.
While others might pass up fishing in 45-degree weather, one Texas man from Richmond thought it was a perfect opportunity to hopefully catch sandbar shark just before the new year.

Ron Richmond was right. The 61-year-old caught not one but two sandbar sharks during a chilly day on Dec. 30 at Matagorda Bay about 80 miles northeast of Corpus Christi. The sharks measured at 7-foot-1-inch and 7-foot-7-inch, respectively.

Richmond told mySA.com the weather conditions didn't scare him away because he knew sandbar sharks typically like when the water temperature drops below 70 degrees. Richmond said he was the only fisherman out at the beach that day.

READ ALSO: Texas man catches, releases 8-foot tiger shark in Corpus Christi

After dropping his bait about 500 yards out in the ocean, Richmond rowed his kayak back to the shoreline and later made his first catch at around noon. He reeled in the larger shark Monday evening, and it wasn't easy, said Richmond, who needed to use all three of his fishing lines to make the catch.

"I put out three baits that evening and it took all three, so they were all tangled up as I was reeling in all three lines," he said. "It was a little tough but I ended up catching it."

Shortly after making the catch, Richmond took a picture with the sandbar, tagged it and then took DNA samples to submit it just in time before the Texas Shark Rodeo tournament ended on Dec. 31.

The tournament is a voluntary year-long competition that allows fishermen to gain points based on the sharks and species they catch. The data from each catch goes to the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

Both of Richmond's catches were released.

Priscilla Aguirre is a breaking news reporter and general assignment writer. Read her on our breaking news site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | priscilla.aguirre@express-news.net | @CillaAguirre
"I never at any time had sexual relations with [that woman] Emily Hale." The words seem familiar, but they were uttered not by an accused U.S. president in January 1998, but by Thomas Stearns Eliot, poet, playwright, essayist, publishing editor, one of the important poets of the 20th century, who got the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, to his executor on November 25, 1960. The sentence appears in public as a result of an important literary event, the release by Princeton University Library on January 2, 2020 of 1,131 letters written by Eliot to a former lady friend, once regarded as his "muse," Emily Hale, between 1930 and 1956.

Eliot died in 1965 and Hale in 1969, so the letters appear now because of the arrangement by Hale, who had given them to Princeton, that the letters would be publicly available 50 years after their deaths. This is a one-sided collection. The letters of Hale to Eliot were destroyed at his request.



Photo credit: Ellie Koczela.

It remains to be seen if the Princeton release is the literary event of the decade, but it will be one of incalculable significance for scholars of Eliot in particular and of modern literature in general. The letters may not only reveal the true relationship between TSE and Hale, but also cast light on the true nature of the man, which has often been disguised; his literary output, often opaque; and other issues that have hitherto been obscure.

The action of Eliot, annoyed when Hale donated his letters to Princeton, is itself a revealing insight into his character. On hearing of the donation, he took a pre-emptive strike to protect himself by writing to his executor on November 25, 1960 a self-revealing picture of the background of the correspondence and his relationship with Hale and others. It was probably an attempt to lessen the import of the Princeton letters. He said he wanted to be "as brief as I can," but he wrote a 1,278-word document. He wanted this statement to be made public as soon as Princeton made public the letters to Hale.

TSE, born in St. Louis, in 1888, had studied at Harvard, obtained a B.A. and M.A., was professor of poetry there, 193233, and was awarded an honorary degree 1947. Hale, born in Boston in 1891, was educated at Smith College and became professor of drama at various colleges. They first met in 1912, and he fell in love with her when he was in the Graduate School at Harvard, before he left for Germany and England, where he remained for the rest of his life. In 1914, he told Hale he was in love with her.

Eliot has been the subject of controversy and of puzzlement. He was original but esoteric, authentic but baffling. In a letter written on September 14, 1936, Isaiah Berlin wrote about a new game he and Stephen Spender were playing: answering questions in the manner of T.S. Eliot. You answer very slowly, carefully, and deliberately, avoiding no obvious platitudes, but embellishing them by clothing them with carefully placed words. Above all, the tempo must be kept very slow and even, and nothing ordinary left unspoken. Playing this game, Berlin was conscious of a deeper insight into Eliot's character. The great test is saying "yes" in a "properly melancholy manner, with a sincere and pensive inflexion."

Eliot's personality and thoughts and the relationship between them has always been the subject of controversy, as has the merit of his poetry and his conservative political and religious views. Eliot may not have been the 20th-century Anglo-American version of Tartuffe, who ostensibly purports to be virtuous, but he also did not resemble the archangel Gabriel. Questions can be asked. Did Eliot measure out his own life with coffee spoons? Did he resemble the bored character in The Love Story of J. Alfred Prufrock, his first professionally published poem in 1915, in that there "will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet"? His remark when receiving the Nobel Prize that he received it "not on his own merits but as a symbol for a time of the significance of poetry" seems disingenuous.

One can admit he was a great poet, even though the poetry is often opaque and does not yield easy understanding and is not easy to decipher. His best known work, The Waste Land, a poem full of fragments and quotations from Homer to the present, can be regarded as a central work of modernist poetry, but it is for many readers indecipherable because of its allusions and its shift among different speakers and scenes without notice given.

Irrespective of disagreement over the quality of his oeuvre, Eliot was also a flawed human being. Some of his positions and statements are disturbing. He praised Mussolini as a "wise and astute statesman;" he talked to Ezra Pound about "wops;" he spoke of the "feeble or incomplete sexuality," of gays. As a director at the publishing house of Faber and Faber he wrote an astonishing letter on July 3, 1944 to George Orwell rejecting the publication of Orwell's Animal Farm, because "we have no conviction that this is the right point of view from which to criticize the political situation." Eliot offered some praise of Orwell's narrative that kept one's interest, but held that Orwell's positive point of view in the book, which he took was generally Trotskyite "was not convincing." Orwell later fairly commented that keeping topics out of print was not because of fear of prosecution, but fear of public opinion. In indirect rebuke of Eliot, Orwell held that intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer has to face.

The most controversial aspect of Eliot's output, fictional and nonfictional, were remarks with outright or overtones of antisemitism and racism. The initial problem in assessing him is that although his poetry can be admired, antisemitism, as Anthony Julius said in his important book, TSE: Antisemitism and Literary Form, was important in his writing, an antisemitism mired in ugliness and loath. It reaches out, as Julius said, as a clear signal to the reader. Some may argue that the unpleasant antisemitic passages in his poetry, especially in Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar, (the rats are underneath the poles. The Jew is underneath the lot,) and in Gerontion, (squalid, squat Jews) are attributable to the characters in the poems rather than to TSE personally.

Yet, this is it ignore some statements other than in poetry. The most notorious passage stems from a lecture in 1933 at the University of Virginia, later incorporated in the book After Strange Gods: "What is more important in unity of religious background, and race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable." Moreover, in 1948, after Auschwitz, he allowed his antisemitic poems to be published in a selected edition.

Less controversial has been the impact of other works by Eliot. His whimsical poetry of 1939, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, was adapted by Andrew Lloyd Webber to become the musical Cats, and later a film. It is ironic if Eliot is most remembered as the author of playful poems about cats. Less amusing than this musical but more significant and useful for understanding Eliot's personality and relationship with women are the letters to Hale now available.

Perhaps the whole truth will emerge from the Princeton letters starting with a true account of the extraordinary circumstances that Eliot in spite of his belief that he was in love with Hale, suddenly married Vivienne Haigh-Wood. Eliot, in partial and elliptical fashion, explained he was very Immature for his age, very timid, very inexperienced, and had doubts about his choice of a profession at that time, a university teacher of philosophy, because he yearned to write poetry. His meeting with Ezra Pound who was enthusiastic about Eliot's poems, changed his life. He stayed in England, wrote verse, and wanted a flirtation or mild affair with Vivienne, but was too "shy and unpracticed" to have this.

Instead, he married Vivienne that led to an unhappy relations, but he, who had converted to Anglicanism, refused to get a divorce for religious reasons from Vivienne who was a Unitarian. Inevitably they separated, but his wife went into a mental home and died there in 1947. For Eliot, life and fiction appeared to merge in a way that may surprise literary critics. For Eliot the marriage "brought a state of mind out of which came The Waste Land." as well as saving him from marrying Emily Hale. He explained, "She, Hale, would have killed the poet in me. Vivienne nearly was the death of me, but she kept the poet alive." Otherwise, Eliot would have been a mediocre teacher of philosophy.

Eliot did see Hale from time to time, every simmer in later years when she came to England. However, Eliot never married Hale, and has a mixed, troubled and unconsummated relationship with her, the exact nature of which may emerge from the Princeton letters which may also shed light on Eliot's life and published output.

Was Eliot deliberately or inadvertently deceitful? In November 1930 TSE wrote to Hale, "you have made me perfectly happythough it is the kind of happiness which is identical with my deepest loss and sorrow, it is a kind of supernatural ecstasy." However, his note to his executor declares that "my love (for Hale) was the love of a ghost for a ghostthe letters to her were of a hallucinated man, a man vainly trying to pretend to himself he was the same man he had been in 1914. He said he realized, after the death of Vivienne in 1947, that he had been in love only with a memory, with the memory of having been in love with Hale in his youth. He was caustic about Hale. She had a lack of respect for his strong views on religion and divorce, and she liked "my reputation rather than my work." She was not interested in his poetry and was guilty of insensitivity and bad taste.

It is enticing to contemplate whether the Princeton letters show kinder and warmer feeling by Eliot towards Hale, and to both the literary and the real world. In particular, they may enlighten literary critics on questions such as whether the bleak world of The Waste Land was influenced by the unpleasant years with Vivienne, or whether the main figure in his play The Family Reunion is troubled by some version of Eliot's transgression in his past.

T.S. Eliot ends the document of November 1960 to his executor with the words, "May we all rest in peace." Will examination of the Princeton letters end in the same way?
Angry and anguished, the student and teacher community felt it crucial that there be immediate protests to send a message that this was not tolerable.

Hyderabad: Students, senior citizens, teachers and others spontaneously gathered at midnight to protest the attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students, after photos, videos and messages of the attack went viral on Sunday night.

Protesters gathered at the Ambedkar statue on Tank Bund road to express solidarity.

Angry and anguished, the student and teacher community felt it crucial that there be immediate protests to send a message that this was not tolerable. They messaged friends over social media and within 40 minutes, more than 200 people had gathered.

We stand in solidarity, says protesters

How can we go to sleep after our JNU friends have been beaten up by masked goons? It is our democratic right to be able to study peacefully in educational institutions. The JNU students union has our full support. We stand in solidarity with the victims of the attack, an Osmania University student said.

Slogans included Inquilab zindabad, JNU mein barbarata, nahi chalegi, nahi chalegi and Modi-Shah ki barbarata, nahi chalegi nahi chalegi. What started as a show of solidarity with lit candles post-midnight where random activists held placards, grew into a full-fledged peaceful protest.

Ashwin Dubey, an activist, revealed that he was in touch with fellow protesters from Saturdays Million march programme against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the NRC.

I am a member of several WhatsApp groups with people who oppose the CAA. After news of the mob attack in JNU broke out, there was a plan to organise a protest. Many of those who have reached here are employees, and only a handful of students, Dubey said.

Even as activists squatted firmly, police tried to pacify them. Cops requested the protesters to call off the protest since it lacked permission. Protesters, in view of police cooperation, called off the protest at 2.30 am.
Abdul Aziz, 38 (mugshot pictured), has been jailed for 18 months after admitting arranging to meet a '14-year-old girl' and possession of indecent images of children

A father-of-one with a 'distorted attitude towards British girls' was caught trying to meet a '14-year-old girl' for sex by paedophile hunters and jailed for 18 months.

Abdul Aziz, 38, travelled to the UK on an extended family visa this summer before messaging what he thought was a 14-year-old called Ruby.

After finding her online he asked to 'hang out and make love' and tried to meet up with her for sex.

But 'Ruby' was actually a 41-year-old female member of the paedophile hunter group Cobra UK.

He was snared by Cobra and another group called Confronted and Caught at Burnley bus station on August 26.

Aziz, of Burnley, was jailed for 18 months after admitting attempting to arrange or facilitate the commission of a child sex offence and possessing indecent images of children at Preston Crown Court.

Prosecutor Peter Barr told the court the very first message Aziz sent to 'Ruby' was a lewd request for sex.

When she responded by saying: 'I don't know what you mean, I am only 14,' Aziz responded by saying it meant to 'hang out and make love,' he told the court.

There then followed a series of sexual messages over a four-week period on Whatsapp in which Aziz asked Ruby several questions and made suggestive remarks.

He asked the girl to send him photos of her in her bra and when she said she couldn't because her phone was broken he offered to pay to get it fixed. He also offered to pay for her to get credit on her phone.

On August 26 Aziz arranged to meet Ruby, who said she was from London, at Burnley Bus Station, Lancashire.

He said he would take her to Rochdale because 'it had nice views', the court was told.

But when he arrived he was met by members of the group Caught and Confronted, who contacted the police.

Mr Barr said police confiscated Aziz's two mobile phones. On one of them they found 18 indecent images of pre-teens.

When Aziz was asked about those he said he had been sent them by another person and he thought he had deleted them.

On August 26 Aziz arranged to meet Ruby, who said she was from London, at Burnley Bus Station, Lancashire (pictured)

But the court heard those images had been saved in the same folder on his phone as family photos.

Defending, Mohammed Nawaz said his client had only come to the UK weeks before he committed the offences on a family extended visa.

He said that was now unlikely to be extended and his client would be deported.

Mr Nawaz said: 'He has a young family. He has been excluded from living with his wife and child.

'The problems that exist in his marriage have only been exacerbated by his offending.'

Jailing Aziz for 18 months, Judge Heather Lloyd said she was concerned by probation's assessment that he posed a high risk of harm to children and vulnerable females.

Telling Aziz that it was clear he considered Ruby as an 'easy target for his sexual gratification', she added: 'It is said by the author of the pre-sentence report that your actions were planned and deliberate, born out of your distorted attitude towards British girls.'

Aziz was also made subject of a 10-year sexual harm prevention order and told to sign the sex offenders register for the same period.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky met with H.E. Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, the Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs of the Sultanate of Oman, on Sunday, January 5, the Presidents Office has reported.

"During a trip to Oman, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky met with the Sultanate of Oman's Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs, H.E. Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah. The parties discussed issues of strengthening relations between the two countries, in particular, they stressed the importance of expanding trade and economic cooperation," the statement reads.

In addition, the parties noted the growth of trade, which increased by 10% last year, reaching USD 80 million, and the intensification of cooperation at the level of chambers of commerce.

"The sides agreed to continue the practice of Ukrainian-Omani business forums, given the success of the last two such events in Kyiv in 2019, which were attended by dozens of businessmen from Oman," the report says.

The president stressed that "Ukraine is interested in direct investment from Oman, focusing on such promising sectors as energy and heavy industry, construction, agriculture, information technology and innovation, infrastructure development, healthcare, and tourism."

ish
Astronomers in Europe, working with members of Canada's CHIME Fast Radio Burst collaboration, have pinpointed the location of a repeating fast radio burst (FRB) first detected by the CHIME telescope in British Columbia in 2018. The breakthrough is only the second time that scientists have determined the precise location of a repeating source of these millisecond bursts of radio waves from space.

In results published in the January 9 edition of Nature, the European VLBI Network (EVN) used eight telescopes spanning locations from the United Kingdom to China to simultaneously observe the repeating radio source known as FRB 180916.J0158+65. Using a technique known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), the researchers achieved a level of resolution high enough to localize the FRB to a region approximately seven light years across - a feat comparable to an individual on Earth being able to distinguish a person on the Moon.

A 'very different' location for an FRB

With that level of precision, the research team was able to train an optical telescope onto the location to learn more about the environment from which the burst emanated. What they found has added a new chapter to the mystery surrounding the origins of FRBs.

"We used the eight-metre Gemini North telescope in Hawaii to take sensitive images that showed the faint spiral arms of a Milky-Way-like galaxy and showed that the FRB source was in a star-forming region in one of those arms," said co-author Shriharsh Tendulkar, a former McGill University postdoctoral researcher who co-led the optical imaging and spectroscopic analyses of the FRB's location.

"This is a very different environment for a repeating FRB, compared to the dwarf galaxy in which the first repeating FRB 121102 was discovered to reside."

CHIME team's hypotheses in line with observed data

The discovery lined up with a number of ideas CHIME/FRB researchers had put forward following their initial detection of the burst in 2018.

"The FRB is among the closest yet seen and we even speculated that it could be a more conventional object in the outskirts of our own galaxy," said co-author Mohit Bhardwaj, a McGill University doctoral student and CHIME team member.

"However the EVN observation proved that it's in a relatively nearby galaxy, making it still a puzzling FRB, but close enough to now study using many other telescopes."

Zooming in on the radio sky

Since it began operation in the summer of 2018, CHIME has detected dozens of fast radio bursts, greatly accelerating the rate of discovery of these transient astrophysical phenomena. With over 1,000 antennas, CHIME's large field of view gives it a much greater chance of picking up fleeting bursts than conventional radio telescopes that are able to observe only a small area of the sky at a time.

When it came to pinpointing FRB 180916, the CHIME/FRB team worked closely with their EVN colleagues to determine exactly where to point the VLBI telescopes.

"By recording and processing the raw signal from each of the antenna elements that make up CHIME, we were able to refine the source position to a level close enough for EVN to successfully observe and localize multiple bursts from this FRB source," said co-author Daniele Michilli, a McGill University postdoctoral researcher and CHIME/FRB team member.

FRB's proximity opens the way for further study

At half-a-billion light years from Earth, the source of FRB 180916 is around seven times closer than the only other repeating burst to have been localized, and more than 10 times closer than any of the few non-repeating FRBs scientists have managed to pinpoint. That's exciting for astronomers because it will enable more detailed study that may help narrow down the possible explanations for FRBs.

"We have a new chance to perhaps detect emissions at other wavelengths - x-ray or visible light, for instance," said McGill University astrophysicist Victoria Kaspi, a leading member of the CHIME/FRB collaboration. "And if we did, that would be hugely constraining of the models."

###

About the CHIME Fast Radio Burst Collaboration

CHIME/FRB is a collaboration of over 50 scientists led by the University of British Columbia, McGill University, the University of Toronto, the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). The $16-million investment for CHIME was provided by the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the governments of British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, with additional funding from the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. The telescope is located in the mountains of British Columbia's Okanagan Valley at the NRC's Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory near Penticton. CHIME is an official Square Kilometre Array (SKA) pathfinder facility.

To read the paper

Marcote, B., Nimmo, K., Hessels, J.W.T., et al. 2020. A repeating fast radio burst source localised to a nearby spiral galaxy. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1866-z
Protesters march along citys main roads, halting traffic to demand rapists arrest and capital punishment for convicts.

The sexual assault of a student at a top university in Bangladesh has triggered angry protests in the capital Dhaka, with demonstrators calling for the death penalty for all the convicted rapists.

Demonstrators on Monday linked arms and marched along main roads in Dhaka, halting traffic to demand the perpetrators arrest within 24 hours.

Signs held up in the protest included messages such as: No mercy to rapist and Please tell me, am I next?

Rape is an unforgivable offence. In Bangladesh, the punishment for rape is very slow, said Shahela, a demonstrator who, like the 21-year-old victim of Sundays attack, is a student at Dhaka University.

We want quick executions for the perpetrators so that others are deterred from committing such crimes, she said.

Nurul Haque Nur, vice president of Dhaka University Central Students Union, said: Dhaka University is considered the supreme educational institute of the country. It is very shameful that a student of that institute was raped.

We demand that all the rape cases in the country including this one are processed under a speedy tribunal and that the rapists are brought to justice, he said.

Jannat Ul Firdous, a Dhaka University student, said rapists must be killed.

We want nothing but the rapists execution by hanging. How is it possible that women cant move freely in an independent country? We cant just passively witness the assaults of rapists. We demand that the rapists are hanged, the protester said.

Police said about 1,500 students joined the protests, which remained peaceful. AFP news agency estimated that twice as many people joined the rally.

Sundays assault

The victim in Sundays attack was travelling to a friends home when she was gagged, taken to a remote area in Dhakas outskirts and sexually assaulted.

The victim was taken to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital at about midnight on Sunday, and is being treated there.

We are working to arrest [the attacker], Sazzadur Rahman, senior police official, told AFP news agency.

Local rights group Ain o Salish Kendra said there were 1,413 reported rape cases in Bangladesh last year, double the number recorded in 2018. Dozens of victims were killed while 10 committed suicide after they were attacked.

Nationwide protests gripped Bangladesh in April after a 19-year-old student who accused her seminarys head teacher of sexual harassment was doused in kerosene and set on fire.

Sixteen people were later sentenced to death over the attack, including the teacher.
(CNN)  Google says it has developed an artificial intelligence system that can detect the presence of breast cancer more accurately than doctors.

A study that tested the accuracy of the system, which was developed through a collaboration between the tech giant and cancer researchers, was published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature.

The program was trained to detect cancer using tens of thousands of mammograms from women in the United Kingdom and the United States, and early research shows it can produce more accurate detection than human radiologists.

According to the study, using the AI technology resulted in fewer false positives, where test results suggest cancer is present when it isn't, and false negatives, where an existing cancer goes undetected.

Compared to human experts, the program reduced false positives by 5.7% for US subjects and 1.2% for UK subjects. It reduced false negatives by 9.4% for US subjects and 2.7% for UK subjects.

The AI system was more accurate despite it having less information to work with than human experts, such as patient histories and prior mammograms.

Professor Ara Darzi, one of the authors of the paper and the director of the Cancer Research UK Imperial Centre, said he had not expected to see such an impressive result from the AI system. "This is one of those transformational discoveries you have in your hand, which could disrupt the way we deliver screening in terms of improving accuracy and productivity," Darzi told CNN Business.

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death from cancer in women, although outcomes improve considerably if the disease is caught and treated early, the authors of the study say.

Yet despite large-scale breast cancer screening programs in developed countries, screening mammograms do not find about one in five breast cancers, according to the American Cancer Society.

"The performance of even the best clinicians leaves room for improvement," the study's authors wrote in Nature. "AI may be uniquely poised to help with this challenge."

The technology could also be used to address shortages in radiologists, they say.

A 2018 report by the Royal College of Radiologists found that 75% of UK radiology department directors feel there are insufficient clinical radiologists to deliver a safe and effective level of patient care.

The report forecast that nearly 2,000 additional radiologists would be required to close the projected shortfall in 2023.

In the United Kingdom, where two radiologists interpret each mammogram, the AI system could be used to replace the second reader, Darzi said. "I don't think this will substitute humans at this stage," he said.

The detection and diagnosis of breast cancer sits alongside other Google research that demonstrates how AI can help doctors to more accurately predict lung cancer and prevent serious eye disease.

The study published Wednesday was part of a collaboration between Google Health, Cancer Research UK Imperial Centre, Northwestern University and Royal Surrey County Hospital.

This story was first published on CNN.com. "Google's AI system can beat doctors at detecting breast cancer."
New Delhi [India], Jan 6 (ANI): Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Tuesday said that he believes US President Donald Trump referred to the 2012 attack on an Israeli diplomat's wife in his assertion that slain Iranian military commander Major General Qassem Soleimani was responsible for terror plots in New Delhi.



Speaking to reporters here, Chidambaram, who was the Union Home Minister in 2012 in the UPA government, said, "I assume President Donald Trump was referring to attack on Israeli lady diplomat who was very seriously injured. I think we identified two of the perpetrators but we never traced them. I think they fled the country. That is my recollection but only Delhi Police can confirm it."

In his statement after the US airstrikes in Baghdad, Trump had said that slain Iranian military commander Soleimani had "contributed to terrorist plots as far away as New Delhi and London."

A bomb explosion on an Israeli diplomatic car on 13 February 2012 in New Delhi had wounded the wife of the then Israeli defense attache, among others. The incident had led to the accusations against the Iranian state. (ANI)


Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 6 : As statewide protests were called by the Students Federation of India (SFI) in Kerala on Monday to protest against the violence in Jawaharlal University, a Central and a state minister traded charges while blaming each other for the violence.

The only Keralite in the cabinet of the BJP-led government at the Centre, Union Minister of State for External Affairs V. Muraleedharan told the media here on Monday that the violence in the JNU was a conspiracy.

"Today, those who are protesting are the same group, who have created terror in campuses in Kerala. Everyone knows what happened and what is happening at the University, College in Thiruvananthapuram. What happened at the JNU is a part of an alleged large scale conspiracy," said Muraleedharan.

Senior Kerala state BJP leader K. Surendran blamed the Kerala TV channels, who, he said, were coming out with fake news on the JNU violence.

"To keep the attacks unleashed by the Left and Congress student unions under wraps here, the Kerala media are spreading canards, while the truth is being told by the national TV channels on what happened there," wrote Surendran in his Facebook.

But Kerala Minister for Culture and Cinema A.K. Balan blamed the BJP for the violence in the JNU.

"Today the stage is such that due to various reasons, the Centre has lost it's connect with the people and now the targets are innocent students. What happened yesterday at JNU is quite clear, if one looks into the various messages that have come in the social media," said Balan.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan wrote on his Facebook: "The Nazi-style attack on the students and faculty of JNU is an appalling display of intolerance running amok.

"The attackers intend to create an atmosphere of unrest and terror in the country. The scale of the attack reveals the extent of planning that went into it. Sangh Parivar must end this diabolical plan to silence universities with bloodshed. Remember, those students are speaking for all," wrote Vijayan.
Tension is brewing at campaign group Extinction Rebellion as activists continue to discuss whether or not flying is ever acceptable.

One of the climate crisis groups founders, Roger Hallam, has branded air travel a no no, despite the fact that many of its celebrity supporters often rack up the air miles by using aircraft.

My Hallam also claimed that flying was bad for any vaguely moral person in this society and also compared using planes to eating meat.

Speaking on the Free Flight UK podcast he said: Its just a physical fact that its beyond bad.

Members of the group are said to be struggling to agree to a policy on flying. The group is pictured above after it protested at City Airport in London

Roger Hallam (above) likened travelling by plane to eating meat and said it was a 'no no'

Free Flight UK encourages people to take a pledge to stop flying and Mr Hallam added that the planned expansion of Heathrow Airport was a crime against humanity.

Extinction Rebellion showed how they felt about air travel in October, after members took over City Airport in London, with some gluing themselves to aircraft.

The group has also suggested the UK government rations flights, while other parts have said people should be allowed one return flight every two years.

An Extinction Rebellion protester climbs on top of British Airways aircraft at London City Airport as a number of different attemps are made to bring the airport to a standstill

According to The Telegraph, senior members are uneasy about famous backers donating to the campaign if they are going to be so open about using planes as a means of transport.

In the summer it was revealed that many celebrities that had turned up at the rallies had previously flown on private jets and taken first class flights.

Dame Emma Thompson had famously flown 5,400 miles from Los Angeles to London to speak at an Extinction event in spring.

Even though members understand its impractical for people to sail everywhere, many are still uncomfortable with the carbon footprint planes leave.

Speaking to The Telegraph Victoria Valentine, who launched an XR branch in Lincolnshire, said she advocated very strict rationing, with pretty much no permission for flights unless it is to visit a dying relative or crucial for some other reason.

Some also said that private jets should be banned all together and a spokesperson for Extinction said the group was always welcoming when it came to various threads of conversation surrounding the topic of air travel.
Chelsy Davy has shared a glimpse at her picturesque festive break in sun-soaked Mauritius.

Prince Harry's ex, 34, took to Instagram today to post a gallery of pictures from her holiday, which saw her enjoy family time with her parents Beverley and Charles, and brother Shaun.

Chelsy, who grew up in Zimbabwe before attending University of Leeds and enjoying an on-off relationship with Prince Harry, 35, from 2004 to 2011, posted the collection of snaps alongside the simple caption '2020'.

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Chelsy Davy has shared a glimpse at her picturesque festive break in sun-soaked Mauritius

Prince Harry's ex, 34, took to Instagram today to post a gallery of pictures from her holiday, which saw her enjoy family time with her parents Beverley and Charles, and brother Shaun (far right)

Another snap, shared with her 33,000 followers, sees Chelsy, dressed in a frilly red frock, standing on a dock overlooking the turquoise see at sunset.

Elsewhere the jewellery designer is seen enjoying a dip by the beach, in a bay surrounded by boats.

And it seems it wasn't just a family holiday, with another photo showing her enjoying a boat ride with her pals.

Meanwhile her New Year's Eve celebrations show a fun-filled beach party complete with glowsticks.

Another snap, shared with her 33,000 followers, sees Chelsy, dressed in a frilly red frock, standing on a dock overlooking the turquoise see at sunset

Elsewhere the jewellery designer is seen enjoying a dip by the beach, in a bay surrounded by boats

Chelsy Davy dated the prince from 2003 to 2010 and attended the same school as his cousin Eugenie's husband Jack Brooksbank, mingling in the same society circles in London.

The jewellery designer attended Princess Eugenie's wedding to Jack Brooksbank in October 2018.

She's also remained on good terms with Prince Harry and attended his wedding to Meghan at St George's Chapel in May his other ex-girlfriend Cressida Bonas.

And it seems it wasn't just a family holiday, with another photo showing her enjoying a boat ride with her pals

Chelsy Davy dated the prince from 2003 to 2010 and attended the same school as his cousin Eugenie's husband Jack Brooksbank, mingling in the same society circles in London. Her break in Mauritius is seen

Meanwhile her New Year's Eve celebrations show a fun-filled beach party complete with glowsticks

After first meeting while she was a teenager at Cheltenham and then getting together during Harry's gap year in Cape Town, Davy returned to the UK to study in Leeds and be closer to the young royal.

She has spoken of their time together - and the subsequent media interest - as 'crazy and scary and uncomfortable'.

The pair broke up in 2010 after a seven-year romance, but Chelsy was still Harry's date for William and Kate's wedding in 2011.

Their relationship has been strictly platonic ever since, bar a fling in South Africa in 2015 and she previously said they would always be friends.
Jordan, by contrast and like the rest of the picture, makes do with a standard-issue portrait of the activist-warrior at the center. (At one point he tells his mother: You always taught me to fight for the people who need the help the most, which sounds more like a speech than actual human speech.) As Stevensons colleague and friend, Brie Larson manages what she can, where she can. The film runs a little over two hours, and covers various compelling stories in and out of prison, yet the people end up feeling slightly surface-y.
New Delhi: The Delhi Police on Monday registered an FIR in connection with the violence that broke out in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on January 5.

A case has been filed against the unknown miscreants for vandalising properties and attacking students and teachers inside the campus. The case has been registered under section 145, 147, 148 149, 151 and Section 3. The police source informed that the case will be transferred to the Crime Branch for detailed investigation.

The police has demanded CCTV footage from JNU administration to investigate in the matter. Several complaints regarding the incidents were made to the Delhi police. Meanwhile, a single case has been registered compiling all the complains.

DCP Devendra Arya said, '' We have registered an FIR ... More than thirty students have been injured but no one is in serious condition. We are investigating in the matter. The police acted on time the CCTV footage and people are being marked and their credentials are being checked.''

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Delhi Police PRO MS Randhawa said on Monday that a total of four FIRs have been registered in connection with this case, out of which three FIRs were registered on Sunday. Earlier on Sunday evening, Randhawa held a meeting with a delegation of students and teachers from JNU.

Delhi Police sources said that students from both ABVP and Left groups had called people from outside the campus and these outsiders were involved in violence inside the JNU campus. According to Randhawa, Delhi Police's Joint CP Western range, Shalini Singh, will lead a fact-finding committee formed to probe this matter.

While the number of the injured in the clashes, which occurred on Sunday was not yet known, at least 20 students were admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences with severe injuries, including the Students Union President Aishe Ghosh.
KYODO NEWS - Jan 2, 2020 - 20:41 | All, World

Eight people including Taiwan's top military officer were killed and five others injured after a helicopter carrying the 13 crashed in a mountainous area of New Taipei City on Thursday morning, the Defense Ministry said.

Air Force Gen. Shen Yi-ming, who served as the military's chief of general staff, was among those killed in the crash involving the UH-60M Black Hawk, the ministry said. He was reportedly Taiwan's highest-ranking military official to die during official duties.

The helicopter was heading to a military base in the island's northeast from the capital Taipei for a pre-Lunar New Year inspection when it disappeared from radar and made an abortive forced landing, according to Taiwan's Central News Agency.

[Central News Agency/Kyodo]

Two major generals, one major and the helicopter's two pilots were among the dead, while the survivors included two lieutenant generals, a major general and a reporter, according to the agency report.

The accident occurred slightly over a week before Taiwan's presidential election on Jan. 11, in which Tsai Ing-wen is seeking re-election and, according to the latest polls, leading her main rival by a double-digit margin.

Tsai ordered Defense Minister Yen De-fa to make an all-out effort to get to the bottom of the accident and make sure it will not affect the island's defense.

Tsai's campaign said the ruling Democratic Progressive Party candidate will suspend her election activities until Saturday, while the campaign for her main rival, Han Kuo-yu of the main opposition Nationalist Party (KMT), canceled plans until Friday.

Maj. Gen. Huang Chih-wei, inspector general of the Air Force Command Headquarters, told a press conference earlier in the day that the chopper took off from Songshan Air Force Base in Taipei at 7:54 a.m. and contact with it was lost at 8:07 a.m.

Huang said the plane was forced to make an emergency landing.

Weather was unlikely to be the reason as the pilot reported in his last contact with the base that visibility was clear, the officer added.

Photos released later by local authorities showed a mangled aircraft with damaged blades lying in a forested area.

Shen became chief of general staff last July after serving as Air Force commander and deputy defense minister, among other positions.

Taiwan has purchased 60 UH-60Ms from the United States. The Army has a fleet of 30 of the helicopters, while the National Airborne Service Corps and the Air Force both have 15.

The helicopter that came down Thursday had been in use since July 2018, according to local media.

In February last year, a UH-60M of the National Airborne Service Corps crashed three minutes after taking off from an airport on Orchid Island off the southeastern coast of Taiwan while conducting a search and rescue operation, killing six people aboard.

Taiwan and mainland China have been governed separately since they split amid a civil war in 1949. Beijing considers the island a breakaway province that must be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Her name may have never appeared on a ballot for political office on Staten Island, but behind the scenes, Mimi Cusick was known as a larger-than-life political figure in the boroughs Democratic politics for the last five decades.

During any Democratic race on the Island, Mrs. Cusick could be found putting together a team of volunteers to work on a campaign, stuffing and mailing out campaign literature or running the show at Democratic County Committee meetings.

Mimi Cusick was a real pillar behind the scenes in the Democratic party for all the years that I knew her, said longtime Democrat Robert Gigante, the Islands former Surrogate Court judge and chair of the Democratic Part for years.

Mrs. Cusick died in her home in Westerleigh on Sunday afternoon surrounded by her loved ones. She was 88-years-old.

Gigante met Mrs. Cusick in 1978 when he ran against the late Sen. John Marchi when Gigante worked as the Staten Island Democratic Partys law chairman.

She was somebody who was very concerned about our quality of life here on Staten Island and she was a doer, Gigante said. Whenever we needed help at the county headquarters or on any campaign, Mimi was always there, behind the scenes, but she was always there."

She was a lifelong Staten Islander born in 1931 in St. Vincents Hospital who dedicated herself to Democratic politics from a young age.

POLITICAL PASSION AND DEVOTED MOM

Mrs. Cusick was a beloved presence in Staten Islands Democratic Party politics and the matriarch of one of the top Democratic families in the boroughs political history.

In her early 20s she and her brother, John Kearney, the Islands former Public Administrator for Richmond County, joined the Staten Island Democratic Party as young Democrats.

She served in the party for the remainder of her life and was even re-elected as a Democratic County Committee member last year.

The Islands Democratic Party is also where Mrs. Cusick met her husband, the late Supreme Court Justice Peter Cusick.

The couple wed in 1967 and went on to have three sons -- Peter, John and Michael -- Michael now an assemblyman who represents the 63rd Assembly district and serves as the Democratic Partys chairman.

A CAREER WOMAN, TOO

Outside of politics, once her children left for college, Mrs. Cusick went back to work in 1987 as a school safety officer at PS 30 and PS 22 for 20 years.

Assemblyman Cusick said often on the campaign trail when he would knock on doors in his district, constituents would recognize him because of his mother when he would come face-to-face with parents of her former students or her former students.

Former PS 30 School Secretary Babara Smith of Great Kills recalls being an awe of an older woman coming on the job as a school safety officer. But Smith said Mrs. Cusick went on to become the best [school safety officer] we ever had.

Smith said she would knew all the parents and students who came through the school doors and didnt let anyone she did not know get past her desk.

HER SONS VIEW; A WELCOMING HOME

Assemblyman Cusick said his late mother never ran for office because she knew she could affect more change from behind the scenes and get into the nitty gritty of campaigns.

Politics was important to her in a sense that she knew that politics was a good vehicle for a better life on Staten Island for people, Assemblyman Cusick said.

Mimi Cusick was also known to unite Democrats and Republicans together on the Island.

She was known for hosting annual gatherings on New Years Day, Fourth of July and before, during and after the St. Patricks Parade, in her home on College Avenue.

Her parties were attended by judges, senators, governors, and mayors, recalled Kathryn Rooney, chairman of the Board of Trustees of Richmond University Medical Center.

One year, Assemblyman Cusick remembers former Gov. David Paterson and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg sitting on either side of her at the picnic table of their backyard, holding court.

Mimi was the beating heart of a vast community of friends, family, and neighbors. Her home was where everyone headed for New Years Day, the Fourth of July, and for green bagels after the Islands St. Patricks Day parade. You were always welcome at Mimis, and you wanted to be there, to bask in the warmth of her graciousness and fabulous smile," said Rooney.

HER IMPACT WAS VAST

State Sen. Diane Savino said Mrs. Cusick was integral to fellow women in the Democratic Party, often encouraging local women to get involved in politics.

She was a person who helped build the party and showed that women could be as effective as the old boys, but in their own way, Savino said. She had her own style.

She was always involved no matter what races we were involved in, said City Planning Commissioner and former MTA Board member Allen Cappelli. Whether it was Eric Vitaliano running for Congress, organizing people to perform tasks, whether it was Ralph Lamberti running for borough president, she was involved in all of it.

Now U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District, Eric Vitaliano recalled Mrs. Cusick as someone who could find humor in politics and the last living link to the hegemony of West Brighton Irish leaders of the Staten Island Democratic Party.

Though she came from a time when women were viewed as the auxiliary,' Mimi was a full-throated partner with her husband Pete and brother John Kearney, Vitaliano said. It has come full circle now with Mimi living long enough to see [her son] Mike not only a member of the Assembly but also Democratic County Leader, the position her brother John so richly deserved. Her laugh is silent now but, even through the tears, it is impossible to think of Mimi without a smile coming to your face."

Mimi was not only the matriarch of a wonderful and beautiful family but she served and advised the wider community -- from her local Westerleigh neighborhood to the Islandwide political and civic centers of meaningful decision making -- with compassion, wisdom and wit, said District Attorney Michael McMahon. With a twinkle in her eye and incomparable empathy and understanding for others, her generous spirit raised up everyone she met. Just speaking with her made you feel good. Including my wife Judith and I, every aspiring Democratic elected official would stop at Mimis house and benefit from her sage counsel and her Irish-American charm and humor. We will miss her dearly and extend our condolences to the entire Cusick-Kearney clan.

A DEVOTED FRIEND TO ALL

Former Borough President Ralph Lamberti called Mrs. Cusick a friend to all who was Democrat, but respectful to everyone.

She was devoted to her family and her faith, and always humble and gracious, despite the high positions her family members had attained, Lamberti said.

Bishop Edmund J. Whalen said: Mrs Cusick was one of the people who made Westerleigh and Blessed Sacrament a great place to grow up: Involved, caring, and willing to help make the neighborhood a real family.

Republican and Conservative Party leaders also praised Mrs. Cusicks work.

Mimi is from a family that everyone on Staten Island liked, whether you be a Republican, a Democrat, a Conservative or a Liberal," said former Borough President and Conservative Party chair James Molinaro. I recall so well all the St. Patricks Parades on Forest Avenue when Mimi would invite us into her home  she made tons and tons of corned beef  and every single person felt welcomed. No one felt like they were intruding. The entire family  the assemblyman, her brother John, her husband Peter  they are really Staten Island community people. Gentle people. Its a loss. A tremendous loss.

Mrs. Cusick was a warm, kind human being. She always welcomed us to her home with a smile after the St. Patricks Day Parade, and her goodness was evident. She was proud of her sons, including my dear friend Assemblyman Mike Cusick, and I will forever remember when my mom joined me at Mrs. Cusicks home when I endorsed Mike for his reelection. That day affirmed there is nothing quite like a mothers love. She lived a purposeful life, and now she can rest, said Borough President James Oddo.

Mrs. Cusicks wake will be held at Casey Funeral Home on Tuesday at 7 to 9 p.m.; Wednesday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Her funeral mass will be held on Thursday morning at Blessed Sacrament R.C. Church at 10 a.m.

Mrs. Cusick is predeceased by her husband of 33 years, the Honorable Peter P. Cusick, and her parents, Michael Kearney and Veronica (Kelly) Kearney; her brothers Michael, a Deputy Chief with the Fire Department for New York, and John, the former Public Administrator for Richmond County.

She is survived by her three sons Peter, Michael and John; her daughters-in-law, Ashley (Bateman) Cusick and Yasmin (Gaffar) Cusick, and seven grandchildren, Peter Stephen, Kelly, Jack, Kate, John Patrick, James and Violet Miriam.
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T he daughter of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani has warned that the US and Israel face a dark day following her fathers killing.

Thousands of mourners took to the streets of the Iranian capital of Tehran on Monday morning for the military leaders funeral.

Among the mourners was Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who prayed over the coffin of General Soleimani.

General Soleimani was widely seen as the second most powerful figure in Iran behind Ayatollah Khamenei.

Qasem Soleimani funeral in Iran 1 /24 Qasem Soleimani funeral in Iran An Iranian man reacts during a gathering to mourn General Qasem Soleimani VIA REUTERS Mourners wave flags as they gather during the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani AFP via Getty Images Mourners gather during the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (image), Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani and eight others in the Iraqi central city of Karbala AFP via Getty Images Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" today as they mourned an Iranian commander and others killed in a US drone attack AFP via Getty Images Mourners gather in the Iraqi central city of Karbala AFP via Getty Images Mourners take part in the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani AFP via Getty Images Iranians gather to mourn General Qasem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, who was killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran VIA REUTERS A mourner holds up a picture AFP via Getty Images Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" today as they mourned an Iranian commander and others killed in a US drone attack AFP via Getty Images Mourners chant slogans against the U.S. during the funeral of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani, AP Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the US airstrike near Baghdad's airport AP Mourners carry the coffins of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani AP Mourners carry the coffin of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis AFP via Getty Images People attend a funeral procession for Iranian Major-General Qasem Soleiman VIA REUTERS An aerial view shows mourners attending a funeral ceremony for Gen. Qasem Soleimani AP Qassem Soleimani and his comrades who were killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike, are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners AP Mourners carry the coffins of Iran's top general Qasem Soleiman AP Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad's airport AP

His daughter Zenaib Soleimani told the crowds on a television broadcast: "Crazy Trump, don't think that everything is over with my father's martyrdom.

Ms Soleimani added: "Families of the American soldiers in western Asia have witnessed America's humiliation in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yemen and Palestine wars, and will spend their days waiting for the death of their children."

Tens of thousands of Iranians gather to mourn Soleimani

Iran has promised to avenge the killing of General Soleimani, the architect of Iran's drive to extend its influence across the region and a national hero among many Iranians, even many of those who did not consider themselves devoted supporters of the Islamic Republic's clerical rulers.

The scale of the crowds in Tehran shown on television mirrored the masses that gathered in 1989 for the funeral of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

General Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike / AP

In response to Iran's warnings, President Trump has threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites, including cultural targets, if Tehran attacks Americans or US assets, deepening a crisis that has heightened fears of a major Middle East conflagration.

The coffins of the Iranian general and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was also killed in Friday's attack on Baghdad airport, were passed across the heads of mourners massed in central Tehran, many of them chanting "Death to America".

Ayatollah Khamenei lead prayers over the casket / KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty Images

One of the Islamic Republic's major regional goals, namely to drive US forces out of neighbouring Iraq, came a step closer on Sunday when the Iraqi parliament backed a recommendation by the prime minister for all foreign troops to be ordered out.

"Despite the internal and external difficulties that we might face, it remains best for Iraq on principle and practically," said Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who resigned in November amid anti-government protests.

Iraq's rival Shi'ite leaders, including ones opposed to Iranian influence, have united since Friday's attack in calling for the expulsion of US troops.

The funeral was attended by some of Iran's allies in the region, including Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Palestinian group Hamas who said: "I declare that the martyred commander Soleimani is a martyr of Jerusalem."

Adding to tensions, Iran said it was taking another step back from commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers, a pact from which the United States withdrew in 2018.
An influential black state legislator in South Carolina endorsed Joe Biden for president Monday, further expanding the former vice presidents grip on the early state.

State Sen. Marlon Kimpson is no longer staying neutral after holding a series of events in his majority-black Charleston district with presidential candidates, including Biden, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Kimpson said Booker spent by far more time engaging audience members  so much so that Booker was still taking questions when Kimpson left the two-hour event  and Warren has a notable following of people who are passionate about her ideas and the possibility that she could shatter the glass ceiling to become Americas first female president.

Buttigieg, he added, is a promising candidate who came into a black-owned restaurant and demonstrated a level of earnestness, humility and tenacity as he took on tough questions.

But Kimpson said the citizens in his district were most comfortable with Biden, whom they believe has the best chance to defeat President Donald Trump in November.

At the end of the day, while there were some candidates who performed better in the town hall setting with respect to energy and enthusiasm, the key question for us is winning this election, Kimpson said. And I firmly believe that Vice President Biden gives us our best chance to win and return the country back to some sense of normalcy so that we can plan a trajectory for progressive ideas in the future.

In my view, he continued, the revolution can wait for a moment. We need to win this election, and thats the main focus.

State Sen. Marlon Kimpson looks on as Democratic presidential candidate and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker addresses a town hall crowd during a campaign trip on Monday, Aug. 5, 2019, in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)

Kimpson, who said he grew tired of standing on the sideline, cast Biden as an experienced leader who can unite the country and help other Democrats win down-ballot. The Biden campaign expects him to play a critical role as a top surrogate in South Carolina, where Kimpson said his mandate is to win big.

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Itd be nice if he comes in the top tier in Iowa and New Hampshire, but quite frankly my job is to put up big numbers in South Carolina, he said of Biden. And I believe given the demographics of the states following South Carolina heading into Super Tuesday, that gives him the pole position to sew up the nomination.

Biden is currently third in Iowa and second in New Hampshire, according to RealClearPolitics average of recent surveys. But he holds a double-digit lead in South Carolina, where Biden has a massive advantage among black voters, who made up about 60 percent of the Democratic electorate in 2016.

Kimpson is the 15th state lawmaker to back Biden, who also has support from more than 100 faith leaders across South Carolina.

While obviously the Biden team would like to win both of those states, I think its a whole different election when it comes to South Carolina, Kimpson said. But if he is successful in those two states  if he comes in the top tier  top one or two in those two states  then this race could be very well over after South Carolina.

Still, Kimpson cautioned that the campaign wont take anything for granted, noting that anything can happen before the state holds its primary late next month and that its unclear how billionaire Michael Bloomberg could affect the race with his personal fortune.

Kimpson attributed Bidens dominant standing in South Carolina polls to reliable voters being wary of experimenting this time and simply wanting someone who is ready to walk into the White House and do the job on Day One.

After spending a full day with Biden, Kimpson said he left impressed with the 77-year-olds energy and the seriousness and preparedness of the ex-vice presidents team.

In addition to a pretty rigorous schedule  I had to go home and rest and he kept going  what was refreshing about that day is he actually had advisers with policy notebooks. There were real people who had experience in the given fields of expertise, Kimpson said. There was a pen and a pad and a notecard. There was a Gatorade, not an energy drink. That was real impressive, given the level of energy that Mr. Biden showed, as well as his focus to the bread-and-butter issues and nuts and bolts of the old-school campaigning.

Im sorry this isnt really sexy, he said of his endorsement process. But it is what it is.
Duchess Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are set to return to royal life after an extended hiatus from their royal duties. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were struggling under the pressure and scrutiny of their positions. They took some much needed time away from the U.K. during the holiday season to spend time with each other and their infant son, Archie Harrison.

Since remaining in the U.K. would have given the royal couple very little privacy  the Sussexes decided to head to Canada, a country that will always have a special place in their hearts. When Markle and Prince Harry met in 2016, the duchess was working in Toronto, Canada on her hit TV series, Suits. The pair were able to keep their romance under wraps in the North American country. Therefore, it seemed only logical to return to the place where their relationship first blossomed.

The duke and duchess had some help when it came to planning their trip.

Just sharing the sweetest Christmas Card from our President and Vice-President, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Very Merry Christmas, everyone! pic.twitter.com/McOcHALoGl  The Queen's Commonwealth Trust (@queenscomtrust) December 23, 2019

This is how Meghan Markle and Prince Harry spent their vacation

The Sussexes headed to the picturesque Vancouver Island during their hiatus where they were seen hiking, jogging and taking in the sites. As has been reported, Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are spending private time in Canada, a royal spokesperson confirmed to Royal reporter Omid Scobie. The decision to base themselves in Canada reflects the importance of this Commonwealth country to them both. Whilst this emails confirms the country they are taking their family time in, for security reasons we will not be releasing any further details and request that their privacy is respected.

Since the Sussexes dont get the same amount of privacy while theyre in the U.K. they were able to take advantage of the great outdoors on Vancouver Island. Horth Hills become a very popular place now. And they jog around, so theyve been seen, Deep Cove Chalet co-owner Bev Koffel said. Its kind of exciting. I hope everything goes fine for them. Theyre breaking away from tradition and I just wish them all the best.

Markle even jumped in to snap a photo for a couple they encountered during one of their hikes.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stayed in a $14 million mansion

During their stay on Vancouver Island, the Sussexes and Baby Archie stayed in a $14.1 million mansion. The estate sits on four acres with access to two beaches. Daily Mail reported the home is fully furnished, with a 11,416 square foot main house with five bedrooms and eight bathrooms and a 2,349 square foot guest cottage with three beds and two baths. It also has, a formal dining room, paneled office with fireplace, large two-story living room opening to the chefs kitchen with pizza oven, game room with wet bar, media room and wine tasting room.

Since the Sussexes had to find a private home that could be outfitted with extra security  they enlisted a little bit of help.

Producer David Foster helped Meghan Markle and Prince Harry plan their vacation

Meghan Markle is close friends with musician Katherine McPhee, who is married to Canadian musician, David Foster. I felt honored that I was able to help Meghan there, because Im a Canadian and were a commonwealth country, were the Crowns, Foster told Daily Mail. Its important to us, so I grew up with that kind of sentiment. I was really happy to be able to help them to find a respite just to take a little time off.

Since Foster doesnt own the mansion, he only acted as a facilitator between the unnamed owner and the royals. The owner has allowed this to happen through me, and I was happy to facilitate, he explained. I dont know what their next plans are, but I know that it was reinvigorating for them to spend some downtime. This is a great testament to my hometown of Victoria that they were able to go under the radar for so long.
Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar came down heavily on a British daily on Monday for referring to the masked mob that attacked JNU students and teachers as nationalists and asked it to stop predicting Indias disintegration at every opportunity.

In a series of tweets slamming the British daily, Javadekar said, I know its a bit too much for you to understand India, but heres an effort: Stop predicting the breaking apart of India at every possible chance you get. India is a diverse democracy and it has always assimilated all differences to emerge stronger. Tagging the British daily, he said in another tweet: Technologists across the world would be eager to get the tech possessed by you, which helps decipher that a masked mob is nationalist. Also, all universities & institutions in our country are secular. A report in the British daily on the Sunday night attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students and teachers here appeared with the title: Nationalist mob goes on rampage at secular university in Delhi.

Javadekar, also the Union minister for information and broadcasting, attached with one of his tweets an image of another report by the British daily headlined as Social unrest in India as climate change hits output of onions. I hate to break it to you, but so shallow is your reporting and understanding of India, that the last time you predicted social unrest in India was over rising onion prices!, he wrote on Twitter.
On May 24, 2017, Jozef Dudek was put in bed for a nap by his father in their home in Buena Park, California. When he returned to his son's bedroom to check on him, he found Jozef under the dresser. Jozef died later that day from crush injuries to his neck which caused him to suffocate. The lawsuit filed by Jozef's parents on June 18, 2018 alleged that IKEA knew of many injuries and deaths associated with tip-overs of the MALM line of dressers prior to Jozef's death but failed to take adequate measures to improve the safety and stability of the dressers. IKEA dressers, Including the MALM which caused Jozef Dudek's fatal injuries, were recalled in 2016 as part of one of the largest consumer recalls in United States history. The recall occurred only after Feldman Shepherd had filed lawsuits on behalf of two other families whose children were killed by MALM dresser tip-overs, and IKEA was placed on notice of the death of a third child whose family was also represented by Feldman Shepherd.

The settlement followed a mediation before Rodney Max, a nationally recognized mediator for complex civil cases. It includes the following provisions intended to keep children safe in their bedrooms:

IKEA will meet with representatives of Parents Against Tip-overs, an advocacy organization fighting for mandatory stability standards for dressers.

IKEA has committed to broaden its outreach to consumers about the existence of the recall of MALM and other model IKEA dressers. We believe this campaign must include a social media campaign, emails to their database of contacts, and additional emails to purchasers of the recalled dressers.

The Dudek family will donate $1 million from the settlement to consumer organizations that have been advocating for more rigorous stability testing for dressers. The three organizations are Kids in Danger, Consumer Reports, and the Consumer Federation of America.

The litigation was led by Feldman Shepherd product liability attorneys Alan M. Feldman, Daniel J. Mann and Edward S. Goldis, who also represented the families of Curren Collas of West Chester, Pennsylvania, Camden Ellis of Snohomish, Washington, and Ted McGee of Apple Valley, Minnesota, all of whom perished from MALM dresser tip-overs. As part of a $50 million settlement in 2016 of these three cases, IKEA agreed to redesign its dressers to comply with the national voluntary standard for tip-over safety and stability. Nevertheless, millions of the unsafe older model dressers remain in the homes of consumers around the country.

Mr. Feldman said, "We will continue to seek justice for the families we represent who have been victimized by dangerously unstable dressers, and to more broadly support the efforts of parents, consumer advocates, government agencies and legislators to improve the design safety of furniture used by and for children."

To Download a copy of the complaint along with other case files, click here or go to:

https://feldmanshepherd.com/press-kit-dudek-v-ikea/

Feldman Shepherd Wohlgelernter Tanner Weinstock Dodig LLP has recovered some of the largest verdicts and settlements in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and several other states across the country. The firm represents plaintiffs in significant personal injury and complex civil litigation including medical malpractice, birth injury, motor vehicle accidents, defective products, and crashworthiness claims.

SOURCE Feldman Shepherd Wohlgelernter Tanner Weinstock Dodig LLP

Related Links

https://feldmanshepherd.com


Iran has put an $80million bounty on the head of Donald Trump as it vowed to attack the White House.

The chilling announcement was broadcast live as millions of Iranians to the streets for the televised funeral of assassinated General Qasem Soleimani.

Iran also vowed to ramp up its nukes program as it tonight pulled out of its 2015 nuclear deal.

The government announced  as hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Mashhad to mourn General Soleimani  it will no longer abide by any restrictions on its operations put in place by the deal.



State TV announced the bounty, saying: Iran has 80 million inhabitants. Based on the Iranian population, we want to raise $80million (61million) which is a reward for those who get close to the head of President Trump.

In response, Trump said America would strike back immediately and possibly disproportionately if they acted.

He tweeted: These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly and fully strike back and perhaps in a disproportionate manner.

It comes as the two countrys teeter on the brink of war after Iran threatened to attack the White House while branding Donald Trump a terrorist in a suit after he vowed to target 52 sites in the Islamic Republic.

The menacing message was delivered by Iranian politician Abolfazl Abutorabi, who labelled the USs deadly strike on General Soleimani a declaration of war.

He said: We can attack the White House itself, we can respond to them on the American soil. We have the power, and God willing we will respond in an appropriate time.

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Kindness and empathy have immense power to improve health. And those who serve others swear that it radically increases their satisfaction from life.

Studies conducted over the years have found many positive effects of volunteering from increased self-esteem and improved satisfaction to lower blood pressure and cardiac risks. A study conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University shows that older adults who volunteer for at least 200 hours per year decrease their risk of hypertension, or high blood pressure, by 40 per cent.

When Amrita Kaur Vij (29) moved from Kolkata to Bangalore three and half years back, she wasnt sure what else to do with her time outside of her work. A chartered accountant by profession she decided to give volunteering a try and starting distributing food packets to the homeless once a month as part of the organisation Lets Spread Love. And the experience completely changed her life, and helped her make the new city her home.

I started volunteering regularly and the joy I experienced was unparalleled. I have formed a strong bond with the kids I met during distribution. I have been thinking of going back to Kolkata, but the kids say dont go. Volunteering has made me more positive, she says.

Raag Malhotra (27) who also volunteers with the organisation says seeing the smiles on the faces of the kids makes her want to do it over and over again. We spend time talking to them post the food distribution. The kids talk about their school and their families. They are so excited to talk to us, she says adding that volunteering has giving her immense satisfaction. You become more empathetic. I have more gratitude for all the things in life. It is made me happier, she states with a smile.

Backed by science

Studies conducted over the years have found many positive effects of volunteering from increased self-esteem and improved satisfaction to lower blood pressure and cardiac risks. A study conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University shows that older adults who volunteer for at least 200 hours per year decrease their risk of hypertension, or high blood pressure, by 40 per cent. The study, published by the American Psychological Associations Psychology and Aging journal, suggests that volunteer work may be an effective non-pharmaceutical option to help prevent the condition.

A meta-analysis of 40 studies published in BMC Public Health in 2013 stated that volunteering had favourable effects on depression, life satisfaction and wellbeing. Meta-analysis of five cohort studies found volunteers to be at lower risk of mortality. Another study involving 1504 adults published in BMC Public Health in 2017 examined other-oriented and self-oriented volunteering in cumulative contribution to health outcomes (mental and physical health, life satisfaction, social well-being and depression). The study found that both forms of volunteering were significantly related to better health outcomes, except the effect of self-oriented volunteering on depression. Other-oriented volunteering was found to have better health benefits than did self-volunteering. The researchers concluded that volunteering should be promoted by public health, education and policy practitioners as a kind of healthy lifestyle, especially for the social subgroups of elders, ethnic minorities, those with little education, single

people, and unemployed people, who generally have poorer health and less participation in volunteering.

Spiritual satisfaction

For Dr Issa Fathima Jasmine, a consultant orthodontist based in Chennai, helping those who need get food through her project Ayyamittu Unn is nothing short of a spiritual experience. Through the project she has placed seven community fridges in Chennai and plans to start many more in the country. I used to donate food but over time I realised I wanted a medium where people can take food without being embarrassed. The community fridge was the answer. Anyone can donate food and anyone in need can take food from it without hesitation, she explains.

Within two years of starting the project, she was able to redistribute food worth of lakhs that would have otherwise gone into the bin, and was able to collect more than a tonne worth of toys, books, shoes and clothes that have been channelized to reach the right hands. Through this project I have met so many amazing people and learnt so much on the way. And when I see people take food with a smile on their face, it really motivates me.

Helping anyone can be life altering, and Seema Mohanchandran found her calling in helping animals in need. As part of Love, Protect, Rescue, a Hyderabad-based group, she helps rescue street animals, get them treated and adopted and also work towards sensitizing people towards the cause. The 50-year-old who is today completely dedicated to welfare work believes helping others improves life immeasurably. It makes you more compassionate and selfless. It improves your patience and makes you more tolerant. More importantly when you put your head on your pillow at night, it helps you sleep so much better, she signs off.
Sikh organisations staged a protest in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district on Monday against the vandalism at Gurdwara Nankana Sahib in Pakistan's Punjab province.

Over 300 Sikhs raising anti-Pakistan slogans blocked a highway in Rajbagh area and demanded protection to minorities and their places of worship in Pakistan.

The protesters burnt effigy of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan as they condemned the killing of a Sikh in the mob attack at the Gurdwara on Friday.

"We demand protection to minorities and their places of worship in Pakistan," Charanpreet Singh, a sikh leader, told reporters.

He said the incident was a matter of "shame" for Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Gurdwara Nankana Sahib, also known as Gurdwara Janam Asthan, is a site near Lahore where the first Guru of Sikhs, Guru Nanak, was born.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
VANCOUVERDr. Nadine Caron says she hears difficult stories every day from some of her Indigenous patients in rural British Columbia facing a diagnosis of cancer.

They tell her why they didnt have a family physician to go to first, why they didnt trust the medical system when they started having symptoms and that no one told them about screening opportunities.

Caron has already identified through research that First Nations in the province are less likely to survive a cancer diagnosis than non-First Nations in B.C.

Now, through a new position created at the University of British Columbia, she plans to tackle how to improve not only cancer outcomes but also wellness among Indigenous Peoples.

I think part of it is, how do we change our health-care system so that we celebrate, as a country, our Indigenous people  so that we actually ensure that our health-care services are a safe space for them that they feel empowered to use, that they have the right to use and benefit from, just like all Canadians, she said in an interview.

Caron was Canadas first female First Nations general surgeon.

During a ceremony on Monday, she was named the inaugural First Nations Health Authority chair in cancer and wellness at the university.

Caron, who lives in Prince George, B.C., provides surgical cancer care to rural populations, while also serving as co-director of UBCs Centre for Excellence in Indigenous Health.

Over the course of her five-year term in the position, she plans to take a holistic approach that acknowledges how colonization, racism, marginalization and poverty have led to a disparity in health outcomes.

Caron said she will focus on collecting and reporting Indigenous cancer experiences and outcomes, and better understanding the systems responsiveness to Indigenous cancer care needs.

Dr. Dermot Kelleher, dean of UBCs faculty of medicine and vice-president of health, said in a statement the school is delighted with her appointment.

The centuries-old knowledge of the importance of wellness, integral to Indigenous traditional learnings, is now a critical principle informing twenty-first century health care.

For Caron, the appointment is about improving the lives of some of her patients. While lack of access to services is a major contributing factor, the historical treatment of First Nations, Metis and Inuit Canadians has led many to distrust the system.

She told the story of one woman she worked with last year, who was diagnosed with breast cancer.

I explained from the medical point of view what I strongly recommended, which included surgery and would give her an excellent chance of surviving, Caron said.

The woman asked if it would be possible to do the surgery at Carons clinic, but it wasnt equipped for surgery. Caron tried to convince the woman to go to a different hospital or another medical facility, but she couldnt be persuaded.

She eventually said she trusted me, she trusted the space our office could provide her, but she couldnt face further involvement with the medical system, Caron said.

She said that she had had such horrific experiences that she would not go into a hospital.

Caron was the senior author of the first study comparing cancer development and survival between First Nations and non-First Nations people in B.C. in 2017.

In addition to the lower survival rates, the study published in the journal Cancer Causes & Control also revealed some cancers, including colorectal and cervical, are significantly more common among First Nations.

At the same time, overall cancer incidence among First Nations is lower than among non-First Nations residents, it found.

The study has filled in some knowledge gaps, but Caron said theres a dearth of research on Indigenous health in Canada and worldwide.

She said shes come across many questions in her clinical work that led her to search medical literature, only to find the questions hadnt been asked before, or if they had, theyd never been answered.

I wanted to be someone who would start to address that gap, she said.

The position is supported by a $1.5 million contribution from the First Nations Health Authority with matching funds from the university.

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Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Company Limited (HKG:338) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 11% in the last month. But that cannot eclipse the less-than-impressive returns over the last three years. Truth be told the share price declined 45% in three years and that return, Dear Reader, falls short of what you could have got from passive investing with an index fund.

View our latest analysis for Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical

While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price.

Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical saw its EPS decline at a compound rate of 25% per year, over the last three years. In comparison the 18% compound annual share price decline isn't as bad as the EPS drop-off. So the market may not be too worried about the EPS figure, at the moment -- or it may have previously priced some of the drop in.

The company's earnings per share (over time) is depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

SEHK:338 Past and Future Earnings, January 6th 2020

Dive deeper into Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical's key metrics by checking this interactive graph of Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical's earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What About Dividends?

It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. The TSR incorporates the value of any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings, along with any dividends, based on the assumption that the dividends are reinvested. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a more complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend. In the case of Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical, it has a TSR of -31% for the last 3 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

Story continues

A Different Perspective

Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical shareholders are down 22% for the year (even including dividends) , but the market itself is up 14%. However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. Longer term investors wouldn't be so upset, since they would have made 6.1%, each year, over five years. It could be that the recent sell-off is an opportunity, so it may be worth checking the fundamental data for signs of a long term growth trend. Keeping this in mind, a solid next step might be to take a look at Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical's dividend track record. This free interactive graph is a great place to start.

We will like Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical better if we see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on HK exchanges.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Massive violence was reported inside the JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) campus on Sunday evening. At least 28 people including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) when masked miscreants attacked with sticks, iron rods and stones.

'Enough is enough', 'Horrifying, 'heartbreaking' and 'barbaric', that's how people in the film industry described the violence that took place late evening. They demanded that the people who were behind the attacks shall be punished and brought to justice.



Ankur Tewari, the man who was behind Gully Boy's 18-song album, took to Twitter to pen down a powerful poem on the entire scenario. In the support of anti-CAA protests, here's what he wrote.



   

  

  

    

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

  

  

   

   

  

   

    pic.twitter.com/MBZ7xcoHT3  Ankur Tewari (@ankurtewari) January 5, 2020

His tweet has been going viral on social media.

Meanwhile, Anil Kapoor recently stated that he couldn't sleep the entire night after coming to terms with what had happened. He said he was feeling disturbed. "Nothing is going to happen with violence. Those who have done this should be punished, he said at the trailer launch of his movie Malang.



Alia Bhatt also penned down a powerful note in solidarity with the anti-CAA protests.



When students, teachers and peaceful civilians become victims of physical assault on an ongoing basis, its time to stop pretending that all is fine. We must look truth in the eye and acknowledge that we are a house at war with itself. We, the people of this country no matter how different our ideologies, must find a human solution to all of our complex problems, and reinforce the peaceful and inclusive ideals upon which this country was built," she wrote.



TOI

Several other Bollywood celebrities also took to social media to demand for justice.



How long will this be allowed to continue? How long will you turn a blind eye? How long will the defenceless be attacked in the name of politics or religion? Enough is enough. @DelhiPolice  Dia Mirza (@deespeak) January 5, 2020

such is the condition inside what we consider to be a place where our future is shaped. Its getting scarred for ever. Irreversible damage. What kind of shaping up is happening here, its there for us to see.... saddening https://t.co/Qt2q7HRhLG  taapsee pannu (@taapsee) January 5, 2020

I'm sorry, students of #JNU and of India. You're bearing the brunt of a fascist dictatorship & we, the people, YOUR people, your Nation, are failing you. :(  VISHAL DADLANI (@VishalDadlani) January 5, 2020

Why do you need to cover your face? Because you know you are doing something wrong, illegal & punishable. There is no honour in this-Its horrific to see the visuals of students & teachers brutally attacked by masked goons inside JNU-Such violence cannot & should not be tolerated  Riteish Deshmukh (@Riteishd) January 5, 2020
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 6) Filipinos residing in Australia remain on high alert as deadly bushfires continue to ravage parts of the country.

Angeline Bulan, a Filipina living in Sydney, described how smoke and ashes became part of her daily view  despite her places distance from the fires.

Amoy na amoy ang usok, mahirap lumabas, maraming mga ashes at gumagamit ng masks, Bulan told CNN Philippines Balitaan Monday as she recounted the scenes from her state.

[Translation: You can smell the smoke, its hard to leave the house. There are a lot of ashes and people are wearing masks.]

Bulan said the fires can be unpredictable and can actually spark anywhere.

May mga araw rin na nagki-clear up, pero may mga araw rin nagfe-flare up yung smoke, she added.

[Translation: There are days when the smoke would clear up, and there are days when it would flare up.]

Bulan, however, praised the Australian governments immediate responsewith firefighters ready to tackle the blaze. She revealed there is also an app  Fires Near Me which would alert residents in case of a nearby bushfire incident.

Malacanang, for its part, said the Philippine government is also ready to help those affected by the fires.

"We understand that about 300 Filipinos have been evacuated from that area," Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in his media briefing Monday.

Ginagawa ng ating pamahalaan ang mga hakbangin upang mapanatiling ligtas ang ating mga kababayan sa nagaganap na conflagration, he added.

[Translation: Our government is undertaking measures to make sure that our fellow Filipinos are safe from the fires.]

Bushfires have been burning out of control across several parts of Australia for months now leaving several residents homeless. The catastrophic fires which also claimed the lives of humans and animals alike prompted celebrities and athletes to raise thousands of dollar in donations for the victims.
CAMBRIDGE  For Stefan Osdene, an electric fan is more than a household appliance.

Sure, it can move air and make a person feel a bit more comfortable on a hot day. But it is also a thing of beauty, a marvel of engineering, and a window into history.

Osdene should know. Over the past 30 years, he has owned thousands of fans. His most prized possession is a 140-year-old fan motor. Some folks might even call him a fanatic.

An art historian who makes a living selling antique watches and jewelry, Osdene is also the curator of a unique museum of antique electrical appliances.

Still a work in progress, the private gallery  open by appointment only  is housed above his shop, Cambridge Gold and Antiques, where vintage appliances, high voltage signs and a pair of Art Deco industrial fans hint at what is upstairs in the shop, located about halfway between Whitewater and Madison.

Shelves are lined with primitive blenders and toasters from days when safety was an afterthought. There are novelty cigarette lighters and heavy-duty appliances, such as a 1904 trolling motor made in Menomonie and the Washkosh washer from Oshkosh.

Started with the fan

For Osdene, the appliances help tell the story of industrialized society, a story that began with the electric fan.

They were one of the first appliances other than electrical lights used in homes, he said. Fans were the thing that people adopted first.

The earliest electric fans were battery-powered, but plug-in fans began to proliferate with the advent of electric generating stations in the 1880s. As current was brought into homes, inventors and manufacturers developed an array of electrical appliances to automate everyday tasks and make life a little more comfortable.

After all, electric utilities were among the first to sell household appliances as a way to boost demand for this new service. In 1929, electric power companies accounted for 35% of all appliances  more than any type of retail outlet, according to a contemporary paper in the Journal of Land & Public Utility Economics.

Osdene is fascinated by history and by the ingenuity of these early contraptions.

Its really simple, he said. Its just an electric motor with a blade.

And yet, despite the elegance of their design and aesthetic beauty of brass blades, the oldest fans are increasingly rare. Osdene said often the blades were stripped off and the motors repurposed. Other fans were scrapped or just tossed in the trash.

They werent treated as great artifacts, he said. Just pieces of industrial equipment.

Intrigued by Willy Wonka

Osdene, 38, grew up in Richmond, Va., the son of a cancer researcher who spent 30 years as a top scientist for the Philip Morris Co.

He traces his fascination to a childhood viewing of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He said he was terrified as Charlie and his grandfather floated dangerously close to the blades of a giant fan after drinking Wonkas fizzy-lifting drink.

Later he visited the Edison and Ford winter estates in Florida, where he became intrigued by the ingenuity of electric motors, and his fear turned to obsession.

I had to have one, he said. I was hooked.

He bought his first fan  a Signal Electric  from a thrift store when he was 8.

By age 15, Osdene was a full-fledged collector, displaying about a dozen of his favorite pieces as part of a young collectors exhibit for the Smithsonian Institutes 150th anniversary celebration. He boasted that he had more than 3,000 appliances occupying several rooms of the family home.

Osdene came to Wisconsin in 2006 after graduating from Cornell University to study art history at the University of Wiscosin-Madison. He eventually earned a doctorate with a dissertation on the history of neon signs, which he concedes was a detour from his interest in collecting.

During graduate school, Osdene was prowling junk and antique stores, often discovering treasures related to the states manufacturing roots.

Companies such as Hamilton Beach, Oster and Dremel all were started in Wisconsin.

Racine produced more fractional horsepower motors and small motorized appliances than any other city in the United States, Osdene said. It began with vibrators and evolved into electrical mixers.

After a stint teaching at UW-Oshkosh, Osdene decided to forgo a career in academia, which he said had forced him to become myopic, focused on minutiae with little relevance to most people.

Ive more or less gone the route of buying and selling, he said. I didnt like teaching too much.

More than a dealer

That is not to imply he is simply an antiques dealer.

Osdenes mind is like a catalog of data that is instantly at his disposal, said Michael Partney, a fan collector from Minneapolis.

Osdene can identify a first-generation Emerson fan from 1934 by the color of its blades and shape of the guards. But he can just as easily veer into an esoteric discussion of the merits of alternating current and the early battles between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse.

Osdenes collection has attracted media attention over the years. He was featured in a Smithsonian magazine article when he was 15, which led to appearances on the Antiques Roadshow appraisal program and spawned feature stories in the local newspaper.

He was profiled by the Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News, which likened his collection to an appliance store operated by the states rural cooperative association in the 1940s.

The hosts of American Pickers visited Osdene in 2015, picking through a garage full of fans at his West Side home before discovering the real treasure  an 1870s electric pen, a battery-powered duplication machine made by Thomas Edisons company.

Believed to be the first electric motor-driven appliance sold in the United States, the pen fetched $12,000, which Osdene used to help buy the cornerstone of his collection, an 1889 induction fan motor.

Manufactured by Westinghouse, the motor was designed by Nikola Tesla, the Serbian inventor considered the father of modern electricity. Tesla used magnetic forces to spin a shaft and transmit mechanical energy. He used the alternating current, which won out over Edisons direct current to become the standard for electrical transmission.

Osdene explains it is the earliest known example of an alternating-current motor available to the general public and one of only a handful that still survive  including two in the Smithsonian.

Its really a key piece historically, Osdene said. Its the most important piece I own.

Despite landing his white whale, Osdene is not done collecting.

Ill do it till the day I die. I love it. Its a constant thrill of chasing and pursuing stuff, he said. I enjoy the objects when I have them. I can never see myself getting over collecting. If its not fans, its going to be something else.

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New Delhi [India], Jan 6 (ANI): The Enforcement Directorate has summoned Congress leader and former Karnataka Minister DK Shivakumar to appear before it on January 13.



The Supreme Court had on November 15 dismissed the Enforcement Directorate's plea challenging the bail granted to Shivakumar by the Delhi High Court in connection with an alleged money laundering case.

On October 23, the Delhi High Court had granted bail to Shivakumar while taking into note that he had been extensively interrogated by the probe agency since his arrest on September 3.

The High Court had said that there was no material on record to show that he was a flight risk. (ANI)


Peace Now says settlement building has increased under PM Benjamin Netanyahu and ally US President Donald Trump.

Israel has approved the construction of nearly 2,000 new settler homes on occupied Palestinian territories, an anti-settlement watchdog group said on Monday.

Peace Now said that nearly 800 housing units received the final approvals needed for construction to begin. It said initial approvals were given for an additional 1,150 homes. Settlement projects require several rounds of approvals.

The green light was given on Sunday and Monday, the watchdog group said, adding that 89 percent of the new homes will be erected in settlements that Israel may have to evacuate under a future peace agreement with the Palestinians.

The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli military body that oversees civilian affairs in the occupied West Bank, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to Peace Now, settlement building has vastly increased under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ally US President Donald Trump.

Netanyahu has been fighting for his political survival after being charged with corruption and after failing to form a new coalition government following April and September elections.

The prime minister, who was indicted in November on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, is now facing a third general election in March.

Despite lacking a clear mandate, for this caretaker government its business as usual  continue the massive promotion of harmful and unnecessary construction in occupied territory and in places that Israel will have to evacuate, said Peace Now in a statement.

Netanyahu continues to sabotage the prospects of peace, dragging Israel into an anti-democratic one-state reality resembling apartheid.

Illegal under international law

Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967 in a move never recognised by the international community.

Its settlements are deemed illegal under international law and widely seen as the main obstacle to peace.

Some 600,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank and Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem among around 2.9 million Palestinians.

Late last year, the Trump administration said it would no longer consider Israeli settlements in the occupied territories illegal.

The move was hailed by Netanyahu while Palestinians have been outraged.

The European Union, United Nations and others have stressed, however, that they continue to consider the settlements illegal.

Last month, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague announced that she believes there is a basis for investigating Israels settlement policies in the occupied West Bank, and that they could constitute a war crime.

The prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has asked the ICC to determine whether she has jurisdiction before opening a formal investigation.

Israel has argued that the occupied West Bank is disputed territory whose fate should be resolved in negotiations and that Bensouda has no jurisdiction in this case.
The United nations, the US and Turkey have condemned the death of 30 military trainees who were killed Saturday in an airstrike, reportedly perpetrated by forces of east-based military commander Khalifa Haftar.

Saturdays bombing reportedly took place as cadets were gathering on a parade ground at the Hadaba academy in a southern district of capital Tripoli.

The UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), on Sunday strongly condemned the bombing of the military academy in the capital Tripoli, which according to news reports left at least 30 dead and more than 30 others wounded.

Responding to Saturdays attack, where the majority of victims were reportedly cadets from cities across the country, UNSMIL stressed in a statement in Arabic on Twitter, that the escalation in military action in this dangerous manner further complicates the situation in Libya and threatens opportunities to return to the political process.

On the eve of the shelling of the academy, and following an uptick in aerial attacks and shelling in recent weeks, which have killed at least 11 civilians since early December, the Secretary-General Antonio Guterres released a statement on Friday, renewing his call for an immediate ceasefire in Libya and a return to political dialogue.

Turkey, in a statement issued by its foreign ministry, urged the international community to take steps to stop Haftar, secure a ceasefire in Libya, and to put an end to external support provided to Haftar.

The ministry underlined that Turkey would continue to pursue efforts in solidarity with the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA).

The US also on Sunday expressed its discontent over the attack on the military training school and voiced concerns over foreign interference in Libyan internal affairs. We also condemn attacks in recent days against Tripolis Matiga Airport and indiscriminate shelling against civilian infrastructure and residential neighborhoods of Tripoli, which killed and injured many civilians, the US embassy in Libya said in a statement.

All Libyan parties have a responsibility to end this dangerous involvement of foreign forces, which is contributing to civilian casualties and damaging civilian infrastructure to the detriment of all Libyans, it added.

The airstrikes occurred as Haftar announced in December the final push for the seizure of Tripoli amid growing Turkish plans to intervene on the side of the GNA following a Nov. maritime and security agreement between the UN-backed Libyan government and Ankara. The Turkish parliament Thursday approved the government plans to send troops to the oil-rich African country dogged by rivalries since 2011 following removal and killing of former Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed revolution.

Haftar launched early April a surprise military offensive to seize the Libyan capital from the GNA that he accuses of housing terrorist and criminal groups. The offensive backed by Egypt, UAE, Russia and Saudi Arabia has been facing staunch resistance from GNA-aligned forces backed by Turkey and Qatar.
A firefighter had to have open heart surgery because he got an infection after trying to fish popcorn out of his teeth with pieces of metal.

Adam Martin, 41, developed an infection of the heart called endocarditis which is caused by bacteria spreading through the bloodstream.

He had had a piece of popcorn stuck in his teeth for three days and used a pen lid, toothpick, piece of wire and even a metal nail to try and get it out.

But jamming the objects into his mouth then led to a gum infection which spread to his heart and left him fighting for his life.

Doctors managed to save him through an operation to remove an infected blood clot from his leg and another seven-hour surgery to replace a valve in his heart.

Adam Martin, 41, developed a deadly infection just days after using various household objects to try and dislodge a piece of popcorn from his teeth

Mr Martin, who works as a firefighter in Cornwall, said he came down with a fever which left him seriously worried about his health. Hospital tests revealed he had an infection in his heart

'I wasn't far off death's door and I am extremely lucky,' said Mr Martin, from Coverack in Cornwall.

'The popcorn stuck in my teeth is the only possible cause I can think of. I am never eating popcorn again that's for sure.'

Mr Martin had developed endocarditis, a bacterial infection of the inner lining of the heart (the endocardium).

This can cause the heart to swell up and the valves to suffer serious damage and even destroy them completely.

Mr Martin, pictured with his children (from left) Holly (14), George (7) and Megan (15) had to have a total of 12 hours of surgery to repair his heart and artery

HOW COULD BACTERIA IN YOUR MOUTH DAMAGE YOUR HEART? Endocarditis, the illness Mr Martin suffered from, is caused by bacteria or infection spreading to the heart through the bloodstream from elsewhere in the body. The NHS says that bacteria can enter the blood through the gums, especially if someone has bad oral hygiene, through small cuts. And gum infections may also spread through the blood and trigger infection elsewhere in the body. This could be because the gums are a weak point of entry for bacteria to get into the blood. They are closely connected to the whole body's bloodstream and are easier to damage than skin, for example. The link between the gums and the heart is already well-established and having gum disease is known to raise the risk of having a stroke or a heart attack because swelling in the mouth may reflect swelling in blood vessels elsewhere in the body. Source: NHS Advertisement

The NHS lists bacteria entering the blood through the mouth or a gum infection as some of the top causes of the illness.

And the metal nail, piece of wire and pen lid Mr Martin jammed into his gum to try and get the popcorn out may have triggered the reaction which nearly killed him.

The father-of-three had got the popcorn stuck in his teeth while watching a film at home with his wife, Helen, in September.

A week afterwards he developed night sweats, fatigue, headaches and eventually a heart murmur, which are all signs of infection.

He went to a doctor on October 7 and doctors diagnosed a mild heart murmur and sent him for blood tests and X-rays, which were uneventful.

Mr Martin was sent home with medication to recover under his own steam but, a few days later, he still had flu-like symptoms.

He also developed a blood blister on his toe - which was later diagnosed as a Janeway lesion, a sign of infective endocarditis.

Worried about his worsening condition, Mr Martin went to the Royal Cornwall Hospital on October 18. He was then diagnosed with endocarditis.

Although the popcorn didn't cause Mr Martin's illness, it may have been triggered by him damaging his gums with dirty items he used to try and get the food out of his teeth

Mr Martin developed a blood blister on his toe - later diagnosed as a Janeway lesion  which is a sign of infective endocarditis

He said: 'I had a feeling there was something seriously wrong. I was sleeping an awful lot and I felt terrible.

'I had aches and pains in my legs and I just did not feel right at all. I was admitted to hospital the same day for tests. By this point I was very worried.

'I felt quite ill and I knew I was not right at all.'

A muscle ache in his leg turned out to be an infected clot wedged in his femoral artery, which required a five-hour operation to clear.

Meanwhile, Mr Martin was being treated with medication to fight the infection but chest scans revealed his heart had been severely damaged and would need an urgent operation.

He was transferred to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, about 80miles (129km) from his home, on October 21 and had seven hours of open heart surgery to replace his heart's aortic valve and repair the mitral valve, which had been damaged by the infection.

Mr Martin is pictured with two of his children at the hospital in Plymouth, some 80 miles away from his home, where he was taken for his lifesaving surgery

It took around a month for Mr Martin to recover completely from his ordeal (pictured left and right in hospital). He said: 'It all happened so quickly and it did get sketchy. I won't be going near popcorn again, that's for sure'

Mr Martin said: 'My heart was not properly working anymore. It was essentially wrecked. The infection had eaten the valves away.

'I should have just gone to the dentist in the first place. I don't want anyone to go through what I have done.

'It all happened so quickly and it did get sketchy. I won't be going near popcorn again, that's for sure.

'It's crazy to think all this happened because of that. It was something so trivial.'

Mr Martin made a quick recovery following surgery and returned home to his wife and three children Megan, 15, Holly, 14, and George, seven, at the end of October.
Two powerful Democrats in the Senate are demanding that Donald Trump publicly release the notification he sent to Congress after the killing of a top Iranian general, which has raised concern of major armed conflict between the US and Iran in the Middle East.

In a letter to the president on Monday, senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Menendez urged Mr Trump to release the notification, which is required under the US War Powers Resoluation.

"It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner," the pair wrote. "An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society, and there appears to be no legitimate justification for classifying this notification."

The letter comes just days after Mr Trump approved a targeted airstrike against Soleimani, who was the leader of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, an elite branch of the Iranian military.

Mr Trump and his administration has since justified the attack by claiming that an "imminent" threat to American lives was present, and that killing the Iranian leader has made the world and region safer.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

But critics have expressed concern that targeting such a high level official in the Iranian government could have been a step too far, with Democrats noting that a Sunday vote by the Iraqi parliament to expel American troops from the country shows that US security interests have already been damaged.

We do not generally execute high-level political figures of sovereign nations, in part because we know that that opens a Pandoras box that may expose American officials to assassination, but also because we know that ultimately that may get more Americans killed, as it likely will, said Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator, on Sunday.

Iran has vowed harsh retaliation for the death of the general, whose body was met by tens of thousands of mourners in the street who chanted "death to America" when it was returned to Iran on Sunday.

Soleimani's successor, Esmail Ghaani, is among the high level Iranian officials to have threatened retaliation against the US, casting his predecessor as a martyr whose death must be honoured by forcing the United States out of the region.

"I promise to continue martyr Soleimani's cause as firmly as before with the help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid oc America from the region," he said on Monday on state television, according to Reuters.

He continued: "God the Almighty has promised to take martyr Soleimani's revenge. Certainly, actions will be taken."

Mr Trump, meanwhile, has threatened to strike back against Iran in a "disproportionate manner" if American citizens or infrastructure is targeted by Iran. In a tweet on Sunday, the president claimed that he was notifying Congress that the US would "quickly & fully strike back" if Iran attacked American targets.
The assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani is an unusual, possibly aberrant, event. The killing of this individual leader of a sovereign state may lead to all-out war between Iran and the U.S.  or, on the other hand, the assassination may bring an end to the cycle of Iranian violence countered by U.S. and world diplomatic flatulence and appeasement.

Assassinating the leaders of terrorist organizations  i.e., non-state actors, such as Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi  did not lead to a greater war footing against the USA because, as terrorist organization leaders, not heads of state, they are automatically considered rogue, even by sovereign state leaders sympathetic to their goals. Al-Qaeda and ISIS, despite any claims to territorial governance, are non-state actors. Thus, despite ISIS's former control of land areas, ISIS was despised for its aggressions but was not considered a serious threat to the power of leaders of other Muslim-dominant states within the region. The Middle Eastern Muslim states that may, to a certain degree, be sympathetic to ISIS's dreams of a re-established caliphate such as existed for hundreds of years nevertheless did not intend to defer to the leader of ISIS as that caliph. Despite Islam's socio-political backwardness in today's world, the glories of Islam's earlier history loom large in the consciousness of most Islamics. ISIS did not appear to Islamics as the proper heir of that presumed glorious history.

Iran's listing as a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department puts it into a special category. Iran is a behind-the-scenes puppeteer of Hamas operating in Gaza, Hezb'allah operating in Lebanon, and the Houthis operating in Yemen as well as a variety of groups in Iraq. Not only did Iran held 52 Americans hostage for over a year after the ayatollahs overthrew the Shah in the 1970s, but the Iranians were crucial in the bombing of the U.S. military barracks in Lebanon (1983), the bombing of the Khobar Towers and American troops in Saudi Arabia (1996), the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998), the bombing of the USS Cole (2000), and the attack on the World Trade Center (2001). With this nefarious history, acting through proxies to undermine the security of the West and the U.S. in particular, Iran's designation as a terrorist state  living in the gray area between sovereign legitimacy and terrorist aggression  is warranted and necessary.

In essence, the Iranians have been in an undeclared war with the U.S. since the ayatollahs and their religiously inspired and power-mad henchmen took over the reins of government from the despotic but pro-American Shah in the seventies. However, fear of being perceived as declaring war on Islam has kept us from a direct declaration of war on Iran even though the Islamic world is divided between the Shiites, represented by Iran, and the larger majority of Muslims, who are Sunnis. George H.W. Bush was considered a master diplomat because he managed to garner large-scale support and allies in the Islamic world for his attack on Iraq and Saddam Hussein after Saddam successfully invaded Kuwait. Bush was able to accomplish this feat because he was acting  on the surface  in defense of an Islamic country, Kuwait, from the depredations of a vicious dictator, Saddam Hussein. However, Bush refrained from capturing or executing Saddam or deposing Saddam and taking control of Iraq. He carefully refrained from asserting hegemony over an Islamic country.

Why were Soleimani and other evil players not targeted over these many decades of Iranian murders and plots to murder? As noted above, there was a fear of being perceived as anti-Islamic or as advancing a "clash of civilizations" agenda, even being so perceived by Islamics who were anti-Shiite. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan who worked as a CIA analyst and Pentagon official on Middle East issues under both Bush and Obama, stated that "what always kept both Democratic and Republican presidents from targeting Soleimani himself was the simple question: Was the strike worth the likely retaliation, and the potential to pull us into protracted conflict?"

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was the head of the Joint Special Operations Command in the Bush administration, in a 2009 article for Foreign Policy recounted his decision not to attack Soleimani's convoy in Iraq one night in 2007. He wrote that while "there was good reason" to attack Soleimani over the deaths of U.S. forces by Iranian-placed roadside bombs in Iraq, "to avoid a firefight, and the contentious politics that would follow, I decided that we should monitor the caravan, not strike immediately."

We can see, then, that appeasement of the Iranian fanatics did not begin with the sell-out Iran deal completed by President Barack Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry. Rather Obama's deal with Iran was full blown appeasement and bribery of Iran the likes of which have taken place since the administration of Pres. Jimmy Carter. (It is worth noting here that billions of dollars of frozen bank accounts were released to Iran as an important part of the deal for the hostage release on January 20, 1981.) Despite violent aggression against the U.S. by Iran, we have continued to look the other way in order to avoid a wider conflict with Iran that might threaten our ally Israel as well as American interests or lead to conflict with other non-Shiite players in the Muslim world who might be offended or incensed by our retaliation.

By assassinating Soleimani, President Trump has broken with the conventional wisdom regarding the need to appease Iran in its covert war against the U.S. However, 9/11 was a game-changer that has not been properly acknowledged by the USA. The present administration has been taking a more proactive and pro-America policy line in foreign affairs. Diplomatic flatulence has been replaced by a policy of emphatic diligence in behalf of our safety and prosperity. Emphatic diligence means more pushback against foreign policies that send mixed messages about our commitment to stand against political or economic tyrannies. Pushback is affirmed by the Trump administration, but not desire for conquest.

Bad deals and bad players in our world often are disguised as being multilateral and thus serving a wider good. But those depictions such as TPP, NAFTA, the Iran deal, the Paris Climate Accords, WTO trade deals with the People's Republic of China, and even to some degree NATO can be self-serving to placate the crowd that loves being served hors d'oeuvres by fawning servants in Geneva, Brussels, and other prestigious capitals.

Trump's assassination of Soleimani is taking us out of this diplomatic quagmire. He is signaling that the years of appeasement of Iran are over. Hiding behind terrorist proxy groups has worked for Iran since the ayatollahs took over in the 1970s. This strike against the head of the Revolutionary Guards may cause the cowardly leaders of Iran to reconsider their modus operandi on the world stage, or it may lead to a lashing out. Whichever path they take, our resolve to stop participating in the cycle of terror attacks and subsequent appeasement of a rogue state is now affirmed.
The majority of tigers of Indias parks and reserves tend to ignore people.

However, those in the Sundarbans, the mangrove forests of the Ganges Delta, are a major threat to life and limb; up to 60 people are allegedly killed by tigers each year.

Cats, its claimed, even swim out to attack fishermen in boats. Ironically, people praying for protection at little Hindu shrines around the area, are particularly vulnerable.

Tigers, stealth and ambush predators, seize their victims from behind, splitting neck-bones and clamping windpipes.

Frontal attacks are avoided; the quarry may spot the predator, reducing the chances of a successful kill and putting the attacker at risk of injury from the victims teeth and claws.

During the 1980s, a student at the Science Club of Calcutta came up with a simple, but ingenious, idea.

Paint human faces on rubber masks, he suggested, and persuade people venturing into the forests to wear them on the backs of their heads.

A mask would fool the tiger into thinking that the potential victim was facing it. Insects use similar tricks; the circles on the wings of Irish peacock butterflies come to mind.

The idea was tested experimentally. Masks were issued to 2,500 of the 8,000 fishermen wood-harvesters and wild honey collectors entering the Sundarbans Reserve in 1986.

Over a three-year period, according to a New York Times report at the time, no worker wearing a rear-facing mask was attacked, whereas 28 people without masks were killed.

Alas, most tigers eventually spotted the deception.

An extraordinary piece of video footage, which went viral recently, is a perfect illustration of the theory behind the two-faced mask trick.

In it, seven-year-old Sean Costello is seen viewing a tiger at Dublin Zoo; his father filmed him from behind.

The tiger and Sean eyed each other but the cat remained motionless several metres away.

However, as soon as the boy turned his back, the animal charged, only to be stopped in its tracks by the glass window of the enclosure.

Zoo animals, fed and found, seldom indulge in such shenanigans.

In the wild, however, young tigers must hone their hunting skills if they are to survive. Charging at Sean was typical of such behaviour.

Some predators even teach their young. Domestic cats will catch and release a mouse repeatedly, allowing their kittens to play with the victim.

Peregrines, the supreme hunters of the bird world, also educate their chicks. Each fledged juvenile may be allocated a station to which the parents bring food.

Then items are brought to locations some distance away, so that the young peregrine must fly to reach them.

Next, it learns to snatch food from the talons of a parent while rolling in the air.Finally, food is dropped from a height, to be caught in mid-air.

If the student fails to intercept it, the parent swoops down, retrieves the item, and repeats the exercise.

Plant eaters have different educational needs; their emphasis is on health and safety. Eyes ears, and sensitive noses, must be fine-tuned, if a youngster is to avoid becoming a meal for an enemy.

Developing lightning reflexes, strong legs, speed and stamina, are the order of the day.

You are running for your dinner, I am running for my life, is the herbivores motto.
BJP leader accuses Kejriwal of favouring tukde tukde gang by not giving sanction to prosecute Kanhaiya Kumar.

BJP president and Union home minister Amit Shah being presented a sapling by Delhi BJP party president Manoj Tiwari during the BJP booth-level workers rally, Karyakarta Sammelan, in New Delhi on Sunday. (Photo: Biplab Banerjee)

New Delhi: Exuding confidence that BJP would form the next government in Delhi under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party chief Amit Shah, on Sunday, accused chief minister Arvind Kejriwal of riding to power by misleading voters with a host of promises and not fulfilling any of them.

Addressing BJPs booth-level workers rally at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, Mr Shah said, One can mislead people once but not all the time. BJP will come to power in Delhi under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Notably, BJP has been out of power in Delhi since 1998.

In a no-holds-barred attack on Mr Kejriwal, Mr Shah accused the AAP supremo of wasting public money on advertisements and misleading people. He also sought to know whether the AAP government has completed any work in the last five years.

He (Kejriwal) promised 20 colleges; I cannot see any even with binoculars. He promised 5,000 schools but they are not visible even with spectacles, Mr Shah said and asked the party workers to ensure that BJP stages a comeback in Delhi after a gap of 20 years.

The BJP leader also accused Mr Kejriwal of favouring the tukde tukde gang by not giving sanction to prosecute Kanhaiya Kumar, the former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU), in the JNU sedition case.

Mr Shah raised issues like anti-Sikh riots and construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya besides the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). He accused Congress of failing to provide relief to the victims of the 1984 riots and of opposing the Ram temple at Ayodhya.

Listing the various works done by the Modi government in Delhi, including construction of eastern and western peripheral expressways to reduce pollution, expansion of Delhi Metro, property registries in unauthorised colonies, and redevelopment of slums, Mr Shah hit out at the Kejriwal government for falling short of fulfilling his promises on various fronts.

Mr Kejriwal tweeted, I heard the entire speech of home minister Shri Amit Shah. I had thought he would point out the shortcomings in our work and talk about Delhis development. But all he did was abuse me. If he has suggestions for Delhi, he should share them. We will implement good suggestions in the next five years.

Urging the party workers to undertake door-to-door campaign to take BJPs message to the people, the party president said he will himself take part in the mohalla sabha campaign in the national capital.

BJP working president J.P. Nadda said his party is the only one that is free from dynastic politics and based on ideology.
Jacks Tavern, 703 10th Avenue, Belmar, one of the last of the Old Time Taverns in New Jersey, has been sold according to Richard Santore of Bielat Santore & Company, Allenhurst, New Jersey, the broker for the sale. The speakeasy which transformed into a neighborhood tavern subsequent to the end of Prohibition, has been owned and operated by the Terranova family for nearly 85 years.

Current fourth generation owner/operator Michael Terranova, who has been in the family business since he was 17, decided it was time to sell. Mikes great grandfather, Jack Smith purchased the property in 1934 and opened up for business asking his wife Lelia to cook for the customers. Mikes father Joseph, a chemist for Hess Oil, married his college sweetheart Carol, while sharing the duties as a bartender in the 50s and made way for his son Michael to come into the family business in the 70s. An article that recently appeared in the Coaster said that Jacks was a place where you could hang your coat on the back of a chair during a packed house and not worry about the pocket contents or the coat. A place where you could have a midnight pizza delivered with the owner getting a slice and a place where you could hear some of the best music of the Jersey Shore and without a cover.

Although this popular watering hole is shutting down, a new day may be dawning soon on 10th Avenue. The real estate and liquor license were purchased by local real estate investors and developers who have not yet finalized their plans for the 10th Avenue store. Of course, Belmar itself draws shore lovers to its pristine beaches, including families, fishermen and world-class surfers. This classic Jersey Shore town boasts a mile-long beach for sunning, bathing and some of the best surfing on the east coast. The towns beach, along with its Boardwalk and the many special events, make this a highly popular destination. Its sandy shores attract a youthful crowd that sunbathes by day and takes advantage of the animated after-hours scene at night.

So, the new owners have decisions to make in choosing the right path for their new acquisition. They can only hope that whatever their final design plans are, they will make a lasting impression on 10th Avenue in Belmar and that they may enjoy the same success that Jacks hadfor 85 years!

About Bielat Santore & Company

Bielat Santore & Company is an established commercial real estate firm. The companys expertise lies chiefly within the restaurant and hospitality industry, specializing in the sale of restaurants and other food and beverage real estate businesses. Since 1978, the principals of Bielat Santore & Company, Barry Bielat and Richard Santore, have sold more restaurants and similar type properties in New Jersey than any other real estate company. Furthermore, the firm has secured in excess of $500,000,000 in financing to facilitate these transactions. Visit the companys website, http://www.123bsc.com for the latest in new listings, property searches, available land, market data, financing trends, RSS feeds, press releases and more.
Law enforcement and public safety officials say they are monitoring the situation, including several instances of threats toward Gov. Ralph Northam (D). Even some gun enthusiasts expressed concern about the potential for violence at a rally planned for the state Capitol on Jan. 20. State police briefed Northam for two hours last week, according to one state official, and the governor plans to lead an all-staff meeting this week to go over increased security procedures.
DUBLIN, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Patient Monitoring Solutions Market: Focus on Products, Applications, End-user, Countries Data, Industry Insights and Competitive Landscape - Analysis and Forecast, 2019-2028" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Global Patient Monitoring Solutions Market report projects the market to grow at a significant CAGR of 6.5% during the forecast period from 2019 to 2028.

The market has evolved dramatically with the rise in the adoption rate of remote monitoring devices, an increasing number of geriatric populations, and the growing prevalence of chronic diseases. Despite the benefits offered by the patient monitoring technology, the major challenges in the market are the high cost of technology, risks associated with monitoring devices and lack of security of patient data and health information safety concerns.

Some of the major opportunities for the key vendors in the market could be a growing demand for monitoring devices from non-hospital settings and growing investments in healthcare IT.



Expert Quote



North America is the leading contributor to the global patient monitoring solutions market. In 2018, in terms of revenue, the North America patient monitoring solutions market is anticipated to grow at a significant CAGR during the forecast period. This double-digit growth can be attributed to the rising demand for home-based monitoring devices and increasing investment in healthcare IT. However, Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing region during the forecast period, because of the rising prevalence of chronic diseases such as diabetes, and hypertension and rising demand for home-based monitoring devices.



Scope of the Market



The purpose of this study is to gain a holistic view of the global patient monitoring solutions market in terms of various influencing factors such as regional adoption trends, and technological advancements.



The scope of this report constitutes an in-depth study of the global patient monitoring solutions market, including a thorough analysis of the products in the market as well as their adoption spanning different geographical regions. The report presents the reader with an opportunity to unlock comprehensive insights with respect to the market and helps in forming well-informed strategic decisions. The research uncovers some of the substantial parameters that must be taken into consideration before entering the market.



Market Segmentation



The global patient monitoring solutions market is segmented based on products (hemodynamic, cardiac, neuromonitoring, respiratory, diabetes, and temperature monitoring device), applications (hematology, cardiology, respiratory, neurology, metabolics, and temperature), and end-user (hospital-based patients, ambulatory based patients, and home healthcare patients), and region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest-of-the-World (Latin America and Middle East & Africa).



Key Companies in the Global Market



The report also profiles 19 key players from the patient monitoring solutions market. Some of the market players include primary and secondary data analysis tools providers such as Medtronic plc, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Abbott Laboratories, F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, General Electric Company, Omron Corporation, Nihon Kohden Corporation, Boston Scientific Corporation, and Biotronik. There are a plethora of companies providing different products such as Medtronic plc, Natus Medical, and Draegerwerk AG & Co. KGaA.

Research Highlights

The Global Patient Monitoring Solutions Market can be segmented on the basis of Product, Application, End-User, and Region.

As of 2018, the global patient monitoring solutions market was estimated to be approximately $19.30 billion and is expected to reach a value of an estimated $36.13 billion by the end of 2028, growing with a double-digit CAGR during the forecast period.

and is expected to reach a value of an estimated by the end of 2028, growing with a double-digit CAGR during the forecast period. North America dominated the patient monitoring solutions market and accounted for 42.18% in 2018, and 40.74% during the upcoming year 2028.

dominated the patient monitoring solutions market and accounted for 42.18% in 2018, and 40.74% during the upcoming year 2028. Factors contributing to the growth of the North America patient monitoring solutions market include rising demand for home-based monitoring devices and increasing investment in healthcare IT.

patient monitoring solutions market include rising demand for home-based monitoring devices and increasing investment in healthcare IT. Asia-Pacific held the second largest contributor for the patient monitoring solutions market, due to the increasing prevalence of chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension and rising demand for home-based monitoring devices.

held the second largest contributor for the patient monitoring solutions market, due to the increasing prevalence of chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension and rising demand for home-based monitoring devices. The global patient monitoring solutions market is segmented based on products (hemodynamic, cardiac, neuromonitoring, respiratory, diabetes, and temperature monitoring device), applications (hematology, cardiology, respiratory, neurology, metabolics, and temperature), and end-user (hospital-based patients, ambulatory based patients, and home healthcare patients), and region ( North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and Rest-of-the-World ( Latin America and Middle East & Africa ).

, , , and Rest-of-the-World ( and & ). By Product, hemodynamic monitoring devices held 28.57% of the market share in 2018. Cardiac monitoring device held 24.62% of the total market share in 2018 and is expected to grow in the upcoming years. The growth in the segment can be attributed to the availability of blood pressure measuring devices in the hospitals, homes as well as in ambulances, where these devices measure the basic vital signs of the patient such as blood pressure. Additionally, demand for these devices is increasing day by day due to the low price of blood pressure measuring devices and increased usage in the population.

By Applications, hematology segment held the largest market share with 26.33%, cardiology segment held the second largest market share with 24.54% in 2018.

By End-User, hospital-based patients dominated the market in 2018 and held the largest market share with 41.90%. The hospital-based patients' segment is however expected to dominate the market attributing to the patients undergo surgery in the hospitals and hence they need continuous monitoring of the vital signs and their disease condition. Therefore, increasing usage of monitoring devices to hospital-based patients.



Key Topics Covered



Executive Summary

1 Market Overview

1.1 Introduction



2 Market Dynamics

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Impact Analysis

2.3 Market Drivers

2.3.1 Rise in Adoption Rate of Remote Patient Monitoring Devices/ Availability of Wireless Monitoring Devices

2.3.2 Rising Incidence of Lifestyle and Chronic Diseases

2.3.3 Government Regulations

2.3.4 Ease of Use and Portability Devices to Promote the Growth

2.3.5 Growth in Geriatric Population

2.4 Market Restraints

2.4.1 Resistance from Healthcare Industry Professionals toward the Adoption of Patient Monitoring Systems

2.4.2 High Cost of Technology

2.4.3 Lack of Security of Patient Data and Health Information Safety Concerns

2.4.4 Risks Associated with Monitoring Devices

2.5 Market Opportunities

2.5.1 Growing Demand for Patient Monitoring Devices in Non-Hospital Settings

2.5.2 Emerging Markets

2.5.3 Growing Investments in Healthcare IT



3 Competitive Landscape

3.1 Key Strategies and Developments

3.1.1 Collaborations, Partnerships, and Agreements

3.1.2 Product Launches and Enhancements

3.1.3 Acquisitions

3.1.4 Awards and Fundings

3.1.5 Product Approvals

3.1.6 Business Expansion Activities

3.2 Market Share Analysis

3.2.1 Market Share Analysis (by Company)



4 Industry Insights

4.1 Patent Analysis

4.2 Regulatory Requirements

4.3 Bills, Acts, and Alliances for Patient Monitoring Solution



5 Global Patient Monitoring Solutions Market (by Product)

5.1 Hemodynamic Monitoring Devices

5.2 Cardiac Monitoring Devices

5.3 Respiratory Monitoring Devices

5.4 Neuromonitoring Devices

5.5 Diabetes Monitoring Devices

5.6 Temperature Monitoring Devices



6 Global Patient Monitoring Solutions Market (by Applications)

6.1 Hematology

6.2 Cardiology

6.3 Respiratory

6.4 Neurology

6.5 Metabolics

6.6 Temperature



7 Global Patient Monitoring Solutions Market (by End-user)

7.1 Hospital Based Patients

7.2 Ambulatory Based Patients

7.3 Home Healthcare Patients



8 Global Patient Monitoring Solutions Market (by Region)

8.1 North America

8.2 Europe

8.3 Asia-Pacific (APAC)

8.4 Rest-of-the-World



9 Company Profiles

9.1 Overview

9.2 Medtronic plc

9.2.1 Company Overview

9.2.2 Role of Medtronic plc in the Global Patient Monitoring Solutions Market

9.2.3 Financials

9.2.4 Key Insights about Financial Health of the Company

9.2.5 SWOT Analysis

9.3 General Electric Company

9.4 Koninklijke Philips N.V.

9.5 Draegerwerk AG & Co. KGaA

9.6 Abbott Laboratories

9.7 Johnson & Johnson

9.8 F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.

9.9 Boston Scientific Corporation

9.10 Edwards Lifesciences Corporation

9.11 Nihon Kohden Corporation

9.12 Omron Corporation

9.13 Bosch Limited

9.14 Becton, Dickinson and Company

9.15 Biotronik

9.16 Welch Allyn

9.17 Smiths Medical, Inc.

9.18 Getinge AB

9.19 Spacelabs Healthcare



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Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

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GANDHINAGAR: In a joint operation with the Indian Coast Guard (ICG), the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Gujarat Police nabbed a fishing boat and arrested five Pakistani nationals on Monday with heroin worth Rs 175 crore from mid-sea in the Kutch coast in Gujarat.

According to initial reports, the joint operation was conducted after receiving specific inputs about heroin smuggling by some Pakistani drug smugglers.

During the operation, the officials confiscated nearly 35 packets containing the banned drug from the fishing boat on which the five Pakistani nationals were travelling.

Live TV

Those arrested are believed to be involved in drug smuggling for a long time and they are being currently interrogated for more leads into the case.

The arrested Pakistani nationals have been identified as Anees (30), Ismail Mohammed Kachchi (50), Ashhraf Usman Kutchhi (42), Kareem Abdulla Kutchhi (37) and Abubaqar Ashraf Sumra (55). They all are residents of Beet Zajeera in Karachi.

Sharing more information about the joint operation, a senior Gujarat ATS official said the Gujarat Police received intelligence that an illegal consignment of heroin is going to be smuggled into Gujarat through the coast.

"The information further revealed that the consignment is being sent in a Pakistani fishing boat from Pakistan," the officer said. The Gujarat Police top officers approached the Indian Coast Guard and a joint operation was launched to apprehend the smugglers and seize the contraband. A team of ATS and Indian Coast Guard started the operation with fast interceptor boats at Jakhau in Kutch.

"Commandos of the marine task force were kept in boats in Indian waters to help in apprehending the smugglers," the officer said. A continuous search operation was undertaken near the location located North West of Jakhau, which was indicated in the information available with ATS Gujarat.

"The interrogation of the apprehended accused persons is in progress jointly by all agencies," the officer said.
chad wolf

Cedar Attanasio/AP

Chad Wolf, acting chief of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement on Friday that there is "currently no specific, credible threats against our homeland."

His statement followed the assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in an airstrike in Iraq.

President Donald Trump said he ordered the strike because of imminent planned attacks.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Iran has vowed to avenge the death of top general Qassem Soleimani, after he was killed in an US airstrike on Friday. But the head of the Department of Homeland Security says there's not active threat from the Middle Eastern nation.

Following Soleimani's assassination, DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf said he had met twice with senior leadership within his department to "assess potential new threats and component actions to respond to the constantly evolving threat landscape."

They determined that "there are currently no specific, credible threats against our homeland."

Wolf added that DHS is continuing to monitor the situation, and is working with "Federal, State and local partners to ensure the safety of every American."

This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday, Jan. 3, 2020. The Pentagon said Thursday that the U.S. military has killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of President Donald Trump. (Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office via AP)

Associated Press

President Donald Trump said he ordered Soleimani's assassination "to stop a war" since the leader of Iran's Quds Force was planning "imminent and sinister attacks."

While the administration has not officially explained what these threats were, anonymous officials gave more details to NBC News.

Multiple officials told the outlet on Friday that Soleimani was planning attacks against American interests in the region.

These current and former officials said that the potential targets were US military outposts in eastern Syria, and diplomatic and financial targets in Lebanon.

FILE- In this Sept. 18, 2016 photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, center, attends a meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Revolutionary Guard commanders in Tehran, Iran. A U.S. airstrike near Baghdad's airport on Friday Jan. 3, 2020 killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force. Soleimani was considered the architect of Iran's policy in Syria. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File)

Associated Press

Senior US officials said that in the day before he was killed, Soleimani traveled to Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq to finalize plans on these attacks.

Story continues

However, a Congressional aide who was briefed on the intelligence told NBC News that he didn't see a compelling case for why the US acted now, since Soleimani was up to the same business as usual.

In the wake of Soleimani's assassination, Iranian officials have vowed revenge. US officials seem to be most concerned about the potential for cyber warfare.

Apart from Wolf's statement on Friday, the only other message to come out of DHS was from its chief of cybersecurity, who warned the public that it was "time to brush up" on Iran's hacking tactics.

"Pay close attention to your critical systems...make sure you're also watching third party accesses!" Chris Krebs tweeted.

Here's what other officials have said about the threat of attack following Soleimani's assassination:

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio appeared on MSNBC Friday and said that the NYPD is on "high alert" for threats after the airstrike. While there are "no credible and specific threats directed at New York City at this moment" he said that Iran proxies have scouted New York for potential attacks in the past. "No one has to be reminded that New York City is the number one terror target in the United States. We're taking escalation in the Middle East seriously  and I have absolute faith in the NYPD to protect this city and keep every New Yorker safe," he said in a news conference.

The Los Angeles Police Department tweeted Friday: "While there is no credible threat to Los Angeles, the LAPD is monitoring the events developing in Iran. We will continue to communicate with state, local, federal and international law enforcement partners regarding any significant intel that may develop."

A Chicago Police Department spokesman told WLS that they are "in real time communication with federal partners and there is no threat to Chicago. The department does routine Homeland Security Patrols on critical infrastructure throughout the city and that will continue."

A spokesman for the Coast Guard told the New York Times that there are "no specific threats" to the nation's ports.

According to KABC, the Transportation Security Administration sent out a warning on Friday about about the threat against surface transportation  including trains, buses, boats, and pipelines.

Read the original article on Business Insider
I rans supreme leader has been seen weeping over the remains of Qasem Soleimani days after the top general was killed in a US air strike in Baghdad.

The targeted killing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard General has already seen the country vow to take revenge.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over the caskets of General Soleimani and others slain in the attack.

Mr Khamenei, who had a close relationship with the general, wept at one point during the traditional Muslim prayers for the dead amid wails from a crowd of hundreds of thousands of mourners.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei openly weeps during the prayers / AP

People cried while others clutched pictures of the late commander. Mourners passed his coffin over their heads and "death to America" chants were heard.

General Soleimani's daughter has warned the US it faces a "dark day" for the killing.

"Crazy (President) Trump, don't think that everything is over with my father's martyrdom," she said.

Aftermath of the US airstrike that killed General Soleimani / IRAQI MILITARY/AFP via Getty Ima

To cheers she added: The families of the American soldiers in western Asia will spend their days waiting for the death of their children."

While Iran recently faced nationwide protests over government-set petrol prices that reportedly killed over 300 people, General Soleimanis mass processionals has seen politicians and leaders across the Islamic Republics political spectrum temporarily silencing their anger to take part.

During the prayers, the general's successor Esmail Ghaani stood near Mr Khameneis side, as did Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other top leaders in the Islamic Republic.

The rising tensions between the US and Iran explained

General Soleimani was hailed as a national hero in Iran and widely considered the second most powerful man in the country behind the Supreme Leader.

The US saw him as a terrorist, and President Donald Trump justfied the killing by saying General Soleimani was plotting "imminent" attacks on US diplomats and military personnel.

Tehran has abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in response to the slaying while in Iraq the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil.

Qasem Soleimani funeral in Iran 1 /24 Qasem Soleimani funeral in Iran An Iranian man reacts during a gathering to mourn General Qasem Soleimani VIA REUTERS Mourners wave flags as they gather during the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani AFP via Getty Images Mourners gather during the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (image), Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani and eight others in the Iraqi central city of Karbala AFP via Getty Images Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" today as they mourned an Iranian commander and others killed in a US drone attack AFP via Getty Images Mourners gather in the Iraqi central city of Karbala AFP via Getty Images Mourners take part in the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani AFP via Getty Images Iranians gather to mourn General Qasem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, who was killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran VIA REUTERS A mourner holds up a picture AFP via Getty Images Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" today as they mourned an Iranian commander and others killed in a US drone attack AFP via Getty Images Mourners chant slogans against the U.S. during the funeral of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani, AP Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the US airstrike near Baghdad's airport AP Mourners carry the coffins of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani AP Mourners carry the coffin of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis AFP via Getty Images People attend a funeral procession for Iranian Major-General Qasem Soleiman VIA REUTERS An aerial view shows mourners attending a funeral ceremony for Gen. Qasem Soleimani AP Qassem Soleimani and his comrades who were killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike, are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners AP Mourners carry the coffins of Iran's top general Qasem Soleiman AP Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad's airport AP

The developments could bring Iran closer to building an atomic bomb, set off a proxy or military attack launched by Tehran against the US and enable the Islamic State group to stage a comeback in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.
Australias fire season started even before summer had begun and has destroyed more than 5 million hectares of bush.

Australia on Monday used a respite from fierce wildfires that have killed 24 people across the countrys southeast to reopen blocked roads and evacuate people who have been trapped for days.

The second day of light rain and cool winds brought some relief from the heatwave-fuelled blazes that tore through two states over the weekend, although the damp made it more challenging for fire crews to carry out the strategic burns necessary before an expected rise in temperatures later in the week.

There is no room for complacency, New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters on Monday morning. Two people remained missing as about 130 fires continued to burn in the state, with almost 70 uncontained.

Authorities stepped up efforts on Monday to provide supplies and repatriate thousands of people who have been trapped by fires in coastal towns for several days.

Canberra chokes

This morning it is all about recovery, making sure people who have been displaced have somewhere safe (to go) and it is making sure we have resources to build up the presence on the ground to clean up the roads, clean up where the rubble exists, Berejiklian said.

Dean Linton, a resident of Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains, used the break from an immediate threat to his town to visit his wife and four children who had evacuated to Sydney. He also used the 870-kilometre (540 mile) round trip to pick up a fire-fighting pump and generator to help him protect the family home.

Theres a lot of fuel in that national park; it would only take one lightning strike, Linton told Reuters.

The bushfire season started earlier than normal this year following a three-year drought that has left much of the countrys bushland tinder-dry and vulnerable to fires. More than five million hectares (12 million acres) of land have been destroyed.

Canberra, the countrys capital, had the worst air quality of any significant city in the world on Monday morning as a result of the fires. The Department of Home Affairs, which is responsible for coordinating the countrys response to disasters, told all non-critical staff to stay at home because of the pollution.
The Fianna Fail Mayor of Clare is to boycott the forthcoming commemoration service for the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), describing the event as "historical revisionism gone too far".

Im not going to attend, it is a personal position, he told Newstalk Breakfast.

Members of Clare County Council can go, but I will not have any hand, act or part in it.

Cllr Crowe, who is a history teacher and also a Fianna Fail general election candidate, said the topic should be looked at clearly and that in this case revisionism had gone too far.

The RIC had been the strong arm of the British government in Ireland.

They (the RIC) had taken part in raids, had murdered two teenagers in Clare whose families still lived locally, he added.

Cllr Crowe acknowledged that there were great individuals in the RIC who had shown great valour and civic mindedness, but the entire organisation should not be white washed, he said.

The British government had decided not to commemorate the RIC, he said, so why would the Irish Government.
ODESSA -- Parents who have children at Odessa Regional Medical Center and Medical Center Hospital will be provided with information and resources through POWER -- Power of Words and Early Reading. The initiative was announced Dec. 11 at the West Texas Food Bank in Odessa.

From the moment of their birth, their family will be made aware of the research and will be given tools on how they can begin to interact effectively with their children, to build brain power, language skills and to make them kindergarten ready, said Lorraine Perryman, chair of the Education Partnership of the Permian Basin.

She said the Education Partnership is a collaboration to bring the entire community together to focus on educating children from cradle to career.

Perryman got the idea while attending a conference at which she learned about Brain Bags in Pensacola, Florida.

All of the information in the POWER bag is based on solid research, Perryman said. There was a huge study that was done, that identified a 30 million-word gap of children in low-income families versus children in high-income families.

About 5,000 children are born in Ector County every year, Perryman said.

Families will receive a bookbag with a POWER bib, information about the initiative, a milestone moments book created by the CDC, A Babys Busy Day book from the CDC, a bilingual Maria Had a Little Llama book, articles about infant development, a magnet with the link to the foundation and research and a key toy.

Without ORMC or MCH we would not be here today, Perryman said. They are the major funders of this initiative and the ones to make the program go forward from here on out.

Dr. Sara Amiri, a pediatrician at ORMC, said it is noticeable in development when children are engaged in their home life.

As a pediatrician, time and time again, I have noticed that kids who have been intentionally read to since birth have a broader vocabulary and they achieve developmental milestones earlier, Amiri said. These children are more likely to be school-ready when they start kindergarten and are more successful in their academic career.

Through the POWER bag initiative, we are providing parents with the knowledge and resources on the importance of daily reading, singing, talking and playing with their babies, Amiri said.

Christin Abbott-Timmins, divisional director of women and children for Medical Center Health System, said that this is an impactful gift to send home with newborns families.

It is very important for us to instill things into our moms, so they know how to care for their infants, Abbott-Timmins said. This is another level of caring for them to be able to put something so important into their hands.

Its developing that eye contact and voice recognition, she said. They watch you and see things, so all of that is being instilled in them making it so important to establish that from the beginning.

ECISD Superintendent Scott Muri said children need help before reaching the school system to arrive ready to start learning.

On the first day of kindergarten, 65 percent of our kids arent kindergarten ready, Muri said. So, 65 percent of our kids begin their first day of school not even at the starting line.  We have an opportunity as a community to make sure that on the first day of school that every child in ECISD is ready for their first day of school.

Muri said ECISD will be looking to expand these programs.

Our contribution to this is to volunteer and to make sure we are part of the stuffing and delivery, Muri said. We also recently announced that we will be starting a full-day pre-k. Starting in August of 2020, we will be having a full day pre-k program for all 4-year-olds. We have to do something from birth to the age of 5.

Adrian Vega, executive director of Education Partnership of the Permian Basin, said that the blame for not preparing children usually gets passed down from high school to elementary school but POWER bags will be helping all kids in the community.

As a community we are starting at birth, Vega said. This is phase one, when we get back together in January the focus of that meeting is to begin to craft and lay out a communitywide strategy and plan to ensure that when children leave the hospital that every single touch point and through line between leaving the hospital and starting pre-k, we have a network.

This includes bringing together pediatricians, clinics, child care centers, day care centers, so a network can be built for kids in Ector County, Vega said.

The first POWER bags were distributed on Jan. 1.
Specials The Most Popular Stories of 2019

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YANGONAs the year draws to a close, The Irrawaddy takes a step back and presents a compilation of the years most noteworthy stories as chosen by you, our readers. The following articles were the most read among the many features, commentaries, analyses, interviews and lifestyle pieces we published throughout 2019. The topics are as diverse as Myanmar itselfThe Irrawaddys readers showed a strong curiosity about everything from a one-on-one interview with the Arakan Army chief to a review of a Yangon cafe that lets patrons dine in the company of exotic animals. Throughout the year, topics like the parliamentary fight over charter change, the uncertain impacts of Chinese investment and tourism, the plight of civilians caught up in the countrys ethnic armed conflicts, and Myanmars lively art scene were all consistently popular. We hope you enjoy this in-depth look at the year gone by, and extend our best wishes for the year to come.

Commentary

The NLD had no choice but to force the military to engage with constitutional reform in Parliament

In this pre-election year, defenders of democracy must remain vigilant against any development that could disrupt preparations for the 2020 vote.

A look at those articles of the Constitution the NLD is most likely to target for amendment firstand why.

Under the 2008 Constitution, if the USDP and its allies win 26 percent of Parliament seats, the army chief could become president without even running for office.

As Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing grooms his juniors, who is likeliest to take his place when he steps down, and what do recent military shake-ups mean for the 2020 elections?

Features

Court and police procedure questioned in defamation case against Myanmar Now editor brought by follower of ultranationalist monk U Wirathu

Politicians, Kachin activists, environmentalists join displaced villagers in taking a stand against the BRI project on the Irrawaddy River.

In 2015 many farmers in Irrawaddy Region voted for the NLD expecting the party to win them their stolen land back. More than three years on, they have little to show for it.

Amid constant threats to their security, Rakhine civilians are treated with suspicion by the military, while police and state officials are unable or unwilling to help.

With no quick fix in sight for intrusive hotels and tourism-related accommodations, the legacy of years of mismanagement continues to be felt in the ancient city.

Editorial

Declaring a state of emergency or inserting more troops will not solve the root causes of the conflict.

The NLDs move to amend the Constitution is a first small step in what will surely be a difficult journey.

As she leads Myanmars legal team to the ICJ, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi returns to the international spotlight, playing a new role: defender of the national interest.

On the Rohingya crisis, the government must prepare to work with ASEAN and others, but ultimately the solution will have to come from within.

As the commander-in-chief visits India, New Delhi and Naypyitaw have much to gain from enhancing mutual ties.

Culture

Overlooked in favor of foreigners since colonial times, local photographers left a rich legacy of images, Austrian photographer and historian says

National Museum show is the best-attended it has ever put on

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats to start filming next year in Myanmar, U.S. and Thailand

Be sure to bring your smartphone and earphones to the punk rocker and painters second solo show, Micro

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi presents democracy as a moral value, author Michal Lubina argues in his analysis of the State Counselors political thought.

Analysis

A press conference on Saturday heard the military saying they would step back from politics when there are no ethnic armed groups and the country is in peace.

A closer look at the facts and figures behind expanding China-owned tissue culture banana plantations causing havoc for locals and lawmakers in Kachin State.

Players and experts in a variety of business fields spoke to The Irrawaddy on their predictions for Myanmars economy in 2019, with more positive than negative views overall.

Ten major projects currently planned with powerful neighboring countries promise to address Myanmars infrastructure needs, but have the social, environmental and other costs been fully assessed?

Maj-Gen. Htun Myat Naing denies links to ARSA, says he doesnt underestimate the abilities of the Tatmadaw. He welcomes Chinas role as peace broker, and foreign investment if it

In Person

If they want to destroy our land [Rakhine State], we should destroy their [the Bamars] land. If they offer peace, we will welcome it as warmly as we can, said Tun Myat Naing.

The Irrawaddy spoke with businessman and government adviser U Htun Htun Naing about the current investment climate, foreign interest, and how to revive the states poor image.

In a wide-ranging interview, the US envoy gives The Irrawaddy his thoughts on the many domestic and international challenges facing Myanmar, and the state of the bilateral relationship.

KIA triggered clashes in Shan by moving beyond agreed boundaries; road construction in Karen State to continue, says Brig-Gen. Zaw Min Tun

Yo Ya May supports 200 weavers in the remote hills of Chin and Rakhine states by selling their handwoven textiles in Yangon and beyond.

Arts

Artist Htein Lins bold new exhibition, Skirting the Issue, invites participants to question whether and why they follow discriminatory customs.

Known for his modernist paintings of cityscapes, street scenes and depictions of Myanmar traditions, Zaw Mong exhibits his first collection of nude paintings this week.

Photographers from Dhaka and Yangon come together to create a book of visual narratives discussing cultural, societal and identity realities on both sides of the Naf River.

Mingalarpar 104 will showcase more than 50 works about the independence hero by artists MPP Ye Myint and Han Kyaw Moe at the We Creation gallery through Sunday.

Photographer Ko Myo, three-time winner at Yangon Photo Festival, risks his life to document the illicit elephant trade in Myanmar through touching photo essays.

Specials

Infographic: 30 Years of Chinese Investment in Myanmar

A selection of infographics to illustrate all Chinese investment projects in Myanmar between 1988 and 2018, including those proposed, underway, completed and stalled.

The Irrawaddy takes a critical look at the major infrastructure projects which are part of Chinas BRI efforts in Myanmar due to get underway this year.

A graphic guide to the work of the joint parliamentary panel set up to draft changes to the 2008 Constitution, which submitted a list of 3,765 proposals on Monday.

The Irrawaddys infographic gives a rundown of the 80 sweeping development projects set to change the lives of 8.2 million citizens of Yangon city and region forever.

A detailed breakdown of the chapters and articles most likely to be targeted for reform by the government

Dateline

The Irrawaddy sits down with NLD lawmaker U Aung Kyi Nyunt to discuss the long road to democracy, and the merits of Myanmars obligation-based society.

Dateline and guests discuss the 2020 elections, ethnic parties and the NLD.

The Irrawaddy talks to Muslim faith leader Haji U Aye Lwin and political analyst Maung Maung Soe about the State Counselors move to lead Myanmars defense at The Hague.

The Irrawaddy discusses the forced closure of a temporary Islamic prayer site in Yangon by a crowd of Buddhist nationalists.

The Irrawaddy talks to one of the NLDs point men on charter change about the partys objectives for the process, and whats at stake for the country.

Lifestyle

Would you like a Burmese python with your order? Lizzo and Mammo is a bizarre new pet cafe where you can get up close and personal with a range of fierce and furry animals.

These six bars may be just the ticket for those looking to pair their drinks with some live music at the end of a long day.

The glamorous awards event disappointed many who were hoping for the makers of Myanmars new wave of modern and creative movies to finally get the recognition they deserve.

Chef Ko Padang Laroi has added two combination meals to the menu at this award-winning ethnic eatery in Kamayut Township.

Ditch the chocolates and roses and give your loved one goose bumps with some unexpected, unique, creative, do-it-yourself and locally made gifts.
Advertisement

Crowds mourning the death of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani continued to flood the streets of the capital as his funeral procession dragged into the night.

Earlier in the day hundreds of thousands of people swamped central Tehran to express their outpouring of grief at the death of the revered leader of the elite Quds Force, who was assassinated in a US drone strike in Iraq on Friday.

After following his casket through the capital, Soleimani's body was transported to the holy city of Qom where a ceremony at Masumeh shrine will be held ahead of his burial in his hometown tomorrow.

Pictures from the procession route showed huge numbers following his body through the streets as mourners surround a truck carrying the flag-draped coffins of Soleimani and his comrades ahead of the general's burial in Kerman.

Before arriving in Qom, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wept over the coffin of Soleimani in Tehran during the second day of the general's funeral, as the warlord's daughter swore revenge on US troops despite Donald Trump's threats of a fearsome response.

Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport on Friday, shocking the Islamic republic and sending tensions spiralling in the Middle East.

His remains were flown back to Iran last night along with four other Revolutionary Guard top brass killed alongside him, carried in a cardboard box which had its own row of seats on a passenger jet.

Mourners surround a truck carrying the flag draped coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and his comrades in the holy city of Qom, south of the capital Tehran today

Coffins of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani and others who were killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike, are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners during a funeral procession today in Tehran

Iranians gathering around a vehicle carrying the caskets of slain military commander Qasem Soleimani and others during a funeral procession after the bodies arrived in the northeastern city of Qom

Lights from mobile phones were shone in the city of Qom as mourners surround a truck carrying Qassem Soleimani and his four comrade's bodies

Footage from the flight showed five cardboard coffins laid across rows of seats in what appeared to be the economy section of the plane as video tributes to Soleimani play on the in-flight video screens.

Following the massive funeral marches in Iraq and the Iranian city of Ahvaz, where protesters chanted 'death to America', Soleimani's body was taken to the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad before being flown to Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran on Sunday night.

Iran has vowed 'severe revenge' and yesterday abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal in response to the airstrike, while Trump has threatened a 'disproportionate response' targeting cultural sites.

Adding to the tensions, Trump has warned of sanctions against Iraq if it goes through with expelling US troops from the country - a move which could spark an ISIS resurgence there.

Speaking to the wailing crowds which stretched as far as the eye could see, Soleimani's daughter Zeinab directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region.

'The families of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East will spend their days waiting for [the] death of their children,' she said to cheers.

Warning of a 'dark day' looming for the United States, she said: 'Crazy Trump, don't think that everything is over with my father's martyrdom.'

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (fourth from left) wept over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral

Mourning: Thousands of people gathered in Tehran for the second day of Qassem Soleimani's funeral after he was killed in a US drone strike on Friday

A tearful Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left) prayed over the remains of Qassem Soleimani as hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the second day of the general's funeral today

The general's daughter Zeinab Soleimani (pictured today) spoke to mourners during the funeral procession in Tehran and directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region

Coffins of Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were seen resting on passenger seats on a jet heading to Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran on Sunday night

Iranians set a US and Israeli flag on fire during Monday's funeral procession for military commander Qasem Soleiman

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (centre) and president Hassan Rouhani (immediately to his right) lead prayers over Soleimani's coffin. On Khamenei's left is chief justice Ebrahim Raisi, and to his left is the slain general's successor Esmail Qaani

Protesters staged a symbolic 'execution' of a Donald Trump effigy during the funeral ceremony of Qassem Soleimani

As the Middle East teetered on the brink of war:

Iranian state media said 'millions' of people had gathered in Tehran to mourn Soleimani's death in scenes not witnessed since the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989;

Soleimani's replacement as commander of the Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, vowed revenge and said Iran was aiming to 'get rid of America from the region';

Trump threatened Iraq with sanctions after the country's parliament voted to kick out the 5,000 US troops stationed there, sparking fears of an ISIS resurgence;

The US president defended his targeting of cultural sites despite Democratic claims that he was preparing to commit war crimes;

The US-led coalition against ISIS in Iraq said it was pausing its fight against the jihadist group to shore up its own defences against an Iranian reprisal;

Oil prices jumped to their highest level since September, surpassing $70 per barrel, amid fears that Iran could harass ships in the Strait of Hormuz;

Rockets landed near the US embassy in Baghdad for the second night in a row, with American troops and diplomats on high alert for Iranian reprisals;

Germany, France and Britain called for de-escalation and urged Iran to stick by the 2015 nuclear agreement which is now on the brink of total collapse;

Boris Johnson's spokesman cautioned against the destruction of cultural heritage and called Iran's move away from the nuclear deal 'concerning' after the PM returned from holiday for crisis talks in London.

Today the supreme leader was flanked by Soleimani's son, his military replacement Esmail Qaani and Iranian president Hassan Rouhani at the funeral in Tehran.

Mourners prayed together with Khamenei whose voice cracked as he prayed over the flag-draped coffin.

Such public displays of intense grief are common among Shiite Muslims, who hold martyrs in the highest esteem. It also signals deep respect for the deceased.

The funeral showcased the depth of the bond Khamenei had with the slain general and gave insight into how Soleimani's death is being felt personally by the supreme leader.

Some mourners shouted 'Death to America' and burned US and Israeli flags as the coffins of Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader who also died in the drone strike were passed over their heads.

Iranian state TV put the crowd size at 'millions,' although that number could not be verified.

The scale of the crowds in Tehran mirrored those who turned out in 1989 for the funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic.

Soleimani will lie in state at Tehran's famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him. He will eventually be buried in his hometown of Kerman.

Mourners marched towards the university, a key artery in Tehran, and formed a sea of black along Enghelab Street dotted with red Shiite flags and white signs.

The coffin of Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was also killed in Friday's attack, was draped in the Iraqi flag and passed over the crowds alongside Soleimani's casket.

'We must give a crushing response,' said one of the mourners, a 61-year-old businessman who gave his name as Afkhami.

'We must target whatever military base they have in the region. We must attack all that are in the range of our missiles.'

One poster held by a mourner read: 'It is our right to seek a harsh revenge,' echoing comments by Iranian military and political leaders.

Washington regards Soleimani as a terrorist leader who was plotting against Americans and had the blood of thousands on his hands through his work with Iranian proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

But many Iranians considered Soleimani, a decorated veteran of the eight-year war with Iraq, a national hero, particularly for mobilising Shi'ite Muslim groups in Iraq to help crush the militant Sunni jihadists of ISIS.

To Iran's supreme leader, Soleimani was a loyal aide who conferred with him often and cemented Tehran's footprint far beyond the country's borders, helping to preserve and advance the principles of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought the Shiite leadership to power.

Soleimani was also close with Khamenei's children and the supreme leader had been photographed embracing him in public. The Ayatollah made a rare visit to Soleimani's home the day he was killed to offer condolences to his grieving widow and grown children.

Their relationship was so close that Khamenei was photographed more than once embracing Soleimani in ways that are customary in Iran for fathers and their beloved sons.

Unlike other military commanders in the Revolutionary Guard Corps., the 62-year-old general answered only to the 80-year-old Khamenei.

Khamenei so revered him that he awarded the general Iran's highest military order in March. IWhen pinning the medal on Soleimani, the Iranian leader said he hoped God would reward the general and help him live a blissful life that ends with martyrdom.

'Of course, not any time soon,' Khamenei said, adding that the 'Islamic Republic needs him for years to come.'

And in death, Soleimani has received what no man before him has in modern Iran. His funeral processions have been spread over several days and cities, marking the first time Iran has ever honored a single man with such ceremonies. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such an honor after his death in 1989.

The flag-draped coffin of Qassem Soleimani is passed over the heads of mourners at his funeral in the centre of Tehran today

Mourners gather in Tehran to pay their respects to a military commander who was hailed as a hero by many Iranians

Soleimani (pictured) was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport on Friday, shocking the Islamic republic and sending tensions spiralling in the Middle East

Thousands of mourners line the streets of Tehran for the funeral procession today, with people waving Iranian and Iraqi flags

Iranian state media said 'millions' of people had gathered in Tehran to mourn Soleimani's death in scenes not witnessed since the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989

Soleimani's successor Esmail Qaani cries over the coffin of his assassinated predecessor during the funeral in Tehran today

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and Soleimani's long-time lieutenant and successor Esmail Qaani stand by the coffin of the military commander who died on Friday

One funeral organiser has called on every Iranian to donate money towards an $80million bounty on Trump's head, according to Iranian television.

On Friday Khamenei vowed 'severe revenge' as he declared three days of mourning.

Esmail Qaani, who has succeeded Soleimani as commander of the Revolutionary Quards' powerful Quds Force, also swore revenge in an interview with state TV which was aired today.

'God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken,' he said.

'We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region.'

American forces are braced for retaliation and the US-led coalition against ISIS said in a statement yesterday that it was pausing its fight against the jihadists to shore up its own defences.

US bases in the region are shoring up their defences and there are also fears that Iran will harass shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which is critical to the world's oil supply.

The global benchmark for crude oil rose above $70 a barrel on Monday for the first time in over three months, with jitters rising over the escalating military tensions.

One Iranian MP also warned of an attack on the White House while an adviser to Hassan Rouhani posted a list of Trump-owned properties in a hint of a possible reprisal.

A former head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards also threatened on Sunday to turn the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv 'to dust' if the US attacks targets in Iran.

Last night Iranian state TV said the country would no longer respect any of the nuclear limits in the 2015 deal, which Trump abandoned last year but which European powers are desperately trying to preserve.

Under the deal, Tehran had pledged to reduce its nuclear capacities for several years, including by capping its enrichment of uranium at 3.67 percent, far below the more than 90 percent required for a nuclear weapon.

Iran has already overstepped some of the limits since Trump pulled out of the deal last year, which include restrictions on Iran's supply of centrifuges and the level to which uranium can be enriched.

Last night two rockets landed near the US embassy in Baghdad, the second night in a row that the heavily fortified Green Zone was hit and the 14th time over the last two months that US installations have been targeted.

Iranian troops parade behind a smoke screen from buring incense as crowds gather in Tehran today to pay homage to slain military commander Qasem Soleimani

Khamenei stands at the front of mourners in Tehran today as hundreds of thousands of Iranians turned out to pay tribute

Iranians set a US and an Israeli flag on fire during a funeral procession in Tehran today

Huge crowds of mourners in the streets of Tehran today where Iranians wailed over the death of the general who was killed

Iranian revolutionary guards surround the coffins of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and others who died in Friday's drone strike

Mourners line the streets of Tehran during Soleimani's funeral today. Iranian state TV claimed that 'millions' were there

Mourners burn flags of the U.S. and Israel during a funeral ceremony for Iranian general Qassem Soleimani today

Friday's drone attack was ordered by President Donald Trump, who said Soleimani had been planning an 'imminent' attack on Americans in Iraq.

In a series of sabre-rattling tweets, Trump has warned that the US will 'quickly and fully strike back, and perhaps in a disproportionate manner' if Iran aims fire at US targets.

The president said America had lined up attacks on 52 targets 'important to Iran and the Iranian culture', representing the number of Americans held hostage at the US embassy in Tehran after a raid in 1979.

Talking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington last night, Trump stood by his targeting of cultural sites despite claims of potential war crimes.

'They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way,' Trump said.

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, who is running for her party's presidential nomination, said Trump was 'threatening to commit war crimes'.

The president's critics have also accused him of launching the attack on Soleimani to boost his popularity before he faces an impeachment trial in the coming weeks.

In Britain, a spokesman for prime minister Boris Johnson issued a warning over Trump's plans, saying there were international conventions in place to stop the destruction of cultural heritage.

Trump has also warned he will demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iran's neighbour Iraq or impose 'sanctions like they've never seen before' if Baghdad goes through with expelling U.S. troops.

The sanctions would make those on Iran look 'tame', Trump said, adding: 'We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there... we're not leaving unless they pay us back for it.'

Iranians carry the coffin during the funeral ceremony of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Forces, who was killed in a U.S. drone airstrike in Iraq

Mourners gather in Tehran today to pay homage to top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, after he was killed in a US strike in Baghdad ordered by Donald Trump

Iranians burn US and Israeli flags during the funeral ceremony in Tehran today, three days after the military leader's death

Iranian army cadets hold up posters of military commander Qassem Soleimani as they march during his funeral in Tehran

Yesterday the Iraqi parliament backed a recommendation by the prime minister for all foreign troops to be ordered out - a move which Washington fears could allow an ISIS resurgence.

Iraq's rival Shi'ite leaders, including those opposed to Iranian influence, have united since Friday's attack in calling for the expulsion of U.S. troops.

There are around 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, deployed after ISIS seized Mosul in 2014.

Today German foreign minister Heiko Maas said threatening Iraq was 'not very helpful'. Germany has a small contingent of troops there training Iraqi forces.

Monday's procession in Tehran comes after Soleimani's remains were returned to Iran on Sunday.

The Iranian general's body was marched through the streets of Baghdad, before it was flown to the city of Ahvaz in southwest Iran, where around one million mourners gathered to pay their respects.

A video of the journey posted on social media on Sunday five cardboard boxes resting on seats in the cabin of a passenger jet rather than being loaded into the cargo or baggage compartments.

The Revolutionary Guards said the overwhelming number of mourners in Mashhad forced the cancellation of a ceremony that had been planned in Tehran on Sunday night.

Mourners carry mock coffins with images of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Iranian revolutionary guards surround the coffins of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and others who were killed in the US attack

Speaking to the crowds which stretched as far as the eye could see (pictured), Soleimani's daughter Zeinab directly threatened an attack on U.S. forces in the region

Soleimani had long been considered a lethal foe by US lawmakers and presidents, with Trump saying he should have been killed 'many years ago.'

Tensions between Iran and the West had been ratcheting up for months, peaking last summer when a series of Gulf tankers were hit by mysterious explosions which Washington blamed on Iran.

The last straw was an attack by a pro-Iran mob on the US embassy in Baghdad this week, where demonstrators burned the entrance to the compound and besieged diplomats inside.

Tributes have poured in from across the Middle East and beyond for Soleimani, who was seen as the Islamic republic's second most powerful person after the supreme leader.

Iraq's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on Sunday offered his condolences to Khamenei, according to the supreme leader's official website.

'Soleimani's martyrdom caused great sorrow,' said the statement.

'His unique role over the years in fighting with Daesh elements in Iraq, and the great pains he endured in this path is unforgettable,' it said, referring to the Islamic State group.

President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan also paid his respects in a telephone call to Rouhani.

A statement from the Afghan presidential palace said Ghani assured Rouhani that 'Afghan soil will never be used against any other country'.

Iran could fall back on its regional militant allies or proxies to launch a retaliatory attack, such as Iraqi militiamen, Lebanon's Hezbollah or Yemen's Houthi rebels.

The Revolutionary Guard also routinely harasses U.S. Navy vessels in Persian Gulf and surrounding waterways, while Iran has surface-to-sea missile batteries along its coast as well.

Last night the leaders of Britain, France and Germany appealed for a de-escalation.

'We call on all the players involved to show utmost restraint and responsibility,' they said in a joint statement.

Boris Johnson is gathering key ministers for crisis talks today as the Iran standoff threatens to spiral out of control - with threats from Tehran to kill British troops.

The PM is back in Downing Street after his Caribbean break, but finds himself walking a tightrope between Donald Trump and other allies who want to ease tensions.

Following massive funeral marches in Iraq, his body was flown to Ahvaz, Iran. Military personnel carry Soleimani's casket in Iran. A tide of mourners packed the streets of the Iranian city of Ahvaz Sunday to pay respects to the top general

Iranian mourners crowded in to touch the casket and express their grief at the death of the powerful general

The scale of the crowds in Tehran today (pictured) matched those who turned out in 1989 for the funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic

Breaking his silence last night, Mr Johnson said Britain 'will not lament' the death of Qassem Soleimani, saying the genreal had played a role in the deaths of thousands of innocent people and was a 'threat to all our interests'.

But he also appealed to both Trump and Iran for calm, urging both sides to encourage de-escalation, after a senior Iranian commander Iranian issued a chilling warning that British forces could be hit.

Today the PM's spokesman called Iran's move away from the 2015 nuclear deal 'concerning' and cautioned against the destruction of cultural heritage but said countries such as America a right to act in 'self-defence'.

A former US ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria said Iranian general Qassem Soleimani 'deserved' to die - but criticised the decision not to inform Britain about the strike.

Ryan Crocker told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Literally hundreds of coalition soldiers and marines, mostly Americans, were killed by improvised explosive devices that were manufactured in Iran, used by the Iraqi Shia militia trained by Soleimani, in very deliberate targeting.

'Britain too lost a number of soldiers in the same attacks. If anybody out there deserved killing, it was Qassem Soleimani.'

But Mr Crocker said he was 'concerned' about the White House's failure to warn allies of its controversial decision to kill Mr Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad last week.

He said: 'Britain is and has been for a number of years our foremost ally. When we take an action like this it can have great consequences for our allies. We, I think, owe it to them to consult in advance.'
After Shastri in 1964, PM Modi first PM to attend AMU event

Protests at AMU following JNU violence

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Jan 06: Days after unrest in the campus over the contentious citizenship law, protests were held at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) late on Sunday night against violence at the JNU.

A spokesperson of protesting students said that a march was held in the night to express solidarity with the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students, who were attacked by masked men armed with sticks.

In a statement, the AMU Teachers' Association (AMUTA) condemned the violence.

AMUTA secretary Najmul Islam urged the Chief Justice of India to take suo motu cognisance of the "unprecedented situation arising from Sunday's assault on JNU students and teachers".

Complete lawlessness say actors, filmmakers on JNU horror

Senior Superintendent of Police Akash Kulahari said police had been deployed at sensitive points all around the campus as a precautionary measure.

NEWS AT NOON, JANUARY 6th, 2020

Till midnight, the protests have been peaceful, the officer said.

Former AMU students' union president Faizul Hasan said students would hold a peaceful march on Monday to express solidarity with all those who are holding peaceful protests against the amended Citizenship Act.

The AMU, which was to reopen on January 6, has already extended the winter break keeping in view the continuing protests against the amended citizenship law.

According to an AMU notice, the decision to extend the vacation was taken after a meeting chaired by Vice-Chancellor Tariq Mansoor on Wednesday.

A detailed schedule for the reopening of the university "in a phased manner" will be notified after reviewing the situation.

Modi, Shah rampaging through universities says Priyanka on JNU violence

On December 15, the university had announced an extended winter break following violent protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) on the campus that leftover 60 people, including 40 students, AMU security staff and police personnel injured.

Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

At least 18 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours.
[January 06, 2020] Essence Group Announces Innovative 3D Sensing Fall Detector using Texas Instruments mmWave Sensor

Ground-breaking technology, enabling elderly independence, wins an IoT Breakthrough Award, is launching at CES 2020 in Las Vegas HERZLIYA, Israel, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Essence Group, the global Internet of Things solutions provider, has developed a pioneering multi-sensor fall detector using the Texas Instruments mmWave sensor. The fall detector's unique monitoring capability enables elderly people to lead independent, safer lives. The advanced technology has been awarded "IoT Health & Wellness Safety Solution of the Year" as part of the IoT Breakthrough awards for 2020. Leveraging decades of experience delivering innovative IoT platforms and sensors for the security and senior care sectors, Essence has developed a revolutionary device that improves the lives of seniors by using radar technology that can track the positioning of seniors, and, most crucially, provide immediate detection in case of falls. Using cutting edge TI mmWave technology, Essence's new Fall Detector is a battery-operated wireless radar-based device that improves independence by providing accurate fall verification  immediately alerting healthcare providers if a person falls over. The radar forms part of the Essence SmartCare's [email protected] senior monitoring platform. The platform uses an integrated series of devices placed around the house with a variety of safety measures including an activity monitoring, physical and verbal panc buttons and various fall detection and prevention methods.



The announcement of the new radar system has significant positive repercussions for the elderly care market. A recent study found that 95% of elderly people want to live alone in later life. Of those elderly people living alone, a third fall each year. Falls can have serious consequences, with 88% resulting in hospitalisation. The tragic fact for many is that many falls go unnoticed for several hours: 60% of people spend 12 hours on the floor and 50% of falls are not reported to the doctors at all. The development of a new, cutting-edge radar fall detector enables these risks to be significantly reduced, empowering elderly people to live independently. Essence has developed a specialised application programming interface (API) that adapts the TI mmWave radar technology to create this unique application for the detection of senior falls in the home. The multi-sensor device has already garnered two respected industry awards for innovation in its pre-launch phase. The most recent, the IoT Breakthrough Award 2020 is part of the IoT Breakthrough Awards program that recognizes the innovators, leaders and visionaries from around the globe in a range of IoT categories, including Health and Wellness.

Dr. Haim Amir, CEO and Founder at Essence said: "Independence in later life shouldn't come at a cost. The use of innovative radar technology significantly increases the accuracy of fall detection, giving peace of mind to caregivers while allowing residents to live freely. By collecting detailed information, we can tailor our response to reduce risk and provide round-the-clock care. [email protected] maintains the privacy of the resident while giving healthcare providers accurate alerts that include the resident's location in the house, allowing assistance to arrive quicker. This is a gamechanger for the elderly care market." Robert Ferguson, manager at Texas Instruments said: "The 3D sensing and on-chip processing capabilities of TI mmWave sensors are opening the doors for applications that require privacy-conscious, intelligence at the edge. Essence has taken advantage of the accuracy and intelligence of our technology to develop an innovative product for today's elderly monitoring applications." Essence will be exhibiting at CES in Las Vegas and will be officially launching the new technology at their booth at the Sands Convention Center Stand 42158. About Essence Essence is a global provider of IoT connected-living and cybersecurity solutions for communication, security and healthcare service providers, serving households and small-medium businesses. Leveraging 25 years of experience and innovation with a global presence and 45 million devices deployed worldwide, Essence is committed to developing and supporting solutions that enhance partners' businesses and enable people to live fuller, better lives.

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For the first time in India a series of controlled blast will be carried out to bring down four apartment complexes on January 11 and 12, in Maradu, famous for its serene lake and uncalled guests of migratory birds flying from all over the world particularly from Europe during winter season.

The four high-rises violating the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) on the edge of the lake flowing through Maradu were ordered to be demolished by the Supreme Court. Preparations are in full swing and Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO), India's premier body to safeguard explosives safety is having a task at hand.

The apex court had ordered for the demolition of the four apartment complexes of H20 Holy faith, Alfa Serene, Jain Coral Cove and Golden Kayaloram for violating the CRZ norms. These flats will be demolished through controlled explosion on January 11 and 12.

R Venugopal, Deputy Chief Controller of Explosives, PESO told ANI all steps for safe demolition has been done and the agency will be adopting the implosion technology.

"The district magistrate of Ernakulam has given the no-objection certificate for implosion using explosives. PESO has given permission to undertake the blasting using explosives approved by the Chief Controller of Explosives. We have taken every step for any flyrots scattering around, minimise explosive usage to have a safe blasting in all towers in Maradu. As per explosive safety rules, we have taken all safety measures during transportation storage and usage of explosives," Venugopal told ANI on Monday.

With regard to the present status of the demolition process, Venugopal added, "Now the work of H2O Holyfaith is over, last and a final inspection has to been done by a team to see that all the explosives have been filled in all the holes and proper accounting has been done for the same. With respect to Alpha Serene and Jain Coral Clove the work has started today. And we hope that it will be completed in the next two days."

Upon being questioned about the safety and precautionary measures put in place, he said, "We are taking utmost precautions there. It will be cut into two levels ( Alpha Serene and Jane Coral Clove) and it will not have any impact on the nearby rivers. We have taken care of the entire situation and the blast plan has been prepared by the company and a technical committee formed by the government of Kerala including PESO officials are monitoring the scene. As per the Kerala government's request, PESO was involved in it. The last and final inspection is being done by a team to see all the explosives are filled in all the holes and proper accounting has been done."

"With respect to Alpha Serene and Jane Coral Clove the work has started today and we hope that it will be completed in the next two days. With regard to Kayoloram, we are taking the utmost precautions there also. It will also be cut into two levels, " he added.

An IIT team has also been roped in to carry out further studies after the blast.

'With respect to vibrations studies, an IIT team has been formed. They will be conducting vibration studies on two days (Jan 11, Jan 12), " he said.

The Kerala government and district administration are handling such a demolition with enormous magnitude for the first time and they are following the guidelines issued by PESO.

"With respect to the safety and security of people, we will be moving out the people from the area during those four hours. All efforts have been taken by the district administration and technical support of PESO. We hope that the building implosion will be conducted in a safe and secure manner," said Venugopal said.

Controller of Explosives, PESO, Dr PK Rana told ANI that the demolition of Holy Faith H2O and Alfa Serene will be done on January 11 at around 11 am.

"The demolition of H2O and Alpha Serene will be carried out on September 11 and that of the other two buildings will be carried out on September 12. H20 will be demolished first and shortly thereafter the demolition of Alpha Serene will be carried out," Rana told ANI.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An Uber driver who allegedly drove a drug dealer to an alleged cocaine sale in the car park of an inner west fast-food restaurant at the weekend is one of six men facing charges following the latest so-called "dial-a-dealer" police operation.

Police say the 65-year-old man from Punchbowl was driving a black Mazda on Newtown's King Street when he drove into the Oporto car park on Saturday night.

About 10.15pm, a 41-year-old man from Drummoyne entered the car which then drove towards King Street. Shortly after, the man got out of the car and ran towards Newtown train station, about 170 metres away, where he was arrested, police said.

It is alleged that the 41-year-old had a small bag of cocaine.

He was issued a Court Attendance Notice to attend Newtown Local Court on February 4.
Opposition parties in Goa have unanimously decided to move an adjournment motion on the Mahadayi water diversion issue during the one-day Assembly session on January 7.

Goa and Karnataka are locked in a dispute over sharing of the Mahadayi river water. Goa is strongly opposing the Kalasa Banduri project proposed to be built by Karnataka on the river.

The project is aimed at providing drinking water to three north Karnataka districts by diverting water from the Mahadayi, the lifeline of Goa, into the Malaprabha river.

The motion, to be moved by the Goa Forward Party (GFP), will be supported by the Congress, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and an independent member.

Governor Satya Pal Malik has called the day-long session to ratify a Constitutional Amendment Bill that extends reservation to Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies by another 10 years.

GFPMLA Vijai Sardesai said the motion will be moved under section 68 of Rules of Procedures and Conduct of Business of the House.

The Congress has five MLAs, the GFP three, the MGP one and there is an independent member.

The Goa government has already challenged before the Supreme Court the order the of Inter-State Water Dispute Tribunal which allowed Karnataka to divert a certain amount of water from the river.

Leader of Opposition Digamber Kamat said the Congress has decided to support the motion on Mahadayi.

"We want the Government's clear stand on the issue," he said, adding the Congress has also decided to issue a whip to its MLAs.

The lone MGP MLA, Ramakrishna Dhavalikar, has also signed the adjournment motion.

However, Assembly Speaker Rajesh Patnekar said he has not yet received any notice on adjournment motion.

The governor would be also addressing the session.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Welcome back, everybody. I hope your holidays went well and welcome to 2020. Lets get right into it.

Flyover states might see their ranks shrink in Congress, diminishing their value in presidential elections next decade. Legal pot opens for business in Illinois. And forever chemicals are slowly seeping into the presidential race.

Check-in

Less is more? No, it isnt. The U.S. Census bureau released its estimated state-by-state population totals last week and as cleveland.coms Rich Exner writes, Flyover states are pegged to lose some influence. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois are all projected to lose a congressional seat  and corresponding Electoral College votes  following the 2020 Census.

Youd know that...if you read the holiday editions of The Flyover from Rich and me, which included deep statistical and political dives into each of the seven states. If you didnt have a chance to read them over the break, here are the links to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa.

Yes we cannabis: Illinois became the latest Flyover state to introduce its recreational marijuana program over the holidays, with more than 77,000 people showing up to the opening day, the Chicago Sun-Times Mitchell Armentrout and Tom Schuba report. All told, the first day of sales tallied $3.2 million, on par with Oregon, Washington and Colorado  the first states to legalize weed.

Beg your pardon: The night before Illinois launched its recreational marijuana program, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, pardoned 11,000 people with low-level weed offenses, the Chicago Tribunes Elvia Malagon reports.

Kind bud: While Illinois is just getting rolling on its program, Michigans  which has been running since the beginning of December, has produced $6.5 million in sales thus far, MLives Gus Burns reports. That accounts for more than $1 million in the states coffers on sales, not including the $1 million its collected in application fees.

Ex-hemp-tion: The feds gave the state of Ohio the OK to move forward with its industrial hemp plan, per the Associated Press. Ohio is the first of three states, along with New Jersey and Louisiana, to get federal approval for hemp production, though 34 other states have also applied.

Chemical reaction: Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent running for president as a Democrat, said if elected he would enact federal standards on harmful PFAS chemicals in drinking water, MLives Malachi Barrett reports. The forever chemicals have plagued states in the industrial Midwest, particularly Michigan. The EPA has an advisory standard for PFAS, but nothing enforceable.

Like a good neighbor: Count Wisconsin on the list of states that are seeing an increase in PFAS contamination sites, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinels Lee Bergquist writes (hard paywall). The state has ordered 31 assessments and cleanups and 19 new investigations in the last two years.

Some good news: State officials in Michigan say there is a measurable decline in PFAS entering waterways from businesses in the state, MLives Paula Gardner reports. The state enacted its own regulations on the chemicals instead of waiting for the EPA.

The secret of the ooze: Cleanup experts officially started work on a metro Detroit property that leaked green ooze onto an interstate highway in what regulators are saying is the worst industrial contamination site theyve ever seen, MLives Paula Gardner reports. Unlike my favorite childhood cartoon, this ooze wont create the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but instead is highly toxic and laden with cancer-causing agents and cyanide. Tests have shown the groundwater near the closed factory and the highway is contaminated. Federal officials declined to slate the site for cleanup last year, saying risk to nearby residents was limited since water is provided by a municipal system instead of wells.

Mr. Robot: Entrepreneur Andrew Yang has been basically the only Democratic presidential candidate whos made automation a big part of his campaign messaging, and its resonating with some in Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazettes Julian Routh reports. While Yang is still a longshot, automation has been a huge issue for the industrial Midwest as blue-collar workers stress over losing their jobs to robots.

Emphasis on longshot: After screwing up his paperwork, Yang will not appear on the March 17 Ohio primary ballot, cleveland.coms Andrew Tobias reports. Yang said he would mount a write-in campaign instead.

Mental note: Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, rolled out a plan to increase patient access to mental health services, PennLives Jan Murphy reports. Part of Wolfs plan includes destigmatizing mental health treatment. Wolf said he wants to emulate the states response to the opioid epidemic, which included encouraging addicts to seek treatment.

The last contempt-ation: The conservative group behind a Wisconsin lawsuit to boot upwards of 265,000 people off the voter rolls in that state is pushing a judge to hold state election officials in contempt of court, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinels Patrick Marley reports. A county judge ruled in favor of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty in December, ordering officials to begin removing voters who may have moved from the state registry. State officials have so far declined to act on that order.

Cleanup crew: Judicial Watch, a conservative activist group, is threatening four Pennsylvania counties with a lawsuit, claiming the counties have not properly purged voters from their rolls, per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The four counties  Allegheny, Bucks, Delaware and Chester  have all drifted toward Democrats since 2016.

Were not gonna make it: For the fifth straight month, the Institute for Supply Manufacturings manufacturing index  a measure of the health of that sector  contracted, MarketWatchs Jeffrey Bartash reports. The index has slipped to the lowest levels since the recession in 2009.

Downward slope: Homicides and shootings have declined for the third straight year in Chicago, the Chicago Tribunes Jeremy Gorner reports. The city is one of Republican President Donald Trumps favorite targets over its high total number of murders in recent years.

I just want the paper: After a prolonged standoff with Wolf and state lawmakers, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania  which includes the capital of Harrisburg  officially decided to purchase new voting machines that leave a paper trail, the Associated Press reports. Local officials had resisted the mandate from the state to buy new machines, saying they were not needed and could cause problems in the 2020 election.

Arrivals/Departures

Former Vice President Joe Biden was in Algona, Cedar Rapids and Independence, Iowa, on Friday, per the Washington Post.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was in Anamosa, Waterloo and Decorah, Iowa, on Friday, per The Gazette.

Billionaire philanthropist Tom Steyer was in Sheldon, Spirit Lake, Algona and Fort Dodge, Iowa, on Friday, per the Des Moines Registers candidate tracker.

Former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland was in Montezuma, Iowa, on Friday, per the Des Moines Registers candidate tracker.

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang was in Perry, Iowa, on Friday, per the Dallas County News.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was in Dubuque and Manchester, Iowa, on Saturday, per The Gazette.

Author Marianne Williamson was in Iowa City, Iowa, on Saturday, per the Iowa Press-Citizen.

Biden was in Waterloo, Vinton and Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, per the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and the campaign.

Steyer was in Hampton, Mason City, New Hampton and Waterloo, Iowa, on Saturday, per KAAL-TV and the Des Moines Registers candidate tracker.

Yang was in Knoxville, Oskaloosa, Ottumwa, Mount Pleasant, Wapello and Burlington, Iowa, on Saturday, per The Hawkeye.

Sanders was in Dubuque, Grundy Center and Mason City, Iowa, on Saturday, per Politico and The Globe Gazette.

Warren was in Maquoketa and Davenport, Iowa, on Sunday, per the Des Moines Register and the campaign.

Yang was in Fairfield, Washington, Fort Madison and Keokuk, Iowa, on Sunday, per the campaign.

Delaney was in Sheldon, Iowa, on Sunday, per the Des Moines Registers candidate tracker.

Biden was in Grinnell and Vinton, Iowa, on Sunday, per the campaign.

Sanders was in Boone, Iowa, on Sunday, per the campaign.

Steyer was in Marshalltown and Newton, Iowa, on Sunday, per the Des Moines Registers candidate tracker.

Delaney will be in Arnolds Park, Iowa, on Monday, per the Des Moines Registers candidate tracker.

Yang will be in Muscatine, Davenport, Clinton, Tipton and Monticello, Iowa, on Sunday, per the campaign.

President Donald Trump will be in Toledo, Ohio, on Thursday, per cleveland.com.

Democratic presidential hopefuls will be on stage in Des Moines on Jan. 15 for the final debate before the Iowa caucus, per the Des Moines Register.

Trump will be in Milwaukee on Jan. 15 to hold a competing rally, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Former Rep. Joe Walsh of Indiana wont appear on the Republican primary ballot Trump in his home state, per the Chicago Tribune.

Iowa may have the Butter Cow, but Pennsylvania has the Butter Gritty, per PennLive.

A pot dispensary is trying to open on Weed Street in Chicago, per the Chicago Tribune.

The Iowa caucus will be coming to the University of Pennsylvania, per the Philadelphia Inquirer.

This Is Your Captain Speaking

Typically when you say youre from South Bend, people either dont know where it is or they say, Oh, Notre Dame. Now its kind of split between, Oh, Notre Dame, and Mayor Pete.

-South Bend, Indiana venture capitalist Max Brickman, quoted in the South Bend Tribune on what Mayor Pete Buttigiegs presidential run means for the city. Brickman, along with other economic development experts, said Buttigiegs unlikely success thus far in the race has increased the profile of the city, broadening investment opportunities in the community.

Enjoying The Flyover? Be sure and subscribe here.

Email Seth at SRichardson@cleveland.com. Follow him on Twitter at @SethARichardson.
The U.S. killing of a senior Iranian military commander could throw the global oil market into disarray.

The Iranian government has vowed to exact "severe revenge" against the United States after Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a revered military figure in Iran, was killed in an American airstrike in at an Iraqi airport early Friday.

A key potential target: Tankers and other oil and natural gas infrastructure of U.S. allies and companies in the Middle East.

Some experts fear a counterstrike from Iran, potentially carried out by proxies for the state, may be more acute than blows the region's oil sector has suffered in the past given the outsize role Soleimani, Tehran's most powerful military commander, had in Iran.

"It's really impossible to overstate how important Soleimani was in Iran, how sort of seismic this event was," said Helima Croft, head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets.

President Donald Trump, who ordered the strike, escalated tensions by suggesting this weekend he may order attacks on Iranian cultural sites, an act that could constitute a war crime under international law. In turn, Iran announced it will abandon restrictions on uranium enrichment under a 2015 nuclear agreement unless U.S. sanctions are lifted.

One area to watch in the oil sector are tankers traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage connecting the Persian Gulf to the rest of the ocean. Often called the world's most important oil choke point, one-fifth of oil consumed globally goes through the waterway.

Ships there have been struck in transit before. The United States blamed Iran for attacks on four ships carrying oil and other fuel in May and on two oil tankers later in June. Iran has denied the accusations.

"Iran has already demonstrated its ability to strike tankers in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, and pipelines, production, and processing facilities in Saudi Arabia," said Samantha Gross, a fellow focused on foreign policy, energy security and climate change at the Brookings Institution. "All of these are still vulnerable."

And experts are closely monitoring oil operations in Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. military ally in the region and one of the world's top petroleum producers. "From an oil perspective, I would think a key risk, and one that the U.S. has already warned of, is an attack on Saudi oil infrastructure," said Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy for ING.

Saudi Arabia saw its most serious attack on oil infrastructure in decades last September after drones were used to attack the kingdom's eastern oil facilities. The attack forced the state-run oil giant Saudi Aramco to suspend production of 5.7 million barrels of crude.

Oil production by ExxonMobil and other American oil firms in Iraq could also be hit with retaliatory attacks. "We're particularly concerned about the operations of U.S. energy companies in southern Iraq," Croft said.

The price of oil ticked up as Trump and Tehran traded threats over the weekend. Brent crude, an international benchmark, topped $70 a barrel on Monday for the first time in three months.

"Clearly [with] the uncertainty over the type of retaliation we could see is supportive for oil prices," said Patterson. "I would expect that the increased tension does mean the market will price in a risk premium until things settle down."

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

But other analysts suggest any further rise in the price of oil would be more muted. The attacks in Saudi Arabia and on the Strait of Hormuz last year did not prompt any long-term spike in oil prices because several oil-producing nations, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, had spare capacity to meet market demand.

"If the situation worsened, and oil supplies were disrupted, this could have broader economic and financial market impacts through a sharp rise in crude oil prices. However, spare capacity in oil remains adequate," Mark Haefele, chief investment officer of UBS Global Wealth Management, wrote in a note to investors.

One of those oil-producing nations helping to insulate the market against shocks from the Middle East is the United States. The domestic boom in shale oil and gas production over the past decade has cut the nation's reliance on the Middle East for energy. Last year, the United States notched its first month in at least 70 years exporting more crude oil and petroleum products than it imported per day.

That independence, according to GasBuddy petroleum analyst Patrick DeHaan, has allowed Trump "to make wider maneuvers when it comes to the Middle East."

"Essentially," DeHaan said, "I think the increase in U.S. oil production has emboldened the White House to make moves that it previously would not."
A 13-year-old boy from Massachusetts is accused of stabbing and seriously injuring a girl in a hallway at their middle school before the start of classes on Monday.

A school resource officer was on the scene at Rockport Middle School almost immediately after the 7.30am assault, Chief John Horvath said in a statement.

The underage suspect had already fled but was tracked down outside the school and arrested.

Scroll down for video

A police officer stands near the entrance to the combined Rockport Middle and High School after a 13-year-old student stabbed a female classmate Monday

The stabbing took place in a school hallway before the start of classes Monday

A neighbor told the station WCVB he saw a boy, believed to be the suspect, hiding in a swampy area and diving into a patch of mud after being spotted.

The victim, whose age was not disclosed, was taken to Beverly Hospital to be treated for serious but not life-threatening injuries.

No names were made public because of their ages, but both were students at the school, the chief said. He did not disclose a motive behind the knife attack.

Police quickly responded and arrested the underage suspect near the school

The school was locked down during the search for the teen, but the lockdown was lifted at 9am

The suspect faces arraignment in juvenile court. Horvath did not say exactly what charges the boy faced.

The school was locked down during the search for the teen, but the lockdown was lifted at 9am and the school day continued with additional police presence on the premises.

Schools Superintendent Robert Liebow in a statement said parents would be allowed to take their children home early if they wanted.
INDEPENDENCE -- An Independence woman was sentenced to prison for stabbing her ex-husband to death in 2017.

Judge Andrea Dryer sentenced Hillary Lee Hunziker, 34, to life in prison without parole Monday in Buchanan County District Court. The sentence is mandatory under Iowa law.

Hillary Hunziker was also ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution to the estate of her victim, Jason Hunziker.

The judge also extended a retraining order, preventing her from contacting their young son for five years.

A jury found Hillary Hunziker guilty of murder during a December trial.

Prosecutors said she slipped into Jason Hunziker's rural Independence home in November 2017 and stabbed him to death. She then took their then 9-year-old son with plans to have him taken to relatives in Minnesota.

During trial, the defense argued Hillary Huziker was insane at the time of the slaying and was acting on a delusion that her ex had been abusing their son.

Before the sentencing on Monday, the judge dismissed defense motions for a new trial that argued the jury wasn't provided with proper jury instructions and that the guilty verdict went against the weight of the evidence.

Photos: The Hillary Hunziker trial

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The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission has said the review of electricity tariffs in the country is subject to public consultation.

The chairman of the board of NERC, James Momoh, said the proposed tariff is only a review that it is mandated twice in a year.

Speaking at a briefing on an oncoming international conference on energy, power systems and planning, which will take place in Abuja, Mr Momoh said within three months, the commission will engage the media and other Nigerians.

So, there will be consultations. We have done our review and given a report card of what we saw based on all the indices.

There is no immediate increase in tariff for customer. The proposal for proposed tariff review is what we are mandated to do as a regulator. We are to do it twice a year.

We (did) the first one around June. January is here, thank God. We have no option but to do our job. We must do our job, he said.

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He said the review is simply a communication of what the commission has done as a regulator, as it pertains to an increase or decrease the tariff.

He said, if there is going to be increase, it will be based on consultations at a public forum.

Mr Momoh also said a press release will be issued over the weekend to clarify the issue.

The NERC commissioner, Frank Okafor, who was also at the briefing, said the tarriff review is statutory and not tantamount to tariff increase to the end user.

This review is an internal process between participants in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry and the regulator (NERC) he said.

The tariff review affected DisCos which include: Abuja Electricity Distribution Company, Benin Electricity Distribution Company, Enugu Electricity Distribution Company, Eko Electricity Distribution Company, Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company and Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company.

Others are Jos Electricity Distribution Company, Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company, Kano Electricity Distribution Company, Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company and Yola Electricity Distribution Company.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, one of Donald Trump's top allies on Capitol Hill, said Monday if Nancy Pelosi won't send the articles of impeachment over to the Senate then the case against the president should be dismissed.

'We need to change the Senate rules to allow the Senate to dismiss this case if she refuses to send the articles over,' Hawley told 'Fox & Friends.'

'To give the president due process, the Senate has to act. We've got to say send us these articles or we're moving on without you,' he noted.

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said if Speaker Pelosi won't send the article of impeachment to the Senate, the case should be dismissed

Congress returns to Capitol Hill this week and Speaker Pelosi has given no indication of when she'll send the articles of impeachment to the Senate so President Trump's trial can begin

Hawley also suggested Pelosi could hold onto the articles into a second Trump term in order to try to obstruct him for four more years.

'We could be sitting here in October of this year and Nancy Pelosi could still be sitting on the articles or when the president gets re-elected, as I believe he will. We could see her still holding on to the articles to try and obstruct a second term. I mean, if the Senate doesn't act, then there's no end in sight,' he said.

A chorus is growing among Republican senators - most of them backers of the president - for the Senate to take some kind of action if the speaker doesn't transmit the articles.

'I mean in a normal courtroom in a real world, if the prosecutor does not try his or her case, if they don't actually bring it forward to the court, then the defendant can say, all right, well, then we're dismissing the case. The court can say we're dismissing the case. And in this in this instance, the Senate is the court. And it's time for us to take action to say if you're not going to prosecute your case, we're throwing it out,' Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, said.

He charged Speaker Pelosi with trying to obstruct the Senate's work.

'She's trying to prevent a Senate trial - she's trying to obstruct it. She's trying to upend the Constitution,' he complained.

On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, another Trump ally, urged Republicans to 'take matters in our own hands and change Senate rules' in order to jump start the president's impeachment trial.

Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he will push for a change in rules that would allow a Senate trial to move forward immediately if Democrats do not agree to its format this week.

'If we don't get the articles this week, then we need to take matters in our own hands and change the rules. Deem them to be delivered to the Senate,' he said on Fox News' 'Sunday Morning Futures.'

Changing the Senate's rules would require 51 votes in a chamber where Republicans have a 53-47 majority.

But such a move would be seen as an extreme measure on the part of Republican leadership and ratchet up tensions in the already divided Congress.

White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway also slammed Pelosi for delaying the president's trial.

'It looks like Nancy Pelosi favors a delay in the impeachment process, because she hasn't bothered to send over the articles of impeachment from the House. Which is it? Is the president is an imminent threat to the republic, a clear and present danger who must be removed immediately? Or did she take a little mini sabbatical over the break and has decided when to send over the articles of impeachment?,' Conway told reporters Monday morning in the White House briefing room.

'They know their case is very weak. They know their case was very obtuse, was very weak, very specious, and she wont send those over. So, delay a trial for what reason? I mean, lets get on with it already,' she added.

Congress returns to Capitol Hill this week after their two-week long holiday recess.

There was no movement over the holiday season on the impeachment process and Pelosi has given no indication when she will transmit the articles to the Senate so it can start the president's trial.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell showed no signs Friday of negotiating with the Democrats.

'Their turn is over,' McConnell said about the Democratic-led House. 'It's the Senate's turn now to render sober judgment as the framers intended.'

Lindsey Graham said he wants the Senate to launch an impeachment trial of Donald Trump within days even if it means changing Senate rules

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell showed no signs Friday of negotiating with the Democrats

Democrats contend the delay has already brought them a victory of sorts.

'One success that this has already had is flushing out McConnell, showing that he is working in cahoots with the president, that he has made himself an active participant in the president's cover-up,' House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said on CNN Monday.

Two moderate Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, have indicated they were open to hearing from more witnesses and registered their concerns about McConnell's claim that he was working closely with the White House on the format for the trial.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has pushed for more witnesses to be called - including Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, along with former national security adviser John Bolton and two other White House aides.

'If we don't get a commitment up front that the House managers will be able to call witnesses as part of their case, the Senate will act as little more than a nationally televised meeting of the 'Mock Trial Club,'' Schumer said Friday.

Pelosi has said she is reluctant to transmit the articles of impeachment until she knows the form the Senate trial will take.

'The American people deserve the truth,' Pelosi said in a statement. 'Every Senator now faces a choice: to be loyal to the President or the Constitution.'

President Trump is expected to be acquitted in the Republican-controlled Senate but Democrats will push to call more witnesses for questioning on the chamber floor.
(Bloomberg) -- Shares of cybersecurity companies gained in the aftermath of last weeks killing of a top Iranian military official as investors bet the increased risk of attacks will result in more business.

Crowdstrike Holdings Inc. rose as much as 11% on Monday, adding to a 2.7% gain in Fridays session. FireEye Inc. has advanced 5% over two days. Companies that offer threat-detection services are the ones most likely to benefit from increased risk of attacks compared with those offering more traditional services like firewall defense, according to Mandeep Singh, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst.

Its really the pure-play security companies that do threat detection that are the ones that can be the direct beneficiary of something like this, he said in an interview. These events are more of a tailwind, it can drive up their services businesses.

U.S. government officials are bracing for an increase in Iranian cyber-attacks on U.S. businesses and government agencies. Christopher Krebs, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, last week warned the public to pay attention to critical systems, especially industrial control infrastructure.

Cybersecurity stocks have outperformed the market over the past two days. The ETFMG Prime Cyber Security exchange-traded fund that tracks the industry has gained 1.3% since Jan. 2, compared with a 0.6% decline for the S&P 500 Index.

Significant events can still help justify spending in the cybersecurity industry even though stocks in the group are less reactionary than they have been in the past, Evercore ISI analysts Ken Talanian and Kirk Materne said in a note last week.

--With assistance from Alyza Sebenius and William Turton.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeran Wittenstein in San Francisco at jwittenstei1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Catherine Larkin at clarkin4@bloomberg.net

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Arunachal Pradesh Governor B D Mishra on Monday expressed concerns over audit objections raised by the Comptroller and Audit General of India (CAG) and asked officials to resolve the queries at the earliest.

Convening a meeting on the issue at the Raj Bhawan here, the governor asked officials to meet representatives of the Public Accounts Committee of the Assembly and Accountant General periodically to ensure that the state has no fault on any matters of accounts.

He advised senior officials to put in concerted effort to ensure better financial administration, a statement said.

"By honest approach and perseverance the present problems have to be eliminated during the current year," he pointed out.

The governor said that the financial grants, which the state government receive, are hard earned money of the tax payers and should be utilised with probity and transparency.

"No mismanagement or inaction will now be tolerated from any officer, department or institution," he said and suggested regular meetings among PAC chairman, Accountant General and officials of the finance department to resolve the issues of audit objections.

Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein, Deputy Speaker Tesam Pongte, Chairman of Public Accounts Committee Ninong Ering, Accountant General Purushottam Tiwary along with commissioner, secretaries and heads of departments attended the meeting, the statement said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: BJP leader and MP Shobha Karandlaje met city Police Commissioner Bhaskar Rao and demanded to initiate action against two youths who allegedly raped a girl for almost one year and also threatened to convert her to Islam.

The MP met the commissioner on Sunday and submitted the complaint copy.

Speaking to reporters later, she said that the girl, who was brought from Kasaragod to Electronics City, where the accused youths run a business, was allegedly raped here. I have asked the Police Commissioner to direct the Electronics City police to register an FIR and arrest the youths,she said.

I have spoken to the survivor and she said that the youths were also forcing her to convert to Islam and threatened her with dire consequences if she did not, the MP alleged.

She suspects that there was a gang that could be operating to forcibly convert Hindu women to Islam.

The BJP leader also met Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa along with the survivors family members and gave a petition.
According to a new report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, 4,671 people were arrested in 2019, most of them by the regime writes Zaman Al Wasl.

At least 4,671 people were arrested by the Syrian regime and other warring factions in 2019, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR).

According to a recent SNHR report, Syrian regime forces arrested at least 2,797 people, including 113 children and 125 women.

The Islamic State (ISIS) arrested 64 people, including two children and one woman, while its fellow jihadist group, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, arrested 303 people, including eight children and four women.

The report documents 405 cases of arbitrary arrests at the hands of factions of the armed opposition, including 19 children and 20 women. It also documented 1,102 cases of arbitrary arrests at the hands of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, including 81 children and 56 women.

According to the International Conscience Movement, an NGO, more than 13,500 women have been jailed since the Syrian conflict began, while more than 7,000 women remain in detention, where they are subjected to torture, rape and sexual violence.

The Syrian regime has been practicing 72 torture methods on detainees in security chambers and military hospitals, SNHR said last October.

Syrian opposition sources said that more than 500,000 prisoners remain inside the prisons of the Syrian regime.

Since the revolution erupted in March 2011, about 1.2 million Syrian citizens have, at some point, been arrested and detained in the regimes detention centers, including 130,000 individuals who are still detained or forcibly disappeared by the Syrian regime, SNHR said.

This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
A woman has died in a horrific lawnmower accident after the ride-on grass trimmer rolled and trapped her beneath it.

Maureen Piggott, from Kin Kin in Queensland, died when she was trapped underneath the machine on Saturday.

Police were called to the 61-year-old's property at about 7.30pm and discovered Mrs Piggott's body still under the mower, The Courier Mail reported.

The tight knit Queensland community of Kin Kin is in mourning over the death of local resident and alpaca farmer Maureen Piggott, 61, (pictured) on Saturday

The tight knit community of Kin Kin was left devastated by Ms Piggott's untimely death.

She was well known around the area for her alpaca farm and her community work.

'I am having trouble comprehending and finding words for such a tragic loss,' one friend wrote on Facebook.

'I am absolutely bereft,' another wrote.

'She'd been overdoing things lately and I told her not to go slashing when she got home. You can't tell Maur what to do.'

Officers from Workplace Health and Safety are on sight investigating because the property doubled as Ms Piggott's alpaca farm.

A report is also being prepared for the coroner.
Residents of a small town which has been destroyed by a ferocious bushfire have taken a strong stance against potential thieves.

A sign reading 'U loot, we shoot' was spotted on a road into Conjola Park, along New South Wales' south coast, on Sunday.

The warning comes after the town was left blackened and charred, with at least 50 properties destroyed, after a blaze swept through on New Year's Day.

A sign reading 'U loot, we shoot' was spotted on a road into Conjola Park, along New South Wales south coast, on Sunday

The warning comes after the town was left blackened and charred, with at least 50 properties destroyed, after a blaze swept through on New Year's Day

Burnt out cars and flattened homes now fill the streets of the popular holiday hotspot.

Many people supported the staunch sign, with a number of people saying the aggression was understandable.

'I will gladly pay for more signs,' one person wrote online.

'Excellent sign. Should be posted everywhereway too many low life thieving pieces of s**t around and unfortunately lots live among us everyday,' another wrote.

NSW Police Force Deputy Commissioner Gary Worboys told news.com.au anyone thinking of looting these homes should be disgusted with themselves.

Burnt out cars and flattened homes now fill the streets of the popular holiday hotspot

A car parked outside a home in Conjola Park, NSW was completely destroyed when the fire tore through the town

'People in these areas have already lost members of their communities, seen property destroyed and suffered emotional turmoil from the recent fire activity.

'They do not need the added stress of looters stealing what little they might have left.'

He said police have been patrolling the area to catch anyone who might thinking about looting.
Retailers were charging up to 180 taka for a kg of the kitchen staple on Friday after the maximum prices remained between 100-110 taka over the past week, bdnews24 reported on Saturday.

Dhaka: After a drop following imports and arrival of new produces, onion prices have shot up again in Bangladesh, it was reported.

Traders have blamed a supply squeeze due to sudden winter rains from Thursday night for the hike in onion prices in a day.

Almas Hossain, a grocer in Mirpur's Pirerbagh, said he was selling new local produces at up to 120 taka a kg two days ago.

"But I had to buy at 160 taka per kg from the wholesalers in the morning. So I can't charge less than 180 taka," he said.

Onions imported from China and Egypt priced between 45-55 taka kg last week, but the prices rose to 70 taka on Friday.

The latest onion price hike has hit the residents of Dhaka a day after Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi demanded an explanation for onion price hike from businesses before warning them against spiking commodity prices during Ramadan in April, said bdnews24.

Onion consumption rises in Bangladesh during Ramadan, which will start in the second half of April, due to the use of the kitchen staple in most Iftar items.

The country usually needs 200,000 tonnes of extra onion in the month, according to Munshi, who said the government was preparing to meet the demand by bolstering import.
PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte ordered the military to prepare to deploy its aircraft and ships at any moments notice to evacuate thousands of Filipino workers in Iraq and Iran, reflecting Asias growing fears for its citizens amid a potential outbreak of violence in the Middle East.

Other Asian nations with large populations of expatriate labor may face similar decisions amid the rapidly escalating tensions between the United States (US) and Iran following last weeks US airstrike that killed Irans General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.

South Koreas Foreign Ministry said last week it would work to increase the security of about 1,600 of its nationals in Iraq, where they work mostly in construction sites. Indias foreign ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said India wasnt planning to evacuate any citizens from the volatile region yet.

Duterte held an emergency meeting with his defense secretary and top military and police officials Sunday to discuss the evacuation plans.

President Duterte ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines to be prepared to deploy military assets to repatriate overseas Filipinos in the Middle East, particularly from Iran and Iraq, at any moment's notice, said Senator Christopher Lawrence Go, a close ally of the Duterte who was at the meeting.

Iran has vowed to retaliate and President Donald Trump warned American forces would hit back at 52 Iranian targets if Americans come under attack. Iraq's Parliament has also called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, which could revive the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.

Compounding contingency plans is the uncertainty where hostilities could possibly break out.

Military chief of staff Lieutenant General Felimon Santos Jr. said Philippine forces have identified possible evacuation routes not only in Iraq and Iran but other hotspots, like Israel.

There are probabilities like that and we are improving our plans just to cover everything just in case something happens, Santos told reporters in Manila.

Story continues

There are more than 7,000 Filipino workers and their dependents in Iraq and Iran, including many who work in US and other foreign facilities and commercial establishments in Baghdad, the Department of National Defense said.

The workers in Iran and Iraq are a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who are employed in countries lining the Persian Gulf.

The Philippines is a leading source of labor worldwide with about a tenth of its more than 100 million people working mostly as household help, construction workers, seamen and professionals.

Other countries face similar dilemmas. Asians make up 40 percent of the world's migrants, and Middle Eastern countries are a common destination.

Gulf Arab states are home to more than seven million Indian expatriates who help drive the region's economy and keep its cities teeming with doctors, engineers, teachers, drivers, construction workers and other laborers. In United Arab Emirates, Indians outnumber Emiratis three to one. (AP)
Vice President Pence Lies About Soleimani, 9/11 in Plain Sight Of Mother, Bible, Half-Eaten Apple Pie By Stephen Robinson January 05, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - Have we mentioned lately that Mike Pence is a lying weasel? The vice president tried to plant the bloody glove of 9/11 on Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. Pence claimed in a tweet Friday that Soleimani, who the US killed good and dead, "assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States." These are all lies. But the New York Times reacted as if he just flubbed an answer on his early 21st century history midterm. Sigh. New York Times This Times headline reads as if "the Public Record" was Pence's band from the 1990s before he went solo. He's on tour with some classic war tunes and the Public Record won't back him again. He'll have to settle for some random session musicians. The actual story here, for those of us who took a journalism class once, is that the vice president willingly spread falsehoods on Twitter about Soleimani. He even got the number of 9/11 hijackers wrong. There were 19 angry men not 12. It's unclear why he'd lie about that. Maybe Pence thought 19 was too close to 69. As Charlotte Clymer quickly pointed out, "Soleimani quite literally helped the U.S. with post-9/11 intelligence in Afghanistan because he hated the Taliban." Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter I can't get over the photo art the Times used for an article about how the vice president's a shameless liar. It's some mother and apple pie patriotic bullshit. I would've gone with a shot of him picking his nose not solemnly standing by the flag with his hand plugging the gaping hole where his soul escaped. Pence's press secretary kept shoveling the manure. For those asking: 12 of the 19 transited through Afghanistan. 10 of those 12 were assisted by Soleimani. https://t.co/KSUI2kXmfX  Katie Waldman (@VPPressSec) January 3, 2020 This is probably news to the 2002-era United States that actively worked with Soleimani to take out their mutual enemy, the Taliban. Here's what should concern you: The American government has a bad habit of blaming countries for 9/11 before we invade them. Two years after 9/11, 7 out of 10 Americans believed Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks. He wasn't. Ellen Degeneres's buddy George W. Bush frequently implied a link. This was all pre-Twitter so Bush and Dick Cheney couldn't just lie in 280 characters or less like Trump and Pence do with apparent impunity. Bush, in his speeches, did not say directly that Hussein was culpable in the Sept. 11 attacks. But he frequently juxtaposed Iraq and al Qaeda in ways that hinted at a link. In a March speech about Iraq's "weapons of terror," Bush said: "If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force, even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks. The attacks of September the 11th, 2001, showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction." Oh no! There are so many words! And 9/11 was one of them. Is 9/11 a word? We don't have time to discuss that! Hussein will kill us all unless we strike first! This is why liberal spoilsports like myself warned against forgiving or worse forgetting what the architects of Iraq did not so long ago. We open ourselves up for a revival of a show we never liked in the first place, one that technically never ended. Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter. This article was originally published by "Wonkette" - Do you agree or disagree? Post your comment here
EDINBORO, Pennsylvania  A Walmart is dealing with bed bugs after they apparently were intentionally released in a dressing room of the store.

A Walmart manager on Thursday discovered live bed bugs in a closed pill bottle in a boys jacket, goerie.com reports. Another bottle with dead bed bugs inside was found Friday in another part of the store, WENY News reports.

The manager called police after discovering the first bottle on Thursday.

A lab worker with the company Ecolab was brought to the store and discovered the bugs crawling in the dressing room, according to goerie.com.

We take this seriously and are looking into this, a Walmart spokesperson tells CNN. We are fully cooperating with law enforcement on their investigation. The spokesperson says the area of the store where the bugs were discovered has been closed off.

The Centers for Disease Control says bed bugs do not spread disease, but their bites can cause itching. An allergic reaction might require medical attention, according to the CDC.

Edinboro is located about 20 miles south of Erie.

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India has seen some significant changes in its human resources (HR) industry over the last five years.

New priorities have included creating a diverse workforce, establishing gender parity and pay equality, providing mentorship, and assuring safety at the workplace.

Moreover, companies and start-up enterprises alike now view hiring in more holistic terms while job seekers choose their employers based on a wider criterion than salary growth, particularly in the initial stages of their career.

Also, as India enters 2020 amid an ongoing economic slowdown, HR departments across its corporate landscape will be expected to ensure the most efficient utilization of resources through increasing reliance on technology for recruitment, onboarding, and performance management.

In this article, we spotlight the five big trends expected to dominate Indias HR industry in 2020.

1. AI to become a standard tool for recruiters

The HR industry is already familiar with artificial intelligence (AI) powered solutions for talent acquisition. In the last few years, AI has reduced the time taken at the recruitment phase by removing the need for managers to manually browse hundreds of applications.

This has given hiring teams more time to perform higher value work, such as broadening engagement with candidates, recruitment marketing, organizing mentorship and training programs, among others.

In 2020, AI integration will be used across employee-facing applications and software to drive productivity and engagement within the organization.

Further, AI powered virtual assistants will start to be used more widely in the workplace. Meanwhile, the technology to automate repetitive routine tasks will continue to improve, enhancing productivity in organizations.

2. Growing usage of data analytics

It is anticipated that in 2020 HR teams will begin to use data analytics in a more focused manner  to increase productivity, innovation, and revenue at the workplace. This will facilitate the creation of employee-centric environments, in turn driving up the role and importance of data driven strategies.

For example, through access to the organizations large database of employee information, specialized HR personnel will be able to understand employee behavioral patterns with regards to retention, recruitment, development and engagement, satisfaction, performance, and productivity, among others.

HR managers can then track metrics, such as offer acceptance rate, training expenses per employee, turnover rate, human capital risk, and revenue per employee. Data from these key metrics will improve the employee experience and hiring process, reduce attrition, and make the workforce more productive.

Use of data analytics may also help HR departments identify future risks and vulnerabilities in the organization so that effective solutions may be applied right away or problematic situations may be recognized and resolved.

3. Blacklist for CV fraudsters, emphasis on background checks

According to a recent report, to counter inaccuracies in candidate CVs, the HR industry is collectively working to create a master blacklist. Expected to be completed by June 2020, this list will include major and minor discrepancies in a candidates resume. The collaboration is important as data show that candidates frequently misrepresent their employment related information.

Further, since hiring needs are now commonly outsourced to third-party recruitment firms, the blacklist will be key to selecting qualified candidates and minimize the scope for fraudulent candidates infiltrating the hiring firm.

Based on the type of inaccuracy, a score will be assigned to each candidate, and details will be stored with recruitment firms. When the candidate applies for a job, details of their CV and past discrepancy will be passed on to the organization. Then, the company will take a final call about interviewing and/or hiring the candidate.

In addition, multinational companies in India are now conducting background verification before hiring selected candidates. This practice is likely to spread as an industry best practice in the coming years.

4. Impetus to create a healthy work culture will add value to HR roles

Employees now look for organizations that nurture their talent, provide them with opportunities to grow, and offer a supportive and healthy work culture.

In a study conducted in India by Randstad, a human resource consulting firm, almost 46 percent of those surveyed stated their preference for work-life balance in their jobs, and 36 percent said they would leave their jobs because of a poor work-life balance. Around 43 percent stated they would leave their jobs because of limited progress in their career path.

Therefore, creating a healthy work culture in order to recruit and retain employees is of utmost importance.

Along with creating a safe and harassment free workplace for employees, HR managers will need to work harder to communicate the companys culture and its values to the employees.

This includes creating opportunities for mentoring and leadership, closing the gender and pay gap, promoting more women to executive positions, and support for employees pursuing further education or skills development.

5. Marketing and branding will be an integral part of the HR function

The role played by HR departments will continue to evolve in 2020. Along with their traditional responsibilities, HR managers will now be expected to work more closely towards employer branding.

This is because as HR operations increasingly digitize, their role becomes more closely aligned with marketing goals. For instance, during the talent acquisition process, firms employ social media marketing to attract the best hires. Here, HR personnel contribute greatly in building the brand that will excite potential employees and motivate them to choose to apply to the organization.

Recruitment online has never been as easy  with the proliferation of platforms like Quora, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn. At the same time, it has created new challenges. The reputation of a firm could easily be maligned by a bad review or comment by a current or former employee. In a post-Me Too era, hiring managers will be expected to prioritize building positive work environments with zero tolerance for harassment and discrimination.
BJP MLC from Telangana Ramchander Rao on Sunday reacted to AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi's statement and said that BJP has always thought of Muslims as real Indians. Asaddudin Owaisi had earlier slammed Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for sharing a video of the RSS march via his Twitter handle in December.

Owaisi said that the video shared by Pakistani PM was false and it is from Bangladesh. Owaisi also added that the Muslim community is proud to be Indian.

Rao said that Owaisi has only reiterated what Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah have been always saying, "What Asaduddin Owaisi must think is that the BJP has always believed that Indian Muslims are the real Indians because when they had the opportunity to go away during Partition, they decided to stay in India. Therefore, there is nothing new in these statements by Owaisi.

He has only repeated what Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah have said. We believe that they are Indians as they are here with us," Rao told ANI.

READ: Leave BJP & we'll all stand with you: Asaduddin Owaisi appeals to Bihar CM Nitish Kumar

Ramchander Rao slams Owaisi

Rao further lashed our at the AIMIM MP for inciting the Muslims against the Central government. Owaisi has been very vocal in criticising the government against the CAA, NRC, and the NPR. The MP had also led a delegation of Muslim leaders to meet Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao on December 25, urging him to not to conduct National Population Register (NPR) process in the state.

"He has been inciting the Indian Muslims against the Indian Government till now. Now that the CAA has come, they are taking the Indian flag in hand and singing the national anthem, we welcome it," Ramchander Rao added.



READ: Owaisi slams Imran Khan for sharing anti-India video, says he is a 'Proud Indian Muslim'

MoS slams Imran Khan

The MoS Home, GK Reddy has also slammed the Pak PM for the same video via Twitter. He said that Pakistan should focus on the persecution of minorities unfolding in his country.

Reddy also asserted that RSS is a "disciplined" organisation and they have been carrying out marches since 1925. MoS further added that India is a"secular" nation and Pakistan is a country that has been sheltering terrorists on its soil.

A rogue nation which patented genocide by systematic persecution of Hindus in their country and which breeds terror across the world including giving shelter to cannibals like Osama Bin Laden blames a disciplined cultural organisation meant for protecting values.



1/2 https://t.co/NIAmAM8Mfk  G Kishan Reddy (@kishanreddybjp) January 4, 2020

READ: 'Common people struggling enough, don't need NRC-NPR': Owaisi slams Centre

READ: Asaduddin Owaisi calls Congress' Uttam Kumar's comments on Hyderabad CP 'intemperate'
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Jan. 06, 2020 | LYON COUNTY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Jan. 06, 2020 | 12:07 AM | LYON COUNTY

Two juveniles and an 18-year-old have been charged in connection with the theft of a Lyon County vehicle on two different occasions.



According to the Lyon County Sheriff's Department, deputies say the vehicle was first stolen on December 26th, and driven to McCracken County where it was involved in a hit-and-run collision. It was then driven back to the original location.



Deputies say it was again stolen on December 30th, and was involved in another hit-and-run crash, this time in Lyon County.



After being reported stolen, the vehicle was located by the Princeton Police Department, and they detained a 17-year-old male juvenile that was in possession of a key to the vehicle.



Lyon County Sheriff Brent White brought the vehicle, and the male juvenile, back to Lyon County.



Deputies say that drugs were found in the vehicle, and that damages from the crashes were just under $3,000.



After an investigation, three people were arrested, which included the 17-year-old male juvenile, a 16-year-old female juvenile, and 18-year-old Conner Richie, of Kuttawa.



Richie will be arraigned in Lyon County District Court on January 8th, the 17-year-old male juvenile was taken to the McCracken County Regional Juvenile Detention Center, and the 16-year-old female juvenile was released to the custody of a parent, pending a juvenile court date.
Speaking at the meeting, the Vice President highly praised the delegates who received the Sao thang Gieng award and the central-level title of Students with Five Good Performances this year, affirming that the awards are noble rewards, requiring comprehensive effort to strive forward.

Delegates should consider the awards as a great and prideworthy motivation to continue to promote knowledge, apply skills in learning to aspects of life, always be shining examples in the student community nationwide, contributing positively to bring Vietnam on a par with the great powers in the region and the world, she added.

She highly appreciating the programmes and activities implemented by Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union and Vietnam Student Association at all levels. The programmes and activities created an environment for students to be creative, mature and contribute to youth, she said.

The Vice President suggested the ministries, branches, unions and localities continue to pay attention and creating opportunities for students to access specific policies of the Party and State; and to foster students' goals, ideals and noble lifestyle, training elite students to become pioneering party members in the future.
A man has been hailed as a hero after taking on a thief who walked out of a JB Hi-Fi store with a stolen laptop.

Ryan Daly snatched the stolen computer from the man who had shoved past the store's security guard in Armadale, Perth, on Friday.

The thief - who was smoking a cigarette - attempted to steal it back, but was kicked several times by Mr Daly who then returned it safely to the shop.

Footage shared to Facebook shows Mr Daly, clad in a 'Next Level' singlet following the thief before snatching the laptop along with his bag.

One woman said the staff at the store had called security but the shopper responded: 'Sorry mate, I'm stealing it. That's just the way it is.'

A scuffle kicked off between the pair but Mr Daly came off victorious and was able to return the computer back to staff.

He was greeted with a round of applause as customers shouted 'well done' and one staff member said: 'You're a hero'.

Dianne Michelle who was with Mr Daly at the time told Daily Mail Australia everyone was impressed that someone was able to stop him.

Ryan Daly snatched the laptop from the thief after he walked out of a JB Hi-Fi store in Armadale last week

The thief attempted to get the computer back but Mr Daly kicked him several times

'I wish I got more of the reactions on video but everyone was quite happy and shocked that someone actually did something about it,' Ms Michelle said.

She said staff at the store told her it wasn't uncommon for people to try and steal things.

'Apparently its day in and day out, where people just simply walk out with unpaid goods,' she said.

Ms Michelle said the pair struggled over the laptop but it was clear Mr Daly was going to win.

'I dont think he was scared but saw that he wasnt going to win the fight, he just wanted his bag back. Ryan took his bag to teach him a lesson,' she said.

'The staff were very thankful and are sick and tired of people taking things from the store.'

The video was flooded with comments with many praising Mr Daly.

'Well done mate, not to many people would want to take you on,' one person wrote.

'Great effort mate, they need to employ you as the security guard!' another said.

Ms Michelle said staff had alerted police.
Who remembers that it was the Progressive Conservatives who created the legal aid plan in Ontario that was once the envy of the world?

Who remembers why they did it?

A democratic society is an ongoing pact between its individual members. Its an agreement not to take a limited and specified number of liberties against one another in exchange for the security provided by the collective. We give up the ability to steal from and assault one another, for example, to secure our own property and persons. We make such anti-social freedoms illegal.

But what happens to a society when the profession weve created to ensure its individual members dont unjustly lose any of their legal freedoms becomes accessible only to those who are well-off?

What happens to that society when it starts taking away the very liberty of its other members unfairly by failing to provide them with the means to retain an independent defence lawyer to represent them?

And what happens when the realization occurs to apparatuses of that society  like the police  that they can deny certain individuals justice and fairness simply by accusing them? When they realize such individuals cannot possibly compete with the states narratives against them without advocates of their own in a justice system that is organized entirely upon the adversarial system of determining guilt and innocence?

The Star and contributors to the Star have already perceptively and comprehensively documented how the currently proposed changes to legal aid in Ontario by the Ford government will leave thousands upon thousands of poor Ontarians without legal representation if charged with a criminal offence.

I am a criminal defence lawyer. I was lucky enough many years ago to reach a point in my practice where I could stop having to represent people on legal aid. I still did, mind you, until I finally had enough of the degradation and frustration a defence lawyer has to endure doing it: woefully inadequate budgets for preparation, hourly rates that leave little left after the expenses of a practice, having to write pages upon pages to justify the most minor but obviously necessary disbursements  the list goes on and on.

But again, Ive been lucky. Very lucky. Most criminal defence lawyers have already had to sacrifice any semblance of a comfortable or even secure existence to represent the poor on legal aid as it has been. I have no idea how theyre going to manage now.

Let me ask and answer two questions: why do they do it, and why should we care?

They do it for a host of very noble reasons but most would at least acknowledge they do it for more cynical ones as well.

They do it because they know and fear the answers to the other questions I posed at the beginning of this argument. They know they are all that stands between a society that can at least make some claim it provides its poorest members a chance of justice, fairness and security as individuals and a completely arbitrary and cruel one.

And they know too many people will opt out of the rules of society and take liberties against society if there is no one to champion them when society accuses and prosecutes them. Many defence lawyers imagine themselves radicals, but most are conservatives in the very best sense of the word.

It should now be obvious why we should care about what happens to these lawyers. For years theyve been holding on in the face of cut after cut and they cannot hold on any longer. They will have to employ their considerable skills in other, lucrative areas of the law or leave law entirely.

Once theyre gone  once their mentorship of new defence lawyers is gone  it will take decades to replace them.

Well be left with a society with travesties of justice like the one the Ontario Court of Appeal recently had to correct where a Hamilton trial judge and Crown made a man who couldnt read represent himself in a trial where the Crowns case against him included two large boxes of documentary materials. Well be left with a society where people feel justified disrespecting its laws.

We should be insisting on a robust legal aid plan because its an essential feature of an unequal society that still aspires to be fair. But if that doesnt move you to care, be moved to preserve your own security. To turn a phrase of one of the fathers of the U.S. Constitution, there can be no security for anyone in a society without legal champions for everyone.

The Bill Davis Progressive Conservatives of the 1970s and first half of the 1980s understood this. The current incantation of the party seems much more prepared to risk the security of all Ontarians.
Watertown, NY (13601)

Today

Becoming partly cloudy later with any flurries or snow showers ending by midnight. Low -8F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 30%..

Tonight

Becoming partly cloudy later with any flurries or snow showers ending by midnight. Low -8F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 30%.
By Express News Service

KOCHI: Having your wedding interrupted can sometimes turn into a fond memory several years down the line.

Ashley Hall, a native of Ann Arbor in Michigan who had been planning her destination wedding for the last eight months, was in for a rude shock when she was asked to shift the venue at the last minute.

Ashley, who was supposed to get married at Taj Malabar in Cochin on Tuesday, was told to move out since President Kovind, on his way to Lakshadweep, was staying at the same hotel. But then this American was not one to give up.

Hall tweeted to Rashtrapati Bhavan requesting help. "Hey @rashtrapatibhvn- anything you can do to help us with your security team so that we dont have to move our wedding from the @Taj_Cochin in under 48 hours?" she tweeted to the president's office.

Hey @rashtrapatibhvn- anything you can do to help us with your security team so that we dont have to move our wedding from the @Taj_Cochin in under 48 hours? https://t.co/0S5y9az9Hk  Ashley Hall (@hall_ash) January 5, 2020

President Kovind had reached Kochi on Monday afternoon and owing to the high-security protocol, the wedding venue was required to be shifted. However, on seeing Ashley's request, the President decided to make an exception and allowed the couple to go ahead with their wedding as per the schedule.

"We are glad the issues have been resolved. President Kovind conveys his best wishes to you on this joyous occasion", the President's office tweeted back to Ashley. She, in turn, tweeted her thanks to the hotel and state officials for helping her and said she hoped to have a beautiful wedding with the blessings of the president.

We are glad the issues have been resolved. President Kovind conveys his best wishes to you on this joyous occasion  President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) January 5, 2020

Many Twitter users were in awe of the President's gesture. "Your kind gesture makes India very special. A lot more to learn from you sir. Proud of you. Blessed to have you as our President", tweeted Harshadha Shirodkar. "Thats really a great gesture from @rashtrapatibhvn Proud to be an #Indian. Congratulations @hall_ash", tweeted Sreeni Konnat, a Twitter user.

However, other users expressed their displeasure at Ashley's tweet. Sajit, a Twitter user from Kerala, said Ashley could have been more respectful to the President. "Next time it would be more appreciated if you can be respectable to the President rather than a 'HEY'," was his tweet.

Another user Shadab Saharanpur responded positively to her tweet stating, "This is India, ma'am, all are taken care of here."

The President will stay at the hotel on Monday and fly to Lakshadweep on Tuesday morning.
In a press conference on Monday at the university campus, the ABVP claimed that at least 25 of its activists were injured, while another 10 activists were missing, ever since the attack.

New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has blamed the Left for the violence in Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

ABVP's JNU wing leader Lalit claimed: "Sabarmati hostel was attacked. Entire violence is to stop students from registering in new semester."

Referring to a purported video which was earlier tweeted by the ABVP, he asked: "What will Aishe (JNUSU President) say about her leading goons to the Periyar hostel, which was vandalised soon after?"

Manish Jagid, whose left arm was fractured in Sunday's violence too alleged that left aligned students came into the Periyar hostel on Sunday and started shouting "Kahan hai Manish?" Manish was the ABVP presidential candidate at JNU in 2019.

Meanwhile, ABVP activist Nidhi Triptahi saw a "pre-planned approach" to Sunday's violence. She said: "Yesterday's violence was a planned one. Why nothing like this occurred before 5th of January. It did on 5th because Jamia was set to open." She added: "The strategist behind this act wanted to trigger another spell in Jamia."

Incidentally, the Jamia Millia Islamia was closed on December 16 after protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act turned violent on December 15. It had also cancelled the examinations and declared vacation till January 5.

Tripathi has also attacked the Delhi Police for reaching the campus late.

Replying to the Left's allegation that the violence was orchestrated by the ABVP, she retorted: "People of Left have ABVP phobia. If they can, they would have also blamed us for attack on the US."

On Sunday, several masked individuals thrashed students and teachers inside the campus here with wooden and metal rods. A number of students were admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) with severe injuries.

The Left and the ABVP have blamed each other for the attack.

abn-rag/dpb
A request by a convict behind bars for life is testing Switzerland's support for assisted suicide, raising complex questions over whether ill prisoners can seek help to end their own lives. The unprecedented case has exposed a legal vacuum in the country which has long been at the forefront of the global right-to-die debate and an official decision is due in the coming months. "It is natural that one would rather commit suicide than be buried alive for years to come," prisoner Peter Vogt said, in a written response to questions submitted by AFP. The 69-year-old, convicted for sexual assault and rape against multiple girls and women ranging in age from 10 to 56, says he is suffering from serious kidney and heart conditions, among other ailments. He has also been diagnosed with several psychological disorders. Although Vogt's most recent sentence was a 10-year term handed down in 1996, he is imprisoned for life at Bostadel prison in northern Switzerland as he is still considered dangerous. This follows a decision in 2004 when Swiss voters approved a popular initiative allowing the indefinite detention of people with established sexual delinquencies who posed a public risk. The authorities have repeatedly determined that Vogt remains a threat despite years of treatment. "It would be better to be dead than to be left to vegetate behind these walls," he said. In July 2018, Vogt contacted Exit Switzerland, an organisation that supports assisted suicide under specific conditions. He argues that he should be able to benefit from Switzerland's liberal assisted suicide laws too. "We told him that his particular case needed to be clarified," Juerg Wiler, its vice president, told AFP. - 'Unbearable suffering' - Swiss law generally allows assisted suicide if the person commits the lethal act themselves -- meaning doctors cannot administer deadly injections, for example -- and the person consistently and independently articulates a wish to die. Organisations that support assisted suicide also apply their own procedures, which are more robust than the legal requirements. The authorities, aiming to take a position on the matter in the coming months, have asked the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Prison and Probation, a publicly funded foundation, to provide guidance following Vogt's request. In October, the experts at the foundation advised that assisted suicide rights should apply to prisoners under certain conditions, noting that in cases of mental illness two independent specialists should be consulted. Any detainee possessing discernment should, in principle, have assisted suicide rights if they have "a physical or mental illness resulting in unbearable suffering," Barbara Rohner, lead author of the foundation's report, told AFP. The foundation also recommended that authorities responsible for the prisoner's welfare must ensure the suicide request is not the result of a short-term emotional crisis. Vogt insisted that he wanted to die because of the "unbearable" deterioration in his quality of life, along with the fact that he can no longer see his gravely ill mother, who lives in Austria. He told the Blick newspaper that he wants to end his life on August 13, his 70th birthday. - More requests coming? - Rohner said that while Vogt's case may be exceptional, similar situations could increasingly arise. "There will be more and more elderly and sick prisoners in detention because of the ageing of the prison population," she said. According to the Swiss National Science Foundation, a research institute, the number of prisoners over 50 years old doubled to 600 between 2005 and 2016. Vogt told AFP that he knows of another inmate interested in assisted suicide, adding: "Nobody should have to commit suicide in his cell alone." Some have raised concern that assisted suicide requests could be used by convicts as a negotiating tactic to demand better conditions in prison. For Christine Bussat, founder of the Swiss chapter of the Marche Blanche victims' rights groups, decisions on a convict's right to die should rest with their victims. That, she added, "is unfortunately not possible" under the current law. But most legal and criminal justice experts in Switzerland believe that assisted suicide rights do extend to convicts. Celine Ehrwein, an ethics professor at Heig-VD University, told public broadcaster RTS that depriving a suffering person of the right-to-die could be considered "a form of torture". Most legal and criminal justice experts in Switzerland believe that the right to die extends to convicts. Shown here is Lausanne's Bois-Mermet prison "There will be more and more elderly and sick prisoners... because of the ageing of the prison population," noted Barbara Rohner of the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Prison and Probation "It would be better to be dead than to be left to vegetate behind these walls," Vogt said
Yankee, Go Home! - Iraqi parliament passes resolution calling for US troops to be expelled By ICH &Agencies January 05, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - Iraq's parliament held an extraordinary session on Sunday, directing the government to end the presence of foreign troops and to lodge an official complaint against the US over the killing of Qassem Suleimani, a top Iranian general. The Prime Minister revealed that he was scheduled to meet with Soleimani the same morning the general was killed in an airstrike in Baghdad. The PM said, said that the US assassination was a "flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty" and an insult to the dignity of his country.



The resolution asks Iraqs government to cancel the request for assistance from the U.S.-led coalition operating in the country against the Islamic State.



The government commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting Islamic State due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory, the resolution read.



The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason.



Parliament also called on the government to ban the use of Iraqi airspace by any foreign power. Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter The bill is subject to approval by the Iraqi government and cancelling the US-Iraq agreement requires giving a one-year notice for withdrawal. This is the largest crowd Ive ever witnessed in my life. Ive never seen Iranians so unified, ever.



This is Suleimanis funeral in Ahvaz, Iran.



Trump has no idea what he has done. pic.twitter.com/ScUhduX96S  Amir (@AmirAminiMD) January 5, 2020 The PM added that there are two options available regarding the withdrawal of US-led coalition troops. The first would see their immediate and complete withdrawal, the second would order foreign military personnel to leave gradually.



As Prime Minister and senior commander, I recommend the first option. Despite the external and internal difficulties that we may encounter, this option is fundamentally better for Iraq ... It will help reorganise relations with the US and other nations, maintain cordial relations on the basis that territorial sovereignty is respected, and allows for no interference in internal affairs," Mahdi remarked.



Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stated in a letter that Iraq should go further and shut down the US embassy.



Late on Saturday, missiles hit the Baghdad enclave where the US embassy is located and an airbase north of the capital housing US troops, prompting President Donald Trump to threaten strikes on 52 sites in Iran.



US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Fox News on Sunday that it is likely that Iran will "make a mistake" and try to attack US troops in Iraq or Syria.



The US-led military coalition in Iraq announced on Sunday it is putting the fight against ISIS militants on hold to focus on protecting its troops and bases. The coalition said it is suspending the training of Iraqi forces and other operations in support of the battle against ISIS. Do you agree or disagree? Post your comment here



The original source of this article is Information Clearing House - Reuters contributed to this report Reuters contributed to this report Two days ago, the Trump admin stated, "There will not be any tears shed in Iran for the death of Soleimani."



Take a look... https://t.co/wA2OxD6Cw6  Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 5, 2020 Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter
Fans love it when celebrity chefs interact on social media. Beat Bobby Flay host, Bobby Flay, is among the elite chefs who make every attempt to interact with viewers on multiple platforms.

The chef and restauranteur often posts how-to videos, garnering comments from fans  and celebrity chef friends  alike. However, theres one fellow chef whos somewhat of an expert in all things Flay and fans are here for it.

Bobby Flay shows fans how to make salsa in his latest Instagram video

Bobby Flay attends FRIEZE New York 2017 Preview Day at Randalls Island Park | Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

Celebrity chef Bobby Flays Instagram page is chock full of how-to videos for recipes Flay makes in his restaurants and in his personal life.

Some of the things he posts to his page include behind-the-scenes snapshots from one of his TV appearances, Flay answering fan questions, and photos of dishes served at any of his famed restaurants.

In his latest video, Flay teaches fans how to make Red Chile Winter Salsa.

Super simple and so flavorful this is one of my go-to recipes for red chile salsa during the winter months when fresh tomatoes are not at their best, he says in the video. Warning: This video will likely get you craving chips, salsa + margaritas!

The 12-minute video has nearly 138,000 views with almost 400 comments from Flay fans  including the biggest Flay fan of all (and no, we dont mean Flays Maine Coon cat, Nacho).

This celebrity chef called Flay out for not doing this 1 thing

Anyone who watches Food Network, or adores Flay, knows theres one hardcore admirer who isnt afraid to declare her undying love of the accomplished chef.

Sunny Anderson is Food Networks resident Flay expert and she isnt afraid to show it. As proven by her supportive, often hilarious comments to Flays posts, Anderson is the friend you want in your corner.

Oh u fancy, huh? Graphics n stuff its cute, Bobby. Its cute, Anderson commented. its cute cuz we know he didnt do itthrowin up some claps for whomever diiiiiid, she added with five clapping-hand emojis.

Flay bantered back saying, big compliments from THE meme artist! To which Anderson posted an artist emoji in response. She also offered helpful comments to a fan asking what to order at Flays restaurant, Gato. scrambled eggstrust.

Fans are on board with the continued back-and-forth banter, but also, Flays look

While many were content watching Anderson and Flay go back-and-forth, some couldnt resist mentioning Flays wardrobe.

That looks good! But Bobby in those grey joggers is Dayumm! one eager fan said. IKR, another added.

In another post, Flay spoke about his go-to breakfast, which is a smoothie. Anderson chimed in with 100 percent support  also for Flays look.

BOBBY OUT HERE MAKIN BED HAIR A THING!!!! IM HERE FOR IT!!! she commented. Ummm u need to hashtag #ad or are u givin up the goods for free? How we gon retire early if you just out there givin up free love? Look, nevermindBED HAIR, Im back on track!!

Flay responded appropriately saying. styleicon, only fueling the fans burning desire to hear more playful banter. MOST DEFINITELY, Anderson, who later referred to herself as the cheap Bobby Flay when talking about smoothie prices, replied with a heart-eyes emoji.

Clearly, theres nothing but love between the two chefs and we, the fans, thank them for putting it on full disFlay.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-07 02:39:53|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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TRIPOLI, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Monday that it evacuated more than 2,000 refugees and asylum-seekers from Libya in 2019.

"But nearly 1,000 asylum-seekers under the age of 18 are still languishing in Libyan detention centers," UNHCR said in a statement.

"UNHCR remains wholly reliant on countries to make available to us places for resettlement and other durable solutions to be able to assist the most vulnerable refugees in Libya," the UN Refugee Agency added.

On Friday, UNHCR said Libya has more than 46,000 registered refugees and asylum-seekers.

Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Africans, chose to cross the Mediterranean from Libya toward Europe because of insecurity and chaos in the North African nation following the overthrow of the former leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
The first woman to read the news on BBC television died after suffering a fall at home, an inquest heard.

Nancy Wiggingon, who was better known as Nan Winton, was described as a trailblazer who paved the way for female broadcasters to appear in front of the cameras.

In her retirement she lived alone in Bridport, Dorset, and was said to be a frail 93-year-old at the time she suffered the fall in May last year.

She was admitted to the Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester on May 8 with a femur fracture.

The first woman to read the news on BBC television, Nancy Wiggingon, died after suffering a fall at home, an inquest has heard

But her condition worsened and she died three days later. Her cause of death was given as congestive heart failure, hypertension and frailty of old age.

She began reading the 6pm news in 1960 but was removed from the role a year later after viewers complained that it was 'not acceptable' to have a woman newsreader.

Ms Wigginton remained the only woman to have read the national news on BBC TV until 1975 when Angela Rippon began working as a newsreader.

The broadcaster was taken to hospital on May 8 last year following a fall at her home in Bridport, Dorset

In a statement read out at the inquest in Bournemouth, Ms Wigginton's daughter Tina Golden said: 'My mother felt at 93 that she had had enough and was too independent to want to live a life anymore being cared for.

'She needed to be fully in control of every aspect of who she was.'

Mrs Golden was described as a 'a significant pioneer' admired by 'many women who came after her.'

She said: 'As with many women in broadcasting Nan had an extremely rough time because of prejudice against women in the media in that period.

'My mother really did not want to be remembered as a broadcaster, but she was a significant pioneer and is held in fond memory and admiration by many women who came after her.'

Newsreader Nan Winton (right) interviewing politician Barbara Castle (left) at County Hall Terrace in London on August 24, 1961

After stepping down from reading the news, Winton (third from right) remained a television and news reporter. She was also a regular panelist on the radio panel game show Treble Chance

The inquest was told how Ms Wigginton, from Portsmouth, Hampshire, joined the Women's Land Army, becoming a drill sergeant during the Second World War.

After the war she toured Italy with a theatre company to entertain the troops.

Returning to London she attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, before marrying actor Charles Stapley in 1948.

Judith Chalmers (left) and Nan Winton (right) are pictured together soon after joining the BBC

Producer Graham Muir (centre) is see here with Nan Winton (left) and Pauline Tooth (right) at the new BBC television offices

The couple were later to divorce, and Ms Wigginton, who became an experienced journalist, worked at the BBC as a presenter on various programmes including Panorama.

She worked as a continuity announcer on the BBC from 1958 to 1961 and first read the news on June 20, 1960, aged 35.

She later worked as a radio reporter and was also a regular panellist on the radio panel game Treble Chance.

Brendan Allen, the assistant coroner for Dorset, recorded a verdict of natural causes.
One Ontario justice of the peace was alleged to have treated a man differently because he was of Middle Eastern descent; another was accused of ending court abruptly when there were still cases to be heard; and yet another JP was alleged to be using the title Justice, which is normally reserved for judges.

These are a handful of the complaints dealt with in 2018 by the Justices of the Peace Review Council that did not make it to public discipline hearings, but which were still considered serious enough to warrant a followup with the chief justice of the Ontario Court of Justice and in some cases, additional training for the JPs in question.

Summaries of the complaints  which, as required by legislation, contain no identifying information about the JPs  are contained in the 2018 annual report of the council, released last year.

Justices of the peace are appointed by the provincial government and earn approximately $132,000 a year. Clad in black robes and green sashes, they preside over bail hearings and cases dealing with non-criminal matters known as provincial offences, as well as sign off on search warrants.

The council, the independent body responsible for investigating and disciplining JPs, closed 45 complaints in 2018, nearly half of which were dismissed as not substantiated or did not amount to professional misconduct. Others were closed due to lack of jurisdiction, which usually means the complaint related to a justice of the peaces decision-making powers, which is outside the councils purview.

As for the rest, a handful were sent for public discipline hearings, some of which are ongoing, while five were referred to the chief justice. Because those five complaints were not sent for full hearings, the summaries contained in the annual report are the only glimpse into how they were handled.

One complaint was from a man of Middle Eastern descent who was appearing on behalf of his wife in court, as she was at home with their youngest child. The man wondered in his complaint if the justice of the peace was making stereotypical comments about Middle Eastern men, when she said: Its so awkward that youre not willing to allow your wife to come.

The man had said nothing to indicate he was forcing his wife to stay home, according to the complaint summary, and the only explanation he could think of is that the justice of the peace assumed that because he was from the Middle East, he was forcing his wife to stay home.

The complaints committee found in their review of the court transcript that the JP had taken issue with the man appearing on behalf of his wife, and had asked inappropriate questions about his children, and whether his wife was breastfeeding. The transcript also showed the JP said, OK, well try it; if this is what you want. Its your wife or your significant other or partner or whatever the term is.

The committee noted that the JPs conduct appeared to be condescending, discourteous and unhelpful. In her initial response to the committee, the JP said she could have used more effective words, but the committee was still concerned that she may not fully understand how her conduct gave rise to the complainants perception that she was expressing stereotypes about Middle Eastern men or that she may be racist.

The case was forwarded to the chief justice on the condition the JP take training that included cultural sensitivity, which was arranged. The JP said she felt confident she could apply the lessons learned from the training in court, and the case was closed.

Another complaint  this one received from a judge about a different JP  alleged that the justice of the peace was adamant about ending court at 4:30 p.m. even though there were still cases to be heard, including someone who was in custody.

When the Crown attorney said they still had matters to deal with, the JP allegedly said: So I wont be doing that; Ill be releasing the clerks and reporter at 4:30, and at another point allegedly said: At 4:30 Im going to stand up and go and so is the support staff.

And sure enough, she was gone by 4:36 p.m., according to the complaint. She did return at 4:55 p.m. to deal with the person who was in custody, but when told by the Crown that there were still out-of-custody cases to be heard, she allegedly said: Yes, Ive made a call to the regional senior justice of the peace, theyre aware that Im leaving and I guess theyll deal with it however they wish to.

Another JP was able to get to court by 5:30 p.m. to hear the remaining cases, according to the complaints summary, which was fortunate because, as the complaints committee noted, when a JP fails to address a case that is scheduled for court, jurisdiction is lost over the person charged with an offence. If a person is in custody, the person would be released.

The committee said it was concerned the JP showed a lack of respect for the rights of defendants and the criminal justice system. In her response to the committee, the JP said she had a medical appointment at 5 p.m., but also wanted to be respectful of the court staffs time. However, in a subsequent response, she accepted she chose the wrong approach that day in court.

After meeting with the chief justice, the JP said she understood she made an error and undertook not to repeat it. The case was closed.

Finally, in a complaint from a senior JP about another JP, the justice of the peace was accused of using the title Justice to describe herself in letters, emails and on her courthouse voicemail. The complaint also indicated that judges of the Superior Court and Ministry of the Attorney General staff had complained about being confused and misled by justices of the peace who on occasion used the title Justice, which the court has said should only be used by judges.

The complaints committee said several senior judges had already told this particular JP to stop using the Justice title, and instead use Justice of the Peace. After the complaint was referred to the chief justice, who met with the JP, she promised to drop the title.

The other two complaints related to a JP who was told to get additional training on reviewing forms under the Mental Health Act that can allow someone to be apprehended and placed in hospital, and another JP who was reminded about the need to be patient and courteous to everyone in court.
tech2 News Staff

It's been less than a fortnight since parts of Asia and the Middle East witnessed a rare annular solar eclipse on 26 December. The Sun and Moon, now in sync, will cause a partial lunar eclipse on 10 January, which will be visible from India.

The 'Wolf Moon eclipse' will be the first of four penumbral lunar eclipses expected in 2020. It isn't an event to get particularly excited about since the Moon will only partially fall under Earth's outer shadow. The eclipse will last 4 hours and 5 minutes overall and will be visible from Africa, Europe, Asia, Alaska, and Australia.

What makes the eclipse interesting is partly its larger-than-usual appearance and subtle shifts in the shadow and hue of the moon during the 4-hour eclipse.

Wolf Moon: When to watch the eclipse

You will be able to view the eclipse as long as the Moon is visible from your location. Those viewing the eclipse from the night-side of Earth at 5.07 pm UT on Friday (10.37 pm IST, Friday)  countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia  can watch the event live. In India, the event will last between 10.37 pm IST on 10 January to and 2.42 am IST on 11 January.

A 'penumbral' eclipse: What to expect

Much like other lunar eclipses, a penumbral eclipse also happens when the Earth passes between the Moon and Sun. It obscures the Sun's light and causes a shadow of the Earth to fall on the Moon's surface. That said, unlike other eclipses, penumbral eclipses are very subtle events to observe.

During the eclipse, the Moon passes through the outer region of Earth's shadow, known as the penumbra. At the peak of the eclipse on 10 January, roughly 90 percent of the Moon's outer disc will fall under the Earth's shadow, giving it a slight shadow gradient across its face, with no part of the Moon in its complete shadow. It will appear as if the Earth is covering part of the Sun's disk, but not completely. The Moon's brightness, as a result, will be lower, by the dim illumination from whatever sunlight does makes its way to the Moon's surface.

The entire outline of the Moon's disk will still be brightly visible. This effect is only perceptible to those with very astute (20/20) vision or using carefully-controlled cameras.

So if you're an avid eclipse-watcher or an amateur photographer keen on getting a shot of the spectacle, the penumbral lunar eclipse will offer a view of the full moon losing its milky white brightness and look odd and shaded for a few hours, making it worth the wait and watch. The regular rise of the full moon at dusk will still be an interesting sight, as long as you're somewhere with clear skies.

The Moon will be just days away from its perigee (closest point to the Earth), making it relatively large. At its peak, the eclipse will be 2.6 percent larger than average, as per In-the-Sky.org. The other penumbral eclipses to follow this year will be on 5 June, 5 July, and 30 November.

The first eclipse this year that the Northern hemisphere can look forward to will be the "Thunder Moon Eclipse" on 5 July 2020.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Grand Rapids police called a critical incident in a Belknap neighborhood Sunday, Jan. 5, after trying to carry out a mental health petition near Lookout Park.

Police said they were having a conversation with a 35-year-old man when he started to make threats of violence and talk about having a firearm. The man, who police described as having been in the military, was inside a friends apartment.

Residents in adjacent apartments were evacuated as a precaution. Police were not able to confirm if the man had a firearm.

The Wyoming man is not being identified. His mother completed a mental health petition, which means police officers would come out and transport him to a facility for evaluation.

The initial petition was filed with the Wyoming Police Department but when his mother realized he was in Grand Rapids it was changed.

Sgt. John Wittkowski said GRPD carries out mental health petitions about twice a day and most people comply.

But that wasnt the case Sunday when officers came to the residence on Taft Court NE near Lookout Park around 12:30 p.m. The specific address was not provided.

When we got there, he didnt want anything to do with us, Wittkowski said.

His threats triggered the nearby units being evacuated.

We dont know what this individuals state of mind is, Wittkowski explained. We dont want any people that are not involved to be in harms way.

GRPD tweeted at 2:28 p.m. that they were working a critical incident in the area and asked the public to avoid the area.

GRPD working a critical incident near Fairview NE and Lookout Park. Please avoid the area. PIO is enroute.  Grand Rapids Police (@GrandRapidsPD) January 5, 2020

It was determined by command staff since we were not getting anywhere (with) this person it would be more prudent to step away, said Wittkowski, about the negotiation effort. We were only escalating things.

There was no actual sighting of a weapon nor did we know that he actually possessed one.

Police left after a little over two hours and tweeted at 2:49 p.m. that the incident was resolved and the neighborhood is back open.

The incident near lookout park has resolved. The neighborhood is back open and the police department thanks you for your cooperation.  Grand Rapids Police (@GrandRapidsPD) January 5, 2020

However, about 30 minutes after departing, police were called back by a caller who said that the man had left the residence and was walking down the street.

When he saw police, he started to run and there was a short foot chase, Wittkowski said, before officers located him behind a house and put him into protective custody.

He said the Wyoming man was taken to Mercy Health Saint Marys for evaluation and later would be escorted to local mental health facility for treatment.

Officers are given advanced mental health awareness and verbal de-escalation training, Wittkowski said.

We do it safely and with compassion. Furthermore, law enforcement is legally charged with executing court ordered mental health petitions, but if we feel we are escalating a situation we have the option to step back.
- The three were captured on CCTV camera as they attempted to break into the military base

- They were later arrested by area chief near Nanyuki Police Station

- The incident happened amid heightened tension and fear of attacks in Kenya

Police in Nanyuki have arrested three suspects who attempted to force their way into the British Army training base in Laikipia county.

According to the police, the suspects were captured on CCTV camera as they attempted to access the camp earlier on Sunday, January 5, before leaving the scene.

READ ALSO: Mwanahabari Ken Mijungu athibitisha kutishiwa maisha na mpenzi Msomali wa Betty Kyallo

The suspects attempted to forcefully enter the training base without permission. Photo: insidedio.blog.gov.uk

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Mombasa: Pasta amuua mkewe na kisha kujitoa uhai wakati wa ibada

They were later arrested near Nanyuki Police Station by the area chief and two police officers at around 5pm.

Later in the day as the chief Nanyuki town and security officers were following up leads they found them near Nanyuki Police Station where they arrested them and called the OCS who acted immediately and booked in vide OB 35/5/1/2019, reads a police report on the incident.

The soldiers training in Nanyuki are part of Askari Storm, a mission to train and maintain British forces as well as working to develop the Kenyan Defence Force (KDF) in their ongoing battle against al-Qaida and al- Shabaab.

British army during a past training session at Nanyuki military base. Photo: Daily Star

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Radio Maisha presenter Clemmo in mourning over young son's demise

The incident took place at the same time when another army base at Manda Bay in Lamu county that hosts Kenya and US soldiers was attacked by al-Shabaab militia on Sunday morning.

Three American soldiers were killed during the attack and two others injured. The army managed to kill five of the terrorists. Five others have since been arrested and are in custody.

Police are currently on high alert following the heightened tension between the US and Middle East countries.

This was as a result of killing of Iran military general Qassem Soleimani who according to US Vice President Mike Pence directed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) to bomb innocent civilians in Turkey and Kenya in 2011.

Do you have a groundbreaking story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690. Contact Tuko.co.ke instantly

Source: TUKO.co.ke
Molly-Mae Hague's sister Zoe has issued a warning ahead of the Winter Love Island launch on Sunday.

In a lengthy Instagram post, the British Army military medical corp recalled her experiences with the show last summer, admitting it was 'extremely hard' to be kept away from her sibling.

Zoe went on to urge the loved ones of new Islanders to 'deactivate Twitter', because of the inevitable trolling that will ensue.

Warning: Molly-Mae Hague's sister Zoe has issued a warning ahead of the Winter Love Island launch on Sunday. In a lengthy Instagram post, she recalled her experiences with the show

Zoe ran Molly-Mae's social media accounts when she was in the villa, and offered some advice to anyone who will be taking on the role for one of this year's Islanders.

She penned: 'Advice to family/friends/people running accounts of the new islanders this year.

'Nothing you do will make a difference to the things you will read. All I can say is every time you go to search your loved ones names on twitter, going a love island 'banter' group on Facebook or search for articles about them, please think twice as it is possible the worst thing to do.

'You know the person better than anyone, people will have opinions, say vile things, the show will edit it parts to make them come across in a certain way. [sic]'

Villa bound: Zoe ran Molly-Mae's social media accounts when she was in the villa, and offered some advice to anyone who will be taking on the role for one of this year's Islanders

Get offline: Zoe admitted it was 'extremely hard' to be kept away from her sibling and went on to urge the loved ones of new Islanders to 'deactivate Twitter', because of trolling

Zoe continued: 'It'll be extremely hard having no contact, however what seems like the end of the world then will be forgotten as soon as they step out of the villa.

'1 week till the show starts.Anyone running an account of an islander this year who is struggling, please feel free to message me!,' followed by a pink heart emoji. [sic]

She finished the post by adding: 'Biggest advice, deactivate twitter!!!'

Zoe mused: 'You know the person better than anyone, people will have opinions, say vile things, the show will edit it parts to make them come across in a certain way'

Molly-Mae was a late arrival during last year's Love Island, entering as a bombshell and immediately turning Tommy Fury's head.

However, the influencer received a fierce backlash after she struggled to choose between Tommy and Anton Danyluk, with several viewers claiming that she was only on the show for money.

Molly-Mae, who is still dating Tommy, launched an anti-trolling campaign in September after discovering some well-known people, including a Victoria's Secret model, joined in on the negative comments.
The Nigeria Union Traders Association of Ghana (NUTAG) is asking the Government to come clear on its plans concerning the closure of shops operated by its members.

About a month after the closure of the shops, the association is worried about the situation it claimed had brought untoward hardships on NUTAG members.

In a Citi News interview the General Secretary of the association, Comrade Everystus Nwankwor, said he government must make known its line of action regarding their issue so they can be advised.

We do not have much to say about this other than opening the shops. It is like Ghanaians are disallowing Nigerians to trade. They should be bold enough. They are speaking in parables. They should come out and say that for the next month, we do not need Nigerians to trade but not use the word foreigners because that is deceptive. We know Togoleses, Burkinabes and Nigeriens who are doing business in Ghana and nobody touches them.

NUTAG has also called on GUTA to come to the aid of its indigenous employees who have also been unemployed since the closure of its shops.

The two associations have been having running battles over the local retail space as the Ghanaian traders push for the enforcement of Ghana's laws that prohibit foreigners from engaging in retail trade.

Hundreds of shops owned by Nigerians have been locked up in a move by GUTA to clamp down on foreigners engaged in retail business against Ghanaian laws.

Local retailers in parts of Accra and Kumasi have in recent times locked up the foreign-owned shops, preventing foreigners from going about their business.

NUTAG appeals to Akufo-Addo to 'call GUTA to order'

The leadership NUTAG has also asked its members at the Tip-Toe Lane to remain calm as discussions continue to have their shops reopened.

All efforts according to them are being made to engage their Ghanaian counterparts to find a lasting solution to the current impasse.

It appealed to President Nana Akufo-Addo to immediately intervene in its ongoing brawl with the GUTA.

NUTAG said it has endured enough of what it describes as the consistent harassment of its members since 2007.

According to the Association, President Akufo-Addo must intervene for a re-look at the laws GUTA takes advantage of to harass them.

---citinewsroom
Lisa Vanderpump's West Hollywood restaurant Pump was hit by a swerving Ferrari on Sunday afternoon, damaging the patio of the Bravo star's trendy establishment.

'No, we are not a drive-thru!' the reality star wrote on Instagram Sunday with shots of the crash, after police told TMZ that the building itself was not impacted and that the driver of the Ferrari was not under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

In the incident, the Ferrari jumped the curb at the eatery (which is located at Santa Monica and Robertson boulevards) and careened into the patio, leaving a mess of broken glass in the immediate area.

The latest: Lisa Vanderpump's West Hollywood restaurant Pump was hit by swerving Ferrari on Sunday, damaging the patio of the Bravo star's trendy establishment

In business: Pump has been seen on her Bravo spin-off Vanderpump Rules, as well as her other venue in the neighborhood, SUR

Police later confirmed to the outlet that the driver of the Ferrari had been cut off by another motorist in traffic, leading to him swerving into the patio of the upscale establishment owned by the 59-year-old Bravo beauty and her husband, Ken Todd.

Todd was at the scene on Sunday as firefighters and emergency workers attended to the crash site. A woman was transported to a nearby hospital with cuts to her arm, Todd told TMZ.

The motorist was able to operate the Ferrari and maneuver off of the patio without incident, the outlet confirmed.

Todd said he was going to leave the restaurant open for the day while the patio was being worked on. He added that he talked to the motorist, who was composed and calm in the wake of the incident.

Scary: In the incident, the Ferrari jumped the curb and careened into the patio

High impact: In the incident, the Ferrari jumped the curb at the eatery and careened into the patio, leaving a mess of broken glass in the immediate area

Working on things: Firefighters and emergency workers attended to the crash site

Smashed: The sports car appeared to have careened into a partition made of steel and glass

Popular: The English socialite and her spouse opened the upscale eatery in May of 2014, as it's one of the many venues they own and operate

Eyewitnesses told The Advocate that the Ferrari had swerved out of the way of a stationary blue vehicle before it made contact with the patio.

The reality star's rep told Page Six, 'We are very lucky that everyone else was uninjured and safe while dining during Sunday brunch.'

The English socialite and her spouse opened the upscale eatery in May of 2014, as it's one of the many venues they own and operate.

'We have created a space that feels as if you alone have discovered it, as you wonder how on earth you havent been here before,' Vanderpump said on the restaurant's website.

Surveying the scene: Personnel on hand cordoned off the area after the dangerous incident

Elegant: Lisa and husband Ken Todd brought their pooch to their gala in LA last November

Fan favorite: The socialite beamed at an event at BravoCon in NYC

She continued: 'Is it eclectic? Certainly, but it is more than thatthere is a unique mix of design that has been a labor of love.'

Pump has been seen on her Bravo spin-off Vanderpump Rules, as well as her other venue in the neighborhood, SUR.

Vanderpump Rules is set for its eighth season debut at 9/8c Tuesday on Bravo.
British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (L) and lyricist Tim Rice (R) are presented with the Gold and Platinum discs for their hit musical Jesus Christ Superstar in December 1971. Jesus has been appropriated by the adherents of practically every progressive movementsocialism, pacifism, liberation theology, feminism, free love, flower power, Black Power, Occupy Wall Streetof the past two centuries. (Evening Standard/Getty Images)

The State Religion of Progressivism vs. How Jesus Would Govern

Commentary

It tells you something about the times that when you Google Jesus Christ, the first suggestion that pops up in the drop-down menu is Jesus Christ Superstar. As a ubiquitous phenomenon of popular modern culture, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical has been one of the most effective forces for the infantilization of the Western mind of the past half-century, and it is entirely typical that, after Joseph and his Technicolor Dreamcoat, Lloyd Webbers second blockbuster hit amounted to a vocalized version of The Idiots Guide to Christology.

In Jesus Christ Superstar Lloyd Webber essayed to cash in on the newly fashionable Seventies image of Jesus as a revolutionary hero, along the lines of those other revolutionary heroesMao, Che, Fidelon whom so many of the leftist intellectuals of the period were developing their incurable schoolgirl crushes. But then an intellectual, as has often been observed, is someone who is so lacking in intelligence as to credit what everyone else knows to be preposterous nonsense.

To be sure, Jesus was an audacious revolutionarya revolutionary revolutionaryin that he refused to be a run-of-the-mill political one. The greatest threat he posed to the state was that, unlike other revolutionaries before or since, he insouciantly ignored it.

When the Pharisees scoffed at Jesuss claims to be the Messiah, asking When will the Kingdom of God arrive, he replied, The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Jesus, we should remember, promised only to redeem the individual from sin, not the socio-political order from inequality and injustice. He said nothing about raising the minimum wage, making the rich pay, guaranteeing the equality of women, promoting diversity at the Sanhedrin, making abortion and contraception universally accessible, or recognizing the demand of the non-binary gendered to be called by pronouns of their own invention. (He wasnt even interested in criticizing Roman colonial hegemonism.) On these and all the other serial obsessions of progressives, Jesus remained a radical and contented conservative.

It must be astounding to a modern politician that Jesus promised to redress not a single instance of political injustice, economic inequality, or racial prejudice. In his teachings, he nowhere champions nor even identifies any interest group smaller than the totality of mankind, or larger than the family. Among the blessed, he names the poor in spirit, not the poor; those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, not those who hunger and thirst. His predicatorial categories are invariably ethical rather than ethnological; he condemns sexual vices but never talks about the sexes; he extols the engendering of virtues in the soul and children in the home but has no theory of gender.

Note that he drove the money-changers out of the temple, not because he had anything against wealth or commercial exchange, but because they violated the sanctity of the House of God. (Again, he was more indignant about theological occupations than merely political ones.) Wherever he encountered individual moral wrongs, he was unapologetically judgmental in condemning them, while saying not a word about collective rights or entitlements.

In the Aquarian Sixties, when Jesus was inducted into the hippie hall of fame, the inference of a shared metaphysical consciousness was drawn on the slender evidence that he had long hair and wore sandals. It can be due only to opacity (or mendacity) that Jesus has been appropriated as a prophet avant le mot by the adherents of practically every progressive movementsocialism, pacifism, liberation theology, feminism, free love, flower power, Black Power, Occupy Wall Streetof the past two centuries, to all of whom, were he in the flesh today, he would simply say, Go and sin no more.

The only group that is not permitted to invoke the teachings of Jesus in the service of political or social change is the community of Christians themselves who, when they do so, are denounced as bigots, theocrats, or gap-toothed rubes who cling to their guns and religion, and lectured gravely on the separation of church and state.

State-Imposed Orthodoxy

As Chesterton observed nearly a century ago, Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.

Since then the foundational democratic right of freedom of religion has devolved into a fastidious freedom from religion. In Canada, the major federal parties either explicitly forbid their members from raising questions about sensitive topics such as abortion or are content to collude with one another in a conspiracy of silence.

Over the past decade in Canada, the states assaults on religious liberty and incursions into the private sphere of religious life have begun to reach Diocletian proportions: Christian parents in Ontario compelled to submit their charges to the tender mercies of the Wynne-Ford sex and gender re-education curriculum; anti-abortion protestors excludedas opposed, that is, to anti-fa, anti-Big Oil, anti-Wall Street, anti-G10, or Black Lives Matter protestersfrom ever-expanding abortion clinic bubble zones. (As I suggested recently, if abortion protestors would only put down their rosaries and take up signs reading Black Lives Matter, don balaclavas and hoodies, smash a few windows, and torch a few police cars, the bubble zones would quickly disappear.)

We are all grateful, of course, that the state no longer establishes an official religion and that all religious creeds are now recognized as equal. But we should be less than completely grateful that all religious creeds are equal only in that legislators and citizens are permitted to profess and live their lives in accordance with none of them.

On the other hand, when the current laws on issues such as abortion have achieved such sacrosanctity that no one in government may question them; when citizens who do so are subject to public shaming and judicial penalty; and when the state demands that parents and teachers, in violation of their own religious conscience, evangelize its dogmas on sexuality, gender, and the family to captive children at home and in school, we have regressed to what can only be described as the Establishment of Religion. We have allowed the state to impose upon its citizens a single and exclusive orthodoxy, dissent from which is proscribed, just as heresy was once proscribed in the Christian Middle Ages and is now proscribed by the mullahs in Iran.

I much prefer Jesuss approach.

Harley Price has taught courses in religion, philosophy, literature, and history at the University of Toronto, U of Ts School of Continuing Studies, and Tyndale University College. He blogs at Priceton.org.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
ISLAMABAD: Imran Chishti, the man who allegedly incited violence against Sikhs in Nankana Sahib Gurdwara in Pakistan earlier this week, has been arrested by police on Sunday. Chisti was arrested after massive public outcry and criticism of the Pakistani government for not taking action against those who attacked the Sikhs at the Nankana Sahib Gurdwara.

Interestingly, Chishti had released an apology video from his home over the incident. Chishti had reportedly led a violent mob of local residents on Friday that vandalised the Nankana Gurdwara Sahib and pelted stones.

Chishti is the brother of Ehsaan, the man who is accused of abducting a Sikh girl Jagjit Kaur, the daughter of the Gurdwara`s 'panthi'. The mob was also seen shouting anti-Sikh slogans outside Nankana Sahib. In video clips tweeted on social media, Chishti spewed anti-Sikh slurs. On late Friday, he released a video message, where he called off the protest because his family members were released by the police.

Live TV

Meanwhile, the Imran Khan government said that the incident in Nankana Sahib goes against his vision and will find zero tolerance and protection from the government including police and judiciary, unlike the Indian government.

Imran took to microblogging site Twitter and said, "The major difference between the condemnable Nankana incident and the ongoing attacks across India on Muslims and other minorities is this: the former is against my vision and will find zero tolerance and protection from the government including police and judiciary..."

The major difference between the condemnable Nankana incident & the ongoing attacks across India on Muslims & other minorities is this: the former is against my vision & will find zero tolerance & protection from the govt incl police & judiciary;  Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) January 5, 2020

Khan further launched an attack on the Narendra Modi government and accused them of supporting operation against minorities in the country. Khan said in a series of tweet said, ''In contrast, Modi's RSS vision supports minorities oppression and the targeted attacks against Muslims are part of this agenda. RSS goons conducting public lynchings, Muslims being violated by mobs are all not only supported by Modi Govt but Indian police lead the anti-Muslim attack.''

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, on Friday evening, tweeted that it was alarmed by the situation in Nankana Sahib. It urged the Punjab government to ensure the safety and security of the Sikh community and their holy places.

India strongly condemned the "wanton acts of destruction and desecration" at Nankana Sahib Gurdwara and called upon Pakistan to take immediate steps to ensure the safety and welfare of the members of the Sikh community.

On Friday (January 3), the Nankana Sahib Gurdwara was attacked by a mob while Sikh devotees were inside the shrine. The mob that had gathered outside raised communal slogans against the minority Sikh community and pelted stones at the shrine.

Videos of the incident were widely circulated on social media. Gurdwara Nankana Sahib was built at the place where Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev was born.
By Tracy C. Miller

In what now qualifies as a national trend, New Jerseys legislature is considering clarifying the definition of an independent contractor. The move would narrow the ability of customers and project-based workers  including those working gig economy jobs like driving for Uber and Lyft  to connect. New Jerseys SB 4204 is making its way through the state Senate about two months after California passed AB 5, which also makes it more difficult for willing workers to be classified as independent contractors.

Officials in other states such as New York, Oregon and Washington are considering similar legislation. These leaders think theyre looking out for workers best interests, but by trying to buck the tide of the 21st century workforce, they are doing very much the opposite.

The purpose of the New Jersey bill is to force firms to classify more workers as employees who receive mandated benefits like minimum wages, health insurance, workers compensation, unemployment compensation and overtime pay. It applies to those who work for gig economy firms, but also to freelance writers, truckers and other well-established small businesses and entrepreneurs.

And its costly. Enough so that many firms will be tempted to offset those costs by paying lower wages to employees than they currently pay to contractors.

If a business instead chooses to pass along the higher costs to its customers, it can expect sales to decline and competitors (particularly in other states) to gain an advantage. It could easily employ fewer workers as a result.

California legislators included some exceptions in AB 5 to make it possible for certain workers such as freelance writers to continue as independent contractors. But the law limits the number of articles a freelancer can write for any one news entity to 35 per year. The purpose is to put pressure on newspapers and magazines to hire those contractors full-time instead. Some struggling news outlets may respond by simply giving fewer jobs (and less income) to regular freelancers.

Like other contractors, many freelance writers appreciate the opportunity to work from home and set their own schedules. Some report earning more than they could working in an office.

These types of laws will have other effects on gig economy firms, which see themselves as platforms that connect people rather than as employers. Federal regulators seem to accept this claim, but state officials like those in New Jersey and California argue that Uber and Lyft are simply transportation companies whose drivers should be considered employees.

There is no doubt that both bills would make some workers better off. But ascertaining employees hours worked and eligibility for overtime and holiday pay would create a bureaucratic nightmare. It would likely reduce opportunities for the many service providers who are only able to work a few hours each week, or who cannot work regular shifts.

In effect, state leaders want to turn a flexible opportunity that suits millions of workers into just another job.

Many gig economy workers do so to supplement earnings from another job. Some are better off with higher wages instead of benefits they already receive somewhere else. Independent contractor status makes that possible. It also gives workers the freedom to decide how many hours to work each week or when to take a vacation.

An independent contractor working for Uber or Lyft earns a net income that depends partly on how the worker manages time, treats customers, and manages vehicle maintenance. Its hard to duplicate this direct relationship between service quality and income with a traditional employer and set wage.

Surveys find that a majority of gig economy workers like the freedom and flexibility of independent contracting better than the benefits they would get as employees. They may even work harder, serve customers better, and earn more money. Entrepreneurship and innovation have flourished as many new platform companies have started operations. Consumers options have expanded.

And last but certainly not least, people have more (and sometimes better) income-earning opportunities than they used to.

Tracy C. Miller is a senior policy research editor with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

The Star-Ledger/NJ.com encourages submissions of opinion. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion. Get the latest news updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters.
Midhani, said: We are the only manufacturer of titanium alloys and major supplier of super alloys in India. Midhani has indigenously developed and supplied various special metals and alloys required for Isros space programmes from its first mission and continues to support all of Isro missions. (Photo: PTI)

Hyderabad: City-based Mishra Dhatu Nigam Limited (Midhani) is all set to play a critical role as India prepares for Gaganyaan, the countrys first indigenous manned space mission by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) set for launch in 2022. The mission seeks to send three Indian Vyomanauts into space from among four Indian Air Force officers selected as possible candidates for the mission.

The company on Monday dispatched its first consignment of ultra high strength steel and cobalt alloys that are to be used for vital mission components, at a ceremony here. Among those present were Dr S. Unnikrishnan Nair, director of Isros Human Space Flight Centre. Midhani will also supply titanium alloy materials for Gaganyaans GLSV-Mark III rockets liquid engine thrusters, nozzle, gas bottles, and cryogenic upper stage components. In addition, Midhani will also supply Isro with nickel alloys, stainless steel and titanium-niobium metal castings that were developed by the company.

Dr Sanjay Kumar Jha, director (production and marketing), Midhani, said: We are the only manufacturer of titanium alloys and major supplier of super alloys in India. Midhani has indigenously developed and supplied various special metals and alloys required for Isros space programmes from its first mission and continues to support all of Isro missions.

Dr Jha said Midhani was in the process of setting up manufacturing facilities for carbon fibre and metal powders for 3D printing applications. An aluminum alloy plant is also being set up in Nellore in Andhra Pradesh under the Make in India initiative, he said.
Dear Editor:

We, as the Kingston Interfaith Council, are deeply saddened and concerned by the vicious attacks on Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg and the Hasidic community on Saturday evening, Dec. 28, 2019, in Monsey, N.Y., during a Hanukkah celebration.

We condemn this anti-Semitic act. All members of the Kingston Interfaith Council unreservedly stand in solidarity with our Jewish siblings here in Kingston and Ulster County.

This is not an isolated event, but part of an ever-increasing rise of anti-Semitic hate crimes locally, nationally and globally. These attacks, fueled by an environment of national and political division, add to a culture of fear, worry and distrust, especially within religious and racially marginalized communities.

We know all too well that anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and other acts of religious violence intersect with other systemic forces of hate  racism, xenophobia, economic oppression, and persecution because of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, age or ability  and seek to dismantle our free and democratic society. These hate-filled acts warrant an even more love-filled and intersectional response.

As we mourn with the Jewish families across the nation, and with all communities that feel threatened, we call upon our political leaders and local community to come together in solidarity, denounce all acts of hate, and promote a more just society.

Kingston Interfaith Council

Kingston, N.Y.
Talley has more than three decades experience in education, and for the past five years has been an administrator with Marylands Prince Georges County Public Schools, which has more than 130,000 students and employs 19,000 in its 208 schools and centers. Its size puts it among the top 25 largest districts in the country.
The Congress on Monday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of instigating violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday evening in which 23 people, including students and teachers, were injured. Former MP and Congress leader Udit Raj alleged that leaders from BJPs Delhi unit were shouting slogan and accused them of instigating violence.

At a press conference addressed by Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala and senior party leaders, Udit Raj named six people who he claimed were involved in instigating the violence.

Raj, a former BJP MP from North West Delhi who joined the Congress before 2019 Lok Sabha elections, alleged that former BJP MLA RK Puram Anil Sharma, former BJP district president of Mehrauli Azad Singh along with four other partys Mehrauli unit members were present outside JNU. I have a video where they are shouting slogans wampanthiyo gundo ko... maro goli. I witnessed this for three hours. They can be seen shouting slogans and leading the mob of 100-150 people. There is no doubt who went inside. They were hitting on the gate and trying to enter the campus. But the police were a mute spectator, alleged Raj.

Also Watch | Uneasy calm in JNU a day after violence: All the top developments

When contacted, both Sharma and Singh admitted that they were there outside the varsity gate but refuted Rajs claim. Sharma said he reached JNU around 8 pm after hearing the news of violence at the campus.

Both the BJP leaders said that they were there like all leaders of other political party. Yogendra Yadav, D Raja and other political leaders were there. I had gone as the campus is in the adjoining assembly constituency. He (Raj) should show one proof that we were involved in violence or were instigating people. We are ready for harshest punishment. We were trying to pacify people, said Sharma.

Singh too challenged Raj to place the proof in public domain. We got reports that ABVP students were beaten up. We were concerned and this is why we went to the varsity. There were other political leaders present there too. Raj should show the proof that we were there, said Singh.

When asked about the allegations levelled by the Congress against BJP leaders, DCP southwest Devender Arya said, As an when we get a complaint in this regard, we will investigate. There were people from both side present outside the gate. Police ensured that no damage to person was cause inside and outside. We successfully managed to handle the situation.

Surjewala said, The JNU administration was complicit in the attack by the goons at JNU campus. The police were a mute spectator as goons damaged ambulances outside and beating up students inside the JNU campus. These goons belong to the BJP and its frontal wing ABVP. This was happening with the tacit support of home minister Amit Shah.
PR-Inside.com: 2020-01-06 15:02:13

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NIAGARA FALLS, ON and SEOUL, KOREA / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2020 / EnerDynamic Hybrid Technologies Corp. (TSXV:EHT) ("EHT") is pleased to announce it has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Axia Materials Co. Ltd ("AXIA"), based in Seoul Korea.AXIA has been in the composite materials business for over 20 years and has built and developed a number of housing projects with their specific composite. EHT and AXIA have now signed a partnership agreement whereby EHT will supply its ENERTEC solar panels to AXIA for use in a number of projects that AXIA currently has ongoing throughout the world. Combining those projects with EHT's impressive technologies will give both companies a strategic advantage over other companies that cannot provide a true Net Zero Building alternative. Over the next few weeks, EHT will be completing supply contracts for delivery starting in the 2nd quarter of 2020.Justin Jin, CEO of AXIA, commented "As a composite material company we have been developing overseas markets especially on high energy efficiency and GHG (Green House Gas) emission reduction solutions in building application. And together with EHT we believe we can strengthen our capability to market with wider range of product solutions as well as having EHT as our strategic partner and customer." EHT's CEO, John Gamble, remarked, "This is a very important step for our company; not only does it help to prove out our leading-edge solar technology, but the partnership shows we are at the forefront of thermal energy and modular efficiency technology when worldly companies like AXIA want to partner with us." About EnerDynamic Hybrid TechnologiesEHT delivers proprietary, turn-key energy solutions which are intelligent, bankable and sustainable.EHT's expertise includes the development of its ENERTEC module structures with full integration of smart energy solutions. Using a proprietary skin and foam core that is stronger than traditional wood or steel structural insulated panels, EHT provides exceptional thermal energy efficiency in modular homes, cold storage facilities, residential/commercial out buildings and emergency/temporary shelters. EHT works with its partners worldwide to erect the buildings on-site utilizing EHT staff and local crews. In addition to traditional support to established electrical networks, ENERTEC buildings excel where no electrical grid exists.About AXIA MaterialsAXIA was incorporated in 2000 as a polymer development and manufacturing company in Korea. Using its patented and proprietary resin technologies, it invented wide (3.0m or 10') CFRTC (Continuous Fiber Reinforced Thermoplastics Composite) sheets featuring zero VOC emissions and fast manufacturing production in a continuous thermoforming process. Since its mass production line was set up in 2015 AXIA has focused more on advanced building systems with its composite materials. AXIA has 32 globally registered patents on material, process, systems, and applications. And it has done Korean government projects with more than $15M government grant programs. AXIA is widely recognized as the leading company in the Composite residential house sector by AZL Aachen GmbH (Germany), by JEC Group, by the press and research institutes, and by many other well-known organizations in the composites industries. AXIA is distinguished as having established the first Evaluation Report for the IBC (International Building Code) in Composite-Building. IBC requires a high level of quality control, repeatable measured properties, and traceable production quality management systems.Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.The statements herein that are not historical facts are forwardlooking statements. Forward-looking information relating to sales of the products (the "Opportunities") involves risk, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events, results, performance, prospects, for the Opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Although EHT believes that the assumptions used in preparing the forward-looking information on the Opportunities outlined in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information, which only applies as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frames or at all. EHT disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by applicable securities laws.FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACTJohn GambleCEO & Director(289) 488-1699jgamble@ ehthybrid.com info@ ehthybrid.com Website: www.ehthybrid.com SOURCE: EnerDynamic Hybrid Technologies Corp.
UPDATE: The cause of the fire is considered undetermined as of Monday, Portland fire Chief Jim Potter said. A Pennsylvania State Police fire marshal will meet with the homeowner and his insurance company to further the investigation, Potter said.

INITIAL POST: Portland firefighters, assisted by several other departments, were able to keep a building blaze from spreading Sunday night to two other structures on the property in the boroughs downtown.

The main building where Portland Steel fabricated gates and railings, among other products, was destroyed, fire Chief Jim Potter said Monday morning.

A Pennsylvania State Police fire marshal was on scene Monday seeking a cause of the fire and the ignition point, Potter said. The fire, which appeared to start to the rear of the building at 394 Delaware Ave., does not appear suspicious, Potter said.

The structure was filled with flames when the first call came in just after 7:30 p.m., Potter said. While the fire department has a facility about 100 yards away, the blaze was too far ahead and firefighters quickly took up a defensive posture, saving a building about 15 feet to the rear and another structure about 60 feet to the south, Potter said.

We protected them, Potter said. We did well.

Initially, due to high-tension wires just in front of the burning building, the departments ladder truck couldnt be deployed, Potter said. Hoses were run to the rear of the building and as much water as possible was put on the fire from the exterior, Potter said. Eventually, when the fire cooled enough to do so, the ladder truck was moved to the side of the building and it had access to soak the entire structure from above, Potter said.

It took about two hours to get the fire under control but borough firefighters were on the scene until about 1:30 a.m. dealing with hot spots, Potter sad. There were calls for a rekindle response around dawn, according to emergency dispatches.

About half of the building is gone and the rest of it is heavily damaged, Potter said. It will have to be torn down, he added.

About 60 firefighters were involved in the effort and one from Delaware Water Gap suffered a minor hand injury, Potter said. The business was closed at the time of the fire, he added.

Fire departments from Upper Mount Bethel Township, Lower Mount Bethel Township, North Bangor and Knowlton Township assisted in the battle, Potter said.

Borough Mayor Lance Prator said the building was vacant for four or five years after Cramers home improvement moved out before the steel company took over about three years ago. He said he hopes the current owner -- listed in Northampton County property records as Bartlomiej Malinowski of Brooklyn, New York -- rebuilds.

The other structures -- one that is more a storage shed -- likely cant handle the companys business, Prator said. Hed rather there not be a vacant lot in the small downtown business district.

There still are buildings that were damaged in the 2004-06 floods that have yet to make it back, he said. One building was knocked clear off its foundation and remains in that condition, he said. The hardware store is gone as are several other local places, he said.

The borough has just completed a revitalization study that defined the obvious -- Portland needs more businesses, he said.

The owners of the vacant train station are trying to bring in two businesses, but then a fire hits and hurts another nearby business, he said, adding that each half step forward is tempered by steps to the rear.

Just like everybody, we want to have a striving downtown, the man who said hes been called Portlands cheerleader explained.

The Cramers building was an anchor, until it closed, he said.

It gives the wrong impression when driving through if stores are shut in the approximately two-block business district, he said. You want to make people want to stop.

The borough is near several trail heads -- including one of the other side of the pedestrian bridge to New Jersey from where someone could walk pretty much to the Statue of Liberty, he said.

What we are supposed to be is a fun riverfront town, he said. Were almost like a trail town.

The kind of place where a bike shop, for example, could thrive, he said.

But, for now, the focus is on whats next for Portland Steel and coming back from the fire.

John Bermingham, chair of the Upper Mount Bethel supervisors, lent his support to the nearby borough.

I spoke to Mayor Prator tonight and I will be in touch with Portland Council in the morning, he wrote Sunday night on Facebook. Whatever Portland needs, Upper Mount Bethel Township is here and we are here to help.

Thank you to our Mount Bethel and North Bangor Fire Departments who responded and all the surrounding Fire Departments. Portland, you are in our prayers and know we got your back!

Prator said Knowlton Mayor Adele Starrs also called Sunday night to offer assistance.

Prator said the borough of 519 people needs its neighboring communities if it expects to find success.

And he has been working for years to open those doors of cooperation.

Portland could be a walkway to the entire Slate Belt, he said, as long as people keep acting locally but thinking globally.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Hyderabad: Leading lifestyle brand Shoppers Stop will soon set up its manufacturing unit in Telangana, it was announced here on Friday.



The Telangana government and Shoppers Stop entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the presence of Industries Minister K.T. Rama Rao in Mumbai.



According to the MoU, Shoppers Stop will set up an apparel manufacturing unit at Sircilla Apparel Park in Telangana.



"Delighted that the apparel manufacturing unit of Shoppers Stop will be coming up at Sircilla. Employment opportunities to hundreds of women will be created and a huge step forward for apparel park, Sircilla," said Rama Rao.



The MoU was signed by state's Principal Secretary, IT & Industries, Jayesh Ranjan and Shoppers Stop Managing Director & CEO Rajiv Suri.



The minister also held talks with industry leaders from the textile sector in Mumbai. He explained to them the investment opportunities in Telangana.



KTR, as the minister is popularly known, gave an overview of the progressive industrial policies and also the single-window clearance system under TSiPASS. He also mentioned the industrial parks coming up in the textile sector in Telangana.



KTR also met the pharma leaders and representatives of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance. He highlighted the investment opportunities in the pharmaceutical and life sciences sector in the state.



"Minister thanked the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance for the opportunity to present at their apex council meeting. aceTelangana's ambitious agenda is to double the size of our life sciences ecosystem from 50 Billion USD in 2020 to 100 Billion USD by 2030 & create 400 thousand new jobs," he said in a tweet.
Carmakers built just 4.7 million cars in Germany in 2019, industry data showed Monday, squeezing production to its lowest level since 1997 as US-China trade tensions sapped vital foreign markets.

The powerful VDA carmakers' club said output had tumbled nine percent year-on-year, blaming "weaker international demand" for the fall.

The lower appetite from abroad comes on top of demanding technological change and tighter emissions restrictions complicating life for carmakers -- long a pillar of Europe's largest economy.

With consumer spending buttressing the domestic market even as economic growth slowed, new registrations of cars on German roads booked an increase of five percent, at 3.6 million.

But auto exports from Germany to the rest of the world fell even more sharply than production, tumbling 13 percent to 3.5 million.

"The fall in car production means Germany continues to lose significance in the global auto industry," said Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer of the Center Automotive Research.

Around the world, car markets have been battered by the effects of the American trade conflict with China.

Last year saw carmakers complain that falling global demand is eating into their business just as massive investments are needed in research and development.

Companies are pumping cash into high-tech projects like automated driving, and switching focus to hybrid or all-electric vehicles from internal combustion engines as they race to meet new emissions limits.

And structural factors threatening the auto firms' pride of place in the German economy are also at work.

Where in 1998 close to 12 percent of all cars sold worldwide were produced in Europe's powerhouse, the share has shrunk to below six percent in 2019, Dudenhoeffer said.

Meanwhile electric motors require less manpower to assemble than their hydrocarbon-burning predecessors, threatening some of the roughly 800,000 car industry jobs in Germany.

Also Monday, figures from the KBA transport authority showed SUVs overtaking compact cars as the most popular class of models on the domestic market.

Many SUVs are built not in Germany but in factories operated by the country's multinational carmakers overseas.

That in turn makes the companies more vulnerable to upsets in international trade.

In a study published in December, Dudenhoeffer forecast that German car production would begin growing again in 2021 after bottoming out this year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei openly weeps as he leads a prayer over the coffin of Gen. Qassem Soleimani at the Tehran University campus, in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 6, 2020. (Iran Press TV via AP)

Khamenei Cries During Soleimani Funeral as Thousands Gather in Tehran

Mourners gathered in Irans capital for General Qassem Soleimanis funeral, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei at one point cried openly at Mondays funeral.

Khamenei led a mass prayer as he stood over a flag-draped casket with the remains of Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq on Friday.

Khameneis voice cracked during a funeral procession unlike any in Irans recent history.

Iranian people attend a funeral procession for Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in an airstrike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 6, 2020. (Nazanin Tabatabaee/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters)

People attend a funeral procession for Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in an airstrike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran on Jan. 6, 2020. (Official Khamenei website/Handout via Reuters)

Video footage showed crowds filling streets and chanting Death to America. The funeral came months after anti-government protests prompted authorities to kill demonstrators.

Khamenei was close to Soleimani. The Iranian leader was photographed more than once embracing Soleimani in ways that are customary in Iran for fathers and their beloved sons.

In one such photograph from 2018, Khamenei, seated on an elevated platform, leans down and kisses Soleimanis forehead. In another image from 2017, Khamenei is seen kissing Soleimanis cheek during Ashoura, a religious day of mourning among Shiites.

Unlike other military commanders in the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the 62-year-old general answered only to the 80-year-old Khamenei.

Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani pray near the coffins of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in an airstrike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 6, 2020. (Official Presidents Website/Handout via Reuters)

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei kisses Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani during a religious ceremony in Tehran, Iran, in this Sept. 30, 2017 photo, re-released Jan. 3, 2020, by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

So revered was he by Khamenei, that the supreme leader has awarded Soleimani Irans highest military order in March. Irans Tasnim News Agency reported that Soleimani is the only Iranian military official to receive the Order of Zolfaghar since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

When pinning the medal on Soleimani, the Iranian leader said he hoped the general would live a blissful life that ends with martyrdom.

Of course not any time soon, Khamenei said, adding the Islamic Republic needs him for years to come.

Khamenei visited Soleimanis house the day after the generals death to offer condolences to his grieving widow and grown children. He also ordered three days of mourning, culminating with the funeral, and harsh retaliation against the United States.

President Donald Trump and Iranian leaders have traded barbs since Soleimanis killing, with no military action taken yet by either side.

Soleimanis replacement said on Monday that Iran would certainly take retaliatory actions.

A photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike, in Baghdad, Iraq, early on Jan. 2, 2020. (Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office, via AP)

Brigadier-General Esmail Qaani, the newly appointed commander of the countrys Quds Force, kisses a coffin during the funeral prayer over the coffins of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis who were killed in an airstrike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, on Iran on Jan. 6, 2020. (Official Khamenei website/Handout via Reuters)

Certainly actions will be taken, Esmail Qaani told state television.

He said hed continue martyr Soleimanis cause  and in return for his martyrdom we aim to rid the region of America, according to a translation from Reuters.

Trump said on Twitter Saturday that the United States would target Iranian sites, including cultural sites if Iran attacks the United States again.

Trump reiterated his position to reports on Air Force One on Sunday, promising major retaliation if Iran conducts another attack.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, Trump said.

Iran also said Monday it would not respect limits set on how many centrifuges it can use to enrich uranium. The limits were part of a deal negotiated by in 2015 by then-U.S. President Barack Obama without congressional approval that Trump abandoned last year.

Top White House advisor Kellyanne Conway told reporters in Washington that Trump has said hes open to meeting with Iranian leaders.

Trump believes its possible to renominate a nuclear deal with Iran if Iran wants to start behaving like a normal country  sure, she said. Absolutely.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Tennessee Department of Agriculture is advising forest landowners to monitor their sassafras trees after detecting new cases of Laurel Wilt Disease in Robertson and Hamblen Counties. Earlier this year, the disease was detected in trees in Montgomery, Cheatham, Dickson and Williamson Counties.

These new detections of this invasive disease show a significant geographic jump across the state, State Forester David Arnold said. This is yet another unfortunate example of an invasive pest impacting our forests. Landowners should take caution to prevent the spread of this disease if detected on their property.

Laurel Wilt is a fungal disease caused by an invasive pathogen, Raffaelea lauricola, which can affect a range of plants, including sassafras and spicebush in Tennessee. The disease is transmitted by the wood-boring redbay ambrosia beetle and prevents the movement of water within the tree. Choked of water, trees wilt and die within a few weeks or months. Currently, no treatment has been developed that can cure laurel wilt disease or protect trees from infection.

Sassafras is found in all regions of the state. The wood is often used for small woodworking projects, interior finish, cooperage, and fence posts. The tree is the host plant for the spicebush swallowtail butterfly and is ecologically important.

The best way to prevent the spread of Laurel Wilt is to avoid movement of firewood or other untreated timber. Laurel Wilt is most likely in Tennessee due to human movement of contaminated wood. For more information on sourcing disease-free, treated firewood, visit www.firewoodscout.org/s/TN/.

If infected, trees should be cut down and chipped to prevent further spread. Chips from the infected tree should be destroyed by burning on site or covered with a tarp to prevent spread of the beetles. Stumps should be ground down to the soil level and no debris of the tree should be transported from the site.

Tennesseans are urged to monitor their sassafras trees for browning of leaves, leaf loss, and staining in the inner bark. If you suspect your trees might have Laurel Wilt Disease, contact Forest Health Program Specialist Sam Gildiner at 615-837-5439 or sam.gildiner@tn.gov. TDA Division of Forestry staff will assist in identifying the disease and recommending management actions, if appropriate.

The TDA Division of Forestry works to minimize health threats to Tennessees forest resources, including mismanagement, insects, and disease. To learn more about how Tennessee manages forest health, visit http://protecttnforests.org/.
Jabalpur, Jan 6 : BJP legislator Prahlad Lodhi, who has been reinstated after being disqualified as MLA, on Monday got a two-week stay on his conviction in a criminal case from the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

The state government sought time to argue the matter, Deputy Government Advocate Vishal Yadav, who appeared for the state government, said.

On October 31, 2019, a Bhopal court had sentenced Pawai MLA Lodhi and 12 others to two years in jail for attacking Raipura tehsildar R.K. Verma in August 2014 for seizing a tractor smuggling sand. Assembly Speaker N.P. Prajapati promptly disqualified Lodhi on November 2, 2019.

The Speaker, however, revoked his disqualification after Lodhi petitioned the apex court. This had raised the Congress' hopes to earn a simple majority in the House. However, Lodhi's reinstatement and a Congress MLA's death have undone the advantage. If Lodhi is disqualified after the final court verdict, the balance may tilt in BJP's favour.

On November 6, 2019 the High Court stayed conviction of Lodhi till January 7, 2020 and granted bail to him on a petition for relief. A bench of Justice V.P.S. Chauhan ordered till next date of hearing, the conviction and sentence of the petitioner shall remain stayed, the counsel said.
US President Donald Trump had unilaterally pulled out the United States from the Obama-era deal. (Photo Credit: File photo)

New Delhi:

US President Donald Trump on Monday said Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. This comes after Iran vowed to pull out of the nuclear deal or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed between Iran and five UNSC members plus Germany. Irans announcement of pulling out of the nuclear deal came amid escalating tensions in the Gulf region after the killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.

IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2020

Earlier, US President Donald Trump had unilaterally pulled out the United States in 2018 from the Obama-era deal.

Iran on Sunday had announced that it will no longer abide by the 2015 Nuclear deal, reports Iranian state television. According to the 2015 Nuclear Deal, which is officially called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran had agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium.

It also was required to cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98%, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of its gas centrifuges for next 13 years.

Moreover, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday urged Iran to drop measures that go against the 2015 nuclear deal, after Tehran announced it would no longer abide by a limit on enrichment. "We call on Iran to withdraw all measures that are not in line with the nuclear agreement," German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British PM Boris Johnson said in a joint statement.

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Abuse from people who work in Dubin but park all day is one of the many problems residents of a Portlaoise estate face because Laois County Council cannot take responsibility for roads, lighting and other issues nearly two decades after it was completed.

Cllr Caroline Dwane was irate with the councils stance and response at the Portlaoise Municipal District meeting when she asked for a progress update on the taking in charge of Millbrook Estate off the Ridge Road.

Angela McEvoy, senior planner responded in writing to Cllr Dwane Stanleys motion. The reply pointed to difficulties with drains and water which would involve Irish Water as to what needed to be done before the council could take it over.

CCTV Survey was completed which highlighted a number of issues which need to be remediated i.e. sliting up of surface water systems, foul sewer requiring two manholes, one at the end of each line. These traverse a very narrow space (alleyway at back of houses) and will be very difficult to remedy. Benching is also required for manholes. A site resolution plan with Irish water will have to be prepared, she said.

Cllr Dwane Stanley was not happy because she had raised the issue over a number of years and had been given the same answer previously.

To say the least I am disappointed with the response, she said. This estate has to be one of the longest that has had to be taken in charge. That estate has been built over 20 years. There has been huge problems and the biggest problem has been parking on both sides of the footpaths.

Residents are absolutely at their wits end. People in wheelchairs have to get onto the road because they cant get onto the footpaths. People are parking up and going to Dublin for the day. Some of residents come out and ask them to move are getting abuse, she said.

Cllr Dwane Stanley said there is a problem with sewerage, lights, footpaths.

It just seems to be going nowhere, she said.

She asked for Director of Service Simon Walton to draw up a plan to act. She said the Woodgrove estate face similar issues but had been taken over.

Cllr Willie Aird endorsed the evidence of illegal parking and questioned whether there is a desire to act.

I question is the will there to do it. I cant understand how it has been left there for so long.

We spent a huge amount of money on Fitzmaurice Place and I asked could we tie the two into one because it is going to have to be done.

Cllr Aird said some of the residents were senior citizens and moved to Portlaoise because of the facilities.

He claimed the council has to step in and finish the estate because no other source of revenue exists.

Cllr Aird said councillors should meet with management and planners before the next meeting.

Simon Walton, Director of Services, said he was new to the role and said he would be briefed before councillors meet again in January.
Cindy Crawford is back in New York City a week after her husband Rande Gerber had a talk with daughter Kaia Gerber's boyfriend Pete Davidson in the budding model's Manhattan apartment.

The 53-year-old supermodel looked tense as she was bundled up in winter wear including knee-high boots during a shopping session.

Clearly the drama has taken a toll on the beauty's family that is reportedly very concerned that 18-year-old model Kaia is hitting a few speed bumps with the 26-year-old Saturday Night Live comedian.

Back in the Big Apple: Cindy Crawford is back in New York City a week after her husband Rande Gerber had a talk with daughter Kaia Gerber's boyfriend Pete Davidson in the budding model's Manhattan apartment

Hard times: The 53-year-old supermodel looked tense as she was bundled up in winter wear during a shopping session

Cindy failed to smile as she walked briskly down a street while in her black high-heeled boots.

The Becoming author wore a long light brown leather coat which had fur on the wide collar.

Underneath, the Versace model wore a light beige wool turtleneck that was tucked into her skinny jeans.

The Illinois native accessorized nicely with a black Gucci crossbody purse, black leather gloves and black sunglasses with small gold huggie earrings.

Snazzy look: The Becoming author wore a long light brown leather coat which had fur on the wide collar. Underneath, the Versace model wore a light beige wool turtleneck that was tucked into her skinny jeans

Her highlighted hair was parted in the middle and worn down over her shoulders.

Crawford carried a white plastic bag in her left hand. And the catwalk queen appeared to be trying to stuff something into her small Italian purse.

Kaia was last seen on Saturday at the Yves Saint Laurent pre-Golden Globes party in Los Angeles.

The model stunned in a plunging gold and black mini dress as she mingled with friends including actor Tommy Dorfman at the star-studded bash hosted by Anthony Vaccarello and Rami Malek.

Stunning: Kaia attended the Yves Saint Laurent pre-Golden Globes party in Los Angeles, California on Saturday, left. Here Pete is seen on Christmas Eve in New York City, right

Better days for the couple: Kaia and Pete attend a friend's wedding in Miami in late November

Earlier in the day, the star appeared downcast during a solo walk around Malibu.

The teenager kept a low profile while appearing to be deep in thought.

In late December Cindy and Rande were spotted outside of Kaia's New York City apartment having a serious discussion about Pete.

A bystander told Dailymail.com that Rande was heard saying that the person upstairs - presumed to be Pete - had 'scratched eyes' and was 'freaking out.'

Bye! Pete admitted in December that he would be entering a rehab facility when on SNL with Colin Jost

Pete reportedly left the apartment in a car down the street after the parents talked. Kaia was later seen returning to the building after dark.

Before that, Pete admitted that he would be entering a rehab facility over the holiday break.

During an SNL skit just before the Christmas holiday, the star announced on live television that he would be checking himself in.

Concerned: After Pete confessed he would be entering rehab, Kaia's parents, Cindy and Rande Gerber (pictured in April) were spotted outside of her New York City apartment having a serious discussion about his ongoing troubles

Top genetics: Kaia is the daughter of Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber

'I'm going on "vacation" but insurance pays for some of it, and they take your phone and shoelaces,' he said using quotes while on-air for the Weekend Update.

'And it costs $100,000 but I still have roommates.'

The unlikely pair was first linked back in October when they were spotted out for brunch at Sadelles in the Big Apple.

They have since been spotted out on vacation in Miami and even attended a wedding together.

The SNL star was previously engaged to popstar Ariana Grande back in 2018.

He then moved on to both Kate Beckinsale and Margaret Qualley in 2019.
Washington, Jan 6 : An Indian-American Muslim group has demanded the dismissal of the Yogi Adityanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Uttar Pradesh over the deaths of anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protesters in the state.

The Association of Indian Muslims of America has appealed to Indian President Ram Nath Kovind to dismiss the incumbent government led by Chief Minister Adityanath and proclaim the President's rule in the state, The American Bazaar said in a report on Sunday.

Kaleem Kawaja, the Executive Director of the organization, also called for imposing "special control" on the Delhi Police, bringing the Indian capital city under the control of paramilitary forces, and monitoring the police in Karnataka to ensure that they "do not commit brutalities".

"In the last three weeks Indian citizens, students and young people have held numerous peaceful public protests in over 50 cities all across India, against the unconstitutional CAA and National Registry of Citizens (NRC) that were recently promulgated by the BJP government in India," Kawaja said in a statement.

"They are demanding the repeal of both Acts that may result in huge hardship to a very large number of citizens belonging to the economically disadvantaged citizens and Muslim citizens, and may result in many (losing) their citizenship." He blamed the police in BJP-ruled states of using violence against the protesters.

Kawaja appealed to President Kovind "to ensure that the constitution of the Indian Republic is upheld in its entirety and is implemented rigorously throughout India".

At least 28 people have been killed in the violent anti-CAA protests in various parts of India.
Ramsey shop accepting donations for injured Australian animals



A rescued baby koala - Credit: Sky News

A shop in Ramsey is collecting donations of soft fabrics for animals injured from bushfires in Australia.

They are sending them onto a woman in Carlisle, who has launched a fundraising appeal to help koalas, kangaroos and other types of animals badly burned.

The Snug on Parliament Street in Ramsey are accepting donations of soft acrylics, such as t shirts and bedsheets for bandages, bat and bird nests until 17th January.

It's been reported that a billion animals will have died in the bushfires and those that make it through the flames could perish in the coming weeks.

A total of 24 people have been killed and almost 2,000 homes destroyed as the bushfires have ravaged three Australian states, burning about five million hectares (12.35 million acres) of land.

On Sunday, a drop in temperature and rain showers has brought some hope of a respite from the flames.
Iranian officials are likely considering a cyber-attack against the U.S. in the wake of an airstrike that killed one of its top military officials.

Former U.S. officials and security experts said there is precedent for such concerns amid years of tit-for-tat cyber-attacks between the two countries. As recently as June, after the U.S. sent additional troops to the Middle East and announced further sanctions on Iran, cyber-attacks targeting U.S. industries and government agencies increased, the Department of Homeland Security said at the time.

In a tweet after the airstrike on Thursday, Christopher Krebs, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, repeated a warning from the summer about Iranian malicious cyber-attacks, and urged the public to brush up on Iranian tactics and to pay attention to critical systems, particularly industrial control infrastructure.

The airstrike in Baghdad killed Qassem Soleimani, a major general in the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard, who led proxy militias that extended the countrys power across the Middle East. The strike ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump was in response to an imminent threat, according to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo.

By midday, shares of cybersecurity companies were mostly up, even as the broader market was down amid uncertainty created by the airstrike. Just before 1 p.m. eastern time, shares of CrowdStrike Inc. were up 3.7% and FireEye Inc., 2.7%.

John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at the cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc., said Iran has largely resisted carrying out attacks in the U.S. so far. But given the gravity of this event, we are concerned any restraint they may have demonstrated could be replaced by a resolve to strike closer to home.

Iranian cyber-attacks have included U.S. universities and companies, operators of industrial control systems and banks. Iranian hackers tried to infiltrate the Trump campaign, and they have launched attacks against current and former U.S. government officials and journalists. The U.S., meanwhile, has employed cyberweapons to attack Irans nuclear capabilities and computer systems used to plot attacks against oil tankers, according to the New York Times.

James Lewis, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, likened the airstrike to assassinating a top U.S. official, such as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As such, he said Iranian retaliation may include the use of force, but the government is also likely asking hackers for a list of options.

Cyber-attacks may be tempting if they can find the right American target, Lewis said. The Iranians are pretty capable and our defenses are uneven, so they could successfully attack poorly defended targets in the U.S. There are thousands, but they would want something dramatic.

The geopolitical tension between the U.S. and Iran has ratcheted up since the U.S. withdrawal in 2018 from a nuclear deal struck under President Barack Obama. But the nations have a years-long history of cyber confrontation.

Roughly a decade ago, the U.S. and Israel reportedly used a computer worm called Stuxnet to ruin about 1,000 centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear facility. Then, starting in 2011, Iran-backed hackers launched disruptive attacks against dozens of mostly financial targets in the U.S.  costing them tens of millions of dollars.

Neither the U.S. nor Israel ever responded publicly to the Stuxnet allegations.

Robert M. Lee, chief executive officer of the industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos Inc., said companies and cyber professionals need to be on guard against an attack.

I would advise analysts to place a particular focus on looking for the tactics, techniques, and procedures of groups that have been shown to operate in the interests of the Iranian state, Lee said. For companies that have yet to make proper investments into the cybersecurity of their business, there is not much that can be done quickly in situations like this.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
Defence officials call letter about preparations for a US military withdrawal from Iraq a mistake.

The United States has no plans to pull out militarily from Iraq, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told Pentagon reporters on Monday, following reports of a US military letter about preparations for a withdrawal.

Theres been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq, Esper said, when asked about the letter, adding there had also been no plans issued to prepare to leave.

Theres been no decision made to leave Iraq. Period, he told reporters.

The letter, cited by news agencies and US media, was sent to Iraqi military by US Marine Corps Brigadier General William H Seely III, commanding general of Task Force Iraq, the US-led military coalition against ISIL.

A top US general told reporters that the letter was a poorly worded draft document meant to only underscore increased movement of forces.

Poorly worded, implies withdrawal. Thats not whats happening, US Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a group of reporters, stressing there was no withdrawal being planned.

This was a mistake from McKenzie, Milley told reporters, referring to US Central Command commander General Frank McKenzie.

The long and short of it is: Its an honest mistake by people trying to do the right things in highly dynamic situations, etc. It should not have been sent, he said, adding that the unsigned document was a draft sent to get input from Iraqi officials.

It (the draft letter) was sent over to some key Iraqi military guys in order to get things coordinated for air movements, etc. Then it went from that guys hands to another guys hands and then it went to your hands. Now, its a kerfuffle.

Esper added the US was still committed to countering ISIL in Iraq, alongside US allies and partners.

The reports came a day after the Iraqi parliament urged the government to expel foreign troops following the US killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.

Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi told the US ambassador to Baghdad on Monday that both countries needed to implement the resolution, the premiers office said in a statement.

The US military has said there are about 5,000 US troops in Iraq.
By Chayut Setboonsarng

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand opened its first full-time clinic specialising in traditional and alternative cannabis-based medicine on Monday, as part of a move by the government towards developing a medicinal cannabis industry.

"This is a pilot clinic, because we cannot produce enough doctors with expertise in cannabis," Public Health Minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, told reporters at the opening ceremony in Bangkok. Patients will receive treatment free of charge for the first two weeks, he added.

Thailand, which has a tradition of using cannabis to relieve pain and fatigue, legalized marijuana for medical use and research in 2017 to boost agricultural income.

There are already around 25 cannabis clinics attached to general hospitals around the country but, unlike the newly-launched pilot clinic, they operate for just a few days a week due to a lack of specialised staff.

The largest producer of medicinal cannabis is currently the health ministry's Government Pharmaceutical Organization. Kasetsart University's director of medical cannabis research, Natakorn Thasnas, told Reuters that the university would supply 2,200 kilograms of cannabis leaf to the ministry.

Cannabis production, cultivation and sale has been limited to licensed Thai producers for the next four years to protect the domestic industry. Currently, only hospitals and research facilities are allowed to apply for cannabis production and extraction licenses, but the government is reviewing regulations to enable Thai businesses to apply for permits.

Last year, Thailand dropped cannabis and hemp extracts from its narcotics list and proposed a draft law that would allow each household to grow six cannabis plants.

Four types of drugs, containing different combinations of cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psycho-active ingredient in cannabis, were given to patients to treat migraine, insomnia, neck pain and muscle stiffness, the ministry said in a statement.

Story continues

The pilot clinic, based in the Ministry of Public Health, expects to see between 200 to 300 patients daily.

"I was worried at first, but I studied the effects and decided it was better because its natural," said Waraporn Boonsri, 69, who received four vials of cannabis oil to help her sleep.

Nearly 2,200 patients have registered at the clinic until March, a health official told Reuters. Anutin said there were plans for 77 clinics to be opened across the country, with one in every province.

(This story was corrected to fix the minister's name to "Charnvirakul" in the second paragraph)

(Reporting by Chayut Setboonsarng, Panarat Thepgumpanat and Prapan Chankaew; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Aviation regulator DGCA has started the process of issuing show cause notices to approximately 100 pilots and senior executives of GoAir over alleged violation of flight duty time limit (FDTL) norms, a senior official said on Monday.

According to a source, GoAir cancelled as many as 40 flights between December 23 and 24. During this period, it also reported air turn back of two if its aircraft due to engine glitches and they were later taken out of operations for further inspection.

The airline had said on December 26 that due to inclement weather in north India, it experienced extensive flight delays and diversions leading to cancellation of flights as its crew approached its FDTL in the last two-three days.

"This was further exacerbated due to the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) protests wherein our crew members were unable to report for duty," the airline had said.

Asked if the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has initiated the process of issuing notices to around 100 pilots and senior officials of budget carrier GoAir over violation of FDTL norms, the senior official replied in the affirmative.

"Yes, it is in process. Those who have violated FDTL are being issued show cause notices as to why action should not be taken against them," the official said.

GoAir did not respond to queries sent by PTI on Monday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Heads of universities across Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Chandigarh on Monday condemned the violence at the countrys premier Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus in Delhi on Sunday night. Security was stepped up in campuses in the region though no untoward incident was reported.

Violence had broken out inside JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus. At least 28 people, including JNU Students Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours.

Panjab University, Chandigarh, vice-chancellor Raj Kumar said, We strongly condemn this (violence at JNU). Protests at universities have to be peaceful and should not spoil the atmosphere on the campus.

Punjabi University, Patiala, vice-chancellor BS Ghuman said that violence in any form had no place on a campus. It is a sensitive issue. Universities are places where we prepare generations for the welfare of society. Universities help in the germination and flourishing of ideas that shape the course of life. Violence is not at compatible with the idea of a university. Issues can be resolved through dialogue, discussion, agreement and debate. Such platforms are on all campuses, Ghuman said

Dharamshala-based Central University of Himachal Pradesh vice-chancellor Kuldip Chand Agnihotri said, The violence at JNU is the result of the kind of political activities being carried out there over years. This is a painful incident and condemnable. In Indian culture, there is no place for violence and use of force. Efforts should be made to build a constructive dialogue.

Mohan Paul Singh Ishar, the vice-chancellor of Maharaja Ranjit Singh Punjab Technical University, Bathinda, said, The brutal attack on students and faculty members on the JNU campus is disturbing. This kind of incident where a masked mob vandalises an educational institution is unacceptable and deserves condemnation. However, claims and counter claims are being reported in the media. JNU has a history of higher academic standards and a dialogue is needed to sort out any difference.

HOLD JNU V-C RESPONSIBLE

Islamic University of Science and Technology, Awantipora in Srinagar, vice-chancellor Mushtaq Ahmad Siddiqi held JNU vice-chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar responsible for the violence. It is the duty of the institution to provide security to students in classes and hostels and to ensure a secure ambience on the campus. If we dont allow students to ask questions how will they develop leadership qualities?

Katra-based Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University vice-chancellor RK Sinha said, The JNU violence is most unfortunate. Whatever is going on for the past couple of months culminated in violence on Sunday. I can see that exams and registrations are not being allowed there due to the violence. All this should be stopped. We have a proper system here and there is no scope for such violence. Nothing of this sort will be allowed.

Condemning the attack, DAV University, Jalandhar, vice-chancellor Desh Bandhu Gupta said exemplary action must be taken against the culprits. It is unfortunate that the university authorities had not taken any precautionary step. How can a mob carrying rods and sticks and enter the campus to attack students and staff? he said.

AGAINST OUR CULTURE, TRADITION

Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, chancellor Ashok Mittal described the attack as highly deplorable. It should never have happened inside a citadel of learning meant for the good of society. Such action is severely condemned and is not expected to happen in any institution. Identify and punish those involved. We should set an example so that such heinous crimes never occur again.

IK Gujral Punjab Technical University, Kapurthala, vice-chancellor Ajay Kumar Sharma said, Violence at any educational institution is condemnable. Universities and colleges are temples of knowledge. This is against the tradition and culture of Indian universities. Our prime responsibility is to curb the anti-social elements inside and outside the campus. Courses on human values and how to lead a peaceful social life should be part of the syllabus in every educational institution.

Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, vice-chancellor Sikander Kumar declined comment on the incident, saying, I dont want to say anything now as Im not sure what exactly happened there.

When contacted, Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Faridkot, vice-chancellor Dr Raj Bahadur also declined comment.

Rohtak-based Maharshi Dayanand University registrar Gulshan Taneja said vice-chancellor Rajvir Singh was at a meeting but he condemned the violence. Only a probe can determine who is behind the violence, Taneja said.

Meanwhile, security has been stepped up across campuses in the region. Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology, Hisar, registrar Harbhajan Bansal said, The campus is peaceful but we are on alert.

Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, registrar BR Kamboj agreed, No one will be allowed to breach law and order on the campus. Its peaceful here.
Protests against the violence in New Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) swept across the country on Monday as authorities deployed a large number of police personnel outside the campus.

Several masked people, armed with sticks and stones, barged into the university campus spreading chaos and terror as they targeted students and teachers on Sunday evening.

JNU students union blamed members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the youth wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. ABVP denied they had instigated the violence and said they were first attacked by the left-leaning students.

Follow JNU live updates here

Authorities have put in a massive deployment of security personnel at JNU and are only allowing students with identity cards inside the campus. Security was deployed outside the hostels, administration block and other important locations across the campus.

Watch: Student protests spread across country after JNU violence

The gates of JNU were closed later with iron chains as senior police officials gathered outside.

Delhi Police have registered a First Information Report (FIR) in connection with violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) under sections of rioting and damage of property.

Thousands across the country started their protest right after a masked mob attacked students and teachers and vandalised hostels in JNU on Sunday and continued their demonstrations on Monday.

Mumbai

A midnight protest meet at the iconic Gateway of India, which began hours after a mob attack at JNU, continued through Monday morning. More protest rallies are likely to take place in the Maharashtra capital through the day.

Hundreds of students and citizens had gathered spontaneously at the Gateway of India on Sunday around midnight, a couple of hours after masked goons attacked students and teachers of JNU.

Apart from students of various organisations in Mumbai, citizens, too, joined in the protests. Social activist and former JNU student Umar Khalid, too, was present at the protest.

Students from the University of Mumbai, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Tata Institute of Social Sciences are likely to join the protests on Monday.

A student from IIT Bombay said that the protests and rallies planned through the day will be peaceful.

The Occupy Gateway call is for all Mumbaiites to come forward and raise their voice against the violence at JNU. All protests will be peaceful. We will fight with pens, not swords, he said.

While students and citizens continued to protest at the Gateway of India on Monday, the Joint Action Committee (JAC) has called for a rally at Hutatma Chowk in south Mumbai at 4pm.

The student-led organisation JAC was formed in 2016 following the death of Rohith Vemula to seek justice for the Hyderabad university student who committed suicide.

Delhi

In the Capital, at least 500 students and alumni from universities in Delhi protested outside the old Delhi Police headquarters at ITO on Sunday night after the JNU attacks.

Protesters, largely students and teachers from Jamia Millia Islamia, JNU and Delhi University, claimed the police did not act promptly in stopping the attacks.

They also alleged that police in plainclothes also assaulted students inside the JNU campus and demanded immediate registration of a first information report, or FIR, into the incident. They also shouted slogans against the police and Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).

Aligarh

Students of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), which saw violence in December last year during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) also took out a candlelight march on Sunday to protest the violence at JNU.

They demanded the masked mob, which attacked JNU students and vandalised property, must be arrested. They held the march inside the campus and ended at its Bab-e-Syed gate.

Our protest was peaceful. ABVP men attacked unarmed students in JNU. They must be booked. The government is booking people for protesting, then it must lodge cases against the people who have gone inside a university campus and beaten up students and vandalised the premises, said former AMU Students Union vice-president Hamza Sufiyan.

The AMU Teachers Association (AMUTA) released a statement urging the Chief Justice of India to take suo motu cognisance of the unprecedented situation arising from Sundays assault on JNU students and teachers.

Guwahati

University students in Assam have also condemned Sunday evenings violence at JNU and have decided to stage a Dhikkar Rally in Guwahati on Monday afternoon.

To express solidarity with JNU students and to condemn the incident in Delhi, students of Gauhati University, Cotton University and others colleges of the city will also gather at Nehru Park at 4pm on Monday and take part in the protest rally.

At least two students from Assam studying in JNU have received injuries in the attack last night.

What happened at JNU last night is shameful and we strongly condemn it. The police remained mute spectators to the violence. It seems the goons had indirect support of the government at Centre, Moon Talukdar, the general secretary of postgraduate students union of Gauhati University, told journalists on Monday.

We fear such incidents could get repeated in other universities. We warn the government that if such acts continue we will have no option but to resort to agitation, Talukdar said.

Hyderabad

The violent attack by a mob at JNU also triggered spontaneous protests in Hyderabad on Sunday night.

More than 200 students from the University of Hyderabad took out a rally from the south campus to the main gate around midnight in protest against the attacks in JNU.

At a short notice, the students gathered at the south campus building following a call given by the students union, after coming to know about the incidents in JNU. We took out a rally till the main campus gate demanding action against the accused, Students Federation of India (SFI) leader and UoH Students Union president Abishek Nandan said while speaking to HT.

The students shouted slogans against the Narendra Modi government and right-wing groups for the attacks on the JNU students. They called upon their JNU counterparts to be vigilant against the conspiracies by rival groups.

Nandan said the students union would be meeting again on Monday afternoon to chalk out the future course of action.

At Ambedkar Statue near Tank Bund on the banks of Hussainsagar lake, some Leftist activists staged a protest demonstration after midnight against the JNU incident.

In solidarity with the brave students of JNU. This cruel attack is meant to punish JNU students because they dared to stand up. Its so bad that even Union Ministers are tweeting helplessly. Modi Sarkar must answer why cops are siding with goons, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) party president and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi tweeted.

Kerala

The CPI(M)s student outfit, Students Federation of India, has asked students to boycott classes to protest against what it called saffron goonda attacks on the premier educational institution.

Classes in many educational institutions in the state were disrupted due to the strike called by the SFI to protest the attack on JNU students.

Other cities

In Uttarakhands Dehradun, J&KSA along with SFI will hold a protest against JNU incident later in the day.

A protest took place in Chhattisgarhs capital Raipur at around midnight where about 300 people, including students and activists, protested against the violence in JNU.

In Bihars Patna, students union president Manish Kumar led the protest. Students associated with the All India Students Federation (AISF) also staged a protest outside Patna University office.
(Natural News) Many a tech junkie will probably wax nostalgic at the thought of the infamous blue screen of death that used to show up on personal computers running older versions of Windows, as well as the choked-out Apple face that appeared on ancient iPods post-hard drive failure. But it might humor you to know that Elon Musks futuristic Tesla cars also have the potential to do the exact same thing unexpectedly and for no apparent reason.

A Car and Driver staff photographer learned this the hard way on Christmas day when his Model 3 reportedly suffered a catastrophic failure while parked in his parents driveway. As he was celebrating the holiday with his family, Michael Simari suddenly got a push notification on his iPhone stating that his Tesla car had suffered a failure and will no longer drive.

Simaris Model 3, which retails for nearly $60,000, was not in use at the time, which makes the notification he received even more perplexing. The electric vehicle appears to have just decided, perhaps in its own artificial intelligence (AI) mind, to just permanently shut down, leaving Simari stranded until Teslas roadside assistance service came to tow it away.

Since he was in Michigan at the time, Simari had to have his Model 3 towed all the way to Toledo, Ohio, as Tesla currently is not allowed to operate any company-owned service centers in the state of Michigan. In other words, the whole thing was a huge headache, which Car and Driver noted in a recent article about this bizarre situation.

Not only is this the first time weve ever had a long-term car suffer a catastrophic failure while parked, its also an extraordinarily rare case of any car leaving us stranded, something unacceptable for any new service, particularly one that costs $57,690 and with merely 5,286 miles on the odometer, the scathing article explains.

Even our problem-prone Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio was at least able to limp to the dealer following each one of its numerous issues.

Tesla cars are JUNK

In years past when Tesla vehicles being tested and used by employees at Car and Driver broke down, they were offered a Model S to use while it was being repaired  and this was only because Car and Driver revealed to its readers that Tesla had initially offered nothing as far as a replacement car, which is entirely unacceptable for a luxury car manufacturer.

After raising a stink about Teslas poor customer service, Car and Driver says it was later offered a loaner car, a rental, or $100 per day in Uber credits while this Model 3 was being repaired. But overall, the car reviewer noted, Teslas service experience hasnt improved much since the early days.

We heard back on the afternoon of the 26th that our car was in the queue to be diagnosed, but there was no time frame given for how long that might take, Car and Driver reports.

After a two-day wait, we were informed that there are issues with the rear drive unit, the pyrotechnic battery disconnect, and the 12-volt battery and that they are waiting for parts. Again, no estimated time was given for when we might be able to cease scrambling for backup transportation.

Car and Driver also reported that there wasnt a single warning message about anything being amiss prior to the Model 3s total failure. Simari says he did observe an anomalous charging situation at a Supercharger station earlier in the day before his car failed, but says there were no early-on push notifications that would have suggested what was soon to occur.

We were just about to download the latest software update (2019.40.50.1) but hadnt yet done it, so that didnt have anything to do with it, Samari explained.

For more related news about these and other modern tech failures, be sure to check out Collapse.news.

Sources for this article include:

Breitbart.com

NaturalNews.com
US President Donald Trump has threatened sanctions against Iraq. This is as a result Iraqs parliament call for immediate evacuati...





US President Donald Trump has threatened sanctions against Iraq.





This is as a result Iraqs parliament call for immediate evacuation of US troops from the country.





Tensions have been on the rise in the Middle East since Friday morning when US airstrike hit Iraqs capital of Baghdad, killing Iranian army General, Qassem Soleimani and other top military officers.





There have been threats and counter threats coming from Washington and Tehran.

Trump had issued a strong warning to Iran, vowing to hit 52 Iranian sites very hard if the Middle East country attacked Americans or United States assets.





Trumps threat came after Iran earlier said it had identified 32 US sites to strike in retaliation for the killing of Soleimani.





Speaking on Air Force One on Sunday, the American leader said that if Iraq asked US forces to leave and it was not done on a friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.





Trump also said Iraq would have to pay for the cost of the airbase.





We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base thats there, he said.





It cost billions of dollars to build, long before my time. Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it.





Reacting to this latest threat, Nader Hashemi, the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver told Al Jazeera Trumps comments were cause for concern.





This is someone who is completely surrounded by war hawks, is driven by his ego and is in a re-election campaign, Hashemi said.





I think hes calculating that this type of tough rhetoric plays well with his domestic base.




I sat at the end of a conference table tucked inside the New York City office of French winemaker Luc Belaire, waiting for Rick Ross to arrive. Most know Ross as the larger-than-life, Maybach-admiring rap star. And no wonder. Hes been a towering presence in the hip-hop world for over a decade, mentoring superstars like Meek Mill while releasing seminal records like "Hustlin'" and collaborating with fellow luminaries including Drake and Jay-Z. But just like his third studio album, Deeper Than Rap, suggests, theres a lot more to the man than music.

Ross is also a record label executive, New York Times bestselling author (Hurricanes), Wingstop and Checkers franchise owner and overseer of a vast real estate portfolio. Plus, he has a line of beauty and styling products sold at Sally Beauty Supply, with a full rollout at Walgreens slated for 2020. And he's been virtually synonymous with Belaire's sparking rose for years, championing it in music videos and among his circle of peers.

When the elevator doors finally opened, out came the Biggest Boss, entourage in tow. For the next hour, over Champagne and aromatic cigars, we spoke about money, music and more. Here are just a few takeaways for you from my interview with Rick Ross.

Related: 3 Startup Lessons From Hip-Hop Entrepreneurs

1. Save until youre sure what the best next move is.

When Ross got his first record deal, he did something unusual: nothing. He didnt buy jewelry, cars, clothes or anything else. Instead, he kept his mind on something bigger, saving his music money until he knew what that big thing was.

Where I was from, getting money, talking about homes and being an entrepreneur -- that really wasn't the priority in Miami," says Ross. "My mind may have been on something bigger. I just wasn't sure, so when you're not sure, the best thing to always do is just save, just stack, and that's what I did. I didn't buy an automobile, I didn't buy anything.

As his protege Meek Mill famously said on the 2011 record Im a Boss": Scared money dont make no money. But, to Ross, uncertain money wont make you money either. So, best to keep it stashed before spending until youve found an investment you're confident in. Which leads to takeaway number two.

2. Start where you are with what you know best.

After some careful deliberation, Ross decided that real estate was his best next investment. Real estate was always my go-to thing," he explains. "Im one of them dudes quick to say Im not into what I cant see. Im one of those guys that love to feel it.

Ross actually picked up on the power of real estate from his mom. Where shes from, real estate was a little more affordable," he says. "And she did a lot of buying homes next door, across the street. I watched her do that for a long time, so I said: Lets take that to another level.

Instead of wasting time hiring people to think for him, or going in an unfamiliar direction, he started with what was familiar. This is something that my team does well," he continues. "This is something that I watched my mother doing and my sister doing, so that's what we're going to invest in. Which leads to another important takeaway.

3. Knowing what not to do is as important as knowing what to do.

This concept is similar to one Tim Ferriss shared at a private Shopify event I attended several years ago. He recommends having a not-to-do list, which is a great way to minimize decision fatigue, save you time and keep you focused on your strengths.

Related: Why T.I. Says a Hustler Needs to Be Patient

Much like Ferriss, Ross recommends that you know what you dont want to invest in -- whether you're committing time, money, attention or anything else -- just as much what would interest you. In Rosss case, no stocks or Bitcoins are in play. His high touch investing preference keeps him focused and protected from potential distractions.

I'm quick to say I'm not into what I can't see, he confirms. All the guys thats profiting off that, congratulations. But me, I need to feel it. Does it have an address? Can I pull up to it and touch it? That was always my blueprint.

Related:

The Next Wave: From Natural Sustainability to Human Sustainability

10 Secrets to Sleeping Better -- And Being More Productive the Next Day

3 Lessons Rick Ross Taught Me About Success



Copyright 2020 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Activists of Left parties and members of students' outfits hit the streets in the state capital on Monday to protest against the violence at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, which left at least 34 injured.

With placards and banners -- which read 'stop hooliganism in JNU' and 'save democracy' -- the demonstrators took out rallies in various parts of the city and raised slogans against the BJP-led government at the Centre for its "failure to protect the students and teachers of the university from masked miscreants".

Earlier in the day, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had condemned the incident and said "violence has no space in democracy". He sought "stiff action against the culprits".

A mob of masked young people stormed the JNU campus in south Delhi on Sunday and systematically targeted students in three hostels, unleashing mayhem with sticks, stones and iron rods, hitting inmates and breaking windows, furniture and personal belongings. They also attacked a women's hostel.

Demanding a judicial probe into the incident, senior CPI leader Ram Krushna Panda said the "brutal attack on JNU students must be unequivocally condemned by one and all".

Echoing him, senior CPI(M) leader Janardan Pati said "fascist forces" who have no faith in democracy are responsible for the attack on JNU students.

Several protesters, including members of students' unions, demanded that the perpetrators should be punished without delay.

A leader of the All India Democratic Students Organisation (AIDSO) -- which took out a march near Rama Devi Women's University -- said those involved in the attack should be immediately put behind bars.

Accusing the Centre of trying to stifle diverse views, senior Congress leader Debasis Patnaik said "democracy was in danger" in the country.

"It was not just an attack on the students but also the democracy. All liberal-minded individuals must join hands to save democracy," the former MLA added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gautham S By

Express News Service

KOCHI: The pineapples from Vazhakulam market, Asias largest market for the fruit, have good demand in domestic and national market.

However, barring a few Middle East countries, pineapples produced in Kerala do not find their way to other markets despite a huge potential.

In a move aimed at increasing demand for pineapple in overseas markets, the state government has urged the Central government to include pineapple in the list of agriculture products in its draft national crop export policy.

Bananas, which are also produced in the state in large numbers, already finds a place in the list.

Agriculture Minister V S Sunil Kumar told TNIE that the state can include two crops to the export list.

The Geographical Indicator (GI)-tagged Vazhakulam pineapple will also be a part of this plan.

The minister said that the biggest challenge to farmers is that they are not able to find a proper market for pineapple and the government hopes to solve the issue by including it in the export list.

According to the policy, export could be conducted only as air cargo. Now the Central government has introduced shipment protocol too. So the quantity of exports can be increased, said Sunil Kumar. Vegetable and Fruit Promotion Council Keralam (VFPCK) is the nodal agency of the centre for exporting.

Pineapple and banana are commercial crops. Priority will be given to these crops as the volume of export is less compared to other crops. The Banana Honey Park at Kannara is a move to increase production and export of banana.

The government has decided to form state-level clusters for exporting pineapple according to the terms of the Centres export policy.

Ernakulam and Thrissur are the clusters and through these pineapples will be added to the export list. Also, a farmers collective should be formed so that a major share of the revenue from exports will directly reach the farmers, said P Indiradevi, Director of Research, Kerala Agricultural University.

The agriculture minister said there were some challenges while exporting Kerala pineapples. Most of the countries export cylindrical-shaped pineapples which are easy to cut and process. Our pineapples take more time to process. Once it is sorted out, exports will be in full swing.

According to the farmers of Vazhakulam, around 20,000 tonnes of pineapple becomes excess. The price of pineapple goes down drastically at times. This results in huge losses to the farmers as the excess quantity goes waste.

"The farmers will get a fixed income as exports will be conducted on a daily basis. So the wastage will also come down, said Sunil Kumar. The minister said the production of wine and low-content alcohol from fruits will benefit farmers.

Though the government had announced that licence will be issued for making wine and brewing alcohol, the process has not started yet, said Thomas Varghese, president, Vazhakulam Merchants Association.
WATERLOO  A state business group is asking the court to strike down a city ordinance that would prevent private employers from inquiring about criminal backgrounds on job applications.

On Jan. 2, the Iowa Association of Business and Industry filed for an injunction in Black Hawk County District Court to head off Waterloos ban the box rule, which is scheduled to begin in July.

The ordinance is one of the broadest criminal-history ordinances in the country, going well beyond any regulation of hiring practices under state or federal law, Iowa ABI officials said in a prepared statement. It doesnt just affect when an employer can inquire about an applicants criminal history; it also forbids employers from considering criminal history at all in some circumstances.

The Waterloo City Council passed the ban the box ordinance in November on a 4-3 vote. The measure would prohibit businesses from asking job candidates about their criminal history until later in the hiring process. Proponents say the ordinance allows people with a criminal past to have a fair chance at landing jobs.

According to Iowa ABIs petition, the group warned city officials before the vote the ordinance would violate a 2017 state law that ABI championed prohibiting cities from adopting ordinances that exceed or conflict with the requirements of federal or state law  relating to hiring practices.

Iowa ABI, represented by attorney Ryan Koopmans of Des Moines, is asking the court to prevent the city from enforcing the ordinance and declare that it violates Iowa Code.

The city hasnt filed a response to the petition in court.

Mayor Quentin Hart declined to address the lawsuit Monday, saying the city typically does not comment on pending litigation. The City Council had yet to hold an executive session at this point to discuss the situation.

The petition for injunction names as defendants the city of Waterloo, as well as the citys Human Rights Commission and City Attorney Martin Petersen, who would be responsible for enforcing the ordinance.

About 1,500 companies are members of Iowa ABI, which has the goal of sustaining a business climate that fosters new jobs and economic growth in the state.

The Couriers Most Read Local Business Stories of 2019.

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January 5, 2020 Pacquaio raises need to expedite law creating Dep't of Overseas Employment The untimely and tragic death of three Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in Kuwait and Singapore should prompt Congress to prioritize the approval of proposals creating a separate department for overseas employment, Senator Emmanuel "Manny" Pacquaio today said. Pacquaio, who is the primary author of Republic Act 11227 or "The Handbook for Overseas Filipino Workers of 2018," lamented that many OFWs make a lot of sacrifices while working abroad and many of them are constantly at risk because of the nature of their job. It is for this reason that he also authored and filed Senate Bill 997 which seeks to create the Department of Overseas Employment so that the government can give more focus in serving our OFWs. " IT's already too hard that they are working away from their families and loved ones and still, some of our kababayans end up sacrificing their lives. Some are so unlucky that they get abusive employers. I think that it is really time that we should have a separate department whose sole focus is to look after the welfare of our OFWS," Pacquiao said. Pacquiao said that for their sacrifice, he has committed to give P100,000 each to the families of the three OFWs and would also provide scholarship assistance to their orphaned children. Pacquiao said that although the death of two OFWs in Singapore was due to an accident, it should serve as a reminder of the dangers faced by Filipinos working abroad. According to reports, the victims Abigail Danao Leste and Arlyn Nucos were just hanging out with some Filipinos outside the Lucky Plaza mall in Singapore when they were hit by a wayward car. At least four other Filipinos who were at the scene were also injured in the accident. Before the turn of the year, another Filipina domestic worker identified as Jeanelyn Villavende was alleged killed by the wife of her employer in Kuwait prompting the government to impose another temporary employment ban for OFWs in that country. According to Pacquiao, although the circumstances surrounding the tragic demise of the Filipina OFWs in Singapore and in Kuwait were completely different, both incidents would entail a long and winding administrative and legal processes that requires full government attention. "These incidents will happen as long as we continue deploying OFWs and most often, the families of the victims will just accept what happened as fate. Namatayan na nga sila pro-problemahin pa nila kung paano nila makukuha yung bangkay ng kanilang mga mahal sa buhay tapos iisipin pa nila kung paano nila mahahabol yung mga lumapastangan sa kanilang mga kaanak kaya madalas napapabayaan na lang ang kanilang mga kaso," Pacquiao noted. "We should change this situation by making sure that our OFWs get best government service that they truly deserve. After all, they have been the lifeblood of our economy,"Pacquiao added. Pacquiao said the immediate passage pending proposals to create a separate department for overseas employees would allow the government to give more focus in dealing with the various challenges faced by Filipino OFWs. " A full government department for our OFWs would mean more manpower to provide assistance for our distressed OFWs and more resource to go around in supporting our kababayan even after they have already decided to come home for good. We need to give our OFWs the full attention that they truly deserve. Dapat special sila," Pacquiao said.
Download photo Participants will create at stations dedicated to drawing, painting, mixed media or group artwork. Photo: Shutterstock

(THOUSAND OAKS, Calif.  Jan. 6, 2020) California Lutheran University is offering free art workshops, counseling and presentations designed to help those who have moved past the immediate crisis of wildfires to a stage where they can process the experience and begin healing.

With full funding from an American Red Cross grant, Cal Lutherans Community Counseling Services is partnering with the nonprofit Art Trek to present Wildfire Recovery Community Healing Workshops from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 10, and Friday, Feb. 28, in Thousand Oaks.

The workshops will offer children and adults the opportunity to explore their journeys since the wildfires through art. Participants will create at stations dedicated to drawing, painting, mixed media or group artwork, and then discuss the experience of connecting art to their wildfire stories and journeys of healing.

Once people have been able to reestablish a daily routine and no longer feel in crisis, the ability to process disaster-related experience and any trauma becomes possible, said Adam Neal, the associate therapist with Community Counseling Services who will lead the workshops. Art promotes deeper awareness of strengths and resiliency and an enhanced ability to express the complexity of our experience, helping us more closely connect with loved ones and others in the community.

Cal Lutheran is also continuing to provide free wildfire-related counseling and presentations through grants from the Red Cross and California Community Foundation. Community Counseling Services in May began offering presentations on mindfulness, trauma and mental health first aid to schools, social service agencies and other organizations preparing for and recovering from wildfires and will continue through December 2021.

Community Counseling Services offers affordable therapy in English and Spanish. Cal Lutheran graduate students provide counseling under close supervision by licensed psychologists, social workers and marriage and family therapists.

Register for the Jan. 10 workshop at http://clucommunityhealingworkshop.eventbrite.com/. Register for the Feb. 28 workshop at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/healing-through-the-arts-supporting-wildfire-recovery-tickets-88409891365.

For more information on the workshops or presentations, contact Neal at adamneal@callutheran.edu or 805-493-3055, ext. 1038. To schedule a phone consultation to begin the therapy process, contact the Westlake Village Center at 805-493-3390 or the Oxnard Center at 805-493-3059.
Ten central on Monday said around 25 crore people will participate in a nationwide strike on January 8 to protest against the government's "anti-people" policies.

INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF, UTUC along with various sectoral independent federations and associations had adopted a declaration in September last to go on a nationwide strike on January 8, 2020.

"We expect participation of not less than 25 crore of working people in the forthcoming General Strike on January 8, 2020, to be followed by many more actions seeking reversal of the anti-worker, anti-people, anti- policies of the Government.

"The Ministry of Labour has failed to assure on any of the demands of workers which called a meeting on January 2, 2020. The attitude of the government is that of contempt towards labour as we construe from its policies and actions," the 10 central (CTUs) said in a joint statement.

About 60 organisations of students and elected office bearers of some universities have also decided to join the strike with an agenda to raise voice against increased fee structure and commercialization of education, it said.

The trade unions condemned the JNU violence and similar incidents in other university campuses and expressed their solidarity with students and teachers all over India.

The unions also expressed displeasure over no Indian Labour Conference being held since July 2015, codification of labour laws and privatisation of PSUs.

"As many as 12 airports are already sold out to private hands, 100 per cent sale of Air India is already decided, decision to sell BPCL taken, BSNL-MTNL merger announced and 93,600 telecom workers already thrown out of jobs under the garb of VRS (voluntary retirement scheme)," it added.

The unions are also against privatisation in railways, corporatisation of 49 defence production units and forced merger of banks.

Joint platform of more than 175 farmers and agricultural workers unions will extend its support to workers' demands and observe January 8 as Gramin Bharart Bandh along with their charter of demands, they added.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 19:13:05|Editor: huaxia

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang meets with Kiribati's President Taneti Mamau at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 6, 2020. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with Kiribati's President Taneti Mamau here Monday and both sides expressed the willingness to enhance bilateral cooperation.

Li said the resumption of diplomatic relations between China and Kiribati laid the political foundation for bilateral ties and created opportunities for all-round cooperation. "China attaches great importance to the development of China-Kiribati relations."

China has always held that all countries, both big or small, are equal, said Li.

He said China supports Kiribati in choosing a development path that suits its national conditions and its efforts to develop its economy and improve people's livelihood, adding that China stands ready to provide assistance to Kiribati within its capacity.

China is willing to maintain close high-level contact with Kiribati, boost political mutual trust, expand mutually-beneficial cooperation and jointly push forward the positive and steady development of bilateral ties, Li said.

Kiribati boasts bountiful fishery resources while Chinese consumers have fast-growing demands for seafood. "There is great potential for bilateral cooperation," said Li. "China is willing to enhance cooperation in pelagic fishing with Kiribati to realize win-win cooperation."

China supports Chinese enterprises in conducting cooperation with Kiribati based on market and commercial principles, Li said.

He said China attaches great importance to the special concerns of Pacific island countries including Kiribati on climate change and is ready to cooperate with Kiribati to address climate change under the framework of South-South cooperation and in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.

Mamau spoke highly of the fruitful results of bilateral cooperation achieved since the resumption of diplomatic ties last year. He hailed China's constructive role in international affairs and its contribution to coping with climate change.

Expressing Kiribati's appreciation for China's assistance, Mamau said his country welcomes Chinese enterprises to invest in Kiribati and is willing to enhance cooperation with China in areas such as economy and trade, fishery, agriculture, education, healthcare and people-to-people exchanges.

Mamau is paying a state visit to China from Jan. 4 to 11.
He lied. He got us into the war with lies. Photo: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images

The U.S. Congress has not declared war on Iran. And yet, last week the U.S. government deliberately killed a top Iranian military official; which is to say, it committed an unambiguous act of war against a sovereign nation-state without congressional authorization.

That is not normal. True, America has long comported itself less as the worlds policeman than as its gun-running vigilante. But even by our nations own (lawless) standards, taking out a high-ranking military officer of an internationally recognized foreign government is beyond the pale: Last weeks strike on Iranian general Qasem Soleimani marked the first time since the Second World War that the U.S. had killed a major military leader in a foreign country, according to the New York Times.

The Trump administration felt compelled to justify its extraordinary measure by invoking extraordinary circumstances. Officially, the president did not order the assassination of a foreign official to exact retribution for past attacks on U.S. soldiers, or deter Iranian aggression in the region in some generalized sense. Rather, according to the White House, the United States dropped several missiles on the Iranian commander because doing so was the only possible means of averting an imminent attack on Americans abroad.

This imminent attack would have transpired in a matter of days and/or weeks, and killed dozens if not hundreds of Americans, along with some unspecified number of Europeans. The intelligence informing these assessments is clear and unambiguous (but the supposedly sovereign public of our great democracy is not allowed to see it).

There is, of course, precedence for Republican administrations launching Middle Eastern wars on the basis of lies. But historically, such administrations have felt compelled to keep up the pretense of democratic accountability. George W. Bush & Co. put in the effort to fabricate a logically coherent casus belli for Iraq and manufacture intelligence backing up their mendacious claims. The Trump White House, by contrast, has not even done voters the courtesy of pretending to believe that they are entitled to a facially plausible narrative  or evidence of any kind  before their government launches wars in their name.

Senate Democrats have asked the administration to declassify the rationale for the Soleimani killing that it had provided to Congress. It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Bob Menendez wrote in a letter. An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society, and there appears to be no legitimate justification for classifying this notification.

There does, however, appear to be an illegitimate one. Contrary to the claims made by Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark A. Milley, the classified intelligence supporting the administrations case is neither clear nor unambiguous, according to just about every official and lawmaker whos been made privy to it. From the Washington Post:

Lawmakers left classified briefings with U.S. intelligence officials on Friday saying they heard nothing to suggest that the threat posed by the proxy forces guided by Soleimani had changed substantially in recent months.

 Some defense officials said Pompeos claims of an imminent and direct threat were overstated, and they would prefer that he make the case based on the killing of the American contractor and previous Iranian provocations.

Sources who spoke with the New York Times told a similar story:

According to one United States official, the new intelligence indicated a normal Monday in the Middle East  Dec. 30  and General Suleimanis travels amounted to business as usual.

That official described the intelligence as thin and said that General Suleimanis attack was not imminent because of communications the United States had between Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and General Suleimani showing that the ayatollah had not yet approved any plans by the general for an attack. The ayatollah, according to the communications, had asked General Suleimani to come to Tehran for further discussions at least a week before his death.

CNN, meanwhile, offers this pointcounterpoint from Democratic and Republican sources who were briefed on the administrations intelligence:

[I]n an interview with CNN last week, Democratic Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico said more than once that he does not believe an attack on the United States was imminent as Trump and other top administration officials have said.

My staff was briefed by a number of people representing a variety of agencies in the United States government and they came away with no feeling that there was evidence of an imminent attack, Udall said.

A Republican congressional source familiar with the administrations decision to strike Soleimani acknowledged that in the past, the President has been reluctant to take military action. In this case, the killing of an American contractor, the wounding of others, and the subsequent embassy protests crossed his line. His advisers also pointed out to the President that if he didnt respond now, they (Iran) will continue to cross it.

Attentive readers will notice that the Republican congressional source does not affirm the administrations official rationale, but rather, directly contradicts it: The president did not kill Soleimani to preempt an imminent attack, but to avenge the killing of an American contractor and/or deter Iranian aggression in a generalized sense. This is consistent with separate reports that suggest the Pentagon presented Trump with the option of targeting Soleimani mainly to make other options for punishing an Iranian militias alleged attack on an Iraqi military base seem reasonable. In other words, the idea for the strike did not arise from intelligence demonstrating a credible, specific threat, but merely from Pentagon officials attempts to conjure a galaxy brain response to past Iranian provocations.

But all these reports are almost beside the point. You dont need to assess any underlying evidence to reject a claim that is nonsensical on its face. The administration has openly admitted that the attack in question was not imminent by any reasonable definition. Asked when Soleimanis attack was set to occur, Milley said Friday, days, weeks. Asked on Sunday which was it  days or weeks  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded indignantly, If youre an American in the region, days and weeks  this is not something thats relevant.

If you are an American who does not want your government to lie to you, however, this detail is quite relevant indeed. To state what should be obvious, an attack can either be weeks away from execution, or it can be imminent, but it cannot be both.

This is not a semantic quibble. If Soleimani was not literally about to carry out a fatal attack on Americans  if he was merely in the process of orchestrating an attack set to take place sometime next month  then how, precisely, would killing him even avert the attack in question? Why would taking out a single general render a nation-state incapable of moving forward with an attack that was already so well-prepared as to be practically imminent?

The only halfway coherent answer is that Trumps brazen escalation is sure to shock and awe Tehran into timidity; with Soleimani dead, Iran will lack the nerve to follow through on his plot. This is the logic that the administrations apologists have largely embraced. But there are two glaring problems with the argument, the biggest being that the administration itself manifestly does not buy it. If the White House actually believed that assassinating Soleimani made future attacks on U.S. installations in the Middle East less likely, then it would not have just suspended operations against ISIS in order to reassign U.S. troops to guard duty at American bases in Iraq.

The second problem with the White Houses argument is that there were quite clearly alternative means for de-escalating tensions with Iran. For example, the U.S. could have stopped strangling the Iranian economy in direct violation of an international agreement our nation committed to just four years ago. Despite Irans compliance with the 2015 nuclear agreement  and the desire of our core European allies to uphold it  the U.S. has imposed draconian sanctions on both Iran and any European firm that dares to invest in it. As a result, Irans economy is now mired in a devastating recession. Its currency has halved in value. For ordinary Iranians, the cost of living has skyrocketed; for many seriously ill Iranians, the cost of lifesaving medications has proven prohibitive. If the Iranian regime is a rational actor that responds to incentives, as the case for deterring its aggression through targeted assassination tacitly presumes, then it is unclear why the regime could not be similarly influenced by an offer of economic peace.

This is what economic war looks like. Photo: Courtesy of BBC

That said, you dont need to believe in the wisdom of the Iran nuclear agreement to object to the administrations rationale for killing Soleimani. You just need to believe that your government should not feel entitled to tell you blatant lies in any context, let alone in the context of war and peace.

As of 11 years ago, this was a premise that even Donald Trump could endorse. In a 2008 interview with CNN, Trump said that he had wanted Congress to impeach Bush and get him out of office. Asked why he believed George W. Bush deserved to be impeached, the mogul replied, He lied. He got us into the war with lies.

On this one subject, lets hope the Senate takes Trumps counsel.
Scientists have developed a new method for detecting oxygen in exoplanet atmospheres that may accelerate the search for life.

One possible indication of life, or biosignature, is the presence of oxygen in an exoplanet's atmosphere. Oxygen is generated by life on Earth when organisms such as plants, algae, and cyanobacteria use photosynthesis to convert sunlight into chemical energy.

UC Riverside helped develop the new technique, which will use NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to detect a strong signal that oxygen molecules produce when they collide. This signal could help scientists distinguish between living and nonliving planets.

Since exoplanets, which orbit stars other than our sun, are so far away, scientists cannot look for signs of life by visiting these distant worlds. Instead, they must use a cutting-edge telescope like Webb to see what's inside the atmospheres of exoplanets.

"Before our work, oxygen at similar levels as on Earth was thought to be undetectable with Webb," said Thomas Fauchez of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and lead author of the study. "This oxygen signal is known since the early 1980s from Earth's atmospheric studies but has never been studied for exoplanet research."

UC Riverside astrobiologist Edward Schwieterman originally proposed a similar way of detecting high concentrations of oxygen from nonliving processes and was a member of the team that developed this technique. Their work was published today in the journal Nature Astronomy.

"Oxygen is one of the most exciting molecules to detect because of its link with life, but we don't know if life is the only cause of oxygen in an atmosphere," Schwieterman said. "This technique will allow us to find oxygen in planets both living and dead."

When oxygen molecules collide with each other, they block parts of the infrared light spectrum from being seen by a telescope. By examining patterns in that light, they can determine the composition of the planet's atmosphere.

Schwieterman helped the NASA team calculate how much light would be blocked by these oxygen collisions.

Intriguingly, some researchers propose oxygen can also make an exoplanet appear to host life when it does not, because it can accumulate in a planet's atmosphere without any life activity at all.

If an exoplanet is too close to its host star or receives too much star light, the atmosphere becomes very warm and saturated with water vapor from evaporating oceans. This water could then be broken down by strong ultraviolet radiation into atomic hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen, which is a light atom, escapes to space very easily, leaving the oxygen behind.

Over time, this process may cause entire oceans to be lost while building up a thick oxygen atmosphere -- more even, than could be made by life. So, abundant oxygen in an exoplanet's atmosphere may not necessarily mean abundant life but may instead indicate a history of water loss.

Schwieterman cautions that astronomers are not yet sure how widespread this process may be on exoplanets.

"It is important to know whether and how much dead planets generate atmospheric oxygen, so that we can better recognize when a planet is alive or not," he said.

Schwieterman is a visiting postdoctoral fellow at UCR who will soon start as assistant professor of astrobiology in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

The research received funding from Goddard's Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration, which is funded in part by the NASA Planetary Science Division's Internal Scientist Funding Model. This project has also received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant, the NASA Astrobiology Institute Alternative Earths team, and the NExSS Virtual Planetary Laboratory.

Webb will be the world's premier space science observatory when it launches in 2021. It will allow scientists to solve mysteries in our solar system, look to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.

###

Bill Steigerwald and Nancy Jones of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center made significant contributions to this article.
BAGHDAD - Iraq's parliament voted on Sunday to expel U.S. troops from the country, in an extraordinarily rapid and decisive response to the Trump administration's targeted killing of a top Iranian general at the Baghdad airport on Friday.

The preliminary vote could result in the removal of more than 5,000 U.S. soldiers and unspecified number of contractors stationed in the country. After invading Iraq in 2003 and ousting Saddam Hussein, the United States maintained a troop presence in the country as it was besieged, first by civil war and then by the murderous insurgency of Islamic State. All the while, Iran's influence in Iraq _ both countries are largely Shiite Muslim nations in a region dominated by Sunni Muslim _ continued to grow.

The vote in parliament, which came after a session on Sunday called by Iraq's caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, represents a major widening of the tensions that have followed the killing of Gen. Qassem Suleimani on Friday.

The American military was on alert over the weekend as Iranian fighters marched through the streets of Baghdad and calls to eject the United States emanated from around the country.

On Sunday, the U.S. military announced that the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq was temporarily halting operations in support of Iraqi forces battling militants of Islamic State. It said that for now, the "first priority" would be protecting American forces, rather than training Iraqi ones.

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The statement announcing the "paused" activities did not specifically cite the heightened threat in the wake of Suleimani's killing, but pointed to repeated rocket attacks over the past two months by the Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah. The statement said the American-led coalition expected at some point to return "full attention and efforts back to our shared goal of ensuring the lasting defeat" of Islamic State.

The extremist group, which once held sway over large swaths of Syria and Iraq, was driven out of the last of its territory, and its leader, Abu Bakr Baghdadi, killed himself during a U.S. raid in October. But Islamic State remnants still pose a threat.

In Parliament, Abdul Mahdi presented lawmakers with the option of ending foreign troops' presence as quickly as possible using "urgent procedures" or choosing a more gradual drawdown.

He urged them to opt for the accelerated timetable.

"Even with the possibility of complications we might face, in the end it is the better option, in terms of practicality, benefit and sovereignty," said Abdul Mahdi.

"It's in the interest of Iraq and the United States, in light of these circumstances, to end the presence after the recent developments and seeking to preserve friendly relations between the two sides."

In his speech, Abdul Mahdi outlined the legality behind U.S. troops in the country, adding that their presence came at Iraq's request in 2011 and 2014, when Iraq faced the existential threat of Islamic State.

Though those troops had been vital to Iraq's counter-Islamic State plans, Friday's attack, which in addition to Suleimani, also killed Abu Mahdi Muhandis, a top militia leader. The session had a torturous start, with legislators struggling to achieve quorum.

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The vote was finally taken with 173 of the 329 Iraqi lawmakers, almost all of them from the Shiite sect.

"The parliament has voted to commit the Iraqi government to cancel its request to the international coalition for help to fight [Islamic State]," parliament speaker Mohammed Halbusi later declared.

Interviewed on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo cut off host Margaret Brennan when she mentioned the just-passed approval of expelling the U.S. military from Iraq. He suggested that Iraq's leadership would ultimately decide to keep U.S. troops in the country.

"It is the United States that is prepared to help the Iraqi people get what they deserve, and continue our mission to take down terrorism from [Islamic State] and others in the region," he said. "That is in defense of the Iraqi people, and it is good for America too."

Parliament's vote in favor of canceling the U.S.'s mandate comes as Washington has dispatched thousands of additional troops to the region to counter what it says is an increasingly belligerent Iran, even as it insists it will continue its role to prevent a resurgence of the extremists.

Nevertheless, for some, including Muqtada Sadr, a cleric who in recent years has spoken out against both U.S. and Iranian influence in the country, Sunday's decision didn't go far enough.

In a statement he posted on Twitter, he described parliament's response to the U.S. attacks as "feeble." He called for the immediate closure of the "American embassy of evil" and U.S. bases in the country as well as a boycott on American products. He also demanded that contact with the U.S. be criminalized, and that the various paramilitary factions, both inside and outside Iraq, convene a meeting so as to form a transnational paramilitary force.

"And if parliament doesn't do this," he vowed, "we will have a greater action."

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Staff writer Laura King in Washington contributed to this report.

___

(c)2020 Los Angeles Times

Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
The United Stated deployed additional troops to augment the defences of its base in Kenya recently attacked by a local terrorist group, US Africa Command said in a statement on Monday, Trend reports citing Sputnik.

US Africa Commands East Africa Response Force (EARF) arrived at Manda Bay, Kenya, Jan. 5, to augment security to secure the airfield after an attack by al-Shabaab terrorists, the statement said.

On Sunday, the compound was attacked by Al-Shabaab terrorists, who killed one US soldier and two Pentagon contractors.
DALLAS, Jan. 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Borden, one of America's favorite dairy companies founded in 1857, today announced that it and certain affiliates (collectively, " Borden " or the " Company ") have initiated voluntary reorganization proceedings in the District of Delaware under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. The Company intends to use the court process to pursue a financial restructuring designed to reduce its current debt load, maximize value and position the Company for long-term success. Borden plans to continue operating in the ordinary course of business, under the court's supervision, and remains focused on being the most service-oriented dairy Company that offers delicious and nutritious products consumers love.

"Borden is EBITDA-positive and growing, but we must achieve a more viable capital structure," said Borden CEO Tony Sarsam. "This reorganization will strengthen our position for future prosperity. Over the past 163 years, we have earned the distinction of being one of the most well-recognized and reputable national brands. We remain committed to 'The Borden Difference,' which is our promise to be the most service-oriented dairy Company that puts people first. We will continue serving our customers, employees and other stakeholders and operating business as usual throughout this process."

Last year marked several major milestones for the Company, including the revival of Borden's beloved spokescow Elsie, the brand's reintroduction in Ohio, and the launch of several innovative products that earned local and national media acclaim, such as State Fair-inspired milk flavors, Gingerbread Eggnog and Kid Builder. The Company's growth last year outpaced the industry as it increased year-over-year sales.

"Despite our numerous achievements during the past 18 months, the Company continues to be impacted by the rising cost of raw milk and market challenges facing the dairy industry," Sarsam explained. "These challenges have contributed to making our current level of debt unsustainable. For the last few months, we have engaged in discussions with our lenders to evaluate a range of potential strategic plans for the Company. Ultimately, we determined that the best way to protect the Company, for the benefit of all stakeholders, is to reorganize through this court-supervised process."

Stressing that it is "business as usual" at Borden, Sarsam noted that the Company had proactively filed expected motions as part of the court-supervised process, which allow it to pursue day-to-day operations. The Company will be seeking court approval for these requests during the coming days and intends to work closely with creditors, customers and employees to identify value-maximizing restructuring plans that will benefit all stakeholders.

"Borden Dairy is a heritage American brand that has been in business since 1857," Sarsam said. "We have a very tenured workforce of 3,300 people who live and breathe our values of teamwork and creative problem solving, and I am extremely confident and optimistic about our continued success in the future."

For additional information about the reorganization, visit www.bordenfinancialreorg.com.

About Borden

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We need strategic clarity. What poses the greater danger to Britain  Iranian aggression abroad or Sunni extremism here?

Three days on from the news of Qasem Soleimanis assassination, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel have issued a joint statement. It may be worth comparing to Dominic Raabs words yesterday.

The Foreign Secretary sought to balance support for de-escalation with non-condemnation of Americas action. He said that it has the right to defend itself.

The statement doesnt mention the United States at all  let alone Donald Trump. One wouldnt know from it that either exist.

It condemns the recent attacks on coalition forces in Iraq and is gravely concerned by the negative role Iraq has played in the region. It name-checks Soleimani.

The three leaders then go on to reaffirm our commitment to continue the fight against Daesh, which remains a high priority. The preservation of the Coalition is key in this regard.

This is the heart of the statement. Their concern is that Iraq insists that American troops leave that country, and that ISIS colonises the space that then opens up.

They are also seeking to keep the nuclear deal with Iran alive. The latters own words and deeds dont quite tally in this regard. On the one hand, it says the deal is dead. On the other, it says it will continue its co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The reasons for the delay in issuing the statement, and its silence on Americas right to defend itself, will be connected to the differences between the three countries.

Heiko Mass, Germanys foreign Minister, has suggested that it may seek direct talks with Iran. This reflects the countrys traditional approach to the country. Mutual trade has been hit hard by Americas intensified sanctions.

Macron has spoken by phone to Barham Salih, Iraqs President. The two presidents agreed to remain in close contact to avoid any further escalation in tensions and in order to act to ensure stability in Iraq and the broader region, the formers office said.

A question that follows is that we asked yesterday: whats Trumps plan now? Are Soleimanis killing and the intensified sanctions part of a plan to collapse the regime?

Or does the President instead believe that the Iranian regime must simply be put back in its box from time, when its aggression against America runs riot (as it has recently), by superior U.S firepower? Especially in an election year.

Or is he somehow hoping that bombs and sanctions will bring Iran to the negotiating table? After all, he is on record as having good feelings about a successor deal to Obamas?

What evidence we have suggests that the second explanation is closest to the truth. One report today claims that the trashing of Americas Bagdhad Embassy sparked his reponse.

Where does the British national interest lie? On the one hand, Johnson wont want to alienate Britains closest ally  with which he now hopes to negotiate a post-Brexit trade deal.

This is why he has gone further than Macron and Merkel and said, in line with Raab yesterday, that he does not lament Soleimanis death.

On the other, we have a direct security interest in preventing any revival of ISIS. Islamist terror in the UK to date has been executed by Sunni and not Shiite extremists.

The long line of incidents include: the London Bridge killings during the general election last month; the attack in the same vicinity during the 2017 contest; the Manchester arena bombing; the murder of Lee Rigby; 7/7.

Johnson is also clinging to the nuclear deal. In his memoirs, David Cameron represents it as the least bad choice.

Yes, he writes, it left Iran able to destroy its missiles and to make trouble in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. But the most important thing is that we stopped a war, and did so safely. Of course, the problem that is Iran was not solved, but it was made less dangerous.

Tomorrow in the Commons, Raab will be be pressed by Labour leadership candidates, Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists playing to the anti-Trump gallery.

They will be easy to see off  particularly given the Governments stonking majority. Ministers position will become more exposed if rational calculation fails and all-out war breaks out by accident  because America and Iran become caught up in a cycle of action and counter-action.

This site asks for strategic clarity. Which is the bigger problem for Britain? Iranian aggression in the Middle East? Or Sunni extremism here in the UK?

To date, it has clearly been the latter. The efficacy of the nuclear deal is debatable  and it may now be dead in any event.

But America, Britain and the West more broadly have expended much blood and treasure in putting ISIS on the ropes in Iraq. It mustnt be let off them.
H ezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has told his followers that the American people are off-limits for Soleimani revenge.

The Islamist party chief was broadcast saying US citizens "cannot be touched" as it "will only serve Trump's agenda".

His message came during an appearance on state TV on Sunday during which he said American bases, warships and soldiers were "all fair targets", increasing fears for Westerners in the region.

Nasrallah made clear that targets should not include American civilians.

And that those working in the country such as doctors, journalists and engineers should not be harmed.

US citizens "cannot be touched" / AP

"When we are talking about this of course we don't mean at all the American people," Nasrallah said, according to translators.

"And I hope there is here extreme clarity. We don't mean the American people. We don't mean American citizens.

"Traders, media people, journalists, companies, engineers and doctors - they cannot be touched."

He added: "In fact, I am saying that any harm coming to US citizens and civilians anywhere will only serve Trump's agenda."

Nasrallah has vowed to eradicate the Middle East of US military following the assassination of Qasem Soleimani and others in Iraq on Friday.

Soleimani was Iran's top general and commander of the country's Quds Force, a paramilitary division assembled to tackle IS.

Iran has said it will seek "harsh revenge" for the killing which has caused international tensions to become a knife-edge.

Donald Trump tweeted in response to the threats of retaliation with his own threats to "strike back" and "in a disproportionate manner" using trillions of dollars worth of military equipment

The Hezbollah leader was close with Soleimani / AFP via Getty Images

Tens of thousands of mourners have flooded the streets for general Soleimani's funeral while Iran announced it has ended its commitment to the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal on Sunday.

In neighbouring Iraq, lawmakers voted to expel the US military from the country amid chants of "death to America".

British and US citizens have been warned about the escalating tensions across the wider Middle East and Gulf area with tourists warned over visiting Turkey and Dubai.
A state judicial panel says extensive testimony showed California Appeals Court Justice Jeffrey Johnson sexually harassed numerous women at the courthouse, including a colleague whom he repeatedly groped and propositioned over a nine-year period.

The findings, if upheld by the Commission on Judicial Performance, could lead to Johnsons removal from the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles. The commission, established in 1960, has removed trial-level judges from office for misconduct but has never unseated an appellate justice.

One jurist, Conrad Rushing, presiding justice of the Sixth District Court of Appeal in San Jose, retired in 2017 while facing accusations of discriminating against female employees and making inappropriate comments about them, allegations the commission had not yet reviewed.

Justice Johnsons pattern of conduct toward these women reflects ethical lapses that undermine the publics trust in the judicial process, the fact-finding panel, composed of an appellate justice and two Superior Court judges, said Friday. They said Johnson had committed 12 acts of prejudicial misconduct against 11 women from 2009 to 2018 and had also been drunk in public while presiding over a wedding and a reception for young attorneys.

The 316-page report followed 17 days of hearings with more than 100 witnesses, including Johnson. The commission will hear his case on March 18 in San Francisco.

Johnson denied harassing, groping or propositioning any court colleagues or employees and noted that his chief accuser, Justice Victoria Chaney, had recommended him to then-Gov. Jerry Brown for a state Supreme Court seat in 2014. His lawyer, Paul S. Meyer, said he disagrees with some of the panels conclusions but said the judges had also found credibility problems of a number of the accusing witnesses that deserve further analysis.

Johnson, 59, was appointed to the court by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2009 after 10 years as a federal prosecutor and 10 years as a federal magistrate. He remains on the court, serving in the same division as Chaney.

Chaney, also a 2009 Schwarzenegger appointee, testified that Johnson first told her that he wanted to have an affair with her in 2010. She turned him down. Then a few months later, after she had gone through a difficult hearing, Johnson approached her and told her he wanted to kiss and squeeze her breasts to make her feel better. He then hugged her and touched one of her breasts, she said, an account that Johnson denied but the judicial panel found credible.

Johnson gave her similar full-body hugs over the years and sometimes patted her on the buttocks while they were walking to the courtroom, Chaney said. She said she did not invite the contact but never told Johnson to stop because she was and am afraid of him. The judicial panel said a federal prosecutor backed Chaneys testimony by describing similar hugs Johnson gave her in 1999.

Around December 2017, Chaney said, she and Johnson were discussing sexual harassment complaints against other judges, and he said, You would never report me, would you? or words to that effect.

Johnson denied threatening Chaney and testified that if he said anything like that, he was only joking. But the judicial panel accepted Chaneys account and said there was little doubt that Johnson, aware of harassment complaints against judges and the #MeToo movement, would have serious concerns about whether his actions would come to the attention of disciplinary bodies.

Chaney was asked about her 2014 letter to Brown that endorsed Johnson for a promotion to the state Supreme Court. The letter described Johnson as intelligent and hardworking, noted his outreach projects to local schools, and called him a family man who has four remarkable children. Chaney testified she had mixed feelings about Johnson, who was in many ways ... a great colleague, and that she was not sure how much he understood about his harassing behavior.

The panel said it found Chaneys letter perplexing but concluded her overall testimony against Johnson was reliable and supported by other witnesses, who said she had told them of her complaints years before making them public in 2018.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

The panel also found that Johnson:

 Made sexually suggestive remarks to a judicial assistant in 2013 and continued to make inappropriate statements to her for the next five years.

 Brought a young female attorney to his chambers late one evening in 2013, tried to start a relationship and sent her sexually suggestive text messages over the next few months.

 Got drunk at a law firm dinner in 2009 or 2010 and then slid his hand up the leg of a young female attorney and told her he could help her with her career.

 Told another appeals court justice, Elizabeth Grimes, as she was walking outside the courthouse in 2010 or 2011 wearing shorts from an exercise session, that she had the cutest little ass in the Second District.

Regarding the allegations of public drunkenness, Johnson denied them and said he was an insulin-dependent diabetic who sometimes appeared wobbly because of the effects of medication. But the panel said evidence at the hearings showed he had been intoxicated at events associated with the court and thereby demeaned the judicial office.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@BobEgelko
Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro share a moment at the end of a Democratic primary debate hosted by NBC News at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, June 26, 2019, in Miami.

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president on Monday, days after dropping out of the Democratic primary race.

"There's one candidate I see who's unafraid to fight like hell to make sure America's promise will be there for everyone. Who will make sure that no matter where you live in America or where your family came from in the world, you will have a path for opportunity to," Castro said in a video posted to Twitter.

"That's why I'm proud to endorse Elizabeth Warren for president," he said.

Warren tweet

Castro left the race on Tuesday after lagging in the polls and failing to keep up with rivals' fundraising efforts. He consistently polled below 2% in national surveys.

The progressive former Obama Cabinet secretary did roll out a slate of ambitious policy proposals, some that inspired other candidates to address topics that were otherwise unlikely to come up.

His call for the repeal of a provision of immigration law that makes it a misdemeanor to cross the U.S. border illegally, known as Section 1325, brought other contenders to his side.

"Nobody is working harder than you are, not only in meeting with people, but in listening to people. And also, bringing the goods, and saying, 'OK, this is what I'm going to do about it,'" Castro says to Warren in the video, which shows the two Democrats at a kitchen table.

"The thing I hear the most from the people in the selfie lines is hope," Warren responds.

The Massachusetts senator wrote in a tweet Monday that Castro had been "a powerful voice for bold, progressive change and I'm honored to have your support."

"Together, we'll fight to make sure every single family in America has a path to opportunity," she wrote.

Castro was the only Latino in the Democratic primary race.

Voting in the primary contests begins in less than a month, with the Iowa caucuses kicking off on Feb. 3. Warren has declined in national polls to third place, behind former Vice President Joe Biden and fellow Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., after reaching a peak in early October.

Few of the other candidates who have exited the race, including Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, have endorsed someone yet. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, who left the race in October, endorsed Biden the following month.
In 2013, doctors expected Wu Yi to live only a few more years. He was only 26 years old at the time. Cancer was destroying his body.

After six months of unending pain, Wu says, a doctor at the Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center in Guangzhou, China, tried to make him feel better. The doctor gave Wu a note permitting him to take a drug called OxyContin. OxyContin is a painkiller created to help people like Wu  cancer patients in the final months of life.

But those who take OxyContin risk becoming addicted to it. In the United States, about 400,000 people have died from taking too much of the drug. They died after taking increasing amounts of it to be able to feel its effects.

Wu said no one in China warned him about addiction risks. He said his doctor told him to take as much OxyContin as he wanted.

So he did. And it worked; the drug brought him relief from his pain.

Six years later, Wu was still alive. The cancer was no longer in his body, and the pain was under control. But he was still taking OxyContin. When he tried to stop using it, he found that he could not do it.

This drug is addictive, Wu said. One hundred percent addictive.

Painkiller abuse in China

Wu fell into drug abuse the same way many Americans do  through a doctors prescription. But while the U.S. is battling its prescription drug crisis, China appears to be ignoring the rise in the use of painkillers there.

The country offers few treatment choices for addicts. And it does not count prescription drug addiction in its official count of drug abuse.

Hao Wei is president of the Chinese Association of Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment. He said he believes abuse of prescription drugs is limited in China. But he adds that official data largely overlooks it.

Chinese officials say the situation in the United States is different than the situation in China. In the U.S., they say, the painkiller addiction epidemic comes from the large number of people who are asking for the drugs. They also say use of the drugs is not well controlled.

In China, strict laws and policies govern where and how painkillers can be given. But more painkillers may be available in China than officials admit. Addicts can turn to online black markets for OxyContin and other prescription drugs.

Reporters with The Associated Press found people were buying and selling the drugs on at least 13 e-commerce and social media services.



Withdrawal

Wu Yi says his parents locked away his painkillers. After that, he was one of the people looking for the drugs on the internet. He joined an online group of abusers and dealers. They connected with grieving family members who were trying to give away leftover pain medicine after a loved one had died.

By then, Wu was trying hard to limit the number of pills he used every day. In April 2019, he ran out of money and was forced to stop taking OxyContin completely.

Quitting the drug was extremely difficult, however. He was not able to sleep for four days. Finally, a doctor gave him sleeping pills  and a warning. Do not take more than three at a time. Wu took 15.

For weeks, Wu visited a number of doctors to get more sleeping pills. He took so many that the pills stunned him. He did not sleep. Instead, he would fall down unconscious.

Its good I didnt die, he said.

Doctors finally sent him to a hospital for the mentally ill. But Wu did not believe he had a mental problem. He told doctors he was going through withdrawal  the painful process when someone stops using an addictive drug.

AP reporters later called the mental hospital. The man who picked up the phone said the place does not have an addiction treatment program. And he said doctors had never dealt with prescription pill abuse.

In time, Wus withdrawal symptoms eased without medical help.

Suffering worse than pain

Another prescription drug abuser who spoke to AP reporters is still battling his addiction. Yin Hao buys his drugs illegally from online drug stores, and lies to doctors to get more.

Sometimes he worries the police are following him, Yin says. He does not want to go to prison. He wants to get help for his addiction.

If he could do it again, Yin says he would change the way he reacted to the medical crisis that started his addiction. He would take the pain instead of the drugs.

I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.

And I'm Anna Mateo.

Erika Kinetz reported this story for the Associated Press. Kelly Jean Kelly adapted it for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

addictive - adj. causing a strong and harmful need to regularly have or do something

prescription - n. a written message from a doctor that officially tells someone to use a medicine

epidemic - n. an occurrence in which a disease spreads very quickly and affects a large number of people

grieving - adj. to feel or show grief or sadness

stunned - adj. very confused, very dizzy, or unconscious

unconscious - adj. not awake especially because of an injury, drug, etc.
A homeowner was shocked to find a three-tonne hippo lounging in his swimming pool in Maun, Botswana, on New Year's Eve. Brent Reed, a safari company director, posted photos of the hippo lounging in his pool. While speaking to an international media outlet, Reed said that the animal was a large male and because the Thamalakane River has dried up, the pool was probably the most inviting place for the hippo to stay.

Reed also told the media outlet that the Hippo left more than 100kg of droppings. He further added that there is always a danger with hippos - especially given the strength of their snappy jaws which are fully capable of crushing even crocodiles (not that crocodiles are prey for hippos) - however, he said that the giant male hippo didn't show any signs of aggression. Reed also shared a picture of his 11-year-old son gazing at the huge animal which was completely unfazed by their presence.

Hippos are increasingly threatened by environmental degradation and the loss of watering holes, as they require to remain in water for some period of time each day to remain cool.

READ: Berlins Tierpark Zoo Is Feeding Chistmas Trees To Animals, Watch Video

READ: 30 Animals Including Chimpanzees, Orangutans Die In German Zoo Fire

Sea Lion enter hotel swimming pool

In another similar incident, a sea lion that was identified as a Galapagos sea lion, was seen taking a dip in a hotel swimming pool in Ecuador. Sea lions are known to be capable of diving to the depths of 600 yards and can stay underwater for as long as 10 minutes. The animal seemed to have wandered off from its natural home the harbour in the Galapagos Islands and decided to surprise a safari expedition group while they were finishing their meal at a seaside hotel in Puerto Ayora in Ecuador.

The sea mammal, completely oblivious to the stunned guests, decided to take a dip at the hotel swimming pool. After struggling to climb over the fence, the sea lion waddled its way to the pool to take its much-deserved dip into the water. The clip that was posted on November 7, quickly went viral as netizens were as enamoured by the adorable sea creature as the crowds in the background of the video were, who can be heard laughing.

READ: Animals Who Were Jailed For Committing Bizarre Crimes In Last Decade

READ: Fire Kills Animals At Zoo In Western Germany
Earlier today, Samsung has officially announced the Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite as well as the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Lite, which will be showcased during CES 2020 thats happening on 7 until 10 January 2020. While there is no official information in terms of the pricing, we can expect both these devices to be cheaper than their non-Lite counterpart.

In terms of the tech specs, the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Lite comes equipped with the Exynos 9810 chipset, up to 8GB of RAM, 128GB of internal storage 6.7-inch AMOLED Infinity-O display as well as a 4500mAh internal battery. Camera-wise, the device comes with a 12MP + 12MP + 12MP triple rear camera setup as well as a 32MP front-facing selfie camera.

The tech specs of the Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite is largely the same as the Note 10 Lite, except it comes with an SD855 chipset, and a 5MP + 48MP + 12MP triple rear camera setup. With all that said, there is no official news on the Malaysia release date and local pricing of both the devices mentioned.

Would you be interested in owning either the Note 10 Lite or the S10 Lite? Let us know on our Facebook page and for more updates like this, stay tuned to TechNave.com.
Prince Charles reportedly has some big changes in store for the royal family once he takes the throne. The royals were hit with a few big scandals in 2019, and Charles allegedly believes the monarchy needs to be slimmed down to avoid future embarrassments. What are the chances that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are cut from the royal family once Prince Charles is the King of the United Kingdom?

Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Meghan Markle, and Prince Harry | Karwai Tang/WireImage

Inside Harry and Meghans struggles

Harry and Meghan are still vacationing in Canada and seem to be enjoying their break from the royal spotlight. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex spent Christmas in the region with their son, Archie Harrison, and her mother, Doria Ragland.

But before their holiday getaway, Harry and Meghan created quite the stir within the ranks of the royal family.

In a shocking documentary titled Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, they both candidly spoke about the struggles they have faced over the past year. While Harry all but confirmed his rumored feud with William, Meghan admitted that dealing with the negative press has not been easy.

The revelations sparked reports that Harry and Meghan were thinking about leaving the royal family for a quieter life out of the public eye. Their decision to spend Christmas away from the royals only fueled the rumors even more.

The Sussexes have not commented on the reports and are expected to fly back to the U.K. in the coming weeks.

Prince Charles plan to slim things down

Queen Elizabeth will be turning 94 this spring and there has been a lot of talk about her retiring when she reaches 95. Her Majestys husband, Prince Philip, retired at that age, so it is possible that she is thinking about doing the same.

Regardless of when Queen Elizabeth steps down, there will come a day when Prince Charles is at the head of the monarchy. When that happens, sources claim that Charles wants to reduce the number of royals who are assigned to active duty.

What appears more likely than a slimmed-down monarchy is a smaller inner core limited to the line of succession including, in time, William and Kates family, Richard Fitzwilliam, an expert on the royals, shared.

Prince Charles has not commented on these rumors, though slimming things down makes sense in light of the recent controversies.

Apart from Harry and Markle, Prince Andrew got himself in the hot seat after being linked to the disgraced financier, Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew has been accused of sleeping with one of Epsteins sex slaves, accusations he has vehemently denied.

Will Prince Harry and Meghan Markle be relieved of their duties?

If the rumors about Prince Charles are true, then there is a chance that Harry and Meghan will get ousted from the core group of royals.

Harry is currently the sixth person in the line of succession. He follows Charles, Prince William, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis. His position will change if William and Kate Middleton have any more children.

According to Express, Fitzwilliams believes that the only thing that might save Harry and Meghan from being ousted is their various charitable endeavors.

The couple recently launched their own organization, Sussex Royal, which will tackle a number of different issues around the world in 2020. They are also very committed to causes in South Africa, so if they continue to bring good press to the royals then Prince Charles might consider keeping them active.

But considering their recent comments, things are not looking good for Harry and Meghan at the moment.

Did Prince Charles force Prince Andrew to step down?

While we wait to hear more about Harry and Meghan, inside sources claim that it was Prince Charles who pushed for Andrews exit from the royal family.

Andrew stepped away from his royal duties after attempting to clear his name in a recent interview. Instead of proving his innocence, Andrews comments only made things worse and were widely considered to be a PR disaster.

Following the scandal, sources say that Charles talked with Queen Elizabeth about forcing Prince Andrew to retire.

If that is true, then it is possible that Charles plan to oust certain members of the royal family has already started. There are also reports that Andrews daughters, Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice, might be next.

Although Andrew is not scheduled for any royal engagements in 2020, he did join the royals for their annual Christmas celebration at Sandringham.

Prince Charles has not commented on any plans he has for when he takes the throne.
The Christian Association of Nigeria in Imo State, and other leaders have attacked Catholic Priest, Rev. Fr. Ejike Mbaka, over his pro...





The Christian Association of Nigeria in Imo State, and other leaders have attacked Catholic Priest, Rev. Fr. Ejike Mbaka, over his prophecy that Governor Emeka Ihedioha will lose his seat to Hope Uzodinma.





The Enugu cleric, who is known for controversial prophecies, in his New Year message, said Senator Hope Uzodimma would be sworn in as governor of Imo State.





He was quoted as saying, In spite of all that would happen this 2020, there is hope. In Imo State, there is hope. Hope, hope, hope  hope in Imo State!





Imo people have suffered (but) God is raising a new hope that would be an agent of salvation for them.





Hes coming with a new flag to restore the dignity of that noble land. A new leadership that will break barriers and there would be joy in the land of Imo.





Lift your candles as I bless Hope Uzodinma; and I empower him to, spiritually, to take over. How, I do not know.





Please, if you heard that there would be a new government in Imo and you dont like the message; if I say Hope, you can say hopeless but do not fight me.





But reacting, CAN leader, Senior Apostle Godson Ibeji, said that Mbakas prophecy was politically motivated.





He told Daily Trust, CAN has consistently opposed such politically motivated prophecies and at the same time strives to maintain the standards that guide and regulates the practice of Christianity.





Also the National Youth Council of Nights Imo State chapter, in a statement in Owerri by its state Chairman, Isdore Chukwuemeka, said,

We advise Fr. Mbaka to leave Governor Emeka Ihedioha alone. The youths of Imo State are pleased and satisfied with the Rebuild Imo administration.





Governor Ihedioha is barely seven months in office and has aggressively restored all that the locust had eaten in Imo state in the last eight years.




WASHINGTONFor three years, U.S. President Donald Trumps critics have expressed concern over how he would handle a genuine international crisis, warning that a commander in chief known for impulsive action might overreach with dangerous consequences.

In the angry and frenzied aftermath of the American drone strike that killed Irans top general, Trump confronted a decisive moment that will test whether those critics were right or whether they misjudged him.

The moment we all feared is likely upon us, Sen. Christopher Murphy, D-Conn. and vocal critic of Trump, wrote on Twitter over the weekend. An unstable President in way over his head, panicking, with all his experienced advisers having quit, and only the sycophantic amateurs remaining. Assassinating foreign leaders, announcing plans to bomb civilians. A nightmare.

Trumps advisers and allies dismissed the criticism as the inevitable partisan blowback from political adversaries too timid to take strong action against foreign enemies who have targeted Americans for years with impunity. And some of Trumps senior lieutenants were betting that any Iranian response proves less than meets the eye.

It may be that theres a little noise here in the interim, that the Iranians make the choice to respond, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday on NBCs Meet the Press as he made the rounds of all five major television news talk shows. I hope that they dont. President Trump has made clear what we will do in response if they do, that our response will be decisive and vigorous.

But the ripple effects from the drone strike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of Irans elite security and intelligence forces, were playing out in rapid succession on Sunday. Iran declared that it was abandoning some constraints on its nuclear program. And the U.S. military halted operations against the Islamic State to focus on protecting itself from Iranian retaliation.

The result is a situation as volatile as it has been at any point in many years that will challenge an instinctive, combative and relatively inexperienced commander in chief to navigate his way through a complicated, dangerous period without making the kind of mistake he has accused his predecessors of making. And he faces enormous skepticism from the critics who have long warned that he was too erratic to face moments of crisis.

The massive demonstrations and calls for retaliation in the region ultimately may not add up to more than a little noise, as Pompeo asserted. An Iraqi parliamentary vote to force U.S. troops to leave the country was nonbinding and the caretaker government may not follow through if only to preserve a hedge against Iranian dominance. Even as Tehran vowed to move ahead with its nuclear program, it kept its options open by not expelling international inspectors.

And some experts on the region suggested that Trumps very unpredictability was a deterrent in itself, arguing that the killing of Soleimani may have been so brazen and shocking to Iranian leaders that they will be wary of provoking an American president evidently willing to escalate in ways his predecessors were not.

Trump actually has a very strong hand vis-a-vis the clerical regime, said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA specialist on Iran at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an organization that rallied opposition to Irans government. Whether he chooses to play it, I dont know. Hes not a strategist. But his tactical game hasnt been bad. The hit on Soleimani was genius  totally flummoxed his opponent.

But those are high-risk gambles with much at stake.

For the moment, the United States faces a dramatic break with Iraq, a country it has deeply invested in for nearly 17 years, and hard-liners in Tehran have consolidated their domestic position by capitalizing on anger at America. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Irans supreme leader, may not immediately mount a response, whether violent or through cyber means, but it is widely assumed that he will act at some point.

When that response occurs, and depending on what it is, the ball will be squarely back in Trumps court, presenting him with an equally fateful decision, said Robert Malley, the president of the International Crisis Group and a former Middle East adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama. Does he escalate further, as he has warned, and risk a far longer, bloodier and costlier military confrontation? Or does he seek an off ramp?

Trump has said he took out Soleimani, whose forces have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of U.S. troops over the years, not to start a war but to stop one; his advisers asserted, without providing evidence, that the Iranian commander was plotting an imminent attack. At the same time, the president has ratcheted up his talk of war, vowing to respond to any Iranian provocations with overwhelming force, including strikes at Iranian cultural sites that some experts said would amount to a war crime.

He did not retreat from that on Sunday. Theyre allowed to kill our people, theyre allowed to torture and maim our people, theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people and were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? he told reporters. It doesnt work that way.

Warming to the conflict, he even said he was ready to escalate against Iraq, the country America has worked so hard to stand up as a key ally in the region, threatening very big sanctions if it expels U.S. troops.

Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it, he said of an airbase in Iraq. If they do ask us to leave, if we dont do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.

A longer, bloodier and costlier military confrontation in the Middle East is not what Trump forecast when he won the presidency in 2016 nor what he seemed to offer since taking office. Throughout the campaign, he promised to extricate the United States from a geopolitical vipers nest that has cost so many lives and so much treasure and as late as Sunday, he repeated his conclusion that going into the Middle East was the worst decision ever made in the history of our country.

But many of his policy pronouncements on the campaign trail and since were vague and at times contradictory, allowing different voters to hear what they wanted.

As a candidate, he repeatedly called for an end to Middle East engagements, while also saying at other times that he might need as many as 30,000 troops in the region to defeat the Islamic State. He excoriated U.S.President George W. Bushs invasion of Iraq while declaring himself a fan of that administrations interrogation techniques, at one point declaring, Torture works.

Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who previously served in the State and Defense departments and on the National Security Council staff, said Trumps decision to kill Soleimani represented a partial evolution for a president who denounced endless wars.

Where Trump may once have seen a clash with Iran as an opportunity to negotiate a better nuclear agreement than Obama did, he now sees an inextricable connection to Tehrans malign actions in the region, fomenting wars and supporting terrorists, Doran said.

But he is also more keenly aware of the power differential between us and the Iranians, Doran said. Once he realized that Khamenei thought Soleimani gave him a competitive advantage, Trump simply took Soleimani off the board. With a drone, not an invasion force.

In scrambling the equation, Trump took the initiative, not as Bush or Obama did in their own very different ways, but in classic Trumpian fashion, keeping everyone off balance, projecting toughness and gambling that he will be able to handle whatever comes next.

Read more about:
A Russian couple was made to issue an apology after they were caught by people having sex on a public beach.

On New Years Eve, the tourists aged 26 and 19 were celebrating. They left the bar after a while to relax by sea in Pattaya, Thailand. The pair got drunk on beer and was apparently 'overcome with arousal' and began romping then and there.

Viral Press

A video was taken by an astonished onlooker which showed the teen woman straddling her partner before undressing herself. The man then mounted the girl and they made love for less than a minute then went back to the hotel.

After the footage was leaked to the police, they immediately set out on the task of identifying the rompers.





Such an act destroys the good image of Pattaya as a tourist resort. Officers were immediately dispatched to the beach to look for clues, Daily Mail quoted Police Lieutenant Colonel Piyapong Ensarn as saying at a conference.

The couple was identified with the help of CCTV footage, arrested and questioned on suspicion of public indecency.

Viral Press

A footage shows the couple wearing masks to hide their faces and issuing a grovelling apology and following local customs by joining their hands as if in prayer.

Roman reportedly said, I apologise for offending citizens and harming the reputation of the city. We're sorry.

The two were later released.
TOKYO - Japan's justice minister vowed Monday to strengthen border checks and review bail conditions after Nissan's former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, fled the country despite supposedly stringent surveillance.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 5/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Lebanese woman with her puppy, passes by the house of ex-Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020. Ghosn earlier this week jumped bail in Japan and fled to Lebanon rather than face trial on financial misconduct charges in a dramatic escape that has confounded and embarrassed authorities. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

TOKYO - Japan's justice minister vowed Monday to strengthen border checks and review bail conditions after Nissan's former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, fled the country despite supposedly stringent surveillance.

Masako Mori told reporters at a news conference that the ministry has already acted to prevent a recurrence but declined to give details. Ghosn skipped bail and showed up in Lebanon a week ago, saying he could not get a fair hearing in Japan, where he was awaiting trial on financial misconduct allegations.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Michael L. Taylor, a former Green Beret who has previously rescued hostages, was among those involved in Ghosn's escape plan.

A private security guard stands outside the house of ex-Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020. Ghosn earlier this week jumped bail in Japan and fled to Lebanon rather than face trial on financial misconduct charges in a dramatic escape that has confounded and embarrassed authorities. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

The team that spirited Ghosn out of the country made numerous trips to Japan to scout out possible escape routes, the newspaper reported, citing sources it did not identify. It said they settled on Osaka's airport, where cargo X-ray scanners were not big enough to handle the man-sized concert equipment box apparently used to get Ghosn aboard a private flight. He flew from there to Istanbul, then switched to a different plane to fly to Beirut, according to the Turkish airline company MNG Jet, which said its planes were used illegally.

Mori declined to say who might be held responsible for such a high-profile escape, stressing it was still under investigation.

While out on 1.5 billion yen ($14 million) bail, Ghosn was living in a home in an upscale part of Tokyo under strict surveillance as part of the conditions for his release. That raises questions about how he left undetected.

Security cameras at his home operated 24 hours a day, but the footage only had to be submitted to the court on a monthly basis, according to lawyers' documents. Security footage showed he simply walked out of the house alone around noon on Dec. 29, NHK TV reported.

FILE - In this May 12, 2016, file photo, then Nissan Motor Co. President and CEO Carlos Ghosn speaks during a press conference in Yokohama, near Tokyo. Japanese Justice Minister Masako Mori vowed Monday, Jan. 6, 2020 to strengthen border departure checks and review bail conditions, given the flight of Ghosn. Mori told reporters at the ministry action has already been taken to prevent a recurrence, while declining to give details. Ghosn skipped bail while awaiting trial on various financial misconduct allegations and appeared in Lebanon. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

Lebanon has said he entered legally with a French passport on Dec. 30. He has not been seen since, but has promised to speak to reporters on Wednesday.

Mori denounced his escape as an unjustifiable" crime.

Japans justice system allows investigating the facts while it ensures the individual basic human rights at the same time," Mori told reporters at the ministry. It is set with appropriate procedures and it is operated appropriately."

Critics say Japan's justice system is too slow and is inhumane. Ghosn was banned from meeting with his wife while out on bail. Preparing for his trial has taken more than a year, and a date has not been set. He was detained, twice, for a total of 130 days before he was released on bail a second time.

Japanese Justice Minister Masako Mori speaks about Nissan's former Chairman Carlos Ghosn during a press conference at her ministry in Tokyo, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. Mori vowed to strengthen border departure checks and review bail conditions, given the flight of Ghosn. Mori told reporters at the ministry action has already been taken to prevent a recurrence, while declining to give details. Ghosn skipped bail while awaiting trial on various financial misconduct allegations and appeared in Lebanon. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

Referring to human rights' advocates descriptions of the Japanese legal system as hostage justice," Mori said, We are aware of the criticisms.

Ghosn, formerly chairman of Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi, was first arrested in November 2018. He is charged with under-reporting his future compensation and breach of trust in diverting Nissan money for his personal gain. He insists he is innocent.

Mori said each nation has its own judicial system and arrests are rarer in Japan than in other countries, suggesting arrests are made only when the authorities are fairly confident they have a case.

Simple comparisons are misleading, she said.

Japanese Justice Minister Masako Mori speaks about Nissan's former Chairman Carlos Ghosn during a press conference at her ministry in Tokyo, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. Mori vowed to strengthen border departure checks and review bail conditions, given the flight of Ghosn. Mori told reporters at the ministry action has already been taken to prevent a recurrence, while declining to give details. Ghosn skipped bail while awaiting trial on various financial misconduct allegations and appeared in Lebanon. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

French authorities are also investigating Ghosn and the automakers. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Monday that he was surprised by Ghosns escape and wants a broader investigation into 11 million euros ($12.3 million) in questionable expenses under Ghosn's watch at the Netherlands-based headquarters of the alliance between Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors.

Le Maire wouldnt say where Ghosn should be prosecuted, but said that as Renaults biggest single shareholder, the French government wants to ensure the struggling automaker prospers again.

When you are an individual subject to laws, you dont escape justice. And Carlos Ghosn is an individual like any other, Le Maire said Monday on France-Inter radio. He should answer before the justice system.

Members of Ghosn's legal team say they did not know about his escape plan. Takashi Takano, one of his lawyers, said he felt sad and betrayed that Ghosn didn't try to prove his innocence in court. He also said he understood how Ghosn might have lost hope not only with the prosecutors but with the entire Japanese judicial system.

Yuichi Kaido, another of Ghosn's lawyer, said he was troubled by public support for denying bail to all foreign suspects. He said in an online statement he feared Japan might react to international criticism of its legal system by becoming more insular and rigid in its views.

Ghosn's bail has been revoked, and Interpol has issued a wanted notice. Japan does not have an extradition treaty with Lebanon, but Mori left open the possibility Japan could seek Ghosn's return.

Such a return so far appears unlikely, and Japan's options are limited.

Mori stressed that any retaliatory action, such as economic sanctions, must be decided on very carefully. She would not say if Japan has contacted the U.S. or France for help.

It is indeed possible to ask for extradition of criminals based on the principle of reciprocity," she said, replying to a question about Lebanon.

But, upon doing that, we need to carefully study whether it is possible to guarantee this principle of reciprocity and their internal justice system.

___

Follow Yuri Kageyama at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has described the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi as barbaric and atrocious and sought strict action from the Delhi police against those who were involved in the incident.

Situation in JNU is clearly out of hand. @DelhiPolice cannot remain silent spectators to this mayhem unleashed by a handful of goons in the premier university. This is barbaric, atrocious and needs to be tackled with iron hand, Singh tweeted.

Violence had broken out inside JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours.

In wake of violence at JNU, the chief minister directed the state police to enhance security around universities and ensure the safety of students in Punjab, officials said adding that Singh had stated that nobody would be allowed to disturb peace in the state.
A man looks at a screen showing global stock market information on the street in Tokyo, Japan.

Asia markets mostly fell on Monday following heightened geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

Japanese shares returned for their first day of trade with the benchmark Nikkei 225 declining 1.91% to close at 23,204.86 while the Topix index fell 1.39% to 1,697.49. In South Korea, the Kospi index fell 0.98% to 2,155.07.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was down 1.11% in afternoon trade. Chinese mainland markets mostly bucked the downward trend by the close: The Shanghai composite eased morning gains to trade near flat at 3,083.41. The Shenzhen composite rose 0.44% to 1,768.68 and the Shenzhen component was up 0.39% to 10,698.27.

In Australia, the ASX 200 finished near flat, with the heavily weighted financials subindex retracing some of its earlier losses to trade down 0.58% as shares of major banks in the country declined. But, the energy sector rose 1.27%.

Global tensions elevated late last week after Iran's top military commander was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, which raised concerns of retaliation from Iranian forces. The Iranian regime said Sunday that it would no longer abide by uranium enrichment limits established in the 2015 nuclear deal, which the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from in 2018.

On Sunday, Trump threatened to slap sanctions on Iraq after its parliament passed a resolution calling for the government to expel foreign troops from the country, following the U.S. airstrike carried out on its soil.

Futures pointed to a lower open in the U.S.  the implied open for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 130.88 points as of 2:00 a.m. ET.

Oil prices surged 3% on Friday on worries that potential conflict between the U.S. and Iran could disrupt energy production in the region.

Prices climbed further Monday afternoon in Asia: U.S. crude futures were up 1.97% at $64.29 per barrel and global benchmark Brent added 2.33% to $70.20.

"Geopolitical tensions look like remaining elevated in coming days, so lending support to oil prices and keeping risk asset markets on the defensive, including 'growth' currencies," Ray Attrill, head of foreign-exchange strategy at the National Australia Bank, wrote in a morning note.

Elsewhere, Australia has been grappling with a devastating fire season that's expected to worsen as the summer months continue. Wildfires have killed at least 18 people so far, destroyed more than 1,000 homes and nine million acres. Nearly half a billion animals in the state of New South Wales are said to have been killed by the blazes in the last few months and the death toll is expected to rise.

One expert predicted that the bushfires could be a 'big drag' on Australia's growth.
Truck driver Matthew Lewis Small, 34, has been charged with reckless homicide after police said his distracted driving led to the death of two women and a one-year-old baby

A mother, her one-year-old daughter and her girlfriend were killed when their car caught fire after a semi-tractor trailer driver crashed into slowing traffic as he looked away from the road to put a down a coffee mug.

Mariah Tomey, 21, Hadley Tomey, one, and Kaylee Kirk, 19, all of Lebanon, Indiana died after the semi crashed into their car on Interstate 65 on Sunday. The tractor trailer pinned the car to a guardrail before it caught fire.

Tomey and Kirk were declared dead at the scene, but Hadley's body was only later discovered in the burnt out car.

Matthew Lewis Small, 34, of Grandville, Michigan, has been charged with three counts of reckless homicide - a level five felony - in relation to the incident which occurred on Sunday at about 11.05am near the exit to Zionsville, Indiana.

Police identified (L to R) Kaylee Kirk, 19, Hadley Tomey, one, and Mariah Tomey, 21, as the three people who died in the crash Sunday morning

Police said Small told them he had looked down while trying to put his coffee mug away when he ran into traffic that had slowed down. Eight cars in total were involved in the crash (shown)

Courtesy of WXIN

Police said in a statement on the Boone County Indiana Sheriff's Office's Facebook page that they received multiple 911 calls about a major crash on the northbound side of they highway Sunday morning.

First responders discovered the crash involved eight cars and a semi-tractor trailer, which Small had been driving.

The other cars were seriously damaged in the crash, and authorities said 14 people were taken to the hospital with what appeared to be non-life threatening injuries.

Police said Kaylee (left) and Mariah (right, holding Hadley) were declared dead at the scene after their car caught on fire while being pinned to the guardrail by the semi-truck

Authorities said that they later discovered that Hadley had been in the car and had died, too

Small has been charged with three counts of reckless homicide over the deaths of Kaylee (left), Hadley (center) and Mariah (right)

Police said that Small told them that the accident happened when he was driving northbound and 'looked down to set his coffee mug down, when he ran into slowing traffic'.

Police said that it appeared that Small had hit all of the eight cars as he 'plowed through the back-up'.

Boone County Sheriff Mike Nielsen said in a statement that it was a 'sad day for two Boone County families'.

'Distracted driving or driver inattention is a major cause of many accidents on our public roadways,' he said. 'In this case we believe it was a contributing factor in this fatal crash.

He added that the Sheriff's Office 'feels strongly that those that cause death on our public roadways, because of driver inattention, should be held accountable'.

Small was booked into the Boone County Jail. He is being held without bond, according to online jail records.
By Trevor Hunnicutt (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden on Sunday won the support of three politicians who helped Democrats seize control of the House of Representatives in 2018, endorsements that could help bolster arguments he is best positioned to fend off Republicans this year.

By Trevor Hunnicutt

(Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden on Sunday won the support of three politicians who helped Democrats seize control of the House of Representatives in 2018, endorsements that could help bolster arguments he is best positioned to fend off Republicans this year.

The backing by Democratic U.S. Representatives Elaine Luria of Virginia and Chrissy Houlahan and Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania is evidence of support for Biden among Democrats in "swing" districts that were held by Republicans before the 2018 vote.

If Democrats push the wrong message or candidate during the presidential race, those districts could flip to Republicans.

All three of the lawmakers served in the U.S. military and could help draw attention to Biden's foreign policy experience as a longtime senator and one-time vice president.

Foreign policy has been thrust into the 2020 race by Republican President Donald Trump's decision to kill Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani with an air strike on Friday that sharply escalated tensions between the two countries.

Biden, 77, tells voters his experience would be a key asset as president, while his competitors often say voters are looking for something new and focus on aspects of his record they see falling short.

"Joe Biden is 'battle-tested' on the world stage, in Congress, and in the White House," Luria said in a statement released by Biden's campaign. "He will defeat Donald Trump and win in tough districts like mine."

Biden is the front-runner in national public opinion polls among Democrats seeking to face Trump in November's presidential election. Voters will also be casting ballots for members of the House, as well as many Senate seats.

Before facing voters in the general election, Biden first needs to win his party's nomination in primaries taking place state-by-state starting next month, and he faces a tough race.

Opinion polls from the very first states that will weigh in, Iowa and New Hampshire, suggest Biden might lose both contests to Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren or former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Biden has increasingly been arguing that he is best positioned to help vulnerable Democrats win tough elections.

He was recently endorsed by another 2018 swing-district House Democrat, Abby Finkenauer of Iowa.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Chris Reese)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
In Nigeria, pirates attacked a ship and abducted three crew members, two of whom might be Russians, a representative of the country's Marine Forces informed.

AMBIKA hopper dredger was attacked on January 2. Pirates abducted three crew members, tentatively, two Russians and an Indian, RIA Novosti reports.

Soon, six members of the rescue team arrived on the ship to eliminate the threat, but the pirates opened fire. Four military armed guards died as a result of the firefight.
A new, safe and efficient way to coax stem cells into bone cells is reported in a recently published article from STEM CELLS Translational Medicine (SCTM). The protocol, developed by researchers at the University of Sydney, Australian Research Centre (ARC) for Innovative BioEngineering, could lead to a shift in the treatment of bone regenerative medicine.

Large bone defects and loss due to cancer or trauma can result in scar tissue that impairs the bones ability to repair and regenerate. The current gold standard therapy, autografting, has inherent drawbacks, including limited availability and donor site morbidity. This leaves researchers seeking an alternative source of bone cells  and makes bone tissue engineering a growing field with considerable translational potential.

The success of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology to reprogram fibroblasts into progenitor cells of various lineages offers an exciting route for tissue repair and regeneration, said Zufu Lu, Ph.D., a member of the University of Sydneys Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Research Unit and a research associate at the ARC for Innovative BioEngineering. He is a co-lead investigator of the SCTM study, along with Professor Hala Zreiqat, Ph.D., head of the research unit and director of the ARC Training Centre for Innovative BioEngineering.

However, while iPSC technology represents a potentially unlimited source of progenitor cells and allows patients to use their own cells for tissue repair and regeneration  thus posing little or no risk of immune rejection  the technology has several constraints. Among them are the requirement for complex reprogramming using the Yamanaka factors (Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4, c-Myc). To add to the complexity, specific stimuli are required to direct iPSCs to re-differentiate to progenitor cells of the lineage of interest.

In addition, Dr. Lu said, any remaining iPSCs pose the risk of tumors following implantation.

One potential way around this, as demonstrated by recent studies, is through the direct reprogramming of fibroblasts into bone cells. Fibroblasts are morphologically similar to osteoblasts. Their similar transcriptomic profiles led us to hypothesize that distinct factors produced by osteoblasts may be capable of coaxing fibroblasts to become osteoblast-like cells, Prof. Zreiqat said.

Previous studies aimed at using fibroblasts to produce various cell types relied on the genetic manipulation of one or more transcription regulators. But just as with iPSCs, reprogramming fibroblasts in this manner has its own inherent technical and safety issues. The Lu-Zreiqat team, however, surmised that an approach employing natural factors might just allow better control over reprogramming and improve the safety.

Unlike genetic reprogramming, chemical induction of cell reprogramming is generally rapid and reversible, and is also more amenable to control through factor dosage and/or combinations with other molecules, Dr. Lu explained.

The team initially determined that media conditioned by human osteoblasts can induce reprogramming of human fibroblasts to functional osteoblasts. Next, said Prof. Zreiqat, our proteomic analysis identified a single naturally bioactive protein, insulin growth factor binding protein-7 (IGFBP7), as being significantly elevated in media conditioned with osteoblasts, compared to those with fibroblasts.

This led them to test IGFBP7s ability as a transcription factor. They found it, indeed, successfully induced a switch from fibroblasts to osteoblasts in vitro. They next tested it in a mouse model  and once again experienced success when the fibroblasts produced mineralized tissue. The switch was associated with senescence and dependent on autocrine IL-6 signaling.

The approach we describe in our study has significant advantages over other commonly used cell sources including iPSCs and adult mesenchymal stem cells, Dr. Lu and Prof Zreiqat concluded.

Bone tissue engineering is a growing field where cell therapies have considerable translational potential, but current cell-based approaches face limitations, said Anthony Atala, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The novel observation described in this study could potentially lead to a shift in the current paradigm of bone regenerative medicine.

This study was conducted in collaboration with the Charles Perkins Centre and the Childrens Hospital at Westmead, University of Sydney.

The full article, Reprogramming of human fibroblasts into osteoblasts by insulin-like growth factor binding protein 7, can be accessed at https://stemcellsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/sctm.19-0281.

About STEM CELLS Translational Medicine: STEM CELLS Translational Medicine (SCTM), co-published by AlphaMed Press and Wiley, is a monthly peer-reviewed publication dedicated to significantly advancing the clinical utilization of stem cell molecular and cellular biology. By bridging stem cell research and clinical trials, SCTM will help move applications of these critical investigations closer to accepted best practices. SCTM is the official journal partner of Regenerative Medicine Foundation.

About AlphaMed Press: Established in 1983, AlphaMed Press with offices in Durham, NC, San Francisco, CA, and Belfast, Northern Ireland, publishes two other internationally renowned peer-reviewed journals: STEM CELLS (http://www.StemCells.com), celebrating its 38th year, is the world's first journal devoted to this fast paced field of research. The Oncologist (http://www.TheOncologist.com), also a monthly peer-reviewed publication, entering its 25th year, is devoted to community and hospital-based oncologists and physicians entrusted with cancer patient care. All three journals are premier periodicals with globally recognized editorial boards dedicated to advancing knowledge and education in their focused disciplines.

About Wiley: Wiley, a global company, helps people and organizations develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. Our online scientific, technical, medical and scholarly journals, combined with our digital learning, assessment and certification solutions, help universities, learned societies, businesses, governments and individuals increase the academic and professional impact of their work. For more than 200 years, we have delivered consistent performance to our stakeholders. The company's website can be accessed at http://www.wiley.com.

About Regenerative Medicine Foundation (RMF): The non-profit Regenerative Medicine Foundation fosters strategic collaborations to accelerate the development of regenerative medicine to improve health and deliver cures. RMF pursues its mission by producing its flagship World Stem Cell Summit, honouring leaders through the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Action Awards, and promoting educational initiatives.
US-Iran crisis spurs oil fears

WORLD: The government is moving to find ways to cushion the impact of the US-Iran conflict, particularly rising oil prices, if tensions escalate into war following the US assassination of Iranian top general Qassem Soleimani on Friday (Jan 3).

economicsmilitarypolitics

By Bangkok Post

Monday 6 January 2020, 10:48AM

Tensions are building between US President Donald Trump and Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei following the US assassination of Iranian top general Qassem Soleimani on Friday (Jan 3). Photo: AFP

Energy Minister, Sontirat Sontijirawong, said yesterday(Jan 5) that state agencies are closely monitoring the situation because an escalation will have a direct impact on oil prices. The minister has called an urgent meeting for later today to discuss the matter and promised to provide the public with an update on the situation.

Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike on Friday near Baghdad International Airport in Iraq, shocking Iran. He was 62.

The air strike was ordered by President Donald Trump, who said the Iranian general had been planning an imminent attack on US diplomats and the roughly 5,200 American troops stationed in Baghdad.

Soleimani's assassination ratcheted up tensions between the arch-enemies and sparked fears of a new war in the Middle East. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed severe revenge and declared three days of national mourning.

But Mr Trump warned on Saturday that the US is targeting 52 cultural sites in Iran and would hit them very fast and very hard if Iran attacks American personnel or assets.

In a sabre-rattling tweet, Mr Trump said: If they attack again, which I would strongly advise them not to do, we will hit them harder than they have ever been hit before!

Mr Trump said the choice of 52 targets represented the number of Americans held hostage at the US embassy in Tehran for more than a year starting in late 1979.

The Commerce Ministry warned that tensions between the US and Iran will cause fluctuations in currency and stock markets values and lead to an immediate rise in gold and oil prices.

The incident will have an impact on Thailand's macroeconomy, said Pimchanok Vonkorpon, director-general of the ministry's Trade Policy and Strategy Office.

Ms Pimchanok said oil prices soared by nearly 4% on Friday and are likely to rise further unless the situation is relieved.

This will prompt investors to hold on to low-risk assets, sending the price of gold into overdrive, she said.

It will negatively impact investors' confidence and affect the global economy.

According to her, if Iran chooses to close the Strait of Hormuz as a retaliatory measure, logistics and subsequently oil prices will be severely affected as about 20% of the world's marine oil shipments passes through the area.

That said, Ms Pimchanok said the global economy is expected to pick up some pace this year, due to a range of positive factors which include the progress in China-US trade talks and economic stimulus measures undertaken by many central banks.

Panitan Wattanayagorn, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University and chairman of the security advisory committee for Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, said the US and Iran have been tangled in a conflict for a while, but the assassination of Soleimani has significantly escalated the tensions.

In the short term, the incident may lead to the two sides launching attacks against each other in the Middle East, or even Europe, he said.

Iran may resort to unconventional warfare in the medium run, taking direct aim at the US president, and US interests, by blowing up US planes or holding US citizens hostage.

In the long term, it may press ahead with its nuclear programme and call for support from its allies, such as Russia and China.

Mr Panitan said Thailand should be in regular contact and share information with its neighbours, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Thailand will not be targeted because it is a friend of both the US and Iran, as we recently boosted our investment in Iran, he said.

However, it will be best for the entire country to stay alert.
A court here in Maharashtra has acquitted a man and his three associates accused of killing his wife six years ago and destroying evidence of the crime.

District Judge P P Jadhav, in his order last Tuesday, acquitted the woman's husband, Datta Kisan Jadhav (33), and his three colleagues Ravidas Rajaram Patil (51), Dayanand Kisan Jadhav (28) and Subash Ramu Bhurkud (44), saying the prosecution failed to prove the charges against them.

All the four accused and the victim, identified as Pushpa, worked in a brick kiln at Desaigaon in Thane district.

According to the prosecution, the victim got married to Datta Jadhav, a resident of Jamghar in Wada taluka of neighbouring Palghar district, in 2012.

The accused did not allow his wife to visit her parents' house. He also doubted her character and used to beat her up after coming home heavily drunk, the prosecution said.

On January 5, 2014, the victim's parents received a message that she had died of snakebite at the brick kiln.

When they reached the accused's house at Jamghar, they noticed wounds on the body, said the prosecution.

The victim's mother subsequently filed a police complaint, saying she suspected that her daughter did not die of snakebite but was beaten to death by her husband.

Based on the complaint, the victim's husband and his three colleagues were arrested.

While the husband was booked under Indian Penal Code Section 302 (murder), his colleagues were charged under IPC Sections 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender), 176 (failure to give information to public servant) and 34 (common intention).

The judge noted that after filing complaint in the case, the victim's mother admitted that she had not seen her daughter's body at Jamghar.

She also admitted that her sister and some members of a tribal organisation narrated the incident to police, instead of her.

The victim' mother had also not asked Datta Jadhav or his parents as to howher daughter died, the judge observed.

"Thus, the complaint is apparently disproved through the cross-examination. Considering the entire evidence on record, it is clear that the prosecution has miserably failed to prove the charges levelled against the four accused, hence they need to be set free," he said in the order.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Jammu University students affiliated to the ABVP on Monday held "anti-Left" protests, blocked roads, condemned the JNU violence and demanded a probe into it.

They blamed some political organisations, particularly the Left, for using the students as "canon fodder" for holding countrywide protests and creating a massive student unrest for their political gains.

Carrying the tricolour and pictures of Bhimrao Ambedkar, hundreds of students cutting across the organizational affiliations took out at a protest rally holding banners against the Left parties at the JU campus.

Raising slogans against the Left parties, the students sat on dharna of the road leading to the university, causing traffic disruption.

The dharna continued for over half-an-hour.

The students demanded a probe into the violence and "creation of pan-India student unrest".

"It is a general protest rally here against the violence at JNU campus. We want a probe into this violence. we are against this violence and use of students by political parties, particularly by the Left, to create pan-India student unrest", Monika, a JU student, told reporters.

They said the students should not allow political parties to use them for their vested interests and instead should focus on their studies.

The government should also look into issues of students and resolve it so that they are not "used by the Left parties as cannon fodder for political interests", they said.

Violence broke out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

The Left-controlled JNU Students' Union and the RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) blamed each other for the incident in which at least 28 people, including JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh were injured.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The stirring, stylish legal drama Just Mercy feels familiar on several levels. The story of a wrongly accused man sent to death row, it joins such films as Dead Man Walking and the more recent Clemency as an affecting examination of how justice is confused with inhumane retribution. Based on factual events, Just Mercy is the story of Walter Johnny D. McMillian, who in 1987 was arrested for a murder he didnt commit, but who was railroaded by a racist and incompetent legal system in Alabama  a story that is as old as the rugged cross itself. McMillians case became famous by way of a 60 Minutes episode and the memoir of Bryan Stevenson, a brilliant, Harvard-educated attorney who came to his defense and has gone on to become a visionary leader in criminal justice reform.
The statement comes just days after Tata Sons and Ratan Tata moved the Supreme Court challenging the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal's December verdict which ordered the reinstatement of Mistry as the Chairman of Tata Sons

Ahead of the Supreme Court's hearing on an urgent petition seeking to set aside the NCLAT order reinstalling him as the group chairman and also in the board of group companies, Cyrus Mistry declared in a statement his unwillingness to take over the reins of Tata Sons again. However, he threw light on the relationship between Tata Group and Shapoorji Pallonji Group, which owns an 18.37 percent stake in Tata Sons, spanned multiple decades and was built on the common agreement and mutual faith, according to an IANS report. Mistry added that as a minority stakeholder, it was in his and SP Group's own interest to ensure the long term success of Tata Group.

"As an 18.37 percent shareholder, it is in our own interest to ensure the Group's long-term success. My family, although a minority partner, has been a guardian of the Tata Group for over five decades," Mistry said in his statement.

Tata Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata, in his petition to the Supreme Court on Friday, had said that SP Group was only a financial investor to Tata Sons and there was no partnership between both Tata Group and the SP Group. He said that the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal's (NCLAT) judgment reinstating Mistry as Tata Son's chairman starts on a "wrong" premise of treating Tata Sons as a "two group company".

"The appellant (SP Group) has been associated with Tata Sons from the year 1965 when the SP Group first became its shareholders. There has never been any relationship akin to a partnership between the 'Tata Group' and the SP Group and the latter has always been a financial investor in the Tata Sons," he said.

Tata further said that SP Group did not hold a seat in the Tata Sons' board, and said that judgment was based on misconceived understanding.

"The Impugned Judgment holds that there was purported comity and mutual relationship between the 'Tata Group' and SP Group until the replacement of Cyrus Mistry as the Executive Chairman of Tata Sons. But such alleged mutual understanding cannot also simply mean that there was a relationship akin to a partnership between the 'Tata Group' and the SP Group, where the latter was entitled to a seat on the Board of Tata Sons," Tata said.

Mistry, on Sunday, said that he although he would not take up any post on Tata Sons board or that of its companies, he would continue to pursue all options to protect SP Group's rights as a minority stakeholder, including the resumption of a seat for his family-run group on the Tata Sons' board.

He also observed that the founding fathers of the Tata Group had laid a strong ethical foundation that cared for all stakeholders and former Tata leaders worked together with the minority partner to create value for all stakeholders

However, in the last three years, the leadership of the group has shown "scant" respect for the rights of the minority stakeholders, Mistry said.

"In the last three years, both in conduct and in their statements to the world at large, the Tata Group's leadership has shown scant respect for the rights of minority shareholders. It is time the group's management introspects and reflects on its conduct as it embarks on future actions," a statement from Mistry read.

Mistry said that the legal fight is not about him but for the protection the rights of minority shareholders and upholding their rights.

"This legal fight has never been about me. It has always been and will always be about protecting the rights of minority shareholders and upholding their right to demand a higher standard of corporate governance from controlling shareholders."

Acknowledging the NCLAT's December 18 verdict, he said: "I am humbled by the NCLAT order, which after review of the enormous material on record, recognized the illegal manner in which I was removed and the oppressive and prejudicial conduct of Tata and other Trustees."

The statement comes just days after Tata Sons and Ratan Tata moved the Supreme Court challenging the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal's December verdict which ordered the reinstatement of Mistry as the Chairman of Tata Sons.

Ratan Tata, in the petition filed in the top court on 3 January, had said that that the appellate tribunal's verdict was "erroneous" and it "pulled down" the governance and corporate structure of the group.

Mistry was appointed as the sixth chairman of Tata Group in 2012 but ousted on 24 October 2016.

--With IANS inputs
EU foreign ministers will hold emergency talks on the Iran crisis on Friday, diplomats told AFP, as tensions rise after US forces killed an Iranian general in a drone strike.

The announcement on Monday came after the EU's diplomatic chief voiced regret at Iran announcing another step away from the fragile 2015 nuclear deal, as Tehran seethes over the killing of Qasem Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guards' covert Quds Force.

Josep Borrell, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs, tweeted that the accord, which has been teetering on the brink of collapse since US President Donald



Trump withdrew support, was "now more important than ever".

European-led efforts to keep Iran in the deal -- which curbed its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief -- have borne little fruit since Trump's decision in May 2018 to pull out and reimpose sanctions.

Borrell will lead a meeting of foreign ministers at 2.00pm (local time) on Friday, three diplomats said, to discuss the fallout from the Soleimani killing and the future of the nuclear deal.

Borrell said the bloc would wait for further details of Iranian breaches from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) before deciding how to respond.

"Deeply regret Iran's latest announcement on #JCPOA. As ever we will rely on @iaeaorg verification," Borrell tweeted, using an abbreviation for the deal's formal name.

"Full implementation of #NuclearDeal by all is now more important than ever, for regional stability & global security. I will continue working with all participants on way forward." On Sunday, Iran said it would forego the "limit on the number of centrifuges" it had pledged to honour in the 2015 agreement, casting doubt on an EU push for talks to salvage the deal.

Borrell spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the weekend and issued a personal invitation to come to Brussels, but so far Iran has not given a public response.

EU spokesman Peter Stano said there was "a lot of activity going on" from the bloc as it seeks to help defuse tensions that heightened dramatically on Friday when a US drone strike killed Soleimani at Baghdad airport.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to make a statement on the situation later on Monday, while NATO has convened an extraordinary meeting of its ruling North Atlantic Council to discuss the crisis -- in particular on the future of its training mission in Iraq.

Iran's 2015 nuclear accord with the United Nations Security Council's five permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany has been hanging by a thread since Trump unilaterally withdrew from it.

Tehran said it would continue cooperating "as before" with IAEA inspectors but the leaders of Germany, France and Britain reacted by urging Iran to rethink its announcement.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Turkey and Libya could use the services of international companies for their joint oil and gas exploration plans in the Mediterranean, Reuters reports, citing Turkeys president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogans statement comes amid attempts by Turkey to restore close relations with Libya. These efforts resulted in a deal that set up a maritime corridor from Turkeys southern coast to Libyas northeast shores.

The move was followed by vocal protests from Greece and Cyprus, with Greece expelling the Libyan ambassador and lodging a complaint against Turkey at the United Nations. For Greece, the corridor is a power grab on the part of its neighbor in the resource-rich Eastern Mediterranean.

The European Union is on Greeces side. Another Reuters report from December said that the union will come out with a statement rejecting the deal on the grounds of it breaking international maritime law.

To make matters more interesting, the Libyan parliament has also rejected the deal, which Erdogan made with the Prime Minister of the Government of National Accord. While the GNA is the Libyan government that the West and the UN recognizes, the Libyan parliament supports an alternative government based in eastern Libya.

The Eastern Mediterranean has drawn the attention of governments in the region after a few significant natural gas discoveries, among them the Zohr field in Egypt, the Leviathan field in Israel, and a few smaller but still sizeable discoveries off the coast of Cyprus. Just recently, the island greenlit a consortium involving Eni and Total to drill for gas in a new part of its exclusive economic zone.

Cyprus sees Turkeys increased activity in the region as infringement of its territorial rights, but that has not made President Erdogan any less determined to pursue his exploration plans. However, Egypt and Israel have also started worrying about the implications of a Turkey-Libya drilling agreement. Both spoke against the deal, with Egypt calling it illegal and not binding, and Israel warning it could threaten the stability of the region.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
(Newser)  President Trump doubled down on his threat to attack Iranian cultural sites Sundayand threatened Iraq, as well. The president responded to the Iraqi parliament's vote to expel all US troops by warning that the US could hit them with "sanctions like they've never seen before." "It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame," Trump said. Axios reports that the resolution passed in Iraq does not formally require US troops to leave, but urges the government to expel them. Trump described going into Iraq as the worst decision in American history, but vowed that the US would not depart until it was reimbursed for the billions of dollars spent on a new air base. More:





"A very friendly way." Trump said the sanctions would be imposed if the US is asked to leave and it isn't on a "very friendly basis." With the warning, Trump "was threatening sanctions on a country for forcing out American troops whom he himself had pledged to bring home during his 2016 presidential campaign," the New York Times notes.

Trump said the sanctions would be imposed if the US is asked to leave and it isn't on a "very friendly basis." With the warning, Trump "was threatening sanctions on a country for forcing out American troops whom he himself had pledged to bring home during his 2016 presidential campaign," the New York Times notes. "It doesn't work that way." Trump also defended his threat to strike 52 sites "important to Iran & Iranian culture" if Tehran retaliated for the killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the Guardian reports. "They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people," Trump said. "And were not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn't work that way." Targeting cultural sites could be considered a war crime under the 1954 Hague Treaty.

story continues below

Soleimani's daughter issues a threat. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over the remains of Soleimani and others killed in the attack in front of a huge crowd in Tehran on Monday, the AP reports. Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, was cheered when she told the crowd: "The families of the American soldiers in western Asia ... will spend their days waiting for the death of their children." Soleimani's successor, Esmail Ghaani, was at Khamenei's side, along with other Iranian leaders. Iranian state TV reports that there were millions of people in the crowd.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over the remains of Soleimani and others killed in the attack in front of a huge crowd in Tehran on Monday, the AP reports. Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, was cheered when she told the crowd: "The families of the American soldiers in western Asia ... will spend their days waiting for the death of their children." Soleimani's successor, Esmail Ghaani, was at Khamenei's side, along with other Iranian leaders. Iranian state TV reports that there were millions of people in the crowd. Next step . The BBC reports that following the funeral Monday, the general's body will be taken to the holy city of Qom for a ceremony and burial Tuesday.

. The BBC reports that following the funeral Monday, the general's body will be taken to the holy city of Qom for a ceremony and burial Tuesday. House to vote on limiting action . House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that the House will vote this week on a use-of-force resolution to limit Trump's ability to act against Iran, the Washington Post reports. She called the assassination of Soleimani a "provocative and disproportionate military airstrike targeting high-level Iranian military officials" that endangered US military personnel and others. Any such measure, however, is unlikely to get far in the Senate.

. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that the House will vote this week on a use-of-force resolution to limit Trump's ability to act against Iran, the Washington Post reports. She called the assassination of Soleimani a "provocative and disproportionate military airstrike targeting high-level Iranian military officials" that endangered US military personnel and others. Any such measure, however, is unlikely to get far in the Senate. Trump "notifies" Congress. Democrats have complained that Trump acted without notifying Congress. Trump said a tweet Sunday would serve as notification of future action. "These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner," he said. "Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!"

(Read more Qasem Soleimani stories.)
- A passionate fishmonger named Grace Tetteh has run her business with her 1st and 2nd generations for 48 years

- The children and grandchildren in the business indicate that they were not forced to join as they discovered a passion for the job

- According to the family, they make good returns from the business

Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

Grace Tetteh, affectionately called Osofo and her generation of daughters and granddaughters have kept a family business of fishmongering going for a total of 48 years.

According to Graphic.com.gh, Osofo indicated that she started the business since she was 17 and has kept it running very religiously.

She mentioned that previously, the effort was just to go to the seashore and carry loads of fresh fish for random people for money until she decided it was time to start the business of mongering.

READ ALSO: 27-year-old Ghanaian lady goes from selling watches to owning Oil & Gas Company

Osofo recounts how she used to walk from the Salaga Market at James Town in Accra carrying her fresh fish in a big basin to the Kaneshie Market to sell and then walk back home.

Grace's daughters Naa Lamley Lamptey and Lamiorkor Lamptey, and two grandchildren Naomi Coffie and Koshie Lamptey stay in Odorkor where they run the business.

Each day, the family separately journey to Elmina, Winneba, Apam, and Cape Coast, all in the Central Region, to buy the fish, returning by mid-day to sell their wares.

READ ALSO: Lady sings Kofi Kinaata's Things Fall Apart 'better' than he (Video)

Speaking about the returns they make from the business, the hardworking family affirm that they live quite comfortably.

All the children, parents and their grandmother say they are able to take care of their separate families and fulfil any financial obligations.

According to the family, the business was not forced on any of them. The children Lamley and Lamiorkor say they drew inspiration from their mother and started helping her until their decision to go fully in the business.

READ ALSO: 4 Ghanaian actresses make 30 Most Beautiful African Women of the Decade list

Naomi and Koshie who are the grandchildren shared similar opinions.

In other news, Kelvin Amaniampong, a 14-year-old SHS student from Akim Manso in the Eastern Region of Ghana has created a groundbreaking innovation that can save the Free SHS Policy in Ghana 4m every year.

Enjoy reading our stories? Download YEN's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Ghana news!

Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Source: YEN.com.gh
Happy New Year!  Over 100 billion private WhatsApp messages were sent on December 31st 2019 around the globe  Breaking all records for most messages sent on WhatsApp in one day ever   WhatsApp Inc. (@WhatsApp) January 3, 2020

WhatsApp is one of the best communication apps throughout the world that is used for messages and media exchanges regularly. With the inception of WhatsApp, iMessage and other text message services have lost their mojo among users. Even though WhatsApp require internet service, most people around the world use it for text messaging.On new years eve, WhatsApp broke all records by recording over 100 billion messages sent through the app. The new revelation by WhatsApp has taken everyone by shock. The data further shows that only 20 Billion of these messages are from Indian users. Apart from it, about 12 billion messages sent through the app were in the form of images.In a tweet, WhatsApp mentioned that these record-breaking messages were sent only during the 24-hour duration of the New Years eve. Imagine, 100 billion messages in just 24 hours? Astonishing!The UK and other countries were not behind, as the data suggests over 900 million messages were sent within the UK during the New Years eve on WhatsApp.The data shows how rapidly WhatsApp is moving ahead and still remains the number one choice of people all over the world. Not only just you can send messages, but you can also send media messages, put stories, send location, etc. in encryption. WhatsApp was bought by Facebook in 2014 in only 19 billion dollars and today the app is much more worth it than it was before. It is one of the most favorite apps of people throughout the world.With over 1.5 billion active users, the number of messages still remains an intriguing question. This shows how rapidly WhatsApp is increasing in its worth and replacing other traditional forms of messaging. Lets see where the number will skyrocket in the next year!Read next: Adverts to be launched on WhatsApp and users are not happy
Pro VC of JNU meets Delhi LG, appraises him of situation

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Jan 06: The Registrar and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of JNU met with Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, Anil Baijal and appraised him of the situation.

The LG took stock of the situation and urged and calm returns at the university. Meanwhile, the police said that the medical examination of 35 students at the AIIMS has been completed.

EarlierUnion Home Minister, Amit Shah asked the Baijal to intervene following the violence at JNU. He asked the LG to speak with the representatives of the JNU and find a solution to the problem.

JNU VC appeals for peace, says top priority is to protect academic interests

On Sunday Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal Baijal to restore order on the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus after violence erupted there and the LG said he has directed police to take action against the perpetrators.

NEWS AT NOON, JANUARY 6th, 2020

'Spoke to Hon'ble LG and urged him to direct police to restore order. He has assured that he is closely monitoring the situation and taking all necessary steps,' Kejriwal tweeted.

Shortly after the tweet, Baijal condemned the violence and said he has directed police to take all possible steps to maintain law and order.

'The violence in JNU against students and teachers is highly condemnable. Directed @DelhiPolice to take all possible steps in coordination with the JNU Administration to maintain law and order & take action against the perpetrators of violence. The situation is being closely monitored,' the LG said in a tweet.

In another tweet, Kejriwal said he was shocked to know about the violence on JNU campus.

'I am so shocked to know abt the violence at JNU. Students attacked brutally. Police shud immediately stop violence and restore peace. How will the country progress if our students will not be safe inside univ campus?' the chief minister said.

Members of JNU Students' Union and ABVP clashed on the university campus Sunday evening, sources said, adding it happened during a public meeting organised by JNU Teachers' Association.

The students' union claimed its president Aishe Ghosh and many other students were injured in stone-pelting by ABVP members. But the RSS-backed students' organisation alleged its members were brutally attacked by Left-affiliated student outfits and 25 of them were injured.

Reacting to the violence, the Aam Aadmi Party alleged the BJP was 'ruining' this country and hooliganism was at its peak under its rule.

Amit Shah tells Delhi LG to fix problem at JNU

'Seeing this picture of JNU woman Prof. Suchitra Sen ji is heart-wrenching. What has the BJP made of JNU. It is the same university from where the country's finance and foreign ministers and thousands of other jewels come from. The BJP is ruining this country,' senior AAP leader Sanjay Singh tweeted in Hindi.

In another tweet, he said, 'The attack on JNU president Aishe Ghosh and General Secretary Satish Chandra Yadav is a challenge to the youth of the country. Where is Delhi police. Hooliganism is at its peak in the BJP regime'.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 19:37:08|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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LONDON, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- British new car registrations fell in 2019 amid political and economic uncertainty, with annual registrations dropping for the third consecutive year, according to figures released Monday by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

Data showed that new car registrations in Britain slid to 2,311,140 units in 2019, a drop of 2.4 percent from 2018.

"The turbulent market reacted to weak business and consumer confidence, general political and economic instability and confusion over clean air zones," said SMMT.

Despite an overall fall, combined alternatively fuelled vehicle (AFV) registrations surged in 2019, representing a record 7.4 percent market share.

Figures showed that hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) continued to dominate the sector, with registrations rising by 17.1 percent to 97,850 units. Battery electric vehicle (BEV) registrations saw the biggest percentage growth, increasing by 144.0 percent to 37,850 units and overtaking plug-in hybrids for the first time.

"Despite the overall decline in 2019, the UK car market remains the second biggest in the EU, behind Germany," stated SMMT.

Mike Hawes, chief executive of SMMT, said, "A third year of decline for the UK new car market is a significant concern for industry and the wider economy. Political and economic uncertainty and confusing messages on clean air zones have taken their toll on buyer confidence, with demand for new cars at a six-year low."

"A stalling market will hinder industry's ability to meet stringent new CO2 targets and, importantly, undermine wider environmental goals," added Hawes.

"We urgently need more supportive policies: investment in infrastructure; broader measures to encourage uptake of the latest, low and zero emission cars; and long term purchase incentives to put the UK at the forefront of this technological shift," Hawes said.
Sacha Baron Cohen (Credit: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Sacha Baron Cohen doubled down on his recent broadside against Facebook at last night's Golden Globes, with a withering joke about the social network's editorial policies.

Cohen took to the stage in Beverly Hills to slam Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, while introducing a clip of new movie Jojo Rabbit.

Read more: Tom Hanks priceless reaction to Gervaiss Golden Globes speech

The movie, helmed by Taika Waititi centres on a young boy growing up in Nazi Germany.

The hero of this next movie is a naive, misguided child who spreads Nazi propaganda and only has imaginary friends, said Cohen.

His name is Mark Zuckerberg.

Watch Sacha Baron Cohen take on Mark Zuckerberg while presenting #JojoRabbit at the #GoldenGlobes https://t.co/D5vyLVJMas pic.twitter.com/rIal2YZaLz  The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) January 6, 2020

After some sharp intakes of breath and laughter, Cohen went on: Sorry, sorry. This is an old intro for The Social Network.

Im actually talking about Jojo Rabbit. Its nominated for two Golden Globes and its directed by its star, the brilliant and groundbreaking Taika Waititi.

Cohen went viral before Christmas after making a startling speech at a summit staged by the Anti-Defamation League.

Read more: The 2020 Golden Globes winners in full

It it, he excoriated Facebook for continuing to ignore calls for it to more effectively moderate its content when it comes to hate speech and racism.

Sadly, there will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites and child abusers, he said. But I think we could all agree that we should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims.

If Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads  Listen to Sacha Baron Cohen slam the social media industry for facilitating the spread of hate, lies, and conspiracies pic.twitter.com/QinOnNRvxv  NowThis (@nowthisnews) November 22, 2019

He added: I believe it's time for a fundamental rethink of social media and how it spreads hate, conspiracies and lies.
Withings has announced a new health-oriented smartwatch at CES 2020, the ScanWatch. This is a hybrid smartwatch which has a minimalistic design, and quite a few features.

This smartwatch is made out of metal (316L stainless steel), and it has a round watchface. It has a small circular PMOLED display in the upper portion of its (sapphire glass) watchface. In the bottom portion of the watchface, youll notice a dedicated daily step goal percentage area.

The Withings ScanWatch comes in 38mm and 42mm variants

This smartwatch comes in both 38mm and 42mm variants, and there are a couple, slight design differences between the two. The 42mm variant has a raised perimeter for minute markets, and slightly thicker bezels, while its lugs are slightly thicker and differently designed as well.

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The watch also has a crown dial on the right side. That is both a button, and a rotating dial at the same time. Its made out of metal, just like the watch itself.

Withings says that its health-oriented ScanWatch is developed with cardiologists, and will soon be clinically validated.

This smartwatch can measure your heart rate, while it also measures your activity, like a regular smartwatch. On top of that, it comes with a built-in electrocardiogram (ECG), and it offers sleep apnea detection as well. It can measure your heart rate while youre sleeping, and it also measures oxygen saturation. GPS is built into this watch, and the same goes for the altimeter.

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The watch offers smart notifications, and it is water resistant up to 50m. SpO2 sensor is a part of the package as well, and so is Bluetooth low energy. In fact, Withings claims that this watch can provide you with 30 days of battery life.

This watch is pending both CE and FDA clearances

This smartwatch is pending both CE and FDA clearances, says Withings. Thats probably what the company meant when it mentioned that it will soon be clinically validated.

You will need to install the Health Mate application in order to take full advantage of this smartwatch. The app will show you ECG readings, and all other information that youre interested in.

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As you can see, this is not your regular smartwatch. This is a health-oriented, hybrid smartwatch, which comes with a small digital display. If youre in the market for something like that, this may be one of the better options out there.

The company says that the ScanWatch will be available in the US and Europe in Q2 2020. The 38mm variant of the watch will cost 249/229/$249, while the 42mm model will set you back 299/279/$299.

The watch will be available from both Withings and Amazon, while you will also be able to choose between different color options, and select from swappable soft silicone and leather watchbands.
President Donald Trump delivers remarks following the U.S. Military airstrike against Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, Iraq, in West Palm Beach, Fla., on a Jan. 3, 2020. (Tom Brenner/Reuters)

Trump Meets With New Ukraine Ambassador, Other Diplomats at White House

Ukraines new ambassador to the United States was one of six diplomats to meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on Jan. 6.

Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchenko and five other diplomats received credentials during a ceremony in the Oval Office.

Credentialing ceremonies happen throughout the year.

The other five diplomats were Martin Weiss of Austria, Mansour Kane of Senegal, Thani Thongphakdi of Thailand, Isilio Antonio de Fatima Coelho da Silva of Timor-Leste, and South Koreas Lee Soo-hyuck.

The event was closed to the press.

Trump was impeached by House Democrats in December 2019 for abuse of office and obstruction of Congress. The impeachment inquiry was triggered by an anonymous complaint about his July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump asked Zelensky to look into corruption allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden and Bidens son Hunter Biden. Democrats said that amounted to an attempt to get a foreign country to interfere in the 2020 election because Joe Biden is a Democratic presidential candidate.

Trump said its his duty to probe allegations of corruption.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) still hasnt delivered the impeachment articles to the Senate so an impeachment trial hasnt happened. Pelosi hasnt given an update on how long she plans to hold the articles for. Pelosi has said shes withholding the articles to force the GOP-held Senate to hold a fair trial. Several GOP Senators have threatened to change Senate rules to be able to go ahead without the articles if she doesnt hand them over soon.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks to media at the Capitol in Washington on Dec. 19, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Monday that Trump doesnt want a delay in the trial, and wants instead to focus on the Iran threat. She also criticized House Democrats, who said during the push to impeach Trump that the president was a danger to the country and needed to be removed.

It looks like Nancy Pelosi favors a delay in the impeachment process, because she hasnt bothered to send over the articles of impeachment from the House. Which is it? Is the president an imminent threat to the republic, a clear and present danger who must be removed immediately? Or did she take a little mini-sabbatical over the break and has decided when to send over the articles of impeachment? Conway said.

Also on Monday, former national security adviser John Bolton said hes willing to testify in a Senate impeachment trial if hes subpoenaed.

Since my testimony is once again at issue, I have had to resolve the serious competing issues as best I could, based on careful consideration and study. I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify, Bolton said.
The death toll from the gas explosion in Kaduna State has increased to six, the police have said.

PREMIUM TIMES reported the explosion which occurred Saturday afternoon at a gas plant in Sabon Tasha.

President Muhammadu Buhari also expressed deep sadness over the explosion which led to the death of the Chairman, Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission, Simon Mallam, his son and three others.

On Monday, the police in Kaduna said the death toll had increased to six.

The police, in a statement by its spokesperson, Yakubu Sabo, also said properties valued at N16 million were destroyed in the explosion.

Read the full statement by the police below.

Kaduna Police Command wishes to update the general Public that the death toll has increased to six from the five persons already mentioned in the earlier statement.

2. The Command has also in the course of investigation identified five of the deceased victims as;

(1) Prof. Mallam Simon M

(2) Wale Ajayi M

(3) Daniel Peter M

(4) Victor Asoegwu M

(5) Micheal Ernest M

Properties valued at sixteen Million, four hundred and two thousand,three hundred Naira (#16,402,300) only, have been burnt in the four shops affected by the fire.

3. The Commissioner of Polic CP Ali Aji Janga psc has expressed his sincere condolences to the families of the victims and assured the Public that, the Command is still investigating the root cause of the incident and will ensure justice in accordance with the law.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's six-week break from their royal duties contributed a lot in their new plans, including their intention to show that they can be the power couple of the royal family.

The Sussexes unquestionably regained their energies and spirits after they spent time with Meghan's mother, Doria Ragland, in the U.S over the Thanksgiving week before traveling to Canada where they spent their first New Year with their son, Archie.

Despite stepping back from the royal watchers temporarily, they spared some time to do their duties in pursuit of improving their image to the monarchy and the royal watchers.

The Christmas Card Proved

A few days before Christmas, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex unveiled their 2019 Holiday Card that featured the family-of-three.

The card appeared to be the usual royal greetings they always deliver every year. But it turned out that the royal couple has a subtle message they wanted to tell the world about.

In an exclusive one-on-one conversation with The Sun's Fabulous Digital, body language expert Judi James analyzed the whole Christmas card and stated that Prince Harry and Meghan wanted to "look cool, stylish, and different" while promoting a more environmentally friendly way to send out greetings.

James added: "this spontaneous-looking pose looks like something from a fashion magazine interview with an A-list power couple."

No hard copies were reportedly sent out in line with the "Save The Earth" slogan that the Sussexes want to promote.

With this gesture showed by the Sussexes, it is obvious that they took the chance to improve their public image during the holiday season, and they succeeded.

Sussexes Still Working While On Break

Aside from the low-key way to "look cool," Prince Harry and Meghan also dedicated their hearts to serve their charities even when they were already off their duties.

Through the Association of Commonwealth Universities, Markle's patronage, she released a statement on how colleges and universities play important roles in this world. The Duchess of Sussex also emphasized how it can be beneficial to people notwithstanding their gender, race and socioeconomic background.

Meanwhile, Prince Harry sent a video message and presented it at Oslo RevCon. The Duke of Sussex spoke about the projects started by his late mother, Princess Diana, and how he is doing anything to continue her works.

He focused on delivering an inspiring message regarding how some parts of this world can be dangerous landmines. But thanks to Princess Diana, an active landmine field before turned into a healthy community today.

When they come back from their break, the two are expected to start their separate charitable foundation, the "Sussex Royal", after they decided to split from the joint charity with Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2019.

The Most Powerful Thing the Sussexes Did Yet

Before their long-awaited break, Prince Harry and Meghan continued her battle with U.K. tabloids, dropping more damaging bombs to their detractors through some newly released court claims.

Through her lawyers, Markle filed new legal documents that voluminously detailed the libelous acts of U.K. tabloids.

In 2019, they also began taking legal action against the aforementioned publication for breaching the Data Privacy Act of 2018 (or the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe). New allegations against the U.K's biggest mid-market newspaper publication included breach of copyright, misapplication of private information, and another count of data privacy felonies.

With these things they independently did in the past years, royal watchers are sure that the Sussexes will be crowned as the "coolest" power couple soon.
The top US diplomat expressed confidence Sunday that 5,200 American troops would be allowed to stay in Iraq, even after the war-torn countrys parliament approved a draft measure to urge the expulsion of US forces.

The vote, the news of which broke as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was making the rounds on Sunday morning talk shows in Washington to defend the Donald Trump administrations decision to kill Islamic Revolutionary Guards elite Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani, is another setback to the US-led campaign to defeat the Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS) in Iraq.

The Pentagon paused the anti-IS mission Sunday in preparation for possible retaliation from Iran over Soleimanis death, after Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah launched two rocket attacks near Iraqi bases where American troops are stationed in Baghdad and Balad.

This has limited our capacity to conduct training with partners and to support their operations against Daesh [IS] and we have therefore paused these activities, subject to continuous review, the coalition said in a statement. The decision marks the second time the United States has halted the mission in the past three months; a temporary pause also came into effect after Turkeys incursion into northern Syria in October.

The United States had already enhanced security and defensive measures for American troops in Iraq over the weekend, and NATO said it would suspend efforts to train forces to fight the terror group as it holds an emergency meeting Monday after President Trump and Iranian officials traded public threats to escalate the conflict over the weekend.

But in the immediate aftermath of the Iraqi vote, Trump administration officials tried to make the case that a continued US footprint was still in Baghdads interest. Questioned about the provisional Iraqi vote to expel US forces, Pompeo, the top US diplomat, said that the continuing American presence was still in Iraqs interest, but did not directly address the parliament's action.

It is the United States that is prepared to help the Iraqi people get what it is they deserve and continue our mission there to take down terrorism from ISIS and others in the region, Pompeo said. That is in defense of the Iraqi people and is good for America too, Pompeo said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

We are confident that the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there, Pompeo added later on "Fox News Sunday," saying that caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who resigned in November amid anti-government protests, is under political pressure to make the move.

Democrats used the Iraqi parliament's vote to counter the administrations claims that the strike that killed Soleimani had improved US national security. The mounting evidence two feet in front of your face is that the Soleimani attack has made us less safe, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy told "Face the Nation."

But an Iraqi lawmaker who spoke with Al-Monitor after the vote doubted that Abdul Mahdi would stick to his pledge to expel 5,200 US troops after a Pentagon operation approved by Trump took out Soleimani at Baghdad International Airport early Friday.

It is just restating [Baghdads] position to take care of the situation, said Sarkawt Shams, a member of Iraqs parliament, after lawmakers approved the draft bill. The move, Shams said, would make it more likely that US troops would be doing training, not fighting as Iraqis intensified security around US bases and the US Embassy.

The nonbinding measure, which will get further consideration in another session of parliament Jan. 11, is saying US forces should not fight others other than ISIS without permission from [the] Iraqi government, he said, such as strikes against Iranian militias and Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Units that are not aligned with Baghdad.

To expel American forces, Abdul Mahdi  who remains in power only until a successor is named  would have to send a formal bill to parliament for approval. Such a decision could also be passed on to his successor, experts said. There is not yet a timeline to ascertain the exit of US forces.

The US presence in Iraq is based on an exchange of diplomatic notes between the two nations that remains in place, a senior US defense official said Friday.
NASHVILLE, Tenn., Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Truxton Trust announced a leadership change in its Private Banking Division, one of the firms two core businesses. Tom Snyder, formerly Senior Managing Director and Chief Lending Officer, is Executive Vice President as of January 1, 2020. He will work with existing bank clients and focus on new business development. Tom Snyder has 48 years of banking experience and has been with Truxton Trust since its inception in 2004. He is one of its original founders.



Taking over Snyders former management responsibilities, W. Bryant Tirrill and William H. Hank Stuart have been elevated to Managing Directors, co-heading leadership of the private banking team, also effective January 1, 2020.

Tom Stumb, Chairman and CEO, said, As Chief Lending Officer since our inception, Tom Snyder has led the private banking team in growing our loan portfolio from $0 to over $350 million. And we still have yet to charge off any loan that weve originated. His commitment to protecting the capital of our bank and his guardianship of our asset quality are arguably unrivaled in the history of the U.S. banking industry. It has been a grand privilege to work alongside him, and I am thrilled he has agreed to continue working with us.

Bryant Tirrill joined Truxton Trust shortly after its inception in 2004 and has over 30 years of banking experience in the Nashville community. Hank Stuart joined Truxton Trust in 2016, also with over 30 years of banking experience. Prior to Truxton Trust, he was Executive Vice President of CedarStone Bank in Lebanon, Tennessee, for twelve years.

Andy May, President and CFO, said, We continue to grow our loan portfolio year over year with non-performing loans remaining zero percent of total assets. Bryant and Hank will work closely with the entire lending team to continue the delivery of customized banking solutions to our clients while growing bank assets. Their experience and drive are extremely impressive, and we look forward to their leadership.

About Truxton Trust

Truxton Trust Company is a provider of private banking, wealth management, trust, and family office services for wealthy individuals, their families and their business interests. Serving clients across the world, Truxtons vastly experienced team of professionals provides customized solutions to its clients complex financial needs. Founded in 2004 in Nashville, Tennessee, Truxton Trust upholds its original guiding principle: do the right thing. Truxton Trust Company is a subsidiary of financial holding company, Truxton Corporation (OTCPK: TRUX). For more information, visit truxtontrust.com.

Media Relations

Tamara Schoeplein

615-515-1714

tamara.schoeplein@truxtontrust.com
Jan. 13 is the deadline for home and business owners to apply for low-interest, long-term loans to assist with recovery efforts from last years flooding.

The loans are provided by the U.S. Small Business Administration for Jersey, Greene, Macoupin, Calhoun and other counties.
Comunicado del Grupo de Lima

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michael barbaro

From The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

[music]

Today: The trial was poised to be the most closely-watched in Japanese history  a case involving claims of corporate greed, wounded national pride, and a rigged legal system, until the defendant pulled off an unimaginable escape. Ben Dooley with the latest in the saga of Carlos Ghosn. Its Tuesday, January 14. Ben, set the scene for us. Its just before New Years in Tokyo. What are you doing?

ben dooley

So Im fast asleep. Its about 7:30 in the morning. Im expecting to have a very easy holiday. The government offices are all closed for a week. Nothings happening in Japan. And all of a sudden my phone starts ringing. And it rings and rings and rings, and finally I decide I better answer it. When I pick it up, its New York.

michael barbaro

And then when you say New York, you mean the feared editors of The New York Times.

ben dooley

Yes, the feared editors. You never want to get an early morning phone call from New York. Its never good news. It means either something bad has happened because someone else did something that you need to be worried about, or youve made some terrible mistake. And what they tell me is that Carlos Ghosn, the most famous criminal defendant in Japan, has just mysteriously disappeared and reappeared in Lebanon.

archived recording 1 Well, its a story were all talking about, the escape straight out of the movies. archived recording 2 Juiciest story of the new year, at least so far. archived recording 3 An international cloak and dagger escape. archived recording 4 Dramatic and mysterious escape of Carlos Ghosn. archived recording 5 Former Nissan C.E.O. and chairman, Carlos Ghosn has left Japan. archived recording 6 Hes now in Lebanon. archived recording 7 Yes. archived recording 8 Just by magic? archived recording 9 Extraordinary. archived recording 10 Once a C.E.O., now an international fugitive.

ben dooley

And you know, my first reaction is, how could he possibly have done this? You know, it seems like something out of a movie  impossible.

michael barbaro

And then remind us who Carlos Ghosn is.

ben dooley

So Carlos Ghosn is this legendary C.E.O. who made his name by reviving Nissan, this Japanese company, one of the countrys largest automakers. He took the company from essentially what he has recently called it  a dead company  and brought it back to life. And it was this miracle of turnaround that made him famous in Japan and throughout the world.

archived recording 1 Carlos Ghosn is regarded as one of the most dazzling managers in the automotive business. archived recording 2 Hes a huge figure, not just in Japan, not just for Nissan, but in the car industry.

ben dooley

And he went on to become the C.E.O. of Nissan, and also the French automaker Renault.

archived recording He turned things around at Renault, and then Nissan where, in 2005, Carlos Ghosn became the first person to run two Fortune 500 global companies at the same time.

ben dooley

And those two companies formed an alliance and became one of the worlds largest automakers.

archived recording Its sort of hard to overstate the significance of going to Nissan and to Renault in this alliance.

ben dooley

Hes just living high  this incredible celebrity in the business world. And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, November 2018, he lands at an airport in Tokyo and is arrested.

archived recording Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn has been arrested for allegedly under-reporting his income.

ben dooley

And over the following several months, he is charged with four counts of financial wrongdoing.

archived recording The internal probe by the Japanese automaker found multiple violations, including salary fraud and personal use of company assets.

ben dooley

Essentially, prosecutors say that he was trying to enrich himself to the company. So thats the situation he finds himself in. He is facing trial on these four charges when he flees from Japan to Lebanon.

michael barbaro

And whats the answer to that question you have of how this happened? Whats the story?

ben dooley

Well, first, its important to understand that hes under house arrest, but its not super strict. I mean, he goes out to dinners, he travels to Kyoto. So hes been able to move around fairly easily. But as best as we can tell from our reporting and from local media and government statements is basically this. On December 29, he walks out of his home in Tokyo. This is a two-story, fairly large home in central Tokyo in a swanky neighborhood. And there are three cameras above the door that were installed by the prosecutors to keep a watch on him. And he just strolls out. Hes got a face mask on, like a surgical mask, the kind of thing that people typically wear here to stop themselves from getting sick, or stop other people from getting sick. Hes got on a hat, black clothes, and he walks out to a nearby hotel. He meets two men there, and they get on a bullet train to Osaka, which is a city to the southwest of Tokyo. Theyre on the train for about two hours. They get off the train. They walk into a hotel. And then the two men walk out without Carlos Ghosn, but what they have is these two boxes, two large boxes. And the boxes have been described as sort of boxes for holding audio equipment, maybe like speakers or kinds of things you might see roadies carrying at a concert. And these two men take these boxes to the Kansai International Airport to the private jet terminal. And the boxes are too big to go through the luggage screening. So theyre not screened. Keep in mind, its almost New Years. People are off their guard. Theyre not really that interested in checking to see whats in these boxes. Theyre just kind of relaxing, looking forward to their holiday. And these man just wheel these boxes right onto the plane, a private jet thats waiting there. And the plane takes off, and in one of those boxes we believe is Carlos Ghosn.

michael barbaro

Wow. So Japans most famous criminal defendant flees the country in an audio box.

ben dooley

Thats what we think happened.

michael barbaro

I mean, what youre describing feels both very simple and extremely elaborate.

ben dooley

Yeah. Well, this was not something that he did by himself with two friends. This is something that took a lot of resources, a lot of planning, and its something that hes famous for  being this detail-oriented planner and someone who likes to manage lots of people, like big teams of people. So you can imagine this was a pretty complex operation even if the execution was simple.

michael barbaro

Ben, after all of that detailed planning and this escape, why is he going to Lebanon of all places?

ben dooley

Well, he had three passports. He is a citizen of Brazil, France and Lebanon. And Lebanon was the closest. It doesnt have an extradition treaty with Japan, which means that the Lebanese government will never send him back to Japan to face a trial. And hes something of a national hero in Lebanon. So he could expect a heros welcome.

michael barbaro

So whats the reaction back in Tokyo once word trickles back that he has pulled this off?

ben dooley

Silence. Absolute silence. Theyre caught completely off-guard. But behind that silence, theres sort of an embarrassment that the prosecutors have allowed the countrys most famous criminal defendant to slip through their fingers, and some outrage. Even among people who supported him, there was a sense that hed gone too far, and that he should have stayed in Japan to defend himself. That would have been the most appropriate thing for him to do.

michael barbaro

And then what are you doing at this point? Because a story that I assume you are very much responsible for has literally just up and left the country that you cover.

ben dooley

Yeah. Well, suddenly this story that I was hugely responsible for, when I was supposed to be taking a vacation, just appears in my lap. And Im just frantically calling as many people as I can, getting in touch with his PR team, his lawyers, various people that Ive spoken to over the previous year about his case, pretty much anyone I can think of. And the big question I have is, now that hes free, is he going to talk? And if so, will he talk to us? And then I get a phone call. And someone asks me, if Carlos Ghosn is willing to talk to you, would you be able to get on a plane to Lebanon?

michael barbaro

Wow.

ben dooley

And I said, of course.

[music]

michael barbaro

Well be right back. O.K. So Ben, Carlos Ghosn is willing to talk to you. What happens next?

ben dooley

So I go online and I buy a last-minute ticket to Beirut. And Im frantically packing, get all my stuff in order, run to Haneda Airport, jump on the plane. And 23 hours later, I touch down in Lebanon.

michael barbaro

Wow. Thats a long flight.

ben dooley

Yeah. There was a layover in Paris. So that wasnt so bad. I had a croissant and some coffee. So Im in Lebanon and Im preparing to talk to Carlos Ghosn. But before I get to sit down with him, first theres this news conference that hes scheduled.

ben dooley So were in an Uber heading towards Press Club where were going to see Carlos Ghosn give his first press conference since he was arrested in November of 2018. Its a rainy day today. Traffic is pretty intense.

ben dooley

So I and one of my colleagues from the Beirut bureau go to a Press Club, where the conference is going to be held.

ben dooley All right. Weve just arrived at the venue.

ben dooley

And we get there, and its just chaos.

archived recording [CHATTER]

ben dooley

I mean, there are hundreds of reporters. Theyre all clamoring to get in. People are screaming, shouting, pushing.

ben dooley Great. Were heading through security to the venue. Weve got some guy with a guard dog here. Tensions running a little bit high here.

ben dooley

There are armed guards with dogs and TV trucks everywhere.

ben dooley Sorry. Were on the list. New York Times.

ben dooley

And we get inside. And we go upstairs and we walk into this big, empty white room with chairs lined up. There are about 100 reporters there from all over the world.

ben dooley This is whats usually referred to as a media circus. archived recording 1 Please be seated. Please be seated. archived recording 2 Sit down! Sit down!

ben dooley

And theyre all waiting to hear what Carlos Ghosn has to say.

ben dooley So hes about to walk in. Weve just heard  Yeah, hes walking in. Hes with his wife Carol.

ben dooley

And when he comes in, people just swarm him. Its a crush of reporters.

ben dooley All of the cameramen and photographers are pushing up trying to get a good shot of him as he walks into the room.

ben dooley

Flashbulbs are going off and everyones just crowded around him.

ben dooley This is pretty exciting. Ive been writing about this guy for almost a year now. Its the first time Ive actually seen him in the flesh.

ben dooley

He looks healthy. Hes got a nice black suit on, red tie. I mean, hes the picture of a C.E.O.

michael barbaro

So no worse for the wear?

ben dooley

You wouldnt know it. And he walks up to the lectern, and the show starts.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for taking the time to be here.

ben dooley

Its everything that hes been saving up for the last year.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) As you can imagine, today is a very important day for me. One, that I have looked forward to every single day for more than 400 days.

ben dooley

He just is taking the opportunity to explain himself, what happened to him, his whole story.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Since I was brutally taken from my world as I knew it, ripped from my family, my friends, my communities, from Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi, and the 450,000 women and men who comprise those companies.

ben dooley

And he starts walking us through his history with Nissan.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) And Renault, which was nowhere in 1999, which became one of the top 60 brands in the world 

ben dooley

 and how he turned it around, and the amazing success that the company had while he was C.E.O.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) You know, a C.E.O. is here as long as he performs. I didnt stay 17 years head of Nissan because I was Carlos Ghosn. I was there only because I was performing. I was delivering growth. I was delivering profit. I was delivering cash flow. I was delivering business.

ben dooley

And then he starts to talk about the arrest.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) I was arrested on November 19, 2018.

ben dooley

And how it happened.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) I didnt suspect anything.

ben dooley

And how he was completely caught off guard.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Some people asked me, oh my god, you didnt look at this? You didnt mention this? You didnt suspect this? And I say, you know what happened in Pearl Harbor? Did you see Pearl Harbor happen?

ben dooley

He says it was like Pearl Harbor.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Did you see Pearl Harbor happen? Did you notice what happened in Pearl Harbor?

michael barbaro

Huh. He says his arrest was like the sneak attack from Japan that led the United States into World War II?

ben dooley

Yeah, exactly. He said he had no idea it was coming.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) And I didnt notice it, because its true that when its planned and its confidential and its secret, well, it happens. And youd be surprised, and I was surprised.

ben dooley

And then he starts to go through all of the charges against him.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) The first accusation is the under-reporting. This is the main accusation for which I was arrested.

ben dooley

And hes got slides. Hes projecting documents on the wall.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) I think we have the list. Yeah, we have here the list.

ben dooley

You know, getting way into the weeds of these issues, frankly trying to litigate them in front of this audience.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) We continue. This is another one.

ben dooley

And people, at this point, are starting to get a little antsy. Theyre starting to have conversations behind me, because you cant read the documents. And even if you could, theres no way that we were in a position to judge what they actually said about the charges against him. But the larger point hes trying to make is that this is a stitch up.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) But obviously, I didnt know that Nissan was behind it. And it was all staged way before between the prosecutor and the public.

ben dooley

That all the charges against him are completely political. Theyre made up. And hes saying that the reason why the Japanese government brought these charges against them is basically because he wounded their national pride.

michael barbaro

And whats his argument for how he did that?

ben dooley

So basically, it comes down to the idea that, as the head of Renault, he had been tasked by the French government to make the alliance between Renault and Nissan stronger, to make the alliance so strong that the two companies would never be able to be separated. And this was seen in Japan, he argues, as essentially an attempt to take one of the crown jewels of Japans auto industry and turn it into a French company. And if this were to have gone through, the argument was then France would be in control of one of Japans biggest and most important companies.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Unfortunately, there was no trust.

ben dooley

And that was something that the Japanese government and certain people at Nissan were just unwilling to allow to happen.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) And some of our Japanese friends thought the only way to get rid of the influence of Renault on Nissan is to get rid of him.

michael barbaro

So he says that the crime he committed  which it sounds like he doesnt think is a crime at all  is taking a Japanese brand and making it less Japanese, and offending the people and the government of Japan in the process.

ben dooley

Right. And he says that was not at all his plan, but that was the fear, and thats what led to his downfall.

michael barbaro

According to Carlos Ghosn?

ben dooley

Yes.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Let me continue. 130 days in prison, solitary confinement, tiny cell without windows.

ben dooley

And he also went into detail about his experience in the Japanese justice system.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Showered twice a week. Tried to ask to have more. They said no. Prescribed medication is forbidden. You can get only the medicine from the prison.

ben dooley

How he had spent more than 130 days in a Japanese jail waiting to get on bail. During that time, he had been interrogated by prosecutors without his lawyer from 7 to 11 hours a day. And even once he got out of jail, there were these restrictions put on his daily life. And the most egregious one for him, he said, was that he wasnt allowed to meet his wife.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) And the question was very interesting. He was saying, why do they want to meet? Id say, O.K., how about a Zoom, a conference. He said, what do they want to talk about?

ben dooley

And Japanese prosecutors had essentially said that they believed that if he were allowed to speak to her, might tamper with evidence, might try to get to witnesses in the case. And his argument is, well, thats ridiculous, because if I wanted to do that, I could have done that through anyone. I didnt have to use my wife. So the only reason why they were forbidding me from seeing her was because they were punishing me.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Because they knew that by not allowing me to have a normal life, they were breaking me.

ben dooley

Theyre trying to squeeze a confession out of him. And when he refused to confess to the crimes they had charged him with, they threatened to make his life a living hell.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) I felt like I was not a human anymore.

ben dooley

So he said that all these elements add up to create a system of justice that was rigged against him, and that he had no chance of ever getting a fair trial in Japan, and thats why he felt he had to escape.

michael barbaro

And Ben, as youre sitting there hearing Carlos Ghosn make these arguments, what are you thinking? And do they sound accurate and truthful, or do they sound highly disputable?

ben dooley

Its impossible to say at this point. We havent seen any of the evidence. And I think if you were to ask the prosecutors, they would say, this is a man who lied to Nissans shareholders. This is a man who enriched himself at the companys expense. And its just impossible to know what the truth is at this point.

michael barbaro

Right, because he fled the country before the trial.

ben dooley

Right, exactly.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) I left Japan because I wanted justice. Thats why I left Japan. I didnt run from justice. I want justice, because justice is the only way Ill re-establish my reputation, and the only way what Ive done during my life is going to be recognized to its value. And if I dont get it in Japan, Im going to get it somewhere else. Thank you for your attention.

ben dooley

And so Carlos Ghosn finishes up his presentation, and he moves into the question and answer section.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) O.K., what were going to try to do is go by region.

ben dooley

And he starts answering questions in four different languages.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) [SPEAKING ARABIC]

ben dooley

Hes speaking Arabic, which is the language he spoke at home with his parents.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]

ben dooley

Hes speaking Portuguese, which is the language of the country he was born  Brazil.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) [SPEAKING FRENCH]

ben dooley

Hes speaking in French, the language of the country he was educated. And, of course, in English.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Well, as you know 

ben dooley

Im just watching him flawlessly move from language to language answering these questions for reporters around the world. And it occurs to me as Im watching, its an incredible performance, and it says a lot about this guys identity. Hes this transnational business person who essentially doesnt belong to any one nation. He lives in this almost kind of like gray area between nation states. And theres something about it that it seems is really essential to the case against him and how hes responded to it.

michael barbaro

What do you mean?

ben dooley

Well, he believes that the charges against him were brought by the Japanese because he is not Japanese. So theres that on one hand. But on the other hand, also, he feels like hes not beholden to Japanese justice. As this person with passports from Brazil and France and Lebanon, and houses around the world, and connections, and networks that span the globe, he doesnt feel like he has to subject himself to Japanese justice. He believes that he can make the choice to just get up and leave, to disappear.

michael barbaro

Right. So whether or not this tactic can ever seem justified or not justified, the message that Carlos Ghosn is sending by fleeing his trial in Japan is that if youre a global C.E.O. and you are well-connected and you have resources, you get to choose which countrys legal system you can abide by, which ones youre willing to participate in, and which ones you plan an elaborate escape from, which basically boils down to not really feeling accountable to any one country.

ben dooley

Right. And it was a question that was bothering me, and I really wanted to ask him about it. And I finally got the chance after the press conference ended and I got to sit down with him one-on-one. We went upstairs, and I tried to set up the fancy recorder you guys made me buy, and I messed it up. So we didnt get the whole interview, unfortunately. [LAUGHTER]

michael barbaro

We forgive you. It had been a long week.

ben dooley

It had been a long week. And I sat down with him and I asked him that question.

ben dooley We probably will have people listening or reading who are thinking to themselves, O.K., maybe the Japanese justice system is rigged, but the only reason why you could do this is because youre a person of wealth. You have power connections, and thats what allowed you to escape Japan. I mean, is that fair? carlos ghosn That you put the other way. That you put the other way.

ben dooley

And he kind of danced around the question, but he came down basically on the idea that the Japanese system is rigged.

carlos ghosn So back to your question, yes. At the end of the day, I fell in a trap, found the way out, which requires resources and contacts, no doubt about it. But the protection is not to have money. The protection is avoid going in places, or you can fall into a trap like this. And I think its my responsibility today that all the foreigners who are in Japan be careful.

ben dooley

That was the message that he wanted to convey to the world.

[music]

ben dooley

And the great irony here is that he says hes searching for justice, but because of a decision that he made he may never find it, because theres always going to be an asterisk next to this case. Hes not going to be able to make his case fully, and the Japanese prosecutors are never going to be able to make it either. So theres not going to be a real test of his innocence. But what he has done is, he has let C.E.O.s around the world know that this is an option, that if they dont like the justice in the country where they are, they can just get up and leave.

michael barbaro

Thank you, Ben.

ben dooley

Thank you, Michael.

michael barbaro
The head of Libya's UN-recognised government was in Algeria on Monday to discuss increasing tensions in his country, ahead of a visit by the Turkish foreign minister.

Since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that killed longstanding dictator Moamer Kadhafi, Libya has been plunged into chaos. It is now divided between the GNA and rival authorities based in the country's east.

Tensions escalated last year when eastern-based strongman Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive to capture the capital Tripoli, seat of the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).

The GNA sought help from Turkey where parliament passed a bill allowing the government to send troops to Libya to shore up the Tripoli government, and on Sunday Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said soldiers had begun deploying in the North African country.

The Algerian presidency said GNA Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj arrived on Monday at the head of a high-ranking delegation to "discuss ways to resolve the difficult situation" in Libya, the official APS news agency reported.

He was due to meet newly-elected Algerian President Abdelmadjid, it said.

Algerian state television said the GNA's foreign and interior ministers, Mohamed Taha Siala and Fathi Bachagha, met their Algerian counterparts Sabri Boukadoum and Kamel Beldjoud.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was also expected in Algiers later in the day for a two-day visit, according to his ministry.

On Thursday, Algerian foreign minister Boukadoum announced "several initiatives in favour of a peaceful solution to the Libyan crisis" and reaffirmed his country's opposition to foreign interference in Libya.

Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia back Haftar, while the GNA is supported by Turkey and Qatar.

Algeria shares nearly 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) of border with Libya and 1,400 km (870 miles) with Mali.

After taking office in December, Tebboune convened Algeria's top security body to discuss the situation at its borders, notably with Libya.
While the BSP is facing threats from the Bhim Army, on one hand, and the Congress, on the other, Mayawati is also getting increasingly isolated in politics.

Lucknow, Jan 6 (IANS) As Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati prepares to enter her 64th year on January 15, her troubles seem to be multiplying.

Mayawati's growing nervousness is evident from the fact that she has been rather inconsistent in her political statements in recent months.

Ever since Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra increased her activities in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati has stepped up her attacks on the Congress.

Priyanka has been visiting homes of the gang rape victims and victims of anti-CAA protests. Since most of the victims are Dalits or Muslims, Mayawati is feeling threatened over this 'encroachment of her support base'.

The Congress is apparently working towards regaining its traditional vote base among Dalits and Muslims in Uttar Pradesh.

"The BSP president has neither the time nor the inclination to visit people's home in their times of distress. Priyanka Gandhi has made it a point to visit such people - whether it is the Sonebhadra massacre, or Unnao rape victim or anti-CAA protests. A leader should not expect voters' support if they do not have the time to reach out to them," said a senior Congress leader.

Akhilesh Singh, a senior Congress leader, says, "Does anyone remember when Mayawati hit the streets last time. Apart from tweeting, she has not done anything substantial for people affected by violence. She cannot dictate where Priyanka should go or should not. Since Priyanka is focusing on UP, she has to be here."

Moreover, Mayawati's cautious criticism of the BJP government at the centre and the state has also not gone down well with the Muslims.

"Mayawati's stand with regard to the BJP has been changing at an alarming rate. We do not know whether she is in support of the BJP or against it but we do know that the BSP is under pressure from the Modi government. Mayawati has been asking her party workers not to protest against abrogation of Article 370 or CAA," said Faisal Khan, a former BSP worker.

Meanwhile, the Bhim Army has now firmly positioned itself against the BSP. Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad, initially, extended the olive branch to Mayawati but after she spurned his offer, has decided to oppose her.

The Bhim Army, which was a quasi-political organization till now, has announced that it will contest the upcoming elections in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.

Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar has been wooing the youth in Dalit and Muslim communities with a vengeance.

Presently in jail, Chandrashekhar has found support from the Congress. Priyanka Gandhi has slammed his arrest and has sought his release from jail.

According to sources, if the Congress agrees to an alliance with the Bhim Army in the 2022 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the BSP could emerge as a major loser.

The BSP has already burnt its bridge with the Samajwadi Party and Akhilesh Yadav is in no mood for reconciliation.

Dalit leaders have been walking out of BSP and the party is completely bereft of a second rung leadership.

amita/skp/
Harvey Weinstein arrives at federal court, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020, in New York. The disgraced movie mogul faces allegations of rape and sexual assault. Jury selection begins this week. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Harvey Weinstein has been indicted on new sex crime charges in Los Angles, just as his trial on separate rape and sexual assault charges in New York was poised to get under way.

Prosecutors in LA recently said they were reviewing eight cases accusing Weinstein of sexual assault.

Los Angeles County district attorney Jackie Lacey said Weinstein had been charged with raping one woman and sexually assaulting another in separate incidents over a two-day period in 2013.

"We believe the evidence will show that the defendant used his power and influence to gain access to his victims and then commit violent crimes against them," she said in a statement.

Expand Close Rose McGowan arrives with Rosanna Arquette to speak to reporters outside New York Criminal Court on the first day of film producer Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault trial in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., January 6, 2020. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon / Facebook

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Whatsapp Rose McGowan arrives with Rosanna Arquette to speak to reporters outside New York Criminal Court on the first day of film producer Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault trial in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., January 6, 2020. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon

"I want to commend the victims who have come forward and bravely recounted what happened to them. It is my hope that all victims of sexual violence find strength and healing as they move forward."

The news came on the day Weinstein and several of the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct converged at a New York City court where a judge and lawyers handled the final preparations for his trial on charges of rape and assault.

Speaking at the New York courthouse before the latest announcement, Weinstein's lawyers suggested they knew charges might be coming. They asked the judge for potential jurors to be sequestered partly because of the possibility that charges could be brought elsewhere against Weinstein while the trial was ongoing. The judge denied that request.

Earlier on Monday, Weinstein, 67, entered the courthouse in New York leaning on a walking frame following a recent back surgery. Asked outside court how his back felt, Weinstein responded with a thin smile and a so-so gesture with his hand.

In a brief hearing, the judge declined to gag Weinstein's lawyers from speaking to the media - in addition to denying the motion to sequester jurors. The judge also turned down a defence request to call as a witness a police detective who had been accused of mishandling part of the case.

Across the street, actresses and other women who say they were sexually harassed or assaulted by Weinstein dismissed him as a villain undeserving of pity.

Expand Close A sign is held outside New York Criminal Court on the first day of film producer Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault trial in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., January 6, 2020. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon / Facebook

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Whatsapp A sign is held outside New York Criminal Court on the first day of film producer Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault trial in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., January 6, 2020. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon

"He looked cowardly. He wouldn't look at us. He wouldn't make eye contact," said Sarah Ann Masse, a performer and writer who said Weinstein once sexually harassed her in his underwear during a job interview. "This trial is a cultural reckoning regardless of its legal outcome," she said.

Jury selection will start on Tuesday, more than two years after the allegations first came to widespread public attention and catalysed the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein faces allegations that he raped one woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and performed a forcible sex act on a woman, Mimi Haleyi, who had come to him seeking film work in 2006.

He has pleaded not guilty and says any sexual activity was consensual. If he is convicted of the most serious charges against him, two counts of predatory sexual assault, he faces a mandatory life sentence.

For that to happen, prosecutors must demonstrate he had a habit of violating women, beyond the two directly involved in the encounters in which he is charged. They plan to call actress Annabella Sciorra, who says Weinstein forced his way into her Manhattan apartment in 1993 or 1994 and raped her after she starred in a film for his movie studio.

They also wanted jurors to hear from a few of the more than 75 women who have come forward publicly to accuse Weinstein of sexual misconduct ranging from harassment to assault.

Prosecutors won permission from the court to try to buttress their case with four other witnesses: Sciorra and three other accusers who have not been named.

One of those women said she had an encounter with Weinstein at a Manhattan hotel in 2004. A second was to give evidence about an interaction with Weinstein at a SoHo apartment in 2005. A third was described in court papers as having had an incident with Weinstein at a hotel in Beverly Hills, California, in February 2013.

Speaking outside court as proceedings began, a group of Weinstein's accusers spoke to reporters, including Masse, actresses Rosanna Arquette, Dominique Huett and Rose McGowan, model Paula Williams and actress and journalist Lauren Sivan.

McGowan thanked the women who will give evidence during the trial for representing many more women who may never get their day in court.

"They are standing for us, and I am immensely proud of them," she said. "We didn't have our day. But hopefully they will. Their victory will be our victory. Their loss will be our loss."

Ms Rotunno has argued the case is weak and said she plans to aggressively cross-examine the accusers.

In court on Monday, prosecutor Joan Illuzzi immediately set a combative tone by referring to Weinstein as a "predator", drawing an objection from the defence table.

The lawyers also clashed after prosecutors asked the judge to bar all lawyers in the trial from speaking about the evidence outside court. Ms Illuzzi accused Ms Rotunno of "degrading and humiliating and putting down our witnesses" in statements to the press leading up to the trial.

"I have not degraded anyone," Ms Rotunno responded.

Judge James Burke refused to issue a gag order, but told both sides: "Leave the witnesses alone, OK? Don't talk about them in any way."
VIJAYAWADA: The YSR Congress government is inclined towards ordering a Lokayukta probe into allegations of insider trading in the Amaravati lands. The decision follows the opposition Telugu Desam intensifying protests and agitations under the Save Amaravat campaign against relocation of the capital and the three capitals proposal.
A line-up of 27 former pupils are back at their old high school for the new term - because they are now members of staff there.

Former school pupils of Ysgol Cwm Rhondda school, in Porth, Wales, who make up almost half of all the teaching staff in roles from deputy head to learning support, have celebrated their return to the school by posing for a reunion class photo.

Headteacher Rhian Morgan Ellis, 57, who grew up in the former mining community in Rhondda, South Wales, before going on to run her old school, has now hired the former pupils on her staff to teach the new generations of children at the 750-strong school.

Ms Ellis, who was named UK headteacher of the year at the Pearson National Teaching Awards, said: 'It is the kind of place that once you're here it grabs you, that's because there are such positive relationships.'

Former school pupils of the welsh-speaking Ysgol Cwm Rhondda school, in Porth, Wales, were employed by headteacher Rhian Morgan Ellis (centre in red top and black cardigan), 57

The ex pupils make up almost half of all the teaching staff in roles from deputy head to learning support

Among the former pupils is Amy Morgan (left now and right as a pupil), 29, who started her career as a music teacher by returning to her old school

One of Ms Ellis' latest recruits is learning support assistant Amelia Davies, 19, who only left Ysgol Cwm Rhondda two years ago after finishing her exams.

She said: 'It's a lovely place to work, it's like we're a big family.

'Going from pupil to staff wasn't hard. As a headteacher, Rhian was always approachable and easy to talk to, and as a member of staff this is still very true.'

Meanwhile music teacher Amy Morgan, 29, who started her teaching career by going back to her old classrooms, said: 'As a pupil I had a positive experience at school. I enjoyed lessons and the school supported me in every way.

'Music was my favourite lesson and the lessons inspired me to become a music teacher.

'I was welcomed back with open arms.'

Deputy headteacher Craig Spanswick, 37, (left now and right as a pupil) began his teacher training at the school in 2004

Also among the former pupils who is now a teacher at his old school is music teacher Owain Harris, 39, (left now and right as a pupil)

Finance officer Elen Perry (left now and right as a pupil), 34, was once a pupil at Ysgol Cwm Rhondda, but now works as a member of staff there

Meanwhile Amelia Davies, 19, who only left Ysgol Cwm Rhondda two years ago, has returned to become a member of staff

Elsewhere Craig Spanswick, 37, who taught six of his colleagues when they were pupils, began his teacher training at the school in 2004 and is now deputy head.

He said: 'You can describe the school as a family. All the opportunities I was provided as a pupil I wanted to give back.'

'Arriving as a newly qualified teacher in 2004, Craig said: 'It never felt strange because no-one made it feel strange, it's such an inclusive school.'

Welsh teacher Helen Griffiths, 46, said: 'Returning to the school was very much like coming home,' said Helen.

'Rhian pushed me constantly as a pupil and then as a work colleague.

'She is the reason I decided to become a teacher and why my children are now brought up through the medium of Welsh. I wanted to have that impact on the pupils I teach.'

Also among the former pupils is finance officer Elen Perry, 34, and music teacher Owain Harris, 39.

Headteacher Rhian Morgan Ellis (pictured), 57, hired the ex pupils on her staff to teach the new generations of children at the 750-strong school
Between the white sand beaches, lush green palm trees, and crystal clear aquamarine blue water, Fiji looks more like a postcard than it does real life. It might just be the sweltering tropical heat talking, but you could almost swear the colors in Fiji are a little more vivid, the sunsets a little more magical, and the pace of life a little bit more relaxed. A literal slice of paradise, it's no wonder that a few hundred die-hard ravers fly south to the Mamanuca Islands each year to take part in the aptly named boutique electronic music festival Your Paradise. Taking place over five days in December, Your Paradise practically sells itself: intimate DJ sets, private island beach clubs, and even the chance to jump off the side of a barge-turned-floating-bar in the middle of the ocean.

But Your Paradise isn't just a midwinter escape for attendees. For the DJs playing the festival, it's a welcome end of the year vacation from their busy tour schedules. "Your Paradise is one of the most unique shows I play each year," says South African-born Australian DJ/actress, Dena Amy. "Between its mind-blowing location, intimate sets, and fun loving crowd it continues to prove itself as a bucket list party for both artists and fans."

For Your Paradise veterans like Mija, the festival has become something of a working retreat. "I go back every year because the people who organize it are amazing humans, and the resort is literally paradise," she says. "It's a great way to wrap up the year and escape from the typical DJ club world, while still getting to play dope music with my friends." Outside of their advertised timeslots on the main stage, it wasn't uncommon to see much of the festival's lineup walking around the resort having drinks with fans by the pool, heading out for a snorkeling excursion, or even trying to catch the midday surf. There were so many impromptu back to back sets that they practically became the norm, from A-Trak hoping on the decks with the LA based Night Bass crew or Oona Dahl and the Desert Hearts crew's Lee Reynolds holding it down beachside deep into the early morning hours.

For first-timer Mikey Lion of Desert Hearts, Your Paradise easily won him over, "the music was poppin', the surf was epic, and the combination of the local Fijians and festival goers made [it] one of my favorite parties this year. Bula!"

This year marked the first time that Your Paradise had opened the festival to American and New Zealand markets, offering flights from Los Angeles and Auckland in addition to their usual host of Australian cities. "Americans brought a whole lot of energy to the event which was great to see," says Your Paradise co-founder Hadi J. "They also came with a sense of discovery and an eagerness to take in Fijian culture and understand how the event ran. They were extremely respectful and appreciative of what we're trying to create."

With a significant increase in attendees and a renewed commitment to reducing the festival's carbon footprint as much as possible, this year's edition came with a whole new host of logistical problems as well. "Fiji being a country of less than a million habitants means we have to fly or ship in most infrastructure," explains Your Paradise co-founder, Ignacio Garcia. "Amazing support from partners like Fiji Airways allowed us to fly in over two tonnes of equipment. We also shipped in local timber and infrastructure to the island using Fiji's biggest barge." Garcia goes on to mention that in an effort to offset the festival's growth the team brought in an extra 40% to their volunteer team as well as donated some of the proceeds to the local Mamanuca Environment Society.

Relive all of the sun-soaked fun of Your Paradise in the gallery below (and if the FOMO is just too much, pre-registration is already open for 2020).
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf published a special bulletin via the National Terrorism Advisory System, indicating that there is no credible terrorist threat but warns Americans need to be extra vigilant for suspicious activity amid the threat of war with Iran.

Wolf tweeted Saturday, "The new @DHSgov NTAS Bulletin on the threat landscape was issued to inform & reassure the American public, state/local governments & private partners that DHS is actively monitoring & preparing for any specific, credible threat, should one arise."

The new @DHSgov NTAS Bulletin on the threat landscape was issued to inform & reassure the American public, state/local governments & private partners that DHS is actively monitoring & preparing for any specific, credible threat, should one arise. pic.twitter.com/iNnHU1TI9A  Acting Secretary Chad Wolf (@DHS_Wolf) January 4, 2020

Wolf's announcement said there's "no information indicating" a terrorist attack is imminent but said Iranian government officials and military leaders have called for revenge following US airstrikes that killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds military force and one of the most influential people in the country.

The bulletin warned about lone wolf attacks from "homegrown violent extremists could capitalize on the heightened tensions to launch individual attacks" on soft targets. It said Iran could use Hezbollah agents to conduct terrorist attacks within the borders of the US.

It warned: "An attack in the homeland may come with little or no warning."

The bulletin also said Iran could use cyberattacks to retaliate.

"Iran is capable, at a minimum, of carrying out attacks with temporary disruptive effects against critical infrastructure in the United States," it read.

On Saturday, an Iranian hacker group breached a US government website and replaced the homepage with Iranian propaganda.

The Federal Depository Library Program's website, fdlp.gov, saw its home page replaced with an image of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Iranian flag.

"This is a message from the Islamic Republic Of Iran," the page read.

"We will not stop supporting our friends in the region: the oppressed people of Palestine, the oppressed people of Yemen, the people and the Syrian government, the people and government of Iraq, the oppressed people of Bahrain, the true mujahideen resistance in Lebanon and Palestine [they] always will be supported by us," the message continued.

The world has dove into uncharted waters  Iran has called for "crushing revenge" for Soleimani's assassination, and Trump has warned if retaliation is seen, the US will strike 52 Iranian sites.
London: A prominent member of Boris Johnson's cabinet says the nation is "heartbroken" by the devastation caused in Australia by the bushfire crisis.

Footage of Australia's bushfire crisis has been leading news bulletins in Britain for the bulk of the past week, as the crisis has worsened.

The devastation has also been pictured on the front pages of some of the nation's major newspapers and prompted condolence messages from the Queen and other members of the Royal Family, including climate campaigners Prince Harry and wife Meghan.

British Trade Secretary Liz Truss visited Australia in September to discuss a post-Brexit trade deal. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Liz Truss, the Trade Secretary, said the nation felt Australia's pain deeply.
Five Shiv Sena workers were detained on Monday in Gujarat's Vadodara after burning the effigy of Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan, police said.

We were protesting against the attack on Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and the killing of a Sikh youth in Pakistan, Shiv Sena spokesperson Tejas Brambhatt told PTI here.

Shiv Sena members were detained and released after two hours, a police official said.

They raised slogans against Pakistan and burnt an effigy of Khan near Vadodara Municipal Corporation, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks to the media during her weekly press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Nov. 21, 2019. (Alex Edelman/Getty Images)

Nancy Pelosi Calls on Congress to Curb Trumps War Powers as US-Iran Tensions Rise

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement Sunday that the House will vote on a war powers resolution this week in a bid to curb President Donald Trumps authority to pursue military initiatives against Iran amid growing tensions following a strike that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.

Pelosi said in a letter to Democratic members of Congress that the resolution seeks to put an end to military action again Iran within 30 days unless authorized by Congress, like via declaration of war.

The speaker claimed that the provocative and disproportionate airstrike on Iranian general Qassem Soleimani endangered our service members, diplomats, and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran.

Trump ordered a strike last week against Soleimani, the architect of Tehrans overseas military operations, including ones targeting Americans. The Iranian general was killed early on Jan. 3 by a drone-fired missile that struck his convoy at Baghdads airport.

Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani (C) attends a meeting in Tehran on Sept. 18, 2016. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File)

Before the attack, the U.S. intelligence community said it had reason to believe that Soleimani was involved in late stage planning to strike Americans in multiple countries, including Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, to draw the United States into military action and take attention away from the mass protests in Iraq against Irans growing influence in the country.

Iranian officials responded by threatening to retaliate. Senior Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Gholamali Abuhamzeh warned that dozens of U.S. targets were within reach of the Islamic regime following Soleimanis killing.

Some 35 U.S. targets in the region, as well as Tel Aviv, are within our reach, Abuhamzeh was quoted by Tasnim news agency as saying. He also raised the prospect of possible attacks on U.S. destroyers and other warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump then cautioned that the United States had targeted 52 Iranian sites in response to the retaliatory threats and warned Iran not to attack any Americans or American assets or targets would be hit very fast and very hard.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told ABCs This Week on Jan. 5 that any target the U.S. military might strike in Iran in retaliation would be a lawful target orchestrated solely to safeguard American interests.

The American people should know that every target that we strike will be a lawful target, and it will be a target designed with a singular mission of protecting and defending America, Pompeo said.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivers remarks on human rights in Iran at the State Department in Washington on Dec. 19, 2019. (Erin Scott/Reuters)

In her letter, Pelosi said the war powers resolution she is seeking to pass reasserts Congresss long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the administrations military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days.

This resolution is similar to the resolution introduced by Senator Tim Kaine in the Senate, Pelosi said.

The resolution is likely to win approval in the Democratic-led House, but prospects for passage are less certain in the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans, many of whom have said they support the presidents action on Iran.

Among those who praised the White House for the strike against Soleimani were House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Graham said Soleimani had American blood on his hands, and he welcomed what he called Trumps bold action against Iranian aggression.

To the Iranian government: If you want more, you will get more, Graham said.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Saudi Arabia Rejects, Condemns Turkey's Latest Escalation in Libyan affairs As Violation of Security Council Resolutions

Saudi Press Agency

Sunday 1441/5/10 - 2020/01/05

Riyadh, Jan 4, 2020, SPA -- The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia expressed its rejection and condemnation of Turkey's latest escalation in the Libyan issue, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

The Kingdom also condemns Turkish Parliament's approval to send military forces to Libya as a violation of the Security Council resolutions issued on Libya, undermining the international efforts to solve the Libyan crisis and contrary to the Arab position adopted by the Council of the Arab League on December 31, 2019.

This Turkish escalation forms a threat to security and stability in Libya as well as to Arab security and regional security as it is interference in the internal affairs of an Arab country in flagrant violation of all relevant international covenants and principles, the Kingdom affirms.

--SPA

02:51 LOCAL TIME 23:51 GMT

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External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Sunday held a telephonic conversation with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, voicing India's concerns over the escalating tensions in the Gulf region after the killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.

Jaishankar also separately spoke with Omani Foreign Minister Yusuf Alawi and his UAE counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan on the tense situation in the region.

The External Affairs Minister's telephonic conversations came as concerns mounted across the globe over fast-deteriorating diplomatic ties between the US and Iran, and the spiralling tensions in the Gulf after Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was killed when a US drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the Baghdad International Airport.

Noting that developments have taken a "very serious turn", Jaishankar said he had a conversation with Zarif and asserted that India remains deeply concerned about the levels of tension in the region.

"Just concluded a conversation with FM @JZarif of Iran. Noted that developments have taken a very serious turn. India remains deeply concerned about the levels of tension. We agreed to remain in touch," the External Affairs Minister tweeted after his discussion with Zarif.

After his discussion with Pompeo, Jaishankar tweeted, "Had a telephonic discussion with Secretary of State @SecPompeo on the evolving situation in the Gulf region. Highlighted India's stakes and concerns."

Pompeo also took to Twitter and said, "Dr S Jaishankar and I spoke just now regarding Iran's continued threats and provocations. The Trump Administration won't hesitate to act to keep American lives, and those of our friends and allies, safe."

Defending the killing of the Iranian commander, President Donald Trump on Friday had said "reign of terror is over" and claimed Qassem Soleimani had contributed to "terrorist plots as far away as New Delhi and London."

"A warm conversation with FM @ABZayed of UAE. Exchanged views on recent developments in the region," Jaishankar tweeted after his conversation with his UAE counterpart.

"Discussed with FM Yusuf Alawi of Oman the tense situation in the region. Reaffirmed our shared interest in the stability and security of the Gulf. Appreciated his perspectives on the current situation," he said in another tweet.

Trump has warned Iran that the US has identified 52 possible targets in the country and will hit it harder than ever before if Tehran, which has vowed "severe revenge", carries out any attack against America to avenge the killing of Soleimani.

Maj Gen Soleimani, 62, the head of Iran''s elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was killed when a US drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the Baghdad International Airport early on Friday. The strike also killed the deputy chief of Iraq''s powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force.

Soleimani''s killing was the most dramatic escalation yet in spiralling tensions between Iran and the US.
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Reynhard Sinaga (pictured above) is facing life for drugging and raping men

But for the bravery of one teenage victim, Reynhard Sinagas crimes may never have come to light.

The 18-year-old sixth former woke up in Sinagas flat to find himself being sexually assaulted.

Although still in a confused and disorientated state he was able to push Sinaga off and fought with his naked attacker in order to escape.

Giving evidence, the victim said the rapist had persuaded him to go back to his flat to get out of the cold after he lost touch with his friends in a nightclub.

He had left the Factory club in Manchester at around midnight and was waiting for a message from his friends when Sinaga approached.

At the flat the victim recalled having two shots of a red liquid. Sinaga then poured a shot of clear liquid from something that looked like a Sambuca bottle.

Although he had been drinking alcohol earlier that evening, the victim said he had been in the nightclub for only an hour and was not drunk.

He said he blacked out after drinking the clear liquid and remembered nothing until he woke up hours later, early in the morning of June 2, 2017.

The victim, a 6ft and 13st rugby player, acknowledged he was physically stronger than the slightly-built, 5ft 7in Sinaga.

Reynhard Sinaga is pictured above leaving Montana House to prowl the streets for victims

Patel hints at law change on date rape drug Priti Patel has ordered an urgent inquiry into date rape drugs after Reynhard Sinaga used them for his horrific sex crimes. The Home Secretary called on her official advisers to look at whether tougher controls are needed for drugs such as GHB, also known as liquid ecstasy. Sinaga is thought to have laced alcoholic drinks with drugs to knock out victims before raping them. During his sentencing, Judge Suzanne Goddard said date rape drugs were regrettably freely available. GHB is used recreationally to produce feelings of euphoria but an overdose can lead to unconsciousness, coma and death. Responding to the case, Miss Patel said: Im deeply concerned by the use of illegal drugs like GHB to perpetrate these crimes and have asked the independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to expedite a review looking at whether our controls for these drugs are tough enough. GHB is a Class C drug with possession leading to up to two years imprisonment, an unlimited fine or both. Selling it carries a penalty of up to 14 years. One option the ACMD could decide to recommend is moving GHB to Class B, so that possession carries a five-year sentence. It is five years since serial killer Stephen Port used GHB and other drugs to knock out victims before raping them. He murdered four men at his flat in Barking, East London. Advertisement

However, he felt weak, possibly from the after-effects of the date rape drug that is believed to have been put in his drink.

Sinaga bit him a few times and pulled him back as he tried to leave the flat. The struggle left the rapist unconscious.

The victim grabbed his possessions and fled  but he had to return to the flat to call for help because his mobile phone was out of battery.

A resident of another apartment let him in, cleaned him up and allowed him to phone police and his mother.

The teenager beat up Sinaga so badly that he decided to dial 999 for an ambulance. The schoolboy was himself arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm because the rapist needed hospital treatment for a suspected bleed on the brain.

The image above shows Sinaga's bedroom. There are sheets on the floor with bedding strewn around

Drinks were found in his flat (pictured above) which he may have used to drug his victims before raping them

But detectives became suspicious when Sinaga started behaving strangely in hospital and refused to unlock his phone.

His victim had discovered the white iPhone 4 in his jeans  possibly put there by Sinaga in a panic. I have no idea how it got there so thats the only explanation there could have been. I didnt put it there. Sinaga must have put it in my pocket, the victim said.

The blunder was to be the sex attackers undoing, as the phones contents revealed the shocking truth about his vile activities.

Police found videos of three rapes and an attempted rape against the teenager when he was unconscious, plus footage of attacks on a huge number of other men. A black iPhone and other electronic devices at Sinagas flat yielded footage of further crimes. Iain Simkin, prosecuting, said: Reynhard Sinaga targeted, isolated, drugged and sexually attacked each of these complainants while they were unconscious.

CCTV footage showed Sinaga walking down the street as he searched for victims

A map of Manchester city centre shows where Sinaga's flat (in red) is located along with the nightclubs Factory and Fifth Avenue, which many of the complainants had earlier been to

Further, he recorded himself doing it, and if he hadnt, nobody might ever have found out.

When befriending the young men he targeted, Sinaga came across as friendly and kind.

But the videos showed that whenever his groggy victims stirred, he would push them back to the floor to continue the assaults.

He would even turn out the light or cover the men with a duvet when he had finished.

Timeline of Reynhard Sinaga's sexual assaults January 2015 to May 2017: The period over which Reynhard Sinaga was said to have committed sex assaults against 48 men in Manchester June 1 to July 10, 2018: Sinaga goes on his first trial which sees him convicted of 31 counts of rape, three counts of attempted rape and six counts of sexual assault. April 1 to May 7, 2019: Sinaga goes on trial for the second time and is convicted of 49 counts of rape, five counts of attempted rape and one count of sexual assault. He is jailed for 20 years after the first two trials. September 16 to October 4, 2019: Sinaga goes on his third trial and is convicted of 26 counts of rape, one count of assault by penetration and five counts of sexual assault. December 2, 2019 and December 20, 2019: Sinaga goes on his fourth trial and is convicted of 30 counts of rape and two counts of sexual assault. Today: Sinaga is jailed for at least 30 years over the third and fourth trials. In total, he was found guilty across all four trials of 159 offences - 136 rapes, eight attempted rapes, 14 sexual assaults, and one by penetration. Advertisement

Most victims woke feeling sick and disorientated but had no idea they had been raped.

Sinaga explained away the fact that some victims woke naked or partially-undressed by saying their clothes were covered in vomit and he had taken them off to make them more comfortable.

The majority of his victims parted on friendly terms with him. But on one occasion Sinaga became aggressive and threatening to a man he had raped four times.

He warned he would leather or bite him if he didnt leave.

He tried to force another 18-year-old schoolboy victmi to give him cash, marching him to an ATM, but there was no money in his account. Some men even felt guilty for having troubled [Sinaga]  a stranger to them  for a floor to sleep on for the night, Judge Suzanne Goddard said.

One victim said: As far as I was concerned, I thought he had done me a good turn. I agreed to be his friend on Facebook and I think I messaged him when I got home.

But some victims had suspicions about their encounter.

Apart from the first teenager who fully woke up, another man came round while being attacked but could not move his arms.

He did not report the incident at the time and police became aware of what happened only due to the phone footage filmed by Sinaga.

On one occasion  two years before the rapist was caught  police attended his block of flats after a victim who had been reported missing by his girlfriend woke to find himself there.

The man did not believe anything untoward had happened and there was no reason to search the flat or question Sinaga, Manchester Crown Court was told.

Police were able to trace Sinagas victims because he had taken screenshots of their social media pages and kept personal items such as driving licences, bank cards and even one phone as trophies.

Sinaga did not wear a condom and the victims faced the added ordeal of medical tests before they were reassured they had not contracted any infections.
The BSE Mid-cap Index down 2.31 per cent and the Small-cap, down 1.96 per cent.

Mumbai: Indian equities were hit by the tensions simmering in the Middle East, as India, one of the world's biggest oil consumers with close to 84.5 per cent crude oil coming from imports, stared at potential supply disruptions and the consequent rise in the import bill.

Benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty-50 fell sharply in line with the other Asian markets, fearing the fallout of a military retaliation by Iran after last weeks US killing of one of Irans top military generals.

The Sensex logged its biggest one-day loss in the last six months, down by 788 points or 1.90 per cent, and closed below the 41,000-mark at 40,676.63. The Nifty-50 closed below the 12,000-mark at 11,993, down by 234 points.

The BSE Mid-cap Index down 2.31 per cent and the Small-cap, down 1.96 per cent.

Volatility index India VIX, an indicator of expected volatility in the equity market, climbed up 16 per cent to 14.77, most in 23 months.

Markets remain wary of the negative impact of rising oil prices on Indias balance of payments, with the country already running into heavy current account deficit. Therefore, we expect the rupee to be under pressure as crude prices have jumped nearly 15 per cent in the last quarter on the extension of a production cut pact by key producers, said India Forex Advisors.

The rupee fell to a low of Rs 72.11 per dollar intra-day but recovered later to close at Rs 71.93.

Siddhartha Khemka, head-retail research, Motilal Oswal Financial Services, said, "There would be weakness in the market in short term due to the major escalation in tension in the Middle East. Market sentiments have turned negative, with rising fear of oil supply disruption after US President Donald Trump threatened sanctions on Iraq, the second-largest producer among the Opec, after Iraq's parliament voted in favour of expelling the US and foreign troops. Trump also threatened to retaliate against Iran after the country vowed to avenge the killing of its top commander."

The Bank Nifty Index fell 2.59 per cent, causing much damage to the benchmark indices loaded with financial heavy weights. All the sectors ended in red, led by Nifty PSU Bank (-4.3 per cent), Metals (-2.9 per cent) Autos (-2.4 per cent) and Realty (-2.4 per cent).

Nifty Energy index fell 1.98 per cent, led by the sharp fall in oil marketing companies the top losers were HPCL (-7.28 per cent), BPCL (-3.23 per cent) and IOC (-1.62 per cent).

Foreign portfolio investors were net sellers by just Rs 103.84 crore and domestic institutions by Rs 23.70 crore as per the provisional data.
Army reservists will help bury more than one hundred thousand sheep and cattle killed in the bushfires.

Agriculture Minister Bridget McKenzie confirmed defence personnel would dig the pits to dispose dead livestock in over coming days and weeks.

'Bearing in mind, though, it's about getting access to those still live fire grounds,' she told the ABC on Monday.

Scroll down for video

The burnt bodies of hundreds of animals line the road into the small town of Batlow, New South Wales, which was one of the worst hit areas by bushfires overnight

'Where it's safe to do so we need to be getting in within a week, ideally, to really be dealing with the carcasses in an appropriate way.'

Senior members of the federal government are meeting in Canberra to discuss their response to the bushfire emergency.

Reconstructing bridges, roads and critical infrastructure destroyed by the blazes is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ahead of the cabinet meeting, Emergency Management Minister David Littleproud was careful not to put a dollar estimate on how much the recovery would cost.

'If cabinet approves it, we will put in place a mechanism to get that money out the door as quickly as we can,' he told the ABC.

Scott Morrison has pledged to commit 'everything that is needed and more' to the recovery effort.

The states will not be asked to match the federal government's funding.

The prime minister has launched a national bushfire recovery agency led by former Australian Federal Police commissioner Andrew Colvin.

Pictured: A fire fighter trying to dampen bushes near buildings to avoid any ember attacks catching alight and creating new fires

The agency will offer income support to farmers, small business owners and residents affected by the fires.

Farmers who lost stock will be an urgent priority as the government responds to the fires.

The National Farmers' Federation estimates more than 100,000 livestock have been killed in the bushfires, either during the blazes or afterwards as a result of heat stress and smoke inhalation.

The livestock toll is expected to climb after many herds perished in fires that tore through southern NSW over the weekend.

'We will be trying to take pre-emptive steps today with state agencies around making sure the disposal of the livestock is done quickly - there is a biosecurity risk there,' Mr Littleproud said.

'We have to think about our native species that have been decimated by the fires, too, in terms of our recovery.'

Fodder and water is being distributed to surviving livestock herds on blackened paddocks, while fencing and other farm infrastructure is repaired.

Water stocks contaminated by ash are also being investigated.

Mental health supports are another major focus of the cabinet meeting.

'We won't be just rebuilding infrastructure, we want to rebuild lives,' Mr Littleproud said.

The prime minister is considering launching a royal commission into the bushfires, an idea which opposition leader Anthony Albanese is open to.

'There will be a time for consideration of the royal commission,' Mr Albanese told Sky News.

'We're going to have to have a comprehensive inquiry that goes to the full suite of measures.

'How we manage our national parks, the long-term impact of climate change, this is not business-as-usual.'
Fair, transparent CEO selection system essential for IBK



Yoon Jong-won, the newly appointed CEO of the state-run Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK), couldn't enter the bank's headquarters in central Seoul, Friday, as he was prevented from doing so by union members. He was unable to work on the first day of his three-year term.



"We are protesting the President's appointment of the new IBK chief. We decided to stop Yoon from coming to work and are ready to stage an all-out strike, if necessary," they said. The union are opposed to Yoon's appointment, pointing to his lack of experience in banking. He appears to be qualified though, given that the long-time bureaucrat had worked in various positions at the finance ministry and for global organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.



Most problematic with the selection of Yoon who served as the senior presidential secretary for economic affairs in the Moon Jae-in administration is that his appointment is nothing more than a top-down decision from Cheong Wa Dae  a practice the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) used to denounce as "toxic power abuse" when it was the opposition party. The ill-advised appointment is also raising concerns about the government's bid to control the banking sector.



There was a time when a CEO from outside could lead the bank successfully. However, the IBK has achieved remarkable growth for 10 years under its past three CEOs chosen from within, leaving little room for outsiders to intervene. Furthermore, Yoon's qualifications are questioned, given his undeniable responsibility for the incumbent government's failed economic policies as a top economic aide to President Moon.



Unlike commercial banks whose CEOs are appointed through an independent executive recommendation committee, the IBK is devoid of such a procedure; its chief executive is appointed by the president following a recommendation from the chairman of the Financial Services Commission. It's necessary to furnish the IBK with a fair and transparent selection system so that the bank can have a well-qualified CEO armed with expertise and capable leadership.




The Iraqi military has said 22 ballistic missiles were fired at two bases used by US and coalition forces in Iraq, as Iran claimed responsibility and dozens of casualties, in a dramatic development of the crisis sparked by the killing of Qassem Soleimani.

The Pentagon confirmed Wednesdays early morning attacks on the al-Asad and Erbil facilities saying they were still evaluating the damage and their response.

President Donald Trump downplayed the reports of wounded and dead saying assessment of casualties & damages taking place now. So far, so good!

Iranian state television, however, claimed 80 American terrorists had been killed and US helicopters and military equipment damaged, but offered no evidence of how it obtained that information.

Iraqs military said there were no Iraqis injured in the assault, adding that 17 missiles landed on al-Asad base in the western province of Anbar and five on Erbil city, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan region.



The Iraqi prime ministry condemned "any attacks on its territory" adding that Iran notified Baghdad shortly after midnight that its response to the killing of its top military commander had begun, and that retaliation would be limited to locations where the US military is present.

Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Show all 24 1 /24 Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Kerman - Final stage of funeral processions Iranian mourners gather around a vehicle carrying the coffin of top general Qasem Soleimani during the final stage of funeral processions, in his hometown Kerman. Soleimani was killed outside Baghdad airport in a drone strike ordered by US President Donald Trump, ratcheting up tensions with Iran which has vowed "severe revenge" AFP via Getty Images Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Tehran Iranian people carry a coffin of Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani during a funeral procession in Tehran Official Khamenei website via Reuters Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Kerman - Final stage of funeral processions The assassination of the 62-year-old heightened international concern about a new war in the volatile, oil-rich Middle East and rattled financial markets AFP via Getty Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Kerman - Final stage of funeral processions West Asia News Agency via Reuters Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Tehran Mourners packed the streets of Tehran for ceremonies to pay homage to Soleimani, who spearheaded Iran's Middle East operations as commander of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force and was killed in a US drone strike on January 3 Iranian Supreme Leader's Office/EPA Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Kerman - Final stage of funeral processions AFP via Getty Images Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Tehran Iranians set a US and an Israeli flag on fire during the funeral procession AFP via Getty Images Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Tehran Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, centre, with Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, second left, and President Hassan Rouhani, third left, standing next to him as he leads a prayer over the caskets of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis at Tehran University Khamenei.IR/AFP via Getty Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Kerman - Final stage of funeral processions AP Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Tehran Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, left, openly weeps as he leads a prayer over the coffin of Qassem Soleimani AP Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Tehran Mourners holding posters of Qassem Soleimani AP Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Tehran Coffins of Soleimani and others who were killed in Iraq by a US drone strike, are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners during a funeral procession, at the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) square AP Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Kerman - Final stage of funeral processions An Iranian mourner holds a placard AFP via Getty Images Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Tehran Downtown Tehran was brought to a standstill as mourners flooded the Iranian capital Khamenei.IR/AFP via Getty Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Tehran Former Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps chief Mohamad Ali Jafari prays on the coffins of Qasem Soleimani and of other victims during their funeral ceremony EPA Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Kerman - Final stage of funeral processions AFP via Getty Images Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Tehran EPA Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Tehran EPA Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Kerman - Final stage of funeral processions West Asia News Agency via Reuters Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Tehran Official Khamenei website via Reuters Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Kerman - Final stage of funeral processions AFP via Getty Images Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Kerman - Final stage of funeral processions West Asia News Agency via Reuters Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Tehran Satellite image Maxar Technologies/AP Qassem Soleimani: Mourners fill Iran streets for funeral Tehran EPA

The missile barrages came hours after tens of thousands of Iranians turned out to mourn the slain Iranian military commander Soleimani  and more than 50 died in a stampede.

Responsibility for the attacks was swiftly claimed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), whose nonconventional Quds Force Soleimani commanded.

This morning, courageous fighters of the IRGCs air force launched a successful operation called Operation Martyr Soleimani, the IRGC said in a statement. The fierce revenge by the Revolutionary Guards has begun.

On Twitter, Irans foreign minister, Javad Zarif, added: Iran took & concluded proportionate measures in self-defence under Article 51 of UN Charter targeting base from which cowardly armed attack against our citizens & senior officials were launched. We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised the missile barrage saying it was a "slap in the face" for the Americans. He did not appear to call for further strikes but repeated demands that Washington pull its troops from the region.

"When it comes to confrontation, military actions of these kinds are not enough...the corrupt presence of the US should come to an end," he said to crowds chanting "death to America".

In Washington DC, Mr Trump tweeted: All is well! Missiles launched from Iran at two military bases located in Iraq. Assessment of casualties & damages taking place now. So far, so good! We have the most powerful and well equipped military anywhere in the world, by far! I will be making a statement tomorrow morning.

In a statement, foreign secretary Dominic Raab said the UK condemn[s] this attack on Iraqi military bases hosting Coalition  including British  forces.

We are concerned by reports of casualties and use of ballistic missiles, he said. We urge Iran not to repeat these reckless and dangerous attacks, and instead to pursue urgent de-escalation.

A war in the Middle East would only benefit [Isis] and other terrorist groups.

 Huge crowds surround funeral procession of Soleimani as it moves through Kerman, Iran

A spokesman for the Pentagon confirmed it also believed the missiles had been fired by Iran, rather than one of its proxy forces.

It is clear that these missiles were launched from Iran and targeted at least two Iraqi military bases hosting US military and coalition personnel at Al Asad and Erbil, Jonathan Hoffman, assistant to the secretary of defence for public affairs, said in a statement. We are working on initial battle damage assessments.

He said the base had already been on high alert due to indications that the Iranian regime planned to attack our forces and interests in the region.

He added: As we evaluate the situation and our response, we will take all necessary measures to protect and defend US personnel, partners, and allies in the region.

Donald Trump had previously made a personal visit to the Al Asad base, in December 2018.



The Iraqi prime ministry said it refused "any violation of its sovereignty and any attacks on its territory."

It added that Iraq is doing everything in its power to contain the situation to avoid a "devastating all-out war."

The development marked a rapid escalation in the crisis between Tehran and Washington, and a major challenge for Mr Trump, who had campaigned on keeping the US out of further wars in the Middle East.

Tehrans missile strike came as senior members of congress were finally briefed on the purported threat presented by Soleimani, which led to the decision to kill him. Mere hours before the attacks, Mr Trump had told reporters in the Oval Office: If Iran does anything they shouldnt be doing, they are going to be suffering the consequences, and very strongly.

Irans Revolutionary Guard warned Washington against retaliating, and told its regional neighbours that if any military action were launched from their territory, they could expect to be attacked in turn.

Mr Esper had warned the US was anticipating a reaction from Iran to the killing of Soleimani, a major regional power broker.

I think we should expect that they will retaliate in some way, shape or form, he told a news briefing at the Pentagon on Tuesday afternoon. He added: Were prepared for any contingency. And then we will respond appropriately to whatever they do.

In turn, a senior Iranian official said Tehran was considering several scenarios to avenge Soleimanis death. Other senior figures have said the Islamic Republic would match the scale of the killing when it responds, but that it would choose the time and place.

We will take revenge, a hard and definitive revenge, the head of the IRCG, General Hossein Salami, told throngs who crowded the streets for Soleimanis funeral in Kerman, his hometown in southeastern Iran.

Soleimanis burial went ahead after several hours of delay following a stampede that killed at least 56 people and injured more than 210, according an emergency official quoted by Irans semi-official Fars news agency.

The next steps on both sides remained unclear. Some experts suggested the actions by Iran, which had been promised by its supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, may have been calculated to satisfy domestic demands for revenge, without provoking a major response from Washington.

Much of the uncertainty lies in the fact that the decision on how the US responds will be made by Mr Trump.

Additional reporting by Reuters
CONTACT: Pamela D. Wilson 303-810-1816

Email: Inquiry_For_Pamela@pameladwilson.com

Golden, Colorado  January 6, 2020

The Caring Generation Radio Show Medication Issues in the Elderly

Golden CO- Caregiving expert, Pamela D. Wilson hosts The Caring Generation radio program for caregivers and aging adults this coming Wednesday, January 8, on the Bold Brave Media Global Network. The program airs live at 9 p.m. EST. The Caring Generation aired initially from 2009 to 2011 on 630 KHOW-AM in Denver, Colorado.

The caregiving topic for this week's program is How to Manage Medications for Elderly Parents. Pamela shares tips and strategies for medication management for the elderly. In Pamela's role as a professional fiduciary, she was responsible for care coordination with healthcare providers. This responsibility included being knowledgeable about health conditions and related medications.

Family caregivers have a similar responsibility, although many lack healthcare experience that is beneficial to managing medications for elderly parents. Medication issues in the elderly can be significant, resulting in visits to hospital emergency rooms.

Behaviors related to Alzheimer's and dementia, that cannot be managed, are one of the main reasons that family caregivers place loved ones in care communities or nursing homes. Some physicians are concerned about prescribing medications like Aricept, Namenda, Zyprexa, Celexa, Seroquel, and others that have "Black Box" warnings but can be beneficial under certain circumstances.

Special guest Dr. Neha Jain, a geriatric psychiatrist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Connecticut Health Center, talks about medication issues in the elderly and discusses "Black Box" warnings. She is double board-certified in psychiatry and geriatric psychiatry.

Family caregivers trying to juggle work, a career, and caring for elderly parents struggle with obtaining medications for depression, anxiety, and dementia. A shortage of geriatric physicians and geriatric psychiatrists leave the elderly at risk of not receiving beneficial medications.

According to Wilson, "General physicians for the elderly are hesitant to prescribe medications because of a lack of experience. Psychiatric hospitals refuse to accept the elderly with co-diagnoses of mental health and dementia. Care communities are quick to discharge elderly residents because of behaviors. In the case of nursing homes, federal regulations dictate discontinuing behavioral medications. The area of managing medications for the elderly is a significant gap in the healthcare system and an area of frustration for caregivers trying to help elderly parents remain at home or in a care community."

Dr. Neha Jain specializes in medications for the elderly. She completed her psychiatric residency training at West Virginia University, Charleston, WV, and a geriatric psychiatry fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pittsburgh, PA.

She was on the clinical faculty at Yale University from 2011-2014 and since 2015 has been part of the geriatric psychiatry department at the University of Connecticut Health Center. Her interests include late-life depression, depression and cognitive impairment, telepsychiatry, and neuropsychiatric symptoms of dementia.

The January 8th edition of The Caring Generation focuses on medication management and medication issues in the elderly. The program gives family caregivers the confidence to develop skills to care for elderly parents, spouses, and loved ones. Being a caregiver encompasses many areas of life. The Caring Generation regularly features information about health, well-being, family relationships, financial, and legal planning.

Make plans to join Pamela D. Wilson, caregiving expert and the host of The Caring Generation radio at 6 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Mountain, 8 p.m. Central, and 9 p.m. Eastern every Wednesday night. Replays of the weekly programs are available in podcast format with transcripts on Pamela's website and all major podcast sites. More information is available on Pamela's website.

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Courtesy from the Hispanic Equity Committee at the University of Texas at Austin / Courtesy

Texas education leaders are discussing how to address the findings of a recent report that detailed gross disparities and discrimination in compensation, leadership opportunities and other measurements for Hispanic professors at the states flagship university.

The 188-page Hispanic Equity Report, released last fall by a group of eight professors at the University of Texas at Austin, found that UT faculty of Latino origin earn thousands of dollars less than their white peers at all levels of professorships. The gaps occur even after taking account of field, rank and scholarship, the report says.

We found that Hispanics are grossly underpaid and underrepresented in positions of leadership in a university that makes diversity one of its central missions, said Alberto Martinez, a history professor and chair of the Independent Equity Committee that produced the report.

Hispanic professors say they have long known about the inequalities and underrepresentation. The universitys Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, for example, has had 13 directors since its 1940 founding; none was of Hispanic or Latin American origin. The institute is named after a Hispanic alumna who endowed it with $15 million.

Thats simply grotesque, said Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, a UT history professor. Thats like having a prestigious center of African American studies (that has) never had an African American director; it would be unthinkable.

But, he added, thats where we are.

UT officials recognize the problem but disagree on the scale of salary disparities.

Speaking at a recent Faculty Council meeting, Gregory Fenves, the president of UT Austin, said that a university council on racial and ethnic equity and diversity completed the first phase of a study on Latino faculty pay and found issues similar to those in the equity committee report.

There were some differences especially in interpretations of data, Fenves said, according to an official transcript of the meeting. But there clearly are inequity issues. He said the council would be working through this information very, very diligently.

Joey Williams, a spokesman for UTs executive vice president and provost, stressed that the university is strongly committed to further understanding this potential inequity and fixing it.

Salary gaps

For the analysis, the committee used methodology similar to the Gender Equity Report of 2008 that prompted changes to address disparities between female and male scholars, according to the document.

One of the most alarming discoveries is that the inequities grow and get larger the longer a Hispanic professor is at UT, Martinez said.

The most significant compensation gaps in net terms were found among full professors, where Latinos were paid approximately $25,300 less on average than their Anglo peers in 2017, the focus year of the report. Assistant professors faced a gap of roughly $19,600 on average, and the difference was about $10,600 for associate professors.

The report analyzed data from different sources, including the Texas Tribunes Government Salaries Explorer, which publishes payroll information from state public entities responding to open records requests.

Another major problem is that Hispanic women are the most underpaid (professors) in the university in almost every category, and they are extremely underrepresented, Martinez said.

Hispanic women who are full professors at UT were paid $37,100 less on average than white men with the same tenure status; $15,800 less than equivalent white women; and $10,200 less than men of Latino origin. The report found a similar pattern for assistant professors, where white men were paid 44 percent more than Latinas.

Williams, the spokesman for the provost, said the universitys analysis found the difference (in compensation) is a little over 3 percent for full and associate professors favoring white faculty. He said that in some job classifications, Latina professors even earn more than their white peers.

He said that pattern is reversed with a much larger difference favoring our Latina over white assistant professors and not much of a difference at all when we compare salaries across races for assistant tenure track professors who are men.

Regardless, this difference favoring white over Latinx faculty at the senior ranks needs to be investigated further, he said.

Defining the problem

Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez, a sociology professor at UT, said race and gender are also factors.

I use the concept of academic domestica (domestic servant) to describe this, where Latina professors do a lot of services for which they are not paid or paid worse than anybody else in academia, she said.

Part of the burden that faculty members of color have in majority-white educational institutions is a sense of responsibility to serve as mentors and role models, frequently helping disadvantaged students who are first-generation college students, Gonzalez-Lopez said.

A basic tenet of education across the lines, whether youre talking about kindergarten kids or college students, is that in order for students to learn, they need to feel connected to the classroom and the faculty, and they are more likely to feel that with someone who shares their background, said Natasha Warikoo, a Harvard University professor and author of the new book The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions, and Meritocracy at Elite Universities.

The overwhelming majority of full-time professors at UT  80 percent  are white. By contrast, only 7 percent are Hispanic even as students of Hispanic ethnic origin are 23 percent of the undergraduate population and 11 percent of graduate students.

At colleges and universities where there are more Latino students than faculty, such as at UT, students are going to go disproportionately to those professors, who, in turn, are disproportionately asked to serve on committees, Warikoo said. Thats in part because of the background and cultural knowledge that they bring to campuses.

Fenves has stressed that diversity and inclusion are priorities, according to his official bio. Under Fenves, the university successfully defended its admissions practices before the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2016 Fisher vs. University of Texas at Austin case, winning and consolidating the right to use race as a valid criterion in its so-called holistic admission policies.

On HoustonChronicle.com: U.S. Supreme Court upholds UT use of race in admissions, but affirmative action remains divisive

University leaders say they want a more diverse faculty. As we explore improving faculty equity issues, we also want to seek ways to improve the supply of future Hispanic professors through graduate opportunities, said Williams, the UT spokesman.

Hispanic professors say they frequently hear the argument that there are not enough Latinos with graduate degrees to increase faculty representation.

Thats a convenient, false argument for a university like UT, Canizares-Esguerra said. He contended that this is the wealthiest institution (of higher education) in the country after Harvard, capable of attracting talented (Latino) professors from anywhere.

The equity committees analysis also found that of the 130 deans, vice deans and associate and assistant deans at UT-Austin, only 7.7 percent are Latino; none is a Hispanic woman. The underrepresentation of Latinos is a pattern observed at all levels of leadership, endowments and recognition, according to the report.

Its ironic that in this state where almost 40 percent (of residents) are Latinos, we are having these inequalities at the public state university, Gonzalez-Lopez said.

What comes next?

Among other remedial actions, the provosts office has asked UT Austin deans to review how leadership and committee roles are assigned, Williams said. And Provost Maurie McInnis recently created a group of deans to pilot new approaches to address issues of salary equity, diverse faculty recruitment and retention, departmental governance and academic unit climate.

State Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, said hes contacted Fenves office and wants a meeting as soon as possible to discuss the equity report and disparities.

The report is quite compelling, particularly the disparity in pay, said Rodriguez, who is policy chair of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus. It seems that the University of Texas can do a much better job in incorporating more Latinos and Latinas, not only as professors but as deans and higher levels of academia.

Martinez, the equity committee chair, said the group will continue pushing for changes at the university.

I dont think these are intentional biases that are executed by individuals who consciously dislike Hispanics, he said. But whether these patterns are intentional or not, the consequences are similar. We feel excluded because we are.

olivia.tallet@chron.com

twitter.com/oliviaptallet
MBABANE - Not so bad.

Despite the disturbances allegedly caused during the strike by teachers over CoLA, the affected schools produced fair results in the Grade VII examinations. During the arguments of the matter on which government was seeking an order to stop the strike over the cost-of-living adjustment (CoLA) late last year, head teachers of about 10 schools deposed to affidavits narrating disturbances or incidents which occurred in their various schools. In particular, the head teachers were in support of the interdict to stop the public sector associations (PSAs) strike action.

Some narrated how they allegedly suffered at the hands of the protesters. In different affidavits which were presented to the court by government, the head teachers related how they now feared for their lives and those of their children. A majority of them in their affidavits, submitted that they now feared for their lives after having received threats and being branded sell-outs.

Strength

On the strength of the affidavits by the head teachers, Minister of Labour and Social Security Makhosi Vilakati and the police, the court issued an interim order stopping the PSAs from continuing with the strike action. In their statements, the head teachers painted a picture of unbearable working conditions due to the alleged attacks and threats they received at the hands of the protesters. The interim order stopping the PSAs strike action was issued by Judge Abande Dlamini after government had filed an urgent application where it argued that the ongoing strike action, which commenced on September 3, 2019 had gone beyond a labour dispute between government and the unions.

The head teachers were from schools such as Mkhweli Primary, Mkhuzweni Primary, St. John Bosco Primary, Siphoso Primary and Nyakatfo Primary School to name but a few.

Worth noting is that one of the schools, the Manzini Infant Practicing Primary School, excelled and topped them all in the examination by producing 33 Merits, 44 First Class Passes and 10 Second Class passes, with no Third Class passes or failures. In her affidavit presented in court last year, Head teacher Jabulile Nkambule submitted that on September 25, 2019 at or near the school at around 7:30am she was reporting for duty when she found that there was a strike and could not reach the school.

Watch

I had to watch the striking members of the respondents dance along the road joining my school. The learners were by the gate watching as well. Suddenly, a teacher from the school came to call the learners to class. The striking workers did not take kindly to that such that one of the strikers, who had an axe in his hand, gave chase to the teacher. The police stopped him and he turned back and joined the group again. The striking workers invited the learners to join them but they did not. The situation then calmed down, she submitted. Elaborating, she submitted that learning began from 8am until 9am and that.

Invaded

The striking workers suddenly invaded the school, banging and kicking doors wide open with some even entering the classrooms demanding the teachers to join them in the strike.

They proceeded to bang desks and in the process pushed one teacher out of the classroom in a rather rough manner. Subsequently, some doors were broken and keys were taken by the protestor such that to date, the keys have not been recovered. This was all done in an effort to force the teachers to join the strike, she stated. An analysis of the rest of the schools where head teachers were against the strike shows that most of them recorded less than 10 failures.
Two people have been taken to hospital after lightning strikes in Sydney's north, with a woman in Arcadia and a man in Dee Why being struck within minutes of each other.

"These are extraordinary circumstances. This is the first time I have ever come across two lightning strikes within 10 minutes - it's terrifying," NSW Ambulance duty operations manager Carolyn Parish said.

"Paramedics had to work quickly at the scene. At both Dee Why and Arcadia, they worked tirelessly on the patients and went to extreme measures and did absolutely everything they could."

A 71-year-old woman was struck outside her home in Arcadia, west of Berowra, at 5.14pm. Four ambulance crews were sent to help.
2 Mourners packed Tehran's Enghelab (Revolution) Square three days after Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad airport. Soleimani's funeral procession was said to be the largest in Iran since the death of the Islamic republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
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San Francisco, 6 January 2020: The Report Small Animal Imaging (In-vivo) Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Technology (Optical Imaging, Micro-Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Nuclear Imaging), By Application, And Segment Forecasts, 2012  2022

The global small animal imaging (In-Vivo) market size is expected to reach $2.7 billion by 2022, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc., progressing at a CAGR of 9.0% during the forecast period. Rising number of medical conditions requiring precise research for development of treatment options is anticipated to stoke the demand for small animal imaging over the forecast period.

Importance of these devices in applications such as defining mechanism of action, drug receptor targeting, and epigenetic research studies are projected to provide substantial growth for the market. Some of the major drivers of small animal imaging (in-vivo) market are technical innovations such as high-resolution MRI with other modalities, growing number of research and pharmaceutical organizations, increasing investments of CROs in pre-clinical studies, and rising adoption of multi-functional pre-clinical imaging.

Access Research Report of Small Animal Imaging Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/small-animal-imaging-in-vivo-market

Further key findings from the report suggest:

Optical imaging was the largest segment in 2014 owing to rapid and easy operations and relatively cost-effective in comparison to other devices

Micro-MRI technology is anticipated to be the fastest growing segment over the forecast period due varied applications during anatomical and functional analysis in developing mouse embryos and neonates

In 2014, bio-distribution and monitoring the treatment response dominated the market in terms of revenue

The cancer cell detection segment is expected to show substantial growth due to the increasing prevalence of cancer and rising government initiatives for cancer diagnostics research

North America was the largest region in terms of revenue in 2016. Vast pre-clinical research, increasing demand for rapid and advanced methods, established healthcare infrastructure, and favorable platform for R&D pertaining to technological advancements are the key factors driving the regional market

Europe was the second largest region in 2014, due to a large number of clinical research and pharmaceutical organizations and diagnostic device manufacturers

Asia Pacific is projected to be the fastest growing region over the forecast period owing to increasing clinical research activities, rising base of target population, and emerging economies

Some of the key players are Promega Corporation, Inc.; Miltenyi Biotec GmbH; Life Technologies Corporation; FujiFilm Holding Corporation; Siemens AG; Thermo Fisher Scientific; Bruker Corporation; PerkinElmer Inc.; and Aspect Imaging Ltd.

Browse more reports of this category by Grand View Research at: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry/medical-imaging

Grand View Research has segmented the global small animal imaging (in vivo) market on the basis of technology, application, and region:

Small Animal Imaging (In-vivo) Technology Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2012 - 2022)

Micro-magnetic resonance imaging

Optical imaging

Nuclear imaging

Other imaging modalities

Small Animal Imaging (In-vivo) Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2012 - 2022)

Monitoring treatment response

Bio-distribution

Cancer cell detection

Biomarkers

Longitudinal studies

Epigenetics

Small Animal Imaging (In-vivo) Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2012 - 2022)

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

RoW

Access Press Release of Small Animal Imaging Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-small-animal-imaging-in-vivo-market

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.

For More Information: www.grandviewresearch.com
The Iraqi parliament Sunday voted in favor of the expulsion of the American forces stationed in the country following the assassination early Friday in capital Baghdad of Irans top general, Qassem Soleimani.

The 329-seat parliament, where Shiites make up the dominant coalition, adopted a resolution calling for the expulsion of the 5,200 US troops stationed in the country in the frame of the fight against the Islamic State.

The resolution also demanded the government to terminate the agreement signed with the US four years ago.

Ties between Iraq and the US worsened following the killing of General Soleimani and Iran-backed Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in a US drone airstrike at the Baghdad airport on Friday.

The airstrike, ordered by President Donald Trump came few days following another US air power sortie that killed over 20 Shiite militiamen, blamed for a rocket on US military camp where one US contractor was killed.

Washington defended the airstrike on Soleimani, arguing that the 62-year old head of Irans powerful Revolutionary Guards foreign legions was preparing attacks on US interests. Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi present at the parliamentary session branded the airstrikes political assassination.
Iraqi Parliament Votes to End Foreign Military Presence, Scrap US-Led Coalition Agreement - Reports

Sputnik News

16:41 05.01.2020(updated 01:33 06.01.2020)

The reports emerge as the US-led coalition fighting Daesh* in Iraq has said that it has suspended its fight against the terror group amid increased attacks on US personnel.

The Iraqi Parliament has passed a resolution to demand the termination of all the foreign troop presence in the country, Sky News Arabia broadcaster reported.

During an extraordinary session convened on Sunday, the legislative body also voted to terminate the agreement with the US-led coalition fighting Daesh.

"The government commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting Islamic State due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory," the resolution read. "The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason."

Prior to the vote, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, the head of the Iraqi government, said in a speech he believes that the foreign troop pullout would be beneficial to the country. He recalled that US-Iraqi relations did not suffer despite the absence of foreign troops in the country in the period 2011-2014.

"Despite the internal and external difficulties that we might face, it remains best for Iraq on principle and practically," Abdul Mahdi told parliament in a speech.

He added that there are two options available regarding the withdrawal of US-led coalition troops. The first would see their immediate and complete withdrawal, the second would order foreign military personnel to leave gradually.

"As Prime Minister and senior commander, I recommend the first option. Despite the external and internal difficulties that we may encounter, this option is fundamentally better for Iraq ... It will help reorganise relations with the US and other nations, maintain cordial relations on the basis that territorial sovereignty is respected, and allows for no interference in internal affairs," Mahdi remarked.

Hezbollah Leader on US Troops in the Region

Echoing the Prime Minister's words, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that the end of the US troop presence in the region, including military bases, navy ships and military personnel would be a fair punishment for Soleimani's killing.

Nasrallah specified that this measure should not include civilians in the country as the punishment should be directed at the institution that implemented the killing of Soleimani.

Soleimani's Killing

The parliament's decision comes in the wake of the resonant killing of Iran's Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani. In the early hours of Friday, Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of an Iraqi Shia militia group, were struck by a US drone near Baghdad International Airport. Both were blamed by Washington for organising demonstrations at the US Embassy in Baghdad on 31 December.

US President Donald Trump said the recent strikes were a preemptive, defensive move to prevent war. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has warned that Tehran will take revenge for what it views to be a heinous crime.

* Daesh (ISIL/ISIS/IS/Islamic State) is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia

A Sputnik

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Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP), the state's apex students' body, will stage demonstration at the Lengpui airport when MP C Lalrosanga, who voted in favour of the Citizenship Amendment Bill, arrives on Tuesday.

MZP president B Vanlaltana told PTI that Lalrosanga had promised to oppose the contentious bill during his campaign for the Lok Sabha elections.

"However, the MP betrayed the people of Mizoram and voted in favour of the bill," he said.

The MZP has criticised the lone MP from the state for voting in favour of the contentious bill "against the interest of the Mizo people".

Vanlaltana said the protesters will carry banners and put on Mizo traditional shawl "Pawndum", which signifies disapproval.

Lalrosanga earlier said that he voted in favour of the bill in Parliament as a gratitude to the BJP-led NDA government for exempting Mizoram and other scheduled areas of the Northeast.

The state government has made elaborate security arrangements to prevent any untoward incident when the MP arrives.

Aizawl's Superintendent of Police C Lalruaia said a briefing has been held with officers and personnel for ensuring security at the airport.

Forces led by additional SP Lalmalsawma Hnamte will be deployed at the airport to prevent any untoward incident, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Business France will field two French pavilions specialised in fire and rescue, commercial security, information security, perimeter and physical security at the upcoming Intersec, a leading trade fair for security and safety in Dubai, UAE.



The exhibition runs from January 19 to 21 at Dubai World Trade Centre.



The French industry has gained an international reputation in different fields such as fire prevention and fire fighting, personal protective equipment (PPE), infrastructure protection and safety. These sectors will be represented by companies offering solutions at the cutting edge of innovation.



Frederic Szabo, managing director, Business France Middle East, stated: The Middle East region represents a particularly attractive market for the safety and security sector, and is expected to grow by about 10% per year by 2022.



Increasing the capabilities of infrastructures, securing power plants and oil complexes, protecting sites and people for major events to come in the region, are all excellent reasons for French experts to extend their presence in the region and attend Intersec trade show.



France offers in particular strong leadership in skills such as mathematics, algorithms, imaging software, identification and cybersecurity. Another French asset is the research and innovation capabilities through its extensive network of state-of-the-art laboratories.



Outstanding engineering and industrial processes skills also stem from the French defence and digital technology industries (biometrics, smart cards, etc.).



The exhibiting companies on the French pavilion are part of a movement called the French Fab, initiated in 2017 by the Alliance Industrie du Futur, Bpifrance, Business France, the Direction Generale des Entreprises (DGE) and the French regions.



French Fab players, committed to an ecological approach, are working to revive the industrial fabric, revitalise the territories, make industrial professions attractive, and promote French industrial excellence, in France and throughout the world, a statement said.  TradeArabia News Service


Family, friends and neighbors gather for a vigil outside the Shamrock Deli in Audubon Jan. 6, 2020 for owner Jerome Pastore, 57, who was fatally stabbed Friday, allegedly by a teenager who stole the deli's tip jar. Read more

One after another, customers returned Monday to the Shamrock Deli in Audubon, Camden County, hugging workers behind the counter and remembering the kind owner, who was fatally stabbed three days earlier.

Me and Jerry go back 50 years. We were childhood friends in Voorhees, Steve Ginn, 58, one of the workers, said as the deli at Cuthbert Boulevard and Davis Avenue reopened after being closed for the weekend. Im his best friend.

Ginn said he was still trying to process what happened. He was not at the deli when, authorities say, a teenager fatally stabbed Jerome Pastore, 57, about 4:50 p.m. Friday. Pastore was found by police across the street from the deli and was pronounced dead shortly afterward at Cooper University Hospital.

Ginn said the attacker fled with the tip jar from the counter, which had about $10 or at most $20. If he needed money, Jerry would have given him the money, Ginn said.

Pastore was a good person, said Ginn. He had a heart of gold.

A spokesperson for the Camden County Prosecutors Office declined Monday to confirm whether the tip jar was the motive in the stabbing. The investigation into the fatal stabbing is still ongoing, Alexandra McVeigh wrote. As such, no additional information is being released at this time.

The office announced Sunday that 18-year-old Dyheam Williams was arrested at his Lindenwold home  about 7 miles away  and charged with murder and weapon offenses in the stabbing. Williams is in custody pending a pretrial detention hearing scheduled for Thursday.

Ginn said the alleged attacker had come into the deli a few times, and around the December holidays had put in an application to work here. The staff had not had a chance to review his application, Ginn said.

Pastore had owned the deli  which opened around 1980  for about a year and a half, Ginn said. It was his dream to own a deli, to earn enough to pay the bills, he said. Pastore previously worked in the food industry, his friend said.

At Pastores West Berlin home Monday, an adult son who opened the door said the family was not ready to speak.

Pastores friends and relatives attended a vigil at 7 p.m. Monday outside the deli. Angelia Taylor, a regular patron of the Shamrock, organized the vigil and started a GoFundMe campaign to help Pastores wife, Ethel, and five children with funeral and other expenses.

On Monday morning, customer Bob Perna walked out of the deli with a coffee in his hand. He was a good friend of mine, he said of Pastore. He was such a sweetheart of a guy. It makes me sick.

I dont know whats happening to this country, Perna said. Nobodys safe.
Amazon Studios and BBC 1 are co production partners for The Offenders (working title), a 6 x 1 hour series from writer and director Stephen Merchant, originally created by Stephen and Elgin James (co-creator of US series Mayans M.C.)



The series was commissioned by BBC Comedy and BBC One, produced by Big Talk (Mum, Cold Feet, Defending the Guilty) with Stephen Merchants Four Eyes. Big Talk is part of ITV Studios. Filming will take place in Bristol. The series will premiere on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Amazon Prime Video in the United States, Canada and Australia.

The Offenders follows seven strangers from different walks of life forced together to complete a Community Payback sentence in Bristol. As their unlikely new friendships intersect with their complicated private lives, The Offenders must unite to protect one of their own from Bristols most dangerous criminal gang. The show is part crime thriller, character study, and a state-of-the-nation commentary.

The series was commissioned for the BBC by Charlotte Moore, BBC Director of Content; Shane Allen, BBC Controller, Comedy Commissioning; and Kate Daughton, BBC Head of Comedy.

Stephen Merchant, who also directs and co-stars in the series, said: The Offenders is a long-standing passion project for me. My parents used to work in the Community Service world and I was always intrigued that the many and varied people they dealt with only had one thing in common: theyd committed a crime. Ever since The Office, I love finding ways to bring unlikely groups of people together and watch the sparks fly. As a writer I always include humour but with The Offenders, I also get to add drama, pathos, crime genre thrills and say something optimistic about the common humanity that unites us all, whatever our background.

Adds Stephen: The Offenders mix of light and shade, dark and comic, middle-class angst with inner-city grit, reflects the unlikely partnership of me and Elgin. I grew up in suburbia whereas Elgin spent his early life building a national street gang until a police investigation landed him in prison. Despite coming from different sides of the tracks, Elgin and I share a love of convincing characters and authentic, engaging, human stories.

Kenton Allen, Big Talk Chief Executive, said: Having long admired Stephens phenomenal work as a writer, director and actor were thrilled to be working with him on his first one-hour TV series and to continue our long relationships with the BBC who have been incredibly smart and supportive from the moment we mentioned the idea. Were also equally thrilled to be working with Amazon for the first time on an original production and cant wait for UK and US audiences to see what I think will be a very distinctive and eye-catching show.

Kate Daughton, Head of BBC Comedy, says: "The BBC One audience are in for an absolute treat with Stephen Merchants gripping world rich with heart, humour and stand out characters. Amongst the deftly woven plots, high jinks, unlikely friendships and big belly laughs are very human stories about loyalty, truth and family."

Were so excited to work with Stephen on a series with his signature razor-sharp wit and distinctive, delightful characters, said Brad Beale, Vice President, Worldwide Content Licensing for Amazon Prime Video. Stephen is such a gifted actor and creator, and we know our Prime Video customers will love The Offenders.

The Offenders is a Big Talk and Four Eyes production created by Stephen Merchant and Elgin James. Executive Producers are Stephen Merchant for Four Eyes, Luke Alkin Kenton Allen and Matthew Justice for Big Talk, and Kate Daughton is the Commissioning Editor for the BBC.

The Lead Director for the series is Stephen Merchant and the Producer is Nickie Sault (The Virtues, World On Fire).

The U.S., Canada, and Australia deal with Amazon was brokered by Phil Sequeira, BBC Studios. Global distribution will be handled by BBC Studios.

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Iran's proxy groups, such as insurgents in Lebanon and Iraq, have vowed revenge following the US assassination of Qassim Soleimani

Iran has warned the United States to prepare for a dark day of revenge for the killing of General Qassim Soleimani - but it remains unclear how and when the regime will retaliate.

Experts say one thing is likely, which is that any response to the US airstrike will be carried out by Irans large network of proxies in the Middle East, rather than its own soldiers or spies.

This is because the Iranian regime is reluctant to trigger direct confrontation with the US, even though the assassination of Soleimani marks the biggest escalation between the two countries in decades.

Here we look at where Iran-sympathising militias, political parties and insurgents have footholds in the Middle East, and how they might respond to Irans vow of revenge.

Why does Iran have proxies?

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, when the monarchy was replaced with a theocracy, Iran has sought to export its values to surrounding countries in the Middle East.

The regime relies on so-called proxies, groups that advance Iranian interests in a given region but are not Iranian state apparatus.

Soleimani himself played a key role in building up these proxies as a means of undermining the United States presence in the region, with particular success following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Tehran also views the proxies as a deterrent against would-be aggressors, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The Tower, a pro-Israel magazine based in Washington, has described Tehran as perfecting the art of gradually conquering a country without replacing its flag in its use of proxies.

The most influential proxies are based in Lebanon and Iraq, but other groups have sprung up in Syria, Yemen and Gaza.

Qassim Soleimani was revered in Iran as a military and tactical genius - but he was reviled in the US as a terrorist mastermind Credit: Office of the Supreme Leader

Lebanon

Hizbollah, a Shia Islamist political party with a military wing, is perhaps Irans most powerful proxy.

Shortly after the news broke of Soleimanis death, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah, called on resistance fighters around the world to avenge him.

Story continues

Meting out the appropriate punishment to these criminal assassins... will be the responsibility and task of all resistance fighters worldwide," Nasrallah told his supporters.

What is less clear is whether Hizbollah itself would take part in attacks on US soldiers or points of commercial interest, such as shipping routes.

Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Lebanon's militant Shiite movement Hizbollah Credit: AFP

However, officials in neighbouring Israel say they have already taken precautionary measures against a Hizbollah strike that would be carried out on Irans behalf.

For a long time, Hizbollah was the main Iranian proxy group and clearly the most long-standing, explained Dr Steven Hurst, an Iran expert at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Up until the Iraq war, there was not really anyone else of much significance," he added.

Dr Hurst also pointed out that Hizbollah is a power in its own right, that acts largely independently of Tehran, though it shares many of the regimes values and goals.

Hizbollah has also stressed that only American soldiers - and not Western tourists or other civilians - should be targeted in retaliation for Soleimanis death, which offers some insight into the type of response they may support.

Iraq and Syria

The Iranian regime wields enormous influence in Iraq, and Soleimani himself has cultivated a number of proxy militias since the US invasion in 2003.

Two significant pro-Iran groups operating in Iraq are Kataib Hizbollah and the Badr Organisation.

A third group, the Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq militia, was designated by the US as an Iranian proxy and terrorist organisation last week, with sanctions applied.

Kataib Hizbollah made headlines in Western media shortly before Soleimanis death, as its members attacked the American embassy in Baghdad in protest at another US airstrike in December.

Representatives of the Badr Organisation have threatened to expel US forces from Iraq in retaliation for Soleimanis death.

Thousands of mourners gather to pay tribute to Soleimani in Tehran Credit: AFP

But Dr Hurst said that Iraq-based Iranian proxies were overall less formidable than Hizbollah.

While there are more Iraqi militias, they are competitive with each other and do not have the same clout as Hizbollah, which clearly has reach beyond Lebanon, he said.

Various pro-Iran factions operate in Syria in support of Bashar al-Assad, the countrys embattled president.

Among those groups are Asaib Ahl al-Haq, established in 2006, the Baqir Brigade and Quwat al-Ridha.

Gaza and Yemen

Hamas and the group Palestinian Islamic Jihad are broadly aligned with Irans strategic goals in Israel, such as creating an Islamic Palestinian state in the West Bank.

Meanwhile, in Yemen, the Houthi Rebels have played their own role in Iran's proxy war with Saudi Arabia.

However, these groups are both geographically and ideologically more distant from Tehran, compared to the Iraqi militias.

As for when Iran's revenge may occur, Dr Hurst was circumspect: Historically, Iran doesnt tend to engage in rash acts and can be very cautious and thoughtful.

He added that, unlike Mr Trumps cavalier approach to military action, the decision-making processes in the Islamic Republic are slow and cumbersome,

I think they will respond at some point, but I would share the view that they are not in a rush.

Additional reporting: Iona McGarvey
Paris: "Nothing will ever be as before", predicted Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo after two gunmen massacred cartoonists at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris five years ago.

The attack on the weekly -- with its long history of mocking Islam and other religions -- was the first in a series of assaults that have claimed more than 250 lives since January 7, 2015, mostly at the hands of young French-born jihadists.

It sent shockwaves through France, exposing divisions in the multicultural modern Republic and sparking an intense debate about Muslim integration and press freedom.

The Kouachi brothers who killed 12 people in their strike on Charlie Hebdo claimed to be avenging the magazine's publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed deemed offensive by many Muslims.

"We avenged the Prophet Mohammed. We killed Charlie Hebdo!", they shouted triumphantly as they ran through the streets.

Within three days, the death toll in the rampage of the al-Qaeda-affiliated siblings and accomplice Amedy Coulibaly had risen to 17, including four people at a kosher supermarket and three police officers.

'I am Charlie'

The Kouachis failed in their bid to "kill" Charlie Hebdo; despite losing its top talent the magazine remained afloat thanks to an outpouring of solidarity.

"I wanted the paper to continue to exist. For me it couldn't just stop like that because of what happened," said Pierrick Juin, a cartoonist who joined the magazine just months after the attack.

This week the magazine published a defiant anniversary issue remembering the attack and also denouncing what it said was a new kind of politically correct censorship by those who "believe themselves to be the kings of the world behind their keyboard and smartphone."

But the attacks did expose deep divisions in France: even a nationwide minute of silence observed by four million people under the slogan "Je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie) could not project a nation united in mourning.

Students at around 200 schools, many of them in neighbourhoods with big immigrant populations, boycotted the tribute, accusing Charlie Hebdo of Muslim-baiting.

Then prime minister Manuel Valls drew widespread criticism by linking the rise of extremism to France's "geographical, social and ethnic apartheid".

President Emmanuel Macron reprised the theme during his 2017 election campaign.

But despite his talk of ending the "house arrest" of young people trapped in high-rise suburban housing projects, the breeding grounds of several of the jihadists who have attacked France since 2015, their conditions remain largely unchanged.

A major Odoxa survey in November showed a majority of residents in housing projects still feeling abandoned by the state and discriminated against by employers.

'Loss of innocence'

The three days of attacks in January 2015 culminated in a deadly hostage-taking by Coulibaly at the Jewish supermarket, confirming fears that French Jews had become a top target for homegrown Islamist radicals.

Coming three years after an Islamist gunman shot dead a teacher and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse, the attack compounded the feeling that "everywhere, at any time, we were a target," France's chief rabbi Haim Korsia told AFP.

For Korsia it marked "a sort of loss of innocence" in the 500,000-strong French Jewish community, Europe's largest, which had until then seen the biggest threat as being from the far right.

Jewish emigration to Israel hit a peak in 2014-15, years which also saw an exodus from the multi-ethnic French suburbs where Jews of north African origin had lived alongside Muslims for decades.

As the year wore on the attacks grew broader in scope, randomly targeting French people in November 2015, when Islamic State bombers and gunmen slaughtered 130 people in Paris.

But although departures for Israel have since declined, anti-Semitism is still on the rise, as the desecration of more than 100 graves at a Jewish cemetery in Alsace showed last month.

Soldiers in the streets

In the aftermath of the January 2015 attacks, then president Francois Hollande sent troops into the streets to guard vulnerable sites and patrol tourist hotspots.

Over the past five years, troops from the Sentinelle anti-terrorism operation have become part of the landscape in French cities.

The military presence was stepped up after the bloodshed of November 2015 and remains at a high level, with around 10,000 troops deployed.

France remains on its second-highest alert level, with sporadic attacks by individuals accused of having become radicalised continuing to claim lives.

In the latest deadly incident, a 22-year-old convert to Islam with psychological problems went on a stabbing rampage in a park near Paris on January 3, killing one man and injuring two women.
Melbourne's urban fringe is at risk of suffering another catastrophic bushfire with experts warning the trees and undergrowth that have grown back since the 2009 Black Saturday fires are now tinder dry.

Eleven years after 173 people died when fires ripped through the densely populated and heavily forested foothills north-east of Melbourne, emergency experts say the bush has recovered to the point where it will be a genuine fire risk if hot temperatures persist this summer.

Kinglake West resident Mark Morrow property is still surrounded by dangerous bush Credit:Chris Hopkins

Former emergency management commissioner Craig Lapsley, who drove through the area a few weeks ago, says that after a hot December the area has dried out.

Thats where the bush meets the cities  and the people. When it burns... it will cause significant issues, he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-03 08:56:09|Editor: Liu

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SUVA, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- Carbon will soon be a new commodity for the Ministry of Forests in Fiji as part of efforts to address climate change.

According to Fiji Broadcasting Corporation (FBC), Fiji's Ministry of Forests Permanent Secretary Pene Baleinabuli said on Friday a new five-year carbon trading plan will help reduce carbon emissions in an effort to address climate change.

"It's meant to address climate change, first and foremost, but within it, there is opportunity for resource owners who grow their trees and do not log them to also make a bit of money through carbon trading," Baleinabuli said.

Baleinabuli said the World Bank is willing to be the first to buy Fiji's carbon.

Fiji is currently undertaking a 4 million tree campaign which includes the planting of timber, fruit and ornamental trees.

The 4-Million Trees-in-4 Years initiative is part of the Fijian government's renewed effort to continue the fight against climate change and to protect Fiji's environment and rich biodiversity.

Fiji also intends to plant 500,000 mangroves over the next three years to protect the coastal ecosystems.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 17:45:56|Editor: xuxin

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A helicopter is seen battling a forest fire in the north of Napier, New Zealand's North Island, Jan. 6, 2020. A large forest fire broke out on Monday in the north of Napier in New Zealand's North Island. The fire is fueled by "cutover from remnants of forestry work" and spread fast through strong winds, said a local government spokesperson. Dry and heavy winds have created bad conditions for battling the fire, according to MetService. (Hayden Woodward/Handout via Xinhua)

WELLINGTON, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand firefighters are still battling a forest fire in the north of Napier in New Zealand's North Island.

The fire has spread about 140 hectares of forest.

The large fire broke out on Monday fueled by "cutover from remnants of forestry work" and spread fast through strong winds, said a local government spokesperson, adding the fire was still spreading.

According to fire and emergency authorities, about 65 firefighters, 11 trucks, an aeroplane, and six helicopters were at the scene.

Dry and heavy winds have created bad conditions for battling the fire, according to MetService.
Students and teachers at premier university recount the horrors of Sunday nights violence that injured dozens.

New Delhi, India  Surya Prakash  a visually impaired student at New Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)  says masked assailants broke into his ground-floor room in Sabarmati Hostel and beat him with iron rods.

I kept shouting that Im blind but they didnt listen to me, Prakash, 25, who is pursuing his PhD in Sanskrit, told Al Jazeera on Monday.

Prakashs left arm and back are swollen. He told Al Jazeera that he could not say who the attackers were.

He is among at least 26 students and teachers who were injured during Sunday nights violence that has caused an outrage, with people across several cities staging solidarity protests on Monday.

Videos shared on social media showed masked men roaming inside the universitys hostels and attacking students and teachers with iron rods, sticks and sledgehammers and vandalising properties.

Prakash was rescued by other students and taken to New Delhis All India Medical Institute of Sciences (AIIMS) for treatment. He was discharged after an hour.

Protests have been organised across several Indian cities in solidarity with JNU students [Adnan Abidi/Reuters]

I couldnt sleep all night. I froze in my bed thinking they might come again, he said.

The Sanskrit scholar says he is getting threat calls from unknown numbers for speaking out.

Im scared but I do not want to remain silent. I want everyone to know what happened with me. I want them to understand that nobody is safe here, he said, adding that he is not part of any political party and spends most of his time studying in his room.

Mayhem

Students and teachers at JNU have been protesting for the past few months against fee rise, which they say will hurt poor students.

The university, a bastion of left-wing student politics, witnessed scuffles between the left-leaning students body and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP)  a student group linked to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)  earlier on Sunday.

I'm scared but I don't want to remain silent. I want them to understand that nobody is safe here. Surya Prakash, visually impaired student at JNU

The JNU Teachers Association had called for a meeting to restore peace on campus on Sunday evening, a move backed by the students union.

Witnesses said the attacks on Sunday were carried out by ABVP members, a charge the right-wing student outfit has denied.

Aishe Ghosh, president of the students union who was badly injured, and other students and teachers said the violent mob created mayhem and terrorised the university for close to three hours.

Many Indians took to social media to criticise the handling of the situation by the Delhi police, and some questioned the police on why it did not arrest the perpetrators of the violence.

The incident came weeks after police were accused of brutalities in handling student protests against the new citizenship law at Jamia Millia Islamia university and Aligarh Muslim University.

Meanwhile, the Delhi police have registered a case against unidentified people for rioting and damage to property.

Violence at Sabarmati Hostel

At a news conference on Monday, the JNU Teachers Association urged Indias president to dismiss JNUs vice chancellor in the wake of the violence.

When we saw group wearing masks, we thought we will talk to them and ask them who they are and why are they in the campus wearing masks, Atul Sood, a professor at JNU, told Al Jazeera. Before we could reach to them, they started throwing stones at us.

Everyone ran for safety but the mob armed with rods and sticks chased the students inside hostels and beat many of them. It was complete mayhem, he said.

Many of the students chased by the rampaging mob took shelter inside Sabarmati Hostel, where most of the violence happened.

Jyoti, who withheld her surname due to security reasons, said she was in her room when the mob attacked Sabarmati Hostel.

She rushed out into the corridor to see what was happening. They were about 30 people armed with iron rods, hammers and carrying some spray and beating students, she told Al Jazeera.

The only sound was doors being banged and glasses being broken and students screaming and crying for help Shreya Ghosh, a PhD student at the Centre for Political Studies, JNU

About a dozen students including Jyoti made a human chain to stop them from entering into their rooms. Jyoti took out her phone and began making videos.

When they saw me doing the video recording, they beat me with sticks, she said. But other students saved me. Everyone was scared and many students had panic attacks and were rushed to hospital later.

On Monday, the wardens of the hostel resigned, stating in their resignation letters that they were quitting on moral grounds as they were unable to provide security to the hostel residents.

Shreya Ghosh, a PhD student at the Centre for Political Studies, was one of the students who took shelter inside Sabarmati Hostel in a single-occupancy room along with nearly 20 other students.

We put the lights off, mobiles on silent mode. At least 10 of us stood against the door to block it so that attackers could not come in, she said.

We thought if the door gets unblocked, we all will lose our lives.

The only sounds we heard were doors being banged and glasses being broken and students screaming and crying for help, she told Al Jazeera.

Ghosh and several other students at JNU alleged that police and security personnel did not come for their help while they were under attack.

It was an organised mob who were determined to do what they were up to. It was a different sense of fear, she said.

Im speechless because police knew this is happening, the security knew this is happening and there was no one from them to stop this for one hour despite police being there in the campus and despite students calling for help.

The Delhi police said they were investigating how masked men entered the university. Social media and CCTV footage will be a part of the investigation, police officer Devendra Arya told Reuters news agency.

JNU students and many teachers have faced attacks and have been called anti-nationals for opposing the Hindu supremacist agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

If ABVP and this government thinks that we will stop fighting against its brutal policies, they are mistaken. JNU will fight till its last student is alive. They cannot break our spirit, said another student, Kaushiki.
Boris Johnson today backed America's right to 'self-defence' as the fallout from Donald Trump's killing of Qassem Soleimani escalated.

The PM's official spokesman refused to criticise the dramatic drone strike despite threats from Tehran that UK forces could be 'collateral damage' in reprisals.

But Downing Street did caution that attacks on cultural sites - an idea Mr Trump has mooted - could break international law.

And the government has again appealed for Iraq not to expel British and US troops, pointing out that they are in the country to combat ISIS.

In a phone call with Iraqi counterpart Adil Abdul Mahdi today, Mr Johnson stressed his commitment to 'Iraq's stability and sovereignty' after the killing on its territory. He 'emphasised the importance of the continued fight against the shared threat' from the terrorist group.

Mr Johnson is back in Westminster after his Caribbean holiday, but finds himself walking a tightrope between Mr Trump and other allies who want to ease tensions.

He met Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace this afternoon to take stock of the situation.

Speaking afterwards Mr Raab said: 'We have been very clear that cultural sites are protected under international law and we would expect that to be respected.'

Tehran moved today to quell speculation that British troops could be targeted by Iranian reprisals.

An unnamed commander told The Times: 'Our forces will retaliate and target US troops in Middle East without any concern about killing its allies, including UK troops, as this has turned into a fully fledged war with much collateral damage expected.'

But Iran's ambassador to the UK, Hamid Baeidinejad, dismissed the report as 'malicious false propaganda'.

He tweeted: 'As the Ambassador and high representative of my country in the UK, I strongly condemn the vicious lie and provocative news.'

A graphic showing British military strength in the Gulf and how it compares to that of other nations

The US strike on Friday and Iran's response to it has put British forces in the region on alert. This graphic shows where the UK has military assets in the area

Boris Johnson gathered key ministers for crisis talks today as the Iran crisis threatened to spiral out of control

Soleimani (left), the architect of Tehran's overseas clandestine and military operations as head of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, was killed on Friday in a US drone strike (President Trump right) on his convoy at Baghdad airport

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab (left) and Mr Johnson's key adviser Dominic Cummings (right) were at work in Whitehall today as the Iran crisis threatens to snowball

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is also in Downing Street to take stock of the Iran standoff

Soleimani's body was returned to Iran on Sunday. People are seen carrying his casket upon arrival at Ahvaz International Airport in Tehran. The casket was greeted by chants of 'Death to America' as Iran issued new threats of retaliation

Iranians surround a vehicle carrying the coffin of Qassem Soleimani in the city of Mashhad, in northeastern Iran

British troops serving in the Middle East could 'possibly' be killed in retaliation attacks on US soldiers, according to retired army officer Sir Simon Vincent Mayall this morning.

Chaos as UK troops abandon their anti-IS missions in Iraq Britain's fight against ISIS is in chaos after the training mission in Iraq was ditched. Soldiers teaching local forces how to fight the militants were ordered to guard their bases instead amid fears that Iran could launch an attack in revenge for the killing of General Qassem Soleimani. Iraq's parliament also voted to boot out all US-led forces in response to the drone strike. If the vote is approved by the government, thousands of foreign troops including British soldiers, would be forced to leave, crippling the battle against the militants. Prime minister Adil Abdul Mahdi said it was 'time for American troops to leave for the sake of our national sovereignty'. The British government urged Iraq to allow UK soldiers to continue their training mission. More than 200 are stationed at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, alongside American and German troops. Others are deployed in Erbil, northern Iraq, and there are a handful at two locations in Baghdad. Announcing the suspension of the training, a statement from the US-led mission against Islamic State cited rocket attacks in Iraq that were threatening the safety of coalition personnel. It added: 'As a result we are now fully committed to protecting the Iraqi bases that host coalition troops.' Former defence minister Tobias Ellwood said: 'This training suspension must not be permanent because it simply undermines the military efforts and huge resources put in to tackling Islamic State. 'This would lead to another reign of terror which will have repercussions far beyond the Middle East.' Advertisement

The lieutenant general told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the allies were 'joined at the hip' in Iraq and that casualties could be shared if Iran strikes back following the US decision to kill Qassem Soleimani, a leading Iranian general.

The Ministry of Defence adviser said: 'I don't think the British are any more vulnerable than the Americans in this case - we are joined at the hip in this.

'But the Iranians are quite right. Because we're so closely joined in this, any attack on American assets will inevitably, possibly lead to to British casualties as well.'

Breaking his silence last night, Mr Johnson insisted Britain 'will not lament' the death of Qassem Soleimani.

He said the general, killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad on Friday, had played a role in the deaths of thousands of innocent people and was a 'threat to all our interests'.

But he also appealed to both Mr Trump and Iran for calm, urging both sides to encourage de-escalation.

Briefing reporters today, the spokesman said: 'States have a right to take action such as this in self-defence, and the US have been clear that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on American diplomats and military personnel.'

Former security minister Admiral Lord West has raised concerns that UK assets could be a 'softer target' than those of the US.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump has reacted with fury after Iraq said US and UK forces could be kicked out of the country. The president suggested the country could be hit with crippling sanctions if it follows through on the move.

The UK cautioned against the expulsion, saying it would give a major boost to ISIS just as the terrorist group seems to be on the back foot.

Washington says Soleimani was the architect of Iran's proxy wars across the Middle East and behind the deaths of hundreds of Americans in roadside bombings and other attacks.

Mr Trump issued a series of explosive tweets yesterday, threatening all-out war against the Iranian regime and boasted of the military arsenal at his disposal.

Referring to Iranian promises of retaliation published on social media, the US President tweeted: 'These media posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!'

Mr Johnson flew back from his holiday on the private island of Mustique yesterday, having ignored calls to return home early to deal with the crisis.

After landing in London, he held talks with Mr Trump, France's president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel.

Mr Johnson's spokesman said: 'The coalition is in Iraq to protect Iraqis and others from the threat from Daesh at the request of the Iraqi government.

'We urge the Iraqi government to ensure the coalition is able to continue our vital work countering this shared threat.

'The Foreign Secretary spoke to the Iraqi president and prime minister this weekend.

'The Prime Minister is speaking with his Iraqi counterpart today and our ambassador in Baghdad is in touch with political leaders in Iraq to emphasise these points and urge them to ensure we can keep fighting this threat together.'

The PM said in a statement last night: 'General Qassem Soleimani posed a threat to all our interests and was responsible for a pattern of disruptive, destabilising behaviour.

'Given the leading role he has played in actions that have led to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and western personnel, we will not lament his death.

'It is clear however that all calls for retaliation or reprisals will simply lead to more violence in the region and they are in no one's interest.'

He urged all sides to encourage de-escalation and said the UK had taken steps to boost the security of UK personnel and interests in the region.

Mr Johnson, Ms Merkel and Mr Macron released a joint statement overnight in which they again stopped short of criticising the US.

'We have condemned the recent attacks on coalition forces in Iraq and are gravely concerned by the negative role Iran has played in the region, including through the IRGC and the Al-Quds force under the command of General Soleimani,' they said.

'There is now an urgent need for de-escalation. We call on all parties to exercise utmost restraint and responsibility. The current cycle of violence in Iraq must be stopped.

'We specifically call on Iran to refrain from further violent action or proliferation, and urge Iran to reverse all measures inconsistent with the JCPOA.

'We recall our attachment to the sovereignty and security of Iraq. Another crisis risks jeopardizing years of efforts to stabilize Iraq.

'We also reaffirm our commitment to continue the fight against Daesh, which remains a high priority. The preservation of the Coalition is key in this regard. We therefore urge the Iraqi authorities to continue providing the Coalition all the necessary support.

Chancellor Sajid Javid was also at work in Downing Street today, but is not thought to be taking part in meetings on the Iran situation

'We stand ready to continue our engagement with all sides in order to contribute to defuse tensions and restore stability to the region.'

Ministers will meet today to discuss the situation and the National Security Council will gather later in the week. Parliament will be updated when it returns from recess tomorrow.

Retired lieutenant general Sir Simon Vincent Mayall told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that UK forces would be at risk because they were 'joined at the hip' with the US in Iraq.

Trump's drone strike could 'pay off', Jeremy Hunt says Donald Trump's dramatic strike on commander Qassem Soleimani could 'pay off', Jeremy Hunt said today. The former foreign secretary said the controversial killing was a 'bold move' - pointing out that Qassem Soleimani was behind 'regional instability'. 'I think it's easy to underestimate why it could have been a bold move that actually pays off because if there's one person who's responsible for regional instability - in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen - it was Soleimani,' he told Sky News. 'He was the hardline radical inside the Iran regime who had the ear of the Supreme Leader.' Advertisement

The Ministry of Defence adviser said: 'I don't think the British are any more vulnerable than the Americans in this case - we are joined at the hip in this.

'But the Iranians are quite right. Because we're so closely joined in this, any attack on American assets will inevitably, possibly lead to to British casualties as well.'

Lord West, a former head of the Royal Navy, warned that Britain could be a 'softer target' than the US for an Iranian retaliatory attack.

He told the Telegraph: 'Iran will assume that Britain would be party to any all out attack by the US.'

But former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said the dramatic step by the US could 'pay off'.

'I think it's easy to underestimate why it could have been a bold move that actually pays off because if there's one person who's responsible for regional instability - in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen - it was Soleimani,' he told Sky News.

'He was the hardline radical inside the Iran regime who had the ear of the Supreme Leader.'

Iran's nuclear announcement effectively ends its remaining commitments to a deal it agreed with Barack Obama. It said it would no longer observe restrictions on uranium enrichment or on research and development.

The statement noted that the steps could be reversed if Washington lifted its sanctions on Tehran.

The announcement came hours after hundreds of thousands of took to the streets to mourn Soleimani and chant 'death to America'.

The general's remains were carried through the cities of Ahvaz and Mashhad, ahead of a burial in his home town of Kerman tomorrow. One organiser for a funeral procession called on all Iranians to donate $1 each 'in order to gather an $80million bounty on President Trump's head'.

In a major blow for the fight against Islamic State, Iraq's parliament met for an emergency session yesterday and vowed to expel the 5,000 US troops in the country.

The vote still needs the approval of the Iraqi government, which has allowed a US-led presence to help combat the terror group. It had the backing of prime minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, who said it was 'time for American troops to leave'.

The US-led coalition announced its troops had suspended training in order to focus on protecting bases from Iranian attacks.

Iran has issued a series of threats against the Americans, with the foreign minister warning that the days of US troops in the region were over.

Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted: 'Whether kicking or screaming, end of US malign presence in West Asia has begun.'

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned in a televised address that US troops would pay the price for the killing of Soleimani by returning home in coffins.

Iranian lawmakers chant anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans to protest against the US killing of Iranian top general Qassem Soleimani at the start of an open session of parliament in Tehran, Iran, on Sunday

Tens of thousands of Iranians carrying the coffin of Qasem Soleimani while the crowds of mourners wept in the city of Mashad

Iranians gather around a vehicle carrying the coffins of slain major general Qassem Soleimani and others, as they pay homage in the northeastern city of Mashhad

Demonstrators attend a protest against the killing of Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, who died in an air strike at Baghdad airport, outside the US Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has accused European allies of not being 'helpful enough' following the assassination.

Speaking on Sky News, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: 'Let's be very clear: Soleimani was a regional menace, and we understand the position that the Americans found themselves in, and they have a right to exercise self-defence.

'They have explained the basis on which that was done, and we are sympathetic to the situation they found themselves in.'

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Mr Raab's declaration of sympathy for the 'reckless and lawless killing was craven and dangerous'.
The 20 Indian fishermen, who were released from a Pakistani jail on Sunday in a goodwill gesture amidst tense bilateral ties, reached the Wagah Border on Monday.

The Indian fishermen, most of whom hail from Andhra Pradesh, were handed over to the Border Security Force by the Pakistan Rangers, officials said.

The fishermen left for Lahore on Sunday by train after their release from the Malir District Prison in Karachi, Sindh province.

"Upon their arrival, the Edhi Foundation received them at the Lahore railway station and took them to its centre where they were provided food and new clothes," a foundation official told PTI.

An official of the Rangers confirmed the handing over of the fishermen to the Indian authorities.

Earlier talking to reporters on his release, fisherman Gir Somnath said, "We were arrested at sea by the Pakistan Coast Guard for crossing over to Pakistan waters in November 2018."



District Jail Malir Superintendent Aurangzaib Kango said the released Indians were sentenced to six months imprisonment but their release was delayed because of the process of the completion of their documents and nationality confirmation.

He said some 200 Indian fishermen were still imprisoned in Pakistan of whom 189 are fishermen.

Tension between India and Pakistan spiked following New Delhi's decision to abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution on August 5, revoking the special status given to Jammu and Kashmir.

Following this, Pakistan downgraded diplomatic relations with India and also expelled the Indian high commissioner.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The latest top-of-the-line soundbars from Samsung wont just replace your TVs speakers, theyll also be able to work together with your built-in TV audio, provided youre using a new Samsung TV.

Announced Sunday at CES in Las Vegas, Samsungs upcoming Q-series soundbars boast support for a new audio technology called Q-Symphony, which allows the soundbars to work together with the top speakers on Samsungs newest 8K TVs.

By syncing up with the object-tracking sound in Samsungs latest, six-speaker 8K TV sets, Samsungs 2020 Q-series soundbarsincluding the Q800T, a 3.1.2-channel soundbar with a wireless subwoofer and Samsungs Acoustic Beam audio technologyare designed to deliver a much more immersive experience than on previous models, Samsung reps said.

Of course, were generally more than happy to switch off built-in TV speakers in favor of the (typically) far superior audio of a soundbar, but were curious to give Samsung's new TV-audio-plus-soundbar feature a listen.

Also coming to Samsungs 2020 soundbar lineup is Alexa. The digital assistant is slated to be built into a number of Samsungs latest soundbar models, according to the company. Samsungs own Bixby digital assistant is also set to arrive on Samsungs new soundbars, but not until later this year. While Samsungs previous soundbars have been compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant, none of them had any onboard digital assistants.

Besides its high-end Q-series soundbars, Samsung introduced a new S-series line of standalone soundbars designed for what Samsung calls a music-centric user, or those who want a soundbar for a secondary TV set. The S-series soundbars will share Samsungs Acoustic Beam feature from the pricier Q series, along with pretty deep built-in bass (according to Samsung), although a wireless subwoofer will also be available.

Finally, Samsung says its latest entry-level T-series soundbars will feature DTS Virtual:X audio for virtual surround and height effects,

In terms of design, Samsung says its 2020 soundbars are shorter and narrower than previous models, meaning theyll be small enough to (in most cases, according to Samsung) fit under the legs of your TV.

Also new for 2020 is a Bluetooth multi-connection feature that lets you pair two Bluetooth devices to a Samsung soundbar simultaneously, rather than just one.

Update (1/10/2020): Samsung's pre-briefing materials referred to its Q-Symphony technology as "Samsung Symphony." We've updated this article to reflect the change.
Podar International School ICSE, Kalyan, organised a three-day event to celebrate its Annual Day celebrations under the guidance of school principal Smarajit Das Gupta.

The chief guests, psychiatrist and counsellor Dr Fabian Almeida, and orthopaedic surgeon Dr Prashant Sonawane, emphasised on moral education, the responsibility of students towards their parents and nation, in their speeches. Language skills are essential for the success of students in many fields, said Fabian.

The event started with a prayer song. The other dignitaries included Sonia Khatri, principal of Podar International School CBSE, Thane; Aruna Mudaliar, principal of Thane CAIE; social activist Sunil Wayle. They lit the lamp for the ceremony.

The theme for the Annual Day was Toy Story, which was presented by students from Class 1 to 4, while the students of Class 5 and Class 6 performed on the theme Malgudi Days. The theme for the students of Class 7 to Class 9 was Nritya Tarang, in which the students showcased the origin of music and various dance forms.

Das Gupta presented the schools annual report on the occasion which highlighted the achievements of the school in the last academic session.

A prize distribution ceremony was conducted to felicitate meritorious students. The teachers of Class 10 were felicitated by the school principal.

The event concluded with the vote of thanks by the schools vice-principal Effie Ferrao, followed by the National Anthem.

Juhu school takes part in interschool competition

The students of CNM School in Juhu participated in The School Enterprise Challenge, a global interschool competition, under the guidance of their principal, Kavita Sanghvi.

The Class 11 students of the school took part in the silver-level challenge.

The purpose of the competition is to teach students the importance of sustainability and develop entrepreneurial skills. During the contest, students had to recycle discarded cloth materials into bags, pouches and folders, and sold it to the parents of the school and the local community. The profit generated is being used to support the students of a civic school.

The competition was conducted by the United Kingdom-based Teach a man to Fish organisation, which provides training, step-by-step guidelines, mentoring and peer networks to schools.

In 2018, the Class 11 students of CNM School had participated in the competition by setting up a business Cutting Edge and entered into the bronze-level challenge.

Colours, joy mark Xmas celebrations

Students of primary section of IES Katrap Vidyalaya, Badlapur, celebrated Christmas on the eve of the festival in colourful attire.

They sung several Christmas carols and enacted a skit to promote the message of peace given by Lord Jesus. Students welcomed the Santa Claus with jingle. Nutan Bhagwat gave her best wishes to all the students. At the end of the function, students received gifts from Santa.

Ulhasnagar institute holds 3-day career fest

The career guidance and placement cell of Ulhasnagars Seva Sadan Institute, under the guidance of principal Dr Geetha Menon and chairperson professor Neelam Kapoor, conducted a three-day Intercollegiate Career Fair.

The event was attended by around 850 students from 15 colleges.

Several seminars and workshops were held to create awareness among students about the emerging career options in the fields of social service, tourism, management and designing.

The event was conducted by eminent speakers from across several industries, who helped the students choose their career paths.

Christmas celebrations with a difference

Students of Cambridge School at Kandivli celebrated Christmas with great fervour. On the occasion, they decorated the Christmas tree, made a reindeer and snowman, put a wreath.

Sweets were exchange and the students several carols during a competition.

To encourage students to be selfless, the school asked the students to donate toiletries and foodgrains to the underprivileged sections of the society.

School holds Xmas events, visits orphanage

St Xaviers High School, Kashigaon, decorated the school premises with balloons, a snowman and Christmas trees on the occasion of Christmas. A special programme was organised, which commenced with a prayer, the reading of the Bible, followed by welcome speeches for the guests in different languages.

The schools headmistress and council members felicitated the guests with saplings. Pastor Benjamin Jose and Pastor Clinton were present on the occasion. The headmistress read the chairmans speech.

Several events, such as carol singing, arts, music and dance, were organised and winners were felicitated with certificates.

The council members visited an orphanage to celebrate the festival.

Mira Road school celebrates Christmas

A Christmas carnival was held at Seven Eleven Scholastic School in Mira Road in which students of other schools too participated.

The carnival started by welcoming the guests. Reyansh Negi from senior KG Casper delivered a welcome speech on the occasion. The senior KG students performed an Invocation Dance, followed by a Welcome Dance. A musical skit was performed by the students of Class 1.

The second day of celebrations were held for Class 2 to Class 10. The students, their parents and friends presented various dances during the SESS Talentia competition.

The event ended with a vote of thanks.
Luis Schmidt (Photo/Fu Yongchao)

While salmon, cherries and red wine from Chile find favor with Chinese consumers today, they were not so popular back in 1991, when Luis Schmidt, now Chilean ambassador to China, came to China for the first time and introduced home-made products to the Chinese people.

It seemed that Chinese consumers believed that those exotic products from Chile either didn't suit their needs or were too expensive, said Schmidt.

Schmidt, however, still believed that with a large population, the Chinese market was filled with great potential.

It turned out that he was right. Today, China has become the largest overseas market of Chilean red wine and Chile is the largest source of fresh fruits for China.

The popularity of Chile's red wine and fruits in the Chinese market is also a reflection of the progress of the Chinese economy and society.

"I really admire China for its achievements in the past 70 years, especially since its reform and opening-up in 1978," said Schmidt, pointing out that China has become the world's second largest economy and contributed over 30 percent to world economic growth.

Chile is the first Latin American country that has signed bilateral free trade agreements with China, and the two countries have since achieved leapfrog development in economic and trade cooperation.

Back in 2010, China only ranked tenth in terms of trade volume with Chile, yet it has now become the countrys largest trading partner, Schmidt pointed out.

Over 1.5 million Chilean people in the fruit business have benefited from trade with China and some farmhouses in Chile have been transformed into big companies.

Schmidt noted that the bilateral cooperation has expanded from fruits to services and investment, among others, which he thinks has brought more business and development opportunities for Chile.

He also believes that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will usher in a new chapter of bilateral cooperation in infrastructure, trade and investment.
Enagagement

Neha Pendse shared several pictures from her engagement and wedding ceremony on social media over the weekend. During the engagement, she was seen wearing a green gown with an over the shoulder net trail. On the other hand, Shardul was seen in a casual outfit, he paired a pink blazer with blue denims.

Wedding Pictures

Neha captioned the gallery post on social media with a verse from the wedding pooja. She wrote in Marathi " :  ". The post was flooded with wishes from fans, while some wished the new couple congratulations, other praised Neha's elegant ensemble.

Wedding Jitters

The two tied the knot on 5th January 2020, reportedly in Pune, among family and close friends. During an interaction with Bollywoodlife, Neha had talked about not feeling wedding jitters, she said, "No nervousness and no jitters. It's absolutely cool and calm as you can hear me. I am surrounded by all the people with whom I am comfortable."

Reception

The actress also revealed she had opted for a heavily embellished gown for the reception. Talking about the same in a previous interview she said, "I have chosen a Swapnil Shinde outfit which is an electric blue heavily embellished gown with a long trail. It is a brocade trail and it has a combination of embellishment and brocade. It's grand just as the reception."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 10:53:16|Editor: xuxin

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SYDNEY, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- A contingent of 3,000 Australian army reservists were deployed on Monday to assist fire crews and emergency workers with evacuations and disaster recovery efforts, following a horror weekend of wildfires across the country.

Although bushfires are a regular occurrence Down Under in the summer, the size and scale of this year's wildfire has been unprecedented with at least 25 people dead, over 1,300 homes lost and around 6.3 million hectares of vegetation destroyed.

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) have received a Call-Out Order of Reservists for the first time in Australia's history.

"The majority of Reservists who have been called out come from the Australian Army's 2nd Division, 4 Brigade, 5 Brigade, 6 Brigade, 9 Brigade, 17 Sustainment Brigade and the broader ADF community," according to the ADF.

Announcing on Saturday that the volunteer fighting force would be involved in assistance operations, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said "I have no doubt (the states) will have a long list of recovery tasks that they will be performing... rebuilding bridges, roads and other critical infrastructure and we will work hand in glove."

Drawing on skills from professions such as engineering, medicine, logistics and transport, reservists will support state government agencies in New South Wales (NSW), Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia.

"The priority for those involved will be to assist in ensuring the safety of life, support the evacuation of affected people, provide assistance to communities and support-managed evacuation centers," the ADF said.

But as well as being handed routine tasks like clearing fire trails and bringing in supplies, Agriculture Minister Bridget McKenzie confirmed that army reservists will also be given the gruesome job of burying the thousands of livestock that have been killed by the bushfires.

According to the National Farmers' Federation, it is estimated that around 100,000 sheep and cattle have been lost due to heat stress of smoke inhalation.

"One of the things I'd say is when it comes to supporting your fellow Australians, I don't have any trouble getting volunteers to come and meet their Reserve obligations, and I'm finding that across the board," Chief of Joint Operations, Lieutenant General Greg Bilton told local media.

"I've got everything from engineers, to specialists logisticians to medics, to doctors, to vets -- we have a number of vets that have made themselves available based on the some of the challenges with wildlife and family pets."

While a cool change has brought some temporary relief to many fire-hit communities on Monday, conditions are expected to worsen later in the week.
KeithBinns/iStock(WASHINGTON) -- The American ambassador to Afghanistan is stepping down from his position on Monday, after serving in the war-weary country's capital since December 2017, according to an official at the U.S. Department of State.



The official said that John Bass's departure was long-planned and part of the normal rotation cycle, with U.S. ambassadors typically serving in Kabul for only two years.



The State Department has named Ross Wilson as charge daffaires ad interim at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul until a new ambassador is confirmed. Wilson is expected to arrive in Kabul soon, according to the official.



Karen Decker, deputy chief of mission of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, will serve as charge daffaires until Wilson's arrival, the official said.



Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
If I was part of shaping the narrative concerning the strike on General Suleimani, Mr. Hegseth said in a telephone interview on Monday, well, thats a wonderful part of my day job.

Mr. Hegseths views, which have greatly evolved since his time in the Army and his tenure leading two conservative veterans organizations, are emblematic of the seismic shift among many Republicans under Mr. Trump on long-held foreign policy positions. They also reflect a slow but significant souring among veterans on the post-9/11 conflicts that many believe have cost the nation too much in lives and money.

I think a lot of us who were very hawkish and believe in American military might and strength were very resistant to how candidate Trump characterized the wars, Mr. Hegseth said in another recent telephone interview. But if we are honest with ourselves, there is no doubt that we need to radically reorient how we do it. How much money have we invested, how many lives have we invested and has it actually made us safer? Is it still worth it?

Mr. Hegseths influence was most pronounced late last year when he lobbied heavily on behalf of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a member of the Navy SEALs who was acquitted of serious war crimes. Mr. Trump reversed a demotion ordered as punishment, and then fired the secretary of the Navy, whom Mr. Hegseth had aggressively criticized.

Mr. Hegseth took to Fox News in November to defend Chief Gallagher. From the beginning, this was overzealous prosecutors who were not giving the benefit of the doubt to the trigger pullers, he said.
American Hospital, part of Mohamed & Obaid Al Mulla Group, has become the first medical facility in Dubai to offer the fourth generation of da Vinci Xi surgical system to conduct robotic surgery services.



The launch of the service aligns with the overarching goals of the UAE Centennial 2071 and the recent three-year budget cycle (2020-2022) approved by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to make Dubai one of the most liveable cities in the world. As per this budget cycle, for the year 2020, 5 per cent has been dedicated to Excellence and Innovation.



Dr Hatem Moussa, American board certified, consultant general surgeon and an international robotic surgery trainer at American Hospital, said: The facilities at the hospital represent the most advanced services from across the world, and with the addition of the robotic surgery system, we will be taking the surgery beyond the limits of human hands.



da Vinci Xi surgical system is the latest development in the robotic surgery that we are proud to premiere in Dubai for the well-being of patients not only in the UAE but also patients coming to the region who are seeking the highest-quality medical care. Moreover, American hospital will be the only hospital in the region to perform robotic assisted single site surgery to minimize the risk of infection with one small scar only.



Robotic Assisted surgery is a process that allows surgeons to perform complex surgical procedures with more precision, flexibility, and control than conventional techniques, the latest edition enable surgeons to perform minimally invasive surgery with an advanced set of instruments, 3D- High Definition (3D-HD) vision system, and with 10 times magnification.



The da Vinci Xi instruments have mechanical wrists that bend and rotate to mimic the movements of the human wrist- allowing the surgeon to make small, precise movements inside the body.



Sherif Beshara, chief executive officer of Mohamed & Obaid Al Mulla Group, said: With a strong emphasis on global healthcare and medical expertise, our mission is to make the region healthier and happier through quality care that comes from latest technological equipment and to integrate artificial intelligence in our medical services. American Hospital consistently seeks the ultimate in-patient comfort and safety, and this new system is one additional step on that journey.



Catering to the international and national patient demand, American Hospital strives to bring latest technology in healthcare to the region and to train doctors by partnering with global leaders in the medical field.



The robotic surgery system that will be employed at American Hospital are developed by da Vinci Xi surgical system, renowned for creating versatile systems that provide multi-quadrant access for a variety of complex procedures.  TradeArabia News Service
Arrests net two suspects, more than 1,000 ya bah pills

PHUKET: Two arrests over the weekend, in Kamala and in Wichit, netted two men in possession of more than 1,000 pills of methamphetamine (ya bah) in total, police have announced.

drugscrimepolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Monday 6 January 2020, 06:32PM

The arrests of the two men led to the seizure of more than 1,000 ya bah pills. Photo: Phuket Provincial Police

According to a report issued on Saturday (Jan 4), Phuket Provincial Police officers led by Cap Chaiwat Chuwang arrested Phuket native Anupoj Poj Kuerak, 25, with five pills of ya bah at a house in Moo 5, Kathu. The report also noted that officers seized four other items related to the arrest. Anupoj, registered as living on Nanai Rd in Patong, was taken to Kathu Police Station and charged with possession of a Category 1 drug, said the report. The second arrest was that of Cherdsak Cherd Phromthaensud, 37, originally from Phattalung, who was found with 1,055 pills of ya bah at a house in Phuket Villa 3, in Moo 1, Wichit. Police also seized six other items related to the arrest. Cherdsak was taken to Wichit Police Station and charged with possession of a Category 1 drug with intent to sell, said the report.
In February 2018, the Drug Enforcement Administration addressed this issue by invoking special emergency authorities to impose a class-wide ban on any and all fentanyl analogues. But this ban expires Feb. 6; it could be extended for at most one year, after consultations with the Department of Health and Human Services. For months, the Justice Department, with the support of 52 state and territory attorneys general (including those of Maryland, Virginia and the District), has been asking Congress to enact a law empowering the DEA on its own to keep the ban on fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances indefinitely. An effort to include the measure in the must-pass year-end spending bill failed, however, so there are only a few weeks left to avoid a reversion to the previous legal status quo.
Jitendra Singh on Sunday said India is the only shelter for religiously persecuted Hindus, Sikhs and other minorities. (Photo Credit: Twitter)

New Delhi:

Reiterating governments stand on the new citizenship law, Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Sunday said India is the only shelter for religiously persecuted Hindus, Sikhs and other minorities who come from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan. Singh, while launching the BJPs countrywide 10-day mass contact drive to spread awareness about the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), said, India owes responsibility towards the minorities living in these countries which proclaim Islam as their state religion.

He attacked the Congress party in a meeting with Kavinder Gupta, former minister Sat Sharma, and veteran columnist, writer and Padmashri awardee K L Pandita, saying that the party had been opposing the new citizenship law without any conviction.

The tragedy of Congress party and contemporary leaders of Congress is that either they do not read their own history or are blissfully ignorant of the statements made by their own party patriarchs and former prime ministers, the Union Minister added.

He went on to say that if a survey was conducted among the family members of these Congress leaders, then, even they would not support their anti-CAA stand.

Continuing with his attack on the Congress, Singh said that a false fear is being created against Muslims and added that there is no place as safe and comfortable to live for the community as India.

Taking a dig at Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi over their opposition to the amended legislation, the minister said that they should be showed the records of proceedings of the winter session of Parliament in 1950 when the then Prime Minister and their great-grandfather (Nehru) had himself said that the persecuted minorities should be given citizenship even at the cost of amending the citizenship law.

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After more than a year of pain and surgeries from gunshot wounds to his head and leg, Watson has been adopted from the RSPCA's Brisbane hospital.

Four-hundred-and-nineteen days after the Staffordshire Terrier cross was found wounded in Bloomsbury, in the Mackay region, he was taken home by a mother and daughter.

After 419 days in care, Watson found his forever home. Credit:RSPCA - Supplied

Watson was found on November 10, 2018, and taken to Orchid Valley Veterinary Surgery in the Whitsundays before being transferred to the RSPCA's veterinary hospital in Brisbane.

Vets initially thought he had been hit by a car, but further examinations determined bullets had done the damage. His left eye could not be saved.
The Supreme Court asked Tata and Wadia to reach an amicable solution in the defamation case that the latter filed against the Tata Group patriarch

The Supreme Court is likely to appoint a mediator to sort out the disputes between Tata Group patriarch Ratan Tata and Wadia group Nusli Wadia. The apex court asked Tata and Wadia to reach an amicable solution in the defamation case that the latter filed against Tata and other members of the board of Tata Sons in 2016 after the removal of then chairman Cyrus Mistry, according to a report in CNBC TV18.

'You both are industry leaders': SC asks Nusli Wadia and Ratan Tata to resolve legal spathttps://t.co/tSOHxmLlLc  CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) January 6, 2020

The Supreme Court said it can ask a reputed mediator to resolve the issue between the duo, the report said.

You both are leaders in the industry  why dont you talk and resolve the issue? In this day and age do parties such as yourselves need to pursue litigation like this, the Supreme Court was quoted as saying in the report.

The Supreme Court is hearing the case after the Bombay High Court had quashed defamation proceedings by Wadia against the Tatas, the report said.

The differences between the two came out again in the open after the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) had reinstated Mistry as the Tata Sons chairman.

Wadia had hailed the restoration of Mistry as Tata Sons Chairman after the NCLAT verdict. He said that the latter's removal was the vindictive act of one person in a veiled attack on Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus.

Wadia moves court against removal from group firms

Wadia was voted out of the Tata group by shareholders at a specially convened general meeting between December 2016 and February 2017.

In December 2016, Wadia had filed a defamation suit against Tata Sons in the Bombay High Court, seeking damages for harming his reputation while proposing to remove him as an independent director of three companies in the Tata GroupTata Chemicals, Tata Steel, Tata Motors.

Tata Sons' special resolution to shareholders seeking Wadia's removal as independent director on board of Tata Chemicals, Tata Motors and Tata Steel has "caused severe

prejudice to the reputation and goodwill", the chairman of Britannia Industries said in the suit.

He had also sought Rs 3,000 crore in damages. Wadia had claimed that Tata and others had made defamatory statements against him after they ousted Mistry on 24 October 2016 as the group chairman of Tata Sons.

His counsel informed the court that the accused had alleged that Wadia was acting in concert with Mistry, and thus against the interests of the Tata group as a whole.

Wadia in his complaint claimed that he approached the court as he was not satisfied with the explanations the respondents had given him following his letters to them. His complaint sought to initiate defamation proceedings against them under Section 500 of IPC.

In December 2018, a Mumbai court had issued notices against Tata, current chairman N Chandrasekaran and eight directors of the group along with the group chief operating officer in a defamation complaint filed by Wadia. Tata had then approached the Bombay High Court seeking to quash and stay the proceedings initiated against him and others by a magistrate court.

In April this year, Tata told the Bombay High Court that the defamation case filed against him and other directors of the group by industrialist Wadia was because of the fallout of a corporate dispute.

 With PTI inputs
The Bernalillo County Commission has a new member  though his stint will be short.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Monday appointed James Jim Collie to the commission seat recently vacated by Maggie Hart Stebbins. Hart Stebbins left to take a state government appointment as New Mexicos natural resources trustee.

Collie, a retired Presbyterian minister and church administrator, will serve the final year on Hart Stebbins term representing District 3, which encompasses most of central Albuquerque.

Jim Collie has spent his life in service to people, and I know hell serve the people of District 3 with that same dedication, Gov. Lujan Grisham said in a statement.

Collie was one of seven applicants Lujan Grisham considered for the position. The governors office had said she wanted a candidate without plans to run for the seat during this falls election, leaving the positions long-term future up to voters.

The county will swear in Collie at 11 a.m. Tuesday  just prior to a special meeting the commission must hold to fill a vacancy in the state Legislature.

Bernalillo County commissioners are responsible for choosing a state representative to succeed William Bill Pratt. Pratt, a first-term lawmaker for a district in Albuquerques Northeast Heights, died in December, about a week after suffering a major stroke.

The commission is slated to meet at noon Tuesday to pick the legislator. The commission has nine applicants to consider:

 Juan Fernandez

 Jill Michel

 Marian Matthews

 Robert Godshall

 Samia Assed

 Jason Barker

 Kevin Fitzwater

 Ronald Krise

 William Orr
Elon Musk's controversial Starlink project is set to expand once again tonight as spacex launches another 60 satellites into orbit.

The small satellites will be launched into orbit around the Earth at an altitude of 174 miles, but will slowly rise to an altitude of about 217 miles.

Tonight's launch is scheduled for 9:19pm ET from Cape Canaveral in Florida and will take the total number of Starlink satellites to 180.

Billionaire Musk hopes they will eventually form a constellation of more than 1,500 satellites around the planet and beam down internet to everyone across the globe.

However, astronomers have repeatedly voiced their concerns over the project, saying the highly reflective satellites are obscuring their view of the cosmos.

Scroll down for video

If all goes to plan, the Falcon rocket (pictured in a previous launch) will return to Earth and land on the 'Of Course I still Love You' drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean around ten minutes after launch

Tonight's launch is scheduled for 9:19pm ET from Cape Canaveral in Florida and will take the total number of Starlink satellites to 180. SpaceX intends to eventually have more than 1,500 satellites in space, working together to provide a global broadband

SpaceX's first Starlink launch of 2020 will be atop its workhorse Falcon 9 booster which, after several delays, is expected to take-off with good weather forecast.

The space exploration firm, which also has ambitions to colonise Mars in the coming years, conducted a static test fire at the weekend to make sure all systems were working perfectly.

Saturday's test went off without a hitch and it is now preparing for its third Starlink launch following successful missions in May and November 2019.

SpaceX's reusable Falcon rocket - B1049.4 - has already flown three successful missions, including one of the precious Starlink launches.

If all goes to plan, it will return to Earth and land on the 'Of Course I still Love You' drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean around ten minutes after launch.

Elon Musk's controversial Starlink project is set to continue tonight as his SpaceX firm is set to launch 60 satellites into orbit. SpaceX's reusable Falcon rocket - B1049.4 - has already flown three successful missions, including one of the precious Starlink launches

Researchers fear that SpaceX's artificial constellation of broadband-providing satellites (pictured) could increasingly spoil views of the night sky and hinder astronomy

Elon Musk's Starlink project recently placed 60 satellites in low-Earth orbit as they look to beam high-speed internet down to the Earth's surface, but plans envisage increasing the artificial constellation to 12,000 satellites by 2025

Last month, astronomers called plans for the high-speed global internet a 'tragedy' and said they are getting in the way of key scientific observations.

'The night sky is a commons  and what we have here is a tragedy of the commons,' Imperial College London astrophysicist Dave Clements told the BBC.

The proposed constellations, he added, 'present a foreground between what we're observing from the Earth and the rest of the Universe.'

'So they get in the way of everything. And you'll miss whatever is behind them, whether that's a nearby potentially hazardous asteroid or the most distant quasar in the Universe.'

The satellites will be a particular menace to large-scale surveys of the sky, like Chile's planned Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).

'What we want to do with LSST and other telescopes is to make a real-time motion picture of how the sky is changing,' explained Dr Clements.

'Now we have these satellites that interrupt observations, and it's like someone's walking around firing a flashbulb every now and again.'

SpaceX is looking into the potential to make the satellites less reflective, in a bid to reduce their interference with astronomers on Earth.

One specific craft in tonight's launch is fitted with a less-reflective surface to reduce glare and is being used as a test case to see how t affects its performance.
Who is he? Photo: Mike Windle/Getty Images for Heineken

For a little over a month, Tempe, Arizona, has been under siege by an unknown graffitist with a simple, but very effective, name: Penis Man. According to ABC 15 Arizona, Penis Man has struck nearly 40 times since late November, tagging abandoned buildings, dumpsters, bridges, electrical boxes, and more with his memorably horny moniker.

Not everyone approves of the Penis Man aesthetic, but of his various arts, my personal favorite is the street sign our guy edited to read, LOOK for Penis Man. You can see it around the 1:19 mark in the clip below.

sorry to absolutely everyone but i'm losing my mind pic.twitter.com/Drt5o6v0Iz   (@averycutedog) January 5, 2020

Therere some people, of course, who think its funny, Isaac Chavira, Tempes Transportation Maintenance Manager, told the outlet. And then there are some people who are sensitive to the issue and want it removed immediately.

City officials, of course, fall into the latter camp: Chavira noted that Tempe authorities have been working hard to identify and erase every piece of graffiti, whether by Penis Man or another artiste, within 24 to 48 hours. The city documented 299,889 graffiti incidents in 2019 alone, but despite his 38 contributions to the collection, this cocky vandal has so far eluded capture. According to Chavira, though, local police have certainly noticed the Penis Men popping up everywhere. The culprit could face charges as small as a misdemeanor or as large as a felony.

Somehow, no one ABC 15 interviewed about this explicit and provocative street art seemed amused by Penis Mans antics. One teen  teens being his target demographic, youd think  called the tags gross, while her boyfriend smirkingly agreed that its probably good theyre getting rid of it. Another young person described the works as obnoxious.

We are all entitled to our own opinions, I suppose, mine being that Penis Man is a hilarious thing to scrawl on an old couch someone tossed on the curb. Also, who doesnt love a good penis mystery?

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I ran's leaders have promised to avenge the US killing of General Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Quds Force.

The Iranian general was killed in an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq on Friday, with his daughter promising a "dark day" for the US and Israel.

But Donald Trump has vowed that the United States will hit back "perhaps in a disproportionate" manner against Iran should the country attack "any US person or target".

Thousands of mourners have taken to the streets of Iranian capital Tehran for the funeral of Soleimani as the world waits to see what the country's next steps will be.

Here is everything you need to know about Tehran's options:

Qasem Soleimani funeral in Iran 1 /24 Qasem Soleimani funeral in Iran An Iranian man reacts during a gathering to mourn General Qasem Soleimani VIA REUTERS Mourners wave flags as they gather during the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani AFP via Getty Images Mourners gather during the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (image), Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani and eight others in the Iraqi central city of Karbala AFP via Getty Images Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" today as they mourned an Iranian commander and others killed in a US drone attack AFP via Getty Images Mourners gather in the Iraqi central city of Karbala AFP via Getty Images Mourners take part in the funeral procession of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani AFP via Getty Images Iranians gather to mourn General Qasem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, who was killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran VIA REUTERS A mourner holds up a picture AFP via Getty Images Thousands of Iraqis chanting "Death to America" today as they mourned an Iranian commander and others killed in a US drone attack AFP via Getty Images Mourners chant slogans against the U.S. during the funeral of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani, AP Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the US airstrike near Baghdad's airport AP Mourners carry the coffins of Iran's top general Qasem Soleimani AP Mourners carry the coffin of slain Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis AFP via Getty Images People attend a funeral procession for Iranian Major-General Qasem Soleiman VIA REUTERS An aerial view shows mourners attending a funeral ceremony for Gen. Qasem Soleimani AP Qassem Soleimani and his comrades who were killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike, are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners AP Mourners carry the coffins of Iran's top general Qasem Soleiman AP Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad's airport AP

Military response

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the US president talk tough but neither have indicated an interest in all-out war although the possibility of military confrontation cannot be ruled out.

If Mr Khamenei calls for restraint, he could look weak at home and among regional proxies so he may opt for small-scale retaliation.

Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Mr Khamenei must carefully calibrate the reaction.

"A weak response risks losing face, an excessive response risks losing his head," he said.

This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad / AP

A US Defence Intelligence Agency report in December said Iran relies on three main military capabilities.

These are its ballistic missile programme, naval forces that can threaten navigation in the oil-producing Gulf region, and militia proxies in countries such as Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

Iran says it has precision-guided missiles, cruise missiles and armed drones capable of hitting US military bases in the Gulf and reaching Tehran's arch-enemy Israel.

Tehran or its proxies could attack oil tankers in the Gulf and Red Sea, shipping routes for oil and other trade linking the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal.

Blocking the Strait of Hormuz

Blocking the Strait of Hormuz could be an option. / REUTERS

A military confrontation or heightened tensions could disrupt shipping via the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world's oil production passes.

Any interruption could drive up oil prices sharply.

Iran cannot legally close the waterway unilaterally because part of it is Oman's territorial waters.

However, ships pass through Iranian waters, which are under the responsibility of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Navy.

Tehran could use missiles, drones, mines and speedboats to confront the United States and its allies.

Pakistani Shi'ite Muslim burn US and Israel's flags to condemn General Qasem Soleimani death / REUTERS

US officials say closing the Strait would be crossing a "red line" and America would take action to reopen it.

Asymmetric tactics and proxies

US forces in the Middle East could be endangered.

Iran mainly relies on asymmetric tactics and its proxies to counter more sophisticated US weaponry.

Iran has passed on weaponry and technical expertise to allies while Yemen's Houthis have used Iran-made missiles and drones to bomb airports in Saudi Arabia.

The United States and Saudi Arabia accuse Iran of attacking oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz last year and say Tehran was behind attacks on Saudi oil facilities. Tehran denies this.

Sir Richard Barrons tells Sky News that 'UK is a soft target' for Iran

Iran-backed militias in Iraq have attacked bases where U.S. forces are located. In June, Iran downed a U.S. drone with a surface-to-air missile, bringing to two sides to the brink of direct conflict.

When could a response happen?

Iran is unlikely to rush into action, said Ali Alfoneh, senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

"Iran has no choice but to strike back and retaliate for assassination of Major General Soleimani," he said.

"But the Islamic Republic is patient and the timing and nature of that strike is not yet known to us."

Iran's long reach

Mourners hold photos of Gen. Soleimani / PA

Iran and its allies could project power beyond the region.

In 1994, a member of the Lebanese movement Hezbollah bombed the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Society building in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people.

Argentina blamed Iran and Hezbollah for the attack. They deny any responsibility.

Argentina also blamed Hezbollah for an attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 that killed 29 people.

"What is more likely is sustained proxy attacks against U.S. interests and allies regionally and even globally. Iran has a long history of such attacks in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, with mixed success," Carnegie's Mr Sadjadpour said.

Diplomacy not confrontation

Iranian leaders have previously kept the door open to diplomacy to achieve their aims, especially when its economy has been squeezed by US sanctions.

General Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike / AP

"Iran and America have worked together in the past, in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places.

They have common interests and common enemies. A military confrontation will be costly for both sides. But diplomacy can solve many problems and it is an option," said a senior regional diplomat.

Iran has ruled out any talks with the United States unless it returns to a 2015 nuclear deal and lifts all sanctions it reimposed on Tehran after quitting the pact in 2018.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said after Soleimani's killing that Washington was committed to reducing tensions.

"While many are predicting World War III, the last 40 years of Iran's history reflect that what's paramount for the Islamic Republic is its survival, " M<r Sadjadpour said.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants to see more action on land clearing and hazard-reduction burns, but experts warn burns are ineffective against extreme fires such as the destructive blazes seen this summer.

They also say Australia is carrying out more prescribed burning than in previous decades and to do much more would lead to heavy smoke affecting communities throughout winter.

National Parks and Wildlife Service staff burning containment lines ahead of the fire front at Burrill Lake on Sunday. Credit:Dean Lewins.

Speaking at the weekend about the need to reduce fuel loads in forests, Mr Morrison said there was time before the next scheduled meeting of the Council of Australian Governments "to bring forward some immediate steps and for those to be considered by premiers before moving to broader-scale reviews".

"You've got to deal with hazard management in national parks ... this, of course, will be one of the things that we will consider when premiers come together after they've been dealing with the fires," he said.
Akal Takht acting jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh on Monday condemned the recent mob attack at Nankana Sahib Gurdwara in Pakistan and the killing of a Sikh youngster in Peshawar and said that Sikhs are unsafe both in India and the neighbouring country.

Terming the incidents very unfortunate, the head of the highest temporal seat of the Sikhs said here that such incidents have raised fear in the minds of members of the community where they live in a minority.

Actually, Sikhs are not safe in Pakistan as well as India. If we talk about India, they are facing eviction in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya, besides Madhya Pradesh. Similar circumstances are there for Sikhs in Pakistan, where they are receiving death threats. In such a situation, we have no hope of justice from any government. Sikhs should stay united to face these things, he said.

Condemning Sundays mob violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi, Giani Harpreet Singh said that nothing is worse in a country than attacking students who come to universities to study. This has to be condemned in a clear-cut manner, he said.

Earlier, he presided over a meeting of Panj Singh Sahib (five Sikh clergymen) at Akal Takht to discuss Panthic (Sikh religious) issues.

He also paid tribute to Satwant Singh, then prime minister Indira Gandhis bodyguard, and Kehar Singh, who was involved in plotting the assassination carried out by Satwant and Beant Singh. Both Satwant and Kehar were hanged on January 6, 1989. They shall remain martyrs, the acting jathedar said. Their death anniversary was observed at Golden Temple complex in the presence of Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) officials and Sikh leaders such as Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) chief Simranjit Singh Mann, Dal Khalsa leader Kanwarpal Singh and parallel acting jathedar of Akal Takht, Dhian Singh Mand.
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Chattanooga Area announced that it will receive $31,000 in grant funding from Habitat for Humanity of Tennessee to assist in the building of two new homes in Chattanooga.

The funding comes as part of a $500,000 grant from the Tennessee housing Development Agency. Habitat for Humanity of Greater Chattanooga Area and its sister organizations throughout the state will apply the grant toward the construction of 30 new homes for qualified first-time homeowners.

In Chattanooga, the funds will be used to support building efforts for Vanester Steeles home located on Kirkland Avenue while the remaining funds will be used in the home for Tempestt Jordans family on Hoyt Street.

Local Habitat President and CEO Dave Butler said, THDA has been a strong supporter of Habitat for many years and these latest grants show once again their high level of commitment not only to Habitat on a statewide level, but on a local more personal level. The funds we are receiving will assist in transforming the future of two Chattanooga families and were very grateful for the support.

THDA allocates the funds to Habitat for Humanity of Tennessee with local Habitat chapters being encouraged to apply for $15,500 per home build. When construction is complete in June 2020, more than 100 children and adults will be living in affordable, energy-efficient homes built in part from this funding.

THDA is a strong statewide partner helping us make homeownership a reality for more Tennesseans, said Colleen Dudley, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Tennessee. This grant provides us with a solid foundation to spur our larger fundraising efforts, which will reach over $4 million from individuals, churches, foundations and businesses to complete these builds.

Funding for the grant came from the Tennessee Housing Trust Fund which receives no state tax dollars but is instead funded by revenue from THDAs mortgage loan program. Since 2006, THDA has provided more than $75 million in THTF grants.

We share Habitats mission and its passion for creating new homeownership opportunities for Tennessee families, so its a very natural partnership, said THDA Executive Director Ralph M. Perry. Were always confident that Habitat is going to put our funding to good use, and Im sure more than few THDA staffers will be among the volunteers at build sites across the state.

In addition to supporting Habitat for Humanity with grant funding, THDA also provides zero-interest home loans to qualified Habitat homeowners. Habitat homeowners help build their own homes alongside volunteers and pay an affordable mortgage that, in turn, helps fund future Habitat builds.






The original Wiggles have announced an over 18s reunion show in aid of the Australian bushfire crisis.

Children's entertainers Greg Page, Jeff Fatt, Murray Cook and Anthony Field will take to the stage at Sydney's Castle Hill RSL on January 18 at 8pm.

All proceeds including tickets and merchandise sales will go the Australian Red Cross and WIRES (Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service).

Worthy cause: The original Wiggles have announced an over 18s reunion show in aid of the Australian bushfire crisis. Pictured: Murray Cook, Jeff Fatt, Greg Page, Anthony Field

The announcement was made to The Wiggles' official Facebook and Twitter accounts on Monday.

'We're getting the band back together... to raise some much-needed funds to assist with those affected by the bushfires in Australia,' the post read.

'ALL proceeds from the show (tickets and merchandise sales) will be going to the Australian Red Cross and WIRES.'

One night only: The group will perform at Sydney's Castle Hill RSL on January 18 at 8pm. Tickets are $35 and go on sale Tuesday January 7 at 10am on The Wiggles' website

Tickets are $35 and go on sale Tuesday January 7 at 10am on The Wiggles' website.

Anthony Field, 56, told 2GB's Natalie Peters and Erin Molan on Monday that 'people can drink whatever they like' at the event.

'We've got some firies coming down from the Newcastle area. We want them to take the applause on behalf of all the firies,' he said.

Funds: All proceeds from the show, including tickets and merchandise sales, will go to the Australian Red Cross and WIRES (Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service)

'They're really looking forward to it too, just getting out there and I suppose just for an hour or two forgetting about what they've been doing and seeing, and put a bit of a smile on their face too.'

An 'unprecedented' state of disaster was declared in Victoria giving the government special powers - used for the first time ever - to impose forced evacuations and give emergency services the right to take over properties.

Neighbouring New South Wales also announced a week-long state of emergency on January 2.

Crisis: Australia is battling raging fires across New South Wales and Victoria. Pictured: Fire impacting a property in Bilpin, NSW on December 21

The national bushfire death toll has reached 24, while more than 1,500 homes have been destroyed.

The conditions prompted Prime Minister Scott Morrison to send in 3,000 Australian Defence Force reserves to help in the bushfire recovery.

Celebrities Pink, Selena Gomez and Nicole Kidman have all pledged donations.

Devastation: The national bushfire death toll has reached 24, while more than 1,500 homes have been destroyed. Pictured: Aerial photo of smoke in Bairnsdale, Victoria on December 30

If you'd like to donate to the Australian Red Cross Disaster Relief, click here.

To donate to the St Vincent de Paul Society appeal for bushfire victims, click here.

For donations to Victoria's Country Fire Authority click here and here for the NSW Rural Fire Service.

To donate to Foodbank click here and here for the World Wildlife Fund.
With the new policy on choosing investors through bidding, the hot race of developing solar power projects is expected to cool down.

Sources said that the fixed electricity price policy applied in the solar power sector suggested by some ministries was rejected at the latest government meeting.





Instead, solar power projects will be chosen for development through bidding to ensure transparency and help reduce electricity prices. The FIT (feed in tariff) will only be applied to several projects under construction and when the investors sign electricity sale contracts with Electricity of Vietnam (EVN).



Experts have lauded the decision on removing the FIT mechanism. Tran Dinh Long, deputy chair of the Vietnam Power Association, said solar power and renewable energy are developing strongly and the prices of technologies used in the industry will go down rapidly. Therefore, it is unreasonable to set an FIT for a long time.

With the new policy on choosing investors through bidding, the hot race of developing solar power projects is expected to cool down.

Investors want to sell electricity at reasonable prices. However, the prices which are reasonable today could become unreasonable tomorrow as the investment rate will decrease. Therefore, organizing bids to choose the investors who can offer best prices is the best solution, he said.



According to Tran Viet Ngai, chair of the Vietnam Energy Association, the bidding mechanism has advantages. The investment rates, total investment capital and profitability can be calculated so as to find most reasonable prices. The mechanism will also help optimize the selection of contractors, thus avoiding the rampant development of solar power projects.



Investors worried



However, some experts warned that it will not be easy to deploy the bidding mechanism for solar power projects. The biggest problem lies in the legal framework.



The current laws dont comprise any provision related to the bidding for power projects. In order to apply the bidding mechanism in the power sector, the government will have to ask the National Assembly to amend the laws.



An owner of a private enterprise in the power sector said the electricity shortage will become more serious if a series of solar power projects are postponed to wait for new legal documents.



Meanwhile, the technical procedures for bidding will be complicated. To serve the bidding, the state will have to spend big money to prepare infrastructure and land, among other things.



An energy expert, who asked to be anonymous, warned that the bidding mechanism may pave the way for Chinese investors to flock to Vietnam.



Chinese investors, who can arrange capital at low cost, may come and manipulate Vietnams clean energy projects, he said.



Investors are taking no action as they wait for new policies.

Linh Ha

Solar power investors ran fast, braked hard in 2019 2019 was a special year for solar power investors: they sprinted in the first half of the year to fulfill projects, but have been idle since July, and are now waiting for a new policy.
(FILE PHOTO: The Singapore Army/Facebook)

SINGAPORE  The injury sustained by a full-time national serviceman during his static-line parachute training in Taiwan was the first such case since the course began in 1974.

Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) Private (PTE) Joshua Quek Shou Jie, 21, was on his fifth and final parachute jump as part of a basic airborne course in Taiwan on the night of 18 December last year.

PTE Quek had completed the previous four jumps successfully in the days before, after successfully undergone the requisite pre-jump qualifications, training drills and safety briefs required for the activity.

As he exited the plane that night, the static line  a cord that attaches the jumpers parachute to the aircraft  swept across his neck, causing injuries to his neck as he landed successfully within the designated landing area.

The incident, termed "static line interference", is a known risk for static-line parachute training and occurs when the line is too slack and interferes with the jumper's exit from the plane, said Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen on Monday (6 January) in a written parliamentary reply.

Dr Ng was responding to a question by Workers' Party chief and Aljunied GRC Member of Parliament Pritam Singh on the findings surrounding the static line interference" incident.

To date, the SAF has graduated about 27,000 basic airborne course trainees and conducts about 6,000 static line parachute jumps every year.

Static line not taut

To ensure that such interference does not occur, established drills and safety protocols are given in the training manuals and safety regulations for both the jumper and the jump-master.

A qualified jump instructor is required to be on board the plane during all jumps, along with two qualified jump masters at the exit door to check that these measures and other safety aspects are adhered to.

Preliminary findings suggest that the static line was not pulled taut as required and interfered with PTE Quek's exit from the plane causing a neck injury.

Story continues

Detailed investigations are underway to determine why this occurred and if adequate supervision was given during PTE Quek's jump, Dr Ng said.

A formal Board of Inquiry, supported by the SAF Inspector General's Office, has been convened by the army to investigate the incident, he added.

The Board of Inquiry will comprehensively ascertain the detailed circumstances and possible contributory factors for the incident. It will examine all existing safety processes and procedures, whether they were adhered to and recommend areas for review and enhancement where needed.

All static line parachute jumps have been suspended, pending the boards findings, and will only resume when its recommendations have been implemented.

Following the incident, PTE Quek was attended to immediately by SAF's on-site medical officer, and later evacuated by the on-site ambulance to the nearest tertiary hospital.

Upon his arrival, a Magnetic Resource Imaging (MRI) scan revealed he had sustained a cervical spine injury and underwent surgery to relieve the pressure on his spine the next morning.

He underwent a second planned surgery two days later to stabilise his cervical spine.

The operation was successfully completed without complications and PTE Quek remains in the Intensive Care Unit for close observations, said Dr Ng.

PTE Queks condition

The injury had resulted in neurological deficits including weakness of his upper and lower limbs.

While PTE Quek has experienced some partial recovery of motor functions since the second surgery, he will require continued rehabilitation and physiotherapy for long term recovery as well as to reduce the damage from the injury, he added.

PTE Quek is currently able to breathe on his own, conscious and alert and able to talk with his family, who was informed of the incident on the night it occurred.

His mother was flown to the hospital the next day, with his father and brother flying in a few days after, Dr Ng added.

SAF personnel are also on site to provide PTE Quek and his family medical, counselling, logistical and other forms of support, he said.

A team of SAF doctors is working closely with the specialists at the hospital to monitor and assess PTE Quek's condition.

While his condition is stable now, the medical opinion is that he stills needs close monitoring over the next few weeks. He will be brought back to Singapore when the specialists deem it safe to fly, said Dr Ng.

All of us, of course, wish PTE Quek a continuous and progressive recovery. Our prayers and hopes are with him and his family. Mindef and SAF will continue to extend our full support to PTE Quek and his family on his road to recovery.

Related stories:

NSF injured during parachute training in Taiwan had 2nd 'successful' surgery

SAF NSF sustained cervical spine injury during parachute training in Taiwan
The onset of psychoactive effects can be delayed by up to four hours when cannabis is ingested

Legalized in Canada last fall, edible cannabis products pose specific health hazards and require targeted prevention messages, say researchers at the University of Toronto.

Since December, cannabis-based food products have been available for sale in Canada. The North American country, which legalized recreational cannabis in October 2018, has thus taken another step towards the free use of marijuana.

Cookies, chocolate, soluble powder, herbal teas... Edible cannabis comes in various forms. When they were introduced, measures were taken to protect vulnerable members of society, such as a ban on cannabis lollipops (which might attract children), neutral packaging and a ban on alcohol in drinks containing cannabis.

Now Canadian researchers at the University of Toronto have made additional recommendations in an article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. "Although edibles are commonly viewed as a safer and more desirable alternative to smoked or vaped cannabis, physicians and the public should be aware of several risks related to the use of cannabis edibles," warn the researchers.

Cannabis edibles can induce effects that may be delayed, but which can also last much longer

In particular, the authors of the article point out that ingested cannabis can take up to four hours longer than inhaled cannabis to produce noticeable effects, which could lead to excessive consumption of edibles. Moreover, effects that take a long time to take hold can also require up to eight hours for the body to eliminate them, which can lead to longer periods of impaired judgement than inhaled cannabis.

The scientists behind the paper also call for greater vigilance with regard to children and pets, who could mistake cannabis products for candy or snacks. They also point out that a recent Canadian report found that young people attribute positive effects on sleep, mood and anxiety to edible forms of cannabis, which are contrary to those observed in real life.

"Physicians should routinely question patients who ask about cannabis about their use or intended use of edible cannabis products so that they can counsel these patients regarding child safety, potential for accidental overconsumption and delayed effects, and potential for interactions with other substances such as alcohol, benzodiazepines, sleeping aids and opioids," warn the authors of the publication.
After several masked individuals thrashed students and teachers inside the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi filmmaker Anurag Kashyap changed his profile photograph on Twitter. Kashyap on Monday morning changed his display picture to Prime M Image Source: PK

Mumbai, Jan 6 : After several masked individuals thrashed students and teachers inside the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi filmmaker Anurag Kashyap changed his profile photograph on Twitter.

Kashyap on Monday morning changed his display picture (DP) to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah in masks.

The image currently has 6.2K Retweets and 19.9K Likes.

However, there was severe backlash, too. As soon as the image was uploaded on the micro-blogging website, a section of social media started trolling Kashyap.

A user wrote: "This man should be arrested ..cant believe this conspiracy terrorist is falling for this ... @DelhiPolice should take action against this terrorist sympathiser..he is insulting our honourable PM @narendramodi and @AmitShahji." Another wrote: "Why no action is taken on him by the police for showing PM and HM in such a low. This blatant abuse if right to speech n expression. @narendramodi @PMOIndia @AmitShah please take action on this goon spreading hatered for our leaders." One simply asked for some action to be taken against Kashyap: "Plz take some action on this guyz, wth why we are watching movies of this kind of personality person." Others came out in support of the filmmaker.

"We want our peaceful, progressive and developing India back! People have been conned, now all the Bhakts should stop ??? and rethink, for the sake of their Children," said a user.

A user said: "We need more people like you who can dare to speak the truth. Being a celebrity, you have to power to reveal the truth with facts. Wish other celebrities could follow your foot steps. Salman and Sharukh for example. I wonder about their silence these days."
In his fifth gig as the host of the Golden Globes, Ricky Gervais didn't shy away from touching upon hot topics like #MeToo, 2019 college admissions scandal involving Felicity Huffman, Martin Scorsese's Marvel comments and the lack of diversity in Hollywood.

The British "Office" creator began his opening remarks by promising that this would be his last time hosting.

"So I don't care anymore. I'm joking, I never did. I mean, Kevin Hart was fired from the Oscars for some offensive tweets hello?... Remember, they're just jokes, we're all going to die soon. And there's no sequel. ," he said reminding the room full of Hollywood A-listers about his own controversy where many on social media had called him out for being trans-phobic over some of his tweets.

Gervais then quipped that he arrived to the ceremony in a limo with a license plate "made by Felicity Huffman" -- a jibe at Huffman's recent prison stint for her involvement in the college admissions scandal.

He made a swift shift to #MeToo reference as he welcomed the top film and TV executives from the industry.

"In this room are some of the most important TV and film executives in the world. People from every background. They all have one thing in common: They're all terrified of Ronan Farrow. He's coming for ya. Talking of all you perverts, it was a big year for pedophile movies. "Surviving R Kelly", "Leaving Neverland", "Two Popes". Shut up. Shut up. I don't care. I don't care," he said.

After a few digs at William H Macy and Joe Pesci, who he referred to as Baby Yoda, he moved onto the lack of diversity among the nominees at the 77th Golden Globe Awards.

"Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about that. The Hollywood Foreign Press are all very, very racist. We were going to do an In-Memoriam this year, but when I saw the list of people who died, it wasn't diverse enough. No, it was mostly white people and I thought, nah, not on my watch. Maybe next year," he joked.

Criticising the trend of sequels and remakes, Gervais said the lack of original content in cinema has led to all the best actors joining Netflix and HBO.

"And the actors who just do Hollywood movies now do fantasy-adventure nonsense. They wear masks and capes and really tight costumes. Their job isn't acting anymore. It's going to the gym twice a day and taking steroids, really. Have we got an award for most ripped junky? No point, we'd know who'd win that," he said adding that he agrees with Scorsese's "theme park" remark on Marvel movies.

However, he didn't let the moment slip and joked about the veteran filmmaker's "tiny" height and his "long" film "The Irishman".

"It wasn't the only epic movie. 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood', nearly three hours long. Leonardo DiCaprio attended the premiere and by the end his date was too old for him. Even Prince Andrew was like, Come on, Leo, mate. You're nearly 50-something," he added leaving the crowd in splits, including DiCaprio.

Gervais ended his monologue by asking the stars at the ceremony to not use the platform to make a political speech.

"If you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a political platform to make a political speech. You're in no position to lecture the public about anything, you know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So, if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your God and f*** off. OK?"



During the telecast at the NBC, Gervais' swear words and his use of profanity in two separate jokes were beeped out.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A father and his ten-year-old daughter have died after their small aircraft crashed off the runway during take off.

Tyler Wesley Walker, 40, and Brooklyn Walker, ten, from Vinemont, Alabama, were killed when the plane veered off of the runway onto a grassy area as they were taking off.

The incident occurred at Cullman Regional Airport-Folsom Field in Vinemont, central Alabama, between 12.30pm and 1pm Sunday, authorities say.

It involved a Vans RV-6 plane that crashed at the end of a runway during departure.

Tyler Wesley Walker, 40, (left) and Brooklyn Walker, ten, (left center) from Vinemont, Alabama, were killed when the plane veered off of the runway as they were taking off

The cause of the incident is not yet known, with National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators expected to attend the scene today.

Cullman County Sheriff's Office, Cullman County EMA, and Vinemont Fire Department are assisting in the investigation.

According to reports from Cullman Daily News, Mr Walker, who was a keen pilot of an RV-6, and his daughter, who was a fifth grader at East Elementary, 'loved to fly' and 'both lived life to the fullest'.

The father-of-three had two daughters and son with wife Michelle Walker.

Emergency services attended the scene at Cullman Regional Airport-Folsom Field, Vinemont, Alabama, at 12.30pm on Sunday

Airport General Manager Ben Harrison told Al.com: 'It's a very sad day for everyone here and everyone in the flying community.

'We have a very small flying community here and pretty much everybody knows everyone else flying in and out.'

Speaking about the investigation he said: 'All the agencies did what they were supposed to do,

Two people were killed in a plane crash at Cullman Regional Airport in Vinemont, Alabama, on Sunday afternoon. Investigators are pictured at the scene

'This plan went together as we thought it would.'

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and NTSB have been notified of the incident.

According to FlightAware data, four planes were scheduled to take off and land at the airport on Sunday. All four planes were single-engine and privately owned.

The runway has since re-opened.

Cullman is located roughly 50 miles north of Birmingham, Alabama.
Cork tech firm Yooni could reduce the student drop-out rate in Irish colleges, writes Trish Dromey.

With an innovative technology-led platform designed to help second level students find the course which suits them best, Cork start-up Yooni believes it can reduce the high drop-out level from college courses.

Our solution uses artificial intelligence and data analytics to compile a list of personalised, best-fit college courses unique to each student, said Yooni co-founder Nathan Mayes, further explaining that its technology, currently being tested in a few Cork schools, is the first Irish-based course recommendation solution to use AI.

Set up in 2018, Yooni plans to launch its platform in March for Leaving Certificate students interested in attending UCC and CIT.

In September, we plan to launch nationwide and make our technology available to all 180,000 senior cycle students, said Mr Mayes, adding that in the longer term the aim is to develop Yooni internationally, selling to Europe, the US and Asia.

For co-founders Mr Mayes and Darragh Lucey, the idea for the company was sparked by the high drop-out rate on their own engineering course at UCC. On graduation day, we realised that a quarter of the friends we made in first year were not graduating alongside us. The number of drop-outs was staggering, said Mr Lucey.

Taking off on a backpacking trip after graduation, they came across an article about the global student drop-out issue while travelling in Cambodia and began thinking about ways to use technology to solve the problem.

By the time they reached South America, they had decided that a technology-led guidance platform, using artificial intelligence, could work. We pitched the idea to UCCIgnite graduate programme via Skype from Peru. We got accepted, returned home and went into the world of business as two engineering graduates with no business experience, said Mr Lucey.

Work began in 2018 with researching the extent of the problem and also talking to students, guidance counsellors, parents and colleges.

The drop-out rate in the first year is 14% while a total of 25% of students drop-out before graduation, said Mr Mayes, adding that studies show that 60% of these drop-outs are due to students choosing the wrong course.

Working out that the drop-out rate involves losses of 17.2m for Irish parents every year, the two young entrepreneurs decided there was space in the market for a company with an effective course recommendation tool.

While still working out the concept for the platform they happened on a means of generating revenue for the software development which also allowed them establish a presence in the education space.

We came up with a concept called Carpool College Courses  which involves a series of fun but in-depth interviews with graduates which take place in Darraghs car, said Mr Mayes, explaining that this came about following a chance meeting with a former lecturer who was looking for a way to showcase the engineering course.

Since starting with one video in January 2019, Yooni has gone on to develop 12 of them for a variety of courses at CIT and UCC, which they post online and which they also showed at a Yooni Open Day which the founders organised in November.

Yooni has since been using the revenue generated from the videos to develop its software platform. Now being trialled at a few schools in Cork this will be further tweaked in preparation for the Cork launch in March.

Mr Mayes said the platform is an advancement on the technology for selecting courses currently in use and provides more specific recommendations.

Thus far, Mr Mayes and Mr Lucey have bootstrapped the development of the company, using revenues from making videos and prize money they won in the Irelands Best YoungEntrepreneur Competition.

Starting off 2020 by taking on its first employee, Yooni is now seeking Angel funding in order to grow the business and develop its platform for use in all Irish universities and colleges by September.
Royal Jordanian (RJ) has resumed its flights between Amman and Baghdad, after having suspended them last Friday as a precautionary measure, in view of the security situation in the Iraqi capital.



Royal Jordanian has urged its passengers who wish to book to Baghdad to call +962 6 5100000, visit the airline's website or use RJs mobile application. They can also visit the airline sales offices or its travel agents worldwide.



In addition to Baghdad, RJ serves four destinations in Iraq; Erbil, Basra, Najaf and Sulaymaniyah. - TradeArabia News Service






Members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) otherwise known as Shites has began a protest in Abuja, the Nigerias capital, over ...





Members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) otherwise known as Shites has began a protest in Abuja, the Nigerias capital, over the killing of Qassem Soleimani the leader of Iranian military.





Suleimani was killed by an American airstrike on Friday, a situation that have heightened tensions in the Middle East region.





Shiites led a procession through Banex, Wuse Area to Berger roundabout in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on Monday.





They also demanded that the President Muhammadu Buhari government should release their leader, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and his wife, Zeenat unconditional.





El-Zakzaky and his wife are currently detained by the Department of State Services (DSS) in Kaduna State.





While burning a flag of the United States and carrying placards, the angry protesters, chanted hate songs and slogan criticising the American government.




The wife of Vice President Constantino Chiwenga was granted bail by Zimbabwes High Court on Monday after spending three weeks in detention for allegedly trying to kill her husband.

Prosecutors say Marry Mubaiwa, who denies all charges, tried to unplug Mr Chiwengas life support tubes in a South African hospital in June.

She was initially arrested on December 14 on separate charges including fraud and money laundering.

A High Court judgment by Judge Pisirai Kwenda has granted Ms Mubaiwa bail for 50,000 Zimbabwe dollar (3,000 dollars), and ordered her to surrender her diplomatic passport and report to a local police station once every two weeks.

MS Mubaiwa is also required to hand over the title deeds of her parents house with the court, the document showed.

Her lawyer, Taona Nyamakura, said Ms Mubaiwa could be released from prison on Monday or Tuesday.

READ ALSO:

Her arrest has sparked accusations against Chiwenga and the anti-corruption agency that initially arrested her.

Opposition politicians say the vice president is using his position to influence a divorce settlement with Ms Mubaiwa, while Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC), which says she illegally transferred 900 million dollars to South Africa, is conflicted.

The ZACC denies this.Ms Chiwenga, who returned to China last week for a medical review, could not be reached for comment.

(Reuters/NAN)
The raging bushfires of Australia have burnt down thousands of acres of land and left a large portion of citizens as well as wildlife homeless and helpless. Amidst such destruction, pictures of hard working firefighters fighting the devastating fires are also being widely shared on social media.

One such post has struck a chord with thousands. Facebook user Jenna OKeeffe posted a picture of her exhausted firefighter dad getting 5 mins sleep on their front lawn while her brother keeps a lookout. In her post, OKeeffe explains that her father has been volunteering with the New South Wales Rural Fire Service.

This is a picture of my Dad getting 5 mins sleep on our front lawn, while my brother keeps watch over the fire burning at the top of our farm after he finished his 10th 12 hr+ day in a row fighting voluntarily in the community, wrote OKeeffe. She added that her family has been fighting the fires on their farm and community for over a month and theyre tired and running out of resources.

Today I heard my Dad cry, he said Jen I have never seen anything like this, its never ending, she wrote further, adding that they still have over 50 days of summer left.

OKeeffe goes on to implore people to support and donate to charities working to put out the fires. Please dont become numb to whats happening. Dont get caught up in the negativity, the politics, the Facebook news, the drama, she wrote.

Shared on January 4, the post has collected over 72,000 reactions and more than 43,000 shares. Netizens have responded with encouraging and supportive messages for OKeeffe and her family.

Thank you, just thank you! God bless you and your family, writes a Facebook user. Your pain is our pain. Our hearts are with you, says another. People like your dad are the real heroes out there. Whilst I am lucky enough not to be affected where I live, I thank these brave people helping communities. Its truly heartbreaking, writes a third.

Terrifying videos and pictures of the bushfires have been shared on social media and #PrayForAustralia even trended on Twitter.

The smoke of the bushfires is spreading to the neighbouring country New Zealand and has turned parts of the sky orange and hazy.

Also read | Sikh volunteers offer meals to bushfire victims in Australia, win hearts
New Delhi: More than 24 hours after the brutal attack on students and teachers on the Jawarharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus, the Delhi Police made no arrests and the Crime Branch obtained no vital clues.

The attack by masked goons triggered protests across India Monday and the clamour grew for the resignation of vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar for his inaction during the violence.

Horrific first-person accounts emerged of the attack on Sunday evening, including a brutal assault on JNU student union president Aishe Ghosh. A mob of masked young people stormed the campus in south Delhi and systematically targeted students in three hostels, unleashing mayhem with sticks, stones and iron rods, hitting inmates and breaking windows, furniture and personal belongings. They also attacked a women's hostel.

I was specifically targeted during a peace march on campus. Around 20-25 masked persons disrupted the march and attacked me with iron rods, Ghosh told PTI after being released from hospital earlier Monday. She received 15 stitches on the head, and her arm was in a cast after the attack.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) said its members were in fact attackd too but presented no one to the media.

For the last four-five days, some RSS-affiliated professors were promoting violence to break our movement," Ghosh alleged at a press conference later.

Also Monday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah talked to Delhi Lt Gov Anil Baijal and the HRD ministry to take stock of the volatile situation.

As videos of the attack were circulated on social media and news channels, ongoing protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) segued into demonstrations against the JNU attack.

The 34 people injured in the attack, including students and faculty members, who were admitted to the AIIMS trauma centre were discharged on Monday morning, officials said.

Large protests took place Monday in universities in Pondicherry to Chandigarh and Aligarh to Kolkata. Protests were also held at the National Law University in Bangalore and IIT-Bombay as well as at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

In Mumbai, a protest by students at Gateway of India that started at midnight Sunday continued.

In Nepal , JNU alumni gathered at Maitighar Mandala in Kathmandu to voice their protest, as did students at Oxford University and University of Sussex in Britain and at Columbia University in the US.

Bollywood spoke up too. "Horrifying", "heartbreaking" and "barbaric" was how many in the film industry, including Anil Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Rajkummar Rao, Anurag Kashyap and Sonam Kapoor Ahuja, described the attack.

The JNU campus resembled a battle zone with shattered windowpanes and shards of glass testimonies of the violence the night before.

As students began clearing the debris, hundreds of security personnel swarmed the campus--and outside it too--keeping a watchful eye on crowds. Many students packed their bags and left for home.

A Kashmiri student, requesting anonymity, said he was chased by the mob and had to jump from the first floor to escape.

We were three-four friends inside a room. Suddenly, some of our friends came running and said, 'The ABVP is coming with lathis and rods'. We latched the room but they started banging on the door with lathis. They also broke the glass windows at top of the door. Scared, we opened the balcony door and jumped from the first floor. Otherwise they would have killed us," the student said.

Surya Prakash, a visually challenged student, was beaten too.

"They came to my room and beat with me rods. I told them I am blind but they continued the assault. I have been hit badly and I will have to go for an X-ray. I'm scared," he said.

Questions remained unanswered.

How was the armed mob allowed to enter the campus? Why was it taking so long for police to make an arrest?

Shreya Ghosh asked how armed goons could enter the campus and said, "The attack could not have happened without the connivance of the administration and police."

The Home minister spoke to Delhi LG Anil Baijal and requested him to call representatives from JNU for discussions, officials said. However, Shah did not mention JNU when he addressed a gathering here later in the day.

The HRD Ministry, on its part, met officials from the JNU administration and took stock of the situation on the campus but vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar skipped the meeting.

"A detailed report has been sent to the HRD Ministry about the sequence of events," Kumar told PTI.

The clamour for Kumar's resignation grew louder with the students' union and the JNU Teachers Association accusing him of behaving like a "mobster" and of "perpetrating violence" in the university.

"The violence that happened is the result of the desperation and frustration of the VC and his cronies, JNUSU said.
NEW YORK, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- James E. Miller of Shepherd, Finkelman, Miller & Shah, LLP ("SFMS")(www.sfmslaw.com), Lead Litigation Counsel for plaintiffs-relators, Charles Arnstein and Hossam Senousy (the "Relators" or "Whistleblowers"), announced today that Teva Pharmaceuticals ("Teva") has agreed to settle alleged violations of the False Claims Act based on a complaint filed by the Whistleblowers in 2013 asserting that Teva used "speaker programs" to pay physician speakers unlawful compensation in violation of the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C.  3729-3733, and the Anti-Kickback Statute, 42 U.S.C.  1320a-7b.

The Whistleblowers were represented by Shepherd, Finkelman, Miller & Shah, LLP ("SFMS"), and its co-counsel, Eric L. Young of McEldrew Young (https://www.mceldrewyoung.com), David J. Caputo and Joseph Trautwein of Youman & Caputo, LLC (https://youmancaputo.com), and Heidi A. Wendel (https://heidiwendellaw.com).

"I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation for the courageous actions of Mr. Arnstein and Mr. Senousy in stepping forward to challenge Teva's alleged use of 'speaker programs' to influence the prescription writing of neurologists with respect to Azilect (a Parkinson's Disease drug) and Copaxone (a Multiple Sclerosis drug)," said James E. Miller.

Mr. Miller also stated: "In addition to thanking the entire SFMS team that worked on this case, including Natalie Finkelman Bennett, Jillian M. Boyce, Jonathan Dilger, Betsy Ferling Hitriz, Nicolas Lussier, Bruce Parke, Laurie Rubinow, James C. Shah and Nathan Zipperian, as well as our highly skilled co-counsel, Eric L. Young, and David J. Caputo, Joseph Trautwein and Heidi A. Wendel, I would like to take this opportunity to state that it was a pleasure and honor to work closely with the Office of Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in resolving this important matter. I would like to specifically thank Pierre G. Armand, the Co-Chief of Civil Frauds Unit for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys, Li Yu and Jessica Hu, for their diligence, hard work and guidance on behalf of the United States of America. I also would like to thank Carrie L. Bashaw, Senior Counsel of the State of Washington Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and Kathryn M. Heim Harris, Special Assistant Attorney General of the New York Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, for their persistence and hard work on behalf of the various states participating in the settlement."

According to the complaint, physicians who participated in alleged sham speaker programs wrote prescriptions for the two drugs  Copaxone and Azilect - that were filled at pharmacies across the country. After filling and dispensing the prescriptions, the pharmacies then submitted claims for reimbursement to various government-funded health care programs. The pharmacies' claims resulted in payments by the government for prescriptions that were allegedly induced through fraud, i.e., Teva's alleged illegal payments to physicians who wrote the prescriptions. Since Teva's actions allegedly caused the submission of false claims to the government via the dispensing pharmacies, those actions were alleged to constitute violations of the False Claims Act and the Anti-Kickback Statute ("AKS" ), 42 U.S.C.  1320a-7b, which criminalizes, among other things, "knowingly or willingly" offering or paying a person "remuneration," in the form of kickbacks, bribes, or rebates, to "induce" that person to "recommend" the purchase of a drug covered by a "Federal health care program." 42 U.S.C.  1320a-7b(b)(2).

Background

SFMS and McEldrew Young filed the original qui tam complaint on behalf of Mr. Arnstein and Mr. Senousy in May 2013. The complaint alleged that Teva provided bogus honoraria or speaking fees to physicians for participation in numerous sham speaker programs in connection with the drugs Azilect and Copaxone. On March 12, 2015, the Court issued an Order unsealing the complaint and permitting Mr. Arnstein and Mr. Senousy to prosecute claims on behalf of the United States and various states. Teva's attempt to dismiss the Whistleblowers' case was unsuccessful and counsel for the Whistleblowers engaged in substantial discovery, including the review of millions of pages of documents, scores of depositions of Teva employees and former employees and expert discovery, including the production by the Relators of expert reports by several world renowned experts that they retained to support their claims.

Summary Judgment Motion

On February 27, 2019, the Honorable Colleen McMahon, the Chief Judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, issued a thoughtful and comprehensive Memorandum Decision and Order denying Teva's motion for summary judgment. In a detailed, seventy-page opinion, Judge McMahon rejected numerous arguments asserted by Teva and ruled that the case would proceed to trial.

In denying summary judgment, Chief Judge McMahon rejected Teva's argument that Relators were required to produce evidence of a quid pro quo arrangement: "The statute also does not require evidence of negotiations with the party receiving the kickback. Rather, the payor must offer or pay 'with the intent to gain influence over the reason or judgment of a person making referral decisions.'" United States v. Teva Pharm. USA, Inc., No. 13 CIV. 3702 (CM), 2019 WL 1245656, at *10 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 27, 2019)("Teva II"). Chief Judge McMahon also rejected the argument that Teva's written compliance policies could be used to shield it from liability: "The question is whether these policies are worth the paper they are written on." Teva II at * 12 (emphasis added). Importantly, Chief Judge McMahon found that "Relators  have introduced substantial evidence that Teva did, in fact, track speakers' prescription writing," and that "[s]ales representatives linked prescriber habits with their retention as paid speakers for Teva." Teva II at * 13. Chief Judge McMahon noted that "Teva has no real answer to this evidence," and that the evidence included "dozens of examples of sales representatives using speaker prescriptions to see whether the programs were producing tangible results and to suggest working more closely with high volume prescribing speakers." Teva II at * 14. In denying summary judgment, Chief Judge McMahon also cited to the substantial evidence developed by counsel for Relators in discovery:

"Relators have also submitted evidence showing that the same programs were repeatedly presented to the same attendees. For example, they have introduced evidence showing 1,500 examples of health care providers' attending three or more events related to the same drug within six months, (Rels. 56.1  75 (citing PX177) ); paid speakers who attended speaker programs on the same topic for which they also serve as a speaker, (Rels. 56.1  74 (citing PX166; PX172; PX185; and PX193) ); and health care providers' "rotating" by attending sequential Teva programs as the speaker at one and audience member at the other, (id. (citing PX169)).

Teva II at * 16. Chief Judge McMahon likewise rejected Teva's argument that Relators' evidence of sham speaker programs was insufficient, noting that "Relators submit that Teva routinely carried out speaker program events in a sham manner, as evidenced by the location at which many programs were held, the amount of alcohol served, and the fact that the audience was frequently made up of either Teva representatives, speakers themselves, repeat attendees, or physicians' family members," that "Relators  offer considerable data showing that events not qualifying as useful  occurred regularly," that, "[f]or that data, Teva has no answers" and, as a result, "Relators have raised a genuine issue of material fact that Teva structured its speaker programs in a sham manner." Teva II at * 2021 (emphasis added).

Settlement

"We believe that this settlement will help to ensure that when a physician chooses a prescription drug for his or her patient, that choice will be motivated solely by the best interests of the patient and not tainted by any improper financial considerations," said James E. Miller. Mr. Miller echoed the comments of co-counsel, Eric L. Young, who added, "We were inspired by the level of our clients' commitment to ensuring that Teva was held to account for its alleged misconduct. Today's result is also a victory for the American taxpayers who are the ultimate victims when unscrupulous individuals and companies defraud the government, oftentimes with impunity."

As SFMS's Managing Partner, James E. Miller has a distinguished track record of success. Mr. Miller has tried over thirty cases to successful verdict as lead counsel and has recovered more than $3 billion dollars for his clients. SFMS represents whistleblowers throughout the United States and on a global basis. Many whistleblower cases are brought under the False Claims Act, which allows a private individual, known as a relator, to file a lawsuit on behalf of the United States government against a company that has perpetrated a fraud against the government. If a relator successfully recovers funds on behalf of the government, he or she may receive a reward of up to thirty percent (30%) depending on the circumstances of the case. SFMS has taken the lead in prosecuting some of the most important and significant cases in the United States regarding "speaker programs" and efforts by pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers to influence the behavior of physicians, prescribers and other providers through allegedly unlawful payments.

Case citation: United States ex rel. Arnstein and Senousy v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc., No. 1:13-cv-03702-CM-OTW (S.D.N.Y.)

About SFMS

Shepherd, Finkelman, Miller & Shah, LLP (www.sfmslaw.com) has obtained billions of dollars in recoveries for its clients since its founding in 2002. Our attorneys have attended some of the best law schools in the country and have extensive experience in litigating cases against large and powerful companies. We maintain eight offices in the United States and two offices in Europe to serve our worldwide clients. SFMS has handled some of the most significant whistleblower cases in the United States and is increasingly recognized as one of the "go to" law firms when a whistleblower case needs to be litigated to trial.

Contact

James E, Miller

Shepherd, Finkelman, Miller & Shah, LLP

65 Main Street

Chester, CT

Tel: (866) 540-5505

Email: [email protected] or [email protected]

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Military allies must respond to Iraqi demands to leave the country following the killing of a top Iranian commander.

NATOs top officials are meeting on Monday to discuss the future of the alliances mission in Iraq, as Middle East tensions mount following the US-ordered killing of senior Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.

Ambassadors from the 29 allies gathered at their Brussels headquarters with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expected to brief journalists afterwards.

US officials are expected to give an update to the group after Washington killed Soleimani, Irans commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, in a US drone strike just outside Baghdad airport on Friday.

The North Atlantic Council will address the situation in the region, a NATO official said.

The secretary general decided to convene the meeting of NATO ambassadors following consultations with allies.

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Stoltenberg had spoken by phone with the US secretary of defence, Mark Esper since Fridays strike, but the killing of Soleimani surprised many of Washingtons allies  and triggered calls for de-escalation.

Stay or go?

The situation has also deteriorated in Iraq, where the Parliament on Sunday called for the 5,200 US soldiers deployed there to leave.

NATO maintains a 500-strong training mission in Iraq, preparing local forces to take on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS) fighters but this would be in doubt if coalition forces pull out.

The big issue is the future of the NATO mission in Iraq after the demand of the Iraqi parliament yesterday to remove US-led coalition and foreign forces. We have to see what we will do now, a NATO diplomat told AFP news agency.

On Saturday, a NATO spokesman said the mission, which involves several hundred allied personnel, was continuing but training activities are currently suspended.

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Another diplomat said the alliance would have to wait and see how Baghdad responds in the coming days.

From our point of view, the Parliament resolution is not binding. We take note of it, but have to wait what the government is going to do, the diplomat said.

We still think that the presence of international troops in Iraq should continue in order to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State. But we have to respect what the Iraqi government will eventually decide.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 19:15:05|Editor: huaxia

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Chinese President Xi Jinping holds a welcome ceremony for Kiribati's President Taneti Mamau before their talks at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 6, 2020. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao)

BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Monday that Kiribati's President Taneti Mamau and his country stand on the right side of history by resuming diplomatic ties with China.

Xi made the remarks when holding talks with Mamau at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

China and Kiribati resumed diplomatic relations in September 2019 on the basis of the one-China policy, opening a new chapter for bilateral ties, said Xi.

"Mr. President and the Kiribati government stand on the right side of history," Xi told Mamau, adding that the resumption "fully embodies their strategic vision and political courage."

"China speaks highly of the decision," said Xi.

Since the resumption of diplomatic ties, China and Kiribati have conducted numerous exchanges in different areas and at different levels with fruitful results, he said.

Facts proved that it is in the interests of both peoples to restore diplomatic ties, and the bilateral ties enjoy broad prospects, said Xi.

Calling Mamau's visit to China "an important landmark in China-Kiribati ties," Xi said China stands ready to work with the Pacific island country to promote bilateral ties to a new level.

Xi called on both countries to deepen mutual political understanding, saying that China has always held that all countries, no matter big or small, should be equal and all countries should respect one another's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

China sticks to the path of peaceful development and respects Kiribati's choice of a development path that suits its own national situation, Xi said.

Xi said the two countries should expand pragmatic cooperation by seeking the synergy of the Belt and Road Initiative with Kiribati's development plans.

China will encourage more Chinese enterprises to invest in Kiribati, said Xi, adding that China has approved the listing of Kiribati as a destination for Chinese tour groups.

China is willing to enhance cooperation within multilateral mechanisms including the United Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum, and will continue to provide assistance and support to Kiribati on climate change under the framework of South-South cooperation to safeguard the common interests of developing countries, said Xi.

Mamau said it is based on trust and confidence in China that Kiribati made the important decision to restore diplomatic ties with China.

He reaffirmed that Kiribati will firmly adhere to the one-China policy, respect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, support China's "one country, two systems" principle and its reunification.

Appreciating China's support, Mamau said he looks forward to enhancing cooperation with China in areas including economy, trade, investment, tourism, fisheries, education, healthcare and infrastructure construction.

Kiribati speaks highly of China's role in safeguarding world peace and promoting common development, and appreciates China's efforts to advance South-South cooperation and help small and medium-sized developing countries such as Kiribati to speed up development and address challenges such as climate change, Mamau said.

Kiribati is willing to work with China to improve bilateral ties to benefit both peoples, Mamau said.

After the talks, Xi and Mamau witnessed the signing of bilateral cooperation documents in Beijing.

Mamau is paying a state visit to China from Jan. 4 to 11.
Sunday, January 5, 2020 at 7:11PM

Samsung is getting ready to unveil its next flagship. The company just teased the upcoming event on its Twitter account. The "Unpacked" event, as Samsung calls it, will happen in San Francisco on February 11, as rumours previously suggested. We're expected to see the next S-series flagship phones, which could be called the Galaxy S11 or the Galaxy S20. The Galaxy Fold 2 might also make an appearance at the event. As with previous years, Samsung will also stream the launch online so that you can check it out on the day itself, too.
H appy Divorce Day . Its the first Monday in January, which means were all trudging back to work and furtively Googling divorce lawyers at our desks. The Christmas holidays have tipped the emotional scales as well as the physical ones, and you never want to argue about whos blocked the kitchen sink again. Thats it. Youre done.

But although todays surge in divorce enquiries might seem depressing, and further confirmation that this is the grimmest of months, what if we looked at it another way? As the product of multiple divorces, take it from me, there are worse fates in the world.

Sure, the actual process of separating is hell, the pain almost unbearable. If there are children involved, even worse. You may end up fighting not just over the chest of drawers but also for previously assumed access to the most precious people in your life.

I recall a nice lady from social services asking me questions from a clipboard, and feeling as if I was being forced to decide which parent I loved more. Never mind them, eight-year-old me said, could I at least stay with the dog? Ha ha, just kidding  although I suspect one positive upshot of having divorced parents is that you develop a sense of humour as a coping mechanism.

Because there are positives. If you spent your lunchbreak scrolling through solicitors websites, dont be too hard on yourself. I dont mean to come over all Dalai Lama, but instead of assuming its the end, you could choose to look at it as the start of something bigger. Ploughing ahead with divorce is an immensely brave decision which could begin to make your life better.

Im not married, so how dare I set myself up as a marriage guidance counsellor, right? Fair. Except you dont need to be five-times-married Joan Collins to see that the fear of divorce, in part, stems from our ludicrous fetishising of weddings. Months spent hemming and hawing over white dresses, over videographers, over whether to have a frigging sponge cake or one made of cheese.

Social services asked which parent I loved more  never mind that, aged eight I just wanted to stay with the dog

Changing your profile picture to a snap of your wedding day, with your gob full of confetti, has become a rite of passage which sets up marriage as the ultimate life goal. It follows that deciding to become unmarried is a failure, a disgrace, a social embarrassment.

Davina McCall / REUTERS

Alternatively, you could view it as quite the opposite. Take Davina McCall, who discussed her divorce in a magazine interview this weekend. That a subsequent headline declared shed broken her silence over this reveals how superior many of us seem to feel when it comes to others marriage breakdowns, as if its a stigma we should whisper about. Actually, it was an admirably honest piece in which Davina said that her divorce was agony but unquestionably the right decision for everyone involved, including her ex-husband and their three children. Shes happy again. Nothing to see here, everyone move on.

I cannot stress enough how much healthier it was for my siblings and I to grow up with split parents, rather than in a sullen household bursting with resentment. So if youre lumbering towards divorce this week, congratulations and the very best of luck. Just do give due thought to the dog.

Nigella  my fellow birthday refusenik

I first fell in love with Nigella Lawson while watching a show where she cooked a late-night snack which involved baking two croissants with a glug of double cream, sugar, milk, eggs and bourbon. I have admired her for her dignity and common sense ever since.

Now, having turned 60 today, shes written a magnificently wise and contemplative piece about growing older. In it, Nigella, pictured, reveals she loathes her birthday. She threw a last-minute party a decade ago but banned cake, presents and singing.

Nigella Lawson / Dave Benett/Getty Images

Im with her. I hate the pressure of my birthday, with everybody asking Are you having a nice day? when its almost the same as every other day, apart from the Colin the Caterpillar cake by the printer and the card signed by colleagues you dont even know. However, this comes with one caveat: although we may loathe the day itself, we reserve the right to, as Nigella puts it, be subdued if nobody notices it at all. In other words, forget the day entirely and well sulk. Mines next month, FYI.

Chatty passengers

I returned from holiday in Sri Lanka yesterday and felt restored until the flight, when I discovered Id been seated beside the chattiest man on the plane. Did I have a nice time? Where exactly had I been? What had I done? And so on. Tiresome. Who are these people who insist on talking to you for the whole journey?
WASHINGTON - The U.S. political year will begin with 100 senators deciding the fate of Donald Trump's presidency and end with 150 million voters or more doing the same in November.

Trump's acquittal in the Republican-controlled Senate is a sure bet. His re-election is not.

No president has ever run in a general election after being impeached, so there's no precedent for how the Senate trial will affect Trump's re-election chances. Trump added even more unpredictability last week by ordering a drone strike that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, increasing the risk of war and causing oil prices to spike not even 48 hours into an election year.

The political picture is so cloudy that one professor who has correctly predicted seven of the last eight U.S. presidential elections - including Trump's upset win in 2016 - isn't sure his model is up to the task this time out.

"Trump really has broken patterns of American history that have held since the Civil War," said Allan Lichtman, a political history professor at American University. "That makes political analysis perilous and that makes this impeachment different."

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Trump is heading into the impeachment trial, expected to start as early as this week, with only a tenuous grip on his possible re-election, despite having one of the strongest economies in years. Head-to-head national polling shows Joe Biden consistently beating Trump in the popular vote and other major Democratic candidates largely within the margin of error.

Polling in battleground states is less reliable, but shows Trump largely behind in Midwestern states that were the key to his victory in 2016 - despite an improving economy.

"The fact that we have the strongest economy in 50 years and he's stuck at 43% approval ought to scream volumes for his language and his overreach," said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and communications strategist.

And that is even before his impeachment trial, which will put some the Democratic allegations about his handling of Ukraine back into the headlines. Polling shows Americans are essentially split, according to RealClearPolitics, with an average of 47.3% in favor and the same number opposed.

Those polls also show significant numbers who oppose impeachment - but still believe that Trump did something wrong when he asked the president of Ukraine to investigate Biden, his chief rival for the presidency.

Trump, who once predicted that President Barack Obama would start a war with Iran to help his re-election, clearly sees political benefits to his Iran response.

"President Trump has sent an unmistakable message: Terrorists will pay a heavy price for attacking Americans," said Trump campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany in a statement. "American strength has been restored under the leadership of President Trump."

The escalation of conflict gives Trump's Republican allies one more attack line against his impeachment - and it has also forced Democrats into the position of lamenting the killing of a terrorist. Biden called the attack "incredibly dangerous and irresponsible." Another presidential candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren, backed off on calling Soleimani a "murderer" and is now calling his killing by a U.S. drone attack an "assassination."

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"Both Trump and the Democrats have overcaffeinated their rhetoric," said Luntz. "The Democrats are being driven so far to the left by their base that they risk alienating the center."

The result of the Nov. 3 election will either vindicate Trump as a two-term, transformational president or repudiate him as a one-term wonder.

Further complicating the picture is that House and Senate negotiators haven't even decided on a timetable for impeachment. There's less than a month before the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses, followed by Trump's State of the Union address the following night.

The stakes are likely to long outlive the Trump presidency. If he wins, he'll blunt the threat of impeachment as a congressional power. If he loses, future Congresses may be more willing to use it to rebuke a president of the opposite party.

The Senate needs 67 votes to convict Trump on the House charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in the Ukraine affair. That means at least 20 Republicans would have to break ranks to remove Trump from office.

Still, a televised impeachment trial with Chief Justice John Roberts presiding would provide no shortage of drama, especially if the Senate calls witnesses.

There are risks for both sides. With five Democratic senators running for president, a January or February trial would take them off the campaign trail for jury duty during crucial early primaries. For Trump, an impeachment trial could bring forward key witnesses from his inner circle, and make the president's Twitter feed a real-time rebuttal of the allegations.

His re-election campaign will be a war fought under new rules of engagement - many of which were broken in Trump's upset victory in 2016 and some of which are yet to be written.

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Trump has even suggested he may boycott the standard three presidential debates, becoming the first president to refuse to debate since Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972. Or, he says, he might just seek an end run around the Commission on Presidential Debates and seek more than three debates.

Advertising Analytics, a political ad-tracking company, projects a record-shattering $6 billion in political ad spending in the 2020 cycle. Much of that will be in traditional media - broadcast and cable television and radio - but $1.6 billion will be on digital platforms like Facebook and Google.

Almost $1 billion of that will come in the Democratic primary alone - a 71% increase from 2016, when both parties had presidential primaries. That spending is being driven by an exceptionally large field of Democratic candidates and the candidacy of two billionaires.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has spent $163 million on broadcast, cable and digital ads, according to Advertising Analytics, while former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer has spent $86 million. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

The spending is also being helped by data-driven fundraising operations that have made small-donor solicitations much more efficient.

The two most liberal major candidates - Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders - have largely renounced traditional fund-raising in favor of large networks of small-dollar donors. The two New Englanders have home-field advantage in New Hampshire, the first primary state.

Pete Buttigieg joins Sanders and Biden for a three-way lead in Iowa.

Beating them all in the national polls is Biden, who's betting on big wins among African-American voters in South Carolina and again on Super Tuesday, March 3, when 15 states will hold primaries.

Still, the divided field could produce a prolonged nomination fight for Democrats going into their July convention in Milwaukee.

Trump, having navigated his own crowded field of challengers in 2016, now has token opposition in his own party and remains overwhelmingly popular with Republican voters. He, too, has targeted small contributors but has also buttressed his massive war chest with $250,000-a-couple fundraisers at his resort home in Palm Beach, Florida.

Michael McDonald, an expert on voting patterns, says unprecedented fundraising numbers are yet another indicator that voter turnout could match or even exceed the all-time record set in the 1960 election.

Turnout in congressional, state and local elections has surged since 2016 - even in races seemingly far removed from presidential politics. Surveys of voter engagement show that voters are already paying attention. "They look like numbers from October of 2020, not January of 2020," said McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida and director of the United States Election Project.

Conventional wisdom is that high turnout benefits Democrats, but Trump showed in 2016 that's not always the case. And his campaign seems to be running the same playbook in 2020, looking to mobilizing his base - especially non-college educated white men - in swing states rather than wooing undecided voters.

Impeachment is certainly helping to fuel that interest, but there's little evidence that it's changing anyone's mind. But McDonald said it could still be a factor in November if it distracts Trump from running on what ought to be his greatest political asset.

"The parallels are there to the 2000 election. Al Gore tried to distance himself from President Clinton at a time when the economy was doing quite well," he said. "Trump, if he would just shut up and stop tweeting, could win just on the economy."

But Amy Fried, a University of Maine professor who's studied presidential scandals and public opinion, said Trump will be Trump, impeachment or not.

"It's very hard to parse out the short-term and long-term effects of impeachment," she said. "It's not that he's going to run this completely disciplined campaign that focuses on bread-and-butter kinds of issues, if only he wasn't being impeached."

---

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The Indian Railways, through RRC South Eastern Railway, Kolkata, has called for online applications from eligible and interested candidates for filling 1,778 Apprentice vacancies in multiple trades comprising Fitter, Turner, Welder (G&E), Electrician, Electronics Mechanic, Mechanic (DSL), Machinist, Painter (General), Refrigeration and AC Mechanic, Carpenter, Cable Jointer/Crane Operator, Winder (Armature) , Lineman, Trimmer, MMTM (Mechanic Machine Tool Maintenance), Forger and Heat Treater through direct recruitment to be posted in various sections/regions. The registration-cum-application process towards the same started on January 4, 2020 and closes on February 3, 2020 by 5:00 pm.

CRITERIA DETAILS Name Of The Posts Apprentices Organisation RRC South Eastern Railway Educational Qualification Class 10/Matriculation in 10+2 examination system with minimum 50% marks (aggregate) with an ITI certificate in relevant trade Experience Freshers can apply Skills Required Desirable Job Location Kolkata Salary Scale As per the Apprenticeship norms Industry Railways Application Start Date January 4, 2020 Application End Date February 3, 2020

Age Criteria And Fees

Candidates interested in applying for Apprentices post through South Eastern Railway must have attained 15 years of age as on January 1, 2020 and not have exceeded 24 years of age (Gen/UR), 27 years (OBC) and 29 years (SC/ST) respectively as specified in the notification.

Candidates must pay a prescribed amount of Rs. 100 as application processing fee through online (debit card/credit card/net-banking) mode only. SC/ST/PWD/Women candidates, however, are exempted from paying the application fee.

Western Railway Recruitment: Apply Online For 3,555 Apprentices Post Starting Tomorrow

Educational Criteria And Eligibility

Candidates applying for Apprentices post through South Eastern Railway must have passed Class 10/Matriculation in 10+2 examination system with minimum 50% marks (aggregate) with an ITI certificate in relevant trade from NCVT/SCVT recognised Board/Institute as specified in the notification.

Selection And Pay Scale

The selection of candidates to Apprentices post through South Eastern Railway will be done based on the percentage of marks obtained by the candidates in their Matriculation as well as ITI examination in the concerned trade.

Candidates selected as Apprentices through South Eastern Railway will be paid a monthly stipend as per the Apprenticeship norms.

Lok Sabha Recruitment: Apply Offline For Security Assistant (Grade - II) Posts Before January 30

How To Apply

Candidates applying for Apprentices post through South Eastern Railway must register online on official RRC South Eastern Railway website at http://www.rrcser.co.in/ and submit their applications on or before February 3, 2020 by 5:00 pm at https://appr-recruit.co.in/2019-20/

Read the detailed notification about South Eastern Railway Recruitment for Apprentices post here
Since bushfire season began in August 2019 in Australia, nearly 6 million hectares of land has been destroyed. At least 21 people - 17 from NSW, two from Victoria and two from South Australia - are now known to have died. At least 2,500 homes have been destroyed.

In response to the unprecedented and ongoing devastation caused by the Australian Bushfires over the last several months, Hillsong Church has organised a Global Bushfire Appeal. 100% of giving will go towards assisting volunteer firefighters across the country and supporting families directly affected by the fires. Any gift is greatly appreciated and for those in Australia the giving is tax deductible. Alternative currency options are available to those giving internationally.

Global senior pastor Bobbie Houston of Hillsong Church writes: "It's heartening to see so many rallying to help. AUSTRALIA has been kind to so many around the world, who have come to love this crazy/amazing/wondrous "Great Southland of the Holy Spirit"! (In the year 1606 Capt. Pedro Fernandez de Quiros gave this continent the name "Australia del Espiritu Santo" or literally "Southland of the Holy Spirit"). Trusting those affected will sense they are not forgotten and that many are praying for strength, courage and peace as they rebuild."

Simlarly, Hillsong's worship leader and songwriter Brooke Ligertwood encourages us to give. "As Hillsong Los Angeles we get the great honor of being a part of a global church. Part of that honor means supporting our church across the world when disaster hits. As a church we're praying for Australia in the midst of the horrible fires that are happening across the country." 

To give to Hillsong's Global Bushfire Appeal, click here.

Tags : Hillsong hillsong church bobbie houston Brian Houston brooke ligertwood hillsong bushfire appeal hillsong worship australian bushfires
For a century and a half, wealthy northerners built their fortunes off sugar, rum, and human misery

Three Negro Men and two Women to be Sold and to be seen at the House of Mr. Josiah Franklinin Union Street, Boston, read an advertisement in the August 3, 1713, edition of the weekly Boston News-Letter. Tavernkeeper Franklin, proprietor of the Blue Bell at the corner of Hanover and Union streets, not only sold slaves but rented his premises to fellow slave traders to do the same. Franklin, 56, whose youngest stepbrother was seven-year-old Benjamin, was one of many New England entrepreneurs whose stock in trade included human beings. From the 1620s until the United States of America outlawed importation of slaves in 1807, New Englanders participated enthusiastically and profitably in the slave trade as buyers and sellers of kidnapped Africans, as well as being financiers, shippers, owners, manufacturers, and providers of goods and services crucial to the practice.

Slavery figured in New England almost from the colonys startless in terms of enslaved workforces than as a business proposition. Profit-minded colonial proprietors initially relied for labor on the indenture system. Indentured individuals contracted to exchange years of toil at no pay for passage to and room and board in the New World. At the end of the specified term, an indentured servant was free to go, perhaps even to compete with a former master. Voluntary self-enslavement waned as shipwrights, joiners, coopers, fishermen, farmers and practitioners of other trades embraced workers who were fully enslaved.

Sometime before 1629 Samuel Maverick became the first Massachusetts Bay Colony resident to own a kidnapped African. More Africans were imported in 1634. During the 1636-37 Pequot War, English settlers tried to enslave Native American prisoners of war but found the indigenes unsuitable because they refused to submit and constantly attempted escape. Colonists instead shipped Indian captives to Bermuda in exchange for enslaved Africans.In These Truths: A History of the United States, Jill Lepore writes, In 1638, the first African slaves in New England arrived in Salem, on board a ship called the Desire that had carried captured Pequots to the West Indies. The exiled Indians had been traded for some cotton and tobacco, and negroes. The first African slaves in Medford, Massachusetts, arrived the same year as part of a cargo from the Tortugas that also included loads of cotton, tobacco, and salt.

In 1641 Massachusetts legalized slavery, the first New England colony to do so. New Englanders began purchasing blacks from sellers in the West Indies. These slaves, seasoned by life in the New World and having built immunity to diseases common in the islands, often had valuable skills, such as blacksmithing and rice cultivation, and spoke some English. Slavery in the West Indies dated to 1505, when English, French, and Spanish slavers began shipping in captive Africans to work on sugar plantations; some 2.5 million Africans were brought forcibly to the Indies and often were sent on to mainland America in a market-driven system built on the concept of European wealth, American land and the idea of hard labor, writes historian Mark Sammons in his 2004 book, Black Portsmouth.

The slave trade offered mariners bigger returns than they made on rice, sugar, cotton, molasses, and other commodities they were hauling between the Indies and the mainland. Ships out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Salem and Boston, Massachusetts, and Providence and Newport, Rhode Island, started carrying slaves from British-held Barbados and Jamaica to the Atlantic coast colonies and, despite international tensions, to Spanish, Dutch, and French ports around the Indies. The round trip between New England and the Caribbean took a month.

In 1644, New England slavers began doing business in West Africa, a two-to-three-month round trip. The Dutch West India Company and the English Royal African Company had fierce grips on the trade along the West African coast. To avoid those entrepreneurs steeper prices, some New England slavers began sailing around Cape Horn and north to Madagascar, where Arab slave traders sold slaves for significantly less. Lower purchase prices justified the fraught four-to-six-month voyage to East Africa. West Indies trips made less but produced a reliable flow of capital.

Those New Englanders who did business in West Africa mainly bought slaves on the Gold Coast, a British holding now called Ghana, on the Gulf of Guinea. At ports like Elmina Castle, African slavers herded captives taken from the interiorprisoners of war, convicts, and kidnap victimsto be loaded for delivery to the Caribbean and southern ports like Charleston, South Carolina. Some slaves were brought to New England for sale locally or to purchasers intending to ship them south. Corresponding with the slave dealing Cutts family of Portsmouth in 1682, Virginian William Fitzhugh inquired about inventory and prices for Africans of both sexes and all ages. Fitzhugh offered the Cuttses 3,000 to 5,000 pounds of tobacco for each healthy slave shipped to his home.

Slavery reverberated throughout New England and at many levels. A fulcrum of the trade was sugar. Europe and North America were ravenous for the sweet stuff, whose cultivation, harvesting, and production required armies of enslaved workers. In 1639 Barbados sugar cane plantations were home to roughly 1,000 Africans. By 1666 that census was 52,000. Rum is made from molasses, a sugar byproduct. Sugar was shipped in that form from the Caribbean to New England for distillation, a mainstay of colonial economies. In 1770, Rhode Island alone imported more than a million gallons of West Indies molasses. Of that, nearly 80 percent became rum shipped to Africa and bartered for slaves sold on Barbados or Jamaica to work on sugar plantations, according to Jay Coughtry in his 1981 book, The Notorious Triangle. Distillers everywhere stored and shipped rum in the eras universal containerswooden barrels held together with iron hoops. New England foresters felled oaks that New England mills lumbered into staves that New England coopers fashioned into barrels hooped with New England iron. New England farmers grew wheat ground into flour for bread fed Africans aboard ship and on plantations. According to Lepore, as much as 40 percent of economic activity in New England derived from West Indies sugar production.

The Middle Passagethe voyage from Africa to the West Indies was the middle leg of the slave triangleended for some prisoners at sugar and rice plantations in the West Indies. Other captives completed their passage at ports in New England, where sellers advertised them for sale. Likely Negro Boys and Girls just imported from Gambia and to be sold on board the Sloop Carolina lying at the Long Whariff in Portsmouth, an ad proclaimed in the July 18, 1758, New Hampshire Gazette. Enquire of Mr. Trailor or Mr. Harrison on board said Sloop. Taverns like Josiah Franklins, popular for socializing, politicking, and doing business, were the preferred sites for auctions, though private residences also served the purpose, as seen in the April 17, 1767, New Hampshire Gazette: To be sold at public venue at the home of captain James Stoodley, Innkeeper in Portsmouth on Friday next at 2 oclock Afternoon One Negro Man, has been with the English 2 years, Negro Girl about 17.a few rumfew bags of cotton wool.

Slave prices varied by sex, vitality, age, and skills, as well as the marketplace. Men generally brought more than women. Lorenzo Greene in his 1942 book The Negro in Colonial New England 1620-1777 notes that in New England as everywhere in slaveholding America, mature young men who could endure heavy work and who usually were more easily trained were in top demand. Buyers favored males age 10 to 40. On September 4, 1761, Medford, Massachusetts, slave trader Timothy Fitch wrote to Captain Peter Gwinn, master of a Fitch ship, you are not to take any Children & Especially Girls, if you Can Avoid it by any means, as few Women as PossibleBut as many Prime Young Men Boys as you Can get from 14 to 20 Years of Age.

Sales were cash or barter, with credit sometimes extended. During the 1600s, a slave sold in New England brought 20 to 30. In the years before the Revolution, demand for slaves boomed, with bondsmen of high quality bringing 1,200 in Rhode Island; as rebellion neared the price sagged to 40 to 50.

Slaving required much capital and, thanks to a high return on investment, easily attracted cash. Around New England, wealthy families invested in the trade, themselves bought slaves, or both. Between 1732 and 1764, many Rhode Islanders owned a share or more in a slave voyage, whether buying captives or investing in industries that relied on slave labor. The regions top slaving centers were Boston and Newport, Rhode Island. Major Bostonian slave-trade family names included Belcher, Waldo, Faneuil, and Cabot. In Newport, the Malbones, Gardners, Ellerys, and Champlins were socially prominentand big in slaving. New Englands preeminent slave traders, the Brown clan, lived in Providence, Rhode Island, tenth among New England slave ports. The Browns cannily worked the triangle trade, investing in rum and in slaving. In 1764, James, Obadiah, Nicholas, John, Joseph, and Moses Brown were reaping huge profits running what some consider one of New Englands largest slaving enterprises. The profits enabled the Brown family to underwrite, in 1769, establishment of the university that bears its name and whose early campus infrastructure included slave-built facilities. Brown University governing board members owned slaves or captained slave ships, a hallmark they shared with the leaderships of Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth colleges.

Slaving trips were costly but offered large profit potential. Voyages differed in length, vessel, crew requirements, capital outlay and overhead costs, profit margin and risk, writes Coughtry. Records kept by slaver Audley Clarke of Newport, Rhode Island, illustrate the difference between ordinary commodities and slaves. During 1768-72, Clarke reported, a round-trip West Indies voyage hauling beans, hay, lumber, low-grade fish, and assorted goods to the islands and bringing home molasses, rice, and fruit cost the equivalent of $3,100 to $5,000 and returned $95 to $249. In the same period, Clarke made three slaving voyagestotal cost $14,127that cleared a total of $3,871, a 27 percent profit.

Large and small, slave cargoes were a commonplace in New England ports. Between 1728 and 1743, captains Samuel Morse, John Major, Joseph Bayley, and John Odiorne mastered ships out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, owned by Pierce Long, Joshua Pierce, and John Ridge and J & S Wentworth. These vessels sailed to and from Guinea, Virginia, and Barbados carrying cargoes that included from one slave to a dozen. In 1755, Exeter, owned by John Moffatt, docked at Portsmouth to deliver 61 enslaved men, women, and children, along with tobacco, wine, beef, rice, corn, rum, pitch, tar, and turpentine.

A slaving ship had one or two slave decks, stacked at either side, with 4 of head room. Into that space were crammed naked Africans manacled spoon-fashion, all but unable to move, wallowing in their waste, the only ventilation a porthole or two. A double-decked New England slave ship could carry 100 captives. Slave decks were deliberately hellish, to discourage uprisings and escape attempts. Slavers separated men and women and, to thwart efforts at conspiracy, shackled together individuals who did not speak one anothers languages. Crewmen, who carried or had access to arms, raped female slaves. Captives died of seasickness, dehydration, starvation, malnutrition, dysentery, and smallpox. In 1764, aboard Sally, owned by the Brown family, more than half of a cargo of 196 captives bought in Africa died at sea. Crewmen flung the corpses overboard.

Slaving in New England was a going concern for about 150 years. As early as the late 1600s a few Quakers began opposing the practice. Some Quakers and Anglican Church clerics expressed concern over slavery even as they engaged in it. Colonial proprietor William Penn owned an unknown number of slaves; like many Quakers in the 1690s, Penn renounced slavery in all forms and manumitted the slaves he owned. In the early 1770s, slave trader Moses Brown became a Quaker and joined the antislavery movement. In 1789 he and others established the Providence Abolition Society. Even before the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the five New England states had begun enacting emancipation laws: Vermont in 1777, Massachusetts in 1780, and Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island in 1784.

Despite these gestures, New Englanders kept at the slave trade. In the late 1780s, according to The New York Times, John Brown, entrenched in the family business in Providence, Rhode Island, boldly defended his livelihood. Americans were doing Africans a favor by removing them from a barbaric homeland, Brown declared: Slavery is right, just and lawful, and consequently practiced every day. The United States outlawed trafficking slaves to foreign ports in 1793; in 1796, authorities prosecuted John Brown on such charges, which, perhaps owing to his position in Rhode Island society, were dropped. Risking arrest and seizure of their vessels, New England slaving ship captains continued to operate in the Caribbean. After the Revolution, merchants in Rhode Island may have controlled 60 to 90 percent of the African slave trade in the United States, which outlawed importation of slaves in 1807.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 6, 2020) - Dr. Stephen Campbell, Chief Technology Officer at Nano OneTM (TSXV: NNO) (OTC Pink: NNOMF) (FSE: LBMB) is pleased to announce the issuance of Taiwanese patent number I672852 relating to lithium nickel manganese oxide (LNMO) cathode material, also known as high voltage spinel (HVS). In addition to the increased durability shown below [Figure 1], Nano One's LNMO also eliminates cobalt from the battery, thereby addressing the ethical and supply chain issues related to artisanal cobalt mining in Africa for use in lithium ion batteries.



Figure 1

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3606/51162_9d5ff2506430491e_001full.jpg

Dr. Campbell said, "This addition to Nano One's patent portfolio is an important, low cost durability improvement to LNMO. This material operates at high voltage with fast rates of charge and discharge, compared to other cathode materials. Our technology treats the surface of the discrete cathode crystals and it mitigates instabilities common to spinels including LNMO and enables elevated operating temperatures that are typical in electric vehicle batteries."

This represents the sixteenth patent in Nano One's IP portfolio which extends to the U.S., Canada, China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

Nano One Materials Corp.

Dan Blondal, CEO

For information with respect to Nano One or the contents of this news release, please contact John Lando (President) at (604) 420-2041 or visit the website at www.nanoone.ca.

About Nano One

Nano One Materials Corp has developed patented technology for the low-cost production of high performance lithium ion battery cathode materials used in electric vehicles, energy storage and consumer electronics. The processing technology enables lower cost feedstocks, simplifies production and advances performance for a wide range of cathode materials. Nano One has built a demonstration pilot plant and is partnering with global leaders in the lithium ion battery supply chain, including Pulead, Volkswagen and Saint-Gobain to advance its lithium iron phosphate (LFP), lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) and lithium nickel manganese oxide (LNM) cathode technologies for large growth opportunities in e-mobility and renewable energy storage applications.

Nano One's pilot and partnership activities are being funded with the assistance and support of the Government of Canada through Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) and the Automotive Supplier Innovation Program (ASIP) a program of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED). Nano One also receives financial support from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP). Nano One's mission is to establish its patented technology as a leading platform for the global production of a new generation of battery materials. www.nanoone.ca

Certain information contained herein may constitute "forward-looking information" under Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, the execution of the plans of Nano One Materials Corp ("the Company") which are contingent on the receipt of grant monies and the commercialization of the Company's technology and patents. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as 'believe', 'expect', 'anticipate', 'plan', 'intend', 'continue', 'estimate', 'may', 'will', 'should', 'ongoing', or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "will" occur. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, including: the ability of the Company to obtain additional financing; including the receipt of grant monies from SDTC, ASIP, NRC-IRAP and the receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals. Although management of the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information that is incorporated by reference herein, except as required by applicable securities laws.

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS NEWS RELEASE.



To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/51162
Donald Trump on Monday insisted Iran will 'never' get a nuclear weapon, a vow that came a day after Tehran said it would no longer abide by the 2015 pact designed to limit its ability to build a weapon

'IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!,' the president tweeted in all capital letters.

On Sunday, Iran announced it would no longer follow the 2015 Obama-era agreement that muzzled its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump had formally withdrawn the U.S. from the treaty last year.

An Iranian government spokesman said that Tehran would now base its uranium enrichment levels on its own technical needs rather than the agreement's limits.

Iran stopped short of completely killing the deal - known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action - and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif left open the possibility the nation would rejoin its provisions should President Trump lift the sanctions he imposed after withdrawing the U.S. from the deal.

The agreement which was drawn up by the Obama administration, Russia, France, Britain and the European Union, was designed to delay Iran's ability to obtain enough fuel to fashion a nuclear warhead.

President Trump vowed Iran 'will never have a nuclear weapon'

Iran on Sunday with drew from the 2015 nuclear pact designed to slow its ability to fuel a war head; above Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the head of Iran nuclear technology organization Ali Akbar Salehi inspecting nuclear technology in 2019

Trump's administration had argued Iran didn't abide by the deal's restrictions anyway.

Tensions have ratcheted up between Washington D.C. and Tehran since Trump ordered the death last week by drone strike of Qassem Soleimani, Iran's top security and intelligence officer, who the U.S. designated as a terrorist.

Since the strike at Baghdad airport, the tensions have spread to Capitol Hill, where Democrats reacted with fury that Congress was not given a head's up on the attack.

Nancy Pelosi announced Sunday night that the House would introduce a War Powers Resolution this week to limit the president's ability to take military action in regards to Iran.

'[The resolution] reasserts Congress's long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administration's military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days,' Pelosi wrote in a dear colleague letter Sunday.

Lawmakers return to Capitol Hill this week after their holiday break

White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway defended Trump's actions, saying he had acted within his rights as commander-in-chief.

'He's the commander in chief, and he did what a responsible, strong  not weak  commander in chief does when faced with the opportunity to take out one of the, if not the world's most wanted terrorist,' she told reporters Monday morning in the White House briefing room.

White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway defended Trump's actions in regard to Iran

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would take up a war powers resolution this week

She said lawmakers would be briefed on the situation in Iran, perhaps as currently as this week, although she noted the timing was up to the Pentagon.

Conway also suggested Democrats 'should calm down and celebrate' Soleimani's death.

The administration argued Soleimani was behind attacks in the Middle East that killed Americans and was in the process of planning more when he was killed.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Robert Menendez sent a letter to Trump on Sunday asking him to declassify the war powers notification following the attack.

'It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner,' they wrote. 'An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society, and there appears to be no legitimate justification for classifying the notification.'

Conway accused the two Democrats of 'chest thumping.'

'They know that Congress will be briefed. It could start as recently as this week. But that's up to the Pentagon,' she said.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed 'deep regret' at the Iranian move to discard the nuclear deal.

He tweeted that full implementation of the nuclear deal by all parties 'is now more important than ever, for regional stability and global security.'

The EU supervises the deal under which Tehran limits its nuclear ambitions in exchange for economic incentives, but it relies on the U.N.s nuclear watchdog to monitor whether Iran is complying, as it has continued to do so far despite its belligerent rhetoric.

'We have to rely on, and see, what the International Atomic Energy Agency says about the deeds on the ground,' Borrells spokesman, Peter Stano, told reporters.

The IAEA told The Associated Press that it was aware of Iran's announcement, but noted that Tehran's statement 'also said that Iran's cooperation with the Agency will continue as before.'

'IAEA inspectors continue to carry out verification and monitoring activities in the country,' the agency said in an e-mailed statement. 'The IAEA will keep its member states informed of any developments in this regard in a timely manner as appropriate.'

Irans announcement and the U.S. killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad last week has sparked a flurry of diplomatic activity in Europe. Borrell has invited Zarif to Brussels, and EU foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting on Friday to address the issue. It remained unclear Monday whether Zarif would accept the invitation.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the Europeans will talk to Iran and the U.N. nuclear watchdog and take a coordinated decision.

'This could be the first step toward the end of this agreement, which would be a great loss - and so we will weigh things up very, very responsibly,' Maas told Deutschlandfunk radio.

He noted that the agreement contains procedures to respond to such situations. They include the triggering of a 'dispute mechanism' that could buy more time to help keep Iran on board.

The EU finds itself in an increasingly awkward position and has been reduced to calling for calm as it seeks to keep Iran inside the agreement and maintain good ties with Washington despite deep concern over the drone killing.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has already expressed frustration at the muted European reaction to events in the region.

'Frankly, the Europeans haven't been as helpful as I wish that they could be. The Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did, what the Americans did, saved lives in Europe as well,' Pompeo said.

On a visit to Germany, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said EU commissioners would also discuss developments on Wednesday.

'The European Union has in recent years built up very reliable channels of dialogue with almost all actors in the region, which it can and must now use,' she said.

Von der Leyen declined to assess Trumps style in threatening retaliation via Twitter, saying that 'my job isnt to evaluate - my job is to de-escalate.' She was firm in pinning the blame for the crisis on forces close to Iran.
Any effort by the Trump administration to target and destroy cultural sites in Iran amid an escalating Middle East conflict would be an abomination that would in effect put us on the level of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Democratic U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden said Sunday.

The comments from Oregons senior senator came just two days after President Donald Trump authorized an air strike killing a top Iranian military commander, leading to cascading threats of retaliation and counterattacks by each nation.

Speaking to about 250 Oregonians during a crowded town hall at Tigard High School, Wyden was circumspect about the danger of war. He called for Congress to provide vigorous oversight of Trump under the War Powers Resolution that checks military action by a sitting president.

Oregonians want that law enforced, and Im going to pull out all the stops to do it, Wyden said to a standing ovation.

Wyden added that he had confidence military leaders would refuse to act on Trumps threats, made public Saturday night on Twitter, to specifically target sites important to Iran & the Iranian culture if Iran strikes back for the killing.

The emerging conflict with Iran was chief among the concerns voiced in Washington County on Sunday during Wydens prearranged town hall tour, which concluded later in the afternoon in Portland. Wyden, on winter recess from work in Washington, D.C., made earlier stops last week in Marion, Lane, Benton, Polk, Columbia and Clatsop counties.

Wyden spoke for about 90 minutes in the Tigard high auditorium, fielding a dozen questions from constituents. The Democratic county proved friendly to Wyden, save one question from an apparent Trump supporter who questioned if the senator lived in Oregon or New York City.

If you come trick or treating in my neighborhood, you will see our house is one of the most popular, Wyden said of his home in Southeast Portlands Eastmoreland neighborhood.

Wydens stop in Washington County marked his 963rd town hall since winning election to the U.S. Senate in 1996. Wyden, 70, isnt up for re-election until 2022, but he used his Tigard visit to showcase his legislative work on several hot-button issues.

In response to a veiled question about how hes able to work with Republicans, Wyden pointed to a bipartisan bill to limit prescription drug price gouging. Wyden said he worked with Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the finance committee, and the bill has now moved to the full Senate for consideration.

I do everything I possibly can to find common ground, and I call it principled bipartisanship, said Wyden, the ranking member of the finance committee.

Wyden also turned a question about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnells penchant for killing bills into an opportunity to promote his political dexterity. Wyden said he worked with lawmakers in the House to push a bill that would improve election security for 2020.

Without more protections, hostile foreign powers will make the 2016 election look like small potatoes, Wyden warned.

Meanwhile, with concerns rising about Iran, the news of Trumps impending impeachment trial felt almost like an afterthought. Asked about the possibility for a fair trial in the Senate, Wyden said he strongly supports calling witnesses because hearing testimony is in the public interest.

Im going to do everything I can to work for a just outcome rather than a political outcome, Wyden said.

The most poignant moment of the town hall came in response to Iran. Saying it had been a very dangerous 24 hours for Americans and American troops, Wyden recalled an interaction he had Saturday with a woman in Polk County.

The woman was in tears, he said, because her son is stationed in Kuwait and had 12 days to go in his deployment.

She put her hand on mine and said, Is my boy going to be OK? Wyden said. So this is not some abstract kind of thing, where you go back to D.C. and you wear a blue suit and a red tie and you give a bunch of windy speeches.

After the town hall, Wyden told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he has yet to receive a classified memo explaining the rationale for the Iran killing but anticipates briefings upon his return to Washington, D.C., on Monday.

Wyden, who sits on the Senate intelligence committee, did not directly answer if he opposed any further escalation with Iran, saying: What I support is getting answers to the tough questions.

Wyden, an opponent of the Iraq war in 2002, said Congress has for too long surrendered its oversight obligation.

If we have a debate over whether or not to go to war, and there is a significant vote, he said, presidents have to take that into consideration.

-- Brad Schmidt

bschmidt@oregonian.com

503-294-7628

@_brad_schmidt
China has ramped up its diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the heightened tensions in the Gulf region over the weekend, vowing to play a constructive role in maintaining peace and security in the Middle East, the Foreign Ministry said.

State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi had telephone talks on Saturday with the foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and France, reiterating that China opposes the abuse of military force in international relations.

On Friday, China's top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, expressed the country's grave concern over the current Middle East situation in a telephone conversation with United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He urged relevant parties, particularly the US, to maintain restraint.

The rarely seen diplomatic activity has come after the US killed Qassem Soleimani, a high-profile commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, in an airstrike near Baghdad International Airport on Friday morning. The attack sparked outrage in Teheran, and Iranian officials vowed to retaliate.

As the risk of further violence between Washington and Teheran looms large, fears are growing about a further escalation of tensions in the Persian Gulf region.

Yang, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, told Pompeo that relevant parties should return to the track of dialogue to achieve, as soon as possible, a de-escalation of tensions.

In telephone talks with Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Wang said that the military adventurism of the US goes against basic norms governing international relations and will aggravate tensions and turbulence in the region.

"Military means will lead nowhere. Maximum pressure won't work either," Wang said. "China urges the US to seek resolutions through dialogue instead of the abuse of force.

"China will continue to uphold an objective and just position and play a constructive role in safeguarding peace and security in the Gulf region of the Middle East."

Speaking to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, Wang mentioned that their countries, together with China, are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and therefore shoulder important responsibilities in safeguarding world peace and security.

He called on the two countries to strengthen their strategic communication with China, jointly uphold international law, jointly safeguard the principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter and basic norms governing international relations, jointly oppose unilateral military action and play a responsible role in properly handling the current situation in the Middle East.

Both Lavrov and Le Drian said their countries have positions similar to China's on the flare-up between the US and Iran and stand ready to maintain close communication with China to play a positive role in preventing escalation.

The US attack that killed Soleimani took place against a background of tensions between Washington and Teheran since 2018, when US President Donald Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was signed by Iran, the US, France, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union in 2015. Trump then renewed sanctions against Iran.

Wang underscored the importance of implementing the Iranian nuclear deal and expressed hope that all parties would stay in close communication and not let the attack affect the implementation of the agreement.

The Chinese embassy in the US released a security notice on Sunday on its website, reminding Chinese nationals in the US to keep close watch on the security situation, as many US cities have strengthened security measures, along with Washington, to heighten vigilance.
In the Queens court on a recent Friday, the gallery was filled with mostly immigrant women sitting nervously beneath fluorescent lights. Signs in English and Chinese instructed them to turn off their cellphones as they waited for their names to be called and for translators to help them understand the proceedings. Sometimes women were accompanied by older men, who lawyers said they believed were pimps.

The nonprofits that work with the courts offer trauma counseling and consultations with immigration attorneys, as well as assistance navigating public health care, affordable housing and education programs. The more times women go through the court process, the more sessions they must attend.

A lot of these girls are under the coercion and control of pimps. They cant just go get health care or IDs or other services unless they go through the courts, said Rachel Lloyd, the executive director of Girls Educational & Mentoring Services, one of the service providers.

Though it often takes years and multiple arrests, many service providers say they have seen the process guide people out of prostitution.

It was really scary, but Im grateful for it. If I wasnt arrested, Im not sure I would have made it out of the life, said Adriana, 29, who was sex trafficked for six years. The Times is withholding her last name to protect her future job prospects. Hearing other people talk about the bigger picture, about how they had been manipulated, that was really eye-opening.

But some people in the sex trade  particularly immigrants  said intertwining the criminal justice system, which holds the threat of punishment, with social services that are intended to help, sends a baffling message.

A.G., a 33-year-old immigrant from China who went through the Queens intervention court, said she ultimately did not tell her assigned counselor much about her life in Queens or China. She is being identified by her initials because her family does not know she is involved in prostitution.
THE Chiltern Centre in Henley has received more than 4,600 from the Co-op shop in Sonning Common. The money was raised as part of the companys local community fund for charities and good causes.

Every time members shop at a Co-op store, one per cent of what they spend on selected own-brand products and services is donated to community projects where they live. The Chiltern Centre cares for adults with learning and physical disabilities.

Emma Lerche-Thomsen, a fundraiser for the charity, said: We are so grateful for the generosity of Co-op customers in helping to raise such a lot of money, which will go towards the cost of nursing care for the young people we look after.
T he Prince of Wales is to deliver his first keynote speech for almost 30 years at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Clarence House said today.

Prince Charles will use the global platform at their annual meeting on 22nd January to officially launch his Sustainable Markets Council.

This initiative, founded by Charles, brings together leading international figures to find ways to rapidly decarbonize the global economy and make the transition to sustainable markets.

The Princes visit will take place as a stopover on the way to his visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories at the request of the British Government.

For more than four decades The Prince of Wales has used his unique position to champion action for a sustainable future.

In an exclusive interview with The Evening Standard last year Charles urged big business and the City to help save the planet by ploughing trillions of pounds into schemes that protect the environment and promote a sustainable economy.

He insisted that sustainable  but profitable  investment was key to combating climate change and preserving biodiversity.

Charles has promoted sustainability to ensure that the natural assets upon which we all depend among other things soil, water, forests, a stable climate and fish stocks endure for future generations.

The World Economic Forums Annual Meeting takes place in Davos, Switzerland between 21st and 24th January 2020 and The Prince is attending with the support of the British Government.

Charles previously visited the World Economic Forums Annual Meeting in Davos in 1992.
Japans justice minister vowed Monday to strengthen border checks and review bail conditions after Nissans former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, fled the country despite supposedly stringent surveillance.



Masako Mori told reporters at a news conference that the ministry has already acted to prevent a recurrence but declined to give details. Ghosn skipped bail and showed up in Lebanon a week ago, saying he could not get a fair hearing in Japan, where he was awaiting trial on financial misconduct allegations.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Michael L. Taylor, a former Green Beret who has previously rescued hostages, was among those involved in Ghosns escape plan.

The team that spirited Ghosn out of the country made numerous trips to Japan to scout out possible escape routes, the newspaper reported, citing sources it did not identify. It said they settled on Osakas airport, where cargo X-ray scanners were not big enough to handle the man-sized concert equipment box apparently used to get Ghosn aboard a private flight. He flew from there to Istanbul, then switched to a different plane to fly to Beirut, according to the Turkish airline company MNG Jet, which said its planes were used illegally.

Mori declined to say who might be held responsible for such a high-profile escape, stressing it was still under investigation.

While out on 1.5 billion yen ($14 million) bail, Ghosn was living in a home in an upscale part of Tokyo under strict surveillance as part of the conditions for his release. That raises questions about how he left undetected.

Security cameras at his home operated 24 hours a day, but the footage only had to be submitted to the court on a monthly basis, according to lawyers documents. Security footage showed he simply walked out of the house alone around noon on Dec. 29, NHK TV reported.

Lebanon has said he entered legally with a French passport on Dec. 30. He has not been seen since, but has promised to speak to reporters on Wednesday.

Story continues

Mori denounced his escape as an unjustifiable crime.

Japans justice system allows investigating the facts while it ensures the individual basic human rights at the same time, Mori told reporters at the ministry. It is set with appropriate procedures and it is operated appropriately.

Critics say Japans justice system is too slow and is inhumane. Ghosn was banned from meeting with his wife while out on bail. Preparing for his trial has taken more than a year, and a date has not been set. He was detained, twice, for a total of 130 days before he was released on bail a second time.

Referring to human rights advocates descriptions of the Japanese legal system as hostage justice, Mori said, We are aware of the criticisms.

Ghosn, formerly chairman of Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi, was first arrested in November 2018. He is charged with under-reporting his future compensation and breach of trust in diverting Nissan money for his personal gain. He insists he is innocent.

Mori said each nation has its own judicial system and arrests are rarer in Japan than in other countries, suggesting arrests are made only when the authorities are fairly confident they have a case.

Simple comparisons are misleading, she said.

French authorities are also investigating Ghosn and the automakers. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Monday that he was surprised by Ghosns escape and wants a broader investigation into 11 million euros ($12.3 million) in questionable expenses under Ghosns watch at the Netherlands-based headquarters of the alliance between Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors.

Le Maire wouldnt say where Ghosn should be prosecuted, but said that as Renaults biggest single shareholder, the French government wants to ensure the struggling automaker prospers again.

When you are an individual subject to laws, you dont escape justice. And Carlos Ghosn is an individual like any other, Le Maire said Monday on France-Inter radio. He should answer before the justice system.

Members of Ghosns legal team say they did not know about his escape plan. Takashi Takano, one of his lawyers, said he felt sad and betrayed that Ghosn didnt try to prove his innocence in court. He also said he understood how Ghosn might have lost hope not only with the prosecutors but with the entire Japanese judicial system.

Yuichi Kaido, another of Ghosns lawyer, said he was troubled by public support for denying bail to all foreign suspects. He said in an online statement he feared Japan might react to international criticism of its legal system by becoming more insular and rigid in its views.

Ghosns bail has been revoked, and Interpol has issued a wanted notice. Japan does not have an extradition treaty with Lebanon, but Mori left open the possibility Japan could seek Ghosns return.

Such a return so far appears unlikely, and Japans options are limited.

Mori stressed that any retaliatory action, such as economic sanctions, must be decided on very carefully. She would not say if Japan has contacted the U.S. or France for help.

It is indeed possible to ask for extradition of criminals based on the principle of reciprocity, she said, replying to a question about Lebanon.

But, upon doing that, we need to carefully study whether it is possible to guarantee this principle of reciprocity and their internal justice system.

(AP)
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SoftBank Vision Fund has walked away from investing in several startups, months after submitting term sheets worth hundreds of millions of dollars and promising that closing delays were only temporary, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: This is highly unusual behavior, even for the idiosyncratic SoftBank, and threatens its ability to invest in highly sought-after companies. SoftBank, which has invested record amounts into startups over the past few years, confirmed that it has "regret" over these situations.

"Hurry up and wait" is how numerous sources describe negotiations with SoftBank, saying that the process was time-consuming, expensive, and ultimately fruitless.

Honor is a San Francisco home care company for older adults that's raised over $100 million from firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Naspers, and Thrive Capital.

It received a term sheet from SoftBank in mid-November, with subsequent reports putting the deal size at around $150 million.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son gave his blessing during a meeting at his Woodside, Calif. estate with Honor CEO Seth Sternberg.

Per a source familiar: "SoftBank kept saying it had to run some 'process stuff' before getting the term sheet fully-signed, but said they wanted to get it funded by year-end, so it started confirmatory due diligencelaw firms, background checks, EY going through stuff, etc... There was no reason to think there was going to be a problem."

SoftBank killed the deal one week before Christmas, telling Honor that Son had changed his mind. Son did not personally communicate his decision or rationale to the company.

Seismic is a San Diego-based maker of B2B sales software that's raised over $180 million in VC funding, most recently at a $1 billion valuation, from firms like General Atlantic, Jackson Square Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and JMI Equity.

It wasn't looking to raise money but, over the summer, SoftBank came with a term sheet that was hard to refuse. High valuation, an opportunity for early investors to sell some secondary stock, and a promise to take Seismic into Japan.

The two sides struck a deal by early August, with CEO Doug Winter getting Son's initial okay via a phone call.

"It was originally supposed to be the last company in Vision Fund 1, but SoftBank kept dragging its feet so suddenly it's supposed to be the first or second deal in Vision Fund 2," says a source close to the situation.

Winter traveled to Japan in October for an in-person meeting with Son, after which Seismic was given "three more boxes to check... not substantive things busywork to make things last longer."

The deal died shortly thereafter.

Creator is a San Francisco-based developer of hamburger-making robots, whose backers include Google Ventures and Khosla Ventures.

SoftBank signed the company to an exclusive, six-month term sheet for a round that was many multiples of the $25 million it had raised to date.

"Totally screwed," is how one source close to Creator refers to what happened next. Like with the other examples, it was unexplained delay after unexplained delay, and at one point said it wanted to add a co-lead investor.

The company pushed back, and SoftBank agreed to wire between $10 million and $15 million as a show of good faith.

But the "hurry up and wait" persisted, with multiple sources telling me last month that the original deal was dead. Things may have since changed, however, as a source close to SoftBank says negotiations remain active.

Company executives and investors all declined to speak on the record, when contacted by Axios.

The big picture: SoftBank's reasons for its reversals are unclear.

Some sources believe a driving factor is SoftBank's struggle to raise Vision Fund 2. In short, outside money still hasn't materialized.

Vision Fund 2 so far has done five deals, although that all appears to be via SoftBank Group's $38 billion commitment to the fund.

They also think the WeWork debacle played a role, creating a sort of shell shock in Tokyo.

What they're saying ... SoftBank sent Axios the following statement:

"Given were a fiduciary and investing very large amounts of capital, our investment process is more rigorous than unregulated investors and typical VCs. There have been a few cases where our process took longer than anticipated, which we regret. Were always upfront with founders about what to expect and we try to keep them informed every step of the way."

The bottom line: Time is one of a startup's most valuable assets, and several startups and their CEOs have been robbed of time by SoftBank's actions.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trumps confrontation with Iran is posing a gut check for Congress, brazenly testing whether the House and Senate will exert their own authority over U.S. military strategy or cede more war powers to the White House.

As tensions rise at home and abroad, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will hold House votes this week to limit Trumps ability to engage Iran militarily after the surprise U.S. airstrike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani. A Senate vote is expected to soon follow.

Yet Congress has shown time and again it is unable to exert its ability to authorize  or halt  the use of military force. With their inaction, lawmakers have begrudgingly allowed the commander in chief to all but disregard Congress.

I think this president has pushed this to the limit with action that has a huge, escalating effect, said Scott Anderson, a former attorney in the State Departments legal office and former legal adviser for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Maybe this will push Congress to make it a priority. ... Anything short of legislative action doesnt mean anything.

The showdown between the White House and Capitol Hill provides the latest example of how Trumps willingness to break the norms in Washington is setting new standards in governance.

Ahead of the attack that killed the Iranian general, the president did not consult with congressional leaders. In the aftermath, he refused to make public his justification for the airstrikes.

Facing an outcry, Trump scoffed that his tweets should provide adequate updates to Congress, regardless of what is required by law.

Republicans have largely supported Trumps actions, saying the president was well within his power to take out Irans architect of proxy operations against Americans in the Middle East. The U.S. considered Soleimani a terrorist.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday theres plenty of time for lawmakers to learn more about the presidents reasoning for the attack. He complained that Democrats rushed to blame our own government before even knowing the facts,  rushed to downplay Soleimanis evil while presenting our own president as the villain.

But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday, It is essential for Congress to put a check on this president.

Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School, said both parties in Congress have for years gone along with an expansion of presidential war powers, especially with regard to the conflicts in the Middle East.

In short, our country has  through presidential aggrandizement accompanied by congressional authorization, delegation, and acquiescence  given one person, the president, a sprawling military and enormous discretion to use it in ways that can easily lead to a massive war, Goldsmith said in an essay in Lawfare, an online newsletter he co-founded. That is our system: One person decides.

Past presidents at least signalled a nod to the legislative branch, which has the sole power under the Constitution to declare war, knowing they would need to ask Congress to pay for military operations. Its one way the founders sought to keep the executive in check.

But Congress has allowed its role to erode since the passage of Authorization for Use of Military Force in 2001 to fight terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks, and passage of another AUMF for the invasion of Iraq in 2002.

The fallout from those votes has deeply divided Congress and the nation, with many lawmakers, particularly Democrats, now saying they were mistakes. Yet lawmakers have been paralyzed on the question of whether to repeal or change those authorities.

Only after U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed last summer in a gruesome murder at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey did Congress muster the resolve to slap restrictions on U.S. involvement with the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

It was a rare exertion of authority from Congress, the first since the passage of the War Powers Act of 1973. And Trump promptly vetoed it.

Theres no question the president has gotten stronger over time, the Congress less strong, said Wendy Sherman, a former undersecretary of state in the Obama administration and chief negotiator of the Iran nuclear deal.

This is a president who we know makes decisions by impulse and without any deliberative process, said Sherman, who now directs the Center for Public Leadership at Harvards Kennedy School. Ceding all this power to an impulsive president ... puts our national security at risk.

Pelosi announced the House will vote this week on a resolution from Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., a former CIA and Defence Department official, that would require an end to the action against Iran unless Congress votes to authorize it.

Similar legislation passed the House last year but failed in the Senate. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., is pushing it again this year and plans to force a vote that could come as soon as next week.

I think this president doesnt care about Congress, Kaine told The Associated Press. But the president is deeply concerned and to the point of insecurity about his own personal popularity. And I think a vote by Congress on a matter like this is ultimately a demonstration  well, what does the American public think? Should we be in another war in the Middle East?

On Monday, Schumer and Sen. Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called on Trump to declassify in full his notification to Congress over the weekend justifying the strikes.

Under the War Powers Act, the White House has 48 hours to notify Congress of such actions. Pelosi said it was highly unusual for the information to be entirely classified and is demanding a full briefing for Congress.

Debates have raged on and off Capitol Hill over whether the White House can continue to rely on nearly 20-year old authorizations for its actions abroad.

At the time of their passage, Congress resisted then-President George W. Bushs effort to secure an even broader authorization, clipping language that would have allowed for actions to deter future acts of terrorism against the U.S., according to a 2019 report from the Congressional Research Service.

Because Congress did not accept this broader authorization language, it can be argued that Congress deliberately chose to limit presidential authority, the report said, adding that the debate about the authorities since then calls for legislative clarification of such scope.

Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn on Monday defended Trump, comparing the killing of the Iranian general to Obamas decision to target Osama bin Laden, even though that raid was more directly tied to the post-2001 war authorizations.

The president not only has the authority under the Constitution, but the responsibility to defend the nation, Cornyn said. He also said Soleimanis death was not an assassination, as some have suggested.

This was the president of the United States exercising his lawful authorities, he said.

___

Associated Press reporter Padmananda Rama in Washington contributed to this report.
Britain's Labour Party on Monday began the formal contest to replace its leader, with centrists set to battle left-wingers in a fight for its ideological soul.

Veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn announced he would step down following last month's crushing defeat to Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservatives.

Labour, a traditionally centre-left party, had moved further left under Corbyn, and haemorrhaged support across its former heartlands to hand Johnson a landslide victory.

The party's National Executive Committee (NEC) met to thrash out a timetable and procedures for the leadership contest -- its fourth since Labour last held power in 2010.

Nominations open on Tuesday and close in a week. Voting will take place from February 21 to April 2, with the winner announced two days later.

An unofficial campaign has been under way for weeks, with several so-called moderate candidates already declared.

They include the early favourite Keir Starmer, the party's Brexit spokesman; foreign affairs spokeswoman Emily Thornberry; shadow finance minister Clive Lewis; and backbenchers Lisa Nandy and Jess Phillips.

They are likely to face off in a highly-charged contest against Corbyn loyalists Rebecca Long Bailey, and party chairman Ian Lavery, a former trade union leader. Both have signalled their intent to stand.

"They could hardly fail to be an improvement on Corbyn," said historian Kenneth O Morgan, who has written several books on Labour and its leaders, and branded Corbyn's tenure a "disaster".

"The party will have to do something quite fundamental and the first important thing is to get a decent leader," he added.

Under current rules, contenders need the backing of 21 Labour MPs as well as at least five percent of local constituency parties or three affiliated bodies, such as trade unions.

A separate election for deputy leader is being held at the same time.

The battle to succeed Corbyn is seen as a critical moment for the party to determine whether it steers towards a more centrist course or sticks with his socialist agenda.

Corbyn unexpectedly won a longshot leadership bid in 2015 amid a flood of new members, and set about remaking Labour with an agenda of nationalisations and higher taxes for big earners.

He also instituted internal reforms widely seen as trying to cement left-wingers' control of the party, installing loyalists on the ruling NEC.

But his hardline policies have twice failed to win a majority at the ballot box, leading to calls for Labour to regain the centre ground.

"After its worst defeat for 80 or 90 years the Labour Party, and with it the shape of progressive in the UK, faces some existential questions," ex-premier Tony Blair, who won three elections as Labour leader, said in a new year's message.

But Corbyn's defenders -- and hopeful successors -- argue his policies are actually popular with voters, and blame Brexit and poor messaging for the defeats.

"We didn't lose because of our commitment to... invest in public services or abolish tuition fees," Long Bailey wrote in The Guardian last month, touting her working-class roots.

The daughter of a docker from Manchester, northwest England, the 40-year-old believes she can win back disaffected voters, while maintaining the backing of Corbyn's supporters.

Starmer, 57, a former director of public prosecutions and shadow Brexit minister for three years, is less well-liked by so-called "Corbynistas".

Popular among the anti-Brexit and moderate factions of the party, he would represent a shift back towards the ideological centre ground if elected.

A YouGov poll of Labour members released last week showed 36 percent backed him as their top preference, 13 points ahead of Long Bailey.

Phillips, a canny media operator and one of the party's most visible MPs on Twitter who has been highly critical of Corbyn, was in third place on 12 percent, according to the survey.

Meanwhile Nandy, a native northerner who presents herself as the champion of the working-class areas that turned Tory in the election, was among the rest in single figures.

However, the contest is seen as highly unpredictable.

Labour uses a preferential voting system, with its approximately 500,000 party and affiliated members able to rank candidates in order of preference.

The NEC must also decide how long the race will last and any cut-off periods for membership.

Corbyn critics are thought to favour a long period of several weeks to allow as many new members as possible to sign up and be able to vote.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The protests against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) spilled out to many Delhi neighbourhoods with university students and residents coming out to gather in parks and streets against the amended law on Sunday.

At southeast Delhis Govindpuri, over 200 people gathered late afternoon to stand in solidarity with ongoing protests. The crowd largely included workers from the All India Traders Union, and circulated pamphlets explaining what the CAA means for citizens.

Protesters sang the national anthem and read out the Preamble to the Constitution of India. There are people from all strata of society including teachers, students and workers. A small group has been going across localities, urging people to come out and support the movement, said Shakti, 30, who works with a trade union.

A banded perform songs of national unity and recited Faiz Ahmed Faizs poem Hum Dekhenge.

We plan to come back here. Workers have called a general strike against the economic slowdown, unemployment and demanding the rollback of the CAA, he added.

Defence Colony in south Delhi saw the first such demonstration in which students and residents from nearby colonies gathered at the Durga Puja park in the morning and sat with placards for over two hours. However, protesters said, they were sitting peacefully, but the local residents welfare association (RWA) was against the protest and called the police.

The students spoke well, explaining the meanings of CAA, NPR [National Population Register] and NRC [National Register of Citizens]. They just sat with posters and placards made by them and sang the national anthem. Some people from the RWA even snatched placards from the students and asked us to leave. But we continued with the protest, said Bhavreen Kandhari, a resident of Defence Colony.

Meanwhile, in northeast Delhis Seelampur, inspired by the women at the forefront of the indefinite sit-in at Shaheen Bagh, a group of women sat on a dharna in solidarity.

We stand in solidarity with protestors at Shaheen Bagh. We salute their courage and bravery, and the women of Seelampur have not only come out in the support of the protesters, but also demand a rollback of the CAA. We also reject the proposal for a nationwide NRC, 27-year-old Alfiya Javed, one of the organisers of the sit-in, said.

The women, many accompanied by their young children, raised slogans against the CAA and NRC and of Azaadi (freedom).

Parween, a 36-year-old woman with disabilities, who had come to the sit-in with her 60-year-old mother said, We elected this government. Why will we show our documents to them to prove our citizenship now? Hindustan is for everyone and we will not leave it.

Fearing action from the police, the protest  that was to take place on the Welcome Eidgah road  was shifted to the Seelampur fruit market, organisers said.

At the same time, the Jamia Coordination Committee (JCC), which comprises both students and teachers, continued their protest against the CAA, NRC and NPR for the 24th day in the university.

According to a statement by the committee, hundreds of students and people from neighbouring Okhla gathered at the protest venue and raised anti-CAA slogans. The protest saw participation of Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh, who called these laws anti-muslim and claimed the policies of the Central government were divisive.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 15:43:40|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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NEW DELHI, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- India's External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar held phone conversations with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as well as foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman, respectively, on Sunday night, over the evolving situation in the Gulf amidst escalated tensions between Washington and Tehran.

"Had a telephonic discussion with Secretary of State @SecPompeo on the evolving situation in the Gulf region. Highlighted India's stakes and concerns," Jaishankar said in Twitter Sunday night.

In another tweet, the Indian minister said he also held a telephone conversation with UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan and exchanged views on recent developments in the region.

Jaishankar also had a phone talk with Oman's Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, reaffirming India's interest in the stability and security of the Gulf region.

Earlier, the Indian minister also spoke with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif over phone, saying New Delhi remained "concerned" about the levels of tension prevailing in the Gulf.

The two ministers agreed to "remain in touch" as the latest developments took a "serious turn".

Tensions between the United States and Iran escalated following the killing of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran's elite Quds Force, by a U.S. airstrike near Baghdad International Airport on Jan. 3.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said at a meeting with Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs of the Sultanate of Oman Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah that Ukraine is interested in direct investment from Oman, the Office of the Ukrainian President said on Sunday.

"President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine is interested in direct investment from Oman, singling out several promising industries, such as energy and heavy industry, construction, agriculture, information technologies and innovations, infrastructure development, medicine, and tourism," the statement reads.

"A rise in trade, which increased by 10% reaching $80 million last year, and stepping up contacts at the level of the commerce and industry chambers were stressed, too. The parties agreed to continue the practice of Ukrainian-Omani business forums, taking into account the success of the latest two such events in Kyiv in 2019, which were attended by dozen Omani businesspeople," it said.

They additionally discussed boosting bilateral relations, and, in particular, stressed enhancing trade and economic cooperation.

As previously reported, Zelensky is visiting Oman, where he arrived with his family by a regular flight at his own expense.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 6, ARMENPRESS. Armenia has surpassed its neighboring Georgia with GDP per capita with results of 2019, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Facebook, citing a report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Folks, remember when I said from parliament floor that with 2019s results we would surpass with GDP per capita indicator Georgia, and in 2020 also Azerbaijan.

The IMF has officially affirmed this assessment: with results of 2019 we have surpassed Georgia, and in 2020 we will surpass Azerbaijan, and become the leading country of South Caucasus, the PM said, citing the report.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan

CORRECTION: 22:02 - The original version of the article erroneously stated that Armenias indicator in 2019 has surpassed Azerbaijan's also.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : The Delhi Police on Monday registered an FIR in connection with the violence that broke out in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

A case of arson and assault has been filed against the unknown miscreants. The case will be transferred to the Crime Branch later in the day, police sources said.

"We have registered a case against various sections of the Indian Penal Code. The case is filed on the basis of a complaint from the police officials," said a senior officer, adding that the case was being probed by the Vasant Kunj police station.

The police has also received a complaint from the Left-associated and the ABVP students.

"We are verifying the details provided by these students," the officer added.

On Sunday night, the police detained four outsiders from the North gate of the varsity, when they were trying to flee the campus.

"They are being interrogated and their credentials are being checked," the official said.

Several masked individuals thrashed students and teachers inside the campus here with wooden and metal rods on Sunday.

While the number of the injured in the clashes, which occurred throughout Sunday was not yet known, at least 20 students were admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences with severe injuries, including the Students Union President Aishe Ghosh, who was reportedly hit over the eye with an iron rod.
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Subhash Chandra-owned Essel Group's Jalesh Cruises, which sailed its first ship Karnika on April 17 last year, is planning to introduce a second vessel by October 2020 following robust demand for cruise tourism in India.

"We witnessed huge demand since Karnika sailed from Mumbai on April 17, 2019. We are witnessing huge growth in bookings. In this calendar year we expect minimum 35-40 per cent growth in bookings from last year," Jalesh Cruises Strategic Advisor Rajiv Duggal told PTI here on Monday on the sidelines of the launch of world's first 4-day business-to-business jewellery exhibition on board Karnika from January 6.

He said, in order to cater to this growing demand, the company is planning to launch another vessel by October this year.

"Cruise is also a huge employment generating medium and cruise ships are heavy with crew member. Currently, in Karnika we have 900 crew and we will be adding another 900 with the new vessel," he said.

As a long term goal, the company is planning to have 4-5 ships in next 5 years, he added.

The growing segments for cruise tourism in the country are wedding, meetings, incentives, conferences and events (MICE) and young independent travellers, he said.

"Destination weddings are now slowly getting extended to cruise as we are witnessing growing interest in the segment and MICE is also a huge segment for us. Young independent travellers are a huge opportunity for us. We are planning to tap all three segments," he added.

Mumbai Port Trust Chairman Sanjay Bhatia, who was also present on the occasion, said the country is in an exciting phase of the travel and tourism industry and cruise tourism will play a vital role in the sector's rapid growth.

"We are undertaking several steps towards expansion and swift implementation of initiatives that will significantly boost cruise tourism in India. We are proud of setting a benchmark by being the first in the world to have a jewellery exhibition on board the Karnika cruise," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Karur Vysya Bank Ltd on Monday said its Managing Director & CEO P R Seshadri has submitted his resignation citing personal reasons.

"Board of Directors of the Bank in their meeting held Monday has accepted the resignation of P R Seshadri," Karur Vysya Bank said in a regulatory filing.

He will be "relieved from the services of the Bank at the close of working hours on 31st March 2020 as per his request," the filing added.

Seshadri, submitted his resignation vide letter dated January 4, 2020 citing personal reasons.

Shares of Karur Vysya Bank were trading at Rs 56.85, down 4.85 percent on the BSE.
The City of Daltons Mayor and Council will meet in a joint meeting with the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners and leaders of Tunnel Hill, Varnell, and Cohutta on Tuesday for a mandatory mediation session to address the Service Delivery Strategy (SDS) agreement.

The meeting will be held at 9:30 a.m.

in the lower level of the Dalton Convention Center in Room A III. The convention center is at 2211 Dug Gap Battle Road in Dalton. Daltons mayor and council could hold a special called meeting at the conclusion of the mediation for ratification of any agreements reached in the session.

Under Georgia law, cities and counties are required to negotiate a new SDS every 10 years. The SDS determines which services will be provided by each government and also how they will be funded. The existing SDS in Whitfield County expired on Oct. 31, 2019 after the parties were unable to come to an agreement during negotiations which included a face-to-face mediation on Oct. 17, 2019. Mandatory mediation is the next step under the states SDS law (OCGA 36-70-25.1) to resolve a service delivery dispute between governments.

The City of Dalton petitioned for a mandatory mediation in November 2019. The honorable Ralph Van Petl, Jr. of the Lookout Valley Judicial Circuit was appointed on Nov. 8, 2019 to preside over the process. Four days later, Judge Van Pelt appointed the honorable Senior Judge Adele Grubbs to serve as mediator for the negotiations.

Georgia statute calls for a Jan. 12 deadline for the conclusion of negotiations, which is 60 days from the appointment date of a mediator.
[January 06, 2020] Kwikset Introduces Halo Touch Wi-Fi Smart Lock at CES 2020

The Kwikset brand of Spectrum (News - Alert) Brands Holdings, Inc. - Hardware & Home Improvement Division, adds to its family of Wi-Fi enabled Smart Locks with its latest addition, Halo Touch Wi-Fi Smart lock. Using the latest technology to create a convenient and secure smart home experience, Halo Touch Smart Lock provides homeowners access to their home via fingerprint. Kwikset is showcasing Halo Touch for the very first time, alongside its previously launched Halo Smart Locks, in its booth during CES (News - Alert), January 7-10 (#41142, CES Tech West | Sands Expo, Level 2 Halls A-D). Halo Touch Smart Lock comes with the ability to program and store up to 100 fingerprints (50 users), ensuring all family and household members can access the home with one-touch fingerprint locking and unlocking. In addition, through the Kwikset app, homeowners can remotely monitor and control their Halo Touch Smart Locks from anywhere in the world while connected to the Internet. Like its predecessor, Halo, the brand's first foray into Wi-Fi enabled smart locks, Halo Touch will connect directly to homeowners' existing Wi-Fi network and smartphone to create a simple, secure smart home, without the need for a third-party hub, panel or subscription service. Why Choose Halo Touch: Installation and set-up designed to be easy.

All Halo Smart Locks are DIY-friendly, so homeowners can easily install the lock themselves. Set-up requires a Wi-Fi network and the Kwikset mobile app, available for free download from compatible smartphone app marketplaces, such as the Apple App Store or Google (News - Alert) PlayStore.

All Halo Smart Locks are DIY-friendly, so homeowners can easily install the lock themselves. Set-up requires a Wi-Fi network and the Kwikset mobile app, available for free download from compatible smartphone app marketplaces, such as the Apple App Store or Google (News - Alert) PlayStore. Convenience at your fingertip.

Halo Touch provides homeowners one-touch access to their home. With the intuitive Kwikset app, they are given more control over their front door security, allowing them to operate, manage and monitor their locks through their smartphones using the app from anywhere there's an Internet connection. With the ability to lock and unlock, manage user codes, view lock activity, receive lock notifications and much more, Halo Touch brings the ultimate in security and convenience to one's fingertips.

Halo Touch provides homeowners one-touch access to their home. With the intuitive Kwikset app, they are given more control over their front door security, allowing them to operate, manage and monitor their locks through their smartphones using the app from anywhere there's an Internet connection. With the ability to lock and unlock, manage user codes, view lock activity, receive lock notifications and much more, Halo Touch brings the ultimate in security and convenience to one's fingertips. Advanced security with Kwikset Halo Touch.

Homeowners can have peace of mind knowing that fingerprints are stored locally at each lock, not in the cloud. All Halo Touch Smart Locks feature the latest patented SmartKey Security, protecting against common and forced entry break-in methods like lock piking, lock bumping and torque attacks. SmartKey Security also allows homeowners to re-key their locks quickly and easily; rendering lost, loaned or unreturned keys useless.

Homeowners can have peace of mind knowing that fingerprints are stored locally at each lock, not in the cloud. All Halo Touch Smart Locks feature the latest patented SmartKey Security, protecting against common and forced entry break-in methods like lock piking, lock bumping and torque attacks. SmartKey Security also allows homeowners to re-key their locks quickly and easily; rendering lost, loaned or unreturned keys useless. Home Automation.





Halo Touch features voice assistant integration as it works with Google Home Assistant and Amazon Alexa through voice commands.

Halo Touch features voice assistant integration as it works with Google Home Assistant and Amazon Alexa through voice commands. Superior Performance Standards.

Halo is BHMA Certified to Grade AAA, meaning it meets the highest certified residential grade performance standards for builder's hardware as certified by the Builders Hardware Manufacturers Association (BHMA), the only organization accredited by the America National Standards Institute (ANSI). These standards ensure the quality and durability of locksets through a series of operational and security tests. "Building upon the technological advances with the original Halo Wi-Fi-enabled Smart Locks, Kwikset once again is at the forefront of security technology with Halo Touch," says Ali Atash, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Kwikset, Spectrum Brands Holdings, Inc. - Hardware & Home Improvement Division. "With the introduction of Halo Touch, Kwikset continues to reinforce our commitment to creating residential security solutions for our customers." The Halo Touch Wi-Fi Smart Lock will be available for purchase in 2020 for $249 MSRP at HomeDepot.com, Lowes.com, Amazon.com and Build.com (News - Alert). The new Smart Locks will launch in traditional and contemporary styling with three finish options, Satin Nickel, Venetian Bronze (traditional only) and Iron Black (contemporary only).

"Homeowners have many options for their home security needs," says Atash. "With Halo Touch, we are providing consumers with the greatest in fingerprint unlocking technology while building on our industry expertise of Wi-Fi enabled smart locks." CES attendees can view Halo, Halo Touch and other cutting-edge home security technology at the Kwikset CES booth (#41142, CES Tech West | Sands Expo, Level 2 Halls A-D). For more information on Halo Smart Locks, please go to www.kwikset.com/halo-touch, or visit http://kwiksetpresskit.com to find media materials, images and request product. About Kwikset Kwikset is the leading residential lock manufacturer, making homeowners feel safe since 1946. Kwikset works hard to understand the world you live in, so that we can do everything we can to protect it. The company's unwavering commitment to meeting homeowners' needs has inspired its innovative lock portfolio that includes patented SmartKey Security deadbolts, patented SecureScreen touchscreen locks, keyless entry combination locks, connected home technology, Bluetooth-enabled Aura, Wi-Fi enabled Halo, door hardware with Microban antimicrobial product protection and a wide variety of styles and finishes. Our interior and exterior door products provide customers with the quality, technology, durability and style they want while guaranteeing the highest level of security. Headquartered in Orange (News - Alert) County, Calif., Kwikset is part of the Hardware & Home Improvement (HHI) division of Spectrum Brands Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SPB). Kwikset products are sold online and through retailers and distributors throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Australia. Visit us at www.kwikset.com and https://kwiksetpresskit.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005207/en/

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Protests against the attack on JNU students rocked various parts of West Bengal on Monday as police had to baton-charge supporters of the Left and the BJP when the two sides engaged in a face-off in south Kolkata.

Several students organisation, civil society groups and parties cutting across political lines took out rallies in various parts of Kolkata and the state to protest against the violence that rocked the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi on Sunday night.

Earlier in the day, students of Jadavpur University joined the nationwide protests by raising slogans, burning tyres and singing songs against the RSS-affiliated ABVP and BJP government at the centre.

Beginning at the JU campus, the rally proceeded towards the Jadavpur Police Station, took a U-turn and again moved towards the Sulekha More. Several eminent personalities like filmmaker Anik Dutta and music director Debojyoti Mishra joined the rally.

Shouting slogans like "Nathuram Godse in your heart while (revolutionary) Khudiram Bose is in our heart", the students slammed the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for allegedly attacking the JNU students, including students' union president Aishe Ghosh and professor Sucharita Sen.

"Yesterday (Sunday) was the darkest day of Indian democracy because of what happened inside the JNU campus. Beating up of students and teachers by goons and attacking girls' hostel by ABVP activists brought shame to our democracy.

"But, such attacks will not deter us from continuing our fight against fascist forces," a JU student said.

Later in the evening, CPI(M) and other Left parties also took out a rally from Jadavpur 8B Bus stand to Sulekha More.

The students of Jadavpur University, activists of the SFI and members of other Left outfits took out a rally from 8B Bus Stand to Sulekha More in the evening.

A march was taken out by the BJP from Bagha Jatin More to Jadavpur Police Station over the JNU issue and also ransacking of its party office in the area on Sunday night.

The two sides came face to face at Sulekha More, leading to a brawl.

BJP activists allegedly pelted stones at the Left activists, prompting them to burn the flags of the BJP and ABVP.

Police put up barricades and blocked both the rallies, but abuses were allegedly hurled and slogans and counter-slogans raised.

SFI supporters claimed that BJP workers used expletives against women activists.

After repeated attempts to calm the situation, police baton-charged supporters of the Left and the BJP as the two sides engaged in a face off, in order to disperse the protesters.

Police personnel were seen brutally beating up the protesters, including students and women.

Later on, South Suburban Division Deputy Commissioner of Police Sudip Sarkar said the intention of the baton charge was not to beat up the students.

"Our intention was not to beat up the students. It was due to a confusion that some students were hurt. We wanted to disperse the BJP and ABVP supporters. If any student is hurt, we are ready to apologise," Sarkar told reporters.

Students of the Presidency University took out a rally on College Street expressing solidarity with the JNU students.

"We condemn such violence inside the JNU campus, which is a cradle of free and liberal thinking. The ABVP and BJP want to curb free thought and want to impose their fascist ideology on us. But we will continue our fight till the last breath," a Presidency University student said.

The Congress students' wing, Chhatra Parishad , burnt effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on College Street.

The Trinamool Congress student's wing -- Trinamool Chatra Parishad -- also took out rallies in various parts of the state.

College and university students took out rallies across the state condemning the attack on JNU campus.

Earlier in the day, West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, termed the attack on students and teachers at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University as a "fascist surgical strike" by the BJP.

The saffron camp was quick to return fire and asked Banerjee to stop shedding "crocodile tears".

On Sunday, a mob of masked young people stormed the JNU campus in south Delhi and systematically targeted students in three hostels, unleashing mayhem with sticks, stones and iron rods, hitting inmates and breaking windows, furniture and personal belongings. They also attacked a women's hostel.

The attack triggered protests across the country on Monday and the clamour grew for the resignation of the vice chancellor, who is being blamed for inaction during the violence that left 34 people injured.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Toshiba Carrier UK Ltd (TCUK) congratulates the participants and winners of this years SkillFRIDGE competition, which culminated in a hard-fought finals event at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC). SkillFRIDGE promotes exceptional industry standards through competitions for Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Heat Pump (RACHP) students. TCUK is a joint venture between Toshiba Carrier Corporation and Carrier in the United Kingdom, and is part of Carrier, a leading global provider of innovative heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC), refrigeration, fire, security and building automation technologies.

As the headline sponsor, TCUK has been a strong supporter of SkillFRIDGE over the last several years as part of its mission to raise the bar on skill levels across the air conditioning industry.

On behalf of TCUK and the Toshiba, Carrier and CIAT brands, I am delighted to add my congratulations to all those who took part in this years event, said David Dunn, TCUKs managing director for new equipment sales. As the industrys national competition, it takes a high level of skill, determination and composure to make it to the finals. Warmest congratulations to Sidney Copus on becoming the UKs SkillFRIDGE champion 2019, and to Ben Wilson and Joshua Collins on winning the Silver and Bronze medals respectively. We wish you success in your future careers.

As well as being headline sponsor of the competition, TCUK provided a range of equipment for this years SkillFRIDGE events, including components for piping test rigs, and graphical recreations of Toshiba outdoor units. The company also supplied controls rigs equipped with various interfaces, including its remote controllers and award-winning TouchScreen controller.

As a global leader in high efficiency, high performance air conditioning, we believe it is vital to support and encourage the industry to improve the level of knowledge and technical skills, added Dunn. It is in everyones interest to raise the bar, from the quality of design and installation to commissioning and ongoing servicing and maintenance throughout the equipment life-cycle. SkillFRIDGE is a superb initiative.
Will come back to haunt you: Jaishankar in veiled reference to Pakistan

India-Central Asia dialogue: Need to provide immediate humanitarian assistance to Afghan, says Jaishankar

We did not see any 'tukde-tukde' gang in JNU: S Jaishankar

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, Jan 06: "I can certainly tell you that when I studied in JNU, we did not see any 'tukde tukde' gang there," External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Monday when asked about the situation in the premier university.

After the violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University campus on Sunday, Jaishankar, a JNU alumnus, had swiftly condemned the incident, saying it is completely against the tradition and culture of the university.

"Tukde-Tukde" is a term often used by the right-wing parties to attack the opposition, particularly Left and Left-backed outfits as well as those who support them.

"What I had to say on JNU, I said it yesterday. It was very clear," said the External Affairs Minister when asked during a book release event about attacks on JNU students on Sunday.

A mob of masked people had stormed the JNU campus and systematically targeted students in three hostels, unleashing mayhem with sticks, stones and iron rods, hitting inmates and breaking windows, furniture and personal belongings.

They also attacked a women's hostel. "Have seen pictures of what is happening in #JNU. Condemn the violence unequivocally. This is completely against the tradition and culture of the university," Jaishankar had tweeted after the incident.
Donald Trump Jr. posted a photo on Instagram on Monday of him holding an AR-15-style rifle featuring an image of the kind of cross used during the Crusades, a series of medieval religious wars between Muslims and Christians. The magazine of the rifle is adorned with an illustration of former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton behind bars.

"Nice day at the range," Trump Jr. wrote in his post, which also refers to the designer and seller of the gun.

It is unclear whether Trump Jr. owns the rifle.

The cross is Christianity's most prominent symbol, appearing in Christian artwork and Western culture to commemorate the biblical account of Jesus' crucifixion. The image of four crosses surrounding a larger one, shown in Trump Jr.'s post, is known as the Jerusalem cross and was used during the Crusades.

"At its best, the cross is a symbol of self-sacrifice and divine love. It has many different resonances for people," said Robin Jensen, a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame who studies Christian art. "This is not what you put on a gun unless you're saying Christians have a right to kill people who aren't one of us."

Andy Surabian, a spokesman for Trump Jr., said symbols "depicting various historical warriors" are common in gun culture. The symbols are common on gear and accessories, but adding them to guns is more niche and expensive. Base AR-15-style rifles can be bought for as little as $500, but the "Crusader" rifle retails for $2,125.

Surabian said the appearance of the Jerusalem cross was not a political statement.

"Don's instagram post was strictly about him using a famous meme to mock Hillary Clinton, as he and many others have done on numerous occasions and will surely do again in the future, so long as it continues triggering humorless liberals," Surabian said in a text message.

Trump Jr.'s post comes just days after the targeted U.S. killing of Qasem Soleimani, one of Iran's top military figures. On Friday, President Donald Trump spoke in front of a group of evangelicals in Florida, saying, "I really do believe we have God on our side," the kind of reference used by Christian nationalists, who believe that God founded the United States to be a religious nation.

The magazine well of the rifle Trump Jr. holds is designed to look like a Crusader helmet and is made by Rare Breed Firearms as part of its Crusader label.

The Jerusalem cross grew out of the Crusades beginning in the early 11th century, according to Fredrick Bunce's 2014 book, "Crosses, Christian and Otherwise: Their Form and Meaning." The four smaller crosses are said to represent the four gospels and the four corners of the world. Together, the five crosses are interpreted to represent the five wounds suffered by Christ at his crucifixion. That kind of cross is derived from the original Greek cross and is frequently employed in heraldry, according to Bunce.

In the right context, the Jerusalem cross is used as a symbol for Christian pilgrimage to the city, according to Dan Jones, a British-based historian who wrote a book published last year on the Crusades. But that particular cross has been co-opted for all kinds of movements since. He noted how white supremacists during the Charlottesville protests and the New Zealand mass shooter have been inspired by images from the Crusades.

"At a time when tensions in the Middle East are running high, it's an inflammatory time to run around with a gun with a crusader image on it," Jones said.

A spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center said that Crusader imagery is frequently used by far-right extremists to invoke the notion that America and its citizens should retake land through violence and expel Muslim "invaders," particularly in the United States and Middle East.

Trump Jr. is an avid hunter. Last year, he shot endangered sheep in Mongolia before he had approval from the government there.

Rare Breed Firearms appeared to provide the cross design on the rifle Trump Jr. posted, and Spike's Tactical appeared to distribute it. Their companies do not indicate whether their owners have religious motivations, and no one from the companies returned requests for comment from The Washington Post on Monday.

Spike's came under fire from some Muslim leaders in 2015 after it made a rifle with a Bible verse designed to repel Muslim terrorists. This time, Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the rifle Trump Jr. is shown holding doesn't appear to directly include an anti-Muslim message.

"A cross doesn't offend me. It's the context. It's on a weapon," Hooper said. "It's a weapon that is similar to ones used in mass killings. The whole package sends the wrong message."

In the Instagram photo, Trump Jr. poses with the rifle with the safety off and the selector switch on fire. Firearm safety norms discourage taking the safety off unless a weapon is pointed down range at a target and ready to be fired, which he is not doing in the photo. The bolt is pulled to the rear in one photo, and it is unclear whether there is any ammunition in the magazine, though it is probably empty. Trump Jr.'s finger is off the trigger.

A recent Axios-SurveyMonkey poll asked Republicans and Republican-leaning independents which Republican they would consider voting for in a theoretical 2024 general election, and 29% said Trump Jr. That put him second, behind Vice President Mike Pence at 40%, and about even with former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley at 26%, but above other hypothetical GOP candidates.

A 2017 Quinnipiac poll found 51% of registered voters overall had an unfavorable opinion of Trump Jr., 22% were favorable, and 25% had no opinion. Among Republican voters, a 54% majority had a favorable opinion of the president's son, 14% were unfavorable, and 31% had no opinion.

- - -

The Washington Post's Alex Horton and Emily Guskin contributed to this report.
[January 06, 2020] Apple Growth Partners Expands Cleveland Tax Team

Apple (News - Alert) Growth Partners (AGP), award-winning accounting and business advisory firm, proudly announces the addition of A'Shira Nelson, CPA, to the Cleveland office as a tax manager. Nelson comes to AGP with a robust background in accounting, with nearly a decade of experience in audit, tax, and public accounting roles. Nelson brings to the Cleveland office expertise in tax planning and preparation, for S-corporations and partnerships with revenue up to $50 million, as well as experience with high-net-worth individuals. Nelson's tax background includes health care, real estate, professional services, and manufacturing. She is well-versed in tax compliance and planning for federal, state, local, and foreign income tax returns. An engaging public speaker, Nelson was requested to speak at The Ohio Society of CPAs Accounting Career Day in November 2019, presenting "360 Degrees of Possibility." She holds a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Akron and served as the treasurer of both the Delta Sigma Theta sorority and the National Association of Black Accountants. Nelson is a volunteer for the College Now mentoring program and Growing Up Great. Continuing to attract and grow talent in the Cleveland office remains a priority for chairman Chck Mullen, and Nelson's joining was a significant win.



"A'Shira's passion for accounting, combined with her dynamic personality, was exactly what we were looking for when adding to our tax team," comments Mullen. "I am amazed by her social media presence, educating her audience on financial wellbeing. It takes a lot of energy and creativity to build a personal brand as she has. I'm a fan." Nelson is the author and manager of "Savvy Girl Money," a social media community, with 10,000 Instagram followers and 1,500 YouTube (News - Alert) subscribers, focused on helping millennial women reach their financial goals. Her videos and posts feature content on budgeting, open enrollment, understanding liabilities and assets, planning for retirement, debt management, saving tips, and personal examples of how she paid off student loans. Nelson's popular account combines her knowledge as a CPA with her passion for educating women on growing their financial empires and managing wealth.

"A'Shira is a rising star, and our firm is thrilled to have her join our Cleveland team," states Mullen. "I couldn't be happier that A'Shira will be building her career here at Apple Growth Partners." About Apple Growth Partners Apple Growth Partners is an award-winning accounting and business advisory firm with more than 75 years of helping grow local businesses. With offices in Cleveland, Akron, Canton, and Kent, AGP offers a full range of services, including audit and assurance, tax planning and compliance, business valuation, litigation consulting, employee stock ownership plans, and transaction advisory services. To learn more, visit www.applegrowth.com. Please contact Brittany White at 330.315.7852 or [email protected] for additional information. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005918/en/

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To the Editor:

Re President Repeats Threat to Target Cultural Sites (news article, Jan. 6):

President Trump has threatened retaliation against Iran by striking Iranian sites including some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture. If carried out, this threat would constitute a war crime under international instruments such as the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which the United States has joined. The American military has a proud history of avoiding intentional damage to and destruction of cultural sites, which began with President Abraham Lincolns law of war manual, known as the Lieber Code.

Cultural heritage represents the record of our shared human achievement, the surviving remains from the past and the places that are sacred to the present. Protected cultural sites include religious and historic structures, cemeteries, libraries, archives, museums and archaeological sites.

The Department of Defense Law of War Manual specifically prohibits acts of hostility  directed against cultural property in the absence of military necessity. Now, the president is threatening to target cultural sites in Iran whose rich cultural heritage spans from the earliest evidence of human domestication of plants and animals to ancient majestic Achaemenid cities and richly tiled Islamic shrines and mosques. Iran is home to 24 World Heritage Sites and thousands of other places that are part of our global shared heritage.

The world community, including the United States, has rightly condemned the intentional destruction of cultural heritage for decades. Hitlers Germany, Pol Pots Khmer Rouge, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Islamic State and the Assad regime in Syria intentionally destroyed cultural heritage in the absence of any military necessity. If Mr. Trump carries out this threat, the United States will join the ranks of these destroyers of the worlds cultural legacy.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : A four-member Trinamool Congress (TMC) delegation is scheduled to visit the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on Monday, to express solidarity with the students after they were attacked by masked individuals the previous night.

The delegation is led by TMC leader Dinesh Trivedi.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, also the party chief, had condemned the "brutality" unleashed against students and teachers at the University.

"We strongly condemn brutality unleashed against students/teachers in JNU. No words enough to describe such heinous acts. A shame on our democracy," Banerjee had tweeted.

On Sunday night, several masked individuals, both male and female, thrashed students, including girls, and teachers inside the JNU campus with wooden and metal rods, injuring many.

While the number of the injured in the various clashes which occurred through the day was not yet known, at least 20 students were admitted to the AIIMS with severe injuries, including Jawaharal Nehru University Students Union President Aishe Ghosh - who was reportedly hit over the eye with an iron rod.
Healthcare Advocate Summit 2020 There is nothing like this offered by the usual conference event companies. Past News Releases RSS

Paige Consulting, LLC, a healthcare consulting and solutions provider, is hosting the 2020 Healthcare Advocate Summit. The two-day inaugural summit is taking place in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Resort on April 6-7, 2020. The 2020 Healthcare Advocate Summit aims to be the premier event for anyone involved in patient access, navigation, and reimbursement. The event anticipates drawing over 300 advocates and healthcare leaders attending, along with over 100 leading industry experts. The goal is to educate healthcare advocates on the available pathways to resources and solutions to barriers that can be leveraged to dramatically improve patient care.

Many healthcare advocates working on behalf of the patient, to include; Medication Assistance Coordinator, Financial Coordinator, Biologics Coordinator, Pre-Authorization Coordinator, Clinical Coordinator, Billing Specialist, Revenue Cycle, Social Worker, and Nurse Navigators are not aware of all the available resources and are not trained on how to effectively navigate the complex healthcare landscape. This lack of knowledge can negate treatment or delay treatment, and can severely impact patient care.

The 2020 Healthcare Advocate Summit provides networking opportunities, engaging exhibits, and more than 20 educational panel discussion and presentations across topics to include; how best to ensure correct authorization, procurement, and reimbursement, how to leverage manufacturer resources, work with the specialty pharmacy, supplement technology solutions, how to navigate share of care for VA patients, the impasse of pharmacy benefits vs. medical benefits, and patient assistance best practices for optimized enrollment and renewal.

ABOUT THE HOST

Melissa Paige, Founder and CEO of Paige Consulting, LLC has extensive experience with access programs across the spectrum to include Oncology, Hematology, Rheumatology, Pulmonology and Neurology. The Healthcare Advocate Summit is for advocates by advocates. Melissa said, There is nothing like this offered by the usual conference event companies. The Healthcare Advocate Summit was created to fulfill an unmet need within the industry. After attending multiple conferences over the years, the host identified something missing, a focus on educating the people actually doing the work and a place for those healthcare advocates to join together and amplify their voice and passion for the patient.

Melissa Paige, Founder and CEO

C: 202-556-1233

E: melissa@advocatesummit.com

SOURCE Paige Consulting, LLC

Related Links

https://www.healthcareadvocatesummit.com/
POINT OF FORK, Va. - No one doubts that layers of history lie at this spot southeast of Charlottesville where the Rivanna River flows into the James. Abandoned canal locks loom like castle walls; Revolution-era buildings stand in ruins nearby.

But one group of Virginians claims the land has even deeper significance. The Monacan Indians, chased out some 300 years ago, believe the V where the two rivers meet was the site of their ancient capital, Rassawek.

Now two local counties want to build a water pumping station on top of it to supply a fast-growing commercial center several miles away. Until recently, the Monacans had felt powerless to protect their heritage, just as they watched electrical lines, a gas line and a railroad girdle the site in years past.

In 2018, the tribe won a long battle for federal recognition. It's using that status to fight the water station, in the first major test of Native American clout in Virginia since six state tribes earned federal protection that year.

"The eyes of everybody were on the project once we were federally recognized," said Kenneth Branham, 66, chief of the Monacan Nation.

The challenge has mired the project in permit delays. The James River Water Authority, chartered by the counties of Fluvanna and Louisa, says the holdup is harming taxpayers. Across the river, a brand new treatment plant sits idle, with no water coming in. Commercial development at Zion Crossroads - a cluster of retailers, fast-food restaurants and gas stations along Interstate 64 - grows thirstier as local well water struggles to meet demand.

"Completing this project and completing it expeditiously is vitally important to both counties," water authority lawyer Justin Curtis said. "It's both a long-term, 50-year supply and it'll also meet some short-term needs."

It all hinges on the question of what lies beneath centuries of river silt.

In 1607, Capt. John Smith ventured up the James River past the falls of modern-day Richmond and encountered the Monacans. While the Powhatan Indians ruled Virginia's Tidewater region, the Monacans held sway from the fall line west to the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Smith published a map in 1612 that located five Monacan villages along the James and Rivanna rivers, with their capital - Rassawek - at the point where the waters converged. It was a major trading center that could have housed hundreds of people.

The Monacans were more reclusive than the Powhatan tribe, who alternately married (Pocahontas) and massacred settlers at Jamestown. Monacans spoke a different language and were distracted by conflict with tribes to the north. Over time, the English pushed them off their land and caused a diaspora that saw Monacans dispersed to North Carolina, Tennessee and possibly as far as Canada.

Today the tribe numbers more than 2,100, with about 500 clustered in Amherst County, about 70 miles from their old capital on the James River.

Over time, the confluence of the Rivanna and the James accumulated American history. A teenage Thomas Jefferson conducted one of his first public acts here, rallying surrounding landowners to clear channels in the Rivanna.

The British army captured an American arsenal on the Point of Fork during the Revolution. Later, the adjacent hamlet of Columbia became a hub for bateau traffic - the long, flat-bottomed boats that once carried cargo up and down canals to Richmond.

Artifacts of those eras have largely washed away in periodic floods. Historic Columbia is mainly a country store and several ramshackle ruins along Route 6.

In 1980, a college student driving to Richmond noticed construction over on the point - a gas line was being dug. Rich deposits of Native artifacts speckled the mounds of dirt. The state briefly called a halt to the work and archaeologists surveyed what had been exposed.

Then the work continued and the artifacts were bulldozed.

Since then, historians have speculated that the artifacts confirm Smith's map and pinpoint the long-lost capital, Rassawek. That would be a significant find. The capital of the Powhatan people, Werowocomoco, was discovered on the York River in Gloucester County in 1977. After extensive study, the National Park Service acquired that site in 2016.

In a state that prides itself on preserving history, Native American heritage has long been overlooked. Many tribes were nearly erased in the early part of the 20th century when officials following the eugenics movement insisted on classifying every Virginian as either "white" or "colored."

That legacy of neglect makes it even more crucial to preserve what's left, said Julie Langan, director of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

"Documenting and preserving Native American sites is a priority for our department because it was an important part of Virginia history and it is not as well understood or documented," she said.

Rassawek, Langan said, "is a highly significant site."

The tribe had known about the water project for several years but had no official role as the counties bought the land, built a treatment plant and began securing permits for the pumping station.

Water authority officials said they kept the tribe informed, but the Monacans said they had no official seat at the table until President Donald Trump signed their federal recognition in January 2018.

After that, "the federal government had to consult the tribe" in reviewing permits, said Marion Werkheiser, a lawyer with Cultural Heritage Partners who has taken up the tribe's case. "Their concerns can't simply be dismissed anymore."

Believing they were too late to change the outcome, the tribe initially asked Werkheiser to seek compensation to help care for artifacts and the reburial of any ancestral remains.

But once the tribe became a full participant, it learned something: There were other possible sites for the pumping station. The counties just thought this was the cheapest.

At that point, the strategy changed. Branham said the tribe dropped its interest in compensation and set out to protect the site.

By the summer of 2019, the Monacans were in what Werkheiser called "government-to-government" consultation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, pressing their concerns as a sovereign entity. They raised questions about the permitting process, and especially the archaeological survey work that the water authority had commissioned to certify that construction wouldn't disturb any major historic site.

The water authority contends that any spot along the James River is going to turn up historic artifacts.

"Yes, it's a very significant historical site," said Curtis, the authority's lawyer. "There are a lot of areas up and down the James River that have been inhabited for thousands of years, a lot of historic sites."

As for whether this is Rassawek: "It's fair to say it's been inconclusive," Curtis said. "Some historians have put it at [nearby] Elk Island, or farther up on Point of Fork."

But the Monacans believe the evidence here is strong. In July, they persuaded Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, to visit Point of Fork and hear their concerns. State and national preservation groups had begun to join in opposing the project.

Two months later, Langan, of the state Department of Historic Resources, dropped a bombshell: She said the project's archaeologist, Carol Tyrer, had improper academic credentials. There would be no permit until a more suitable archaeologist had conducted a review.

The decision played like a major scandal in local newspapers. Then it got worse. A former employee of Tyrer's came forward to accuse her of improper practices at the site, including using sloppy methods and destroying artifacts.

Tyrer has filed a lawsuit challenging the state's ruling. Her office referred a reporter to her lawyer for comment; the lawyer did not respond to an email or phone call.

In her suit against the state, Tyrer said her graduate degree in global affairs with a concentration in world history and culture qualifies as a "related field" in meeting state guidelines for archaeological work. She said the Department of Historic Resources' action is "an arbitrary and capricious abuse of power, exceeds the scope of the power granted to DHR . . . and is not in accordance with law."

Meanwhile, the project is on hold. The Corps of Engineers rescinded an earlier permit and demanded a more thorough review. A spokesman for Northam said the governor stands by Langan's call for a new archaeologist.

"He wants to ensure a level playing field and fair process for those who seek to preserve their cultural heritage," spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky said via text message.

The water authority has hired another consultant to work with Tyrer and said it would investigate the claims of improper practices. It is analyzing other possible sites and plans to resubmit its applications in the coming weeks, Curtis said.

Several adjacent landowners side with the tribe. "Nobody is against water; there just has to be another spot," said George Bialkowski, 52, who with his wife owns 72 acres near the point.

For now, the site remains undisturbed, apart from fields harvested for cattle feed. White sycamore, oak and maple trees march along the banks toward the point where the brown rivers slowly converge from either side. Chief Branham picks his way through undergrowth, notices deer tracks in the mud.

"Can you imagine four or five hundred years ago, canoes running up and down the river over here?" he says. "People, children - living normal family life. It was a town."

Twenty years ago, Branham was part of a group of Monacans who received ancestral remains that had been on display in a Richmond museum. They wrapped them in red cloth and reburied them.

"If you've never had the experience of opening up a box - " he said, his voice trailing off. "Taking those skeletons and putting them in cloth, looking at them and knowing it was a kid - I never want to go through that again."

Better to let them lie where they are, he said. "This is our history. It's part of who we are."
A New Jersey man has filed suit against CVS Pharmacy, claiming a brand of the stores cold medicine sent him into a violent seizure that required hospitalization and caused permanent injuries.

Brian Hurst, 60, of Wanaque, claims in court papers a pharmacist at a CVS in New York recommended on Dec. 13, 2017, that he take the stores brand of cold medicine for sinus and congestion relief.

Hurst examined the box and, after determining it would not cause problematic side effects, bought the medicine and went home to take it, according to the suit, filed last month in Passaic County Superior Court.

Early the next morning, Hursts wife, Sharon, was startled out of her sleep by Brian suffering from violent convulsions, the suit claims.

The lawsuit claims Hurst became unresponsive, appeared to be bleeding from his mouth."

Sharon Hurst called to her daughters for help and they "were in complete shock and terror to find that their father appeared to be dying, the lawsuit states.

Sharon Hurst called 911 and arriving paramedics determined he was suffering a seizure, the suit states.

Hurst was taken by ambulance to a local hospital where he was treated. Medical staff later determined the cold caplets he had taken caused his reaction, according to the suit.

The CVS drug has caused Brian severe and permanent damage (because it) was designed in a defective manner, the lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit claims the Rhode Island-based CVS violated New Jerseys product liability law by allegedly selling defective medicine, which is offered over-the-counter under the name Maximum Strength Sinus Relief Severe Congestion Acetaminophen Caplets.

The lawsuit also names the manufacturer, New York-based LNK International Inc., which is one of the nations largest makers of generic medications.

The suit accuses CVS, LNK International and others of negligence, reckless conduct and names Hursts wife and daughters as additional plaintiffs, claiming they have been deprived of the benefits of a family relationship with Hurst due to his alleged permanent injuries.

CVS and Link International did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.

Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyAttrino. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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The Delhi Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has registered an FIR against former associates Sunil Godhwani and his brother Sanjay Godhwani and 14 others based on complaints filed by Malvinder Singh's Malav Holdings Private Ltd for alleged large-scale misappropriation of funds in the aviation business.

Malvinder Singh's Malav Holdings Pvt Limited had, in November 2018, filed a complaint with the Delhi Police, accusing the Godhwanis and others of allegedly hatching a conspiracy and causing wrongful loss of around Rs 18.8 crore. The complaint alleged the accused had breached the trust reposed in them and made fraudulent payments using fake invoices for fictitious expenses.

As per the complaint, Malvinder Singh's Malav Holdings owns 50 per cent stake in NBFC RHC Holding Private Ltd, which in turn holds 30 per cent shares in Ligare Aviation Ltd (LAL). RHC also owns 67.27 per cent in RHC Finance Pvt Ltd, which owns 70 per cent LAL. The complaint says Godhwani brothers, in connivance with others, caused a wrongful loss to LAL, which directly affects Malav Holdings.

Explaining the modus operandi, the complaint alleges the Godwanis first acquired subsidiaries of Ligare Group by misusing their powers, changed their corporate names and then sanctioned payments to them, which were later routed to their accounts. Ligare Aviation was run by Sanjay Godhwani independently. Sanjay Godhwani was appointed CEO of LAL on May 1, 2006, and made a whole-time director on August 6, 2006. On January 1, 2008, he was appointed the company's MD.

The complaint says that it was revealed through the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) website that Sanjay was also the key shareholder of SAPL, wherein he held 99.99 per cent of shares. SAPL or Spectrum Aero Pvt Ltd (formerly known as Ligare Flysims Pvt Spectrum Aero Pvt Lt), was formally a 100 per cent subsidiary of another company called Ligare Voyages Ltd (LVL).

An internal investigation revealed Rs 42.2 lakh was paid to SAPL by LAL on December 2, 2015, using false invoices, says the complaint. Similarly, the said accused made payment worth Rs 3.8 crore from LAL to a company called Phoenix International Ltd in the name of "slot coordination and kit procurement" using false receipts. In another instance, the complaint alleges that LAL during Godhwani's tenure made payments worth Rs 4.5 crore to five entities -- Shaurya Aeronautics Pvt Ltd, Silverline Aviation Pvt Ltd, Aviation India, Ultra Shine Aviation India Pvt Ltd and Pinnacle Air Pvt Ltd -- in 2015-16. All were allegedly made using fabricated invoices. The company also made payment worth $130,0000 twice to Empire Aviation Group and Dubai-based Metal and Steel Solutions FZC in 2014 -- all using false invoices, alleges the complainant.

Ligare Aviation was the charter airline business of the Singh brothers, which was started in 2006. It ran air services offering helicopter jets, turbo-props and later forayed into air ambulance services, diversifying further into crew training and aircraft maintenance. Ligare Aviation's board comprised Singh brothers, their family and associates, which included Sanjay Godhwani (brother of Sunil Godhwani). Sanjay resigned from company's board in November 2015 citing internal differences.

The real blame-game started in 2018 when the Singhs blamed Godhwani brothers for taking wrong business calls, causing them to land in a difficult financial position. Out of several of businesses losing money, the biggest drain on Religare were its subsidiaries, Religare Capital Markets and Ligare Aviation. As per the Singh brothers, besides Religare, all investment companies and the funds in their holding firms, Oscar and RHC Holding, were managed and operated by Sunil Godhwani independently.

Malvinder Singh (46), his brother Shivinder Singh (44), Sunil Godhwani (58), two others, Kavi Arora and Anil Saxena, were arrested by EOW for allegedly diverting the money and investing in other companies in November. A Delhi court in December 2019 extended the judicial custody of Malvinder and Sunil Godhwani till January 6.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : A contempt plea was moved in the Supreme Court on Monday, in connection with the violence in the JNU campus on Sunday, against the Delhi Police for wilfully disobeying the top court's direction in a lynching case pertaining to taking preventive and remedial measures to deal with mob violence.

Activist Tehseen Poonawala, in the plea, sought initiation of contempt proceedings against Delhi Police for wilfully disobeying the specific directions of the top court issued an order on July 17, 2018, in connection with Tehseen S Poonawala Vs Union of India & others.

The plea contended the apex court had laid down preventive and remedial guidelines for the government and police authorities to curb and handle mob violence, and then the court came to a conclusion that no individual in his/her own capacity or as a part of a group, which within no time assumes the character of a mob, can take the law into hands and deal with others as guilty.

"The alleged contemnor/respondent (Delhi Police and its officials) herein, the Government of India, has failed to take action against the masked miscreant mob who entered the JNU Campus on January 5, 2020, and no FIR has been registered yet against the offenders," said the plea.

The plea also contended that Delhi Police deployed on the campus neither stopped nor deterred the large number of masked miscreants, who entered JNU armed with sticks, hammers and other weapons. "An injured student who is admitted in the Trauma Centre of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences claimed to have been kicked by police personnel in the head several times. The incident that transpired in JNU reflects the Central government's non-compliance with the above cited judgement of the Supreme Court of India," added the plea.

The plea contended that the horrendous acts of mobocracy cannot be permitted to inundate the law of the land. "Earnest action and concrete steps have to be taken to protect the citizens from the recurrent pattern of violence which cannot be allowed to become the new normal," it said.
The British Royal Navy will escort UK-flagged vessels going through the worlds most vital oil choke point, the Strait of Hormuz, amid a sudden spike in tensions in the Middle East after the U.S. carried out an air strike in Baghdad that killed a high-ranking Iranian general.

The government will take all necessary steps to protect our ships and citizens at this time, Defence Minister Ben Wallace told media, as quoted by Reuters. To this end, the HMS Montrose and the HMS Defender will be deployed in the region again, after last year they escorted UK-flagged ships through the Strait of Hormuz following the seizing of an Iranian oil tanker by Gibraltar with the help of the UK that angered Tehran.

In retaliation, Iran captured a UK-flagged vessel in the Strait of Hormuz. The deployment of the HMS Montrose and the HMS Defender followed, with the UK and the United States urging other countries to join a coalition for the protection of vessels sailing through the vital oil chokepoint.

Since then, UK-Iran tensions have been defused, after London released the Iranian tanker and Tehran reciprocated the gesture. Yet now, with Iran threatening to retaliate for the U.S. assassination of the leader of the Quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qassem Soleimani and with Iraqs parliament voting in favor of the withdrawal of all foreign troops from its territory, tensions are running high again.

According to Reuters, Wallace called his U.S. counterpart, Mark Esper, and advised restraint.

Under international law, the United States is entitled to defend itself against those posing an imminent threat to their citizens, Wallace said in what could be construed as defence of the targeted air strikes that killed Soleimani and prompted a hostile verbal response from Tehran and anti-American demonstrations in Iraq.

Oil prices have been trending higher as a result of the latest developments, with Brent crude breaking the $70 ceiling for the first time in several months and West Texas Intermediate moving closer to $65 a barrel.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Celeste Barber's bushfire appeal has now raised more than $37million, and there are no plans to stop there.

The 37-year-old took to Instagram Stories on Monday night to announce that she will keep the appeal open and asked her fans for more donations, raising the goal to $40million.

The comedian also marvelled at just how much money her appeal - which was shared by big name stars such as Lizzo and Natalie Portman - has raised.

'I'm gonna keep asking!' Celeste Barber (pictured) took to Instagram Stories on Monday to announce she's raised her fundraiser goal to $40million, after her bushfire appeal reached $37million in just four days

Looking tired but elated, with tears in her eyes throughout the video, Celeste told her fans: 'I think it's just hit me. It's so much money. I earned $36million dollars!

'You have all donated. It's incredible and I've looked through a lot of the donations. It's $10, $10, $20, $35' she trailed off, becoming emotional.

Celeste went on: 'I was just lying in bed with my kids and husband It's so much money. They need so much.'

Looking tired but elated, with tears in her eyes throughout the video, Celeste told her fans: 'I think it's just hit me. It's so much money. I earned $36million!'

Gratitude: 'You have all donated. It's incredible and I've looked through a lot of the donations. It's $10, $10, $20, $35' she trailed off, becoming emotional

Celeste went on: 'I was just lying in bed with my kids and husband It's so much money. They need so much. I don't want to keep asking you guys, but I'm gonna keep asking. Thanks!'

'I don't want to keep asking you guys, but I'm gonna keep asking. Thanks. Aww, thanks, f**k!' she concluded.

Celeste has received more than 950,000 donations in just four days, after first sharing the Facebook campaign with her 1.8 million followers on Friday.

As of Monday night, Celeste has actually exceeded the $36million she thanked fans for, and has now raised close to $38million - with donations going up by the minute.

Amazing: Celeste has received more than 945,000 donations in just four days, after first sharing the Facebook campaign with her 1.8 million followers on Friday. She has currently raised close to $38million with the donations going up by the minute

The fires have so far claimed at least 24 lives, left dozens injured - including hero firefighters and volunteers - as well as destroying more than 1,000 homes and leaving about 500million animals dead.

Celeste - who is known for her parodies of celebrities' Instagram posts - also spent the weekend buying much-needed supplies for firefighters on the frontline.

On Sunday, Celeste's husband, Api Robin, shared a video of his wife 'getting some essentials ready... for those heroic folks fighting the blazes'.

Going the extra mile! Celeste - who is known for her parodies of celebrities' Instagram posts - also spent the weekend buying much-needed supplies for firefighters on the frontline

Stocking up: On Sunday, Celeste's husband, Api Robin, shared a video to Instagram of his wife 'getting some essentials ready... for those heroic folks fighting the blazes'

The footage showed Celeste struggling with six shopping trolleys filled with water, medical supplies and toiletries at a Coles supermarket.

As her fundraiser grows, the likes of Pia Miller, Laura Byrne and Angie Kent have called for Celeste to become Australia's 'next PM'.

Pia shared a post to Instagram on Sunday, which read: 'Celeste Barber for PM'.

Laura also used the hashtag '#CelesteForPM', before adding: 'What a woman.'

Vocal: As her fundraiser grows by the minute, the likes of Pia Miller (pictured), Laura Byrne and Angie Kent have called for Celeste to become Australia's 'next PM'

Supportive: Laura Byrne used the hashtag '#CelesteForPM', before adding: 'What a woman'

'Strong humans leading the way': Angie Kent, a former Bachelorette, paid tribute to Celeste for inspiring so many people from around the world to donate

Angie, a former Bachelorette, paid tribute to Celeste for inspiring so many people from around the world to donate.

Angie wrote: 'This is what happens when we work together and have strong humans leading the way. Thank you, Celeste, and your army of amazing people who follow you and have donated.'

Many others have compared her generosity to the questionable leadership shown by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who went on a poorly-timed holiday to Hawaii as the bushfires intensified last month.

Celeste announced on Facebook on Friday that she had set up the fundraiser: 'I'm raising money for The Trustee for NSW Rural Fire Service & Brigades Donations Fund and your contribution will make an impact, whether you donate a lot or a little,' she wrote

Celeste announced on Facebook on Friday that she had set up the fundraiser.

'I'm raising money for The Trustee for NSW Rural Fire Service & Brigades Donations Fund and your contribution will make an impact, whether you donate a lot or a little. Anything helps,' she wrote.

Dozens of celebrities and public figures have praised Celeste, including the likes of Jonathan Van Ness from Netflix series Queer Eye.

Jonathan urged his 4.8 million Instagram followers to donate to the cause on Saturday.
Xerox amped up its attempt to acquire HP when the printing and imaging giant said Monday that it has lined up $24 billion in financing agreements to help fund its unsolicited buyout efforts. In a letter sent to HP chief executive Enrique Lores and chairman Chip Bergh, Xerox said it has secured support from Bank of America, Citigroup and Mizuho Financial Group for loans of $24 billion to support its HP acquisition offer. Xeroxs proposal values HP at about $33 billion. The letter, which was signed by Xerox chief executive John Visentin, was also posted on Xeroxs corporate website.
ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan, Jan. 6

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov has approved the Turkmen side's composition of Hungary-Turkmenistan intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation, Trend reports with reference to the president's decree.

On January 20-21, the meeting of the Turkmenistan-Hungary intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation will be held in Budapest. Turkmen Minister of Finance and Economy Batyr Bazarov will participate in the meeting.

More than ten representatives of the Turkmen Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs will attend the event.

As was reported earlier, businessmen involved in agriculture, textile industry, agriculture, bread baking and poultry keeping will discuss the spheres of cooperation with Hungarian partners.

Hungary is interested in increasing import of chemical products, oil and gas processing products from Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan is learning from Hungarian experience in improvement of irrigation systems and water resources management.

Turkmenistan and Hungary signed an intergovernmental convention on the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of tax evasion in respect of taxes on income and capital in June 2016.

The diplomatic relations between the countries were established in 1992.
The factional state Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Edo State, Joseph Osagiede, has accused the National ...





The factional state Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Edo State, Joseph Osagiede, has accused the National Chairman of the party, Adams Oshiomhole of undermining the power of the Oba of Benin.





Osagiede said APC in the state do not have faction, saying that those who left the party went to form Edo Peoples Movement, EPM, and till date which remains an unregistered political association or social association that has no bearing with in the party.





According to him, I believe that the national chairman will also learn some lessons from what is going because His royal majesty, the Oba of Benin, Oba Ewuare II to have led Benin Traditional Council to meet with the president on this matter.





Once the Oba has expressed a wish about anything it becomes a command to we that are Edo people. So, the Obas wish is to command that there should be peace in this political imbroglio and for Adams Oshiomhole to still be harbouring these descendants who led the captain and they are forming EPM and he is supporting them, he is working against the wish of the Oba.

You are all aware that recently the Oba also had a meeting with the Benin Traditional Council announced that we go into prayer and fasting to avert calamity this year, because of the political crisis that is on going.





Any wise man, any wise leader, any wise political chairman that knows that he is directly responsible for this crisis should take a cue from such statement by the Oba and come home meet with the governor and reconcile with him. We have always said that we are willing and ready for reconciliation but you see you can not be constituting a reconciliation body when you are an interested party in that issue.





He noted that the All Progressives Congress crisis is already ending because members of EPM are already folding up.





On the issue of who and how will the name of the party candidate to the independent national electoral commission, INEC, he said the chairman does not have any constitutional power to submit names, you go through a process and that process is what we call the congresses.





And if through the primaries any candidate emerges, it is that candidate name that will be submitted by the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party.




Fears that a devastating bushfire in the NSW South Coast will disrupt milk production and cause a further tightening in supply has spooked investors in the ASX-listed dairy group Bega Cheese.

Bega Cheese's shares fell 9.3 per cent to $3.92 on Monday, as the company and its dairy providers started to assess the damage caused by fires that have raged around the towns of Bega and Cobargo.

About 30 to 40 farmers had been affected in the area, said Shaughn Morgan, chief executive of the industry group Dairy Connect, with some reporting they had lost the bulk of their livestock.

A cow at a burnt out farm at Clifton Creek, in Gippsland. Many farmers have lost livestock or had to kill animals due to the fires. Credit:Joe Armao

Other farmers without power were struggling to milk their cows, while others were spilling their milk because dairy processors including Bega were unable to access roads to collect their produce.
Starting in the New Year, visitors of Holocaust Museum Houston will have the opportunity to meet with a local Holocaust Survivor once a month.

Survivor Sunday is included in the cost of admission and will kick off with the testimony of Bill Orlin at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 26. Holocaust Survivors Chaja Verveer and Ruth Steinfeld are scheduled to share their stories on Sundays, Feb. 23 and March 22, respectively.

There are very few of us left, said Holocaust Survivor Bill Orlin, We speak because the world needs to know that the Holocaust happened. We want to be sure that this does not happen again.

Between 1939 and 1945, Bill Orlin and his family lived on the run. The eldest son of Sender and Sonia Orlinski, Orlin was 7 years old when German troops invaded Poland and occupied his hometown of Brok. The Jewish residents were forcibly marched to Ostrow Mazowiecki, about 50 miles northwest of Warsaw.

Holocaust Survivor Chaja Verveer was just one year old when she and her family went into hiding, splitting up because they were too many to stay in one place. She ended up in Leiden with the van den Bergs, a Dutch family active in the Resistance. In February 1944, the van den Bergs were betrayed and Verveer was sent to Westerbork, a transit camp in northeastern Holland, from there she was sent to both Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt concentration camps. Verveer was liberated at the age of three.

Ruth Steinfeld and her sister Lea lived in Sinsheim, Germany, when Hitler came to power. The family was deported to the Gurs interment camp in 1940. Steinfeld and her sister's lives were forever altered when their mother made the difficult decision to let a Jewish philanthropic organization called Oeuvres de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) take her daughters to safety. The sisters never saw their parents again.

Survivors are at the core of our Museum, said HMH CEO Dr. Kelly J. Zuniga, As we continue to see a rise in antisemitism, their stories need to be heard now more than ever.

Admission includes entrance to the exhibitions, including Dolores Huerta: Revolution in the Fields/Revolucion en los Campos , on view through Feb. 16 in the Mincberg Gallery.

Permanent featured galleries include the Museums Holocaust Gallery, Bearing Witness: A Community Remembers, which is personalized with testimony of Holocaust Survivors who later settled in the Houston area.

The gallery was expanded and enhanced by bringing two of the Museums most important artifacts, the World War II-era railcar and the 1940s Danish rescue boat, into the new Museum facility. The Lester and Sue Smith Human Rights Gallery features educational displays of all UN-recognized genocides as well as tributes to international human rights leaders including Malala Yousafzai and Martin Luther King Jr., among others.

The Samuel Bak Gallery is the nation's largest collection of artwork by its namesake, Holocaust child survivor and painter Samuel Bak, with 131 works in exhibition rotation. Finally, And Still I Write: Young Diarists on War and Genocide brings to life the writings of 12 young diarists, including Anne Frank, who died in genocides around the world.

Admission is free for children and students (includes college students with valid college ID), $15 for adults, and $10 for seniors, AARP members and active military. As a member of the Houston Museum District Association, HMH waives admission from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. each Thursday. Audio guides are available each day while supplies last for an additional $3, but are available at no cost to children and students. Parking is available onsite in the Museums lot for $8 for the first four hours. The Museums hours of operation are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday noon to 5 p.m. For more details, visit hmh.org.
OTTAWA COUNTY, MI  A Holland Latin King will spend the rest of his life in prison for the gang-related killing of a 14-year-old boy at Hampton Inn in Holland Township.

Juan Sandro Cabrera, 18, was sentenced Monday, Jan. 6, to a mandatory term of life in prison without hope for parole in the Feb. 16 killing of Troy T.J. Wells, a West Ottawa student.

Cabrera was convicted by an Ottawa County Circuit Court jury of first-degree murder, gang membership and felonious use of a firearm.

Judge Karen Miedema handed down the sentence.

The killing happened when Holland Latin Kings and their rival, the Gangster Disciples, had parties just the hall from each other. The victims family said he had friends who were tied to Gangster Disciples but that he was not in a gang.

Cabrera shot Wells outside of the hotel room where Latin Kings were partying. Wells was scuffling with one of Cabreras friends outside the door when he was shot.

Police arrested Cabrera in the Upper Peninsula a couple of weeks after the killing. The prosecution said Cabrera was armed with one of two AR-15-style rifles that were in the hotel room.

He was agitated and preoccupied with the firearms before the shooting, witnesses testified.

Assistant Ottawa County Prosecutor JoEllen Haas said Cabrera was armed with an AR-15-style rifle  one of two in the hotel room  when he shot Wells in the hallway. Witnesses said he was agitated and kept looking at the firearms in the closet.

Beyond the life sentence, Cabrera received 95 to 240 months in prison for gang membership, to be served concurrently, and a two-year sentence for felony firearms to be served consecutively.
Britain will conduct post-Brexit trade talks with the US at the same time as it negotiates the terms of the UK's future relationship with the EU, Downing Street has signalled.

The UK will split from Brussels on January 31 and there will then be a 'standstill' transition period until the end of 2020 when the two sides will try to hammer out a trade deal.

Number 10 said today that the UK will 'not just focus on discussing the future partnership with the EU' after Brexit because it will be 'free to hold trade discussions with countries across the world'.

The possibility of the government engaging in tandem talks with the EU and the US will delight Tory Brexiteers.

They believe the potential for a swift free trade deal with the White House could stop the EU from dragging its feet on agreeing its own deal.

Brexiteers believe the 'leverage' of US trade talks will force the EU to pull out all of the stops to agree a deal with the UK by the end of the year - or risk a better-prepared Britain opting to walk away.

Boris Johnson, pictured during a trip to Estonia in December, is expected to seek tandem trade talks with the EU and US after Brexit

They fear the EU could delay progress on talks in order to pressure Boris Johnson into breaking his promise not to extend the transition period which would then likely require the UK to make further budget contributions.

Asked if the UK will conduct trade talks with the EU in tandem with trade talks with the US, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'Once we have left the EU on the 31st of January we will be free to hold trade discussions with countries across the world and not just focus on discussing the future partnership with the EU.'

Mr Johnson will meet Ursula von der Leyen, the new president of the European Commission, in Downing Street for talks on Wednesday.

The 'introductory meeting' between the pair is likely to set the tone for the trade negotiations which will then follow in the months to come.

The PM is believed to want swift progress on a EU/UK trade deal. Downing Street today insisted its focus remained on hitting the end of 2020 deadline.

Asked when Mr Johnson wanted intensive negotiations with Brussels to begin, the PM's spokesman said: 'Where minds should be focused is on the fact that the EU jointly agreed with the UK that it would do everything to conclude an ambitious future partnership by the end of 2020.

'The Prime Minister and the government could not be any clear in its position that we will be leaving the implementation period on December 2020. There will be no extension.'

Many EU figures believe it will not be possible to strike a full trade deal with the UK in such a short amount of time.

Britain is firmly on course to split from Brussels after Mr Johnson won a massive Tory majority at the general election last month and MPs gave their initial backing to his divorce accord.

The Withdrawal Agreement Bill - the legislation needed to make an orderly Brexit happen at the end of the month - will return to the House of Commons on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week for further votes and debate.

Ursula von der Leyen, pictured alongside chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier in Strasbourg on December 18, will meet Mr Johnson for talks on Wednesday this week

The draft law will then move to the House of Lords for further scrutiny starting on Monday next week.

The government is hoping to have the law on the statute book by the middle of the month so that the European Parliament can then ratify the agreement before the end of January.

Even if the law is passed well ahead of January 31, the current divorce date will not change.

'Clearly, the important date is that the WAB is in law and received Royal Assent by the point of our departure on January 31,' the PM's spokesman said today.

'It is agreed between the United Kingdom and the EU that it is at 11pm on the 31st UK time when we will be leaving the EU. Not before then.'
MBABANE  The pig industry is self-sustainable and has produced 418.3 metric tonnes of pork, generating E14 million in the past three months.

This revenue was generated during the second quarter of the 2019/20 financial year. Worth noting is that during this period, the country suspended animal imports from neighbouring South Africa for a second time in 2019 following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Despite this ban, local farmers were able to produce and supply the local demand with 7 228 pigs. During this period, Lubombo came out tops with the production and sale of 137 794 kilogrammes (kg) of pigs thus generating revenue of E4 822 790. The Shiselweni Region had the second highest produce as 134 400 kgs of pork were produced. This generated E4 569 600 for the farmers. On the other hand, the Manzini Region came third with the production of 98 638kgs which was valued at E3 634 610 while the Hhohho Region had the least production of pork at 47 472kgs worth E1 703 502.

Increment

The quarter ended with a total of 54 355 pigs countrywide which was a 9.59 per cent increment from the first quarter which had 1 164 registered farmers. The increment in production could also be attributed to an addition of 42 farmers in the Ministry of Agricultures database. This computes to 1 227 registered farmers. The high production of pork in the country emanates from the collaboration of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Republic of China, Taiwan through the International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF) programme.

This saw an improved yield in the past years as the country at some point had a shortfall of 1.713 metric tonnes in the infant years of the past decade. This introduced the capacity building at Mpisi Farm through training on pig rearing or farming. According to the pig industry enhancement programme, pork is now available at a medium price and it is the most widely accepted among all meat products.

Supply

Despite the increment in the pork production, the country is said to be still facing a shortfall in the domestic supply of pork to the market, which counts on the import of pork products to satisfy market demand.
Garba Shehu, presidential spokesman, has asked Nigerians not to panic over the withdrawal of Chadian troops from the Lake Chad region....





Garba Shehu, presidential spokesman, has asked Nigerians not to panic over the withdrawal of Chadian troops from the Lake Chad region.





About 1200 Chadian troops deployed in the Lake Chad area in the north-east to combat the Boko Haram insurgency alongside Nigerian troops withdrew from the area on Friday.





Its our troops who went to aid Nigerian soldiers months ago returning home. They have finished their mission, Azem Bermandoa, a Chadian military spokesman, was quoted to have said.





None of our soldiers remains in Nigeria. Those who have come back will return to their sector at Lake Chad.





Speaking on Sunday, Shehu asked Nigerians not to panic over the withdrawal of the Chadian troops from the area.





According to TheNation, the presidential spokesman said the troops came to Nigeria as part of a concept of the ongoing operations against insurgency, and that their withdrawal was as a result of a change in the concept and in line with the mandate of the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF).





He asked Nigerians to have faith in the ability of the Nigerian military because they are capable of securing the nation.





Nobody should panic, Nigerians need not to worry at all about the Chadian withdrawals, he said.





They came here as a part of a concept of the ongoing operations. That concept has changed and they are moving out.





Indications from the defence headquarters suggest that soon, Nigeria will be sending troops to that country as part of yet another concept.





So there is nothing of concern about the way deployments are made by the MNJTF. They know what they are doing. It is in the execution of their mandate.





Nigerians should equally not have any doubts about the ability of our armed forces to hold their own. They are capable and have proven to be so.




A plea has been filed in Supreme Court seeking contempt action against the Centre and Delhi Police for allegedly not following its direction to curb and handle mob violence at premier Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on January 5.

The plea, filed by Tehseen Poonawala, said the apex court had on July 17, 2018, laid down "preventive and remedial guidelines for the Government and Police authorities to curb and handle mob violence, and came to a conclusion that no individual in his/her own capacity or as a part of a group, which within no time assumes the character of a mob, can take law into his/her/their own hands and deal with others as guilty".

The alleged Contemnor/ Respondent (Government of India) has failed to take action against the masked miscreant mob that entered the JNU Campus on January 5, 2020, and no FIR has been registered yet against the offenders, the plea said.

It further stated that top court had also said, "It shall be the duty of every police officer to cause a mob to disperse, by exercising his power under Section 129of CrPC, which, in his opinion, has a tendency to cause violence or wreak the havoc of lynching in the disguise of vigilantism or otherwise".

He said: "However, when a large number of masked miscreants entered the campus of JNU armed with sticks, hammers and other weapons, who clearly had a malicious intention, were neither stopped nor deterred by the Delhi Police personnel deployed at the campus.

The petition sought contempt action against the the alleged contemnors for wilfully and deliberately disobeying the court's judgment of last July.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
German farmers worried over the impact of hard Brexit on profits have urged the EU to strike a soft trade deal with Britain to avert losses.

The German Farmers Association (DBV) fears that its agri-food trade balance with the UK could drop by half if no agreement is reached at the end of the 2020 Brexit transition period.

The lobby group is concerned that farmers' profits could be significantly impacted by tariffs, customs checks and new red tape.

Figures show that the country's agri-food industry exports 4.5 billion (3.8bn) of goods a year to the UK.

On the other hand, the United Kingdom exports only 1.3 billion (1.1bn) to Germany.

Speaking to The Times, DBV vice-president Walter Heidl said Brexit makes 'trade difficult and new expenses arise'.

It costs time and money for everyone involved. We need to ensure that the consequences for British consumers and German agriculture are cushioned through the trade deal.

Mr Heidl added that a hard Brexit would be as bad for UK consumers as it would for German farmers.

Each year, Germany exports 620m worth of grain, 370m of baked goods and 35m of beer to the UK.

The DBV also raises concerns over the 'Brexit gap' - a possible shrinkage in the bloc's farm subsidies budget once the UK leaves the EU.

This could lead to a severe cuts in the payments to German farmers, even though Germany would have to contribute more in funds to Brussels, Mr Heidl said.

[Britain] was up to now a net contributor to the EU budget. The other member states are going to have to provide significantly more money, he told the paper.
Devastating wildfires ravaged an Australian island on Friday in the midst of the countrys months-long drought and fire crisis, with many fearing that the new blaze wiped out half of the koala population seeking refuge there.

Rescuers are frantically looking to find any surviving animals on Kangaroo Island after wildfires burned through nearly one-third of the island, The Straits Times reported.

Over 50 per cent (of the population) has been lost, Sam Mitchell, co-owner of the Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park, told AFP of the koala population, according to the Times. Injuries are extreme. Others have been left with no habitat to go back to, so starvation will be an issue in coming weeks.

Kangaroo Island is a popular tourist attraction with protected nature reserves off the coast of South Australia, and was estimated to have a population of about 50,000 koalas before the fires.

In July, a group of researchers at the University of Adelaide found that this specific population was extremely important to the survival of the wider population of koalas in the country, as they were the only group free from chlamydia, according to the Times.

RELATED: Half a Billion Animals, Including 8,000 Koalas, Feared Dead from Devastating Australian Wildfires

Koala rescued from bushfires being treated at Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park

They are an insurance population for the whole population, the University of Adelaides PhD candidate Jessica Fabijan, told the outlet, explaining that the bacterial infection is widespread in groups of the species in eastern parts of Australia. Chlamydia can cause blindness, infertility and even death in koalas.

The dire situation has the Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park seeking help in their relief efforts as they bring in countless injured koalas and animals who have barely survived the fires. The organization has set up a GoFundMe page asking for donations.

Kate Geraghty/The SMH/Fairfax Media via Getty

Over the past few days we have started to see a large number of injured koalas, along with other native species heavily impacted by this event, the page reads. We have been treating these victims as best we can to supply pain relief, antibiotics, treatment to wounds and basic husbandry requirements. We spent most of January 3rd building extra holding enclosures as well as defending the park from the immediate threat of the fire. We will continue to prepare more infrastructure to house the extra wildlife we expect to see over the coming weeks.

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RELATED: How to Help Australian Fire Victims and the Half a Billion Animals Impacted by the Blazes

We are working around the clock with a highly experienced, qualified and dedicated team of volunteers including qualified vets, vet nurses and wildlife carers to rescue, rehabilitate and care for all of the animals coming in from the bushfires, it added.

As of Monday, the page has raised $571,116  well over their $15,000 goal. All proceeds are said to go towards veterinary costs, koala milk and supplements, extra holding/rehabilitation enclosures, as well as setting up a building to hold supplies to treat these animals.

Just last week, experts announced that an estimated half-billion animals in Australia have died from the wildfires, including 8,000 koalas. Koalas have reportedly been hit the hardest due to their slow-moving nature and the fact they only eat eucalyptus tree leaves, which come from oily, highly flammable plants.
It is not an easy task to run a small and medium enterprise (SME), especially when it is a one-man show. Business owners have to look at various aspects of running a business such as working capital, equipment, manpower, latest trends, marketing, sales, and more, due to which they often get no time to focus on business expansion and other activities.

Apart from business operations, they also face challenges while accessing credit and risk capital, addressing infrastructural bottlenecks, facilitating capacity building, etc.

Visit the website at irisgst.com or Easybiz

One of the challenges they also face is multiple registrations and online taxation. Its been over two years since its launch on July 01, 2017, still majority of SME owners are unable to file the Goods and Services Tax (GST) without any hassles. Even though the GST Council has taken several steps to simplify the process, it remains a real challenge for business owners.

As the year 2019 ends, business owners are still dealing with Harmonised System of Nomenclature (HSN), GSTR 2A, GST 3B, GSTR 9 and 9C, and more.

As per a World Bank document, there are still issues with matching of B2B invoices, uploading information on tax returns, etc.

In this scenario, it is important for the government and private players to help SMEs in smooth filing of the GST. In a bid to assist the business owners, Moneycontrol has introduced one-stop shop for all the GST needs.

Moneycontrols Easybiz has come out with digitisation tools that will help business owners in hassle-free filing of GST returns including GSTR-1, GSTR-2A, GSTR-3B, GSTR 9A, 9C and GSTR 10.

Thus, the online tool will also help taxpayers to file GST in minimal steps without any operational challenges
Kushal Punjabis wife Audrey Dolhen has come out and spoken about being blamed for the death of the television actor. She says that Kushal failed their relationship and called him a careless father.

It was reported that Kushals failed marriage with Dolhen was the reason behind him taking the shocking step. The two got married in 2015. We had problems in our marriage but it was not a failed marriage. I never stopped Kian from talking to his father Kushal. It was Kushal who was not serious about his family, Dolhen told PeepingMoon.com.

I invited him to settle down in Shanghai but he was least interested. In fact, it was me who was looking after his expenses. Kian lost interest in his father because of lack of seriousness. I tried my best to save my relationship with Kushal, she added. Dolhen, according to peepingmoon.com, is currently working as CCO in CMA CGM China Shipping Company.

Also Watch | Sushant Singh, Karanvir Bohra & others pay their last respects to Kushal Punjabi

Why was she residing in Shanghai and not in India?

I was on contract with my company and Kushal was not able to understand this. He wanted me to shift to London. It was not possible for me to quit my job. Kushal was a careless father who never bothered about his sons future. I was at the receiving end in the marriage and not him. I was with our son Kian in France for Christmas holidays, she said.

I dont know why I am being blamed for his death, it was Kushal who failed in our relationship, Dolhen added.

According to the portal, Kushals parents said that Dolhen harassed him no end and demanded a huge sum of money for a divorce. They said that she took away their three-year-old son Kian, which shattered Kushal and made him take his life.Dolhen has been summoned by Mumbai Police in connection with Kushals suicide.

Also read: Priyanka Chopra, Nick Jonas are the hottest couple at Golden Globes 2020 red carpet. See best looks from the night

The TV actor committed suicide at his home in Mumbais Bandra area. As per a statement from the police, the actor committed suicide by hanging himself from a fan with a nylon rope.

He came into limelight after winning the reality show Zor Ka Jhatka, and went on to do other reality shows such as Fear Factor, Paisa Bhari Padega and Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa. Kushal also worked in movies like Lakshya, Kaal, Salaam-e-Ishq, Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal and Crazy Cukkad Family.

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Tom Hanks has a cold.

That didnt stop him from being at the Golden Globes on Sunday to accept the Cecil B. DeMille Award for achievement in film.

The actor said that he had been made jittery by all the savagely orange drinks he had to consume in order to fight his cold.

Hanks, 63, took more than one beat in his acceptance speech to fight back tears. He blamed his emotional state on the illness, but clearly seemed touched by the honor.

Charlize Theron presented the veteran actor with the DeMille Award, one of two career awards given that night. The other was the Carol Burnett Award, which went to Ellen DeGeneres for her work in TV.

Hanks, a two-time Oscar winner, has won four Golden Globes in his career, his first for Big in 1989, and his most recent for Cast Away in 2001. He was also nominated this year for best supporting actor in a film for playing Mister Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

The actor reacted with glee and amazement to a career retrospective video that started with his role in TV series The Love Boat." But his voice began to crack when he addressed his family in the audience, including his wife, Rita Wilson.

Hanks began his remarks by paying tribute to talents hes worked with throughout his career, from highly experienced actors to those just starting out.

You know, youre a dope if you dont steal from everybody youve ever worked with, he said. And I have stolen from the likes of the people that only need one name, you know? Like Meryl. Like Denzel. Like Antonio. Like Meg. Like Julia. Like Sally Field. Even though thats two names, its still one.

Hanks went on to name-check directors and screenwriters by using their first names, too  Nora, Penny, Bob, Paul, Clint.

He described his work, and all of acting, as a process by which collaborators of every type have a hand in helping him hit his mark and go there" as a performer.

Hanks recalled being an intern in 1977, at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, where he and others working there got reamed out by the director, who told them they had to show up on time, know the material and come armed with a head full of ideas.

That was the greatest lesson a young actor could possibly ever get, Hanks said.

Have a tip? Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.

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In the streets of besieged Idlib - one of the last rebel-held areas in Syria - a man passed out sweets Friday to celebrate the U.S. airstrike that killed a commander who has been at the center of Syria's civil war from the beginning: Qasem Soleimani.

The Iranian major general, both revered and reviled as a key military strategist for Tehran's leaders, had been steering events in the Middle East for decades. As the commander of the Quds Force, which runs foreign operations for Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, he was held responsible by U.S. officials for supporting Iranian-backed militias in Iraq that targeted U.S. soldiers and allied forces after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

But in Syria,as well as elsewhere in the Middle East, Soleimani has had an even more devastating reach. He was a point man for Iran's backing of Syrian President Bashar Assad and helped shape the Syrian military strategies in a horrific civil war that began with pro-democracy protests in 2011.

When peaceful protesters rose up against Assad in March of 2011, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came to his ally's aid. Iran provided loans, oil and financial assistance to skirt international sanctions. Tehran and its regional proxies, such as Lebanon's Hezbollah, also were a conduit for weapons, battlefield training and fighters -- all vital support for Assad until Russia sent warplanes and other aid in 2015 to finally tip the scales in Syria's favor. Soleimani was reportedly the main man in Syria coordinating this all and doing Iran's bidding.

"Soleimani is almost resident in Damascus, or let's say he goes there a lot and you can find him between meetings with President Assad and visits to the theater of operations like any other soldier," a senior regional official told Reuters in 2015.

Just two years before Syria's unraveling began, Iran's leaders faced their own unrest. Major protests broke out across Iran in 2009 amid claims that the outcome of presidential elections were manipulated to hand victory to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over reformist rivals. Iran's Revolutionary Guard led the crackdowns -- with Soleimani and others at the helm.

In the Syrian uprisings early months in 2012, Soleimani "helped orchestrate the regime's vicious response to rebel attacks inside Damascus and to the threats of a palace coup," according to Sam Dagher in his book, "Assad or We Burn the Country."

Soleimani's knowledge of Arabic helped him to win over local commanders and build up Assad's support network. Already by 2012, the Treasury Department sanctioned Soleimani for his role in "the violent repression against the Syrian people." A then rare photo of the commander from 2014 in Syria showed him offering condolences to the family of the Syrian president's cousin, Hilal Assad, who was killed in battle near the border with Turkey.

That same year, Soleimani called on a close friend in Iraq, the transportation minister, to allow planes loaded with military support for Assad to fly through Iraqi airspace, according to cables published by The New York Times and the Intercept.

In February, Assad made his first visit to Tehran since the war began to see Khamenei. Soleimani sat next to Assad in the meeting. His support for Syria's army "will not be forgotten," Assad said Friday.

Soleimani also helped Assad with fighters - a mix that included Hezbollah, the Revolutionary Guard, affiliated militia fighters and hired hands from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Soleimani's role as commander of the Quds force enabled him to draw from a wealth of proxy fighters, some of whom then received training from Hezbollah operatives in bases in Iran and Syria.

"To save Assad, Suleimani has called on every asset he built since taking over the Quds Force: Hezbollah fighters, Shiite militiamen from around the Arab world, and all the money and materiel he could squeeze out of his own besieged government," The New Yorker's Dexter Filkins wrote in a 2013 profile.

He added: "This kind of starkly sectarian atmosphere may be Suleimani's most lasting impact on the Middle East. To save his Iranian empire in Syria and Lebanon, he has helped fuel a Sunni-Shiite conflict that threatens to engulf the region for years to come - a war that he appears happy to wage."

Iran has denied sending soldiers to Syria, despite reports otherwise, though Iranian media has reported on funerals for "military advisers" killed in Syria.

In the summer of 2015, Soleimani defied a U.N.-imposed travel ban and visited Russia to coordinate Moscow's military intervention in Syria. According to Reuters, Soleimani and his Russian counterparts set up an agreement: A Russian airstrike campaign would accompany on the ground battles led by Iranian, Syrian, and Hezbollah fighters. Russia's air assaults ultimately helped to shift the war in Assad's favor.

"Soleimani put the map of Syria on the table," a senior regional official told Reuters at the time. "The Russians were very alarmed, and felt matters were in steep decline and that there were real dangers to the regime. The Iranians assured them there is still the possibility to reclaim the initiative. At that time, Soleimani played a role in assuring them that we haven't lost all the cards."

Just between April and November of 2019, Syrian and Russian bombing campaigns in northwest Idlib province killed 1,300 and displaced more than 1 million people, according to Syria Campaign, a monitoring group based in Britain.
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Linkedin Eisya A. Eloksari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020 17:13 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c3210ef97 1 Business Jakarta-flood,industry-ministry,small-and-medium-manufacturers,small-business,agus-gumiwang-kartasasmita,Greater-Jakarta Free

The Industry Ministry plans to replace the damaged capital of small and medium manufacturers (IKMs) affected by recent massive floods in Greater Jakarta.

"We can assure small IKMs whose machines were damaged by flooding that we will provide 100 percent replacement," said Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita in Jakarta on Monday.

He said small businesses were the ones most affected by the flooding as large industries usually had measures to anticipate and mitigate losses from natural disasters.

He also said that during the week he would assess some IKMs affected by the floods, which lasted for several days in some parts of the city.

Gati Wibawaningsih, the ministrys director general for small and medium enterprises, told the press that the minister would inspect a tofu and tempeh manufacturing plant in Semanan, West Jakarta, and a furniture center in Pondok Bambu, East Jakarta, among other places, to assess the floods impact on the small industries.

"We allocated about Rp 4 billion (US$288,333) for national natural disaster aid for the year," she said, adding that the ministry and local industry agencies were still conducting research on the number of affected IKMs and their losses from the recent flood.

She went on to say that the amount of aid would depend on the suggestions of the manufacturers. However, as people were still focused on evacuating their families, the ministry had not yet received any reports.

For some, it is not their first flood, so they are relatively calm, Gati said. We can proceed with the aid once they are ready to start production.

According to 2018 ministry data, there are 4.49 million IKMs nationwide. Some IKM centers in West Java were recently affected by the flood, including convection centers in Tambora, rattan manufacturers in Grogol, West Jakarta, snack manufacterers in West Bandung and palm sugar IKMs in Cigudeg, Bogor.

The Retailers Association has estimated that retailers in Greater Jakarta lost more than Rp 1 trillion as shops ceased operation amid severe flooding.

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency reported that the death toll from floods and landslides in West Java, Jakarta and Banten had climbed to 60 as of Sunday and that 92,261 people had been relocated to shelters throughout Greater Jakarta as of Saturday night.
The Government is being urged to complete work on new employment legislation, including the Gender Pay Gap Information Bill before a general election is called.

CIPD Ireland, the representative body for human resource workers is demanding that two laws in particular should be included in the final list of topics to be addressed in the lifetime of the current Dail.

They believe legislation to narrow Irelands Gender Pay Gap should have been prioritised last Autumn, while the Payment of Wages Bill has yet to be published.

The Gender Pay Gap Information Bill will require employers to publish information relating to the gender pay gap among their employees and, where there is a gap, to explain the measures being taken to reduce it.

The Payment of Wages Bill will ensure that workers' tips and gratuities cannot be used to make-up or satisfy a persons contractual wages.

Director of CIPD Ireland Mary Connaughton said it is now crucial the government gets the Gender Pay Gap Information Bill passed and enacted without further delay.

"Despite positive steps in early 2019, the legislation has not progressed and the consultation on the necessary regulations has not commenced," she said.

On the Payment of Wages Bill, Ms Connaughton said:

This vital legislation will force employers to clearly display their policy on how tips, gratuities and service charges are distributed to employees and ensure that they cannot be used to make up contractual rates of pay.

"Both of these pieces of legislation will have real and tangible benefits in the lives of workers in Ireland and they must be a priority in the final weeks of this Dail - we would urge the Taoiseach to include these on his final list of priorities."

Mary Connaughtons comments come as her CIPD colleagues in the UK yesterday marked High Pay Day, the day by which the average FTSE 100 CEO will already have earned what it will take the average worker the rest of the year to earn.

As of this year, large UK employers are obliged to report on CEO pay ratios.

CIPD Ireland said it wants to see Irelands next government step up requirements surrounding the reporting of CEO pay ratios, and said it would also set a good example for companies to exercise constraint in setting executive pay.
Donald Trump has doubled down on his claim that it would be acceptable for American forces to retaliate against any attack by Tehran by targeting Iranian cultural sites, an act which some experts believe would constitute a war crime under US and international law.

On Saturday, Mr Trump responded to Iranian officials promises of retaliation for his ordering of the targeted killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Maj Gen Qasem Soleimani in a tweet threatening to attack 52 separate targets, including some "at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture".

While Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used a series of Sunday morning television appearances to claim that Mr Trump "didnt say hed go after a cultural site," the president reiterated his desire to do just that Sunday evening while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One.

After inviting reporters to his cabin while flying back to Washington from a two-week vacation in Florida, Mr Trump opined that it would be unfair for US forces to not be permitted to target Iranian cultural sites because of the tactics used by many of the insurgent groups the US has fought since it invaded Iraq in 2003.

"Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way," Mr Trump said as he sat behind the desk in his airborne office.

But under both international and American law, some experts say it does work that way.

Prohibitions against destruction of cultural heritage sites in international date back to the 1907 Hague Convention, which required parties to an armed conflict to take all necessary steps" for the protection of buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected".

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Additionally, Protocol I of the 1949 Geneva Convention is clear in its prohibition of "any acts of hostility directed against the historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples".

The US is a party to both of those treaties. Jill Goldenziel, an international law professor at Marine Corps University, tweeted: "Attacking cultural sites is a war crime unless theyre being used for military purposes."

The US has also has been a party to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict since 2009, which provides for further prohibitions against destruction of cultural artefacts and sites during war or occupation.

Although the US helped draft the treaty and initially signed it in 1954, Cold War-era concerns kept it from being submitted to the senate for ratification until 1999, when then-president Bill Clinton did so at the unanimous recommendation of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ironically, the impetus for the senate's final ratification of the treaty in September 2008 was a wave of public attention following the looting of Iraq's museums after the 2003 US invasion.

It is unlikely that US forces would obey an order to target cultural sites within Iran, since following such an order would go against clear instructions in the US Defence Department's Law of War Manual, which states that "cultural property, the areas immediately surrounding it, and appliances in use for its protection should be safeguarded and respected".

wBut since he first entered politics in 2015, Mr Trump has often derided the very idea of war crimes as a manifestation of political correctness. He has often suggested that the CIA's enhanced interrogation program - widely condemned - should be restarted, and he has suggested that killing Islamic State fighters' family members would be an effective anti-terrorism strategy.

Mr Trump has also been an advocate for American soldiers accused of war crimes, and in November pardoned three US service members who were either convicted of war crimes charges or were awaiting trial.

One such service member, retired Navy Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher, was spotted at the president's Mar-a-Lago club last month, where he reportedly thanked Mr Trump for his support. Mr Gallagher has offered to campaign for Mr Trump's re-election.

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Trump warns US may strike Iran back in disproportionate manner
Eager: It is challenging, but vital, to read another persons cues  certainly at the outset of what you hope will be a relationship. You two have never met in person, and the reasons she is cautious could range from: She is cautious because she is smart and realizes she is communicating with a virtual stranger ... to ... She is cautious because she is in another relationship (or any combination or variation along a very wide spectrum).


BetMakers to power new Victorian Bookmaker initiative

Sydney, Jan 6, 2020 AEST (ABN Newswire) - The Board of BetMakers Technology Group Limited ( ASX:BET ) ( FRA:T07 ) is pleased to announced that its subsidiary company, DynamicOdds, has extended its Australian Principal Racing Authority Official Price project through its existing partnership with Racing Victoria ("RV") (as disclosed on 14 June 2018) with the development of the VBA Price feature for RV and the Victorian Bookmakers Association ("VBA"). All intellectual property rights in the VBA Price software are owned by RV and VBA.Highlights- BetMakers has extended its partnership with Racing Victoria by developing a new Victorian Bookmakers Association price ("VBA Price") for Racing Victoria and the Victorian Bookmakers Association- On-course screens at Flemington, Caufield, The Valley and Sandown will display the new VBA Price- Expansion to be featured at country and provincial meetings expected to be rolled out in 2020In an initiative to further promote the markets being offered by on-course bookmakers at Victorian metropolitan meetings, a special VBA Price will be displayed alongside the current Victorian Official Price ("VOP") via on-course screens and the DynamicOdds premium application.On-course screens at metropolitan tracks Flemington, Caulfield, The Valley and Sandown will display the VBA Price which will be calculated by taking an average from a sample of the oncourse rails bookmakers.The VBA Price and the Victorian Official Price will commence being displayed on screens and via the DynamicOdds premium application from 25 minutes prior to each Victorian metropolitan race.After a recent trial period, The Victorian Bookmaker Association Official price has now commenced operations.It is expected the VBA Price service will expand into feature country and provincial meetings in 2020.Racing Victoria's Chief Financial Officer Aaron Morrison commented;"We are very pleased to offer real-time wagering markets from our on-course operators alongside our existing off-course price display infrastructure. This will give patrons on course and via the DynamicOdds platform the chance to source the best price available on a particular runner.""This project, along with the core Official Price Network, Barrier Technology and Proprietary Integrity Platform have been made possible due to the technical agility and expertise of the team at BetMakers."BetMakers Technology Group CEO Todd Buckingham added;"As a Company, BetMakers Technology Group is striving to assist racing bodies, rights holders and wagering operators in delivering the best product possible to the end user, the punters.The on-course market is now very competitive and the opportunity to increase the visibility was attractive enough for Racing Victoria to engage BetMakers to help deliver this to the market.BetMakers look forward to working with Racing Victoria and other Principal Racing Authorities around the world to assist them in delivering the best possible wagering options to their customers."About Betmakers Technology Group Ltd

Betmakers Technology Group Ltd (ASX:BET) (OTCMKTS:TPBTF) is an ASX-listed holding company and a global provider of online wagering products and services to both wholesale and retail markets through its various wholly owned subsidiaries. The Company operates a retail wagering business, offering consumers wagering, fantasy tournament and content products and services.
Hareesh Tibrewala, Joint CEO, Mirum India, has been accepted into Forbes Agency Council, an invitation-only community for owners of and executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative, and advertising agencies.

Hareesh Tibrewala was vetted and selected by a review committee based on the depth and diversity of his experience. Criteria for acceptance include a track record of successfully impacting business growth metrics, as well as personal and professional achievements and honors.

We are honored to welcome Hareesh Tibrewala into the community, said Scott Gerber, founder of Forbes Councils, the collective that includes Forbes Agency Council. Our mission with Forbes Councils is to bring together proven leaders from every industry, creating a curated, social capital-driven network that helps every member grow professionally and make an even greater impact on the business world.

As an accepted member of the Council, Hareesh has access to a variety of exclusive opportunities designed to help him reach peak professional influence. He will connect and collaborate with other respected local leaders in a private forum. Hareesh will also be invited to work with a professional editorial team to share his expert insights in original business articles on Forbes.com, and to contribute to published Q&A panels alongside other experts.

Finally, Hareesh Tibrewala will benefit from exclusive access to vetted business service partners, membership-branded marketing collateral, and the high-touch support of the Forbes Councils member concierge team.

I am delighted to be a part of the Forbes Agency Council, said Hareesh Tibrewala. This is a testament to Mirum Indias leadership position in the MarTech industry. The council provides a great platform for creating thought leadership in the MarTech space, and also to network with other global business leaders and exchange ideas and share business intelligence.
The Israeli and United States flags are projected on the walls of the ramparts of Jerusalem's Old City to mark one year since the transfer of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on May 15, 2019. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)

US Embassy in Israel Warns Citizens About Heightened Middle East Tensions

The U.S. Embassy in Israel warned American citizens of heightened tensions in the Middle East as a flurry of Iranian leaders threatened the United States with reprisals for the killing of General Qassem Soleimani.

The embassy said in a Jan. 6 warning that Americans should stay on the alert in the event of mortar or rocket fire.

Out of an abundance of caution, the Embassy strongly encourages U.S. citizens to remain vigilant and take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness, as security incidents, including rocket fire, often take place without warning, it stated.

A red alert siren could be triggered by mortar or rocket fire; all such alerts should be treated as real and people should follow instructions from local authorities and seek shelter immediately, the embassy said.

Know the location of your closest shelter or protected space. U.S. government personnel and their family members may be restricted from traveling to areas affected by rocket activity, sirens, or the opening of bomb shelters, it said.

Americans should keep a low profile, stay alert when in areas known as tourist hubs, avoid all demonstrations, and keep tabs on local media, authorities said.

The site where top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were killed along with eight others in a U.S. airstrike the day before, outside the international airport road in Baghdad, Iraq., on Jan. 4, 2020. (Ali Choukeir/AFP via Getty Images)

Coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and others who were killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners during a funeral procession at the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) square in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 6, 2020. (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

Israel, a strong U.S. ally, has mostly kept quiet since the United States took out Soleimani and other Iranians in the strike near Baghdad International Airport.

The alert came a day after Mohsen Rezaei, a former chief of Irans Revolutionary Guards Corps, told a Hezbollah-linked media that Iran could strike Tel Aviv and Haifa if the United States responds to Irans expected retaliation for Soleimanis killing.

If Trump retaliates to Irans revenge, we will strike Haifa, Tel Aviv and wipe out Israel, Rezaei told AL-Manar News on Sunday, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The assassination of the martyr General Soleimani established a new revolution in Iran against America, said Rezaei, adding that Iranian officials are very serious about avenging Soleimanis death.

Rezaei currently heads the Expediency Council, which advised Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

On Twitter shortly after the death, he claimed Israel passed the United States information about Soleimanis whereabouts.

Trump has repeatedly warned Iran that the U.S. military will respond to any further attacks by the country. Iran-backed militias killed an American contractor, sparking U.S. airstrikes on a militia in Iraq and Syria, which led to Iran-backed militias attacking the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The killing of Soleimani came after the chain of events, which included several attacks on the U.S. over the summer of 2019.
Kolkata (West Bengal) [India], Jan 6 (ANI): Students of the Jadavpur University on Monday held a protest against the attack on students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University.



Showing solidarity with the students of JNU, the students were holding placards stating, "Stop hooliganism of ABVP at JNU".

"We are protesting against the attack by BJP and ABVP on JNU students. As protests were continuing against National Register of Citizens and the Citizen Amendment Act, they sent their goons wearing black masks to attack students," said a student while speaking to ANI.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the RSS-affiliated ABVP blamed each other for the violence.

The students slammed the Central government for not taking the appropriate action against the hooligans.



The student protesters also raised slogans against the CAA and NRC.

On Sunday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had condemned the assault on students and teachers of JNU, terming it a "heinous act" and a "shame on democracy".

She said that a four-member Trinamool Congress (TMC) delegation will visit JNU to express solidarity with students and teachers.

"We strongly condemn brutality unleashed against students/teachers in JNU. No words are enough to describe such heinous acts. Shame on our democracy," Banerjee said in a tweet.

On Sunday evening, more than 30 students, including JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, were injured and taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered JNU and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods.

Around 34 students were discharged today morning, a doctor said.

The JNU administration and political leaders, cutting across political lines, had condemned the attack on students and urged the police to take action against the perpetrators. (ANI)


Members of the Representatives and Shura councils and citizens have praised the decision of the recent Cabinet meeting, chaired by His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander and First Deputy Prime Minister, to cancel the fees of 200 government services from 11 government agencies, raising the number of government services that have been exempted from fees during 2019 to 400, praising His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifas directives in this regard.

In statements to the Bahrain News Agency (BNA), they said that the decision was the fruitful outcome of the serious study conducted by the Government Executive Committee, led by HRH the Crown Prince, following directives from HM the King to constantly achieve the welfare of the Bahraini families.

Shura Council member, Dr Mansoor Sarhan, and members of the Council of Representatives, MPs Dr Abdulla Al Thawadi, Abdulla Al Dossari and Kalthan Al Hayki stressed that the decision reflects HM King Hamads keenness to ensure the citizens comfort and welfare. They also affirmed that the move will reflect positively on all Bahraini families as it will reduce the burden of living costs on them.

They extended sincere thanks to HRH Crown Prince for his constant keenness to launch development initiatives aimed at achieving the interests of the nation and the citizens, praising HRH Crown Princes great interest in the positive and effective cooperation between the Executive and Legislative branches, being the best means to enhance the kingdoms progress.

They expressed confidence that HRH the Crown Princes vision, keenness to achieve the interests of the citizens and great knowledge of the needs of the national economy would reflect positively on the governments decisions and contribute to achieving the prosperity of the nation and the citizens.

In the same context, citizens Dr Mohammed Abdulqader Khanji (Majlis owner in Hamad Town), Bakhet Humaidan, and Abdulla Baqer (Baqer Majlis owner in Riffa) welcomed the Cabinets decision to cancel the fees of more government services, stressing that the move will increase the gains of Bahrainis, praising the fruitful efforts exerted by the Executive Committee, chaired by HRH Crown Prince, in this regard.

They affirmed that the move, which filled the hearts of the citizens with joy, proves the credibility of the government and its unwavering efforts to serve the Bahraini society, which, they said, will contribute to achieving social and economic stability. They also lauded HRH the Crown Princes constant directives aimed at achieving the welfare of the citizens and the Bahraini society.

They pointed out that Bahrain is moving steadily towards more progress and prosperity thanks to the directives of HM King Hamad, the efforts of His Royal Highness Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa and follow-up of HRH the Crown Prince. They wished Bahrain ever-lasting security, stability, progress and prosperity.
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A detailed analysis report of the Global Spinal Cord Stimulation Devices Market has been covered in the report coupled with a thorough description of each company profile with information on the H.Q, future capabilities, key mergers & acquisitions, financial outline, partnerships and new product launches and developments.

Drivers

Growing aging population

Innovation in technologies and therapies

Restraints

High cost

Strict regulatory bodies

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Degenerative Disk Disease (DDD)

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Europe (EU)  UK, Germany, France & Rest of Europe

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A 58-year-old man has been charged with arson endangering life after an attack on a house in Dungiven on Friday night.

He is expected to appear in court in Coleraine on Monday.

Police were notified about a fire at a house in Ard Na Smoll at around 11.40pm on Friday.

No injuries were reported following the blaze, which caused damage to the property.

As is normal procedure all charges are reviewed by the PPS.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 6) - On January 9, millions of Filipino devotees will flock once again to Manila to witness the traditional transferring of the venerated image of Black Nazarene from Quirino Grandstand to Quiapo Church.

Around 4 million devotees attended the 21-hour procession last year with hopes of experiencing miracles from the statue of Jesus Christ.

Here is everything that you need to know on the upcoming Traslacion 2020:

How did the Black Nazarene find its way to the Quiapo Church?

In an interview by the Catholic News Agency, Quiapo Church or the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene rector Msgr. Jose Clemente Ignacio said that the Black Nazarene was brought by Augustinian Recollect missionaries from Mexico in 1606.

The dark image of Jesus Christ carrying a cross with one knee bended was first enshrined on the same year in St. John the Baptist Church at Luneta and was moved to a bigger church nearby two years later.

Pope Innocent X specially recognized the Philippines strong devotion to the Black Nazarene of Manila in 1650, Ignacio said.

The image was later transferred to its permanent home, the Quiapo Church.

In 1880, Pope Pius VII gave the image his Apostolic Blessing and granted plenary indulgence to those who will pray before it.

A plenary indulgence removes all the temporal punishment due to forgiven sin.

Why is the Black Nazarene believed to be miraculous?

Filipino Catholics venerate the Black Nazarene with the belief that the image can bring miracles, as it has endured fires that destroyed its home church, two earthquakes, floods, and even bombings from the World War II.

In 2019, Manila Archbishop Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle stressed in behalf of devotees that veneration comes with true love, honest service, and unity with Jesus, instead of mere fanaticism.

Whats the story behind the statue's dark color?

There are many tales on why the centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ now more than 400 years old  became dark. One of the most popular is that the galleon carrying it caught fire which led to the burning of the statue. However, Msgr. Sabino Vengco, from the Loyola School of Theology of the Ateneo de Manila University debunked all these stories and said that the wood of the Black Nazarene image has always been dark.

Vengco told CNN Philippines before that the Black Nazarene was sculpted from mesquite wood, akin to the local kamagong wood which has a dark color.

Why is the Translacion held every January 9?

It was on January 9 when the Black Nazarene was transferred from the possession of the Recolletos congregation to the Quiapo Church. Yet, Vengco said that the liturgical celebration of the Black Nazarene should be in connection with the Lenten season instead.

For 2020, authorities are expecting the procession to start around 4:30 a.m.

A day before the Traslacion, thousands of devotees line up at the Quirino Grandstand in Manila for hours to participate in the ceremonial "Pahalik" or kissing and touching of the feet of the Black Nazarene.

What will be the route for Traslacion 2020?

There will be a slight change in the route for the annual Traslacion. The Quezon Bridge, McArthur Bridge, and Jones Bridge, through which the procession usually traverse, are currently under construction. The Metro Manila police says there will now be 14 segments from the previous 10, but the travel will be shorter from 6.19 kilometers to 6.16 kilometers.

The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority provided a list of areas where the image of the Black Nazarene will pass:

What security preparations are in place this year?

Personnel from the Philippine National Police, NCRPO, the Bureau of Fire Protection, MMDA, the Philippine Coast Guard, the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, and volunteers will secure the procession from the Quirino Grandstand to Quiapo Church.

A total of 2,144 policemen will form an andas wall to secure the andas or the vehicle which will carry the Black Nazarene.

These policemen will be part of the 13,573-strong personnel who will man the route as early as 5:00 p.m. of January 8.

READ: Authorities beef up security for Traslacion 2020

Former NCRPO chief Guillermo Eleazar, who now heads the PNP Directorial Staff, earlier said they have coordinated with the National Telecommunications and the Department of Information and Communications to jam telecommunication in parts of Manila City during the procession as these can be used as triggers for explosives.

During the procession, ambulances and volunteers will be deployed on the ground to provide assistance, according to the Philippine Red Cross. It had also coordinated with the Philippine General Hospital and other nearby hospitals along the route.

READ: LIST: Traslacion 2020 do's and donts

CNN Philippines' Vince Ferreras, Lara Tan and Glee Jalea contributed to this report
The rising incidence of chronic renal failures is anticipated to create lucrative growth opportunities for the dialyzer market, finds Fortune Business Insights in their new study. The study is titled, Dialyzer Market: Global Market Analysis, Insights, and Forecasts, 2019  2026. According to the study, the market will rise at a CAGR of 4.9% and reach a value of US$ 13707.2 Mn by the end of 2026 as against US$ 9344.7 Mn in 2019. Fortune Business Insights foresees the disposable dialyzers segment to contribute the highest share in the market. This is attributable to the rapid adoption of dialyzers for hemodialysis in healthcare centers and hospitals worldwide. An important factor boosting the global market is that these dialyzers can be reused and recycled.

Leading Players operating in the Dialyzer Market are:

Key players are involved in mergers and acquisition to strengthen their market position. Owing to increasing competition frequent innovations are taking place in the market. Some of the companies operating the industry are:

Fresenius Medical Care

Baxter

B Braun Melsungen

Nipro Corporation

Nikkiso Co., Ltd.

Asahi Kasei Corporation

JMS Co. Ltd.

Toray Medical Co. Ltd.

Other players

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Launch of Dicap Pro Hemodialyzer by Baxter to Intensify Market Competition

The global market is expected to gain more revenue from Asia Pacific owing to the rise in number of end stage renal disease patients in developing countries of China, and India. In 2018, the market in Asia Pacific was valued at US$ 3353.9 Mn. This is because of the rapid development in healthcare infrastructure and increasing dialysis system installations across the region. North America is likely to follow Asia Pacific in terms of revenue generation owing to the rise in disposable income of people and the presence of well-established medical facilities available in the developed nations of Canada and the U.S.

With the advent of internet of things in healthcare sector, manufacturers are focusing on using IoT for keeping live record of the patients health while ongoing dialysis. Governments are also taking initiatives and helping market players come up with better facilities for hemodialysis treatment, thus propelling growth.

In 2017, Baxter launched Dicap Pro hemodialyzer, a product designed for enhancing kidney dialysis for patients suffering from chronic kidney disorders. Some of the players operating in the dialyzer market are Toray Medical Co. Ltd., Asahi Kasei Corporation, Nipro Corporation, Fresenius Medical Care, JMS Co. Ltd., Nikkiso Co., Ltd., and B Braun Melsungen.

Market Segmentation:

By Flux Type

High-flux

Low-Flux

By Usage Type

Disposable

Reusable

By End User

Dialysis Centers and Hospitals

Home Healthcare

By Geography

North America (USA and Canada)

Europe (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia and Rest of Europe)

Asia Pacific (Japan, China, India, Australia, Southeast Asia and Rest of Asia Pacific)

Latin America (Brazil, Mexico and Rest of Latin America)

Middle East & Africa (South Africa, GCC and Rest of Middle East & Africa)

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Comprehensive analysis of the Dialyzer Market growth drivers, obstacles, opportunities, and other related challenges.

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What are the key companies operating in the market?

Which company accounted for the highest market share?

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What is the market size and growth rate of the global and regional market by various segments?

What is the market size and growth rate of the market for selective countries?

Which region or sub-segment is expected to drive the market in the forecast period?

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Deepika Padukone Spends Her 34th Birthday With Acid Attack Survivors, Poses With Laxmi Agarwal On Her Lap!
Newly sworn in for a second term Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney acknowledges the applause of the audience prior to his inaugural address at the Met Philadelphia on North Broad Street on January 6, 2020 Read more

Mayor Jim Kenney began his second term in office Monday, touting progress made over the last four years and promising to confront gun violence and other stubborn challenges that he blamed on decades of "economic and racial inequality.

The administrations top priority, he said, will be reducing gun violence. In 2019, the city had the highest number of homicides since 2007.

Working with incoming Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, whom Kenney appointed last week, the mayor wants to lower the number of homicides in the city by 30% from the 353 recorded in 2018. He also wants the city to continue instituting criminal justice reform measures with the goal of halving the jail population.

Talking to the moms and dads, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, of the young men and women cut down on the streets of Philadelphia has left deep scars on our communities, and, frankly, on me personally," Kenney said in an inauguration speech at the Met Philadelphia on North Broad Street.

His cakewalk 2019 reelection meant that he barely had to campaign or articulate his goals for a second term before Monday.

Few of the mayors second-term agenda items, however, match the ambition of some of his first-term accomplishments, such as returning the School District to local control or enacting the sweetened beverage tax to fund pre-K, community schools, and renovations of recreation centers, parks, and libraries.

All 17 members of City Council, four of whom took office for the first time, were also sworn in Monday morning for four-year terms. And the ceremony included oaths of office for Register of Wills Tracey L. Gordon and Sheriff Rochelle Bilal  who both unseated longtime incumbents in Democratic primary elections last year.

Council President Darrell L. Clarke, reelected to a third term in the top leadership post, said lawmakers would focus on lifting 100,000 Philadelphia residents out of poverty by 2024. This is our moonshot moment, he said, reminding the audience of the ambition, and success, of the Apollo space program in 1969.

There also was a rare shakeup in leadership on Council: Cherelle L. Parker unseated Bobby Henon as Democratic majority leader.

The vote, finalized during Monday mornings inauguration ceremony, is the sharpest rebuke yet of Henon from his colleagues since he and other officials with the local Electricians union were indicted on federal corruption and fraud charges last year.

 READ MORE: Philadelphia City Council gets a leadership shakeup, with Cherelle Parker beating Bobby Henon as majority leader

After Kenney took the oath of office on a Bible held by his mother, Barbara, he said his focus on education and other issues in his second term will also be part of an effort to reduce gun violence in the city.

I cant control the guns, and the federal government and state wont do anything about it," he told reporters after the inauguration ceremony. "So we can control education investment, we can control job training and job access, and thats where were going.

On education, Kenney plans to continue to increase funding for the School District and to focus on making Community College of Philadelphia more affordable and accessible through a last dollar model that would help students with the shortfall between their contributions and financial aid awards.

On transportation, the mayor wants to add 40 miles of protected bike lanes on city streets and to support the planned redesign of SEPTAs bus routes.

And Kenney vowed to begin street sweeping in every neighborhood by the end of his second term, reiterating a campaign promise he made in his first run that has proved to be a complicated one to carry out.

To address climate change, Kenney plans to hire a chief resilience officer," who will identify potential threats to public and private entities in the city caused by global warming.

Kenney began his term by signing two executive orders. One created the Office of Children and Families. Cynthia Figueroa, who was previously commissioner of the Department of Human Services, was appointed as deputy mayor for the Office of Children and Families.

Figueroa will serve as a member of the mayors cabinet and focus on improving coordination among agencies that serve children. She will oversee the Department of Human Services, the community schools program, and pre-K. The latter two functions were previously part of the Mayors Office of Education, which will now focus on working with the School District and CCP. The new office also will work closely with the School District.

All of our children deserve to grow up healthy in safe, loving homes and prepared for the future, Kenney said Monday afternoon as he signed the executive order in City Hall. We know that unfortunately not all children have that opportunity."

The other executive order requires diversity training in city departments and the creation of racial equity plans for every city agency, evaluating whether any services are administered in a discriminatory way.

For example," Kenney said, well reform burdensome fines and fees to bring fairness to more residents, and well provide more support to returning citizens so they can contribute to our society in a meaningful way.
In 1998, after a rampaging Taliban conquered the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, around a dozen Iranian diplomats posted in the Iranian consulate went missing. For weeks, it was believed that they were in Taliban custody. A livid Iran demanded their immediate release. Iran pressured the Taliban handlers in Islamabad who, as is their wont, insisted that they had no control over their proxies.

1998 redux

To mount further pressure, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard held the largest ever military exercises along the border with Afghanistan. Quite like dire predictions of a wider war breaking out  being peddled by even seasoned analysts and observers  after the assassination of the shadowy Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, there was a consensus back then that Iran would do something drastic against the Taliban, who continued to deny any knowledge about the whereabouts of the missing Iranian diplomats.

People attend the funeral procession for Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani in Ahvaz, Iran. (Photo: Reuters)

A couple of weeks later, the news broke that nine of the 11 Iranian diplomats had been killed when the Taliban captured Mazar. There was outrage in Iran. Massive demonstrations were taken out, including outside the Pakistan embassy in Tehran. Iran now had a casus belli and war seemed inevitable. The then Pakistan Army Chief, Gen Jehangir Karamat, feared a disastrous war that would devastate the Islamic world.

But nothing of the sort happened. After making a huge song and dance, the Iranians piped down. Forget proportionate retaliation, there was virtually nothing that Iran did against the Taliban. Against the backdrop of the assassination of Soleimani and the over-the-top predictions of how Iran will respond and retaliate, the Mazar-e-Sharif episode is instructive.

Iran might have convinced the world, especially the usual suspects in Western media and academia (yes, the same lot that seems to think that India is in the throes of an Arab Spring-like movement over the Citizenship Amendment Act) that they will exact harsh revenge from the US. But the Iranians are neither stupid nor suicidal. While it is never smart to underestimate an adversary like Iran, it is also foolish to overestimate their ability and capacity. Iran has over-extended itself in the region, has an economy which is on the ropes and is confronting serious internal challenges.

Tehran is pragmatic

This is not to say that the Iranian regime is fragile or on the brink of collapse; certainly not. But it also doesnt have space to mess with a superpower like the US and its regional and global allies and partners. Iran cannot expect either Russia or China to have its back in an open confrontation with the US. Therefore, while there is a reasonably high probability that there will be some response (over and above the impotent shows of defiance and threats of fires of hell engulfing the US and its allies), Iran will, in all likelihood, try and ensure this response doesnt violate the threshold of tolerance of the US. Otherwise, it will put both sides on an escalation spiral and, finally, ignite a war that no one wants, no one can afford and no one can really win.

Demonstrators attend a protest outside US Consulate in Istanbul against the killing of Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani. (Photo: Reuters)

Chances are that Iran will double down on its asymmetric, and to an extent deniable, assets to retaliate. Instead of targeting the US directly, these non-state or para-state assets will be used to target US allies and/or interests. Of course, the US would have factored this in before deciding to take Soleimani out. On Irans part, while it is likely to calibrate its retaliation to not violate US red-lines, it always runs the risk of violating the red-lines of US allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia. Until now, the Saudis have absorbed the blows delivered by Iran without retaliating. But for how long?

A stable Middle East?

Iran has for long been upping the ante in the Middle East through its proxies, and other countries havent been able to counter Iranian provocations effectively. The Saudis along with Emiratis tried it in Yemen but failed. The Israelis have serious concerns about the Iranian assistance and influence on Hamas and Hezbollah. Therefore, Iran felt emboldened to keep pushing the envelope.

Until Soleimanis killing, whatever pushback there was against Iran did not make a difference. It was always below the level at which Iran would start getting deterred. It might seem counter-intuitive at this point, but the possibility that the killing of Soleimani may actually make the Middle East more stable, or even manageable, cannot entirely be ruled out.

A lot will depend on the calculations and, of course, miscalculations that are inherent in the obtaining situation. The sort of fear-mongering and petrified analysis of American politicians and analysts might end up convincing Iran to take some action which, otherwise, it would be extremely reluctant to take. However, the sort of hysterical rhetoric emanating from Tehran could force the Iranian regime into a commitment trap and push it to enter into an escalation spiral that leads to war. Even so, Soleimani isnt likely to become the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the 21st Century.

(Courtesy of Mail Today)

Also read: As Iran looks to the East, India must not lose sight of it
The first British person to go into space said she believes aliens are real  and they may be among us.

Helen Sharman made history in May 1991 as the first Brit to go to space when she was launched on the spacecraft Soyuz for eight days and visited the Soviet-operated space station Mir. She told the Observer about her belief in extraterrestrial forces in an interview published Sunday.

There are so many billions of stars out there in the universe that there must be all sorts of different forms of life, she said.

She said the beings may not be made of carbon and nitrogen  two of the composite elements in the human body  but rather of materials unseen by the human eye.

Its possible theyre here right now and we simply cant see them, Sharman said.

Elsewhere in the interview, she pointed out the sexism in the assumption that the first British astronaut must have been a man. "People often describe me as the first British woman in space, but I was actually the first British person," she said. "Its telling that we would otherwise assume it was a man."

Sharman, 56, is a chemist at Imperial College in London. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY.

Though Sharman may be one of the first astronauts to share their beliefs in the alien unknown so publicly, she isn't alone. Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, when asked on Twitter if he believed in life outside Earth, responded yes  without any further context.

Follow Joshua Bote on Twitter: @joshua_bote

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: First British astronaut Helen Sharman says aliens exist, live among us
India vs Sri Lanka, 1st T20I: Guwahati crowd breaks into impromptu Vande Mataram

India and Sri Lanka's 1st T20I in Guwahati was abandoned due to damp weather, but spectators at the Barsapara Cricket Stadium, warmed the hearts of Indian fans all over the world by breaking into impromptu singing of A. R. Rahman's version of 'Vande Mataram'.

Indian fans were geared up and raring to cheer the team at India's first Twenty20 International (T20I) of the year 2020. Photo Courtesy: BCCI Twitter

Indian captain Virat Kohli had won his first toss for the new decade and had chosen to field. But the heavens opened up soon after the toss resulting in an announcement that the match would be delayed due to rain.

Captain @imVkohli has won the toss and elects to bowl first in the 1st @Paytm T20I against Sri Lanka.#INDvSL pic.twitter.com/V2a6ujWHrK  BCCI (@BCCI) January 5, 2020

The ground was still damp and the outfield worse when the two captains and match officials inspected the pitch more than an hour later, resulting in the match being abandoned due to rain.

Next inspection at 9.30 PM IST.



*fingers crossed* pic.twitter.com/pT5wf61yiV  BCCI (@BCCI) January 5, 2020

One would have expected fans to be morose when it rained on their match, without a single ball being bowled, but not the Guwahati fans.

With their mobile torches held high they rendered a goosebumps raising Vande Mataram, singing as one voice in a salute to their motherland India.

The weather was damp but this video, posted by BCCI on social media, captioned 'Guwahati, you beauty', is sure to warm many hearts.

Indian and Sri Lankan teams will travel to Indore for the next T20I which is scheduled to be held on Tuesday as part of this three-game series.
Police in Germany shot dead a knifeman who ran towards them shouting 'Allahu Akbar' just hours after armed officers in France shot another attacker and two days after a man was stabbed to death in Paris.

The 37-year-old man first hit a patrol car with an unidentified object before rushing towards officers wielding a knife.

He was shot dead when he ignored warnings to stop the attack in Gelsenkirchen at around 7.40pm last night.

A police spokesman said the attacker was a Turkish national who lived in the city and had previous convictions for violent crimes.

The man was shot at around 7.40pm on Sunday evening in front of the South Police Station in Gelsenkirchen in the west of the country

The spokesman said: 'Two police officers were in front of the station in a patrol car.

'A man ran past the patrol car and suddenly hit the car with an object. The officials asked him to stop. The man attacked the officers with his arm raised and the object.'

The spokesman said the attacker had a knife in his other hand that he tried to hide behind his back.

One of the officers shot him dead after he ignored orders to stop and continued to threaten the officers and shouting 'Allahu akbar', he said.

The attack came just hours after a similar attack in Metz, France, when a knifeman was shot and wounded by police after threatening passersby and shouting 'Allahu Akbar' - meaning God is great in Arabic.

Police officers were pictured on the scene today following the attack in the French city of Metz

Police officers rushed to the scene in Metz where they managed to get the suspect on the floor (left and right)

The 28-year-old, who was shot in the legs, was 'known to be radicalised' and had a personality disorder, Metz public prosecutor Christian Mercuri said.

He was on an 'S-file' in France, meaning he was considered to be a serious threat to national security because of his obsession with radical Islam, including groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

It followed a knife attack on Friday in Paris which left one dead and two injured.

Nathan Chiasson, 22, who was reportedly wearing a suicide vest and no shoes, was shot dead by police in the Hautes-Bruyeres park at around 2pm.

France has suffered several major attacks by Islamist militants in recent years.

Co-ordinated bombings and shootings in November 2015 at the Bataclan theatre and other sites around Paris killed 130 people - the deadliest attacks in France since World War Two.

The attack happened in Metz (stock image above) just days after another attack hit France

French police secure an area in Villejuif near Paris, France, January 3, 2020 after police shot dead a man who tried to stab several people in a public park

Suicide bombers pledging allegiance to ISIS targeted the Stade de France, cafes, restaurants and the Bataclan music venue, where 90 died.

The same year two gunmen linked to Al-Qaeda broke into the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and butchered 17 people dead inside and three outside.

In July 2016, 86 people were killed and more than 400 injured when a 19 tonne truck was deliberately driven into crowds on the seafront promenade in Nice.

The terrorist, a Tunisian immigrant, was shot dead by police.

During the same month, two ISIS terrorists murdered an 86-year-old Catholic priest during a church service in Normandy.

Germany has also been targeted. In December 2016, 11 people died and 55 were injured when a truck ploughed into a Christmas market.

Just months before, an asylum seeker stabbed five people on a train near Wurzburg, while a Syrian refugee blew himself up outside a music festival in Ansbach injuring 15.
Oregon States stunning 76-68 win at Colorado on Sunday is a gift that is beginning to give in various ways.

The win over the Buffaloes  who came into Sunday No. 18 in the NCAA NET rankings  is earning rewards in national rankings, including one that matters to the Beavers goal of reaching the NCAA Tournament.

In the NCAA NET rankings, a key metric in determining the NCAA tourney field, OSU jumped 22 places to No. 56. The Beavers have been as high as 39 this season, but fell into the 80s two weeks ago after a humiliating loss at Texas A&M.

In another prominent college ranking, Oregon State is No. 66 on KenPom.com. The Beavers were 82 before Sundays game.

The win also landed Oregon State into Jay Bilas Index of the countrys top 68 teams. The Beavers are No. 66 in Bilas latest iteration.

The Beavers did not receive any votes in the AP Top 25 that was released Monday morning.

Oregon State can continue to improve its profile this week when the Beavers play host to Arizona State and Arizona. A win over the Wildcats would particularly resonate as they are No. 13 in NCAA NET.

--Nick Daschel | ndaschel@oregonian.com | @nickdaschel

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Regular Maintenance of Your Car Will Payback When You Decide to Sell it

Without regular maintenance, everything will reach a point of fatigue and loss its value, be it a person, a product or machine. Thus, the same applies to cars as well. Regular maintenance of your vehicle will benefit you in more ways than one. The most obvious being car performance, followed by preventing costly repairs in the long run.

However, a lot of people mistake car maintenance as just fuelling up or an occasional engine oil change. They dont realize there is so much more to maintaining your car. The best way to go about maintaining your vehicle is to leave it to an expert. There are several companies that deal with everything that has to do with your car. From repairs, dealerships to regular maintenance, they will provide full-fledged services. Carswitch is one of the most reputed companies that deal with cars. If you are looking for how to sell cars in UAE, they might one of the best choices for you.

The most important advantage of regularly sending your car for maintenance is that your car will stand more value when you sell it. Here are few other benefits of doing the same:

Safety Aspect  A small mishap in the mechanism of your car can cause big risks to you. We all know rash driving is directly related to the condition of your car, similarly regular maintenance also stands for the same. Sometimes small problems might go unnoticed and may pose as big problems later on. Boosts performance  Have you noticed sometimes your clutch might get tight or your car may make weird noises. This could be due to a small defect somewhere in the mechanism or engine that cannot be resolved by yourself. Regular maintenances will ensure that these issues dont turn up and boosts the overall performance of your car, in turn boosting your happiness too. Improves fuel efficiency  Mileage and fuel is a major factor that one considers when deciding to buy a car. People want to know how much fuel the car drinks up as this directly affects the cost of having a car. Regular servicing and regular engine oil change improves the fuel efficiency of your car, which is a big bonus when selling your car. Prolong cars life cycle  Considering all the benefits the car receives from getting serviced regularly, the cars lifespan also automatically increases. Lowers cost of operations  Many people are under the wrong assumption that servicing cars is a cost burden to them. However, it is important to remember that these regular expenses might save you a lot of money in the long term and is actually an investment in prolonging the life of your car. Gives you peace of mind  regardless of whether everything is perfect, there might be some anxiousness in your mind if you arent sure about the condition of your car. Knowing that your car has been serviced and cared by professionals in cars, will give you the peace of mind that there are no problems and you can have a safe and peaceful drive. Increases the resale value of your car  Undoubtedly, this has got to be the most valuable benefit of them all. You always want to make sure your money is spent on a good investment. All the above benefits will add on to a good resale value for your car when you decide to sell it.

Selling your car might be quite hard on you, emotionally as well as practically. You can reduce the burden you will have to face during this time, by investing in regular car maintenance. If you are looking for used cars for sale in Dubai, you can find some good ones online. Carswitch is always a preferred option in the region of UAE. Think no more, Invest wisely.

By Ruchi Mahajan

 2020 Copyright Ruchi Mahajan - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




An adorable service dog took a day off to relax as she met her favorite Disney character Stitch.

Ezra, a golden retriever, looked ecstatic as she whimpered and cuddled up next to the Lilo & Stitch mascot at the Magic Kingdom in Florida.

The puppy, who is nearly a year old and from Tennessee, seems seems excited as she playfully pulls back and lies on all fours during the video.

The puppy, who is nearly a year old and from Tennessee, seems seems excited as she playfully pulls back and lies on all fours during the video taken at the Magic Kingdom in Florida

Ezra is pictured outside the Magical Kingdom in Florida where she met a mascot version of Stitch

And after further reassurance from Ellianna Blair, her owner, the dog's tail begins madly wagging.

Ezra sniffs at the giant blue costume as the mascot sits down on the ground to be closer to her.

She then slowly crawls up to Stitch and rolls on to her side to be closer to her favorite character.

After gentle reassurance from Ellianna Blair, her owner (right), the dog grows in confidence, her tail begins to wag and she crawls up to the mascot and sniffs the costume

They then play together as the dog jumps around on the ground and Stitch pats the floor in front of her.

The camerawoman says: 'If you had a ball, boy, she'd be in there with you.'

In one cute moment, Ezra puts her paws on the mascot's hands and lets him stroke her head.

Owner Ms Blair, who posted the footage online in December, and who has a form of hyperactive nervous system on top of a spine injury, said: 'I'm so proud of her though, she kept all four paws on the ground the whole time and regained her focus right after.'

She also revealed that her uncle played Pleakley in the 2002 animated movie.
When you do the math for the four-day workweek, something doesn't quite compute. For those who put in a 10-hour day for four days, you're still working 40 hours.

In fact, some companies that have experimented by eliminating one day of the workweek have still told employees to work the same number of hours.

That doesn't seem helpful to me.

Before Sanna Marin became Finland's prime minister in December, she suggested something radically different: perhaps one day the country could experiment with either a four-day work week or six-hour work days, perhaps following the lead of other Scandinavian countries. Marin made the remarks over the summer when she was the minister of transport and communications, according to the Washington Post.

Marin is only 34 and started her new role just last month.

I really like her math.

Researchers who have studied the topic from a productivity standpoint do as well.

Six-hour work days would mean a 30-hour week, which might be a little worrisome if you are the employer trying to persuade your staff to actually finish their tasks.

Sweden has tried a six-hour workday and productivity improved. Microsoft recently announced a successful trial in Japan related to working only four days. The research on this topic suggests that working harder over shorter periods is best because we do optimal work; when we work longer hours, our productivity trails off.

I am living in this scenario and have for many years. I don't keep specific work hours but I know for a fact that I complete most of my tasks in the morning in about a four- to five-hour window. After that, I tend to do more research and miscellaneous tasks.

For me, the morning is when I do the most important work and when I complete the toughest tasks. It has been that way for quite some time.

In the modern workplace? Not so much.

What needs to happen is a shift in mindset from, ironically, a "shift" mindset.

The 40-hour workweek came about because of shift workers in factories. You can blame the Ford Motor Company for that, actually. It instituted shifts for an eight-hour day five days a week way back in 1926. Before that, railroad workers were required to work an eight-hour shift. That all started way back in 1916. It's a bit dated.

We're so far beyond a shift mentality. Most of us still put in hours at night and in the morning, checking email and "working" at the dinner table. It's not about quantity. Workers with integrity and persistence will always get the tasks done and will stay on top of things.

Forcing them to come into the office every day for eight hours doesn't really make sense.

Do you agree? Have you tried something new with employees or do you work a shorter shift? Post on my Twitter feed with what has worked and not worked at your company.
RIO RANCHO  Looking back, Makila Furcap remembers not wanting to move with her mother from Flagstaff, Arizona, to Rio Rancho.

Almost five years later, shes come a long way  more than the 400 or so miles from Flag to the City of Vision.

Makila (muh-KI-luh), 16, was wary of leaving her hometown, grandparents and the nearness of the Navajo Nation in the winter of 2015. But she and her mother, Shannon James, who had a new job as a medical assistant at UNM-Sandoval Regional Medical Center, made the move, and Makila found herself with a new batch of friends at Eagle Ridge Middle School.

At the beginning, I did (fit in), she said. A lot of people kind of accepted me, but down the line, you know, middle schoolers nowadays get into trouble and thats what happened.  Im not friends with them any more.

Makila left that group and stayed out of trouble.

People here (at CHS) are nice, she said. Its a big change.

She has plenty of friends today, the Cleveland High junior said, and a new title  Miss Indian Rio Rancho Public Schools  bestowed upon her at the annual Native American Pageant held by RRPS on Nov. 21.

Although her grandparents were raised and lived on the Navajo reservation, Makilas mother spent many years in the Phoenix area, so Makila is basically a regular 21st century teen  but with respect for her heritage, evident when she wears her turquoise squash-blossom jewelry in the hallways of CHS.

I lived with my grandparents most of the time, so whatever traditions they grew up with, they would try to put that on me and my mom; I grew up with whatever they taught me, she explained.

Makila has been playing the viola for five years, and is in the CHS orchestra and active in DECA. Her hobbies are painting and photography.

She has her eye on a career as a doctor in radiology, so shes already looking ahead to her college years, starting with a couple of years at Central New Mexico Community College and then a transfer to the University of New Mexico.

Over the summer, I did this health sciences program, she said, which led to thinking about a medical career. It was like a month, almost, and we had people from UNM hospitals come and talk about their jobs, and we got to shadow people in their jobs.

One of the people she shadowed inspired her after Makila heard how the professional had begun her career path with classes at CNM.

Makila said shes sure the tougher challenges at CHS, compared to those in Flagstaff, should help her focus on her career dream. Shes taking Advanced Placement classes in U.S. history and English literature.

Sadly, she said, the U.S. history course doesnt include much about manifest destiny and what Native Americans faced in the 1800s.

They just go over it really fast, she said. We went over the first Native Americans and that was probably it.  It should be more included, because not a lot of people have background knowledge of what happened, and I think it kind of affects how kids think now. When they talk about Native kids, they dont really think about what theyre saying.

Still, she says, I feel comfortable and happy here, wishing more Native American youth would become involved with their heritage and, as far as the girls are concerned, compete in the next Miss Indian RRPS pageant.

Kind of what made me want to sign up for this (recent pageant) was, in school, I saw there wasnt that much participation from the Native kids, Makila said. The counselor here does her best to get more kids involved. I remember the first meeting I went to  there was like me and three other girls that attended.

I thought, education-wise, I could be a voice to kind of improve the education here for the Natives, like bringing in more language classes here, like Navajo and Keres (spoken at several pueblos in New Mexico).

She said, given that obtaining foreign language credits at CHS was mandatory, she would have preferred Navajo over Spanish, but her native tongue isnt offered there.
He said the AAP government and the Congress were to blame for it.

New Delhi: Continuing his tirade against the Congress Party over the amended Citizenship Act, BJP president and Union home minister Amit Shah on Monday accused senior Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, of misleading the minorities over the CAA. The BJP president also accused Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal of being responsible for riots and breach of the peace in the national capital over the citizenship law. Mr Shah alleged that Mr Gandhi and Mr Kejriwal speak the launguage of Pakistan.

Accusing Mr Gandhi of identifying himself with rioters, Mr Shah said the country is seeing the Congress leader supporting rioters and Delhi bore the brunt of riots for four days in the recent violent protests over the CAA. He said the AAP government and the Congress were to blame for it.

The new law was brought in by the Narendra Modi government to give citizenship to the minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who sought refuge in India, the BJP president said, but the Congress and the AAP, especially Rahul and Priyanka, are misleading the minorities in the entire country... They are telling them you will lose your citizenship due to CAA. There is no provision in the amended law that takes away anyones citizenship... Why are you lying? ...The country is watching with binoculars Rahul Gandhi supporting the rioters.

Mr Shah said the Congress and AAP were misleading the youth and the people of Delhi and have committed the sin of burning the national capital in the fire of riots.

Unashamed, they are still saying they will give legal aid to those behind the riots, go to their houses and take care of them, he added.

Accusing Mr Gandhi and Mr Kejriwal of speaking the language of Pakistan, Mr Shah said both demanded proof from the PM when the armed forces had conducted surgical strikes on terror camps in Pakistan. No one had the courage to revoke Article 370. Modiji did it in one stroke. Our flag is flying high in Kashmir. No one can separate Kashmir from India now, Mr Shah said.

On the Ram Mandir, Mr Shah accused the Congress of having double standards and of delaying the resolution of the issue for votebank politics. Dont worry. Let Rahul, Kejriwal and company do whatever they want. A sky-touching temple will be built in Ayodhya, he said.
The anger over violence in Delhi's JNU spilled onto roads in Pune where members of several groups staged protests on Monday, while the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad held its own demonstration and blamed Leftist groups for the attack on students and teachers.

Violence had broken out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus. At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) president Aishe Ghosh, were injured.

The attack inside the prestigious university triggered protests in several parts of the country. The Left-controlled JNUSU and the ABVP blamed each other for the violence.

In Pune, functionaries and members of a clutch of organisations, including Yuvak Kranti Dal, Rashtra Seva Dal, Navjawan Bharat Sabha and Swaraj Abhiyan, held a protest near the collectrate in the heart of the city and strongly denounced the JNU violence.

The protesters, united under the banner of 'We the people of India', submitted a memorandum to the district administration seeking suspension of JNU Vice-Chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar over the mayhem.

They said the attack in the campus took place in presence of police and it, therefore, meant the administration led by Kumar was "supportive of the act".

The memorandum demanded that the incident be probed by a panel of retired judges and the guilty be brought to book.

Calling the JNU incident horrific, the memorandum said the JNU violence was part of efforts going on over the last one month to "trample values enshrined in the Constitution".

In the recent past, Pune has seen protests against the new citizenship law.

Governments led by the BJP at the Centre and several states were "suppressing" people protesting peacefully, it claimed.

A similar protest took place outside the Garware College where speakers condemned the JNU violence and blamed Sangh Parivar-linked outfits for it.

The ABVP, which has been accused of being behind the JNU incident, on its part, held a protest in the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) and blamed Leftists groups for the attack.

"Since a lot of people are coming out in support of the Citizenship Amendment Act, Leftists outfits are rattled and are resorting to violence, thrashing students and damaging property," said ABVP member Anil Thombre.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Moscow on Saturday to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid growing tensions in the Middle East and elsewhere, officials said Monday.

Merkel and Putin will discuss "current international questions," said Steffen Seibert, the chancellor's spokesman. Those will include Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Ukraine and bilateral ties.

"Russia is an important player on the world stage and as a permanent member of the (UN) Security Council it's also indispensable when it comes to solving political conflicts," Seibert said. Germany is currently a non-permanent member of the Security Council.

Germany and Russia are among the world powers that have been trying to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran after the US withdrew from the agreement unilaterally in 2018.

Merkel has already spoken with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday about the situation in the Middle East, Seibert said.

Germany has offered to mediate between all parties following the killing of Iranian Gen Qassem Soleimani in a US airstrike in Iraq last week.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who will accompany Merkel to Moscow, spent "all weekend on the phone" with his European and American counterparts, his spokesman Rainer Breul told reporters.

He added that talks with the Iranian foreign minister were planned soon. Germany may struggle to portray itself as an honest broker between Washington and Tehran, however.

Iran summoned Germany's charge d'affaires in Tehran to the foreign ministry Sunday to express annoyance over comments by German officials that suggested Berlin considered Soleimani's killing to be justified.

Asked to elaborate on about Germany's stance, Merkel's spokesman said that the killing of Soleimani "was preceded by Iranian actions," citing attacks on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and the US Embassy in Baghdad.

"We have always stressed, and perhaps this is an opportunity to do so once more, that we see these regional activities by (Iran) in particular in a very critical way and that they play a negative role in this region," Seibert said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(CNN)  Kenya's military said it killed at least four terrorists Sunday in repelling an attack on an airstrip located near a US military base.

A US service member and two civilian contractors working for the Defense Department were killed in the attack, according to US Africa Command.

In a statement, Kenya's Defense Forces (KDF) said there had been an attempt to breach security at Manda Airstrip -- which is near the Camp Simba US base -- but it had been "successfully repulsed."

"Four terrorists' bodies have so far been found," the KDF said in the statement. "The airstrip is safe."

Al Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack in Lamu county, near Kenya's border with Somalia.

US Africa Command -- which is responsible for military relations with nations on the continent -- said Africa Command and Kenya Defense forces repelled the attack. Africa Command later reported the US deaths.

"Working alongside our Kenyan partners, the airfield is cleared and still in the process of being fully secured," Africa Command said Sunday.

Al-Shabaab said the base was used by both American and Kenyan military personnel, and that US military equipment was "destroyed," according to a statement released by the terror group Sunday. Al-Shabaab provided no evidence to support those claims.

"Al-Shabaab has put out multiple press releases exaggerating the security situation on the ground. This practice has proven common place for this terror organization," the Africa Command said.

The airstrip near Camp Simba is also a tourist site frequented by Western visitors to Kenya.

A fire broke out as a result of the breach and affected some fuel tanks at the airstrip, although the blaze was put out, the KDF said.

CNN has reached out to the State Department, the Pentagon, and the US Embassy in Nairobi for comment.

The Somali government, in coordination with US Africa Command, has conducted several retaliatory airstrikes on al-Shabaab targets in recent weeks.

What is Camp Simba?

US troops began operations at Camp Simba in 2017, performing counter-terrorism and border security operations to aid Kenya, according to a US Air Force news release.

It essentially became a permanent US military installation on August 26, 2019, when the American flag was raised over the facility in what the Air Force said signified its "change from tactical to enduring operations."

"The flag flying here today over Camp Simba symbolizes the permanency of our mission and our dedication to our partners," Lt. Col. Cody Smith, commander of the 475th Expeditionary Air Base Squadron, said in August.
There have been memes and commentary on social media platforms with the possibility of a war that could affect the entire globe.

The popular hasthtags included #WWIII, #WorldWar3 and #WorldWarThreeDraft were trending on Twitter which garnered hundreds of thousands of mentions. (Photo: AFP)

Over the weekend, social media was filled to the brim with reactions to the US killing of a top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and World War III hashtags that started trending online. Users have also been seen posting about fears of a U.S. military draft which further spurned on speculation that the third World War could be looming.

The airstrike on Friday which was ordered by US President Donald Trump sent tensions in the Middle East to skyrocket and sparked fears of an all-out war. In turn, Iranian officials vowed retribution for the killing and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei promising to exact harsh revenge.

Later on, on Saturday, Trump issued a stark threat to Iran on Twitter by stating that the US had targeted dozens of Iranian strikes in the event of a reprisal.

The popular hasthtags included #WWIII, #WorldWar3 and #WorldWarThreeDraft were trending on Twitter which garnered hundreds of thousands of mentions.

Me and the boys on missile duty during #WWIII pic.twitter.com/pdfh29eT9n  Hatif (@ahmadzadahatif) January 3, 2020

Me dodging Irans bullets, after Trump drafts me to fight for World War 3 #WWIII pic.twitter.com/GhIfYanLIR  Bowling Balling Hoes. (@All_Cake88) January 3, 2020

Jan 1st: New decade going fairly well, all things considered.



Jan 2nd: Australia appears to be on fire.



Jan 3rd: World War III announced.  Have I Got News For You (@haveigotnews) January 3, 2020

Me and my boys when we in Iran and run out of ammo and have to make our own redneck shit #WWIII pic.twitter.com/t7Qeb32SKD  kc (@frofrosagginsxx) January 3, 2020

As per a report by Times of Israel, The possibility of a US military draft also generated thousands of mentions. There have been no official statements indicating that a draft is in the making, and the last US conscription took place in 1973 during the Vietnam War.

The US Selective Service, which maintains lists of potential draft recruits, on Friday sought to calm fears amid rumors of a draft, writing on Twitter that it was conducting business as usual. The agency said its website was struggling under high traffic volumes due to the spread of misinformation.
C omedian Jim Davidson will be questioned by British Transport Police over a claim he racially abused a black train attendant.

Mr Davidson told The Sun that a row at Euston station in London had taken place but denied it was a racial incident.

The Generation Game presenter claims that the train attendant was white South African.

The 66-year-old said: I wasnt racist and the man was white.

Ive spoken to the police and told them what happened.

I didnt know they wanted to speak to me again. It is a joke. I was not racist.

Mr Davidson claimed the row, which happened last October, began after the attendant would not let him on a train without his older person's rail pass.

British Transport Police said in a statement: "British Transport Police are aware of a report of racial abuse on board a Virgin Trains service travelling to Milton Keynes Central."
Forensic officers at the crime scene in Finsbury Park after a man was stabbed to death on Friday evening. (PA Images)

A series of violent crimes has marked the new year.

A number of murders took place on New Years Eve and New Years Day. Further fatal incidents, attempted murders and assaults then happened over the first few days of the decade.

Victims include a middle-aged couple, teenagers at a house party and a mum of six.

Police expect crime at the end of the year, and arrests spike during New Year celebrations.

Among the alcohol-fuelled arrests were a number of serious cases, with families starting 2020 with tragedy.

Stacey Cooper, 34, was found dead in Redcar on New Year's Eve.

Redcar, 31 December

A man has been charged with the murder of a mother of six.

Emergency services attended an address in Malham Gill, Redcar, where they found the body of 34-year-old Stacey Cooper.

Liam Murray, 27, has been charged with her murder and appeared at Teesside Magistrates Court on Thursday.

A family statement said: Stacey was a much loved mother-of-six, a treasured daughter and sister.

There are no words to express our sadness.

Stacey was a wonderful mother and the loss of her to her children is unimaginable.

Police at the scene in Duffield, Derbyshire after two people were found dead in a house. (PA Images)

Duffield, 1 January

An estranged husband appeared in court on Monday 6 January charged with murdering his wife and her lover.

Rhys Hancock, 39, of Portland Street, Etwall, Derbyshire, is accused of killing Helen Hancock, 39, and Martin Griffiths, 48, at their former marital home.

The pair were found to have been stabbed to death at the house in Duffield on New Years Day.

Mrs Hancock, of Duffield, Derbyshire, was a teacher and had three children, aged nine, four and three, with her estranged husband.

Helen Hancock (nee Almey) and Martin Griffiths. (Derbyshire Constabulary)

Mr Griffiths, of Derby, was a father of two. The pair had suffered multiple stab wounds at the house after police were called at 4.11am .

Rhys Hancock appeared at Southern Derbyshire Magistrates Court for a 10-minute hearing on Monday.

Isaiah Usen-Satchell was stabbed to death on New Year's Day.

Sheffield, January 1

Isaiah Usen-Satchell was stabbed to death after being involved in an altercation in the Norfolk Park area of the South Yorkshire city.

Three men from Rotherham  two aged 18 and one aged 20  were arrested on Wednesday and released on bail.

Story continues

A further two men  aged 22 and 27, both also from Rotherham  were arrested on suspicion of murder.

Mr Usen-Satchell was described by his university, Leeds Trinity, as a real character with a big personality while sister Iman Anne Usen-Satchell said she was heartbroken.

Anyone with information can call 101 quoting incident number 458 of January 1 2020 or speak to Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

West Norwood, 1 January

Three people were arrested after three teenagers were stabbed at a New Years Eve party in south London.

Police were called to Casewick Road at about 12.16am on Wednesday after a fight broke out.

Three males, two aged 17 and one aged 18, had suffered stab injuries and were taken to hospital. The injuries are not life-threatening.

Three people were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

Felixstowe, 1 January

Two women were stabbed in Suffolk early on New Years Day.

Officers were called to Mill Lane, Felixstowe, just after 2am, where a 33-year-old woman had suffered a serious knife wound to her stomach.

A 44-year-old woman had received a knife injury to the shoulder.

Both women were taken to Ipswich Hospital, where the 33-year-old is in a serious but stable condition while the 44-year-old was released following treatment.

A 34-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder on New Years Day.

Police believe everyone involved knew each other.

Harrogate, January 3

Three teenage boys were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a man in his 30s was stabbed in the town centre.

The boys, aged 13, 15 and 16, were questioned over the attack yesterday. Police had been called to Victoria Shopping Centre in the North Yorkshire town at about 4.40am on Friday.

The victim was said to have been seriously hurt in the attack and suffered cuts to his face, back and leg, but the injuries are not life-threatening.

Anyone with information has been urged to contact North Yorkshire Police.

Sussex Police are investigating a man's death in Brighton. (PA Images)

Brighton, January 4

A 24-year-old is believed to have been murdered after police discovered his body on Thursday afternoon.

Billy Henham, 24, of Henfield, West Sussex, was found dead in North Street, Brighton.

A 26-year-old man from Hove, an 18-year-old man from Greenwich and a 16-year-old boy of no fixed address were questioned and released on conditional bail.

Police are appealing for witnesses to come forward.

Detective Chief Inspector Mark Chapman, from the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team, said: Our thoughts remain with Billys family and friends at this difficult time.

We are continuing to conduct enquiries in the city centre and are appealing for any witnesses to come forward.

We would particularly like to hear from anyone who saw Billy on New Years Eve in Brighton from about 6pm onwards.

Anyone with information can call 101 quoting Operation Gatling.

Glasgow, January 4

A 41-year-old man was found seriously injured in Royston Road in the Germiston area on Saturday evening,.

He was treated for stab wounds at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

Detective Alistair Donaldson at Maryhill CID said: We are still trying to establish the motive and exact circumstances surrounding this incident and are reviewing CCTV in the area.

Anyone who was in the area of Royston Road around 9.45 (Saturday) night and may have witnessed a disturbance of some sort is asked to contact police immediately.

Police Scotland is investigating a stabbing in Glasgow. (Jane Barlow/PA Wire)

Slough, January 5

A teenager was stabbed to death in Slough with police arresting two men on suspicion of murder.

Officers were called to Benjamin Lane in Wexham before South Central Ambulance Service took the injured male to hospital. He was later pronounced dead and his next of kin has been informed.

Two 18-year-old men have been arrested on suspicion of murder.

Dejan Avramovic, of Thames Valley Polices Major Crime Unit, said: Members of the public will see an increased police presence whilst we continue to investigate and patrols will be increased in the area.

We would ask anyone with any information or concerns to please speak to one of our officers.

Anyone with any information should call 101 quoting reference 1118 4/1/2020.

Police cordon off Charteris Road close to the junction with Lennox Road in Finsbury Park after a man was stabbed to death on Friday evening. (PA Images)

Forensic officers at the crime scene. (PA Images)

Finsbury Park, January 5

A manhunt for a van driver believed to have been involved in the fatal stabbing of a delivery rider is under way.

Detectives have named the victim as 30-year-old Takieddine Boudhane, who had been riding a motorbike when he was stabbed to death in Finsbury Park on Friday evening.

Police said Mr Boudhane, who worked for Deliveroo and Uber Eats, was involved in an altercation with the driver of a white van at the junction of Lennox Road and Charteris Road.

The van was found in Islington on Sunday and police are carrying out a forensic examination.

Detective Chief Inspector Neil John has appealed for witnesses and people with mobile phone footage to come forward.

He said: The incident itself appears to have been spontaneous and not connected to, or as a result of, anything other than a traffic altercation.
Two overground workers of Hizbul Mujahideen were arrested in Jammu and Kashmirs Kishtwar district, police said on Sunday. Bashir Ahmad Mengnoo of Khraipakhnoo and Wali Mohammad Sheikh of Swarbati were among 10 persons who had been identified by police for providing support to Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Mohammad Amin alias Jehangir Saroori, who is active in the hilly district for the last three decades, a police officer said.

All the 10 persons were booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in police station Dachan on Saturday for their alleged involvement in providing logistic support, finance and transport to the most wanted terrorist, he said.

While Mengnoo and Sheikh were arrested on Saturday itself, the search for others is going on, the officer said, adding they are being questioned. Saroori is one of the longest surviving terrorist who joined Hizbul Mujahideen in the 1990s.
West Orange-Cove CISD recieved nearly $2 million in federal dollars to rebuild a middle school nearly two years after it was damaged by Tropical Strom Harvey.

Rep. John Cornyn, R-Texas, announced the funds in a statement.

In the two years since this historic storm made landfall, Texans have come together seeking strength and a return to normalcy, Sen. Cornyn said. These funds will truly make a difference in helping Texas students and teachers get back on their feet, and I applaud the Trump Administration for their continued commitment to our states recovery.

The funds will be used to rebuild West Orange-Stark Middle School, according to Cornyns office.

The grant was the latest in a growing share of federal assistance dollars given through the Robert T. Stafford Act, which grants authority for the federal government to assist in local disaster aid efforts.

A similar grant was given to the Hardin-Jefferson Independent School District in October, which is being used to replace the contents of Henderson Middle School.

Related: Hardin-Jefferson receives another round of Harvey FEMA funds

Another Southeast Texas school district, Vidor, is using two separate FEMA grants to completely replace two of their schools that were flooded out during Harvey.

Related: Harvey + 2: Storm-damaged Vidor Middle School to be razed

Some students at both Vidor and Hardin-Jefferson are attending school in portable buildings in the mean time.

Officials with the West Orange-Cove CISD were not reached for comment by the time of publication, but more details on the project will come forward in coming months.

isaac.windes@hearstnp.com

twitter.com/isaacdwindes
In Turkey, protesters near the US Consulate in Istanbul chant anti-US slogans during a demonstration against the killing of General Qassem Soleimani (Lefteris Pitarakis/AP)

US President Donald Trump insists Iranian cultural sites are fair game for the US military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so could constitute a war crime under international law.

He also warned Iraq he would levy punishing sanctions if it expelled American troops in retaliation for a US airstrike in Baghdad that killed a top Iranian official.

Mr Trumps comments on Sunday came amid escalating tensions in the Middle East following the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Irans elite Quds force.

Iran has vowed to retaliate and Iraqs parliament responded by voting on Sunday to oust US troops based in the country.

Mr Trump first raised the prospect of targeting Iranian cultural sites Saturday in a tweet. Speaking with reporters as he flew back to Washington from his holiday stay in Florida on Sunday he doubled down, despite international prohibitions.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, Trump said.

The killing of General Soleimani sparked outrage in the Middle East, including in Iraq, where more than 5,000 American troops are still on the ground 17 years after the US invasion.

Expand Close President Donald Trump waves, with first lady Melania Trump and their son Barron Trump, arrive back in Washington on Sunday night (Alex Brandon/AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp President Donald Trump waves, with first lady Melania Trump and their son Barron Trump, arrive back in Washington on Sunday night (Alex Brandon/AP)

Iraqs parliament voted on Sunday in favour of a non-binding resolution calling for the expulsion of the American forces.

Mr Trump said the US would not leave without being paid for its military investments in Iraq over the years  then said if the troops do have to withdraw, he would hit Baghdad with economic penalties.

We will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, he said. If theres any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.

He added: Were not leaving until they pay us back for it.

The administration has scrambled to contend with the backlash to the killing of General Soleimani. Though he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, the American strike marked a stark escalation in tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US military may well strike more Iranian leaders if the Islamic Republic retaliates. He tip-toed around questions about Mr Trumps threat to attack Iranian cultural sites, a military action that likely would be illegal under the laws of armed conflict and the UN charter.

Mr Pompeo said any US military strikes inside Iran would be legal.

Well behave inside the system, Mr Pompeo said. We always have and we always will.

Mr Trumps warnings rattled some administration officials. One US national security official said the president had caught many in the administration off guard and prompted internal calls for others in the government, including Mr Pompeo, to clarify the matter. The official, who was not authorised to speak publicly, said clarification was necessary to affirm the US military would not intentionally commit war crimes.

Expand Close Mourners surround a truck carrying flag draped coffins of General Qassem Soleimani and his comrades who were killed in last Fridays US drone strike, in the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz on Sunday (Mohammad Mohsenifar/Mehr News Agency/AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Mourners surround a truck carrying flag draped coffins of General Qassem Soleimani and his comrades who were killed in last Fridays US drone strike, in the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz on Sunday (Mohammad Mohsenifar/Mehr News Agency/AP)

Oona Hathaway, an international law professor at Yale and a former national security law official in the Defence Departments legal office, said Mr Trumps threat amounted to a pretty clear promise of commission of a war crime.

The presidents threats to Iran did little to quell Tehrans furore over the death of General Soleimani.

Iranian state television reported the country would no longer abide by any limits of the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with the United States and other world powers. Mr Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018 and stepped up economic sanctions on Tehran  actions that accelerated a cycle of hostilities leading to the last Fridays assassination.

The administration also pushed back on Sunday on questions about the legality of the strike on General Soleimani.

Expand Close In Pakistan, a Shiite Muslim illuminates a portrait of General Soleimani during a rally to condemn his killing (Ikram Suri/AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp In Pakistan, a Shiite Muslim illuminates a portrait of General Soleimani during a rally to condemn his killing (Ikram Suri/AP)

Mr Pompeo said the administration would have been culpably negligent in its duty to protect the United States if it had not killed him. He did not provide evidence for his previous claims that General Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on Americans. Instead of arguing an attack had been imminent, he said it was inevitable.

We watched him continue to actively build out for what was going to be a significant attack  thats what we believed  and we made the right decision, he said.

We continue to prepare for whatever it is the Iranian regime may put in front of us within the next 10 minutes, within the next 10 days, and within the next 10 weeks.

Some Congressional Democrats were sceptical.

I really worry that the actions the president took will get us into what he calls another endless war in the Middle East. He promised we wouldnt have that, said Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senates top Democrat.

Mr Schumer said Mr Trump lacked the authority to engage militarily with Iran and Congress needs a new war powers resolution to be a check on this president. To which Pompeo said: We have all the authority we need to do what weve done to date.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said the administration violated the Constitution by not consulting with Congress in advance.

Congressional staffs received their first briefings from the administration on Friday, and members were expected to be briefed this week.

But Mr Trump made clear on Sunday he sees little reason to give Congress advanced warning if he orders the military to carry out further actions against Iran.

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any US person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner, he wrote on Twitter. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!

Moving swiftly to rebuke Trump for not consulting with Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said late Sunday the House would introduce and vote this week on a war powers resolution to limit the presidents military actions regarding Iran. In a letter to House Democrats, Ms Pelosi called the airstrike provocative and disproportionate and said it had endangered our servicemembers, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran. A similar resolution was introduced in the Senate.
SCHAUMBURG, Ill., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The arrival of 2020 brings with it a touch of gold as the Emergency Nurses Association begins a year-long celebration of its five decades dedicated to emergency nursing and the vision of founders Anita Dorr and Judith Kelleher.

For 50 years, ENA's mission has focused on being the strongest advocate for emergency nurses and delivering high-quality trauma nursing education. Today, it represents 45,000 members in the United States and more than a dozen countries around the world, creates innovative trauma education and hosts thousands at its education and networking events.

"The legacy established by ENA over the last 50 years has far exceeded the expectations of our pioneering founders Anita Dorr and Judith Kelleher. We honor them every day through the work we do to empower emergency nurses in their EDs and as leaders in the health care world," said ENA President Mike Hastings, MSN, RN, CEN. "While 2020 will be full of celebrations and reflections on our past, 2020 will also be another opportunity for ENA to showcase its important role as a leader in emergency care for years and decades to come."

ENA's golden birthday will be marked throughout the year in a variety of ways  from going gold on its social media platforms to holding a special 50th anniversary celebration in Las Vegas in September as part of Emergency Nursing 2020. The ENA website's 50th anniversary page hosts a virtual historical timeline and information on celebrations at upcoming ENA events. The 50th anniversary year will also feature the premiere of "In Case of Emergency," the documentary film on emergency nurses commissioned by ENA and produced by Carolyn Jones.

The golden anniversary tributes kicked off Monday with a special ENA Podcast episode featuring ENA Historian Joanne Fadale, BSN, RN, FAEN. In the interview, Fadale, who served as president in 1990, talks with emotion about how her connection to Dorr and how ENA has evolved.

"We started from nothing in the basement of Anita Dorr's house. And Judy in her house. The first 20 years we grew like a little bush into a huge tree. Now, we're into a full forest. It's been an unbelievable ride (and) we have so much further to go in the future," said Fadale, whose connection to ENA started when she worked for Dorr early in her career.

Hear the full interview here. And, check out ENA on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for event updates and special anniversary features all year.

About the Emergency Nurses Association

The Emergency Nurses Association is the premier professional nursing association dedicated to defining the future of emergency nursing through advocacy, education, research, innovation, and leadership. Founded in 1970, ENA has proven to be an indispensable resource to the global emergency nursing community. With more than 44,000 members worldwide, ENA advocates for patient safety, develops industry-leading practice standards and guidelines, and guides emergency healthcare public policy. ENA members have expertise in triage, patient care, disaster preparedness, and all aspects of emergency care. Additional information is available at www.ena.org.

ENA Media Contact:

Dan Campana

Senior Manager, Communications

847-460-4017

[email protected]

SOURCE Emergency Nurses Association

Related Links

http://www.ena.org


The Crime Branch of Delhi Police on Monday (January 6) arrested five men, including two Bangladeshi nationals, for their alleged involvement in causing violence during an anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protest recently at Seempuri in North East Delhi.

Delhi Police officials said that besides the two Bangladeshi nationals, two others arrested accused belong to Uttar Pradesh and one to Seemapuri.

The accused have been identified as Ghaziabad resident Mohammad Shoiab (19), Pilibhit resident Mohammad Amir (24) and Seemapuri resident Yusuf (40). The two Bangladeshi nationals have been identified as Mohammad Azad and Mohammad Subhan.

Delhi Police have also detained two juveniles in connection with this case and the two have been sent to the Juvenile Justice Board.

Earlier, a Special Investigating Team (SIT) of Delhi Police had said that illegal Bangladeshi immigrants were involved in the violence that erupted in East Delhi's Seemapuri and Seelampur areas few days ago.

At 15 Bangladeshi infiltrators were identified by SIT who were involved in causing damage to public properties during anti-CAA stir in Seemapuri.
Nine Entertainment will drop the Macquarie Media brand name from its radio division, in a move to focus attention on consumer-facing brands such as 2GB and 3AW.

All Macquarie news bulletins have been brought under the 9News banner as part of the changes, while the radio network will be known in each city by its local call sign, 2GB, 3AW, 4BC and 6PR.

Tom Malone, head of Nine radio Credit:Eddie Jim

The decision comes two months after Nine took control of the radio network, appointing Nines former director of sport Tom Malone to helm the group's radio business.

Mr Malone said the decision was about moving the radio brands "front and centre", however for corporate purposes Macquarie Media will be referred to as Nine Radio.
India on Monday summoned Pakistan's Charg d'affaires Syed Haider Shah and lodged a strong protest over desecration of the Nankana Sahib gurudwara and killing of a Sikh man in Peshawar.

The External Affairs Ministry said the diplomat was conveyed that Pakistan should ensure safety, security and welfare of members of minority communities.

"Pakistan's Charg d'affaires Syed Haider Shah was summoned today to lodge strong protest at the recent acts of vandalism and desecration of the holy Gurdwara Sri Janam Asthan at Nankana Sahib and the targeted killing of minority Sikh community member in Peshawar," the MEA said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Discovery Institute is pleased to announce Tom Shakely , who serves as Chief Engagement Officer at Americans United for Life, has joined the Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism as a Research Fellow where he will focus on human dignity, human rights, and law and policy.

"Tom's passionate and distinctive voice on the human right to life will be a powerful addition to Discovery Institute's interdisciplinary community of scholars and policy advocates," said Steve Buri, President of Discovery Institute.

"We're living through a time of increasingly sophisticated, and ultimately brutal, attacks on human rights," said Wesley J. Smith, Senior Fellow of the Center on Human Exceptionalism. "Tom is a powerful advocate for the principle of universal human rights who understands the importance of asking this central question: 'Does every human life have equal moral value simply and merely because it is human?'"

Tom Shakely serves as Chief Engagement Officer at Americans United for Life, where he hosts "Life, Liberty, and Law," featuring conversations on the human right to life. Tom has spoken on human rights issues at the United Nations, testified to the District of Columbia City Council on conscience rights, and advised on testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and U.S. House of Representatives. Tom holds a B.A. in Political Science from the Pennsylvania State University, M.S. in Bioethics from the University of Mary, and Certification with Distinction in Health Care Ethics from the National Catholic Bioethics Center.

"I've admired the Discovery Institute for its ability to transcend partisanship and factionalism in American life, and I've particularly admired Wesley J. Smith's relentless commitment to engaging issues of human dignity and human rights," said Tom Shakely. "I'm grateful to contribute to the conversation on these essential issues."

Discovery Institute is a public policy think tank whose mission is to advance a culture of purpose, creativity, and innovation. The Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism exists to affirm and uphold the intrinsic nature of human dignity, liberty, and equality, examining the entire spectrum of issues relating to human life in order to inspire, inform, and equip thought and policy leaders with a comprehensive vision of the importance of being human as the predicate to universal human rights and human flourishing.

For more information contact Discovery Institute at Discovery Institute at (206) 292-0401 x1070 or via e-mail at [email protected].

SOURCE Discovery - Center on Human Exceptionalism

Related Links

https://www.discovery.org


Iran Threatens to Retaliate Against America as Soleimani Replacement Vows Revenge

Esmail Qaani, the replacement for the Iranian regimes General Qassem Soleimani, said at Soleimanis funeral over the weekend that Iran would avenge Soleimanis death as another military official threatened to target United States assets.

A U.S. airstrike took out Soleimani and other Iranian officials in Baghdad early Jan. 2.

Thousands attended Soleimanis funeral, during which the regimes Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was reportedly crying as he prayed over the caskets of those who were killed. Soleimanis daughter, Zeinab, was among the speakers at the funeral.

Families of the American soldiers in western Asia have witnessed Americas humiliation in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yemen and Palestine wars, and will spend their days waiting for the death of their children, she said Monday, according to a translation from the Associated Press.

Two military leaders also added new verbal threats.

Protesters chant anti-U.S. slogans during a demonstration against the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, close to United States consulate in Istanbul on Jan. 5, 2020. (Lefteris Pitarakis/AP Photo)

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, left, awards Irans Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan with the Medal of Honor for his role in the implementation of a nuclear deal with world powers, in Tehran on Feb. 8, 2016. (Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)

Maj. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, the primary military adviser to Khamenei, told CNN that Iran would not use Iran-backed militias for the next strike, but would strike directly against U.S. military sites.

It might be argued that there could be proxy operations. We can say America, Mr. Trump, has taken action directly against usso we take direct action against America, he said. Our reaction will be wise, well considered and in time, with decisive deterrent effect.

Dehghan claimed that America started the war, adding: The only thing that can end this period of war is for the Americans to receive a blow that is equal to the blow they have inflicted. Afterward they should not seek a new cycle.

Responding to President Donald Trumps threat to target Iranian cultural sites, Dehghan said: If he says 52 we say 300and they are accessible to us. No American military staff, no American political center, no American military base, no American vessel will be safe.

Qaani, Soleimanis replacement as head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, on Monday told state television that there would be retaliatory actions taken.

God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken, Qaani said, according to the Associated Press.

A photo released by the Iraqi Prime Ministers Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike, in Baghdad, Iraq, early on Jan. 2, 2020. (Iraqi Prime Ministers Press Office, via AP)

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive at the White House on Jan. 5, 2020 in Washington. The Trumps were returning from spending the holidays at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Bach, Florida after last weeks U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian military leader, Major Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Trump said on Twitter Saturday that the United States would target Iranian sites, including cultural sites, if Iran attacks the United States again.

Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently hundreds of Iranian protesters, Trump said, referring to Soleimani.

He was already attacking our Embassy, and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!

Trump reiterated his position to reports on Air Force One on Sunday, promising major retaliation if Iran conducts another attack.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, Trump said.
live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

Shabbir Kayyumi

The overall structure of the market looks bullish as long as Nifty is making higher highs and higher lows formation.

However, it is noticeable that the index has formed a small body bearish candlestick pattern in the weekly timeframe.

RSI is trading around 67-levels and sustaining above its 9-DMA and 50-DMA marks which indicates strength in the current upside momentum.

Once Nifty surpasses the resistance zone of 12,300, it can march upwards to 12,500 as the level is near the rising trend line and upper band of Bollinger Band.

Near-term supports are placed near 12,046 which is the last 3 weeks lowest low.

Remember, the 5 week-DMA is near 12,150 level and a decisive close below it will be considered an early sign of trend reversal.

A sustained move above 12,300 level will push prices higher towards Fibonacci extension mark of 12,400 which can even extend towards 12,500 whereas base supports lie near 12,050.

For the Bank Nifty, as long as the index sustains above 31,800, it can rise higher towards 33,000 -33,500 levels. The trading range for the banking index for the week is 31,300-33,500.

Here are three buy calls for the next 3-4 weeks:

Roto Pumps | Buy | LTP: Rs 149.95 | Target: Rs 172 | Stop loss: Rs 134 | Upside: 15%

The stock has been undergoing consolidation for the longer time frame and is on the verge of resuming its prior trend from the polarity area of support.

The momentum indicator MACD has crossed the signal line, indicating a start of a trend. The RSI, too, is above its key 50-mark, indicating positive momentum on its side.

A pause at the area of polarity suggests a significant rebound is likely.

Karnataka Bank | Buy | LTP: Rs 74.20 | Target: Rs 83 | Stop loss: Rs 66 | Upside: 12%

The stock has witnessed decent erosion from the peak of 120 to the currently bottommed out level of Rs 68.

The appearance of a three back to back bullish candle near the support levels, along with RSI bouncing off oversold region, indicates immediate floor near Rs 66-68 zone.

As of now, it indicated a bullish candle to signify strength and has the potential to carry on the momentum further on the upside.

Indicators and oscillators are looking conducive to the price pattern.

Ashok Leyland | Buy | LTP: Rs 83.65 | Target: Rs 92 | Stop loss: Rs 73 | Upside 10%

The stock has decisively broken out from its downward sloping line and is sustaining above the same.

On the daily and weekly chart, the stock has witnessed a shift of trend to the upward, forming base with congestion.

The weekly strength indicator and the momentum indicator stochastic, both are in the positive territory which supports upside momentum to continue in the near-term.

The stock price is sustaining well above all significant moving average which supports bullish sentiment ahead.

(The author is Head of Technical Research at Narnolia Financial Advisors)

: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts on moneycontrol.com are his own and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.
Tensions soaring between U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. (AP/Reuters)



Iran announced a further rollback of its commitments to the troubled international nuclear accord Sunday amid anger over the US killing of a top commander which also prompted Iraq's parliament to demand the departure of American troops.



While vast crowds gathered in Iran's second city of Mashhad as Qasem Soleimani's remains were returned home, the Tehran government said it would forego the "limit on the number of centrifuges" it had pledged to honour in the 2015 agreement which was already in deep trouble.



The announcement was yet another sign of the fallout from Friday's killing of Soleimani in Baghdad in a drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump, which has inflamed US-Iraqi relations and among the rival camps in Washington.



Iran's 2015 nuclear accord with the United Nations Security Council's five permanent members  Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States  plus Germany has been hanging by a thread since the US withdrew unilaterally from it two years ago.



European countries have been pushing for talks with Iran to salvage the deal, inviting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif to Brussels for talks, but the prospect of progress seemed remote after the government's statement on Sunday night.



"Iran's nuclear programme no longer faces any limitation in the operational field", said the statement.



This extends to Iran's capacity for enriching uranium, the level of enrichment carried out, the amount enriched, and other research and development, it said.

"As of now Iran's nuclear programme will continue solely based on its technical needs," it added.





Supporters attend a rally for Qassem Soleimani in southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, on Jan. 5, 2020. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah urged on Sunday its fighters to attack U.S. soldiers in the region in retaliation for the assassination of Iranian top commander Qassem Soleimani by the United States. (Photo by Bilal Jawich/Xinhua)





Supporters shout slogans during a rally for Qassem Soleimani in southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, on Jan. 5, 2020. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah urged on Sunday its fighters to attack U.S. soldiers in the region in retaliation for the assassination of Iranian top commander Qassem Soleimani by the United States. (Photo by Bilal Jawich/Xinhua)



Until now, Iran has said it needs to enrich uranium up to a level of five percent to produce fuel for electricity generation in nuclear power plants.



Tehran said it would continue cooperating "as before" with the International Atomic Energy Agency but the leaders of Germany, France and Britain reacted by urging Iran to rethink its announcement.



"We call on Iran to withdraw all measures that are not in line with the nuclear agreement," Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a joint statement.



The European leaders also urged Iran to refrain from taking "further violent actions or support for them."



"It is crucial now to de-escalate. We call on all the players involved to show utmost restraint and responsibility."





South Korea in dilemma over Hormuz deployment S. Korea to hold NSC meeting on Iran issue Rising oil prices from US-Iran conflict pose risk to Korea Iran supreme leader vows 'severe revenge' for Soleimani killing The Europeans have been among the chorus of voices urging restraint in the aftermath of the drone strike which killed Soleimani, the veteran commander of the Revolutionary Guards' foreign operations.



But as his remains were paraded through the streets of Mashhad, cries of "Revenge, Revenge" echoed through the streets while mourners threw scarves onto the roof of the truck carrying his coffin.



Soleimani's remains had been returned before dawn to the southwestern city of Ahvaz, where the air resonated with Shiite chants and shouts of "Death to America".



Some 5,200 US soldiers are currently stationed across Iraqi bases to support local troops preventing a resurgence of the Islamic State jihadist group.



But the government could be poised to demand they leave after a vote in the Baghdad parliament where caretaker prime minister Adel Abdel Mahdi joined 168 lawmakers  just enough for quorum  to discuss a motion to force US troops.



"The parliament has voted to commit the Iraqi government to cancel its request to the international coalition for help to fight IS," speaker Mohammed Halbusi announced. The cabinet would have to approve any decision but the premier indicated support for an ouster in his speech.



In this file photo taken on January 3, 2020 US President Donald Trump speaks during a 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held at the King Jesus International Ministry in Miami, Florida. - President Donald Trump thumbed his nose January 5, 2020 at critics angered at being kept in the dark over the US killing of a top Iranian general, saying he didn't need Congressional approval  even for a "disproportionate" strike. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been leading the backlash against Trump's decision to authorize a drone strike against Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, an operation that Trump only officially informed Congress about on Saturday  nearly 48 hours after the event. (Photo by JIM WATSON / AFP)

In this file photo taken on June 21, 2017 a US soldier advising Iraqi forces is seen in the city of Mosul, during the ongoing offensive by Iraqi troops to retake the last district still held by the Islamic State (IS) group. - The US military could face its second forced exit from Iraq in a decade after the parliament in Baghdad voted on January 5, 2020 in support of the expulsion of American forces. The Iraqi parliament held an extraordinary session after the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards leader who wielded influence in Iraqi politics and was popular among the majority Shiites.But the risk of withdrawal could be high: the US pullout in 2011 left a security vacuum that allowed the rise of the Islamic State jihadist group  and led to the US military's return. (Photo by MOHAMED EL-SHAHED / AFP)

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reacted by saying he would "take a look at what we do when the Iraqi leadership and government makes a decision" but indicated that he felt American troops were still welcome.



"We are confident that the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there to fight the counterterror campaign," Pompeo said on Fox News.



Two rockets hit near the US embassy in Baghdad late Sunday, the second night in a row that the Green Zone was hit and the 14th time over the last two months that US installations have been targeted.



Pompeo defended the decision to kill Soleimani while insisting that any further US military action against Iran would conform to international law.



Trump triggered accusations that he had threatening a war crime by declaring cultural sites as potential targets in a Tweet on Saturday night.



Zarif drew parallels with the Islamic State group's destruction of the Middle East's cultural heritage following Trump's tweets that sites which were "important to... Iranian culture" were on a list of 52 potential US targets.



"We'll behave lawfully," Pompeo told the ABC network.



House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been leading the backlash against the Soleimani strike, an operation that Trump only officially informed Congress about after the event.



But Trump made light of the calls for him to get Congressional approval in the future, saying such notice was "not required"  and then saying his tweet would serve as prior notification if he did decide to strike against Iran again.




Senator Marsha Blackburn said she has joined Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) to introduce a resolution updating Senate rules to allow a motion to dismiss articles of impeachment for lack of prosecution. They are joined by Senators Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa).

She said the action was "in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosis unprecedented attempt to prevent an impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate."

Senator Blackburn said, After three years of searching for a reason to impeach this president, Democrats in the House cannot seem to find the time to send over the articles of impeachment. Impeachment ought to be reserved for high crimes and misdemeanors  acts that, if identified, require the timely and prompt removal of a president. If House Democrats are so confident in their findings, they ought to have no problem sending the articles over within a 25-day deadline.




Update 7.45pm: A spokesperson for the Irish Coastguard has warned that gale force winds could impede the search for a missing fisherman off the south east coast this morning.

Niall Ferns explained that high winds could mean a smaller search, but that winds are due to decrease from gale force 8 to gale force 7 by this afternoon.

He told RTE radios Morning Ireland that the search will resume at first light and will be continued with all assets.

Mr Ferns told of how the Coastguard first received the alert late on Saturday night when the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon from the trawler Alize, which had been out fishing for scallops for 36 hours, was activated and a major search was launched.

On board were father of four Joe Sinnott (65) from Kilmore Quay and recently married skipper Willie Whelan (41) from Fethard-on-Sea who comes from a well-known fishing family in Co Wexford.

Mr Sinnot was recovered shortly after, but despite efforts by emergency services, he passed away in University Hospital Waterford.

The search will continue Monday morning for Mr Whelan with the LE Ciara as the on scene coordinator, two units of the RNLI, Coastguard helicopter R117, added Mr Ferns, along with shoreline searches by the Coastguard and the local community.

An Independent Wexford councillor has said it is a mystery what happened to the fishing trawler.

Cllr Ger Carthy told RTE radios Morning Ireland that something catastrophic must have happened for the trawler to go down so quickly without the crew being able to send a distress signal.

Emergency services were alerted when the trawlers Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon was activated. That would have happened when the vessel went underwater said Cllr Carthy.

It is a mystery what happened. They were steaming back to port after a successful fishing trip.

Cllr Carthy paid tribute to the emergency services for the alacrity with which they recovered one of the members of the crew  Joe Sinnot, who subsequently passed away in University Hospital Waterford.

He described Mr Sinnot as a man with fishing in his DNA as his brother and nephew are also involved in maritime careers. He is married to Mary, with four children, he spent his life working at sea. It is in the familys blood.

Cllr Carthy said that tragedies like this have a lasting effect on the community which he described as very tight.

It has a ripple effect.

He said that he hoped in time it will be known what happened and that Mr Whelan, the other crew member, can be returned to his family.

Meanwhile, Leo Varadkar spoke to the director of the Irish Coast Guard, Eugene Clonan this morning to thank staff and volunteers for their ongoing work in the search operation off Hook Head.

As the search continues, our thoughts are with the family and friends of the missing fisherman, and those of his bereaved colleague," the Taoiseach said.

This morning I spoke to the Director of the Irish Coast Guard, Eugene Clonan, on behalf of the Irish Government to thank him and his teams for their role in this search, in exceptionally difficult circumstances off the Wexford coast. As a former Minister for Transport, I am very conscious of the brave service provided by the Coast Guards staff and volunteers right around our coastline. I also acknowledged the vital assistance of the RNLI, the Civil Defence and other volunteers in this search and throughout the year.

The Defence Forces is also providing assistance in this search, with the LE Ciara acting as a co-ordinating vessel. In my role as Minister for Defence, I assured Mr Clonan that the Defence Forces will be available to provide further assistance if required.

Earlier: Search for man missing from trawler to resume today

The Coast Guard involved in the search at Hook Head, Co Wexford. Picture: Patrick Browne

By Jess Casey and Joe Leogue

The search for a man who went missing after a trawler disappeared off the southeast coast on Saturday night is expected to resume today.

Search efforts will continue after the identity was revealed of the man who was rescued from the water and subsequently passed away due to his injuries.

He has been named locally as 65-year-old father of four Joe Sinnott, who died in at University Hospital Wexford having been found in the water after the Alize trawler sunk off the coast of Hook Head on Saturday night.

A major multi-agency search operation for the second man on the Alize was wound down yesterday evening as weather conditions and visibility worsened.

At the time of going to print, the search party for the man, who is understood to be in his 40s, was expected to resume at first light, at approximately 8am today, weather permitting.

Shortly before midnight on Sunday, gardai and the Coast Guard responded to reports that a fishing trawler carrying two men had sank near Hook Head off the Wexford coast.

A major search operation for the second man who remains missing intensified across the day, with RNLI crews from Kilmore Quay, Dunmore East, and Fethard-on-Sea, and the Coast Guard dispatched to the area.

Rescue helicopter 116 from Dublin and Rescue helicopter 117 from Waterford also assisted with the search.

The naval vessel LE Ciara also joined the search on Sunday, with the naval service assuming on-scene co-ordination.

Between 15 to 20 other trawlers also helped to conduct searches in the area.

Mr Sinnotts cousin, also named Joe Sinnott, paid tribute to the late fisherman.

I found out about two oclock in the morning, one of my brothers rang me and asked did I hear the news, I said no, I had heard nothing. I couldnt believe it. A great fisherman all his life, a very good one all his life, he told RTE News.

Speaking to the same programme, local Independent councillor Ger Carthy said the sinking was a tragedy for the local community.

At the start of the new year this is tragic news for any family to get and indeed a local man here living in Seaview has lost his life and has left behind a wife and four children, he said. The wider community are heavily involved here in fishing, in the costal community, and the maritime industry across Co Wexford.

RTE also reported that an alert came from the trawlers Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) late on Saturday night, and that debris from the vessel has been recovered from the sea, including the EPIRB.

Diesel was also found on the water near where the debris was recovered, which will aid searchers in focussing their operations.

Mr Sinnott is survived by his wife Mary and children Michael, Siobhan, Bernie, and Bridget.

His funeral is to be held on Wednesday at St Marys Church, Kilmore, Co Wexford. His family has requested donations to the RNLI in lieu of flowers.

So far in 2020, the Coast Guard has been tasked to 11 missions.

These have included six incidents of people in distress on the water, three cliff or mountain rescues, one flare sighting, and one organ transplant mission.
Tokyo:

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has tried to carve out a role mediating between Washington and Tehran, said Monday he was "deeply worried" by tensions in the Middle East. The US assassination of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani last week has raised fears of an all-out conflict, with President Donald Trump threatening "major retaliation" if Tehran makes good on a pledge to avenge the killing.

"Middle Eastern tensions are increasing. I'm deeply worried about the current situation," Abe said in his first comments since the killing of Soleimani in Iraq. "A further escalation in this situation should be avoided and I call for diplomatic efforts by parties concerned." Tokyo and Tehran have maintained diplomatic ties for decades, even through the crisis with the West sparked by Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and subsequent frictions over its nuclear programme.

In June, as tensions rose over Trump's decision to withdraw from a nuclear deal with Tehran, Abe visited Iran for talks with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani. But his visit coincided with a suspected attack on two oil tankers in the Sea of Oman, off the Iranian coast, which again sent tensions in the Gulf soaring.

And Khamenei categorically ruled out talks with Trump despite Abe's efforts to smooth a path. Abe later met Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, and in December welcomed the Iranian leader to Japan -- the first visit by an Iranian head of state in two decades. Japan has walked a fine line in balancing its key alliance with Washington and its longstanding relations and interests with Iran.

It was formerly a major buyer of Iranian crude but stopped purchases to comply with US sanctions imposed after Washington unilaterally quit the nuclear deal in May 2018. It has opted not to join a US-led coalition patrolling waterways in the Middle East, proposed by Washington after the tanker attack during Abe's Iran visit.

Also Read: Trump Says His Twitter Posts Serve As Notification To Congress About Iran

But it has said it will send a military vessel and two patrol planes to the region for intelligence activities. The Japanese patrol activities will not, however, be deployed in the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the global oil trade passes and where the US-led coalition operates.

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Make-up guru Charlotte Tilbury has revealed the secret to red carpet beauty - but it doesn't come cheap.

The British entrepreneur and her team created stunning Golden Globes looks for stars including Salma Hayek, Michelle Williams and Violetta Komyshan ahead of the awards show in Los Angeles last night.

Posting on Instagram afterwards, A-list favourite Charlotte revealed the skincare, base, eye and lip products used on each woman.

Alongside best-sellers like the $100 Charlotte's Magic Cream (75) and $22 Pillow Talk Lip Liner (17), which sells every two minutes, there are new releases from the upcoming Pillow Talk collection, which already has an online waitlist.

But beauty fans hoping to recreate the looks at home will have to start saving. Michelle's make-up involved $705 (528) worth of products and even Violetta's relatively affordable look cost $444 (339).

SALMA HAYEK

Perfectly polished: Charlotte Tilbury used $680.50 (513) worth of products from her own brand to create this stunning look for Salma Hayek, who looked stunning in a Gucci gown

THE LOOK

Charlotte said: 'For Salma, I wanted to create an iconic, hypnotising and perfectly polished red carpet makeup look. Beautiful, matte-fresh, airbrushed skin, a soft, lifted contour and sultry, shimmery chocolatey and bronzy-reddy tones on her mesmerising eyes using the "Date" look from my new Instant Eye Palette in Pillow Talk.

'Its a fresh, neutral and glamorous look that perfectly mirrors the decadent wash of sparkle from her magical Gucci, mermaid-esque gown.

'The look was finished with my new warm berry-pink Pillow Talk lipstick in Medium which worked gloriously against the teal tones of the dress.'

THE PRODUCTS

Complexion Charlotte's Magic Cream: $100/75 Magic Eye Rescue: $60/42 Airbrush Flawless Foundation in 9 Cool: $44/34 Airbrush Flawless Foundation in 8 Warm: $44/34 Magic Away Concealer in shade 5: $32/24 Magic Away Concealer in shade 8: $32/24 Hollywood Contour Wand in Medium/Dark: $38/29 Cheek to Chic in Love Glow: $40/30 Eyes Legendary Brows in Super Model: $22.50/18.50 Brow Lift in Luscious Brow: $30/22.50 Pillow Talk Instant Eye Palette: $75/60 Pillow Talk Eye Liner: $27/19 Rock 'n' Kohl Eye Liner in Bedroom Black: $27/19 POP shade from Bella Sofia Luxury Palette: $53/40 Lips Pillow Talk Lipstick: $34/25 Pillow Talk Lip Cheat: $22/17 Total: $680.50/513

MICHELLE WILLIAMS

Dreamy: Golden Globes winner Michelle Williams had Charlotte Tilbury make-up by Angela Levin. The overall effect might be natural but it would cost $705 (528) to recreate at home

Getting ready: Beauty pro Angela shared some behind the scenes images from the night, revealing the products she used on Michelle throughout the evening

THE LOOK

What Charlotte said: 'Congratulations to the divinely gorgeous Golden Globe winner Michelle Williams who looked so magical, dreamy and fresh in my new Pillow Talk look.'

The look was created by make-up artist Angela Levin, who shared behind the scenes photos while helping Michelle to prep for the evening, revealing the face chart that she used to create the final look for the event.

Describing her client as 'beauty and grace', Angela proudly posted several photos of the star - as well as videos and images of all the products that were used on Michelle throughout the evening.

PRODUCTS

Skin Instant Magic Dry Sheet Mask: $22/18 Charlotte's Magic Cream: $100/75 Brightening Youth Glow Primer: $55/39 Complexion Airbrush Flawless Foundation in 2 Cool: $44/34 Mini Miracle Eye Wand in shade 3: $45/29 Hollywood Contour Wand in Light/Medium: $38/29 Filmstar Bronze & Glow in Light/Medium: $68/49 Cheek to Chic in Pillow Talk: $40/30 Eyes Full Fat Lashes Mascara: $29/23 Pillow Talk Instant Eye Palette: $75/60 Luxury Palette in Pillow Talk: $53/40 Lips Collagen Lip Bath in Pillow Talk: $35/25 Lip Cheat in Pillow Talk: $22/17 Matte Revolution Lipstick in Pillow Talk: $34/25 Finish Airbrush Flawless Finish Powder in 1: $45/35 Total: $705/528

VIOLETTA KOMYSHAN

Purple reign! Dancer Violetta Komyshan, the girlfriend of Ansel Elgort, had her make-up done by Charlotte's niece, Sofia Schwarzkopf-Tilbury. It involved $444 (339) worth of products

Perfecting: Sofia posted videos of the makeup process, revealing how she created the perfect smoked out cat eye with the Pillow Talk Eye Liner

THE LOOK

Make-up by Charlotte's niece, Sofia Schwarzkopf-Tilbury.

Sofia said: 'Violetta is wearing the new magical world of Pillow Talk - its a dreamy, glowing Pillow Talk look to hypnotise the red carpet! Its the perfect high-gloss, high-glow skin with a glowing, pink smokey, contoured eye using the most-flattering champagne-pinks and soft fuchsia shades from the new Pillow Talk Instant Eye Palette!

'Completed with a naturally, fuller-looking lip using In Love With Olivia, this Pillow Talk (with a rocknroll twist) look perfectly complements Violettas incredible Tom Ford dress!'

THE PRODUCTS

Complexion Charlotte's Magic Cream: $100/75 Airbrush Flawless Foundation in 6N: $44/34 Magic Away Concealer in shade 5: $32/24 Hollywood Beauty Light Wand in Spotlight: $38/29 Cheek to Chic in Pillow Talk: $40/30 Eyes Pillow Talk Instant Eye Palette: $75/60 Pillow Talk Eye Liner: $27/19 Full Fat Lashes Mascara: $29/23 Lips Hot Lips 2 In Love With Olivia: $37/28 Lip Cheat in Pillow Talk: $22/17 Total: $444/339

The finishing touch: Just before Violetta walked out the door, Sofia applied the Hot Lips 2 In Love With Olivia to her pout
New Delhi, Jan 6 : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday warned the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi that its time is up, soon after the Election Commission (EC) announced Assembly poll dates for the national capital.

"AAP has found a new strategy of taking BJP's criticism in its stride by suggesting that they will implement many of them in the next five years. But I want to tell the Aam Aadmi Party that your time is up," said Union Minister Prakash Javadekar.

BJP's Delhi chief Javadekar said that the fact that election results will be announced on Tuesday (February 11) is a "good indication". In Hindu belief system, Tuesday is considered auspicious.

The verbal onslaught came soon after the EC announced that Delhi will go to the polls on February 8. Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said that model code of conduct will come to play with immediate effect.

The ruling AAP, which won 67 out of 70 Assembly seats last time, is hopeful of returning to power. The BJP too is desperate to taste power in the national capital, where it has been left in the cold for nearly the last two decades.

Earlier in the day, BJP President Amit Shah too trained his guns at the Arvind Kejriwal-led government, blaming it for the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act violence in Delhi.
Tiny solar cells woven into a flexible, lightweight mesh could soon be powering everything from spacecraft and drones to buildings, devices and remote locations.

The textile-like photovoltaic lace, created by Albuquerque startup mPower Technology, is nearing market, thanks to a $2.5 million venture investment in October, and a $1.1 million small business research grant that the U.S. Army approved in December.

The private funding will boost company efforts to enter the aerospace industry, where its photovoltaics could offer a low-cost, robust alternative to the bulky, expensive solar panels used today on satellites and other space vehicles, said mPower President and CEO Kevin Hell. And the Army grant, awarded by the Combat Capabilities Development Command Center, will allow mPower to further develop and test its solar modules for portable power in remote locations, potentially opening military markets for the technology and commercial sales for outdoor applications.

The micro solar cells that the company weaves into flexible solar arrays were originally developed by Sandia National Laboratories Materials, Devices and Energy Technologies group using microdesign and microfabrication techniques. mPower took the cells, which are thinner than a human hair, and integrated them into lightweight, bendable sheets that it calls DragonSCALES.

The interconnected cells are made of highly efficient silicon that can be meshed into any shape or form, providing unprecedented adaptability for a wide variety of applications. Theyre particularly well-suited for aerospace, where they could replace rigid, glass-enclosed solar arrays that often include expensive Gallium Arsenide ingredients.

DragonSCALES offer reduced weight and volume while also providing resilience and extreme reliability, dramatically lowering costs, Hell said. In addition, they can be mass manufactured with standard semiconductor and solar-cell microfabrication tools and technologies, allowing the company to easily adapt and scale up production as needed.

Gallium arsenide-based cells are too expensive, and the supply is constrained, with only three major manufacturers in the world, Hell told the Journal. Ours are cost-efficient and flexible to fit any form factor needed on space vehicles, taking up much less space. They can fold up tightly, offering low volume and much lighter weight because they dont need the glass enclosures.

Theyre also more robust than traditional space arrays, Hell said.

Its an interconnected mesh of cells, so if one point is damaged, say, by a meteorite or a shadow, the rest of the solar panel still functions, making them very resilient in extreme space conditions, Hell said. With most solar panels, if you knock out one point, the full string of solar cells goes out.

Given those competitive advantages, mPower is focusing first on the booming space industry, especially the growing market for small, low earth orbit satellites.

There are big opportunities there for us with constellations of hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of small sats being prepared for launch, Hell said. Were getting tremendous interest in that market. Were in the process of testing and evaluating our technology with major aerospace companies.

Those opportunities were particularly attractive to the angel and institutional investors who contributed to the companys Series A round of investment in October. That includes participation by Santa Fe-based Sun Mountain Capital.

Given all thats happening with small satellites, mPowers technology offers real advantages, said Sun Mountain partner Lee Rand. Its a long procurement cycle that begins with design work to match the solar technology with targeted satellites, so it could be a number of years before mPowers technology is flying in space. But once they enter into satellite design contracts and start generating revenue, theyll grow from there.

The extensive work done by Sandia to develop the foundational technology will help attract industry interest, Rand added.

Its incredible technology with a lot of investment from the lab, Rand said. Its very mature technology, which is what attracted us as investors.

The Army grant will also help mPower build terrestrial markets, said Chief Technology Officer Murat Okandan, a former Sandia electrical engineer who founded mPower in 2015 after working with the lab team that created the original micro cell technology.

Given the benefits of our technology, its a good fit for the portable power market, Okandan said. Under the (Army) grant, well build early prototypes and then test and prove them to get to the point where we can scale up to a finished product for sale. Its a dual-market approach that includes Department of Defense applications for remote power thats easily transportable, and then commercial use for things like outdoors stuff or on-site power in agriculture or mining operations.

Other eventual applications could include rooftop solar and powering devices and sensors.

Its perfect for harvesting ambient energy, Okandan said. It could be used for sensors that need a curved form or other applications where you need to wrap it around something.

The company is based at the Bioscience Center in Uptown Albuquerque with offices as well in San Diego, which is a major hub for the aerospace industry. It currently has 12 full-time and contract employees.
One person was killed in Imo State on Monday as sacked chairmen and councilors attempted to resume their duties at various local government areas of the state.

They met stiff resistance from members of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party in most of the local government areas.

The chairpersons, whose elections were conducted by the past administration of Rochas Okorocha before he left office, were sacked by Governor Emeka Ihedioha shortly after he was sworn in.

He also set up interim management committees for the councils.

The suspended chairmen and their councillors across the state had besieged the 27 LGAs headquarters with the intent to resume duties.

They cited the Supreme Court judgement in a case between suspended Ekiti State LGA chairmen and the state government, in which the court ruled that the governor had no legal power to suspend elected LGAs chairmen.

But the suspended chairmen were resisted by the interim management committees and PDP supporters which led to a riotous situation.

In Owerri West council, the committee chairman, Innocent Ekenma, said the APC chairmen and their supporters were stopped 200 metres away from the secretariat before they could even gain access into the council.

We resisted them; they did not even progress beyond the market square. Everywhere is calm now and I am in charge; whoever told you that they beat us is telling lies, Mr Ekenma said.

The situation was similar in Owerri North council.

The committee chairman, Solomon Onwuegbuchulam, also prevented the APC sacked chairman and councillors with over 500 supporters from coming close to the gate of the council.

Orlu, Nwangele, Orsu, Ehime-Mbano, Isiala-Mbano, Ahiazu Mbaise, Oru East , Oru West and Ohaji/Egbema also had similar situations.

In Aboh Mbaise, the APC chairman, Chidi Nwaturuocha, who earlier successfully gained entrance into the council with his councillor and supporters, was allegedly manhandled by the police. He was said to have been teargassed and beaten by the police.

His councillor, Jasper Nwachukwu, was also said to have been wounded in the head when a police officer attacked him with the butt of his gun. Gov. Ihedioha is from Aboh Mbaise.

Also, at Njaba, there was a palpable tension as the scenario degenerated into a free-for-all-fight between APC supporters and PDP supporters.

Properties were vandalised and windscreens of vehicles destroyed by the riotous crowd.

However, at Umundugba, the headquarters of Isu Local Government Area, one of the suspended councillors, Ahamefule Maduabuchi, was shot dead as he and other colleagues engaged the police and PDP supporters.

There were conflicting reports on who fired the gun that killed the councillor.

While some alleged he was killed by the police, others claimed that he was shot by a member of the PDP.

The police spokesperson in the state, Orlando Ikeokwu, said the State Commissioner of Police, Olaniyi Fafowora, had ordered an investigation into the killing.

READ ALSO:

Yes, we are aware of the killing of one of the suspended councillors at Isu LGA today but the commissioner of police has launched an investigation into the killing with of view to apprehending the killers.

The CP had a meeting with the suspended councillors and they have agreed to sheath their swords for now. The area is calm and the state is calm. People should go about their lawful business without fear.

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He said that the APC chairmen who were coming for reinstatement could not produce a valid Supreme Court judgement they claimed gave them the power to occupy their former positions.

He said the Ekiti State judgement which they were relying on though similar should never be used as a yardstick.

We were there to ensure the security of lives and properties; the ousted council chairmen said they had the Supreme Court judgment. To the best of the knowledge of the command, there is no Supreme Court judgement as such, Mr Orlando said.

The norm or the ethics is the bailiff would have to serve you with a court order but they dont have it.

However, the judgement that they are referring to is that of Ekiti State; there is no way you can import another judgement from another state even though they are similar; so there is no order directing them to take over, Mr Orlando said.
The University of Limerick Foundation has appointed a new CEO, who will also take up the new role of vice president development at UL.

UL President Dr Des Fitzgerald has announced that Harvey Duthie has accepted the position of Chief Executive Officer of the UL Foundation and UL Vice President Development.

Originally from Ballinasloe, Mr Duthie has spent the last ten years in London working on several major global fundraising campaigns.

His clients have included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Oxford University, Africa Centres for Disease Control, UNHCR and Singapore Management University, among others.

In his new role as UL Vice President Development, he will shape a plan to support ULs development ambitions, with input from across the University.

Harvey will serve as the senior staff member of the Foundation, providing guidance and support to the Board, the Chair and the President, as well as to University faculty and administrators. Harvey will be responsible for the formulation, development and implementation of the Foundations fundraising policy and strategy and will have the lead role in the solicitation of gifts, Dr Fitzgerald said.

As a senior executive with demonstrable experience of leading successful capital campaigns and fundraising initiatives with more than 50 clients across the United Kingdom, Ireland, mainland Europe and the United States, Harvey has extensive experience of planning, managing, and implementing programs aimed to achieve fundraising goals and mission impact. I look forward to Harvey joining the University this January, he added.

Mr Duthie said: I am excited to be joining the University at such an important moment in its history and playing a part in the ambitious UL@50 development plans.
GREENWICH, Conn., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Morgantown Energy Associates ("MEA"), a company owned by controlled affiliates of Starwood Energy Group Global, LLC ("Starwood"), a leading private investment firm focused on energy infrastructure, announced today that it has terminated its Electric Energy Purchase Agreement ("EEPA") with Monongahela Power Company ("Mon Power"), a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp. The early termination was approved by the Public Service Commission of West Virginia ("WVPSC") and facilitates the early retirement of inefficient coal-fired electrical production at the facility, which has been in service since 1991. The project site will transition to natural gas-fueled steam-only production to support its obligations with West Virginia University ("WVU"), providing reliable steam supply through existing and new infrastructure investments.

The complete transition to steam-only production and shutdown of the waste coal fired boilers is forecasted to be completed by early to mid-2020 with modifications to existing natural gas boilers and installation of additional equipment. The agreement ending electric production and shutdown of the waste coal boilers will provide numerous benefits to Mon Power and the Morgantown community.

The termination of the EEPA was supported by numerous stakeholders including WVU, the City of Morgantown, WVPSC staff, WV Energy Users Group, Energy Efficient West Virginia, West Virginia Citizen Action Group and the WV Consumer Advocate Division. The transition to steam-only operations could also facilitate the early repurposing of MEA's property located adjacent to the Monongahela River.

"We are pleased that Mon Power, the WVPSC and numerous stakeholders supported the early termination of the EEPA, which will provide immediate benefits to Mon Power and the city of Morgantown," said Himanshu Saxena, CEO of Starwood Energy. "MEA also appreciates the support from WVU and looks forward to continuing to support WVU's energy needs and being a member of the Morgantown community. As an ESG-minded firm, we are always looking to craft win-win solutions with our stakeholders that are also beneficial for the environment."

About Starwood Energy Group

Starwood Energy Group is a private investment firm based in Greenwich, CT that specializes in energy infrastructure investments. Through its general opportunity funds and other affiliated investment vehicles, Starwood Energy Group has raised equity commitments in excess of $3 billion and has executed transactions totaling more than $7 billion in enterprise value. The Starwood Energy Group team brings extensive development, construction, operations, acquisition and financing expertise to its investments, with a focus on the natural gas and renewable power generation, and transmission sectors. Starwood Energy Group is an affiliate of Starwood Capital Group Global, L.P. Additional information about Starwood Energy Group as well as Starwood Capital Group can be found at www.starwoodenergygroup.com

Media Contacts

Tom Johnson/Dan Scorpio

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A day after brutal attacks on students and professors in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus by some masked goons, protests broke out in several parts of India on Monday (January 6) against the attack on JNU students.

During one such protest at Mumbai's Gateway of India on Monday (January 6), a girl was spotted holding 'Free Kashmir' poster. The display of this message is surprising because when the protest was called for expressing solidarity with JNU students, why were people carrying placards with controversial messages written on them?

The girl displaying the poster has been identified as Mehak Mirza Prabhu and she is a storyteller and blogger. "I was at the protest at churchgate today with a placard that said Free Kashmir. I did mean freedom from the internet shutdown, free movement. I am a non kashmiri, who feels for the plight of kashmiris and feel that all issues need to be talked about and not forgotten. Peace," she tweeted.

In a related development, MS Randhawa, Delhi Police PRO, on Monday (January 6) told media that probe has been launched into the attack on JNU students and professors by some masked goons on Sunday (January 5).

He added that a total of four FIRs have been registered in connection with this case, out of which three FIRs were registered on Sunday. Delhi Police sources said that students from both ABVP and Left groups had called people from outside the campus and these outsiders were involved in violence inside the JNU campus. According to Randhawa, Delhi Police's Joint CP Western range, Shalini Singh, will lead a fact-finding committee formed to probe this matter.

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Randhawa said that the crime branch will investigate the matter. He also informed the media that 34 people got injured in the mayhem and all of them have been discharged after proper medical attention.

Meanwhile, JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, who was also brutally attacked by the goons, claimed that since past 4-5 days violence was being promoted in the campus by some RSS affiliated professors and ABVP. Every iron rod used against the students will be given back by debate and discussion. JNU's culture will not be eroded anytime soon. JNU will uphold its democratic culture.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 17:34:55|Editor: Yurou

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CANBERRA, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The smoke from bushfires has been affecting the lives of Canberrans, who are beginning to take measures for their health.

The Australian capital has been blanketed in bushfire smoke since the end of last year, and the air quality was, at some point, ranked as the worst in all world's major cities.

A Ms. Xu, who has two children aged at six and eight, said the air was chocking.

"I am considering going back to China for the Spring Festival," she said. She talked about a friend, whose 17-month-old baby died of asthma.

According to local media, an elderly woman has died of respiratory distress in Canberra after disembarking from a plane from Brisbane.

On Sunday when the sky in Canberra turned yellow even orange with the air pollution, Xinhua reporters saw salespeople in Costco, one of the largest supermarkets in Canberra, wore masks.

Many stores in the Canberra Center shopping mall closed before noon for security concern, including the outlet of Australian telecommunications company Telstra, which closed at about 11 a.m. local time Sunday morning.

According to the Canberra Times, all Qantas flights at Canberra Airport were cancelled on Sunday due to the smoke, and the Department of Home Affairs told staff to stay at home on Monday.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the Australian National University and the University of Canberra both closed their campuses, citing hazardous air concerns.

Caroline Hussey is in her 70s. "I haven't seen the air quality this bad," she said. "It is extraordinarily."

At home she used air conditioners with filter to clean the air and an electric fan for air circulation. "It is better to keep the doors and windows closed," she said.

Facial masks were sold out in many stores.

According to Caroline Williams, a marketing manager with the Pharmacy Network, many people in Canberra even drove to Sydney over the weekend to buy masks.

The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) has accepted an offer of more than 100,000 P2 masks from the Commonwealth as the city continues to face extremely poor air quality conditions.

"These (the masks) will be made available to vulnerable people in our community, such as those sensitive to smoky conditions, and those unable to avoid long outdoor exposure," said ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr.

Williams said to Xinhua, "We have supplies this week so people could come to our three stores to buy masks."

In the Pharmacy on Petrie, people could begin buying masks from 9 a.m. local time Monday. Williams said the masks were sold quickly. "We are still keeping an order level at five masks per person."

Health authorities of the ACT government gave advice to the public during smokey days on its official website.

"The heavy smoke affecting the ACT is expected to continue while fires continue to burn across the border," it said. "During these periods of smoke, all Canberrans are advised to minimise their levels of prolonged or heavy physical activity outdoors. When there is heavy smoke in the area it is best to avoid all physical activity outdoors."

"The government is continuing to monitor demand for masks and is working closely with Canberra retailers," it said.
The IAA has announced that entries are open for the 10th edition of their Olive Crown Awards. The awards honor advertising that makes consumers aware of environmental threats. This year's theme is related to water conservation including Increasing water pollution, depleting water tables, tsunamis, cloudburst

Punit Goenka President India Chapter, and (Managing Director & CEO at ZEEL) of the International Advertising Association (IAA) says, "These awards are very meaningful. They bring the environment on top of the creative agenda for marketers and advertising agencies. They are also unique. In its tenth year now, the Olive Crows are the only awards of their kind in the region. Finally, it is a great example of a global body IAA working together with an Asian industry association, the Asian Federation of Advertising Associations (AFAA) to further a good cause."

Olive Crown Awards Committee Chairperson Megha Tata (Managing Director, South Asia, Discovery Communications India) said, "The Olive Crown awards need no introduction to the marketing and advertising community. They are the first and only awards that salute creativity in communication sustainability. This year we have added a few new categories, one for international advertising, which is essentially advertising created and run in Asia, outside India. AFAA have been a part of these awards for a long time and hence this category. There is also a new category for work done by an NGO in the green space. And finally there is an award for New Age Green Initiatives working in the space to reduce, minimise or manage whatever could be harmful to the environment. Keeping in mind the importance of the environment we are anticipating a very good response. And keeping in mind the green nature of this subject, no forms will be mailed out in any physical form.

For call-for-entry form and details please click here: https://forms.gle/BJ2Bz42PnGiBB5AFA
2. Ginbo Wush Wush, Sparrow (Chicago, Naperville): Sparrow prides itself on artisan coffees and an elevated drinking experience. And Wush Wush, a new single origin from Ethiopia introduced this fall, delivered. It showed several noteworthy flavors, but it was tough to discern them individually. Its like a well-blended soup or sauce that has a really cohesive flavor medley. Burnt sugar, light fruit (lemon or orange?) and honey came through. It lacked the dry aftertaste that can linger with lighter roasts  and thats what made it special. The varietal is known to have a delicate, floral element and thats noticeable too. How prized is the roast? Baristas at the cafe in Naperville perform pour-overs to exact specifications to be sure extractions are spot-on.
[January 06, 2020] Tenavolts Selected as Honoree for CES 2020 Innovation Awards Program

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Tenavolts, a new generation of rechargeable lithium battery, has been selected as an Honoree in the Tech for a Better World category of the CES 2020 Innovation Awards. Tenavolts showcases its product to the press, and industry analysts during CES Unveiled Las Vegas, the official media event of CES, held on January 5, 2020, in Las Vegas, Nevada. "We are thrilled that Tenavolts has been recognized in the global consumer technology arena. This award is a testament to the innovative capabilities and dedication of our team, and we are more motivated than ever to provide more powerful, sustainable and efficient batteries to the world," said Xiaochen Lin. The CES Innovation Awards is an annual competition that celebrates outstanding design and engineering in consumer technology products. Entries are judged by a panel of highly respected inustry experts from leading companies, including Amazon, Intel, and Google. Products in the Tech for a Better World category were evaluated based on engineering, aesthetic and design qualities, innovation, and positive contribution to global impact or social responsibility.



Traditional batteries are either available as non-rechargeable batteries, which are expensive and rarely eco-friendly, or rechargeable solutions such as nickel-metal hydride batteries (Ni-MH). Despite being reusable, Ni-MH cells suffer issues with long recharge times, insufficient voltage, self-discharge and short recharge cycles. Tenavolts harnesses advanced lithium technology to address these issues, bringing unparalleled performance and sustainability to the rechargeable battery market. With a stable and constant 1.5V voltage and 1,100mWh capacity, Tenavolts AAA batteries are ideal for most household appliances including remotes, electronic toys and game controllers.

Recharging in two hours and with a long lifespan of up to 1,000 recharge cycles, Tenavolts charge 60% faster than Ni-MH cells, reducing the battery's carbon footprint while saving customers time and money. The battery's integrated safety chip also protects it from self-discharge, overcharge and damage from extreme temperatures, ensuring consistent performance over a more significant period. In addition, the Tenavolts batteries are convenient to carry around, with a lightweight, portable charging case that supports micro-USB charging. Born from a vision to explore new possibilities for rechargeable batteries, Tenavolts aims to engineer the best product for stability, safety and performance. With over six national invention patents and a team of leading engineers and designers, Tenavolts is poised to transform the battery industry and power a sustainable future. For more information, please visit https://www.tenavolts.net/. Tenavolts will showcase its revolutionary lithium rechargeable battery at Booth #44572 in Halls A-D at the Sands Expo Convention Center in Las Vegas. About Tenavolts Tenavolts is a new generation, eco-friendly lithium rechargeable battery. Using advanced lithium technology, Tenavolts batteries provide constant 1.5V output, charge in under two hours, and have a long lifespan of over 1,000 recharge cycles. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tenavolts-selected-as-honoree-for-ces-2020-innovation-awards-program-300981347.html SOURCE Tenavolts

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& Industries expects exports to grow around 50 per cent in the ongoing fiscal to clock over Rs 800 crore, which along with domestic replacement market will help offset decline in direct sales to automobile makers, according to a senior company official.

Due to the ongoing slump in the Indian automobile sector, the company has seen contribution from Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) segment to its overall sales decline to around 20 per cent from an earlier 32-33 per cent.

"We could actually combat that slowdown in OEMs (sales) to a large extent through increase in sales in the replacement market and exports," & Industries CFO Sanjeev Agarwal told PTI.

For example, he said in December JK Tyre's exports have gone up by more than 40 per cent and in the replacement market it grew by 18 per cent.

"Similarly, in the first nine months, the growth has been very good in the export market segment and also in replacement market. These have become a saviour for us and we could actually turn around the situation of decline in the OEM segment," he added.

Elaborating, Agarwal said in the first nine months, exports have grown by around 40-45 per cent resulting in revenue clocking over Rs 800 crore as compared to Rs 550 crore in the same period last fiscal.

In the replacement market, he said the company has clocked "double digit" growth without sharing absolute numbers.

On the outlook for the ongoing fiscal he said,"Definitely in the export market we will register almost about 50 per cent growth. In domestic market also we are expecting 12-14 per cent growth."



These will basically offset loss of sales in the OEM segment, he said adding "OEM has come down from about 32-33 per cent last year to about 20 per cent this year."



Agarwal said the company has also gained from anti-dumping duties imposed on Chinese tyres in the US, which is "a very important market where we have expanded our distribution network with specific products launched for the market".

Also, in the domestic market Chinese imports have come down substantially in the last couple of years due to anti-dumping duty and anti-subsidy duties, which was levied last year thereby helping domestic manufacturers, he added.

"In this year this (Chinese imports) will go down by around 3-5 per cent," he added.

On the outlook for fiscal 2020-21, he said,"We are seeing green shoots in the auto sector...OEM segment will come back and this will pick up. We will continue to focus on the segment of exports and replacement market in the new financial year as well."



On the export front, he said has been focussing on Europe, the US and some of the Middle East markets which will help it in further increasing overseas shipments.

The company has also started making groundwork for plans to enter Africa, which is still a bit away, Agarwal added.
HP Inc. was awarded $439 million in damages against Quanta Storage Inc. and its U.S. subsidiary after a federal judge tripled a jurys 2019 award for damages caused by a widespread scheme to inflate the price of optical disk drives.

In October, a Houston jury ordered Quanta to pay HP $176 million in damages. U.S. District Judge David Hittner said Friday that Quanta hadnt shown any reason why the jurys findings should be set aside. He tripled the damages award, as authorized under antitrust law, to $528 million before deducting the $89 million in settlements paid by the other companies HP accused of participating in the price-fixing scheme.

Other disk-drive makers like Hitachi-LG, Sony and Panasonic settled with HP over the past decade. Only Taiwan-based Quanta chose to go to trial.

Andrew Lusby, an attorney for Quanta, said Friday the company was not commenting at this time on the tripled damages.

The company had argued to Hittner that tripling damages would violate constitutional prohibitions on excessive punitive damages. But the judge rejected that argument, pointing out that antitrust law allows for tripling awards as compensatory rather than punitive damages.

HP hopes this judgment sends a powerful message to suppliers all over the world that there are significant consequences when you violate US antitrust laws, Alex B. Roberts, HPs lawyer, said in an email after Hittner ruled.

The case is Hewlett-Packard Co. v Quanta Storage, 4:18-762, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas (Houston).

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Legislation USA
Apparent hacking by an #Iran-linked group of a US government website (the little-known Federal Depository Library Program). https://t.co/r47ODmt4Pw is currently offline. pic.twitter.com/8dx7EDUZvu  Steve Herman (@W7VOA) January 5, 2020

The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World! If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way...and without hesitation!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2020

After the Trump administration ordered the killing of a high-ranking Iranian general last week, state sponsored hackers from the country may have retaliated by defacing a U.S. federal website, cyber officials say.The death of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike at Baghdad airport last week has stirred tensions regionally, escalating the threat of further conflict between the U.S. and Iran. It has also led to predictions from security experts that Iran may retaliate with cyberattacks.On Saturday night, the homepage of the U.S. Federal Depository Library Program was apparently hacked and briefly replaced with an image of a bloody-mouthed President Trump being punched in the face by a fist bearing Iranian insignia, according to CBS News On the page was written: "Hacked by Iran Cuber Security Group Hackers. This is only small part of Iran's cyber ability! We're always ready." The image also apparently bore a message memorializing Soleimani.Whether or not the hack actually came from Iran has not yet been verified, said officials with the Department of Homeland Security."We are aware the website of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) was defaced with pro-Iranian, anti-US messaging," said CISA in a statement to Newsweek . "At this time, there is no confirmation that this was the action of Iranian state-sponsored actors. The website was taken off line and is no longer accessible. CISA is monitoring the situation with FDLP and our federal partners."Soleimani, who was a well-respected political and military figure in Iran , was the leader of the Quds force, an important division of the Iranian National Guard that specializes in covert operations and intelligence. His death was considered by many to be the most drastic escalation in a period of renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran, one that has included crippling sanctions , alleged attacks on U.S.-allied oil tankers , and subsequent cyberattacks While the hacking of the website may seem somewhat innocuous, experts have worried that Iran may ply its cybertalents toward larger targets. These include attacks on infrastructure, as well as the potential for hackers to unleash malware like ransomware on American governments and businesses.In the hours after the hack, President Trump pitched in his two cents on U.S. defense capabilities with a tweet:
North Chinas Tianjin and the city of Anyang in Central Chinas Henan province both reported two new cases of the highly transmissible omicron variant over the weekend. Both cities have launched new rounds of mass testing and designated more Covid-19 risk areas to control the spread of the virus

Jan 10, 2022 06:18 PM
Rotherham sex abuse survivor Sammy Woodhouse (pictured) has claimed men are sending her abusive messages and threatening to harm her children

Rotherham sex abuse survivor Sammy Woodhouse has claimed someone is sending her abusive messages and threatening to harm her children.

The mother-of-two was groomed by child sex gang leader Arshid Hussain in South Yorkshire from the age of 14.

She was subjected to unthinkable sex abuse but waived her right to anonymity as a rape victim in 2017 to expose the grooming gang.

The 34-year-old has been pushing for a change in the law after Rotherham Council tried to give Arshid access to her son, who he fathered when he raped her.

But she now faces further suffering after a 'local gangster' messaged her now 18-year-old son in a bid to get money out of the family.

Ms Woodhouse told MailOnline in a statement: 'One of my sons has been sent a number of threatening messages via Facebook Messenger.

'The individual responsible for sending them is attempting to extort money from us by threatening my son.'

She tweeted today: 'Sick and tired of 'men' sending messages to my kids threatening to harm us all and if we don't meet there demands they're coming to my home to harm my kids, smash windows and steal my car cause they think they're little gangsters and we're an easy target. Nothing but cowards!!'

South Yorkshire Police have been contacted for further comment.

The mother-of-two now claims she is 'sick and tired of men sending messages to my kids threatening to harm us all'

The 34-year-old has been pushing for a change in the law after Rotherham Council tried to give Arshid access to her son (pictured), who he fathered when he raped her

Hussain, 43, the ringleader of the grooming gang, was not named on Ms Woodhouse's son's birth certificate and had no parental responsibility for the child, who was born after his mother was raped, aged just 15.

Hussain is now in a wheelchair after surviving a shooting.

He is serving 35 years in prison for multiple rape offences against nine victims  some as young as 11  but was contacted last year by officials from Rotherham Council, who said he had a right to see the child.

Other survivors of the grooming gang branded the South Yorkshire Council's actions 'disgusting'.

More than 120 MPs have now called for an urgent inquiry into the way the family courts in England and Wales treat victims of domestic abuse or rape and their children.

Arshid Hussain (pictured) was eventually jailed for 35 years

Sammy Woodhouse grew up in Rotherham and was groomed by child sex gang leader Hussain when she was 14 years old.

She was subjected to horrendous abuse including rape and assaults and Hussain also coerced her by threatening to kill her family.

He also forced her to rob a post office aged 15 and when police raided Hussain's home later that year they found her in bed with him but failed to arrest him and charged her with possessing a baton.

After years of abuse she approached The Times anonymously with her claims, leading to the Jay Inquiry which exposed the Rotherham gang and led to the discovery of more than 1,400 victims between 1997 and 2013. Hussain was eventually jailed for 35 years.

Ms Woodhouse waived her anonymity on the BBC in 2017.

She has been leading campaigns to change the laws around child sex abuse victims, particularly supporting a bill named after her, Sammy's Law, that would pardon child sex abuse victims who are coerced into committing crimes.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Gov. Lincoln Chafee will deliver an address at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. this Wednesday, Jan. 8. This event is open to media and members of the public, and will begin at 10 a.m. in the Zenger Room.

"As the lone senator who bucked his party to vote NO on the Iraq War authorization, it sickens me to think that the lies of administrations past have turned into the ongoing problems we face today. We must work towards an America at peace with the world, and end these senseless and counterproductive wars," said Chafee.

In addition to addressing the current crisis in the Middle East, Gov. Chafee will make an announcement concerning the 2020 Presidential race.

Chafee will be joined by fellow members of the Libertarian Party at the event. "The Libertarian Party is the only party that has consistently opposed our aggressive overseas entanglements," Chafee continued. "I'm proud to stand up for truth as an Anti-War Libertarian and say loudly and clearly that I am already against the next war."

Over the coming months, Chafee plans to attend Libertarian Party State Conventions each weekend from now until the Libertarian National Convention Memorial Day weekend in Austin, TX May 21-25.

Chafee will attend the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire State Convention in Concord, NH on Saturday morning Jan. 11, before flying to Lebanon, TN to attend the Libertarian Party of Tennessee State Convention and Gala that evening. In addition to a fundraiser for the Libertarian Party of Utah, Chafee plans on attending Libertarian Party state conventions in Georgia and Arizona during the month of January.

"I'm looking forward to having a conversation with members of the Libertarian Party and the American people about fiscal responsibility, protecting our personal freedoms, and ending these needless and costly wars," said Chafee. "There are too many lies in Washington. It's time for someone to lead with truth."

Lincoln Chafee is a member of the Libertarian Party and served as the Mayor of Warwick, RI from 1993 to 1999, as United States Senator from 1999 to 2007, and as Governor of Rhode Island from 2011 to 2015.

SOURCE Gov. Lincoln Chafee
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said there was no skepticism within the Trump administration about the intelligence behind the decision to kill a top Iranian general last week, and that any moves taken by the U.S. against Tehran will be "lawful."

"We'll behave inside the system," Pompeo said in an interview with ABC's "This Week," one of several he'll do with U.S. political talk shows.

The top U.S. diplomat was asked about President Donald Trump's threat on Saturday to hit "52 Iranian sites," including cultural targets, if Tehran retaliates. The tweet raised concerns because attacks against cultural property are prohibited under the Geneva Convention.

"I've seen what we're planning," Pompeo said. Every target "is lawful."

Pompeo spoke days after the U.S. killed top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Iraq, and hours after Trump ratcheted up the rhetoric against the Islamic Republic after saying on Friday that the U.S. isn't seeking to start a war.

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Before Trump's tweets, sent from his Florida resort and which continued until the early hours of Sunday morning, Pompeo had stressed that the U.S. was committed to de-escalating tensions with Iran in a series of phone calls with his counterparts in Middle East and elsewhere.

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, defended Trump actions and ramped-up Twitter threats against Iran.

"This president has shown - he's not getting enough credit for it - tremendous restraint," Rubio said in an interview with CBS's "Face the Nation."

Asked whether the administration had articulated evidence to Congress of a clear, imminent threat to the U.S. immediately before the Baghdad airstrike, Rubio responded, "I understand it, and it's called self-defense."

Senior Pentagon officials briefed staff members from the House Armed Service Committee and Senate Armed Service Committee on Friday about recent threats and attacks on U.S. personnel and interests, including the 11 attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq since October and attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Dec. 27.

Pompeo said on ABC that more Congressional briefings would come this week.

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It comes as emergency departments are under increasing pressure

The head of Northern Ireland's public health agency has an annual package of over 300,000, making him the highest paid health executive in the UK, it has been revealed.

Dr Adrian Mairs, the PHA's acting director of Public Health, takes home an annual package of more than 310,000.

His total renumeration was 311,500 in 2018/19, which included a salary of more than 155,000 and an employer pension contribution of 154,000.

Dr Mairs' earnings surpass those of Public Health England director in London, Yvonne Doyle, who takes home 257,500 a year.

Details of salaries afforded to the officials were revealed by the TaxPayers' Alliance in its 'Nanny State Rich List'.

It claims the total package received by Dr Mairs is the highest in the UK "by almost 60,000".

The Public Health Agency, however, said the pension contribution figures reported by the Alliance were incorrect.

In a statement, a spokesperson said: "In addition to a gross salary of 155k-160k, employer superannuation contributions of 20k-25k were made during the financial year 2018/19.

"The figure quoted by the Taxpayers Alliance as being an 'employer pension contribution' is in fact an actuarial calculation of the impact of one years earnings on aggregated future pension earnings  it is incorrect to call this the employer pension contribution, and is therefore inaccurate to record it as part of total earnings for the financial year.

In an earlier statement, a spokesperson said 154k figure is the calculated increase in benefit after the multiplier of 20 has been applied.

"This explanation was included on page 69 of the PHA annual accounts but is not reflected in the narrative of the Taxpayers Alliance report," they added.

"Individuals are entitled to make decisions about their pensions based on their personal circumstances and these may have implications for how benefits accruing are reported on the annual accounts in any given year.

"In-line with other clinical professionals, PHA medical professionals overall packages comprise a number of elements, including salary, pensions and NHS National Clinical Excellence Awards."

Dr Mairs is one of hundreds of public health staff who earned in excess of 100,000 in the past tax year.

Two other members of staff in Northern Ireland were named on the list of those who earn more than 100,000 a year.

They are Dr Carolyn Harper, also a director of public health for Northern Ireland, who earns 112,500 and Mary Hinds, the PHA's director of nursing and allied health professions, who earns 106,500.

Ten public health chiefs across the UK earned an average of 242,650 and two individuals earned more than 250,000.

One executive received more than 300,000.

The TaxPayers' Alliance claimed in the report that 21 senior public health employees earned more than British Prime Minister Boris Johnsons salary of 154,908.

It comes as Northern Ireland's emergency departments face huge pressure in terms of lengthening waiting lists and stretched resources.

Experts have warned that the health service in Northern Ireland has fallen off a cliff edge - just days before thousands of health workers again stage further crippling strike action.

On Wednesday, nurses from the Royal College of Nursing will stage their second day of strike action over staffing levels and pay.
(Newser)  A mild-mannered student who prosecutors say led a double life as "Britain's most prolific rapist" has just earned another life sentence. Reynhard Sinaga, 36, has so far been convicted of 136 rapes of men in multiple trials, reports the Guardian. Based on evidence from Sinaga's phone, however, authorities believe he had at least 70 more victims. The latest life sentence, requiring a minimum imprisonment of 30 years, was handed out Monday. "You are an evil serial sexual predator who has preyed upon young men who came into the city center wanting nothing more than a good night out with their friends," said Judge Suzanne Goddard said in Manchester Crown Court, per the AP. "Rarely if ever have the courts seen such a campaign of rape covering so many victims over such a prolonged period," she added, per the Guardian.

story continues below

Sinaga, an Indonesia native who arrived in Britain in 2007, was studying for his PhD at the University of Leeds when he was arrested in 2017. Prosecutors say he followed a familiar pattern for years: He would befriend young, drunken men outside bars, offer them a place to crash, and then drug and sexually assault them. Authorities say Sinaga filmed many of the rapes of the unconscious men, many of whom had no idea they'd been assaulted until police knocked on their door years after the fact. "We suspect he's offended over a period of 10 years," said Assistant Chief Constable Mabs Hussain, who acknowledges that the true number of victims may never be known, per the BBC. "The information and evidence we are going from is largely from trophies that he's collected from the victims of his crimes." (In the US, genealogy results led to the arrests of two suspected serial rapists.)
The US-Iran face-off is likely to delay two major deals that India is looking up to. The government has been planning to divest its 53 per cent stake in Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) at the earliest to bridge the fiscal deficit and meet the disinvestment target. While that seems nearly impossible to conclude in this financial year, the two investment plans of the largest oil player Saudi Aramco may also hit by the war-like situation in the Middle East.

The government has been planning to invite top global petroleum giants to bid for its stake in BPCL. "The top firms like Exxon Mobil, Saudi Aramco, Royal Dutch Shell and Total SA are there in the list of the petroleum ministry. The government aims to raise over Rs 60,000 crore from the deal. But the unexpected turn of events will delay sale process as no petroleum giant would be ready to loosen their purse strings in a volatile situation," said a Mumbai-based banker.

Aramco has been negotiating with India's most profitable company Reliance Industries (RIL) to pick up 20 per cent stake in the latter's refining and petrochemicals business for about Rs 1 lakh crore. The deal, which was announced by Mukesh Ambani in the last annual general meeting (AGM) of RIL in July, will depend on Aramco's revised expansion plans post the geo-political tensions in the region. According to sources, the deal has been planned to conclude in this year.

Also Read: Cabinet gives nod to sell stake in BPCL, 4 other PSUs

Before the present problems, the scaled-down initial public offering (IPO) of Aramco was one of the worries of Indian investors and policymakers. The aspirational IPO of Aramco has failed to fulfill the dreams of the Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman, who wanted to sell a 5 per cent stake to raise $100 billion, valuing the company at $2 trillion. Finally, the oil giant sold 1.5 per cent stake to raise just over $25 billion, because of the lower interests from western markets.

Also read: Will the subdued IPO hurt Saudi Aramco's investment plans in India?

In another deal, Aramco and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) have been planning to pick up 50 per cent stake in $44 billion refinery in Maharashtra. Indian Oil Corp, BPCL and HPCL through Ratnagiri Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd (RRPCL) have agreed to hold the rest of the stake. The refinery was initially proposed to be built at Nanar, a village in Ratnagiri district. But it has been relocated to Raigad district, about 100 km south of Mumbai because of protests from local farmers. After the delays, the analysts reported that the cost of the refinery has been escalated to $70 billion.

With the near impossibility of completing the privatisation of Air India, Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL) and Container Corporation of India (Concor), the government is expected to face divestment shortfall of Rs 60,000 crore - 70,000 crore in this financial year. According to reports, it is planning to line up 'offers for sale' (OFS) to garner at least Rs 40,000 crore, by selling stakes in few profit-making public sector firms to at least achieve 50 per cent of the disinvestment target.

Also Read: Stake sale in 5 PSUs: Will the govt be fourth time lucky in achieving its divestment target?

The rating agency ICRA said that the escalation of US-Iran tensions could adversely impact the margins of oil marketing companies (OMCs). The agency said that every $1 a barrel rise in crude price will increase the country's import bill by $1.4 billion and every $10 a barrel jump will affect the fiscal deficit by about 0.1 per cent of the GDP. India had cut down crude oil imports from Iran, but its neighbour Iraq has remained one of the top energy suppliers. The tension will have an impact on the supplies from Iraq, ICRA expects.
Awkwafina's brilliant and heartfelt performance in Lulu Wang's The Farewell was something that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association could not ignore. At the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards, the actress/comedian/rapper made history as the first performer of Asian descent to win a Golden Globe Award in a lead actress film category.

During her acceptance speech, Awkwafina (born Nora Lum) first thanked writer and director Lulu Wang who based the film on her own life. The Farewell tells the story of a young woman named Billi (Awkwafina) who needs to come to terms with her family's decision to hide a terminal diagnosis from her grandmother Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao).

"You gave me this chance, the chance of a lifetime, and you've taught me so much," she told Wang from the Golden Globes stage. "Just filming this story, being with you, is incredible."

She also dedicated the award to her grandmother, late mother, and father. She concluded, "I told you I'd get a job, dad."

Congratulations, Nora!

Bong Joon-ho's thriller Parasite also made history as the winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. It was the first South Korean movie to win the award in Golden Globes history.
That Indias optimistic future is overtaken by concerns about the road ahead. Bangladeshs rise seems more imminent than Indias. Will economic decline spur course correction? Or, will Hindu nationalism enable the decline to perpetuate itself?

Editor's note: In a speech whose precise origins have, perhaps mercifully, been forgotten by history, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi proclaimed: mera bharat mahaan [my India is great]. The prime ministers nationalist pitch was undone by the venality of his regime: critics were to mercilessly lampoon it in the late 1980s, adding the prefix, kilo mein nau sau gram, phir bhi [there are 900 grams in a kilo, but still'].

Yet, the impulse behind that speech was to drive the course of Indian political and cultural life for two decades. For an emerging youth cohort, the largest in Indias civilisational history, the idea of Indian greatness was key. As economic crisis were beaten back, and high growth registered, it seemed possible for India to be something other than a nation mired in poverty, backwardness and strife.

Prime Minister Narendra Modis rise, in 2014, marked the culmination of an era of optimism: the gates of a new millennium, it appeared  even to many who did not share his Hindu-nationalist ideological moorings  had finally been opened.

As India heads into the 2020s, though, theres reason to believe we are heading into a new age of anxiety. Economic growth has been crippled; many economists argue recovery will take years of painful reform. Ethnic and religious tensions have sharpened. Even Indias core Constitutional values and institutions, many commentators have argued, are besieged.

In this series, Firstpost examines what the 2020s will mean for India: for everything from politics and the economy, to our culture and communities.

***

Few in India recognise that ethnic nationalism is spurred by economic decline. Economic decline and ethnic nationalism are two elements that can render a combustible chemical reaction to the detriment of the nation and the citizen. Ethnic and nationalistic appeals are often deployed to distract the citizenry away from economic hardship. India is clearly in economic decline. Gone are the days when policymakers and entrepreneurs would look at Indias economic rise with wonder at Davos. Scholars such as MITs Yasheng Huang and Harvards Tarun Khanna had even prophesied that India could take over China. And, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen had argued persuasively about the advantages of the argumentative character of the Indian nation and its ability to live with pluralism.

That Indias optimistic future is overtaken by concerns about the road ahead. Bangladeshs rise seems more imminent than Indias. Will economic decline spur course correction? Or, will Hindu nationalism enable the decline to perpetuate itself?

Hindu nationalism has arrived like a whirlwind often in contradistinction to the idea of a secular India enshrined in the Constitution. The BJPs Hindutva agenda had overtaken its professed economic agenda by 2019, in stark contrast to the 2014 campaign. Terrorism and the threat from Pakistan became the rallying cry. For example, in a clarion call at Latur in April 2019, the Prime Minister asked the youth to vote for the BJP as a vote dedicated to the Balakot airstrike. Whereas Mr Modi rarely used the term terrorism in 2014, the same was deployed numerous times last year. Soon after coming to power again in 2019, the BJP turned a special status state  Jammu and Kashmir  to a union territory directly under the supervision of the central government. Did it matter that this was the only state in the Indian Union that enjoyed a Muslim majority?

The project of isolating Muslims and attacking secularism as a fundamental ethos was pursued systematically through 2019. First, the infamous National Register of Citizens (NRC) was resurrected to ensure that illegal immigrants be held and detained. Just the cost of rolling out such a measure at a nationwide-level could exceed a years budget of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), and this does not even include the cost of detention camps. Added to this came along the Citizenship Amendment Act (2019), where treatment of Muslims seems to be at odds with secularism enshrined in the Indian constitution. Even the BJPs coalition partners such as Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik are opposed to implementing the NRC in their respective states.

Do such exclusivist propensities have something to do with economic decline? The economy is moving farther and farther away from the governments claim of reaching the five trillion-dollar mark by 2024/25. This ambition would require continuous 8 percent average growth during the next four years. What have we achieved instead? Indias growth between July-September 2019 fell to 4.5 percent from 5 percent in the previous quarter. This is a six-year low.

Economists are debating the significance of the new methodology for comparison with the previous years. The new methodology was deployed to measure GDP beyond 2011/12. The current governments former chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian has noted that the new methodology of calculating Indias growth overstates the figure by about 2.5 percentage points. For example, whereas the government reported an average growth rate of 6.9 percent between 2011/12 and 2016/17, the same figure was likely to be between 3.5 and 5.5 percent. While there is plenty of debate on Indias plausible rate of growth  it is not clear how much the new figures are overstating the case.

As Indias growth dipped so did the sales of cars in India. Passenger vehicle sales dropped by 41 percent in August 2019 compared with the previous year  an unprecedented and astonishing slowdown that would have eliminated at least 3,00,000 jobs. Indias automobile market was thriving with domestic and foreign investment in recent years. It is hard to buy the governments view that more persons are gravitating towards public transportation in a rapidly growing aspirational economy.

What gives even greater credence to declining economic well-being is the 3.7 percent decline in an average Indians consumption between 2011-12 and 2017/18. Such was the hue and cry regarding this dip that the government did not even release the report of the National Sample Survey Organisation. Thereafter, 214 economists including Nobel Laureate Angus Deaton unsuccessfully petitioned the government to make this data public. The 2019 Laureate Abhijit Bannerjee has publicly endorsed that such a decline is unprecedented and worrisome. Why will firms invest and spur growth if people do not consume?

The Periodic Labor Force Survey (PLFS, July 2017-June 2018) pegged the unemployment rate at 6.1 percent. This was almost double the customary figure of 3-3.5 percent. This figure at a 45 year high was kept from the press till the BJP was elected in 2019. It was claimed that the new methodology renders the data incomparable. The Acting Chairperson of the National Statistical Commission PC Mohanan and another independent member JV Meenakshi resigned in protest.

It is well known that MGNREGS was launched in 2005 to reduce rural poverty through the right to work enacted by the Parliament. Every Indian living in rural India has a right to 100 days of work. Early on in his tenure Mr Modi had opined, that this scheme was well suited for the Congresss regressive development model that did not create jobs in the market. His government would generate employment in the real economy where there would be little need for such doles. In the early days of the BJP, delayed wage payments discouraged workers. Even in November 2019, the Central Government had delayed wage payments to the tune of rupees 5,812 crores.

Those early optimistic assumptions of the Modi regime are faced with declining consumption and rising levels of unemployment. The government has changed course and rededicated itself to the right to work. However, MGNREGS expenditure at Rupees 48,766 crores in 2019/20 is about Rupees 20,000 crores less than in the previous year. Moreover, the earlier stipulation of spending more on wages than on equipment is now reversed, with the possible consequence of employing fewer persons through the scheme.

At a time when consumption and employment are at a dismal low, Rathin Roy, Director of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy and a former member of the Prime Ministers Economic Advisory Council, has pointed to the low level of tax collection and government resources. The poorly implemented Goods and Services Tax may have contributed to this fiscal disarray, among many other factors. To partly plug the gap the Reserve Bank of India, in an unprecedented move, agreed to grant the government a dividend of Rupees 1.76 trillion ($24.6 billion) to bail it out of fiscal distress. This historic decision occurred when a loyal civil servant replaced two accomplished economists as Governor of the Reserve Bank.

We have only described economic distress at last years end without going into its causes. What should the government do? Should it improve the material condition of the economy by generating jobs and raising consumption that will feed into investment and growth? Or, should it continue to loudly proclaim that the Indian nation needs to spend a greater effort in excluding Muslims rather than serving a plurality consistent with the millennial idea of India  that had earned the country some respect in the comity of nations as an emerging power. If the government somehow fails to pilot the ship of the Indian economy, we should expect ever more exclusivist actions such as aggressive implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act along with the National Register of Citizens. Whether such exclusivist aggression will spell doom for the BJP, will depend largely on whether or not the people of India vote for the idea of a plural progressive and culturally rich India.
Survivors of a helicopter crash that occurred at Ghanas offshore Petroleum field some six years back are demanding compensation.

Two of the survivors who were contracted by Tonimo Engineering which at the time was providing drilling services for Lukoil said attempts to get compensation after the incident had failed.

A survivor who spoke to Citi News' Akwasi Agyei Annim said the incident was having a psychological effect on him.

It is true we were not injured but anytime the aircraft is passing and we are around that place, I do not feel fine. At times we even have to move away from there. When you make a move you remember you are at the place so you have to control yourself. Now I cannot even go offshore and do any work anymore, he said. For the past six years, everything has gone wrong. I am praying to government to intervene. We want the government to help us, another survivor said.

The incident took place after the helicopter, operated by Ghana's Volta River Aviation, took off from the western port of Takoradi on its way to the Jack Ryag oil rig near the giant Jubilee field, reported Reuters.

The helicopter crashed approximately 20 miles off Takoradi but the cause of the crash was not immediately known, though bad weather was reportedly suspected.

The Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) said that a search commenced about two hours after the helicopter failed to arrive on the rig.

Four people were rescued while another passenger was still missing and two others, both said to be crew members, were reported dead.

The Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) said that a search commenced about two hours after the helicopter failed to arrive on the rig.

citinewsroom
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 07:35:01|Editor: xuxin

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LA PAZ, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Bolivia's Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) on Sunday approved a procedural calendar for a new round of general elections on May 3, said the TSE's president Salvador Romero.

The calendar specifies that a runoff will be held 45 days later if no candidate wins the first round by garnering 50 percent or more of the votes, or 40 percent of the votes with a 10-point lead over the runner-up.

"We are working to provide the people certainty of a transparent process," Romero told reporters at a press conference.

The TSE has revised the voter roster, he said, adding that votes "will be counted scrupulously."

"The main activity for citizens is the process of registering ... in the voter roster. That activity is going to take place two weeks from now," said Romero.

Voter registration will begin on Jan. 18 and continue for nine days, he said.

Political parties are expected to register their candidates for president, vice president and legislative seats by the end of this month.

Bolivia was plunged into political turmoil after the opposition rejected the reelection of Evo Morales to a 4th term in the October elections, leading Morales to resign and go to Mexico, where he was offered asylum. He has then relocated to Argentina.
President Trump, Focus on The IMPEACHMENT

Jan. 05, 2020

By Limin Wang

President Trump, I am not sure who arranged the whole thing and whether you personally made the decision to go for the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, it's better for the DOD and DOS to handle the Iran Crisis now. You should know why you are at this stage. If this opinion helps you, quid pro quo, please help me fight the USA corrupt system in my injury case.
According to him, depressed mental state is a harbinger of cancer, heart disease and even death.

US-based renowned cardiologist Dr Indranill Basu Ray on Sunday asserted that yoga is the best way to beat depression, which has become biggest killer disease in the recent past in the country.

Bengaluru: US-based renowned cardiologist Dr Indranill Basu Ray on Sunday asserted that yoga is the best way to beat depression, which has become biggest killer disease in the recent past in the country.

Speaking at the Yoga Science conference as part of the 107th Indian Science Congress here, Dr Ray, quoting Swami Vivekananda, said, To every action, there is an equal reaction. If a man strikes me and wounds me, it is that mans action and my bodys reaction. Suppose I have so much power over the body, I can resist even that automatic action.

He said that yoga philosophy incorporates the senses, the intellect, the ego and the body into one whole reality. It suggests that our misery and our happiness are our own productions. Everything is in the senses. It is the touch of the senses that creates pleasure or pain. If we can control our senses and order what we shall feel, without letting them control and have command over us, if they become our servants, then the problem is solved. Our senses make us experience the world and mastery over them is the key to successful living, which can happen with mindfulness attained by yoga, he explained.

According to him, depressed mental state is a harbinger of cancer, heart disease and even death.

It is something that you just cannot entertain. It is like having a small porch in front of your house where instead of growing flowering trees, you are planting weeds. The same it is with the brain. The one organ in your body that defines who you are. You cannot afford to cultivate any negative thoughts as your thoughts will create your physical reality, he contended.

The heart surgeon said that little or nothing of what we traditionally call mind is thoroughly understood. In particular, the idea that the mind and the body have a medically significant relationship  where the state of the mind controls the wellbeing of the body  is relatively new to Western medicine.

However, this concept has been an integral part of Ayurveda, a traditional Indian medical science, for ages. Ancient texts, including the Vedas, Upanishads, and other scriptures considered to be the fountainhead of Indian philosophy, propounded this principle. Practicing physicians and surgeons of ancient India, like Charaka and Sushruta, emphasised the importance of the right mental state for healing. They proposed that the state of ones mind governs the entire existence of the human being, including physical health. The nearest that Western medicine has come to this concept is in the study of the origins of certain diseases  called psychosomatic illnesses  where mental states like fear, anger, and anxiety can cause disease, he said.

He said that yoga can intricate mind-body links, in which emotions directly affect the body function, have not been scientifically palatable to human biologists until recently. In the past few decades, an explosion of scientific explorations that support the contention that mental states like happiness and sadness have a direct consequence on the bodys ability to fight diseases, has occurred, the noted surgeon claimed.

He said that modern science is beginning to pay attention  as evidenced by the use in advanced medical clinics of visualisation, meditation, relaxation techniques, and other ways of activating the power of the mind. Promising results with a variety of diseases, for example, hypertension, cancer, irritable bowel syndrome and asthma have been documented. Inappropriate mental activity including rage, anger and hatred can cause a propensity for heart diseases, including increasing blood pressure and heart attack. It is indeed a fascinating story to learn how the perception of the human brain, visualised by Western medicine to be a static, genetically predetermined organ over which humans had little if any control, got transformed overnight into a dynamic, ever-changing instrument whose structure and function we can control to a great extent, he concluded.
So much for putting a stop to the endless wars.

President Donald Trump, given a list of options to strike Iranian interests, chose what was by far and away the most provocative - killing senior Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, and others, in a two-vehicle convoy near the Baghdad airport in Iraq.

Soon thereafter, following Iranian threats to retaliate, Trump ramped up his own rhetoric, stating that hed selected 52 targets - one for each American hostage taken by Iran at the U.S. embassy in Tehran back in November 1979 - in an apparent effort to show how tough he is.

But with the list including important Iranian cultural sites, it looks as though he thinks its all a game, or a TV game show.

This is not likely to end well.

No American should mourn the death of Soleimani. He was a notoriously terrible man who was personally responsible for the deaths of countless people, with more assuredly ahead. But that is in no way to suggest that Trumps order was wise or considered, or made with his understanding of what might lie ahead.

No one knows what is coming next. Not Trump. Not our nations military leaders. No one.

Though the White House has claimed that the killing of Soleimani was carried out because it had information regarding imminent threats against American interests, such assertions, coming from this crew, strain credulity. Trump himself has only a casual relationship with the truth.

His press shop, such as it is, is often a fact-free operation, when its even pretending to function. And then theres Vice President Mike Pence, who was quick to link Soleimani with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center - a completely specious claim no credible person supports.

On Sunday, Iraq's Parliament voted to kick all U.S. forces out of the nation. If this should come to pass, it will please Iran and Islamic State even as the region is further destabilized. Also on Sunday, Iran cut itself completely free from what remained of the 2015 multinational accord that was meant to limit its efforts to become a nuclear power.

A situation that was dire is turning more so by the day. And all because Trump is making up policy as he goes along - without understanding, without any kind of an overarching plan.
A court here is expected to pronounce verdict on January 18 on the massacre of 20 people in Behmai village, allegedly by bandit Phoolan Devi nearly four decades ago.

The special court for hearing dacoity-related cases was expected to deliver the verdict in the 1981 Behmai massacre case on Monday. But it allowed the defence counsel to submit its written arguments by January 16, district government counsel Raju Porwal said.

The court has now listed the case for January 18, when the judgment is expected on the role of the four surviving accused -- Bhikha, Posha, Vishwanath and Ram Singh.

The defence counsel Girish Narain Dubey appeared before the court, seeking more time to submit written arguments and was granted 10 more days, the government counsel said.

Bandit Queen Phoolan Devi, who later turned to politics, and her gang members were accused of killing 20 people belonging to the Thakur community at Behmai village in Kanpur Dehat on February 14, 1981.

Phoolan Devi had stormed into Behmai in what was described as an attack to avenge her alleged rape there by two other bandits, both Thakurs.

She surrendered to police in 1983 and went on to become an MP from Mirzapur. She was shot dead outside her Delhi home on July 25, 2001.

Initially, 35 people, including Phoolan Devi, were named as accused in the case. Eight of them were reportedly killed by police in separate encounters.

Three others were reportedly absconding.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
How do you follow up a first-year music festival and build for its future? If youre The Rochester Thaw organizers, you make almost half the event free.

The eleven-act festival is set for March 21 at the Castle -- the former armory -- in downtown Rochester.

The second year festival builds off the goals of last year -- showcase a variety of musicians, genres and keep it local. This year, theyll keep it moving by adding another stage.

Last years event featured a seven-band lineup on the third-floor stage of the Castle. This year, The Thaw includes a second-floor stage with acts between the third-floor sets.

"That will keep things moving," said organizer and founder Nick Novotny.

The second floor is home to artist studios and workspaces, Queen City Coffee and Collective Books and Records store. In order to not deter business, the second-floor stage will be free to the public, Novotny said.

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"We want this to be a beneficial thing for all the businesses in the building," he said.

The lineup, headlined by The Bad Man and Humbird, was announced Monday morning. The acts are local, but that doesnt mean they dont have experience and a regional draw.

"All of the top line up has toured regularly," Novotny said.

The act traveling the furthest to reach Southeast Minnesota is Peas and Carrot, with frontwoman transplant Audrey Robinson, an Iowa transplant who now lives in Rochester, backed by her Iowa band. Novotny said The Thaw isnt the only festival recognizing talent from this quadrant of Minnesota. He noted Big Turn, Midwest and Rockchester music festivals heavily feature Southeast Minnesota musicians.

"There are so many Minnesota people booking Minnesota musicians because Minnesota has rad music," Novotny said.

{{tncms-inline content="<p>March 21, The Castle</p> <p>The Bad Man</p> <p>Humbird</p> <p>Porkys Groove Machine</p> <p>Sass</p> <p>Peas and Carrot</p> <p>RLGDPPL</p> <p>Loreweavers</p> <p>Levi Henry</p> <p>My Grandmas Cardigan</p> <p>Twin Lakes</p> <p>Josiah Smith</p>" id="c8eb7b0b-8bf3-45f8-9958-bc275660e004" style-type="info" title="The Rochester Thaw Lineup" type="relcontent"}}

March 21, The Castle

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The Bad Man

Humbird

Porkys Groove Machine

Sass

Peas and Carrot

RLGDPPL

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The primary role of an insurance company is taking away fears or risks from you and promise to pay for damages or losses affecting your life or property. Presently, Kenya has over 50 registered insurance companies. Most of them offer general and life insurance and others offer both. The products offered by insurers are the same. However, each company has an array of value-added services for its customers. So, when it comes to buying a policy, it makes sense to look for the best insurance companies in Kenya.

Image: pixabay.com

Source: UGC

Before purchasing a policy, seek advice so that you can buy something that meets your needs. Also, you must have some knowledge of the insurance market because many policyholders in Kenya do not understand who their insurers are or what they do.

List of the best insurance companies in Kenya

To help you make a better decision, here are some of the best insurance companies in Kenya and their contacts:

1. AAR Insurance Kenya

AAR Insurance is one of the oldest and best insurance companies in Kenya. It began its operations in the country in 1984. Its primary business model was to evacuate accident casualties by air and road. But over the years, AAR has created more opportunities to give its customers a comprehensive health cover. Today, the company provides many insurance solutions, including:

Travel insurance

Personal accident cover

Individual and family medical plans

Business enterprise medical plans

Professional indemnity cover

Homeowners insurance

READ ALSO: List of Insurance companies in Kenya and their paybill numbers

AAR Insurance is also a prominent provider of school, marine, and landlord insurance cover. The company has flexible and competitive rates in the industry.

The company is located in Real Tower, Upper Hill, Nairobi, Kenya. Or, you can contact them through info@aar.co.ke. The companys telephone numbers are +254-703063-000, +254-730-633-000, and +254-20-289-5000.

2. AIG Kenya Insurance Company

AIG is one of the largest general insurance companies in the world. In Kenya, the company has previously operated as Chartis Kenya and Alico insurance since 1972. It has grown to become one of the leading insurance companies in Kenya. The company offers various products for both businesses and individuals. Some of its lines include:

Domestic package insurance

Private and commercial motor vehicle insurance

Motorcycle insurance

Travel insurance

Individual personal accident insurance

Image protector insurance

Businesses can get an array of insurance solutions such as property, aviation, and marine insurance. The company also covers business liabilities and has an array of financial lines to protect both SMEs and large corporations.

You will find the company located in Eden Square Complex, AIG House, Chiromo Road. Or, contact them through P.O. Box 49460, 00100 Nairobi Kenya, email aigkenya@aig.com, or call +254-20-3676-000, +254-723-600-400, +254-723-600-500, and +254-731-091-298.

READ ALSO: Top insurance companies to consider in Kenya

3. British-American Insurance Company Kenya Limited (BRITAM)

Britam is a leading financial services group and one of the best insurance companies in Kenya. It offers a diversified range of financial services and products in banking and property, asset management, and insurance.

Britam is one of the best life, general, and micro-insurance companies you can find in Kenya. It offers a wide range of products for both businesses and individuals, including:

Medical insurance

Personal accident cover

Education plans

Home insurance

Motor vehicle insurance

Fire insurance

Liability insurance

Professional indemnity

Marine insurance

Britam is also the leading provider of cyber insurance. Its many years of experience in the industry enables it to provide flexible solutions to help businesses and individuals to plan for the future.

Image: Britam.com

Source: UGC

You can contact Britam through email info@britam.com or call +254-705-100-100. Or you can visit the company on Elgon Road, Upper Hill, Nairobi, Kenya.

4. CIC General Insurance

The CIC Group is one of the most experienced insurance and financial services companies in Kenya. Having been in existence for over three decades, the insurance firm has brought about innovative products that have made it one of the best medical insurance companies in Kenya. CIC is also a leading provider of micro-insurance in Kenya. Some of its products include:

General insurance

Life assurance

Health insurance

The company has many policies that cover both individuals/families and businesses. It also offers customized products that meet the needs of its customers. You can contact CIC by visiting the head office at CIC Plaza, Mara Road, Upper Hill, Nairobi, Kenya. Or, call them using +254-703-099-120.

5. GA Insurance Company

GA Insurance Limited is a company that specializes in all classes of medical and general insurance. Incorporated in 1979, it is one of the most reputable insurers in the country and a preferred choice for many clients and intermediaries. The company provides personal, business, life, and health insurance products to its customers. You can get:

Travel insurance

Personal accident insurance

Motor insurance

Engineering insurances

Marine and aviation insurances

READ ALSO: Insurance Regulatory Authority functions, offices, and their contacts

GA Insurance is also a leading provider of bonds, political violence, and terrorism insurance in Kenya. All its products are available at affordable rates and have open policies for all its customers.

You will find the company located on the 4th floor of GA Insurance House, Ralph Bunche Road, Nairobi, Kenya. Also, you can contact them through P.O. BOX 42166-00100, Nairobi, Kenya, or call them via +254-709-626-000.

6. Jubilee Insurance Company Limited

Jubilee Insurance is one of the oldest insurance companies in Kenya. Incorporated in 1937, it played a significant role in the establishment of the composite insurance industry in the country. Today, Jubilee is the best insurance company in Kenya that offers an array of insurance products and solutions. Some of these include:

Motor insurance

Health insurance

Home insurance

Education plans

As a public company with over 80 years of experience, Jubilee Insurance creates long-lasting solutions for its customers. Its policies are straightforward, and it has some of the best medical insurance rates in the country.

You can contact the company through email at info@jubileekenya.com, P.O. Box 30376  00100 Nairobi, Kenya, telephone+254-20-328-1000. Or, you can visit the insurer at Jubilee Insurance House, Wabera Street, Nairobi.

7. Madison Insurance Company Kenya

Madison is a diversified financial services company in Kenya incorporated in 1988. The company provides some of the best insurance products in the country at the most reasonable rates. It has many solutions that meet customer expectations. Some of its insurance products include:

General insurance

Health insurance

Life assurance

Travel insurance

Madison is one of the best education insurance companies in Kenya. It has an education policy that seeks to enable children to live their dreams by covering the costs involved.

READ ALSO: APA Insurance contacts for general, life and health cover

You can get in touch by emailing madison@madison.co.ke, writing a letter to P.O. Box 47382  00100, Nairobi, Kenya, or calling them via +254-20-2864-000 and +254-709-922-000. Or, you can visit their head offices at Madison House, Upper Hill Close.

8. Liberty Life Assurance Kenya Limited

Liberty Life Assurance Kenya is one of the leading life insurance providers in the country. It has been providing relevant products and services to Kenyans for over 50 years. The company has innovative solutions that help its customers to protect their assets. Also, it has flexible and diverse products such as investment options, education, and retirement savings plans. Its insurance offerings cover individuals, businesses, and families. Some of these include:

Life protection plans

Funeral plans

Education plans

Group life assurance

Liberty Life also offers an array of annuity and risk products. It customizes its products to meet the unique needs of individuals, families, and businesses.

Image: Liberty.co.ke

Source: UGC

You can contact the company through P.O. Box 30364 - 00100, Nairobi, Kenya, phone +254-711-076-222, or email csc@libertylife.co.ke. Or, visit its headquarters at Liberty House, Professional Way, Nairobi, Kenya.

9. UAP Old Mutual

UAP Old Mutual Group is an integrated financial services company. It is one of the largest financial services groups in Kenya, and an experienced player in offering insurance, asset management, investment, and banking solutions to its customers. Some of its insurance products include:

Health insurance

Personal accident cover

Home insurance

Agriculture insurance

Corporate health insurance

Motor commercial cover

UAP Old Mutual is a leading provider of disability income cover in the region. It is a product that covers individuals against the loss of income mostly due to accidental physical harm. You can contact the company through:

Email: uapinsurance@uap-group.com

uapinsurance@uap-group.com Phone: +254-20-2850-000, +254-711-065-000, +254-711-065-100, or +254-711-010-100.

Or you can visit UAP Old Mutual Tower, Upper Hill Road, P.O. Box 43013  00100, Nairobi, Kenya.

10. Resolution Insurance Company

Resolution Insurance makes this list of insurance companies in Kenya because of its many insurance products and services. Incorporated in 2002 and formerly known as Resolution Health, the company offers many solutions that cater to the insurance needs of Kenyans. Some of these include:

Property covers

Medical plans

Motor covers

Travel plans

Liability

All classes of general insurance

Insurance products availed by the company provide value to customers wherever and whenever they are. Resolution Insurance is one of the few insurers in Kenya that allow policyholders to contribute premiums in flexible monthly installments.

READ ALSO: A list of travel insurance companies in Kenya

Resolution Insurance Kenya is situated at Parkfield Place, Muthangari Drive, Off Waiyaki, Nairobi, Kenya. Or, you can contact them using email info@resolution.co.ke or call them using+254-709-990-000, +254-730-199-000, and +254-20-2894-000.

The best insurance companies in Kenya are those that make it easier for you to purchase a policy and will cover you in the event of calamities. Even though you will have to deal with conditions, coverages, definitions, endorsements, and exclusions, it is much easier to work with the most experienced providers. The list above features some of the most dominant insurance companies in Kenya but it doesnt mean that they are the only ones providing better policies and flexible rates in the industry.

READ ALSO: Resolution Health Insurance packages, list of hospitals and contacts

Source: TUKO.co.ke
Boris Johnson is planning official events to mark the UKs departure from the European Union on 31 January, Downing Street has indicated.

The prime ministers official spokesperson said that details of Mr Johnsons plans for Brexit Day would be announced shortly.

But he declined to say whether Mr Johnson will give the governments support to a parliamentary move by Brexit hardliners to require Big Ben to be sounded at 11pm on Brexit Day as the UKs membership lapses.

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage is planning to throw a 100,000 celebration party in Parliament Square on the night of EU withdrawal, with fireworks, bands and speakers.

Mr Farage told The Daily Telegraph the event would be an upbeat, optimistic, genuine celebration with no direct political edge whatsoever.

Bizarre: Boris Johnson drives 'Brexit' digger through boxes Show all 8 1 /8 Bizarre: Boris Johnson drives 'Brexit' digger through boxes Bizarre: Boris Johnson drives 'Brexit' digger through boxes Conservative party leader Boris Johnson drives a JCB through a fake wall POOL/AFP via Getty Images Bizarre: Boris Johnson drives 'Brexit' digger through boxes PA Bizarre: Boris Johnson drives 'Brexit' digger through boxes AFP via Getty Bizarre: Boris Johnson drives 'Brexit' digger through boxes PA Bizarre: Boris Johnson drives 'Brexit' digger through boxes REUTERS Bizarre: Boris Johnson drives 'Brexit' digger through boxes PA Bizarre: Boris Johnson drives 'Brexit' digger through boxes AFP via Getty Bizarre: Boris Johnson drives 'Brexit' digger through boxes AFP via Getty

Richard Tice, the Brexit Party chairman, said he hoped tickets for the event would be extraordinarily affordable, almost zero.

Asked about Mr Johnsons intentions for the evening, the prime ministers spokesperson told a regular media briefing in Downing Street: In terms of our departure on 31 January, we will set out our plans shortly.

Its clearly a significant moment in our countrys history, but we will set all of our plans out shortly.

The spokesperson also indicated that trade talks with the US will begin as soon as the 31 January date of Brexit has passed, and will not be delayed until the conclusion of a free trade agreement with the EU, which both sides say they hope to complete by the end of 2020.

Once we have left the EU on 31 January, we will be free to hold trade discussions with countries across the world and not just focus on discussing the future partnership with the EU, said the spokesperson.

A group of Brexit-backing MPs, including Tories Mark Francois, Nigel Evans, Sir David Amess, Laurence Robertson, Andrew Rosindell and Henry Smith as well as the DUPs Jeffrey Donaldson, has tabled an amendment to the EU withdrawal agreement bill to require Big Ben to chime on Brexit Day.

Farage is planning a 100,000 celebration in Parliament Square (Reuters)

The totemic parliamentary clock is currently silent during renovations to the Elizabeth Tower, and is sounded only for key national events such as Remembrance Sunday and New Years Eve.

Mr Johnsons spokesperson said the prime minister would not indicate the governments position on any amendments to the bill until speaker Lindsay Hoyle has announced which will be debated as the legislation completes its final stages in the Commons over the next three days.

Other amendments include a Labour demand for the post-Brexit transition period to be extended by two years to December 2022 if the prime minister fails to secure a free trade agreement with the EU by the end of this year.

And Northern Irish parties from across the communal divide have united to table changes to the bill to require unfettered access for the provinces goods to markets on the British mainland.

The bill will return to the Commons on Tuesday for three days of debate concluding on Thursday, and is due to receive its second reading in the House of Lords next Monday, with the goal of securing Royal Assent before the end of the month.
At least five people are dead and dozens more injured after a multiple vehicle crash on the Pennsylvania turnpike, according to transportation officials.

The crash occurred around 30 miles east of Pittsburgh and involved at least two semi-trucks, several passenger vehicles and a tour bus, which reportedly flipped onto its side.

At least 60 people were injured when those vehicles collided early Sunday, according to Pennsylvania Turnpike spokesman Carl DeFebo, who tweeted information about the crash.

They were reportedly transported to three area hospitals.

A spokesperson for Excela Health, the company that runs the Excela Frick Hospital where around 25 of the victims were transported, said that they received patients ranging in age from 7 years old to 52. Nine of the victims were under the age of 18, said spokesperson Robin Jennings.

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One of the victims sent to Excela was transported to a nearby trauma centre, and Ms Jennings said the condition of other patients was not known.

Another eleven victims were transported to the Forbes Hospital in Monroeville, according to spokesperson Stephanie Waite, who was not immediately able to provide the ages of the victims. She said one was in critical condition, and the other 10 were in fair condition.

It was not immediately clear which hospital the remaining victims were sent.

The cause of the crash is unclear, and the National Transportation Safety Board is gathering information related to the incident. The agency has not indicated whether it will launch a formal investigation.

Weather conditions in the county at the time of the crash were listed as potentially having light precipitation, with air temperatures below freezing. Mr DeFebo said it was premature to say if weather contributed to the crash.

The stretch of highway, which is the main artery connecting the Philadelphia area to Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, remained closed hours after the crash. It was not clear when it might reopen.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
An Australian man has been found alive more than a week after he disappeared in a dense Indonesian jungle.

Stephen Camkin was in North Kalimantan with and left with his tour guide but when both men failed to return the rest of the group raised the alarm.

A search team was called in to track the pair and were successful in finding both men more than a week after they were last seen, Nine News reported.

Australian man Stephen Camkin (pictured middle in blue shirt) was rescued by a search party

According to local media both men were in a very 'weak condition' when they were rescued.

The pair were found in the upper Bahau River which is outside of the North Kalimantan border.

One of the search team, Taufik Ismail, said both men were in a bad way when they were found.

'Both were left with limited logistics,' he said.

'Approximately a week they got lost in the forest, before they were finally found by our members.'

Both men were then taken to the Apauping Village Head's residence where they were looked over by medical staff and are recovering from their ordeal.
Panaji, Jan 6 : Students, opposition party leaders and members of civil society on Monday, held a protest in Panaji against the assault on Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University students and members of the faculty late on Sunday, which left several students injured.

Leaders of the Congress, as well as the Aam Aadmi Party also supported the protest meet which was held at Panaji's Azad maidan grounds and was attended by a several hundred-crowd.

"We can see that the government is trying to scapegoat the JNU and they want to create an example out of this university and send a message to the students across the country that if you protest, this will be your fate. They want to indulge in politics of fear," Prasenjit Dhage, a student at the VM Salgaocar college of law.

Earlier on Monday, the Congress legislature party also passed a unanimous resolution condemning the violence against the students by unidentified members of a mob at the university campus in the national capital.

"The CLP condemned the attacks on students at JNU and other parts of the country. It is shameful," Leader of Opposition Digambar Kamat said.

The Aam Aadmi Party in Goa also described the violence against JNU students and faculty members.

"The attack on students is an attack on the future of India itself, as students are the future who need to have a free and fair environment for pursuing their education," Goa AAP convener Elvis Gomes said in a statement issued on Monday.
Lisle, IL, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AAIS (the American Association of Insurance Services) has expanded its admitted Cannabis Businessowners Policy (CannaBOP) program in Nevada with approval by the Nevada Division of Insurance on December 24, 2019. The first-of-its-kind program was approved just four days after its submission, a testament to the strength and clarity of the CannaBOP form and AAIS's role as a leader in the cannabis insurance market.

The cannabis industry continues to grow and mature as states legalize and expand medicinal and adult-use programs each year. Sales of cannabis in the U.S. are expected to top $15 billion in 2020. Nevada alone accounted for around $700 million in sales in 2019 and is expected to reach $1 billion by 2022. The need for admitted cannabis insurance is a natural by-product of this growth market.

"Cannabis and hemp are two of the fastest growing markets in North America," notes Commercial Lines Product Manager Joseph Jonas, "making it a critical consideration for insurance carriers and agents." CannaBOP offers a comprehensive solution for Nevada carriers looking to capitalize on a growing demand for quality insurance programs in the Silver State. The CannaBOP program includes a unique package policy containing both property and liability coverage for qualifying cannabis dispensaries, storage facilities, distributors, processors, and manufacturers. It comes fully supported by rules and loss costs developed with actuarial consulting group Merlinos & Associates, Inc.

As the only national not-for-profit insurance advisory organization, AAIS is bringing forward-thinking cannabis programs to all states with established cannabis markets. Since CannaBOPs inception in 2018, the program has been approved in California, Colorado, and now Nevada. AAIS intends to develop similar programs for Alaska, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and others. Program updates, including a multi-state base form for use in surplus lines markets, supplemental coverage and exclusion endorsements and alignment with AAISs commercial umbrella/excess program, are available.

For more information on program features, visit www.AAISonline.com/CannaBOP or contact cannabis@AAISonline.com.





ABOUT AAIS

Established in 1936, AAIS serves the Property & Casualty insurance industry as the only national nonprofit advisory organization governed by its member insurance carriers. AAIS delivers tailored advisory solutions including best-in-class policy forms, rating information and data management capabilities for commercial lines, inland marine, farm & agriculture and personal lines insurers. Its consultative approach, unrivaled customer service and modern technical capabilities underscore a focused commitment to the success of its Members. AAIS also serves as the administrator of openIDL, the insurance industrys regulatory blockchain, providing unbiased governance within existing insurance regulatory frameworks. For more information about AAIS, please visit www.aaisonline.com.

Attachment
Microsoft published an interesting analysis of RDP brute-force attacks that targeted the 45,000 have analyzed in months of study.

Researchers from Microsoft have analyzed several months worth of data to investigate RDP brute force attacks occurring across Microsoft Defender ATP customers. The study involved 45,000 machines that had both RDP public IP connections and at least 1 network failed sign-in.

The experts discovered that, on average, several hundred machines per day had a high probability of being targeted by RDP brute force attack attempts.

The experts noticed that the brute force attacks lasted 2-3 days on average, with about 90% of cases lasting for 1 week or less, and less than 5% lasting for 2 weeks or more.

Around 0.08% of RDP brute-force attacks are successful, and RDP brute-force attacks last 2-3 days on average.

The experts collected details about both failed and successful RDP login events, these events are coded with ID 4265 and 4264, respectively. Researchers also collected the usernames a user/attacker might have used.

In the attempt to remain under the radar, the attacks lasted days rather than hours, this means that attackers only try a few combinations per hour in each day.

Out of the hundreds of machines with RDP brute force attacks detected in our analysis, we found that about .08% were compromised. continues the report.

Furthermore, across all enterprises analyzed over several months, on average about 1 machine was detected with high probability of being compromised resulting from an RDP brute force attack every 3-4 days.

According to Microsoft, The Netherlands, Russia, and the United Kingdom have a larger concentration of inbound RDP connections from high-abuse IP.

Microsoft experts recommend using multiple indicators for detecting RDP inbound brute force traffic on a machine, such as:

hour of day and day of week of failed sign-in and RDP connections

timing of successful sign-in following failed attempts

Event ID 4625 login type (filtered to network and remote interactive)

Event ID 4625 failure reason (filtered to %%2308, %%2312, %%2313)

cumulative count of distinct username that failed to sign in without success

count (and cumulative count) of failed sign-ins

count (and cumulative count) of RDP inbound external IP

count of other machines having RDP inbound connections from one or more of the same IP

Monitoring suspicious activity in failed sign-ins and network connections should be taken seriouslya real-time anomaly detection capable of self-updating with the changing dynamics in a network can indeed provide a sustainable solution. concludes Microsoft.

Pierluigi Paganini
New Delhi:

Amid escalating tensions between American and Iran after the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday said the world is a safer place as Soleimani no longer walks on the planet. Pompeo said President Trump made the right decision to order drone strike on Soleimani and prevented future plans that he had against the United States. Pompeos statement comes after Trump tweeted, Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.

US Secy of State Mike Pompeo: Its very clear the worlds a safer place. Qassem Soleimani no longer walks the planet. US President Donald Trump made right decision to stop Soleimani from terror campaign that hed been engaged in against America&prevented future plans that he had pic.twitter.com/c15vNWkIdw  ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020

Trump tweeted after Iran vowed to pull out of the nuclear deal or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed between Iran and five UNSC members plus Germany. Irans announcement of pulling out of the nuclear deal came amid escalating tensions in the Gulf region after the killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.

Trump had warned Iran that the US has identified 52 possible targets in the country and will hit it harder than ever before if Tehran, which has vowed severe revenge, carries out any attack against America to avenge the killing of top military commander Qasem Soleimani.

Soleimani, 62, the head of Irans elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was killed when a US drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the Baghdad International Airport early on Friday. The strike also killed the deputy chief of Iraqs powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force.

Moreover, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday urged Iran to drop measures that go against the 2015 nuclear deal, after Tehran announced it would no longer abide by a limit on enrichment. "We call on Iran to withdraw all measures that are not in line with the nuclear agreement," German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British PM Boris Johnson said in a joint statement.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
The Supreme Court of India (SC) will hear a petition filed by Tata Sons seeking a stay on the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal's (NCLAT) judgment that reinstated Cyrus Mistry as chairman on January 10. The petition was mentioned before the Chief Justice today after the court reopened following the winter vacation.

Last week, Tata Sons had moved the Supreme Court challenging the NCLAT order, saying the verdict "undermined corporate democracy" and the "rights" of its board of directors.

"Restoring Cyrus Mistry to the position as Chairman has undermined corporate democracy and the rights of the board of directors," Tata Sons said in its filing.

"The NCLAT has, in one stroke of the pen, pulled down the governance and corporate structure of the appellant (Tata Sons) so painstakingly put together by its founders, in the spirit of trusteeship and responsibility, in the course of last one century," it said.

Also Read: Ratan Tata moves Supreme Court seeking stay against NCLAT's order to restore Cyrus Mistry

On January 3, Tata Group patriarch Ratan Tata had also filed a petition in the apex court seeking to quash the tribunal's order directing the group's holding company Tata Sons to rehire the chairman it had fired in 2016. He said that the order held him guilty of oppressive and prejudicial steps against the interests of Tata Sons shareholders without explaining the factual or legal foundation.

In a fresh development, the NCLAT on Monday refused to modify its judgment passed in the Tata-Mistry matter and dismissed the petition filed by the Registrar of Companies (RoC), saying that there was no ground to amend the judgment. A two-member bench headed by Chairman Justice SJ Mukhopadhyaya dismissed RoC's plea.

Also Read: Tata Sons-Cyrus Mistry case: NCLAT dismisses RoC petition to modify order

On December 18, 2019, the NCLAT ordered restoration of Mistry as the executive chairman of the Tata Group. This judgement rendered N Chandrasekaran's appointment as executive chairman of the company illegal. However, the appellate tribunal had granted Tata group four weeks to file an appeal before the Supreme Court against its judgement.

Also Read: Cyrus Mistry says not returning as Tata Sons chairman, will protect minority shareholders' rights

Meanwhile, Cyrus Mistry has said that he has no plans to rejoin Tata. He, however, said that he will "vigorously pursue all options to protect our rights as a minority shareholder".

Shapoorji Pallonji Group scion Cyrus Mistry had been engaged in a boardroom battle against Tata Sons over his unceremonious termination from the company's board in October 2016. Mistry moved NCLAT to reverse his sacking after his appeals were turned down by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). The appellate tribunal had admitted his appeal in August 2018.

By Chitranjan Kumar
Iraqi Parliament Calls For U.S. Troops To Leave The Country In Wake Of Soleimani Killing

By RFE/RL January 05, 2020

Iraq's parliament has passed a resolution calling for foreign troops to leave the country in the wake of a U.S. air strike that killed Iran's top military commander, Qasem Soleimani, near Baghdad last week.

The Iraqi government "commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting [the Islamic State (IS) extremist group] due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory," the lawmakers said in the resolution adopted on January 5.

The government of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi "must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace, or water for any reason," they added.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said the United States was disappointed in the decision.

"While we await further clarification on the legal nature and impact of today's resolution, we strongly urge Iraqi leaders to reconsider the importance of the ongoing economic and security relationship between the two countries and the continued presence of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS," Ortagus said in a statement, using an alternate acronym for the Islamic State group.

The United States has some 5,000 military personnel in Iraq, mainly as advisers.

Parliamentary resolutions are nonbinding to the government, but Abdul-Mahdi had earlier urged parliament to take urgent measures and end the presence of foreign troops as soon as possible.

"Despite the internal and external difficulties that we might face, it remains best for Iraq on principle and practically," he told lawmakers in a speech.

Meanwhile, Iraq's Foreign Ministry said it had summoned the American ambassador in Baghdad to condemn U.S. strikes on Iraq that killed Soleimani, an Iraqi militia commander, and other local fighters.

The strikes are "a blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty" and "contradict the agreed-upon missions" of the anti-IS coalition presence in Iraq, a statement said.

Later in the day, Iraq's military said that two rockets had fallen inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, where the U.S. and other embassies are based, as well as the seat of Iraq's government.

Another rocket hit a nearby area, it said.

Several people were reportedly wounded in the attacks.

Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, the foreign arm of Iran's hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), was killed on January 3 as he left Baghdad's airport in a convoy amid a regional tour.

The attack marked a significant escalation between Iran and the United States, with Tehran promising "harsh revenge."

Thousands of Iraqis attended a funeral procession for Soleimani before his body was flown to Iran, where hundreds of thousands of mourners on January 5 participated in processions honoring the commander.

In a series of January 4 tweets, President Donald Trump said he had ordered the strike on Soleimani because the Iranian commander had organized attacks on U.S. and Iraqi targets and that he was "preparing for additional hits in other locations."

"Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently hundreds of Iranian protesters," Trump wrote.

"If Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture," he also said.

Trump's reference to hostages taken by Iran refers to the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 by Iranian revolutionaries, who held 52 Americans captive for 444 days.

The inclusion of "cultural" sites on a potential target list prompted immediate criticism from Iranian officials and observers.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the killing of Soleimani was a breach of international law and that any targeting of cultural sites would constitute a war crime.

"Those masquerading as diplomats and those who shamelessly sat to identify Iranian cultural & civilian targets should not even bother to open a law dictionary," Zarif wrote in a January 5 tweet. "Jus cogens refers to peremptory norms of international law, i.e. international red lines. That is, a big(ly) 'no no'."

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on January 5 defended the intelligence assessment that led to the air strike which killed Soleimani, saying not taking action would have posed a greater risk.

Asked about reports suggesting that intelligence behind the U.S. air strike was thin, Pompeo told ABC television: "The intelligence assessment made clear that no action -- allowing Soleimani to continue his plotting and his planning, his terror campaign -- created more risk than taking the action that we took last week."

In the interview, he defended the U.S. strikes as lawful and said that any target the American military may strike in Iran would be legal under the laws of armed conflict -- which prohibit the deliberate targeting of cultural sites under most circumstances.

"Every target that we strike will be a lawful target, and it will be a target designed with a singular mission -- defending and protecting America," the secretary of state said.

Pompeo also said there was no doubt in his mind that Iran "gets clearly the message from the American leadership."

In remarks aired later in the day on Fox News, he said "there is a real likelihood Iran will make a mistake and make a decision to go after some of our forces, military forces in Iraq or soldiers in northeast Syria."

Amid soaring tensions with Iran, the U.S.-led coalition battling the IS group in Iraq and Syria said on January 5 it had halted most of its operations against the militants for now to focus on protecting coalition forces and bases.

A spokesman said that the coalition could still carry out some operations and would act in self-defense against the militants.

As head of the Quds Force, the 62-year-old Soleimani helped orchestrate Tehran's overseas clandestine and military operations.

Both the Quds Force and the IRGC have been designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department.

Trump's decision to kill Soleimani was praised by his Republican supporters but criticized by many Democrats, who say it could draw the United States into a war with Iran.

Demonstrators took to the streets in many American cities to protest against the targeted killing.

Many traditional U.S. allies have also expressed concerns that the military strike could ignite a wider conflict in the already tense Middle East, although some have defended the United States' right to defend itself.

Washington has blamed Iran for orchestrating attacks by Iraqi Shi'ite militias on U.S. and coalition sites, including an assault on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad by a mob that included pro-Iran paramilitary groups on December 31. The attackers withdrew on January 1 and no staff was hurt.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, AFP, and dpa

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/trump- targets-iranian-sites-retaliatory- strikes-soleimani/30360757.html

Copyright (c) 2020. 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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On how evangelicals can support Trump, both libs and conservatives get it wrong By Selwyn Duke

With both the Russia and Ukraine hoaxes having fizzled and the legal means for President Trumps removal perhaps exhausted, at least for now, the Left appears to have moved on to a moral argument designed to influence the 2020 election. Initiated by Christianity Today and advanced by figures such as CNNs Chris Cuomo, the idea is that Evangelicals  and by implication all Christians  should be ashamed to support Trump because he makes a mockery of their faith. Its an interesting argument not because its anything but a demagogic one, but because it relates to interesting issues completely eluding the very uninteresting people making the argument. Unfortunately, Ive yet to hear them treated adequately. Were I to apply my own purity test, I couldnt vote for anyone, including myself. Characterizing myself, I shy away from ideological or party labels and rather say Im sort of like Mayberry meets the Middle Ages. In fact, theres a certain (half?) joke I sometimes make with those around me, who are very few in number, after returning from situations in which I encounter large groups of people. I had to interact with the humans today, Ill say. Yet I can still vote for the humans  including the very human Donald Trump. The reason why has nothing to do with how, as many conservatives say, Im voting for president, not pastor. While rhetorically effective and having beautiful alliteration (which I can truly appreciate), this smacks too much of the Lefts 90s defense of Bill Clinton, Character doesnt matter. Conservatives roundly dismissed this argument, and rightly so. Would you want to be pulled over by a police officer or hire a baby sitter, auto mechanic, financial manager or employee with bad character? Character is central to anything we may do and is why the Deep State is, well, the Deep State (see Brennan, Clapper, Comey et al.). The actual reason why I can, without reservation, vote for a very human human was expressed well by legendary German leader Otto Von Bismarck. Politics is the art of the possible, he said. Its not the art of you get whatever you want right now, 100 percent, no questions asked. My ideal candidate for president would be Selwyn Duke (no, its not narcissism, just love of aliens). But thats a non-starter. Next on my list would be Pat Buchanan or Alan Keyes, both great men with whom Ive corresponded. Thats not happening, either. So what am I left with? The possible. In every general election there are usually just two viable alternatives, which brings to mind William F. Buckleys advice about voting for the most conservative candidate who can win. Moreover, my faith not only provides an accurate yardstick for measuring candidates personal and policy-wise moral status but informs about something else: Everyone is a sinner. This means every candidate is a sinner, which means voting amounts to supporting a sinner  that is, until seraphim, or at least cherubim, take corporeal form and enter the political fray. So, in a way, voting is always choosing the lesser of two evils. Then again, we could always just exit politics. Convincing some people of faith to thus retreat and refuse to vote, with Trump-shaming, is no doubt a Machiavellian goal of the Chris Cuomo types, too. That way the field can be left to them  so they can elect someone with really bad character. And thats the point. As usual, leftists are engaging in pure projection. Cuomo the Lesser supports Cuomo the Greater (NYs governor), a man who signed a bill allowing prenatal infanticide up to birth (Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, Jeremiah 1:5, anyone?). In fact, along with other purported leftist Christians, the Lesser makes a mockery of his own faith. It requires a striking lack of self-awareness, or a sociopathic lack of compunction, for the glass-house Left to hurl its White House stones. Who, Mr. Cuomo, is this saintly viable alternative who must exist if you imply that Christians should abandon Trump? Whomever you suggest, it wont just be someone supporting prenatal infanticide, putting boys in girls bathrooms ([M]ale and female he made them, Genesis 5:2) and indoctrinating schoolchildren with sexual devolutionary propaganda (But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea, Matthew 18:6). As the Left has already demonstrated, it will also be someone willing to coerce Christians into violating their faith; examples are forcing them to fund prenatal infanticide and contraception and to service same-sex weddings. Why, the Lefts overt Christian persecution makes mere mockery of the faith seem attractive. In fact, while space constraints preclude a comprehensive theological and moral examination of left-wing failings (only so many bits and bytes in the world, you know), its hard to think of a Commandment todays leftists dont violate. But a dishonorable mention, aside from the continual bearing of false witness, is adding a one-night stand with God to leftists one-night stand with the Founding Fathers. That is, I pray for the president all the time, said Nancy Pelosi in a pretentious show of something far less than even Pharisaic religiosity. (In fairness, she didnt specify what she prays for or whom she prays to.) But the Pelosi pretense is a common leftist one. As to this, I seem to remember someone (perhaps the theologian Democrats can jog my memory) saying that when praying, do not be like the hypocrites who make a show of it so they may be seen by men. Meanwhile, the pious poltroons of progressivism got perturbed recently because Justice Neil Gorsuch wished people Merry Christmas! So I can support Trump unabashedly and maintain my faith absolutely. Sure, along with the presidents many accomplishments, he also just signed a horrid $1.4 trillion spending bill, and hes weak on opposing our Great Sexual Devolution. But I also know that the battle for civilization is fought on both the political and cultural (and, ultimately, spiritual) level, and what we want possible politically must first be palatable culturally. So, to improve civilization, the culture more than the commander in chief must be changed. This would also help remedy the problem of Christian magazines that make a mockery of Christianity and journalists who make a mockery of journalism. Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Gab (preferably) or Twitter, or log on to SelwynDuke.com. Home
By PTI

DEHRADUN: Universities are centres of learning and will not be allowed to become "addas" of politics, HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' has said.

The minister was replying to questions from reporters in Haldwani on Sunday about protests against the amended Citizenship Act across university campuses.

"Universities are centres of learning where the country's future is in the making. We cannot let them become addas of politics," Nishank said.



ALSO READ | Students, teachers attacked by masked mob as cops nab four outsiders fleeing JNU violence scene

He accused the opposition parties of trying to turn the universities into hotbeds of politics.

The new legislation passed by Parliament aims to grant citizenship to persecuted religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who had taken refuge in India and there is nothing wrong in it, the Union Minister said "When Pakistan was created, the population of religious minorities there stood at 22 per cent. Today it is a minuscule 3.7 per cent. Persecuted on the basis of their religion, they sought sanctuary in India. The CAA is meant only to grant them citizenship," he said.

Terming the law humanitarian, the minister said it was going to make no difference to the status of Muslims in India and wondered why the Congress was making such a hue and cry about it.

Nishank's press conference in Haldwani was part of the BJP's campaign to create awareness in favour of the amended Citizenship Act.
439 illegal petrol stations were closed during the last three weeks in Ukraine as Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk reported on Facebook.

The law enforcers checked 787 petrol stations. Moreover, they arrested 275,4 tons of fuel.

Besides, the leadership of all regional state administrations involved in the work. I ordered to liquidate the issue until January 9. We should overcome the shadow market for the further growth of the economy of the country as soon as possible, the message said.

Earlier the prices for gasoline A-92 and A-95 and diesel fuel decreased for $0,022- 0,043. It happened after the meeting of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky with the representatives of the filling stations.

As we reported, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky during a meeting with representatives of participating companies in the fuel market, oil and gas industry and gas station networks discussed the issue of lowering fuel prices at Ukrainian gas stations and detailing the market.
Female student, 20, stabbed to death in attack at New Year event

PHUKET: One of three men wanted for a vicious attack at a New Years celebration event at the Sarasin Bridge on Saturday night (Jan 4) that left a 20-year-old student from Phuket Rajabhat University stabbed to death has surrendered himself to police.

violencedeathhomicidepolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Monday 6 January 2020, 11:21AM

Thanaphon Janjit, 23, is still recovering from his injuries. Photo; Eakkapop Thongtub

Noppamas Baitong Ngenyangthong, a 20-year-old student from Phuket Rajabhat University, died from stab wounds in the attack. Photo: Supplied

Noppamas Baitong Ngenyangthong, a 20-year-old student from Phuket Rajabhat University, died from stab wounds in the attack. Photo: Supplied

Noppamas Baitong Ngenyangthong, a 20-year-old student from Phuket Rajabhat University, died from stab wounds in the attack. Photo: Supplied

The attack occurred on the last night of a New Years celebration event at the Sarasin Bridge on Saturday (Jan 4). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Kerkkiat Songsaeng, 23, from Khok Kloi, just north of Phuket in Phang Nga province, was wanted for his role in the deadly attack, which occurred on Saturday night at the Countdown Saphan Sarasin New Year event organised by Mai Khao Subdistrict Administration Organisation (OrBorTor), held at the Sarasin Bridge from Dec 26-Jan 4.

Capt Kraisorn Boonprasop of the Thalang Police said he was first made aware of the attack when staff at Thalang Hospital informed him at 3am yesterday morning (Jan 5) that a woman brought to the hospital had died of knife wounds.

At the hospital officers were shown the body of Noppamas Baitong Ngenyangthong, 20, originally from Prachuap Khiri Khan. She had died from a two-centimeter stab wound under the left breast. She had also suffered slash wounds on her left wrist and left calf.

Hospital staff told police that Miss Noppamas died while being rushed to the hospital.

Four other people were injured in the attack, Capt Kraisorn reported.

Thanaphon Janjit, 23, had been stabbed in the stomach, suffered a large slash to his chest and had a head wound that took three stitches to close. He was taken to Thalang Hospital, but transferred to Vachira Phuket Hospital for surgery.

Of the three others injured, Mr Thanaphons twin brother, Mr Thanaphong, had suffered injuries to his hands, Patipat Deekhran had suffered a slash wound on his right hand, and a man named only by his nickname A-ngoon (Grape) had suffered injuries to his eyes.

All three had been taken to Thalang Hospital and treated, and all three had been already released from hospital care, Capt Kraisorn reported.

Rattanawan Kaem Khunthong, 23, from Prachuap Khiri Khan province, told police that she and Miss Noppamas had been girlfriends for about five years.

The couple with about 10 friends on Saturday went to the last night of the event for a live music concert, she said.

After the concert, one of the group, Sittichai Khongyam, 18, went to urinate in the grass under the bridge. After Mr Sittichai had finished his business, he was attacked by three men.

Earlier during the night, the three men had made unwelcome gestures and advances towards Miss Noppamas, Miss Rattanawan explained.

Mr Thanaphon, a 23-year-old third-year student at Thalang Technical College, went to intervene, and the three men turned to attack him, smashing a beer bottle on his head, she said.

The group moved to help Mr Thanaphon and Mr Sittichai, Miss Rattanawan explained.

During the fight, one of the three attackers grabbed a meat cleaver from a local vendor and struck Mr Thanaphon several times. However, the attacker dropped the knife and Mr Thanaphon was able to pick it up and chase the attackers off, she said.

In the melee, Miss Noppamas had hit one of the attackers with a chair. In response, one of the attackers pulled out a knife and attacked her. She suffered slash wounds on her left wrist and left calf, and was stabbed in the chest.

Miss Rattanawan said that Miss Noppamas had never had a boyfriend. The two had been a couple since school in Prachuap Khiri Khan.

However, on the night of the attack Miss Noppamas was openly showing her affection in public, which was unusual for her, Miss Rattanawan said.

Miss Rattanawan told police that she already knew the three men before the attack.

Before the surrender of Kerkkiat, Capt Kraisorn said that police had the names of all three attackers and were taking action to take all three into custody.

Police are are now tracking down the remaining two, Capt Kraisorn said.
[January 06, 2020] Xcentz Rolls Out AW-31011 Fast Charger That Supports 45W PD Charging Protocol

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Xcentz, a consumer electronics and smart hardware maker, recently announced the launch of the AW-31011, a compact fast charger that supports the 45W Power Delivery (PD) charging protocol. With the popularization of PD fast charging technology, the protocol is now built into a growing number of devices. Based on increasing demand among consumers for products that can be recharged quickly among an expanding range of application scenarios, Xcentz has developed the AW-31011, the 45W PD charger that is compatible with the broadest range of devices, from low-powered mobile phones and tablets to power-hungry notebooks and laptops. With a unique appearance, a slip-resistant diagonal design and folding pins, the charger, which comes in several fashionable colors, takes up minimal space in the user's pocket or carrying case. "Xcentz is committed to creating products which combine leading tech and optimum usability," said Kevin Luo, Director of Product Research and Development at Xcentz. "The challenge facing the new PD charging protocol is the ability to provide fast charging across all brands and devices. Despite claims over the speed devices can be recharged, most currently available chargers fail to live up to the hype and offer an inferior experience. In response, we have expanded our R&D efforts, and repeatedly adjusted and improved our 45W PD charger by testing it with more than 100 popular products, models and brands to ensure uers an enhanced fast-charge experience."



Highlighted features of the AW-31011: Faster charging : Combined with a USB-C to USB-C Cable, the AW-31011 can quickly charge a Samsung Note 10+ to 70 percent in 30 minutes, while combined with a USB-C to Lightning Cable, an iPhone XR can be charged to 50 percent in 30 minutes. A MacBook Pro 2018 can be fully charged in 2 hours 50 minutes;

: Combined with a USB-C to USB-C Cable, the AW-31011 can quickly charge a Samsung Note 10+ to 70 percent in 30 minutes, while combined with a USB-C to Lightning Cable, an iPhone XR can be charged to 50 percent in 30 minutes. A MacBook Pro 2018 can be fully charged in 2 hours 50 minutes; Offers quick charging for a variety of phones and tablets : iPhone 11 / Pro / Max / XS / XS Max / XR, Samsung Note 10+ / S10+ / S9 / S9+, Pixel 3/2/XL, iPad Pro 12.9'' / iPad Pro 10.5'', among others as well as for commonly available notebooks and laptops: MacBook Air 13'' (2018) / MacBook 12'' / MacBook Pro 13'', Dell XPS 13, Inspiron 13, HP Elite X2, Spectre 15, Spectre 360, Lenovo ThinkPad X1, YOGA730, among others;

: iPhone 11 / Pro / Max / XS / XS Max / XR, Samsung Note 10+ / S10+ / S9 / S9+, Pixel 3/2/XL, iPad Pro 12.9'' / iPad Pro 10.5'', among others as well as for commonly available notebooks and laptops: MacBook Air 13'' (2018) / MacBook 12'' / MacBook Pro 13'', Dell XPS 13, Inspiron 13, HP Elite X2, Spectre 15, Spectre 360, Lenovo ThinkPad X1, YOGA730, among others; Safety First : Consistent with the industry's highest safety and quality standards, the product is protected by several safety features, including surge, overcurrent, thermal, overload and short-circuit protection and self-matching. The charger has passed a large number of limit tests to ensure safety;

: Consistent with the industry's highest safety and quality standards, the product is protected by several safety features, including surge, overcurrent, thermal, overload and short-circuit protection and self-matching. The charger has passed a large number of limit tests to ensure safety; Compact size and fashionable look: 25 percent smaller than the 60W Macbook Pro Charger. Compact body and foldable plug design make the charger a good choice for travel. Simple anti-slip texture and radiant design make the device easy to use, including when plugging or unplugging it from the power source. For more information about the product, please visit: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZSHQYY6

About Xcentz Founded in January 2018, Xcentz is an emerging innovative hardware producer of mobile phone accessories, smart wearables and devices for the smart home. Based in Wilmington, Delaware, the company has offices in the United States, Hong Kong, Germany and mainland China. We pursue minimalism, making the concept the sole starting point of our team and our brand philosophy, with a focus on the real needs of users. When it comes to brand positioning, we focus on advanced design styles, leading R&D technologies and excellence in quality. Our slogan is "The tech that gets you". At Xcentz, our mission is to make people's lives easier, better and more dynamic. For more information, please visit Xcentz at https://xcentz.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xcentz/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/XcentzOfficial

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Xcentz.fans/ View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/xcentz-rolls-out-aw-31011-fast-charger-that-supports-45w-pd-charging-protocol-300981373.html SOURCE Xcentz

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LG Electronics' employees pose while promoting the company's OLED display installation called New Wave, which is made up of some 200 curved OLED panels, at its booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Jan. 6. / Courtesy of LG Electronics



By Baek Byung-yeul



Web-enabled TVs, mobility technology, robots and fifth-generation (5G) network-backed services are among the key points for this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which will kick off in Las Vegas, Wednesday (KST), organizers and participating companies said.



The CES is still the world's most influential technology exhibition, offering chances for industry officials to take a close look the latest trend in the global technology industry. This year's show will feature 4,400 companies from all over the world and is expected to garner about 170,000 visitors from 160 countries.



Major heavyweights Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor, Qualcomm, Sony and Intel are set to unveil their new business strategies and what are believed to be stunning products, inviting global media and industry officials to their media event before the official launch date.



From South Korea's standpoint, Samsung and LG, the two biggest domestic tech rivals, will compete for who has smarter TVs with better ultra-high resolution, to put an end to the ongoing debate over the definition of 8K TV.



The world's No. 1 and No. 2 TV maker has been tit-for-tat over contrast modulation value as LG has claimed Samsung's 8K TV has low contrast modulation value.



At the CES 2020, LG will introduce a new lineup for its 8K TV, which satisfies the 8K requirements of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the organizer of the tech fair. Samsung also earned a certification from the 8K Association to legitimize its standards for 8K resolution.



Both Samsung and LG said they have applied their advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and Internet of Things (IoT) to its appliances to better offer enhanced personalized services.



Robots are another key theme for the CES event. Among the Korean companies, Samsung will introduce new robots incorporating its new AI technology called NEON. The new robot is an expansion of its robot platform Samsung Bot, which was introduced at the 2019 event.



LG will also introduce its AI technology-featured robot products ranging from those for the business environment to home-help robots.





Samsung Electronics' employees pose with the firm's 5G network-based digital cockpit for future vehicles at its booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Jan. 6. / Courtesy of Samsung Electronics
The violence on Sunday night at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is a blot for any democratic society. For hours, goons from outside ran riot in the campus, violently beating up students and teachers, both men and women. Even as the violence was underway, a mob gathered at the main gate of the university, inciting violence against JNU students and heckling and even beating up journalists and civil society activists. All this happened even as the police was present.

Yesterdays attack has taken the intimidation being meted out to JNU to a completely different level. This cycle started three years ago, when the police arrested Kanhaiya Kumar, the then JNUSU president and two others, under charges of sedition. A chargesheet is yet to be filed in the case. Since then, JNU has faced constant vilification, intimidation and intermittent violence. Yesterdays is only the biggest, but not the first attack. While the so-called nationalists have tried to portray JNU as a hub of anti-nationals, the JNU administration has been continuously pushing students and teachers against the wall while undermining all democratic forums inside the university.

The latest in this series is the fee hike announced last year, which has triggered massive protests both inside and outside the campus, so much so that the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) had to constitute a committee to talk to the JNU Students Union (JNUSU). The Vice-Chancellor has not been talking to the students for a very long time now. The JNU administrations statement on yesterdays incidents is a cynical attempt to portray the anti-fee hike protesters as the villains behind the violence, which is completely against the version of most students and teachers.

Also Watch | Uneasy calm in JNU a day after violence: All the top developments

During the entire course of agitation against the fee hike, JNUs detractors have been ridiculing and dismissing the protest by portraying the fact that JNU students are used to doles from the state, even though many of them can afford to pay higher fees.

While there can hardly be any engagement with the vilification and the violence and intimidation being meted out to the university, the argument for differential fee structure - charging those who can pay a higher fees - in higher educational institutions deserves to be countered.

Like all other investments, spending on higher education hinges on a cost-benefit analysis by a young student and his family. While the costs are clear - fees and other related expenses - there is a significant amount of asymmetry in information about the benefits of studying in an elite university.

A Bihari middle class family would not know that getting into JNU can also be a launchpad for an Ivy League PhD programme. They would not know that years of exposure to research and debates can make a good journalist out of you. The economic and cultural elite and their children know these benefits much better than the non-elite while making this decision.

Given this information deficit, the non-elite are always more willing to settle for safer but less rewarding options in education. They would want their children to become a school teacher or bank probationer officer, rather than go for an MA or PhD. This tendency to settle for less rewarding options would increase manifold if the fees in these elite institutions become significantly higher, as the costs would increase.

This is the biggest reason why differential fee structure in elite universities ought to be opposed. Low-fees, yet resource rich public universities allow Indias non-elite to live and compete with their peers from very privileged background on same terms. Both of them learn from each other in this process. The non-elite learn about new opportunities and break new knowledge frontiers. The elite learn from the experience of backwardness, discrimination and deprivation of their non-privileged classmates. The teachers learn about dealing with a class which has students from some of Indias most elite families and first generation learners at the same time. This is the biggest pedagogic challenge in a society like India.

Institutions such as JNU and Delhi University are elite spaces. But they are also the biggest facilitators of promoting equality in the next generation of social elite in the country. This is essential for deepening democracy and furthering justice. It would be a travesty if all this were frittered away for a few hundred crore rupees in fiscal savings.

It needs to be underlined that even the fee hike, which has been unleashed in JNU, cannot recover an overwhelming share of the spending on running the university. For that to happen, the fees will have to go into tens of lakhs.

One need not always agree with everything JNU students say and demand. But they should always have the right to say these things as long as they are democratic and non-violent, which JNU has always been.

Yesterdays treatment of JNU students is proof that we are living in an age where ideological differences in places of learning will be crushed with brute force, and the state at best will remain a bystander. A society which condones violence against its universities is only condoning the destruction of its future.

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As the state Legislature prepares for the upcoming session, a $6.1 billion budget gap hangs over the lawmakers like a dark cloud. It is the states largest budget deficit since the Great Recession. Despite Democrats legislative successes during their first year after gaining complete control of state government, they must now show whether they can overcome this more mundane  but potentially more implacable  obstacle: an old-fashioned budget deficit, according to The New York Times.

Revealed late last year, the projected $6.1 billion budget gap for the coming fiscal year has prompted discussion about how best to move forward, and debate over the two traditional approaches  spending cuts and tax hikes  are unsurprisingly central. Some on the left, like Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, have been advocating for raising taxes on the wealthy, and others on the right want to start with spending cuts.

Much of the budget gap has been attributed to Medicaid spending  which has contributed about $3 billion to $4 billion to the deficit  as enrollment and costs of the program grow. Spending on schools is another major budget item, with the state spending $27.9 billion on school aid in 2019. The state has started to implement changes to close budget gap, including cutting a projected Medicaid spending increase in half, delaying a $2.2 billion Medicaid payment to the following fiscal year and limiting overall spending increases to 2%. But as some have pointed out, those fixes alone are unlikely to address the entirety of the behemoth budget gap. More details will likely come later this month, when Cuomo introduces his budget proposal.

In this weeks Ask the Experts feature, we asked experts from across the political spectrum to offer their insight on what should be done about New Yorks multibillion-dollar problem. Three experts weighed in: Ron Deutsch, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute; David Friedfel, director of state studies at the Citizens Budget Commission; and E.J. McMahon, research director at the Empire Center for Public Policy.

What should be done to solve the budget gap?

David Friedfel: First, we should remember that this gap is the result of (a) delayed response to unbudgeted spending and papering over the gap last year. Second, this is a spending problem  revenues are coming in at or above expectations  so the gap should be closed by restraining spending. Therefore, the state should start by making targeted reductions to Medicaid and unproductive economic development programs, and then look for savings in every other part of the state budget. By waiting until the year was almost over, the state has made solving this problem radically more challenging. The state must resist the temptation to paper over the problem again, which is what the state would be doing if it follows through on the proposal to permanently lag $2.2 billion in annual Medicaid payments. To fully close the gap, the state may consider using some one-time resources, but this would only be reasonable as a component of a multiyear strategy that fully brings spending in line with revenues. Using one-time resources in (the) absence of such a plan would perpetuate the type of fiscal maneuvers that have damaged the states finances and fiscal integrity in the past.

E.J. McMahon: A $4 billion overrun due to a failure to control spending in the Medicaid program should be addressed primarily with reductions in spending on Medicaid.

Ron Deutsch: The budget gap highlights the growing needs that exist in New York, and this year offers us the opportunity to commit to creating a state that works for everyone, not just the rich.

Our state has a robust economy but consistently leads the nation in income inequality, meaning that our wealthiest residents are doing exceptionally well, and the poorest are struggling to make ends meet. We can take the necessary steps forward by realizing how austerity spending (the 2% spending cap) has hamstrung services statewide, embracing an equitable tax structure where everyone shoulders the burden fairly, reforming and reimagining economic development programs that are currently based on corporate whim or high-stakes competition, and rejecting creative accounting. The worst thing we could do is to start believing that we cant make a difference, because we can, and New York depends on us.

New York should ask our billionaires and millionaires to pay a little more so we can eliminate our budget gap, create a fairer tax system and fund the starved services so many New Yorkers depend on.

What should be done for the structural deficit going forward?

Deutsch: Any structural deficit is going to require either spending cuts or revenue raisers. Now is not the time for spending cuts but rather the time to carefully consider where and how our state can raise revenues. New York state can increase revenue from high-income earners to fund high-quality government services without overburdening middle-income New Yorkers in several ways. We should institute a billionaires wealth tax and an ultramillionaires tax that adds new income tax brackets at $5 million, $10 million and $100 million of earnings. We should also institute a stock buyback transfer tax, carried interest fairness fee, pied-a-terre tax, and reform the estate tax to ensure our state has the resources to address growing and unmet needs.

McMahon: Medicaid aside, closing the structural deficit requires curbing the growth in school aid, still the largest single category of state-funded spending in the budget. While advocates seek (a) $2 billion (increase), even the $1 billion hike assumed in the financial plan looks high, given ongoing drops in enrollment in the majority of districts statewide. More than ever, the emphasis should be not on spending more but on spending more effectively. School administrators and school boards should be equipped with more flexibility to manage their costs, including Taylor Law reforms starting with (the) repeal of the Triborough Amendment, which now locks in teacher step pay increases and gives unions a strong upper hand in negotiations. In addition, the state should mandate a minimum level of school district and local government employee contributions to health insurance, replicating whats in effect for state workers.

Otherwise, everything should be on the table. The low-hanging fruit on the expenditure side of the budget includes all current operating spending in support of economic development programs, a redirection of economic development-related capital borrowing to core transportation and other infrastructure needs, (and) (New York) State Police barracks in New York City  a Cuomo creation that needlessly replicates the effective NYPD.

Friedfel: First and foremost, the state needs to produce a transparent budget that includes all current program spending and aligns spending with revenues. Then the state should hold spending to budgeted amounts.

To identify savings, the state should reconstitute the Medicaid Redesign Team, whose focus should include containing long-term care costs, and directing Medicaid supplemental payments to the neediest safety net hospitals. Should Medicaid spending exceed (its) budget, the executive should exercise its Medicaid global cap powers.

Outside of Medicaid, the state should focus education aid on the neediest districts  the state could have saved over $800 million last year and still provided funding for a sound basic education statewide. The state also should curtail the $4.4 billion annually devoted to questionable economic development incentives and enact retiree post-employment benefits reforms that the governor has repeatedly proposed.

Finally, part of the problem is that the states cash budgeting and reporting system can mask fiscal realities  as happened when the state balanced its budget by paying a bill three days late. The state should show the budget is balanced in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, so New Yorkers know if what they are seeing really is what they are getting.

If the state raises taxes, will that drive a further decline in population?

Friedfel: High-income taxpayer mobility is a real risk. Wealthy taxpayers, like all people, are sensitive to financial incentives and could decide to leave New York. Combined, New York state and local taxes are among the highest in the country and the state and local tax deduction cap has made many taxpayers even more sensitive to state and local taxes. Also, its important to remember that we are in the midst of the longest economic expansion since economists have been keeping track, and the state is still imposing the temporary (personal income tax) surcharge that was adopted to help us get through the last recession. Increasing taxes now to plug a self-imposed budget gap on top of the current surcharge, and then potentially increasing them again when we hit a recession, will certainly cause high-income taxpayers to take notice.

From a strict budget perspective, the top 1% of the states taxpayers pay 37% of the states personal income taxes, or $18.5 billion per year. If 1% of the top 1% leave, which would only be 1,050 taxpayers, it will cost New York state about $185 million.

Deutsch: This is the most common refrain whenever we discuss raising revenues. Our taxes fund essential services, including our schools, infrastructure and the programs relied on by our seniors, children and people with disabilities  principally, all the things that make a vibrant, healthy community where people wish to live.

Touting lower taxes as an incentive is just a shell game. Without taxes, services either dont exist or must be paid for through other means. A just tax system means that the burden is shared equitably, with the wealthiest residents and largest corporations shouldering their fair share and preventing struggling working families and individuals from being capsized by short-sighted policies.

Population decline is more of a regional issue. Its not the wealthy millionaires that are fleeing, its the struggling working families across this state trying to make ends meet. We should be looking at providing tax relief to those at the bottom through refundable tax credits and property tax relief while investing in infrastructure and job training to make upstate New York more attractive to businesses.

McMahon: Any increase in New Yorks already high tax burden would give affected taxpayers an even greater incentive to consider relocating. New Yorks highest earners, especially those living in New York City, have already seen their net, all-in federal state (and) local income tax burden grow thanks to the SALT cap. Targeting income millionaires for an added tax hike, as proposed by the Assembly speaker, will further erode a state tax base that is more dependent than ever on the top 1%.

If the Legislature would prefer to find revenue rather than reduce Medicaid spending, which would require the governor to bust his 2% spending cap, they should eliminate the annual giveaway of $420 million to TV and movie producers  easily the largest ongoing corporate (cash) giveaway on the books in any state, assuming, that is, legislators actually do assign a higher priority to health care than to tax subsidies for Netflix, Amazon and assorted other highly profitable Hollywood studios and TV networks.
: Two men from Bihar were found dead with bleeding injuries in a powerloom factory at P Mettupalayam village near Bhavani taluk in Erode district on Monday, police said.

The bodies of the two workers - Surendrakumar (28) and Navinkumar (24) - were found by their co-workers when the factory, run by Ramesh, was opened early in the morning, the police said.

Two others who were also from Bihar - Ranjan and Ravindrakumar - were being interrogated in connection with the deaths, they said.

Surendrakumar, married and having two children, was living alone near the factory while Navinkumar was living with his wife and children in the same area, the police said adding that investigations based on a complaint were on.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US Expresses Disappointment Over Iraqi Legislature's Decision to Expel Foreign Troops

Sputnik News

03:12 06.01.2020

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The US expresses disappointment over Iraqi parliament's vote on expelling foreign troops from Iraq and cutting off ties with the US-led international anti-terrorist coalition, the US State Department said, as tensions in the area are rising after the killing of an Iranian military commander and an Iraqi militia leader in Baghdad.

The parliament voted to support the measures on Sunday and the decision is currently pending approval from the government.

"The United States is disappointed by the action taken today in the Iraqi Council of Representatives. While we await further clarification on the legal nature and impact of today's resolution, we strongly urge Iraqi leaders to reconsider the importance of the ongoing economic and security relationship between the two countries and the continued presence of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS [the Islamic State terrorist group banned in Russia]," US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said.

"We believe it is in the shared interests of the United States and Iraq to continue fighting ISIS together. This administration remains committed to a sovereign, stable, and prosperous Iraq," Ortagus added.

The parliament's vote followed a US airstrike on Baghdad, that killed Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Abu Mahdi Muhandis, a senior member of Iraq's Iranian-backed Shia Popular Mobilization Forces, on Friday.

Tens of thousands of people took to streets across Iraq and Iran on Saturday and Sunday to mourn Soleimani and Muhandis.

A Sputnik

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So what was Gervaiss tongue-in-cheek refrain. (Its the last time, he said, about his hosting gig. Who cares?) He shouldnt be up there, you shouldnt be watching  this is entirely known. If the evening seemed flat in some indescribable way, let me once again describe the problem for you: We cant start awards season this close to the holidays. The stars arent ready. The audience isnt ready. Give me one good reason (besides the forthcoming chain of events that includes the Sundance Film Festival, scores of other awards shows and the unexpected arrival of World War III) why the Golden Globes couldnt hold off for a few weeks? (Oscar night this year? Its Feb. 9. This is madness.)
CONCORD TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- Authorities have identified a man and woman shot to death while they sat in an SUV late Saturday in Concord Township.

William Larondez Jackson Jr., 39, and Heavenly Goddess Murphy-Jackson, 38, were found dead in the front seats of a 2019 GMC Yukon parked on Andrea Drive, Lake County Sheriff Frank Leonbruno said Monday. Both lived in Euclid.

Blake E. Sargi, 27, is charged with two counts of murder in connection with their deaths. A judge set his bond at 10 percent of a $10 million bond during his arraignment Monday afternoon in Painesville Municipal Court, defense attorneys Ian Friedman and Brad Wolfe said in a phone interview after the hearing.

Detectives have not established a motive for a double homicide, Leonbruno said during a news conference Monday morning. Friedman urged the public not to draw any conclusions about the case, but declined to elaborate.

Sheriffs deputies arrested Sargi shortly after the shooting, following a brief SWAT standoff at his home on Oakridge Drive in Concord Township.

Sargis mother learned of the shooting when Sargi arrived home late Saturday. She called her ex-husband, and Sargis stepmother called 911, Leonbruno said.

Deputies learned Sargi had several weapons in the home, so they called a SWAT team in to negotiate with him. He surrendered without incident after about 45 minutes, Leonbruno.

Investigators recovered a 9 mm handgun they believe was used in the shooting, Leonbruno said.

To comment on this story, visit Mondays crime and courts comments page.

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Cleveland man dumped womans body on the street after fatal fentanyl overdose, records say
Two people are accused of trying to cash in a doctored $100,000 scratch-off lottery ticket, Mississippi authorities said.

The would-be crooks used super glue to attach winning numbers to a losing ticket and tried to cash it in Monday at the Mississippi Lottery office in Flowood, less than 10 miles from Jackson.
Police found the bodies of the four people at the home in Albuquerque, New Mexico after receiving a call for help on Christmas Day

Authorities said all four victims appeared to have died from gunshot wounds

Police have not released any other information about the victims or the circumstances surrounding their deaths

The four people were from the same family, according to relatives

Four people have been found dead inside a New Mexico home following a Christmas Day shooting.

Police found the bodies of the four people after receiving a call for help at the Rio Rancho home, just outside Albuquerque, following reports of a shooting on Wednesday at about 4pm.

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Authorities said all four victims appeared to have died from gunshot wounds.

Police found the bodies of the four people after receiving a call for help at the Rio Rancho home, just outside Albuquerque, following reports of a shooting on Christmas Day

Police have not released any other information about the victims or the circumstances surrounding their deaths.

It is not yet clear what ages the victims were.

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The four people were from the same family, according to relatives.

A relative, Rose Varona, said the family had all been together on Christmas Eve to celebrate the holiday.

She said they were all supposed to meet up again on Christmas Day but that she started to get a bad feeling.

Authorities said all four victims appeared to have died from gunshot wounds. The four people were from the same family, according to relatives

'I just had a feeling something was wrong, cause since yesterday in the evening I was telling my sister my heart was heavy and racing and I didn't know why,' she told KRQE.

She said the family became worried when they hadn't heard from the four relatives so her mother and brother went to the home to check on them.

Varona said they found the bodies inside.

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'I really don't understand what's going on, we just try to draw the strength from God, even though we don't understand what's going on,' she said.
American Airlines said Monday that it reached an agreement with Boeing to reimburse the airline for financial damages incurred last year from the grounding of the 737 Max, which is now in its 10th month.

Airlines have lost more than $1 billion in revenue because of the grounding after two fatal crashes. Boeing and Southwest Airlines  the largest U.S. operator of the 737 Max  disclosed they had reached an agreement last month.

American didn't disclose the terms of the agreement, but as CNBC reported last week, it plans to share a portion of the compensation with employees. American said the compensation would add $30 million to an employee profit-sharing program, payable in March. Southwest had taken a similar step, saying it would share $125 million with its workers.

American's pilots deserve more compensation, their labor union, the Allied Pilots Association said. Dennis Tajer, a Boeing 737 captain and spokesman for the union, called the profit sharing increase a "good start" but not enough because pilots lost out on income, not just profit sharing. He added that the airlines some 4,000 Boeing 737 pilots can't simply start flying an Airbus plane.

American flies older 737s but has had to curb its growth for the year because of the Max grounding. American in October forecast the Max grounding would cost it $540 million in pretax income in 2019. The full financial toll on airlines isn't yet known because it's not clear when the planes will fly again. American and Southwest removed the planes from their schedules until April, while United pulled them until early June.
(Newser)  Sen. Lindsey Graham wants to get the impeachment trial over with as quickly as possible, and he's suggesting changing the Senate rules if Nancy Pelosi continues to hold things up. Pelosi still has not formally given the Senate the two articles of impeachment passed by the House, and the Senate cannot proceed with its trial until she does. "If we dont get the articles this week, then we need to take matters in our own hands and change the rules," said Graham Sunday on Fox News, per the Hill. Graham wants to allow the Senate to begin its trial without the articles, with the goal of wrapping it up by acquitting President Trump by the end of January.

story continues below

However, the Washington Post thinks it's highly unlikely, if not impossible, for the Senate to make such a move at this point. For one thing, Graham would need 67 votes to change the rules on impeachment, meaning he would need Democratic support. What's more, the newspaper also quotes sources who think the issue will be irrelevant soon because Pelosi is expected to deliver the articles this week. (Graham has made clear he will vote to acquit Trump.)
Soleimani was to deliver Tehran's reply to Saudi de-escalation letter when killed: Iraqi PM

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 05 January 2020 11:20 PM

Iraq's Caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi has said that Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani was set to deliver Tehran's reply to an earlier Saudi message regarding de-escalation talks mediated by Baghdad when he was assassinated.

Abdul-Mahdi made the remarks during an extraordinary parliamentary session in the capital which led to the adoption of a law demanding the withdrawal of US forces from the country on Sunday, the National Iraqi News Agency reported.

The premier said that he was due to meet Soleimani at 8:30 am local time on Friday before the US assassinated the general a few hours earlier.

The revelations come as Baghdad has been mediating talks between Tehran and Riyadh following a recent uptick of tensions the region.

Sunday's parliamentary vote was held in response to Washington's Friday airstrikes targeting Soleimani and his comrades.

Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) was also killed in the attack.

Iran's judiciary has said that the attack took place despite Soleimani being a "formal" and "high profile" guest of the Iraqi government.

The Sunday vote comes as many Iraqi figures and parliamentary factions have been long demanding the withdrawal of US troops from the country, specifically following a series of unclaimed airstrikes on PMU forces.

Abdul-Mahdi also revealed in his Sunday remarks that Washington had confirmed to Baghdad that Tel Aviv was behind a number of the attacks.

"America informed us that Israel bombed the warehouses of the PMU last summer," he said, calling on the parliament to take all measures to end the presence of foreign forces in Iraq.

Rockets rock Baghdad's Green Zone

Also on Sunday, the Iraqi military reported that three Katyusha rockets fell in Baghdad, two of which landed inside the capital's heavily fortified Green Zone housing government buildings and foreign missions.

Witnesses told AFP that the rockets had landed close to the US embassy without further elaborating on probable casualties.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

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Extending support to the United States over the killing of Iran's senior military commander Qassem Soleimani, the United Kingdom, Germany and France have condemned the attacks against US-led coalition in Iraq and expressed concern by "negative role" played by Tehran in the region.

On Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson held separate telephonic conversations with each other to discuss escalated tensions in the middle east.

"We condemned the recent strikes on the coalition forces in Iraq and are deeply concerned by the negative role that was played by Iran in the region, especially through the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force under the command of General Soleimani," the joint statement, issued by the German cabinet late on Sunday, read.

Soleimani, a US-designated terrorist, was killed along with six others after the US carried out a strike near the Baghdad's international airport on Friday.

Soelimani's killing has infuriated Iran. He was considered as a second-most powerful man in the country. Iran leadership has vowed to take equally "harsh revenge" from the United States. The three leaders have also called for a deescalation of tensions in the region.

Many countries around the including Syria, China and Russia have condemned the United States' action. While countries like India have urged both parties to deescalate.

Amid relationship deteriorating with the United States, Tehran on Sunday announced that it was abandoning its last obligation under the 2015 nuclear deal which is to limit the number to centrifuges.

Merkel, Macron and Johnson called on Iran to refrain from withdrawing from the deal.

"We especially call on Iran to refrain from further violent actions and supporting such activities. We also urge Iran to refrain from actions that do not comply with the nuclear deal," the statement read.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bharat Bandh: Banking services to be hit on January 8

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Jan 06: Bank services will be hit on January 8, 2020, after the Central Trade Unions have called for a strike or Bharat Bandh.

Several bank unions will kin the all India general strike which has been called to protest against the government's recent order relating to bank reforms. SBI in a note said that the strike would have minimal impact on its operations. The SBI said very few of its employees will be part of the strike.

As a result of this strike, normal banking services and ATMs are likely to be get affected. Services like net banking are unlikely to get affected.

It may be recalled that the All India Bank Officers' Confederation general secretary Soumya Datta had asked members to not demand or accept any keys or perform any clerical durries on the day of the strike.

Bank strike next week: ATMs likely to be affected

The employees are protesting against the banking reforms and bank mergers apart from demanding a salary hike. "Our legitimate demand for wage revision for bank employees and officers is being unduly delayed. Employees recruited after April 2010 are deprived of the defined pension benefit. Our genuine demands like 5 Day Banking, etc. are being ignored by the Government. Employees and officers are suffering from the heavy workload and adequate recruitment is not being made in banks," a strike notice read.
Misse Beqiris boyfriend Jake Hall has broken his silence following her brother Alex (also known as Flamur's) shock murder which took place on Christmas Eve.

Jake, 26, took to Instagram on Sunday to share three lovely photos of himself, Misse, 33, and their daughter River, two, on the beach.

He wrote: 'Your last message is what we must do  keep your head up and keep smiling.'

Tragedy: Misse Beqiris boyfriend Jake Hall broke his silence on Instagram on Sunday following her brother Alex's death as he said they will 'keep their head up and keep smiling'

Sad: Misse appeared to be putting a brave face on for the sake of her little girl, following the tragic loss of her record company boss brother, who was aged 36

Misse appeared to be putting a brave face on for the sake of her little girl, following the tragic loss of her record company boss brother, who was aged 36.

The Mail on Sunday revealed that Alex was shot in the back while standing on his own doorstep.

Police believe the killing which took place at his 1.7 million home could be part of a tit-for-tat drugs gang feud.

He was targeted as he returned to his townhouse in Battersea, South London, with his wife and young son just before 9pm.

Awful: Alex Beqiri (Flamur) and wife Debora Krasniqi - the 36-year-old was targeted as he returned to his townhouse in Battersea with his wife and young son just before 9pm

Love: Misse pictured in a throwback snap with her beloved brother, Alex

The killer was lying in wait for the Swedish national.

Neighbours reported hearing five shots  four in quick succession then a fifth a few seconds later  that left Mr Beqiri in a pool of blood on his doorstep and his distraught wife Debora Krasniqi screaming for help.

She has since told friends that her husband was shot 'from behind'. He is said to have had one bullet wound in his lower abdomen and a 'lot of blood' around his neck.

Doing her best: Misse could be seen walking down the beach with little River following the sad family tragedy

A nurse living nearby tried to save his life before paramedics arrived. However, Mr Beqiri was pronounced dead at the scene.

It is understood the assassin fled on foot and police have taken CCTV from local shops to try to identify the killer.

Neighbours told of suspicious activity in the days before the attack, including a man wearing a high-vis jacket picking up litter and another of 'Eastern European appearance' loitering.

Scotland Yard officers are now focusing on Mr Beqiri's alleged connections to drug gangs in his hometown of Malmo in Sweden  he moved there from Kosovo as a child.

His wife has told friends her husband 'never told me much' about his business activities. Mr Beqiri ran a hip-hop record label called Skrilla in Malmo and a firm called Fantabolous Music.

He set up the label 20/20 Music Ltd in London last year but the company was yet to file any accounts.

On his own doorstep: The crime scene where Alex Beqiri, 36, a father of one, was murdered on Christmas Eve in south-west London

Swedish police were understood to have briefed Scotland Yard that Mr Beqiri, of Albanian heritage, was suspected of being heavily involved in smuggling large quantities of cocaine and cannabis through Morocco and Spain to Sweden.

He is thought to have been affiliated with a gang in Malmo which is embroiled in a feud with rivals known as Los Suecos, meaning 'the Swedes', which has been linked to more than ten murders in Sweden and Spain.

Los Suecos's leader Amir Mekky, 22, escaped with a leg wound last year when three associates were killed outside a cafe in Malmo.

It has been reported in Sweden that Mr Beqiri received death threats in Malmo before he left for the UK about four years ago.

In a statement released through Scotland Yard, his family said: 'We thank everyone for their kind thoughts and condolences.

'Our family are in a state of shock and are grieving. To have so much sadness at this time of the year is heartbreaking.

Close: On his Facebook, Alex had posted a picture with Real Housewives of Cheshire reality star Misse Beqiri with the caption: 'Brothers!'

'We would kindly ask that you respect our privacy and let us grieve in peace.'

No arrests have been made.

Detective Inspector Jamie Stevenson said Mr Beqiri may have been 'involved in some criminality in Sweden' but his 'wife and very young child, bore witness to this horrific attack and are coming to terms with having their world turned upside down'.

Mr Beqiri was shot multiple times by a lone gunman, who fled on foot. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Scotland Yard said Mr Beqiri, a Swedish national of Albanian heritage, had been living in London for four or five years.

Mr Stevenson said: 'Work is ongoing to determine what the possible motive could be, and while we retain an open mind, we are considering that this is a targeted attack.

'While I am mindful of concerns from the local community, we do not believe at this stage that there is any ongoing risk to members of the public.

'We believe Flamur may possibly have been involved in some criminality in Sweden, and are in liaison with our Swedish counterparts to try to understand what, if any, incidents there may have been that might have led to someone seeking retribution against Flamur in the UK.

'I would reiterate that we are in the very early days, and there is a lot of discussion that I will not comment on. What is most important now is getting justice for Flamur's family.

'Not only would many people have been out going about their business, but I am sure many residents would have been alarmed by the sound of the disturbance and gone to see what had happened.'
Photo: Patrick Feller/Flickr

Read on for the most recent top news you may have missed in Houston.

Houston Health Department starts investigating cancer-struck area

The Texas State Department of Health Services found higher than normal rates of cancers in Fifth Ward neighborhoods near a former creosote facility; the facility was located in a railyard formerly owned by Southern Pacific Railroad.

Read the full story on FOX 26 Houston.

Baby dies after being rushed to Houston fire station by mother

Officials say the baby's mother pulled up to the fire station screaming and crying before firefighters transported the baby to the hospital.

Read the full story on ABC13 Houston.

Houston man charged for killing fiancee days after proposing on New Years Eve

A Houston man named Kendrick Atkins has been arrested and charged for the Saturday shooting death of his fiance, Dominic Jefferson, which came mere days after Atkins proposed on New Years Eve.

Read the full story on New York Daily News.

FBI Houston searches for first bank robber of 2020

An armed suspect robbed the Woodforest National Bank on Jan. 2 inside the Walmart in southwest Houston, according to FBI Houston.

Read the full story on KPRC2 / Click2Houston.

HPD: 1 person dead, another injured after shooting on Hayes Road

One person killed and another person injured in a shooting around 12:41 p.m. on Hayes Road, according to the Houston Police Department.

Read the full story on KPRC2 / Click2Houston.

This story was created automatically using data about news stories on social media from CrowdTangle, then reviewed by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
Riskiest Choice: Womens Gowns

The most powerful red-carpet fashion statement at the Globes occurred in 2018 when almost all the women showed up in black gowns and tuxedo suits in solidarity with Times Up and #MeToo. So the fact that this years ceremony took place the night before the start of the trial of Harvey Weinstein, the man who arguably gave rise to the movement, added a certain scrutiny to what everyone wore.

Would they continue what they had started, and make their clothes about more than just a pretty dress? Or would they return to the status quo, when fashion choices were more about marketing and best-dressed lists? In the end, the most striking looks were gloriously, sometimes ridiculously, risky. (Sometimes they were also just ridiculous, but that was O.K.)

They included Joey King doing her best impression of living sound waves; Cate Blanchett in gold pleats and crystal bra looking like a cross between an archangel and a pole-dancing Valkyrie; and Charlize Theron in Jolly Green Giant goddess drapes over a peekaboo black corset.

And then there was Gwyneth Paltrow in a sheer high-necked ruffled mud brown tulle  knit? It was hard to tell, but the Fendi gown revealed everything from her undies to her abs and may well get her on all sorts of worst-dressed lists.
A bloody red sky loomed over the states of New South Wales on Sunday as residents run away from deadly bushfires.

As seen on the photographs uploaded online, multiple landscapes were illuminated by a blazing red sky that looks like hell depicted in many films.

Hundreds of residents on the town of Eden sought refuge on the beach as advised by the police, CNN reported. Many houses and properties were destroyed, and fire officials feared for more fatalities.

NSW has declared a state of emergency, which grants them additional emergency support to deal with the crisis.

"One of the worst days ever."

According to the NSW Rural Fire Service (NSWRFS), at least 150 bushfires were scattered all over the states, with about half of it remained uncontained. At least 2,300 firefighters were working hard to stop the fire from spreading.

#nswfires pic.twitter.com/FUpI9vyTpG At 10:30am there are 150 fires burning, 64 are uncontained. After a difficult day for firefighters yesterday, around 2,300 firefighters are active in the field today. Conditions have eased, however a statewide total fire ban remains in place. #nswrfs  NSW RFS (@NSWRFS) January 4, 2020

Four firefighters were hospitalized after suffering from burns, smoke inhalation and heat exhaustion, but they were in stable condition.

NSWRFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons called the previous day as "one of our worst" on a news conference on Sunday.

Fitzsimmons also confirmed the 24th fatality on this crisis: a middle-aged man who died from cardiac arrest while helping to contain the fire at his friend's house in Batlow.

The temperature on Sunday decreased a bit, but the forecast said that it could worsen again. Fitzsimmons described it as merely a "psychological relief" that they do not need at the moment.

State of Disaster

The state of Victoria has witnessed a 6,000-hectare (23 square miles) blaze -- bigger than Manhattan, New York. It came from three separate fires that combined overnight on Friday, according to Gippsland's Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning.

Canberra, Victoria's capital, reached 44 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit) on the afternoon of Saturday, according to the country's Bureau of Meteorology. This record was never seen in the last 80 years.

The local government has declared a state of disaster, which was the first time since the deadliest bushfire in 2009 that killed 173 people and injured 500 others.

More support to come

The Australia Defence Force (ADF) announced on Sunday that they will be deploying additional 3,000 army reserve forces, including specialists on disasters. The goal of the force was to evacuate people in isolated communities and assist in transporting supplies.

Aircraft, ships, and a large vessel, HMAS Adelaide, will also be provided. Some bases will also be open to serve as temporary shelters for those who were displaced by the fire.

Australian President Scott Morrison previously announced on Twitter that ADF has successfully evacuated 1,000 people from Mallacoota through HMAS Choules & MV Sycamore.

Around 1000 people have been safely evacuated from Mallacoota today on board the HMAS Choules & MV Sycamore following the Federal Governments decision to deploy both vessels earlier this week to support the Victorian Govs efforts. Thanks to all those involved in this operation. https://t.co/isyrTs0IA2  Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP) January 3, 2020

New Zealand and Singapore have also offered military support.

ALSO READ: Australia Mourns Over Two Bushfire Crisis Heroes
At the meeting, Consul General of Vietnam to Shanghai Ninh Thanh Cong briefly presented the important achievements of Vietnam in 2019. Under the right leadership of the Party, the Government and the joint efforts of sectors, levels and people at home and abroad, Vietnam continues to maintain political stability, security and defense; Socio-economic development is fast and sustainable, people's living standards are constantly improved, and GDP growth is over 7%, the highest among ASEAN countries.

The delegates at the event (Photo: baoquocte.vn)

The Consul General shared that Vietnam-China relations continue to maintain a positive and stable development trend; High-level contacts are maintained regularly as Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc attended the 2nd Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in April 2019 in Beijing, and Chairwoman of the National Assembly Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan paid an official visit to China and Jiangsu province in July 2019.

Vietnam - China trade revenue continues to create a new record, reaching about 160 billion USD; China has become one of the major FDI sources of Vietnam.

Mr. Ninh Thanh Cong also said that the cooperation between Vietnam and Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang was further promoted; exchange activities took place bustlingly; the two sides actively researched and promoted the expansion of mechanisms and fields of cooperation in order to promote supplementation and enhance cooperation for mutual benefit.

The diplomat affirmed that the Consulate General always attaches importance to and endeavors to well perform the affairs for overseas Vietnamese and citizen protection; and respect and appreciate the valuable contributions of overseas Vietnamese people, businesses and students in community building.

Besides, he hoped that in the coming time, the Vietnamese community in Shanghai will continue to promote the patriotic tradition, national pride and solidarity, join hands to build a cohesive community, promote the image of the country and people of Vietnam, Vietnam-China friendship and cooperation and make practical contributions to the cause of national construction.

Representing the overseas Vietnamese in Shanghai, Mr. Dieu Manh Tuong hoped that he would continue to work with the Vietnamese community in Shanghai to build a growing, united community to make specific, practical contributions to the homeland.

On this occasion, Vietnam Airlines presented four round-trip tickets as lucky gifts at the beginning of the New Year for overseas Vietnamese people and students at the meeting.

During the meeting, the participants enjoyed an art program, participated in folk games and enjoyed Vietnamese traditional dishes on Lunar New Year Festival holiday./.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Monday demanded a probe by a sitting Supreme Court or High Court judge into deaths of children at Gorakhpur Medical College.

Blood tests conducted on 1,800 children admitted in the hospital between January and October last year showed that they were suffering from encephalitis, but the government admitted only 500 such cases by "tweaking the records", he told reporters here.

He alleged that acting at the behest of the government, the doctors there described illness of the children as acute fever and claimed that around 1,500 children had died there between January and October last year.

Yadav demanded that a team of doctors headed by a sitting Supreme Court of High Court judge be set up to probe the deaths.

The former chief minister said that when his father Mulayam Singh Yadav was in power, the then SP government used to pay compensation to the next of kin of the victim.

The SP government doubled the amount when the party returned to power in 2012, but the present government has stopped it, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Military members and veterans can get up to four free months of Apple Music through the Apple Music military discount -- but...
More than 60 Iranians and Iranian-Americans have been detained at length and questioned at the US border with Canada, according to advocacy groups, as the crisis over the killing of Qassem Soleimani escalates.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reported those who were detained had their passports confiscated and were questioned about their political views and allegiances.

These reports are extremely troubling and potentially constitute illegal detentions of United States citizens, Masih Fouladi, the executive director of CAIR-Washington, said in a statement.

The advocacy group has also claimed a source at US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said a national order has been issued to report and detain anyone with Iranian heritage entering the country who is deemed potentially suspicious, regardless of their citizenship status.

CBP has denied any such directive is in place and insisted reports of Iranian-Americans being detained on social media were false.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

Social media posts that CBP is detaining Iranian-Americans and refusing their entry into the US because of their country of origin are false, CBP wrote on Twitter.

Reports that DHS/CBP has issued a related directive are also false.

However, the National Iranian American Council also said it had spoken to Iranian-Americans who were detained for hours at borders and airports over the weekend and asked about their views on Iran.

Recommended Trump doubles down on threat to attack Iranian cultural sites

The allegations come amid heightened tensions between the US and Iran after top Iranian general Soleimani was killed in a US airstrike order by Donald Trump last week.

His death marks a major escalation in tensions and has been followed by threats of further attacks by both countries.

On Sunday, Iran announced it would no longer respect restrictions on enrichment of uranium introduced under the 2015 international nuclear agreement.

Meanwhile, Iraqi MPs passed a non-binding resolution calling for foreign troops, including about 5,000 US soldiers, to leave its country in response to the attack.

Mr Trump has threatened severe sanctions and attacks on cultural sites if Iran retaliates against the US over the killing.

Pramila Jayapal, a Washington congresswoman, has said she is deeply disturbed by reports of Iranian-Americans being detained at the border, while Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, has said his office is closely tracking the situation.

Mr Inslee later added that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had told his office there was no order issued to detain or refuse entry to Iranian-Americans but his team was continuing to seek answers from officials.

One woman, who was allegedly detained and interrogated for more than 10 hours at the border crossing, said the majority of people who were held were American citizens.

We kept asking why we were being detained and asked questions that had nothing to do with our reason for travelling and were told Im sorry this is just the wrong time for you guys, the woman told CAIR.

On Saturday, DHS updated its National Terrorism Advisory System to warn that Iran could retaliate against the US through cyberattacks or attacks by homegrown violent extremists.

However, the department acknowledged that it had no information indicating a specific, credible threat at this time.

CAIR Washington has said it believes everyone who was detained has now been released but the group will continue to monitor the situation.
Chidambaram says, NRC is mischievous plan to divide India

India

oi-Mousumi Dash

New Delhi, Jan 06: Congress leader P Chidambaram while addressing the media on Monday repeated his earlier statement once again saying that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) a "sinister and mischievous plan" to divide the country.

Addressing a press conference in the national capital, he said there is a world of difference between the National Population Register (NPR) of 2010 and the NPR of 2020.

The NPR of 2020 with additional fields of information is a disguised attempt to carry out an Assam NRC-like exercise throughout the country and must be "stoutly opposed", the Congress leader told reporters.

Children not part of NRC wont be sent to detention centres: AG tells Supreme Court

Earlier, Chidambaram alleged that the NPR approved by the BJP government was different and dangerous in terms of the "text and context" of the data collection done in 2010.

NEWS AT 3 PM, JANUARY 6th, 2020...

According to PTI. The senior Congress leader Charged that the BJP government has a "sinister agenda", and if the BJP's motives are bonafide, the Government should unconditionally state that they support the NPR form and design of 2010 and do not intend to link it to the controversial NRC.

Reject CAA-NPR-NRC scheme to divide India: Pavan Varma urges Bihar CM Nitish Kumar

Besides this, the senior Congress leader also condemned the JNU campus violence and demand that the perpetrators to be identified and arrested within 24 hours and brought to justice. Along with this he also demanded that accountability on officers be fixed and action taken immediately in this matter.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 22:13:25|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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DUBAI, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Standard & Poor's (S&P) Global Ratings said on Monday that the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani by the United States does not change their base-case assumption that any military action by either side will not lead to a fully fledged direct military confrontation.

"For now, we continue to believe that any escalation will remain contained given that a direct conflict would be economically, socially, and politically destabilizing for the entire region, including U.S.-Gulf allies," S&P Global Ratings said in a press release issued in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.

"We consider that a potential intensification of proxy conflicts will further undermine confidence and investment in the region," it added.

Tensions soared in the Gulf after a U.S. airstrike on Friday killed an Iranian senior commander in Baghdad, with Iran vowing to take "tough revenge," and the Pentagon saying it planned to send thousands more troops to the region.
In the days surrounding President Donald Trump's approval of a drone strike that took out Iranian Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani, there was internal dissent inside the Pentagon over whether to carry out the strike and if the Pentagon had the legal backing for the move, a former senior administration official told Al-Monitor.

The debate inside the Defense Department centered around fears of a potential escalation with Iran, the official said, after tit-for-tat clashes since May 2019, culminating in suspected Iranian-backed drone and cruise missile strikes against a refining facility in Saudi Arabia in September.

Officials also feared that potential blowback inside Iraq could hamper the US-led campaign to defeat the Islamic State (IS), which the coalition suspended on Sunday amid threats from Iran.

Some believed it was too escalatory and would not end the threat, some believed we should do it but not in Iraq, said a former senior administration official with knowledge of the deliberations. There was dissent on whether to do it, where to [do] it and under what authority.

Despite internal dissent within the Pentagon over the decision to strike, Trumps decision was backed by Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, the militarys top officer, the Washington Post reported Sunday.

The former official said the threat to US troops and citizens that prompted a Defense Department drone strike to take out Soleimani was credible, but did not provide further details. The Trump administration ultimately justified the strike under the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force that the United States first used to invade Iraq in 2003.

The George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations had also considered the option of a military strike to take out Soleimani but second-guessed the wisdom of potentially escalating tensions with Iran.

Its always been on the table, a US official told Al-Monitor. But once you got past all the testosterone BS, rational heads recognized the red line this crossed with Iran and the [blowback] it would create.

Make no mistake, this is the quintessential definition of a Pyrrhic victory, said the official, particularly concerning threats to the US Embassy in Lebanon, where Iranian-backed Hezbollah wields significant influence, and against US forces in Iraq or Israel.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo  who has led the administrations public messaging on the strikes  has insisted taking out Soleimani would de-escalate tensions in the region, though the United States has already moved or alerted 10,000 troops to the Middle East since the Friday morning strike.

The brewing tensions between the United States and Iranian-backed forces mark a turning point for the Pentagon-led fight against IS, which was paused over the weekend after Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah was linked to two rocket attacks on Iraqi bases at Balad and Baghdad, near where US troops are based.

For a time, the United States had kept violence from Iranian-backed militias in Iraq in check as Soleimani, who held significant influence over those groups, turned the focus on Iraqs fight against IS.

Specifically, the Pentagon leaned on Hadi al-Amiri, the head of the Iranian-linked Badr Brigade, to deconflict airstrikes with Tehran-connected Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) that fought IS near US troops in Iraqs Tigris and Euphrates River Valleys, officials who served in Iraq told Al-Monitor.

I used to call it the Soleimani moratorium, said Sean MacFarland, a retired Army lieutenant general who led the defeat-IS coalition until 2016. It wasnt a question of whether or not these Hezbollah and guys like that would start to cause problems for us, it was just a matter of when.

MacFarland said the United States always questioned how long Soleimani, who had strong linkages with Shiite militant groups, would tolerate a US presence after the defeat of IS. I felt like they would make that calculation on their own when they didnt need us anymore, he said.

Another military official who served in the defeat-IS fight in Iraq said the Iranian-backed PMU mostly occupied ground with regular Iraqi army units and conducted defensive operations, while Iraqi special forces and Kurdish peshmerga reconquered land held by the militant group.

The US-backed coalition never had direct lines of communication with the PMU, the official said, relying on the Iraqi army to talk with them and deconflicting indirect weapons fire and airstrikes with terrain features on the ground so as not to accidentally hit Shiite units.

The Shia [PMU] were minimally trained and controlled but maximally manned and equipped, the official said. The lack of professionalism resulted in their employment as occupation troops to hold ground seized from IS.

But even though Pompeo and Iraqi lawmakers werent sure that caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi would follow through on threats to evict 5,200 US troops from Iraq, the departing head of government seemed to stick to that message in meetings with the US administration.

Abdul Mahdi told US Ambassador Matthew Tueller on Monday that both countries should work to implement a nonbinding resolution passed by Iraqs parliament this weekend to encourage the withdrawal of foreign troops, according to a statement from the prime minister's office.

Without the Trump administration having a frank conversation with Iraqi leadership about a residual American and coalition troop footprint, former officials fear a worst-case scenario: US troops again leaving the country, allowing for the resurgence of IS.

Weve seen this movie before, said MacFarland, the former commander of the defeat-IS coalition. I think thats where its headed.
LAUREL, Maryland  Police are searching for a person they say used popcorn to lure seagulls into a parking lot, then used a vehicle to run them over, killing at least 10 birds.

In a post on Facebook, the Laurel Police Department says that on Saturday the unidentified person bought a bag of pre-popped popcorn and emptied it on the ground in front of a Dollar Tree store. Once the seagulls gathered, the suspect ran over the birds with a vehicle, then left the area.

Officers who went to the scene said they found several dead birds in close proximity to each other. The department says an officer was able to take one injured bird to wildlife rescue to be treated for a broken wing.

On Twitter, police spokesperson Audrey Barnes called the incident a senseless act of animal cruelty. Police are continuing to search for the suspect.
Schools need to forget about emphasising the use of devices like smartphones in classrooms and instead focus on what technology offers students and teachers as they enter a new school year, an Australian education expert says.

Cluey chief learning officer Selina Samuels said in 2020 there needed to be less importance placed on whether devices had a place in education and more attention on developing pupils skills to be able to cope in a rapidly changing world.

Schools need to focus less on the device and more on what technology offers students in 2020, says leading education expert Selina Samuels. Credit:Alamy Stock Photo

There is a lot of debate across the country about the device, theres a lot of focus on the thing itself; the phone or the iPad and whether it has a place in education, she said.

What well see is that discussion become less and less important, we will stop talking about technology in education.
HP's Elite Dragonfly First-to-Market, Tile-Enabled Laptop is Findable Even When Offline or Powered Down

LONDON, Jan. 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Tile, the world's leading smart location company, today announced a collaboration with HP, a PC industry leader, to release the first laptop with built-in Tile[1], marking the company's entrance into a new vertical.

Starting early 2020, the HP Elite Dragonfly will feature Tile's finding technology as an option, allowing customers to use their Tile app to look for their lost or misplaced laptops, view the last place it was seen, and activate Tile's finding network for assistance should the device be lost beyond Bluetooth range. The feature works even if the HP laptop is offline or when powered off.

"This announcement with HP comes at a time when Tile is rapidly expanding our embedded business," said CJ Prober, CEO of Tile. "We are pleased to innovate alongside industry leaders to make valuable, everyday devices like laptops findable."

In a recent global survey, nearly half of respondents said they have left home without their laptop in the past year, making them late to work and disrupting their day. Today's announced Tile and HP collaboration brings finding power to all of the places laptop users go, saving time and empowering the everyday -- in fact, 72 percent said the ability to locate their lost or misplaced laptop would be very or extremely valuable.

The integration will work using a new Tile Windows app on the HP Elite Dragonfly, and the users Tile mobile app. The Tile-enabled Dragonfly boasts a finding range and ringing features similar to Tile's most powerful hardware.

With over 29 billion BLE-enabled devices[2] expected to ship over the next five years, nearly one billion of them laptops[3], integrations are an important business pillar for Tile. Starting in 2018, the company announced a number of new partners including Bose and Sennheiser, as well as BLE chip makers Nordic, Qualcomm and Toshiba, bringing the total number of Tile partners to over 20. Moving forward, Tile will continue to grow its embedded partnership portfolio, with plans to more than double the number of its current partners in 2020.

About Tile

Tile gives everything the power of smart location, locating more than six million unique items every day. Leveraging its vast community that spans 195 countries, Tile's cloud-based finding platform helps people find the things that matter to them most. The company is based in San Mateo, CA and is backed by Francisco Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and GGV Capital. For more information, please visit Tile.com.

References:

[1] Based on HP's internal analysis of notebooks with factory pre-installed Tile tracking hardware and software as of December 2019. Planned availability on HP ELITE DRAGONFLY Q1 2020. Must be configured at purchase.

[2] https://www.ericsson.com/en/mobility-report/internet-of-things-forecast

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272595/global-shipments-forecast-for-tablets-laptops-and-desktop-pcs/
CLINTON COUNTY, Ind. (WLFI)Frankfort police have provided 11,604 police services in 2019. That's a decrease of 572 from 2018.

"All credit goes to the officers out there who are doing all the work and the cooperation with the community, said Chief Troy Bacon.

According to the department, there was a nine percent decrease overall in reported crimes in the city when compared to 2018. Chief Bacon said they've used the same methods.

"Really it's just been a carry on of what we've been doing for the last 4 to 8 years, said Bacon. Just being very aggressive and going after."

He goes on to say that there was a 13% decrease in burglary and an 18% decrease in larceny-theft. Although there's still more work to do.

"I still think there's more work to do, said Bacon. Especially with drugs."

In 2019 there were 207 people arrested for drug-related offenses and 79 arrests for DUI's.

"We didn't see any increases in the arrest this year but we know it's pretty prevalent in our community, said Bacon. That's something that I think we really need to focus on."

Bacon said the department doesn't do this for anything more than to create a safer place for the people of Frankfort.

"We wont get more grants or any money, said Bacon. But it's a sense of pride in what we've been able to do to help the community."

The department also conducted more than 4,000 traffic stops and issued more than 800 traffic and city ordinance warnings.
Fishing vessels taking part in the search for the missing fisherman

A search is due to resume at first light this morning for a Wexford man who has been missing since the trawler he was fishing on sank late on Saturday night.

Willie Whelan, who is in his 40s, was fishing off Hook Head, a headland in Co Wexford, with another man, Joe Sinnott (65), who was winched from the sea and rushed to hospital but who died later.

The tragedy has hit the close-knit communities of Kilmore Quay, Dunmore East and the surrounding villages and townlands.

A massive search operation began when the emergency radio beacon from the 12-metre fishing boat Alize automatically alerted Coast Guard personnel at around 10.30pm on Saturday.

This beacon operates when it is submerged in water, and could indicate that the boat sank quickly, giving the two man crew no time to radio for assistance.

They had been fishing for scallops six miles south of Hook Head.

Mr Sinnott, a father-of-four and grandfather-of-nine, was from the Seaview area of Kilmore Quay. Neighbours and friends yesterday gathered at the house he shared with his wife Mary to comfort her and the Sinnott family on their loss.

Mr Sinnott's son, Michael, said: "We really don't know what happened. It's too early to tell. The first we knew was around 11pm after the signal from the boat was received by the Coast Guard in Dublin who then in turn contacted the owner.

"It's hard to believe. He was so many years at sea, and the man who was with him too, so whatever happened wasn't down to a lack of experience.

"He was a hard worker. They were scallop fishing which would have been a 24-hour trip with a two-man crew. The boat was in good condition."

After being taken from the sea Mr Sinnott was transferred to University Hospital in Waterford but later died. His funeral will take place on Wednesday.

The family of Mr Whelan was also being comforted by friends as they await news.

Wexford Fianna Fail councillor Michael Whelan said Mr Whelan had only married five months ago.

"The family is distraught," he said. "I spoke with his father at Hook Head and he said he saw him out fishing and had expected him to be back in just an hour and a half.

"The family is just holding out hope for a rescue or recovery."
The global news magazine The Economist dedicated a front page to Australia a few years ago with the headline Aussie Rules: What the World Can Learn from Australia.

To be sure, The Economist found good fortune had played a role in Australias success, blessed as we are with an abundance of natural resources and conveniently located close to Asia, which hoovers such things up.

Kylie Minogue fronts the Matesong campaign in the biggest Tourism Australia investment in the UK for more than a decade.

But the magazine also found good policy had played a critical role in making Australia probably the most successful country in the rich world. Unlike most countries, we had achieved a broad consensus on key issues such as mass immigration, low public debt, trade policy and an affordable welfare state.

Now, as we enter a new decade, there is a growing number of Australians who view the future with pessimism and believe our best days are behind us. A recent Roy Morgan poll found 40 per cent of respondents think 2020 will be "worse" than 2019, the worst poll result in 30 years.
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A group that insures local governments across Iowa is going to court to try to block the state auditor from reviewing its spending, including on board members travel to out-of-state vacation destinations.

The Iowa Communities Assurance Pool, which is owned and funded by nearly 800 cities, counties and other governments, argues in a lawsuit filed this week that it is not a governmental subdivision and that State Auditor Rob Sand has no authority to examine its finances.

The legal action means that taxpayers will essentially cover the costs of an attempt to keep some of the pools spending records away from public scrutiny.

Sand, a Democrat serving his first term as auditor, said that the pools refusal to provide records he is seeking raises serious questions.

We look forward to fighting for taxpayers right to know what is happening with their money, he said.

Sands office began reviewing the pools finances in October after The Associated Press reported that its directors have routinely held public meetings at vacation resorts in Florida every February and in Michigan every August.

Those trips, which date back at least a decade, include several to islands off the coast of Florida and in Lake Michigan, and activities such as winery tours. Board members have also tripled their daily pay since 2010 to $300 for attending those meetings, which cost thousands of dollars in public funds but are virtually inaccessible to taxpayers.

The risk-sharing pool was formed in 1986 to offer liability and property coverage for local governments that were unable to afford the high cost of traditional insurance.

Pool leaders say they have been successful in offering coverage at fair and stable prices and serving the pools membership, which includes 75 of Iowas 99 counties and hundreds of cities and local fairs. Local governments paid the pool $38 million in premiums last year.

Citing APs reporting, Sand told the pool in October that it would be in the public interest for his office to review its spending since 2016. He said he wanted to determine that the payouts had a public purpose and complied with state laws.

Sand issued an investigative subpoena seeking its records last month, after ICAP provided only some of the information he requested and disputed his authority.

Its Dec. 30 petition filed in Polk County seeks a court order to void the subpoena and to declare that Sand does not have jurisdiction to conduct the review.

The case may hinge on whether the pool is a governmental subdivision.

State law gives Sands office the power to investigate the spending of governmental subdivisions, including cities, counties, and several other entities.

But the law does not mention ICAP, which calls itself a nonprofit local government risk pool. The groups membership elects its seven directors, which has been led for years by retired West Des Moines official Jody Smith and includes state Rep. Michael Bergan.

The APs scrutiny of the boards spending and travel prompted several changes. The board cancelled its planned February meeting in Florida and withdrew a $1,000 deposit it had put down to reserve The Inn at Bay Harbor, Michigan  a Lake Michigan paradise  for its August 2020 meeting.

The boards vice chairman, Gary Mahannah, dropped his bid for re-election amid the controversy. The board also promised to begin streaming audio of its meetings online beginning next week, posted its recent annual financial statements and pledged to undertake other reforms.

The pool resisted the APs request for copies of recent settlement agreements showing how much it has paid to resolve lawsuits against members. After erroneously claiming they werent public records, Smith later said it would cost $22,000 to obtain the documents.

The Iowa Court of Appeals ruled last year that the pool performs government functions and is subject to the open records law, saying, The public has an interest in knowing how public monies are being expended.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Florida Michigan Iowa
In a matter of days the threats to world peaceapocalyptic nuclear threatshave grown incalculably worse, largely thanks to President Donald Trumps failed diplomacy with North Korea and his now murderous confrontation with Iran.

Last Tuesday, North Koreas Kim Jong Un announced that he would no longer observe a self-imposed moratorium on the testing of intercontinental ballistics missiles and the nuclear warheads in his growing arsenal. On Sunday, amid the intensifying crisis precipitated by Trumps order to assassinate one of Irans top generals, Tehran announced it was effectively ending its observance of the 2015 nuclear deal that had frozen its efforts to build a bomb. (For the record, it said it never had such an intention.)

Does Iran Have Secret Nukes in North Korea?

The Trump administration has vowed to use any means necessary to compel Kim to give up his nukes and prevent the ayatollahs from ever acquiring them. So the battle lines are drawn. But, making the situation even more dangerous, Iran and North Korea have a long record of lethal cooperation, including the exchange of scientific and technical secrets.

As the U.S. intensified its confrontations with both countries, they are being pushed toward even greater collaboration, and the possibility looms that the United States could find itself waging a two-front war with adversaries 4,000 miles apart.

When President Trump ordered the fiery termination of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani near the Baghdad airport in the small hours of Friday morning, he may have been concerned that his weird coziness with Kim and his decisions not to respond to increasingly aggressive actions by Iran had made him look weak. Blowing away Soleimani would show he is not a paper tiger. But analysts who follow North Korea and Iran closely believe that, rather than surrender to Trumps intimidation, they are likely to step up their cooperation.

As it is, North Korea now has hundreds of advisers in Iran, to which it has been exporting mid-range Musudan missiles and the technology for the Taepodong intercontinental type that Kim is itching to test-fire in keeping with his promise of a new strategic weapon to intimidate the United States.

Story continues

Bruce Bechtol, whos been studying North Korea from his days as a Marine serving on the peninsula, then as an intelligence analyst at the Pentagon and a faculty member at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, believes if anything the North Korea-Iran relationship is broadening and deepening.

This has always been a robust relationship, says Bechtol, but its picked up because Iran has been supplying so many North Korean-made systems and capabilities to Syria, Hezbollah, and the Houthisin addition to the stuff they pay the North Koreans for themselves.

Iran will be counting on North Korea even more as Irans Supreme Leader Ali Khameini threatens harsh revenge and Iranians shout Death to America at funeral observances for Soleimani.

The Iranians have been at many North Korean missile launches to learn, to observe systems they might procure, says Bechtol. Will North Korea sell Iran its strategic new weapon? Why not? The North Koreans have sold Iran everything from light machine guns to submarines to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

Bruce Bennett, North Korea expert at RAND, says hes contended ever since President Bush described his axis of evil in 2002 (including Saddam Husseins Iraq, North Korea, and Iran), the latter two have participated in a rogue cartel, with North Korea very interested in the Iranian financial resources.

Bennett says the relationship goes far deeper than is generally known, reiterating some of the points made by Bechtel. North Korea has provided Iran with many ballistic missiles and even ballistic missile production facilities, he says. Iranian scientists have been at the North Korean nuclear weapon tests. And there are stories about North Korea and Iran training Syrian personnel on how to load chemical weapons on ballistic missiles. Plus, Iran seems to have submarines that look exactly like some submarines produced by North Korea.

Bennett believes the full detailsof Iran-North Korean cooperation probably go well beyond what we know about but predicts, With both North Korea and Iran seriously angry at the U.S., we could see more cooperation in the coming months.

If and when Iran starts taking terrorist actions against the U.S., he goes on, North Korea could have an adviser role involved in serious provocations.

President Trumps order to snuff out Soleimani came three days after Kim called off his self-imposed moratorium on testing long-range missiles and nukes while charting a new path for his country, including economic reform. Menacingly, he warned of shocking action against the U.S. for ignoring his end-of-year deadline for resolving differences, presumably including relief from sanctions imposed after he last ordered nuclear and long-range missile tests in 2017.

On the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, says Steve Tharp, long-time military and civilian analyst of North Koreas rise as a nuclear power, Iran and North Korea were always working together. Both of them would like to focus more on cooperation to get the evil Americans.

Beijing might yet play a restraining role, however, in view of its power and influence over North Korea, which counts on China for virtually all its oil and half its food.

North Koreas shipments to Iran of missiles and other weaponry have gone by air over Chinese territory, but China could tamp down the flow while proposing relief in the United Nations from onerous sanctions on North Korea. If North Korea begins carrying out serious provocations, says Bennett, China might pull back from sanctions relief.

But a U.S. drone strike against an enemy general has added a sense of urgency to deliberations in Pyongyang. Trump has made it clear he is ready to dispense with any notion of proportionality in the violent minuets America conducts with its adversaries. That makes it difficult for them to calculate how far they can push him, but may also push them toward more extreme actions.

Its no longer possible to rule out the U.S. using decapitation of foreign governments as an instrument of policy.

At the least the Soleimani episode ought to prompt Pyongyang to re-examine its assumptions about U.S. behavior, says Nicholas Eberstadt, long-time economist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. Trump is clearly not your average president. He is clearly capable of taking actions that previous decision-makers would not have chosen. Indeed, adversaries once seen as untouchable' are obviously no longer so.

If nothing else, Eberstadt believes, the Soleimani incident might suggest the standard North Korean approach of breaking sanctions through brinkmanship might be received less well in Washington by this administration than others the Kim family regime has contended with in the past.

As Donald Trump Eyes Iran Nuclear Deal, North Korea Is Watching

If Im Kim Jong Un, I worry that the U.S. is willing to take out foreign leaders without waging war, says Van Jackson, a former Pentagon official and author of On the Brink, a book about the dangers confronting the Korean peninsula. Assassination circumvents the nuclear deterrent North Koreas worked so hard to build. If Kim feels his deterrent doesnt protect his ass, then he may feel greater pressure to keep his nukes on a hair trigger.

In the meantime, Iran will take all the help it can get to break out with a nuclear capability, says Jackson. The question is whether Kim will indulge Irans nuclear needs.

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Xerox confirmed Monday it has $24 billion in financing commitments from Citi, Bank of America and another lender, as the Norwalk-based company continues to pursue a merger with HP after an initial rejection in November.

In a letter to HP executives, Xerox stated it has engaged in constructive dialogue with HP shareholders, after vowing to pursue a hostile takeover absent any meaningful commitment to negotiations by HPs board of directors.

We have always maintained that our proposal is not subject to a financing contingency, but in order to remove any doubt, we have obtained binding financing commitments ... from Citi, Mizuho and Bank of America, said Xerox CEO John Visentin in a letter to his HP counterpart Enrique Lores and Chip Bergh, who chairs HPs board. My offer stands to meet with you in person, with or without your advisors, to begin negotiating this transaction.

Visentin and Xerox investor Carl Icahn envision pairing Xeroxs and HPs existing expertise in office and home printers to gain an advantage over rivals Canon, Konica Minolta and Ricoh. This would also open each companys respective customer base to products sold by the other, including HPs line of laptops and computers, and services like document management both offer.

After its 2019 fiscal profits came in at a third the levels of a year earlier, HP initiated a restructuring in October that could cost as many as 9,000 jobs. Xerox is more than a year into its own downsizing that has included layoffs and the outsourcing of thousands of jobs to HCL Technologies.

HP is currently in the midst of a window during which it is weighing nominations to the companys board. Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani floated the possibility in December of Icahn putting forward his own slate of proposed HP directors in an effort to bring about a deal.

HPs board has warned investors the deal proposed by Xerox would bog the combined company down in debt with long-term implications for the value of the stock, while indicating it remains open to any new offers addressing its concerns.

Separately on Sunday, Fujifilm Holdings confirmed it plans to end its decadeslong Fuji Xerox joint venture at the end of March, freeing Xerox to sell directly in the Asian-Pacific region. After taking control of the Xerox board last year, Icahn scotched an acquisition agreement between Fujifilm and Xerox and vowed to extricate Xerox from the joint venture, stating it would boost the companys revenue outlook. Visentin justified the decision last year on an accounting investigation at Fuji Xerox.

In November, Xerox sold to Fujifilm its 25 percent share of Fuji Xerox, which as recently as 2013 ranked among the 50 companies assigned the most U.S. patents, with 800 that year.

In a Sunday statement, Fuji Xerox stated it will rename itself Fujifilm Business Innovation Corp. entering April  the expiration of the joint venture  and that it will continue existing supply agreements with Xerox.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
Reserve troops fanned out across fire-ravaged regions in three Australian states on Monday after a horror weekend, as the government pledged $1.4 billion over two years to help recover from the devastating months-long crisis. Catastrophic bushfires have turned swathes of land into smouldering, blackened hellscapes and destroyed an area about the size of the island of Ireland, according to official figures. Authorities warn the disaster still has weeks or months to run. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, whose government has been criticised for its slow response to the emergency, pledged Aus$2 billion ($1.4 billion) of taxpayer money for a national recovery fund. "It's a long road ahead and we will be with these communities every step of the way as they rebuild," Morrison said. Firefighters joined by fresh teams from the US and Canada took advantage of rainy and cooler conditions to tackle out-of-control blazes ahead of rising temperatures forecast later this week. In the biggest-ever call-up of reserves, military teams were deployed across eastern Australia to help emergency services assess the damage, restore power and deliver supplies of food, water and fuel to cut-off communities. For the first time in Australian history the government also deployed its medical assistance team to help evacuees. The team is normally sent to other nations to lend support in the aftermath of their disasters. "There is no room for complacency, especially as we have over 130 fires burning across (New South Wales) state still," Premier of New South Wales state Gladys Berejiklian said on Monday. - 'New normal' - Almost five million hectares (about 12 million acres) have been razed across New South Wales and more than 1.2 million hectares in Victoria since late September, officials said. Twenty-five people have lost their lives, after police in New South Wales confirmed on Monday that a 71-year-old man reported missing had died, raising the toll by one. Another person was still unaccounted for in the nation's most populous state. More than 1,800 homes have been damaged. In Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews established a bushfire recovery agency to help devastated towns. It will be a permanent body, he said, as intense fires will become commonplace. "We should just be honest about the fact that we're going to see more and more fires, more and more damage as each fire season comes... This is the new normal," Andrews told reporters. The chair of the newly established Victoria state bushfire appeal fund, Pat McNamara, added that this year's summer bushfire season was a "creeping disaster". "We're still not even into what we would regard as the peak of the fire season," McNamara told national broadcaster ABC. In the usually picturesque southeastern town of Eden, Holly Spence said she spent more than 12 hours defending her family's farm on Saturday, less than a week after saving it on New Year's Eve. "We don't want to go through this for a third time," the 28-year-old told AFP. Fiona Kennelly, 50, who evacuated with 24 members of her extended family to a motel outside Eden, said she was relieved the easing conditions allowed them to get some respite from the crisis. "It's good to see daylight at the right time again," after the skies had been turning pitch-black in the afternoons, she told AFP. - Public anger - The impact of the bushfires has spread beyond affected communities, with heavy smoke engulfing the country's second-largest city Melbourne and the national capital Canberra. Some government departments were shut in Canberra as the city's air quality once again ranked as the world's poorest, according to independent online air-quality index monitor Air Visual. The disaster has sparked growing public anger with Morrison. Rallies are planned on Friday to call on his government to step up efforts to tackle climate change, which experts say have helped fuel the fires. In Los Angeles, Hollywood superstar Russell Crowe said in a message at the Golden Globes that the disaster was "climate change-based" and we need to act "based on science". Even as fires raged on the outskirts of Sydney, the country's cricketers gave the country something to rejoice in, crushing New Zealand by 279 runs on Monday to sweep their Test series. Retired spin legend Shane Warne separately said he would auction the "beloved" baggy green cap worn during his 145-Test cricket career to raise money for bushfire victims. "Everyone is in this together and we continue to find ways to contribute and help on a daily basis," Warne said on Instagram. Ash from Australia's bushfires washes up on a beach in Merimbula, New South Wales state Satellite image showing bushfires in relation to the city of Sydney as of Jan 5 A burned-out vehicle sits on Quinlans street after an overnight bushfire in Quaama, south of Sydney in Australia's New South Wales state A long exposure picture shows a car commuting on a road as the sky turns red because of smoke from the Snowy Valley bushfire on the outskirts of Cooma, in Australia's New South Wales state Royal Australian Navy MH-60R Seahawk helicopters taking off from HMAS Adelaide as part of bushfire relief operations -- Australia has made its biggest-ever callup of military reserves in living memory, to help emergency services workers
(Newser)  Reports that Carlos Ghosn escaped Japan in a musical instrument box were pretty close to the truth. The former Nissan executive facing charges of financial wrongdoing hid in a large black box designed for concert equipment, with breathing holes poked in the bottom, reports the Wall Street Journal, citing sources close to the investigation in Turkey. Three months earlier, operatives had visited at least 10 Japanese airports looking for a security flaw. They found it at Osaka's Kansai International Airport, where scanners were too small to fit oversize luggage. Such items are to be screened manually, according to a rep for the airport's operator. But Japan's transport ministry tells AFP that luggage checks aren't mandatory for private jets, which carry a lower terrorism risk. The audio-equipment case was therefore loaded onto a jet without security staff realizing there was a fugitive inside.

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Also on the plane were two US security operatives: Michael Taylor, an ex-Green Beret who's worked with the US government to rescue overseas kidnapping victims, and George Zayek, a Lebanese-born US citizen who's worked in private security with US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as with Taylor's Boston-based security company, per the Journal. The outlet reports the escape planinvolving a bullet train trip from Tokyo to Osakainvolved 10 to 15 people and cost millions of dollars, not to mention the $13.9 million forfeited in bail. Japan's justice minister said Monday the departure process would be tightened "so that similar acts can't be committed," per the New York Times. Masako Mori also said an existing review of bail procedures would be hurried. Per the Times, Ghosn had offered to wear a tracking device but was ultimately granted bail without one. (His future in Lebanon is unclear.)
Parents night out!

Kirsten Dunst and fiance Jesse Plemons, who share a 1-year-old son, walked the Golden Globes 2020 red carpet together on Sunday night  and didnt hide their affection as they posed for photos along the way.

Were treating this as parents night out because tomorrow were going to New Zealand, Dunst told E! Live from the Red Carpet. The Golden Globe nominee, 37, whos up best actress in a television series  musical or comedy, turned heads in a custom Rodarte pink lace ruffled gown with Swarovski crystal details.

Steve Granitz/WireImage

The Irishman actor, 31, supported his fiance in true style, wearing a classic black tuxedo with a black bow-tie and dress shoes.

The two met while on the set of Fargo in 2016, they became engaged in January 2017 and welcomed their son Ennis a year and a half later.

Emma McIntyre/Getty

I thought I would have a hard time getting pregnant, but it was a surprise, Dunst told Net-a-Porters digital magazine PorterEdit in August. If I hadnt met Jesse, I would have frozen my eggs. It feels like I lucked out.

RELATED: Golden Globes Nominations 2020 Announced! Jennifer Aniston, Joker and More Score Nods

Dunst is nominated tonight for her role as Krystal Stubbs, a water-park employee looking for prosperity in the early 1990s, on the Showtime series On Becoming a God In Central Florida. The 10-episode show, which premiered in August 2019, stars Dunst opposite Alexander Skarsgard as her husband.

In July, the actress, who is also an executive producer on the show, opened up to PEOPLE about bringing back 90s style back for her characters look.

We found Krystals look. We decided she definitely wore socks with her boots, Dunst told PEOPLE, adding that creating Stubbs wardrobe was a collaborative process.

Alfonso Bresciani/Sony Pictures

The 90s are so popular and trendy right now that we wanted to steer away from the trends that are happening now in terms of clothing she explains. We didnt do certain things that people are doing now to make sure it was distinctive. Shes got that country 90s to her.

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RELATED: Golden Globes 2020 Snubs: Game of Thrones, This Is Us and Cats Shut Out of Major Races

It was perfect  the hair and makeup, she says about her characters classic 90s wedding look to husband Travis (played by Skarsgard). The right amount of trash and sass.

The actress started On Becoming a God In Central Florida just after welcoming Ennis in 2018, which she says was the hardest thing she could have done after becoming a mom.

I basically went for the hardest thing that I could possibly do after having a baby, she says of her role as Krystal. I was with this role for two to three years. For me, it was just the perfect time frame. I had family and friends to help me.

The 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony is airing live on NBC from the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles on Sunday, Jan. 5.
President Donald Trump speaks during an

Associated Press

President Donald Trump on Saturday issued new threats at Iran, including one that could amount to a war crime if carried out.

Trump warned Iran that a strike on "any Americans" or "American assets" would result in the US hitting 52 targets  including "Iranian culture" sites.

But deliberately targeting cultural sites or cultural heritage sites could amount to a war crime under international law.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Iran that a strike on "any Americans" or "American assets" in retaliation for the killing of its top general would result in the US targeting 52 sites  including "Iranian culture" sites.

But deliberately targeting cultural sites or cultural heritage sites could amount to a war crime.

The US killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran's top military leader, in a drone strike in Baghdad on January 3. Iran has vowed to retaliate, with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday stating that the US had committed a "grave mistake."

A day after the president claimed Soleimani's killing was meant to "stop a war" rather than start one, he tweeted: "Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!"

Under international law, destroying cultural sites during armed conflict could be designated a war crime.

United Nations resolution 2347 condemns "the unlawful destruction of cultural heritage, including the destruction of religious sites and artefacts, and the looting and smuggling of cultural property from archaeological sites, museums, libraries, archives, and other sites, notably by terrorist groups."

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And under Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions it is prohibited to "commit any acts of hostility directed against the historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples...to use such objects in support of the military effort...[and] to make such objects the object of reprisals."

In 2016, judges at the International Criminal Court issued a nine-year sentence to a radical Islamist who had destroyed shrines in Timbuktu, Mali, in 2012. This marked the court's first prosecution of the destruction of cultural heritage as a war crime, The New York Times reported at the time.

The US Department of Defense Law of War Manual also touches on these matters, discussing the "protection of cultural property" at length.

When contacted by Insider for more information on Trump's tweet and the reference to "Iranian culture" sites, a Pentagon spokesperson said: "We would refer you to the White House concerning this tweet."

The White House did not offer a comment in response to a query from Insider on Trump's tweet.

Trump's tweet threatening Iran garnered a fair amount of attention on Twitter, including from members of Congress.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez excoriated the president, tweeting, "This is a war crime. Threatening to target and kill innocent families, women and children  which is what you're doing by targeting cultural sites  does not make you a 'tough guy.' It does not make you 'strategic.' It makes you a monster."

Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut also weighed in on Trump's threat, calling it a "moment we all feared" in a tweet.

"An unstable President in way over his head, panicking, with all his experienced advisers having quit, and only the sycophantic amateurs remaining. Assassinating foreign leaders, announcing plans to bomb civilians. A nightmare," he wrote.

Read the original article on Business Insider
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that Britain would not lament Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Soleimani, killed by a U.S. drone strike in Iraq on Friday, but called for restraint in the response to his death.

Soleimani "was responsible for a pattern of disruptive, destabilising behaviour in the region. Given the leading role he has played in actions that have led to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and western personnel, we will not lament his death", Johnson said in an emailed statement.

He added: "Calls for ... reprisals will simply lead to more violence."

Johnson said he had spoken with U.S. President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron about the rising tension in the Middle East, adding: "We are in close contact with all sides to encourage de-escalation."

He said steps had been taken to increase the security of British personnel and interests in the region.
Modified On Jan 08, 2020 06:23 PM By Sonny for Toyota Innova Crysta 2016-2020

The 2.8-litre diesel-automatic variants will be axed in the BS6 era

Toyota Innova Crysta now gets BS6-compliant 2.7-litre petrol and 2.4-litre diesel engines with both manual and automatic transmission.

The 2.8-litre diesel-AT powertrain will not be offered in the BS6 era.

Innova Crysta now gets stability control, hill assist, and emergency brake signal as standard.

Prices for BS6 petrol Innova Crysta variants range from Rs 15.36 lakh to Rs 22.02 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).

The BS6 diesel variants of Toyotas MPV are priced between Rs 16.14 lakh and Rs 24.06 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).

Toyota had already confirmed that itll be updating its larger diesel powertrains along with the petrol engines to meet the upcoming BS6 emission norms. The first big model with the updated engines is the Innova Crysta MPV.

The Innova Crysta is offered with a 2.7-litre petrol engine and a 2.4-litre diesel engine with both manual and automatic variants. Toyota has discontinued the more powerful 2.8-litre diesel-AT powertrain for the BS6 Innova Crysta. The updated Innova Crysta will also be equipped with features like vehicle stability control, hill assist control, and emergency brake signal as standard.

These are the ex-showroom Delhi prices for the BS6 Innova Crysta models:

Petrol

Variant Old Price New Price Difference GX 7-seat/8-seat Rs 14.93 lakh/ Rs 14.98 lakh Rs 15.36 lakh/ Rs 15.41 lakh Rs 43,000 GX AT 7-seat/8-seat Rs 16.15 lakh/ Rs 16.20 lakh Rs 16.58 lakh/ Rs 16.63 lakh Rs 43,000 VX Rs 18.07 lakh Rs 18.70 lakh Rs 63,000 VX Touring Sport Rs 18.92 lakh Rs 19.23 lakh Rs 31,000 ZX AT Rs 21.03 lakh Rs 21.34 lakh Rs 31,000 ZX AT Touring Sport Rs 21.71 lakh Rs 22.02 lakh Rs 31,000

Diesel

Variant Old Price New Price Difference G 7-seat/8-seat (new base variant) - Rs 16.14 lakh/Rs 16.19 lakh - G+ 7-seat/8-seat Rs 15.67 lakh/ Rs 15.72 lakh Rs 16.79 lakh/ Rs 16.84 lakh Rs 1.12 lakh GX 7-seat/8-seat Rs 16.05 lakh/ Rs 16.10 lakh Rs 17.17 lakh/ Rs 17.22 lakh Rs 1.12 lakh GX AT 7-seat/8-seat Rs 17.46 lakh/ Rs 17.51 lakh (2.8-litre) Rs 18.17 lakh/ Rs 18.22 lakh Rs 71,000 VX 7-seat/8-seat Rs 19.27 lakh/ Rs 19.32 lakh Rs 20.59 lakh/ Rs 20.64 lakh Rs 1.32 lakh VX Touring Sport Rs 20.97 lakh Rs 21.97 lakh Rs 1 lakh ZX Rs 21.13 lakh Rs 22.13 lakh Rs 1 lakh ZX AT Rs 22.43 lakh (2.8-litre) Rs 23.02 lakh Rs 59,000 ZX AT Touring Sport Rs 23.47 lakh (2.8-litre) Rs 24.06 lakh Rs 59,000

The price increase for the diesel-automatic option in the GX and ZX variants is comparatively less than the manual variants. This is because these were previously offered with the larger 2.8-litre diesel engine as opposed to the 2.4-litre diesel engine. There is also a new base-spec variant for the BS6 diesel Innova Crysta which makes the entry-level diesel pricier by only Rs 47,000 instead of Rs 1.12 lakh.

Toyota has also informed that bookings are open and a celebratory price can be availed at dealerships for a limited period. The BS6 models are scheduled to begin rolling out in February 2020.

The Innova Crysta has no direct rivals but it competes against the likes of the Maruti Suzuki Ertiga, Tata Hexa and Mahindra Marazzo in the MPV segment. It will also face competition from upcoming models like the Tata Gravitas and the 7-seater MG Hector.

Read More on : Toyota Innova Crysta Automatic
The City of Portland has halted all homeless camp clean-ups while officials debate whether to authorize a new contract for the work. According to a memo, the city has not responded to complaints about camps for at least a week now.

City Council was supposed to vote on the new contract in mid-December, but it was pulled from the council agenda the day of the meeting. Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty criticized the contract for some of its new additions -- changes the mayors office says will make the clean-up work more humane and useful to the city.

The contract is back on the Jan. 8 agenda, and Monday, it seems the commissioners found a compromise that will enable clean-ups to start after the Wednesday vote.

The stakes are reminiscent of a six-month stretch under former Mayor Charlie Hales, who ordered a stop to homeless camp sweeps under what he called a safe sleep policy. It was roundly criticized by Portland residents, business leaders and police for what they said resulted in rampant trash and tents near shopping districts, pedestrian paths and neighborhoods.

Currently, through the citys hotline, One Point of Contact, every complaint about a homeless person, camp or RV is vetted by a team of people who rate the site on a variety of metrics, such as the appearance of drugs and needles, how many yards of trash are visible and if there is obvious criminal activity.

If the camp scores above a certain threshold, a crew of biohazard cleaners are dispatched to move the people living there, then go through the remaining belongings, sorting it into trash and useable property, which is stored in a police facility.

The system has undergone significant changes since it was first implemented. In the last fiscal year, the program cleaned 3,122 campsites, removed 8,400 gallons of human waste, 1,300 tons of garbage, and removed 28,909 hypodermic syringes.

Those numbers have generally increased since the program started in 2014.

City officials have long said that the clean-ups are necessary to make conditions more safe and sanitary for people living outside and to appease business owners and neighbors who are upset about homeless camps.

But the people who clean up have also clashed with people living in camps. Theyve also been the first to find three people who died from drug overdoses in the last six months, according to the mayors office.

Officials with the mayors office say they have listened to homeless people, advocates and workers to make the scope of work in the new contract more compassionate and effective.

The new contract adds language that says clean-up workers must be polite, diplomatic and professional at all times, and treat all persons with dignity and respect. Discrimination and harassment shall not be tolerated in any form.

It also requires that they be trained to administer the drug to reverse opioid overdoses, commonly called naloxone or Narcan, and CPR.

When the weather turns freezing and snowy, those clean-up crews then become outreach workers who are supposed to check on campers safety and well-being, distribute hand warmers and trash bags and help them get to shelter.

We can effectively address public health, environmental, and public safety issues in problematic camps while also being compassionate in our approach," said Mayor Ted Wheeler in a statement Monday. "This contract achieves both goals. This is the case that I will make to my City Council colleagues on Wednesday.

These duties would all fall to Rapid Response Bio Clean, which has been doing the citys camp clean-ups for the past five years. The city had a second contractor, Pacific Patrol Services, but let that contract expire at the end of November without renewing it.

The city was only authorized to spend $5 million on clean ups for the past five years. During that time, the city absorbed the clean-up responsibilities of the Oregon Department of Transportation. While that work came with an extra infusion of money, the city has still spent more than was allocated.

When City Council approved drafting a new contract with the intent to sign it at the end of December, another $5 million was set aside for the next five years.

But when Wheeler pulled the new contract from the December agenda in the midst of criticism from Hardesty and homeless advocates, the city spent down the rest of the money.

Lucas Hillier, the program manager for the citys clean-up coordination system, wrote in a memo dated Jan. 2 to the council that Rapid Response employees had been told to stop working, and cant resume until the council decides what to do.

The council could also choose to temporarily extend the current contract, but that would mean Rapid Response employees would not be beholden to the additional stipulations.

Few have taken issue with the changes to the contract. Instead, criticism focuses on those doing the work.

Hardesty said that she doesnt think one company, created around cleaning up biowaste, should also be entrusted to act as outreach workers and medical first responders.

She said she is also concerned about the trauma homeless people experience from constantly being moved and often losing their belongings during the moves.

She joined Street Roots Executive Director Kaia Sand in calling for a reconsideration of the contract. Sand, a homeless advocate with the newspaper of the same name, asked for a six-month delay before approving a new contract to allow advocates and others to figure out an alternative to the One Point of Contact system.

While the contract stipulates that Rapid Response workers carry naloxone and refer people to services, this money would be better spent on actual naloxone-carrying outreach workers from those services.  Kaia Sand (@mkaiasand) December 17, 2019

However, that would likely mean no clean-ups would happen for six months.

But Monday, after a meeting with Wheeler, she announced that she was willing to vote for the new contract -- for the time being.

The contract only covers one year, after which it must be voted to be renewed for the following four years. Hardesty said she is willing to let the work happen for that first year as laid out in the contract, because the new stipulations make it more palatable than extending the current contract.

In the meantime, the commissioners will discuss the camp clean-up system in a work session and hold community meetings to get feedback. She also said she got assurance from Wheeler that he is open to splitting up the Rapid Response contract into smaller ones that assign some of the tasks the biohazard company performs to other groups.

There is no easy solution to this issue, but I do believe we can and should address it with compassion, Hardesty said in a statement. I remain committed to working on a long-term solution with the Mayor and my colleagues that minimizes trauma and public health concerns that ultimately is rooted in our citys housing crisis. As always, I know that complex problems are best addressed with many voices and I thank those of you that have reached out or met with me to have your voice heard. I am always willing to change my mind and we are best able to address problems when we listen to each other and work together.

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com | 503-294-5923 | @MollyHarbarger

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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 6)  President Rodrigo Duterte has signed into law the 4.1-trillion national budget for 2020 on Monday.

Duterte signed Republic Act 11465 or the General Appropriations Act, which authorizes the release of funds for new and continuing government projects and programs as approved by Congress. The six-day delay is much shorter compared to 2019, when the passage of the spending plan stalled for four months as lawmakers disagreed on supposed last-minute insertions in the budget.

Duterte's economic managers earlier warned that another reenacted budget could mean even slower growth, as seen with soft domestic activity from January-June.

The P4.1 trillion general appropriations is said to be the countrys largest budget to date, greater by 12% than the 2019 budget.

A bulk of the budget or P1.495 trillion is earmarked for the social services sector. The amount will fund programs like the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education, basic education facilities program, the Universal Health Care program, the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, and the Unconditional Cash Transfer Program.

Meanwhile, P1.2 trillion is allocated for economic services. This will be used for infrastructure development to be spearheaded by the Department of Public Works and Highways and the Department of Transportation.

Of the said amount, DPWH will use P203.8 billion for its network development, asset preservation, and bridge programs, while the DOTr will use P63.5 billion for the development of the countrys rail, air, and sea transportation infrastructure.

Moreover, some P70.6 billion will be allocated for the operational and developmental needs of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has proposed to spend a little over 1 trillion on infrastructure this year, with a focus on developing transportation, tourism, and agriculture. The same spending plan will also provide for the implementation of the Universal Health Care Act that will provide more health services to all Filipinos for free, the transition to the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and the creation of the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development.

The House of Representatives, however, realigned 9.52 billion in the budget bill to raise the funding for 12 state agencies.

The new fiscal plan also sets aside some 34 billion for fresh salary increases for government workers, ahead of the passage of the Salary Standardization Law 5 that provides for yearly pay hikes until 2023. Like the budget bill, Duterte certified this measure as urgent in order to fast-track its approval. The Senate also included 3.173 billion meant to raise the pay of nurses in public hospitals and health offices to implement a recent Supreme Court decision.

Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson again called out the House of Representatives for allegedly inserting at least 16 billion in pork barrel funds, or those left under the discretion of lawmakers. House appropriations committee chair Isidro Ungab denied this, saying there are no pork or parked funds in the new budget.

READ: Lacson says 2020 budget pork-free, but warns of possible last-minute insertions

In 2019, Duterte vetoed 95.3 billion from last year's 3.757 trillion spending plan discovered "not within the programmed priorities" of the Department of Public Works and Highways. This is bigger than the 75 billion questioned by senators during the bicameral committee meetings for the 2019 spending law.

Prior to signing the 2020 budget, the President gave one more year for agencies to spend their 2019 allocations for maintenance and other operating expenses as well as capital outlays to catch up with planned spending.

DBM has authorized agencies to spend one-twelfth of their 2019 budgets so they can have funds prior to the 2020 budget taking effect.
TEHRAN, Iran  Irans supreme leader wept Monday over the casket of a top general killed in a U.S. airstrike, his prayers joining the wails of mourners who flooded the streets of Tehran demanding retaliation against America for a slaying thats drastically raised tensions across the Middle East.

The funeral for Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani drew a crowd said by police to be in the millions in the Iranian capital, filling thoroughfares and side streets as far as the eye could see. Although there was no independent estimate, aerial footage and Associated Press journalists suggested a turnout of at least 1 million, and the throngs were visible on satellite images of Tehran taken Monday.

Authorities later brought his remains and those of the others to Irans holy city of Qom, turning out another massive crowd.

The outpouring of grief was an unprecedented honor for a man viewed by Iranians as a national hero for his work leading the Guards expeditionary Quds Force. The U.S. blames him for the killing of American troops in Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before his death Friday in a drone strike at Baghdads airport. Soleimani also led forces in Syria backing President Bashar Assad in a long war.

His slaying already has pushed Tehran to abandon the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as his successor and others vow to take revenge. In Baghdad, the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, something analysts fear could allow Islamic State militants to mount a comeback.

Soleimanis daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened the U.S. military in the Middle East while also warning President Donald Trump, whom she called crazy.

The families of the American soldiers  will spend their days waiting for the death of their children, she said to cheers.

Her language mirrored warnings by other Iranian officials who say an attack on U.S. military interests in the Middle East looms. Iranian state TV and others online shared a video that showed Trumps American flag tweet following Soleimanis killing turn into a coffin, the likes of the tweet replaced by over 143,000 killed.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over the caskets of Soleimani and others at Tehran University after a brief mourning period at the capitals famed Musalla mosque, The mosque was where prayers were said over the body of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, after his death in 1989.

Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani and referred to him as a living martyr, broke down in tears four times while offering Muslim prayers for the dead.

Oh God, you took their spirits out of their bodies as they were rolling in their blood for you and were martyred in your way, Khamenei said as the crowd wailed. Soleimani will be buried Tuesday in his hometown of Kerman.

Soleimanis successor, Esmail Ghaani, stood near Khameneis side as did President Hassan Rouhani and other leaders of the Islamic Republic. While Iran recently faced nationwide protests over government-set gasoline prices that reportedly led to the killing of over 300, Soleimanis death has brought together people from across the countrys political spectrum, temporarily silencing that anger.

Demonstrators burned Israeli and U.S. flags, carried a flag-draped U.S. coffin or displayed effigies of Trump. Some described Trump as a legitimate target.

Mohammad Milad Rashidi, a 26-year-old university graduate, predicted more tension ahead.

Trump demolished the chance for any sort of possible agreement between Tehran and Washington, Rashidi said. There will be more conflict in the future for sure.

Another mourner, Azita Mardani, warned that Iran will retaliate for every drop of his blood.

We are even thankful to (Trump) because he made us angry and this fury will lead to shedding of their blood in the Persian Gulf and the regions countries, Mardani said. Here will become their graveyard.

Ghaani made his own threat in an interview shown Monday on Iranian state television. God the Almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken, he said.

Markets reacted Monday to the tensions, sending international benchmark Brent crude above $70 a barrel for part of the day and gold to a seven-year high. The Middle East remains a crucial source of oil, and Iran in the past has threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all the worlds oil traded passes.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, chairing emergency talks with the alliances ambassadors in Brussels, called for restraint and de-escalation, adding: A new conflict would be in no ones interest.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned global political tensions were at their highest level this century. In a letter, Iraqs U.N. Ambassador Mohammed Hussein Bahr Aluloom called on the U.N. Security Council to condemn the U.S. airstrike that killed Soleimani and ensure that Iraq is not dragged into international and regional crises.

Ghaani, a longtime Soleimani deputy, has taken over as the head of the Revolutionary Guards Quds, or Jerusalem, Force, answerable only to Khamenei. Ghaani has been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2012 for his work funding its global operations, including its work with proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Those proxies likely will be involved in any operation targeting U.S. interests in the Middle East or elsewhere.

Already, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks. In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimanis killing made U.S. military bases, warships and service members across the region fair game for attacks.

We promise to continue down martyr Soleimanis path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region, Ghaani said.

The head of the Guards aerospace program, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, suggested Irans response wouldnt stop with a single attack.

Firing a couple of missiles, hitting a base or even killing Trump is not valuable enough to compensate for martyr Soleimanis blood, Hajizadeh said on state TV. The only thing that can compensate for his blood is the complete removal of America from the region.

On the nuclear deal, Iran now says it wont observe the accords restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities. Thats a much-harsher step than they had planned to take before the attack.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have urged Iran to withdraw all measures not in line with the deal.

Iran insisted it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldnt seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions last year. It further raises regional tensions, as Irans longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Edith M. Lederer contributed from the United Nations.
Ladies often make odd requests before marriage, and Kate Middleton was no exemption.

Even before she married into the royal family, Kate had been well aware of Prince William's future role. Kate knew then she had to prepare for an equally important role, too.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have been married for almost a decade. Kate married into the royal family on April 29, 2011 and she has since been active with royal engagements even now that she is a doting mom of three.

Kate Confirms Royal Speculation with Odd Request

Reports of an odd request from Kate Middleton resurfaced as she continues to prepare for her role as Queen consort. Now that Prince Charles is being groomed to replace the Queen very soon, Prince William, and evidently Kate Middleton, have to step up to the plate, too.

Kate is already deemed busy with a year's worth of royal engagements. But apparently for her, she did not really get what she asked for before marriage.

In 2008, Kate and William just got back together after a short break-up in 2007. They came back in the relationship stronger than before and by that time, William was determined to marry Kate. At this time, there were strong speculations that the couple were set to marry soon.

Before announcing their engagement on November 16, 2010, Kate already confirmed royal speculations of their engagement with an email to friends. Kate knew she better start making changes to her life, starting with her name.

In an email that resurfaced from 2008, it was revealed that Kate had requested her friends to stop calling her by her informal-sounding nickname. Middleton wanted to ditch "Kate" in favor of "Catherine."

While the Duchess is referred to as Catherine in official royal engagements, unfortunately for her, the nickname "Kate" stuck. Tabloids, news and TV reports would refer to the Duchess as Kate even before her marriage. The name carried on to this date and the public never thought of calling her Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

Kate is Partly to Blame

Reports reveal that the email sent to friends was in a joking manner, yet it sounded awkward to friends. Kate was never a snobbish, authoritative figure. Rather, she was always approachable and seemed forgiving.

Sunday Express columnist Adam Helliker first reported about the email in 2008. He revealed that one of Kate's friends was shocked upon receiving the email. Kate's friend had told the columnist, "Everyone knew what's going to happen with Kate and William, so we were a bit surprised when she requested we start calling her Catherine."

Kate opting to be called by her full name was dubbed as her first move, implying she will take her future role very seriously. "There had been a distinct feeling she was very aware of her position," revealed Helliker.

Kate Actively Prepares for Future Role

2019 was a good year for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The pair has taken on more royal responsibilities. These included their trips to Palestinian Territories and in Israel. They ended the year on a positive note too with Mary Berry's Christmas Special.

This year, the royal couple is expected to double up on their royal responsibilities. As Prince Charles gets ready to fulfill a greater role, so are Prince William and Kate. Adding to the royal work they have to do is the work left by Prince Andrew after last year's biggest royal scandal.

READ MORE: Royal Trouble: Queen Elizabeth II Expected to Face More Problems in 2020
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Benerjee on Sunday condemned the brutality unleashed on the students and teachers of JNU and said that a team of her party men will reach the national capital to show solidarity with them.

We strongly condemn the brutality unleashed against students/teachers in JNU. No words enough to describe such heinous acts.

A shame on our democracy. Trinamool delegation led by Dinesh Trivedi with Sajda Ahmed, Manas Bhunia, Vivek Gupta are headed to Delhi to show solidarity with JNU students, she said in a statement. Members of JNU Students Union and ABVP clashed on the campus Sunday evening, sources said, adding it happened during a public meeting organised by the JNU Teachers Association.

The students union claimed that its president Aishe Ghosh and many other students were injured in stone-pelting by ABVP members.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 11:29:20|Editor: xuxin

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NANJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- With a history dating back 2,500 years, the ancient eastern Chinese city of Suzhou now thrives with over 400 projects invested by 156 foreign enterprises on the Global Fortune 500 list.

In 2019, the world's top companies, including Honeywell and Emerson Electric, all established branches in the city.

Leica Microsystems, a leading German optical technology and product manufacturer, opened an innovation center in Suzhou Industrial Park last November. Covering a floor space of 500 square meters, the center will be used for the development of high-quality smart products.

"Suzhou is a vibrant city with a large collection of talents, tech incubators and research institutions, and we hope to rely on its innovation ecosystem to develop innovative digital solutions to serve the broader customer base," said Andreas Hecker, vice president of Leica Microsystems.

"Though higher economic uncertainties now lead to cautious foreign investment for many firms, we are confident about the prospect and huge potential of China's economy," Hecker said.

To promote wider opening-up, the city released a new plan Friday that outlined its blueprint for higher-quality growth, with measures in innovative development, industrial upgrading, foreign investment and other aspects.

According to the plan, Suzhou will be home to 14,000 high-tech firms by the end of 2022, with 3,000 foreign-invested ones.

In addition to abundant technological resources, Suzhou is also equipped with a complete and efficient supply chain. Ten advanced manufacturing industrial clusters in the city, including electronic information and high-end equipment, have an output value of over 100 billion yuan (around 14.34 billion U.S. dollars).

"The city's complete industrial chain fully supports the development of foreign companies," said Li Chenchun, deputy general manager of Samsung Electronics Suzhou.

In 1994, the South Korean tech giant was one of the earliest foreign firms to arrive in the city.

"We can find almost all the suppliers we need within 100 km, saving us a lot of time and costs," Li said.

For many international companies investing in Suzhou, a friendly and supportive government with efficient problem-solving abilities is one of the city's biggest attractions.

According to Lan Shaomin, secretary of Suzhou's municipal committee of the Communist Party of China, the city provides targeted support to foreign investors on a case by case approach.

"The government of Suzhou can address our problems overnight after receiving our requests, which is hard to imagine in many other countries," said Oo Ee-Lin, senior vice president of finance and administration of Bosch Automotive Electronics China.

Due to a fair business environment and a series of preferential policies, more talents have settled down in the city. So far, about 13,000 foreigners are working in Suzhou, with more than 4,500 foreign talents.

The city plans to introduce 10,000 high-end talents within three years for its high-quality development, and more than half of them will be from overseas, with the number of top foreign experts exceeding 2,500.

"Suzhou is embracing globalization with growing openness, which will bring us more business opportunities in China," said Yamaguchi Keizo, vice-chairman of the board president of Factory Engineer Department of Panasonic System Networks (Suzhou).
A former head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards threatened to turn the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv "to dust" if the US attacks targets in Iran.

"If America takes any measures after our military response, we will turn Tel Aviv and Haifa to dust," Mohsen Rezai, who currently heads the Expediency Council, a top state body, said in a Tweet on Sunday.

His warning came after President Donald Trump warned on Saturday that the US would target 52 sites "important to Iran & Iranian culture" and hit them "very fast and very hard" if the Islamic republic attacked American personnel or assets.

Read: Trump Threatens 'major Retaliation' If Iran Launches Attacks

In a saber-rattling tweet that defended Friday's US drone strike assassination of top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in Iraq, Trump said 52 represents the number of Americans held hostage at the US embassy in Tehran for more than a year starting in late 1979.

Read: Iran Exits Nuclear Deal Amid Rising Tensions With The US

"Mr Trump, you tweeted that you will attack 52 targets in Iran?" Rezai was also quoted as saying by the semi-official ISNA news agency. "You have said that you will attack again if Iran gets revenge? Be sure that Iran will turn Haifa and Israel's centres to dust in a way that Israel would be erased from the face of the earth," he warned.

Trump's tweet also drew condemnation from Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif who responded on Twitter saying "targeting cultural sites is a WAR CRIME".

Read: Iran's Parliament Speaker: Soleimani Killing 'a Crime'

Soleimani, who spearheaded Iran's Middle East operations as commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' Quds Force, was killed in a US drone strike Friday near Baghdad airport. He was 62.

The attack was ordered by Trump, who said the Quds commander had been planning an "imminent" attack on US diplomats and forces in Iraq.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed "severe revenge".

Read: Pro-Iran Faction Urges Iraqi Troops 'get Away' From US Forces In Bases
Apart from banking services, ATM services are also expected to be affected during the one-day Bharat bandh, said the report.

Banking and ATM services across the country are expected to be affected on 8 January following the country-wide strike call given by 10 central trade unions last week.

Several bank unions will take part in the general strike or Bharat bandh which has been called to protest against the Narendra Modi government's recent banking reforms. The unions are also demanding salary hike and other benefits.

The banking unions including All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA), All India Bank Officers Association (AIBOA), Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI), Indian National Bank Employees Federation (INBEF), Indian National Bank Officers Congress (INBOC) and Bank Karmachari Sena Mahasangh (BKSM) will also join the strike on 8 January, said a report in India TV citing Indian Bank's Association statement.

Apart from banking services, ATM services are also expected to be affected during the one-day Bharat bandh, said the report.

However, the strike may not affect the net banking facility as NEFT services are available round the clock now.

In August last year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had decided to allow round the clock fund transfers through NEFT from December 2019 in order to promote digital transactions.

Meanwhile, in order to avert inconvenience to the people, several banks have taken steps for the smooth smooth functioning of their branches on 8 January.

Country's leading lender State Bank of India (SBI) said the strike is set to have minimal impact on its operations adding very few SBI employees will be a part of the six bank unions participating in the strike.

However, Bank of Baroda expressed concerns that the strike could hit its operations.

Bank of Baroda said it taking necessary steps for the normal functioning on 8 January but if the strike gains strength, functioning of its branches may be affected, said a report in Mint.

Like Bank of Baroda, many other banks said that there could be disruptions in services amid the strike, the report said.

On Saturday, state-owned Syndicate Bank said it was taking necessary steps for the smooth functioning of its branches on 8 January.

In a BSE filing, the lender said it received notice from the AIBEA, BEFI, INBEF and INBOC on the proposed one-day strike.

"Bank has received notice...on the proposed strike on 8 January 2020," Syndicate Bank said.
So where are the best ribs, smoked brisket, chicken, sausage, sides and everything in between throughout the San Antonio area? Well, we're done uncovering the best of the bunch.

In January, Express-News food writer Mike Sutter and I launched 52 Weeks of BBQ, and we've been spotlighting a different barbecue joint every Friday at ExpressNews.com/BBQ and every Sunday in the Taste section of the paper.
The African Development Bank's Board of Directors (AfDB.org) has approved a grant to the government of Sudan to accelerate the adoption of solar-powered irrigation pumps in the country's West Kordofan and North Kordofan states.

The project will enable farmers' adoption of renewable energy technology through the installation of 1,170 photovoltaic (PV) irrigation pumps, the establishment of maintenance and repair workshops for the pumps, and the supply of equipment for a pump testing laboratory to provide certification and training.



Agriculture is an important economic sector in Sudan. In 2016, nearly 40% of the country's GDP came from farming. For the sector, and for the wider economy, the project offers significant and numerous knock-on benefits. As a result of the expected phasing out of diesel-fueled pumps, participating farmers will realise cost savings from no longer needing to purchase diesel, which is scarce in rural areas. Productivity also would increase: diesel generators require time consuming maintenance and repair. Pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, the country's largest contributor, would fall.



Mr. Paul Baldeh, the Bank's Director for Power Systems Development, noted that "by extending farmers a grant covering 75% of installation costs, the government, with Bank support, will overcome the most significant hurdle of adopting clean PV technology: high upfront costs." The remaining 25% will be payable in installments over three years. He added that the project will conduct a ground water survey and sustainability assessment that will inform the development of subsequent projects in Sudan.



The project meets the Sudanese government's renewable energy and poverty reduction objectives as well as the Bank's High Five and Energy Sector Policy. Moreover, the project has strong potential to be replicated and scaled up in other parts of the country.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Development Bank Group (AfDB).

About the African Development Bank Group:

The African Development Bank Group (AfDB.org) is Africa's premier development finance institution. It comprises three distinct entities: the African Development Bank (AfDB), the African Development Fund (ADF) and the Nigeria Trust Fund (NTF). On the ground in 41 African countries with an external office in Japan, the Bank contributes to the economic development and the social progress of its 54 regional member states. For more information: www.AfDB.org

Media Contact:

Olufemi Terry

Communication and External Relations Department

African Development Bank

Email: o.terry@afdb.org
The Indian market witnessed strong selloff on January 6 as the rising tensions between the US and Iran spooked investors and made them avoid riskier equities and rush to safe-haven assets.

The S&P BSE Sensex plunged 850 points in intraday trade while Nifty50 gave broke below 12,000 on the downside as rising geopolitical concerns sent crude higher and India Gold to fresh record highs.

The BSE Sensex closed 788 points, or 1.90 percent, down at 40,676.63, while the Nifty50 settled 234 points, or 1.91 percent, down at 11,993.05. The BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices fell 2.31 percent and 1.96 percent, respectively.

"The US-Iran tensions spooked Indian market badly throughout the day as financials and metals led the fall which was pretty broad-based. Risk-off was evident as Gold jumped to a 7-year high. Rising oil prices also took a toll on the market," said S Ranganathan, Head of Research at LKP Securities.

The volatility index, India VIX surged 16.60 percent, marking its biggest single-day gain in a year.

This was the biggest fall in Sensex since July 8, 2019. On August 24, 2015, Sensex took a beating of 1,625 points or 5.94 percent, which was the biggest fall in points in the last five years.

In fact, in the last five years, there have been 40 such sessions (including today) in which Sensex plunged over 500 points, 20 sessions in which Sensex cracked over 600 points, and 11 sessions in which the market benchmark suffered a loss of over 700 points.

On January 6, 2019, the Indian market reacted negatively to rising crude oil prices. As India's dependence on crude imports as a percentage of consumption is the highest, its impact on the domestic economy and the market is also higher.

Along with crude, the weakness of the currency also weighed on the Indian market.

"Geopolitical tension has increased the risk of unknowns which is getting factored into the market. Just before the event took place, the Nifty50 index was trading in a new zone on the back of budget expectations. However, a forward PE of Nifty50 at 19 times was close to its previous peak which made it susceptible to any external shock," said Rusmik Oza, Senior VP (Head of Fundamental Research-PCG), Kotak Securities.

"If the situation between the US & Iran does not escalate then we could see some near-term support or bottom formation around 11,600 levels which is the 200-DMA for Nifty50. A 5-6 percent correction from the peak levels could be a healthy one for the long-term," Oza added.
Today we'll look at Epwin Group PLC (LON:EPWN) and reflect on its potential as an investment. Specifically, we're going to calculate its Return On Capital Employed (ROCE), in the hopes of getting some insight into the business.

First up, we'll look at what ROCE is and how we calculate it. Second, we'll look at its ROCE compared to similar companies. Finally, we'll look at how its current liabilities affect its ROCE.

Understanding Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)

ROCE is a measure of a company's yearly pre-tax profit (its return), relative to the capital employed in the business. All else being equal, a better business will have a higher ROCE. Ultimately, it is a useful but imperfect metric. Renowned investment researcher Michael Mauboussin has suggested that a high ROCE can indicate that 'one dollar invested in the company generates value of more than one dollar'.

So, How Do We Calculate ROCE?

Analysts use this formula to calculate return on capital employed:

Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT)  (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)

Or for Epwin Group:

0.096 = UK17m  (UK253m - UK74m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2019.)

So, Epwin Group has an ROCE of 9.6%.

Check out our latest analysis for Epwin Group

Is Epwin Group's ROCE Good?

ROCE is commonly used for comparing the performance of similar businesses. Using our data, Epwin Group's ROCE appears to be around the 10% average of the Building industry. Separate from Epwin Group's performance relative to its industry, its ROCE in absolute terms looks satisfactory, and it may be worth researching in more depth.

Epwin Group's current ROCE of 9.6% is lower than 3 years ago, when the company reported a 20% ROCE. Therefore we wonder if the company is facing new headwinds. You can see in the image below how Epwin Group's ROCE compares to its industry. Click to see more on past growth.

AIM:EPWN Past Revenue and Net Income, January 6th 2020

It is important to remember that ROCE shows past performance, and is not necessarily predictive. ROCE can be misleading for companies in cyclical industries, with returns looking impressive during the boom times, but very weak during the busts. ROCE is only a point-in-time measure. Since the future is so important for investors, you should check out our free report on analyst forecasts for Epwin Group.

Story continues

What Are Current Liabilities, And How Do They Affect Epwin Group's ROCE?

Liabilities, such as supplier bills and bank overdrafts, are referred to as current liabilities if they need to be paid within 12 months. Due to the way ROCE is calculated, a high level of current liabilities makes a company look as though it has less capital employed, and thus can (sometimes unfairly) boost the ROCE. To check the impact of this, we calculate if a company has high current liabilities relative to its total assets.

Epwin Group has total liabilities of UK74m and total assets of UK253m. As a result, its current liabilities are equal to approximately 29% of its total assets. Low current liabilities are not boosting the ROCE too much.

The Bottom Line On Epwin Group's ROCE

With that in mind, Epwin Group's ROCE appears pretty good. Epwin Group shapes up well under this analysis, but it is far from the only business delivering excellent numbers . You might also want to check this free collection of companies delivering excellent earnings growth.

If you are like me, then you will not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Two vessels carrying 29 rescued off Isla Mujeres

Isla Mujeres, Q.R.  Two boats required rescue assistance off the shores of Isla Mujeres over the weekend that involved nearly 30 people.

One boat carrying 17 tourists required marine assistance after it began taking on water due to high winds from the entry of a recent cold front. Merced Ortiz Maya, head of Isla Mujeres Civil Protection, reported one boat carrying 17 passengers from Puebla required a marine rescue.

Photos: Semar

The vessel, La Traviea, which was carrying seven adults and 10 minors, was reportedly sinking after taking on water one nautical mile west of Playa Zama. Marine personnel were able to locate the vessel and return its passengers and crew to land without incident.

The second rescue mission was carried out by la Secretaria de Marina-Armada de Mexico after the Captaincy of the Port of Isla Mujeres reported a boat named 5th Wheel carrying eight adults and four minors experienced mechanical failure and was reported drifting.

Photo: Semar

Marine search and rescue personnel set out to locate the vessel, which they found with complete engine failure approximately 1.5 nautical miles west of Isla Mujeres. The boat, 5th Wheel, was towed to a safe harbor while its passengers were reviewed by medical personnel.

There were no reported injuries in either case.
This article is written for those who want to get better at using price to earnings ratios (P/E ratios). We'll show how you can use Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings's (NYSE:LH) P/E ratio to inform your assessment of the investment opportunity. Based on the last twelve months, Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings's P/E ratio is 21.86. That means that at current prices, buyers pay $21.86 for every $1 in trailing yearly profits.

See our latest analysis for Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings

How Do You Calculate Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings's P/E Ratio?

The formula for price to earnings is:

Price to Earnings Ratio = Share Price  Earnings per Share (EPS)

Or for Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings:

P/E of 21.86 = $167.23  $7.65 (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2019.)

Is A High Price-to-Earnings Ratio Good?

A higher P/E ratio means that investors are paying a higher price for each $1 of company earnings. That isn't necessarily good or bad, but a high P/E implies relatively high expectations of what a company can achieve in the future.

Does Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings Have A Relatively High Or Low P/E For Its Industry?

We can get an indication of market expectations by looking at the P/E ratio. As you can see below Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings has a P/E ratio that is fairly close for the average for the healthcare industry, which is 22.1.

NYSE:LH Price Estimation Relative to Market, January 6th 2020

That indicates that the market expects Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings will perform roughly in line with other companies in its industry. The company could surprise by performing better than average, in the future. I would further inform my view by checking insider buying and selling., among other things.

How Growth Rates Impact P/E Ratios

Probably the most important factor in determining what P/E a company trades on is the earnings growth. Earnings growth means that in the future the 'E' will be higher. And in that case, the P/E ratio itself will drop rather quickly. So while a stock may look expensive based on past earnings, it could be cheap based on future earnings.

Story continues

Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings saw earnings per share decrease by 45% last year. But it has grown its earnings per share by 4.7% per year over the last five years.

Don't Forget: The P/E Does Not Account For Debt or Bank Deposits

The 'Price' in P/E reflects the market capitalization of the company. In other words, it does not consider any debt or cash that the company may have on the balance sheet. In theory, a company can lower its future P/E ratio by using cash or debt to invest in growth.

Such expenditure might be good or bad, in the long term, but the point here is that the balance sheet is not reflected by this ratio.

How Does Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings's Debt Impact Its P/E Ratio?

Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings has net debt equal to 38% of its market cap. You'd want to be aware of this fact, but it doesn't bother us.

The Verdict On Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings's P/E Ratio

Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings trades on a P/E ratio of 21.9, which is above its market average of 18.9. With modest debt but no EPS growth in the last year, it's fair to say the P/E implies some optimism about future earnings, from the market.

Investors have an opportunity when market expectations about a stock are wrong. People often underestimate remarkable growth -- so investors can make money when fast growth is not fully appreciated. So this free visual report on analyst forecasts could hold the key to an excellent investment decision.

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking at a few good candidates. So take a peek at this free list of companies with modest (or no) debt, trading on a P/E below 20.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Phuket health officials scan Chinese tourist arrivals for Wuhan flu

PHUKET: Phuket health officials today (Jan 6) confirmed that they have yet to positively identify any new arrivals from Wuhan, China, as being infected or carrying a mysterious form of pneumonia that has developed in the central Chinese province.

tourismChinesehealthCoronavirusCOVID-19

By The Phuket News

Monday 6 January 2020, 12:29PM

Any persons in Thailand who suspect they may have contracted the virus are urged to immediately call the Department of Disease Control (DDC) hotline 1422.

Any persons in Thailand who suspect they may have contracted the virus are urged to immediately call the Department of Disease Control (DDC) hotline 1422.

Any persons in Thailand who suspect they may have contracted the virus are urged to immediately call the Department of Disease Control (DDC) hotline 1422.

Any persons in Thailand who suspect they may have contracted the virus are urged to immediately call the Department of Disease Control (DDC) hotline 1422.

A tourist from Wuhan, China, is screened on arrival for increased body temperature at Phuket International Airport. Photo: PPHO

A tourist from Wuhan, China, is screened on arrival for increased body temperature at Phuket International Airport. Photo: PPHO

A tourist from Wuhan, China, is screened on arrival for increased body temperature at Phuket International Airport. Photo: PPHO

A tourist from Wuhan, China, is screened on arrival for increased body temperature at Phuket International Airport. Photo: PPHO

Officials from the Phuket Provincial Health Office (PPHO) were stationed at Phuket International Airport on Saturday to start scanning all passengers arriving on direct flights from Wuhan, PPHO Chief Thanit Sermkaew told The Phuket News.

The scanning of passengers began after the PPHO received an order from Bangkok, Chief Thanit said.

Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul inspected the screening measures at Suvarnabhumi airport yesterday. He said about 500 travellers arrived there from Wuhan every day, but health officials had yet to find anyone showing signs of pneumonia. (See story here.)

We started temperature scans of arrivals from Wuhan this weekend. We have six officials  three from the PPHO and three Phuket Airport Health Control division scanning the arrivals, starting with a direct flight that arrived at 2am on Saturday (Jan 4), Chief Thanit told The Phuket News.

Additional officers have been assigned to support the scan teams at the airport, Chief Thanit noted.

Four extra health officers from Thalang Hospital have been assigned to support the team, and other hospitals are standing by to provide additional support, he added.

However, at this stage, only passengers on direct flights from Wuhan to Phuket are being scanned for the virus, Chief Thanit confirmed.

This is because there are a lot of Chinese tourists who arrive in Phuket every day, he said.

Public Health Minister Anutin at Suvarnabhumi airport yesterday assured the public that disease surveillance measures were being implemented efficiently.

Visitors showing suspicious symptoms would immediately be taken to hospitals by ambulance and treated in isolated wards, he said.

Ground zero

The move follows an outbreak of a mysterious viral pneumonia that has affected 59 people in Wuhan, which has become ground zero for the disease.

Chinese officials yesterday said the viral pneumonia was not the flu-like virus SARS that killed hundreds more than a decade ago.

The infection was first reported last week in Wuhan, a central Chinese city with a population of over 11 million  leading to online speculation about a resurgence of the highly contagious SARS virus.

We have excluded several hypotheses, in particular the fact that it is a flu, an avian flu, an adenovirus, respiratory syndrome severe acute (SARS) or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the Wuhan health commission said.

Wuhan police last Wednesday (Jan 1) said they had punished eight people for publishing or forwarding false information on the internet without verification, reported AFP.

The health commission said that seven of the 59 patients are seriously ill but that none have died. All are being treated in quarantine.

The infection broke out between Dec 12 and 29, with some of the patients employed at a seafood market in the city that has since been closed for disinfection.

No obvious evidence of human-to-human transmission has been found so far, it added.

The reported link to a wholesale fish and live animal market could indicate an exposure link to animals, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday (Jan 5).

The symptoms reported in patients were mainly fever, with a few patients having difficulty in breathing and chest radiographs showing invasive lesions on both lungs.

The symptoms reported among the patients are common to several respiratory diseases, and pneumonia is common in the winter season, said the WHO, adding that the concentration of cases should be handled prudently.

It said it was against imposing any travel or trade restrictions on China.

SARS killed 349 people in mainland China and another 299 in Hong Kong in 2003.

The virus, which infected more than 8,000 people around the world, is believed to have originated in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, according to WHO.

WHO criticised China for under-reporting the number of cases following the outbreak.

China sacked its then health minister Zhang Wenkang for the poor handling of the crisis, several months after the first case was reported.

WHO announced that China was free of SARS in May 2004.
A new frailty index shows promise in determining how acute illness affects functional ability in older patients admitted to hospital, according to a new study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) co-led by researchers from Dalhousie University, Canada, and University College London (UCL), United Kingdom: http://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.190952

Older, frail adults often lose the ability to function if they are admitted to hospital for a sudden acute illness. Understanding how to measure seniors' frailty in the context of their illness may help in providing them with specific supports after discharge from hospital.

Researchers used routine laboratory tests to create a frailty index (FI-Laboratory) linked to hospital outcomes data based on a group of adults admitted to University College Hospital, London, UK. A higher score on the FI-Laboratory was associated with an 18% increased likelihood of readmission and 45% increased likelihood of death when accounting for other health factors.

"Assessing clinical frailty in the acute care setting is difficult," writes Dr. Samuel Searle, Dalhousie University and MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at UCL, with coauthors. "The FI-Laboratory can help to identify complex, acutely ill older adults at hospital admission who have accumulated multiple health deficits and are at an increased risk of adverse outcomes."

"By quantifying both acute and chronic deficits, the score may draw attention to risk that is not always apparent clinically," write the authors.

The authors note that although the FI-Laboratory is being studied in several clinical settings, it is not yet known whether it will help improve clinical outcomes for patients.

###

"Complementing chronic frailty assessment at hospital admission with an electronic frailty index (FI-Laboratory) comprising routine blood test results" is published January 6, 2020
Nick Herman once led a global corporate campaign to trick people into clicking on a fictitious link. He created fake websites and phishing emails in different languages.



Herman is no cyber fraudster  quite the contrary. Interning at a high-technology manufacturer in Charlotte, North Carolina, during his freshman year at Virginia Tech, he was put in charge of the phishing project to promote cybersecurity mindfulness throughout the company.

The biggest issue in cybersecurity is the lack of awareness, said Herman, who was self-employed as an IT consultant in high school. And lack of cyber education and awareness, he said, can lead to phishing attacks, which are the number one way cyber criminals infiltrate a system.

Arpit Soni wants to launch his own business to help organizations better defend themselves against cyber intruders. Network security, he said, is where vulnerabilities are being relentlessly exploited.

Herman and Soni, both juniors majoring in business information technology in the Pamplin College of Business, leapt at the chance to pursue a new academic option this fall in cybersecurity management and analytics.

When I saw that Pamplin will start offering cybersecurity, I immediately booked a one-on-one meeting with my advisor to make the switch from the decision support systems option, said Soni. The cyber option, he said, would equip him with the skills and knowledge to protect systems from security threats and damages, as threats to systems will never go away.

Herman has set his sights on a career in cybersecurity and business. The cyber option will allow me to take classes that are focused on my goal, he said.

As data breaches and cyberattacks continue to grow, businesses, government agencies, and other employers are seeking employees with the right skills to help them.

The cybersecurity option would help meet the tremendous need for talent in this field, said Robin Russell, head of the Department of Business Information Technology, which developed the option.

Given the dramatic increases in cyber threats and the continued shortfall of cyber-skilled professionals  3.5 million cybersecurity jobs are estimated to be unfilled by 2021, according to Cybersecurity Ventures  Russell said the need for more students educated in cybersecurity is a major priority for Virginia as well as a matter of national security.

In metro Washington, D.C., where Virginia Tech will build its technology-focused Innovation Campus, the demand for such professionals is especially intense  more than double the need of the New York metro area, more than five times the Boston area, and almost seven times that of Silicon Valley.

The new option would fill a huge gap in cybersecurity education as well. Citing workforce analytics research, Russell noted that the vast majority of cybersecurity education programs are at the graduate level  even though 84 percent of job postings in cybersecurity require only a bachelors degree  and are technically focused, originating in engineering or computer science.

Pamplins BIT-Cyber option is different from engineering and computer science programs offered at Virginia Tech, she said. In general, the other programs prepare students to design and create physical networks and software that are secure and to monitor and assess them for attacks.

BIT-Cyber emphasizes the use of business processes and data analytics in cybersecurity management. Our students will gain proficiency in the business management of cybersecurity within an organization, including setting policies, managing risk and incident response, using data to understand attacks on business assets, and managing the overall cybersecurity function within a business, Russell said.

Our industry partners tell us there is a great need for problem-solvers who have business as well as technical skills, she added. They need graduates who understand the technical issues of data, IT, and cyberattacks  and also know how to use data to support business functions and management decisions, including how to articulate the risk and ramifications of alternative cyber strategies.

The option, which reflects a focus area for both Pamplin and the university, is among the ways the college seeks to contribute to Virginias Commonwealth Cybersecurity Initiative. Pamplin faculty are also conducting related research and teaching courses in the nations top-ranked online masters program in cybersecurity.

Get the full story on the cyber option and more in the fall 2019 issue of Virginia Tech Business, the magazine of the Pamplin College of Business. Contact BITCyber@vt.edu to learn more about the new BIT-Cyber option.

 Written by Sookhan Ho
With the March 2020 Presidential Primary Election right around the corner, county, city, and township clerks are making preparations. We are also seeing an increase in voters utilizing the opportunity to vote via absent voter (AV) ballot (also known in some states as Vote at Home) since the passage of Proposal 3 in 2018.

Local clerks are sending out Absent Voter Ballot Request Applications to those individuals on their Permanent AV Application List so that those voters may return the completed application and an absent voter ballot may be mailed out promptly.

It is important to note that in Michigan, a voter is not registered as a Democrat or a Republican, but when requesting a ballot for the March Presidential Primary Election, the voter must request a specific ballot style, as there may be up to three different types of ballots for this coming election: Democratic, Republican, and No Party Declaration, the third of which will only be available for those jurisdictions that are also holding local contests in March. How a voter votes is anonymous, however, what type of ballot the voter requests during such a Presidential Primary Election, and if they vote, is public information.

To be clear, if a jurisdiction only has the presidential candidates on the March Presidential Primary Election ballot (i.e., no county, local, or school proposals), there will only be an option of a Republican or Democratic ballot.

Please note, both partisan ballots will each have a choice as Uncommitted, which means that the voter selecting this choice is exercising a vote for that political party, but is not committed to voting for any of the candidates listed on the ballot. If enough voters cast Uncommitted votes, that political party may send delegates to their national nominating convention who are not committed to a specific candidate.

Also public information is if a voter has requested an absent voter ballot, when the request was received, when the ballot was mailed out, and when the voted ballot was returned. That is why voters receive numerous calls, the closer we get to Election Day, as campaigns are paying attention to those absent voters who have not yet returned their ballots to their local clerks.

The federal requirement to have ballots available to Military and Overseas Voters (MOVE) is 45 days before an election, which in this case is January 25, 2020, and typically, ballots are mailed to all voters that have requested an absent voter ballot around that date as well.

To address a common myth: absent voter ballots are absolutely counted! Michigan has strict rules regarding how absent voter ballots are processed and counted. Specifically, when received, the local clerk is to do the data entry into the state system as soon as possible so that voters (and campaigns) know when ballots have been received. The signature on the return envelope must be present and is then compared to the voters signature on the Absent Voter Ballot Application they completed for that election. Absent voter ballot envelopes may only be opened once polls have opened on Election Day. They are then removed from the envelope (still in a secrecy envelope) and fed through the tabulator.

The Michigan Bureau of Elections is encouraging local clerks to open Absent Voter Counting Boards, which will increase the need for tabulators but will allow for faster tabulation of absent voter ballots, as they will be processed separately from in-precinct ballots on Election Day.

I, along with more than 1,500 clerks across Michigan, have been working hard to prepare for the 2020 elections and to ensure your right to vote securely  whether that is by absent voter ballot from home or wherever you may be in the world, or on Election Day. In light of that, I ask that voters take the opportunity to make sure they are prepared for these elections as well. To check the status, update your voter registration and see your sample ballot, please visit the Michigan Voter Information Center (MVIC). To request an absent voter ballot for the March Presidential Primary Election, please complete the request form and send it to your local (city or township) clerk.

As always, if I may ever be of assistance to your or your neighbors in exercising the right to vote, please feel free to contact me.

Image credit: BadgeMonkey via Flickr.
Diane Ford, the mother of Premier Doug Ford and the late mayor of Toronto Rob Ford, died in her Etobicoke home Sunday following a battle with cancer. She was 85.

In a statement, the Premiers Office described the Ford family matriarch as an active member of her community who supported numerous charitable causes.

But most of all, she was the rock for her family, especially her 10 grandchildren. The Ford family is extremely grateful for the outpouring of support from members of the community in recent weeks, the statement reads.

Diane Ford had long been seen  since the days Rob Ford was first on council and making a run for mayor in 2010  as a key decision-maker in the family.

She had an influential role in family meetings discussing her sons political futures. She headed the family alone following the death of Doug Ford Sr. in 2006, who had been diagnosed with colon cancer.

She met her husband at in the 1950s when he was working as a lifeguard. In a 2014 interview, Doug Ford recounted his parents courtship. His father asked Diane if she wanted a ride home. There was a Caddy and a Lincoln. She was all excited. And in between was a Triumph motorcycle. Hop on,  he said.

They had just oiled the road to keep the dust down and he wiped out. Mom went one way, the bike went the other  and my dad went over to check on his bike first.

The story would garner laughs at family gatherings but there was never any doubt of the love and commitment Diane had for her four children  Randy, Doug, Rob and Kathy  and her grandchildren.

Ford long supported her familys political aspirations, as she watched Rob and Doug follow in her husbands footsteps to become elected officials. She was standing beside Rob when he was elected mayor in 2010, her arm raised with his in celebration. And she was there too when Doug was voted into Queens Park, to become premier.

She fiercely stood by Rob when her son was ensnared in repeated controversies involving drugs and alcohol in the years before his 2016 death from cancer.

In a 2013 interview with CP24, she praised her sons strong character and confidently said there was nothing her son cant recover from.

He did what he did, he made a mistake, he admitted to his mistake,  she said.

Ford was also very close with grandson Michael Ford, now a city councillor, whom she partly raised. As the younger Ford stepped into a political dynasty, claiming his uncles Etobicoke North council seat in a 2016 byelection following Robs death, the matriarch was right there beside him. The CBC reported that Diane Ford ruffled Michaels hair at a celebratory event in Etobicoke, then turned to the TV cameras and said: Hes going to be the future mayor.

Doug Holyday first met Ford in 1994, when he successfully ran for mayor of Etobicoke. He said her remembers her as a hardworking woman committed to the personal lives and political careers of her children.

It is a very close family and she was the impetus of that happening, Holyday said. She tried to keep them on the straight and narrow as best she could. Im sure she was deeply hurt by some of the things that involved Rob but I think she was greatly pleased by the successes the boys had.

They worked hard to get it and she showed them the way. She set the example of the hard work.

Fords family home was often the setting for her sons campaign events and press conferences. Over the years, she opened her backyard to thousands each year in hosting Ford Fest.

In a statement, Mayor John Tory said he had known Diane Ford for 25 years and expressed his condolences to the Ford family.

Throughout the 25 years I have known her, Mrs. Diane Ford was so obviously the matriarch of the Ford family and that is why I know they will miss her so much, Tory said.

She was dedicated to her Etobicoke community but nothing surpassed her dedication to her family and the very special role she played in their lives.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath joined other members of provincial parliament in offering their sympathies. The Ford family is in our hearts and thoughts as they grieve this deep loss, she said in a statement.

I hope the family can find strength in each other, and comfort in community, and may warm memories of Mrs. Ford help the Ford family through this difficult time.

In the statement from the Premiers Office, the family thanked Fords caregivers for their compassionate care.

The Ontario PC party sent a letter to its supporters Monday afternoon, writing that the Premier and his family are extremely grateful for the outpouring of support from all of you over the last little while.

Visitation will take place at the Kipling Chapel at the Newediuk Funeral Home at 2058 Kipling Ave. on Thursday from 2 to 4 p.m. and from 6 to 9 p.m. and on Fridayduring the same times.

The funeral service will be held at the Toronto Congress Centre on Saturday, beginning at 10 a.m. All are welcome to attend.

With files from Jacob Lorinc and Ted Fraser

Read more about:
All over the UK the corpses of pine trees have been spotted lying in the streets as the tinsel and baubles have disappeared overnight.

Christmas might be well and truly over as we charge headlong into 2020, but there's one person keeping the festive spirit going: Queen Elizabeth , who is still on her holiday break at Sandringham.

Apparently, the monarch asks for her decorations to be kept up a month longer too for an emotional reason.

Queen Elizabeth with her late father King George / Granger/REX/Shutterstock

The Queen reportedly keeps her tree and tinsel up until February 6 - a full month after Twelfth Night , when decorations typically come down.

The date has a special significance: 6th February is the day the Queen's father King George VI passed away at Sandringham in 1952. Apparently the Queen stays on the estate to mark the anniversary in private, before returning to Buckingham Palace.

AP

The Queen and her father shared a close bond. In a letter to her secretary in 1952 following his death, the Queen said It all seems so unbelievable still that my father is no longer here and it is only after some time has passed one begins to realise how much he is missed.

Joe Giddens/PA Wire

The Queen has been spending Christmas at Sandringham since 1988. This year, she started her holidays as usual by catching a Great Northern train up to Norfolk.

Getty Images

On Christmas Day, she was joined by family members including the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for a service at the Church of St Mary Magdalene.

Kate, William and their brood appeared to have an extended stay at Sandringham with the Queen, as the Duke and Duchess were photographed attending church with the monarch on Sunday.
Today, we'll introduce the concept of the P/E ratio for those who are learning about investing. To keep it practical, we'll show how American States Water Company's (NYSE:AWR) P/E ratio could help you assess the value on offer. Looking at earnings over the last twelve months, American States Water has a P/E ratio of 39.26. In other words, at today's prices, investors are paying $39.26 for every $1 in prior year profit.

See our latest analysis for American States Water

How Do I Calculate A Price To Earnings Ratio?

The formula for P/E is:

Price to Earnings Ratio = Price per Share  Earnings per Share (EPS)

Or for American States Water:

P/E of 39.26 = $86.51  $2.20 (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2019.)

Is A High P/E Ratio Good?

A higher P/E ratio means that buyers have to pay a higher price for each $1 the company has earned over the last year. All else being equal, it's better to pay a low price -- but as Warren Buffett said, 'It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price'.

How Does American States Water's P/E Ratio Compare To Its Peers?

The P/E ratio essentially measures market expectations of a company. You can see in the image below that the average P/E (37.9) for companies in the water utilities industry is roughly the same as American States Water's P/E.

NYSE:AWR Price Estimation Relative to Market, January 6th 2020

Its P/E ratio suggests that American States Water shareholders think that in the future it will perform about the same as other companies in its industry classification. If the company has better than average prospects, then the market might be underestimating it. Further research into factors such as insider buying and selling, could help you form your own view on whether that is likely.

How Growth Rates Impact P/E Ratios

Probably the most important factor in determining what P/E a company trades on is the earnings growth. That's because companies that grow earnings per share quickly will rapidly increase the 'E' in the equation. That means unless the share price increases, the P/E will reduce in a few years. And as that P/E ratio drops, the company will look cheap, unless its share price increases.

Story continues

American States Water increased earnings per share by a whopping 29% last year. And its annual EPS growth rate over 5 years is 7.7%. So we'd generally expect it to have a relatively high P/E ratio.

Remember: P/E Ratios Don't Consider The Balance Sheet

One drawback of using a P/E ratio is that it considers market capitalization, but not the balance sheet. So it won't reflect the advantage of cash, or disadvantage of debt. Theoretically, a business can improve its earnings (and produce a lower P/E in the future) by investing in growth. That means taking on debt (or spending its cash).

Spending on growth might be good or bad a few years later, but the point is that the P/E ratio does not account for the option (or lack thereof).

So What Does American States Water's Balance Sheet Tell Us?

American States Water's net debt is 15% of its market cap. That's enough debt to impact the P/E ratio a little; so keep it in mind if you're comparing it to companies without debt.

The Bottom Line On American States Water's P/E Ratio

American States Water's P/E is 39.3 which is above average (18.9) in its market. While the company does use modest debt, its recent earnings growth is very good. Therefore, it's not particularly surprising that it has a above average P/E ratio.

Investors should be looking to buy stocks that the market is wrong about. People often underestimate remarkable growth -- so investors can make money when fast growth is not fully appreciated. So this free report on the analyst consensus forecasts could help you make a master move on this stock.

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking at a few good candidates. So take a peek at this free list of companies with modest (or no) debt, trading on a P/E below 20.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
STOCKHOLM, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- CES 2020 - Pico Interactive, a leading global virtual reality (VR) headset manufacturer, today announced two new standalone VR headsets, the Neo 2 and the Neo 2 Eye. With the integration of advanced eye tracking technology from Tobii, the Neo 2 Eye represents a powerful and intuitive all-in-one headset designed primarily for the enterprise.

"With the Neo 2 Eye, Pico has combined the benefits of Tobii eye tracking with smart design choices and the power of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Mobile XR Platform," said Anand Srivatsa, CEO of Tobii Tech. "The result is an innovative and flexible device that sets a clear standard for enterprise-focused standalone VR headsets."

"The Neo 2 Eye is a VR headset built for business, offering excellent visual quality, great support, and sophisticated design," said Henry Zhou, CEO of Pico Interactive. "The addition of Tobii eye tracking leads to a more intuitive interface and better graphics performance. Additionally, eye tracking enables user insights that add significant value to use cases such as training and education."

The new Pico Neo 2 Eye is the first commercially available headset to feature Tobii eye tracking and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Mobile XR Platform.

"Qualcomm Technologies is focused on transforming the way people connect and communicate using XR," said Hugo Swart, vice president and head of XR, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "We are pleased to be working with Pico and Tobii to help raise the bar for creating great user experiences using our XR technology and Tobii's high quality gaze interactions to provide enterprise customers with intuitive and visually-immersive interactions."

Benefits that Tobii eye tracking brings to the Neo 2 Eye include:

Improved graphics and longer battery life. Powered by Tobii Spotlight Technology, dynamic foveated rendering on the Neo 2 Eye increases framerates by up to 66% and reduces shading loads by up to 72%*, leading to higher quality visuals and more efficient performance.

Actionable insights, improved decision making. The Neo 2 Eye can provide important insights regarding user behavior for purposes such as training and assessment, simulation, knowledge and skills transfer, and customer?research.

Immersive and intuitive.?With Tobii eye tracking, gaze becomes a natural form of input for the device making even simple interactions such as menu navigation and selection feel seamless and responsive. Additionally, eye tracking technology can enhance social interaction in virtual meetings and environments, leading to increased immersion and providing a true sense of presence.

One device fits all. Tobii's integrated?eye tracking solution ensures that the Neo 2 Eye works for the widest possible population of users, including people with glasses and contact lenses.?As a result, Neo 2 Eye is inclusive, enabling you to confidently and rapidly deploy devices throughout your organization.

To learn more and see additional information about the Neo 2 Eye, please visit https://vr.tobii.com/products/pico-neo-2-eye/.

*Data from the benchmarking test based on dynamic foveation in Tobii's demo environment "Spot's Apartment" and conducted on Pico Neo 2 Eye.

Contact

Ben Conrad, Vice President, Global Corporate Communications, Tobii Group, phone: +1-(650)-224-6261, email: ben.conrad@tobii.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/tobii-ab/r/pico-interactive-and-tobii-announce-world-s-first-commercial-standalone-vr-headset-with-native-eye-t,c3001606

The following files are available for download:
JNU Violence LIVE Updates: Deepika Padukone on Tuesday was present at JNU to express solidarity with students and faculty after the 5 January violence.

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After a night-long peaceful protests at Gateway of India in Mumbai, protesters were forcefully moved from the area by the Mumbai Police. News reports said that the police had denied permission to continue protest at the historic site. The police had urged protesters to move the demonstration to Azad Maidan instead, but the protesters refused to relent, after which hundreds of people were rounded up and put into buses.

"Now they have detained us here and it is all because they are scared that we will go back and continue our protests at the Gateway," the protester added.

He said, "We were singing songs, raising slogans and protesting in a peaceful way. But police started putting us in buses and taking us away. I was trying to shoot the whole thing on my mobile, which is when they told me to move away. I protested saying I am within my rights to stand alone at a public place, but the policeman rudely told me that I will have to move because he is telling me to."

Describing the early morning crackdown of Mumbai Police against the protesters, one of the people rallying there told Firstpost how the cops forcefully evicted all those protesting at the Gateway of India. The protester also revealed that after moving the protesters to Azad Maidan, the police surrounded the ground and prevented anyone from moving out of the field.

Protesters told Firstpost that police detained people at Azad Maidan and was shooting videos of them, taking down names, and identifying protesters. They said that the police personnel were not allowing even a single person to leave the Azad Maidan, in the fear that they will mobilise a protest again at Gateway of India.

When asked about who asked the students to arm themselves on those groups, she was seen evading a response and later altered her statement to say she did not "identify the picture" of the two people holding rods, but merely confirmed that the two names being taken during discussion were ABVP members.

She also said that that the members being referred to during the discussion were indeed from ABVP. "Yes, I am not disowning these are our activists," she said.

"So much panic was being created, so many threat calls were being made that all the students were asked to step out in groups.. step out while you have rods, bars, whatever you get handy. Pepper spray. Somebody has acid. In self defence," Anima told the news channel.

Anima Sonkar, ABVP Delhi joint secretary made a startling revelation on national television on Monday, Speaking to Times Now, the ABVP leader sought to 'explain' the visuals showing armed people linked to the ABVP outside and around the JNU campus. However, in her attempt to rebut those charges, Anima ended up saying that the members of ABVP were "asked" on several Whatsapp groups to arm themselves and step out, but all in self defence.

Sangramsingh Nishandar, DCP (Zone 1) said, that protesters were evicted from Gateway of India because roads were getting blocked and common Mumbaikar and tourists were facing problems. "We had appealed to protesters many times,have now relocated them to Azad Maidan," he told ANI.

It is noteworthy here that the police is yet to take action against perpetrators of violence in the JNU campus on Sunday night, in which Ghosh also sustained injuries.

Delhi Police has filed an FIR against JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh and 19 others (name not in accused column but in detail list) for attacking security guards and vandalizing server room on 4 January. The complaint was filed by JNU administration and an FIR was registered on 5 January.

Protesters, who were earlier re-located from Azad Maidan to Gateway of India, have said that they are being held at Azad Maidan. They say that the police is not allowing anyone to leave, unless they produce a declaration that they will not assemble at the Gateway of India for any protest.

Against the backdrop of attack on JNU students, the Shiv Sena on Tuesday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, alleging that what they wanted was happening, and said such "brutal politics" was never seen before in the country. An editorial in Shiv Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' further alleged that the BJP wanted to see "Hindu-Muslim riots" over the Citizenship Amendment Act, but that did not happen. Since the BJP has been cornered over the issue of CAA, several things are happening out of "revenge", it said.

The committee is expected to submit its report to Congress interim chief Sonia Gandhi within a week. Among the members of the committee are All India Mahila Congress president Sushmita Dev, former NSUI president Amrita Dhawan, MP Hibi Eden and MP Syed Naseer Hussain.

The four-member fact-finding committee constituted by the Congress following the violence reported at JNU on Sunday, will meet interim party chief Sonia Gandhi at 4.30 pm. The committee is also likely to start meeting students and those impacted by the incident.

In another video posted on Twitter, the outfits leader Bhupendra Tomar alias Pinky Chaudhary said Hindu Raksha Dal workers barged into the JNU campus on Sunday night as "anti-national and anti-Hindu activities" were being carried out there.

Hindu Raksha Dal, a far-Right group, has claimed responsibility for the brutal assault on teachers and students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) by a masked mob on 5 January.

She also spoke against politicians for trying to derail the conversation around the protest.

The girl whose free Kashmir poster is turning into a controversy amid protests against JNU violence, Tuesday said that her understanding was that the protests were an assertion against government's attempts to undermine Constitutional rights of citizen, and the extent of crackdown in Kashmir is a violation of rights of citizens of a free country.

The JNU administration had given the names of students union office bearers including its president Aishe Gosh in connection with the vandalism but police have not put her name or that of other students in the accused column of the FIRs.

The Delhi Police has registered two FIRs in connection with vandalism at the server room at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, police said on Tuesday. The FIRs were registered on the complaint of JNU administration on 5 January, they said.

Mumbai Mirror reported that the cops have told some of those detained at Azad Maidan that they may be booked under Section 68, 69 of Bombay Police Act, which for disobeying reasonable directions of the police. The police say that this will not go on their records as a criminal case.

Police is taking the help of video footage as well as face recognition system to identify the culprits, the sources said on Tuesday. The police is also investigating the claim made by a group called Hindu Raksha Dal of being involved in the violence at the university.

Delhi Police is taking the help of video footage and face recognition system to identify those involved in the violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) here on Sunday, government sources said. The violence was perpetrated by a group of masked men at the premises of the prestigious institution.

She said she was first hit with a large stone on her shoulder and then with even a larger one on her head, following which she fell on the ground bleeding profusely.

Sen said outsiders had gathered at the university campus with sticks, rods, and deadly weapons.

JNU Professor Sucharita Sen, who suffered head injuries during an attack on students and teachers in the university campus on Sunday, has filed a police complaint.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of an event, the Information and Broadcasting Minister said misunderstanding are deliberately being spread in JNU and others parts of the country to incite violence. "I feel that Home minister has ordered an enquiry and the masked men involved in the JNU attack will soon be unmasked.

Union minister Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday said "masked" men involved in the JNU attack will be exposed soon as the Home ministry has ordered an inquiry into the incident.

Taking to Twitter, National Award Winner singer and lyricist Swanand Kirkire condemned the violence agaisnt students of JNU. Tweeting in Hindi, Kirkire said, "If you are so full of hatred that you can break someone's head, and are looking for excuses to justify such an act, just because he or she does not think like you, then I will pray that good sense prevails over you."

North East Students' Organisation (NESO) on Tuesday termed the recent violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) as "barbaric" and alleged that the central government has failed to protect the innocent students of the premier institute. Advisor, NESO Samujjal Kumar Bhattacharya also said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah must take immediate steps to book those involved in the violence at JNU on Sunday.

The vice chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University finally gave a press statement almost two days after violence was unleashed in the varsity campus. However, the bulk of his statement was dedicated to informing students that hostel registration process under the contentious revised rules is underway. He expressed hope that students will put the violence behind them and will try to make a fresh start. He also promised strict action against those found guilty.

Kumars tenure has been a controversial one  right from the 2016 sedition row, to the November incident where HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank got stuck for a few hours during the JNU convocation, to the ongoing row over increased hostel fees.

Kumar's statement comes amid an outcry for his registration as students say the VC didn't take appropriate action to protect the students and faculty while an armed mob continued its rampage for three hours.

JNU VC M Jagadesh Kumar said, "Let us put all the past behind and make a new start. I would like to tell students that JNU campus is secure place and I have urged all students to come back to campus."

The Physics team will collect evidence such as rods and stones used by the masked mob to attack students and teachers at the university, while the Chemistry team will collect samples of chemicals, if there are any. The biology team will collect DNA samples, among other evidence. A team of photo experts from the FSL was also present at the campus.

Several teams of the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) arrived at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Tuesday to collect evidence in connection with the violence in the varsity campus that left 34 people injured, sources said. Teams from Physics, Chemistry and Biology divisions of the FSL were in the university, they said.

JNU alumni has given a call of protest against the attack on JNU teachers and students by a masked mob, which students allege were affiliated to ABVP and RSS. They are marching from old campus and will assemble at North Gate. JNUSU appeals students community to assemble at North gate at 3 pm, today (7 January 2020).

In a video shared by ABP News , Nikhil Savani, a member of the NSUI is seen being beaten up in the clash while the local police tried to control the crowd.

The incident took place during the protest organised by NSUI, the students' wing of the Congress, outside the office of the RSS-affiliated ABVP in the city's Paldi area. The police later rushed to the spot and brought the situation under control, PTI reported an official as saying.

Members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and its rival National Students' Union of India clashed on Tuesday during a protest against the JNU violence, leaving over 10 people injured.

In Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram, people from various Left organisations on Tuesday held protests against the violence against students of Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.

She was quoted by News18 as saying, "We have visited all the spots and interacted with students in JNU. Currently the investigation is in its initial stage. Students have put their confidence in us and given us few inputs."

Delhi Police joint Commissioner Shalini Singh on Tuesday said that the personnel had "visited all the spots" of significance for the investigation into the violence against JNU students in the evening on 5 January.

The march undertaken by the JNU almuni in protest against the violence that the students were subjected to on 5 January has been stopped in front of the north gate of the campus, sources said. The Delhi Police has disallowed the march from entering the university.

In addition to the protest march that has been organised by the JNU alumni, the current students and professors of the varsity also held a protest outside the university on Tuesday afternoon.

Demanding Kumar's resignation from the post, Khalid said, "JNU VC is sermonising via press conference that students should forget the past and make a fresh beginning. This man hasn't even met the injured students and has instead filed cases against them."

Former JNU leader Umar Khalid criticised the varisty vice chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar for his statements on Tuesday regarding the 5 January violence against students, allegedly by members of the ABVP.

Theatre activist Shamsul Islam was also quoted by The Indian Express as questioning the Delhi Police over the obstruction to the alumni march from entering the campus. "Where were your barricades when goondas entered the campus?" he asked.

CPM leader Sitaram Yechury on Tuesday led the JNU alumni protest outside the campus and slammed the VC for the inaction against the perpetrators of the violence on students on 5 January.

Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale on Tuesday said that those who had indulged in the violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University should be identified at the earliest and arrested. Talking to the media, Athawale, the president of RPI(A), an ally of the BJP, said the fact-finding team of the Delhi Police, which has been asked to probe into the incident, should complete its job as soon as possible so that the perpetrators of the crime are brought to book.

A report by India Today said, "Interestingly, the ministry observed that Jamia Millia University Vice-Chancellor Najma Akhtar handled the incident of violence inside the campus far better than the JNU administration."

After the JNU VC Jagadesh Mamidala skipped the HRD ministry's meeting convened to look into the matter of the 5 January violence against students inside the campus, the ministry reportedly noted that the Jamia Milia Islamia VC, Najma Akhtar, had handled the incident of violence that had broken out in the campus on 15 December better than Mamidala did.

Amid calls for his resignation due to "inaction" during the violence, Kumar said, "When there is a law and order situation, we don't rush to police immediately; we see if varsity security can handle it. We informed police on Sunday when we saw the possibility of aggressive behaviour among students."

JNU VC M Jagadesh Kumar on Tuesday was further quoted by reports as saying that the administration had informed the police in the evening on 5 January when they saw the "possibility of aggressive behaviour among students". On 5 January, masked people entered the campus and beat up students inside.

Students of the Jadavpur University held a protest in Kolkata against the violence in JNU. Tuesday's protest comes a day after students allegedly clashed with local police during a solidarity march.

"The Executive Committee of the Supreme Court Bar Association further called upon the authorities to act and ensure that the Rule of Law prevailed," the statement said.

The Supreme Court Bar Association on Tuesday issued a statement condemning the violence that was unleased against JNU students on 5 January and the lack of police action against the perpetrators.

Delhi Police on Tuesday issued a public appeal seeking pictures, footage or any information related to about Sunday's violence in JNU campus that left 34 people injured even as forensic teams looked for evidence.

Students on Tuesday held a candlelight march in Bengaluru to protest against the violence against JNU students on 5 January.

Mumbai Police on Tuesday registered an FIR against Mehak Mirza Prabhu, the woman who was seen holding a poster with slogan, 'Free Kashmir' on it, at Gateway of India on Monday, during a protest against the JNU violence, ANI reported.

Deepika Padukone on Tuesday was present at JNU to express solidarity with students and faculty after the 5 January violence, NDTV reported .

Sitaram Yechury, CPI-M, outside JNU: I'm here to show solidarity with JNU teachers&students. I condemn #JNUViolence . If VC thinks he can silence students then it'll not happen. We demand removal of VC, identification of those who attacked students&also roll back of fee hike. https://t.co/nz0rtHmW6G pic.twitter.com/zhoeLU3Ns1

Theatre activist Shamsul Islam was also quoted by The Indian Express as questioning the Delhi Police over the obstruction to the alumni march from entering the campus. "Where were your barricades when goondas entered the campus?" he asked.

CPM leader Sitaram Yechury on Tuesday led the JNU alumni protest outside the campus and slammed the VC for the inaction against the perpetrators of the violence on students on 5 January.

Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale on Tuesday said that those who had indulged in the violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University should be identified at the earliest and arrested. Talking to the media, Athawale, the president of RPI(A), an ally of the BJP, said the fact-finding team of the Delhi Police, which has been asked to probe into the incident, should complete its job as soon as possible so that the perpetrators of the crime are brought to book.

A report by India Today said, "Interestingly, the ministry observed that Jamia Millia University Vice-Chancellor Najma Akhtar handled the incident of violence inside the campus far better than the JNU administration."

After the JNU VC Jagadesh Mamidala skipped the HRD ministry's meeting convened to look into the matter of the 5 January violence against students inside the campus, the ministry reportedly noted that the Jamia Milia Islamia VC, Najma Akhtar, had handled the incident of violence that had broken out in the campus on 15 December better than Mamidala did.

Amid calls for his resignation due to "inaction" during the violence, Kumar said, "When there is a law and order situation, we don't rush to police immediately; we see if varsity security can handle it. We informed police on Sunday when we saw the possibility of aggressive behaviour among students."

JNU VC M Jagadesh Kumar on Tuesday was further quoted by reports as saying that the administration had informed the police in the evening on 5 January when they saw the "possibility of aggressive behaviour among students". On 5 January, masked people entered the campus and beat up students inside.

Students of the Jadavpur University held a protest in Kolkata against the violence in JNU. Tuesday's protest comes a day after students allegedly clashed with local police during a solidarity march.

"The Executive Committee of the Supreme Court Bar Association further called upon the authorities to act and ensure that the Rule of Law prevailed," the statement said.

The Supreme Court Bar Association on Tuesday issued a statement condemning the violence that was unleased against JNU students on 5 January and the lack of police action against the perpetrators.

Delhi Police on Tuesday issued a public appeal seeking pictures, footage or any information related to about Sunday's violence in JNU campus that left 34 people injured even as forensic teams looked for evidence.

Students on Tuesday held a candlelight march in Bengaluru to protest against the violence against JNU students on 5 January.

Mumbai Police on Tuesday registered an FIR against Mehak Mirza Prabhu, the woman who was seen holding a poster with slogan, 'Free Kashmir' on it, at Gateway of India on Monday, during a protest against the JNU violence, ANI reported.

Deepika Padukone on Tuesday was present at JNU to express solidarity with students and faculty after the 5 January violence, NDTV reported .

JNU Violence Latest Updates: Deepika Padukone on Tuesday was present at JNU to express solidarity with students and faculty after the 5 January violence, NDTV reported.

CPM leader Sitaram Yechury on Tuesday led the JNU alumni protest outside the campus and slammed the VC for the inaction against the perpetrators of the violence on students on 5 January.

Theatre activist Shamsul Islam was also quoted by The Indian Express as questioning the Delhi Police over the obstruction to the alumni march from entering the campus. "Where were your barricades when goondas entered the campus?" he asked.

Members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and its rival National Students' Union of India clashed on Tuesday during a protest against the JNU violence, leaving over 10 people injured.

The incident took place during the protest organised by NSUI, the students' wing of the Congress, outside the office of the RSS-affiliated ABVP in the city's Paldi area. The police later rushed to the spot and brought the situation under control, PTI reported an official as saying.

The vice chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University finally gave a press statement almost two days after violence was unleashed in the varsity campus. However, the bulk of his statement was dedicated to informing students that hostel registration process under the contentious revised rules is underway.

The four-member fact-finding committee constituted by the Congress following the violence reported at JNU on Sunday, will meet interim party chief Sonia Gandhi at 4.30 pm. The committee is also likely to start meeting students and those impacted by the incident.

Pinky Chaudhary, belonging to the Hindu Raksha Dal, told ANI that the right-wing outfit was behind the attack in JNU and that the masked attackers were the organisation's workers. "JNU is a hotbed of anti-national activities and we can't tolerate this," he said. Government sources told PTI that the police is looking into the Hindu Raksha Dal's claims.

People protesting against the JNU violence were evicted from Gateway of India in south Mumbai on Tuesday morning as roads were getting blocked and tourists and common people were facing problems, a police official said. Meanwhile, protesters claimed they were held at Azad Maidan and were only allowed to leave after declaring that no protests will be held at Gateway of India.

After a night-long peaceful protests at Gateway of India in Mumbai, protesters were forcefully moved from the area by the Mumbai Police. News reports said that the police had denied permission to continue protest at the historic site.

A day after mayhem broke out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi, a political blame game ensued between the BJP and Opposition as large-scale protests against the incident were seen in parts of the country, including Mumbai and Chandigarh.

The Delhi Police, which was accused of not doing enough to stop the violence, on Monday claimed it acted professionally and brought the situation under control. It further said the case had been transferred to the Crime Branch, which has found vital clues and is working on it. Thus far, no arrests have been made.

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA) has demanded the removal of Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar. The HRD Ministry, on its part, met officials from the JNU administration and took stock of the situation on the campus but the vice-chancellor skipped the meeting.

"A detailed report has been sent to the HRD Ministry about the sequence of events," Kumar told PTI. The clamour for Kumar's resignation grew louder with the students' union and the JNU Teachers Association accusing him of behaving like a "mobster" and of "perpetrating violence".

Uneasy calm at ground zero

There was an uneasy calm on the JNU campus, where there was a massive deployment of security personnel and authorities only allowed in students with valid ID cards. However, these measures did not assuage the concerns of students over their safety.

Shreya Ghosh, a resident of Shipra Hostel, asked how goons entered the campus with rods and sticks and said, "The attack could not have happened without the connivance of the administration and police." She claimed that she had to hide in Sabaramati Hostel after the masked men chased her and others.

Akarsh Ranjan from Periyar hostel said students were threatened into staying into their rooms. According to other residents of Periyar hostel, a group of masked people entered around 4.30 pm and banged on doors, forcing many students to flee from back door exits.

Some mediapersons tweeted videos of ABVP members, allegedly responsible for the violence against JNU students on Sunday night, also gathered at the varsity's main gate as people protested the incident in Delhi and across the country.

Meanwhile, JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh said she was hit with multiple rods during Sunday's "organised" attack on the campus, but every iron rod used against students will be answered to by debate and discussion and the university's culture will never be eroded.

Ghosh, who was earlier admitted to a hospital after sustaining injuries in the attack, demanded the resignation of the vice-chancellor, alleging he had not bothered to meet or check upon the injured students and professors. She claimed that the university security staff colluded with vandals during the attack and added that some "RSS-affiliated professors" had been promoting violence for the past four or five days.

Ghosh, who was discharged on Monday, attended a press conference convened by the students' union amid cries of 'Lal Salaam' and 'Red Salute'. "It was an organised attack. They were singling out people and attacking," she told reporters. Firstpost reported that it appears, as per several accounts of students on campus, that the attack was coordinated on WhatsApp groups, many of them tied to the ABVP.

Political war of words

Possibly the most striking condemnation of the violence at the university came from the BJP's former ally Shiv Sena. The party's president and Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray likened the incident to the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack. Calling it an act of cowardice, he asked why the attackers wore masks. He demanded an investigation to find out who these masked attackers were.

Asserting that such incidents will not be tolerated in Maharashtra, he said that there is an atmosphere of fear among the students in the country. "We all need to come together and instill confidence in them," Thackeray said.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee termed the attack on students and teachers at JNU as a "fascist surgical strike" by the BJP, evoking sharp reactions from the saffron party, which said she should stop shedding "crocodile tears". Banerjee, who is also the TMC supremo, said she had begun her political career as a student leader but never before witnessed such "brazen attack" on educational institutes.

"Whatever is happening across the country is very disturbing... I, too, was involved in student politics at one point in time, but never have I witnessed this sort of an attack on students and educational institutions."

Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh, urging the Central and Delhi governments to stop indulging in blame game over the incident, sought strict action against perpetrators of violence irrespective of their party links. Singh sought the action saying the spate of violence in various university campuses recently has marred India's image internationally and has caused "irrevocable damage" to the country's education system.

"The Centre and Delhi government should stop blame games over the attack on JNU students and ensure urgent restoration of law and order in the premier university of the country," he said in a statement.

Protests across country

At Mumbai's Gateway of India, a protest began on Sunday midnight, when a group of students held a candlelight vigil to show solidarity with the JNU students.

Hundreds, including students, women and senior citizens demanded action and called for Union home minister Amit Shah's resignation.

Nadeem Ghauri, a teacher from Mahim, said, "We will sit till our colleagues are here. People from different castes and religions are present here, most of them are students, many protesters are from out of Mumbai."

Maharashtra minister Jitendra Awhad briefly joined the protest. "When people fear intellect, there is anarchy," the NCP minister told reporters. A poster with the message "Free Kashmir" was carried by one of the protesters at the site.

Meanwhile, the ABVP also held a protest a short distance away  at Hutatma Chowk  against the violence, which it blamed on Left-affiliated student bodies.

At the Panjab University in Chandigarh, some students shouted slogans during a seminar to protest the violence at JNU. The students shouted slogans when Haryana Assembly Speaker Gian Chand Gupta was speaking a seminar  'Women's Participation in Decision Making' at the PU campus.

Protesters, including female students, were taken out of the seminar hall by the security personnel.

In Ahmedabad, over 100 college students, activists and citizens held a peaceful protest outside the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) to denounce the violence on the JNU campus in New Delhi.

Students from various prominent institutes, including the IIMA, Cept University, Ahmedabad University, National Institute of Fashion Technology, National Institute of Design and Gujarat Vidyapith took part in the protest by standing in a row on a footpath outside the top business school.

With inputs from PTI
Kenyan police have arrested three men who tried to force their way into a British military camp in central Kenya, according to an internal police report seen by AFP Monday.

The men were arrested at 5pm on Sunday, just hours after Al-Shabaab Islamists stormed onto a US-Kenyan military base in the coastal Lamu region, near the border with Somalia, killing three Americans.

The report said officers "managed to arrest three terrorist suspects who had earlier in the day tried to force their way into British Army Camp but in vain."

The camp, near the town of Nanyuki 200 kilometres (120 miles) north of Nairobi, is used by the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) under an agreement with Kenya for training British troops in hot and rugged terrain.

"Kenyan Police are currently investigating suspicious activity near a base used by the British Army for training," the army said in a statement.

"We do not believe there was a direct threat to UK personnel or assets and are liaising with the Kenyan authorities as part of their investigation."

A government source in London told AFP the three young men had turned up at the main gate at the camp, chatting to guards and showing their Kenyan ID cards.

They were reportedly then seen at a back entrance and camp authorities informed local police in line with procedure.

High alert

The trio's images had been "captured by CCTV and circulated," the report said. Investigators following up leads "found them near Nanyuki police station where they arrested".

Marcus Ochola, police chief for the Rift Valley Region, said the trio were not armed.

"The three suspects are being interrogated to establish their motive," he said.

Map of Kenya locating the town of Lamu, where militants attacked a US military base. By AFP (AFP)

Kenyan police are on high alert around the country after Somalia's Al-Shabaab stormed Camp Simba in Lamu, destroying several aircraft and killing three American citizens in their first strike on a hard target in Kenya.

The militants began targeting Kenya after it sent troops into Somalia in 2011 to join an African Union peacekeeping force seeking to combat the militants who have been trying to topple an internationally-backed government in Mogadishu for over a decade.

The Al-Qaeda-linked group has in the past carried out bloody sieges against civilians in Kenya, such as the upmarket Westgate Mall in 2013 and Garissa University in 2015.

The uptick in tensions comes just days before the one-year anniversary of an attack on a Nairobi hotel complex which left 21 people dead.

A separate police report on Monday said a Canadian citizen of Somali origin had been arrested in the suburb of Eastleigh in the capital while taking pictures of a nearby airforce base.

According to Britain's ministry of defence website, BATUK consists of around 100 permanent staff and 280 on "short tour" assignments.

Its job is to provide "demanding training to exercising units preparing to deploy on operations or assume high-readiness tasks."

Under the agreement with Kenya, up to six infantry battalions per year carry out eight-week exercises.
The Nativity of Christ Cathedral is the largest church in the Middle East, with a capacity to accommodate 8,200 worshipers.

Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II will lead this evening the Coptic Christmas mass in the Nativity of Christ Cathedral in Egypts New Administrative Capital.

Egyptian ministers, MPs and top state officials will be attending the mass.

The Coptic Orthodox Church published earlier today Pope Tawadros' Message for the Feast of Nativity 2020. The Papal message was translated into 19 languages.

The mass will be broadcast on Egyptian terrestrial and satellite TV channels and on the radio.

The Nativity of Christ Cathedral is the largest church in the Middle East, with a capacity to accommodate 8,200 worshipers.

In 2018, Pope Tawadros led the first Christmas mass in the newly inaugurated New Administrative Capital's Nativity of Christ Cathedral. President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi attended the mass.

Coptic Orthodox Egyptians, who make up around 90 percent of all Christians in the country, celebrate Christmas on 7 January. A minority of non-Orthodox Christians observed the holiday on 25 December.

Egypt's interior ministry has intensified security measures nationwide ahead of Christmas, deploying security in main streets, axes and squares, and around vital institutions and houses of worship.

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The husband of Iran-detainee Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has requested an urgent meeting with Boris Johnson following major escalations in tensions between Iran and the US.

Richard Ratcliffe said he wants to see the prime minister to ask how the government plans to keep prisoners with dual nationality safe after the US killing of Qassem Soleimani sparked threats of retaliation by Iran.

Mr Ratcliffe said his wife was desperate when she heard about Soleimanis killing and has warned the airstrike ordered by Donald Trump has made the campaign to release British prisoners more difficult.

Part of our campaigning has always been to call on Iran to uphold international law and to respect UN rulings in Nazanins case and that gets a bit harder when international law is played fast and loose with by other parties, he told BBC Radio 4s Today programme.

We have always been a chess piece in this game and this chess game has just changed radically.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a dual British-Iranian citizen, has been imprisoned in Tehran since 2016, when she was arrested and accused of spying in Iran.

In December, her husband told Mr Johnson to stop getting distracted from the fight to release her from prison and said the UK government needed to take a much more robust stand against hostage-taking.

Anoosheh Ashoori, a British-Iranian dual citizen serving 10 years in the same Tehran jail, also reportedly fears that the killing of Soleimani could damage his case for being released.

Recommended Johnson finally breaks silence on Iran crisis with call for calm

His wife, Sherry Izadi, told The Sunday Telegraph she feared he no longer had a hope in hell of being let out of prison.

He told me everyone there is very jittery. They are so scared of the fallout, Ms Izadi said.

He had hoped that Iran would negotiate or relent on his release, but we feel that hope is now gone.

The prime minister has been criticised for not returning immediately to the UK after news of the killing broke.

Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, insisted on Sunday he had been in constant contact with Mr Johnson, who was on holiday on the island of Mustique, to discuss the crisis.

Middle East experts have warned that the killing of Soleimani, a top military general, could lead to all-out war between the US and Iran.

A spokesperson for Mr Johnson said: "The Foreign Office has been in regular contact with Nazanins family to offer them support wherever we can. All of our dual nationals are at the forefront of our thinking on Iran and the decisions that we are making.

"Nazanins continued detention is inhumane and completely unacceptable. The prime minister called for the immediate release of Nazanin and the other dual nationals illegally imprisoned in Iran when he met President Rouhani recently."

The spokesperson said Mr Johnson had agreed to meet with Mr Ratcliffe but a specific date had not been announced.

Mr Ratcliffe added that he believes it is now an appropriate time for Mr Johnson to meet him to discuss his wifes case.

This is not a case where you can stand on the sidelines and just wait quietly, he told Today.

The prime ministers handling of Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffes case was widely criticised when he was the foreign secretary in 2017, after he mistakenly said she had been teaching people journalism in the country.

Although Mr Johnson later apologised for his remark and said she had been there on holiday, his comment was cited as evidence against her in an Iranian court.

Additional reporting by PA
SCHENECTADY  People who live and work along the Erie Canal will likely see something new next winter  an icebreaker. Use of an icebreaking vessel, as well as dredging and modifications to the Vischer Ferry Dam, should help prevent the ice dams and subsequent floods that have long plagued communities along the waterway including Schenectadys historic Stockade neighborhood.

The $65 million plan to combat ice jams is part of a larger $300 million, five year program to re-imagine the Erie Canal that Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled Monday in his 29th State of the State proposal for the upcoming legislative session and budget year.

"When the Erie Canal was created in the 19th century it set the state and the nation on a path to prosperity, and this year we will repurpose the canal to fit our state's 21st century needs," Cuomo said in announcing the proposal which also includes plans for recreation and tourism enhancements along the 363 mile-long waterway.

Other initiatives include wetland restoration and efforts to improve fishing and use of the canal for more agricultural irrigation. There also are plans to develop swimming and a kayak slalom course.

That type of concept will be brought across the (entire) Erie Canal, said Jim Malatras, president of Empire State College, who helped oversee a months-long Re-imagining the Erie Canal contest over the summer in which community members along the canal corridor offered revitalization and improvement ideas.

Another possibility  noted in a report about the plan  is to start charging lockage fees, or tolls for using the various locks that boaters use up and down the waterway. Use of the canal is currently free although the report notes that other waterways have tolls or usage fees. The St. Lawrence Seaway, for example, charges $30 per lock for pleasure boats.

The re-imagining contest was conducted by the SUNY Rockefeller Institute, which Malatras headed before going to Empire State College, and the state Canal Corporation, which is a subsidiary of the New York State Power Authority.

Meetings were held in Schenectady as well as points west including Lockport, Brockport, Syracuse and Utica to solicit ideas that were summarized a report.

Canal TaskForceReport by rkarlin on Scribd

Most of the focus in the greater Capital Region around Schenectady and Amsterdam is on preventing ice dams and the flooding they can cause.

In spring or during winter thaws large, automobile-sized chunks of ice can build up at choke points along the canal, creating frozen dams. As the water continues to flow, those dams cause it to back up and flood.

As well as using a special ice-breaking vessel, the Mohawk River stretch of the canal could be dredged and channelized as a way to mitigate ice dams, according to the report. Icebreaker ships have long been used on rivers like the Hudson as well as the St. Lawrence. And NYPA, which operates the canal, employs an icebreaker in the Niagara River to keep the water flowing freely toward its hydro plant there. News of ice dam prevention was welcomed by Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy.

We look forward to working with Governor Cuomos administration to advance flood mitigation initiatives, repurpose the canal, and continue our waterfront development efforts, the mayor said in a prepared statement.

Funding to start these improvements could be approved as soon as Jan. 29 when NYPAs Cuomo-appointed board meets.

The Canal Corporation, which is a perpetual money-loser, was moved from the state Thruway to the Power Authority in 2017.

The Power Authority often generates a surplus through the sale of electricity at its hydroelectric power stations in western and northern New York.

NYPA officials early on expressed worries about paying for the canal system which, in addition to deficits, is overdue for some lock and dam repairs.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

And the state Business Council said it fears that spending money on canal improvements could detract NYPA from its primary purpose of generating and supply low-cost power.

Our concern is all of it or most of it has nothing to do with its core mission, said Ken Pokalsky, senior director of government affairs for the council, which represents numerous businesses that rely on NYPA electricity.

Our broad-based concern is always the siphoning off of NYPA revenues and resources.

More for you State collecting ideas for reinventing Erie Canal

NYPA officials, though, now maintain that this plan wont hinder their ability to generate inexpensive power as well as maintain and upgrade their system going forward.

Efforts to harness the canal into an economic driver for the depressed Mohawk Valley through Central and Western New York have gone on for years. And, in a way, the re-imagining is a consolidation of many of the ideas that have been around for a while.

The canal was built in the 19th century to facilitate freight transport between Buffalo and New York City and points in between. The canal is credited with turning the region into a one-time industrial powerhouse.

Eventually, barge transport gave way to railroads and later to trucks. Over the years, many of the factories along the canal corridor closed or moved offshore. Developing lifestyle and tourist enhancements along the canal has consequently been seen as a way to keep people in the area and to help reinvigorate the many towns villages and cities along the route.

The re-imagining, notes the governors office, should dovetail with their efforts to revitalize the states downtowns, and to build an Empire State Trail, or walking/running/biking path that connects Albany, Buffalo and the Canadian border in the north. Much of the trail already exists in bike and walking paths along the Erie Canal, but the trail would fill in the gaps.

The full report is at http://www.canals.ny.gov/reimagine/TaskForceReport.pdf

rkarlin@timesunion.com  518-454-5758  @RickKarlinTU
Trump trips on a pygmy By Michael R Shannon

It must be very frustrating for President Trump. Hes clearly sees what needs to be done politically to counter attacks from the left, but the political pygmies that surround him refuse to cooperate. And Im not referring to the Democrats. This particular pygmy is Curator of the Senate Mitch McConnell. The Curator would be much more comfortable if Trump were not the president. McConnell wouldnt be under any pressure to defend the White House. He wouldnt be expected to push legislation past Hillarys veto. He could quietly be his preferred passiveaggressive self. Blocking Hillarys Big Government initiatives when required. Dodging social issues supported by the base. And gaining the occasional favorable headline from the Opposition Media in exchange for passing bipartisan, budgetbreaking spending bills. McConnell could continue to burnish his reputation for inertia by claiming hes playing his risible long game, when the only time horizon hes interested in lengthening is his time in office. Trump might as well have Bartleby the Scrivener as Majority Leader. Here is an example of what McConnell might do if he were an ally of conservatives and the president. The Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is Cong. Adam Schiff (DBug Eyes). His recent in a long line of abuses of power was the release of phone records of the ranking Republican on the committee, Rep. Devin Nunes. The Washington Examiner reported Schiff claimed he found it deeply concerning at a time when the president of the United States was using the power of his office to dig up dirt on a political rival, that there may be evidence of members of Congress complicit in that activity. The fact there is no crime alleged, there was no probable cause and Kommissar Schiff isnt part of a law enforcement agency doesnt bother the Opposition Media or the left. Anyone is fair game in their effort to nullify the 2016 election. This is where Mitch McConnell should demonstrate that two can play at that game. He would quietly instruct the chairman of the Senate equivalent to subpoena Schiffs records and then release the information. That would immediately get Schiffs attention and more important get Nancy Pelosis attention. I predict Pencilneck Schiff would soon find himself on a very short leash. Democrats get away with these abuses of power because there are no consequences. And there will continue to be no consequences on McConnells snooze. A source told the Examiner, the GOP is considering a wide variety of strong responses to Schiffs actions. No doubt ranging from sending a hot letter to hiring hot lawyers. Neither having any deterrent value for Schiff. McConnell wont even punish the leftist House for its Illegitimate Impeachment. Trumps instincts here are exactly right. Hes been under a constant barrage of negative coverage over the socalled Ukraine scandal. Schiffs committee wouldnt allow Republicans to call witnesses and Schiff blocked some questioning. The entire show trial was a onesided attempt by the powerhungry left to propagandize the American people. Trump has a chance to clear his name during the Senate trial. In a report from CNN thats remarkable for finally portraying Trump accurately, the president is eager to finally have a chance to tell his side of the story and turn the tables on the left. [A highly visible Senate trial] is exactly what Trump wants. He's made clear to advisers privately that rather than end the trial as quickly as possible, he is hoping for a dramatic event He wants Hunter Biden, Adam Schiff and the whistleblower to testify. He wants the witnesses to be live, not clips of taped depositions. And he's hoping to turn it into a spectacle, which he thinks is his best chance to hurt Democrats in the election. The public will have an opportunity to hear the other side of the impeachment story that Democrats and their leftist stenographers in the Opposition Media have done their best to hide. Its a onceinanadministration opportunity for Trump to finally set the record straight in a forum the OpMedia wont be able to ignore. Naturally, McConnell wont do it. Mainly because theres nothing in it for him. Acting as the modern embodiment of Edmund Burkes despised false, reptile prudence, CNN reports McConnell told the White House, he hopes to end the trial as soon as he can, an effort to both get impeachment off his lap and protect his conference from potentially damaging votes should the process break out into partisan warfare. McConnells own words prove hes either an idiot or a coward. Partisan warfare broke out almost three years ago. The question is will Mitch continue collaborating with the enemy or will he finally join the fight to support the administration and the 63 million voters who elected it. Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He is a dynamic and entertaining keynote speaker. He can be reached at mandate.mmpr (at) gmail.com. He is also the author of Conservative Christian's Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!). Home
CHARLESTON  A woman was sentenced to probation after she admitted taking part in the theft of electronics from Wave Graphics in Mattoon.

Amanda M. Bishop, 38, for whom records show a Mattoon address, pleaded guilty to a theft charge in connection with the June 26 theft from the business at 320 N. Second St.

With the agreement reached in her case, Bishop was placed on probation for 2 years for the conviction that could have resulted in a prison sentence of three to seven years or up to four years of probation.

Terms of the probation sentence included an evaluation for substance abuse treatment and a requirement that Bishop follow its recommendations.

Coles County Circuit Judge James Glenn sentenced Bishop by accepting the terms of a plea agreement that State's Attorney Jesse Danley and defense attorney Todd Reardon Jr. recommended.

In other cases, Glenn also accepted guilty pleas from:

Dytanyuan J. Johnson, 21, whose address on record is in Charleston, to an obstructing justice charge.

Johnson admitted giving a false name to police on July 30 when they were trying to arrest him for failing to appear in court in a misdemeanor case.

A resisting police charge that accused him of fighting with officers during the arrest attempt was dismissed and he was placed on probation for 2 years.

The prosecution also agreed not to seek revocation of a probation sentence Johnson received for an earlier theft conviction. That meant he didn't face resentencing in that case.

Glenn accepted a plea agreement that Assistant State's Attorney Maggie Crisman-Wilson and Reardon recommended.

Joseph G. Seiler, 43, for whom records show a Mattoon address, to a methamphetamine possession charge accusing him of having the drug on Aug. 17.

Seiler was placed on probation for two years with a treatment evaluation included in its terms.

Also, a resisting police charge accusing Seiler of trying to flee from officers on a bicycle was dismissed.

Glenn accepted a plea agreement that Crisman-Wilson and Public Defender Anthony Ortega recommended.

Austin L. Anders, 23, whose address on record is in Charleston, to a methamphetamine possession charge accusing him of having the drug on Nov. 25.

Terms of Landers' two-year probation sentence included a treatment evaluation. The prosecution also agreed to not seek revocation of his probation for an earlier aggravated battery conviction.

Danley and Ortega recommended the plea agreement.

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MANILA, Philippines  Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo criticized Vice President Leni Robredos revelations of what she claimed as her discovery during her short stint as the anti-drug czar.

In response to her press briefing Monday (January 6), the Palace said it was Robredo who failed as the co-chairperson of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD), and not the Duterte Administrations campaign against illegal drugs.

Palagay ko ang failure ay ang pag-upo niya (I think the real failure is when she took the post), Panelo said.

Robredo spent only 18 days in the ICAD before President Rodrigo Duterte dismissed her from the position due to a lack of trust.

As for the figures that the Vice President divulged before the press, the Palace official said they were wrong and all anti-drug law enforcement agencies could attest to that.

Panelo argued that in comparison to Robredo, the President has unlimited resources when it comes to the governments war on drugs as compare to her who knows nothing about the campaign.

I think she just wants to be relevant, Panelo said.

Its a dud. Wala naman siyang sinabing bago na hindi tinututukan ng mga ahensya na involved sa laban droga (There was nothing new with what she said that anti-drugs agencies didnt address. Theres nothing new in what she said), Panelo concluded. MNP (with details from Rosalie Coz)

The post Palace on VP Robredos anti-drug report: Nothing new appeared first on UNTV News.
Pakistan will not allow its soil to be used against anyone: DG ISPR

ISLAMABAD: Army spokesman Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor on Sunday said that Pakistan will not allow its soil to be used against anyone and will play its role to secure peace in the region.



Maj Gen Ghafoor said the aforementioned sentiments had been expressed by both Prime Minister Imran Khan and Chief of Army Staff General (COAS) Qamar Javed Bajwa.



Pakistan will not be party to anyone or anything but will be a partner of peace and peace alone, he said, quoting Prime Minister Imran.



The director general of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), in reply to a question regarding the killing of Irans Major General Qasem Soleimani in a US strike on Friday, said the regional situation had been altered and Pakistan would play its role in helping peace prevail.



Maj Gen Soleimani was killed on Friday morning in a US strike on Baghdads international airport, in a dramatic escalation of tensions between the two countries.



Shortly after, Gen Bajwa in a call with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had emphasised the need for maximum restraint and constructive engagement following the killing of Soleimani.



Discussing the phone call between the army chief and Pompeo, Ghafoor said Gen Bajwa had said two things.



Firstly, he said that the region was improving from very bad conditions, adding that the Afghan reconciliation process is very important for this improvement. He added that Pakistan would play its role in this and wants the focus to remain on the issue.



Secondly, he said the army chief had told Pompeo that tensions in the region should be reduced. He said all relevant countries should move forward with constructive practices and dialogue.



Pakistan will support all peaceful efforts and hopes the region doesnt go towards another war, he quoted the army chief as saying.



Responding to a question regarding rumours that Pakistan would participate in the war by supporting the United States against Iran, Ghafoor said such rumours were circulating on the social media. He clarified, however, that this was not the first call [between Pompeo and Gen Bajwa].



From the Afghan reconciliation process to the regional security, the army chief has an important role, he said, adding that the Foreign Office had also issued a statement.



The Foreign Office via a statement had also expressed deep concern over the tensions, urging all sides to exercise restraint.



My request to the people and media would be to only pay attention to statements from an authentic source, he said, adding that they should not pay attention to propaganda and rumours of enemies of the country.



India is playing the lead role in spreading these rumours, he said, adding that he had read an Indian news article that Pakistan had ditched Iran, which led to the resumption of Pakistans participation in a US military training and educational programme.



In our bilateral relations with America, training cooperation was suspended. For the past four to five months, America has been talking about restoring this because training engagement in military to military cooperation goes on. Linking something that has been going on for quite a few months to this incident is part of that propaganda campaign.



The armys spokesman said that peace had been achieved in Pakistan after a lot of sacrifices, adding that the nation would play its role for peace in the region. We will not be part of any effort to ruin this peace, he said.



Speaking about the new Indian army chiefs threatening statements against Pakistan, Maj Gen Ghafoor said that Lt Gen Manoj Mukund Naravane had been newly installed as the army chief and is busy trying to make a place for himself but is not new to the institution itself. He knows well the situation in the region and the capability of the Pakistan Army, he said.



He was part of the Indian force on Feb 27 as well. So hes not new. Maj Gen Ghafoor expressed hope that Gen Naravane will no longer let go of reason. The Pakistan Army knows how to defend the country and India also knows this, he said.



The army spokesperson said that Pakistan desired peace in the region, but would make no comprise when it came to safeguarding its security.
Mr Fitzsimmons has been leading a team of over 70,000 volunteer firefighters

He has received widespread praise for his handling of the current bushfire crisis

He's been at the helm of the service since 2007 when he became commissioner

Mr Fitzsimmons has gone on to have a decorated career in the NSW RFS

He joined the NSW RFS as a volunteer in 1985 when he was just 15-years-old

The NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner followed in his late father's footsteps

Shane Fitzsimmons has revealed the personal struggle that drove his determination to succeed as a firefighter and go on to become a hero amid Australia's bushfire crisis that has claimed 18 lives across New South Wales.

The NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner followed in his father's footsteps of fighting fires on the frontline, and is now spending months away from his wife and two daughters as he leads a 70,000-strong crew of volunteers.

As the bushfire crisis rages on, Mr Fitzsimmons said he has spent 'more time with the Premier of NSW than I have with my wife,' but it's a job he always had his sights on.

When Mr Fitzsimmons' father George died in a hazard-reduction burn gone wrong in 2000, he became all the more determined to become an accomplished firefighter.

George was just 53 when he was killed in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park when a reduction burn became out-of-control.

Four National Parks and Wildlife Service officers also died, and three more were injured in the freak accident.

NSW RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons has become Australia's hero for his leadership during the bushfire crisis

Following his father's tragic death, Mr Fitzsimmons - who was at the time Assistant Commissioner for Operations - didn't lose his drive to succeed in the force.

In fact, in 2009 he revealed that losing his father only strengthened his resolve to be part of the organisation.

His mission then began making sure strategies, equipment and operations maximised the safety of firefighters.

'Every family has the right to expect their loved ones to come home after a shift,' he said at the time.

The commissioner said he wished he could have had one last conversation with his father to find out what happened in his terrifying final moments.

'Something went horribly wrong. The mapping and information on the terrain was woefully inadequate,' he told The Sunday Telegraph in 2013.

NSW RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons with his daughters Lauren (left) and Sarah (right)

Mr Fitzsimmons and his wife Lisa (left) and daughter Sarah (centre)

'You cannot know how much I would give just for five minutes to talk to him and find out what happened on that day.'

Mr Fitzsimmons joined the NSW RFS as a volunteer member of the Duffys Forest Brigade in 1985 when he was just 15-years-old, and has gone on to have a decorated and esteemed career in the service.

After qualifying as a motor mechanic he became a paid officer in 1994, taking on the role of Regional Planning Officer for the Central East Region.

He then became State Operations Officer in 1996, and two years later was named Assistant Commissioner, Operations.

In 2004 - four years after his father's death - Mr Fitzsimmons became the inaugural visiting fellow of the Australasian Fire Authorities Council to the Australian Institute of Police Management.

He became Commissioner in mid-2007, where he has been at the helm of NSW RFS operations ever since.

Mr Fitzsimmons pinning a medal on Harvey Keaton after his father Geoffrey Keaton was posthumously awarded with the Commissioners Commendation for Extraordinary Service and a Commendation for Bravery, at his funeral in Sydney

Shane Fitzsimmons became NSW RFS Commissioner in mid-2007, where he has been at the helm of state operations ever since

Mr Fitzsimmons followed in his father George's footsteps. Pictured: George's plaque erected after his death during a hazard-reduction burn gone wrong in 2000 in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park

The 50-year-old and his wife Lisa have two adult daughters, Lauren and Sarah.

He's received widespread praise for his handling of the current bushfire crisis, which has killed 18 people in NSW and destroyed at least 1,365 homes across the state.

The Commissioner has been surviving on just a few hours' sleep a night for the last three months, all while leading a team more than 70,000 volunteers.

RFS Assistant Commissioner Rob Rogers commended his boss for his leadership, compassion and resilience during the national disaster.

'I have never found someone who is able to be as supportive to people in need as Shane,' he told The Daily Telegraph.

With Australians rapidly losing faith in Prime Minister Scott Morrison's handling of the bushfire crisis, people are turning to Mr Fitzsimmons as a beacon of light.

Mr Morrison outraged Australians in late December when he secretly jetted off to Hawaii for a family holiday at the height of the national disaster.

'I know Australians will understand this, and they'll be pleased I'm coming back... but they know that, you know, I don't hold a hose mate,' he told 2GB at the time.

Mr Fitzsimmons have also made his frustrations with the prime minister known; recently accusing the Morrison government of stalling on plans to increase funding for a national aerial firefighting fleet.

With Australians rapidly losing faith in Prime Minister Scott Morrison's (right) handling of the bushfire crisis, people are turning to Mr Fitzsimmons (left) as a beacon of light. Pictured with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian

He said at a Sydney press conference on Friday that a proposal for ongoing funding was submitted 18 months ago but had still not been implemented.

That same day, Mr Fitzsimmons claimed he had no idea 3000 army personnel would be sent to the worst hit areas until after Mr Morrison announced it on the news.

Mr Fitzsimmons said he was 'disappointed' not to have been told of the plan to deploy 3,000 army reserve members to the worst hit areas before Saturday's announcement.

The Commissioner said to make matters worse the announcement came 'in the middle of one of our worst days this season'.

In the midst of Australia's bushfire disaster, Mr Fitzsimmons' predecessor Phil Koperberg, who stepped down in 2007 after almost two full decades of service, said he couldn't think of a better person to run the state's firefighting efforts.

He's received widespread praise for his handling of the current bushfire crisis, which has killed 18 people in NSW and destroyed at least 1,365 homes across the state

'Shane is a very intelligent and committed fire professional. He is 100 per cent dedicated and was good to work with,' he told 7News.

'While his professionalism is more than up to scratch, it's his compassion that sets him apart from the group.'

Mr Koperberg put Mr Fitzsimmons' passion down to his father's death in the line of duty.

'I think, as a consequence of that, he's very understanding of people who have lost loved ones and their needs,' he said.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Iran's ancient and rich cultural landscape has become a potential U.S. military target as Washington and Tehran lob threats and take high-stakes steps toward a possible open conflict.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 6/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Iran's ancient and rich cultural landscape has become a potential U.S. military target as Washington and Tehran lob threats and take high-stakes steps toward a possible open conflict.

President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday evening that if Iran attacks any American assets to avenge the killing of a top Iranian general, the U.S. has 52 targets across the Islamic Republic that "WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD."

This Oct. 27, 1960 file photo, shows a partial view of the Throne Hall of the Royal Golestan Palace, in Tehran, Iran. Iran's ancient and rich cultural landscape has become a potential U.S. military target as Washington and Tehran lob threats and take high-stakes steps toward a possible open conflict. President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday, Jan. 4, 2020, that if Iran targets any American assets to avenge the killing of a top Iranian general, the U.S. has 52 Iranian sites it will hit, including ones important to Iran & Iranian culture." (AP Photo/Jim Pringle, File)

Some are "important to Iran & Iranian culture," Trump wrote on Twitter.

That vague comment drew immediate anger across Iran.

"I'm not sure when he says cultural sites, does he for example mean our Persepolis?" said Mehrdad Khadir, a cultural and political analyst in Tehran, referring to the ancient ruins invaded by the Greeks in 330 BC. "Does he want to be seen as the new Alexander (the Great) by Iranians?"

If the U.S. were to directly bomb Iran, it could spark a war and lead to region-wide violence, potentially drawing other countries into a global conflict.

Iran's earliest traces of human history reach as far back as 100,000 BC. Its historic monuments preserve the legacy of a civilization that has kept its Persian identity throughout the tides of foreign conquests, weaving in influences from Turkic, South Asian and Arab cultures, and the footprints of Alexander the Great and later Islam.

"Through MILLENNIA of history, barbarians have come and ravaged our cities, razed our monuments and burnt our libraries," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif tweeted in response Sunday. "Where are they now? Were still here, & standing tall."

Trump's threat also raised questions about the legality of such an attack on heritage of global importance.

Targeting cultural sites is a war crime under the 1954 Hague Convention for the protection of cultural sites. The United Nations Security Council also passed unanimously a resolution in 2017 condemning the destruction of heritage sites. Attacks by the Islamic State group and other armed factions in Syria and Iraq prompted that vote.

"Im really sorry that we are living in a world where the president of the biggest so-called superpower still doesnt know that attacking cultural sites is a war crime," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi told journalists in Tehran.

Telecommunications minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi compared Trump's threats to strike cultural sites to the Islamic State group, Adolf Hitler and Genghis Khan, calling the U.S. president a "terrorist in a suit."

The United Nations cultural agency UNESCO called on governments to remember that cultural sites are not targets, after meeting with Iran's ambassador to the Paris-based organization on Monday.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson put some distance between London and Washington over Trumps threat. "There are international conventions in place that prevent the destruction of cultural heritage," said James Slack, Johnsons official spokesman, on Monday.

Trump's tweet also caused concern in Washington. One U.S. national security official said Trumps threat to target Iranian cultural sites had caught many in his administration off-guard and prompted calls for others in his government, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to clarify the matter. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly to the issue, called such a clarification necessary to affirm that the U.S. military would not intentionally commit war crimes.

Among Iranians, pride in the countrys culture supersedes the divisive and nationalistic fervour whipped up by current politics that has put a chasm between hard-liners in Tehran and the diaspora of Iranians in the West.

Tensions sharply escalated between Washington and Tehran following America's targeted killing early Friday in Iraq of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's powerful Quds Force. The U.S. Defence Department said it killed Soleimani because he was developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in the Middle East.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed "harsh retaliation," calling Soleimani the "international face of resistance" against Western hegemony.

Zarif also wrote on Twitter Sunday that after committing "grave breaches" in killing Soleimani, Trump is now threatening a "WAR CRIME" in targeting cultural sites.

Long before the 1979 Islamic Revolution birthed Irans Shiite theocracy, the land historically known as Persia was the birthplace of towering Islamic figures like the mystic poet Rumi and the philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. Its also home to the tombs of great scholars, including Ibn Sina, also known as Avicenna and the father of modern medicine.

Iran is home to two dozen UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including Persepolis with its ancient ruins that date back to 518 BC, the 17th century grand mosque of Isfahan located in a teeming bazaar, and the Golestan Palace in the heart of Tehran, where the last shah to rule Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was crowned in 1967.

The countrys cultural sites reflect the expanse of Irans history: Geological and archaeological sites date back several thousand years, while 1,000-year-old sites reflect Irans contributions to the Golden Age of Islam. In Qom, the Feizeh Religious Science School and a shrine of a Shiite saint, Masoumeh, attract Muslim pilgrims from around the world, reinforcing Irans preeminent place among Shiite clerics, theologians and scholars.

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More recently, though, some of the most iconic cultural sites have come to embody the nations defiance in the face of the United States. For example, the iconic Azadi Tower, or Freedom Tower, with its famed white marble arch is where hundreds of thousands gather in Tehran each year and chant slogans against the U.S. to mark the anniversary of the 1979 revolution.

On Monday, the famed Musalla mosque in Tehran will be used by mourners to grieve Irans fallen commander. Soleimanis body will lie in state there before his burial in the city of Kerman on Tuesday.

If culturally prominent sites were targeted, the Trump administration might argue they were being used to covertly stockpile weapons that could target U.S. interests and personnel in the region.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard has in the past deployed HAWK anti-aircraft missiles around the sprawling tomb complex of Ruhollah Khomeini where the Islamic Republic's late supreme leader is buried. The complex was attacked by Islamic State militants in 2017.

___

Associated Press journalists Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran, Iran, and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
PHOTO: Screengrab from Gov.sg YouTube channel

SINGAPORE  In calibrating the never-ending balancing act between locals and foreigners in the workforce, Singapore must reject extremist positions on immigration, said Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing in Parliament on Monday (6 January).

Chan told the House that the balance was based on three factors: the needs of Singapores industries and enterprise, the needs of the workers of this generation and the opportunities for children in the next generation. He added that the goal was to strive for a Goldilocks balance, or the principle of just the right amount.

In the process, said Chan, the government must not open the floodgates and drown Singaporeans, but neither must it close borders and reject foreigners in the workforce. Above all, in this House, we must firmly reject efforts to stoke anti-foreigner sentiments by spreading falsehoods or creating invidious comparisons out of context.

This is not the kind of politics we want this is not how a confident and capable Singapore should face the future.

The 50-year-old was responding to questions from fellow Members about, among others, how the 23 Industry Transformation Maps (ITM) have benefited Singaporeans. The $4.5 billion programme, launched progressively from late 2016, aims to deepen partnerships between the government, firms, industries, trade associations and chambers.

The government will always have your backs

Earlier, Minister of State for Manpower Zaqy Mohamad revealed that from 2015 to 2018, the total employment in these sectors, excluding Foreign Domestic Workers, grew by 19,500. Jobs for Singapore citizens grew by 9,300 and by 8,600 for PRs. Jobs for foreigners decreased by 28,500.

Chan also noted that between 2015 and 2018, local employment increased by nearly 60,000 for the whole economy. The proportion of locals in PMET (professionals, managers, executives and technicians) jobs also increased to nearly 57 per cent, one of the highest rates in the world. Growth in real wage monthly earnings for locals was 3.2 per cent per annum during this period, higher than the 2.4 per cent per annum during the preceding three years, higher than most advanced economies such as the US (0.5 per cent), Japan (0.8 per cent) and Germany (1.2 per cent).

Story continues

In responding to Holland-Bukit Timah MP Liang Eng Hwas query on whether the ITMs have benefited Singaporeans more than foreigners, the Minister acknowledged the anxieties of Singaporeans and pointed out that the government has invested heavily in programmes such as SkillsFuture and Adapt and Grow.

It has also put in place the Fair Consideration Framework, which penalises unfair employment practices where Singaporeans are passed over for non-meritocratic considerations.

Too few foreign workers mean that our businesses cannot seize the opportunities out there too many, and there will be pushback, especially if Singaporeans feel unfairly treated. It is a never-ending balancing act with difficult trade-offs.

Singaporeans v PRs

Noting that official statistics on locals often combines Singaporeans and PRs, Aljunied MP Pritam Singh repeatedly asked for clarification on Chans point about employment figures between 2015 and 2018. He wanted to know how many jobs went to Singaporeans and how many went to PRs, and whether the government would provide that data in future.

If the governments approach is going to be No, we are not going to provide that data, can the Minister please share that detail with us here? Because its pointless for us to keep asking the question if the government is not going to provide that data, said the Workers Party chief.

In response, Chan said, We can get you the numbers, but let me say this: what is the point behind the questions?

Has local unemployment increased? The answer is a resounding no are our wages going up? Yes, and its faster than many other countries. Those are the proof points to show that we are doing right by Singaporeans. But Im always very cautious about this constant divide: Singaporeans vs PR. The insinuation seems to be that somehow, Singaporeans are not benefiting.

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File photo of Al Shabaab militants parading new recruits after arriving in Mogadishu - REUTERS

Somalias al-Shabaab terror group targeted US forces in neighbouring Kenya for the first time on Sunday, killing three people and destroying American reconnaissance aircraft during an attack on a secretive military base.

An unknown number of jihadist militants struck at Camp Simba, an American military facility located on a Kenyan naval base, shortly before dawn. The US military said one US service member and two contractors had been killed, while two while two Department of Defence officials were wounded.

There were fewer than 150 American soldiers at Camp Simba, which is located on Manda Bay close to the tourist resort of Lamu, when the attack took place, US officials said.

Although the militants were unable to penetrate Camp Simba itself, they succeeded in overrunning an adjacent airfield where they set ablaze at least two planes, one of which was an American Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance aircraft used for missions in Somalia.

The brazen nature of the attack  which took place more than 50 miles south of the Somali frontier  represents a significant escalation in al-Shabaab cross-border operations.

The group has frequently carried out attacks on Kenyan troops in retaliation for the Kenyan armys military incursion into southern Somalia.

But until now it has shied away from attacking US troops stationed in Kenya, although the group did mount mount a failed operation against American forces stationed in Somalia last September.

Camp Simba, established in 2004, is one of the largest American military installations in Africa. It is frequently used by US special forces mounting covert operations in Somalia.

One prominent analyst, Rashid Abdi, suggested that the attack may have been a well-timed signal to Iran it is open for tactical alliances following the US airstrike that killed Qasem Soleimani, Irans top general, in Baghdad on Friday.

Mr Abdi said that Sunni al-Shabaab is fundamentally hostile to Shia Iran but noted that the Kenyan security services have long accused Gen Soleimanis Revolutionary Guards Corps of trying to woo the group into a marriage of convenience against the United States.

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But other analysts rejected the theory, saying that attacks like the one on Camp Simba normally involve months of preparation. They also suggested that al-Shabaab would alienate potential recruits if it sided with Iran.

The US has mounted a growing number of airstrikes against al-Shabaab targets in Somalia in recent years.

Sundays attack forced a brief closure of Manda Island civilian airport, which is situated across a narrow stretch of water from Camp Simba and is used every year by thousands of British tourists heading to hotels on the Lamu archipelago.
Former Union minister and BJP leader Swami Chinmayanand, who has been accused of sexual exploitation by a law student, appeared before a local court here on Monday.

Chinmayanad was brought to the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Omvir from the jail amidst tight security, said his counsel Om Singh.

He said the court has fixed January 20 as the next date for hearing.

The counsel for the law student, Kalvinder Singh, said she could not appear before the court as she was unwell.

Chinmayanand, whose trust runs Shahjahanpur Law College, where the student studied, was arrested under Section 376C of the IPC, an offence pertaining to abuse of one's position by a person in authority to "induce or seduce" a woman under his charge to have "sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape".

Chinmayanand also faces charges of stalking under Section 354D, wrongful confinement under Section 342 and criminal intimidation under Section 506 of the IPC.

The 23-year-old law student, who was arrested for allegedly trying to extort Rs 5 crore from Chinmayanand, was released on bail on December 11.

The former Union minister had alleged that they had threatened to make public some video clips that showed him getting massage from the law student, who was arrested on September 25.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Linkedin Eisya A. Eloksari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020 10:17 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c320fca29 1 Business Moeldoko,talent,human-development,Nadiem-Makarim Free

The government is planning to create a national talent management body this year in an effort to enhance human capacity development, which the President said was at the top of the agenda in his second term.

Presidential Chief of Staff Moeldoko said on Dec. 23 that the body, called National Talent Management (MTN), would gather data on talented Indonesians who have yet to be managed properly.

Super-talented Indonesians are still scattered everywhere and have yet to be managed well. It is our job to manage, he said during a press conference after a ministerial meeting at the Executive Office of the President in Jakarta.

By July next year, data on talented individuals in priority sectors, which include the arts, science and sport, would be compiled, Moeldoko added.

He went on to say that the government was still deciding on the grand design and had not entered into detailed preparations, such as determining the talent criteria and selecting who would manage the agency.

Moeldoko said there were three options for the set-up of the MTN, which would be managed by a new agency under a ministry or by creating a task force.

"Soon we will hold a limited meeting, and the President will decide on the form of national talent management," he said.

According to presentation material shown to the press, in the research and industry sector, the MTN would use data to recruit people and give them scholarships so that they could develop research-based products.

Moeldoko said that this talent management plan was formed because Indonesia lagged behind other countries in terms of macro indicators, having placed 72nd in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and 116th in the Human Development Index (HDI).

Meanwhile, Education and Culture Minister Nadiem Makarim expressed hopes over the MTN not only supporting economic growth but also instilling confidence in young talents.

"The initiative to nurture and appreciate national talent is important because there are many talented young people who we have yet to know or see, he said. Supporting them [] is good for the nation's self-confidence as it achieves its dreams."

The idea for a national talent management body was mentioned by President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo when he gave his first political speech after his reelection in July. He then said he would create an Indonesian talent management institution that would facilitate and support education and self-improvement for Indonesia's talents.

Jokowi said the body would also support talented members of the diaspora so that they could contribute to Indonesia's development.

We will create a special institution to manage these great talents who can make this country globally competitive, he said.

Human development is central to Jokowi's second-term agenda, as the President said in his inaugural speech in August that Indonesians should have world-class level human capital to expand the country's influence in international markets, putting forward reforms in the education system and vocational schools so that the Indonesia Onward Cabinet could realize the vision.
The parties discussed trade, economic, and investment cooperation between Ukraine and Oman.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has met with Abdulsalam Al Murshidi, the Executive President of the State General Reserve Fund (SGRF) of the Sultanate of Oman, during his visit to the Sultanate.

Read alsoOman simplifies travel for Ukrainians  Ukraine MFA

In particular, the parties discussed trade, economic, and investment cooperation between Ukraine and Oman. According to the officials, the current level of bilateral investment cooperation does not correspond to the available potential, in particular, in comparison with the dynamic growth in trade relations. The parties noted the need to boost investment, the Ukrainian President's Office said on January 6.

Today, Ukraine offers significant investment opportunities, Zelensky said. The president spoke of the conditions and advantages of doing business in Ukraine for foreign investors, creation of a favorable business environment in the country, and the most attractive areas for investment. He also called on Omani partners to take part in a large-scale privatization campaign in Ukraine.

"The Omani side expressed interest in intensifying cooperation in the investment sphere and accepted Zelensky's invitation to visit Ukraine to get acquainted with new projects and areas of cooperation," the report said.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Zelensky is visiting Oman to meet with Omani top officials.
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San Francisco, 6 January 2020: The Report Computational Biology Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Application (Cellular & Biological Simulation, Drug Discovery & Disease Modelling), By Service, By End Use, And Segment Forecasts, 2019  2026

The global computational biology market size is expected to reach USD 13.6 billion by 2026, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 21.3% during the forecast period. Rise in clinical studies in pharmacokinetics and pharmacogenomics for novel drug delivery and increase in the application of computational biology for bioinformatics R&D programs for the population based sequencing studies are fueling the market growth.

Rising use of computational tools in genomics, epi-genomics, proteomics, and meta-genomics to understand 3D protein structural analysis, protein-protein interactions, and gene sequencing and expression studies coupled with increasing research activities in drug designing and disease modeling is expected to drive the growth. However, lack of skilled resources to operate computational tools is expected to restrain the growth of the computational biology market during the forecast period.

Many pharmaceutical companies are seeking funding from angel investors. For instance, in February 2019, StemoniX Inc., the U.S. based provider of product and services for drug discovery and development, received funding of USD 14.40 million from a group of investors. Brightstone Venture Capital was the major financer and was later joined by Crescent Ridge Partners, Alumni Ventures Group, and Mayo Clinic. Similarly, in the same month, U.S. based Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus received funding of USD 5.0 million to speed up the discovery of new drugs. With this finding, the research institute is planning to procure and install drug discovery research instruments and other drug discovery platforms.

Access Research Report of Computational Biology Market @ www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/computational-biology-market

Further key findings from the report suggest:

Cellular and biological simulation is expected to expand at the fastest CAGR of over 15.0% over the forecast period. The shift in sequencing studies towards further analysis of the nature of various biological proteins as a part of the development of personalized medicine, is projected drive the growth

Drug discovery and disease modelling applications led the market, accounting for 38.0% of the global market in terms of revenue in 2018. The factors responsible for this growth are extensive drug pipelines for the global drug manufacturing firms

North America was the largest regional market, accounted for more than 45.0% of the global revenue in 2018. Increase in research activities for drug discovery processes and innovations in biological computation tools are anticipated to drive the growth

Asia Pacific is anticipated to witness the fastest of around CAGR of 23.0% during the forecast period, due to increasing expenditure in the clinical studies for the pharmaco-kinetics and pharmaco-genomics

Some of the players operating in the computational biology market include Chemical Computing Group Inc.; Compugen Ltd.; Simulation Plus Inc.; Genedata AG; Certara; Insilico Biotechnology AG; Accelrys; Rhenovia Pharma SAS; Entelos; Nimbus Discovery LLC; and Rhenovia Pharma SAS.

Browse more reports of this category by Grand View Research at: www.grandviewresearch.com/industry/healthcare-it

Grand View Research has segmented the global computational biology market based on application, service, end use, and region:

Computational Biology Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million 2015 - 2026)

Cellular & Biological Simulation Computational Genomics Databases Infrastructure/Hardware Software & Services Computational Proteomics Pharmacogenomics Others (Transcriptomics/Metabolomics)

Drug Discovery & Disease Modelling Target Identification Target Validation Lead Discovery Lead Optimization

Preclinical Drug Development Pharmacokinetics Pharmacodynamics

Clinical Trials Phase I Phase II Phase III

Human Body Simulation Software

Computational Biology Services Outlook (Revenue, USD Million 2015 - 2026)

In-house

Contract

Computational Biology End-use Outlook (Revenue, USD Million 2015 - 2026)

Academics

Industry

Commercial

Computational Biology Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million 2015 - 2026)

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Latin America

Middle East & Africa

Access Press Release of Computational Biology Market @ www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-computational-biology-market

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.

For More Information: www.grandviewresearch.com
We are pleased to recognize Dr. Michael Shanks as a UroLift Center of Excellence for his commitment to providing consistent care to BPH patients using the UroLift System treatment, said Dave Amerson

NeoTract, a wholly owned subsidiary of Teleflex Incorporated (NYSE: TFX) focused on addressing unmet needs in the field of urology, today announced that Michael Shanks, DO, Regional Health in Terra Haute, IN, has been designated as a UroLift Center of Excellence. The designation recognizes that Dr. Shanks has achieved a high level of training and experience with the UroLift System and demonstrated a commitment to exemplary care for men suffering from symptoms associated with Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), also known as enlarged prostate.

Recommended for the treatment of BPH in both the American Urological Association and European Association of Urology clinical guidelines, the FDA-cleared Prostatic Urethral Lift procedure using the UroLift System is a proven, minimally invasive technology for treating lower urinary tract symptoms due to BPH. The UroLift permanent implants, delivered during a transurethral outpatient procedure, relieve prostate obstruction and open the urethra directly without cutting, heating, or removing prostate tissue.

The UroLift Center of Excellence program is designed to highlight urologists who are committed to educating their patients on BPH and the UroLift System as a treatment option and consistently seek to deliver excellent patient outcomes and experiences.

We are pleased to recognize Dr. Michael Shanks as a UroLift Center of Excellence for his commitment to providing consistent care to BPH patients using the UroLift System treatment, said Dave Amerson, president of the Teleflex Interventional Urology business unit. This achievement has helped many patients experience durable, long-term relief from the burdensome symptoms of BPH while preserving sexual function*1,2.

Over 40 million men in the United States are affected by BPH, a condition that occurs when the prostate gland that surrounds the male urethra becomes enlarged with advancing age and begins to obstruct the urinary system. Symptoms of BPH often include interrupted sleep and urinary problems and can cause loss of productivity, depression and decreased quality of life.

Medication is often the first-line therapy for enlarged prostate, but relief can be inadequate and temporary. Side effects of medication treatment can include sexual dysfunction, dizziness and headaches, prompting many patients to quit using the drugs. For these patients, the classic alternative is surgery that cuts, heats or removes prostate tissue to open the blocked urethra. While current surgical options can be very effective in relieving symptoms, they can also leave patients with permanent side effects such as urinary incontinence, erectile dysfunction, and retrograde ejaculation.

About the UroLift System

The FDA-cleared UroLift System is a proven, minimally invasive technology for treating lower urinary tract symptoms due to benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). The UroLift permanent implants, delivered during a minimally invasive transurethral outpatient procedure, relieve prostate obstruction and open the urethra directly without cutting, heating, or removing prostate tissue. Clinical data from a pivotal 206-patient randomized controlled study showed that patients with enlarged prostate receiving UroLift implants reported rapid and durable symptomatic and urinary flow rate improvement without compromising sexual function*1,2. Patients also experienced a significant improvement in quality of life. Over 100,000 men have been treated with the UroLift System in the U.S. Most common adverse events reported include hematuria, dysuria, micturition urgency, pelvic pain, and urge incontinence. Most symptoms were mild to moderate in severity and resolved within two to four weeks after the procedure. The Prostatic Urethral Lift procedure using the UroLift System is recommended for the treatment of BPH in both the American Urological Association and European Association of Urology clinical guidelines. The UroLift System is available in the U.S., Europe, Australia, Canada, Mexico and South Korea. Learn more at http://www.UroLift.com.

About NeoTract | Teleflex Interventional Urology

A wholly owned subsidiary of Teleflex Incorporated, the Interventional Urology Business Unit is dedicated to developing innovative, minimally invasive and clinically effective devices that address unmet needs in the field of urology. Our initial focus is on improving the standard of care for patients with BPH using the UroLift System, a minimally invasive permanent implant system that treats symptoms while preserving normal sexual function*1,2. Learn more at http://www.NeoTract.com.

About Teleflex Incorporated

Teleflex is a global provider of medical technologies designed to improve the health and quality of peoples lives. We apply purpose driven innovation  a relentless pursuit of identifying unmet clinical needs  to benefit patients and healthcare providers. Our portfolio is diverse, with solutions in the fields of vascular and interventional access, surgical, anesthesia, cardiac care, urology, emergency medicine and respiratory care. Teleflex employees worldwide are united in the understanding that what we do every day makes a difference. For more information, please visit http://www.teleflex.com.

Teleflex is the home of Arrow, Deknatel, Hudson RCI, LMA, Pilling, Rusch, UroLift and Weck  trusted brands united by a common sense of purpose

For Teleflex Incorporated:

Jake Elguicze, 610.948.2836

Treasurer and Vice President, Investor Relations

Media:

Nicole Osmer, 650.454.0504

nicole@healthandcommerce.com

*No instances of new, sustained erectile or ejaculatory dysfunction

1. Roehrborn, J Urology 2013 LIFT Study

2.McVary, J Sex Med 2016

MAC00968-01 Rev A
(Reuters) - Britain's emergency preparations for a no-deal Brexit have been halted "with immediate effect", as Prime Minister Boris Johnson's deal to leave the European Union is expected to be approved by members of parliament, Sky News reported https://news.sky.com/story/govt-stands-down-no-deal-brexit-planning-despite-pm-election-pledge-11902688 on Monday.

Civil service chiefs working on the contingency plans, known as Operation Yellowhammer, have been asked to stand down, Sky News reported, citing a letter by a senior official at the Department for Exiting the EU.

(Reporting by Juby Babu in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni)
Joseph McKeraghan, 59, struck ladders at a train depot in Croydon, south London, around half an hour into his afternoon shift on December 27 2018, Westminster Magistrates Court heard. (PA)

A former train driver who crashed into scaffolding while drunk has been given a suspended jail sentence and banned from driving.

Joseph McKeraghan, 59, struck ladders at a train depot in Croydon, south London, around half an hour into his afternoon shift on December 27, 2018.

He then went home and drank most of a bottle of wine in an apparent bid to mask his blood alcohol level, Westminster Magistrates Court heard.

Shortly after the incident he resigned from his post.

McKeraghan, a Southern Railway employee of 12 years, was found guilty in his absence last month of being unfit for work through drink.

Passing sentence on Monday, Sarah Houston, chairing the bench, told McKeraghan: You have shown considerable remorse, however this was reckless and caused damage.

Thankfully no-one was hurt.

He then went home and drank most of a bottle of wine in an apparent bid to mask his blood alcohol level, the court was previously told. (PA)

Mrs Houston imposed a three-month prison sentence suspended for 12 months alongside a 12-month driving ban.

She also ordered McKeraghan to pay the 775 cost of his trial which he failed to attend, as well as a 115 victim surcharge.

After the incident was reported, British Transport Police (BTP) Inspector Michael Tanner told the court he found McKeraghan clutching a bottle of wine while still in his work uniform at his home.

He said: When he opened the door I could smell alcoholic liquor on his breath as he was speaking to me.

He seemed unsteady on his feet and his eyes were glazed.

At around 9.50pm, five hours after the collision, he was found with at least 38 micrograms of alcohol in his system  the legal limit for train drivers is 13 micrograms.

McKeraghan, a Southern Railway employee of 12 years, was found guilty in his absence of being unfit for work through drink last month. (Getty)

Forensic scientist Michael Robinson told the trial the amount of alcohol McKeraghan claimed to have consumed after the incident was not consistent with his blood alcohol level, adding: In my opinion he has drunk more.

McKeraghan, formerly of Raynes Park, south-west London, has since moved in with a cousin in Kilwinning, in north Ayshire, Scotland.

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He told the court he has been signed off work with anxiety and has been attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings around three times per week.

McKeraghan said he would soon look for work but that it wont be within the railway industry, adding: Ive never been unemployed in my life.

The court heard he is of previous good character.
A new investigation of the circumstances surrounding the death of Jeffrey Epstein has made public several new pieces of evidence, including photos of his jail cell showing a number of bed sheets, prescription medicine and an apparent note written by the convicted sex offender complaining about jail conditions before his death.

The paedophile financier was awaiting trial in New Yorks Metropolitan Correctional Centre in downtown Manhattan when his body was found in his cell in August. The circumstances of his death, ruled a suicide by the New York medical examiner, have sparked considerable speculation, given the powerful company he kept that included Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew.

The newly revealed letter, a photo of which was obtained during a months-long investigation by CBS News 60 Minutes, includes claims that the writer was locked in a shower for hours, sent burnt food and that giant bugs had crawled across his hand.

"Giant bugs crawling over my hands. No fun!! he apparently wrote, with a blue pen.

The investigation has also revealed photos showing the apparent noose used in Epsteins hanging and photos of the jail cell where he died. Further photos from the autopsy show the mans discoloured neck and torso.

Jeffrey Epstein: Controversies surrounding paedophile billionaire Show all 9 1 /9 Jeffrey Epstein: Controversies surrounding paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein: Controversies surrounding paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in court Billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein attends court as he pleads guilty to solicitation and procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution, 2008 Zuma/Rex Jeffrey Epstein: Controversies surrounding paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in court Billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to felony solicitation and procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail. Epstein, allegedly paid several girls under the age of 18 in return for naked massages at his Palm Beach, Florida estate Zuma/Rex Jeffrey Epstein: Controversies surrounding paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's car Jeffrey Epstein is whisked away from the Palm Beach County jail in a black car shortly after 6am on 22 July 2009. Epstein left the jail through the sally port, where prisoners are brought in, rather than through the main doors where prisoners are routinely released Zuma/Rex Jeffrey Epstein: Controversies surrounding paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's mugshot Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's mugshot, taken after he was indicted for soliciting a prostitute on 26 July 2006. Beginning in mid-March 2005, Epstein became the target of a sexual battery probe conducted by the Palm Beach Police Department, according to the affidavit, which alleges that Epstein paid a series of underage girls to engage in sexual activity with him. In a 2002 New York magazine profile of Epstein, Donald Trump called the moneyman a 'terrific guy' who 'likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.' Epstein, who reportedly runs a multibillion-dollar investment fund, travels in his own Boeing 727 (upon which he has transported Bill Clinton to Africa) and owns a 45,000-square-foot mansion on Manhattan's Upper East Side Palm Beach County Sheriff's Department Jeffrey Epstein: Controversies surrounding paedophile billionaire Jack Goldberger, Jeffrey Epstein's attorney Jeffrey Epstein's attorney, Jack Goldberger, talks with reporters gathered outside the Palm Beach County jail on 22 July 2009 after Epstein was whisked away from the jail in a black car Zuma/Rex Jeffrey Epstein: Controversies surrounding paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein Florida Police department sexual offenders database picture of Jeffrey Epstein taken in 2013 Jeffrey Epstein: Controversies surrounding paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's mansion His Palm Beach mansion in Florida Google Jeffrey Epstein: Controversies surrounding paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's island The private Caribbean island, Little St James is part of the US Virgin Islands NBC News Jeffrey Epstein: Controversies surrounding paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's island The private Caribbean island, Little St James is part of the US Virgin Islands NBC News

While the official ruling is that Epstein killed himself, forensic pathologist Dr Michael Baden  who was hired by Epsteins brother, Mark  has said that it is concerning that there were no photos taken of the body while it was in the cell, and that knowing its position would be helpful to clarify certain questions.

Among those are where the noose was on the 66-year-olds neck, as well as the way that lividity settled, which is how blood pools in a body after death.

At this length of time, [we] still dont have that information, he told CBS. So if this was called a suicide without all that information, it was a premature judgment.

In previous interviews, Mr Baden has suggested that Epsteins death may likely be a homicide, given what he called unusual activity surrounding his death.

During an interview with Fox News in October, Mr Baden said that he believes that the broken bones found in his neck are more consistent with strangulation than hanging. He was hired by Mark Epstein amid concerns that the convicted sex offender was killed because he had damaging information on powerful people, and that others with information might likewise be in danger as well.

I think that the evidence points toward homicide rather than suicide, Mr Baden said during the earlier interview.

He continued: Hanging does not cause these broken bones and homicide does. A huge amount of pressure was applied.

Beyond those physical markers, questions have arisen over the general circumstances surrounding his death. He was reportedly taken off of suicide watch just days before his body was found, and officials have said the two guards who were tasked with checking in on him regularly both fell asleep on the night in question  an explanation Mr Baden has called extremely unlikely.
A 24-hour McDonald's in California blasted bagpipe music in an unsuccessful attempt to ward away homeless people from outside its restaurant - and ended up infuriating neighbors instead.

The McDonald's in midtown Sacramento played the Scottish music 24/7, but the homeless people were visibly still sticking around.

Finally, the music stopped when neighbors complained.

'If we wouldn't have said anything or reported it to the police, they would have had that thing going on still,' said Arnold Phillips, who lives across the street, reports KOVR.

This McDonald's in midtown Sacramento, California, resorted to broadcasting bagpipe music to ward off homeless people from outside the restaurant

The broadcasts of the music didn't seem to work since homeless people were visibly still hanging around the restaurant

The music stopped, for now, after neighbors like Arnold Phillips (pictured) complained on Friday, the Sacramento Police Department confirms to DailyMail.com

The Sacramento Police Department confirmed to DailyMail.com that residents had complained on Friday about the bagpipes, and that cops alerted the restaurant.

'We have not been contacted by residents in the that area regarding the sounds of bagpipes since,' a spokesman told DailyMail.com.

There's no word on whether the music stopped permanently.

McDonald's did not immediately respond when DailyMail.com reached out.

The tactic of using weaponized sound was similarly employed by other establishments, including a 7 Eleven in West Hollywood that broadcast classical music in the hopes of shooing away homeless people, reports KOVR.

A 7 Eleven in Sacramento, however, decided to replace the classics with a high-pitched tone.

A 7 Eleven in Sacramento, however, decided to replace the classics with a high-pitched tone

Meanwhile, Phillips said the bagpipes had penetrated his home.

'We can hear it [when] I'm trying to watch TV or whatever and it's going through that,' Phillips told KOVR.

Nate Dewitt, his downstairs neighbor, also had similar gripes.

'You know, I turn off the leaf blower and I could still hear the bagpipes coming and it's just constant,' Dewitt said.

Nate Dewitt, also a neighbor to the Sacramento McDonald's also had similar gripes about the bagpipes.

Even the restaurant's patrons were upset. 'It was offensive to me because it was just so annoying,' Susan Smart said

Even the restaurant's patrons were upset.

'It was offensive to me because it was just so annoying,' Susan Smart told KOVR.
Virginia Republican Scott Taylor said Monday that he will end his U.S. Senate campaign against Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat, and instead run for his old U.S. House seat representing Virginia Beach.

If Taylor wins a competitive Republican primary, he will face Rep. Elaine Luria, the Democrat who unseated him in a 2018 election amid a wave of anti-Trump sentiment and a scandal over election petitions that embroiled Taylor's campaign. His GOP opponents include Ben Loyola, a retired Navy captain and defense contractor whose family fled communist Cuba when he was 2.

Taylor, a former Navy SEAL, said Luria's support for articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump convinced him to pursue a rematch against her.

In an interview on WAVY TV 10, he accused Luria, a former Navy commander, of "disgracefully using your military background to justify an empty impeachment which has taken away from the needs of the district and the country."

Luria is one of seven freshman Democrats, five of them women, who announced their support for an impeachment inquiry in late September in an opinion article in The Washington Post.

"These girls that have national security backgrounds, they came out before there was any bit of evidence whatsoever, and they did so to create political cover for moderates to allow [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi to move forward," Taylor said early Monday on radio's "John Fredericks Show."

Responding to Taylor, Luria said: "Yes, I am a girl. I may wear heels now, but I wore steel-toed boots for 20 years in the Navy. It's 2020 - girls can do anything."

Taylor also said turnout in a presidential election year could benefit Republicans in a district that voted for Trump by about three percentage points.

Luria on Sunday endorsed former vice president Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Loyola's campaign spokesman, Peter Finocchio, said there's no reason to expect that voters will come back to Taylor.

"Scott Taylor had his chance and failed," he said. "The issues that plagued his 2018 campaign will cause him to lose again. He also failed to stand up for conservative principles, often voting with lobbyists and Washington Democrats over the interests of his own constituents."

Scott Rigell, Taylor's predecessor in Congress, endorsed Loyola, whom Rigell defeated for the party nomination in 2010.

Former congressman Randy Forbes, whom Taylor defeated for the 2016 nomination, also endorsed Loyola. Forbes represented a neighboring district, but when lines were redrawn to put more Democrats in his district, he opted to challenge Taylor.

Taylor, who was raised on Maryland's Eastern Shore by a single mother, was deployed to Iraq as a Navy SEAL and served as a state delegate before winning a seat in Congress.

He lost to Luria amid a scandal over fraudulent signatures that his campaign collected to help a potential spoiler candidate get on the ballot.

In May, a special prosecutor filed two charges of election fraud against a Taylor staff member but did not say whether the former congressman broke any laws. The investigation is ongoing.

"I was devastated to learn about wrongdoing on the team," Taylor said Monday in the TV interview. "But in the end, I'm responsible for it, and I think some voters held me accountable for it."

The Post reported last month that in late 2018, Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani proposed replacing the U.S. ambassador to Qatar with Taylor, who visited the country in 2017 and spoke at a Qatari event in Washington the following year.

Virginia Democrats seized on the switch as proof that Taylor couldn't gain traction in the Senate race against Warner.

"Scott Taylor, who was fired by his constituents in the 2018 midterm election, couldn't get his Senate campaign off the ground after failing to get the ambassador job that he wanted," Virginia Democratic Party spokesman Grant Fox said in a statement.

Luria said Monday that she is looking forward to "seeing a spirited debate" among the various contestants in the Republican primary.

Taylor told Fredericks that he plans to transfer a balance of about $167,000 in his Senate campaign account to his House campaign. Luria had about $1.1 million cash on hand at the end of September, reports show.

When he announced plans to challenge Warner in July, Taylor said that after running in eight contested primary and general elections in about a decade, shifting to the Senate's six-year cycles made sense.

The independent analysts at Cook Political Report consider the Senate seat solidly Democratic. Republicans have not won a statewide seat in Virginia since 2009.
KAMPALA  Three justices of the Court of Appeal have on Monday, January 6, 2020, upheld the sentence and conviction that was handed to the Africell Accountant Manager of Western and Southwestern Uganda Kenneth Kaawe for stealing USD 50000 of Bank of Africa (UBA) in 2009.

The three justices, Geoffrey Kiryabwire, Percy Tuhaise and Stephen Musota have upheld Kaawes conviction citing that the lower court was right in its findings.

However, the justices faulted the lower court of not considering the twenty-five days Kaawe had spent on remand while sentencing him to eight years which makes it illegal and must have prejudiced him.

The justices reasoned that it is a mandatory constitution requirement that the period spent on remand has to be abided in mind at the time of imposing a custodial sentence however this was not considered by the trial judge.

Court has now set aside the eight-year sentence handed to Kaawe for embezzlement and instead reduced it to seven years, 11 months and five days.

Court ruled that Kaawe abused the trust put in him by his employer who headhunted him and offered him a job and the offence for which he was indicted attracts a sentence not exceeding fourteen years, however, a sentence of eight-year imprisonment is appropriate.

Court noted that the delivery note and Cash in Transit forms were all direct evidence of the movement and proof that Kaawe received and acknowledged receipt of the money.

The traditional cash book the appellant insists on is not only the document that can prove that money was transited from one place to another. The evidence adduced, in our opinion, is direct and credible. It requires no collaboration, even in the absence of a delivery cash book, the justices ruled.

The conviction of embezzlement against the appellant (Kaawe) is upheld, sentence of eight years is set aside and substituted with a sentence of seven years and eleven months and five days imprisonment and an order to refund the USD 50000 to UBA is upheld, the justices ruled.

Justice Catherine Bamugemerire of the Anti-Corruption on May 17th 2011 found Kaawe guilty of embezzlement of USD 50,000 from his employer, United Bank of Africa where he was working as the Head of Central Cash.

Related
Los Angeles, Jan 6 : Actress Awkwafina made history at the 77th Golden Globe Awards ceremony by becoming the first woman of Asian descent to win a Golden Globe for lead actress in a comedy film.

The actress picked up the honour in Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy category for her film "The Farewell". In the film, she is seen as Billi, a Chinese-American woman who travels back to China with her family to say goodbye to her terminally ill grandmother (essayed by Shuzhen Zhao).

A first-time Globes nominee, Awkwafina won over Ana de Armas ("Knives Out"), Cate Blanchett ("Where'd You Go, Bernadette"), Beanie Feldstein ("Booksmart") and Emma Thompson ("Late Night").

"This is great, thank you, if I fall upon hard times I can sell this, so that's good," the actress joked as she got on the stage to accept the honour on Sunday night.

She then thanked her family and the director Lulu Wang.

"You gave me this chance, the chance of a lifetime, and you've taught me so much," she said, adding: "Just filming this story, being with you, is incredible." According to variety.com, it is the first time a performer of Asian descent has won a lead actress Golden Globe Award for a film. Last year, Sandra Oh became the first Asian woman since 1980 to win best actress in a TV drama for "Killing Eve".

Awkwafina dedicated her award to her father, her grandmother and her late mother.

This was Awkwafina's first Golden Globe nomination. "The Farewell" also received a nomination for Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language.

Last year, the actor-rapper celebrated getting nods through an Instagram post.

She wrote: "This week has been so surreal. Incredibly honored to wake up to the news this morning... Thank you so much HFPA for this nomination and for recognizing @thefarewell. Can't believe I am nominated alongside such insanely talented women."
Its time to celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr., especially his color-blind dream for American society. Its now, however, conservatives who are more likely to celebrate that dream than liberals.

The cause of this liberal failure is identity politics, which has been embraced by the Democratic Party.

On May 22, 2019, Georgia Democrat and failed candidate for governor Stacey Abrams said her party should not pretend it doesnt practice identity politics, because identity politics is exactly who we are, and its exactly how we won (in the 2018 midterm elections).

On July 13, 2019, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, D-Massachusetts, and a member of The Squad, said: We dont need any more brown faces that dont want to be a brown voice. We dont need black faces that dont want to be a black voice. Insisting that someone with a brown or black face must adhere to and be an advocate for a certain ideology is textbook racism.

Identity politics has turned MLKs famous quote about the color of skin and character on its head. Adherents of identity politics judge people exclusively by the color of their skin regardless of the content of their character. Thats who Democrats have become.

Henry Fowler,

Stevensville

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Southampton University has launched an investigation into the death of a first-year student found hanged in her halls of residence.

Keana Dippenaar, 18, was found dead in her room by friends at the Richard Newitt Court student halls in Southampton last month.

Friends say the student's death is a mystery and have rallied to set up a fundraising page and help her family with funeral costs, raising 1,126 out of a 5,000 target.

Keana Dippenaar, 18, was found dead in her room by friends at the Richard Newitt Court student halls in Southampton last month. Friends have rallied to set up a fundraising page and help the psychology student's family with funeral costs, raising 1,126 out of a 5,000 target

An inquest opened into Keana's death on December 9 heard the teenager, originally from Southend in Essex, died from hanging.

Her devastated mother, Carlene, described Keana as her 'beautiful, precious and most-loved daughter'.

She also said: 'She was the most gorgeous, bubbly, friendly, compassionate and caring daughter.

'She loved [Korean pop music] K-pop and Korean pop culture. Keana loved to read and she always wanted to write a book. She got on very well with her two brothers.'

A statement on their page says: 'Unfortunately a close friend of many and one of our flatmates, Keana took her life.

'Keana cared so much about everyone she met and put a smile on everyone's face whenever she was around.

Keana was into everything Korean, according to her family, and had even learned the language. They say she was a happy cheerful person with two older brothers. Friends at Southampton University say her death is a mystery

Southampton University has launched an investigation into the death of a first-year student found hanged in her halls of residence

'Even though we didn't know her for too long she made a huge impact on everyone and was a big part of our flat.

'We want to support her family with any donations to give Keana the funeral or memorial that she deserves.'

One friend said: 'Will always remember your beautiful big smile.'

Another added: 'Keana was a friend of mine from Westcliff High School for Girls. It was a pleasure to have known her. May she rest in peace.'

A full inquest into her death will be held in June

Keana Dippenaar, 18, was found dead in her room by friends at the Richard Newitt Court student halls in Southampton last month

Posting on its website, Westcliff High School for Girls - Keana's former school in Southend, Essex, said: 'It is with sadness that we have been informed of the sad passing of Keana Dippenaar.

'Keana was a 6th Form student who left WHSG in July this year, to study Psychology at Southampton University. Our thoughts are with her family at this very sad time.'

The first-year student had previously written a note which said: 'Remember you are better, smarter and more beautiful than you give yourself credit for. Love yourself.'

A University of Southampton spokesperson said:

'We remain extremely saddened by the death of Keana and her family are still very much in our thoughts at what must continue to be a very difficult time. We continue to offer support to her fellow students and those staff members who knew her.'

A full inquest into her death will be held in June.

For confidential support 24/7 in the UK, you can call the Samaritans on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org
Dixon Technologies (India) rose 0.57% to Rs 3973.05 after the company said it entered into agreement with Samsung India Electronics for manufacturing of LED TVs.

The stock traded in the range of Rs 4022.75 and Rs 3950 so far during the day.

In an exchange filing made after market hours on Friday, 3 January 2020, Dixon Technologies (India) (Dixon) said it has entered into agreement with Samsung India Electronics (Samsung) for manufacturing of LED TVs. Dixon shall be manufacturing LED TV for Samsung from its manufacturing facility located at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh.

Dixon is the largest home grown design-focused and solutions company engaged in manufacturing products in the consumer durables, lighting and mobile phones markets in India.

The company reported 162% jump in consolidated net profit to Rs 43.04 crore on a 89.8% rise in net sales to Rs 1401.98 crore in Q2 September 2019 over Q2 September 2018.

The scrip continued to extend gains for third straight sessions as it has risen 4.93% from its recent closing low of Rs 3786.05 recorded on 1 January 2019.

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By IANS

NEW DELHI: An American Instagram model has raised more than $100,000 for Australian bushfire victims by encouraging her followers to donate in exchange for naked selfies.

Kaylen Ward, 20, said she wanted to help after seeing the devastation the bushfires had caused and thought her x-rated images would be the best way to raise funds, The Daily Mail said in the report.

"I'm sending nudes to every person who donates at least $10 to any one of these fundraisers for the wildfires in Australia," American model Kaylen Ward posted on Twitter on Saturday, alongside a list of charities and fire services.

Within minutes of posting her offer on social media, her private messages on Instagram and Twitter were bombarded by hundreds of people sending in their receipts to prove they had donated.

After the post went viral, the Netizens hailed the idea and commitment of the model.

A user on micro-blogging site Twitter wrote, "Sex workers are single-handedly saving Australia and I am here for it."

"Thank you so much! It means a lot to see people all over the world doing things to help my country... I'm so scared right now but your kindness and generosity means more than you know", added another.

A post read, "Your a true hero to Australia thank you for your sacrifice."

A tweeple remarked, "I often question the motivations and dignity of women who expose themselves online, but honestly, this is the most selfless motivation I have seen for such a thing! I am going to try to donate even without any nudes. Kudos to you!"

However, Instagram has deactivated the account of 20-year-old American model Kaylen Ward.

In a screenshot posted by Ward, Instagram said she posted "sexually suggestive content".

Taking on Twitter she wrote, "My IG got deactivated, my family disowned me, and the guy I like won't talk to me all because of that tweet. But f**k it, save the koalas."
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Former Higher Education Secretary R. Subrahmanyam condemned the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) violence calling it "completely unacceptable and shameful" and demanded action against hooligans.

"JNU violence completely unacceptable and shameful. I condemn the violence is no uncertain terms and demand immediate action against the hooligans," Subrahmanyam tweeted.

His tweet came following an unprecedented violence which occurred in the JNU on Sunday as several masked individuals, both male and female, thrashed students, including girls, and teachers inside the campus with wooden and metal rods, injuring many.

Subrahmanyam, a 1985-batch IAS officer and a JNU alumni, was last month shifted to the Social Justice Ministry from the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry, allegedly over the JNU student protests since the end of October over a hike in hostel fees.

Amit Khare, also a 1985-batch IAS officer, replaced Subrahmanyam.

As per sources, Subrahmanyam was in favour of resolving the issue by keeping the JNU students' demands in mind while the JNU administration was reluctant.

The agitating students were lathi-charged by the police when they tried to march to Rashtrapati Bhavan to meet the President and urge him to ensure the hike in hostel fee is completely rolled back.
Five people are dead with around 60 injured after a crash on the Pennsylvania Turnpike at 3:40 a.m. Sunday, according to authorities.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation closed the Turnpike in both directions between the Breezewood (Exit 161) and New Stanton (Exit 75) interchanges as emergency crews continued to sort through the wreckage.

A passenger bus owned by Z&D Tours was traveling from Rockaway, New Jersey, to Cincinnati was traveling down a grade when it could not navigate a turn. The bus went up an embankment and rolled over before being hit by two tractor trailers, Pennsylvania State Police spokesman Stephen Limani told reporters Sunday afternoon.

Those two trucks were struck by another tractor trailer, and another passenger car was involved in the crash, Limani said, who described it as "extremely serious."

The Westmoreland County Coroner's Office confirmed to FOX Business that five people had been killed. Fourteen National Transportation Safety Board investigators are on the scene, according to Limani.

The bus was carrying foreigners, the majority of whom did not speak English, Limani said. None of the 60 have life-threatening injuries, though two of them have "critical" injuries, he said.

Images from the accident show a FedEx Ground truck mangled in the accident.

"First and foremost we extend our deepest condolences to the families of the individuals involved in this accident," FedEx told Fox News. "There is no higher priority for FedEx Ground than safety, and we are cooperating fully with investigating authorities at this time."

576,000 vehicles use the Turnpike per day, according to the commission that manages the highway.

Photos of the deadly accident show the tour bus flipped over on its side in the westbound side of the turnpike, with debris from the crash causing the eastbound lane to be closed as well.

The exact cause of the crash is still under investigation.

Story continues

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Students staged peaceful marches to register their protest against the violence on the JNU campus with hashtag SOSJNU trending on social media.

NEW DELHI: A day after armed muffled goons with iron rods and sticks went on a rampage on the JNU campus, hundreds of students and teachers on Monday held peaceful protests in the varsity demanding action against those involved in the violence.

The JNU administration appealed to the students not to leave campus and assured that steps would be taken to normalise the situation.

An uneasy calm prevailed in the university where heavy police deployment had been made. The authorities only allowed students with valid ID cards inside the campus. However, these measures did not assuage the concerns of students over their safety. Though an FIR has been registered in connection with the Sundays violence, but no arrests were effected until late Monday night.

Students fear more attacks, leave campus

Fearing more attacks, some students even left the campus for their respective residences. It is learnt that the wardens of the Sabarmati hostel resigned on moral grounds for their failure to provide security to the hostel residents.

Sources close to wardens Ramavtar Meena and Prakash Chandra Sahoo, however, alleged that a group of students cornered them when they reached the hostel and accused them of not providing security. There are reports that some students forcefully made the wardens sign their resignation papers.

JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, who was badly injured in the violence, alleged it was an organised attack.

It was an organised attack. They were singling out people and attacking. There is a clear nexus of JNU security and vandals. They did not intervene to stop violence, Ghosh said.

For last 4-5 days, some RSS-affiliated professors were promoting violence to break our movement. Are we wrong to ask for safety from the JNU and Delhi Police, she said adding that the attackers were both from the campus and outside, she told journalists.

Narrating the horrifying incident, witnesses alleged that the masked people entered the premises when a meeting was being held by the JNUTA on the issue of violence on campus and assaulted students and professors. They also barged into three hostels.

Students staged peaceful marches to register their protest against the violence on the JNU campus with hashtag SOSJNU trending on social media.

Today it is them, tomorrow it can be us. Violence in any form is Condemnable. We stand by our friends in JNU, said one of the protestor.

Akarsh Ranjan from Periyar hostel said students have received threats that they should not come out from their rooms.

Shreya Ghosh, a resident of Shipra Hostel, asked how could goons enter the campus with rods and sticks and said, The attack could not have happened without the connivance of the administration and police.

She claimed that she had to hide in Sabaramati Hostel after the masked men chased her and some other people.

Some of the protesting students at JNU were seen humming poems of peace and reciting Faiz Ahmed Faizs Hum Dekhenge.

The Police has outrightly rejected the charge of reaching the JNU late despite several pleas by students unions, asserting that they responded to the Police Control Room (PCR) calls and law-and-order situation professionally to control the violence on the campus.

A senior police officer said that the internal security of the JNU lies with the varsity administration.

A fact-finding committee under Jt.CP (West) Shalini Singh has been set up to look after all these aspects, he added.

The Crime Branch also visited the spot to collect CCTV footages and the entry register of the campus gate to identify the miscreants behind the violence, said Delhi Police PRO Mandeep Singh Randhawa.
The Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness is asking individuals across the state to volunteer for the upcoming annual counts of individuals experiencing homelessness in Connecticut. The Pointin-Time Count will take place on the evening of Jan. 21 into the morning of Jan. 22. A Youth Outreach & Count runs from Jan. 22-28.

Each year, the Point-in-Time Count surveys adults and families with children for one night, followed by the Outreach & Count, a week-long count of youth. These counts provide two sources of data that are used to measure the extent of homelessness in the state and enables a comparison of how homelessness is trending from year-to-year, according to a statement from the coalition.

Like all states and communities, Connecticut is also required to report this data to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, who use it to compile the Annual Assessment of Homelessness Report to Congress, according to the statement.

CCEH says that separate census for youth is critical, because many are missed during the PIT Count because they often do not access adult emergency shelters or other homeless services. For those experiencing homelessness, these counts offer a chance for young people to connect with volunteer surveyors who can record their needs, add them to community lists for housing resources, and guide them to services and supports that that can end their homelessness.

The 2019 PIT Count estimated that 3,033 people in Connecticut were experiencing homelessness, 577 of them children, according to the statement. The 2019 Youth Outreach & Count identified 337 unaccompanied youth under age 25 who reported having been literally homeless the night of the Point-in-Time Count and 674 unaccompanied youth who reported being unstably housed that night. The full 2019 PIT and Youth Count Report can be found at www.cceh.org/pit/data-and-reports.

As CCEH and our partners across Connecticut work to bring an end to homelessness for all individuals, families, and youth in our state, we rely heavily on these counts to help us measure whether and how well our strategies are working, said CCEH CEO Richard Cho. This year, we will need more volunteers than ever to ensure an accurate count, and we hope that congregations, businesses, college students, municipalities, and any individual interested in engaging in efforts to end homelessness will join us for this important effort.

Connecticut has been a national leader in ending homelessness, having reduced the number of people experiencing homelessness by 25 percent since 2007. The success of these Counts depends on the participation of volunteers. Volunteers will attend a brief training before hitting the streets in teams led by members of Connecticuts homeless service-provider community.

Visit www.cceh.org/volunteer to sign up.

Volunteer surveyors will be using a mobile app called Counting Us, developed by Canton, MA based company, Simtech Solutions. The 2020 PIT Count and Youth Outreach & Count are made possible through support from the Department of Housing, Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, Fairfield Countys Community Foundation, Farmington Bank Community Foundation, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, and Melville Charitable Trust. Learn more by visiting cceh.org.
As many countries close their borders to the globes largest refugee crisis since the Second World War, a Winnipeg legal expert on refugee resettlement has written the book on the subject and Canadas experience as a global leader.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 6/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As many countries close their borders to the globes largest refugee crisis since the Second World War, a Winnipeg legal expert on refugee resettlement has written the book on the subject and Canadas experience as a global leader.

Crossing Laws Border: Canadas Refugee Resettlement Program by Shauna Labman shows the role that law plays in resettlement programs and what can help or hinder refugees being able to call a new country home.

Her book, which will be launched later this month, is an in-depth look at how national and international law and policies shaped Canadas resettlement programs.

Labman, an associate professor of human rights at the University of Winnipegs Global College, taught immigration and refugee law at the University of Manitobas Robson Hall for several years and has an academic and personal connection to the issue.

At the U of M, she helped set up a program for law students to assist in-country asylum seekers prepare their refugee claims at Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Councils Welcome Place. Her family is part of a group that sponsored a refugee family that was selected for resettlement by Canadian immigration officials.

But it was Labmans first job after being called to the bar in Ontario that pulled her toward refugee resettlement. She was sent to India by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to interview asylum seekers who arrived in that country to see if they were eligible for refugee resettlement in another country. They werent allowed permanent resident status in India because it wasnt a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, as was Canada and many other countries.

"I saw how ad hoc resettlement was," she said. Labman returned to Canada from India and decided to do a masters degree in refugee resettlement. Her masters thesis titled "The Invisibles" was about refugees who remained unsettled without a country to call home or a "durable solution."

Labmans new book, Crossing Laws Border: Canadas Refugee Resettlement Program, will be launched on Jan. 16 at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers.

Now, shes written a book about how the law has affected refugee resettlement and asylum policies in Canada, including the arrival of the Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s and the resettling of Syrian refugees in recent years.

Theres been much written about refugee law but very little about legislation, government policy and increasingly complex rules for refugee resettlement, Labman said.

"The problem is the information is presented in really siloed containers," Labman said Sunday. Theres not a lot of government information about the resettlement of privately sponsored refugees versus government-assisted refugees or asylum seekers, she said.

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Canada, her book says, has hung onto an informal resettlement program thats allowed it to maintain "complete and selective control over those it chose to admit and protect."

The country that prides itself on welcoming refugees has a history of "humanitarian hesitation," said Labman.

Canada was part of the UN committee that drafted the 1951 Refugee Convention but didnt sign onto it until 1969  long after most western countries. It obliges countries not to send back refugees whove arrived in their territories. That includes asylum seekers who walk across the border or sail into a Canadian port, who can verify their claim for refugee protection.

"We have to remember we have a legal obligation to refugees," Labman said.

Her book launch is set for Jan. 16 at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 01/06/2020



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alum Caila Quinn is engaged to her boyfriend Nick Burrello!"Can't wait to spend the rest of my life with my best friend," Caila captioned a photo of the pair all dressed up on Sunday that showed off her diamond engagement ring. "#MrsBtoBe."Caila also posted a video on Instagram of herself jumping into a hotel bed covered in pink rose petals, which were placed to form a giant heart. She followed that up with a video of herself staring at her ring while in the bathtub."Still soaking it in," she captioned the image.After two years of dating, Nick popped the question on January 2 in Sarasota, FL, Us Weekly reported Nick, 27, turned his marriage proposal to Caila, 28, into a family affair, as he decided to get down on one knee on the way to visiting her grandparents."He was like, 'We're going to go on a little detour and we're going to spend the weekend with both of our parents," Caila recalled to Us."He rented an Airbnb for all of us to stay in, the six of us. So, from visiting my grandparents, we drove a couple of hours to another little town and he said that he wanted to do dinner, just the two of us."Nick reportedly planned a "very romantic, elaborate evening," which began with dinner at the Ritz Carlton, where he had also booked the pair a suite and decorated the room with roses and candles."As we start walking up the table at sunset, by the beach, there was an acoustic guitar playing this beautiful romantic song, 'The Way You Look Tonight' and I start tearing up," Caila admitted."And it was just a special evening where we had dinner by the ocean and we kind of talked about our relationship, our lives together. It was just the two of us. Then, at the end of the dinner, he asked me to slow dance and I said, 'Okay.' So we started slow dancing and I'm swaying in his arms and then he gets on one knee and he asks me."After Caila said yes, both sets of their parents rushed in from around the corner to congratulate the happy couple and participate in a toast.Caila and Nick intend to marry in 2020 and are considering tying the knot in Sarasota, Us reported.Caila shared with the magazine fellow former bachelorettes Sharleen Joynt and Olivia Caridi will definitely be invited to the ceremony.The newly-engaged couple just rang in the New Year together and gushed about their relationship on January 1."Happy new year!! Can't wait to start the next one with you," Caila captioned an Instagram post of herself kissing Nick on the cheek.As for the private equity real estate investor and Harvard University graduate, he wrote on his own Instagram account, "Around the world and back again. A year full of exploration, family, and friends. Here's to topping this list in 2020."Caila found fame when she competed for Ben Higgins ' heart on 's 20th season.Although she didn't end up with Ben, Caila told Us she's every grateful for her time on the show because it placed her on a path that eventually led to meeting her future husband."I feel really lucky because I feel like I wasn't meant to go on the show to find love there," Caila explained."I was meant to go on the show to find Nick. If I wasn't on the show, I wouldn't ever have met him because I would never have been a blogger and that's who introduced us and set us up on our first date. So, I think everything happens for a reason and I thank God every day."Caila, who moved from Hudson, OH to New York, NY after her stint on the show, confirmed she was dating Nick in October 2017.Caila shared a photo at the time of Nick and herself kissing underneath a classic movie theater banner in Cleveland, OH, that read: "Nick Meets the Parents. PS They Love You."The photo was captioned by Caila, "Now playing in a theater near you."In a separate video Caila shared, the couple was strolling hand-in-hand and exchanged kisses before she surprised him with the adorable customized sign. Nick's reaction was priceless, as he was both shocked and flattered by the gesture.Caila later revealed in a September 2018 blog post on her website Olivia had actually set them up."My girlfriend Olivia had briefly pulled up a picture earlier that night in an effort to set us up. I really wasn't even looking for someone at the time, having been in New York for over two years -- I thought all the good ones had deserted," Caila wrote, according to Us."But Olivia sold me with, 'I feel like you guys are similar. He's a thoughtful listener.' So from one party to this rustic bar, I trusted my friend."On , Ben eliminated Caila right after his round of overnight Fantasy Suite dates in favor of eventual runner-up JoJo Fletcher and winner Lauren Bushnell , from whom he split in May 2017.Caila, who was 24-years-old at the time Ben broke up with her, was blindsided, crushed and sent home before a Rose Ceremony in Jamaica."I thought I'd be getting engaged in a week-and-a-half. I was ready," Caila said in tears following her ouster."I was ready to get married. I was ready to be his wife. I was ready. I was ready for our future. It's all I thought about. My purpose in life is to love other people and I don't know why I haven't found it yet. I thought this was it. I thought this was it. I was ready. I didn't see this coming. I love him, too. Like, I still love him."That same year, Caila appeared on Season 3 of Bachelor in Paradise and left the show still dating Jared Haibon . Caila even met Jared's family in Rhode Island, but she revealed during an August 2016 episode of After Paradise that "mystical forces" contributed to their split.Jared's tight friendship with a very jealous and possessive Ashley Iaconetti seemed to be the reason behind his split with Caila about six weeks after filming wrapped.Jared and Ashley reconciled in May 2018 after remaining friends for years and tied the knot in August 2019.Interested in more news? Join our The Bachelor Facebook Group
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When the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) announced in 2018 the termination of its 12-year outsourcing contract with Northrop Grumman and plans to migrate to other suppliers, it marked an end of an era. For nearly 20 years, a handful of states and at least one large local government have pursued outsourcing strategies that put much of IT in the hands of big IT firms, contractors and system integrators.The idea that government should privatize its tech operations took root in the late 1990s when computing in the public sector increased substantially, becoming more complex and costly. For mayors, county executives and especially governors, the growing burden of expensive hardware, software and specialized tech workers hit their budgets hard just as costs for education, health care and crime fighting continued to rise. At the same time, the growth of large-scale system integrators, along with fast-growing tech firms  IBM, Unisys and HP, for example  created an opportunity to change how government procured and ran its computer systems.In 1999, Connecticut Gov. John Rowland explained why he wanted to change the role of IT in his state. I hope that government entities, whether [theyre] cities, counties or states, take a very serious look at getting out of the business of information technology, he told a governors Task Force on Information Technology during the National Governors Association meeting in February that year. Rowland, who was in the process of outsourcing his states entire IT operation to systems integrator EDS for an estimated $1.35 billion over seven years, said the cost savings and improvement in services would be worth the effort.Rowland wasnt the only government chief executive to believe outsourcing could be a better and cheaper way to run IT. That same year, San Diego County awarded a contract to Computer Sciences Corporation worth more than $500 million over a 10-year period to run a substantial portion of its computer systems. Part of the plan was to use the contract to bring in new technology at a faster pace, allowing the county to move more services online while holding down overall costs.Like Rowland, the county believed that government shouldnt be in the business of running technology. Former San Diego County Chief Administrator Lawrence Prior toldthat outsourcing this non-core business offers the best available opportunity to control costs and hold expenditures at a steadier level.Not surprisingly, state and local government borrowed the idea of wholesale, mega-outsourcing deals from the private sector. In the 1980s, GM outsourced its entire IT operations to EDS. Kodak did the same with IBM. Like Connecticut and San Diego, these firms and others emphasized that technology was not part of their essential business and should be run by experts who could do it better and at a lower cost.As enticing as this sounded, it soon became apparent that privatizing IT in the public sector was easier said than done. Connecticuts multi-year contract with EDS quickly ran into opposition from labor unions, legislators, the state comptroller and several state agencies. Not long after Rowland told fellow governors at the NGA meeting about the benefits of outsourcing, the project in Connecticut was dead.Still, the interest in large-scale outsourcing continued to resonate, especially at the state level. In 2003, Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a former telecommunications businessman, created VITA as part of an IT consolidation and streamlining program. In 2005, he privatized the states IT systems and services, signing a $2 billion contract with Northrop Grumman to run tech for the state, with VITA overseeing the outsourced work. In 2006, Texas undertook a statewide IT consolidation project, which included outsourcing its data centers to IBM. In 2009, Georgia signed contracts with IBM and AT&T to run the states IT infrastructure and to provide tech services to state agencies.Two other states that embraced the outsourcing fever during this period were Pennsylvania and Florida. The Keystone State has had a series of large contracts with tech services firm Unisys, starting in 1999 with a $621 million deal to consolidate its mainframe operations that was extended several times. In 2014, the state and Unisys signed a seven-year, $681 million contract to move computing operations to the cloud. Florida, which has been a long-time proponent of outsourcing for just about every state service, entered into several IT contracts with vendors back around 2003, but many had to be rebid after allegations of mismanagement.While Georgias mega-outsourcing deal has operated relatively smoothly, both Virginia and Texas ran into trouble with their efforts. Some of the challenges were around transitioning IT workers from government jobs to the private sector, as was the case initially in Virginia. Structuring a contract to privatize an enterprise-scale computing environment also proved daunting, as did managing something so complex. But universally, tech firms struggled to provide state agencies with the level of service that had been promised.When Texas turned to IBM to consolidate 27 state agencies into two new data centers, the effort proved too daunting for the tech giant. Deadlines were missed and when the state tried to renegotiate the contract, progress stalled. By 2010, Texas decided to rebid the $863 million deal and break up the consolidation into smaller chunks involving a variety of contractors, not just one.That thinking mirrors somewhat the plan announced by Virginias VITA last July to implement a multi-supplier model rather than rely on a single vendor to manage the states IT services. Georgia has also begun to move in this direction, with plans to issue smaller, short-term contracts, covering PCs and cloud computing, for example, rather than the mega-deals that covered as much as a decade of service in some cases.What will happen with outsourcing 20 years hence? Two decades ago, government computing was still heavily mainframe-based; client-server computing was where a lot of resources were focused; and the Internet was just beginning to become a mainstream phenomenon, though it would be years before social media and cloud computing would resonate. Going big with IT outsourcing made sense to public officials who believed government should be in the business of government, not running computers.Today, the landscape is vastly different. The desire to turn over computing to the big integrators and tech firms has dissipated. But its hard to rule out the appeal of big firms with lots of expertise handling the digital needs of government, always a tech laggard. Microsoft just signed a massive $10 billion deal to handle cloud computing for the Pentagon, for example. Whos to say big deals wont come back to state and local government too?
The Senior Pastor of Latter Rain Assembly, Tunde Bakare, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to sustain his legacy by picking a successor before 2023.

The cleric in a live broadcast in his church on Sunday explained that by institutionalizing a system of succession, Mr Buhari would join the league of strong world leaders like the late Deng Xiaoping of China; the late Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Goh Chok Tong of Singapore.

In three decades, that programme gave China a succession of leaders who piloted Chinas economic transformation, including the current President, Xi Jinping. Without their foresight, we would not be running to China today to finance our shortsightedness, Punch Newspaper quoted Mr Bakare to have said.

We must also learn from Nelson Mandela who stepped aside after one term, but not without positioning the likes of Thabo Mbeki and Cyril Ramaphosa. We must learn from the success story of Singapore, whose former Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong, once said, Mr Lee Kuan Yew has always emphasised political succession, and when I took over, likewise, I planned for successionPrime Minister Lee is also working very hard to plan for succession.

Therefore, even as we build institutions of democratic governance, a key responsibility that history has bestowed on President Muhammadu Buhari at this turning point in our journey to nationhood is to institutionalise systems of accurate succession that will build and sustain the Nigeria we desire. This is a task that must be done.

Mr Bakares statement is coming about a week after he paid Mr Buhari a visit, and he has, at different fora, postured himself as a potential successor to President Muhammadu Buhari.

The cleric who himself was the running mate of then candidate Muhammadu Buhari in the 2011 presidential elections, last year said there was a divine arrangement for him to become Nigerias president when Mr Buharis tenure ends in 2023.

Also, in an interview published last January in Calgary, Canada, he predicted that he would succeed Mr Buhari as Nigerias 16th president.

Mr Buhari on his part has said has no intention of grooming anyone to succeed him in office.

Succession is very funny because if I did find anybody, I will create more problems for him or her. Let those who want to be president try as much as I did, the president said last July.

But Mr Bakare insisted that anyone in government that does not concern himself about succession is destroying his own legacy.

Let us ask God for the grace of accurate succession; that he (Buhari) will not hand over the baton of government and governance to thieves and perverts, to corrupt and power-drunk individuals, but those who are true patriots, who will serve like our founding fathers served; though not perfect, they did their best.

Mr Bakare also condemned the attempt by the legislature to clamp down on social media critics. He said the move was from enemies of the nation who rig the system to enthrone their stooges and use them to corner resources and opportunities.

They are the political bandits and pseudo-democrats who are maniacal in merchandising the will of the people, from masterminding vote-buying to engineering seemingly spontaneous outbreaks of political violence. These are the true enemies of Nigeria, he added.
South China Holdings (HKG:413) shareholders are no doubt pleased to see that the share price has had a great month, posting a 32% gain, recovering from prior weakness. Longer term shareholders are no doubt thankful for the recovery in the share price, since it's pretty much flat for the year, even after the recent pop.

Assuming no other changes, a sharply higher share price makes a stock less attractive to potential buyers. While the market sentiment towards a stock is very changeable, in the long run, the share price will tend to move in the same direction as earnings per share. So some would prefer to hold off buying when there is a lot of optimism towards a stock. One way to gauge market expectations of a stock is to look at its Price to Earnings Ratio (PE Ratio). A high P/E ratio means that investors have a high expectation about future growth, while a low P/E ratio means they have low expectations about future growth.

See our latest analysis for South China Holdings

How Does South China Holdings's P/E Ratio Compare To Its Peers?

We can tell from its P/E ratio of 15.13 that there is some investor optimism about South China Holdings. As you can see below, South China Holdings has a higher P/E than the average company (8.2) in the leisure industry.

SEHK:413 Price Estimation Relative to Market, January 6th 2020

That means that the market expects South China Holdings will outperform other companies in its industry. Clearly the market expects growth, but it isn't guaranteed. So investors should always consider the P/E ratio alongside other factors, such as whether company directors have been buying shares.

How Growth Rates Impact P/E Ratios

Probably the most important factor in determining what P/E a company trades on is the earnings growth. Earnings growth means that in the future the 'E' will be higher. Therefore, even if you pay a high multiple of earnings now, that multiple will become lower in the future. Then, a lower P/E should attract more buyers, pushing the share price up.

Story continues

South China Holdings shrunk earnings per share by 16% over the last year. But EPS is up 50% over the last 3 years. And over the longer term (5 years) earnings per share have decreased 14% annually. This growth rate might warrant a below average P/E ratio.

A Limitation: P/E Ratios Ignore Debt and Cash In The Bank

The 'Price' in P/E reflects the market capitalization of the company. In other words, it does not consider any debt or cash that the company may have on the balance sheet. The exact same company would hypothetically deserve a higher P/E ratio if it had a strong balance sheet, than if it had a weak one with lots of debt, because a cashed up company can spend on growth.

While growth expenditure doesn't always pay off, the point is that it is a good option to have; but one that the P/E ratio ignores.

Is Debt Impacting South China Holdings's P/E?

Net debt totals a substantial 171% of South China Holdings's market cap. If you want to compare its P/E ratio to other companies, you must keep in mind that these debt levels would usually warrant a relatively low P/E.

The Verdict On South China Holdings's P/E Ratio

South China Holdings has a P/E of 15.1. That's higher than the average in its market, which is 10.7. With relatively high debt, and no earnings per share growth over twelve months, it's safe to say the market believes the company will improve its earnings growth in the future. What we know for sure is that investors have become more excited about South China Holdings recently, since they have pushed its P/E ratio from 11.5 to 15.1 over the last month. If you like to buy stocks that have recently impressed the market, then this one might be a candidate; but if you prefer to invest when there is 'blood in the streets', then you may feel the opportunity has passed.

When the market is wrong about a stock, it gives savvy investors an opportunity. People often underestimate remarkable growth -- so investors can make money when fast growth is not fully appreciated. We don't have analyst forecasts, but you could get a better understanding of its growth by checking out this more detailed historical graph of earnings, revenue and cash flow.

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking at a few good candidates. So take a peek at this free list of companies with modest (or no) debt, trading on a P/E below 20.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Iraqi President Barham Salih is being candid about one of his biggest fears: that Iraq won't be able to "survive another conflict in the Middle East."

The New Yorker's Robin Wright interviewed Salih on Sunday, just days after President Trump authorized an airstrike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Soleimani was targeted while in Baghdad, and the United States did not inform the Iraqi government of its plans. In the aftermath of the strike, the Iraqi parliament voted to compel the government to expel foreign troops from the country; there are more than 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Iran has also promised to retaliate against the U.S.

Iraq has seen its share of conflicts, including a war with Iran that lasted for eight years and achieved nothing. "Did this gain us any security?" Salih asked. "Did this bring us any stability? No. A lot of people were killed. A lot of people were maimed. A lot of resources were wasted and squandered." War should never be started "because you never know how it ends," he said, and Iraq "should never serve as a gate for others" or "fight a war, paid for by Iraqi resources and Iraqi lives, for others."

Should a conflict break out between the U.S. and Iran, it would likely "undermine the hard-won stability that we have achieved after years of conflict, and certainly after the last war against ISIS," Salih said. "If we are not careful, we may go beyond the brink, God help us all, in the neighborhood and internationally, as well." This would have "terrible consequences for Iran and the region at large," and countries in the Middle East should focus instead on creating job opportunities for youth and educational reforms, he added. Otherwise, young people could "fall prey to extremism and destabilize not only our societies but global security." Read the entire interview at The New Yorker.

More stories from theweek.com

America is guilty of everything we accuse Iran of doing

Republican Kelly Loeffler sworn in as Georgia's newest U.S. senator

Pompeo and Pence reportedly pushed Trump to kill Soleimani. Pentagon leaders were 'stunned' Trump agreed.


ABP News concluded its highly-acclaimed show, Shikhar Sammelan, on 02 January at The Lalit, New Delhi. The flagship show highlighted various views and discourses on the government, the upcoming Delhi elections, and other national imperatives such as CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), NRC (National Register of Citizens), NPR (National Population Register) and the happenings in J&K.

The knowledge-sharing platform was attended by the Honourable Home Minister Amit Shah, who gave his first interview of 2020 on ABP News. Various dignitaries from the ruling and opposition parties as well as several renowned journalists attended the conclave and deliberated on pressing national issues.

Addressing the ongoing perplexity on the issue of CAA, Honourable Home Minister Amit Shah said There is no violation of Article 14(A) of the Indian Constitution. Citizenship is not being given on the basis of religion. Refugees are equally our responsibility and we will treat them with respect. Exploited Muslims have also been given citizenship.

In making the summit highly informative, Shikhar Sammelan also hosted dignitaries such as Sambit Patra (National Spokesperson  BJP), Abhay Dubey (Congress Spokesperson), Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi (Union Minister of Minority Affairs), Keshav Prasad Maurya (Deputy Chief Minister  Uttar Pradesh), Sudhanshu Trivedi (National Spokesperson  BJP), Gaurav Vallabh (National Spokesperson  Congress), Tarek Fatah (Journalist and Author), Manish Tewari (Former Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting) and Ravi Shankar Prasad (Union Law Minister).



Ensuring perfect coordination amongst the debating dignitaries, the summit was moderated by versatile anchors of ABP News such as Sumit Awasthi, Anurag Muskaan, Romana Isar Khan, Rubika Liyaquat, and Shobhna Yadav.

Elaborating on the summit, Avinash Pandey, CEO  ABP News Network, said, It has always been our prime responsibility to deliver quality content to viewers, ensuring they can act as well-informed, empowered citizens. Accordingly, Shikhar Sammelan was a summit that focused on imparting the correct facts to the public. The conclave saw a wide variety of discussions and analysis of the governments performance. Our overarching intention is to ensure people are aware of the intricacies of the nations pressing issues while making the content more engaging.

About Shikhar Sammelan

A platform that deliberates on relevant issues of significance to the common people, Shikhar Sammelan provides an opportunity for both the government and opposition to debate on these challenges and outline the way forward.

Key Highlights:
Imagine driving for hundreds of miles anxious to take a potty break, and there's not a Buc-ee's to be found anywhere.

While that might sound like a nightmare for Texas motorists, it's a cold reality in most other states. That's why a couple of southern states are eager beavers to get a Buc-ee's in their backyard.

The beloved Texas-based mega-pitstop planted its first flag out of state in Baldwin County, Alabama, last January.

And in September, Florida broke ground for the beaver in Dayton Beach. It was such big news, even the governor tweeted about it.

Thumbs: Castro drops out; Buc-ees moves in

Now Georgia is clearing the path for Buc-ee's. The location at Warner Robins, Georgia, will have 116 gas pumps and 53,000-square feet of retail space. Even those living in the Peach State's biggest city know this is no ordinary gas station.

Recently, Atlanta Magazine touted, "While Buc-ees may be designed for pit-stops on long road trips, its also a destination unto itself. 53,000 square feet is bigger than the average Best Buy. Inside, youll find the companys beaver mascot slapped on just about everything money can buy..."

Of course,the article also praised Buc-ee's immaculately clean bathrooms, walls of trail mix, jerky, and of course, Beaver nuggets, along with mouth watering BBQ sandwiches.

It's all part of co-founder Arch "Beaver" Aplin's plan for "world domination." So hopefully in the near future as you travel east towards Disney World or points unknown, there will be a familiar looking beaver there to greet you.

Danny Hermosillo is the Digital News Editor for Chron.com | Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com | Follow him on Twitter at @Dannyherm1| Email him at Danny.Hermosillo@chron.com
Fans of the hit Netflix series "You" are getting acquainted with the second season's stars and some are excited to find out one of the cast members is from San Antonio.

This season, fans met Forty, a recovering addict turned aspiring screenwriter who is the brother of Love, who is the new romantic interest of the main character, Joe. James Scully, the actor who plays Forty, is a San Antonio native and a North East School of the Arts graduate.

Fans of the show started researching the character and pulled up his Wikipedia page, revealing his Alamo City hometown. Facebook posts and tweets mentioning the San Antonio connection are racking up attention on both platforms, with fans tagging their fellow binge-watchers to key them in.

"Wow I did not know Forty from You was from San Antonio, that's crazy," one fan tweeted.

Some didn't know if they should believe the news, but it hasn't been a secret that Scully hails from the 210.

RELATED: Celebrities spotted in San Antonio in 2019

The San Antonio Express-News caught up with the star in 2018, when he was starring in "Heathers," a reboot of the '80s movie, as bad boy J.D.

Scully attended Driscoll Middle School and then NESA for high school, where he graduated from in 2010. Sully told the Express-News he was a "the butt of several jokes in high school," but also told Interview Magazine that attending the performing arts school was the "biggest thing" to happen to him at that point. He moved to New York to pursue his acting career after high school.

The actor, now 27, said he visits his family in the Alamo City as much as possible.

The Pearl is getting bigger and bigger. The river is getting longer and longer. Where was all this when I was a teenager there? he said in the 2018 interview.

Both seasons of "You" are available on Netflix.

Madalyn Mendoza is a breaking news reporter and general assignment writer. Read her on our breaking news site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | mmendoza@mysa.com | @MaddySkye
Devastating bushfires burning across Australia have generated massive clouds of smoke that can be seen from outer space.

Stunning footage from NASA shows how smoke billowing from the country's east coast has created a cloud bigger than the area of the continental United States.

Images taken by the SuomiNPP satellite in space on New Year's Day showed the large palls before they merged into an enormous mass that has since travelled across the southern hemisphere.

Scroll down for video

NASA's GEOS-5 model, which calculates the density of black carbon particles generated by fires, tracked the trajectory of the smoke cloud over a ten-day period

A sequence beginning on New Year's Eve shows winds carrying the smoke eastward, moving across New Zealand and the South Pacific, before reaching South America in less than a week

Images taken by the SuomiNPP satellite in space on New Year's Day show clouds of smoke billowing from bushfire zones all along the eastern coast of Australia

The agency's GEOS-5 model, which calculates the density of black carbon particles generated by fires, tracked the trajectory of the smoke cloud over a ten-day period.

A sequence beginning on New Year's Eve shows winds carrying the smoke eastward, moving across New Zealand and the South Pacific, before reaching South America in less than a week.

The cloud travelled over 12,000km, before finally becoming dispelled by wind current, according to Severe-Weather.eu.

Bushfires in Australia have become so intense, clouds of smoke crossed the Tasman Sea and reached New Zealand last week.

South Island settlements were left in a haze last Wednesday after wind pushed smoke from the NSW and Victorian bushfires 2,000 kilometres across the ditch.

A satellite image showed the entire South Island covered in smoke and spreading to the west coast of the North Island.

Another satellite image highlighted bushfire hotspots around Australia

Satellite pictures show smoke blanketing the East Gippsland region of Victoria on Saturday

Images taken in places such as Christchurch, Queenstown, Dunedin, Wanaka and Otago showed a thick haze filling the skies.

On Monday, Canberra's air quality was the worst of any major city in the world after winds carried in smoke from bushfires in NSW.

The Department of Home Affairs has told staff to stay home after thick bushfire smoke blanketed the country's capital.

Staff have been told to stay away from Canberra headquarters for 48 hours, but some essential employees will work from other locations.

At least three people were killed on Saturday, while four people missing in Victoria are feared dead. As a fire front approached the town of Batlow (pictured) on Saturday, the sky was filled with orange flames and thick, grey plumes of smoke

This picture taken on December 31, 2019 shows a firefighter hosing down trees and flying embers in an effort to secure nearby houses from bushfires near the town of Nowra on the NSW south coast

The Environment Protection Authority has also recorded 'very poor' air quality in Melbourne's metropolitan area, attributing the smoke to bushfires burning in the state as well as in NSW and Tasmania.

Chief environmental scientist Andrea Henwood urged people to take precautions to take precautions, saying the smoke will linger until Wednesday.

A total of nine people have been killed in the New South Wales bushfires since Monday, taking the total death toll across the nation to 23.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews confirmed six people are still missing after the fires, which destroyed more than a million hectares - 800,000 in East Gippsland alone.

In total, more than six million hectares of land has been decimated in the blazes, which have been burning since about October.
WASHINGTON  U.S. officials on Monday braced for Iran to respond to the killing of its most powerful general, noting heightened military readiness in the country and preparing for a possible tit-for-tat attempt on the life of an American military commander.

President Donald Trump ordered the Jan. 2 strike against Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Irans elite Quds Force, after the death of an American contractor in Iraq. Now, as the massive demonstrations of Irans public mourning period for Soleimani come to a close, officials believe the next steps by America longtime foe will determine the ultimate course of the latest crisis.

While officials say American intelligence isnt clear on whether Irans latest military moves are designed to bolster Tehrans defenses or prepare for an offensive strike, the U.S. is continuing to reinforce its own positions in the region, including repositioning some forces. One official said the U.S. anticipated a major attack of some type within the next day or two.

On Monday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said no decision had been made about withdrawing troops from Iraq. Pro-Iranian factions in the Iraqi Parliament have pushed to oust American troops following Soleimanis killing on Iraqi soil. Esper spoke to reporters after a letter from a U.S. Marine general circulated that seemed to suggest a withdrawal had been ordered in response to a vote by the Iraqi Parliament over the weekend. Theres been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq, Esper said.

Soleimanis death, which has sparked major protests, further nuclear development and new threats of violence, has raised the prospect of a wide and unpredictable conflict in the Middle East and escalated tensions between Iran and the U.S.

The two nations have careened from one flare-up to another since Trump began his maximum pressure campaign against Iran shortly after taking office. He abrogated the 2015 nuclear deal and reimposed crushing economic sanctions, both steps aimed at preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and deterring the sort of regional aggression spearheaded by Soleimani.

Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions, said targeting Soleimani was not representative of a wholesale shift in American policy toward Iran, despite Secretary of State Mike Pompeos comments on Sunday that the U.S. was targeting Irans actual decision-makers rather than its network of proxy allies. Trump has repeatedly contended that he is not seeking regime change in Iran, as has been pushed by some of his more hawkish advisers.

Still, Trumps strike against Soleimani, a revered figure in Iran whose death sparked large displays of anger and grief, was a risky decision his Republican and Democratic predecessors opted not to take out of concern it would draw the U.S. and Iran closer to conflict.

U.S. officials are also aware that Iran could try to strike a high-level American leader in a tit-for-tat move, potentially a military commander.

One official said some Iranian ships have spread out, and while the intent isnt immediately clear, they could move rapidly to attack.

The U.S. military has increased protection of its forces, particularly in Iraq. Officials said a number of the recently deployed soldiers from the 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division had moved into Iraq from Kuwait in order to increase security for Americans there. The U.S. military has stopped all training of Iraqi forces to focus on force protection, officials said.

As of Monday, officials said, there had not been a broadly distributed order or recommendation to increase security at military installations worldwide. Instead, decisions were being left up to the commanders.

The U.S. militarys concern about its vulnerability to Iranian attack in the Persian Gulf region has been at a heightened state since about May, when the administration reported it was getting intelligence indications that Iran was planning attacks on U.S. interests in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. The Pentagon sent additional forces to the Gulf at that point, and in July it worked out an arrangement with the government of Saudi Arabia to send U.S. forces to a large base deep in the Saudi desert, in less obvious range of Iranian missiles.

The main hub for American military air operations throughout the Middle East is located at al-Udeid air base in Qatar  within easy range of Iranian missiles. American forces also are stationed in the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. The Navys 5th Fleet, which operates throughout the region, is based at Bahrain.

Meanwhile on Capitol Hil in the U.S.l, Democrats prepared largely symbolic resolutions under the War Powers Act to limit the presidents military actions regarding Iran. In a letter to House Democrats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the airstrike on Soleimani provocative and disproportionate and said it had endangered our servicemembers, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran.

Congress, which has the sole power to declare war, has complained that Trump did not provide advance notice of his airstrike in Baghdad. Trump did meet the 48-hour deadline required by the War Powers Act to notify Congress after the deadly drone strike. The document was classified, and no public version was released.

Senators will receive a briefing Wednesday on the situation, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Pompeo, Esper, CIA Director Gina Haspel and Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are expected to speak. The House is also expected to be briefed this week.

White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway, speaking Monday on Fox & Friends, dismissed complaints from Democrats about notification as a partisan action.

Pelosi said the notification raises more questions than it answers. This document prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner and justification of the Administrations decision to engage in hostilities against Iran, she said.

In remarks to reporters Monday, Gen. Milley insisted that the intelligence on which Trump based his decision to kill Soleimani called for urgent action.

Ill stand by the intelligence I saw, he said, adding that details had not been made public because they are classified. He said the intelligence showed Soleimani was plotting attacks and that the U.S. would have been negligent not to act. It was imminent, he said, and it was very, very clear in scale and scope. Did it exactly say who, what, when and where? No, but he was planning, coordinating and synchronizing significant operations against U.S. military forces in the region, and it was imminent.
Scary movie junkies, rejoice! The year ahead is packed with fright fests that will have you peeking over your shoulder and checking to make sure all the doors are locked  as all good horror movies should.

From modern adaptations of literary classics like The Invisible Man to new installments in fan-favorite horror franchises like The Purge and Saw to some intriguing original tales, the slate of upcoming horror movies for 2020 has something for every horror enthusiast.

Here are TIMEs most anticipated upcoming horror movies with release dates set over the course of the next year.

The Invisible Man (Feb. 28, 2020)

Following the failure of the Dark Universe, Universal is reviving its monster movie franchise with a modern reimagining of H.G. Wells 1897 novel The Invisible Man. Leigh Whannel (Insidious: Chapter 3, Upgrade) wrote and directed the standalone sci-fi thriller, which stars Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia Kass, a young woman who begins to suspect that her recently deceased abusive ex (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) isnt actually dead.

A Quiet Place Part II (March 20, 2020)

Writer-director John Krasinski is bringing his dystopian world of sound-hunting monsters back in A Quiet Place Part II, a follow-up to the 2018 original that TIMEs critic Stephanie Zacharek dubbed one of the most terrifyingly effective horror movies in years. While details about the sequels plot are being kept under wraps, we know that Emily Blunt (Krasinskis wife both on- and off-screen) will return as the shotgun-wielding, baby-birthing warrior Evelyn Abbott, alongside Millicent Simmonds as her daughter Regan and Noah Jupe as her son Marcus. Peaky Blinders Cillian Murphy and Atlantas Brian Tyree Henry have also signed on.

I really think that what well do is well see more of that family continuing to survive and finding out that theyre not the only ones, Henry told the Observer in June. And I think that were also going to get a few answers to the origin of where and how this whole thing happened.

Story continues

The New Mutants (April 3, 2020)

This long-delayed, horror-centric X-Men spin-off has undergone extensive reshoots  reportedly to at least somewhat better integrate it into the Marvel Cinematic Universe  since Disney acquired 21st Century Fox in March 2019. But its underlying storyline has seemingly stayed the same. The film, starring Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy and Antonio Banderas, centers on a group of young mutants who are being held against their will inside a secret facility thats running horrific tests on them.

Antlers (April 17, 2020)

Based on novelist and screenwriter Nick Antoscas short story The Quiet Boy, Antlers stars Keri Russell as a small-town Oregon teacher who, with the help of her sheriff brother (Jesse Plemons), tries to save a young student (Jeremy T. Thomas) from the dark secret hes harboring. Director Scott Cooper (Hostiles, Black Mass) is helming the monster movie, which looks to heavily feature the signature horror touch of producer Guillermo del Toro.

Antebellum (April 24, 2020)

From the producers of Get Out and Us comes another thriller with a trailer that reveals little about the mystery at the heart of its story. Janelle Monae takes the lead as Veronica Henley, a successful author who appears to find herself trapped between the realities of modern-day America and the pre-Civil War South. Helmed by writer-director duo Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, Antebellum also stars Marque Richardson II, Eric Lang, Jack Huston, Kiersey Clemons, Tongayi Chirisa, Gabourey Sidibe and Jena Malone.

Run (May 8, 2020)

Starring Sarah Paulson and Kiera Allen as Diane and Chloe Sherman, a mother and her 17-year-old daughter who uses a wheelchair, Run is an intimate thriller set almost entirely in the home where the pair live in isolation. Unfortunately for Chloe, when she begins to suspect that her mothers past is full of dark secrets, their relationship quickly and violently swerves off the rails. Aneesh Chaganty is directing from a screenplay he wrote with Searching co-writer Sev Ohanian.

Spiral: From the Book of Saw (May 15, 2020)

What? You thought Jigsaw  and his numerous successors  were finally done trapping people in torture devices intended to teach them a lesson about the fragility of life? Think again. Based on a story created by Chris Rock, who stars as a police detective investigating a series of grisly crimes with ties to the past, the forthcoming ninth entry in the Saw saga has been described as a reimagining and a spinning-off of the franchise. Samuel L. Jackson plays Rocks father, a veteran cop.

Josh Stolberg, who co-wrote the script with Pete Goldfinger, has confirmed on Twitter that the movie is not a sequel to their 2017 reboot Jigsaw, but that it does take place within the Saw series timeline. Its NOT a sequel to Jigsaw, he wrote. Its DEFINITELY in the timeline of ALL the films though.

Director Darren Lynn Bousman, who helmed Saw II, III, and IV, returns for Spiral.

Candyman (June 12, 2020)

Jordan Peele, the mastermind behind Get Out and Us, continues his foray into the world of horror with a spiritual sequel to Bernard Roses 1992 cult classic Candyman, which explores issues of race and class in America. The original movie stars Tony Todd as the titular hook-handed bogeyman, who, according to urban legend, is the undead son of a slave who has haunted Chicagos Cabrini-Green housing project since being lynched for having a love affair with a white woman in the late 1800s.

Candyman was a major inspiration for me as filmmaker, Peele said in a November 2018 statement. The original was a landmark film for black representation in the horror genre.

This time around, Todd will return for some applause-worthy moments alongside Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Colman Domingo and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who, despite reports to the contrary, director Nia DaCosta (Little Woods) says isnt taking over Todds original role.

I cant say whats happening in the film because we want it to be a surprise, but hes not replacing Tony Todd, DaCosta said in March. Thats been reported, and I was just like, I dont know what to say about this. This is not right.

The reboot was co-written by Peele and Win Rosenfeld, whose joint production company, Monkeypaw Productions, is producing alongside MGM Pictures.

The Purge 5 (July 10, 2020)

Universal Pictures

The Purge will commence in 5.4.3.2.1..Prepare yourself for yet another government-sanctioned night of lawless violence in The Purge 5, the fifth installment in the horror franchise set in a near-future United States where any and all crime is legal for one 12-hour period per year.

Its still unclear whether the Everado Gout-directed Purge 5 will be another prequel like 2018s The First Purge, or explore the fallout from the election in 2016s The Purge: Election Year.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (Sept. 11, 2020)

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson in The Conjuring 2. | Warner Bros. Pictures

Married demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (played by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson) will be investigating yet another case of (supposed) paranormal activity that their real-life counterparts took on in the 1970s.

This time, the focus will be on a man who used demonic possession as his defense for committing a murder. Its this guy who was on trial for committing a murder, executive producer James Wan told Bloody Disgusting. I think its the first time in Americas history where the defendant used possessions as a reason, as an excuse.

Michael Chaves (The Curse of La Llorona) will direct from a screenplay by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (The Orphan, The Conjuring 2).

Last Night in Soho (September 25th, 2020)

Not much is yet known about director Edgar Wrights (Baby Driver, Shaun of the Dead) forthcoming psychological thriller except that its set in 1960s London, involves some time travel, and stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Thomasin McKenzie, Matt Smith, Michael Ajao, Synnve Karlsen, Diana Rigg, Terence Stamp and Rita Tushingham.

That is a wrap on main unit photography on my next feature film, 'Last Night in Soho. Can't wait for you all to see @lastnightinsoho on a big screen near you, September 25th, 2020... pic.twitter.com/JTvSB7SEDB  edgarwright (@edgarwright) August 30, 2019

I realized I had never made a film about central London  specifically Soho, somewhere Ive spent a huge amount of time in the last 25 years, Wright told Empire of the movie. With Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, you make movies about places youve lived in. This movie is about the London Ive existed in.

Halloween Kills (Oct. 16, 2020)

Despite the fact that we last left Michael Myers trapped inside the basement of a burning house, the seemingly unkillable masked killer will be back to once again terrorize Jamie Lee Curtis Laurie Strode and her family in a sequel to the supremely successful 2018 franchise reboot, Halloween. And considering theres already a third movie titled Halloween Ends in the works for 2021  the 12th installment in the saga as a whole  it seems safe to say that Michael will survive whatevers thrown at him this time as well.

Halloween director David Gordon Green is returning to direct both sequels, which will feature appearances by characters from John Carpenters original 1978 classic including Kyle Richards Lindsey Wallace.

The Witches (Oct. 16, 2020)

If director Nicolas Roegs (Dont Look Now) 1990 adaptation of this Roald Dahl classic is any indication of what we can expect from Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump) forthcoming take, fans are in for a spooky treat. Anne Hathaway will follow in the footsteps of Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch, a powerful sorceress intent on ridding England of all its children by turning them into mice.
Predictably, following the targeted strike on General Qassem Soleimani when he stepped onto Iraq soil, Iran responded with its usual bombastic, existential (and, of course, anti-Israel) threats. What must have surprised the mullahs was that Trump, rather than countering with vague diplomatic language, gave as good as he got. That was Saturday. On Sunday, Trump upped the ante.

As you may recall, on Saturday, the mullahs promised to bomb American targets, destroy shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, and attack Israel:

[Gen. Gholamali] Abuhamzeh, commander of the Revolutionary Guards in the southern province of Kerman, foreshadowed a possible attack on "vital American targets" located in the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation of Soleimani's death. "The Strait of Hormuz is a vital point for the West and a large number of American destroyers and warships cross there," Abuhamzeh said according to a Reuters report, citing Tasnim news agency. "Vital American targets in the region have been identified by Iran since long time ago ... some 35 U.S. targets in the region, as well as Tel Aviv, are within our reach."

Each of those threats is unlikely. The mullahs know that if they touch the American homeland, none will survive the next few hours. They also know that the American military is feeling unconstrained under Trump and will respond ferociously to any attacks on military targets. Israel, with Trump in the White House, will also go full speed ahead should Iran target it. Lastly, with America now a major oil exporter and Israel a major natural gas producer, the threat to the Strait of Hormuz matters significantly less.

Nevertheless, at least rhetorically, Trump took the threats at face value, threw out the usual cautious diplomatic language, and spoke in words Iran understands:

Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2020

....hundreds of Iranian protesters. He was already attacking our Embassy, and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2020

....targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2020

Then, on Sunday, Trump did something remarkable and, to those of us who found the Democrats' predictably pro-Iran response to Soleimani's death disturbing, something wonderful. Not only did he use his Twitter feed to remind Iran that it was in his crosshairs, but he also reminded Congress that he is president, and that gives him unique powers.

Trump started the morning by telling Iran that it started this fight and that, if it chooses to continue, it can expect major American pushback:

They attacked us, & we hit back. If they attack again, which I would strongly advise them not to do, we will hit them harder than they have ever been hit before! https://t.co/qI5RfWsSCH  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2020

Trump next stated that while Iran could indeed continue the fight, its ill equipped military would be going up against the strongest fighting force in the history of the world:

The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World! If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way...and without hesitation!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2020

So far, so good. But the real beauty of Sunday's Trumpian Twitter storm was his reminder to Congress  or more accurately, his reminder to the Democrats in Congress  that the Constitution grants the president, as commander in chief and head of foreign policy, the sole power to respond to sudden attacks.

The long version of this power is that when the Drafters wrote the Constitution, the topic on August 17, 1787 was whether to give Congress broad authority to use military force by stating in Art. I 8 that Congress has the power to "make war." James Madison, however, objected because Congress is a deliberative body that cannot by its nature react quickly. The Drafters agreed with Madison's take on things and changed the proposed language to give Congress the power to "declare war." The Constitution, therefore, is specifically written to give the president authority to respond to "sudden attack."

Trump, being Trump, eschewed a scholarly argument. Instead, he kept it short, sweet, and powerful:

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2020

This is a man to be reckoned with.
Last week, China's state news agency announced the sentencing of three scientists for the creation of three gene-edited babies, two who were reportedly born in 2018, and a third who was not mentioned until recently.

Image Credit: Marcos__Silva / Shutterstock.com

The researchers, who all worked in China's Guangdong province, He Jiankui, Zhang Renli, and Qin Jinzhou, were all sentenced at the end of last year for their work, which led to three children controversially being born with edited genetics.

The team that shocked the world with the birth of genetically edited twins

Back in 2018, the scientific community and the general public were shocked by the work that researchers in China were reporting on. A team had announced the birth of the world's first genetically edited children, raising major questions surrounding the ethics and morales of the actions of the Chinese team.

He Jiankui, who announced the birth of two genetically edited twin girls, had caused major cause for concern surrounding the team's use of the gene-editing tool CRISPR. Up until this point, the technique had already caused a stir in the scientific community, due to the incredibly varied and useful list of applications that it had already found.

Since it was first developed for use in human genome editing back in 2013, CRISPR has already been used to help create new therapies and more accurate diagnoses for cancer, helped to eliminate malaria, improved IVF treatment, been instrumental in new HIV therapies, and much more.

However, He Jiankui and his colleagues' use of CRISPR demonstrated to the world the other side of genome editing. One which raises serious ethical concern.

Unqualified doctors in pursuit of fame

The trial, which was conducted in private, concluded with each of the three researchers being sentenced. He Jiankui was given three years in prison for practicing medicine without a license. Had his work caused deaths or serious health damage to the victims, this sentence could have been as long as ten years.

In addition, he was fined three million yuan ($430,000) for implanting genetically-engineered embryos into women. He was also found guilty of forging approval documents to give him the go-ahead to recruit the couple who participated in the study.

Zhang Renli received a lighter sentence of two years in prison and a 1 million yuan ($143,000) fine. Lastly, Qin Jinzhou received an 18-month sentence with a two-year reprieve and a 500,000 yuan ($72,000) fine.

The judge determined that all three researchers were not qualified as doctors, and had motives of seeking fame and profit from their work, crossing ethical boundaries to achieve this.

Sentences send message to the world that China opposes unethical gene-editing work

The work of this group has been deemed by others in the Chinese scientific community not only to be unethical and "crazy", but it is also considered to have damaged the reputation and advancement of science in China. The sentencing may instigate the enactment of tougher laws on gene editing, which are seen by many as long overdue.

Many in China's scientific community are pleased with the jail sentences, hoping that it will send a clear message to researchers in China that this work will not be tolerated, as well as sending the message to the rest of the world that China upholds ethical standards when it comes to scientific study.

Unfortunately, He Jiankui has not vocalized his regret for what he and his team did and does not recognize the potential danger he put participants in, nor the breach to ethics and morals. Rather, he is defending his research and believes standards of safety and ethics were observed.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar and Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray condemned the violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and said that it was a disturbing and fascist strike" by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

IMAGE: Police in riot gear stand guard inside the Jawaharlal Nehru University after clashes between students in New Delh. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters

Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday alleged that the "horrifying" violence unleashed on India's youth by goons was with the active abetment of the ruling Modi government and demanded an independent judicial inquiry into the violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University.

In a statement, she accused the Modi government of seeking to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent and said Sunday's "bone chilling" attack on students and teachers in JNU was a grim reminder of that.

"The voice of India's youth and students is being muzzled every day. The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on India's young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi government is deplorable and unacceptable," she charged.

Gandhi alleged that every day campuses and colleges are raided across India, either by the police or lumpen elements with support of the BJP government.

"Yesterday's bone chilling attack on students and teachers in JNU, Delhi is a grim reminder of the extent the government will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent," she said.

The Congress president said students and youth need affordable education, a deserving job, a promising future and a right to participate in the thriving democracy. "Sadly, the Modi government seeks to suffocate and restrain each one of these aspirations," she charged.

"The entire Congress party stands in solidarity with India's youth and students. We strongly deprecate the sponsored violence in JNU yesterday and demand an independent judicial inquiry," she said.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday termed the attack on students and teachers at JNU as a "disturbing and fascist strike" by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Banerjee said she had begun her political career as a student leader but never before witnessed such "brazen attack" on educational institutes.

"Whatever is happening across the country is very disturbing... I, too, was involved in student politics at one point in time, but never before have I witnessed this sort of an attack on students and educational institutions...

"Yesterday's was a fascist strike on the student community," Banerjee said.

Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar on Monday said JNU students were subjected to a "cowardly and planned attack", adding that use of violence to suppress democratic values won't succeed.

Pawar's remarks came as his party minister Jitendra Awhad joined the students protesting the violence, at the Gateway of India.

"JNU students and professors were subjected to a cowardly but planned attack. I strongly condemn this undemocratic act of vandalism and violence. Use of violent means to suppress democratic values and thought will never succeed," Pawar tweeted.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday compared the JNU violence with the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, and said students were feeling "unsafe" in the country.

Amid demands of resignation of Union Home Minister Amit Shah in view of the violence, Thackeray said politics over it can wait and the priority should be to bring take strict action against the attackers.

"The attack on JNU students on Sunday night reminded me of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack. Students are feeling unsafe in the country. I will not allow anything like JNU to happen in Maharashtra," he told reporters.

Asserting that students in Maharashtra were safe, Thackeray said he will not tolerate any move to hurt them.

Terming the masked attackers at JNU as "cowards", he said their identity should be revealed.

"If Delhi Police fail to find out perpetrators of the attack, then they will also be in the dock," he said.

To a query on protests by students at the Gateway of India in Mumbai against the JNU violence, the chief minister said, "I understand their rage. I am also equally unhappy with what has happened in JNU."
Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly issued a decree on Monday to form a ministerial cluster for investment that will be chaired by the prime minister.

The new ministerial cluster, according to the decree, will be responsible for encouraging investment, eliminating hurdles facing investors, and suggesting solutions to accelerate and simplify investors work.

The cluster will also be responsible for setting venture policies, proposing rules and priorities to achieve them, and drawing sectoral venture policies and foreign direct investment (FDI) development policy in Egypt.

The cluster will follow up on the implementation of decrees issued by the ministerial committee to settle investment disputes and coordinate with other ministerial committees to ensure the coherence of decrees that impact the investment climate in Egypt.

Moreover, it will draft policies to promote investment in Egypt and carry out missions required for achieving investment objectives.

The cluster includes the ministers of tourism and antiquities, planning and economic development, international cooperation, finance, local development, housing and urban development, agriculture, and trade and industry. It will also comprise the governor of Egypts Central Bank, the head of the General Authority for the Suez Canal Economic Zone, the executive director of Egypts Sovereign Wealth Fund Tharaa, and the executive head of General Authority for Free Zones and Investment.

The cluster is will convene at least once a month and can use the services of other experts and invite them to attend its meetings.

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URBANA, Ill. - Like most plants, soybeans pair up with soil fungi in a symbiotic mycorrhizal relationship. In exchange for a bit of sugar, the fungus acts as an extension of the root system to pull in more phosphorus, nitrogen, micronutrients, and water than the plant could on its own.

Mycorrhizal fungi occur naturally in soil and are commercially available as soil inoculants, but new research from the University of Illinois suggests not all soybean genotypes respond the same way to their mycorrhizal relationships.

"In our study, root colonization by one mycorrhizal species differed significantly among genotypes and ranged from 11 to 70%," says Michelle Pawlowski, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Crop Sciences at Illinois and co-author on a new study in Theoretical and Applied Genetics.

To arrive at that finding, Pawlowski grew 350 diverse soybean genotypes in pots filled with spores of a common mycorrhizal fungus. After six weeks, she looked at the roots under a microscope to evaluate the level of colonization.

"It was a little bit of a gamble because we didn't know much about soybean's relationship with mycorrhizae and did not know if differences in colonization among the soybean genotypes would occur. So when we screened the soybean genotypes and found differences, it was a big relief," Pawlowski says. "That meant there was a potential to find genetic differences, too."

The process of root colonization starts before fungal spores even germinate in the soil. Roots exude chemicals, triggering spores to germinate and grow toward the root. Once the fungus makes contact, there's a complex cascade of reactions in the plant that prevents the usual defensive attack against invading pathogens. Instead, the plant allows the fungus to enter and set up shop inside the root, where it creates tiny tree-like structures known as arbuscules; these are where the fungus and plant trade sugar and nutrients.

The study suggests there is a genetic component to root colonization rates in soybean. To find it, Pawlowski compared the genomes of the 350 genotypes and honed in on six genomic regions associated with differing levels of colonization in soybean.

"We were able to use all the information we have on the soybean genome and gene expression to find possible causal genes within these six regions," she says.

According to the study, the genes control chemical signals and pathways that call fungus toward roots, allow the plant to recognize mycorrhizal fungus as a "good guy," help build arbuscules, and more. "For almost every step in the colonization process, we were finding related genes within those regions," Pawlowski says.

Knowing which genes control root colonization could lead breeders to develop soybean cultivars with a higher affinity for mycorrhizal fungus, which could mean improved nutrient uptake, drought tolerance, and disease resistance.

"This environmentally friendly approach to improving soybean production may also help reduce the overuse of fertilizers and pesticides and promote more holistic crop production systems," says Glen Hartman, plant pathologist in the Department of Crop Sciences and crop pathologist for USDA-ARS.

###

The article, "Whole-genome resequencing identifies quantitative trait loci associated with mycorrhizal colonization of soybean," is published in Theoretical and Applied Genetics [DOI: 10.1007/s00122-019-03471-5]. Authors include Michelle Pawlowski, Tri Vuong, Babu Valliyodan, Henry Nguyen, and Glen Hartman. Funding was obtained from the United Soybean Board and the USDA Agricultural Research Service.

The Department of Crop Sciences is in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois.
German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel will pay a working visit to Russia on January 11 at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin press service said.

"The talks are expected to address vital international issues, including the situation in Syria, Libya, the escalation of tensions in the Middle East as a result of the U.S. air strike on the Baghdad airport on January 3," the report said.

The talks will also address the settlement of the internal Ukrainian conflict in the context of the implementation of the 2015 Minsk Package of Measures and the agreements reached at the summit in the Normandy format in Paris on December 9, 2019, the press service said.
Cerebral Palsy Alliance Foundation (CPARF) is proud to announce the award of nearly $16,000 in funding to its 2019 Small-Grant Cohort. CPARF funds research that will change the lives of people with CP, a disability that affects 18 million people globally.

Cerebral Palsy Alliance Foundation (CPARF) is proud to announce the award of nearly $16,000 in funding to its 2019 Small-Grant Cohort. The winning grants fund critical researcher training, equipment, and travel to several underserved nations to help treat people with cerebral palsy (CP) and assist their families.

CPARF funds research that will change the lives of people with CP, a disability that affects 18 million people globally.

Each member of the 2019 Small-Grant Cohort advances CPARFs mission in a tailored way. A training grant will support Dr. Susanne Martin Herz of University of California, San Francisco, as she learns how to administer the General Movements Assessment to diagnose CP quickly and prescribe vital early intervention therapies. She will share her experience with pediatricians in low- and middle-income countries and guide US-based pediatricians, leading to earlier diagnosis and treatment.

A small equipment grant will enable Northeastern Universitys Dr. Danielle Levac to set up a mobile virtual reality (VR) lab to understand how children with CP learn new movement skills in VR, as well as how they can transfer these skills to real environments. The labs mobility will help them reach more children than they ever have before.

CPARFs travel grants will take researchers to Malawi, Belize, and Zimbabwe. Katherine Herman and Juliette Schmidli of Otis College of Art and Design will teach caregivers in Malawi to use Appropriate Paper-Based Technology  affordable, templated, corrugated cardboard chairs that support children with CP so that they can sit upright, strengthen weakened muscles, and increase eye contact and social interaction as they observe their surroundings from a new perspective.

Dr. Margaret Cristofalo of Seattle University will visit the Childrens Rehabilitation Unit (CRU) in Zimbabwe to study how caregivers experience raising children with developmental disabilities. She will identify ways to improve long-term outcomes for children with CP and strengthen quality of life for their families. She will support interventions for these children, ensure that their caregivers give appropriate, effective care, and help support research at the CRU.

Long Island Universitys Dr. Nia Mensah will lead occupational and physical therapy students as they treat children with disabilities on a life-changing spring break trip to Belize  a country with nearly 400,000 people that currently has no occupational therapists and only one physical therapist.

CPARF will announce its Large-Grant Cohort later this year.

CPARFS MISSION

Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Foundation wont stop until people with CP can live pain-free, until they can live the lives they envision for themselves, and until they can express whats on their mind and be understood even when they cant communicate verbally. We won't stop until we can prevent CP in the first place. We won't stop until we find a cure. As the only organization in the world solely focused on CP research, CPARF is poised to reshape the disability landscape. Were poised to make breakthroughs. We are poised to change lives.

To learn more about CPARFs funded research projects, visit http://www.cparf.org or contact info@cparf.org.


Gov. Tom Wolf has ordered flags lowered to half-staff to honor former U.S. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, who passed away after battling cancer.

A Republican, Fitzpatrick represented Bucks County in the Philadelphia suburbs for four terms in Congress, with his final term ending in 2017. He also served as a Bucks County commissioner for a decade.

Fitzpatrick, who was 56, died Monday. His brother, U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Bucks, succeeded him in representing the district.

The Democratic governor praised Fitzpatrick for his willingness to work across the aisle to serve his district.

Mike Fitzpatrick honorably served Bucks County as a commissioner and as a congressman, fighting to make our communities stronger and find compromise in a bipartisan way, Wolf said in a statement. After receiving a cancer diagnosis in the prime of his life, he chose to not just courageously fight, but to share his story with the hope of giving strength to others. He will be greatly missed, and we offer our deepest condolences to his family and friends.

Wolf ordered U.S. and state flags to be lowered at all commonwealth facilities, public buildings and grounds. The flags were lowered Monday and will be lowered again on the day of Fitzpatricks interment, which hasnt been determined.

Many of Pennsylvanias leading elected officials, including U.S. Sens. Bob Casey Jr. and Pat Toomey, praised Fitzpatricks service and expressed sympathies to the Fitzpatrick family.

Former Gov. Mark S. Schweiker, a Republican and a longtime friend, said in a statement, Mike Fitzpatrick worked tirelessly to improve the lives of those he served."

State Sen. Steve Santarsiero, a Democrat who represents Bucks County, said Fitzpatricks devotion to his county - and his family - wont be forgotten.

His decades of public service as a Bucks County Commissioner and United States Congressman have left his imprint on every corner of the county," Santarsiero said. "We will honor him by continuing the hard work to preserve the best of Bucks County, while also making sure we leave no residents behind as we build a better future.

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A Canberra resident has issued a grim warning about the effect of toxic smoke billowing from raging bushfires, after finding the barely-used filter of his air purifier caked in ash and dirt from blazes burning along Australia's south coast.

A sobering sign of the pollution the area has experienced in recent weeks was captured in a photo by Colin Wakefield, as the Australian capital continues to be shrouded in a thick layer of smoke from fires across the region.

'The smoke is pretty dense again here in Canberra today,' Mr Wakefield posted on Facebook, alongside an image of two purifier filters, one new and one which has been used for less than six months, covered in dark grey soot.

'Usually it is a little darker than the new filter on the left, but as you can see it looks like a filter that's been in the same machine for [more than] 10 years.'

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A sobering sign of the pollution Australia's capital has experienced in recent weeks was captured in this photo by Canberra man Colin Wakefield; the image shows a new (left) and barely used air purifier (right) caked in ash and dirt from fires burning along the South Coast

Pictures show the apocalyptic scenes Canberrans woke to over the weekend, as the city continues to be blanketed in a thick layer of orange smoke (here, a cleaner works on the deserted forecourt of Parliament House on Sunday, January 5 2020)

Mum's 'Old Wives Tale' for neutralising bushfire smoke Soak towels in water and vinegar. Place towels over a clothes rack a metre from a fan or air conditioner, allowing fanned air to pass through the wet towels. Smoke should start to clear within 30 minutes, neutralising fully after a few hours. Source: Beechworth Community Facebook Advertisement

He urged residents of bushfire stricken areas to check air conditioners and purifiers for smoke-induced damage.

The stark warning comes hours after Canberra recorded the worst air quality on earth for the second time in a week, eclipsing the hazard levels of notoriously polluted New Delhi in India and Lahore in Pakistan.

Concerned locals replied to Mr Wakefield's post, with one woman saying: 'Imagine what we're breathing in.'

Others shared their own photos of dirt encrusted filters and air conditioning units.

'I'm in Canberra too and changed my air con filter, [it] was so gross. It hadn't even been done that long ago either,' said another, alongside a photo of a smoke stained screen.

Others shared their own photos of dirt encrusted filters and air conditioning units, as winds carry toxic smoke from bushfires across Australia's south east coast

One mother highlighted the silent effect of smoke by posting a photo of her foot covered in soot after cleaning the house barefoot over the weekend.

'I'm taping up the unused vents tomorrow. The house is smoky and apparently it's not going to let up!' she wrote in a comment.

'Vacuumed and mopped yesterday morning (had also done this 48 hours before) and after being indoors all day, this is the state of my feet!'

The disturbing images come as people in Canberra woke to another day of hazardous smoke on Monday, as air quality deteriorated in the capital yet again.

Staff from the Department of Home Affairs and child care centres across the city have been told to stay home after winds carried in smoke from bushfires across New South Wales.

Shops, museums and recreational facilities have all shut their doors.

One Canberra mother highlighted the silent effect of smoke by posting this photo of her foot covered in soot, after cleaning the house barefoot over the weekend

Last Thursday, an elderly woman died from respiratory distress moments after disembarking a Qantas flight at Canberra airport, which was blanketed in toxic smoke.

Air quality in Australia's capital was more than 10 times above hazardous levels on Thursday afternoon, according to local health authorities.

Acting chief health officer Dr Paul Dugdale told the Canberra Times on New Year's Day the capital experienced the worst air quality conditions since ratings were first measured 15 years ago.

Canberrans have been advised to avoid physical activity during heavy periods of smoke.
There were fresh fears for 4,000 Tata steel workers in Port Talbot after the boss of its Indian owner said he would not tolerate losses.

Natarajan Chandrasekaran, who has been chairman of Tata Sons for three years, said the plant in South Wales, which went 371 million into the red last year, up from 222 million the year before, had to become self-sustaining.

The Port Talbot steelworks complex in Neath Port Talbot, South Wales, UK

We cant have a situation where India keeps funding the losses just to keep it going, he told The Sunday Times.

Everyone will tell you the Tatas have gone way beyond to keep this going. Anybody else would have walked away.

Tata paid 6.2 billion for the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus in 2007, which owned the Port Talbot site.
THE DISTRICT Commissioners Office in Salt Cay  struck by three hurricanes over nine years - has finally been repaired and upgraded and is ready for business.





The building was first damaged in 2008 when category four hurricane Ike hit the TCI, and then again nine years later by hurricanes Irma and Maria.





On Friday, December 20, members of the Government visited the island as Premier Sharlene Cartwright Robinson cut the ribbon on the refreshed facility.





"I am elated for this project to be completed. An upgrade for Salt Cay is long overdue, she said.





"This office is the face of Government on these islands and today it is sending the right message.





Also attending the event were Deputy Speaker of the House Hon. Derek Taylor, Minister of Education Hon. Karen Malcolm, and Executive Director for the Office of the Premier, Ronlee James.





Hon. Edwin Astwood, MP for Grand Turk South and Salt Cay, brought remarks during the brief ceremony.





"Everything happens in its time and now it is Salt Cays time, he said. "This office is only the start.





"Through the newly built and resilient building, we will be able to connect residents of Salt Cay and the District Commissioners Office with persons on other islands.





"With a stable internet connect we will be able to offer residents a chance to teleconference with specialist doctors, business partners and the district commissioner and staff will be able to attend district administration meetings without the hassle of leaving the island.





"We are bringing technology to the people of Salt Cay not to overpower the natural aesthetic and uniqueness of the island but to enhance and strengthen their reach and connectivity.





The premier, as the Minister with responsibility for District Administration under the Office of the Premier, Local Government and Community Affairs, spoke of further works.





"My Government is committed to enhancing the lives of those that live on the island, hence, the redevelopment and expansion of the airport runway, the upgrade to the Grand Turk Port to strengthen travel by boat into and out of Salt Cay, and now the newly constructed DCs Office - all to ensure residents of Salt Cay feel like they are a crucial part of this beautiful by nature archipelago and connected to the rest of the world.





"Salt Cay is a very unique island with a lot to offer and we must ensure as a government that they have the infrastructure, technology and financial investment to grow as the residents desire, and develop as with the rest of the Turks and Caicos Islands.





The Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force Band provided music for the soft opening of the office.




W hat happens when disruptive pupils are thrown out of school? The answer should alarm us all.

Today the Evening Standard begins a major investigation into a hidden crisis, which is destroying young lives, fuelling drug crime and bringing knife violence to our streets. It shows how the system lets down children who end up in Pupil Referral Units (PRUs), the last-resort alternative to school.

Instead of helping them escape troubled lives, these units are often a one-way route to disaster. The cost of running them is huge  and the price society pays for the consequences is even higher.

In London, our investigation shows, there are around 90 PRUs or similar units, taking pupils excluded permanently from mainstream schools. We have discovered that the average cost per pupil is up to 24,000 a year, enough to pay the fees at a top private school.

What does this buy? Not the sort of dedicated attention which could give children a chance, but often the end of any hope of educational success.

Just 1.6 per cent of PRU pupils achieved strong GCSEs in English and maths, and 96 per cent failed them entirely. Many PRUs seem more like day-release prisons than places of hope and encouragement.

Our investigation has found pupils being searched on entry and free movement restricted. Its hardly a surprise that one analysis of 100 teenage boys involved in county lines drugs gangs found every one had been permanently excluded or spent time in a PRU.

Analysis of official data by the Evening Standard suggests exclusion is the biggest single common factor in boys ending up in prison.

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It would be simple to blame the way PRUs are run. But its the system which is broken, leaving them to deal with the consequences.

There has been a 70 per cent rise in school exclusions in England in the last five years  in part because schools want to protect their place in results league tables.

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Our report finds that children who often did well at primary school find themselves locked out of the secondary system for bad behaviour with no hope of returning to it.

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Is there a better way of dealing with it? We think there is.

As John Bradshaw, the head of one of the most successful PRUs, tells us: A significant number of pupils that end up in PRUs could have stayed in mainstream schools if they had the right support.

Theres a lesson from whats happened in Glasgow, where exclusions have fallen  crucially, without disrupting the education of better-behaved children.

Only one PRU is still open in the city, grades have risen and knife crime has fallen. Its a model London should learn from, as we will be showing in the next part of our investigation.

Cypriot justice on trial

Cyprus and Britain are old friends with deep personal, political and military ties. Thousands of British Cypriots make their homes in London. Huge numbers of people from here holiday in Cyprus every year.

So it is all the more shocking to see how one of those visitors, a 19-year-old British woman, has been treated by the Cypriot courts.

Last summer she told police that she had been raped by up to 12 men. Now she faces up to a year in prison, accused of making up the charge  a claim which has produced outrage. Tomorrow she will be sentenced.

Cyprus should see this case for the disgrace that it is and release her.

Golden success for stars

Golden Globe Awards 2020: Show winning moments - In pictures 1 /85 Golden Globe Awards 2020: Show winning moments - In pictures Olivia Colman accepting the award for best actress in a drama series for "The Crown" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ricky Gervais speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 202 AP Beyonce and Jay-Z Renee Zellweger accepting the award for best actress in a motion picture drama for her role in "Judy" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Jason Momoa wears a vest at the Golden Globes NBC Paul Rudd and Nicole Kidman gatecrash Laura Dern's Golden Globes red carpet interview E! News Elton John reacts as Taron Egerton wins a Golden Globe for Rocketman NBC Reese Witherspoon, and Jennifer Aniston at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tom Hanks NBC Laura Dern accepting the award for best supporting actress in a motion picture for "Marriage Story" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tom Hanks accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award from presenter Charlize Theron at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Phoebe Waller-Bridge accepts the award for Best TV Series, Musical or Comedy for "Fleabag. Reuters Joaquin Phoenix accepting the award for best actor in a motion picture drama for his role in "Joker" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Sam Mendes accepting the award for best motion picture drama for "1917" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Patricia Arquette accepting the award for best supporting actress in a series, limited series or TV movie for her role in "The Act" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Stellan Skargard, winner of Best Supporting Actor - Series/Limited Series/TV movie for "Chernobyl." Reuters Jason Momoa and Zoe Kravitz at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ramy Youssef accepting the award for best actor in a TV series, comedy or musical for "Ramy" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Elton John, and Bernie Taupin at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tom Hanks accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Phoebe Waller-Bridge accepting the award for best actress in a comedy series for "Fleabag" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Brad Pitt accepting the award for best supporting actor in a film for his role in "Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Olivia Colman accepts the award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama for "The Crown" from Zoe Kravitz onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Olivia Colman accepting the award for best actress in a drama series for "The Crown" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ricky Gervais speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Jesse Armstrong and the cast of "Succession" accept the award for Best Television Series - Drama for "Succession" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sienna Miller and Kit Harington speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Ellen DeGeneres accepts the Carol Burnett TV Achievement Award at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 Amy Poehler and Taylor Swift speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Quentin Tarantino accepts the award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture for "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Charlize Theron at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Sacha Baron Cohen speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Ewan McGregor and Margot Robbie at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Gwyneth Paltrow at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Sam Mendes accepts the award for Best Director - Motion Picture for "1917" onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Helen Mirren and Antonio Banderas at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Michelle Williams accepts the award for Best Actress - Limited Series or Motion Picture Made For TV for "Fosse/Verdon." Reuters Wesley Snipes and Da'Vine Joy Randolph speak onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Taron Egerton accepting the award for best actor in a motion picture comedy for his role in "Rocketman" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Paul Rudd and Jennifer Lopez speak onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sam Mendes accepting the award for best director for the film "1917" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Glenn Close at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Rami Malek speaks onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sandra Bullock speaks onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Cate Blanchett at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Tiffany Haddish and Salma Hayek at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson speak on stage during the 77th Golden Globe Awards on January 5, 2020 Reuters Awkwafina accepting the award for best actress in a motion picture comedy for her role in "The Farewell" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Nick Jonas speak onstage during the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Annette Bening speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Sir Elton John and Bernie Taupin accept the award for Best Original Song - Motion Picture for "I'm Gonna Love Me Again" in "Rocketman" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Pierce Brosnan, center, with his sons Dylan, left, and Paris at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Ansel Elgort and Dakota Fanning at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Matt Bomer and Sofia Vergara at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Kate McKinnon at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Kate McKinnon, embracing Ellen DeGeneres as she accepts the Carol Burnett TV Achievement Award at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Jesse Armstrong accepting the award for best drama TV series for "Succession" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Chris Butler and Arianne Sutner accept the award for Best Motion Picture - Animated for "Missing Link" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Ted Danson and Kerry Washington speak onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Bong Joon Ho accepts the award for Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language for "Parasite" onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) President Lorenzo Soria speaks onstage during the 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 5, 2020 Getty Images Jared Harris and Craig Mazin, second right, accepting the award for best limited series for "Chernobyl" at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP Pierce Brosnan and Will Ferrell at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 AP

Another awards night, another British triumph, this time at the Golden Globes.

Two went to the Sir Elton John biopic Rocketman. More went to Phoebe Waller-Bridges comedy Fleabag and to Olivia Colman for The Crown. Sir Sam Mendes won two more for his World War One epic, 1917.

Its not just a win for the stars involved but also proof of the strength of this countrys film, TV and theatre industries.

Congratulations to them all.

Listen to today's episode of The Leader:
Another proud day in U.S. history! Trump Says US Will Not Leave Iraq Until Baghdad Pays for American Air Base, Threatens Sanctions By Sputnik News January 06, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - The Iraqi parliament voted on Sunday to support the expulsion of all foreign troops from the Iraqi territory and cutting off ties with the US-led international anti-terrorist coalition due to the Friday's assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Bagdad.



We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base thats there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it [...] We will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, US President Donald Trump said Sunday, while he was traveling from Florida Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter Trump referred to the Balad military base that houses US forces some 50 miles north of Baghdad. Trump also hinted that the administration "may discuss" releasing intelligence related to the killing of Qassem Soleimani.



Kataib Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militias within the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces, threatened earlier to launch attacks on military installations used by the US forces in Iraq if the Trump administration does not quickly implement the Iraqi ultimatum to withdraw its troops from the nation. This article was originally published by "Sputnik News" - Do you agree or disagree? Post your comment here
Boeing will halt production of the 737 MAX this month following the grounding in March of its best-selling plane after two fatal crashes in five months killed 346 people

Washington: The Boeing Co and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed on Sunday they are reviewing a wiring issue that could potentially cause a short circuit on the grounded 737 MAX.

Boeing spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Sunday the US planemaker identified this issue as part of that rigorous process, and we are working with the FAA to perform the appropriate analysis. It would be premature to speculate as to whether this analysis will lead to any design changes.

The New York Times reported Boeing is reviewing whether two bundles of wiring are too close together, which could lead to a short circuit and potentially result in a crash if pilots did not respond appropriately.

The FAA said in a statement on Sunday the agency and company are analysing certain findings from a recent review of the proposed modifications to the Boeing 737 MAX.

The agency added it will ensure that all safety-related issues identified during this process are addressed.

Boeing is currently working to design separating the wiring bundles if necessary and conducting extensive analysis to establish if the electrical fault could occur in a real-world scenario, a company official said.

Officials said the FAA had directed Boeing to complete an audit in December. The wiring issue could push back the return of the MAX, the officials added. Reuters has reported previously the FAA is not likely to approve the plane until at least February and might not until March or later.

The FAA flagged the wiring issue as potentially catastrophic. It is possible other protections like shielding, insulation and circuit breakers could prevent the short circuit, a company official said.

Boeing will halt production of the 737 MAX this month following the grounding in March of its best-selling plane after two fatal crashes in five months killed 346 people.

Last month, Boeings board fired Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg after repeatedly failing to contain the fallout from the crashes that tarnished its reputation with airlines and regulators.

The crisis has cost Boeing $9 billion, and has hurt suppliers and airlines.

Boeing is struggling to mend relations with the US and international regulators it needs to win over to get the jet back in the air.

Separately, US and European regulators are expected to return to Iowa this week to review a software documentation audit of the 737 MAX that was not completed last year, officials said Sunday. FAA and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency are scheduled to meet in Seattle this week and then return to Rockwell Collins facility in Cedar Rapids, Iowa next weekend to review the audit.
At around 5:20 am, Zhang Guimei arrives at the teaching building of Lijiang Huaping Girls High School. [Xinhua]

At 5:20 in the morning, Zhang Guimei, 62, Principal of Lijiang Huaping Girls High School, comes to the campus with a flashlight, patrolling, opening doors, and lighting. Each part of the large campus is "awakened" one after another in anticipation of the students' arrival.

The high school, established by Zhang, is the only free high school in China dedicated to girls from impoverished families. It is located in Lijiang City, Southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Students of Lijiang Huaping Girls High School [Xinhua]

In 1996, Zhang was transferred from Dali City to Huaping County and worked there as a teacher. To her surprise, girls dropped out at a far higher rate than that of boys.

Zhang determined to make a change. Since 2002, she had been pursuing an "impossible dream" of setting up a free high school exclusively for girls from impoverished families in mountainous areas.

For more than five years, Zhang experienced difficulties, pain and sadness as she tried to establish the school.

"I want to run a girls high school at no charge. It's my dream to get all the girls in the mountains to study in the school," said Zhang. In 2007, as a deputy of the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Zhang's simple and affectionate words impressed countless people and attracted the attention of the Party committees and governments.

With the help from all sides, in September 2008, Huaping Girls High School opened, enrolling nearly 100 students from Huaping, Yongsheng, and Ninglang Yi autonomous counties. Recalling the day of the opening ceremony, Zhang still can't hide her excitement.

Zhang Guimei (R) inspects the attendance of students. [Xinhua]

"In general, students in the school have poor academic foundations and self-control. If there is no effective management and guidance, they cannot succeed in finishing their studies," Zhang said.

The responsibilities of running the school well and teaching students drive Zhang to work like a perpetual motion machine.

At Zhang's "home"  a bed in a dormitory in the school, she has four things beside the pillows  a flashlight, a small speaker, her mobile phone and painkillers.

At 5:15 in the morning, as soon as the mobile phone alarm sounds, Zhang immediately gets up, walks around the campus with a flashlight, turns on the lights on each floor of the teaching building, and wakes up the students with her small speaker.

"I hope students can observe discipline and cherish their time at school," she said.

Getting up early in the morning, Zhang keeps busy until 12:30 in the evening. Overwork all year round leads to serious illness. "Sometimes I really want to take a day to sleep well, but I can't. I'm afraid that as soon as I relax, the children will relax too," she explained.

Zhang Guimei with a student [Xinhua]

In the past 11 years, a total of 1,645 of her students have been admitted to universities. The school's comprehensive results on the college entrance examination topped those throughout Lijiang City for nine consecutive years.

"I don't want students to come back to see me and thank me after graduation. They should pursue their studies and dreams far and high without burden," Zhang added.

(Source: Xinhua/Translated and edited by Women of China)
JERUSALEM - When a U.S. strike killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani last week, it gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu three things he dearly wanted: a strong blow against Iran, relief from growing fears that President Trump was backing out of the Middle East and a change of subject from the corruption indictments dogging him two months before a national election.

Of the three, it seems as if Netanyahu's reprieve from the media's focus on the corruption cases may be the shortest-lived. Three days after the U.S. drone strike, Netanyahu's efforts to shield himself from prosecution had returned to Israel's front pages.

To be sure, the killing of Soleimani, considered the mastermind of Iran's regional terrorism apparatus, was still welcomed here Monday. After growing frustration at Trump's apparent unwillingness to confront Iran more directly, his surprise decision to target the powerful Iranian commander was deemed a "strategic miracle" by at least one Israeli commentator.

"This reversal in American military policy in the Middle East did not entail any Israeli diplomatic or military steps that would have carried a high price," Alex Fishman said in the Hebrew-language Yedioth Ahronoth. "President Trump chose to stick his own hand into the fire."

For Netanyahu, a hawk, any shift of focus from his legal woes to regional security is considered an advantage. The election campaign has been overshadowed by the corruption allegations against Netanyahu, who wasindicted in November on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He has refused to resign or drop out of the race, and last week he formally requested parliamentary immunity from prosecution.

But Friday, after the U.S. drone strike, the issue of security temporarily eclipsed the corruption scandals.

"People feel secure with Bibi," said Gil Hoffman, chief political correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, using Netanyahu's nickname. "If we're talking about security, they will feel 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' "

Israeli officials have declined to say whether they were briefed ahead of the U.S. operation, although most analysts assume the Netanyahu administration was given at least some notice. The officials were equally mum on the more sensitive question of whether Israel provided intelligence or other support to the operation.

Netanyahu's chief rival, former military chief of staff Benny Gantz, joined him in hailing the killing of Soleimani. But it is Netanyahu who has promoted himself as uniquely influential over Trump. Regardless of whether he lobbied directly for the strike, he would be the one likely to benefit.

"We have no idea if he had any influence at all, but voters will give him credit because he's Trump's rabbi," Hoffman said.

Trump's surprise escalation against Iran is just the latest of the policy shifts that Netanyahu has long sought from Washington, including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and increasingly siding with Israel's position on settlements in the West Bank.

But after a weekend dominated by the coverage of the attack on Soleimani's convoy near Baghdad's airport, Israeli media on Monday was again filled with news of Netanyahu's electoral and legal struggles. How rising tensions with Iran play out in coming weeks, including the possibility of retaliatory attacks on Israel, will determine what effect they have politically.

Tal Schneider, diplomatic and political correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Globes, said that Soleimani's killing had redirected the news cycle in Israel but that it couldn't yet be seen as a boost for Netanyahu's campaign.

"It is too far before election day, and it could also be very harmful for Israel," said Schneider, noting that Netanyahu's response to the killing was muted.

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"If Israel comes under direct attack from Iran, then who knows what will happen," she said. "Historically, if there is a war and if there are casualties, the sitting prime minister is blamed."

In the meantime, Netanyahu continues to wrestle with his legal woes. On Wednesday, he submitted a request to Israel's parliament, the Knesset, for immunity in the cases against him under a law that protects public figures from prosecution, tying up even further the complicated proceedings against him. Because of the political stalemate in the country, with two elections failing to produce a governing coalition and setting the stage for an unprecedented third election within a year, the parliamentary panel that would be tasked with weighing his request does not exist.

On Sunday, under pressure from Gantz's Blue and White party, the Knesset's legal adviser, Eyal Yinon, said that even though the parliament was not formally in session, it was permissible for such a committee to be created.

If that process moves forward, it is unlikely that the committee, which will be dominated by opposition lawmakers, will accept Netanyahu's arguments for immunity and a very public debate would take place.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Netanyahu appointed as agriculture minister a man facing the prospect of prosecution on criminal charges. David Bitan is suspected of bribery in 12 criminal cases mostly involving contractors and business executives allegedly funneling hundreds of thousands of shekels in cost to him.

"The Netanyahu government is turning into a criminal organization whose sole purpose is to ensure its leader receives immunity from prosecution," Blue and White said in a statement following the appointment.
(TEHRAN, Iran)  Weeping amid wails from a sea of mourners, Irans supreme leader on Monday prayed over the remains of a top Iranian general killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, an attack thats drastically raised tensions between Tehran and Washington.

The targeted killing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qasem Soleimani drew a crowd, said by police to be in the millions, on Monday in Tehran, where Soleimanis replacement vowed to take revenge. Additionally, Tehran has abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in response to the slaying while in Iraq, the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil.

Read more: How Qasem Soleimanis Assassination in Iraq Comes at a Fraught Moment for Trump

The developments could bring Iran closer to building an atomic bomb, set off a proxy or military attack launched by Tehran against America and enable the Islamic State group to stage a comeback in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.

Mourners attend the funeral ceremony of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Tehran, on Jan. 6, 2020. | Ali MohammadiBloomberg/Getty Images

Adding to the tensions, President Donald Trump threatened to demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iraq or impose sanctions like theyve never seen before if it goes through with expelling U.S. troops.

Soleimanis daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened an attack on the U.S. military in the Mideast while speaking to a crowd that stretched as far as the eye could see down major thoroughfares in Irans capital.

The families of the American soldiers in western Asia  will spend their days waiting for the death of their children, she said to cheers. Iranian state television and others online shared a video that showed Trumps American flag tweet following Soleimanis killing turn into a coffin, the likes of the tweet replaced by over 143,000 killed with the hashtag #severerevenge.

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Zainab Soleimani, daughter of Qasem Soleimani, makes a speech during her father's funeral in Tehran on Jan. 06, 2020. | Iranian Leader Press OfficeAnadolu Agency/Getty Images

Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself prayed over the caskets of Soleimani and others slain in the attack. Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani, wept at one point during the traditional Muslim prayers for the dead. The crowd wailed.

Soleimanis successor, Esmail Ghaani stood near Khameneis side, as did Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other top leaders in the Islamic Republic. While Iran recently faced nationwide protests over government-set gasoline prices that reportedly killed over 300 people, Soleimanis mass processionals has seen politicians and leaders across the Islamic Republics political spectrum take part, temporarily silencing that anger.

Demonstrators burned Israeli and U.S. flags, carried a flag-draped U.S. coffin or effigies of Trump. Some described Trump himself as a legitimate target for Irans revenge.

Mohammad Milad Rashidi, a 26-year-old university graduate, predicted more tension ahead.

Trump demolished the chance for any sort of possible agreement between Tehran and Washington, Rashidi said. There will be more conflict in the future for sure.

Read more: Iran Has Vowed Revenge Against the U.S. for Killing Qasem Soleimani. Heres What May Happen Next

Ghaani made his own threat in an interview with Iranian state television aired Monday. God the Almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken, he said.

Markets reacted Monday to the tensions, sending international benchmark Brent crude above $70 a barrel. The Middle East remains a crucial source of oil and Iran in the past has threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all the worlds oil traded passes.

New Quds Force leader Gen. Esmail Qaani cries during the funeral ceremony of Qasem Soleimani in Tehran on Jan. 06, 2020. | Iranian Leader Press OfficeAnadolu Agency/Getty Images

Ghaani, a longtime Soleimani deputy, has now taken over as the head of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, an expeditionary arm of the paramilitary organization answerable only to Khamenei. Ghaani has been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2012 for his work funding its operations around the world, including its work with proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Those proxies likely will be involved in any operation targeting U.S. interests in the Mideast or elsewhere in the world.

Already, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks. In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimanis killing made U.S. military bases, warships and service members across the region fair game for attacks. A former Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader suggested the Israeli city of Haifa and others could be targeted should the U.S. attack Iran.

We promise to continue down martyr Soleimanis path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region, Ghaani said.

The head of the Guards aerospace program, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, suggested Irans response wouldnt stop with a single attack.

Firing a couple of missiles, hitting a base or even killing Trump is not valuable enough to compensate for martyr Soleimanis blood, Hajizadeh said on state TV. The only thing that can compensate for his blood is the complete removal of America from the region and taking away their evil from the oppressed people of the region.

On the nuclear deal, Iranian state television cited Sunday a statement by Rouhanis administration saying the country would not observe the nuclear deals restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson specifically urged Iran to withdraw all measures not in line with the 2015 agreement that was intended to stop Tehran from pursuing its atomic weapons program.

Iran insisted that it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldnt seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions last year. It further raises regional tensions, as Irans longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

Iran did not elaborate on what levels it would immediately reach in its program. Tehran has already broken some of the deals limits as part of a step-by-step pressure campaign to get sanctions relief. It already has increased its production, begun enriching uranium to 5% and restarted enrichment at an underground facility.

While it does not possess uranium enriched to weapons-grade levels of 90%, any push forward narrows the estimated one-year breakout time needed for it to have enough material to build a nuclear weapon if it chose to do so.

Iranian policemen stand in front of portraits of Qasem Soleimani before his funeral in Tehran on Jan. 6, 2020. | Morteza NikoubazlNurPhoto/Getty Images

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations watchdog observing Irans program, did not respond to a request for comment. However, Iran said that its cooperation with the IAEA will continue as before.

Soleimanis killing has escalated the crisis between Tehran and Washington after months of back-and-forth attacks and threats that have put the wider Middle East on edge. Iran has promised harsh revenge while Trump has vowed on Twitter that the U.S. will strike back at 52 targets VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. 

He doubled down on that threat Sunday, dismissing warnings that targeting cultural sites could be a war crime under international law.

Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, Trump told reporters.

The processions for Soleimani mark the first time Iran honored a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such a processional with his death in 1989.

Soleimani will be buried in his hometown of Kerman.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Leaders from across the political spectrum have condemned the attacks on the students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) inside the campus.

Along with the condemnation, the blame game has also started over the violence that swept the university campus on Sunday as several masked individuals thrashed students and teachers with wooden and metal rods.

Two office-bearers of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU), including President Aishe Ghosh were badly injured. The JNUSU accused the RSS' student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for the violence.

The ABVP, in return, has blamed the Left for the violence. It claimed that at least 25 of its activists were injured, while another 10 activists were missing ever since the attack.

The JNU administration, on the other hand, has appealed to the students to maintain peace.

Vice-Chancellor M. Jagadesh Kumar assured the students that no person involved in the violence will be spared and appropriate action will be taken.

"Their intent is clearly aimed at disrupting the functioning of the university. This is simply hooliganism and against the ethos of JNU. No such person will be spared and appropriate action will be taken," Kumar said.

Union Minister Prakash Javadekar blamed the Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party and Left parties for the violence.

He said, "Few elements along with a group from the Congress, the AAP and the Communists deliberately want to create an atmosphere of violence across India and particularly in universities. There should be an inquiry against them." Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray compared Sunday's violence in JNU with the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

"Why were the attackers faces covered? Why are they hiding? I was reminded of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks... They are cowards," Thackeray said condemning the violence.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee termed the attack a "shame on our democracy".

"No words are enough to describe such heinous acts," she tweeted.

She said that a four-member Trinamool Congress (TMC) delegation, led by Dinesh Trivedi, will visit the campus and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to express solidarity with the students attacked by masked individuals.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said he was shocked to know about the violence at JNU.

"Students attacked brutally. Police should immediately stop violence and restore peace. How will the country progress if our students will not be safe inside university campuses?" Kejriwal asked.

He spoke with Delhi Lt. Governor Anil Baijal and urged him to direct police to restore order.

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik too called the incident shocking.

"Violence has no space in democracy and such attacks on students must be condemned unequivocally. Appeal law enforcement agencies to take swift action to apprehend the culprits and wish the injured students a speedy recovery," he tweeted.

Chief Minister of Kerala Pinarayi Vijayan blamed the attack on the 'Sangh Parivar' and asked them to end the diabolical plan to silence universities with bloodshed.

"The attack on students and faculty of JNU is an appalling display of intolerance running amok. The scale of the attack reveals the extent of planning. Sangh Parivar must end this diabolical plan to silence universities with bloodshed. Remember, those students are speaking for all," he tweeted.

Calling the incident "shocking", Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said "the fascists in control of our nation are afraid of the voices of our brave students. Today's violence in JNU is a reflection of that fear." In a series of tweets, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi blamed the Centre and said, "there is something deeply sickening about a government that allows and encourages such violence to be inflicted on their own children." Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati also condemned the violence inside the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Yadav hit out at the Centre and said that masked men attacking teachers and students in JNU shows how 'low' the government will stoop to establish the rule of fear. "The BJP is using violence and hatred to polarise society and stifle dissent. The ABVP are acting like the storm troopers of the BJP," he said.

The BSP termed the mob attack as shameful and demanded a judicial probe into the incident.

"The violence against students and teachers in JNU is shameful and condemnable. The Centre should take it seriously and it would be better to order a judicial probe into it," Mayawati said.
'They did not spare the girls or teachers; they beat all of them.'

'We kept calling the police, but no one came.'

IMAGE: Property destroyed inside the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Photograph: ANI Photo

Some students thrashed, some cowering in their hostel rooms hoping to escape the trauma unscathed and all around chaos.

That was the scene on the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus on Sunday when masked assailants went around the campus, entering the Sabarmati and Periyar hostels, and assaulting students and teachers with lathis, rods and hammers.

As many as 28 students and teachers were injured in the attack.

Eyewitnesses accused the police of failing to stop the mob from entering the campus or ending the violence sooner, despite calls from JNU as well as frantic students and teachers.

Amid these scenes of anarchy and pandemonium, Mehboob Rehman, a PhD student in demography in population studies, recounts the horror to Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com while hiding from the assailants who were on the rampage.

"I was having tea with my friends in the campus around 6.30 pm when I suddenly saw 40, 50 people walking together, with their faces covered and armed with sticks and lathis.

Without any provocation, they started thrashing the students and didn't leave anyone.

Their aim, it seemed was to thrash all JNU students. They did not spare the girls or teachers; they beat all of them.

My friends and I did not know what to do and in all that chaos and confusion we ran towards our hostel.

These goons entered our hostel too, they thrashed everyone they found.

We locked ourselves in the hostel room, called the police and sent out an SOS to everyone we could.

We switched off all the lights and hid and therefore, they could not find us. They, however, broke all the windows of our hostel and many hostel doors.

We kept hiding there. Luckily, these goons could not break my room door and so we escaped the attack.

I have no idea how they were able to enter the campus.

Security is always present and one needs to show a valid identification to gain access into the campus.

I have no idea where our own security guards were because I did not see them when these goons were unleashing their terror on students.

It seems this was a pre-planned attack. Their only aim was to beat JNU students because they went to all 16 hostels and beat up the students.

These goons created terror for two hours and nobody was there to stop them.

We kept calling the police, but no one came.

The registration of admission (for semester exams) was on JNU.

JNU students had boycotted this registration because of the fee hike.

The protest against the fee hike is ongoing, therefore some students did not give exams as well and did not register for further semester exams.

There were some other students who did not boycott the registration and this was the reason for the tussle, I guess. I think the ABVP (the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the Bharatiya Janata Party's student wing) wanted to do the registration whereas the Left students union did not want to register for further exams.

But in general, many students did boycott the registration.

At this moment, we are sitting in our hostel room and we can see many injured people from here.
Boeing is weighing a move to raise more debt after the grounding of the 737 Max and that the jetliners return to service could face further complications.

While Boeing had about $20bn (18bn) in available funds at the end of the third quarter, costs stemming from the Max crisis are increasing, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.

That has prompted the company to consider raising additional debt, the paper said.

Boeing is halting output of the Max, which has yet to gain approval to resume service after two fatal crashes prompted a global flight ban in March. While the production hiatus has reduced some costs, it also means a longer wait for payments for finished planes. The Chicago-based company also faces compensation claims from airlines disrupted by the grounding, as well as from families of the crash victims.

Boeing shares have tumbled by around 20% since the second of the crashes, which killed a total of 346 people.

Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg was ousted last month and will be replaced next week by David Calhoun, a board member who took over as chairman in October.

Analysts expect Boeing to raise as much as $5bn in extra debt to help cover spending that may exceed $15bn in the first half, the WSJ said. Funds would help maintain Max production facilities and finished planes, as well as close the $4bn purchase of an 80% stake in the airliner business of Embraer.

Meanwhile, US regulators are considering requiring pilots to complete simulator training before they can operate the Max again, the Wall Journal had also reported. The story cited government and industry officials familiar with the matter. Bloomberg
Amid tensions between Iran and the US after the assassination of top Iranian military commander Qasim Sulemani in a US drone strike in Iraq troubled by terror and political crisis, Pakistan said it would not allow its soil to be used. Pakistan Army Spokesperson Major General Asif Ghafoor said that we will not allow our soil to be used against anyone. He quoted Prime Minister Imran Khan as saying that Pakistan will not become a party for anyone but will be a partner of peace and peace.

Death on newborn children, now bad news came from Gujarat after Kota

The matter comes two days after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said that according to the bilateral security agreement signed between Washington and Kabul in 2014, Afghanistan's land will not be used against any nation. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan share a border with Iran, vowing to avenge the assassination of its top general.

Senior RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh invited Nitish Kumar to join hands

After the rocket attack on the US Embassy and Airbase in Iraq, US President Donald Trump warned Iran on Sunday that it has identified 52 possible targets in Iran. If Tehran carried out any attack against America to avenge Suleimani's murder, it would be very dangerous. On the other hand, Iraq has also opened a front against America. On Sunday, the Iraqi parliament has convened a special session of parliament to remove American soldiers from their place. MPs said they would pass a resolution to send back American troops from Iraq through MP voting.

Priyanka Vadra's attack on Yogi government on issue of education system
Police are hunting two robbers who threatened a shop worker with an axe and a hammer.

The two masked men were caught on CCTV in GMP Off Licence in Wednesfield, West Midlands.

They entered the shop just before 10pm on December 17 and confronted the member of staff behind the counter.

The robbers stormed into GMP Off Licence in Wednesfield, West Midlands, on December 17 (Picture: SWNS)

The men smashed up the till with an axe (Picture: SWNS)

One of the men hit the worker twice on the arm with a harmer, causing significant bruising and swelling.

They threatened to strike him with the axe before using it to crack open the till.

They stole cash and cigarettes before fleeing the scene.

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West Midlands Police have released CCTV footage of the incident in an effort to track down the pair.

PC Mark Turner, of Force CID at Wolverhampton, said: "This was a nasty robbery where the men involved had weapons and were not afraid to use them.

"Fortunately, the shop worker wasnt seriously injured but we dont underestimate the distress of being in such a situation.

The men wore masks to carry out the robbery (Picture: SWNS)

"I would urge anyone who can help our enquiries to come forward."

Officers say they want to hear from anyone who recognises the men or has any information about the robbery.

Anyone with information can contact police via Live Chat at west-midlands.police.uk, or via 101, quoting crime reference number 20WV/298053G/19.
Mumbai: In a statement which is expected to raise hackles of the BJP, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday likened the alleged attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students to the 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai.

Amid demands of resignation of Union home minister Amit Shah in view of the violence, Thackeray said politics over it can wait and the priority should be to bring take strict action against the attackers. The attack on JNU students on Sunday night reminded me of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. Students are feeling unsafe in the country. I will not allow anything like JNU to happen in Maharashtra, said the CM.

Assuring that the youths in Maharashtra are safe, he said that youngsters are the future pillars of the country. If they are not safe, it is a blot on the countrys image, he said.

Speaking on the protest at the Gateway of India on Monday, the Chief Minister said, I understand their rage. I am also equally unhappy with what has happened in JNU.

Thackeray termed the masked attackers at JNU as cowards and said their identity should be revealed. If Delhi Police fails to find out perpetrators of the attack, then they will also be in the dock, he said.

Though the CM slammed the violence at the JNU, he fell short of demanding the resignation of Mr Shah for it.

I dont want to do politics over this. But the priority should be to bring the assailants to justice. Politics can wait. There should be an impartial inquiry into the incident, he said.

Several hundred people on Monday assembled at Hutatma Chowk in Fort to protest against the alleged attack on the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Besides, hundreds of students and activists carried out a march from Hutatma Chowk to Gateway of India on Monday. Aazadi slogans were raised at the protest, officials said.

Protesters were carrying placards and shouting slogans condemning the violence they claim was perpetrated by the RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and other outfits linked to the ruling BJP. Students also carried out a candlelight march.
New Delhi:

In the first reaction soon after the Election Commission of India announced the date for the Delhi Assembly Elections, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will contest the polls, to be held on February 8, on the basis of its government's work.

"The AAP will fight the Delhi Assembly election on basis of its government's work," Kejriwal tweeted.

A AAA Aa A AAA AAAAAAA AAA AAA AA A AaA AAA AA A AAA AA A AAA AaA AaA AA a Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) January 6, 2020

The election to the 70-member Delhi Assembly will take place on February 8 and results will be declared on February 11, the Election Commission announced on Monday. Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said the notification for the polls will be issued on January 14 while the last date of withdrawal of candidature will be January 24.

Delhi Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Ranbir Singh said there are total 1,46,92,136 voters -- 80,55,686 males, 66,35,635 females and 815 belonging to third gender -- in the final voters list.

Singh said all voters will be provided QR code-enabled voters slip which will speed up voting through easy identification.

The CEO said that there are over 11.55 lakh voters in Delhi who come under 'ASD' (absent, shifted, deceased) list and added that there were no instructions regarding registration of refugees covered under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in the electoral roll this time. Despite publication of the final electoral roll (up to January 1, 2020), any eligible person can apply for registration as voter till the last date of nomination of the Assembly polls, he said in a press conference.
We're fast approaching the midway marker of the 100/100 Challenge. I have fallen off the wagon long ago, but our faithful participants continue to log dutifully. Over 250 runners have at least 25 runs to their name so far, and nearly 100 are yet to miss a day.



Our weekday Challenge support runs continue to traverse the run-specific tracks of Watopia. Be on the lookout for a potential Slowman sighting during the evening sessions.



100/100 Challenge Support Run Schedule

Monday, 7 PM Eastern

Wednesday, 7 AM Eastern

Wednesday, 7 PM Eastern

Slowtwitch Indoors Rides

Similar to the run schedule, we're spending a lot of time in Watopia this week. The only exception is our Tuesday Structured Training event, which will be headed to London.Our women's only ride gets to experience last week's Structured Training workout, Highs and Lows. This one will scorch the legs in more ways than one -- you'll be pedaling the Whole Lotta Lava course. Be sure to get the coffee on board before riding!Off to London with you! Our Tuesday night group event will trundle along the flat roads in London. For a workout, you get to experience the Strange Part of Our Town. (Although, I suppose, if I were being correct to the source material, this ride should be in New York. I digress...)Our early morning East Coast barnburner heads to Dust in the Wind this week. Be very smart to stay in the draft, or else you will be the dust in the wind and left far, far behind. As always, we please ask that you register for the correct group -- flyers will be fenced out. Pedal hard and often!Last but not least, this week's Hilly Vanilli will also take a trip up and around the Volcano on Whole Lotta Lava. This should let users who get dropped the ability to latch back on as the groups head back around for another trip. This one is definitely going to favor the climbers in the group -- good luck and have fun!
Over the weekend, thousands of mourners in cities in Iraq and Iran participated in funeral processions for Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a prominent Iranian commander. He was a Washington boogeyman, implicated in years of chaos and bloodshed. But the theocratic regime and its allies cast his death - the result of a U.S. drone strike on a convoy carrying him and a number of other prominent pro-Iranian militia leaders out of Baghdad's international airport early Friday - as a martyrdom, the heroic sacrifice of an icon of "resistance" whose influence and supposed charisma helped stitch together a network of pro-Tehran proxy groups throughout the Middle East.

Iran's leadership vowed "severe revenge," though many analysts suspect the regime will bide its time before mustering a violent reprisal. Instead, it basked in a surge of nationalist sentiment and anger at home. Less than two months ago, security forces are said to have killed hundreds of Iranian protesters to quell an uprising spurred by the regime's dysfunctional management of the country's crippled economy. On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of Iranians poured into the streets of Iranian cities to mourn a fallen hero and decry the "imperialist" power that killed him.

President Donald Trump helped stoke the flames even further with a tweet threatening the destruction of Iranian cultural sites - what most international legal scholars would tell you is a war crime - should the regime seek vengeance for the death of Soleimani.

"At a time when his unprecedented sanctions had stirred unrest inside Iran, the political elite has just been handed a rallying cry," wrote Mohammad Ali Shabani, a researcher at Soas University in London. "The strike on Suleimani, whose status approached that of national icon, will harden popular sentiment against the U.S. while simultaneously shoring up the regime."

On Sunday, Iran made its fifth announcement about winding down its obligations to the 2015 nuclear deal. Iranian authorities said that they would no longer abide by restrictions on uranium enrichment, but would return to their previous commitments should the United States withdraw the sanctions whose imposition were also a violation of the pact. The announcement had been expected before Soleimani's assassination but took on a darker cast as tensions mounted.

In Iraq, too, the backlash was swift. The country's parliament voted on Sunday to ask for the removal of U.S. troops on Iraqi soil. The resolution was nonbinding and "did not immediately imperil the U.S. presence in Iraq," wrote The Post's Erin Cunningham, "but it highlights the head winds the Trump administration faces after the strike, which was seen in Iraq as a violation of sovereignty and as a dangerous escalation by governments across the Middle East."

For President Trump and some of the Washington foreign policy establishment, though, it still may be worth it. In Trump's words, Soleimani was "the number one terrorist in the world," the mastermind behind a generation of asymmetric warfare in the region, as well as various plots against America. In briefings with reporters, U.S. officials justified the targeted killing of Soleimani as an act of "deterrence" based on intelligence that the senior leader was planning a number of "imminent" possible attacks on U.S. interests. But other officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to my colleagues and other outlets, suggested that the evidence of Soleimani's direct involvement was "razor thin" and that Trump had chosen the most extreme path of retaliation after pro-Iran militiamen ransacked sections of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq last week.

Soleimani was the head of the Quds Force, a wing of Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that steers the regime's proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere. These factions have been locked in months of shadow conflict with the United States and its allies in the wake of Trump's reimposition of sweeping sanctions on Iran after quitting the Obama-era nuclear deal.

On one hand, the Trump administration believes its "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran is working and that killing Soleimani adds to the regime's internal strains. But Iran's destabilizing activities in the region - a key reason cited by Trump for reneging on the nonproliferation pact - have only spiked in recent months, including alleged attacks on U.S. positions in Iraq, shipping in the Persian Gulf and a major Saudi oil facility.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared the world a "safer place" after Soleimani's death. But the path ahead remains deeply treacherous. "My sense is that we will see an escalation in Iraq," said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, to my colleague Liz Sly. "But I don't think the Iranians really want a war with the U.S. I don't think they are interested in an all-out regional conflict. The problem is that all it takes is one small error and the whole region would be engulfed."

Amid the crisis, the United States ordered American citizens to leave Iraq and suspended its military cooperation and training programs with Iraqi security forces. The latter action risks undermining the ongoing effort to defeat the extremist Islamic State. And the Trump administration has hardly rallied a united front to its cause, with Pompeo bemoaning how European allies - who are trying to keep afloat the gutted husk of the nuclear deal - were "not helpful" enough.

"For European capitals," wrote Ellie Geranmayeh of the European Council on Foreign Relations, "this means their worst predictions - they warned the Trump administration that withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal would trigger a chain of escalation with Iran - are becoming reality."
Chicago, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Blank Rome LLP is pleased to announce that Paul H. Tzur, former Deputy Chief of the Narcotics and Money Laundering Section at the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of Illinois, has joined the Firms Chicago office as a Partner in the White Collar Defense & Investigations group. Blank Rome opened its Chicago office last June and moved to 444 West Lake Street in September. Last week, the office also welcomed leading corporate and finance partner Craig Culbertson to the team.

Paul is an accomplished and respected litigator, and we are thrilled to welcome him to the Chicago team, said Kenneth J. Ottaviano, Chair of Blank Romes Chicago office and Partner in the Finance, Restructuring, and Bankruptcy group. With top talent like Paul and Craig on board, we are off to a strong start in 2020 building out Blank Romes newest office, and are committed to continuing our momentum in the weeks and months ahead.

Paul has more than four years of corporate litigation experience in the private sector and nearly nine years as a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorneys Officeincluding more than two in the Office's Securities & Commodities Sectionand will focus his practice on high-stakes white collar defense and complex commercial litigation matters, representing clients as well as their boards, audit committees, officers, directors, and other individuals on government enforcement matters, internal investigations, and related litigation.

It is an honor to have Paul join our Firm, said Grant S. Palmer, Blank Romes Managing Partner and CEO. In his roles as deputy chief and assistant U.S. attorney, Paul consistently exhibited innovative thinking and distinguished himself as an impressive litigator, arguing 11 appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. His experience in both investigating and prosecuting high-profile cases involving participants in financial markets and related industries shaped Pauls understanding of the nuances involved in these matters, legal acumen that will prove valuable in his representation of clients facing complex civil actions, as well as white collar criminal matters.

Story continues

Drawing on his experience, Paul will counsel clients on the intricacies of government investigations, developing strategies that anticipate what methods investigators will leverage and what key evidence they will seek to uncover throughout the investigation and proceedings, should the cases move to trial. Pauls work in the U.S. Attorneys Office affords him a unique understanding of the conduct that may prompt criminal investigation, bringing an insiders look at these matters. For example, Paul investigated and prosecuted corporate accounting fraud, bank fraud, insider trading, and unlawful market manipulation in the Securities & Commodities section of the U.S. Attorneys Office. He also prosecuted Medicare fraud cases, and managed multiple narcotics and money laundering investigations and prosecutions brought by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

During his tenure at the U.S. Attorneys Office, Paul gained recognition for many of the cases he oversaw, including United States v. Gary Winemaster, Craig Davis and James Needham; United States v. Matthew Brunstrum; United States of America v. Chunlai Yang; and United States of America v. Carol Delgado and Brent Houck, among others.

We are excited to welcome Paul to Blank Rome and to our practice, said Jerry D. Bernstein, Co-Chair of the Firms White Collar Defense & Investigations group. Paul will provide robust counsel on the most novel and complex investigations and disputes our clients face. And Pauls government background and private practice experience will help grow our litigation team both in Chicago and nationally with a focus on white collar, criminal, and intellectual property matters, through exceptional service, outstanding relationships with attorneys and other business professionals, and his mentoring abilities.

The decision to join Blank Rome was an easy one, said Tzur. I was attracted to the Firms comprehensive range of service capabilities and the prospect for cross-practice worka key differentiator for Blank Rome and its partners. Also, I could not pass up the opportunity to contribute to the Firms strategic growth and presence in Chicago while building my own white collar and civil litigation practice.

In line with Blank Romes ongoing commitment to pro bono legal representation and investment in the community, prior to joining the U.S. Attorneys Office, Paul regularly offered counsel to individuals appealing cases before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. Paul plans to resume his commitment to offering such counsel now that he is at Blank Rome. Paul also plans to become active with the Criminal Justice Act Panel and the Northern District Trial Bar.

Paul earned his J.D., cum laude, from the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and his B.S. in Engineering, cum laude, from the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering. Following law school, Paul clerked for the Honorable Steven M. Colloton at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and then worked as a litigation attorney at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.

About Blank Rome

Blank Rome is an Am Law 100 firm with 14 offices and more than 600 attorneys and principals who provide comprehensive legal and advocacy services to clients operating in the United States and around the world. Our professionals have built a reputation for their leading knowledge and experience across a spectrum of industries, and are recognized for their commitment to pro bono work in their communities. Since our inception in 1946, Blank Romes culture has been dedicated to providing top-level service to all of our clients, and has been rooted in the strength of our diversity and inclusion initiatives. For more information, please visit blankrome.com.

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Kate Tavella

Blank Rome LLP

215.988.6988

tavella@blankrome.com


Metro Manila (CNN Philippines. January 2)  The Philippines will stop sending new household service workers to Kuwait after the killing of another Filipino helper there, a Cabinet official said Thursday.

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III told CNN Philippines he will issue an order anytime soon for a "partial deployment ban" to the Gulf state pending the possible reimposition of the work ban.

"[This] means hindi na muna kami magdedeploy ng bago, we will only allow the deployment of yung mga balik manggagawa, yung returning at saka yung skilled workers," Bello said.

[Translation: This means we will not deploy new workers in the meantime, we we will only allow the deployment of those returning workers and skilled workers.]

He said in a statement that only first-time household service workers will be prohibited from going to Kuwait. He added a complete ban may take effect if justice is not served for Jeanelyn Villavende, the overseas Filipino worker who was allegedly killed by her Kuwaiti employer.

READ: PH gov't seeks justice for OFW death in Kuwait

The suspect is now detained.

Bello said he had received an initial report that Villavende was black and blue when brought to the hospital. The exact date of her death remains unknown days after making headlines this week.

Villavende's local recruitment agency will also face an investigation for failing to take the necessary action after the victim already reported in September that she was maltreated and underpaid. Villavende also requested for repatriation, but the agency did nothing, Bello said.

"We could either put them under suspension or cancel their license if they could not explain why they did not take the appropriate action," Bello said.

In February 2018, the Philippines implemented a total deployment ban of Filipino workers to Kuwait, in the wake of reports Filipino workers in Kuwait have been abused and some died, including the case of Joanna Demafelis who was found inside a freezer of her employer's home.

The ban was lifted in May that year.

The two countries also signed an agreement for the protection of Filipino workers. Bello, however, lamented that the provisions have not been followed, including the drafting of a template employment contract that would allow Filipinos to keep their passports and cellphones which are often surrendered to employers. The working and sleeping hours should also be specified, Bello said.

Senator Joel Villanueva, chairman of the committee on labor, warned of graver consequences if the Kuwaiti government does not address the problem.

"We have already seen one OFW death in Kuwait too many. If we cannot get safety and security guarantees for our OFWs in Kuwait, a most basic and reasonable demand in our view, perhaps our government should make the ban permanent," Villanueva said in a statement.

More than 200,000 Filipinos are in Kuwait, mostly household service workers.
It seemed too fantastical to be true when reports first swirled of the killing of Qassem Soleimani, the chief of the clandestine foreign wing of Irans elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and one of Tehrans most powerful generals.

Even more ludicrous were the suggestions a US drone strike on Baghdad airport had taken out the 62-year-old alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, arguably the second most important of Tehrans men in Iraq. And so, when the deaths were confirmed, a kind of hysteria ricocheted around the world. Two separate World War 3 hashtags trended on Twitter, while Google registered a spike in Americans searching the draft age.

President Donald Trump only stoked that panic on Sunday when he warned Washington was poised to target 52 sites in Iran, including some of cultural importance, an action that would likely be a war crime under international law. Simultaneously commenters were quick to declare that Irans most indispensable military commander had been taken out, the man who held up the powerful al-Quds force he commanded, and Irans network of proxies across the region. Now they would surely fall.

He was portrayed as a one-of-a-kind lynchpin holding everything together and the only connection to the groups the IRGC has trained, financed and supported abroad  like the Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. His demise would see a kind of unravelling.

He has been compared to multiple US generals in one, as more significant than Osama bin Laden, says Holly Dagres, Iran expert and non-resident fellow at the Washington-based think tank, the Atlantic Council. But its a naive assessment that it is going to collapse like a house of cards. The IRGC is not going to fall apart because one leader died. They have planned for this.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

The shadowy commander, who oversaw the killing of hundreds of US servicemen in Iraq, as well as killings and sieges in Syria, was the most visible face of Irans military interests across the region, a product of a carefully crafted media campaign.

But the truth is his death will not significantly hurt the capabilities of the IRGC, which has a deeply complex structure. Neither will it see the end of ties with Irans powerful proxy armed groups.

Now revered as one of Irans  nay the regions  greatest martyrs by his supporters, it may in fact have the opposite effect. Certainly, similar targeted killings in the past have only bolstered support for groups: see the 2008 assassination of a top Hezbollah leader, Imad Mughniyah.

Nothing underlines this point more than the footage of Soleimanis body being taken around Iran in massive funerary marches. On Sunday, videos shot in the western Iranian town of Ahvaz showed tens if not hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets. Soleimanis supporters have held similar gatherings in Iraq, in Lebanon and in Gaza.

Narges Bajoghli, author of Iran Reframed, who has spent the last decade investigating IRGCs media producers, says regime figures in charge of organising public events like this could never have dreamed of such a large gathering in recent years.

Trump, with the assassination of Soleimani and with tweet threats to hit Iranian cultural sites, has ignited national cohesion on a level that just last week wouldve been unthinkable given anger at the state for the crackdown on protesters, she says. If these are crowds in Ahvaz, imagine Mashad and Tehran.

Soleimanis own daughter Zeinab hammers home the point in an interview with Lebanons Manar TV. Sitting in front of a picture of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah (whom she called Uncle), she says: Let dirty Trump know that by killing my father he will not erase his legacy. He gives us all another life.

Bajoghli says the IRGC deliberately has a devolving leadership structure on the ground which they developed through years of asymmetrical warfare. What that means is that much leadership capacity is given to a variety of people in the organisation, she says.

Helicopter footage said to show mass gathering of Iranian mourners for Qassem Soleimani in Ahvaz

As important and charismatic as Soleimani was, he was not the only figure who could stoke the loyalty of supporters across the region. Neither is he the only architect of Irans proxy warfare, a tactic first learned during the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, when Iraq was being heavily supplied by the US and the west.

Ali Alfoneh, author of Iran Unveiled on the IRCG and senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, agrees. No one is indispensable in the IRGC, he tells The Independent. The IRGC is a highly bureaucratised organisation which existed before Soleimani was appointed its chief commander and will survive decapitation.

Alfoneh adds that the ability to keep affiliates and proxies on board is deliberately sorted at an institution-wide level. And so it would be easy for Soleimanis replacement Brigadier General Ismail Qaani to take on the job.

Spectacle-wearing Qaani is just one year younger than Soleimani, and was his deputy. He too was a veteran of the 1980 Iran-Iraq war where he first befriended the slain leader.

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While Soleimani worked Irans western front in places like Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, his deputy was more focused on the east  including managing operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and central Asia. But Qaani is not the risk-taking daredevil like Soleimani, who shuttled around front lines wearing no body armour.

Qaani was busy attending to the bureaucratic affairs of the IRGC Quds Force while Soleimani was active directing the war effort and mobilising public support for it, Alfoneh says. Qaani was an institution builder.

Even if he does not enjoy cult status Soleimani does, Qaani already has deep relationships across the region and an intimate understanding of Tehrans interests abroad. A concerted campaign to build him up as a leading figure will no doubt be unleashed once the mourning period is over, even if he doesnt perform as well in the public eye. Meanwhile, Soleimani will continue to be billed as a martyr unifying the various Iran-backed forces under the banner of ridding the region of imperialism.

The regime will turn the killing of Soleimani into a huge propaganda opportunity and will probably manage to rally large parts of the public around the flag, Alfoneh adds.

I dont see his death splitting the political factions in Iran since each faction will claim Soleimani as one of their own.
Security at the airline is one of those things people hope they never have to think about while travelling via aeroplanes.

Qantas has been rated the safest airline in the world as it has also held the title of the worlds safest airline from 2014 to 2017, reports CNN Travel.

AirlineRatings.com, a website for safety and quality evaluation, has created the safety table, which tracks 405 airlines worldwide and provides an annual list of the safest airlines.

ALSO READ: 2020 will bring 9 long weekends, heres the full list and how you can plan your holidays

In 2018, AirlineRatings was unable to find a clear winner and they alphabetically identified the 20 best airlines with the prize.

However, Qantas has returned to the top this year.

For rankings, considerations such as assessments by aviation authorities and states, flight age, pilot training and history, crash and serious incident reports are taken into account.

Geoffrey Thomas, who is editor-in-chief of the Australian based website told CNN Travel that, They did not look at minor incidents, as all airlines have incidents every day. It is the way the flight crew handles incidents that determines a good airline from an unsafe one.

In almost every important operational safety development in the last 60 years, Qantas is the leading airline and has not had any fatality during the pure jet era, he further mentioned.

At the second place is Air New Zealand, while in the third position is Taiwans EVA Air and a new entry in the list is Abu Dhabi based Etihad Airways which is in the fourth position.

Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Alaska Airlines, Cathay Pacific and Virgin Australia are the remaining of the top ten.

While airlines that are ranked between ten-twenty include Hawaiian Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, TAP Air Portugal, SAS, Royal Jordanian, Swiss, Finnair, Lufthansa, Aer Lingus and KLM.

British Airways, ANA, American Airlines and United, all made the top 20 last year, are notable exceptions to the list.

British Airways was rated as not life-threatening due to the combination of a fleet age and the number of incidents, but there were a lot of them compared to other airlines of similar size said, Thomas.

ALSO READ: Travel on the cards? Here are a few offbeat destinations for backpackers in and around India

In respect to others, he cited the cases on Fedex, American, Delta, JAL and ANA involving reportedly drunk pilots.

Thomas further praised Qantas, by mentioning their latest innovations that included its Perth to London Boeing 787nonstop service which was a great success and the recent London-Sydney and New York-Sydney test flights.

12 Airbus A350s were ordered by the airline to fly between cities without waiting.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)

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Spox: Iran to decide on fifth step to reduce JCPOA commitments tonight

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Jan 5, IRNA -- Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi announced on Sunday that President Hassan Rouhani's cabinet will hold an important meeting tonight to decide on the fifth phase of cutting down its nuclear commitments that will determine the country's approach regarding the JCPOA.

The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said that some decisions had been taken for the fifth step, but due to the current situation, an important meeting will be held on the fifth step which can impact the previous decisions.

"Today's decision wil determine Iran's policy concerning the implementation of the JCPOA and the future of the deal," Mousavi said.

The Iranian diplomat made the remarks in his weekly press conference on the occasion of commemorating the martyrdom of commander Soleimani.

He described Lieutenant General Qasem Soleimani as a global hero for combating terrorism, violence as well as extremism.

The General could be regarded as the person who has captured the hearts and is a best-loved icon, he added.

He went on to say that the foreign media are seeking to introduce Soleimani in a wrong way whereas the plots will go nowhere.

Mousavi thanked the Iraqi nation and government over the funeral ceremony of the resistance martyrs, expressing condolence on the martyrdom of Abu Mahdi Al-Mohandes as well as the other military forces.

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FAIRFIELD  Fairfield Warde High School would welcome the opportunity to develop a collaboration with local companies and business to create an opportunity for students to complete an internship experience. School officials are looking for local companies to volunteer to be mentors, especially in the areas of General Business, Criminal Justice, EMT, Nursing/Medical, Finance, Forensic Science, and Marketing.

The Internship Program at Fairfield Warde High Schooltakes place over the course of a semester or approximately 16 weeks. Fairfield Warde High School believes that an internship is an opportunity offered by an employer to students, to work at a firm for an extended period of time. School officials want students to understand the culture behind the business and their career path.
Australian officials used a respite on Monday from fierce wildfires that have killed 24 people across the country's southeast to race to reopen blocked roads and evacuate people who have been trapped for days. A second day of light rain and cool winds brought some relief from heatwave-fuelled blazes that ripped through two states over the weekend, but officials warned the hazardous weather conditions were expected to return later in the week. "There is no room for complacency," New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters on Monday morning. Two ...
A well-known political and social activist was shoved and pushed until he fell to the ground.

The savage assault by scores of masked men wielding clubs, rods and hammers  probably mostly outsiders, although this needs to be ascertained through an impartial probe, if such a thing is still possible  who ran riot on the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus in New Delhi on Sunday evening is apt to attract comparison with the events that occurred during the creeping rise of fascism in 1930s Germany.

For reasons that are only too obvious, it will be purposeful falsification to view the shaming, brutal, episode as a clash between left-wing and right-wing students in the precincts of a university, as some have sought to suggest.

If scores of armed hoodlums were beating up students and teachers, pulling out even young women from their hostel rooms, and attacking doors, windows and parked vehicles inside the campus, their friends, colleagues and sympathizers, who had massed at the universitys main gate, were flattening tyres and breaking the windowpanes of ambulances seeking to go in bring out the injured as the police stood by meekly.

Journalists on reporting assignments were attacked and abused and had their equipment smashed, with the more independent news outfits being singled out for special mob attention. A well-known political and social activist was shoved and pushed until he fell to the ground. Instead of restraining the mob, the police first blamed this prominent figure for creating tension and then had him removed.

The police arent known to show such solicitousness towards leftist students. But its the slogans that give the hoodlums away. Naxals, tukde-tukde gang, desh ka gaddar were some of the milder things said. These expressions arent a part of the Lefts vocabulary. A woman reporter of a top television channel could be seen asking those who surrounded her why they wanted her to shout Bharat Mata ki Jai and what relevance that nationalist cry had to the prevailing situation.

In the past six years, leading lights of the ruling party and the government have sought to devise ways to dismantle JNU as it is today  a haven of study through seminars, sharp debates, and a consciously designed academic programme that encourages the linking of all aspects of life with the curricula in a free manner. The spirit of constant questioning, and JNUs admissions policy that assiduously seeks students from all parts of the country and from the poorest classes, has made this university among the best in the world, but anathema to the majoritarian right-wing.

The powers-that-be appear to want to inculcate scholarship that is worshipful of the State and would pray at the altar of the putative greatness of our ancients. The identity of those behind Sundays assault is yet to be established, but the suspicion is too strong to be brushed away that they might be linked, organizationally and ideologically, to those in command.

Of late, this country has begun to be viewed in negative terms internationally. The vile attack on JNU is likely to raise further questions about the health of Indian democracy.
As a nurse, Tanis Rummery was dedicated to caring for others. Now shes caring for herself and her dementia, living, shopping and driving on her own while challenging the stigma surrounding the disease.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 6/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a nurse, Tanis Rummery was dedicated to caring for others. Now shes caring for herself and her dementia, living, shopping and driving on her own while challenging the stigma surrounding the disease.

"Im going to speak up where I can," said Rummery, 76, who was diagnosed with dementia in 2013.

More than 23,000 Manitobans have Alzheimers disease or another form of dementia. That number is growing at an alarming rate and is expected to hit 40,700 by 2038, the Alzheimer Society of Manitoba says.

When she realized something was wrong, Rummery went for a brain scan and discovered she had vascular dementia, a form of the disease that is caused by an impaired blood supply to the brain.

"I did a lot of crying," she said. "I live alone with my cats." Facing hard times on her own wasnt new to the nurse who grew up "extremely poor" on a farm near Sperling and was widowed at a young age with two small children.

In 2014, Rummery reached out to the Alzheimer Society of Manitoba and joined a support group.

"It was such a healing thing," she said. "I was processing the idea that I could still make it."

The weekly group was an eye-opener, Rummery said.

She got to know a 51-year-old woman with Lewy body dementia, who would be mistaken for someone "on drugs, drinking or crazy," she said.

"I thought, this is nuts," she said.

So she decided to let people know about her vascular dementia but to keep living life to the fullest for as long as she can. She has a valid drivers licence, two cats and is managing well in her own place. She has not had a traffic ticket or an accident, she said. "That doesnt mean I dont forget."

Whats helping her stay on track now is her professional training and work habits. "As nurses, we had to chart every damn thing we did," she said.

Now Rummery charts everything in her life, with a daily diary logging what she has done and what she needs to do to make sure nothing is forgotten. "The place is clean, my garbage is emptied."

She drives herself to her weekly support group and runs errands. If shes having trouble somewhere, shell quietly tell someone, "I have dementia  can you help me?

"Its really nice to feel that Im not afraid."

The manager of her apartment building is aware of her dementia. Rummery said she knows that if she ever parks her car outside her designated stall, someone will report her to the manager. Staff at her bank and support people at the Alzheimer Society of Manitoba know she has dementia and what to do if there are signs that shes not managing the disease any more.

"It will progress," she said.

For now, she wants to focus on enjoying each day.

And Rummery knows how to live. When her two daughters left home, she did, too. After working as an ICU nurse at Victoria General Hospital, she went to Toronto, found a place to stay and started taking nursing contracts that interested her.

"I had no idea what my life would be... I was willing to try anything." Rummery was the "set nurse" on a production starring Mr. T, cared for patients at a hospice in the early days of the AIDS crisis in Toronto, then worked in Saudi Arabia for two years.

She learned a lot about the world, including not to accept long contracts in unfamiliar places. After arriving in Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf War began. It was a restrictive society but full of discovery for the adventurer who had never travelled abroad.

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She remembers getting a newspaper from the West that had former British leader Margaret Thatchers photo on the front page. It was torn out by officials in the Arab kingdom because it revealed too much of Thatchers skin.

"It was weird," she laughed. "And it was so hot you could cook your potatoes on the sidewalk." Rummery then took nursing contracts all over the United States and in remote northern Manitoba, which left a mark on her  literally. "I got an eagle tattoo."

It was a sign of how much she loved working in the Indigenous community near Oxford House.

"I thought it was an amazing experience," Rummery said from her Winnipeg home where she retired with no regrets.

"I enjoy these memories now. When theyre gone, itll be really sad."

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
The company let him go after he tweeted in complaint about the holiday gift

An employee who was gifted a bottle of BBQ sauce for the holidays from the 'billion-dollar' company he works for was fired after complaining about the present on Twitter.

Hussien Mehaidli, from Toronoto, Canada, was fired from his job as a general manager for the construction company Fastenal, after he complained that the Canadian employees were gifted a $6 bottle of BBQ sauce.

He claims their US colleagues were treated to a goodie box full of cookies, M&Ms, beef jerky, just as all the employees had in previous years.

Hussien Mehaidli, from Toronoto, Canada, was fired from his job as a general manager for the construction company Fastenal, after he complained that the Canadian employees were gifted a $6 bottle of BBQ sauce

From an anonymous Twitter account he tweeted: 'What kind of multi billion-dollar company gifts it's Canadian employees barbecue sauce as a holiday gift?

'Yet the USA employees stuff their face with an actual holiday gift box!'

He shared the tweet with a picture of himself looking unimpressed next to the bottle of BBQ sauce, accidentally tagging his employer in the tweet.

After working hard to hit his sales targets all year the manager said the present felt like a slap in the face.

From an anonymous Twitter account he tweeted: 'What kind of multi billion-dollar company gifts it's Canadian employees barbecue sauce as a holiday gift?

Mr Mehaidli told CTV: 'I work really hard. We get pushed really hard to reach our sales goals.

'I felt I gave this company so much and I felt really disrespected when I was given barbecue sauce as a holiday gift.'

The next day his boss from Fastenal gave him a call, but seemed to be unaware of his identity, calling him by his Twitter username.

Mr Mehaidli was called into a meeting and fired on December 30 for a 'violation of standards of conduct policy.'

Unfortunately, despite deleting his post, the worker was tracked down by the company who managed to work out who he was from the workplace background in another photo on the account.

He was called into a meeting and fired on December 30 for a 'violation of standards of conduct policy.'

Mr Mehaidli said the timing of the firing was the worst Christmas gift of all.

He told CTV: 'Christmas just came by. There are bills to be paid, my visa bill.

'Money is an issue. 'I'm a very heavy believer in God and everything happens for a reason, but I believe I was done very, very dirty.'
Delhi Congress president Subhash Chopra on Monday said his party was prepared to face the upcoming Assembly polls, while asserting that it will get a majority and form the government in the national capital.

The 70-member Delhi Assembly will go to polls on February 8 and the results will be declared on February 11, the Election Commission announced on Monday.

The campaign committee chairman of the Congress, Kirti Azad, said the party was ready to run an "aggressive" campaign in the run-up to the elections.

"The Congress will get a majority and form the government on its own. The tide is turning in our favour due to the hollow promises of the AAP and the BJP," Chopra said.

Azad said the Congress will try to corner the (AAP) by comparing the erstwhile Sheila Dikshit regime and the current government led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the national capital.

"We are prepared and will run an aggressive campaign, which will compare the works done by the Congress under (former chief minister) Sheila Dikshit and the current Kejriwal government in Delhi," Azad said.

The Congress will question the AAP and the (BJP) over the condition of schools, hospitals and regularisation of unauthorised colonies in the national capital, he added.

The grand old party has suffered a series of electoral defeats in Delhi, starting with the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. It drew a blank in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls as well as in the 2015 Delhi Assembly election.

The parliamentary polls held last year offered a silver lining to the party as under the leadership of late Dikshit, Congress candidates pushed the nominees of the ruling AAP on to the third place in five of the seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital.

The Congress managed to improve its vote share, although it failed to win any seat. The party got over 22 per cent votes, which was considerably higher than the over-18 per cent votes polled by the AAP.

"We have been on the election mode for the last few weeks, holding 'Halla Bol' rallies, protests and demonstrations across Delhi, not only to expose the failures and falsehood of the BJP and AAP governments, but also to highlight the achievements of the Congress governments headed by Sheila Dikshit," Chopra said.

The Delhi Congress president has already announced that the party will provide relief to people consuming up to 600 units of electricity in Delhi per month. He has also promised to raise the welfare pension amount to up to Rs 5,000 per month.

The party has also asserted that it will not implement the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), the National Population Register (NPR) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Delhi if it comes to power.

Ajay Maken, the head of the party's manifesto committee for the Delhi polls said on Sunday that it will be a major election promise of the Congress.

The Delhi Congress has set up a "war room" to connect with party leaders, workers and candidates in all the 70 Assembly constituencies.

Chief spokesperson of the Delhi Congress Mukesh Sharma said the process of candidate selection was underway.

"Winnability will be the prime criterion for ticket distribution," he said.

The "war room" at the Delhi Congress office has been operationalised, connecting all the 70 constituencies.

Ward-level committees of the party have been constituted and Congress workers will step up campaigning from Tuesday, Sharma said.
(Newser)  Walmart managers may not be sleeping tight tonight: Somebody released live bedbugs in a Pennsylvania store and police are now investigating. State police say they were contacted by the manager of the Edinboro store Thursday after staff members found a pill bottle in a boy's jacket with live bedbugs inside, the Erie Times-News reports. Another bottle, this one with dead bugs inside, was found on the floor in the men's department near the belts, police say. Health safety company Ecolab confirmed that the insects were bedbugs. An Ecolab employee inspecting the store Friday found bedbugs crawling around the men's changing rooms.

story continues below

"We take this seriously and are looking into this," a Walmart spokesperson tells CNN. "We are fully cooperating with law enforcement on their investigation." Police say they are looking for whoever released the bloodsucking insects in the store. "A third-party pest management service has visited the store and we are working with them to assess next steps," the Walmart spokesperson says. "In the meantime, we have blocked off the impacted area." (Last year, a courthouse was temporarily closed after bedbugs were seen falling from an attorney's clothing.)
Tokyo, Jan 6 : Japanese authorities announcedon Monday that they will revise measures concerning immigration and bail conditions to prevent escapes such as that of ousted Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn.

The announcement was made by Justice Minister Masako Mori in her first press conference after Ghosn fled the country while out on bail and facing charges of alleged financial misconduct, reports Efe news.

Mori stressed that Ghosn's departure from Japan was "illegal" and that to avoid similar cases in the future, the authorities were contemplating new rules that include a review of immigration controls.

The Minister also said that they were considering possible measures to prevent such an incident from repeating and mentioned tools such as GPS tracking for those out on bail.

Mori did not reveal details about how Ghosn was able to escape from Japan, given that the case was under investigation.

The Minister also took the opportunity to defend the Japanese judicial system against criticism that has arisen in the Ghosn case, such as the possibility of prosecutors questioning a detainee without a lawyer present.

Each country has a different system and it is not appropriate to see only a part of the legal system and criticize it for one detail, Mori said.

Ghosn, 65, had been under strict house arrest conditions on bail in Tokyo, awaiting an expected April trial.

The former chief of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance left Japan clandestinely on December 29, 2019 from Osaka and reached Beirut in a private jet with a stopover in Turkey.

In a statement from Beirut on December 31, he claimed to have left his country to escape "injustice and political persecution".

Japan does not have an extradition treaty with Lebanon, therefore Lebanese law will be applicable in Ghosn's case and hence the possibility of the businessman being handed over to Tokyo is unlikely, Lebanese Justice Minister Albert Serhan had earlier said in interviews to Japanese media.

Meanwhile, Turkey has opened a probe into whether Ghosn violated Turkish laws during his departure to Lebanon and has detained five people suspected in being involved in his escape.

Ghosn, born in Brazil to a family of Lebanese roots, is expected to hold a press conference on Wednesday in Beirut, the first since his November 2018 detention.
Prince William had a packed schedule for 2019 and might be set for an even busier year ahead. Debbie Frank, an expert astrologist, believes that the Duke of Cambridge will experience a significant turn towards the crown in 2020. This includes starting several projects that will later become important parts of his reign. Heres a quick look at all the signs that point towards Prince William taking a significant turn towards the crown.

Prince William | Daniel Leal-Olivas  WPA Pool/Getty Images

Prince William looks to shoulder greater responsibilities

Frank believes that 2020 will be a big year for William because there is a solar eclipse scheduled on his 38th birthday. In the world of astrology, eclipses represent big changes in peoples lives.

According to Express, Frank argues that part of these changes will be adding more responsibilities to Williams plate in 2020. Considering how William was very busy this past year, adding more to his schedule will be a difficult feat.

William will also be shouldering greater responsibilities this year, Frank shared. We can expect him to begin a range of ventures that will become central to his stewardship of the crown.

Prince William is currently second in line to the throne following his father, Prince Charles. There has been a lot of talk about Queen Elizabeth retiring in the coming years, so it makes sense that William would start preparing for a change in the monarchy.

When Charles ascends to the throne, William will take his place as the new Prince of Wales. The title comes with a lot more responsibility, including running the royal familys Duchy of Cornwall.

A look back at Prince Williams 2019

While it sounds like 2020 will be a busy year for William, he accomplished a lot in 2019 as well. This includes a tour of Pakistan, which was the first time a royal has visited the region in over a decade.

During their stay in Pakistan, William and his wife, Kate Middleton, rubbed elbows with the countrys prime minister, Imran Khan, as well as the President of Pakistan, Arif Alvi.

Throughout the year, Prince William also did a lot of charitable work in the United Kingdom. He helped raise awareness of mental health issues with his project, Heads Up, and continued work with homeless people in the area.

William and Kate, of course, also enjoyed the first birthday of their youngest son, Prince Louis, whom they welcomed in the spring of 2018.

What about his feud with Prince Harry?

Prince William has yet to comment on his plans for 2020, though Frank is confident that his path will continue to diverge from his brother, Prince Harry.

William and Harry have fought feud rumors all year long, and the Duke of Sussex confirmed that their relationship has taken a hit in the documentary, Harry & Meghan: An African Journey.

As far as Frank is concerned, she predicts that William and Harry will not make amends in 2020. Instead, she believes they will continue to grow apart as Harry seeks to build a life of his own with Meghan Markle.

There remains tension at the heart of the family, Frank added.

In the documentary, Prince Harry revealed that he and Prince William do not communicate like they used to and that they have experienced some ups and downs in recent years. We can only hope that their relationship gets better next year, but if Frank is correct, that will not be the case.

King William V

When it comes to William taking another step towards the crown, many royal watchers are curious about which title he will receive once he takes the throne.

As is the case with most members of the royal family, Williams titles will likely change over the years. He was born with the title, His Royal Highness Prince William of Wales, and was given a bunch more when he tied the knot with Kate.

Prince William currently has the titles of His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, the Earl of Strathearn, and the Baron Carrickfergus. He will eventually get the title of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cornwall, but not until Charles inherits the crown.

Once Prince William takes the throne, he will be officially known as King William V. The last person to take on this title was King William the IV, who took over things before Queen Victoria and reigned between 1831 and 1837.
By Steve Gorman and Barbara Goldberg

(Reuters) - A chain-reaction crash involving a tour bus, three tractor-trailers and a passenger car killed five people and injured about 60 others on the Pennsylvania Turnpike near Pittsburgh early on Sunday, state police said.

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators began arriving hours later in Mount Pleasant Township, about 40 miles (64 km) southeast of Pittsburgh, to determine the cause of the pre-dawn pileup.

The accident forced the closure of an 86-mile (138-km) stretch of the turnpike, a major east-west highway across the state, in both directions between the exits for New Stanton and Breezewood, adding to post-holiday travel woes in the region.

The highway was reopened about 16 hours after the crash, state police said.

The tour bus was headed downhill when it swerved into an embankment at a bend in the road and rolled over on its side, state police spokesman Stephen Limani told a news conference hours later.

Two tractor-trailers then ploughed into the bus and a third big rig slammed into the other trucks in a chain reaction that also involved a car, Limani said. All three trucks, at least one belonging to FedEx Corp, were hauling shipments of packages, he said.

Five people from the entangled vehicles were killed and about 60 others were injured, two of them described as critically hurt, although all of those taken to hospitals were expected to survive, according to Limani. Three area hospitals took in a total of 57 patients from the accident, according to a state police tally.

Limani said the bus, owned by Z&D Tour Inc, was en route from Rockaway, New Jersey, where the company is based, to Cincinnati. But Z&D owner Chen Dan Yu said the ill-fated bus trip originated from Manhattan's Chinatown district and was headed to multiple Ohio destinations, the New York Times reported.

Chen told the Times that Z&D had contracted with a Chinatown company called Ohio Coach for ticket sales on that route, which he said his company drives daily.

Story continues

Emergency personnel also faced a language barrier as some of the bus passengers spoke only Japanese, while others spoke only Spanish, Limani said. The injured ranged in age from seven years old to some believed to be their 60s, he said.

The cause of the crash remained under investigation. But Limani said some motorists reported deteriorating weather conditions at the time of the accident in an area that lies in the snowbelt of western Pennsylvania.

"There was some precipitation that was coming down, and I'm sure that could have played a factor," he told reporters. A state transportation official told reporters that road crews had been out overnight applying salt and ash to icy spots on the highway.

NTSB spokesman Eric Weiss said crash investigators would be looking to see if the bus was equipped with an electronic data recorder similar to the "black boxes" carried on airplanes.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York and Steve Gorman in Culver City, California; Editing by Peter Cooney and Christopher Cushing)
She is the thirteenth Doctor Who, and the first woman to take up the part.

And Jodie Whittaker, 37, was in New York on Monday to discuss her iconic role at a Build Series by Yahoo.

The former Broadchurch star ensured all eyes were on her in a blue blazer featuring pleat detailing, coupled with flared trousers of the same colour.

Feeling blue: Jodie Whittaker, 37, was in New York on Monday to discuss her role as Doctor Who at the Build Series by Yahoo

The actress added white shirt and slip on loafers to her 50s-esque get up, wearing her bouncy blonde tresses around her shoulders.

The natural beauty added a touch of makeup, heavier around the eyes, with some hip golden earrings.

She took to the stage to discuss all things Doctor Who, enticing the crowd in The Big Apple alongside co-stars Tosin Cole and Mandip Gill.

Eccentric: The former Broadchurch star ensured all eyes were on her in a blue blazer featuring pleat detailing, coupled with flared trousers of the same colour

Stylish: The actress wore her bouncy blonde tresses around her shoulders

Her outing comes after it was revealed the twelfth series began with a significant dip in viewers compared to last series, as three million less viewers tuned in for the show's return on New Year's Day.

Despite stunning fans with a dramatic twist that saw historic villain The Master return from the dead, the show struggled to pull in overnight viewers.

It comes after 2018's series - the first to star Jodie as the titular Time Lord - saw a huge boost in ratings for the BBC show.

In conversation: She took to the stage to discuss all things Doctor Who, enticing the crowd in The Big Apple alongside co-stars Tosin Cole (left) and Mandip Gill (centre)

Dip: Her outing comes after it was revealed the twelfth series began with a significant dip in viewers compared to last series

At the beginning of the last series, Doctor Who attracted just over eight million viewers, but by episode five - The Tsuranaga Conundrum - the iconic sci-fi show received an average of 6.1 million viewers.

Wednesday's series return attracted just over five million viewers, and at one point viewers dipped to a low of 4.88 million.

However these ratings are not the lowest in the series' history, as The Eaters Of Light pulled in a mere 2.89 million viewers overnight when it aired in June 2017.

Co-stars: Jodie posed up a storm at the Doctor Who premiere in New York City on Sunday too, joined by Tosin (left) and Mandip (right)

Big wigs: Jodie put her arm around Courtney Thomasma, the executive director of BBC America

The figures are a far cry from Who's peak, which saw 13 million viewers tune in on Christmas Day in 2007.

An insider told The Sun: 'Beeb bosses were hoping the downturn in ratings towards the end of the last series was just the novelty of Jodie's arrival wearing off a little.

'But the fact that the new season seems to have fared even worse will have them worrying whether it has less to do with who plays the Time Lord, and signs of a greater problem with the show. '

Joining Jodie: English television personality, nanny and author Jo Frost put in an appearance

Taking to the mic: The Supernanny star was interviewed during the panel

The insider added: 'After all, the debut episode aired in a day when many people were still off work and school, so should have attracted a more substantial audience.'

MailOnline have contacted BBC representatives for comment.

For the second episode, Who will move back to its regular time-slot on Sunday night, so it remains to be seen whether the viewership will improve.
For instance, when I flip past a television cop show, all of which now seem to feature male-female partners (meant to signal gender progress), I notice the male cop is invariably wearing a suit and the female cop is often busting out of a tank top. I suppose I could read this as a display of sexual confidence and toughness rather than a billboard for sexual availability, but the mandatory brandishing of breasts does seem to offset any gains in social power. Either way, she must be freezing.

The convergence between the sexed-up wardrobe onscreen and the sexed-up treatment of women offscreen seems both obvious and the great verboten subject. Seth MacFarlane was widely denounced for his painfully truth-telling (and name-naming) musical number, We Saw Your Boobs, at the 2013 Academy Awards  considerable umbrage was taken. But isnt it a curious fact that so many directors manage to portray the complexity of their male characters with so much less of the actors anatomy displayed?

Demands for sexual pay-to-play by a rutting producer holding all the career cards may be horrific. It may well be criminal if force is involved (or perhaps not: Quid pro quo requests arent actually a crime, only a violation of civil employment law). But its not exactly a departure. In a system already rigged for sexual manipulation, whats most notable about Harvey Weinstein is that he tried to rig it even more, traversing the distance between expectation, insistence and (some allege) force with such alacrity that his targets couldnt even think.

Some say women commodifying our sexuality on our own terms is a form of empowerment. Its a subject of continuing feminist debate, from Madonnas heyday to sex workers unions. For my part, I wonder about the practical problems of transactional sex: How do you enforce the terms of the deal on an uneven playing field? Even in cases where women yielded to quid pro quo demands  and maybe a better term for this is decision rather than choice  its not clear that Mr. Weinstein actually came through with the goods. Wow, who would have thought such a stand-up guy couldnt be trusted?

Traditionally, women are socialized to be sexually strategic; men not to take no for an answer. Feminism has tried to rewrite that narrative, but the culture remains saturated with images that normalize it, that make womens sexuality our selling point. Its not like any of this is hidden. Consider the armies of young women tottering around the nightclub district of any American city in camisoles and stilettos every weekend night of the year even in the dead of winter (arent they freezing?) because thats what sexiness looks like onscreen, and maybe some form of reward will follow.

Theres no overestimating the importance #MeToo has had in forcing cultural change on industries and institutions across the country. Its exciting to see that momentum start to transform the screen images that shape the larger culture too: Women playing down the come-hither thing, more offbeat-looking women, a few chunky women (and not just in comedy specials). Now how about those window-dressing roles too  or maybe calling a close to the era of women as window dressing altogether?

Mr. Weinstein may be our most flagrant monster at the moment. But what if the whole system is abhorrent? The basic acceptance of gender inequality is, to me, the subtext of his trial. It also happens to be the question our courts are least equipped to deal with.
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Linkedin A. Muh. Ibnu Aqil (The Jakarta Post) Mahakam Ulu  Tue, January 7 2020

Rare beauty: Lun Bith, 84, is one of the last remaining Dayak woman of Long Tuyoq village, Mahakam Ulu, East Kalimantan, who has stretched earlobes and charcoal tattoos. Dayak women of younger generations do not favor the unique look, which traditionally is considered a sign of beauty. (JP/A. Muh. Ibnu Aqil)

In her youth, 84-year-old Lun Bith must have been considered pretty with more than a dozen large earrings on her elongated earlobes  a standard of beauty of the Long Giaat Dayak ethnic subgroup in her village of Long Tuyoq, situated on the banks of the Mahakam River in East Kalimantan.

An indigenous Dayak woman, Lun Bith got her fingers tattooed as a child. Her wrists and legs are also covered in ink  a sign that she had married.

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North Korea's official newspaper called Monday for building up "impregnable" military power, saying the country should expect nothing from the United States and therefore go its own way without hesitation.



North Korea's media outlets have called for "self-reliance" and "self-defense" almost daily since leader Kim Jong-un threatened to showcase a "new strategic weapon" at a recent key ruling party meeting.



"There is nothing to expect and hesitate about in the face of growing hostile acts, nuclear threats and blackmail," the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North's ruling party, said in an article.



"(We) should continue to strengthen our impregnable military power quantitatively so as to make no one ever think about using armed forces against us until the U.S. withdraws its hostile policy," the paper added.



The paper said that North Korea's sovereignty and security could be infringed upon if Pyongyang does not continue to strengthen its self-defense capabilities while just waiting for the lifting of sanctions imposed against it.



North Korea has hoped that progress in denuclearization talks with the U.S. would lead to easing or removal of crippling sanctions and help revive its fragile economy.













Talks, however, have been stalled since the summit between leader Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump ended without an agreement in February as they failed to narrow differences over how to match Pyongyang's denuclearization steps and Washington's sanctions relief.



At a key party meeting in late December, Kim accused the U.S. of dragging its feet in denuclearization talks and threatened to show off a "new strategic weapon" to the world in the near future, which experts think could include testing of a long-range missile.



Kim also said that he sees no reason to stick to his self-imposed commitment to suspend nuclear and long-range missile tests and that there will never be denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula until the U.S. rolls back its hostile policy against Pyongyang.



Speculation has arisen that the North might be preparing to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile as it tested what is presumed to be a rocket engine twice last month at its satellite launch site. (Yonhap)
BJP leader Vijay Goel on Monday expressed confidence that his party will form the government in Delhi, which will go to polls next month.

"We are confident that BJP will form the government in Delhi," Goel tweeted.

Goel blamed the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for failing to control water and air pollution in Delhi.

"In the last Lok Sabha election, BJP won all seven seats and by that calculation, we won 65 Assembly seats in Delhi. We also won the last Delhi municipal corporation election. People of Delhi have seen development by the Modi government," Goel told ANI.

"AAP used to say that they were stopped from doing work in the last five years. They created the biggest problem of water and pollution in Delhi," he said.

The Model Code of Conduct came into force in Delhi on Monday with the Election Commission announcing that assembly polls in the capital will be held on February 8.

The last date of filing nomination is January 21 while the last date of withdrawal of candidature is January 24.

The ensuing Assembly election in Delhi will witness a triangular fight between the ruling AAP, BJP and Congress.

In the 2015 polls, AAP won 67 of 70 seats while the BJP could win only three. Congress, which was in power for 15 years in Delhi between 1998 to 2013, drew a blank.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Sikh woman has cancelled her first trip back to India in 10 years to cook meals for distressed bushfire victims.

Sukhwinder Kaur, 35, from Melbourne, had scheduled a trip back to her home town to visit her sister who is in a coma after she suffered a stroke.

But decided to stay in Australia to cook more than 1,000 meals a day for families forced to flee their homes after fires ravaged East Gippsland.

Ms Kaur has been camping at Bairnsdale Oval since New Year's Eve to help the community who she now regards as her 'family'.

Sukhwinder Kaur (second right) and other Sikh Volunteers Australia volunteers have dedicated the last week to feeding bushfire evacuees from the East Gippsland region

Her day begins at dawn and ends at 11pm, where she camps out in a room next to the kitchen before it starts all over again.

'I realised my first duty is towards the community here where I have lived for so long. If I had left the people here during such a difficult time, I don't think I could call myself a good human being,' she told SBS Punjabi.

'This is my family too and I have a responsibility towards it. I just can't go while my family is suffering.'

Writing on their Facebook page, Sikh Volunteers Australia said 'no words could describe' Ms Kaur's dedication.

'(Ms Kaur) is working continuously from last five days in bushfire effected area Gippsland region Bairnsdale,' they said.

'She is preparing food three times a day around 400 meals. She has not gone back to home from last five days. Thank you for the delicious taste.'

Sukhwinder Kaur (pictured) was meant to go back to India to visit her sister in a coma but stayed to feed her 'bigger family'

East Gippsland residents were forced to flee their homes due to bushfires (pictured January 2)

Ms Kaur (left) cooks up to 1000 free vegetarian meals each day for bushfire vcitims

Ms Kaur said she is grateful for the chance to serve the community.

'I feel particularly happy when I see that no food is wasted and all of it is used up in the community,' she said.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews met Ms Kaur and other Sikh Volunteers Australia members on January 2 to personally thank them for their tireless efforts.

'Theres a saying that in a crisis, we should look for the helpers. These legends from Sikh Volunteers Australia drove up to Bairnsdale from Melbourne on Monday  and theyve been serving free, hot meals ever since. People helping people. That's what Victoria is all about,' Mr Andrews later tweeted.

Two lives have been lost, at least 200 homes destroyed and a million hectares burnt across Victoria in the last week.
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE U.S.

TORONTO, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- G2 Goldfields Inc. (TSXV: GTWO) (the Company or G2) is pleased to provide an exploration update on the Companys Sandy Lake Gold Project, located 140 miles north of Red Lake, Ontario. The project is comprised of approximately 125,000 acres of contiguous mineral claim units in the underexplored Sandy Lake Greenstone Belt. High-grade gold mineralization has been identified by drilling and sampling in several areas along a major banded iron formation (BIF) structure trending for 60km across the property. G2 owns a 100% interest in 110,000 acres and has the right to earn 70% interest in the W series of claims totalling approximately 15,000 acres.

During 2019, G2 completed a total of twenty-two drill holes totalling 4794 meters. Eleven holes targeted the W1 and W2 zones and were successful in outlining high grade gold mineralization over a 600 m in strike length ( see releases May 13 and September 4, 2019 ) An additional eleven holes were drilled in the W3 zone located over two km to the west of the W1/W2 area. The Company previously released the first seven holes (19-12 to 19-18) (release September 4, 2019) which included high grade core length intervals of 1.4 m of 11.85 g/t Au (hole 19-12) as well as .73 m grading 450.04 g/t Au (hole 19-14).

G2 is pleased to release a further four holes drilled a further 400 m west of the original W3 discovery. Results are tabulated below:

TABLE 1 DRILL HOLE FROM (m) TO (m) INTERVAL (m) GRADE g/t Au SD 19 - 19 18.46 26.00 7.54 1.13 SD 19 - 20 37.65 40.96 3.31 1.84 SD 19 - 21 61.50 75.00 13.5 1.58 SD 19 - 22 244.22 304.71 60.48 0.83 Including 278 283 5.00 5.73

Widths are drill indicated core length as insufficient drilling has been undertaken to determine true widths at this time. Average grades are calculated with un-capped gold assays, as insufficient drilling has been completed to determine capping levels for higher grade intercepts.

Drill holes SD 19-19 through SD 19-22 were drilled in a fan pattern from a single pad. Of note, hole SD 19-22 intersected a broad zone of low-grade gold mineralization, returning a core length interval of 60.48 m grading 0.83 g/t Au. This is the deepest and most broad intersection to date in the W3 target area. G2 believes that this may demonstrate that as drilling progresses to the west, the gold mineralization may increase in thickness. Gold mineralization is associated with VTEM chargeability anomalies of which several remain untested to the west around the closure of a major fold nose structure.

A summary plan map of drilling in the W3 series of targets is available here.

Fig.1 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cd0f64c4-3d29-4934-8609-b56b419ced7b

A summary drill plan map of drilling in the W1, W2 and W3 zones is available here.

Fig.2 https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/1b32400e-18f1-429e-b1e0-6b5d9130619f

Discussion

The 2019 drilling program has demonstrated the potential for the Companys project to host both high grade as well as disseminated gold mineralization. Significant high-grade intersections at Sandy Lake Project are summarized in the table below.

W PROPERTY

TABLE OF HIGH-GRADE INTERCEPTS AS OF JANUARY 1, 2020

Area Drill Hole From To Intercept Grade (Metres) (Metres) (Metres) Au g/t W1 (East) BK  14 - 03 34.15 41.00 6.85 12.86 W1 (East) BK  14  23 7.85 11.70 3.85 10.89 W1 SD  19  05 205.07 206.03 0.60 81.59 W1 SD  19  06 83.67 90.0 6.33 17.37 W1 SD  19  07 7.24 13.47 6.23 4.85 W1 SD  19  11 43.06 45.0 1.94 7.05 W1 SD - 19 - 11 116.00 117.56 1.56 11.25 W1 BK- 14 - 05 14.65 18.15 3.50 12.45 W1 BK  14  06 39.50 40.70 1.20 8.85 W1 BK  14  07 51.80 58.00 6.20 12.17 W1 BK  14 -08 37.56 39.74 2.18 8.59 W1 BK  14 - 09 78.9 86.4 1.50 6.60 W1 BK  14 - 10 38.00 39.15 1.15 9.59 W1 BK  14 - 11 22.1 27.15 5.47 6.71 W1 BK  14  12 20.7 27.73 7.03 6.76 W1 BK  14 - 12 68.37 70.27 0.55 9.77 W1 BK  14  16 78.33 85.16 6.83 8.59 W2 SD  19  04 75.50 76.00 0.50 536.37 W2 SD  19 -04 95.80 97.44 1.64 49.83 W2 BK  14  17 48.68 53.19 4.51 9.35 W2 BK  14 - 18 43.56 47.53 3.97 23.14 W2 BK  14  23 7.85 11.70 3.85 10.89 W3 SD  19 -12 24.0 25.4 1.4 11.85 W3 SD  19  14 69.64 70.37 0.73 450.4 W3 SD  19  16 29.40 32.76 3.36 5.29 W3 SD  19 - 22 278 283 5.00 5.73

Widths are drill indicated core length as insufficient drilling has been undertaken to determine true widths at this time. Average grades are calculated with un-capped gold assays, as insufficient drilling has been completed to determine capping levels for higher grade intercepts.

Dan Noone, VP Exploration stated this initial drill program has encountered both discrete, high grade shoots and veins as well as BIF hosted disseminated mineralisation. The upcoming drilling will focus on extending the high grade at W1 & W2 down plunge and along strike, following the disseminated mineralisation in the BIF to the west through the axis of the NW Arm Fold and testing the chargeability anomaly in the BIF between W2 & W3.

G2 is designing a 10,000 meter drill program for the Sandy Lake Project in order to follow up existing target areas W1 to W3 as well as multiple untested targets.

G2 Goldfields Inc. wishes to thank the Chief, Council and members of the Sandy Lake First Nation for their support and assistance as we continue to build upon a long-term beneficial relationship of economic and community development. The Company is committed to best practices in all aspects of its exploration efforts and strongly supports local partnerships.

QA/QC

Drill core is logged and sampled in a secure core storage facility located in Sandy Lake, Ontario. Core samples from the program are cut in half, using a diamond cutting saw, and are sent to SGS Canada Inc. in Red Lake, Ontario, which is an accredited mineral analysis laboratory, for analysis. All samples are analysed for gold using standard Fire Assay-AA (atomic absorption) techniques. Samples returning over 10.0 g/t gold are analyzed utilizing standard fire assay gravimetric methods. Certified gold reference standards, blanks and field duplicates are routinely inserted into the sample stream, as part of G2 Goldfields quality control/quality assurance program (QAQC). No QA/QC issues were noted with the results reported herein.

About G2 Goldfields Inc.

G2 Goldfields Inc. is a Toronto based mineral exploration company focused on the exploration and development of the Sandy Lake Gold project in Canada and the Aremu/Oko and Puruni District projects in Guyana. The Aremu/Oko and Peters Mine (Puruni District) properties are two of the four past producing historical mines in Guyana. The properties total approximately 25,888 acres and are located in the Cuyuni-Mazarumi Region (Region 7) of north-central Guyana in the Guiana Shield.

All scientific and technical information in this press release has been prepared under the supervision of Dan Noone (Director of G2 Goldfields Inc.), a qualified person within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Noone (B.Sc Geology, MBA) is a member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists.

For further information please contact:

Patrick Sheridan

Executive Chairman & CEO

+416.628.5904

Email: p.sheridan@g2goldfields.com

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking information and statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. The use of any of the words expect, anticipate, continue, estimate, may, might, will, project, should, believe, plans, intends and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking information and/or statements. Forward-looking statements and/or information are based on a number of material factors, expectations and/or assumptions of G2 Goldfields which have been used to develop such statements and/or information but which may prove to be incorrect. Although G2 Goldfields believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements and/or information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements as G2 Goldfields can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. In addition to other factors and assumptions which may be identified herein assumptions have been made regarding, among other things: results from planned exploration and drilling activities; future plans for operational expenditures; the accuracy of the interpretations of exploration and drilling activity results; availability of financing to fund current and future plans and expenditures; the impact of increasing competition; the general stability of the economic and political environment in which G2 Goldfields has property interests; the general continuance of current industry conditions; aboriginal matters; the timely receipt of any required regulatory approvals; the ability of G2 Goldfields to obtain qualified staff, equipment and/or services in a timely and cost efficient manner; the ability of the operator of each project in which G2 Goldfields has property interests to operate in a safe, efficient and/or effective manner and to fulfill its respective obligations and current plans; future commodity prices; currency, exchange and/or interest rates; and the regulatory framework regarding royalties, taxes and/or environmental matters in the jurisdictions in which G2 Goldfields has property interests. The forward-looking information and statements included in this news release are not guarantees of future performance and should not be unduly relied upon. Such information and/or statements, including the assumptions made in respect thereof, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results and/or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information and/or statements including, without limitation: risks associated with the uncertainty of exploration results and estimates, currency fluctuations, the uncertainty of conducting operations under a foreign regime, exploration risk, the uncertainty of obtaining all applicable regulatory approvals, the availability of labour and/or equipment, the fluctuating prices of commodities, the availability of financing and dependence on the management personnel of the Corporation, other participants in the property areas and/or certain other risks detailed from time-to-time in G2 Goldfields public disclosure documents (including, without limitation, those risks identified in this news release and G2 Goldfields current managements discussion and analysis). Furthermore, the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as at the date of this news release and the Corporation does not undertake any obligations to publicly update and/or revise any of the included forward-looking statements, whether as a result of additional information, future events and/or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy and / or accuracy of this release.




The Pentagon on Monday disputed that U.S. troops are preparing to withdraw from Iraq  after a leaked letter from a U.S. general suggested plans are underway to prepare troops to leave following the Iraqi Parliament's Sunday vote calling for their removal.

The misfire added yet another layer of confusion to an already murky situation days after the region erupted in response to the U.S. drone attack that killed Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani at the Baghdad airport. It also raised new questions about the Pentagon's intentions as it faces new threats from Iranian militias in Iraq even as it seeks to defeat the remnants of the Islamic State terrorist group.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took the unusual step of holding an impromptu question-and-answer session with reporters at the Pentagon after media outlets reported a top US. general on Monday informed an Iraqi counterpart that American personnel are initiating steps for a possible withdrawal.

The reported letter from Marine Brig. Gen. William Seely to Iraqi Lt. Gen. Abdul Amir outlined plans for "repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement."

"We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure," the letter added.

But Milley, agreeing the letter was a "mistake," told reporters it was only a draft and had not been sent. He said he had just spoken to Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, about it.

"He used other words that were a little more colorful than mistake," Milley said, according to reports from Pentagon reporters who were present.

UPDATE: Milley just came back down. Says he just got off the phone with Gen. Mckenzie of @CENTCOM - bottom line is letter was a mistake - it was a draft letter that got sent around for coordination purposes. But there is no US troop movement out of Iraq. https://t.co/m10AYs87P3  Lara Seligman (@laraseligman) January 6, 2020

A defense official who was not authorized to speak on the record said the letter was a draft, not yet ready for delivery to Iraqi officials, but that when delivered, it was to notify them that U.S. forces already inside Iraq would be consolidating at safer locations and leaving or reinforcing bases seen as especially vulnerable to retaliatory strikes by Iranian-backed forces.

Story continues

Esper also pushed back hard on any notion the U.S. plans to withdraw from the country.

We are repositioning forces throughout the region number one," he said. "Beyond that with regard to the letter which Ive read once, I cant tell you the veracity of that letter and I can tell you what Ive read. That letter is inconsistent of where we are right now.

There are an estimated 5,000 American troops in Iraq helping government forces combat the Islamic State.
[January 06, 2020] Dorsey Adds Matthew Olson to Finance & Restructuring Group in Palo Alto

International law firm Dorsey & Whitney LLP is pleased to announce that Matthew Olson (News - Alert) has joined the Firm's Palo Alto office as an associate in the Finance & Restructuring Practice Group. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005868/en/ Matthew Olson has joined Dorsey's Palo Alto (News - Alert) office as an associate in the Finance & Restructuring Practice Group. (Photo: Dorsey & Whitney LLP) Mr. Olson has broad experience representing debtors, creditors, and fiduciaries in complex insolvency matters, in cases involving both individuals and businesses. His practice focuses on helping companies navigate a bankruptcy reorganization, from the first day of a case, through confirmation of a plan of reorganizationand resolving disputed claims, and to final resolution. When a bankruptcy case is not appropriate, Mr. Olson is able to help with other out-of-court options to resolve a troubled financial situation. He also helps creditors protect their rights in insolvency matters and helps professional fiduciaries discharge their duties and recover the maximum amount for the estates they represent.



Mr. Olson received a J.D. degree with distinction from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, and B.S., Business Administration and B.A., Political Science degrees from the University of the Pacific. He is the Immediate Past Chair for the Commercial Law & Bankruptcy Section of the Bar Association of San Francisco and serves as a Member on the Board of Directors for the Sacramento Valley Bankruptcy Forum. "We are ecstatic that Matt has joined the Dorsey Palo Alto office," noted Steve O'Neill, Partner and head of Dorsey's Bankruptcy & Financial Restructuring West Coast Practice Group. "Matt has a tremendous amount of experience in the restructuring arena, and is a great asset to Dorsey, providing our clients with valuable insight and expertise. Matt has already shown that he is a leader of the next generation of restructuring lawyers. I and the rest of the Dorsey restructuring team look forward to working with Matt."

"I am honored to join Dorsey and to be a part of a firm known for its high standards and compelling vision," noted Mr. Olson. "As a part of the Palo Alto office's outstanding team, I look forward to serving Dorsey's exceptional client base across the country and around the world." About Dorsey & Whitney LLP

Clients have relied on Dorsey since 1912 as a valued business partner. With locations across the United States and in Canada, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, Dorsey provides an integrated, proactive approach to its clients' legal and business needs. Dorsey represents a number of the world's most successful companies from a wide range of industries, including leaders in banking & financial institutions, development & infrastructure, energy & natural resources, food, beverage & agribusiness, healthcare and technology, as well as major non-profit and government entities. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200106005868/en/

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TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's supreme leader wept Monday over the casket of a top general killed in a U.S. airstrike, his prayers joining the wails of mourners who flooded the streets of Tehran demanding retaliation against America for a slaying that's drastically raised tensions across the Middle East.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 5/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In this Nov. 5, 2016 photo, Gen. Esmail Ghaani speaks in a meeting in Tehran, Iran. A new Iranian general has stepped out of the shadows to lead the country's expeditionary Quds Force, becoming responsible for Tehran's proxies across the Mideast as the Islamic Republic threatens the U.S. with "harsh revenge" for killing its previous head, Qassem Soleimani. (Mohammad Ali Marizad/Tasnim News Agency via AP)

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's supreme leader wept Monday over the casket of a top general killed in a U.S. airstrike, his prayers joining the wails of mourners who flooded the streets of Tehran demanding retaliation against America for a slaying that's drastically raised tensions across the Middle East.

The funeral for Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani drew a crowd said by police to be in the millions in the Iranian capital, filling thoroughfares and side streets as far as the eye could see. Although there was no independent estimate, aerial footage and Associated Press journalists suggested a turnout of at least 1 million, and the throngs were visible on satellite images of Tehran taken Monday.

Authorities later brought his remains and those of the others to Iran's holy city of Qom, turning out another massive crowd.

The outpouring of grief was an unprecedented honour for a man viewed by Iranians as a national hero for his work leading the Guard's expeditionary Quds Force. The U.S. blames him for the killing of American troops in Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before his death Friday in a drone strike at Baghdad's airport. Soleimani also led forces in Syria backing President Bashar Assad in a long war.

Protesters chant anti-U.S. slogans during a demonstration against the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, close to United States' consulate in Istanbul, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020. Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" for the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad's airport that killed Soleimani, Tehran's top general and the architect of its interventions across the Middle East, as tensions soar in the wake of the targeted killing. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

His slaying already has pushed Tehran to abandon the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as his successor and others vow to take revenge. In Baghdad, the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, something analysts fear could allow Islamic State militants to mount a comeback.

Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened the U.S. military in the Middle East while also warning President Donald Trump, whom she called crazy.

"The families of the American soldiers ... will spend their days waiting for the death of their children," she said to cheers.

Her language mirrored warnings by other Iranian officials who say an attack on U.S. military interests in the Middle East looms. Iranian state TV and others online shared a video that showed Trump's American flag tweet following Soleimani's killing turn into a coffin, the likes of the tweet replaced by over 143,000 "killed."

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over the caskets of Soleimani and others at Tehran University after a brief mourning period at the capital's famed Musalla mosque, The mosque was where prayers were said over the body of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, after his death in 1989.

Mourners attend a funeral ceremony for Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and his comrades, who were killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike on Friday, at the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) square in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. The processions mark the first time Iran honored a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such a processional with his death in 1989. Soleimani on Monday will lie in state at Tehran's famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani and referred to him as a living martyr, broke down in tears four times while offering Muslim prayers for the dead.

Oh God, you took their spirits out of their bodies as they were rolling in their blood for you and were martyred in your way, Khamenei said as the crowd wailed. Soleimani will be buried Tuesday in his hometown of Kerman.

Soleimani's successor, Esmail Ghaani, stood near Khamenei's side as did President Hassan Rouhani and other leaders of the Islamic Republic. While Iran recently faced nationwide protests over government-set gasoline prices that reportedly led to the killing of over 300, Soleimani's death has brought together people from across the country's political spectrum, temporarily silencing that anger.

Demonstrators burned Israeli and U.S. flags, carried a flag-draped U.S. coffin or displayed effigies of Trump. Some described Trump as a legitimate target.

Mohammad Milad Rashidi, a 26-year-old university graduate, predicted more tension ahead.

This Monday, Jan. 6, 2020 satellite photo from Maxar Technologies shows Azadi Tower in Tehran, Iran, amid a mass processional for Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad. The funeral for Soleimani drew a crowd said by police to be in the millions in the Iranian capital, filling thoroughfares and side streets as far as the eye could see. Although there was no independent estimate, aerial footage and Associated Press journalists suggested a turnout of at least 1 million. (Satellite image 2020 Maxar Technologies via AP)

Trump demolished the chance for any sort of possible agreement between Tehran and Washington," Rashidi said. "There will be more conflict in the future for sure.

Another mourner, Azita Mardani, warned that Iran will retaliate for every drop of his blood.

We are even thankful to (Trump) because he made us angry and this fury will lead to shedding of their blood in the Persian Gulf and the regions countries, Mardani said. "Here will become their graveyard.

Ghaani made his own threat in an interview shown Monday on Iranian state television. "God the Almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken," he said.

Markets reacted Monday to the tensions, sending international benchmark Brent crude above $70 a barrel for part of the day and gold to a seven-year high. The Middle East remains a crucial source of oil, and Iran in the past has threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all the world's oil traded passes.

Mourners surround a truck carrying the flag draped coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and his comrades in the holy city of Qom south of the capital Tehran, Iran, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. The men were killed in a U.S. drone strike on Friday, Jan. 3 in Iraq. The funeral drew a crowd said by police to be in the millions in the Iranian capital, filling thoroughfares and side streets as far as the eye could see. (Amir Hesaminejad/Tasnim News Agency via AP)

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, chairing emergency talks with the alliance's ambassadors in Brussels, called for restraint and de-escalation, adding: "A new conflict would be in no ones interest.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned global political tensions were at their highest level this century. In a letter, Iraqs U.N. Ambassador Mohammed Hussein Bahr Aluloom called on the U.N. Security Council to condemn the U.S. airstrike that killed Soleimani and ensure that Iraq is not dragged into international and regional crises.

Ghaani, a longtime Soleimani deputy, has taken over as the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds, or Jerusalem, Force, answerable only to Khamenei. Ghaani has been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2012 for his work funding its global operations, including its work with proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Those proxies likely will be involved in any operation targeting U.S. interests in the Middle East or elsewhere.

Already, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks. In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimanis killing made U.S. military bases, warships and service members across the region fair game for attacks.

"We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region," Ghaani said.

The head of the Guard's aerospace program, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, suggested Iran's response wouldn't stop with a single attack.

Firing a couple of missiles, hitting a base or even killing Trump is not valuable enough to compensate for martyr Soleimani's blood, Hajizadeh said on state TV. The only thing that can compensate for his blood is the complete removal of America from the region.

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On the nuclear deal, Iran now says it won't observe the accord's restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities. That's a much-harsher step than they had planned to take before the attack.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have urged Iran to withdraw all measures not in line with the deal.

Iran insisted it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldnt seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions last year. It further raises regional tensions, as Irans longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Edith M. Lederer contributed from the United Nations.
MOBILE, Ala., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Equity Underwriters, Inc. (AEU), the leading provider of workers' compensation for waterfront employers, announced today that an AEU Regional Forum will be held February 11, 2020 from 9:00am until 3:30pm at the Westin Long Beach in Long Beach, Ca.

Held several times per year, AEU Regional Forums are one-day events attended by maritime industry professionals. Attendees participate in relevant, interactive discussions on safety, claims, personnel, operations, and leadership.

Speakers for the Long Beach event include:

Woody Collins , Program Manager, AEU LEAD

, Program Manager, AEU LEAD Shawn Galloway , President, ProAct Safety, Inc.

, President, ProAct Safety, Inc. Jason Lake , Loss Control Manager, The American Equity Underwriters, Inc.

, Loss Control Manager, The American Equity Underwriters, Inc. Jimmy Burgin , SVP, Director of Loss Control, The American Equity Underwriters, Inc.

, SVP, Director of Loss Control, The American Equity Underwriters, Inc. Will Scheffler , CPCU, AIC, SVP, Director of Claims, The American Equity Underwriters, Inc.

SVP, Director of Claims, The American Equity Underwriters, Inc. Kayla Tortorich , SVP, Medical Management, The American Equity Underwriters, Inc.

The event is free to members of the American Longshore Mutual Association (ALMA) and $350 for the public. More information and registration details are available on the event website.

About The American Equity Underwriters, Inc.

With headquarters in Mobile, Alabama, The American Equity Underwriters, Inc. serves as program administrator for American Longshore Mutual Association Ltd., a group self-insurance fund authorized by the U.S. Department of Labor for waterfront employers in all 50 states under the United States Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act. AEU provides best-in-class services including claims handling, loss control, longshore consulting and other support. For more information, call (866) 238-8754 or visit amequity.com. Follow AEU on Facebook and LinkedIn.

SOURCE The American Equity Underwriters, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.amequity.com


STAMFORD  In response to Fotis Dulos seeking to end his acrimonious divorce with his missing wife, an attorney appointed to represent the best interests of the couples children is calling for a hearing before a judge.

Attorney Michael Meehan, a court-appointed guardian ad litem for the five Dulos children, is asking the judge overseeing the two-year divorce to hold a status conference to discuss his fees and his future role in the case.

Meehan filed the request Thursday, one week after attorney Richard Rochlin, representing Fotis Dulos, filed papers seeking to end the divorce because Jennifer Dulos May 24 disappearance has stalled the proceedings.

Rochlin also sought to move custody proceedings for the five children to juvenile court to challenge a New Canaan Probate Court judges recent decision to grant Jennifer Dulos mother, Gloria Farber, guardianship of the children.

Farbers attorneys have claimed Fotis Dulos owes Meehan $43,000 in unpaid fees. Both parents were responsible for paying for Meehans services.

Attorney Reuben Midler, representing Jennifer Dulos in the divorce, filed papers this week opposing Fotis Dulos push to end the legal action on the grounds he is the prime suspect in his estranged wifes disappearance and has been charged in the missing persons case.

Midler contends the divorce is still hotly contested and there are several issues that still need to be decided, including custody of the children who have been staying with Farber since their mother disappeared.

Midler also wants Fotis Dulos to pay his attorney fees and legal costs associated with defending the motion to dismiss the divorce and any other actions he files.

Rochlins motion to dismiss coincided with his request to appeal the guardianship ruling. The custody battle will be the subject of a hearing in Stamford juvenile court on Jan. 9  the same day Fotis Dulos is scheduled to appear at the courthouse for his next pretrial hearing on the criminal charges related to the disappearance.

Fotis Dulos intends to seek access to the children during the hearing, according to Rochlin who contends Meehans services have not been used for months.

According to Midler, there is no record of Meehan being removed from the case. Meehan indicated in his request for a status conference that the matter was not urgent, but he wanted to discuss his fees and his role as the childrens guardian ad litem.

In his motion to dismiss the divorce, Rochlin contends the dormant status of the divorce could lead to different judges issuing conflicting orders on the same issues, including in custody matters.

A Stamford family court judge had limited Fotis Dulos access to his children prior to the May 24 disappearance. Fotis Dulos was allowed supervised visits with his children, the last of which occurred at his estranged wifes New Canaan home two days before she vanished.

Fotis Dulos has since been banned from all contact with his children as part of the conditions of his release on bail for charges of tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution in the disappearance.

Farber, who has been granted the right to intervene in the divorce, has been caring for the children since the disappearance and is seeking permanent custody of them.

Jennifer Dulos was last seen on a neighbors security camera returning to the Welles Lane home she had been renting around 8:05 a.m. May 24. According to arrest warrants, police believe Fotis Dulos was lying in wait when she arrived home from dropping off their children at a nearby school.

Police said two people resembling Fotis Dulos and his former girlfriend Michelle Troconis were captured on video in Hartford later that night around the time Jennifer Dulos was reported missing. The man police contend is Fotis Dulos was seen on the videos dumping bags that were later determined to contain his wifes blood and clothing, the warrants said.

A separate arrest warrant said Fotis Dulos and Troconis  who faces the same charges  also took a red Toyota Tacoma pickup truck belonging to a Fore Group employee to a car wash in the days after the disappearance. Police said in the warrant that they believe Fotis Dulos drove the truck to New Canaan the morning of the disappearance.

Fotis Dulos also urged the employee to remove the seats, which testing later revealed contained Jennifer Dulos blood, according to the warrant.
Joint message of Iran, Russia and China to the world By Alireza Majidi TEHRAN - After the U.S. failed to form an international coalition in the Persian Gulf, Iranian, Russian and Chinese armies launched a joint naval maneuver, codenamed "Naval Security Belt", in the northern part of the Indian Ocean and the Sea of Oman. The drill started on December 27 and lasted for four days. Many media outlets interpreted the maneuver as a "clear warning to America". Some main political and geopolitical aspects of the wargame are given here: Iran's dominant position in the region cannot be overlooked The most significant aspect of the maneuver is Tehran's clear message to those countries that seek to isolate Iran through economic and political pressure. Through holding this joint maneuver, Tehran sent this warning to the foes that Islamic Republic is a power that world powers such as Russia and China cannot close their eyes to.

The Turkish Anatolia news agency, quoting experts, said, "The maneuver is a clear message from Tehran to Washington." The state-run news agency also said the maneuver was conducted at a time that Iran is decreasing its commitments to the 2015 nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In its editorial, the Al-Rai Elium newspaper also said "An Iran which is facing the harsh U.S. blockade will profit furthermost from this maneuver since it will shatter the U.S. blockade, at least psychologically, and shows that Iran is not an isolated country and has strategic friends at the international level."

The widespread coverage of the joint exercise by regional and overseas media indicated that Tehran has selected a suitable time and good thing to indirectly show its power to the United States. Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter From Iran's success to Washington's failure to establish international coalition The joint marine maneuver took place at a time that the United States has launched an intensive effort in the recent months to form a global naval alliance to allegedly secure the Persian Gulf. In its preliminary calculations, after the Fujairah events, the Pentagon expected to form the coalition with participation of great powers; in line with that policy Washington asked more than 60 countries to join the coalition. Reportedly, Abu Dhabi even entered talks with Moscow to convince Russia to join the coalition. But except Washingtons traditional allies such as England and Australia, no country accepted to join the coalition.

Enormous efforts by the Pentagon to form the alliance failed. Only seven countries that three of which host the alliance joined the coalition. In other words, if we disregard Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia - which are the host to the coalition - only England, Australia and Albania admitted to be in the coalition. A contrast between this coalition and the number of countries that participated in the operations inside Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks demonstrates how the situation has changed for Washington. In this regard, there are two things to note. First, even France, which except Africa, has established its only overseas military base in the UAE, refused to join the coalition. Also Japan, rather than joining the U.S. Navy, has decided to separately send its self-defense forces to north of the Indian Ocean. India, which has heavy interests in the Persian Gulf, did not undertake to join the coalition as well. Even a country such as Kuwait, which is a traditional ally of Saudi Arabia and is located in the Persian Gulf region, rejected to join the coalition. Similarly, Egypt, which is frequently present at U.S. coalitions and is politically and economically dependent on the UAE and Saudi Arabia, avoided to join the coalition. To this list we should add certain countries like Germany and Belgium, which are usually sensitive to crude oil export from the Persian Gulf; they also declined to join the coalition for different reasons. In the face of the U.S. failure to form a big global coalition to supposedly protect the Persian Gulf, by holding this joint maneuver  which is unprecedented in the history of the region  Tehran sent a warning to the Pentagon. Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran has reached a level of power that not only it can never be taken for granted in calculations but it has succeeded to bring together emerging powers and form a strong bloc against enmity. Chabahar port is stable against sanctions pressure One of the issues that should be noted in scrutinizing this maneuver is the situation of Chabahar Port as the host of the maneuver. From a geopolitical point of view, Chabahar port is very important and India has invested heavily in it. For Central Asian countries the port is going to serve as a gateway to high seas. If this is accomplished, Iran's geopolitical weight will rise meaningfully. The sensitivity toward Chabahar port and its cold rivalry with Pakistan's Gwadar Port are so great that in the former six-month sanctions exemptions by Donald Trump the port was given waivers! Now, Tehran, with its joint maneuver with China and Russia, has revealed that the geopolitical importance of the port is highly noticed by great powers, and that China spreads red carpet for the development and security of Chabahar. Promising prospects for geostrategic collaboration between Tehran, Beijing and Moscow One of the greatest accomplishments of this maneuver was to show the level collaboration between Iran, China and Russia. For the first time in history, China and Russia participated in a naval maneuver in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman region. The wargame at a time that the harshest sanctions in history are being introduced against Iran shows that Beijing and Moscow have a great potential to establish strategic partnership with Iran.

Probably this issue, more than any other thing, has caused concern among the White House officials and anti-Iran lobbyists in Washington. Indias predicament in making a big decision India is seeking to form an influential global alliance with China and Russia to compete the West. India has also invested billions of dollars in Chabahar port and is working hard to make it a rival to Gwadar port and to turn it into Central Asias gateway to the Sea of Oman and the Persian Gulf. Nevertheless, under pressure by Washington, New Delhi has lowered its level of cooperation with Tehran since past year, and even some sources have claimed that India no longer purchases oil from Iran. Similarly, India has the least collaboration with Tehran in other economic and political areas.

In such a situation, China and Russia as two superior powers participated in the joint drill which started from Chabahar port. In view of this fact, New Delhi should reassess its prior calculation and reconsider submissiveness in the face of pressure by Washington. This article was originally published by "Tehran Times" - Do you agree or disagree? Post your comment here
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020 13:06 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c32103bef 1 Entertainment Ria-Irawan,actress,film,Movie,movie-actor,Indonesia Free

Actress Ria Irawan passed away at the age of 50 on Monday after battling lymphatic cancer.

Rias husband Mayky Wongkar confirmed the news to kompas.com, saying that the actress passed away at 4 a.m. in Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital in Central Jakarta.

Born on July 24, 1969, Ria was the daughter of actors Bambang Irawan and Ade Irawan.

She began her career in 1973 as a supporting actress in several films, including ones produced by her father.

Ria was named Best Supporting Actress for her role in Selamat Tinggal Jeanette in the 1988 Indonesian Film Festival (FFI).

Read also: Guess what?: Ria has cancer, undergoing chemo

The actress starred in popular films, such as the 2003's Biola Tak Berdawai and Arisan, and was known for her optimistic, lively demeanor.

Ria also tried her luck in the music industry by releasing albums, including Sorga Dunia in 1989.

In 2009, Ria was diagnosed with stage 3 pelvic lymphoma and had to go through chemotherapy. She was declared cancer-free in 2014.

The cancer returned in March 2019, which led to frequent visits to the hospital.

Ria's latest movie was Kuambil Lagi Hatiku, which was released in March 2019. (jes/wng)
U.S. Army soldiers from 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, Task Force-Iraq, man a defensive position at Forward Operating Base Union III in Baghdad, Iraq, on Dec. 31, 2019. (U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Desmond Cassell/Task Force-Iraq Public Affairs/Handout via Reuters)

Esper: Theres Been No Decision Whatsoever to Leave Iraq

No decision has been made to leave Iraq, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said on Jan. 6, drawing heightened scrutiny to a letter reportedly sent to Iraqi lawmakers from the U.S. military that signaled a withdrawal.

Theres been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq, Esper told reporters in Washington.

Staff members are trying to figure out what the letter is and there are no plans to leave, he added. There has been no decision made to leave Iraq, period.

The letter, from United States Marine Corps Brigadier General William H. Seely III, commanding general of Task Force Iraq, the U.S.-led military coalition against ISIS, was leaked to media outlets on Monday and widely circulated online.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staffs, told reporters that the letter was real but that it wasnt meant to be released. That letter is a draft, it was a mistake, it should not have been released, he said.

Milley said the draft was poorly worded and wasnt signed.

The letter, addressed to the Iraqi defense ministrys Combined Joint Operations Baghdad, stated:

Sir, in deference to the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq, and as requested by the Iraqi Parliament and the Prime Minister, CJTF-OIR will be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement, read the letter. During this time, there will be an increase in helicopter travel in and around the International Zone (IZ) of Baghdad. We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure.

A Department of Defense spokesperson told The Epoch Times before Milley and Esper spoke that they were still tracking down the letter.

Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani pray near the coffins of Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in an airstrike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 6, 2020. (Official Presidents Website/Handout via Reuters)

A photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike, in Baghdad, Iraq, early on Jan. 2, 2020. (HO, Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office, via AP)

The Iraqi parliament passed a resolution over the weekend to expel foreign troops after Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi called on members to act.

The government commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting [the ISIS terrorist group] due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory, the resolution read. The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason.

Resolutions, unlike laws, are non-binding.

About 5,000 American military personnel are in Iraq, which has found itself caught between Iran and the United States. The parliament was reacting several days after a U.S. airstrike took out Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.

President Donald Trump threatened on Sunday to impose harsh sanctions on Iraq if lawmakers there forced U.S. troops to leave.

If they do ask us to leave, if we dont do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before, ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, he said.

We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base thats there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time. Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it.

Trump added that If theres any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.

Allen Zhong, Jack Phillips, and Katabella Roberts contributed to this report.
Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., the Rolling Meadows, Ill.-based broker, announced it has purchased a minority stake in Malaysian broker SP&G Insurance Brokers Sdn Bhd.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

SP&G is a multi-discipline commercial insurance broker specializing in coverages for the aviation market, as well as offering clients additional expertise and insurance solutions for property & casualty, marine, engineering and other risks. Founded in 1974, SP&G was purchased in its entirety by its current CEO, Dato Zakaria Meranun, in early 2014.

Based in Kuala Lumpur with an office in Johor Bahru, SP&G today is one of the leading insurance brokers in Malaysia, with revenues exceeding US$6 million in 2018, said Gallagher in a statement.

SP&G presents an exciting opportunity to expand Gallaghers commercial insurance footprint in Asia and further extend our client reach in the global aviation sector. This is in keeping with our growth strategy of investing in great businesses that deepen our capabilities and expand our geographic presence, said J. Patrick Gallagher, Jr., chairman, president and CEO. We are very pleased to partner with SP&G, and extend a warm welcome to Zak and his associates as they join our growing global team.

Source: Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

Topics Mergers Agencies A.J. Gallagher
FTSE 100 executives will have been paid more by the end of Monday than most workers will earn all year.

British bosses are being urged to explain corporate executive pay after new research suggested the highest earners receive 117 times the annual wage of the average worker in the United Kingdom.

Chief executives of companies in the FTSE 100 who started work this year on January 2 only need to work until just before 5pm on Monday to make the same amount of money that the typical full-time employee will earn this entire year, according to a study from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and think-tank the High Pay Centre.

The groups said their findings revealed the average FTSE 100 chief executive was paid 3.46 million ($4.6m) in 2018, equivalent to 901.30 ($1,185) an hour.

In comparison, the average full-time worker took home an annual salary of 29,559 ($38,850), equivalent to 14.37 ($18.89) an hour.

This tells you everything about how unfair our economy is. Every working person plays a part in creating Britains wealth, but people at the top are taking more than their share, said Frances OGrady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress.





We need a real plan from the government to tackle excessive pay. Reporting on it is only the start, there should be seats for workers on pay committees and company boards to stop fat cats taking more than their fair share.

This is the first year where businesses are really being held to account on executive pay. Pay ratio reporting will rightly increase scrutiny on pay and reward practices, but reporting the numbers is just the start, said Peter Cheese, chief executive at the CIPD.

Publicly listed firms with more than 250 UK employees must disclose the ratio between chief executive pay and that of their average worker, and explain the reasons for their executive pay ratios, under legislation that comes into action for the first time in 2020.

The CIPD and High Pay Centre called on businesses not to treat the new reporting requirements as a tick-box exercise, and to use it as an opportunity to fully explain chief executive pay levels.

We need businesses to step up and justify very high levels of pay for top executives, particularly in relation to how the rest of the workforce is being rewarded, said Cheese.

Greater fairness and openness in pay is essential in building trust, amongst employees as well as external stakeholders and investors.

Comparing CEO salaries to the average salary serves to stoke public hostility, and misleads workers to believe that cuts at the top end will directly translate to top-ups at the bottom Mark Littlewood, Institute of Economic Affairs

Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Centre, added: CEOs are paid extraordinarily highly compared to the wider workforce, helping to make the UK one of the most unequal countries in Europe.

New reporting requirements mean that publicly listed firms will have to be more transparent over how and why they reward their CEOs relative to the wider workforce. Hopefully this will lead to a more sensible balance between those at the top and everyone else.

The Conservative governments business secretary, Andrea Leadsom, praised what she called world-leading legislation to improve corporate transparency.

Todays figures will be eye-watering for the vast majority of hard-working people across the UK, she said.

The numbers are better than they were  but the situation is still concerning, especially in those cases where executives have been rewarded despite failing their employees and customers.





Our world-leading legislation shines a light on excessive pay and forces companies to disclose and explain the pay of their CEOs, with new reforms this year to increase transparency around how directors meet their responsibilities and future plans to ensure companies cannot shy away from required reporting on executive pay.

But while union leader Tim Roache, general secretary of GMB, said it was a source of national shame that company fat cats will already have made more money than the typical worker will in the rest of the year, corporate bosses also have their champions.

Comparing CEO salaries to the average salary serves to stoke public hostility, and misleads workers to believe that cuts at the top end will directly translate to top-ups at the bottom, said Mark Littlewood, director general at the Institute of Economic Affairs.

In todays globalised economy, the role of the chief executive has become significantly more important; the successes, failures and sudden departures of CEOs can increase or diminish a companys worth by billions of pounds  which can also result in the gain or loss of thousands of jobs.

By continuing our obsession with high pay, we dismiss the achievements of successful CEOs which benefit employees and customers alike; and we distract ourselves from tackling the critical issue of low pay and the cost of living crisis.
Take that, President Trump. Iraqs parliament passed a nonbinding resolution calling on the government to end the presence of foreign troop presence in Iraq. Not only is the resolution non-binding, but the caretaker prime minister isnt legally authorized to sign the bill into law. Not only that, there apparently is no timetable attached to the resolution.

Not only that, the Iraqi parliament that passed the resolution was barely able to muster a quorum. Only 173 of the 329 Iraqi lawmakers participated. Nearly all of those who did are Shiite representatives. Kurd and Sunni legislators wanted nothing to do with the resolution.

The Kurds and the Sunnis presumably would like U.S. forces to remain in Iraq. Many Shiites probably would as well. Otherwise, they would have passed something stronger than a non-binding resolution with no timetable.

Shiite cleric and longtime U.S. nemesis Muqtada Sadr aptly described the resolution as feeble. He called for the immediate closure of the American embassy of evil and of U.S. bases in the country.

Even the Shiite legislators didnt want to go that far, and for good reason. Iran has worn out its welcome in Iraq even among large segments of the Shiite population. The attacks by Shiite protesters on Iranian diplomatic outposts in the south of Iraq demonstrate this. I assume that disgust with Iran also explains why the resolution isnt directed only at America, but instead encompasses all foreign forces.

For his part, President Trump would like to remove all U.S. forces from Iraq. But that was never a good short-term option, and its a terrible one now that were in a direct confrontation with Iran. Handing Iran the kind of victory a U.S. withdrawal would represent is unthinkable at this moment, or should be.

Accordingly, Secretary of State Pompeo promptly blew off the idea of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. On Fox News Sunday, he stated:

We are confident that the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there to fight the counterterror campaign. And well continue to do all the things we need to do to keep America safe.

Given the weakness of the withdrawal of troops resolution, continuing to do these things will not violate Iraqi law.
KB Financial Group Chairman Yoon Jong-kyoo

Shinhan, Woori send digital experts to tech fair



By Park Jae-hyuk



KB Financial Group Chairman Yoon Jong-kyoo became the nation's first financial group CEO to visit the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), according to industry officials, Monday.



The banking group said its chairman flew to Las Vegas, Monday, to attend the world's largest electronics fair that will be held from Tuesday to Friday.



He is accompanied by 17 employees from KB Kookmin Bank's IT group, KB Kookmin Card, KB Investment and KB Financial Group Research Institute.



Yoon, who is highly likely to try to serve another three-year term when his second term ends in November, will be looking for technology to bolster the group's long-term growth engines at CES 2020.



KB has already shown keen interest in integration between financial and digital technologies.



In 2019, it launched its budget phone service Liiv M, which will provide users with low-cost plans and convenient mobile banking services.



"The chairman has been interested in global IT firms and industry trends. He mentioned Google as one of the rivals to KB," a KB Financial Group spokesman said. "The latest visit will be an opportunity to build networks for future business."



Over the past few years, the nation's financial companies have sent their workers to the show, which is a globally famous event for tech firms to show off their latest products.



At the exhibition, they have witnessed new technologies for digital transformation, such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and internet of things (IoT).



Although KB is the only financial group sending its chief executive to the event this year, Shinhan and Woori financial groups are also seeking future growth engines there.



Shinhan said it sent 12 employees including Shinhan DS Vice President Cho Young-suh and Orange Life managing director Han Sang-wook to the CES this year to analyze changes in the global digital environment and discover technologies that can be applied to the financial sector.



It will also hold an event for fintech firms and smart cities there on Friday, so as to allow Korean startups to attract global investments.



Woori said it sent employees from its digital group to the trade fair.



Brokerages and accounting firms also decided to send their executives to this year's CES to learn about industry trends and look for investment opportunities.


Amit Shah further said that the AAP government had done nothing to improve the lives of the people of the National Capital and had only deceived them by publishing advertisements.

New Delhi: Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday criticised Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal for not granting sanction to prosecute those who raised 'anti-India' slogans. "Some students shouted anti-India slogans, said 'Bharat tere tukde honge'. Tell me should not they be sent to jail?," alleged Shah. "But Kejriwal is not granting sanction to prosecute them. Who do you want to save, Kejriwalji?" he said.

Shah had on Sunday too accused the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener of "favouring the tukde tukde" gang by not giving sanction to prosecute Kanhaiya Kumar, the former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU), in the JNU sedition case. Shah further said that the AAP government had done nothing to improve the lives of the people of the National Capital and had only deceived them by publishing advertisements.

"Kejriwal had promised to install 15 lakh CCTV cameras for the safety of residents of Delhi. People are looking all over but can't find any camera," Shah said. "The AAP government had also promised free wifi, however, your phone's battery will drain while searching for wifi signals as they are nowhere to be found," he said. Shah said "though Kejriwal reduced water bills, he supplied poison-like water to the people of Delhi".

The Delhi Jal Board, which would register of profit of Rs 150 crore, is running a loss of Rs 800 crore under him, he claimed. He said the AAP government has done maximum damage to the poor and people living in rural areas. On the AAP government not joining the Centre's Ayushman Bharat scheme, Shah said Kejriwal feared that if the scheme is implemented in Delhi, the people will favour the BJP in the upcoming Assembly polls.
Students on Monday linked arms and formed a human chain in Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University in Maharashtra's Aurangabad to protest against violence in Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Violence had broken out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, after which the police conducted a flag march.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured.

The human chain started from the statue of Babasaheb Ambedkar in the university campus and extended till the administrative building, an official said.

Protesters shouted slogans against the ruling BJP, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, which is accused of being behind the violence, and other Sangh Parivar outfits, he said.

The protesting students belonged to Congress' NSUI, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen and Republican Vidyarthi Sena.

Meanwhile, Inspector Sachin Sanap said the protest did not have permission from authorities and the students have been warned about it.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Loading your Paytm wallet with more than Rs 10,000 a month? Be prepared to pay a fee. Effective January 1, 2020, Paytm has started charging a fee of two percent if you load your wallet in excess of Rs 10,000 using a credit card during a month. However, there are no charges for using debit cards or the unified payments interface (UPI) system.

Paytm has sought to plug the small loophole of free credit. Here is what this means for you.

Transferring borrowed money

Experts in the payments space have observed that Paytm has noticed users loading their wallets using their credit cards and soon transferring the funds their bank accounts. This amount would then be spent or invested. In other words, the wallet user would take advantage of the 40-day interest free period available on credit cards.

Paytm did not respond to our emails or phone calls.

This is not the first time that Paytm has imposed a charge for credit card fund transfers. In March 2017, the firm announced that it would levy a two percent charge on adding funds to the wallet using credit cards. However, the company later withdrew these transaction charges stating that it would cause inconvenience to a majority of its customer base.

In the same month, MobiKwik had said that it will continue to offer free loading of funds using credit cards. Sunil Khosla, Head Digital Business, India Transact Services Limited says, Other wallet companies may introduce loading charges using credit cards after taking into consideration feedback from Paytm customers. They may charge for loading amounts more than Rs 5,000 or Rs 20,000 using credit card. It will be interesting to watch.

How does the charge work?

Assume you add Rs 15,000 in your Paytm wallet using your credit card and as the first top-up in the month. A two percent charge on this means you pay Rs 300 extra, which goes to the firm. The remaining Rs 15,000 gets added to your Paytm wallet.

However, if you add amounts into your wallet gradually, say, Rs 3,000, followed by Rs 4,000 a few days later and then Rs 3,000, you will not face any charges till you breach the free top-up limit of Rs 10,000. But in your last top-up, if you add Rs 3,001 instead of Rs Rs 3,000, a charge will be levied.

Rajeev Agrawal, CEO of Innoviti payment solutions says, Paytm seems to be monetising on the customer base it has built in the last couple of years and seeing whether they are ready to pay for the convenience offered.

Khosla says, Most of the users should not be impacted since the limit of Rs 10,000 is enough to take care of day-to-day expenses, transportation costs, utility bills, etc.

Paytms charge is meant to plug a loophole that some users were taking advantage of, by borrowing sums in a circuitous way to benefit from the 40-day interest-free period that credit cards give. You could maintain one or two mobile wallets and divide your funds between them if you really wish to avoid these charges. Of course, other mobile wallets may follow the Paytm route eventually.
F inland's new Prime Minister would like to see a flexible working schedule that could involve a four-day week and six-hour days discussed.

Sanna Marin, the youngest female head of government in the world , believes efforts to improve the work-life balance of ordinary people need to continue and raised the prospect of the dramatic change to hours when she was previously the transport minister.

Ms Marin tweeted last August that working time had been reduced of the past 100 years, and that people's income and well-being had improved.

Hailing a reduction to an eight-hour working day as being a goal her Social Democratic Party had achieved, she said further changes should be explored.

She said: "Shorter working hours can and should be discussed. A 4-day week or a 6-hour day with a decent wage may be a utopia today, but may be true in the future."

Currently the typical working week in Finland is eight hours a day, five days a week.

The 34-year-old heads a five party centre-left coalition - all led by women - however the Finnish Government was quick to distance itself from the concept after Ms Marin's comments re-surfaced.

It tweeted: "In the Finnish Governments program there is no mention about 4-day week. Issue is not on the Finnish Governments agenda. PM @marinsanna envisioned [the] idea briefly in a panel discussion last August while she was the Minister of Transport, and there hasnt been any recent activity."

Sanna Marin / AFP via Getty Images

Since 1996 Finnish workers have had the right to start or finish work three hours earlier or later.

In 2015, Sweden trialled six hour working days and found that employees were happier, wealthier and more productive.
The visit's agenda, includes conducting several meetings with Egypt's Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, and the economic cluster ministries to discuss the priorities of the economic reform program

Egypts Minister of International Cooperation Rania El-Mashat announced on Monday that a high-level delegation of executive directors from the World Bank (WB) is set to arrive in Egypt in January in a first of its kind visit since 2014.

The delegation will include Mirza Hassan, dean of the board of executive directors of the WB, Ragui El-Etreby, the alternate executive of the board of the WB, and a number of other top officials.

The visit's agenda, according to a statement, includes several meetings with Egypt's Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and the countrys economic ministries to discuss the priorities of the economic reform programme in the coming phase.

The meetings will also tackle Egypts structural and legislative reforms to empower the private sector, provide job opportunities for young people and women, and invest in human capital, especially in education, healthcare and social protection.

The agenda also includes a number of visits with private sector representatives to discuss the role the sector should play as a key engine of economic growth and its plans to pump new investments in venture and developmental projects.

The delegation is also expected to meet with a number of entrepreneurs to discuss their projects and the governments role in enabling them economically.

Minister El-Mashat stressed the importance of such a visit, as the delegation is part of the World Bank's executive board of directors, which is chaired by the president of the WB and consists of 25 directors who represent the WBs 189 member countries.

She added that Egypt was working to deepen its partnership with the WB over the coming years in line with its efforts to achieve sustainable development, adding that the cooperation with the WB will be in accordance with the government's programme and in collaboration with the private sector.

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MANILA, Philippines  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the military to prepare to deploy its aircraft and ships at any moments notice to evacuate thousands of Filipino workers in Iraq and Iran should violence break out, reflecting Asias growing fears for its citizens in the increasingly volatile Middle East.

Other Asian nations with large populations of expatriate labor may face similar decisions amid the rapidly escalating tensions between the United States and Iran following last weeks U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.

South Korean government ministries have discussed strengthening protections for the nearly 1,900 South Koreans in Iraq and Iran. Indian foreign ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said India wasnt planning to evacuate any citizens from the volatile region yet.

Duterte held an emergency meeting with his defense secretary and top military and police officials Sunday to discuss the evacuation plans.

President Duterte ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines to be prepared to deploy military assets to repatriate overseas Filipinos in the Middle East, particularly from Iran and Iraq, at any moments notice, said Sen. Christopher Lawrence Go, a close ally of the Duterte, who was at the meeting.

Duterte expressed fears Monday that the Philippines may have to carry out massive evacuations if violence hits Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia that host large numbers of Filipino workers.

Im nervous. Iran seems to be hell-bent on a retaliation, which I think will come. Its a matter of time  the cry for blood is there, Duterte said in a speech. He urged Congress to hold a special session on the impact of a possible crisis in the Middle East and set aside contingency funds.

Iran has vowed to retaliate and President Donald Trump warned that U.S. forces would hit back at 52 Iranian targets if Americans come under attack. Iraqs Parliament has also called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, which could revive the Islamic State group in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.

Compounding contingency plans is the uncertainty where hostilities could possibly break out.

Military chief of staff Lt. Gen. Felimon Santos Jr. said Philippine forces have identified possible evacuation routes not only in Iraq and Iran but other hotspots, like Israel.

There are probabilities like that and we are improving our plans just to cover everything just in case something happens, Santos told reporters in Manila.

Other countries face similar dilemmas. Asians make up 40 percent of the worlds migrants, and Middle Eastern countries are a common destination. African migrants are also employed around the Middle East, though the possibility of their home countries arranging evacuations is uncertain.

Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said on Twitter on Sunday that he spoke to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the evolving situation in the Gulf region and highlighted Indias stakes and concerns.

He also tweeted that he spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif. Noted that developments have taken a very serious turn. India remains deeply concerned about the levels of tension, he said of his conversation with Zarif.

Gulf Arab states are home to more than 7 million Indian expatriates who help drive the regions economy and keep its cities teeming with doctors, engineers, teachers, drivers, construction workers and other laborers. In United Arab Emirates, Indians outnumber Emiratis three to one.

South Koreas Foreign Ministry said Monday that government agencies had discussed preparations for an escalating crisis in the Middle East but had no immediate plans for evacuations. The ministry said about 1,600 South Koreans are in Iraq, mostly working in construction, while another 280 who live in Iran are businesspeople, students or spouses of Iranians.

On past occasions, China has evacuated its citizens from other countries during times of conflict, political tension or natural disaster. In 2015, the navy transported nearly 500 Chinese out of war-torn Yemen. It evacuated 3,000 from Vietnam in 2014, after the deployment of a Chinese oil rig in disputed waters elicited a wave of anti-China riots.

There are more than 7,000 Filipino workers and their dependents in Iraq and Iran, including many who work in U.S. and other foreign facilities and commercial establishments in Baghdad, the Department of National Defense said.

The workers in Iran and Iraq are a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who are employed in countries lining the Persian Gulf.

The Philippines is a leading source of labor worldwide, with about a tenth of its more than 100 million people working mostly as household help, construction workers, seamen and professionals.

___

Associated Press writers Yanan Wang in Beijing, Emily Schmall in New Delhi and Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
File image: Abhijit Banerjee

Reacting to the violence in his alma mater, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on January 5, Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee told news channel CNN News18 that the government should "establish the truth of what happened" in the university campus.

"I think any Indian who cares about the nations image in the world should worry. This has too many echoes of the years when Germany was moving towards Nazi rule," Banerjee told the news channel.

Violence broke out at the prestigious university in the national capital on when masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours.

"The government needs to actually establish the truth of what happened and not let it get drowned in the chorus of counter accusations," Banerjee said, adding that he was really "concerned" about those who were injured and wished them a "speedy recovery".

Banerjee, who had reportedly faced police action during the time when he was a student at the university in 1983, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics last year for efforts to alleviate global poverty along with fellow economists Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer.

The economist had written about his experience at the university earlier as well, during the JNU sedition row in 2016.

"(I was) thrown into Tihar jail, charged not quite with sedition, but attempt to murder and the rest. The charges were eventually dropped  thank god  but not before we spent ten days or so in Tihar," Banerjee had written in an article for The Hindustan Times.
The procurement for the Hamilton LRT was in trouble months before the Ontario Progressive Conservative government cancelled the transit project citing ballooning costs, with two of the three groups that had been shortlisted to bid on the line declining to participate in the process, and one major construction company pulling out altogether, according to internal Metrolinx documents.

The documents, which have not been made public but were obtained by the Star, show that in the run-up to the Ontario government pulling the plug on the LRT on Dec. 16, two of the consortia bidding on the project through a public-private partnership model cited concerns about a potential lack of provincial and municipal support for the line as a primary reason they werent taking part.

Both Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger and the citys LRT director, Kris Jacobson, said they were unaware of the procurement problems.

It was unknown to me. It still doesnt make sense to me, said the mayor, who has been a strong supporter of the LRT. My understanding to date is that as of the time they cancelled the project, all three bidders were in play and active.

Metrolinx is the arms-length provincial agency in charge of transit for the GTA.

Jacobson, who fronted the citys involvement in the Metrolinx-led project, said pauses and changes to large, messy multinational procurement processes are not uncommon. But the suggestion that two consortiums had stopped engaging in the process, or that one large construction partner had dropped out, was news to the city.

We had not received any formal communication from the province that any of the partners had changed, Jacobson said.

Caitlin Clark, a spokesperson for Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney, blamed the procurement problems on the previous Ontario Liberal government, which launched the LRT project.

The challenges in the process developed by the previous government demonstrate why our government is committed to doing things differently. Our government is committed to delivering major transit projects better and faster, she said.

Clark said that publicly revealing the challenges with the procurement would have jeopardize(d) the commercial integrity of the procurement process, but Mulroney delivered an update to Mayor Eisenberger on procurement challenges and escalating costs in September 2019.

In April 2018, the provincial government issued a request for proposals to design, build, finance, operate and maintain the LRT to three shortlisted groups of companies: Mobilinx, CityLine Transit Group and Ei8ht Transit.

But according to the Metrolinx documents, which include sections of reports dating from the fall of last year tracking the status of the LRT, CityLine and Ei8ht were not actively engaging in the process.

The groups cited concerns around municipal and provincial support, a lack of a break fee in the proposed LRT contract, and problems related to being asked to supply vehicles for the line.

A break fee is a payment issued as compensation for a broken contract. The fact the bidders wanted one included in the LRT deal indicates they believed there was a likelihood the project could be cancelled midstream.

Concerns among the bidding consortia were running so high that one of the principal team members of the Ei8ht Transit group, construction giant EllisDon, withdrew from the process completely in May 2019, according to the documents.

The other leading partners in Ei8ht  engineering firm Fluor and vehicle manufacturer Bombardier  attempted to enlist a replacement for EllisDon, but according to the documents they had great difficulty in finding a suitable replacement and were considering pulling out as well.

The documents state the consortium was planning to make a decision about whether to officially withdraw from the procurement process by mid-November. Its not clear whether they made that decision before the LRT was cancelled.

A spokesperson for Bombardier said the company couldnt comment on a procurement process, and none of the other leading members of Ei8ht or CityLine responded to questions Monday.

In an effort to alleviate the bidders concerns, the government agreed on Oct. 11 to add a break fee, the documents show. A little more than two months later, the province cancelled the LRT.

The province confirmed break fees would be paid as a result of the cancellation, but declined to say how much they would cost, citing the need to protect future procurements. Such fees are typically in the millions of dollars.

Andy Manahan, executive director of the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario, which represents labour and construction groups across the province, said he couldnt speak directly to the case of the Hamilton LRT. But he said bidders reluctance to engage in a procurement could be a sign of problems with the public-private partnership (P3s) model, which the province plans to use for other major GTA transit projects.

Under a P3, a government pays a private entity to deliver a project, on the condition the private company pays for any cost overruns or delays. The model has become popular with governments because its intention is to shift risk to the private sector and guarantee taxpayers dont foot the bill for unforeseen costs.

What that kind of reasoning ignores is that the risk transfer has to be fair, and if its not balanced then the private sector will tend to shy away, Manahan said.

The documents dont spell out specific reasons the companies were concerned about a lack of political support for the LRT. But uncertainty had swirled around the Hamilton project for years.

After a contentious debate, Hamilton city council agreed in a decisive April 2017 vote to go ahead with the plan. But the election in June 2018 of Premier Doug Ford, who in his days as a Toronto councillor had expressed an antipathy for LRTs, led to speculation the project could be cancelled.

In August 2018, Metrolinx paused spending for the LRT in what the agency described as a freeze on discretionary expenditures mandated by the new provincial government. It was the only Metrolinx project affected by the spending pause.

Seven months later, in March 2019, then transportation minister Jeff Yurek announced the freeze was lifted and the LRT would go ahead.

Hamilton city council also contributed to the uncertainty, with some members pledging to vote against the LRT if its operating and maintenance costs, which the municipality had agreed share, turned out to be too high.

The documents reviewed by the Star contain a detailed breakdown of the provinces budget for the LRT, which the government said was generated by Infrastructure Ontario.

It shows that Infrastructure Ontarios estimation that the LRT would cost about $1 billion to construct remained on the provinces books into the fall of last year. The budget projected all elements of the LRT, including financing, operations and contingencies, would cost $3.75 billion, just $87 million more than its approved budget.

However, the documents note the cost could rise. The experience with previous transit projects indicated the current approved funding envelope may not be achievable which could result in proponent bids exceeding the approved budget.

Those bids were never reviewed, because the province cancelled the LRT before any of the consortia could officially submit one.

A consultant report current Transportation Minister Mulroney cited to justify the LRTs cancellation set a much higher estimate of $5.5 billion for the full cost of the line, including financing, operations and contingencies.

The provincial government has refused to release the report or even say which third party produced it, claiming it contains proprietary and commercially confidential information. But the Metrolinx documents reveal the third party was Turner & Townsend, an infrastructure consultancy firm that has previously done work for Metrolinx and the City of Toronto.

Infrastructure Ontario contracted the firm to review the LRT in the summer of 2019, and the company submitted its report on Oct. 22.

About a month prior to that, on Sept. 26, Mulroney met with Eisenberger and advised him the LRT was way over budget. Mulroney also met with him about the project earlier, on Sept. 5, but the mayor reportedly balked at discussing the issue when the minister asked him to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

Asked why Mulroney met with Eisenberger before the consultant had submitted its final report on LRT costs, Clark said the minister did so to share information about expected cost increases in an effort to be transparent with the City of Hamilton.

Clark said Infrastructure Ontario commissioned the third-party estimate to reflect significant changes in the construction market, including cost escalation pressures.

Although the province has refused to release the full consultant report, it did publish a summary of its findings.

Compared to the Metrolinx projections in the documents the Star reviewed, the major cost escalation in the consultant report is attributable largely to higher estimates for construction, vehicles, construction financing and contingencies for any cost-overruns built into the budget.

Turner & Townsend estimated those costs at $2.9 billion, while the province previously estimated just $1.54 billion, a little more than half the consultants figure.

Hamiltons mayor said he had not seen the provincial budget document before, but suggested it looked like the right order of magnitude as opposed to the ludicrous $5.5-billion estimate from the provincial consulting review.

Somebodys playing with the numbers. They added some zeros, or didnt do the math properly, or decided they wanted to inflate numbers to justify their case, Eisenberger said of the Turner & Townsend review. There is no justification for inflating the numbers by some two billion. It just makes no sense.

Clark claimed it was the previous Liberal government that kept the true cost of the LRT under wraps, and the documents affirm the statement of the government on Dec. 16 announcing the cancellation of the procurement.

While privately knowing the project would cost nearly $3.7 billion, the Liberals positioned the LRT as a project that could be afforded with a $1-billion provincial capital contribution, she said.

Eisenberger rejected that argument, pointing out the Hurontario light rail project in Mississauga was commonly referred to as a $1.4-billion project in capital spending. The final 30-year cost, however, was a provincially approved $4.6 billion.

Mississaugas project was also scaled back to address budget concerns near the end of procurement. We didnt get the benefit of that opportunity, the mayor said.

Clark said the province is keeping its commitment of $1 billion in capital funding for transportation and transit projects in Hamilton and will create a Hamilton Transportation Task Force to determine how best to use the money. The task force will consider both transit and highway projects, including Light Rail Transit (LRT).

Ben Spurr is a Toronto-based reporter covering transportation. Reach him by email at bspurr@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @BenSpurr

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/ -- With an introduction by Arun Govil of Ramayana fame, and foreword by acclaimed investigator Kunwar Vikram Singh, who is also a former Chairman of the World Association of Detectives, the storyline of 'The Gateway' by Hariharan Balagopal is gripping and thought provoking. The book saw its release recently by Justice K.G.Balakrishnan, former CJI, with a few advance copies presented to distinguished guests. There are indications that the book will soon be made into a film for greater reach and impact on the subject, and is being taken up by Arun Govil for production. In its present form, the paperback version of the book is available at Amazon and all other leading book stores.

The book, opening with three brutal murders, steers away from the usual route of thriller and mystery. Employing an unconventional take on the same genres, it combines a good cause of safety and rehabilitation of senior citizens with a gripping and nail-biting storyline, and outlines the need for a concerted effort to fight crime against the old and the aged.

While much needed focus and attention is being extended to the security and safety of women and children in the country, one of the most vulnerable sections of the society, that of senior citizens, continues to be neglected. The headlines of murders of senior citizens in their own homes are often disturbing and shocking at the first instance, but are soon relegated to the background amidst the noise of more sensational and stories. Sadly, crimes against senior citizens are not discussed with the same levels of alacrity and enthusiasm as crime against women in public places and molestation of children in their schools. When did one hear of candle light marches or social-media campaigns seeking justice for an old couple murdered in cold blood? Or is the rape of a sixty-five-year-old woman so gory and revolting that it can only grab headlines for one day for the sake of sensational news, but never to be followed up thereafter?



The National Crime Records Bureau throws up data on crimes against senior citizens and to say the least, it is disturbing. According to the NCRB report of 2016, Maharashtra tops the crime chart against senior citizens, followed by Madhya Pradesh and other metropolitan cities. The NCRB Report also forms a reference point in Hariharan Balagopal's book titled 'The Gateway', which draws attention to the plight of senior citizens, particularly the elderly and the aged, and presents their day-to-day struggle for existence, compulsions of medical needs, and their vulnerability against lurking dangers from hardened criminals.

'The Gateway' acts as the perfect squeaky wheel that divulges the adverse situations that senior citizens often find themselves in, and the issues they grapple with on a day to day basis without much help from their own kith and kin. Problems that one does not anticipate but are ever waiting to happen are enumerated in the book. The work advocates how certain basic precautionary measures can avert major problems for the senior citizens fending for themselves, and seeks to bring them out of self-imposed isolation.

About Hariharan Balagopal



A specialist in Media Management and Education, Hariharan has been a consultant with many educational initiatives and is associated with various established brands. With over 25 years of hands-on experience in both areas of work, Hariharan Balagopal has helped establish several renowned brands with strategic and media solutions, and has also been showing the way on launching, establishing and managing educational initiatives.

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1060072/The_Gateway.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A member of the Kennedy clan on Monday joined the race to win the New Jersey seat held by U.S. Representative Jeff Van Drew, the erstwhile Democrat who joined President Donald Trump in the Oval Office last month to say he was switching parties.

Amy Kennedy, 41, a former teacher who lives in Van Drew's southern New Jersey district, announced her candidacy in a short video released on Monday, becoming the fifth Democratic candidate in the primary race.

She is the wife of Patrick J. Kennedy, who is the youngest son son of the late Ted Kennedy and therefore a nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy who represented a Rhode Island congressional district from 1995 to 2011. The family has been one of the most prominent in American politics.

'Trump and Van Drew are symptoms of a bigger sickness infecting our country and our politics,' Kennedy said in the video.

It also shows a clip of Van Drew shaking hands with a smiling Trump from last month's Oval Office meeting in which he pledged his 'undying support' for the Republican president, who carried the New Jersey district in the 2016 election.

Running: Amy Kennedy says she wants the Democratic nomination for the New Jersey seat held by Democrat-turned Republican Jeff Van Drew

Greeting: First-term House member Jeff Van Drew was given an Oval Office welcome when he switched sides after voting against impeaching Donald Trump

Van Drew, 66, switched parties after being one of only two Democrats who voted last month to oppose both articles of impeachment faced by Trump.

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, saying he should be removed from office after a trial by the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans who are unlikely to agree.

Van Drew, then a conservative Democrat, was elected to the House in 2018 from a district that favored Trump by 5 percentage points.

That district, which voted for Barack Obama, a Democrat, in the two presidential elections before 2016, stretches across the state, from the suburbs of Philadelphia to the gambling resort of Atlantic City on the coast.

Kennedy, a director at a mental health care advocacy group founded by her husband, used her launch video to decry the impact of climate change on the New Jersey coastline. If elected, she pledged to focus on the 'crisis' of mental health and addiction that affects many American families.

In June's primary election, she will face Ashley Bennett and John Francis III, who both hold local elected offices; Will Cunningham, who worked for New Jersey Senator Cory Booker; and Brigid Harrison, a Montclair State University professor who has been endorsed by a majority of Democratic Party leaders in the district, according to Politico.

Family: Patrick J. Kennedy and Amy Kennedy have four children together, and she has one daughter from her first marriage. She was pregnant with their youngest child when this picture was taken in May 2018

Three Republicans remain in the race, having announced their challenges prior to Van Drew's switching allegiance.

Amy Kennedy's husband Patrick, 52, was a Rhode Island congressman from 1995 to 2011.

He did not run for re-election in 2010, the year after his father Ted's death, and the following year announced his engagement to Amy, who was born Savell.

The couple have four children aged from seven to one, and she has an older daughter from her first marriage.

Amy Kennedy would be the first Kennedy wife to enter Congress or take public office; a series of Kennedy husbands have done so, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was married to Maria Shriver when elected governor of California, and Andrew Cuomo, elected New York governor while marriaged to Kerry Kennedy.

Currently there is one Kennedy serving in Congress - Joe Kennedy III, 39, who has a Democratic House seat in Massachusetts but who is running a primary challenge to Democratic senator Ed Markey.

It is unclear if he plans to run for re-election to the House in November if he loses the Senate challenge.

Patrick J. Kennedy was named for his great-grandfather Patrick Joseph - P.J. - Kennedy, who lived from 1858 until 1929, and who first established the family's wealth and involvement in Democratic politics.

Patrick J. Kennedy crashed his car into a Capitol Hill barricade in 2006, was not given a sobriety test, and later checked into a rehab facility, confessing to prescription drug addiction, and pleading guilty to a DUI in a plea deal. He went into rehab again in 2009, and since leaving Congress has spoken and written about dealing with drug addiction and bipolar disorder.
Iran has broken an American president before. In 1979, Iranians under the aegis of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stormed the US embassy in Tehran, taking 52 diplomats hostage.

All of president Jimmy Carters efforts to free the hostages failed, including a rescue mission in April 1980, when some of the aircrew were killed and the desert aircraft wreckage was a stain on the US military. The US's humiliation in Iran was a major factor in Carters defeat that November.

Iran deliberately waited until Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the new president on January 20, 1981, with Carter truly gone, to free the hostages after 444 days in captivity.

A boy next to a desecrated poster of US President Donald Trump during a rally to condemn the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani. Credit:AP

Last week, after an Iranian-supported attack on the US embassy in Baghdad that threatened hundreds of Americans, Trump ordered the killing of General Qassem Soleimani, the second most revered leader in Iran after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The killing was brutally executed, and it rocked the world.
In the backdrop of recent protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, Governor Banwarilal Purohit on Monday asserted in the Tamil Nadu Assembly that the government was committed to protecting the interests of all citizens irrespective of their religion.

The main opposition DMK and its allies including the Congress, however, staged a walkout and boycotted his address amid slogans against the CAA.

In his customary address to the House, Purohit said the government was "firmly treading" the path laid by late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and the focus was on the socio- economic growth of Tamil Nadu.

Without any direct reference to the CAA or protests against it, Purohit said the government "will ensure that the interests of all citizens regardless of religion or creed are protected."



In the same breath, he said Tamil Nadu will urge the Centre to provide dual citizenship to Sri Lankan Tamil refugees.

DMK and several others have held several protests against the CAA in Tamil Nadu.

The principal opposition party had also demanded a resolution against the CAA in the Assembly.

Speaking to reporters outside the House, Stalin listed the reasons for boycotting Purohit's address.

"Tamil Nadu's debt has increased to Rs four lakh crore. There is no industrial growth and no new job opportunities," he said.

There was no response from the Governor on the recommendation of the State government to release seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, he said.

He blamed the AIADMK government for supporting the CAA in the Parliament and "betraying minorities and the Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka."



Purohit, on devolution of funds from the Centre said, "there has been a diminution in the overall flow of Central funds to Tamil Nadu," adding Tamil Nadu faced a very severe adverse impact due to the horizontal distribution formula of the 14th Finance Commission.

The state eagerly awaited the 15th Finance Commission recommendations and the government is hopeful of a "fair and equitable distribution of resources, which rewards efficiency and performance."



This year, Tamil Nadu has so far received Rs 7,096 crore as GST compensation and Central grants of Rs 17,957.31 crore.

"However, there are a few outstanding issues in the release of dues to Tamil Nadu which are being followed up closely."



On river water issues, the Governor urged the Centre to ensure that the Detailed Project Report for the Mekedatu project by Karnataka was rejected.

He wanted the Union government to restrain Karnataka from taking up any construction activity in the Cauvery basin.

Karnataka was also planning a reservoir across the Markandeya river in the Pennaiyar basin, Purohit said and reiterated the government's opposition to it.

Tamil Nadu also went to the Supreme Court on this matter and based on an interim order, the State had requested the Centre to constitute a tribunal on the Pennaiyar dispute.

A tribunal should be set up at the earliest, he urged and wanted a direction to Karnataka to not take up any work in the Pennaiyar basin without Tamil Nadu's consent.

"Tamil Nadu is a water deficit State and inter basin transfer of river water is essential to meet its needs," he said and urged the Centre to divert at least 200 tmc ft of water from Godavari to Cauvery basin in the initial stage.

Purohit also urged Kerala and the Centre to accord requisite clearances for strengthening the Mullaperiyar dam.

He thanked the Andhra Pradesh government for release of water from Kandaleru reservoir for meeting Chennai's drinking water needs.

Referring to the fishermen issues, he said the number of fishermen and boats apprehended by the Lankan Navy in the Palk bay has come down during during 2018 and 2019.

As of now, 17 fishermen continue to be in Sri Lankan custody and the Centre "should intervene and have this issue amicably resolved at the earliest."



As soon as Governor Purohit began his customary address, Stalin was on his feet trying to raise some issues. The Governor appealed to the DMK president to resume his seat.

"You are the best orator. Please use your skills for debate. Let this House be used for debate," he told Stalin.

However, the DMK members demanded that the Leader of the Opposition be allowed to raise his point.

As the Governor repeated his appeal, Stalin walked out of the House followed by his party MLAs.

DMK member Poongothai Aladi Aruna, a former minister, shouted 'down down CAA' slogan and walked out.

MLA M Thamimun Ansari, an ally of the ruling AIADMK and belonging to the Manithaneya Jananayaga Katchi, waved a small national flag at Purohit.

Both Ansari and the lone IUML MLA, K A M Muhammed Abubacker came to the House clad in black.

After the walkout of the opposition members, Purohit made his address to the House.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An Egyptian court has ruled that Coptic citizens should be governed by Christian inheritance norms, including gender equality, a lawyer told AFP on Sunday.

"Until now, Islamic law (which provides that men should inherit twice as much as women) was applied to Coptic citizens, even though Orthodox rules guarantee equality between men and women," said lawyer Hoda Nasrallah, who brought a test case.

READ | Egypt: Tax authority chief arrested on bribery charges after accepting gifts and money

READ | Egyptian journalist says his home raided, brother arrested

Nasrallah said she was forced to go to court to ensure her father's estate was "fairly shared" between her and her two brothers.

The court decision was based on article three of Egypt's 2014 constitution, which said Christian inheritance rules govern Christian citizens. Previous rulings by the Coptic Orthodox church guarantee gender equality in inheritance matters.

Coptic Christians, the largest non-Muslim religious minority in the Middle East, make up about 10-15 per cent of Egypt's predominantly Sunni Muslim population of 100 million. Up until now, a law dating from the 1940s has continued to apply Islamic inheritance law to Coptic citizens.

READ | Indian Tourist Killed In Egypt Bus Accident, Embassy Says 16 Nationals Onboard

READ | US temporarily stops deploying sniffer dogs to Jordan, Egypt after numerous deaths
A Honda shop in Hanoi (Photo: VNA)

Instead, VAMM members, comprising Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Piaggio and SYM, sold just over 227,000 units in October and 230,000 units in November, a drop of 6.5 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively, compared to the same periods in 2018.

Business has been poor during the first three quarters of 2019 as VAMM members struggled to boost sales, according to the association. A report by VAMM said sales by its members dropped 6.13 percent in Q1, 4.39 percent in Q2 and 3.8 percent in Q3 compared to the previous year.

Total sales for 2019 by VAMM members were estimated at around 3.2 million units compared to nearly 3.4 million units sold in 2018. Of which, Honda, the countrys largest motorcycle manufacturer, alone sold 2.6 million units, followed by another Japanese brand Yamaha, which sold over 400,000 units.

Industry experts have long forecast the decline of the motorcycle industry. As Vietnamese families income increases, more and more consumers have been switching to buying cars. In addition, a rise in demand for electric bikes and the nations direction to reduce the number of motorcycles, especially in large cities, have all contributed to a sharp fall in demand for motorcycles.

2019 saw a rise in the popularity of electric motorcycles, with major brands including Vietnamese Vinfast consolidating their hold on the domestic market with aggressive sales promotions including heavy discounts and offering free charging for their vehicles.

Vinfast, a subsidiary of VinGroup, have sold thousands of Klara e-motorcycles since their debut in late 2018. The electric vehicles have proven to be popular among city dwellers, especially young students, for their lightweight and modern design. As of now, owners of e-motorcycles are not required to hold a driving licence, which counts as another advantage for e-motorcycle makers over their traditional counterparts.

Foreign e-motorcycle firms also wasted no time entering the fray with Republic of Koreas brand Mbigo rolling out several models with prices ranging from 1,700 USD to 2,600 USD. Chinese brand YADEA joined the market in October 2019 with their latest offering the YADEA G5, priced at 1,700 USD. The firm also opened a factory in the northern province of Bac Giang.

Sales of combustion engine motorcycles will likely continue to fall to just under 2.5 million units by 2024, according to industry experts, as competition from e-motorcycles is set to further intensify in the years to come.
Donald Trump

The Trump administration mounted an extensive campaign to block the sale of Dutch chip manufacturing technology to China, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lobbying the Netherlands government and White House officials sharing a classified intelligence report with the country's Prime Minister, people familiar with the effort told Reuters.

The high-level push, which has not previously been reported, demonstrates the importance the White House places on preventing China from getting hold of a machine required to make the world's fastest microprocessors. It also shows the challenges facing the U.S. government's largely unilateral efforts to stem the flow of advanced technology to China.

The U.S. campaign began in 2018, after the Dutch government gave semiconductor equipment company ASML, the global leader in a critical chip-making process known as lithography, a license to sell its most advanced machine to a Chinese customer, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Over the following months, U.S officials examined whether they could block the sale outright and held at least four rounds of talks with Dutch officials, three sources told Reuters.

The effort culminated in the White House on July 18 when Deputy National Security Advisor Charles Kupperman raised the issue with Dutch officials during the visit of Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who was given an intelligence report on the potential repercussions of China acquiring ASML's technology, according to a former U.S. government official familiar with the matter.

The pressure appears to have worked. Shortly after the White House visit, the Dutch government decided not to renew ASML's export license, and the $150 million machine has not been shipped.

Ilse van Oevering, a spokeswoman for Rutte's office, declined comment, saying the government cannot discuss individual licensing cases.

The White House declined to comment. Kupperman did not reply to a request for comment.

The delayed shipment was first reported on Nov. 6 by the Nikkei Asian Review, but details of the U.S. pressure campaign have not previously been disclosed. ASML said it is still awaiting approval of a new license request and declined further comment.

ASML has never publicly disclosed the identity of the Chinese customer, but Nikkei and others have reported that it is Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), China's biggest chip-making specialist. SMIC did not reply to a request for a comment.

SECURITY INTEREST

The ASML machine uses extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light beams, generated by lasers and focused by giant mirrors, to lay out extraordinarily narrow circuits on slabs of silicon known as wafers. That in turn makes it possible to create faster and more powerful microprocessors, memory chips and other advanced components, which are critical for consumer electronics and military applications alike.

Only a few companies, including America's Intel Corp, South Korea's Samsung Electronics and Taiwan's TSMC, are currently capable of manufacturing the most sophisticated chips. But China has made catching up to those companies in chip-making technology a key national priority and is investing tens of billions of dollars in the effort.

That drive has run head-on into the Trump administration's efforts to block the flow of sensitive technology to China on national security grounds. Companies selling U.S.-made goods are now barred from shipping them to blacklisted Chinese firms including telecoms giant Huawei Technologies and surveillance vendor Hikvision without a special license.

The U.S. government can also deny licenses to firms that want to sell goods made with U.S. technology to any Chinese company, not just those on the export blacklist. But blocking companies like ASML that manufacture overseas is much more difficult.

Under current regulations, the U.S. can require a license for many high-tech products shipped to China from other countries if U.S.-made components make up more than 25% of the value. The U.S. Department of Commerce conducted an audit of ASML's EUV machine, two sources told Reuters, but found it did not meet the 25% threshold, according to one of the people.

The U.S. Department of Commerce is now considering lowering the 25% threshold in some cases, Reuters reported in November.

With no way to block the sale directly, the Trump administration pressed its Dutch ally to consider the security issues. Lithography equipment falls under the purview of an international agreement known as the Wassenaar Arrangement, which coordinates export restrictions of so-called 'dual-use' technology that has commercial and military applications.

U.S. Department of Defense officials met their Dutch counterparts several times to discuss the security risks of the sale, two sources told Reuters. Meetings took place at the Netherlands embassy in Washington in late 2018 and January 2019, two separate sources said.

Pompeo urged Rutte himself to block the sale, despite commercial pressures to let ASML proceed, during a visit to the Netherlands last June, three sources said.

With a market value of more than 110 billion euros, ASML has grown to dominate the lithography market over the last two decades and is the pride of Dutch industry.

"Our ask is that our allies and our partners and friends don't do anything that would endanger our shared security interest," Pompeo told reporters in The Hague on June 3. He did not mention chip equipment specifically.

The U.S. Department of State did not reply to a request for comment.

Six weeks later, during his visit to the White House, Rutte was given a copy of the intelligence report. Reuters could not determine whether U.S. President Donald Trump mentioned the ASML deal to Rutte during the White House meeting.

ASML's export license expired unused on June 30, 2019, and no new license was granted in the following eight-week period during which a renewal request would normally be considered, according to a public database of licenses published by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Netherlands Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Irene Gerritsen said the Dutch government has sovereign discretion to grant licenses of dual-use technology and would not comment on specific cases.

With or without the EUV license, ASML expects its Chinese sales to increase in 2020 as it continues to ship earlier-generation equipment.
Shaza Hotels, will make a special presentation to Saudi Arabias hotel owners and investors at the Saudi Arabia Hotel Investment Conference (SHIC) in Riyadh



(TRAVPR.COM) UAE - January 6th, 2020 -

Riyadh: Shaza Hotels, will make a special presentation to Saudi Arabias hotel owners and investors at the Saudi Arabia Hotel Investment Conference (SHIC) in Riyadh on 21-22 January 2020 about Mysk by Shazas compelling brand proposition in the area of Transformational Lodging. Shaza will also compete in the Three-Minute Pitch to Owners, to highlight some of the main characteristics that make it unique in this segment.

Chris Nader, Vice President  Development, Shaza Hotels, said, The hotel industry is becoming very competitive in the region. There is too much of the same. People want to live new experiences that will change them in some form or another. With Mysk by Shaza, we are offering travellers immersive and transformative experiences in extraordinary locations. We want to connect people to nature, culture and heritage, and provide enriching experiences through intimate and authentic encounters with the environment.

A member of the Global Hotel Alliance, Shaza is becoming a leading player in transformational lodging in the Middle East.

Elaborating on why Mysk by Shaza is an excellent choice for owners, Chris stressed, Owners are becoming more selective and demanding when it comes to choosing the best operator and brand for their project. They need a partner who knows how to create unique experiences so that their hotel stands out from the mass and become financially successful. This is exactly what we are doing in our retreats in Sharjah that form part of the Sharjah Collection by Mysk, and I would like to extend a personal invitation to any owner or investor wanting to develop such concept in Saudi Arabia, to stay in our three retreats in Sharjah and see how we deliver transformational experiences.

The recent reforms and widespread investment in Saudi Arabias tourism sector are driving demand for a new generation of hotels and Mysk by Shaza is ideally suited for the market given its innovative concept.

Speaking about expansion in KSA, Chris stated, Saudi Arabia is a priority market for us with 35 per cent of our portfolio located in the country and SHIC is an excellent platform to showcase our latest brand offering to hotel owners and investors. We have operated in the Kingdom with great success since the launch of our first 5-star property Shaza Al Madina and thereafter expanded to Makkah, Riyadh and will soon be in Jeddah.

He added, The new tourism strategy of Saudi Arabia has opened the doors for the world to discover the amazing nature and heritage of the Kingdom, and this represents a massive opportunity for us to develop transformational lodging in various areas of the country.

####

About Shaza Hotels

Shaza Hotels is an international hotel management company comprising of two unique brands: Shaza in the luxury segment, and Mysk in the upscale segment. The brands are characterised by their dedication to offering true Arabian hospitality inspired by the traditions and culture of the Silk Route and reflected by a contemporary Middle Eastern style decor and serene ambiance that is appreciated by the most discerning travellers. Shaza is a member of the Global Hotel Alliance (GHA).

About DISCOVERY Loyalty

A memorable trip demands more than a comfortable stay. DISCOVERY, an award-winning global loyalty programme, provides 16 million members recognition and perks across over 570 hotels, resorts and palaces in 78 countries. Elite members have the opportunity to immerse themselves in local culture through Local Experiences, distinctive activities that capture an authentic taste of each destination. For more information, visit discoveryloyalty.com

For media please contact:

Hina Bakht

Managing Director

EVOPS Marketing & PR

Mob: 00971 50 6975146

Tel: 00971 4 566 7355

Hina.bakht@evops-pr.com

www.evops-pr.com

###
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Union Minister of State for Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy alleged that the opposition parties in the country kept mum when Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsi and Christian women were being persecuted in the neighbouring countries and asked them why they were not commenting on the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib attack in Pakistan.

While launching the Gruha Sampark Abhiyan (awareness on Citizenship Amendment Act-2019) programme here on Sunday, he slammed the opposition parties for opposing the CAA. "Non-Muslim women and girls are being kidnapped, raped and forcibly converted in Pakistan. The population of Hindus in the country has decreased to just 1-2 per cent of the total population," he said.

He said that the CAA would not adversely affect citizens in the country and that the Muslims in India were safe despite being a religious minority. Kishan added that there has been a lot of misconception and misinformation surrounding the Act, which was propagated by parties and groups with vested interests.


By Trudy Rubin





No one should mourn the death of Gen. Qassem Soleimani.







This was the man responsible, directly and indirectly, for the death of hundreds of U.S. soldiers, as well as much of the carnage in Syria, the brutal repression of Iranian protesters in 1999 and 2009 and many more crimes.







But the verdict is out as to whether the White House has any strategy to deal with the repercussions of killing Iran's second-most powerful leader, who combined the powers of top military commander, intelligence chief and shadow foreign minister.







Eliminating this general is the equivalent of declaring open war on Tehran. A president who has insisted he wants to quit the Middle East is now sending thousands of more troops there to guard against Iranian retaliation.







"Certainly, it's a good thing Soleimani is dead," says Ryan Crocker, the legendary former U.S. ambassador to Iraq who had to deal with Soleimani's wiles in the early 2000s. "But at what cost?"







Here are my early thoughts about costs and possible benefits of Soleimani's death.







Was the killing justified? "Absolutely, no question," says Crocker. Soleimani was the military commander who devised and controlled virtually all of Iran's imperial adventures in the Middle East from Lebanon (with ally Hezbollah) to Gaza to Yemen.







In Syria, the general assembled Shiite militias from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, plus Hezbollah fighters, that kept Bashar al-Assad in power, backed up by criminal Russian airstrikes against Syrian civilians.







And Soleimani was the most powerful man in Iraq. As commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, he organized Shiite militias to fight the Americans in the wake of the 2003 invasion and provided them with lethal, armor-piercing IEDs that killed hundreds of U.S. soldiers. These militias are now more powerful than the Iraqi army.







Was the killing wise? Having spent much time in Iraq when U.S. soldiers were being blown to bits, I have to cheer. And keep in mind that Soleimani's Quds Force has been helping to crush brave young Iraqi protesters on Baghdad's streets who are calling for an end to Iranian "occupation" of their country (although they also want U.S. forces out of Iraq).







But there are reasons that neither the United States nor Israel took the general out during the Bush or Obama years: the ongoing Iraq war, the hope for an Iran nuclear deal _ and the fact that Soleimani's militias were crucial in defeating ISIS.







Most of all, there was a reluctance to enter open war with Iran.







With its capability of waging asymmetrical warfare militias, cyber assets and naval presence in the Gulf, Tehran can destabilize the entire Mideast. Even President Trump backed off responding with force when the Iranians shot down a U.S. drone and badly damaged a Saudi refinery.







Now all that has changed, supposedly because one U.S. contractor was killed by Iranian-backed militias _ and because more Iranian attacks were likely. Is this just Trump seizing a target of opportunity? Was this earth-shaking event triggered with an eye to Fox News and 2020 elections?







What does Trump want to achieve? One moment, Trump says he wants to negotiate with top Iranian leaders; the next, Mike Pompeo effectively calls for regime change.







Does Trump believe killing Soleimani will precipitate a popular uprising against the ayatollahs? This is a pipe dream. Although many urban Iranian liberals will cheer the general's death, Soleimani remains a hero to most Iranians because of his military bravery in the Iran-Iraq war, in defeating ISIS in Iraq and in protecting Shiite shrines in Syria and Iraq.







A reasonable midterm goal would be to block Iran from stirring more trouble in the region  and the loss of Soleimani's talents will seriously hurt Tehran's imperial ambitions.







But an erratic Trump is famously resistant to experts who could help him devise ways to counter Iran's efforts at revenge. And if the regime holds on, what then?







What are the likely costs of the assassination? The most immediate cost will likely be in Iraq. Shiite legislators will probably vote to remove the 5,000 U.S. troops now based in their country. Trump may not care.







Reminder: When Barack Obama removed the last troops from Iraq in 2011, Iraqi forces proved incapable of halting ISIS's rise. Iraqi officials tell me their greatest fear is that, if U.S. forces leave, Iran will take full control of Iraq. Soleimani would be smiling.







Beyond Iraq, Tehran's possible asymmetric responses are many: a return to 20 percent enrichment of uranium, which opens the path to a bomb; more attacks on Gulf refineries or shipping, driving oil prices up; terror attacks against Israel, or Americans in the Mideast, by proxies; a high-level revenge killing of a U.S. official if the opportunity occurs. The list is endless.







The only thing that is certain is this: Contrary to Pompeo's claim, in the short term, Americans in the region aren't safer after the general's death. How high the long-term costs depends on whether Trump _ contrary to his history _ has any realistic goals in mind for waging open warfare with Iran.









Trudy Rubin (





trubin@phillynews.com ) is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her commentary was distributed by Tribune Content Agency. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.
The thick, potentially life-threatening haze from bushfires in Victoria's east that enveloped Melbourne on Monday is set to remain until the end of the week as city residents rush to buy the last of a dwindling stock of smoke masks.

After Melburnians woke to the smell of smoke inside their homes on Monday morning, the city's air quality deteriorated to "very poor" in the evening with almost all areas gradually worsening as the day went on.

Many Bunnings stores reported smoke mask shortages while Officeworks ran out of stock statewide as smoke enveloped Melbourne on Monday. Credit:Jason South

Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Tom Delamotte said on Monday the thick blanket of smoke over Melbourne would stay until at least Tuesday morning, with hazy conditions expected until Friday.

Wind has been transporting smoke from East Gippsland, where multiple fires were still burning on Monday, out over Bass Strait then back into Melbourne.
[January 05, 2020] Aiqudo Voice Platform To Power Digital Experience in BYTON'S Electric Vehicles

Aiqudo, a voice technology pioneer, announced ahead of CES (News - Alert) 2020 a partnership with premium electric vehicle manufacturer BYTON, bringing the power of Aiqudo's Voice AI platform to BYTON cars. Aiqudo's Voice to Action(R) platform will enable interacting with your favorite apps on your mobile phone hands-free while driving, seamlessly integrating with BYTON's unique Digital Experience. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200105005021/en/ BYTON cabin with Aiqudo (Photo: Business Wire) Aiqudo's industry-leading Voice AI platform will voice-enable actions in native apps within the BYTON ecosystem as well as intelligently launch app actions on personal mobile devices in the vehicle. BYTON drivers and passengers will be able to navigate, make calls, send messages, listen to music, shop, join meetings, make payments and more using simple voice commands with apps they use and love. In its integration with BYTON, Aiqudo incorporates the personalization and individual choice reflected by consumers' favorite apps, as well as personal elements within apps such as preferred playlists, contacts, or favorites, all without user registration or setup. The BYTON experience powered by Aiqudo delivers the safest, easiest and most useful way to use a mobile device while in the car. "A seamless voice experience is integral to BYTON's groundbreaking user experience and Aiqudo Voice will make accessing your favorite apps convenient and safe," said Jeff Chung, BYTON Vice President of Digital Engineering. "Aiqudo's white label solution allows us to explore new possibilities with our expanding partnerships in the BYTON digital ecosystem." Aiqudo's voice platform comprises a semiotics-based intent engine that understands natural language commands in 7 languages currently, plus an action execution capabilty across thousands of applications that consumers rely on daily. The company's white-label voice platform allows car manufacturers, phone and smart device OEMs and mobile app developers to define unique voice experiences for their customers.



"Byton has reimagined the relationship between cars and the people who drive or ride in them, placing voice-based interactions at the center of the in-car experience. We believe that voice will soon be the primary way people interact with their digital world. We're partnering with BYTON to bring a high utility, personalized voice experience to their automobiles," said John Foster, CEO of Aiqudo. "The in-car experience is a prime use case demonstrating the power of voice. Customers can now drive safely, undistracted and hands-free, and still use their favorite apps just by using their voice." Aiqudo's Action Kit functionality will be offered to app developers through the BYTON developer portal.

"Action Kit enables BYTON app developers to easily and effortlessly enable voice within their applications for the company's range of cars and expansive infotainment systems," said Dr. Rajat Mukherjee, Aiqudo CTO. "BYTON's vision of the car of the future, equipped for autonomous driving, will accelerate the need that users have to access their personal digital lives everywhere. Aiqudo makes this easy!" About Aiqudo Aiqudo (pronounced: "eye-cue-doe") is a Voice AI pioneer that connects the nascent world of voice interfaces to the useful, mature world of mobile apps through its Voice to Action(R) platform. It lets people use natural voice commands to execute actions in mobile apps across devices. Aiqudo's SaaS (News - Alert) platform uses machine learning (AI) to understand natural-language voice commands and then triggers instant actions via mobile apps, cloud services, or device actions, enabling consumers to get things done quickly and easily. Aiqudo's proprietary technology is covered by more than 30 granted patents and patent applications. Aiqudo's technology is delivered in a scalable approach to creating voice-enabled actions without mandating APIs or developer dependencies. For more information, visit: www.aiqudo.com. About BYTON BYTON is a global premium electric vehicle manufacturer that is creating the world's first smart device on wheels. By integrating advanced digital technologies to offer a smart, connected, and comfortable mobility experience, the company is designing an EV that will meet the demands of an increasingly digital lifestyle now and into the future. The company's global headquarters and state-of-the-art manufacturing center are located in Nanjing, China. Its global R&D hub is located in the heart of Silicon Valley and devoted to the development of BYTON's groundbreaking intelligent car experience, digital ecosystem, advanced connectivity, as well as other cutting-edge technologies. BYTON's design and concept vehicle center is located in Munich, Germany. BYTON's core management team is made up of top innovators from leading-edge companies such as BMW, Tesla, Google, and Apple (News - Alert). This diverse group of leaders from China, Europe, and the US share the singular vision of creating an unprecedented automotive experience. Official website: www.byton.com Further Information: BYTON Newsroom View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200105005021/en/

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Often referred to as the "City of Golden Domes," Kyiv is the mother of Eastern Slavic civilization.

Ukraine's capital city of Kyiv is among the world's best underrated capital cities you need to put on your bucket list, according to Forbes.

Read alsoSome 1.5 mln foreign tourists visit Kyiv in nine months of 2019

Often referred to as the "City of Golden Domes," Kyiv is the mother of Eastern Slavic civilization," reads an article on Forbes.

"In this underrated city you can wander happily for hours without fear of fighting other tourists for space. You can't miss striking St. Michael's blue and golden-domed monastery, named in honor of Kyiv's patron saint. The city is rich in stunning architecture, marvelous churches and authentic Ukrainian eateries. The incomparable, 11th-century UNESCO Heritage Site Kyiv-Pecherska Lavra (Monastery of the Caves) will keep you enthralled for hours with its extensive underground network," the publication said.

"Looking for a destination that is high on interest but low on tourists? Luckily, there are still plenty of breathtaking destinations that remain stubbornly off most must-see lists. As complaints of over-tourism at some of the world's top spots continue to grow, there's never been a better time to go off-grid and visit cities that manage to elude the spotlight despite their many assets," reads the article, giving a look at just a few capital cities.

In particular, Ottawa (Canada), Zagreb (Croatia), Seoul (South Korea), Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Sofia (Bulgaria) are also included in the list of the world's best underrated capital cities.
For now, one of the panelists gave Insurance Business some insight on how to tackle self-doubt and why its important to do so considering that many women still arent making it into the senior ranks of insurance.

Its not raising the hand  thats I think where the imposter syndrome comes in, said Ania Caruso (pictured), strategic insurance executive and a speaker at Women in Insurance Atlanta. She recommends, based on her own experience, that rising leaders do exactly that, before they have time to question themselves.

Once I raise the hand and say Ill do it, the mind doesnt have time to come up with excuses for me. I already raised my hand and now all I can do is prepare, prepare, practice, seek knowledge  whatever that is that I just raised my hand to. In our industry, when you think about getting from one level to the other, its that confidence building and the imposter syndrome is trying to tear down your confidence.

Another way to overcome imposter syndrome over the course of a career is to focus on how you bring value to your organization and promote that.

The act of self-promotion means claiming credit for your achievements, said Caruso. When you are trying to move up from one level to the other, youve got to effectively market yourself and your skills, your abilities, your potential because it is essential and far from shameful to help you reach to the next level.

The act of self-promotion is critical because if you dont find a way to speak about the value of what youre doing for your organization, you send an unintentional message that you dont put much value on what you bring to the table, added Caruso. And if youre not making that value known, why should somebody else?

The same thing goes when going for a promotion or interviewing for a new role. You have to be your authentic self and still be comfortable with who you are, but you have got to put yourself outside that comfort zone, she explained. Believing in what you have to offer is essential and its not self-serving. Whatever your expertise is, its a gift to the world. Many people will think, I dont want to be a shameless self-promoter, but you just have to stop it. Youre simply a talented person bent on speaking up for herself or yourself.

Building a tribe of people around you during your career that can help you realize your potential and champion your skills will also be up for discussion during the panel at Women in Insurance Atlanta. Caruso knows from personal experience the benefits of having other leaders watching out for you, even when imposter syndrome has taken hold. When a big role came up at CNA, Caruso didnt think about throwing her hat in the ring, but a friend who had known her over her entire career put her name in the running.

He saw that I had the skills and the potential to apply for this role, she said. He raised the hand for me so I was in a position of nothing to do but to prepare for it and actually, now I realize that the imposter syndrome is also our best secret weapon for women because its a gift that makes us prepare. If you feel uncomfortable and you dont know something, that discomfort for me pushed me to be proactive in becoming a lifelong learner.

During the interview process before joining CNA, I reached out to a couple of colleagues that used to work on the insurance company side  and I was coming from the broker side  to understand some of the lingo and understand some of the top priorities. Even though theres a lot of similarities because its the insurance industry, theres still little intricacies between them, so I came prepared, and I asked questions. Diving in obviously can get you in this discomfort zone, but in that discomfort zone is where the accelerated growth happens.

To learn more about imposter syndrome and how to overcome it, register for Women in Insurance Atlanta on April 14 and Boston on April 07.
TORONTO, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Golden Leaf Holdings Ltd. (CSE: GLH) (OTCQB: GLDFF) (Golden Leaf or the Company), a pioneering cannabis solutions company and dispensary operator built around the recognized brands of Chalice Farms, is pleased to announce that it has sold its two Canadian subsidiaries, Medical Marihuana Group Corporation (MMG) and Medical Marijuana Group Consulting Ltd. (MMC, and together with MMG, the Canadian Operations), to Sensi Brands Inc. (Sensi Brands or Purchaser), a global cannabis consumer packaged goods company.



The Canadian Operations were sold for aggregate consideration of C$3,400,000, including the assumption of outstanding mortgage debt of C$400,000. In addition to all the issued and outstanding shares of MMG and MMC, the Purchaser acquired certain amounts receivable by the Company from MMG and MMC. The consideration was composed of C$1,800,000 in cash received at closing, C$200,000 in an unsecured loan, and C$1,000,000 in a secured vendor take-back loan. The Purchaser assumed a C$400,000 note issued by MMG and held by an arms length lender secured by a first mortgage over the real property of the Canadian Operations. The transaction closed on December 31, 2019.

In parallel, the Board of Directors of MMG has approved a strategic shift whereby management will place more focus on what is thought to be more attractivee markets in the United States, where existing operations have demonstrated more favorable cash flows. MMG recorded zero sales in the third quarter of 2019 and consumed nearly C$475,000 of cash during this time. Turning attention to the U.S. aligns with the Companys crawl, walk, run mantra, and will enable the Company to continue to validate its business plan and revenue streams prior to making additional, and more significant, capital investments to generate further positive returns.

With the sale of MMG and MMC to Sensi Brands, GLH was able to strengthen its cash position while maintaining the right to sell its Chalice Farms products in Canada upon receipt of Health Canada approvals. As part of the transaction, GLH anticipates entering into a royalty agreement with Sensi Brands to market and distribute its Chalice Farms products to Canada. GLH also expects to enter into a reciprocal royalty agreement with the Purchaser to sell their products in the United States.

We are excited to acquire MMG and MMC and to enhance their operations, said Sensi Brands CEO Tony Giorgi. They provide Sensi Brands with a solid platform for executing on our strategy of introducing and developing strong cannabis brands in Canada and international markets.

This transaction was a pro-active move that better aligns the Company with the strategy defined by our new leadership team and puts us firmly on a growth trajectory for 2020, said Golden Leaf Holdings CEO Jeff Yapp. We will continue to focus on growing our brands, launching new products, expanding our geographic footprint in North America while driving towards profitability. By retaining the option to launch Chalice Farms products in Canada, we will be able to apply the proven model that we have executed successfully in California to the key Canadian markets.

The sale of the Canadian Operations allows the Company to strengthen its balance sheet and focus its resources on its principal markets in the U.S., including Oregon, Nevada and California, as well as the addition of new markets in the coming year. With more than 50 new SKUs launched  and enthusiastically received - during the fourth quarter, the Company management believes that the cash from this sale and available funds on hand will be sufficient to fund the Companys key ongoing operations and to help it achieve its objectives for fiscal 2020. The transaction will be accounted for in the Companys Consolidated Financial Statements as of and for the year ended December 31, 2019.

To be added to the distribution list please email ir@goldenxtrx.com with GLH in the subject line.

About Golden Leaf Holdings

Golden Leaf Holdings Ltd. is a Canadian company with operations in multiple jurisdictions including Oregon, Nevada and California, with cultivation, production and retail operations built around the recognized brands of Chalice Farms. Golden Leaf distributes its products through its branded Chalice Farms retail dispensaries, as well as through third-party dispensaries. Golden Leafs cannabis retail operations and products are designed with the customer in mind, focused on superlative in-store experience and quality products. Visit goldenleafholdings.com to learn more.

Investor Relations:

John Varghese

Executive Chairman

Golden Leaf Holdings Ltd.

971-371-2685

ir@goldenxtrx.com

Media Relations:

Anne Donohoe / Nick Opich

KCSA Strategic Communications

adonohoe@kcsa.com/ nopich@kcsa.com

212-896-1265 / 212-896-1206

About Sensi Brands Inc.

Sensi Brands Inc. is a global cannabis consumer packaged goods company. Sensi Brands has established an ecosystem of best-in-class cannabis cultivators to supply select cannabis ingredients, which are processed and packaged to support a portfolio of brands for discerning cannabis consumers. Sensi Brands is raising the bar on cannabis branding by bringing together an experienced management team (former leaders at vertically integrated cannabis companies) to build the next leader in the cannabis CPG industry. Please visit www.sensibrands.ca to learn more.

Investor Relations:

Tony Giorgi

Chief Executive Officer

Sensi Brands inc.

416-458-5161

tony@sensibrands.ca

Disclaimer: This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the Companys future business operations, the opinions or beliefs of management and future business goals. Generally, forward looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as plans, expects or does not expect, is expected, budget, scheduled, estimates, forecasts, intends, anticipates or does not anticipate, or believes, or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. These risks include but are not limited to general business, economic and competitive uncertainties, regulatory risks, market risks, risks inherent in manufacturing and retail operations such as unforeseen costs and production shutdowns, difficulties in maintaining brand loyalty, and other risks of the cannabis industry. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward looking information. Forward-looking information is provided herein for the purpose of presenting information about managements current expectations relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such information may not be appropriate for other purpose. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. This press release does not constitute an offer of securities for sale in the United States, and such securities may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration or an exemption from registration.




Reynhard Sinaga (pictured above), 36, preyed on at least 195 young men and police admit the true figure may be higher

A churchgoing PhD student was unmasked yesterday as the worlds worst serial rapist.

Reynhard Sinaga, 36, preyed on at least 195 young men and police admit the true figure may be higher. Jailing him for 30 years, a judge called him a monster.

Sinaga incapacitated victims with the date rape drug GHB before filming his attacks. Last night Home Secretary Priti Patel ordered a review into whether tougher controls are needed for the Class C drug widely used recreationally among the gay community.

Sinaga, who mostly targeted heterosexual students in Manchester, was convicted of 159 attacks, including 136 rapes, eight attempted rapes and 15 indecent assaults against 48 victims. Four trials were held over 18 months.

Footage was found of him assaulting up to 195 different men, 70 of whom have not been traced.

He would almost certainly be the most prolific sex offender to have gone through the British courts and quite possibly any court in the world, said Ian Rushton, North West deputy chief crown prosecutor.

Montana House on Princess Street in Manchester city centre where Sinaga operated as a serial rapist

The videos of the attacks Sinaga was charged with are believed to date from 2015 to 2017 and Sinaga arrived in Britain in 2007. A source said: What he did in the intervening years is unknown and it is possible there are many more victims.

As the authorities faced questions about how Sinaga was able to get away with his crimes for so long:

Manchester University and police set up support helplines;

Detectives appealed for other victims to come forward;

It emerged that two men targeted by Sinaga attempted suicide;

Jurors were offered counselling after having to watch videos of Sinagas rapes.

Sinaga (pictured above) posed as a Good Samaritan and would offer his victims a place to stay

Fifth Nightclub on Princess Street in Manchester city centre, and formerly known as 5th Avenue. One victim had been waiting outside the club when Sinaga approached him

The shocking case can finally be reported after the lifting of court reporting restrictions. Indonesian-born Sinaga was already serving a minimum of 20 years after being found guilty at trials in July 2018 and May 2019. Trials in October and December saw further convictions.

He posed as a good Samaritan to men who had become separated from their friends on nights out in central Manchester. The slightly-built sex attacker, who described himself in court as an effeminate gay man, would strike up conversation and invite them to his nearby flat.

Sinaga (above) would prey on victims aged 18-36

His victims ranged from 18 to 36 but the average age was 21, Manchester Crown Court was told.

Most were students and some were still at school, including the sixth former whose escape from his vile clutches led to Sinaga being arrested.

Passing sentence, Judge Suzanne Goddard QC said Sinaga was a dangerous offender who had committed evil crimes.

She added: Im not aware of any other case of sexual offending on this scale and magnitude. This was a campaign of rape which, in my judgement, justifies the highest of sentences.

One of your victims described you as a monster. The scale and enormity of your offending establishes that is an accurate description. She called Sinaga a highly dangerous, cunning and deceitful individual who will never be safe to release  also pointing out that he could have killed or seriously injured his victims by spiking their drinks.

She said she would have imposed a whole life term  a UK first for a case not involving murder  but for the fact that Sinaga did not torture his victims.

The Crown Prosecution Service said the investigation was the largest rape case it had ever handled.

Mr Rushton said: His extreme sense of sexual entitlement almost defies belief and he would no doubt still be adding to his staggering tally had he not been caught. He used victims as objects purely for his own gratification.

Sinaga, who came to Manchester as a student funded by his wealthy Indonesian family, boasted to friends about using black magic potion and secret poison to have sex with straight men.

He denied all the offences, claiming his victims had agreed to play dead during sex in a 50 Shades of Grey fantasy.

Sinaga had two degrees from Manchester University and was taking a PhD in geography at Leeds University at the time of his arrest in June 2017. Although raised a Catholic, he attended a liberal Anglican church close to his flat.

The court heard that Sinagas victims had suffered deep and lasting psychological harm. Two of the men attempted suicide, while others told how the trauma of what happened had ruined their lives and forced them to take to drink.

Nazir Afzal, a former North West chief crown prosecutor, said law enforcement agencies were being overly reactive.

He added: They wait for brave victims to come forward. They dont look for patterns, join the dots or assume the worst.

Its better that we presume that predators exist in every environment and go looking for them.

Greater Manchester Police urged other potential victims of Sinaga or anyone requiring support to come forward.
Soon after the Cyrus Mistry family qualified legally to hold a board position in Tata group as a minority shareholder, another corporate dispute has come to the fore. Valli Arunachalam of Murugappa family, the older daughter of former executive chairman MV Murugappan, was allegedly denied board position in the group holding company, Ambadi Investments Ltd (AIL). Arunachalam, her sister Vellachi Murugappan and their mother MV Valli Murugappan together hold 8.15 per cent stake in the holding entity.

Sources close to the development said that New York-based Arunachalam plans to come to India in a couple of days to take it up through legal routes. "She has approached the other family members on the board for the position, but failed to elicit any response. It forced her to think about opting for legal options," they said.

Valli Arunachalam complained in her recent media interviews that the group is dominated by male heirs. Her points hold value as the family tree on the group websites displays only male heirs of the five generation. Arunachalam, her mother and sister jointly inherited the stake in Ambadi Investments after MV Murugappan passed away in 2017. She also tried to sell the 8.15 per cent stake to other family members, according to her father's wishes, at a 'fair value'. But it failed to fructify. Right now only her family has not been represented on the board, because of the alleged gender discrimination.

"My sister and I are well educated, we have many years of experience in the industry, and there is no reason why our skills cannot be transferable or applicable to the family business," she told a business newspaper. Tube Investments of India, TI Financial Holdings, Shanthi Gears, Carborundum Universal and Cholamandalam MS General Insurance are also Murugappa group companies.

Legal experts say that no group can deny board positions based on the gender. It will not pass legal test, they added.

The fifth generation Murugappa family controls the Rs 40,000-crore conglomerate, which has 10 listed companies, including the likes of EID Parry, Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company and Coromandel Fertilisers. The group has 28 registered businesses and runs other businesses such as bicycles, engineering, fertilisers and finance and employs 50,000.

Also read: PM Modi holds meet with Indian business leaders; Ambani, Tata, Adani attend event

Also read: Tata Sons-Cyrus Mistry case: NCLAT dismisses RoC petition to modify order
Lenovo unveiled the first Windows laptop with a foldable display during CES 2020. It's called the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold and features a 13.3-inch screen that can bend in half when you shut the laptop closed. It runs Windows 10 and looks kind of similar to Microsoft's Surface Neo computer that will launch before the holidays this year, but has a single display instead of two side-by side.

When it's unfolded, you can use the ThinkPad X1 Fold just like a regular tablet. But, when you need to use it like a laptop computer, you can fold the screen upward and attach a magnetic keyboard. Or, you can just type on a digital keyboard that appears when it's in laptop mode. It also lets you run two apps side by side. So, you might have a presentation on one half of the screen and a video chat on the other half.

Lenovo said it's using a plastic OLED (pOLED) screen from LG, which means it should be strong enough to fold without being damaged. Still, as we saw with the first iteration of the Samsung Galaxy Fold phone, sometimes sharp objects can easily damage the fragile folding screens. But, Lenovo is confident enough in the screen that it also supports an Active Pen stylus for drawing or taking notes on the display.
By Ezgi Erkoyun and Makiko Yamazaki ISTANBUL/TOKYO (Reuters) - A Turkish private jet operator said on Friday that ex-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn used two of its planes illegally in his escape from Japan, with an employee falsifying lease records to exclude his name from the documents. MNG Jet said it had filed a criminal complaint over the incident, a day after Turkish police detained seven people, including four pilots, as part of an investigation into Ghosn's passage through Istanbul en route to Lebanon.

By Ezgi Erkoyun and Makiko Yamazaki

ISTANBUL/TOKYO (Reuters) - A Turkish private jet operator said on Friday that ex-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn used two of its planes illegally in his escape from Japan, with an employee falsifying lease records to exclude his name from the documents.

MNG Jet said it had filed a criminal complaint over the incident, a day after Turkish police detained seven people, including four pilots, as part of an investigation into Ghosn's passage through Istanbul en route to Lebanon.

Ghosn has become an international fugitive after he revealed on Tuesday he had fled to Lebanon to escape what he called a "rigged" justice system in Japan, where he faces charges relating to alleged financial crimes.

Lebanon on Thursday received an Interpol arrest warrant for Ghosn, whose surprise escape from his home in Tokyo to a separate home in Beirut has not been fully explained.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the diminutive Ghosn slipped out of Japan aboard a private jet hidden in a large black case typically used to carry audio gear. He was accompanied by a pair of men with names matching those of American security contractors, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with Turkey's probe into the escape.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK, citing investigative sources, said a surveillance camera captured the former Nissan Motor Co <7201.T> chairman leaving his Tokyo residence alone shortly before his escape.

The security footage was taken by a camera installed at his house in central Tokyo around noon on Sunday, and the camera did not show him returning home, NHK said.

By early Monday, he had touched down in Istanbul.

MNG Jet said in its statement it leased two jets to two different clients in agreements that "were seemingly not connected to each other." One plane flew from Osaka to Istanbul, the other from Istanbul to Beirut.

"The name of Mr Ghosn did not appear in the official documentation of any of the flights," it said.

"After having learnt through the media that the leasing was benefiting Mr. Ghosn and not the officially declared passengers, MNG Jet launched an internal inquiry and filed a criminal complaint in Turkey," it added.

An employee admitted to falsifying the records and confirmed he "acted in his individual capacity," the company said.

The pilots and other detainees, including two airport ground staff and one cargo worker, were sent to court on Friday after giving statements to police, according to a Reuters witness.

Late on Friday the court ruled to formally arrest five of the suspects, state-owned Anadolu news agency reported. The other two suspects were released from custody, according to media reports.

Turkish interior ministry spokesman Ismail Catakli told reporters earlier on Friday that Ghosn was believed to have been transferred through the cargo section of the airport in Istanbul, but did not provide further details.

Ghosn has said he will speak publicly about his escape on Jan. 8.

Some Lebanese media, in reports similar to the Wall Street Journal, have floated a Houdini-like account of Ghosn being packed in a wooden container for musical instruments after a private concert in his home, but his wife has called the account "fiction".

NHK said police suspected Ghosn may have left his home to meet up with someone before heading to an airport. Under the terms of his bail, Ghosn was required to have security cameras installed at the entrance of his house.

(Writing by Jonathan Spicer and Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan, Jon Boyle and Tom Brown)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Oakland City Councilor Proposes Using Cruise Ship to House Up to 1,000 Homeless People in the Bay Area

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Garba Shehu, the presidential spokesman, has urged Nigerians not to panic over the withdrawal of Chadians troops from the Lake Chad region.

The presidential spokesperson, while speaking on Sunday, said the troops came to Nigeria as part of a concept of the ongoing operations against insurgency, and that their withdrawal was as a result of a change in the concept and in line with the mandate of the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF), the Nation reports.

Read Also: You Are A Hypocrite: Nigerians Knock Aisha Buhari Over Attack On Garba Shehu, Mamman Daura

He said, Nobody should panic, Nigerians need not to worry at all about the Chadian withdrawals. 

They came here as a part of a concept of the ongoing operations. That concept has changed and they are moving out.

Indications from the defence headquarters suggest that soon, Nigeria will be sending troops to that country as part of yet another concept.

So there is nothing of concern about the way deployments are made by the MNJTF. They know what they are doing. It is in the execution of their mandate.

Nigerians should equally not have any doubts about the ability of our armed forces to hold their own. They are capable and have proven to so.

The MNJTF is a multinational formation, comprising troops from Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria and Benin.
The latest editions of Saudi Plastics and Petrochem Exhibition 2020 and Saudi Print and Pack Exhibition 2020 (Saudi PPPP) are set to review the Kingdoms economic diversification plans and investment opportunities, said event organisers.



Organized by Riyadh Exhibition Company at Riyadh International Convention and Exhibition Center, the 17th edition of exhibitions will highlight governmental efforts that aim to enhance the attractiveness and competitiveness of these vital sectors and their important roles in the Kingdoms economic diversification efforts.



Both exhibitions will be held from January 13-16, under the patronage of Bandar bin Ibrahim bin Abdullah Al khorayef, Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources.



The exhibitions will highlight the most recent technological innovations within the plastics, petrochemical, printing and packaging industries that continue to remain major drivers of economic growth and diversification in the country.



Saudi Plastics and Petrochem Exhibition 2020 and the Saudi Print and Pack 2020 are set to bring together the largest number of decision makers, experts, manufacturers, and local and regional and international suppliers under one roof to explore the prospects for joint cooperation and discuss new partnerships, in order to capitalize on the tremendous opportunities that exist within the local petrochemical and plastic sectors.



Saudi PPPP is poised to attract remarkable international attention, thanks to the participation of 424 exhibitors from 26 countries, spread across eight international pavilions, reflecting the high confidence and prestigious reputation it enjoys on the world stage.



This year, the exhibitions agenda includes two conferences, the Saudi Conference for Plastic and Petrochem, which will be held on January 14, and the Saudi Conference for Printing and Packaging, which will be held on January 15 and 16.



The conferences will feature significant participation from government and private sector representatives and experts, who will gather to promote constructive dialogue, facilitate knowledge sharing, and exchange successful experiences, in order to position the Kingdom at the forefront of the world's economies.



Mohammad Al Al-Sheikh, head of Marketing, Riyadh Exhibition Company, said: "The exhibition continues to consolidate its position as an important strategic platform to strengthen cooperation frameworks between the leaders of the petrochemical and plastic industries and packaging within the Kingdom and globally as well.



It aims to capitalize on emerging opportunities and the most promising prospects that are available in the Kingdom, with an aim to drive the pace of development and diversification of the national economy, in light of the continuous government support to achieve the goals of the National Transformation Program 2020 and the Saudi Vision 2030.



The 2020 edition of the Saudi Plastics and Petrochem Exhibition will support the national efforts to raise the contributions of the petrochemical sector from $133.33 billion to $453.3 billion by 2030. This will further contribute to increasing non-oil exports to reach $666.66 billion by the same year.



The 17th edition of the Saudi Print and Pack Exhibition 2020 will highlight the latest innovations and products before specialists and experts from all over the world, presenting opportunities for exhibitors and visitors to identify investment opportunities in the Saudi market, Al Al-Sheikh explained.



With the announcement of the start of new cooperative projects with international and local entities, and the Saudi companies accessibility to tools that are necessary to enter new markets for export of plastic products make it even more relevant. Seventy per cent of the raw materials exported from Saudi Arabia to all parts of the world are raw materials of petroleum derivatives, and the value of exports of the plastics and chemicals sectors account for about 60 per cent of the non-oil exports to the Kingdom, which owns 67 per cent share of the regions packaging industry, he added.



Saudi Arabia is witnessing an important industrial boom, within the framework of plans aimed at driving economic diversification and enhancing the participation of the private sector in economic development and creating job opportunities for citizenship competencies. This is in addition to encouraging, supporting and attracting foreign investment to enhance the Kingdom's position as a major hub for plastic and consumer goods industries.



We look forward to the upcoming edition of the exhibition as an important addition to our leading portfolio of major events, exhibitions and conferences that we continue to organize in line with the highest standards of excellence, quality and professionalism, and under the supervision of a team of the best Saudi nationals. These efforts are further supported by our industry experience spanning more than 38 years, which enables us to contribute to strengthening Saudi Arabias position on the global economic map, Al Al-Sheikh concluded.



Saudi Plastics and Petrochem Exhibition 2020 and the Saudi Print and Pack 2020 will be held with the diamond sponsorship of Sabic and Advanced Petrochemical Company, supported by the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu as the supporting partner of the industry; and the Saudi Authority for Industrial Cities and Technology Zones Modon as an industry partner. Saudi Industrial Development Fund is the industrial empowerment partner and the Riyadh Chamber is a supporting partner of the exhibition.  TradeArabia News Service
(As delivered)

Good afternoon.

I have just chaired a meeting of the North Atlantic Council.

We addressed current tensions in the Middle East, and implications for NATOs training mission in Iraq.

NATO and all NATO Allies take part in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.

And NATOs mission in Iraq is an important contribution to the Coalitions effort.

At the invitation of the Iraqi government, we are helping to train forces and prevent the return of ISIS.

At our meeting today, Allies expressed their strong support for the fight against ISIS and for the NATO mission in Iraq.

In everything that we do, the safety of our personnel is paramount.

As such, we have for the time being suspended our training on the ground.

And we are taking all precautions necessary to protect our people.

We are keeping the situation under close review.

And we remain in close contact with the Iraqi authorities.

NATO is prepared to continue our training and capacity-building when the situation permits.

We remain strongly committed to the fight against international terrorism.

***

At our meeting today, the United States also briefed on the regional situation, following recent attacks on coalition forces in Iraq, and the strike against General Soleimani.

For years, all Allies have expressed concern about Irans destabilising activities in the wider Middle East region.

We agree Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon.

We share concern about Irans missile tests.

And we are united in condemning Irans support for a variety of different terrorist groups.

We have recently seen an escalation by Iran, including the strike on a Saudi energy facility, and the shoot-down of an American drone.

At our meeting today, Allies called for restraint and de-escalation.

A new conflict would be in no-ones interest.

So Iran must refrain from further violence and provocations.

***

With that, I am ready to take your questions.

Piers Cazalet [NATO Deputy spokesperson]: Yes please.

Teri Shultz [NPR]: Its not me, but Ill take it. [inaudible; 00:03:08]

Piers Cazalet: Sorry, okay, Teri.

Teri Shultz: Well, thank you, thats what you meant, right?

Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General]: Yeah.

Teri Shultz: Thanks, Piers. Mr Secretary General, were any of the Allies specifically mentioning that they would like restraint on the part of the United States as well? And when the Iraqi Parliament says that it is going to kick out all foreign forces, if that should come to pass, does that mean . . . do you believe that the 500 or so NATO personnel would be leaving, or would you ask for a special dispensation to stay in Iraq? Thank you.

Jens Stoltenberg: At the meeting today, Allies expressed very strong support for the NATO Training Mission in Iraq, because the training mission in Iraq is an important part of the efforts of the Global Coalition to defeat Daesh and to make sure that Daesh or ISIS is not able to return. One of the best weapons we have in the fight against international terrorism is to train local forces, build local capacity, and thats exactly what the Coalition is doing and what NATO is doing through our training mission in Iraq. We are there by invitation from the Iraqi authorities. We have suspended our training mission now, because of the security situation on the ground. But we are ready to restart the training when the situation on the ground makes that possible. We are in close contact with the Iraqi authorities, with the Iraqi government. I visited Iraq some weeks ago, or last fall. And then the Iraqi authorities and the Iraqi Prime Minister stressed the importance of NATOs support.

NATO support, Coalition support to the Iraqi security forces is important for Iraq, but it is also important for us, because when we train them, help them in fighting ISIS and international terrorism, were also making our own countries more safe and secure. I will not speculate more than we will continue to . . . to work closely to . . . have close dialogue with the Iraqi government. And I strongly believe that the NATO Training Mission is good for both Iraq and for NATO Allies. And we are there by invitation of the Iraqi government. What was also clearly expressed at the meeting today was a call for restraint and de-escalation. All Allies have, several times, expressed their concerns about Irans destabilising activities in the region, including Irans support for different terrorist groups. And, of course, all Allies agree that Iran should never be able to develop nuclear weapons. We have also expressed again and again our concerns about Irans missile programme: missiles which are able to reach, also, many European Allied countries.

Piers Cazalet: Now, TV 2, sorry, just behind Teri.

Question [TV 2]: Should Iran retaliate in a way that makes the United States trigger Article 5, what would NATOs response be then?

Jens Stoltenberg: I think the important thing now is to really try to de-escalate and to avoid further increase . . . increased tensions in the region. And I think that if I start to speculate on how we will react, this will not help to de-escalate, it will actually do the opposite. So we call on . . . on responsible behaviour. We believe in the importance of de-escalation and restraint. And that was a clear message from all Allies in the meeting today. I will not speculate, because that will actually contribute to the opposite. That will only increase tensions.

Piers Cazalet: Philip from NRK?

Philip Lote [NRK]: Philip Lote, NRK, Norwegian Broadcasting. Was the criticism of the US by European Allies . . . Allies during the meeting relating to the assassination of General Soleimani, and what is your view, General Secretary of the killing of General Soleimani?

Jens Stoltenberg: The meeting we had today was actually a meeting where we saw a very strong unity from all Allies on the importance of standing together in the fight against international terrorism, on the importance of the NATO Training Mission in Iraq, on the importance of the training activities and the efforts of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. All NATO Allies and NATO are part of the Global Coalition. And NATO contributes to the Global Coalition in different ways, including with our troops in Iraq. Again, NATO Allies are very concerned about Irans activities in the region. And the NATO Allies condemned, and have condemned many times, attacks on Coalition forces by Iran and supported groups. And that criticism, that position, was reiterated by many Allies in the meeting today.

Philip Lote: Did you understand the assassination of Soleimani, General Soleimani?

Jens Stoltenberg: This is a US decision. It is not a decision taken by either the Global Coalition nor NATO. But all Allies are concerned about Irans destabilising activities in the region, Irans support to different terrorist groups. And of course, we are extremely concerned about the recent attacks we have seen against civilian energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, or against Coalition bases in Iraq  bases which are important for our efforts to fight international terrorism in Iraq and in Syria.

Piers Cazalet: Time for one more. Michael from DPA.

Michael [DPA]: Hi, its Michael with German News Agency. You just said, Mr Sec Gen that the US briefed on the airstrike against Soleimani. The US justified this killing by saying that Soleimani developed plans to attack American diplomats. Did they show . . . did the US show some evidence on that today?

Jens Stoltenberg: The US provided the rationale behind the action against General Soleimani. And we had several briefers from the United States, from the State and from Pentagon and they briefed and explained to other Allies why they took this action against General Soleimani. I will not go into the details of that briefing. I will leave that to the United States. But we value and appreciate the briefings provided by the United States. I think this provides, or once again shows that NATO is a platform where European Allies, North American Allies, are able to come together and address security concerns for all of us.

Piers Cazalet: Thats all we have time for. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

Jens Stoltenberg: Thank you.
Blaine, Wash.  There are two versions of what happened Saturday night when more than 60 Iranians and Iranian Americans were returning to the U.S. at the Blaine border crossing after attending a Persian pop concert in Vancouver, B. C.

According to Washingtons chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), they were detained, some for as long as 11 hours.

According to U. S. Customs and Border Protection, Social media posts that CBP is detaining Iranian-Americans and refusing their entry into the U.S. because of their country of origin are false. Reports that DHS/CBP has issued a related directive are also false.

The people detained had traveled to British Columbia to see Masih & Arash Ap, the Persian duo who are called the voice of love, on their Canada Tour 2020, according to CAIR.

Jay Gairson, a Seattle national security immigration attorney who volunteers with CAIR, said about what the Iranian Americans say they experienced on Saturday night, Im almost positive this has to be related to General [Qassem] Soleimanis death, the top Iranian military commander killed last week in a U.S. air strike.

Gairson said that among the few specifics hes gotten back from those detained, who so far have not publicly come forward, is that, for example, They were asked if they had been a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The U.S. government is concerned about retaliation from Iran.

The CBP says that based on the current threat environment, it routinely adjusts staffing. At Blaine, according to the agency, wait times on Saturday evening increased to an average of two hours, although some travelers experienced wait time of up to four hours because of increased traffic volume and reduced staffing during the holiday season. By Sunday morning, the wait was 40 minutes, it says.

On Sunday, the states politicians responded to the reports, which had spread on social media, of Iranian Americans being detained at the Blaine border crossing.

Gov. Jay Inslee tweeted that his office is closely tracking reports of the detainments.

And Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle, issued a statement saying her office was investigating reports that the CBP targets people of Iranian heritage, regardless of their citizenship status, for questioning or further punitive actions. If these reports are true, the Administration would be following its dangerous foreign policy decisions with dangerous policies here at home.

Gairson said the wording from the CBP was very careful, in that it said the Iranian Americans were not detained.

Thats different, he said, from a secondary screening, which can take hours to complete.

The CAIR statement quoted a woman named Crystal, 24, whose last name was not used, who said she was kept at the crossing more than 10 hours.

We kept asking why we were being detained and asked questions that had nothing to do with our reason for traveling and was told, Im sorry this is just the wrong time for you guys,  she was quoted as saying.

-- By Erik Lacitis, The Seattle Times
Louisiana authorities are perplexed over why a man left apparent designer bags holding drugs, a gun, cash and a digital scale in a convenience store.

The man went into the store early Thursday and put the Louis Vuitton and Gucci bags on a chair, according to a news release Friday.

The employee said he offered her $100 to keep his bag,'" Lt. Brennan Matherne, spokesman for Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre, said in an interview. I don't know if his intention was for her to hold onto the bag until he came back or what.

The worker declined, and the man walked out without the bags, the news release said. A customer later pointed out that one of them held a handgun, which turned out to be stolen from neighboring Terrebonne Parish. It also held cash and a digital scale, while the other bag held the drug Suboxone and suspected methamphetamine, according to the statement.

Surveillance cameras got photos of the man and deputies hope to identify him.

We haven't positively identified him ... but have gotten a couple tips already," Matherne said after the release and photos were posted on the sheriff's web and Facebook pages. "These images are pretty good, so we feel confident we'll be able to get him identified.
The number of trademarks registered in the UAE increased by 30.5 per cent in December 2019 compared to November 2019, a media report said.



The UAE is ranked first in the Middle East and second in the world in attracting new trademarks in the retail sector, reported Emirates news agency Wam, citing the "How Global is the Business of Retail Report" issued by the property consultancy CBRE.



Statistic from the Trademarks Administration at the Ministry of Economy highlighted an increase in the number of registered trademarks in the UAE in December 2019, totalling 1,589, which rose from 1,217 in November.



In 2018, specialist international organisations acknowledged the UAEs distinguished stature as one of the major countries that attract global trademarks, following the success of its retail sector in attracting 63 trademarks, while leading the UK, which attracted 54 trademarks, Germany with 51, and Japan with 47.



The list of registered trademarks in the UAE includes Microsoft, Airbus, Huawei, Samsung and other major companies.



The UAE and Saudi Arabia occupied first place in the Middle East in attracting key trademarks in the region in 2019, according to a report by Brands Finance on the top 50 trademarks in the region in 2019.


India summoned the senior-most Pakistani diplomat in New Delhi on Monday to lodge a strong protest over incidents targeting Pakistans Sikh minority and to demand immediate action against the perpetrators of such heinous acts.

Pakistans deputy high commissioner Syed Haider Shah was summoned to the external affairs ministry hours after Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal and other Sikh leaders wrote a letter to external affairs minister S Jaishankar demanding that India should seek action against those targeting Pakistani Sikhs.

Shah, currently the senior-most Pakistani diplomat in New Delhi following Islamabads decision to send back the Indian envoy and to downgrade diplomatic ties in August last year, was told about strong concerns raised by members of civil society, parliamentarians and others at the continued persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in Pakistan, including recent despicable and heinous acts against Sikhs.

According to a statement from the external affairs ministry, a strong protest was lodged over the vandalism and desecration of Gurdwara Janamsthan at Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak in Pakistan, on Friday and the targeted killing of a Sikh man in Peshawar on Saturday.

Government of Pakistan was called upon to ensure safety, security and welfare of the members of the minority communities in Pakistan, including their places of worship, and take immediate measures to expeditiously bring the perpetrators of such despicable and heinous acts to justice, the statement said.

India has already condemned the incident of Friday, when a mob had threatened to storm the gurdwara in Nankana Sahib, and the murder of the 25-year-old Sikh man named Ravinder Singh.

In their letter to Jaishankar, the Sikh leaders referred to these two incidents and said multiple atrocities are being unleashed on Pakistani Sikhs. The letter noted that Imran Chisti, the Pakistani man who led the protest in Nankana Sahib, had threatened to throw out all Sikhs from the area and to demolish the gurdwara.

These acts were clearly indicative of how unsafe Pakistans minorities are and they had sent a wave of deep shock in the Sikh community around the world, the letter said.

The letter asked Jaishankar to demand strict action against those responsible for targeting Pakistani Sikhs, especially Chisti and the killers of Ravinder Singh. The persecution of Pakistans minorities should be raised at the UN and other international bodies, the letter said.

Pakistans Foreign Office rejected what it described as Indian propaganda about the treatment of the countrys minorities. It said the Indian governments was portraying isolated law and order incidents in Peshawar and Nankana Sahib as alleged persecution of minorities to divert attention from the situation in Kashmir.

In a statement, the Foreign Office also criticised the fallout of the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) and said Pakistan attaches the highest respect to all places of worship, including those belonging to Sikhs.

Pakistani authorities have arrested Chisti and set up a high-powered committee to investigate the murder of Ravinder Singh.

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The BJP is set to raise the pitch in Bihar in support of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, with two of its top leaders flowing down to the state to address public meetings and raise awareness about the contentious legislation, a senior party official said on Monday.

Union Home Minister and party chief Amit Shah is scheduled to address people in Vaishali district on January 16, two days after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath holds a public meeting in Gaya, state BJP vice- president Devesh Kumar told PTI.

A massive door-to-door campaign is currently underway in the state, after its launch on Sunday with rallies addressed in Patna by Union minister of state for Home Nityanand Rai and Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi.

Notably, Bihar witnessed massive anti-CAA protests in the recent past, including statewide bandhs called on different days by Left parties and the RJD and its allies.

A demonstration staged by a motley group of student outfits in December had caught the police off guard as the agitators went on the rampage, setting on fire a police outpost and many vehicles at Kargil Chowk, a stone's throw from the district police chief's office and the collectorate.

Meanwhile, the state BJP mocked Pavan K Varma, the disgruntled national general secretary of the JD(U), for his open letter in protest against "unilateral announcement" on National Population Register (NPR) exercise by the deputy CM.

Modi had made the disclosure at a press conference on Saturday and issued a stern warning that "administrative and punitive action" will be taken against officials, found guilty of dereliction of duty.

State BJP spokesman Nikhil Anand came out with a flurry of tweets, addressed to Varma, pointing out that what he assumed to be a "unilateral announcement" by the deputy CM has been set in motion by a notification issued by the state government last month.

Sharing a screenshot of the notification dated December 18, 2019, signed by the additional chief secretary- cum-state coordinator for Census, Anand asked Verma to "take back the letter accusing our Deputy CM".

"Sir! India is not America, which has dual citizenship. Do you want the state government to take independent issues related to citizenship and census which is the sole jurisdiction of the Union government and Parliament as per the Constitution of India," Anand said sarcastically in another tweet, tagging both Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and the Deputy CM.

Interestingly, Modi's disclosure seemed to have caught more than one senior JD(U) leader off guard. Shortly after Saturday's press conference, Shyam Rajak - a national general secretary of the ruling party and member of the state cabinet - had told channels that the deputy CM might have expressed his "personal opinion" and "no decision has been taken on the matter so far by the chief Minister or by the cabinet".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Los Angeles, Jan 6 : Star couple Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara once again caught the eye of the global media when they made a rare appearance together on the red carpet of the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards.

The duo did a play-acting moment, with Phoenix stopping on the red carpet to theatrically stare at his fiancee, emoting with his hand on his face, definitely leaving fans in awe. He touched everyone's heart a little more when he thanked Rooney while accepting the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama) for his role in "Joker".

"Rooney ... I love you," Phoenix said tearfully.

The red carpet romance prompted us to draw a quick timeline check of the couple love story. Here goes: June 2012

It was on the sets of the science-fiction romance "Her" where the two met for the first time, and since then their love life started blossoming. Phoenix told a magazine that he initially believed Rooney disliked him while making the movie only to later discover that she liked him but was just shy, reports people.com.

October 2016 The two worked together again on "Mary Magdalene". In the fim, Rooney played the leading role, Phoenix played Jesus. It was during this production that the dating rumours started, reports eonline.com.

May 2017 Phoenix and Rooney stunned everyone when they made a public debut as a couple at the 70th annual Cannes Film Festival. Rooney held his hand during the closing ceremony and was the first to congratulate him when he won the Best Actor prize for his role in the grim thriller "You Were Never Really There".

September 2017 According to oprahmag.com, Phoenix revealed in an interview with New York Times that he is in a live-in relationship with Rooney and the two enjoyed meditating, relaxing with their dogs, and watching Netflix January 2019

More frequent public outings followed. Early in the year, Phoenix and Mara were spotted stepping out together in Los Angeles. The pair maintained a low profile, both rocking sunglasses during their walk about town. That same month, they also attended artist Michael Muller's exhibit Heaven. Phoenix and Mara were co-chairs of the exhibit.

June 2019 Animal lovers both, they made a joint appearance at the National Animal Rights Day demonstration. Both held dead birds in their hands during a peaceful demonstration walk and wore T-shirts that read: "Our planet. Theirs too." July 2019

Several publications reported that Phoenix and Rooney were engaged. Later in September, while receiving an award at the Toronto International Film, Phoenix called Rooney, herself an award-winning actress, his "filthy dragon".
Barack Obama raised quite a few eyebrows when he included Fleabag on his annual list of his favorite movies, books, and more for 2019. Not because the show isnt goodits second season is certainly scooping up plenty of awards, including two Golden Globes on Sundaybut because the first season features a scene of the main character masturbating to a speech given by  Barack Obama. Creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge acknowledged the honor of being on the former presidents TV shortlist by dropping a sincere thanks, Obama in her acceptance speech for best television series, musical or comedy.

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Though Waller-Bridge began with predictable shoutouts to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the BBC, and Amazon, she then added an unusual acknowledgment. Personally, Id like to also thank Obama for putting us on his list, she said. As some of you may know, hes always been on mine. She urged viewers who might not understand the joke to go watch Fleabag, but you can also just watch the clip below.

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As far as we know, it was the only acceptance speech of the night to include a (very subtle) masturbation joke. Things got a bit more serious backstage, where Waller-Bridge told reporters that her ensemble is going to support a good cause: the devastating wildfires in Australia.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that US bases, warships and soldiers in the Middle East were all fair targets after the US drone strike that killed General Qassem Soleimani, the architect of many of Iran's regional military campaigns in recent years.

Australia has 450 troops based in Iraq as part of Operation OKRA, with the stated aim of combating Islamic State. Hundreds more are based throughout the Middle East and North Africa, many in a support capacity.

Baghdad: Iraq's Parliament has voted to expel US troops and their allies - including Australia - from the country as the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah group warned that US military across the region "will pay the price" for killing a top Iranian general.

Hezbollah supporters hold pictures of slain Iranian general Qassem Soleimani during a televised speech by Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah. Credit:Bloomberg

The two developments were new signs of the backlash from Friday's killing of Soleimani and a number of top Iraqi officials at the Baghdad airport, and further heightened tensions in a region already on high alert and bracing for an Iranian retaliation.

Later on Sunday (Monday Australian time), at least three explosions shook the Iraqi capital and sirens sounded across the Tigris River. The blasts appeared to be mortars or rockets that landed inside the heavily fortified Green Zone where the US and other embassies are based, as well as the seat of Iraq's government. There was no immediate word on casualties. It was the second such attack in two days.

"The suicide attackers who forced the Americans to leave from our region in the past are still here and their numbers have increased," said Nasrallah. It was not clear which suicide bombings Nasrallah was referring to. A 1983 attack on a US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killed 241 US servicemen and led President Ronald Reagan to withdraw all American forces from the country.

"When American troops return in coffins, when they come vertically and return horizontally to the United States of America, then Trump and his administration will know that they lost the region and will lose the elections," Nasrallah said. He added that US civilians in the region should not be targeted, because attacking them would play into President Donald Trump's hands.
The state police must reinstate a trooper who was filmed shoving his wife during an argument but was not charged with committing domestic violence, a Commonwealth Court panel ruled Monday.

The decision, outlined in an opinion by Judge Anne E. Covey, upholds an arbitrators finding that replaced Trooper John Bogarowskis firing with a 15-day unpaid suspension.

In appealing to Coveys court, the state police contended the arbitrator overstepped his bounds in deciding to put Bogarowski back on the force.

The battle over Bogarowskis employment began in December 2016 when state police became aware of a possible domestic assault at the troopers home that had occurred six months earlier.

In March of 2018, his superiors viewed home surveillance camera footage of the incident, which they concluded showed a verbal dispute between (Bogarowski) and his wife which escalated into a physical altercation when (Bogarowski) pushed his wife and then grabbed her and threw her to the ground, Covey wrote.

Three months later, Bogarowski, who was assigned to the Honesdale barracks, was notified that he faced termination for unbecoming conduct and engaging in domestic violence.

The Pennsylvania State Troopers Association backed Bogarowski, sending the dispute to arbitration.

In his March 2019 ruling, the arbitrator concluded there is no question that the behavior of (Bogarowski) depicted on the video was unacceptable and warranted discipline.

However, as Covey noted, the arbitrator found there was aggression on both sides during the incident. The arbitrator didnt agree that the video showed the level of physical contact that state police cited in firing Bogarowski.

In addition, the arbitrator stressed that the local district attorney after watching the video and interviewing Bogarowskis wife declined to file any criminal charges.

Covey found the arbitrator did not exceed his jurisdiction in voiding Bogarowskis firing and replacing it with the suspension.
Protestors withdrew from the U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad, Iraq, on Wednesday following orders from the Iranian-backed militia group Kataib Hezbollah, the Washington Post reports.

Why it matters: The militia leaders said they had won a victory that allowed their message to be heard, signaling they would now try to remove U.S. troops from Iraq by taking action in the countrys parliament.

All protesters withdrew from the area in front of the U.S. embassy and left the Green Zone. The embassy is now completely surrounded and secured by security forces."

 Joint Operation Command statement, per NBC News

Details: The militia group's political spokesman of Kataib Hezbollah was seen addressing protestors at the embassy compound, saying, "We will take our fight to expel U.S. troops from our land to parliament and if we dont succeed, we will return."

The protestors signaled that they would move to an encampment on the other side of the Tigris River, outside of the fortified Green Zone where the embassy compound is located.

Context: The attempt to storm the embassy was prompted by U.S. airstrikes on five facilities in Iraq and Syria belonging to Kataeb Hezbollah over the weekend.

The U.S. began deploying 750 troops to the region in response to the embassy breach.

Worth noting, via Axios' Jonathan Swan: Unlike most of his national security team, President Trump sees very little value in an American presence in Iraq  full stop.

Trump has long wanted out of Iraq and believes the American presence in Iraq is an unmitigated disaster that was the worst mistake in U.S. history.

Go deeper: Where U.S. troops and military assets are deployed in the Middle East

Editor's note: This article has been updated with comment from the Joint Operation Command and news that the protesters have left the area.
LORAIN, Ohio  Two men are in critical condition after suffering gunshot wounds to their torsos early Monday in Lorain, police said.

Lorain police officers found both men shot while investigating a report of gunfire just after 12:15 a.m. near the intersection of East 28th Street at Pearl Avenue, police said.

Ambulances took both men to Mercy Regional Medical Center for treatment.

The Lorain Police Department did not provide any other information in a news release Monday morning. Detectives have not announced any arrests in the case.

Police are asking anyone with information about the shooting to call detectives at 440-204-2105.

To comment on this story, visit Mondays crime and courts comments page.

Read more crime stories:

No motive established for Concord Township double homicide, sheriff says

Cleveland man dumped womans body on the street after fatal fentanyl overdose, records say

Cleveland shooting victim inside ambulance involved in crash en route to hospital dies, police say

Man assaulted, knocked unconscious in Cleveland home, police say

Driver hospitalized after crashing into pole in Clevelands Forest Hills neighborhood, police say
PRESS RELEASE

Paris, 6 January 2020

Bogart Group (Euronext Paris - Compartment B - FR0012872141 - JBOG), which specializes in the creation, manufacture and sale of luxury fragrances and cosmetics, has signed a draft agreement to acquire 8 new selective fragrance boutiques in Germany belonging to the Parfumerie Gottmann chain.

The Group is energetically pursuing its acquisition strategy focusing on the Boutiques business. Bogart Group has operated in Germany since 2016 via the HC Parfumeries chain (87 boutiques) and will now strengthen its footprint in the country by purchasing 8 new boutiques from Gottman.

Located in the Cologne region since 1955, the new boutiques will give the Group access to previously uncharted territory as well as boosting profit margins.

This acquisition will increase HC Parfumeries turnover by around 10%.

The deal at a modest price by Group standards will be closed in January 2020 after the customary due diligence procedure and the new business will be consolidated from March 2020.

Following the acquisition, Bogart Group will operate 95 fragrance boutiques in Germany and a total chain of 390 stores across all of its regions (Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France and Israel).

Next publication

Bogart Group will publish its yearly turnover on 13 February 2020.

Group website www.groupe-bogart.com

CONTACTS

GROUPE BOGART ACTUS finance & communication



contact@jbogart.com

Tel.: 01 53 77 55 55

Anne-Pauline PETUREAUX

Relations Analystes/Investisseurs

Tel.: 01 53 67 36 72

apetureaux@actus.fr

Alexandra PRISA

Relations Presse

Tel. 01 53 67 36 90

aprisa@actus.fr

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-07 00:51:44|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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YAOUNDE, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- At least 11 people were killed and 26 others were injured Monday afternoon in a suicide attack on El Beid bridge in Fotokol, a locality in Cameroon's Far North region, according to several security sources.

Local officials interviewed by Xinhua confirmed the attack but gave no further details.

Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for the attack according to local journalist Dairou Mohammed.

"The suicide bomber worked to the portion of the bridge that was crowded and then detonated the bomb. Among those killed and injured are women and children," Mohammed told Xinhua.

Last week, security reports indicated that the Boko Haram group in December kidnapped and killed at least 50 people mostly fishermen on Lake Chad.
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Here are the stocks that are in news today:

Results Today: ITI

Ceat - CARE Ratings re-affirmed the credit ratings of long term, short term bank facilities and commercial papers of the company

Birlasoft - Chief financial officer Rajeev Gupta of the company resigns w.e.f. March 31, 2020

Bank of Baroda to consider fund raising via issue of capital debt instruments on January 8

PNB Gilts - ICRA reaffirms credit rating as ICRA A1+ for company's commercial paper of Rs 500 crore

PVR - ICRA reaffirms rating of non-convertible debenture programme at ICRA AA-, while outlook revised from stable to positive

Ashoka Buildcon arm executes concession agreement worth Rs 1,000 crore with NHAI

Force Motors: December total auto sales up 30 percent 2,517 units versus 1,936 units, MoM

HDFC cuts retail prime lending rate on housing loans by 5 bps w.e.f January 6

HDFC to raise up to Rs 5,000 crore via debentures on January 7 at 7.50%

Titan Company - Q3 jewellery revenue growth at 11%, the retail growth much better at 15%. Fragrances business witnessed growth in excess of 20%

Karur Vysya Bank - Managing Director & CEO Shri P R Seshadri resigns

Manpasand Beverages appoints Dhirendra Singh as managing director w.e.f. January 3 for a period of 5 years

Vedanta board meeting on January 8 to consider issue of NCD worth Rs 2,000 crore in one or more tranches

NCC board approves merger of two wholly-owned subsidiaries

Dishman Carbogen board meeting on January 16 to consider buyback of shares

Future Retail approves allotment of equity shares to Future Coupons and raising of long term funds

PNB Gilts - Reliance Home Finance defaults on Rs 25 crore worth of NCDs held by the company

PNB Gilts - ICRA reaffirmes credit rating of ICRA At + to Rs 500 crore commercial paper programme of company

MSTC - Agreement for E-commerce Services has been entered into by Security Printing & Minting Corporation of India with company

Texmaco Rail & Engineering - NCLT disposed of an application filed by Veekay General

IRB INfra - gets NOC from NHAI for transfer of 9 BOT assets to IRB Infrastructure Trust and subsequent investment by GIC affiliates for 49% stake in the Trust

Jump Network launches its first ''JUMPNET Public WiFi'' service in Sawantwadi, Maharashtra

KPI Global commissions additional 1.20 MW solar power project w.e.f. November 29 at Bharuch under captive power producer category

Adani Ports intends to acquire 75% stake of Krishnapatnam Port Company Limited (KPCL) from the existing shareholders of KPCL

Sobha - Q3FY20 (October-December) sales volume up 17% and sales value up 4 percent, YoY

AXISCADES Engineering Technologies - CARE upgraded rating of long term bank facilities of the company from CARE BBB; Negative to CARE BBB; Stable

Dixon Technologies partners with SAMSUNG for manufacturing of LED TVs

Allahabad Bank receives capital infusion fund of Rs 2,153 crore from the Government of India

Indian Overseas Bank receives Rs 4,360 crore towards contribution of the Central Government in the preferential allotment of equity shares

Reliance Capital delayed the interest / principal payment with regards to NCDs due on January 2, 2020

Automotive Stampings - CRISIL revises long term borrowings rating to CRISIL BBB-/Stable from CRISIL BBB/Negative and short term borrowings rating from CRISIL A3+ to CRISIL A3

J Kumar Infraprojects - India Rating & Research affirms long-term issuer rating at IND A+

Dr Reddy's gets shareholder's nod for amalgamation of Dr Reddy's Holdings into company - PTI
Netanyahu drops clanger, calls Israel 'nuclear power'

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 05 January 2020 6:55 PM

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, in an apparent stumble, called the occupying entity a "nuclear power" before correcting himself with a bashful nod and an embarrassed smile.

Netanyahu made the terrible blunder in a cabinet meeting on Sunday, while reading Hebrew notes on a deal with Greece and Cyprus on a subsea gas pipeline.

"The significance of this project is that we are turning Israel into a nuclear power," he said, before swiftly correcting himself to say "energy power."

The Israeli premier then paused for a while, acknowledging his mistake with a smile, and then continued with his comments.

The apparent tongue slip from Netanyahu quickly proliferated on Israeli social media.

Israel is the only possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, but its policy is to neither confirm nor deny having atomic arms.

Jimmy Carter, a former president of the United States, and various high-profile newspaper and media reports have, however, verified the regime's ownership of the non-conventional arms. Estimates show that the regime is currently in possession of 200 to 400 atomic warheads.

The regime is also believed to possess the capability to deliver its nuclear warheads in a number of methods, including by aircraft, on submarine-launched cruise missiles, and the Jericho series of intermediate to intercontinental range ballistic missiles.

The United States, Israel's most dedicated and biggest ally, has invariably cast its veto against the United Nations' measures seeking to hold the regime to account for its various grave actions, including its refusal to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

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John Bolton was White House national security adviser until September 2019 - FR170079 AP

John Bolton, the former White House national security adviser, has announced he would give testimony in Donald Trumps impeachment trial if subpoenaed by the US Senate.

Mr Bolton has previously insisted he would only give evidence if the American law courts approved ignoring an order from the US president not to appear.

Mr Bolton was part of Mr Trumps inner circle last year as the Ukraine scandal that triggered impeachment played out and has hinted he has information relevant to investigators.

Other US officials have described how Mr Bolton was alarmed as Trump allies tried to get Ukraine to investigate the Democrat Joe Biden, allegedly likening the scheme to a drug deal.

Democrats have been pushing for Mr Bolton and Mick Mulvaney, Mr Trumps acting chief of staff, to give evidence in the Senate impeachment trial, with the rules yet to be set.

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The House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment against Mr Trump in December, one for abuse of power and another for obstruction of Congress.

The issue is set to be taken up by the Senate, which will decide whether to remove him from office in a trial.

Removal is unlikely to happen given the Republicans, Mr Trumps party, holds a majority of Senate seats.

Mr Bolton issued a statement updating his position on Monday, explaining how his position had morphed based on careful consideration and study.

I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify, Mr Bolton concluded.

Unlike many key witnesses in the impeachment probe, Mr Bolton is likely to have direct knowledge of Mr Trumps thinking about Ukraine during the period in question.

Donald Trump became only the third US president in history to be impeached by the House of Representatives in December 2019 Credit: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images

The question now becomes whether the Republican-run Senate will issue a subpoena  a legally binding request  for Mr Bolton to give evidence.

Story continues

A row over the rules of the Senate impeachment trial, especially whether any witnesses should be called, has been rumbling on over the festive period.

The Democrats are pushing for witnesses, but some leading Republicans are arguing that the fact-finding part of the impeachment process is over and no new evidence should be presented.

The trial was expected to be held in January and last around a fortnight but the timing has been complicated both by the row about witnesses and the dramatic escalation of tensions with Iran.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker, has not formally handed over the articles of impeachment to the Senate, hoping to create leverage to influence how the trial will be handled.

Until she does, a trial cannot be scheduled, according to congressional rules.
An Iranian general who replaced Qassem Soleimani after he was killed by the U.S. airstrike has vowed to take revenge as the slain leader's daughter swears death to the families of American soldiers.

Esmail Ghaani's threat on Monday in an interview with Iranian state television comes as part of the fallout over the U.S. killing of the top Iranian general.

'God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken,' he said.

Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened an attack on the U.S. military in the Mideast while speaking to a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Tehran that stretched as far as the eye could see.

'The families of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East will spend their days waiting for death of their children,' she said to cheers.

It comes as Tehran abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in response to the slaying. Separately, Iraq's parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil.

Iranian general Esmail Ghaani's (left) threat on Monday in an interview with Iranian state television comes as part of the fallout over the U.S. killing of the top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani (right)

The three developments could bring Iran closer to building an atomic bomb, set off a proxy or military attack launched by Tehran against America and enable the Islamic State group to stage a comeback in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.

Adding to the tensions, President Donald Trump threatened to demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iraq or impose 'sanctions like they've never seen before' if it goes through with expelling U.S. troops.

Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened an attack on the U.S. military, saying they would 'spent their days waiting for death of their children'

Ghaani now serves as the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force, an expeditionary arm of the paramilitary organization answerable only to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

As Soleimani's longtime deputy, Ghaani has been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2012 for his work funding its operations around the world, including its work with proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Those proxies likely will be involved in any operation targeting U.S. interests in the Mideast or elsewhere in the world.

Already, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans 'of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks.'

In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimani's killing made U.S. military bases, warships and service members across the region fair game for attacks. A former Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader suggested the Israeli city of Haifa and others could be targeted should the U.S. attack Iran.

'We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region,' Ghaani said.

Following massive funeral marches in Iraq, his body was flown to Ahvaz, Iran. Military personnel carry Soleimani's casket in Iran. A tide of mourners packed the streets of the Iranian city of Ahvaz Sunday to pay respects to the top general

An organizer for a funeral procession for Soleimani called on all Iranians to donate $1 each 'in order to gather an $80million bounty on President Trump's head'. The organizer made the remarks during the procession in Mashad

Iranian mourners crowded in to touch the casket and express there grief at the death of the powerful general

On the nuclear deal, Iranian state television cited Sunday a statement by President Hassan Rouhanis administration saying the country would not observe the nuclear deals restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities.

'The Islamic Republic of Iran no longer faces any limitations in operations,' a state TV broadcaster said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson specifically urged Iran to 'withdraw all measures' not in line with the 2015 agreement that was intended to stop Tehran from pursuing its atomic weapons program.

Iran insisted that it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldnt seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions. It further raises regional tensions, as Irans longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

Iran did not elaborate on what levels it would immediately reach in its program.Tehran has already broken some of the deals limits as part of a step-by-step pressure campaign to get sanctions relief.

It already has increased its production, begun enriching uranium to 5% and restarted enrichment at an underground facility.

While it does not possess uranium enriched to weapons-grade levels of 90%, any push forward narrows the estimated one-year 'breakout time' needed for it to have enough material to build a nuclear weapon if it chose to do so.

President Trump , first lady Melania Trump and their 13-year-old son Barron arrived back at the White House on Sunday night following a two-week stay in Florida

Donald Trump warned Sunday that if Iran retaliates against the U.S. he will take 'disproportionate' action against them. He also said he did not need to notify Congress if he decides to issue another attack

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations watchdog observing Irans program, did not respond to a request for comment. However, Iran said that its cooperation with the IAEA 'will continue as before.'

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi earlier told journalists that Soleimanis killing would prompt Iranian officials to take a bigger step away from the nuclear deal.

'In the world of politics, all developments are interconnected,' Mousavi said.

Soleimani's killing has escalated the crisis between Tehran and Washington after months of back-and-forth attacks and threats that have put the wider Middle East on edge. Iran has promised 'harsh revenge' for the U.S. attack, while Trump has vowed on Twitter that the U.S. will strike back at 52 targets 'VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. '

He doubled down on that threat Sunday, dismissing warnings that targeting cultural sites could be a war crime under international law.

'They're allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way,' Trump told reporters.

On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of mourners accompanied the coffin carrying Soleimani's remains in the Iranian cities of Ahvaz and Mashhad.

A similar procession was expected in Qom and Tehran on Monday. Tens of thousands already filled the streets of the Iranian capital early Monday morning.

Mourners wearing black beat their chests and carried posters with Soleimani's portrait. Demonstrators also unfurled red Shiite flags, which traditionally symbolize both the spilled blood of someone unjustly killed and a call for vengeance.

The processions mark the first time Iran honored a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such a processional with his death in 1989.

Soleimani on Monday will lie in state at Tehran's famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him.

He will be buried in his hometown of Kerman.
Children raised in deprived orphanages in communist Romania have brains that are one tenth smaller than English adoptees', research shows.

Scientists took MRIs of nearly 70 people raised in eastern European institutions in the 1980s and later adopted by families in Britain.

The volunteers had all been beaten, starved and deprived of social interaction as babies and toddlers.

On average, their brains were 8.6 per cent smaller than English orphans who had not suffered the same levels of neglect.

The Romanians also had a higher rate of low IQ and greater symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Kings College London researchers, who conducted the study, believe a lack of social engagement in early childhood literally shapes the brain.

And these physical changes go on to affect cognitive abilities and mental health as children grow, the academics speculate.

Children raised in deprived orphanages in communist Romania have brains that are one tenth smaller than English adoptees', research shows. A photo that emerged in 2017 reveals the plight of children found on the brink of starvation in an orphanage in Belarus

Between 1965 and 1989, under a communist regime, hundreds of thousands of Romanian children were thrown into orphanages because their parents were too poor to look after them.

In the notorious children's homes, youngsters were starved, beaten and forced to sleep in squalor.

Many of them developed psychological disorders and were infected by diseases such as hepatitis B and HIV.

As part of their latest study, King's College scientists looked at MRI brain scans of 67 Romanians aged between 23 and 28 who'd been in the orphanages in their first few weeks of life.

THE STARVING CHILDREN OF ROMANIAN CARE HOMES IN THE 1980S In the 1980s, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu enacted an austerity policy in order to pay Romania's external debt. Orphanages suffered as a result, with many lacking heating and food. Many orphans did not know how to feed themselves, while others would starve to death. Thousands of emaciated and diseased babies were found slowly dying in filth infested cradles. Children were tied to their beds or restrained in their own clothing. Girls and boys' heads would be shaved and children would often sit naked because staff forgot to clothe them. Advertisement

The participants had spent between three months and three years in the homes.

Analysis showed participants' brains were smaller the longer they had lived in them.

In comparison to British adoptees, the Romanians had visibly smaller right inferior frontal regions in the brain.

These areas are important in cognitive skills, such as emotional expression, problem solving, memory, language, judgment, and sexual behaviors.

The changes were also associated with lower levels of ADHD symptoms.

Lead study author Dr Nuria Mackes, a researcher in child and adolescent psychiatry at KCL, said: 'Previous research... has suggested that the emergence and persistence of low IQ and a high level of ADHD symptoms involves structural changes in the brain but, until now, we have not been able to provide direct evidence of this.

'Showing these very profound effects of early deprivation on brain size and then showing that this difference is associated with low IQ and greater ADHD symptoms provides some of the most compelling evidence of the neuro-biological basis of these problems following deprivation.'

Co-author Mitul Mehta, a professor in neuroimaging, added: 'We found structural differences between the two groups in three regions of the brain.

'These regions are linked to functions such as organisation, motivation, integration of information and memory.

'It's interesting to see the right inferior temporal lobe is in fact larger in the Romanian young adults and that this was related to fewer ADHD symptoms, suggesting that the brain can adapt to reduce the negative effects of deprivation.

'This may explain why some individuals appear less affected than others by deprivation.

'We believe this is the first time that research has shown such compelling evidence of compensatory effects around deprivation.'

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
- An Army captain has been killed on gunmen who invaded a community in Munya local government area of Niger state

- The captain was killed alongside three soldiers - a staff sergeant, two corporals in the area

- It was also gathered that the gunmen had ambushed the team accompanied by some Police officers in the bush

A Nigerian Army captain and four soldiers have been killed by some gunmen in an ambush in Sarkin Pawa in Munya local government area of Niger state.

The Nation reports that three other soldiers were also injured in the attack that left the captain who led the soldiers - a staff sergeant, two corporals in an operation in the area.

It was gathered that the deceased were said to have responded to a distress call by residents of Gwar community in Munya local government area when the incident took place.

The gunmen had invaded the area carrying out a house to house rad but immediately took after their sighted the team who had been deployed from the base Zazzaga community.

They (the gunmen) took cover in the bush where they ambushed the team accompanied by some armed policemen in their armoured vehicle.

On sighting the team, the gunmen fired shots at them killing the captain on the spot while the soldiers were hit during the gunfight which lasted for over one hour.

Also, the operational vehicles - two Hilux vehicles were burnt - while the gunmen carted away with the team's Machine Gun (MG) riffle.

Confirming the incident, the chairman of the Munya local government area, Mohammed Dazz, said the gunmen who were about 30 in number invaded the community holding residents hostage.

Dazz said: I personally provided logistics to the soldiers before they left for the operation, both the soldiers and the police were overpowered due to a large number of the gunmen."

One hour after they left for the scene, they came back with bullets holes in their armoured vehicle and the glass shattered."

As I speak with you now, they have killed four soldiers and three others seriously injured. They have also burnt the Hilux Van of the soldiers," he said.

He also said that the bodies of the soldiers were taken to the Sarkin Power police station after the incident occurred.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that an attack by some suspected Boko Haram insurgents was repelled by troops of the Nigerian Army in Michika local government area of Adamawa state.

PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read the best news on Nigerias #1 news app

The attack which took place on Thursday, January 2, resulted in a stampede with residents scampering for safety.

NAIJ.com (naija.ng) - Legit.ng. We have upgraded to serve you better

Primate Ayodele releases new year prophesy, speaks on Buhari actualizing vision 2020| Legit TV

Source: Legit.ng
She's only been in the South African jungle on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! Australia for one day, but Charlotte Crosby has already made a love match.

The newly single 29-year-old has been eyeing off fellow reality TV veteran Ryan Gallagher, 31, who starred on Married on First Sight Australia in 2018.

The Geordie Shore alum admitted that she had flirted with Ryan over social media before they appeared on I'm A Celebrity together - and a day cooped up in the jungle with the hunk had her heart aflutter.

Feeling flirty! Charlotte Crosby (pictured) admitted on Monday that she is falling for I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! Australia co-star Ryan Gallagher saying he 'gives her a tingle'

'Ryan makes us laugh, he's really good looking and handsome,' she admitted excitedly.

The Celebrity Big Brother star went on: 'His legs are paler than the rest of his body which kind of freaks us out, but other than that, gives us a bit of a tingle, you know.'

Ryan and Charlotte had a little flirt in camp, with Ryan mocking Charlotte's former boyfriend, Ex On The Beach star Joshua Ritchie, who she split with just weeks ago.

Love match? 'Ryan makes us laugh, he's really good looking and handsome,' Charlotte admitted excitedly. Pictured: Ryan Gallagher

Likes what she sees! 'I fancy him. He has got biceps that are kind of bigger than his head and that melts us all over the place,' Charlotte said of Ryan

'Why do you want that? Why do you want a guy who pumps Botox in his face, straightens his hair every five minutes?' he said.

'He looks like a pretty boy,' Ryan went on, adding that Charlotte 'picks the wrong people' to date.

Charlotte told Ryan that he was 'funny' for making the comments, but was worried that he may be too shy to make a move on her.

Giggles! Charlotte laughed as Ryan slammed her ex Joshua Ritchie. 'Why do you want a guy who pumps Botox in his face, straightens his hair every five minutes?' he said

However, Charlotte worried that she was trying to woo Ryan while unable to wear makeup: 'Imagine I fancy someone a little bit and then, like, looking like this!' she said

'I fancy him. He has got biceps that are kind of bigger than his head and that melts us all over the place,' she told her fellow campmate Tanya Hennessy.

'We were talking on these beds and he said, 'I'm really shy with girls', maybe that's why he hasn't made it obvious', Charlotte added.

Tanya confirmed: 'Old mate Ryan, he likes you!' then joked that she would act as a matchmaker between the pair.

Charlotte said of Ryan: 'His legs are paler than the rest of his body which kind of freaks us out, but other than that, gives us a bit of a tingle, you know'

Same scene: Ryan is a fellow reality show veteran who starred on Married At First Sight Australia in 2018

Slim down: The reality star buffed up and lost 14 kilos before appearing on I'm A Celeb

However, Charlotte worried that she was trying to woo Ryan while unable to wear makeup or do her hair.

'Imagine I fancy someone a little bit, being with a load of people, and never really having a chance to be by yourselves and then, like, looking like this!' she said.

Charlotte had already made moves on Ryan before they became co-stars on the reality show.

On the hunt! Charlotte had already made moves on Ryan before they became co-stars on the reality show. On Sunday night, the star said: 'I can't believe that Ryan is here! The thing about me and Ryan is, we had never met but we have spoke on social media...'

Love on the cards? Ryan (pictured) seemed just as excited to meet her in person, saying: 'I'm happy to meet Charlotte. She seems like she's a lot of fun. She's mad but I am also mad'

Speaking to her fellow campmates when she entered the jungle on Sunday night, the star said: 'I can't believe that Ryan is here! The thing about me and Ryan is, we had never met but we have spoke on social media...'

Ryan seemed just as excited to meet her in person, saying: 'I'm happy to meet Charlotte. She seems like she's a lot of fun. She's mad but I am also mad.'

The former Just the Tattoo of Us host is single after ending her romance with ex boyfriend Joshua late last year.

'Heartbroken': Ex On The Beach star Joshua Ritchie, 25, was with the Geordie Shore favourite, 29, for two years before she announced in November that their relationship had 'broken down'

A source close to Charlotte told New! magazine: 'For a while Charlotte has wanted to get married and have kids, but Josh, being younger, doesn't have any interest in settling down.

'They both want completely different things because they're at different stages in their lives. That's what she really wants but Josh was adamant he isn't ready.'

The pair officially called it quits in November, announcing that their relationship had 'broken down'.

A source close to Charlotte told New! magazine: 'Charlotte has wanted to get married and have kids, but Josh, being younger, doesn't have any interest in settling down'. Pictured in 2018




ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE: US President Donald Trump threatened sanctions against Baghdad on Sunday after Iraq`s Parliament called on US troops to leave the country, and the President said if troops did leave, Baghdad would have to pay Washington for the cost of the airbase there.

We have a very extraordinarily expensive airbase thats there. It cost billions of dollars to build, long before my time. Were not leaving unless they pay us back for it," Trump told reporters on Air Force One.

Trump said that if Iraq asked US forces to leave and it was not done on a friendly basis, "we will charge them sanctions as theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.

Live TV

Trump also threatened "major retaliation" against Iran if Tehran were to retaliate for the killing of one of its top military commanders.

The President also told reporters travelling with him from Florida that he was willing to go after Iranian cultural sites because Iran had killed Americans, and he said the administration "may discuss" releasing intelligence related to the killing of Qassem Soleimani.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President of France Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson issue statement urging Iran to withdraw measures flouting nuclear deal.

(With Agency inputs)
France-headquartered minerals producer and processor Imerys Group has announced that it has acquired a manufacturer of abrasives minerals in China.

Imerys now has majority ownership of Shandong Luxin Mount Tai Co, after taking control of 65% of the company, based in Zibo in Shandong province, with a view to expanding...
'Code Name: Arc Angel delivers the greatest hits of World War II wrapped up in personal narrative, with the unique addition of a German-born American hero to the World War II fictional canon.

Author Bruce Jarvis has published his exciting World War II spy thriller, Code Name: Arc Angel, that plunges readers into the year 1940 as Europe finds itself in crisis with Adolf Hitler leading Germany, the Italians declaring war on Great Britain and France, and the formidable Luftwaffe carrying out large-scale attacks.

The book follows Carlton Fuller  an ordinary U.S. citizen and family man  who is called upon due to his German background by the Office of Strategic Services to infiltrate the highest ranks of the Nazi Party in a daring, covert operation that could determine the outcome of the war.

Fuller assumes the identity of a Nazi Colonel who plans armed services operations and interacts with Hitler and other notorious individuals, including Heinrich Himmler, Alfred Jodl, Joseph Goebbels, and their respective staffs. As Fuller attempts to fulfill his mission by gathering military secrets for the allies, he puts everything on the line for the sake of destroying Hitlers regime.

 sincere World War II buffs will find a lot in Carlton Fullers story that is appealing, a Foreword Clarion reviewer wrote. Code Name: Arc Angel delivers the greatest hits of World War II wrapped up in personal narrative, with the unique addition of a German-born American hero to the World War II fictional canon.

In his ambitious book, Jarvis displays a masterly command of the historical period  especially impressive is his grasp of German language and culture, a Kirkus reviewer wrote.  In addition, the plot is as inventive as it is clever.

Based on a true story, Code Name: Arc Angel twines elements of drama, romance, and espionage to deliver something for every reader while also embodying notions of duty, patriotism, and personal sacrifice.

Code Name: Arc Angel, The Demise of the Devil

By Bruce Jarvis

ISBN: 978-1-5320-0001-0 (hardcover); 978-1-5320-0003-4 (softcover); 978-1-5320-0002-7 (e-book)

Available through iUniverse, Barnes & Noble and Amazon

About the author

Bruce Jarvis served in the U.S. Navy from 1956-1959 and worked for nearly three decades for AT&T before he was recruited by the Department of Defense to work for their Defense Information Systems Agency. He is also the author of Willy Victor and 25 Knothole. Now retired, Jarvis has three children, six grandchildren, and one great-grandson from his first marriage. He currently resides in Leland, N.C., with his second wife, Joan. To learn more, please visit http://www.codenamearcangelbrucejarvis.com.

General Inquiries, Review Copies & Interview Requests:

LAVIDGE  Phoenix

480-648-7557

dgrobmeier@lavidge.com
Activists take part in a demonstration, after a British woman was found guilty of faking a rape claim, outside the Famagusta courthouse in Paralimni - REUTERS

Travel advice for Britons going to Cyprus is under review, Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, has said, ahead of the sentencing of a teenager from Derbyshire, convicted of lying about being gang-raped on the island.

Mr Raab said while the Government had to avoid aggravating the authorities in Cyprus, the case was "firmly on my radar".

The 19-year-old woman will be sentenced on Tuesday after being found guilty of public mischief when she withdrew an allegation that she had been raped by 12 Israeli youths in the holiday resort of Ayia Napa last July.

The woman has since claimed she only withdrew the allegations after pressure from the Cypriot police.

It has now emerged that the teenager, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had 35 bruises on her body when she was examined after the alleged attack, but the judge dismissed them as jellyfish stings.

Dr Marios Matsakis, a forensic pathologist, said: "The bruises I sketched show force was clearly exerted in her body, but the court accepted they were jellyfish stings, which is ridiculous."

Mr Raab acknowledged that the case needed to be handled "very sensitively" to prevent doing anything "counterproductive" ahead of the sentencing, but confirmed he had spoken to the girl's mother to offer support.

Asked if the Foreign Office would advise tourists against visiting Cyprus, he replied that it always kept its travel advice "under review".

The teenager, who has not been allowed to leave the island since the incident in July, could face up to a year in jail and a 1,500 fine.

But questions have been raised about the handling of the case after it emerged that the girl did not have legal representation during questioning.

Asked if he was worried there had been a miscarriage of justice, Mr Raab said: "We don't control the Cypriot justice system ... but there are clear questions around the due process, the fair trial, safeguards that have applied in this case."

Story continues

He added: "The concerns we have and that I have, have been squarely and firmly and categorically registered with the Cypriot authorities."

The teenager initially told police she had been raped by 12 Israeli tourists in a hotel room in the party town of Ayia Napa on July 17.

The suspects were arrested but later released without charge when the girl retracted her complaint.

One of the Israeli men who was accused has now claimed the group is preparing to sue the girl for damages.

Yona Golub said: "We deserve compensation for what we went through."
The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Monday refused to modify its judgment passed in the Tata-Mistry matter and dismissed the petition filed by the Registrar of Companies (RoC). A two-member bench headed by Chairman Justice SJ Mukhopadhyaya dismissed RoC's plea.

The NCLAT said that the December 18 judgment has no aspersions cast against it. "There is no ground to amend judgment dated December 18, 2019," said NCLAT.

In the December 18 order, the NCLAT reinstated Cyrus Mistry as the Chairman of Tata Sons. The NCLAT said that his removal was oppressive and the appointment of N Chandrasekaran in his position was illegal. The order asked Tata Sons not to take any action against Mistry whose family owns 18 per cent in Tata Sons.

Tata Group had moved Supreme Court against the NCLAT order and sought a stay. They took the matter to the court after the SC reopened after the Christmas and New Year holidays. On January 3, Ratan Tata also moved the Supreme Court in his personal capacity against the order. He said that that the order held him guilty of oppressive and prejudicial steps against the interests of Tata Sons shareholders without explaining the factual or legal foundation grounds.

Also read: TCS moves Supreme Court against NCLAT order reinstating Cyrus Mistry

On January 3, Tata Consultancy Services also moved the Supreme Court challenging the NCLAT order, the company stated in a filing to Bombay Stock Exchange.

Cyrus Mistry, who had earlier said that he was vindicated issued a statement saying that he has no plans to rejoin Tata. "To dispel the misinformation campaign being conducted, I intend to make it clear that despite the NCLAT order in my favour, I will not be pursuing the executive chairmanship of Tata Sons, or directorship of TCS, Tata Teleservices or Tata Industries," Mistry said. "I will however vigorously pursue all options to protect our rights as a minority shareholder, including that of resuming the thirty-year history of a seat at the Board of Tata Sons and the incorporation of the highest standards of corporate governance and transparency at Tata Sons," he added.

Also read: Ratan Tata moves Supreme Court seeking stay against NCLAT's order to restore Cyrus Mistry

Also read: Cyrus Mistry says not returning as Tata Sons chairman, will protect minority shareholders' rights
Zeinab Soleimani, the daughter of the slain Iranian army chief, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, has vowed that her fathers death must be ...





Zeinab Soleimani, the daughter of the slain Iranian army chief, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, has vowed that her fathers death must be retaliated.





Zainab told the crowd at her fathers funeral procession in Tehran that the US and Israel faced a dark day for his death.





The airstrike, which was an order from US President Donald Trump, killed Maj. Gen. Soleimani and his deputy in Baghdad, the Iragi capital on Friday.





The death of Soleimani has inflamed tensions in the Middle East resulting in a series of war threats from both America and Iran with the Middle East countrys latest threat to retaliate the assassination of their general.





Trump had issued a strong warning to Iran, vowing to hit 52 Iranian sites very hard if the Middle East country attacked Americans or United States assets.





Trumps threat came after Iran earlier said it had identified 32 US sites to strike in retaliation for the killing of Soleimani.





Multiple rockets were also on Sunday launched near the US embassy in Baghdad Iraq





The move by the US has drawn condemnation from leaders and officials who fear that tensions in the region could escalate drastically.





Irans Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei had also warned that a harsh retaliation is waiting.




A number of rockets have been fired into Iraq's Green Zone near the US Embassy.

A statement from Iraqi military said three Katyusha missiles hit on Sunday evening inside the capital of Baghdad's heavily fortified area which houses government buildings and foreign missions.

Three more rockets fell in the nearby Jadriya area injuring six people, the statement said.

The attack comes two days after General Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad.

Earlier today, Iraqi lawmakers voted to expel the US military from the country as tensions between the nations increased.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians hit the streets today to mourn his death and to protest against the American attack.

Iranians have vowed to take revenge following the assassination.

Boris Johnson commented on the crisis for the first time on Sunday since returning from his holiday in the Caribbean and said he had spoken to the US President Donald Trump.

Following the phone call, Mr Johnson warned that all calls for reprisals will simply lead to more violence in the region and they are in no ones interest in the wake of the killing in Baghdad on Friday.

But a short while later, Mr Trump threatened to strike back and perhaps in a disproportionate manner if Iran strikes a US citizen or target

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the country's military will strike more Iranian leaders if the Islamic Republic retaliates to the killing.

He said: "We continue to prepare for whatever it is the Iranian regime may put in front of us within the next 10 minutes, within the next 10 days, and within the next 10 weeks.

As rockets fell, it was confirmed three Americans, one US military service member and two contractors, were killed during an attack by Somalia's Al-Shabaab militant group on a military base in Kenya.
Brian Magerkurth is 61 years old, 12 weeks post hip replacement, and already back to his intensive training schedule in his home gym. Four years ago Magerkurth appeared on American Ninja Warrior and now with his new hip he's trying to make it back on the show. Emily Cohen/For The Inquirer Read more

Brian Magerkurth does handstands on playground equipment. He hangs off the sides of outdoor stairways, hoisting himself up the steps hand by hand.

Once, when passing by a hotel with an awning over the entrance, he could not help noticing its sturdy crossbars. Time for a quick upper-body workout!

He no more could stop running, jumping, hopping than he could stop breathing, said his wife, Valarie.

All this gives the retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, at age 61, a body that would fill out a superhero costume.

But earlier last year, the Villanova resident discovered one thing that could stop him: an arthritic right hip. At masters track and field events, he no longer could sprint down the runway in his beloved pole vault, a demanding event in which he had been among the worlds best for his age. And he knew the pain would jeopardize his quest to requalify for NBCs American Ninja Warrior, the extreme test of strength and agility in which he competed once before, in 2015.

He first tried stretching, to no avail. Then cortisone shots. With X-rays showing that the cartilage in the joint had worn away to leave bone on agonizing bone, he finally decided on surgery.

On Sept. 23, Magerkurth got a hip replacement at Rothman Orthopaedic Institute in Bensalem. He was a bit worried that he might never get back to peak form.

His wife, on the other hand, worried he would try to do it too quickly.

Stop that!

The second-floor gym in the Magerkurths house has a treadmill and a fancy, zero-impact contraption that resembles an elliptical trainer but is said to allow the user to run with a fuller range of motion.

Yet for the most part, the exercise space is low-tech. Ropes and rings hang from the ceiling beams. A few free weights, an exercise ball, and stretchy resistance bands are arrayed neatly on one side.

Magerkurth has always hit them hard, six days a week, with maybe a vigorous bike ride on day seven. Its not the equipment, he said, but how you use it  a principle he espoused when he was a professor of exercise physiology at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Now a senior executive in the life-sciences industry, he maintains his passion for low-tech, hard-core exercise, rising at 4:45 a.m. every day.

Give me a chair, a broomstick, and a road, and Ill give you a workout, he says.

Upon returning home from the surgery, Magerkurth was eager to get back to it.

Like most patients, he started walking with a walker hours after surgery and soon graduated to a cane. Unlike most patients, who use a walker or cane for at least a month, he was done after eight days.

Next, he started resistance training, pleased to find he had a good range of motion in the repaired hip. And there was plenty of his usual punishing upper-body exercises  pull-ups, push-ups, rope climbs, and rings.

Then at four weeks post-surgery came the no-no: a bit of light running. At a follow-up visit to Rothman, Magerkurth proudly played a video of himself in motion for Matt Austin, the surgeon who had implanted the new hip.

Stop that! Austin ordered.

He said Magerkurths bones had not yet had a chance to grow into the metal implant, so even the slightest bit of jogging could be disastrous. The implants pointy, titanium stem, in particular, was a trouble spot, Austin warned. So early in his healing, it could act like a log-splitter, cracking the thigh bone.

 READ MORE: These American Ninja Warrior Junior stars are big on strength and spirit

Chastened, Magerkurth dialed it back. But he plowed on.

Balance exercises. Flexibility drills. Simulated running on the zero-impact trainer.

At 12 weeks after surgery, in mid-December, Magerkurth said he felt close to normal. After a follow-up X-ray, Austin gave him the green light to start running again.

The old guy

The surgeon, who performs more than 300 hip-replacement surgeries a year, said Magerkurths superb conditioning had helped him recover in half the time of the typical patient. He walked without a limp four weeks after surgery instead of the typical eight. His sturdy bones had accepted the titanium joint without issue, and his lean muscles readily regained their power and flexibility.

The average person cant expect to get a hip replacement and have a recovery like Brian, because Brians not an average person, Austin said. Brian needed a little counseling to slow him down. I dont have to have that conversation with most patients.

Valarie Magerkurth said she was not surprised to see her husband bounce back.

I knew he would, she said. This is the guy who ran on a broken ankle for six months.

It was a slight fracture, her husband protested, in mild exasperation. (It happened with a hard slide into third base during a softball game at West Point, a few years back.)

Now comes more training and the wait to see whether he is accepted for Ninja Warrior in the spring.

The show accepts just a few hundred contestants out of many thousands of applicants, inviting them to one of five regional contests for the chance to advance to the finals in Las Vegas. The organizers are looking for people who can do the stunts on the obstacle course, such as dangling from outlandish overhangs, scampering up curved walls, and hurtling themselves across watery voids. And because the contest is made for television, the show-runners also are looking for people with a good story.

Magerkurth thinks he meets both requirements. There have been a few contestants older than he is but they generally have not made it through many of the obstacles. Magerkurth is a triple threat, with his age, his skill, and his new bionic part.

Im the old guy, he said. Im over 60 and I can still do all this stuff. Plus, I have a story this year, which is my hip replacement.

Austin said the hip should be good to go. With older models of hip implants, physicians used to caution patients against heavy-duty running, as the device could wear out faster. But the newest plastics seem to last for decades with no issues, the surgeon said.

With a hip replacement, you can pretty much do anything your body will let you do, Austin said. If your body lets you do it, then Im fine with that.

But what about the rest of Magerkurths well-conditioned, though indisputably aging, frame? Is it smart for a 61-year-old to do one-armed handstands, as Magerkurth does, or to launch himself skyward in the pole vault?

The important thing for Brian is that this is what brings him joy, Austin said. Hes willing to risk injury to do the things that bring him pleasure in life. I couldnt take that away from someone.

So in March, Magerkurth plans to enter the pole vault at the national indoor masters track and field competition, in Baton Rouge, La., where he thinks a jump in the mid-11-foot range will give him a good shot at the podium.

And later in the spring, if all goes well, he could be back on TV as a ninja  a package of pure Pennsylvania muscle, except for a bit of ceramic and titanium on his right side.
New York state officials secretly offered Amazon nearly $1 billion more than previously known for a second headquarters that fell through, according to a new report.

The Wall Street Journal obtained documents showing the state offered to provide up to $2.5 billion in tax credits and incentives to the online retail giant to make an Amazon HQ2 site happen in the New York City area. The first offer, which was $800 million more than the state initially agreed to, also showed the state was prepared to pay part of some Amazon employees salaries.

A spokesperson for Empire State Development told the WSJ that the $800 million extra was intended for earlier plans that included a larger Amazon campus than agreed upon.

Throughout the negotiating process, we sharpened our incentive package and ultimately secured a better return on investment for the state and the biggest economic development opportunity in New Yorks history, Matthew Gorton said on behalf of the states economic development program.

The final agreement was worth closer to $3 billion. According to The Hill, it included $1.2 billion in tax credits, $505 million to reimburse some construction costs and another $1.3 billion through two incentive programs available to any company.

The project would have brought up to 40,000 jobs to Long Island City in Queens and created as much as $30 billion in revenue over 25 years, but was canceled last year amid opposition from some residents and New York lawmakers. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat who represents a Queens district near Long Island City, said last month that the jobs were a a 10-20 year fantasy... not a promise or agreement."

Amazon later announced it would lease a space in Manhattan for 1,500 employees.

More than 200 cities and states pitched Amazon for its second headquarters, including Syracuse and Central New York. New Jersey offered the most with $7 billion in tax breaks, while Marylands incentives totaled $5 billion.

CNBC reports Amazon is expected to break ground on its HQ2 site in northern Virginia early this year and complete the project in 2023. The 2.1-million-square-foot development, which includes two 22-story buildings, is expected to create 25,000 jobs in Arlington County.
The head of Libya's UN-recognised government was in Algeria on Monday to discuss increasing tensions in his country, ahead of a visit by the Turkish foreign minister.

Since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that killed Moamer Kadhafi, Libya has been plunged into chaos. It is now divided between the GNA and rival authorities based in the country's east.

Tensions escalated last year when eastern-based strongman Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive to capture the capital Tripoli, seat of the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).

The GNA sought help from Turkey where parliament passed a bill allowing the government to send troops to Libya to shore up the Tripoli government, and on Sunday Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said soldiers had begun deploying in the North African country.

The Algerian presidency said GNA Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj arrived on Monday at the head of a high-ranking delegation to "discuss ways to resolve the difficult situation" in Libya, the official APS news agency reported.

He was due to meet newly-elected Algerian President Abdelmadjid, it said.

Algerian state television said the GNA's foreign and interior ministers, Mohamed Taha Siala and Fathi Bachagha, met their Algerian counterparts Sabri Boukadoum and Kamel Beldjoud.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was also expected in Algiers later in the day for a two-day visit, according to his ministry.

On Thursday, Algerian foreign minister Boukadoum announced "several initiatives in favour of a peaceful solution to the Libyan crisis" and reaffirmed his country's opposition to foreign interference in Libya.

Algeria shares nearly 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) of border with Libya and 1,400 km (870 miles) with Mali.

After taking office in December, Tebboune convened Algeria's top security body to discuss the situation at its borders, notably with Libya.

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An Iranian cleric has mocked the US saying it can't strike back as hard as the late Qassem Soleimani because it only has fictional heroes.

Cleric Shahab Moradi, posted a video to Twitter on Saturday night, a little over a day after the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp Major General Qassem Soleimani.

In the segment the cleric called in to a presenter and said the Islamic Republic would have a hard time taking the revenge that they have promised since the general's death.

Cleric Shahab Mohadi said Iran would find it difficult to respond to Soleimani's death directly because 'All of their [America's] heroes are cartoon characters  they're all fictional'

A file photo dated September 18, 2016 shows Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani during Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's meeting with Revolutionary Guards, in Tehran, Iran

He said: '[In the situation] that we take one of theirs now that they've got one of ours  who should we consider to take out in the context of America?

'Think about it. Are we supposed to take out Spider-Man and SpongeBob?

'They don't have any heroes. We have a country in front of us with a large population and a large landmass, but it doesn't have any heroes.

'All of their heroes are cartoon characters  they're all fictional.'

In this photo released by the official website of the Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, front row, fourth from left, leads a prayer over the coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and his comrades, who were killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike on Friday, at the Tehran University campus, in Tehran today

A US airstrike late Thursday hit a convoy carrying Soleimani and Iran-backed Kataib-Hezbollah leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis near Baghdad airport, shocking the Islamic Republic and sending tensions spiralling across the Middle East.

Soleimani's remains were flown back to Iran last night to a heroes' funeral, with thousands mourning in streets across the country.

Iran has vowed 'severe revenge' against America and yesterday abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal in response to the airstrike, while Trump has threatened a 'disproportionate response' targeting cultural sites.
Fon of Babungo whatsapp

The Fon of Babungo, a community in the North West region, have expressed dissatisfaction with activities of armed separatists in the area, giving them a 24 hours ultimatum to release all those they are holding captive.

His Royal Highnes, Fon Zofoa Ndofoa Aboubakar, was recorded while he expressed his frustration, towards the kidnapping of over 18 members of his subjects, by armed separatists.

He made the address shirtless, an act many of his kin say, is hardly done. The traditional authority of Babungo often comes out without clothes when theres a traditonal event but it was not the case on Sunday, as Fon Zofoa delivered stern warnings.

Talking in his mother-tongue, he condemned the activities of armed separatists in his community and promised to ban any one who continued carrying out the acts. He threatened to barnish family members of armed separatists from his village, if armed separatists continue to keep members of the community held captive and incommunicado.

Recently, some Anglophones have been speaking out against attrocities perpetrated not only by military but by armed separatists. In some communities, armed separatists have been accused of using all sorts of methods to push members to adhere to their demands, from money, goods, respect for ghost towns and school boycott.

Leaders of these group in the diaspora have been cautioned by both national and internattional parties to restrain from carrying out human rights violations on the populations.
The petitioner submitted her son, who was convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case,had been lodged in Madurai central prison for more than 27 years, after he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Madurai: The Madras High Court on Monday granted 15 days parole to Ravichandran, one of the seven life convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, to attend to his ailing mother and also to settle some family matters.

Acting on a petition by his mother, Justices T Raja and B Pugalendi granted him parole from 10 January, though the state government submitted that it would not be possible to provide police security for him in view of Pongal festival.

The petitioner submitted her son, who was convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case,had been lodged in Madurai central prison for more than 27 years, after he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Tamil Nadu government had taken a decision to release him and the recommendation for the same was pending with the state Governor, she submitted. The petitioner said Ravichandran, who was 21 years old when he was imprisoned, was now 48 years old.

She said she was old and had some health issues and was also struggling to settle various family issues. She submitted that the Tamil Nadu government had already asked police to consider her application for parole for her son.

However the parole request had been rejected. Hence she requested the court to grant her son parole.

Ravichandran, along with Nalini and her husband Murugan, Santhan, Robert Payas, Perarivalan and S Jayakumar are serving life term in connection with the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi by a suicide bomber at an election rally in Tamil Nadu on 21 May, 1991.
A day after the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), its vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar appealed to students to maintain peace and assured them of protecting their academic interests.

The University stands by all the students to facilitate their pursuit of academic activities. We will ensure that their winter semester registration will take place without any hindrance, Jagadesh Kumar said in a statement.

They need not fear about their process. The top priority of the University is to protect the academic interests of our students, he said.

Also Watch l JNU violence: Masked men allegedly attack teachers & students inside campus

He also accused the protesting students of damaging the universitys communication servers to disrupt the registration process for the winter semester.

Follow JNU live updates here

They prevented thousands of students from doing their winter registration. Their intent is clearly aimed at disrupting the functioning of the University. This is simply hooliganism and against the ethos of JNU. No such person will be spared and appropriate action will be taken, he said.

The JNU vice-chancellors statement came after a masked mob, armed with sticks and rods, barged into the JNU campus on Sunday evening and attacked students and teachers leaving 23 injured.

Videos and television visuals showed the mob in jeans and shirts, with strips of cloth covering their faces, vandalise hostels, hurl stones and hit students with sticks on the campus.

The administration has condemned the violence but said it was the students agitating against hostel fee hike who engaged in violence.

The Left-backed JNU students union (JNUSU) and many students alleged that members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, attacked them.

The ABVP has refuted the charges, saying members of the Left parties led the violence.

JNUSU on Monday called for the removal of Jagadesh Kumar accusing him of perpetuating violence after attack by a masked mob on the campus on Sunday evening.

It said, goons from outside, especially Delhi University were imported to break the momentum of the hostel fee hike protest, which has been going on for over two months.

Mr. Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, it is time to go! The JNU community has a single point demand. That either this VC resign or the MHRD as the competent authority remove him! Those who are trying to malign and destroy this university will not succeed JNU will live on! JNUSU said in a statement.

M Jagadesh Kumar is behaving like a mobster who perpetuates violence in the university he is supposed to administer, it said.
Doremus said it is important for the public to know the rules of flying these drones and know what space is restricted or not.

However, Doremus also said it is unknown who is operating these drones and if they had the permits and permissions to operate in that space.

Duering and Doremus said it is important that members of the public do not shoot these drones out of the sky.

Duering said that as far as they can tell, these are large, commercial-style drones that would require a license to operate.

The drones are also FAA-registered, so shooting them down is illegal.

Both police captains said shooting anything high in the air is dangerous, and the size of the aircrafts are unknown at this time.

Duering also said discharging a firearm in city limits is illegal.

While both departments are keeping an eye on the situation, both captains said there is nothing that the public should be worried about at this time.

The Buffalo County Sheriffs Department has also had drone sightings reported.

Buffalo County Sheriff Neil Miller said three reports of drones flying in his county came in between 7 and 9 p.m. Sunday. Miller said deputies are tracking the locations of the reports to try to identify who is flying the drones.

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Harvey Weinstein charged with rape, other sex crimes: LA district attorney originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

Harvey Weinstein has been charged with raping one woman and sexually assaulting another in separate incidents over a two-day period in 2013, Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey announced Monday.

The disgraced movie mogul was charged with one felony count each of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery by restraint.

MORE: Timeline: Harvey Weinstein's path to his New York City rape and sexual assault trial

"We believe the evidence will show that the defendant used his power and influence to gain access to his victims and then commit violent crimes against them," District Attorney Lacey said. "I want to commend the victims who have come forward and bravely recounted what happened to them. It is my hope that all victims of sexual violence find strength and healing as they move forward."

On Feb. 18, 2013, Weinstein allegedly went to a hotel room and raped a woman after forcing his way into her room. He is also accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a Beverly Hills hotel the next evening.

Neither woman has spoken out publicly about the allegations, but one of them is scheduled to testify in Weinstein's criminal trial in New York, which began Monday.

In all, eight women came forward in Los Angeles county with sexual assault allegations against Weinstein, although three of the alleged incidents took place outside of the statute of limitations, the district attorney's office said during a press conference announcing the charges.

The office said it is still investigating the remaining allegations and warned that more charges could follow.

"We continue to investigate allegations involving three other women to determine if additional charges will be filed," Lacey told reporters Monday. "However, I want to commend the victims who have come forward and bravely recounted what happened to them."

Story continues

"I want victims to know that just because we may lack sufficient evidence to charge their assailant, it does not mean that a crime did not occur. It simply means that the evidence was not strong enough to meet our filing standards. To those victims I want you to know, we see you, we hear you and we believe you," she added.

PHOTO: Harvey Weinstein leaves State Supreme Court in New York, Jan. 6, 2020. (Seth Wenig/AP)

Prosecutors are recommending bail be set at $5 million. If convicted, Weinstein faces up to 28 years in state prison.

Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson of the Sex Crimes Division is prosecuting the case which remains under investigation by the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills police departments and the District Attorney's Bureau of Investigation.

As Weinsteins New York trial got underway, a group of his alleged victims, among them actresses Rosanna Arquette and Rose McGowan, spoke out against him.

MORE: Former aspiring actor claims Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her at 16: Lawsuit

These so-called "Silence Breakers" -- who represent the more than 90 women who've accused him of everything from inappropriate behavior to rape -- took turns at the microphone.

"While the emotion of the day runs high, I join these other brave women who were also harmed by Harvey Weinstein to say that we aren't going anywhere," said Arquette, who starred in Pulp Fiction, which Weinstein produced.

"The truth will prevail. And whether it is this trial or in the future, Harvey will be held accountable for his actions."

PHOTO: Rose McGowan speaks during a press conference, after Harvey Weinstein arrived at State Supreme Court, Jan. 6, 2020, on the first day of his criminal trial on charges of rape and sexual assault in New York. (Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)

For her part, McGowan addressed Weinstein directly, via a letter she read aloud.

"Dear Harvey, no matter what lies you tell yourself, you did this," she said.

"Today, Lady Justice is staring down a super-predator: you. You brought this upon yourself by hurting so many. You have only yourself to blame. You thought you could terrorize me and others into silence. You were wrong."

She added, "Know this: We are free, we are beautiful and we are strong and you will never take that from us. Survivors will never give up."

Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him and has denied ever engaging in non-consensual sex with anyone.

His arraignment will be scheduled at a later date.
Five Shiv Sena workers were detained on Monday in Gujarat's Vadodara after burning the effigy of Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan, police said.



We were protesting against the attack on Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and the killing of a Sikh youth in Pakistan, Shiv Sena spokesperson Tejas Brambhatt told PTI here.



Shiv Sena members were detained and released after two hours, a police official said.



They raised slogans against Pakistan and burnt an effigy of Khan near Vadodara Municipal Corporation, he added.
Cartel Big J, a member of Praye group has disclosed how his attempts to bear a child with his celebrity wife Selly Gally has failed.

Even though the couple have been married for 5 years, they are yet to bring forth a child. As societal pressure mounts on them, Cartel Big J, otherwise known as Praye Titia seems unperturbed and rather says children are gifts from God and they will have one when God permits it.

Speaking in a recent interview ZionFelix on the uncut show, Praye Titia disclosed that he has sex with his wife on daily basis but she is yet to bear the fruit of the womb.

Praye Titia is however hopeful that God will answer their prayers at the right time. He went ahead to debunk rumors that his wifes fashion lifestyle is the reason she is refusing to get pregnant.

Meanwhile Praye Titia is still healing after his finger got damaged while playing with firecrackers popularly known in Ghana as knockout on 31st night.

Watch the full interview below.



---Ghbase.com
ALBANY  As most New Yorkers know, the state's motto  Excelsior  means "ever upward."

The census bureau begs to differ.

In what has become an annual ritual, the federal agency has again released estimated data showing that the state's population is decreasing in alarming fashion. New York recorded its fourth consecutive population decline and lost more people than any other state, the census says.

Grim, right? Wait, there's more.

As noted in an analysis of census data by the Empire Center for Public Policy, nearly 1.4 million people left New York since 2010, which again is the largest absolute decline recorded by any state. Only Alaska lost a larger percentage of its residents.

Question: How do you say "ever downward" in Latin?

Want more from Chris Churchill? Sign up for his weekly newsletter.

Now, some of you might be wondering what's wrong with a declining population. Can't we look forward to shorter lines at the deli and cheaper real estate?

Sure, but the deli will eventually close as its community withers. Places with declining populations are anything but dynamic; they can easily fall into a death spiral.

That's why, in a better world, lawmakers would be sick to their stomachs over such troubling numbers. At the bare minimum, they'd be announcing the formulation of a Task Force of Very Important People Dedicated to Stemming the Outflow and Saving New York.

But that, of course, is not what's happening.

Democrats in the Legislature's power positions seem loathe to talk about the state's population outflow. They rarely mention it.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, meanwhile, prefers to pretend everything is superbly wonderful in the state he's led since 2011.

When forced to talk about population losses, the governor likes to blame things beyond his control  like the weather. I'm somewhat surprised Cuomo doesn't just yell "Excelsior! Excelsior! Excelsior!" until reporters give up.

Regardless, the state's population slide is an inconvenient truth, no matter how much lawmakers wish otherwise, and ignoring the trend is akin to governmental malpractice. If you care about New York, shouldn't you care that sections of the state are withering away?

Two things are going on here.

1. Democrats who control the Legislature have a very downstate/New York City view of things. And like the Capital Region, New York City, which continues to be a draw for immigrants, has largely been immune from population declines. Out of sight, out of mind.

2. Addressing the population decline would mean asking some uncomfortable questions about policy decisions. Namely, it would mean taking a close look at a state tax burden that, by many measures, is the nation's highest.

Cuomo isn't entirely wrong about warm weather drawing residents away. Even a winter lover like me is forced to admit that retirees enjoy a little January sunshine.

Still, it is no coincidence that Florida, the top destination for New Yorkers who move away, has warm weather and no income tax. Meanwhile, quite a few New Yorkers are moving to nearby states with equivalent weather but generally lower taxes.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Nearly 16 percent of New Yorkers who have left since 2010 moved to New Jersey, the Empire Center found, while another 7.1 percent moved to Pennsylvania and 5.6 percent departed for Connecticut.

In Columbia and Rensselaer counties, neighboring Massachusetts, with its lower property taxes, was the top destination for departing residents. In many of the counties along the state's southern border, lower-tax Pennsylvania was the top destination.

More Information Contact columnist Chris Churchill at cchurchill@timesunion.com or 518-454-5442. See More Collapse

Granted, this is an inopportune time to be talking about the state's tax problem. With a $6.1 billion budget gap looming, Democrats in the Legislature can be expected to look at tax increases to fill the hole  no matter what the census data says.

"That's going to drive more people away," Nick Langworthy, head of the state Republican Party, warned Monday, before describing continued population losses as "a sad upstate narrative that's now becoming the sad New York state narrative."

If the Legislature did ever create that Task Force of Very Important People, what would the group do?

Well, it might start its work by recognizing that New York's taxes, property taxes especially, are driven largely by per-pupil school spending that's easily the highest in the nation, according, once again, to that pesky census bureau.

The task force might even suggest that with a few key reforms, including eliminating mandates that have little to do with teaching kids, New York could scale education costs down to the level of, say, Massachusetts, which has highly regarded schools and spends about 30 percent less per pupil.

Not likely, I know. In the session that begins Wednesday, lawmakers will give no meaningful attention to the state's population drop.

And that inaction will mean that New York almost certainly continues its decline  making Excelsior, a word prominently displayed on the state's new license plate, an increasingly ironic motto.

cchurchill@timesunion.com  518-454-5442  @chris_churchill
The blowback over the US killing of a top Iranian general mounted Sunday as Iran announced it will no longer abide by the limits contained in the 2015 nuclear deal and Iraq's Parliament called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil.

The twin developments could bring Iran closer to building an atomic bomb and enable the Islamic State group to stage a comeback in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.

Adding to the tensions, US President Donald Trump threatened to demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iraq or impose sanctions like they've never seen before if it goes through with expelling US troops.

Iranian state television cited a statement by President Hassan Rouhani's administration saying the country would not observe the nuclear deal's restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran no longer faces any limitations in operations," a state TV broadcaster said.

In Iraq, meanwhile, lawmakers voted in favor of a resolution calling for an end to the foreign military presence in the country, including the estimated 5,200 US troops stationed to help fight Islamic State extremists. The bill is subject to approval by the Iraqi government but has the backing of the outgoing prime minister.

In yet another sign of rising tensions and threats of retaliation over the deadly airstrike, the US-led military coalition in Iraq said it is putting the battle against IS on hold to focus on protecting its own troops and bases.

The string of developments capped a day of mass mourning over Iranian Maj. Gen.

Qassem Soleimani, killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad on Friday. Hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets in the cities of Ahvaz and Mashhad to walk alongside the casket of Soleimani, who was the architect of Iran's proxy wars across the Mideast and was blamed for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in roadside bombings and other attacks.

Trump responded to the Parliament's troop withdrawal vote with a monetary threat, saying the US expected to be paid for its military investments in Iraq before leaving and threatening economic sanctions if the US is not treated properly.

We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time. We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

If they do ask us to leave, if we don't do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame," he said He added: We're not leaving until they pay us back for it.

State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus earlier said the US is awaiting clarification on its legal meaning but was disappointed by the move and strongly urged Iraq to reconsider.

We believe it is in the shared interests of the United States and Iraq to continue fighting ISIS together, Ortagus said.

The leaders of Germany, France and Britain issued a joint statement on Sunday calling on Iran to abide by the terms of the nuclear deal and refrain from conducting or supporting further violent acts. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson specifically urged Iran to withdraw all measures not in line with the 2015 agreement that was intended to stop Tehran from pursuing its atomic weapons program.

Iran insisted that it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldn't seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions. It further raises regional tensions, as Iran's longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

Iran did not elaborate on what levels it would immediately reach in its program. Tehran has already broken some of the deal's limits as part of a step-by-step pressure campaign to get sanctions relief. It has increased its production, begun enriching uranium to 5% and restarted enrichment at an underground facility.

While it does not possess uranium enriched to weapons-grade levels of 90%, any push forward narrows the estimated one-year breakout time needed for it to have enough material to build a nuclear weapon if it chose to do so.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations watchdog observing Iran's program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, Iran said that its cooperation with the IAEA will continue as before. Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi earlier told journalists that Soleimani's killing would prompt Iranian officials to take a bigger step away from the nuclear deal.

In the world of politics, all developments are interconnected," Mousavi said.

In Iraq, where the airstrike has been denounced as a violation of the country's sovereignty, Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said that the government has two choices: End the presence of foreign troops or restrict their mission to training Iraqi forces. He called for the first option.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Newly appointed head of Hong Kong Liaison Office Luo Huining speaks to media to mark his first day at office in Hong Kong, China January 6, 2020. Reuters



HONG KONG - The new head of China's liaison office in Hong Kong, the most senior mainland official based in the territory, said on Monday China was the strongest backer of the Asian financial hub, which he hoped would return to "the right path".



The liaison office, which reports to China's State Council or cabinet, is a platform for Beijing to project its influence in the city, and has faced criticism for misjudging the situation in the Chinese-controlled city, which has faced more than six months of pro-democracy protests.



In his first comments to the media since Saturday's announcement by China's Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security that he had replaced Wang Zhimin, 65-year-old Luo Huining said he was "not unfamiliar with the city".



"Hong Kong compatriots have made important contributions to the reform and opening up and modernisation of our country. The motherland will always be Hong Kong's strongest backer," Luo told reporters.



"In the past half a year, the Hong Kong situation has been worrying. Everyone eagerly hopes Hong Kong can return to the right path."



In November, Reuters reported exclusively that Beijing was considering potential replacements for Wang, in a sign of dissatisfaction with the liaison office's handling of the crisis in Hong Kong.



Until November, Luo was the top official of China's ruling Communist Party in the northern province of Shanxi, where he had been tasked with cleaning up a graft-ridden, coal-rich region where corruption was once likened to cancer.



Before moving to Shanxi, Luo had been the top party official in the western province of Qinghai.

Protests in Hong Kong escalated in June over a now-withdrawn extradition bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent for trial to the mainland, where justice is controlled by the Communist Party.



They have since evolved into a broad pro-democracy movement, with anger growing over a perception that Beijing is meddling too much into Hong Kong, which was promised a high degree of autonomy upon returning from British to Chinese rule in 1997.



China denies meddling and blames the West for fomenting unrest.



Luo said the "one country, two systems" type of governance that guarantees Hong Kong freedoms not available on the mainland was the city's greatest advantage and that the basic law, the city's mini-constitution, will be "fully implemented." (Reuters)




President Donald Trump appeared to call for dialogue with Iran only a day after it blasted American targets in Iraq.

The strikes, which did not kill any American or Iraqi forces, follow the U.S. killing of the top Iran general, Qasem Soleimani, last week. After Soleimani's death, Tehran said it would back away from another key provision landmark 2015 deal to limit its development of nuclear weapons by blowing past limits on enriching uranium.

Trump said the U.S. would ratchet up economic sanctions on Iran as it tries to avoid armed conflict with the state. The president first reimposed sanctions on Tehran after he withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018. The international agreement aimed to reduce the chances of nuclear conflict and normalize Iran's relations with the world.

The latest tensions follow decades of enmity between the U.S. and Iran. The timeline below outlines some of the major events in the U.S.-Iran relationship since the mid-20th century and how the nuclear deal fits into it.

 Timeline summaries by Reuters, with CNBC edits.
The Founder and President of Shiloh Word Chapel, Abuja, Prophet Samuel Ikechukwu, has warned the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), against impending break up of the party, except it takes proactive steps to avert it.

Ikechukwu, who announced this as part of his prophetic insight into the year 2020 and beyond, while coming down from prayer mountain, also forewarned against the death of an unnamed president of a nation.

The present ruling party, APC should maintain unity, if not, your party will crash and divide into four over night, to fight one another.



I saw a president slumped and the flag lowered in 2020. God have mercy, he warned.

For incumbent and past governors, the cleric warned against alarming scandals and political setups, said more leaders will go to jail.

He said: I see more leaders going to jail and lots of assassinations. Remember all governors and ex-governors in prayers against health cases that will be alarming, political setups and great political scandals.

Nigerian judicial system shall be sanitised. From now on, I see the UN and America getting involved in Nigerias affairs politically and on religion related-related matters.

Ikechukwu also earned Christians in the country to brace up for difficult times and persecution from the government.

Christians be ready for real persecutions by new laws and war of faith. I see religious leaders in Nigeria and Africa fighting and betraying, haunting each other, as trials increase in the church, instead of coming together to pray, he said.

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The death of commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, general Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad on January 3 has sharply escalated the multi-party conflict that has been going on for decades. This is stated in the statement issued by the council of the National Agenda Party.

The council of the National Agenda Party expresses its condolence to the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran and voices hope that all the forces engaged in the conflict in the Middle East will refrain from taking further action to destabilize the situation and will try to resolve the discrepancies through peaceful means.

The council of the National Agenda Party also calls on the authorities of the Republics of Armenia and Artsakh to maintain active neutrality at the same time and do everything possible to help reduce the tension that has been caused. At the same time, taking into consideration the possibility of further escalation of the conflict in the region, we express hope that the authorities and the leadership of the Armenian army take necessary additional actions to ensure the security of our countrys borders and critical infrastructures, the councils statement reads.
Iraqs Foreign Ministry has lodged official complaints with the United Nations Secretary-General and Security Council over U.S. air strikes on Iraqi soil that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and several Iraqi militia leaders.

The complaint is about American attacks and aggression on Iraqi military positions and the assassination of Iraqi and allied high level military commanders on Iraqi soil, the ministry said in a statement.

It described the attacks as a dangerous breach of Iraqi sovereignty and of the terms of U.S. presence in Iraq, Reuters reported.

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry called on the Security Council to condemn the attacks.
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Early on Friday morning, Iraqi time, a U.S. drone strike at the Baghdad airport killed Irans top military leader, Qassem Soleimani. For decades, Soleimani has been the mastermind behind Irans involvement in armed conflicts and acts of terror across the Middle East, from supplying the terrorist organization Hezbollah, to attacking Saudi oil fields and international shipping, to targeting U. S. forces in the region. In fact, the Pentagon lays the deaths of over 600 U. S. military personnel directly at Soleimanis feet.

At the time of his death, Soleimani was just 15 miles away from the U. S. Embassy in Iraq, which, last week, was stormed by militants thanks to Soleimani.

Writing in the New York Times, the Hudson Institutes Michael Doran asserts, Taking out the architect of the Islamic Republics decades-long active campaign of violence against the United States and its allies, especially Israel, represents a tectonic shift in Middle Eastern politics.

And, despite not knowing what those tectonic shifts might bring, Doran concludes, The world to which we wake up today, rid of its most accomplished and deadly terrorist, is a better place.

Of course, the U. S. attack on Soleimani raises a whole host of questions. How will Iran respond? Will it expand its proxy war through Shiite militias? Will it dare take on the U. S. military directly? Will it unleash terrorist cells in the Middle East and even here in America? Is this a decisive step toward a wider, bloodier war in the Middle East and maybe even beyond?

It is impossible to see the future, especially in such a volatile region that features such volatile actors. But we can evaluate whether this decision, and any decision leading to hostile action, is justified according to what is called Just War Theory. Over the centuries, Christian thinkers from Augustine to Aquinas to the Reformersseeking to reconcile Christian teaching on the sanctity of human life with the Christian responsibility to love our neighbors by protecting them from evilhave proposed a set of conditions by which a violent act can be considered justified. These conditions deal with both whether war ought to be waged, as well as how war should be waged.

First, the cause for going to war and the intention behind it must be just. Second, the war must be waged by a legitimate authority. Third, force must be used as a last resort. Fourth, force used in war must be proportionate to the threat. Fifth, force must not target non-combatants, and finally, there must be a reasonable chance of success.

Obviously, these conditions deal with very precarious details, including some that we, as the watching public, may or may not have access to or assurances of. If we measure the killing of Soleimani against these conditions, we can conclude that given Soleimanis long resume of terrorism and evil, and his targeting of America and Americas allies (including civilians), there was just cause.

Whether the act was performed by a legitimate authority is a tougher question, since a formal, declared state of war does not exist between Iran and the U. S. However, our forces are in Iraq legally, with Congressional mandate and the approval of the Iraqi government. Soleimani was instigating hostile acts against the U.S. and the Iraqi government with, according to the Pentagon, plans to do even more. (David French offers a helpful explanation in this Twitter thread).

The attack, a precise drone strike, did not target civilians, which also addresses the questions of proportionality and probability of success. Was the attack a last resort? Thats difficult to know. Clearly, sanctions against the Iranian regime werent affecting Soleimanis activities around the region.

The most difficult question, in my view, is whether the evils prevented are greater than the potential consequences. Will this bold, new posture cause Iran to curtail its activities, or will it ignite a wider war? Well only be able to answer this question in hindsight.

Of course, we are dealing with limited information. But, well need to keep these just war conditions in mind in the days and weeks ahead. As Mindy Belz told me in a special episode about Soleimani and Iran available on the BreakPoint Podcast: While America has been focused on impeachment, the Middle East has been exploding all over again.

Most importantly, lets pray to the God of History, for wisdom for the President and Congress, for the safety of our men and women in uniform as well as the many other lives at stake, and for peace in the Middle East.
US President Donald Trump doubled down Sunday on a threat to attack Iranian cultural sites despite accusations that any such strike would amount to a war crime. After his top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, had insisted that any military action would conform to international law, Trump said he would regard cultural sites as fair game if Iran resorted to deadly force against US targets. "They?re allowed to kill our people, they're allowed to torture and maim our people, they?re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people and we're not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn?t work that way," Trump told reporters. "If they do anything there will be major retaliation." His comments on his return from a break in Florida followed a welter of criticism over a Tweet on Saturday night in which he said sites which were "important to... Iranian culture" were on a list of 52 potential US targets. Tehran's foreign minister had reacted to those initial comments by drawing parallels with the Islamic State group's destruction of the Middle East's cultural heritage. And as Twitter was flooded with photos of revered Iranian landmarks in ancient cities such as Isfahan under the hashtag #IranianCulturalSites, leading US Democrats said the president would be in breach of international protocols if he made good on his threat. "You are threatening to commit war crimes," Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the top Democrats hoping to challenge Trump in November's election, wrote on Twitter. "We are not at war with Iran. The American people do not want a war with Iran." "Targeting civilians and cultural sites is what terrorists do. It's a war crime," added fellow Senator Chris Murphy. In a flurry of interviews on the Sunday talkshows, Secretary of State Pompeo said the US would not hesitate to hit back hard against Iran's "kleptocratic regime" if it came under attack, but pledged that any action would be consistent with the rule of law. Both sides have traded threats since a US drone strike in Iraq on Friday killed Qasem Soleimani -- one of the most important figures in the Iranian government. "We'll behave lawfully. We'll behave inside the system. We always have and we always will," Pompeo told the ABC network. "The American people should know that every target that we strike will be a lawful target, and it will be a target designed with a singular mission, of protecting and defending America." His comments came after his opposite number in Tehran Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that "targeting cultural sites is a WAR CRIME". "A reminder to those hallucinating about emulating ISIS war crimes by targeting our cultural heritage: Through MILLENNIA of history, barbarians have come and ravaged our cities, razed our monuments and burnt our libraries," said Foreign Minister Zarif. "Where are they now? We're still here, & standing tall." - Threat 'Un-American' - Nicholas Burns, who served as US ambassador to NATO under president George W. Bush, said the Trump administration would be guilty of hypocrisy given it was part of international efforts to deter IS from destroying countless pre-Islamic artefacts, including in the Syrian UNESCO-listed site of Palmyra. "Donald Trump's threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites would be a war crime under UN Security Council resolution 2347 ? supported by the Trump Administration itself in 2017 to warn ISIS+Al Qaeda of similar actions. "His threat is immoral and Un-American," said Burns, now a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Others drew comparisons with the Taliban's 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan Pompeo refused to give details on the 52 potential targets which Trump said had been drawn up to represent each and every hostage held in the standoff at the US embassy in Tehran four decades ago. But one former official expressed skepticism that military planners would agree to target cultural sites. "I find it hard to believe the Pentagon would provide Trump targeting options that include Iranian cultural sites," said Colin Kahl who was National Security Adviser to former vice president Joe Biden. "Trump may not care about the laws of war, but DoD (Department of Defense) planners and lawyers do... and targeting cultural sites is war crime." US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says that "every target that we strike will be a lawful target" Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the top Democrats hoping to challenge Trump for the presidency, said he is "threatening to commit war crimes" Trump's threat drew comparisons with the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, which once stood at this site
The Blue Mountains rail line is likely to remain closed to most passenger trains for at least another two months between Lithgow and Mount Victoria due to extensive damage to power and signalling equipment from massive bushfires.

Train passengers have been forced to catch replacement buses since December 21 after the Gospers Mountain megafire destroyed signalling and other railway infrastructure along a 25-kilometre stretch of the line in the Blue Mountains.

A burnt power pole fallen across the rails along the Blue Mountains Line, near Dargan. Credit:James Brickwood

While a small number of diesel-powered passenger trains are expected to begin operating on the line by late January, the extent of damage means it is likely to be at least two months before electric trains can run between Mount Victoria and Lithgow. The worst damage has been to signalling equipment, much of which was destroyed, and power supply.

The closure of the line between Lithgow and Mount Victoria has meant passengers who usually travel by Xplorer trains from Broken Hill, or diesel-powered XPTs from Dubbo, have had to catch buses for their entire journeys to and from Sydney.
There had been a lot of stories of discriminatory practices in workplaces in different places all over the United States of America. Lawsuits are mostly being filed by people of color for being discriminated against by the company they work for.

Most of the lawsuits filed by these people reach headlines especially when the companies they are suing are large and influential ones. Examples of these companies are Wal-Mart, General Electric, and Abercrombie & Fitch.

There are news articles that tell the story of big companies being sued for racial discrimination. The cases that these big companies faced had become a warning to other companies. These incidents had also served as proof of the many ways on how people of color in the workplace are being treated. This news aims to encourage each business in the country to promote diversity in the workplace.

Even though a man of African-American origin had attained the country's top job in the year 2008, numerous diversified workers are not receiving the same luck. Due to racial discrimination, people of color are earning less than white people, they are left behind in terms of promotion in their companies, and many get fired.

Recently, a new case of racial discrimination has been reported on the news.

Former employees are filing a case of racial discrimination in the workplace against KidsPeace, their former employer. It was also said that the employees were threatened by their company top

KidsPeace is a charitable organization based in the United States of America. It is headquarted in Philadelphia. It helps support the behavioral needs of children and promote good mental health for the youth and their families.

The name of the plaintiffs (former black and Latino employees of KidsPeace) are Dusan Littlejohn, Ashley Gonzalez, and Janette Gonzalez. They filed the lawsuit last October 2019. Each of the three plaintiffs was hired in 2014 and 2015 by the organization. They were recently fired in October 2018 after their evaluation after a training session by the company.

The black and Latino employees worked as health technicians in the company. They were being called racial names such as "the two Spanish girls from New York" and "he big Black guy." According to the statements of the plaintiffs, their dismissal from the company was unlawful and discriminatory. They stated that after their lunch break, they were immediately sent home, suspended, and relieved from their positions in the company.

According to the lawsuit, Ashley, with Puerto Rican origin, was asked by a co-worker to refrain from speaking Spanish. She was even threatened with deportation.

Janette, also of Puerto Rican origin, was also victimized with racial discrimination in the country when she was asking for help with her tax form and was told that all people from Puerto Rico are having problems with their money.

According to the official statement of KidsPeace, the allegations pointed at them are without sufficient evidence and that their company promotes a good environment for their diversified workforce. They said that they will do everything in their power to defend their company.

A pre-trial will be held in February with the District Judge of Philadelphia named Chad f. Kenney.
COPPELL, Texas, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Heritage Health Solutions, Inc. (Heritage) is pleased to congratulate our Chief Pharmacy Officer Kevin James, RPh, MBA, CCHP, who has earned a professional certification in the field of correctional health care on 1/1/2020. To become a Certified Correctional Health Professional (CCHP), Kevin demonstrated mastery of national standards and the knowledge expected of leaders working in this field. He joins over 4,200 correctional health care professionals nationwide who have earned this distinction, two of which are also part of the Heritage Team - Vice President of Operations Joanna Garcia, CCHP and Account Manager, USMS Programs Courtney Nicholson, CPhT.
Parties cutting across political lines, civil society groups and student bodies are slated to hit the city streets on Monday afternoon to protest the violence inside the JNU campus in New Delhi.

Violence broke out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours.

Students' unions of the Jadavpur University affiliated to the AISA and the SFI are slated to march towards the ABVP state office in Maniktala area of Kolkata on Monday, police said.

Students of the Presidency University would also take out a procession from their campus in central Kolkata till Jorasanko in the northern part of the city, a police officer said.

The ruling TMC is slated to take out a protest rally in north Kolkata, he said.

The Congress student's wing, Chhatra Parishad would burn effigies of BJP leaders and hold a protest rally on College Street in the central part of the city, the officer said.

Another protest meeting is slated to be held near Coffee House on College Street, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Australia is battling raging fires across New South Wales and Victoria.

And model Erin McNaught detailed the devastating impact the bushfire crisis will have on the economy, in an impassioned Instagram post on Sunday.

The 37-year-old said the country 'will suffer even further, through skyrocketing food and vegetable prices, a shortage of primary resources and flailing exports'.

'Our country will never be the same': Erin McNaught (pictured) detailed the devastating impact the Australian bushfire crisis will have on the economy in an Instagram post on Sunday

'These fires are not letting up, they will continue to burn for many more weeks, if not months. AUSTRALIA WILL NOT BE THE SAME AFTER THIS,' Erin wrote.

'We are hearing about the devastating loss of human lives. Our hearts break for these people and their loves ones. Over half a billion of our native animals dead. HALF A BILLION. Countless more domestic, livestock animals have died too.'

Erin went on to reveal the impact the bushfire crisis will have on our economy.

Impact: The model said the country 'will suffer even further, through skyrocketing food and vegetable prices, a shortage of primary resources and flailing exports'. Pictured: Smoke billowing from a fire burning at East Gippsland, Victoria on January 2

'Our country will suffer even further through skyrocketing food and vegetable prices, a shortage of primary resources and flailing exports,' she wrote.

'The timber, dairy and meat industries have been DECIMATED. Hundreds of millions of tourism dollars lost. Over 1,300 families are now without homes. How many more will now be without jobs??'

Erin concluded by urging her followers to donate money, food and other supplies, listing the Australian Red Cross, Wires Wildlife Rescue, The Salvation Army Australia and the New South Wales Rural Fire Service.

Support: Erin encouraged fans to donate to the Australian Red Cross Disaster Relief, the NSW Rural Fire Service and WIRES Wildlife Rescue. Pictured: Lake Conjola, NSW on December 31

An 'unprecedented' state of disaster was declared in Victoria giving the government special powers - used for the first time ever - to impose forced evacuations and give emergency services the right to take over properties.

Neighbouring New South Wales also announced a week-long state of emergency on January 2.

The national bushfire death toll has reached 24, while more than 1,500 homes have been destroyed.

Devastation: The national bushfire death toll has reached 24, while more than 1,500 homes have been destroyed. Pictured: Fire impacting a property in Bilpin, NSW on December 21

The conditions prompted Prime Minister Scott Morrison to send in 3,000 Australian Defence Force reserves to help in the bushfire recovery.

Celebrities Pink, Selena Gomez and Nicole Kidman have all pledged donations.

If you would like to donate to the Australian Red Cross Disaster Relief, click here.

To donate to the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, click here.

For donations to WIRES Wildlife Rescue, click here.
Generous Australians who donated to bushfire appeals they now believe were scams can now ring a specific hotline.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on Tuesday opened its dedicated number - 1300 795 995 - for reporting bushfire-related scams.

Reports can also be made on the Scamwatch website, where more information about where to get help is available.

Dairy farmer Patrick Salway, 29, and his father Robert, 63, died trying to defend their home from bushfires in Cobargo. Just days later a fake fundraiser had been set up to cash in on their deaths

Donors can protect themselves by being wise to cold-calling, fake websites, and direct messaging, the consumer watchdog said.

Dairy farmer Patrick Salway, 29, and his father Robert, 63, died trying to defend their home from bushfires in Cobargo in the south east of New South Wales last week. Just days later a fake fundraiser had been set up to cash in on their deaths.

'Do not donate via fundraising pages on platforms that do not verify the legitimacy of the fundraiser or that do not guarantee your money will be returned if the page is determined to be fraudulent,' a spokesman said.

'If you are unsure, make your donation to an established charity instead.'

The Australia Charities and Not-for-profits Commission Charity Register lists all registered charities and their official websites.

'If you think you have paid money to a scammer, please contact your bank immediately,' the ACCC said.

The NSW Rural Fire Service Association was forced earlier this week to confirm cold calls from 02 9094 2428 were made by its fundraising centre, amid rumours the calls were a scam.

The fraudulent campaign had almost reached the target goal set by the scammers before it was shut down

Crowdfunding site GoFundMe, where more than $5 million has been raised this season for bushfire appeals, said it would guarantee donors refunds in the rare event campaign creators misuse funds.

'Before money is transferred to an individual, their personal information, including ID and banking information, must be verified,' a spokeswoman told AAP.

'If someone is raising money for someone they don't know, they will rarely touch the money. Instead, GoFundMe will work with the campaign organisers to ensure it goes directly into the beneficiary's bank account.'
The ministerial meeting would come few days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the start of Turkish troop deployment to Libya

Egypt is set to host on Wednesday a ministerial coordination meeting with the foreign ministers of France, Italy, Greece and Cyprus to discuss the ongoing rapid developments in Libya, a statement by the foreign ministry read.

According to the statement, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry will hold the meeting with his counterparts to discuss pushing forward efforts to reach a comprehensive political resolution for the Libyan crisis and military actions that aim to hamper such efforts.

The foreign ministers will also discuss the overall situation in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The ministerial meeting comes a few days after Shoukry held phone calls with his Italian and French counterparts Luigi Di Maio and Jean-Yves Le Drian, where they agreed that Turkeys recent intervention in Libya endangers security and peace in whole the region.

The calls, which came shortly after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the start of Turkish troop deployment to Libya, are part of intensive communications by Egypt with international partners on ongoing developments in Libya.

In the past weeks, tensions have continued to mount in the Mediterranean region following controversial accords signed between Ankara and Libya's Government of National Accord, led by Prime Minister Fayez Al-Sarraj.

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IT generally requires a good reason to disrupt a smooth working environment, which is why some hardware sits deployed for decades. Even though Windows Server 2016 is relatively young, theres a decent argument to be made for upgrading a Server 2016 environment to Server 2019, the most recent release.

Theres a longer span between Windows Server releases than the desktop version of the software because of slower migration habits on the server side, and this means bigger changes between releases. Windows Server 2016 was the first server OS built on the Windows 10 kernel, and some of the changes were rather rough. Windows Server 2019 is markedly faster, and it has a number of changes under the hood, from security to hybrid cloud integration. Heres a rundown of whats new and what are the most compelling arguments for upgrade.

SEE ALSO: Top 6 features in Windows Server 2019

In-place Windows Server 2019 upgrades

For a long as the desktop version of Windows has been on the market, it has allowed users the option to upgrade over the existing OS installation and migrate all apps. Microsoft aggressively pushed updates from Windows 7 and 8 to Windows 10.

Windows Server, though, has not had that option until now. You either got Windows Server with new hardware, or did a clean installation, where you install on a blank server or overwrite an existing operating system. And because Server 2019 is built on the 2016 code base, app compatibility is maintained.
New Delhi [India], Jan 6 (ANI): In the backdrop of violence that took place in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has called Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal requesting him to meet representatives from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and hold talks, said sources.



The Secretary of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has also called the Registrar, Proctor and Rector of JNU to his office today.

Meanwhile, an FIR has been registered at Vasant Kunj North Police Station in connection with the violence.

Also, all 34 JNU students who were admitted to hospital for treatment yesterday, have been discharged, a senior doctor informed ANI.

On Sunday evening, more than 18 students of the university, including JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, were injured and were taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered the JNU and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods.

The JNU administration and political leaders, cutting across political lines, had condemned the attack on students and urged the police to take action against the perpetrators.

Meanwhile, the situation remained tense but peaceful outside JNU on Monday morning as the university guards' maintained a strict vigil at the gate, checking I-cards of all those entering the university. (ANI)
Christine Lagarde has a plan for rebutting German criticism of the bond-buying programme she inherited as European Central Bank (ECB) president: Put a German in charge of it.

Ms Lagarde has handed one of the ECB's highest roles to a German who has taken a stand against undue sniping at the institution's policies.

Isabel Schnabel, a University of Bonn economics professor and government adviser who has joined the Executive Board, is now responsible for market operations.

She'll oversee the 2.6trn quantitative easing programme controversially revived last year only months after it had been capped.

QE still awaits a judgment in Germany's top court over accusations it illegally crosses the line between monetary and fiscal policy.

The portfolio, which will also include heading up ECB research, is a nod to Ms Schnabel's standing as an economist.

Her predecessor, Sabine Lautenschlaeger, was a lawyer who mostly held a senior role in bank supervision with less influence on monetary policy.

But it's also a recognition by Ms Lagarde that Ms Schnabel - the only other woman on the six-person board - is well-placed to counter mounting German-led hostility to the ECB's easy-money policies.

"Lagarde clearly signals that she sees Schnabel at the very centre of the ECB's core business, monetary policy," said Lucas Guttenberg, deputy director of the Jacques Delors Institute in Berlin. "This puts Schnabel in a good place to explain the ECB's policy in Germany."

Around a third of the 25-member Governing Council opposed restarting QE.

 Bloomberg
China has issued an order that all foreign-made computerequipment and software be removed from government offices andpublic institutions within the next three years.

The news of Beijings move came earlier this week in a report from the Nikkei-owned, London-based Financial Times.

China has estimated that upwards of 30 million pieces of hardware will need to be replaced, the paper noted.

This is just the latest salvo in the ongoing trade war between theUnited States and China, the worlds two largest national economies.It began last year when President Donald J. Trump began to set tariffsand other trade barriers on China. The goal of the White Housespolicy was to address what the president has called unfair tradepractices, which included a growing trade deficit, theft ofintellectual property, and the forced transfer of American tech toChina.

This latest round has been dubbed a tech cold war, as China nowhas banned the use of U.S. tech in government facilities, which could be a response to the Trump administrations ban on the use of Chinese-madehardware by U.S. government agencies and government contractors.

The White House this summer banned all federal agencies from doingbusiness with Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision and Dahua over fears that the companies could plant surveillancedevices and gather sensitive information  including U.S. tradesecrets  and supply that information to the Chinese government.

The order from the White House came a year before theCongress-mandated deadline of next August for all federal contractorsto cease business with those Chinese firms. A number of U.S. companies, suchas Google, Intel and Qualcomm, announced they would ceaseworking with Huawei.

The Office of Management and Budget this summer releaseda statement on its strong commitment to defending the UnitedStates from foreign adversaries, including with respect to guarding tradesecrets. Legislation aimed directly at Chinese tech companies was included in the defense spending bill passed last year.

Chinas ban could impact such U.S. multinational firms as Dell, HP and Microsoft.

21st Century Haijin

This ban on U.S. computer products could be viewed as a modern version of theHaijin, or sea ban  a series of isolationist Chinesepolices that began in the 14th century under the Ming dynasty, with the goal of putting an end to Japanese maritime piracy. It was applied again under the QingDynasty beginning in the 17th century, limiting maritime tradingand coastal settlement, but that eventually led to smuggling including the illicit opium trade  and then to conflicts with GreatBritain and other European powers.

While the intent of Haijin largely was to reduce outside influence, China never completely closed itself to the West or to Western goods.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Chinas current ban on foreign products should not be viewed as isolationist in its intent, but rather as a direct result of the trade war. It also could be a way to build up the home team companies in China.

Lenovo is one such company that could benefit from the move, as it could be among the firms called upon to replace Western hardware.

Other firms likely will be hurt by not being able to offer products to Western markets.

Chinas response could very well be seen as a tit-for-tat response, remarked Javvad Malik, security awareness advocate at KnowBe4.

The move illustrates just how important and integral to everyoneslife technology has become, to the point that it is used as a politicalbargaining tool, he told TechNewsWorld.

Tech Cold War

The question now is whether this is just the latest round of salvos inthe ongoing trade war, or whether this ban on Western hardware couldresult in a very serious tech cold war  one that might not be resolvedquickly, or even ever.

At this point its hard to tell whether it represents a serioustactical decision by Chinas government or is merely a strategic feintaimed at President Trumps bellicose attempts at trade warfare, saidCharles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

The gradual implementation of the plan, with 30 percent of U.S.hardware replaced by the end of next year, could be easily rescindedif the president loses his bid for re-election or leaves office priorto November, he told TechNewsWorld.

Government purchasing represents just a tiny portion ofoverall tech spending in China, so this may not have a huge impact forU.S. tech companies. It may not affect some U.S. techcompanies directly or indirectly.

Its also unclear  since the Chinese havent officially responded toqueries  how U.S. tech company products are defined, added King.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

That is, does it mean literally any product made by any IT vendorheadquartered in the U.S.? he pondered. Or does it refer to productsmanufactured in the U.S. by those vendors?

If the former is the case, then achieving the plans stated goals could bedifficult, since China still has a way to go before it is able todevelop and deliver hardware and software that equals, let alonesurpasses, the quality of U.S. technologies.

New Operating System

Given the state of Chinas tech industry, moving to domestically sourced hardware exclusively would not be without problems for the country. Computer hardware wouldneed to be replaced, of course, but a bigger issue is that the ban couldrequire replacing Microsoft, Apple and Google software.

Chinas software industry trails the United States, and it is unclearif it could develop operating systems and applications comparable to those available from American firms, or provide the related services to support them.

While current products may not be a perfect feature-by-feature fit, there definitely are more than enough homegrown offerings and talent available to have a viable alternative product, said KnowBe4s Malik.

For U.S. firms, Chinas move might be far less significant.

The effect of the ban would be relatively benign if it only impactsU.S.-manufactured solutions, since virtually every major U.S. ITvendor supports global supply chains with manufacturing performed inmultiple facilities outside the U.S., explained King.

If thats the case, vendors could easily find ways to continue doingbusiness that wouldnt violate the spirit of the ban, he noted.

A Less-Connected World

The lasting impact of this 21st century Haijin may be more serious than whetherU.S. tech products are sold and used in China, or whether Chinese hardware is used inthe West. It could trigger a complete disconnect in the digital world. China maynot become completely isolated, but it could become far more difficult to make digital connections with people in China.

If this trend continues and more countries take to blockingtechnology, apps or services from certain countries, we could end upwith a highly fragmented or Balkanized Internet, Malik warned, which could undo much of the progress that has been made over the years.
Fox & Friends' Ainsley Earhardt has newfound confidence in U.S. intelligence now that it has set its crosshairs on Iran.

A U.S. airstrike killed Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani last week, raising questions of why America focused on the Quds Force leader even though his deadly track record has spanned decades. But Earhardt doesn't seem to think we should be questioning the U.S. government on this one, saying Monday "you just have to trust" them.

"I find it interesting that people are critical of the president's decisions, of our intelligence community's decisions, or general's decisions," Earhardt said. "Everything can't be made public," she continued, paraphrasing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in saying "you just have to trust us, basically."

Ainsley Earhardt finds it "so interesting" that people criticize "our intelligence community's decisions," because "everything can't be made public ... you just have to trust [them]." pic.twitter.com/DC50DHWgJ2  Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) January 6, 2020

It's a bit ironic coming from Earhardt, who hasn't displayed much trust in the U.S. government or intelligence in the past. She's tossed around the conspiracy theory that there's a "deep state" pulling the strings when the U.S. government makes decisions  a theory whose believers usually don't trust the U.S. to keep secrets.

More stories from theweek.com

Bernie Sanders is America's best hope for a sane foreign policy

Judge threatens to jail Harvey Weinstein as he texts in court despite repeated warnings

America is guilty of everything we accuse Iran of doing


The United Arab Emirates on Monday introduced a multiple-entry visa scheme valid for five years for all nationalities, with the aim of turning the Gulf state into a hub.

"#UAE Cabinet chaired by @HHShkMohd, approves new amendment for tourist visas in #UAE," the government of Dubai Media Office tweeted, referring to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE prime minister and ruler of Dubai.

"The new tourist visa will be valid for 5 years and can be used for multiple entries and is open for all nationalities," the Dubai Media Office wrote.

Sheikh Maktoum said on Twitter that the UAE currently attracts 21 million tourists a year.

Travellers from Africa, some South American countries, Arab states outside the Gulf, and European states from outside the European Union and former Soviet Union previously needed visas.

In October, Dubai is to host Expo 2020, a big-budget global trade fair.
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Narabet: Visit to Zero Line & Border outpost in Gujarat from where you can freely take photos I visited Raan of Kutch in Dec-19 and while doing my research online, I came across a tourist spot called Nadabet. So I decided to club it with my ROK trip. The ROK trip was a standard itinerary and so I decided to mainly write about this particular place as there is no mention of this place on the Tbhp forum. The best part of this place is that you can freely take photographs unlike the other border outposts like Vighakot in the same area, where you have to deposit all your photo gear and mobiles.



Visited on: 22nd Dec. 2019.

Vehicle: Ford Endeavour.





Names: Nadabet / Narabet. Also referred to as Seema darshan by Gujarat tourism.











Some government website links for reference:-

1.



2.



3.



4.



5.





About this place:-



India-Pakistan border stretches from Gujarat towards Rajasthan and Kashmir.



The total length of India-Pakistan border in Gujarat is 508 kms., out of which 340 kms. only are feasible for construction of physical fencing. 280 kms. of physical fencing has been completed and the target for completion of remaining 60 kms. is March 2020. The 168 kms. of border which is not feasible for physical fencing is being guarded by BSF through patrolling, round the clock surveillance, laying nakas and using technology etc.

Source:



One such fenced border outpost is Narabet, which is being developed as a tourist attraction with the assistance of Government of Gujarat.



Honble Chief Minister of Gujarat State Shri Vijay Rupani inaugurated Seema Darshan program on 24 Dec 2016 at BOP Nadabet and expressed his commitment to extensively develop border tourism in Gujarat.



This Seema Darshan has begun on the basis of Wagah Border pattern with a view to observe bravery of BSF Jawans. The attractions at the border viewing point will be a retreat ceremony by the BSF, fusion band performance, camel show and bird watching. Visitors will also be able to watch an exhibition of weapons, a photo gallery and a film on BSF at the newly developed border viewing point by Tourism Corporation of Gujarat Limited (TCGL).



Besides the Border, the Nadeshwari mata temple is another attraction.





How to reach:-



In Gmaps you need to type or search for " Nada Bet Indo-Pak Border (Zero line)"

The last small town is Suigam which is about 200 kms. from Ahmedabad.

From Suigam to the BOP, its about 45 kms.

Suigam has a government rest house.

Link: vishram gruh

Suigam, Gujarat 385570

https://maps.app.goo.gl/kgcY7jr5bTmmagbx5



Another town before Suigam is Radhanpur which can be used as base for stay. Radhanpur - Suigam = 50 kms.



Radhanpur can also be used as your base. However there are very limited facilities. I found Yash hotel in Radhanpur (to be reviewed) which can be booked online as well.

Link:





Your own car or hired car is preferable.



Gujarat tourism organizes a one day bus package with lunch from Ahmedabad, which also includes Patan.

Link:

Please share reviews if anyone uses this service.







Overview of route from Suigam towards Nadabet.





What I did:-

Since I wanted to visit ROK and LROK, I chose Little Raan resort as my base and did a to and fro trip to Narabet. Approximate driving time was about 3.5 hrs. one way. Little Raan resort is near Zainabad, which is very close to the entry point of Little Raan / Wild Ass sanctuary.

Website:



Route: Little Raan resort - Dasada - Shankeshwar - Radhanpur - Suigam - Nadabet. (Mostly single lane roads).

Shankeshwar which is about 50 kms. before Radhanpur has many Hindu temples, dhams, Jain Derasars etc. Hence there are a few dharamshalas as well which can be used if required.



Rough distances:-

Suigam to TCP Jaloya = 10 kms. about 2 kms ahead of Getco Jaloya (marked on gmaps).

Jaloya to Nadeshwari mata mandir = 11 kms.

Nadeshwar temple to BOP after Y junction = 2 kms.

BOP to Nadabet = 25 kms. (Single lane narrow road with white desert on both sides).

















Procedure for permits:-



1. At the first BSF checkpost (TCP Jaloya) one has to enter the vehicle number and number of persons including children in the BSF register, after production of government ID card (I used Aadhar card). After that they give you a token number on a small piece of paper which has to be returned after crossing the same checkpost on your way back.



2. From here you have to go to Nadeshwari mata mandir (darshan can be done first or later / preferably first so you don't have to come here again). About 100 metres from the temple is the BSF post. Parking is available at both places. Here you have to register again with vehicle details and number of persons. Here BSF gives you a hand written permit (attached for reference). This area also has a parade ground, weapons exhibition, toilet facilities etc.







3. After this you proceed back towards the Y junction and turn right. Here there is another BSF checkpost which checks the permit and retains your government ID. Nadabet is about 25 kms. from here through a white desert. The road is entirely single lane and there are sidings on the left side for two vehicles to pass.



4. On arrival at the main outpost you park your car and cross the last BSF checkpost.



Note: On your way back, your ID is returned and the BSF permit is retained at the outpost.





Things to see: You can see the Border fencing and outpost no. 960. From the fence the actual border is about 150 metres.











Border Outpost 960.





A selfie tower was also under construction just before the outpost.

Its a sense of satisfaction to interact with the BSF jawans who are posted here in inhospitable conditions and guard our borders 24x7. Being so close to the border and taking photographs is fun.





At the outpost near Nadeshwari temple from where you get permits, there is a BSF parade which happens on weekends in the evening. There is a huge crowd to watch this, something like the ceremony at Wagah border.

Although I visited on a Sunday, we did not see this parade. Kindly share your experiences if you see this parade.





Note: There is massive construction going on near the Y junction area by Gujarat tourism. The actual parade ground will be shifted here. The place is new and changing. Most of the details mentioned above are my personal observations and are subject to change. This is just a guide for fellow members and others to visit this wonderful place.





YouTube videos from Gujarat tourism





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjIDlGRahNg



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiA7E7yCHDI Nadabet / Narabet. Also referred to as Seema darshan by Gujarat tourism.Some government website links for reference:-1. http://guj.bsf.gov.in/seemadarshan.html 2. https://www.gujarattourism.com/desti...details/12/414 3. https://banaskantha.nic.in/tourist-p...an-at-nadabet/ 4. https://www.deshgujarat.com/2016/12/...adabet-border/ 5. https://cmogujarat.gov.in/en/cm-laun...do-pak-border/ India-Pakistan border stretches from Gujarat towards Rajasthan and Kashmir.The total length of India-Pakistan border in Gujarat is 508 kms., out of which 340 kms. only are feasible for construction of physical fencing. 280 kms. of physical fencing has been completed and the target for completion of remaining 60 kms. is March 2020. The 168 kms. of border which is not feasible for physical fencing is being guarded by BSF through patrolling, round the clock surveillance, laying nakas and using technology etc.Source: https://pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRele...x?relid=188391 One such fenced border outpost is Narabet, which is being developed as a tourist attraction with the assistance of Government of Gujarat.Honble Chief Minister of Gujarat State Shri Vijay Rupani inaugurated Seema Darshan program on 24 Dec 2016 at BOP Nadabet and expressed his commitment to extensively develop border tourism in Gujarat.This Seema Darshan has begun on the basis of Wagah Border pattern with a view to observe bravery of BSF Jawans. The attractions at the border viewing point will be a retreat ceremony by the BSF, fusion band performance, camel show and bird watching. Visitors will also be able to watch an exhibition of weapons, a photo gallery and a film on BSF at the newly developed border viewing point by Tourism Corporation of Gujarat Limited (TCGL).Besides the Border, the Nadeshwari mata temple is another attraction.In Gmaps you need to type or search for " Nada Bet Indo-Pak Border (Zero line)"The last small town is Suigam which is about 200 kms. from Ahmedabad.From Suigam to the BOP, its about 45 kms.Suigam has a government rest house.Link: vishram gruhSuigam, Gujarat 385570Another town before Suigam is Radhanpur which can be used as base for stay. Radhanpur - Suigam = 50 kms.Radhanpur can also be used as your base. However there are very limited facilities. I found Yash hotel in Radhanpur (to be reviewed) which can be booked online as well.Link: https://goo.gl/maps/NSv2hoCD59zRLZyX8 Your own car or hired car is preferable.Gujarat tourism organizes a one day bus package with lunch from Ahmedabad, which also includes Patan.Link: http://tourismdevelopmentcorporation...ma-darshan.php Please share reviews if anyone uses this service.Overview of route from Suigam towards Nadabet.Since I wanted to visit ROK and LROK, I chose Little Raan resort as my base and did a to and fro trip to Narabet. Approximate driving time was about 3.5 hrs. one way. Little Raan resort is near Zainabad, which is very close to the entry point of Little Raan / Wild Ass sanctuary.Website: https://www.littlerannresort.com/ Route: Little Raan resort - Dasada - Shankeshwar - Radhanpur - Suigam - Nadabet. (Mostly single lane roads).Shankeshwar which is about 50 kms. before Radhanpur has many Hindu temples, dhams, Jain Derasars etc. Hence there are a few dharamshalas as well which can be used if required.Suigam to TCP Jaloya = 10 kms. about 2 kms ahead of Getco Jaloya (marked on gmaps).Jaloya to Nadeshwari mata mandir = 11 kms.Nadeshwar temple to BOP after Y junction = 2 kms.BOP to Nadabet = 25 kms. (Single lane narrow road with white desert on both sides).1. At the first BSF checkpost (TCP Jaloya) one has to enter the vehicle number and number of persons including children in the BSF register, after production of government ID card (I used Aadhar card). After that they give you a token number on a small piece of paper which has to be returned after crossing the same checkpost on your way back.2. From here you have to go to Nadeshwari mata mandir (darshan can be done first or later / preferably first so you don't have to come here again). About 100 metres from the temple is the BSF post. Parking is available at both places. Here you have to register again with vehicle details and number of persons. Here BSF gives you a hand written permit (attached for reference). This area also has a parade ground, weapons exhibition, toilet facilities etc.3. After this you proceed back towards the Y junction and turn right. Here there is another BSF checkpost which checks the permit and retains your government ID. Nadabet is about 25 kms. from here through a white desert. The road is entirely single lane and there are sidings on the left side for two vehicles to pass.4. On arrival at the main outpost you park your car and cross the last BSF checkpost.Note: On your way back, your ID is returned and the BSF permit is retained at the outpost.You can see the Border fencing and outpost no. 960. From the fence the actual border is about 150 metres.Border Outpost 960.A selfie tower was also under construction just before the outpost.Its a sense of satisfaction to interact with the BSF jawans who are posted here in inhospitable conditions and guard our borders 24x7. Being so close to the border and taking photographs is fun.At the outpost near Nadeshwari temple from where you get permits, there is a BSF parade which happens on weekends in the evening. There is a huge crowd to watch this, something like the ceremony at Wagah border.Although I visited on a Sunday, we did not see this parade. Kindly share your experiences if you see this parade.Note: There is massive construction going on near the Y junction area by Gujarat tourism. The actual parade ground will be shifted here. The place is new and changing. Most of the details mentioned above are my personal observations and are subject to change. This is just a guide for fellow members and others to visit this wonderful place. Last edited by ruzbehxyz : 3rd January 2020 at 19:46 . Reason: Editing
Some students on Monday shouted slogans during a seminar at the Panjab University here to protest the violence atthe Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

The students shouted slogans when Haryana Assembly Speaker Gian Chand Gupta was speaking a seminar- 'Women's Participation in Decision Making' at the PU campus here.

Protesters including girls students were taken out of the seminar hall by the security personnel.

Later talking to media, one of the protesters Kanupriya strongly condemned the attack on theJawaharlal Nehru University Student Union (JNUSU) President Aishe Ghosh.

Talking to reporters, Gupta described the protest as "a premeditated act".

Violence had broken out at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos prevailed on the campus for nearly two hours.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Armed Maoists stormed a construction site, thrashed 17 workers and set two vehicles on fire in Bihar's Nawada district, police said on Monday.

The incident happened near Baksauti village's bazar under the jurisdiction of Govindpur police station on Sunday midnight.

Around 30 to 40 Maoist attacked the base camp at the construction site and set a JCB machine and a pickup van on fire and beat up 17 workers there, the Station House Oficer (SHO) of Govindpur polices station, Nagendra Prasad said.

The Maoists took all the workers towards a river, on which a bridge is being constructed, tied them with ropes and thrashed them, Prasad said.

Before leaving the spot, the Maoists also took away mobile phones and money from the workers.

The Naxalites fired two rounds in the air before moving towards a nearby hillock.

The injured workers were admitted to Govindpur community health centre, the SHO said, adding, the reason behind the attack is yet to be ascertained.

An investigation has been initiated, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Express News Service

ANGUL: Spiritual or trance possession is not uncommon in India but a legislator dancing under its influence is sure to raise eyebrows.Such a sight unfolded at Ambasarpada village here on Sunday as Athmallick MLA Ramesh Sai was reportedly possessed during Samba Dashami Puja which was organised by Gond tribals.

Like every year, hundreds of tribals of Gond community gathered at Ambasarpada near Athmallick to perform religious rituals on the occasion of Samba Dashami. Sai, who became an MLA after resigning from his Government job, joined the tribals and performed Kalash Puja and other rituals with religious fervour. He was holding a sword.

When the main Puja was being performed, the MLA started to tremble and dance erratically with the sword much to the surprise of bystanders. The sudden change in the behaviour of Sai made people believe that he was possessed by a divine spirit. Many people even prostrated before him.

He remained in possession of the divine spirit for more than two hours becoming normal, sources said.However, some people opined that it was an act by the MLA to respect the beliefs of tribals. Sai could not be reached for comment despite several attempts.
A call by nurses for a major incident protocol to be adopted across the country to alleviate hospital overcrowding has been backed by opposition parties, as the number of people waiting on trolleys hit a record high.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation said 760 admitted patients were without a bed today, a new high since records began, with University Hospital Limerick also breaking the daily record for an individual hospital, with 92 patients on trolleys.

The previous highest figure was 82, also in UHL. There were 56 patients on trolleys in Cork University Hospital today, followed by University Hospital Galway (47) and South Tipperary General Hospital (40).

The HSEs national director of acute hospitals disputed figures from the INMO, but acknowledged this is not a good day for the health service.

Liam Woods told RTE Radio there are real pressures on the system, but that capacity will improve with 190 beds due to open in the first quarter of this year.

He said flu season peaked in weeks 51 and 52, but that the pressure will be felt in the following two to three weeks. He also said that there is a risk of a double incident of the flu, particularly with the return to school this week and the increased risk of infection.

He advised parents that if their children are ill to keep them at home.

A number of measures were being taken, he said, such as the curtailment of elective surgery, use of the private sector and community initiatives such as sending doctors out into the community in cars rather than having patients come into surgery or hospitals.

While Mr Woods said it was normal for elective surgery to be curtailed at this time of year, it was a move that the HSE was reluctant to take.

We need to recognise that the system was running at 94% before Christmas and it is now above 100% occupancy.

The INMO called for a major incident protocol to be adopted nationwide after the HSE had previously agreed to mitigation measures in CUH and the Mercy University Hospital in Cork.

This has received the backing of the main opposition parties.

Immediate action includes cancelling elective surgery and ending non-emergency admissions therefore increasing bed capacity. This is the first step. A turbo-charging of hiring staff to counteract the nonsensical recruitment pause which has been in place is also necessary, Fianna Fail Health Spokesperson Stephen Donnelly said.

Sinn Fein's Louise O'Reilly called for the implementation of an immediate crisis intervention package that will alleviate the pressure on services".

"This means lifting the recruitment embargo on frontline staff and expanding capacity in our hospitals, she said.

Labour Health Spokesperson Alan Kelly said the trolley numbers are a damning indictment of nine years of Fine Gael at the helm in health.

Fine Gael has presided over a recruitment ban in our health system for nearly a year now, depriving overcrowded emergency departments of much needed staff who could help ease the pressure.

This is the busiest time of year in our hospitals, this situation wasnt unforeseen but the Government and the HSE have refused to heed the very stark warnings, he said.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and leading Democrats have warned Donald Trump that attacking Iran's cultural landmarks could constitute a war crime.

Last night Trump doubled down on Saturday's threat to sites 'important to Iran and Iranian culture,' saying that they were justified by Tehran's attacks on US personnel.

Johnson's spokesman told reporters that there are 'international conventions in place that prevent the destruction of cultural heritage.'

However, careful not to be drawn into a direct rebuke of the US, he added: 'You can read the international conventions for yourself. It is the 1954 Hague convention.'

Democratic Presidential hopeful, Senator Elizabeth Warren, put it more squarely: 'You are threatening to commit war crimes.'

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that he would strike 52 Iranian sites, including targets important to Iranian culture, if Tehran attacks Americans or US assets.

'They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way,' President Donald Trump said last night

The stunning interior view of the altar at the Bedkhem Church in the New Julfa district, an Armenian Apostolic Church in Isfahan, Iran. The British government has said that targeting such sites would breach international law

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that he would strike 52 Iranian sites, including targets important to Iranian culture, if Tehran attacks Americans or U.S. assets. The number a symbol of the 52 American hostages held by Tehran during the 1979-1981 Iran hostage crisis

The number, he said, was a symbol of the 52 American hostages held by Tehran during the 1979-1981 Iran hostage crisis.

Talking to reporters on his way back from Florida to Washington aboard Air Force One last night, Trump redoubled the threat.

Iran's UNESCO World Heritage sites: Cultural (22) Armenian Monastic Ensembles of Iran (2008) Bam and its Cultural Landscape (2004) Bisotun (2006) Cultural Landscape of Maymand (2015) Golestan Palace (2013) Gonbad-e Qabus (2012) Historic City of Yazd (2017) Masjed-e Jame of Isfahan (2012) Meidan Emam, Esfahan (1979) Pasargadae (2004) Persepolis (1979) Sassanid Archaeological Landscape of Fars Region (2018) Shahr-i Sokhta (2014) Sheikh Safi al-din Khanegah and Shrine Ensemble in Ardabil (2010) Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System (2009) Soltaniyeh (2005) Susa (2015) Tabriz Historic Bazaar Complex (2010) Takht-e Soleyman (2003) Tchogha Zanbil (1979) The Persian Garden (2011) The Persian Qanat (2016) Natural (2) Hyrcanian Forests (2019) Lut Desert (2016) Advertisement

'They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people.' He said. 'And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way.'

Iran, which lies in the Cradle of Civilisation, is home to 24 UNESCO World Heritage sites and other priceless ancient artefacts from its rich history.

Indeed, the US and its Western allies were highly critical of recent destruction in Syria - which holds a similar number of heritage treasures - by Islamic State jihadists.

According to the UN's 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property, it is a war crime to desecrate cultural sites in military action.

UNESCO director general Audrey Azoulay highlighted that both Tehran and Washington had signed a 1972 convention prohibiting states from taking 'any deliberate measures which might damage directly or indirectly the cultural and natural heritage' of other states.

At a meeting with the Iranian ambassador to the Paris-based organisation, Azoulay 'stressed the universality of cultural and natural heritage as vectors of peace and dialogue between peoples, which the international community has a duty to protect and preserve for future generations'.

Meanwhile Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif tweeted: 'Through MILLENNIA of history, barbarians have come and ravaged our cities, razed our monuments and burnt our libraries. Where are they now? We're still here, & standing tall.'

A Twitter hashtag for #IranianCulturalSites began trending, with people sharing their favourite images of heritage sites and condemning the President.

One shared images of Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, a stunning temple completed in 1619 during the time of the Safavid Empire.

The Twitter user wrote: 'Who can destroy cultural historical places but an uncultured little boy! History won't forget even your threat!! #IranianCulturalSites belongs to whole humanity, who think you are @realDonaldTrump!'

Colourful light through stained glass window inside Nasir Al-Mulk Mosque (Pink Mosque). One tweeted an image of the Pink Mosque, writing: 'Stop this moron (Trump) from destroying years of history, art and culture!!!'

One tweeted an image of the Pink Mosque, writing: 'Stop this moron (Trump) from destroying years of history, art and culture!!!'

Taq-e Bostan (Taghbostan) at the outskirts of Kermanshah, is a site with a series of large rock relief from the era of Sassanid Empire of Persia, the Iranian dynasty which ruled western Asia from 226 to 650 AD

Trump's threat to go after such revered places has even rattled administration officials, with one saying off the record that clarification was needed to confirm that the US would not intentionally attack cultural sites.

Oona Hathaway, an international law professor at Yale and a former national security law official in the Defense Department's legal office, said Trump's threat amounted to 'a pretty clear promise of commission of a war crime.'

Iran's earliest traces of human history reach as far back as 100,000 BC.

Its historic monuments preserve the legacy of a civilisation that has kept its Persian identity throughout the tides of foreign conquests, weaving in influences from Turkic, South Asian and Arab cultures, and the footprints of Alexander the Great and later Islam.

Among Iranians, pride in the country's culture supersedes the divisive and nationalistic fervour whipped up by current politics that has put a chasm between hard-liners in Tehran and the diaspora of Iranians in the West.

Soleimani (pictured) was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport on Friday, shocking the Islamic republic and sending tensions spiralling in the Middle East

Iranian state media said 'millions' of people had gathered in Tehran on Monday to mourn Soleimani's death in scenes not witnessed since the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989

Telecommunications minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi compared Trump's threats to strike cultural sites to the Islamic State group, Adolf Hitler and Genghis Khan, calling the U.S. president a 'terrorist in a suit.'

Tensions sharply escalated between Washington and Tehran following America's targeted killing early Friday in Iraq of General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's powerful Quds Force.

The U.S. Defense Department said it killed Soleimani because he was developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in the Middle East.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed 'jihad,' calling Soleimani the 'international face of resistance' against Western hegemony.

Zarif also wrote on Twitter Sunday that after committing 'grave breaches' in killing Soleimani, Trump is now threatening a 'WAR CRIME' in targeting cultural sites.

Long before the 1979 Islamic Revolution birthed Iran's Shiite theocracy, the land historically known as Persia was the birthplace of towering Islamic figures like the mystic poet Rumi and the philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazali.

Bull and lion fighting on the bas-relief of Persepolis palace walls, Iran. Persepolis city was a capital of the Achaemenid Empire 550 - 330 BC

Persepolis was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire. It is situated 37 miles northeast of the city of Shiraz in Fars Province, Iran. UNESCO declared the ruins of Persepolis a World Heritage Site in 1979.

Floral decoration, painted majolica tiles on the ceiling inside Nasir al-Mulk Mosque, also known as the Pink mosque, situated in Shiraz, the capital of Fars province of Iran. Nasir al-Mulk mosque was built during the Qajar era, between 1876 to 1888, by the order of Mirz Hasan Ali (Nasir ol Molk), a Qajar ruler. It includes extensive coloured glass in its facade, and displays other traditional elements such as the Panj Kse ('five concaved') design

It's also home to the tombs of great scholars, including Ibn Sina, also known as Avicenna and the father of modern medicine.

Iran is home to two dozen UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including Persepolis with its ancient ruins that date back to 518 BC, the 17th century grand mosque of Isfahan located in a teeming bazaar, and the Golestan Palace in the heart of Tehran, where the last shah to rule Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was crowned in 1967.

The country's cultural sites reflect the expanse of Iran's history: Geological and archaeological sites date back several thousand years, while 1,000-year-old sites reflect Iran's contributions to the Golden Age of Islam.

In Qom, the Feizeh Religious Science School and a shrine of a Shiite saint, Masoumeh, attract Muslim pilgrims from around the world, reinforcing Iran's preeminent place among Shiite clerics, theologians and scholars.

More recently, though, some of the most iconic cultural sites have come to embody the nation's defiance in the face of the United States.

For example, the iconic Azadi Tower, or Freedom Tower, with its famed white marble arch is where hundreds of thousands gather in Tehran each year and chant slogans against the U.S. to mark the anniversary of the 1979 revolution.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard has in the past deployed HAWK anti-aircraft missiles around the sprawling tomb complex of Ruhollah Khomeini (pictured) where the Islamic Republic's late supreme leader is buried. The complex was attacked by Islamic State militants in 2017

On Monday, the famed Musalla mosque in Tehran will be used by mourners to grieve Iran's fallen commander. Soleimani's body will lie in state there before his burial in the city of Kerman on Tuesday.

If culturally prominent sites were targeted, the Trump administration might argue they were being used to covertly stockpile weapons that could target U.S. interests and personnel in the region.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard has in the past deployed HAWK anti-aircraft missiles around the sprawling tomb complex of Ruhollah Khomeini where the Islamic Republic's late supreme leader is buried. The complex was attacked by Islamic State militants in 2017.
Trump Doubles Down on Iran Warning, Says US to Strike Back 'Perhaps in a Disproportionate Manner'

Sputnik News

01:18 06.01.2020(updated 01:30 06.01.2020)

US President Trump repeatedly tweeted threats at Iran, warning that if Tehran struck US targets or military personnel in response to the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the US would strike back.

US President Donald Trump tweeted more threats at Iran on Sunday, saying that he could respond with any "disproportionate manner" if Iran were to strike any "US person or target".

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!

 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2020

The tweet comes after accusations that Trump in his Saturday tweets was threatening to commit war crimes against Iran, as his threat to hit 52 Iranian sites, including those "important" to Iranian culture, is in breach of United Nations Resolution 2347 which outlaws the destruction of cultural heritage artifacts, structures and locations during periods of conflict.

Iran stated that it would respond to the assassination of top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in a targeted US drone strike on Friday by targeting US "military sites", according to an advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's on Sunday.

"It was America that has started the war. Therefore, they should accept appropriate reactions to their actions. The only thing that can end this period of war is for the Americans to receive a blow that is equal to the blow they have inflicted", said former Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan.

The attack saw several missiles launched by a drone killing up to seven people, including Soleimani, as the commander's two-car convoy drove from the Baghdad airport.

Following the attack, Trump declared that Soleimani's "reign of terror" was over. Trump also suggested that he could defend Americans if they become threatened.

Both Pentagon officials and Trump have claimed that the attack was preemptive and alleged that the Iranian general was planning to launch attacks on American targets in Iraq and other regions of the Middle East.

The attack was personally ordered by US President Donald Trump from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, and was done without informing either the US Congress or the UK government; the latter is a staunch military partner to the US and has soldiers and equipment on the ground in the region.

Prior to the attack, the US embassy in Iraq was stormed in response to attacks on Iranian-backed militia groups in the country which killed up to 27 Hezbollah fighters.

A Sputnik

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It wasnt long when the Ghana Government decided to launch the Year of return initiative to invite those in the diaspora to come back to their ancestral roots and see for themselves how their ancestors were sold as slaves to Foreign countries.

This initiative by the Government was applauded by many and hundreds of foreigners trooped in to honor the invitation.

Well, everything was so successful that our neighboring country Nigeria decided to come up with Door of Return.

A lot of social media users have reacted to this including Ghanaian controversial TV and radio personality Afia Schwarzenegger.

Afia Schwarzenegger who could not fathom why Nigeria decided to copy Ghana took to her Instagram page to mock them.

According to Afia Schwarzenegger, instead of Nigerians fixing their light issues, they want to rub shoulders with Ghanaians.

She wrote;  But Why???? The door of return. Na waooo do you have lights?? Or they are coming with their own generatorsI know they will bring their sharp mouth, me I am sleeping ooo. Cos this will be the saga of the returnees I swearm

Return to be kidnapped or return to Book Haram? I love my naija people but I beg, this one Naija no go fitI know from a distance it looks enviable but bro where will they land? mutala Mohammed? Are you sure? And how will they move, by air, cos the traffic in Lagos is another bad news.

2020 certainly wont be the door of return in Nigeria..you are not ready yet!!!!!!

Lots of people reacted to Afias advice with some even asking her to do a video to make the Nigerians understand her more.

Do you agree with Afia Schwarzenegger? Are Nigerians not prepared for the door of return? Share your thoughts with us!

---Ghbase.com
African pay-TV subscriber numbers are set to climb by 54% between 2019 and 2025 to 47.26 million, according to a study from Digital TV Research.





In this rising tide, Nigeria is set to float the highest, contributing ten million subscribers by 2025 after having overtaken South Africa in 2020.Yet despite the strong subscriber growth, there will not be a huge commensurate rise in business. In African pay-TV, competition is intense with prices and ARPUs falling as rivals fight to gain subscribers. Indeed, the analysis showed that pay-TV revenues will rise by only 31% from 2019 to 2025, indicating that subscribers will pay less. Total revenues are set to reach $7.20 billion by 2025, up by $1.72 billion on 2019.Looking at the companies that are driving Africas pay-TV industry, the report showed that three groups accounted for 93% of Sub-Saharan Africas pay-TV subscribers in 2019 but this this proportion is set to fall to 88% by 2025. Each of these three provides a satellite TV platform and a pay DTT platform.The data showed that Multichoice had 14.56 million subs across satellite TV platform DStv and DTT platform GOtv by end-2019. This total is set to grow to 18.05 million by 2025, with a marked slowdown in satellite TV growth. Frances Vivendi had 4.73 million subs to its Canal Plus satellite TV platform and Easy TV DTT platforms by end-2019. This total is projected to climb to 7.35 million by 2025.Yet Digital TV Researchs Africa Pay TV Forecasts report identified StarTimes/StarSat as likely to enjoy the most impressive growth, from 9.10 million subs at the end of 2019 to 16.39 million by 2025.
Sen. Hawley Wants Deadline for Sending Impeachment Articles to Senate

WASHINGTONSpeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) might have only one week left to withhold from the Senate the two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, approved by House Democrats on Dec. 19, if the upper chamber approves a proposal for a 25-day deadline introduced Jan. 6 by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)

If, following adoption of such articles, the House of Representatives does not so notify the Senate or otherwise provide for such articles to be exhibited to the Senate within 25 calendar days from the date of adoption of such articles, as recorded in the Journal of the House of Representatives, such articles shall be deemed exhibited before the Senate and it shall be in order for any Senator to offer a motion to dismiss such articles with prejudice for failure by the House of Representatives to prosecute such articles, the resolution reads.

Such motion shall be adopted by an affirmative vote of a majority of the Senators, duly chosen and sworn, without debate by the yeas and nays, which shall be entered on the record.

If Hawleys resolution is approved as is and made applicable to the Dec. 19 date, Pelosi would have to deliver the two approved articles of impeachment to the Senate no later than Jan. 13. She has withheld them while insisting the Senate adopt fair rules that allow testimony from witnesses who didnt appear during the House impeachment hearings.

Once the articles of impeachment are delivered to the Senate, its current rules stipulate that a trial then be held in which two-thirds of the 100 senators would have to vote in favor of convicting Trump on at least one of the two articles in order to remove him from the presidency.

In addition to Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), co-sponsors of the resolution include Republican Sens. Mike Braun of Indiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Ted Cruz of Texas, Steve Daines of Montana, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Joni Ernst of Iowa, David Perdue of Georgia, and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma.

The presence among the initial co-sponsors of Barrasso, who is chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, and Inhofe, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, could be a signal to House Democratic leaders that further delays in their impeachment drive against Trump could have significant consequences.

Speaker Pelosi started this bogus impeachment by claiming President Trump was an urgent threat to democracy who had to be removed now. But after a bipartisan vote against the articles in the House, and with the public opposed to the Democrats partisan games, Pelosi has changed her tune, Hawley said in a statement announcing the resolution.

Now she wants to prevent a Senate trial, perhaps indefinitely. But the Constitution gives the Senate sole power to adjudicate articles of impeachment, not the House. If Speaker Pelosi is afraid to try her case, the articles should be dismissed for failure to prosecute, and Congress should get back to doing the peoples business.

Scott said in the statement: Nancy Pelosi and [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] are making a mockery of our government. Democrats have wanted to impeach Donald Trump since he came down that escalator four years ago. They just hate Trump.

But [House Select Committee on Intelligence] Chairman Adam Schiff [D-Calif.] did a great job showing the American people that the President did nothing wrong and that this is just an effort to undo the 2016 election.

If Nancy Pelosi doesnt want to send the articles to the Senate, we should dismiss the articles of impeachment and get back to work on all the things that arent getting done, like securing the border, passing No Budget/No Pay, and lowering the cost of prescription drugs.

He was referring to Trumps program to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, legislation to deny paychecks to Congress when it doesnt adopt a budget on time, and legislation to reduce prescription drug prices.

Barrasso said in the statement: Democrats have been obsessed with impeaching President Trump since day one. They know they dont have a credible case against the President.

Speaker Pelosi cannot dictate how the Senate operates. If she refuses to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate, the Senate should be able to dismiss them.

Republicans control the Senate, with 53 members, compared to 45 Democrats and two independents.

Contact Mark Tapscott at Mark.Tapscott@epochtimes.nyc
JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, 34 other injured in campus violence discharged from AIIMS

India

oi-Mousumi Dash

New Delhi, Jan 06: Thirty-four people admitted to All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi, including the JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, who was injured in the violence that spread at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday night were discharged on Monday.

Reportedly, Aishe suffered head injuries in the violence that took place on the campus on Sunday. The JNUSU had alleged that she was hit with stones and rods by members of the RSS-affiliated ABVP.

According to PTI, 34 people were admitted at the trauma centre after violence in JNU. Four of them had head injuries. They were discharged on Monday.

Pro VC of JNU meets Delhi LG, appraises him of situation

NEWS AT 3 PM, JANUARY 6th, 2020...

Violence broke out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as a masked group of people armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus.

Several people, including JNU Students' Union president were injured and admitted to the AIIMS after the violence spread on the JNU campus for nearly two hours. The masked men reportedly armed attacked the students and teachers, prompting the administration to call in the police which conducted a flag march.

On Monday, taking the cognizance of the violence an FIR has been registered against the unidentified person under a section of rioting and damage to property.
Of course after we deduced what Ford was launching when they released the invite for the Transit, they're being a bit more cautious. The invite for the January 23 launch, however, had a photo of the great outdoors, and that might be the clue.

It looks like Ford Philippines wants to start 2020 off with a bang. Recently, the automaker sent us an invitation for an upcoming car launch. Simply labeled with a launch date set for January 23, the rather plain invitation has left us scratching our heads as to what the Blue Oval has planned for the country.

We think that come January 23, Ford Philippines might officially debut the all-new Explorer.

A quick check of whats currently available in the Philippine market, as well as what models were launched last year in the US, gave us a good idea as to what Ford might be debuting in a few weeks.

The automakers current lineup mostly consist of new-generation models, as well as refreshed nameplates. From the Ranger, Ranger Raptor, Everest, EcoSport, Mustang, Expedition, and the latest Transit arriving in the Philippines, this leaves the fifth-generation Explorer as the likeliest (and oldest) to be replaced soon.

But what can we expect from the sixth-generation Explorer should it be available in the Philippines in due time? For starters, it now gets a new look that appears to have been borrowed from the Edge ST. It gets a redesigned front grill, horizontal headlights, along with a new front bumper design. The new Explorer also gets a revised set of taillights, a more sloped roofline, and a new tailgate complete with a bigger chrome trim.

A simpler and more high-tech cabin might also await would-be customers of the 2020 Explorer. A new tablet-inspired infotainment screen now makes its home on the center dashboard and makes use of an updated SYNC 3 system. Beyond that, a new digital instrument panel, a rotary-style gear selector, and new captain-style second row seats could be available as well on the PH-spec Explorer.

Under the hood, a choice of either an upgraded 2.3-liter turbocharged four-cylinder or a new 3.0-liter twin-turbo V6 EcoBoost engines are available for the new Explorer. The former now produces 304 PS along with 420 Nm of torque while the latter cranks out 370 PS and 515 Nm of pulling power. Gone is the old six-speed automatic transmission as that has been replaced by a new ten-speed automatic unit.

Also, unlike the outgoing model which has a front-wheel drive layout, the new Explorer reverts to a rear-wheel drive configuration. However, four-wheel drive is still available on higher-grade models. This could mean that the PH-spec 2.3-liter EcoBoost could be RWD while the 3.0-liter twin-turbo V6 might have 4WD as standard.

With just a few weeks away before January 23, well have to wait and see if Ford will indeed be launching the next-generation Explorer for the Philippine market. Fingers crossed too if Ford Philippines will offer the more powerful Explorer ST in the not so distant future.
Former U.S. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, a Republican known as a bipartisan lawmaker, has died at the age of 56.

Fitzpatrick represented Bucks County in Congress for four terms, opting not to seek re-election after his last term ended in 2017. His brother, U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, currently holds the seat.

He also served as a Bucks County commissioner from 1995-2004, including five years as chairman of the board.

Pat Poprik, chairman of the Bucks County Republican Party, confirmed Fitzpatricks death Monday morning, the Bucks County Courier Times reported. Fitzpatrick died following a battle with melanoma, the Associated Press reported.

Michael Fitzpatrick passed away peacefully this morning, surrounded by family, after a long and arduous battle with melanoma, Fitzpatricks family said in a statement released by Bucks County Republican Party officials.

Former Gov. Mark S. Schweiker, a longtime friend, issued a statement Monday morning.

Bucks County and Pennsylvania has lost a fine public servant. Mike Fitzpatrick worked tirelessly to improve the lives of those he served," he said in the statement. "As Bucks County Commissioner, and later in Congress, we could always count on Mike to fight for his fellow citizens. More than anything, I will remember him as my friend for over 40 years, and I will miss him. Kathy and I will hold his wife, Kathleen, their children and family in our prayers.

Born in Philadelphia, Fitzpatrick earned a law degree from the Dickinson School of Law in Carlisle.

In Congress, Fitzpatrick earned a reputation for working with fellow Democrats and his occasional willingness to vote against his own party. A Washington Post analysis in 2015 found Fitzpatrick was among the 10 House Republicans who most often voted against the party majority.

U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, a Lehigh County Republican, hailed Fitzpatricks bipartisan work.

Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick served our commonwealth and country with great integrity, competence, and dignity," Toomey said in a statement. "During his time as a Bucks County Commissioner, and then as a member of Congress, Mike proved time and again that it is possible to work across the aisle to make progress while remaining true to ones principles. Kris and I extend our condolences to Mikes wife Kathleen, their children, and the entire Fitzpatrick family.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat from Scranton, respected Fitzpatricks willingness to work across the aisle.

Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick served our Commonwealth with distinction, demonstrating countless times his willingness to reach across the aisle and put people before politics, Casey said on Twitter. Sending my deepest condolences to @RepBrianFitz and the entire Fitzpatrick family.

Fitzpatrick was first elected to Congress in 2005 but he lost his seat after only one term to Democrat Patrick Murphy, an Iraq War veteran who ran in opposition to the war. About a decade ago, Fitzpatrick was diagnosed with colon cancer.

But Fitzpatrick recovered and was re-elected to Congress in 2011. He would serve three more terms before opting against seeking re-election.

State House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, said Fitzpatrick served his district with grace and dignity.

He will be remembered as a dedicated public servant who put his constituents first, Turzai said in a statement.

In a story published by the American Association for Cancer Research, Fitzpatrick described how his cancer battle changed him.

In the aftermath, I look at life knowing Id been given a second chance," Fitzpatrick said. Of course, I always appreciated my family, my wife and six kids, seven siblings, parents  but facing your own mortality somehow changes the view. What we take for granted, soars."

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While the 2020 Pennsylvania Farm Show is in full swing in Harrisburg, a major milk distribution company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Borden Dairy Company made their bankruptcy announcement on Jan. 6. The Texas-based company was one of the largest milk distributors in the nation, and their financial struggles come only a few months after a similar move from Dean Foods, the nations largest milk processor.

The Borden announcement may not have a direct impact on Pennsylvanias dairy farmers, according to Jayne Sebright, the executive director of the Center for Dairy Excellence. But it does reflect a shifting market for milk-producing farmers, one that has already handed Pennsylvanias dairy farms some rough years.

From what I understand, [Borden Foods] doesnt have any facilities here in Pennsylvania, and they dont use a whole lot on Pennsylvania milk, said Sebright, who also owns a dairy farm. So were hoping it wont have a huge impact on Pennsylvania farms.

Jared Kurtz, whose family owns Kurtland Farm in Elverson, Berks County, agreed that there would likely be little direct impact.

The biggest thing is probably the headlines that its going to grab in the news: Another dairy processor applying for bankruptcy in the midst of a notable downturn in economics in dairy farming," he said. Obviously, long term, any time we lose processing capacity, its not ideal. We want to see it growing rather than reducing. Not that bankruptcy necessarily means decreasing and reducing, but you want to hear good stories about how dairy [companies] are doing well.

Even without a direct impact, though, the bankruptcies reflect how the milk market has been volatile for the past decade.

The supply of milk on the world market has been pretty strong, and its depressed prices, said Dave Smith, executive director of the Pennsylvania Dairymens Association. Its affected all dairy in the United States, including Pennsylvania. I think looking out at the future, things may be a little bit better. But well probably continue to have more consolidation for our farmers, changing business models to a degree.

Bob Stanton of Manor Meadow Farms in Everett, Bedford County, painted a bleak picture for many dairy farmers financial states.

Well, the biggest part of your older dairy men had retirement saved up, he said. Every bit of that retirement is gone, trying to keep that dairy farm alive. A lot of the older people have sold their cows on account of theres just no money. Were robbing Peter to pay Paul all the time. Everybodys getting tired. When you get out of bed, you know youre going to lose money today. And weve lost money for over three years. We cant keep it up.

According to Sebright, a span from 2015-2018 found farmers were barely breaking even on the sale of their milk products. Unfavorable weather conditions also impacted production for some recent seasons.

Another key factor is that while consumption of dairy products overall is increasing, the sales of liquid milk - the kind you drink, add to coffee, and pour on cereal - are dropping. And as liquid milk would obviously require less processing than products such as cheese or butter, the profits are slimmer for farmers.

And there are more alternatives to milk than ever before, according to Kurtz.

Delaware Valley University senior Adrienne Peters shows passersby the milking procedure using "Clover," a milking Shorthorn, during day 3 of the 2020 Pa. Farm Show. January 6, 2020. Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.com

Theres a lot of competitive brands out there, what a lot of people call dairy alternatives, he said. Almond, soy, nut beverages are out there, for many years labeling themselves as milks. Thats a challenge we face, too.

Consumers have changed their buying habits in response to changing ideas in nutrition, as well. Stanton said that shifting messaging about whats healthy has dramatic effects on farmers. First Lady Michelle Obamas activism on nutrition, he said, had a negative effect on how many people are think of milk as a healthy option, adding that kids will not drink skin milk."

What people dont realize is that whole milk is not bad for you, he said, comparing more fat-rich foods positively against sugary foods. Whole milk will not make you fat. And if you stop and think, back a few years ago, they picked on the chicken farmers because they said eggs arent good for you. Now they say eggs are good for you. Then it was red meat isnt good for you, then it was white meat isnt good for you. Its a viscious cycle all the time.

And the recent rise in tariffs due to international economic tensions arent helping, either. Kurtz noted that the past 18 to 24 months of economic jockeying over tariffs have had an impact, as have rising costs of labor.

About 14 percent of the milk products in the country go overseas in the form of dairy exports, Sebring said. Wherever there are tariffs in place that restrict the dairy exports, thats a challenge. Exports have stayed relatively strong given the tariffs that are in place, but is has restricted sales that have gone out overseas.

Stanton agreed that federal policies have hurt farmers, with both tariffs as well as government regulations on prices.

Id like the federal government to get their fingers out of the pot, and let us alone, he said. Let us control the milk market, instead of them controlling it. They only let you sell it for so much. People are willing to pay money for a good product.

However, not all hope is lost. While Dean Foods did have four facilities in Pennsylvania, and the company is looking to sell its assets, Borden Dairy Companys bankruptcy has been presented as a strategic restructuring of the companys debts.

Sebring said that there are reasons to be optimistic, albeit cautiously.

Theres no magic bullet, she said. Milk prices are starting to rebound. Dairy is a commodity, a product. Milk prices will go up and down. As we secure more trade agreements, as milk prices stabilize, all of those things will be better.

She also added that the one thing consumers can do to is buy milk and dairy products from Pennsylvania dairies, 99 percent of which are family-owned. More information can be found at the Choose PA Dairy website or the PA Preferred website.

It makes a lot of sense in many respects, Smith said - not just as a boon for Pennsylvanias farmers, but for the consumers as well. Were supporting our local economy, but were also seeing that we have a fresher products, less time for delivery and its closer to home.

Kurtz had a similar outlook. While he admits there has been a shift in the public perception of milk products overall, he is also looking forward to the industry shifting in response, to better connect people to where and how their food is made, and to address consumers concerns about animal welfare, land usage, nutrition and food safety.

I think the industry is already doing a better job telling our story, he said. These are things that weve been doing for years, but were doing a better job of communicating it."

Im excited. Im 31 years old, and I have three young kids - the fourth generation on our farm that weve been farming on for 100 years, he added. "There are some concerns there, but Im excited about looking through those challenges and overcoming them.

Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. You deserve the best. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.
IMAGE: Students outside the violence-affected Sabarmati Hostel of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), in New Delhi, on Monday. Photograph: Atul Yadav/PTI Photo

The Human Resource Development Ministry met officials from the Jawaharlal Nehru University administration on Monday and took stock of the situation on the campus following Sunday's violence, even as Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar skipped the meeting.

Meanwhile, Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank,' who was in Bhubhaneshwar, on Monday said educational institutions cannot be allowed to become 'political adda' and vowed 'strong action' against the perpetrators of the violence at JNU.

The meeting at the HRD Ministry which went on for over two hours was attended by the JNU registrar, proctor and other admin officials who briefed the ministry officials on the sequence of events that unfolded on the campus and the measures taken to restore normalcy.

"HRD Secretary Amit Khare held a meeting with a team of JNU authorities, including Pro-VC Chintamani Mahapatra, Registrar Promod Kumar, Rector Rana Pratap Singh and Proctor Dhananjay Singh, today. The secretary held a detailed discussion with them and was also briefed about the current situation in JNU," a senior HRD Ministry official said.

The ministry had on Sunday sought an immediate report from JNU Registrar Pramod Kumar after the violence broke out and students and teachers were attacked.

There was heavy deployment of police on Monday outside the Shashtri Bhawan in New Delhi which houses the HRD ministry.

"A detailed report has been sent to the HRD ministry about the sequence of events. The top administration officials are at the ministry to provide all details leading to present situation," JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar told PTI.

Violence broke out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as a group of masked people armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.

Many sustained injuries and were admitted to All India Institute of Medical Sciences Trauma Centre in New Delhi. They were discharged on Monday.

JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh suffered a head injury.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.

The Union HRD minister had urged JNU students to maintain the dignity of the university and peace on campus.

"I have said this earlier also that these autonomous institutions cannot be allowed to become political 'adda' (dens). Strong action will be initiated against people involved in such an attack," he told reporters in Bhubhaneshwar on Monday.

JNU proctor Dhananjay Singh appealed the students to not panic and leave the campus.

"We appeal to students to not panic and leave the campus. Measures are being taken to normalise situation on the campus and ensure safety of everyone," he said after the meeting at the HRD ministry.

DCW issues notice to Delhi Police

Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal on Monday issued summons to the Delhi Police and the JNU registrar in connection with the violence.

In the notice to police, Maliwal has sought details of the first information report registered in the case and reasons for not responding to violence immediately.

She also sought the details of all PCR calls made regarding the JNU violence from 2 pm on January 5 till 7 am on January 6 and an action-taken report on each call.

The DCW has also sought a detailed factual report of the entire incident along with the sequence of events, a copy of CCTV footage and reasons for not preventing a mob from entering the campus.

'The panel wants to know the reasons for not responding to the reports of the violence immediately and reasons for allowing the mob to leave the campus with impunity despite heavy police presence,' it said.

The commission also questioned them about the reasons for disallowing ambulances and media personnel from entering the campus, details of people arrested in the matter and the steps taken to identify and arrest the other accused persons.

It has also questioned about the action taken/proposed to be taken against erring police officers and sought a list of such officers.

She has summoned the police to be present in the DCW office on January 8.

The panel has also summoned the university's registrar on January 8 with the records of copies of all complaints received in the matter, action taken/proposed to be taken against erring administration officers, reasons for shutting down streetlight and copy of the entire CCTV footage of all the cameras in the campus from 4 pm on January 5 till 7 am on January 6.

Edited by Utkarsh Mishra
From making cars talk using Alexas voice to managing data from factories full of robots, Amazon wants a big piece of the action in transportation, and this week at CES, the worlds biggest tech show, will unveil more about its strategy to achieve that goal.

The US retail and cloud services powerhouse plans to use the annual technology show in Las Vegas to unveil its plan to be a major player in self-driving vehicle technology, connected cars, electric vehicles, and management of the torrents of data generated by carmakers and drivers.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides large-scale cloud computing and data management services, is central to Amazons strategy.

We really are extending ourselves more and more out in the ecosystem from manufacturing to connected car, said Jon Allen, head of professional services in AWSs automotive practice.

The takeaway message on this is if you go to CES this year we really are taking it as a One Amazon view.

Until now, Amazon has shown its transportation strategy to investors  and rivals  one piece at a time.

Amazon has invested in self-driving software startup Aurora. It has also signed deals with carmakers to deliver packages to vehicles, help develop electric vehicle charging networks, and use AWS to network their factories.

The company will share the CES stage with partners such as virtual reality firm ZeroLight, electric vehicle startup Rivian, Canadas BlackBerry, and video game software development company Unity Technologies.

"Its our attempt to weave everything together in a single experience for our customers, said Dean Phillips, AWSs automotive technical leader.

Customers dont distinguish AWS from Alexa from Amazon.com. Its Amazon.

At CES, ZeroLight and General Motors Cadillac will demonstrate how they are partnering to develop an online vehicle configuration experience that will allow high-fidelity images of vehicles that consumers build online to be taken with them on visits to dealers, said Mr Phillips.

The process can open the door to dealers better meeting customer needs by knowing what users focused on when building their dream car. It has already boosted profit per vehicle at Volkswagens Audi brand, he said.

Rivian, in which Amazon has twice invested, will demonstrate Alexa in the R1T electric pickup truck it will begin building in the autumn, as well as the companion R1S SUV that will follow, said Mr Phillips.

Rivian will begin building 100,000 electric delivery vans for Amazon starting in 2021. Alexa will be integrated into all of those vehicles.

- Reuters
Representative Image

The Congress on Monday accused the government of harbouring enmity with youth of the country and said violence in the JNU campus reminded it of the Nazi rule.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala also accused the JNU administration of being complicit in the violent attack on Sunday night.

It also alleged that the Delhi Police remained a mute spectator when students were being attacked by armed miscreants.

"Why are you harbouring enmity with youth of country. The more you suppress voice of the youth, more emboldened it will become," Surjewala told reporters.

"Violence in JNU reminds us of Nazi rule 90 years ago," he added.
Graduation photo of slain OFW, Jeanelyn Villavende | Courtesy: DSWD

The Overseas Worker Welfare Administration (OWWA) is waiting for the decision of the Kuwaiti government on the investigation of the death of Jeanelyn Villavende.

READ: Deployment ban to Kuwait possible over another Pinays death  Bello

OWWA Administrator Hans Leo Cacdac said the government also awaits the filing of formal charges against the employer couple.

The employer couple is detained in prison so, pending investigation they will remain in prison until of course ang expectation natin after 6-7 days they will be formally charged in the court, Kuwaiti court, he said.

Cacdac also said there is still no confirmation if the male employer is a member of the police force.

He is an official of the Interior Ministry at kasama doon sa Interior Ministry ang kapulisan (and the police is under the Interior Ministry), he said.

Meanwhile, the governing board of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) is currently investigating Villavendes recruitment agency for their alleged inaction on her abuse complaints.

Cacdac said the recruitment agency might face suspension or revocation of the license if they are proven guilty of inaction on Villavendes case.AAC (with reports from Aiko Miguel)
The BUILDER Chowa Concept Home provides U.S. companies with a template for how to build houses that are significantly more resistant to Mother Natures forces than the traditional American stick frame structure," said Joel Abney, National Vice President of Operations for Woodside Homes.

Japans largest homebuilding company, Sekisui House, its wholly-owned subsidiary U.S. builder Woodside Homes, and construction industry analyst firm Hanley Wood today unveiled the BUILDER Chowa Concept Home outside Las Vegas to coincide with the start of CES 2020. The project showcases Sekisui Houses proprietary design and construction systems and techniques that are unlike any the U.S. homebuilding industry has ever used.

Innovation in the U.S. homebuilding industry has been stalled for more than 50 years, and that has created an ever-widening gap between what homebuyers want and what the industry can deliver, explains John McManus, vice president and editorial director of the residential group at Hanley Wood. Were providing a complete model that U.S. architects, designers, builders and their partners can use to close that gap.

Faster, More Precise, More Resilient

The BUILDER Chowa Concept Home is in Howard Hughes Corp.s west-Las Vegas master planned community of Summerlin. Among its many stand-out features is Sekisui Houses unique SHAWOOD post and beam framework system that allows for a simpler, faster and more precise building process. The SHAWOOD system enables builders to construct a stronger, more resilient structure compared to the typical American house, and significantly shorten the construction timetable.

The SHAWOOD system and other Sekisui House proprietary methods and materials, including a fire-resistant porcelain siding, have been proven effective at protecting homes from some of historys worst natural disasters.

For example,177,488 Sekisui House-built homes were in the area later affected by the 9.0 magnitude Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded to hit Japan. The earthquake, and the enormous tsunami waves it created, caused tens of billions of dollars in damage, prompting the World Bank to designate it as the worlds costliest natural disaster ever. Yet, not a single Sekisui House structure in the areas affected by the earthquake and aftershocks was fully, or even partially, destroyed.

Over the last two years, the U.S. federal government has paid out over $220 billion in home insurance claims resulting from wildfires, hurricanes and other natural disasters - more than the previous 20 years combined, said Joel Abney, National Vice President of Operations for Woodside Homes. The BUILDER Chowa Concept Home provides U.S. companies with a template for how to build houses that are significantly more resistant to Mother Natures forces than the traditional American stick frame structure.

But its not only the homes physical attributes that make it unique.

Improving Society Through Housing

Sekisui House, Woodside and Hanley Wood have embraced the ancient Japanese philosophy of chowa - the spirit of life balance, harmony and connection to nature.

The project incorporates Sekisui Houses latest advancements in materials selection, construction processes, thermal insulation, air quality management and technology integration to create a health and wellness-focused environment, and a more sustainable footprint.

The BUILDER Chowa Concept Home reflects our companys guiding principle to improve society through housing, says Norio Adachi, Marketing General Manager at Sekisui House. That has informed all the homes we have built around the world, and this project marks our entry into the North American markets. Were showing companies how they can meet American homebuyers desire for new homes that support health and well-being, highlighting the balance between indoor living and outdoor life, technology and privacy, comfort and simplicity, and themselves and their communities.

A New Way to Build Homes

The BUILDER Chowa Concept Home unites an international design, development, and construction team and introduces several new technologies and methodologies to North America-based home building enterprises, including:



Factory-made, then shipped: All structural components, the entire exterior wall system, and exterior cladding were manufactured to precise, within-millimeter accuracy in Sekisui Houses Kanto factory north of Tokyo, and shipped to the U.S.

Pre-site engineering and design: The SHAWOOD post-and-beam style structure undergoes a rigorous, proprietary pre-site engineering, design, and manufacturing process that makes assembly easier, faster and more accurate compared to traditional building processes. This ensures on-site workers do not need specialized skill sets, and consistently high quality.

Proprietary foundation system: The foundation follows another proprietary system by Sekisui House and is square to within five-millimeter accuracy from the northwest corner of the foundation to the southeast corner, the entire 128-foot breadth of the home as well as the 66-foot depth.

Modern Japanese aesthetic: This home introduces principles of Japanese architecture and design adapted to U.S. dimensions, sensibility, and values: a marriage of simplicity, seamless indoor-and-outdoor living, and sanctuary.

Cutting-edge smart home technologies: The long list includes the seamless integration of GE Monogram appliances into the cabinetry to provide sleek, uninterrupted lines throughout the entire kitchen. The bathrooms and kitchen feature Kohler voice-activated sink faucets and shower heads. The home also includes Delos DARWIN Home Wellness Intelligence network. It is a system of technologies and solutions designed to help improve sleep quality, increase performance and enhance overall health and well-being.

Healthy air system: The DARWIN Home Wellness Intelligence network also features recessed air quality sensors to monitor indoor air pollutants. The home also includes Panasonic Cosmos Healthy Home System which is the first connected IAQ System that automatically manages indoor air quality 24/7 to maintain a healthy environment for all family members, of all ages.

Environmental sustainability: Builders can adhere to good sustainability practices during all phases of construction, and the home achieves net zero energy consumption.

BUILDER Chowa Concept Home Project Partners



BUILDER

Sekisui House

Woodside Homes

KTGY Architecture + Planning

L.R. Nelson Consulting Engineers

Ryan-Young Interior Design

Summers/Murphy & Partners Landscape Design

Howard Hughes Corporation

BUILDER Chowa Concept Home Project Sponsors

Title



Delos

Founding



BMC

Daikin

Monogram

Alliance



Boral Roof

Kohler

Kwikset

Square D by Schneider Electric

Viega

Zillow New Construction

Supporting



ACPI

BIMaire

Daltile

Icynene Lapolla

Panasonic

iDevices

Aquor Water Systems

Resideo

Organized Living

Shaw Floors

IAPMO

More Information and Media Briefings

Media tours of the BUILDER Chowa Concept Home can be scheduled by contacting Actual Agency (TeamChowa2020@actual.agency) For more information about the home, please visit the BUILDER Chowa Concept Home site.

About Sekisui House

Founded in 1960, Sekisui House, Ltd. is one of worlds largest homebuilders and an international diversified developer, with cumulative sales of over 2 million homes. Based in Osaka, Sekisui House has over 200 consolidated subsidiaries and affiliates, over 20,000 employees, and is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Nagoya Stock Exchange.

Sekisui House aims to create homes and communities that improve with time and last for generations. With Love of Humanity as its Corporate Philosophy, Sekisui House believes that homes should offer comfort, security and peace of mind for residents, while maintaining harmony with the environment and its surroundings. Sekisui House has sustainability as a core corporate target and is now the global leader in the construction of net-zero-energy homes with more than 40,000 built since the product was launched in 2013. In 2009, Sekisui House expanded into several new international markets and now operates in the United States, China, Singapore, Australia and the United Kingdom. http://www.sekisuihouse.co.jp/english/index.html

About Woodside Homes

Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, Woodside Homes is one of America's top 30 homebuilders and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sekisui House. The company has built more than 40,000 homes across the western US, with current operations in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah -- earning the trust and confidence of families who seek the very most from their homeownership experience. http://www.woodsidehomes.com

About BUILDER

Published by Hanley Wood, BUILDER is the leading brand in residential construction and serves as the magazine of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). For more than three decades, BUILDER has provided essential news, information, and resources about products, technologies, trends, regulatory requirements, and best practices to help home building professionals navigate challenges for success. With an integrated media platform encompassing print, online, and in-person, BUILDER is a trusted source for top builders, architects, and other industry professionals across the country.

About Hanley Wood

Hanley Wood, represents the housing industrys leading provider of rich data, backed by Zonda and Metrostudy, and the industrys top advisors for residential real estate development and new home construction. With products and services geared for homebuilders, multifamily developers, lenders, and financial institutions, we provide innovative solutions to maximize opportunities in today's real estate development landscape. To learn more, visit https://www.hanleywood.com.
For Ramy Youssef, 2019 was a year of major success. Now, hes entering 2020 with a Golden Globe in hand.

Youssef, who grew up in Rutherford, has won the Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy series for his performance in Hulus Ramy.

The actor, comedian and writer is the creator of the well-received dramedy, which debuted in April and is nearing its second season.

I would like to thank my God, Allahu akbar," Youssef said, accepting the award. "Thank you, God. This is thanks to God and Hulu.

Look, I know you guys havent seen my show, he continued, getting more than a few laughs from the crowd. Everyone is like, ls this an editor??"

Youssef accepts the Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy series.Paul Drinkwater | NBC

We made a very specific show about an Arab Muslim family living in New Jersey and this means a lot to be recognized on this level," Youssef said. So I want to thank everyone who is involved, my co-creators, producers, my family, my mom and dad. My mom was rooting for Michael Douglas. Egyptians love Michael Douglas, I dont know if you know this. But this means a lot. Thank you, HFPA.

In Ramy," Youssef, 28, plays Ramy Hassan, a millennial of Muslim Egyptian and Palestinian American heritage living in North Jersey. In a March interview with NJ Advance Media, Youssef, who is Egyptian American, said he wanted to show Arab American Muslims living their lives in a way that was not visible on screen.

Part of my desire to make this show was a lack of seeing anything that felt like it, Youssef said. I think that a lot of the stories I would see was kids who are first-generation immigrants, watching them try to rip themselves from their family and their faith and kind of erase. I hadnt really seen anything where someones trying to reconcile the two.

Youssef in scene with Hiam Abbass and Amr Waked, who play his parents in "Ramy."Craig Blankenhorn | Hulu

In the series, Ramy often tries to work out some of lifes problems with friends at a local diner.

Thats what you do if youre from Jersey, Youssef said. "You make a big decision at a diner at 3 in the morning. Like, thats how you talk about life, thats how you operate, and theres this underdog-ness to being in the shadow of the city thats so interesting and really pairs, intersectionally, interestingly, with being an Arab Muslim, you know, because its like, Oh, man, I feel like people have put me one step behind. I probably have just as hard of a time defending New Jersey as I do defending Muslims. They are two very misunderstood groups, and to kind of pair them together is just a very natural fit and I think its important for the show.

Youssef wins the Golden Globe over Living with Yourself" star Paul Rudd, another actor with Jersey ties (he was born in Passaic), as well as Bill Hader of Barry, Michael Douglas of The Kominsky Method" and Ben Platt of The Politician."

The talent from Bergen County celebrated the debut of his first HBO special, Feelings," in June. Youssef also has an overall deal with A24 for which he is working on two shows, including a Netflix series and a series for Apple TV Plus that will star his real-life friend Steve Way. (A24 also produces Ramy.")

Way, a fellow comedian, co-stars with Youssef in Ramy and works as a substitute teacher at Rutherford High School. He has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair.

Being in this society and in this industry where disability representation is very poor, being able to authentically tell my story, thats something that the disability community has been fighting for for decades, Way told NJ Advance Media in March.

Youssef told The Hollywood Reporter that with the Apple series, he wants to show that people with disabilities dont have to be relegated to being side characters.

What is it like to be with other people who are going through similar things and not just being the one in someone elses story? he said.

The second season of Ramy," which is set to premiere in the coming months, will feature Oscar winner Mahershala Ali.

Have a tip? Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.

Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters.
German police on Sunday shot dead a knife-wielding Turkish man who sought to attack officers in the city of Gelsenkirchen.

The man, who lived in Gelsenkirchen, struck a patrol car with an object and sought to assail officers standing by the vehicle "with a raised object," a police spokesman told AFP.

Officers noted that the attacker was holding a knife behind his back, he added.

Despite several warnings from officers, the man refused to stop his assault, leading a 23-year-old policeman to fire a shot that killed him.

Asked to confirm reports that the man cried out "Allah Akbar" ("God is greater") during the assault, the police spokesman would only say they are "rumours".

remains on alert following a series of Islamist attacks, the deadliest of which was a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in 2016 that killed 12 people. Dozens of suspects have been arrested or charged over alleged terror plots in recent years.
The United States on Monday slammed Russia and China for their failure to condemn an attack last week on its Baghdad embassy by pro-Iranian demonstrators.

While congratulating the 27 of the 193 member nations that did issue statements condemning the December 31 attempt to storm the compound, the US mission to the UN said that Russian and Chinese silence undermined the Security Council.

"Not allowing the United Nations Security Council to issue the most basic of statements underscoring the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises once again calls the council's credibility into question," the US statement said.

Washington said that voicing support for the 1961 Vienna convention that protects diplomatic missions "should not be controversial or warrant courage." "As we have demonstrated, we will not tolerate attacks on US personnel and facilities and will respond decisively to protect our interests, citizens and allies," it added.

The attack on the Baghdad embassy, which did not result in any injuries, was meant to protest against a US airstrike against Ketaeb Hezbollah (KH), an Iranian-backed militia which the US had blamed for rocket attacks on its facilities in northern Iraq that resulted in the death of a US contractor.

President Donald Trump responded to the attack on the embassy by ordering a drone strike in Baghdad that killed one of Iran's top military commanders, Qasem Soleimani, and the head of the KH militia.

UN sources said Monday that no country had so far called for a Security Council meeting to address the soaring tensions that the attacks have triggered in the Middle East.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Zhou Feihu is training local medical personnel in Liberia, photo provided by the author.

By Zhou Feihu

As a doctor, Ive seen so many deaths that Ive become accustomed to it, but when I went to Liberia as a member of the Chinese contingent to fight Ebola in January 2015, I felt pressured and challenged as never before.

Before we set out, Id already heard a lot about the dangerous Ebola outbreak in Africa, but I was still shocked by the tense atmosphere when we arrived in Liberia. Vehicles and equipment marked with UN relief were everywhere, military transport planes came and went frequently, and everyone coming in and out of the airport had to have their temperature tested...

January in Liberia was the dry season with the average temperature of 40 Celsius degrees, and the sanitary conditions were unbelievably poor with mosquitoes and flies swarming here and there. What was worse, nearly half of the 200-plus qualified local medical personnel had died from Ebola infection, paralyzing the normal medical relief work.

My comrades and I completed the equipment commissioning as soon as possible and threw ourselves into work immediately. The Ebola vaccine hadnt be invented yet, so we had to enter the wards wearing three layers of special costumes in the high temperature.

The infected area was our battlefield. As Ebola could be spread through body fluids, every time we walked out of the ward, what we were most concerned about was how to take off the outfit that had been contaminated with the virus and the sweat-soaked underwear hygienically.

I was often asked a question: werent you afraid? Id be lying if I said no. Im a soldier and doctor, and treating patients was my top priority.

In the next two months and more, I participated in the treatment of 61 patients and received 38 ones suspected of Ebola infection, among whom five being confirmed.

One year after I completed the mission in Liberia, I was assigned on another peacekeeping mission to Mali, the most dangerous mission area in Africa.

In May 2016, the 4th Chinese peacekeeping force to Mali was attacked, which killed peacekeeper Shen Liangliang and injured many others. Soon afterwards, I, along with three other comrades in the medical team, was assigned to Mali to take the injured peacekeepers home.

After arriving in the war-ravaged Mali of West Africa, I found the mission was unexpectedly arduous and formidable. Several Chinese peacekeepers got wounded with detonation, which left serious internal damages other than the obvious bone fractures and external wounds.

The medical conditions in Mali were too poor, so the injured soldiers were quickly transferred to more standard hospitals in Senegal after primary treatment, and I had to stay there alone to take care of them because of staff shortages.

But unexpected trouble emerged one after another. There was so few equipment at the hospital that we didnt even have enough breathing machines and monitors when there were too many severe cases. I had to rely on the stethoscope and my clinical experience in terms of diagnosis and treatment. I stayed with the patients for more than 20 days, helped them get through the critical period and transfer from ICU to regular wards.

After the injured Chinese peacekeepers became stable in physical conditions, I was assigned to take them back to China by regular passenger flight and we had to transfer once on the way. The trip lasted about 30 hours without any oxygen gear or monitor, and the wounded might have thrombus or even worse situations if they stayed still for too long.

Under pressure, I made detailed plans and didnt sleep a wink on the plane. I closely watched the conditions of the wounded, and helped them move their limbs in case of any emergency.

When the plane landed and I saw the crowds with flowers in hand waiting to welcome our heroes, a sigh of relief was belatedly breathed. We made it homesafe.

The author is director of ICU at the First Medical Center of Chinese PLA General Hospital.

(This article is interviewed and organized by PLA Dailys special correspondent Luo Guojin, reporter Cheng Anqi and correspondent Hong Jianguo)
Much of Massachusetts will see spotty snow showers Monday, with little to no accumulation expected, before unseasonably warm temperatures arrive later this week.

A hazardous weather outlook was issued for parts of Western Massachusetts. Slippery travel conditions are possible in Berkshire County during the morning commute.

A mix of light rain and snow will push through Western Massachusetts in the morning and spread across the state during the day before a cold front moves offshore in the evening. Little to no snow accumulation is expected, according to the National Weather Service.

It will take some time before snow or rain showers will actually reach the ground this morning, the National Weather Service said.

Temperatures across the state dipped to the high 20s in the morning but will climb to the mid 30s by the afternoon. Highs of 36 degrees in Boston, 34 degrees in Worcester and 37 degrees in Springfield are expected.

Another cold front may bring accumulating snow again Tuesday afternoon into Wednesday.

Sub-freezing temperatures are expected before a warm front moves in Friday, lifting temperatures to around 50 degrees by Saturday.

The cold will be short-lived, as a warm front lifts north on Friday, the National Weather Service said. Saturday highs [are] expected to be 15-20 degrees above normal for mid January.

Theres a chance of rainfall late Friday into Saturday, and a light wintry mix of rain and snow.

We've got a mix of precip types in Fall River. Let us know what you're seeing. https://t.co/TbzDAvJevR  NWS Boston (@NWSBoston) January 6, 2020
CES 2020: Flo Technologies and Moen Launch New Smart Water Detector to Enhance the Flo by Moen Smart Home Water Security System

Flo Technologies and Moen, the leaders in smart home water security, launched the Flo by Moen Smart Water Detector (Smart Water Detector) at CES (News - Alert) Unveiled today, a standalone sensor that can be placed anywhere in a house to alert users if, and when, it detects moisture to help prevent water damage and loss. The Smart Water Detector is capable of working in conjunction with or independently from the Flo by Moen Smart Water Shutoff (Smart Water Shutoff), a device that proactively identifies leaks anywhere in the home's water supply and automatically shuts off the water. The new water detector further provides homeowners with an unmatched level of security against water damage and loss - whether from a leaky pipe or weather event like a flood.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200105005047/en/

The Flo by Moen Smart Water Detector is a standalone sensor that can be placed anywhere in a house to alert users if, and when, it detects moisture to help prevent water damage and loss. (Photo: Business Wire)

Flo by Moen Smart Water Detector

The Smart Water Detector enables users to identify not only when, but also where water may be leaking in their home to inhibit any possible damage. Users simply place the discreet 3.5" sensor where they see a risk, such as the basement, laundry room, attic or other areas in the home that are susceptible to water damage by environmental factors or fixture malfunctions. If the Smart Water Detector senses the presence of water, freezing temperatures or high humidity, it will alert users through a push notification in the Flo by Moen and Moen smartphone app. If homeowners also have the Smart Water Shutoff, a leak sensed by the Smart Water Detector can automatically trigger the shut-off feature to protect the home from water damage.

FloSense 2.0

Users of the Smart Water Shutoff can now experience FloSense 2.0, an enhanced proprietary machine learning technology that uses AI and user feedback to better customize protection for each home. Placing an emphasis on convenience and customization, users can toggle the new Sensitivity Slider Bar in the recently updated smartphone app to adjust the Smart Water Shutoff's level of responsiveness to concerning water behavior in the home, or set their own custom parameters for responsiveness, enabling more control than ever before.

New Redesigned Flo by Moen App

The recently updated Flo by Moen app now gives users the ability to track multiple Flo by Moen devices, including the new Smart Water Detector, across one or multiple locations. This means users can ensure water security in their permanent residence, their vacation house, rental property and any other location where they use Flo by Moen devices - al from a single app.







Additionally, with the reimagined Flo by Moen App, users can better utilize the learnings and data FloSense 2.0 provides and easily access and control their home's water system right from their mobile device.

Gabriel Halimi, CEO and co-founder of Flo Technologies, said: "We are dedicated to empowering every household with the tools and insights they need to better protect their homes from one of the most common home catastrophes - water damage. New Flo research into homeowner water habits found that a majority of homeowners would like to be more aware of their water usage, yet 73 percent have no idea how much water their households use on a daily basis*. With FloSense 2.0, the redesigned app and the new Smart Water Detector, homeowners can seamlessly and intuitively access, understand and most importantly, act on the insights the Flo by Moen system provides to ensure they are sustainably and responsibly using their home's water."

"The addition of the Smart Water Detector was a natural extension of the Flo by Moen system to allow homeowners to further enhance the control they have over their home's water," said Michael Poloha, group manager, IoT, Moen. "The Smart Water Shutoff offers a completely preventative approach to leak detection, and now the Smart Water Detector can sense and notify users of water events that happen outside of the pipes - like a flooding basement or a malfunctioning appliance - to help reduce the risk of water damage and provide full home protection."

Pricing and Availability

The Flo by Moen Smart Water Detector is available today for pre-order at MeetFlo.com for just $49.99 or $129.99 for a three pack, and will be available for purchase on Amazon.com (News - Alert) beginning in March. Consumers can buy the Flo by Moen Smart Water Shutoff at MeetFlo.com, Amazon.com and HomeDepot.com for $499.99.

CES 2020

Come see Flo Technologies and Moen at CES 2020 January 7-10 (Sands, Halls A-D #43119) to learn more about the new Flo by Moen Smart Water Detector and how it works within the Flo by Moen Smart Home Water Security System. Flo Technologies and Moen will also be exhibiting at CES Unveiled at Mandalay Bay on January 5 and Pepcom Digital Experience! at The Mirage on January 6.

Click here for images and other media assets.

*According to a recent survey commissioned by Flo Technologies and conducted online by Fluent in April 2019.

About Flo Technologies

Flo Technologies is on a mission to prevent loss one drip at a time with its whole-home water monitoring and leak protection system. Flo's smart home water security system gives homeowners the products and information they need to proactively prevent water damage and unnecessary water waste. While many believe their home's water supply system is leak-free, the average household's leaks can account for nearly 10,000 gallons of water wasted every year, and 10 percent of homes have leaks that waste 90 gallons or more per day, according to the EPA. With decades of plumbing expertise, Flo is committed to helping prevent this water waste and protect every U.S. home from serious water damage. Flo is so confident in its system that it offers an optional guarantee of effectiveness for up to $2,500 towards your insurance deductible via its FloProtect program. To learn more, visit www.meetflo.com. Find Flo Technologies on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

About Moen

As the #1 consumer faucet brand in North America, Moen offers a diverse selection of thoughtfully designed kitchen and bath faucets, showerheads, accessories, bath safety products, kitchen sinks and garbage disposals for residential applications - delivering meaningful innovation, useful features, on-trend styling and lasting value. In addition, Moen Commercial offers superior-performing products that can deliver lower lifetime costs for today's facilities.

Moen is part of Fortune Brands Home & Security, Inc. (NYSE: FBHS), which creates products and services that help fulfill the dreams of homeowners and help people feel more secure. Moen anchors the Global Plumbing Group (GPG), which also includes several brands under the House of Rohl including Perrin & Rowe, ROHL, Riobel, Shaws and Victoria + Albert. Its other segments include Master Lock and Sentry Safe security products, MasterBrand Cabinets and Therma-Tru entry door systems. Fortune Brands is part of the S&P 500 Index. For more information, please visit www.FBHS.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200105005047/en/
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will arrive in Russia on a working visit on January 11 on the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlins press office reported.

During the talks, the sides will discuss essential issues of the international agenda, including the situation in Syria and Libya, the escalation of tension in the Middle East.

"The sides will also consider the issues of settling the intra-Ukrainian conflict in the context of implementing the 2015 Minsk Package of Measures and the agreements reached at the Normandy Four summit in Paris on December 9, 2019," TASS cited the press office as saying.

The situation in the Middle East deteriorated sharply after the Pentagon announced on January 3 that Commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps General Qasem Soleimani had been killed in a U.S. airstrike near Baghdad airport. The missile strike came on order of U.S. President Donald Trump.

According to the U.S. Administration, the operation was defensive, as it was aimed at protecting U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East. According to Washington, the attacks planned by the Iranian general could have led to the deaths of hundreds of Americans and Iraqis.

After the attack, Irans Supreme National Security Council vowed at an emergency session to exact "severe revenge" on those involved in the killing of Soleimani, blaming the U.S. for the attack. In a telephone call with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif slammed the attack as an act of terrorism by the U.S.

The Normandy Four summit with the participation of the leaders of Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine took place in Paris on December 9. As one of its results, a decision was made on holding a prisoner swap in the Donbass region by the end of the year, using the principle of "all identified for all identified." The summit participants undertook to provide for a complete and comprehensive ceasefire until the end of 2019 and agreed to support the agreement within the Contact Group on settling the situation in eastern Ukraine with regard to three additional sections of the disengagement of forces and weapons in the conflict area by the end of March 2020.
TULSA, Okla., Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Laredo Petroleum, Inc., a Delaware corporation (NYSE: LPI) (Laredo or the Company), announced today that it is commencing cash tender offers and consent solicitations for any or all of its outstanding (i) $450 million aggregate principal amount of 5 5/8% senior unsecured notes due January 2022 (the 2022 Notes) and (ii) $350 million aggregate principal amount of 6 1/4% senior unsecured notes due March 2023 (the 2023 Notes and, together with its 2022 Notes, the Existing Notes), subject to certain conditions (collectively, the Tender Offers). Information related to the Existing Notes and the pricing terms of the Tender Offers is listed in the table below.



Title of Notes CUSIP Number Aggregate Principal Amount Outstanding Tender Offer Consideration(1) Early Tender Premium(1) Total Consideration(1)(2) 5 5/8% Senior Notes due 2022 516806AD8 $450,000,000 $956.30 $50.00 $1,006.30 6 1/4% Senior Notes due 2023 516806AE6 $350,000,000 $965.63 $50.00 $1,015.63

(1) Per $1,000 principal amount of Existing Notes validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) and accepted for purchase by the Company.

(2) Includes the Early Tender Premium (as defined below) for Existing Notes validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) prior to the Early Tender Date (as defined below) and accepted for purchase by the Company.

In conjunction with the Tender Offer for each series of the Existing Notes, the Company has also commenced a solicitation (a Consent Solicitation) of consents (each a Consent) from holders of such series of Existing Notes to amend certain provisions (the Proposed Amendments) of the indenture governing such series of Existing Notes to eliminate substantially all of the restrictive covenants and certain events of default under the applicable indenture and shorten the notice required to be given to holders from 30 days to 3 business days in the case of a redemption of the Existing Notes issued under the applicable indenture.

Holders may not tender the 2022 Notes or 2023 Notes without delivering their Consent pursuant to the related Consent Solicitation and may not deliver a Consent without tendering their 2022 Notes or 2023 Notes pursuant to the applicable Tender Offer.

Subject to the terms and conditions of the Tender Offers and the Consent Solicitations, the consideration for each $1,000 principal amount of Existing Notes validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) and accepted for purchase will be the tender offer consideration for such series of Existing Notes set forth in the table above (with respect to each series of Existing Notes, the Tender Offer Consideration). Holders of Existing Notes that are validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) at any time prior to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on January 17, 2020 (such date and time, as it may be extended, the Early Tender Date) and accepted for purchase by the Company pursuant to the applicable Tender Offer will receive the applicable Tender Offer Consideration for such series of Existing

Notes, plus the applicable early tender premium for such series of Existing Notes set forth in the table above (with respect to each series of Existing Notes, the Early Tender Premium and, together with the applicable Tender Offer Consideration, the Total Consideration), subject to the terms and conditions of the Tender Offers and the Consent Solicitations. Holders validly tendering their Existing Notes after the Early Tender Date will not be eligible to receive the Early Tender Premium. In addition to the Total Consideration or Tender Offer Consideration, as applicable, all Existing Notes accepted for purchase by the Company will receive accrued and unpaid interest on such Existing Notes from the last interest payment date to, but not including, the applicable Settlement Date (as defined below).

The early settlement date for each series of Existing Notes is currently expected to occur on or about January 24, 2020, subject to all conditions to the applicable Tender Offer and Consent Solicitation having been either satisfied or waived by the Company (the Early Settlement Date). On the Early Settlement Date, the Company will accept Existing Notes validly tendered (with Consents that have been validly delivered) (and not validly withdrawn) (or Consents revoked) at or prior to the Early Tender Date. The Company will purchase any remaining Existing Notes of each series that have been validly tendered and not validly withdrawn at or prior to the Expiration Date (as defined below) for such series and that the Company chooses to accept for purchase, subject to all conditions to the applicable Tender Offer and Consent Solicitation having been either satisfied or waived by the Company, promptly following the Expiration Date (the settlement date of such purchase being the Final Settlement Date; the Final Settlement Date and the Early Settlement Date each being a Settlement Date). The Final Settlement Date is expected to occur on February 5, 2020, the first business day following the Expiration Date, assuming that the conditions to the applicable Tender Offer and the Consent Solicitation are satisfied or waived.

Neither Tender Offer is conditioned upon the tender of a minimum amount of Existing Notes, the consummation of the other Tender Offer in respect of the other series of Existing Notes or obtaining any Requisite Consent (as defined below). However, the Tender Offers are subject to, and conditioned upon, the satisfaction or waiver of certain conditions described in the applicable Offer to Purchase and Consent Solicitation (as defined below), including the Company having completed the proposed senior unsecured notes offering of at least $830 million in net proceeds, assuming all other conditions to the Tender Offers have been met. In the event that all of the Existing Notes are not tendered in the Tender Offers or the Tender Offers are not consummated, the Company intends to use a portion of the net proceeds from the proposed notes offering to fund the redemption of all 2022 Notes outstanding on or around February 5, 2020 (or, if the related Proposed Amendments become operative on or before January 30, 2020, on the date three business days after such operative date) and all 2023 Notes outstanding on or after March 15, 2020. The Consent Solicitations are conditioned on the receipt of consents from holders of at least a majority in principal amount of each series of Existing Notes.

The Company intends to execute a supplement to the indenture governing each series of Existing Notes (each a Supplemental Indenture) with the trustee with respect to the Proposed Amendments to the applicable indenture if the requisite consents to effect such Proposed Amendments (the Requisite Consents) are received, as described in the applicable Offer to Purchase and Consent Solicitation. Assuming that the Requisite Consents are received, it is expected that each applicable Supplemental Indenture will be entered into promptly following the later of the receipt of such Requisite Consents and the Withdrawal Deadline (as defined below). The applicable Supplemental Indenture will apply only to the applicable series of Existing Notes and a Supplemental Indenture may be executed with respect to one series of Existing Notes even if the Requisite Consents for the other series of Existing Notes have not been received.

Each Supplemental Indenture will become effective upon execution, but will provide that the Proposed Amendments will not become operative unless the Company accepts the applicable Existing Notes satisfying the Requisite Consents required for purchase in the applicable Tender Offer for the respective series of Existing Notes. If a Tender Offer or the related Consent Solicitation is terminated or withdrawn, the applicable indenture will remain in effect in its present form unless the Requisite Consents with respect to the Proposed Amendments to such indenture are otherwise obtained.

The Proposed Amendments constitute a single proposal with respect to the applicable series of Existing Notes, and a consenting holder of such series of Existing Notes must deliver a Consent to the Proposed Amendments as an entirety and may not consent selectively with respect to certain of the Proposed Amendments.

Tendered Existing Notes may be validly withdrawn from the Tender Offers, and delivered Consents may be revoked, at any time prior to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on January 17, 2020, unless extended by the Company (such date and time, as it may be extended, the Withdrawal Deadline). Holders who validly tender their Existing Notes (and validly deliver any related Consents) after the Withdrawal Deadline, but prior to the Expiration Date, may not validly withdraw their tendered Existing Notes (or validly revoke their Consents). The Company may amend, extend or, subject to certain conditions and applicable law, terminate each Tender Offer or Consent Solicitation at any time in its sole discretion.

The Company has engaged BofA Securities to act as dealer manager in connection with the Tender Offers, and has appointed Global Bondholder Services Corporation (GBS) to serve as the depositary and information agent for the Tender Offers.

For additional information regarding the terms of the Tender Offers, please contact BofA Securities at (888) 292-0070 (toll-free) or (980) 388-0539 (collect). Questions regarding the Tender Offers should be directed to GBS at (212) 430-3774 (banks and brokers) or (866) 470-3700 (all others).

The full terms and conditions of each Tender Offer are described in the Offer to Purchase and Consent Solicitation Statement for the applicable series of Existing Notes, dated January 6, 2020 (each an Offer to Purchase and Consent Solicitation), and the accompanying Consent and Letter of Transmittal with respect to such series of Existing Notes. Each Tender Offer and Consent Solicitation will expire at 12:01 a.m., New York City time, on February 4, 2020, unless extended or earlier terminated by the Company (such date and time, as it may be extended, the Expiration Date). Holders of the applicable series of Existing Notes are encouraged to read these documents, as they contain important information regarding the applicable Tender Offer and Consent Solicitation. These documents are available at http://www.gbsc-usa.com/Laredo/ and may also be obtained by contacting GBS by telephone.

None of the Company, its board of directors, the dealer manager, GBS or the trustee for the Existing Notes, or any of their respective affiliates, is making any recommendation as to whether holders should tender any Existing Notes in response to the Tender Offers. Holders must make their own decision as to whether to tender any of their Existing Notes and, if so, the principal amount of Existing Notes to tender.

This press release is not an offer to purchase, a solicitation of an offer to purchase or a solicitation of consents with respect to any series of the Existing Notes. The Tender Offers have been made solely pursuant to the applicable Offers to Purchase and Consent Solicitation and the related Consents and Letters of Transmittal.

About Laredo

Laredo Petroleum, Inc. is an independent energy company with headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Laredos business strategy is focused on the acquisition, exploration and development of oil and natural gas properties, primarily in the Permian Basin of West Texas.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release and any oral statements made regarding the subject of this release contain forward-looking statements as defined under Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, that address activities that Laredo assumes, plans, expects, believes, intends, projects, indicates, enables, transforms, estimates or anticipates (and other similar expressions) will, should or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are based on managements current belief, based on currently available information, as to the outcome and timing of future events. The forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, among others, that our business plans may change as circumstances warrant and that the new notes may not ultimately be offered to the public and the Existing Notes may not be purchased because of general market conditions or other factors. General risks relating to Laredo include, but are not limited to, the decline in prices of oil, natural gas liquids and natural gas and the related impact to financial statements as a result of asset impairments and revisions to reserve estimates, the increase in service and supply costs, tariffs on steel, pipeline transportation constraints in the Permian Basin, hedging activities, possible impacts of litigation and regulations, the suspension or discontinuance of share repurchases at any time and other factors, including those and other risks described in its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018, Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2019, the preliminary prospectus supplement and those set forth from time to time in other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These documents are available through Laredos website at www.laredopetro.com under the tab Investor Relations or through the SECs Electronic Data Gathering and Analysis Retrieval System (EDGAR) at www.sec.gov. Any of these factors could cause Laredos actual results and plans to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Therefore, Laredo can give no assurance that its future results will be as estimated. Laredo does not intend to, and disclaims any obligation to, update or revise any forward-looking statement.
Bent coat hanger. Debris spewer. Shining piece of Medieval brutalism.

Since the day, early in February, when it unleashed chunks of concrete onto a white Mercedes, the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge has drawn all manner of colorful descriptions. Its also had 31 joints repaired on the westbound upper deck and opened a popular bicycle path while carrying 82,000 motorists each day.

Still, one assemblyman is crusading for a new, better structure. All he needs is $8 billion.

If the bridge is going to last another 10 or 20 years, thats great, said Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael. But we should be planning for what the next span will look like.

Although state and regional transportation agencies have sunk more than a billion dollars into maintenance  which includes a new road deck, piers and a trestle at the San Rafael approach  the bridge wouldnt survive a major disaster, Levine noted. Its had enough seismic retrofits to remain standing and not cause any deaths during the next big earthquake, but it wouldnt function afterward.

And we dont even have a drawing on a shelf as to what the next bridge should look like, Levine said.

He first pitched the idea of a new structure in April, when pieces of concrete fell from the bridges upper deck for the second time in two months. By that point Levine had already been meeting Caltrans officials to discuss the upkeep and lifespan of the bridge deck, which was last overhauled during a major rehab project from 2001 to 2005.

Caltrans recently began a deck analysis and load-rating study to determine whether its time to develop a new structure. Agency staff estimated it could come to $8.2 billion, said Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney.

In November, Levine started a website to provide constituents with regular updates on repairs of the 64-year-old crossing, which is scheduled to get a paint job and 30 new joints on the lower deck next year. Hes also seeking suggestions on bus rapid transit, bike and pedestrian paths, and rail  or, possibly, more vehicle lanes. So far, hes received more than 500 letters and comments from commuters in all corners of the region: Marin, Sonoma, Davis, the Peninsula and the inner Bay Area.

Its a remarkably old-looking structure  almost like something built during World War II by the Army Corps of Engineers, instead of in 1956, said El Sobrante resident Greg Stevens. He crosses the bridge at 5:30 a.m. on weekdays to teach Spanish at Redwood High School in Larkspur.

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

Stevens is neutral about a new bridge, but he would like to see significant changes in the current one  namely, removal of the new bike path to add a third lane for car traffic on top. Hed also support other dream projects that would make his commute less hellish, like a BART extension through the North Bay to make a full loop back to Richmond. One advantage of a new span is that it could include imaginative elements, such as bike lanes or rail tracks.

Many commuters have a love-hate relationship with the span, known for its web of metal trussing and undulating roadway  partly to make room for shipping channels, but also to cut costs by removing steel from the design. In a 1953 interview, famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright called the bridge  which was then under construction  an ignorant violation of good sense and taste. For decades its been the ungainly cousin of the more elegant Golden Gate Bridge, which is known internationally for engineering beauty.

At the same time, motorists rely on this east-west connection to get from homes in Contra Costa to jobs in Marin and San Rafael, where housing is expensive and sparse.

The high cost of living has forced more than 25% of the public schools workforce to live outside of the county and face long commute times, Marin County Schools Superintendent Mary Jane Burke and Tamalpais Union High School District Superintendent Tara Taupier wrote in a June letter to Levine. They joined Stevens call for a traffic lane on the upper deck to replace the bike path.

Heavy traffic and freight from trucks have strained and battered the bridge. That constant pummeling, combined with the briny salt air of the bay, causes joints to shrink or expand and allows concrete to pry loose. Next year, Caltrans and the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission will pour $129 million into fixes.

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Yet many advocates and policymakers question whether a new a bridge is a wise investment, given all the other transportation needs in the Bay Area. Levine has not presented a funding plan; nor has he taken a stance on the Faster Bay Area sales tax measure, which could bolster big projects like this one, should it pass in November. Officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission estimate that motorists would have to pay a $6 toll hike on all the regions bridges to raise enough money for a new one. A $6 increase, combined with other scheduled hikes, would push the cost of crossing the Bay Bridge to $15 in 2025. Drivers would pay $14 to cross the existing Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

The North Bay is ripe for infrastructure improvement, but it also has needs that seem more urgent than a new Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, said Stuart Cohen, a transportation consultant who is involved in the Faster Bay Area campaign. Among them is Highway 37, a crumbling road atop a levy that sometimes closes down during the winter because of flooding. It may need a new viaduct or embankment to stave off rising sea levels, which could cost $5 billion.

Some transit advocates view Levines push for a new bridge as a form of old-school bravado. A few compared it to a recent appeal by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and East Bay Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, who want a Southern Crossing for cars and transit.

Politicians often fixate on big capital projects that allow them to stick a gold shovel in the ground, said Bob Allen, director of policy and advocacy campaigns for the nonprofit group Urban Habitat. In reality, Allen argued, its the less glamorous solutions  increased bus service, transit-only lanes and better connections  that a make a difference in peoples lives. Another possibility: investing in e-bikes to transport more people along the bike lane to jobs in Marin and San Rafael, Cohen said.

Levine deflected concerns about the cost of a bridge and accused naysayers of trying to throw cold water on something thats not their own pet project.

Hes aware that such a monumental project wont happen immediately. But hes adamant that the Bay Area start planning now, considering the glacial pace of transportation projects: It took 25 years to rebuild the east span of the Bay Bridge after the Loma Prieta earthquake.

Knowing that there is going to be no functioning bridge after a disaster is enough reason for me to want a plan on the shelf, ready to go, he said. As far as what it looks like  Ill leave that up to the many creative dreamers in the Bay Area.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 10:48:16|Editor: ZX

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BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The People's Bank of China (PBOC), the country's central bank, skipped reverse repos as a lower reserve requirement ratio (RRR) for banks takes effect on Monday.

The move to cut the RRR by 50 basis points will inject around 800 billion yuan (about 114.75 billion U.S. dollars) into the market, which will absorb impacts from factors including maturing reverse repos, the People's Bank of China said on its website.

A reverse repo is a process in which the central bank purchases securities from commercial banks through bidding, with an agreement to sell them back in the future.

The country will continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy and prudent monetary policy, according to the annual Central Economic Work Conference held in December, 2019.

The quality and effect of the fiscal policy must be enhanced with more efforts on structural adjustment, while the monetary policy should be pursued with moderate flexibility to maintain market liquidity at a reasonably ample level, said a statement released after the conference.
Gold surged close to a seven-year peak on Monday, as investors flocked to the safe-haven metal on escalating U.S.-Iran tensions, while palladium surpassed the level of $2,000 to hit a record high.

Spot gold rose 1.7% to stand at $1,577.98 per ounce by 0409 GMT. Earlier in the session, it had rallied as much as 1.8% to touch $1,579.72, its highest since April 10, 2013.

U.S. gold futures gained 1.8% to $1,580.30.

"The geopolitics is taking center-stage," said Benjamin Lu, an analyst at Phillip Futures. "The Iran-U.S. tensions have escalated to a boiling point, that's what has been pushing gold prices up."

President Donald Trump threatened sanctions against Iraq on Sunday after Baghdad demanded that American and foreign troops leave, amid a growing backlash over the U.S. killing of a top Iranian military commander, heightening fears of wider conflict.

Further spurring uncertainty, Iran said it would drop limits on enriching uranium, taking a further step back from commitments to a 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers.

The market's risk-averse sentiment underpinned bullion, which is often seen as an alternative investment during times of political and financial uncertainty.

Asian equities moved away from an 18-month peak and oil prices soared on the intense Middle East hostility.

"If it (gold) breaks the key resistance level of $1,585, it would lead to the key psychological level of $1,600," Lu said.

Investors also took stock of a private survey on Monday that showed slower expansion in December in China's services sector, with business confidence falling to the second lowest on record, despite a pick-up in new orders.

Spot palladium hit an all-time peak of $2,020.18 an ounce, and was last up 1.5% at $2,017.67.

"The (palladium) market continues to tighten and that's what is pushing the market up," said ING analyst Warren Patterson, adding, "The key risk moving forward is how sustainable this price move is."

Plagued by sustained supply deficit, palladium, used mainly in catalytic converters in vehicles, rose about 54% in 2019.

Elsewhere, silver gained 2.2% to $18.45 an ounce, after touching a more than three month high at $18.50, while platinum advanced 1% to $990.05.
Iraqi Shiite Cleric Sadr Calls for International 'Resistance Legions' as MPs Vote to Oust US Troops

Sputnik News

17:59 05.01.2020(updated 19:15 05.01.2020)

The Iraqi parliament on Sunday urged the government, which had already approved the plan, to expel US-led coalition forces from the country, outraged by a US strike that killed a top Iranian commander and Iraqi militants on Friday.

Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has called on paramilitary groups in Iraq and elsewhere to unite as the country moves to end America's military presence in the country.

In an extraordinary session on Sunday, the Iraqi parliament adopted a resolution requiring the government to revoke its request for assistance from the United States, effectively telling Washington to withdraw coalition troops from the country.

The US pulled its troops out of Iraq in 2011 after eight years of war, only to return there in 2014 to help the Baghdad government fight Daesh*. There are currently 5,200 American soldiers stationed in Iraq.

In a letter to members of parliament, al-Sadr described the resolution as a "weak response [to] American violation of Iraqi sovereignty". He went on to urge the government to cancel the existing security agreement with the United Sates, close the US Embassy in Baghdad and criminalise communications with Washington.

The cleric, who heads the largest bloc in parliament, called on militant groups in and outside of Iraq to meet immediately and create "International Resistance Legions".

Although the newly-adopted resolution is non-binding for the government, it is likely to be fulfilled, given that the caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi had earlier demanded legislative steps from parliament to force the US withdrawal.

Many in Iraq have expressed outrage at the US strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, a top battlefield commander and strategist and one of Iran's most influential figures, on Iraqi soil on Friday.

Abdul Mahdi said that the United States informed Iraq about its plans to target Soleimani minutes before the attack, which also killed an Iraqi militia commander and 10 other people.

Thousands gathered to mourn Soleimani as his funeral procession marched through Baghdad on Saturday, with some protestors chanting anti-American slogans.

Mass protests also took place this week at the US Embassy in Baghdad after American airstrikes killed 25 fighters from an Iran-backed Shi'ite militia.

*Daesh, aka ISIS/IS/Islamic State, is a terror group outlawed by Russia, the US and many other countries.

A Sputnik

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Michel Savoie uses a walker to shuffle between his lifelines in downtown Hamilton.

Hes recovering from spinal surgery at Hamilton General after developing a serious infection while sleeping outside.

The 52-year-old praises the care he received but is bitter about how the hospital discharged him after nearly a month.

They gave me the boot and that was it, he recently said over a cup of coffee after visiting a medical clinic downtown.

He was served dinner and told to leave the hospital that evening, Savoie said.

No details of a plan to send him in a taxi to a mens shelter had been shared until that moment, he said. If they had told me a day in advance, that would have been OK.

But the side-swipe left him mentally unprepared to stay in a shelter, which can be replete with drug use, aggression and filth. Savoie said he was about to exit the hospital with a walker packed with his bags when he was told he had to leave the device behind.

So he hobbled on cane into a taxi that snowy December night. I felt like just a dirtbag.

He headed to a Tim Hortons on Barton Street East to take stock of his situation. The pain was bad. You know what was worse? Feeling like I was being ostracized and rejected.

Savoie later acquired a walker from someone he knows for $60. He still owes that money.

This isnt how a person with nowhere to go should be discharged, but it isnt an uncommon scenario, says a local doctor who treats patients who are homeless.

Often the result is that people, they dont get better. And to me, its not a surprise that they dont get better, said Dr. Tim OShea, medical director of the Hamilton Social Medicine Response Team.

OShea said patients should have a say in their discharge plan. Housing, food security, medication and mobility to make it to appointments need to be considered.

Hospitals arent necessarily well-equipped to address poverty and homelessness, while shelters cant handle medical issues, he said. I think thats where people tend to fall into the cracks.

This is an unacceptable gap in our system, said Katherine Kalinowski, Good Shepherd Centres chief operating officer.

The problem of someone who does not have a safe, stable home to go to after hospitalization is a really significant issue.

Good Shepherd and Shelter Health Network are developing a provincially funded pilot to help address the problem.

The pilot at Good Shepherd mens shelter on Mary Street will involve 10 transitional beds for vulnerable patients leaving hospital. It will be staffed by medical professionals. Help with housing and other support services will be offered, too.

Kalinowski hopes the partners can start the pilot in coming weeks. We truly believe it will result in improved health status for vulnerable individuals, but it will also reduce rehospitalization or repeated visits to the emergency room.

She said the pilot wont be suitable for everyone and emphasized the community as a whole must continue reducing system barriers.

When asked about Savoies discharge, Hamilton Health Sciences said it couldnt comment on a specific case but noted it has well-established practices for homeless patients.

We ensure a supportive discharge plan is in place before discharging a patient, for example, with the patients consent, our team partners with the patient to locate and secure supportive housing and this may be a shelter bed, spokesperson Patrice Cloutier wrote in an email.

Patients who need walkers after discharge are referred to the Local Health Integration Network Home and Community Care, Cloutier added.

Before surgery, Savoie had been homeless after losing his room at a residential care facility in the fall. After years of living on the street, hed found a stability at Burris Lodge before it closed in a spiral of financial problems.

My security was there in a sense, said Savoie, who receives a disability pension. I had a place to go and rest and not worry about anybody bothering me.

Since he left the General, he has stayed at the workplace of a former boss and outside. It was in underground parking; it was in stairwells.

When the cold was too much for his ailing body, Savoie went to the Salvation Army on York Boulevard. There, he struggled to get in and out of his cot and worried about robbery.

Kalinowski said theres a tremendous tension with hospitals under pressure to free up beds for patients with the most acute needs.

But in recent years hospitals and the homeless-serving agencies have made strides in closing the discharge gap, she said. The local Hospitals-Shelters Working Group meets regularly to discuss system barriers.

Being poor and homeless makes you sick; being poor and homeless makes you likely to remain sick or get sick again, and re-enter the system repeatedly, Kalinowski said.

Savoie hopes to find a place of his own where he can spend time with his 19-year-old daughter. We can sit there and watch a movie together.
The Trump administration is urging the Supreme Court to uphold a Louisiana pro-life law that requires abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals, asserting the law is constitutional and benefits womens safety.

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments March 4 in a case brought by abortion providers against the 2014 law, which requires abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. It has yet to go into effect.

The high court struck down a similar Texas law in 2016 in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, but since then, the makeup of the court has changed.

Pro-choice groups fear the court will overturn that 2016 decision and gut Roe v. Wade. They also say the law will force clinics to close.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco, representing the Trump administration, argues in a Jan. 2 brief that the abortion clinics lack standing  that is, the legal right  to bring the case. Francisco urges the court to overturn its 2016 decision, if needed.

The Louisiana law is known as Act 620.

[T]he Acts purpose is to improve the health and safety of women undergoing an abortion by ensuring that their provider can qualify for hospital-admitting privileges, the brief says.

Unless the law is allowed to go into effect, Francisco argues, Louisiana law will favor abortion providers over other doctors in the medical field.

The law should not elevate the status of abortion providers above other physicians in the medical community,  and Act 620 advances that interest in evenhanded regulation by closing the regulatory gap that previously required physicians at [ambulatory surgical centers]  but not at abortion facilities  to obtain admitting privileges, the brief says.

Francisco also references Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, who was convicted of murdering infants who were born alive and whose clinic was found to be unsanitary, with blood and urine stains covering the floor. A flea-infested cat roamed the office.

Given the profound ethical concerns presented by atrocities at abortion clinics like those run by Kermit Gosnell  Louisiana has a strong interest in assuring the public that abortion providers are subject to adequate health and safety regulation, Franciscos brief says. The burdens of Act 620 are minimal  principally, a modest increase in the waiting time (less than an hour) to obtain an abortion. The benefits described above are more than sufficient to justify that burden.

Referencing the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the Trump administration brief says, From the start, this Courts abortion decisions have emphasized States legitimate interest in seeing to it that abortion, like any other medical procedure, is performed under circumstances that insure maximum safety for the patient.

The Supreme Court struck down the Texas law when Justice Anthony Kennedy  who supported Roe v. Wade  sided with the majority in a 5-3 decision. But since then, Kennedy has been replaced by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Neil Gorsuch has taken the seat formerly held by Antonin Scalia, who opposed Roe but who died four months before the decision was released.

Related:

New Trump Rule Stops Obamacares Hidden Abortion Surcharge

Democrats Medicare for All Bills Would Legalize Taxpayer-Funded Abortion

One-Third of Independent Abortion Clinics Have Closed since 2012

Pro-Life Win: High Court Upholds Law Requiring Ultrasounds before Abortions

Despite Popular Belief, Women Are More Pro-Life than Men, Gallup Poll Says

2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates Are More Radically Pro-Abortion than Ever before, NYT Says

Nearly Half of U.S. States Could Ban Abortion if Roe v Wade Is Overturned, Abortion Rights Group Says

Trump Admin. Keeps Pro-Abortion Language out of U.N. Resolution

Michael Foust is a freelance writer. Visit his blog, MichaelFoust.com.

Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Kagenmi

Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Mazda Motor (China) Co., Ltd. said its new car retail sales in December, 2019 reached 24,492 units, of which FAW Mazda and Changan Mazda contributed 10,418 units and 14,074 units respectively.

Based on the year-ago figure, the Japanese automaker saw its China deliveries jump 19.2%, the second month in a row achieving year-on-year double-digit growth.

Full-year deliveries of Mazda's China market amounted to 227,750 units, falling 16.4% compared with the year of 2018.

Both joint ventures maintained an upward momentum in Dec. sales. FAW Mazda posted a year-on-year increase of 22.5%, and gained growth for three straight months. Retailing 91,416 new cars through 2019, the joint venture still faced a decline of 16.1%.

(Photo source: FAW Mazda)



Among vehicles delivered last month, 4,724 units (+32.5%) were the Mazda6 Atenza cars, the highest figure for the year of 2019. Besides, the deliveries of the Mazda CX-4 leapt 15.8% over the previous year to 5,694 units, making its annual retail sales amount to 49,419 units.



(Photo source: FAW Mazda's WeChat account)



It is worth noting that the all-new CX-4 just hit the market on November 8. Its advent helped the model's deliveries jump 17.5% month on month in the year-end period.



(Photo source: Changan Mazda)



Changan Mazda's deliveries grew 16.9% from the prior-year period in December, but its full-year sales slid 16.5% to 136,334 units. Last month, 10,956 consumers took delivery of the Mazda3 Axela, a surge of 35.4%. Moreover, the deliveries of the Mazda CX-5 edged up 3% over a year ago to 2,990 units, making its 2019 sales total 35,620 units.

Changan Mazda is said to locally manufacture the Mazda CX-30, a small-sized SUV positioned between the CX-3 and the CX-5. Powered by the latest SKYACTIV-X engine, the homegrown CX-30 will compete with such models as the Honda Vezel, the Toyota C-HR and the TACQUA.
Cyrus Mistry says not interested in chairmanship at Tata Sons

The man who fought for justice after getting unceremoniously ousted from the top of the countrys biggest industrial conglomerate, Cyrus Mistry says he will not seek executive chairmanship of Tata Sons again.

In a public statement issued on Sunday, he said the NCLT order has only humbled him and that he does not intend to pursue executive chairmanship of Tata Sons.

Mistry said his focus has always been on upholding best standards in corporate governance  that the interests of the Tata group are far more important than interests of any individual or me.

To dispel the misinformation campaign being conducted, I intend to make it clear that despite the NCLAT order in my favour, I will not be pursuing the executive chairmanship of Tata Sons, or directorship of TCS, Tata Teleservices or Tata Industries," said Cyrus Mistry.

Mistrys statement comes a day ahead of the Supreme Court hearing, in which Tata Sons Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata challenged the National Company Law Tribunal's (NCLAT) verdict reinstating Cyrus Mistry as Tata Sonschairman.

While the Tata Group is pursuing its case against NCALT order, Mistrys statement has helped put at rest the rumours about the future leadership of Tata Sons Ltd and Tata group companies.

Mistry, however, said he will seek a board seat, for improving governance standards at Tata Sons.

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), on 18 December, issued an order reinstating ousted chairman Cyrus Mistry and holding the appointment of N Chandrasekaran as his successor illegal. The appeals court also held the change of status of the company from a public company to a private one as void.

The NCLAT had reinstated Mistrys directorship in three group companies  Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) and Tata Industries Ltd  for the remainder of his tenure, which was just about five months.

NCLAT had cited haste in removal of Mistry as chairman of the Tata groups holding company, ignoring the interest and oppression of minority shareholders, and mismanagement at Tata Sons as reasons for the ruling.

Tata Sons moved a petition in the apex court on 2 December citing that the ruling was untenable in law and violated set principles of Company Law. The Supreme Court is set to hear the plea today (6 January) as it reopens after winter vacation.

Mistry was removed as chairman of Tata Sons on 24 October 2016, five months before his tenure was to end. This triggered a three-year long corporate and legal battle between the Mistry firms and majority shareholders of Tata Sons.

Mistrys family firms - Cyrus Investments Pvt Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt Ltd - which own 18.4 per cent of ordinary shares in Tata Sons, moved the National Company Law Tribunal in December 2016 alleging oppression of minority shareholders and mismanagement.
Mineral Area College ended 2019 with two of its employees having recently received state awards.

Dr. Margaret Williams, professor of chemistry at MAC, received the Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching this fall from the Missouri Community College Association (MCCA).

This award is presented to an outstanding faculty member from every participating higher education institution in the state.

The awards are given out based on effective teaching, effective advising, service to the university community, commitment to higher standards or excellence and success in nurturing student achievement."

Williams has taught chemistry on the MAC campus since 1995, and in the past has been described by her colleagues as a go-to-person that is always willing to listen.

Prior to receiving this award, Williams was also elected by her colleagues for the 2019 MAC Faculty Member of the Year award for her positive impact at the college.

She has a reputation as a campus leader who spends a lot of time looking for ways to improve how she teaches and makes time to meet and help her students and provide guidance for her fellow colleagues.

Dr. Amy Henson, chief information officer at MAC, received the MCCA's Senior Service Award.

The MCCA Annual Recognition and Excellence Awards program is dedicated to recognizing individuals and institutions that have set the standard of excellence during the year."

Henson received this award at the organizations annual convention in Kansas City.

Henson has served MAC for 28 years. Throughout her years at MAC, she has worked as a full-time faculty member, department chair and currently serves in the capacity of overseeing the IT department on campus.

It has been said of Henson that she is instrumental in many facets of leadership, contributing to work on accreditation, faculty and strategy forums as well as the implementation of a new website and IT infrastructure at the institution."

Macey Adams is a reporter for the Daily Journal and can be reached at 573-518-3616 or madams@dailyjournalonline.com

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A new Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) for the appointment of judges to the higher judiciary is yet to be finalised because of continued disagreements over the issue more than four years after the Supreme Court asked the Centre to draft the document, according to officials aware of the developments.

In December 2015, the Supreme Court ordered the government to revamp the 1999 MoP and finalise a new one after consultations with the Chief Justice of India (CJI). The order came after the Centre, through its then-Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, sought to draft the MoP stating that it was an administrative responsibility, which fell within the executive domain.

In its order, the court noted that Rohatgi submitted the Supreme Court neither had the expertise nor the wherewithal for proposing amendments to the existing MoP.

Over the four years since then, the government and the CJI have held discussions and differed over the issue. As per the response received in August last year to a query under the Right to Information Act, the government sent a draft of the new MoP in March 2016 to the CJI, who responded to it a few months later. The government again in August 2016 conveyed its views about the CJIs response. The CJI got back to the government in March 2017.

Subsequently, the Centre conveyed the need for making improvements to the draft MoP to the Supreme Court on July 11, 2017.

A law ministry official said that the ball is now in the CJIs court. CJI Sharad Arvind Bobdes office could not be reached for comment while Attorney General KK Venugopal declined to speak on the subject.

In February 2018, HT reported that the law ministry wrote a letter to the Supreme Court in July 2017 acknowledging the differences. It said that the government wanted to keep the reasons for rejecting a candidates selection on the grounds of national security and overriding public interest confidential and share it only with the CJI. The letter mentioned the two other issues of difference between the government and the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court was against creating a secretariat for vetting and clearing names of judges and forming a committee of judges, who were not part of the collegium to screen complaints against sitting judges. It was also not in favour of having search and evaluation committees for selecting candidates.

The MoP was first drafted in June 1999 and laid down the procedure to be followed under the collegium system for appointing judges to the higher judiciary. The Centre has minimal say in such appointments.

In 2015, Parliament enacted the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act to mark a significant shift in the manner of the appointment of judges. The NJAC Act sought to replace the collegium system by providing for a body comprising representatives from both the judiciary and the Centre to make recommendations for the appointment of judges to the higher judiciary.

The Supreme Court struck down the NJAC Act in October 2015 and held that the collegium system would continue. It, however, invited suggestions from the public and other stakeholders to tweak the MoP to improve the functioning of the collegium and ensure transparency.

The court then held a separate hearing on December 16, 2015, to consider the suggestions. It was during that hearing that the Centre sought to frame the new MoP.

Senior advocate late Anil Divan, speaking at a panel discussion organized by Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms on August 31, 2016, had asked the Supreme Court to recall its order regarding the new MoP, saying the Centre was not cooperating with its drafting. The Supreme Court took up the issue in 2017.

In October 2017, a bench of justices AK Goel and U U Lalit said that though the Supreme Court fixed no time limit for the finalisation of the new MoP, the issue cannot linger on for an indefinite period. It issued a notice to the Attorney General to respond to the issue while hearing a petition of advocate RP Luthra.

The matter was subsequently listed before another bench, led by then CJI Dipak Misra-led bench, which recalled the order of Justices Goel and Lalit saying that the matter should not be handled on the judicial side.

A Supreme Court bench of justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph took cognisance of the burgeoning vacancies in high courts on December 6 last year. The bench said that as on December 1, 2019, there were only 669 judges in 25 high courts against a sanctioned strength of 1,079.

Senior advocate Sanjay Hegde said the Supreme Court can consider putting out the entire correspondence on MoP between the government and CJI in the public domain. The Supreme Court can always review its own order and can take appropriate action in the light of past experience.
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, written by Cretton and Andrew Lanham, based on a book by Bryan Stevenson

The harsh state of social relations in the US is the subject of Just Mercy, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, which concerns itself with the fight against the death penalty.

The film is based on Bryan Stevensons bestselling 2014 memoir, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. It dramatizes the courageous efforts by Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan), an African-American, Harvard-trained lawyer, early in his career, to reverse death penalty sentences in Alabama.

Just Mercy focuses, above all, on the case of Walter Johnny D McMillian (Jamie Foxx), a black man arrested in 1987 for the murder of an 18-year-old white girl and convicted based on false testimony, organized by a racially motivated prosecutor and local authorities.

Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx in Just Mercy

The murder and arrest take place in Monroeville, Alabamathe hometown of Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird. Stevenson arrives at nearby Holman Prison to find it full of death row inmates like Johnny D. Others include Herbert Richardson (Rob Morgan), who admits to a killing, but was convicted without any consideration given to the fact that as a Vietnam veteran, he suffers from severe PTSD. His electrocution is a shocking and disturbing scene, providing a close-up view of the barbaric state murder machine and its assembly line of death.

In 1989, Stevenson founds the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), whose website explains that the organization is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.

Crettons Just Mercy is a moving film with committed performances. Johnny Ds trial scenes are taut and emotional. Brie Larson plays Eva Ansley, Stevensons tireless white assistant and collaborator, who places her family in danger to fight the monstrously unjust legal system.

Cretton, born in Hawaii, the son of a Japanese-American hairdresser mother and an Irish-Slovak father who worked for the fire department, told an interviewer from refinery29, I felt like the trajectory of that story really paints a clear picture as to how this justice system that we have in our country is really working for the rich and powerful and not really working for the poor. Furthermore, Cretton explained. It really highlights the different aspects of how difficult it is for this system to admit that [it has done] something wrong even when all the evidence is pointing towards that.

Jamie Foxx in Just Mercy

It is EJIs belief that the death penalty is the direct descendant of lynching. They write: More than eight in ten American lynchings between 1889 and 1918 occurred in the South, and more than eight in ten of the nearly 1500 executions carried out in this country since 1976 have been in the South.

Stevenson made the same essential argument in his contribution to the New York Timess now discredited 1619 Project, summed up in its headline, Slavery gave America a fear of black people and a taste for violent punishment. Both still define our criminal-justice system. According to Stevenson, White Americans have always feared blacks and black retribution for slavery, and therefore have created a criminal-justice system central to new strategies of racial control.

Of course, there is continuity between lynching and capital punishment, but it lies, above all, in the brutality of capitalist rule in America, which has relied on terror and intimidation to suppress the working class and the poor since its origins, and on racism to divide the oppressed.

When Stevenson and the EJI associate capital punishment primarily with racism, they are mistaken. In fact, it is a broader issue, bound up with the vast social gap and reflecting the real state of class relations in democratic America. Although African Americans are disproportionately represented among the victims of the death penalty, 56 percent of those executed in the US since 1976 have been white, while 34 percent have been black and 8.5 percent Latino.

My thesis is essentially that slaverythe evil of slavery wasnt involuntary servitude, Bryan Stevenson declared in an interview in 2015: It was this narrative of racial difference, this ideology of white supremacy. And so when [R]econstruction collapsed, to restore the racial hierarchy you had to use force and violence and intimidation. And in the South that manifested itself with these lynchings.

Brie Larson in Just Mercy

As the WSWS commented in 2015, the problem with Stevenson and the EJIs approach when it comes to history is that, as horrible and as clearly racist as the system of Judge Lynch was in the South, it is impossible to understand it outside of an analysis of the social order it upheld. It was not simply racism that gave rise to lynching, but a social system that underlay racist ideology.

According to the logic of contemporary identity politics, slavery was not a system of forced labor and all that flowed from itthe selling apart of families and children, the drivers lash, and so onbut this narrative of racial difference. Likewise, racial violence in the Jim Crow South was not about extreme labor exploitation and separating blacks from the white poor, much less maintaining the one-party dictatorship of the Democratic Party  but about maintaining White southern identity.

The filmmakers are entirely justified, in a postscript, in pointing to the appalling fact that since 1976, for every nine Americans executed by the state, one is exonerated and released from death rowa margin of error that should terrify us all.
A Siberian explorer near the tusks of a 23,000-year-old mammoth that rests in a block of ice 200 miles (320km) from the Russian city of Khatanga - Reuters

Russia is planning to use the advantages of warmer temperatures brought about by climate change, according to a document published by the government at the weekend.

The report notes increased opportunities for navigation and trade as ice melts in the Arctic, an area where Russia has also boosted its military presence in recent years.

The two-year, first stage plan lists other advantages including decreased spending on heating over the winter and the possibility of new areas available for farming.

But the 30-point paper also focuses on the risks of climate change and the dangers it poses to public health, animal environments and the Russian permafrost.

The consequences of (climate change) are having a significant and increasing impact on the economic and social development of the country, its conditions for life and peoples health, according to the document signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Russia is warming on average 2.5 times quicker than the rest of the planet, the report said, adding that the countrys industry, transport and agriculture would have to adapt to these changes.

The government said it would plan for crisis scenarios including evacuations in the case of natural disasters, and make sure climate change was taught in schools.

The publication comes after Moscow experienced its warmest December on record, with authorities dumping artificial snow in Red Square ahead of New Year celebrations.

Normally the capital spends millions of pounds a year and employs tens of thousands of people to keep roads and pavements free of snow.

President Vladimir Putin has questioned the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by human activity, saying at a recent press conference that nobody knows the origins of global climate change.

But he said that rising temperatures could have very serious consequences from Russia.

Moscow has formally adopted the Paris climate accord and criticised the US President Donald Trumps decision to withdraw from the deal
Margot Robbie has revealed she used Twitter to better understand the mindset of Republican women while researching her role in Bombshell.

The 29-year-old actress told E! News at the Golden Globes on Sunday that Twitter was a useful way to 'hear what young, conservative, millennial girls were thinking'.

In Bombshell, Margot plays Kayla Pospisil, a fictional employee at Fox News.

Research: Margot Robbie (pictured at the Golden Globes in LA on Sunday) used Twitter to better understand the mindset of Republican women while researching her role in Bombshell

Margot said: 'Kayla and my political point of views are different.'

But despite her views not aligning with those of her character, Margot said she did not feel frustrated during filming but instead welcomed the challenge.

'You have to come around to how they see the world. It takes a minute, and it clicks and then they suddenly feel like a real person,' she said.

Method actress: Margot, 29, told Ryan Seacrest of E! News that Twitter was a useful way to 'hear what young, conservative, millennial girls were thinking'

'Kayla and my political point of views are different': In Bombshell, Margot (left) plays Kayla Pospisil, a fictional employee at Fox News. Pictured with co-star Kate McKinnon (right)

Margot has previously admitted to creating a right wing Twitter account in order to more authentically embody her character.

'I didn't grow up watching Fox News, and I didn't grow up in the same place as her,' she told EW in December.

'I was struggling to understand that point of view for a while, and Twitter ended up being the most useful tool, because people are extremely vocal on Twitter.'

Eye-opening experience: Margot revealed that studying conservative women on Twitter helped her to understand them as 'real' people. Pictured at the Golden Globes

In Bombshell, Margot's character represents many of the Fox News staff who came forward to accuse the late CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment and misconduct.

'Some of the specifics you see in scenes with her are taken from real-life interactions those women experienced,' said the former Neighbours star.

Bombshell also stars Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron and John Lithgow.
The husband of Iran prisoner Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe today revealed he has asked for a meeting with Boris Johnson over her 'desperate' plight.

Richard Ratcliffe said the family was 'really worried' that the huge crisis over the US killing of Qassem Soleimani had made her situation worse.

The request came amid warnings that the drone strike that took out the notorious Iranian general was a 'hammer blow' to hopes of getting British prisoners released.

Tehran has vowed to avenge Soleimani, who died in Baghdad on Friday, and a senior commander has issued a chilling warning that UK assets could be hit.

The husband of Iran prisoner Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (pictured with daughter Gabriella in happier times) has asked for a meeting with Boris Johnson over her 'desperate' plight

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said yesterday that the case of Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian mother jailed in Iran on spurious spying charges in 2016, remained 'at the forefront of my mind'.

Mr Ratcliffe told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he feared his wife was going to be a 'chess piece' in the global standoff.

'Part of our campaigning has always been to call on Iran to uphold international law and to respect UN rulings in Nazanin's case and that gets a bit harder when international law is played fast and loose with by other parties,' he said.

'We have always been a chess piece in this game and this chess game has just changed radically.

'This is not a case where you can stand on the sidelines and just wait quietly. I think there needs to be a real clear clarity of priorities and I think we are asking to meet with Boris Johnson, with us and the other families (of British Iranian prisoners), as soon as possible to give that reassurance.'

Former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said those pushing for the release of political prisoners now face a 'much tougher climate'.

'I'm afraid what's happened with the assassination of Soleimani will be a hammer blow to those who are trying to get loved ones home,' he told Sky News.

'Everything Iran does now will be seen through the prism of its relationship with the West, with the US, of wanting to exact revenge and retribution...

'That of course makes it a much tougher climate if you are trying to negotiate something as sensitive as getting someone home.'

Boris Johnson is gathering key ministers for crisis talks today as the Iran crisis threatens to spiral out of control

Soleimani (left), the architect of Tehran's overseas clandestine and military operations as head of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, was killed on Friday in a US drone strike (President Trump right) on his convoy at Baghdad airport
Mi Dia From Scratch. | Photo: Scott K./Yelp

In search of a new favorite Mexican restaurant?

Hoodline crunched the numbers to find the most excellent sources for Mexican cuisine around Plano, using both Yelp data and our own secret sauce to produce a ranked list of where to fulfill your urges for guacamole, fajitas or tamales.

December is one of the top months of the year for consumer spending at restaurants across the Plano area, according to data on local business transactions from Womply, a provider of CRM for small business and business health for small businesses. Daily spending at Plano-area restaurants grew to $1,438 per business in December of last year, second only to March with an average of $1,441, and 7% higher than the average for the rest of the year.

Hoodline offers data-driven analysis of local happenings and trends across cities. Links included in this article may earn Hoodline a commission on clicks and transactions.

1. Casa Mama

Photo: Casa Mama/Yelp

First on the list is Casa Mama. Located at 1445 Los Rios Blvd., Suite 301, the Mexican and Tex-Mex cantina is the highest-rated Mexican restaurant in Plano, boasting 4.5 stars out of 277 reviews on Yelp.

2. Mexican Sugar

Photo: Mexican Sugar/Yelp

Next up is Mexican Sugar, situated at 7501 Lone Star Drive, Suite B150. With four stars out of 1,415 reviews on Yelp, the Mexican and Latin American bistro has proven to be a local favorite.

3. Rusty Taco

Photo: Jean M./Yelp

An outpost of the chain Rusty Taco, located at 8000 Coit, is another outstanding choice, with Yelpers giving the Tex-Mex joint, which is known for its tacos and margaritas, four stars out of 504 reviews.

4. Mi Dia From Scratch

Photo: Soannia T./Yelp

Last but not least is Mi Dia From Scratch, a Mexican and Tex-Mex dining establishment, with four stars out of 491 Yelp reviews. Head over to 3310 Dallas Parkway, Suite 105 to give it a go for yourself.

This story was created automatically using local business data, then reviewed and augmented by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
It was utter chaos outside the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Trauma Centre after 23 people injured in the violence at JNU landed up in the hospital emergency unit, one after another within a span of an hour and a half, beginning 5.08pm on Sunday.

Overwhelmed doctors say they couldnt cope with the influx. Initially, 14 victims arrived, in 2 JNU ambulances and private vehicles, who were rushed into the triage area to divide them as per seriousness of their injuries. As it was a Sunday, the hospital was working on a less than usual staff strength, and has to call in more people to lend a helping hand.

As per the hospital protocol, patients were segregated for three colour coded areas: red (serious looking injuries needing thorough investigation and admission), yellow (injuries needing evaluation and observation, and may not need admission) and green colour (minor injuries needing first aid). Two patients were put in red zone as they had sustained chest compression and head wounds.

Five of the victims who had suffered minor injuries were rushed to the green zone, the rest were assigned the yellow zone.

Within 30 minutes of the first patient having reached the hospital, VIP visitors started pouring, including Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Delhi Congress leaders Subhash Chopra and Arvinder Lovely also accompanied her.

As a result there was a huge crowd that had gathered outside the trauma centre emergency, and the guards had a tough time in controlling the rush of people within the hospital premises.

By 10.30pm, however, six victims had been discharged, five from the green zone and one from the yellow zone.

Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as masked miscreants armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.

At least 18 people, including JNU Students Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured and admitted to AIIMS as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours.

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DALLAS, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Trial law firm Sommerman, McCaffity, Quesada & Geisler is pleased to announce that Jody Rodenberg has earned a spot on the list of D Magazine's Best Lawyers Under 40 for 2020, an annual recognition of the top young attorneys in North Texas.

"I'm honored to be recognized among this very talented group, especially since it's based on nominations by our peers," said Ms. Rodenberg. "That really means a lot."

Along with peer nominations, selection to D Magazine's Best Lawyers Under 40 involves an extensive evaluation process including a blue-ribbon panel and final review by the magazine's editorial team.

Known for her work in business litigation, Ms. Rodenberg also handles employment and ERISA lawsuits, personal injury, wrongful death and medical malpractice cases. Thomson Reuters' Super Lawyers magazine has recognized her since 2017 as a Texas Rising Star for her business litigation expertise.

"Jody is a smart, talented attorney who strives for the best possible outcome for our clients," said firm name partner Andrew Sommerman. "She earned this recognition, and we are very proud of her."

Ms. Rodenberg is a member of the Dallas Trial Lawyers Association and the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers, which honored her with a special recognition award in 2017. She obtained her law degree from Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law, with honors, in 2011. She received her undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University.

Sommerman, McCaffity, Quesada & Geisler, LLP, has a distinguished reputation for knowledgeable and assertive legal representation in the areas of personal injury, wrongful death and commercial litigation. Since formation, the firm has handled more than 4,000 personal injury cases, negotiated thousands of settlements and taken hundreds of cases to trial. Visit https://www.textrial.com/.

Media Contact:

Sophia Reza

214-559-4630

[email protected]

SOURCE Sommerman, McCaffity, Quesada & Geisler

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Protesters shout slogans against the US during a demonstration following a US airstrike that killed top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in Iraq, in Islamabad on January 3. Photo: AFP

The US killed Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a commander of Iraq's Shia Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Units, in an early-morning drone strike on Friday. The US operation shook the Middle East. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened "a harsh retaliation" against the US. The US Embassy in Baghdad and the US State Department on Friday called on Americans in Iraq to "immediately leave" Iraq.

This round of escalating conflicts between the US and Iran dates back to December 27, 2019 when a rocket attack hit a US base in northern Iraq, killing an American contractor and wounding four American servicemen. Two days later, the US bombed Kata'ib Hezbollah, an Iraqi Shia armed group, killing 25 members of the militia, and accused Iran of being behind the rocket attack. Then the US Embassy in Iraq was besieged on December 31, which Washington once again believed Iran should be "held fully responsible" for. Soleimani's removal is the latest escalation of tensions.

More information is needed to understand the situation. The US overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein through war in 2003, but the Iraqi situation didn't develop as the US expected. The country's politics has had more sectarian and tribal features. Shias account for more than 60 percent of Iraq's population, which provides Tehran with much room for activities in Iraq. For some forces in Iran and Iraq, Soleimani's trip to Baghdad was a normal exchange and they regarded the US action against him as "assassination" and an "international terrorist act."

The US previously designated the Quds Force as a foreign terrorist organization. The US and Iran accuse each other of terrorism and engage in tit-for-tat confrontations. Is this what Washington wants?

The US has bigger power and strength. It easily killed an important Iranian official. But how much hatred will be aroused among Shia Muslims by Soleimani's death? Will the American personnel in the Middle East become safer?

One certain thing is that the US action will cause much more anger and hostility than fear against the US in Iran and areas that support Iran. Since the war in Afghanistan, the US has killed many senior officials and even leaders of its deemed rivals. With the high price it paid, did Washington successfully deter those in the Middle East who hate the US? The answer is apparently no. Anti-US forces have been growing all the time.

From the US assisting Israelis in fighting and negotiating with Arabs, to its support for the "Arab Spring" to helping Israel and Sunni regimes confront Shia regimes, the US has always had enemies in the Middle East.

Washington has underestimated the serious political consequences of killing Soleimani. The warning of "a harsh retaliation" by Khamenei is more than just a threat, but represents the sentiment and voice of Shia society in the Middle East. Even if the Iranian government doesn't retaliate, how about some regional forces?

The US is too powerful. Facing a challenge, it tends to believe the use of force is the best choice. But the use of force can only lead to death. It cannot transform people's will.

It's fair to say the US Middle East policy is a failure. Washington today cares more about how to woo American voters to support the current government. It has little interest in working out a long-term solution to the Middle East problem, but is more willing to conduct short-term operations.

Disclaimer: This article is originally published on globaltimes.cn. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
Banerjee said that she felt ashamed to say anything in view of how dangerously an attack was carried out on democracy in a planted way.

Kolkata: Denouncing the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee branded the brazen attack on JNU students and faculty as an absolute fascist surgical strike by the BJP.

The miscreants of the BJP were sent on the one hand, while the police was made inactive on the other. What will the police do? They got instructions from the top to remain mute spectators and to let the BJP do whatever they want. This is absolutely wrong. This is a fascist surgical strike absolutely, Ms Banerjee alleged in South 24 Parganas on Monday.

Slamming the BJP, she claimed, We have never seen this type of thing. Everywhere it is going on now. They (BJP) are talking of each state but see what is happening in Lucknow and Moradabad. They are doing what they want. In democracy one government goes out of power while another comes.

The Trinamul Congress supremo said, But no one has the right that he can do anything just because he has the majority. We have to work according to the Constitution when in power. I appeal the student community to be together and fight together. Let us fight the battle together against this government.

Recalling early years of her political life, she observed, I started my political career as a student leader and student worker. So I know student politics very well. Nowadays, I have seen how they (BJP) are torturing students and professors too. It is not only disturbing for me but also for all.

Ms Banerjee said that she felt ashamed to say anything in view of how dangerously an attack was carried out on democracy in a planted way.

If anyone says anything against them, he is called a Pakistani and an enemy of the state. Such things never happened in Hindustan, she said.

She argued, The difference between Hindustan and Pakistan is that Paki-stan is not a democratic country. But we can proudly call our Hindustan is a democratic country.
A seven-year-old boy with a rare inoperable brain tumor has been in rapidly declining health since he returned home in hospice care.

Trenton O'Brien, of East Haven, Connecticut, was sent home from the hospital on Christmas Eve after his parents learned there were no more treatments worth trying.

His mother, Marissa, captured a photo of her son lying on the couch next to his father, Tim, as the pair watch television together for what may be their last holiday season as a family.

In June 2019, Trenton was diagnosed with a brain tumor known as Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG).

Despite treatment, including radiation, the mass continued to grow and began to press on his spinal cord, causing the right side of his body to become completely paralyzed.

Trenton O'Brien, seven, of East Haven, Connecticut, was diagnosed with a tumor known as Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG) in June 2019. Pictured: Trenton, left, with his father in December 2019

DIPGs are rare and inoperable brain tumors with a two-year survival rate of 10 percent. Trenton (left and right) began radiation in June in an attempt to shrink the tumor

DIPG is a very rare and highly aggressive form of cancer typically found in children between ages five and nine.

Only between 200 and 300 children in the US are diagnosed each year.

This type of tumor is located at the base of the brain and the top of the spine, but it is unknown what causes them.

The tumor presses on the area of the brain called the pons, which is responsible for a number of critical bodily functions such as breathing, sleeping and blood pressure.

Over time, the tumor affects heartbeat, breathing, swallowing, eyesight and balance.

Some of the first symptoms of the tumor are problems with eye movement, facial weakness, difficulty walking, strange limb movements and problems with balance.

Only 10 percent of children with DIPG survive for two years following their diagnosis, and less than one percent survive for five years.

According to a GoFundMe page, Trenton's first round of treatment was seven days a week of pinpoint radiation therapy for five weeks.

A mask was made of his face so that a 3-D map could be created and small, specific areas of the brain could be targeted with concentrated levels of radiation.

By mid-August, Trenton's right eye was unable to move to the right, he'd begun experiencing facial paralysis and he was having trouble walking without assistance.

After radiation for seven days a week for five weeks, doctors said the treatment had only slowed the tumor's growth. Pictured: Trenton, left, with his parents, Tim and Marissa

The family tried to final a clinical trial for Trenton to enroll in, but were unsuccessful. Pictured: Trenton, left, with his father on Christmas Day

Trenton (left and right, with his father) was in the hospital for five days in December after his vitals began fluctuating, and doctors said they could do no more. He was released home, in hospice care, on Christmas Eve and his parents say he is 'declining rapidly'

However, in September, scans revealed the radiation had not shrunk the tumor, but merely slowed its growth.

In December, Trenton went to the hospital for a regular check-up, where doctors discovered his vitals were wildly fluctuating.

'In the matter of 12 hours...he went from being able to feed himself and sit up without help and walk with minimal assistance to having total right sided paralysis,' the GoFundMe page read.

After five days in the hospital, doctors said there wasn't much more they could do.

Trenton was discharged from the hospital and was allowed to return home on Christmas Eve, but has been in hospice

'The tumor grew that fast. It's pushing down on his spinal cord and causing cerebral spinal fluid to building up and there's nowhere for it to go,' according to the GoFundMe page.

'Unfortunately Trenton is declining rapidly.'

A GoFundMe page has been set up to help cover the cost of medical expenses. As of Monday morning, $41,428 has been raised out of a $50,000 goal.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 6, ARMENPRESS. Armenia has once again been named a hottest travel destination for 2020, this time by the London-based Evening Standard newspapers trip advisor Suzannah Ramsdale.

The newspaper called Yerevan city as The Culture Hit. History buffs will get their fix, and some, in Armenias capital. Currently a relatively undiscovered corner of the world for Brits, Yerevan has museums, Soviet-era architecture and medieval churches aplenty, Evening Standard wrote about the Armenian capital. As for destinations outside Yerevan, the newspaper mentioned the famous Geghard monastery.

Geghard, a Unesco World Heritage Site, is a must. A labyrinthine monastery, carved into the mountains, dating back to the Fourth century.

When youre cultured-out, make the most of the lively, ever-evolving foodie scene. Try Armenian dolma  minced meat wrapped in vine leaves  or head to the Yerevan Brandy Company distillery to sample Winston Churchills favourite brandy, Ararat. Tastings are pleasingly generous. Luxury travel agent Black Tomato has added a tour of Yerevan to its 2020 offerings. Summer is the best time to visit, says the companys co-founder Tom Marchant, when locals flock to the so-called Pink City to make the most of its outdoor cafes and gathering in Republic Square to literally soak in its fountains and lakes.

Previously many other magazines and newspapers had named Armenia as a top trending tourism hotspot for 2020.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (fourth from left) leads a prayer (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP/PA)

Irans supreme leader has prayed over the remains of a top general killed in a US air strike in Baghdad, an attack that has drastically raised tensions between Tehran and Washington.

The targeted killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani already has seen his replacement vow to take revenge.

Additionally, Tehran has abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in response to the slaying while in Iraq the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil.

The developments could bring Iran closer to building an atomic bomb, set off a proxy or military attack launched by Tehran against the US and enable the Islamic State group to stage a comeback in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.

Expand Close Mourners attend the funeral ceremony for general Qassem Soleimani (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP/PA) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Mourners attend the funeral ceremony for general Qassem Soleimani (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP/PA)

Adding to the tensions, President Donald Trump threatened to demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iraq or impose sanctions like theyve never seen before if it goes through with expelling US troops.

Soleimanis daughter Zeinab directly threatened an attack on the US military in the Mid East while speaking to a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Tehran that stretched as far as the eye could see.

The families of the American soldiers in western Asia  will spend their days waiting for the death of their children, she said to cheers.

Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself prayed over the caskets of Soleimani and others slain in the attack.

Expand Close Hundreds of thousands of people attended the funeral (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP/PA) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Hundreds of thousands of people attended the funeral (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP/PA)

Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani, wept at one point during the traditional Muslim prayers for the dead. The crowd wailed.

Soleimanis successor Esmail Ghaani stood near Khameneis side, as did Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other top leaders in the Islamic Republic.

While Iran recently faced nationwide protests over government-set petrol prices that reportedly killed over 300 people, Soleimanis mass processionals has seen politicians and leaders across the Islamic Republics political spectrum take part, temporarily silencing that anger.

Ghaani made his own threat in an interview with Iranian state television aired on Monday. God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken, he said.

Ghaani, a longtime Soleimani deputy, has now taken over as the head of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, an expeditionary arm of the paramilitary organization answerable only to Khamenei.
Key Companies Covered in Cement Market Research Report are CEMEX, HeidelbergCement, Italcementi, InterCement, LafargeHolcim, CRH plc, The Siam Cement Group, Titan Cement Company S.A, Aditya Birla Ultratech, Votorantim Cimentos, Buzzi Unicem S.p.A., Mitsubishi Cement Corporation, and more

Cement Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast, 2014-2026

PUNE, India, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The global Cement Market size is projected to reach USD 463.0 billion by 2026. According to a report by Fortune Business Insights, titled "Cement Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By Type (Portland, Blended, and Others), By Application (Residential, and Non-Residential), and Regional Forecast 2019-2026," the market was worth USD 312.5 billion in 2018. Driven by the increasing product demand across the world, the market will exhibit a CAGR of 5.2% during the forecast period, 2019-2026.

Recent Advances in Manufacturing Techniques to Aid Growth

The uses of cement have dramatically risen in the past two decades. The need for improved road quality has drawn massive investments in the manufacturing of high-quality cement. The increasing investments have successfully yielded high-grade products. The development of inter-country highways, coupled with contributions from government and tourism departments have all contributed to the growing demand for cement across the world.

The increasing uses and subsequently rising demand for the product will bode well for the global Cement Market in the coming years. Advances in manufacturing techniques, coupled with the use of improved ingredients for manufacturing will open up a huge potential for the companies operating in the market. Moreover, the massive potential will attract several market entrants in the forthcoming years. The market has been analyzed for the forecasted period of 2019-2026.

To Gain More Insights into the Cement Market with Detailed Table of Content and Figures, Click Here: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/cement-market-101825

List of the companies that are profiled in the Cement Market report includes;

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CEMEX

HeidelbergCement

Italcementi

InterCement

LafargeHolcim

CRH plc

The Siam Cement Group

Titan Cement Company S.A.

Aditya Birla Ultratech

Votorantim Cimentos

Buzzi Unicem S.p.A.

Mitsubishi Cement Corporation

Argos USA Corporation

Corporation CNBM International Corporation

Taiheiyo Cement Corporation

Drake Cement LLC

Forecast Values Have Been Evaluated Through Top-notch Research Methods

The competitive landscape of the global Cement Market has been discussed in detail. The report highlights the leading companies of recent years and discusses the latest strategies adopted by these companies. In addition to growth stimulators, the report discusses a few of the factors that have restrained market growth. Forecast values have been provided for the market for the period of 2019-2026. Additionally, the report identifies areas that have witnessed the highest demand and applications for the product in recent years. Besides this, a few of the leading products, major companies, and major industry developments of recent times have been highlighted in this report.

Company Mergers Dominate the List of Industry Developments

The report encompasses several factors that have contributed to the growth of the market in recent years. With a bid to establishing a stronghold in the market, companies are looking to adopt newer strategies. Among all strategies, it has been observed that company collaborations and acquisitions are most successful strategy and have helped SMEs as well as large businesses. A few of the leading mergers and acquisitions have been highlighted in the report, a couple of which have been listed below.

January 2019: Hanson Holdings Australia completed the acquisition of Alex Fraser Group. Hanson is a subsidiary of Heidelberg Cement, a leading manufacturer of cement as well as other construction material. Through this acquisition, the company plans to improve its existing portfolio and subsequently establish a wide consumer base.

June 2017: UltraTech Cement completed the acquisition of cement plants of JP Associated Ltd. This will help increase the yearly manufacturing capacity of UltraTech to 93 million tonnes.

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These company mergers will not only help them generate sufficient revenues, but they will bode well for the overall market in the coming years. These factors will certainly add to the global market value. Along with mergers and acquisitions, the report provides an analysis of a few of the other factors that have added to the growth of the market in recent years. Additionally, the report includes a few of the factors that have restricted market growth.

The Asia Pacific accounted for the Highest Market Share; Increasing Product Demand in Developing Nations to Aid Growth

The report analyses the ongoing market trends across fiver major regions, including North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. The performance of regional markets has been discussed in detail. The demand for the product is the highest in developing as well as developed countries such as India and Japan. The increasing construction and infrastructure development activities will create several growth opportunities. Besides Asia Pacific, North America will witness considerable growth in the coming years, driven by the high product demand across diverse industries. As of 2018, the market in North America was worth USD 12.3 billion and this value is likely to increase further in the coming years.

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Table of Content:

Introduction

Research Scope



Market Segmentation



Research Methodology



Definitions and Assumptions

Executive Summary

Market Dynamics

Market Drivers



Market Restraints



Market Opportunities

The Global Cement Market Key Insights

Key Emerging Trends  For Major Countries



Key Developments: Mergers, Acquisition, Partnership, etc.



Latest Technological Advancement



Insights on Regulatory Scenario



Porters Five Forces Analysis

Market Key Insights by Segments

Key Findings / Summary



Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Type



Portland





Blended





Others



Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Application



Residential





Non-Residential



Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Region



North America





Europe





Asia pacific

pacific



Latin America





Middle East & Africa

TOC Continued!

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Have a Look at Related Insights in (Chemicals and Materials Industry) Research

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Calcium Formate Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By Type (Feed Grade, Industrial Grade), By Application (Feed, Construction, Leather, Chemical, and Others), and Regional Forecast, 2019-2026

Dolomite Powder Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By Type (Calcium Dolomite, and Magnesia Dolomite), By Application (Steel-making, Cement Industry, Agriculture, Glass, Ceramic, Rubber, and Others), and Regional Forecast, 2019-2026

Chromium Oxide Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By Type (Pigment Grade, Metallurgical Grade, Refractory Grade, Chemical Grade), By Application (Paints & Coatings, Ceramic, Metallurgy, Rubber, Others), and Regional Forecast, 2019-2026

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Investment into the Australian student accommodation market has reached record levels in 2019, according to the latest report from Savills Research.

The study ranks the main global student accommodation markets according to their attractiveness to investors, with Australia topping the inaugural index. It looks at a range of factors including demographics, migration, affordability, local legislation, delivery of accommodation, and University rankings and student numbers.

While much of the developed world ages, Australias most urbanised cities are forecast to remain youthful, underpinning demand for student accommodation.

Savills 2019 Global Living Report identifies six Australian capital cities which feature within the top 100 cities around the world which in ten years time will be the most youthful (the largest share of people aged 15-39).

Forecast youthfulness is shaping investment into Australias student accommodation sector, with demographic change shifting the profile of the student accommodation investor (figure 1).

Improving Higher Education standards across the globe is broadening choice and making competition for international students greater than ever. Although University tuition fees are a drag on Australias ranking, its institutions have a strong international standing and remain a top destination for foreign students.

The US and the UK still remain by far the top two countries globally for universities within the top 400, with 75 and 45 respectively in 2020, followed by Germany (23) and Australia (22).

Australias post-study work visa provides a huge incentive for many people to consider studying in Australia. Between 2012 and 2017 the total number of students in Higher Education has increased by 11% to exceed 220 million.

The report said, "many major student markets, including the UK and US, have seen the size of their university-aged populations decline over the same period. Australia has benefited greatly from its geographic proximity to major Asian source markets such as China, India, Vietnam and Malaysia."

"The number of international students enrolled in Higher Education in Australia now accounts for around a third of total students. The US remains the largest market for international students, host to one million international students (but only 5% by share of total students)."

"The UK is the second largest market for international students by number with 460,000, closely followed by Australia, host to 430,000. Together, these three countries account for a third of all globally mobile students, according to UNESCO. Having addressed the above mentioned factors, low levels of PBSA provision, transparency around investment, and political, social and economic stability pushes Australia to the top of the investability ranking (figure 3)."

"Until early 2019, a lack of available operational assets to purchase has held the sector back from an investment, liquidity and access perspective. However, with over 24,240 student accommodation beds completed since January 2017 and a further 4,170 expected to be completed by the end of 2020, we expect transaction volumes to continue tracking upward," the report concluded.
Kyiv and Washington continue discussions about what kind of weapons Ukraine needs, but in the future the United States will supply the systems that were mentioned earlier, said William Taylor, former Charge d'Affaires a.i. in Kyiv.

Taylor said in an exclusive interview with Television News Service (TSN) that the Ukrainian authorities, the Ukrainian Minister of Defense and his team were working closely with people at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv to get an answer to this question. He said that America would like to extend the dialogue with the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and Chief of the General Staff, General Khomchak, about which specific systems Ukraine needs, specifying that such kind of discussions are ongoing.

He noted that the U.S. Congress signed up for specific weapons systems.

The diplomat said that those weapons had already been discussed. Those are anti-ship missiles, drones, radio communication equipment, which will be received. He added that this was an important component for Ukraine to be able to defend itself against Russians.
RAMALLAH, West Bank  Palestinian feminists are preparing to launch a broad national coalition in cooperation with human rights institutions and some political parties, in response to recent tribal threats against them.

Tribal leaders in the city of Hebron apparently were fired up after Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree last month banning child marriage. The decree raises the minimum age for marriage to 18 for both genders; previously, females had to be only 15 and males, 16.

Abbas' order falls in line with the PA's participation in the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Now, some clans are calling for a rejection of all things feminist and demanding that the PA withdraw from the treaty.

Palestine joined CEDAW in 2014, but Abbas decree heralded the PA's actual implementation of the agreement. Some Hebron clans issued a statement Dec. 21 rejecting both the decree and the treaty and threatening to shut down all feminist institutions. They warned media outlets against covering news related to feminists groups and warned judges against abiding by Abbas decree. They even called for the cancellation of any rental agreements with feminist groups, accusing complicit landlords of being partners in "crime."

Palestinian tribes outside Hebron have issued no official stance on the matter.

Abdel Wahab Ghaith, a tribal dispute reconciliation chief in Hebron, told Al-Monitor the Hebron clans and citizens stand against CEDAW because it violates Sharia. This agreement cannot [continue], and we stand publicly against the suspicious feminist groups that call for the implementation of CEDAW," he said.

Ghaith affirmed that the tribes have submitted their position to Hebron Gov. Jibreen al-Bakri "to clarify their rejection of the treaty. He added, We will wait for the PAs position to see the extent of its responsiveness to the demands of the Palestinian people."

The PA position is nebulous, however. The Cabinet confirmed at its Dec. 23 meeting that it upholds the principles and values of Islam and will never contradict them. But PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat said in a statement Dec. 24 that joining CEDAW was a national achievement.

"The Palestinian people who struggle to fulfill their inalienable right to self-determination and freedom cannot deny Palestinian women their right to freedom and dignity," he said.

But Ghaith begged to differ. Feminist associations are a minority, and all Hebron rejects CEDAW. The meeting held a few days ago was attended by 10,000 people, and no one objected to the rejection of the [CEDAW] agreement," he said.

The clans' statement raised some controversy because of its inflammatory wording.

Our statement may have been very strong-worded, but this is not what's important. What's important is our position on CEDAW, which is that it contradicts Sharia, Elder Mukhtar Zahdeh told Al-Monitor.

Many people believe that Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), a very popular Islamist political party in Hebron, was behind the tribes' statement. Hizb ut-Tahrir wants to establish a global Islamic caliphate  though it does not support the Islamic State (IS)  and is banned in many countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia and China.

Another Hebron clan said Dec. 23 that the statement didn't represent all dignitaries and clans. In fact, al-Tamimi clan, which hosted the tribes meeting, said Hizb ut-Tahrir had prepared the statement before the meeting even took place, and no one signed it.

The tribes did agree on rejecting CEDAW, but not the parts of the statement that contained "threats and intimidation and calls for chaos  and civil disobedience," Hijazi al-Tamimi told the local Quds Network.

Tamimi was referring to warning judges against abiding by the decision to raise the minimum age for marriage and the threats to close feminist associations and institutions.

The statement reflects the position of a certain party, which is Hizb ut-Tahrir. It does not reflect the position of all the tribes, he added.

Despite the opposition, Mahmoud al-Habbash, an Abbas adviser and top Sharia judge, issued the decision to implement the marriage rule.

Habbash told Al-Monitor, The Palestinian Constitution expressly states that Islamic Sharia is the primary source of legislation and that everything must be in harmony therewith. There is also a decision by the Constitutional Court whereby international agreements prevail over local laws, provided these are consistent with the Palestinian religious and cultural legacy.

Former Minister of Social Affairs Magda al-Masry told Al-Monitor, The attack on CEDAW is an attack on women's rights, democracy, equality and social justice. This attack stems from tribal concerns over being neutralized and stripped of their powers.

Masry was referring to the role tribes play in resolving major disputes and crimes such as murder through the tribal judiciary that was employed before the PA's rise to power under the 1993 Oslo Accord.

She said all feminist organizations adhere to CEDAW and explained that feminist groups, coalitions and unions have started working to form a national coalition to defend women's rights in partnership with factions, political parties and human rights institutions.

Asked about the government's stance on the tribal statement, Masry said, We call on the government to play its role, break its silence, preserve civil peace and take action against the [tribal] statement, which is a threat to civil peace.

She added, The statement used the language of terrorism. It issued threats and incited violence against women.  This is why we call on the government and Attorney General Akram al-Khatib to prosecute tribes." The tribes' threat to close feminist institutions "is not within their competence and would be illegal."
One U.S. military service member and two American contractors were killed in an attack by Somalias al-Shabab militant group. The predawn attack targeted an airstrip located on Kenyas coast. Two other American contractors were wounded in the attack on a military base used by both U.S. and Kenyan forces near the border with Somalia.

The wounded Americans are currently in stable condition and being evacuated, U.S. Africa Command said in a statement. Five militants were killed, according to the Kenyan military. Witnesses said the attack by the al-Qaida-linked group lasted around four hours.

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The attack on Manda Bay Airfield in Lamu county marked al-Shababs first attack against U.S. forces in Kenya, notes the Associated Press. Although it remains unclear how the attack unfolded, pictures of the aftermath indicated that al-Shabab was able to detonate explosives where U.S. military equipment such as helicopters and other aircraft would have been stationed, reports the Washington Post. Citing a report from Kenyan police, Reuters says the attackers destroyed two planes, two U.S. helicopters and multiple American military vehicles during their assault.

The attack came a little more than week since a truck bomb in Somalias capital killed at least 79 people.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prays near the coffins of Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran January 6, 2020. Official Khamenei website/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS

Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani, the newly appointed commander of the country's Quds Force Official Khamenei website/Handout via REUTERS

People attend a funeral procession for Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis Official Khamenei website/Handout via REUTERS

Zeinab Soleimani, daughter of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani speaking during his funeral procession at Tehran University (Photo by - / various sources / AFP)

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani and Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani, the newly appointed commander of the country's Quds Force, pray near the coffins of Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani Official Khamenei website/Handout via REUTERS

Iranian people carry pictures of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a funeral for Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran January 6, 2020. Official Khamenei website/Handout via REUTERS

Iran's supreme leader wept in grief with hundreds of thousands of mourners thronging Tehran's streets on Monday for the funeral of military commander Qassem Soleimani, killed by a US drone on the orders of US President Donald Trump.

As the coffins of General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who also died in Friday's attack in Baghdad, were passed over the heads of mourners, Soleimani's successor vowed to expel US forces from the region in revenge.

The killing of the 62-year-old Soleimani, architect of Iran's drive to extend its influence across the Middle East, has stoked concern around the world that a broader regional conflict could erupt.

Trump has listed 52 Iranian targets, including cultural sites, that could be hit if Iran retaliates with attacks on Americans or US assets, although US officials sought to play down the president's reference to cultural targets.

Expand Close In this image taken from video, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, left, openly weeps as he leads a prayer over the coffin of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike on Friday, at the Tehran University campus, in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. (Iran Press TV via AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp In this image taken from video, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, left, openly weeps as he leads a prayer over the coffin of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike on Friday, at the Tehran University campus, in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. (Iran Press TV via AP)

General Esmail Ghaani, Soleimani's successor as commander of the Quds Force, the elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards charged with overseas operations, promised to "continue martyr Soleimani's cause as firmly as before with the help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to rid the region of America.

"God the Almighty has promised to take martyr Soleimani's revenge," he told state television. "Certainly, actions will be taken."

Other political and military leaders have made similar, unspecific threats. Iran, which lies at the mouth of the key Gulf oil shipping route, has a range of proxy forces in the region through which it could act.

The crowd in Tehran, which state media said numbered in the millions, recalled the masses that gathered in 1989 for the funeral of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Soleimani was a national hero in Iran - even to many who do not consider themselves supporters of Iran's clerical rulers.

Aerial footage showed people, many clad in black, packing thoroughfares and side streets and chanting "Death to America!" - a welcome show of national unity for Tehran after anti-government protests in November in which many demonstrators were killed.

Iran's demand for US forces to withdraw from the region gained traction on Sunday when Iraq's parliament passed a resolution calling for all foreign troops to leave the country.

Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Abdel Abdul Mahdi told the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad on Monday that both nations needed implement the resolution, the premier's office said in a statement. It did not give a timeline.

The United States has about 5,000 troops in Iraq.

Soleimani, widely seen as Iran's second most powerful figure behind Khamenei, built a network of proxy militia that formed a crescent of influence - and a direct challenge to the United States and its regional allies led by Saudi Arabia - stretching from Lebanon through Syria and Iraq to Iran. Outside the crescent, Iran nurtured allied Palestinian and Yemeni groups.

He notably mobilised Shi'ite Muslim militia forces in Iraq that helped to crush Islamic State, the Sunni militant group that had seized control of swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

Washington, however, blames Soleimani for attacks on US forces and their allies.

Prayers at Soleimani's funeral in Tehran, which moves to the general's southern home city of Kerman on Tuesday, were led by Khamenei, who wept as he spoke.

His daughter Zeinab Soleimani told mourners the United States would face a "dark day" for her father's death.

Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, on his first trip to Iran since taking up his role in 2017, said "resistance against America" would continue.

Expand Close Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prays near the coffins of Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran January 6, 2020. Official Khamenei website/Handout via REUTERS / Facebook

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Whatsapp Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prays near the coffins of Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Tehran, Iran January 6, 2020. Official Khamenei website/Handout via REUTERS

Iran stoked tensions on Sunday by dropping all limitations on its uranium enrichment - another step back from commitments under a landmark deal with major powers in 2015 to curtail its nuclear programme that Trump abandoned in 2018.

In response, European signatories may launch a dispute resolution process against Iran this week that could lead to a renewal of the United Nations sanctions that were lifted as part of the deal, European diplomats said on Monday.

Diplomats said France, Britain and Germany could make a decision ahead of an EU foreign ministers meeting on Friday that would assess whether there were any ways to salvage the deal.

After quitting the deal, the United States imposed new sanctions on Iran, saying it wanted to halt Iranian oil exports, the main source of government revenues. Iran's economy has been in freefall as the currency has plunged.

Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Monday that he was still confident he could renegotiate a new nuclear agreement "if Iran wants to start behaving like a normal country".

Tehran has said Washington must return to the existing nuclear pact and lift sanctions before any talks can take place.

Trump stood by remarks that cultural sites were potential targets, despite criticism from US politicians that this amounted to a threat to commit war crimes.

"They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way," Trump said.

Democratic critics of the Republican president have said Trump was reckless in authorising the strike. Republicans in the US Congress have generally backed his move

Trump also threatened sanctions against Iraq and said Baghdad would have to pay Washington for an air base in Iraq if US troops were required to leave.

It was not clear if Washington had advised its allies of its plans before killing Soleimani. Britain, which also has troops in Iraq, said it understood why the United States had acted but called for a de-escalation to avoid war.
A 30-year-old housewife, Hauwa Lawal, has been arrested by the police in Kano state for allegedly pushing her co-wife Zuwaira Sani, 35 and her 18-month-old son into a well.

According to the Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Abdullahi Haruna, while speaking in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday, said the police received a report on Friday that Lawal of Rurum village in Rano Local Government Area of the state, had pushed her co-wife and baby into a well.

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The suspect had a misunderstanding with the victim in the process they started fighting in the house. The suspect pushed her rival along with her 18-month-old son, Mustafa Gambo, whom she was backing into a well situated in their house.

He said the Commissioner of Police in the state, Mr Habu Sani-Ahmadu, ordered the tracking down and arrest of the fleeing suspect within 24 hours. Operation Puff-Adder, swung into action and arrested the suspect on Saturday at about 1:17 a.m.

The victims were removed from the well and were rushed to Rano Hospital where Sani was confirmed dead, while her son is alive and has been discharged from the hospital. The suspect confessed to the crime, the PPRO said.

Once investigation is completed the suspect would be charged to court, Haruna said.
As 2019 ends, multiple actors continue to target Somalia media and its professionals through continued attacks, arbitrary arrests, death threats, and obstruction of access to information  all representing a vital constitutional right that citizens were meant to enjoy. Instead, authorities continued to order arbitrary arrests and suspensions based on perceived criticisms, blocked independent news websites and introduced an anti-press bill currently before the Upper House of the Federal Parliament.

While the number of journalists killed in Somalia was considerably less than previous years , the level of arbitrary arrests, attacks and suspensions remained high across Somalia. Local and Federal authorities continue to enjoy total impunity and powers to suppress Somali journalists whether in Mogadishu, Kismayo, Hargeisa or Garowe  whenever journalists publish or broadcast perceived criticism towards them.

According to interviews with journalists, officials routinely ordered the detention of journalists as an intimidation exercise to quell critical stories. This trend may explain why the majority of journalist detentions took place without any charges presented across Somalia in 2019.

Multiple elections took place across Somalia in 2019 and end of 2018, and subsequent attacks against the press covering these elections also took place. The politically sensitive elections could partially explain the high level of state-led attacks on the press in 2019 with 81 journalists physically assaulted while on duty.

Authorities also arrested 53 journalists during the year. Somaliland arrested 18 journalists with two remaining incarcerated by end year. Puntland arrested five journalists. Police in Puntland have been extremely aggressive against the media and carried out four raids on independent media houses for covering investigative news reports deemed critical to the state.

Three journalists were wounded, two of them with gun shots, during the year. The most serious incident took place in Lasanod where a Somaliland police officer shot and injured a TV journalist during a violent arrest while a member of Hirshabelle Parliament cruelly assaulted and injured another TV journalist in Beledweyne.

Key red lines for coverage remain across the country. Somali police in the countrys capital, Mogadishu, have blocked journalists covering bombing sites and other security incidents more than 15 times during the year. Other areas such as reporting on human rights abuses, especially those perpetrated by state actors, remains another no-go area for the Somali press. Online expression is further curbed after state actors repeatedly targeted and harassed journalists on the internet for any critical personal social media posts.

Across Somalia authorities shuttered, temporarily suspended or raided seven media houses including five broadcasters and one newspaper, in addition to two news websites blocked. The main perpetrator for these closures is Somaliland, seconded by Puntland and Hirshabelle states. By end year, the local, independent City FM remained closed in Jowhar Targeted killings against journalists and media staff has significantly declined in 2019 compared to the previous years . So far two journalists died in a hotel attack in the southern coastal town of Kismayo by al-Shabaab militants. While an improvement over previous years, federal and regional authorities have done little to curb impunity towards killed journalists in Somalia. The country maintains the ignominious world title for impunity towards killed journalists for the fifth year in a row.

The barrage of attacks against the press, predominantly perpetrated by state actors, was one key reason the Somali Journalist Syndicate (SJS) was formed in May 2019. Identifying a dearth in effective associations that holistically protect the Somali press, professional Somali journalists set up SJS to defend the rights of working journalists and promote press freedom. Through advocacy, legal aid and capacity building, SJS is increasing in participation by journalists across Somalia on a daily basis. During the last part of 2019, SJS trained 70 journalists- 40% women journalists- with skills ranging from safety, documentary production as well as editorial planning for good journalism.

Abdalle Ahmed Mumin,

Secretary General of Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 17:37:55|Editor: Yurou

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ISLAMABAD, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had telephone conversations with his counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey on Sunday, discussing the emerging situation in the Middle East after a U.S. airstrike killed an Iranian commander, according to the country's Foreign Ministry.

Highlighting Pakistan's "deep concern" over the recent developments, Qureshi underscored the imperative of avoidance of conflict, exercise of maximum restraint, and de-escalation of tensions, the ministry said in a statement.

"He (Qureshi) renewed the call on all parties concerned to abide by the UN Charter and principles of international law to settle differences through peaceful means," a foreign ministry statement said.

Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa emphasized during his telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday that "maximum restraint and constructive engagement by all concerned to de-escalate" the situation in the broader interest of peace and stability are needed, according to the Pakistani army.
Everything was going according to plan with Dr. Kristen Kanns third pregnancy.

As the associate program director of emergency medicine residency at Brooke Army Medical Center, Kann was well equipped to identify signs that something was amiss with the baby. So was her husband, Dr. Will Kann, medical director of the emergency department at Metropolitan Methodist Hospital.

In late May, when she was 37 weeks along, Kristen went in for a midfternoon appointment. All was well with the baby.

The couple went shopping for a minivan later that afternoon, and in the early evening, it was time for Kristen to count the babys kicks. She felt nothing. Over the next hour, she couldnt identify any movement, even after listening with her stethoscope.

Hours later, at BAMC, their worst fears were confirmed. Inexplicably, at some point over those few hours, the baby had died.

Devastated, the Kanns figured that they would have a limited amount of time to say goodbye to their daughter  hours, at most.

On ExpressNews.com: Jabari Gray, San Antonio baby born without skin, finally goes home

To their surprise, the hospital told them there was a way to spend as much time as they needed with Penny.

About a year earlier, another mother who had lost an infant had donated a CuddleCot, a cooling device that, when placed in a cradle, can preserve the babys body for days.

The Kanns took full advantage of the opportunity.

Over the next three days, they sequestered themselves in a room at the hospital. They brought their two young sons, spending time as a family and taking turns holding the baby. Friends, and later family members who flew in from out of town, sat and cried with them. A professional photographer took pictures.

For a little while, things almost felt normal.

You only get one chance to spend any time with this child, said Will Kann, 36. What legacy is she going to have other than what happens in this hospital room?

On the last day, they took Penny to a courtyard. Outside, with the sun on her face, their daughter looked completely different, her father said.

On ExpressNews.com: After a toddler fell into a septic tank, a team in San Antonio raced to save her life

For Kristen Kann, 35, those days felt like a gift. It was a chance to give their daughter a story, even if it was a short one. They were allowed the space to express their feelings about their new reality.

We were given the time to just process, which was huge, she said. We were never made to feel weird, or strange.

After they went home, the Kanns realized that other parents in their position would deserve the same. They decided to buy and donate one device themselves. But after fundraising among friends, family and strangers, they had enough money to purchase 10 CuddleCots for hospitals in the San Antonio area and even some overseas, in light of their military background.

Its amazing that its not a standard piece of equipment in hospitals, Will Kann said.

A few days before Thanksgiving, the couple donated a CuddleCot to North Central Baptist Hospital, which plans to incorporate it into a butterfly room  a dedicated space for parents who are grieving the loss of a baby or considering end-of-life options.

The room is being created with the help of the Gus Owen Stephens Foundation, a San Antonio organization that promotes pediatric palliative care and advocates for bereavement spaces in childrens hospitals.

The room, which is expected to be completed this year, will include the hospitals second CuddleCot, said Donna Wilcox, the hospitals director of the neonatal intensive care unit. The first was donated about five years ago by a hospital security guard who lost a baby.

On ExpressNews.com: Childrens Hospital, Baylor researchers in San Antonio to develop training for maternal cardiac arrest

Having two of the devices on hand will be useful, Wilcox said, because fetal deaths, especially those earlier in pregnancy, happen regularly. Each year, about 24,000 babies are stillborn in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or less than 1 percent of total births.

The death of a baby brings a unique kind of grief, said Gwynneth Livesay, a regional chaplain who works at the hospital, because parents are also mourning the lost possibilities for that childs future.

At North Central Baptist, the loss of a baby in the labor and delivery department or the NICU occurs about every two weeks, Livesay said. Not all parents are interested in using the CuddleCot, but offering it as an option allows them to have more control over their time, when everything seems out of control, she said.

The CuddleCot provides a sense of having a say over something, over how long I can be with my child, Livesay said. Being able to bond, even after that child has died, is beyond words important.

Lauren Caruba covers health care and medicine in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | lcaruba@express-news.net | Twitter: @LaurenCaruba
Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park will present a program at the Moccasin Bend National Archeological District on Saturday, Jan. 18, at 2 p.m. This 45-minute talk focuses on the Cherokee who fought alongside Andrew Jackson during the Creek War and takes place at the Gateway Site, near 130 Hamm Road in Chattanooga."The Creek War is viewed mainly as a war between the forces of the young American Republic and the Native Creek people in what is now the state of Alabama," officials said."However, it was much more complicated, as it was actually a Civil War within the Creek Nation, with American forces intervening. In order to assist the Americans, the Cherokee Nation was called upon to provide troops. These soldiers played an integral role in the war, and it forever changed Cherokee society, both politically and culturally."For more information about upcoming programs at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, contact the Lookout Mountain Visitor Center at 423-821-7786, the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center at 706-866-9241, or visit the parks website at www.nps.gov/chch.
Its true that some Democrats, including me, have longed to impeach Trump from the first. How could we not want to impeach such a man, a grifter and serial bankrupt, a compulsive liar and certified racist who scorned decency, restraint, expertise and women?

Were we wrong? Trump has repeatedly helped our enemies and betrayed our friends, disgracefully abandoning the Kurds in particular. At Helsinki he all but kissed Putins feet, and in Singapore he made major concessions to Kim Jong Un in exchange for love letters and a photo op. He enabled the murder and dismemberment of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He sabotaged arms deals with Iran and Russia and started a needless trade war with China. He failed to build his comic-opera wall at the border but used it as a pretext to hijack funds belonging to the military. He withdrew from the Paris Accords, for nonsensical reasons, in an act that history may well record as his most lethal.

What about the economy, you say? Trump has continued the trend lines of the Bush-Obama recovery, but only by running the country the way he ran his casinos, piling on ruinous debt for the sake of short-term glitz, with his tax cut that increased the national debt to $23 trillion. Trump has done nothing to alleviate income inequality and much to worsen it, cutting Social Security and Medicare, depriving millions of health care. He has jailed thousands of children at the border. He has defrauded charities and veterans and been fined $2 million for it.

Trump has vastly coarsened the national conversation, supplanting rational argument with insult, slander, and intimidation, constantly lowering the norms of political conduct. He has encouraged Nazis and the Klan while insulting people of color whenever possible. He has insistently undermined our system of checks and balances, attacking Congress, the press, the courts, the FBI, the Federal Reserve, his own cabinet, and anything else that might check his own power, which he aspires to make limitless. He has filled the Federal bench with ideologues and incompetents.

So of course we longed to impeach the worst president in history, and the worst person ever to hold the office.

But wanting something is not the same as attempting it. For most of this nightmare presidency, Democrats opposed impeachment by wide margins, voting it down on three separate occasions. We accepted Pelosis cautious counsel to wait for the next election.

So what changed? Trump was caught stealing that very election, and we saw that our remedy would be gone if we didnt act, and perhaps even if we did. We had to take a stand on principle, lay down a marker. So we undertook that exercise, though with great and well documented reluctance.

Impeachment will certainly fail in the den of lackeys that is the Republican Senate, and thats that. The real test comes in November. At that point, please, if you love your country, remember how atrocious this larger record has been.

John Kilgore, Charleston

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COLUMBIA, Md. and WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Researchers may have found a way that NASA's James Webb Space Telescope can quickly identify nearby planets that could be promising for our search for life, as well as worlds that are uninhabitable because their oceans have vaporized.

Since planets around other stars (exoplanets) are so far away, scientists cannot look for signs of life by visiting these distant worlds. Instead, they must use a cutting-edge telescope like Webb to see what's inside the atmospheres of exoplanets. One possible indication of life, or biosignature, is the presence of oxygen in an exoplanet's atmosphere. Oxygen is generated by life on Earth when organisms such as plants, algae and cyanobacteria use photosynthesis to convert sunlight into chemical energy.

But what should Webb look for to determine if a planet has a lot of oxygen? In a new study, researchers identified a strong signal that oxygen molecules produce when they collide. Scientists say Webb has the potential to detect this signal in the atmospheres of exoplanets.

"Before our work, oxygen at similar levels as on Earth was thought to be undetectable with Webb, but we identify a promising way to detect it in nearby planetary systems," said Universities Space Research Association's Thomas Fauchez at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "This oxygen signal is known since the early 80's from Earth's atmospheric studies,but has never been studied for exoplanet research." Fauchez is the lead author of the study, appearing in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The researchers used a computer model to simulate this oxygen signature by modeling the atmospheric conditions of an exoplanet around an M dwarf, the most common type of star in the universe. M dwarf stars are much smaller, cooler, and fainter than our Sun, yet much more active, with explosive activity that generates intense ultraviolet light. The team modelled the impact of this enhanced radiation on atmospheric chemistry, and used this to simulate how the component colors of the star's light would change when the planet would pass in front of it.

As starlight passes through the exoplanet's atmosphere, the oxygen absorbs certain colors (wavelengths) of light in this case, infrared light with a wavelength of 6.4 micrometers. When oxygen molecules collide with each other or with other molecules in the exoplanet's atmosphere, energy from the collision puts the oxygen molecule in a special state that temporarily allows it to absorb the infrared light. Infrared light is invisible to the human eye, but detectable using instruments attached to telescopes.

"Similar oxygen signals exist at 1.06 and 1.27 micrometers and have been discussed in previous studies but these are less strong and much more mitigated by the presence of clouds than the 6.4 micrometer signal," said Geronimo Villanueva, a co-author of the paper at Goddard.

Intriguingly, oxygen can also make an exoplanet appear to host life when it does not, because it can accumulate in a planet's atmosphere without any life activity at all. For example, if the exoplanet is too close to its host star or receives too much star light, the atmosphere becomes very warm and saturated with water vapor from evaporating oceans. This water could be then broken down by the strong ultraviolet radiation into atomic hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen, which is a light atom, escapes to space very easily, leaving the oxygen behind.

Over time, this process can cause entire oceans to be lost while building up a thick oxygen atmosphere. So, abundant oxygen in an exoplanet's atmosphere does not necessarily mean abundant life, but may instead indicate a rich water history.

"Depending upon how easily Webb detects this 6.4 micrometer signal, we can get an idea about how likely it is that the planet is habitable," said Ravi Kopparapu, a co-author of the paper at Goddard. "If Webb points to a planet and detects this 6.4 micrometer signal with relative ease, this would mean that the planet has a very dense oxygen atmosphere and may be uninhabitable."

The oxygen signal is so strong that it also can tell astronomers whether M dwarf planets have atmospheres at all, using just a few Webb transit observations.

"This is important because M dwarf stars are highly active, and it has been postulated that stellar activity might 'blow away' entire planetary atmospheres," said Fauchez. "Knowing simply whether a planet orbiting an M dwarf can have an atmosphere at all is important for understanding star-planet interactions around these abundant but active stars."

Although the oxygen signal is strong, cosmic distances are vast and M dwarfs are dim, so these stars will have to be relatively nearby for Webb to detect the signal in exoplanet atmospheres within a reasonable amount of time. An exoplanet with a modern Earth-like atmosphere will have to be orbiting an M dwarf that is within approximately 16 light-years of Earth. For a desiccated exoplanet with an oxygen atmosphere 22 times the pressure of Earth's, the signal could be detected up to about 82 light-years away. One light-year, the distance light travels in a year, is almost six trillion miles. For comparison, the closest stars to our Sun are found in the Alpha Centauri system a little over 4 light-years away, and our galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across.

The research was funded in part by Goddard's Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration (SEEC), which is funded in part by the NASA Planetary Science Division's Internal Scientist Funding Model. This project has also received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant, the NASA Astrobiology Institute Alternative Earths team, and the NExSS Virtual Planetary Laboratory.

Webb will be the world's premier space science observatory, when it launches in 2021. It will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

About USRA

Founded in 1969, under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences at the request of the U.S. Government, the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) is a nonprofit corporation chartered to advance space-related science, technology and engineering. USRA operates scientific institutes and facilities, and conducts other major research and educational programs, under Federal funding. USRA engages the university community and employs in-house scientific leadership, innovative research and development, and project management expertise. More information about USRA is available at www.usra.edu.

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https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/goddard/2019/oxygen-planets

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This past semester, we had a first-year student class where we focused on the book Educated by Tara Westover. Since her family members believe in a lot of conspiracy theories, I thought Id have the student myth-test some of these arguments. I had no idea that we would find such a sad case emerge, especially from the South Pacific.

Late in 2019, measles struck the island of Samoa with devastating effects. Normally this would not be a problem, but the island only had less than a third of the population vaccinated. As a result, there were more than 80 deaths, mostly small children. There were also thousands of cases. The island virtually shut down, as businesses and schools closed. The economic effects upon this tourist-dependent locale are likely to be devastating, as many decided to steer clear of Samoa. Theyre ramping up vaccination, but its too little too late for many.

Now you might wonder why so many decided not to take the practical decision to get vaccinated. There are two reasons. Last year, a nurse botched the administration of the measles vaccine, and two people died. But much of the reason stems from a resident who did everything he could to convince everyone not to get vaccinated. All you need to do is drink more papaya juice, he told his online readers.

This scoundrel has been since been arrested (defying a government order). I think thats a little extreme, and might feed into some more conspiracy theorists, making him out to be a martyr. But I can see why a public that was deceived would be a little more upset about this charlatan.

At the same time Samoa was overrun by the measles, two other South Pacific islands (Fiji and Tonga) also experienced measles. But both of these places had 90 percent vaccination rates, and neither had many cases. Fiji, for example, had 15 total cases, without any fatalities.

If you follow other places in the South Pacific, youll find another sad case. The Philippines, led by a president (Duterte) who dabbles in wild rumors and conspiracy theories to make his democracy a lot more authoritarian under his command, has only a 67 percent vaccination rate (public health officials recommend 90 percent vaccination rates to ward off the effects of the disease). As a result, The Philippines led Southeast Asia with the most cases, at 42,000. Singapore and Malaysia, with 95 percent vaccination rates, didnt even top 1,000 cases.

Why are such wild rumors spread? In the case of the anti-vaxxer family Westover writes about, the dad holds many anti-government views. He was abused by his father, a mailman, so that may be the source of such dangerous beliefs, and not rooted in science and evidence.

One of my students gave a strong argument for both sides when she covered the vaccination debate. One view was that measles isnt so bad, and not everyone dies. But then when we looked at what would happen if every American was exposed to it, we would have a year of 60,000+ deaths in the USA. Those getting adversely affected by a measles vaccine were much fewer in number.

As we face another year where a series of diseases threaten America, be sure youre getting some good information before making decisions. Such critical choices shouldnt be made just because you dont like another person or government. Lets learn from the Samoa case and look to science for explanations, insisting that such vaccines are held to the highest standards of safety before being employed.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His Twitter account is JohnTures2.
Oil extended its dramatic price surge from Friday as the fallout between the U.S. and Iran escalated after the assassination of one of the Islamic Republics most powerful generals.

Futures are up about 6% since Friday, trading above $70 a barrel in London, as the U.S. State Department said theres heightened risk" of missile attacks near military bases and energy facilities in Saudi Arabia. Iran said on Sunday it no longer considers itself bound by the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated with the U.S. and other world powers in the fallout from the killing of General Qassem Soleimani.

Oils rising after a more than 20% gain in 2019, as the warning followed a weekend of bellicose rhetoric. President Donald Trump said he was prepared to strike in a disproportionate manner" and attack more than 50 Iranian sites if Tehran retaliates against the killing of Soleimani, while the Middle East nation said it has to settle a score with the U.S."

Oil will remain on tenterhooks, ready to jump higher with every headline indicating a turn for the worse," said Vandana Hari, founder of Vanda Insights in Singapore. The U.S. and Iran traded sequentially bigger threats over the weekend and Tehran has pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal, marking a quick downward spiral in what could turn out to be the worst crisis in the Middle East since the Arab Spring."

Brent for March settlement jumped as much as 2.2%, or $1.51, to $70.11 on ICE Futures Europe and was at $70.04 at 9:11 a.m. in Singapore. The contract surged 3.6% on Friday to end the session at the highest since Sept. 16.

West Texas Intermediate for February delivery rose as much as 1.9% to $64.27 on the New York Mercantile Exchange and traded $1.14 higher at $64.19.

The U.S. said theres risk of attacks particularly in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia and near the Yemeni border and close to military bases as well as oil and gas facilities, the State Department said in a tweet.

In response to the killing of its top military commander, Irans government said it will no longer abide by any limits on its enrichment of uranium nuke, while Iraqs parliament voted to expel U.S. troops from the nation.

In a separate event, an American service member and two contractors were killed in a Sunday attack on U.S. counter-terror forces in Kenya, with al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab militants claiming responsibility for the act. The raid came after a U.S. airstrike killed several members of the Somalia-based group, even as more troops are being dispatched to the Middle East.

Rising tensions between the U.S and Iran have already caused unprecedented disruptions to oil markets, but so far theyve been short-lived. Last year, Washington blamed Tehran for sabotage attacks on supertankers and a missile and drone attack on Saudi Arabias Abqaiq crude-processing plant in September -- the largest single supply halt in the industrys history.

Tough Talk

Trumps tough talk over the weekend followed Irans threat of a protracted response, and eclipsed his assertion a day earlier that the U.S. hadnt launched the attack near Baghdad airport on Thursday to start a war." The president is also sending more troops to the Middle East.

The Iranian leadership has signaled that it will probably target U.S. military installations and bases in the Middle East and mobilize its network of militias across the region.

Iraq is the second-largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, pumping 4.65 million barrels a day last month. Its immediate neighbors in the region -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran -- together produce about 15 million barrels a day. Most of their exports leave the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that Iran has repeatedly threatened to shut down if theres a war.

Beyond crudes rise, there were other signals in the market that people were preparing for further disruption.

Volatility rose to its highest level in a month and the cost of derivatives that insure against price spikes increased. Four million barrels of options contracts that would profit from a jump in Brent crude to $95 a barrel traded for both March and September. The cost of insuring tankers could rise again, after it surged in the wake of the Abqaiq attack in September.

Less Room

Still, oils 23% rise last year could already have taken it to levels that may not leave much room for further increase, according to analysts.

The oil market always assumes the worst, so a lot of the general risk is already priced in," said Jaafar Altaie, managing director of Abu Dhabi-based consultant Manaar Group. Prices at $70 a barrel already assume the worst-case scenario and we see them holding there, in a range from $60-$70, for the first quarter."

The greatest risk to supply would be an attack on Iraqs southern fields, he said. Iran would likely continue to target tankers and energy infrastructure in the region as its accused of having done in recent months, Christof Ruehl, a researcher on energy and policy at both Columbia and Harvard universities, said on Bloomberg television Sunday.

Theyre walking a tight rope" and face retaliation if they react too forcefully, Ruehl said.





This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.

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Amit Shah tells Delhi LG to fix problem at JNU

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Jan 06: Union Home Minister, Amit Shah has asked the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, Anil Baijal to intervene following the violence at JNU. He asked the LG to speak with the representatives of the JNU and find a solution to the problem.

On Sunday Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal Baijal to restore order on the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus after violence erupted there and the LG said he has directed police to take action against the perpetrators.

'Spoke to Hon'ble LG and urged him to direct police to restore order. He has assured that he is closely monitoring the situation and taking all necessary steps,' Kejriwal tweeted.

Shortly after the tweet, Baijal condemned the violence and said he has directed police to take all possible steps to maintain law and order.

JNU campus violence: FIR registered, CCTV footages will be part of investigation

'The violence in JNU against students and teachers is highly condemnable. Directed @DelhiPolice to take all possible steps in coordination with the JNU administration to maintain law and order & take action against the perpetrators of violence. The situation is being closely monitored,' the LG said in a tweet.

NEWS AT NOON, JANUARY 6th, 2020

In another tweet, Kejriwal said he was shocked to know about the violence on JNU campus.

'I am so shocked to know abt the violence at JNU. Students attacked brutally. Police shud immediately stop violence and restore peace. How will the country progress if our students will not be safe inside univ campus?' the chief minister said.

Members of JNU Students' Union and ABVP clashed on the university campus Sunday evening, sources said, adding it happened during a public meeting organised by JNU Teachers' Association.

The students' union claimed its president Aishe Ghosh and many other students were injured in stone-pelting by ABVP members. But the RSS-backed students' organisation alleged its members were brutally attacked by Left-affiliated student outfits and 25 of them were injured.

Reacting to the violence, the Aam Aadmi Party alleged the BJP was 'ruining' this country and hooliganism was at its peak under its rule.

JNU campus violence: Protest continues at Gateway of India in Mumbai

'Seeing this picture of JNU woman Prof. Suchitra Sen ji is heart-wrenching. What has the BJP made of JNU. It is the same university from where the country's finance and foreign ministers and thousands of other jewels come from. The BJP is ruining this country,' senior AAP leader Sanjay Singh tweeted in Hindi.

In another tweet, he said, 'The attack on JNU president Aishe Ghosh and General Secretary Satish Chandra Yadav is a challenge to the youth of the country. Where is the Delhi police. Hooliganism is at its peak in the BJP regime'.
Rembrandt's Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul returns to Italy after 220 years.

Galleria Corsini in Rome will showcase Rembrandt's Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul, in an historic return for the masterpiece, from 11 June until 30 September 2020.

The painting by the Dutch master - on loan from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam - has not been seen in Rome for more than two centuries.

Dating to 1661, the work belonged originally to the noble Corsini family but was sold - apparently without the family's knowledge - during the French occupation of 1799.

The exhibition will also host a selection of engravings by Rembrandt owned by the Corsini family.

For visiting details see Galleria Corsini website.

Image: former US president Barack Obama admiring Rembrandt's masterpiece in 2014. Photo Pete Souza.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : As the EC announced the date for the Delhi Assembly election, Union Home Minister and BJP chief Amit Shah has set the tone by upping the ante against the AAP government.

Urging the people of Delhi to come out in large numbers to vote, in a series of tweets, Shah expressed hope that they will vote against the AAP for allegedly failing to keep its promises.

"I am confident that through this 'mahaparva' (festival) of democracy, they will choose the government which fulfils the aspirations of the people of Delhi under the leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi by defeating those who misled them for five years by making only hollow promises," Shah tweeted.

Claiming that the AAP government only made "promises" and spent a huge amount in the last three months splurging on advertisements, Shah took a dig at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal saying, "People of Delhi are still looking for free WiFi, 1.5 million CCTV cameras, new colleges and hospitals." All these have been poll promises of the Aam Aadmi Party. Earlier in the day while inaugurating the cycle walk in Tughlakabad area, Shah highlighted the fact that Delhi is yet to see Kejriwal's promise of equipping the national capital with CCTVs.

In a no-holds-barred attack on the AAP, the BJP chief said, "This election is the election of the poor to fulfil their dream of a 'pucca' house. It is an election to remove those who snatched their right to free treatment by not implementing Ayushman Bharat. It is also an election to clean up vote bank politics that disturbed the peace of Delhi." Shah was referring to the violent protests across Delhi over the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act.

In his tweet, he appealed to BJP's Delhi cadres to not only spread the welfare works done by the Modi government but also to "expose" the "truth" of AAP-led Delhi government.

The BJP has kicked off a door-to-door campaign across the nation to counter the opposition's narrative on CAA. Shah now wants Delhi cadres to additionally use the opportunity to campaign for the party in the national capital.

The Election Commission on Monday announced February 8 as the date for Delhi Assembly election. The model code of conduct comes into effect immediately, said the EC.

The BJP is desperate to taste power in the national capital, where it has been in the cold for nearly the last two decades. The ruling AAP, which won 67 out of 70 seats last time, is hopeful of returning to power in 2020 as well.
Fugitive former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn allegedly fled Tokyo on a bullet train before taking a private jet to Istanbul.

The 65-year-old executive skipped bail nearly a week ago, fleeing Japan where he was awaiting trial on multiple counts of financial misconduct that he denies.

Local media reports, citing people involved in the investigation, said Monday that Ghosn boarded a 'shinkansen' bullet train from Tokyo's Shinagawa station on December 29.

He got off at a station in western Osaka, arriving around 7:30pm and taking a taxi to a hotel near Kansai Airport.

Scroll down for video.

Carlos Ghosn, 65, skipped bail nearly a week ago, fleeing Japan where he was awaiting trial on multiple counts of financial misconduct that he denies

Citing people involved in the investigation, Nippon Television Network (NTV) said Monday that Ghosn boarded a 'shinkansen' bullet train from Tokyo's Shinagawa station on December 29 (file photo)

Ghosn took a bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka (inset) before flying from Kansai Airport onto Beirut via Istanbul

He is thought to have taken a private jet the same day from the airport, bound for Istanbul, where he switched planes and continued to Beirut.

Last week, local media reported Ghosn was caught on security camera leaving his Tokyo home by himself around noon on December 29.

But the exact circumstances of his departure from Japan are still shrouded in mystery.

The justice ministry said it did not have records of Ghosn departing Japan.

'It is believed that he used some wrongful methods to illegally leave the country,' Justice Minister Masako Mori said at a press conference on Monday.

Members of the media gather outside a house identified by court documents as belonging to former Nissan Motor Co and Renault SA chairman Carlos Ghosn in Beirut, Lebanon, January 4

'I have instructed the immigration agency to further tighten the departure process,' she added.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Ghosn was loaded onto the flight from Osaka in a large case for audio equipment, which was later found at the back of the cabin.

The newspaper cited unnamed sources close to the investigation in Turkey as saying that holes had been drilled into the bottom of the container to ensure the businessman could breathe.

Japan's transport ministry told AFP that luggage checks are not mandatory for private jets.

'Operators of private jets decide if luggage checks are necessary or not while airline operators are obliged to conduct security checks under Japan's aviation law,' a ministry official told AFP.

International tycoon Ghosn, pictured leaving the Tokyo Detention House in Tokyo, April 25, 2019

'The security checks are carried out to prevent danger such as bombs, and to prevent hijacks,' he said, adding such risks are considered less likely for private jets.

Ghosn, who has French, Brazilian and Lebanese nationalities, was able to enter Lebanon on a French passport, according to airport documents seen by AFP.

A court in Tokyo had allowed Ghosn to keep a second French passport as he needed one to travel inside Japan, a source close to the matter has told AFP.

Japan has launched a probe into the humiliating security lapse and prosecutors said they would 'coordinate with the relevant agencies to swiftly and appropriately investigate the matter.'

Ghosn has vowed to give his own account at a hotly awaited press conference in Beirut this week.
Job Title: Senior Human Resources

Assistant

Organisation: United Nations High Commissioner

for Refugees (UNHCR)

Duty Station: Kampala, Uganda

Vacancy Notice Number: 026/2019

Position Number: 10026727

Position Grade: GS-5

About US:

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for

Refugees was established on December 14, 1950 by the United Nations General

Assembly. UNHCRs mandate under the Statute of the Office of the United Nations

High Commissioner for Refugees is to lead and co-ordinate action for

international protection to refugees; seek permanent solutions for the problems

of refugees and safeguard refugee rights and well-being. UNHCR has an

additional mandate concerning issues of statelessness, as it is given a

designated role under Article 11 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of

Statelessness.

Job Summary: The Senior Human Resources Assistant will

function under direct supervision of the Human Resources Officer, assisting

him/her in personnel administration and other HR related matters, including the

process of recruitment and appointment of staff, and in the performance

management and welfare issues of staff under area of responsibility (AOR).

Key Duties and Responsibilities:



Assist in the recruitment, assignment,

reassignment and separation of local general service staff. Prepare documents for

the interview panel for the recruitment of local staff.



Process local staff members contracts,

entitlements and benefits in accordance with Staff Rules and established HR

procedures.



Update personnel related information in MSRP/HR

module where this activity has been rolled out from PAPS to the respective

office.



Advise staff members on their rights,

obligations, benefits and entitlements, and assist them in interpreting

UN/UNHCR staff rules and regulations.



Assist newly-arrived international staff with

administrative formalities related to their accreditations, security/ground

passes, submission of completed forms and related documents to headquarters,

arrange travel and hotel reservations



Assist with shipment of their personal effects

in coordination with the logistics section.



Administer UNHCR medical insurance plan for

locally recruited staff. Provide administrative support to staff and dependants

in case of medical evacuations, as well as security evacuations/relocations.

Maintain daily tracking record of staff and families to provide accurate

information in case of emergency.



Maintain personnel records in the office,

including maintenance of the attendance, overtime and leave records.



Perform other related duties as required.

Key Results:



The workforce in the AOR is well-informed of the

organisations human resources policies and practices.



UNHCR provides a healthy, safe and respectful

working environment for its workforce in the AOR.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:



The ideal candidate for the United Nations UNHCR

Senior Human Resources Assistant job placement should have completed secondary

education



Certificates or diplomas in human resources

management, secretarial and administrative training is required.



At least five years of previous relevant work

experience is required.



Good knowledge of UNHCR administrative

procedures and processes and exposure to provision of support services in an

international organization is required.



Fluency in English is required.



Planning and Organizing



Working knowledge of other UN language(s).



Field experience with UNHCR and/or with other

humanitarian organizations is an asset.



High IT affinity and working experience of

PeopleSoft/MSRP.

How to Apply:

All interested Ugandan nationals who wish to join the United

Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the aforementioned capacity

are encouraged to click on the link below and follow the application

instructions after reviewing the job details.

Click

Here

Deadline: 16th January 2020

For more of the latest jobs, please visit https://www.theugandanjobline.com or

find us on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UgandanJobline
The Presidency on Sunday asked Nigerians not to panic over the withdrawal of 1,200 Chadian troops from the Lake Chad Basin bordering the country.

It said the withdrawal was in line with the mandate of the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF), launched on July 1, 2016 and due to end on December 31, 2019.

It said Nigeria will be sending troops to Chad as part of a new concept against the Boko Haram insurgency.

In line with the scope of the MNJTF, the 1,200 troops were recalled on Friday from a part of the Northeast.



Following their withdrawal, many Nigerians in Borno State started fleeing the areas managed by the Chadian troops, which is not vacant.

The operation was estimated to have cost Africa-EU partnership about 50million Euro and the UK about 5 million.

Nobody should panic, Nigerians need not to worry at all about the Chadian withdrawals.

They came here as a part of a concept of the ongoing operations. That concept has changed and they are moving out.

Indications from the Defence Headquarters suggest that soon, Nigeria will be sending troops to that country as part of yet another concept.

So there is nothing of concern about the way deployments are made by the MNJTF. They know what they are doing. It is in execution of their mandate.

Nigerians should equally not have any doubts about the ability of our armed forces to hold their own. They are capable and have proven to be so, Presidents spokesman Garba Shehu said yesterday.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
ALBANY  A farm-workers' rights law implemented last week will dismantle some remnants of the racist Jim Crow era, a civil liberties group says, but opponents to some portions of the law claim it is contradictory and could be burdensome to small, family-owned farms.

The Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act, which was signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo last year and took effect Jan. 1, grants sweeping advantages to New York farm workers, including the rights to unionize, receive disability benefits and receive a day of rest during each workweek.

Many of the benefits afforded under the farm labor act had already been available to workers in other industries under the National Labor Relations Act, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935. But Roosevelt made some concessions in order to appease segregationist Southern Democrats, said Lisa Zucker, a legislative attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union. The act excluded the farm workers, who at the time were predominantly black.

"So instead of excluding black workers from the NLRA, what they did was they excluded these two categories of workers that were largely made up of black Americans  farm and domestic workers," Zucker said.

But in a federal lawsuit filed in Buffalo two days before the farm labor act took effect, two farming industry trade organizations claim that, while the law purports to help farm workers, "the harsh economic impact on farms, particularly small farms, will undoubtedly harm these workers in many respects," claiming that some workers may see their hours reduced to balance increased costs of the benefits.

The trade groups, New York State Vegetable Growers Association and Northeast Dairy Producers Association, also claim portions of the law are contradictory. The farm labor act gives a broad definition to "farm workers" eligible to receive the benefits, one that includes anybody permitted to work on a farm, minus the employer's immediate family, and would include supervisors on any given farm.

That could cause an issue, the trade groups claim, because employers are required by law to prohibit supervisors from engaging in activities that could help or hinder workers' rights to collectively bargain. But since supervisors are considered farm workers and covered under the law, their employers are also prohibited from keeping them from communicating with workers about union issues.

"This creates an unworkable Catch 22, imposing on farms an obligation to engage in conduct that would violate other provisions of the Act and thereby creating conflicting prohibitions that cannot be reconciled," the groups' lawyers write in the lawsuit.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

A judge last Tuesday sided with the trade groups, granting a temporary restraining order to portions of the law concerning farm owners and managers, until a hearing is held on the matter Jan. 24. But the law still went into effect for everyday farm workers covered under the law.

In an interview Monday, Rick Zimmerman, a representative of the NYSVGA, said the association doesn't oppose the basic premise of the law: to afford farm workers the same rights as those in other industries.

"This is not a renewed debate about the issue of overtime and collective bargaining rights," Zimmerman said. "This is an attempt to fine-tune the law and make the necessary corrections to these two subcategories of the employee workforce."

Zimmerman attributed what he described as issues in the law's wording to oversights during the legislative discussion process.

Michael.Williams@timesunion.com or 518-454-5018.
Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development has justified the upward adjustment in license fees for fishing vessels.

The new charge for fishing vessels has increased from US$35 to US$ 200 per gross registered tonnage.

According to the Ministry, calls for the reduction of the amount by the National Fisheries Association is unjustified because the increment is aimed at protecting Ghanaian fishermen

Deputy Minister for Fisheries and Aquaculture Development, Francis Kinsley Ato Cudjoe in a Citi News interview said the move will help reduce the depletion of the county's fish stock by large trawlers mostly owned by foreigners.

First is the fact that there hasnt been any increase in such fees in the last ten years and the fees are also the lowest in the region leading to many vessels trying to do their business in our waters thus leading to a decline in our fishing stock. We have decided to peg ours at US$200. It will be like a huge one but that is the prevailing rate. In terms of whether we are going to review or not, this is something we wrote to the Cabinet and they are aware of the approval of Parliament. We need to take measures that will ensure that our people benefit and not foreign vessels.

The Fisheries Commission in a letter dated December 31, 2019, and signed by its Executive Director, Mr. Michael Arthur-Dadzie, indicated that the new fishing license fees approved by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning would take effect from January 1, 2020.

The letter stated that the chargeable rate per vessel for all industrial vessels (Tuna and Trawlers) is US$200 per GRT or its equivalent at the prevailing Bank of Ghana rate.

This was said to be a major factor for the depletion of fish stock in the country's territorial waters.

On the same league table with Mauritius, Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana's license rate of $35 for industrial fishing vessels was identified to be the lowest rate among these countries.

As of May 2018, Ghana's license fee was said to be the cheapest among the 10 countries implementing the West African Regional Fisheries Project with commercial fishing activities.

Fisheries Commission urged to review 'outrageous increment' in license fee

The Fisheries Commission has been urged by the National Fisheries Association of Ghana to reduce the recently announced increase in fishing license fees for operating a fishing vessel on Ghanaian waters.

A member of the Association, Richter Nii Armah Amarfio, in an interview with Citi News, accused the Fisheries Commission of short-changing members of the association by introducing the new fishing licensing fee.

According to him, the Fisheries Commission has in the past neglected their plights and has only been interested in taking money from them.

He further explained that the operational cost of fishermen has increased significantly to a point where their businesses have been negatively affected.

At this time, our cost of operation is going high and our income is going low. We have raised concerns that our Pole and lines vessels are collapsed and nothing is happening, the ministry and the commission does not do anything to enhance the work of the industry, their interest is how to raise money from us and we think it doesn't work to our benefit. We can't just pay it, we can break even, we can't add to our current operational cost, it will collapse our businesses.

citinewsroom
Spain has taken just one year to reach a goal that was expected to require a decade. The government had predicted that by 2030 coal would no longer be used in power plants to generate electricity, yet this objective was all but achieved last year. The country has dramatically reduced its reliance on coal-fired power, and as a direct result, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions from electricity generation fell 33.3% in 2019, according to figures that Red Electrica de Espana (REE), the national power grid operator, advanced to EL PAIS.

For decades, coal-powered thermal plants have been one of the main sources of electricity. But in 2019 Spain turned its back on this fossil fuel, which when burned releases carbon dioxide  a primary greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

Coal-fired thermal plants generated under 5% of total electricity, or 85.6% less than in 2002

Coal mining in Spain came to an end on January 1, 2019, when Spain stopped providing state aid to its flailing coal mines in observance of European Union regulations and due to the poor profitability of national coal deposits. But it was expected that Spanish thermal plans that use imported coal  those which are located along the coast and have coal shipped in  would continue operating for some years to come. Indeed, the owners of these mines had invested millions of euros in adapting to the new EU standards on polluting emissions that came into effect this year.

But coal-fired electricity dropped dramatically in 2019 to its lowest point since REE began keeping records in 1990. Last year coal-powered thermal plants contributed less than 5% of all electricity generated in Spain  85.6% less than in 2002, when coal power was at its peak. Whats more, there were five days (December 14, 21, 22, 24 and 25) when Spain did not need any coal-powered electricity at all.

There are many reasons why it is no longer financially profitable for electricity companies to maintain thermal plants. According to the expert group Carbon Tracker, the owners of these Spanish plants were expected to lose 992 million by the end of 2019. One of the main reasons is the EU emissions trading system, the worlds first major carbon market. After nearly 15 years, the EU agreed to set a price for releasing carbon dioxide that was high enough to discourage the use of this fossil fuel. During 2019, the price of a ton of CO 2 was 25, meaning that in many European countries coal-fired electricity is not as profitable as other options like natural gas or renewable energy.

Last year 36.8% of the countrys electricity came from renewable energy sources

The EU emissions trading scheme has turned out to be a useful instrument in the fight against climate change in Europe. The problem is that there is still no agreement on a global system, which became apparent at the United Nations climate summit held in Madrid in December.

The drop in the cost of natural gas and the introduction of renewable energy have also contributed to the fall in coal-powered electricity. Green energy installations jumped by 10% in 2019. According to REE, 36.8% of the countrys electricity came from renewable energy sources, and 58.6% was free of carbon dioxide emissions (from both renewable and nuclear power).

Thanks to these factors, the Spanish power sector ended 2019 having released just over 43 million tons of carbon dioxide  33.3% less than the 64.5 million tons released into the atmosphere in 2018.

The power sector accounts for 17% of the Spanish economys carbon dioxide emissions. The fall in coal-powered plants is expected to be reflected in a global fall in carbon dioxide emissions for 2019. But last years figures on the transportation sector (namely cars and trucks), which contributed 27% of greenhouse gases in 2018, and industry, which contributed 19%, have yet to be released. In recent years, the drop in power plant emissions has been compensated by the rise in transportation emissions.

English version by Melissa Kitson.
Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP top brass categorically saying that nationwide NRC has not been discussed by the Centre, the West Bengal BJP in its booklet claimed that after implementation of the CAA, the register of citizens will be in the pipeline.

The 23-page booklet in English, Hindi and Bengali, published as part of BJP's statewide campaign in favour of the amended Citizenship Act, states that the Centre is intending to implement the National Register of Citizens (NRC) across the country.

The CAA has been simplified in a question and answer format to allay people's fears on the law, party sources said.

A question in the booklet read, "Will there be NRC after this? How much is it needed? And if there is NRC, will Hindus have to go to detention centres like in Assam?"



The answer to the question said, "Yes, there will be NRC after this. At least, that is the intention of the central government."



The booklet claimed Hindus have been sent to detention centres not due to NRC but because of Foreigners Act.

"The NRC is Assam took place as per orders of the Supreme court and the Foreigners Act was passed by the Congress government. The BJP government is Assam did not bring the NRC. Rather, it has decided to move court against the NRC," the booklet said.

It said the Hindus lodged in detention centres in Assam would be released after the CAA is implemented.

"It is heard that there are around two crore infiltrators in Assam and West Bengal. It is needed to enlist these infiltrators as D-voters. This only speaks volumes about the problem of infiltration in the country. That is why countrywide NRC is needed," the booklet said.

Reacting to BJP's claims on NRC in the booklet, the Trinamool Congress leadership said, "truth has come out".

"The cat is now out of the bag. The truth of BJP has come out. We have been saying that the Prime Minister and the union ministers have been trying to confuse the people by making contradictory statements on NRC.

"The people of this state and the country will give them a befitting reply," TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
tech2 News Staff

Samsung Electronics said on Sunday that it will introduce new, innovative devices in San Francisco on 11 February, with the electronics giant widely expected to unveil its new foldable phone and a new version of its flagship S model.

This means the company might be launching its Galaxy S11 (or speculated to be named as Galaxy S20) series next month. In addition to this, it is also possible that the clamshell foldable smartphone, expected to be named as Galaxy Fold 2 might also arrive at the event.

The move comes as the worlds top smartphone maker seeks to maintain its lead in the foldable phone and 5G phone markets, with rivals plotting a catch-up in the nascent, but growing segments.

Samsung Electronics will unveil new, innovative devices that will shape the next decade of mobile experiences, the South Korean firm said at an invitation letter. It said the event at 11 am Pacific time (12.30 am IST on 12 February) will be live-streamed.

The official invitation video of Samsung Unpacked 2020 revealed that it will be held on 11 February in San Francisco.



In a teaser image, Samsung hinted at two phones  one shaped like a square and another with a rectangular form. This time, it is expected that Samsung's foldable phone will be square-shaped and will fold just like Motorola Razr 2019, unlike Galaxy Fold.

To catch the live updates of the event, you can click on this page.

With inputs from Reuters
January 06 : Sara Ali Khan has begun her New Year 2020 on a high note with her two films lined up for release in 2020Coolie No. 1 with Varun Dhawan and Imtiaz Alis untitled sequel of Love Aaj Kal with Kartik Aaryan.

Before the hectic schedule of both the films start, Sara opted to take a cool break with bro Ibrahim Ali Khan and mom Amrita Singh in the Maldives. The actress has been posting breathtaking pictures from the paradise vacay.

In the latest pictures she posted on her Instagram handle from her beach vacay, we can see the diva floating on the blue sea in her white bikini as a white motorboat is seen at a distance. The video that gives of a bird-eye view of Sara from high above is mesmerizing. Wonder if the video has been shot by a drone camera. The actress is also seen gesturing with her hand to take the picture from the right angle.

The actress also went for snorkeling and shared a couple of pictures on her Instagram stories. Sara ticked off sea-diving from her bucket list, as the Simmba actress is seen exploring the world under the sea with Ibrahim.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 6)  A Mandaluyong court has stopped for 72 hours the new cap on the number of motorcycle taxis.

Acting Executive Judge Ofelia Calo issued Monday a temporary restraining order against the Land Transportation and Franchising Regulatory Boards new guidelines on the pilot run of motorcycle taxis, which sets a 10,000 cap on motorcycles per company in Metro Manila and 3,000 per company in Cebu.

The new LTFRB guidelines would have taken effect today.

The court agreed that there is an urgency to issue a 72-hour restraining order as the new LTFRB rules on motorcycle taxis will suffer grave irreparable injury as they would lose their jobs.

The LTFRB Technical Working Group, which created the new guidelines, said it is now coordinating with the Office of the Solicitor General on how to move forward with the case.

"The TWG is confident that it stands on solid legal ground in its administration of the Motorcycle Taxi Service Pilot Implementation program, and we remain steadfast in carrying out our mandate, especially in ensuring that the safety and welfare of the riding public is at stake," it said in a statement.

The ruling stems from the petition of Angkas bikers against the new LTFRB guidelines on the motorcycle pilot run, which the company said will leave 17,000 of its 27,000 bikers unemployed.

This proves that justice is on our side. We are only trying to make an honest living and helping commuters every day to get to their destinations fast and safe, said Rommel Villanueva, one of the Angkas bikers who challenged the new LTFRB guidelines before the court.

The 72-hour restraining order takes effect once the Department of Transportation and LTFRB posts a 30,000 bond.

The court will conduct a summary hearing in 72 hours to decide whether the restraining order would be extended. The restraining order can be extended for up to 20 days.
Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army said on Monday they had advanced into positions around the city of Sirte in a bid to take control of it.

Capturing Sirte would be a important strategic gain for Haftar, who since April has been waging a military offensive on the capital, Tripoli, home to Libya's internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).

Sirte lies in the centre of Libya's Mediterranean coast, and has been controlled by GNA-aligned forces since they ejected Islamic State from the city with the help of U.S. air strikes in late 2016.

Haftar's Libyan National Army said they had taken areas surrounding Sirte including al-Qardabiya air base.

"The army forces control all the districts surrounding the city of Sirte, and we are heading towards the heart of the city to complete its liberation," said Khaled al-Mahjoub, an LNA spokesman.

A resident in the city centre told Reuters by phone: "We can see convoys of LNA inside Sirte city ... they control large parts of the city now. We also hear gunfire."

There was no immediate comment from GNA forces.

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From the early hours of Monday, Iranians walked toward the University of Tehran near Enghelab Square, where the funeral rites began among chants against the US and Israel, reports Efe news.

Tehran, Jan 6 (IANS) Hundreds of thousands of mourners, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gathered in Tehran on Monday to pay tribute to Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a targeted US drone attack in Baghdad last week.

People in the funeral procession carried photographs of Soleimani, Iranian flags and banners with anti-US slogans.

While addressing the crowd, General Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, said: "The name Haj Qasem Soleimani is now shaking the nest of Zionism, Takfirism, and the order of hegemony.

"America and Zionism should know that my father's martyrdom has awakened more human instincts on the resistance front. It will make life a nightmare for them and shatter their spider houses," the Tehran-based Press TV reported.

Due to the huge number of expected mourners, police were deployed in the area hours beforehand to control traffic and ask residents to remove their vehicles from the streets.

The authorities have reinforced security measures in the capital, which helicopters have been flying over since Sunday afternoon.

Khamenei led a mass prayer service, with high-ranking government and military officials also to attend the funeral.

Soleimani's remains, along with those of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy leader of the Iraqi militia Popular Mobilization Forces who was also killed in the attack, arrived in Iran on Sunday.

Muhandis's remains were brought to Iran where it will undergo DNA testing.

Funeral ceremonies were also held on Sunday in Ahvaz, the main city in the country's eight-year battle against the forces of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein which shaped Soleimani's future as an austere military tactician.

Later in the day, processions were also held in the holy city of Mashhad, which hosts the tomb of Imam Reza, the eighth Shia imam.

The funeral rites will continue on Tuesday in Soleimani's southern hometown of Kerman, where his remains will be buried on Wednesday.

Soleimani, 63, was the elite Quds Force chief in charge of IRGC operations outside Iran, and has been on the ground in Syria and Iraq supervising militias backed by Tehran.

The Quds Force holds sway over a large number of militias across the region ranging from Lebanon to Syria and Iraq.

The Iranian authorities have called for "harsh revenge" over the killing of the commander and believe that the incident marks a turning point and will lead to the withdrawal of the US troops from the region. However, Washington has begun deploying hundreds more personnel to the region.

Amid threats of retaliation from Iran, US President Donald Trump on Sunday warned in a tweet that "the US will quickly and fully strike back, and perhaps in a disproportionate manner".

ksk/
It will indeed be a sad day when students, who once strengthened the hands of the Mahatma Gandhi and made Jayaprakash Narayan lead a successful movement against Emergency, become a tool in the hands of radical elements by passing on the mantle to such divisive forces.

A few visuals of the ongoing protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) have been etched in the mind.

In the first, a TV reporter is seen among the protesters returning from a rally and upon being asked as to what the protest was about, each one of them giving replies ranging from fascist Modi government to kala kanoon without even being able to give the full form of the CAA, or for that matter, the National Register of Citizens.

Cut to Jamia Milia Islamia, where a journalist was interviewing the newfound postergirls of the protest whom she named sheroes. Nothing unusual in this case, some may say, but what was significant in this case was that the journalist was gleeful while the sheroes were proclaiming Islam and Allah as their prime motivator for joining the protest.

The duo had no respect for the Indian State and had little consideration for other religions. Their act to protect someone who had indulged in violence was in the name of religious bigotry and not secularism. These two disconcerting visuals have, sadly, become the hallmark of the protest, which is being proclaimed as a protest led by students from various universities.

What is worrisome is students of these reputed universities have allowed themselves to be defined by these protesters and this does not portend well for the student movement in our country, which has a hoary past. We must be able to differentiate between students movement and an out and out religious mob taking to the street in the name of secularism and democracy. We must call the bluff and expose this sham.

Contributions of students in our struggle for Independence and various agitations in the post-Independence era are legion. No one could forget that thousands of students left their education to join Mahatma Gandhi in the fight against the British. No one could forget the role played by students, who convinced a reluctant Jayaprakash Narayan to lead the movement against the imposition of Emergency by the then dispensation of Indira Gandhi.

Many such students went on to play a significant role in Indian politics in the post-Emergency era and many of them are still contributing, in their own way, to Indian politics. No one can also forget the role played by students during the Assam Agitation which led to the signing of the Assam Accord; none can also forget the student movements in various parts of the country, led by the ABVP on national security issues. All in all, the student movement In India has played a positive role in not only contributing to the freedom struggle but even in the past seven decades.

However, the present round of protests is a clear departure from the past. Students seem to have been egged on by a misinformation campaign and thus Justice Santhosh N Hedge, a former Supreme Court judge, who is well respected by a cross section of society, is not off the mark when he recently said students are being used as shields by vested interests to foment trouble in the name of protests against the CAA.

What also seems to have been overlooked and not analyzed by the otherwise well-informed student community is the limited applicability of the CAA only to the persecuted minorities of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, who have been made to flee from these countries just because they profess a religion different from the State religion.

What has also been missed by these protesting students is that all the CAA does is to provide a statutory framework for citizenship in India for such people with a clear cut-off date. Rather, in the shrill ill-informed campaign which has been launched, with motives which are anything but bonafide, what has been lost is the fact that this piece of legislation has nothing to do with Muslims who are Indian citizens.

What also has not been taken into consideration by the students is that leaders of all hues from the Indian National Congress, to CPI(M) to TMC have, in the recent past, raised the issue of India providing a safe harbor for these persecuted minorities or to deal with illegal immigration that has plagued the country.

The students are doing a great national disservice if they are knowingly turning a blind eye to what Manmohan Singh, the former prime minister, had to say on the floor of the Parliament in 2003 or what Prakash Karat said with respect to the persecuted minorities in 2012 or for that matter what Mamata Banerjee spoke about illegal immigration wreaking havoc in West Bengal on the floor of Parliament in 2005.

If however, even after knowing about the views expressed by a cross section of the political leadership, who have nothing to do with the BJP or for that matter the RSS, the students still choose to support the protests against CAA not only in the National Capital but also in other parts of the country, it would be a calamitous choice with far-reaching consequences for the healthy student movement in India.

And by all accounts, it seems that the students have fallen into a trap where the protests against the CAA have been used as a ruse to resort to large-scale violence and destruction of public property and the deaths of innocent, all for an imaginary NRC which has not even been mooted by the Central government.

This imaginary issue of NRC has now become the fulcrum of the protests where posters and banners like Khilafat 2, a distorted signage of the Nazi symbol clearly resembling OM preceded by cuss words against Hindutva are being put to service. Use of such is a clear sign that the protesting students have become a willing party to a sinister design to strike at the very root of secularism enshrined in our Constitution.

Ironically, the protests against CAA started as something which sought to protect the secular values of our Constitution. The question that the protesting students need to ask themselves is that whether a protest that was launched to save the secular fabric of the country is slipping away and instead radical elements have dislodged them from a cause which they thought was dear to their hearts.

It will indeed be a sad day when students, who once strengthened the hands of the Mahatma and made Narayan lead a successful movement against Emergency, become a tool in the hands of radical elements by passing on the mantle to such divisive forces.

The author practices in the Supreme Court and is a former president of JNUSU
In a statement issued here on Monday, AMUSU vice president Hamza Sufiyan said that the students of AMU stand in solidarity with the students of JNU in this hour of crisis.

Aligarh, Jan 6 (IANS) The Aligarh Muslim University Students Union (AMUSU) has strongly condemned the 'brutal attack on JNU Students by ABVP masked goons' and has sought the intervention of the Supreme Court in the situation.

"Those goons must be strictly booked under various sections of IPC. If government is booking people even for protesting, then it must lodge cases against the people who have gone inside a university campus, beaten up students and vandalized the premises," the statement said.

AMUSU has further demanded that those who are responsible for this attack on the student community must be arrested immediately.

"We also demand resignation of Vice Chancellor, JNU who is ineffectual to maintain law and order on the campus and the environment of campus is continuously disturbed due to him. We demand to Supreme Court to take suo motu cognizance of the unprecedented situation arising in the country," the statement said.

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Appointment

6 January 2020

Calimano joins Fairmont Dubai from his most recent role as Area Director of Human Resources with InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, where he successfully led the human resources function at its four-unit complex in Dubai Festival City.

He possesses an impressive trajectory of global experience with some of the world's most celebrated luxury hotels. This has included single and multi-unit human resources leadership appointments in key destinations with Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, One & Only Resorts, and a distinctive tenure with Jumeirah's Burj Al Arab.

In his new role, Calimano will oversee all aspects of talent acquisition and development, whilst driving sustained high levels of colleague engagement by leveraging on the strengths of the brand and existing resources at the company's flagship hotel located in the heart of Dubai.
CHICAGO, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Eye Tracking Market by Offering (Hardware, Software, and Services), Tracking Type (Remote and Mobile), Application (Assistive Communication, Human Behavior & Market Research,), Vertical, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2025", published by MarketsandMarkets, the Eye Tracking Market is expected to grow from USD 560 million in 2020 to USD 1,786 million by 2025; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 26.1% from 2020 to 2025. The high demand for eye trackers in the healthcare vertical, especially for the assistive communication application is one of the key driving factors for the eye tracking market. The increasing penetration of eye tracking technology in the consumer electronics vertical, and high demand for eye trackers for personalized advertisements and consumer research purposes are a few other key factors having a positive impact on the growth of the eye tracking market.

Ask for PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=144268378

Remote eye tracking segment to hold largest share of eye tracking market, by tracking type, in 2020

The remote eye tracking segment will lead the eye tracking market, by tracking type, in terms of size, by 2020. The leading position of this segment can be attributed to the high demand for remote eye trackers for assistive communication and human behavior & market research applications, especially in healthcare, research, and retail verticals.

Market for automotive & transportation vertical to grow at highest CAGR during forecast period

The eye tracking market for the automotive & transportation vertical is expected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period. Rise in the adoption of eye tracking technology in the automotive & transportation vertical for integration in driver monitoring systems is the major reason for the high growth of this vertical in the eye tracking market. Eye tracking technology is considered as an effective technology to detect drowsy or distracted drivers due to which this technology is increasingly being integrated into driver monitoring systems. The healthcare & research labs vertical is expected to dominate the eye tracking market, in terms of size, during the forecast period.

North America to hold largest share of eye tracking market by 2020

North America is expected to hold the largest share of the eye tracking market by 2020. The US and Canada are the key countries contributing to the growth of the eye tracking market in North America. Europe is expected to account for the second-largest share of the eye tracking market during the forecast period. The UK and Germany are significant demand-generating countries for eye tracking technology-based products and services in this region.

Browse in-depth TOC on "Eye Tracking Market"

110  Tables

59  Figures

172  Pages

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A few key players operating in the eye tracking market are Tobii (Sweden), EyeTracking (US), SR Research (Canada), Seeing Machines (Australia), PRS IN VIVO (France), Smart Eye (Sweden), EyeTech Digital Systems (US), LC Technologies (US), Ergoneers (Germany), ISCAN (US), iMotions (Denmark), and Lumen Research (UK).

Please Explore Relevant Report:

Gesture Recognition and Touchless Sensing Market by Technology (Touch-based and Touchless), Product (Sanitary Equipment, Touchless Biometric), Industry, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2022

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ROCKVILLE, Md., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Two hundred years ago, medicines in the United States could often be deadlier than the cures they were meant to provide. That began to change in 1820 with the creation of the United States Pharmacopeia (USP). January marks the 200th anniversary of USP, now a global leader in building trust in medicines, supplements and foods through public quality standards that help assure quality and safety.

The United States Pharmacopeia was created nearly 200 years ago, dedicated to instilling trust where it matters most: in the medicines, supplements and foods people rely on for their health.

USP was founded when 11 physicians took action to protect patients from poor-quality medicines. Convening in the Old Senate Chamber in the United States Capitol, they published a national, uniform set of guidelines for medicine quality called the U.S. Pharmacopeia. Since then, the U.S. Pharmacopeia and the National Formulary (USPNF) has become an essential compendium on drug quality. Today, USP Reference Standards and monographs are legally recognized in the U.S. and relied on in more than 140 countries.

"Billions of people live longer and healthier lives thanks to medicines they can trust," said Ronald T. Piervincenzi, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, USP. "Our public quality standards build patient, practitioner, and industry confidence by setting clear quality expectations and increasing patient access to vital therapies. Governments in the U.S. and around the world rely on the thousands of USP standards to make sure quality medicines are available to their populations, and that poor-quality and counterfeit drugs do not enter the market."

USP standards are in a continuous process of review and revision based on new evidence and technologies, emerging public health concerns and public requests for revision. Input from expert volunteers is crucial for maintaining these high standards and preserving public trust.

For its first nearly 130 years, the USPNF was developed entirely by volunteers  scientist and other experts who contributed their knowledge and time. Now, more than 800 independent scientific experts and 1,200 staff around the world support USP's important mission. USP is currently welcoming applications from committed scientists and other health and science professionals passionate about improving public health as a part of its Champions of Trust Initiative.

As a part of its anniversary, USP has also launched Trust TV on its new 200th anniversary hub, which invites leaders in science and health to consider trust's role in helping people live longer and healthier. Practicing physician, researcher, author and Trust TV host Dhruv Khullar talks with guests about some of today's most pressing topics, starting with the challenges of misinformation in healthcare with Adam Berinsky, director of the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab.

USP Convention Convenes in May to Set High-Level Direction

A pivotal moment of the 200th anniversary will be the 2020 Meeting of the USP Convention taking place May 36 in Washington, D.C.

The USP Convention, which convenes every five years, is a unique and powerful network of more than 460 Member Organizations from across the healthcare continuum and around the world, uniting to advance access to quality medicines. In addition to helping shape USP's impact through governance responsibilities such as electing USP's Board of Trustees and Council of Experts, adopting high-level guiding resolutions and amending the USP bylaws, Convention Delegates will participate in dynamic programming at the meeting.

USP Convention Member Organization leaders shared the following:

"Pharmacists are the last line of defense for patients receiving medications, prescription or nonprescription, and we need to be sure that the products we are dispensing are what they say they are and are pure. The quality of pharmaceuticals is something that our consumers and patients in America rely on. APhA has a deep appreciation for USP's work in quality," said Thomas E. Menighan , executive vice president and CEO, American Pharmacists Association.





, executive vice president and CEO, American Pharmacists Association. "We want our patients to walk out of our offices with the confidence that the medications they take will work, have met quality standards and will lead to better health outcomes. USP and AMA have similar goals: All of our work points to that north star of the betterment of public health," noted Dr. Patrice Harris , president, American Medical Association.





, president, American Medical Association. "USP's vision of a world in which all have access to high-quality, beneficial and safe medicines and food aligns well with the ACS vision of improving people's lives through the transforming power of chemistry. It's the chemists who create new materials, and USP plays a critical role in assuring the quality of those products as they are produced," said Thomas Connelly Jr. , executive director and CEO, American Chemical Society.

Exploring Trust in Future Medical Breakthroughs and Worldwide Impact

In addition to celebrating USP's past and present work, throughout 2020, USP will continue to look at the future of medicine.

"We're working to help ensure that today's remarkable innovations can be tomorrow's trusted therapies, just as we have done for 200 years," noted Piervincenzi.

To explore the medical breakthroughs that will shape people's health between now and 2040, and what it will take to build trust in these innovations, USP has partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Collective Intelligence and over 100 global leaders in health and science. Through MIT's unique online platform, the Trust CoLab, thought leaders collaborated to develop scenarios on how trust in medicine and healthcare will evolve. USP will release the project's findings on Feb. 25 and discuss the results at TEDMED 2020 in early March.

USP will also launch an innovative Trust eXperience, available at TEDMED 2020 and online at www.usp.org/200 this spring. This self-guided digital visualization experience enables users for the first time to explore the relationships between USP public quality standards and the medicines used to treat humanity's deadliest diseases, ultimately illustrating how quality medicines help people live longer and healthier. Users can also learn what happens without quality standards, investigate the history of standards in the U.S. and meet some of the experts from USP's global health science network.

Anniversary excitement will peak in late fall 2020 with the reopening of the USP Museum in USP's Rockville, Maryland, headquarters. Open to the public, it will offer visitors opportunities to learn about the people, partners and accomplishments of USP. USP will also publish a commemorative anniversary book in late 2020.

USP's anniversary observances will take place throughout the year. For additional information and updates, visit www.usp.org/200.

About the USPNF

The United States PharmacopeiaNational Formulary (USPNF) includes more than 5,000 monographs for finished drug products (both chemical and biologic), as well as active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and excipients. Specifically, the USPNF includes more than 1,500 API monographs covering 50 therapeutic classes including oncology, cardiovascular, endocrine, infectious disease and mental health drugs. The first printing of the U.S. Pharmacopeia was in 1820. Since then, 43 editions have been published. The latest printed edition was published in 2019. USPNF is now available to subscribers online.

About USP

USP is an independent scientific organization whose mission is to improve public health through public standards and related programs that help ensure the quality, safety, and benefit of medicines and foods. Through our standards, advocacy and capability building, USP helps increase the availability of quality medicines, supplements and food in the United States and for billions of people worldwide. USP has offices in the United States, Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe, including five state-of-the-art laboratories, full-scale training facilities in Ghana and India, online and in-person training courses, and partnerships with national quality control laboratories around the world. For more information, visit www.usp.org.

Media Contact:

Anne Bell [email protected]

Office: +1-301-998-6785

Mobile: +1-240-701-3242

SOURCE U.S. Pharmacopeia

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 17:01:51|Editor: Yurou

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NANYUKI, Kenya, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan security forces are holding three terror suspects who were arrested for trying to storm a British military camp in the country, an official said Monday.

The suspects attempted to force their way into the British army camp in Laikipia County in central Kenya on Sunday. Their photos were circulated after being captured on closed-circuit television camera, Laikipia County Criminal Investigations Officer Peter Muinde said.

"Later in the day (Sunday) as the chief and security officers were following up leads, they found them (the suspects) near Nanyuki police station where they arrested them," Muinde said.

Investigations are ongoing into the incident which came hours after Somalia-based extremist group al-Shabab stormed a military airstrip in Manda Bay along Kenya's eastern coast.

The U.S. Africa Command, responsible for military relations with 53 African nations, said a U.S. service member and two civilian contractors working for the U.S. Defense Department were killed in the attack.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said the upcoming Assembly elections will be fought on the basis of the AAP government's work and that his party will run a "positive" campaign.

Addressing a press conference after the Election Commission announced the poll schedule, the AAP national convener appealed to the people to put behind their political preferences and vote in favour of progress and development of Delhi.

He said the AAP would conduct "positive campaigning" and accept suggestions from the opposition to add to their manifesto for the next tenure.

"The Aam Aadmi Party is prepared for the elections. The Delhi Assembly elections will be held based on the development done by us. The people of Delhi have decided to vote on the basis of the improvement in the infrastructure of government schools and hospitals," he said.

ALSO READ: Delhi Assembly election to be held on February 8, counting on February 11

We count these votes as positive votes, which will be in our favour because of all the development made by us in Delhi. I believe this is happening for the first time in the history of politics of independent India. People will compare the work (done) by each party in Delhi," he added.

Kejriwal appealed to the people of Delhi to "vote for us (AAP) only if you think we have done good work in the last five years".

"If I have done work, then vote for me. If I have not done work, then don't vote for me," said Kejriwal.

He urged supporters of the BJP and the Congress to vote for Delhi and not for "your political party".

"We will ask for votes from BJP supporters as well as Congress supporters. We will go door-to-door and urge supporters of the Congress and the BJP to vote for us," he said.

Kejriwal said the AAP would run a "positive campaign" and not abuse anyone.

"All (BJP president and Union Home Minister) Amit Shah ji did in his speech recently was abuse me. I will not indulge in anything like that. We will not abuse anyone.

"In 70 years, for the first time, people will vote on schools and hospitals. Our whole campaign will be a positive campaign," he added.



ALSO READ | CAA, unorganised colonies ownership: BJP's key issues against Kejriwal in Delhi elections

He said this time people will cast their vote on the basis of the positive work done by the AAP government.

Earlier, he said on Twitter that the election will be fought on the basis of the AAP government's work.

Kejriwal appealed to the opposition to give suggestions to add to their manifesto for the next tenure.

"We will be presenting our manifesto soon, and I want to request the BJP to share their vision with us, suggest steps for the welfare of Delhi.

We are open to adding all their positive suggestions to our manifesto and will work on them in the next five years.

"We need the support of all the parties as well as 2 crore people of Delhi in working for the progress of Delhi," he added.

He also said that the people of Delhi have decided to break their previous record of electing them on 67 out of 70 Assembly seats.



ALSO READ: Delhi BJP wants CM Kejriwal to apologise for lying about unauthorised colonies

When asked about issues concerning Delhi on which the elections will be conducted this time, Kejriwal said, "The elections in Delhi will be conducted on the basis of education, health, development of unauthorised colonies, free provision of water and power, CCTV cameras and street lights installation, Teerth-Yatra and several other developmental works done across the city.

" "The progress of Delhi is running at a speed of 100 km/hr, now the people will accelerate this progress to a speed of 200 km/hr on February 8.

The leaders have not questioned our performance or our work across various sectors, but have only cursed me in their speeches.

I think they also believe in the phrase, 'Acche Beete Paanch Saal, Lage Raho Kejriwal' (the party's slogan for upcoming polls)," he added.

The election to the 70-member Delhi Assembly will take place on February 8 and results will be declared on February 11, the Election Commission announced on Monday.

Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said the notification for the polls will be issued on January 14 while the last date of withdrawal of candidature will be January 24.
Philadelphia City Council President Darrell L. Clarke speaks during a news conference introducing the new police commissioner. Clarke and his Council colleagues will begin new four-year terms Monday. Read more

A younger, more liberal City Council is coming to Philadelphia.

Council members will take their oaths of office Monday at the Met Philadelphia, where Mayor Jim Kenney also will be inaugurated for a second term.

Poverty, gentrification, gun violence, education funding, and cleaning up environmental hazards in city schools are among the issues likely to take center stage in 2020. Thats according to interviews last week with several of the 17 new and returning members. Although Council members did not offer many specifics on bills they plan to introduce, they said theres new energy and political will to focus on those issues.

Council seems to be coalescing around those critical needs, said Councilmember-elect Jamie Gauthier, who upset longtime incumbent Jannie L. Blackwell to represent the Third Council District in West Philadelphia. And I think thats because of what were hearing from people in neighborhoods and because were looking at the hard numbers.

At the end of the last Council session, lawmakers enacted the first changes to the controversial 10-year tax abatement for new construction in almost two decades. And Council President Darrell L. Clarke has convened a special committee to address poverty, with an ambitious goal of reducing the number of Philadelphians living in poverty by one-quarter, from about 400,000 to 300,000, in the next four years.

The new Council will be younger and more progressive, as four newcomers take office. Councilmember-elect Kendra Brooks of the Working Families Party won an at-large seat long held by Republicans, one of two effectively set aside for candidates outside the Democratic Party. She will be joined by three new Democratic colleagues: Gauthier and at-large members-elect Katherine Gilmore Richardson and Isaiah Thomas.

 READ MORE: Big business in Philly campaigned for real change. Change came  but not the kind it wanted.

Larry Ceisler, a public affairs consultant and longtime observer of city politics, said the new political dynamics on Council will be key.

How far left is Council going to go? he said. Theres one thing when theres campaign rhetoric, and then theres another story once youre governing.

Poverty and affordable housing

Reducing poverty is Clarkes priority for the year.

We must drive down the poverty rate in our city, and working together with the administration, the business community, nonprofit leaders, citizens, and City Council, we will do that, Clarke said Friday.

But how the city can accomplish that goal will remain up for debate.

Brooks campaign platform included legislation to institute rent control in Philadelphia. She has a progressive ally in Councilmember Helen Gym, who said the city will need to look carefully at poverty and housing  especially without support in those areas from the state and federal governments. Gym said she will push for the additional tax revenue collected from reducing the 10-year tax abatement to go toward supporting affordable housing.

Its going to require a lot of policy work and really bringing people to an understanding of how this housing market is really changing rapidly across the city and impacting peoples ability to keep a roof over their heads, she said.

Gauthier said she would like to change zoning ordinances to require affordable housing in developments. Currently, developers simply receive zoning bonuses if they include affordable housing or make a payment to the housing trust fund.

We have to force the issue of affordable housing, she said. Thats something I want to push in 2020.

Councilmember Allan Domb said he plans to reintroduce his bill to offer refunds on the citys wage tax to low-income workers, which Kenney declined to sign at the end of the year.

 READ MORE: Mayor Kenney pocket vetoes six bills as his first term ends

If were talking about helping people get out of poverty, heres the opportunity, he said.

Cleaning up city schools

Gym said she would like to create a school modernization fund that can not only make our schools safe and free of lead, mold, and asbestos, but also really just be an anchor in our communities.

The School District of Philadelphia has had to close six schools and an early childhood education center because of asbestos issues so far this school year.

Other members have also voiced support for ensuring that funding is in place to remove environmental hazards from schools and protect students. Although Council does not control the School District, it does have the power to provide funding as part of its annual budget. That work will begin in March, after Kenney proposes a budget to Council.

But Councilmember Cherelle L. Parker said the city will need help.

The city cannot and should not be required and-or expected to address this issue alone, she said. We cannot tax our way out of it.

Gun violence

Lawmakers also said reducing gun violence is a priority, after 2019 had the highest total of killings in the city since 2007. But theres little legislating Council can do on gun control due to state laws that preempt local gun laws.

Parker said Council can act to stem gun violence by addressing poverty and encouraging job growth. Give folks access to opportunity, and I guarantee you that we will begin to make some strides, she said.

Clarke said Council looks forward to working with newly appointed Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw.

 READ MORE: 3 big challenges as Phillys new police commissioner takes over a beleaguered department

Other issues

The new Council session is likely to include legislation on a number of other issues.

Here are a few:
The killing of the head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC's) Quds Force, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani as a result of a U.S. air strike ordered by President Donald Trump was a demonstration of Washingtons hostile stance on Iran's policy in Iraq. Tehran has long sought to establish a pro-Iranian government in Iraq, which, since the U.S.-led invasion and Saddam Hussein's overthrow, has plunged into the chaos of civil war for many years, with the Iran-Iraq border becoming a source of threat to Iran.

Meanwhile, it was Saddam Hussein's overthrow that opened up wide opportunities for Tehran to strengthen its own positions in neighboring Iraq, defining its strategy for many years to come. Since than Iran has begun to actively support and consolidate the fragmented Shiite opposition. Starting in the second half of 2000s, Qasem Soleimani's name, who actually became the conductor of Iran's policy in Iraq and oversaw contacts with the opposition, manifested itself.

In 2008, in a letter to Commander of the U.S. Central Command David Petraeus, the commander of elite Quds Force openly announced that it's him who controls the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, including diplomatic contacts. All these years, Washington has been well aware that Iran's elite power structures are making efforts to establish control over Iraq, with Qasem Soleimani being the central figure. Not a single supply of weapons, not a single secret meeting of Shiite leaders was held without Soleimani's approval.

His name is associated with successes in fighting ISIS (banned in Russia) in Syria and the Iraqi provinces neighboring Iran, which helped shape Iraqs political course. About 45 of the 60 well-known Shiite militias of Iraq are subordinate to Tehran. Much of the credit for achieving these rights goes to Soleimani. Moreover, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) formed of Shiite militias played a decisive role in the defense of Baghdad, including in the battles of Baiji, Ramadi and Fallujah. Fearing that if Damascus is captured and the Syrian army is defeated, the number of terrorists could significantly increase at the expense of Syrians, Soleimani adjusted joint operations of the PMF and IRGC forces, including in Syria. Given that the backbone of the terrorist organization was composed of former officers of Saddam Hussein's army, Tehran rightly feared a terrorist incursion into Iran.

Iran has become an active participant in Iraqi political life, not only in the military, but also in its economic and cultural spheres. Iraq has the fifth largest oil reserves in the region, with most of the fields located on the western border. Through joint projects in the oil and gas industry, Tehran is striving to influence the price of "black gold", overcoming its trade and energy isolation, and is already refining Iraqi oil. This year, the Iranian authorities plan to hold more than 40 trade fairs in Iraq and ease visa regulations for Iranian and Iraqi businessmen. It is also planned this year to discuss a promising project for the construction of a railway from Iran's Kermanshah to Iraq's Basra, which can optimize the Iraqi transport system by combining it with Iran. All these joint steps are aimed at eliminating American influence, towards which the fragile Iraqi government is being persistently pushed by Tehran. It is obvious that the leadership of the Quds Force plays one of the leading roles in this process.

The killing of Soleimani will not cause a war between the U.S. and Iran, but will mark the beginning of another round of escalation in relations between Tehran and Washington. Tehran has long adhered to the tactics of maintaining tension in Iraq and Afghanistan, due to which the United States could not devote all its attention to Iran. After Qasem Soleimani's death, the leadership of the Islamic Republic was forced to look for a worthy alternative, since the general had leverage over the Iraqi political system. General Esmail Ghaani was appointed new Commander of the Quds Force, and the Iraqi parliament has voted to end the presence of any foreign troops in the country.
A day after violence on the JNU campus, the Congress on Monday demanded a judicial probe into it and accused the Modi government of sponsoring violence across the country.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi alleged that the "horrifying" violence unleashed on India's youth by goons was with the active abetment of the Modi government and demanded an independent judicial inquiry into it.

She accused the Modi government of seeking to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent and said Sunday's "bone chilling" attack on students and teachers at JNU was a grim reminder of that.

"The voice of India's youth and students is being muzzled everyday. The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on India's young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi government is deplorable and unacceptable," she charged.

Gandhi alleged that everyday campuses and colleges are raided across India, either by the police or lumpen elements with support of the BJP government.

"Yesterday's bone chilling attack on students and teachers in JNU, Delhi is a grim reminder of the extent the government will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent," she said in a statement.

Masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus on Sunday. At least 36 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala accused the government of unleashing "state-sponsored terrorism" on campuses across the country and said the violence in JNU reminded him of the Nazi rule.

Demanding a judicial probe into the violence that erupted in JNU, Surjewala said the enquiry should look into the role of the government, the JNU administration and the Delhi Police.

Congress senior spokesperson P Chidambaram demanded that Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik be held accountable for the attacks on a group of JNU students and teachers, saying the perpetrators must be identified and arrested within 24 hours.

Strongly condemning the attacks, he said the "buck starts with the Commissioner of Police and stops with Home minister Amit Shah."



Chidambaram said the JNU violence was an example of the country's "descent into fascism" and the incident was the most clinching evidence of India rapidly descending into anarchy.

He said he was "absolutely sure" that there were intelligence inputs on Sunday's attacks and pointed towards the failure of the Delhi Police in preventing it.

"The Commissioner of Police must be held accountable...The buck starts with the Delhi Police Commissioner and stops with Union Home Minister Amit Shah," he said.

The former home minister said, "This incident is perhaps the most clinching evidence that we are rapidly descending into anarchy. It has taken place in the National Capital in India's foremost University under the watch of the central government, the Home Minister, the LG and the Commissioner of Police."



"This is the gravest act of impunity that we have seen in recent times. Nothing can be more shocking and shameful," Chidambaram said.

The Congress president said students and the youth need affordable education, a deserving job, a promising future and a right to participate in the thriving democracy. "Sadly, the Modi government seeks to suffocate and restrain each one of these aspirations," she charged.

"The entire Congress Party stands in solidarity with India's youth and students. We strongly deprecate the sponsored violence in JNU yesterday and demand an independent judicial inquiry," she said



Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, while condemning the attacks, said the reign of terror unleashed in educational institutions is just an attempt to curb the voice of dissent and debate in the country.

"Ever since the BJP has come to power at the Centre the nation has witnessed a serious threat to institutions of democracy, independence of universities, the voice of youth and general public has repeatedly come under attack with tacit government support," he said in a statement.

"Congress party stands in solidarity with the students and teachers of JNU who have been fighting to save the culture of discussion, debate and democracy," Azad said.

Surjewala accused the BJP government of harbouring enmity with youth of the country as it accused the JNU administration of being complicit in the violent attack on Sunday night.

It also alleged that the Delhi Police remained a mute spectator when students were being attacked by armed miscreants.

"We demand a comprehensive judicial probe into the entire violence at JNU campus by a sitting judge," Surjewala told reporters.

"The entire country witnessed state-sponsored terrorism and 'goondaism' yesterday on the JNU campus when nearly 300 masked goons, brandishing sledgehammers, iron rods and other weapons, created mayhem between 6-9 pm last night," he alleged.

The Congress leader alleged the entire 'goondaism' happened under the watch of the JNU administration as also the Delhi Police which is directly controlled by Home Minister Amit Shah.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
More than 150 emergency workers were mobilised following the tragedy at Lutago in the Italian Alps, and a field hospital was set up by the roadside to provide first aid AFP/Filippo MONTEFORTE

The accident happened at around 1.15am (0015 GMT) in the village of Lutago near the Austrian border in an area popular with skiers.

A group of German tourists had just got off a shuttle bus as they returned to their hotel from an evening at a nightclub when the car slammed into them at high speed - throwing some of them dozens of metres.

Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in a statement expressed his "most sincere" condolences to the "families of the young German tourists", wishing those injured a swift recovery.

"I cry with those who have lost their children, their brothers and sisters, their friends, in the night," German Chancellor Angela Merkel added on Twitter.

Six Germans were killed, a fire service official in Lutago told AFP. Eleven other people were injured - two of whom were seriously hurt and flown by helicopter to a hospital in the Austrian city of Innsbruck.

They were fighting for their lives, according to the prosecutor's office in nearby Bolzano.

The local head of Italy's paramilitary carabinieri police force told AFP that the driver, a 27-year-old local resident, had been charged with murder and put in hospital under police guard.

The prosecutor's office said the driver had between 1.9 and 2.0 grams of alcohol per litre in his blood, about four times the maximum allowed level.

He could face a prison sentence of up to 18 years, it added.

"I had just dropped the youths off when I saw the car coming at a crazy speed," the bus driver told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

"I flashed my headlights in vain to tell the driver to slow down. A few seconds later I saw these poor kids flying through the air in my rear-view mirror."

A TERRIBLE SCENE

Roughly 160 emergency workers went to help out after the accident and a field hospital was set up at the side of the road.

"A terrible scene, people on the ground, cries and pain, a tragedy - we don't have the words," a hotel receptionist told Corriere della Sera.

"We have asked several times for a radar on this road as drivers speed up as soon as they leave Lutago and here, one kilometre from the centre, they go at 100 kilometres per hour."

"The New Year has begun with a tragedy," South Tyrol governor Arno Kompatscher told reporters.

South Tyrol is a largely German-speaking province afforded a high degree of autonomy from Rome, known in particular for the Dolomites mountain chain.

German officials said the country's consulate in Milan was in close contact with the local authorities and staff were helping the people affected.

Lutago, in the picturesque Aurina valley, is popular with tourists who ski at Klausberg and Speikboden.

The village of about 800 residents is the location for a popular Italian television series "Un Passo dal Cielo" ("One Step from Heaven").

Last week, three Germans - a woman and two girls, one aged seven - were killed in an avalanche in South Tyrol.
Soldiers at Fort Bragg in North Carolina loaded aircraft bound for the Middle East on January 4, less than two days after senior Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani was killed in Iraq by US airstrikes.

This footage shows troopers and aircraft bound for the United States Central Command area of operations, which includes the Middle East. The deployment was a precautionary action taken to respond to increased threat levels against U.S. personnel and facilities, according to a description given by the military.

Following Soleimanis death, the Supreme National Security Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran issued a statement promising retaliation for his killing. Credit: US Army via Storyful
Hong Kong, Jan 6 : About 200 people gathered at various locations in Hong Kong on Monday to voice their discontent, a day after police arrested nearly 50 people at a march against mainland Chinese shoppers and parallel traders.

Answering online calls, crowds turned up outside the Revenue Tower in Wan Chai, and on streets in Causeway Bay to chant slogans, while some staged a sit-in at the Kowloon Commerce Centre in Kwai Chung, reports the South China Morning Post newspaper.

About a dozen pro-independent activists joined midway through chanting, "Hong Kong independence, the only way out".

A group of students also took part in the march, with Form Five student David Lee leading the rally at one point.

Monday's protest came a day after a rally in Sheung Shui ended in chaos.

Protesters took to the border town to vent their frustration at parallel traders, both from the mainland and Hong Kong, who buy products in the city and resell them at a higher price across the border.
Uddhav Thackeray is 'disappointed' with newly-inducted minister Abdul Sattar in connection with the Aurangabad Zilla Parishad polls where the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi managed to win the president's post after a rebellion and draw of lots, a senior Shiv Sena leader said

Mumbai: Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray is "disappointed" with newly-inducted minister Abdul Sattar in connection with the Aurangabad Zilla Parishad polls where the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi managed to win the president's post after a rebellion and draw of lots, a senior Shiv Sena leader said on Sunday.

Sattar, who joined the Sena from the Congress ahead of the October Assembly polls, has been accused of "sabotage" by a section of Sena leaders in Aurangabad who claimed his supporters did not throw their weight behind the MVA-backed Congress candidate in the poll for the ZP's vice president.

Since coming to power, the three parties have decided to fight such local elections in tandem to keep the BJP out of power.

"Sattar has some plans for his supporters so was considering an alternative in the ZP poll. However, Uddhav ji has communicated clearly to him on the importance of the MVA remaining intact," a senior Sena leader said on condition of anonymity.

"Uddhav ji is disappointed with Sattar and has made it clear to the minister," the leader added.

Sattar, who met Uddhav on Sunday, on his part, claimed all was well.

"I have informed Uddhavji my side in this whole episode. I am very much part of Sena and am not leaving the party. I am meeting Uddhavji tomorrow (Monday) evening," the MLA from Sillod in Aurangabad district said.

There was intense speculation on Saturday that Sattar had resigned, with several Aurangabad Sena leaders, prime among them being former Lok Sabha MP Chandrakant Khaire, coming out openly against him.

Khaire called Sattar a "snake" and a "traitor".

On Sunday, Meena Shelke of the MVA was appointed president of Aurangabad ZP after a draw of lots following a tie with Sena rebel Devyani Dongaonkar, who was the outgoing president. Lahanu Gaikwad of the BJP was elected vice president.
The time and place of the farewell will be announced later

A 44-year-old fighter of the 93rd Detached Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine died in combat as a result of enemy shelling in Donbas. The page of the organization Native Slavutych on Facebook reported that.

"As a result of enemy shelling in the zone of Joint Forces Operation, Ukrainian hero, a resident of the city of Slavutych, Ratsun Sergey Petrovich was killed," the message said.

As we reported, on January 5, Russian mercenaries landed five attacks on positions of Ukrainian troops in Donbas. Two Ukrainian servicemen deceased, and another one sustained a combat wound after stepping on a landmine.
Mumbai: Kushal Punjabi's wife Audrey Dolhen has come out and spoken about being blamed for the death of the television actor. She says that Kushal "failed their relationship" and called him a "careless father".

It was reported that Kushal's failed marriage with Dolhen was the reason behind him taking the shocking step. The two got married in 2015.

"We had problems in our marriage but it was not a failed marriage. I never stopped Kian from talking to his father Kushal. It was Kushal who was not serious about his family," Dolhen told PeepingMoon.com.

"I invited him to settle down in Shanghai but he was least interested. In fact, it was me who was looking after his expenses. Kian lost interest in his father because of lack of seriousness. I tried my best to save my relationship with Kushal," she added.

Dolhen, according to peepingmoon.com, is currently working as CCO in CMA CGM China Shipping Company.

Why was she residing in Shanghai and not in India?

"I was on contract with my company and Kushal was not able to understand this. He wanted me to shift to London. It was not possible for me to quit my job. Kushal was a careless father who never bothered about his son's future. I was at the receiving end in the marriage and not him. I was with our son Kian in France for Christmas holidays," she said.

"I don't know why I am being blamed for his death, it was Kushal who failed in our relationship," Dolhen added.

According to the portal, Kushal's parents said that Dolhen harassed him no end and demanded a huge sum of money for a divorce.

They said that she took away their three-year-old son Kian, which shattered Kushal and made him take his life.

Dolhen has been summoned by Mumbai Police in connection with Kushal's suicide.

The TV actor committed suicide at his home in Mumbai's Bandra area. As per a statement from the police, the actor "committed suicide by hanging himself from a fan with a nylon rope".

He came into limelight after winning the reality show "Zor Ka Jhatka", and went on to do other reality shows such as "Fear Factor", "Paisa Bhari Padega" and "Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa".

Kushal also worked in movies like "Lakshya", "Kaal", "Salaam-e-Ishq", "Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal" and "Crazy Cukkad Family".
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020 19:16 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c3211428b 1 People basuki-tjahaja-purnama,ahok Free

Politician-turned-Pertamina president commissioner Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama and his wife Puput Nastiti Devi welcomed a baby boy on Monday.

Puput gave birth to the baby boy, named Yosafat Abimanyu Purnama, in the early hours of Monday at Bunda Hospital in Menteng, Central Jakarta.

Creative Economy Agency head Triawan Munaf posted a photo of the couples newborn on his official Instagram account.

Congratulations on the birth of Yosafat Abimanyu Purnama, Pak BTP and Bu Puput, Triawan wrote on the caption, in reference to the preferred moniker of the former Jakarta governor.

Jakarta City Council speaker and Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) politician Prasetyo Edi Marsudi tweeted photos of his visit to the hospital and congratulated the couple on the birth of Yosafat.

My family and I pray that Yosafat may grow up to be a person who will do his parents and country proud. Amen, Prasetyo wrote in the tweet, alongside photos of him posing with Ahok, former Jakarta deputy governor Djarot Syaiful Hidayat and Puput in a hospital room.

Members of the public have also taken to social media to express their joy over the birth of Yosafat.

Welcome, baby boy of @basukibtp and Puput Nastiti Devi. Congratulations to the happy parents, child psychologist Novita Tandry posted on her Twitter account @novitatandry.

Yosafat is Ahoks fourth son and his first from his marriage with Puput, a former police officer. He has three children from his previous marriage with Veronica Tan. Ahok filed for divorce against Veronica in 2018 and was later granted custody of their two younger children.

Ahok was previously married to Veronica Tan until their divorce in April 2018. Puput once served as Veronicas aide.

He tied the knot with Puput on Jan. 25 last year.

Neither Ahok nor his wife have released any official statement regarding the birth of their son at the time of writing.

Ahok was convicted of blasphemy during the 2016 Jakarta gubernatorial race and served two years in prison.

He was released from prison in January 2019. Ahok returned to the limelight last November when State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) Minister Erick Thohir appointed him the new president commissioner of state-owned energy holding company Pertamina. (rfa)
UPM Says "Full Speed Ahead" for USD 3 Billion Pulp Mill Project in Uruguay There are currently over 700 people working on the mill site preparation, housing construction in the outskirts of Paso de los Toros as well as on pulp terminal construction and dredging at the port. Jan. 6, 2020 - UPM on July 23, 2019 announced its decision to build a 2.1 million tonnes per year greenfield eucalyptus pulp mill near Paso de los Toros in central Uruguay. Besides the mill, the total investment of USD 3 billion also includes a pulp terminal in the port of Montevideo as well as investments in local facilities in Paso de los Toros. In December, UPM published the following update on the progress of construction activities associated with the mill project: In Uruguay the month of December is generally one of the busiest times in the year. Not just because of the approaching year end, but it's also the last month before the summer holiday season. The last few months have also been very exciting for us  since the investment decision in July we have moved full speed ahead to start preparatory work for our new state-of-the-art pulp mill in Paso de los Toros. In addition to the new mill, this project includes building a pulp terminal at the Montevideo port as well as other related facilities, such as permanent and temporary apartments and houses for construction employees, and infrastructure. There are currently over 700 people working on the mill site preparation, housing construction in the outskirts of Paso de los Toros as well as on pulp terminal construction and dredging at the port. Half of the workers in Paso de los Toros and Durazno are from the region. Several Initiatives Ongoing Besides construction, several initiatives have been started in line with the regional development plan. These include both professional and complementary training, support for entrepreneurship as well as awareness building  for example on road safety. The government-led Rio Negro Initiative aimed at improving the conditions of the Rio Negro river has also established a technical office in Paso de los Toros. UPM is contributing USD 10.5 million to this initiative and improvement of the sanitation system of Paso de los Toros and Pueblo Centenario. Active engagement Throughout all this we have continued active communication and engagement with the local community and stakeholders. In November we opened a new UPM office in Paso de los Toros. This serves as an information point and many people have already visited to learn about the project, UPM in Uruguay and the training and work opportunities that the project will bring as it proceeds. [During the first week in December] UPM President and CEO Jussi Pesonen visited us here in Uruguay. He, as well as other UPM executives, often visit Uruguay to meet with the local team and stakeholders. This is natural given the importance of our current operations and the investment  USD 3 billion  which is the largest the company has ever made. On this visit Jussi Pesonen also met with the country's newly elected leader Luis Lacalle Pou in Montevideo to greet and congratulate the new President. On Thursday, 12 December, we held a local information meeting to share progress with everyone in Paso de los Toros. Just like previous information meetings, we had a full house and active participation. We continue to engage and share information through information meetings and on our project website at www.upm.uy/en/growth as we proceed. Knowing the importance of this project to UPM and my home country, and the positive impact that the Fray Bentos mill continues to have on the local community, it is both humbling and exciting to be part of this investment and share its progress! Through the renewing of the bio and forest industries, UPM is building a sustainable future across six business areas: UPM Biorefining, UPM Energy, UPM Raflatac, UPM Specialty Papers, UPM Paper ENA and UPM Plywood. To learn more, please visit: www.upm.com SOURCE: UPM Go to a related story on PaperAge.com:

 UPM Announces Final Decision to Build $2.7 Billion Pulp Mill in Uruguay - July 23, 2019.
Dear Investor:From all of us at Dunnedin Ventures, our best wishes for a successful and prosperous New Year. We are grateful for your continued interest and support and look forward to delivering exploration success in 2020. 2019 was a transitional year for Dunnedin as we saw an opportunity to capitalize on an overall market sentiment shifting in favor of copper porphyry assets over diamond exploration.

To that end, we added to our project portfolio with the acquisition of two promising porphyry projects, the MPD copper-gold project in southern British Columbia and the Mohave copper-molybdenum-silver project in Arizona. Together with our Trapper copper-gold project in the northern Golden Triangle we now own 100% of three advanced-stage copper porphyry exploration projects in North America, all of which have large footprints and the potential to yield major deposits.

Our strategic priority is to drill MPD and Mohave as both projects have significant discovery potential, are accessible year-round and are blessed with great infrastructure, including paved highways within a kilometre of the drill targets. In November, we achieved an important milestone and completed our maiden drill program at MPD. We are optimistic about this early round of drilling and much anticipating the drill results which are expected this month. Mohave is slated for drilling in 2020 so look out for more results and news flow throughout the year.

Why Copper?

It's no secret that tomorrow's sustainably-oriented world will require an abundance of copper. Battery powered electrical cars will use up to 10 times more copper than today's conventional cars and clean energy from solar and wind will need 4-6 times more copper than energy generation from fossil fuels. According to Rio Tinto, more copper will be required in the next 25 years than was consumed in the last 500 years. The recent China-USA trade deal was a catalyst that pushed the copper price to a 7-month high in December, up 8% over 7 straight sessions of gains. The global commodities market is getting more bullish on copper and as shown by the short selling position of the metal which has been decreasing dramatically over recent months while the long position is gaining. Meanwhile, the pipeline of copper development projects is sparse and most analysts forecast a supply gap opening up that will need significantly higher copper prices in the coming years to be filled (see figure 1 below).





Figure 1: Copper Supply/Demand (Source: Wood Mackenzie, Rio Tinto)

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3803/51177_7339dd6824ef6b09_002full.jpg

Our Team

Dunnedin's recently acquired porphyry assets were evaluated and selected by Dunnedin's founder and Chairman, Chris Taylor who you may also know as the founder, President and CEO of our sister company, Great Bear Resources which made a significant gold discovery and was one of the best performing stocks on the TSX Venture Exchange in 2019. You may not be aware, however, that Chris is a structural geologist with significant porphyry experience who 'cut his teeth' drilling copper assets in North America for Imperial Metals for many years. My own background also includes significant experience in the copper space and during my years as general manager at Rio Tinto I was involved in feasibility studies at some of the world's largest copper mines such as Escondida and Oyu Tolgoi.

Vice President Exploration, Jeff Ward and Andrew Berry, VP Operations, have co-managed highly successful exploration and drilling campaigns, with annual budgets exceeding C$20M in very challenging locations - they are certainly up to this task. We are also fortunate to be supported by great advisors, including Tom McCandless, a well-recognized porphyry expert. In addition, Dunnedin is able to access a wealth of expertise as a member of Discovery Group, which is led by successful mining entrepreneur John Robins and includes companies such as Great Bear Resources Ltd., Bluestone Resources Inc. and Fireweed Zinc Ltd. We are proud to be part of such a respected group, off the back of our exciting exploration potential.

MDP Copper-Gold Porphyry Project

MPD is a large, 78.5 km2 land package in south-central British Columbia, owned 100% by Dunnedin that we believe overlies a gold-rich porphyry system of significant size. It is located just east of Highway 5A, between Princeton and Merritt in a prolific mining district with great infrastructure. Nearby mines with similar host rocks and mineralization styles include Highland Valley, Copper Mountain and New Afton. From 1966-2014, previous operators including Rio Tinto and Newmont Mining completed 129 drill-holes for 25,780 metres at MPD.

We acquired MPD in November 2018 and in the summer announced results of our initial ground work at the project which consisted of mapping, prospecting, soil sampling and resampling of historic trenches. Trenching results announced on August 22 included: 0.89% copper and 0.04 g/t gold over 46.0 metres, including 1.83% copper and 0.08 g/t gold over 12.0 metres. On August 29 we released further results, including grab samples with 0.89% copper and 0.32 g/t gold, and 0.76% copper and 0.24 g/t gold.

November 2019 marked an exciting milestone for Dunnedin as we successfully completed our maiden drill program at MPD. We drilled 1,766 metres in three drill holes and all holes intersected prospective sulphide-bearing, altered porphyritic host rocks. Two of the holes were designed to follow up on drilling in 2013 which for the first time tested deeper than previous historic holes which rarely exceeded 200m vertical depth. The 2013 holes yielded promising results as they both encountered porphyry mineralization with grades increasing with depth, approximately 450 metres apart (see figure 2). The samples from Dunnedin's drill program are currently in the lab and assay results are expected this month.





Figure 2: MPD Project Prime Zone Cross Section

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3803/51177_7339dd6824ef6b09_003full.jpg

Mohave Copper-Molybdenum-Silver Porphyry Project

Announced on March 4, we acquired the Mohave copper-molybdenum-silver porphyry project in Arizona on favorable terms from fellow Discovery Group company, Bluestone Resources Inc.. The project was last drilled in 2011 with 11 holes for 3,500 metres. Anomalous mineralization over significant intervals was reported in all holes, with the first higher-grade intercepts also being drilled at that time, including 0.49% Cu over 59.4 m, and 0.30% Cu, 0.01% Mo, and 2.54 g/mt Ag over 70.7 m. Work to date strongly indicates that a large system of porphyry style mineralization underlies the project.

Mohave is road-accessible and adjacent to Highway 93 which links Las Vegas and Phoenix. The project is geologically and structurally analogous to the neighbouring Bagdad mine which is owned and operated by Freeport-McMoRan and has one of North America's largest copper reserves.

Over the course of 2019 Dunnedin's technical team reviewed the historic work on the project and we are ready to start exploration on the ground in 2020, starting with a geophysical modelling and infill, and followed by drilling.

Trapper Copper-Gold Porphyry Project

The third project in Dunnedin's porphyry portfolio is the 100% owned Trapper project, located at the northern tip of the BC's prolific Golden Triangle, adjacent to Brixton Metals' Thorn project which was drilled in 2019 with excellent results. Trapper is a textbook copper-gold porphyry complex with an alteration signature of over 15 km2. It was drilled in 2011 and returned encouraging gold values including 34.11m @ 1.71 g/t gold, which propelled the valuation of the company to almost $80 million at the time. Trapper is an exciting project that provides Dunnedin with additional optionality for value creation.

Looking Forward to 2020

Our aim is to create material shareholder returns through exploration discoveries, in a global copper and gold market that is gaining positive momentum. We look forward to releasing the results from our first drill campaign at MPD soon and are planning to follow up with further drilling in the months ahead. In addition, our Mohave project offers further low-cost/high-impact exploration opportunity. As our porphyry assets can be drilled year-round you can look for a steady stream of exploration news from Dunnedin in 2020.

As we have witnessed in 2019, exploration companies have been rewarded handsomely in the capital markets for copper-gold discoveries. Other copper exploration companies in British Columbia such as GT Gold have generated significant increases in shareholder value through deeper drill testing of porphyry targets. Having acquired MPD and Mohave because of their large porphyry footprints and encouraging shallow drill results, Dunnedin is now advancing these projects with a similar ambitious goal - the discovery of a large copper porphyry system that was hiding in plain sight, right beside the highway and surrounded by producing mines.

Sincerely,

Claudia Tornquist

President & CEO

Jeff Ward, P.Geo, Vice President Exploration and a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical information contained in this release.

For further information please contact Mr. Knox Henderson, Investor Relations, at 604-551-2360 or khenderson@dunnedinventures.com.

About Dunnedin Ventures Inc.

Dunnedin Ventures is advancing a portfolio of copper porphyry projects in Canada and the USA, including the MPD copper-gold porphyry project in the prolific Quesnel Trough in south-central British Columbia, the Mohave copper-molybdenum-silver porphyry project near the world-class Bagdad mine in Arizona and the Trapper copper-gold porphyry project in the northern Golden Triangle region of British Columbia. Dunnedin's porphyry assets all present known mineral discoveries with the potential to hold large-scale deposits. The Company also owns the advanced-stage Kahuna diamond project in Nunavut which hosts a high-grade, near surface inferred diamond resource and numerous kimberlite pipe targets and is located 26 kilometres from Rankin Inlet and adjacent to Agnico Eagle's Meliadine gold mine.

Based in Vancouver, Dunnedin is backed by a world-renowned team of exploration experts with decades of combined exploration experience and significant capital market strength. Dunnedin is part of the Discovery Group of companies led by John Robins, one of the most successful mining entrepreneurs in Canada.

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.

Statements included in this announcement, including statements concerning our plans, intentions and expectations, which are not historical in nature are intended to be, and are hereby identified as, "forward- looking statements". Forward-looking statements may be identified by words including "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "expects" and similar expressions. The Company cautions readers that forward-looking statements, including without limitation those relating to the Company's future operations and business prospects, are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements contained herein are made as of the date of this news release and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward- looking statements, except as required by applicable securities laws.


Wall Street shrugged off rising tensions in the Middle East on Monday, even as oil prices rose and stocks outside the United States sank.

The S&P 500 wobbled early but regained its losses and closed 0.4 percent higher for the day.

The resilience of the American market reflects, in part, the emergence of the United States as the worlds largest oil producer  and therefore, in part, a beneficiary of rising oil prices.

The Middle East matters far less to the U.S. today than a decade ago, Robert Bilkie, chief executive at Sigma Investment Counselors in Northville, Mich., wrote in an email.

But Mondays rally also underscores ingrained investor expectations that the Federal Reserve will continue to take steps to bolster the economy and cushion financial markets.
Around 15-20 people gathered outside the main gate of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi on Monday, raising slogans against the Left-affiliated outfits and chanting 'Jai Shri Ram' and 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'.

The police have maintained a tight vigil outside the gate.

The students raised slogans against the Left as the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) addressed a press conference narrating the attack on group of students inside the campus on Sunday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Known for his luminous metscapes, Akbar Padamsee was among the pioneers of modern Indian art

One of India's best known artists, Akbar Padamsee passed away in Coimbatore on the evening of 6 January 2019. He was 91.

Padamsee, along with FN Souza, MF Husain and SH Raza, was among the pioneers of modern Indian art, and was also part of the Progressive Artists' Group.

Padamsee was born in Mumbai in 1928.

His interest in art began early, and Padamsee recalled copying pictures out of copies of the Illustrated Weekly. While visiting his father's office as a little boy, he would also draw in the margins of the account books and ledgers  prompting both exasperation and affection from his parent in response.

While enrolled at St. Xavier's High School in Fort, Akbar began studying art more seriously, going on to join the Sir JJ School of Art, from where he earned a Diploma in Painting.

It was after he finished his course at JJ that his friend, SH Raza, suggested that Padamsee accompany him to Paris; Raza had won a scholarship there. The duo sailed for France in 1951, where Padamsee would meet the surrealist Stanley Hayter and also hold his first-ever solo exhibition.

Padamsee lived in France until 1968, marrying the late Solange Gunelle, with whom he had a daughter, the actress Raisa Padamsee. On his return to India, he once again made Mumbai his home.

Over a long and storied career, Padamsee  renowned for his metascapes  would win many honours, including a gold medal from the Lalit Kala Akademi, and the Padma Bhushan in 2010. Of his oeuvre, the online auction house Saffronart noted:

Padamsees interest in structure and form takes shape from landscapes, and is borne from an interest in Sanskrit texts such as the 'Abhijanashakuntalam'. His 'Mirror Images' reflect a concern with the duality of existence. His portraits and heads are treated with the same interest in constructing form rather than in the specifics of portraiture. The only occasion when he created identifiable portraits was in 1997, with his 'Gandhi' series of works on paper in watercolour and charcoal.

The Jehangir Nicholson Foundation's profile of the artist observed:

During his illustrious career, [Padamsee] explored a wide range of mediums, and managed to remain fiercely experimental and individualistic. His artistic oeuvre is a formal exploration of a few chosen genres  prophets, heads, couples, still-life, grey works, metascapes, mirror-images and tertiaries, across a multitude of media  oil painting, plastic emulsion, water colour, sculpture, printmaking, computer graphics, and photography. His early portraits and landscapes in varied mediums of painting, drawing and etching demonstrate a quasi-spiritual style of working. His oils have been characterised by a deep intensity and luminescence while his drawings exude a serene grace."

One among eight siblings, the artist's brother was (noted ad man and theatre guru) Alyque Padamsee.

Akbar Padamsee is survived by his wife Bhanumati, and daughter Raisa and her family.
SALEM TOWNSHIP, MI -- A $10-million grant to a rural township northeast of Ann Arbor was held up by Gov. Gretchen Whitmers administration last year when it was revealed a former Republican political leader would benefit from the funds. But the aid ultimately passed legal review and will be awarded, state officials said.

The funds came under scrutiny in January and February 2019 when Bridge Magazine first reported that Salem Township was awarded two $10-million infrastructure grants despite never asking for them. The grants were to develop sewer and water lines to the townships urban services district, land set aside for future residential or commercial development.

The questions intensified when it became clear the money would benefit a project by Bobby Schostak, whose development company Schostak Brothers & Co. of Livonia owns the land and plans to build a 550-home subdivision. Schostak was the Michigan chairman of the Republican Party from 2011 to 2015.

Whitmers administration put the second of the two grants on hold for a due diligence review in early 2019, State Budget Office spokesman Kurt Weiss said in an email Friday. State officials were partly concerned because the second grant was approved before the first was even fully leveraged.

Weiss said the review lasted about six months and was incorporated into the 2020 budget discussion. The township must spend the first $10 million allocation before they can receive the 2019 fiscal year grant.

It was never frozen, but did require additional discussion and review since more money was being appropriated for something that had yet to spend its original appropriation in fiscal year 2018, Weiss wrote.

The township has taken out $5 million so far, a spokesman for Michigan Economic Development Corporation, the state agency that administers the funds, said Thursday.

Salem Township long held that any developer looking to build in the urban services district would be responsible for bringing that infrastructure to the land.

With the funds in hand, Salem Township is now looking to build a sewer line running south to the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority treatment facility through the east side of Superior Township.

But the project is being met with some opposition from the neighboring community. Superior Township Supervisor Ken Schwartz last month told the township board he fears the proposal goes against the communitys master plan by developing agricultural land that borders Wayne County. He said the township retains the right to refuse a project from a neighboring community, unless there is a public health emergency and no other option.

In Salem Townships permit application submitted last September, Township Attorney Ed Plato argued there is a public health emergency because the area lacks proper sanitation infrastructure.
There must  mustnt there?  have been someone in the room who asked questions when the US president, Donald Trump, and his advisors met to discuss the proposal to kill Irans General Qassem Soleimani.

Yes, we can kill him, but whats our assessment of the risks of retaliation for the US and our allies? Whats our strategy for getting Iran to behave like, as we say, a normal nation?

Answers, it seems, came there none, although Mr Trump might have said, as he did later, that assassinating Irans highest-ranking general would stop a war, not start one, and that a reign of terror would be over with Soleimani blown out of the picture.

The general had much blood on his hands. He inspired and controlled jihadi militias that plague the Middle East and North Africa  in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the Palestinian territories, and Libya  and which have the shared Iranian aim of destroying, firstly, Israel, and, secondly, Saudi Arabia. He died in Baghdad, alongside the founder of Irans principal proxy militia in Iraq, the group responsible for strikes against US bases and diplomats.

The generals friends lodge, in mitigation, his role in co-operating with Western special forces in the defeat of Islamic State , but they omit to explain that this was motivated not so much by the Shia commanders loathing of its so-called caliphate as his determination to crush a rival Sunni power base in the region.

But what little Mr Trump has said  and tweeted  to justify the assassination does not add up. If there was evidence of an imminent, murderous jihadi plot, removing Soleimani will not thwart it; another general, equally committed to the goals of Irans extraterritorial Quds Force  whose brief is unconventional warfare  has stepped into his boots.

Soleimanis network of jihadi proxies across the Middle East remains in place, as does that which Mr Trump describes not inaccurately as the reign of terror.

The Tehran regime, weakened by trade sanctions and increasingly unpopular at home, has been re-energised by the gift of an adored martyr.

We cannot know how Irans government will retaliate. But it will, and with a thirst for revenge whetted by Mr Trumps bizarre warning that the consequence of retaliation would be attacks on sites  52 of them  important to Iran and its culture.

This atavistic reference to the 52 hostages held by Irans rulers for almost 15 months after its mobs overran the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, would be comical if it were not so incendiary.

Soothing appeals by our government, and by others in the European Union, for all parties in the conflict to exercise maximum restraint, are unlikely to count for much, certainly not while Irans theocracy is busy milking Soleimanis funeral for its propaganda value.

In Washington DC., House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks for many in the US, and the wider Western world, when she complains about the inadequate information provided by the White House to justify an escalation that puts Americans and their allies in danger.

Iran, says the president pithily, in reply, has been nothing but problems for many years.

Hes right; it has, and his solution has compounded them.
P rotesters were today set to march on Downing Street in support of a British teenager facing a prison sentence after being found guilty of lying about being gang-raped in Cyprus.

The 19-year-old from Derbyshire could receive up to a year in jail and a 1,700 (1,500) fine after she was convicted of public mischief at Famagusta district court last Monday.

Demonstrators were expected to set off from outside the Cypriot Embassy in St Jamess Square to march to Downing Street and the Foreign Office.

The teenager said she was raped by up to a dozen Israeli men in Ayia Napa on July 17. Twelve men were arrested but then freed and the teenager was charged after signing a retraction 10 days later.

Protesters gather outside the Famagusta courthouse in Paralimni as the verdict was reached / REUTERS

She maintains she was raped but says she was forced to change her account under pressure from Cypriot police.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, appearing on Skys Sophy Ridge On Sunday, warned that the case now needs to be handled very sensitively to prevent doing anything counter-productive before sentencing.

The British teen leaves the Famagusta District Court alongside her mother / AFP via Getty Images
A Region on Edge: Mideast Officials Scramble to Anticipate Iranian Retaliation

By Jamie Dettmer January 05, 2020

No one knows where Iran may strike to avenge the killing Friday of its top general in a U.S. drone strike, but few believe Tehran won't retaliate, and it has plenty of possible targets to pick proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen to carry out reprisals, warn analysts.

U.S. allies - some of whom complain they weren't forewarned of the plan to eliminate Gen. Qassem Soleimani  are drafting contingency plans to cope with the fallout. President Donald Trump has warned the U.S. will strike Iran "very fast and very hard," if it takes retaliatory action, saying the Pentagon has identified 52 Iranian targets, including some "very high level" cultural sites.

British military chiefs are counseling Downing Street to consider dispatching more soldiers to bolster security for the 400 servicemen the country already has in Iraq, and the more than 1,000 stationed across the Gulf.

That advice so far has been rejected with Prime Minister Boris Johnson instead ordering British troops in Iraq to be given heavier weaponry and for their mission to be switched from training local forces to guarding British diplomats from revenge strikes by Iran after the assassination of Soleimani, who was seen in Washington and London as a terror chief. London fears that Iranian proxies could storm the British embassy compound in Baghdad to kill or abduct British citizens.

Britain's defense secretary, Ben Wallace, ordered Sunday two Royal Navy warships in the Gulf to begin "close escort" of oil tankers amid fears that Iran could seize or sink western ships. "We have a plan A and a plan B and a break the glass' plan, if it all kicks off. Our forces in the region have been told to reorientate towards force protection," a senior British official said.

France and the Netherlands have followed the U.S. example and ordered its citizens to leave Iraq, where on Saturday rockets landed near the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. At various levels Washington's European allies have expressed frustration with the strike against Soleimani, while acknowledging, too, that he was directly involved in terrorist activity. U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo said Saturday that Britain and other European allies were not "as helpful as I would wish," adding, "the Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did saved lives in Europe as well."

Israeli military chiefs are tightening their defenses and are bracing for Hezbollah to respond to the killing of Soleimani, Iran's master-fixer in the region and head of Iran's elite Quds Force.

Threats from Hezbollah

A Lebanese Hezbollah official, like other Iranian clients in a chorus of angry threats, said Saturday the response of the Iran-backed "axis of resistance" would be decisive. His threats echoed the words of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who says Tehran will react with "harsh revenge" to the killing of Soleimani, a personal friend and a man he once dubbed a "living martyr."

Most analysts suspect Iran will take a leaf out of Soleimani's own playbook and aim to target Americans across the Middle East and Afghanistan, where Iran has been observing a marriage of convenience with the Taliban. Soleimani was a master-manipulator of Iranian-backed forces in the region and strove to drive up the death toll of U.S. troops in the Mideast in a bid to drain the American resolve to fight.

Gen. Gholamali Abuhamzeh, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Soleimani's native province of Kerman, in southern Iran, raised the prospect Saturday of a possible renewal of an offensive against oil ships navigating the Strait of Hormuz.

"The Strait of Hormuz is a vital point for the West and a large number of American destroyers and warships cross there," he told an Iranian broadcaster. But like Iran's para-military proxies in the region, who appear to be lining up to exact revenge, he painted the a grim picture of reprisals across the region. "Vital American targets in the region have been identified by Iran since a long time ago ... some 35 U.S. targets in the region as well as Tel Aviv are within our reach," he said.

Immediate retaliation

The most immediate arena will likely be in Iraq, where Tehran and its Iraqi Shi'ite proxies have already made clear they want to force U.S. troops to abandon the country.

That effort was underway before the drone assassination of Soleimani with Shi'ite militias launching a dozen attacks on U.S. troops since October. Those attacks -- including an assault no the U.S. embassy in Baghdad  was the trigger for Friday's assassination of Soleimani, according to U.S. officials. Qais al-Khazali, a powerful pro-Iranian Iraqi militia leader, has ordered his fighters to be on high alert, saying on Iranian television the price for the drone strike must be "the complete end to American military presence in Iraq."

"Retaliation, in the first instance, is likely to be focused on Iraq," said Toby Dodge, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics. But Western troops stationed in Syria's Kurdish regions in the north are also vulnerable to attacks from Iran-commanded Shi'ite militias, fear Western officials.

But outside Iraq and Syria, the target list is worryingly long and military and intelligence officials on both sides of the Atlantic are scrambling to assess when and where Tehran will most likely strike amid the heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran,. Western companies are operating in the Gulf are restricting their employees travel in the region, say security consultants.

Unnamed U.S. officials told the broadcaster CNN Saturday that they're seeing signs of Iran stepping up readiness to launch short and medium-range ballistic missiles.

Other analysts predict Iran will want to lash out, too, at U.S. allies in the region, to make their backing of Washington as costly and disruptive as possible.

Qatar dispatched Saturday its foreign minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani to Tehran, seemingly in a bid to mollify Iran. The Reaper drone that fired a Hellfire missile killing Soleimani flew from a U.S. military base in Qatar. "No such similar action was taken in the past, which is why we are very uncomfortable and worried," Al Thani told Iranian President Hassan Rouhani according to official reports.

Rouhani in statement after the meeting said Tehran expects neighboring countries explicitly condemn this murder by the U.S. America's Gulf allies, notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, privately have welcomed Soleimani's death, say Western diplomats. They have long condemned him role in the region, and see his slaying a blow to Iran. But diplomats based in the region say their official reaction is reserved as trey are nervous about Iran's response. Washington and Riyadh blamed Iran for missile and drone attacks in September on Saudi oil facilities.

Iranian targets

Qatar is unlikely to be on an Iranian target list as Doha has been supportive of various Iranian diplomatic initiatives in the region, say Western officials and analysts. But both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, sworn enemies of Iran's Shi'ite regime, are braced for attacks.

"Beyond the immediate environment [of Iraq], Israel may reap serious security repercussions and U.S. allies in the Gulf, particularly Bahrain, the UAE and Saudi, could all fall victim to Iranian retaliatory measures," says Charles Lister, an analyst the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

Any reprisals on Saudi Arabia and UAE would likely come from Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen, where Iran and Saudi Arabia have been engaged in a long-running proxy war.

European intelligence officials are also fearful of Iranian cyber-attacks. In 2017 Iran was suspected of being behind a cyber-attack on the British parliament's computer system, which compromised the email accounts of British ministers.

At this stage the European ally likely to be singled is Britain, a British intelligence official told VOA. "I don't think Tehran will want to hit out at other European states  Iran is more interested in widening transatlantic rifts between Washington and the Europeans," he said.

One question Western diplomats and intelligence officials are trying to answer is how far Iran will go to revenge the death of Soleimani. Iran and the U.S. are not evenly matched  and Washington has the backing also of powerful regional powers, Saudi Arabia and Israel. And Iran has little gain in an all-out war with the vastly superior U.S. That power equation could well limit how far Iran is prepared to go to challenge Washington, say some Western experts.

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UPDATE: The United States Marshals Service is helping the Lynchburg Police Department search for a man suspected in the malicious wounding of two McDonald's employees.

Sherwin Torrance Overstreet is wanted on charges of two counts of malicious wounding and use of a firearm during the commissions of a felony.

The U.S. Marshals Service offers a $2,000 reward for information directly leading to Overstreets arrest. Tips can be submitted at USMS84.tips@usdoj.gov or the USMS Tips app.

EARLIER: Lynchburg police are searching for a suspect after two employees of a Lynchburg McDonald's were shot Friday evening.

Sherwin Torrance Overstreet, of Roanoke, is charged with two counts of malicious wounding and two counts of use of a firearm in commission of a felony, police said in a news release.

Officers responded to the McDonald's at 2135 Wards Road at 6:21 p.m. Friday. An altercation between a drive-through customer and an employee had occurred before the customer drove away, parked his vehicle and came inside, police said.

The altercation continued inside the restaurant, and the customer shot two employees, police said.

Police described the employees' injuries as non-life-threatening and said they are expected to recover.

The suspect fled in a red Mazda SUV; in a news release update, police later said the vehicle had been located but the suspect was still at large.

Anyone with information about this incident is asked to contact Detective M. Scott at (434) 455-6174 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 798-5900. Enter a tip online at http://p3tips.com or use the P3 app on a mobile device.

Police said the shooting is unrelated to a Thursday incident on Wards Road in which a man was stabbed and suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

Contact Matt Busse at (434) 385-5534 or mbusse@newsadvance.com.

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CALGARY - A retired neurologist has admitted in court to sexually assaulting 28 female patients over three decades.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 6/1/2020 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Retired neurologist Keith Hoyte leaves the courthouse in Calgary, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. Hoyte has admitted in court to sexually assaulting 28 female patients over three decades.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Todd Korol

CALGARY - A retired neurologist has admitted in court to sexually assaulting 28 female patients over three decades.

Keith Hoyte, 71, pleaded guilty to 28 counts as his trial was to begin Monday in Calgary. Two counts were stayed because they were melded into charges involving the same victims.

Crown prosecutor Rosalind Greenwood read aloud an agreed statement of facts describing how victims between 17 and 46 felt confused, embarrassed, numb and angry during appointments with Hoyte.

"The common thread running through the evidence is that Dr. Hoyte was seeking, in each instance, to obtain sexual gratification from his patients," the statement said.

The charges relate to assaults between 1983 or 1984 to 2013.

In the statement, women described being told to undress from the waist up even though they were there seeking treatment for brain ailments such as migraines and seizures.

They described Hoyte fondling their breasts and pricking them with pins, while the doctor made little eye contact or conversation. In some cases, he pushed down gowns without his patients' consent.

Court heard that most of the time he did not explain what he was doing or why. In others, he said it was to test reflexes or sensation.

One woman described how Hoyte instructed her to walk back and forth with her eyes closed, arms outstretched and her gown wide open. She opened her eyes to see him crouching down and looking under the gown. He then grabbed her breast and pushed his body against her, the agreed statement of facts said.

"As she left the appointment she said to herself, 'What the heck just happened?'" the document said.

"She tried to rationalize what happened. She also thought about reporting the incident, but thought to herself, 'Who's going to believe me? It would be my word against his.'"

That woman, trusting a family doctor who made the referral, went to see Hoyte for another appointment six years later, during which he tugged down her gown so hard she could hear the stitching rip, she recalled.

One victim went to police in 1991, one in 2008 and another in 2018. Police charged Hoyte with three counts of sexual assault in June 2018. After media reports, 25 more women came forward.

Complainants gave varied reasons for not reporting Hoyte sooner. Many thought they wouldn't be believed. One didn't want to be thought of as a "difficult patient" when it was so hard to get a referral. Another one had debilitating headaches and she didn't want to "risk not getting some answers."

Another young woman recounted staring at her pointy fuchsia shoes during the appointment thinking: "Let this end."

The 19-year-old recalled how, when she tried to push his hands away from her breasts, the doctor became angry.

"The look on his face told it all," she said, according to the agreed statement of facts. She recalled saying she was done and leaving the office in tears.

Submitted with the agreed statement of facts was a report from another doctor who said there is "no legitimate clinical explanation" for what Hoyte did during the examinations.

The case is next in court Jan. 17 to set a date for sentencing. Defence lawyer Alain Hepner has requested a psychological risk assessment.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 6, 2020
Representatives from Brazils scientific community and government will head to Antarctica this month to inaugurate its new Comandante Ferraz Research Station, which replaces a facility lost to fire in 2012. The two low-slung buildings, designed by Estudio 41, a Brazilian architecture firm, house laboratories, operational support and living quarters  and could be mistaken for an art museum or a boutique hotel.

Brazil is a tropical country, so we were not used to these conditions, said Emerson Vidigal, a principal at the firm.

These conditions include temperatures that drop below minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit and winds that reach 100 miles per hour.

Throughout the 20th century, architecture in Antarctica was a pragmatic and largely makeshift affair, focused on keeping the elements out and the occupants alive. In 1959, the Antarctic Treaty dedicated the continent to research. Since then scientists have come in growing numbers and with ever more complex needs. Construction in Antarctica, long the purview of engineers, is now attracting designer architects looking to bring aesthetics  as well as operational efficiency, durability and energy improvements  to the coldest neighborhood on Earth.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has vanished from public view since an extraordinary session of the Workers Party Central Committee came to a close on Dec. 31.

State media reported last week that Kim paid his New Year's respects at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang, the mausoleum of regime founder Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il, but published no pictures.

There is speculation that he has gone to ground since the U.S.' assassination of Iran's top military commander by airstrike on Jan. 3.

At the committee gathering, Kim had threatened to scrap a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests and vowed to confront the U.S. until it "rolls back its hostile policy."


When the Mission's only Guamanian restaurant, Prubechu, closed the doors to its first restaurant in the fall of 2018, many let out a collective and depressed sigh. Now, we can let out another sigh, this time of relief, because the boys co-owners chef Shawn Naputi and Shawn Camacho, are back in town.

The two who proudly tag themselves and their food as Chamorrothe name for the indigenous people and the language of Guam, as well as a signifier of its culturehave landed once again in the neighborhood.

With them come the charismatic flavor combinations conjured by Naputi, who in an interview in 2016 described his approach as "Grandma's recipes with a little bit of lipstick or perfume." As genuine as that humility is, it would be a mistake to underestimate his considerable skills in the kitchen.

As a graduate of California Culinary Academy, Naputi has spent time in the kitchens of Incanto, Foreign Cinema, and La Folie to name a few. At Prubechu, his innovations on food manage to incorporate the legacy of the Micronesian island's long historywhich includes a fair bit of colonization under Spain, then briefly Japan, and later the United States. As the westernmost territory of the U.S.15 hours ahead of Eastern Standard TimeGuam bills itself as the place "where America's day begins."

"We Chamorro are a result of our history," says Camacho. "And taking pleasure in the preparation and eating of food, is a big, big part of that."

The shrimp pancake is baked in a cazuela with peas and corn. (Courtesy of Prubechu)

Situated at Mission and 18th streets, Prubechu has taken over the space formerly occupied by Commonwealth, and feels miles away from the Valencia Street vibe that reigns only one block west. The experience here feels like a connection to the urban ambience and unpredictability that makes a city feel vivid, alive, and diverse, and this will be a welcome mood for fans of the "old San Francisco" that is often said to be lost.



A longtime Mission resident, Naputiwho takes jiujitsu not too far from the restaurantwas thrilled that playing the waiting game worked out, as the new kitchen here allows for considerably more freedom of creation and expression than the old space which, for all its slightly ramshackle charm, made difficult.

We sat and scanned the short wine list that leans heavily on biodynamic or low-intervention wines and decided on the Verdelho Orange 2018 from Koehnen Wine in Santa Rosa; it was fresh and even lemony on the palette, and wore its ABV casually. (We also especially enjoyed our segue to the rose on the list: Sleepless Nights 2018 from the Oakland winery Subject to Change.)

First up was an off-menu item of octopus that had been poached in ginger and lemongrass before hitting the plancha for charring, the heat of which curled it at one end, giving the impression of a seahorse glistening on the plate. Served with a dollop of house-made kimchi, the combination of the two when eaten together set off a chain reaction of such sweet, salty, and chili-driven goodness that one's brain slowed for a brief couple of seconds to savor the moment.

Prubechu specializes in kelaguen, which are basically ceviches that are served in a drier manner than is typical. There are four options on the menu: shrimp, chicken, octopus, and steak. We chose the shrimp (uhang) and the chicken (manok). The shrimp is blanched and then marinated in lemon, scallion, coconut, and hot pepper, and then served on "titiyas" made with corn and achiote, which resemble a thickish corn tortilla. If shrimp is how you follow your bliss (it is for me), rest assured you've come to the right place.

The chicken is barbecued first before marinating in lemon, scallion, and coconut and served with a spicy aioli on "titiyas niyok"a supple coconut flatbread that again recalls a tortilla. The tang on this is perfect, and we held back an impulse to double up on the order.

Similar to a ceviche, the shrimp kelaguen is served on a thick corn tortilla. (Courtesy of Prubechu)

Also on deck, the "lechen birenghenas" is a dish of eggplant that is first barbecued and then marinated in coconut milk with lemon and scallion. This was served chilled and, honestly, had the sweetness and depth of a dessert, a great change of pace. My dinner companion turned to me and said, "Guam revelations!"



For our final share we opted for the shrimp pancake, baked in a cazuela with peas and corn and served quite hot at the table. It had the yielding feel and reassurance of a casserole, a nice antidote to the cold, damp night outside.

Looking around, we saw other menu items being served that two people could easily share, including an iceberg salad and a bone-in short rib, both very generous portions. Other items include chicken sausage, caramelized potato soup, red rice (a specialty, for sure), crispy fried snapper, and empanadas. They also offer what they call the Fiesta Table, a sampling platter of different Chamorro specialties that looks very tempting indeed.

We arrived at Prubechu (which means "you're welcome" in Chamorro) at 6:30pm on a Thursday evening. The place was absolutely humming, so reservations through Resy are recommended.

// Prubechu, 2224 Mission St. (Mission), prubechu.com
New Delhi :

Massive deployment of security personnel remained in place on Monday at Jawaharlal Nehru University, with authorities only allowing students with valid ID cards inside the campus which had witnessed violence. According to sources, security was deployed outside the hostels, administration block and other important locations. Entry of outsiders including media was restricted, the sources said. Violence had broken out at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

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17:03 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In

Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor on #JNUViolence: It has to be condemned. It was quite sad & shocking what I saw, it was very disturbing. I could not sleep the whole night thinking about it. Violence is not going to get us anything and those who have done it should be punished. pic.twitter.com/YHAWWnzKid

 ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020



16:57 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Federation (JNUTF) stands with the JNU students, faculty and staff and their families in this hour of crisis and would like to work with them in restoring normalcy in the JNU campus.

15:08 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In P Chidambaram on JNU violence This incident is perhaps the most clinching evidence that we are rapidly descending into anarchy. It happened in the national capital in Indias foremost University under the watch of Central govt, Home Minister, LG and Police Commissioner.

We demand that the perpetrators of violence (JNU) be identified and arrested within 24 hours and brought to justice. We also demand that accountability on officers be fixed and action taken immediately



13:10 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on JNU Violence It is very disturbing, it is a dangerous planted attack on democracy. Anyone who speaks against them is labelled a Pakistani and an enemy of the country. We never saw such a situation in the country before this. Delhi's Police is not under Arvind Kejriwal rather it is under Central Govt. On one side they have sent the BJP goons & on the other side they made the Police inactive. What can Police do if they are directed by higher authority. This is a fascist surgical strike.

Delhi's Police is not under Arvind Kejriwal rather it is under Central Govt. On one side they have sent the BJP goons and on the other side they made the Police inactive. What can Police do if they are directed by higher authority. This is a fascist surgical strike.





13:05 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In JNU sends detailed report of violence on campus, sequence of events to HRD Ministry: Officials

13:05 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Actor Sushant Singh also reaches Gateway of India where students are protesting against yesterday's JNU Violence.



Mumbai: Actor Sushant Singh also reaches Gateway of India where students are protesting against yesterday's #JNUViolence pic.twitter.com/k0NEJZqgaJ

 ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2020



12:10 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) Secretary's meeting with JNU Registrar, Proctor and other University officials is underway.

11:49 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Registrar, Pro-VC of JNU meet Delhi LG, apprise him of situation: MHA officials

11:49 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Congress seeks comprehensive judicial probe into JNU violence.

11:40 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Following violence in JNU, Police forces on alert, additional forces being deployed in Universities across the state including in Aligarh Muslim University.



Following violence in JNU, Police forces on alert, additional forces being deployed in Universities across the state including in Aligarh Muslim University(in pics) pic.twitter.com/AepR31gNXh

 ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) January 6, 2020



11:31 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In We condemn the violence in JNU. This needs to be investigated. Congress, Communists, AAP and some elements want to create environment of violence in universities across the country.

11:26 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In National Students' Union of India(NSUI) to protest at Arts Faculty, North Campus in Delhi University at 2 pm today, against yesterday's violence.

11:07 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In The entire country witnessed state sponsored goondism and terrorism yesterday in the campus of JNU. All this happened under the watch of JNU administration and also Delhi Police which is directly controlled by Home Minister Amit Shah: Randeep Surjewala, Congress

10:53 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Entire country witnessed 'goondaism' at JNU on Sunday: Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala

10:53 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Entire country witnessed 'goondaism' at JNU on Sunday: Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala

10:51 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In All 34 JNU students who were admitted to hospital for treatment yesterday, have been discharged: Dr. Rajesh Malhotra, AIIMS Trauma Centre Chief

10:48 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Amit Shah speaks to Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, Requests Him To Call Representatives From JNU For Discussions.

10:40 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Would like to appeal to all students to maintain peace. University stands by all the students to facilitate their pursuit of academic activities. We will ensure that their winter semester registration will take place without any hindrance: JNU Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar

10:39 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In They need not fear about their process. The top priority of the University is to protect the academic interests of our students: JNU Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar

10:31 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Delhi Police Registers FIR, Security Heightened At Campus

10:10 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In JNU Violence: FIR registered in connection with violence in Jawahar Lal University yesterday. 23 students who were admitted to hospital have been discharged.

10:09 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In A student of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) seen today leaving the campus after a violence broke out yesterday evening, says,"People came from outside, armed with sticks and rods. Situation is grim in the University. So, I am leaving the campus for now."

10:09 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Meeting underway at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence over yesterday's JNU Violence. Senior Aam Admi Party leaders and Delhi ministers present in the meeting.

10:09 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In The onslaught on students is the result of intolerance. The Nazi-style attack on students and teachers on the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University are carried out by those who want to create unrest and violence in the country: Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan

10:08 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In We have received multiple complaints in connection with yesterday's violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). We will soon register FIR: Delhi Police
It appears Nollywood actress, Tonto Dikeh is back in Nigeria as she stepped out with her son, King Andre to church in a stunning white gown.

The actress, who has been away from public eye for quite a while, posted the stunning pictures with the words;

HAPPY SUNDAY HUNNAYS..STEPPING OUT TO MY FATHERS HOUSEWITH MY FAVOURITE MAN

This comes after the controversial Nollywood actress shared with her fans some useful nugget on how to grow in the new year.

See the full post below:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B67oiFJHh8F/?igshid=uwvqa528pnfd
Gardai are appealing for information after a member of the force was injured after being run over and dragged by a car in Dublin.

Gardai at Dundrum are investigating the endangerment incident that happened at 6.45pm yesterday at Dundrum Town Centre.

Security staff at Dundrum Town Centre and gardai saw a Blue Fiat Bravo hatchback that was allegedly connected with a previous theft in the area and attempted to stop the car and apprehend the occupant.

The driver failed to stop and fled from the scene at speed, colliding with a male Garda member in the process.

The member was dragged a considerable distance before falling on the road and later attended St Vincent's Hospital.

Pending further medical assessments, it is known at this time that he has suffered significant soft tissue injuries to his lower leg.

The vehicle was later recovered by Gardai at Kilcarrig Close in Tallaght.

The driver of the car is understood to be part of a crime group that were planning a theft in the area. Prior to this endangerment incident, two men in their late 40s were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a Serious Offence (Theft).

These men were later charged to appear before Dun Laoghaire District Court this morning.

Gardai at Dundrum are appealing to the public for information in relation to this incident. If anyone is aware of the identity of the driver or has any information in relation to any individuals in this crime group, please contact gardai.

Gardai are also appealing for information in relation to the Blue Fiat Bravo Hatchback that was recovered at Kilcarrig Close, Tallaght.

Anyone with any information is asked to contact Dundrum Garda Station on 01 666 5600, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111, or any Garda Station.
Pooch Pace honored as WLOS Person of the Year

Rufus "Pooch" Pace accepts award as the WLOS-TV Person of the Year.

For 70 years, Rufus Pooch Pace, his tenor bark piercing the air in sunshine or in rain, in sweltering heat or bitter cold, was a part of Henderson Countys celebrations of America, opening day of the Apple Festival and the honoring of veterans, collectively or one by one.



A veteran of World War II and the Korean War, Pace, 92, announced last year that he was hanging up his uniform and M-1 rifle and retiring. After the community honored Pace during the annual Veterans Day ceremony at Forest Lawn, WLOS named him its Person of the Week. That put him in the running for Person of the Year. He was identified last week as one of the finalists, and on Monday morning at American Legion Post 77 downtown WLOS reporter John Le presented Pace with the Person of the Year award.

Pace said he always gave thanks for being raised by loving parents in a Christian home, for being born and raised in the mountains and for the honor of serving his country in the Army.

When the city council calls, county commissioners call, he mobilizes, Shuford Edmisten, a past Honor Guard member, said before Paces award. Youre standing out in the elements and that pole is cold. You better have some gloves. It can be very testing. But I dont think Pooch has ever missed one. We had a lot of these guys who were also on the team, World War II and Korean War veterans, that have passed away. But we also have a lot of new people. We never have enough but we do have a good positive group.

Pace recalled the modest origins of the county Honor Guard.

When I started there was just two of us, he said. All we could do was fold the flag and make a presentation. Later, we got the rifle detail and a bugle and all that. We didnt know anybody that knew how to play the bugle so we got somebody from the high school band. When they couldnt recruit a bugler, they pushed a button on a boombox and played a cassette tape of Taps.

Up till now, when an old soldier died, Pace would get a call to muster the Honor Guard for graveside military rites.

One time we were out at Shepherd Park and it was sleeting and I thought it was gonna beat my ears off, he said. But after that I got earmuffs.

Now he can spend time at home with Jean, his wife of 65 years. Jean was there to celebrate Paces honor, along with their sons Dewey and Gary, daughter Donna and granddaughter, Shelbi. More than a dozen members of the current Honor Guard also attended the presentation.

At 92, Pace is in good health. His seven decades of service on the Honor Guard has got to be a record of some kind and with his retirement, one element of the guard passes into history. Pooch Pace is the last World War II veteran to serve on the flag detail. With his self-imposed sidelining, he will now sit or stand along with others and watch as other volunteers take up the flags and carry out the command that Pooch singularly would shout: Forward, march! Colors, halt! Right, face! Present, colors!
View of the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, HI

December 7th of our most recent year past marks the 78th anniversary of a date that will live in infamy, to use words of the very man who signed into law the Federal Credit Union Act.

I like to believe that we are all, each of us heroes in our own little way. Theres a magic to our brains, our hearts, and when we use this magic in service of others, well, thats heroism.

Saturday, December 6, 1941Friday was payday and scores of members of Hickam Federal Credit Union, located at Pearl Harbor Naval/Hickam Air Base, were flowing into the shop, deposits and payments at the ready. The credit union distributed roughly $5,000 in receipts on that Friday and Saturday.

The credit unions offices were housed in a large hangar on Hickam Field, which made it easier for members  many of them active duty  as they had no payroll deductions available, and automatic deposit had yet to be conceived. As such, members were often asked to leave their passbooks for redistribution for a few days after (staff recorded deposits, withdrawals, and payments for members in a small booklet known as a passbook).

Sunday, December 7, 1941Just shy of 8 am, the first of more than 360 warplanes dipped from the clouds above Oahu and into view of American civilians and military personnel. Though it took time for many on the ground to realize the gravity of the situation, the concussion from ordinance and thudding of gunfire was more than enough to alert former Hickman FCU Treasurer Philip Ward Eldred, who lived only a few blocks from the credit union.

Eldred peered from his windows and immediately recognized the large, red suns on the wings of these aircraft. Imperial Japan was at war with the United States, but Eldred couldnt help thinking of his members. He bolted from his home and into the din and the glare of history unfolding in waves before him. A thick blanket of oily smoke already hung in the air over battleship row. Eldred watched helplessly as Japanese warplanes strafed civilian traffic all about him. And still, he couldnt help thinking about his members.

He charged toward his office, desperate to secure records held in the vault and in two, large steel lockers. He was a mere few hundred yards from the credit union when an Aichi D3A Carrier Bomber opened up on those rushing across Hickam Field. Eldred was no match for the two Light 97 machine guns mounted at the front of the airplane and he was cut down there. He was 36 years old.

Less than 5 minutes later, a cluster of 100 lbs. bombs fell, one of which struck the credit union, sending office equipment, documents, and a 600 lbs. safe out of the hangar and onto the airstrips. Almost all of the memberships passbooks were destroyed, including the bulk of Hickam FCUs most important records. A whirlwind of burning paper and debris danced over the destruction.

Wednesday, December 10th, 1941As the smoke lifted and the dread of the aftermath shown, Hickam FCUs board convened. Hundreds of accounts, loans, and passbooks had to be recreated, many from memory. The offices were destroyed. It was decided Hickam FCU would suspend business, minus taking deposits, as the credit union began to rebuild.

Wednesday, January 7th, 1942 Members of the credit union rallied behind their institution, fully supporting the decisions of the board. By the new year, almost $60,000 in notes were obtained and more than 400 passbooks, accounting for $74,000 in shares were reissued, equal to roughly $1,859,124.20 today. A small structure was erected to serve the many displaced, as best the credit union knew how.

Sunday, January 11th, 1942After the cooperative energies of the board and staff, the amazing support of the credit unions members, (most if not all of the membership agreed to transfer assets to a special reserve, foregoing dividends so that the credit union could keep its doors open) Hickam FCU reopened. The shop is still thriving today, with assets of $582 million and some 48,000 members.

While the heroism of the day goes unmatched by countless and the memory of those lost forever remembered, its important to believe that we are all heroes in our own way. Theres a magic inside of us, and when we use it in the service of others, we can be heroes. Its special to remember this as we work, tirelessly, to protect our members, our industry, and each other. As a credit union employee, you may often find yourself immersed in the lives of many, and while it might not always seem like it, you are very often someones hero.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Telecom companies on Monday asked the government for reduction in levies such as licence fees, and spectrum usage charges and to facilitate cheap credit to them for lowering cost of borrowing.

Telecom industry association, the Cellular Operators Association of India, requested the government to set up a working group comprising of members from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, industry associations and other stakeholders to prepare guidelines for adopting the principle of input line credit to provide funding to telecom companies at a lower rate of interest.

"COAI has requested the government to facilitate funding at a lower rate of interest so as to plough more funds for network upgradation, maintenance and expansion to provide state of the art service at an affordable rate to the people," it said.

DoT on Monday held pre-budget consultations with industry bodies and representatives of all operators. The COAI sought removal of GST on license fees, spectrum usage charges and payment of spectrum acquired in auction and refund of accumulated ITC (input tax credit), which cannot be utilised in the near future.

It also urged the DoT to reduce multiplicity of compliance, audits, investigations and Litigations for large pan-India service providers. It wanted DoT to issue clarification that GST paid on goods and services used for erection, installation of telecom towers is available as an input tax credit.

The COAI presentation said the telecom sector is currently facing extreme financial hardship, and the input/output offsets for GST are out of balance for operators as output (revenue) has been declining, whereas inputs have remained stable or increased. This imbalance between input and output on GST has led to large credits, amounting to almost Rs 35,000 crore.

"We request this amount may be refunded or applied to other government liabilities of operators. GST regulations may be amended or a notification be issued to allow refund of accumulated ITC. This should be done immediately to improve cash flow of the ailing telecom industry," the COAI said.

The association asked the government to exempt custom duty on certain telecom equipment which presently increases the cost of rolling out critical infrastructure.

"Customs duties for the 4G/5G related network products along with other related products should be immediately brought down to NIL as this is critical because of the essential nature of these imports to meet the National Vision of a Digital India. Till the time good quality equipment is available in India at affordable price, BCD should not be increased," it said.

It said currently basic custom duty of 20 per cent is levied on import of most of telecom equipment. Basic customs duty on various 4G/5G related network products, notably MIMO/ LTE products, soft switches and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) equipment, DWDM Optical Transport Network (OTN), Multiprotocol Label Switching-Transport Profile (MPLS-TP) products, has been doubled to 20 per cent, it said, adding that due to the hike, service providers will incur additional cost, and this will over-burden the already stressed telecom industry and hamper rollout of critical networks.
Each month, Paste brings you a look at the best new selections from the Criterion Collection. Much beloved by casual fans and cinephiles alike, Criterion has for over three decades presented special editions of important classic and contemporary films. You can explore the complete collection here.

In the meantime, because chances are you may be looking for something to give the discerning (raises pinkie) cinephile this month, find all of our Criterion picks here, check out some of our top titles this December, and, hey, maybe sign up for Criterions Criterion Channel to stream many of the titles we talk about here.



Year: 1960

Director: Ronald Neame

Tunes of Glory is introduced as an anti-authority comedy about loveable misfits defying the death of fun, heralded by the arrival of the new tightwad-in-charge. Over an hour and 40 minutes, it morphs into an honest-to-goodness war movie, not the kind where men fight and die in glorious battle, but the kind that focuses on the effects that glorious battle has on the men who fight it. A Highland Regiment first bids farewell to Major Jock Sinclair (Alec Guiness) when he resigns his post as its commanding officer, and bristles immediately against his replacement, Lieutenant Colonel Basil Barrow (John Mills), an Oxford man seemingly born with a steel rod in his keister. Sinclair likes bawdy revelry. Barrow likes boring regulations. Theyre boisterous oil and stuffy water. But rather than go the way of Police Academy or Super Troopers from there, the film slowly begins taking itself more seriously. Stray shots of absurdityone soldiers pajama pants slowly unrolling past his kilt as he dances Reels at the crack of dawn under Basils ordergive way to macho posturing that clangs with PTSD. True to his forename, Sinclair is a brutish, cocky loudmouth, a rowdy good time on two legs until you tell him to turn down the volume. Barrow, by contrast, is something of a wet blanket, but theres horror in his past and honor in his upbringing that drives him to shape the regiment into a force he deems respectable. Both men launch toward each other like ordnance, and Neame lets the audience feel the impact of their collision deep in the soul. His filmmaking lends Tunes of Glory the sense of order Barrow craves and the spirit Sinclair recklessly clings to. Neame is fastidioushell have a ball when a ball is called forbut hes focused on the idea that war is hell enough without it following the people who fight it home. Atmospheric final act beats evoking horror grammar impress on viewers the tragedy of honor sought and lost, veiled by performed masculinity and snuffed out with a single gunshot. Sinclair and Barrow have their reasons. Pity theyre better trained in dancing than they are in emoting. Andy Crump



Year: 1933

Director: Stephen Roberts

The Story of Temple Drake opens with a shot of Lady Justices shadow cast on a wall. It ends with Temple Drake (Miriam Hopkins) lying prone on a courtroom floor. Shes spent after retelling her tale of suffering to the judge, the jury, the audience and her boyfriend lawyer, Stephen (William Gargan), who pushes her to speak the truth and spare an innocent man the death penalty. Boiled down to a word, The Story of Temple Drake is complicated. It might even be problematic, though this has more to do with its functional titillation than anything else; this is seedy material about shocking subject matter, in which a spoiled rich girl falls into the clutches of a bootlegging gangster following a night of bad decisions. Even so, Stephen Roberts adaptation of the scandalous William Faulkner novel Sanctuary takes a tamer hand to Temples sexual assault, and to wrongs being righted. (For a rape-revenge movie, it ends on a surprisingly sunny note, though it must be stressed that sunny is a very relative term.) Most of all, Roberts has a sharper take on the role women play in an American court system presided over by men: Theyre either ignored or kept silent until theyre forced to take the stand against their wishes. Lady Justice merely plays a background role in that first scene, where a judge gamely tries to undermine Stephens defense of a different clientwhich, for claritys sake, is not what a judge is supposed to do. Frankly, there isnt much justice to find in The Story of Temple Drake except for the justice people make for themselves. Andy Crump



Year: 1991

Director: Wim Wenders

Wim Wenders insisted, reiterated plenty in Criterions presentation of the films 287-minute directors cut, that Until the End of the World isnt science-fiction. Except it is: In imagining 10 years later 30 years ago, the films prescience is both impressive and blurred by the slipstream of decades past, lost, as if in the same dream through which our protagonist Claire (Solveig Dommartin) wanders, to undefined borders of time. Which makes sense in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, how such a self-described ultimate road movie could so embrace the vastness the world now seemed to represent. Claire, reeling in the wake of her boyfriend Eugenes (Sam Neill) supposedly one-time affair with her best friend, embarks on an aimless sojourn throughout the known planet, itself on the verge of the new millennium, embroiled with a looming catastrophe care of none other than the United States military, threatening to shoot down an Indian satellite, causing untold devastation to the Earth. Adventures ensue; Claire has a chance meeting with two French bank robbers, Raymond (Eddy Mitchell) and Chico (Chick Ortega), and then with Trevor McPhee (William Hurt), the strangely alluring stranger who seems to have some weird eye problems and a few too many shady characters chasing after him. This chance meeting will come to envelop a vast array of lives, drawing them all to a hidden commune in the Australian outback and to two heartbreaking performances by Max von Sydow and Jeanne Moreau.

Until the End of the World foresees plenty, from GPS for the casual traveler to search engines and the Y2K scare, but most apocalyptic is the films odd speculation over the obsession with social media with which we currently contend. Obliquely, as Trevor McPhees decidedly sci-fi past emerges and Claire falls in love with him and the two seduce everyone they know and love to follow them to the edges of the globe, their lives are undone by a technology that allows them to remember, but not exactlyto remember everything they lost through the filter of their dreams, imperfectly but intimately. This is how we curate ourselves through social media, and then aspire to this curation, to crave these piece of ourselves we werent supposed to keep. Meanwhile, the aching beauty of the world revolves around them, Robby Mullers cinematography capturing the Australian wild as breathlessly as Tokyo and San Francisco and Paris and Berlin. Self-serious and goofy as fuck, Until the End of the World playfully meanders through melodrama and mellifluously gorgeous naturalism alikewe know everything will be alright in the end, until we dont. When Jeanne Moreau mutters that the Earth is in fact not OK, we know what she means. Or, at least, now we do30 years later from the point at which Wim Wenders looked 10 years into his future and saw the universe unfold before him. Dom Sinacola
The federal government says it is merely enforcing existing law with its new policy insisting that some ACA insurance customers pay separately for abortion coverage. Read more

Abortion is always a hot-button issue, but the result of the latest wrangling may at first sound trivial: Affordable Care Act health insurance plans that cover abortion  most dont  will have to send a separate monthly bill for the part of the premium calculated to cover abortion care. Even men with such plans will get a separate bill.

Abortion is the only medical service that must be broken out separately by ACA plans. Its hard to think of another industry where the government mandates, as the Trump administration would here, that consumers cut two checks a month for the same service, said Margaret A. Murray, CEO of the Association for Community Affiliated Plans.

The new requirement is moot in 26 states, including Pennsylvania, because they banned abortion coverage by state ACA exchange plans. An additional eight states allow ACA plans to cover abortion but none of the insurance plans offered there do so, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. New Jersey is among 16 states with exchange plans that do cover abortion.

Clearly, abortion coverage is not the norm under the ACA. And federal funding of abortion has been illegal under the Hyde Amendment since 1976. Nonetheless, abortion foes wanted to make sure that the ACA would not cover abortion through tax breaks and subsidies, so from the start, the law included a requirement that insurers itemize abortion coverage separately and segregate consumers payments for that coverage from premiums for other health services. (Plans have to charge consumers at least $1 a month for abortion coverage.)

The problem is, health plans early compliance with this requirement was not great, according to a 2014 report by the General Accounting Office.

 READ MORE: Online abortion pills come to the U.S., as the right to abortion is on the line

The new billing rules were proposed in 2018 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and finalized last month. The requirement fulfills Congress intent and reflects President Trumps strong commitment to preventing taxpayer funding of abortion, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said last month in a statement.

The new rule also generated a tsunami of 75,000 comments to the HHS from the insurance industry, state regulators, consumer advocacy organizations, and activists on both sides of the abortion divide.

Nearly all commenters objected to the proposal, raising concerns about high implementation costs, consumer confusion and frustration, reduced access to care, and coverage losses, said a Dec. 23 article in the journal Health Affairs.

Americas Health Insurance Plans said in its comments: We have serious concerns with any proposals that create a more complex and confusing consumer experience, and could increase premiums by imposing new costs on health insurance providers.

Fears of coverage loss, at least, may be overblown. As Health Affairs noted, insurers cannot terminate coverage if consumers continue to pay their entire premium, including abortion coverage, with a single payment. Instead, insurers have to separate the abortion part of the payment and put it into a separate account.
After January 5, masked mob attacks inside the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus, several former students of the institute, including two cabinet ministers, spoke out against the horror that had unleashed.

Several students were grievously injured in the violence, including Aishe Ghosh, the president of the Left-run JNU Students Union.



Have seen pictures of what is happening in #JNU. Condemn the violence unequivocally. This is completely against the tradition and culture of the university.

 Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) January 5, 2020



Horrifying images from JNU  the place I know & remember was one for fierce debates & opinions but never violence. I unequivocally condemn the events of today. This govt, regardless of what has been said the past few weeks, wants universities to be safe spaces for all students.

 Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) January 5, 2020

Condemning the incident, both External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the government abhors the violence unequivocally and wants educational institutes to be safe space for all students.

Reacting to their response, Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi asked the two union ministers to consider stepping down since it is alleged that RSS student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) incited the violence.

Would you kindly consider resigning before articulating such noble sentiments? he said.



Urgent appeal!!!! To all Delhiites PLS gather in large numbers outside the Main Gate of JNU campus on Baba Gangnath Marg.. to pressure the govt. & #DelhiPolice to stop the rampage by alleged ABVP masked goons on JNU campus. PLS PLS share to everyone in Delhi! 9pm on 5th. Jan pic.twitter.com/IXgvvazoSn

 Swara Bhasker (@ReallySwara) January 5, 2020

Actor Swara Bhasker, a JNU alumnus, whose parents live on campus, broke down while urging the public to gather near JNUs gate and pressure Delhi Police to control the situation.

Her social media post was retweeted by Nepals former prime minister and fellow alumnus Baburam Bhattarai.



   ,    ,              ,             ,                 

 Kanhaiya Kumar (@kanhaiyakumar) January 5, 2020



Reports coming from JNU point to a collusion between the administration and goons of ABVP to inflict violence on students and teachers. It is a planned attack by those in power, which is afraid of the resistance provided by JNU to its Hindutva agenda.

 Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) January 5, 2020



We strongly condemn the violence on JNU campus. This is a desperate attempt by forces of anarchy, who are determined to use students as cannon fodder, create unrest to shore up their shrinking political footprint. Universities should remain places of learning and education.  BJP (@BJP4India) January 5, 2020

In a series of tweets, former JNUSU president and CPI-M leader Kanhaiya Kumar said that the government is trying to keep poor students from educating themselves at premiere institutes by hiking the fees.Sitaram Yechury, leader of left-wing party CPI-M, who is also an ex-student of JNU, claimed the attacks to be premediated by those in power, who are afraid of the resistance provided by JNU to its Hindutva agenda.The BJP has, however, has blamed the forces of anarchy of creating unrest to shore up their shrinking political footprint. They also condemned the campus violence.
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By Long Island Published: April 04 2020

The famous racetrack hosts the final leg of the Triple Crown.

Horses head down the stretch on the main track at Belmont Park. The Long Island race course is home to the third jewel in the U-S Thoroughbred Triple Crown series, the Belmont Stakes. Photo by Dave Mock. [Public Domain]

Of all the storied sporting events that have taken place in New York over the years, arguably, none have the glitz, glamor, and history of The Belmont Stakes. And that race takes place every June in Belmont Park in Elmont. The eyes of the world turn to Long Island and Belmont Park annually as the best of the best take to the track, especially in a year when some 3-year-old thoroughbred racehorse is vying for the Triple Crown by winning The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the final leg of The Belmont Stakes.

Belmont Park Racetracks history is tied to the history of New York, and a father and son who also helped to finance the New York City subway system. You dont have to travel all the way upstate to Saratoga to experience horse history. Just make your way to the border of Nassau and Queens and spend the day at the races when the horses are running in the spring and summer.

Below we gathered some interesting, crazy, and nostalgia-inducing facts about Belmont Park and the Belmont Stakes.

Portrait of August Belmont / Daguerreotype [puublic domain]

The inaugural Belmont Stakes was first run in 1867 at Jerome Park Racetrack in the Bronx

The Belmont Stakes is the oldest of the Triple Crown events

The first winner was named Ruthless

The Belmont Stakes was named for August Belmont, I, a businessman who helped finance the race

The Belmont Stakes was originally run in a clockwise direction

In 1921 the race ran first ran counter-clockwise

Sir Barton was the first horse to win the Triple Crown in 1919

In 1890 the Belmont Stakes moved to Morris Park Racecourse in the Bronx

Belmont Park Racetrack opened on May 4, 1905

It was built by a group of investors that included August Belmont, II

The site was originally called Foster's Meadow, and was home to a Tudor-Gothic mansion owned by William de Forest Manice

Belmont Park, which was named for August Belmont I, became the new home of the Belmont Stakes when it opened

It cost $2.1 million to build the original Belmont Park

Photo: Crowd watching seven planes in air at Belmont Park air show, New York [public domain]

In 1910, Belmont Park was host to the International Aviation Tournament air show staged by Wilbur and Orville Wright. It featured a race to the Statue of Liberty and back

There used to be another, nearby track, called Belmont Park Terminal

August Belmont, II also helped finance the original New York City subway

From 1911- 1912 a New York State law banning gambling cause racing at Belmont Park to come to a halt. Racing resumed in 1913

In 1918, Belmont Park track served as the NYC terminal for the first airmail service between New York and Washington, D.C.

The legendary horse Secretariat finished the race in a world record 2:24 on a dirt track in 1973

Secretariat won the race by 31.5 lengths

There is a blue-and-white striped pole that 31 lengths from the finish line to mark Secretariats win

Ruffian,a filly who had to be euthanized after a race at Belmont, is buried under the flagpole on the track with her nose pointed towards the finish line

Photo: Belmont Park from the NYRA Facebook page.
The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad on Monday claimed that the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union was behind the violence that occurred on campus on Sunday evening that saw 34, including union president Aishe Ghosh, being injured after masked men ran amok.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad on Monday claimed that the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union was behind the violence that occurred on campus on Sunday evening that saw 34, including union president Aishe Ghosh, being injured after masked men ran amok.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) further accused Ghosh of 'leading masked goons inside campus.'

The ABVP, the right-wing student organisation affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), at a press conference held in New Delhi, said, "It was a pre-planned attack. JNUSU was behind campus violence. JNUSU president led masked goons inside the campus."

#NewsAlert | ABVP press conference: This was a pre-planned attack. ABVP students do not promote violence: #JNUShowdown pic.twitter.com/PlhXMDN1Wg  News18 (@CNNnews18) January 6, 2020

Click here to follow LIVE updates on JNU violence

A student addressing the media on behalf of the APVP said that he lived in the JNU's Kaveri Hostel, which was attacked and his two laptops were broken. "Who will write my dissertation now?" the student asked.

When asked about the WhatsApp groups screenshots that alleged the involvement of the ABVP in the violence, the student said, "Those groups were made by communists and ABVP members were made the admins of that group without permission. There was no member of AVBP on that group knowingly." The ABVP claimed that a "common" WhatsApp group was made initially.

In the screenshots circulated online, the group titled Friends of RSS showed a man sharing a link of a group chat, around 5.30 pm. He followed it up with, Please join this group for unity against Left terror. Now we must catch them and beat them up.

Violence broke out at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday evening as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus.
ATHENS, Ala. - Alabama deputies appeared to have been justified in fatally shooting a man who brandished a shotgun at officers responding to a domestic violence call, the sheriff said Monday.

Sheriff Mike Blakely told a news conference that two deputies were involved in the killing of George Dison, 57, and neither was being placed on administrative leave since there was no indication either officer did anything wrong.

Its pretty obvious as to what happened. Im kind of the old school that if you get thrown off a horse the quicker you can get back on the better off you are, said Blakely.

The shooting by Limestone County deputies happened after 5 p.m. Sunday at a home in a rural area of Elkmont, sheriffs office spokesman Stephen Young told news outlets.

Dison had walked out of the woods near the scene and approached deputies with a shotgun, Young said. Dison ignored orders to drop the weapon, then pointed it at the deputies, Young added. The deputies fatally shot Dison and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The shooting happened as officers were sent to the home on a domestic violence call for the second time in about six hours.

Its not uncommon for us to have multiple calls at an address during the same day, and you obviously have to take that into consideration as a deputy and you have to rely on your training but you have to understand that there could be an additional level of danger, said Young.

Court records show Dison had multiple arrests for offences including menacing, domestic violence and assault over the last two decades and Blakely said he knew both the man and his family.

Theyre good people, he said. Its unfortunate something like this had to happen.

An autopsy will be performed at the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, Limestone County Coroner Mike West said.

The state Bureau of Investigation is reviewing the shooting. Officers were wearing body cameras, the sheriff said, and the state will review any video they captured.
The man is full of energy, strong in the saddle and is likely to be around till 2030.

What sort of legacy will Prime Minister Narendra Modi leave India? Oh, come on say those who like him (and they are a large number), its way too early to talk about a legacy. The man is full of energy, strong in the saddle and is likely to be around till 2030.

They are probably right. Despite the recent halo around NCP supremo Sharad Pawar for outwitting the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo at their own game of thrones in Maharashtra, there seems little traction around a wider pan-India anti-Modi front. That is not without reason.

The dirty tricks department of the BJP is continuing to polarise the Hindu vote by targeting Muslims alone out of other so-called foreign religions  Zoroastrianism or Christianity  as spoilers of national progress and integrity. This is not new.

Christianity has not been a threat. It was dignified 210 years ago, when it took up arms against the slave trade, out of Africa. Today its global profile is greatly helped by the generally humanist behaviour of Christian-dominant nations in Europe and North America, who are standard bearers of the modern virtues of democracy, equality, liberty and the rule of law.

Nor is Zoroastrianism a threat. It has no global salience today even in its home  Persia (modern Iran)  from where 1,000 years ago the Parsis fled religious persecution by the conquering Muslims. They are refugees in India, who are more nationalistic than the original inhabitants, as is always the case with new citizens.

In contrast, Islam does not rhyme with modernity. It presents a strong, alternative sovereignty, backed by petro-dollars. It is increasingly more assertive globally. To be sure, moderate Islamic countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina Wajed demonstrate some virtuous democratic trends. But these are not the standard bearers of Islam. That honour goes to Sunni Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Turkey and Shia Iran, where there is a strong confluence between religion and the State. None of these countries shine if viewed through the modern lens of good governance, equality or liberty.

Allah has bestowed his followers with vast quantities of black gold. Only a ramping up of a combination of nuclear and renewable power, as the preferred energy source, can dilute the fiscal heft of this gift and weaken the pull of resurgent, global Islam. But this is unlikely any time before 2040.

This means that Hindu polarisation will remain politically attractive over the near future. The Ram Mandir and Rath Yatra political template, exploited by the BJP leaders from a gentler time  Lal Krishna Advani and Atal Behari Vajpayee  is likely to increase in potency.

This is the real problem for Narendra Modi. So attractive is the Hindutva path to political power, and so used are his followers to exercising dominant power, that it will be well nigh impossible to get away from the current high.

Expect a new population control law limiting all families to two children to follow the completion of a national population register. This will, while appearing fair and even-handed, disproportionately impact Muslims, who are more fertile than Hindus.

Left-leaning, secular intellectuals explain that their fertility has nothing to do with Islam; that Muslims are poorer than Hindus and it is well known that for the poor, constraining the family size is not a priority. This argument is salient. But a trope does not need a reason behind it to become popular. It is enough that it seems true.

It is therefore certain that Narendra Modi will go down in history as the Hindu leader who brought dignity and pride to a religion  which, like the white, blue collared masses of middle America  has felt neglected in its own home; ignored by its own, mostly Hindu, leaders; relegated to a residual status on which all the burdens of social compromise could be saddled. This ersatz revivalism is Mr Modis claim to a page in history.

But how sustainable is such religious revivalism without a cleansing of the embedded barriers to organic consolidation? An excess of rituals over substance has created a curious disconnect between the modern demands of a scientific temperament, equality of opportunity, changing norms are androgenising society and shaping global allegiances, while contradictions afflict traditional roles and relationships  not least between men and women, the rulers and the ruled, patrimony and dissent and the aged versus the youth.

Its no longer politically correct to demonise dalits, and the law punishes those who should dare to do so. But ask any dalit how free and equal he or she feels, and the answer will surely be  not fully empowered, yet. The good news is that the hope for a better future accompanies dissatisfaction about the present.

Similar misconceptions and shibboleths about race, region and language divide our population deeply. Customs and norms which encourage preservation of genetic purity lie hidden under the more acceptable mask of cultural affinity. Underneath deep-rooted biases grow and fester.

Mr Modis true legacy lies in being the liberator of the Hindus from the shackles of self-doubt. Doing so would require that all Hindus acquire equal opportunities. But in achieving this objective lies the certainty that Hindu society will cease to feel threatened; that it shall become universally confident, open to external influences and thereby cease to be a narrowly focused religious, pocket borough.

Mr Modi might never see the fruit of his labours, even though at 69 years he is a mere spring chicken compared to the average age of 85 years that 12 of the 14 previous Prime Ministers enjoyed till their natural end.

But surely it must torment Mr Modi, in his sleep, that the tortuous political process of Hindu consolidation  started by the Advani-Vajpayee duo in 1992  and refined into a fine art by the Modi-Shah duo  can only end in its own disintegration.

Dominance breeds decay. This is the path Christianity trod. This is the path Islam is on today, with fundamentalism breeding distance or tacit rejection among its 1.2 billion followers. Surely a disquieting prospect for Hindutva afficionados to look forward to.
Delhi: Dozens of masked men in Delhi stormed one of India's most prestigious universities Sunday, attacking students and professors with rods and bricks, vandalising dormitories and injuring at least 42 people, some of them seriously, officials said.

Some students accused the police of complicity, and videos posted on social media appeared to show officers standing by as students were beaten in front of them.

The attack, which was described by students and witnesses and recorded in videos posted on social media, happened at Jawaharlal Nehru University, a leafy campus in Delhi. Students at the university said the attackers belonged to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a Hindu nationalist student organisation. The group denied involvement.

Students have been protesting against new citizenship laws, which critics say is an attempt by the Modi government to marginalise India's 200 million Muslims. Credit:AP

Witnesses said the attackers rushed the campus between 7pm and 8pm. They shattered windows, attacked medics and yelled, "Hail Lord Ram!" a reference to a Hindu god that has become a battle cry for far-right Hindu nationalists as India has grown more polarised under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Angel Broking's report on Gold

Last week, spot gold prices rose by 2.3 percent. The U.S. military carried out air strikes in Iraq and Syria against an Iran-backed militia group, providing modest support to the precious metal used as a safe investment in times of geopolitical and economic uncertainty. Gold posted its biggest rise in a decade as a raft of geopolitical uncertainties, including protests in Hong Kong and tensions on the Korean peninsular, as well as a long-drawn Sino-U.S. tariff war impacting global economic growth. Even the major central banks like the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and PBOC had to resort to quantitative easing which further supported the yellow metal prices. The interim trade deal will be signed U.S. & China on 15th January 2020 in the white house. It will be the first step to end the prolonged trade war; however, the deal was supposed to take place in the end of 2019. No concrete details on the trade deal and only the initial part of the trade deal placed on the table kept the markets cautious and supported the bullion metals.

Outlook

Rising tension between U.S. & Iran might weigh on the risk appetite amongst investors in turn boosting the demand for the safe haven asset, Gold. On the MCX, gold prices are expected to trade higher today, international markets are trading higher by 1.90 percent at 1581.75 per ounce.

For all commodities report, click here

Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts/broking houses/rating agencies on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.



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Japan's justice minister vowed Monday to strengthen border departure checks and review bail conditions after Nissan's former Chairman Carlos Ghosn fled the country.

Masako Mori told reporters in Tokyo that the ministry has already acted to prevent a recurrence but declined to give details.

Ghosn skipped bail while awaiting trial on various financial misconduct allegations and later said from Lebanon that he did to escape injustice.

Mori declined to say who might be responsible for such a high-profile flight, stressing it was still under investigation.

She said Ghosn left illegally, denouncing it as "extremely regrettable."
Employees who adopt a cheery disposition while at work are much more likely to find themselves having a successful career, according to a business expert.

Jeroen de Flander, a renowned Belgian thinker on business strategy, says a 'glass half full' attitude is often the difference between success and failure.

In his book, The Art of Performance: The Surprising Science Behind Greatness, de Flander offers essential tips to achieving career success - and it all hinges on being a happy person both in and out of the workplace.

Here, the career guru explains the logic behind his book including how positive people are more likely to shine in a crisis.

What are the benefits of being an optimist?

Turn that frown upside down! Adopting a 'glass half-full' approach in the workplace is often a ticket to success, according to Belgian career guru Jeroen de Flander

How optimistic a person is can be the fine line between disaster and success, says de Flander, as it determines exactly how an employee will bounce back when things don't go to plan.

His mantra is that mistakes are not as important as the way people respond to them.

Pessimists and optimists react radically different to workplace problems. A pessimist will ask themselves what went wrong, while an optimist will directly look for ways to improve ensuring a situation is more quickly remedied.

Jeoren de Flander, a Belgian business strategist, explains the importance of being optimistic in his book, saying it will make you more resilient and proactive

Pessimists, he says, will constantly down-play how taking positive action could improve the situation, where as optimists will strive to make positive consequences happen.

How does that manifest in a work environment? While pessimists will find an explanation that cannot be improved, eg a blanket response such as 'I don't perform well under pressure', an optimist will take an approach more centred on self-belief, perhaps suggesting 'I only made one mistake.'

Finally, pessimists are drawn to think an issue will be long-term, where optimists will use what they learned from their present mistake to perform better in the future.

How to respond to a workplace crisis like an optimist

1) Look clearly and calmly at the evidence

De Flander explains that it's possible to teach ourselves to react to a situation in a certain way. When assessing a drama when it first transpires, it is important to ask yourself the right questions.

By definition, a pessimist will often prepare for the worst-case scenario.

One way to calm down and be more positive, is to taker a step back, ask yourself what evidence there is to support your claim and to try and favour rational logic instead of knee-jerk over-reaction.

De Flander explains that it's possible to teach ourselves to react to a situation in a certain way. Stock image

2. Determine the reason for the mistake

Instead of jumping to conclusions or playing the blame game, first ask yourself about what the catalyst to the error was. Did you play a part? And which causes were external?

3. Assess the implications a mistake could have on your future

Thinking about our mistakes and what factors caused them in a logical manner allows us to then move on and defuse the situation.

For instance, instead of thinking 'all is lost,' try: 'I made a mistake, but I will get better at this'.

The art of performance: the surprising science behind greatness, by Jeoren de Flander is available for purchase on Amazon

4. How useful am I being?

If the worst has happened - it really hasn't - then don't wallow in your own failure, it would be wiser to ask yourself how useful your negative beliefs are to you and to alleviating the situation.

Some self-criticism can be helpful but how much is it actually going to aid you in overcoming the issue and moving on?

Remember to take control

How in control of a situation you are has a direct impact on how you solve the issues you're faced with.

For instance, people who are constantly told there's no way to fix a situation will give up more easily than those who've been told the situation could be improved if they help.

Feeling in control is imperative when it comes to overcoming adversity.

The art of performance: the surprising science behind greatness, by Jeroen de Flander, is available for purchase on Amazon
The four high-rises violating the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) on the edge of the lake flowing through Maradu were ordered to be demolished by the Supreme Court. Preparations are in full swing and Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO), India's premier body to safeguard explosives safety is having a task at hand.The apex court had ordered for the demolition of the four apartment complexes of H20 Holy faith, Alfa Serene, Jain Coral Cove and Golden Kayaloram for violating the CRZ norms. These flats will be demolished through controlled explosion on January 11 and 12.R Venugopal, Deputy Chief Controller of Explosives, PESO told ANI all steps for safe demolition has been done and the agency will be adopting the implosion technology."The district magistrate of Ernakulam has given the no-objection certificate for implosion using explosives. PESO has given permission to undertake the blasting using explosives approved by the Chief Controller of Explosives. We have taken every step for any flyrots scattering around, minimise explosive usage to have a safe blasting in all towers in Maradu. As per explosive safety rules, we have taken all safety measures during transportation storage and usage of explosives," Venugopal told ANI on Monday.With regard to the present status of the demolition process, Venugopal added, "Now the work of H2O Holyfaith is over, last and a final inspection has to been done by a team to see that all the explosives have been filled in all the holes and proper accounting has been done for the same. With respect to Alpha Serene and Jain Coral Clove the work has started today. And we hope that it will be completed in the next two days."Upon being questioned about the safety and precautionary measures put in place, he said, "We are taking utmost precautions there. It will be cut into two levels ( Alpha Serene and Jane Coral Clove) and it will not have any impact on the nearby rivers. We have taken care of the entire situation and the blast plan has been prepared by the company and a technical committee formed by the government of Kerala including PESO officials are monitoring the scene. As per the Kerala government's request, PESO was involved in it. The last and final inspection is being done by a team to see all the explosives are filled in all the holes and proper accounting has been done.""With respect to Alpha Serene and Jane Coral Clove the work has started today and we hope that it will be completed in the next two days. With regard to Kayoloram, we are taking the utmost precautions there also. It will also be cut into two levels, " he added.An IIT team has also been roped in to carry out further studies after the blast.'With respect to vibrations studies, an IIT team has been formed. They will be conducting vibration studies on two days (Jan 11, Jan 12), " he said.The Kerala government and district administration are handling such a demolition with enormous magnitude for the first time and they are following the guidelines issued by PESO."With respect to the safety and security of people, we will be moving out the people from the area during those four hours. All efforts have been taken by the district administration and technical support of PESO. We hope that the building implosion will be conducted in a safe and secure manner," said Venugopal said.Controller of Explosives, PESO, Dr PK Rana told ANI that the demolition of Holy Faith H2O and Alfa Serene will be done on January 11 at around 11 am."The demolition of H2O and Alpha Serene will be carried out on September 11 and that of the other two buildings will be carried out on September 12. H20 will be demolished first and shortly thereafter the demolition of Alpha Serene will be carried out," Rana told ANI. (ANI)




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The Dodge Challenger SRT Demon is a vehicle built with one purpose in mind: going fast down a drag strip. Weight is the enemy when it comes to acceleration, and one surefire way to add weight to a car is to make it into a convertible. However, thats exactly what one Demon owner decided to do to their Challenger.

Motor Authority spotted this Plum Crazy Demon convertible conversion for sale online, and the dealer and builder even spilled a few details on the car itself. This particular conversion was done by Droptop Customs, a shop with experience, having previously converted a couple Challengers into convertibles for Shaq in Miami. However, ripping the roof off the 840-horsepower Demon is no small task. Thats a ridiculous amount of horsepower to handle for a car that has lost a fair amount of structural rigidity from removing the roof.

The Droptop Customs sales manager told MA about the changes that were made to make this build work. To begin, the frame rails were reinforced with 1x2-inch pieces of metal. Then, the shop added diagonally-mounted metal braces underneath to resist twist. Even more structural supports were added to the trunk, front and rear shock towers, and gussets were added to the bottom of each door to keep them from moving. Lastly, the shop boxed the connection of the front rails to the engine cradle. No specifics about weight gain were provided.

There is one sad bit of news about this Demon, though. The dealer told MA that its currently on consignment, despite being listed for sale on FCA dealership Cape Corals website. Its priced at an eye-watering $145,995. But the new owner wont have to manually put down the top! Thats right, its powered, and its supposed to take about 20 seconds to lower or raise into place while stationary. Somehow, the car has only 172 miles on it, so its hardly been used. We have no photos with the top up, so youll have to settle for top-down photos for now. It looks like a professional job through and through, and we actually dig the convertible look. Plus, who doesnt love Plum Crazy?

Story continues

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When Taylor Wind first discovered a tiny lump, no bigger than the size of a pea, behind her left ear, she was concerned.

A doctor told the then-14-year-old it was harmless and she didn't have anything to worry about.

But the lump continued to grow and her mother, Susan, was convinced something was wrong and sought further opinions.

In May 2017, when Taylor was 16, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

Susan said that, over the next several months, five people on her street in Mooresville, North Carolina - about 27 miles north of Charlotte - had either thyroid cancer or thyroid tumors.

The mother-of-three has now raised more than $100,000 for research in effort to prove that this is a cancer cluster, reported NBC News.

Taylor Wind, of Mooresville, North Carolina, developed a lump behind her ear but her doctor told her it was harmless. Pictured: Taylor, left, and her mother, Susan

Her mother, Susan, pushed for testing and two years later, Taylor, then 16 (left and right, with her mother), was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in May 2017. She has since had surgery to remove the tumor and is currently in remission

'[Taylor] developed a lump on the side of her neck, they said it was a swollen gland probably and I shouldn't even worry about it,' Susan told WCNC.

'Later, we got a diagnosis that she had thyroid cancer, and it had spread throughout her whole neck.'

Thyroid cancer affects the thyroid gland, a butterfly-shaped organ at the base of the neck that produces hormones.

Women are anywhere from two to three times more likely to develop the rare cancer than men are,

Symptoms include a lump or swelling at the front of the neck, swollen glands, unexplained hoarseness and difficulty swallowing.

According to the American Cancer Society, about 52,000 cases will be diagnosed in 2019 and about 2,200 people will die.

The five-year survival rate for people with thyroid cancer is 98 percent. Taylor had to undergo surgery to remove the tumor and is currently cancer-free.

Susan said that when she began sharing Taylor's story, friends and neighbors began contacting her with similar tales.

'Neighbors on my street came to me, and they were like: "We have thyroid cancer,"' she told WCNC.

'Other moms in the area and other neighborhoods were contacting me saying: "My daughter got thyroid cancer." Kids as young as 13 years old.'

Neighbors started telling the Wind family that they'd also been diagnosed with the cancer, including friends Susan Lunsford (left, with family) and Tricia Edmiston (right, with family)

A study funded by the Winds showed 191 thyroid cancer cases were diagnosed in Mooresville (pictured) between 2012 and 2016, double what is expected

Among them were neighbors Susan Lunsford and Trisha Edmiston.

'I have a very rare form of cancer and mine is stable now, which I'm very thankful for,' Lunsford said.

'But it's just heartbreaking to hear of all those people, even in my own neighborhood, who have gotten cancer.'

NBC News reports that Susan Wind was referred to a Duke University chemist, who told her she needed at least $50,000 for an investigation.

She organized a 5K fundraiser and raised $110,000.

State data from 2012 to 2016 showed 191 cases of thyroid cancer were diagnosed in Mooresville, a town of only about 40,000 people.

That means the rate of thyroid cancer in the town is two to three times higher than should be expected.

The researchers from Duke University began testing areas around Mooresville and found high levels of radon, a radioactive gas, in the homes of three cancer patients.

That's when they decided to focus on Marshall Steam Station, which produces coal ash and is owned by Duke Energy.

Almost 17 million tons of the ash sits in an unlined basin, reported NBC News.

Wind believes the cases are linked to coal ash, which contains mercury and arsenic, produced by nearby Marshall Steam Station (pictured) that sits in an unlined basin

The family has since moved to Florida where, Taylor, 19, is studying nursing. Pictured, left to right: Father David Wind, Taylor, the Winds' youngest daughter, the Winds' son and Susan

Coal ash contains chemicals such as mercury, arsenic and cadmium. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 'without proper management, these contaminants can pollute waterways, ground water, drinking water, and the air.'

A 2015 study from Duke University study found high levels of radioactivity in coal ash samples from basins such as in Illinois and Appalachia.

While radioactivity is linked to future cancer risk, some experts say it would take a great deal of direct exposure for a thyroid tumor to develop.

The researchers funded by Susan are planning to publish a report this year on coal ash and its potential links to cancer cases in Mooresvile.

The Wind family has since moved to Florida, where Taylor, now 19, is studying nursing, reported NBC News.

'I want to know why everyone is getting cancer, and what do we all have in common,' Susan told the network.

'People don't really see things until it happens to them.'
Representative image

Iran announced it would abandon limitations on enriching uranium, taking a further step back from commitments to a 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers, but it would continue to cooperate with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Iran had been expected to announce its latest stance on the deal this weekend. But its announcement coincided with a major escalation of hostilities with Washington following the U.S. killing of top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike on Friday in Baghdad.

State television said Iran would not respect any limits set down in the pact on the country's nuclear work: whether the limit on its number of uranium enrichment centrifuges to its enrichment capacity, the level to which uranium could be enriched, the amount of stockpiled enriched uranium or Iran's nuclear Research and Development activities.

"Iran will continue its nuclear enrichment with no restrictions .... and based on its technical needs," a government statement cited by television said.

Iran has steadily overstepped the deal's limits on its nuclear activities in response to the United States withdrawal from the accord in 2018 and Washington's reimposition of sanctions that have crippled Iran's oil trade.

Under the nuclear deal, Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of most international sanctions.

Relations between Tehran and Washington sharply deteriorated after President Donald Trump's withdrawal of the United States from the deal. Iran has criticised European powers for failing to salvage the pact by shielding its economy from U.S. sanctions.

Sunday's statement said Tehran can quickly reverse its steps if U.S. sanctions are removed.

"This step is within JCPOA (deal) & all 5 steps are reversible upon EFFECTIVE implementation of reciprocal obligations," tweeted Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif referencing the acronym that stands for the deal's official name, "The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action."

A European Diplomat, who declined to be named, said the "deal is all but dead," but said that Europe would do everything possible to slow proliferation and "try and save what can be saved."

Mark Fitzpatrick, associate fellow and nuclear non-proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Iran's latest step left room for diplomacy.

"They are not saying how far they will push the enrichment or the number of centrifuges they'll operate," Fitzpatrick told Reuters. I think they have reserved a lot of room for negotiation and for taking further steps if they need to.

'MAXIMUM PRESSURE'

Washington says the maximum pressure campaign it started after withdrawing from the nuclear agreement will force Iran to negotiate a more sweeping deal, covering its ballistic missile program and its role in Middle Eastern conflicts. Iran says it will not negotiate a new deal.

Tehran has rejected Western assertions that it has sought to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran has already breached many of the deal's restrictions on its nuclear activities, including on the purity to which it enriches uranium, its stock of enriched uranium, which models of centrifuge it enriches uranium with and where it enriches uranium.

It has, however, not gone far over the purity allowed  the deal sets a limit of 3.67% and Iran has stayed around 4.5% in recent months, well below the 20% it reached before the deal and the roughly 90% that is weapons-grade.

The deal as a whole was designed to increase the time Iran would need to obtain enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb if it wanted one  the main obstacle to producing a nuclear weapon  from around two or three months.
The Allahabad High Court on Monday ordered the Uttar Pradesh government to apprise it within a week of the exact time and place of the arrest of an advocate during the recent protests here against changes in the citizenship law.

Acting on a habeas corpus plea on behalf of the advocate Mohd Sohaib, allegedly arrested illegally, a bench of justices Shahibul Hasnain and Virendra Kumar, directed the government to submit to it the facts of the advocate's arrest in a sworn affidavit.

Amid allegations by petitioner Mohd Sohaib's counsel A B Solomon that his client was not produced before any court at all after his arrest, the bench also asked Additional Government Counsel S P Singh to include in the affidavit details of the advocate's production before judicial magistrate.

During the hearing last week on the issue, the court had expressed concern when the government counsel Singh was not able to assist the court properly for want of adequate information from the police.

During the hearing, investigating officer Brijendra Kumar Mishra too was present in the court but the bench found that even he was not able to give correct information to the government counsel.

In his habeas corpus plea, advocate Sohaib has alleged that his arrest is illegal as the time and manner of his arrest shown by the police is incorrect and concocted.

He even questioned the proceedings of judicial remand, alleging that he was never produced before any magistrate, rendering his custody illegal.

Sohaib's counsel Solomon had made statement on last hearing before the court that the petitioner was never produced before any magistrate.

Had he been produced before a magistrate, the time and place of the court would have been captured in the CCTV cameras because the entire civil court is having CCTV cameras for surveillance, the petitioner's lawyer had argued.

Expressing concern over the argument, the court directed the government counsel to be prepared to respond to this allegation as well.

As the matter came up for hearing on Monday, the government counsel vehemently opposed the petitioner's contentions that his custody was illegal.

He placed records showing that the petitioner was properly produced for the judicial custody before being sent to jail.

The government counsel sought to file an additional affidavit in this regard to which the court agreed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Press Release

6 January 2020

NH Hotel Group has reached an agreement with Covivio, one of the key European real estate players, to operate a unique portfolio of eight high-end hotels, with prime locations in Rome, Florence, Venice, Nice, Prague and Budapest

The portfolio includes iconic hotels such as the Palazzo Naiadi in Rome, the Carlo IV in Prague, the Plaza in Nice and the NY Palace in Budapest, and will be operated by the Company under a sustainable long-term variable lease with minimum guaranteed rent, including a shortfall cap mechanism, with extension rights for NH Hotel Group

Most of the hotels will be rebranded under the Anantara Hotels & Resorts and NH Collection brands, following an extensive repositioning work program pursued by Covivio in all the properties in the coming months

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NH Hotel Group has entered into an agreement with Covivio, one of the key European real estate operators, which will consolidate its commitment to the luxury hotel segment while reinforcing its leadership in Italy and boosting its prominent position in competitive markets of France and Eastern Europe.

After the acquisition by Covivio of eight high-end hotels formerly belonging to the prestigious Boscolo portfolio, the real estate investor and NH Hotel Group have reached an agreement for handing operation of this luxury portfolio to the latter. The hotel group has agreed with Covivio a long-term sustainable lease contract under which it will pay variable rent with minimum guaranteed, including a shortfall cap mechanism. The agreement has an initial duration of 15 years, extendible at NH Hotel Group's option to a period of not less than 15 years. The closing of the transaction is expected to be fully complete by the end of the first half of 2020. The handover of the hotels will take place at the same time of the closing, except for the hotels in Florence and Nice -currently under a full refurbishment-, expected by June 2020 and January 2021 respectively.

Ramon Aragones, CEO of NH Hotel Group, commented on the deal, "following our integration with Minor Hotels, this transaction represents an extremely important milestone in our shared ambition to continue to expand the luxury brand Anantara Hotels, Resorts & Spas in Europe, while marking significant progress on our strategy of creating added value for NH Collections customer base via new hotels and destinations. This agreement reinforces the collaboration between Covivio and NH Hotel Group, which dates back to 2014 and has since unlocked advantageous deals for both parties in the Netherlands and Germany".

Adding 1,115 rooms to the group's burgeoning line-up of luxury properties, the portfolio includes former Boscolo hotels in Rome, Florence, Venice, Nice, Prague and Budapest. Centrally located in coveted destinations, the collection of six 5-star and two 4-star hotels is notable for its flagship properties: Palazzo Naiadi in Rome, Plaza in Nice, Carlo IV in Prague and New York Palace in Budapest. The hotels are flagship establishments and they will gradually be rebranded under the Anantara Hotels & Resorts and NH Collection brands. Covivio is now pursuing a works program for the entire portfolio, that shows great potential for growth in the medium term.

Emblematic hotels in privileged destinations
Congressional seats are allocated to states based on how many inhabitants they have, as tabulated in the census every 10 years. As recently as the 1940s, Illinois had 27 U.S. House members. Today, it has just 18  and commensurately less clout in Washington. After the 2020 census, it will have no more than 17, and could drop to 16. Texas, by contrast, could go from 36 to 38. Each states electoral votes in presidential elections will change accordingly.
Deadly bushfires in Australia are still happening up to this day. With that said, Queen Elizabeth II has given her deepest message of sympathy for the victims of the uncontrollable blazes.

Her Majesty said that the people are always in her thoughts and prayers.

Last week, there were two people killed because of the fire in northern New South Wales. A total of 64 homes and 150 buildings were totally destructed. In Southeast Queensland, on the other hand, one home was destroyed.

Queen Elizabeth II sent a heartfelt letter of symphaty to Queensland Governor Paul de Jersey and New South Wales Governor Margaret Beazley. The 93-year-old monarch was so saddened about the continued bushfires in Australia.

"Prince Philip and I have been deeply saddened to hear of the tragic loss of life and property caused by bushfires affecting communities and businesses across northern New South Wales and South East Queensland," the Queen wrote.

"I am heartened that once again the richness of spirit that defines Australians has drawn people together to support those in need. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of the victims," the statement further reads.

The letter was signed by the Queen herself. Australia's Governor-General David Hurley also published the message on Facebook last Thursday.

Last Thursday, Australian authorities were on red alert due to hot and windy weather forecast. A total ban on fire usage has been declared all over the affected areas of northern New South Wales.

Months of Fire

Slashes of fires started burning for more than a month and ripped through the large swathes of northern NSW and southeast Queensland last week. The wild blazes left rural communities completely devastated.

In the debris of a home in northern NSW on October 10, dead bodies of an elderly couple were found. The victims were last spotted at their home on Deadman Creek Road before all of this tragedy happened. The fire was triggered by a lightning strike and completely ruined the house of the couple.

Authorities investigating the incident reported that their house had been destroyed because of the Long Gully Road bushfire. As per the report of the Sydney Morning Herald, the police treated this as suspicious as it was a different fire to the Busbys Flat blaze.

Today, there is already a prolonged period of water shortage. Serious drought and other future damages were increased due to extremely dry conditions. The large areas of the land are now at risk of any spark.

NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons declared last October 10 that more than 400,000 hectares of drought-affected land have been destructed in NSW alone since July.

A Wonderful Land Burning

The town of Rappville in northern NSW was one of the most affected areas. A resident named Robert Collier said he expected people to evacuate immediately as a result.

"I think you won't see as many kids at the school now," he told ABC news.

Collier, who managed to escape with his partner and their children, said his family saw their home burning on the news.
MINNEAPOLIS and ST. PAUL, Minn., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Criminal Defense Attorney & Workers Compensation Law Offices of Arechigo & Stokka congratulates attorney John Arechigo on being named Attorney of the Year by Minnesota Lawyer. For the past 19 years, Minnesota Lawyer has honored the top attorneys in Minnesota for their achievements and leadership throughout their legal professions. This prestigious award is given to lawyers who distinguish themselves throughout 2019 by achieving a successful outcome in a high-profile case or demonstrating exceptional leadership or service to the legal profession.

This marks John's second Attorney of the Year award with the first coming in 2015. This year's honor carries the exclusive Circle of Excellence designation, an award reserved for multiple Attorney of the Year honors. John is believed to be the first criminal defense attorney in Minnesota to be selected as an Attorney of the Year twice by the age of 40.

Criminal Defense Attorney John Arechigo was recognized as a 2019 Attorney of the Year for his work on two high-profile criminal cases. John successfully obtained an acquittal following jury trial for a client accused of making a Threat of Violence to his former employer, Hubbard Broadcasting. John also obtained a landmark victory at the Minnesota Supreme Court, reversing a client's former convictions and striking two criminal laws as unconstitutional in what was dubbed a "Minnesota cyberbullying case."

In addition to the two cases that led to John's Attorney of the Year honor, he wrapped up 2019 with another late victory at the Minnesota Court of Appeals. On December 23, the Court of Appeals issued an opinion invalidating Minnesota's revenge porn law. John once again successfully argued that the law violated the First Amendment. This decision marked the third criminal law John had declared unconstitutional by the Minnesota Court of Appeals or Supreme Court in 2019.

John continues to serve Minnesota communities by working tirelessly to protect his clients' rights and futures. Our firm is proud to be under the leadership of John Arechigo.

SOURCE Criminal Defense Attorney & Workers Compensation Law Offices of Arechigo & Stokka

Related Links

https://arechigo-stokka.com


Donald Trump Jr. showed off the newest firearm in his collection on Sunday, posting three Instagram photos of a 'Crusader'-model AR-15 rifle fitted with an ammunition magazine whose design depicts Hillary Clinton behind bars.

Austin, Texas-based Rare Breed Firearms made the gun, which also features a Jerusalem cross. That emblem was associated with the Crusades, a series of wars between Christians and Muslims during the 11th, 12th and 13th Centuries.

A spokesman for Trump Jr. insisted Monday that the president's eldest son wasn't trying to weigh in on the chaos in the Middle East whose latest chapter saw a U.S. drone attack kill Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran's Quds Force.

'Anyone claiming that the Jerusalem Cross is some sort of political statement, couldnt be more ignorant. Symbols depicting different warriors are about as common in gun culture as hating President Trump is in the oped pages of the New York Times,' the spokesman said in a text message.

Don Jr. showed off AR-15 on Instagram; gun included 'Jerusalem cross' and an ammunition magazine laser etched with a drawing of Hillary Clinton in prison

A spokesman for Trump Jr. said he was trolling failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and noted that rifle designs featuring famous fighters are common in U.S. gun culture

Jerusalem cross was associated with Christian nations' mediaeval Crusades against Muslim sultanates; this drawing, circa 1900, shows First Crusade leader Goffredo di Buglione in his regalia after the conquest of Jerusalem

The manufacturer also produces an AR-15 design based on the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta, known for its war-fighting culture.

'Dons instagram post was strictly about him using a famous meme to mock Hillary Clinton, as he and many others have done on numerous occasions and will surely do again in the future, so long as it continues triggering humorless liberals,' the spokesman added.

Trolling Clinton, the Democrat who unsuccessfully challenged President Trump in the 2016 election, appears to have been an afterthought.

The weapon, which Rare Breed markets as the 'Crusader Rifle,' costs $2,125. Its distinguishing feature is a two-tone metal helmet that wraps around the lower receiver.

President Donald Trump (left) ignited a new round of Middle East chaos last week by ordering a drone strike that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani (right), the Quds Force leader responsible for killing hundreds of U.S. servicemen and women; Soleimani was mourned over the weekend by millions in Iran and the Islamist country vowed revenge on America

The magazine decorated with Clinton's face behind prison bars sells for $20.00 online from Spike's Tactical, the exclusive distributor for Rare Breed.

Trump Jr. thanked both companies in his Instagram post for 'adding a little extra awesome to my AR' during a visit to a firing range.

'[A]nd that mag...' he added, referring to the Clinton design.

The Jerusalem Cross's history stretches from 11th Century Jerusalem to modern-day Roman Catholicism, where it shows up in some priestly vestments.

It's also visible on coins minted by Mary Queen of Scots, and on the coat of arms of Puerto Rico, colonized by the Spanish.

Both instances date to the 16th Century.

Some on social media speculated on Monday about the design's link to the Crusades. Others suggested, incorrectly, that the Jerusalem cross was a design favored by neo-Nazis.
Union Minister Ramdas Athawale on Monday said an investigation should be conducted into the violent incidents in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi and those responsible be arrested.

"Police should investigate that matter my party (Republican Party of India (A)) is also demanding that investigation should be there and whoever is responsible, they should be arrested," he told reporters here.

The Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment was responding to a question on the violence that rocked the JNU campus on Sunday.

Masked men armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police.

Several were injured and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu held telephone talks with Turkish national intelligence chief and chief of Iran's general staff, local news agencies reported citing Russian defence ministry.

Shoigu and Head of Turkey's National Intelligence Organization Hakan Fidan discussed possible joint actions to reduce tensions in the Middle East after the United States killed a senior Iranian military commander in Iraq on Friday, Interfax reported Russian defence ministry as saying.

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Two children who were part of a group of children throwing snowballs at passing cars were shot by a driver whose car was hit.

The children - a 12-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy - were found with non-life threatening injuries about 8pm on Saturday in Milwaukee.

Police said the children were thought be part of a larger group who were playing around in the snow. However, when a snowball hit a white Toyota, an upset driver allegedly shot at the group, hitting the two children.

Officers who found the injured children administered first aid before taking them both to a local hospital for treatment, police said on Twitter Monday.

A search is now on for the gunman.

Police in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, say that a 12-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy were found shot shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday, in the 6100 block of West Birch Street (pictured)

The Milwaukee police initially tweeted that a 12-year-old girl was found suffering from 'non-life threatening' gun shot at the scene

But a follow up tweet adds there was a second victim, a 13-year-old boy, who also was found suffering a non-life threatening gunshot would. Both kids were taken to a local hospital and treated, the police said

The Milwaukee Police Department later tweeted (pictured) that both victims were shot by a driver after a snowball was thrown, striking his 'white Toyota'

The girl was the first found wounded by police, in the 6100 block of West Birch Street, police said in one of several tweets about the incident.

'Upon arrival officers found a 12 year old Milwaukee female suffering from a non-life threatening gunshot wound,' cops said in a second tweet.

'Preliminary investigation indicates both victims were with a group of juveniles throwing snowballs at cars passing by. One of the snowballs struck a white Toyota, no further description, and the driver of the auto fired shots into the group of kids striking the two victims,' the police wrote in a third tweeted description of the incident.

Anyone with information about the driver, his vehicle or the events of the shooting is urged to call the department at 414-935-7360, or the Milwaukee Crime Stoppers at 414-224-TIPS.
Sinn Fein has condemned a sectarian attack in which 'IRA' was painted on the side of an Orange hall in Co Antrim.

Glenavy Protestant Hall on the Crumlin Road has been repeatedly targeted in recent years, most recently with paint bombs in July last year.

Sinn Fein MLA Declan Kearney said it was a sectarian attack which he strongly condemned.

"Those responsible are clearly trying to provoke division and tension in an area where community relations are very integrated. But I and other political and community leaders will ensure their toxic agenda will not succeed," the South Antrim MLA said.

"The perpetrators represent nothing except sectarian bitterness and their actions are the opposite of Irish republican politics in the united Irish tradition."

DUP councillor James Tinsley said he was "very disappointed to see the beginning of a new year start with the same old hatred". He said: "The vast majority of the residents in Glenavy are great, but it only takes a few mindless idiots to try and stir up tensions."
Keith White

WireCo WorldGroup (WireCo) announced today that Keith White has been appointed Chief Executive Officer effective January 1, 2020, and will be serving on the Board of Directors. Interim Chief Executive Officer, Jay Townsend, will step down from his executive duties, but will remain actively involved with WireCo as Lead Independent Member of the Exec. Committee of the Board of Directors.

Mr. White, a resident of Kansas, most recently served as Senior Vice President of Industrial at Kiewit Corporation, a leading construction and engineering company to the transportation, power, oil & gas and chemical end-markets. Prior to Kiewit, Mr. White was President of the Industrial Air Platform, Parker Filtration Group at Parker Hannifin Corporation, having come to Parker Hannifin from its acquisition of Clarcor Corporation in 2017. While at Clarcor, Mr. White served as President of Clarcors Industrial Group, was a member of Clarcors Executive Leadership team, and an Officer of the company since 2014.

Earlier in his career, Mr. White worked at General Electric Companys Energy Division for twelve years, where he had successive leadership roles, most recently leading GEs Air Filtration division which was acquired by Clarcor in 2013.

Mr. White holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the United States Naval Academy and served in the United States Navy for approximately seven years.

Keith White commented, Im very excited to be joining WireCo as its CEO. This is an extraordinary opportunity to become part of a world class industrial company. I was attracted to WireCos well-respected, market-leading, brands globally synonymous with delivering premium quality to its customers over many decades.

Regarding Mr. Whites appointment, Manish Srivastava, Managing Director at Onex and Chairman of the WireCo Board said, On behalf of the Board, we are thrilled that Keith will be joining WireCo as its Chief Executive Officer. Keith has a demonstrated and consistent track record of value creation through commercial and operational excellence across several leading industrial organizations, which makes him well-qualified to drive WireCos growth over the coming years. After running an extensive CEO search over the past six months, we are pleased to have found someone who has strong ties to the Kansas City community and has a strong global mindset, having experience across the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia. Additionally, we are thankful for Jays leadership and the organizational improvements he implemented while acting as Interim Chief Executive Officer. We and Keith look forward to continuing to work with Jay in his new role.

About WireCo WorldGroup

WireCo WorldGroup markets value-added products under several brands that are recognized throughout the world and used in a wide range of market applications. WireCo WorldGroup is headquartered in Prairie Village, Kansas with manufacturing plants, distribution facilities and research and development centers worldwide.
Former foreign minister Julie Bishop says Australia needs to show global leadership on climate change by putting forward a "coherent energy policy" in response to the nation's bushfire crisis.

Amid growing international criticism of Prime Minister Scott Morrison's climate change policies as fires burn across six states, Ms Bishop said on Monday other countries looked to Australia for "direction, guidance and leadership".

"Australia is a highly developed country," Ms Bishop said in an interview on Nine's Today show. "We should be showing leadership on the issue of climate change."

"We don't have a national energy policy in this country and a national approach to climate change so we are part of a global effort.
The timing and outlook for the presidents impeachment trial were already murky. In a pair of votes in December, the House impeached Mr. Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The charges stem from his bid to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, while withholding nearly $400 million of military aid.

Ms. Pelosi has refused to transmit the charges against Mr. Trump to the Senate, in a bid to give Senate Democrats more leverage as they try to force Republicans to agree to call administration witnesses and gain access to more documents. The president blocked administration officials from testifying in the House inquiry and refused to turn over documents that impeachment investigators requested, prompting the obstruction charge.

Now, the question is whether the coming debate on Iran will affect the calculations by Democrats and Republicans strategizing over the terms and length of a trial.

Democrats on the left argue that the impulses that led Mr. Trump to strike General Suleimani are themselves grounds for his removal.

The issues are connected, said Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, who sponsored legislation to block Mr. Trump from launching an unauthorized strike against Iran. It shows the same reckless pattern of policymaking that he engaged in with Ukraine. Its no longer a matter of standing up for the rule of law and the Constitution. This is a matter of safeguarding our national security and peace because a president that disregards constitutional processes can pose a huge risk to stability and peace.

Senators spent the year-end holidays preparing for the impeachment trial, a showdown over the fate of Mr. Trumps presidency that could consume parts of January and February.

Lawmakers and aides close to Ms. Pelosi say she has not yet made up her mind on how or when to proceed, and said foreign policy would not affect her thinking. A decision could come as soon as this week, when House lawmakers reconvene on Tuesday and the speaker holds a series of meetings with her leadership team.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

Last week we observed that our own mother country, the United Kingdom (redubbed the Dis-United Kingdom) is crumbling before our very eyes. But the DUK is hardly alone. Lets take a quick look at our final six democracies.

France. France (GDP of $2.7 trillion, or roughly half that of Japan), is Germany-without-Mother-Merkel. Like the Germans, the French were governed for many decades after World War II by either the center-right (de Gaulle, Sarkozy) or center-left (Pompidou, Mitterand).

But the collapse of the USSR hit French political life hardafter all, the biggest party in France was the Socialists, suddenly hopelessly discredited. Following the Presidency of the hapless Francois Hollande, French politics fractured badly, and for a time it seemed likely that Marine Le Pen would actually be elected President.

Then, more or less out of nowhere, Emmanuel Macron formed a new partyEn Marcheand was elected President, with the old center-right and center-left parties left in tatters. Since the only reason to vote for Macron was that he wasnt Le Pen, the French political system is essentially broken.

Its true, of course, that the French have always imagined that a perfectly sound way to run a country is for everyone to go on strike whenever they feel like it. But before Macron the cohesion of the main center-right and center-left parties made the strikes mostly symbolic.

Now, however, France is reduced to governance-by-strike-and-shutdown. No sooner had Macron bought off the yellow vests than more than 800,000 people went on strike over a relatively modest pension reform proposal. Polls showed that a full 76 percent of the voting public supported pension reform, but no matter. Lawyers, teachers, students, air-traffic controllers and many others hit the streets, bringing the country to a standstill.

But so what? Chaos now has no consequences because there are no heavily armed, hostile nations around to take advantage of it. The Germans have been disarmed, the Russians are held at bay by the U.S. (disguising itself as NATO), and the Chinese are out-of-sight and out-of-mind. With no enemies menacing its border, la France seffondre.

Italy. With $2 trillion of GDP, mostly produced in the industrial north of the country, Italy is the seventh largest economy among the worlds democracies. Like Germany and France, Italy was governed for decades after World War II by center-right and center-left parties. But today the two largest Italian partiesFive Star and the Northern Leagueare both radical populists. And although they are bitter rivals its hard to tell much difference between them on policy issues.

But, really, Italy doesnt fall neatly into my thesisthat democracies only remain stable and centrist when they are menaced by powerful enemies. Thats because, powerful enemies or not, Italy has always been chaotic. Since World War IIyou could look it upItaly has had 66 governments, the majority lasting less than a year. The country vies with India as The Worlds Most Ungovernable Democracy.

Brazil. With GDP of $1.9 trillion, Brazils economy is nearly as large as Italys. Unfortunately, Brazil cant be analyzed according to my theory because a) the nasty bully Brazil feared for most of its political life wasnt a heavily armed Communist or fascist power, but that fearsome military machine, Argentina, and b) Brazil has been a democracy only since 1989.

Canada. Canada is a tiny country population-wise, but it punches way above its weight GDP-wise. It boasts only 37 million people (its smaller than California) but its GDP of $1.7 trillion is nearly as large as that of Brazil (209 million people) and is larger than that of Russia (145 million), South Korea (52 million), Spain (47 million) and Mexico (130 million).

From the perspective of the U.S., Canadians can seem like one big (okay, small) blob of undifferentiated niceness. In fact, Canada is a country built atop huge geopolitical fault lines.

The main fault line, of course, is the one between French-speaking Quebec and the rest of the country. As recently as 1995 sovereignty for Quebec nearly passed, narrowly failing when 51% of Quebecois voters rejected it.

Newfoundland and Labrador, the easternmost province of Canada, is also perpetually restive. Newfoundland, its often forgotten, has a long history of independence. It was a British self-governing colony from 1855 to 1907, a self-governing member of the British dominion from 1907 to 1934, and a free-standing British crown colony until 1949, when it finally and belatedly became a province of Canada.

Finally, the western provinces of Alberta (especially), British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan seem to be perpetually alienated from the eastern part of the country. In 2001 the Alberta Agenda was promulgated, urging Alberta (and, by extension, the other western provinces) to assert their distinctiveness in the same manner as Quebec has done.

Canada manages to hang together only because a) they actually are nice people, even the Quebecois, and b) they are terrified of America.

South Korea and Spain. We can quickly dispense with the last two democracies ranked by GDP, South Korea (GDP of $1.6 trillion) and Spain ($1.4 trillion).

South Korea is already the broken half of what used to be Korea. And even the full Korea was governed by Japan from 1897 (informally) and 1910 (formally) until Japans defeat in World War II. Then the country was divided and the southern section was governed by autocratic military regimes until democracy finally took hold under the Sixth Republic in 1987. Whatever divisive issues South Koreans have are kept under very tight control because North Korea sits just north of them and China sits just north of that.

Ive written elsewhere about the chaotic Spanish Republic, which descended into civil war. The Spanish, desperate for stability and terrified of the USSR and Germany, ended up with Franco, who ran the country for 40 years.

Spain isnt a country in the same sense that the U.S. is a country. Instead, under the Spanish constitution Spain is a collection of some 17 autonomous regions and two autonomous cities. As a result, with no external enemies in sight, Spain is bedeviled by peripheralism, according to which any region is entitled to devolution (control of their own regional polity) or even independence. In 2014, for example, Catalonia (Barcelona) held a referendum in which 81 percent of the voters chose independence from Spain.

Spain recently had to hold its fourth national election in four years and the winning party managed to capture all of 120 seats in the 350-seat Congress of Deputies. Spain is, in fact, perpetually falling apart.
1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business Insider

Expedition Motor Company converts vintage convertible Mercedes-Benz G-Wagens sourced from the German military into bespoke luxury SUVs.

This includes EMC's 1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf restoration, which can be dropped from a helicopter.

The 1991 250GD Wolf build costs $93,000, which is less expensive than the current Mercedes-Benz G-Class which starts at $127,650.

Visit BusinessInsider.com for more stories.

New Jersey-based Expedition Motor Company is converting vintage Mercedes-Benz G-Wagens sourced from the German military and turning them into bespoke convertible vehicles, including a 1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf which can be dropped from a helicopter.

Mercedes-Benz G-Wagens have become an iconic fixture on American streets and are owned by multiple celebrities, including Kylie Jenner and Matt Kemp, according to The News Wheel. It's no surprise many celebrities love to show off their G-Wagens: at a starting price of $127,650, the large SUVs are definitely a luxury item not everyone can afford.

Expedition Motor Company takes vintage convertible G-Wagens formerly used by the German military and restored the vehicles to a luxurious bespoke quality with builds starting at $90,000. While this isn't necessarily inexpensive, the EMC vehicles are significantly cheaper than the present-day built G-Wagens, now known as the G-Class.

"If I'm driving a Lamborghini through New York City, or driving this [G-Wagen] through New York City, I'll get more comments on this [G-Wagen]," Expedition Motor Company founder Alex Levin told Business Insider.

EMC's 1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf build is especially unique: its side hooks allow it to be dropped from a helicopter with its side hooks.

"With the top on, maybe it's a little conspicuous," he continued. "But when the top is off, it's a completely different environment. In the summertime, people are just so drawn to it because 'there goes a convertible SUV and it's a Mercedes and it's a G-Wagen.'"

Story continues

Keep scrolling to see the former air-lifted military G-Wagen that can be dropped from the sky:

The build that can be dropped from a helicopter is the 1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf, pictured below.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderEMC invested around 1,000 hours into creating the build, according to its website.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business Insider

Source: Expedition Motor Company

The original G-Wagens were purchased in bulk from the German military

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business Insider...and brought to a workshop in Poland for most of the restoration, which needs to be done because "[the] 18-year-old military service members [drive] the crap out of them," Levin said.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderThey are then shipped from Poland to the US for final touches before being sold to customers.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderThat's really what the niche and the special sauce is: if you want [a vintage G-Wagen]...to be reliable and last year for 20 years, it has to be fully restored and that's where Exhibition Motor Company comes in, he continued.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company_3

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderThe build still retains some of its original parts and appearance.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderThe only restoration parts that are outsourced are the injection pumps, which are made by Bosch.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderThe bespoke G-Wagen has a OM602 diesel engine.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderSide hooks allow it to be dropped from a helicopter.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderThe engine, transmission, axles, and transfer case were disassembled, inspected, rebuilt, and refinished after some parts were either cleaned or replaced.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderNew brakes and rotors, among several other pieces, were installed.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderYou never feel like you're out of control in the car, Levin said.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business Insider'Wow, I turn and it turns!'" some customers have said to Levin during test drives, shocked by the easy handling of Expedition Motor Company's restored G-Wagens.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderCustomers have praised how well the car corners with its confidence-inspiring drive, Levin claimed.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderThis is what happens when you put in that much work, he continued.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderThe body and interior were taken apart from the frame during its restoration process.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderThe body was then blasted down to only metal to make any metal-related issues more manageable before an anti-corrosive primer was applied to both the body and the frame.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderThe interior of the G-Wagen is custom-made, although it still retains some of its original components.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderLevin selected the white exterior finish, which has also been wet-sanded and polished.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderThis white finish contrasts the interior brown vinyl.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderWhen it comes to modifications like making the car automatic instead of manual or adding power windows, Levin  who claims he is known for saying "no"  refuses.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business Insider"I want to respect the vehicle for what it was," he said. "It's restored, it's refined so that a user like me or you can use it."

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderLevin took his pet dog and me for a test drive in the Wolf, and I was pleasantly surprised by the vehicle.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company_4

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderHe taught me how to drive the G-Wagen, which would also serve as my first time driving manual, something I thought I would never do as more and more cars are now being sold as automatic.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderAnd although I was terrified, I found the vehicle easy to handle.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company_1

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderI found the steering and handling to be as responsive and smooth as Levin claimed, more so than other non-vintage cars that I've driven.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderAccording to Levin, most people's first impressions when they ride in one of EMC's G-Wagens is that "they're amazed at how well the vehicle steers, so it's responsive for a 25, 30-year-old vehicle."

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business Insider"They're expecting something that's either very tough to turn or is going all over the place, like a Land Rover Defender," he said.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business InsiderThis model costs $93,000, although EMC currently has several other 250GD Wolf builds available for sale on its website.

1991 Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf Expedition Motor Company

Brittany Chang/Business Insider

Read the original article on Business Insider
prices on Monday soared by Rs 857 to Rs 40,969 per 10 gram in futures trade as speculators moved towards safe haven, amid rising tensions in the Middle East.

On the Multi Commodity Exchange, contracts for February traded higher by Rs 857, or 2.14 per cent, at Rs 40,969 per 10 gram with a business turnover of 5,559 lots.

The yellow metal for April delivery traded higher by Rs 874, or 2.17 per cent, at Rs 41,170 per 10 gram in a business turnover of 530 lots.

Top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani was killed on Friday in a US strike on Baghdad's international airport.

US President Donald Trump has warned Iran of "major retaliation" if Tehran carries out any attack against America to avenge the killing of top military commander Qasem Soleimani and hinted at striking its cultural sites.

Globally, prices rose 1.67 per cent to $1,578.40 per ounce in New York.
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Linkedin Adrian Wail Akhlas (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020 11:00 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c320fea49 1 Business fuel,gas-station,SPBU,BP,AKR-Corporindo,AKR-BP-fuel-stations,joint-venture,business-expansion,outlook Free

A joint venture company of British energy firm BP and publicly listed fuel trader PT AKR Corporindo plans to build 30 new fuel stations each year to have a total of 350 in 10 years.

The joint venture company, operating under the name BP-AKR Fuels Retail or PT Aneka Petroindo Raya, is to open two fuel stations, one in Ciater, Banten, in January and another in Cikarang, West Java, in March. The company currently owns 13 fuel stations in Greater Jakarta and Surabaya as it estimated it distributed up to 15 million liters of fuel in 2019.

BP-AKR Fuels Retail president director Peter Molloy said during an exclusive interview with The Jakarta Post in December that the company aimed to build 30 fuel stations each year in Indonesia. It planned to distribute up to 40 million liters of fuel by the end of 2020, more than double the amount in 2019.

We are interested in 10 to 40 locations but negotiations for plots of land took a long time to process, such as [building] permits and licensing. Thus, fuel distribution would depend on whether we could acquire more land, said Molloy in Jakarta on Dec. 18. However, he declined to reveal the companys revenues and profits.

To attract new customers to its fuel stations, BP-AKR Fuels Retail struck partnership deals with retail store Alfamart, as well as the Kopi Tuku and Kopi Kenangan coffee shops. Molloy identified middle-class Indonesians as the companys target market.

The middle class of Indonesia is the biggest area of growth as it is set to double between now and 2030. We are aiming for 350 fuel stations over the next 10 years, he added.

Despite the ambitious target, Molloy said that the company was cautious about further expansion as it would depend on land acquisition and the implementation of Energy and Mineral Resources Ministerial Regulation No. 187/2019 on the formula of fuel prices.

The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry issued in October a revision to Regulation No. 19/2019 that would change the pricing formula and margin of nonsubsidized fuel prices and is set to be implemented in January.

We just need to be cautious when the new regulation is in place in January, said Molloy. We will look at how this regulation plays out before we make further investments.
NEW YORK - Presidential politics move fast. What were watching heading into a new week on the 2020 campaign:

___

Days to Iowa caucuses: 28

Days to general election: 302

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THE NARRATIVE

Its on. With the holidays over, the sprint to the first voting contest of the 2020 primary season begins now. The presidential spotlight for Donald Trump will burn brighter than ever, which will magnify anything and everything that happens on the campaign trail. Thats as a thick cloud of uncertainty hangs over the Democratic field. Less than a month before the Iowa caucuses, the top tier is a cluster of four candidates: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

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THE BIG QUESTIONS

Will the real front-runner please stand up?

Buttigieg got front-runner treatment in the last debate, but Biden, Sanders and Warren each have a legitimate chance to score a victory in Iowa. Almost as importantly, some of the second-tier candidates  Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer, among them  have an opportunity to exceed expectations and walk out of the state with momentum heading into New Hampshire, which traditionally loves an underdog. Expect to see a clearer narrative begin to develop regarding expectations in the coming days.

Is this suddenly a foreign policy election?

Trumps decision to take out a top Iranian general has thrust foreign policy into the forefront of the news cycle. On paper, a foreign policy focus should help Biden, who has decades of experience on the worlds stage. But that long record includes a series of controversial decisions  none bigger than his 2002 vote to authorize military force against Iraq  that could hurt him. Can Bidens less-experienced rivals capitalize? Can Biden finally put the Iraq vote behind him? There are risks, but it remains to be seen how much Democratic primary voters who are hyper-focused on domestic issues will ultimately care.

How worried should Democrats be about the size of Trumps bank account?

As Democrats play up their own fundraising numbers, the Trump campaign last week announced that it had finished the year with more than $100 million in the bank. Thats A LOT of money  more than any other incumbent has amassed heading into a reelection year, and it may be more than all the 2020 Democratic candidates combined. Look to see whether Trumps massive haul has any impact on the heated fight among Democrats over the role of big donors. And perhaps more importantly, look to see if Trumps team is using the money to expand the 2020 map.

Does Bernie have an advantage over Warren?

The progressive movements favourite candidates suddenly seem to be moving in opposite directions. Warren was surging through the fall, but she had stalled in the polls even before posting an underwhelming $21 million fundraising quarter last week. Sanders poll numbers are improving and he dominated the field with a $34.5 million quarter  virtually all of it from small-dollar donors. Winning the nomination will require more than cash and polls, however. Organization reigns in Iowas quirky caucus system, and there are strong indications that Warrens team on the ground in several states, especially Iowa, is for real. But for now, Sanders seems to have a distinct edge.

Will the billionaires devalue the early states?

As you were recovering from your New Years festivities, billionaire activist Tom Steyer was announcing the hiring of delegate guru Jeff Berman. It was a big get for Steyer, who has struggled to find a foothold in the crowded primary but has the resources to carve his own path to the nomination if the stars align. Berman, the architect of Barack Obamas delegate strategy, told The Associated Press that Steyers path would feature a strong showing in the many states that hold primary contests in March. That mirrors Michael Bloombergs plan as well, and the New York billionaire has gone so far as to declare that hes skipping Iowa and the other three states to hold elections in February. Lest anyone need a reminder, Bloomberg is starting his week in California, which is Super Tuesdays biggest prize. The first four states will be critical, but the 2020 billionaires are using their fortunes to ensure the race extends long beyond Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

THE FINAL THOUGHT

With no true front-runner in the Democratic field, the opportunity is there for any of the candidates to make a move. But in presidential primary politics, expectations sometimes matter as much as actual vote totals. Be ready for the campaigns to ratchet up their expectations spin dramatically over the coming days.

___

2020 Watch runs every Monday and provides a look at the week ahead in the 2020 election.

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Follow Peoples at https://twitter.com/sppeoples

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Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, Ground Game.
Instagram is one of the best social media platforms for promoting your brand online. According to Instagram statistics, over 200 million Instagrammers visit at least one business profile per day and 60 percent of people say they discover new products on Instagram.

But, with so many other businesses on the platform, it can be hard to stand out from the crowd. Your brand needs to be memorable if you want to capture the attention of Instagrammersand you can do that with a visually stunning Instagram aesthetic.

Heres how to create an eye-catching Instagram aesthetic for your brand.

1. Determine your brand personality

The first step to creating an eye-catching Instagram aesthetic is to determine your brand personality. Brand personality is a set of human characteristics that represent your brand.

Related: Instagram Icon: How 'Bachelorette' Star Kaitlyn Bristowe Leveraged Reality TV Fame Into Multiple Successful Businesses

For example, according to a study published on ResearchGate, Airbnbs brand personality is ruggedness, excitement, sophistication, sincerity, and competence. As you can see in the image below, these characteristics can be seen in their Instagram aesthetic, particularly ruggedness, excitement and sophistication.

So, think about your brand as a person, what characteristics does it have?

Here are some adjectives to spark your imagination:

Friendly

Innovative

Whimsical

Relaxed

Feisty

Determining your brand personality will help you create a cohesive Instagram aesthetic that represents your business accurately and resonates with your target audience.

2. Decide what to post

After deciding on your brand personality, you need to decide exactly what type of content youre going to post to Instagram. If you dont figure out in advance what type of images and videos youll post on Instagram, youll likely end up with a bit of everything, which wont create a consistent look.

Chipotles Instagram feed is famous for their memes  its all they post. See below:

But memes arent right for every business. So, decide what your audience would want to see on your Instagram feed and what type of content represents your brand personality. Will you share helpful, informative posts? Will you share user-generated content that promotes your product? Inspirational quotes and images?

Choose 1-3 types of content or topics to share that you want your brand to be known for. And then post that content all the time!

3. Choose a theme

To create a visually stunning Instagram feed, you need to choose an Instagram theme. An Instagram theme will give your feed a particular look and feel and make your profile more memorable to users.

There are a number of different Instagram themes you could consider, such as dark and moody, clean and minimalistic, vintage or tropical.

Related: This Family Has 4 Million Instagram Followers -- and the Kids' College Educations Are Already Paid For

Or, you can simply choose one main color to feature like McDonalds does with the color yellow, which is the color of their logo.

Choosing your brand/logo color for your Instagram theme like McDonalds did is a great way to build your brand recognition. According to a study performed by the University of Loyola, Maryland, color increases brand recognition by up to 80 percent.

4. Decide on a grid layout

Next, you need a grid layout. Whats a grid layout? Well, a grid layout is how you position posts in your feed. A good grid layout will help you visually organize your Instagram feed and create a consistent look overall.

For example, take a look at Birkenstocks Instagram feed. Their posts alternate between shots of their products and images of models wearing the products, which creates a balanced look.

Some other grid layout ideas include:

Tile - Alternating images and quotes with solid backgrounds.

Row by Row - Each row of your Instagram feed tells one story.

Rainbow - Where the color of your Instagram feed changes as you scroll.

Choosing a grid layout isnt only for aesthetic purposes. By deciding on a grid layout, youll know exactly what to post on your Instagram feed next.

5. Pick a filter  just one

If youre going to use Instagram filters on your photos, remember to choose just one filter. When you use a bunch of different Instagram filters, your feed wont have a consistent look. So, choose one filter that matches your Instagram theme and stick to it.

Related: This Hairstylist to the Stars Used Instagram to Build a Business That Makes Her Hollywood Looks Accessible to All

Take a look at how consistent the Instagram theme of fashion brand Privacy Please is:

If you do nothing else, sticking with one Instagram filter will help you easily create a great-looking, consistent aesthetic.

Over to you

With these tips, your brand can easily create an eye-catching Instagram aesthetic that will get you noticed on social media. Not only that but with a stunning Instagram aesthetic, you can turn Instagram users into customers.

Related:

5 LinkedIn Growth-Hacking Strategies for 2020

The Underrated Power of LinkedIn Content Creation

6 Steps to Create an Eye-Catching Instagram Aesthetic for Your Brand



Copyright 2020 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Following the Friday killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in a drone airstrike, the United States has cautioned Americans to reconsider travelling to or across Nigeria.

The US Embassy in Nigeria, in a statement on its website, admonished American citizens to review their personal security measures, be prudent and keep a low profile.

Stating that it had no specific security threat information, the mission advised US nationals in Nigeria to stay alert in public places, including schools, hospitals, government facilities, places of worship, tourist locations, and transportation hubs.

The security advisory, which was dated January 3, 2020, also asked them to review and alter travel routes and times to reduce time and place predictability.



It read, Due to recent world events, U.S. citizens should review their personal security measures. While we have no specific threat information, it is prudent to remind ourselves of the following personal security actions to follow on a regular basis.

Actions to take: Be aware of your surroundings; keep a low profile; avoid crowds and demonstrations; exercise caution when walking or driving at night; carry proper identification; review your personal security plans and monitor local media for updates.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
Decent gastropubs are ten-a-penny in the Cotswolds; you really dont have to wind far through the regions famous golden villages to find a thatched tavern that can serve up thoughtful food under ancient beams.

What you wont often find scratched on the chalkboard at these toasty alehouses, however, is proper, wood-fired pizza.

And thats where the newly renovated 17th-century roadside inn The Stump, just outside Cirencester on the A429, finds its niche.

The newly renovated 17th-century roadside inn The Stump, just outside Cirencester on the A429

Formerly the ailing but historic Hare and Hounds, The Stump was snapped up by London Bridge-based pizza maestros Baz & Fred a year ago and their neon-red branding now glows as brightly as the embers in the pubs three roaring fires.

The two-man band, who grew up in the area, have renovated all ten bedrooms that are annexed behind the main building, and its a sort of rustic motel  with Farrow & Ball paint on the doors.

In the pub, The Stumps menu is confident, pared down to seven pizzas and four pastas, with a handful of specials. Prices are reasonable, with a Dorset crab linguine the most expensive main at 14.50.

Discs of dough are puffed up and fired to perfection in a silver-domed oven and the genuinely enticing toppings  nduja (spreadable salami), raw honey and whipped ricotta, among them  breathe new life into the stone-baked artform.

The back of the oak-beamed pub, with the biggest of the open fires, is a natural dining area but should you want to eat pizza by the pool table in the front, thats fine too.

The bedrooms range from a king-size master suite with a roll-top bath to small doubles, and are style-conscious but unfussy. Comfy beds, brand new bathrooms  with full-size products from Wiltshire-based brand Bramley  and a TV loaded with Amazon and Netflix make a date with the duvet hard to resist when youre dozy on carbs and good wine.

In the pub, The Stumps menu is confident, pared down to seven pizzas and four pastas, with a handful of specials

Breakfast, like dinner, is a simple but well executed affair: yogurt, berries and granola; sourdough and jams; or eggs and bacon.

So, whos the clientele? Locals with their dogs chew the cud over a pint of Hooky, amber nectar produced by the nearby Hook Norton brewery.

Theres a good sprinkling of weekending Londoners, escaping the big smoke safe in the knowledge that, when they flick the mud from their boots, someone at the bar will know how to make a Negroni. And families too, delighted by a menu their brood will actually enjoy eating from.

The USP: An ancient Cotswold creamy stone pub now making sweet music with an Italian staple.

The rooms: Great value. Clean lines, good beds  bedecked in white linen  and swish bathrooms.

The food: Local ale, hipster cocktails and good house wines marry perfectly with killer pizzas and delicious pasta.
Harvey Weinstein says he hopes to rebuild a career in the film industry should he be acquitted of sex assault charges.

The disgraced film producer, whose trial begins in Manhattan today, has pleaded not guilty to two charges of predatory assault. He has faced allegations of harassment and assault from more than 80 women including some of Hollywood's biggest names. Many are planning to be in court.

Justice James Burke will set out the schedule for the trial, expected to last two months. Jury selection alone is predicted to take two weeks.

Weinstein said yesterday in an email interview with CNN that he believed he could make a comeback in the industry, even though the studio which he co-founded in 2005 with his estranged brother, Bob, no longer exists.

"It will take a bit of work to build back to it," Weinstein wrote. "If I can get back to doing something good and building places that help heal and comfort others, I intend to do so."

Last month, the producer's legal team reached a tentative $25m (23m) legal settlement with more than 30 women who took out a civil suit against him.

The deal enabled Weinstein to avoid personal liability or admit wrongdoing.

But it left two cases outstanding. One woman accuses Weinstein of raping her at a Manhattan hotel in 2013 and another alleges he forced her to perform oral sex in 2006.

Weinstein (67) has repeatedly denied all allegations of non-consensual sex.

The trial will include testimony from the two alleged victims as well as evidence from Annabella Sciorra, a former 'Sopranos' actor who alleges that she was raped by Weinstein in the 1990s.

Weinstein, who has been on $1m bail, declined on legal advice to express any empathy for his alleged victims.

"I realise now that I was consumed with my work, my company and my drive for success. This caused me to neglect my family, my relationships and to lash out at the people around me," Weinstein added.

Asked what he would do if acquitted, he replied: "I plan to focus on my children, my health and rest. If I can do something positive to advance the causes that I had always championed, I hope to find a way to do so." ( Daily Telegraph, London)
Some customers of gold dealership firm, Menzgold Ghana limited are massing up at the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) headquarters in solidarity with some of their colleagues who have been invited for questioning by the CID.

One of the customers who was invited on January 2, 2020 told Citi News he was charged with offensive conduct and asked to report to the CID office today Monday, January 6, 2020.

Another one identified as Nana Kissi is expected to meet with CID officers over some comments he made on Accra based radio station, Adom FM.

A spokesperson of the Coalition of aggrieved customers of Menzgold, Fredrick Forson indicated that the comments made by his colleagues do not warrant such invitations.

We had expected that we could call the leadership and say that caution your people to speak well or maybe some of the statements were not good but as we speak now we do not know where the error is so we are all here to attend to the call. We are also calling on the state, the Attorney General, the Minister for National Security to respond to our petition that we presented on the 17th of August in which we called for a tripartite committee for us to sit down and resolve the issue because we do not understand why in the case of the rural and other microfinance and even the local banks that were collapsed, the government thought it wise to ensure that depositors' investments are paid to them before they went about with the criminal prosecution and all that but in the case of Menzgold, they are rather doing the opposite, he said.

Background

The company since its collapse in 2018 following a suspension order from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been struggling to refund monies invested by the customers.

Menzgold had announced earlier that it will from Friday, December 27, 2019, begin paying customers their locked up funds which have been in arrears for the past three years.

Management also assured that it is in the process of retrieving debts owed the company to shore up funds in other to pay its customers. Customers cannot be paid

However, lawyers for Menzgold Ghana Limited have said they do not have the capacity  to pay customers' locked up cash.

Menzgold in its statement dated 18th December 2019 had instructed its lawyers to make payments to customers.

Claims shall be settled in full and shall be subject to an invitation from our legal team: Kwame Akuffo & Co. Unlimited strictly following scheduled order, the statement said.

The lawyers, however, said it will be unable to carry out such an instruction.

We have informed the client that the firm does not have the capacity to carry out the said exercise. The firm is therefore unable to accept instructions in that regard. Under the circumstances, we have advised the client to instruct a third party entity to carry out the instructions in respect of the above-mentioned, a statement from the lawyers said.

Customers of the defunct firm have also vowed to kick against any payment plan that fails to promise a 100% retrieval of their locked up investments.

A spokesperson for the customers, Fredrick Forson indicated that they will only rescind their decision if a meeting is scheduled between the management of the company and the customers.

citinewsroom
Chicago, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Blank Rome LLP is pleased to announce that Paul H. Tzur, former Deputy Chief of the Narcotics and Money Laundering Section at the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of Illinois, has joined the Firms Chicago office as a Partner in the White Collar Defense & Investigations group. Blank Rome opened its Chicago office last June and moved to 444 West Lake Street in September. Last week, the office also welcomed leading corporate and finance partner Craig Culbertson to the team.

Paul is an accomplished and respected litigator, and we are thrilled to welcome him to the Chicago team, said Kenneth J. Ottaviano, Chair of Blank Romes Chicago office and Partner in the Finance, Restructuring, and Bankruptcy group. With top talent like Paul and Craig on board, we are off to a strong start in 2020 building out Blank Romes newest office, and are committed to continuing our momentum in the weeks and months ahead.

Paul has more than four years of corporate litigation experience in the private sector and nearly nine years as a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorneys Officeincluding more than two in the Office's Securities & Commodities Sectionand will focus his practice on high-stakes white collar defense and complex commercial litigation matters, representing clients as well as their boards, audit committees, officers, directors, and other individuals on government enforcement matters, internal investigations, and related litigation.

It is an honor to have Paul join our Firm, said Grant S. Palmer, Blank Romes Managing Partner and CEO. In his roles as deputy chief and assistant U.S. attorney, Paul consistently exhibited innovative thinking and distinguished himself as an impressive litigator, arguing 11 appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. His experience in both investigating and prosecuting high-profile cases involving participants in financial markets and related industries shaped Pauls understanding of the nuances involved in these matters, legal acumen that will prove valuable in his representation of clients facing complex civil actions, as well as white collar criminal matters.

Drawing on his experience, Paul will counsel clients on the intricacies of government investigations, developing strategies that anticipate what methods investigators will leverage and what key evidence they will seek to uncover throughout the investigation and proceedings, should the cases move to trial. Pauls work in the U.S. Attorneys Office affords him a unique understanding of the conduct that may prompt criminal investigation, bringing an insiders look at these matters. For example, Paul investigated and prosecuted corporate accounting fraud, bank fraud, insider trading, and unlawful market manipulation in the Securities & Commodities section of the U.S. Attorneys Office. He also prosecuted Medicare fraud cases, and managed multiple narcotics and money laundering investigations and prosecutions brought by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

During his tenure at the U.S. Attorneys Office, Paul gained recognition for many of the cases he oversaw, including United States v. Gary Winemaster, Craig Davis and James Needham; United States v. Matthew Brunstrum; United States of America v. Chunlai Yang; and United States of America v. Carol Delgado and Brent Houck, among others.

We are excited to welcome Paul to Blank Rome and to our practice, said Jerry D. Bernstein, Co-Chair of the Firms White Collar Defense & Investigations group. Paul will provide robust counsel on the most novel and complex investigations and disputes our clients face. And Pauls government background and private practice experience will help grow our litigation team both in Chicago and nationally with a focus on white collar, criminal, and intellectual property matters, through exceptional service, outstanding relationships with attorneys and other business professionals, and his mentoring abilities.

The decision to join Blank Rome was an easy one, said Tzur. I was attracted to the Firms comprehensive range of service capabilities and the prospect for cross-practice worka key differentiator for Blank Rome and its partners. Also, I could not pass up the opportunity to contribute to the Firms strategic growth and presence in Chicago while building my own white collar and civil litigation practice.

In line with Blank Romes ongoing commitment to pro bono legal representation and investment in the community, prior to joining the U.S. Attorneys Office, Paul regularly offered counsel to individuals appealing cases before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. Paul plans to resume his commitment to offering such counsel now that he is at Blank Rome. Paul also plans to become active with the Criminal Justice Act Panel and the Northern District Trial Bar.

Paul earned his J.D., cum laude, from the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and his B.S. in Engineering, cum laude, from the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering. Following law school, Paul clerked for the Honorable Steven M. Colloton at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and then worked as a litigation attorney at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.

About Blank Rome

Blank Rome is an Am Law 100 firm with 14 offices and more than 600 attorneys and principals who provide comprehensive legal and advocacy services to clients operating in the United States and around the world. Our professionals have built a reputation for their leading knowledge and experience across a spectrum of industries, and are recognized for their commitment to pro bono work in their communities. Since our inception in 1946, Blank Romes culture has been dedicated to providing top-level service to all of our clients, and has been rooted in the strength of our diversity and inclusion initiatives. For more information, please visit blankrome.com.

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Astonished and horrified at the violence unleashed against students and teachers of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) by masked miscreants, the Jadavpur University TeachersAssociation (JUTA) on Sunday called upon all sections of society to condemn the heinous act.

In a statement, JUTA General Secretary Partha Pratim Roy urged the JNU authorities to restore normalcy, and the Central and Delhi governments to take urgent action to stop the violence and bloodshed.

JUTA is astonished and horrified at the violence unleashed against students and teachers of JNU by masked miscreants armed with sticks, rods, stones, and other implements which they are using with impunity inside the university, including inside hostels, Roy said.

This horrifying act is apparently being carried out in the presence of police personnel, the statement said.

Roy said reports he received from acolleagues and friends within JNU seem to indicate that the goons owe allegiance to one particular political party.

No words are strong enough to condemn this heinous act, which is apparently still under way.

The JUTA calls upon all sections of society, especially students and teachers, to condemn this act, he said.

If our universities and those who study and work in them cannot be protected from such atrocities, how can we claim to be a civilised nation? Roy wondered.

Violence swept the JNU on Sunday as several masked individuals, both male and female, thrashed students, including girls, and teachers inside the varsity campus with wooden and metal rods.

Two officer-bearers of the Jawaharal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU), including President Aishe Ghosh - who was reportedly hit over the eye with an iron rod, received severe injuries. They blamed RSS student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for the rampant violence in the campus.
One rainy afternoon, I floated over a galaxy of egg yolks and spiky gumball tree seeds, and plucked a fork-shaped constellation from the asteroids.

In this constructed world, my hands looked red as I reached out to grasp at a small ball: a piece of real food, rendered in the digital cosmos. As I chewed, the image brightened into a new world.

This is one of the first scenes of Aerobanquets RMX, a culinary experience that incorporates virtual reality. The installation runs at the James Beard Foundations West Village townhouse through Jan. 26.

We invest in museums for art and orchestras and music, but food we think of as nutrition or biological, said Mitchell Davis, the organizations chief strategy officer. This experience is arting up food a little bit.
UPDATE: Police have identified the drivers and released more details.

Original article:

DEWITT, N.Y. -- Emergency crews are responding to a crash that has shut down a ramp on the New York State Thruway near the Interstate 481 exit in DeWitt.

Someone called the Onondaga County 911 Center at 11:03 p.m. to say a tractor-trailer and snow plow had crashed on Interstate 90 East at milepost 276.6, near Exit 34A -- the I-481 exit. The 911 caller also reported seeing the tractor-trailer smoking.

State police, East Syracuse firefighters and EAVES Ambulance responded. The state Department of Environmental Conservation also was being notified of a fuel spill, authorities said.

At 11:20 p.m., Thruway officials said the I-90 East ramp was blocked at Exit 34A. At midnight, the right lane of I-90 East also was blocked and police remained at the scene.

At 12:40 a.m., the East Syracuse Fire Department posted photos from the accident scene and an update. The fire department reported the tractor-trailer driver rear-ended a state plow.

EAVES and Minoa ambulances transported both drivers to area hospitals with traumatic injuries, according to the fire departments Facebook post.

The scene has been turned over to the state police, state DEC and the Thruway Authority, fire officials said.

In its Facebook message, firefighters reminded drivers: EVERYONE MUST SLOW DOWN AND MOVE OVER!!

Check back for updates.

Thanks for visiting Syracuse.com. Quality local journalism has never been more important, and your subscription matters. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 23:42:36|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BERLIN, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Germany was lacking 300,000 public service employees, the German Civil Service Association (dbb) announced at the association's annual meeting on Monday.

According to the figures by dbb, there would be a shortage of more than 138,000 employees in Germany's municipal administrations alone. The health care system was lacking 40,000 employees while police forces would require 50,000 additional officers.

To address the shortages in the legal system, the German government and the federal states agreed on creating 2,000 new jobs for judges and lawyers by 2021.

Supporting Germany's federal states financially, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced to provide a one-off funding of 220 million euros (246.37 million U.S. dollars) for new public service employees in the legal system.

With 1.3 million employees from the public sector retiring in the next ten years, there would be a staff gap of several hundred thousand employees further exacerbating the situation even if expected new hires were included, warned dbb President Ulrich Silberbach.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday told Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, that he does not plan to run for Senate in 2020, most likely ending Republicans hopes of securing a potentially dominant candidate for the open seat in his home state of Kansas, according to four people briefed on the meeting.

Mr. Pompeo, a former congressman from the Wichita area, has quietly explored a campaign for months. But in the aftermath of the military operation last week that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran, Mr. Pompeo has told senior party officials that he is ruling out becoming a candidate, according to several people who have spoken with him directly.

His conversation with the majority leader, which took place in Mr. McConnells Capitol office, touched on the events of the last few days in the Middle East, according to an aide to the senator.

Another person briefed on the decision said it was clear it would be irresponsible for Mr. Pompeo to leave the State Department and would not help him in any possible presidential run in 2024 as much as people had speculated it might.
A Montgomery County man faces a manslaughter charge in the shooting death of his father Monday morning, according to State Police.

Alexander R. Eller, 20, called Montgomery County police dispatchers at 5:43 a.m., saying he had just shot his father in the man's home on Route 334.

Troopers and deputies found 56-year-old Dallas B. Eller Jr., dying from a gunshot wound to the chest.

Attempts by paramedics with the Greater Amsterdam volunteer ambulance company to revive the elder Eller were unsuccessful and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Alexander Eller was charged with first-degree manslaughter.

He was arraigned Monday in the town of Glen and sent to the Montgomery County jail on $25,000 cash bail.

He is expected back in court on Tuesday.

Captain Richard O'Brien of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation said Monday afternoon during a news conference at State Police headquarters in Latham that the younger Eller, who used a rifle to shoot his father, lived in a camper on the property where the shooting occurred.

O'Brien declined to discuss motive or get into any great detail about the circumstances surrounding the shooting.

"We believe there was a verbal exchange but not a physical confrontation," O'Brien added.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

O'Brien credited a police dispatcher for getting the younger Eller to surrender peacefully to authorities.

"The dispatcher did a great job in obtaining information that we needed to successfully have this individual surrender, including having this individual showing his hands and exiting the residence, " he said, adding that the suspected shooter also complied with commands from the law enforcement personnel at the scene.

He said State Police and sheriff's deputies had responded previously to the home in the past, but not recently.

"I would not characterize this family as being known to law enforcement," he added.
We have a split caucus, said Joshua Cole, a Democrat elected in November to the House of Delegates from Northern Virginia, who describes himself as a progressive. We have old-school Democrats, moderate Democrats who represent moderate areas, and then you have progressives. You are going to see bills that are very aggressive, but the question is whether they make it out of committee.

Democrats may find that control of state government does not always translate into overwhelming legislative success, political analysts said.

In most places, having Democratic unified control is not carte blanche to enact a progressive policy agenda, said Sarah F. Anzia, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. Winning and keeping those majorities requires catering to more moderate Democrats.

In Maine, moderate Democrats joined Republicans to block a red flag firearms bill that would have allowed relatives to petition courts to confiscate firearms from residents if a judge determined they were a risk to themselves or to others. Instead, a compromise was approved that generally requires a medical professional to assess mental stability and make that determination.

In Oregon, where Democrats control both legislative chambers and the governors office, the party won approval for a statewide rent control law but failed to push through a bill that would have significantly decreased the amount of greenhouse gases that businesses were legally allowed to emit. Republicans blocked the bill by suddenly leaving the state so they would not be forced to vote.

And in New Mexico, also controlled by Democrats, conservative-leaning Democrats and Republicans in the legislature prevented the repeal of a law that would prohibit abortion in the state if Roe v. Wade is struck down by the Supreme Court.

Along with the 2020 presidential race, upcoming state legislative elections are viewed as critical because the winners in most states will get to draw once-a-decade maps, setting district boundaries for state and congressional elections after a new census count.
I was in the U.S. Army Security Agency in the 60s, and continue to have an interest in world affairs. In 1961, the Army flew me to Germany on a chartered plane. I happened to sit next to an Iranian in uniform, so I asked him what he was doing in the United States. He said he was taking fighter pilot training. Most of the Iranian military officers during that period were trained in the United States.

Iran is larger in area than the combined areas of Iraq and Afghanistan, and its population is also larger than their combined populations. If you dont believe this, look it up at CIA.gov. And the population of Iran is much better educated than the other two; in fact, many Iranians were educated in the United States.

I think going to war with Iran would be a big mistake. And then, Iran is supported by both Russia and China. What happens if they get involved?

Donald E. Dozer,

Chardon
Trump threat to hit 52 cultural sites an attempt to justify terror attack: Army Cmdr

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Jan 5, IRNA -- Commander of the Iranian Army Major-General Abdurrahim Mousavi said on Sunday that it is very unlikely that the US is brave enough to attack Iran, and that the threat to attack 52 cultural sites in Iran is to justify their terrorist attacks.

Speaking on the sidelines of commemoration of the 25th anniversary of martyrdom of Major General Mansour Sattari, General Mousavi said that the US resorted to threaten Iranian cultural heritage to justify their heinous criminal action against Iranian Commander General Soleimani and to keep their face in the international public opinion.

He added that if the US makes a move and clash with Iran, it will become clear that where the 5 and the 2 belong to.

He said that crowds of people of Iran are attending funeral procession of Lieutenant-general Qasem Soleimani to pay their last respect for him indicating to what extent he has been cherished in Iran.

Iran's world renowned General Soleimani, who had a major role in annihilating the US-made Daesh (ISIS) terror group in Syria and Iraq, was assassinated in Baghdad. US President Donald Trump later on Friday claimed the responsibility of the terrorist move and said that he has directly ordered the US army to assassinate the extremely popular general.

9417**1416

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A fishing vessel takes part in the search for the missing trawler off Co Wexford. Photo: Steve Humphreys

A father-of-four has died and a second man remains missing after a trawler sank off the cost of Co Wexford.

Joe Sinnott (65) was winched from the sea and rushed to hospital, but who died later.

A search was due to resume this morning for a second crewman, Willie Whelan, who is in his 40s and had only recently got married.

The tragedy has hit the close-knit community of Kilmore Quay and nearby villages and townlands.

A huge search operation began when the Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) from the 12m fishing boat Alize automatically alerted Coast Guard personnel at 10.30pm on Saturday.

This beacon operates when in water, and could indicate that the boat sank quickly, giving the two-man crew no time to radio for assistance.

Comfort

They had been fishing for scallops nearly 10km south of Hook Head. Mr Sinnott, a father-of-four and grandfather-of-nine, was from the Seaview area of Kilmore Quay.

Neighbours, friends and the wider community gathered at the house he shared with his wife Mary to comfort her and the Sinnott family on their loss.

"The first we knew was around 11pm after the signal from the boat was received by the Coast Guard in Dublin who then in turn contacted the owner," Joe's son Michael told the Herald.

"It's hard to believe. He was so many years at sea, and the man who was with him too, so whatever happened wasn't down to a lack of experience.

"He was a hard worker. They were scallop fishing which would have been a 24-hour trip with a two-man crew. The boat was in good condition."

After being taken from the sea Mr Sinnott was transferred to University Hospital Waterford but later died.

The family of the second man missing was also being comforted by neighbours and friends as they await news.

Local Fianna Fail councillor Michael Whelan, from New Ross, said the family of missing fisherman Willie Whelan was still holding out hope that he would be rescued or at least that his body would be found.

"The family is distraught," he said.

"I spoke with his father at Hook Head and he said he saw him out fishing and had expected him to be back in just over an hour.

"The family is just holding out hope for a rescue or a recovery."

He said the loss of both men is still a blow to the local community and that Willie had only just married five months ago.

"Obviously, our thoughts are with the families," he said.

Conditions yesterday were difficult, with a strong wind and rain hampering visibility, causing the search to be called off.

Many local fishing vessels were also involved in the search which was being co-ordinated by the Le Ciara off Hook Head.

Some items from the stricken boat have been spotted in the water and recovered.

The trawler, a scallop fishing vessel, was said to be in good condition and working in good sea conditions, when it sank.

The boat is a steel-hulled vessel built in the UK in 1989.

Defence Minister Paul Kehoe, TD for Wexford, said the sinking of the trawler was "a hugely tragic incident that has shocked the community".

Devoted

"I know that Le Ciara is at the scene and that all efforts are being made by emergency services," Mr Kehoe added.

"My thoughts at this time are with the families impacted."

A garda spokeswoman said: "Searches were carried out by the RNLI and R117 Helicopter. One male in his 60s was recovered from the water and taken to University Hospital Waterford where he has since passed away. Searches continue for the second man."

Rosslare district Fine Gael councillor Jim Moore, who lives in Kilmore Quay, said the community is reeling from the tragedy.

He said Mr Sinnott was a life-long fisherman who was devoted to his wife Mary and their four children.

"He was very much a family man," he said.

He said Mr Sinnott was a quiet man whose death has left the area in shock.

"It's the first weekend of the new year and a tragedy has been visited on us. It's a small community and people are only just getting back from their holidays. It's just very sad," he said.
Anyone believing that the German Greens have yet to provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate that Green parties offer no alternative to the right-wing political establishment only needs to turn to their co-thinkers in neighbouring Austria for further proof. In the new government, which will be sworn into office this week, the Greens have seamlessly filled the shoes of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPO), securing a majority for inhumane, pro-corporate, and law-and-order policies.

Sebastian Kurz of the conservative Austrian Peoples Party (OVP), the former and incoming Chancellor, managed to perform a minor miracle a few days after Christmas, commented the news channel NTV. He will lead his OVP into a government coalition with the Greenswithout giving up his right-wing course.

Sebastian Kurz, left, head of the Austrian People's Party, OEVP, shakes hands with Werner Kogler, right, head of the Austrian Greens after finishing the coalition negotiations. (Credit: AP Photo/Ronald Zak)

The 326-page coalition agreement presented by Kurz and Green leader Werner Kogler to the public last Thursday continues in the areas of economic policy, taxation, refugee policy, internal security, military rearmament, and social spending cutbacks the agenda of the far-right OVP/FPO coalition that fell apart last May amidst a filthy corruption scandal.

What Kurz described as the unification of the best from both worlds and proof that you can protect the environment while protecting our borders, turns out on closer inspection to be a classic declaration of war on the working class, refugees, and the most vulnerable sections of society with a handful of cosmetic Green flourishes.

In exchange for the extremely vague commitment that Austria will be a net zero carbon emitter by 2040, the Greens have agreed to the racist policies that they were publicly condemning during the election campaign, including a decisive struggle against illegal immigration and political Islam, a ban on headscarves in schools, and preventive detention for so-called threats.

All major ministries, including Finance, the Interior, Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Integration, will be controlled by the conservatives. The Greens, which will lead four of the 14 ministries, were bought off with a so-called super ministry for climate change, the environment, transportation, infrastructure, energy, and innovation. However, the Greens room for manoeuvre will be extremely limited given the tax cuts and strict budgetary policies to which they have agreed.

Several media outlets have praised the conservative/Green alliance as a model for the whole of Europe, and Germany in particular. This is by no means coincidental, since it marks the shift of privileged layers of the urban middle class which once considered themselves to be left-wing and progressive into the camp of political reaction in the face of the resurgence of the class struggle worldwide.

OVP leader Kurz made clear from the outset of the three-month-long negotiations that the strict, inhumane refugee policy would not be altered. The government programme describes the policy of distributing refugees within the European Union (EU) as a failure, and states that Austria will not propose any initiative on the issue. People rescued at sea should be brought to third countries or sent back to their countries of origin by personnel from the EU border protection agency Frontex. The construction of a system of camps in the countries of origin should also be considered, the programme adds.

At the same time, the government will significantly strengthen the apparatus of state repression. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Combatting Terrorism (BVT), which already unifies the powers of the intelligence agencies and police under one agency, will be expanded further. Moving forward, it will publish annual reports on extremism.

While the Greens claim this will help to improve the surveillance of right-wing extremist groups, it will be directed above all against left-wing organisations and movements. By strengthening the BVT, the government is granting more power to an agency that has been infiltrated over recent years by far-right forces and implicated in a series of scandals.

The police will also be significantly strengthened. A planned personnel offensive will result in the recruitment of 2,300 new officers and the creation of 2,000 trainee positions. The use of drones by the police is to be made standard procedure.

The incoming government will also go further than its predecessor in terms of online surveillance and gathering private data. Under the control of the Interior Ministry, so-called cyber cops will work together within a state cyber security centre. After the Federal Constitutional Court blocked the comprehensive use of spy software, the OVP and Greens also declared their intention to continue working on the implementation of an all-embracing surveillance system.

Right-wing extremist organisations that are expanding their networks and, like the Austrian Identitarians, maintain ties with far-right terrorists, such as the Christchurch gunman, will remain largely untouched. Instead, the government plans to intensify the fight against political Islam by creating an information-gathering centre for that purpose. Cultural associations accused by the authorities of spreading terrorist propaganda will be able to be shut down. This proposal, like many others, has been lifted straight from the programme of the far-right FPO.

The establishment of preventive detention, which can be imposed without the existence of sufficient evidence or a court decision, was a demand raised by the FPO that the Greens criticised until recently. The last time such a system of detention existed in Austria was under the regimes of Austro-fascism and the Nazis.

By strengthening the mechanisms of domestic repression, the OVP-Greens government is preparing to combat the eruption of major class battles. The central focus of both parties programmes is the interests of the corporate elite. The planned income and business tax cuts are gifts to the super-rich and big business, just like the cutting of corporation tax and the increase to the tax-free limit for profits made from private wealth.

Der Standard pointed out that the tax cuts, including their minor details, correspond to those agreed by the OVP and FPO. Those with high incomes will benefit from the tax cuts, while low wage earners will notice little difference. According to Statistics Austria, low-wage earners amount to one quarter of employees, excluding the self-employed.

The corporate tax will be reduced from its current rate of 25 percent to 21 percent. In contrast, the inheritance and capital transfer taxes on large sums of wealth demanded by the Greens in their election programme are nowhere to be found in the coalition agreement. To make the country more attractive to speculators, the government is also aiming for a balanced budget, an upper limit to state debt of 60 percent of GDP, and the cutting of capital gains tax during its first term in office.

Additionally, the attack on pensions will be intensified. Following the German model, the framework for the rollout of a private pension provision will be established. At the same time, the state pension will be cut.

The governments personnel embodies its right-wing programme. The 33-year-old Kurz headed the government from December 2017 to May 2019, first in a coalition with the Social Democrats, then with the far-right FPO, and now with the Greens. Within the conservative OVP, he has enforced a hard-right line.

The same applies to the future Vice Chancellor and Green leader Werner Kogler. In the 1980s, he was a founding member of the Alternative List Graz, a collection of environmental, pacifist, and left groups. Among others, this included the Pabloite Group of Revolutionary Marxists (GRM).

Like the vast majority of this milieu, Kogler underwent a rapid rightward evolution in the Green Party and helped pave the way for the party to join the government. Their positions in opposition to militarism, for social justice, and in support of refugees and immigrants were jettisoned in the process.

The Finance Ministry and Interior Ministry will be led by experienced OVP politicians deemed to be hardliners in their areas of expertise. Gernot Blumel and Karl Nehhammer have announced that they will continue the line of the OVP-FPO government. Future Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, a career diplomat, was already a member of the transitional government that served over recent months. Schallenberg, who is not a member of any party, is considered the eminence grise of foreign policy, has close ties with all of the parties, and is a close confidant of Kurz.

The Interior Ministry will be led by Susanne Raab (OVP), who has made a name for herself over recent years as a hardliner. The jurist was responsible, together with the FPO, for the burka ban and an anti-Islam law. Her nomination has been interpreted as sending a message to the far-right that the policies of the OVP-FPO government will be continued.

The Defence Minister will be Klaudia Tanner, former director of the Lower Austrian Farmers Alliance, who has no experience on defence issues. Like all of the other OVP ministers, she is a loyal ally of Kurz and will ensure a substantial strengthening of the armed forces, both in terms of personnel and equipment.

For the Greens, Leonore Gewessler will assume control of the expanded Environment Ministry. As director of the Global 2000 NGO and an environmental activist, she previously organised campaigns against free trade and the building of a third runway at Vienna airport. Vice Chancellor Kogler will also head the Ministry of Sport and Public Servants.

Alma Zadic, whom Kogler won over from the Pilz List, a split-off from the Greens, will head the Justice Ministry. The party of the ex-Pabloite Peter Pilz has moved far to the right and advocates anti-Muslim positions. While on the BVT parliamentary committee, Zadic assisted in the cover-up of the intelligence agencies activities.

The Ministry of Social Affairs and health will be led by the former primary school teacher Rudolf Anschober, who previously served in the OVP/Green state government in Upper Austria, where he enforced sweeping cuts.
The top court on Monday issued a notice informing listing of petition filed by Indian Young Lawyers Association seeking review of its historic 2018 judgment allowing women and girls of all ages to enter Sabarimala temple

New Delhi: A nine-judge constitution bench of Supreme Court will hear from 13 January, the issue of allowing women and girls of all ages to enter Kerala's Sabarimala temple along with other contentious issues of alleged discrimination against Muslim and Parsi women.

The top court on Monday issued a notice informing listing of petition filed by Indian Young Lawyers Association seeking review of its historic 2018 judgment allowing women and girls of all ages to enter Sabarimala temple

"Take notice that the following matters will be listed for hearing before a nine judges constitution bench commencing from Monday the 13th January, 2020", the notice said. The names of the nine judges are yet to be announced.

On 14 November, a five-judge constitution bench in a 3:2 majority verdict had referred to a larger 7-judge bench, the pleas seeking review of its historic 2018 judgment allowing women and girls of all ages to enter Sabarimala temple.

It had however said that the debate about the constitutional validity of religious practices like bar on entry of women and girls into a place of worship was not limited to the Sabarimala case.

The top court said such restrictions are there with regard to entry of Muslim women into mosques and 'dargah' and Parsi women, married to non-Parsi men, being barred from the holy fire place of an Agyari. It said that it was time for the apex court to evolve a judicial policy to do "substantial and complete justice".
Golden Globe winner Russell Crowe skips show to be in Australia during bushfires originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com

Actor Russell Crowe was not at the Golden Globes to accept his award for best actor in a limited series or TV movie, because he was at home in Australia.

Presenter Jennifer Aniston told the crowd at the Beverly Hilton hotel that Crowe, who was recognized for his work in "The Loudest Voice," was "protecting his family from the devastating brush fires" and thus, was unable to attend the ceremony.

However, in the event that he won, he sent along a message about the dangers of climate change and the importance of respecting our planet, which Aniston read.

PHOTO: Russell Crowe attends 'The Loudest Voice' New York Premiere at Paris Theatre on June 24, 2019, in New York. (Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

"Make no mistake: The tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change based," Crowe wrote. "We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is. That way we all have a future."

MORE: Nicole Kidman, Pink and more celebs support Australia wildfire relief efforts

The wildfires, which began in September, have burned more than 22,393 square miles of land and destroyed more than 1,630 homes, according to the Australian Department of Home Affairs.

At least 24 people have died, and ecologists from the University of Sydney estimate that about half a billion animals have been killed.

After his win, Crowe also posted a video on the ground showing the tools on hand for the emergency response efforts.
A mother suffered burn injuries escaping a two-alarm fire at an apartment complex in Santa Rosa on Saturday night, according to fire officials.

The two-alarm fire, reported at 8:33 p.m., caused approximately $350,000 in damage to the two-story, 10-unit building at 2120 Jennings Ave., fire officials said.

In the unit where the fire started, the mother escaped through the front and her son through a back window. The mom was transported to a hospital for treatment of her injuries. Her son wasn't hurt.

Of the four units involved in the blaze, the two downstairs units suffered major interior fire, heat and smoke damage and the two upstairs units suffered exterior fire damage and interior smoke damage. All four units involved were deemed uninhabitable.

Residents of the other six units on site were allowed to return to their apartments, fire officials said. A total number of residents displaced wasn't provided.

The fire was brought under control in 30 minutes. The cause is under investigation.

State officials this week penalized a Fairfield appliance recycler for mishandling and burning hazardous waste for years at three Northern California locations.

Freon Free will pay $145,800 under an agreement with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, according to a news release.

At the company's three locations in Fairfield, American Canyon and Orland, inspectors found staffers treating two to three ammonia-containing refrigerators per week by bolt-cutting refrigerant lines and mixing the contents into a container of water.

They also found the company burning hazardous waste without a permit, which increases the risk of a fire or explosion. Staffers were also removing materials that require special handling to locations that were not certified, plus Freon Free didn't train staff on properly managing the waste, state officials said.

A residential fire Saturday afternoon in Brentwood was contained to a garage and had largely been extinguished by a sprinkler system by the time firefighters gained access, East Contra Costa Fire Protection District officials said.

The fire, reported about 3:30 p.m. at 2719 Reddington Way, activated two sprinkler heads in the garage.

The fire caused minor damage to the contents, while the sprinklers caused moderate water damage to the garage, officials said.

BART police arrested a 22-year-old Oakland man at the Fruitvale station Saturday on firearm and drug possession charges.

Syon Sergio was contacted shortly before 1 p.m. and found to be in possession of controlled substance and a loaded firearm, officials said.

He was booked into Santa Rita Jail on felony charges that include possession of drugs for sale and possession of a concealed firearm.

A woman found with gunshot wounds early Sunday morning died after being taken to the hospital, San Francisco police said.

Officers were called shortly before 4 a.m. to the area of O'Farrell and Larkin streets, where they discovered the adult woman.

The shooter remains at large and police are asking anyone with information to contact them at (415) 575-4444 or by texting a tip to TIP 411 and begin the text message with SFPD. Tipsters will remain anonymous.

Copyright  2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
After weeks of rumors that they're dating, Bill Hader and Rachel Bilson confirmed their relationship by making their red carpet debut at the 2020 Golden Globes.

Hader, 41, who is nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series  Musical or Comedy for his role in HBO's Barry, hit the red carpet with Bilson, 38.

They were first rumored to be dating just before Christmas, when Hader took Bilson home to Tulsa, Oklahoma to meet his family, after they were spotted in a Los Angeles restaurant together in November 2019.

Red carpet debut: After weeks of rumors that they're dating, Bill Hader and Rachel Bilson confirmed their relationship by making their red carpet debut at the 2020 Golden Globes

Hader hit the red carpet witha classic black tuxedo with a black jacket, white dress shirt, black bowtie, black pants and black shoes.

Bilson stunned in a black low-cut dress with frilly sleeves and a lacy bodice with a flowing black dress with a gold design around the hem.

She completed her look with a pair of gold earrings as she hit the red carpet with her new boyfriend.

Couple: Hader hit the red carpet witha classic black tuxedo with a black jacket, white dress shirt, black bowtie, black pants and black shoes

Hader and Bilson first worked together on the 2013 movie The To-Do List, while Hader was married to that film's writer-director, Maggie Carey, while Bilson was seeing Hayden Christensen.

Hader and Carey have three daughters together, Hannah, 10, Harper, 7, and Hayley, 5, before they split in 2017 with their divorce finalized in 2018.

Bilson and Christensen had been dating off and on from 2007 to 2017, and they have one child together, five year old daughter Briar Rose.

First meet: Hader and Bilson first worked together on the 2013 movie The To-Do List, while Hader was married to that film's writer-director, Maggie Carey, while Bilson was seeing Hayden Christensen

After their first sighting in November, they were seen in Hader's hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma in December grabbing coffee together.

They were also spotted together in Los Angeles last week, leaving a Ralph's grocery store together with a cart full of groceries.

While they showed no signs of public display of affection during their outing, they both certainly seemed happy and smiling.

First sighting: After their first sighting in November, they were seen in Hader's hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma in December grabbing coffee together

LA life: They were also spotted together in Los Angeles last week, leaving a Ralph's grocery store together with a cart full of groceries

Hader is coming off three sequels in 2019, IT Chapter 2, Toy Story 4 and The Angry Birds Movie 2.

He also stars in Netflix's Noelle and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and he next stars in Empress of Serenity with Issa Rae.

Bilson stars as Daisy Valentine in the pilot Lovestruck from Californication creator Tom Kapinos.

Busy year: Hader is coming off three sequels in 2019, IT Chapter 2, Toy Story 4 and The Angry Birds Movie 2

New role: Bilson stars as Daisy Valentine in the pilot Lovestruck from Californication creator Tom Kapinos
Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that making Iraq a conflict zone in terms of U.S.-Iran tensions was damaging stability in the region.



In a broadcast interview with CNN Turk, Erdogan said Turkey was monitoring with concern the risks arising from the killing of Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani by a U.S. drone on Friday.

The Turkish leader highlighted that both the U.S. and Iran need to take steps to reduce tension.
Baghdad, Jan 6 : Four mortar rounds hit on the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad, which houses the US embassy and the main offices of the Iraqi government, a Defence Ministry official said.

The incident took place on Sunday evening, the official told Xinhua news agency, adding: "One of the rounds landed at the bank of Tigris River close to the US embassy." The heavily fortified Green Zone has been frequently targeted by mortar and rocket attacks. The roughly 10 sq.km zone is located on the west bank of the Tigris River, which bisects the Iraqi capital.

On Saturday night, Abu Ali al-Askari, security leader of the Shia militia Kata'ib Hezbollah (KH) warned the Iraqi security forces to move away from the US bases with no less than 1,000 metres starting from Sunday.

"The leaders of the security services must abide by the safety rules of their fighters and not allow them to be a human shield," al-Askari said.

The latest attack came after the January 3 US drone attack ordered by President Donald Trump killed Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of Iraq's paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces.

The attack took place on the Baghdad international airport's road.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani have vowed to retaliate against the US over Soleimani's death.

The January 3 attack also came after Iraqi protesters on Tuesday stormed the US embassy compound in Baghdad to protest the American airstrikes conducted on December 29 against five bases of Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria, claiming the lives of 25 militants.
By teleSUR

January 05, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - The parliamentarians declared themselves in opposition against Guaido for having used the presidency of the parliament as a personal project to enrich himself. The Venezuelan opposition stated on Sunday that they would not be seeking the reelection of the self-proclaimed president Juan Guaido. According to their statement, the opposition is choosing to move forward without Guaido, as his corruption and failures have worsened their cause.

The parliamentarians declared themselves in revolt against Guaido for having used the presidency of the parliament as a personal project to enrich himself.

"In 2019 that has just concluded, you were the hope of the country, today you are the biggest disappointment, you could be the future, but today you are and you will be the past, you were a dream turned into a nightmare, Juan Guaido from today your time ended," the right-wing opposition deputy, Jose Brito, said this week.

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He continued that they will propose that deputy Luis Eduardo Parra is elected as the new president of the Popular Will Party (AN).

Guaido lied to the country and to the international community, he also repeatedly denied to everyone that he was not in talks with (President Nicolas) Maduro and the truth is that you got up and sat back and again back to the country and the main international allies."

He said that he also asked the people to stay on the streets and Venezuelans came out again and again and "in each of them the frustration and hopelessness was eating away at their fighting spirit."

"Guaido used the people to consolidate not the forces of change, but their own position of power," Brito said in a statement to the media from the immediate vicinity of the seat of parliament in Caracas.

The installation of the legislative period 2020-2021 is marked by the maneuver of a possible ratification of Juan Guaido, of the Voluntad Popular (VP) cell, as president of the Parliament.

This article was originally published by "teleSUR" -
Vladimir Putin is expected to meet with Recep Tayyip Erdogan on January 8 for a ceremony to open the Turkstream pipeline, which has begun pumping natural gas to the Balkans via Turkey. The Russian and Turkish presidents also seem certain to discuss events in the Middle East, where the U.S. killing of a top Iranian military leader has added to tensions. Current Time Executive Editor Kiryl Sukhotski joins host Steve Gutterman to discuss.
An IndiGo flight on Monday evening declared mayday and landed in Mumbai with full emergency status. The Airbus A320neo aircraft with registration VT ITA was operating on the Bengaluru- Mumbai sector and was minutes away from its destination, while it declared emergency.

Mayday is defined as a distress call made by the pilot to the local air traffic control (ATC) declaring that there is imminent danger to life.

The flight that took off from Bengaluru 50 minutes after its scheduled time of 6.15 pm, was scheduled to land in Mumbai at 8.20 pm.

However, the pilot declared mayday at 8.14 pm when the aircraft was 40Nm or 75km south of Mumbais Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA). The pilot later lowered the call and requested the ATC for priority landing.

A senior Mumbai airport official said, The aircraft faced pressurization failure which can be severely dangerous for people on board. At such times, it is crucial for the aircraft to descend and reach 10,000 ft in order to stabilize the situation. In this case too, the pilot first declared Mayday as it needed to decline and fly at a height safe for passengers. After it descended, the pilot lowered the category of his call and requested the Mumbai ATC to allow priority landing.

During a full emergency, the ground staff including, fire department and ambulances are alerted and positioned at the tarmac in case of any untoward incident.

ATC officials confirmed that the aircraft safely landed in Mumbai at 8.29 pm.

IndiGo A320 VT-ITA 6E-6449 operating on Bangalore-Mumbai sector had an air-system indication caution during flight. The pilot followed the laid down procedure which required him to prioritize the landing at Mumbai. The aircraft is currently being inspected by the maintenance team. This was not a NEO engine related concern, an IndiGo spokesperson said.

One of the passengers on board tweeted, EMERGENCY DESCENT captain announced during initial descent. Rise in temp and rapid descent followed by parking at isolation bay and fire trucks. No information from @IndiGo6E.passengers have a right to know if something went wrong with the craft. #6E 6449. (Sic).
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iran-backed Iraqi militia commander Qais al-Khazali said on Sunday if U.S.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iran-backed Iraqi militia commander Qais al-Khazali said on Sunday if U.S. troops do not leave Iraq, they would be considered an occupying force.

Khazali was speaking after Iraq's parliament backed a recommendation by the prime minister to end the presence of foreign troops, a response to the U.S. killing of a top Iranian military commander and an Iraqi militia leader in Baghdad.

The U.S. sanctioned Khazali's Asaib Ahl al-Haq group on Friday, saying it was an Iranian proxy.

(Reporting by Maha El Dahan; Editing by Ahmed Aboulenein)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
The North Atlantic Council at Ambassadorial level will meet this afternoon at NATO Headquarters in Brussels.

After the meeting, the NATO Secretary General will briefly address the Press in the Agora Podium. (Estimated time: 16:30)

The event will be available live on the NATO Website.

Photos, video and audio files from NATO will be available after the event on the NATO website.

Follow us on Twitter (@NATO, @NATOPress and @jensstoltenberg)

Broadcast quality B-roll will be available on the NATO Multimedia portal (www.natomultimedia.tv), please register for access.

Accreditation

NATO annual media pass (2020)

Media representatives in possession of a NATO annual media pass (2020) can access the NATO HQ directly by tapping their badge at the turnstiles (NATO HQ Guard House South - GHS, media entrance, NATO Headquarters, Boulevard Leopold III 1110 Brussels).

Ad-hoc accreditation (day-pass)

Media representatives who do not hold an annual media pass and wishing to attend the event are invited to request ad-hoc accreditation directly at NATO HQ Guard House South (media entrance) on Monday, 06 January 2020 starting from 15:00 (Brussels time). They will have to present a proof of ID/passport and a valid press card (provided by a recognised national professional body of a NATO country  i.e. Government, Professional association, Union of journalists).

starting They will have to present a proof of ID/passport and a (provided by a recognised national professional body of a NATO country  i.e. Government, Professional association, Union of journalists). Media representatives not in possession of a valid press card and wishing to attend the event are required to send a signed letter from their editor to the NATO Accreditation Office to NatoAccreditations@hq.nato.int no later than Monday 06 January 2020 at 14:00 noon (Brussels time).

Due to the exceptional circumstances of the event and given the processing time required for this type of ad-hoc requests, please note that we cannot guarantee access. Either way, you will receive a confirmation by email.

Please type NAC in the subject line of the message.

Security Procedures

A security check will take place and all equipment and personal effects carried onto the site will be examined by security personnel. Media representative are therefore encouraged to arrive with sufficient lead time to allow for security proceedings.

Contact

Overall Coordination Mr Jean-Philippe Juneau

Juneau.jean-philippe@hq.nato.int Tel: +32 (0)2 707 17 64

Accreditation Mr Angelo Pacifico

NatoAccreditations@hq.nato.int Tel: +32 (0)2 707 83 46

TV & Radio arrangements on site and via satellite Mr Eric Morel

Morel.Eric@hq.nato.int Tel: +32 (0)2 707 12 87
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 08:04:02|Editor: Wang Yamei

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SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- An 89-year-old Chinese American woman has died from injuries one year after she was brutally beaten at a park in southeastern San Francisco, her family members said on a fund-raising website over the weekend.

The Chinese American senior named Yik Oi Huang died at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco on Friday, just a few days before an event planned by her family and friends to mark the one-year anniversary of her attack to raise awareness and solidarity among community members.

The event, titled "Healing Through Compassion & Solidarity Silent Sit-In," will still be held as planned on Jan. 8 to "shine light to the trauma ... and to turn pain into purpose by building solidarity across the communities," according to Huang's family.

Huang's family said she was attacked and brutally beaten on Jan. 8, 2019, when she was out for regular morning exercises at a park in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood. Huang suffered life-threatening injuries including facial and skull fractures as well as a brain wound in the assault.

"The family has gone through a year of unexpected emotional and financial hardship," according to the GoFundMe website page.

San Francisco police have arrested Keonte Gathron, an 18-year-old local resident, as a suspect in connection with Huang's attack and other crimes.

Huang's rare attack has aroused fears and worries among seniors in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood ever since, and city officials have pledged to install surveillance cameras to improve community security.
At Least 3 Shells Hit Baghdad's Green Zone, Adjacent Area of US Embassy in Iraq

Sputnik News

22:45 05.01.2020(updated 04:28 06.01.2020)

The shelling comes hours after Iraq's parliament voiced its support to order the withdrawal of US-led coalition troops from the country and end all foreign military presence in Iraq, including in the nation's airspace and surrounding territorial waters.

The Iraqi military said, cited by Reuters, that three katyusha-type projectiles hit late on Sunday the area with two shells hitting the heavily fortified Green Zone and another one the nearby Jadriya area.

According to various media reports, citing sources, several people were injured after Soviet-made katyusha-type projectiles, hit Baghdad's so-called Green Zone - a dense area of governmental buildings - particularly, territory adjacent to the US embassy.

Iraqi sources say that at least one family was injured in the attack. Netizens have shared a footage allegedly showing the moment when the shells hit the Green Zone. The shaky video captures sounds of distant explosions.

No group has claimed responsibility for the shelling, according to reports.

Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraqi Shia militia within the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), posted an ultimatum to locally-stationed American forces to "get away" from Iraq by 5:00 p.m. local time (14:00 GMT), threatening to launch attacks on US military installations in the country.

The leader of the Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia paramilitary group, Aas'ib Ahl al-Haq Laith al-Khazali, has warned US military assets in the area they will be considered an occupying force if the Trump administration does not quickly implement the group's ultimatum to withdraw its troops from the nation.

On Saturday, the Iraqi capital saw several rocket attacks, including in the residential area of Al-Jadriya, and at the Balad military base that houses US forces some 50 miles north of Baghdad.

The escalation comes after a US drone strike on Friday assassinated Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani near the Baghdad International Airport. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated that Tehran will take revenge for what it views as a terrorist attack by the US.

US President Donald Trump characterized the assassination of Soleimani as a preemptive move to prevent war, although later claiming that Washington had identified 52 Iranian targets at which US forces were ready to strike if Tehran retaliates for the extrajudicial killings.

A shocked international community has called for restraint and dialogue in the wake of rising threats of international violence.

A Sputnik

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North Dakota apparently ended 2019 with fewer than 100 traffic deaths, officials said.

According to preliminary reports, North Dakota had 98 motor vehicle fatalities in 2019. If that number remains unchanged, it would be the first time in 17 years that North Dakota recorded fewer than 100 traffic deaths in a year.

Gov. Doug Burgum thanked state agencies involved in the Vision Zero traffic safety initiative. Since the initiative was launched in 2018, North Dakota has seen traffic deaths decline year-to-year, from 116 in 2017 to 105 in 2018 to a preliminary total of 98 in 2019.

The last time North Dakota recorded fewer than 100 traffic deaths in a year was 2002, when 97 were recorded.

It will take up to 30 days to finalize the 2019 total as crash reports and investigations are completed.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics North Dakota
A Sudanese man was apprehended by CISF personnel at the Delhi airport for allegedly smuggling white sandalwood weighing 40 kg, officials said on Monday.

Passenger Mohammed Khinder Baballa was intercepted on Sunday evening at the Terminal-3 of the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport as his baggage looked suspicious, they said.

Baballa, bound for Sudan's capital city of Khartoum via Jeddah, and the white sandalwood logs recovered from him were handed over to Customs authorities at the airport for further investigation, they said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Iran Cultural Sites

Eric LAFFORGUE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images/Carlo Bavagnoli/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images/Matjaz Krivic/Getty Images/Business Insider

Donald Trump said that the US is preparing to target 52 Iranian sites, including those important to "Iranian culture," if the country retaliates for the US's assassination of General Qassem Soleimani.

This could be considered a war crime, but Trump has only doubled down on the idea.

Trump has not offered any further hints as to where the US might considering as a target, but Iran is home to centuries-old tombs, monuments, mosques, and other stunning sites, some of which are considered world heritage sites.

Take a look at some of the most important cultural sites in Iran below.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump said that the US is preparing to target 52 Iranian sites, including sites "important to Iran & the Iranian culture," if the country retaliates for the US's assassination of General Qassem Soleimani in an airstrike.

Doing this could be considered a war crime under international law  the United Nations, Geneva Convention, and the International Criminal Court condemn, prohibit, or have ruled against such actions.

But Trump has since doubled down on the idea, defending the US's right to target cultural sites if Iran retaliates. He said of Iran: "They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way."

And while White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on Monday that Trump "didn't say he's targeting cultural sites," she said that he had "identified those sites and said it may happen if Iran retaliates in a certain way."

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would not say on CNN whether the US was actually preparing to do this, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned Trump that any attempt to target Iranian cultural sites would be a breach of international law.

Story continues

Trump did not specifically name any sites in Iran, but the country has many stunning, historic places that are not only important to Iranian culture, but also transcend Islam and pre-date the Islamic Republic as it is formed today. Iran is home to 24 UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Here are just some of Iran's most important cultural sites, which could be at risk of damage or destruction if Trump follows through with his threats:

Many of Iran's most-famous sites predate the founding of the country. The ruins of the city of Persepolis, which are now a UNESCO world heritage site, are the remnants of the capital of the Achaemenid Empire. The city dates back as far as 518 BC.

Persepolis

Carlo Bavagnoli/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images

Source: UNESCO

Other ancient cities are also recognized by UNESCO. The Historic City of Yazd is thought to be Iran's oldest continuously inhabited city, and its desert location means it is close to the ancient Spice and Silk Roads.

Yazd Iran

UNESCO/S.H. RashediMany of the Islamic Republic of Iran's most important sites are religious. The Nasir ol Molk is famous for its vivid colors and stained glass windows. It was built in the 1870s, during the Qajar dynasty, and is now one of the country's most-popular attractions.

Nasir Ol Molk Mosque.

marka/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesMosques are among the most important and most beautiful sites in the country. Construction started on the Sheikh Lotf Allah Mosque in the 1600s.

Sheikh Lotf Allah Mosque Iran

Matjaz Krivic/Getty ImagesThe mosque is in Naqsh-e Jahan Square in the center of the city of Esfahan. It's one of the world's largest city squares, and itself a UNESCO world heritage site.

Iran

Leisa Tyler/LightRocket via Getty ImagesBut other sites act as symbols of a diverse religious history. The 17th-century Vank Cathedral was built by the Christian Armenian community who left Armenia during a war with the Ottoman Empire.

Vank Cathedral Iran

Hermes Images/AGF/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesOther sites serve as monuments to major figures in the country's history. The Tomb of Hafez pays tribute to the Persian poet Hafez, who died in the 1300s.

Tomb of Hafez Iran

Kyodo News Stills via Getty ImagesOthers significant locations are lavish palaces for past Iranian royals. Tehran's Golestan Palace was once the seat of kings, and is now a UNESCO site.

Iran Golestan Palace

Bernd von Jutrczenka/picture alliance via Getty ImagesBisotun, in the west of Iran, is another one of the country's world heritage sites. Its inscriptions and carvings date back thousands of years, including writings from the Persian Empire dating back to 521 AD in ancient languages: Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian.

Bisotun, iran.

DeAgostini/Getty ImagesNaqsh-e Rostam Necropolis is another one of Iran's ancient sites, home to tombs cut into a cliff face surrounded by figures of kings, soldiers, and gods. It was the official cemetery of the Achaemenid dynasty, which ended in 330 BC.

Naqsh-e Rostam Necropolis Iran

Prisma Bildagentur/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Read the original article on Business Insider
Almost five years after the death of Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor who led the investigation into Argentina's deadliest terrorist attack, Netflix once again featured the series, "Nisman: The Prosecutor, the President and the Spy" on January 1. It was first aired in 2017.

According to an article by NBC News, his death still perplexes and fascinates many in this South American country and the surrounding mystery launched a debate over whether he was murdered or if he took his own life.

On January 18, 2015, the prosecutor's lifeless body was found in the bathroom of his apartment with a gunshot to the head and a 22-caliber weapon at his side. It was the day before he was to appear before Congress to provide details about his shocking accusations against then-President Cristina Fernandez, her Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, a lawmaker and four others of conspiring to lift Interpol's red alerts against a handful of prominent Iranians accused of involvement the 1994 bombing of Argentina's AMIA Jewish center which left 85 people dead.

Nisman accused Fernandez's government of negotiated impunity for the suspects with Tehran in exchange for resuming trade relations. But Fernandez, who is now Argentina's vice president, has denied covering up the perpetrators. She also said she played no role in Nisman's death and suggested he took his own life. Meanwhile, as police investigation concluded he was murdered.

The six-hour long docu-series by British director Justin Webster features dozens of unpublished images, interviews and testimonies from different individuals and authorities including that of researchers, spies, FBI and CIA agents. Current President Alberto Fernandez - who is not related to Cristina Fernandez but was her chief of staff during her first term in office - was also interviewed.

The series quickly became the most commented topic on social media in Argentina and the president himself spoke to the media to address his statements in the documentary.

In an interview with Webster in 2017 that appeared in the documentary, Alberto Fernandez said, "To this day, I doubt he committed suicide,".

But on Thursday, the president seemed to revoke his statement. In an interview with a local radio station, he said, "from 2017, when the interview was recorded, until now no serious evidence has appeared saying Nisman was killed."

The president also said her likes to know what really happened to Nisman and the reason if he really did kill himself.

In an interview with The Associated Press Thursday in Barcelona, Webster said he wasn't surprised why the president changed his opinion over the years. As people get to know more about a case, "it is completely natural for people to change their minds."

"When I interviewed him, he had no idea that he was going to be president." Webster said. "He was, as in the documentary, quite critical of Cristina (Fernandez de) Kirchner. When I say critical... I don't mean he was against her and he was able to say what was good about her and what was bad about her for instance."

The spy being referred in the documentary's title is Antonio Stiuso, the former Argentine counterintelligence chief signaled by the vice president as the man behind the prosecutor's accusations as well as his killer as a revenge for having displaced him from office.

Webster described both Stiuso and Cristina Fernandez as "Shakespearean characters," adding that Stiuso is an "absolutely fascinating" man who was responsible for investigating the AMIA attack. The director said that Stiuso provided evidence that alleged Iran was the intellectual author of the attack and the Islamic group Hezbollah the executor due to his close ties with the U.S. and Israeli intelligence service. Iran has previously denied its involvement.

Initially, the Argentina's judicial system described Nisman's death as doubtful, but in 2017, when the probe moved to the federal system, investigators declared it was a homicide linked to the investigation against Fernandez's government.

Judge Hector Timerman continued the investigation of Nisman and formally accused Cristina Fernandez and other former officials of conniving to cover up Iranian involvement in the attack. The case is still pending due to the judge's death in 2018.

Webster warns, the prosecutor's death occurred in a country strongly divided between the allies and enemies of Cristina Fernandez.

"And I think to the attentive viewer who watches all six episodes, then it does bring quite a lot of clarity to the big questions around the Nisman case, around AMIA and around the memorandum case," he said.

"That's what makes it for me a particularly attractive story, that it's a psychological story about a single man and psychological stories, if you like, about two other sort of Shakespearean characters, if you like... But it's also got this international resonance that is, I think, very it's quite a revelation about how things work," Webster said.
Sinn Fein Justice Spokesperson Martin Kenny TD has said government plans to commemorate the Royal Irish Constabulary and its auxiliary force the Black and Tans along with the Dublin Metropolitan Police on January 17 next are shocking and inappropriate.

There is certainly no public demand for this as most Irish people recognise that the RIC and the Black and Tans were brutal enforcers of British rule in Ireland.

While some people may have regard for deceased family members who were in these colonialist militias, it is up to them to commemorate them individually. Everyone has a right to mourn their dead. However, it is for the British, whom they served, to commemorate them as a force if they wish.

"In no other State formed from anti-colonial struggle would they celebrate the deeds of oppressors. This is more Fine Gael revisionism, from a party which would like to see more emphasis placed on celebrating partition and the Government of Ireland Act than 1916 and the struggle for independence.

British police and military in Ireland ruled with terror for centuries, from the RIC with their battering rams evicting families during the Great Hunger, to the Dublin Metropolitan Police attacking and murdering poor workers during the 1913 lock out.

One hundred years ago the war of Independence was raging, as the RIC and Black and Tans pillaged, murdered and burned out communities across the country, in their attempt to enforce the rule of the British Empire.

"It is shocking that this government would think it right that these oppressive brutal colonial militias, should be honoured for their service, Deputy Kenny said.
Opposition leader Umaro Sissoco Embalo has won presidential elections in the volatile West African state of Guinea-Bissau, picking up 53.55 per cent of votes, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) announced Wednesday.

His rival Domingos Simoes Pereira, head of the country's historic ruling party PAIGC, took 46.45 per cent in Sunday's runoff.

"I declare Umaro Sissoco Embalo to be the winner of this second round," CNE President Jose Pedro Sambu said.

Embalo takes over from Jose Mario Vaz, who came to power in 2014 on hopes of stabilising a country notorious for coups and assassinations since gaining independence from Portugal in 1974.

But his tenure was hampered by a paralysing faceoff with parliament under the country's semi-presidential political system.

The CNE put turnout at 72.67 per cent, virtually identical to the first round of voting on November 24, which Pereira won with 40.1 per cent against 28 per cent for Embalo.

Embalo, 47, is a reserve brigadier general who favours wearing a red-and-white Arab keffiyeh headress.

Like Pereira, he is also a former prime minister, serving under Vaz between 2016 and 2018, before representing Madem, a party formed by PAIGC rebels.

He fought to overcome his first-round vote deficit by portraying himself as a unifier of the country and by gaining the backing of eliminated candidates, including Vaz.
Opinion Article

6 January 2020

Over the past 10 years, the likes of Expedia and Booking.com (the so-called OTAs) have become some of the most significant sources of bookings for independent hotels. All OTAs, but most notably Expedia and Booking have grown by relying heavily on Google to drive new customer acquisition and bookings.

However, Googles recent move to cram the top of its search results with ads is driving competition for that real estate. Ad pricing is up, creating customer acquisition cost problems for the online travel industry.

Expedia Group fell the most in 14 years and TripAdvisor dropped the most in two years after both companies reported dismal third-quarter results and laid the blame on Google. Booking.coms shares also plummeted by 8%, wiping out a combined market value of over $13 billion from all three OTAs.

As Google continues to disrupt the online travel market by increasing customer acquisition cost and taking a bigger slice of the pie, the big question this article will be asking is: Could Google be your new worst best friend?

The Relationship Between Google and OTAs

Google dominates at least two-thirds of the online search market. With millions of users researching trips and destinations globally, OTAs have refined their websites with trustworthy content and easy booking tools to ensure they position high in Google search results.

Historically, OTAs have served hotels on a pay-for-performance model and held power over them by trying to control demand and bookings. However, it's important to note how OTAs now generate this demand, which is where Google comes into play.

OTAs generate demand to their websites with a combination of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. This strategy has long been beneficial to both parties. Google drives traffic to the OTAs, which, in aggregate, make an estimated $100 billion via commissions extracted from suppliers.

Google, meanwhile, not only receives relevant results it could serve to customers but also makes tens of billions of dollars from OTAs buying search ads.

This all began to change when Google started placing more ads at the top of the search engine and pushing down free organic listings from OTAs. The internet giant also built new travel search tools, which were mostly paid listings. This means OTAs must now pay billions each year to Google to ensure they rank high in search results and get clicks from travel planners.

From Partner to Competitor - The Rise of Google Hotel Ads

Until now, Google has always denied any firm intention to engage in direct travel sales. Its business model has historically focused on offering an intelligent search engine that points to third-party sites and features advertising on its platform and affiliated networks.

But the launch of Googles destination hub Travel  sent fresh waves of concern throughout the OTA community. Hoteliers and other competitors can now set up their own destination packages on Google, including flights, hotels, and attractions for any given destination.

Google Hotel Ads auctions a diverse range of bidding strategies to hoteliers and OTAs to consider. These include CPA (cost-per-conversion), Target ROARs (for partners with 100+ hotels), Enhanced Cost-Per-Click and Commission strategies.

When a customer executes a search that would result in Hotel Ads being displayed, Google first grabs eligible prices for hotels and then runs the auction. After the results of the auction, Google displays the ads with the winning bids to the end-user.

There are a number of factors that affect whether a customer qualifies for inclusion in the auction. For example, rates from a customers hotel must match the end-users exact itinerary.

With the Google Hotel Ads feature, hoteliers can manage the distribution of their inventory directly on the Google platform and promote rates with Google Ads. More importantly, with the Room Booking module, they can also encourage potential customers to book directly within Google, without leaving the mobile app.

Mobile users represent approximately 50 to 60% of all bookings, which is more than hotel website users in 2019. It is therefore unsurprising that Google has also optimized this feature for mobile.

Google Disrupts the Online Travel Market

Googles dominance has been an increasing risk for the online travel industry, but executives have been generally hesitant to blame the search giant for poor results. Google is one of the most important sources of traffic and business for OTAs, which is why these companies have tried to maintain a good relationship.

But in the 2019 Q3 earning reports, the reality of Google's grip and impact on the online travel market was so painful that industry executives and Wall Street analysts could no longer ignore it.

Shares of Expedia and TripAdvisor both reached new year-to-date lows during midday trading, tumbling as much as 25% after both the travel service stocks reported third-quarter earnings misses. Both companies pointed to weakened visibility in Google search results as a long-term revenue headwind.

Former Expedia CEO, Mark Okerstrom said: "What we saw was a continued shift of essentially the free links further down the page, by other modules that were inserted and ultimately a shift of traffic from the SEO channel over to some of the other products whether it's flight metasearch or hotel metasearch over time."

"Now of course as related to the hotel product, the lodging product, we are able to pick up some of that volume and that ultimately resulted in spending more on sales and marketing than we otherwise would have."

"Google has gotten more aggressive," CEO Steve Kaufer said of TripAdvisors quarterly earnings call. "We've been predicting this of course for the past many years. We talked about it on our last call. We know that this SEO piece is an ongoing trend and we're not predicting that it's going to turn around."

Booking Holdings  CEO Glenn Fogel was also peppered with questions about Google following the group s earnings report. The response indicated that the company's future success would rely on reaching people without Google getting in the way.

He said: "What we know is most important is for us to get customers to come to us directly," he said. "Building brand strength and retaining customers better means the company will not be as dependent on other sources of traffic".

What Does This Mean For Hoteliers?

Googles rising power over OTAs is probably heralded by independent hotels as good news. The ability to compete with OTAs on a level playing field like meta-search gives hotels ultimately the power to get more direct bookings.

However, increasing customer acquisition costs from Google are bound to have a ripple effect across independent hotels globally. Many rely heavily on OTAs to increase visibility and generate bookings, but what will happen when OTAs are locked in a bidding war for the top spot on the Google search engine?

Bidding directly on Google will likely become difficult for independent hotels and OTA commissions will likely soar to pass through the extra costs.

Some experts predict a massive shift where OTAs will no longer be the dominant reservation channel. Up until now, Google has predominantly operated as an ad agency, generating clicks and driving traffic which then converts into transactions for companies on the search engine.

But as the threat of Google monopolization looms, there will likely be a bidding war between Expedia, TripAdvisor, Booking.com and direct channels. The higher everyone bids, the more money Google will generate.

This begs the question: "Do independent hotels - with less resource and financial leverage - stand a chance?"

The silver lining is that in parallel with paid advertising, Google has been strengthening their Google My Business tools to give visibility to the business owners. Now more than ever, Hoteliers will need to invest in smart online solutions to both level the distribution playing field and generate the best possible return on investment.

The Next Step for Hoteliers

As it stands, 87% of guests will visit a hotel's website before making a reservation. Therefore, it is essential that hoteliers implement a comprehensive digital sales and marketing strategy to optimize the guests' experience and drive conversions.

Google is likely to expand its foothold on the travel industry, either by acquisitions or by bringing competitors to the edge of irrelevance. The trend is unlikely to revert, so it's time hoteliers wake up from their TripAdvisor-centric approach and start investing where the volume (and ROI) is.

Below, is a short summary of our recommendations:

Optimize your website and booking engine: It is vitally important that both your website and booking engine are optimized for direct. A few ways you can optimize include featuring pictures with your special offers, ensuring both website and booking engine are mobile-friendly and featuring shopping activation/recovery widgets. For example, our research shows that including shopping activation and shopping recovery widgets can lift direct bookings by up to 60%.

Be smart about your bidding: Google Hotel Ads campaigns are very sophisticated, with hundreds of variables and, very likely, this complexity and sophistication will increase with the upcoming Hotel Ads/Ads merge. Rate leakage is one of the main reasons why many campaigns underperform, so bidding should be very dynamic, based on your future rates, availability, and feeder market depending on seasonality.

Continuously update and engage with Google My Business: Make sure your Google My Business listing is always up-to-date, as this is the primary entry point for most Google users. Answer to ALL users questions on Google My Business and reply to the Google reviews. If you have time only for one platform, then drop TripAdvisor and focus on the Big G.

Diversify your traffic channels: Focus on other aspects of digital marketing to drive direct bookings, such as social media referrals, influencer marketing and user-generated content.

Most importantly, never lose sight of the customers' experience at all stages of their interaction with your hotel.

Organic growth requires a comprehensive strategy, and many hotels wait at least 12 months before seeing real, tangible results. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, so to help you get started, here are 5 Digital Marketing Strategies for your Hotel to Win Direct Bookings in 2020.

Contact one of our specialists for more insights like the above.
Gardai are making progress in identifying a gang of youths behind a savage attack on a teenager in which part of a finger was severed and major tendon damage inflicted on two other fingers.

Officers said up to 20 youths were involved in the incident in Artane, north Dublin, in what appears to have been a fight between two groups.

During the attack, an 18-year-old male was beaten with an iron bar and slashed across the face before one of his hands was maimed.

Given the injuries inflicted, gardai suspect that some sort of machete-type weapon was used.

Gardai believe the gang that inflicted the wounds was larger in number, and brandished more serious weaponry, than the second group.

A member of the offending gang recorded part of the assault and uploaded it on social media.

It is thought the fight is related to some sort of feud, but may not be linked to local drug dealing, as initially thought.

The incident occurred on Thorndale Walk, a laneway in Artane, at around 8.40pm last Thursday.

The victim is an Irish national from a Polish background, but gardai do not believe there was any racist motivation involved.

Sources said the garda team, operating out of Clontarf Garda Station, was satisfied with the way the investigation was going.

A lot of work is going into identifying those people involved, and that takes time, said one source.

The suspects are thought to be aged in their late teens to early 20s.

CCTV footage has been harvested and there are some images showing the suspect group in an area near the crime scene.

Gardai have appealed to any witnesses or people with dashcams in their cars and in the area between 8pm and 9pm to contact Clontarf Garda Station on 01-6664800 or the Garda Confidential Line 1800 666 111.

Meanwhile, in a separate attack that also occurred last Thursday, two young boys were beaten around the head and face near a busy shopping centre.

The incident took place at 5pm on a pedestrian footbridge on the busy N4 near Liffey Valley Shopping Centre in Clondalkin, west Dublin.

The victims, thought to be aged in their early teens, were crossing a footbridge connecting the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre and King's Hospital and met a larger group of juveniles.

A Garda statement said: These juveniles approached the male youths and proceeded to assault them. One of the youths managed to break free and alert members of the public to assist.

The attackers, thought to be aged around 16 or 17, fled towards the shopping centre.

The statement said the victims received head and facial injuries and attended Midlands Regional Hospital and later discharged.

Gardai in Lucan are appealing to any witnesses and anyone using the footbridge at around 5pm to come forward, as well as any road users with dashcams.

They are asked to contact Lucan Garda Station on 01 666 7300 or the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111.
Some were heading back to their home and some to their relatives' place as fear gripped several women students who were leaving the JNU campus on Monday, a day after a mob stormed the university and went on a rampage.

The women students were seen wheeling their bags out of their hostels and leaving the south Delhi campus after a mob of masked young people stormed the university on Sunday and systematically targeted students in three hostels, unleashing mayhem with sticks, stones and iron rods, hitting inmates and breaking windows, furniture and personal belongings.

Many girls students leaving the campus requested anonymity and said their parents were concerned following the violence on campus on Sunday evening.

Pancham, who was leaving the Koyna hostel -- one of the three hostels that witnessed violence -- said she was leaving the campus fearing for her safety.

"My parents too are concerned about my safety," the second-year student of MA Sociology said as she was heading back to her home in Haryana.

Another woman student, who hails from Nepal, said her parents, too, have asked to leave the campus.

The student, who was staying at Yamuna hostel, said her parents insisted that she moved to her relatives residence in Gurugram.

However, there were exceptions as many said they would stay put.

Monica, who goes by her first name, said she would not leave campus despite pleas by her parents.

"I am the president of the Sabarmati hostel. I have certain responsibility, so I cannot leave," she added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
archived recording I was at a dinner in New York City one night with a bunch of friends, and I sat down at the table at an empty seat. And he came up behind me and said, I think youre in my seat. And I recognized him immediately.

[music]

archived recording 1 I was a very young actor new to Los Angeles. archived recording 2 It was my first job also out of college, and I was 24 years old. My passion all my life was to work in the film industry. archived recording 3 And he was completely  I mean, hes really charming when he wants to be. archived recording 4 We had been in touch about an audition for a Quentin Tarantino film, and thats when I met with him at the Peninsula. archived recording 5 He had his assistant call me at the last minute and say, Harvey cant meet you in the lobby. Harvey cant meet you in the cafe. Can you go up to his office, his hotel suite? archived recording 6 Thats when he said, well, come and see me at my hotel. archived recording 7 And he told me, O.K., were going to my room now. archived recording 8 I opened the door, and he just went straight into my bedroom. archived recording 9 He wanted to know if I was cool and if we were friends, and he just wanted to relax with me. archived recording 10 After some normal conversation  archived recording 11 He said, how about you just give me a massage? archived recording 12 He asked me if Id give him a massage. archived recording 13 He asked me to give him massage. archived recording 14 Which I declined. archived recording 15 And I thought it would end there, but thats when he blocked the exit for me. archived recording 16 His whole affect changed, and he looked like a predator. archived recording 17 I just remember that feeling of having to fight off an invader. archived recording 18 If I would try to fight myself away from him, he would then move around to a place where he could block me in somewhere. And hes a big individual. archived recording 19 He just is very dominant, persuasive. archived recording 20 Hes a very big guy. archived recording 21 He backed me into a dark room. archived recording 22 He led me to his bathroom. archived recording 23 He pushed me back against the bed. archived recording 24 Pleading that I just watch him masturbate. archived recording 25 He held me down, and he forced oral sex on me. archived recording 26 And I was petrified and terrified. archived recording 27 I pulled my arm away, finally, and headed to the door. He started following me and telling me that I could get a three-picture deal and that he would greenlight my script. But I had to watch him masturbate. archived recording 28 A nightmare  literally a nightmare.

[music]

michael barbaro

The story of Harvey Weinstein was a story of patterns. Dozens of women  more than 80  all telling a very familiar and eerily similar story of abuse and harassment by the famed movie producer. But this week, two years after that pattern of allegations was first reported in The Times by my colleagues Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, there are just two women at the center of the criminal case against him as his trial opens in Manhattan. Today, in Part 1, Megan Twohey on how we got from 80 to 2. Its Thursday, January 9. Megan, help us understand how, after these dozens of allegations against Harvey Weinstein, the charges that hes facing in this trial center on just two women.

megan twohey

Well, after we broke our first Harvey Weinstein story, and then Ronan Farrow published his first story in The New Yorker, there were these dozens of women who came forward with accusations.

michael barbaro

Right.

megan twohey

And there were three jurisdictions 

archived recording Some major developments in the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal, New York 

megan twohey

 New York 

archived recording  police say they are now investigating rape allegations 

megan twohey

 Los Angeles 

archived recording The L.A. County district attorneys office is determining if Weinstein should be charged.

megan twohey

 and London 

archived recording And the BBC is reporting police in England are now investigating an allegation against him as well.

megan twohey

 that responded by launching criminal investigations. And thats because the vast majority of allegations that were coming out were centered in those three jurisdictions. But even as they launched these criminal investigations, there were questions about whether or not they would be able to bring criminal charges.

michael barbaro

And why would that be, given the overwhelming number of these allegations that are now surfacing?

megan twohey

Well, there are several reasons that explain that. First, a lot of these allegations were of inappropriate behavior, sexual harassment, which is illegal under civil law, but its not a sex crime. Youre never going to be prosecuted for it. Other allegations of actual sex crimes fell outside the statute of limitations for prosecution. And there were women who had really serious allegations who were reluctant to participate in a criminal investigation, let alone a prosecution. But from the beginning, New York, in particular, was very intent on bringing a prosecution.

michael barbaro

And why is that?

megan twohey

Well, thats because they had actually investigated Harvey Weinstein once before in 2015. That was the year that a model from Italy walked into a New York City police precinct and reported that Harvey Weinstein had groped her breast and tried to force his hand up her skirt during a work meeting at his office. And she worked closely with the police at that time. She actually wore a wire into a follow-up meeting with Weinstein that captured what sounded like a confession to at least some of what she had alleged.

archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) What do we have to do here? archived recording (harvey weinstein) Nothing. Im going to take a shower. You sit there and have a drink, water. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) I dont drink. Can I stay on the bar? archived recording (harvey weinstein) No, you must come here now. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) No. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Please? archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) No, I dont want to. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Im not doing anything with you, I promise. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) I know. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Now youre embarrassing me. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) Im sorry. I cannot. archived recording (harvey weinstein) No, come in here. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) No, yesterday was kind of aggressive for me. archived recording (harvey weinstein) I know. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) I need to know a person to be touched. archived recording (harvey weinstein) I wont do a thing. Please. I swear I wont. Just sit with me. Dont embarrass me in the hotel. Im here all the time. Sit with me. I promise  archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) I know, but I dont want to. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Please sit there. Please. One minute. I ask you  archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) No, I cant. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Go to the bathroom. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) Please, I dont want to do something I dont want to. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Go to the bath  hey, come here. Listen to me. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) I want to go downstairs. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Im not going to do anything, and youll never see me again after this, O.K.? Thats it. If you embarrass me in this hotel where Im staying  archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) Im not embarrassing you. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Just walk  archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) Its just that I dont feel comfortable. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Honey, dont have a fight with me in the hallway. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) Its not nothing, its  archived recording (harvey weinstein) Please, I am not going to do anything. I swear on my children. Please, come in. On everything. Im a famous guy. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) Im feeling very uncomfortable right now. archived recording (harvey weinstein) Please come in now. And one minute. And if you want to leave when the guy comes with my jacket, you can go. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) Why yesterday you touch my breast? archived recording (harvey weinstein) No, please. Im sorry. Just come on in. Im used to that. Come on  archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) Youre used to that? archived recording (harvey weinstein) Yes, come in. archived recording (ambra battilana gutierrez) No, but Im not used to that. archived recording (harvey weinstein) I wont do it again. Come on. Sit here. Sit here for a minute, please.

megan twohey

But in spite of that recording and the woman wanting them to prosecute, the district attorneys office declined to bring charges against Weinstein at that time. They said that they felt like a shifting account that she had provided about an alleged sexual assault in Italy years earlier would make her seem not credible on the witness stand. So then, in 2017, as the Harvey Weinstein story is exploding, this case comes back into public focus.

archived recording D.A. Cyrus Vance Jr. was mobbed by reporters, who asked whether Weinsteins wealth and fame influenced his decision not to press charges.

megan twohey

There are so many questions about Cy Vance, the Manhattan district attorney, and why he didnt prosecute Harvey Weinstein in 2015.

archived recording D.A. Vance, did you not have the evidence you need? Was this not a slam-dunk case? archived recording (cyrus vance jr.) If we had a case that we felt we could prosecute, and my experts felt we could prosecute, against Harvey Weinstein, we would have.

megan twohey

A lot of people are accusing him, saying that he had succumbed to the power and influence of Weinstein 

archived recording Critics say financial contributions by Weinsteins lawyers to Vances campaign could have played a role in the D.A.s decision.

megan twohey

 and had allowed this alleged predator to slip through the cracks.

michael barbaro

And so that is what left New York in a position, I guess, where, by 2017, they feel all this pressure to aggressively pursue these new allegations against Weinstein?

megan twohey

Theyre feeling a lot of pressure. And so even with all of those challenges to bringing a sex crimes charge, they are on the hunt for an allegation that will allow them to make an arrest.

megan twohey Im going to put my headset on. lucia evans Oh, yeah. Megan, I just have some notes on my phone Im just going to, like, keep open if I need them. megan twohey Sure, totally.

megan twohey

And so they quickly zoom in on this account of a sexual assault from 2004 that had been made in Ronan Farrows New Yorker article by a woman named Lucia Evans.

megan twohey Just please  lucia evans O.K. megan twohey  please feel free to read at your  lucia evans Lucia Stoller, now Lucia Evans, was approached by Weinstein at Cipriani Upstairs, a club in New York, in 2004, the summer before her senior year at Middlebury College. Evans, who is now a marketing consultant, wanted to be an actress, and although she had heard rumors about Weinstein, she let him have her number. Weinstein began calling her late at night, or having his assistant call her, asking to meet. She declined, but said that she would do readings during the day for a casting executive. Before long, an assistant called to set up a daytime meeting at the Miramax office in Tribeca, first with Weinstein and then with a casting executive, who was a woman. I was, like, Oh, a woman. Great. I feel safe, Evans said. When Evans arrived for the meeting, the building was full of people. She was led to an office with exercise equipment in it and takeout boxes on the floor. Weinstein was there, alone. Weinstein told her that shed be great in Project Runway,  the show, which Weinstein helped produce  but only if she lost weight. At that point, after that, is when he assaulted me, Evans said. He forced me to perform oral sex on him.

megan twohey

What happened next, according to Lucia, is that Weinstein pulled his penis out of his pants, that he pulled her head down onto it. She said that she said over and over she didnt want to do this, to stop. And she said that Weinstein overpowered her.

lucia evans I just sort of gave up.

michael barbaro

So a clear allegation of a sex crime.

megan twohey

A clear allegation of a sex crime and also one that falls within the statute of limitations  exactly what New York is looking for. And so within hours of that story being published, New York detectives are trying to find Lucia.

lucia evans So a lot of different things happened very quickly, and it was very overwhelming. The N.Y.P.D. showed up at my parents house. They live in upstate New York. And they said, Lucia has a prosecutable charge. And they were like, what are you talking about, you know? They were just kind of overwhelmed anyway, you know? And they said, were worried about her safety, and we  where does she live? We want to talk to her.

michael barbaro

Wow.

megan twohey

Yeah.

lucia evans And so they actually drove through the night to come to D.C. and showed up at my door the next morning. I was still in my pajamas, I think. So I just stayed in my pajamas that whole time and just drank a whole pot of coffee  a whole pot to myself. I just kept drinking coffee and 

megan twohey

She says that they told her immediately that they wanted her to participate in the criminal investigation.

lucia evans They immediately wanted me to go on the record, because they said I was the only one that could put him in jail. megan twohey And how are you feeling in this moment? Are you feeling scared? Are you feeling nervous? Are you feeling  what is it like when, you know, several detectives show up at your door and come into your living room? lucia evans Yeah, I mean, it was the most surreal thing. I never conceived of this happening. I was one of the few, or maybe the only, people in that article that wasnt an actress, you know? And it was frightening to me, because I didnt do this for the press, obviously. I didnt do this for any kind of fame or fortune. And so I think I was scared for a few reasons. I was nervous about what it could do to my family, to  you know, I mean, I know what criminal proceedings can be like. Ive seen a bunch of movies, and Ive watched a lot of court TV. Its like, I know how this could go. And I think that the narrative has always been that victims are torn apart on the stand. And why would you do that to yourself? Why would you put yourself or your family through that? And all these things are kind of just running through my mind. And they were positioning it as a very empowering thing  like, oh, you can change society forever. You can change the laws. And of course, that made me a little excited, too. I was like, wow, you know, I would absolutely love to influence the law, and to empower victims, and to put him in jail. Like, that would be an incredible feeling, but also tempering that with my more rational side. Like, are you serious? First of all, I cant be the only one that can put him in jail. And also, you need to give me time to process this, you know? megan twohey So you finish your pot of coffee. lucia evans Yes. megan twohey You finish this conversation with them. How does it end? How do you guys part after that? lucia evans So they told us  my husband, who was there, and myself  to get out of town for a few weeks.

megan twohey

They tell her that they think that shes in danger and that Harvey Weinstein and any of his kind of associates could potentially come after her. So they really want to relocate her  officially relocate her to a safe location.

lucia evans They didnt think I was safe there, just because I was easily traceable. And they were worried about my safety at that point, since I was the only one that could put him in jail, quote, unquote, that we knew of.

megan twohey

And so she and her husband packed their bags and moved into this house for two weeks, closer to New York City, as they decided what they were going to do next.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm. And what did she do?

megan twohey

Well, she started weighing her options. She starts meeting with a variety of lawyers. And as she tells it, many of those lawyers are actually discouraging her from participating in the criminal case, telling her that she would be much better off just seeking to strike an out-of-court  like, basically a private out-of-court civil settlement with Weinstein in which she would receive money.

lucia evans I met with lawyers who said, forget the criminal case. Just file a civil suit, you know what I mean? And that didnt feel right to me. And I didnt even know what that would entail at the time.

michael barbaro

And why are the lawyers telling her that the civil route is better than this criminal prosecution?

megan twohey

They basically tell her that its going to play out the way that shes seen it depicted on all those TV shows.

michael barbaro

And that means its going to be really ugly.

megan twohey

Yeah, its going to be really ugly.

lucia evans The narratives I heard the most often were, its going to be a long, drawn-out, painful process. Theyre going to tear apart your background, your life. Theyre going to talk to everyone youve ever worked with, everyone youve ever been in a relationship with, find anything they can to discredit you. And its hard on you. Its hard on your family. Theyll go through your trash and find every single thing youve ever done in the past, and blow it up out of proportion, and shame you, and just ruin your life, basically. I just had this vision of myself just being left with nothing on the street. Thats the narrative that I think still exists, but also that I was hearing at the time. Its really scary to hear over and over, and it starts to kind of become part of you. And you start to think, oh, this is what will happen if I do this, you know? How can you not feel like that?

megan twohey

So shes put off by these lawyers. And as she tells it, theyre not the only people who are counseling her against participating in the criminal case. She says that she has friends and family members who are saying the same thing.

michael barbaro

Dont do it.

megan twohey

Dont do it.

lucia evans The narrative that I heard a lot was, youve already done enough  and in a good way, not a negative way at all. But youve already done so much. Look at  the movement was starting to pick up steam at that point. Like, look at what you helped to reignite?

megan twohey

You did your part. You participated in the journalism, some of these first stories that are helping to ignite the #MeToo movement. Youve done enough. But as Lucia tells it, something keeps pulling at her.

lucia evans The criminal case was really kind of calling my name in a way right from the beginning, and I wanted to understand what that would be like. And I just wanted to be able to have the option to pursue it without having a lawyer say, its not right for you. Dont do it. megan twohey And when you say that the criminal case was calling to you from the beginning, what do you mean? lucia evans I wanted this to continue to mean something to me and to mean something for other people. And it always kind of felt right to me deep down. And even though I struggled with it for so many months, and it was so hard to decide what to do, I just felt like it was the right thing to do, ultimately.

megan twohey

So she decides to meet with the prosecutors office, which is a significant step, because the prosecutors are ultimately the ones who will decide whether or not to bring charges. And the lead prosecutor on the Weinstein case at the time was a woman named Maxine Rosenthal. And as Lucia tells it, she did not have a good experience with her.

michael barbaro

Why?

lucia evans I didnt feel comfortable talking to her, and I didnt have a lot of confidence in it. megan twohey What do you mean by that? What was  lucia evans I just remember there was one thing that she said that made me very uncomfortable. She referred to me and the other survivors as Harveys girls. And at that point, I think I was just so blown away by that statement and just horrified that she could ever say that about  it doesnt even need an explanation about why thats so horrifying to say.

megan twohey

So listen, I cant speak to this particular prosecutors conduct. What I can tell you is that shes a veteran sex crimes prosecutor whos known for being very hard-nosed and that Lucia wasnt the only person who was complaining about her. There were complaints coming from the police, from victims rights advocates that she was not sensitive and that she was moving too slowly. I cant speak to whether or not those complaints were valid, but Rosenthals boss is Cy Vance, the Manhattan prosecutor, the same one who had been criticized for not prosecuting Weinstein in 2015. And he decides that hes going to take Rosenthal off the case. And he puts in her place a veteran homicide prosecutor. Her name is Joan Illuzzi, and shes also known for being tough.

lucia evans Joan would ask me tough questions, but I still felt good about it.

megan twohey

But Lucia says that she feels like shes on her side, that shes being tough to toughen her up.

lucia evans She was definitely the bad cop, and I think she had to be, because she wanted to prepare me, right? But I felt like she respected me in a way that I didnt feel like I felt from Maxine. And I knew what she was doing. I was like, well, I want to be prepared for this trial. So if you think you have to be tough on me, thats totally fine.

megan twohey

So thats important for Lucia. And in another significant development, a new woman, a new accuser, is added to the criminal case.

lucia evans Another thing that made me feel comfortable was the fact that there would be one other person who was involved. And that made me feel a lot more comfortable. Initially, it was just me for a long time. It just gave me a little more sense of community and just like I wasnt doing it alone.

megan twohey

And so finally, at this point, Lucia is ready to make a decision.

lucia evans I went back home to D.C. And a while earlier, I made this list of all the reasons why I should do it and all the reasons why I shouldnt do it. And all the reasons why I shouldnt do it  I mean, there were so many reasons  fear for my safety, fear for my family, my reputation, my career  everything. All these things would just be ruined. And then on the other side, I had just written, because it feels right. I didnt really have much else to write on that side. It did feel like I could, at the very least, hopefully, put him in jail, this person that had assaulted so many people and harassed so many people. And I couldnt say no to the chance to do that, ultimately. This is the right thing to do. Im going to do it.

megan twohey

Shes in. Shes willing to be part of criminal charges.

michael barbaro

So at this point, New York is able to do what its been trying to do ever since these allegations first came out.

megan twohey

Yes.

archived recording (speaker 1) Are you sorry, Harvey? archived recording (speaker 2) Harvey, Harvey! archived recording (speaker 3)  whove accused you, Mr. Weinstein? archived recording (speaker 4) Harvey, you got anything to say?

megan twohey

In May of 2018, seven months after the police had first shown up on the door of Lucias home, prosecutors bring charges here in New York against Harvey Weinstein. They charge him with a criminal sex act stemming from the encounter with Lucia. And they also charge him with rape stemming from the encounter with the second woman in the criminal case.

[music]

michael barbaro

Well be right back. So Megan, what happens after these charges against Weinstein are actually filed?

megan twohey

Law enforcement officials continue to build out this case, as they start to prepare to go to court. And Lucia says that she is, for the most part, feeling good about the process. But even with this new prosecutor in place, she says that shes confused about some aspects of whats going on.

lucia evans They didnt ask me for a full list of people I had told until months and months in. I would think that you kind of start with, who have you talked to? Who knows about this? And I told them some people that either I had told, or knew of me going to the meeting with him, or something to that respect.

megan twohey

She says that she is confused by the fact that law enforcement officials are not reaching out to more of the potential witnesses for her charge  she says that she had provided them with a list of names, people in whom she had confided about the alleged attack  and that, even at this stage of the investigation, that they have not reached out to all of those people to talk to them. This is also a case that involves both prosecutors and the police. And she says that shes struck by the fact that they dont seem to be in sync.

lucia evans So it seemed to be a very disjointed process with the D.A. and the N.Y.P.D. And they didnt seem to communicate very well right from the beginning and all the way through my time with them. So  megan twohey What do you mean by that, that the police and the prosecutors werent communicating  lucia evans Yeah  megan twohey  effectively? lucia evans It just seemed like some things I had told to the police, the prosecutors werent aware of or didnt remember when they would talk to me. They didnt even interview my husband until  they never did, actually. They never talked to my husband.

michael barbaro

Megan, whats the significance of them not talking to her husband, exactly?

megan twohey

Well, I mean, think about it. If you are trying to build a case, if youre trying to shore it up, presumably, youre going to want to talk to the people closest to that alleged victim, the people who have the most knowledge about her. So for law enforcement officials to have not talked to her husband at this point seems a little weird to her. But she says that shes not giving it that much thought. And then, one day in October 2018, Lucia is on a work trip in Hong Kong when she gets a call from her lawyer.

lucia evans I was about to give a huge marketing presentation to a group of executives, and then I get a call from my lawyer saying that they were going to drop my charge.

megan twohey

The prosecutors office contacted her attorney and said that there was new information that had come to light, and that they were preparing to drop her charge.

michael barbaro

Wow.

megan twohey

Yeah. And she says that she cant even process it right at that point, because shes got to give that work presentation.

lucia evans I just had to shut off my emotions and just try to just pull myself together right after that, and pretend that it didnt happen. I told my family, and then I got on a flight back home with no Wi-Fi, thank goodness, and fell asleep. And when I woke up, I was being destroyed in the press. archived recording 1 We begin with one of the sex assault charges against disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, tonight, dropped. archived recording 2 Lucia Evans claims Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him in 2004. But new information revealed yesterday casts doubt on Evanss story. archived recording 3 The single charge was dropped after the Manhattan district attorneys office recently discovered new evidence from a witness that discounts Lucia Evanss previous accusations 

megan twohey

And so as Lucia is learning about her charge being dropped, so, too, is the public. And in a lot of those news stories, its presented as contradictory evidence thats come to light, evidence that undermines her allegation. Not surprisingly, Weinstein and his defense team seize on this new twist.

archived recording His attorney, Benjamin Brafman, says he believes Evans lied about what happened. archived recording (benjamin brafman) Lucia Evans, who you will see from the documents released, has clearly, in our opinion, committed perjury on several occasions.

megan twohey

For months, theyd been arguing that all of these women were lying. And now, theyre going out and making the claim that this entire criminal case is tainted, that its completely unfair.

archived recording (benjamin brafman) The case is not over, but I think it is permanently and irreparably damaged.

megan twohey

Theyre gleeful.

michael barbaro

So her story seems to be falling apart.

megan twohey

Thats how it appears.

megan twohey How did that affect you? Did you have to have conversations with your friends and family, and anybody that you work with? lucia evans Yeah. megan twohey Was this something that you had to talk about or address? lucia evans I mean, it was interesting, because before this happened, I had been meeting with lots of actresses who  I became a very popular figure for a month in there in the summer, because I was kind of representing all of Hollywood that wanted to send him to jail, but they were too afraid to do it themselves  some of them. Im not speaking for all of them. But the actresses I spoke to all had very credible potential charges. But they had families and careers, and they couldnt do it. So I was kind of doing it for them. After my case is dropped, my friend group and that group whittled down to very few people who actually cared and wanted to know the truth and reached out to me. Some of them didnt know me personally, so I dont blame them for not reaching out. But some very clearly kind of severed ties with me, which was really hard and really hurtful. And I dont care if an actress comes into my life, and then she leaves again. I never fooled myself into thinking I was close with these women, these famous actresses, necessarily. But the ones  the women that have been with me since the beginning  that was really, that was really tough.

michael barbaro

Megan, what happened here, exactly? What happened to this case? Because youve been describing law enforcement officials who, from day one, have been telling Lucia shes their best chance at bringing criminal charges against Harvey Weinstein. She finally signs on. She risks all that that entails. And then they handle it in this confusing way, and then they drop it.

megan twohey

Well, what we now know is that prosecutors have spoken to a friend of Lucias, actually the friend who was with her the very first time she met Weinstein. Lucia said that when she went to that work meeting at Harvey Weinsteins office after meeting him, that he sexually assaulted her, that he forced her to perform oral sex on him against her will. And this friend says that after that work meeting, Lucia told her that she had actually consented to perform oral sex on him, that she did that in exchange for the promise of acting jobs.

michael barbaro

Wow. So a very different version of the story.

megan twohey

Right, this friend is providing an account of an encounter with Weinstein that, if true, turns it back into a variation of one of the common stories about Weinstein, but one that cannot be subject to criminal charges.

michael barbaro

Why is this only now coming to light?

megan twohey

Well, one possibility is that this is an example of what can happen when there is a rush to prosecute. Well, we also now realize what we now know is that the lead detective in the case had apparently talked to this witness months before Weinstein was charged, and that she had shared this information with him. And prosecutors say that that detective did not share that information with them, the prosecutors.

michael barbaro

Suggesting maybe he didnt want to bring them information that might hurt the case.

megan twohey

Suggesting that he purposely withheld potentially complicating information from the case. Now, the detective says that he did tell the prosecutors this information. So that could also speak to what Lucia had complained about herself, that this entire investigation seemed to be plagued by the fact that the police and prosecutors were not in sync and communicating well with each other.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm. But if the detective had told prosecutors, it seems like that would only be further evidence of this desire to get this done, to bring these charges and overlook complicating information.

megan twohey

Right, so that is another interpretation of this, that both the police and the prosecutors were aware of this complicating information and moved forward with bringing charges anyway.

michael barbaro

Well, in that case, what would explain them dropping this case when they did?

megan twohey

Well, with all of the finger-pointing thats gone on, its hard to know, for certain, the answer to that question. But what seems likely is that prosecutors have realized, at this point, that this information is going to come to the attention of the defense and that its likely to undermine the entire criminal charge. But I should say that Lucia insists that she never consented to oral sex with Weinstein, that she never told this friend otherwise, and that she explained that to the detective when he asked her about it months and months before.

michael barbaro

Megan, what should we make of Lucias experience?

megan twohey

For all the people who have been watching so many women come forward with allegations against Harvey Weinstein, watching what seems to be this overwhelming evidence of a pattern of predatory behavior, it shows how difficult it is to turn stories into criminal charges. Her account fell within the statute of limitations, it was alleging criminal conduct, and she was willing to participate.

michael barbaro

Right, to brave the spotlight and the scrutiny.

megan twohey

Exactly. And still, her charge was dropped.

michael barbaro

So this is October of 2018. Where does that leave the case against Harvey Weinstein?

megan twohey

So in the lead-up to Lucias charge being dropped, there was actually a third woman who was added to the criminal case here in New York. So after Lucias charges dropped, there are still two women. But one of those women, one of those accusers, appears to also come with some potential complicating factors.

michael barbaro

Like what?

megan twohey

Weinsteins legal team has produced emails between Weinstein and this woman that went on for years after the alleged attack. These emails appear extensive. They appear friendly. They even appear romantic at times.

michael barbaro

Tomorrow, in Part 2, how the case against Weinstein moved forward after Lucia.

megan twohey Do you wish that you were still part of this case as we head into trial? lucia evans Honestly, yes, I do. I do wish I was. I put so much into this. And when it comes down to it, I do wish I was a part of it. And I also just dont want people to be discouraged from coming forward and doing it. So I would just hope people dont  people, despite all the things Ive said about how hard it is, still decide to come forward, because thats literally the only hope that we have.

michael barbaro

Well be right back. Heres what else you need to know today.

archived recording (donald trump) Good morning. Im pleased to inform you the American people should be extremely grateful and happy. No Americans were harmed in last nights attack by the Iranian regime.

michael barbaro

On Wednesday, in a televised address to the nation, President Trump backed away from further military confrontation with Iran, saying that Irans retaliation for the U.S. killing of General Qassim Suleimani appeared to be over.

archived recording (donald trump) Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned, and a very good thing for the world.

michael barbaro

That retaliation, about a dozen missiles that inflicted minimal damage to two U.S. bases in Iraq, seemed designed to satisfy Irans desire for revenge without provoking a military response from the Trump administration. In his speech, Trump vowed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but in a gesture of conciliation said he was prepared to make peace with the countrys leaders.

archived recording (donald trump) Finally, to the people and leaders of Iran, we want you to have a future, and a great future  one that you deserve, one of prosperity at home and harmony with the nations of the world. The United States is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.

michael barbaro
Former Commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, General Qassem Soleimani, whose funeral is taking place today in Tehran, did much to strengthen strategic cooperation with Russia, senior adviser to the Supreme Leader in international affairs Ali Akbar Velayati said at Soleimanis funeral.

Soleimani was a key figure in our bilateral partnership with Russia and respected Russian President Vladimir Putin with whom he had close ties, TASS quotes him as saying with a reference to Al Alam TV channel.
(Getty Images file photo)

SINGAPORE  There are an estimated 800 to 900 mynas roosting at hotspots near Yishun Avenue 3 based on a 2019 survey, said Minister of National Development Lawrence Wong on Monday (6 January).

However, there is no comparable historical data on the birds as NParks only started doing localised surveys on the myna population at hotspots last year, added Wong in a written parliamentary reply.

Wong was responding to questions raised by Nee Soon GRC Member of Parliament (MP) Er Dr Lee Bee Wah on the population trends of mynas in Yishun over the past years.

Dr Lee also asked Wong about the findings of a tree fogging pilot project held in 2016 in the area to deter mynas.

In response, Wong said the pilot showed that tree fogging had limited long-term effects, given that the mynas returned once the fogging stopped.

Instead, NParks has been working with various stakeholders to implement a sustainable myna management strategy. This involves a holistic suite of measures such as habitat modification, and the reduction of food sources made available by humans, he added.

More Singapore stories:

3,550 applications received for e-scooter trade-in grant from food delivery riders since footpath ban

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The Crown: Part Four By Michael Moriarty

The Prince, of Wales mind you, has admiring friends who also know how touchy the return of a disgraced nobleman can be but, indeed, these friends know, with most expert skill, how to work round such inconveniences. Cecil Beaton and Noel Coward have arranged a special supper party for the Prince! Meanwhile, the other Prince, now referred to as his Royal Highness, no fan of the Duke of Windsor, suggests, upon the Duke of Windsors arrival at Buckingham Palace, Can you just make up an excuse and say Im off sinning somewhere? No, says the Queen. You cant ask, beg or pray for better soap opera than this! Suddenly we are back under the spell of the Reverend Billy Graham. He is preaching to the Royal Family. Only Queen Elizabeth is enthralled! Undeniably, at least according to this telling of the tale, in love with the Reverend Billy Graham. But also, madly in love with Christianity! Both the Queen and the Evangelist confess to being shy children. The first time Graham spoke publically, however, he was 12 years old and told immediately, after that, he had a gift! The undeniably romantic feelings that Queen Elizabeth feels, while watching Billy Grahams car drive away?! They do not go unnoticed by her husband. However, Vergangenheit is the title of the episode and back to the Duke of Windsor we must hasten! Hes collected quite a group of supporters by now, to whom he appeals for help in his desire to be reinstated as a major player in the future of the British Empire or is it Commonweallth? Perhaps the military! A guest suggests the Board of Trade! Helping Englands interests abroad. No, replies the Duke rather firmly. He rather prefers a liason post! Someone else suggests, What about a diplomatic post?! The Prince quite enjoys that suggestion. A roving Ambassador, adds another guest at the dinner table. Something like that, smiles the Duke, would be ideal ! The entire assembly at the dinner table?! They are left shouldering the questionable honor of politely, diplomatically landing the Duke of Windsor an actual job as ambassador of some sort! Yet it is not long before his former Royal Highness is, as the Americans might say, dissing the Reverend Billy Graham. What has happened to the people of this country?! Turning like lemmings to this crusading showman from Charlotte for their inspiration. He goes on in his diary to call the thought of Shirley Temple visiting with Billy Graham a grotesque event! Ever returning are The Marburg Files! The Adviser, former Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth are assembled to deal with The Marburg Files. The Adviser, once allowed to, seats himself at the table occupied by the two Queens of England. He then begins the tale of The Marburg Files. The Nazi plan was to dispose of all the top-secret papers. To burn them. The most valuable material, however, was kept by, yes, this Translator for Adolf Hitler. He, the Translator, would use the material to negotiate his freedom with the Allies. One file dealt with Anglo-German relations. With, in particular, His Majesty, the Royal Duke of Windsor, and the Nazi High Command. Queen Mary, of course, always the bearer of bad tidings and condemnations, says to Queen Elizabeth, And this is the man you let back into the country! Mary adds, I hope you have a strong stomach! While Elizabeth reads the Marburg File, in particular, that portion dealing with the Duke of Windsors relations with the Nazis, the Duke of Windsor is being offered possible jobs in the British government, not the least of which is Ambassador to France! He is now being referred to, by of course his closest friends, as his Royal Highness! As he begins his all-important visit with the Queen?! The Duke of Windsor, now, among friends, His Royal Highness, refers to the Queens dwelling as that miserable mausoleum! Buckingham Palace! Both a masterful actor and actress, Alex Jennings and Claire Foy, the scene they play together now is, quite symbolically, a dance of death. Horrifying! The defense of himself! Sounds nauseatingly like the American Democrat Party defending its dreams of a New World Order!!! In the end, Windsor dismisses what the Queen tells him about his past, and labels them baseless rumors and German propaganda! Oh, my God! In the next scene? Between Elizabeth and her husband?! She wants, even after reading the Marburg File on the Duke of Winsor, to forgive him. The Prince asks his wife, the Queen, to consult Tommy Lascelles before she actually forgives the Duke of Windsor and finds him a post in the government. Tommy Lascelles was the private secretary to the Duke of Windsor when he was King of England. Mr. Lascelles wants the Queen to be in full possession of the facts which apparently go way beyond the Marburg File. Wow! The soon-to-be, during the Duke of Windsors reign as King, Duchess of Windsor, had previously or perhaps simultaneously been having an affair with the German Amabassador, Herr Ribbentop! Meanwhile, the King of England was packing his court with a new and very German set of couriers! Once the King, David as he is informally known, abdicated to marry what is now known as the Duchess of Windsor?! They both visited Hitler in Germany. The Fuhrer labeled the trip Unofficial State Visit! On that trip to Germany, Dave met with Herr Hess and The Plan was hatched! A plan

to re-instate

the Duke of Windsor

as King of England! According to Mr. Lascelles, The plan would depose Elizabeths father as King of England and, in short, would give German forces free reign across Europe. German troops were even promised to quell a colonial rebellion. And there were visits to SS training schools and the early concentration camps. The full horrors were yet to come! Nonetheless, he visited. Into the war with Germany, Windsor gave vital information about allied plans and forces to the Nazis who, of course, altered their strategies accordingly! Partly because of the Dukes invaluable assistance, Paris fell to German occupation. Worst of all?!?! The Duke of Windsor told the Nazis that their bombardment of London, because of it, the British resolve was weakening! Germany, with that information, continued bombing! How many Londoners would have lived if the Duke had been a British Patriot rather than becoming Britains Benedict Arnold. The Duke of Windsors objective during World War II: Soon make ready Britain for peace! Claire Foys expression at the end of this scene?! A profound shock almost beyond description. What will Queen Elizabeth do now?! She again banishes the Duke of Windsor, with no permission to return. Theres no possibility of The Crown ever forgiving the Duke of Windsor! Her final question to the David?! How on earth can you forgive yourself?! Troubled by her decision to not forgive the Duke of Windsor, the Queen seeks advice again from Reverend Billy Graham. He tells her, No one is beneath forgiveness! The reverend adds, One prays for those one cannot forgive! What a great performance by Ms, Foy! And what a divine image of the Queen at the end, praying at Westminster Abbey for the soul of : David, the Duke of Windsor. Now, without a doubt, the greatest leader of both the 20th Century and now, at the beginning of the Third Millennium?! Unless Donald Trump softens his unforgiving style, it will be Queen Elizabeth and not President Trump who will be known as the greatest leader of the Free World. Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com. He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/@MGMoriarty. Home
Congress' Rajya Sabha MP Partap Singh Bajwa urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday to send an all-party delegation of Sikh MP's to Pakistan immediately for them to study the condition of the community members there.

His comments came against the backdrop of a mob attack on Nankana Sahib Gurdwara in Lahore and "targeted killing" of a minority Sikh community member in Peshawar.

Bajwa said he was alarmed by the violence being faced by the Sikh community in Pakistan, and requested the prime minister to send an all-party delegation of Sikh MP's from both Houses of Parliament, led by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar at the earliest.

The delegation would study the conditions of the Sikh community in Pakistan, he said.
Japan said Monday it will pursue a criminal prosecution of former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn despite his dramatic escape from the country.

Speaking to reporters at her Tokyo office, Justice Minister Masako Mori said Ghosn's attempt to avoid trial was unlawful.

"It is clear that we don't have any records of the defendant departing Japan, hence we believe that he left Japan illegally," Mori said.

Ghosn, the former chief of the Nissan-Renault auto alliance, fled the country a week earlier despite being subject to stringent bail conditions. Ghosn was arrested at Tokyo airport in November 2018, on charges related to hiding income and using company funds for personal gain.

Last January, Ghosn said he had been "wrongly accused" and "unfairly detained."
Gopinath Rajendran By

Express News Service

Actor-director Parthiban is in talks with Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui to star in the Hindi remake of his recent directorial venture, Oththa Seruppu Size 7.

The actor took to Twitter to reveal that the two were in talks, and also shared a picture with Nawazuddin who was in town to attend an awards ceremony.

We are in talks and its too early to confirm it at this juncture. I was able to meet him earlier today and hes interested in the project. He has not seen the film but his associates have caught it. He will watch the film and then give his word, says Parthiban. When asked about the status of his upcoming film, Iravin Nizhal, Asias first single-shot feature film, the filmmaker says, Its a huge process and is akin to doing ten films. I am also busy with my acting commitments, including Vijay Sethupathis Thuglak Durbar. I will be commencing work on Iravin Nizhal in between these projects.

Parthiban, who was last seen in Thittam Poattu Thirudura Koottam, also has films such as Gautham Menons Dhruva Natchathiram and Mani Ratnams Ponniyin Selvan in the pipeline.
The deadline for Jet Airways corporate insolvency resolution process is October 21

live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

Shares of Jet Airways were locked in 5 percent upper circuit on January 6 after a media report said that South American Synergy Group had again shown interest in acquiring the debt-laden airliner.

The stock was quoting at Rs 35.90, up Rs 1.70, or 4.97 percent and there were pending buy orders for 24,345 shares, with no sellers available on the BSE at 1347 hours.

The stock, which had closed 5 percent higher on January 3, has rallied 66 percent in the last one month on the hope of acquisition.

Brazil-based Synergy Group had submitted an Expression of Interest to acquire grounded Jet Airways yet again, CNBC-TV18 said, citing multiple people aware of the development.

Synergy Group had emerged as the sole contender for Jet Airways in the previous round of bidding but it did not submit a binding bid as it sought more time and several clarifications on the slots available for the airline among other things.

Without any binding bid in place, the creditors committee for Jet Airways had earlier decided to invite fresh bids and even extended the deadline to submit Expressions of Interest to January 15, as per people aware of the matter.

This will be the last attempt by the lenders to secure a bid for the airline and no further extensions may be granted, a senior banking executive told CNBC-TV18 on the condition of anonymity. If no bids were received in this round, liquidation may be considered, the banker said.

Besides Synergy Group, banks are hopeful that two other suitors a Dubai-based fund and the London-based Hinduja Group-- may also come forward, the report said.

Jet is facing loan claims of over Rs 36,000 crore under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code from various creditors.
- Hackers reportedly breached a US government agency's website and posted a graphical image which had pledges of revenge over the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani

- The image had a picture of a bloodied President Donald Trump receiving a punch on his face while missiles were coming towards him

- The hackers declared the slain military boss a martyr claiming he was executed after years of relentless efforts

- Soleimani who was the most powerful Iranian military commander was killed by an airstrike ordered by President Trump on Friday, January 3

A group claiming to be hackers from Iran has hacked a United State of America's (USA) government agency's website and defaced it with pledges of revenge over assassination of Iran's military commander Qassem Soleimani by the US on Friday, January 3.

The website of the Federal Depository Library Program was hacked and a graphical image with a picture of a bloodied President Donald Trump receiving a blow from a fist posted.

READ ALSO: US confirms 3 Americans killed in Manda Bay attack

A graphical image was uploaded on a US government's site by alleged Iranian hackers. Photo: Independent.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Jennifer Aniston's cheeky smile after Brad Pitt wins Golden Globe leaves fans thinking they are dating

The graphic image shared by various international news outlets showed missiles being fired to Trump from Iran. The hackers vowed to revenge killing of Soleimani who they called a martyr.

"Severe revenge awaits those criminals who tainted their filthy hands with his ( Soleimani) blood and the blood of other martyrs of last night's ( Friday, January 3) incident," the message on the graphical image read.

Soleimani was assassinated on Trump's order. Photo: BBC.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Liverpool vs Everton: Bao la kipekee la Curtis Jones lawaondolea Reds aibu nyumbani

The statement also claimed the Islamic State of Iran will continue supporting middle-East states such as Iraq, Yemen and Palestine.

The Iran's military leader who was considered the second most powerful dignitary was executed in an airstrike ordered by the US president who claimed Soleimani had planned imminent attacks on the US.

Trump said the Iranian leader was responsible for the deaths of millions of people in the world.

His assassination saw heightened tensions between the middle-East and the West.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced 'harsh revenge' to the assassins as he declared three days of national mourning for Soleimani.

Do you have a groundbreaking story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690. Contact Tuko.co.ke instantly.

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Anti-extortion cell (AEC) of the Mumbai crime branch arrested Sonia Lakdawala, daughter of fugitive gangster Ejaz Lakdawala, on Monday for allegedly threatening and demanding money from a Bandra-based builder.

Deputy commissioner of police Shahji Umap confirmed the development and said they have registered a first information report and charged Lakdawala along with her father Ezaj and one more associate for extortion.

Lakdawala was earlier arrested on December 29, at the Mumbai international airport for allegedly trying to fly out of the country with her daughter, using a fake passport. Police nabbed her before she could board a flight to Nepal.

After checking her documents, police found that she was carrying a fake passport under the name Sonia Shaikh. Lakdawala was charged for cheating and forgery under the Passport Act and Indian Penal Code. She was in police custody till January 6 following which a court remanded her in judicial custody.

On the same day (January 6), Lakdawala was charged in the extortion and threatening case and was returned to police custody.

The complainant builder told police he had received threatening calls for two months. The caller allegedly identified himself as Ejaz Lakdawala and demanded a good luck amount. He also threatened the complainant of consequences if he refused to pay the money, said a police officer. When the complainant stopped picking up the international calls, Ejaz asked his associate in Mumbai to threaten the builder. Lakdawala was in touch with her father so police suspect she was involved in the extortion. They have been verifying her role and trying to gather evidence, said the officer.

In April 2019, AEC had arrested Ezajs brother Aquil for allegedly demanding money from a Khar-based developer. Ezajs associate Sagar Yadav was also arrested during the inquiry. Police said they were demanding 50 lakh from the developer on Ezajs instruction.
"Snack trends premiering in 2020 focus on meeting the needs of college students, who want food that is diverse, ethically sourced and, of course, convenient to their busy schedule," said Nadia Jackson, Sodexo's Director of Retail for North America.

Snacktime is anytime  It is no surprise that convenience is important when it comes to snacking. When surveyed, 81 percent of Gen Z consumers said they want healthy, convenient snacks that they can grab whatever time of the day or night. In 2020, students will see new technology designed to deliver snacks faster than ever before, including more automation to make fresh food faster and sophisticated apps that make waiting in line a thing of the past.

The world is their oyster  Having grown up eating ethnically diverse food, tomorrow's college students want access to foods from Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Europe all in one place. This has led to sophisticated palates and they want snacks that reflect this diversity of flavors. International snack trends for 2020 include roasted seaweed sheets from Korea, rice and soy sauce crackers from Japan, goat milk whey cheese from Norway, gluten-free baked cheese balls from Brazil and dried beef sticks from South Africa.

Do Good Taste Good  Sixty-seven percent of younger consumers said they would pay more for snacks with an ethical pedigree. They care about the story behind the product and have access to a lot more information than previous generations. Does the yogurt company treat the dairy cows well? Are the ingredients from farms that use sustainable practices? Do the companies embrace workers' rights? These are all considerations when selecting which items to purchase.

Plant protein to power through the day  Sodexo is seeing a clear trend toward protein alternatives in snacks like cookies, cakes and ice cream. The evolution of plant-based snacks goes beyond soy and nut proteins to pea, mung bean, watermelon seed and hempseed flours. While plant-based snacks are not new, the number of different types of plant protein continue to expand to an ever-more diverse and delicious array of products.

Waste not want not  Sustainable packing is an important part of reducing waste and tomorrow's students want their to-go items in sustainable packaging. Compostable craft paper is replacing commonly used packaging such as Styrofoam and plastic. The ultimate goal is to eliminate the use of plastic packaging and use less disposable packing altogether.

About Sodexo - Universities

Sodexo provides food service, accommodations and facilities management services to over 700 universities, colleges and independent schools in the United States and 35 other countries around the world. Sodexo serves eight million university students, staff and visitors around the world daily. With nearly 50 years of experience, Sodexo focuses on improving the student experience through integrated services that promote and enhance quality of life.

Media Contact: Dasha Ross-Smith, [email protected], (202) 695-0505.

SOURCE Sodexo
It Is Time to End the Violence in Kansas City Church of Scientology of Kansas City hosts an open house and special viewing of "Uncommon Allies".

A recent presser offers a glimpse at community outreach for this church with a. . . "Documentary filmmaker Jon Brick briefs those gathered at the Church of Scientology Kansas City on the film Uncommon Allies and the need for concerted community action to end the violence."Read more:
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has described former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and his party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as the wasted past that Nigerians have chosen to correct.

This was in reaction to Atikus statement urging the PDP to focus on rebuilding itself rather than 2023 elections.

In a statement on Sunday, Lanre Issa-Onilu, the spokesperson of the APC said Atiku was anything but sincere in his advice.

Instead of Atiku focusing on how to corner the 2023 presidential ticket of the PDP or any of the other political parties where he may choose to purchase his ticket, we call on Atiku, along with other PDP leaders to find the courage to return our resources and seek forgiveness from Nigerians, he said.

Read Also: We Should Be Concerned With Building Our Party, Not Election, Atiku Tells PDP

Return of our stolen resources and sincere apologies for the havoc wrecked on the country during the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) 16-year rule should be the preoccupation of PDP.

Atiku and the PDP represent the wasted past which Nigerians have chosen to discard and correct.

The era when national assets were a bazaar for cronies and friends; an era when funds were approved and released for projects that were never executed; an era of waste and impunity; an era of voodoo economy; an era when corruption was a state policy.

He added that, The resolute and pro-people intervention by the President Muhammadu Buhari government has ensured the plugging of revenue leakages, oil sector reforms, anti-corruption policies, economic diversification, rapid infrastructure development, intensification of fight against violent extremism among others. 

Particularly in the fight against public sector corruption, the recently-launched Open Treasury Portal (OTP) complements previous initiatives such as the administrations full implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) which has increased the level of accountability and transparency in the financial resources of the government; stoppage of budget padding, contrary to what we witnessed throughout the 16 years of the PDP and pruning out thousands of ghost workers through stricter implementation of Integrated Personnel Payroll System (IPPIS).
Jaishankar said India is now tackling problems with great deal of purpose and determination. (Photo Credit: PTI File)

New Delhi:

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday touched upon how China went on to emerge as the power, it had aspired to become. Jaishankar said India should also start the preparations and take the big learning out of China story that unless a society has mindset to decisively address its current issues, it won't go up in the world.

Asserting the need to look at the China story systematically, the foreign minister said, This China will impact the world more and it is important to understand the thinking of this China.

It is important there is a leader to leader understanding of each other's thinking, added Jaishankar.

Jaishankar, who was addressing an event in Delhi, said India has the less lethargic governance mindset today than it had in the past.

He added that India is now tackling problems with great deal of purpose and determination and not looking to leave problems for the future.

Patting government's back for solving the 'longstanding' issues, the EAM said, Lot of what we are doing today are accumulations of problems we have not addressed. Look at the Citizenship issue, it started 50 years ago, Article 370 went on for 70 years, and the Ayodhya issue. We tended to put it off.

Jaishankar reiterated governments resolve against terrorism as he said that no country became victim of terrorism like India. He said that despite the continuous efforts on the part of terror perpetrators, terrorism should not be normalised.

When Pathankot attack happened even Pakistan accepted who was the perpetrator. On this, this government is very clear who is the victim and who is the perpetrator, said Jaishankar.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
The 77th Golden Globe Awards just took place in Hollywood and we weren't shocked with the results. Well, at least not where Joaquin Phoenix was concerned! The actor won a Golden Globe for best actor in a motion picture drama for his role as a troubled Arthur Fleck in Joker.

While winning the award is one thing, giving one hell of an acceptance speech is another and that's exactly what Phoenix ended up doing at the Beverly Hills Hotel. After acknowledging his fellow nominees in his speech, Phoenix, who has never been keen on award shows as such said- "There is no F***ing best actor".

 Twitter

He also went on to thank Todd Philips, the writer and director of Joker and also said, "I'm such a pain in the ass, I cannot believe you put up with me. in his speech. Even though a lot of his speech was bleeped while he was on stage (since he used a lot of 'F-word'), he nailed the way he delivered every aspect of it. The words chosen and the sentiments behind those words, everything was appreciated not just by the audience present there but by the Twitter world as well.

"Contrary to popular belief I don't want to rock the boat. The boat is fucking rocked," is one of the things he said. Phoenix even talked about climate change where he thanked the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for its meat-free meal, while stating "recognizing and acknowledging the link between animal agriculture and climate change. It's a very bold move, making tonight plant-based,

"We don't have to take private jets to Palm Springs ... I'll try to do better, and I hope you will too." the vegan actor added.

 warner Bros Pictures

Not only did Phoenix think the awards are quite useless in general, he also talked about social issues everyone should be concentrating on currently. And he did all this while still celebrating the work of his fellow nominees. Quite an actor, if I may say so myself! Obviously the Twitter fraternity lauded his speech and praised it to no extent!

Joaquin Phoenix calling out the bullshit of Awards Season and celebrating the work of his fellow nominees! Plus he breaks down while acknowledging Rooney Mara...



THIS IS WHY WE LOVE HIM!!!!!! #GoldenGlobes #FilmTwitter pic.twitter.com/kNWfh1IRj5  Matt Neglia (@NextBestPicture) January 6, 2020

Joaquin Phoenix is giving no fuck in his speech and I'm living!#GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/bYBtNDvJjd  Miguel Parpadeos (@miguelparpadeos) January 6, 2020

Joaquin Phoenix, maybe the actor of his generation, calls out Hollywood, on live television, for using private jets, but then gets cut off by the orchestra. This is why I hate the Globes.  Jordan Ruimy (@mrRuimy) January 6, 2020

Some people weren't truly pleased with his speech.

Joaquin Phoenix's speech is basically a blank mad lib  Kristin Chirico (@lolacoaster) January 6, 2020

can't wait to see Joaquin Phoenix travel to the BAFTAS in a canoe he carved out of reclaimed wood #GoldenGlobes  Matt Oswalt (@MattOswaltVA) January 6, 2020

That room is not feeling Joaquin Phoenix's speech! Yikes! #GoldenGlobes  Chad Darnell (@ChadDarnell) January 6, 2020

I am enjoying everyone in the audience nervously watching Joaquin Phoenix. #GoldenGlobes  DC (@dcb97) January 6, 2020

Everyone in the audience during Joaquin Phoenix's speech #GoldenGIobes pic.twitter.com/9MNHtkxcLH  Austin S. Harris (@austinsharris) January 6, 2020

Joaquin Phoenix: the world is going to hell and we're millionaires I think we can do more than send well wishes



the #GoldenGlobes audience:

pic.twitter.com/vaSYBFY2f9   (@thatsrach) January 6, 2020

And here's some more love for him.

Joaquin Phoenix has officially won the Golden Globe for Best Actor (Drama) for JOKER. I want to fucking cry. Heath Ledger would be so incredibly proud tonight.



Easily the most acclaimed & beloved lead performance of the year. This is Joaquin's Oscar to win. #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/p0YtVzr2o9  Jesabel (@JesabelRaay) January 6, 2020

Joaquin Phoenix is coming for that Oscar. pic.twitter.com/rK5lNlyiEE  Films to Films (@FilmstoFilms_) January 6, 2020

While his speech got a lot of love and hate, we're more concerned about what he's going to come out with in 2020 and whatever it is, we hope it's as good as his role as Arthur Fleck in Joker.
MEXICO CITY - Mexicos national search effort to find tens of thousands of missing people has so far uncovered 1,124 corpses in 873 clandestine burial pits, officials said Monday.

The countrys National Search Commission said that in its first 13 months of work, only about one-third of the bodies found were identified and less than a quarter of the total had been turned over to relatives.

While Mexico faces a backlog of about 40,000 missing-persons cases dating to the countrys 2006-2012 drug war, it also faces a crisis of unclaimed or unidentified bodies.

The government has set up DNA databases to help identify bodies, but the majority of bodies found in clandestine burial pits still go unidentified.

In all, since the 1960s, over 61,000 people have gone missing in Mexico, but the bulk of them vanished during the drug war.

Historically, the highest number of missing  and largest number of body pits  have been registered in the northern border state of Tamaulipas.

Such unmarked pits are frequently used by drug and kidnapping gangs to dispose of the bodies of their victims or rivals.

The commission said about a third of the corpses found the last 13 months were located in just three of the countrys 31 states: the northern state of Sinaloa, the Gulf coast state of Veracruz and the Pacific coast state of Colima.

But many of the most recent cases of disappearances have been centred in the western state of Jalisco, home to the drug cartel of the same name.
Patna: Amid nationwide protests over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Registration of Citizens (NRC), and National Population Register (NPR) Bihar Deputy CM Sushil Modi on Sunday said that the CAA and NRC were here to stay and the process of implementing the NPR will be carried out in Bihar between May 15 to 28.

Speaking at a press conference in Patna, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader accused non-NDA parties of spreading rumors and falsehoods about the CAA in the Muslim community.

"Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and other opposition parties have been engaging in spreading myths and lies about the CAA in the Muslim community. Moreover, some Muslim clerics are also fomenting apprehensions about the CAA by instilling fear among the Muslims. They are being told that India will kick out all Muslims from the country which is an outright lie," the Deputy CM said.

Modi, however, said that the fact that the protests were dying down nationwide indicated people were not buying lies and falsehoods about the CAA anymore and were beginning to realize that it is for the good of the nation and not bad for any community, particularly the Muslims.
And why Selena Gomez changed everything.

Victor Glemaud at his Spring 2020 presentation during New York Fashion Week in September 2019.

In our long-running series "How I'm Making It," we talk to people making a living in the fashion and beauty industries about how they broke in and found success.

Victor Glemaud is a storyteller  in every way, in every medium. He's best known for design, of course, but he's worn a lot of hats throughout his decades-long career in fashion: He's been a design assistant, a PR representative, a studio director, a consultant and, now, a business owner. That means he has plenty of memories, skills and lessons that he's eager to share.



"Today, more than ever, so many people reach out  they DM, I go to talk to young designers at the CFDA  I'm flabbergasted by the amount that people still don't know," he says. "And I feel like in our industry, a lot of information is very proprietary and no one wants to share or give advice. And I just think we have to, because as accessible as so many people claim to be, they're really not. As a creative, your vision is invaluable, but fashion is a village. There's a lot of people involved in the creation of an item, the selling of it, the promotion of it  no one teaches you that."

Glemaud was born in Haiti, raised in New York and educated all over the world. Every gig has taught him something and shaped him into the designer and businessperson he is today. And he's looking forward for what's still to come.

A look from Victor Glemaud's Resort 2020 collection.

"The biggest challenge that I think all brands are facing is that it's a really tough market. And we're going into an election year  I don't think people are thinking about clothes," he says. "It's about how I navigate that cleverly so I can grow, maintain a good balance sheet and cash flow so I can pay my team and pay myself something. And also be excited by what I do creatively, because if I'm not excited, no one's going to be excited about it. My clothes are joyous and optimistic, so I need to be in it and participate. And we've got some good things coming up. I'm not apprehensive. I'm really excited for 2020  but with cautious eyes, if you will."

Story continues

Ahead, read about how Glemaud got his start, what he's learned from his "meandering journey" in fashion, and which celebrity changed everything for his business.

When did you first realize you were interested in fashion?

I always read my sister's magazines  her Elle, her W, her Vogue. It was in high school when I was like, 'I either want to be a chef or I want to go into fashion.' But I also wanted to leave New York. I grew up in Queens, since I was three. So I applied to this school in Providence called Johnson & Wales, which has a culinary arts program, and I also applied to FIT. I got into both, but I went to Providence. And I hated culinary arts  I did not want to be a chef. So I quickly applied for transfer, got back into FIT, and came back to New York. I did not regret going to Providence and trying culinary arts, but I was very certain once I got to FIT this is what I wanted to do.

Once you transferred to FIT, was there anything  any classes or experiences  that confirmed that decision?

I was working checkout at the Dean & DeLuca in SoHo, and I met this designer that I'd read about in the newspaper, Patrick Robinson. I was like, 'I've read about you in the paper, I really like your clothes. I'm studying fashion and I'd love to intern for you.' And he said, 'We don't have any internships coming up, but call the office and see what happens.' I called his office every Friday for six months. Finally, I got through to him, and he's like, 'I don't remember who you are and we can't offer you an internship, but come and work on my show. If we all like you, we can talk.'

I remember my job was to lint-brush the girls' shoes. Gisele and Alek Wek were in the show. I was like, 'Oh my God, this is what I want to do.' That led me to becoming an official intern and that internship led to me becoming a design assistant. I was still at FIT  I was working for him during the day and going to FIT at night and on the weekends. I graduated on time in 2000. I also went out a lot. So I really didn't sleep. It was great.

A look from Victor Glemaud's Resort 2020 collection.

What about that first job sticks with you today?

It taught me on a very small scale about a fashion business. I was an intern, then I was a designer on a very small team. When Patrick wasn't able to do a trunk show, I went to Omaha with the head of sales. It was really about having access to all of the facets of fashion, from sales to the creative, to making the clothes, to the factories, to the atelier. It was really great exposure for someone at 19, 20, 21 years old. And I also learned loyalty because Patrick's always been there for me in my career, and visa versa.

Speaking of all the people that go into making a fashion business, you also worked in PR for some time.

Yeah, my meandering journey. After Patrick I went to work at KCD. Virginia [Smith], his then-girlfriend who was at Calvin Klein at the time and is now his wife and works at Vogue, recommended me. I was carrying a crocodile violin case and a green sweater  I'll never forget my outfit  and it was the middle of summer. By the time I got home [from the interview], there was a message on the answering machine that I had the job.

I worked at KCD for five and a half years. And all the different brands they represented at the time, from Versace with Donatella to Helmut Lang with Helmut Lang  it was so exciting to see the work that was being done in all these different ateliers all over the world and to work on these shows, from men's to couture to ready-to-wear.

I call it my finishing school because it introduced me to all types of clothing construction, from different denim weights at the Gap to the interior construction of a Versace gown. If I went and worked at another place in New York, I would have never experienced and touched and felt those things. It also taught me about the production and the marketing of a show. It introduced me to editors all over the world, to models and model agents, to hair and makeup people backstage. It really introduced me to the fashion industry.

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I moved to Paris with KCD. And the timing was completely in sync: Patrick became the artistic director at Paco Rabanne and asked me, 'Do you want to work with me again?' I jumped at the chance and became studio director at Paco Rabanne. I worked there for three years. Living and working in Paris was such an education in terms of making things, the way of the French working versus the American.

When [my time at Paco Rabanne] ended I launched a menswear collection. It was seven looks that I sold to Colette, Beams in Tokyo, Maxfield in L.A. I had this business and I was like, 'Oh shit, what do I do?' So I quickly packed up, moved to New York and started building it from there. I had that for around four years. To fund it, I started working at Tommy Hilfiger as style director, working on runway collections. I learned how to adhere to brand codes, because [Tommy Hilfiger] is global. Also, something Tommy the person taught me is that timing is everything  you can't be too early, you can't be too late. That was my last full-time job.

A look from Victor Glemaud's Resort 2020 collection.

What made you want to eventually relaunch the brand in 2015, with both men's and women's?

After I stopped working at Tommy, I stopped doing [my own brand]. I shipped my last collection and I had what my parents and I now call my Eat, Pray, Love moment: I went to Vietnam, Cambodia and India. I needed to get out of my head, sort of check my ego and just deal with some things  and I couldn't do it in New York. It remains one of the best trips I've ever taken because I processed closing this business and started to think about what I would do next. I came back from that trip and I was like, 'Okay, I have an idea.'

It took me a couple of years to refine it and to have the confidence to launch again. I had to feel like what I was going to reintroduce was challenging and new to me and exciting for the consumer. I had to make sure I had funding to launch and sustain it for a couple of years. I needed to have a new creative viewpoint and message, because it just couldn't be the same thing. What I realized when I was doing men's was that what sold the best and what people liked were the sweaters. So why not do that?

When I came back, I had three sweaters. I didn't want to do any presentations or fashion shows  which now, four years into the new iteration, I'm doing again, but it's still in my way so we launched it with a street poster campaign and a super fun video for social media. We launched at The Line and they had the exclusive for a year, which gave me time to test the market, the quality and the price. We slowly started launching into wholesale and e-commerce. It built from there to the collection that it is now. And that process would not have happened without, again, my meandering journey, and my being confident about the way I want to do [business].

You first started Victor Glemaud, the label, in 2006. By the time the relaunch came around, a lot about the industry had changed. What were things that you were determined to do differently the second time?

What I wanted to do was really focus on the business strategy. It took me two years to find a factory that was willing, able and interested in doing those slash sweaters at the price I wanted them at. It took me a really long time to find the right yarn that made it work. I wanted to have the proper margin so I could scale this business, and have it be attainable for the consumer. When we do cashmere it gets to around $900, but nothing [in the collection] is ever over $1,000. It's a really versatile, all-season type of knitwear  thats also a challenge for a lot of people in our industry because they don't understand. They're like, 'What do you sell in the summer?' Well, crochet cotton sweaters; with Pre-Fall, bikinis that people are buying. To me, sweaters are like jeans  you wear them all year round.

Do you think people get it now?

They're starting to. And you know when [they started]? After the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, which I did in 2017. It was a great experience, but it was really hard. It forced me to think about Instagram, which I'm not really good at or think about ever  sorry, Eva Chen. And it made me really refine and think about my business. The idea of incorporating curve sizing into my business, that came out of the Fashion Fund. I dressed Ashley Graham and she looked so beautiful and she was so captivating, I was just like 'Oh, there should be more of this in this collection.'

Glemaud during the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Show and Tea at the Chateau Marmont in October 2017.

What impact has curve had on your brand and your business?

It has been really great to the business. We sell a large to an extra-large to wholesale and that's considered curve. It's something I can't really promote through my wholesale partners, and that's why it's a focus for my direct-to-consumer business. I can promote it. I can talk about it. I just really find it exciting. What I sell is confidence. The clothes that I do, you see them on a beautiful girl who's an 18, a 22 or on a girl who's a six or a four  it's the same thing.

Another partnership you've had in recent years is with H&M, with their Met Gala looks. Can you tell me a little bit about it?

In sort of broad terms I can talk about it  that's really a consultancy that came about through one of my bosses at KCD who used to be at H&M. They were going to do the Met and they needed some help. I loved doing it and it led to, this year, dressing my first person under my brand: Dominique Jackson. I had no qualms about doing it. I wasn't really nervous, even though it was my first year, because I'd done it before. So to do this with Dominique, I don't want to say it was easy  it was manageable to me. I had a great time, I loved the way she looked and I can't wait for Met 2020.

Dominique Jackson wearing Glemaud at the 2019 Met Gala.

You've mentioned these celebrity moments that have opened a door in your business. Have there been other milestones that have elevated your brand to a larger platform?

Selena Gomez. Selena Gomez. Selena Gomez.

How so?

She wore a red sweater in Vogue's 73 Questions. It went online on Net-a-Porter a few months later and it sold out. I still get tagged on Instagram. It introduced me to a whole global client base. She's worn [the brand] a few times, but that was the first and it was a game-changer. One of my best friends, Kate Young, styles her and I see the impact that it has now more than ever.

What would you say has been the most influential shift that has happened in the industry since you first went out on your own in 2006?

Well that's easy: social media. My former Net-a-Porter buyer found the collection via Instagram  she DM'd me, I sent the collection to her in London and then they ordered something. That would have been impossible in 2006. The way we communicate and the way people learn about a brand are completely different now. Instagram is your business card. I always say, for me, Instagram is information. When I'm doing a trip, I go on Instagram to look at hotels, restaurants and this and that. I think people do the same thing with clothes.

Your brand has aligned itself with folks who have a point of view, and it centers a lot of people who haven't been centered by the fashion industry in the past.

I always love beauty, whatever shape of form it comes in. I always think back to me being that young gay Haitian kid on the train who was obsessed with fashion, who was allowed to express himself and be free and dress the way I wanted and go out and explore a career path that my parents and my family knew nothing about. But they always supported me and were always there for me. That's what I think about when we have opportunities to dress people. I want to do what's new and what's exciting because it should be exciting.

Glemaud with Indya Moore and Tess Holliday  both wearing Glemaud  at his Fall 2019 presentation during New York Fashion Week in February 2019.

What are the decisions you make as you're building your business to ensure that your brand is inclusive?

To me, it's very instinctual. When I met Indya [Moore], we were passing by each other at the CFDA Awards  we locked eyes, then we came and started chatting with each other. Two nights later, we were sitting next to each other at a gala. From there, I was planning to shoot the Fall 2019 imagery and was introduced to their people. I was like, 'Would you want to do it?' And they came back and said yes. I don't need to ask a panel and get sign-off. I'm confident in the people that I work with. George Cortina always styles everything with me and he's one of my great friends. He told me that Richie Shazam was taking pictures, and Richie has now shot the last few lookbook for us. It's really about trusting the people you work with, liking the things you like and being confident in what you like and don't like. I don't think everything is super, super perfect but I love everything I do. That's what matters.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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UN meeting, to take place at Russias request, is first chance to discuss Libya-Turkey security and maritime agreements.

The United Nations Security Council will meet behind closed doors on Monday about the situation in Libya, as Turkish troops began deploying to the country in a bid to shore up the UN-recognised government in Tripoli.

The meeting, held at Russias request, is formally focused on an international conference on Libya that Germany hopes to organise by months end. So far, no date for the meeting has been announced.

But Mondays talks will be the first chance for Security Council members to discuss controversial security and maritime deals struck by Libya and Turkey in November, and Ankaras subsequent decision to send troops to Libya.

Turkeys move comes after the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord  under sustained attack since renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive in April  made a formal request for military support.

The maritime agreement reached by Tripoli and Ankara gives Turkey rights to large swathes of the Mediterranean where gas reserves have recently been discovered.

Security has broken down in Libya where the Government of National Accord (GNA), which is recognised by the UN, is battling renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar [Ismail Zitouny/Reuters]

That has angered other Mediterranean countries including Greece and Cyprus, that also want to exploit energy resources in the region.

Military school attacked

At least 30 people were killed and 33 others wounded in an air raid on a military school in Tripoli on Saturday, according to the government.

UN diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP they could not rule out the possibility that a council member could raise the issue of Russian mercenaries working to bolster Haftar.

Moscow has denied all responsibility on that front.

On Friday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres renewed his call for an immediate ceasefire in Libya.

Any foreign support to the warring parties will only deepen the ongoing conflict and further complicate efforts to reach a peaceful and comprehensive political solution, he said in a statement.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - U.S. Ambassador John Bass is ending his two-year tenure in Afghanistan Monday as peace talks with the Taliban remain stalled.

The State Department said in a statement Monday that "Ambassador Bass's departure is long-planned and part of the normal rotation cycle."

The departure of the top American diplomat in Afghanistan comes as American and Taliban negotiators are once again trying to revive efforts to reach a peace deal. During a surprise visit to Afghanistan in November, President Donald Trump announced peace efforts had "made tremendous progress."

A peace agreement would pave the way for the withdrawal of thousands of American troops, a key Trump campaign promise. American and Afghan government officials are asking the Taliban to commit to a reduction in violence before talks are formally restarted.

Over the course of Bass's tenure, peace efforts with the Taliban gained steam and at several points a deal appeared imminent.

In September, Taliban and American negotiators agreed on a framework that would have seen the withdrawal of American troops in exchange for a Taliban pledge not to harbor terrorist groups with ambitions to attack the United States. That draft deal was called off by Trump after a Taliban attack killed an American service member.

More recently, after a prisoner swap helped bring the two sides back to the negotiating table, a Dec. 11 Taliban attack on the highly fortified U.S. Bagram air base derailed talks once again.

"My earnest hope is for leaders and citizens across this country to find strength in unity, put aside their differences, and work together to negotiate a political settlement with the Taliban. Afghans and this beautiful country deserve nothing less," Bass said in a farewell message posted to Twitter on Monday.

While efforts to reach a peace deal were the most high-profile diplomatic effort during Bass's tenure, the ambassador spoke out against corruption and publicly criticized Afghanistan's main intelligence agency for employing "Soviet-style tactics."

Bass recently said he was "disturbed" by reports that a former bank manager convicted of multimillion-dollar fraud was moved from prison to house arrest after making a large campaign donation to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

"This action, along with the continued failure to execute warrants for those accused of corruption, calls into question the government's commitment to combating #corruption and making best use of donors' support," Bass said in a tweet. His comments were met with swift criticism from the Afghan president's office.

A career Foreign Service officer, Bass served as U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 2014 to 2017, U.S. ambassador to Georgia from 2009 to 2012, and in U.S. missions in Iraq, Italy, Belgium and Chad, according to his State Department biography.

"As diplomats we rarely stay long enough in a country to see and experience the whole story. We arrive in the middle of a tale and we learn about the chapters we missed," Bass said in a farewell video posted to the U.S. Embassy Kabul Facebook page. Bass added that no one "knows how this story, this chapter in the larger tale of this country and its people will end," but he said hopes for a more peaceful future.

The State Department announced Ambassador Ross Wilson has been named charge d'affaires until a new ambassador is confirmed and is expected to arrive in Kabul soon. Deputy Chief of Mission Karen Decker will serve as charge until Wilson's arrival.
The US has been forced to deny it is planning to pull its military out of Iraq after a poorly-worded draft letter leaked online.

The letter, which was not signed but was printed on the letterhead of Brig Gen William Seely, alerted Iraqi military colleagues of repositioning over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement.

It said there would be an increase in helicopter travel around the Green Zone and added, in reference to the Iraqi parliaments vote to demand that US forces leave the country following Washingtons killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani: We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure.

Coalition forces would take steps to ensure that the movement out of Iraq is conducted in a safe and efficient manner, the memo continued.

Amid confusion that reverberated around the world, US defence secretary Mark Esper told reporters at the Pentagon he knew nothing about the letter. Theres been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq, he said. He also told reporters the US remained committed to the fight against Isis, in Iraq and elsewhere.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

Minutes after that hastily-arranged briefing Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, returned to tell reporters: Heres the bottom line, this was a mistake. Nobodys leaving. He called the missive poorly worded and said it wrongly implied a wider withdrawal.

Brig Gen Seelys intent had been to advise his Iraqi colleagues of increased movement of US troops around Iraq, Gen Milley said.

When reporters first began asking press office staff about the letters authenticity, it became apparent the presidents own employees were once again caught unawares about what appeared to be a major development in the events following Donald Trumps decision to order the targeted killing of Soleimani.

White House spokespersons were unable to immediately confirm the documents provenance, but sources close to the administration suggested it had been leaked prematurely.

The confusion appeared to underscore the fact that the presidents order had caught many in the administration by surprise, and were scrambling to handle the fall out and repercussions.

Over the weekend, the Iraqi parliament voted for the removal of US forces from the country, something Mr Trump responded to by threatening massive sanctions on Baghdad.

Meanwhile, Iran said it was no longer observing any of the undertaking it made in regards to limiting uranium enrichment as part of the 2015 nuclear deal, that Mr Trump pulled the US out of last year and reimposed sanctions.

Alyssa Farah, a Pentagon spokesperson, later tweeted: There has been no change in US policy with regard to our force presence in Iraq. We continue to consult with the Iraqi government regarding the defeat-Isis mission and efforts to support the Iraqi Security Forces.

In his briefing, Mr Esper also suggested to reporters the US would never target any of Irans cultural sites in any possible strikes, something that Mr Trump had raised over the weekend.

We will follow the laws of armed conflict, he said.
US President Donald Trump on Sunday vowed "major retaliation" if Tehran launches attacks to avenge the killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, ratcheting up fears of a spiralling conflict.

Trump, speaking on Air Force One on his way back to Washington, also said he would impose "very big sanctions" on Iraq if it follows through on a parliament vote in support of US troops being expelled from the country amid anger over the death of Soleimani in a drone strike near Baghdad's international airport.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The opening of London's Crossrail project has been delayed once again as the completion date was pushed back another six months to late 2021.

Transport for London confirmed today that the central London section would not open until Autumn 2021 at the earliest, meaning the whole project will be three years behind schedule.

The project, Europe's biggest ongoing infrastructure scheme, has been cursed with delays and is now estimated to cost more than 18billion.

TfL commissioner Mike Brown told the London Assembly today that more time was needed to test trains before the scheme, to be called the Elizabeth line, could open.

Once up and running, the line will run from Reading and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.

Workers walk along a Crossrail tunnel that heads off in a north easterly direction towards Stratford from the Stepney Green shaft in east London

A walkway for the new Elizabeth Line at Liverpool Street station in London as the latest developments in the Crossrail project continue

Crossrail will run from Reading/Heathrow in the west to Shenfield/Abbey Wood in the east

Stage 4 of the scheme, in which trains coming from Shenfield begin running through the central tunnels, could take place in May 2022.

Meanwhile Stage 5, when trains from Reading/Heathrow come through the central tunnels, could take place in December 2022.

Today, a TfL spokesperson told MailOnline: 'The Crossrail team continues to make progress completing the railway and is moving forward with the complex testing of the signalling and train systems so that the railway can be handed over safely and reliably for passenger service.

As Crossrail Ltd previously announced, the Elizabeth line will open as soon as practically possible in 2021.

'As part of our annual business planning process, we have made some prudent assumptions including that the central section of the railway could open in autumn 2021, but continue to support Crossrail Ltd in delivering the railway as soon as possible.

'Crossrail Ltd continue to refine their delivery schedule and will provide an update in the coming weeks.'

In November, Crossrail chief executive Mark Wild revealed that the cost of the railway could reach 18.25billion.

It would represent an increase of up to 650million on the previous funding total agreed by Mayor Sadiq Khan, the Government and Transport for London.

Crossrail's budget was set at 15.9billion in 2007.

The railway was initially due to be completed in December 2018, but this date was missed due to a series of problems.

A new plan to open between October 2020 and March 2021 was announced in April.

One of the platforms for the new Elizabeth Line at Paddington station in London is pictured ahead of its opening in 2021

The entrance hall for the new Elizabeth Line at Whitechapel station in east London is shown under development

This graphic shows the progress made so far - but the the of the railway could reach 18.25 billion

Billed as Europe's most ambitious infrastructure project, the line running under London was meant to open in December 2018 with significant faster journey times.

But the project  which was first suggested in the 1940s - was delayed before the original launch because of problems with testing and delays to signalling work.

Mr Wild had previously announced that the railway would open between October 2020 and March 2021.

All stations on this section are expected to be in operation on the opening day except for Bond Street, which is delayed because of 'design and delivery challenges'.

Full services from Reading and Heathrow in the west to Abbey Wood and Shenfield in the east will commence 'as soon as possible', according to Crossrail Ltd.
The Ghanian government says it will proceed with caution before adopting the single currency proposed by the Economic Community of Wes...





The Ghanian government says it will proceed with caution before adopting the single currency proposed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)  days after endorsing the adoption of Eco by eight countries in the subregion.





At its 55th ordinary session in July, the heads of the 15-member countries had agreed to launch ECO, its proposed single currency, in 2020.





The community also agreed that a flexible currency regime will be adopted.





But in a statement on Friday, the Bank of Ghana said there are several unresolved issues regarding the common currency which requires time to settle.





The apex bank said this while justifying its introduction of new higher Ghana cedi denomination banknotes, which have been described in some quarters as an ambush.





It said the Ghanian government will work with ECOWAS to ensure a sustainable and viable currency.





Furthermore it has been alleged that the expenditure is a waste in the context of a new Eco currency in 2020. The Bank of Ghana would want to clarify that although the Government of Ghana is committed to do all it can to join the West African common currency arrangement, there are many unresolved issues regarding the common currency, which would take time to resolve, the statement read.





The Bank of Ghana will be working with ECOWAS Central banks to ensure that any currency arrangement will be viable and sustainable.





On December 21, eight countries namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo, announced that they would be changing from the CFA Franc to Eco.





The countries, which are all French colonies except Guinea-Bissau, severed financial links to France with the decision.





In Nigeria, Zainab Ahmed, the minister of finance, budget and national planning, said the country is still working on the next course of action on the adoption of the single currency.




The precise causes of dyslexia remain a mystery, though research out of France two years ago suggests the condition occurs when someone has two dominant eyes, rather than the usual one. This means letters appear mirrored or blurred, making it difficult to read. The Lexilight lamp tackles this problem with LEDs -- it pulses at a customizable rate, enabling the brain to process information from a single "dominant" eye and clearing up mashed-together letters instantly.

The Lexilight is completely adjustable -- knobs on the back of the light change the pulsation, allowing users to find the rhythm that works for them.

Lexilight

Lexilife is a new company out of France, and it's showing off the Lexilight at CES 2020. The lamp itself is available now in Europe and will come to the United States soon, according to Lexilife founder Jean-Baptiste Fontes. It costs 549, and is available for a free 30-day trial.

Lexilife partners with dyslexia support organizations, and it's tested the lamp on more than 300 people with dyslexia. Ninety percent of them found it improved their reading abilities.
Elizabeth Warren has secured the endorsement of a former opponent in the 2020 presidential race.

Former HUD Secretary Julian Castro announced his endorsement of the Massachusetts senator Monday morning.

Elizabeth and I share a vision of America where everyone counts," Castro wrote in a tweet. "An America where peoplenot the wealthy or well-connectedare put first. Im proud to join her in the fight for big, structural change.

In a tweet, Warren thanked him for his support and commended his campaign. Youve been a powerful voice for bold, progressive change and Im honored to have your support. Together, well fight to make sure every single family in America has a path to opportunity.

Today I'm proud to endorse @ewarren for president.



Elizabeth and I share a vision of America where everyone counts. An America where peoplenot the wealthy or well-connectedare put first. I'm proud to join her in the fight for big, structural change. pic.twitter.com/xDvMEKqpF3  Julian Castro (@JulianCastro) January 6, 2020

Castro announced he was ending his presidential campaign on Thursday.

Ive determined that it simply isnt our time, he said in a video released to wrap up his yearlong campaign. Today its with a heavy heart, and profound gratitude, that I will suspend my campaign for president.

Castro was the sole Latino candidate in the Democratic presidential campaign.
Just a couple of weeks after Island Beach State Park officials put out a call for discarded Christmas trees to help build sand dunes, they announced Monday morning the response has been overwhelming.

Park officials had hoped to get about 200 trees. They got more than 2,000 instead, New Jersey State Parks officials said on the departments Facebook page.

Due to the huge response, they announced they could use some additional help.

We invite you all back to Island Beach State Park this Saturday, January 11, at 8 a.m. to assist us in moving and placing these trees to predetermined areas on the dunes, parks officials said.

These donated trees will help to improve our dune system by filling in areas where dune growth is needed the most. The trees help to capture sand that is blown and grows the dune at a much faster rate than they would naturally.

Members of the public who wish to help with the project can pre-register through the New Jersey State Parks for the event.

Thank you to everyone who donated their Christmas tree to Island Beach State Park this weekend. The park had a goal to... Posted by New Jersey State Parks, Forests & Historic Sites on Monday, January 6, 2020

Jenna Wise may be reached at jwise@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JennaRWise. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips.

Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters.
Benzer Pharmacy Team, QualityCare Pharmacies & AshHEALTH LLC. We are thrilled that QualityCare Pharmacies has joined our GPO Model. Benzer offers a pharmacy support program aimed at transitioning population health across its member base into remuneration for every member affiliate. Tonya Shackelford, Benzer Pharmacy, President

Tonya Shackelford, Benzer Pharmacy, President, We are thrilled that QualityCare Pharmacies has joined our GPO Model. QualityCare members will benefit from the comprehensive healthcare program and preferred pricing and pharmacy management model driven through Benzer. Not to mention, Benzer offers a pharmacy support program aimed at transitioning population health across its member base into remuneration for every member affiliate.

QualityCare Pharmacies has nearly 800 members that will now qualify to receive first rate prescription drug pricing and value-based care support services offered through Benzer Pharmacy Group Healthcare Hub of Programs.

After an extensive search, we chose Benzer Pharmacy Group because of its commitment and proven track-record with its own stores to help our members grow their pharmacy business states, Lanny Doud, Executive Director, QualityCare Pharmacies. Doud also adds, Its a difficult climate for independent pharmacy, we needed options for our members and Benzer offers that. They have built their pharmacy operations and support infrastructure around value-based care, this is a model our members need in order to increase patient traffic, win preferred employer and insurer contracts and enhance the value added patient services expected by our members.

The companies acknowledged AshHEALTH LLC. founded by industry power broker, Ashton Maaraba for facilitating the transaction and for its outstanding leadership throughout the process.

About Benzer Pharmacy Group

Founded in 2009, Benzer Pharmacy is a chain of independent retail pharmacies specializing in compounding and specialty medication. Currently, there are 82 corporate-owned and 34 franchise locations situated throughout 29 states, including Florida, Michigan, Virginia, West Virginia, North

Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, Nevada, Louisiana, New York, Missouri, Mississippi, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, and Idaho. Projections call for continued rapid growth as the organization seeks to substantially increase its customer base, while ensuring experiences match expectations at every touchpoint.

Benzer Pharmacy has made four straight appearances on Inc. 5,000 list of the fastest growing private companies in America from 2015-2018; correspondingly, the company earned 39th place on the 2015 Florida Fast 100 list, while concurrently placing 67th on the 2015 TBBJ 200 list of Tampa Bay's largest private companies. Benzer was also voted favorite pharmacy in the 2015 Best of Fuquay Varina in North Carolina, and achieved PCAB compounding accreditation with Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC). All Benzer Pharmacy medications require a doctor's prescription. To learn more about Benzer Pharmacy visit http://www.benzerpharmacy.com.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BenzerPharmacy

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/benzerpharmacy

Instagram: https://instagram.com/benzer_pharmacy

SOURCE: Benzer Pharmacy

About QualityCare Pharmacies

QualityCare Pharmacies is a Buying Group servicing Independent Pharmacy in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Through our partnerships we are able to offer an aggressive cost of goods along with significant rebate potential. We collect and return rebates based on compliant purchasing on branded Rx, generic compliance, plus many other vendor related categories.

Our current membership stands at 793 members and we have given back $92,633,619 in rebates since 1989. To learn more about QualityCare Pharmacies visit https://www.qcpharmacies.com/

About AshHEALTH LLC.

AshHEALTH LLC. aims to grow your Health & Wellness driven business, brand, product, service, identity and government affairs. AshHEALTH brokers opportunities for companies offering unique synergies, or those unable to gain market penetration, or faced with a struggling business in a competitive environment. To learn more about AshHEALTH LLC go to http://www.AshHEALTH.FIT
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With more than 150,000 company formations in the last 15+ years, Incfile is the name to know when looking to create an LLC,

TopConsumerReviews.com recently awarded their highest ranking to Incfile, an industry leader in LLC Formation services.

For most small business owners, one of the first steps needed to protect and grow their company is to create an LLC. Forming an LLC helps limit liability and protect assets, but without the hassles associated with the bigger step of incorporation. While the process of LLC formation isnt overly difficult, its essential that businesses check off all of the required boxes, such as registering the company name and filing documentation in their state of operation, to ensure that their legal protection is fully in place. For that reason, many business owners turn to services that assist with LLC formation: for an affordable fee, these services walk clients through each and every step necessary to create their LLCs, making sure that nothing gets overlooked. However, these LLC creation services vary widely with respect to whats included in their fees and the amount of help they offer, so its important to read the fine print carefully before signing on as a client.

With more than 150,000 company formations in the last 15+ years, Incfile is the name to know when looking to create an LLC, according to Brian Dolezal of TopConsumerReviews.com, LLC. While there are lots of reputable services on the market, Incfile gives you the most for your money, even at their most basic level of service: its hard to find LLC formation services that include lifetime customer support, unlimited name availability searches, and even activation of Google AdWords, but youll get all that and more with this provider. Previous clients have given Incfile glowing praise for their knowledgeable customer service representatives, speed in handling all of the required steps to form an LLC, and the overall simplicity of the entire process. For all of these reasons, Incfile emerges as the clear winner among LLC formation companies in 2020.

To find out more about Incfile and other LLC Formation services, including reviews and comparison rankings, please visit the LLC Formation category of TopConsumerReviews.com at https://www.topconsumerreviews.com/forming-an-llc/.

About Incfile

Incfile was founded in 2004 and headquartered in Houston, Texas. Since its inception, the company has assisted more than 250,000 entrepreneurs and small business owners form their businesses. All of Incfiles staff has at least 6 years of experience with incorporating new businesses. Incfiles mission is to provide a superior user experience at an unparalleled value.

About TopConsumerReviews.com

TopConsumerReviews.com, LLC is a leading provider of reviews and rankings for thousands of consumer products and services. From LLC Formation to Company Incorporation and Trademark Registration, TopConsumerReviews.com delivers in-depth product evaluations in order to make purchasing decisions easier.
Slayback Pharma LLC on Monday said private equity firm Everstone Group will invest up to USD 50 million (about Rs 355 crore) in the pharmaceutical company.

The new capital will be used to expand and further accelerate Slayback's pipeline of complex generic and specialty pharmaceutical products, the firms said in a joint statement.

Prior to this, institutional investor KKR invested USD 60 million in Slayback in December 2016, the statement added.

Managing directors of Everstone Group -- Arjun Oberoi and Puncham Mukim -- will also join Slayback's board of directors, it said.

Everstone Group co-founder and CEO Sameer Sain said, "Slayback's expertise in complex generics fits well with our healthcare investment strategy. Slayback joins our list of notable healthcare investments, and we are optimistic about the commercial potential of Slayback's highly differentiated pipeline of complex generics developed by its strong R&D team in India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
THE Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) dubbed Monday, January 6, Vice President Leni Robredo's assessment of the government's campaign against illegal drugs as a mere political attack against President Rodrigo Duterte.

Robredo, in a press briefing Monday, revealed her recommendations and suggestions on the government's war on drugs, which she said was a "failure" despite all the resources and budget given by the Duterte administration.

In her report, Robredo said that based on data from the PDEA, the drug war has only eradicated about one percent of the total supply of shabu (methamphetamine hydrochloride) in the country in the last three years.

She also said that there is a need for the government to change its strategy, stressing that instead of going after small-time pushers and users, the government must hunt down drug lords and determine the source of illegal drugs to solve the problem.

PDEA Director Aaron Aquino said Robredo's statement is "saddening."

"Eighteen days as Icad (Inter-Agency Council on Illegal Drugs co-chairman, yet she has dismissed and ignored all of our governments accomplishments and efforts for the past three years... I see her recommendations as a mere political attack against President Rodrigo Duterte," Aquino said in a statement.

Robredo was appointed by Duterte as Icad co-chairperson in November 2019. She was however fired by the President four days after he said he does not trust her. She served as anti-drugs czar for only 18 days.

As far as PDEA is concerned, the metrics for the success of the anti-illegal drug campaign is drug clearing, crime index, trust rating and operational accomplishments, added Aquino.

He cited the over 16,000 barangays that have been cleared from illegal drug menace; the decline of crime incidents from 11,860 in July 2016 to 5,000 in July 2019, as reported by the Philippine National Police (PNP); and the 82 percent satisfaction rating by the Filipinos on war on drugs based on the survey conducted by the Social Weather Station (SWS) on September.

Story continues

Aquino also noted the trust rating of Duterte, which he called as the author of the illegal drug war, that was at its peak at 87 percent last December and the seizure of over P45 billion worth of illegal drugs from 2016 to 2019 from the 162,987 operations with 225,284 arrest of drug personalities.

Ibig sabihin tama ang ginagawa ng ating National Government. Gusto ng tao ang ginagawa ng Pangulong Duterte sa program kontra illegal na droga. How can she claim its a failure? said Aquino.

Yes, there are still shortcomings and flaws to the illegal drug programs, particularly on rehabilitation but that is what Icad is addressing now. As one working committee, he added.

Robredo also said earlier that the Icad failed to perform because it was chaired by the PDEA.

Nirerekomenda ko na ilipat sa Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) ang chairmanship ng Icad. Ang DDB ang mas may kakayahang magplano ng pangkalahatang mga programa kung saan tutulong ang bawat miyembro ng Icad, she said.

(I recommend the transfer of the Icad chairmanship to the Dangerous Drugs Board, which has the capability to plan all the programs that the Icad members can help with.)

Kung sila ang pinuno ng Icad, magiging mas balanse ang kampanya at lahat ng aspeto ay matutugunan... Pag PDEA kasi, law enforcement. Yon siguro yong isang failure ng Icad, na yong chairmanship niya binigay niya sa PDEA.... Kung DDB, ang tingin namin, yong perspektibo mas malawak, mas strategic yong pagplano ng programa, Robredo added.

(If DDB chairs the Icad, the campaign against illegal drugs will be more balanced and all aspects will be addressed, because if it's PDEA, it's all law enforcement. The perspective would be wider and the planning of programs will be more strategic if DDB chairs it.) (With LMY/SunStar Philippines)
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Linkedin Maria Antonova (Agence France-Presse) Moscow, Russia  Mon, January 6, 2020 20:07 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c32115143 2 Environment Russia,climate,climate-crisis,environment Free

The Russian government has published a plan to adapt the economy and population to climate change, aiming to mitigate damage but also "use the advantages" of warmer temperatures.

The document, published on the government website on Saturday, outlines a plan of action and admits that changes in the climate have had a "prominent and increasing effect" on socioeconomic development, people's lives, health and industry.

Russia is warming 2.5 times quicker than the planet on average, and the two-year "first stage" plan is an indication that the government officially recognizes this as a problem, even though President Vladimir Putin denies that human activity is the cause.

It lists preventive measures such as dam building or switching to more drought-resistant crops, as well as crisis preparations including emergency vaccinations or evacuations in case of a disaster.

The plan is needed to "lower the losses and use the advantages".

It says climate change poses risks to public health, endangers permafrost, increases the likelihood of infections and natural disasters. It also can lead to different species being pushed out of their usual habitats.

Possible "positive" effects are decreased energy use in cold regions, expanding agricultural areas and navigational opportunities in the Arctic ocean.

Read also: Weak Arctic ice sees 56 polar bears descend on Russian village

Unseasonably warm Christmas

The document lays the groundwork for various agencies and stresses the need for more research on economic vulnerabilities, without detailing financing.

Among a list of 30 measures, the government will calculate risks of Russian products becoming uncompetitive and failing to meet new climate-related standards as well as prepare new educational materials to teach climate change in schools.

Russia is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, with vast Arctic regions and infrastructure built over permafrost. Recent floods and wildfires have been among the planet's worst climate-related disasters.

Russia formally adopted the Paris climate accord in September of last year and criticized the US withdrawal from the pact.

Putin however has repeatedly denied the scientific consensus that climate change is primarily caused by man-made emissions, blaming it last month on some "processes in the universe".

He has also criticized Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, painting her as an uninformed impressionable teenager possibly being "used" in someone's interests.

He also voiced skepticism on numerous occasions about solar and wind energy, expressing alarm about the danger of turbines to birds and worms, causing them to "come out of the ground" by vibrating.

While there is evidence of that large wind-power installations can pose a risk to birds, known research does not suggest they harm worms.

On Sunday, Russia's meteorological service predicted temperatures up to 16 degrees Celsius higher than normal Monday and Tuesday, when Russia celebrates Orthodox Christmas.

"Weather on Christmas will be warmer than normal almost on the entire Russian territory," it said on its website.

The service said temperatures were expected to be four to eight degrees higher than normal in the European part of the country, and 10 to 16 degrees higher beyond the Urals.
Biocon share price fell nearly 5 percent intraday on January 6 after the firm sold a minority stake in biopharmaceutical arm to True North.

As per the company's press release, True North has acquired 2.44 percent stake in Biocon Biologics for Rs 536.25 crore.

"This investment is an endorsement of the value that Biocon Biologics has demonstrated as a global biosimilars player, having commercialised three of its molecules in developed markets like EU, US, Japan and Australia. This is at an important inflection point as we gain commercial success with our first wave of Biosimilar products and invest in the long term through broadening our pipeline, expanding our manufacturing capacity and increasing our commercial footprint," said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairperson & Managing Director, Biocon in the press release.

Biocon Biologics is a fully-integrated "pure-play" biosimilars organisation globally committed to transforming patient lives through innovative and inclusive healthcare solutions. It is engaged in developing high-quality, affordable biosimilars aimed at expanding patient access to a cutting-edge class of therapies across the world.

At 1505 hrs, Biocon down 3.9 percent at Rs 289.2 on the NSE.
A man has been arrested for selling his 12-year-old daughter for less than 5 to a man in Pakistan who then tried to rape her.

Police in Kasur in the Pakistani province of Punjab also arrested the man who bought the young girl for 500 Pakistani rupees, the equivalent of 2.45.

The mother of the girl told police her husband had called a man to their house and let him abuse their daughter after receiving the money.

A man has been arrested for selling his 12-year-old daughter for less than 5 to a man in Pakistan who then tried to rape her (stock image)

She was at work when the horrifying incident took place, Dawn News reported.

Her daughter then told her about what had taken place when she returned after the suspects had escaped.

She was given a medical examination and concluded an attempted rape had taken place.

The man who paid the money to assault the girl had previously been charged with child abuse in 2013 but was let off without punishment.

The mother of the girl told police her husband had called a man to their house and let him abuse their daughter after receiving the money (stock)

Police charged the pair with rape as well as buying and selling for the purposes of prostitution.

A list in Kasur also went viral on social media which named more than a hundred touts in the district - men who are patrons of prostitution.

The list includes names of local political figures, lawyers and reporters.
Feintool International Holding AG (VTX:FTON), which is in the machinery business, and is based in Switzerland, saw significant share price movement during recent months on the SWX, rising to highs of CHF62.20 and falling to the lows of CHF54.50. Some share price movements can give investors a better opportunity to enter into the stock, and potentially buy at a lower price. A question to answer is whether Feintool International Holding's current trading price of CHF59.60 reflective of the actual value of the small-cap? Or is it currently undervalued, providing us with the opportunity to buy? Lets take a look at Feintool International Holdings outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if there are any catalysts for a price change.

View our latest analysis for Feintool International Holding

What is Feintool International Holding worth?

Good news, investors! Feintool International Holding is still a bargain right now. Ive used the price-to-earnings ratio in this instance because theres not enough visibility to forecast its cash flows. The stocks ratio of 15.71x is currently well-below the industry average of 24.52x, meaning that it is trading at a cheaper price relative to its peers. Although, there may be another chance to buy again in the future. This is because Feintool International Holdings beta (a measure of share price volatility) is high, meaning its price movements will be exaggerated relative to the rest of the market. If the market is bearish, the companys shares will likely fall by more than the rest of the market, providing a prime buying opportunity.

What kind of growth will Feintool International Holding generate?

SWX:FTON Past and Future Earnings, January 6th 2020

Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Although value investors would argue that its the intrinsic value relative to the price that matter the most, a more compelling investment thesis would be high growth potential at a cheap price. With profit expected to grow by a double-digit 15% over the next couple of years, the outlook is positive for Feintool International Holding. It looks like higher cash flow is on the cards for the stock, which should feed into a higher share valuation.

Story continues

What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? Since FTON is currently undervalued, it may be a great time to increase your holdings in the stock. With an optimistic outlook on the horizon, it seems like this growth has not yet been fully factored into the share price. However, there are also other factors such as capital structure to consider, which could explain the current undervaluation.

Are you a potential investor? If youve been keeping an eye on FTON for a while, now might be the time to make a leap. Its prosperous future outlook isnt fully reflected in the current share price yet, which means its not too late to buy FTON. But before you make any investment decisions, consider other factors such as the track record of its management team, in order to make a well-informed investment decision.

Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters  the fundamentals  before you make a decision on Feintool International Holding. You can find everything you need to know about Feintool International Holding in the latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in Feintool International Holding, you can use our free platform to see my list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
The following editorial appears in The Washington Post:

- - -

The first results of the killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani have not been positive for the United States. On Sunday, the Iraqi parliament voted to expel U.S. troops from the country. In Tehran, the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced it would no longer observe controls on its uranium enrichment. Millions of Iranians meanwhile took to the streets to mourn Soleimani, providing the regime with a nationalist boost and setting the stage for likely acts of retaliation.

These consequences could be mitigated or even reversed, if President Donald Trump and his administration act wisely. Yet Trump has so far done the reverse, issuing bombastic threats, hinting at a desire to commit war crimes and mocking congressional powers. If "deescalation" is actually the administration's aim, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insists, then the president is actively thwarting it.

Tehran's first reponses to the killing of its most powerful military figure appeared carefully tempered. In announcing it would enrich uranium without restriction, the regime said it could return to controls if U.S. sanctions were lifted. So far, it has not broken relations with the U.N. inspectors who monitor its nuclear activities, meaning that whatever it does will be subject to reporting.

Similarly, the vote by Iraq's parliament on ejecting the 5,000 U.S. troops in the country was non-binding, though the U.S. commander in Iraq notified the government Monday that troops were being repositioned for a possible withdrawal. Acting Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi supports the measure, but he resigned from his post weeks ago and may not be able to implement it.

Preserving the U.S. position in Iraq will require skillful diplomacy. Yet Trump's response to the parliamentary vote was to crudely threaten "very big sanctions" on Iraq if "they do anything we think is inappropriate." That will only make it difficult for potential defenders of the U.S. deployment to resist what will surely be strong pressure from Iran to follow through on the expulsion.

Similarly, it ought to be a primary aim to coax the Khameini regime toward diplomacy, rather than further escalation. Yet Trump is provocatively promising to target 52 sites inside Iran, including some "important . . . to Iranian culture," in the event of any retaliatory attacks on Americans. When critics pointed out that strikes on cultural sites would be war crimes, the president doubled down. Meanwhile he informed Congress that his tweets would serve as notice under the War Powers Act that he would respond to any Iranian acts "perhaps in a disproportionate manner" - a claim that ought to make Republicans as well as Democrats bridle.

Trump may believe this bluster will deter Iranian action. It almost certainly won't. But it may end up ensnaring the United States in the full-scale war with the Islamic republic that the president says he does not want. Iran meanwhile may return to the dangerous course of uranium enrichment that was restrained by the 2015 nuclear deal that Trump rashly discarded. If Iran succeeds in expelling the United States from Iraq, its strategic position in the Middle East will be stronger than ever.

The way to avoid these outcomes is to work with allies and other intermediaries to offer Iran a diplomatic solution, before the slide toward war becomes irreversible. In short, what's needed is Pompeo's "deescalation," not Trump's reckless threats.
Foreign Ministry emphasized that Ukraine is ready, if necessary, to provide assistance to Australian people

The Ukrainian Embassy in Australia sorts out possible presence of Ukrainians among those affected by large-scale forest fires on the continent. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine reports.

"In Ukraine, they are watching the development of the situation with deep sorrow; it remains critical and has led to a significant number of victims, as well as dozens of missing people as a result of large-scale forest fires in Australia," the report said.

The agency expressed condolences to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to all the victims and the rescue services and firefighters participating in the elimination of the tragic consequences of the natural disaster.

"The Australian government is taking all necessary measures to minimize the effects of fires. For its part, the Ukrainian government is ready to provide assistance to the friendly Australian people, if necessary," the Ministry added.

They also emphasized that the Ukrainian Embassy in Australia is in constant contact with government and local authorities, including to determine the presence of Ukrainian citizens among the victims.

As we reported, The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry responded to criticism of Poland and Israel about honoring Stepan Bandera and a number of people who collaborated with the Nazis, citing the revival of "national memory."
In 2012, Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick raises his wife Kathy's hand in triumph after winning re-election. Read more

Michael G. Fitzpatrick, 56, a longtime Republican politician who rose from Bucks County commissioner to congressman, and whose nonconsecutive terms reflected two of the biggest electoral waves of the last quarter-century, died Monday, Jan. 6, after a battle with cancer.

His death was confirmed by the office of his brother, U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.

My heart is broken. My big brother Mike was my hero and my best friend, Brian Fitzpatrick tweeted, referencing his brothers 12-year battle with cancer. Mike has forever touched the lives of so many in our community.

During a time of increasing political polarization, Michael Fitzpatrick, of Levittown, was known as a relatively moderate Republican and was popular in his Bucks County district. Representing what was then the 8th District, Rep. Fitzpatrick served from 2005 to 2007 before losing his seat to Patrick Murphy in the 2006 Democratic wave spurred by unrest over the Iraq War. But he won the seat back in 2010 amid the rise of the Tea Party, and held it from 2011 to 2017, serving four terms in total.

Citing a belief in term limits, Rep. Fitzpatrick did not seek reelection in 2016. His brother ran instead and currently holds the seat.

His death drew remembrances from politicians across the state and from the state Republican Party. Gov. Tom Wolf, who said Rep. Fitzpatrick fought to make our communities stronger, ordered flags on all public buildings lowered to half-staff.

Mike proved time and again that it is possible to work across the aisle to make progress while remaining true to ones principles," said Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

Rep. Fitzpatrick had been diagnosed with colon cancer in 2008. He was in remission in 2010 when he ran for Congress again.

I worked for him when he bounced back and made his second run, said Rep. Fitzpatricks longtime campaign strategist, Michael J. Hudome. He talked about how grateful he was to have a second chance. It was inspiring.

In 2016, Rep. Fitzpatrick underwent surgery after a cancer screening. His battle with cancer had continued in recent years, those who knew him said.

Many dont appreciate that he fought gravely for years dealing with the implications of his cancer," said former Rep. Pat Meehan, a Delaware County Republican who served in Congress with Rep. Fitzpatrick. Throughout it, he was an outstanding representative who really knew his district and took a courageous and independent position on many issues.

In Washington, Rep. Fitzpatrick focused on issues that included medical device safety, abortion, the banking reform debate, and end-of-life care. He also chaired a committee that developed legislation to address terrorism financing, pushed for cancer research funding, and advocated for victims of 9/11.

He was instrumental in opening the Washington Crossing National Cemetery for veterans in Upper Makefield Township. That was his legacy issue, Meehan said, which will last in perpetuity.

While he supported Republican priorities such as repealing the Affordable Care Act and lowering taxes and spending, Rep. Fitzpatrick often joined a small handful of more centrist House members in resisting the most far-reaching policies and confrontational tactics of the partys ascendant right wing. He was also one of a handful of moderates who often broke with the partys more conservative bloc to end repeated fiscal standoffs with the Obama administration, reopen the government after a shutdown in 2013, and provide an aid package after Hurricane Sandy.

The former congressman was the epitome of a northeastern Republican back in the day, said Hudome, the strategist.

Its a shame to see that strain of our party go the way of the past, Hudome said. There arent that many guys like Fitz in Congress. Moderate, easy to get along with.

Hudome called Rep. Fitzpatrick a solid guy, a classic Bucks County Irishman, and a family man first and foremost. And he was a straight shooter, Hudome said: You just knew exactly where he stood on things."

Murphy, who beat Rep. Fitzpatrick in 2006 and then lost the seat to him in 2010, said they both tried to be gracious in victory and defeat. He called Rep. Fitzpatrick a tireless and tough campaigner.

Our nation lost a true patriot, Murphy said. Mike Fitzpatrick was a champion for our beloved Bucks County. No one worked harder than Mike.

Rep. Fitzpatrick grew up in Levittown in a family of 10, graduating from Bishop Egan High School as an Eagle Scout. He attended St. Thomas University in Miami, and received a law degree from Dickinson School of Law.

He ran for the state House from Bucks County in 1990 and 1994, losing both times, and then became a county commissioner in 1995. He served for almost a decade before running for Congress. Rep. Fitzpatrick also practiced law with various firms in Bucks County.

He exemplifies the kind of public servant that was in it for the right reasons, Meehan said, and in time, his legacy will be appreciated more and more.

In addition to his brother, Rep. Fitzpatrick is survived by his wife, Kathleen, and their six children.

Plans for services had not been announced Monday.

Staff writer Jonathan Tamari contributed to this article.
Dr. Amir HagShenas Invests in Carestream Intraoral Scanner for Dental Implants in San Jose, CA The Carestream intraoral scanner helps Dr. HagShenas discover the areas of the jaw with the most bone to support the dental implants, in order to provide the most accurate and longest lasting results.

Dr. Amir HagShenas of Silicon Valley Smile Solutions has recently invested in a new Carestream intraoral scanner to help educate patients on their oral health when they seek restorative dentistry, such as full mouth dental implants, in San Jose, CA. An intraoral scanner is a handheld digital device that captures images of the teeth and bite structure and simultaneously displays them on a screen to be viewed by both Dr. HagShenas and the patient. The ability to see what the doctor sees helps patients more fully and comfortably understand their current oral health and the procedures needed.

The Carestream intraoral camera is an advanced piece of technology that makes capturing detailed digital images fast and easy. Patients no longer need to experience goopy, gag-inducing impressions, as the intraoral scanner is a minimally invasive handheld device. Images are captured instantly and displayed on a monitor visible to both the dentist and the patient. This makes treatment planning and workflow significantly more streamlined. By using the Carestream intraoral scanner, Dr. HagShenas and his patients gain many benefits, including:



Real-time view of teeth

Accurate digital image captures

No goopy, gag-inducing impressions

Quick results

Better patient education

Improved treatment planning

Patient education is important to Dr. HagShenas. He wants to assure that patients have a clear understanding of restorative dentistry procedures, oral concerns and what can be improved. When patients are able to see exactly what the doctor sees during their impressions, they more fully understand the extent of their oral health. Dr. Hagshenas is then able to better explain patient needs and treatment methods, as well as stress the importance of proper oral healthcare routines.

The Carestream intraoral scanner is often used for those who need full mouth dental implants to replace an entire mouth of missing or failing teeth. Both a functional and restorative dentistry solution, full mouth dental implants utilize as few as four implants to secure a lifelike arch of teeth to the jaw. This treatment allows patients to enjoy the benefits of a fully functional and aesthetic smile. The Carestream intraoral scanner helps Dr. HagShenas discover the areas of the jaw with the most bone to support the dental implants, in order to provide the most accurate and longest lasting results.

Those in need of restorative dentistry in San Jose, CA who are looking to return to an ideal smile are encouraged to connect with Dr. HagShenas. To schedule an appointment at Silicon Valley Smile Solutions, call the office at 408-377-5134 or visit the website at http://www.svsmilesolutions.com.

About the Dentist

Silicon Valley Smile Solutions offers full-service dentistry in San Jose, CA. Dr. Amir HagShenas has been practicing dentistry for nearly 30 years. Dr. HagShenas received his doctorate in dental surgery degree from the University of Minnesota, where he has since been honored with the Irwin A. Epstein Award for Excellence in Endodontics, among other numerous accomplishments. Every year, Dr. HagShenas completes many hours of continuing education in implant and surgical dentistry, far above the requirements mandated by the Dental State Board of California. His motive: I am committed to help my patients to receive the very best in dentistry. Dr. HagShenas and his team at Silicon Valley Smile Solutions are dedicated to staying up-to-date on the latest dental technologies in order to provide the highest quality of care for patients undergoing treatments like full arch dental implants. Skilled in numerous areas of dental treatments, Dr. HagShenas is particularly passionate about providing long-lasting, full arch dental implant treatments that are, in many cases, available in just one office visit. It is Dr. HagShenas goal to form lasting connections with every patient built on trust, partnership, and compassion. To learn more about Dr. HagShenas and the services offered at Silicon Valley Smile Solutions visit http://www.svsmilesolutions.com or call 408-377-5134 to schedule a consultation.
IRGC Commander Vows Tehran's Response to Soleimani Assassination Will End US Presence in Region

Sputnik News

05:27 05.01.2020(updated 07:59 05.01.2020)

The Middle East, considered one of the most unstable regions in the world, was further plunged into an escalation of tensions following the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander, early on Friday in a targeted airstrike ordered by US President Donald Trump.

IRGC Major General Hossein Salami has stated that "the assassination of martyred General Qasem Soleimani will be followed by a strategic revenge which will definitely put an end to the US presence in the region", according to Fars News.

Salami highlighted that Iran's response would come "in a vast geography throughout time and with determining impacts".

In apparent effort to double down on his pledge, the commander suggested that his statement "should come in written, since everyone will see its realization."

The situation in the Middle East, which has more recently been in a state of turmoil since the Trump administration's 2019 unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 Iran Nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), has worsened after the killing of IRGC's Quds commander Qasem Soleimani at the order of the US president on Friday.

Following the raid which led to Soleimani's assassination, Iran has vowed to retaliate, with separate militias issuing warnings to the US. On Saturday, Kataib Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militias within the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces, threatened to launch attacks on military bases used by US forces in Iraq beginning Sunday evening.

Hours after the Hezbollah statement, Trump claimed that any attack against US citizens or assets would be reciprocated with a counterattack against "52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago)".

A Sputnik

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New Delhi:

Bhushan Kumar and director Mohit Suri are planning a sequel to the directors very successful 2014 crime thriller Ek Villain, where Siddharth Malhotra and Shraddha Kapoor were tormented to breaking point by villain Riteish Deshmukh and not Arjun Kapoor, John Abraham and Aditya Roy Kapur will feature in the lead roles.

Mumbai-Mirror reported that Part 2 is not a sequel but a new story that pits John and Adityas characters against each other. It will also have an intense love story at its core, revealed the source, adding that the makers are in the process of signing a top actress to be paired alongside the hero. Both John and Adi had heard Mohits idea a while ago and were excited to come on board as the premise is something both havent explored before. The final narration took place recently, following which the two actors signed the film.

Music will be the USP for the sequel like it was for the original, giving us chartopper some romantic tracks like Hamdard, Galliyan, Banjara. Bushan and Mohit are now locking songs for the music album of the film.

Mohit and Aditya are gearing up for the release of Malang scheduled for February 07 and whose trailer drops today. This will be the filmmakers third collaboration with the actor after Ashiqui 2 and Malang and first with John Abraham who is currently shooting for Sanjay Guptas Mumbai Saga and Independence Day release, Attack.

Earlier it was reported that Arjun Kapoor will be roped into get in the shows of Retiesh Deshmukh for his first grey character, but looks like things did not work out with the Panipat actor giving way to John Abraham. Kriti Sanon reportedly will romance Arjun.

The film will go on the floors towards the second half of 2020. Nothing has been revealed about the leading lady who will star opposite John and Aditya.
The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine urged the international society not to weaken pressure on Russia

Open source

About 100 Ukrainian political prisoners will spend Christmas holidays behind bars in Russia as the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine reported on Facebook.

The Foreign Ministry urged the international society not to weaken pressure on Russia until all Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia and temporarily occupied territories are released.

About 100 citizens of Ukraine who illegally stay in the detention in Russia celebrate Christmas holidays in jail. Again. Some of Ukrainians political prisoners were released and returned home to their families and friends but they could not see them for years and celebrated a lot of holidays in jails, the message said.

As we reported earlier, on December 29, Ukraine and representatives of the militant-held Donbas exchanged prisoners; these are political prisoners, POWs and civilians, some of which were not even convicted. The venue was Mayorske checkpoint in Donetsk region.

Ukraine passed 127 people to the non-controlled territory, and the Russian mercenaries passed 76 people to Ukraine; 12 of these were military servicemen. Another 14 people refused to be exchanged.
American rapper Lizzo is currently on her first-ever Australian tour.

And the star, real name Melissa Viviane Jefferson, dazzled in a beaded bodysuit and fishnet stockings as she performed at Sydney Opera House on Monday.

During the show, the 31-year-old told fans that she's with them 'every step of the way' as the country continues to battle raging fires across New South Wales and Victoria.

I'm with you every step of the way': American rapper Lizzo, 31, (pictured) addressed the Australian bushfire crisis during her show at the Sydney Opera House on Monday night

Lizzo took to the stage in a cleavage-enhancing black and gold beaded bodysuit and lace-up boots.

Her long locks were styled out and in waves, and her makeup included defined brows, a smoky eye, a false set of lashes and a matte nude lip.

Lizzo performed her chart-topping hits including Good as Hell, and took a moment during the show to address Australia's bushfire crisis.

'I feel so connected to you guys right now during these bushfires that are plaguing this nation, that are destroying wildlife, animals and homes,' she said.

Ensemble: The star, real name Melissa Viviane Jefferson, took to the stage in a black and gold beaded bodysuit and fishnet stockings

Incredible show: The Good as Hell chart-topper entertained the crowd and took a moment to share her support for the country

'I want to let you know that more than my heart going with you, I am with you. I'm with you every step of the way. I won't shut up about it until we get these fires out.'

The Michigan-born artist went on to say that the crisis is 'not just an Australian crisis', but rather a 'global crisis'.

'The whole world needs to see this ASAP,' she explained. 'The things that are happening here are happening all over the world, but we can be so disconnected sometimes and we can seem so far away from each other.'

Support: 'I want to let you know that more than my heart going with you, I am with you. I'm with you every step of the way. I won't shut up about it until we get these fires out,' she said

United: 'The things that are happening here are happening all over the world, but we can be so disconnected sometimes and we can seem so far away from each other,' Lizzo stated

Lizzo revealed she had arranged for donation buckets to be set up outside of the event venue at Sydney Opera House.

'I've donated and we're all going to donate and I wanted to facilitate that at my show,' an emotional Lizzo said.

'Unfortunately this is such a tragic time and I couldn't not reflect on the times, it's what artists do - they stand up for the people whose voices need hearing.'

Lizzo, who will perform at The Forum in Melbourne on January 8, added that she's 'visited koalas and kangaroos' and 'thinks about them all the time' as conditions worsen.

Every little bit counts: Lizzo arranged for donation buckets to be set up outside of the event venue at Sydney Opera House

Heartfelt: 'I've donated and we're all going to donate and I wanted to facilitate that at my show,' an emotional Lizzo said

Lizzo added: 'Unfortunately this is such a tragic time and I couldn't not reflect on the times, it's what artists do - they stand up for the people whose voices need hearing'

'I just want to let you know my heart goes out to all of you, and anything I can do, anything else I can do, let me know.'

An 'unprecedented' state of disaster was declared in Victoria giving the government special powers - used for the first time ever - to impose forced evacuations and give emergency services the right to take over properties.

Neighbouring New South Wales also announced a week-long state of emergency on January 2.

Crisis: An 'unprecedented' state of disaster was declared in Victoria, while New South Wales also announced a week-long state of emergency. Pictured: Lake Conjola, NSW on December 31

Devastation: The national bushfire death toll has reached 24, while more than 1,500 homes have been destroyed. Pictured: Fire impacting a property in Bilpin, NSW on December 21

The national bushfire death toll has reached 24, while more than 1,500 homes have been destroyed.

The conditions prompted Prime Minister Scott Morrison to send in 3,000 Australian Defence Force reserves to help in the bushfire recovery.

If you'd like to donate to the Australian Red Cross Disaster Relief, click here.

To donate to the St Vincent de Paul Society appeal for bushfire victims, click here.

For donations to Victoria's Country Fire Authority click here and here for the NSW Rural Fire Service.

To donate to Foodbank click here and here for the World Wildlife Fund.
Please, General Motors, dont revive Hummer.

The brand is toxic, and the idea that adding a brand can cure what ails your existing business  which, in case youve forgotten, is selling Cadillacs, Chevrolets, Buicks and GMCs  makes no more sense today that it did when the automaker tried it with Hummer, Saturn and Saab.

During its lost decades of the 1980s and '90s, GM wasted billions of dollars and the talent of countless engineers and designers chasing the fantasy of those three brands. Theyre gone, and GM is better off without them, able to concentrate on providing strong lineups for fewer brands.

Talk about reviving Hummer as an all-electric brand of luxury off-roaders began in mid-2019. It shouldnt survive into 2020.

Its a mirage, like the illusion an idealized new relationship will improve the broken ones you already have.

CES 2020: Fiat Chrysler plans to show electric Jeep Wrangler, Compass and Renegade

Fill 'er up: Volkswagen is working on an autonomous robot to juice your battery

With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but a lot of people hate Hummer. Particularly the educated, wealthy, early adopters GM would want to attract with a line of electric luxury SUVs.

From the day the first GM-developed H2 SUV rolled off the assembly line, the brand was a raised middle finger to convention: So heavy the EPA didnt even calculate its fuel economy, styled with fake military chic like an overdone uniform from a costume shop.

Theres nothing inherently wrong with that. "Rebel Without a Cause" can be a fine business model, but youve got to deliver the goods.

Hummer didnt. The H2 and the smaller H3 that followed it were poseurs. They pretended to be luxury vehicles but were festooned with cheap plastic. Based on GMs GMT800 truck architecture, they had more off-road capability than an average pickup, but nothing close to the military HMMWV (known as the Humvee) that created the brands image.

Story continues

Jeeps and Land Rovers vehicles are authentic, true to their heritage. Hummers werent.

The product was a phony, product development consultant Eric Noble of the Carlab in Orange, California, said. It wasnt just that it was a profligate fuel user. It was a profligate fuel user for no good reason. Ferraris are thirstier, but they suffered exactly zero sales decline in the Great Recession.

The one-two punch of spiking fuel prices and the Great Recession wounded Hummer, but the fatal blow was that theyd become vehicles too many Americans just didnt want to be seen in.

Baggage included

Adding a brand makes sense when a company wants a clean slate to create an image that will draw a new type of customer. Toyotas invention of the Lexus luxury brand is Exhibit A. The baggage Hummer carries with it is the opposite of that. Its a reclamation project GM doesnt need.

Hummer had a short life as a coveted, niche brand, IHS Markit senior analyst Stephanie Brinley said. But it was not recognized for environmental friendliness or as a beacon of technology, so the brand image it revives would have to be reshaped and redefined.

About now, your local Cadillac dealer should be jumping up and down, saying, Im right here!

GM says Cadillac will lead its big move into electric vehicles, but the process is taking too long. Adding Hummer would diminish the impact electric vehicles have on Cadillac, weakening a brand that deserves the automakers undivided attention.

If GM truly needs a second brand to sell luxury electric vehicles, its got a ready-made sales channel in GMC. The all-truck brand has a sterling image and already commands premium prices. If GM cant profitably sell enough EV SUVs between Caddy and GMC, the problem isnt the brands.

Current electric-vehicle technology doesnt lend itself to off-roading, another factor against a Hummer revival. Batteries are heavy. Weight, which can bog a vehicle down in sand or mud, is the enemy of off-road capability. Serious off-roaders who tackle challenges like the Rubicon Trail and Baja 1,000 are the last people likely to sign up for an EV.

If you resurrect Hummer, it should be with peerless off-road ability, Noble said. Batteries make that tougher. An H2-sized vehicle with a 300-mile range would need 1,500 pounds of batteries. That weight comes at the expense of performance and payload.

Repeating mistakes

Adding brands is in GMs DNA, but high blood pressure can be genetic, too. The last time adding a brand improved GMs U.S. business was arguably 1918, when Chevrolet joined the fold.

Somehow, a generation ago, GMs leaders decided that creating a new brand was a better business model than fixing the ones they already had. Saturn was born largely because GM couldnt convince Chevy dealers to change how they sold cars, and its factories and workers to change how to build them.

Saturn made some fine vehicles, but GM wouldve benefited more by fixing its existing brands, not spending years and billions creating a new one the others resented as internal competition for sales and resources.

In the crassest terms, some executives made careers of kicking problems down the road, promising to fix them with a new brand tomorrow rather than doing anything today.

As 2020 dawns, Cadillac should be GMs focus. Establishing it as a leader in electric vehicles and a meaningful force in the global luxury market is a huge challenge. Anything that distracts from that threatens the automaker.

Please, GM, dont revive Hummer.

Contact Mark Phelan at 313-222-6731 or mmphelan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mark_phelan. Read more on autos and sign up for our autos newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Why GM should shift to Cadillac instead of reviving Hummer
New Delhi [India], Jan 6 (ANI): Jawaharlal Nehru University Vice-Chancellor M. Jagadesh Kumar on Monday issued an appeal to all students to maintain peace in the campus and stated that the top priority is to protect the academic interest of the students.



This comes a day after unidentified masked goons entered the varsity on Sunday night and attacked students and teaching staff, leaving many injured.

"Would like to appeal to all the students to maintain peace. The University stands by all the students to facilitate their pursuit of academic activities. We will ensure that their winter semester registration will take place without any hindrance", Kumar said in a statement.

He also assured the students that there was nothing to be afraid of and necessary action will be taken to protect the student interest.'

"They need not fear about their process. The top priority of the University is to protect the academic interests of our students", Kumar added.

In the backdrop of violence that took place inside the campus on Sunday, JNU Students Union (JNUSU) has demanded the resignation of Vice-Chancellor Kumar.

Earlier on Sunday evening, more than 18 students of the university, including JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh, were injured and were taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered the JNU and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods.

"This Vice-Chancellor is a cowardly Vice-Chancellor who introduces illegal policies through the backdoor, runs away from the questions of students or teachers and then manufactures a situation to demonize JNU," said a statement from JNUSU.

According to hospital sources, 34 JNU students had come in the night for the treatment and all were discharged by Monday morning.

Home Minister Amit Shah has also spoken to Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, requesting him to call representatives from JNU and hold talks with them. (ANI)
MANILA, Philippines  Around 16,000 security personnel consisting of the members of the Philippine National Police (PNP), the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP), and the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) will be deployed on Thursday (January 9) for the observance of the annual Traslacion of the Catholic faith.

National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) acting director PBGen Debold Sinas said they are ready to provide security in the said event although his team has yet to receive any threats on the countrys security, particularly in Manila.

More than 2,000 Special Action Force (SAF) personnel will be deployed around the carriage for a smooth flow of the procession.

Sinas said they will also install signal jammers in the area.

He also warned that violators of law and order will be arrested.

Littering and urinating in public places will not be tolerated.

Manila mayor Isko Moreno, meanwhile, said they are strictly implementing the NO Obstruction policy on the streets that will be part of the Traslacion.

Any vehicle that has been utilized by any respective agencies along the route has to be cleared, including the motorcycles. All those vehicles found in the area will be considered donations to the city of Manila because we will pick it up and bring in a rightful place, we will implement towing, Moreno said. (from the report of Lea Ylagan) /mbmf

The post Despite zero threat, 16,000 security personnel to be deployed in Traslacion 2020 appeared first on UNTV News.
Kolkata: Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP top brass categorically saying that nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC) has not been discussed by the Centre, the West Bengal BJP in its booklet claimed that after implementation of the CAA, the register of citizens will be in the pipeline.

The 23-page booklet in English, Hindi and Bengali, published as part of BJPs statewide campaign in favour of the amended Citizenship Act, states that the Centre is intending to implement the NRC across the country.

The CAA has been simplified in a question and answer format to allay peoples fears on the law, party sources said.

It also said the Hindus lodged in detention centres in Assam would be released after the CAA is implemented.

Reacting to BJPs claims on NRC in the booklet, the Trinamul Congress leadership said, truth has come out.

The cat is now out of the bag. The truth of BJP has come out. We have been saying that the Prime Minister and the union ministers have been trying to confuse the people by making contradictory statements on NRC.

The people of this state and the country will give them a befitting reply, Trinamul secretary general Partha Chatterjee said.

Triggering controversy once again, West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh on Monday said violence in educational institutes is a gift of the Left

who are now getting it back as scores are being settled.

He also dismissed Trinamul supremo Mamata Banerjees criticism of the BJP for the JNU violence, accusing her of shedding crocodile tears only.

The BJP MP of Midnapore wondered why the Chief Minister did not raise her voice when Union minister Babul Supriyo and West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar were heckled at the Jadavpur University last year.

Violence in students politics and educational institutes are a gift of the Left students outfits. You will witness violence in educational institutes only in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura where Left is either in power or were in power till a few years back, Ghosh told reporters.

Now, the Left students' groups are getting it back as scores are being settled.

The BJP leader said the authorities and police are looking into the incident and it would be better if violence can be averted inside educational institutions.
The Trump administration reportedly pressured Dutch officials to cancel a licence for ASML to sell products to China.

United States President Donald Trumps administration mounted an extensive campaign to block the sale of Dutch chip manufacturing technology to China, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lobbying the Netherlands government and White House officials sharing a classified intelligence report with the countrys prime minister, people familiar with the effort told Reuters news agency.

The high-level push demonstrates the importance the White House places on preventing China from getting hold of a machine required to make the worlds fastest microprocessors. It also shows the challenges facing the US governments largely unilateral efforts to stem the flow of advanced technology to China.

The US campaign began in 2018, after the Dutch government gave semiconductor equipment company ASML, the global leader in a critical chip-making process known as lithography, a licence to sell its most advanced machine to a Chinese customer, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Over the following months, US officials examined whether they could block the sale outright and held at least four rounds of talks with Dutch officials, three sources told Reuters.

The effort culminated in the White House on July 18 when Deputy National Security Advisor Charles Kupperman raised the issue with Dutch officials during the visit of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who was given an intelligence report on the potential repercussions of China acquiring ASMLs technology, according to a former US government official familiar with the matter.

The pressure appears to have worked. Shortly after the White House visit, the Dutch government decided not to renew ASMLs export licence, and the $150m machine has not been shipped.

Ilse van Oevering, a spokeswoman for Ruttes office, declined comment, saying the government cannot discuss individual licensing cases, Reuters reported.

The White House declined to comment, and Kupperman did not reply to a request by Reuters for comment.

The delayed shipment was first reported on November 6 by the Nikkei Asian Review, but details of the US pressure campaign have not previously been disclosed. ASML said it is still awaiting approval of a new licence request and declined further comment, according to Reuters.

ASML has never publicly disclosed the identity of the Chinese customer, but Nikkei and others have reported that it is Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), Chinas biggest chip-making specialist. SMIC did not reply to a request for comment.

Security interest

The ASML machine uses extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light beams, generated by lasers and focused by giant mirrors, to lay out extraordinarily narrow circuits on slabs of silicon known as wafers. That in turn makes it possible to create faster and more powerful microprocessors, memory chips and other advanced components, which are critical for consumer electronics and military applications alike.

Only a few companies, including US firm Intel Corp, South Koreas Samsung Electronics and Taiwans TSMC, are currently capable of manufacturing the most sophisticated chips. But China has made catching up to those companies in chip-making technology a key national priority and is investing tens of billions of dollars in the effort.

That drive has run head-on into the Trump administrations efforts to block the flow of sensitive technology to China on national security grounds. Companies selling US-made goods are now barred from shipping them to blacklisted Chinese firms including telecoms giant Huawei Technologies and surveillance vendor Hikvision without a special licence.

The US government can also deny licences to firms that want to sell goods made with US technology to any Chinese company, not just those on the export blacklist. But blocking companies like ASML that manufacture overseas is much more difficult.

Based on current regulations, the US can require a licence for many hi-tech products shipped to China from other countries if US-made components make up more than 25 percent of the value. The US Department of Commerce conducted an audit of ASMLs EUV machine, two sources told Reuters, but found it did not meet the 25 percent threshold, according to one of the people.

The US Department of Commerce is now considering lowering the 25 percent threshold in some cases, Reuters reported in November.

With no way to block the sale directly, the Trump administration pressed its Dutch ally to consider the security issues. Lithography equipment falls under the purview of an international agreement known as the Wassenaar Arrangement, which coordinates export restrictions of so-called dual-use technology that has commercial and military applications.

US Department of Defense officials met their Dutch counterparts several times to discuss the security risks of the sale, two sources told Reuters. Meetings took place at the Netherlands embassy in Washington, DC in late 2018 and January 2019, two separate sources said.

Pompeo urged Rutte to block the sale, despite commercial pressures to let ASML proceed, during a visit to the Netherlands last June, three sources said.

With a market value of more than 110 billion euros ($123bn), ASML has grown to dominate the lithography market over the last 20 years and is the pride of the Dutch industry.

Our ask is that our allies and our partners and friends dont do anything that would endanger our shared security interest, Pompeo told reporters in The Hague on June 3. He did not mention chip equipment specifically.

The US Department of State did not reply to a request for comment.

Six weeks later, during his visit to the White House, Rutte was given a copy of the intelligence report. Reuters could not determine whether Trump mentioned the ASML deal to Rutte during the White House meeting.

ASMLs export licence expired unused on June 30, 2019, and no new licence was granted in the following eight-week period during which a renewal request would normally be considered, according to a public database of licences published by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Netherlands Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Irene Gerritsen said the Dutch government has sovereign discretion to grant licences of dual-use technology and would not comment on specific cases.

With or without the EUV licence, ASML expects its Chinese sales to increase in 2020 as it continues to ship earlier-generation equipment.
A mourner holds a picture of senior Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, Iraq, Jan. 4, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]

The assassination of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, a significant figure widely respected in Iran and Iraq, on January 3 has become the top news in all major international media. This new development will produce many long-term consequences, but will primarily put U.S. President Donald Trump's administration in crisis in many ways.

Firstly, the assassination will create domestic challenges for Trump's administration. The last months of 2019 have seen Democrats launch an impeachment against Trump for his pressuring of a foreign government to investigate his campaign opponent by withholding U.S. government-approved military assistance. Though the Republican-controlled Senate will unlikely vote to impeach Trump, the process has undermined his prestige as the leader of the nation.

Predictably, the killing of the Iranian military commander will become another issue that the Democrats will use to question Trump's leadership. Some senior Democrats had already questioned the legality of Trump's decision since the operation was conducted without informing Congress. Some other Democrats said that Trump should be held responsible for the potential security threat that American businesses as well as its diplomatic and military institutions will face in the region and at home since the assassination will provoke serious retaliation from the Iranian side.

That's not the full story. The killing of Soleimani also has huge repercussions on the American public who do not want another war in the Middle East with Iran, and do not want to see more lives lost. As is evident, demonstrations took place in more than 80 cities across America in the immediate aftermath of the operation. Americans are worried that an escalation of this growing crisis will pull the U.S. into yet another war.

The coming months will certainly see a fierce domestic debate on whether Trump is truly capable and fit to lead the country, and the debate between the parties and among the people will become a major domestic challenge to the Trump administration.

Secondly, the assassination will isolate the Trump administration even more diplomatically. The U.S. led by President Trump had already been snubbed by international powers after its withdrawal from the JCPOA, dubbed the Iran nuclear deal, and its launching of maximum pressure on Iran. As is evident, the foreign ministers of major U.S. allies including Germany and France refused to participate in the conference for the isolation of Iran in Warsaw in February 2019. They have also privately and publicly criticized Trump's policy toward Iran. Other major powers like China and Russia are even more further removed from the U.S. position on Iran.

The assassination will further put the Trump administration in diplomatic jeopardy when dealing with countries like France, Germany, China and Russia. Michael Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State telephoned his counterparts of major powers shortly after the assassination, saying that the U.S. does not want any escalation. This might seem that America is fine-tuning the unilateral approach that the Trump administration had adhered to all along.

However, Europeans, Chinese and Russians have reasons to be more dissatisfied with Trump's decision in this regard. They do not want to see more tensions between the U.S. and Iran as well as in the region, which will threaten the interests of all. They might very well help prevent the situation from becoming worse, but their dissatisfaction against the U.S. will undoubtedly grow. In one word, the U.S. will only become more isolated.

Thirdly, the latest development will put the Trump administration's global strategy in crisis. The United States has long regarded itself as the leader of the free world, and the main power providing security for many nations. But Trump, much like his predecessor, is well aware that the U.S. actually does not have that much military resources to provide security to the entire world. Trump himself also knows that the deployment of military resources is the least cost-effective in the Middle East. He personally said that the situation in the Middle East had remained the same even after the U.S. had invested US$7 trillion by the end of 2018. Therefore, Trump has always believed that the U.S. would have to eventually pull some of its troops out of the Middle East and deploy more troops in other parts of the world.

Trump might have assessed Soleimani's assassination in too simple of terms. He might have calculated that killing the Iranian general would paralyze Iran's military operation against the U.S., and with Iran posing less of a threat to U.S. interests in the region, a case could be made for America's gradual military withdrawal from the Middle East.

Contrary to this, killing Soleimani could in fact stoke more hatred from Iran and pro-Iran militias. In this scenario, the U.S. will have to invest more of its military resources to protect its businesses, its diplomatic and military institutions in the region, as well as to counter Iran's growing influence in the Middle East as well. This means that the U.S. will have less military resources to deploy in other parts of the world. To put it in another way, the U.S. global outreach will soon be in crisis.

By assassinating Soleimani, Trump might have wanted to prove his decisiveness and boldness and establish himself as a national hero in the lead up to the 2020 election. But this decision will put him, his administration and America in serious jeopardy. Trump may soon face a host of challenges that he might have never met in his past three years in office.

Jin Liangxiang is Senior Research Fellow with the Center for West Asian and African Studies, Shanghai Institutes for International Studies. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/jinliangxiang.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

If you would like to contribute, please contact us at opinion@china.org.cn.
Oil prices shot more than 2 percent higher on Monday, with Brent rising above $70 a barrel, after US President Donald Trump issued a threat to impose sanctions on Iraq amid escalating tensions with Iran in the Middle East.

Singapore: Oil prices shot more than 2 percent higher on Monday, with Brent rising above $70 a barrel, after US President Donald Trump issued a threat to impose sanctions on Iraq amid escalating tensions with Iran in the Middle East.

Brent crude futures soared to a high of $70.27 a barrel at 0222 GMT, up $1.67, or 2.4 percent, from Fridays settlement.

US West Texas Intermediate crude was at $64.39 a barrel, up $1.34, or 2.1 percent, after touching $64.44 earlier, the highest since April.

The gains extended Fridays more-than-3 percent surge after a US airstrike in Iraq killed top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani on Friday. The killing has heightened concerns of a widening Middle East conflict that could disrupt oil supplies from a region that accounts for nearly half of the worlds oil production.

On Sunday, President Trump threatened to impose sanctions on Iraq, the second-largest producer among the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), if US troops were forced to withdraw from the country. Baghdad earlier called on American and other foreign troops to leave Iraq.

Trump also said that the United States will retaliate against Iran if Tehran were to strike back after the killing.

The incident will trigger a long cycle of regional escalation with significant risks to US assets and Mideast energy infrastructure that nevertheless stop short of war, Eurasia Group analyst Ayham Kamel said in a note.

But the risk of limited conflict is real. It would include substantial Iranian attacks on Gulf energy targets and direct naval clashes between the US and Iran.

The consultancy expects oil prices in 2020 to range from $65 to $75 a barrel, based on rising risks to oil infrastructure in the region.

Meanwhile Capital Economics analyst Caroline Bain said: Fridays incident has all but removed the possibility of a lifting of Iranian sanctions, a large downside risk to our oil price forecast.

Regardless of geopolitical events, we expect constrained supply growth and a modest pick-up in demand to push oil prices higher in 2020, she added in a note.
The Assad regime is continuing is brutal assault in Idleb, bombarding the town of Ariha, killing a handful of civilians and wounding dozens more reports Zaman Al Wasl.

At least seven civilians were killed and 20 more wounded in regime airstrikes on the town of Ariha in northern Idleb province, a local reporter said Sunday.

In the latest round of violence in Syrias nearly nine-year-old war, regime forces have upped their deadly bombardment of the northwestern opposition bastion of Idleb in recent weeks.

In December alone, the violence pushed some 284,000 people from their homes in the jihadist-run region of some three million people, the United Nations says.

The mass movement of people has seen public buildings such as mosques, garages, wedding halls and schools turned into shelters, UN humanitarian agency OCHA says.

In late August, the regimes ally Russia announced a ceasefire in Idleb, after months of deadly Russian and regime bombardments that killed around 1,000 civilians.

But sporadic clashes and bombardments persisted throughout autumn, before a spike in violence in the past month, the Observatory says.

In total 11,215 people including more than 1,000 children were killed last year, although it was the least deadly year on record since the beginning of the conflict.

This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
A 'chemical incident' has caused businesses to be evacuated and residents have been told to stay indoors after a 'gas canister leak' on an Essex industrial estate.

Emergency crews rushed to West Thurrock this afternoon after a reaction involving an industrial cylinder which produced 'clouds of fumes' over the east London area.

A 100m exclusion zone is in place and residents have been told to keep their doors and windows shut.

A 'chemical incident' has caused businesses to be evacuated and residents have been told to stay indoors after a 'gas canister leak' on an Essex industrial estate

Emergency crews rushed to West Thurrock this afternoon after a reaction involving an industrial cylinder which produced 'clouds of fumes'

Essex Fire Service said: 'We are currently at the scene of a chemical incident in West Thurrock.

'Control operators received reports of a cloud of fumes this afternoon following a reaction involving an industrial cylinder.

'Emergency services are working together at the scene. Firefighters are using a hazardous materials unit as part of work to establish the chemicals involved.

'A 100 metre exclusion zone has been set up, as is standard for incidents of this type.

A 100m exclusion zone is in place around the industrial park (pictured) and residents have been told to keep their doors and windows shut

Several roads are also closed nearby while emergency services manage the incident

'If you live in the area, please keep your doors and windows closed and stay inside.'

Several roads are also closed nearby while emergency services manage the incident.

The incident took place on an industrial estate in Grays, which is less than a mile from Lakeside Shopping Centre.

The incident took place on an industrial estate in Grays, which is less than a mile from Lakeside Shopping Centre

Essex Fire Service said: 'If you live in the area, please keep your doors and windows closed and stay inside'

An Industrial Chemical Group spokesperson would not comment on the situation today but said that a statement would be issued later on

The industrial park, which sits on The Thames, is home to a number of businesses, including Industrial Chemical Group Ltd and Proctor & Gamble.

An Industrial Chemical Group spokesperson would not comment on the situation today but said that a statement would be issued later on.
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today marks the official launch of the J Collection, a New Orleans-based collection of exceptional Southern hotels and resorts. The J Collection is comprised of 19 unique, locally owned and operated hotels situated throughout New Orleans and the surrounding region. Each property offers its own distinctive style and personality, along with personalized service and southern hospitality. This new brand is the next step in the evolution of the New Orleans Hotel Collection and the French Quarter Hotel Collection  previously two separate hotel groups  which are now under the same umbrella of the J Collection.

"The J Collection represents the best of the South, with an incredibly diverse array of hotels and resorts, each with its own unique story to tell," said Joe Jaeger, Principal of the J Collection. "As we continue to expand our presence throughout New Orleans and beyond, including the two most recent acquisitions of Le Richelieu and Dunleith, we look forward to continuing our commitment to preserving and protecting historically significant properties throughout the region."

The J Collection was founded in New Orleans by Jaeger in 2015 as a part of the MCC Group, a multi-unit real estate development organization dedicated to projects that spur meaningful economic and community development. Jaeger's vision is guided by a belief that all projects should not only deliver exceptional guest experiences, but also positive change for the community. Jaeger has a deep commitment to preserving history while modernizing amenities for today's traveler, and this is reflected across all of the hotels under the J Collection brand.

The J Collection hotels and resorts are designed to inspire, capturing the rich history, culture and personality of their respective destinations. Each are a part of the fabric and heritage of the cities in which they reside  beloved icons that have been cherished by generations  including Nottoway, the largest remaining antebellum mansion in the South; The Bourbon Orleans, which is home to the most historic ballroom in New Orleans; The Jung Hotel & Residences, Canal Street's first luxury hotel; and Audubon Cottages, a collection of tucked away cottages gathered around what is said to be the first swimming pool in the French Quarter.

The J Collection is committed to providing engaging social spaces for guests and offers a multitude of gathering places at its properties including the iconic Bourbon O Bar at the Bourbon Orleans and 21st Amendment at La Louisiane inside Hotel Mazarin, both featuring live jazz nightly. With a well-curated range of options, from boutique to sprawling, the J Collection offers a range of price points appealing to any traveler; from a romantic escape or a family vacation, to a one-of-a-kind corporate event, wedding or celebration.

For more information about the J Collection, please visit www.JCollectionHotels.com.

SOURCE The J Collection

Related Links

https://www.jcollectionhotels.com


Iran's Foreign Minister Compares Trump to Ancient 'Barbarians' Over Threat to Target Cultural Sites

Sputnik News

17:34 05.01.2020(updated 18:46 05.01.2020)

Earlier, following threats by Iranian officials to exact revenge on the US for the assassination of a top Iranian military commander, the US president warned that the US has "targeted 52 Iranian sites," including the country's cultural landmarks, for destruction in the event of an Iranian attack on Americans or American assets.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has offered President Donald Trump a history lesson over his latest threats to attack Iranian cultural sites.

"A reminder to those hallucinating about emulating ISIS [Daesh]* war crimes by targeting our cultural heritage: Through MILLENIA of history, barbarians have come and ravaged our cities, razed our monuments and burnt our libraries. Where are they now? We're still here, and standing tall," Zarif wrote, recalling his country's status as one of the world's oldest continuous major civilizations.

The Iranian foreign minister went on to note that targeting a country's cultural sites is a war crime under international law, and warned that "whether kicking or screaming, [the] end of US malign presence in West Asia has begun."

In a series of tweets on Saturday, President Trump warned that if Iran responded to the US assassination of Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani by targeting "any Americans, or American assets," the US would carry out strikes on "52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago," including "some at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture."

On Sunday, Iranian Army Chief Maj.Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi commented on Trump's remarks, saying the US did not "have the courage to carry out" such attacks. Iran's military has already identified nearly three dozen US targets in the Middle East which it said were "within reach" of Iran's vast arsenal of missiles. The US has an estimated 5,000 troops stationed in Iraq, with thousands more deployed at US bases across the Arabian peninsula, and in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Syria and other countries near Iran's maritime and land borders.

Also on Sunday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denied that President Trump threatened to target Iranian cultural sites, encouraging his Fox News interviewer to "read what he said."

Regional tensions began escalating last month, after a December 27 rocket attack on a US military base in northern Iraq killed a US civilian contractor. The US blamed a Baghdad-allied Iraqi Shia militia group for the attack, and launched airstrikes against five facilities across Iraq and Syria, killing over two dozen Shia militants. The attack led angry crowds of protesters to try to storm the US Embassy in Baghdad. The US accused Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force responsible for Iranian military operations abroad, of being behind the violence. On January 3, Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike at Baghdad's International Airport. A day later, US forces across Iraq began facing sporadic attacks, including a rocket attack on the US Embassy in Baghdad and an airbase north of the Iraqi capital. Iranian officials have warned that they would not leave the killing of Soleimani unanswered, and former CIA Director Michael Morell warned that the decision to kill the senior Iranian soldier would lead to "dead Americans."

*A terrorist organisation outlawed in Russia and many other countries.

A Sputnik

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In Avengers: Endgame it took Earths Mightiest Heroes a whole five years to mount a response after Thanos wiped out half the universe with a snap of his fingers, From Thor (Chris Hemsworth) letting himself go to Captain America (Chris Evans) leading support groups, a lot happened to our favorite heroes in the five-year time jump between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. With Marvel entering Phase 4 of the MCU, heres a quick breakdown of everything that happened after the snap.

The cast of Avengers: Endgame | Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney

Iron Man

In many ways, Thanos victory vindicated all of Tony Starks (Robert Downey Jr.) work in the years leading up to Infinity War. The snap proved that the Avengers should have been working towards a defense of cosmic threats.

Tonys first reaction reflected this vindication as he was bitter and angry at his fellow Avengers. But his feelings were tempered after he had a child with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). He even started updating his Iron Man suit and got up to Mark 85 by the time of Avengers: Endgame.

War Machine

In the wake of the snap, one of Black Widows (Scarlett Johansson) strongest allies was War Machine (Don Cheadle). Despite everything that happened in Infinity War, James Rhodes continued his work and became one of Earths mightiest protectors.

According to Screen Rant, he was also given an upgrade to his armor and was rocking the Cosmic Iron Patriot look at the end of the five-year time jump. Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) likely assisted in the War Machine upgrade, and Avengers: Endgame hinted that the two developed a working relationship.

Black Widow

Black Widow took on a lot more responsibility in the wake of the snap. Several of the Avengers quit the team altogether (including Captain America and Hawkeye), so it was left to Black Widow to pick up the slack.

Natasha made the old Avengers compound her home base and developed a network of heroes who worked together to eliminate threats. We do not know what happened with Black Widows small group, but she clearly made a difference by the time everyone came back for Avengers: Endgame.

Captain Marvel

While Black Widow was coordinating things on Earth, Captain Marvel spent most of her time on her home planet rebuilding things. She did, however, remain in contact with Black Widow and seemingly made frequent trips back to Earth.

Exactly what she did in the five years after the snap remains a mystery, but it is possible that her visits to Earth inspired a young girl who will eventually become Ms. Marvel.

Thor

The Asgardians were left without a home following the events in Thor: Ragnarok and Thanos destroying their ship in Infinity War did not help matters. Luckily, they found a new home in Tnsberg, Norway, which is the same place where Odin hid the Tesseract.

Thor, of course, helped his people establish their new home base, though he clearly did not want to be their leader. Instead, he kept to himself (and gained a bunch of weight) while Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) led her people into a new era.

Hulk

Hulk did not have a very good showing in Infinity War, and Bruce Banners frustration with his alter-ego led to some experiments in the lab. At some point, Bruce figured out how to fuse his brains with Hulks brawn to create Professor Hulk.

In a deleted scene from Avengers: Endgame, we see Hulk helping out some local firefighters in a new costume. Essentially, Hulk became the public face of the Avengers and was continuing their work.

Hawkeye

Out of all of the Avengers, Hawkeye was the only one who completely lost it and went rogue. Taking on the identity of Ronin, it became Hawkeyes mission to track down and kill the criminals of the world.

Luckily, Hawkeye was convinced to go a different path when Tony figured out how to travel back in time. But the damage he did during the five-year time gap clearly weighed heavily on him in Avengers: Endgame.

Captain America

Captain America may have quit being an Avenger after Infinity War but he did not stop helping people. In Avengers: Endgame, we find out that Cap has been leading a support group and helping people get over losing their loved ones.

The support group is actually a nod to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), who perished in the snap and led a similar group for veterans in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Avengers: Endgame is available to stream on Disney+.
As diplomats we rarely stay long enough in a country to see and experience the whole story. We arrive in the middle of a tale and we learn about the chapters we missed, Bass said in a farewell video posted to the U.S. Embassy Kabul Facebook page. Bass added that no one knows how this story, this chapter in the larger tale of this country and its people will end, but he said hopes for a more peaceful future.
Former Nissan and Renault boss Carlos Ghosn began his astonishing escape from Japan with a bullet train ride from Tokyo to Osaka, possibly accompanied by several people, Japanese news agency Kyodo reported January 6.

Japanese authorities also said on Monday they may still press for Ghosn's extradition from Lebanon to face multiple charges of financial wrongdoing, even though the country does not normally extradite its nationals.

Security cameras captured Ghosn leaving his home on December 29 at about 2:30 p.m. (0530 GMT) and arriving some hours later at Tokyo's Shinagawa Station, where he took the train to Shin Osaka Station, Kyodo said, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The international fugitive then went by car to a hotel near Osaka's Kansai International Airport, where he boarded a private jet at 11:10 p.m., according to the media report.

Ghosn was forbidden from leaving Japan while awaiting trial on charges of financial misconduct, which he has denied, but he fled at the end of last year to escape what he called a "rigged" justice system.

Prosecutors are now working with police to piece together Ghosn's route and find out who helped him, Kyodo said.

In the government's first briefing since Ghosn skipped bail, Justice Minister Masako Mori said on Monday that as a general principle, Tokyo could request the extradition of a suspect from a country with which it has no formal extradition agreement.

Such a request would need to be carefully examined based on the possibility of "guaranteeing reciprocity and the domestic law of the partner country", Mori told reporters in Tokyo.

Mori did not say what would guarantee reciprocity - the idea that benefits or penalties extended by one country to citizens of another should be reciprocated. She also did not say if there were any Lebanese nationals in Japan wanted in Lebanon.

RED NOTICE

According to a Lebanese judicial source, Lebanon has yet to receive a formal notice from Interpol requesting Ghosn's arrest and will not take any steps until it does.

The source said on Monday that the so-called red notice it received last week had been sent directly from Japan rather than via Interpol's headquarters in Lyon, France.

"There are questions in Wiesbaden and Lyon over the legality of sending the notification directly from Tokyo to Lebanon without passing through Interpol headquarters," the source said, referring to Interpol offices.

When Lebanon has received red notices in the past, suspects have not been detained but their passports have been confiscated and bail has been set, a judicial source said last week.

Mori offered little insight into the events of Ghosn's escape to his ancestral home, repeatedly saying she could not comment on specifics because of an ongoing investigation.

Japanese officials broke days of silence about the Ghosn case on Sunday, saying they would tighten immigration measures and investigate his escape thoroughly. The authorities have also issued an international notice for his arrest.

Mori also defended Japan's justice system against Ghosn's charges that it was "rigged" and discriminatory.

In Japan, suspects who deny charges against them are often detained for long periods and subject to lengthy questioning without a lawyer present, a system critics call "hostage justice".

"Various comments about Japan's justice system and this unjust departure are two different things," Mori told reporters, saying criticism of the justice system could not be used to justify Ghosn's escape.

"Departure in an unjust way without proper procedure is tantamount to smuggling, an illegal departure amounting to a crime."
After former school education minister Vinod Tawde, it is now, current higher education minister Uday Samants turn to be in a spot of bother, as his education degrees from an unrecognised institute, are being called into question.

Samant, a minister in the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, disclosed in his election affidavit his qualifications  a diploma in automobile engineering from the Pune-based Dnyaneshwar Vidyapeeth, whose vice-chancellor was former Maharashtra chief minister Manohar Joshi.

Started in 1980 by the late Dr Manohar Apte, the Dnyaneshwar Vidyapeeth campus is an apartment in Punes Navi peth. The institute ceased to offer any courses since 2010.

Samant, according to his affidavit, completed his diploma course from Dnyanweshwar Vidyapeeth in 1995 after completing his higher secondary education in 1991.

Speaking to a Marathi television channel, Samant said he has no qualms in admitting that he did a diploma from the Dnyaneshwar Vidyapeeth.

I went to Dnyaneshwar Vidyapeeth as it offered practical knowledge. My plan was also to get diploma certificate and start a business, said Samant.

Earlier in 2015, Tawade came under attack from the then opposition parties Congress and NCP, for holding a degree issued by an institute which was not recognised.

Tawde, minister in the Devendra Fadnavis government, had disclosed in his election affidavit while contesting the Assembly elections from Borivali, Mumbai, in 2014, that he holds an Engineering degree in Electronics.

In the case of Samant, an RTI activist from Pune, Abhishek Hardas, has raised questions, saying: How can an education minister remain in his position after he procured a diploma certificate from an institute which was not recognised.

Dnyaneshwar Vidyapeeth was famous for offering flexibility in classes and its cut- offs for admission, along with the fees, were lower compared to other private institutions.

The Vidyapeeth, according to one of its alumni who requested not to be named, used to offer admission to Engineering to students who even scored 35 per cent in the HSC board exam.

Such was the flexibility offered by the institute which focused more on the practical aspect of leaning rather than theory, said the alumni.

Dnyaneshwar Vidyapeeth, with its 33 franchises, offered various degrees and diploma courses before it ceased operations after a High Court order following a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Dombivali-based activist Dinesh Kamat.
In a veiled attack on the BJP and its affiliated outfits, Shiv Sena Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut on Monday said a particular student union holds a grudge against the Jawaharlal Nehru University which has produced a Nobel Laureate, and renowned politicians, industrialists, poets and authors.

While Raut did not name any outfit, it was possibly a reference to the RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad which has been accused of unleashing violence in the JNU campus in Delhi late Sunday night.

"I have seen that a student union is holding a grudge against an institution like JNU that has given a Nobel Prize winner, as well as politicians, industrialists, authors and poets. The university has constantly been targeted for last the five years," Raut told a Marathi channel here.

Professor Abhijit Banerjee, who jointly won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize with Esther Duflo and Harvard's Michael Kremer, completed Masters in Economics from JNU in 1983.

Raut said amid the unrest, "people in government" are busy with with legislations like the Citizenship Amendment Act.

"If students are not safe, then the country is not safe. It's not a good sign when police barge into a university campus in the national capital and open fire. Masked people storm another university and students are left bleeding," he claimed.

These are definitely not signs that the powers-that-be have the country's law and order under control, he added.

Violence had broken out at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., conducts news conference in the Capitol Visitor Center on the transcript of a phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday, September 25, 2019.

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is wading into the controversy surrounding President Donald Trump's Middle East military action by calling for Congress to hold open hearings.

Schiff, who led the way during Trump's impeachment in the House, told Washington Post opinion writer Greg Sargent that the president's surprise decision to authorize the killing of top Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani could have dire consequences.

"I think there should be open hearings on this subject," Schiff told Sargent in the interview published Monday.

"The president has put us on a path where we may be at war with Iran. That requires the Congress to fully engage," Schiff said.

If the House follows through on Schiff's call for open hearings, Trump administration officials could be brought forward to testify about the planning and timing behind the airstrike.

Schiff told Sargent that he's "not satisfied" that intelligence he's seen so far "supports the conclusion that the killing of Soleimani was going to either prevent attacks on the United States or reduce the risk to American lives."

Democrats in Congress  and most of the presidential primary field  responded with alarm after the Trump administration announced that Soleimani had been killed by a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad on Thursday. While they acknowledged that Soleimani has been blamed for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, many feared that the move to kill the high-ranking official was ill-conceived and could escalate tensions in an already tense region.

"President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox, and he owes the American people an explanation," former Vice President Joe Biden said in a statement.

Only a handful of political leaders, including Trump's close ally Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said they were notified in advance of the airstrike. None of the four top Democrats on the so-called Gang of Eight said they had been warned before Soleimani was killed.

Trump's surrogates and Cabinet members have said that Soleimani's death saved Americans from imminent threats. But U.S. officials told The New York Times that the evidence for such imminent attacks is "razor thin."

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In accordance with the law, the Trump administration sent Congress a letter of notification after the strike was carried out. But it was completely classified, Democrats said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced that the House would soon vote on a War Powers resolution that would stop all U.S. military hostilities toward Iran within 30 days "if no further Congressional action is taken."

NBC News reported that senators will be briefed Wednesday on the Baghdad airstrike by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and CIA Director Gina Haspel.

Iran, meanwhile, has vowed revenge on the U.S. and says it will no longer abide by any of the restrictions in the 2015 nuclear deal struck during the Obama administration. Iraq's parliament voted for a resolution to essentially expel U.S. troops by ending all foreign military presence in the country.
The CPI on Monday appealed to people to support the January 8 all-India strike and 'Gramin Bharat Bandh' called by trade unions and farmers' organisations, respectively, against the "anti-people" economic policies of the BJP-led NDA government.

CPI general secretary D Raja said the strike and the bandh had been called to draw attention of the people and the government to the bad state of the economy and the agrarian crisis in the country.

"We appeal to people to see through diversionary and divisive tactics of the government and make the proposed strike and bandh a success," he said at a press conference at the CPI office here.

Ten central trade unions will go on a general strike or 'Bharat Bandh' on January 8 "to protest against the anti-labour policies" of the government. The Left parties too have supported the strike.

Several farmers and agricultural workers' unions will also extend support to the strike and observe January 8 as 'Gramin Bharat Bandh'.

Hitting out at the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government over its economic policies, the CPI leader said ever since the BJP government came to power in 2014, it has been aggressively pursuing economic policies that have brought "disaster to our economy".

The government has repeatedly claimed that the economy is doing well. In fact, the economy has been sliding down, he said.

Raja also released a paper titled "Comforting the Rich, Confronting the Poor".

"The prices of all essential items are going up unabated and there is unprecedented unemployment in the country. All this is the result of misrule and mismanagement of the economy by the BJP-led NDA government and their continued anti-people economic policies," he said.

The CPI general secretary also targeted the government over the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act and related measures.

Instead of taking steps to help workers and farmers affected by the economic "slowdown", the government is busy "pursuing a divisive agenda through NRC, NPR and CAA", Raja said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(Natural News) With Democrats set to take over all lawmaking apparatuses in the state of Virginia within days, tensions are high ahead of expected new gun control legislation that could include outright bans and registration schemes.

For weeks after the November elections, newly empowered Democrats have said they plan to introduce a new Fifth Amendment-violating red flag law that allows guns to be taken away from citizens before theyve even committed a crime; gun registration, which critics and historians say is the first step towards widespread confiscations; and a so-called assault weapon ban, which may also include a confiscation provision if residents who own those firearms dont voluntarily turn them in.

In response, counties, cities and towns throughout the state have declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries along the lines of the Lefts sanctuary cities for illegal aliens: Officials and authorities in gun sanctuary jurisdictions have vowed not to enforce any new gun laws they feel violate the Constitution, much as state officials in some localities ignore federal immigration laws to protect illegal aliens.

Virginia officials and Gov. Ralph Northams administration have hypocritically declared that gun sanctuaries will have no force of law or any effect while doing nothing to push back against illegal alien sanctuaries.

The gun sanctuary movement actually began in Illinois in April of 2018 after officials there grew tired of state Democratic lawmakers pushing their anti-gun agenda. It has since spread to other states including Virginia, Colorado, Kansas  and now Kentucky.

Gov. Andy Beshear (D) has a new gun control agenda of his own (because all Democrats hate the Second Amendment, in case you havent noticed), and in response, several counties thus far have declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries, according to Breitbart News.

As noted further by the Lexington Herald-Leader, those counties include Cumberland, Harlan, Leslie, and Letcher, among others. Authorities there have said theyre not going to enforce any new gun control laws passed by the state or the federal government.

There are so many people angry

Tonight, I feel that we the people of Letcher County, and not just Letcher County but the state of Kentucky, and not just the state of Kentucky but of these United States of America, can stand up as law abiding citizens and proclaim that we are constitutional to the bitter end, said resident David Johnson, according to the Herald-Ledger.

Others are concerned that arrogant Democrats are pushing their anti-gun agenda to the point where they will force citizens to defend their rights by extreme means.

As reported by The National Sentinel, last month Marine Corps Reserve Maj. Ben Joseph Woods, who is also a civilian police officer, addressed the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and admonished state Democrats for ramming through gun control laws despite obvious widespread pushback (some 90 percent of Virginia jurisdictions have passed gun sanctuary declarations).

Im not going to address the bills themselves, Woods told the supervisors, adding that a large number of residents believe they are patently unconstitutional as well as pointless.

The ugly truth of our situation is that is just scratching the surface of what is happeningI work plainclothes law enforcementI walk around without a uniform, people dont see my badge, people dont see my gun, and I can tell you: People are angry, he continued, Law Enforcement Today added.

He said the situation was becoming so frightening to him that he is considering moving his wife and child out of the state if the bills pass.

[T]here are so many people angry in gun shops, gun shows, at bars, we have heard it now, people talking about tar and feathering politicians in a less than joking manner, he said. The legal precedent we would set by allowing the legislature to selectively ignore enumerated rights at will is the same mindset that 150 years ago led this country into a civil war.

Is a showdown coming with Democrats in several states over guns? It would appear so.

Sources include:

TheNationalSentinel.com

LawEnforcementToday.com

NewsTarget.com

Breitbart.com
Chile's finance minister ruled out new funding for Codelco amid spending pressures from a wave of nationwide protests, dealing a blow to the world's top copper producer that needs billions of dollars to upgrade its mines.

The government will continue to support the state-onwed mining company, but "we're not talking about a capital injection," Ignacio Briones said in an interview with Radio Pauta Bloomberg on Monday. "The state has always supported Codelco in such a way that it can access financing via capitalization or international markets."

At the same time, policymakers will spend $3 billion this year to boost the economy and counteract the effects of the biggest social upheaval in a decade.

Chile has been rocked by nationwide demonstrations that have led to widespread looting, disrupted transportation and undercut economic activity. President Sebastian Pinera's administration has moved to address a long list of demands that include better pensions and social services. That's constrained funding for Codelco, which planned to spend $20 billion over a decade to modernize mines and maintain production.

Codelco, or Corporacion Nacional del Cobre de Chile, has been able to keep its output steady over the past few years, but the ore it's extracting is of increasingly lower quality, boosting processing costs. Without access to government funds, the company's debt could soar to $21 billion, former Chief Executive Officer Nelson Pizarro said last year. It stood at $18.4 billion at the end of the third quarter, up from $15.5 billion at the end of 2018.

The nationwide protests began in October over a rise in the price of metro fares before ballooning to include much broader demands. Pinera initially called in troops and established a curfew before reversing course and agreeing to a plebiscite on a new constitution.

Chile's government is not expecting a sovereign credit rating downgrade, as the country has a relatively low level of debt compared to other countries, Briones said in the interview. The nation's debt levels should stabilize in 2024 after rising for several years, he said.

Taxes in the South American nation will rise gradually, though there's no room to lift them to levels seen in Europe, he said, adding that Chile's tax system must be simple, fair and pro-investment.
A moving image museum is a type of media museum dedicated to the history of cinema and television, as well as the equipment used in the film and television industry. Moving image museums offer different experiences compared to classical history and art museums, as they focus on topics of film art and history, the evolution of film technology and technique, and the social impact of television, film and digital media. Notable moving image museums are located in the United States, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates (History of Cinema Museum).

Museum Of The Moving Image (MOMI)

The Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) opened in 1988 in New York City, United States, in a building that was formerly occupied by Astoria Studios. The institution exists to enhance public understanding of the history, art, technology, and technique in film, television, and digital media through artifacts, educational programs, and multimedia exhibitions. A variety of hands-on activities are available that make the MOMI one of the most interactive museum experiences in the world. Visitors can explore interactive exhibits, create a short stop motion film, record their voices in a "dubbing station", and the old-school video arcade is one of the museum's most popular attractions. The museum also features works by artists that manipulate light in the development of the moving image and panel discussions related to the latest movies. Recently, a modern extension was added to the building. The juxtaposition of the 1920s and 3D-feel architecture immerses visitors in a fantasy world that typically exists only in film.

Australian Centre For The Moving Image (ACMI)

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) is among the most popular attractions in Melbourne, Australia, as it welcomes an estimated 1.55 million visitors every year who flock to experience its numerous attractions. The museum's history dates back to 1946 when it opened as the State Film Centre of Victoria and has since expanded to include moving image experimentation and changing exhibitions. During its early history, the museum served as an archive of local films and helped in the production of television projects. Its role within the film and television industry gradually grew, and by 1969, the State Film Theater was placed under its management. The new facility allowed the exhibition of a wide variety of works including those not screened by commercial cinemas. The ACMI was officially established in January 2002 and opened to the world in October of that year. The institution currently has a Screen World gallery and two main cinemas. Other attractions include a shop that sells exhibition catalogs, DVDs, toys, and books, as well as office space that can accommodate curators, producers, and programmers, which is dubbed ACMI X. The Australian Mediatheque, a multi-screen station featuring works from the museum, was closed in 2017.

Community Engagement And Online Projects

Community engagement is currently critical in the operation of moving image museums. A diverse community consisting of artists, filmmakers, service-based, and residents are involved in the development of programs that enhance the enjoyment and understanding of the moving image. Such programs explore media arts education and celebrate the achievements of digital arts. Museums like the Museum of Moving Image in New York City have also significantly increased the use of online exhibition platforms, such as websites. Some of the works found on the MOMI website include an archive of presidential campaign commercials from 1952 to 2016 and Reverse Shot, which is an online film magazine.
Researchers from King's College London have shown that the brains of young adult Romanian adoptees who were institutionalised as children are around 8.6% smaller than the brains of English adoptees who have not suffered this form of deprivation.

According to the research, the longer the time the Romanian adoptees spent in the institutions, the smaller the total brain volume, with each additional month of deprivation associated with a 0.27% reduction in total brain volume. Deprivation related changes in brain volume were associated with lower IQ and more symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the study analysed the MRI brain scans of 67 young adults, aged 23-28 years, who were exposed to severely depriving conditions in Romanian institutions under the Communist regime and subsequently adopted into nurturing families in the UK. They were compared to the MRI brain scans of 21 English adoptees aged 23-26 years who had not suffered this institutional deprivation.

MRI scans were conducted at the Centre for Neuroimaging Sciences at King's College London, as part of the Medical Research Council (MRC) funded English and Romanian Adoptees Brain Imaging Study (ERABIS). This is part of the larger ERA project that has collected information from Romanian and English adoptees over time including measures of mental health and cognitive performance.

This is the first time research has examined the impacts of severe early childhood deprivation on the brain structure of young adults.

Statistical analysis showed that, in this group of young Romanian adults, those changes in brain volume that were related to deprivation were also associated with lower IQ and more ADHD symptoms. This implies that changes in brain structure could play a mediating role between the experience of deprivation and levels of cognitive performance and mental health.

The research investigated other possible factors that could have influenced the results but found the results were unaffected by level of nutrition, physical growth and genetic predisposition for smaller brains.

The principle investigator of the study, Professor Edmund Sonuga-Barke from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), King's College London said: 'The English and Romanian Adoptees (ERA) study addresses one of the most fundamental questions in developmental psychology and psychiatry - how does early experience shape individual development? It's essential to recognise that these young people have nearly always received great care in loving adoptive families since they left the institutions. However, despite a lot of positive experiences and achievements there remain some deep-seated effects of deprivation on these young adults.'

First author, Dr Nuria Mackes from the IoPPN said: 'Previous research on the English and Romanian Adoptees (ERA) study has suggested that the emergence and persistence of low IQ and a high level of ADHD symptoms involves structural changes in the brain but, until now, we have not been able to provide direct evidence of this. Showing these very profound effects of early deprivation on brain size and then showing that this difference is associated with low IQ and greater ADHD symptoms provides some of the most compelling evidence of the neuro-biological basis of these problems following deprivation.'

The study also investigated where these changes were occurring in the brain and what localised features contributed to the differences. In comparison to the UK adoptees, the young Romanian adults who had suffered deprivation as children had markedly smaller right inferior frontal regions of the brain both in terms of volume and surface area.

In contrast the right inferior temporal lobe was larger in volume and surface area and thickness for the Romanian young adults and this was associated with lower levels of ADHD symptoms. This implies that this increase in volume and surface area in this region may play a compensatory role in preventing development of ADHD symptoms. In the right medial prefrontal region, the longer the duration of deprivation, the larger the volume and surface area.

The neuroimaging lead for the study, Professor Mitul Mehta from the IoPPN said: 'We found structural differences between the two groups in three regions of the brain. These regions are linked to functions such as organisation, motivation, integration of information and memory. It's interesting to see the right inferior temporal lobe is in fact larger in the Romanian young adults and that this was related to fewer ADHD symptoms, suggesting that the brain can adapt to reduce the negative effects of deprivation. This may explain why some individuals appear less affected than others by deprivation. We believe this is the first time that research has shown such compelling evidence of compensatory effects around deprivation.'

The Romanian young adults in the study had entered into institutions in the first few weeks of life, where they were often malnourished with minimal social contact and little stimulation. The time spent in institutions before adoption into families in the UK varied between 3 and 41 months.

Reflecting on the implications of the study Professor Sonuga-Barke said: 'By investigating the long term impact of deprivation our research highlights the need for a life-span perspective on the provision of any help and support, especially during the transition to adulthood. More speculatively the evidence of neural compensation in the inferior temporal lobe provides encouragement to look for ways that might help the brain adjust to deprivation and to improve outcomes. For example, it would be interesting to see if targeting this area directly through cognitive training might reduce ADHD symptoms.'

The research was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and funded by Medical Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council and NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre.

###

About King's College London and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience

King's College London is one of the top 10 UK universities in the world (QS World University Rankings, 2018/19) and among the oldest in England. King's has more than 31,000 students (including more than 12,800 postgraduates) from some 150 countries worldwide, and some 8,500 staff.

The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London is the premier centre for mental health and related neurosciences research in Europe. It produces more highly cited publications in psychiatry and mental health than any other university in the world (Scopus, 2016), with 21 of the most highly cited scientists in this field. World-leading research from the IoPPN has made, and continues to make, an impact on how we understand, prevent and treat mental illness and other conditions that affect the brain. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn
The YSRCP government in Andhra Pradesh said on Monday that it had issued an order for providing Rs 15,000 to poor women sending their children to schools under the 'Amma Vodi' scheme, fulfilling a poll promise made by the party.

The scheme will be operational from the 2019-20 fiscal, it said.

The financial assistance would be provided to all mothers or guardians irrespective of the number of their children, it said.

"The assistance would be directly deposited in the beneficiaries' bank accounts in January every year till the child completes class 12," the government said in a statement.

The order sanctioning financial assistance of Rs 15,000 per beneficiary was issued last week, it said.

The district educational officer or vocational educational officer or regional educational officer would release the amount to the beneficiaries' savings bank account.

The data of the beneficiaries under the scheme would be available with the gram volunteer of respective village in the state, it added.

The government said the assistance will be given to children studying in all government, private aided, private unaided schools/junior colleges.

The scheme is applicable to the mothers of children who are below poverty line.

The beneficiary should be a white (BPL) ration card holder and ensure that the student must have 75 per cent attendance in the school/college.

In case of dropout from school or college, the scheme would not be applicable to the beneficiary. Government employees and income tax payers are not eligible for the scheme.

Besides, the government has included orphans and street children in this scheme who are studying in schools through voluntary organisations. The financial assistance will be provided to these organisations after coordination with the department concerned, the statement added.

To ensure transparency, the beneficiaries' list would be displayed at the village level.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Even as the police are investigating the role of Anas, one of the two young men killed during December 20 anti-CAA protests in Bijnor, his post-mortem report, accessed by HT, suggested he was shot in his left eye from a close range.

Police have already named Suleiman, the other youth killed in the protest in Bijnor, as an accused in the violence that day.

Police have also claimed Suleiman, 20, shot the cops during the protest and in self-defence, the police opened fire and hit him.

However, the police have been denying that Anas, 25, was killed by their bullet.

Superintendent of police, Bijnor, Sanjeev Tyagi said, Suleiman is already an accused in the December 20 violence but as far as Anas is concerned, investigation is on.

Additional SP Vishwajeet Shrivastava said, Anas also died during the violence but from a gunshot fired by protesters. His role is being probed, whether he was a part of the violent mob.

The post-mortem report of Anas, accessed by HT, revealed that he received the gunshot injury on his left eye and the entry wound was dark. It shows the gunshot fired at Anas was from a close range, said a doctor, requesting anonymity.

An entry wound is on the left eyeball and it is black. It is black only when a gunshot is fired from close range, said a senior doctor of the Bijnor district hospital.

This report has supported the familys claim that he was shot by the police after they picked up him from the market.

A few others and I saw a cop firing the gunshot at Anas, said Arshad Husain, Anass father, who also filed a complaint against sub-inspector Ashish Tomar and constables, including Mohit Kumar, who was reportedly injured during the protest.

He said, A separate FIR should be filed against cops. Both the cases cant go together.

SP Sanjeev Tyagi reiterated that an FIR had been filed and all the applications had been clubbed.

When asked about the post-mortem report, senior police officers said, Protesters may have been fired from close range. We are investigating all the cases as well charges levelled by the family.

Suleimans family has also filed an application, charging the police with killing him.

Earlier, the police were not admitting that Suleiman died from their bullet. When they admitted, they have now come up with this self-defence theory, said one of Suleimans relatives.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Saurabh Chauhan Saurabh Chauhan is a correspondent reporting from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, covering Social Welfare, Women and Child Development, Agriculture. Previously reported from Mohali (Punjab), Shimla (HP) and covered Political, Civil Admin, Finance beats. ...view detail
Pictures released by militant group al Shabaab Sunday (January 5) claim to show the aftermath of an attack in Kenya which killed three Americans.

One U.S. military servicemember and two contractors were killed in Sunday's attack on a military base, close to the Somali border.

Several others were wounded. And the Kenyan military said a number of militants were dead.

Pictures showed the islamist group's flag, and masked gunmen standing next to an aircraft in flames.

Al Shabaab claimed it had destroyed seven aircraft and three military vehicles.

They have been fighting for more than a decade to overthrow the Somali government and impose strict Islamic law.

Now the attack presents another crisis for Washington.

The Pentagon is grappling with a rapidly escalating standoff with Iran following a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad that killed Iran's top military commander.
The Malaysian resort where schoolgirl Nora Quoirin was staying when she disappeared last August has confirmed its legal team is looking into a civil case filed on behalf of the dead teenager's parents.

Meabh Josephine Quoirin, who is from Belfast, and her French husband Sebastien Marie Philippe Quoirin have filed the civil case against Helen Marion Todd, the operator of the Dusun Resort.

Nora, along with her parents and two siblings, had been staying at the resort prior to her disappearance and subsequent death last August.

The Quorins in their claim said that Todd failed to keep the premises safe and secure, did not install and maintain a CCTV system in the premises, and also that they did not maintain the ledge of a window in the room where the family stayed.

The claim, filed on their behalf by lawyer Sankara Nair, amounts to damages of around 34,000.

The director of the Dusun Resort, Haanim Bamadhaj, confirmed that it had received confirmation of the civil suit and that it will issue an official statement in the coming days.

"Yes we are aware and we had received it earlier. However, I am so sorry I can't divulge details on when we received it," she told local newspaper the New Straits Times.

She said the resort's legal team is looking into the matter.

"We will issue an official statement on the matter once we get the clearance from the legal team," she said.

Haanim added that despite the heated debate surrounding the case, the management of the resort is grateful to have support from its guests.

"We appreciate every message and kind words.

"However, we hope that everyone will be patient as we go along with the case," she said.

The case is due to take place at Seremban Sessions Court on January 21, in front of Judge Rahimah Binti Rahim.

Nora disappeared from the resort on August 4 last year after her family checked into the property a day earlier, but she was not found in the room the following morning, and a window that could only be opened from the inside was found open in the room

The remains of the 15 year-old schoolgirl were found 10 days after she went missing from the resort.

A post-mortem conducted by Malaysian officials on the teenager found that she had died of internal bleeding, probably caused by hunger and stress.

But in December Nora's parents said that they still believed there was a "criminal element" to their daughter's death.
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Linkedin Anselmo Jason (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020

Raising awareness about environmental issues is a step in the right direction for a better future, but many tend to overlook one particular issue: defaunation.

Referring to the drastic decrease of wildlife found in the natural environment, defaunation causes imbalances in the natural food chain. It is also the main cause of extinction of several animal species, such as the Javanese tiger in Indonesia.

One of the few organizations working to address defaunation in Indonesia is the Jakarta Animal Aid Network (JAAN).
SINGAPORE - Media OutReach - 6 January, 2020 - Catriona Gray, Miss Universe 2018 have her image immortalized in Madame Tussauds Singapore. Catriona's wax figure will wear a replica of the iconic lava gown, inspired by Albay's Mayon Volcano, specially designed by Mak Tumang, which she wore when she won the 2018 Miss Universe tile.









"I am so excited to see the final figure and be a part of this special event! To unveil the figure in my home country with my fans watching is another dream come true." said Catriona on her Instagram.

"The Philippines market continues to be one of our strongest markets and has been very important to our attractions in Asia and we had seen an increase of travellers to Madame Tussauds in Bangkok, Hong Kong and Singapore. We believe that by having Catriona's wax figure, it will definitely be a huge draw and create the platform for her fans to get up-close with her in 2020. Her figure will be in Madame Tussauds Singapore for a limited period of time. Thereafter, her figure will be going to Madame Tussauds Bangkok and Hong Kong" said Susan Ang, Regional General Manager, Asia (excluding China).

"We are constantly bringing in more fun to cater to various markets and we look forward to welcome Catriona who will be the first Filipino wax figure in Madame Tussauds Singapore. Besides her figure Catriona also filmed something special for Madame Tussauds" said Alex Ward, General Manager of Madame Tussauds Singapore.

More information will be released on Madame Tussauds Singapore's social media pages, so be sure to stay tune for more information!





Twitter: @TussaudsHK | @MTsSingapore

Instagram: @MadameTussaudsBangkok_Official | @madametussaudshongkong | @MtsSingapore

Facebook: @MadameTussaudsBangkok | @MadameTussaudsHongKong | @MadameTussaudsSingapore

Hashtag: #MTBKK | #MadameTussaudsHongKong | #MadameTussaudsSG

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Madame Tussauds

The ultimate celebrity experience and the world's best known and most popular wax attraction. There are currently 23 Madame Tussauds attractions around the world. Each of the attractions is unique and tailored to the host city and visitor demographic to feature both local as well as international figures.

The result of 200 years of expertise and painstaking research every figure takes Madame Tussauds' gifted sculptors a minimum of three months to make, and costs more than $300K (Singapore dollars). Most contemporary figures are also produced following sittings with the celebrities themselves.
The government had claimed of making Kashmir like the rest of India but has ended up doing otherwise, former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha said on Monday, as he slammed the Centre over what he called was its policy of "suppression".

Sinha, who had quit the BJP after being sidelined in the party he served for more than two decades, made the remarks while addressing the anti-citizenship law protestors outside Jamia Milla Islamia here.

He also said the the attack on JNU students and teachers on Sunday had left no difference in "government goons and government police", accusing police of "helping" the anti-social elements and not the innocent.

Sinha said he was part of a five-member group which had visited Kashmir amid restrictions and shutdowns there around four years ago and after talking to locals and stakeholders drafted a report for the central government with a proposal for dialogue to resolve the situation.

"Here a top level official told me that I was suggesting talks which is not the government's policy. We have a doctrine of state -- a method and ideology of running the government -- which was that anybody opposing us would be suppressed. That is the policy being followed and will be followed in Kashmir," the 82-year-old leader said.

He said he was disappointed by the government's approach then and last year also tried to go to Kashmir but was once "sent back" and on another occasion "confined to a hotel room".

"Recently when they abrogated Articles 370 and 35A to remove special status of Jammu and Kashmir and divided it into two union territories it was that same doctrine of state at work -- suppression of dissent," he claimed.

Sinha said, "Those in the government had claimed that we will make Kashmir like the rest of India. Today, after five months, Kashmir has not become like any other part of India but the rest of India has become like Kashmir."



He said if one were to visit Shopian, Baramulla or Pulwama in Kashmir, he would witness the heavy presence of security forces and the situation was now similar in Delhi where police personnel are deployed in large numbers near colleges.

"Wherever you look around, it's a cycle of suppression. Earlier they would use police to suppress voices but now they are also using goons to this effect. Whatever happened in JNU yesterday, shows this very tie-up ... (Sarkari police aur sarkari gundon ka jo farq tha wo sab khatam ho gaya) The difference between government police and government goons is no longer there," Sinha said.

"And the police here helps the goons and not the innocent people. It's a strange situation across the country," he added.

Thousands of people, including women and children, are on a protest outside Jamia Millia Islamia and nearby Shaheen Bagh for over 20 days to oppose the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizen (NRC).

Besides Delhi, protests have been witnessed across the country over the contentious law and have at several places led to clashes including Uttar Pradesh, where more than 20 people have died.

According to the amended law, members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities, who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan till December 31, 2014 and facing religious persecution there, will not be treated as illegal immigrants but given Indian citizenship. The law excludes Muslims.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As Father Time closes the books on an eventful 2019, its time to reflect on the recent accomplishments of WGA. During the past year, Western Governors:

1. Pursued the Reimagining the Rural West Initiative of WGA Chair Doug Burgum

The ambitious initiative, Reimagining the Rural West, is examining challenges and opportunities in rural economic development, infrastructure and quality of life. A kickoff webinar in July introduced the initiatives pillars of opportunity, connectivity and community. Regional workshops have since been hosted by: North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum in Fargo; New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham in Santa Fe; and Idaho Governor Brad Little in Post Falls. Initiative webinars focused on broadband deployment in tribal communities and federal issues in broadband data and mapping. Additional webinars and a workshop in The Dalles, Oregon, are scheduled for 2020, and a final report containing initiative recommendations will be published in connection with the 2020 WGA Annual Meeting in Medora, North Dakota.

2. Enacted a Host of Substantive Policy Resolutions

No other group of elected officials at their level of influence are, on a bipartisan basis, producing and pursuing public policy that is as substantive and meaningful as that being advanced by Western Governors. During the past calendar year, they adopted detailed policy resolutions regarding: federal-state land exchanges and purchases; biosecurity and invasive species management; national parks; wildlife migration corridors and habitat; improvements to the state-federal relationship; states share of royalties and leasing revenues from federal lands and minerals; tax-exempt federal lands and Secure Rural Schools; financial assurance regulation; and physical and behavioral health care in western states.

3. Launched the Center of Excellence for Improving the State Federal Relationship

During its 2019 Winter Meeting in Las Vegas, the Western Governors Association launched the Western Governors Center of Excellence for Improving the State-Federal Relationship, an online repository of WGA resources on federalism issues, including case studies, reports, correspondence and other products of the Governors research and policy work to improve the state-federal relationship.

4. Celebrated the Inauguration of Eleven New Members

As a consequence of the 2018 general election, a majority of WGAs active members assumed the reins of state leadership early this year. WGA is proud that these leaders immediately embraced the bipartisan ethos of the Association and apprehended the value of working across state lines on a bipartisan basis to address challenges facing our region and nation. WGA appreciates the contributions of those Governors completing their first year of service as their states chief executives: Jared Polis of Colorado, Brad Little of Idaho, Mark Gordon of Wyoming, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Steve Sisolak of Nevada, Laura Kelly of Kansas, Lou Leon Guerrero of Guam, Mike Dunleavy of Alaska, Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, and Gavin Newsom of California.

5. Welcomed Kansas into Active Membership

Upon her inauguration as Governor of the great state of Kansas in early 2019, Laura Kelly activated her membership in the Western Governors Association and assumed a position on its board of directors.

6. Initiated Work on Projects Under a Shared Stewardship Agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture

The leadership of WGA executed a shared stewardship memorandum of understanding with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue in December 2018. In June of this year, WGA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced specific projects the organizations are jointly pursuing to advance principles of the agreement. These efforts involve cheatgrass, vegetation management, and post-disaster recovery protocols. In October, Idaho Governor Brad Little hosted a meeting of WGAs Working Lands Roundtable in Boise, where experts, stakeholders and resource managers worked on implementation plans for each of these projects.

7. Conducted Sensational Annual and Winter Meetings

The 2019 Annual Meeting in Vail, Colorado, was attended by twelve active Governors, eight of whom had been elected the previous November. Veteran Governors David Ige of Hawaii, Doug Burgum of North Dakota, Kate Brown of Oregon and Gary Herbert of Utah were joined by their first-term counterparts Jared Polis of Colorado, Brad Little of Idaho, Mark Gordon of Wyoming, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Steve Sisolak of Nevada, Laura Kelly of Kansas, and Lou Leon Guerrero of Guam. Nearly 450 attendees joined the Governors for three days of policy discussions, business meetings and special events. The conference featured keynote addresses by: Secretary of the Interior, David Bernhardt; Secretary Ben Carson of the Department of Housing and Urban Development; internationally renowned pollster Frank Luntz; the chief executive officer of Vail Resorts, Robert Katz; and author Craig Johnson, creator of the Longmire book series. Panel discussions provided expert perspectives on biosecurity and invasive species; broadband connectivity in the rural West; the use of data and forecasting in western water management; and the fentanyl crisis. In addition, former Governors Roy Romer of Colorado and Mike Leavitt of Utah reflected on the creation of the Western Governors University by WGA over 20 years ago. Governor Burgum was elected by Western Governors to serve as Chair of WGA, and Governor Brown was elected Vice Chair.

The 2019 Winter Meeting, held in December in Las Vegas, was attended by 11 Western Governors: David Ige, Doug Burgum, Kate Brown, Gary Herbert, Jared Polis, Brad Little, Kristi Noem, Steve Sisolak, Doug Ducey of Arizona, Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, and Steve Bullock of Montana. Approximately 380 conference attendees joined the Governors, who engaged in public conversations with Land O Lakes CEO Beth Ford; inventor and philanthropist Dean Kamen; and former Governors C. L. Butch Otter of Idaho, Matt Mead of Wyoming, Dennis Daugaard of South Dakota, and Rick Snyder of Michigan. Panel discussions addressed cutting edge energy innovations, precision agriculture, behavioral health, emerging issues in cybersecurity and the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women.

8. Published a Report on the Western Governors Biosecurity and Invasive Species Initiative and Established the Western Invasive Species Council

During its 2019 Annual Meeting in Vail, WGA presented its findings with respect to the Western Governors Biosecurity and Invasive Species Initiative of the Associations immediate past Chair, the Honorable David Ige of Hawaii. The report includes specific recommendations to combat threats posed by invasive species in the West. In December, WGA implemented one such recommendation, announcing creation of the Western Invasive Species Council. The council is working to enhance coordination among existing state invasive species councils, improve communication and collaboration on regional biosecurity and invasive species control efforts, and advocate for regional needs at the federal level.

9. Launched the Western Governors Collaborative Conservation Task Force

Under the auspices of the Working Lands Roundtable, WGA launched the Western Governors Collaborative Conservation Task Force, which is focused on the development of strategies to conserve potentially imperiled species long before they become vulnerable to listings as either threatened or endangered.

10. Populated the Board of the Western Governors Foundation

The Governors appointed six members to the board of the reinvented Western Governors Foundation. The boards chair is former Governor Dennis Daugaard of South Dakota, and its Vice Chair is former Governor Brian Sandoval of Nevada. Other board members include Governors Steve Bullock of Montana and David Ige of Hawaii, as well as former Governors Matt Mead of Wyoming and C.L. Butch Otter of Idaho. Governors have directed the foundation to manage the annual Celebrate the West high school art competition and pursue projects to advance their philanthropic interests and workforce development priorities.

Jim Ogsbury is the executive director of the Western Governors Association. Contact him at 303-623-9378 or jogsbury@westgov.org.

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Kolkata, Jan 6 : Kolkata and various districts of West Bengal on Monday erupted in protest against the attack on students and professors of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, as students hit the streets in large numbers blockading roads and railway tracks and shouting slogans railing against right-wing Hindutva forces, like ABVP, BJP and the RSS.

Holding aloft banners and posters condemning the "fascist attack" at JNU, the CPI-M affiliated Students Federation of India led a rally from Presidency University and lit fires at the College Street crossing as a mark of protest.

The Congress' student wing Chhattra Parishad protested outside the College Street campus of Calcutta University The All India Democratic Students Organisation (AIDSO) brought out a condemnation rally from near Presidency University and staged a demonstration by obstructing the College Street-M G Road Crossing.

"We are observing this day as protest day across the nation. The goons have carried out dastardly attack on fellow students. We cannot but protest," said an AIDSO leader.

Hundreds of Jadavpur University students led by the SFI took out a colourful protest march from the campus. With songs and slogans of "Azaadi" and "Hallabol" on their lips, they went round the campus beating the daffli and clapping in rhythm. A JNU student, who was in the city on leave, also joined the march.

"My friends in JNU are in panic. Also, they are seething in rage after the dastardly attack. I couldn't sit at home and joined the protest here," she said.

In West Burdwan district's Durgapur, the SFI blockaded the rail tracks for some time.
The accident took place when a microbus was heading to Cairo University from Faisal district collided with a truck moving in the opposite direction at high speed.

Three people were killed and at least seven others were injured in a shocking accident on Cairo University road on Monday.

The accident took place when a microbus was heading to Cairo University from Faisal district collided with a truck moving in the opposite direction at high speed.

According to local news reports, the microbus was overturned upon the fierce collision. Ambulances rushed to the scene to take the injured to nearby hospitals.

On the same day, four Syrians were killed and 11 others were injured when a microbus overturned south of Marsa Alam in the Red Sea governorate.

Last week, 23 people were killed and others were injured when a bus overturned in Port Said. The bus driver was remanded into custody on charges of manslaughter by Egypt's prosecutor-general.

Egypt has allocated millions of pounds to developing and expanding road networks in recent years.

A comprehensive traffic law to crack down on violators and enhance safety is set to go into effect in 2020.

According to Egypts Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, 1,567 people died as a result of road accidents in the first half of 2019, which recorded 5,220 accidents, up from 4,426 accidents in the same period in 2018, an increase of 17.9 percent.

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Phu Nhai church, officially known as the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, is a Roman Catholic church located in Bui Chu Diocese in Xuan Truong district, Nam Dinh province.

Phu Nhai church was the biggest in Indochina back when it was built.

The church was originally built of wood by priest Emmanuel Riano Hoa in 1866, shortly after King Tu Duc signed a decree promising not to harm the Christian community, ending nearly three centuries of religious suppression. The church was restored several times, becoming larger and nicer and in a more Western style.

Unfortunately, it was leveled by a storm in 1929, but was rebuilt in 1933 to be the biggest church in Indochina at that time. After being damaged during the war, Phu Nhai church was remodeled by Bishop Nguyen Chu Trinh in 2004 into its current form. It was recognized as a minor basilica by the Vatican in 2008. The world now has four major basilicas, all in Italy, and 1,575 minor basilicas.

Parishioner Dinh Ngoc Toan of Phu Nhai village said Vietnam has four recognized minor basilicas, including Phu Nhai church, So Kien church in Ha Nam province, La Vang church in Quang Tri province, and the Notre Dame Cathedral in Ho Chi Minh City. Phu Nhai is a world-class church. It is packed with tourists all year round and most crowded during Christmas and holy ceremonies. The church borrowed the French architechture and was built by the Vietnamese.

Phu Nhai church covers 2,160 square meters. In front of the church is a square. On the right is a 17-meter tower dedicated to St. Dominic, who founded the Dominican Order in the 12th century.

Dominicans were the first missionaries to enter Vietnam in the 16th century. On the left of the church is a 15-meter tomb containing remains of 83 martyrs of the Phu Nhai diocese. Around the church are 14 embossments depicting Christ carrying the cross to his crucifixion.

Dinh Xuan Nghia, a Phu Nhai villager, told VOV This church measures 30 meters high, 80 meters long, and 30 meters wide. The church has two towers, each 44 meters high, representing power. In Phu Nhai church, there are three statues, Mary in the middle flanked by two angels, symbolizing Jesus being born and in heaven. There are also statues of bishops who once looked after Bui Chu diocese. Inside the church are precious saint statues made of ivory brought from France.

The church beguiles visitors with its Gothic decorations and architecture reminiscent of the Middle Ages in Western Europe. The embossments on the doors and walls are engraved with Chinese script. The two bell towers have four bells made in France, each weighing two tons. They are rung only during major festivals.

Two majestic wooden doors open to a cathedral with splendid arches. Like most Catholic churches, Phu Nhai church has a vertical form with an altar at the far end. On the altar is Jesus in the highest position with the virgin Mary placed a little bit lower. Both are delicately carved.

Visitors can climb to the bell towers to enjoy a panoramic view of Phu Nhai village.

Tourist Nguyen Van Chien from Ho Chi Minh city said Ive been to numerous beautiful churches in Europe and find a lot of churches in Vietnam equally beautiful. Phu Nhai church has similar Gothic architecture with typical features like two bell towers, a pointed roof, asterisks, and Gothic doors. The church is not big but is as big as people at that time could build. The construction was entirely the work of Vietnamese people.

Major celebrations at Phu Nhai church include a dedication ceremony on December 7, the feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, and Christmas on December 24. Phu Nhai church is a tourist attraction that provides research material for architects and historians. VOV

Foreign tourists flock to view Tan Dinh Church Located in District 3 of Ho Chi Minh City, the brightly coloured Tan Dinh Church has become a popular tourist attraction for both local and foreign visitors due to its unique pink shade coupled with Roman style architecture.
France's culture minister said Monday that a writer accused of raping and seducing children should be stripped of a special state pension. Award-winning essayist Gabriel Matzneff is being investigated by French police after the publication of a book detailing his sexual relationship with a girl of 14 over three decades ago. Matzneff, 83, who won the prestigious Renaudot prize in 2013, has never made any secret of his sexual preference for adolescent girls and boys. In the mid-1970s, he published a notorious essay called "Les Moins de Seize Ans" ("Those Less than 16") in which he recounted his "conquests". Culture minister Franck Riester said Matzneff should be deprived of cash from a hardship fund from the National Books Centre (CNL) for elderly writers in financial straits. In a statement, he said the author should not be granted the annual allowance if he applies for it again. Matzneff is reported to have received around 8,000 euros ($8,900) from the fund last year, and up to 160,000 euros since 2002, according to a French Sunday newspaper, Journal du Dimanche. The case has again shone a light on what many see as an overly permissive attitude towards sexual harassment and assaults in France. The French film establishment has been rocked by rape accusations against directors Roman Polanski and Luc Besson, while star Adele Haenel said she was sexually harassed by the director of her first film when she was 12. All three men deny the claims. - Fame doesn't give 'impunity' - The head of the CNL, Vincent Monade, said it had resisted Matzneff being awarded the allowance when he first applied for it, but bowed to the request under pressure from politicians and other famous authors who lobbied for him. He said they had recommended to the minister that the grant now be withdrawn. Police opened a formal investigation into Matzneff last week after leading publisher Vanessa Springora described her tortured relationship with writer in a book called "Consent". In it she described how Matzneff, then in his fifties, would wait for her outside her school and then take her back to his home for sex. Prosecutors said their inquiry would focus on "rapes committed against a minor" aged under 15. Matzneff has denied any wrongdoing and said that there had been an "exceptional love" between him and Springora. He claimed her book tried to portray him as "a pervert, a manipulator and a predator". Ahead of the book's publication, Riester turned on Matzneff, saying "having a literary aura is not a guarantee of impunity". MP Aurore Berge, from President Emmanuel Macron's ruling LREM party, said French society had to work to do, having looked the other way for years on sex crimes. "Raping a child of 12 is still a crime whether it was committed in 1968 or 2019," she said in an article published at the weekend. "To deny that children in the 1970s were victims is to try to wipe away the crimes and the trauma that they caused," she added. Under investigation: Veteran writer Gabriel Matzneff who never hid his history of relationships with minors
Children not part of NRC wont be sent to detention centres: AG tells Supreme Court

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Jan 06: The Centre has told the Supreme Court that children will not be separated from their families and taken to detention centres if any of their parent's names are included in the final NRC.

The centre made this submission after it was pointed out that 60 children had been excluded from the Assam NRC. They were excluded despite showing all the documents. However, their parents were included, advocate Aparna Bhat pointed out.

NEWS AT NOON, JANUARY 6th, 2020

The Supreme Court then took on record the undertaking by Attorney General, K K Venugopal that the children excluded from the NRC, whose parents have been given citizenship will not be sent to detention centres in Assam. The AG also told the court that 19 lakh had been excluded from the final NRC in Assam.
The Senate returns Monday. The House on Tuesday. The dynamics of impeachment are, from a practical standpoint, largely unchanged from where they were before the holidays. The array of questions from the most immediate: "when will the articles be transmitted to the Senate," to perhaps the most central: "will there be witnesses?" are still unanswered.

Bottom line: This is, finally, mercifully, the week questions start to get answered. Pay close attention to senators facing questions about what kind of trial they'd like to see play out. For months they've been able to dodge the question as the House moved through its inquiry and vote. That's no longer the case. It's time to put some positions on the record.

What to watch today: The full Senate returns to the Capitol for the first time in the new year, which will provide the first real opportunity to take the temperature of the rank-and-file members in weeks. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic counterpart Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York will speak from the floor as well.

What about the House: The House doesn't return until Tuesday, and it remains unclear when the next time House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will speak, or take questions, will be at this point.

Good rule of thumb on the articles: There's a general expectation the articles will be transmitted this week among those in both chambers. But remember this: if Pelosi hasn't personally told you when she plans to send them over, you don't know. Period.

Will Iran change the impeachment calculation?

The early answer, according to lawmakers and aides in both chamber CNN spoke to over the weekend, is emphatically "no." One House Democrat made clear they are "separate issues" and the chamber has proven "we can do more than one thing at a time."

McConnell and Schumer have, to this point, kept them as completely separate issues, by design. There's no expectation that's going to change in the near-term, aides say.

A refresher on the key positions

Pelosi said before the holidays she wants to ensure what Democrats would view as a fair trial structure before sending over the articles of impeachment to the Senate. She's aligned with Schumer on the need for witnesses to be addressed up front. She also wants to know the structure before finalizing her impeachment managers.

said before the holidays she wants to ensure what Democrats would view as a fair trial structure before sending over the articles of impeachment to the Senate. She's aligned with Schumer on the need for witnesses to be addressed up front. She also wants to know the structure before finalizing her impeachment managers. McConnell has made clear his preference is to structure a trial where the House managers, then the President's defense team give presentations. Then senators can ask questions. Then they will either vote to subpoena witnesses or, if the votes aren't there for that, vote to acquit the President. McConnell has made clear he doesn't believe witnesses are necessary, and privately has noted they could very well work against Trump.

has made clear his preference is to structure a trial where the House managers, then the President's defense team give presentations. Then senators can ask questions. Then they will either vote to subpoena witnesses or, if the votes aren't there for that, vote to acquit the President. McConnell has made clear he doesn't believe witnesses are necessary, and privately has noted they could very well work against Trump. Schumer has been explicit that he wants subpoenas for four administration witnesses, and a raft of documents, included in any initial organizing resolution. All 47 senators who caucus with the Democrats support the position and each drip of news or information related to Ukraine has served, according to Schumer, to bolster his push to do so.

What happened last week?

McConnell reiterated his position on the Senate floor. Schumer did the same. Pelosi was mostly silent beyond a statement ripping into McConnell, saying he "made clear that he will feebly comply with President Trump's cover-up of his abuses of power and be an accomplice to that cover-up."

That was the extent of what Pelosi has said about impeachment in the last two weeks. So we wait.

How the Senate trial rules impasse ends: McConnell isn't going to move, according to people familiar with his thinking. If at least 51 of the 53 Senate Republicans back him in that position, he won't have to.

Reality check

At this point, there is no expectation a bipartisan agreement on the trial structure will be reached, according to people involved. That's what occurred in 1999 as it pertained to the first portion of the trial, but McConnell and Schumer are simply too far apart right now.

The most likely scenario is McConnell moves his own organizing resolution, along party lines, that sets up the first half of the trial.

The longer game: View everything Schumer is doing through lens of getting 51 votes on witnesses -- eventually. The witness proposal, the framing, the sharp and fast statements coming after any story that drips out new information about the Ukraine allegations -- it's all driving toward the idea that wary (or politically endangered) Republicans will have a choice to make: a robust trial with witnesses who have firsthand knowledge of events but declined to show up in the House, or stick behind McConnell.

Schumer has been making this point implicitly for weeks -- that four of Republicans essentially hold the keys to the trial structure in their hands. But he was explicit about it on ABC's "This Week." "I hope, pray, and believe there's a decent chance that four Republicans will join us. If they do, we'll have a fair trial."

To be clear, there haven't been any clear breaks in Republican ranks yet. But Democratic leaders, who are very much aligned now, are using every pre-trial moment they can to try and push them to that point.

Collins and Murkowski

What Collins and Murkowski (actually) said: Much attention was given to Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska during the holidays, due to their remarks in local media interviews regarding where they stand on impeachment. And rightfully so: all eyes are on both, and both critiqued, either explicitly or implicitly, McConnell's stated close relationship and coordination with the White House on the trial.

But it's important to take a close look at what else the two moderates who are often swing votes said.

Murkowski didn't give an answer on whether she'd like to see witnesses and criticized House Democrats for not going through the courts to compel testimony. Collins said she was "open" to witnesses but that it was too soon to make that judgment.

Both appeared to pretty clearly line up with what McConnell has laid out as his preferred path, at least for the start of the trial -- presentations by the managers, then the defense, then questions from senators. Then decisions will be made (or votes will be had) on whether to subpoena witnesses.

This is a long way of saying, for all of the attention the comments got, neither broke with how McConnell wants to at least start this process. That obviously could change. But it hasn't yet.

When will the trial begin?

There is no good answer to this question right now beyond "we don't know." It's entirely contingent on Pelosi holding the vote to appoint managers and transmit the articles to the Senate. Pelosi hasn't tipped her hand as to when that may occur.

Even when it does, it's likely there will be several days of negotiations about how the trial will be structured before any real floor action kicks into gear.

In other words, this will be a process -- one in which without the first step, nothing else comes together.

Would McConnell consider starting a trial without the articles?

No. The answer is no.

The 1986 Senate rules related to impeachment state, in their first point, that the Senate acts only when it receives notice from the House that managers have been appointed and have been directed to transmit the articles to the Senate.

So in other words, a trial without the articles would require the chamber to essentially go around the standing impeachment rules, which would require 60 votes, or an explicit rule change which would require 67 votes. There are 53 Republican senators. They don't have the votes. Ostensibly the Senate could move to drop the threshold to a simple majority, but that would basically entail nuking the legislative filibuster.

It's more detailed and complicated than this, but that's a 30,000-foot way of looking at it, per people who have walked through this idea.

Here's the best way to summarize it: McConnell is not going to pursue this. Period.

What the Senate does if Pelosi continues to hold the articles: Conduct business as usual, particularly on the nominations front. McConnell said publicly on Friday he's just fine if the articles never come over and has already teed up nominations for this week for the Senate to move through in the absence of the articles.

And yet: That doesn't mean some in his conference won't do just that. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, said he will introduce a motion on Monday to change the Senate impeachment rules to allow for a vote to dismiss the articles if they aren't sent over "for lack of prosecution."

It would come in a motion to update Senate impeachment rules, which would be subject to the much higher vote threshold. The votes for this don't exist, but it underscores the tension here.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on Fox News Sunday that if Pelosi doesn't send the articles over by the end of this week, the Senate should "take matters in our own hands" and change the rules to start the trial without the articles.

Just want to reiterate here once more: McConnell is not considering this, and the mechanics of doing it would, for lack of a better description, incinerate the Senate.

Your 'Who to Watch' Briefing

Republicans

The moderates:

Murkowski

Collins

There's no sense where either will end up, and that's not a new development. Both are very well-known to go through their own process (Collins was holding lengthy briefings with Congressional Research Service experts before the holidays) and McConnell gives both quite a bit of space to do just that. As one senior GOP aide put it to me before the holidays: "Jamming or whipping either of them is a fool's errand. They're going to do it their way, and we hope it comes out in our favor."

The 2020ers:

Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado

Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina

Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona

Collins

The natural place to look on a tough vote is to those who are running for reelection in swing (or swing-ish) states. Hence these five. There will certainly be a ton of pressure on them, along with ad money coming down in their states pushing them to go one way or another.

One thing to keep in mind here, however: in most, if not all, of the cases of these five senators, the political repercussions of voting against the President likely far outweigh the benefits. With a President as popular within the Republican Party as Trump is, raising his ire is an excellent way to potentially depress the base voters needed to make any of these races close, let alone tip them into the incumbents' direction.

Now, the caveat here is these decisions aren't always made through the purely political lens. And in a trial setting, there's a way to have it both ways (vote in favor of witnesses pushed by Democrats, but against removal). All of those things are possible and why these lawmakers are worth watching. But do keep in mind there isn't some clear political benefit to bucking the President just because they come from swing states.

The Romney:

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah

Sen. Mitt Romney has repeatedly been willing to question or raise concerns about President Trump's actions, including as it relates to Ukraine. Yet he's also been careful not to commit to anything as it relates to the trial regarding what he'd like to see, as he continues to study past impeachments and the case itself.

The retirees:

Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee

Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas

Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming

The theory here is that one or more of these members may choose to side with Democrats at some point on voting to subpoena witnesses or documents on the grounds that a more fulsome trial is good for the institution they will soon be leaving. Of note: none of these senators have said anything publicly that would show they're willing to do that. Republican aides find it laughable that someone like Enzi or Roberts would break in any way from the party line, but Democrats have their eyes on all three -- Alexander in particular, who has taken great pains to keep his powder dry and not lean any way in advance of the trial.

Democrats:

Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama

Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona

All 47 senators who caucus with the Democrats support Schumer's push to have subpoenas for documents and witnesses in the initial organizing resolution (see Jones in The Washington Post).

But beyond that, it's worth noting that there is no guarantee the entire Democratic caucus will vote to remove the President. Keep an eye on the three mentioned above. Jones makes clear in his op-ed he's not there yet, and unquestionably has the most difficult reelection race in the country. Manchin always takes his time on these types of votes and comes from a state that supports Trump in a major way. Sinema simply doesn't tip her hand, but has split with the broader caucus in the past. It's entirely possible there are Democrats who vote to acquit Trump, and these three are far and away the most likely candidates. But we just don't know yet.
The USA is now at war, de-facto and de-jure, with BOTH Iraq and Iran By The Saker The blowback has begun January 05, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - First, lets begin by a quick summary of what has taken place (note: this info is still coming in, so there might be corrections once the official sources make their official statements). Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdl Mahdi has now officially revealed that the US had asked him to mediate between the US and Iran and that General Qassem Soleimani to come and talk to him and give him the answer to his mediation efforts. Thus, Soleimani was on an OFFICIAL DIPLOMATIC MISSION as part of a diplomatic initiative INITIATED BY THE USA. The Iraqi Parliament has now voted on a resolution requiring the government to press Washington and its allies to withdraw their troops from Iraq. Iraqs caretaker PM Adil Abdul Mahdi said the American side notified the Iraqi military about the planned airstrike minutes before it was carried out. He stressed that his government denied Washington permission to continue with the operation. The Iraqi Parliament has also demanded that the Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said that Baghdad had turned to the UN Security Council with complaints about US violations of its sovereignty. Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said the parliamentary resolution to end foreign troop presence in the country did not go far enough, calling on local and foreign militia groups to unite. I also have confirmation that the Mehdi Army is being re-mobilized. The Pentagon brass is now laying the responsibility for this monumental disaster on Trump (see here). The are now slowly waking up to this immense clusterbleep and dont want to be held responsible for what is coming next. For the first time in the history of Iran, a Red Flag was hoisted over the Holy Dome Of Jamkaran Mosque, Iran. This indicates that the blood of martyrs has been spilled and that a major battle will now happen. The text in the flag say s Oh Hussein we ask for your help (u nofficial translation) The US has announced the deployment of 3000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne to Kuwait. Finally, the Idiot-in-Chief tweeted the following message, probably to try to reassure his freaked out supporters:  The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World! If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their wayand without hesitation! . Apparently, he still thinks that criminally overspending for 2nd rate military hardware is going to yield victory Analysis Well, my first though when reading these bullet points is that General Qasem Soleimani has already struck out at Uncle Shmuel from beyond his grave. What we see here is an immense political disaster unfolding like a slow motion train wreck. Make no mistake, this is not just a tactical oopsie, but a major STRATEGIC disaster. Why? For one thing, the US will now become an official and totally illegal military presence in Iraq. This means that whatever SOFA (Status Of Forces Agreement) the US and Iraq had until now is void. Second, the US now has two options: Fight and sink deep into a catastrophic quagmire or Withdraw from Iraq and lose any possibility to keep forces in Syria Both of these are very bad because whatever option Uncle Shmuel chooses, he will lost whatever tiny level of credibility he has left, even amongst his putative allies (like the KSA which will now be left nose to nose with a much more powerful Iran than ever before). Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter The main problem with the current (and very provisional) outcome is that both the Israel Lobby and the Oil Lobby will now be absolutely outraged and will demand that the US try to use military power to regime change both Iraq and Iran. Needless to say, that aint happening (only ignorant and incurable flag-wavers believe the silly claptrap about the US armed forces being THE BEST). Furthermore, it is clear that by its latest terrorist action the USA has now declared war on BOTH Iraq and Iran. This is so important that I need to repeat it again: The USA is now at war, de-facto and de-jure, with BOTH Iraq and Iran. I hasten to add that the US is also at war with most of the Muslim world (and most definitely all Shias, including Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis). Next, I want to mention the increase in US troop numbers in the Middle-East. An additional 3000 soldiers from the 82nd AB is what would be needed to support evacuations and to provide a reserve force for the Marines already sent in. This is NOWHERE NEAR the kind of troop numbers the US would need to fight a war with either Iraq or Iran. Finally, there are some who think that the US will try to invade Iran. Well, with a commander in chief as narcissistically delusional as Trump, I would never say never but, frankly, I dont think that anybody at the Pentagon would be willing to obey such an order. So no, a ground invasion is not in the cards and, if it ever becomes an realistic option we would first see a massive increase in the US troop levels, we are talking several tens of thousands, if not more (depending on the actual plan). No, what the US will do if/when they attack Iran is what Israel did to Lebanon in 2006, but at a much larger scale. They will begin by a huge number of airstrikes (missiles and aircraft) to hit: Iranian air defenses Iranian command posts and Iranian civilian and military leaders Symbolic targets (like nuclear installations and high visibility units like the IRGC) Iranian navy and coastal defenses Crucial civilian infrastructure (power plants, bridges, hospitals, radio/TV stations, food storage, pharmaceutical installations, schools, historical monuments and, lets not forget that one, foreign embassies of countries who support Iran). The way this will be justified will be the same as what was done to Serbia: a destruction of critical regime infrastructure (what else is new?!) Then, within about 24-48 hours the US President will go on air an announce to the world that it is mission accomplished and that THE BEST military forces in the galaxy have taught a lesson to the Mollahs. There will be dances in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem (right until the moment the Iranian missiles will start dropping from the sky. At which point the dances will be replaced by screams about a 2nd Hitler and the Holocaust). Then all hell will break loose (I have discussed that so often in the past that I wont go into details here). In conclusion, I want to mention something more personal about the people of the US. Roughly speaking, there are two main groups which I observed during my many years of life in the USA. Group one: is the TV-watching imbeciles who think that the talking heads on the idiot box actually share real knowledge and expertise. As a result, their thinking goes along the following lines: yeah, yeah, say what you want, but if the mollahs make a wrong move, we will simply nuke them; a few neutron bombs will take care of these sand niggers. And if asked about the ethics of this stance, the usual answer is a f**k them! they messed with the wrong guys, now they will get their asses kicked. Group two: is a much quieter group. It includes both people who see themselves as liberals and conservatives. They are totally horrified and they feel a silent rage against the US political elites. Friends, there are A LOT of US Americans out there who are truly horrified by what is done in their name and who feel absolutely powerless to do anything about it. I dont know about the young soldiers who are now being sent to the Middle-East, but I know a lot of former servicemen who know the truth about war and about THE BEST military in the history of the galaxy and they are also absolutely horrified. I cant say which group is bigger, but my gut feeling is that Group Two is much bigger than Group One. I might be wrong. I am now signing off but I will try to update you here as soon as any important info comes in. The Saker UPDATE1: according to the Russian website Colonel Cassad, Moqtada al-Sadr has officially made the following demands to the Iraqi government: Immediately break the cooperation agreement with the United States. Close the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Close all U.S. military bases in Iraq. Criminalize any cooperation with the United States. To ensure the protection of Iraqi embassies. Officially boycott American products. UPDATE2: RT is reporting that One US service member, two contractors killed in Al-Shabaab attack in Kenya, two DoD personnel injured. Which just goes to prove my point that spontaneous attacks are what we will be seeing first and that the retaliation promised by Iran will only come later. UPDATE3: al-Manar reports that two rockets have landed near the US embassy in Baghdad. UPDATE4: Zerohedge is reporting that Iranian state TV broadcasted an appeal made during the funeral procession in which a speaker said that each Iranian ought to send one dollar per person (total 80000000 dollars) as a bounty for the killing of Donald Trump. I am trying to get a confirmation from Iran about this. UPDATE5: Russian sources claim that all Iranian rocket forces have been put on combat alert. UPDATE6: the Russian heavy rocket cruiser Marshal Ustinov has cross the Bosphorus and has entered the Mediterranean. This article was originally published by "The Saker" - Do you agree or disagree? Post your comment here
A New York judge recently doubled disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinsteins bail  to $2 million (U.S.)  after prosecutors accused him of disabling his location-tracking electronic ankle bracelet.

The bottom line, the lead prosecutor in the sex assault case said in court last month, is this man could fly out on a private jet, which he does, and go to another country like that.

Electronic monitoring has long been a fixture in the U.S. justice system, where tens of thousands of accused criminals wear GPS-monitoring bracelets  not just celebrities such as Weinstein. But GPS monitoring is also becoming more common in Canada, with growing acceptance by judges and justices of the peace that the devices can be another safeguard in a release plan.

Some electronic supervision programs in Canada are government-run and have been around since the 1980s. In Ontario, the government also uses them to monitor offenders serving non-custodial sentences, or offenders released on parole or temporary passes.

But in the past decade, private electronic monitoring services have increasingly been used not just with convicted offenders but also those in jail awaiting trial who are presumed to be innocent.

Recovery Science Corp., one of Canadas largest private providers of electronic monitoring services, says it has supplied monitoring bracelets in more than 760 bail cases since 2010, the vast majority of these in Ontario. (In 2010, there were just five cases. Last year, the number of releases climbed to more than 200.)

The company is currently keeping tabs on 190 people on bail  176 in Ontario. Those people are awaiting trial on charges ranging from assault to murder.

The cost of monitoring, $610 a month, is entirely paid for by the accused. (The company reduces the cost for people on Legal Aid to $390 a month.)

Critics point to that not-insignificant cost  nil for police, the Crown and the courts, but out of reach for many poorer accused  as one reason the bracelets havent been more widely used to keep people out of Ontarios overcrowded jails.

Big-time drug dealers who have tons of money lying around, they dont care, theyll have money to pay for it. A regular kid caught with a gun, coming from a single-parent family, no chance, says Toronto defence lawyer Hussein Aly, who nevertheless supports electronic monitoring as an alternative to jail.

So does James Lockyer, another Toronto defence lawyer best known for his work fighting to overturn wrongful convictions. I think its a good thing, but its very unfortunate that there is that cost attached to it that prevents people who cant afford it, from making use of the system.

Lockyer turned to electronic supervision to argue for release pending appeal for Demitry Papasotiriou, a lawyer who was convicted of the first-degree murder of his husband in 2018  no slam dunk for someone a jury found guilty of the most serious of crimes. The Crown opposed his release, arguing he must be detained in order to maintain public confidence in the administration of justice.

Papasotirious willingness to wear and pay for the GPS ankle bracelet was one of the factors that persuaded Justice Gary Trotter, of the Ontario Court of Appeal, to grant him bail ahead of his appeal. Papasotirious sureties also pledged $500,000, and he has stringent conditions including house arrest.

The public can be assured Papasotiriou is not simply being turned loose on society, with no precautions or safeguards, while his case works its way through the appeal process, Trotter wrote in his 2018 decision. The appeal has yet to be scheduled.

Peter Marshall, RSCs co-founder, acknowledges his service carries a hefty price tag.

Were conscious of the fact there are people who cant afford this and we want to try to do our part to make it available, Marshall said. The other important way of looking at it is, should people who can afford it stay in jail because somebody else cant? Would that make sense?

In addition, electronic monitoring saves hundreds of thousands of remand custody days, which, in turn, saves taxpayers the cost of housing inmates, transporting prisoners to court, inducing guilty pleas and the impact of incarceration on families.

In theory, people not yet found guilty of a crime should be released from custody in most circumstances  even if that flies in the face of political rhetoric that bail should be made harder for people accused of some crimes.

The starting point for courts is presumption of innocence and charter right to reasonable bail, Marshall points out in an email.

Himself a lawyer, Marshall didnt initially start his company to track the location of accused criminals under house arrest or other court-ordered restrictions.

In 2009, while he was practising child protection law in Ontarios cottage country, Marshall was representing a young alcoholic mother whose child had been removed from her care.

He wanted to help her reunite with her child as soon as possible, so he did some research, and discovered SCRAM, an alcohol-monitoring bracelet widely used in U.S. impaired driving cases. The SCRAM bracelet  the acronym stands for Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor  can detect traces of alcohol in a wearers sweat and alerts authorities if levels are too high.

It provided all the information about whether someone was drinking or not in a much more timely way than other available tests, such as blood, urine and the now-discredited hair strand test, Marshall explained.

That led Marshall to co-found Recovery Science Corp. with Stephen Tan, a trained chiropractor who is often called upon to appear in court to explain how the system works. Together, they brought the SCRAM technology to Canada for use in bail and conditional sentences for alcohol related-criminal charges and in family law and child protection cases.

In 2012, they added GPS monitoring, acquiring from a U.S. company the waterproof, half-pound ankle bracelets that contain a GPS chip that tracks the location of the wearer to ensure compliance with terms imposed by the court.

Wearing one has been likened to strapping a half-full pop can, or an orange, to your ankle, with batteries that require once-daily charging. A persons whereabouts is continuously recorded and, the company says, police are notified if there are any breaches of house arrest, curfew or other location-related restrictions.

But skeptics say electronic monitoring gives the public a false sense of security. For instance, if an accused wants to flee the country, he or she can easily remove the device. According to Marshall, 25 people have had their bail revoked or varied due to ankle bracelet tampering.

In 2017, Superior Court Justice Robert Clark was not persuaded that an ankle bracelet would ground an accused high-level drug and weapons trafficker, who was later convicted.

I accept that electronic monitoring can, in some cases, be a very effective tool, but in my view, this is not such a case, Clark said in his ruling dismissing an application to rescind his detention order.

The accused had plenty of reasons to skip town. He was facing a formidable Crown case, a potential double-digit sentence, and appeared to have access to considerable sums of cash, giving him the means to abscond if he were to decide to do so, Clark said in court.

An ankle bracelet also wont reveal anything about who the wearer is associating with, or what they are doing. A drug dealer, for instance, can still ply his trade by telephone or visits. Nor does the bracelet have a drug or gunshot residue sniffing capability.

Marshall readily admits all of these things  but adds no one is suggesting electronic monitoring is the silver bullet.

Theres really nobody out there asserting that it is foolproof, or a panacea or it can prevent people from doing things that they shouldnt be doing, he says.

Aly, the Toronto defence lawyer, understands that and remains a believer, saying monitoring strongly deters bail breaches because of the certainty of apprehension.

If an accused believes he might get away with it, he might be tempted to take a chance that a breach wont be detected. Similarly, a family member may find it difficult to report a breach and send a loved one to jail so they may forgive it.

And often sureties are unable to provide around the clock supervision.

Monitoring was accepted in one of my cases (last) year as an added guarantee that closed a small gap in supervision that existed where both my sureties were at work and the accused was home alone.

Marshall said its a very individualized process when deciding who is a candidate.

Someone engaging in child porn activities over the internet, the GPS bracelet worn under house arrest is not going to manage that behaviour.

Weinsteins trial began in Manhattan on Monday. His lawyers earlier argued problems with his ankle bracelet stemmed from technical issues, not tampering.

Correction - Jan. 7, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly transposed Toronto defence lawyer Hussein Alys first and last names in one reference.

Correction - Jan. 8, 2020: As well, Recovery Science offers a reduced rate of $390 a month, not $332 a month, to people who are on Legal Aid.
The bushfire death toll has risen after the body of a missing 71-year-old was found on his burnt-out south coast property.

The elderly man was last seen on New Year's Eve moving equipment on his property in Nerrigundah, New South Wales Police said.

Officers had been unable to access the area until Monday when a large-scale land search located the man's body between a destroyed home and car.

The Australian bushfire death toll has risen after the body of a missing 71-year-old was found on his burnt-out south coast property. Pictured: Bushfires on the NSW south coast

Police believe the body is that of the 71-year-old but are awaiting formal identification.

The grim discovery rose the New South Wales bushfire death toll to 20.

Volunteer firefighter Samuel McPaul, 28, was killed on December 30 when he was battling a blaze in Jingellic, in Green Valley, about 70km east of Albury on the border of NSW and Victoria.

His crew were leaving the area when extreme winds caused a 'fire tornado' and flipped the truck.

Mr McPaul married his long-time love Megan in April last year and the pair were expecting their first child on May 4.

Mr McPaul was the third firefighter to have died after Andrew O'Dwyer, 36, and Geoffrey Keaton, 32, were killed when a tree fell on their truck.

Volunteer firefighter Samuel McPaul, 28, was killed on December 30 when he was battling a blaze in Jingellic, in Green Valley, about 70km east of Albury on the border of NSW and Victoria

Both men were young fathers and had volunteered with the Horsley Park Rural Fire Service brigade for more than a decade.

Mr Keaton had a young 19-month-old son Harvey, and Mr O'Dwyer had a 19-month-old daughter Charlotte, and two young sons.

Deaths from the bushfires in New South Wales began on October 9 when the bodies of Bob Lindsey, 77, and Gwen Hyde, 68, were found outside a burnt out home.

Three people died in November after their bodies were pulled from homes and cars that had been burned to a crisp.

Sam McPaul was the third firefighter to have died after Andrew O'Dwyer (left), 36, and Geoffrey Keaton (right), 32, were killed when a tree fell on their truck

George Nole's body was found in a burnt out car near his home in Glen Innes while 63-year-old Julie Fletcher's body was pulled from a scorched building in Johns River, north of Taree.

Vivian Chaplain, a 69-year-old woman from Wytaliba, succumbed to her injuries in hospital after attempting in vain to save her home and animals from the blaze.

The fourth victim was named just days later as 58-year-old Barry Parsons, who was found dead in bushland near Kempsey on November 13 - five days after he was last seen.

Patrick Salway, 29, (pictured with his pregnant wife Renee) died fighting the fires with his father Robert Salway

Bereaved widow Renee Salway took to social media on Tuesday (pictured) and said she is 'broken'. 'I love you now, I love you still, I always have and I always will,' she wrote

A 59-year-old man died on December 29 after he was found badly burned after he took shelter from a blaze in a Yarrowitch water tank in November.

A father and son were also found dead on December 30 after they tried to defend their home from the bushfires in Cobargo.

Patrick Salway, 29, and his 63-year-old father Robert were identified just days after the horrific incident.

Mr Salway was expecting a second child with his pregnant wife Renee, who paid tribute to her husband on social media, telling friends she was 'broken'.

Deaths from the bushfires in New South Wales began on October 9 when the bodies of Bob Lindsey (left), 77, and Gwen Hyde (right), 68, were found outside a burnt out home

Vivian Chaplain, a 69-year-old woman from Wytaliba, succumbed to her injuries in hospital after attempting in vain to save her home and animals from the blaze

'I love you now, I love you still, I always have and I always will,' she wrote.

'I will see you again Patrick, my best friend. Hope you are up there "fixing things in the stars tonight".'

On New Year's Eve a 70-year-old, named by local media as Laurie Andrew, was found outside a Yatte Yattah home while a man, 75, was found in a burnt out car near the Princes Highway in the same area.

The body of a 62-year-old man was found in a car in Sussex Inlet while a 72-year-old, believed to be off-duty RFS firefighter Colin Burns, was found dead in a car near Belowra.

The body of a 56-year-old was found outside a home east of Cobargo.

David Harrison, 47, suffered a heart attack on January 4 after he travelled from Goulburn to Batlow to help his friend Geoff protect his home.

Mr Harrison was returning to a car to refill water to help battle the horrific flames.

He has been remembered as a hero.

The fourth victim was named just days later as 58-year-old Barry Parsons, who was found dead in bushland near Kempsey on November 13 - five days after he was last seen

The total death toll for the bushfires across the country is 26.

Well-known outback pilot Dick Lang and his son, Adelaide surgeon Clayton Lang, died in the Kangaroo Island bushfire after their car was trapped by flames.

Beloved great-grandfather Mick Roberts, 67, from Buchan, in East Gippsland, was found dead at his home.

One other person has died in the Victorian bushfires.

Two people also died in South Australian fires before Christmas, including 69-year-old engineer Ron Selth.
The mother of a 2-year-old boy who was found dead inside his familys Novi home Friday night has been placed under arrest in the hospital, where she is being treated for injuries, police said.

Novi Police Chief David Molloy said the woman is a suspect in the case, according to the Associated Press.

The boys father came home from work Friday night and entered his familys suburban Detroit home to find his toddler son dead and his wife severely injured, police have said. The Oakland County Medical Examiner has determined the childs death is a homicide, and has told other media outlets that the toddler died of an incised wound on his neck, the AP reported.

Authorities have said the boys father is not considered a suspect, and that no one else appeared to be involved in the incident other than the mother and child.

Police have learned that the woman has a history of mental health issues, the AP said.
06.01.2020 LISTEN

The Member of Parliament for Ahanta West constituency has been criticized upon his nomination to serve on the community Parliament of ECOWAS by his constituents.

Not long ago, the Ahanta West NPP MP was nominated by the Parliament of Ghana to serve on ECOWAS parliament.

Most of the electorates in the constituency describe his nomination as putting a square peg in a round hole.

While some wonder why an MP who was rated least in the university of Ghana performance assessment on Western Region MPs could be considered for such an appointment, others question the criteria for selecting MPs to represent Ghana.

Many see his nomination as just to occupy space at the ECOWAS Parliament since his contribution to issues on the floor of Parliament hasn't been good enough.

If this is a calculated attempt by some NPP executives to hype him and also lure delegates, then l am sorry the bottom line has already been drawn.

"He has failed us and we will vote against him in the upcoming NPP primaries," an NPP delegate stressed.

Will this nomination solve our numerous problems in the Constituency - another constituent quiz.

A resolution was passed on Monday 23 December 2019 to approve the eight-member parliamentary representatives on the ECOWAS Parliament.
The crash on the Holywood Road. Pic Kevin Scott, Belfast Telegraph.

Two people are in hospital after a crash on the Holywood Road in Belfast.

The three-vehicle incident happened at around 10.30am on Monday.

Police and the Fire Service attended the scene cordoning off the road.

The Fire Service said three appliances were sent to the scene from Knock Fire Station and from Central Fire Station.

While two people were out of their cars by the time firefighters arrived at the scene another had to be cut from their vehicle.

Two emergency ambulance crews attended the scene.

An Ambulance Service spokesman said: "Following assessment and initial treatment at the scene, two patients have been transferred to the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast."

The road was closed for a time to allow the emergency services to investigate the scene.

It has since been reopened.
WASHINGTON  Rep. Lizzie Fletchers first bill  a measure meant to cut away federal red tape and speed up disaster recovery funding  passed the House nearly unanimously, with just seven votes against it and some of the chambers most conservative members joining the freshman Democrat in pushing the legislation forward.

The next day, Fletcher voted to impeach President Donald Trump  a move Republicans are dead-set on making sure overshadows all else Fletcher has done in her first year in Congress.

It was a fitting end to the year for Fletcher, a moderate from west Houston seen by some as the most vulnerable Democrat in Texas in 2020.

Fletcher mostly has kept her head down and tried to get work done, often side by side with Republicans, rather than draw the spotlight in an increasingly chaotic Congress.

She sought out committee assignments  transportation, science  that matter to Houston but rarely generate much attention.

Shes pretty much the antithesis of AOC and the rest of the Squad, Rice University political science professor Mark Jones said, referencing the liberal firebrand from New York, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Fletcher doesnt seek the headlines, he said. Shes focused on constituent services, the nitty-gritty of committees, passing legislation.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

But despite her efforts to reach across the aisle and stay above the fray, Fletcher  who represents a broad group of freshly elected moderate Democrats, many of them women, who helped the party take the House in 2018  nonetheless was key to helping House leadership move impeachment forward in the first place.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened the impeachment inquiry after moderates in swing districts voiced support for it. And those moderates, Fletcher included, largely held the party line when it came time to vote.

Within minutes of her casting it, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is targeting her seat in 2020, issued a statement saying, Lizzie Fletchers vote to impeach President Trump destroys any chance she has for re-election and shows Texas voters shes exactly like the rest of the socialist Democrats.

But Fletcher didnt come to Congress to impeach the president, and she wants her colleagues to know that.

The day after the vote, Fletcher approached U.S. Rep. Randy Weber, a Houston-area Republican, after a science committee hearing to explain her impeachment stance and let him know she still was looking forward to working with him on the energy subcommittee next year.

She had a similar exchange earlier in the year when she ran into U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, a Republican from The Woodlands, in the Washington airport and brought up the new United States Mexico Canada Agreement.

Unlike some of my other colleagues whove been here a long time, I am here just this year, Fletcher said in an interview. And I am engaged in part because I felt like we could do better up here and  that I thought, you know, bringing this Houston attitude of being collaborative and innovative and more bipartisan would help.

I put my name on the ballot because I want things to be different. I put my name on the ballot to make change, she said. And I think there are a lot of good people here that Ive gotten to work with who were here for those reasons.

Nuts-and-bolts issues

Within days of flipping a district long held by Republican John Culberson in 2018, Fletcher joined Rep. Pete Olson, a Fort Bend Republican, to meet with Houston and Harris County officials to ask what they wanted her to do in Congress.

At the top of local leaders wish list: Help getting much-needed disaster recovery funding faster. One easy way to do that, they said, was to scrap a Federal Emergency Management Agency rule that was delaying funding for projects in the city meant to guard against future flooding.

Under the rule, the city couldnt do anything until it got the green light from FEMA  or risk losing the federal match. That means the city couldnt even start buying the properties it needed to clear the way for projects until it had heard from FEMA  a process that takes months.

It was causing major delays in some big projects the city launched after Hurricane Harvey, including more than a years stalling of work on a canal where White Oak and Buffalo bayous meet, designed to curb flooding downtown. Its the biggest mitigation project in the state with a $131 million price tag, $46 million of which the federal government is set to cover.

So Fletcher got to work on legislation that Olson co-sponsored that would scrap those rules and allow local governments to get started. She got the rest of the Texas delegation on board and went even beyond that, drafting conservative North Carolina Republican Mark Meadows  an unlikely ally for a Democrat  as a co-sponsor of the bill.

Fletcher and Meadows both are on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and Fletcher had heard Meadows, who represents a state that has also been wracked by natural disasters, rail against FEMA inefficiencies during hearings.

She approached him after one and said, Look, Im working on this bill and I would love for you to work on it with me. She was sure to get a Democrat from North Carolina  U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield  on board, as well, so it was evenly bipartisan.

For subscribers: Rep. Lizzie Fletcher confronts Green New Deal, border security, Mueller at first town hall

Speaking on the House floor just before the bill sailed through on a 409-7 vote, Meadows gave Fletcher a shout-out on its name: the Hazard Eligibility and Local Projects Act, or the HELP Act for short.

Its always interesting to see how we can name these bills in the most creative ways to actually let them resonate with the voters back home, he said.

This totally helps out directly, said Bill Kelly, Houstons director of government relations. Being able to do the property acquisition  its not a sexy issue. It is one of these nuts-and-bolts issues.

But those are the issues Fletcher largely has focused on. Her committee assignments and the caucuses shes joined illustrate how she approaches work in Washington with an eye on Houston. She co-chairs a task force on trade in the New Democrat Coalition, a group of centrist Democrats, and is on the groups health care task force as well. Shes also co-chair of the Natural Gas Caucus and a member of the Oil and Gas Caucus.

Her success in passing the HELP Act speaks to how quickly shes learned the job of legislating, said Sean Theriault, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin whos an expert on Congress.

Its not easy to get Democrats and Republicans to agree  even on things that make sense, like this bill, he said. Its good for her. Its not the be-all and end-all and it doesnt mean she can walk on water, but it does mean she can put together a diverse and bipartisan coalition. It should be said, its no easy feat these days.

Optimistic view

But Fletchers work hasnt all been bipartisan. Shes stayed in line with Democrats on many of their signature bills that passed the House this year: legislation to expand background checks to buy guns, bolster voting rights and lower the cost of prescription medication, all of which passed on party-line votes.

The prescription bill was a key victory for Fletcher. The legislation would allow the government to negotiate lower prices for drugs in Medicare  something Fletcher campaigned on specifically in her run against Culberson.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee immediately posted ads on Facebook touting Fletchers support for the bill  a sign of how focused they are on helping her hold a district that could be up for grabs next year.

Republicans, however, will try to place her vote on impeachment at the center of her re-election fight.

Lizzie Fletcher showed her true colors tonight, Wesley Hunt, a Republican Army veteran running to challenge Fletcher, tweeted as she voted to impeach Trump. Not moderate, not bipartisan, just another part of the problem.

Cindy Siegel, a former Bellaire mayor also vying to take on Fletcher, similarly targeted the impeachment vote on Twitter, writing: I am frustrated that Lizzie Fletcher, someone who vowed to be an independent thinker and work across the aisle, just voted with the Democrats to impeach a duly elected President. Her actions are inexcusable, and wont be forgotten by the voters of TX-07.

For subscribers: Impeachment adds more heat to 2020 Texas elections

Fletcher clearly is aware of the potential risks her impeachment vote poses, and sent an email to constituents explaining it the day after.

The House impeached Trump on two charges: abuse of power for withholding military aid from Ukraine while pushing its government to investigate political rival Joe Biden and obstruction of Congress for stonewalling the impeachment inquiry itself.

Fletcher, who voted to impeach on both charges, was especially moved by the second.

We have to understand that were operating in this institution. And that, to me, the effort to undermine the authority of this institution really undermines our entire system, Fletcher said.

We want government to be efficient, effective and ethical, she said. And I do think that the people I represent want checks and balances.  And I think a lot of those things have been put to the test in this administration.

I think it is unfortunate and sad for our country that that is where we are and I think there was a lot of resistance for good reason of getting to that point, Fletcher said. But I did feel that the presidents actions really left no other choice than to address the abuse of power and the undermining of a coequal branch of government.

Fletcher heads into her second year in Congress  which could end up being her last  with a really fundamentally optimistic view about what we can accomplish, she said.

And Ive seen it play out and we just need a lot more of that. But I think there are a lot of people here who share that view, too, and are willing and trying to work together.

ben.wermund@chron.com

twitter.com/BenjaminEW
Prophet T.B. Joshua of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, SCOAN, has revealed what God told him about Nigerias health and Agricultural sector

The renowned prophet also made revelations about the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo.

TB Joshua who spoke on the 2020 prophecies in a live service at his church, urged Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo to be more prayerful as he will be facing more pressure in the new year.

The Cleric also prophesied that many leaders will be bedridden in 2020.



In his words; Agriculture will help the economy because the economy will have a backlash. People should invest in agriculture. Let us farm to help the economy

This year will be a year of HUMILITY. This year, the Lord will humble us with our challenges. Challenges can be affliction, arrogance, pride, wickedness or bad habits. To humble us with these is for those things to destroy us or expose us. Let us move closer to God.

The cleric further warned that There will be a common medicine that will cause people to be high to die, to commit suicide, to think of what can lead to death. The governments of each nation should watch out and put a check on pharmaceutical drugs that come to their country.

Other revelations by the prophet reads; America should invest more in agriculture because their economy will be affected. The economy they see today will be affected, so they should invest in agriculture and encourage their farmers. Also, approach to the security issue will affect the candidates and swing voters in the next election. It will be tough in the election. They should pray against a recount. It may be too tight.

Let us pray for the Nigerian government to be able to finish this year without an interlude that will cause a situation of for and against. Join me in praying for my nation.

Vice President, it is not yet over. Expect much more pressure. The pressure will be so much. I pray you will be able to stand the pressure. We join you in prayer.

Many sicknesses and diseases that leaders have been treating privately will surface this year. They will become bedridden and many will not make it

Russia should pray for their leader to avert his being on the sickbed. Something will surface. There is a ladder to go up  if this is averted.

An incident will happen to the nation Iran that will cause panic throughout the world. We are praying to know the mind of God concerning this

Work of God  people will be getting tired this year because the work of God is not by power and might; because of so many challenges, tribulations and burdens they will not be able to bear.

United Kingdom  there will be agitation from a section that wants to leave; that will become an issue. Also, pray for the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh against going in and out of the hospital; pray for God to give them revival. Pray for unity and understanding among the Royal Family  because of what I am seeing. Brexit needs more time to stand on its feet  with more co-operation of the EU leaders. If not, there will be economic repercussions and the cost of things will become unbearable. With time and preparation, all will be well.

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
During the meeting, the parties talked over trade, economic and investment cooperation between Ukraine and Oman

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has met with the Executive Chairman of the State General Reserve of the Sultanate of Oman Abdulsalam al-Murshidi. This is stated on the website of the President's Office.

During the meeting, the parties talked over trade, economic and investment cooperation between Ukraine and Oman and stated that the current level of bilateral investment cooperation does not correspond to the existing potential, in particular in comparison with the dynamic growth of trade relations, and they agreed on the need for its intensification.

Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that today Ukraine offers significant investment opportunities. The Head of State informed about the conditions and advantages of doing business in Ukraine for foreign investors, creating a favorable business environment in our country, the most attractive areas for investment, and called on Omani partners to participate in large-scale privatization in Ukraine.

The Omani side expressed interest in intensifying the cooperation in the investment sphere and accepted the invitation of Volodymyr Zelensky to visit Ukraine in order to get acquainted with promising projects and directions of cooperation.

As we reported earlier, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky is in Oman, where he went with his family on a regular flight at his own expense. According to the Presidents Office on Telegram, Zelenskys meeting at the highest level is planned in Oman.

"In Oman, Volodymyr Zelensky will discuss trade and economic cooperation between the two countries, strengthening diplomatic relations and attracting investment in Ukraine," reads the message.
Release no. 1/2020





Columbus strengthens its market position in Norway with the acquisition of Advania Business Solutions, a market leading Microsoft Dynamics cloud consultancy in Norway.







Today, Columbus A/S has acquired Advania Business Solutions, a leading Microsoft Dynamics cloud consultancy in Norway.

With the acquisition of Advania Business Solutions, Columbus creates a Microsoft Dynamics cloud Powerhouse in Norway, thus establishing Columbus position as the leading Microsoft Dynamics cloud company in Norway.

Advania Business Solutions is part of the Advania Group and Advania Norway, and Columbus takes over the employees in the Dynamics AX business comprising 45 highly skilled Microsoft Dynamics AX professionals located in Oslo and Sandefjord.



In addition, Columbus takes over the customer base comprising more than 100 Microsoft Dynamics customers, characterized by a high degree of loyalty with long and close customer relationships.

We look forward to welcoming Advania Business Solutions skilled employees. Together we are market leading in Norway within Dynamics cloud, and I am excited about how we will jointly create value for our customers and help them in the digital transformation of their business, says CEO & President in Columbus, Thomas Honore.





Market leader in the Nordic region

Today, Columbus holds a market leading position within business applications, cloud, e-commerce, consultancy and ERP in the Nordic region.

With Advania Business Solutions on board, Columbus strengthens its Nordic cloud business, thus increasing the market share and Nordic market footprint, comprising more than 1,000 cloud consultants.





Strengthened industry focus

Advania Business Solutions and Columbus share a common industry focus on retail, distribution and manufacturing.

With this common industry focus, Columbus will further strengthen and expand its industry offerings, with new opportunities for creating higher value for existing and new customers.

Columbus is a leading global player within business applications, and I am convinced that the acquisition of our Advania Business Solutions will give our Microsoft Dynamics cloud consultants the opportunity to work and advance their careers in a leading global Microsoft Dynamics environment, says Espen Harz, CEO in Advania Norway.

The Advania Business Solutions business was founded in 1991 and offers a wide set of IT services, cloud solutions and consultancy offerings and is among the market leading Microsoft Dynamics cloud consultancies in Norway.

In 2019 Advania Business Solutions Norway had a revenue of NOK 76m and EBITDA of NOK 6m*.

The acquisition agreement was signed and closed 6 January 2020 with financial effect from 1 January 2020.





Transaction overview

The agreed acquisition price is NOK 40m (Enterprise Value) paid at closing with a common working capital adjustment.

The acquisition is financed by Columbus own available funds.

The acquisition is not expected to have significant impact on Columbus result for the financial year 2020.

Expectations to revenue and EBITDA for the Group in 2020 will be announced when the Annual Report is published on 24 March 2020.





* As the acquisition is an asset transaction the EBITDA is an assessed number for the assets comprising the transaction.

Ib Kune

Chairman

Columbus A/S



Thomas Honore

CEO & President

Columbus A/S Contact for further information Thomas Honore, T: +45 70 20 50 00.







Attachment
By IANS

NEW DELHI: Amid the ongoing protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the Jamia Millia Islamia campus reopened on Monday for the semester exams and the students started arriving at the campus.

The number of students is still small as they are worried about their safety after the violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday.

As of now, only bonafide students with ID cards are being allowed in the campus.

A student said they are planning to boycott the exams as the protest is still going on.

ALSO READ: Students from Jamia, DU protest against JNU attack outside Delhi Police Headquarters

Students gathered at Gate no 7 as the protest against the CAA entered the 25th day. Showing solidarity with the JNU students, the students raised slogans against the RSS' affiliate student wing the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). They shouted: "JNU tum sangarsh karo hum tumhare sath hai and ABVP murdabad."

Sajid, a student of Jamia, said: "The government wants that nobody should study because if the people get educated they will not become their pawns."

The kind of violence perpetrated by the ABVP in JNU is to crush the dissenting voice of the students against the government, said another student.
NASHVILLE  Dear Mr. Lewis, I write with a heavy heart. Stage 4 pancreatic cancer is a brutal diagnosis, so its no surprise that last Sunday night the internet erupted with anguish as news of your illness became public. Treatment may give you a fighting chance to continue working for the Beloved Community, as you wrote in a statement, but its painful to think of what you will be called on to bear in the coming months. You have already borne so much for us.

In the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, a massive screen plays a montage of film and still photos from March 7, 1965, a day now commemorated as Bloody Sunday. The images were made at the beginning of a planned march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabamas capital, to claim voting rights for the African-American citizens of the state. I grew up in Alabama, not far from Selma, and Ive always known the story of Bloody Sunday, but knowing the story is not the same thing as watching it unfold on a life-size screen. Standing in the National Civil Rights Museum on Martin Luther King Jr. Day a few years ago, I watched in horror. What you and your fellow marchers, 600 strong, found waiting for you on the other side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge was 150 state police and local law-enforcement officers armed with billy clubs, bullwhips and tear gas. They gave you two minutes to disperse.

As the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, you were standing at the very front of the march. You were wearing a light-colored trench coat, and that coat is what makes it possible to follow you in the black-and-white footage of those next chaotic moments. One minute and five seconds after the two-minute warning, evil advanced and the carnage began, even as you knelt in the road to pray.

The beating you took that day from an Alabama state trooper may have fractured your skull, but it didnt crack your resolve. National news stories carrying photos and film footage from Bloody Sunday finally woke this nation to what was happening in the Jim Crow South, and that awakening ultimately led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act five months later.
Amaravati (Andhra Pradesh) [India], Jan 6 (ANI): The Andhra Pradesh Police on Monday appealed to people not to stage protests in the Amaravati capital region as permission for the same has not been granted.



While addressing the media persons, Amaravati's Tulluru village Additional Superintendent of Police (SP) Chakravarti said, "There is no permission for dharna in Amaravati capital region. We appeal to people not to hold any Padayatra [Foot March] as there is no permission."

People of 29 villages in the region have been protesting since Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy mooted the idea of three state capitals. They are demanding Amaravati to be retained as the sole capital of the state.

While reacting on highhandedness shown by the police officials, Chakravarti said that cases have not been filed against those who staged protests. "It has only been served to those who attacked the media persons."

The SP further said that the farmers will not be "disturbed until they remain peaceful". "In case anybody violates the law, action will be taken against them." (ANI)


An informal pre-trial hearing is set for a man accused of allegedly killing a Texas Army National Guard soldier in March.

READ MORE: Records reveal bar altercation before fatal shooting in west Laredo

Gilberto Guadalupe Villarreal, 23, is charged with a first-degree murder felony and unlawful possession of a firearm as a felon, a third-degree felony.

A pre-trial hearing is set for Feb. 4 and a final pre-trial is set for March 3, and jury selection is set for March 23 in the 111th District Court. Villarreal remains behind bars after he was booked April 9 and was set a $250,000 bond.

Jose S. Tellez Jr. is representing Villarreal while Assistant District Attorney Estrella Ramirez is representing the state.

On Aug. 5, Ramirez conveyed a plea bargain offer to Villarreal, but in December the case was continued by agreement. Villarreal was indicted on June 12, 2019.

According to court documents, Villarreal and Texas Army National Guard soldier John Lydell Tyler, 28, of Beaumont, were possibly involved in an altercation at a local bar prior to the fatal shooting. Police said the shooting on March 31 took place at Tylers west Laredo apartment complex.

A Blue Moon Country Bar & Patio bar employee told investigators he overheard Villarreal telling Tyler, Ya estas muerto, which translates to You are already dead, according to the arrest affidavit. The bar is located at 9802 McPherson Road.

Tyler and other people were involved in the altercation, and authorities confirmed it after recovering video surveillance from a nearby business.

Villarreal during an investigation was taken to LPD headquarters where he stated he was involved in a fight at the bar and that a person he did not know started a fight by striking him, according to court records.

Police said Tyler may have assaulted one of the people involved in the altercation deliberately or while trying to break up a fight.

Video surveillance shows Villarreal started the fight at the Hooka Lounge, police said. The fight escalated and more people became involved.

Police said Villarreal and two women allegedly went looking for a male individual, later identified as Tyler, with the intention of assaulting him over the incident at Blue Moon Bar.

Police said they allegedly looked for Tyler in several places until arriving at an apartment complex on Old Santa Maria. Police said the two women knew Tyler was having a relationship with a woman who lived on Old Santa Maria.

When the three allegedly arrived at the complex, Villarreal allegedly walked toward the back of the apartment and about four to five shots were heard, police said. Villarreal allegedly called one of the two women and told her to pick him up nearby the old juvenile detention center.

Police said Villarreal allegedly got in the car. Court documents state Villarreal stated he pointed the gun at Tyler who laughed, and then Villarreal allegedly shot him.

Further investigation revealed the bar employee knew Tyler and said the fight occurred at closing time. The employee told police he witnessed a short, heavy-set and dark-complected male threatening Tyler.

Laredo police responded to shots on March 31 in the 4300 block of Old Santa Maria Avenue. First responders found Tyler with an apparent gunshot wound to his abdominal area. EMS crews administered advanced life support and took Tyler to the Laredo Medical Center where he later died due to his injuries, police said.

Police said Tyler was taken to Laredo Medical Center where he was prepared for surgery. Once stabilized, he was to be airlifted to San Antonio for further treatment.

Police said Tyler was visiting a woman and they were drinking behind her apartment when a lone gunman opened fire and hit Tyler. The suspected shooter was described as a short, heavy-set male wearing a light-colored bandana covering his face.

At the scene, authorities said there were multiple spent casings and projectiles as well as blood splatters.

Tyler had been assigned to Operation Guardian Support of Customs and Border Protection in and around Laredo. In November 2009 he joined the Texas Army National Guard, military officials said.

READ MORE: State police officer killed, another wounded in N.L. ambush

His service record included awards from the National Defense, Army Service Ribbon, Humanitarian Service Medal, the Adjutant Generals Individual Award, Texas Homeland Defense Service Medal and the Texas Humanitarian Service Ribbon.
Schapelle Corby has joined the long list of public figures donating to bushfire appeals, as blazes threaten to flare back up this week.

The convicted drug trafficker, 42, took to Instagram to advertise a resin art wall clock she made herself out of recycled wood.

'100% of funds go to emergency fund for Wildlife @wireswildliferescue,' she wrote, along with a photo of the beach-themed quartz clock.

'This is the first ever that I've made. I don't have much else & like everyone my heart aches for Australia,' she added.

Schapelle Corby is selling a resin art wall clock she made herself out of recycled wood, with all profits going towards Wires Wildlife Rescue

Corby said the eBay auction will last for seven days, with the handmade clock going to the highest bidder

Corby said the eBay auction will last for seven days, with the handmade clock going to the highest bidder.

By Tuesday morning, the eco-friendly clock already had 37 bids, with the highest standing at $730.

Corby was praised by her 167,000 Instagram followers for the 'kind gesture'.

'Its beautiful Schapelle! Youre a legend, I hope it sells for heaps,' one follower wrote.

'What a great idea! Gorgeous clock, good for you Schapelle,' wrote another.

In 2005, Corby was sentenced to 20 years in Bali's notorious Kerobokan prison after 4.2kg of Marijuana was found in her boogie-board bag at Ngurah Rai International Airport.

After a series of sentence reductions, Corby was released on parole in February 2014 after nine years behind bars.

The convicted drug smuggler was praised by her 167,000 Instagram followers for the kind gesture

She she was deported back to Australia in May 2017 after living in Bali for three years, amid a media frenzy.

Corby is in a long-term relationship with Ben Panangian, 38, an Indonesian surfer she first met at a church service at Kerobokan Prison in 2006.

There have been 25 deaths this bushfire season and more than 1,600 homes have been lost, with almost six million hectares across Australia burnt, which is about the size of the Republic of Ireland.

All emergency bushfire warnings in Victoria have been downgraded after rainfall provided some respite, but conditions are expected to deteriorate again on Friday.

There are still 15 'watch and act' warnings' in Victoria and emergency supplies are being flown into the state's 18 cut-off communities.

There are around 300 people waiting to be evacuated from the coastal town of Mallacoota where aircraft have been grounded by smoke.

South Australia's tourist hotspot Kangaroo Island is host to one of more than 100 fires still burning across the country.

Bushfire conditions in Victoria are expected to deteriorate again on Friday. Pictured: East Gippsland over the weekend

There have been 25 deaths this bushfire season and more than 1600 homes have been lost. Pictured: Gospers Mountain fire near the New South Wales central coast

In an unprecedented move, almost 500 Army reservists have been called to help in the bushfire response and that number could reach 3000.

A smoke haze sits above Melbourne and Canberra - which recorded the worst air quality of any major city in the world on Monday - and the smoke has even made its way to New Zealand.

Some estimates suggest 500 million animals have died in the fires.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison pledged to spend whatever amount necessary to get Australians 'back on their feet' after announcing a $2 billion relief package on Monday.
A technology upgrade in 2021 could allow Michigan to add a third gender option to drivers licenses, something Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is actively exploring.

We have heard the call from individuals and communities across the state seeking a sex-designation that matches their reality, Benson said in a statement.

Fourteen states now have gender-neutral IDs, said Equality Michigan Executive Director Erin Knott. These typically allow people to select X as an option to display next to Sex on their drivers license instead of M or F."

States including nearby Indiana have gender-neutral IDs as an option, as do Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington and Washington D.C. Two more states  Hawaii and Illinois  have plans to implement the change.

Michigan hasnt yet decided what the third option would be called, said Secretary of State Director of Communications Jake Rollow.

Knott applauded Benson for exploring the change in Michigan.

I think that by modernizing this policy were helping not only to remove barriers, but were saying that all Michiganders, including members of the transgender community, deserve to live with dignity and respect, Knott said.

Rachel Crandall-Crocker, executive director of Transgender Michigan and a licensed medical social worker who counsels patients, said she has been working on ID issues for 20 years. The gender-neutral designation would be a welcome change.

She said especially among younger members of the transgender community, many people identify as non-binary.

If you call them a male or a female, you would be misgendering them. And a lot of people consider that a real insult, Crandall-Crocker said.

Crandall-Crocker said people whose gender matches whats displayed on their IDs may not realize how often they use them. But you present your ID in a lot of places, from opening a bank account to going to the bar.

You actually present it an awful, awful lot. Probably a lot more than youre aware of, Crandall-Crocker said.

Knott said having an ID that doesnt match your gender can lead to harassment. Equality Michigan has a Transgender Victims Advocate who regularly hears about transgender people who don't carry their IDs out of a fear of being harassed or assaulted, she said.

Within the current male or female selections available, Benson has already taken steps to make it easier to change that designation.

Last year, she streamlined the procedure to change the sex designation on a drivers license, making it possible by paying a fee and filling out a form.

Prior to a change in 2016, people had to have surgery to get the designation changed on their ID.
Social media's impact

Not only will communications from both sides likely reflect the deep political divisions that permeate the electorate, but the way the candidates communicate will be more personal and focused on platforms like Facebook, analysts say.

"This is the first postmass media election in which, for the first time in U.S. history, more significant amounts of money will be spent on social media and digital than on broadcast, says Will Robinson, a Democratic consultant and founding partner of the New Media Firm.

Robinson compares the transformation to that of the 1960 presidential battle between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. That election was the first one in which television was a major communication element. Kennedy understood the power of television, Robinson says, and many credit his performance in the first televised debate of that campaign as a key to his eventual victory.

Ever since, the 30-second television spot and fliers mailed to voters homes have been the primary communication tools of state and national candidates.

No more. Much of the reason for this shift to digital is practical; the traditional ways of contacting voters just aren't working anymore. Broadcast television viewership is at an all-time low, Robinson says. And only 6 percent of Americans will complete telephone surveys, leading to the potential demise of political phone banking, which is another long-standing mainstay of get-out-the-vote efforts. At the same time, people are more skeptical about answering their door to talk with a candidate or volunteer canvasser about politics.

Older voters still dominate

Analysts predict that 2020 will see a huge turnout at the polls. I think we're going to see a record high percentage of voters, similar to when the voting age was lowered to 18 [in 1971], Bolger says. It could even be a record turnout since women got the right to vote [in 1920].

What will remain a constant in 2020, experts agree, is the importance of the older voter. In the 2018 midterm elections, 53 percent of eligible voters turned out, compared with 66 percent of Americans 65 and older, as well as 60 percent of people ages 45 to 64, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the 2016 presidential election, 71 percent of those 65 and older voted, but just 46 percent of those under 30 went to the polls.

Nancy LeaMond, AARP's chief advocacy and engagement officer, says the data show that candidates are going to have to pay attention to older voters, and that means finding ways to reach out to them. Many older voters may not be plugged in to the social media platforms that younger people rely on for their news and political information. So that will probably mean investing in some traditional media, especially local television and newspapers.

"One of the most powerful trends of the 21st century is changing demographics, and public officials at all levels are going to have to come to grips with the myriad opportunities of having many more older Americans  but also the challenges, LeaMond says.

Experts also say that, given the expected volatility of the 2020 elections, voters who care about issues are going to have to challenge candidates to say where they stand.

Older Americans disproportionately are concerned about issues that other voters might be overlooking, says John Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. They're thinking about pensions and home health care and issues like the future health of Medicare and Social Security, which, Pitney says, aren't even on his students radar.

What's the best way to be sure that those issues are addressed? Show up, Pitney says. When candidates have forums, go to the forums. When candidates see a lot of older voters in the audience, they pay attention. When older Americans speak, politicians listen because they know older Americans vote."

Social Security and Medicare are classic examples of programs that concern older voters more than younger ones, says Charles Franklin, the poll director at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee. The advantage and clout that older Americans have, because of their high propensity to vote, carries over in the reluctance of Congress to touch either of those two programs, he says.

And not only is turnout expected to be exceptionally high this November, but voters are engaging much earlier than usual. What we've seen in both state and national polling so far is that interest in politics generally and the professed likelihood of voting in the upcoming election are at unusually high levels, Franklin says. Our polling shows interest at about a level that we normally see in October  two or three weeks before the general election."
A certain amount of anxiety is to be expected for any first-time mother. But shortly after Lea Teahan's daughter Ivy was born, those natural worries spiralled into something darker and all-consuming, and she was diagnosed with severe post-partum anxiety.

'I couldn't bring myself to leave Ivy with anyone else, even for a couple of hours,' says Lea, 30, a conveyancer from South Wales.

'Once, when my partner Rob tried to take me out for lunch, I ended up having a panic attack. I was convinced some awful accident would befall her, or Rob and I would be killed, leaving her an orphan. It was consuming me. My palms would sweat and I'd have a racing heartbeat.'

After Lea Teahan's daughter Ivy was born (pictured together), she was diagnosed with severe post-partum depression

The trigger for Lea's anxiety? She believes it was the five days she endured in a painful labour induced at 39 weeks, before Ivy was finally delivered by caesarean last summer.

'I was in for five nights, unable to sleep properly and only able to see Rob for a few hours a day,' she recalls. 'I watched other women come onto the labour ward and go after just a few hours, but nothing happened for me  just immense pain.'

In the UK today, one in three women will, like Lea, be induced. According to NHS figures published in October 2019, 33 per cent of all babies born last year were delivered after an induced labour  yet ten years ago the figure was 20 per cent. At the hospital where Lea gave birth, the induction rate is closer to 40 per cent.

Many experts welcome the medical benefits induction can offer. Professor Alexander Heazell, a consultant obstetrician and director of the Maternal and Fetal Health Research Centre at St Mary's Hospital, Manchester, says that performing more inductions has been a key part of making birth safer for women and for babies, including reducing the risk of stillbirth.

Indeed, some experts make the case that even more women should be induced for this reason.

But what if you don't want to be induced?

There are concerns, though, about the over-medicalisation of childbirth, with many women reporting feeling pressured into having an induction they don't want.

As Lea puts it: 'I know that during birth there are going to be a lot of things you're not going to be able to control, but I feel I was rail-roaded into doing something that I didn't want and that wasn't in my best interests.'

She believes her anxiety was triggered by the five days she endured in a painful labour

Nor are inductions without their drawbacks. Anecdotally, they can make labour longer and more painful. Evidence also shows they are associated with further interventions, such as the need for forceps or ventouse (a suction device) to aid delivery  which can add to the pain and the risk of further complications, such as vaginal tearing and post-natal incontinence.

Also, such interventions aren't in keeping with many women's desire for a 'natural' birth.

'We know that most women would prefer not to be induced,' says Soo Downe, a midwife and a professor of midwifery studies at the University of Central Lancashire.

Guidance from NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) is that in a healthy, low-risk pregnancy, labour should be induced once a woman is one to two weeks overdue (due date being the 40th week of pregnancy).

But many inductions, like Lea's, are performed earlier than that.

All the doctors Good Health spoke to for this piece said that the main reason for the steady increase in inductions over the past decade is not that more women are going past their due date, but that the women tend to be both older and heavier (50.4 per cent of all pregnant women are now overweight or obese).

This means they are more likely to have other health problems and their pregnancies are likely to be more complicated. The longer pregnancy goes on, the more danger both mother and baby may be in.

Modern mums, riskier labours

Such complications include pre-eclampsia (which causes high blood pressure) and gestational diabetes, explains Dr Brooke Vandermolen, an obstetrician and gynaecologist at an NHS hospital in London. 'It means you want to deliver babies earlier, before any problems develop.

'With gestational diabetes, uncontrolled blood sugar levels can mean babies grow very big, which increases the chance of shoulder dystocia, where the baby's head comes out but the shoulders don't deliver.'

This results in doctors having to physically manipulate baby and mother, and/or make a cut to free the shoulders. In the worst cases, the baby can be starved of oxygen, risking disability, possible brain injury and even death.

'There is also an increased risk of stillbirth with gestational diabetes,' adds Dr Vandermolen.

According to NHS figures published in October 2019, 33 per cent of all babies born last year were delivered after an induced labour

Mothers who are 40 or over have a higher rate of stillbirth after 40 weeks, too, says Professor Heazell. 'In fact, their risk doubles after this point, which is why the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) recommends offering induction around their due date.'

Another factor is that doctors are also now confident that while an induction can increase interventions such as ventouse and forceps, it won't increase the risk of a caesarean  as was once thought.

In fact, a 2018 review of 30 studies by the respected Cochrane group concluded that induced births resulted in fewer caesareans and fewer babies admitted to neonatal intensive care after birth.

This means that doctors may also be more likely to agree to so-called 'social inductions' for reasons that aren't strictly medical, suggests Dr Patrick O'Brien, a consultant obstetrician at University College Hospital in London and spokesperson for the RCOG.

'So now, if someone is 39 weeks pregnant and they request to be induced, we would try to accede to those wishes.'

Move to cut chance of stillbirth

Some doctors now argue that the 41 to 42 weeks the NHS advises for inductions should be brought back to before 41 weeks to save lives.

They point to evidence such as the small but significant increase in the risk of stillbirth in pregnancies that continue to 41 weeks compared to babies born at 40 weeks, reported by a British study last year using data from 15 million pregnancies.

Writing in the journal PLoS Medicine, researchers calculated that the risk of stillbirth rose incrementally from 0.11 in 1,000 pregnancies at 37 weeks to more than three in 1,000 by 42 weeks.

And results were published in November 2019 from a Swedish trial that was halted early after six babies died in the group of women selected to be induced at 42 weeks as opposed to 41 weeks. It is not known exactly why very overdue babies are more likely to be stillborn, but one possible explanation is that the placenta may become less efficient late in pregnancy.

Based on their findings, the Swedish researchers suggested all women be induced before 41 weeks.

Professor Heazell believes women who go beyond their due date aren't always adequately informed by their doctors about the risks. 'I do see a number of women who have lost babies after 41 and 42 weeks  and they always say nobody told them this could happen,' he says.

He believes the social taboo around stillbirth plays a part in this.

'If doctors are unwilling to use the 'S-word', how on earth can women make an informed decision?'

Based on the latest UK birth data, he estimates that 2 per cent of stillbirths could 'be relatively easily prevented' by inducing labour by 41 weeks.

Yet such figures need to be handled with care, suggests Amy Gibbs, CEO of Birthrights, a charity that promotes human rights in maternity care.

'Women are often told that without an induction their risk of stillbirth doubles; but that figure needs to be put into context,' she says. 'For example, the actual chance of stillbirth may rise from one in 1,000 to two in 1,000.' Other experts go further, suggesting women should be routinely induced at 39 weeks. A 2018 U.S. suggested this could reduce the chance of women needing a caesarean.

While such evidence may mean some women would choose to be induced, others worry it could be used to over-rule women's personal choice. Women already report feeling pressured into inductions  sometimes when the medical justifications are far from clear-cut, according to Amy Gibbs.

'We do have concerns that women feel under pressure to be induced,' she says. 'For example, we hear from women who decline an induction, yet they get daily calls from the hospital continuing to ask them about it.

'Or women who are booked in for an induction before they've had any discussion with their healthcare providers about their options.'

Women denied facts to reach a decision

This 'pressure' rings true for Lea, who was induced early after being told her baby was 'large for her dates', although she did not have gestational diabetes or any other complications.

'The consultant kept saying it was a risk not to do anything,' says Lea. 'She didn't explicitly say what the risk was, but I was left thinking she was referring to stillbirth.

How to kickstart labour Consultant obstetrician Dr Patrick O'Brien explains that there can be three steps to an induction. First, the cervix  the neck of the womb  is 'softened' using a pessary or gel containing hormone-like substances called prostaglandins. Alternatively, this can be done using a balloon to stretch the cervix mechanically. Sometimes, this first step alone is enough to trigger labour. Then, once the cervix has dilated enough, if a woman's waters haven't broken, they'll be broken manually. Again, this can prompt labour. Finally, if labour hasn't been triggered by the first two steps, a drip of the hormone oxytocin is given to stimulate contractions. Dr O'Brien says inducing labour this way, in three stages, mimics natural labour much more closely than inductions used to. 'Twenty years ago, induction got a really bad name,' he says. 'They'd start the oxytocin drip straight away, and while that was really good at making contractions come, it would mean they were being forced against a cervix that was rigidly closed, so back then labour did tend to be much longer and more painful.' Advertisement

'I discussed it with Rob and we were both terrified. We went ahead, because we thought there's no way they'd say that if it wasn't absolutely necessary. It was never framed as a choice.

'At no point did anyone talk me through the procedure. I was handed a leaflet and effectively shoo-ed out of the room. What's more, no one told me that sometimes an induction just doesn't work.'

Lea spent a week in hospital waiting for active labour to kick in, before the procedure was deemed to have 'failed' and her baby delivered by caesarean.

Milli Hill, founder of the Positive Birth Movement and author of the book Give Birth Like A Feminist, says: 'Even if research one day found unequivocally that induction was guaranteed to save babies lives, women still have the fundamental right to choose what happens to their bodies.'

After her health visitor spotted that Lea's anxiety went far beyond normal new mother worries, Lea was referred for group counselling sessions at her local hospital. 'I was very lucky that I got help quickly,' she says.

Even so, she says: 'We always wanted two or three children, but now I can't see myself going through it again.'

Professor Heazell acknowledges: 'There is a lot of concern about women's experiences with induced labour. It's longer and it's more associated with mental trauma and a lack of mental well-being afterwards  and we can't overlook that.'

A study published in 2019 in the journal Midwifery, which looked at women's experiences of induced labour, reported they felt under-prepared for the process as well as unsupported during it. Pain was often mentioned, and 'anxiety, fear and isolation'.

'It's a widespread concern,' says Professor Downe. 'A lot of women report finding the experience very traumatic, even some years after the event. The difficulty is knowing whether that would have been the case if they'd had a spontaneous labour.'

Some hospitals now give women the option to start the induction process (see box) as an outpatient, says Dr Vandermolen. This involves a pessary containing a hormone-like substance to 'soften' the cervix, after which women can go home for 24 hours.

What everyone agrees on is that proper communication between women and their doctors is key.

Professor Heazell says: 'We need to be using the data to have open conversations with women. There isn't a right or wrong answer, but individual women can only make that decision if we're prepared to have a proper conversation with them - and that conversation has to include all outcomes.'

Five of the best

We're meant to floss our teeth daily, but surveys show that more than a third of us never bother  despite the fact it's vital to clean between your teeth to remove plaque. We asked Uchenna Okoye, a dentist at London Smile Group and a spokesperson for the British Dental Association, to select some of the best alternatives to floss.

DENTEK COMPLETE CLEAN FLOSS PICKS

Pack of 75, 5, boots.com

WHAT IT IS: A 3cm piece of floss strung between two prongs. Insert floss between your teeth and slide it back and forth. There's a pick at the other end.

EXPERT VERDICT: Great if you aren't comfortable using normal floss. The pick at the end of the handle is good for removing bigger pieces of food. Choose a thick floss, ideally one that's waxed to help it slide between teeth without pain or breaking.

PHILIPS SONICARE AIR FLOSS

64.99, boots.com

WHAT IT IS: This uses a combination of high-pressure air and water to blast away food and plaque. Fill the reservoir in the handle with warm water or mouthwash.

EXPERT VERDICT: These are useful  the combination of air and water makes them a powerful tool, but it may also be gentler on teeth and gums than normal floss. Plus, it's much faster than manual flossing.

HUMBLE BAMBOO INTERDENTAL BRUSHES

Pack of six, 3.99, hollandandbarrett.com

WHAT IT IS: About the size of a match, this has a tiny brush on the end of a bamboo stick.

EXPERT VERDICT: My favourite method for cleaning between teeth and I recommend these to most of my patients. I find them easier to use than floss and the tiny brush head can get in and clean the whole area. They also come in varying widths to fit different size gaps in the teeth.

WATERPIK CORDLESS FREEDOM WATER FLOSSER

43.01, amazon.co.uk

WHAT IT IS: This battery-operated gadget shoots a jet of pressurised water between the teeth.

EXPERT VERDICT: This type of flosser has been shown to clean deeply between the teeth and below the gumline  removing up to 99.9 per cent of plaque. The downside is that they create a lot of spray.

WISDOM INTERSPACE BRUSH

1.99, superdrug.com

WHAT IT IS: A narrow toothbrush head with a pointed shape and firm bristles designed to splay to reach between the teeth and around the gum line.

EXPERT VERDICT: Particularly good around crowns, implants and bridges. This manual brush has a long handle to help reach difficult areas at the back.

By Caroline Jones
Iraq's PM calls for putting an end to foreign troops in Iraq

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Baghdad, Jan 5, Iran -- Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi on Sunday attended a parliamentary meeting to discuss a plan to expel US troops from Iraq, stressing that the immediate withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq or setting a timetable for implementing the move would be two options facing Iraq.

The extraordinary session of the Iraqi parliament to approve the law on the expulsion of US troops, which was delayed until Sunday afternoon due to the fact that representatives of the Kurdish and Sunni factions were in contention, has finally convened by the opposition's presence in the parliament.

Speaking at a parliamentary meeting, Abdul Mahdi highlighted that the choice of ending foreign troops in Iraq is the most logically viable option for Iraq.

The presence of US troops in Iraq is only limited to fighting ISIS and training Iraqi troops and does not include any other mission, the interim prime minister said.

Abdul Mahdi reiterated that parliament must understand the situation and explain to the Iraqi people that any internal conflict will have a political and economic cost to the country.

As prime minister and commander of the armed forces, "I want to put and end to the existence of foreign forces in Iraq," he said.

Abdul Mahdi emphasized that the end of the presence of foreign forces in the country would pave the way for reconsideration of relations with Washington and other countries.

9455**1430

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More major news came out of Iran and Iraq over the weekend. Overnight thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of protestors took to the streets of Tehran to mourn General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in Iraq last week while part of an official envoy sent to help elect a new Iraqi prime minister. On Sunday, the Iraqi parliament approved a humiliating resolution to expel American troops from Iraq after the US assassination. Meanwhile, Irans government announced yesterday that it would be pulling out of the 2015 nuclear deal, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The Nuclear Deal was brokered by the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany  also known as the P5+1  and finalized in 2015 under the Obama administration. In Sundays announcement, Iranian officials said while they would continue to work with the UN, they wouldnt adhere to any limits on the amount of uranium they could enrich, nor would they limit nuclear research and development. Iran conditioned its return to the original terms of the deal on the US dropping sanctions.

The US was the first to walk away from the deal in 2018, saying the JCOPA didnt address Irans ballistic missile program or its role in regional conflicts. When I asked Rutgers University professor of Middle Eastern studies, Dr Neda Bolourchi, about the tension between the two nations after the US left the deal, she told me: Iran has every right to be angry Tehran engaged in good faith negotiations with the P5+1 When it found out that the full benefits of that agreement would not be forthcoming because the US still listed the country under terror sanctions the government was frustrated againThe US could have worked with Iran in a different way.

But the White House didnt stop there  it reinstated sanctions from before the 2015 deal. I spoke with Dr Hamid Zangeneh, an Iranian American professor of economics, about the difference between the sanctions during earlier presidencies and Trumps sanctions. He told me that Trumps sanctions were, well, significantly worse: During the Bush and Clinton presidencies, Iran was allowed to sell a certain percentage of its oil to buy medicines and pay for infrastructure, he said. But when the US left the deal, Trump criminalized the purchase of Iranian petroleum exports and blacklisted banks and other commercial and state entities who dared do business with the western Asian nation. The treasury department began to specialize in hunting down anyone who dared to buy Iranian oil. In other words, the Trump administration aimed to obliterate the Iranian economy.

And as the wheels of the legitimate sectors of Irans economy ground to a halt, millions were forced to barter for goods, or pay 30 to 40 per cent over market price. Zangeneh went on to say that people in Iran today cant afford to buy food or medicine and the demise of a legitimate economy has created a powerful smuggling industry.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeos rambling justification for last weeks killing of Irans top military official was that Soleimani had killed American soldiers in Iraq and was supposedly plotting an imminent attack on American lives. Pompeo claims that Soleimani organized a similar attack that killed an American contractor in late December. Evidence for an alleged imminent threat against American lives has yet to be proven; however, Trumps threats to attack sites important to Iran and Iranian culture would fall under the definition of a war crime under rules 38 and 40 of the Geneva Convention.

Pompeo has been gunning for conflict with Iran since he was appointed Secretary of State. And his simplified excuse for the killing Soleimani conveniently forgets two major issues with the US invasion of Iraq, including the 500,000 Iraqi people killed in the war and the legal precedent for killing them  lies read to the American people by then-president Bush and members of his administration that Saddam Hussain possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. We all know how that turned out.

Speaking with Bolourchi about Pompeos excuses for possibly instigating a war with Iran, she noted that Soleimanis participation in the killings of American soldiers was after the invasion of Iraq between 2005 and 2011. Bolourchi also said that Soleimani began fighting Isis after the US left Iraq in 2014, and then there was a bit of a truce [between the two countries]. She added, That in no way excuses Soleimanis acts and decisions that resulted in the deaths of civilians but noted that the additional context was important to understanding the conflict.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

Indeed, context is critical. While most Americans cant find Iran on a map, theyve been sold the most simplified storyline of all times: that the US is the benevolent promoter of democracy worldwide, while Iran is a belligerent nation filled with religious extremists. In fact, the US has been meddling non-benevolently with Iranian lives since 1953, when it helped to remove that countrys democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, replacing him with the brutal Shah of Iran who was eventually overthrown. In the 1980s, the US government provided then-ally Saddam Hussein with weapons to use against Iran, including chemical weapons, resulting in the deaths of over a million Iranian citizens in the Iraq-Iran war. Sanctions were instituted during the Bush and Clinton presidencies until, after 20 months of negotiations, President Obama was able to walk them back with a historic nuclear deal that gave the Iranian economy room to grow legitimately. In 2018, Trump reinstituted significantly harsher sanctions in what was really an act of economic violence. That decision affected government and everyday civilians equally.

What choice do we give Iran when we overthrow their democratically elected officials, arm their enemies, destroy their economy, starve their people, and threaten their cultural sites? I am in no way justifying the civilian deaths or human rights abuses perpetrated by Irans government. What I am saying, however, is that the story of Irans belligerence has an important backdrop of violence perpetrated against it from the US.

As Trump tries to navigate the latest crisis he created with fewer allies and less experienced advisers than previous administrations, it will be Iranian civilians and American troops that will suffer the consequences. Are we, as everyday Americans, happy with that?
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)

A 13-year-old Fort Bragg girl missing since Friday was found Sunday afternoon, a University of California San Francisco spokeswoman confirmed.

Sienna Carter was first reported missing Friday near the University of California San Francisco campus off Third Street in San Francisco's Mission Bay neighborhood.

A UCSF Police spokeswoman confirmed Sunday night that Sienna was found Sunday. But in a statement, Lorna Fernandes said that because of the ongoing investigation and because of Sienna's age, "we are unable to comment further at this time."

"We will provide additional information as soon as we are able to do so," Fernandes said in the statement.

On his Facebook page, Bart Buckner of Fort Bragg, Sienna's grandfather, said Sunday afternoon, "Just got call they found her. Me and my wife are crying with joy. Thank you very much everyone."

Photos of Sienna were spread widely on social media and in the news media. And Cold Case Mendocino, a Mendocino County group that bills itself as "citizen investigators," posted on its web site Saturday that its members spoke with a witness who said the girl may have met up with a man when she was in San Francisco.

An account on that page said Sienna's family members were at the UCSF Madison Clinic for Pediatric Diabetes in Mission Bay Friday for treatment of a family member recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

Copyright  2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
In the third special open market operation in as many weeks, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on January 6 bought Rs 10,000 crore of three long-term securities while selling a same amount of three short-term bonds. The RBI had announced to simultaneous purchase and sale of government securities (G-Secs) under open market operations (OMOs) for Rs 10,000 crore each, last week.

Like last week, though the RBI offered to sell four securities in the auction, it accepted bids for three bonds. In the current OMO purchase auction, the RBI offered to purchase three securities including 10-year benchmark government bond, as against just one bond in the previous two auctions.

It got bids worth Rs 64,505 crore for the three bonds but choose to accept only Rs 10,000 crore of bids under the OMO purchase auction.

It got 198 bids for 7.32 per cent-2024 but accepted 12 bids and for 7.27 per cent-2026 bonds the RBI received 163 bids and accepted only two bids.

The RBI received 224 bids for 6.45 per cent-2029 security but accepted only 22 bids. It offered to sell four government securities-6.65 per cent- 2020; 7.80 per cent-2020; 8.27 per cent-2020 and 8.12 per cent-2020 through OMO sale. These securities were offered by the RBI in the previous two OMO sale auctions. It received Rs 47,540 crore of bids but accepted to sell Rs 10,000 crore of bids.

In terms of number of bids, the central bank received 26 bids for 6.65 per cent-2020; 40 for 7.80 per cent-2020 and 35 for 8.27 per cent-2020 but accepted 7, 3 and 4 bids, respectively.

For 8.12 per cent-2020 bond, it received 41 bids but did not accept any of them. In the previous two similar auctions, the RBI had purchased Rs 20,000 crore and sold Rs 15,326 crore of bonds. These special OMO auctions are similar to the US Federal Reserves' Operation Twist aimed at faster transmission of policy rates, an analyst said.

The RBI has reduced the repo rate by 135 basis points between February and October 2019 but there has been a delay in passing on the cut in repo rate by lenders.
Residents in New England may soon see Deval Patrick on their televisions again.

The former Massachusetts governor debuted Monday his first TV ad in his Democratic presidential campaign, targeting early-state voters.

The 30-second spot addresses his late entry into the 2020 presidential election.

I planned on announcing a year ago, but life had other ideas, Patrick said in the ad.

His wife, Diane, who appears by his side in the ad, cited her health. I was diagnosed with cancer and we decided to put politics on hold."

The former first lady of Massachusetts said their family fought through it and shes well now. She said theyre now fighting for the future of our democracy and that she encouraged her husband to restart his campaign plans.

The campaign is spending low-six figures on air time in New Hampshire and an additional $60,000 in South Carolina, Politico reported.

Its not too late to build a campaign that fights to renew the American Dream for everyone, everywhere and a movement that can defeat Donald Trump. Today were up with our first TV ad. Watch and share: pic.twitter.com/b97tWIvBQe  Deval Patrick (@DevalPatrick) January 6, 2020

Speculation of a 2020 presidential bid floated in 2018. Former President Barack Obama reportedly encouraged him to consider running, as did David Axelrod, the chief strategist for Obamas presidential campaigns, Politico reported at the time.

He announced in January 2019 that he would not seek a 2020 presidential bid following months of speculation. He cited the cruelty of the election cycle.

After a lot of conversation, reflection and prayer, Ive decided that a 2020 campaign for president is not for me, Patrick wrote. Ive been overwhelmed by advice and encouragement from people from all over the country, known and unknown. Humbled, in fact. But knowing that the cruelty of our elections process would ultimately splash back on people whom Diane and I love, but who hadnt signed up for the journey, was more than I could ask.

He announced his 2020 bid for president in November.

In weeks following, Patrick has struggled to standout in the already crowded field. Many of his closest campaign staff and supporters have committed to other 2020 presidential campaigns, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

The late campaign start has caused setbacks on the ballot. Election officials in Michigan announced last month that he will not appear on the ballot after he fell short of the required signatures.

He and former Republican Gov. Bill Weld will appear in the top spots on the Massachusetts ballot in their respective parties primaries following a random drawing by Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin.

Patrick made history as the first black governor of Massachusetts, overseeing the states implementation of health care reform, significant raises in the minimum wage and an 1.25% increase in state sales tax.

Following his second term as governor, Patrick joined Bain Capital - a firm founded by his gubernatorial predecessor Mitt Romney. He largely stayed out of the public spotlight since leaving office.

Related links:
[January 06, 2020] TCL Communication previews its new line of TCL-branded smartphones, including the company's first 5G phone at CES 2020

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at TCL's official CES 2020 press conference, TCL Communication previewed its all-new TCL 10-Series smartphone lineup, including the company's first 5G phone set to launch globally later this year. The TCL 10 5G is the company's first 5G smartphone, following the successful launch of its 5G CPE device in 2019, and will be powered by Qualcomm's recently announced Snapdragon 7-Series 5G SoC. Along with the TCL 10 5G, the company also previewed the TCL 10 Pro and TCL 10L, which are designed to form the core of TCL's smartphone portfolio in 2020 and will be available in global markets later this year. They will be available in the US and Canada beginning in Q2 2020, starting at under $500 USD. 2020 will prove to be a critical year in the evolution of TCL's business, not just as a mobile device manufacturer, but also as China's only end-to-end global consumer electronics brand," said Kevin Wang, CEO of TCL Industrial Holdings. "Our TCL-branded smartphones and mobile devices will be an important focal point for the larger TCL ecosystem moving forward, and with these powerful and accessible devices coming this year, we feel TCL is well-prepared to compete in any market around the world." Each of these new TCL smartphones features the company's new design for 2020, which includes quad-rear cameras, as well as TCL-made displays to provide a more immersive and crisp viewing experience. They will also feature TCL's NXTVISION visual technology, a proprietary advanced display optimization and camera technology, so you can see your screen come to life with enriched color, clarity and contrast enhancement i real-time and have an elevated camera experience.



The TCL 10 Pro is the first TCL device to feature the company's edge AMOLED display for an even richer multimedia experience. This technology is made possible through TCL Communication's sister company, TCL CSOT, which also develops the award-winning display panels for TCL televisions. CSOT is one of the worldwide leaders in LCD panels as well as LTPS, AMOLED and advanced display technologies such as flexible displays. TCL Communication's close supply chain collaboration with CSOT ensures timely support and prioritized utility of the latest display technologies while also making our products more affordable for consumers. "The 2020 TCL smartphone lineup is our most ambitious effort yet to bring beautifully crafted, modern smartphones to the masses while keeping our devices accessibly priced," said Shane Lee, General Manager, Global Product Center at TCL Communication. "With each of these new devices, we focused on creating a complete smartphone experience capable of meeting the everyday needs of our customers, while delivering on the quality and value consumers have come to expect from TCL."

TCL will officially launch the TCL 10L, 10 Pro and 10 5G at a press event in Barcelona, Spain on February 22, 2020 as part of Mobile World Congress, along with additional products to be announced. Come visit TCL during CES 2020 (January 7-10, 2020) at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Central Hall, Booth 12930. For more information about TCL Communication and the company's lineup of mobility devices, please visit http://www.tcl.com/global/en/mobile/tclplex.html. https://www.tclusa.com/products/mobile # # # About TCL Communication TCL Communication Technology Holdings Limited (TCL Communication) designs, manufactures and markets an expanding portfolio of mobile devices and services worldwide through a comprehensive, multi-brand portfolio that includes TCL, Alcatel and BlackBerry branded products. Additionally, TCL Communication is the brand owner, R&D developer and manufacturing partner of Palm branded devices. The company's products are sold in more than 160 countries throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Incorporated in Hong Kong, TCL Communication operates its own manufacturing in China as well as global R&D centers. For more information, please visit www.tclcom.com TCL is a registered trademark of TCL Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Alcatel is a trademark of Nokia used under license by TCL Communication. Trademarks, including but not limited to BLACKBERRY and EMBLEM Design are the trademarks or registered trademarks of BlackBerry Limited, used under license, and the exclusive rights to such trademarks are expressly reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. BlackBerry is not responsible for any third-party products or services. Palm is a trademark owned by TCL Communication and under license by Palm Ventures Group through Wide Progress Global. Google, Android, Google Lens and other related marks and logos are trademarks of Google LLC. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tcl-communication-previews-its-new-line-of-tcl-branded-smartphones-including-the-companys-first-5g-phone-at-ces-2020-300981513.html SOURCE TCL Communication Technology Holdings Ltd.

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with Kiribati's President Taneti Mamau on Monday in Beijing and both sides expressed the willingness to enhance bilateral cooperation.

Li said the resumption of diplomatic relations between China and Kiribati laid the political foundation for bilateral ties and created opportunities for all-round cooperation. "China attaches great importance to the development of China-Kiribati relations."

China has always held that all countries, both big or small, are equal, said Li.

He said China supports Kiribati in choosing a development path that suits its national conditions and its efforts to develop its economy and improve people's livelihood, adding that China stands ready to provide assistance to Kiribati within its capacity.

China is willing to maintain close high-level contact with Kiribati, boost political mutual trust, expand mutually-beneficial cooperation and jointly push forward the positive and steady development of bilateral ties, Li said.

Kiribati boasts bountiful fishery resources while Chinese consumers have fast-growing demands for seafood. "There is great potential for bilateral cooperation," said Li. "China is willing to enhance cooperation in pelagic fishing with Kiribati to realize win-win cooperation."

China supports Chinese enterprises in conducting cooperation with Kiribati based on market and commercial principles, Li said.

He said China attaches great importance to the special concerns of Pacific island countries including Kiribati on climate change and is ready to cooperate with Kiribati to address climate change under the framework of South-South cooperation and in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.

Mamau spoke highly of the fruitful results of bilateral cooperation achieved since the resumption of diplomatic ties last year. He hailed China's constructive role in international affairs and its contribution to coping with climate change.

Expressing Kiribati's appreciation for China's assistance, Mamau said his country welcomes Chinese enterprises to invest in Kiribati and is willing to enhance cooperation with China in areas such as economy and trade, fishery, agriculture, education, healthcare and people-to-people exchanges.

Mamau is paying a state visit to China from Jan. 4 to 11.
Police in Uganda on Monday fired tear gas to disperse supporters of pop star and presidential hopeful Bobi Wine when he tried to hold a rally.

This underscored the hurdles he faces in seeking to unseat President Yoweri Museveni.

Police also arrested Wine, a lawmaker whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, accusing him of trying to stage an illegal assembly.

Wine and his pressure group People Power had aimed to start a programme of consultations with supporters on his plans to stand for president in 2020 in a challenge to Museveni, 75, who has ruled Uganda since 1986.

Edson Muhangi, a police commander, said Wine was attempting to hold his meeting in an open area when he had only been allowed to meet supporters in an enclosed area like a conference hall.

This one is not an enclosed place, we cannot even allow them to be here, Mr Muhangi said.

We are reliably informed that their aim is to engage us so that they can be seen exchanging words, fighting with the police and tarnishing the image of Uganda.

Ugandas Electoral Commission had cleared Wine to conduct the consultations, but security personnel have broad powers to allow or prohibit public gatherings.

Police arrested Wine as he and his supporters attempted to start the meeting and he was held at a nearby police post, Wine said on Twitter.

READ ALSO:

Security personnel in Uganda routinely break up opposition rallies with tear gas, beatings and detentions.

Human rights activists have accused the police and the army of rights violations.

Since he became a legislator in 2017, Wine has rattled Ugandan authorities, who see him as a formidable threat to Mr Museveni.

The Daily Monitor newspaper reported that a day-old baby had been rushed to a hospital in critical condition after inhaling tear gas used to disperse the crowd.

Police spokesman Patrick Onyango said he could not comment.

Robert Ssempala, Head of the Human Rights Network for Journalists-Uganda, said two local reporters had been briefly detained as they covered the confrontation.

He condemned the police response as high handed and unlawful.

(Reuters/NAN)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 20:38:15|Editor: mingmei

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BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Local governments will be guided to revise rules to allow foreign-invested banks underwriting bonds issued by them as part of the country's financial market opening-up, the Ministry of Finance said.

Allowing foreign-invested banks to participate in underwriting local government bonds would help expand the issuance channel, investor base and the market's opening-up, the ministry said Monday in a statement on its website.

Foreign-invested banks include solely foreign-funded banks, Sino-foreign joint venture banks and Chinese branches of foreign banks.

Foreign-invested banks have already participated in underwriting bonds issued by the governments of Ningbo, Chongqing, Tianjin and Qingdao cities, as well as the government of Guangdong Province, the ministry said.
(Newser)  David Leonhardt isn't endorsing Amy Klobuchar exactly, but his op-ed in the New York Times makes the case that she deserves a strong look from Democratic voters. Many of them are worried that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are too liberal, and that Pete Buttigieg is too hyped, and they "get nervous every time Joe Biden opens his mouth," writes Leonhardt. "So where are you supposed to find a comfortably electable, qualified candidate who wont turn 80 while in office?" Enter the 59-year-old Minnesota senator, who might be the frontrunner if party leaders picked nominees. She has a "savvy understanding" of how to campaign against President Trump and of how to draw the swing voters Democrats will need to win the election.

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"Her greatest strength is her understanding of how to beat Republicans," writes Leonhardt. "They like to portray Democrats as self-serious elites who look down on ordinary Americans ... but Klobuchar has built her political career on an image that combines working class and middle class." In fact, she reminds Leonhardt of Harry Truman. Klobuchar's hope is to do well enough in Iowa and New Hampshire to stick around as one of the final two or three candidates. The main thing she is lacking in Leonhardt's view is the ability to strike inspirational "grace notes" when speaking. Instead, she often sounds very much like a wonky lawmaker. Still, "many Democratic voters care more about beating Trump than anything else," writes Leonhardt, and he advises those voters not to write off Klobuchar. (Read the full column.)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 03:33:48|Editor: huaxia

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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks during a press conference in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 17, 2017. (Xinhua/Ahmad Halabisaz)

Iran says it would abandon the limits of 2015 nuclear deal after U.S. airstrike killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad.

TEHRAN, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Iran on Sunday announced the fifth and final step to end its commitments to the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, official IRNA news agency reported.

"In the fifth step of withdrawing from its commitments, the Islamic republic drops the last key restriction under the nuclear deal, namely 'restriction on the number of centrifuges'," IRNA cited the announcement by Iranian government as reading.

Therefore, "Iran's nuclear program will no longer embrace any practical restrictions, including the level and purity of enrichment, the mass of enriched materials and R&D activities," read the announcement.

"From now on, Iran's nuclear program will advance based on its own technical requirements," it said.

In a reaction to the U.S. withdrawal from the landmark 2015 Iranian nuclear deal in May 2018 and the subsequent sanctions, and in a response to the Europe's sluggishness in facilitating Iran's banking transactions and its oil exports, Iran, since May 2019, made staged moves to drop its nuclear commitments.

Iran had said that the cut of obligations under the 2015 nuclear deal was a "wake-up call" for the remaining parties of the deal to protect Iran's economic interests.

"As before, Iran will continue its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)," according to Iran's announcement on Sunday.

The Iranian government, however, said that Tehran is ready to re-embrace its nuclear commitments, in case anti-Iran sanctions are removed and its economic interests under the nuclear deal are secured. 
HONOLULU  NASA's next flagship space telescope is still on track for a launch in March 2021 despite long-standing scheduling concerns, according to agency personnel.

The James Webb Space Telescope has been notoriously prone to delays and cost overruns, but during two town hall meetings held here at the 235th American Astronomical Society meeting, NASA leaders emphasized that the launch date set in June 2018 still holds. A second major telescope is also continuing to meet its timeline, targeting a launch in the mid-2020s.

"This past year was an exciting year for James Webb," Paul Hertz, director of the astrophysics division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said of Webb on Sunday (Jan. 5) during an update about the astrophysics program. "This is your next great observatory."

Related: What's the Point of the James Webb Space Telescope?

But before it can become NASA's next great observatory, Webb needs to complete a host of milestones this year. Right now, the spacecraft is being packed up from the first test of its deployment. Next, engineers will subject the spacecraft to the type of vibration and acoustic environments it will experience during launch on an Ariane 5 rocket.

Then, the mission team will test deploying it again to ensure that those environmental tests didn't create any new problems. A host of other, smaller tasks are also scheduled for this year, according to NASA's Eric Smith at a separate town hall dedicated exclusively to Webb, which is currently estimated to cost about $9.7 billion . One vital step will be replacing some electronics that failed during an earlier test, which Smith said is the type of work that has never been done on the telescope before.

Smith emphasized both that the bulk of the work on Webb is complete and that the activities scheduled for the next 15 months are crucial to the mission's success.

"We're just about done constructing the observatory; pretty soon it's our job here to realize the promise of that," Smith said. "We have the James Webb Space Telescope now. What we have to do is make sure it works as planned."

It's not just Webb that will spend the year preparing for launch  the project's humans will as well, according to mission operations project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland Jane Rigby. The team conducted nine rehearsals in 2019 of various phases of the mission, from launch through deployment and a six-month commissioning phase and into gathering science data; Webb staff will complete another 14 such rehearsals this year.

Webb isn't the only major telescope that NASA's astrophysics team is building this year; the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope , or WFIRST, is also a key focus of the division's resources, Hertz said.

"We are at peak spending on WFIRST right now so we are at the point in the program where we are getting the most done every year as we make progress toward launch in the 2020s," Hertz said. At one point during his presentation, he pointed to a slide of tasks for the year. "You can read this: We're building stuff," he said.

That work is supported by the NASA budget that Congress approved last month, which fully funds both Webb and WFIRST, despite President Donald Trump administration's proposal to cancel the latter program . The December approval of a budget marks a break from recent years characterized by drawn-out negotiations that have left agencies in the dark about the funding they would receive.

"I'm not sure how many years it's been since the last time I could stand in front of you and say, 'I have received my appropriation for the current fiscal year,'" Hertz said. "Those of us who work for the federal government are ecstatic.  It's really good news."

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels . Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook .
Competing for dollars in the digital age is hard for any brick-and-mortar retailer, but sprinkle in some self-inflicted wounds and the task gets tougher. Just ask Targets CIO Mike McNamara, who invested in a new technology operating model, reskilling and innovation to help pull the big box chain out of its funk.

We did things to change our ways of working by investing in learning and development, Target CIO Mike McNamara told CIO.com in an interview at the Forbes CIO Next event recently. When those things come together its a magic combination.

Magic isnt a bad word to describe Targets revival.

When McNamara took the tech helm in 2015, the company was still recovering from a data breach that shook the confidence of consumers, investors and employees. Its ill-fated launch in Canada was a debacle. The companys 1,800 physical stores were losing foot traffic and sales.

Moreover, the companys first website didnt launch until 2011 and it ran on cloud software from rival Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of the very company that has been throttling retail for two decades. This made it difficult for Target to compete when the current blueprint for retail success is making it easier for customers to purchase goods via physical and digital channels.

McNamara, who previously ushered U.K. grocer Tesco into the digital era, pulled the technology department, an order-taking function that was 70 percent outsourced, in-house and hired more than 1,000 new engineers. He also ordered the IT department to cull many of its 800 projects and sharpen its focus on building supply chain applications for assortment planning, digital merchandising, store ordering and other critical software.

A bullseye for products

McNamara revamped Targets tech operations, replacing the project management and waterfall processes, in which the tech staff worked on feature requirements dictated by the business, with a product management model that emphasized agile delivery and DevOps. This model shaved development times from several months to weeks.

Rallying around point of sale, search and other Target products helped each team, ranging from 4 to 20 engineers and product developers, take ownership of managing each product. There are no micromanaged feature lists or top-down provisos, McNamara said.

It gives stability to the teams, whereas when a project used to come along theyd rush through the requirements because they thought they had one shot at getting it done, McNamara added.

The teams compete on a friendly level, with each creating its own branding logo. While he acknowledged that it may sound superfluous, McNamara insisted that nothing is more symbolic of Targets new approach than pride in product ownership.

Product management is a red-hot approach in IT, as CIOs at dozens of enterprises are aligning their IT workflows with the value they create. The scramble to create digital businesses has prompted 55 percent of businesses to move from project to product delivery, according to Gartner.

It sounds sage, if not a bit obvious, but if thousands of engineers under your remit havent worked in this vein the learning curve is steep. In fact, few Target engineers knew how to work in a product management model, let alone how to rapidly write, test and improve software.

Kicking it in the Dojo

IT staff also hit the Target Dojo, a classroom equipped with long tables and whiteboards, to learn how to deliver products and innovation using agile, lean and DevOps principles. Today, experts tasked with knotty problems hit the Dojo to flex their skills, McNamara said.

We needed to change the way that we work, iterate, test and learn, so that we can work faster and ship product quickly, McNamara said. It also helps us attract and retain top tech talent.

With Dojo training and agile delivery, a squad of engineers rewrote Targets replenishment systems from scratch in 8 weeks, 4 weeks ahead of schedule. There is something to the Dojo concept in general; FedEx CIO Rob Carter built a similar school to help beef up his IT teams cloud software chops.

With its tech operating model and platforms in place, Target has ramped up its innovation efforts. In programs such as 50 Days of Learning, Targets technology and data science team members spend 50 days a year exploring new ideas that could create better experiences for Targets guests or operations. This commitment, roughly one day a week, includes innovation sprints, hackathons and conferences.

Thus far, the program has spurred everything from back-end services that allow teams faster access to supply chain data, to dynamic promotions displayed on self-checkout registers (an idea that surfaced from a hackathon), to geekfest ride-alongs by senior engineers.

Target has also tucked its Cartwheel e-coupon feature into its mobile app, which was upgraded with Bluetooth-enabled location services; added computer-generated imagery to its website; and implemented in-store tech tools that help employees better serve guests.

The path forward

The sweeping transformation is paying off for the company and McNamara. After a strong performance through the 2018 holiday season, in which digital sales rose 29 percent, Target CEO Brian Cornell folded the enterprise data analytics and business intelligence team under McNamara.

This team, which includes roughly 1,000 data scientists, engineers, governance experts and analysts, helps Target leverage data to elevate the guest experience and improve its operations, including applying artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and automation. The team also uses algorithms to generate insights for the companys supply chain, marketing, merchandising and properties teams.

Experimentation with AI and ML could prove pivotal as Target pursues growth in a world where technology is making commerce more seamless. And while the popular refrain is that Amazon.com is eating the retail world, McNamara noted that the ecommerce market remains relatively small compared to its brick-and-mortar counterpart. McNamara fully expects physical retail locations, augmented by digital services, will be critical for Targets future.

The trick for Target? Cultivating the capabilities to respond to the changes, whatever form they take. We need a great engineering team and flexible adaptive architecture because consumer tastes change and weve got to pivot to respond, McNamara said.
CES has never been a great show for serious robotics. Its not a phenomenon I expect to change at any point in the near future, though things do seem to get slightly better each year. Pollen Robotics is an interesting addition to the mix that largely revolves around things like companion and smart home robotics.

Pollen Robotics certainly stands out from that crowd, offering a robotic torso named Reachy. The two arms, chest and a head are an open-source platform designed for prototyping and research purposes. The system just went up for sale this week as either a standalone arm ($9,000) or full half-body ($17,000), but the three-year-old French startup says it already has clients.

We are working with a lab in France that works on prosthetics, a staff member told me at CES. Were also working with an engineering school to teach mechanics, robotics and AI. There are big innovation labs that want to explore robotics for service and start prototyping service robotics.

Its a broad range of potential applications, starting with the simple tic-tac-toe game Reachy was playing at the show. That was designed for a company with presentation needs. In this case, the robot fills a similar need as Pepper, essentially using the technology to draw people in to something like a convention booth. It certainly worked in this case.

Research robots, meanwhile, are a needed, but difficult to monetize, category. Prominent companies like Willow Garage and Rethink Robotics have classroom mainstays, but have ultimately faded away. Reachy doesnt look to have quite the sophistication as those systems, but the (relatively) low price point could certainly hold some appeal.

The projects open-source nature, too, could ultimately be a benefit for researchers and startups alike.
He recently showed just how much of a hopeless romantic he is, when he serenaded his wife, Nancy Shevell, onstage while performing at a party.

And Sir Paul McCartney, 77, was spotted enjoying more time with the glamorous 60-year-old on Sunday, soaking up the sun on the shores of Saint Barthelemy.

The legendary rocker was seen sprinting into the French Caribbean island's clear azure waters, while his swimsuit-clad wife years strolled on Flamands Beach.

Holiday: Paul McCartney, 77, (right) was spotted with his wife Nancy Shevell (left) on Sunday, soaking up the sun on the shores of Saint Barthelemy

Nancy looked elegant and youthful as she meandered along the shoreline wearing black swimsuit, which she teamed with a patterned long-sleeved top.

With a wide-brimmed straw hat resting atop her glossy brown locks, the American businesswoman shielded her eyes with a pair of tinted sunglasses.

Meanwhile, Beatles icon Paul was dressed for an afternoon of activity, stepping out in a black long-sleeved top and a pair of red shorts.

Stylish: Nancy looked elegant and youthful as she meandered along the shoreline wearing black swimsuit, which she teamed with a patterned long-sleeved top

Making a splash: Meanwhile, Beatles icon Paul was dressed for an afternoon of activity, stepping out in a black long-sleeved top and a pair of red shorts

Diving in: Paul couldn't resist taking the plunge as he splashed around in the shallows

Taking a dip: Paul was in his element as he enjoyed a low-key swim

After his brief dip in the ocean, Paul went back onto dry land to meet his wife of 11 years, who handed him a large red towel to dry off.

The couple chatted as they made their way along the beach together before heading back to their luxury hotel.

Their outing comes several weeks after Paul serenaded his wife during a surprise performance at a party in New Jersey back in November.

Living it up: After his brief dip in the ocean, Paul went back onto dry land

Covering up: With a wide-brimmed straw hat resting atop her glossy brown locks, the American businesswoman shielded her eyes with a pair of tinted sunglasses

Musician Paul delighted guests with a performance of the 1963 Beatles hit I Saw Her Standing There at the party, held at Hudson House in Jersey City for the New England Motor Freight (NEMF) company.

In a video captured by one of the guests, Paul threw of his jacket before breaking into a rendition of the classic tune, with Nancy and the guests singing along in unison.

Another video also showed Paul dancing with Nancy and the rest of the guests to the Beyonce hit Crazy In Love.

Heading out: The artist cooled off with a towel following his refreshing swim

What's down there? Nancy appeared to reach down for an object during her beach outing

The party in honour of NEMF's staff was held at Hudson Hous.e, which is based at Port Liberte and overlooks the Hudson River and the Statue Of Liberty.

Nancy, who celebrated her 60th birthday last week, is an executive for NEMF which is owned by her family, and is believed to have hosted the bash.

Paul and Nancy tied the knot on October 9, 2011, exchanging vows at London's Old Marylebone Town Hall register office.

Glamorous Nancy is an heiress to a haulage fortune and is Sir Paul's third wife after Linda McCartney died in 1998. He divorced second wife Heather Mills 10 years later, in 2008.

Cheery: The media personality flashed a wide grin as he returned to his accomodation

Maintaining the tradition: The couple spend time in the idyllic island every year after Christmas




HARRISBURG  Retirement is not as easy as pie for Sharon Kurtz.

The Lehigh County woman who in 2003 won the Pennsylvania Farm Show Blue Ribbon Apple Pie Contest and then retired from competitive baking, returned Saturday to win the prestigious contest at the 104th Pennsylvania Farm Show.

Kurtz, of Emmaus, beat 78 other pie bakers from throughout the state and won $500, a blue ribbon and bragging rights in the contest considered the Super Bowl of Pennsylvania baking.

Other top winners were Lucinda Donough of Port Royal, second place and $250; Ann Krug, third place and $100; Chris Arbutina, fourth place and a yellow ribbon; and Angie Espenshade fifth place and a green ribbon.

The contest, sponsored by the Pennsylvania State Association of County Fairs and the Pennsylvania Apple Marketing Program, was only open to certified first place winners from Pennsylvanias community and county agricultural fairs of 2019.

I entered this contest in 2003 and won it, Kurtz said. Then, I retired from competitive baking. I had a lot of apples this year and decided to get into baking again. I never expected to win again.

A good pie starts with the crust, Kurtz said, adding that her crust contains butter-flavored Crisco, an egg and apple cider vinegar. She used Granny Smith apples and cooked them in a crock pot for nearly two hours.

Her entry was rich in pecans because I love pecan pie and wanted to incorporate pecans in my pie, Kurtz said. She smiled when asked about her plans for the $500 winning.

My friend and I are going to Atlantic City to celebrate my birthday, she said. I will use some of the money for that trip.

For nearly three hours, contestants and members of the public watched judges sampling each entry and evaluating it on appearance, color, flavor and texture of crust, doneness of bottom crust, consistency, doneness and flavor of filling. As judges tasted, contestants talked.

I made a basket of apples pie with Jonagold, Stayman-Winesap, Matsu, Granny Smith and Honey Crisp apples in it, said Sharon Karlheim of Patton. My crust uses butter and shortening, and my top is a toffee caramel crunch.

Michelle Argust of Tamaqua made a caramel apple crumb pie with a basic crust and McIntosh apples. Samantha Bowman of Shelocta called her pie an apple quartet because she uses Granny Smith, Honey Crisp, Fuji and Jazz apples. Her crust used sour cream and apple juice.

Jane Yates of New Castle made an apple crumb pie, with a crust that includes an egg and vinegar because it rolls out well. I made one pie yesterday but it wasnt good enough because the apples were too soft. So I baked another. I took it out of the oven at 11 a.m., put it in a box in the car, put a seat belt on it and we drove to Harrisburg.

Kevin Bieber, contest coordinator and announcer, finally announced the winners, then the pies were sliced and given to the public to taste.

Darren McClure of Camp Hill tried a slice with apples and molasses in the filling and oatmeal topping, which he praised, though he said that the crust was too doughy. Carolyn Blatchley of Paxtang called her slice of rhubarb apple pie tart but just right. I like the nice, flaky crust and the leaf cutouts on top of the pie.

Kelly Kastronis of North Huntington liked her basic apple pie, but thought it needs a scoop of ice cream on it!

Kurtzs prize-winning recipe follows:

FOUR LAYER APPLE PIE

Crust:

3 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon granulated sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 1/2 cups butter-flavored Crisco

1 large egg, beaten

5 tablespoons cold water

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Mix flour, salt, sugar, cinnamon and Crisco with mixer. Add beaten egg mixed with water, vanilla and vinegar.

Divide dough into two pieces and wrap in plastic wrap. Place dough in refrigerator for at least one hour. Using rolling pin, roll dough out on floured board and transfer to a 10-inch pie dish. Trim excess and flute edge.

Place pie shell in freezer for one hour before baking. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Line pie crust with aluminum foil and weigh it down with two cups of rice.

Bake on center rack for 30 minutes. Remove foil and rice; bake for 5 more minutes or until lightly browned. This crust recipe makes two pie shells plus enough for cut-outs, if desired.

First Layer

2/3 cup chopped roasted pecans

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup light corn syrup

1 egg, beaten

2 teaspoons butter, melted

Mix ingredients together. Pour into prepared pie shell. Cover edges of crust with aluminum foil and bake in a 350 degree oven for 24 minutes until set. Completely cool on rack.

Second Layer

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 cup confectioner sugar, divided

2 tablespoons butter, softened

4 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Using a chilled bowl and whisk, beat whipping cream on medium-high speed for two minutes or until stiff peaks from when beater is slowly raised. Add 1/8 cup confectioners sugar and gently mix into whipped cream until blended. Set whipped cream aside.

In a large mixing bowl, blend butter, cream cheese, remaining confectioner sugar and vanilla. Mix on medium-high speed for one minute until well blended and smooth. Add whipped cream to cream cheese mixture and mix gently until well blended.

Cover with plastic wrap and keep in refrigerator until ready to assemble pie. When ready to assemble pie, spread second layer evenly over cooled first layer.

Third Layer

7 cups finely sliced Granny Smith apples

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon butter

Place apples, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla in 4-quart slow cooker and mix until incorporated.

Place butter on top and cook on high heat for one to two hours or until apples are soft. Let pie filling cool for 1 hour and then place in refrigerator until chilled.

Spoon chilled third layer evenly over top of second layer. Can be made the night before so its chilled and ready to go in the morning.

Fourth Layer

1 cup chopped glazed pecans

2 tablespoons caramel dip

Sprinkle glazed pecans over top of third layer and drizzle caramel dip over top of pecans. If desired, you can bake pie crust cut-outs out of any remaining pie crust dough and place on top of pie.

This pie should be refrigerated until ready to serve.

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BJP ally JD(U) on Monday demanded removal of the JNU vice-chancellor and a probe by a Supreme Court judge into the Sunday night violence in the university as it accused the Delhi Police of failing in its duties.

Party spokesperson K C Tyagi in a statement said that his party strongly condemned the violent activities of goons in the JNU campus, and that all sections of society should slam the way elected office bearers of the JNU Students' Union were attacked by masked outsiders.

"We strongly condemn the attitude of the university's vice chancellor and other authorities who became silent spectators of the dirty game of these goons. Police officials too failed in performing their duties.

"The JD(U) demands a free and fair enquiry by a Supreme Court judge and for a fair trial, the VC and other top administrators must be removed from their respective posts," he said, expressing his party's solidarity with JNU students.

The JNU is known for debate, dialogue and ideological differences and never for such incidents, Tyagi said and termed the violence as an act of "cowardice of those ideologically defeated in debate".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Estes endowment affords opportunity

Supporting scholarships: The Robey and Jean Estes Business Scholarship Endowment, which will provide need-based scholarships support to business students. Courtesy photo Photo - of - Hide Caption

$1.5 million gift to fund scholarships at William & Marys Raymond A. Mason School of Business

Jean Berger Estes 75 and Robey Estes 74 believe that scholarships change lives and have the power to attract top students to William & Mary  students who will go on to make a positive impact in the business world.

The couple recently made a commitment of $1.5 million to William & Marys Raymond A. Mason School of Business to help attract high-caliber students to W&M now and into the future. The couple established the Robey and Jean Estes Business Scholarship Endowment, which will provide need-based scholarships support to business students.

The Estes know the impact of giving firsthand. Their son, Webb Estes 06, M.Acc. 07, received a scholarship to attend William & Mary.

Webb received a Master of Accounting scholarship based on his academic achievements, Jean Estes said. We think its important to help people with scholarships support in order to attract the best and brightest to the business school.

The Mason School has created more than 50 new scholarships during the For the Bold campaign, making a business education accessible for students. The business school was recently ranked No.1 for learning for the second year in a row by BusinessWeek.

We are enriched by the Estes continued care for William & Mary, said Raymond A. Mason School of Business Dean Larry Pulley 74. Their generosity allows us to provide our students with a transformative educational experience and to prepare them for lives of principled achievement.

William & Mary has a special place in the Estes hearts. The couple met in Millington Hall in February 1971 and have remained connected to the university ever since. Its this lifelong connection to the university that has guided their service to alma mater.

We think the business school is such an important part of what makes William & Mary a world-class university, Rob Estes said. Dean Larry Pulley 74 and the staff have done an exceptional job to enhance the programs that we have today and to bring the business school to the level it is with its competition. We couldnt be happier to make this gift.

The couple has continually given to the university through their time, talent and treasure, including major gifts to the Estes Challenge and the 1693 Scholars Program. The Estes Challenge, which is designed to encourage increased annual giving, supports students and faculty in the Raymond A. Mason School of Business by funding scholarships, career development services and undergraduate initiatives. The Estes 1693 Scholars Endowment provides full financial support for highly talented students to attend W&M.

The Estes, who serve as co-chairs for the Richmond For the Bold regional campaign committee, are members of several boards at the university. Jean is a member of the Campaign Steering Committee and the Society of 1918 and has also served as co-chair of the Class of 1975s 30th Reunion Committee. She is an emeritus trustee of the William & Mary Foundation. Rob is a member of the Campaign Steering Committee, the W&M Business School Foundation Board and previously served on the Class of 1974s 30th and 40th Reunion Gift Committees.

The Estes recent commitment aligns with the top priority of the For the Bold campaign, which is to raise funds to provide scholarships for W&M students.

Whatever little bit we have done to support the institution, weve gotten much more back in the feeling of being part of something larger than we are, Rob said.
John Bolton confirmed Monday that he would appear before the Senate if he is subpoenaed to testify in the impeachment trial against Donald Trump.

'[S]ince my testimony is once again at issue, I have had to resolve the serious competing issues as best I could, based on careful consideration and study. I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify,' Bolton said in a statement posted to his Political Action Committee website.

Trump's ex-national security adviser, who parted ways with the administration on a sour note in September, revealed he would comply if he was served with a legal notice - but there is no clarity on whether there would be one.

It is Democrats who have expressed interest in his testimony. Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer revealed last month in a letter to Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that he wants to hear from Bolton.

But Republicans hold the majority and so far McConnell has said he is determined to start the trial without calling witnesses, which would make Bolton's move an empty gesture.

Donald Trump's former national security adviser, John Bolton (pictured), said Monday he will comply with a congressional subpoena if the Senate compels him to testify in the impeachment trial

'I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify,' he said in a statement on his Political Action Committee website

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (pictured) has expressed interest in subpoenaing Bolton to testify in a Senate impeachment hearing

However Republicans handle it, the announcement by Bolton set off an explosion of speculation in Washington D.C. about the former aide's true intentions and the next step by Nancy Pelosi, who has not yet sent the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial.

Schumer said the former Trump official has 'direct knowledge of Administration decisions' that could help clear things up in the charges against the president.

He also said proposed having acting White House Chief of Staff Mick-Mulvaney, his adviser, Robert Blair and Office of Management and Budget official Michael Duffey testify.

Schumer released a statement Monday following Bolton's comments.

'Momentum for uncovering the truth in a Senate trial continues,' Schumer said. 'John Bolton correctly acknowledged that he needs to comply with a Senate subpoena to compel his testimony, if issued.'

The New York Democrat says its now up to a small group of Republicans in the Senate to support subpoenaing Bolton to make it happen.

'Given that Mr. Bolton's lawyers have stated he has new relevant information to share, if any Senate Republican opposes issuing subpoenas to the four witnesses and documents we have requested they would make absolutely clear they are participating in a cover up,' Schumer continued in his statement.

The House voted last month, almost completely along party lines, to impeach Trump for two charges: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

'During the present impeachment controversy, I have tried to meet my obligations both as a citizen and as former National Security Advisor,' Bolton wrote in his statement.

He also mentioned in the statement the case with Charles Kupperman, who acted as Trump's national security adviser for eight days between Bolton and the president's new adviser, Robert O'Brien and was Bolton's deputy.

Kupperman faced a House subpoena for the impeachment proceedings, but was given a directive by the White House not to testify. The case ultimately got caught up in a legal battle and eventually the House committee withdrew the subpoena to stop the court from having jurisdiction over the case.

'It now falls to the Senate to fulfill its Constitutional obligation to try impeachments, and it does not appear possible that a final judicial resolution of the still-unanswered Constitutional questions can be obtained before the Senate acts,' Bolton said.

Bolton did not mention something that is well known in Washington: that he is a prolific and meticulous note-taker, and that being summoned to give evidence would have the potential to open up a huge vault of written details of Trump's inner-circle's discussions.

But McConnell and other Republicans in the Senate do not even want to have a trial with witnesses.

Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (pictured) has said he doesn't want to hold a lengthy trial with witnesses, and instead wants to move the matter through the Senate swiftly

Instead, they have claimed they want to go off of House testimony to move the trial quickly through the Senate  where the president will surely be acquitted by the Republican-controlled chamber.

Bolton's ousting was announced by the president via Twitter in September.

'I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House,' Trump tweeted September 10. 'I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service.'

A few days after departing from the White House, Bolton returned to his post as head of both the John Bolton PAC and John Bolton Super PAC.

He also still periodically weighs in on foreign policy matters, especially Trump's strategy regarding North Korea - on which he has been critical of the administration.
Delta Air Lines has been named as the most on-time airline in North America in the annual On-Time Performance (OTP) Review released by travel data and analytics expert Cirium

Ciriums On-Time Performance Review of 2019 names Aeroflot as the worlds most on-time mainline airline and the most punctual European airline

Runners-up include All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Delta Air Liines

In North America, Delta is named as the most on-time airline for three years running

Alaska Airlines and Southwest Airlines are ranked in second and third place

Average on-time performance among the top ten airlines was high at 79.5%

Spirit Airlines who didnt feature in the top ten North American on-time airlines for 2018, achieves fourth place

Eight of North Americas major airports feature in the top 20 global airports ranking for on-time performance  Salt Lake City International Airport being the only airport to make the top ten

Delta Air Lines has been named as the most on-time airline in North America in the annual On-Time Performance (OTP) Review released by travel data and analytics expert Cirium.

Both Alaska Airlines and Southwest Airlines rank at second and third place in the North America category, with Spirit Airlines, who did not feature in the top ten in 2018, achieving fourth place in 2019.

Russias Aeroflot has been named as the worlds most on-time mainline airline in the OTP Review. A report that identifies the worlds best performing airlines and airports for on-time flight operations in 2019.

According to the long-running analysis by Cirium, which provides the definitive ranking of the top ten most on-time airlines and airports globally, by size and region, 86.7 per cent of Aeroflots flights operated on-time in 2019.

Last years winner, Delta Air Lines, took third place in the global category with 85.7 per cent of flights arriving on-time.

Meanwhile, Latin American airline LATAM clinches top ranking of the global network airline category with 86.7 per cent of the flights in its network arriving on time.

The 2019 Review also reveals that the most punctual airline in Europe is also Aeroflot. In the Asia Pacific, ANA takes top spot; Copa Airlines is most on-time in Latin America; and in the Middle East and Africa, Qatar Airways beats Emirates to top ranking.

Japanese airline StarFlyer is named the worlds most punctual low cost carrier with 91.4 per cent of flights arriving on-schedule**.

Ciriums OTP Review also identifies the worlds most punctual airport, with Moscows Sheremetyevo International (SVO) operating the most on-schedule departing flights, with 95 per cent being on time. North Americas global airports dominate the top 20 with eight airports making the list  Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) being the only one to rank in the top ten.

Cirium On-Time Performance Review 2019  Airlines Category Mainline Network Global Aeroflot (86.68%) ANA (86.26%) Delta Air Lines (85.69%_ LATAM Airlines (86.67%) ANA (86.49%) Delta Air Lines (84.63%) Asia Pacific ANA (86.26%) Singapore Airlines (85.57%) Thai AirAsia (83.74%) ANA (86.49%) Singapore Airlines (85.57%) JAL (84.47%) Europe Aeroflot (86.68%) S7 Airlines (84.66%) Iberia (83.33%) Aeroflot (86.82%) Iberia (84.24%) S7 Airlines (84.11%) North America Delta Air Lines (85.69%) Alaska Airlines (82.01%) Southwest Airlines (81.44%) Delta Air Lines (84.63%) Alaska Airlines (83.12%) Southwest Airlines (81.44%) Latin America Copa Airlines (92.16%) VivaColombia (86.94%) Sky Airline (86.10%) Copa Airlines (92.29%) VivaColombia(86.94%) LATAM Airlines (86.67%) Middle East and Africa Qatar Airways (82.45%) Emirates (81.02%) Middle East Airlines (79.38%) Qatar Airways (82.45%) Emirates (81.02%) Middle East Airlines (79.86%) Low Cost Carriers StarFlyer (91.37%) Air Do (90.42%) Solaseed Air (88.05%)

Cirium On-Time Performance Review 2019  Airlines  North America Category Mainline Network North America Delta Air Lines (85.69%) Alaska Airlines (82.01%) Southwest Airlines (81.44%) Spirit Airlines (81.19%) American Airlines (79.89%) Allegiant Air (79.48%) United Airlines (79.30%) WestJet (76.48%) JetBlue Airways (74.80%) Frontier Airlines (74.44%) Delta Air Lines (84.63%) Alaska Airlines (83.12%) Southwest Airlines (81.44%) Spirit Airlines (81.19%) American Airlines (80.50%) WestJet (80.31%) Allegiant Air (79.48%) United Airlines (78.11%) JetBlue Airways (74.80%) Frontier Airlines (74.44%)

Cirium On-Time Performance Review 2019  Global Airports Category Mainline Global Airports (SVO) Sheremetyevo International Airport (95.01%) (CAN) Guangzhou Baiyun International Airports (92.52%) (PVG) Shanghai Pudong International Airport (91.04%) (KMG) Kunming Changshui International Air..(90.72%) (PEK) Beijing Capital International Airport (89.15%) (SZX) Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport (88.94%) (XIY) Xianyang International Airport (88.73%) (CKG) Chongqing Jiangbei International Air..(88.49%) (HND) Haneda Airport (88.08%) (SLC) Salt Lake City International Airport (88.05%) (CTU) Chengdu Shuangliu International Airp..(87.27%) (MSP) Minneapolis-St. Paul International Air..(86.84%) (ATL) Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Internation.. (86.52%) (DTW) Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County A..(86.08%) (IAD) Washington Dulles International Airport (85.27%) (HKG) Hong Kong International Airport (84.90%) (MIA) Miami International Airport (84.76%) (PHL) Philadelphia International Airport (84.36%) (CLT) Charlotte Douglas International Airport (83.96%) (OSL) Oslo Airport Gardermoen (83.62%)

As the worlds leading authority on airline on-time performance, aviation and travel data analytics expert Cirium has now published its annual review for 11 consecutive years.

It is designed to raise the benchmark by encouraging airlines and airports to invest, ensuring they operate on-time and provide their customers with a best-in-class travel experience, both in the air and on the ground.

Jeremy Bowen, Cirium CEO, said: We apply the highest level of data analysis to generate our On-Time Performance Review and were delighted to announce that Aeroflot surpassed other leading airlines as the worlds most on-time mainline airline.

As Aeroflot has more controls in place over their environment than most, that helps enormously to drive the airlines operational efficiency. Russias successful year continues with Moscows Sheremetyevo International airport also winning the top spot as the most punctual airport.

Meanwhile, Delta Air Lines continues its winning steak by winning top spot to be named the most punctual mainline and network airline in North America for the third successive year; this is a fantastic achievement and a testament to their focus on optimising operational efficiency.

Airlines and airports which consistently operate on-time and go that extra mile for their customers deserve to be recognised in an increasingly competitive environment and should be justifiably proud of reaching such a world-class industry standard.

Jeremy Bowen added: Achieving world-class customer satisfaction and industry-leading product differentiation is about more than just competitively priced tickets and flight availability. When choosing who to fly with, savvy travellers also now consider airline punctuality and operational reliability.

We believe Ciriums On-Time Performance Review 2019 will inspire airlines and airports to continue innovating to improve their performance. By embracing digital transformation and leveraging data to its full potential, Cirium can help the aviation industry harness its power to improve on-time performance and enhance the passenger experience.

The Cirium OTP review draws on over a decade of experience reporting on the punctuality of airlines and airports. Cirium has tracked, analyzed and recognised the hard work of carriers and hubs which deliver on their promise to fly customers to their destinations on time.

Ciriums 600 unrivalled data sources, including almost every airline around the world, means it tracks over a staggering 100,000 flights a day and bases its analysis on an 80 per cent coverage requirement for each category. According to Cirium, an airlines flight is on-time if the aircraft arrives at the gate under 15 minutes of the scheduled arrival time. Airport on-time performance is measured by on-time departing flights.

Using its advanced technology, Ciriums dedicated team of expert data analysts process 15 million updates a day  18 times more than the industry average  to ensure the most accurate results with multi-source verification.

This data enables Ciriums analysts to provide powerful and meaningful insights for every sector of the aviation industry to ensure customers are at the heart of everything they do.

The awards are grouped by Cirium into three areas including Global Airlines, Major Airlines by Region and Low Cost Carriers, and there are strict criteria  for example for the Global Airline category Cirium considers the top 10 per cent of all airlines by size.

Cirium has created a new, prestigious board of elite industry professionals to provide an independent view of the analysis of on-time performance.

Jeremy Bowen commented: Ciriums data is used widely by airlines, airports as well as varying companies involved in travel and we are considered as the pre-eminent leaders in this space. For this reason, we are the only company that are transparent and have a board for independent oversight in this area.

The initial members of Ciriums on-time performance board include: Luis Felipe de Oliveira, Executive Director and CEO at ALTA (The Latin American & Caribbean Air Transport Association); Henry H. Harteveldt, President at Atmosphere Research Group; and Dr. Mario Hardy, CEO of PATA (Pacific Asia Travel Association). New members will be joining in 2020.

To view Ciriums On-Time Performance Review 2019, please click here.

Ciriums aviation and air travel data and analytics are used by companies surrounding the movement of people and goods around the world. The company employs over 500 technologists, analysts, data scientists and market experts in the UK, US, Europe, Middle East, India and Asia-Pacific.

* Mainline refers to a system of flights that are operated by a major airline and does not include airline partners. Network is a system of flights that are flown by a major airline and include the flights that are marketed by the airline but are operated by a separate airline partner.

** Airlines in each category have different thresholds in terms of flight coverage and capacity which are tracked.

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Piers Morgan has laid into Prime Minister Scott Morrison on British TV for his dereliction during the bushfire crisis.

The Good Morning Britain host hit out at Mr Morrison during a segment with Liberal MP Craig Kelly, lambasting his decision to take a holiday to Hawaii as the fires began to rage.

When Morgan questioned Mr Kelly over Mr Morrisons behaviour, he reiterated to the former Mirror editor and co-host Susanna Reid that the responsibility to manage the fires was in the hands of the individual state premiers.

But its a national emergency so youd expect the national leader to take charge and not fly out of the country, Reid said in response.

Mr Kelly suggested the only way Mr Morrison could assist was if the state leaders requested help, suggesting none had.

But Morgan wasnt convinced.

Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid laid into Craig Kelly. Source: Good Morning Britain

He was absent when the fires were burning, Scott Morrison thought the right response to these fires erupting in Australia was to go and lie on the beach in Hawaii and it was a dereliction of his duty as leader of Australia, he quipped.

Youre facing now one of the greatest crisis youve ever faced.

Liberal MP slammed over climate change denial

He then turned his focus onto Mr Kelly, roasting him for a stance on climate change Mr Morrison has also faced intense scrutiny over.

There is you Mr Kelly, with respect, a senior politician, who still doesnt think this has anything to do with the heating of our planet.

Craig Kelly tried defending the response but Morgan was having none of it. Source: Good Morning Britain

Nothing to see here, nothing to worry about and virtually your entire country is eviscerated by fires.

Mr Kelly attempted to hit back, saying the natural disaster had been hijacked by politicians for personal gain before Morgan said theyd run out of time and cut him off.

Ironically, a day earlier Mr Morrison was forced to deny that a much-criticised video posted on the Liberal Party's Twitter account detailing the federal bushfire response was not a political advertisement.

Morrison defiant over bushfire response

Mr Morrison has faced prolonged backlash over his behaviour throughout this bushfire season, most recently from NSW RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons over his lack of communication over 3000 army reservists to be deployed.

Story continues

"I was disappointed and I was frustrated on one of our busiest days," Mr Fitzsimmons said of Saturday's announcement.

Scott Morrison visiting decimated communities during the bushfire crisis. Source: AAP

"They apologised that in hindsight they could have done better with communicating that."

The prime minister was also berated by disgruntled victims when visiting fire-ravaged communities, facing a series of expletives while awkwardly forcing a mother who lost her home to shake his hand when she refused.

On Sunday, Mr Morrison shrugged off questions about his leadership during the national bushfire crisis.

"There has been plenty of criticism but I can't be distracted by that," he said.

"The public, I know, are not distracted by that."

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play.
A case has been registered against a Superintendent of Police (SP) in Assam for allegedly sexually assaulting a minor girl, according to Commissioner of Police, MP Gupta.

"A case was registered under section 10 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act against the official," Gupta told ANI on Sunday.

Gupta further said that the accused official was Karbi Anglong, SP Gaurav Upadhyay.

Further investigation is underway.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Netflix docuseries "The Movies that Made Us," takes a look behind the scenes at the making of iconic American movies.

And the "Dirty Dancing" episode sheds light on a fun fact: the 1987 movie would have never been made had it not been for a no-name film company based in Stamford, Conn.

According to the documentary, after the script for "Dirty Dancing" was brutally rejected by every major (and minor) studio in Hollywood, it ended up at Vestron Video in Stamford. The company, which had been successful as a VHS distributor of somewhat cheesy movies ("They were not quality-driven," as the documentary puts it), was moving into the movie-making business. As a new production company with no clout, Vestron would receive all the reject scripts from studios.

"In effect, almost literally, dump trucks with 5,000 scripts or so are dumped in the loading dock in the dumpster," Mitchell Cannold, who was head of production at Vestron Video at the time, tells the cameras.

The "Dirty Dancing" script reached Cannold, and he loved it it because it brought him back to his childhood summer camp days in the Catskills.

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"The life that's depicted in the movie was one I know, one I loved," Cannold says in the documentary. "I was laughing; I was crying; I got all the jokes; I got all the meaning; I got all the themes of it."

"Dirty Dancing" was to become Vestron Video's first feature-length film. With a relatively inexperienced crew and an extremely low budget, the movie was shot within a year and became an instant success.

But despite the megahit that was "Dirty Dancing," it did not put Vestron on the map. The company went on to release a number of flops and eventually closed its doors in 1991.

But the documentary does highlight one happy ending for the employees at Vestron Video. Bringing the cameras to the former headquarters at 60 Long Ridge Rd. in Stamford, Netflix follows Cannold and the former VP of physical production, Dori Berinstein, down the hallways of the office building where they first met and fell in love. The two have been married ever since.
Hunter Biden's 'crack pipe' crisis in Arizona has been dragged into his paternity case, as he's accused of having a history of using stolen identities to conceal his location, according to legal papers obtained by DailyMail.com.

Private eye Dominic Casey filed a notice of identity theft on Monday morning, as the Orlando, Florida-based investigator seeks to be made a party in Biden's case with his baby mama Lunden Roberts in Independence County, Arkansas.

Casey rehashed the scandal of Biden, 49, leaving his rental car in Prescott, Arizona in October 2016, and calling Hertz to pick it up. Among the items authorities found in the car were a glass pipe, cocaine residue and his deceased brother Beau Biden's Delaware Attorney General badge.

No charges were ever brought against Biden because local prosecutors said there was a lack of evidence that the pipe had been used by him, due to no fingerprints being found.

Casey claims Biden used the fake name of Joseph McGee to call Hertz as well as citing Beau's badge as alleged proof of Biden's 'history' of using fake identities.

But Judge Holly Meyer shot down Casey's attempt to get involved hours later, as well as 'defrauded investor' Joel Caplan, saying neither had any right to intervene and strongly cautioned them not to file any 'frivolous pleadings' in the future or otherwise face 'being held in contempt, punished by fine, incarceration or both.'

Hunter Biden's 'crack pipe' crisis in Arizona has been dragged into his paternity case, as he's accused of having a history of using stolen identities to conceal his location, according to legal papers obtained by DailyMail.com. Pictured: Hunter and his late brother Beau in 2013

Private eye Dominic Casey filed a notice of identity theft on Monday morning. Casey rehashed the scandal of Biden, 49, leaving his rental car in Prescott, Arizona in October 2016, and calling Hertz to pick it up. Among the items authorities found in the car were a glass pipe, cocaine residue and his deceased brother Beau Biden's Delaware Attorney General badge

Casey (pictured) filed papers in late December 2019, seeking to become a party in the case. He claims he has obtained Biden's bank account records and handed them over to Roberts' legal team

Also on Monday, Roberts demanded that Biden show up for a court appearance scheduled for Tuesday, blasting his attempt to skirt traveling to Arkansas, pointing to his alleged $150 million fortune, and accusing him of trying to delay the case.

Meanwhile, Hunter tried again to postpone Tuesday's hearing, claiming he didn't receive 'proper notice' and said he wouldn't be able to make it in time. He requests, if the judges denies his motion, to appear via telephone.

Later on Monday, after a hearing over the phone, Judge Meyer rescheduled the Tuesday in-court hearing for January 29.

Casey filed papers in late December 2019, seeking to become a party in the case. He claims he has obtained Biden's bank account records and handed them over to Roberts' legal team.

Casey has claimed Biden was involved in a 'counterfeiting scheme' in Ukraine that accumulated a $150 million fortune, and his bank records are 'subject of known felonies including fraud and counterfeiting.'

Casey heads up D&A Investigations and he is known for pursuing right-wing conspiracy theories. During the Casey Anthony trial, he claimed a psychic told him where to find Caylee's body.

In court papers filed on Monday, Casey claims a Hertz employee received a call at 10am on October 28, 2016, from a man who called himself Joseph McGee.

The court filing states that 'McGee [stated] his friend was sick, and left the vehicle overnight with the keys in the gas cap area because they did not know what to do.

'A bag containing the suspicious items, a cellar telephone (Apple) belonging to Shauna Stranglr aka Puma St. Angel and a Delaware Attorney General Badge belonging to his deceased brother Joseph R. Beau Biden III were provided to Officer Jeremy Brazell.'

Beau Biden died aged 46 in May 2015 of brain cancer.

The police report notes there was a glass pipe collected from the car. Testing later showed it contained cocaine residue, but there were no fingerprints on it

Biden told the New Yorker that while on his drive from California to Arizona he hadn't slept in days and claims on a bendy mountain road, he thought he saw a large owl fly over his car and appeared to follow him. Unsure whether or not he was hallucinating, Biden claims he dropped off the car and had a van from the rehab facility pick him up. Pictured: Grace Grover Center

Beau Biden died aged 46 in May 2015 of brain cancer. During Biden's rehab stint, Beau's widow Hallie (pictured together right) flew out to visit Hunter and that's when they decided to become a couple, after becoming extremely close after his brother's death

A Hertz employee told the New Yorker last June that he found a crack pipe inside the car and there was a line of white powder residue on one of the consoles.

The police report notes a glass pipe was collected from the rental car. Testing later concluded it contained cocaine residue, but there were no fingerprints on it.

No charges were ever brought against Biden because local prosecutors said there was a lack of evidence that the crack pipe had ever been used by him.

After finding evidence of narcotics inside the rental car, an officer attempted to contact Biden using the 'fake name' he gave as Joseph McGee.

Casey's filing states: 'On November 31, 2016, Officer Jeremy Brazell called the Verizon cellar telephone number, a female answered and stated her name was Puma aka Shauna Stranglr and she would have Joseph call him.

'The telephone number belonged to Shauna Stranglr aka Puma. She is the co-founder of Grace Grover Center aka Rejuvenation & Performance Institute in Arizona.'

Biden told the New Yorker that while on his drive from California to Arizona he hadn't slept in days and claimed on a bendy mountain road, he thought he saw a large owl fly over his car and it appeared to follow him.

Unsure whether or not he was hallucinating, Biden claims he dropped off the car and had a van from the rehab facility pick him up.

During Biden's rehab stint, Beau's widow Hallie flew out to visit Hunter and that's when they decided to become a couple, months after becoming extremely close after his brother's death.

'We were sharing a very specific grief,' he told the New Yorker. 'I started to think of Hallie as the only person in my life who understood my loss.'

Roberts filed the suit last May and it was later revealed the two had met while Roberts worked as a stripper in Washington D.C. The 28-year-old (right) wants his financial records to determine how much he should pay in support, as Biden's finances are in the spotlight in connection with Trump's impeachment. On Monday, she blasted his attempts to skirt traveling to Arkansas, citing his alleged $150 million fortune

Biden is being sued by his baby mama Lunden Roberts for child support for their now 17-month-old child.

Roberts filed the suit last May and it was later revealed the two had met while Roberts worked as a stripper in Washington D.C.

Originally, Biden claimed the child, whose gender is being kept secret, was not his but DNA testing proved he is the father.

The 28-year-old wants his financial records to determine how much he should pay in support, as Biden's finances are currently in the spotlight over his former position at the Ukrainian energy company, which has been at the center of Hunter's entanglement in President Trump's impeachment.

On Monday, Roberts blasted Biden's attempts to skirt traveling to Arkansas, citing his alleged $150 million fortune.

She claims he has defied the court's orders to disclose his finances and income.

Biden's team also filed papers on Monday morning, seeking to have 'defrauded investor' Joel Caplan's 'intervener motion' thrown out.

Caplan filed papers in late December seeking to become a party in the case, much like Casey, claiming he wanted Biden's bank records to allegedly prove Hunter received $1.5 billion from Chinese companies that hustled Americans out of their life savings.

Judge Meyer threw out Caplan's motion on Monday morning.
Iraqs Parliament voted in favor of a resolution that calls on the government to end the presence of U.S. and other foreign troops in the country, in the latest clear backlash against President Donald Trumps decision to kill Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani. The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, air space or water for any reason, the resolution reads.

The resolution is non-binding but Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi was the one who drafted the bill and earlier gave a speech to lawmakers in which he called for Parliament to vote in favor of ending the presence of foreign troops in the country. In his speech, Abdul Mahdi said that ending the presence of foreign troops in the country was necessary for the sake of our national sovereignty. The vote was approved by most Shiite lawmakers, who hold a majority of seats in Parliament. Many of the Kurdish and Sunni legislators did not attend the session and did not vote as some expressed fears that kicking out foreign troops would leave Iraqis vulnerable to attacks.

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When asked whether the United States would comply with a request from the Iraqi government for U.S. troops to leave, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not give a straight answer. It is the United States that is prepared to help the Iraqi people get what it is they deserve and continue our mission there to take down terrorism from ISIS and others in the region, Pompeo said on CBS Face the Nation.

Despite Pompeos words though it seems that after Soleimanis killing, the ISIS fight is taking a bit of a backseat. The resolution, which gives no timetable for the end of the presence of foreign troops, was approved on the same day as the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria announced that it was halting its campaign against ISIS in order to protect bases and troops from any retaliation for Soleimanis killing. The coalition is pausing its training missions due to repeated rocket attacks over the last two months that require troops to refocus their energies on protecting bases from attack. We remain resolute as partners of the government of Iraq and the Iraqi people that have welcomed us into their country to help defeat ISIS, the statement said. We remain ready to return our full attention and efforts back to our shared goal of ensuring the lasting defeat of Daesh.

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Few Businesses Are Ready For Californias New Consumer Data Privacy Law

In 2020, one of your New Year's resolution might be to have better control of your digital privacy. Now in California, it's not just a resolution, it's the law. The problem, though, is that some companies are pushing back against key provisions of this California Consumer Privacy Act California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

As of January 1, Americans are now finally protected by a comprehensive online privacy law, at least, the nearly 40 million Americans living in California are. But as with Europes GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation from 2018, at least some aspects of the CCPA could extend beyond the state.

The California Consumer Privacy Act has been effective since January 1st 2020, and it doesnt look like anyone, even the state of California itself, is totally ready. Draft regulations for enforcing the law are still being finalized at the state level, and questions about specific aspects of the most sweeping privacy regulation since GDPR are still not clear.

The crux of the CCPA is this: if your company buys or sells data on at least 50,000 California residents each year, you have to disclose to those residents what youre doing with the data, and, they can request you not sell it. Consumers can also request companies bound by the CCPA delete all their personal data.

Despite the handwringing ahead of its deadline last year, GDPR went as smoothly as could be expected. And Facebook and Google are already facing billion-dollar lawsuits over alleged violations of the GDPR, but it will be years before those suits are closed.

Until that time, small companies will have only a muddled sense of how they might be vulnerable to the rule, and compliance continues to be something of a puzzle.But the CCPA is likely to be an even greater compliance challenge. Its the first sweeping legislation in the US to give consumers control over how their personal information is used online, and may signal how other states will seek to protect their residents privacy.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has said that even though widespread enforcement of the CCPA isnt likely until July, companies should not view the first six months of the year as a grace period. Were going to try to help folks understand our interpretation of the law, Becerra said, And once weve done those things, our job is to make sure theres compliance, so well enforce.

James Steyer, CEO of childrens privacy advocacy organisation Common Sense, says he thinks most companies are making good-faith efforts to get in compliance with the CCPA.

Microsoft has said that it plans to implement the provisions of the CCPA not just in California, but for all its customers, too.

Facebook looks to be taking a different approach toward CCPA, emphasizing that we do not sell peoples data. Facebook already has tools to allow users to access and delete their information, wherever they live' although some of its critics

challenge Facebooks stance, since, the companys business model is based on collecting and monetising its users data.

Other commentator question how is a companies can ensure it is deleting the right customers data without collecting more information to verify them. Service provider agreements are another area where companies will have to take a close look at their practices; an agreement with a subcontractor or vendor should carefully spell out how any personal information is used or shared.

Most large tech companies, Steyer says, view the CCPA as being in their long-term interests because it will create more trust among consumers.

This is a landmark moment, its the first major comprehensive privacy legislation passed in the US since Zuckerberg was in kindergarten, Steyer says. But Facebook is trying to find ways to get around the law.

The Verge: Fast Company: Varonis: Techcrunch: CNet:

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A Kildare County Council staff member was congratulated by the council for her presentation on homelessness at an event in 2019.

Niamh Dunne was commended for being runner up in the Young Ireland Programme Young Thinker of the Year in 2019.

Niamh, who has worked with the council for two years, and is currently works with tenants in council housing areas, was nominated by the council to take part in the event.

Mayor Suzanne Doyle, said that Niamhs contribution had been very valuable. It is easy to identify problems but not very easy to solve them, she said.

Niamh, who is one of nine people who work in her section under the direction of Ollie Brady, said that she had been nominated been senior official, Annette Aspell.

Niamh is daughter of well-known Clane community activist, Mary Dunne, who chairs the towns St Patricks Festival commitee, among other things.

She came to the Council in December 2017 after having served as a senior manager with the Dublin Simon Community, working in the city for five years but also in Kildare.

Niamh has since worked with the homeless and on housing issues.

She was one of 33 other delegates to make presenations at the Young Ireland event.

Her paper was on the impact on people of living in emergency accommodation in Ireland.

I was delighted to be nominated and get a runner up prize, she said. It is difficult finding emergency accommodation.

Niamh said that the chief thing was not to forget the impact on children of living in emergency accommodations.
A mentally ill Chinese woman has reportedly been locked up by a farmer at his home for more than 20 years and forced to have children with him.

Her self-proclaimed 'husband', 70-year-old Mr Dong, also beats her regularly and even sold two of their children, a neighbour has accused.

Mr Dong, who lives in the province of Hebei in northern China, told local media that he brought the woman home as his 'wife' after finding her in the fields one day.

Footage released by Chinese news outlet The Paper shows the woman lying in the bed. It is reported that she has been locked up by her self-proclaimed husband for more than 20 years

Mr Dong claimed that the woman could not talk when he came across her and had been badly beaten by others for unspecified reasons.

The local government said they were investigating the matter.

The woman's grim situation was revealed by Chinese news outlet The Paper in a report on Saturday.

According to the report, Mr Dong has kept the woman, known as Xin Yan, at his cramped home at Mafangying Village in the county of Jize since the 1990s.

The video shows the man, Mr Dong, hitting the woman with a wooden stick after she failed to converse with him and a reporter. Mr Dong calls her his wife and said he found her in the fields

The Shanghai-based news site released a video of a reporter visiting Xin Yan at Mr Dong's grotty home.

Xin Yan is seen lying in a bed under a duvet. When the reporter asked her for her name and whether or not she had any children, she was not able to respond.

Mr Dong then scolded Xin Yan and hit her with a wooden stick for not being able to converse with him and the reporter.

The man explained to the reporter that his 'wife' was 'stupid'.

Afterwards, he carried on poking Xin Yan with the rod for not covering herself properly with the duvet.

Mr Dong said he did not know how old Xin Yan was or where she was from. Official residential records show Xin Yan was born in 1956.

A villager, Ms Wang, accused that Mr Dong sold two of the children he had with the woman. Local officials denied the claims, adding Mr Dong's wife was not a victim of human trafficking

A villager, known by her surname Wang, told the reporter that Mr Dong and Xin Yan had several children and Mr Dong sold two of them.

'He found human traffickers and sold their children,' she accused.

The whistle-blower also claimed that Xin Yan became mentally ill after she had been locked up and maltreated by Mr Dong  claims village officials denied.

The Party Secretary of the village, Mr Zhang, said that Mr Dong took Xin Yan home after meeting her by accident and then spent more than a dozen yuan (1-2) buying peanuts and sweets for other villagers to announce their 'marriage'.

Mr Zhang claimed that the couple had two children who are in their early 20s now.

The local officials set up a team to investigate the matter after the report became trending on social media.

Mr Dong lives at Mafangying Village in the county of Jize, northern China's Hebei Province

According to a statement from the People's Government of Jize County, the woman, referred to as Mrs Dong, had been homeless and come to Mafangying Village before being 'adopted' by Mr Dong who has 'co-inhabited' with her since.

The investigators claimed that Mr Dong met Mrs Dong 30 years ago.

They said the village's officials registered Mrs Dong's information in the local residential database in September 2018 after confirming she had not been a victim of human trafficking.

The statement also denied the allegations that Mr Dong had sold their children. It said that the couple had three children who were raised by their aunt and now live in Beijing and Shandong with stable jobs.

The authorities said they were carrying out further investigation.
Bengaluru, Jan 6 : Many Indian students are not taking up agricultural studies due to lack of awareness, an Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) official said on Monday at the first-ever Farmers' Science Congress held at the ongoing 107th Indian Science Congress.

"There are a lot of opportunities in agricultural education in India. Perhaps it is the lack of knowledge about opportunities on agricultural studies that many students gravitate towards engineering and medical education," said ICAR's Deputy Director General for Education, R. C. Agrawal.

In an effort to popularise agricultural education among students, ICAR will organise 48 workshops in February, he said.

"We will meet school teachers, principals and science teachers to explain the available agricultural education opportunities," said Agrawal.

The ICAR has teamed up with the World Bank to create the National Agricultural Higher Education Project (NAHEP), with a budget of Rs 1,100 crore, each contributing 50 per cent.

ICAR has already sent 300 students and 18 faculty members to study in international universities through NAHEP in the last one year.

It has a target of sending 2,000 students and 300 faculty members, to expose the students to best practices and return with many fresh ideas.

"NAHEP is aimed at ensuring food security, sufficient resources and solving farmers' problems," said Agrawal hoping that the students will become job creators and not job seekers.

The 107th edition of the Indian Science Congress scheduled from January 3-7 is currently underway at the University of Agricultural Sciences here.
'They are ABVP-phobic people. Tomorrow, they will say the US attack on Iran is because of the ABVP.'

IMAGE: On Sunday, January 5, evening, masked mobs entered the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus and mercilessly attacked students. Photograph: ANI Photo

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the Jawaharlal University Students Union have jumped onto the blame game train after masked goons entered the JNU campus and assaulted several students and teachers on Sunday, January 5.

Immediately after the attack, the JNUSU alleged that the ABVP carried out the attacks in which over 26 students and teachers were injured.

"JNU students want to study, but these Leftists and Naxals do not want JNU students to study. They want to shut down JNU," ABVP's national General Secretary Nidhi Tripathi tells Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com.

The ABVP is being blamed for the violence at JNU.

The students belonging to the Left unions have a habit of spreading dirt and then blaming it on the ABVP.

If you see the earlier videos, it is clear that the wi-fi rooms in the campus were shut by them. They were wearing masks and not allowing JNU authorities to do their work (so that students cannot sit for exams).

They cut the wires and this entire episode was being led by Left student leaders.

You then have a video that (shows) JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh leading a mob. You must ask them questions. I am sure all these people who attacked JNU were led by Left student unions. They beat up ABVP activists.

But the images show Aishe Ghosh injured. How can you say this attack was orchestrated by the Left?

Do they have any proof against the ABVP? It is inter-union rivalry.

She encouraged violence by stating that ABVP leaders should be beaten. She wants to indulge in violence.

Ever since Aishe Ghosh got a ticket for president, students of different Left unions like the Democratic Students Federation, All India Students Association were not happy with her. They did not want her to become president.

This entire violence was planned by the Left to blame ABVP.

It is being said the Bharatiya Janata Party through the Union home ministry encourage violence at JNU; that you wanted to teach them a lesson.

On the contrary. If you claim so, I will say the Delhi police gave the Left a free hand to beat up ABVP activists.

Our student leaders are injured. So I will say the truth is other way round.

We have been beaten and now these Left unions are spreading the story that we have beaten our own student leaders. There is a limit to lies. There is no common sense and logic to it.

There is an Indian Express report that says there was a WhatsApp group created by ABVP leaders before the attack.

In this way, anyone can make a WhatsApp group and spread lies. In that group, a Left student is there. He is from Hyderabad and his phone number is there. So how can you say this was an ABVP plan?

Anybody can make a WhatsApp group, make the chat go viral and blame it on the ABVP.

There is no logic. This is fake news.

An attacker has been identified on social media to be an ABVP activist.

That girl was Shambhavi who had been admitted to AIIMS.

How is it possible? She was getting treated at AIIMS and they are saying she was attacking at the same time. How can you say that? There is no logic.

What will the Left achieve by blaming you, as you say?

They only want to blame the ABVP.

These people suffer from a phobia. They are the same people who said after the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai that the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh had perpetrated it. Today, everyone knows who did that attack.

They are ABVP-phobic people. Tomorrow, they will say the US attack on Iran is because of the ABVP. They only know to blame the ABVP.

Left unions have been winning JNU elections and the ABVP has lost, therefore, you have a grudge against them.

Who says that? This is just a myth spread across the country.

If JNU students support the Left, then why is it that five organisations have to come together to fight elections against the ABVP?

You can also see the vote percentage. If they are so confident, why do they not contest alone and not come in a group?

What is the ABVP's stance on the JNU fee hike?

We have clearly said we are against it.

During that time, they (the Left unions) put a female teacher under house arrest for three hours.

They attacked the homes of teachers. They threw liquor bottles at the apartments of wardens and stoned them too.

They also broke lights on the campus. The ABVP does not support these things.

What about the examinations which is the root cause of the problem as the Left unions have boycotted them?

Left student unions do not want exams. Students who gave exams, their answer sheets were torn up by them.

The forms were torn up by Left leaders. They are creating terror in JNU.

If they say JNU students are not willing to give exams, why is it that Left student unions have locked up JNU buildings?

JNU students want to study, but these Leftists and Naxals do not want JNU students to study. They want to shut down JNU.
He took the United States out of the nuclear agreement and imposed sanctions against Iran  which some see as setting off a crisis that continues today  on claims that it was on the cusp of acquiring nuclear weapons in just a short period of time.

But international inspectors and United States military leaders said that Iran was complying with requirements to freeze its nuclear development.

Without a clear explanation for Mr. Trumps behavior, anyone whose job requires forecasting the next American action  from foreign head of state to think tank analyst  was left guessing.

Deepening the challenge, the administration followed up with a set of demands that included some nuclear restrictions but focused mostly on Irans regional influence and proxy forces, ordering Tehran to sever ties to nearly all of them in a sweeping surrender.

Was this the real agenda? If so, what were the plans for winning each demand, and the metrics for measuring whether those plans were working? How would the administration balance competing priorities?

American action on the ground deepened confusion.

United States diplomacy has emphasized calls for peace but has conspicuously declined to offer what diplomats call offramps  easy, low-stakes opportunities for both sides to begin de-escalating, which are considered essential first steps.

Theres been no talk of, say, If you do this, then well bring back waivers, Ms. Kaye said, referring to American waivers allowing other countries to buy Iranian oil. If you do X, then youll get Y. Theres been nothing tangible like that.
A Manitoba legislator is calling on Canadians to contact the federal heritage minister to remove two poems, written by the killer of an Indigenous woman, from the Parliamentary Poet Laureate website.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 5/1/2020 (736 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nahanni Fontaine, an NDP MLA who shared her story of sexual abuse, is photographed at the Manitoba Legislature, in Winnipeg on Tuesday, November 15, 2016. A Manitoba legislator is calling on Canadians to contact the federal heritage minister to remove two poems, written by the killer of an Indigenous woman, from the Parliamentary Poet Laureate website. Fontaine says in a series of tweets that the inclusion of poems by Stephen Brown, including one about a prostitute, constitutes "blatant disrespect" for Brown's victim and missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods

A Manitoba legislator is calling on Canadians to contact the federal heritage minister to remove two poems, written by the killer of an Indigenous woman, from the Parliamentary Poet Laureate website.

Nahanni Fontaine says in a series of tweets that the inclusion of poems by Stephen Brown, including one about a prostitute, constitutes "blatant disrespect" for Brown's victim and missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

The two pieces are among "Poems Selected by George Elliot Clarke" on the website and were posted in 2017 when Clarke was parliamentary poet laureate.

Last week, Clarke cancelled a lecture about Indigenous justice issues at the University of Regina following outrage over his working relationship and friendship with Brown.

Brown, who changed his name from Steven Kummerfield, and his friend Alex Ternowetsky were convicted of manslaughter in the 1995 beating death of Pamela George, a First Nations woman.

A spokesman from Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault's office did not immediately provide comment.

But Fontaine is calling for action.

"Canada has a responsibility to ensure that its cultural and heritage-based products reflect art that doesn't exploit the suffering of our most vulnerable, including Indigenous women," Fontaine said in an interview on Sunday.

"You cannot actively participate in celebrating an individual who has taken the life of an Indigenous woman. That is the crux of the issue here."

Brown was sentenced to six-and-a-half years and was granted parole in 2000. He now lives in Mexico.

His poems on the website are titled "Plaza Domingo" and "Alejandra." The subject of "Alejandra" is a woman referred to as "la pornai," a type of prostitute in ancient Greece. At one point in the poem, he writes "I follow her."

Fontaine interprets that to mean the author is stalking the woman.

"Here you're uplifting on a Canadian parliamentary website a murderer who's now writing about stalking vulnerable women. It's unacceptable," Fontaine said.

Brown and Ternowetsky were originally charged with first-degree murder but were found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.

George's killing and the ensuing trial was a painful time for many Indigenous people in Saskatchewan, who were appalled by what they saw as soft sentences for the white, well-off offenders. There was also anger at Justice Ted Malone, who reminded jurors in his final instructions that George worked as a prostitute.

Clarke, who is of mixed Black and Indigenous heritage, said he found out about Brown's crime last September and it changed his opinion of him.

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Clarke was to deliver the Woodrow Lloyd Lecture on Jan 23. The talk was titled "'Truth and Reconciliation' versus 'the Murdered and Missing': Examining Indigenous Experiences of (In)Justice in Four Saskatchewan Poets."

He initially told CBC News he would not pander to "so-called intellectuals" and "may or may not" read a poem by Brown at the lecture.

On Thursday, he issued a statement saying he would not be citing Brown's poetry "because of my sensitivity to the feelings of the survivors of his victim."

Then, on Friday, Clarke said he would withdraw from the lecture.

"I never intended to cause such anguish for the family of Pamela George and the Indigenous community, and for that I am truly sorry,'' he said in a statement.

With files from Lauren Krugel
Jayanta Roy Chowdhury By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: With stock markets in doldrums following the unexpected missile attacks in West Asia, investing in oil, precious metals and commodities linked to the fast-expanding electric vehicles (EV) market may well be an investors safer bet in 2020.

Among others, Goldman Sachs has said its top recommendation for the new year is to belong on commodity index play, with better returns likely from oil. In 2020 and for the rest of this coming decade, we believe the old economy will be focused on cleaning up its excesses of too much debt, emissions and capacity, which is compounded from the redundancies created by decarbonisation, Goldman Sachs said in a note.

The New York banker said its findings support the 2020 trade recommendation to belong on oil-heavy indices. Prices of Brent oil are likely to be upwards of $70 a barrel even after the West Asian situation has calmed down. The US-China trade deal will mean demand will go up and not down, said a top Indian Oil Corporation executive charged with importing crude.

Goldman Sachs forecasts returns of 7.4 per cent from energy, 8.4 per cent for precious metals, followed by 4.9 per cent for industrial metals.

Gold is expected to be the breakout commodity of 2020, with some forecasting that prices could touch $1,675 an ounce from the current $1,552. Gold prices in India surged by Rs 2,000 in just two weeks. Usually, gold is a defensive buy to guard against stock and realty market downsides, but also a buy during politically sensitive times such as now with risks of a West Asian conflagration.

Unrest in the Middle East, US elections, an economic slowdown in India and China are reason enough for betting on gold. Many think the rally last year was great and cannot be repeated, but many of us feel the decade will see more gold rallies and 2020 will be one of them, said Ashu Khanna, a commodities trader.

Silver, the lesser noticed commodity, has also been rising in tandem with gold and many punters aver could cross Rs 50,000 a kilo after rising 23 per cent to Rs 47,000 in 2019.

Outlook for lithium, nickel and cobalt  metals required by the electronic vehicle industry  are expected to be good as the world moves towards EVs. Changes of subsidy rules in many countries including China saw demand for cobalt and lithium softening. But we see an upside with renewed thrust towards EVs globally. China will be among leaders in trying to gobble up resources linked to EVs, said Khanna.
Dhangadhi, January 5

Former Prime Minister and NCP senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal says erstwhile UML vice-chairs Bhim Rawal and Asta Laxmi Shakya should also be given a seat on the new partys secretariat.

Nepal, who was speaking at a programme in Dhangadhi, said that the two leaders held important positions in the UML party and they should not be left out from the secretariat. If we bring them on board, we will also ensure the representation of the Far-west and women, he said. It does not matter if the number of members reaches 15, he said.

Meanwhile, he said that he does not oppose the MCC compact with the US, but Nepal should be clear if it was part of a military alliance. We can accept the money only if it is just economic assistance.
The meeting was attended by the JNU registrar, proctor and other admin officials who briefed the ministry officials on the sequence of events that unfolded on the campus and the measures taken to restore normalcy

New Delhi: The Human Resource Development Ministry met officials from the JNU administration on Monday and took stock of the situation on the campus following Sunday's violence, even as Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar skipped the meeting.

It was attended by the JNU registrar, proctor and other admin officials who briefed the ministry officials on the sequence of events that unfolded on the campus and the measures taken to restore normalcy.

"HRD Secretary Amit Khare held a meeting with team of JNU authorities, including Pro-VC Chintamani Mahapatra, Registrar Pramod Kumar, Rector Rana Pratap Singh and Proctor Dhananjay Singh, today. The secretary held detailed discussion with them and was also briefed about the current situation in JNU," a senior HRD Ministry official said.

Follow LIVE updates

There was heavy deployment of police on Monday outside the Shashtri Bhawan in New Delhi which houses the HRD Ministry.

The ministry had on Sunday sought an immediate report from JNU Registrar Pramod Kumar after the violence broke out and students and teachers were attacked. "A detailed report has been sent to the HRD Ministry about the sequence of events. The top administration officials are at the ministry to provide all details leading to present situation," JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar told PTI.

Violence broke out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as a group of masked people armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police. Many sustained injuries and were admitted to AIIMS Trauma Centre here. They were discharged on Monday. JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh suffered a head injury.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the ABVP blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.

Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' had urged JNU students to maintain the dignity of the university and peace on campus. JNU Proctor Dhananjay Singh appealed the students to not panic and leave the campus. "We appeal to students to not panic and leave the campus. Measures are being taken to normalise situation on the campus and ensure safety of everyone," he said after the meeting at the HRD Ministry.
NEW YORKDays after the New Yorker and New York Times first published allegations of sexual misconduct by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, the hashtag #MeToo took flight, becoming shorthand for a worldwide campaign aimed at holding men accountable for abuses of power.

The highly anticipated trial, which began Monday morning in Lower Manhattan, concerns not the allegations levelled by more than 80 women but narrow charges that he sexually assaulted two women. Weinstein has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex.

Trial lawyers often say that cases are won or lost in jury selection. Weinsteins is no exception. Yet his case is, to many, a referendum of the movement, creating an uphill battle to selecting an impartial jury.

This week, Judge James Burke will tell a group of prospective jurors to avoid watching, reading or listening to news coverage of the trial moving forward. Experts say it would be a fools errand, however, to seek out a jury pool that has been shielded from the pervasive reporting on Weinstein and his alleged abuse of more than 80 women.

Everyone is going to come in having been exposed to the #MeToo movement and, presumably, some of the allegations against Weinstein, according to Deborah Tuerkheimer, a professor at Northwestern Universitys School of Law and a former prosecutor.

But that, alone, does not disqualify them from service.

What we dont want  and what we cant have  are jurors who have already made up their mind or who want to use the case as a vehicle to make a statement either for or against the #MeToo movement, she said.

Although the #MeToo movement looms, Weinstens attorney, Donna Rotunno, said that the only thing that should matter is the evidence presented during the trial.

The whole case is picking the right jury, Rotunno said. At the end of the day, the only people that matter are those 12 that we put in the jury box.

She continued, We just have to remind the jury that this case is not about movements and that movements dont have a place inside the courtroom.

Though there may be positives that have emerged from #MeToo, through Rotunnos lens as a defence attorney the movement is problematic.

The notion that youre innocent until proven guilty gets thrown out the window, she said, which strips people of their due process and right to a fair trial.

At the core of #MeToo is power in numbers: One allegation is often not enough to persuade people that an accuser is telling the truth, whereas several  or dozens  surmount this barrier to belief.

Twenty-five Weinstein accusers, who are not the two alleged victims in the criminal case, have called the trial critical to show that predators everywhere will be held accountable.

Thanks to the courage of so many women who risked everything to come forward  this ugly facade came down and (Weinstein) finally faced a public and professional reckoning for his actions, said a statement issued Friday by the women.

In a courtroom, there are rules of evidence, a high burden of proof and presumptions of innocence that favour the accused.

Weinstein is charged with two counts of rape, one count of criminal sexual act and two counts of predatory sexual assault, which is a felony that includes committing sex crimes against multiple people. If convicted, Weinstein, 67, faces life in prison.

Burke has agreed to permit trial testimony from actress Annabella Sciorra, who accused Weinstein of raping her at her Gramercy Park apartment in the 1990s, to help bolster the count of predatory sexual assault.

Jurors will also hear from three accusers who are not part of the criminal charges to help establish a criminal pattern.

Other accusations that might bear on everyday decisions, however, are inadmissible; of the dozens of women who have spoken up in the court of public opinion, most will not testify at trial.

Attorneys dont select jurors during jury selection; they eliminate them. Theyre restricted in that regard. The defence and prosecution can challenge an unlimited number of prospective jurors for cause, when theres clear proof of bias. Each side is also allowed a limited number of peremptory strikes, in which they can reject a juror without, in most situations, needing to give the court a reason. The exact number is determined by the jurisdiction, nature and severity of the charged crime. In New York, it ranges from 10 to 20.

Jury experts say that despite hundreds of studies on the matter, some of the most obvious juror characteristics  occupation, income, religion and age  have not been shown to correlate in any consistent way with expected verdict outcomes.

The biggest misnomer with jury selection is that demographic factors are the trump card, according to Mark Calzaretta, founder and lead jury consultant at Magna Legal Services. Instead, he said, its generally an experiential issue  something in their background thats good or bad or drives decision-making.

In the Weinstein case, which lawyers expect to last two months, both sides have complied a multi-section questionnaire. In addition to standard inquiries  including where each prospect lives, his or her marital status and occupation  it devotes questions to pretrial publicity, asking those in the group about their pre-existing knowledge about Weinstein, the allegations and whether they can be fair and impartial when assessing the trial evidence. Jurors will also likely be asked about the #MeToo movement and whether they have been victims of sexual misconduct, then the lawyers will be given a second opportunity to question each prospective juror individually.

The defence team also plans to look at prospective jurors social-media pages for additional insight into prejudice and to eliminate people who may lie to serve on the case.

The Manhattan District Attorneys Office declined to comment on the case but has previously said that the process is sufficient to ensure biased jurors are weeded out. Some experts agree.

Rotunno first met Weinstein in May, in a Manhattan office outfitted with movie posters and photographs that catalogued his personal history and professional achievements. Weinstein sat in jeans and a T-shirt, chatty and self-deprecating, and, she said, cross-examining her process.

I told him that unless I thought I could really be effective for him, thered be no reason for me to do it, she recalled.

The former Cook County prosecutor left the eight-hour meeting thinking: He didnt force anyone to do anything.

It was a feeling I got. I trust my instincts, she said, confident that she was the right person for the job.

Despite a relentless onslaught of public criticism and claims shell be on the wrong side of history, Rotunno remains convinced that shes the right person for the job.

This is what criminal lawyers do, she said.

The more thats at stake, the stronger the constitutional protections  even in the context of #MeToo. And for Weinstein, whos facing the possibility of life in prison, there are no higher stakes.

Women who dont want to bash women have no problem bashing me because what I say doesnt fit their narrative, she said. I dont think that theres any right or wrong side. This is a historical case with huge ramifications, and Im here ready to fight it and here ready to win.
RALEIGH, N.C., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- 2019 was a year of tremendous growth for Leith Automotive Group, headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina. During the company's fiftieth year in business, Leith opened three new luxury franchises on property along Capital Boulevard, just north of Interstate-540.

The most recent openings include a new home for heritage American luxury brand, Lincoln. The Leith Lincoln franchise was the original Leith dealership when the company debuted in 1969 near downtown. The brand-new location at 2350 Capital Summit Court, opened on December 16th, 2019.

New Leith Acura (Top L/R) and Leith Lincoln (Bottom Left) now open in Raleigh, N.C. Classic 1957 Lincoln Mark II interior (Bottom Right).

Leith Lincoln's showroom is designed to resemble a glass display case or "vitrine" in French. Each new model is lined-up like a runway fashion show. Along with all-new models like the three-row Lincoln Aviator SUV, visitors can see a bit of Lincoln's glorious luxury past too. Currently on display in the new car showroom is a stunning 1957 Lincoln Continental MKII, on loan from the Raleigh Classic Car Auctions.

Aficionados of premium Japanese luxury and performance vehicles now have a new automotive showcase to visit nearby too. Leith Acura, opened its doors mid-December within sight of the new Lincoln store. Leith Acura, located at 2300 Capital Summit Ct. is the first Acura dealership ever in north Raleigh and is sure to please visitors with its large, open showroom space and prominent position overlooking Capital Boulevard.

Here, Leith Acura clients will enjoy a cafe while having their vehicle serviced in one of the most modern service bays in the industry. For those purchasing a vehicle, the delivery presentation will take place in a glass-walled, comfort controlled environment allowing the Leith Acura staff to familiarize new clients with their new or used vehicle purchase.

Together, these two new Leith luxury stores join the new Jaguar Raleigh and Land Rover Raleigh dealership at 4001 Capital Hills Dr, which opened in early 2019.

About LeithCars.com

LeithCars.com is one of the most recognized websites in North Carolina for consumers searching for new, used, and certified pre-owned cars, trucks, and SUVs. Leith, Inc., is the parent company, operating over 30 automobile franchises representing 24 automotive brands throughout Raleigh, Cary, Wendell, and Aberdeen.

For additional information, please visit LeithCars.com Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter (@leithcars).

Contact:

Mark Arsen

(919) 832-3232

[email protected]

SOURCE LeithCars.com

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T he family of a food delivery driver stabbed to death in Londons first killing of 2020 revealed today that he had risked his life to come to the UK in search of a better life.

Algerian Takieddine Boudhane, 30, who worked for Deliveroo and UberEats, was knifed while on shift in Lennox Road near Finsbury Park station on Friday in an apparent road rage attack.

Police were on Monday searching for the owner of a white VW Caddy found abandoned in Islington yesterday morning.

Mr Boudhanes brother Islam, 29, who arrived at the scene moments after the stabbing, said he had lost a lion who had been working three jobs to try to save up to build his own house and start a family.

He told the Standard: We came to this country because we thought it was safe. Look at how it has become.

Takieddine Boudhane (Met Police ) / Met Police

He said his brother, known as Taki, had first come to London as a teenager after a dangerous journey from Algeria that included crossing the Mediterranean in a small boat. Most recently, he had been in the UK for three years.

He came all the way from Africa for a better life, he said. He crossed many countries and risked his life to get here. He survived all that, and then he comes here and when he is working someone comes and sticks a knife in his heart. He was killed while he was at work. It could happen to anyone.

The Prime Minister, the Mayor of London, they need to speak out. How many more families are going to be broken because of knife crime?

Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted: Such violence has no place in our city. Motorcycle delivery drivers must be given the support they need to do their work.

A friend of Mr Boudhane who witnessed the attack said: The man in the van pulled up next to him and started shouting at him and told him he was too close to his van.

"Taki started to shout back, and they both stopped their vehicles. As soon as the man got out of his van he pulled out a knife from his glovebox and stabbed him straight in the heart before driving away.
DJ Gerry Stevens has recorded a series of podcasts warning that strokes can hit at any age. Photo: Seamus Farrelly

A radio DJ who had to take a break from his job after a stroke two years ago, is to launch a new series of podcasts to highlight the fact that the condition can hit any age.

After 30 years as a broadcaster, Gerry Stevens (52) had to hang up his microphone temporarily when he suffered a brain haemorrhage while watching TV on November 1, 2017.

"I had just been visiting my mother-in-law in hospital in Naas and was chilling out, watching TV with my partner Ann when I suddenly didn't feel very well," said the Q102 DJ.

"I didn't have an event but I just didn't fell very well. I was nauseous, hot and my tongue all of a sudden felt very large.

"Ann noticed that the left side of my face had dropped. I used to make a living out of being able to speak, but all of a sudden I couldn't control my voice and my tongue just wouldn't work for me.

"I started getting pins and needles in my arms and within 10 minutes, I definitely knew that I was in trouble as my left hand, arm and leg stopped working.

"I tried to get out of the chair but just fell over," he added.

During the four months he spent in hospital, Gerry, from Duleek, Co Meath, said he was surprised to meet people of all ages who had suffered a stroke.

"When I was growing up, a stroke was something that happened to your granny and was a sign of old age, but that's no longer the case. It's now a common occurrence even in the under-40s. There are 10,000 stroke cases in Ireland every year and 2,000 of these are fatal.

"Much is down to lifestyle and I was leading a busy life touring around and managing bands, but I didn't think I was stressed. I didn't get any warning signs," Gerry said.

"Unlike 85pc of most stoke victims, I didn't have a clot, I had a brain haemorrhage and had undiagnosed hypertension with a reading of over 200.

"It was the scariest time of my life. Everything just stopped and I no longer had any control.

Dignity

"All of a sudden, I couldn't talk or drive and had lost all power on my left-hand side. When I spoke, I sounded angry or drunk or both.

"I spent three months in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda learning to talk and walk again - all the things I took for granted.

"I was always the same person in my head but I just couldn't get out my thoughts verbally in the right way.

"I was using a hoist and wheelchair and my dignity and self-esteem had disappeared.

"The staff both there and in Dundalk Hospital, where I spent another month, were fantastic and I can't praise or thank them enough."

Two years on and Gerry still has spasms in his foot and has trouble moving his left hand, but he is back driving and has just bought an adapted motorcycle.

He also decided to record a series of podcasts with victims and medics in an effort to raise awareness of the condition.

"I haven't the confidence yet to go back on the radio, so I decided to record podcasts on stroke from all angles.

"The main thing is to remember the acronym FAST to recognise a stroke - Facial dropping, Arm Weakness, Speech Difficulties and Time to call emergency services.

"Time is brain and you lose 100,000 brain cells a minute so it really is of the essence," Gerry added. "I've interviewed nine people of all ages about their experience of stroke.

"I've talked to a registrar at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Dr Zul Khalil, on his observations of each of the patients as they came in and also to the clinical nurse of the Specialist Stroke Unit Fiona Connaughton on the progress and recovery of each patient."

The podcasts will be launched later this month. Further information can be obtained at www.facebook.com/strokecastirl/
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-07 02:51:54|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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VIENNA, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg on Monday called for dialogue and de-escalation from all sides given the growing tensions in the Middle East.

"There is great concern in Austria about the worsening of events in the Middle East. All sides urgently need to take steps to de-escalate," said the minister in a statement sent to the Austrian Press Agency (APA) on Monday.

"It will not be possible to use violence to create sustainable security and stability in the region. Therefore, a clear willingness to engage in dialogue is needed from all sides," he added.

The minister also stressed that Austria supports Josep Borrell, EU high representative for foreign affairs and security, in his efforts to find a political solution to the conflict, and Vienna is available as a place for dialogue at any time.

Regarding Tehran's announcement that it would ignore all the restrictions in terms of the numbers or type of centrifuges that can be operated or the level of enrichment that it can pursue under the 2015 nuclear deal, the statement said that from an Austrian perspective, the question of the continued validity of the deal should be seen separately from the current tensions.

"If Iran implemented its announcement to operate uranium enrichment without restrictions, this would contradict the Vienna nuclear deal and should be clearly condemned. We therefore appeal to Iran not to implement this announcement and to return to the full implementation of the agreement," said Schallenberg.
25 years ago: Russian bloodbath in Chechnya intensifies

On January 11, 1995, Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev met with reporters for the first time in three weeks to concede that Chechnya could not win a war against Russia for independence. And what victory for us? Dudayev asked the press reporters cynically. Certainly we cannot withstand such a power as Russia. It was clear. But winning militarily is impossible  Everything can be settled in an hour.

Chechen women praying in Grozny

A day earlier, a 48-hour ceasefire announced by Russia fell apart. Chechen civilians reported that those who remained in Grozny had not received any news of an official ceasefire and that many continued to live without power, water and other utilities. The ceasefire was supposed to allow both Russian and Chechen sides to recover their dead.

Estimates of the death toll in the assault on Grozny, begun by the Russian military on New Years Eve, ranged as high as 18,000 civilians, a number the New York Times reported cannot be checked and seems exaggerated. Twenty-five years later, estimates of the total civilian deaths range from 30,000 to 100,000, with another 200,000 injured. Fighter planes dropped cluster bombs on villages. Air Force jets and army tanks subjected apartment buildings, village markets, schools and other nonmilitary targets to relentless bombardment. Russia continued to fire on the capital city of Grozny, closing in on Dudayevs presidential palace, shelling every 30 seconds.

The brunt of the fighting was borne by untrained teenage Russian conscripts, treated as cannon fodder in Moscows aggression. The regime headed by Boris Yeltsin combined the merciless methods of czarist conquest with those of Stalins terror in what amounted to a genocidal campaign against a small, historically-oppressed nationality.

The Clinton administration repeatedly stressed the democratic character of the Yeltsin regime and reiterated US support for Moscows efforts to resolve an internal matter. In the midst of the assault on Grozny, the Yeltsin regime announced its acceptance of International Monetary Fund demands that Moscow lift restrictions on foreign companies seeking to extract oil from Russia. The measure was hailed in the West as a sign that Yeltsin was moving in the right direction.

One year later, Dudayev was killed by a Russian laser-guided missile that honed in on his cellphone signal while he was speaking to a Moscow politician.

50 years ago: Biafran forces surrender in Nigerian civil war

On January 12, 1970, the military forces of the breakaway region of Biafra surrendered to Nigeria, ending the three-year Nigerian Civil War that began in 1967. The Nigerian military had launched its final offensive, Operation Tail-Wind, on January 7 and captured the Biafran capital of Owerri on January 9. The Biafran president Chukwuemeka Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu had already fled to the Ivory Coast, leaving his Vice President Philip Effiong to oversee the surrender.

The civil war in Nigeria, also known as the Biafra War, was an immensely tragic affair and a brutal near-genocide against the people living within the borders of the secessionist region. Immediately after Nigeria gained independence from Britain in 1960, the new country was thrown into crisis.

Map shows the breakaway state of Biafra

Low wages, overcrowded housing, general conditions of poverty, and the continuation of British domination of the economy despite independence led to large workers strikes and protests in the first years of independent Nigeria. Fierce crackdowns by police and the military followed. In the face of this unrest, the 1964 elections were marked by the stoking of tensions between Nigerias numerous ethnic groups.

In 1966 a series of military coups further escalated the crisis. The first, led by Major-General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi and other officers who belonged to the Igbo ethnic group, held power for just six months until they were overthrown in a countercoup led by General Yakubu Gowon.

An anti-Igbo hysteria swept across the northern regions of Nigeria when Gowon came to power. Horrendous pogroms were carried out. Mobs, assisted by the Nigerian army, massacred tens of thousands of Igbos and caused millions to flee to the Igbo-majority southeastern region.

After the massacres, calls for Igbo independence gained a mass following in the east. Ojukwu, who had been the military governor of the east region, broke from Nigeria on May 30, 1967, declaring the independence of the Republic of Biafra.

The area that had become Biafra was immediately put under a blockade by the Nigerian central government. Biafra, however, maintained control of large oil resources that it was able to use to fund the isolated nation for a short period of time. In July 1967 the war began when the Nigerian military launched its offensive to retake the territory.

Nigeria was backed in the war by Britain, which provided weapons and artillery to decimate Biafra. At the time of the war the British-owned United Africa Company was responsible for over 40 percent of all Nigerian foreign trade. The main military objective of the Nigerian military was to retake control over the Shell-BP oil production facilities and return them to producing large quantities of cheap petroleum. Indeed, after lagging due to the start of the war, Nigerian oil production rose to 1,080,000 barrels a day by 1970.

The blockade of Biafra was effectively an exercise in mass starvation. The population became dependent of foreign food supplies that were flown in from abroad. But this was not nearly enough to meet the needs of over 14 million. many of whom had become refugees during the war. During the course of the war over 2 million people would die from starvation in Biafra.

75 years ago: Fourth International publishes resolution exposing US imperialisms war aims

This week in January, 1945, the Fourth International, the theoretical journal of the world Trotskyist movement, published a major resolution adopted by the US Socialist Workers Party (SWP) exposing the predatory character of American imperialisms intervention in World War II.

The resolution was published the same week that US President Franklin Roosevelt issued a State of the Union address. Under the garb of calling for institutions to ensure peace at the conclusion of the conflict, Roosevelt advocated a global order that would be dominated by the US banks and corporations, in many cases through the establishment of nominally neutral international organizations.

SWP leaders jailed by Roosevelt for anti-war stance

The resolution, adopted by the 11th convention of the SWP the previous November, declared:

When the United States entered the second World War, Roosevelt, chief spokesman of American capitalism, proclaimed that this war was a crusade for democracy, for the Four Freedoms, for the destruction of fascism and totalitarianism. The labor bureaucrats, recruiting sergeants for the war machine, volunteered their services to sell the war as a conflict between free labor and slave labor.

After three years of Americas participation in the war, the demagogic slogans under which the people were dragooned into the slaughter have been stripped bare. Democracy and freedom are among the first casualties of the war. The slogans of national unity and equality of sacrifice are a snare. The pledges to take the profits out of war to prevent a new crop of wartime millionaires, are proved a monstrous hoax.

The resolution outlined the assault on the social and democratic rights of the working class that had been spearheaded by Roosevelt and enforced by the unions. This included the arrest and prosecution of 18 SWP leaders at the beginning of US involvement in the war, and the enforcement of a draconian no-strike pledge and effective wage freeze by the unions.

The document warned that the program of US imperialism was to establish its hegemony over the world. Its aim is to make Wall Street the center of world tribute ... The plans of US imperialism call for maintaining a military machine before which all previous world militarisms pale into insignificance.

The resolution insisted that this would provoke major class battles, within the US and internationally. Pointing to a radicalization of the working class as a result of the depredations of war and fascism, it stated: The crowning slogan of the Trotskyist transitional program is the Workers and Farmers Government. Each of our transitional demands leads to one and the same political conclusion: the workers must break with the political parties of the capitalist class and organize their own political party in order, jointly with the working farmers, to establish their own power. Through the program of transitional demands elaborated by the Socialist Workers Party the Workers and Farmers Government can assure the transition from capitalism to socialism.

100 years ago: Red Army routs Whites in Siberia

On January 7, 1920, the Red Fifth Army captured the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. An uprising in the city and Soviet partisans had facilitated the capture. This was a significant milestone in the rout of Admiral Kolchaks counterrevolutionary Siberian Army, which had begun with the autumn counter-offensive of the Red Army against his forces.

Kolchaks government had abandoned its capital in the Siberian city of Omsk, to the west of Krasnoyarsk, in November and had relocated to Irkutsk. Kolchaks armies had begun to disintegrate, and fights broke out between units of Polish, Romanian and Czechoslovak former prisoners of war as they retreated further into Siberia.

Red Army troops in Siberia

One section of the Whites engaged in a five-week retreat through the frozen wilderness known as the Great Siberian Ice March. These forces were dogged by the Red Fifth Army and Soviet partisans and were stricken by disease and the bitter Siberian cold until they eventually reached Chita, nearly 600 miles east of Irkutsk, which was occupied by Japanese troops.

By early January, Kolchak himself, who had not remained with his armies, was traveling in a second-class railway car along the trans-Siberian railway, his main strategic asset, flying the flags of England, the United States, France and Japan. He was slowed down by 36 cars containing the gold and silver deposits of the Tsarist reserve that he had captured in Kazan in August 1918.

Kolchak gave his personal bodyguard the choice of remaining with him or defecting to the Bolsheviks. Most went over to the Bolsheviks. By January 5, his government in Irkutsk fell to a revolt of Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, equally opposed to the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and the Soviet state, but at odds with Kolchak, a former Tsarist officer.

On January 15, Czechoslovak soldiers turned Kolchak over to the new government in Irkutsk. By then Red Guards were operating openly in the streets of the town. The government surrendered to the Bolsheviks on January 21 and turned him over to the new Soviet authorities.

While Lenin sent telegrams urging that Kolchak not be shot so that he could stand trial, by February remnants of the White armies were advancing on the city and the Cheka executed him.
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Introduction

Y2020 is significant to Nigerias policy environment and direction for two reasons. First, it is the year the country should be taking stock of the objectives of Vision 2020, which was launched in 2009 and was designed to lead Nigeria to become one of the Top 20 economies by GDP. Like other national plans before it, Vision 2020 has been abandoned and any attempt at assessing its successes and failures is forlorn and futile.

Second, it is also the year set for the attainment of the current administrations medium term Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).

One of the main objectives of the ERGP is to reduce petroleum product imports by 60 per cent by 2018, become a net exporter by 2020.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, as quoted by media reports, N1.97tn was spent on PMS importation in 2017 when ERGP came into force and N2.95tn was spent in 2018 .

It is a no brainer to state that the objectives of the ERGP are also not attainable as things are. Government continues to wobble and tumble through policy summersaults, totally oblivious of the fact of the prodigious population expansion in the country. Children born in Y2000 are now considered full grown adults. There is no foreseeable or realistic plan for their future.

This commentary is a reflection on the most significant issues in Nigerias policy environment in 2019. We call on all Nigerians and lovers of Nigeria to pay attention to these issues, taking corrective actions where and when necessary.

1. Visa on Arrival Policy

The Visa on Arrival policy announced in Egypt by President Muhammadu Buhari GCFR is quite shocking noting the timing and venue of the announcement. Such an important policy should ideally be discussed at home first because of the very important need to secure the buy-in of Nigerians and prepare their minds on how to take advantage of such policy and avoid the disadvantages therein.

While announcing the policy to his audience, President Buhari was quoted to have said that, We in Nigeria have already taken the strategic decision to bring down barriers that have hindered the free movement of our people within the continent by introducing the issuance of visa at the point of entry into Nigeria to all persons holding passports of African countries with effect from January 2020.

We are wondering who constitutes the we in Mr. Presidents declaration. We note that it is unacceptable that nothing in government communication prepared Nigerians for this policy, whether through the weekly Federal Executive meeting media briefing or even the annual Independence Day broadcast which was only three months ago. Neither was this policy an election promise or in the manifesto of the governing party. The increasingly imperial Presidential style which confers on the President the freedom to foist on the nation any policy that catches his fancy and that of his kitchen cabinet needs to be tempered by a conscious effort to ensure that major policy shifts are well considered and filtered through the sensitivities of the diverse community that Nigeria is.

Should Nigerians not know whether their leaders reviewed the existing Visa on Arrival policy granted to selected categories of visitors since 2012 before deeming it fit to expand the coverage? Have we understudied the impact of such policy in other countries that have implemented it? Should we not have sought reciprocity from the countries we are now offering Visa on Arrival privileges?

Given the security crisis and the attendant displacement faced by many African countries, should Nigeria not be trying to adequately apply extreme vetting for non-business visitors while those who enjoy Visa on Arrival should only be business visitors (with local sponsors and guarantors)?

A motion moved by Senator Adetunbi on this policy revealed that the Federal Government is not even thinking of the need to provide legal backing to this crucial policy. If securing important legal backing is not on the agenda of the Federal Government, there is every reason to believe that this policy is not well thought out and that little or nothing has been planned for its implementation.

Government is duty-bound to act in ways reflective of the reality of the daily pains of the citizens and should use its executive power to demonstrate, like a democratic government, a deep understanding of the needs of the electorate.

Therefore, we note that this policy is not consistent with the letters and spirit of Nigerian Constitution and it is in bad faith against the indigenous peoples of Nigeria whose consents were not sought on a matter that will dilute the countrys population and alter its demographic composition.

2. Rule of Law and National Interest

There have been a number of assaults on the Rule of Law under this administration, a phenomenon that is now spreading to the sub-national level. State governments now exhibit similar rascality by treating critics views as treason. We have also had shocking assaults on judicial officials. Nothing however compares with the drama by the DSS in open court trying to forcefully re-arrest an accused, on bail, with the presiding Judge still on seat. No such egregious contempt for the temple of justice has ever been seen in the annals of Nigerias history. When the Government finally decided to respect several court-ordered bails for two of its three well-known detainees, the explanation of Government action could not be more depressing. The Attorney-General was quoted as saying that the release of the duo was on compassionate ground.

The Government is a creation of law and must respect all laws to remain legitimate. Nobody voted for this Government to govern us on the basis of its compassion which it may grant at its own discretion. This is the road to despotism and anarchy. In case the current occupants of political office have forgotten some people paid with their lives in the fight for this democracy.

This administration is weaponising the nebulous national interest to terrorise citizens and incarcerate people, devising a cynical strategy of endless filing of new charges against those they desire to hold against valid court orders. Its doctrine of rule of law being subject to a self-serving definition of national interest is indeed Nigerias national security risk because narrowing the space for open debate of issues and denying citizens their fundamental human rights have always been destabilising factors in all societies.

Attempts to criminalise free speech that is not to the liking of those in Government or clamping down on peaceful demonstrations of citizens has the potential of aggravate the frustration of citizens and strengthen forces of purveyors of non-democratic change.

Contemptuous betrayal of electoral promises, especially the one on restructuring, and the disingenuous labelling of advocates of restructuring as secessionists even in the face of the reaffirmation of the ruling party of its belief in restructuring can only erode faith in the political process, heighten hegemonic fears and worsen national cohesion.

3. Y2020 Budget, Accountability, and Anti-corruption

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Another worrisome trend under this administration is that budget padding has attained notoriety through the penchant of the National Assembly to increase budgetary proposals by inserting spurious capital projects into the budget.

The ICPC in a recent report titled Constituency Projects Tracking Group claimed that it uncovered N3.9 billion included in the 2019 budget for constituency projects but not allocated to any specific project or sector .

It states further that the size, number and types of Zonal Intervention Projects (ZIP) domiciled in Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) and Border Communities Development Agency (BCDA), for instance, have turned them into conduits for, and means of abuse of constituency projects and therefore vulnerable to corruption.

We note that President Buharis major complaint about 2019 budget was what he described as an attempt by the lawmakers to take over executive governments role of initiating projects. Surprisingly, Mr. President praised the National Assembly for Y2020 despite a reoccurrence.

Like last year, when over 391 projects were smuggled by federal lawmakers into the budgets of the SMEDAN and BCDA, this year too, over 300 projects found their ways into the two agencys budgets, a media report stated in its analysis of Y2020 budget .

Amidst all these is the disturbing insensitivity with which the leadership and members of the National Assembly are defending the unconscionable provision of N37 billion in the 2020 Budget for maintenance of the National Assemblys offices, when in the same budget, only N36bn was budgeted for FERMA to maintain all federal roads across the country.

In 2018 when it slashed the amount budgeted for the ongoing rehabilitation of Lagos-Ibadan expressway, the National Assembly said it was done in cognisance of the countrys available resources. Similarly, would it be out of place for the National Assembly to consider the precarious revenue situation in the country and phase the maintenance of its offices over five years?

On anti-corruption, we note that the fight against corruption must also encompass transparency and accountability, two key components that are yet to be given priority. For instance, since inception till 2014, a total of 495 agencies reportedly defaulted in submitting their annual audited financial statements to the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation but in the first year of this administration, 215 agencies defaulted while 323 defaulted in the second year, bringing the cumulative to a total of 538 agencies. Some agencies do not even have audited accounts as claimed recently by the chairman of the Senate Public Account Committee, Matthew Urhoghide.

The best place to fight corruption at federal level is at the office of the Auditor General of the Federation. This office has been exposing corruption in the past but lacks any constitutional power to nip corruption in the bud.

Recommendations

 We call for immediate suspension of the Visa on Arrival policy to allow for appropriate consultation and preparation.

 We recommend that Nigerians take Y2020 as the year to defend civil rights as provided for in Nigerias Constitution, even if it means doing so against the government that we helped into power. If this is not done, we may soon witness similar trend being perpetrated at all levels of government and by cadres of appointed officers.

 We call for a review of the National Planning Commission Act in a way that will enshrine national development plans as legal instrument that must be implemented through its lifespan irrespective of administrative tenure and ruling party. No country develops on short-termism and inconsistent policy environment.

 We call on President Buhari to urgently give his assent to the Financial Audit Service and Federal Audit Service Commission Bills, which will empower the Auditor General to compel all agencies of government to be accountable.

 We call on President Buhari to institute a just and equitable appraisal system that subjects all heads of MDAs to periodic performance evaluation.

Conclusion

We enjoin Nigerians to wake up to their civic responsibility and actively contribute their resources to meaningful nation-building efforts. This country belongs to all of us and as the adage says, as you lay your bed, so you will lie on it.

Signed

Hon. Olawale Oshun

Chairman, Afenifere Renewal Group

Mr. Ayo Afolabi

General Secretary, Afenifere Renewal Group
Source: Xinhua| 2019-12-26 14:46:33|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Dec. 26, 2019 (Xinhua) -- The world in the past 24hrs. A selection of the best daily press photos from Xinhua.



Aerial photo taken on Dec. 25, 2019 shows fishing boats sailing on the Xingyun Lake in Yuxi, southwest China's Yunnan Province. A fishing ban on the Xingyun Lake was lifted on Wednesday. The fishing season will last till Jan. 23, 2020. (Xinhua/Hu Chao)

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 25, 2019 shows fishing boats sailing on the Xingyun Lake in Yuxi, southwest China's Yunnan Province. A fishing ban on the Xingyun Lake was lifted on Wednesday. The fishing season will last till Jan. 23, 2020. (Xinhua/Hu Chao)

A woman feeds her child at Vial refugee camp of Chios, Greece, on Dec. 23, 2019. Some 90,000 refugees and migrants are currently stranded in Greece, including 34,700 on islands, according to the latest official data from Greek authorities. (Photo by Lefteris Partsalis/Xinhua)

Students have a class in the Shuhada-Alwahdah School in Al-Radhmah district in Ibb province, Yemen, Dec. 23, 2019. The war in Yemen has forced more than two million children out of school and put 3.7 million others at high risk because of the non-payment of teachers' salaries, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). But for those who can return, they will risk everything in order to go back to the classrooms, even to sit on the rubble of airstrike-hit schools. (Photo by Mohammed Mohammed/Xinhua)

The commercial suborbital carrier rocket Tansuo-1 blasts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwest China's Gansu Province, Dec. 25, 2019. The commercial suborbital carrier rocket Tansuo-1 developed by a private Chinese company was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China Wednesday. The rocket can serve purposes of meteorological observation, microgravity testing as well as satellite payload experiments. It was the maid flight of the first rocket developed by the company. (Photo by Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua)

A man walks on rubble of building destroyed in airstrikes in Dhamar province, Yemen, Dec. 25, 2019. The ongoing fighting between the two warring rivals with daily Saudi-led airstrikes plunged Yemen into more chaos and violence. Three-quarters of the population, or more than 22 million people, urgently require some form of humanitarian assistance, including 8.4 million who struggle to find their next meal. (Photo by Mohammed Mohammed/Xinhua)

Tibetan wild donkeys run in Nagqu, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Dec. 23, 2019. The number of wild animals in Nagqu rises gradually thanks to the improvement of the ecological environment. (Xinhua/Sun Fei)

Algerian people bid farewell to late Army Chief Ahmed Gaid Salah in the streets of Algiers, Algeria, Dec. 25, 2019. Algeria on Wednesday buried late Army Chief Ahmed Gaid Salah in a military funeral. Tens of thousands of Algerians participated in the funeral while standing along the road from Algiers downtown to the El Alia cemetery, some 10 km eastern the capital. (Xinhua)

A man stands on the muddy snowy road in Mount Hermon in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights as the first snowfall of the winter hit Golan Heights on Dec. 25, 2019. (Ayal Margolin/JINI via Xinhua)

Local residents look at an artwork made of autumn leaves in an exhibition in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, Dec. 24, 2019. The 3rd autumn leaves art exhibition opened here to present a visual feast for visitors. (Photo by Zhao Fanyu/Xinhua)
OTTAWAAs wildfires ravage wide swathes of Australia, climate activists in Canada say the situation should stand as a warning of the political perils of weak climate policy in an age when the consequences of global warming are increasingly clear.

On Monday, the premier of New South Wales  the state in southeastern Australia that has been hit hardest  said the severity of the wildfires is unprecedented as the national death toll from the blazes hit 24. Thousands were ordered to evacuate their homes in recent days as acrid smoke blankets major cities and more than 20,000 square kilometres of land  an area almost four times the size of Prince Edward Island  has burned in New South Wales alone. According to one highly conservative estimate from a University of Sydney ecology professor, 480 million animals have died because of the fires.

The devastation has inspired criticism of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who was slammed for taking a pre-Christmas vacation to Hawaii as the fires got worse. After months of pressure to step in, the Australian government deployed 3,000 army reservists to fight the fires and announced $1.8 billion for recovery efforts.

But the fires havent just sparked concerns about the governments practical response. They have also drawn attention to Australias climate policies, as the country recorded its driest and hottest year ever in 2019 while greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming continue to rise.

Catherine Abreu, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, said these figures and the ongoing fires put Australias climate policies in stark relief. The country repealed its short-lived carbon pricing system in 2014  a mechanism used in Canada and around the world to deter greenhouse gas emissions  and, under Morrisons leadership, has defended the continued mining and export of coal, a heavily polluting fossil fuel.

Last month, at the annual United Nations climate conference in Madrid, Australia also lobbied for credits from a previous agreement to fight global warming to be carried over to the current Paris Agreement  a proposition that Abreu and other climate activists say would weaken the deal by allowing countries to claim emissions reductions that havent really happened.

Australia, I think, is really lifting up the political tensions around climate right now, Abreu said, referring to the wildfires and the countrys climate policies that she sees as inadequate.

Theyre experiencing some of the worst climate impacts in the world and they have a climate-denying government that is failing to protect people against those impacts, she said.

Isabelle Turcotte, federal policy director with Canadas Pembina Institute, said it was really disheartening to witness Australia push for measures at the recent climate conference that she believes would weaken global efforts to reduce emissions. Like Abreu, Turcotte pointed to the irony that Australia is seeing some of the most severe impacts of a changing climate while its federal government has rolled back policies to address the problem.

She added that Canada isnt immune from the same situation, with Conservatives campaigning in the last federal election on a rollback of key federal climate policies like the federal minimum price on carbon and the incoming clean fuel standards.

Abreu and Turcotte argue this would represent a major weakening of climate action in Canada, even if the Conservatives claimed  against estimates from policy experts  that their policies would be better.

Australia is a country where strong (anti-)carbon pricing rhetoric won the day, Turcotte said. It gives us a really salient opportunity to have that discussion around honest conversations. What is the discourse that we expect form our leaders on climate? We cant put our head in the sand, we cant exploit climate as wedge issues  for political gain.

For Abreu, the wildfires also illustrate the need for fossil fuel-exporting countries like Canada to plan a transition to a cleaner economy, as countries around the world  including much of Europe and Canada  push to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

I cant imagine a more stark lesson in the dangers of caving to that political argument and not heeding the warning signs that its time for us to address climate change and diversify our economy, Abreu said.

We should be first movers when it comes to this type of diversification.

With files from Star wire services

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Twitter users are baffled by images of a sauce pan that appears to have melted into a stove.

Anie from Provo, Utah shared pictures of the pot in December, explaining that the confusing catastrophe was the handiwork of her roommate.

But Anie couldn't provide an explanation for how, exactly, her roommate managed to melt what looks like a steel pan on a stove, despite over a thousand commenters begging her for answers.

What is that? Twitter users are baffled by images of a sauce pan that appears to have melted into a stove

Huh? Twitter user Anie from Provo, Utah shared pictures of the pot in December, explaining that her roommate left a sauce pan that way

'In case you ever think your roommate is dumb... let me one up you,' she wrote.

She included two pictures of the sauce pan, showing that it has entirely collapsed on one side.

The rim is twisted and distorted, while the bottom and side are warped beyond repair. It appears to have melted into a metallic mess, right into the stove.

The tweet has earned 61,000 likes, and hundreds of people have demanded an explanation.

'Honestly it's more impressive than anything because like, how??' asked one curious woman.

How? Dozens of commenters expressed confusion and demanded answers

Sorry! Anie had none, admitting her roommate hasn't told her what happened

Crazy: Others have shared funny GIFs to illustrate their confusion

'Were waiting for an answer on how tf this happens,' said another.

Others responded with GIFs to illustrate their confusion, or just simply wrote the word 'how'.

But Anie herself admitted that she had no idea.

'I am so sorry, lol she hasnt even told us what happened or addressed the situation,' she said. 'I dont have an answer... she hasnt even told us what happened.'

Other have just cracked jokes about the odd images, with one writing, 'This is next level negligence.'

'Im no expert but Id say that soup is done,' said another, while one more asked, 'Have you tried putting it in rice?'

Cracking up: Dozens have also cracked jokes, saying that her soup is done and she could try fixing it by putting it in rice

Wait a minute... One suggested its the 'Lorenz effect,' though there is no such thing

Maybe... Some thing that the aluminum pot just melted from getting overheated

Some have tried to give an explanation.

'It looks like the Lorenz effect in action - inductive buildup of heat from eddy currents in the aluminum layer of the pot. Basically the electric current in the burner created a magnetic field that interacted with that of the aluminum in the pot to produce heat,' wrote one.

But there is no such thing as the Lorenz effect. The Lorentz force, which has a similar name, involves a magnetic field but has nothing to do with heat.

Others have suggested that it melted because it's aluminum, rather than steel. Aluminum still has a melting point of 1,220 degrees Fahrenheit.
Most price increases are said to be announced later this week, but most will be less than 10 per cent and about half of them is said to be in the range of 4-6 per cent.

Pfizer, Sanofi, and GlaxoSmithKline are among the leaders in the Vietnamese pharmaceutical market with strong expansion plans in the country. In particular, Sanofi Vietnam has three factories in the country, supplying 80 per cent of its products locally.

The companies' price hikes in the US have triggered concerns over possible hikes in Vietnam, which could put a burden on local patients.

Vietnam still heavily relies on medicine imports with, on average, 55 per cent of drugs imported every year. Data from Vietnams Ministry of Health showed that the countrys drug imports last year increased by 8.8 per cent on-year to $3.7 billion, reflecting growing local demands. Taken together, the number of imported pharmaceuticals granted with marketing authorisation rose from 771 in 2016 to 758 in the 11 months of 2018.

According to the Vietnam Drug Administration (VDA), the pharmaceutical industry will continue to enjoy double-digit growth in the next five years, with the market scale reaching $7.7 billion in 2021.

Sanofi Vietnam celebrates first batch of pharmaceutical import Sanofi-Aventis Vietnam Ltd. has recently organised a ceremony to celebrate the first batch of pharmaceutical import in Ho Chi Minh City.

Direct imports for pharma groups With Sanofi Vietnam becoming the newest foreign-invested enterprise joining the race to import drugs directly, pressures on local manufacturers are forecast to heat up in ...
Media organisations across the globe have criticised Australia's handling of the bushfire crisis, describing it as a 'monstrous reality' which politicians are largely ignoring.

Three separate outlets cited the re-election of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who until recently refused to discuss climate change in relation to the bushfires.

The nation's economic reliance on exporting coal was also named as a factor which contributed to the widespread crisis.

Mr Morrison once brought a lump of coal to parliament to discourage people from being 'afraid of it' when the nation was debating reducing coal mining.

So far, the Australian bushfires have killed 24 people, destroyed more than 1,500 homes and tore through more than four million hectares of land.

Residents look on as flames burn through bush on January 04, in Lake Tabourie, NSW

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks during a press conference on the governments' bushfire response on Monday

An estimated half a billion animals were also wiped out in the blazes, which have been burning through much of the east coast of Australia since October.

Novelist Richard Flanagan wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times drawing comparisons between the bushfire crisis and the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, in the Soviet Union, in 1986.

Pictured: Australian author Richard Flanagan

Mr Flanagan said he would not be surprised if Australian politics crumbled as the Soviet Union's did after such a catastrophic disaster.

'Could it be that the immense, still-unfolding tragedy of the Australian fires may yet prove to be the Chernobyl of the climate crisis?' he wrote.

He described the political sphere as sclerotic and demented - frozen in its inability to confront the 'monstrous reality' of the crisis head on.

The nation is committing 'climate change suicide' according to Mr Flanagan, who was born and raised in Tasmania.

'Australia today is ground zero for the climate catastrophe. Its glorious Great Barrier Reef is dying, its world-heritage rain forests, its giant kelp forests, numerous towns have or are about to, and now the vast continent is burning on a scale,' he said.

'And yet, incredibly, the response of Australias leaders to this unprecedented national crisis has been not to defend their country but to defend the fossil fuel industry, a big donor to both major parties  as if they were willing the country to its doom.'

Pictured: A car travelling a road as the sky turns red from smoke of the Snowy Valley bushfire on the outskirts of Cooma on January 4

A burnt vehicle is seen inside a gutted house after an overnight bushfire in Quaama in NSW

Mr Flanagan pointed out Prime Minister Scott Morrison's trip to Hawaii and noted he was basically booed out of Cobargo - a town ravaged by fires - when he paid a visit.

He said: 'Mr. Morrison has tried to present the fires as catastrophe-as-usual, nothing out of the ordinary.'

Meanwhile CNN, an American news source, on Saturday published a story stating Australia's way of life is being threatened in the blazes.

The analysis of the fire threat determined Mr Morrison 'could be in trouble' over the fire crisis.

Again, the outlet cited his international holiday as fires were destroying much of the east coast of Australia, and commented on the delay in declaring a crisis.

Firefighters have spent weeks defending lives and property from the blazes. Pictured: Two firefighters doing what they can to stop the fire in Batlow on Saturday

Dozens of homes are feared lost in Batlow. Pictured: A dwelling completely up in flames on Saturday

Fire and rescue, as well as waterbombing helicopters, did their best to help out in Batlow on Saturday, but low visibility made it difficult and risky

The reporter said backyard barbecues had been banned and Australia's most famous beach, Bondi, was basically untouchable due to the dust and debris which had placed the nation's air quality among the poorest in the world.

'Australia's political inaction on climate change can be hard to understand,' the report concluded.

'Famous for its natural beauty, the country suffers annual fires and intense drought. It is regularly smashing heat records, and its rain patterns are becoming less predictable. Its seasons are beginning to look a little back to front.'

Pictured: Robinson Meyer from The Atlantic

The Atlantic's Robinson Meyer wrote: 'Australians will lose to climate change.'

He, too, criticised the nation's handling of the climate crisis, saying Australia's reliance on coal sales has hampered efforts to defend the country from fires and floods.

'Australia is buckling under the conditions that its fossil fuels have helped bring about,' he wrote in the piece. 'Perhaps the two biggest kinds of climate calamity happening today have begun to afflict the continent.'

Referring to the bushfires and the dying Great Barrier Reef, Mr Meyer believes both crises have been worsened by the government's decision to 'keep the lights on' for East Asian economies rather than pay attention to a potential climate catastrophe.

'Australia is caught in a climate spiral. For the past few decades... the country has padded out its economy by selling coal to the world.

'Faced with such geographical challenges, Australias people might rally to reverse these dangers.

'Instead,' he wrote, 'they have elected leaders with other priorities.'

As the fire front approached, the sky was filled with orange flames and thick, grey plumes of smoke
The last time Army Specialist Henry Mayfield Jr spoke to his mother on New Year's Day, he reassured her that his military base in Kenya was secure.

Four days later, the 23-year-old soldier from suburban Chicago became one of three Americans who lost their lives in a car bomb blast set off by al-Shabab extremists at Manda Bay Airfield near Lamu.

Mayfield's family on Monday confirmed his death on social media and to local news outlets.

Scroll down for video

Army Specialist Henry Mayfield Jr, 23, has been identified as one of three Americans killed in an attack on an airfield in Kenya. His mother (right) confirmed his death

Al-Shabab militants killed Mayfield and two American defense contractors during the Sunday attack at a Kenyan airfield (pictured) used by United States forces

The US military said in a statement that two Americans from the Department of Defense were also wounded in the attack (pictured). 'The wounded Americans are currently in stable condition and being evacuated,' the US military's Africa Command said

Two other Americans, both contractors with the U.S. Department of Defense, were also killed on Sunday. So far, they have not been identified.

'I last spoke with him New Years Day via FaceTime,' Mayfields mother, Carmoneta Horton-Mayfield, told NBC5. 'We discussed him not having to go to Somalia and he told me everything was good and safe at his base. He told me everything would be OK. Those were his last words to me.'

Mayfield, who went by the name Mitch, joined the US Army in 2018 and was stationed at Fort Rucker, Alabama.

His mother said he turned to military service because he did not have enough money to continue his studies at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.

Horton-Mayfield on Monday posted a message on Facebook thanking everyone who has reached out to her and her husband to express their condolences.

Carmoneta Horton-Mayfield thanked well-wishers for their condolences on Facebook

Mayfield, who went by the name Mitch, joined the US Army in 2018 and was stationed at Fort Rucker, Alabama

Mayfield's mother said she last spoke to her son on New Year's Day and he assured her 'everything was good and safe at his base'

'We may not be able to respond to them all at this time but we feel the love and we appreciate you all,' she wrote. 'Please keep our family in prayer.'

Isaac Wiseman, a neighbor of the Mayfield family in the village of Hazel Crest, Illinois, described Mitch Mayfield to CBS Chicago as an 'outstanding young man.'

'Its breaking my heart,' he said of the soldier's death. 'I just saw him this summer. I dont have words to say. Its just breaking my heart.'

Al-Shabab, based in neighboring Somalia, claimed responsibility for the deadly assault.

The US military said in a statement that two Americans from the Department of Defense were also wounded in the attack.

'The wounded Americans are currently in stable condition and being evacuated,' the US military's Africa Command said.

US Army General Stephen Townsend, who is the commander of the US Africa Command, also paid tribute to the victims of the attack, saying: 'As we honor their sacrifice, let's also harden our resolve. Alongside our African and international partners, we will pursue those responsible for this attack and al-Shabab who seeks to harm Americans and US interests.'

'We remain committed to preventing al-Shabab from maintaining a safe haven to plan deadly attacks against the US homeland, East African and international partners,' Townsend added.

Kenyan authorities said the pre-dawn attack also destroyed US aircraft and vehicles.

An image distributed by al-Shabaab after the attack on a military base in Kenya shows Somalia's al-Shabaab militant group's flag, said to be at the Manda Bay Airfield in Manda, Lamu

It is the first known al-Shabab attack against US forces inside Kenya, a key base for fighting one of the world's most resilient extremist organizations.

A plume of black smoke rose above the base. Residents said a car bomb had exploded.

Lamu county commissioner Irungu Macharia said that five suspects were arrested and are being interrogated.

An internal Kenyan police report seen by the Associated Press said two fixed-wing aircraft, a US Cessna and a Kenyan one, were destroyed along with two US helicopters and multiple US vehicles at the Manda Bay military airstrip.

The report said explosions were heard at around 5.30am local time from the direction of the airstrip. The scene, now secured, indicated that al-Shabab likely entered 'to conduct targeted attacks,' the report said.

A plume of black smoke (pictured) rose above the base. Residents said a car bomb had exploded

Lamu county commissioner Irungu Macharia said that five suspects were arrested and are being interrogated. Black smoke rises from the base following the attack

Sunday's attack is the first known al-Shabab attack against US forces inside Kenya, a key base (file image) for fighting one of the world's most resilient extremist organizations

According to the US military, 'initial reports reflect damage to infrastructure and equipment'. The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority said the airstrip was closed for all operations.

Al-Shabab's statement included photos of blazing aircraft it asserted were from the attack. A second al-Shabab claim issued hours later asserted that 'intense close-quarters combat' against US forces continued.

The military's Camp Simba in Lamu county, established more than a decade ago, has under 100 US personnel, according to Pentagon figures. US forces at the Manda Bay airfield train and give counter-terror support to East African partners, according to the military.

A US flag-raising at the camp in August signaled its change 'from tactical to enduring operations,' the Air Force said at the time.

According to another internal Kenyan police report, dated Friday, a villager that day said he had spotted 11 suspected al-Shabab members entering Lamu's Boni forest, which the extremists have used as a hideout. The report said Kenyan authorities did not find them.

Al-Shabab has launched a number of attacks inside Kenya, including against civilian targets such as buses, schools and shopping malls.

The group has been the target of a growing number of US airstrikes inside Somalia during President Donald Trump's administration.

The latest attack comes just over a week after an al-Shabab truck bomb in Somalia's capital killed at least 79 people and US airstrikes killed seven al-Shabab fighters in response.

Last year al-Shabab attacked a US military base inside Somalia that is used to launch drone strikes. The extremist group also has carried out multiple attacks against Kenyan troops in the past in retaliation for Kenya sending troops to Somalia to fight it.

This attack marks a significant escalation of al-Shabab's campaign of attacks inside Kenya, said analyst Andrew Franklin, a former US Marine and longtime Kenya resident.

The latest attack comes just over a week after an al-Shabab truck bomb in Somalia's capital killed at least 79 people and US airstrikes killed seven al-Shabab fighters in response. Pictured is the scene of the car bomb on December 28

'Launching a deliberate assault of this type against a well-defended permanent base occupied by (Kenya Defense Forces), contractors and US military personnel required a great deal of planning, rehearsals, logistics and operational capability,' he said.

Previous attacks against security forces have mainly been ambushes on Kenyan army or police patrols.

The attack comes days after a US airstrike killed Iran's top military commander. Iran has vowed retaliation, but al-Shabab is a Sunni Muslim group and there is no sign of links to Shiite Iran or proxies.

Analyst Rashid Abdi in Twitter posts discussing the attack said it had nothing to do with the tensions in the Middle East but added that Kenyan security services have long been worried that Iran was trying to cultivate ties with al-Shabab.

'Avowedly Wahhabist Al-Shabaab not natural ally of Shia Iran, hostile, even. But if Kenyan claims true, AS attack may have been well-timed to signal to Iran it is open for tactical alliances,' he wrote, adding that 'an AS that forges relations with Iran is nightmare scenario'.

When asked whether the US military was looking into any Iranian link to the attack, US Africa Command spokesman Col Christopher Karns said only that 'al-Shabab, affiliated with al-Qaida, has their own agenda and have made clear their desire to attack US interests'.

The al-Shabab claim of responsibility said Sunday's attack was part of its 'Jerusalem will never be Judaized' campaign, a rarely made reference that also was used after al-Shabab's deadly attack on a luxury mall complex in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, in January 2019.
In Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wept and offered prayers over the coffin of General Suleimani at his funeral in Tehran on Monday. The generals successor swore revenge, while chants of Death to America rang out from the crowds in the capital.

The latest: Leaders from several European nations were scrambling to put the abandoned 2015 nuclear deal back together while calling on Iran to refrain from violence.

Behind the scenes: The general may have been working as a go-between in quiet efforts to reduce the tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia at the moment he was killed.

Big picture: General Suleimanis killing has left a swirl of confusion among analysts, former policymakers and academics, our Interpreter columnist writes. None of them seem to be able to identify a long-term strategy in the Trump administrations actions.
Press Release

January 6, 2020 Gatchalian seeks further discussion on PH nuclear power agenda While the Department of Energy awaits Malacanang's reply on its submitted nuclear policy, Senator Win Gatchalian said the DOE should release a report to the public on the integrated work plan for nuclear power infrastructure in the country. The government concluded a week-long discussion in November last year with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which gave its Integrated Nuclear Infrastructure Review (INIR) on introducing a safe, secure, and sustainable national nuclear program. Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi called for the creation of Nuclear Energy Program Implementing Organization (NEPIO) in October 2016 to comply with IAEA's policy guidelines in conducting research on the feasibility of nuclear energy development. Gatchalian, Senate Energy Committee Chairman, stressed that ordinary Filipinos will never understand the reason behind these nuclear talks if the government will continue to keep them in the dark when it comes to the Philippine nuclear plan. "The more the public is informed about the government's nuclear plan, the more comfortable they become. By being transparent, we are telling the Filipinos that the government is serious and committed in discussing and investigating whether nuclear power might be part of the country's future energy policy," the senator explained. This is not the first time that Gatchalian called out the DOE for its lack of transparency on nuclear energy agenda. In October last year, Gatchalian probed the DOE's ambiguity on its nuclear plan amid reports that the Philippines and Russia signed a deal on exploring the possible construction of a nuclear power plant in the country. "The basic question is - is nuclear energy fit for the Philippines? Will it deliver the promises of lower electricity cost at very minimal risk? Most importantly, what will we do with the nuclear waste in the long term?," asked Gatchalian. Gatchalian has filed a resolution for the Senate Energy Committee to conduct an inquiry on the status of the country's nuclear energy plan.
Popular comedian Jordan Shanks has called on the Queen to sack Prime Minister Scott Morrison over his handling of the bushfire crisis.

'Your majesty, you fired Gough Whitlam for less than that,' he said on YouTube.

'If Gough Whitlam was sacked for not getting the supply bill through Senate, surely Scott Morrison should be sacked for not supplying the firefighters.'

Mr Shanks, known as Friendlyjordies, urged the public to call for his sacking by contacting the Royal Family.

The video was uploaded on Sunday and has been viewed more than 47,300 times since then.

Queen Elizabeth II is officially Australia's head of state but her website says she won't interfere.

'As a constitutional Monarch, Her Majesty does not intervene in any political or personal disputes, and letters asking her to do so will receive a standard reply to this effect,' the website says.

The Queen's representative in Australia is Governor-General David Hurley.

Governor-General Sir John Kerr sacked Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975. The Governor-General is the Queen's representative in Australia. Friendlyjordies asked the Queen if she could please sack Prime Minister Scott Morrison the same way

Queen Elizabeth II is Australia's Head of State, but she won't get involved in politics

The Queen did tweet a condolence message for the victims of the bushfires

He is the official commander-in-chief of the Australian Defence Force and has the power to dissolve Parliament, dismiss government ministers and the right to exercise reserve powers.

Daily Mail Australia asked Governor-General Hurley's office if the Governor-General would ask the Queen to dismiss the Prime Minister.

A spokesperson from the Office of the Official Secretary to the Governor-General responded to the request via email on Monday afternoon.

'No,' the spokesperson said.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been criticised for perceived lack of leadership in handling the bushfire crisis. Friendlyjordies asked the Queen to sack him like Gough Whitlam

Friendlyjordies urged the public to contact the Queen

In 1975 Australia had a crisis when the opposition blocked Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's Labor government from passing appropriation bills needed to supply money for government spending through the Senate.

The Governor General dismissed the Prime Minister and called a double dissolution election which Mr Whitlam lost.

FriendlyJordies said it hadn't been possible for Mr Whitlam to get the supply bills through the Senate.

'But it was very possible for Scott Morrison ... to supply firefighters with even basic equipment which his government and preceding Liberal governments refused,' he told Daily Mail Australia on Monday afternoon.

'Surely that is a level of gross negligence that far supercedes whatever crimes Gough Whitlam's may have been.'

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been broadly criticised over the past two weeks for a perceived lack of leadership in his handling of the bushfire crisis, in particular for going on holiday to Hawaii as the fires burned.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott (pictured) was criticised by the video as an 'incompetent' politician - but good as a person who has been fighting the fires without media attention

Daily Mail Australia contacted the Prime Minister's Office but they did not provide a response to the video.

The video praised former Labor leaders Kevin Rudd and Bill Shorten for their handling of previous disasters and called on the Queen to make current Labor leader Anthony Albanese Prime Minister, heavily praising him, also.

'After you dismissed him (Gough Whitlam), you made Malcolm Fraser caretaker Prime Minister,' he says in the video.

'Seeing as Anthony Albanese is already acting as such, can we just make it official.'

The video strongly criticises former Liberal leaders Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott, calling Mr Abbott 'incompetent' as a politician while praising his personal efforts as a volunteer firefighter.

Daily Mail Australia asked Mr Shanks whether his video was a paid political advertisement, but he said it was not.

'No, it's completely crowd-funded,' he said.

Daily Mail Australia asked Anthony Albanese's office whether they had contributed funding for the video.

'The Labor Party did not pay for this video,' an Opposition spokesperson said via email.

Daily Mail Australia also asked the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), which has strong ties to the Labor party, whether it funded the video.

In 2016 the ACTU employed Mr Shanks to create an advertising video as part of their election campaign.

The ACTU did not reply in time for publication.

FriendlyJordies said he worked with the ACTU once in 2016, but that was a long time ago, and that he is now independently crowd funded via Patreon donations.
In a move that could put the Obama-era health law squarely in the middle of the 2020 election, Democratic-led states Friday asked the Supreme Court for a fast-track review of a recent court ruling that declared part of the statute unconstitutional and cast a cloud over the rest.

A coalition of 20 states led by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed a petition seeking expedited review, joined by House Democrats and Washington, D.C. They hope to get a Supreme Court hearing and decision by this summer, before the November elections. For the court to agree to such a timetable would be unusual, but not unprecedented.

Defenders of the Affordable Care Act are arguing that the issues raised by the case are too important to let the litigation drag on for months or years in lower courts, and that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans erred when it struck down the health laws now toothless requirement that Americans have health insurance.

The lower courts actions have created uncertainty about the future of the entire Affordable Care Act, and that uncertainty threatens adverse consequences for our nations healthcare system, including for patients, doctors, insurers, and state and local governments, according to the states filing.

There was no immediate reaction from the Trump administration. President Donald Trump had hailed the appeals court ruling, calling it a win for all Americans. But many congressional Republicans want to avoid another election-year battle over the ACA, after their unsuccessful effort to repeal it helped flip the House back to the Democrats in 2018.

While finding the health laws individual mandate to be unconstitutional, the 5th Circuit made no decision on such popular provisions as protections for people with preexisting conditions, Medicaid expansion, and coverage for young adults up to age 26 on their parents policies.

The 2-1 appeals court decision left the health law in effect for now. Open enrollment season for 2020 has been able to proceed without disruption.

The 5th Circuit sent the case back to a lower court judge who has already decided once to throw out the entire health care law. The appellate court asked Texas-based U.S. District Judge Reed OConnor to determine whether other parts of the law can be separated from the insurance requirement, and thus remain in place.

About 20 million people now have coverage through the ACA, including its subsidized private insurance and Medicaid expansion. But the 900-page law also made many changes to other programs, from Medicare, to community health centers, to fraud-fighting. Sorting out whether some provisions could remain while other go with the insurance mandate would be a colossal effort.

The 5th Circuit found that the requirement to carry insurance was rendered unconstitutional when Congress in 2017 eliminated the tax penalty for people going without coverage.

Five justices would have to agree for the Supreme Court to hear the appeal on an expedited schedule.

If court does take the case, it would mark its third extensive review of the health law. The five justices who upheld the law the previous two times are still on the court.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement that the Supreme Court should not delay, arguing there is no legal or practical justification to leave the case in limbo.

The Supreme Court should hear this case now and recognize Congresss clear intent to preserve protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and all the other benefits and protections of the Affordable Care Act, said Pelosi, D-Calif.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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In the Indian narrative, the civilian-politico-bureaucrat combine conducts politics, governance and diplomacy without much military involvement and the military undertakes war-to-victory without much civilian intrusion. The barracks and cantonments are usually isolated from civilian and societal churns, and the professional steel, step and kinetic bluntness of the armed forces is essentially retained. The respect of this divide ensured that the larger-than-life combatant generals like Maneckshaw, Harbaksh, Sagat or Hanut could hold their own and 1965, 1967, 1971 or even Kargil were the natural outcomes  even in 1962, the raw heroics of those who defended whilst, outnumbered and outgunned, only strengthened the inner core of the institutional ethos and elan. By and large, the cantonment gates were euphemistically iron-fenced and the winds of societal turbulence did not seep into a soldiers conduct. The dissonance of the Thimayya-Menon breakdown and the 1962 fallout were rectified reasonably soon.

Post-independence, the societal disruptions emanating from historical inequities, wounds and political unrest owing to castes, religions and regions could not affect the discipline, morale or efficacy of the professional Indian soldier whose regimental denomination was rooted in the same regional, caste or religious denominations like the Infantry Regiments of Bihar, Kumaon, Jat, Rajput, Dogra, etc. The strains of Tamil nationalism and anti-Hindi agitation of the 1960s had virtually no impact on the troops from the Madras Regiment, insurgencies in the Northeastern region had no impact on troops from regiments like Assam or Naga, caste-based upheavals had no impact on regiments like Rajputs, Mahars or Jats. Subsequent insurgencies in Punjab, Kashmir or the Maoist movements bore no major impact on troops who were recruited from the catchment areas of political biases and regional fractures. Somehow, the armed forces remained insulated, protected and focused on their professional calling, whereas the morass of societal concerns had started telling on their uniformed cousins, in the police forces.

The most important factor driving the professional conduct of the Indian armed forces, was the constitutional wiring that limited the political connect to a bare minimum (unlike the police). Political interest in the affairs of the armed forces bordered on disinterest, and that oddly worked to the interest of the armed forces who were content to train or fight, as and when required, and only entered the world of political imagination on the annual Republic Day parades. The traditional rules governing the social conduct of all ranks took a dim view of any political conversations in formal gatherings. The Army Act explicitly stated: No person subject to the act shall attend, address or take part in any meeting or demonstration held for a party or any political purposes, or belong to or join or subscribe in the aid of any political association or movement, and added amongst other provisions, or in any way actively promote or prosecute a candidates interests.

This kept the vitriol and passions of political preferences at reasonable bay. Secondly, the gradual all-India composition of its various regiments and the operational work conditions created strong interdependencies and exposures to troops of divergent denominations under the most hostile conditions, which naturally defrayed any negative perceptions that afflicted civil society.

Lastly, the restricted interaction with the larger world outside the cantonments, in the absence of social media platforms ensured that the reckless manipulation of political unrest could not infiltrate the soldiers psyche and perceptions. All this control was suddenly undone with easy access to the uncontrolled and unverified content emanating from the social media streaming into the palms and minds of the uniformed fraternity  influencing their conversations, and polarising their identities beyond the simplistic regimental affiliations, that they had adhered to hitherto. The veteran community too played into the hands of the politicians and allowed the appropriation of the Indian soldier into the political context and willy-nilly implied institutional preferences. The positions, language and expression of many veterans in the social media platforms is a shocking revelation for a supposedly apolitical institution that eschewed and frowned upon divides on the basis of religion, region or castes.

Now with the prevailing societal vulnerabilities and unprecedented divides following executive decisions like CAA, NRC, etc, imagine the situation if influenced conversations were to take place amongst the leaderships of multi-class units? Clearly, there are sensitivities involved and the access to both information and misinformation are readily available  it perhaps more necessary than ever before to not dabble in an us-versus-them sort of divisiveness that has already torn the social fabric of civil society. The Indian armed forces are perhaps the last bastion that practices and celebrates unity in diversity, and does not discriminate amongst its own. The revisionist tendencies that seeks out individual identities beyond regimental or corps denominations is an anathema to the times when a Lt. Gen. Sami Khan (from the former Rampur royalty) was a proud Madrasi, Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw (ethnically, Parsi) a Gorkha and a Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa (from Coorg) a Rajput! Region, race and above all religion, had no relevance and often the religious practices within units were uniquely harmonious and perhaps even borderline blasphemous with the harmonious gaiety, unanimity and practicality (stripped of any puritanical necessity) with which they were happily conducted. Both gods and soldiers were happy!

Today the cantonments have been opened, both literally and spiritually, to hate-and-divide that traditionally spared the military realm. Everyone from politicians, media, civil society, serving soldiers to retired veterans need to take a step back and reflect upon the possible implications of the societal winds affecting military conduct, culture and outlook. The situation is still controllable and in a cruel twist of irony, while the agenda of revisiting history had engulfed the mood of India  it took a 24-year-old fallen-braveheart, Sepoy Aurangzeb, from the wounded region of J&K, to focus on making history for his paltan, his fauj and for his desh! Postscript, two of his brothers joined the Indian Army after his death. The cantonments need to be spared the political agendas, bigotry and falsehoods  for Indias sake.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said the Government is very much concerned about any escalation of tensions in the Middle East, but stopped short of condemning the US attack on Iran.

The Government's silence on the attack which resulted in the death of General Qasem Soleimani has been criticised by the Opposition.

Mr Varadkar's failure to condemn the attack reflects the importance the Government places on its relationship with the US Government.

Speaking in Dublin, Mr Varadkar said he has not yet had an opportunity to discuss the matter with Tanaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney, but said the last thing the region needs is more conflict.

We are very much concerned about any escalation of tensions in the Middle East. The last thing Iran or Iraq or any parts of the Middle East needs now is another conflict, he said.

"We know what the effect of the conflicts in Iraq and Syria being not just for that region but also for other parts of the world.

"It's very much our desire that situation should be de-escalated, and the structure of the European Union and the United Nations are there as well, to help do that. But I'll talk to the Tanaiste about that more in the next couple of hours, he said.
Akhilesh, Mayawati condemn JNU campus violence, slam Centre

India

oi-PTI

Lucknow, Jan 06: Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati condemned the violence inside Jawaharlal Nehru University in which students and teachers were attacked by masked persons.

Hitting out at the Centre, Yadav said that masked men attacking teachers and students in JNU shows how "low" the government will stoop to rule through "fear" adding that the BJP is using violence and hate to polarise society.

"Masked men attacking teachers and students in JNU shows the low to which the government will stoop in order to rule through fear. The BJP is using violence and hate to polarise society and stifle dissent. The ABVP are acting like the storm troopers of the BJP," he said in a tweet on Sunday night.

JNU VC appeals for peace, says top priority is to protect academic interests

NEWS AT 3 PM, JANUARY 6th, 2020...

The BSP has termed the mob attack as shameful and demanded a judicial probe into the incident.

"The violence against students and teachers in JNU is shameful and condemnable. The Centre should take it seriously and it would be better to order a judicial probe into it," Mayawati said in a tweet in Hindi on Monday.

Violence had broken out inside JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police which conducted a flag march.

At least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured as chaos reigned on the campus for nearly two hours.

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Story first published: Monday, January 6, 2020, 13:04 [IST]
Over 100 people, including college students, activists and citizens, held a peaceful protest outside the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) campus here on Monday to condemn the violence in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi.

Four Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) members were detained from near the protest site as a precautionary measure, said police inspector H M Vyas.

Violence broke out inside the JNU campus on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus.

Students from various prominent institutes, including the IIMA, CEPT University, Ahmedabad University, National Institute of Fashion Technology, National Institute of Design and Gujarat Vidyapith took part in the protest march.

Dalit activist and independent MLA Jignesh Mevani was among the protesters who were demanding stern action against those involved in the attack on JNU students and teachers.

The protesters were holding banners having slogans like - "JNU is bleeding", "Saffron is new black", "Stop Brahminical Terrorism", "Save JNU", "With JNU - Against Fascism", "Save Students-Save Democracy".

To counter the march, some persons claiming to be associated with the ABVP gathered on the opposite side of the road and raised banners claiming the attack was planned and executed by 'Left-wing' students.

As a precautionary measure, police detained four ABVP members, said Vyas.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A group of London restaurant chiefs have written to the Government calling for a cut to wine taxes to help the under-pressure hospitality sector.

Among the signatories on the letter to Exchequer Secretary, Simon Clarke MP, are Jeremy King, whose Corbin & King empire runs the Wolseley and the Delaunay, and Mark Derry, chief executive of Brasserie Bar Co.

They, plus representatives from other businesses, are supporting lobby group Wine Drinkers UK, which is campaigning for wine taxes to be cut.

The letter raises concerns about the impact of the unfair tax treatment of wine on our restaurants and the wider UK hospitality sector. It says duty on wine has risen 12% since 2014, compared with 2% for spirits and a 0.2% fall for beer.

The bosses think a new fairer deal for wine in the Budget, expected next month, will help consumers.
Anger over the three-year closure of the National Portrait Gallery has erupted into a public dressing-down for its bosses and their 'disgraceful' plans.

The institution will shut in June for refurbishment expected to cost 35million  a chunk of which will be spent simply to shift the front door around the corner.

The closure, which is said to have caused disquiet among trustees, could cost 100 staff their jobs. But, sources claim, bosses at the London gallery will be protected from the cuts.

The attack on the plans is being led by the Burlington Magazine, the 'bible' of the British art scene. In an editorial for the January edition, the Burlington calls the scheme 'astonishing' and 'frankly disgraceful'.

Anger over the three-year closure of the National Portrait Gallery has erupted into a public dressing-down for its bosses and their 'disgraceful' plans (file picture)

Goodwill among art lovers has 'abruptly dissipated', it claims, observing that the 'disappointing' plans 'will not result in additional display space for the collection'.

It adds: 'Presumably ways can be found to keep the curators occupied, but the future looks bleak for the front of house and security staff.'

The editorial questioned how the museum could justify continuing to receive grants from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Last year it received 7.6million.

If the grants continue at that level, the gallery could receive up to 23million  despite being shut for years.

'Many will think it unreasonable that it should expect to receive this level of public funding while it is closed', it said. 'When the definition of 'British' is under debate as never before it seems the NPG's ill-timed closure is ultimately an evasion of its statutory mission.'

Bendor Grosvenor, an art historian and BBC4 presenter, said the plans should be ditched

The gallery insisted the refurbishment would make it more 'welcoming, engaging and accessible to all'.

But Bendor Grosvenor, an art historian and BBC4 presenter, said the plans should be ditched. 'To get an article like that in Burlington, it is as bad as it gets in the art world,' he said. 'It is the house journal of that world.' Dr Grosvenor questioned the focus on moving the entrance.

'Nobody ever went into a museum because they liked the front door  it's what's inside that counts,' he said. 'To spend 35million and end up without significantly more space seems to me misguided. A fleet-footed director could be putting on interesting events to explore our past and future relationship with Europe.

'But by closing it until spring 2023, they risk turning up to the party, just as everyone is leaving.'

In a letter to the Art Newspaper, director Nicholas Cullinan said the decision was not taken lightly. 'Complete closure is the most time-efficient and cost-effective way to complete the project and, more importantly, to ensure visitors, members of staff and the collection are not put at risk', he added.

The gallery said: 'It is too early to say which roles will be affected. We will be consulting with staff and unions ... and exploring all options to mitigate the impact.' A spokesman added: 'We do not wish to comment directly on the Burlington Magazine article.'

The refurbishment will also change gallery layouts to better show off portraits of national figures that dates back to the Tudors.
Concerning High stakes in the 2020 Census (Editorial, Jan. 2): What difference does it make if our states congressional delegation shrinks from 53 to 52 because a reduced population count in the upcoming census, so long as the Electoral College and not the popular vote continues to determine our nations presidential elections?

The 2000 and 2016 contests gave us chief executives who were put in office due to an antiquated Electoral College system that does not reflect voter preferences. I would concur that correct population counts are needed for the correct future allocation of federal aid dollars. However, the future determination of presidential elections should reflect 21st century realities, not 18th century systems.

Terrence Williams, Berkeley

Deflector in chief

Well, he finally did it! We are now realizing our worst fears as the deflector in chief actually is starting a war to redirect attention away from his impending impeachment trial.

While no decent human being will mourn the death of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, this action was just another strategically useful step in this administrations continued attempts to provoke Iran into a politically expedient war. This mob boss will stoop to anything to protect himself from being brought to justice, and if American lives and treasure are lost as a result, so be it. To my conservative friends who will grasp at anything to defend this criminal in plain sight, particularly by rubbing their hands together as their stock portfolios flourish, your leader is successfully destabilizing the Middle East and world oil prices will follow. While President Trumps domestic, energy-producing buddies will again reap benefits and will be pocketing another windfall, I would bet other economic factors will suffer mightily. Enjoy your portfolios while you can, youre in for a rough ride.

Cory David, South San Francisco

Tarnish on California

So California is about to lose at least one congressional seat, and one electoral college vote, as a result of the 2020 census. A big reason for this is the outmigration of California residents who have had it up to their eyeballs with the traffic and high taxes. The Golden State is tarnished and no amount of polishing will ever restore its luster.

The climate and natural wonders of the state are hardly worth the misery, especially for retirees and people whose jobs cant possibly pay enough to make living here really viable. Its a shame, because being a Californian is a great thing.

George Mathews, Antioch

War with Iran?

Regarding Top Iranian general dies in U.S. air strike (Page One, Jan. 3): The killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani further strains our relations with Iran and will probably further destabilize the Middle East. I suspect the beginnings of the present precarious situation dates back to President Trumps abandoning of the 2015 nuclear deal whereby Iran agreed to limit its ability to produce a nuclear weapon, in exchange for the removal of various sanctions imposed on it internationally. After the 2016 election, Trump reneged on the Iran nuclear deal even though Iran was abiding by the deal.

The Iranians are suffering deeply under the Trump administrations tightening financial choke hold. In Iran, the leadership convened an emergency security meeting. And the countrys supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a statement calling for three days of public mourning and then retaliation. Has Trump bungled us into a war with Iran? Stay tuned.

Ralph Stone, San Francisco

Escaping prosecution

Concerning Ex-Nissan boss flees (News of the Day, Jan. 1): So former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn, who was free on bail while awaiting trial in Japan for financial misconduct allegations, fled to Lebanon, claiming he would no longer be held hostage by a rigged Japanese justice system where guilt is presumed, discrimination is rampant, and basic human rights are denied? Perhaps these very words will be spoken by a certain former U.S. president in 2021 if he faces campaign violation charges and flees to Russia to escape prosecution.

Hector Maldonado, Pinole

Legalize pot nationwide

At the start of this new year, congrats to Illinois for joining California and nine other U.S. states for legalizing the sale and use of recreational marijuana. This action will help to reduce the number of criminal convictions and jail sentences for those charged with possession of pot, and allow law enforcement to focus on more serious problems, like gun violence.

One century ago, America began a Prohibition era that tried to stop the sale of liquor across the nation. It was both unsuccessful and unpopular, and led to bootlegging and the rise of speakeasies. In 2020, this nation should reflect on that failed social experiment and move to legalize the sale and use of recreational marijuana in all 50 states.

Erica Pappalardo, Burlingame

Presidents taxes

I can hardly wait to see President Trumps taxes. Not only will we see how much he is really worth, we can see his medical expenses and perhaps get an inkling of his true health condition. We can also see his charitable contributions and to whom he donated to. It should be fascinating. What is he worried about the most, the medical, the charitable or his true wealth?
Chloe McDaid,pictured with daughter Melodie, from Wallasey, Merseyside, was found unresponsive by her father. Pictured a week before her 25th birthday

A suicidal mother of an eight-month-old baby girl tried to get medical help one week before she took her own life.

Chloe McDaid, from Wallasey, Merseyside, hanged herself at home and was found unresponsive by her father days after she was discharged from hospital.

The 24-year-old mother to Melodie, had told medics she was suicidal and had sought help with her mental health as far back as 2011, an inquest into her death heard.

Liverpool Coroner's Court heard how Ms McDaid took her own life shortly after having an argument with her partner on June 26.

Despite the best efforts of her father and paramedics to conduct CPR, Ms McDaid was placed in an induced coma and died later at Arrowe Park Hospital on July 2 2019.

Ms McDaid was described as a 'fantastic mum' and 'the kind of person who would light up a room with her smile'

Ms McDaid, who worked as a barmaid, was diagnosed with ADHD and moderate depression and had sought help for anxiety.

She had been described as a 'fantastic mum' and 'the kind of person who would light up a room with her smile'.

The mother-of-one visited hospital on November 23 2018 for help with depression and anxiety.

The court heard how Ms McDaid had attended appointments in March last year but subsequently missed later appointments in April.

On June 3, Ms McDaid had sought more help and was referred to Bowmere Hospital, Chester.

Despite saying she'd had suicidal thoughts, she was discharged on June 11 and then seen by medics again on June 14.

Her family questioned why she was only discharged after one week and said: 'It takes more than a week to even get over a cold.'

Ms McDaid (left and right), who worked as a barmaid, was diagnosed with ADHD and moderate depression. She had sought help with her mental health as far back as 2011, an inquest into her death heard

Det Supt Int Phil Atkinson said there was also evidence that Ms McDaid had self-harmed.

Investigating Manager for Brackendale Ward at Bowmere Hospital Sam Hare said an investigation had been undertaken into Ms Mcdaid's death.

Ms Hare told the court when Ms McDaid was first admitted it was indicated this would be for a short period of time.

Ms McDaid was placed in an induced coma and died later at Arrowe Park Hospital on July 2 2019

After a thorough evaluation, it was deemed by a multi-disciplinary team that Ms McDaid was ready to be discharged and receive care from other mental health professionals at home.

She said: 'There were three assessments carried out while she was on the ward.

'During these assessments, the main cause of concern raised by Ms McDaid was social and financial issues.'

She added when Ms McDaid was discharged 'she was adamant she had no intention of harming herself'.

Chloe's mother Amanda Boden asked: 'Why was she discharged after only one week when she said she was suicidal?

'Life is precious, so think hard about discharging someone.'

Concerns were also raised by Ms McDaid's family about her parents not being consulted during her discharge.

In regard to the family not being present in her discharge meeting, Ms Hare said this was 'unusual' and apologised to the family on behalf of the hospital and said it was 'below standards'.

Ms McDaid's family also questioned why their daughter was allowed to leave without a working phone.

Amanda Boden also asked: 'Why was our daughter discharged without a phone to contact anybody?

'She has been admitted to Bowmere because she was suicidal. Our daughter would still be here if she had someone to talk to.'

Ms Hare said Ms McDaid had been informed about the risks to personal property on the ward and had been told the protocol to replace a damaged phone.

Assistant Coroner Julie Golding said Ms Mcdaid's cause of death was asphyxiation caused by self-hanging.

Giving a narrative finding, she said: 'It's not possible to say if her death was anything other than a desperate cry for help.'

For confidential support in the UK call the Samaritans on 116123, visit a local Samaritans branch or click here for details.
A senior United States diplomat has called on IGAD countries to put pressure on the two main peace partners in South Sudan if they are to move forward with the formation of a Government of National Unity. This is according to a report published by the 'Sudan Tribune,' online.

Africa Service  Vatican City

Both President Salva Kiir and his main rival, Riek Machar were supposed to have formed a unity government by 12 November 2019. They asked for 100 days extension, which was granted.

There are growing echoes for more pressure to be exerted on the two leaders to make progress on negotiations and enter into a power-sharing arrangement.

50th day of the 100 days extension elapses without progress

The Sudan Tribune quotes the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of African Affairs, Tibor P. Nagy, calling for more pressure to be exerted on the two leaders. His call comes as South Sudan crossed the 50th day of the 100-days extension without any substantial progress.

IGAD secretariat should hold President Kiir and Dr Machar accountable and urge compromise, Tibor said. He further expressed his disappointment that contentious issues remain unresolved referring to the security arrangements and the number of states and their boundaries.

Peace deal must not unravel

With less than 50 days remaining before the February extension deadline, there are concerns that if a Government of National Unity is not formed, the peace deal could start to unravel.

The fighting has generally stopped

So far, the September 2018 peace deal seems to be holding. At least in terms of the ceasefire, South Sudan has relatively remained quiet. The two warring parties have stopped fighting and people are slowly regaining their freedom of movement.

The worst-case scenario would be a unity government that is dysfunctional and then falls apart.

IGAD states need to save the peace deal

There are now calls that the heads of state of the regional group, IGAD, which has been helping mediate between South Sudans warring parties, takes a more hands-on approach. In the interests of peace, IGAD should shun any divisions within the bloc.

If the peace agreement is to be saved, President Museveni of Uganda; Kenyan President Uhuru; Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy and the new Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok -all need to work together to pressure both President Kiir and his rival Machar to commit to a realistic power sharing arrangement.
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BAMAKO, Mali - Malis armed forces say five soldiers were killed and four others were wounded when their convoy was bombed near the border with Mauritania.

Four vehicles were also destroyed in the attack by extremists Monday in Alatona, according to a statement.

Col. Maj. Diarran Kone said an investigation has been opened into who staged the attack.

Islamic extremists took over Malis north in 2012. France, Malis former colonial ruler, led a 2013 military operation that ousted them from their urban strongholds. Since then, however, the extremists roam through the open, desert areas of northern Mali.

Malis military has failed to stem the violence despite support from the French and a United Nations peacekeeping mission.

The extremist groups have pushed south into Malis more populated areas and into neighbouring Burkina Faso, staging deadly attacks.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP)  Tens of thousands of mourners accompanied a casket carrying the remains of the slain Gen. Qassem Soleimani through two major Iranian cities Sunday as part of a grand funeral procession across the Islamic Republic for the commander killed by an American drone strike amid soaring tensions between Iran and the U.S.

President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb 52 sites in Iran if it retaliates by attacking Americans. The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia separately warned Americans of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks. Meanwhile, Iran vowed to take an even-greater step away from its unraveling nuclear deal with world powers as a response to Soleimani's slaying.

The U.S. drone strike killing Soleimani in Iraq Friday escalated the crisis between Tehran and Washington after months of trading attacks and threats that put the wider Middle East on edge. The conflict is rooted in Trump pulling out of Iran's atomic accord.

Iran has promised harsh revenge" for the U.S. attack, which shocked Iranians across all political lines. Many saw Soleimani as a pillar of the Islamic Republic at a moment when it is beset by U.S. sanctions and recent anti-government protests.

Retaliation for Soleimani could potentially come through the proxy forces which he oversaw as the head of an elite unit within the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. Soleimani's longtime deputy Esmail Ghaani already has taken over as the Quds Force's commander.

Late Saturday, a series of rockets launched in Baghdad fell inside or near the Green Zone, which houses government offices and foreign embassies, including the U.S. Embassy.

Trump wrote on Twitter afterward that the U.S. had already targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture.

Trump did not identify the targets but added that they would be HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.

Story continues

The 1954 Hague Convention, of which the U.S. is a party, bars any military from direct hostilities against cultural property." However, such sites can be targeted if they have been re-purposed and turned into a legitimate military objective," according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Iran, home to 24 UNESCO World Heritage sites, has in the past reportedly guarded the sprawling tomb complex of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with surface-to-air missiles.

After thousands in Baghdad on Saturday mourned Soleimani and others killed in the strike, authorities flew the general's body to the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz. An honor guard stood by early Sunday as mourners carried the flag-draped coffins of Soleimani and other Guard members off the tarmac.

The caskets then moved slowly through streets choked with mourners wearing black, beating their chests and carrying posters with Soleimani's portrait. Demonstrators also carried red Shiite flags, which traditionally both symbolize the spilled blood of someone unjustly killed and call for their deaths to be avenged.

Officials brought Soleimani's body to Ahvaz, a city that was a focus of fighting during the bloody, 1980-88 war between Iraq and Iran in which the general slowly grew to prominence. After that war, Soleimani joined the Guard's newly formed Quds, or Jersualem, Force, an expeditionary force that works with Iranian proxy forces in countries like Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Authorities then took Soleimani's body to Mashhad later Sunday. His remains will go to Tehran and Qom on Monday for public mourning processions, followed by his hometown of Kerman for burial Tuesday.

This marks the first time Iran honored a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Khomeini received such a processional with his death in 1989. Soleimani on Monday will lie in state at Tehran's famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him.

Soleimani was the architect of Iran's regional policy of mobilizing militias across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, including in the war against the Islamic State group. He was also blamed for attacks on U.S. troops and American allies going back decades.

Though it's unclear how or when Iran may respond, any retaliation was likely to come after three days of mourning declared in both Iran and Iraq.

Iranian officials planned to meet Sunday night to discuss taking a fifth step away from its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, one that could be even greater than planned, Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi told journalists.

In the world of politics, all developments are interconnected," Mousavi said.

Iran previously has broken limits of its enrichment, its stockpiles and its centrifuges, as well as restarted enrichment at an underground facility.

After the airstrike early Friday, the U.S.-led coalition has scaled back operations and boosted security and defensive measures at bases hosting coalition forces in Iraq, a coalition official said on condition of anonymity according to regulations.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has dispatched another 3,000 troops to neighboring Kuwait, the latest in a series of deployments in recent months as the standoff with Iran has worsened. Protesters held demonstrations in dozens of U.S. cities Saturday over Trump's decisions to kill Soleimani and deploy more troops to the Mideast.

In a thinly veiled threat, one of the Iran-backed militias, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous, called on Iraqi security forces to stay at least a kilometer (0.6 miles) away from U.S. bases starting Sunday night. However, U.S. troops are invariably based in Iraqi military posts alongside local forces.

The Iranian parliament on Sunday opened with lawmakers in unison chanting: Death to America! Parliament speaker Ali Larijani compared Soleimani's killing to the 1953 CIA-backed coup that cemented the shah's power and to the U.S. Navy's shootdown of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988 that killed 290 people. He also described American officials as following the law of the jungle.

Mr. Trump! This is the voice of Iranian nation. Listen! Larijani said as lawmakers chanted.

A spokesman for Iran's armed forces, Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, likewise threatened the U.S. by saying Iran and the resistance front will decide the time, place and way revenge will be carried out.

Iraq's parliament is meeting for an emergency session Sunday. Its government has come under mounting pressure to expel the 5,200 American troops who are based in the country to help prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group.

The U.S. has ordered all citizens to leave Iraq and temporarily closed its embassy in Baghdad, where Iran-backed militiamen and their supporters had recently staged two days of violent protests in which they breached the compound. Britain and France have warned their citizens to avoid or strictly limit travel in Iraq, as London said it would begin escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Oman, long an interlocutor between Iran and the West, urged Tehran and Washington on Sunday to pursue dialogue.

No one was hurt in the embassy protests, which came in response to U.S. airstrikes that killed 25 Iran-backed militiamen in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. blamed the militia for a rocket attack that killed a U.S. contractor in northern Iraq.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Aya Batrawy in Dubai, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Zeina Karam and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut and Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.
Pedestrians walk past the entrance to the probation office on Market Street in Philadelphia. Read more

It took more than a decade after the legislature issued it a mandate, but Pennsylvanias Commission on Sentencing has finally instituted guidelines for resentencing people who violate their probation.

What the commission came up with  a rule of thumb setting the guidelines, in most cases, back to the options available to the judge at initial sentencing  will give judges a common starting point and rein in outliers, said the commissions executive director, Mark Bergstrom.

It tends to bring sentences closer to the middle rather than a lot of extreme sentences, he said.

But given that those guidelines will in many cases call for jail or prison time, it could also result in many judges imposing far harsher sentences on probation violators than they had in the past. In Pennsylvania, more than 30,000 people face resentencing each year after their probation is revoked.

That could result in an increase in mass incarceration, said Sangeeta Prasad, a fellow from the Stoneleigh Foundation working with the Philadelphia District Attorneys Office on probation issues. This would push a significant portion of the judges to consider a higher sentence.

The commission spent the last decade building a data-collection system and analyzing current sentencing practices, according to Bergstrom. It found that, for the lowest-level crimes, judges departed from the guidelines to impose harsher penalties at resentencing more than half the time.

Thats one reason Greg Rowe, legislative director for the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, thinks the guidelines will pave the way for more consistent outcomes and ultimately reduce incarceration. Given that weve had no real structure up until this point, I think its a good step in the right direction, he said.

But at a hearing on the resentencing guidelines last summer, Helene Placey, executive director of the County Chief Adult Probation & Parole Officers Association, questioned whether that analysis was sufficient.

 READ MORE: The Probation Trap: Lenient sentences in Pa. often have harsh consequences

Its time to take a step back and request the Sentencing Commission members not rush into adopting policies that have no data to support the proposals, Placey testified.

She particularly decried an aspect of the plan that increases the guideline sentence for any violation that involves a new criminal conviction, calling it very arbitrary and capricious in nature  because it doesnt take into account the seriousness of the offense or the rehabilitative needs of the defendant.

Prasad argued that it also may create a false distinction  for instance, between a person in addiction who tests positive for drugs and one caught with those same drugs and convicted of possession.

Both of them are relapses which every substance-abuse expert will tell you is part of the trajectory for a user or an addict, she said. To her mind, in the case of either violation, incarceration is not a helpful response. It sort of flies in the face of common sense," she said. "Putting people in jail constantly for them will actually increase recidivism and decrease public safety.

State law prohibits the incarceration of probation violators unless they have committed a new crime, are likely to commit a crime, or have acted out so flagrantly that jail is essential to vindicate the authority of the court. In some cases, incarceration will now become the recommended sentence. Judges will have to explain on the record their reasons for departing from the guidelines.

Lawmakers in Harrisburg have over the last year debated comprehensive probation-reform proposals that would greatly reduce the number of people on probation and limit jail stays for noncriminal violations to just a few weeks or months. However, those proposals have stalled under opposition from prosecutors, judges, and Republican lawmakers.

As that debate raged, little attention was paid to the draft resentencing guidelines the commission had published.

Bergstrom said that, even after a decade of consideration, what the commission came up with was more or less an inevitability.

The question would be: What would be the alternative? he said. Were saying just go back to where you started. Im not sure what the alternative would be.
A charity which transformed the educational prospects of deprived black youngsters is to turn its attention to struggling white working class boys.

Generating Genius founder Tony Sewell has promised to tackle the victim mentality being replicated by poor white pupils.

His move comes after figures showed they are the underdogs of the education system, doing worst at GCSEs and the least likely group to go to university. Mr Sewell said he had a proven track record using methods that encourage the youngsters to better themselves.

Generating Genius has promised to tackle the 'victim mentality' being replicated by poor white pupils. It comes after figures showed they have the poorest performance in GCSEs and the least likely to go to university

He added: Every student with Generating Genius gets to a top university more or less.

Their only headache at the end of it is which job offer to accept.

Weve created an experience for black children that goes against the norm, by using a positive methodology.

Mr Sewell, the son of Jamaican immigrants, said: There can be a victim mentality, the same rhetoric around white boys that there used to be around black boys.

Charity founder Tony Sewell has helped improve the educational prospects of poor black pupils by using 'positive methodology'. He was supported by Boris Johnson, when he was London mayor, to mentor children in areas such as Hackney and Lambeth

We dont stand for that. We demand the best and say you can be the best. Our method is to find the diamonds in the area and use them to captain the ship to drive the others forward.

He was supported by Boris Johnson when London mayor to mentor children in areas such as Hackney and Lambeth.

This work in the capital will continue and Mr Sewell hopes for extra backing from Whitehall to expand and help white youngsters in northern towns such as Dewsbury, Bolsover and Wakefield.

Only a quarter of white working class boys achieves five good GCSE grades.

And only three per cent of Oxford students come from this group, a report from the National Education Opportunities Network revealed last year. In contrast many children of immigrants excel at school and go on to university.

It comes just a week after Winchester College (pictured) was condemned for turning down scholarships of 1.2million to help poor white boys

Last week two leading public schools were condemned for turning down scholarships of 1.2million to help poor white boys.

Winchester College and Dulwich College snubbed bequests from Professor Sir Bryan Thwaites, 96, because they feared breaking equality laws.

Sir Bryan, a mathematician who attended both schools on scholarships, said he wanted to help address underperformance of working class white children.

Last year, controversial rap star Stormzy set up scholarships exclusively to help black students attend Cambridge University in a move lauded by the institution.

Yet Sir Bryans similar offer was rejected by Winchester College in Hampshire and Dulwich College in south-east London.

Winchester said it did not see how such an offer could ever be compatible with its values.

London mayor Sadiq Khan believed Winchester and Dulwich College in south-east London should have accepted as long as it was targeted towards those who needed a helping hand

Yesterday, it emerged London mayor Sadiq Khan believed the schools should have accepted as long as it was targeted towards those who needed a helping hand. He said Sir Bryans intentions were noble and good. Trevor Phillips, former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, also suggested the decision was wrong.

He said: One state school has already accepted Thwaites offer. Ironically, but not surprisingly, its headmaster is black. Bad luck, Dulwich College and Winchester.

Under the 2010 Equality Act positive discrimination, giving someone preferential treatment due to a certain characteristic, is unlawful.

But there is an exemption for trying to help someone to overcome a disadvantage that is down to a characteristic, such as race, which is called positive action.

We tell them you can be the best
The HRD Ministry on Monday called an urgent meeting with the JNU administration, including the vice-chancellor, over the violence that took place on the campus the previous day, officials said.

The ministry had on Sunday sought an immediate report from JNU Registrar Pramod Kumar after the violence broke out and students and teachers were attacked.

There was heavy deployment of police on Monday outside the Shashtri Bhawan here which houses the HRD Ministry.

"A detailed report has been sent to the HRD Ministry about the sequence of events. The top administration officials are at the Ministry to provide all details leading to present situation," JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar told PTI.

Violence broke out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.

Many were admitted to All India Institute of Medical Sciences here with injuries and discharged on Monday. JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh suffered a head injury.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the ABVP blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.

Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' had urged JNU students to maintain the dignity of the university and peace on the campus.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
From Colum McCann and Hilary Mantel to Nick Hornby and Rachael English, there are plenty interesting reads on the way over the next few months, writes Marjorie Brennan.

1. American Dirt

Jeanine Cummins (January)

A suspenseful, harrowing and heartbreaking exploration of the human cost behind the border crisis, this timely novel tells the story of Lydia who must flee her comfortable life in Mexico with her young son and join the terrifying la bestia freight train in search of a new life in the US.

2. Motherwell

Deborah Orr (January)

Sadly, this much-anticipated memoir will serve as an epitaph of sorts for Deborah Orr who died last October, aged just 57.

Orr blazed a trail through Londons journalism scene and in more recent years was a fierce and funny presence on social media. This reflection on her youth inScotland is characteristically piercing, funny and honest.

3. Apeirogon

Colum McCann (February)

McCanns acclaimed back catalogue, including the sublime Let The Great World Spin, means this book comes with a guarantee of quality, but the advance word on this novel suggests a level of ambition we may not have encountered yet from the Dublin native.

It explores the Palestine-Israel conflict through the unlikely friendship of two men from either side.

Eimear McBride (February)

Expect something out of the ordinary from the author (pictured above) of the acclaimed A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing.

McBrides third novel follows a nameless womans journey through a series of hotel rooms, which reflect aspects of her lifeand self.

6. The Mirror And The Light

Hilary Mantel (March)

Theres eagerly anticipated and then theres the maniacal fervour that comes with the arrival of a new book by Hilary Mantel.

Mantels sweeping series on Thomas Cromwell already encompasses bestsellers Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror and The Light, out in March, deals with Cromwells final years.

Spoiler: it doesnt end well for him.

7. A Thousand Moons

Sebastian Barry (March)

Barrys Days Without End entranced readers with its lyrical rendition of the American West and two men who fall in love amid the carnage of the native American genocide.

John Cole and Thomas McNulty return in AThousand Moons, in which Barry continues his exploration of identity and dislocation.

8. My Dark Vanessa

Kate Elizabeth Russell (March)

In this Me-Too era take on Lolita, the titular protagonist must re-evaluate her schoolgirl relationship with a teacher when new information comes to light, almost two decades later.

An explosive and challenging read, this is sure to polarise readers as much as the Nabokov classic continues to do.

9. Our Little Cruelties

Liz Nugent (March)

Nugent is queen of the pacy page-turner and her latest is sure to be no different. Brothers Will, Brian and Luke are in constant competition growing up  a rivalry which ends up with one of them dead.

10. Exciting Times

Naoise Dolan (April)

The buzz has been building around this debut novel from Irish writer Dolan for quite a while, with the Sally Rooney comparisons flowing thick and fast.

Protagonist Ava teaches English to the children of the Hong Kong elite, while navigating her relationships with non-committal banker Julian and earnest lawyer Edith. Millennial cynicism smartly rendered.

11. As You Were

Elaine Feeney (April)

Feeney is one of Irelands brightest literary talents and her debuter novel comes with an inventive premise, featuring at its centre a young property developer with a terrifying secret which she confides to a magpie.

12. The Ratline

Philippe Sands (April)

Sands previous book, East West Street, interweaved the authors family origins in eastern Europe with the Nuremberg trials following World War II.

In this book, based on the gripping podcast of the same name, Sands tracks a Nazi provincial governor as he tries to escape justice after the war  helped by a growing friendship with the Nazis son,who still believes his father was a good man.

13. The Cutting Place

Jane Casey (April)

Casey is one of the leading proponents of Irelands flourishing crime fiction genre and has won a legion of devoted fans with her Maeve Kerrigan series.

In the latest instalment, the indefatigable detective sergeant tackles toxic masculinity and domestic abuse when she probes the murder of a young journalist.

14. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Suzanne Collins (May)

The taut and thrilling Hunger Games books were among the last decades top sellers, spawning a hugely successful movie franchise and launching the career of Jennifer Lawrence. In this prequel Collins revisits the world of Panem, 64 years before Katniss Everdeen took up her bow, and centres on the competitors of the 10th Hunger Games.

15. Nothing But Blue Sky

Kathleen MacMahon (May)

This is How It Ends by the Dublin-based former journalist was a deeply affecting and beautifully written meditation on grief and loss. In her latest novel, a husband discovers theres no such thing as a perfect marriage when he must confront his wifes secrets after her death.

16. Love

Roddy Doyle (May)

One of Irelands best-loved writers returns with this humorous and poignant examination of friendship and the meaning of love. Former drinking buddies Davy and Joe meet up for a pub crawl as old memories resurface to comfort and haunt them.

17. The Lying Life of Adults

Elena Ferrante (June)

Speculation continues to swirl over the actual identity of the author but die hard fans will only be interested in getting their hands on this English translation of Ferrantes latest novel, which was published in her home country of Italy in November, with fans queuing up to buy copies at the stroke of midnight.Reviews suggest readers wont be disappointed.

18. Curtis Sittenfeld (July)

Details such as the title of Sittenfelds new book are thin on the ground, but that wont matter to the many fans of her finely drawn portraits of contemporary American life, from Prep to Sisterland.

What we do know is that the new book takes Hillary Clinton as its inspiration; this echoes the criminally under-rated American Wife, which was based on the life of Laura Bush.

19. Just Like You

Nick Hornby (September)

Hornby may now be better known as a screenwriter in some quarters  he adapted Brooklyn and Wild for the screen  but his first novel in five years will kindle interest among those who fell in love with the effortless charm of his earlier books such as HIgh Fidelity.

Just Like You is being flagged as another astute analysis of relationships, but with an added layer of complexity added to the mix: the swirl of the Brexit referendum forms the background to the narrative.

20. Ghosts

Dolly Alderton (October)

The Times columnist and podcasters witty memoir Everything I Know About Love was a huge word-of-mouth hit, so expectations for her first novel will be high.

It follows food writer Nina, whose huge success online is not mirrored in her increasingly fragile reality.
By Richard Read and Sarah Parvini, Los Angeles Times

SEATTLE  Mona Zabihian was on her way back to Washington after a Persian pop concert in Canada late Saturday night when she and four other Iranian Americans were pulled aside at the border. As their van slowed at the checkpoint, the U.S. citizens were asked a series of standard questions. Then they were given a slip and told to go inside, she said Sunday.

The 27-year-old said she waited for about an hour before officials called for her questioning.

They wanted to know the names of all my immediate family members, their birth dates, their location and their occupation. They asked when was the last time I visited Iran. When I asked regarding my boyfriend, they said since he wasnt born in Iran they didnt even need to question him, said Zabihian, who was born in Iran and now lives in Washington. Her boyfriend is also of Iranian descent, she said, but was born in Germany.

More than 60 Iranians and Iranian Americans were questioned Saturday as they tried to reenter the U.S. through the Peace Arch Border Crossing to Blaine, Wash., the Washington-state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said. Some were subjected to delays of several hours and asked numerous questions concerning their political views and allegiances, according to accounts the organization received.

The reports came as the United States and other countries tightened security after the U.S. killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad on Friday. The National Iranian American Council was checking reports of similar questioning by immigration officers at other U.S. points of entry.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency spokesman said in a statement issued Sunday that social media posts that CBP is detaining Iranian Americans and refusing their entry into the U.S. because of their country of origin are false.

But agency spokesman Mike Friel attributed increased wait times at the Blaine entry point to higher levels of security imposed due to the current threat environment. Reports that the agency had issued a national directive to border agents to detain Iranian Americans and refuse their entry were untrue, he added.

These reports are extremely troubling, Masih Fouladi, executive director of the American-Islamic councils Washington chapter, said in a news release Sunday.

Ryan Costello, policy director for the National Iranian American Council, said the organization has been hearing from members of Congress and social media of prolonged questioning of Iranians and Iranian Americans.

Apparently theres a room full of people, said Costello, after speaking Sunday with a man who said he had spent several hours in a waiting room at the border in Surrey, near Vancouver. A person came and was asked where he was born. He said Iran, and so he was led into this room.

Costello said there was interest in questioning people of Iranian heritage on a range of different issues, from basic family information to whether individuals served in military in Iran and what their thoughts are of the current geopolitical crisis.

Costello said that the naturalized U.S. citizen whom he spoke with said he answered the questions, and after further questioning, was eventually released.

A lot of people are shocked that this is happening, and so quickly, Costello said.

He noted previous occasions when U.S. immigration officials appeared to tighten restrictions after increased tensions with Iran. In August, about 20 Iranian students who had planned on starting graduate studies in fields such as computer science and engineering had their U.S. visas revoked.

There is a kind of direct link weve seen, that when tensions spike with Iran, Iranian Americans and Iranians with visas are going to be increasingly targeted for questioning and harassment, Costello said.

Enoka Herat, immigrant rights counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union in Seattle, said Sunday that her organization had also received reports concerning questioning of people of Iranian heritage at the Blaine border crossing. It seems that American citizens are being targeted because of their ancestry, she said. Weve seen that historically that doesnt bode well.

Friel, the CBP spokesman, said in his statement that the agency does not discriminate based on religion, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation. He said that the agency was operating with an enhanced posture at ports of entry to safeguard national security while protecting civil rights and liberties.

At the Blaine entry point on Saturday, Friel said, some travelers experienced wait times of up to four hours due to increased volume and reduced staff during the holiday season. He said that processing times result from the current circumstances, including staffing levels, volume of traffic and threat posture.

Zabihian said she waited for more than five hours before her group was released, adding that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers were friendly.

Among those sitting alongside her at the Blaine port of entry were children and pregnant women, she said. Parents curled up on the floor to get rest, anxious for their release.

The border officers were understanding of this horrible situation and did their best to address the sheer volume of Iranian-born U.S. citizens that were being detained, she said. U.S. citizens should not have been subjected to this, regardless of where they were born.
Union Home Minister and BJP president Amit Shah on Monday accused the AAP government in Delhi of misleading the people for five years and said after the February 8 assembly polls, a new dispensation will take over and accelerate development in the national capital.

In a series of tweets, Shah also alleged the AAP government made only promises throughout its tenure and now in the last three months, public money was being spent on advertisements for its announcements.

"I am confident that through this festival of democracy, the government led by a party, which misled people for five years and gave hollow promises, will be defeated and a government will be formed under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that can fulfil the people's aspirations," he said.

Shah said the people of Delhi are still looking for free Wi-Fi, 15 lakh CCTV cameras, new colleges and hospitals, as promised by the AAP government.

Welcoming the announcement of the polls, Shah said this election will lay the foundation for accelerating development in Delhi.

"I hope that the people of Delhi will vote in large numbers and create a new record," he said.

The elections to the 70-member Delhi Assembly will take place on February 8 and results will be declared on February 11, the Election Commission announced on Monday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Barge Design Solutions, Inc., Community Fund awarded over $32,000 to various organizations local to the firms regional offices. One of these grants was awarded to the Chattanooga Area Food Bank for $5,040.Serving 20 counties in Southeast Tennessee and Northwest Georgia, the Chattanooga Area Food Bank seeks to lead a network of partners in eliminating hunger and promoting better nutrition throughout their region. This grant will specifically support their Sack Pack Program, an initiative to provide children with nutritious food over each of the 32 weekends in the school year.The Food Banks Sack Packs are provided to students who lack consistent access to nutritious food and are therefore identified as food insecure by guidance counselors, principals, teachers and other professionals at their schools.Each Sack Pack includes roughly two-and-a-half pounds of balanced, nutritionally-sound food that follows the USDA My Plate recommendations. The Community Fund grant will provide Sack Packs for 75 students throughout the course of one school year.Pat Moore, project manager at Barge, nominated the Chattanooga Area Food Bank for this grant, and shares, In southeast Tennessee and northwest Georgia, one in five children struggles with hunger and may go to bed hungry tonight. Many children who are enrolled in free and reduced school meal programs don't know where their next meal will come from once school lets out for the weekend. The Sack Pack program helps to address their needs and provides nutritious food to help bridge the gap from Friday to Monday when school is out. This grant will help to provide 2,400 Sack Packs to children at risk for hunger during the 2019-2020 school year."Barge Design Solutions, Inc., is committed to caring for the communities they live, work and serve in," officials said. "The Community Fund was established to support these efforts and intentionally foster the inherent spirit of generosity across the company and employees."
Ahead of a Jersey Mikes Subs opening this week, the restaurant is handing out coupons.

On Jan. 8, the fast casual restaurant will open at 6301 Grayson Road in Swatara Township. To help spread the word about the opening, Jersey Mikes is circulating 7,500 coupons good toward a regular sub with a $2 contribution to Four Diamonds.

The promotion runs Jan. 8-12.

"We are thrilled to be joining the Swatara community in Harrisburg, said co-owner Matt Patterson in a press statement. Customers have given us great feedback and we hope all are looking forward to the opening of this location. We are also, once again, excited to be partnering with Four Diamonds in their quest to eliminate childhood cancer.

Patterson and his wife, Kristie, operate several Jersey Mike restaurants in the Harrisburg area, including one that opened in October at 25 N. 32nd St. in Camp Hill.

READ MORE: Weis Markets closing another store in Dauphin County

Jersey Mikes is known for slicing meats and cheeses as customers place their orders. Sandwiches are served on bread baked on-site. Order Mikes Way for onions, lettuce, tomato, spices and the juice, a blend of olive oil and red wine vinegar.

The chain dates to 1956 when Peter Cancro opened a sub shop at Point Pleasant, New Jersey, on the Jersey Shore. It now has 2,000 restaurants open and under development nationwide.

The restaurant will be open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week. The phone number is 717-695-9759.

Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.
Prayers at Soleimanis funeral in Tehran, which will later move to his southern home city of Kerman, were led by Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Dubai: Tens of thousands of Iranians thronged the streets of Tehran on Monday for the funeral of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani who was killed in a US air strike last week and his daughter said his death would bring a dark day for the United States.

Crazy Trump, dont think that everything is over with my fathers martyrdom, Zeinab Soleimani said in her address broadcast on state television after US President Donald Trump ordered Fridays strike that killed the top Iranian general.

Iran has promised to avenge the killing of Soleimani, the architect of Irans drive to extend its influence across the region and a national hero among many Iranians, even many of those who did not consider themselves devoted supporters of the Islamic Republics clerical rulers. The scale of the crowds in Tehran shown on television mirrored the masses that gathered in 1989 for the funeral of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In response to Irans warnings, Trump has threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites, including cultural targets, if Tehran attacks Americans or US assets, deepening a crisis that has heightened fears of a major Middle East conflagration.

The coffins of the Iranian general and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was also killed in Fridays attack on Baghdad airport, were passed across the heads of mourners massed in central Tehran, many of them chanting Death to America.

One of the Islamic Republics major regional goals, namely to drive US forces out of neighbouring Iraq, came a step closer on Sunday when the Iraqi parliament backed a recommendation by the prime minister for all foreign troops to be ordered out. Despite the internal and external difficulties that we might face, it remains best for Iraq on principle and practically, said Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who resigned in November amid anti-government protests.

Iraqs rival Shiite leaders, including ones opposed to Iranian influence, have united since Fridays attack in calling for the expulsion of US troops. Esmail Qaani, the new head of the Quds Force, the Revolutionary Guards unit in charge of activities abroad, said Iran would continue Soleimanis path and said the only compensation for us would be to remove America from the region.

Allies at Funeral

Prayers at Soleimanis funeral in Tehran, which will later move to his southern home city of Kerman, were led by Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Soleimani was widely seen as the second most powerful figure in Iran behind Khamenei.

The funeral was attended by some of Irans allies in the region, including Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Palestinian group Hamas who said: I declare that the martyred commander Soleimani is a martyr of Jerusalem.

Adding to tensions, Iran said it was taking another step back from commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers, a pact from which the United States withdrew in 2018.

Washington has since imposed tough sanctions on Iran, describing its policy as maximum pressure and saying it wanted to drive down Iranian oil exports - the main source of government revenues - to zero.

Talking to reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to Washington from Florida on Sunday, Trump stood by his remarks to include cultural sites on his list of potential targets, despite drawing criticism from US politicians. Theyre allowed to kill our people. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesnt work that way, Trump said.

Democratic critics of the Republican president have said Trump was reckless in authorising the strike, and some said his comments about targeting cultural sites amounted to threats to commit war crimes. Many asked why Soleimani, long seen as a threat by US authorities, had to be killed now.

Trump also threatened sanctions against Iraq and said that if US troops were required to leave the country, Iraqs government would have to pay Washington for the cost of a very extraordinarily expensive air base there.

He said if Iraq asked US forces to leave on an unfriendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like theyve never seen before ever. Itll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.
Spains rural regions have lost 28 percent of their populations in the past 50 years.

Madrid, Spain  Sitting 2,000 metres above sea level on the southern edge of the province of Teruel, the Javalambre astrological observation station is said to offer one of the clearest night skies in Europe for stargazers.

But cast your eyes back down to earth, and there is a grim reason for Javalambres much-appreciated dearth of light pollution.

For decades now, Teruels population has been draining away, and in 2017 some parts had sunk to an average of 1.63 inhabitants per square kilometre  lower than that of Lapland in Sweden, internationally famous for being one of Europes most remote regions.

And it is not just Teruel. Spains rural depopulation crisis has reached a point where five of its regions  Aragon, Castilla y Leon, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura and La Rioja make up 53 percent of its territory, but now have only 15 percent of its residents.

In the past 50 years, Spains rural regions have lost 28 percent of their population, and are now popularly known as la Espana vacia  empty Spain. In Teruel, part of Aragon, with a drop in population of nine percent in the past decade alone, the loss has been particularly noticeable.

Its a real environmental, human and historic problem  a disaster for the whole country, Tomas Guitarte tells Al Jazeera.





In Novembers elections, Guitarte became the first MP to represent a Spanish political association specifically created to fight rural depopulation. It is named Teruel Existe [Teruel Exists].

Although the industrial development plans forged by Spains former dictator, General Francisco Franco, kickstarted the rural depopulation process in the 1960s, Guitarte believes 40 years of state inaction in the democracy following Franco has meant it has not been reversed.

Recently when I met the king, I reminded him how back when, as crown prince, hed come to Teruel in 2000, he said. Wed told him the regions biggest problems were depopulation and the lack of infrastructure.

Nineteen years have passed and those problems become even more serious  and places like Teruel risk ending up completely empty.

Guitarte, whose own family left the region when he was aged 10  basically because they wanted us to live somewhere I could get some worthwhile academic qualifications, which was nearly impossible at the time in Teruel  says one of Francos ministers, Cruz Martinez Esteruelas, indicated the states underlying intentions towards his region back in 1974 when opening an education centre.

He more or less said that if it was the destiny of the people of Teruel to emigrate to benefit other regions, we should at least get some schooling before we left.

The emigration hasn't been natural, it was programmed, thanks to the state's lack of action, and despite Teruel's well-placed geographical location in the middle of Spain Tomas Guitarte

Thats whats most scandalous  the emigration hasnt been natural, it was programmed, thanks to the states lack of action, and despite Teruels well-placed geographical location in the middle of Spain.

That explains, too, why industrialisation back then took place on the Spanish coast, not inland in Teruel. After mining our natural resources, they shipped them away, in what was a form of colonialism, he said.

More than four decades later, the absence of state investment, transport infrastructure and employment opportunities has done nothing to slow down the depopulation process, with Guitarte pointing to the vast areas of Teruel  around 40 percent still lacking any kind of internet broadband coverage  as one example of ongoing institutional neglect.

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Should Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez finally succeed in forming a government this week, he has promised universal broadband across Spain, as well as stepping up rural health care.

But the most striking example of Teruels abandonment is surely the transport sector. Spain is famous for having the greatest length of high-speed railways per inhabitant in the world, but when Madrids high-speed train connection to Valencia was constructed in the early 2000s, pleas for it to go through Teruel fell on deaf ears.

As for the double-track railway offered in compensation, it has never been built, while a video published by Teruel Existe in 2018 of a tractor overtaking the provinces one ultra-slow train, travelling at around 30km/h, remains a Spanish social media hit.

Repeated requests for comment made to Spains Ministry of Transport and Development for this report were unsuccessful.

Sick of empty promises, Guitartes decision to head for Madrid as an MP followed an epiphany of sorts.

We realised we need to be in the seat of power to get anything done, he said. Weve had demonstrations, weve signed petitions. They havent worked. Getting into Parliament, with the backing of the people, feels like Teruels last throw of the dice.

Nearly 600 kilometres (370 miles) further south, in the tiny village of Torvizcon in Andalucia, 31-year-old physiotherapist Adrian Moron Sanchez tells Al Jazeera how the population here has plummeted since he was growing up.

When I was a kid there were 1,200 people in the village, Moron Sanchez says. Now that has halved to 673, and lots of people from the other villages round here tell me the same kind of drop in population has happened in their towns too.

Climate change, he says, accompanied by increasingly inclement weather and heavy frosts has played a part in the mass emigration because the almond and olive harvests have been bad, and a construction company went bust in 2012.

Its really sad, when I go back, I walk through streets which were once full of life, but now they are dying on their feet.

People want to stay in the villages; it's a question of how and what they get in return Maria Andres

Any plan to slow depopulation requires spending in isolated areas to help retain people in these small communities.

There needs to be far more investment and subsidies on offer from the regional government for small-scale, agroecological local businesses or crafts as a way of ensuring the benefits, financial or otherwise, remain in the villages, says Maria Andres, an activist with the Ecologistas en Accion pro-environmental movement.

She worked for 15 years on an extensive livestock project in Cuenca in central Spain, and says people want to stay in the villages; its a question of how and what they get in return.

In the battle against depopulation, some places like Pescueza, a tiny village of just 172 people in the western region of Extremadura, have developed a strategy called Quedate con nosotros (Stay with us) making it as attractive as possible to its senior citizens, who make up 65 percent of inhabitants.

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With a new day centre, special free vehicles for pensioners, railings on the slightest slope, even anti-slip paint, the village has seen an upturn not just in its senior citizens but across the generations.

No fewer than 14 children have been born in the village in the past seven years since the day centre opened  after 17 years without any births at all.

Our project would work well for smaller towns with populations of under 1,000, Andres Rodriguez, mayor of Pescueza, told Al Jazeera. With just 1.3 percent of Spains population living in villages of fewer than 500 people, [this] is where the biggest problem in Espana vacia is right now, he said. It would help them flourish again.

But central government policies attempting to halt the growth of Spains disappearing regions still appear sorely lacking, say activists.

Depopulation is a very serious problem for Spain; more important than the questions of Catalonia or the Basque Country  the areas involved [in the depopulation crisis] are more than half the countrys territory, concluded Guitarte.

The state itself has generated this problem of two Spains, the developed Spain and the empty Spain. Now we need some kind of political action by the state to redress the balance.
The victims of the world's most prolific serial rapist Reynhard Sinaga have revealed their struggles with coping with the sickening attacks, with most not even realising they had been assaulted before being told by police.

Reynhard Sinaga, 36, is believed to have attacked at least 195 men and filmed himself sexually violating them while they were unconscious in his Manchester flat.

The men who were attacked are mostly straight and none of them wanted to know the full details of what had happened to them after being contacted by police.

Two of the victims even attempted to kill themselves after police told them how Sinaga had raped them.

All but two of Sinaga's victims were unaware they had been sexually assaulted and prosecutors said that was because he used the potentially fatal 'chemsex' drug GHB to 'stupify' his victims to the point of coma.

Gay Christian Sinaga was jailed today for 159 offences committed from January 2015 to May 2017.

Police have linked Reynhard Sinaga to more than 190 potential victims in total - 70 of whom they have not yet been able to identify

A map of Manchester city centre shows where Sinaga's flat (in red) is located along with the nightclubs Factory and Fifth Avenue, which many of the complainants had earlier been to

In total, police have linked Sinaga to 195 potential victims - 70 of whom they have not yet been able to identify.

He went out in the early hours of the morning, hunting for lone, drunk young men around nightclubs near his flat.

The slightly-built Indonesian student posed as a Good Samaritan and offered his victims a floor to sleep on or promised them more drink, Manchester Crown Court heard.

None of his victims suspected the malevolent intentions of the 36-year-old mature student as he approached them in the street.

And none felt intimidated by Sinaga - slight in stature and friendly by appearance.

One said Sinaga was 'really nice' and 'looked after him' after he lost his friends and his phone battery had ran out.

'I want him to suffer for what he has done': Victims respond to the rapist's crimes A series of harrowing statements from different victims in the case of Reynhard Sinaga were given. Some victims told how their life had changed 'forever', while others said they wanted him to 'spend the rest of his life in prison'. A third has 'periods where I can't get up and face the day'. Here is what the victims said as they responded to the rapist's crimes: 'I felt numb; I was totally shocked, embarrassed, betrayed and very angry.'

'His actions were disgusting, unforgiveable, he has massively abused my trust in humanity.'

'The events of the night have a lasting impact on me, it affects my confidence in being able to trust people or to approach people in a normal public setting.'

'I was very anxious giving evidence, it was very traumatic for me because I knew I had to face up to reality of what had happened. I also knew I was going to get asked questions that would make the night a reality and that would haunt me.'

'I want Sinaga to spend the rest of his life in prison. Not only for what he has done to me but for what he has done to the other lads and the misery and stress he has caused them.'

'I remember the day the police contacted me, it is a day I will never forget because it changed my life forever.'

'I could recall the events of the evening the police were talking about but had no memory of any offences committed against me due to a complete lack of memory.'

'I know I have the support I need in place to help me no matter how long it takes.'

'I would like to thank the police, they couldn't have dealt with me any better.'

'I want Reyhnard Sinaga to suffer for what he has done to me and the other victims.'

'I don't think I will ever be OK with what has happened.'

'I have had the support of my ISVA from St. Mary's and I really could not have got through it without her. I have periods where I can't get up and face the day.'

'I wish the worse for him, I want him to feel the pain and sufferance I have felt. He has destroyed a part of my life.'

'No prison sentence is long enough for what he did to me.'

'I would like Sinaga to get an indefinite prison sentence because it has had such a big effect not only on my life but my friends and family and the other victims.'

'I have never been in such a bad place in my life and I didn't know how to get out of it. I was diagnosed with severe depression and put on anti-depressants, I also started counselling.'

'I will never forget the day the Police attended my home address. I did not know why they needed to see me, but I was devastated when I was told that I had been a victim of serious sexual offences, also that I have been drugged and the appalling sexual act was filmed.'

'I hope he never comes out of Prison and he rots in hell.'

'This assault has had a serious impact on my mental health and my relationships.'

'The perpetrator has taken a part of me that I will never get back, and deserves the largest sentence possible.'

'I will never forget the day the Police came to see me, I did not know why they needed to see me but I can say I was absolutely devastated to hear that I had been a victim of rape, after being drugged and this sexual act was filmed by a man, I now know to be Sinaga.' Advertisement

Another thought the defendant had acted as a Good Samaritan after Sinaga said he looked after him when he found him lying on the ground near a hotel.

One victim was so devastated to find out he had been raped that he tried to kill himself on Christmas Day.

Another was terrified nobody would believe him and that Sinaga would walk free.

A third- who uses a stoma for Crohns Disease - was so disturbed to find out he had been raped three times that he asked doctors to remove his colon.

One victim was raped seven times in eight hours.

Another was sedated, repeatedly raped and kept at his flat, on Princess Street in the city centre, for 15 hours.

Manchester Crown Court heard one complainant was sitting on the kerbside after the battery on his mobile phone was drained and he was approached by Sinaga.

The defendant invited him to his apartment to charge the device but instead went on to drug and sexually violate him on camera.

He too believed Sinaga had acted as a Good Samaritan and was grateful before he eventually learned the full horror of what had happened to him when the police called.

A third man fell victim to Sinaga's phone charge ruse as he attempted to flag down a taxi when he was unable to order an Uber journey.

Several of his victims felt guilty when they awoke the next day for troubling a stranger who they thought had provided them with somewhere to stay or for being sick in his flat.

Others felt they had undergone a 'weird experience' but none had any real concerns or suspicions, with one complainant telling the court: 'I thought briefly he might have done something, but I thought stuff like that doesn't happen.'

None of the victims, of whom 45 were heterosexual and 26 were students, when contacted by the police wanted to know the detail of what happened to them.

Two attempted to commit suicide as a result of severe depression.

A number of personal statements were read out in court on Monday from victims of offences which Sinaga was convicted of in the third and fourth trials.

One said: 'That night was just like any night out with my mates. What I didn't know was that there was a monster lurking in the background waiting to take advantage of my drunken state.

'I want Sinaga to acknowledge what he has done to me and show some remorse, but I doubt that will ever happen.'

Another victim said: 'I genuinely thought he had helped me. How wrong could I be?

'The day I gave evidence was the hardest day of my life.

'I have a message to you, Sinaga. I am not going to let your ruin my life. I am going to fulfil my career plans and live a happy, content life.'

Several said they had not told immediate family members of their ordeal, with one stating: 'I don't want them to view me as victim forever' and another saying he could not bear to tell his mother because of how much it would upset her.

Sinaga filmed the assaults on his mobile phone, and his victims later left the apartment unaware they had been violated.

He claimed many of the victims appeared to be asleep as they 'were playing dead' as he has sex with them.

Sinaga - who was condemned for showing no remorse - was born into a relatively wealthy family in Indonesia and arrived in the UK on a student visa in 2007 financed by his parents, before studying at Manchester and Leeds universities.

Police believe his offending could stretch back well over ten years, but Sinaga was convicted of 159 offences committed from January 2015 to May 2017 across four separate trials - with the case split up due to the number of victims involved.

Sinaga is believed to now be world's worst convicted rapist ahead of Joji Obara, 67, from Japan, who is known in the UK for killing British flight attendant Lucie Blackman in 2000 and is thought to have raped between 150 and 400 women.

The Crown Prosecution Service was forced to split the prosecution into four separate trials of 10 to 13 victims such were the numbers involved in the case.

Sinaga claimed the men consented to being recorded playing a sex game in which they pretended to be dead to fulfil his fantasies - a defence labelled 'preposterous' by prosecutor Iain Simkin as jurors saw footage of some victims snoring.

He was found guilty of a total of 159 offences committed between January 2015 and May 2017 - 136 counts of rape, 13 counts of sexual assault, eight counts of attempted rape and two counts of assault by penetration.

Sinaga (left) claimed the men consented to being recorded playing a sex game in which they pretended to be dead to fulfil his fantasies at his flat (right, where blood was seen on the door)

The front door and the hallway at the home of Sinaga, who has been jailed for life, is pictured

The living room at the home of Sinaga, who has been jailed at Manchester Crown Court for life

A large part of Sinaga's offending took place in the bedroom but some did take place in the living room. The final victim was raped in the bathroom before he woke up during the ordeal

Spirit bottles at Sinaga's flat are pictured. He is thought to have drugged the men when giving them a drink from his selection of alcohol

Many of the complainants had earlier been to the city centre nightclubs Factory and Fifth Avenue.

Sinaga's apartment, situated next to Factory in Princess Street, provided a perfect vantage point from which to identify his targets.

Prosecutor Iain Simkin told the court today that a common feature of many of the victims was the defendant's search for their social media details and that he was 'collating or cataloguing his victims in some way'.

The collection 'greatly assisted' the police in identifying the victims, he said.

He added that Sinaga bragged about one of his victims to a friend in a phone conversation and paraphrased the Little Mix song Black Magic.

He said: 'Take a sip of my secret potion, I'll make you fall in love.'

Detectives from Greater Manchester Police say they are keen to speak to about 70 of the potential victims who have not yet been identified from Sinaga's videos to ensure they have any support needed.

Earlier, Judge Goddard said police had established there are 195 different males who appear to be unconscious while Sinaga sexually assaulted them on film.
Iran will hit US 'military sites' in response to assassination of Lt. Gen. Soleimani

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 05 January 2020 3:12 PM

A top Iranian military commander says the Islamic Republic's response to US assassination of Iran's top military commander, Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, will only be 'against military sites'.

Hossein Dehghan, Iran's former defense minister and current military adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, made the remark in an exclusive interview with CNN in Tehran on Sunday, stressing that "the response for sure will be military and against military sites."

Lieutenant General Soleimani, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy chief of the Iraqi pro-government Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), was assassinated during the early hours of Friday. Four other Iranians as well as four Iraqis accompanying them were also martyred.

The Pentagon said in a statement that American President Donald Trump had ordered the US military to assassinate the top Iranian commander.

Following Soleimani's assassination, Ayatollah Khamenei said those who assassinated the IRGC Quds Force commander must await a harsh revenge, noting that the "cruelest people on earth" assassinated the "honorable" commander who "courageously fought for years against the evils and bandits of the world."

Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) has also said that a harsh vengeance "in due time and right place" awaited the criminals behind Soleimani's assassination.

The targeted assassination has raised fears of a conflagration between the US and Iran, prompting many countries in the region as well as in Europe to call on all parties to show restraint.

However, Brigadier General Dehghan said that Iran would not seek war with the US.

"Let me tell you one thing: Our leadership has officially announced that we have never been seeking war and we will not be seeking war," Dehghan said.

"It was America that has started the war. Therefore, they should accept appropriate reactions to their actions. The only thing that can end this period of war is for the Americans to receive a blow that is equal to the blow they have inflicted. Afterward they should not seek a new cycle," he added.

On Saturday, Trump threatened in a number of tweets that if Tehran attacked American assets, Washington would strike "52" Iranian targets, "very hard and very fast."

Dehghan described the American president's tweets as "ridiculous and absurd."

"[Trump] doesn't know international law. He doesn't recognize UN resolutions either. Basically he is a veritable gangster and a gambler. He is no politician he has no mental stability," the Iranian brigadier general added.

Dehghan referred to UN Resolution 2347, which condemns the unlawful destruction of cultural heritage, blasting Trump who had also threatened that an unspecified number of those targets would be Iran's cultural sites.

The Iranian military commander added that if logic and rationality were to be taken into account, Trump would be considered a war criminal, who would be tried in a relevant court of law.

Earlier on Sunday, Iran's Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, also lambasted Trump's threat of striking Iran's cultural sites.

"Targeting cultural sites is a WAR CRIME; -Whether kicking or screaming, end of US malign presence in West Asia has begun," he said.

When asked what would happen if the US president were to carry out his threat to hit any of Iran's cultural sites, Dehghan vowed that no US target would be beyond the reach of Iran's attacks.

"For sure no American military staff, no American political center, no American military base, no American vessel will be safe. And they are accessible to us," Ayatollah Khamenei's main military advisor stressed.

Lieutenant General Soleimani was an international figure who played a leading role in promoting security in regional countries, particularly in Iraq and Syria. Both commanders were admired by Muslim nations for eliminating the US-sponsored Daesh terrorist group in the region.

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Taking to Twitter, Javadekar said: "I condemn yesterday's violence in JNU. Few elements along with a group from Congress, AAP and Communists deliberately wants to create an atmosphere of violence across India and particularly in universities. There should be an inquiry against them."

New Delhi, Jan 6 (IANS) Barely 12 hours after the violence in Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar blamed it on the opposition Congress, Aam Aadmi Party and Left parties.

The minister has also demanded an inquiry on who were creating hurdles in semester exam registration at JNU by lockdown of the server room. Recently JNU went into a lockdown following which Vice Chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar blamed it on 10-15 people and had warned of filing a police complaint against them.

Interestingly, a video too has surfaced where students allegedly belonging to the Left unions are seen to be purportedly beating up students who appear to belong to ABVP during the admission process. This is believed to be the trigger for Sunday's violence.

Following Sunday's rampage many students from both the Left and ABVP were seriously injured.

abn/kr
Salalah Free Zone (SFZ) has opened the Oman Dairy Products factory, a $70 million investment the first phase of which went operational by the third quarter of 2019, and signed a number of agreements for new projects on the free zone, a media report said.



The pacts included a land development agreement for the setting up of a urea products unit, another agreement to lay the foundation stone of a steel industries unit, a third agreement for the setting up of a bus assembly unit and a fourth agreement to set up a new water and beverages unit, reported state news agency Oman News.



The memoranda of understanding signed by Salalah Free Zone included one with Iran International Hospital and another with Stemz Health Care to set up a hospital at the free zone.



The ceremony was patronized by Darwish bin Ismaeel al-Balushi, Minister Responsible for Financial Affairs, and attended by Ahmed bin Nasser al-Mahrzi, Minister of Tourism and Board Chairman of SFZ.



Ali bin Mohammed Tabook, CEO of Salalah Free Zone, said that the free zone managed to localize 80 investment usufructs valued at RO3.2 billion ($8.3 billion) that will generate 7,800 direct jobs. The FZ also leased 80 per cent of land plots ready for rent.



A sub-usufruct agreement was signed to produce urea, an investment project worth $285 million. The unit is set up on an area of 150,000 sq m and it will have a production capacity of 570,000 tons and will generate 550 jobs.



The foundation stone of three direct foreign investment projects was laid down. These were National Steel Industries unit, set up on an area of 86,000, metres which will produce 300,000 tons per annum. Its products will enhance various industries, including fridges, power generators and steel roofs. This $500 million investment will provide 500 direct jobs.



The foundation stone of a bus assembly unit was also laid down at the ceremony. The factory, to be set up on an area of 50,000 sq m, will have an annual production capacity of 1,500 bus, 70 per cent of which will be exported to markets in the GCC, Africa and the league of independent countries. It will provide 350 direct jobs.



The third foundation stone laid down today was that of a water and healthy beverages factory set up on an area of 21,000 metres. The unit will have an annual production capacity of more than 4 million cartons, 90 per cent of which will be exported to GCC, African and East Asian markets. The $13 million investment will provide 52 direct jobs.



A second memorandum of understanding was signed with Iran International Hotel, an affiliate of the Iranian Red Cross, for the setting up of a world-class hospital at Salalah Free Zone.



The third memorandum of understanding was signed with Stemz Healthcare, a pioneer of medical services, for the establishment of a medical examination centre to serve the visa section at SFZ.
Deniz Baran

In late November 2019, Turkey and the United Nations (UN)-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) of Libya signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on maritime boundaries between the two states, in which the parties agreed on a 30 km-long boundary line which runs close to the Greek island of Crete. In doing so, Turkey and Libya disregarded Greeces far-reaching and controversial maritime jurisdiction claim off the coasts of some Greek islands and overstepping the perceived maritime zones of Greece and the Greek Administration of Cyprus (GASC). Hence, Greece and the GASC immediately argued the illegality of the MoU in question, with Greece expelling the Ambassador of Libya on December 6 and sending two letters to the UN lodging its objections to the deal.

The MoU came into force on December 8, 2019 and sparked fierce criticism from many global and regional actors. Understandably, Turkey and the GNAs deal has antagonized many sides given its particular importance in the context of the vast hydrocarbon reserves believed to be in the Eastern Mediterranean. The current competition over hydrocarbon reserves in the region involves many states, including the USA and Russia who are not even coastal states, as well as non-state actors such as multinational oil corporations and armed militias. Immediately after the MoU came into force, the Greek and Egyptian foreign ministers gathered to discuss developing a common strategy against the deal.

Further opposition has come from the European Union (EU), which has called the deal illegal and had already decided to impose some sanctions over Turkeys drilling operations off the coast of Cyprus. Israel recommended speeding up the East Med Pipeline Project to confront Turkeys activity. Aguila Saleh Issa, the chief of Libyas Tobruk-based self-proclaimed parliament, which is under the control of General Haftar, stated that, The deal is invalid. Those that signed it do not have any legal authority to do so. The following blog post will address the issue of legality of the deal. The aim is neither to discuss the geopolitical aspects of the deal nor to examine its legality from the point of international maritime law rules. [1] Instead, I will focus on Saleh Issas claim that the deal is invalid and the question of whether the deal would be binding for Libya if General Haftars forces took over Tripoli and the Tobruk-based parliament (House of Representatives-HoR) therefore prevailed over the GNA.

The Key Concept: De Jure Government

In international law the doctrine of state continuity plays a key role. As per this doctrine, a states international legal personality, thus its rights and obligations, persist in spite of changes in its government. Constitutionally or unconstitutionally, governments can change but a state remains constant. State continuity is crucial for the political stability of the international order. Thereby, a successor government is considered to be bound by all commitments and obligations undertaken by the preceding government, regardless of whether it supported or opposed political decisions made by the preceding government.

When there is a constitutional change of government in a state, state continuity is not a matter of debate at all. However, in case of unconstitutional changes, some controversial situations may arise, as we can see in Libya now. It is important to note that constitutional change does not necessarily mean change happening through democratic elections. Meanwhile, unconstitutional change entails situations such as civil war, military coups or insurgence through which rival political authorities/governments emerge in a country.

Other states are legally free to recognize any rival governments, although there might sometimes be exceptional restraints, usually stemming from UN Security Council Resolutions, on the recognition of certain entities. Views such as those expressed in the Tobar Doctrine, which argues that only the legitimate governments shall be recognized by other states, have so far not been endorsed by the majority of the international community. This is despite the fact that the excuse of legitimacy has sometimes been used by states for their non-recognition of other governments, as happened with Sierra Leone in 2010.

The issue of the recognition of governments is largely seen as a unilateral, purely political and practical decision of states. For rival governments, recognition of its possession of the effective control on a considerable portion of the territory, is usually what matters most. The Estrada Doctrine suggests that the recognition of a government should be based on its de facto existence rather than on its legitimacy. Consequently, the issue of recognition is rightly identified as one of the most political matters of international law.

Thus, what will happen in the Libyan case if both rival governments have effective control on different portions of a countrys territory and could gain recognition from different states? Are one sides commitments considered binding to the other when one of the sides takes over full control of the country? In case the forces of GNA or Haftar gain the full control of Libya, there is no doubt that the triumphant government will be bound by the commitments it has undertaken when it competed with the other government. But when it comes to being bound by the commitments of the defeated side, the answer lies in the concept of de jure government.

A de jure government is the legal and principal government of a state and so widely recognized by other international legal persons. A more practical definition is that, a de jure government is the one possessing the original political authority in a country before it is contested by the other side. It is widely accepted that when there are rival governments in a state, the one considered to be the de jure government preserves its right to make commitments on behalf of the whole country, even when its effective control over the whole country is seriously diminished. Therefore, when a de jure government is defeated and overthrown by a contesting government, its previous commitments shall be binding for a new government. The Tinoco Case between Costa Rica and the United Kingdom in 1923 is one of the best examples of this principle in international law.

Of course, it is not always easy to determine which side is the de jure government and a factual examination of each given case is required.

Broad Recognition for the GNA by the International Community

Firstly, one of the main qualifications of a de jure government is the broad recognition it enjoys by the international community, although recognition of an entity by other states is not necessarily essential for its status. As previously mentioned, the GNA is a UN-backed government and it was established in 2015 in order to reconcile the different factions in Libya, having divided the country since 2014 when it was unanimously recognized by the UN Security Council as the sole executive authority of Libya. The EU also supported the formation of the unity government.

Moreover, the HoR themselves, as well as Haftars forces, have already supported the establishment of the GNA following a peace agreement signed in 2015 between the contesting factions in Libya. Just two weeks after the recognition of the Security Council, the afore-mentioned Saleh Issa, currently claiming the lack of legitimacy of the GNA, had declared his support for and recognition of the GNA. When the GNA held its first meeting at the beginning of 2016, the government received a vote of confidence from the HoR. Moreover, Haftars forces paved the way for the GNA to settle in Tripoli in March 2016 against rebellious factions.

However, in the summer of 2016, the HoR withdrew its support from the GNA because of some political disagreements and became their rival government by rising against them and retracting recognition of its legitimacy. Despite the talks between both sides in France and Italy in 2018, no result has been achieved. Nevertheless, the GNA is still recognized, as of 2019, as Libyas legitimate, thus de jure government by the UN and the majority of the international community. The HoR would be incapable of gaining such wide recognition at this time. Therefore, the GNA is the official unity government of Libya and the original political authority as Haftars forces initially recognized. The fact that the Libyan ambassador expelled by Greece was assigned by the GNA, is further proof of this reality.

In conclusion, as long as the GNA does not lose all its effective control in Libya and preserves the potential to assert its full control, it preserves its status as the de jure government of the country. Thus, it also preserves its authority for signing international agreements on behalf of the whole of Libya, which should be binding for any successor government, including Haftars forces. Thereby, the GNA and Turkey agreed on the exact coordinates of their maritime boundary (Annex 1 of the MoU) to which any future amendment or review of that boundary is precluded as per Article 5 of the MoU. In addition, the MoU, as a binding international agreement, was registered with the Secretariat of the UN pursuant to Article 102 of the Charter of the UN. Hence, Saleh Issas claim of the lack of legality of the MoU is not accurate from the point of international law.

sharqforum
The Aug. 24 editorial Give them shelter slammed opponents of building just such a youth detention center in this area as knee-jerk opposition . . . to sensible practices. It went further: The shelters have nothing to do with family separation. And The shelters are not an outgrowth of the Trump administrations odious immigration policies. All of those statements were false.
PARIS (Reuters) - French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire on Monday warned the United States against any retaliation to France's new digital services tax.

"If the Americans decide to go ahead and impose sanctions against the digital tax ... in this case we would retaliate," Le Maire told France Inter radio.

"If there were to be sanctions, and it is a possibility that we will take sanctions, we would immediately contact the WTO (World Trade Organization)", he added.

Le Maire said he had sent a letter on that issue to the U.S. negotiator and was also going to discuss it with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin by phone.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Mark Potter)
US President Donald Trump said he did not expect North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to break his promise about denuclearization, but conceded that he might.

Kim Jong Un said last week there were no longer grounds for Pyongyang to be bound by a self-declared moratorium on intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear bomb testing and that a "new strategic weapon" would be introduced in the near future.

"I don't think he'd break his word to me, but maybe he will," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington after a two-week stay in Florida.

Trump - who in 2018 became the first sitting U.S. president to meet with a North Korean leader - said after Kim's comments that the North Korean leader had signed a denuclearization contract and Trump thought Kim was a "man of his word."

Last month, Pyongyang warned Washington of a possible "Christmas gift" after Kim gave the United States until the end of the year to propose new concessions in talks over his country's nuclear arsenal.

Speaking with reporters last week, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said the alert status of American forces was at a sufficient level to respond to anything that happens and military defensive capabilities were adequate to defend the United States.
He may not know it, but Boris Johnson has quite a bit in common with Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Both grew up dreaming of glory on a global stage  Johnson claimed he wanted to be world king, while Ibrahimovic pronounced himself King Zlatan. Born winners, perhaps. But people can tire quickly of megalomaniacs. Anti-Zlatan vandals have toppled a giant gold statue of the narcissistic Swedish star by sawing off the ankles. Our PM will have to make sure he isnt cut down to size in his prime. As Johnson returns home to face his first foreign policy crisis, he has much of Westminster snapping at his heels  angry at his failure to cut short his hubristic 12-day holiday in the Caribbean. Im Adam Forrest, and welcome to The Independents daily Inside Politics briefing.

Inside the bubble

Our deputy political editor Rob Merrick on what to look out for today:
Kenyan police have arrested three men who tried to force their way into a British military camp in central Kenya, according to an internal police report seen by AFP Monday.

The men were arrested at 5pm on Sunday, just hours after Al-Shabaab Islamists stormed onto a US-Kenyan military base in the coastal Lamu region, near the border with Somalia, killing three Americans.

The report said officers "managed to arrest three terrorist suspects who had earlier in the day tried to force their way into British Army Camp but in vain."



The camp, near the town of Nanyuki 200 kilometres (120 miles) north of Nairobi, is used by the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) under an agreement with Kenya for training British troops in hot and rugged terrain.

The trio's images had been "captured by CCTV and circulated," it said. Investigators following up leads "found them near Nanyuki police station where they arrested," it said.

Marcus Ochola, police chief for the Rift Valley Region, said the trio were not armed.

"The three suspects are being interrogated to establish their motive," he said.

Kenyan police are on high alert around the country after Somalia's Al-Shabaab stormed Camp Simba in Lamu, destroying several aircraft and killing three American citizens in their first strike on a hard target in Kenya.

The militants began targeting Kenya after it sent troops into Somalia in 2011 to join an African Union peacekeeping force seeking to combat the militants who have been trying to topple an internaitonally-backed government in Mogadishu for over a decade.

The Al-Qaeda-linked group has in the past carried out bloody sieges against civilians in Kenya, such as the upmarket Westgate Mall in 2013 and Garissa Univerity in 2015.

The uptick in tensions comes just days before the one-year anniversary of an attack on a Nairobi hotel complex which left 21 people dead.

A separate police report on Monday said a Canadian citizen of Somali origin had been arrested in the suburb of Eastleigh in the capital while taking pictures of a nearby airforce base.

According to Britain's ministry of defence website, BATUK consists of around 100 permanent staff and 280 on "short tour" assignments.

Its job is to provide "demanding training to exercising units preparing to deploy on operations or assume high-readiness tasks." Under the agreement with Kenya, up to six infantry battalions per year carry out eight-week exercises.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
OTTAWACanadas mission to train Iraqi security forces faces an uncertain future as the fallout from the U.S. airstrike that killed an Iranian general continues to roil the region and threatens coalition efforts to stabilize the country.

NATO members called for lower tensions, singling out Irans destabilizing activities as they met Monday in an emergency meeting to weigh the evolving crisis and the future of its Canadian-led training mission in Iraq.

That mission was suspended in the wake of Fridays airstrike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who U.S. President Donald Trump said was responsible for terror attacks that have killed hundreds.

In everything that we do, the safety of our personnel is paramount. As such, we have for the time being suspended our training on the ground and are taking all precautions necessary to protect our people, Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary-general, told reporters following the meeting.

We are keeping the situation under close review and we remain in close contact with the Iraq authorities. NATO is prepared to continue our training and capacity building when the situation permits, he said.

Stoltenberg said that allies have long expressed concerns about Irans activities in the Middle East, and pointed to a recent attack on a Saudi oil facility and the downing of a U.S. drone.

We agree that Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon. We share concerns about Irans missile tests and we are united in condemning Irans support for a variety of different terrorist groups, he said.

A photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister's Press Office shows the burning wreckage of a vehicle following an American drone strike outside the Baghdad airport early on Friday. Qasem Soleimani, the powerful and shadowy spymaster at the head of Iran's security machinery, was killed in the drone strike. NYT

At the meeting today, allies called for restraint and de-escalation. A new conflict would be in no ones interest. Iran must refrain from further violence and provocations.

Security concerns prompted the broader coalition that came together in 2014 to combat Islamic State insurgents to also pause its training of Iraqi security forces and support to their operations against ISIS. Instead, the focus now is on protecting the bases that house coalition troops. We remain ready to return our full attention and efforts back to our shared goal of ensuring the lasting defeat of (ISIS), the coalition said in a statement.

Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne spoke with his Iraqi counterpart, Mohammed Ali al-Hakim, and reiterated Canadas commitment to a stable and united Iraq.

The two ministers agreed that a de-escalation in tensions is necessary as peace and stability are key to pursuing the political and economic reforms underway in Iraq, according to a statement issued by Champagnes office.

A government official said an escalation of the crisis would imperil efforts to stabilize the Iraqi government.

Gen. Soleimani is someone that we have been concerned about for a long time. Now that he has been killed, we are very much of the view that we need make moves to ensure this doesnt end up spiralling into something bigger, said the official, who spoke on background because of the sensitivity of diplomatic discussions.

NATOs mission role to train local Iraqi forces is currently led by Canadian Maj.-Gen. Jennie Carnigan. Canada has 500 personnel deployed in Iraq, with some 250 dedicated to the NATO mission along with three Griffon helicopters. The rest are involved in Operation Impact, Canadas ongoing mission to train security forces in the country.

But the turmoil created by Washingtons targeted killing of Soleimani as he left Baghdad airport Friday has put those efforts in limbo. Iran is vowing to retaliate and Iraqi lawmakers on Sunday passed a non-binding resolution seeking the exit of American and allied forces from their country.

The fate of coalition forces faced further confusion Monday when a senior U.S. military official issued a letter suggesting that a troop pullout would be happening over the coming days in deference to the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq and as requested by the Iraqi Parliament, according to media reports.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said later theres been no decision to withdraw troops, according to the Associated Press.

The Iraqi resolution is non-binding but it speaks to the current political climate in Iraq, said Bessma Momani, a professor at the University of Waterloo and senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

It does not mean that we are being asked to leave ... its purely symbolic, she said.

Canadian forces first deployed to the region in 2014 as part of the coalition to combat ISIS insurgents, who had overrun large parts of Iraq. More than five years later, that territory has been reclaimed and ISIS no longer holds territory, she said.

As a military force, ISIS is spent. As an ideological force, its still going to be active and it certainly still has its tentacles in terrorist activity, Momani said.

Our role is not really to fight ISIS ... that mission is finished, she said. We are also really there to professionalize the Iraqi army so it can stand on its own two feet.

The current turmoil puts a question mark over when that role can resume. Theres no work for us to do. Its basically hunker down and wait for this to pass, she said.

Soleimani was a monster, Momani said, but his killing is a setback to regional security and reveals that American understanding about Iraq and Iran is so problematic.

If they understood that this guy was seen as practically a saint they wouldnt have done something so stupid. Hes not just a general ... hes got a cult following, she said.

At Mondays meeting, Stoltenberg said there was very strong support for the NATO training mission, seen as a critical part of the global efforts to combat ISIS.

The best weapons we have in the fight against international terrorism is to train local forces, build local capacity and thats exactly what the coalition is doing, he said.
The RBI-appointed administrator of beleaguered DHFL admitted close to Rs 4,800 crore of claims submitted by fixed deposit holders of the company.

The crisis-hit Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd (DHFL) will be able to start its lending operations soon.

The committee of creditors (CoC) to Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd (DHFL) reportedly gave its nod to a plan enabling the housing finance company to resume its lending operations starting with Rs 500 crore per month in order to stop decline in the company loan book, said a report in Mint.

DHFL has been recovering up to Rs 1,800 crore every month from past loans and, after setting aside money for securitisation payments and operational expenses, it can restart disbursements of Rs 500 crore per month, the report said citing a document from the administrator appointed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

The RBI-appointed administrator of the beleaguered DHFL admitted close to Rs 4,800 crore of claims submitted by fixed deposit holders of the company, reported PTI.

Nearly 55,000 public depositor holders, including retail and UP Power Corporation Employees, have demanded payments aggregating to Rs 5,200 crore from the troubled mortgage players as of 17 December.

"The claims from fixed depositors that have been admitted, so far, are Rs 4,800 crore," a source said.

With this, the total amount of claim received by the company's administrator, R Subramaniakumar, who is also the resolution professional, from financial creditors, operational creditors, employees, fixed deposit holders, and other creditors has touched approximately Rs 93,105 crore.

Against that, around Rs 85,800 crore of claims have been admitted, so far, said a banker.

In November last year, the RBI had sent DHFL to the bankruptcy tribunal, making it the first non-banking finance company (NBFC)/housing finance company (HFC) to be resolved under the insolvency and bankruptcy code.

The central bank also said there will an interim moratorium on the lender between the date of filing of the bankruptcy application and its admission or rejection.

In November last year, there were news reports that the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) would investigate into the allegations of financial fraud against DHFL and five real estate companies.

Minister of state for corporate affairs Anurag Thakur informed the Lok Sabha that the government ordered an SFIO probe into the affairs of DHFL and five real estate companies namely Immediate Real Estate, Tenancity Real Estate, RKW Developers, Darshan Developers, and Rajen Skycraper.

On 20 November 2019, the Reserve Bank had superseded the board of the troubled HFC due to governance concerns and defaults on various debt instruments.

The central bank had then appointed Subramaniakumar, the ex-managing director of Indian Overseas Bank as the administrator of the third-largest pureplay mortgage lender.

In January last year, the corporate affairs ministry had started inquiring into allegations of DHFL diverting Rs 31,000-crore loans and would seek more information from the housing finance firm.

DHFL was in the eye of a storm after a report that the company through layers of shell companies allegedly siphoned off Rs 31,000 crore out of the total bank loans of Rs 97,000 crore.

Following the report this week, the Registrar of Companies (RoC), Mumbai, had started looking into the matter.

 With PTI inputs
Top industrialists Anand Mahindra, Harsh Mariwala and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw have condemned violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday night, saying such acts cannot be tolerated and the perpetrators must be hunted down swiftly.

Speaking up against the violence, Marico Ltd Chairman Harsh Mariwala tweeted, "Coming from the land of non-violence, it's unbecoming of us to witness and encourage these acts of violence. Extremely hurt seeing last evening's news".

Expressing similar views, in a tweet late last evening Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra said, "It doesn't matter what your are. It doesn't matter what your ideology is. It doesn't matter what your faith is. If you're an Indian, you cannot tolerate armed, lawless goons. Those who invaded JNU tonight must be traced & hunted down swiftly & given no quarter..."



Likewise, reacting to a video of an injured student who claimed she was beaten up, Biocon CMD Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw tweeted, "This is unpardonable. Violence cannot be condoned".

Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night as a group of masked people armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.

RPG Enterprises Chairman drew parallels between India and Australia, saying India is caught in "religious bushfires".

"Hearing me pray for Australia, for its people, for its 500 million animals that have died since the #bushfires, my little one asked why are you not praying for India where there are religious bushfires lit all over the country and students being attacked mercilessly?" Goenka wrote on his Twitter handle.

Rajan Anandan, former head of Google India, who now is associated with venture capital fund Sequoia, also retweeted Mahindra's tweet.

Many sustained injuries and were admitted to AIIMS Trauma Centre here. They were discharged on Monday. JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh suffered a head injury.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the ABVP blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NEW YORK, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --

INTRODUCTION

In 2018, it was estimated that the availability of low-cost, generic versions of pharmaceutical interventions saved nearly USD 1.6 trillion in healthcare costs in the US over the last decade. Given the cost benefits offered, generic medicines usually have high adoption rates. Moreover, upcoming patent expiries of several blockbuster drugs, such as LYRICA, Cialis, Advair and Sensipar, have intensified the interest of several drug manufacturers in the development of generics. As more generic drugs get approved by regulators across the globe, the competition in the industry has steadily increased. Interestingly, in 2018, the US FDA approved more than 780 generic products, which represented more than 90% increase in the number of such drug approvals since 2014. The most evident impact of the growth in competition in this domain is deflation of cost of generics, resulting in diminished profit margins for the developers of such products. Therefore, to ensure sustainable growth within the off-patent drug products market, companies are gradually adopting innovative drug alteration techniques in order to develop value added medicinal products, which offer better commercial benefits.



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05836972/?utm_source=PRN



The availability of several advanced drug development and technology platforms have enabled the fabrication and formulation of improved versions of existing drug products. Such modified pharmacological interventions are commonly referred to as supergenerics / complex generics / value-added generics. Although supergenerics are based on the same mechanism of action as that of the original drug, these versions usually have certain additional attributes, such as a new active ingredient, improved manufacturing process, alternative dosage regimen, modified release properties or different formulation. Typically, such drugs are granted a form of marketing exclusivity (for a period of 3-7 years ), enabling their developers to generate relatively higher profit margins, compared to conventional generics. Moreover, the development of value added generics is generally directed at certain unmet clinical needs, which may have been unaddressed by previous versions of the drug. In addition, the approval process for such products is not as complicated; in the US, value added medicines are evaluated under the FDA's 505(b)(2) pathway. This evolving segment of the pharmaceutical industry has also witnessed a surge in the availability of technology providers, offering a diverse range of platforms / solutions to support the development of supergeneric drugs. After a detailed analysis of prevalent trends, we are led to believe that value-added generic products market is poised to witness significant growth over the coming years.



SCOPE OF THE REPORT

The 'Generics Market: Focus on Value-added Medicines / Supergenerics, 2019-2030' report features an extensive study of supergenerics, as well as the current landscape and future potential of technology providers that are offering innovative platforms / solutions to supergeneric drug developers.



Amongst other elements, the report features:

 An overview of recently approved supergenerics (over the period 2016-2018), featuring information on route of administration, target disease indication(s), target therapeutic area(s), approval timeline, submission classification code and most active drug developers (in terms of number of product approvals). Additionally, it provides a detailed assessment of technology providers, offering platforms / solutions for supergeneric drug development, including information on year of establishment, company size and geographical location.

 An informed competitiveness analysis of the technologies captured in our database, taking into consideration relevant parameters, such as supplier power (based on company size of technology provider) and other important technology-related specifications, such as the type of molecule, impact on drug properties and route of administration.

 Elaborate profiles of prominent technology developers engaged in this domain, featuring an overview of the company, its financial information (if available), a detailed description of its technology platform(s), recent developments and a comprehensive future outlook.

 A list of marketed generics that, we believe, are likely to be developed as supergenerics in the near future, based on an in-depth analysis taking into consideration multiple relevant parameters, such as the current annual cost of treatment of the parent drug, year of patent expiry, revenues generated in the year before patent expiry, target therapeutic area and number of competitor (generic) drugs available in the market.

 Detailed case studies on five approved supergeneric drugs, including an overview of the product along with information on the original / parent drug, value proposition offered by the supergeneric version, pricing strategies adopted by the developer (if available), annual revenues of the supergeneric and parent drug (if available) and the key learnings / takeaways from individual case studies.

 A discussion on affiliated trends, key drivers and challenges, under a comprehensive SWOT framework, featuring a Harvey ball analysis, highlighting the relative impact of each SWOT parameter on the overall supergenerics industry.



One of the key objectives of the report was to understand the primary growth drivers and estimate the future opportunity within the market. Based on several parameters, such as size of the generic drugs market, share of supergenerics within the generic drugs market and expected annual growth rate across various geographies, we have provided an informed estimate of the likely evolution of the market, in the mid to long term, for the period 2019-2030. The chapter also presents a detailed market segmentation across [A] different therapeutic areas (autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular disorders, CNS disorders, metabolic disorders, oncological disorders, pain disorders, respiratory disorders and others), [B] routes of administration (parenteral, intravitreal, oral, topical and others) and [C] key geographical regions (North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, South America, and Africa and Middle East).



In order to account for future uncertainties and to add robustness to our model, we have provided three market forecast scenarios, namely conservative, base and optimistic scenarios, representing different tracks of the industry's growth. All actual figures have been sourced and analyzed from publicly available information forums. Financial figures mentioned in this report are in USD, unless otherwise specified.



RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The data presented in this report has been gathered via secondary research. For most of our projects, we conduct interviews / surveys with experts in the area (academia, industry, medical practice and other associations) to solicit their opinions on emerging trends in the market. This is primarily useful for us to draw out our own opinion on how the market will evolve across different regions and segments. Where possible, the available data has been checked for accuracy from multiple sources of information.



The secondary sources of information include:

 Annual reports

 Investor presentations

 SEC filings

 Industry databases

 News releases from company websites

 Government policy documents

 Industry analysts' views



While the focus has been on forecasting the market till 2030, the report also provides our independent view on various non-commercial trends emerging in the industry. This opinion is solely based on our knowledge, research and understanding of the relevant market gathered from various secondary sources of information.



CHAPTER OUTLINES

Chapter 2 is an executive summary of the insights captured in our research. It offers a high-level view on the likely evolution of the supergeneric drugs market in the mid to long term.



Chapter 3 provides an overview of generic drugs and the contemporary challenges related to such products, such as price erosion, growing competition and unfavorable policy changes by regulatory authorities. It further highlights the rise of supergenerics / value added generics and the various techniques used for the development of these products. The chapter also provides a brief outline of the regulatory pathways involved in the approval process of supergeneric drugs. Further, it includes a discussion on the various advantages and limitations / constraints within this evolving segment of the pharmaceutical industry.



Chapter 4 provides an overview of recently approved supergenerics (over the period 2016-2018). The chapter presents detailed analyses of these drugs based on several relevant parameters, such as route of administration, target disease indication(s), target therapeutic area(s), approval timeline, submission classification code and most active drug developers (in terms of number of product approvals).



Chapter 5 provides an overview of industry players that are actively engaged in offering technology platforms for the development of supergenerics. The chapter presents an analysis of these players on the basis of their year of establishment, geographical location and company size. It also provides a list of the various technologies offered by the aforementioned companies, along with a detailed competitiveness analysis based on parameters, such as compatibility with different types of molecules, routes of administration, and impact on drug properties.



Chapter 6 includes detailed profiles of prominent technology developers engaged in this domain, featuring an overview of the company, its financial information (if available), a detailed description of its technology platform(s), recent developments and a comprehensive future outlook.



Chapter 7 presents detailed case studies on five approved supergeneric drugs, including an overview of the product along with information on the original / parent drug, value proposition offered by the supergeneric version, pricing strategies adopted by the developer (if available), annual revenues of the supergeneric and parent drug (if available) and the key learnings / takeaways from individual case studies.



Chapter 8 provides a list of marketed generics that are likely to be developed as supergenerics in the near future, based on a detailed analysis of potential candidates, taking into consideration various parameters, including the current annual cost of treatment of parent drug, its year of patent expiry, revenues generated by the parent drug in the year before patent expiry, target therapeutic area and number of competitor generic drugs available in the market.



Chapter 9 provides a discussion on affiliated trends, key drivers and challenges, under a comprehensive SWOT framework, featuring a Harvey ball analysis, highlighting the relative impact of each SWOT parameter on the overall supergeneric drugs industry.



Chapter 10 presents a detailed market forecast, highlighting the future potential of the supergenerics market till the year 2030. The chapter features the likely distribution of the opportunity across different [A] type of therapeutic areas (autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular disorders, CNS disorders, metabolic disorders, oncological disorders, pain disorders, respiratory disorders and others), [B] routes of administration (parenteral, intravitreal, oral, topical and others) and [C] geographical regions (North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, South America, and Africa and Middle East).



Chapter 11 summarizes the entire report. It presents a list of key takeaways and offers our independent opinion on the current market scenario. Further, it summarizes the various evolutionary trends that are likely to influence the future of this market.



Chapter 12 is an appendix, which provides tabulated data and numbers for all the figures included in the report.



Chapter 13 is an appendix, which contains the list of companies and organizations mentioned in the report.



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05836972/?utm_source=PRN



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SAGINAW, MI  A group of thieves made off with nearly $5,000 worth of iPhones and iPads after breaking in to a Target store in Kochville Township, Saginaw County Sheriff William Federspiel said in a press conference Monday.

The thieves remained at large as of 3 p.m. Monday, Jan. 6.

Police say at roughly 4 a.m. Sunday, a group of at least three suspects entered the store, located at 2772 Tittabawassee Road, using a large rock to smash two sets of glass doors. Police responded within four minutes of receiving the dispatch call, but the thieves had already fled by the time officers arrived.

The suspects fled the scene in a black SUV. They all wore masks and gloves, so the sheriffs department does not have any identifying information at this time, Federspiel said.

They knew exactly what they were doing, Federspiel said. They knew what they wanted to do, and they were in and out quickly.

The department is working with Target to review the stores security footage, but gaining access is a process, Federspiel said. The department is asking if anyone in the community has information about the break-in to come forward.

Were not going to be able to get any fingerprints if theyre wearing gloves, Federspiel said. The rock they used couldve been from anywhere. Its really unknown at this point.

The incident shares similarities with a string of recent burglaries at other Target locations throughout Michigan, including Brighton, Woodhaven, Allen Park and Dearborn. The department is working with other police agencies to determine if the incidents are linked.

Right now, were not sure, Federspiel said. However, were going to keep working with every outside agency that we can.

Federspiel encouraged residents to be wary of potentially stolen goods when shopping on online marketplaces: If a deal is too good to be true, it probably isnt, he said.

READ MORE:

3 Detroit-area Target stores hit in rash of targeted burglaries throughout the state
JD(U) leader Pavan K. Varma urges state CM Nitish to reject CAA, NPR & NRC.

Patna: Amid rising discontent over the Citizen Amendments Act (CAA), the BJP has decided to launch several awareness programmes in the state this month.

A BJP leader in Patna told this newspaper that senior central leaders including Union home minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath will hold rallies in the state to create awareness about the Citizenship Act on January 16.

The party has been holding the door to door campaign in the state to raise awareness among the masses about the Act.

While the BJP state president and MP Sanjay Jaiswal led a massive roadshow in his constituency on Sunday, Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi and Union minister of state for home Nityanand Rai visited various locations in Patna.

Accusing the Congress and other Opposition parties of misleading people on the issue Sushil Kumar Modi said, After the recent Nankana Sahib incident, it has been proved that the government took the decision at the right time. Why RJD, Congress and other Opposition parties opposing the CAA kept silence after the attack on the holy Gurudwara. The incident shows how minorities are being persecuted and why they need citizenship in India.

He said that parties like Congress and RJD have been trying to create confusion among the masses especially among the Muslim community for political gains.

The Act is to provide citizenship to minorities who were persecuted in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The oppositions effort to mislead people and spoil the atmosphere will not work anymore as the BJP has decided to visit around three crore household to create awareness about the issue, he added.

Recently Bihar had witnessed several anti- CAA protests during the bandh called by RJD, left and other opposition parties.

Besides the opposition, a section in the ruling JD(U) has also expressed discomfort over the CAA, NPR and NRC. JD(U) leader Pavan K. Varma urged Bihar CM Nitish Kumar to reject the CAA, NPR and NRC divisive scheme. Save the idea of India as a plural, composite, multi-religious nation. he said.
Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian Quds Force commander who was killed in a US drone attack in Baghdad on Friday, was in Iraq to negotiate a de-escalation in tensions with Saudi Arabia, according to the Iraqi prime minister.

Adel Abdul Mahdi, Iraqs caretaker prime minister, told his parliament on Sunday that President Trump called him to ask for help in mediating with Iran after the American embassy in Baghdad was attacked.

On Tuesday, people belonging to the Shiite group Kataib Hezbollah overran security and scaled the walls of the embassy. No Americans were injured during the protests.

Trump blamed Iran for the embassy incidents and threatened retaliation.

Iraq's caretaker prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi (left), told parliament on Sunday that he was due to meet top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani (right) on the day that he was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad early on Friday

Abdul Mahdi said that Soleimani was due to bring him Iran's response to de-escalation proposals made in three-way talks between Tehran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. The above image shows the burning vehicle which was hit in the attack that killed Soleimani at Baghdad airport

The attack on the embassy on Tuesday unfolded after thousands attended the funerals of the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah fighters killed in the American airstrikes last Sunday.

US fighter jets bombarded three locations in Iraq on Sunday night, in retaliation for last week's 36-rocket attack which killed an American contractor and injured several others at a base in Kirkuk, 170 miles north of Baghdad.

On Sunday the US struck a total of five Kataib Hezbollah controlled weapon depots in Iraq and Syria, killing at least 25 people and wounding 51.

Abdul Mahdi said he worked hard to defuse tensions outside the embassy.

He said he went so far as to threaten to resign if the crowds did not disperse, according to Axios.

Abdul Mahdi even told Iraq's parliament that Trump thanked him for his efforts. He expressed disappointment that while the American president was grateful, he was also simultaneously planning an attack on Soleimani.

Soon after Trump made his request to Abdul Mahdi for mediation, US forces launched their drone strike on Friday killing Soleimani, the Iraqi leader was quoted as saying by National Public Radio.

Abdul Mahdi slammed the Americans on Sunday for what he called a political assassination in targeting Soleimani.

Abdul Mahdi suggested that the Iranian military leader was in Baghdad as part of Iraqi-mediated negotiations with Irans main regional rival, Saudi Arabia.

He said that Soleimani was going to meet him on the same day that he was killed.

He came to deliver me a message from Iran, responding to the message we delivered from Saudi Arabia to Iran, Abdul Mahdi told The Washington Post.

The Iraqi leader did not provide any further details.

Tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia have been high since September, when Iran was blamed for an attack on Saudi oil facilities.

The Saudis, for their part, were reportedly taken aback by the American strike against Soleimani.

Saudi Arabia was not consulted by its ally Washington over the strike, an official said Sunday, as the kingdom sought to defuse soaring regional tensions.

Saudi Arabia faces a heightened risk of missile and drone attacks, the US warned, after Tehran vowed revenge following the strike on Friday that killed the powerful Quds Force commander in Baghdad.

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia was not consulted regarding the US strike, a Saudi official told AFP, requesting anonymity.

In light of the rapid developments, the kingdom stresses the importance of exercising restraint to guard against all acts that may lead to escalation, with severe consequences, the official added.

Saudi Arabia on Sunday that the Trump administration did not consult with the kingdom before decided to take out Soleimani. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is seen above in Riyadh on December 10

Several thousand protesters and militia fighters broke down the gate of the US embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, storming the compound as gunshots and sirens ring out, following US air strikes on Hezbollah that killed 25 last Sunday

Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry made a similar call for restraint at the weekend and King Salman emphasized the need for measures to defuse tensions in a phone call on Saturday with Iraqi President Barham Saleh.

In a separate phone call with Iraq's caretaker premier Adel Abdel Mahdi, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stressed the need to make efforts to calm the situation and de-escalate tensions, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

The crown prince has instructed Prince Khalid bin Salman, his younger brother and deputy defense minister, to travel to Washington and London in the next few days to urge restraint, the pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported.

Prince Khalid will meet White House and US defense officials, the paper said, citing unnamed sources.

The killing of Soleimani, seen as the second most powerful man in Iran, is the most dramatic escalation yet in spiraling tensions between Washington and Tehran and has prompted fears of a major conflagration in the Middle East.

President Donald Trump, who ordered the drone strike, has warned that Washington will hit Iran very fast and very hard if the Islamic republic attacks American personnel or assets.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both allies of Washington, are also vulnerable to Iranian counter strikes.

Abdul Mahdi claims that President Trump (seen left returning to the White House with First Lady Melania Trump on Sunday) personally called him and asked him to mediate talks with Iran

The American embassy in Riyadh on Sunday warned its citizens there was a heightened risk of missile and drone attacks close to military bases and energy facilities, particularly in the kingdom's oil-rich Eastern Province and areas near the Yemen border.

A string of attacks blamed on Iran has caused anxiety in recent months, as Riyadh and Washington deliberated over how to react.

In particular, devastating strikes against Saudi oil installations last September led Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to adopt a more conciliatory approach aimed at avoiding confrontation with Tehran.

Analysts warn that pro-Iran groups have the capacity to carry out attacks on US bases in Gulf states as well as against shipping in the Strait of Hormuz - the strategic waterway that Tehran could close at will.

Expect Iranian reprisals (directly or through partner groups in Iraq, Lebanon or elsewhere) to target US partners in the region including Saudi Arabia, said Thomas Juneau, an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa.

Given the climate in the US, where support for Saudi in the media and Congress is at an all time low, it will be difficult for Trump to commit significant resources to come to its aid.

Yemen's pro-Iran Houthi rebels, locked in a five-year conflict with a Saudi-led military coalition, have also called for swift reprisals for Soleimani's killing.

The aggression... will not go without a response, said Houthi political council member Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti.

"How the response is going to be, when and where will be determined by Iraq and Iran, and we will stand with them as a hub for the resistance."

In September, the Abqaiq oil processing facility (pictured on fire) and Khurais oil field in Saudi Arabia were both rocked by explosions which cut off 5 per cent of the world's supplies. Saudi authorities blamed Iran for the strike

It was unclear if the Houthi warning was directed in part at Saudi Arabia, which has stepped up efforts to end Yemen's conflict amid a lull in Houthi attacks on the kingdom.

Saudi military commanders recently met with counterparts from friendly countries to formulate a new strategy to tackle the Yemeni rebels, particularly those opposing a political solution, according to Asharq al-Awsat.

Riyadh has said it will host a separate meeting of foreign ministers of Arab and African coastal states on Monday.

Meanwhile, Iraq's parliament voted on Sunday to expel US troops from their country while the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah group said the US military across the region 'will pay the price' for killing Soleimani.

Iraq's parliament voted in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for the expulsion of American soldiers from their country in a move that that could pave the way for a resurgence of the Islamic State group.

The resolution asks the Iraqi government to end the agreement under which Washington sent forces more than four years ago to help fight the IS extremists.

The bill is subject to approval by the Iraqi government but has the backing of the outgoing prime minister.
The Carol Burnett Award, a lifetime achievement award for television which was introduced last year, was given to Ellen DeGeneres. "You never know where life takes you, huh?" the 61-year-old comedian said. DeGeneres praised the power of television to introduce us to the truth about one another. "That's what it was like for me with Carol Burnett, I felt like I knew her, I felt like she showed us who she was," she said. "Every week I felt like she was larger than life. We counted on her to make us feel good and she delivered. "Television inspired and influenced everything that I am today. All I have ever wanted is to make people feel good and laugh. The real power of television for me is not that people watch my show, but they watch my show and they are inspired to go and do the same thing in their own lives, [to] make people laugh." Ellen DeGeneres accepts the Carol Burnett TV Achievement Award. Credit:NBC Broadly, despite Gervais' warning during his opening monologue, many of the night's winners came to the stage with something to say. And some were truly visceral moments. "We are the largest voting body in the country, let's make it look more like us," said best actress in a limited-series, Michelle Williams, in a powerful and moving call to action for women.

As a predictor of Oscar victory, the Globes are the equivalent of a punter's each way bet: they crown a film in both the "drama" and "comedy or musical" genres. Even doubling their own odds, they have managed only to sync with the Oscar best picture winner about 10 times in the past two decades. Their biggest hindrance as a measure of trends is their small voting pool  less than 100 journalist members of The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, compared with some 7200 voting members of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who vote for the Oscars  and the fact that they are more easily swayed by a film's "star" power. Loading And yet, the Globes surprise as often as they disappoint. There was no director nomination this year for Greta Gerwig  leaving an all-male director category which arched eyebrows in Hollywood and drew a stinging barb from Gervais  and no nomination for best film for Little Women. Another masterpiece, Jordan Peele's Us, also came up empty-handed. Add to that the increasingly nonsensical problem of award categories: Once Upon A Time in Hollywood and The Farewell (both dramas) were nominated in the musical/comedy category, Judy (a musical), was nominated in the drama category and Uncut Gems, originally submitted as a comedy, was switched to drama.

On the flipside, Netflix's brilliant Unbelievable made a strong showing, with nominations for the show and its two leads, Merritt Wever, Kaitlyn Dever and Toni Collette, plus there were standout nominations for Jojo Rabbit star Roman Griffin Davis and comedian Ramy Youssef (who won). Indeed, one of the key industry trends out of the telecast was the emergence of streaming as an aggressive player in the awards space. The algorithm itself is disingenuous  made-for-television films are given brief theatrical windows in order to qualify in the film categories  and somewhat exposes new players like Netflix and Amazon for a big case of old school envy. Nevertheless the impact has been substantial: the nominations for The Irishman, The Two Popes and Marriage Story mean that Netflix went into the night with three out of the five nominees in the drama motion picture category. Trying to use the Golden Globes as a more literal crystal ball to the Oscars is a fraught science, however. The so-called "awards season" kicks off in December with the Gotham independent film awards and includes the National Board of Review awards, the New York and Los Angeles critics awards, the Satellite awards, Australia's International AACTA awards and the Golden Globes. So far to have emerged are two leading titles, The Irishman and Parasite, with two wins from a possible six, and two contenders for the lead actor Oscar in Adam Driver and Antonio Banderas, also with two wins from a possible six. Best actress has just one leading contender, Awkwafina, with two wins from a possible six.

Clearer are the director and screenplay categories: Quentin Tarantino, who directed Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, holds two out of six possible wins and Noah Baumbach, who wrote Marriage Story, who is riding three out of seven possible wins. Still to come in "awards season": the Producers, Screen Actors, Directors and Writers Guild awards, the BAFTAs, the Independent Spirit awards and the Oscars themselves. Voting for the Oscar nominations closes on January 7; the Oscar nominees will be announced on January 13. Final Oscar voting opens on January 30 and closes on February 4; the 92nd annual Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, February 9, in Los Angeles. LIST OF WINNERS, FILM Best Motion Picture, Drama: 1917

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama: Joaquin Phoenix, Joker

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama: Renee Zellweger, Judy

Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy: Taron Egerton, Rocketman

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy: Awkwafina, The Farewell

Best Director, Motion Picture: Sam Mendes, 1917

Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture: Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture: Laura Dern, Marriage Story

Best Foreign Language Film: Parasite

Best Animated Motion Picture: Missing Link

Best Screenplay, Motion Picture: Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Best Original Score, Motion Picture: Hildur Gunadottir, Joker

Best Original Song, Motion Picture: (I'm Gonna) Love Me Again, Rocketman

The Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award: Tom Hanks
Tens of thousands of Guineans took to the streets on Monday in new anti-government protests, with violence between rival groups injuring at least 12 people in the east.

Crowds marched from the suburbs of the capital Conakry to the city centre in one of the biggest protests, and witnesses told AFP that demonstrators came out in cities including Labe, Pita, Dalaba, Mamou and Boke.

The West African country has been hit by rolling protests since mid-October over concerns President Alpha Conde plans to reform the constitution to attempt to stay in office for a third term.

About 20 people and one gendarme have died since the protests began, according to an AFP tally.

The protests again turned violent on Monday in the Conde stronghold of Kankan in the east -- the president's supporters attacking protesters and leaving at least 12 wounded, according to medical and security officials.

Meanwhile, protesters in Conakry came out dressed in red -- the colour of the opposition -- carrying placards reading "No to a new constitution" and "No to a third mandate for Alpha Conde".

Former prime ministers Cellou Dalein Diallo and Sidya Toure were among the crowds in Conakry.

Conde, who announced a draft constitution last month, visited the western city of Kindia on Monday, where the population gave him a "warm welcome", he said on Twitter.

Despite initial hopes of a new political dawn, critics say his rule has become increasingly authoritarian. By CELLOU BINANI (AFP)

An opposition march in the city was postponed after the intervention of local and religious officials to avoid clashes, according to sources.

"I promise you that what you could not have, your children will have. Guinea will advance," 81-year-old Conde told his supporters, who carried signs claiming a new constitution would ensure the "development of Guinea".

In his New Year wishes, Conde, who was elected in 2010 and reelected in 2015, reiterated his plan to organise legislative elections on February 16, despite calls for a boycott by the opposition.

Abdourahmane Sanoh, the coordinator of National Front for the Defence of the Constitution (FNDC), an alliance of opposition groups behind the protests, said there were plans to increase the number of rallies from January 13.

"I ask that the whole Guinean people be ready from January 13," he said.

Ethnic strife

Cheick Mohamed Kaba, an MP from the opposition Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea party (UFDG), said pro-Conde militants in Kankan had "vandalised, ransacked and pillaged" property belonging to ethnic Fulani people.

The opposition said it would stop the elections planned for February, citing irregularities in the electoral roll. By CELLOU BINANI (AFP)

The majority of UFDG supporters are Fulani, Guinea's largest ethnic group.

Conde's Rally of the Guinean People party draws most of its support from the country's second-largest ethnic group, the Malinke.

The violence comes after the political opposition said it would stop the elections planned for February, citing irregularities in the electoral roll.

Conde is a former opposition figure himself who was jailed under Guinea's previous authoritarian regimes.

He became the first democratically elected president in 2010. Under the present constitution, presidents are limited to two terms in office.

Despite initial hopes of a new political dawn, critics say his rule has become increasingly authoritarian.
Jeffrey S. Churchwell admitted to defecating outside of and on a building at Natureland Park in the town of Whitewater, sometimes several times per day, since 2017

A retiring Wisconsin high school teacher has admitted to defecating on buildings in a public park for more than two years.

Jeffrey S. Churchwell admitted to defecating outside of and on a building at Natureland Park in the town of Whitewater, sometimes several times per day, since 2017.

The 60-year-old, who is retiring from Milton High School later this month, told authorities he did it for convenience and to be disrespectful.

Churchwell has to pay $365 in fines plus $5,705 in restitution to the Public Works Department, which cleaned up after him.

Authorities caught him in October last year when a deputy spotted Churchwell's vehicle and stopped him as he drove into the park, the Janesville Gazette reports.

Earlier that day, sheriff's deputies had already spoken to a worker at the Walworth County Highway Shop who complained about someone defecating on a park building and leaving used toilet paper behind.

The worker showed deputies photos from trail cameras that showed a man defecating in the park.

The pictures also showed Churchwell's car parked nearby and a partial plate number, which was used to identify the teacher.

Churchwell has to pay $365 in fines plus $5,705 in restitution to the Public Works Department, which cleaned up after him

Video courtesy of FOX6

When the deputy pulled over Churchwell driving into the park, he initially said he didn't know why he was being stopped.

Deputies asked if it would be helpful if they had photos of him doing anything, Churchwell hung his head and admitted to 'going to the bathroom' in the park.

Asked what that meant and if it was in a park bathroom, Churchwell reportedly responded 'a number 2' by the park building without a bathroom.

He also acknowledged he occasionally defecated in the park on the way to school.

A day after his arrest, Churchwell wrote to the sheriff's deputy who stopped him and apologized and said he realizes he made a mistake.

'Im so disappointed in myself,' Churchwell said in an email.

'I have the great opportunity to teach 'Political Rhetoric' ... In this class, I stress the importance of involved citizenship. And then there I am being a lousy citizen of Walworth County,' he said, adding that he's sickened by his hypocrisy.

'As well, after REALLY thinking about why I did what I did, I came to the conclusion that I allowed my thrill-seeking, self-indulgent pride and ego both get the best of me.'
New Delhi:

Filmmaker Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri on Monday showed support to the injured students following the JNU violence by reaching out to them on social media. Urging the injured students to reach out to him, the Tashkent Files filmmaker, tweeted, All the injured students (non-leftists) pl contact me urgently on DM. You are not alone.

All the injured students (non-leftists) pl contact me urgently on DM.



You are not alone.  Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) January 6, 2020

Ask all the woke idiots of Bollywood -



Where was your bloody wokeness when:



1. Leftist students cut wi-fi of JNU for 4 days (led by Geeta)

2. Leftist students didnt allow common students to register for the semester.

3. For last 70 days #JNU has become HQ of #UrbanNaxals  Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) January 6, 2020

Other Bollywood stars such as Swara Bhasker, Shabana Azmi, Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub and Taapsee Pannu, and filmmakers Aparna Sen and Hansal Mehta on Sunday condemned the violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and urged Delhi Police to intervene. Violence broke out at JNU on Sunday night after masked men armed with sticks attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus, prompting the administration to call in police.

At least 18 people were injured and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). JNU students' union president Aishe Ghosh suffered a head injury.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the RSS-affiliated ABVP blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours. Several disturbing videos that show masked people carrying sticks and bats have gone viral on social media.

Swara, whose mother Ira Bhaskar is a professor at the JNU, took to Twitter to appeal to the people on social media to reach the campus "to pressure the government and Delhi Police" to control the violence.

"Urgent appeal!!!! To all Delhiites PLS gather in large numbers outside the Main Gate of JNU campus on Baba Gangnath Marg.. to pressure the govt. & #DelhiPolice to stop the rampage by alleged ABVP masked goons on JNU campus," the actor captioned the video, adding that she was concerned about her parents' safety who live at the campus.

Commenting on Swara's video, Azmi said she was shocked by the violence and called for immediate action against the perpetrators.

"Is this really happening ? Im not in India and it all seems like a nightmare. 20 Students Admitted To AIIMS As Violence Breaks Out In JNU. Students and Teachers beaten. Reprehensible, Appalling Condemnable. Immediate action must be taken against the perpetrators," she tweeted.

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State-owned Syndicate Bank on January 6 said it has crossed Rs 5 lakh crore business target three months ahead of its schedule. The bank crossed Rs 5 lakh crore total business mark at the end of December 31, 2019.

The bank achieved this milestone on the back of every business unit contributing in its full capacity which included retail, MSME and priority sector, the lender said in a statement.

With this achievement, the bank has proved itself as one of the most trusted and technology savvy public sector bank with a well segmented and granular growth across corporate, MSME and retail businesses that have resulted in astounding business figures, it said.

As per the mega merger plan announced by the government in August 2019, Syndicate Bank has been selected for merger with Canara Bank and the amalgamation is expected to be complete by March 31.
The Nepal government has initiated the process to deport 122 Chinese nationals detained for alleged cross border cyber crimes and criminal activities last month from different parts of Kathmandu, authorities said.

On Sunday, the Kathmandu District Court imposed a fine of Rs 1,000 each on the Chinese nationals for their 'indecent behaviour' and ordered their release.

The Department of Immigration has started the process of screening the documents in an attempt to deport 122, who were arrested on charges of attempting to commit cyber crime and cross border criminal activities.

Of those arrested, 92 Chinese do not have any valid travel documents and the authorities here have asked the Chinese Embassy to provide the necessary travel document, according to official sources.

They will be deported after the immigration department completes all the legal procedures, Senior Superintendent of Police Teku was quoted as saying by the Himalayan Times on Sunday.

Director General of Department of Immigration Eshwor Raj Poudel said the Chinese would be deported to China within two days.

"Since police investigation has shown that the arrested Chinese were not involved in crime related to Nepal, we will have to deport them from the country after recording their statement," added Poudel.

The 122 Chinese were arrested on December 23 on suspicion of using social media to swindle money from the rich, single and divorced Chinese women, running an illegal online gambling racket, operating Ponzi scheme and blackmailing the Chinese by hacking their private information from phones and computers, the report said.

The police arrested them from 10 different locations in Kathmandu.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Pakistan government on Monday moved closer to finalise a legislation to give three-year extension to Army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa as the bills concerning tenures of the services chiefs were unanimously approved by a parliamentary committee.

Defence Minister Pervez Khattak told the media that the Standing Committee on Defence of the National Assembly unanimously approved the three bills to extend the retirement age from 60 to 64 years for the chiefs of army, navy and air force, and the chairman of the joint chief of staff committee.

"The amendments were passed unanimously by the body. I congratulate the entire country and the opposition parties," the minister said.

The bills will now be put up for voting in the National Assembly or lower house on Tuesday.

Khattak said all political parties were on the same page regarding the matter. "All political parties are on the same page and are standing alongside the armed forces."



The bills will be presented before Senate once passed by the National Assembly.

Since major Opposition parties have announced their support to bills, it is expected that they will smoothly sail through the Senate.

The government hoped that the bills would be passed before the end of this week.

The government on Friday introduced the bills in the National Assembly.

On the same day the standing committees on defence of Senate and National Assembly in a joint session approved the bills. But due to technical reasons, opposition demanded separate meetings of the two committees headed by their chairmen, to approve the before voted in the two houses.

Prime Minister Imran Khan had extended 59-year-old Gen Bajwa's tenure through a notification on August 19. However, the Supreme Court in November suspended the government order, citing irregularities in the manner the army chief, a close confidant of Khan, was granted an extension.

On November 28, the apex court granted a six-month extension to Gen Bajwa after being assured by the government that Parliament will pass a legislation on the extension/reappointment of an army chief within six months.

The powerful military, which has ruled Pakistan for more than half of its 70 plus years of existence, has wielded considerable power in deciding matters concerning security and foreign policies.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sir Keir Starmer was interviewed by Andrew Marr yesterday on the BBC. Marr asked:

Would you ever support military action if you were the Labour Leader in the House of Commons?

Starmer replied:

I would pass legislation that said military action could be taken if first the lawful case for it was made, secondly there was a viable objective and thirdly you got the consent of the Commons. I think that piece of legislation is much needed. But they would be the tests and its obvious from those tests that there might be circumstances in which they could be met.

It may be his sincere view that a Commons vote should be required before any military action. Or it may be regarded as an expedient compromise in seeking to straddle public opinion and the prevailing view of the Labour Party membership. In any event, the approach is dangerously misguided.

The issue goes back to the Iraq War during Tony Blairs premiership. Robin Cook resigned as Foreign Secretary, in March 2003, and told the House of Commons:

From the start of the present crisis, I have insisted, as Leader of the House, on the right of this place to vote on whether Britain should go to war.

The vote was held  which did, of course, authorise military action. But the headstone on Cooks grave in Edinburgh includes the following quote from his memoirs:

I may not have succeeded in halting the war, but I did secure the right of Parliament to decide on war.

That is the legacy Starmer seeks to entrench and which many will regard as reasonable. Yet for hundreds of years before 2003 the Government had the power, under Royal Prerogative to take military action. It was a decision for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. Parliaments role was to hold them to account for their actions. That could mean bringing down the Government. But it could not bind the Prime Ministers hands.

It doesnt mean that MPs can not express their views. On April 3rd 1982 there was a sitting on a Saturday as the taskforce was about to embark for the Falklands. Passionate speeches were made. But the motion before the House said simply:

That this House do now adjourn.

As James Gray, the Conservative MP for North Wiltshire, wrote on this site:

The truth is that if the use of military force is allowed to be political (which it must be if it needs a majority in a possibly marginal House of Commons), then it cannot be strategic. Should the Prime Minister be doing what is right for the peace and the people of the world? Or should he have primary concern for its popularity in Parliament? The former Chief of Defence Staff, David (now Lord) Richards was quoted in this weekends paper attacking Cameron over his actions in Libya and Syria  even going so far as to suggest that the current refugee tide may be linked to it. There may be some truth in that. The Government does seem to have got itself into a terrible tangle over the process by which we make use of our military.

Giving Parliament the final say over warfare politicises the war; it means that possibly sensitive intelligence has to be made public; it removes any element of surprise, delays decision-making and, in a host of other ways, makes the effective conduct of military force extremely difficult, if not virtually impossible. Now even if you think all this may be a good thing, I would hope that you would agree it also has a devastating impact on our ability to project power for the good of the world. Diplomacy without arms is like music without an orchestra.

Jesse Norman, the Conservative MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire, has made a further important point:

If Parliament itself authorises such action in advance, what then? It gives up part of its power of scrutiny; it binds Members in their own minds, rather than allowing them the opportunity to assess each Government decision on its own merits and circumstances; and instead of being forced to explain and justify their actions, Ministers can always take final refuge in saying, Well, you authorised it. Thus, far from strengthening Parliament, it weakens it and the Government: it weakens the dynamic tension between the two sides from which proper accountability and effective policy must derive.

The executive needs to have the flexibility to act quickly. The Government must be allowed the authority to govern and then to be held to account. The notion of the House of Commons  made up of 650 people  managing a war is absurd. Still more absurd than Sir Oliver Letwin attempts last year to empower them to conduct our Brexit negotiations. It also follows that passing laws that constrain the Governments future management is misguided. For instance, over spending levels. The Conservative Manifesto pledge to make NHS spending rises legally binding might have been good politics but is bad for management of the country. The legal requirement to spend 0.7 per cent a year of GDP on foreign aid erodes the ability of the Government to adjust to circumstances. It might be more sensible for it be 0.6 per cent one year and 0.8 per cent another year. Equally, the net-zero emissions target for 2050 being legally binding shows the wrong mentality. I suppose in practice these laws could be changed fairly quickly or if the targets are missed the Minister just comes and gives a statement explaining what happened. But if these laws are mere gestures that is hardly a good argument for them.

Whatever you think about war, or Brexit, or the correct level of spending for different departments, the Government must decide and take the consequences.

I believe another future is possible  but we have to fight for it. Thats why Im standing to be leader of the Labour Party. Join me and together we can  and we will  win: https://t.co/7LQiNItoDU pic.twitter.com/hZQaDBmx3M  Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) January 4, 2020

Last week, I suggested that comparisons between Starmer and Neil Kinnock are unfair to Kinnock. But there is a certain parallel. When Kinnock was standing to be the Labour leader in 1983 he did not immediately repudiate the Partys left wing Manifesto in that years General Election. At that stage Kinnock defended the economic programme and unilateral nuclear disarmament  though he criticised the Militant Tendency and suggested that the proposal to withdraw from the Common Market be abandoned. His rival, Roy Hattersley, was more outspoken  and got trounced as through the summer we waited with baited breath as USDAW, the National Union of Railwaymen and others held their seaside delegate conferences.

So the dilemma for Labour leadership contenders is not new. Thus far though, they all seem to compare unfavourably to Kinnock. All are desperate to ingratiate themselves with the Corbynistas. Starmers campaign video stresses his credentials as an ally of striking miners and print workers in the 1980s. Jess Phillips, used her offering to mention that her grandfather was the cartoonist for Tony Benn and the Socialist Campaign Group  and in her childhood she made signs for the nuclear disarmament protests at Greenham Common.

The choice the leadership contenders are making is to ignore the dismay the electorate showed for Jeremy Corbyn last month. Instead they are devoting themselves to the Labour Party membership  most of whom regard Corbyn as a hero. Part of that will means some pretty dud policies are put forward. It makes it much harder for whoever becomes the Leader of the Opposition to establish any credibility as a responsible and patriotic statesman.
Caracas (AFP) - Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido hit out at the police on Sunday for preventing him from attending the National Assembly where he was due to be voted in for a second term as parliament speaker.

Lawmakers were due to elect the new National Assembly president, with Guaido widely expected to be confirmed in the post he has held for the past year.

But when he arrived at the assembly on Sunday morning, police prevented him from entering.

"This is unprecedented!" Guaido told a member of the security forces with whom he had a heated exchange.

For the last year, Guaido has led opposition to Venezuela's socialist president Nicolas Maduro.

Last January, Guaido declared himself acting president -- a move quickly supported by more than 50 countries -- after parliament officially branded Maduro a "usurper" over his 2018 re-election, which was widely denounced as fraudulent.

Despite intense pressure from the opposition and the United States -- which has imposed sanctions on regime figures -- Maduro has retained power, thanks largely to support from the armed forces.

The National Assembly is the only branch of government in opposition hands. But it has been sidelined since 2017, when the Supreme Court, made up of Maduro loyalists, declared it in contempt. The court has since annulled its every decision.

The parliament session was due to begin at 11:00 am (1500 GMT.)

Journalists as well as lawmakers were prevented from accessing the site.

AFP journalists saw police and army blockades in the streets surrounding the assembly building in the capital Caracas.

"The regime is kidnapping and persecuting deputies, militarizing the Federal Legislative Palace, preventing access and blocking entry to the free press," Guaido said on Twitter.

"This is the reality in Venezuela: the desire for change in the face of a dictatorship that continues to persecute."

The national press workers union launched a "worldwide alert in the face of the Nicolas Maduro regime initiative to block the press" from reaching parliament.
In the hours since the Trump administration announced that the high-ranking Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani had been killed in a U.S. airstrike, Americans wondered: Does this mean war?

And for young people, there was a follow-up: Would I have to go?

The impact of President Donald Trump's decision to order a strike against Soleimani has yet to be seen, it has turned up the heat on America's already tense relationship with Iran, a country the president has portrayed as one of America's most dangerous adversaries. Google searches for terms such as "conscription", "Selective Service" and "Iran" spiked, according to Trends data, as youthful social media users on platforms like TikTok and Instagram dealt with this collective political anxiety the best way they knew how: by spinning out endless memes about getting drafted in a hypothetical, but seemingly imminent, World War III.

On Friday, the website for the Selective Service, a federal agency tasked with maintaining a database of adult men who could be called upon should a crisis require a draft, experienced technical difficulties as people flooded the site.

The draft was suspended in 1973 because of intense public and political opposition to the Vietnam War, and Congress and the president would have to pass legislation to bring it back, should an emergency call for it. But America still keeps a database of all young men who could be called upon should the draft ever return.

Every year, millions of young, adult men are required by law to register with the Selective Service, "a relatively low-cost insurance policy for our nation," as the agency puts it.

If you're a male residing in the United States between ages 18 and 25, you are required by law to register for the Selective Service. The mandate applies whether you're a U.S. citizen, immigrant, or undocumented immigrant. Women are not currently required to register, and signing up for the Selective Service does not enlist a person in the military.

Failure to register for the Selective Service could lead to criminal penalties, and an inability to qualify for federal student loans and federal jobs.

But would the latest escalation with Iran lead to a conflict so intense that the long-dormant draft would be instated, as the United States did during the Civil War, World War II, Korean War and, most famously, the Vietnam War?

Probably not, said said Patricia Sullivan, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who researchers military policy.

"I think there is almost no chance at all that the draft will be reinstated," Sullivan told The Washington Post. "With Iran, there's almost no chance that we're getting into the kind of ground-war scenario that large numbers of ground troops would be needed and we would implement the draft."

Sullivan added that the military is now so professionalized, and the cost of training each solider so high, that it would not necessarily make sense to add a surge of new recruits that may not be qualified.

The people who had the most reason to be concerned about an escalation with Iran were the military forces already in the Middle East region, Sullivan said, not civilians who might be conscripted in a hypothetical draft.
David Thomas became the CEO of Barratt Developments PLC (LON:BDEV) in 2015. This report will, first, examine the CEO compensation levels in comparison to CEO compensation at other big companies. Next, we'll consider growth that the business demonstrates. And finally - as a second measure of performance - we will look at the returns shareholders have received over the last few years. This method should give us information to assess how appropriately the company pays the CEO.

See our latest analysis for Barratt Developments

How Does David Thomas's Compensation Compare With Similar Sized Companies?

At the time of writing, our data says that Barratt Developments PLC has a market cap of UK7.5b, and reported total annual CEO compensation of UK3.6m for the year to June 2019. While this analysis focuses on total compensation, it's worth noting the salary is lower, valued at UK739k. Importantly, there may be performance hurdles relating to the non-salary component of the total compensation. We took a group of companies with market capitalizations over UK6.1b, and calculated the median CEO total compensation to be UK3.5m. Once you start looking at very large companies, you need to take a broader range, because there simply aren't that many of them.

So David Thomas receives a similar amount to the median CEO pay, amongst the companies we looked at. Although this fact alone doesn't tell us a great deal, it becomes more relevant when considered against the business performance.

You can see a visual representation of the CEO compensation at Barratt Developments, below.

LSE:BDEV CEO Compensation, January 6th 2020

Is Barratt Developments PLC Growing?

Over the last three years Barratt Developments PLC has grown its earnings per share (EPS) by an average of 10% per year (using a line of best fit). It saw its revenue drop 2.3% over the last year.

This shows that the company has improved itself over the last few years. Good news for shareholders. While it would be good to see revenue growth, profits matter more in the end. Shareholders might be interested in this free visualization of analyst forecasts.

Story continues

Has Barratt Developments PLC Been A Good Investment?

I think that the total shareholder return of 89%, over three years, would leave most Barratt Developments PLC shareholders smiling. This strong performance might mean some shareholders don't mind if the CEO were to be paid more than is normal for a company of its size.

In Summary...

Remuneration for David Thomas is close enough to the median pay for a CEO of a large company .

Few would be critical of the leadership, since returns have been juicy and earnings per share are moving in the right direction. Although the pay is a normal amount, some shareholders probably consider it fair or modest, given the good performance of the stock. Whatever your view on compensation, you might want to check if insiders are buying or selling Barratt Developments shares (free trial).

Important note: Barratt Developments may not be the best stock to buy. You might find something better in this list of interesting companies with high ROE and low debt.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Science and Technology Minister of Pakistan, Chaudhry Fawad Hussain slapped TV anchor Mubasher Lucman on Sunday during an argument over the Tik Tok star Hareem Shah. Media reports suggest that this incident occurred during the reception ceremony of Punjab Irrigation Minister Mohsin Laghari's son. Other Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's (PTI) leaders present at the event included Jahangir Tareen and Ishaq Khakwani.

The spat between Hussain and Lucman

The spat began as Jahangir Tareen and Chaudhry Fawad Chaudhry were discussing the allegations that the TV anchor Lucman had levelled on Chaudhry on his show. Reportedly, Lucman had salaciously linked Fawad Chaudhry to the TikTok star Hareem Shah. It was at that moment that Lucman arrived there, triggering a war of words between him and Chaudhry over the issue.

Read: Nankana Sahib: Pakistan in complete denial over religious persecution of minorities

Read: Virtual martial law in Pakistan: Pak dissidents

The Minister protested the claims made by Lucman on his show and subsequently slapped the TV anchor. The altercation stopped when others present at the reception intervened. Soon after, both Hussain and Lucman left the event.

Hussain later took to Twitter and tacitly admitted to the act of slapping the anchor. Earlier, Hussain had also slapped another TV anchor, Sami Ibrahim, in June 2019. Meanwhile, the TikTok star linked to Chaudhry gained popularity over the social media after she shared a video wherein Hareem Shah was seen inside a conference room at Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's foreign ministry office.

Read: Pakistan will not allow its soil to be used for any regional conflict: FM Qureshi

Read: MEA: Pakistan yet to pay its share for South Asian University campus construction

(With ANI Inputs)
The two Toyota pickups manufactured in San Antonio had sharply contrasting fates in 2019  Tacoma sales hit an all-time record while the Tundra attracted fewer buyers than it had the year before.

Toyota sold more than 248,000 Tacoma vehicles last year, up 1.3 percent from 2018, statistics the automaker released Friday show. Auto industry analysts said sales figures were impressive considering the midsize pickup saw new competition from the Ford Ranger and the Jeep Gladiator, both introduced in 2019.

The Tacomas dominance of the midsize truck market is quite an achievement, said analyst Jeremy Acevado of Edmunds.com.

Ford reintroduced the Ranger after an eight-year absence. Ford executives had scrapped the Ranger in 2011 after miscalculating the demand for a midsize truck among recreational users and other consumers who wanted a smaller pickup. That helped the Tacoma become the market leader.

Despite Fords sales of about 80,000 Rangers in 2019, Acevado said, Toyota is expected to continue dominating the midsize pickup category in coming years. Drivers bought about 40,000 Jeep Gladiators last year.

The Tundra headed in the other direction.

The full-size truck saw sales of 111,576 in 2019, down 5.6 percent from the prior year.

December 2019 sales were particularly troublesome for the Tundra, down by 22.3 percent from the same month a year earlier. Tacoma sales also fell in December, but by a smaller 3.7 percent.

The Tundras competition is formidable. The Ford F-150, the most popular full-size truck on the U.S. market, hit sales of nearly 900,000 in 2019.

Edmonds statistics show two other competitors also had sizable sales compared to the Tundra  the Chevy Silverado and Dodge Ram.

Toyota officials have said the Tundra will be redesigned  the last time the vehicle saw a major overhaul was 2007  but its not clear when the automaker will unveil the reworked pickup.

During a news briefing Friday, Jack Hollis, Toyota Motors group vice president and general manager, said only that the redesign wont be introduced in 2020.

Acevado said the company may not be in a rush to introduce an updated design because of the expense of marketing a new model.

In the meantime, overall vehicle sales are down in North America. Total sales peaked in 2016 at 17.5 million cars, SUVs and trucks, said Michelle Krebs, an analyst with Autotrader.com. She expects 2019 sales will amount to about 17.1 million, and that this years sales could fall as low as 16.5 million.

She blamed slow economic growth in the United States.

During Toyotas briefing, Hollis also had little to say about the automakers planned $391 million renovation of its South San Antonio truck plant, announced in September.

On ExpressNews.com: Toyotas $391 million expansion the first major renovation of San Antonio plant in nine years

The upgrades are expected to improve the manufacturing process  for example, adding so-called cobots, or cooperative robots that work alongside humans. Its not clear when the renovation will begin.

The plant employs about 3,200 workers. The overall count is 7,200 when Toyotas 23 on-site suppliers are included.

One Toyota supplier, Aisin AW, has announced it will open a manufacturing plant in Cibolo that will employ 900 workers. Aisin supplies transmissions for the Tundras made in San Antonio.

Randy Diamond covers energy and manufacturing in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read his stories and more local coverage on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | randy.diamond@express-news.net
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said though she backs protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, she will not support any bandh for the cause.

The Left parties had on December 26 last year announced a nationwide strike on January 8 and a seven-day protest from January 1 against the CAA, National Population Register (NPR) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

Banerjee, speaking at an administrative meeting in Kakdwip in South 24 Parganas district, observed that she supports the cause (protest against CAA, NPR and NRC) but will not back any bandh which she said causes trouble to people and loss to the exchequer.

Left leaders had sought support for the bandh from all political parties protesting the CAA.

Banerjee also instructed her administration to take measures to ensure normalcy on January 8.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 13:49:30|Editor: xuxin

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SYDNEY, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Authorities have warned that supplies of Australian dairy products could be significantly affected by the ongoing bushfire disaster, which has already wiped out vast numbers of livestock.

While the full extent of the damage could take days or weeks to emerge, the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) in the badly affected New South Wales (NSW) revealed on Monday that 3,900 livestock animals had been confirmed dead so far.

Most of the losses have occurred since Christmas as fires took hold in dairy and sheep farming communities on NSW's south coast.

"Limited access to fireground and loss of power and phones in the area mean the full picture of losses and damage will take some time to emerge," State Incident Controller Karen Roberts said.

"However stock losses as a result of fires in south-east NSW since Christmas have been high, with approximately 2,800 stock reported killed in the fires or euthanized to date."

Australia exports large amounts of dairy products like milk, cheese and infant powder to countries including China.

South Coast dairy farmer Robert Miller told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that supplies of fresh milk were likely to be significantly compromised as a result of the disaster.

"Every dairy farmer in NSW is suffering now. We've got a shortage of milk and it's only going to get worse," Miller said.

The DPI offered assistance to farmers affected by the fires, providing them with emergency fodder and water, animal care, livestock assessment, necessary stock euthanasia and burial.

"I would urge people whose stock and properties have been affected to register... so that we can allocate resources to help them deal with what are going to be very significant impacts," Roberts said.
Dhaka: Onion prices have increased again in Bangladesh. Prices have increased due to a decrease in onion imports and a decrease in the arrival of new crops. According to media reports, on Friday, retailers were asking for 180 takas (currency of Bangladesh) for 1 kg of onion whereas its prices last week were between 100-110 taka per kg.

Arrest notice issued against first Hindu Chief Justice of Bangladesh, know what is the whole matter?

Traders have said that due to sudden rain since Thursday night, onion prices have increased. Vegetable seller Almas Hussain of Pirrbagh of Mirpur has told that the price of domestic onion was going up 120 takas per kg 2 days ago. He said, "If I got onions at 160 takas per kg from the wholesale seller, then I cannot sell below 180 takas per kg." The price of onions coming from China and Egypt was 45-55 taka per kg last week, but on Friday it too started selling at 70 takas per kg.

Sulemani's daughter's big statement, says 'Father's blood will not go in waste'

A day after the onion price hike, Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi has asked traders to answer for this. Before the commencement of Ramadan in April, he was warned about the increase in onion prices. Onion consumption increases during Ramadan in Bangladesh. According to Munshi, the country usually requires an additional 200,000 tonnes of onions in this month. He said that the government is preparing to increase imports to meet the consumption of onions.

Pakistan: Police arrested man who raised slogans at Nankana sahib
The Taoiseach has claimed that a "very severe flu season" has exacerbated the level of overcrowding in the country's hospitals.

According to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), the trolley crisis has reached a record level, with 760 admitted patients waiting for beds.

The union said it is the worst figure since records began.

It comes as the Minister for Health Simon Harris confirmed that 199 additional beds will be made available by the end of the month to help the bed crisis.

Mr Harris also said that 50 additional beds have been opened on Monday.

"A total 199 additional beds will be in place by the end of this month. Some of those beds will be in our hospitals and some will be in the community setting," Mr Harris added.

"It's also in our plan to hire more doctors and we need more hospital consultants.

"We actually had some pretty good months in 2019 but we're navigating a very, very rocky patch and it comes back to the fact that we need more beds, more staff, both of which were increasing."

He said there are plans to put 2,000 extra beds in Ireland's hospitals over the next two years.

Some 60 of these beds will be in Limerick while around 40 beds will be in Clonmel.

Mr Varadkar confirmed that the hospitals are "severely overcrowded".

He said that the HSE and hospital management would have the support of government in taking any actions necessary to "alleviate the situation" over the next couple of days.

Mr Varadkar thanked hospital staff for "putting in Trojan effort" over the last few days.

"We have a long term plan in place to deal with that long term problem, and that is increasing the number of hospital beds, increasing the number of staff and increasing resources for social care and primary care in particular," he added.

"The particular situation we have at the moment is exacerbated by what is a very severe flu season and what was predicted - predicting a severe flu season is like predicting a bad storm - it doesn't stop that happening, it still happens."

The INMO said that the previous record was 714 patients on March 12 2018, during the Beast from the East.

INMO said the number of patients waiting on trolleys on Monday morning would more than fill Ireland's largest hospital, St James, which has 707 beds.

University Hospital Limerick (UHL) has also broken the daily record for an individual hospital, with 92 patients on trolleys.

The previous highest figure was 85, also at UHL.

INMO is calling for a major incident protocol to be adopted across the country.

This is likely to see all non-emergency admissions halted, elective surgery cancelled, and extra bed capacity sourced from the private and public sectors, it added.

INMO general secretary Phil Ni Sheaghdha said: "Ireland's beleaguered health service continues to break records in the worst possible way. Our members are working in impossible conditions to provide the best care they can.

"The excuse that this is all down to the flu simply doesn't hold. There are always extra patients in winter, but we simply do not get the extra capacity to cope.

"This is entirely predictable, yet we seemingly fail to deal with it every year.

"The Government need to immediately initiate a major incident protocol. We need to cancel elective surgeries, stop non-emergency admissions, and source extra capacity wherever we can.

"We also need to immediately scrap the HSE's counter-productive recruitment pause, which is leaving these services understaffed and thus overcrowded.

"Behind these numbers are hundreds of individual vulnerable patients - it is a simply shameful situation.

"This is entirely preventable if proper planning was in place."

It came as the SIPTU union said the overcrowding crisis in emergency departments is causing chaos for ambulance professionals.

Siptu health division organiser Paul Bell said: "SIPTU representatives are demanding that the Minister for Health, Simon Harris, the Department of Health and the Health Service Executive (HSE) take immediate and effective action to relieve the immense pressure being experienced by ambulance professionals across the country.

"At the end of November, SIPTU representatives requested that the HSE and Department of Health agree a protocol for the handover of patients at emergency departments.

"Unfortunately, our calls were ignored and now we have an unacceptable situation where our members are reporting delays in some cases of between three-and-a-half and seven hours outside emergency departments as our now annual winter overcrowding crisis bites.

"It is outrageous that in 2020 Ireland patients are being treated in the loading bays of hospitals instead of hospital beds.

"This is not what quality patient care looks like, and this kind of chaos is starving communities of a safe and functioning ambulance service, particularly in areas of the west of Ireland and in the midlands."

The HSE has been asked for a response.
ALBANY  Assemblyman William A. Barclay, a Republican from Oswego County, is expected to be voted in as the Assembly's minority leader on Tuesday after Assemblyman Brian Kolb last week announced he would step down a few days after he crashed his state-issued SUV and was arrested for DWI.

Barclay, 51, is the deputy minority leader and was elected to the Assembly in 2002. Multiple Assembly sources said over the weekend that Barclay, buoyed by his strong fundraising efforts, had garnered enough support from his fellow GOP lawmakers to win the leadership position in the chamber where Democrats outnumber Republicans 105 to 42.

The vote for the leadership post is scheduled to take place Tuesday when legislators are scheduled to conference as they return to Albany for the legislative session that begins Wednesday.

Kolb, who had been minority leader since 2009, announced Friday he was stepping down from the leadership position in the wake of his New Year's Eve arrest for driving while intoxicated.

Kolb, 67, was arrested by sheriff's deputies after he crashed his state-owned SUV in front of his Ontario County residence.

Kolb was elected to the Assembly in 2000 and has been minority leader for the past decade, which had made him the current longest-serving legislative leader. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Kolb said he would support Barclay to succeed him.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

The unexpected leadership shakeup comes as Republicans in the state Legislature, especially the Senate, are struggling to gain traction for their party as the November elections loom and many veteran GOP senators have said they will not seek re-election.

It remains unclear whether Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie will refer Kolb's DWI crash to an ethics panel for consideration of any sanctions or disciplinary charges. Most state agencies bar employees from driving a state-owned vehicle for personal outings that don't involve government business.

"With a new year and new legislative session ahead, the work of our conference cannot be undermined or deterred in any way," Kolb said in the statement announcing his resignation as leader. He is not resigning from his Assembly position.
FULTON, N.Y. -- When Fulton police and firefighters arrived at a fire Sunday morning, they were told someone might be trapped inside.

A 10-year-old child who lived in the large, two-story apartment at 221 Cayuga St. in the city of Fulton, was helped out a side window to safety, Fulton Assistant Fire Chief Shane Laws said. Another resident helped the girl out a bedroom window during the fire, according to Fulton police reports.

Paramedics evaluated the girl and said she did not need to go to the hospital.

Meanwhile, Fulton city firefighters searched the building and continued battling the blaze.

Someone called Oswego County 911 at 10:10 a.m. to report the fire. When police and firefighters arrived three minutes later, they saw heavy smoke and fire.

Firefighters battled the blaze for more than a half-hour. The fire was extinguished at 10:53 a.m., according to 911.

There were no reports of injuries.

Fulton firefighters initially said approximately 22 people lived in the apartment building. But the American Red Cross announced in a news release that they are helping 19 people from nine apartments affected by the fire.

A team of eight Red Cross Disaster Action Team volunteers responded to the incident, according to Red Cross spokesman Daniel Hartman.

The Red Cross typically provides fire victims with funding for temporary housing, food and clothing, as well as health services. Families affected by the fire also will meet with caseworkers in the coming days to work on a long-term recovery plan, the release said.

Several Oswego County volunteer fire departments, the Oswego County Fire Coordinators Office, Menter Ambulance and Golden Sun Bus Company also helped during the fire. Volney, Granby Center and Cody volunteer firefighters went to Fulton fire stations to be on standby during the fire, in case of other emergencies.

Two Golden Sun buses provided residents affected by the fire with temporary shelter because it was cold outside, Fulton firefighters said.

The nearby First United Church of Fulton also provided space for residents to gather for comfort, food, refreshments and support, Hartman said in the Red Cross news release.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation, Fulton police and firefighters said.

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Essayist Gabriel Matzneff is being investigated by French police for allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl.

Frances culture minister said Monday that a writer accused of raping and seducing children should be stripped of a special state pension.

Award-winning essayist Gabriel Matzneff is being investigated by French police after the publication of a book detailing his sexual relationship with a girl of 14 over three decades ago.

Underage relationships have featured in Matzneffs writing, and in 1977 he published a piece in Le Monde newspaper supporting three people convicted of raping teenagers.

In a 1990 television talk show, Matzneff, 83, talked about his sexual exploits with girls.

Despite his views, he was named by the Culture Ministry as an officer of the arts and letters in 1995 and he won the prestigious literary award, the Renaudot Essai, in 2013.

Franck Riester, current culture minister, said Matzneff should be deprived of cash from a hardship fund from the National Books Centre (CNL) for elderly writers in financial straits.

In a statement, he said the author should not be granted the annual allowance if he applies for it again.

Matzneff is reported to have received around 8,000 euros ($8,900) from the fund last year, and up to 160,000 euros since 2002, according to a French Sunday newspaper, Journal du Dimanche.

The case has highlighted what many see as an overly permissive attitude towards sexual harassment and assaults in France.

Police opened a formal investigation into Matzneff after publisher Vanessa Springora described her tortured relationship with the writer in a book called, Consent [File: Martin Bureau/AFP]

The French film establishment has been rocked by rape accusations against directors Roman Polanski and Luc Besson, while star Adele Haenel said she was sexually harassed by the director of her first film when she was 12.

All three men have denied the claims.

The head of the CNL, Vincent Monade, said the organisation had resisted Matzneff being awarded the allowance when he first applied for it, but bowed to the request under pressure from politicians and other famous authors who lobbied for him.

He said they had recommended to the minister that the grant now be withdrawn.

Police opened a formal investigation into Matzneff last week after leading publisher Vanessa Springora described her tortured relationship with the writer in a book called, Consent.

In it, she describes how Matzneff, then in his fifties, would wait for her outside her school and then take her back to his home for sex.

Prosecutors said their inquiry would focus on rapes committed against a minor aged under 15.

Matzneff has denied any wrongdoing and said there had been an exceptional love between him and Springora.
Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Turkish troops have begun deploying to Libya in a bid to prop up the UN-recognised government in Tripoli, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has announced.

The move followed a vote in the Turkish parliament backing deployment and further deadly attacks in Tripoli by an airforce under the control of Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the warlord who has been trying to oust the government since April.

Erdogan told CNN Turk on Sunday that Turkish forces were already on their way to Libya. Our soldiers duty there is coordination. They will develop the operation centre there. Our soldiers are gradually going right now, he said.

The Turkish deployment, likely to take many weeks, risks a military confrontation between Turkey and other regional actors supporting Haftar, notably the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

Russian mercenaries, believed to have the backing of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, are also operating in Libya in support of Haftar. Putin has urged Erdogan not to send troops.

Erdogan has been signalling his support for the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) ever since he signed a memorandum of understanding with Libyas prime minister, Fayez al-Serraj, in which the two sides agreed to carve out drilling rights in the Mediterranean and to cooperate militarily.

European powers for years have failed to mediate an end to the conflict in Libya between the east and the west of the country, leaving a vacuum that Turkey is eager to fill. The latest European effort is to be a conference in Berlin, but its date has been repeatedly postponed as regional powers dispute the conferences purpose and attendance list. Attention to the rise in violence in Libya has been reduced due to the focus on north-east Syria and the US conflict with Iran.

Related: Dozens killed in bombing of military academy in Libya

The speed of Turkish actions has been prompted by signs that Haftars Libyan National Army (LNA) is stepping up its attacks on Tripoli, including a deadly air raid on the Hadaba military academy at the weekend that left 30 dead and 33 injured.

Story continues

The GNA called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to denounce the strikes, describing them as a war crime.

But Turkey already has forces engaged in northern Syria, and the Turkish political opposition has opposed the deployment to Libya, fearing that the Erdogan government is overstretching itself militarily.

Related: Mercenaries flock to Libya raising fears of prolonged war

The US embassy in Libya at the weekend called for an end to the toxic foreign interference in Libya, citing the arrival of Syrian fighters supported by Turkey as well as the deployment of Russian mercenaries. The embassy added: All Libyan parties have a responsibility to end this dangerous involvement of foreign forces, which is contributing to civilian casualties and damaging civilian infrastructure to the detriment of all Libyans.

The statement made no mention of the role of the United Arab Emirates, which has been supplying air support to the LNA for months, if not years.

The UAE believes that Islamist militia, regarded as terrorists by the UAE, form the backbone of the GNAs military support. The Tripoli government, furious at the lack of European support, insists that it is a democratic force fighting Haftar, who is a proven war criminal and authoritarian.
FILE PHOTO: Gold bars are displayed at the headquarters of Mitsubishi Materials Corporation in Tokyo

By Karthika Suresh Namboothiri

(Reuters) - Gold surged on Monday to a near seven-year high as the U.S. killing of a top Iranian commander stirred fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East. Palladium surpassed $2,000 an ounce for the first time.

Spot gold <XAU=> was up 1.1% at $1,568.19 per ounce as of 1:42 p.m. EST (1842 GMT), after rising to $1,579.72 earlier in the session, its highest since April 2013.

U.S. gold futures <GCcv1> settled 1.2% higher at $1,568.80 per ounce.

"The markets are nervous about what comes next between the United States and Iran; there are political risks and there is safe haven buying in gold," said Bob Haberkorn, senior market strategist at RJO Futures.

"The equities are lower, and this is a perfect storm for higher gold between now and until we get some clarity on the situation."

Iraq's parliament called on Sunday for U.S. and other foreign troops to leave while Iran lambasted U.S. President Donald Trump after he threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites, including targets important to Iranian culture, if Tehran were to retaliate.

The conflict took a hit at risk appetite, sending world stocks <.MIWD00000PUS> down 0.3%. [MKTS/GLOB] On Wall Street, the Nasdaq turned positive, a sign investors were taking a cautious approach.

"Even though the stock markets pared its losses, and gold pared some gains, we still look for a higher extended range because gold has become a necessary haven," said George Gero, managing director at RBC Wealth Management.

Elsewhere, U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers agreed that interest rates were likely to stay on hold for "a time," minutes of the Fed's Dec. 10-11 policy meeting, released on Friday, showed.

Gold is highly sensitive to interest rates, as higher rates lift the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion.

Palladium <XPD=> was up nearly 2% to $2,024.64 an ounce, after hitting an all-time high of $2,031. The industrial metal added 53.93% in 2019, and is expected to remain in high demand this year.

Story continues

"It (palladium) seems to be unstoppable. Many market players are of the opinion that the market will remain severely tight, and that's the main driving force for prices," Commerzbank analyst Daniel Briesemann said.

Silver <XAG=> gained 0.7% to $18.17, having earlier hit its highest in more than three months at $18.50.

Platinum <XPT=> shed 2.2% to $958.94 an ounce.

(Reporting by Karthika Suresh Namboothiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Grant McCool and Tom Brown)
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Helping hands: Public Facility Maintenance Agency officers distribute food supplies to flood victims in South Kembangan, West Jakarta, on Friday. (JP/Dionnasius Aditya)

Many residential areas are still submerged by standing water after massive flooding hit Greater Jakarta and Lebak, Banten, following heavy downpours in the region from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday morning, leaving at least 43 people dead.

Thousands of residents have fled to makeshift tents and evacuation points and are in need of immediate supplies, including medicines, blankets, instant food, drinking water, tents or tarpaulins, pillows, diapers, flashlights and any other emergency items.

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As the only place in the Chinese-speaking world where people can choose their top political leader, its unsurprising that elections in Taiwan embody democracy at its unbridled messiest: febrile, rambunctious and dripping in color. This year is no different. The island of 23 million heads to the ballot box on Saturday following a campaign dominated by fake news from malevolent actors, sexist personal attacks and fist-pumping speeches.

The growing clout of Beijing looms large over the island. Chinas strongman President Xi Jinping has been blunt about the need to politically reunite self-governing Taiwan with the mainland. The past four years has seen seven diplomatic allies switch to Beijingonly 15 nations still recognize the government in Taipeiand repeated threats of invasion.

How best to safeguard the islands democratic way of life has dominated the election, which pits the anti-China incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen against the more pro-Beijing challenger Han Kuo-yu.

Deteriorating cross-Strait relations are worrisome for the U.S., which maintains Taiwan as an unofficial ally.

Heres what you need to know about the 2020 Taiwan presidential election.

Whats at stake?

Taiwan has ruled itself since effectively splitting from the mainland following the Nationalists flight across the Taiwan Strait in 1949 following Chinas civil war. Relations between Taipei and Beijing had improved thanks to the One China principle, which states that the island and mainland belong to the same country, even if the governments of Beijing and Taipei bicker over which is the legitimate power. Today, Taiwans unfortunate distinction is that it has every characteristic of a statepeople, territory, economy, military, governmentexcept recognition by the U.N. and most governments. (The U.S. switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing under Jimmy Carter in 1979, though maintains a host of unofficial ties with Taiwan.)

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Although the islands population is over 95% ethnic Han Chinese, over the previous half-century they have been politically divided between those who migrated alongside Nationalist Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek 70 years ago and those who were already on the island, and identify as Taiwanese above all. Historically, the former have supported the Nationalists, or Kuomintang (KMT), while the latter back the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Taiwan democratized in the early 1990s and enjoyed an export-driven boom. The islands economy ranks 21st in the world with a GDP per capita about three times that of the mainland. It has switched from low-end manufacturing to advanced design and production for semi-conductors, AI and biotech. Still, like fellow tiger economies Japan and South Korea, in recent years Taiwan has fallen victim to the middle-income trap with sluggish growth and stagnant wages.

But it is relations with China that have dominated the election campaign. Last January, Xi suggested Taiwan would enjoy the same system of semi-autonomy, known as one country, two systems, under which Hong Kong has been ruled since its 1997 takeover by Beijing. However, ferocious and increasingly violent pro-democracy protests in the freewheeling former British colony have galvanized opposition to any such arrangement.

Recent surveys show some 80% of Taiwans people reject political union with China. Most back the islands current status of de facto independence, given Beijing has vowed formal secession would draw a military response. Theres also a fear that conflict with Taiwan might become an easy distraction for Beijing if its slowing economy sparks popular unrest. Thats probably the biggest threat to Taiwan right now, says Shelley Rigger, an East Asia expert at Davidson College in North Carolina and author of Why Taiwan Matters.

The ballot is taking place just over a week after a helicopter crash killed eight military officials including Gen. Shen Yi-ming, who had taken over as chief of the general staff in July and was Taiwans top military officer.

Who are the main candidates?

The campaign is widely seen as a two-way race between incumbent President Tsai for the DPP and Kaoshiung Mayor Han for the KMT. A third candidate, People First Party candidate James Soong, brings up the rear.

Tsai Ing-wen

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party attends a campaign rally in Tainan on Jan. 5, 2020. | Kyodo News/AP

Elected president in a landslide in 2016, Tsai, 63, is a U.S. and U.K.-trained lawyer and academic with a reputation as bookish and aloof, says Rigger. Although Tsai is of southern Taiwanese stock, she was born in Taipei and grew up among the capitals KMT-dominated educated elite. One grandmother belongs to Taiwans Paiwan aboriginal group, famed for their intricate wood and slate carvings.

Tsai first entering government in 1994 with roles in the Fair Trade Commission, National Security Council and Mainland Affairs Council. Tsais popularity plummeted over her first term as president due to a series of scandals. Her decision to overhaul Taiwans lavish state pension system resulted in chastening local election results in 2018. At one point she had a 30-point deficit to her KMT rival. However, her poll numbers have since recovered, helped not least by the turmoil engulfing Hong Kong.

After the local election she realized she needed more face-to-face communication with the people, Jason Liu, Deputy Secretary-General of Presidential Office, tells TIME in his Taipei office. Since then she has cut time in internal meetings and increased that she spends outside meeting the people.

Tsais refusal to endorse the idea that Taiwan and China must and always will be the one nation makes her anathema to Beijing. Taipei has also accused Beijing of orchestrating a campaign of misinformation against her. In recent months, Tsai has been falsely accused of everything from installing artwork bearing an enormous quote from Mao Zedong in her Presidential Office to faking her doctoral dissertation. (The Chinese government denies any such campaign.)

She has also been the subject the of a series of spiteful, misogynistic attacks from opponents who claim that an unwed, childless woman isnt qualified to lead the next generation.

Nevertheless, shes clear favorite for reelection.

Han Kuo-yu

Taiwan's 2020 presidential election candidate, KMT or Nationalist Party's Han Kuo-yu, delivers a speech during a campaign rally in Taipei, Taiwan, Saturday, Dec. 28, 2019. | Chiang Ying-yingAP

The populist Han, 62, has been described as Taiwans Donald Trump for good reason. When hes not leading diehard supportersknown as the Han Wavein nostalgic and patriotic songs on the stump, hes making outlandish promises, such as drilling for oil in the contested South China Sea and bringing casinos and Formula One motor races to Taiwan.

An undeniably colorful character, Han has been accusing of having links to a gangster and once punched fellow lawmaker and future DPP President Chen Shui-bian within the parliament building, hospitalizing him for three days. However, unlike Trump, Han doesnt vilify particular social or ethnic groups and has no problem making fun of himself, especially his bald head.

Few thought Han would be win the KMT nomination, especially given his opponent was the popular and fabulously well-resourced billionaire Foxconn CEO Terry Gou. But Han is used to pulling off the miraculous. His stock within the party had fallen so far that many saw his assignment to run as mayor in the DPP stronghold of Kaohsiung in 2018 as a punishmentso slender seemed the possibility of victory. Han shocked everyone by orchestrating a stunning victory, wresting Taiwans third-largest city from 20 years of DPP control, helped by the backlash against Tsais pension reforms. In the end, he bested Gou, too.

Han says building ties with Beijing can ultimately better safeguard Taiwans de facto sovereignty, describing the two sides as one family during speeches. But he has also rejected one country, two systems as a formula for reuniting the estranged territories.

Still, Hans Beijing-friendly stance has put off many fearful of soft colonization via Taiwans growing economic reliance on the mainland. China is Taiwans top trading partner, with trade totaling $226 billion in 2018; Taiwan companies have over $100 billion invested in China, reports Reuters.

What does this mean for the U.S.?

Although Washington switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing to in 1979, that same year Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which obliges the U.S. government to sell the island weaponry necessary for its own defense among other security guarantees.

Still, Trumps transactional record on foreign policy has caused palpable anxiety over whether the U.S. would flip on Taiwan. The recent U.S. withdrawal from the Syrian border with Turkey spotlights how quickly the mercurial U.S. President can turn on allies, this time the Kurds. And Trump has long prided himself in doing what other leaders consider unthinkablethe sudden suspension of U.S.-South Korea military drills during denuclearization talks with Kim Jong Un, for one.

Yet theres much evidence to suggest U.S. support for Taiwan remains robust as the U.S. relationship with China becomes more acrimonious generally. Last year, Trump signed the bipartisan Taiwan Travel Act, which boosts the exchange of high-level officials, prompting the Chinese embassy in Washington to complain the laws clauses severely violate the One China principle.

Taiwan also just purchased $2.2 billion of American weaponry, including Abrams tanks, much to Beijings ire. In late October, a bill to protect Taiwan from Chinese diplomatic pressure won approval in the U.S. Senate.

That same month, Ted Cruz became the first U.S. Senator in 35 years to attend Taiwans National Day celebration. When it comes to support for Taiwan, Cruz tells TIME, the United States will not be bullied and will not back down.

With reporting by Gladys Tsai/Taipei
Photo: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

President Trumps risky escalation of the conflict with Iran has confused many people who took him, if not for a dove exactly, then for a skeptic of wars, especially in the Middle East. The unfolding Iran adventure seems to open once again the question of what principle, if any, defines this presidents foreign policy. Isolationism? Nationalism? Whatever Fox News is demanding at any given moment?

His real North Star is in fact an idea he has explicated many times, but  perhaps because it is so horrifying  even his critics seem hesitant to accept as a true motivation. Trumps plan is to collapse the moral space between America and its enemies.

The president laid out his logic most recently on Sunday night, when he reiterated his threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites if that country retaliates in the wake of the targeted killing of Qasem Soleimani. Theyre allowed to kill our people, Trump told the press pool. Theyre allowed to torture and maim our people. Theyre allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And were not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesnt work that way.

This is Trumps deepest belief about foreign policy: The things that separate the United States from terrorists and dictatorships are not a source of strength, but of weakness. Our enemies are stronger and tougher, willing to do the hard things that must be done in order to win. To defeat them, we must become like them.

Trump has long dismissed respect for human rights, international law, and innocent life as a form of political correctness. During the campaign, he promised to kill the families of terrorists, steal oil from countries the U.S. invades, and restore torture. Dont tell me it doesnt work  torture works, Trump said in 2016. Okay, folks? Torture  you know, half these guys [say]: Torture doesnt work. Believe me, it works. Okay?

Trump even laid out his intentions in an op-ed during the Republican primary. I have made it clear in my campaign that I would support and endorse the use of enhanced interrogation techniques if the use of these methods would enhance the protection and safety of the nation, Trump penned in a USA Today op-ed, short enough to have plausibly been written by his own hand. Though the effectiveness of many of these methods may be in dispute, nothing should be taken off the table when American lives are at stake. The enemy is cutting off the heads of Christians and drowning them in cages, and yet we are too politically correct to respond in kind. Here again is the characteristic assumption in his mind that any distinction between methods used by terrorists and by the U.S. military necessarily means the U.S. has imposed a needless handicap upon itself.

This sort of rhetoric was generally dismissed as campaign bluster. But Trump has increasingly found it within his means to turn his ideas into practice. He has pardoned and celebrated the most notorious war criminals in the U.S. military, opening an avenue for sadistic killers to indiscriminately torture prisoners and murder civilians, knowing they can appeal to the president to escape any accountability for their crimes. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that, in the pardon power, Trump has found a loophole that allows him to negate the entire military code of conduct.

Whether Trump likewise carries out his threat to destroy cultural sites in Iran is obviously an open question. CNN reports that senior officials have registered opposition to the idea, which is not only an unambiguous war crime but a method of war crime closely associated with the Taliban. But the protective cordon surrounding Trump has eroded as his first term draws to a close, and it would be foolish to assume they will necessarily succeed in stopping his latest unthinkable act.

Trumps disdain for human rights and international law explains his longstanding admiration for dictators. This is a man who 30 years ago criticized the Chinese communist party for waiting too long to suppress the demonstrations at Tiananmen Square, and defended Vladimir Putins iron hand: Hes running his country and at least hes a leader, unlike what we have in this country, Trump said in 2015. From the premise that the authoritarians of the world are strong and correct, and its (small-d) democrats are politically correct fools, his broader recasting of Americas alliances makes perfect sense. Of course he would draw the United States closer to Russia, the Gulf States, and the emerging autocrats of Europe, and further away from its traditional Western allies. Why side with the foolish and weak when we can instead cast our lot with the clever and strong?
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 6)  Senator Koko Pimentel denies allegations he had a hand in the inclusion of JoyRide PH in the government's test run of motorcycle taxis.

Speaking to CNN Philippines Busina Balita Monday, Pimentel said while he received a letter from JoyRide PH, he denies endorsing the company.

"Ang ginamit lamang na salita endorsement, hindi ibig sabihin niyan na tinutulak mo. Ibig sabihin no'n, referral. Ibig sabihin yung sulat nila sa akin, pinasa ko sa DOTr (Department of Transportation) na meron gustong sumali sa pilot testing," he said.

[Translation: They merely used the word endorsement, but it doesn't there was a push. It means a referral. Meaning the letter they gave to me, I passed on to the DOTr because there was a company that wanted to join the pilot testing.]

Pimentel also denied he had any familial links to a top official of JoyRide PH, saying his wife only had the same last name.

"Ang pangalan ng presidente ng company ay Yu, at ang asawa ko ay Yu... ibig sabihin nun meron daw kaming interest sa company. Ang daming Yu sa mundo, sa Pilipinas, hindi naman magkamag-anak 'yun... Hindi owner, part-owner ang aking asawa o ako sa JoyRide," he said.

[Translation; The name of the company president is Yu, and my wife is a Yu... they say that means we have an interest in the company. There are many Yus in the world, in the Philippines, and they aren't all related... Neither my wife nor I are owners or part-owners of JoyRide.]

He did admit, however, to being friends with one of the owners.

The senator also denied he had knowledge that two JoyRide officials  Edwin Rodriguez and Noli Eala  were part of his political party PDP-Laban until the issue blew up. Rodriguez is the secretary-general of PDP-Laban Quezon City.

JoyRide earlier denied links to the administration and Rodriguez denied it approached PDP-Laban to help the company.

Eala admitted that his team once wrote to the office of Senator Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III  whom he called a "family friend" of the owners  in September to ask for help in reaching out to the Department of Transportation. Pimentel is PDP-Laban president.

"It was simply because we needed a way to send our letter faster to the Department of Transportation and we were hoping he could help. He made this recommendation on his own personal volition and it was not because of any other consideration," Eala said, adding that Pimentel simply forwarded their letter to the agency.

Meanwhile, the DOTr said Pimentel endorsement of the motorcycle-hailing firm did not automatically merit JoyRide's inclusion in the pilot run of the new commuter service.

After a six-month pilot test exclusively with Angkas, the government gave three more months for motorcycle taxis to serve commuters in Metro Manila and Cebu. JoyRide and another player, Move It, were included in the extended trial run.

The pilot test has been designed to collect data for DOTr and Congress, which will be the basis of crafting a law that would legalize motorcycle taxi services in the country.
A man was killed by a shark while diving near Esperance off the coast of Western Australia on Sunday.

The attack happened as the man was diving from a boat at Cull Island off Esperance just after 1 pm.

His body has not been found, authorities say.

The Department of Primary Industries confirmed the attack, saying "a man received fatal injuries after being bitten by a reported white shark."

Police said a woman aboard the boat had been treated for shock.

"Esperance Police and Marine Rescue WA volunteers deployed to the area on board the marine rescue vessels. They are still searching the ocean for the victim," a police spokesman said.

It was the 16th fatal shark attack off Western Australia since 2000.
Muzaffarpur: Just days after fellow BJP'ian Giriraj Singh suggested actions against Indians living abroad while getting accustomed to eating beef, Union Minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey on Sunday said knowledge of English should not be requirement to pass an exam in India as English was not the mother tongue of the Indians.

Speaking at a seminar at L S College in Muzaffarpur on Sunday, Choubey, who like Giriraj Singh, carries the band of Hindutva on his arm as a badge of honor, said that while it helps to have the knowledge of English, it should not be made mandatory to pass in English to get through any exam at any level.

Choubey, in order to give credence to his argument, name-dropped former Chief Minister of Bihar Karpoori Thakur who, in the early '1970s, made it possible to pass matric exam in spite of failing in English papers. This came to be known as PWE, or Pass Without English, also popularly known as 'Karpoori Division'.

"Karpoori Thakur was very right when he made it possible to pass matric exam without passing English. One should have the knowledge of English but to force one to pass in it is not correct at all as English is not our first language or our mother tongue," he said reminding people of the old saying that though the British left India in 1947, 'Angreziyat', or British attitude had lingered among the Indians.

Like Giriraj Singh who had earlier said that the Indian children in foreign nations should be taught to stop eating cow meat to maintain and nurture the Hindu culture, Choubey said that the new education policy will attempt to restore the 'sanskara' (Indian tradition) among young students in India.

Singh, who has re-invented himself as one of the many the cultural police of the Narendra Modi administration, had said last Wednesday that each school in India should impart education about Bhagwadgita and those who go abroad after graduating from English schools and IITs of the nation should be discouraged from eating beef.

"They start eating beef because we no longer teach our children our culture, our traditional values in the schools anymore," he had said.
NEW YORK, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Halper Sadeh LLP, a global investor rights law firm, continues to investigate the following companies:



Care.com, Inc. (NYSE: CRCM)

The investigation concerns whether Care.com and its board of directors violated the federal securities laws and/or breached their fiduciary duties to shareholders in connection with the sale of Care.com, Inc. to IAC/InterActiveCorp for $15.00 per share. If you are a Care.com shareholder and would like to learn more about your legal rights and options, please visit: https://halpersadeh.com/actions/care-com-inc-crcm-stock-merger-iac/ .

AquaVenture Holdings Limited (NYSE: WAAS)

The investigation concerns whether AquaVenture and its board of directors violated the federal securities laws and/or breached their fiduciary duties to shareholders in connection with the proposed sale of AquaVenture to Culligan for $27.10 per share. If you are an AquaVenture shareholder and would like to learn more about your legal rights and options, please visit: https://halpersadeh.com/actions/aquaventure-holdings-limited-waas-stock-merger-culligan/ .

Cincinnati Bell Inc. (NYSE: CBB)

The investigation concerns whether Cincinnati Bell and its board of directors violated the federal securities laws and/or breached their fiduciary duties to shareholders in connection with the proposed sale of Cincinnati Bell to Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P. and its institutional partners for $10.50 per share. If you are a Cincinnati Bell shareholder and would like to learn more about your legal rights and options, please visit: https://halpersadeh.com/actions/cincinnati-bell-inc-cbb-stock-merger-brookfield-infrastructure/ .

On behalf of shareholders of these companies, Halper Sadeh LLP may seek increased consideration, additional disclosures and information concerning the proposed transaction, or other relief and benefits.

Shareholders are encouraged to contact the firm free of charge to discuss their legal rights and options. Please call Daniel Sadeh or Zachary Halper at (212) 763-0060 or email sadeh@halpersadeh.com or zhalper@halpersadeh.com .

Halper Sadeh LLP represents investors all over the world who have fallen victim to securities fraud and corporate misconduct. Our attorneys have been instrumental in implementing corporate reforms and recovering millions of dollars on behalf of defrauded investors.

Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
To the Times:

For years, Ive been a pen pal with a man imprisoned for life for a serious crime. From our correspondence, I believe that my friend, a devout Jehovahs. Witness, has reformed his life. He often writes about the many difficulties he and other inmates experience. I occasionally contribute modest sums to Dismas Ministry. Its a Catholic ministry that provides free Bibles, other religious material and support to men and women prisoners.

Prison must be particularly difficult for people who are ill, especially those with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. My late Aunt Dorothy was severely mentally ill, and from age 15 lived in a state mental hospital. (At the time, there were no home- or community-based programs for the mentally ill). My loving Grandmom visited her daughter frequently and used public transportation for the long trip. When my parents marrried, my dad drove grandmom and our family to visit my aunt. My aunt, due to the lack of services, didnt have the good fortune to live at home, but at least received medical treatnent.

A story in The Angelus (7/27/18) noted the tragic fact that mentally ill people are 10 times more likely to be incarcerated than hospitalized for medical treatment. Almost 400,000 prison inmates are mentally ill, and their untreated illness may have played a primary role in their being imprisoned. The article also reported that half of our nations counties have no mental health professionals. Therefore, Im proud that one of my nieces, a college graduate, has decided to return to college to earn a degree and become a therapist.

Catholic Charities of Washington, D.C., provides services such as long-term psychiatric treatment for mentally ill prisoners who have served their sentences. This past Christmas, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles visited prisoners and celebrated Mass at the Mens Central Jail in Los Angeles, as have his predecessors for the last several decades. He also stopped and spoke with inmates in the restrictive housing unit where the jails most dangerous inmates are kept in single cells.

Archbishop Gomez gave each of these inmates a Christmas gift. It was the book, Tattoos of the Heart, by Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries. Founded in 1988, Homeboy Industries works to improve the lives of former gang members and previously incarcerated men and women. They serve more than 10,000 people from Los Angeles each year. Their services include workforce development (assistance with job searches, resume training, interview practice and computer skills training). Education for former gang members and prisoners is also important. Their services include GED preparation, and assistance with completing high school and college readiness skills. Finally, this worthwhile program provides services related to substance abuse treatment and mental health care.

We all want safe communities. I certainly believe that police protection is important. However, efforts to prevent crime by providing treatment for mentally ill people as well as providing a wide range of relevant services for former gang members and prisoners are also crucial.
Serena Williams hopes her famed determination can end the longest drought of her storied tennis career and lift her alongside Margaret Court as the owner of the most grand slam singles titles.

The American superstar said she felt relaxed two weeks out from the Australian Open, where her pursuit of a 24th crown will again be one of the dominant women's narrative in Melbourne.

Williams, 38, enters her fourth decade as a professional admitting that her role as a mother to two-year-old Alexis Olympia is a priority but that catching Australian legend Court continues to drive her.

Serena Williams in Auckland ahead of her 2020 opener, the ASB Classic. Credit:Getty Images

"It's meant a lot to me for a while and now it is just about getting over that one hump," Williams told journalists in Auckland, where she will begin her year. "I'm almost there, and I'm confident that I'll get there."
The beautiful thing about boybands has always been the incredibly low barrier to entry: boybands can make heartthrobs of anyone. They represent the democratisation of desire.

The phenomenon of boyband-goggles has long been a soothing balm, a beacon of hope and validation, for short, wonky-faced Irish men. There are women all over the country, normal women like me and you, who still harbour crushes on Shane Filan. So I was captivated last week by the news, 'Hailee Steinfeld pens diss track about cheating ex Niall Horan' alongside a 2017 photo of an objectively perfect-looking woman delightedly laughing down at our own little, incongruous Niall Horan - who looks exactly like Niall Horan.

I wasn't exactly sure which one Hailee Steinfeld was - it turns out she's not the Hailey who married Bieber, and Halsey is someone else entirely. She's a 26-year-old actress so beautiful that it's hard to hold her features in your mind, they melt generically together in that indistinct manner of Gen Z child stars - all full lips and full eyebrows and olive skin. She looks like the centre of a Venn diagram of the most beautiful parts of various models and actresses.

And she sings, "Every time you burned me down/Don't know how; for a moment it felt like heaven" and "Lookin' back, I probably should have known/But I just wanted to believe that you were out sleepin' alone" about Niall Horan. Niall Horan.

It was life-affirming, my own soothing balm, seeing that even women like that get their hearts broken by average dudes from Mullingar.

The track is called Wrong Direction which feels a bit on the nose - but in this brave new world of fandom culture, intriguing inflammatory titles which will spawn a thousand lyric-combing Twitter-Sherlocks is the only business decision.

Hailee is able to record this revenge track thanks to the tireless work of the female pioneers of the form who came before her.

Taylor Swift was the first beautiful person to release a pointedly-named song about the caddishness of a member of One Direction with Style and I Knew You Were Trouble. But that was back in 2012 before we knew about sexism and slut-shaming, so poor old Taylor didn't enjoy the same universally 'Yasss queen!' reception that Hailee is currently bathing in.

We all know how Hailee feels. Wrong Direction is the anthem for confused and furious Irish women everywhere, wondering how exactly they lost sleep over a 4/10 chancer.

*******

Video of the Day

And so to 2020's first overly in-depth glossy-magazine celebrity interview about mental health journeys, charity work and hard-won life-philosophies that no one asked for: it's Katy Perry! In her Vogue India profile, complete with a 12-hour photo shoot, we reluctantly catch up with Katy Perry at 35.

We are treated to her secret to making it to Prince Charles's 71st birthday charity event (Spoiler: it's transcendental meditation, which she abbreviates to TM) where she was due straight after her gruelling Vogue interview, which appeared to include such questions as: "how are you so amazing?" and "really how are you SO amazing??"

But TM isn't her only helping hand, like all the most serious celebrities Perry has gone to therapy, done the Hoffman Process (a residential "intense, condensed experiential programme") and tried plant medicine - but mostly, it's fiance Orlando Bloom who assists her on her 'spiritual journey' - and it sounds horrifying.

She says Orlando is an "anchor" who "holds [her] down" which is a confusing compliment, especially when followed with, "and he's very real'" Orlando Bloom is very possibly the worst boyfriend in the world. "When we first met, he said we would pull the poison out of each other, and we really do. It's exhausting, but we really hold each other accountable." It's hard to believe that this is the same curiously blank Orlando Bloom we know and are completely indifferent to.

"It's challenging," Katy continues, "because you're facing all the things you don't like about yourself. It's like a never-ending cleanse." A relationship that feels like starvation, eternal diarrhoea, and a constant barrage of reasons to hate yourself?

Katy, blink twice if you need help.

*******

The UK's Official Charts Company has announced that more cassette tapes were sold in 2019 than in any year since 2004. Now, everyone knows that cassettes were the worst way to listen to music, and thanks to our generational object-fetishism and commitment to irony, millennials seemed guilty.

But this has those pesky Gen Z kids written all over it. It was probably inevitable, from the moment that Netflix's 13 Reasons Why went viral and introduced its teenaged target audience to the notion of tapes. The show was criticised for glorifying self-harm and mental illness, but perhaps we should have been more concerned about its glorification of outdated and unreliable tech.

It's not difficult to see where the appeal for kids lies: for these iPad natives, music has always meant streaming. These sensory-starved little hipsters would have fallen immediately for the tactile romance of flimsy tapes; the sense of industry, the winding and flipping.

Or perhaps, for the Snapchat generation, it's the fragile transience of a medium that can be taped over and over - the 'disappearing message' of music.

Or perhaps, they've simply inherited millennial object-fetishism and a commitment to irony.
Amy Kennedy, a member of the renowned Democratic family, is running for the partys nomination for the New Jersey congressional seat held by Jeff Van Drew, who became a Republican last month after voting against President Donald Trumps impeachment.

Kennedy, a Brigantine resident married to former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D., R.I.), joins a growing field in the Democratic primary in South Jerseys 2nd Congressional District. The battle for the seat is shaping up to be one of the most bitter and high-profile House races of the 2020 election cycle.

Too many of our leaders have lost their moral compass, Amy Kennedy said in a video announcing her bid. Trump and Van Drew are symptoms of a bigger sickness infecting our country and our politics.

Kennedy  a former public-school teacher who currently is education director of the Kennedy Forum, where she advocates for policy change in education and mental health  joins five other candidates in the Democratic primary, where tension between establishment Democrats and progressives is running high.

Brigid Callahan Harrison, a professor at Montclair State University and a Longport resident, announced her candidacy last month. She is considered the front-runner and a favorite of establishment Democrats.

A day before Van Drew made his party switch official last month in a White House meeting with Trump, six of the eight county Democratic chairs in the district, as well as State Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester), all backed Harrison.

Ashley Bennett, an Atlantic County freeholder, also got into the race last month and is looking to chart a path to the Democratic nomination based on a grassroots progressive campaign. It remains to be seen what approach Kennedy will take.

This race is just getting started," Kennedy said in a statement. I believe that voters are tired of machine politics and want a transparent process to decide who will be best to represent them.

Kennedy signaled in her campaign video that shell focus on job creation, the environment, mental health, and the opioid crisis. Her husband, a son of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, has battled drug addiction and is a leading advocate on the issue, as well as on mental illness treatment.

John Francis III, a commissioner in West Cape May; William Cunningham, a former staffer for Sen. Cory Booker; and former FBI agent Robert Turkavage, who switched from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party last month, are also running in the Democratic primary.

Van Drews defection to the GOP has infuriated many local Democrats. Van Drew was a prized Democratic recruit to run for the South Jersey swing district vacated by longtime Republican Rep. Frank LoBiondo in 2018. Democrats knew the district was purple: Trump won it by five points in 2016, while President Barack Obama got 53% of the vote each time he ran. They sought a moderate, well-known candidate.

In Van Drew, who supports gun rights and represented part of the district as a state lawmaker for years, Democrats found a candidate who captured the seat for the first time in decades. In 2018, Van Drew handily won the Democratic primary with 57% of the vote over multiple progressive candidates. He topped Republican Seth Grossman by an eight-point margin.

Some experts say this year could be different because Van Drews party switch and stance on impeachment have polarized voters, potentially altering the dynamic in a general election.

With Van Drew, youve got a Republican who has ticked off a large segment of the Republican base by virtue of the fact hes been a Republican for five minutes," said Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky. Conversely, Democrats felt incredibly betrayed. Theyll be motivated to come out for whoever the Democratic primary [winner] is."

On Monday, the Trump campaign announced it will hold a rally in Wildwood  which is in Van Drews district  on Jan. 28 at the Wildwoods Convention Center. Van Drew has hired Ron Filan, former political director of the New Jersey Republican State Committee and former campaign manager for LoBiondo.

Van Drews chances to survive a Republican primary are not guaranteed. He has mostly voted with House Democrats, and though Trump has endorsed him and an affiliated PAC spent $250,000 on ads supporting Van Drew, several declared Republican candidates have not dropped out of the race.
In the wake of an ageing population and the narrowing domestic market, Japanese businesses are expanding to the new fields of digital technology, healthcare, the Internet of Things, and services across the ASEAN, including in Vietnam.

Takeo Nakajima, the newly-elected chief representative of the Japan External Trade Organizations Hanoi Office, analyses the new trend in these tech-based sectors among Japanese corporations.

Today, Japan is suffering a fall in population and human resources. The country needs more partners to expand its business, strength, and innovation elsewhere. In that sense, Vietnam is one of the most powerful partners in the region.

Takeo Nakajima, the newly-elected chief representative of the Japan External Trade Organizations Hanoi Office

The population of Vietnam is growing steadily, and the number of people who speak Japanese is growing. Therefore, it is a logical and strategically sound decision to do business in Vietnam.

Historically, Japanese companies started Asian business in China, Thailand, and South Korea. Now the labour, land, and transportation costs of doing business in those countries is higher than before. The Vietnamese government, as well as the society, now welcome more investment from Japan into the country.

Tech-based industries

The Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) has piloted some innovative projects in new industries of digital technology, healthcare, the Internet of Things, and services across the ASEAN, including in Vietnam for the last fiscal year.

There are untapped business opportunities to solve social issues in Vietnam. Japan has experienced similar issues through industrialisation in the 1950s to 1970s, but we now have the knowledge and the tools to tackle them. Among those initial projects, healthcare has the greatest potential to grow when this sector is prioritised by the Vietnamese government.

The healthcare system in Vietnam should be modernised. The country faces ageing society issues in the next 20 years, and the government and people should prepare for this. Japan tackles exactly this difficult issue and so we can contribute to that. Vietnam also needs to upgrade its living space, transportation, and infrastructure, but the hardware is not enough; software that controls energy, communication, and safety should be considered as well.

The country needs software, telecommunications, and management systems to make that infrastructure user-friendly and safe. The train system requires time management, a smooth ticketing system, safety precautions, and services for disabled people. Tokyo has built one of the most complicated subway systems in the world, where every train runs every minute.

On the other hand, Vietnam has areas and sectors that are more advanced than in the Japanese economy, particularly in the consumer sectors. Vietnam has ride-hailing and delivering platforms like Grab and GoViet, while Japan does not have that kind of systems. In addition, smartphones are more popularly used by the Vietnamese.

For business-to-business (B2B), however, the Japanese systems are much more advanced, in terms of business transactions, factory automation, and government systems.

To attract investment in the high-tech sector, incentives are important, but they should be easier to apply. The incentives cannot solely drive more investment  businesses need markets and reliable partners as well.

Movements in investment

As the Vietnamese business environment improves, more Japanese companies invest here. And now, more Vietnamese groups are pouring money into Japan. For example, FPT already has ten offices across Japan and more Vietnamese companies also set up there. The more the Japanese companies know about Vietnamese partners, the more they expand business with Vietnam.

To assist Japanese businesses to establish an entity in Vietnam, the JETRO provides several different services. First, companies need accurate information about whats happening in Vietnam. We try to provide reliable information to them in collaboration with the Japanese Embassy, the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, and other organisations.

Some companies may need to exhibit their products and services to Vietnamese consumers. JETRO assists them to participate in these trade shows and facilitate business matching.

The JETRO Business Support Center provides temporally office spaces as well. More than 85 Japanese companies use this facility in total and more than 55 companies have successfully established entities here.

Japanese investment in Vietnam is more diversified than before. Manufacturing is the largest sector among them in terms of value. In terms of numbers, we see more non-manufacturing sectors investing in Vietnam, such as retail, restaurants, wholesale, education, human resources, IT, construction, and transport.

Regarding the purpose of the investment, in the past they were mostly export-oriented. Recently, more companies are interested in the Vietnamese market, which is reflecting the growing domestic B2B and business-to-consumer markets. Vietnam is becoming wealthier  the market is still limited but the average consumer now has more consumption power.

Consumer products such as electronics, motorcycles, and processed foods, as well as related services, are very attractive for Japanese companies and this trend will continue to be maintained in the future.

Agriculture is one of the bright spots in Vietnam too, where 40 per cent of the population is involved. There are resources, but they lack modern technologies and a newer business model. On the contrary, Japanese agriculture is more technology-concentrated and its high productivity comes with a sensitive business model.

In the past few years, we have had huge Japanese investment projects in Vietnam  big energy projects in 2017 and a smart city project by Sumitomo and BRG Group in 2018, for example. For this fiscal year, we have not seen that kind of large project, but the number of projects as a whole has been growing.

Japanese investors still face problems in doing business in Vietnam, such as unclear regulations, permitting processes, land acquisitions, commercial transactions, and import and export rules. However, The Ministry of Planning and Investment and other government agencies in Vietnam have been very active in tackling those issues.

Recently, we see hiring and securing people is the largest challenge for Japanese companies according to JETRO surveys. Over the past several years, regulatory issues have been the number one concern but now, securing people is at the top. By the same token, labour costs, which increase significantly every year, become a big challenge. VIR

Japans retailers reaching out to Vietnams market Japanese retailers are increasingly amplifying business activities in Vietnam as the countrys middle class expands amid market conditions in their home country slowing down.
The main accused in the vandalism at Gurdwara Nankana Sahib has been arrested, officials said on Monday.

A First Information Report (FIR) has also been registered against the accused, Imran Chishti, Focal Person on Digital Media to CM Punjab, Azhar Mashwani, said.

On Friday, a mob in Pakistan surrounded the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib and pelted stones at the Sikh shrine.

Gurdwara Nankana Sahib, also known as Gurdwara Janam Asthan, is a site near Lahore where the first Guru of Sikhs, Guru Nanak, was born.

The mob, led by Chishti, also included relatives of Mohammad Hassan, accused of abducting and forcibly converting a Sikh woman, Jagjit Kaur. Kaur is the daughter of the gurdwaras granthi.

The mob threatened to occupy the gurdwara if people detained in connection with the forcible conversion were not released.

Several devotees were stuck in the gurdwara as protesters threatened to destroy the shrine and build a mosque in its place. The protest ended after negotiations between the protesters and representatives of the local administration led to the release of the arrested people, reports in the Pakistani media said.

Political leaders in New Delhi, cutting across party lines, condemned the attack on the gurdwara and called for strict action by the Pakistan government.

Pakistan, however, maintained that the incident was not communal in nature and the gurdwara was not desecrated. Attempts to paint this incident as a communal issue are patently motivated...the gurdwara remains untouched and undamaged. All insinuations to the contrary, particularly the claims of acts of desecration and destruction and desecration of the holy place, are not only false but also mischievous, the Pakistan Foreign Office had said in a statement.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, in a series of tweets on Sunday, said that the incident is against his vision and will find zero tolerance and protection from the government including police and judiciary.

Interior minister Ijaz Shah had on Sunday visited the town on PM Imrans instructions to review the situation after the incident.

Addressing a press conference at Gurdwara Janamasthan, he said all the communities were living with brotherhood and peace in Nankana Sahib and such example could not be found in any other city of the country.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said she was all in favour of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, but her party will not resort to the "cheap politics" of bandhs.

The Left parties had on December 26 last year called for a nationwide strike on January 8 and a seven-day protest from January 1 against the CAA, National Population Register (NPR) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

Banerjee, speaking at an administrative meeting in Kakdwip in South 24 Parganas district, said she will not back any bandh, as it causes trouble for people and loss to the exchequer.

Later in the day, while talking to reporters at Gangasagar, Banerjee said the Trinamool Congress has been protesting against the CAA, NRC and the NPR, but it is against the call for strike, as it is "cheap politics".

"We are not in favour of bandh, but extend our support to the issues for which the strikes are called. We will continue our protests but don't support cheap

"Why should we call a bandh when the country is going through an economic disaster and unemployment is increasing," the CM said.

Ten central trade unions on Monday said around 25 crore people will participate in a nationwide strike on January 8 to protest against the government's "anti-people" policies.

Banerjee also asked state government officials to take measures to ensure normalcy on January 8.

Reacting to Banerjee's remarks, Anandi Sahu, senior CPI(M) leader and the state general secretary of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), said that any attempt to foil the strike would be met with resistance.

"There is no difference between the economic policies of the the Narendra Modi government and the Mamata Banerjee government, and that is why attempts are being made to foil the strike," Sahu said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Borno States governor, Babagana Zulum, on Monday, flagged off the construction of an overhead bridge in Maiduguri, that would become the first of its kind in Northeast Nigeria.

Previously, Kano and Kaduna were the only states of the 19 northern states of Nigeria that had flyovers in their capital cities.

The overhead bridge construction contract was awarded to a Chinese construction company, Eighteenth Engineering Company (EEC), at the cost of N4.2 billion.

In June, Mr Zulum announced that his new government would be constructing two overhead bridges to ease traffic in Maiduguri.

The Commissioner for Works, Yerima Saleh, said the entire overhead bridge was designed to ease the notorious gridlock in the Customs House, a roundabout that links the city to international highways leading to Cameroon and parts of central Africa.

Mr Saleh, an architect, said the overbridge is expected to be completed within 18 months. He said that there was no provision for any form of variation to the cost of the project.

The governor, while flagging off the construction, said a take-off grant of N1.3 billion has been paid to EEC on 23 December 2019.

He said no amount of hostilities from Boko Haram would deter the state government from carrying out its mapped out development programs.

We are going to deliver all our campaign promises to our people, Insha Allah.

This should send a message to all the distracting elements that we will not be cowered or intimidated into abandoning the developmental path that we have taken.

The governor said the overhead bridge, just like any other road network projects embarked by his administration are designed to ease the movement of the populace and the workforce in the state.

He said he would be awarding the construction of a second overhead bridge that will be erected at the citys central location, known as Post Office, by the end of this year or early 2021.

Maiduguris population has in the last six years doubled due to the influx of people displaced from their rural settlements by the Boko Haram conflict. Their presence has since been telling on the public infrastructure, including the highways.
We have a president of the U.S. who just pardoned Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher of horrible war crimes.

Many SEALs had put themselves out there to testify against Gallagher, and then Donald Trump intervened, gave Gallagher full honors and invited him to campaign for him. The SEALs who testified are being threatened if they say anything further.

We are a military family and we are alarmed at how Trump not only takes important money from the military, he fires the head of the Navy and constantly denigrates our military. The same Trump who wanted to go to Russia to honor their military display.

We need to support our men and women in uniform, not tear them down in front of the dictators of the world. These honorable SEALs who spoke up against an officer committing war crimes should not be threatened with violence. These great men have risked their lives to protect democracy and honor our military.

It is looking more like we are under dictatorial law leaning toward the support of countries like Russia that are a known adversary of the United States. This has got to stop.

Joseph Gervais

Corvallis

Love 3 Funny 9 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 2
An Indian autistic teenager based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was deemed unfit for school, but he has an exceptional talent and gifted with a powerful memory, a media report said here on Sunday.

Nineteen-year-old Rohithparithi Ramakrishnan can tell you the day of any past or future date in a matter of seconds, said the Khaleej Times in the reported.

He showed signs of prodigious intellect from an early age. He recollected family events with year, date, guest list, their vehicles and colour.

Ramakrishnan remembers even dates of shooting and movie release of actor Rajinikanth.

Born weighing about 1 kg, Ramakrishnan was kept in an incubator for months and underwent multiple surgeries. He was diagnosed as autistic before turning two years.

He is a miracle baby, Malini, his mother, told the Khaleej Times.

He was deemed unfit for normal school as he was hyperactive. Our doctor suggested putting him in special schools.

We soon realised he had unique talents. He used to hum songs that he listened on TV. He never committed mistakes in mathematics, which Tejaswaryalaxmi, his younger sister and a normal child, made.

Ramakrishnan has also won electronic keyboard competitions held by various groups and associations and, that too, in general category.

He can reproduce any kind of music after hearing it twice or thrice. He remembers and chants more than 40 shlokas in Sanskrit from (Hindu religious text) Bhagavad Gita, his mother told the Khaleej Times.

The teenager has also participated in Special Olympics Mena Games 2018.
Bengaluru, Jan 6 : The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) will start a Farmers' Innovation Fund (FIF), said Director General Trilochan Mohapatra at the first ever Farmers' Science Congress, a part of the ongoing 107th Indian Science Congres.

"We will start in a small way to see how successful it is and then move in a big way. We will see how farmers are showing interest," said Mohapatra on Monday.

Though no quantum of money has been allocated to the fund yet, he said ICAR will start operating the FIF in fiscal 2020-21.

Mohapatra said the fund's nitty-gritties are currently being worked out, and ICAR may even start it with as low as Rs 1 crore for a beginning.

"We also have a proposal to include the fund in the Union Budget. Even if it doesn't feature in the Budget, we will create it in our own ICAR budget," said Mohapatra who is also the Secretary of the Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE).

After the farmers' congress, he said farmers are conserving the biodiversity and local germ plasma.

"If we can give some support to their innovations by way of financial support, innovation validation and market linkage, farmers will be encouraged to continue that," Mohapatra said.

He said innovative farmers will be the applicants of the fund.

ICAR falls under the purview of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

Separately, University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) vice chancellor and the science congress organising committee chairman Rajendra Prasad said that all the tangible recommendations from the congress will be presented on Tuesday at the valedictory function.

"All the tangible recommendations from the 14 sectors of the science congress, women's science congress, children's science congress, farmer's science and science communicators will be presented in the valedictory function," said Prasad.

The 107th edition of the Indian Science Congress scheduled from January 3-7 is currently underway at the University of Agricultural Sciences here.
An expert has called HS2 the 'wrong and expensive solution' to improving commuter journeys. Photo: Toby Melville/Reuters

A new war of words has broken out over Britains controversial new high-speed rail line after an expert claimed costs were spiralling out of control.

Prime minister Boris Johnson is under fresh pressure from all sides over HS2, with critics calling for it to be scrapped and supporters demanding the government end uncertainty by unequivocally backing the project.

The latest row erupted when Lord Berkeley, former deputy chair of a government-commissioned review of the giant infrastructure project, published his own heavily critical report on Sunday.

He called it the wrong and expensive solution to improving commuter journeys.

Money should be spent on more widely used services within regions rather than north-south lines, he argued, with existing lines in the north and the Midlands some of the worst in the country.

Its stated aim of providing better North South links is just as likely to attract more jobs from the regions to London than the other way round, the dissenting report said.

Berkeley also claimed parliament may never have approved the new line if it had known the full costs of the scheme. The transport expert warned costs could more than double from previous estimates to 107bn at current prices.

READ MORE: Crossrail delayed again as costs soar for Britains new Elizabeth line

But one government insider told the Financial Times the figures looked made up on the high side, and could prove just as wide of the mark as initial government underestimates.

A report last year by the chair of government-owned HS2 Ltd said costs would lie between 81bn and 88bn at current prices.

Prime minister Boris Johnson is under fresh pressure from all sides over HS2. Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA Images via Getty Images

A spokeswoman for the Department for Transport sought to play down the significance of Berkeleys figures, telling Yahoo Finance UK his report represents his personal view.

She said the government had commissioned its review, led by former HS2 and Crossrail chair Douglas Oakervee, to advise on whether HS2 should go ahead, with an independent panel to represent diverse views.

Story continues

But the government now faces further pressure from supporters of the project, including from its own benches in parliament.

READ MORE: Misery for thousands of commuters hit by south-west rail strikes

Andrew Percy, a Conservative MP and former northern powerhouse minister, called for an urgent decision as soon as possible to provide certainty for commuters and firms in northern England.

Sir Richard Leese, Manchester council leader and a spokesman for the pro-HS2 Connecting Britain campaign group, urged the government to commit fully to both HS2 and better connections across the north.

After decades of under investment in strategic rail infrastructure, this is a once-in-a-generation chance to transform capacity and connectivity and level-up communities across the north, and beyond, he said.

He took a swipe at Berkeley himself, adding: We dont much appreciate being told by a peer, who divides his time between London and Cornwall, what the north wants.

READ MORE: Fears for Port Talbot steelworks as Tata warns it cant keep funding losses

Tim Woods, northern powerhouse rail director at Transport for the North, said he was concerned about the idea the north did not need HS2.

The North has Victorian infrastructure, in many places either reaching or at capacity. It simply wont be able to keep pace with growing passenger numbers, meaning productivity will be stunted if we dont act, he said.

A spokeswoman for HS2 Limited said it awaited the publication of the official Oakervee review, and had been co-operating with its team.

Investment in a state-of-the-art high speed line is critical for the UKs low-carbon transport future, will provide much needed rail capacity up and down the country, and is integral to rail projects in the north and Midlands which will help rebalance the UK economy, she told Yahoo Finance UK.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday hit out at the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party over the attack on teachers and students at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday, underscoring that the violence by Indias young on the campus was horrifying and unprecedented.

Everyday campuses and colleges are raided across India, either by the police or lumpen elements with the support of the BJP government, the Congress president said.

Sonia Gandhis pointed remark on raids by the police was a reference to the crackdown by the police that targeted students at Jamia Millia Islamia University and Aligarh Muslim University protesting the amended citizenship law.

Also Watch | Uneasy calm in JNU a day after violence: All the top developments

Gandhis statement on Monday was a follow-up to the oppositions severe criticism of the government and the police for its handling of the violence. JNU students had alleged that the police had given masked goons a free run to target students and teachers.

The voice of Indias youth and students is being muzzled everyday. The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on Indias young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi Govt is deplorable and unacceptable, Sonia Gandhi said.

The first reports of violence in JNUs sprawling campus in the national capital came a little before 8 pm when videos showed groups of masked individuals entering hostel with bats and hammers. The universitys students union president Aishe Ghosh was seen with head wounds after the assault; the union accuses right-wing ABVP of attack. Over the next few hours, masked vandals moved room-to-room as students locked themselves in hostel rooms.

On Monday, the Delhi Police which could not arrest the vandals, said a case of rioting and damage to property had been registered against unnamed people.

The violence has set up a war of words between the opposition and the ruling BJP at the Centre. The BJP has accused students from Left leaning students groups of orchestrating the violence.

But the anger over the violence the night before has resonated in universities across the country. In Mumbai, hundreds of people came out to express their solidarity with JNU students.

Gandhi described yesterdays bone chilling attack on students and teachers a grim reminder of the extent the Govt will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent.

Students and youth need affordable education, a deserving job, a promising future and a right to participate in our thriving democracy. Sadly, Modi Govt seeks to suffocate and restrain each one of these aspirations, she said, demanding an independent judicial inquiry into the sponsored violence in JNU.
COPLEY, Ohio -- On the night of Jan. 2 in Baghdad, Iraq, a U.S. drone shot missiles at a convoy of vehicles traveling outside of the Baghdad airport. The missiles hit their targets and two very high-level adversaries of the United States were killed. One of those individuals was a top leader of an Iraqi Shia militia that has been recently launching rockets at U.S. forces in Iraq. But the most important of the two was Major Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Irans Al Quds Force. His killing will cause a wave of repercussions for the stability of the Middle East.

Who was Qassem Soleimani and why does his death matter to the United States? Soleimani was the second most powerful man in Iran, after the Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader in the country.

Why would a general who was not even commander of the Iranian armed forces be so powerful? The Quds Force is the external arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC is the vanguard of the Iranian military and is extremely powerful politically in Iran. The Quds Force is the most important and powerful part of the IRGC.

Karl Kaltenthaler is director of security studies at the University of Akron.

In a country where the regime is ruled by unpopular clerics, the IRGC, with all of its coercive power, is a very important part of regime survival.

The Quds Force is key to the Iranian regimes interests because it is the primary way that Iran tries to exert its influence and protect its interests in the Middle East. Iran has a relatively weak conventional military with old, shoddy equipment and little investment in improving that situation. Iran depends primarily on asymmetric warfare capabilities to protect its interests. Asymmetric warfare means using guerrilla warfare and terrorist tactics to stymie ones enemies.

Soleimani was a master at building Irans asymmetric capabilities by assembling an array of groups that could act as proxies for Iran to further that countrys goals. Groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria have all been bolstered in their capabilities because of the work of Qassem Soleimani. The United States and its allies now face a coterie of non-state actors who have tremendous destructive capabilities because of Soleimanis efforts.

But Soleimani was also a very important political power broker in the Middle East. He played a decisive role in the shaping of political coalitions and governments in Iraq and elsewhere. It is not an exaggeration to say that he was one the most powerful people in the Middle East in terms of shaping politics in that region. He was absolutely essential to Irans ability to exert political influence in the region.

For Iran, the death of Soleimani is a multifaceted blow to the regime.

First, he is considered a top official in the regime. So, from the Iranian perspective, killing Soleimani is the equivalent of the Iranian regime killing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo or Vice President Mike Pence. It is a great humiliation for the Iranian regime that the United States would kill a top official in the regime, and it will be considered an act of war.

Second, Soleimani will be very difficult to replace in terms of his influence and talents. He had an outsized stature in much of the Shia world but particularly in the Shia areas of the Middle East.

The response from Iran will be violent. It will likely take multiple forms and be targeted against U.S. military forces, civilians, and possibly even U.S. allies, such as Saudi Arabia or Israel.

The Iranian regime will believe it is necessary to exact a very high price on the United States for crossing what they view as a red line by killing such a high-ranking figure in the regime. Iran cannot effectively confront the United States in a head-to-head conventional war, and it will not likely try that, but it can and will hit us where we are more vulnerable, with terrorism against civilians and attacks against less-defended U.S. interests.

It is unclear what the death of Soleimani will mean for the security of the United States. He was certainly a threatening U.S. adversary who was responsible for the death or injury of scores of Americans and our allies. It will take quite some time before we see the full effects that killing Soleimani will have on U.S. interests.

Karl Kaltenthaler is professor of political science and director of security studies at the University of Akron.

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The year starts well for Hollywood actor Tom Hanks who was given a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes to mark his 30-year movie career, according to an article by Reuters. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association said the award recognizes is his lasting impact on the film industry.

The 63-year old actor was presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Award during the awarding ceremony on Sunday where he was also nominated as best supporting actor for playing the role of the late, beloved U.S. children's television presenter Mister Rogers in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood."

Hanks began his acceptance speech in a joke about the dawn of his career at the 1970s TV comedy "The Love Boat" but had to take a moment to compose himself during his speech, particularly when paying tribute to his family, adding that he had a bad cold that had made him particularly emotional.

"A man is blessed with a family sitting down front like that -- a wife who is fantastic in every way, who has taught me what love is," he said. "Five kids who are braver and stronger and wiser than their old man is. And, uh, a loving group of people who have put [up] with me being away months and months and months at a time."

Hanks also acknowledged a long list of co-actors and directors who he said had contributed to his long success.

"You're a dope if you don't steal from everybody you have every worked with," Hanks said, mentioning Meryl Streep, Meg Ryan, Denzel Washington, and Charlize Theron, and many more.

This is not the first time Hanks received an award from Golden Globes. He won best actor in the 1989 Golden Globes for his movie breakthrough in "Big" in 1988, playing a teenager who wakes up to find himself in the body of an adult.

He went on to win back-to-back Oscars and Golden Globes in 1994 and 1995 for his roles in AIDS drama "Philadelphia" and comedy "Forrest Gump."

In 2008, he won the Golden Globes Best Actor in a Motion Picture (musical or comedy) for his lead role in "Charlie Wilson's War."

Hanks has been dubbed as "America's Dad" for being genial and dependable image thanks to performances in more than 70 movies, including the romantic comedy "Sleepless in Seattle," war movie "Saving Private Ryan," action film "Sully" and the animated movie series "Toy Story" where he gave voice to the friendly cowboy Woody.

Hanks credited some of his success in the movies to a lesson about being on time - something he learned while working at a Shakespeare theater festival when he was still a young actor.

"Showing up on time is one of the greatest liberating acts you can give yourself in a movie," he said.

The Cecil B. DeMille award has been presented annually since 1952 by Golden Globe organizers the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, with exceptions being 1976 and 2008. The latter was due to the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike which led to the cancellation of that year's ceremony.

First presented at the 9th Golden Globe Awards ceremony in February 1952, the award is named in honor of its first recipient, "The Greatest Show on Earth" director Cecil B. DeMille due to his prestige in the industry and his "internationally recognized and respected name." Past recipients also include Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bridges and Harrison Ford.
Sense of family is a big part of the culture at CSS

CSS (Connecticut Spring & Stamping), a leading metal spring and stamping manufacturer based out of Farmington, CT, is pleased to announce they have been awarded 1st place in Hartford Business Journals 2019 Connecticut Family Business Awards amongst companies in the 76+ full time employees category. This award was given to CSS due to its history of dedication to supporting its employees.

Proud to be nominated for the award, CSS recognizes its success is due to the hardwork and dedication of its employees. CSS strives every day to create a positive and cultivating work environment and share its success with the extended CSS family--all 425 of them.

As stated by Steve Dicke, President of CSS, sense of family is a big part of the culture at CSS. CSS is a family owned business, founded 80 years ago by the Youmans family. Today, youll find employees whove built a career from the ground up at CSS, have relatives working at the company or even met their spouses there.

CSS continues to express its employee-centric culture in a myriad of ways. The company has supported employee growth through its employee first philosophies around promotions, helping the company retain and nurture top talent. Even CSS internal company newsletter is used to foster company culture and connectivity.

Looking ahead, CSS has invested heavily in new technology to expand its manufacturing capabilities, further establish itself as a leader in the metal springs and stamping industry, as well as continue to provide new opportunities for employees to thrive. Interested in joining an established, quickly growing company? Check out CSS Careers Page to learn more about open positions and available sign-on bonuses.

About CSS (http://www.ctspring.com): CSS is a leading precision manufacturer and has been a key strategic supplier of metal springs, stampings, machined components, and assemblies to industries for 80 years. As a family owned and managed company, we pride ourselves in our decades of experience, honed by our expertise in medical devices, defense and firearms, aerospace, and government. We are a comprehensive solution provider that collaborates with our customers through all aspects of development, managing projects from prototyping, assembly and product launch to full volume production. What sets us apart from the crowd is our experience in developing innovative, advanced, and difficult-to-make parts. Companies and industry leaders work with us because they know they can rely on our ability to tackle the most challenging of components and assemblies.
UKs Johnson declares his support US action against Iran

Boris Johnson said that the UK has taken steps to increase security in the region to protect British personnel and interests.

Iranian general Qassem Soleimani posed a threat to all our interests and was responsible for a pattern of disruptive, destabilizing behavior in the region, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Sunday.

"UK WILL NOT LAMENT SOLEIMANI'S DEATH"

Johnson, who had until now remained silent over the assassination early Friday of the commander in a US drone strike in Baghdad, said Soleimani played a leading role in actions that have led to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and western personnel. We will not lament his death."





It is clear, however, that all calls for retaliation or reprisals will simply lead to more violence in the region," he said, adding the UK is in close contact with all sides to encourage deescalation. "I will be speaking to other leaders and our Iraqi friends to support peace and stability," Johnson added.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab earlier Sunday urged Iran to take a diplomatic route to deescalate tensions following the killing of Soleimani.

Speaking on the BBC, Raab said US President Donald Trump and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron "left the door open to a diplomatic route through this, to a better place for Iran," but that Tehran decided not to take it.
They were just really good people, said Aguilar, 22, adding that he was shocked when he heard gunshots Wednesday night. Aguilar said that at first he thought they were fireworks and learned from news reports Thursday morning what had happened.
John Bolton Says Hes Willing to Testify in Trumps Impeachment Trial

John Bolton, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, indicated he will testify in the coming Senate impeachment trial if hes called as a witness.

Since my testimony is once again at issue, I have had to resolve the serious competing issues as best I could, based on careful consideration and study. I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify, Bolton said in a statement on his website.

Bolton issued a statement after a court didnt rule on whether he would be compelled to testify in the Houses impeachment inquiry. He was never subpoenaed, and Democrats withdrew a subpoena for his former assistant, Charles Kupperman. Democrats explained that they wanted to move forward on impeachment and couldnt wait for court decisions to be rendered.

My colleague, Dr. Charles Kupperman, faced with a House committee subpoena on the one hand, and a Presidential directive not to testify on the other, sought final resolution of this Constitutional conflict from the Federal judiciary. After my counsel informed the House committee that I too would seek judicial resolution of these Constitutional issues, the committee chose not to subpoena me. Nevertheless, I publicly resolved to be guided by the outcome of Dr. Kuppermans case, Bolton, who left the White House in September 2019, said in his statement.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has publicly expressed resistance to calling in new witnesses during the Senate trial, although Democrats are pressing to hear from Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and others.

Boltons statement comes as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is stalling the two articles of impeachment against Trump in an attempt to get the Senate to reveal how it will hold the trial. At the same time, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has proposed calling several witnesses, but McConnell has rejected Schumers terms.

We cant hold a trial without the articles, McConnell wrote on Twitter on Jan. 3. The Senates own rules dont provide for that. So, for now, we are content to continue the ordinary business of the Senate.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Jan. 5, however, suggested changing the Senates rules if the House doesnt release the two articles.

If we dont get the articles this week, then we need to take matters in our own hands and change the rules, deem them to be delivered to the Senate so we can start the trial, invite the House over to participate if they would like, if they dont come, dismiss the case, and get on with governing the country, Graham told Fox News.
Addressing hundreds of thousands of mourners Monday in Tehran, the daughter of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani threatened an attack against U.S. service members.

Soleimani was killed last week in Baghdad after President Trump authorized an airstrike against him. Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, told the mourners that "the families of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East will spend their days waiting for death of their children," a statement that elicited cheers from the crowd. She also told "crazy Trump" not to "think that everything is over with my father's martyrdom" because the United States will soon face a "dark day."

Iran has vowed to retaliate against the United States, and on Sunday, the country announced it will no longer abide by the uranium enrichment limits agreed upon under the 2015 nuclear deal. Soleimani was the commander of the Quds Force, a paramilitary organization now overseen by Esmail Ghaani. In an interview with Iranian state television, Ghaani said God "has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken." He later said in return for Soleimani's "martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region."

On Sunday, a coffin containing Soleimani's remains was carried through the streets of Ahvaz and Mashhad, and on Monday, the coffin will make its way around Tehran and Qom. Soleimani was close to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who prayed over his casket on Monday morning and at one point openly wept. This is the first time Iran has honored one person with a multi-city funeral, The Associated Press reports.

More stories from theweek.com

America is guilty of everything we accuse Iran of doing

Republican Kelly Loeffler sworn in as Georgia's newest U.S. senator

Pompeo and Pence reportedly pushed Trump to kill Soleimani. Pentagon leaders were 'stunned' Trump agreed.


ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. today announced that it has purchased a minority stake in Malaysian broker SP&G Insurance Brokers Sdn Bhd ("SP&G"). Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

SP&G is a multi-discipline commercial insurance broker specializing in coverages for the aviation market, as well as offering clients additional expertise and insurance solutions for property & casualty, marine, engineering and other risks. Founded in 1974, SP&G was purchased in its entirety by its current CEO, Dato' Zakaria Meranun, in early 2014. Based in Kuala Lumpur with an office in Johor Bahru, SP&G today is one of the leading insurance brokers in Malaysia, with revenues exceeding $6 million (US) in 2018.

"SP&G presents an exciting opportunity to expand Gallagher's commercial insurance footprint in Asia and further extend our client reach in the global aviation sector. This is in keeping with our growth strategy of investing in great businesses that deepen our capabilities and expand our geographic presence," said J. Patrick Gallagher, Jr., Chairman, President and CEO. "We are very pleased to partner with SP&G, and extend a warm welcome to Zak and his associates as they join our growing global team."

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE: AJG), a global insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting services firm, is headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. The company has operations in 48 countries and offers client service capabilities in more than 150 countries around the world through a network of correspondent brokers and consultants.

Investors: Ray Iardella Media: Linda J. Collins VP  Investor Relations VP  Corporate Communications 630-285-3661/ [email protected] 630-285-4009/ [email protected]

SOURCE Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

Related Links

http://www.ajg.com


L'Oreal UK and Ireland has today announced that it will be moving from its current office site in Hammersmith to a brand new bespoke building in White City Place, West London, W12.

LOreal will occupy six floors of the eleven storey building, which is part of the new creative business district W...

Photos: Allies and Morrison



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Industrialist Anand Mahindra has condemned the violent attacks in the Jawaharlal University (JNU) campus premises. The business tycoon took to Twitter on Sunday night to criticise the perpetrators of the savage assault on (JNU) students and teachers. Mahindra said that the goons who stormed the JNU campus and went on a rampage must be "hunted down swiftly".

The 64-year old industrialist urged people across the country to speak out against the violence, irrespective of their ideology, politics or faith.

"It doesn't matter what your politics are. It doesn't matter what your ideology is. It doesn't matter what your faith is. If you are an Indian, you cannot tolerate armed, lawless goons. Those who invaded JNU tonight must be traced & hunted down swiftly and given no quarter..." Mahindra posted on Twitter.

It doesn't matter what your politics are. It doesn't matter what your ideology is. It doesn't matter what your faith is. If you're an Indian, you cannot tolerate armed, lawless goons. Those who invaded JNU tonight must be traced & hunted down swiftly & given no quarter... - anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) January 5, 2020

Political leaders across party lines and Bollywood actors have also condemned Sunday's mob attack on the JNU campus.

Also Read: Ring of tradition! Anand Mahindra reveals Harvard connect that dates back to 1977

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, chairperson and managing director of Biocon also took to Twitter to condemn the JNU violence.

"This is unpardonable. Violence cannot be condoned," Shaw tweeted with a clip that showed JNU Students' Union President Aishe Ghosh saying that she was "brutally attacked" by masked goons.

This is unpardonable. Violence cannot be condoned. https://t.co/ASulCmtQRU - Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (@kiranshaw) January 5, 2020

At least 35 people, including Ghosh, were injured in Sunday's violence at the JNU campus. Initial reports suggested the matter pertained to a tussle between left and right-wing students at the university.

The first round of skirmishes happened post noon, which escalated after 5 pm when "outsiders" entered the campus. In some visuals, women with faces covered were also seen carrying sticks. The attackers not only trashed students and faculty members but also destroyed property, including cars and hostel window panes. After police were called in, a flag march was conducted on the campus.

Delhi Police filed an FIR in the case on Monday, saying that the masked miscreants involved in the attack have been identified.

Also Read: JNU Violence Live: Amit Shah slams Delhi govt, says CM Kejriwal wants to save Tukde Tukde gang
GRAND RAPIDS, MI  Barbara Chance, the mother of Jared Chance, convicted of killing and mutilating a young woman, pleaded no contest Monday, Jan. 6, to charges of accessory after the fact and perjury.

Chance, 64, entered the pleas before she and her husband, James Chance, 77, were to stand trial.

Jury selection is expected to begin shortly in the husbands trial.

Jared Chance killed and dismembered Ashley Young, 31, of the Kalamazoo area, at his home in Grand Rapids.

He is serving at least 100 years in prison.

Kent County Circuit Judge Paul Denenfeld said that a review of sentencing guidelines showed that Barbara Chance would face a maximum penalty of one year in jail.

If other information comes forward that would increase the potential penalty, she would be allowed to withdraw her pleas.

Jared Chance, 30, was sentenced to 100 to 200 years in prison after he was convicted by a jury of second-degree murder, mutilation of a body, concealing a death and tampering with evidence.

He and the victim, who were friends, were together early on Nov. 29, 2018, before she went missing.

On Dec. 2, 2018, Grand Rapids police found her torso in a tarp in the basement of Chances two-family rental home.

Police found her limbs on the landing of his second-story home. Her head, hands and feet have not been found and Chance has refused to cooperate with investigators.

If you are reading this in your Facebook app, use this link to view the entire gallery of photos.

Assistant Kent County Prosecutor Lawrence Boivin said Barbara Chance and her husband and another son picked up Jared Chance on Dec. 1, 2018, from his home in the 900 block of Franklin Street SE and took him to their Holland home. He brought boxes that contained the victims body parts, along with a mop, bucket and reciprocating saw that he used to cut the victims body.

When Jared Chance returned to his home the next day, he brought most of the items with him. The reciprocating saw was found three days later under a couch in the living room during a search of the parents home.

Boivin said the mother, while under oath, lied to police about her contact with her son.
Find all our Lessons of the Day here.

Lesson Overview

Featured Article: U.S. Strike in Iraq Kills Qassim Suleimani, Commander of Iranian Forces (PDF excerpt) by Michael Crowley, Falih Hassan and Eric Schmitt (full digital article here)

Irans top security and intelligence commander was killed early Friday in a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport that was authorized by President Trump, American officials said. In this Lesson of the Day, students learn about what happened, why the president made this decision, and how the action might affect both the United States and the Middle East going forward.

Warm Up

The Times published an article focusing on young people in the United States and how they responded to the news in the Middle East. The article begins:

Over high school lunch tables, teenagers spoke of World War III. When they got home, they tearfully asked their parents whether they would be drafted. Social media feeds exploded with predictions of military action and wisecracking memes about end times. As the United States escalated its conflict with Iran this past week by killing Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a powerful Iranian commander, Americans scrambled to determine what it all meant for the young men and women whose lives could be upended in the event of an extended conflict. For now, it remains too soon to tell.

Does this description of discussions at school lunch tables with friends and at home with parents resonate with you? How did you and your friends react to the news of escalating tensions with Iran? Did you pay attention to the talk of possible war? What have you heard about this subject?

Then, before reading the featured article and answering the questions below, watch the short video above about the attacks aftermath. What is one thing you learned? What are questions you have?
 Flash

Kenyan military on Sunday vowed to pursue al-Shabab terrorists after a foiled attack at its airstrip which its soldiers use along with U.S. forces in the coastal region of Lamu.

Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) spokesman Paul Njuguna also confirmed that five al-Shabab terrorists were killed in the 5:30 a.m. attack at Manda Airstrip in Lamu county in which the extremist group claimed responsibility.

Njuguna said the situation at the airstrip which is located near the military base has been contained on the ground and normal airstrip functions are set to resume.

"Following a military operation, five bodies of terrorists were recovered. Search for more is ongoing," Njuguna said in a statement.

He said one PKM gun, four RPG launchers, four AK 47 rifles, one hand grenade and assorted ammunition were captured.

"Multi-agency forces charged with defending and protecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our Republic will continue to pursue and destroy these forces of evil until they are smoked from their caves and permanently destroyed," Njuguna said.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the latest attack in a statement, saying they had successfully stormed the heavily fortified military base and effectively controled part of the base.

The military group which has stepped up its attacks on Kenyan in the recent past said there had been both Kenyan and American casualties. However, this could not be verified.

However, Njuguna said terrorists are known for propagating false and misleading information in an attempt to grab headlines and feed their egos. "Their contorted plans have not and will never succeed," said the KDF spokesman.

Sources said the joint Kenyan and U.S. forces killed al-Shabab terrorist commander Abu Hamza al Kinyi, 13 km deep inside the Boni Forest which the militants have been using as their hideout. This could not be independently verified.

Al Kinyi, a Kenyan who joined the terrorists' group in 2013 was believed to be the commander of the botched Manda airstrip attack.

A Kenyan police report says two fixed-wing aircraft, a U.S. Cessna and a Kenyan caravan were destroyed along with two U.S. helicopters and multiple U.S. vehicles at the airstrip.

Njuguna had earlier said a fire broke out during 5.30 a.m. incident affecting some of the fuel tanks located at the airstrip.

"The fire has been put under control and standard security procedures are now ongoing," said Njuguna in a statement.

An internal police report clarified that the destroyed aircraft at the joint U.S. and Kenya military airstrip at Manda in Lamu were not in use.

"All were on irreparable condition hence of zero value to the military forces. Only one of the vehicles affected was in use," says the report seen by Xinhua.

The U.S. Army said that initial reports reflect damage to infrastructure and equipment and promised to disclose more information once accountability of personnel assessment is completed.

The police said five suspects believed to have participated in the attack have been arrested and are helping the security agencies with investigations.
Iranians march on January 5, 2020 in the streets of the northwestern city of Ahvaz to pay homage to top general Qasem Soleimani, after he was killed in a US strike in Baghdad. Hossein Mersadi | Getty Images

Terrorist group ISIS will likely be the winner as tensions between Washington and Tehran mount after the U.S. killing of Iran's most powerful military commander, experts say. Qasem Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force, was killed in Baghdad last Friday in a U.S. airstrike directed by President Donald Trump. The crisis sent tensions between the U.S and Iran rocketing and triggered retaliation threats from Tehran. It also raised questions about the future of American troops in Iraq. "There is a winner here, and the winner is ISIS," Dan Yergin, chairman of IHS Markit, told CNBC on Monday.

The assassination was such an extreme violation of Iraqi sovereignty ... that Iraqi officials will come under tremendous political pressure to eject U.S. forces. Ilan Goldenberg director of the Middle East program, Center for a New American Security

A U.S.-led coalition has been operating in Iraq to fight the notorious terrorist group, the self-declared Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. After the death of Soleimani, the coalition announced Sunday that it would be suspending most operations against ISIS, which once controlled large swathes of Iraq and Syria before allied intervention. The U.S. and Iran, though adversaries, are mutual enemies of ISIS and effectively fought against ISIS to crush the terrorist group's de facto state in Iraq and Syria. "Because it was the unlikely coalition between the United States and Iran ... that pushed ISIS back. The U.S. forces leave  on the one hand, that's good news for Iran ... but it's also good news for ISIS," he said. "ISIS which had seemed to be on its backfoot, there's a new opening for it."

Iraq's parliament on Sunday passed a resolution calling for the government to expel foreign troops from the country. It came as the government in Baghdad accused Washington of violating its sovereignty. Experts say that the Iraqi response is causing more uncertainty surrounding U.S. presence in the region. "The assassination was such an extreme violation of Iraqi sovereignty  done unilaterally, without Iraqi government consent  that Iraqi officials will come under tremendous political pressure to eject U.S. forces," said Ilan Goldenberg, director of the Middle East program at Washington-based Center for a New American Security, in an op-ed on Friday. The U.S.-led coalition has now shifted its focus to protecting Iraqi bases from attack by Iranian-allied militias such as Kataib Hezbollah, according to an official statement from the coalition.

U.S. Army gunners assigned to the 101st Airborne Division conduct a fire mission in support of Iraqi security forces with a M777 towed 155 mm Howitzer from Qayyarah West Airfield, Iraq, August 10, 2019. Spc. DeAndre Pierce | U.S. Army Reserve | Reuters
There are those who value relationships, this Kenyan politician returned after 23 yrs to repay debt

Kenya police arrests 3 men trying to enter British Army camp

International

oi-PTI

Nairobi, Jan 06: Kenyan police say they have arrested three men who tried to force their way into a British Army training camp on the same day that al-Shabab extremists attacked a military base and killed three US military personnel.

The internal police report seen by The Associated Press says the three "terrorist suspects" were arrested Sunday after trying to enter the British Army Training Unit in Laikipia county. It occurred around the same time as the al-Shabab assault on the base in Lamu county.

Al-Shabab attacks military base used by US forces in Kenya

The British government was not immediately available for comment. Al-Shabab's assault at the Manda Bay Airfield lasted several hours and destroyed several US aircraft and vehicles. The airfield is adjacent to Camp Simba, a key Kenyan military base used by US counterterror forces.

No Kenyans died in the attack, Kenya's military spokesman Paul Njuguna said Monday.

Al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaida, has vowed retribution on Kenya for its troop presence in Somalia to counter the extremist group.
Edmonton, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - January 6, 2020) - Camino Minerals Corp. (TSXV: COR) (OTCQB: CAMZF) (WKN: A116E1) ("Camino" or the "Company") is pleased to announce results and preliminary interpretation of the geological mapping survey conducted at the Atajo zone on its 22,000-hectare Chapitos copper-gold project, near Chala, Southern Peru.

The detailed geological mapping has identified a north-south oriented structural corridor that is up to 150 metres wide, 450 metres long, and is comprised of a series of steeply dipping normal faults and associated pervasive fracture network (Figure 1). The bounding fault structures juxtapose copper mineralized and altered porphyritic andesites and breccias against unaltered, bedded volcaniclastics. The mineralization is typically fracture and fault controlled and in places the mineralizing fluids have also exploited the shallow north-dipping bedding to form stratigraphically controlled mantos.

CEO John Williamson commented, "Completion of the mapping project has provided a strong understanding of the controls on mineralization and a foundation to build from in our ongoing interpretation of this large mineralized zone, enabling much improved delineation of drill targeting".

The geological mapping was completed at the Atajo zone with the goals of; 1) improving our understanding of the geology beyond the regional scale government data, 2) identifying the controls on mineralization, and 3) providing a strong foundation for ongoing interpretation of structural, geochemical, and lithological data, all of which is critically important for delineating future drill targets. The mapping has already been utilized to enable the updating of the Atajo DIA permit and associated drill pad repositioning (see Nov 4 news release).

Additionally, during the mapping program follow-up work was conducted on a number of soil and rock anomalies in the surrounding Atajo region. Positive visual results from limited outcrops in these anomalous areas warranted further work and have resulted in an ongoing trenching and bedrock sampling program. Results will be released and disseminate as they are received from the laboratory and interpreted.

Story continues

Figure 1 - Geological map draped on drone imagery that spans a portion of the Atajo Zone. The image illustrates the north-south oriented structural corridor, associated alteration, and select mineralization samples. A schematic lower cross section explains the relationship of the faults to mineralization and manto development. *Chip samples were collected and analysed in July 2016 by ALS Chemex at its facilities in Lima, Peru.





To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/1384/51173_6c528220c4305a2d_001full.jpg

Other

All samples were submitted for preparation and analysis by ALS Chemex at its facilities in Lima, Peru. All samples were analyzed using multi-digestion with ICP finish and select samples were analyzed for gold using fire assay with AA finish. Samples over 1% copper were reanalyzed using four acid digestion with an ore grade ICP finish. Mineralized samples were analyzed for acid soluble copper by being agitated at room temperature in a 5% sulphuric acid solution with the copper content measured by AA. One in 20 samples was blank, one in 20 was a standard sample, and one in 20 samples had a sample cut from assay rejects assayed as a field duplicate at ALS Chemex in Lima, Peru.

Board of Directors

Camino announces the appointment of Ewan Webster, Ph.D., P.Geo, as a Director of the Company. Dr. Webster is an exploration geologist with comprehensive field experience in North and South America and a strong technical and academic background. He is a registered professional geologist with Engineers and Geoscientists British Columbia (EGBC), holds a First-Class Honours degree in geology from the University of Glasgow, Scotland and a Ph.D. from the University of Calgary, Canada. His research focused on unraveling aspects of the structure, stratigraphy, tectonics, and metamorphism of southeastern British Columbia, to establish a sound geological framework in which to place the region's abundant and diverse mineral deposits.

In addition, the Company announces the resignation of Mr. Olav Langelaar from the Board. Mr. Langelaar has been a Director with Camino since March 2017. The Camino team would like to extend a sincere thank you to Olav for his hard work as a Director of the Company and wish him all the best with his future endeavors.

About Camino Minerals Corporation

Camino is a discovery-oriented mineral exploration company. The Company is focused on the acquisition and development of high-grade copper and precious metal projects. For more information, please refer to Camino's website at www.caminominerals.com.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

/S/ "John Williamson"

President and CEO

For Further information, please contact:

Jeremy Yaseniuk, Director

jeremyy@metalsgroup.com

Tel: (604) 773-1467



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.

This news release may contain certain "forward looking statements". Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of this news release and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/51173
Eastern Command chief Lieutenant General Anil Chauhan arrived in Nagaland on Monday to review the security situation in the Northeast.

The officer is on a visit to the Army's Spear Corps Zone till January 10, said defence spokesperson Lt Col Sumit Sharma.

On his arrival at Dimapur, he was briefed on the progress of operations being undertaken by the Spear Corps, the spokesperson said.

As part of his assessment of the prevailing security situation in the Northeast states, the Army Commander commenced his visit from Dimapur, he said.

During his visit, he will be briefed by the operational commanders of Manipur and Nagaland, besides interacting with civil dignitaries of the states, the spokesperson said.

The Army commander will also visit the forward areas along the Indo-Myanmar border to take stock of the situation on ground and interact extensively with the men deployed in the remote areas of Northeast.

During the visit to the forward areas, the officer will be accompanied by Lieutenant General Rajeev Sirohi, General Officer Commanding Spear Corps, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - In an apparent slip of the tongue on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Israel as a nuclear power before correcting himself with a bashful nod and an embarrassed smile. Israel is widely believed to have an atomic arsenal but has never confirmed or denied that it has nuclear weapons, maintaining a so-called policy of ambiguity on the issue for decades. Netanyahu stumbled at the weekly cabinet meeting while reading in Hebrew prepared remarks on a deal with Greece and Cyprus on a subsea gas pipeline

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - In an apparent slip of the tongue on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Israel as a nuclear power before correcting himself with a bashful nod and an embarrassed smile.

Israel is widely believed to have an atomic arsenal but has never confirmed or denied that it has nuclear weapons, maintaining a so-called policy of ambiguity on the issue for decades.

Netanyahu stumbled at the weekly cabinet meeting while reading in Hebrew prepared remarks on a deal with Greece and Cyprus on a subsea gas pipeline.

"The significance of this project is that we are turning Israel into a nuclear power," he said, before quickly correcting himself to say "energy power".

He then paused for a beat, acknowledging his mistake with a smile, and then ploughed on with his comments.

The rare blooper from one of Israel's most polished politicians swiftly proliferated on social media.

Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival in a March 2 vote after two inconclusive elections in April and September. In November, he was indicted on corruption charges, which he denies.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Maayan Lubell and Frances Kerry)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Abuja, Nigeria (PANA)  Nigerias Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr Mohammed Adamu, has placed all police commands and formations nationwide on red alert amidst claims that some people may be plotting to instigate a crisis as a fallout of the killing of an Iranian military chief
Vijay Mallya, who is currently in the UK, has been charged by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) with defaulting on bank loans to the tune of Rs 9,000 crore.

The Supreme Court on Monday said that Vijay Mallya cannot use pendency of his plea in the apex court to stall insolvency proceedings initiated against him in other jurisdictions.

A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde passed the order after the Centre told the top court that Mallya used pendency of his plea to stall the UK court from delivering verdict in insolvency proceedings, according to a PTI report.

Mallya had approached the apex court on 27 June seeking a stay on the confiscation of properties owned by him and his relatives.

In the petition, Mallya had said that no other properties other than that of Kingfisher Airlines facing cases of alleged irregularities should be attached.

On 11 July, the Bombay High Court had refused to grant stay on proceedings before a special court on confiscation of Mallya's properties.

The division bench of the court had dismissed an application filed by Mallya in June seeking a stay on the proceedings before the special court hearing cases pertaining to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

On 5 January 2019, the special PMLA court declared Mallya a fugitive economic offender. The court then started proceedings for confiscation of his properties.

Mallya, who is currently in the UK, has been charged by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) with defaulting on bank loans to the tune of Rs 9,000 crore. He is also facing an extradition trial in the UK.
Coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and his comrades who were killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike, are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners during a funeral procession, in the city of Mashhad, Iran, on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020. (AP)

Tehran: The blowback over the US killing of a top Iranian general mounted Sunday as Iran announced it will no longer abide by the limits contained in the 2015 nuclear deal and Iraq's Parliament called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil.

The twin developments could bring Iran closer to building an atomic bomb and enable the Islamic State group to stage a comeback in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.

Adding to the tensions, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iraq or impose sanctions like they've never seen before if it goes through with expelling U.S. troops.

Iranian state television cited a statement by President Hassan Rouhani's administration saying the country would not observe the nuclear deal's restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities.

The Islamic Republic of Iran no longer faces any limitations in operations, a state TV broadcaster said.

In Iraq, meanwhile, lawmakers voted in favor of a resolution calling for an end to the foreign military presence in the country, including the estimated 5,200 U.S. troops stationed to help fight Islamic State extremists. The bill is subject to approval by the Iraqi government but has the backing of the outgoing prime minister.

In yet another sign of rising tensions and threats of retaliation over the deadly airstrike, the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq said it is putting the battle against IS on hold to focus on protecting its own troops and bases.

The string of developments capped a day of mass mourning over Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad on Friday. Hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets in the cities of Ahvaz and Mashhad to walk alongside the casket of Soleimani, who was the architect of Iran's proxy wars across the Mideast and was blamed for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in roadside bombings and other attacks.

U.S. President Donald Trump responded to the Iraq Parliament's troop withdrawal vote with a monetary threat, saying the U.S. expected to be paid for its military investments in Iraq before leaving and threatening economic sanctions if the U.S. is not treated properly.

We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time. We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it, he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

If they do ask us to leave, if we don't do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, he said

He added: We're not leaving until they pay us back for it.

The leaders of Germany, France and Britain issued a joint statement on Sunday calling on Iran to abide by the terms of the nuclear deal and refrain from conducting or supporting further violent acts.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson specifically urged Iran to withdraw all measures not in line with the 2015 agreement that was intended to stop Tehran from pursuing its atomic weapons program.

Iran insisted that it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldn't seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions. It further raises regional tensions, as Iran's longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

Iran did not elaborate on what levels it would immediately reach in its program. Tehran has already broken some of the deal's limits as part of a step-by-step pressure campaign to get sanctions relief. It has increased its production, begun enriching uranium to 5% and restarted enrichment at an underground facility.
Nationwide outrage over the violence in the JNU campus in New Delhi founds its expression in Maharashtra also where protests were organised on Monday to denounce the attack on students, teachers and vandalism inside the prestigious university.

Protests against the violence - that had left at least 28 people, including JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) president Aishe Ghosh, injured - were held in Mumbai, Aurangabad and Pune among other cities. Political leaders led by state Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray also condemned the attack.

Maharashtra minister Jitendra Awhad joined the protest at the Gateway of India in south Mumbai, while Thackeray said the JNU violence reminded him of the deadly 26/11 terror attacks in the financial capital.

A poster with the message "Free Kashmir" was carried by one of the protesters at the site.

Violence had broken out at JNU on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus.

The Left-controlled JNUSU and the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) have blamed each other for the violence that continued for nearly two hours.

Awhad sat with the protesters for a while on Monday. "When people fear intellect, there is anarchy," the NCP minister told reporters.

NCP president Sharad Pawar said JNU students were subjected to a cowardly and planned attack.

Hundreds of people, including students, women and senior citizens - who assembled at the Gateway of India at Sunday midnight - demanded action against the culprits and called for Union Home Minister Amit Shah's resignation.

"JNU students and professors were subjected to a cowardly but planned attack," Pawar said.

"Use of violent means to suppress democratic values and thought will never succeed," the former Union minister said.

Asserting that students in Maharashtra were safe, Thackeray said he will not tolerate any move to hurt them.

Terming the masked attackers at JNU as "cowards", Thackeray said their identity should be revealed.

The protesters at the Gateway of India refused to end their stir till their demands were met.

Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) activist Prasad S said, "We are going to continue the protest at the Gateway this night (Monday) too. We are not forcing people to sit with us, they are willingly joining us.

"Our main demand is the arrest of around 50 people involved in the JNU attack. The Delhi Police failed to prevent this attack. Home Minister Amit Shah should step down.

IPS officer Abdur Rahman, who resigned from service in December, was among the agitators and hit out at the central government over the JNU mayhem.

"This government is trying to divide people on community lines. The ABVP showed brutally inside the JNU... I condemned the attack.

"It was a pre-planned attack by the ABVP and they were directed by top leaders of the central government," Rahman alleged.

Nadeem Ghauri, a teacher from Mahim, said, "We will sit till our colleagues are here. People from different castes and religions are present here, most of them are students, many protesters are from out of Mumbai."



Looking at the situation, the police have tightened security in and around the Gateway of India and are keeping a close tab on developments.

Another protest in Mumbai was organised at Hutatma Chowk, also in south Mumbai, on Monday afternoon. Hundreds of people, most of them college students and youngsters, were part of the demonstration.

They were carrying placards and shouting slogans condemning the violence they claim was perpetrated by the ABVP and other outfits linked to the BJP.

In Pune, protests were held near the collectorate in the heart of the city, outside the Garware College and at the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU).

The demonstration at the collectorate was organied by a clutch of organisations, including Yuvak Kranti Dal, Rashtra Seva Dal, Navjawan Bharat Sabha and Swaraj Abhiyan.

The protesters, united under the banner of 'We the people of India', submitted a memorandum to the district administration seeking suspension of JNU Vice-Chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar.

They said the attack in the campus took place in presence of police and it, therefore, meant the administration led by Kumar was "supportive of the act".

The memorandum demanded that the incident be probed by a panel of retired judges and the guilty be brought to book.

Calling the JNU incident horrific, the memorandum said the JNU violence was part of efforts going on over the last one month to "trample values enshrined in the Constitution".

The ABVP, which has been accused of being behind the JNU incident, on its part, held a protest in the SPPU premises and blamed Leftist groups for the attack.

"Since a lot of people are coming out in support of the Citizenship Amendment Act, Leftists outfits are rattled and are resorting to violence, thrashing students and damaging property," said ABVP member Anil Thombre.

Members of various student and youth organisations staged a separate demonstration at SPPU on Monday evening. Holding placards and shouting slogans, they strongly condemned the JNU violence JNU and sought action against the culprits.

Meanwhile, students of the Pune-based Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) said they would take out a march to SPPU on Tuesday to protest the JNU attack.

In Aurangabad, central Maharashtra, students linked arms and formed a human chain in the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University to protest against the JNU violence.

The protesters shouted slogans against the BJP, the ABVP and other Sangh Parivar outfits.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The East Mediterranean has become a highly contested region due to the discovery of major hydrocarbon reserves which has triggered a scramble for energy wealth. According to the United States Geological Survey, the Levant basin contains 3.6 trillion cubic meters and the Nile delta basin 6.3 trillion cubic meters of gas. While countries such as Israel, Cyprus, and Egypt have struck gold, has failed to discover significant deposits. Ankara, however, has set its eyes on a pipeline project to connect its mainland with occupied northern Cyprus which could potentially transform the geopolitical landscape.

The energy wealth of the Mediterranean has brought Cyprus, Greece, Israel, and Egypt closer to each other. Tel Aviv has already struck a deal with Cairo to export natural gas to the latters liquefaction plant at Idku for export purposes while Nicosia is discussing the same option. Next to this, Cyprus, Greece, and Israel signed a three-way agreement on January 2nd in Athens to build the subsea EastMed pipeline.

Although a diplomatic solution would be in the interest of all involv ed parties, Turkeys hostile attitude towards virtually all littoral states in the Eastern Mediterranean rules out cooperation. Ankara has ordered exploration vessels in Cypriot waters and struck an agreement with Libya concerning the delimitation of the seabed without considering Crete. According to experts, these actions represent the Turkish desire to exert control in the region. Despite the counterproductive policies, Ankaras intention for the construction of a pipeline of its own is intended to offer an alternative for regional cooperation on energy infrastructure. Related: The Biggest Wild Card In 2020 Oil Markets

Turkeys aspiration to become an energy hub is not a secret. The country already boasts that it is a conduit for natural gas from the north and east. It would like to add the south to its list of accomplishments. Unfortunately, the fraught relations with gas-rich countries in the Eastern Mediterranean rule out a deal. Ankara, therefore, has decided to go its way and constructing an alternative.

Even though exploration vessels haven't found natural gas resources in the internationally recognized waters of Turkey, Ankara wishes to connect the mainland with the North of Cyprus. The proposed pipelines length is 80 kilometers and it should start pumping gas by 2025. The projects main goal is to lower the northern inhabitants energy bill by exporting gas from north to south, but the pipelines reverse-flow feature also allows the export of natural gas to the mainland.

Turkey maintains that the new-found energy wealth of the internationally recognized Cypriot republic should be shared with the Turkish inhabitants to the north. According to experts the gas fields of the islands coast contain approximately 227 bcm which could be worth $44.8 billion or 40 billion.

Turkeys dual-use pipeline could compete with the EastMed pipeline as it would connect the Eastern Mediterranean with customers in Europe. Its main advantage is the relatively low construction costs. EastMeds price tag is approximately 6 to 7 billion and requires state of the art technology for activities to commence at 2,000 meters depth. Turkeys pipeline, in contrast, is much shorter and could connect to largely existing infrastructure on the mainland. Related: Iran's Retaliation Could Cause A Middle East Oil Shock

Despite the apparent advantages, Turkeys plans have a low chance of success due to the elephant in the room which is the country itself. Ankaras adventurism and aggressive foreign policy have become a liability for investors who need to reckon with the risks before approving multi-billion dollar investments.

Although a land-based pipeline is significantly cheaper than a technically challenging subsea version, the latter has the advantage that it directly connects producers with consumers. This means that the risk of supply disruptions is significantly lower compared to a situation where a third party has control over a section of the pipeline.

The disagreements between Russia and Ukraine over natural gas exports have too often disrupted the flow of energy to European customers. Energy security is not only improved by diversifying suppliers but also increasing alternatives for transportation. Therefore, Turkeys wish to become a conduit for Mediterranean gas seems unrealistic at the moment.

By Vanand Meliksetian for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Collaborative Conferencing is the process by which local boards of education and their professional employees meet, either directly or through representatives designated by the respective parties, to confer, consult, and discuss matters relating to employment. The process of collaborative conferencing includes the exchange of information, opinions, and proposals among the conferencing parties, as well as the use of the principles and techniques of interest-based collaborative problem-solving.

Our organization supports the right of employees to discuss their working conditions, and always have; however, a failed Industrial era model dubbed Collective Bargaining was previously utilized. Numerous researchers such as Michael Lovenheim, Alexander Willen, Andrew Coulson, Caroline Hoxby, Agustina Paglayan, and Terry Moe criticized this approach. The term collective bargaining was coined in 1891 by British socialist reformer Beatrice Webb.



Recognizing that this contentious 18th Century industrial model did not serve teachers and students in the 21st century, the Tennessee General Assembly made changes to the law in 2011. This more modern approach to addressing issues and removing barriers to cooperation, while including more voices on working conditions, is called Collaborative Conferencing. It has also been somewhat problematic, even though the intent was positive.



We disagree with some of the items like differentiated pay plans and other incentive compensation programs, including stipends, and associated benefits, being excluded. The law has a clearly established a timeline for how this process must be completed. Any time the specifics of a law that are clearly included in the legislation are being ignored it creates a risk for the entire result to be invalidated outright. All parties involved should want to ensure that the process is followed lawfully so that a Collaborative Conferencing agreement is successful.

In particular, the timeline written into the collaborative conferencing law was established to interact with school district budgeting processes, which align with City and County government budget processes and the state budgeting processes. Items that require funding are not effective until the local funding body has approved such funding in the budget. If the amount of funds appropriated is less than the amount required, the parties may continue to confer to reach agreement within the number of funds appropriated. It is a cycle.

Deviation from that cycle in the bureaucratic processes make alignment with local, state, and federal budgets difficult. Whether or not we agree with the timeline established in the law is moot. It is the law. Perhaps it is time that we look at needed changes to the law. However, until the law is changed, we have no other option but to follow the law.

The goal of collaborative conferencing has always been to include more, not fewer, teacher voices in the debate for teacher working conditions. It is a means to express an opinion and work toward solving disagreements on issues such as salaries or wages, grievance procedures, insurance, fringe benefits, working conditions, leave, and payroll deductions. Payroll deductions for political activities are expressively forbidden. It is also important to be reminded that state organizations do not initiate collaborative conferencing; rather, it is done by local educators who may be members of any organization.

Fortunately, collaborative conferencing is not the only manner to address critical employment issues. Working outside of the conferencing process with superintendents and other elected leaders may be much more beneficial, especially since the conferencing process has not been enacted widely across the state. In addition, rather than an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding), many of these items should be placed within board policies to be more effective for educators, thus making it more difficult to take away from educators. Public education in Tennessee wins when we all work together through civil discourse to address our considerable issues.

J.C. Bowman

Executive Director of Professional Educators of Tennessee
Thousands of students in universities and colleges across India came together on Monday to protest against an attack by masked assailants in Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), amid mounting criticism of the administration and city police for failing to stop the goons from barging into the campus and engaging in violence for three hours.

Students from Mumbai to Kolkata and Chandigarh to Chennai spilled out onto the streets in support of JNU students and teachers who were assaulted on the south Delhi campus Sunday evening, even as the city police waited outside the gate.

More than 24 hours after the attack, no arrests had been made and police only filed an FIR against unknown persons.

Many students and professors, including the Left-dominated JNU Students Union, blamed members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for the attack. But the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) denied the charges, and blamed Left-leaning students instead.

It was an organised attack There is a clear nexus of JNU security and vandals. They did not intervene to stop violence, said JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, who suffered head injuries after being beaten with iron rods.

She blamed some RSS-backed professors for the attack and said top police officers refused to intervene when contacted. I was surrounded by 30 persons who hit me with iron rods continuouslythey were about to lynch, added Ghosh. At least 33 other people sustained injuries.

Campuses in the Capital have been on the boil since police barged into the Jamia Millia Islamia on December 15, lobbing tear gas shells into the library, lathi-charging students, and assaulting people to ferret out protesters after a demonstration against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act turned violent.

In contrast, on Sunday evening, police waited outside the gate for roughly three hours as a rampaging mob attacked students and vandalised hostel rooms, and allegedly didnt respond to a number of distress calls, including Ghoshs.

The police said it entered the campus as soon as it received permission, and that internal security was the responsibility of the JNU administration. We have responded to PCR [police control room] calls, and law and order situation professionally crime branch has found some vital clue and we are working on it, said Delhi Police public relations officer MS Randhawa.

It was unclear when the police got a note from the JNU administration asking it to intervene. While the suo-motu FIR by the police suggested it was at around 4pm, deputy commissioner of police Devendra Arya said the permission was received at 7.45pm. By all accounts, the police entered only after 8pm, by when most of the violence was over.

Social media and CCTV footage will be part of the investigation, Arya said.

Calls for the resignation of vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar also grew.

The JNU Teachers Association (JNUTA) demanded that the vice-chancellor either tender his resignation or be removed by the human resource development ministry.

He is a cowardly vice-chancellor who introduces illegal policies through the backdoor, runs away from questions of students or teachers and then manufactures a situation to demonise JNU, the JNUSU said in a statement.

In response, Kumar blamed some agitating students for the violence. The protesting students damaged the university communication servers to disrupt the winter semester registration, Kumar added, suggesting that a student group led by Ghosh, which is opposing the semester exams until a roll-back of a proposed fee hike, was behind the violence.

According to eye witnesses, violence broke out shortly after 5pm on Sunday afternoon as students were leaving a demonstration against the proposed fee hike. Students and teachers reported mobs of masked men and women armed with sticks, rods and hammers running towards them, beating people up and smashing property.

Videos shot by students showed shattered glass, broken furniture and injured pupils cowering for safety from the assailants who shouted slogans, threatening death for traitors.

I and my three colleagues, we were standing near a bus stand. Suddenly we saw a huge mob, close to 50 people, in masks. After they reached closer, they started pelting stones, and also beat us up. They circled me and started beating me, said Saugata Bhaduri, a professor.

As news spread of the attack on Sunday night, students quickly mobilised in at least 30 cities.

In Mumbai, protesters gathered at the Gateway of India at midnight and shouted slogans against the ABVP and the government; they were joined by students from many city institutions in the morning and top state ministers.

The violence at JNU is a resounding reminder of the November 26 terror attack in Mumbai, said chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, referring to the 2008 attack that killed 166 people.

Protests also erupted in Aligarh Muslim University, where alleged police violence during demonstrations against the amended citizenship law last month had left many students injured. Protests were also reported from Banaras Hindu University and Allahabad University.

ABVP men attacked unarmed students in JNU. They must be booked, said former AMU students union vice-president Hamza Sufiyan.

In Kolkata, students and Left-wing organisations took out rallies and blocked roads. Let ABVP stoop as low as they can but they would not be able to defeat us, said Debraj Debnath, a student leader in Jadavpur University.

In Guwahati, already simmering over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, students said they feared reprisals. The attack on JNU students and teachers is perpetrated by those in power in Delhi with the intention of curbing protests there, said Pranjal Kalita, former general secretary of Cotton University Students Union.

A day after the attack, students returned to the campus as slogans of freedom and defiance rang loud. The teachers association carried a peaceful march to the main gate of the campus where hundreds had gathered in support of the JNU students. For every rod raised against students, we will reply with debate and discussion, said Ghosh.

Police defended itself against charges of complicity in violence, saying it entered the campus as soon as it received permission, and that internal security was the responsibility of the JNU administration. We have responded to PCR [police control room] calls, and law and order situation professionally crime branch has found some vital clue and we are working on it, said Delhi Police.

Social media and CCTV footage will be part of the investigation, said deputy commissioner of police Devendra Arya, adding the violence at the university had prompted the police to file an FIR against unknown people.

The government vowed strong action against the alleged perpetrators and human resource development minister Ramesh Pokhariyal Nishank said no educational institution would be allowed to become a hub of politics. Anyone found guilty in the JNU violence would not be spared, said Pokhriyal, adding that the HRD secretary has spoken to the officials of JNU.

Foreign minister S Jaishankar  an alumnus of the university  condemned the violence. I can certainly tell you that when I studied in JNU, we did not see any tukde tukde gang there, he said, referring to a phrase used by top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to describe a section of activists and political leaders who are staunchly opposed to the government. Jaishankar had, on Sunday night, tweeted that the violence was against the tradition and culture of the university.

But the Opposition and students blamed the ruling party for the violence. Yesterdays bone chilling attack on students and teachers in JNU, Delhi, is a grim reminder of the extent the government will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent, said Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.

The ABVP also rejected charges, saying several of its members were injured in the attack and that Left-affiliated groups from Jamia Millia Islamia were responsible for the violence .

I was attacked by the mob when I was going to register for the next semester, said Manish Jangid, secretary of ABVPs JNU unit.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-07 03:10:56|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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ALGIERS, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Monday evening arrived in Algeria for a two-day visit to mainly discuss the developments in Libya, official Algeria Press Service (APS) reported.

The Turkish foreign minister was welcomed by his Algerian counterpart Sabri Boukadoum at the airport, APS said.

Turkey has decided to send troops to Libya, a neighbor of Algeria, in response to the distress call of the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) which is fighting fierce battles in and around the capital Tripoli with the east-based army led by Khalifa Haftar who vowed to "liberate the capital Tripoli" from the control of the GNA.

Encouraging the UN-backed political process in Libya, Algeria has repeatedly voiced its readiness to do everything possible except military intervention to restore peace and security in the war-torn country.
New Delhi, Jan 6 : National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partner in Bihar, the Janata Dal-United on Monday condemned the violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and described the attack as the cowardly act of the ideologically defeated. It demanded a Supreme Court Judge-led probe into the incident.

The JD-U also accused the Vice Chancellor of being a silent spectator of the dirty games of goons.

In a statement, JD-U General Secretary and Rajya Sabha MP K.C. Tyagi said, "JD-U condemns the violent activities by the goons in the JNU campus. The way, elected office bearers of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) were attacked by outsiders, is to be condemned by all the sections of society." He said that JNU is known for debate, dialogue and ideological differences and never for such incidents. "This is the cowardice act of ideologically defeated in the debate," Tyagi said.

Slamming the JNU Vice Chancellor, the JD-U leader said, "We strongly condemn the attitude of the JNU VC and other authorities who became silent spectators of the dirty game of the goons. Police officials too failed in performing their duties." His remarks came a day after violence engulfed JNU as several masked individuals, both male and female, thrashed students, including girls, and teachers inside the varsity campus with wooden and metal rods.

The Rajya Sabha MP demanded a free and fair enquiry by a Supreme Court Judge and said for a fair trial the VC and other top administrators must be removed from their posts.

"We express our solidarity with the students of JNU," Tyagi added.
Being typecast in a popular franchise is still a blessing and a curse. Anthony Daniels is one of the most prominent examples of this to a point where Star Wars became a synonymous love/hate relationship. Playing C3P0 for the last 43 years did at least up his status as an icon, even if the early part of his career pinned him only in that one role.

Now that Daniels is presumably going to retire from the character after The Rise of Skywalker, hes giving some interviews pointing to how arduous the work has been to make the role memorable every time.

Was it just too stressful to ever play C3P0 again? For those whove seen TRoS, it doesnt necessarily give any kind of finality to the droid thanks to one plot point.

Working inside a gold droid suit is not an easy task

Anthony Daniels | David M. Benett/Dave Benett/WireImage

As Daniels pointed out in a recent Associated Press interview, the amount of work hes put in as C3P0 has been more than the usual acting performance. Considering it really is Daniels inside the suit, imagine still having to do such a thing at his current age of 73.

Even when he was doing this at age 30 during the filming of A New Hope in 1976/77, he notes it was more than a little grueling. Those famous desert scenes, especially, were a little uncomfortable filming in intense heat. Regardless, he said the reaction from people watching him play the character in the desert then was more than worth it.

Following the success of the first film, Daniels thought it was the only time hed play the famous droid. Being caught up in an iconic trilogy can start to wreak havoc on being associated with anything else.

Daniels points out how rough those earlier days were in finding any other work other than in a Star Wars movie.

Making a living as an actor based only on filming a movie every two years can often feel like a nightmare.

Many expected C-3PO to die

It was a bit of an emotional moment in The Rise of Skywalker when C3P0 had to have 43 years of memories wiped from his system so he could properly translate a particular Sith language from a dagger. The good news is he managed to have all of his valuable memories mostly restored thanks to R2D2 by the end.

Perhaps its arguable J.J. Abrams didnt have the heart to kill off C3P0 since the death of Leia was already tough to take for many longtime fans. While its not known what becomes of C3P0 and R2-D2, theyre seen in the celebration at end, much like the ending of The Return of the Jedi in 1983.

Audiences are now to assume the two droids will go on living peacefully without being embroiled in epic chaos as they had for four decades.

Maybe not everyone was a fan of C3P0s witty quips during the most intense action scenes. For fans, at least its known hes alive for any future Star Wars movies or shows. Outside of Daniels saying he probably wont play the role again, its worth noting he thought the same after the first trilogy ended until the calls came for the prequelsthen the new trilogy.

If theres any chance hell play C3P0 again, it might be for one of the Star Wars shows on Disney+.

Would he suit up again for The Mandalorian or the Obi-Wan series?

Just because The Rise of Skywalker wraps up the Skywalker saga doesnt mean there wont still be strong references to it in the Disney+ shows coming up. In the Obi-Wan Kenobi series alone, its more than possible C3P0 and R2D2 might be seen. Also, The Mandalorian is bringing back a lot of original trilogy characters next season.

Anthony Daniels may be saying goodbye in the media to throw fans off the trail. Not that isnt likely true hell never again play C3P0 in a movie. Doing cameos in a Disney+ series, however, is no doubt easier to suit up when pushing 75.

By then, Daniels may just voice the famous golden droid rather than sweat directly in the suit.
Tony Dejak, STF / Associated Press

A Galveston County woman has died following her use of e-cigarettes or vaping products, according to county health officials.

The woman, who was between 30 and 35 years of age, is the first death associated with e-cigarette, or vaping, associated lung injury (EVALI), according to a Galveston County Health District news release. The woman was being treated at a local hospital for EVALI, officials said. The health district said it would not release any additional information about the woman.
Japan on Monday said it could still press Lebanon to extradite Carlos Ghosn, after the former Nissan Motor boss skipped bail to become a fugitive in a country that normally does not extradite its nationals.

In the Japanese government's first briefing since Ghosn fled to his childhood home of Lebanon, Justice Minister Masako Mori gave little insight into the events of the escape, repeatedly telling reporters she could not comment on specifics because of an ongoing investigation.

The ousted boss of Nissan and France's Renault was forbidden from leaving Japan while awaiting trial on charges of financial misconduct, which he denied. However he fled at the end of last year, saying he escaped a "rigged" justice system.

Mori noted that as a general principle, Tokyo could possibly request extradition from a country with which it has no formal extradition agreement.

Such a request would need to be carefully examined based on the possibility of "guaranteeing reciprocity and the domestic law of the partner country," Mori told reporters in Tokyo.

She did not elaborate on what would be required to guarantee reciprocity - the idea that benefits or penalties extended by one country to citizens of another country should be returned. She also did not say whether there were any Lebanese nationals in Japan that were wanted by authorities in their home country.

Japanese officials on Sunday broke days of silence about the Ghosn case, saying they would tighten immigration measures and promising a thorough investigation. Authorities have also issued an international notice for his arrest.

All government offices and most businesses in Japan have been shut for the New Year holidays, which formally ended on Monday.

Lebanon has said it received an Interpol arrest warrant for Ghosn and that Ghosn entered the country legally. A senior Lebanese security official has said Lebanon does not extradite its citizens.

Mori also defended Japan's justice system against Ghosn's charges that it was "rigged" and discriminatory.

In Japan, suspects who deny charges against them are often detained for long periods and subject to lengthy questioning without a lawyer present, a system critics call "hostage justice".

"Various comments about Japan's justice system and this unjust departure are two different things," Mori told reporters.

She said any criticism levelled at the justice system could not be used to justify his escape.

"Departure in an unjust way without proper procedure is tantamount to smuggling, an illegal departure amounting to a crime."
Game of Thrones alum Maisie Williams wigs out as Rahne Sinclair, a religious Scottish teen who transforms into the werewolf Wolfsbane, in the first trailer for The New Mutants.

'I was 13,' the British 22-year-old - who has an 'M' mark on her neck - said of her pubescent transformation. 'I thought it was a dream. I just lost control.'

If rumors are true that Maisie's character romances fellow mutant, Danielle Moonstar/Mirage (Blu Hunt), it would mark the first Marvel Comics flick to feature LGBTQ superheroes.

'M' mark on her neck: Game of Thrones alum Maisie Williams wigs out as Rahne Sinclair, a Scottish teen who transforms into werewolf Wolfsbane, in the first trailer for The New Mutants

The British 22-year-old said of her pubescent transformation: 'I was 13. I thought it was a dream. I just lost control'

Josh Boone's gritty, horror-inspired X-Men spin-off finally hits US theaters April 3 and UK theaters April 8 after being filmed way back in 2017.

As recent as 10 months ago, Williams complained to Rolling Stone that she had no clue if and when the long-delayed movie would ever see the light of day.

'Who knows when the f*** that's gonna come out,' the two-time Emmy nominee said.

'[I asked co-star Charlie Heaton] what the f*** is going on with this movie? He didn't know either. Hopefully this interview will make everyone hurry up a little bit!'

Sapphic: If rumors are true that Maisie's character romances fellow mutant, Danielle Moonstar/Mirage (Blu Hunt), it would mark the first Marvel Comics flick to feature LGBTQ superheroes

Religious: Josh Boone's gritty, horror-inspired X-Men spin-off finally hits US theaters April 3 and UK theaters April 8 after being filmed way back in 2017

'Who knows when the f*** that's gonna come out!' As recent as 10 months ago, Williams complained to Rolling Stone that she had no clue if and when the long-delayed movie would ever see the light of day

The two-time Emmy nominee said: '[I asked co-star Charlie Heaton] what the f*** is going on with this movie? He didn't know either'

The 25-year-old Stranger Things star's teenage mutant character Sam Guthrie aka Cannonball is imprisoned at the same secret facility as Rahne and Dani.

'I started panicking. People got hurt,' Sam said referring to a mysterious accident at a coal mine.

Queen of the South star Alice Braga plays Cecilia Reyes, the doctor mentoring the group who can generate a protective bio-field around herself.

Looking for Alaska star Henry Zaga plays Brazilian rich boy Roberto da Costa aka Sunspot, who accidentally 'burned' his girlfriend with his solar energy powers.

'I started panicking. People got hurt': The 25-year-old Stranger Things star's mutant character Sam Guthrie aka Cannonball is imprisoned at the same secret facility as Rahne and Dani

Friend or foe? Queen of the South star Alice Braga (L) plays Cecilia Reyes, the doctor mentoring the group who can generate a protective bio-field around herself

Oops! Looking for Alaska star Henry Zaga plays Brazilian rich boy Roberto da Costa aka Sunspot, who accidentally 'burned' his girlfriend with his solar energy powers

'I killed 18 men, one by one': Peaky Blinders actress Anya Taylor-Joy takes on fan favorite Illyana Rasputin, a Russian sorceress whose Magik alter ego can teleport

Peaky Blinders actress Anya Taylor-Joy takes on fan favorite Illyana Rasputin, a Russian sorceress whose Magik alter ego can teleport.

'I killed 18 men, one by one,' Illyana deadpans.

During the preview's climax, the younger sister of Colossus could be seen battling the main antagonist Demon Bear with her glowing Soulsword.

The New Mutants was one of legendary comic book writer Stan Lee's final producing projects before he passed away, age 95, from cardiac arrest on November 12.

CGI storm: During the preview's climax, the younger sister of Colossus could be seen battling the main antagonist Demon Bear with her glowing Soulsword
Photo: Kena Betancur/Getty Images

One day before Harvey Weinsteins rape and sexual-assault trial is supposed to start in New York City, Los Angeles district attorney Jackie Lacey announced that Weinstein has been charged with raping one woman and sexually assaulting another woman in separate incidents across two days in 2013.

According to the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office, Weinstein has been charged with one felony count each of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery by restraint. On February 18, 2013, Weinstein allegedly pushed his way into a womans hotel room and raped her. He is also accused of sexually assaulting a different woman in a hotel suite in Beverly Hills the next evening. Neither of the alleged victims has come forward publicly, but one will be testifying in the upcoming criminal trial in New York, Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson, who will be prosecuting the case, confirmed at a press conference Monday. An arraignment date for the Los Angeles charges has not yet been set. The DAs office was investigating a total of eight accusations against Weinstein, but Lacey said that three of those accusations took place outside the statute of limitations and, therefore, will not be pursued. The office is continuing to investigate the other three accusations to determine if additional criminal charges will be filed.

We believe the evidence will show that the defendant used his power and influence to gain access to his victims and then commit violent crimes against them, Lacey said in a statement. I want to commend the victims who have come forward and bravely recounted what happened to them. It is my hope that all victims of sexual violence find strength and healing as they move forward.

The development was not entirely unexpected. During a pretrial proceeding Monday morning, Weinsteins lawyers asked for the presiding judge, James Burke, to sequester the jury in case something may happen. Burke denied this request.

After the proceeding, one of Weinsteins lawyers said that the request was related to the sexual-misconduct investigation in Los Angeles.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles said that the New York City judge might have to weigh whether to increase Weinsteins bail, as an arrest warrant has been filed against him relating to these new charges. This possible bail increase comes several weeks after Weinsteins bail in his New York City case was upped from $1 million cash to $2 million insurance-company bond. The increase came after allegations that Weinstein had nearly 60 violations involving his ankle-monitoring bracelet.

The Manhattan district attorneys office declined to comment. A rep for Weinstein did not immediately provide a comment, but Weinstein has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. The four Los Angeles charges are in addition to the charges against him in New York, where he faces one count of rape in the first degree, one count of rape in the third degree, one count of a criminal sexual act in the first degree, and two counts of predatory sexual assault against two different victims. His trial is expected to last around eight weeks.
Photo: The Canadian Press President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump exit Air Force One, Sunday, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md.

President Donald Trump insists that Iranian cultural sites are fair game for the U.S. military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so could constitute a war crime under international law. He also warned Iraq that he would levy punishing sanctions if it expelled American troops in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed a top Iranian official.

But Congress is pushing back, in what's expected to be a pivotal week as lawmakers return from a holiday recess. On Monday, two top Senate Democrats called on Trump to immediately declassify the administrations reasoning for the strike on the Iranian official, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, saying there is no legitimate justification for keeping the information from the public.

And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said late Sunday the House would introduce and vote this week on a war powers resolution to limit the presidents military actions regarding Iran. In a letter to House Democrats, Pelosi called the airstrike provocative and disproportionate and said it had endangered our servicemembers, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran. A similar resolution was introduced in the Senate.

Congress, which has the sole power to declare war, has complained that Trump did not provide advance notice of his airstrike on Soleimani in Baghdad. Trump did meet the 48-hour deadline required by the War Powers Act to notify Congress after the deadly drone strike, though the document was classified and no public version was released.

The administration is expected to brief lawmakers on its actions this week.

In their letter to Trump, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and the Senate Foreign Relation Committees Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey said the White Houses classified notification sent to Congress late Saturday under the War Powers Act was insufficient and inappropriate.

It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner, they wrote. An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society. They asked that the notification be declassified in full.

White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway, speaking Monday on Fox & Friends, dismissed the letter as a partisan action.

Pelosi said the notification raises more questions than it answers. This document prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner and justification of the Administrations decision to engage in hostilities against Iran.

Iran has vowed to retaliate for Trump's targeted killing of Soleimani, the head of Irans elite Quds force. It has sparked outrage in the Middle East, including in Iraq, where more than 5,000 American troops are still on the ground 17 years after the U.S. invasion. Iraqs parliament voted Sunday in favour of a nonbinding resolution calling for the expulsion of the American forces.
(CNN)  Britain's most prolific rapist has been sentenced to life in prison, after being found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting 48 different men at his apartment in Manchester over the course of more than a decade.

Reynhard Sinaga was found guilty of 159 counts of sexual offenses against 48 different men, and must serve 30 years before he is considered for release.

Sinaga, 36, approached men in the early hours of the morning outside nightclubs in Manchester, offering them somewhere to sleep or more alcohol at his home.

Once there he would drug them, then film himself raping them while they slept. Police found evidence linking him to assaults against as many as 190 different people. They said victims were often unaware they had been assaulted.

Sinaga's attacks only came to light in 2017, when a victim woke up and fought him off before going to the police. Police believed he had been carrying out similar attacks for 12 years by that point.

He was found guilty in four separate trials, the details of which can only now be published.

"Reynhard Sinaga is the most prolific rapist in British legal history," Ian Rushton, North West Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor, said. "His extreme sense of sexual entitlement almost defies belief and he would no doubt still be adding to his staggering tally had he not been caught.

"Sinaga's unthreatening demeanour duped these young men  many of whom thanked him for his kindness in offering them a place to stay  into thinking this monster was a Good Samaritan," he added.

"But once back at his flat he used victims as objects purely for his own gratification  then appears to have derived further twisted pleasure from re-watching his films in court and putting victims through the trauma of giving evidence."

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Britain's most prolific rapist sentenced to life in prison for 159 sexual offenses."
Safe: Two soldiers help a family and their dog evacuate by helicopter at the town of Omeo in the state of Victoria. Photo: Getty Images

Smoke from bushfires thousands of kilometres away in Australia colours the sky in Auckland, New Zealand. Photo: Getty Images

One of the koalas rescued from the bushfires on Kangaroo Island. AP photo

Brian Cartmill has been helping firefighters by transporting campsite bases to the areas worst affected

As the fierce blazes continue to rage across Australia, a Belfast man has been helping firefighters by transporting campsite bases to the areas worst affected.

Newtownbreda native Brian Cartmill lives in Melbourne in Victoria.

The 61-year-old has lived in Australia for 30 years and works as a truck driver, volunteering with his lorry during "fire season".

Nineteen people have died as a result of the bushfires raging through Australia, dozens remain missing and thousands of families are displaced.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has already sent in troops, ships and planes to bushfire danger zones.

The fires were fuelled by record temperatures and several months of severe drought.

The worst affected areas are along the eastern and southern coasts, including New South Wales and Victoria.

Emergency warnings remain in place in Victoria, where Brian lives, and four people remain missing in the state.

An evacuation from the Victoria beach town of Mallacoota is ongoing, since it was isolated by the fires on New Year's Eve.

Brian said he has seen entire towns turned to ash during his travels.

He said there is now a great fear among residents that two massive fires will join together.

"I drive a heavy goods vehicle over here," he says.

"I work for a company based over in Tasmania and I help out with shipping during fire season every year.

"We supply support for the firefighters and deliver the camps that they use, which are eight by 20 foot containers which include a kitchen, fridge area, toilet, shower and laundry blocks and one that has 250 sleeping bags contained within.

"So we get the call and load up and head to where we are needed.

"We drop out the containers, then head back and repeat.

"This year has been horrific as the fires are breaking out all over the state.

"There have been so many deaths and so much property destroyed. It is just awful.

"And it looks like today we have lost a whole firefighters' campsite to the fire. The kitchen alone was worth $800,000 but it would have been far too dangerous to go back to pick up."

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Brian said that what he has seen travelling through the country has terrified him.

"I saw a wall of smoke and flames that would go from Belfast to Ballynahinch, if not Newcastle, and the sky turning a terrifying colour of red.

"At one point the road from Bairnsdale to Mallacoota - which is the last town in Victoria before you cross into New South Wales - was closed.

"There's a large town in that area called Lakes Entrance that during the year has a population of maybe 2,500 during the year but grows to 20,000 at Christmas.

"It's a stunningly beautiful town on a beach.

"People are so scared as there is only one road in or out and the fire cut off the Princes Highway.

"In another coastal town, Mallacoota, people were told to get into the water to escape the fire.

"I can never remember this happening before.

"Can you imagine being there in a tent or caravan with your kids aged from newborn up and you can't get out? Especially with warnings that a fire is heading towards the town.

"It is just petrifying.

"People in towns were told to get out, but because they have paid for their holidays, many are staying thinking they can fight nature.

"You can't beat Mother Nature when she is in full swing. And with the road cut off, no one can get supplies in."

Brian said that what he does can be dangerous, but nothing in comparison to what the firefighters are doing.

"What we do is nothing compared to the firefighters," he said.

"We are safe, but it does almost stop your heart when you come around a corner and see in the distance a wall of smoke.

"I have never seen anything like it.

"The fires produce their own weather system.

"When the embers rain down it's like a heavy rain shower.

"Then after the devastation, the place looks like the surface of the moon with these black trees everywhere.

"This is going to last for months.

"If two fires link up it will burn from the mountains to the coast and that's about 400km in a straight line, and it's all forest in between.

"So far they think over 500m animals have been lost. I would say that's a conservative number.

"The loss of life hits everyone so hard. A lot of the guys are volunteers and just helping out the folks in their area. So everyone knows them.

"Last week one of the volunteers died in the fires. His wife is expecting their first child in May. It's just utterly heartbreaking."

Brian said that people are fearful for their families and for the future.

"The army reserves have been called in to help," he said. "Never before has this happened.

"We have tragically lost people. We have lost towns, beautiful old buildings that have stood for years and years, all gone.

"How can you replace that?

"Now we have a smoke haze in Melbourne that is causing trouble for people with breathing problems.

"The area on fire in Victoria is around half the size of Belgium, but that will grow in the next few hours as the wind is changing and picking up.

"So that will affect the fires and if they join up, God help us all."
Sandra Bullock sure knows how to make an entrance.

Sandra Bullock decided to skip the buzzy arrivals line at the Golden Globes on Sunday, choosing instead to give her gown maximum impact on the awards stage itself when she appeared at the close of the ceremony to present the final award of Best Motion Picture - Drama.

Bullock, 55, positively shined in the strapless gown, which was made of subtly reflective textured gold fabric arranged in tastefully overlarge ruffles that cascaded down the front.

Saving the best for last: Sandra Bullock decided to skip the buzzy arrivals line at the Golden Globes, choosing instead to give her gown maximum impact on the awards stage itself when she appeared at the close of the ceremony

The asymmetrical hem of the grand dress revealed Sandra's strappy gold footwear, and it also gave way to a voluminous train in the back.

The Blind Side actress wore layered gold chains around her neck, which she echoed in a bracelet in the same style.

Bullock wore her dark hair down around her face, parted at the middle and brushing her shoulders.

While she was last honored with a Globe (as well as an Oscar) in 2010 for her role in The Blind Side, the actress has enjoyed further considerable success of late, thanks to her hit 2018 Netflix film Bird Box.

Standing out: Bullock positively shined in the strapless gown, which was made of subtly reflective textured gold fabric arranged in overlarge ruffles that cascaded down the front

Stunning: Bullock wore her dark hair down around her face, parted at the middle and brushing her shoulders

In fact, she recently met with Netflix executives to sign on for another movie with the streaming giant.

On Sunday night, meanwhile, she handed out one of the biggest awards of the night to 1917, which clinched the award for Best Motion Picture - Drama.

Afterward, she proceeded to pose for pictures in the press room, where her golden gown stood out beautifully and strikingly against the blue background.

After presenting: Sandy proceeded to pose for pictures in the press room, where her golden gown stood out beautifully and strikingly against the blue background

Happy actress: The Blind Side actress wore layered gold chains around her neck

She also was seen at the Golden Globes after party with her buddy Jennifer Aniston, along with the divine Glenn Close.

In another snap, Sandra posed with Brad Pitt along with other industry insiders.

The next Netflix flick for Sandra is a yet-to-be-titled film opposite Viola Davis, in which Bullock will portray a woman released from prison who struggles to re-enter society.

A starry trio: She also was seen at the Golden Globes after party with her buddy Jennifer Aniston, along with the divine Glenn Close
Mumbai, Jan 6 : In a bizarre incident on the third day of the Ranji Trophy contest between Mumbai and Karnataka at the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) here play was halted a few times after snakes entered the ground.

According to a tweet from a 'The Hindu' reporter, a snake-catcher was called to the ground after the incident on Sunday. "The highlight of the day at BKC: The snake-catcher displays his 'second catch of the day'. It's a non-venomous rat snake, btw," the reporter tweeted with an image of the snake-catcher holding the snakes in his hands.

Later in the day, Karnataka defeated Mumbai by five wickets inside two-and-a-half days. This was Mumbai's second consecutive loss at home after their defeat against the Railways while it was Karnataka's second win from four games. They are yet to be beaten in the ongoing 2019-20 season.

Earlier, a similar incident had happened this season during a match between Andhra and Vidarbha in Vijayawada when a snake had entered the ground on December 8. Later, the ground staff were pressed into the rescue act as the start of the match was delayed.
Gemma Quinn, 35, booked a two-week trip around Asia. (PA)

A disabled woman was left stranded in Singapore after an airline lost part of her wheelchair will be able to continue her dream trip after it was recovered.

Gemma Quinn, 35, booked a 15,000 19-day trip around Asia with her two carers but was left distraught when part of her chair was lost in transit.

Ms Quinn, was paralysed from the neck down in a car accident in 1992, was faced with the possibility of not being able to leave her hotel room following the loss of her custom-made wheelchair.

On her first flight with Emirates on December 23, the back of the chair was lost after it was put in the hold, rendering Ms Quinns vital chair unusable.

Part of Ms Quinn's chair went missing on an Emirates flight. (Getty) [file photo]

The experienced traveller flew from Manchester Airport to Dubai, where she was carried through the airport on a stretcher and told a solution would be found for when she arrived in Singapore.

However, when she arrived in Singapore on December 24, the back had not been found, leaving Ms Quinn unable to leave her bed or consider completing the next two stops on her trip.

This was meant to be a holiday of a lifetime, which has now turned into a living nightmare, she said.

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I have always tried to live as normal and active a life as possible. Travel always comes with its difficulties, but I have never been made to feel so disabled as I do now.

Ms Quinn said she felt degraded by the experience with Emirates when she was informed the back of her chair had been lost after her first flight, adding that the specially-moulded back of the chair was not registered as lost by Emirates until she got to Singapore.

It was an absolutely mortifying experience, Ms Quinn said. I got the feeling that they just wanted me off the aircraft.

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On Wednesday, Emirates confirmed the missing part of Ms Quinns chair had been found, and apologised.

A spokesman said: Emirates wishes to confirm that the missing part of Ms Quinns wheelchair has been located in Dubai and is being transported to Singapore on 25 December 2019.

The part will be handed over to her upon its arrival. Our teams in Dubai and Singapore have made every effort to help Ms Quinn and her family continue on their planned holiday, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience they have experienced.

Ms Quinn said she would wait until the part had been returned to her before celebrating.

She said: I have spoken to an Emirates representative who assured me its on its way to me in a flight coming in tonight but I will believe it when I see it.

I foolishly believed it was on its way when my friend sent me her response from Emirates informing her it was on its way this morning. I was crushed when it didnt arrive.
Union minister on Monday said there are many forces that are trying to "defame" the Centre over economic issues but the government understands the interests of traders and is working towards it.

Speaking at an event organised by the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), Singh said he has discussed the issue of sealing with Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri.

Industry body CAIT had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking an amnesty scheme to protect more than 10 lakh traders from the "onslaught of sealing" in the capital.

"I talked to Hardeep Singh Puri on sealing and he said it is being taken care of," Singh said.

He asserted that the is part of global economic recession and developed countries are more affected by it than India.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 23:50:37|Editor: ZX

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LONDON, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The north of England will thrive in the decades ahead if it gets the kind of support London and the south east has long enjoyed, a British expert has said, calling on the British government to take the Northern Powerhouse project as a "top priority".

Britain is among the most regionally unequal countries with its size and level of development, Luke Raikes, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) North told Xinhua in a recent interview via email.

But at the same time, there is huge potential in the regions outside of London and the south east, especially in the north of England, said Raikes, co-author of the report "Divided and connected: Regional inequalities in the North, the UK and the developed world -- State of the North 2019".

Noting that the North's economy is larger than most European Union countries, he urged the British government to take the Northern Powerhouse project as a "top priority".

The Northern Powerhouse project is an initiative launched by former Chancellor George Osborne and economist Jim O'Neill in 2014 to boost economic growth in the north of England.

The theory goes that key cities in northern England (Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull and Newcastle) are close enough to each other to be united into a single market similar in size to that of the London metropolitan area. It would mean Britain becoming home to two globally competitive city-based commercial hubs.

"It is a region that has strong capabilities in energy, digital, health innovation and advanced manufacturing technologies, as well as the business services, logistics and education sectors that support these," said the expert based in Manchester, a heart city of the northern England.

Asserting that the North is twice as vulnerable to Brexit as London, he explained that it is "a strong trading region and has long supply chains that could be ruptured with knock-on impacts on many of the North's services sectors and the wider economy."

Shortly after Prime Minister Boris Johnson's landslide victory in the recent general election, he told newly-elected MPs of his plans to direct billions of dollars of investment to the North.

Highlighting the region's huge potentials, Raikes said now there is an opportunity to look to the long-term sustainability of Britain's economy and the public finances, and invest in the North.

"Government investment in the North is welcome, but it is not a substitute for a healthy relationship with our closest trading partners," he said.

"The North has always been a strong trading region with links across the world, and now these links will become incredibly important," he said.

Foreign companies, including those from China, are already involved in the Northern Powerhouse project, Raikes noted.

"The new flights between Manchester Airport and China are incredibly valuable, as are relationships between China and the North's businesses, universities and its tourism industry," he added.

The Northern Powerhouse is considered as a popular destination for international investment, with nearly 40,000 new jobs created between April 2015 and March 2018. Analysts predict further potential opportunities for foreign investment if renewed interest in the project is to materialize.

But challenges also remain ahead for Johnson's government. After all, the north of England has been in economic decline relative to the south since the late 19th century.

Many towns in the region have still not recovered from deindustrialization of the 1980s. Their labor markets lag behind the rest of the country, with poor employment rates and lower wages, according to British weekly magazine the Economist.

The IPPR is a think tank based in London, with offices in Britain's major cities such as Newcastle, Manchester and Edinburgh.
Hundreds of AMU students on Monday held a rally on the varsity campus after taking out a 'Tiranga March' from Purani Changi to Babey Sir Syed Gate to protest against the violence in JNU last evening.

Raising slogans "JNU tum sangharsh karo, hum tumhare saath hain" (JNU you fight, we are with you), the protesters handed over a memorandum, addressed to President of India, to the district authorities here.

The memorandum by the Aligarh Muslim University students, among other things, also demanded "immediate punishment to those responsible for attack on JNU students and teachers".

It also sought action against policemen allegedly responsible for killing peaceful protestors in some parts of the country during the recent anti-CAA protests.

The protestors also sought release of all detained, anti-CAA protesters.

Also condemning the recent attack at Gurdwara Nankana Sahib in Pakistan's Punjab, the memorandum said, "We strongly oppose any attempt to enforce majoritiarianism" in any country.

The resolution also urged the president of India to ensure that no attempt is made by the government to crush the citizens' Fundamental Right right to hold peaceful protest against any issue, including the CAA.

The students also urged the president, who is also the visitor of the central varsity, to immediately take steps for reopening it.

The AMU students' march and rally on Monday in protest against the attack on JNU students and teachers by masked miscreants on Sunday evening was the second one in as many days.

They had held a demonstration on late Sunday evening as well soon after the of attack on JNU students and teachers reached here.

A spokesperson for protesting AMU students on Sunday had said a march was held in the night to express solidarity with the JNU students, who were attacked by masked men armed with sticks.

In a statement, the AMU Teachers' Association (AMUTA) too had condemned the violence.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Flagship Product Tauri-Gum Successfully Listed on Alibaba.com

New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - January 6, 2020) - Tauriga Sciences, Inc. (OTCQB: TAUG) ("Tauriga" or the "Company"), a revenue generating company that operates through the development, distribution, and licensing of proprietary products as well as the evaluation of potential acquisition opportunities and equity investments, today announced that it has been approved by Chinese multinational conglomerate, Alibaba Group ("Alibaba"), to operate a Global Seller Account. In addition, the Company has been designated as a Gold Supplier (Gold Tier Level Supplier). This Alibaba approval, opens up the global marketplace to Tauriga, its products, its product lines, as well as to future business opportunities. The Company also has the opportunity to introduce its outstanding products to the retail marketplace of China. The Company is working diligently towards establishing a partnership with a top tier China based fulfillment and distribution network.

The Company has successfully listed its Flagship Product, Tauri-Gum, on Alibaba.com (Please see below Links):

Link Below - Mint Flavor Tauri-Gum listed on Alibaba.com

Link: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Mint-Flavor-Tauri-Gum_62019109166.html'spm=a2700.7724838.0.0.aa324f02Qs9KXs

Link Below - Blood Orange Flavor Tauri-Gum listed on Alibaba.com

Link: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Blood-Orange-Flavor-Tauri-Gum_62452195384.html

Link Below - Pomegranate Flavor Tauri-Gum listed on Alibaba.com

Link: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Pomegranate-Flavor-Tauri-Gum_62450616572.html'spm=a2700.7724838.0.0.aa324f02Qs9KXs

The Company has been designated the following credential by Alibaba Group:

Tauriga Sciences Inc. Global Seller Account (Gold Supplier):

Member ID (License #): US1359170021PMGW

Link: https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=tauri-gum

In other news, the Company is actively working with Alibaba's New York City office to both enhance its brand awareness and business opportunities throughout the Alibaba global network.

The Company's Product Liability Insurance Policy (covering its Tauri-Gum brand) is Underwritten by Evanston Insurance Company and provides Coverage of $5,000,000 USD (Policy # MKLV7PPD000108).

ABOUT TAURIGA SCIENCES, INC.

Tauriga Sciences, Inc. (OTCQB: TAUG) is a revenue generating company that operates through the development, distribution, and licensing of proprietary products as well as the evaluation of potential acquisition opportunities. One such opportunity on which the Company has acted, involves the Company having entered into the cannabidiol (or "CBD") infused chewing gum product business, as more fully described above and in prior press releases. This CBD infused chewing gum product has been branded under the following name: Tauri-Gum. The Company is currently in production of three distinct flavors of Tauri-Gum: MINT, BLOOD ORANGE, and POMEGRANATE. On December 6, 2019 the Company announced that it completed the initial production run (thereby expanding its existing product lines) with the introduction of a 25mg Vegan CBD Isolate Infused vegan gummy ("gumdrop"), branded under the name: Tauri-Gummies. Further, the Company continues to identify and evaluate additional potential opportunities to generate revenue, as well as shareholder value, and leverage its resources and expertise to build a diversified and sustainable business model. Please visit our corporate website at www.tauriga.com.

The Company has also announced the development of a Cannabigerol ("CBG") Isolate infused version of Tauri-Gum. The flavor that has been selected is Starfruit/Peach and each piece of gum will contain 10mg of CBG Isolate / Each blister pack will contain 80mg of CBG Isolate. The Company expects to commence production during its 4th Fiscal Quarter of 2020 (January 1, 2020 - March 31, 2020).

In addition, on March 11, 2019, the Company announced the official launch of its E-Commerce site - as part of its Tauri-Gum commercialization strategy. This site can be accessed by visiting the following URL address: www.taurigum.com.

The Company has established corporate offices in both New York City (USA) and Barcelona (Spain).

DISCLAIMER -- Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements" as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 which represent management's beliefs and assumptions concerning future events. These forward-looking statements are often indicated by using words such as "may," "will," "expects," "anticipates," believes, "hopes," "believes," or plans, and may include statements regarding corporate objectives as well as the attainment of certain corporate goals and milestones. Forward-looking statements are based on present circumstances and on management's present beliefs with respect to events that have not occurred, that may not occur, or that may occur with different consequences or timing than those now assumed or anticipated. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements due to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, such as are not guarantees of general economic and business conditions, the ability to successfully develop and market products, consumer and business consumption habits, the ability to consummate successful acquisition and licensing transactions, fluctuations in exchange rates, and other factors over which Tauriga has little or no control. Many of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in greater detail in the "Risk Factors" section of Tauriga's Form 10-K and other filings made from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Such forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this release, and Tauriga assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

CONTACT INFORMATION



Tauriga Sciences, Inc.

555 Madison Avenue, 5th Floor

New York, NY 10022

Chief Executive Officer

Mr. Seth M. Shaw

Email: sshaw@tauriga.com

Cell # (917) 796 9926

Corp. Website: www.tauriga.com

E-Commerce Website: www.taurigum.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/51176
SHENZHEN, China, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On January 2, 2020, a financing platform for SMEs in China's Guangdong province was formally launched. The platform is supported by OneConnect (NYSE: OCFT), a leading Chinese fintech company that has just been listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The launch of the platform with blockchain as its key underlying technology marks the deep integration of digital government and fintech, signaling that difficulties in obtaining financing, including the associated high cost and slow pace of completing the process, faced by small and medium-sized businesses can be solved by following the "Guangdong model".

Guangdong province governor Ma Xingrui, Ping An Group chairman and CEO Ma Mingzhe and OneConnect chairman and CEO Ye Wangchun attended the launch ceremony.

OneConnect leveraged Guangdong's "digital government" data resources, as well as its own advanced financial technologies in blockchain, artificial intelligence and big data, to build a platform that furnishes financing to SMEs, while resolving the issue of information asymmetry. This was accomplished by providing comprehensive commercial credit profiles for businesses, as well as solutions for supply chain financing, trade financing and intellectual property financing, with the result that financial institutions can strengthen their risk management capabilities and improve the efficiency of their financial services.

The SME financing platform currently has access to data in 213 categories from 26 government departments, collecting information and creating a corporate profile alongside a risk evaluation for more than 11 million companies. In addition, the platform has successfully connected with 129 financial institutions in the province, including ICBC, China Construction Bank and Ping An Bank, in addition to launching 319 financial products.

The prominent technical advantage of the SME platform is the blockchain technology it uses and its information sharing, privacy protection and mutual trust mechanism, which not only assures the accuracy and security of the corporate profile, but also enables financial institutions to acquire company information in accordance with laws and regulations, said by OneConnect CEO Mr. Ye. Blockchain can play a role in solving financing problems for SMEs, whether they are engaged in manufacturing, foreign trade or the more innovative areas of science and technology.

At the event, the Guangdong provincial governor, Mr. Ma, formally inaugurated the "Intelligent Matching" feature of the SME financing platform, witnessing the platform's accepting and granting of the first online unsecured financing credit based on blockchain technology. Within 10 minutes, Huizhou Shenghua Industry Co., Ltd. received 1.12 million yuan in supply chain financing from ICBC, while Guangdong Sunlux IOT Technology Co., Ltd. obtained 500,000 yuan in foreign trade financing from Ping An Bank, and Corehelm Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. received 200,000 yuan in intellectual property financing from China Construction Bank.

About OneConnect

OneConnect Financial Technology Co., Ltd. (the "Company") is a leading technology-as-a-service platform for financial institutions in China. The Company's platform provides cloud-native technology solutions that integrate extensive financial services industry expertise with market-leading technology. The Company's solutions provide technology applications and technology-enabled business services to financial institutions. Together they enable the Company's customers' digital transformations, which help them increase revenue, manage risks, improve efficiency, enhance service quality and reduce costs.

The Company's 12 technology solutions strategically cover multiple verticals in the financial services industry, including banking, insurance and asset management, across the full scope of their businesses  from sales and marketing and risk management to customer services, as well as technology infrastructure such as data management, program development, and cloud services.

SOURCE OneConnect
Catalan premier Quim Torra. Massimiliano Minocri

Spains Central Electoral Board (JEC) agreed on Friday to strip Catalan premier Quim Torra of his position as deputy in the Catalan Parliament following his 18-month ban from public office for disobedience.

In December, the Catalan Regional High Court found Torra guilty of disobedience for refusing to remove banners supporting jailed independence leaders from public buildings during an election campaign, which violated regulations on political neutrality. The ruling, however, is not definitive until the Supreme Court issues a decision on Torras appeal.

We need to move on from this notion of supreme courts or electoral boards. Where does sovereignty reside?

Catalan premier Quim Torra

But the conservative Popular Party (PP), center-right Ciudadanos (Citizens) and far-right Vox called upon the JEC to remove Torra from his post as deputy, meaning that he would not be able to continue serving as Catalan premier, as the regional leader must also be a deputy. The JEC agreed by a very tight margin  seven votes to six  that the Catalan Regional High Courts disobedience ruling effectively stripped Torra of his eligibility to be a deputy, given that it was a crime against the public administration.

The members of the JEC who voted against the decision argued that the electoral board does not have the power to adopt a resolution to remove an elected official. The JECs decision also goes against an agreement reached earlier by the Barcelona electoral board, which dismissed the right-wing parties request to strip Torra from his position as deputy.

The JEC decided against Torra by a very tight margin of seven votes to six

In an extraordinary assembly on Saturday, the Catalan Parliament, which is controlled by pro-independence groups, approved a resolution that rejected the JECs decision as a coup that contravenes the will of the Catalan people. According to the chambers resolution, only the Catalan Parliament has the power to remove Torra from office. It argues that the decision is a new [Article] 155 that has not been approved by the Senate, in reference to the provision of the Spanish Constitution that allowed former prime minister Mariano Rajoy to temporarily strip Catalonia of its autonomous powers following the 2017 breakaway bid.

Torra is already assuming that the Supreme Court will back his removal. It is very likely that this process will end in my disqualification from office a few months from now, he said in a televised interview on the regional station TV3.

But the separatist leader invoked the regional parliaments support for him on Saturday as a good reason to disobey the Supreme Court. Torra said that sovereignty resides in the Catalan Parliament. We need to move on from this notion of supreme courts or electoral boards. Where does sovereignty reside? It was very important to underscore the sovereignty and inviolability of the Parliament, said Torra.

English version by Melissa Kitson.
Rumors about Nintendo working on a more powerful Pro model of its Switch console, following the successful release of the Lite model last year, have been circulating the web, and now, a new report suggests we may see it on the market sooner than expected.

Per details from Taiwanese media outlet Digitimes, Nintendo will have a new Nintendo Switch model on store shelves by mid-2020, with production set to begin around the end of the first quarter this year, around the end of March. The report states that the information comes from upstream supply chain sources.

While this isnt by any means official, Digitimes has been pretty accurate about similar details in the past. Last year, it noted that Nintendo would produce a cheaper version of the Switch, and months later, the Switch Lite came to market for $199.

This also ties in with a story from last week, in which analyst Dr. Serkan Toto predicted that Nintendo would release the new Switch model for around $399. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind, he said. He also believes it will come with beefed-up components, though he didnt go into specifics.

Theres been a lot of talk about a Nintendo Direct airing sometime this month, based on new game SKUs that have popped up on the radar and the pick-up of rumors on the Switch Pro.
A Dublin woman has appeared in court accused of damaging an- other's car in an incident at a retail park in the west of the city.

Ailsa Sherlock (34) had the case against her adjourned at Blanchardstown District Court.

Ms Sherlock, of Milford Manor Avenue, Clondalkin, is charged with causing criminal damage to a car at Fonthill Retail Park, also in Clondalkin.

The offence is alleged to have happened last July 9.

Sgt Maria Callaghan told Judge David McHugh that the Director of Public Prosecutions had consented to summary disposal of the case at District Court level.

Sgt Callaghan said the allegations involved some paint damage to a 2011- registered car on the date in question.

Unemployed

Judge McHugh accepted jurisdiction to deal with the case in the district court instead of sending the accused to Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

He made an order for disclosure of prosecution documents to the defence following an application by Ms Sherlock's solicitor, Simon Fleming.

The judge also granted free legal aid after hearing that the accused was un- employed and was caring for young children.

A statement of her financial means was submitted to the court in support of the application.

Ms Sherlock was remanded on continuing bail.

She will appear in court again on a date later this month.

She has not yet indicated how she intends to plead to the charge.
Enter to Win $5,000 Worth of STIHL Tools Were 105 years strong, and our strength comes from the dedicated professionals who protect our communities. We owe them this thank you for all that they do.

California Casualty wants to thank first responders once again with a 2020 Work Hard/Play Hard contest. This year, one lucky firefighter, EMT or law enforcement officer will receive their choice of tools in the $5,000 STIHL* Tools Giveaway. Public safety professionals and volunteers can learn more and enter at http://www.contest4heroes.com.

First responders know first-hand that using the right tools reduces their risk of injury and helps get the job done faster  two important aspects in their line of work.

From chainsaws and trimmers, to drills and safety equipment, STIHL has it all. Thats why California Casualty, the trusted auto and home insurance provider of Americas firefighters, EMTs and law enforcement officers, is offering a prize package of dependable tools and equipment.

Were 105 years strong, said California Casualty Sr. Vice President Mike McCormick. Our strength comes from the dedicated professionals who protect our communities. We owe them this thank you for all that they do.

Previous Work Hard/Play Hard sweepstakes from California Casualty have awarded public safety personnel Liberty Safes, DeWalt Tools, motorcycles, and cash. Past winners include an Oregon Police officer, Colorado Sheriffs captain, Firefighters from California, Nebraska, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and a California Highway Patrolman.

California Casualty will provide one lucky winner the STIHL tools of their choice in the Work Hard/Play Hard $5,000 STIHL Tools drawing, open to police officers, EMTs and firefighters  American heroes who work hard and risk their lives. Entries are being taken now through October 31, 2020 at http://www.contest4heroes.com. The winner will be announced in November.

Headquartered in San Mateo, California with Service Centers in Arizona, Colorado and Kansas, California Casualty provides auto and home insurance to educators, firefighters, law enforcement and nurses across the country. Founded in 1914, California Casualty has been led by four generations of the Brown family. Learn more about California Casualty at http://www.calcas.com or call 1.800.800.9410.

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New Delhi: The attack on students and teachers at the Jawarharlal Nehru University by unidentified goons triggered protests across India on Monday as the clamour grew for the resignation of the vice chancellor who is being blamed for inaction during the violence that left 34 people injured.

As horrific first-person accounts emerged of the attack on Sunday evening, including on JNU students union president Aishe Ghosh, Delhi Police said no arrests have been made and that they have transferred the case to the Crime Branch, who claimed to have found "vital clues."

Politicians of all parties condemned the violence. The opposition and JNU students blamed the ABVP, the students' wing of the BJP for the violence, and accused the Delhi Police of inaction. The BJP said campuses should not become political battleground.

On Sunday, a mob of masked young people stormed the JNU campus in south Delhi and systematically targeted students in three hostels, unleashing mayhem with sticks, stones and iron rods, hitting inmates and breaking windows, furniture and personal belongings. They also attacked a women's hostel.

I was specifically targeted on Sunday during a peace march on campus. Around 20-25 masked persons disrupted the march and attacked me with iron rods, union president Ghosh, her head swathed in bandages, told PTI after being released from hospital earlier Monday. She received at least 15 stitches on the head, and her arm was in a cast after the attack.

The ABVP has denied being responsible, and in turn, has blamed Ghosh's Left-supported union of stage managing the violence. It also claimed that many of its activists were injured, but has not presented any to the media. "For the last four-five days, some RSS affiliated professors were promoting violence to break our movement," Ghosh alleged at a press conference later.

Also Monday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah talked to Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal and the HRD ministry to take stock of the volatile situation. "The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on India's young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi government is deplorable and unacceptable," alleged Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

Union minister Smriti Irani said campuses should not be made a "political battlefield" and hoped students would not become political pawns. With no face to Sunday night's terror, videos of which did endless rounds of social media and news channels, the tide of anger showed no signs of ebbing.

Protests against the citizenship amendment act and the attack against students of JNU  which has seen a 70-day strike against the hike in fees  segued into one with students joining parties across the political spectrum to call for accountability.

The 34 people, including students and faculty members, who were admitted to the AIIMS trauma centre were discharged on Monday morning, officials said.

Large protests took place Monday in universities in Pondicherry to Chandigarh and Aligarh to Kolkata. Protests were also held at the National Law University in Bangalore and IIT-Bombay as well as at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. "Today it is them, tomorrow it can be us," Raiza, a Pondicherry university student, said.

In Mumbai, the protest by students at the Gateway of India that started at midnight continued. In New Delhi, the youth wing of the Congress Party took out a torchlight march through central New Delhi.

In Nepal, JNU alumni gathered at Maitighar Mandala in Kathmandu to voice their protest, as did students at Oxford University and University of Sussex in Britain and at Columbia University in the US. Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati also condemned the violence.

While Yadav said masked men attacking teachers and students in JNU shows how "low" the government will stoop to rule through "fear" and accused the BJP of using violence and hate to polarise society, Mayawati termed the mob attack shameful and demanded a judicial probe. NCP chief Sharad Pawar said JNU students were subjected to a "cowardly and planned attack".

Situation Inside JNU Day After Violence

A day after they were attacked in what they believed was their safe refuge, many students in Jawaharlal Nehru University on Monday were both angry and fearful with some demanding that the guilty be booked and others saying they were going home.

There was an uneasy calm in the campus where there was a massive deployment of security personnel and authorities only allowed students with valid ID cards inside. However, these measures did not assuage the concerns of students over their safety.

Shreya Ghosh, a resident of Shipra Hostel, asked how could goons enter the campus with rods and sticks and said, "The attack could not have happened without the connivance of the administration and police." She claimed that she had to hide in Sabaramati Hostel after the masked men chased her and some other people.

Akarsh Ranjan from Periyar hostel said students had received threats that they should not come out of their rooms. According to other residents of Periyar hostel, a group of masked people had entered their hostel around 4.30 pm and banged on doors, forcing many students to flee the hostel from back door exits.

Many of them went without food on Sunday night as the food had to be thrown away. "The food was prepared by 4.30 pm on Sunday. After we heard that students were barging in, we locked the mess and went upstairs. They broke open the mess door. They did not touch the food but we did not feed it to students because we were scared they might have mixed something in it," said OP Tiwari, a mess employee.

He said the food was prepared for 550 students, including for those living in Godavari Hostel, where some renovation is going on. A resident of the hostel, however, alleged that glass pieces had been mixed in the food.

Aman Kumar, a PhD scholar said a mob had vandalised the mess around 4 pm. "They were banging on the door but my roommate and I pushed one of the beds against it so that they could not enter. We left from a back-door. I had food at Koyna Hostel and spent the night at Lohit Hostel. I came to collect some things at my hostel around midnight but all the rooms were locked," he said. Kumar claimed many students had left Godavari Hostel out of fear.

JNUSU President Reacts After Brutal Mob Attack

JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh said she was hit with multiple rods during Sunday's "organised" attack on the campus, but every iron rod used against students will be answered to by debate and discussion and the university's culture will never be eroded.

Ghosh, who was admitted to a hospital after sustaining injuries in the attack, demanded the resignation of Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar, saying he had not bothered to meet or check upon the injured students and professors.

She claimed that the university security staff had colluded with the vandals during the attack and added that some RSS-affiliated professors had been promoting violence for the past four-five days.

Ghosh, who was discharged on Monday, attended a press conference convened by the students' union amid cries of 'Lal Salaam' and 'Red Salute'. "It was an organised attack. They were singling out people and attacking," she told reporters. "There is a clear nexus between the JNU security (staff) and vandals. They did not intervene to stop violence."

"I was hit by multiple rods. Every iron rod used against the students will be answered back by debate and discussion. JNU's culture will never be eroded. JNU will uphold its democratic culture," she said.

She said they will fight back and will not be scared after the attack and they will continue the struggle against the hostel fee hike. Ghosh said the JNUSU has called for a strike of universities across the country on January 8.

What Police Said

The Delhi Police rejected charges of reaching the JNU campus late despite several pleas by the students' union, asserting that they responded to PCR calls and law-and-order situation professionally to bring things under control.

Under attack for not acting swiftly to prevent the violence on Sunday, the police also dismissed the charge that they were mute spectators despite a small number of police personnel being present on the campus.

Talking to the media, Delhi Police spokesperson Mandeep Singh Randhawa said the force was deployed in the administrative block of the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the scuffle took place in an area far from the spot.

Randhawa said the internal security of the JNU lay with the varsity administration. "We have responded to PCR calls, and law-and-order situation professionally," he said. According to the spokesperson, calls received by the police around 5 pm were from hostel areas away from the administrative block and it alerted them about a scuffle.

"We immediately responded to the calls and brought the situation under control. Normally, the police deployment is only at the administrative block of the varsity. The area where the scuffle took place was far from there," the officer said.

The Delhi Police also registered an FIR against unidentified persons for rioting and damaging property, officials said. According to the FIR, students were protesting against a hostel fee hike for the last few days. According to instructions issued by the high court, no protest is allowed within a 100-metre radius of the administrative block of the university.

A case was registered under sections 145 (joining or continuing in unlawful assembly, knowing it has been commanded to disperse), 147 (punishment for rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with deadly weapon), 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object), 151 (knowingly joining or continuing in assembly of five or more persons after it has been commanded to disperse) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and section 3 of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, the FIR said.

The high court had earlier directed the Delhi Police for deploying the personnel in plain clothes to ensure that protests do not happen within the 100 metres of the administrative block.

Opposition's Reaction

The Congress demanded a judicial probe into it and accused the Modi government of sponsoring violence across the country.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi alleged that the "horrifying" violence unleashed on India's youth by goons was with the active abetment of the Modi government and demanded an independent judicial inquiry into it.

She accused the Modi government of seeking to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent and said Sunday's "bone chilling" attack on students and teachers at JNU was a grim reminder of that.

"The voice of India's youth and students is being muzzled everyday. The horrifying and unprecedented violence unleashed on India's young by goons with active abetment of the ruling Modi government is deplorable and unacceptable," she charged.

Gandhi alleged that everyday campuses and colleges are raided across India, either by the police or lumpen elements with support of the BJP government. "Yesterday's bone chilling attack on students and teachers in JNU, Delhi is a grim reminder of the extent the government will go to stifle and subjugate every voice of dissent," she said in a statement.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala accused the government of unleashing "state-sponsored terrorism" on campuses across the country and said the violence in JNU reminded him of the Nazi rule. Demanding a judicial probe into the violence that erupted in JNU, Surjewala said the enquiry should look into the role of the government, the JNU administration and the Delhi Police.

How Eminent Personalities Reacted

Eminent personalities condemned the violence at Delhi's Jawarharlal Nehru University and said the "cowardly act" bears testimony that those in power are afraid of student protests.

Demanding that the perpetrators be brought to book, noted filmmaker Aparna Sen wondered whether the country has turned into a "goonda raj". "JNU students being beaten up by ABVP goons. Live on TV! How much longer are you going to look the other way? Or r u spineless? Yes I AM a liberal! Yes, I AM secular! And proud to be so if THIS is the alternative. Shame! Shame on ABVP & the police who are aiding & abetting them," Sen said in a tweet.

Writer Shirshendu Mukhopadhaya also denounced the incident and said the "brazen attack" on students is unacceptable. "It is expected that the student community will protest. But such kind of retaliation from a students group supported by those who are in power is unacceptable. Students have every right to protest," he said.

Actor Kaushik Sen said the JNU attack is proof that those who are in power are afraid of student protests. "The repeated attack on students shows that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah are scared of such protests. Students have every right to question and protest. From Jamia Milia University to Aligarh Muslim University to JNU, the Centre is committing one blunder after another," Sen said.

Poet Joy Goswami said he was pained to witness the violence unleashed on students, but said such attacks will not deter them from continuing the fight against "injustice".

(With PTI inputs)
The tech giant is sending emails to Google News users about full refunds that are being processed and there will be no new issues coming, reports Android Police.

San Francisco: Realising that people are not even reading magazines like Rolling Stone or Conde Nast Traveller and newspapers online, Google has decided to discontinue 'print replica' PDFs of magazines on its Google News app.

The "print replica" magazines in Google News are the PDF versions of print editions that you could view on smartphones or desktop.

Readers could still visit a magazine's website if they wish to read the e-version of the magazine, the report said on Friday.

"This notification is to inform you that we're discontinuing print-replica magazines in Google News.

"Publishers can continue selling content on Google News in the form of paywalled RSS-based publications - it is only the support for the sale of discrete digital files that is changing," read the Google email.

However, you'll continue to have access to all issues you previously subscribed to in the Google News app, in the Following or Favorites tab, depending on your app version.

"To continue to read the latest articles, we encourage you to search for that publication in Google News, or visit the publication's website," said Google.

Google started providing magazine content in 2012 with the Play Magazines app.

The company later renamed it to Play Newsstand and merged it into Google News.
NEW YORK, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --

Global Recombinant Cell Culture Supplements Market to Reach $977.8 Million by 2029







Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05835676/?utm_source=PRN







Key Questions Answered in this Report:

 What is the role of media and supplements in cell culture and what are the advantages associated with serum-free media? What is the importance of recombinant proteins in cell culture applications?

 What are the key trends of the global recombinant cell culture supplements market? How is the market evolving and what is its future scope?

 What are the major drivers, challenges, and opportunities of the global recombinant cell culture supplements market?

 What are the key developmental strategies implemented by the key players of the global recombinant cell culture supplements to sustain the competition of the market? What is the percentage share of each of the key players in different key developmental strategies?

 What is the regulatory scenario of the global recombinant cell culture supplements market? What are the initiatives implemented by different governmental bodies and guidelines put forward to regulate the commercialization of recombinant cell culture supplements products?

 What was the market size of the global recombinant cell culture supplements market in 2018 and what is the market size anticipated to be in 2029? What is the expected growth rate of the global recombinant cell culture supplements market during the period between 2019 and 2029?

 What are the different recombinant supplement products involved in cell culture? Which product type dominate the market in 2018 and why? Which product type are expected to witness highest growth rate and to dominate in market in 2029?

 What are the different application areas of the global recombinant cell culture supplements market? Which application type dominates the market in 2018 and is expected to dominate in 2029?

 What was the market value of the leading segments and sub-segments of the global recombinant cell culture supplements market? What are the different macro and micro factors influencing the growth of the market?

 Which region is expected to contribute the highest sales of the global recombinant cell culture supplements market during the period between 2018 and 2029? Which region and country carries the potential for the significant expansion of key companies for different recombinant cell culture supplement products? What are the leading countries of different regions that contribute significantly toward the growth of the recombinant cell culture supplements market?

 What are the key players of the global recombinant cell culture supplements market and what is their role in the market?



Global Recombinant Cell Culture Supplements Market Forecast, 2019-2029



The recombinant cell culture supplements market analysis projects the market to grow at a significant CAGR of 12.93% during the forecast period, 2019-2029. The recombinant cell culture supplements market generated $258.8 million revenue in 2018, in terms of value.



The recombinant cell culture supplements market growth has been primarily attributed to the major drivers in this market such as advantages offered by recombinant cell culture supplements and the promising impact displayed by them in culturing cells act as drivers for the growth of the market.Moreover, an increase in funding and investment supporting the advancement of life-science research with an ever-increasing demand for advanced cell culture systems have boosted the adoption rate of recombinant cell-culture supplements products.



However, there are significant challenges which are restraining the market growth.These challenges include the shortage of skilled professionals and lack of proper laboratory infrastructure.



Further, high cost of the cell culturing process and complications involved in it are also acting as challenge for the market.



Expert Quote



"The most important advantage of utilizing these recombinant proteins is that they facilitate large batch biomanufacturing with minimal risk of contamination and improved adhesion. Another advantage is that it involves animal-free manufacturing which in turn simplifies regulatory issues and export-import issues."



Scope of the Market Intelligence on Recombinant Cell Culture Supplements Market



The recombinant cell culture supplements market report provides a holistic view of the market in terms of various factors influencing it, including product optimization, and technological advancements.



The scope of this report is centered upon conducting a detailed study of the products and manufacturers allied with the market. In addition, the study also includes exhaustive information on the unmet needs, perception on the new products, competitive landscape, market share of leading manufacturers, growth potential of each underlying sub-segment, and company, as well as other vital information with respect to global recombinant cell culture supplements market.



Market Segmentation



The recombinant cell culture supplements market segmentation (on the basis of product) is further segmented into recombinant insulin, transferrin, albumin, among others.



The recombinant cell culture supplements market segmentation (on the basis of application) is segmented into stem cell and regenerative medicine, bio-production, and academic and research.



The recombinant cell culture supplements market segmentation (on the basis of region) is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Rest-of-the-World.



Key Companies in the Recombinant Cell Culture Supplements Market



The key manufacturers who have been contributing significantly to the Recombinant Cell Culture Supplements Market include Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Merck KGaA, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Hi-Media Laboratories, Sartorius AG, InVitro, SeraCare Life Sciences, Inc., GE Healthcare, Novozymes A/S, and Advanced Biotechnologies, Inc., among others.



Countries Covered

 North America

 U.S.

 Canada

 Europe

 Germany

 France

 U.K.

 Italy

 Spain

 The Netherlands

 Rest-of-Europe

 Asia-Pacific

 China

 Japan

 South Korea

 India

 Australia

 Rest-of-Asia-Pacific

 Latin America

 Brazil

 Mexico

 Rest-of-Latin America

 Rest-of-the-World

 Russia

 Israel

 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (K.S.A.)



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05835676/?utm_source=PRN



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



__________________________

Contact Clare: [email protected]

US: (339)-368-6001

Intl: +1 339-368-6001

SOURCE Reportlinker

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WINNIPEGThe City of Winnipeg is suing construction companies, consultants and a former top city official, alleging they engaged in fraud and deceit that drove up the cost of a new police headquarters building.

The lawsuit alleges there were inflated invoices, altered quotes and kickbacks in the five years it took to erect the building.

The structure was originally slated to cost $135 million but ended up costing more than $210 million by the time it was finished in 2016.

The statement of claim contains allegations that have not been proven in court, and no statements of defence have been filed.

There was no immediate comment from lawyers who have represented the major contractor, Caspian Projects, and Winnipegs former chief administrative officer Phil Sheegl.

The RCMP earlier investigated the matter for possible fraud and breach of trust, but prosecutors announced last month there was not sufficient evidence to lay charges.

The decision ... to not proceed with criminal charges did not end the matter, Michael Jack, the citys chief corporate services officer, said in a written statement Monday.

The city has the right to seek damages to protect its interests when it has suffered loss or damages as a result of an alleged fraud or negligent conduct.

The statement of claim names more than 30 defendants. It alleges some knowingly and fraudulently altered and/or inflated actual bona fide quotes and invoices, which resulted in the city being overcharged for work.

The document also alleges a company owned by Sheegl received $200,000 from a company connected to Caspian Projects four months before Caspian was awarded the contract for the headquarters.

The contractors, the contractor principals ... and Sheegl conspired and combined amongst themselves and other unknown persons to procure, and induce the city to award, the Phase 1 contract to the joint venture by, among other things, providing kickbacks to Sheegl and/or the Sheegl companies and to other unknown persons in exchange for improper procurement advantages, says the claim.

Robert Tapper, a lawyer who has represented Sheegl in previous matters, told the CBC in 2017 that the money Sheegl received was part of an unrelated real-estate transaction involving property in Arizona.
Houston Police Department

Houston police are searching for a man they believe is responsible for strangling a woman, sexually assaulting her and then robbing her in southwest Houston.

The incident occurred on Sunday, Dec. 29 around 8:45 p.m. in the 8000 block of Buffalo Speedway when the woman was walking home, police said. As she walked, a man suddenly came up from behind her and began strangling her to the point where she lost consciousness, according to police. The man then is said to have dragged the woman behind some bushes, sexually assaulted her and then took her cellphone and wallet before fleeing, police said.
06 Jan 2020, 11:50 AM

Cyrus Mistry says not returning as Tata Sons chairman, will protect minority shareholders' rights

Cyrus Mistry has said that he is not pursuing the position of Tata Sons' executive chairman, the office he was unceremoniously terminated from in October 2016, or directorship of any of the Tata group companies. He added that he will, however, "vigorously pursue all options to protect our rights as a minority shareholder". Mistry's statement on Sunday came in the backdrop of an NCLAT order that reinstated him on the Tata Sons' board.

BSNL identifies assets worth Rs 20,160 crore for monetisation

State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd has submitted details of 14 properties worth Rs 20,160 crore to the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) as part of the telecom corporations' ambitious asset monetisation plans, according to its Chairman.

Claims worth Rs 4,800 crore admitted from fixed deposit holders of DHFL

The Reserve Bank-appointed administrator of beleaguered Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL) has admitted close to Rs 4,800 crore of claims submitted by fixed deposit holders of the company, a source said. Nearly 55,000 public depositor holders, including retail and UP Power Corporation employees, have demanded payments aggregating to Rs 5,200 crore from the troubled mortgage players as of December 17.

India Inc's overseas borrowing rise 6.5% to $2.12 billion in Nov 2019

Overall borrowings by India Inc from overseas markets grew 6.5 per cent to $2.12 billion in November 2019, the Reserve Bank data showed. Domestic companies had borrowed over $1.99 billion in November 2018 from foreign sources.

Also read: DHFL share price hits upper circuit of 5% on creditors' approval for disbursing loans

The government is unlikely to announce capital infusion for the public sector banks (PSBs) in the upcoming Budget and will rather encourage them to expedite recovery of bad loans and raise funds from the market. Besides, sources said, banks may also look for divesting or selling their non-core business as part of fund raising exercise during 2020-21.

Over 390 hospitals served show cause notice, 170 delisted for fraud under PM-JAY scheme

The Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY), the Centre's healthcare insurance scheme under the National Health Authority (NHA) has noted that 390 hospitals have been served show-cause notice, suspended or de-empanelled across nine states for alleged fraud.

Govt addressing issues without waiting for Budget: FM

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday said the Centre has taken steps to address the challenges faced by various sectors without waiting for the Budget. She also said that GST collection, which crossed Rs 1 lakh crore per month mark during the last two months, will remain "good" in coming days.

Read more: Tax department cracks down on export houses misusing GST refund system

Read more: Cyrus Mistry says not returning as Tata Sons chairman, will protect minority shareholders' rights
Former U.S. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, a Republican known as a bipartisan lawmaker, has died at the age of 56.

Fitzpatrick represented Bucks County in Congress for four terms, opting not to seek re-election after his last term ended in 2017. His brother, U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, currently holds the seat.

He also served as a Bucks County commissioner from 1995-2004, including five years as chairman of the board.

Pat Poprik, chairman of the Bucks County Republican Party, confirmed Fitzpatricks death Monday morning, the Bucks County Courier Times reported.

Former Gov. Mark S. Schweiker, a longtime friend, issued a statement Monday morning.

Bucks County and Pennsylvania has lost a fine public servant. Mike Fitzpatrick worked tirelessly to improve the lives of those he served," he said in the statement. "As Bucks County Commissioner, and later in Congress, we could always count on Mike to fight for his fellow citizens. More than anything, I will remember him as my friend for over 40 years, and I will miss him. Kathy and I will hold his wife, Kathleen, their children and family in our prayers.

Born in Philadelphia, Fitzpatrick earned a law degree from the Dickinson School of Law in Carlisle.

In Congress, Fitzpatrick earned a reputation for working with fellow Democrats and his occasional willingness to vote against his own party. A Washington Post analysis in 2015 found Fitzpatrick was among the 10 House Republicans who most often voted against the party majority.

U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, a Lehigh County Republican, hailed Fitzpatricks bipartisan work.

Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick served our commonwealth and country with great integrity, competence, and dignity," Toomey said in a statement. "During his time as a Bucks County Commissioner, and then as a member of Congress, Mike proved time and again that it is possible to work across the aisle to make progress while remaining true to ones principles. Kris and I extend our condolences to Mikes wife Kathleen, their children, and the entire Fitzpatrick family.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat from Scranton, respected Fitzpatricks willingness to work across the aisle.

Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick served our Commonwealth with distinction, demonstrating countless times his willingness to reach across the aisle and put people before politics, Casey said on Twitter. Sending my deepest condolences to @RepBrianFitz and the entire Fitzpatrick family.

Fitzpatrick was first elected to Congress in 2005 but he lost his seat after only one term to Democrat Patrick Murphy, an Iraq War veteran who ran in opposition to the war. About a decade ago, Fitzpatrick was diagnosed with colon cancer.

But Fitzpatrick recovered and was re-elected to Congress in 2011. He would serve three more terms before opting against seeking re-election.

In a story published by the American Association for Cancer Research, Fitzpatrick described how his cancer battle changed him.

In the aftermath, I look at life knowing Id been given a second chance," Fitzpatrick said. Of course, I always appreciated my family, my wife and six kids, seven siblings, parents  but facing your own mortality somehow changes the view. What we take for granted, soars."
A 39-year-old man was arrested on Monday in Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh for allegedly targeting old people and withdrawing their money from ATMs after cloning cards, police said on Monday.

Abdul Kalam Khan, a resident of Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh, had come to Jabalpur in a car hired from Mumbai when he was detained and later arrested from Panagar area, said Superintendent of Police Amit Singh.

"He has told us six others, all from Pratagarh, helped him clone cards. The gang would approach old people in ATM kiosks offering to help them withdraw cash. They would obtain passwords of their cards and clone them and make withdrawals later," he said.

He identified Khan's accomplices as Arif Khan, Om Prakash Jaiswal, Sayyad Khan, Zahid Ali, Wasim and Nasiruddin, adding that efforts were on to nab them.

"We have seized 32 ATM cards and other equipment from Khan. He withdrew money in this way of two Jabalpur residents. Khan has been charged under provisions of IPC and Information Technology Act," Singh said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United States on Monday slammed Russia and China for their failure to condemn an attack last week on its Baghdad embassy by pro-Iranian demonstrators.

While congratulating the 27 of the 193 member nations that did issue statements condemning the December 31 attempt to storm the compound, the US mission to the UN said Russian and Chinese silence undermined the Security Council.

"Not allowing the United Nations Security Council to issue the most basic of statements underscoring the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises once again calls the council's credibility into question," the US statement said.

Washington said that voicing support for the 1961 Vienna convention that protects diplomatic missions "should not be controversial or warrant courage."

"As we have demonstrated, we will not tolerate attacks on US personnel and facilities and will respond decisively to protect our interests, citizens and allies," it added.

The attack on the Baghdad embassy, which did not result in any injuries, was meant to protest against a US airstrike against Ketaeb Hezbollah (KH), an Iranian-backed militia which the US blames for rocket attacks on its facilities in northern Iraq that resulted in the death of a US contractor.

President Donald Trump responded to the embassy attack by ordering a drone strike in Baghdad that killed one of Iran's top military commanders, Qasem Soleimani, and the head of the KH militia.

Russia and China rejected the US allegations, saying in a statement they could not disregard the US killing of Soleimani and the Iraqi general.

"As a principle, we condemn strongly any attack on any embassy anywhere in the world," Russian ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia told reporters.

"The statement was nearly ready, and it was agreed upon, at least with us, with the US."

But when news of the January 3 drone strike emerged, it wasn't possible to disregard "the whole context."

Story continues

"China does not accept the US accusation," China's UN ambassador Zhang Jun added.

"China firmly supports the protection of the safety of foreign missions in accordance with international law. The US unilateral military action has led to drastic changes in (the) regional situation."

He added that any Security Council action "should reflect latest developments of the situation and help prevent escalation of tensions."

UN sources said Monday that no country had so far called for a Security Council meeting to address the soaring tensions that the attacks have triggered in the Middle East.
SEATTLE, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Alaska Air Group announced today that Brandon Pedersen, Chief Financial Officer since 2010, plans to retire on March 2. Shane Tackett, currently Alaska's executive vice president of planning and strategy will succeed Pedersen, focusing on execution of the company's business model for continued long-term growth and value for guests, employees, owners and communities.

"Brandon has done an extraordinary job as Alaska's CFO," said Brad Tilden, chairman and CEO of Alaska Air Group. "Brandon has excelled in his work with analysts and investors, clearly articulating industry issues and Alaska's plans for creating long-term growth and value. He will be deeply missed by all of us. We thank him for his fantastic service to Alaska, and wish him and his wife, Janet, the very best in their future."

Pedersen is a life-long Seattle resident. After serving as Alaska's outside auditor for 11 years, he joined Alaska in 2003 as vice president of finance and controller and was promoted to CFO in May 2010. During his tenure as CFO, Alaska acquired Virgin America Inc., fortified its balance sheet, and initiated a dividend that has grown every year since 2013. The Puget Sound Business Journal named Pedersen as its "CFO of the Year" in 2015 for public companies with more than one billion dollars in revenue and he was recognized every year since 2012 as one of the top airline CFOs in Institutional Investor Magazine's annual "All-America Executive Team" rankings. He is a graduate of the University of Washington, where he continues to teach and be actively involved.

Tackett joined Alaska in 2000 and has led in many capacities across the company. In 2010, Tackett became vice president of labor relations at Alaska Airlines, building and leading the company's relationship with its five unions and ultimately negotiating six, long-term labor agreements. In 2015, he became responsible for the revenue management and e-commerce functions for Alaska and managed relationships with key commercial technology partners. He was promoted to executive vice president of planning and strategy in 2018, once again leading Alaska's labor relations team, which he will continue to lead as CFO.

"We're extremely lucky to have someone of Shane's caliber who's ready to succeed Brandon," said Tilden. "Shane has been with Alaska for nearly 20 years. He has led a wide array of divisions, including financial planning and analysis, e-commerce, revenue management and labor relations. He has a tremendous understanding of the underlying algebra of our business, but perhaps most importantly, of how we work from a people perspective. All of us are very excited to welcome him as our CFO, and we look forward to seeing the impact he makes in this role."

Tackett attended Pacific Lutheran University near Tacoma, Washington, where he majored in business administration with a concentration in finance. He also holds an MBA from the University of Washington's Foster School of Business. Tackett serves on the board of trustees of Make-A-Wish of Washington and Alaska.

Alaska Airlines and its regional partners fly 46 million guests a year to more than 115 destinations with an average of 1,300 daily flights across the United States and to Mexico, Canada and Costa Rica. With Alaska and Alaska Global Partners, guests can earn and redeem miles on flights to more than 800 destinations worldwide. Alaska Airlines ranked "Highest in Customer Satisfaction Among Traditional Carriers in North America" in the J.D. Power North America Airline Satisfaction Study for 12 consecutive years from 2008 to 2019. Learn about Alaska's award-winning service at newsroom.alaskaair.com and blog.alaskaair.com. Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air are subsidiaries of Alaska Air Group (NYSE: ALK).

SOURCE Alaska Air Group

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Iraqi Government Working on Steps to Expel Foreign Troops  Prime Minister

Sputnik News

01:38 06.01.2020(updated 01:41 06.01.2020)

CAIRO (Sputnik)  The Iraqi government has begun working on steps to implement the parliament's decision on the expulsion of foreign forces from the country, the press service of Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi said in a statement, as regional tensions are rising in the wake of the assassination of Iranian general by the United States in Baghdad.

"Iraqi specialists from various agencies are drafting a document on further legal and procedural actions to implement the parliament's decision to remove foreign troops [from Iraq]," the prime minister said during his conversation with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian, as quoted in the statement on Sunday.

The parliament voted to support a resolution recommending that the government recall its request for foreign military assistance on Sunday.

On the same day, the US-led international coalition, operating in Iraq and Syria, said it was suspending its anti-terrorist operations in Iraq, adding that its activities would be focused on protecting US military bases in the country in the wake of the recent attacks on the facilities hosting US troops.

The United States also expressed disappointment over the Iraqi parliament's decision to recommend that the government ban foreign troops from the country.

The escalation in the region followed the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Abu Mahdi Muhandis, a senior member of Iraq's Iranian-backed Shia Popular Mobilization Forces, by a US airstrike in Baghdad on Friday. The United States believes that both officials were behind the attack on military bases, as well as other activities targeting the United States, in the region.

A Sputnik

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A 95-year-old nursing home resident was found dead after a male attacker 'smothered him with a pillow while sitting on his chest' before fleeing.

The incident took place at Tiffany Hall Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Port St. Lucie, Florida, just after midnight on Saturday night.

A nurse spotted the unknown attacker as she walked past the resident's room and called for another nurse to ring 911.

Before emergency services could arrive the man fled the facility.

Police conducted a search around the perimeter with dogs and a helicopter but were unable to spot the attacker who is still being hunted.

The incident took place at Tiffany Hall Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Port St. Lucie, Florida, just after midnight on Saturday night

Port St. Lucie Police Department said in a statement on Facebook: 'Port St. Lucie Detectives investigating a Murder at Tiffany Hall Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.

'On January 5, 2020, at 12:11am, police went to 1800 SE Hillmoor Drive (Tiffany Hall) for reports of a ninety-five-year-old male patient being hurt by an unknown male suspect.

'Police learned a nurse walked past the male patients room when she noticed an unknown male suspect sitting on top of the patients chest, holding a pillow over his face. The nurse immediately called for help as she yelled for another nurse to call 9-1-1.

'The unknown male suspect immediately took off running and fled the facility as police were called to the scene.

'Police set up a perimeter and searched the area with the K-9 unit. In addition, St Lucie County Sheriffs Office assisted with their aviation unit, however the unknown male was not located. Police were informed the male suspect is a white male.

A nurse spotted the unknown attacker as she walked past the resident's room and called for another nurse to ring 911

'Port St. Lucie Detectives are in the early stages of the investigation; therefore, no additional information will be released at this time, including the identity of the deceased male victim.

'The Port St. Lucie Police are asking if anyone has any information related to this crime to immediately call the Port St. Lucie Police Department at 772.871.5001 or Treasure Coast Crime Stoppers at 1-800-273 TIPS.'

Police have not yet released any further description of the male suspect or the victim's name.

There is no information on how the man managed to enter the property, which is locked to visitors outside of working hours, 8am to 8pm.

Resident, Dale Norman told CBS12 News: 'There was literally police every stop sign and there was a helicopter up for probably a good hour.'
Get this newsletter in your inbox Monday-Friday by signing up at subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters.

Top stories for Monday, Jan. 6

SOBERING SERVICE CLOSED: A Portland nonprofit has closed the facility where intoxicated people were long brought to sober up and ended its roving van service that transported people there. There's no plan to replace them.

BIG NUMBERS: A former Portland detective racked up nearly 100,000 miles on his take-home police car in three years by taking it on personal trips. A review board unanimously recommended he be fired, but then-Police Chief Danielle Outlaw opted to demote him.

PAY-TO-PADDLE: Planning to do some kayaking or stand-up paddle boarding in Oregon this year? Youll have to pay a little more for the pleasure.

HATE CRIME ALLEGED: A Portland woman is accused of grabbing a hijab off of a woman and desecrating it while mocking Muslims.

INEQUALITY WIDENS: Oregon is enjoying a long economic expansion thats unmatched in the states history, a closer look reveals a wide gap between the states richest residents and everyone else.

EDITORIAL: The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial board bids farewell to Portland Commissioner Nick Fish, who died before Portland had much of a chance to show its appreciation for his service.

NOTE TO READERS: Weve decided to eliminate comments on OregonLive, as have many other news sites over the past decade. This change will occur at 6 a.m. on Jan. 2.

Year in snaps

Mark Graves/Staff

Mark Graves, a photographer for The Oregonian/OregonLive, looked back at his most memorable shots from a year of spot news coverage. (Mark Graves/Staff)

More news

Families face off during Portland mans unusual murder arraignment

Bernie Sanders Oregon connection helps him lead 2020 presidential field in money race

House Education Chair Margaret Doherty to retire from Legislature

Chuck Palahniuk plans Portland book signing for his new memoir-slash-writing workshop

Dont abbreviate 2020 on checks and documents. It could leave you in the lurch.

Screen Door will open a downtown Portland location this year; airport to follow

Will 2020 be good for Portland? A local psychic offers her predictions

Find more at oregonlive.com

Weather and traffic

Periods of rain. High 49, low 48.

Get the latest forecast at oregonlive.com/weather

Freeway sign installation has closed the Interstate 5 southbound ramp to North Alberta/Swan Island. It will reopen Sunday, Jan. 12.

Stay up to date on traffic conditions at oregonlive.com/commuting

Advice

Ask Amy: Adult child weary of mothers constant guilt trips

Dear Abby: Brides choice of groomsman brings back haunting memories

Dear Annie: How much do parents owe adult children?

Find more, including todays horoscope, at oregonlive.com

Today's comics

Click here to see today's comics

Today's obituaries

Click here to find area deaths reported recently

Today in history

In 1941: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, outlined a goal of Four Freedoms: Freedom of speech and expression; the freedom of people to worship God in their own way; freedom from want; freedom from fear.

In 1412: Tradition holds that Joan of Arc was born this day in Domremy.

In 1885: Workers free a snowbound Pacific Express passenger train after 21 days stuck between The Dalles and Portland. No one died, but the incident nonetheless gave a nearby stream its modern name: Starvation Creek.
Ferozepur Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president Sunil Jakhar has criticised the Modi government at the Centre for playing politics on the sensitive issues of Nankana Sahib and Peshawar incidents and advocated the use of diplomatic channels to resolve these issues.

Talking to reporters in Panjkosi, his native village in Fazilka district, Jakhar added, Why has the Prime Minister not uttered a single word on these extremely sensitive issues? Akali leaders who questioned the silence of former minister Navjot Singh Sidhu on the Nankana Sahib incident did not object to the silence of the PM, the external affairs minister and even the home minister. I dare the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee to protest outside the houses of the PM and the home minister to awaken them on the recent violence in Pakistan on minorities.

Condemning the murderous attack on students at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jakhar added that the BJP government, which had failed to provide jobs to the youth as per its election manifesto was trying to crush their voice by manipulating violence. They want to push us back to the stone age. Modi and Shah are crossing their limits in giving us dictatorial policies, Jakhar added.

On the resignation of former finance minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa as the leader of the SAD legislative party, Jakhar said, This marks the beginning of the end of the SAD.
Through the German magazine Spiegel, Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs Miltiadis Varvitsiotis sent a loud message that Europe must not appear to fear Erdogans migration-related threats.



In his statements in the latest issue of Der Spiegel, which includes a special report on the migration crisis and the EU-Turkey agreement on refugees, Mr. Varvitsiotis reacted to the Turkish presidents recent threats that he would flood Europe with migrants, highlighting that Turkey is converting the migration issue into a foreign policy tool and using migrants as leverage.



The Greek Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs also sent a message to the European partners that Europe must not appear to fear Erdogan's threats at all.
The concealed carry license holder opened fire on Dec. 30 when two men tried to steal a vehicle from the 4800 block of North Moody Avenue in Jefferson Park, Chicago police said. The men were trying to steal a vehicle belonging to a 25-year-old woman when a friend of hers, a 26-year-old man with a concealed carry license, saw one of the two men appear to reach into his waistband.








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Here at The Canadian Business Daily we like to give credit where it's due.



That's why our "award" for having Canada's most racist police goes to Gatineau.



If you're black or from some other disenfranchised group, and particularly when it's late at night, expect that if you see the Gatineau police while driving or on foot you will be stopped for some as-hole reason.



Just ask Officer Bergeron, badge number 5708.



A black male was driving in Gatineau and making a right-hand turn late at night on Boulevard Maloney when he spotted one of these fine officers turning onto the street.



Naturally, this officer from Canada's most racist police force did what any self-respecting representative of such a racist organization would do.



Seeing the black male, Officer Bergeron made a U-turn to follow this black male for about five minutes.



When the black male asked why he was stopped, Officer Bergeron replied that it was because he saw that he was driving a "rented car."



The black male driver responded that "driving a rented car" in no way constitutes a criminal offence or grounds for a police officer to stop anyone.



Officer Bergeron responded that he, as a representative of the Gatineau Police Department, could basically stop him for any reason he dreamed up, including the fact that the male was driving a rented vehicle.



It became quickly apparent to the black male that he was being subjected to racial profiling and the practice of "carding," in which black males and other disenfranchised populations are stopped simply so that the police can check their driver's license because, of course, black males obviously must be criminals on the loose, out on bail, or wanted by the police.



Unfortunately, the list of racist behaviours by the Gatineau Police, which include illegal detentions and beatings of disenfranchised civilians, are all too commonplace. The police force has accumulated a long rap sheet of harassment.



This includes the black male that two Gatineau police officers stopped because he was walking across the grass of a commercial establishment.



The black male, versed in law, responded that walking across the grass was not a violation of the Canadian Criminal Code, and asked what the problem was. They said, "Nothing," and left because they were expecting one of the less-educated "local Negroes" not as educated about their rights.



One black male was actually ticketed by two racist Gatineau police officers for "not walking on the sidewalk" of a Gatineau residential neighbourhood.



And what about the black male who was rushing back to the restaurant he came from to use the washroom? This black male was cross-questioned for 15 minutes for "walking funny." Later that same night, two other Gatineau police officers, after 11 p.m. in a very quiet residential area, stopped the same black male because in their view he didn't cross exactly at the intersection.



How about the Gatineau police officers who stopped a black male because they didn't like the sound of his car?



And tell me, in what other part of Canada would you find such as-hole behaviour by the police? Only in Gatineau, mon ami(e).



Gatineau's police force is not much better than the racists who stalked black people during the 1950s in parts of the American South, which include Georgia or Alabama.




tsinghua.edu.cn| 2020-01-06 21:49:38|Editor: Xiang Bo

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On January 6th, Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a letter in reply to the student representatives of the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate (GAUC), expressing his appreciation for their common concern for the planet and future of mankind. The message is as follows:

6 January 2020

Student Representatives of the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate,

I am glad to receive your letter. I greatly appreciate the fact that although you are from different countries, you share a common concern on climate change, an issue that bears on the future of mankind.

Over four decades ago, I lived and worked for many years in a small village on the Loess Plateau in western China. Back then, the ecology and environment there was seriously damaged due to over-development and the local people were trapped in poverty as a result. This experience taught me that man and nature are a community of life and that the damage done to nature will ultimately hurt mankind. I have since put forward the concept that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets in themselves. My goal is for China to build an ecological civilization as part of our international responsibility to tackle climate change, and at the same time to work with the rest of the world to protect the Earth, the common home of us all.

I look forward to your active efforts in this field as doctoral students from world-renowned universities. I also welcome your continued interest in China's development and more good suggestions from you.

Xi Jinping

President

The People's Republic of China

(Source: tsinghua.edu.cn)
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei openly weeps as he leads a prayer over the coffin of General Qassem Soleimani (Iran Press TV via AP)

In a rare display of emotion from the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cried openly at the funeral of General Qassem Soleimani, his most important military commander with whom he shared a deep bond.

Oh Allah, they are in need of your mercy, and you are exalted above punishing your servants, Ayatollah Khamenei said during a mass prayer as he stood over a flag-draped coffin with the remains of Gen Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq on Friday.

Ayatollah Khameneis voice cracked under the weight of the moment during a funeral procession unlike any in Irans recent history.

Police said attendees numbered into the millions.

Expand Close Mourners attend a funeral ceremony for Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and his comrades in Tehran (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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The funeral showcased the depth of the bond Ayatollah Khamenei had with the general and gave insight into how Gen Soleimanis death is being felt personally by the supreme leader.

It could also impact how Ayatollah Khamenei responds to the United States.

The US killed Gen Soleimani, other Revolutionary Guard members and a senior Iraqi militia leader in a stunning attack on their convoy, shortly after Gen Soleimani had arrived at Baghdads international airport.

The killing, ordered by President Donald Trump, has dramatically heightened the risk of war as senior Iranian figures vow to strike US military targets in response.

To many across the Middle East, Gen Soleimani was a dangerous figure whose armed militias killed thousands of Sunni Muslims in Syria and threatened regional security.

To the US, he was the man responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq and countless attacks on Iraqis fighting alongside American forces.

Expand Close Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei leads a prayer over the coffins of General Qassem Soleimani and his comrades (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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In Iran, Gen Soleimani was a lionised figure who embodied Irans lethal reach in the face of crushing US pressure.

He was a powerful commander in charge of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, overseeing Irans proxy militias abroad, ranging from Hezbollah in Lebanon to armed factions in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

In Iraq, that meant directing the countrys mostly Shiite paramilitaries, including in the fight alongside the US against Sunni extremists such as so-called Islamic State.

To Irans supreme leader, Gen Soleimani was a loyal aide who conferred with him often and cemented Tehrans footprint far beyond the countrys borders, helping to preserve and advance the principles of the 1979 revolution that brought Irans Shiite leadership to power.

Their relationship was so close that Ayatollah Khamenei was photographed more than once embracing Gen Soleimani in ways that are customary in Iran for fathers and their beloved sons.

In one such photograph from 2018, Ayatollah Khamenei, seated on an elevated platform, leans down and kisses Gen Soleimanis forehead.

Expand Close Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei kisses the head of Gen Soleimani during a religious ceremony in Tehran in 2018 (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei kisses the head of Gen Soleimani during a religious ceremony in Tehran in 2018 (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

In another image from 2017, Ayatollah Khamenei is seen kissing Gen Soleimanis cheek during Ashoura, a religious day of mourning among Shiites.

Unlike other military commanders in the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the 62-year-old general answered only to 80-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei.

So revered was he by Ayatollah Khamenei, that the supreme leader awarded the general Irans highest military order in March.

Irans Tasnim News Agency reported that Gen Soleimani is the only Iranian military official to receive the Order of Zulfaqar since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

When pinning the medal on Gen Soleimani, the Iranian leader said he hoped God would reward the general and help him live a blissful life that ends with martyrdom.

Of course not any time soon, Ayatollah Khamenei said, adding the Islamic Republic needs him for years to come.

To Gen Soleimani, Ayatollah Khamenei was a venerated spiritual figure whom he referred to as his dear and honourable leader.

Expand Close Mourners attend a funeral ceremony for Qassem Soleimani and his comrades in Tehran (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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In 2015, Gen Soleimani was quoted saying: I ask God to sacrifice my life for you.

So close were they that Iranian media is describing the killed general as Ayatollah Khameneis own Malik al-Ashtar, a reference to the most loyal companions of the first Shiite leader, Imam Ali.

And in death, Gen Soleimani has received what no man before him has in modern Iran.

His funeral processions have been spread over several days and cities, marking the first time Iran has ever honoured a single man with a multi-city ceremony.

Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such a processional with his death in 1989.

Ayatollah Khamenei vowed that the Quds Forces strategy would be unchanged and he quickly named a successor to Gen Soleimani, but the generals standing and relationship with Ayatollah Khamenei is not as easy to replace.

Expand Close Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had a deep bond with Gen Qassem Soleimani (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had a deep bond with Gen Qassem Soleimani (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

That is in part because their relationship extended beyond the war room.

Gen Soleimani was also close with Ayatollah Khameneis children and had been photographed kissing one of the sons on the forehead.

In a deeply personal and symbolically weighty gesture, Irans supreme leader made a rare visit to Gen Soleimanis home the day he was killed to offer condolences to his grieving widow and grown children.

Rather than calling him by his last name as is customary, Ayatollah Khamenei referred to him as Hajj Qassem  another indication of how close the two were.

That same day, Ayatollah Khamenei declared three days of mourning across the country and vowed harsh retaliation.

The loss of Gen Soleimani is bitter, Ayatollah Khamenei said in statements carried on Twitter and in Iranian media on Monday.
Iraq lodges complaint to UN chief, UNSC over US assassination of Lt. Gen. Soleimani, Muhandis

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 05 January 2020 5:45 PM

Iraq says it has lodged a formal complaint to the UN chief and the UN Security Council (UNSC) over the US assassination of Iran's top military commander, Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

The Iraqi foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday that it had submitted two letters of complaint to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the UNSC, asking the world body to condemn the assassination of General Soleimani and Muhandis in a US drone strike near Baghdad International Airport in the early hours of Friday.

According to the statement, the complaint is about "American attacks and aggression on Iraqi military positions and the assassination of Iraqi and allied high-level military commanders on Iraqi soil."

The assassination was "a dangerous breach of Iraqi sovereignty and of the terms of US presence in Iraq," the ministry added.

Four other Iranians as well as four Iraqis accompanying them were also martyred in the US strike.

The Pentagon said in a statement on Friday that American President Donald Trump had personally ordered the US military to assassinate the top Iranian commander.

Following Soleimani's assassination, Ayatollah Khamenei said those who assassinated the IRGC Quds Force commander must await a harsh revenge, noting that the "cruelest people on earth" assassinated the "honorable" commander who "courageously fought for years against the evils and bandits of the world."

Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) has also said that a harsh vengeance "in due time and right place" awaited the criminals behind Soleimani's assassination.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Iraq's Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi, along with the Arab country's president, Barham Salih, have already denounced the deadly airstrike as a flagrant breach of Iraq's sovereignty and a sheer violation of international agreements.

Separately on Sunday, Iraqi lawmakers unanimously approved a bill, demanding the withdrawal of all US-led foreign military forces from the Arab country.

The legislators, citing Articles 59 and 109 of the Constitution and in line with their national and regulatory responsibilities as representatives to safeguard the security and sovereignty of Iraq, used an extraordinary parliamentary session to vote on the four-point resolution requiring the government to press Washington and its allies to withdraw their troops from Iraq.

Later on Sunday, Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said the parliamentary resolution to end the presence of foreign troops in the country did not go far enough, calling on local and foreign militia groups to unite, stressing that an ongoing security agreement with Washington should be cancelled immediately.

The prominent cleric also called for the immediate closure of the US embassy in Iraq and the expulsion of the American troops in a humiliating manner.

Sadr also said that communication with the US government should be criminalized.

The US, backed by Britain, invaded Iraq in 2003 claiming that the former regime of Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons, however, were ever found.

The invaders withdrew from Iraq, after nearly nine years of a military campaign that cost tens of thousands of Iraqi lives.

A US-led military coalition, however, returned to the Arab country in 2014, when the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group unleashed a campaign of destruction there.

Widespread reports said the Washington-led operations largely spared the terrorists and led, instead, to civilian deaths and inflicted damage on the Iraqi infrastructure.

Iraq's army troops, backed by volunteer PMU forces, managed to liberate all Daesh-held areas, thanks in part to effective military advisory assistance from neighboring Iran.

Baghdad declared the end of the anti-Daesh campaign back in 2017.

Lieutenant General Soleimani was an international figure who played a leading role in promoting security in regional countries, particularly in Iraq and Syria. Both commanders were admired by Muslim nations for eliminating the US-sponsored Daesh terrorist group in the region.

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Eason is buzzing to launch its 10th annual Eason Spelling Bee, as the nationwide search begins to find Irelands champion student speller.

Primary schools across the country have until Sunday, January 12 2020 to register for this years competition to be in with a chance of winning the coveted title of Eason Spelling Bee Champion 2020.

The Eason Spelling Bee provides the opportunity for students across Ireland to get off their devices, improve their spelling skills, make new friends and develop their vocabulary.

This year, over 800 schools around Ireland have already registered to take part, and schools yet to register must do so by Sunday, January 12 of 2020.

Eason are partnering with Today FM for a fifth year and, in early summer, presenter Alison Curtis will host the Provincial and All-Ireland Spelling Bees.

Marketing Manager at Eason, Elizabeth Blake said: "Eason is delighted to announce the 10th Eason Spelling Bee.

"Each year, the amazing children who participate showcase an impressive level of spelling skill and its wonderful to see how much they enjoy it. We hope the 10th year of the Bee will be the biggest and best yet."

To participate in the Eason Spelling Bee and be in with a chance to win a library of books, registered schools must host their own in-school Bee among 5th & 6th class students to find their School Spelling Champion.

From there, the Eason Spelling Bee team will travel around the country to host County Final Bees, culminating in four Provincial Bees.

The champions from these will then go head to head in the 10th annual All-Ireland Final Bee in June, where the lucky winner will be crowned King or Queen Bee.

Along with the prestigious title of the 10th Eason Spelling Bee Champion, the winning speller will also take home a collection of books for their school library, worth 7,500 as well as a personal collection of books worth 500.

To register for the Eason Spelling Bee 2020, please visit www.easons.com/spellingbee before January 12 of 2020. Follow #EasonSpellingBee or visit www.easons.com/spellingbee to keep a-buzz with all the action from this years Bee.
Last month, a group of dissident Republicans, George T. Conway III, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson offered a scathing rebuke of Donald Trump in a New York Times op-ed for "the damage he and his followers are doing to the rule of law, the Constitution and the American character." They broadcast their goal of "defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box" by "persuading enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents" to vote against Trump in 2020. Forming the Lincoln Project as a coordinating body, they cited Abraham Lincoln as the inspiration for their mission to defeat "so polarizing a character as Trump" and "allow the country to heal its political and psychological wounds and allow for a new, better path forward."

The Lincoln Project's founders are not the first to invoke the 16th president to justify the righteousness of a political cause. Since the Civil War's conclusion in 1865, Republicans have portrayed Lincoln as the patron saint of Republicanism to whom all in their party must remain true. But, while a romanticized image of Lincoln has been paramount within the party, Republicans have been less willing to recognize the key values that made Lincoln such a transformative president. Only by incorporating the ideas of national unity, tolerance and constitutional responsibility could the GOP actually become the party of Lincoln it claims to be.

At no time was the fracture between celebrating the idea of Lincoln while rejecting what he stood for more evident than during the 1960s. In 1964, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., sought the party's nomination by making antagonism toward civil rights legislation central to his platform. Goldwater's vote against the Civil Rights Act - one of only six Republican senators to oppose the bill - solidified his position as the chosen candidate of racial conservatives.

Many progressive Republicans saw Goldwater's opposition to racial equality and courting of segregationists as tarnishing the party's heritage. Just as contemporary anti-Trump Republicans use Lincolnesque memory to denounce Trump, progressive Republicans in 1964 leaned heavily on historical allusions to combat Goldwater.

The Ripon Society's "Declaration of Conscience," of July 4, 1964, outlined these concerns. Formed in 1962, the Ripon Society - named after the Wisconsin town where the GOP was reportedly founded - was a liberal Republican group, mainly based at universities in the Northeast.

On Independence Day, Riponers journeyed to Ripon and issued their declaration. "The Republican Party faces its greatest internal crisis since its founding," they declared, condemning Goldwater's vote against the Civil Rights Act. "It must choose . . . whether it will embrace a candidate who has by his action in Congress and silence in the face of national crisis disqualified himself to be the leader of the party of Lincoln." Ripon members proposed that pro-civil rights Republicans were the true "heirs of Lincoln - unwilling to surrender our Republican inheritance to him - unable to escape the implications of his legacy." Pennsylvania Gov. William Scranton, who unsuccessfully challenged Goldwater for the nomination, agreed: "The most important single Republican principle since Abraham Lincoln is equal rights for all. Sen. Goldwater's vote indicates clearly he is not with the Republicans."

Goldwater's supporters countered these arguments by recalling a different version of Lincoln. Conservative theorist Russell Kirk accused those labeling Goldwater as "being false to the principles of Abraham Lincoln" and employing "bad history." Kirk saw Goldwater as the apt legatee of both Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, thanks to his willingness to stand against "baneful 'civil rights' measures" and refusing to bow to "pressure groups." Others argued that by refusing to support civil rights legislation, Goldwater actually followed in Lincoln's footsteps: "Lincoln was for the separation of our two most predominant races," wrote one Goldwaterite from Tennessee, "If he were living today he would be appalled by the 'compulsory' integration law."

As the party nominated Goldwater and moved to the right on racial issues, many of its longtime voters - notably moderate Republicans and African Americans - who had embraced Lincoln's emancipationist legacy, turned to the Democratic Party. But memories of Lincoln persisted, and in fact, invoking the "Great Emancipator" became a cover for conservative racial politics. Richard Nixon notably relied on Lincoln to support his racially coded "law and order" platform. He argued that Lincoln would oppose "redress by mob law" due to his belief that "No one is above the law. No one is below the law."

Trump has also tried to present himself in the mold of Lincoln to refute charges of racism. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he reworked the Gettysburg Address, declaring that if he was elected, "we will once more have a government of, by and for the people." In November 2018, Trump informed a crowd in Tupelo, Mississippi, "African American unemployment [and] . . . the African American poverty rate has reached the lowest level ever recorded. This is under Republicans folks. Please remember the home of Abraham Lincoln."

Today, the Lincoln Project is once again trying to reclaim the Lincoln legacy, and it is willing to go outside the party to do so, if necessary, by encouraging the election of "Democrats who support the Constitution over Republicans who do not."

But perhaps rather than paying homage to Lincoln the man, the real solution to the deep divides facing America rests in examining the ideas he put forth about unity and, eventually, equality. Though he may have begun his presidency as a racial conservative, resisting putting abolition at the heart of the Union war effort and flirting with support for colonization, Lincoln gradually embraced more progressive ideas on race. Alongside the Emancipation Proclamation and his support for the 13th Amendment, Lincoln also spoke of limited black suffrage in his final public address on April 11, 1865. Lincoln grasped that slavery was fundamental to the discord wracking the United States. He understood that only by reckoning with racism was any future possible for the nation. Turning to Lincoln, and appreciating his great capacity for growth, would be a worthwhile exercise for those hoping to unite a divided America in the present day.

- - -

Tim Galsworthy is a history PhD candidate at the University of Sussex investigating American Civil War memory and the Republican Party in the civil rights era.
In 2014 Robert MacLeod was appointed CEO of Johnson Matthey Plc (LON:JMAT). First, this article will compare CEO compensation with compensation at similar sized companies. Next, we'll consider growth that the business demonstrates. Third, we'll reflect on the total return to shareholders over three years, as a second measure of business performance. This method should give us information to assess how appropriately the company pays the CEO.

View our latest analysis for Johnson Matthey

How Does Robert MacLeod's Compensation Compare With Similar Sized Companies?

According to our data, Johnson Matthey Plc has a market capitalization of UK5.7b, and paid its CEO total annual compensation worth UK2.8m over the year to March 2019. We think total compensation is more important but we note that the CEO salary is lower, at UK818k. We further remind readers that the CEO may face performance requirements to receive the non-salary part of the total compensation. We examined companies with market caps from UK3.1b to UK9.2b, and discovered that the median CEO total compensation of that group was UK2.6m.

That means Robert MacLeod receives fairly typical remuneration for the CEO of a company that size. While this data point isn't particularly informative alone, it gains more meaning when considered with business performance.

You can see, below, how CEO compensation at Johnson Matthey has changed over time.

LSE:JMAT CEO Compensation, January 6th 2020

Is Johnson Matthey Plc Growing?

Johnson Matthey Plc has increased its earnings per share (EPS) by an average of 9.1% a year, over the last three years (using a line of best fit). Its revenue is up 44% over last year.

It's hard to interpret the strong revenue growth as anything other than a positive. With that in mind, the modestly improving EPS seems positive. I'd stop short of saying the business performance is amazing, but there are enough positives to justify further research, or even adding the stock to your watch-list. It could be important to check this free visual depiction of what analysts expect for the future.

Story continues

Has Johnson Matthey Plc Been A Good Investment?

With a total shareholder return of 2.3% over three years, Johnson Matthey Plc has done okay by shareholders. But they would probably prefer not to see CEO compensation far in excess of the median.

In Summary...

Robert MacLeod is paid around what is normal the leaders of comparable size companies.

We see room for improved growth, as well as fairly unremarkable returns over the last three years. While the CEO may not be underpaid, we don't think the pay is too generous either. If you think CEO compensation levels are interesting you will probably really like this free visualization of insider trading at Johnson Matthey.

Arguably, business quality is much more important than CEO compensation levels. So check out this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick always wanted to follow in his big brothers footsteps.

When former Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, a Republican, opted against a run for re-election, Brian Fitzpatrick ran for the seat representing Bucks County in the Philadelphia suburbs. He won the seat in 2017. But his older brother remained a well-respected figure following his years of service in Congress and as a Bucks County commissioner.

Mike Fitzpatrick died at the age of 56 after a battle with cancer, his family said Monday. And his younger brother said Monday, My heart is broken.

In a poignant statement shared on social media, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick described his brother as my hero and my best friend.

Brian Fitzpatrick, 46, is 10 years younger than the former congressman. He said from the time he was young, he wanted to be like his older brother.

He was the greatest brother and the greatest public servant our community has ever known, Brian Fitzpatrick said in his statement.

Mike Fitzpatrick earned a reputation as a bipartisan lawmaker willing to work with Democrats in Congress. After his passing, U.S. Sens. Bob Casey Jr. and Pat Toomey, both hailed his public service.

Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick served our commonwealth and country with great integrity, competence, and dignity. During his time as a Bucks County Commissioner, and then as a member of Congress, Mike proved time and again that it is possible to work across the aisle...  Senator Pat Toomey (@SenToomey) January 6, 2020

In 2008, not long after he lost his seat in the House after just one term, Mike Fitzpatrick was diagnosed with colon cancer. He battled it, recovered and won re-election in November 2010. He held the seat until 2017, when he opted not to seek re-election.

The family announced Monday that Mike Fitzpatrick died following a battle with melanoma.

His twelve-year courageous battle with cancer has taught our entire family his values of perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds, Brian Fitzpatrick wrote in his statement. Mike has forever touched the lives of so many in our community.

Now, Brian Fitzpatrick wrote, his older brother has gone from my hero to my guardian angel.

More: Gov. Wolf orders flags lowered to half-staff for former Pa. congressman

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Joe Lieberman, in happier times, with Dick Cheney. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

President Trumps sudden, massive escalation of the military conflict with Iran has freaked out large segments of the national-security Establishment. But one person who is not worried at all is Joe Lieberman, once the Democrats vice-presidential candidate, currently a lobbyist for a Chinese telecommunications firm, and, as always, deeply concerned that his party is failing to line up behind the right wing of the Republican Party on a high-risk foreign-policy venture.

Liebermans argument, laid out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed today, will only come as a surprise to those laboring under the impression that his thoughtful manner implies actual thought. He begins by fretting that the parties disagree on Trumps Iran strategy. Its understandable that the political class should have questions about it, he concedes, But it isnt understandable that all the questions are being raised by Democrats and all the praise is coming from Republicans.

In fact, its hardly true that all the questions about Trumps policy are coming from Democrats  many members of Trumps own administration have registered their intense dismay in the media at his policy, which has likely only gone through because Republican officials like James Mattis are no longer around to block it. Even if it was true, though, Lieberman doesnt hold both parties equally responsible for disagreeing with each other. Instead, he proceeds immediately to blaming Democrats for failing to agree with Republicans:

After World War II, Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, a Michigan Republican who was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, formed a bipartisan partnership with President Truman that helped secure the postwar peace and greatly strengthened Americas position in the Cold War. Politics stops at the waters edge, said Vandenberg when asked why he worked so closely with a Democratic president. He added that his fellow Americans undoubtedly had earnest, honest, even vehement differences of opinion on foreign policy, but if we can keep partisan politics out of foreign affairs, it is entirely obvious that we shall speak with infinitely greater authority abroad.

In their uniformly skeptical or negative reactions to Soleimanis death, Democrats are falling well below Vandenbergs standard and, I fear, creating the risk that the U.S. will be seen as acting and speaking with less authority abroad at this important time.

Ah, so the Vandenberg standard is that Congress has to support the presidents foreign policy. Oddly, however, the Vandenberg standard fails to apply to Democratic presidents. Indeed, the last time we had a Democratic president, Republicans undermined his diplomatic strategy with Iran to the point of sending the Iranians a letter warning that they would refuse to uphold the agreement their president had made. This sabotage campaign did not concern Lieberman, who at the time was too busy forming a group lobbying against Obamas diplomacy to notice that the sacred Vandenberg standard was being broached.

After bemoaning Democrats for their partisanship, he takes on the concern raised by Trumps critics that killing Qasem Soleimani will provoke a violent response. (Lieberman does not bother to list other downsides of the killing, such as undermining Irans domestic opposition, infuriating Iraqs government, freezing the campaign against ISIS, and alienating NATO allies, all of which have happened already.) Lieberman responds that we cant worry our pretty little heads about what Iranians, or any foreign country, will do in response to something like killing their second-most-powerful person: If we allow fear of a self-declared enemy like Iran to dictate our actions, we will only encourage them to come after us and our allies more aggressively. Lieberman insists the killing will instead diminish the chances of a wider conflict by giving the Iranians much to fear.

Will the Iranians decide to cooperate with Trump rather than carry out the revenge they are loudly vowing to undertake? Conceivably. But Liebermans track record of predicting the course of this relationship is not encouraging. He has previously insisted, in 2018, that tearing up the Iran nuclear deal will make Iran come back to the table and negotiate a total denuclearization, and again, last year, that history has shown that the best peaceful way to force a malevolent Tehran to change its behavior is to hit their bottom line.

Somehow, Iran is acting in a way contrary to all the lessons Lieberman has drawn from history. Rather than backing down, it is lashing out. But Lieberman is confident that this latest escalation will do the trick.

Lieberman concludes his argument in a blaze of insinuation. In this incredible sequence of sentences, Lieberman floats the charge that Democrats really just hate using force against any bad guy anywhere. (He does not note that this charge is belied by events as recent as Democratic support for the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.) He then takes care to say he personally does not believe this, but that people are saying it anyway:

It is possible that anti-Trump partisanship isnt behind Democrats reluctance to say theyre glad Soleimani is dead. It may be that todays Democratic Party simply doesnt believe in the use of force against Americas enemies in the world. I dont believe that is true, but episodes like this one may lead many Americans to wonder whether it is.

Is it possible Joe Lieberman is being paid by his Chinese clients to support every Trump foreign-policy maneuver, however reckless, because China wishes to undermine American power? I dont believe this is true, but episodes like this Lieberman op-ed will lead many Americans to wonder if it is.
[January 06, 2020] Reshift Security Inc. Closes Initial $275K Financing

Security software start-up receives funding from Software Secured Inc. and Business Development Bank of Canada to support the market introduction of its first SaaS product. OTTAWA, Jan. 6, 2020 /CNW/ - Reshift Security Inc., a Software as a Service (SaaS) start-up that helps software development teams find and fix code vulnerabilities faster and earlier in the software development cycle, announced today that it has closed its first round of financing in the amount of $275,000 from Software Secured Inc. and the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC). Reshift offers a developer-centric solution that integrates into modern software development tools, processes and workflows, identifies code vulnerabilities as the software is being created, and offers immediate corrective steps to the developer. Reshift uses machine learning algorithms to adapt to the development organization's code base and steadily reduces the rate of false positive distractions. The prevailing software security model used by larger software development organiations today relies on an after-the-fact audit approach to detecting vulnerabilities which are then flagged back to the development team for correction. This traditional approach is slow and inefficient and is breaking down as today's cycle of code creation, testing and publishing becomes shorter and shorter  to weekly, daily and even continuous production updates.



The declining effectiveness of the traditional software security model coupled with the increasing business imperative to reduce an organization's exposure to the cost, time and brand damage from vulnerabilities exploited by hackers, are creating a significant market opportunity for Reshift's developer-centric security approach. In September 2019, Reshift was selected by a panel of investors for inclusion in the L-Spark SaaS Accelerator 2019-2020 cohort of promising companies.

Participating funder Software Secured Inc. is an Ottawa-based software security company that provides Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) solutions to a wide range of software development companies globally. Business Development Bank of Canada is Canada's pre-eminent financial institution devoted exclusively to assisting Canadian businesses with financing, advisory services and capital. Reshift CEO, Sherif Koussa, highlighted the importance of the funding to the next stage of the company's development saying, "So far, we have been successful in bootstrapping Reshift's early platform development from personal sources. This $275K of funding will allow us to increase market understanding of the imperative to embrace developer-centric software security, along with awareness of the Reshift solution." For more information, please visit https://reshiftsecurity.com SOURCE reshift security inc.

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BEIRUTU.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Monday that the United States has not made any decision to leave Iraq, shortly after the U.S. military said in a letter to Iraqi officials that U.S. forces would be relocating to prepare for onward movement.

On Sunday, Iraqi lawmakers passed a nonbinding resolution calling for foreign troops to withdraw.

In the letter, released Monday, Marine Corps Brig. Gen. William Seely said that U.S. forces respect your sovereign decision to order our departure. A U.S. military official confirmed the letters authenticity.

But in a day of confusion, Esper said at the Pentagon that he could not confirm the authenticity of the letter because he had seen it only after it had been leaked. He said the letter is inconsistent with where we are right now.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the letter was a draft, it was a mistake, it was unsigned, it should not have been released.

Part of the letter was poorly worded, implies withdrawal, Milley said. That is not whats happening.

Asked whether the U.S. military was prepared to strike Iranian cultural sites, as U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested, Esper said the military would follow the laws of armed conflict. Asked whether that means no, because international law prohibits targeting such sites during war, Esper said: Thats the laws of armed conflict.

Esper said the United States remains prepared for any contingency with regard to Iran, and that the message to Tehran is that the ball remains in their court.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Defense Department has ordered an amphibious force of about 4,500 sailors and Marines to prepare to support Middle East operations, a defence official said Monday. The order was disclosed as huge throngs of Iranians mourned Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who led the elite Quds force, at his funeral Monday in Tehran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Irans supreme leader, wept as he prayed over the generals coffin, while he and other Iranian leaders vowed revenge.

Caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi told U.S. Ambassador Matthew Tueller that the United States and Iraq needed to co-operate to implement the withdrawal of foreign forces in accordance with the decision of the Iraqi parliament, according to a statement from the prime ministers office.

U.S. senators are expected to be briefed by top U.S. officials Wednesday on the U.S. drone strike that killed top the Iranian commander Soleimani last week, according to three people familiar with the plans.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley and CIA director Gina Haspel are expected to brief the lawmakers. House members are also expected to attend a separate briefing session, people familiar with the matter said.

The streets of Irans capital Tehran flooded with millions clad in black on Monday.

Have you EVER seen such a sea of humanity in your life, @realdonaldtrump? Irans Foreign Minister Javad Zarif wrote on Twitter. And do you still imagine you can break the will of this great nation & its people?

Khamenei tweeted in the afternoon bidding farewell to the pure body of the Iranian nations hero and the international figure of Resistance. You were assassinated by the most barbaric of mankind.

Since the killing of Soleimani, Irans leadership has repeatedly vowed to take revenge on U.S. military and political targets.

Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace division, also said Trump should order more coffins.

Soleimani was not seen as a hero only in Iran, but was also by Iranian-allied groups in the region  including in Yemen and Lebanon.

Yemens city of Saada, held by the Iran-allied Houthis, exploded with millions of mourners filling the streets and protesting the strike that killed him. Lebanons Hezbollah, a military group that also holds seats in parliament, held a funeral for Soleimani on Sunday.

Soleimanis body was to be carried to the holy city of Qom, where a ceremony will be held five hours late, delayed by the massive crowds in Tehran, Iranian state television said. His body will be buried in his hometown of Kerman.

On the diplomatic front, at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit Moscow Saturday with plans to discuss escalating tensions in the Middle East, the Kremlin announced.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is accompanying Merkel on the trip. Maas said Monday that Trump threatening Iraq with heavy sanctions if U.S. troops are forced to leave is not very helpful.

Russia has been even more critical of the U.S. airstrike that killed Soleimani. Its Foreign Ministry denounced the move as reckless on Friday though Putin himself has been publicly mum on the issue with the country still enjoying its New Years holidays.

He spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron by phone Friday evening, and the Kremlin announcement of the call said both sides expressed concern and that this attack could escalate tensions in the region.

Moscow has quietly benefited from Soleimanis death with oil prices spiking. Now Putin will weigh in on the state of the Middle East twice this week, when he meets with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul Wednesday and then with Merkel over the weekend.

In a joint statement on Monday, France, Germany and Britain appealed to Iran to stick with its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal and refrain from responding violently to a U.S. attack.

We specifically call on Iran to refrain from further violent action or proliferation, and urge Iran to reverse all measures inconsistent with JCPOA, the statement said, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal that Tehran struck with world powers.

On Sunday, Iran announced that, unless U.S. sanctions are lifted, the country would abandon the accords final restrictions on uranium enrichment.

The joint statement also stressed the need for de-escalation in the region.

China on Monday heavily criticized the U.S. killing Soleimani as a violation of international norms and said it would work with Russia to maintain international justice.

In a flurry of calls with his Russian, Iranian and French counterparts over the weekend, Beijings top diplomat Wang Yi criticized what he called a risk-taking U.S. military strike and urged a halt in the American abuse of force, according to statements released by Chinas Foreign Ministry.

Wang and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed during their phone call to strengthen joint strategic coordination to maintain international justice, the ministry said without giving details.

China, which has increasingly close military ties with Moscow, has long sought a neutral position in the Middle East, fostering friendly relations with Iran, Israel and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.

At a regular press briefing, ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China would uphold an objective and just position in Middle East politics but lambasted the Trump administrations withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and Americas ignorance of international obligations and international law as the root cause of the tension.

When asked by reporters, Geng declined to say whether China would increase its security presence in the region.

We urge the U.S. not to abuse force and the relevant parties to exercise restraint to prevent a spiraling of tensions, he said.

European Union foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting on Friday in Brussels to discuss how to respond to the escalating crisis with Iran, diplomats said Monday, including whether Europe starts the process that could lead to the eventual re-imposition of sanctions on Iran.

The unusual gathering will give Europeans a chance to co-ordinate plans among all 28 member states. Leaders have been reluctant to publicly condemn the United States for Soleimanis killing, focusing most of their ire on Iran, which they view as the core threat to their security interests. But they have invested more than a year of efforts to try to preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear deal following Trumps pullout. Many European diplomats view Soleimanis death as the final blow to hopes that the accord could hold together until the possible election in November of a U.S. president more supportive of the nuclear agreement than Trump.

Iran on Sunday announced that it would take major additional steps to depart from the terms of the nuclear accord, although it stopped short of saying it would significantly increase its uranium enrichment. Europeans took that as a sign that Tehran is still interested in extracting concessions in exchange for returning to at least partial adherence to the deal, rather than walking away from it altogether.

If sanctions were re-imposed, that would likely mark the end of any effort by Iran to uphold the deal.

In Washington, D.C., Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said the House should hold open hearings on the escalating tensions.

I think there should be open hearings on this subject, Schiff told Greg Sargent, an opinions writer for The Washington Post. The president has put us on a path where we may be at war with Iran. That requires the Congress to fully engage.

Schiff also said he believes that Trumps threats against Iranian cultural heritage sites do not reflect any consultation between the White House and the Pentagon. None of that could come out of the Pentagon, Schiff said. Absolutely no way.

The United Nations top cultural body said Monday that the United States is a signatory to a 1972 treaty pledging not to attack cultural sites, two days after Trump tweeted that if Iran strikes Americans, or American assets, the United States would target 52 Iranian sites, including some that are important to Iranian culture.

Those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD, he wrote.

In a statement, UNESCO said that Audrey Azoulay, UNESCOs director general, met with Ahmad Jalali, Irans permanent representative to UNESCO, to discuss tensions in the Middle East with particular regard to heritage and culture.

In Washington, White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway offered contradicting responses to questions about Trumps tweets threatening Iranian cultural sites, telling reporters that he didnt say hes targeting cultural sites, according to a White House pool report. Conway also said that Trump is open to renegotiating the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran if Iran wants to start behaving like a normal country ... sure, absolutely.

 The Washington Posts Paul Sonne in Washington, Michael Birnbaum, Mustafa Salim, Dan Lamothe, Karoun Demirjian and Isabelle Khurshudyan in Moscow and Gerry Shih in Beijing contributed to this report.

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Cats are 'very godlike', which make them more likely to be owned by atheists than churchgoers as a substitute for religion, according to a new study.

People who worship more than once a week own 1.4 cats on average, compared to the non-religious who have an average of two, according to research by the University of Oklahoma.

Researcher Samuel Perry said that he carried out the study of more than 2,000 people because he felt that some of what people sought in religion was also what they sought in pets.

People who worshipped more than once a week own 1.4 cats on average compared an atheists who have two, University of Oklahoma study finds

'We own pets because we love their company and the special interaction they provide for us,' Professor Perry, whose study appears in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, told the Times.

'In some ways, pets are actually substitutes for human interaction.'

People heavily connected to their faith or church already have plenty of 'social interaction' which means they do not need a feline.

Pet (file image) owners feed their cats constant need for affection on their terms which makes the pets 'very godlike', according to Professor Perry, whose study appears in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

Cats are 'very godlike' and act as a substitute for people without this influence in their life.

Their constant need for affection on their terms infuriates owners who desperately try to win their love.

This means owners 'end up serving [cats] a lot' and makes the pets 'very godlike in those characteristics', according to the pet-free Christian.

The University (pictured) study of more than 2,000 people showed those connected to their faith or church already have plenty of 'social interaction' which means they do not need a pet feline

Writer Christopher Hitchens said if you feed a dog, they think you are God, while if you do the same to cats, they 'draw the conclusion they are gods'.

The atheist went on to say: 'Cats may sometimes share the cold entrails of a kill with you, but this is just what a god might do if he was in a good mood.'

Ancient Egyptians held cats in high regard and the penalty was death by 450 BC.

Goddess Bastet, commonly depicted as a cat or a woman with a feline's head was among the most popular deities of the Egyptian pantheon.
A day after they were attacked in what they believed was their safe refuge, many students in Jawaharlal Nehru University on Monday were both angry and fearful with some demanding that the guilty be booked and others saying they were going home.

There was an uneasy calm in the campus where there was a massive deployment of security personnel and authorities only allowed students with valid ID cards inside.

However, these measures did not assuage the concerns of students over their safety.

Akarsh Ranjan from Periyar hostel said students have received threats that they should not come out from their rooms.

Shreya Ghosh, a resident of Shipra Hostel, asked how could goons enter the campus with rods and sticks and said, "The attack could not have happened without the connivance of the administration and police."



She claimed that she had to hide in Sabaramati Hostel after the masked men chased her and some other people.

A Kashmiri student, requesting anonymity said, he was also chased by the mob along with other students and he had to jump from the first floor of the hostel to save themselves.

"We were 3-4 friends inside a room. Suddenly, some of our friends came running and said, 'The ABVP is coming with lathis and rods'. We latched the room but within a few seconds, they started banging on it with lathis. They also broke glass windows on top of the door. Scared, we opened the balcony door and jumped from the first floor. Otherwise they would have killed us," the student said.

Surya Prakash, a visually challenged student, said he was scared after being attacked in Sunday's violence.

"They came to my room and beat with me rods. I told them I am blind but they continued the assault. I have been hit badly and I will have to go for an X-ray. I'm scared after yesterday's violence," Prakash said.

Masood, a student pursuing PhD in Urdu, claimed that he was attacked because he was from Kashmir.

Several students were also seen leaving the campus.

A student, Pancham, who did not reveal her last name, said she was leaving the hostel because her parents feared for her safety.

Mallika Sinha, a computer science student from Nepal who lives in the Yamuna Hostel, said she received a call from her parents asking her to leave the campus.

At the entrance of Sabarmati Hostel, the premises was littered with shards of window panes and some students were seen clearing the debris.

The hostel mess was also damaged in the violence on Sunday evening when masked mob had gone on a rampage, vandalising property and attacking the staff and students, including the JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh.

The mob also entered two other hostels -- Periyar and Koyna -- where they took to vandalism.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Protesters shout slogans against the United States and Israel as they hold posters with the image of top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a US airstrike in Iraq, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during a demonstration in the Kashmiri town of Magam on January 3, 2020. Tauseef Mustafa | AFP | Bloomberg

Iranian hackers are likely planning social engineering and phishing efforts as retaliation for the U.S. military's killing of Iranian military chief Qasem Soleimani, according to security experts in government and the private sector. But the flurry of website defacements and social media rancor over the weekend are unlikely to be important, and might not have originated from Iran at all. On Saturday and Sunday, several websites across the globe were hit with cyberattacks that defaced them with images and slogans supportive of Soleimani. The hacked websites displayed images of a fist-punching Trump among other anti-American rhetoric. Victims included the U.S. Federal Depository Library Program and the Commercial Bank of Sierra Leone. Through a statement, the Department of Homeland Security expressed doubt these attacks were state-sponsored. One intelligence official from the Treasury Department, who wished to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to media, said the organization was not concerned with scattered online defacements, which cause little real damage and are difficult to attribute On the contrary, he said, Treasury and other government agencies are more concerned about a heightened risk of social engineering attacks from across the Shiite world, well beyond Iran, and the possibility that other hostile nations -- like Russia or China -- may take advantage of the chaos to launch their own attacks. Along those lines, sources from federal, state and local agencies -- including the cities of New York, Los Angeles and Houston; power authorities PSE&G in New Jersey and ConEd in New York; and the U.S. Treasury Department -- told CNBC they are warning employees to be particularly wary of unexpected or suspicious emails, phone calls, text messages or other digital contacts that may serve as an entry point for attacks, more typical of the Iranian strategy.

Emotional outpouring could draw attackers

Experts are particularly concerned with the enormous emotional outpouring from across the Shiite Islam world, which could drive a variety of hacker collectives into action. These could include groups sponsored by Hezbollah in Lebanon and pro-government forces in Syria, as well as other sympathizers with Iran's plight. Russia has also assisted Iran in hacking efforts, and used the country as a cover to conduct its own espionage operations. "We watched the funeral march closely, in the sense that that's a lot of emotion, that when harnessed alongside a pretty substantial cyber capability, is going to represent longer term fallout than just a few small site takedowns," the Treasury official said. He said that experts are more concerned about a possible flurry of social engineering attempts, aimed at compromising the credentials of employees in these agencies. Social engineering typically involves gathering information about a target -- such as what he does for a living, or who her employees are -- and using that information against the individual. Often this takes the form of a phishing email, which uses the personal details to convince the recipient to click on a malicious link, thus giving the sender access to the victim's files or other information.
Sinagas modus operandi was to meet men leaving nightclubs near his Manchester city center apartment. According to police and court testimony, he targeted young men who were by themselves, usually sick or intoxicated  and then he would play the good Samaritan and offer them another drink, a place to sleep or charge their phones, or help calling a taxi.
NEW DELHI  Masked assailants beat students and teachers with sticks on the campus of a prestigious university in Indias capital, injuring more than 20 people in an attack opposition lawmakers blamed on the government.

Videos that emerged after the assault late Sunday showed people in masks roaming inside the corridors of Jawaharlal Nehru University and beating students who were protesting against a fee hike. Most of the injured were treated at a hospital for cuts and bruises, said Aarti Vij, a spokeswoman at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

New Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik said the incident was a clash between rival student groups. But opposition parties and injured students blamed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a student organization linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modis Bharatiya Janata Party.

The fascists in control of our nation are afraid of the voices of our brave students. Todays violence in JNU is a reflection of that fear, tweeted Rahul Gandhi, a leading politician from the main opposition Congress party.

Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, which includes students at Jawaharlal Nehru University, released a statement saying the group didnt start Sundays violence and insisted their members were attacked first by students with links to communist groups.

Communist-linked student organizations at the university have led recurring protests against the fee increase, which went into effect in November. Opponents say the fee hike makes education too expensive for many.

The government was quick to condemn the violence.

Horrifying images from JNU  the place I know & remember was one for fierce debates & opinions but never violence. I unequivocally condemn the events of today, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, a member of the prime ministers party, said on Twitter.

Surya Prakash, a 25-year-old doctoral student at the universitys Sanskrit school, said he was brutally beaten in his dorm room despite crying out that he is blind.

They first broke the door and windows of the room and barged inside and hit my head with a rod, Prakash said.

One floor up from Prakash, above the dorm wardens residence, students said two Kashmiri Muslim students living in adjacent rooms were targeted. While the attackers used a fire extinguisher to ram one door open, a student climbed over his balcony into the room next door while another jumped to the ground below, sustaining an injury, according to Mukesh Kumar, a student who lives across the hall.

An ambulance carrying injured people off campus was attacked by a group of men with sticks while police stood by, several bystanders said.

Hours after Sundays attack, students across the country took to the streets to protest the incident. Some gathered outside police headquarters in New Delhi and accused police of inaction.

The clashes come amid simmering anger over the governments new citizenship law, which has resulted in a series of violent protests and clashes around the country that have left at least two dozen people dead.

Emily Schmall and Sheikh Saaliq are Associated Press writers.
Pennridge to vote on one textbook; further review on other one
(TNS)  As states continue to look toward innovative technologies to address the ever-changing needs of the modern world, California has approved the use of light-duty autonomous delivery vehicles.Last month, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) revised existing regulations to allow the use of autonomous delivery vehicles weighing less than 10,001 pounds with a permit from the DMV. Eligible vehicles include autonomous cargo vans, mid-sized pickup trucks and passenger cars carrying select goods, like groceries and pizza.The adoption of these regulations means Californians soon could receive deliveries from an autonomous vehicle provided the company fulfills the requirements, DMV director Steve Gordon said. As always, public safety is our primary focus.Autonomous delivery vehicles will be subject to comply with the same requirements currently in place for autonomous passenger vehicles, with companies eligible to test their autonomous delivery vehicles with or without a safety driver, depending on the type of permit theyve received.Currently, 65 companies have permits to test autonomous delivery vehicles on Californias public roads with a safety driver, including Tesla, Ford and Honda, with just one company, Waymo, permitted to operate without a safety driver onboard.In order to be deployed on public roads, the vehicles must be equipped with an autonomous vehicle data recorder (the technology designed to detect and respond to roadway situations), in addition to being capable of detecting and responding to cyber attacks. The vehicle manufacturers must have conducted extensive testing to ensure safety on public roads and must submit a copy of a law enforcement interaction plan to the DMV. Additionally, if the vehicle does not require a safety driver, manufacturers must meet other requirements, such as a communication link between the vehicle and a remote operator.The move made by California could inspire other states to follow suit, though the idea of autonomous vehicles on New York City streets has long been a point of contention for city and state officials.In late 2017, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans to allow General Motors and Cruise Automation to begin testing autonomous vehicles on Manhattan streets starting in 2018.Autonomous vehicles have the potential to save time and save lives, and we are proud to be working with GM and Cruise on the future of this exciting new technology, Cuomo said at the time. The spirit of innovation is what defines New York, and we are positioned on the forefront of this emerging industry that has the potential to be the next great technological advance that moves our economy and moves us forward.However, the program never came to fruition, with Mayor Bill de Blasio fiercely opposing the deployment of autonomous vehicles onto busy Manhattan streets, citing safety concerns and a lack of coordination between the state and the citys Department of Transportation and NYPD.I really dont like it,'' de Blasio said at the time. "I think its a mistake. I think that it creates a danger. The last thing we wanna do is create a potential new danger, so were gonna be very aggressive in saying this is not a good idea unless it is carefully vetted.While autonomous vehicles have yet to hit public roads in New York, Optimus Ride, an autonomous vehicle technology company, launched the states first self-driving vehicle program this past August in Brooklyn Navy Yard, a 300-acre industrial park thats home to more than 400 businesses, employing more than 10,000 employees.Currently, six self-driving shuttles are transporting passengers, free of charge, between the recently-opened NYC Ferry stop at Dock 72 and Brooklyn Navy Yards Cumberland Gate at Flushing Avenue.The autonomous vehicles are currently confined to operating within the private complex of Brooklyn Navy Yard, with a safety driver and software operator present in the vehicles to ensure that someone can take control if the self-driving software malfunctions.Our system will provide access to and experience with autonomy for thousands of people, helping to increase acceptance of and confidence in this new technology, which helps move the overall industry forward," said Dr. Ryan Chin, CEO and co-founder of Optimus Ride.
Sydney (AFP) - A man has been mauled to death by a suspected great white shark at a popular diving spot off Australia's southwestern coast, officials said Sunday.

The man was attacked at Cull Island near the town of Esperance in Western Australia state, the state's primary industries department said in a statement.

"A man received fatal injuries after being bitten by a reported white shark," the department said.

Surf Life Saving Western Australia said he was believed to be a diver.

The fatal attack, the first in Australia this year, is the second in the area in less than three years.

A 17-year-old girl was mauled by a shark in full view of her parents near Wylie Bay in 2017. She lost her leg and was pulled from the water, but died shortly after.

In 2014, a young surfer lost parts of both arms after being attacked by a great white, also off Esperance.

Australia has one of the world's highest incidences of shark attacks, but fatalities remain rare.

There were 27 maulings but no fatalities off Australia last year, according to data from Sydney's Taronga Zoo.
TV fans are seeking help for binge watching addition because cliffhanger endings give a similar hit to drink and drugs.

Private clinics on Harley Street in London are treating patients who complain Netflix and other streaming services dominate their lives.

A 35-year-old man said that he even put his job in peril because he was spending hours watching crime shows.

TV fans are seeking help from Harley Street clinics in London for a TV addiction linked to Netflix. A 35-year-old man said that he even put his job in peril because he was spending hours watching crime shows (stock image)

Registered psychotherapist Adam Cox, who has treated three patients struggling with the addiction, told the Daily Telegraph: All three had fallen into a dangerous loop where they felt unable to switch off.

They just had to watch the next episode, and the one after that and the one after that. A TV cliffhanger is a reward mechanism - like drink or drugs.'

The purposeful element of suspense 'releases dopamine' which can 'be an issue for people who have other stresses or anxieties in their life'.

Psychotherapist Adam Fox has treated three patients 'unable to switch off'. He said TV cliffhangers act as a 'reward mechanism' (stock image)

A lack of sleep reduces productivity and stops people from forming 'proper relationships'.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and counselling has been offered to patients wanting to break free of the small screen.

More than 150 million people are now subscribing to Netflix.

In one private clinic, on the well-renowned street (file image) of medical specialists, a 35-year-old man said that he even put his job in peril because he was spending hours watching crime shows

The TV giant has been blamed for the rise of so-called binge watching, with fans sometimes viewing entire series in a single sitting.

Hit show Breaking Bad triggered one mans streaming addiction, leading him to spend seven hours a day in front of the screen until the early hours.

It put his job at risk and made it impossible to form a romantic relationship.

Netflix's CEO Reed Hastings said 'sleep' was the streaming services top rival, in 2017.
The House of Representatives 385-41 passage of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement was a welcome end-of-the-year gift to Americans, not least because it showed the Democrat-controlled chambers willingness to work with the Trump administration on a major issue important to the daily lives of many Americans.

Now its up to the Republican-controlled Senate to get the deal  which the U.S. International Trade Commission estimates could create 176,000 new U.S. jobs across multiple sectors  across the finish line.

Journal reporter Scott Turner wrote Thursday that New Mexico Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich are unsure when the proposed pact will come up for a vote. Some reports have floated the notion a vote may not occur before President Donald Trumps impeachment trial this month.

Lets hope they dont sit on it that long.

The new NAFTA is a good deal, particularly for Americans. Other than the projected job growth, the trade commission also estimates the deal could result in a 6.7% increase in exports to Mexico worth some $14.2 billion and 5.9% to Canada worth $19.1 billion. As a border state, thats particularly significant for New Mexico. The USMCA is also possibly the best example of bipartisan compromise and cooperation weve seen from Congress in some years.

Theres no reason to wait for an impeachment trial to get this win-win-win across the finish line.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
Advanced Foot & Ankle Specialists of Brighton Michigan are seeing all patients across from St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Livingston County. Dr. Tom Biernacki states "We are hoping to make this move to better service the patients of the area! This allows us to provide excellent hospital care wound care, care for diabetic ulcers, advanced diagnostic imaging, ultrasound and x-rays all in one physical location for all of our patients."

The podiatrists and foot doctors of Brighton advanced foot and ankle specialists have moved into a new state-of-the-art office next to SJMH Livingston.

Advanced foot and ankle specialists of Brighton Michigan have consolidated their Brighton location five minutes down the road near St. Joseph Livingston Hospital. This is a temporary move as a decision is being made to consolidate hospital care throughout Livingston County.

The goal of this move is to provide better foot and ankle hospital care and wound care. This allows for better care of diabetes, diabetic foot movements, diabetic foot ulcers and any type of foot and infections.

The for podiatrists that are on staff at Brighton advanced foot and ankle specialists are Dr. Tom Biernacki, Dr. John Stevelinck, Dr. Marc Bonanni and Dr. Danielle Blanchard. These are for hospital trained physicians and podiatrists who have been in the local area for over 20 years.

Currently advanced foot and ankle specialist will be serving all Livingston County patients a load of the location and Howell Michigan at 524 Byron Rd, Howell, MI 48843. This location is adjacent to St. Joseph Mercy Livingston Hospital.

This move has been made to better serve the Livingston County area. Including Brighton Michigan and Howell Michigan specifically. This will allow for specialized and high-quality hospital and outpatient care for all patients.

Soon, an announcement will be made for a new Brighton Michigan specific location. This will likely be announced in the early portion of 2020.

Advanced foot and ankle specialists of Michigan is the busiest and one of the best reviewed podiatrists and foot Dr. clinic's in both Livingston County and Washtenaw County. This medical practice services all foot and ankle needs in Brighton Michigan, Howell Michigan and Dexter Michigan, as well as Western Ann Arbor. There are four hospital and residency trained podiatrists ready to serve your problems, whether they are medical pedicures, ingrown toenails, bunions, heel pain, broken toes, or a broken ankle!

Dr. Tom Biernacki states "We are hoping to make this move to better service the patients of the area! This allows us to provide excellent hospital care wound care, care for diabetic ulcers, advanced diagnostic imaging, ultrasound and x-rays all in one physical location for all of our patients."


Is Trump trying to distract us from impeachment? Is he wagging the dog to try to win reelection? If so, not very skillfully. Hes still impeached and still faces trial in the Senate. And this is far too early for a rally-round-the-flag election ploy. By November, the Soleimani assassination will be old news  and there will likely be thousands more U.S. troops deployed in the Middle East than there are now. Having promised to end our long-running wars, Trump will have kept all the old ones going and added a new one.
MSP Annie Wells has condemned vandalism at her constituency office after the words Tory scum were spray-painted on a wall.

Ms Wells said she would report the incident in Glasgow to police.

She tweeted a picture of the graffiti, sprayed in red paint on the wall of her office in Maryhill Road, adding: Happy new year! A civic and joyous start to 2020 at our constituency office.

A spokesperson for the MSP said: Its depressing that abusive graffiti like this has become the norm for MSPs and MPs across Scotland.

Its not a particularly nice way to start the year but it wont stop Annie from continuing to get things done for her constituents and people in Glasgow.

Ms Wells contacted police last year over fears for her safety after she received online threats and abuse.

During the general election campaign, SNP MSP Aileen Campbells office also experienced vandalism when a window was smashed and SNP out was spray-painted on her office.

Ms Campbell, who is the Communities and Local Government Secretary, said at the time she was deeply saddened by the attack.

Additional reporting by agencies
The BSE Sensex crashed nearly 788 points, its worst session in about six months, as escalating US-Iran tensions sent crude oil prices soaring and also made investors shun equities and rush to safe haven assets.

At the closing bell, the 30-share Sensex was at 40,676.63, down 1.90 per cent or 787.98 points -- the biggest single-day drop since July 8.

After opening the session on a subdued note, the BSE gauge broadened losses and hit an intra-day low of 40,613.96.

Similarly, the 50-scrip NSE Nifty closed at 11,993.05, falling by 1.91 per cent or 233.60 points.

On the Sensex chart, Bajaj Finance was the top loser, dropping 4.63 per cent, followed by SBI, IndusInd Bank, Maruti, HDFC, Hero MotoCorp, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and Reliance Industries.

Bucking the broader trend, only Titan and PowerGrid ended with gains.

All sectoral indices ended in the red, with BSE metal, finance, realty, bankex, energy, auto, oil and gas, capital goods and healthcare indices cracking up to 2.96 per cent.

While, broader BSE midcap and smallcap indices slumped up to 2.31 per cent.

Along with soaring crude prices, the negative impact of weakening Indian currency is also weighing on equities.

The Indian rupee dropped 13 paise to close at 71.93 against the US dollar on Monday amid rise in crude benchmark Brent Futures, quoted last at USD 69.64 per barrel -- an increase of 1.37 per cent in price.

"The ground reality is unstable, global market feels that this (US-Iran) tension can escalate further. Investors are closing their current position and shifting to haven assets leading to a mount in bond yield, oil and gold prices," Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Financial Services, said.

Global markets too remained underpressure after US President Donald Trump warned Iran of major retaliation if Tehran carries out any attack against America to avenge the killing of top military commander Qasem Soleimani and hinted at striking its cultural sites.

Bourses in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul ended lower. European markets were also trading in negative terrain in early sessions.

Trump's statement came hours after Iran announced it will no longer abide by the limits contained in the 2015 landmark nuclear deal.

The US President also threatened to impose "very big sanctions" on Iraq if it follows through on a parliament vote calling for the expulsion of US troops based in the country.

Analysts opined that the Indian market is reacting more negatively than other emerging markets due to crude oil impact.

Since India's dependence on crude imports as a percentage of consumption is the highest, the impact on economy and markets is also higher, they said.

Hemang Kapasi, Portfolio Manager - Equity Investment Products, Sanctum Wealth, said, "The investors have turned cautious because of uncertainties and have taken refuge in gold which is visible from sudden jump in gold prices.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Quite a sight to behold.

Jason Momoa ditched his green velvet blazer at the Golden Globes and bared his ultra-jacked physique, as evidenced by eagle-eyed viewers who spotted the actor seated at his table in just a black tank top. Although it at first appeared that he'd gotten overheated, he later explained to paparazzi that it was quite cold in the room, so he gave his jacket to his wife.

The hunky "Aquaman" star also tied up his trademark long locks in a ponytail after finishing up on the red carpet.

Did yall just see Jason Momoa in a tank top at the #GoldenGlobes?  pic.twitter.com/q3shqHui4w  Julie Dolan (@WLKYJulie) January 6, 2020

Sleeves gone, hair up. We want to sit with Jason Momoa at tonight's #GoldenGlobespic.twitter.com/iftgsJ7wWe  The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) January 6, 2020

Momoa successfully re-clothed himself and untied his hair before joining stepdaughter Zoe Kravitz onstage to jointly present the award for Best Actress in a Television Series - Drama.

Earlier in the evening, Momoa walked the red carpet with wife Lisa Bonet, who was an ethereal beauty in a sheer sage green gown.

Photo: Getty

The devoted couple will celebrate their 15th anniversary this year, although they didn't formally wed until 2017. They share two children, 12-year-old Lola and 11-year-old Nakoa-Wolf.

Bonet was previously married to Lenny Kravitz, who has famously maintained a strong friendship with Momoa: He's "like a brother to me," Kravitz once said in an interview with UK publication The Times.
On Nov. 27, 13-year-old Kerri-Lynn Bunting died by suicide in Constance Lake.

On Nov. 28, Rydell Mekanak, just 12 years old and from Webequie, died by suicide.

On Dec. 18, it was 17-year-old Neil Agammway from Marten Falls.

On Dec. 23, 36-year-old Kris Chikane from North Caribou Lake.

On Dec. 25, 18-year-old Randale Oskineegish from Nibinamik.

On Dec. 30, 24-year-old Kelsey Moonias from Neskantaga.

And on Jan. 1, 15-year-old Sierra Mckay from Kasabonika Lake died by suicide.

Last year ended with the First Nations suicide crisis getting worse instead of better. In community after community, moms and dads wept at the burials of their children, and close-knit nations were shattered and weighed down by grief.

How many more young people have to die before governments see that it is their job to provide supports that will give Indigenous youth hope?

We believe Ontario needs a mental health and addictions strategy thats tailored to support Indigenous people, and we need it urgently.

According to Statistics Canada data released in June 2019, across Canada, about eight out of every 100,000 non-Indigenous people per year die by suicide. For Indigenous people, that number soars to 24.3 deaths by suicide.

For Indigenous children under 15 living in remote First Nations communities in Ontario, that number is even more dire  50 times higher than non-Indigenous suicide rates.

Yet, help has been lacking or denied to First Nations families.

Wait times for mental health supports are too long all over the province, but in Northern Ontario, theyre the longest, and theyre outrageous. The wait from a doctors referral to the first visit to a mental health specialist service is six months for a quarter of all those who need it. Thats 200 days and nights during which a child can become overwhelmed by illness and hopelessness.

But Ontarios mental health strategy for Indigenous people wont be successful if it only includes access to mental health specialists.

According to the chief coroner of Ontario, the factors that played the greatest role in suicides on Pikangikum First Nation  a fly-in community in the far north west  included education, food security, income, racism and generations of colonialism.

In other words, not enough food or money. Living uncomfortably because of the overcrowded and dilapidated homes. Schools that lack resources. Experiencing discrimination. These things are eroding mental health.

Yes, the federal government has to step up. This government, like the last, has ignored their obligations, like clean water and equitable education.

But the provincial government has used excuses about federal jurisdiction to allow children within Ontarios borders to suffer. To allow those with illnesses to go untreated. To watch insidious hopelessness to spread, and to deprive children of care, support and hope.

While Indigenous youth suicide rates have been trending downward in other provinces, the Canadian Medical Association Journal reported that Northern Ontario has gone in the opposite direction.

We were shocked that the current provincial government voted against the NDP proposal for an Indigenous-specific component of Ontarios mental health strategy in December, with PC MPP Robin Martin saying by specifying a particular group, it might imply that other groups are not included or are less important, and we prefer that we keep [the strategy] the way it is.

We do not want to keep things the way they are.

How many more young people have to take their lives in this crisis? Indigenous children and youth deserve lives of hope and promise, and as a province, we can do much, much better by them.
It took over 14 hours for 162 passengers on a GoAir Pune-Kolkata flight that was scheduled to take off on Sunday night to reach their destination.

Go Air flight G8 394 that was scheduled to take off at 10.25pm on Sunday had to be diverted to Bhubaneshwar because of poor visibility in Kolkata. The flight was first delayed due to technical problems with the aircraft. An alternate flight was arranged and passengers had to repeat the boarding formalities.

According to the airline, the crew could not be allowed to fly as they had exceeded flight duty time limitation as mandated by the DGCA.

GoAir flight G8 394 from Pune to Kolkata was diverted to Bhubaneswar due to bad weather in Kolkata... GoAir sincerely regrets any inconvenience caused to its passengers, said the airline spokesperson.

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An Armenian man has been arrested for releasing "false information" on Facebook claiming the country's prime minister had congratulated Donald Trump for killing Iran's top general, the security service said Monday.

"On January 2, the Facebook page 'Diana Arutyunyan' published information according to which Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan congratulated the United States for its actions against a senior Iranian military official," Armenia's SNB security service said in a statement.

This "false information" was picked up by Azerbaijani and Iranian media, causing "major damage to the national security interests of Armenia", it said.

Pashinyan, who came to power after a 2018 revolution, himself denied on his Facebook page on Sunday that he had congratulated Trump.

He also urged the United States and Iran to exercise restraint while the foreign minister called his Iranian counterpart to express condolences over the assassination.

General Qasem Soleimani, Iran's top military commander, died in a US drone attack at Baghdad airport on Friday, raising tensions in the Middle East.

"Diana Arutyunyan" is the pseudonym for a man whose identity has not been revealed.

In a video released with the SNB statement, the man explained that he had created the Facebook page in 2018 to "write political publications" and admitted being the author of the article in question.

"I did it because I have political opinions and I believe that it is unjust to keep Robert Kocharyan in prison," he said in the video, referring to the former president who is being held for a "breach of constitutional order".

Landlocked Armenia has strained relations with neighbours Azerbaijan and Turkey. Maintaining strong ties with Iran is therefore crucial for Yerevan, which remains close to the United States, home to a vast Armenian diaspora.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a rare display of emotion from the typically reserved and measured supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cried openly Monday at the funeral of slain Gen Qasem Soleimani, his most important military commander with whom he shared a deep bond.

Oh Allah, they are in need of your mercy, and you are exalted above punishing your servants, Khamenei said during a mass prayer as he stood over a flag-draped casket with the remains of Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq on Friday.

Khameneis voice cracked under the weight of the moment during a funeral procession unlike any in Irans recent history. Police said attendees numbered into the millions.

The funeral showcased the depth of the bond Khamenei had with the slain general and gave insight into how Soleimanis death is being felt personally by the supreme leader. It could also impact how Khamenei responds to the United States.

The US killed Soleimani, other Revolutionary Guard members and a senior Iraqi militia leader in a stunning attack on their convoy, shortly after Soleimani had arrived at Baghdads international airport. The killing, ordered by President Donald Trump, has dramatically heightened the risk of war as senior Iranian figures vow to strike US military targets in response.

To many across the Middle East, Soleimani was a dangerous figure whose armed militias killed thousands of Sunni Muslims in Syria and threatened regional security. To the US, he was the man responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq and countless attacks on Iraqis fighting alongside American forces.

In Iran, Soleimani was a lionised figure who embodied Irans lethal reach in the face of crushing US pressure. He was a powerful commander in charge of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, overseeing Irans proxy militias abroad, ranging from Hezbollah in Lebanon to armed factions in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. In Iraq, that meant directing the countrys mostly Shiite paramilitaries, including in the fight alongside the US against Sunni extremists like the Islamic State group.

To Irans supreme leader, Soleimani was a loyal aide who conferred with him often and cemented Tehrans footprint far beyond the countrys borders, helping to preserve and advance the principles of the 1979 revolution that brought Irans Shiite leadership to power.

Their relationship was so close that Khamenei was photographed more than once embracing Soleimani in ways that are customary in Iran for fathers and their beloved sons.

In one such photograph from 2018, Khamenei, seated on an elevated platform, leans down and kisses Soleimanis forehead. In another image from 2017, Khamenei is seen kissing Soleimanis cheek during Ashoura, a religious day of mourning among Shiites.

Unlike other military commanders in the Revolutionary Guard Corps., the 62-year-old general answered only to the 80-year-old Khamenei.

So revered was he by Khamenei, that the supreme leader awarded the general Irans highest military order in March. Irans Tasnim News Agency reported that Soleimani is the only Iranian military official to receive the Order of Zulfaqar since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

When pinning the medal on Soleimani, the Iranian leader said he hoped God would reward the general and help him live a blissful life that ends with martyrdom.

Of course not any time soon, Khamenei said, adding the Islamic Republic needs him for years to come. To Soleimani, Khamenei was a venerated spiritual figure whom he referred to as his dear and honourable leader. In 2015, Soleimani was quoted saying: I ask God to sacrifice my life for you. So close were they that Iranian media is describing the slain general as Khameneis own Malik al-Ashtar, a reference to the most loyal companions of the first Shiite leader, Imam Ali.

And in death, Soleimani has received what no man before him has in modern Iran. His funeral processions have been spread over several days and cities, marking the first time Iran has ever honoured a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such a processional with his death in 1989.

Khamenei vowed that the Quds Forces strategy would be unchanged and he quickly named a successor to Soleimani, but the slain generals standing and relationship with Khamenei is not as easy to replace.

Thats in part because their relationship extended beyond the war room. Soleimani was also close with Khameneis children and had been photographed kissing one of the sons on the forehead.

In a deeply personal and symbolically weighty gesture, Irans supreme leader made a rare visit to Soleimanis home the day he was killed to offer condolences to his grieving widow and grown children.

Rather than calling him by his last name as is customary, Khamenei referred to him as Hajj Qassem  another indication of how close the two were.

That same day, Khamenei declared three days of mourning across the country and vowed harsh retaliation. The loss of Soleimani is bitter, Khamenei said in statements carried on Twitter and in Iranian media Monday.
The Supreme Court Monday sought response from the Centre on a plea seeking stay on its decision to allow the commercial roll out of Genetically Modified (GM) mustard crop in the country.

It asked the Centre, petitioner NGOs and activist Aruna Rodrigues to come up with some scientific data and studies to substantiate their arguments.

It also asked the chairman of Technical Expert Committee (TEC), set up by the apex court, to be present on next date of hearing to assist in the matter.

A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Indira Banerjee said it would like to hear the matter at length next month "as these issues cannot be kept pending for long".

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Rodrigues, said that government had earlier assured the court that before allowing commercial roll out of GM mustard crop in the country, it would seek the court's permission.

Bhushan said a TEC report has pointed out that the entire regulatory system was in shambles and a 10-year moratorium should be given.

He said that despite court's order and contrary to the report of TEC, the government has allowed commercial use of GM Mustard crop.

The top court said: "It is a matter which requires detailed hearing. All the parties should file written arguments in detail before the next date of hearing."



The Centre had told the apex court that it will soon take a decision on whether to allow the commercial roll out of GM mustard.

The top court had then said that if the government takes a decision in favour of GM mustard crop, then the court would like to hear the petition challenging the commercial release.

It had earlier granted time to the Centre to apprise it as to by when it will take a "well-informed and well-intentioned" policy decision on the roll out.

The apex court had on October 17, 2016 extended the stay on the commercial release of GM mustard crop until further orders.

It had also asked the Centre to seek public opinion on such seeds before releasing them for cultivation. Mustard is one of India's most important winter crops which is sown between mid-October and late November.

Rodrigues has alleged that government was sowing the seed in various fields and said the bio-safety dossier has to be put on the website, which has not been done yet.

Alleging that field trials were being carried out without doing relevant tests, she had sought a 10-year moratorium on them.

Rodrigues had filed the plea seeking a stay on the commercial release of GM Mustard crop and prohibition of its open field trials.

She had also urged the court to prohibit open field trials and commercial release of Herbicide Tolerant (HT) crops including HT Mustard DMH 11 and its parent lines/variants as recommended by the TEC report.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Treasury yields cut losses and turned higher on Monday despite the escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves inversely to price, was up slightly at around 1.79%. The benchmark yield was lower at 1.77% at one point Monday. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond rose one basis point to 2.26%.

"Focus will remain firmly on the consequences of mounting tensions between the US and Iran," Ian Lyngen, BMO's head of U.S. rates, said in a note. If there is a more material pick up in aggression, "a larger flight-to-quality bid should be expected to exert sustained downward pressure on yields," he said.

Crude turned lower on Monday, giving up earlier gains, despite ongoing fears of Iran's retaliation against U.S. interests. Earlier in the session oil prices had been up more than 2%.

President Donald Trump threatened to impose sanctions against Iraq on Sunday, shortly after Baghdad called for American and foreign troops to leave the country.

Last week, Iran's General Qasem Soleimani, who led a special forces unit of the Islamic Republic's elite Revolutionary Guards, was killed by a U.S. airstrike at the Baghdad International Airport.

It has ratcheted up already-high tensions between the U.S. and Iran, with market participants increasingly concerned about the prospect of retaliatory action.

Trump has warned Iran that the U.S. would strike back if Tehran's military forces attacked any American person or target, saying Washington could do so "perhaps in a disproportionate manner."

The U.S. Treasury is set to auction $42 billion in 13-week bills and $36 billion in 26-week bills on Monday.
Here's one for the record books. With five bedrooms and nine baths in 20,058 square feet of living space, this brand-new California modern super-mansion with a view is the largest ever built in the chic Hollywood Hills.

And it recently sold for $35.5 million, we were able to confirm. While sky-high, the price is actually something of a deal, considering that it was originally listed at $43.9 million. In fact, the home at the original price made our most expensive home listing on realtor.com in August.

For the price point, the build has some of the most luxe features we've ever seen. Find that hard to believe? Just take a look at the 163-foot wraparound infinity pool, which juts out over the hill and the lower level of the house. It features sunning decks and peninsulas, a step-down lounge with a fire pit, an island with palm trees, and a bar.

The pool also has a killer view of the San Gabriel Mountains, downtown L.A., and the Pacific Coast right out to Catalina Island. You've never seen anything quite like it, because nothing quite like it has ever been built.

Then there's the interior 12-foot cascading waterfall, an immaculate living wall, a car showroom, plus a state-of-the-art theater with stadium seating, and a luxe bar with concession stand and kitchen at the back.

Because of the floor-to-ceiling disappearing glass doors, which take full advantage of the 270-degree views, it's hard to tell where the outside begins and the inside ends. You'd feel as if you were living in the cloudsif there ever were any serious clouds in Los Angeles.

The master suite shares those views, and features a terrace with a fire pit and private spa, an enormous bath, and an oversized walk-in dressing room with elements imported from Italy's Lake Como.

And let's not forget the incredibly plush "wellness center," which has hot and cold plunge pools, a sauna, steam room, a fancy workout room, and massage area. Because walking around this massive mansion and swimming in that gigantic swimming pool is just not enough to keep you in top shape.

A much humbler house once sat on the property, and was last listed in 2013 for $1,995,000. Obtaining the permits and completing the construction for a house on this scale are likely to have taken years.

The spectacular property was listed by the Agency's David Parnes and James Harris, both stars of "Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles," and the Oppenheim Group's Jason Oppenheim, who also stars in the reality real estate show on Netflix, "Selling Sunset."

The post Biggest Home in the Hollywood Hills Sells for an Equally Impressive Price: $35.5M appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
Short-Term Support? Soleimani's Killing Gives Iran A Chance To Rally People, Show Some Unity

By Golnaz Esfandiari January 05, 2020

The killing of Qasem Soleimani, Iran's most powerful and iconic military commander who headed the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is a major blow to the Islamic republic on many levels.

At the same time, Soleimani's death -- at a time of increased U.S. pressure and following last month's bloody crackdown on anti-establishment protests in more than 100 cities and towns -- has allowed the Iranian government to display unity and popular support by organizing mass street funeral ceremonies.

That includes on January 5 in the southern city of Ahvaz and Mashhad in the northeast, where hundreds of thousands of mourners dressed in black were seen honoring the influential military commander who played a key role in advancing Iran's foreign policy interests from Lebanon to Yemen and many places in between.

The 62-year-old Soleimani was killed in a U.S. air strike in neighboring Iraq on January 3 ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump -- who said the Iranian commander had organized attacks on U.S. and Iraqi targets and was planning further acts of terror against U.S. interests.

Images on Iranian television and state-controlled media showed men and women, young and old, crying while holding images of Soleimani that said: "Your Way Will Continue" and signs with state slogans including "Death To America."

State-controlled television, which does not cover anti-establishment protests, called the demonstration in Mashhad "unprecedented," referring to Soleimani -- blamed for the deaths of thousands of civilians in several Middle Eastern countries due to conflicts involving pro-Iran militias -- as "the fatherland's soldier."

Iranian officials declared January 6 a holiday in Tehran and January 7 a holiday in Kerman while inviting Iranians to attend a funeral ceremony for Soleimani in the capital and a day later in his hometown of Kerman, where he is to be buried.

On social media, some Iranians have in past days paid tribute to Soleimani while condemning his assassination as "government-sponsored terrorism."

But the reaction to his death has also been very mixed. A large faction of anti-regime activists and demonstrators are unhappy with Iran's activities -- organized and carried out by Soleimani -- and large military expenditures supporting regional conflicts when the Iranian economy is in such desperate straits and facing enormous budget shortfalls in virtually all spheres due to U.S.-led economic sanctions that have destroyed Tehran's oil revenues.

Such sentiments were also echoed by people in other countries in the region, who even celebrated Soleimani's killing.

Fearing War

Still others expressed fear over the consequences of Soleimani's killing, which is considered a major escalation in the already heightened conflict between Tehran and Washington.

Some of the comments appeared to highlight a fear of war rather than support for the clerical establishment which, according to Amnesty International, killed at least 304 people in the November crackdown on protests triggered by a significant hike in the price of gasoline. Reuters reported that some 1,500 people were slain in the nationwide demonstrations. That figure could not be confirmed.

Regime supporters have been using the hashtag #hardrevenge to underline comments by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who vowed "harsh" retaliation for Soleimani's killing.

"We won't rest until we avenge your death, commander of the hearts," tweeted user Morteza Ben Hassan, whose profile photo was Soleimani.

Reformist figures including former President Mohammad Khatami and cleric Mehdi Karrubi -- who's been under house arrest since 2011 for challenging the Iranian establishment after a purported fraudulent presidential election -- also praised Soleimani while expressing their condolences over his "martyrdom."

Ali Fathollah Nejad, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center think tank, noted that Iran's state propaganda had portrayed Soleimani "as a nationalist hero masterfully protecting Iran from regional threats such as [Islamic State] while erecting Iran as the region's supreme power."

"Beyond the fact that Soleimani's killing has raised fears among various sections of Iranian society of an impending war ravaging the country and the empowerment of the most hard-line domestic elements, the pro-Soleimani statements by the Islamic republic's reformists are a reflection of demonstrating elite unity in the face of internal and external pressure as well as a reminder of how engrained the marriage of Islamism and nationalism is among the Islamic republic's establishment," Fathollah Nejad told RFE/RL.

"[More] blood spilled on the wall of mistrust; poor #peace; poor justice," human rights activist Hassan Assadi Zeidabadi, who went to prison several times because of his activism, said on Twitter.

Reformist journalist Maziar Khosravi complained that he had used 10 anti-filtering tools to be able to access Twitter, which is banned in Iran except for top government officials, to condemn "state terrorism."

"Domestic tyranny and an external enemy are pulling the rope on both sides of our throat and choking us," Khosravi tweeted.

Prominent journalist and human rights advocate Emad Baghi, who was also jailed in Iran for his peaceful activities and public dissent, noted that Soleimani's death had made some happy and others sad while adding that not condemning the "terrorist action" by the Trump administration would mean "prescribing the violation of human rights and international laws."

But Baghi also appeared to blame the Iranian establishment, writing that "a series of causes and effects brought matters to this point."

He suggested that "reason" on the issue could have brought a different outcome.

"I see Soleimani's martyrdom as the result of a past process that could have been definitely different," Baghi said.

A journalist in Tehran who did not want to be named said the establishment needed to rally the public at a sensitive time.

"Clearly, even those who are not regime supporters were shocked by Soleimani's killing," he said. "Soleimani was seen by many as a national hero."

But he added that does not necessarily mean that "people have forgotten" the recent bloody crackdown against protesters.

"Many are still upset," he said.

Sussan Tahmasebi, a well-known human rights activist and the executive director of FEMENA, an organization focused on women's rights in the Middle East, said Soleimani's killing is likely to make it more difficult to raise human rights issues due to an "increased securitized atmosphere."

"The cost of dissent and criticism will increase," Tahmasebi said, while adding that those killed and those in prison following last month's protests are likely to be forgotten.

"In an emergency war situation, even the less politicized demands for rights will take on a lesser priority," she told RFE/RL.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/soleimani-s-killing -gives-iran-chance-to-rally-people- show-some-unity-/30361411.html

Copyright (c) 2020. 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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Kolkata:

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday termed the attack on students and teachers at JNU as a fascist surgical strike by the BJP, evoking sharp reactions from the saffron party, which said she should stop shedding crocodile tears.

Banerjee, who is also the TMC supremo, said she had begun her political career as a student leader but never before witnessed such brazen attack on educational institutes. Whatever is happening across the country is very disturbing... I, too, was involved in student politics at one point in time, but never have I witnessed this sort of an attack on students and educational institutions...

It was a planned attack on democracy. Yesterdays was a fascist surgical strike on the student community, Banerjee told reporters, before leaving for Gangasagar. Whoever raised voice against the BJP was dubbed anti-national or a Pakistani, she claimed.

India is a democracy and we have our right to protest. Anyone who speaks against them is branded an enemy of the state. In a democracy, how can someone be branded anti-national or Pakistani for protesting against the government, Banerjee questioned.

The Delhi Police is not under the Arvind Kejriwal dispensation, it is under the central government, she said. On one hand, they (BJP) have sent goons, and, on the other, they have asked the police to not to take any action. What could police do if they are asked by their higher ups to stay put? she said.

Later in the day, while talking to reporters at Gangasagar after offering puja at the Kapil Muni Temple, Banerjee said, The countrys democracy is in danger, impartiality of institutions is in danger, freedom of expression is in danger.

Why did outsiders go there (JNU) and beat up students and teachers mercilessly? Though the administration was present at the time, I have seen that nobody rescued them. Hitting out at the central government, the chief minister said it is trying to muzzle the voices of students, farmers, youths, industrialists and civil society members.

If a party comes to power and destroys the countrys institutions, how can the country move ahead. It is a bad message for the country, she said. Meanwhile, the four-member Trinamool Congress (TMC) delegation that went to JNU on Monday to express solidarity with the students and teachers, was not allowed inside the campus, she alleged.

The TMC delegation was not allowed to enter the campus. It is not important whether they were allowed to visit the campus or not. The intension is clear, they dont want the truth to come out, so we were not allowed. We are with the students, Banerjee said.

Reacting to Banerjees comments, West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh said, Banerjee should stop shedding crocodile tears for the students of JNU.

Where was she when Union minister Babul Supriyo was heckled on Jadavpur University campus on September 19 (last year)? Just to score some political points, she is sending a delegation. Why didnt she send a delegation to those colleges which were ransacked by TMCP activists over the past eight years, he said.

Violence broke out at Delhis Jawarharlal Nehru University on Sunday night, as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers, and damaged properties on the campus, prompting the administration to call in the police.
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VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2020 / Mota Ventures Corp. (CSE:MOTA) (the "Company") is pleased to provide an update regarding its proposed acquisition of the online distributor First Class CBD. As previously announced, the Company has signed a binding term sheet (the "Term Sheet"), dated effective January 2, 2020, with Unified Funding LLC ("Unified"), an arms'-length party, to acquire the operations of First Class CBD.Based in Wyoming, First Class CBD offers a CBD hemp-oil formula intended to provide users with the therapeutic benefits that hemp may offer. The hemp oil used in the product is derived from hemp grown and cultivated in the United States. The extraction process is designed to maintain all of the beneficial qualities that the hemp may offer. First Class CBD offers a range of products, which include CBD oil drops, CBD gummies, CBD pain relief cream and CBD skin serum.First Class CBD is a leader in online CBD sales in North America, and in the eleven months through to November 30, 2019, Unified generated revenue of approximately US$30,000,000 from the distribution of First Class CBD products, with a profit margin of approximately 9.5%. The Company cautions that figures for revenue and profit margin generated from the sale of First Class CBD products have not been audited, and are based on calculations prepared by management of Unified. Actual results may differ from those reported in this release once these figures have been audited.For more information on First Class CBD, readers are encouraged to review their website, www.firstclasscbd.com The Term Sheet contemplates that the Company would acquire Unified's First Class CBD business. Total consideration for the acquisition is anticipated to be US$32,000,000 (the "Purchase Price"), of which an aggregate of US$3,000,000 will be payable in a series of payments over a six-month period, and the balance in common shares of the Company at an effective price of Cdn$0.80 per share. All securities issuable in connection with the acquisition will be subject to the terms of a thirty-six (36) month time-release pooling arrangement, as well as a claw-back arrangement in the event revenue generated by First Class CBD in the 2020 calendar year does not exceed US$28,000,000. Unified will also be entitled to a bonus payment in the event revenue and profitability of First Class CBD in the 2020 calendar year exceeds certain agreed upon thresholds.Completion of the acquisition of First Class CBD remains subject to finalization of a structure for the acquisition, giving consideration to appropriate tax and corporate factors, and the negotiation of definitive documentation in respect of the acquisition, which is expected to include an agreement by which Unified will continue to provide management and operational oversight for the business following closing. The acquisition cannot be completed until a structure and documentation have been finalized.About Mota Ventures Corp.Mota Ventures is seeking to become a large-scale vertically integrated low-cost producer and exporter of the highest quality CBD products. The Company currently controls a 2.5-hectare site located in Colombia, with optimal year round growing conditions and access to all necessary infrastructure. The site is located approximately 2 hours outside of Bogota 20 minutes away from the free trade zone and 30 minutes away from the international airport. Phase one development in Colombia will consist of a state of the art 60,000 square foot greenhouse with the capacity to produce more than 14,000,000 grams of non-psychoactive cannabis per year, along with build out of the Company's extraction facilities. The Company intends to focus on CBD extraction to produce pure raw CBD, with the goal to make value added CBD products and create its own brand to be sold internationally. The Company anticipates completing phase one development in Colombia by the end of the third-quarter of 2020, at an estimated cost of approximately Cdn$1,300,000. Completion of phase one will also require completion of the acquisition of an additional 11-hectare site in Colombia, at a cost of approximately Cdn$500,000.ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORSMOTA VENTURES CORP.Joel ShackerChief Executive OfficerFor further information, readers are encouraged to contact Joel Shacker, Chief Executive Officer at +604.423.4733 or by email at IR@ motaventuresco.com or www.motaventuresco.com Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release, which has been prepared by management.Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking StatementAll statements in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, are "forward-looking information" with respect to the Company within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including with respect to completion of the acquisition of First Class CBD, the registration of cannabis strains, completion of a 60,000 square foot greenhouse in Colombia, the construction of an extraction facility, the international distribution of CBD products and the creation or acquisition of CBD brands. The Company provides forward-looking statements for the purpose of conveying information about current expectations and plans relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. By its nature, this information is subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that may be general or specific and which give rise to the possibility that expectations, forecasts, predictions, projections or conclusions will not prove to be accurate, that assumptions may not be correct and that objectives, strategic goals and priorities will not be achieved. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited those identified and reported in the Company's public filings under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com . Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to
Russias crude oil and condensate output hit a post-Soviet high last year even as it curbed production under an agreement with OPEC.

The 11th consecutive year of output growth underscores the reality of Russias cooperation with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Despite being one of the architects of the original 2016 deal, Moscow has a poor record of fulfilling its pledged production cuts and has come under pressure from its allies to do better.

The country consistently failed to meet its quota last year, overshooting its target in nine of the 12 months, Bloomberg calculations show. The Energy Ministry has come up with various explanations for producing above the target -- from the limitations of a harsh climate to technical issues after the Druzhba oil-contamination crisis.

OPEC: Hedge funds stay bullish on oil amid trade truce, OPEC+ cuts

Russia produced 560.2 million tons of oil in 2019, up 0.8% from the previous year, preliminary data from the Energy Ministrys CDU-TEK unit show. Thats equivalent to 11.25 million barrels a day, according to Bloomberg calculations. Russia produced a record 11.416 million barrels a day in 1987, BP Plc data show.

Under the OPEC+ deal, Russia pledged to cut output by 228,000 barrels a day from the October 2018 baseline of 11.418 million barrels a day. That allocation will change this month after OPEC and its allies agreed in December to deepen their cuts.

New Arrangements

Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman has urged the laggards in the deal to carry their share of the burden. The kingdom is making the deepest cuts in the group.

Russia has agreed to deepen its reductions by 70,000 barrels a day to about 300,000 a day in the first quarter. But its baseline and monthly production calculations will exclude a type of light oil called condensate, potentially making it easier to hit its cuts target.

Energy Minister Alexander Novak has denied that the change is a loophole allowing Russia to pump more oil and still claim compliance. While Russias official statistics dont yet provide a breakdown for crude and condensate, the ministry will regularly inform analysts, the media and OPEC about the composition of its output, according to Novak.

FUEL FIX: Now more than ever, you need our energy news in your inbox.

Russia has also started making noises about the future of the OPEC+ alliance. When ministers meet next in March, the group will have been restricting output for more than three years, compared with an initial plan for six months. During the meeting, Russia may bring up the issue of exiting the agreement, Novak said in an interview to state TV network Rossiya24 last month.

Oil production cuts cant be eternal, Novak said, adding that Russia needs to defend its global market share and let its oil companies develop new projects. We will gradually need to make a decision on exiting the accord, he said.

Ending the deal would allow Russia to deploy about 500,000 barrels a day of spare production capacity, which could pave the way for a new output record in 2020.

2020 Bloomberg L.P.
MBABANE  Parents of pupils at Enhlanganisweni High School have rejected the financials of the school, while demanding the head teacher to furnish them with an audit report.

The school was last year marred by controversy as the parents allegedly locked out the Head teacher, Nomthantazo Tembe, and requested the Ministry of Education and Training to conduct an audit to prove allegations of mismanagement of funds. The parents were willing to go an extra mile by hiring their own audit company as they felt the ministry was taking forever. However, government rejected their proposal of bringing their own audit company. Instead, government auditors were deployed in the school and conducted the assessment around October last year.

Adamant

Results of the audit have not been brought back to the school and parents are adamant that they want them before schools open. Some of the parents said they were not in a position to discuss the financials without the report findings from the auditors, adding that they were waiting upon the Hhohho Regional Education Officer Thulie LaNgwenya to bring a full report.

They also said they would not discuss the financials on the basis that there was no budget for 2018 going to 2019 and they did not know what exactly would be presented to them. We have so many questions regarding the financials and would be very pleased to be addressed by the REO, said the parents. Further, the parents requested the head teacher to discuss the budget in order for the school to continue operating and put aside the financials.

Financials

Responding, the Head teacher Tembe, said she would not force the parents to discuss the financials. Instead, they only discussed the budget and the new fees structure. Tembe said she had no idea when the REO would come back to the school to give a report on the audit findings. She said the audit was conducted last year but she also did not have access to the findings.

The head teacher also reassured parents that fees were not going to be hiked this year but were to remain the same. Tembe also highlighted some projects which the school was expected to implement this year, including a E3 million worth hall, feedlot and the bulk SMS project.

She noted that the hall would be state-of-the art and accommodate 900 people. Tembe stated that the hall had a kitchen and toilets and could be used by the school to generate funds by renting it out to the community and general public. In terms of the feedlot, she said pupils to be admitted in Form I this year would take up agricultural lessons, something that had been long overdue. According to Tembe, the feedlot was expected to be an agricultural project for the school, which would also generate income. Meanwhile, she added that the school was spending a lot in stationery, hence they were considering partnering with MTN on the bulk SMS project, where they would be able to send one SMS in bulk to communicate with all the parents and guardians.

Further, she said parents would also be able to pay fees through MTN Mobile Money when they accept the project. Both the agriculture and school hall project were accepted by the parents, however, they rejected the bulk SMS, which they said was expensive for them. However, some parents said the bulk SMS was convenient as there would be no one claiming they had not received communication from the school.
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VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2020 / Renaissance Gold Inc. ( TSX.V:REN)(OTCQB:RNSGF) ("RenGold" or the "Company") is pleased to report another strong year of exploration for the Company. During 2019, partners completed drilling on 5 of our projects, we successfully generated and acquired 4 new high-quality exploration opportunities, saw significant advancement of our Silicon Project by AngloGold Ashanti ("AngloGold"), and we welcomed Altius Minerals as a significant shareholder of the Company.The Company enters 2020 in a strong position, with funding partners on 6 of its projects and a healthy treasury (C$3.56M as at 9/30/19). We currently anticipate partner drilling on at least 3 of those projects in 2020. AngloGold has significantly advanced our Silicon project with extensive geophysical surveys, completion of 47 drill holes, and plans for additional drilling under a new Plan of Operations permit. Should AngloGold choose to complete their purchase option, the final payment of US$2.4M (C$3.1M) comes due in June 2020, with the Company's retention of a 1% NSR. The payment would be very meaningful and would fund the Company for nearly 2 additional years and the royalty could potentially be very material for the Company as the Silicon project progresses and the NSR becomes monetized.Robert Felder, President and CEO states "We are quite pleased with the continuing aggressive pace of exploration by the Company. We see each of our projects as a value creation opportunity, and our ability to generate, partner and drill test several projects every year is an excellent platform from which to maximize the probability of making another significant discovery and bring meaningful value to our shareholders. Our Silicon Project has been explored aggressively by AngloGold, and we very much look forward to continuing developments on this project, which may have important implications for the Company" (See NR dated October 18, 2019).2019 Drilling ProgramsSpring PeakOceanaGold has informed the Company that they received the final drill permit from the U.S. Forest Service on December 13, 2019. Drilling is planned for Q3, 2020.MarsA ten (10) hole, 2320 meter (7610 feet) reverse circulation drill program was completed in October 2019 on the Mars Project, Lincoln County, Nevada, testing a variety of structural and stratigraphic targets. Drill holes tested multiple alteration cells over approximately 3 km and intercepted silicified carbonates under clay-altered volcanics. Silicification was associated with strong As (up to 2200 ppm), Sb (up to 681 ppm) and Hg (up to 18 ppm) but subeconomic levels of gold. The best intercept in the program was 20 feet (6.1m) @ 0.39 g/t Au in hole RM19-09. Hochschild has informed the Company of their termination of the earn-in agreement on the project, and RenGold is further evaluating the drill data to assess the remaining target potential.JupiterThe Jupiter project, Nye County, Nevada is subject to an earn-in agreement with Ramelius Resources Ltd. The third drill campaign under this agreement was completed in November 2019 and was designed to test "Long Canyon-type" targets occurring along the Cambrian-Ordovician unconformity and in the distal halo of a outcropping and magnetically indicated intrusive body. Three (3) holes, totaling 791 meters (2595 feet) of reverse circulation drilling was completed. A zone of iron rich silicification (jasperoid) was encountered beneath the unconformity and contained weakly anomalous As (up to 126 ppm), Hg (up to 1.29 ppm), Sb (up to 19.6 ppm) and Tl (up to 2.48 ppm), but with no reportable gold intercepts. These results are weaker than previously reported drill results (see NR dated Jan. 29, 2018) and the Company is working with Ramelius to decide on the next steps for the project.Ferguson MountainFollowing a review of the 2019 drill results (see NR dated October 18, 2019), Hochschild has informed the Company of their termination of the earn-in agreement on the project. The Company is continuing to evaluate the project to decide on next steps.Fat LizardFollowing a review of the 2019 drill results (See NR dated October 18, 2019), OceanaGold has informed the Company of their termination of the earn-in agreement on the project. The Company is continuing to evaluate the project to decide on next steps.About Renaissance Gold Inc.Renaissance Gold Inc. is a western US focused prospect generator utilizing a joint venture business model. RenGold applies the extensive exploration experience and high-end technical skills of its founders and team members to search for and acquire high quality precious metal exploration projects that are then offered for joint venture to industry partners who provide exploration funding. RenGold maintains a large portfolio of gold and silver exploration properties and has entered into over 70 exploration agreements over the past 16 years including those of its predecessor, AuEx Ventures Inc., and those from Kinetic Gold. RenGold's objective is to place its projects into exploration agreements, testing as many drill targets as possible and providing maximum exposure to success through discovery.Qualified PersonAll technical data disclosed in this press release has been verified by RenGold's Qualified Person, Robert Felder, M.Sc. and Certified Professional Geologist as recognized by the American Institute of Professional Geologists (AIPG).By: Robert Felder, President & CEOFor further information, contact:Robert Felder 775-337-1545 or bfelder@ rengold.com Ronald Parratt 775-337-1545 or rparratt@ rengold.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.This news release contains certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking" statements. Forward looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "intends," "estimates," "projects," "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will," "would," "may," "could" or "should" occur. Although Renaissance Gold Inc. believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statemen
Banks and financial services paid a record 75.5billion in taxes last year, figures have revealed.

The sum accounts for more than 1 in every 10 paid to the Government, according to a report by accountants PwC for the City Of London Corporation.

The total was made up of 33.4billion of direct taxes, including corporation tax and business rates, and 42.1billion through indirect ones such as employee National Insurance contributions.

Britain's banks and financial services paid more than 1 in every 10 of taxes collected by the Government

This was slightly up on the previous year's 75billion, despite the political and economic uncertainty, although corporation tax on profits fell for the first time since 2014.

The report, Total Tax Contribution Of UK Financial Services, added that finance firms employ 1.1m staff across the country  around 3 per cent of all UK employment  making taxes on workers the highest contributing factor in the industry.

It also revealed that 10.5 per cent of all taxes collected in the year to March 31 were paid by the sector.

Catherine McGuinness, policy chairman at the City of London Corporation, said: 'Despite a challenging economic climate and uncertainty around Brexit, the sector has maintained its tax contributions from the record high of last year.

'With Brexit looming, however, the UK must remain competitive to safeguard the sector's employment base and significant tax contribution.

'It will play a critical role in fuelling our economic success after we leave the EU.'

Andrew Kail, PwC's head of financial services, said: 'It's important we look closely at our tax system to ensure it's fit for new ways of working and doing business while optimising the competitiveness of the sector post-Brexit.'
C rossrail is due to open in autumn 2021, the head of Transport for London revealed today.

TfL commissioner Mike Brown confirmed the latest date - which is almost three years later than first planned - in evidence to the London Assembly.

The autumn 2021 date relates to the opening of the central section of the line, which will run via twin tunnels under the West End and initially connect Paddington with Liverpool Street and Abbey Wood.

Through-trains to Heathrow Airport are not due to start running until December 2022, though a Heathrow to Paddington service will start sooner.

Crossrail has been delayed again until the end of 2021 / PA

Trains to and from Shenfield are due to run through the tunnel by May 2022, Mr Brown said. They currently run to and from Liverpool Street.

Monday's announcement confirms Crossrails most recent plans to open the central section in 2021.

The Crossrail board meets on Thursday, when a more precise opening window is likely to be made public.

TfL had been at risk of being forced to pay damages to Canary Wharf Group if a Crossrail link between Canary Wharf and Heathrow were not completed by December 2021.

Mr Brown on Monday revealed that a confidential deal had been struck with Canary Wharf Group that removed the risk of TfL facing a pay-out.

The project was initially due to open in December 2018 / Getty Images

A TfL spokesperson told the Standard: The Crossrail team continues to make progress completing the railway and is moving forward with the complex testing of the signalling and train systems so that the railway can be handed over safely and reliably for passenger service.

"As Crossrail Ltd previously announced, the Elizabeth line will open as soon as practically possible in 2021.

As part of our annual business planning process, we have made some prudent assumptions including that the central section of the railway could open in autumn 2021, but continue to support Crossrail Ltd in delivering the railway as soon as possible.

"Crossrail Ltd continue to refine their delivery schedule and will provide an update in the coming weeks.

Crossrail is 3.4 billion over budget, taking its cost to 18.25 billion, after major problems completing stations and integrating new signalling systems on the tracks and trains.
Irelands new apprentices are not just heading to building sites, but to well-paid jobs in sectors such as biopharma, finance, auctioneering, ICT, and logistics.

Apprenticeship is fast becoming a new route to a wide variety of exciting, well-paid jobs for those who want to get into the workforce quickly and still want to build a solid foundation for a long career.

Traditionally, Ireland has associated apprenticeships with the construction or engineering trades, with a bias towards male participation. The man in a hard hat, hi-vis jacket, and a white van would be the picture that many would associate with an apprenticeship.

Unfortunately, while valuing the contribution that tradesmen and women make to the economy, many would generally have considered that the apprentice route was for those who either didnt want or were unable tofollow the CAO route into college after their Leaving Certificate. However, they would be wrong in making such an assumption.

Thankfully this mindset is changing, and the evolution of changes the apprenticeship area opens a vista of opportunities for school-leavers and others to embark on rewarding, well-paid careers in a range of occupations and business areas.

Since 2015, government policy  driven by the National Apprenticeship Council  has opened the apprenticeship area to a broader range of opportunities than ever before.

While Ireland still lags well behind Germany  commonly held as the exemplar that other countries should aspire to, with over 320 recognised apprenticeships registering 500,000 new apprentices every year  apprenticeship is growing and set to grow even more.

If one looks at the National Apprenticeship website, alongside engineering and construction, you will see apprenticeships in biopharma, finance, auctioneering, ICT, logistics, sales, and many others.

The new apprenticeships in these areas echo many of the features of their long-established counterparts in the craft areas, intermixing periods of on-the-job training and skills acquisition with time spent in education and training facilities studying and gaining the necessary supporting skills and knowledge for their careers.

Unlike their traditional counterparts, these new initiatives can vary in length from two to four years in duration, and lead to an aninternationally-recognised qualification on the national framework of qualifications at levels from level 5 to level 8. Level 8 is equivalent to an honours degree.

Cork Education and Training Board (CETB), as the statutory body charged with further education and training delivery in the Cork area, is leading the way with the introduction of new apprenticeships. Already, apprenticeships for accountancy technicians, commis chefs, auctioneering and property services, cyber-security and others have been added to our extensive offerings in the craft areas.

While some employers have initially been cautious about moving into this area, the feedback has been extremely positive.

If apprenticeship in Ireland is to model or resemble the European experience, one of the biggest challenges to be overcome is for school-leavers and their parents to gain acceptance of its value. The perception that the CAO college route is the only means to secure well-paid employment is a myth  but nevertheless, it is one that is widely held.

If Irelands economy and workforce is going to continue to grow and prosper, apprenticeships need to become a central feature of the education and training landscape.

John Fitzgibbons is director of further education and training at Cork Education and Training Board
CARROLL TOWNSHIP, Ohio  Two Cleveland residents were taken to a Toledo hospital with serious injuries after a crash Sunday night in Northwest Ohio, according to the State Highway Patrol.

The crash on Ohio 2 in Ottawa County involved three vehicles. According to a news release, a 2006 Ford F-150 driven by Ronald Jackson, 58, of Cleveland, was heading west on Ohio 2 when it went left-of-center and hit the drivers side of a 2016 GMC Yukon. The F-150 was then hit by a 2015 Kia Sonata.

Jackson and a passenger in the F-150, Marvin Wall, 58, of Cleveland, both were taken to St. Vincent Medical Center in Toledo. Their conditions were not released. Both men were wearing seatbelts at the time of the crash.

The driver of the Yukon, Kylie Biggert, 31, of Oak Harbor, also was seriously injured and was taken to ProMedica Hospital in Toledo, the news release says. Biggert also was wearing a seatbelt.

Mercedes Martell, 21, of Parma, the driver of the Kia, had minor injuries and was treated at the scene. Martell was wearing a seatbelt.

Troopers say its unknown why the F-150 went left-of-center. Its unknown if drugs or alcohol are factors, but the crash remains under investigation.

If youd like to comment on this post, please visit the cleveland.com crime and courts comments section.

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President Erdogan talks on tension between US, Iran

In Syria, 8,200 square kilometers of land cleared of terrorism with Turkish operations, says Turkish president

Turkey spends great effort to reduce tension between the US and Iran, Turkish president said on Sunday, amid dramatic escalation of tension in the region, following killing of a top Iranian commander in a US drone airstrike on Friday in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

"IRAN PROBABLY WILL RESPONSE US ACTION"

"Turkey always stands against foreign intervention and considers recent US attack in Baghdad with this same understanding," Erdogan said in a televised interview.

Erdogan said Iran probably would not remain unresponsive over the killing of Qasem Soleimani, adding that the choice of the US of killing a top Iranian commander would rise the tensions in the region.

The Turkish president said he will host his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Turkey on Jan. 8 and the leaders will discuss TurkStream, regional and other issues. Erdogan also said he hoped that Turkey and Russia can help ceasefire in Idlib, so no more civilians are hurt by bombs.
By Trend

The Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran announced in a statement the fifth and final step in reducing Iran's commitments to JCPOA.

The Islamic Republic of Iran no longer faces any restrictions on its nuclear program including enrichment capacity, percentage of enrichment, amount of enriched material, and research and development, the Iranian Government announced in a statement tonight on Sunday, Trend reports.

The statement of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran is as follows:

The Islamic Republic of Iran, in a fifth step in reducing its commitments, sets aside the last key case of its operational limitations in JCPOA, including the "limit on the number of centrifuges".

As such, the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear program no longer faces any operating restrictions including enrichment capacity, percent enrichment, amount of enriched material, and R&D.

From now onward, Iran's nuclear program, is merely based on its technical needs. Iran's cooperation with the IAEA will continue.

If the sanctions are lifted and Iran benefits from its interests, the Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to return to its obligations. The IAEA is obliged to take the necessary steps and arrangements in this context with Iran`s president.

---

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 6, 2020 15:14 735 48be62e941b44f04afae568c32107e3c 1 National Garuda,Twitter Free

In the latest of a string of incidents that reflect poorly on the airline, a Garuda Indonesia passenger has claimed that she and her family were detained by Garuda employees who accused her husband of insulting the airline.

Twitter user @jesswjk described the events on her Twitter account on Sunday night.

So udah banyak yang request gue untuk cerita pengalaman gue jadi penumpang GA404 kemarin, hari Sabtu 4 Januari. Let's see.



Gue travel ke Bali dengan suami gue, 3 anak gue yang terakhir usia 5 bulan, dan 2 orang nannies.



Kami duduk di section business class.  jessica (@jesswjk) January 5, 2020

She and her husband and three young children were flying business class on Garuda flight GA404 to Denpasar, Bali on Saturday.

When we were about to land, [our flight] was held back for about 50 minutes while waiting for the runway to clear at Ngurah Rai [International Airport], @jesswjk wrote.

At this point, anak gue yang besar pengen poop. Posisi memang sudah diperintahkan captain untuk pakai seat belt. Suami gue jalan sebentar ke aisle untuk minta izin bawa anak gue ke toilet. Pramugari menolak, karena alasan safety.  jessica (@jesswjk) January 5, 2020

At that point, with the captain having instructed passengers to put on their seatbelts, her eldest child asked to go to the bathroom. Her husband stood up to ask a flight attendant if he could take the child to the toilet, which the flight attendant said was not allowed for safety reasons.

My husband complied and sat back down, @jesswjk continued. My son started to complain about having a stomach ache [] which made my husband panic and start to grumble (GRUMBLING TO ME! IN HIS SEAT!) about Garuda to me.

The flight eventually landed and everything seemed fine until the woman and her family got to the baggage lounge at Ngurah Rai International Airport.

She was met outside the lounge by the captain of the flight, a few flight attendants and Aviation Security (Avsec) officers.

The captain said to Avsec: Detain all of these [people]!' she wrote. My husband asked again: Whats the problem?'

She said the captain then asked her husband what he said during the flight and accused him of insulting Garuda and claimed that he was acting on behalf of Garudas director of operations.

After being called over by the captain, the flight attendant said she heard the husband say: Garuda is [expletive].

At this point I should have laughed. So fascist, should grumbling to your wife in your own seat be punishable? @jesswjk continued.

She said she told the captain that she knew Pak Chairul and Pak Chairal - an apparent reference to business tycoon Chairul Tanjung and his brother Chairal, who is on Garudas board of commissioners - and would call them about the incident, after which the captain walked away.

The ground crew were apologetic about the incident but refused to give the captains name to @jesswjk. She asked them to write a statement about the incident, which they did.

Break dulu. Mau makan pork star. In the time being gue lampirkan surat keterangan dari Garuda kemaren, biar gak ada yg nuduh gue bohong. pic.twitter.com/0r0rRpm1c2  jessica (@jesswjk) January 5, 2020

The statement said that the captain had asked that a passenger be detained because of suspected swearing. The statement added that Avsec decided not to go through with the captains request because the incident was just a case of normal frustration.

Garuda did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This incident was only the most recent in a string creating bad publicity for the beleaguered airline, the president director of which, Ari Askhara, was dismissed in December for allegedly smuggling Harley-Davidson motorcycle parts and Brompton folding bicycles. (kmt)

Topics : Garuda Twitter
On one side of the street were truckers, blaring horns and demanding the right to stay independent. On the other, Uber and Lyft drivers, demanding the right to become employees. This recent scene on the streets of San Francisco acted as a microcosm of the confusion and complexity that California Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) has introduced. Meant to restrain the gig economy created by Uber and Lyft, AB5 essentially makes it tougher for workers to be classified as independent contractors.

And while the law is limited for now to California, it is likely the template for legislation to come from other states around the country. AB5 has set off intense debate about what constitutes an employee, and whether the law is really about protecting workers or more about generating additional tax revenue.

Uber and Lyft are worried for obvious reasons, but its small businesses that should be wringing their hands the most. The highest burden of cost will fall, just like it always has, on them, not the large corporations that have not only the resources to help navigate new legislation, but a much lighter tax bill -- about 21 percent compared to 28 percent for small businesses. Of course, this is a fight thats been brewing for many years. Small-business owners have already been squeezed, and how to classify their employees is just the latest example.

Related: An Entrepreneur's Guide to Compliance

The distinction between big and small is crystalized in the recent uptick of wage-and-hour suits, which purport workers are actually employees instead of independent contractors. Amazon might be able to withstand such a lawsuit with little to no fanfare, but this kind of litigation can put smaller companies out of business. Thats because if a court decides you treated a worker like an employee, you now owe all of the taxes you never paid on their behalf, and potentially all the cost of covering their healthcare. It can get more complicated if youre in an industry that requires workers-compensation insurance. You could be found liable for that as well.

For example, I once had a client who ran her own massage-therapy studio. She successfully rented out unused rooms to other therapists until the day one of them suggested they were employees and demanded back taxes and wages. All it takes is one disgruntled worker to raise the red flag, and if you dont have your affairs in order, youre vulnerable.

It seems with each new rule designed to make it harder for companies to classify workers as independent contractors, the burden on small businesses gets bigger. The good news is theres a lot you can do to protect yourself.

Only engage in business-to-business payments.

This is the number-one priority. Only engage with independent contractors who have gone through the process of creating their own company. That way, youre only ever making payments to a business, not an individual. I once knew of a firm that employed a full-time lawyer whose only job was to help independent contractors set up their own businesses. While it was expensive, the cost was worth it. Even without an attorney, its extremely easy for individuals to set up an LLC, and can get even easier depending on what state youre doing business in.

Ensure youre not the sole provider of income.

To be truly independent, a contractor needs to be working on more than one project with more than one company. If youre providing all their income, even if its a big job and it seems reasonable, you could get pegged as an employer. Even if youve got contractors on a major project, they need to be working for multiple companies to be truly considered independent.

Demand proof.

To ensure your contract will hold up in court, youll need to make sure your contractor is doing their part. Its not enough for them to tell you they secured their own insurance. You need to see the proof. Also, get your hands on some kind of proof that your contractors are paying their taxes properly, because if the IRS comes knocking on their door demanding loads of cash, its all too easy to point the finger back at you and claim you should have been paying employment taxes and withholding all along.

Related: The Legal ABCs of Running a Transportation Service

Decide whats best for your business.

While getting your books, payroll and contracts in order will go a long way towards protecting yourself, theres nothing thats foolproof. As legislators and tax collectors begin to potentially undo the gig economy, the burden will continue to fall on small-business owners. The fact remains that they pay higher taxes and states have more revenue to gain from ensuring theyre paying up.

If, despite all these challenges, you decide to stick with independent contractors, dont take the risk of assuming its a problem for the Ubers of the world. Stay up to speed on whats happening in your state, cover your bases, and perform your due diligence in every case. It could literally mean life or death for your business.

Related:

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These "Start-ups" are Reducing Cash Burn to Target Profitability



Copyright 2020 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
A view of the Hubble Space Telescope through the window of the shuttle Atlantis, which brought astronauts on a repair mission in 2009.

HONOLULU  Astronomers kicked off 2020 by welcoming the 30th anniversary year of NASA's venerable Hubble Space Telescope here at their largest annual gathering.

During the first full day of the 235th American Astronomical Society conference (Jan. 5), a team of scientists affiliated with the instrument shared their highlights from the mission. Over the course of its decade in flight, the Hubble Space Telescope has produced not just scientific results, but also a host of iconic images of the universe around us .

"We flooded the world with jaw-dropping pictures, month after month and year after year," Ray Villard, a long-time public affairs officer working on Hubble for the Space Telescope Science Institute that runs it, said during the event. "These pictures, they really have redefined the universe for public, and they speak to public at visceral and emotional level that is far beyond the scientific understanding."

Related: The Best Hubble Space Telescope Images of All Time!

And as scientists emphasized throughout the presentation, many of Hubble's impacts couldn't have been predicted when the instrument launched. Take, for example, exoplanets , of which zero had been identified at Hubble's launch in 1990. Now, scientists know of more than 4,000 such distant worlds, and the space telescope has been a vital tool for studying and identifying them.

Hubble has been a key instrument for directly imaging exoplanets, Nikole Lewis, an astrophysicist at Cornell University, said during the event. Scientists have never actually seen most of the exoplanets they have discovered, except for those that have been directly imaged  and Hubble's data archives are allowing scientists to see more of these worlds.

"These were basically images that were taken before we knew those planets were there," Lewis said. "We were able to dig back into the archives of these data and find planets that were just buried before ." That research can continue even after Hubble's eventual demise.

Related: How the Hubble Space Telescope Works

Scientists are well aware that things could have gone very differently for Hubble. After the instrument launched in 1990, astronomers were dismayed to see that all its images were fuzzy. Engineers traced the problem to a manufacturing error in the telescope's mirror.

But Hubble was special: It had been designed so that astronauts flying the space shuttle could repair it . In 1993, the first such mission launched and fixed Hubble's infamous mirror issue; four additional servicing missions visited the instrument before the space shuttle was retired.

Since 2009, Hubble has been on its own. A couple of glitches in late 2018 and early 2019 reminded scientists how lucky they were to have the telescope. But overall, the grizzled spacecraft is doing well, Jennifer Wiseman, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said during the panel. The gyros that allow the spacecraft to point at targets are lasting well, as are the batteries that run the machinery and the science instruments themselves.

And astronomers of all stripes are dedicated to getting every drop of Hubble data that they can. The mission is a vital for understanding our own neighborhood as well as the greater universe around us. Heidi Hammel, an astronomer at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy emphasized in particular the way the Hubble Space Telescope's work benefits missions that NASA sends to visit solar system destinations.

It was the Hubble Space Telescope that allowed for last year's record-breaking New Horizons flyby of a Kuiper Belt object now dubbed Arrokoth. That object wasn't discovered until long after the spacecraft launched; it was Hubble images that spotted it and determined it could be a good target for the mission's second act.

"It's been a superb solar-system explorer and it will continue to be as long as it's working," Hammel said. "I'm a lifetime Hubble-hugger."

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels . Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook .
New Delhi, Jan 6 : Tightening its vigil, the RBI on Monday revised the Supervisory Action Framework (SAF) for urban cooperative banks to ensure expeditious resolution of financial stress being faced by some of them with the apex bank to place them under supervision if net NPAs exceed 6 pr cent.

Depending upon the severity of the stress, the central bank may ask them to curtail their lending powers, among other safeguards.

An urban cooperative bank could also be placed under SAF when it incurs losses for two consecutive financial years or has accumulated losses on its balance-sheet. The RBI's trigger is the mess at the PMC Bank recently.

Further, issue of show cause notice for cancellation of banking license may be considered by the RBI "when continued normal functioning of the UCB is no longer considered to be in the interest of its depositors/public", the notification said.

"Supervisory action already taken under the earlier SAF will be reviewed and revised instructions, if any, will be issued to the UCBs concerned," it added.

Following the exposure of scam in the PMC Bank, which has over 9.15 lakh depositors, the RBI imposed restrictions on withdrawals.

A UCB may also be placed under SAF when its CRAR falls below 9 per cent. Depending on the severity of stress, the RBI may take one or more of the actions - advising the UCB to submit a Board-approved Action Plan for increasing the CRAR to 9 per cent or above within 12 months, advising the Board of Directors of the UCB to review the progress under the Action Plan on a quarterly/monthly basis and submit the post-review progress report to the RBI.

This may also need reduction in exposure limits for fresh loans and advances and restriction on fresh loans and advances carrying risk-weights beyond the specified limit. Restriction on expansion of size of the balance sheet can also be applied.

Restriction on fresh borrowings, except for meeting temporary liquidity mismatches, could follw as a plan and prohibition on sanction/disbursal of fresh loans and advances other than loans against collateral security of term deposits/NSCs/KVPs/insurance policies.

Prohibition on expansion of size of the deposits is also an RBI formula to check the UCBs.
US President Donald Trump has warned Iran of "major retaliation" if Tehran carries out any attack against America to avenge the killing of top military commander Qasem Soleimani and hinted at striking its cultural sites.

His statement came hours after Iran announced it will no longer abide by the limits contained in the 2015 landmark nuclear deal.

Maj Gen Soleimani, 62, the head of Iran's elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was killed when a US drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the Baghdad International Airport early on Friday. The strike also killed the deputy chief of Iraq's powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force.

Soleimani's killing was the most dramatic escalation yet in spiralling tensions between Iran and the US.

Trump, on his way to the White House from Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after spending his Christmas and New Year vacation, told reporters abroad Air Force One: "If it happens it happens. If they do anything there will be major retaliation".

"They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn't work that way," Trump said in response to a question.

Meanwhile, Trump spoke to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

"The two leaders discussed the current situation in Iraq and Iran and reaffirmed the close alliance between the two countries," the White House said.

On Saturday night, Trump warned that the US will target 52 sites in Iran some of which are "at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture" if the Islamic republic attacks American personnel or assets.

Responding to Trump's remarks, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said targeting cultural sites was a 'war crime'.

Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Khamenei has vowed a revenge against the killing of his general, saying "severe revenge awaits the criminals" behind the attack.

Soleimani was widely seen as the second most powerful figure in Iran behind the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His Quds Force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, reported directly to the Ayatollah Khamenei and he was hailed as a heroic national figure.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dr Joseph Garcia Delivers New Year's Message

In his New Year's Message, Deputy Chief Minister and Leader of the Liberal Party The Hon Dr Joseph Garcia MP says that Gibraltar will emerge successful whatever happens.

"Gibraltar, together with the United Kingdom, will leave the European Union at the end of this month. This will mark the end of an era. It will bring to a close some 46 years of membership of the club and will open the door to new opportunities elsewhere.

This was not the route that the people of Gibraltar chose in 2016, nor is it the preferred option of the Government or the Parliament of Gibraltar.

However, we must now rise to the challenge.

PHASE ONE  UK BILATERALS

You will recall that we worked very hard in Government to protect the position of Gibraltar in view of a potential EU exit. The first phase entailed a bilateral negotiation with the United Kingdom in order to ensure that we ring-fenced the existing access to the UK market of our financial services and on-line gaming companies. There were also agreements on student fees and on health.

PHASE TWO  EU EXIT

Phase two were the actual negotiations for the departure of the UK and Gibraltar from the European Union. We managed to successfully navigate those waters with skill, common sense, determination and tact.

Gibraltar met with all the Member States of the European Union as part of that process. We met with Spain also at a time when the Partido Popular was in power and when Mr Margallo had been replaced by Mr Dastis in the Foreign Ministry.

This phase ended with Gibraltar included in the UK/EU Withdrawal Agreement. It was a considerable achievement. A framework of four Memoranda of Understanding and a Tax Treaty flowed from the Gibraltar Protocol to the Agreement. This framework will protect the positon of Gibraltar when we exit at the end of this month.

The Memoranda provide for the creation of a number of Committees in which Gibraltar will be represented together with the United Kingdom, the European Union and Spain. The preparatory work for the establishment of these Committees will start in Madrid later this month.

There is provision for these Committees to come to an end on 31 December 2020 at the same time as the transitional period.

TRANSITION

This framework also means that Gibraltar will form a part of the transitional period together with the United Kingdom. This was again an important achievement.

A transition will ensure that nothing much will change on a day-to-day basis for the ordinary citizen. However, the UK will become a third country, will lose all its MEPs from the moment of departure, will lose its judge in the European Court of Justice and its seat and vote in the Council.

The transition will come to an end on 31 December 2020. There is a possibility to extend this until the end of 2022, but the UK Government intends to legislate against this happening.

Gibraltar will need to legislate also. We have been shadowing the UK legislative process and have already adopted our own European Union (Withdrawal) Act. This month we will introduce the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act into the Gibraltar Parliament. It follows the passing of this legislation at Second Reading in the House of Commons where it will now move forward to Committee Stage.

Our Parliament has already made provision for the voluntary implementation of EU legislation in Gibraltar, to match EU standards where we wish to in certain areas, even though there will no longer be an obligation to do so once we are out.

We are conscious of the fresh mandate we received from the electorate, both in terms of our handling of Brexit so far and in terms of our ability to deal with any future challenges to come. Led by the Chief Minister, the Attorney General, the Financial Secretary and I, supported by other officials, will once again bat for Gibraltar. I want to congratulate the Attorney General on the award of a well-deserved CMG from HM The Queen.

PHASE THREE  THE FUTURE

The third phase will open as from 1 February when the UK and the EU will start negotiations on a future relationship. The UK has made it clear that it will be negotiating for the whole British family of nations, including Gibraltar. Indeed, the Gibraltar Government has been fully involved with UK officials in preparatory talks on the future for many months now.

There will obviously be a need to talk to the EU and to Spain, our nearest EU neighbour, as we work our way through this process. The meetings we held for the exit negotiations were held in a largely positive and constructive spirit. We met Spanish officials here in Gibraltar, in London, in Brussels and also in Madrid. There was variable geometry for these discussions with different formats depending on the subject matter. This worked to produce an outcome that protected Gibraltar.

All sides must now work to ensure that our departure from the European Union does not impact negatively on citizens or businesses wherever they may be based.

NO DEAL BETTER THAN A BAD DEAL

The clock is ticking for the UK and EU to conclude a future trade agreement before the end of the year. Gibraltar has no manufacturing industry, we have no agriculture and no fishing industry.

We will therefore need to examine very carefully the contents of any future UK/EU agreements in order to determine their relevance.

Moreover, there is always the possibility that we could be asked to pay an unacceptable political price in order to enjoy any benefits.

The Chief Minister has already made it clear that no deal is better than a bad deal. Gibraltar must be ready to walk away from the negotiations if we have to.

In those circumstances, the no deal planning that has consumed us for many months will stand us in good stead.

It will be recalled that we were supposed to have left the EU on 31 March 2019, then on 12 April 2019, then on 31 October 2019 and now finally on 31 January 2020. This all led to detailed contingency planning which we expect to continue as a prudent precaution. The structures we established will remain in place and the invaluable data and experience of the last two years will be put to good use.

Indeed, in that no deal context, it is true to say that we have left no stone unturned and we have dealt with whatever issues were in our control. It is quite simply impossible to have done more.

As this new phase opens, the intensity and the pace will pick up once again. It is not in Gibraltars interests to provide a blow-by-blow account in public of everything that happens. At the same time, we do need to be conscious of political mischief-making on the part of others outside Gibraltar

during that sensitive period. The Government has already pledged to keep the Opposition parties in the Brexit Select Committee of the Gibraltar Parliament fully informed of developments.

NEW MARKETS

As we leave the European Union, and having secured our major market which is the United Kingdom, 2020 will see us turn our eyes to new markets and opportunities elsewhere. The Government was delighted with the establishment of trade associations with the United States AMCHAM and with Israel GIBRAEL. We also welcome and support the Gibraltar Morocco Business Association as a step towards encouraging greater commercial links with our closest non-EU neighbour.

We will turn to the Commonwealth too. The Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council have already agreed to open an office in Gibraltar, with the full support of the Government. The High Commissioners of Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand to the United Kingdom have all visited since the 2016 referendum. That work with the organisations and members of the Commonwealth will continue throughout 2020.

VOTE OF CONFIDENCE

The vote of confidence you gave us in October means that we also have a full and exciting manifesto to deliver at the same time as we deal with events outside our borders. This is a four-year programme of Government. Our record of implementation in this area is second to none.

Government policy reflects our manifesto commitment to commemorate important events in our history. Indeed, this is what we did with the wartime evacuation, the 1967 referendum and the closing of the border in 1969. This is particularly important for the younger generations of Gibraltarians. We are convinced that knowledge of the past is the key to the future.

There are important commemorations this year too. The Government has announced a Bank Holiday to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day. On 8 May 1945 the Allied Powers formally accepted the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. Gibraltar played its part in this struggle against tyranny. Not least in the evacuation of the civilian population in 1940, 80 years ago this year, and in Operation Torch, the Allied offensive in North Africa. We are truly proud of our long and historic association with our armed forces, which are the armed forces of the United Kingdom, and indeed, also with those of the United States.

The National Archives will be holding an exhibition this year to coincide with the anniversary of VE Day which will highlight the Gibraltar connection and contribution towards this important global event.

2020 will also mark 70 years from the date when a Legislative Council was established in Gibraltar. This was an important constitutional step forward in the evolution of Gibraltarian self-government which was achieved despite opposition from the then Prime Minister Clement Attlee. This year also marks 190 years of the formal establishment in 1830 of the Supreme Court.

The infamous Lisbon Agreement of 1980 will be 40 years old this year. This generated considerable controversy in Gibraltar since it implicitly linked sovereignty negotiations with the re-opening of the land border by Spain.

We must all learn the lessons of the past. Our long and turbulent history over centuries of battles, sieges, bombardments, political pressure, restrictions and blockades have made us resilient and determined. We have become a product of that past and of that shared common experience. That is what makes a people. This background will always stand us in good stead.

And so, as we prepare to leave the European Union, we should now look forward to the new opportunities that a new focus on the wider world beyond will bring.

You can rest assured that with skill, determination and perseverance, Gibraltar will emerge successful from this latest phase in our historical and political evolution - whatever happens.

I take this opportunity to wish you all a peaceful, restful, happy and prosperous 2020."
Christian Buhl became the CEO of Geberit AG (VTX:GEBN) in 2015. First, this article will compare CEO compensation with compensation at other large companies. Next, we'll consider growth that the business demonstrates. And finally we will reflect on how common stockholders have fared in the last few years, as a secondary measure of performance. The aim of all this is to consider the appropriateness of CEO pay levels.

Check out our latest analysis for Geberit

How Does Christian Buhl's Compensation Compare With Similar Sized Companies?

According to our data, Geberit AG has a market capitalization of CHF20b, and paid its CEO total annual compensation worth CHF2.5m over the year to December 2018. While this analysis focuses on total compensation, it's worth noting the salary is lower, valued at CHF932k. We note that more than half of the total compensation is not the salary; and performance requirements may apply to this non-salary portion. We took a group of companies with market capitalizations over CHF7.8b, and calculated the median CEO total compensation to be CHF4.8m. Once you start looking at very large companies, you need to take a broader range, because there simply aren't that many of them.

Most shareholders would consider it a positive that Christian Buhl takes less in total compensation than the CEOs of most other large companies, leaving more for shareholders. While this is a good thing, you'll need to understand the business better before you can form an opinion.

You can see a visual representation of the CEO compensation at Geberit, below.

SWX:GEBN CEO Compensation, January 6th 2020

Is Geberit AG Growing?

Over the last three years Geberit AG has grown its earnings per share (EPS) by an average of 7.5% per year (using a line of best fit). Revenue was pretty flat on last year.

I'd prefer higher revenue growth, but I'm happy with the modest EPS growth. It's clear the performance has been quite decent, but it it falls short of outstanding,based on this information. Shareholders might be interested in this free visualization of analyst forecasts.

Story continues

Has Geberit AG Been A Good Investment?

Boasting a total shareholder return of 44% over three years, Geberit AG has done well by shareholders. This strong performance might mean some shareholders don't mind if the CEO were to be paid more than is normal for a company of its size.

In Summary...

It appears that Geberit AG remunerates its CEO below most large companies.

Christian Buhl is paid less than what is normal at large companies, and the total shareholder return has been pleasing over the last three years. So, while it might be nice to have better EPS growth, on our analysis the CEO compensation is quite modest. Shareholders may want to check for free if Geberit insiders are buying or selling shares.

Arguably, business quality is much more important than CEO compensation levels. So check out this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.



We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
Mining remains one of the major contributors to the South African economy. In 2019, the mining industry saw a number of exciting developments. More interesting developments lie ahead.

additional

At the Investing In African Mining Indaba, held in Cape Town in February 2019, the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe, announced his departments intention to split the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, 2002 (MPRDA) into two separate pieces of legislation: one focusing on minerals and the other, on upstream petroleum resources (i.e. oil and gas). It will be interesting to see how the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) implements these changes.Fresh from the publishing of the latest version of the Mining Charter in 2018, communities again became a focal point. Two court cases were decided to shed more light on the role of communities in mining. These cases explore the tension that exists between land rights and the right to mine, which is promoted by the MPRDA. Both judgments affirm the link between the dignity of African communities and the land  which is considered to be their most treasured possession.In, the Constitutional Court decided that communities with land rights protected by the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act, 1996 (IPLRA) were deprived of their informal land rights by the award of a mining right. This deprivation requires the consent of the informal land right holders (i.e. the community) as required by the IPLRA in order for any mining to take place.Closely following thejudgment (about a month later), the High Court decided on the Xolobeni community case in. In this case, the Court found that communities which fell within the ambit of the IPLRA were afforded broader protection than common law landowners when it came to mining rights under the MPRDA. Essentially, the IPLRA imposes anobligation on the Minister to seek the consent of the community before granting a mining right. At the 2019 Mining Indaba, the Minister expressed concern that this interferes with the Ministers authority to consider mining title applications and affords these communities with decision-making powers on mining title applications.In light of these two cases, and the contemplated amendments to the MPRDA, we may see communities informal land rights being recognised in the new laws. However, the DMRE needs to clarify what constitutes a community and which communities should be consulted by a mining company seeking to start mining operations on the land.Beneficiation remains a topical issue. The National Treasury published the(or what some call the Economic Growth Plan) which reaffirms governments aim to promote beneficiation. However, neither the Economic Growth Plan, the proposed MPRDA Amendment Bill nor the MPRDA itself, specify how this beneficiation will be achieved.It is difficult to be optimistic about this renewed effort to promote beneficiation of minerals as there are still many hurdles in the way. It takes a stable electricity supply, the right expertise and skillset, and incentives from government, to grow a globally competitive beneficiation industry. South Africa is lacking in all three of these support pillars.So, while the envisaged outcome of beneficiation may stimulate economic growth and lead to job creation, without the necessary infrastructure and commitment from the state, a well-functioning minerals beneficiation industry in South Africa remains an optimistic dream.
"Yesterday's attack was an organised attack by goons of RSS and ABVP. Since past four-five days, violence was being promoted on the campus by some RSS-affiliated professors and ABVP," she said at a press conference here.Recalling incidents of Sunday evening, she said, "We were having tea when we came to know that there is again a group of people who had gathered at Ganga Dhaba with sticks and rods"."JNUSU representatives were informed. The office bearers discussed the issue. We decided that police should be immediately informed about it," she said.Ghosh claimed that text message and WhatsApp message were sent to police officers with appeals for immediate intervention."I had personal communication with police half an hour after that (text message). They gave an assurance that the hooligans have been removed. But at 6:30 pm a mob of 60-70 people began beating students without mercy. People in black masks came, students began to run here and there to save their lives," she claimed.Ghosh said she began moving towards her hostel when she was targeted."We were surrounded by 30 people. The first iron rod hit my head. Till then I had been shouting at them that you cannot do like this and asking them to go away. I and my friend were hit with an iron rod and we both fell down. After that, we were punched. They were carrying hammers. I cannot even explain how frightening it was. They were about to literally lynch us there. They were abusing us and saying we will be cut to pieces, she alleged.Ghosh said some people identified them and they heard the attackers saying "these people were not to be beaten". She was later taken to AIIMS trauma centre.She also alleged that there was "a nexus" between the attackers and internal security of JNU."They were present at every place where violence took place. Whenever we asked for security, they did nothing other than saying -- `what can we do, don't fight amongst yourselves'.She alleged the attack was "an an attempt to murder"."We consider University as our second home. JNU is our home and will be so. RSS people cannot snatch our home from us," she said.Ghosh said that JNU culture of debate and discussion will not be eroded.She also sought removal of Vice-Chancellor."If the VC had moral ethics, then he would have resigned. If he has not, we will ensure his removal. The VC must resign himself or if he is not resigning, the Human Resource Development Ministry must ensure that he is removed from his position," she said. (ANI)
The successful U.S. drone strike against a top-level Iranian enemy combatant responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans has roused the Democrats, their media mouthpieces, and Hollywood haters to defend the terrorist and vilify President Trump. With their responses to the annihilation of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Trump-haters have officially joined Iran's "Death to America" war against the United States.

For the record, Soleimani wasn't in Iraq last week to take in the sights or recite his poetry. President Trump made it clear in a post-strike address to the nation that the target was there coordinating a military operation against American troops and diplomats. This didn't stop everyone from Bernie Sanders to CNN to PBS to the New York Times to a mentally disturbed, washed-up actress from declaring their bleeding-heart support for Iran's "most revered military leader."



Credit: Calvin Gordon Dodge on Facebook.

According to CBS, Soleimani was an "inspirational military genius." CNN's Anderson Cooper compared him to France's WWII hero, Charles de Gaulle, while his cohort, Fareed Zakaria, described the now defunct General Soleimani as "heroic," "brave," and "revered." The New Yorker depicted Soleimani as a "flamboyant former construction worker with snowy white hair, a dapper beard and arching salt-and-pepper eyebrows" who rose to power in 1998 as the head of the Quds Force, "an Iranian unit of commandos comparable to the U.S. SEALs, Delta Force and Rangers combined."

The air strike that killed Soleimani and several others early on Friday also prompted Peoples World, the official newspaper of the Communist Party USA, to stand in solidarity with Democrats in their opposition to the military action. In a compilation of various reactions from Democratic presidential hopefuls and their colleagues, the CPUSA writer agrees with the Democrats that Trump is to blame for any impending retaliation, not Iran.

Joe Biden stated that Trump "just launched a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox." Senator Bernie Sanders lamented the fact that members of the Democrat Party along with the GOP voted to pass the annual war budget bill last month after anti-Iran war provisions were stripped out of it. "I was right about Vietnam. I was right about Iraq. I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran and I apologize to no one," said Sanders. Pelosi called Trump's decision "disproportionate and provocative." Senator Tom Udall (D-Utah) said the killing of Soleimani was "a reckless escalation of hostilities" and put us "on the brink of an illegal war with Iran."

In addition to politicians, presidential candidates, and media pundits siding with Iran, Hollywood liberals jumped on the ayatollah train. A 46-year-old impaired-looking actress named Rose McGowan tweeted out an apology to Iran, saying, "[T]he United States is morally corrupt and acts illegally. It is only logical to appeal to Iran's pride by apologizing." Actor John Cusack said Trump's actions were "full fascist 101 mode."

The perpetually race-obsessed Nike spokesperson, Colin Kaepernick, tweeted: "America has always sanctioned and besieged Black and Brown bodies both at home and abroad. America militarism is the weapon wielded by American imperialism, to enforce its policing and plundering of the non white world."

How long before we see Kaepernick peddling Soleimani Nike sneakers?

The traitorous left in this country are openly aiding the enemies of America. Quoting President Trump, "these people are sick."
The leaders of Germany, France and Britain on Sunday urged Iran to drop measures that go against the 2015 nuclear deal, after Tehran announced it would no longer abide by a limit on enrichment.

"We call on Iran to withdraw all measures that are not in line with the nuclear agreement," German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British PM Boris Johnson said in a joint statement.

The 2015 agreement negotiated between Iran and the UN Security Council permanent members -- Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany offered Tehran relief from stinging sanctions in return for curbs to prevent it acquiring nuclear weapons.

But US President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the deal last year had largely left it in tatters, with Iran in turn progressively dropping key commitments in the accord.

With tensions rising following the US drone strike at Baghdad airport that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and top Iraqi military figure Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the European leaders also urged Iran to refrain from taking "further violent actions or support for them."



"It is crucial now to de-escalate. We call on all the players involved to show utmost restraint and responsibility." The European leaders also pleaded with the parties to not jeopardise a battle against IS jihadists, after the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution demanding that thousands of US troops be ousted.

"Preserving the (anti-IS) coalition is of great importance in this context. We call on the Iraqi authorities to continue to provide the coalition with the necessary support," they said.

The US soldiers stationed across Iraqi bases are deployed as part of the broader international coalition, invited by the Iraqi government in 2014 to help fight IS.

The joint statement issued by the three leaders came hours after they spoke on the phone.

Earlier Sunday, a German government spokesman said the three leaders agreed to cooperate towards reducing tensions in the region.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The assassination of Qassem Soleimani has capsized Iraqi politics in the most dangerous of ways, making it possible that the country will be plunged once again into a state of permanent crisis and war from which it has escaped in the last two years.

President Trump is threatening sanctions against Iraq if it expels the 5,200 US military personnel in the country, while the Iraqi parliament has passed a non-binding resolution demanding the eviction of foreign troops after what it sees as a flagrant breach of Iraqi sovereignty.

Some commentators draw comfort from the fact that any official move by the Iraqi government to kick out US troops is far down the road and so, consequently, are any countermeasures by Mr Trump.

In reality, the crisis over the presence of US troops on the ground in Iraq is already with us and will get worse. The US troops returned to Iraq in 2014 to combat Isis after it captured Mosul and was advancing on Baghdad. The US forces provided logistics, intelligence and, crucially, helped orchestrate US air support for Iraqi soldiers and paramilitaries fighting Isis. These anti-Isis forces consist of the Iraqi army and the Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilisation Forces, the Shia paramilitary umbrella group, whose fighters are paid by the Iraqi government and headed by a senior Iraqi government official. Many of these paramilitary groups have Iranian links or are under Iranian control.

From the moment that a US drone killed General Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of the powerful Kataib Hezbollah group, the priority for US troops in Iraq changed. It was no longer to pursue Isis and prevent its resurgence, but to defend its highly vulnerable bases from possible attack by Shia paramilitaries. This immediately relieved pressure on Isis which is trying to stage a comeback. The biggest cheer in Iraq after the US drone strike last Friday will have come from Isis commanders in their isolated bolt-holes in the desert and mountains of Iraq and Syria.

US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Show all 35 1 /35 US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures This photo released by the Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office shows a burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, early Friday 3 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures The wreckage of the car in which general Soleimani was travelling when a targeted US airstrike struck outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January Ahmad Al Mukhtar via Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Demonstrators burn the US and British flags during a protest in Tehran after general Soleimani was killed in a targeted airstrike by American forces Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike. The Pentagon said Thursday that the US military has killed general Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, at the direction of Donald Trump AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn Israeli and US flags as thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of general Soleimani at the hands of America EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of Donald Trump pray at an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event held on the day following the killing of general Soleimani. At the event, the president praised the "flawless strike that eliminated the terrorist ringleader" AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A huge procession of mourners gather in Baghdad for the funeral of general Soleimani on 4 January AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani during an anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iraqis perform a mourning prayer for slain major general Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Great Mosque of Kufa AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A billboard reading 'Death to America and Israel', installed by Iran-backed shiite armed groups at a street in Jadriyah district in Baghdad, Iraq EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him visiting the family of Soleiman KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Thousands of Iranians take to the streets in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US flag as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammed Jalal Feiruznia, looks to a portrait of Soleimani, as he receives condolences at the Iranian embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures People make their way on the street while a screen on the wall of a cinema shows a portrait Soleimani in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Aziz Asmar, one of two Syrian painters who completed a mural following the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani poses next to his creation in the rebel-held Syrian town of Dana in the northwestern province of Idlib AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A demonstration in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures An anti-US demonstration to condemn the killing of Soleimani, after Friday prayers in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Mujtaba al-Husseini, the representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivers a speech in the holy shrine city of Najaf AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shiite Muslims burn a mock of a US and Israeli flags as they hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, outside the US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters demonstrate in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims hold pictures of General Qasem Soleimani during a protest against the USA, in Peshawar, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters, holding a photograph of the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran Massoud Rajavi, outside Downing Street in London PA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Protesters burn a US flag in Tehran AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A Syrian man offers sweets to children to mark the killing AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers attend a mourning prayer for Soleimani in Iran's capital Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Kashmiri Shiite Muslims shout anti American and anti Israel slogans during a protest AP US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshipers chant slogans during Friday prayers Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures A protest against the USA, in Islamabad, Pakistan EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranians burn a US flag in Tehran EPA US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin, Germany Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Germany (NWRI) protest outside Iran's embassy in Berlin Reuters US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian worshippers in Tehran AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Vehicles of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol a road in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila near the border with Israel. Following morning's killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for the missile strike by Israel's closest ally, to be avenged AFP via Getty US airstrike kills Iran's Qassem Soleimani: Fallout in pictures Iranian women take to the streets in Tehran EPA

The US bases in Iraq are in fact more usually compounds within Iraqi military facilities. This means that from day one the US troops there are close to being hostages surrounded by potentially hostile Iraqis. Iraqi security units made no effort to protect the US embassy in the Green Zone in Baghdad last week. Even if the compounds are not directly assaulted or subjected to rocket fire, self-protection will be their priority.

Mr Trump, supported by Boris Johnson, has justified the killing of Soleimani by pretending that his sole role in Iraq was to organise attacks on US and British forces. But the real history of the relations between the US and Iran since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 has in fact been a strange mixture of rivalry and cooperation. This is not obvious because the cooperation was largely covert and the rivalry explicit. Iraqis, whose leaders balanced nervously between Washington and Tehran, used to say of them: They wave their fist at each other over the table and shake hands under it.

This contradictory approach stretches back 30 years: the US and Iran both vied to be the predominant foreign power in Iraq, but they also had dangerous enemies in common. The US had not finished off Saddam Hussein after his defeat in Kuwait in 1991, because they feared that his fall would open the door to Iranian influence. Washington changed its mind on this in due course and, by the end of the 1990s the CIA and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards both had bases in Salahudin in Iraqi Kurdistan that publicly ignored each others existence, but communicated privately through third parties.

Rivalry intensified after the US became the dominant power in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But in the long term both countries wanted a stable Shia government in power in Baghdad and realised that this could only happen if both the US and Iran agreed on Iraqi leaders acceptable to each other. Nouri al-Maliki was the choice of the US ambassador in Baghdad to be Iraqi prime minister in 2006 in the knowledge that Iran would approve  the British ambassador of the day objected and was shown the door.

This same system of joint decision-making at distance produced Malikis successor, Haider al-Abadi in 2014 and the current prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, in 2018. The same convenient US-Iran arrangement decided the appointment of other senior officials, such as President Barham Salih, who was long close to the Americans, but was the surprising choice of Iran.

The common interest of these two outside powers was particularly close when Isis was at the peak of its strength between 2014 and 2017. The links were weakened by the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, damaged further by his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, and finally destroyed by the assassination of General Soleimani.

A great danger in the present crisis is that Mr Trump and his advisers know even less about Iraq than did George W Bush and Tony Blair in 2003. For instance, a problem about attacking the pro-Iranian Shia paramilitary groups is that they are part of the Iraqi state. The Iraqi interior minister always belongs to the Badr Organisation, a pro-Iranian grouping. The military muscle of the Iraqi security forces, which the US is in Iraq to support, comes in part from such groups with whom the US has just gone to war.

It is not a war that the US is likely to win, but it will inevitably reduce Iraq to chaos. Thanks to such confusion, with its enemies at each others throats, Isis may again take root and flourish. In the Islamic world, the killing of General Soleimani will be seen as not only anti-Iran, but anti-Shia. Everywhere conflicts are being stirred to life, of which Mr Trump knows nothing, but is about to find out.
In 2020 the abbreviation could mean that dates could easily be manipulated by adding extra number to change the date to a previous or future year. Photo: Getty

A US police department has warned that abbreviating the date 2020 on legal documents could lead to fraud in an online post that has since gone viral.

When the year 2020 is abbreviated on official forms and documents, scammers could easily doctor those numbers by adding two digits to the end, leaving unsuspecting people vulnerable to fraud, the post warned.

The post shared on the police departments Facebook (FB) page read: "When signing and dating legal documents, do not use 20 as the year 2020.

March 3rd, 2020 being written as 3/3/20 could be modified to 3/3/2017 or 3/3/2018.

Protect yourself. Do not abbreviate 2020."

READ MORE: War of words over HS2 as expert claims costs 'out of control'

The original post, by George E Moore Law Office, LLC, has been shared over 58,000 times.

It is common practice when dating documents to simply use the last two numbers of the year  for example, 30/12/19 meaning 30 December 2019.

However, in 2020, this abbreviation could mean that dates could easily be manipulated by adding extra number to change the date to a previous or future year, such as 2019 or 2021.

The advice has been met with mixed responses.

One Facebook user commented: "Its good advice ... But its not new with this decade.

"Its always true. If you sign 3/7/19 it could be modified to 3/7/1999 or whatever."

READ MORE: 21,000 UK retail jobs axed in 2019 as household names collapsed

However, others suggested that there was more danger in a date being altered to a more recent year or even changed to a future date.

"Changing 19 to 1999 isn't the same as changing something from 20 to 2019 or 2021.

I know there are a lot of 'experts' commenting here but there are also a lot of scammers waiting for an opportunity like this," another Facebook user posted.

In the UK, though, no such warnings have been issued by the police nor any fraud concerns raised.
New Delhi: The Congress Monday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of spearheading the violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday evening in which 26 people, including students and teachers, were injured.

Former MP and Congress leader Udit Raj alleged that Delhi BJPs local unit leaders were shouting slogans and instigating violence on the campus.

At a press conference addressed by Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala and senior party leaders, Udit Raj named six people from the Delhi BJP who were shouting slogans such as Mar saalo ko (beat them up) and instigating violence.

Raj, a former BJP MP from North West Delhi who joined the Congress before 2019 Lok Sabha elections, alleged that former BJP MLA RK Puram Anil Sharma, former BJP district president of Mehrauli Azad Singh along with four other partys Mehrauli unit members were present outside JNU on Sunday evening.

I have a video where they are shouting slogans wanpanthiyo gundo ko.. maro goli (shoot the leftist goons). I was witness to this for three hours. They can be seen shouting slogans and leading the mob of 100-150 people. There is no doubt who went inside. They were hitting on the gate and were trying to enter the campus. But the police remained mute spectators, Raj alleged.

When contacted, Sharma and Singh admitted that they were outside the varsity gate but refuted Rajs claim. Sharma said he had reached around 8pm after he heard the news of violence.

Both the BJP leaders said they were there just like all leaders of other political parties. Yogendra Yadav, D Raja and other political leaders were also there. I had gone there as the campus is in the adjoining assembly constituency. He (Raj) should show one proof that we were involved in the violence or were instigating people, we are ready for the harshest punishment. We were trying to pacify people, Sharma said. He said he reached the campus around 8pm.

Singh, too, challenged Raj to place proof in public domain. We got reports that ABVP students were beaten up. We were concerned and that is why we went to the varsity. There were other political leaders present there too. Raj should show the proof that we were there, Singh said.

Addressing media persons, Surjewala said the JNU administration was complicit in the attack on campus. The police were mute spectators as goons damaged ambulances outside and beating up students on the campus. These goons belong to the BJP and its frontal student wing ABVP. This was happening with the tacit support of home minister Amit Shah.

The manner in which youths and students are being attacked and their voices stifled, reminds us of the Nazi Germany of 1933, which seems to have come back under the rule of Modi and Shah, Surjewala said.

When asked about the allegations levelled by the Congress against BJP leaders, deputy commissioner of police southwest Devender Arya said, As and when we get a complaint in this regard, we will investigate. People from both sides were present outside the gate. Police ensured that no damage to person was cause inside and outside (the campus). We successfully managed the situation.
Aligarh/Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh) [India], Jan 6 (ANI): A day after the violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), police was put on alert in Uttar Pradesh and additional forces were deployed at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and Banaras Hindu University (BHU).



Additional forces were seen outside both the varsities.

AMU Public Relation Officer Omar Saleem Peerzada announced that the winter vacation of the varsity will be extended in view of the prevailing situation.

This comes as AMU students took out a candle march in support of the JNU students who were assaulted on Sunday evening and demanded action against the accused.

More than 18 students of the university, including JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, were injured and were taken to the AIIMS Trauma Centre after a masked mob entered the varsity and attacked them and professors with sticks and rods. (ANI)


An unusual act of rebellion took place on Place de l'Europe around 7 am this Monday morning - an intoxicated man lay down on the tram tracks.

Witnesses alerted the police but a pedestrian had already pulled the man from the tram tracks when officers arrived at the scene. The man represented a risk to himself and others and was consequently put in the police's drunk tank to sober up.

The man, however, had no intention of cooperating with the officers and started to resist the arrest and hurl insults at the police. He was brought under control and taken to the hospital for a medical check-up. He continued to resist police and headbutted one of the officers. He was eventually put into the drunk tank and a formal complaint was lodged.

He was not the only drunk person to resist police: on Sunday night, an inebriated bus passenger refused to get off the bus.

When officers eventually managed to convince him to get off the vehicle, he started being aggressive and shouting at pedestrians. He also spent the rest of the night in the cells to sober up.

Around 4 am, another drunk individual decided to riot inside a pub and, once outside, started to throw stones at the building. His drunken escapade also ended inside the drunk tank.
The international response was indeed collective, a near-universal eruption of outrage and dismay at the loss. At the United Nations, after the Taliban announced its intent to destroy the statues, representatives of countries from around the world, Muslim and Christian alike, spoke of the Talibans intent as barbaric, and condemned the threatened vandalism. After the deed was done, and the ancient statues were reduced to rubble, the event defined the Taliban as an outlaw regime, uncivilized and evil. The fundamentalist religious government had committed countless outrages against its own people, especially women, but the destruction of the statues at Bamian created a monumental symbol of its barbarism that was somehow more tangible, more communicable, more purely distilled than its myriad acts of interpersonal cruelty. Fourteen years later, the Islamic States destruction at Palmyra did much the same work of branding, defining the cruel so-called caliphate as an organization beyond all bounds.
Monika Monalisa By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: Mumbai has been the answer to a lot of dreams, and Belgian photographer Max Pinckers, it turned out to be a place of nirvana when he found the people of this city as his muse for his first book on India, The Fourth Wall in 2012.

Pinckers was in the city to talk about his love for photography and his work in India at Bangalore International Centre, Domlur.

Pinckers says he finds Indians kind towards people who work for art.

As a photographer, I find India a friendly place to work because people here, in my experience, love to be photographed. At all the places I have worked, people have had their apprehension towards being photographed, but here, its different, he says.

Pinckers recalls his first visit to India was with his mother when he was nine years old. He says he was too young to understand the connection he had with this country but soon, it became his favourite place.

Till now, the photographer from Brussels has come out with two books on India  The Fourth Wall (2012) and Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty (2014).

The first one revolves around life in Mumbai, while the second one is about the idea of romance in the 21st century.

I find it quite fascinating about how Bollywood actually influences the life of a Mumbaikar, says Pinckers, who confesses that he has not watched many Bollywood movies.

Being a professional photographer for 10 years, he likes to capture critically constructed moments, which are raw and real. While growing up, Pinckers never wanted to be a photographer.

When I was studying art at Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, group artists from different disciplines came together to come up with a project where I was the photographer. Since then, I have never stopped clicking pictures, says 32-year-old Pinckers, who later pursued Masters in photography from the same academy and is now a photographer, researcher and publisher.

Of the many awards he has received for his work, the last one was Leica Oskar Barnack Award for his series Red Ink, which was made in 2017 in North Korea for The New Yorker magazine.
Rebel forces in Libya say they have taken control of Sirte following what media reports describe as a rapid advance on the strategic coastal city.



The UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) has not yet commented on the January 6 announcement, which comes amid an offensive by the east-based forces loyal to General Khalifa Haftar to capture Tripoli.



The Libyan capital is the seat of the GNA.



Sirte has been controlled by GNA- aligned forces since fighters of the Islamic State extremist group were expelled in 2016.



Libya has been torn by violence since longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi was deposed and killed in 2011.



The North African country has two rival administrations, the UN-backed one based in Tripoli, and Haftar's one in the eastern city of Tobruk.



Reuters quoted an unidentified resident as saying that convoys of troops belonging to Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) could be seen inside Sirte.



"They control large parts of the city now. We also hear gunfire," the resident said.



The reports come a day after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced he had dispatched military elements to Libya to ensure stability for the GNA, after parliament approved the move last week.



Ankara has given no details about the scale of its military deployment, but Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on January 6 that Turkey would send military experts and technical teams, adding, "How and when this will happen is to be decided by the government, under the president's leadership."



The UN-backed government is supported by NATO-member Turkey and its ally Qatar.



Haftar is backed by the United Arab Emirates, and others, including what is believed to be a force of Russian private military contractors.



Also on January 6, the UN's Libya envoy said that a country supporting Haftar's forces was likely responsible for a deadly drone attack on a military academy in Tripoli.



Speaking after briefing the UN Security Council, Ghassan Salame called on foreign powers to "keep out of Libya."



At least 30 people were killed in the January 4 air strike.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, and the BBC
Officer Bryan Boone calling out of service for the last time Officer Bryan Boone retired Friday after 30 years with the GRPD. His wife, a dispatcher, made special arrangements to have his daughter, Katie, call him out of service for the last time. Posted by Grand Rapids Police Department on Saturday, January 4, 2020

GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Emotions were high Friday, Jan. 3, when Grand Rapids Police Officer Bryan Boone retired after 30 years of service to the department.

But it wasnt just because it was his last day.

On Saturday, the Grand Rapids Police Department shared a video on Facebook that showed Boone in his vehicle being surprised as he heard his daughters voice over the intercom.

On his special day, it was his 11-year-old, Katie, delivering his final radio call as a police officer.

Boones wife, Kristin, who is a dispatcher, made special arrangements to have their daughter call him out of service for the last time to commemorate his retirement.

It took me totally by surprise, Boone told MLive Sunday, Jan. 5. Made my eyes water.

In the Facebook video, Boone is seen calling over to dispatch under his number, 1611. Thats when Kristin Boone says she is going to turn it over to someone else.

My daughter, said a surprised Boone to a fellow officer.

Officers recorded Boone as he teared up when his daughter came over the intercom.

My dad and my hero, who Im so proud of, you are officially 1042 for the final time at Grand Rapids Police Department, I love you, Katie says in the video.

Boone began his career at the police department in 1986 as an intern while attending Grand Valley State University. He went through the Grand Valley Police Academy in 1989 and was hired at GRPD the following year.

He worked in the neighborhood patrol unit (now special response team), detective field unit, was a field training officer and finished his career on patrol.

All of those experiences taught him patience, he said.

It made me a better person, Boone said. You see so many different things, good and bad.

Over the past three decades, Boones fellow officers and co-workers at the department became a second family to him.

I spent, for a long time, many years, more time at work with your friends at work, than I did with my family and wife, Boone said.

Now that its done, I can spend time with my family, my kids, my grandchild. It was a bittersweet day.
PR-Inside.com: 2020-01-06 15:30:40

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PICKERING, ON / ACCESSWIRE / January 6, 2020 / Renforth Resources Inc. (CSE:RFR)(OTC Pink:RFHRF) ("Renforth" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that a total of $777,700 has been raised via the sale of common and flow through shares from treasury, this will fund drilling, to commence in January 2020, at Renforth's wholly owned New Alger Gold Property, located on the Cadillac Break in the Cadillac Mining Camp of Quebec's Abitibi.Funds were raised by the sale of 550,000 common share units priced at $0.05 per unit, with each unit consisting of one common share and one common share purchase warrant, each warrant entitling the holder to purchase a common share at a price of $0.075 for a period of 24 months from closing. In addition, 12,503,334 flow-through units, priced at $0.06 each, were sold, each unit consisting of one share issued on a flow-through basis and one common share purchase warrant, allowing the holder to purchase a common share for a period of 24 months after closing at an exercise price of $0.10.Renforth has commenced planning the January 2020 program, a follow up to the successful 2057m, 10 drill hole, November 2019 program which discovered a new gold bearing zone within the Cadillac Break at New Alger. Assay results from this program are still pending, however, this does not hold up planning the next program which will, in general terms, continue to advance westwards on the property.For further information please contact:Renforth Resources Inc.Nicole BrewsterPresident and Chief Executive OfficerT:416-818-1393E: nicole@ renforthresources.com #269 - 1099 Kingston Road, Pickering ON L1V 1B5ABOUT RENFORTHRenforth Resources Inc. is a Toronto-based gold exploration company with five wholly owned surface gold bearing properties located in the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario, Canada.In Quebec Renforth holds the New Alger and Parbec properties, in the Cadillac and Malartic gold camps respectively, with gold present at surface and to some depth, located on the Cadillac Break. In both instances additional gold bearing structures, other than the Cadillac Break, have been found on each property and require additional exploration. Renforth also holds Malartic West, contiguous to the western boundary of the Canadian Malartic Mine property, located in the Pontiac Sediments, this property is gold bearing and was the recent site of a copper discovery. In addition to this Renforth has optioned the wholly owned Denain-Pershing gold bearing property, located near Louvicourt, Quebec, to O3 Mining Inc.In Ontario Renforth holds the Nixon-Bartleman surface gold occurrence west of Timmins Ontario, drilled, channeled and sampled over 500m - this historic property also requires additional exploration to define the extent of the mineralization.No securities regulatory authority has approved or disapproved of the contents of this news release.Forward Looking StatementsThis news release contains forward-looking statements and information under applicable securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward looking. Forward-looking statements are frequently identified by such words as may', will', plan', expect', believe', anticipate', estimate', intend' and similar words referring to future events and results. Such statements and information are based on the current opinions and expectations of management. All forward-looking information is inherently uncertain and subject to a variety of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, including the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development, fluctuating commodity prices, the risks of obtaining necessary approvals, licenses and permits and the availability of financing, as described in more detail in the Company's securities filings available at www.sedar.com . Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements and the reader is cautioned against placing undue reliance thereon. Forward-looking information speaks only as of the date on which it is provided and the Company assumes no obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements except as required by applicable law.SOURCE: Renforth Resources Inc.
Lior Mizrahi/Getty

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trumps closest ally on the international stage, is walking on a tightrope in crafting his reaction to the American strike against Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.

On Sunday, for public consumption, Netanyahu issued a statement of praise, but restrained himself from the usual flourishes he indulges in when congratulating Trump, such as accompanying videos.

In a statement released by his office, Netanyahu said, Qassem Soleimani brought about the death of many American citizens and many other innocents in recent decades and at present. Soleimani initiated, planned and carried out many terrorist attacks throughout the Middle East and beyond.

President Trump is deserving of all esteem for taking determined, strong and quick action. I would like to reiterateIsrael fully stands alongside the US in the just struggle for security, peace and self-defense.

And that was it.

Netanyahu is in the thorniest moment of his turbulent, three-decade long career in politics. He is running for re-election after having failed to form a coalition government in two elections held in 2019. Last November, he became the first sitting Israeli prime minister to be accused of crimes, when he was indicted on three separate counts of corruption. In the fight for his political life, Netanyahu took the unprecedented step of requesting parliamentary immunity last Thursday.

Israel has previously been the target of terror attacks attributed to Iran, including the bombing of its embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, and several attacks in other countries in the past decade.

While the foreign ministry put all its embassies on high alert immediately following the assassination of Soleimani, the last thing Netanyahu wants is for Israelis to suspect the danger from Iran has grown since the 2018 American withdrawal from Syria, which Netanyahu championed and celebrated.

Two leaks from his security cabinet meeting on Monday helped sustain this aim, despite Iranian troops entrenchment along Israels northern border with Syria in recent years.

Story continues

On Monday, as the meeting ended, several ministers transmitted Netanyahus declaration distancing Israel from the Soleimani hit.

The assassination of Soleimani isnt an Israeli event but an American event. We were not involved and should not be dragged into it, he said, according to Israeli news outlets.

Simultaneously, journalists were told that security and intelligence officials who briefed the security cabinet told ministers there was no imminent threat of Iranian attacks against Israel following the Soleimani assassination.

With one exception, regarding the Kurds fighting in Syria after the withdrawal of American troops, Netanyahu has never distanced himself from Trump, though his thoughts about Iran have occasionally slipped out.

Last November, speaking at a graduation ceremony for army officers, he said, Irans brazenness in the region is increasing and even getting stronger in light of the absence of a response.

At the same time, Israels Channel 13 news reported that some weeks earlier, in a closed-door meeting, Netanyahu told cabinet members he believed Trump would not act against Iran until the 2020 elections were behind him.

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The United States can help. Too often it has viewed Iraq exclusively through the prism of U.S. policy toward Iran. The Trump administration should publicly state that it is committed to the sovereignty of Iraq, that the mission of U.S. and coalition troops is to train Iraqi security forces and help them protect the Iraqi people against a resurgent Islamic State, and that the United States will coordinate with the Iraqi government on matters involving U.S. troops.
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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced in a letter to House colleagues that the House will vote to limit Trumps war powers toward Iran.

Pelosi wrote in a letter provided to PoliticusUSA:

Last week, the Trump Administration conducted a provocative and disproportionate military airstrike targeting high-level Iranian military officials. This action endangered our service members, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran.

As Members of Congress, our first responsibility is to keep the American people safe. For this reason, we are concerned that the Administration took this action without the consultation of Congress and without respect for Congresss war powers granted to it by the Constitution.

This week, the House will introduce and vote on a War Powers Resolution to limit the Presidents military actions regarding Iran. This resolution is similar to the resolution introduced by Senator Tim Kaine in the Senate. It reasserts Congresss long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administrations military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days.

The House Resolution will be led by Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin. Congresswoman Slotkin is a former CIA and Department of Defense analyst specializing in Shia militias. She served multiple tours in the region under both Democratic and Republican Administrations.

I greatly appreciate the solemnity with which all of our Members are working to honor our responsibility to protect American lives and values.

The House currently has its largest number of female veterans in history (6). With each election cycle, more veterans of the wars in the Middle East are joining Congress. The upcoming vote was signaled last week.

The vote to limit Trumps power to start a war with Iran is why elections matter. A Republican House would have joined Mitch McConnell in rubber-stamping Trumps escalation with Iran.

There is separate legislation in the House and Senate to block Trumps funding for offensive military action against Iran, which is a direct action that the House could take without the Senate.

Democrats have power, and they are using it to do everything possible to block a Trump war with Iran.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.

Follow Jason Easley on Facebook
Sanctions pressure on Iraq will not have the desired effect, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas expressed such an opinion in an interview to Deutschlandfunk Radio.

"I do not think it is possible to convince Iraq by threats, but it can be convinced by arguments," Reuters quotes the diplomat as saying.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump warned the Iraqi authorities that if the US armed forces were forced to leave the country, Washington would impose against Baghdad "such sanctions that they had never seen before."
A man who got pulled over by the police was diagnosed with cancer on his penis after an officer became suspicious of a 'large bulge in his pants'.

The 39-year-old man, from West Virginia, went to a hospital after the police officer had picked up on the large growth in his groin.

There, a doctor's exam revealed he had a 'large cauliflower-like mass' covering his penis and the patient revealed it had ruined his sex life.

The gigantic growth was actually a rare type of penile cancer which is considered an STI because it is believed to be caused by HPV.

After extensive surgery and chemotherapy, the man recovered from his illness and doctors managed to keep his penis intact.

Doctors describe the tumours growing on the man's penis as 'cauliflower-like' (stock image)

Doctors from Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, published the tale in a medical case report which doesn't identify the patient.

The reason for him being stopped by the police was not revealed. It is unclear if the officers asked to physically see his growth or if he just told them about his ailment.

Dr Anthony El Khoury and colleagues released a graphic photograph of the tumour, showing how it had spread 'erratically and rapidly' all over his groin.

They said the man suffered from Buschke-Lowenstein tumour, 'an aggressive locally invading tumor that grows in a wart-like fashion'.

'BLT is characterized by it being a low-grade tumor,' the doctors wrote, meaning the cancer is not very aggressive or deadly. The medics did not reveal how long the growth had been there for.

A graphic image showed the tumour had grown to extend all over the man's groin and doctors said it had ruined his sex life

WHAT IS A BUSCHKE LOWENSTEIN TUMOUR? Buschke-Lowenstein tumour is a type of rare cancer which is also considered a sexually-transmitted disease. It usually affects the groin and anus and causes fast-growing wart-like lumps to grow. BLT is considered a low-grade cancer which means it usually does not spread aggressively or pose an immediate threat to life. It can spread in the pelvic area but it's rare for it to invade other parts of the body. It may stop people having sex or using the toilet properly. It's unclear how many people suffer from the disease but one study suggests it may affect one in 1,000 people (0.1 per cent) in the general population. The condition has been linked to HPV types 6 and 11, which are very common and also cause genital warts, but a cause has not been confirmed. BLT can usually be treated with surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. Sources: US Department of Health; Journal of Dermatological Case Reports Advertisement

'That, coupled with the sensitivity of the subject of male genitalia, makes the obvious choice of a [penis removal] not always suitable as a management plan as it highly impacts quality of life.'

They added: 'Like most patients, our patient wanted to fight for penile preservation.

'Their quality of life had been heavily impacted by the tumour especially since they had not experienced intimacy with their partners for years, due to their medical condition.'

BLT is poorly understood  it's thought to affect only around one in 1,000 people and has been linked to HPV types 6 and 11, which are extremely common and cause genital warts, in scientific studies.

Many cases would be treated before they became as bad as this one.

Doctors started the man's treatment by giving him chemotherapy to try and shrink the tumours.

They then did two rounds of surgery to slice the cauliflower-like growths off his penis, and said it was tricky because they were so close to his urethra.

They then gave him more chemotherapy, during which he suffered weight loss, anorexia, joint pain and nerve pain in his legs, to stop the tumours from growing back.

A photograph showed the man's penis looked normal after surgery and he now has 'consistent follow-up' to make sure the cancer doesn't return.

The paper was published in the medical journal Urology Case Reports.
The European Union has launched a probe into how Google and Facebook gather, process, use and monetize data for advertising purposes.

The European Commission, the EUs executive arm, on Monday told CNBC that it has begun distributing questionnaires as part of a preliminary investigation into Googles and Facebooks data practices.

We use data to make our services more useful and to show relevant advertising, and we give people the controls to manage, delete or transfer their data, Google said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by spokesperson Jose Casteneda. We will continue to engage with the Commission and others on this important discussion for our industry.

Facebook did not respond to our request to comment for this story.

Amazon Also Targeted

Facebook and Google join Amazon as targets of the EUs digital czar, Margrethe Vestager, the member of the European Commission in charge of competition policy.

The probe of Amazon,s announced in July, aims to assess whether Amazons use of sensitive data from independent retailers who sell on its marketplace breaches EU competition rules.

European consumers are increasingly shopping online, Vestager noted.

E-commerce has boosted retail competition and brought more choice and better prices. We need to ensure that large online platforms dont eliminate these benefits through anti-competitive behavior, she pointed out.

I have therefore decided to take a very close look at Amazons business practices and its dual role as marketplace and retailer, to assess its compliance with EU competition rules, Vestager said.

Catch 22 Dilemma

Facebook, Google and Amazon are finding themselves in a Catch 22 dilemma, maintained Daniel Castro, vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a research and public policy organization in Washington, D.C.

If they do not restrict third-party access to data, they are accused of violating consumer privacy, he told TechNewsWorld.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

If they do restrict access, they are accused of antitrust violations, Castro said.

The common thread in these investigations has less to do with corporate wrongdoing or anticompetitive behavior than with consumer welfare.

I dont know if there is an anti-American bias in the investigations, but the regulators seem to target the most successful Internet companies, and there is a strong correlation there with U.S. businesses, Castro observed.

The lesson American regulators should take is that the U.S. regulatory environment is conducive to innovation, and they should seek to maintain its advantage in this area, rather than copy the European approach, he said.

Fear of Success

European regulators fear successful companies, asserted Ronald Cass, president of Cass & Associates, a Great Falls, Virginia, legal consultancy specializing in international trade.

The regulators in Europe have a bias against any firm that becomes extremely successful, because they fear that those businesses can harm competitors, can harm consumers, or can accumulate power that threatens to undermine government, explained Cass, a former vice chairman and commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission.

While these regulators attention has focused in the last two decades largely on American businesses, that may be more because those have been the more successful, more entrepreneurial, more rapidly expanding businesses in emerging high-technology fields, he told TechNewsWorld.

Some American regulators  more at the FTC and some state governments than at DoJ  have similar biases, Cass added.

The fears of ways that dominant businesses can use the power that comes with being the top dog in a business sector dont automatically justify government intervention, or even government investigation, which carries its own risks of tilting markets and discouraging innovation and competition, he said.

The combination of those fears with fears about misuse of data is a powerful attraction for regulatory actions, Cass noted, especially in Europe where privacy rules are very different from the U.S.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Better Behavior Through Antitrust

Some of these companies have frankly admitted that theyre having trouble managing all the data theyre collecting, observed Cory Doctorow, a special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online rights advocacy group in San Francisco.

If they cant manage their data, then maybe theyve gotten too big, he told TechNewsWorld.

Even if antitrust actions dont result in breaking up a company, they can make companies behave better.

The Microsoft antitrust case is widely acknowledged, even by Bill Gates, as being a force that disciplined the company and curbed many of its worse impulses, Doctorow said.

Bill Gates recently said that one of the reasons Microsoft didnt get into mobile was that it was distracted by antitrust concerns, he said.

The antitrust stuff ended eight years before the launch of Android, Doctorow continued. So what hes saying is that for as long as eight years after Microsoft went through antitrust investigations, they were so traumatized that they were made timid and didnt want to engage in the kind of monopolistic conduct that they had once been fond of.

Probing Googles Heart

Unlike the EUs past probes of Google, this latest investigation aims at the heart of its business model, observed Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a not-for-profit public interest group in Los Angeles.

This isnt just about Google steering people toward its own products, he told TechNewsWorld. The EU is looking into whether Google is living up to the GDPR and its opt-in requirements.

The GDPR  General Data Privacy Regulation  is an EU law that gives people greater control over their data and imposes stiff fines on companies that dont protect consumer data properly.

This is all about how Google is using its data collection to control markets, Court explained. The GDPR was supposed to prevent companies from getting that type of monopoly because of its opt-in requirement.

Reining in Facebook and Google will be a challenge for regulators, he added.

The sheer size and power of these two companies is unprecedented. Theres a lot of danger in knowing everything about everybody when youre in a position to swing elections or change markets, Court said. The EU sees that and is wondering what it can do with the power it has to curb what these companies do.
Chevron Pulls US Workers out of Iraq in Wake of Iran General Death

Chevron, the No. 2 oil company in America, announced it would evacuate its American employees from Iraq following a U.S. drone strike that killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad.

The company said on Monday that it would pull them out of the Kurdistan Region, located in Iraqs north, a precautionary measure amid escalating tensions and bellicose rhetoric in the wake of Gen. Qassam Soleimanis death last week, according to CNN. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he was killed to prevent a war and had received intelligence he was plotting attacks on Americans.

The safety of our people and facilities is Chevrons top priority globally, a Chevron spokeswoman told CNN.

Chevron, which doesnt have any workers in other parts of Iraq, added that its employees and contractors have left for the time being. Local workers are overseeing the ongoing operations in Kurdistan, it said, according to the report.

The move comes after the Iraqi oil ministry said last week that a limited number of employees with U.S. citizenship would depart the countrys south in the meantime. It added that that the conditions are normal in oil fields throughout Iraq and production and export operations have not been affected.

Other foreign workers werent departing the Iraqi oil fields and were operating at normal levels, the ministrys statement added.

Last week, the United States urged its citizens to immediately depart Iraq due to the rise in tensions. The United States on Monday also warned its citizens in Israel and the Palestinian territories to be vigilant, citing the risk of rocket fire. As a U.S. ally against Iran, Israel is concerned about possible rocket attacks from Gaza, ruled by Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamists, or major Iran proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Exxon also said that it was closely monitoring the situation and added it has programs and measures in place to provide security to protect its people, operations and facilities, CNN reported.

BP and Shell, other top oil producers, have not commented on their operations in the region.

According to the report, Exxon has a presence in Kurdistan, Baghdad, and is a contractor on the West Qurna oilfield in southern Iraq. BP, meanwhile, has operations inside the Rumaila oilfield in southern Iraq

In the wake of Soleimanis death, President Donald Trump has listed 52 Iranian targets, including cultural sites, that could be hit if Iran retaliates with attacks on Americans or U.S. assets.

The comment came after top Iranian officials called for attacks on U.S. targets, including the White House.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Mongabay- India

by Rhett A Butler

After a decade of increased deforestation, broken commitments, and hundreds of murders of rainforest defenders, the 2020s open as a dark moment for the worlds rainforests. Here are some key things to watch for the coming year.

Brazil

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon hit an 11 year high for the year ended 31 July 2019. But forest clearing has rapidly accelerated since then, setting up 2020 as a significantly worse year for the Amazon rainforest. With the world fast forgetting about what transpired in the Amazon the past few months, look for the Bolsonaro administration to continue rolling back environmental regulation and law enforcement, opening up more of the Amazon to conversion by ranchers and farmers, and questioning the motives and integrity of those working to protect the environment. The situation in the Amazon looks to get far worse before it gets better.

Pushback against some Bolsonaro policies will probably continue in 2020 from Brazils court system, independent public prosecutors at both the federal and state level, and Congress. With civil society increasingly marginalized in Brazil under the current administration, the most likely near-term catalyst for halting or reversing the recent deterioration of the situation in the Amazon would be pressure from constituencies that support Bolsonaro: farmers and ranchers concerned about the impact of drought or lawlessness on their productivity; Brazilian companies with exposure in eco-conscious markets, especially Western Europe; or religious leaders, especially evangelical Protestants. And large-scale public protest  especially around corruption, abuse of power, or economic malaise  is always a possibility.

Destabilization of tropical forests

In a commentary published this month in Science Advances, Carlos Nobre and Thomas Lovejoy warned that the Amazon rainforest has reached a critical tipping point where the biome is showing signs of shifting from the humid tropical forest with well-developed canopy structure toward wooded savanna similar to that found in the Chaco and Cerrado. But the Amazonas isn't alone. Studies in Borneo, Sumatra, and the Congo Basin show that these great rainforests are also experiencing drying trends and a higher incidence of fire. We shouldnt expect to see a big change in 2020especially given that were coming out of an El Nino eventbut we can expect to see the publication of more data on how forests are changing.

US elections

By eviscerating laws to protect wildlife and habitat, abandoning climate leadership, and encouraging leaders who back deforestation and attack environmental defenders, the Trump administration has done substantial damage to conservation efforts globally, including efforts to protect tropical forests. Accordingly, the US election in November 2020 will likely be meaningful for setting the course for conservation agenda globally through mid-decade.

The global economy

For 2020 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is forecasting the slowest growth of the global economy since 2008-2009, while the World Bank is expecting softer demand for commodities, translating to lower prices. If those projections hold true, it could affect key tropical commodities that are important drivers of deforestation. That said, there are other macroeconomic factors that can influence deforestation including trade tensions (e.g. tariffs on US soybeans can make soy from Brazil and Bolivia more profitable), the relative profitability of different types of land use (e.g. even at a depressed palm oil price, conversion of forests for oil palm plantations can still be an attractive investment), government incentives (e.g. biofuel mandates in Malaysia and Indonesia to increase demand for palm oil), and currency exchange rates, among others.

Jokowis new administration in Indonesia

Joko Widodo, better known as Jokowi, was re-elected last year as president of Indonesia. He switched up his cabinet, bringing in some new members who generally arent seen as supportive of environment policies. Civil society groups have voiced concern that Jokowis cabinet may stall social and environmental reforms, while pushing forward on projects and initiatives that endanger forests. Some key issues to watch in Indonesia in 2020: the B30 (fuel with 30% biodiesel) target which would drive up demand for palm oil; progress on land rights reform, including recognition of customary forests; large-scale infrastructure projects like the Trans-Papua highway and the Batang Toru dam; the governments appetite for addressing persistent problems with peat fires and deforestation; and the climate for journalists and activists after recent detainments and violence.

Market-based conservation initiatives

With the failure of climate talks in Madrid to produce anything of substance, the near-term outlook for government-led progress on addressing climate change at an international scale is bleak. But some countries, sub-national entities, and corporate entities are moving ahead on efforts to curb emissions. For example, after years of debate, California approved the Tropical Forest Standard (TFS) which could see polluters in the state offset a portion of their emissions by supporting conservation projects in tropical countries. Observers will be watching California closely: Success could lead others to follow its path, hiccups could ripple through the forest carbon market for years.

Zero deforestation commitments

2020 is the year many companies set for achieving zero deforestation in their commodity supply chains, but some of the biggest agribusiness players are signaling they wont meet that goal. Activist groups will be monitoring this sector carefully to see whether it looks like these companies are still working toward eliminating deforestation or slipping back toward business-as-usual approaches on forests.

Ambition on addressing the biodiversity crisis

China is slated to host the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in October 2020. As host, Chinas impact on biodiversity globallyfrom the wildlife trade to resource extraction abroadwill be in the spotlight. NGOs are pushing for a stronger framework to stave off the sixth great extinction currently underway, but recent signs hint that China may be downscaling its ambitions for the meeting. Look for some unconventional actors  especially religious and business leaders  to weigh in on the importance of biodiversity in 2020. The climate protest movement could apply its growing prominence to the issue as well.

Congo Basin

Central Africa is experiencing the highest acceleration in deforestation of any region on Earth. The forests of the Congo Basin face myriad threats: increased interest from industrial agriculture, proliferating road networks, new oil and gas exploration, and a regional drying trend. But foreign governments have also recently pledged more aid to Congo forest conservation.

Assessment of 2019s damage

2019 seemed like a catastrophic year for the worlds tropical forests but we wont have comprehensive data on the damage until sometime in 2020. Brazil will release its official estimate for 2018-2019 Amazon deforestation sometime in the spring and its August 2019-July 2020 preliminary estimate in the fall, while Global Forest Watch and Matthew Hansen of the University of Maryland should publish tree cover loss data in the second quarter of 2020.

This article was originally published on Mongabay.com.

Mongabay-India is an environmental science and conservation news service. This article has been republished under the Creative Commons licence.
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has tried to carve out a role mediating between Washington and Tehran, said Monday he was "deeply worried" by tensions in the Middle East. The US assassination of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani last week has raised fears of an all-out conflict, with President Donald Trump threatening "major retaliation" if Tehran makes good on a pledge to avenge the killing. "Middle Eastern tensions are increasing. I'm deeply worried about the current situation," Abe said in his first comments since the killing of Soleimani in Iraq. "A further escalation in this situation should be avoided and I call for diplomatic efforts by parties concerned." Tokyo and Tehran have maintained diplomatic ties for decades, even through the crisis with the West sparked by Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and subsequent frictions over its nuclear programme. In June, as tensions rose over Trump's decision to withdraw from a nuclear deal with Tehran, Abe visited Iran for talks with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani. But his visit coincided with a suspected attack on two oil tankers in the Sea of Oman, off the Iranian coast, which again sent tensions in the Gulf soaring. And Khamenei categorically ruled out talks with Trump despite Abe's efforts to smooth a path. Abe later met Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, and in December welcomed the Iranian leader to Japan -- the first visit by an Iranian head of state in two decades. Japan has walked a fine line in balancing its key alliance with Washington and its longstanding relations and interests with Iran. It was formerly a major buyer of Iranian crude but stopped purchases to comply with US sanctions imposed after Washington unilaterally quit the nuclear deal in May 2018. It has opted not to join a US-led coalition patrolling waterways in the Middle East, proposed by Washington after the tanker attack during Abe's Iran visit. But it has said it will send a military vessel and two patrol planes to the region for intelligence activities. The Japanese patrol activities will not, however, be deployed in the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the global oil trade passes and where the US-led coalition operates.
Mike Pompeo

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Mike Pompeo backed Trump over the death of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in an interview on CBS News' Face The Nation on Sunday with host Margaret Brennan.

Pompeo told Brennan that it was a "collective decision" to kill the Iranian commander and that it was the "right decision."

"There was sound and just and legal reason for the actions the president took and the world is safer as a result of the bold action President Trump took," he added.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Mike Pompeo is backing Trump over the death of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani as tensions between the US and Iran continue to grow.

In an interview on CBS News' Face The Nation on Sunday host Margaret Brennan, Pompeo said that it was a "collective decision" to kill the Iranian commander and that it was the "right decision."

"He not only caused enormous death and destruction throughout the region, killed hundreds of Americans over the years, but had done so in the past couple of days, killed an American on December 27. We watched him continue to actively build-out for what was going to be a significant attack. That's what we believed and we made the right decision," he told Brennan.

"It was intelligence analysis that doing nothing created far more risks than the action that we took," he added. "There was sound and just and legal reason for the actions the president took and the world is safer as a result of the bold action President Trump took."

Pompeo's assertion that leadership was in agreement about the decision seemingly contradicts a New York Times report from Saturday that said that the strike on Soleimani was presented on a menu of options, and was meant to be an extreme possibility meant to make the other choices seem more palatable. The report said top military officials were "stunned."

Story continues

Trump previously said that the US airstrike in which the general was killed in Iraq was meant to "stop a war."

"We take comfort in knowing that his reign of terror is over," he said of Soleimani. "We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war."

But Soleimani's death has heightened tensions between the US and Iran, and the country is now promising to take revenge.

Brennan pressed Pompeo to comment on this but he stressed again that it would have been worse to do nothing at all.

"Qassem Soleimani killed hundreds of Americans. To take a terrorist off the battlefield does not increase the risk of terror. The risk of terror is increased by appeasement. That's what the Obama- Obama-Biden administration did. It's what President Trump will never do," he said.

Read the original article on Business Insider
New Delhi, Jan 6 : A day after violence swept the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus leaving over 30 students injured, a delegation of the Trinamool Congress led by former Union Minister Dinesh Trivedi was not allowed to meet the students here.

The delegation, led by Trivedi, and comprising party MPs Sajda Ahmed, Manas Bhunia and other leaders like Vivek Gupta, arrived at the JNU to express solidarity with students but were stopped at its main entrance by the police.

On Sunday, violence swept the JNU as several masked individuals, both male and female, thrashed students, including girls, and teachers inside the varsity campus with wooden and metal rods.

Following the violence inside JNU camous, the police has deployed heavy force around the campus and also closed the Baba Gang Nath Marg for traffic.

Two office-bearers of the Jawaharal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU), including President Aishe Ghosh - who was reportedly hit over the eye with an iron rod, received severe injuries. They accused RSS' student wing ABVP for the rampant violence in the campus.

Hostel rooms, and lobbies were vandalised during the assault while several vehicles standing on roads were damaged by the unidentified miscreants.

The situation turned violent after masked goons attacked a peace march being carried out by teachers and students against the violence in campus.

Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, senior Congress leader Ajay Maken, Delhi Congress chief Subhash Chopra, CPI-M leader Brinda Karat, BJP leader Vijay Goel and others met the injured students at the AIIMS trauma centre.
MANILA, Philippines - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the military to prepare to deploy its aircraft and ships at any moments notice to evacuate thousands of Filipino workers in Iraq and Iran should violence break out, reflecting Asias growing fears for its citizens in the increasingly volatile Middle East.

Other Asian nations with large populations of expatriate labour may face similar decisions amid the rapidly escalating tensions between the United States and Iran following last weeks U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.

South Korean government ministries have discussed strengthening protections for the nearly 1,900 South Koreans in Iraq and Iran. Indian foreign ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said India wasnt planning to evacuate any citizens from the volatile region yet.

Duterte held an emergency meeting with his defence secretary and top military and police officials Sunday to discuss the evacuation plans.

President Duterte ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines to be prepared to deploy military assets to repatriate overseas Filipinos in the Middle East, particularly from Iran and Iraq, at any moments notice, said Sen. Christopher Lawrence Go, a close ally of the Duterte, who was at the meeting.

Duterte expressed fears Monday that the Philippines may have to carry out massive evacuations if violence hits Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia that host large numbers of Filipino workers.

Im nervous. Iran seems to be hell-bent on a retaliation, which I think will come. Its a matter of time ... the cry for blood is there, Duterte said in a speech. He urged Congress to hold a special session on the impact of a possible crisis in the Middle East and set aside contingency funds.

Iran has vowed to retaliate and President Donald Trump warned that U.S. forces would hit back at 52 Iranian targets if Americans come under attack. Iraqs Parliament has also called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, which could revive the Islamic State group in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.

Compounding contingency plans is the uncertainty where hostilities could possibly break out.

Military chief of staff Lt. Gen. Felimon Santos Jr. said Philippine forces have identified possible evacuation routes not only in Iraq and Iran but other hotspots, like Israel.

There are probabilities like that and we are improving our plans just to cover everything just in case something happens, Santos told reporters in Manila.

Other countries face similar dilemmas. Asians make up 40 per cent of the worlds migrants, and Middle Eastern countries are a common destination. African migrants are also employed around the Middle East, though the possibility of their home countries arranging evacuations is uncertain.

Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said on Twitter on Sunday that he spoke to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the evolving situation in the Gulf region and highlighted Indias stakes and concerns.

He also tweeted that he spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif. Noted that developments have taken a very serious turn. India remains deeply concerned about the levels of tension, he said of his conversation with Zarif.

Gulf Arab states are home to more than 7 million Indian expatriates who help drive the regions economy and keep its cities teeming with doctors, engineers, teachers, drivers, construction workers and other labourers. In United Arab Emirates, Indians outnumber Emiratis three to one.

South Koreas Foreign Ministry said Monday that government agencies had discussed preparations for an escalating crisis in the Middle East but had no immediate plans for evacuations. The ministry said about 1,600 South Koreans are in Iraq, mostly working in construction, while another 280 who live in Iran are businesspeople, students or spouses of Iranians.

On past occasions, China has evacuated its citizens from other countries during times of conflict, political tension or natural disaster. In 2015, the navy transported nearly 500 Chinese out of war-torn Yemen. It evacuated 3,000 from Vietnam in 2014, after the deployment of a Chinese oil rig in disputed waters elicited a wave of anti-China riots.

There are more than 7,000 Filipino workers and their dependents in Iraq and Iran, including many who work in U.S. and other foreign facilities and commercial establishments in Baghdad, the Department of National Defence said.

The workers in Iran and Iraq are a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who are employed in countries lining the Persian Gulf.

The Philippines is a leading source of labour worldwide, with about a tenth of its more than 100 million people working mostly as household help, construction workers, seamen and professionals.

___

Associated Press writers Yanan Wang in Beijing, Emily Schmall in New Delhi and Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
The number of catalytic converters stolen from cars in 2019 jumped by as much as 1,700 per cent, figures show.

Crime statistics from 12 police forces reveal that three-quarters experienced marked increases in thefts of the anti-pollution devices in the first ten months of last year.

In Nottinghamshire, police recorded just nine such offences in 2018. But between January and October 2019 there were 163, a rise of 1,711 per cent.

Crime statistics from 12 police forces reveal that three-quarters experienced marked increases in thefts of the anti-pollution devices in the first ten months of last year

West Yorkshire police saw a rise of 351 per cent, from 39 to 176, while in Warwickshire and West Mercia there was an increase from six in 2018 to 52 in the first ten months of 2019  a rise of 766 per cent.

Kent, Avon and Somerset, Sussex, Greater Manchester and the Met  which recorded 6,848 cat thefts  saw five-fold increases from 2018.

The crimewave is being driven by rising global precious metal prices. Police warn that thieves are particularly targeting catalytic converters on hybrids  with Toyota Prius Mk 2 and Auris models the worst affected, because they contain higher concentrations of platinum, palladium and rhodium, and are generally less corroded as the cars are part electric.

The devices, which cost 1,000, can be removed in as little as a minute  either by unscrewing bolts or using an angle grinder. Thieves sell them to scrap metal dealers or online.

Kent, Avon and Somerset, Sussex, Greater Manchester and the Met  which recorded 6,848 cat thefts  saw five-fold increases from 2018

Toyoya said its service network replaced 56 stolen converters in 2018. Last year, more than 4,000 were replaced.

All the figures except those from Kent, which were published separately, were obtained by Freedom of Information requests lodged by the Daily Mail. Only two of the 12 forces  Devon and Cornwall and Northumbria  recorded fewer thefts between January and October last year than in 2018.

In November, AA Insurance said the number of claims for stolen cats rose from eight in January to 79 in October.

Hospital car parks have become a hot spot for thefts. In October Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust spoke out following a spate of thefts at Darent Valley Hospital. Police were called after a device was removed from a midwifes car, the second incident that month and the fifth since April.

In November, a nurse at Kettering General Hospital in Northamptonshire finished her shift and discovered her Toyota Prius had been targeted.

Toyota said it was very concerned by the thefts and added that it was increasing the supply of replacement parts and developing security devices for cars.
The next frontier in Californias battle against pollution: lawn equipment.

State air regulators are laying long-term plans to phase out gasoline-powered devices like leaf blowers and lawn mowers, saying they can produce more noxious emissions than cars.

Plenty of Bay Area cities are already acting: At least eight have banned gas-powered blowers, and more restrict their use during times of day or up to a certain noise level. Novato may soon join the list.

What I think we need to realize is that we have to do something different for climate change in the world, said Novato Mayor Pro Tem Pat Eklund, who proposed a ban on gas lawn mowers and leaf blowers in December. If not, we are going to see a different world than we do today. Every little bit is going to help.

Such restrictions force people to use cleaner, quieter electric machinery instead. But they are not universally popular.

Jose Vaca, who owns Vaca Construction and Landscaping, which has locations in Novato and Petaluma, said he would have to buy up to five batteries  costing an average of $100 to $200 each  to finish jobs on large properties like homeowner associations or shopping centers. Electric leaf blowers would make tasks longer and more expensive, he said.

Vaca said he has already ended contracts in Mill Valley because of the citys ban on gas-powered leaf blowers. If Novato implements a similar restriction, hell do the same.

We would just start canceling more contracts and moving up north, he said.

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

While cars produce more carbon dioxide, small engines can emit more of other problematic gases. Running a lawn mower for an hour generates as much smog-forming pollution as driving a 2017 Toyota Camry from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, according to the California Air Resources Board, which works to keep the air clean. A leaf blower is worse  all the way to Denver. Daily exposure to the fumes also increases cancer risks, a 2018 air board study found.

The reason that theyre such high polluters, theres not anything fundamentally different about engines, theyre not fundamentally dirtier, but we havent put effort into cleaning them up like cars, said Dorothy Fibiger, an engineer with the air boards Monitoring and Laboratory Division. Because some machines such as leaf blowers are handheld, they cant take on added weight for equipment  like the catalytic converters carried by cars  that reduces emissions, she explained.

This year, the air board is reducing the emissions allowed for gasoline-powered lawn equipment sold in California. As early as 2022, it wants allowed emissions to drop to zero. (Companies can in the meantime earn credits for selling machines that are below the standard, allowing them to continue selling gasoline-powered devices even after 2022.) The ultimate goal is ending the sale of gas machines, but that will come much later, Fibiger said.

Its part of a push to tackle less-obvious sources of greenhouse gas emissions, like natural gas used in homes and businesses, which is also facing a growing wave of local bans in the state.

California has the small lawn devices in its sights in part because of looming federal standards for ozone, according to David Wooley, executive director of UC Berkeleys Center for Environmental Public Policy.

In the North Bay, Belvedere, Mill Valley and the city of Sonoma already bar gasoline-powered leaf blowers. Tiburon allows them only in nonresidential areas and at certain times of day.

Berkeley bans gas leaf blowers. Orinda restricts use to certain hours; the City Council voted down a measure to ban them entirely in 2010.

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

Palo Alto bans gas leaf blowers in residential zones. Los Gatos banned blowers in all areas, saying they degrade the quality of life with noise and pollution. The town replaced approximately 10 blowers  at the cost of $1,370 each for a blower, charger and two batteries  when the ordinance was adopted in 2014. Electric leaf blowers cant exceed a noise threshold and can operate only at certain times.

Los Altos was one of the first cities to prohibit gas-powered leaf blowers in 1991. Two decades later, the city reconsidered the ban, citing the adverse impact on the parks department, which needed extra battery packs to work on large properties without electric outlets. Ultimately the effort to repeal the ban fell short.

San Jose floated a buyback program this year to make it more affordable to replace gas-powered lawn equipment. Environmental Services Department senior public information representative Carlos Velazquez said the city is not moving forward with any ban but is focusing on reducing emissions from transportation and buildings.

We dont want to say never, Velazquez said of the idea of a ban. Right now it isnt a priority.

Atherton on the Peninsula is also considering a ban on blowers.

Novatos proposed ban, which would be among the strictest in the region, is due to be discussed by the City Council in the first half of this year, followed by a possible staff report and public hearings.

One resident, speaking at the December City Council meeting, called leaf blowers the most hated tool of the 21st century.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

Anthony Alioto, who has lived in Novato for 20 years, said he was so bothered by the noise of his old gasoline-powered lawn mower, and his wife by its fumes, that he bought a battery-powered one that weighs less.

Novato officials appreciate the environmental benefits of fewer gas-powered tools, but also are aware of the potential economic impact. I want to see us doing some outreach to see who is affected, Councilwoman Susan Wernick said at the December meeting. I wouldnt want to see anybody driven out of business.

Some companies said theyre ready to make the investment. John Markham, manager of Marin Landscape Management, wants to switch to electric equipment to make for a cleaner environment.

We are considering switching over because were aware of not just the laws, but people dont like those machines, he said. Non-electric lawn mowers burn gasoline and have exhaust and are loud. Theyre very efficient machines, they get the job done fast and it does a good job, but there are good electric machines out there. Theyve gotten better and better.

Markham would need to buy up to 10 lawn mowers and leaf blowers over time, reselling his older machines to fund the investment. He supported Novatos measure but urged the city to phase it in over time.

If we had to replace every bit of our equipment overnight, it would be significant, he said.

Mark Bailey, who runs Bucks Saw and Lawn Equipment in Novato, said sales of cordless electric lawn mowers have risen in the last couple of years. But most people still seek out gasoline-powered equipment.

Electric leaf blowers at the Novato store cost around $130, whereas gas-powered models range from $150 to $600. Battery powered lawn mowers run around $500 while gas versions cost anywhere from the mid $400s to up to $1,000. Bailey said a battery for an electric lawn machine lasts from 20 minutes to an hour, with a life span of up to six years, depending on usage, although he sells a warranty for only two years.

The advantage of electric lawn mowers is saving money in fuel and maintenance, Bailey said, but the downside is less power and performance.

Fibiger at the Air Resources Board said the effectiveness and efficiency of electric lawn machines have improved as technology has advanced, but some landscapers who tried them years ago may not give them a second chance. The air board has a program to loan test equipment to cities, businesses and schools, with a goal of encouraging adoption.

Besides the cost of buying a new machine, change can be hard, she acknowledged. Landscapers have been doing the same thing for a really long time, and asking them to change how they do their job, thats a big ask.

Mallory Moench is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mallorymoench
Miller Ingenuity of Winona has been awarded the contracts to supply its electronic early warning system ZoneGuard to two transit agencies based out of California.

By adopting the system, both San Diego Trolley and San Francisco Municipal Railway have fulfilled a requirement imposed by the state of California, which stipulates that state transit agencies must adopt an early warning alarm technology in compliance with protection procedures.

ZoneGuard Electronic RWP System warns track workers and equipment operators of trains approaching on adjacent tracks.

Once a train has been detected, the system sends a signal to a device that each worker wears.

In a press release by Miller Ingenuity, the company said both transit agencies will be supplied with Millers ZoneGuard portable system kits, which includes train detector modules, train alert modules and worker-wearable devices.

The company said this particular kit is made to be lightweight by being less than 5 pounds and measuring roughly a foot in length.

It is also efficient enough to be easily set up and transported to multiple job sites.

These contracts are not only a great moment for our ZoneGuard team, but they are also a great win for roadway workers in California, Kevin Smith, Miller Ingenuitys senior vice president of global sales and marketing, said. Our electronic RWP system has patented detection technologies that work together to form a secure zone of protection for workers out in the field. That unique technology paired with our worker wearable devices, provides rail maintenance crews with the ability to put the responsibility of safety back into their own hands.

In addition to San Diego Trolley and San Francisco Municipal Railway, ZoneGuard has been deployed in Lafayette, California, for a general engineering contractor based out of San Francisco that is working on a track rebuild project.

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Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Monday strongly condemned the murder of a minority Sikh community member in Pakistan's Peshawar that took place shortly after an angry mob attacked the Nankana Sahib Gurudwara, and demanded severe punishment to the perpetrators of crimes against Sikh minority in Pakistan.

Taking to Twitter, Ashok Gehlot said that the Pakistan government should take action against the killers of Ravinder Singh who was the brother of a Sikh journalist and demanded the apprehension of those involved in vandalism the holiest Sikh shrine of Nankana Sahib Gurudwara.

Condemn in strongest words the killing of Sikh youth in Pakistan that follows recent attack on Nankana Sahib Gurudwara. Pak govt must take action to give severe punishment to perpetrators of this crime and also bring to book those behind vandalism at the holy shrine.  Ashok Gehlot (@ashokgehlot51) January 6, 2020

READ | Nankana Sahib Attack: Police Arrests Main Culprit Behind The Incident

Sikh man shot dead in Pak

The incident took place on Sunday when a Sikh journalist's brother was shot dead by an unidentified person in Pakistan's Peshawar, exposing the neighbour's treatment towards its minorities. The body of 25-year-old Ravinder Singh was found in the area of Chamkani police station on Sunday, who was in the city for a short while to shop for his wedding.

This case of cold-blooded murder in Pakistan, which followed the gheraoing of one of the holiest Sikh shrines, comes at a time when the country's persecution of its minorities is under minute focus. Even a report filed by the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) had stated back in December that religious freedom is affected and deteriorated under Imran Khan's government in Pakistan.

READ | After Attack On Gurudwara, Sikh Youth Killed In Pakistan's Peshawar

Attack on Nankana Sahib Gurdwara

On Friday, a video emerged where around 400 Muslims of Nankana Sahib attacked the revered Gurdwara Nanam Asthana and nearby residences of local Sikhs with stones.

The incident reportedly took place around 5 pm. Sources within the security apparatus say that Pakistani authorities aided this protest and made absolutely no effort to bring the situation under control.

As per sources, the protesters declared that they will soon change the name from Nankana Sahib to Ghulaman-e-Mustafa. Further, the mob allegedly claimed that 'no Sikh will remain in Nankana'.

READ | MEA: India Condemns Targeted Killing Of Sikh Community Member In Pak's Peshawar

READ | Sambit Patra Slams Imran Khan Over Attacks On Sikhs, Calls Him Head Of 'Terroristan'
BAGHDAD, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi parliament on Sunday passed a draft law requiring the government to end the presence of foreign forces in Iraq and prevent them from using Iraqi airspace and water.

In an extraordinary session, the lawmakers voted with majority in favor of passing a law requiring the government to cancel the request for assistance from the international coalition to fight Islamic State (IS) group due to the end of military operations and war in Iraq.

"The Iraqi government should work to end the presence of any foreign forces in the territories and prevent them from using the Iraqi airspace for any reason," according to the parliament decision.

In addition, the Iraqi government, represented by the foreign minister, should "file a complaint against the United States for its violations and grave breaches of Iraqi sovereignty and security."

The Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi also attended the televised parliament session and addressed the lawmakers, saying "the departure of the U.S. forces from Iraq will be in the benefit of Iraq and the United States, especially after the latest developments."

The parliament session came two days after a U.S. drone strike on a convoy at Baghdad airport which killed Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of Iraq's paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces.

After the airport attack, Abdul Mahdi called on parliament to hold an extraordinary session to fix the Iraqi official position and take the necessary legislative decisions that would preserve the dignity, security and sovereignty of Iraq.

Over 5,000 U.S. troops have been deployed in Iraq to support the Iraqi forces in the battles against IS militants, mainly providing training and advising to the Iraqi forces.
Morrison & Foerster, a leading global law firm, is pleased to announce that Alex Yap has rejoined the firms Intellectual Property Litigation Group in its Los Angeles office. Mr. Yap will further deepen Morrison & Foersters Patent Trial and Appeals Board (PTAB) practice.

Mr. Yap comes to Morrison & Foerster from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in San Jose, where he served as an administrative patent judge for almost four years and presided on over 200 ex parte appeals and inter partes review (IPR) and covered business method (CBM) patent proceedings. Mr. Yap was previously at Morrison & Foerster for 11 years and, prior to beginning his legal career, held senior technology and engineering roles at Freescale (formerly Motorola) and Analog Devices.

Alexs outstanding legal and technical experience will enhance and expand our market-leading IP litigation capabilities, said Richard S.J. Hung, co-chair of Morrison & Foersters IP Litigation Group. Alexs insights from his time as an administrative patent law judge will be particularly valuable to clients navigating post-grant adversarial proceedings, especially IPRs.

Mr. Yaps practice at Morrison & Foerster will focus on IP litigation and PTAB litigation matters. He will advise companies across multiple sectors, including those in the technology space.

We are delighted to welcome Alex back to MoFo, said Los Angeles IP Litigation partner Bita Rahebi. Alexs experiences at the USPTO will add further to our already extensive PTAB capabilities. His exceptional background in litigation will also benefit our clients.

Mr. Yap earned his J.D. from the University of Minnesota after earning his B.S. and M.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin.

As I considered returning to private practice, I knew that I wanted to come back to MoFo because of its premier IP Litigation Group and renowned culture, Mr. Yap said. Im excited to have the opportunity to bring my knowledge to the firms already strong PTAB bench and to once again work closely with the team at MoFo to help our clients protect and enforce their intellectual property.

Morrison & Foersters IP Litigation Practice Group comprises a powerhouse of trial lawyers and appellate specialists, coupled with a patent prosecution team that is unrivaled in its depth of technical expertise. The firms 125 IP litigators are regularly at the forefront of groundbreaking IP disputes for the worlds leading high-tech, consumer products, and life sciences companies. National Law Journal has named Morrison & Foerster to its IP Hot List four times, Law360 has twice named the firm IP Practice Group of the Year, Chambers USA has named the firm IP Firm of the Year, and BTI has named the firm an IP VIP.

ABOUT MOFO

We are Morrison & Foerster  a global firm of exceptional credentials. Our clients include some of the largest financial institutions, investment banks, Fortune 100, and technology and life sciences companies. The Financial Times has named the firm to its lists of most innovative law firms in Northern America every year that it has published its Innovative Lawyers Reports in the region. In the past few years, Chambers USA has honored MoFos Privacy and Data Security, Bankruptcy, and IP teams with Firm of the Year awards, the Corporate/M&A team with a client service award, and the firm as a whole as Global USA Firm of the Year. Our lawyers are committed to achieving innovative and business-minded results for our clients, while preserving the differences that make us stronger. The firm also has a long history of commitment to the community through providing pro bono legal services, including litigating for civil rights and civil liberties, improving public education for poor children, advocating for veterans, promoting international human rights, winning asylum for the persecuted, and safeguarding the environment.


Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday recognized Luis Parra as the new parliament speaker, after the lawmaker proclaimed himself the successor to opposition leader Juan Guaido.

"The National Assembly has taken a decision and there's a new board of directors... the deputy Juan Guaido was kicked out of the National Assembly by the votes of his own opposition," Maduro said in a televised speech.

The opposition slammed a "parliamentary coup" as Guaido, who was prevented by police from entering the National Assembly, held his own legislative session at the offices of El Nacional newspaper.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
"Terrell is very regretful that while trying to protect himself from being shot at himself that Mr. Foard lost his life. I think the state of Indiana also recognized that based upon all of the evidence gathered in this case, that Terrell never intentionally tried to harm the victim," he said. "We are hopeful that Judge Vasquez will see all of this, see that Terrell's lack of criminal history and acceptance of responsibility provides for a sentence that will allow everyone to move on from this tragic event."
DOWNERS GROVE, Ill., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Dover (NYSE: DOV) announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Sys-Tech Solutions, Inc., d/b/a Systech International ("Systech"), a leading provider of software and solutions for product traceability, regulatory compliance and brand protection. Following the close of the transaction, Systech will become part of the Markem-Imaje business unit, a global supplier of product identification and traceability solutions, in Dover's Imaging and Identification segment.

Systech is headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, with approximately 170 employees worldwide and serves well-recognized global pharmaceutical and FMCG manufacturers. Systech offers a unique integrated Brand Protection Suite for compliance and brand protection applications, including serialization, traceability, anti-counterfeiting and anti-diversion solutions, which help pharmaceutical and FMCG manufacturers to meet evolving product traceability regulations and growing consumer demand for product safety, security and authenticity. Systech's proprietary and innovative e-Fingerprint technology is a unique non-additive product authentication solution that offers superior levels of protection with lower complexity and cost.

The acquisition will enhance Markem-Imaje's portfolio of product identification and traceability solutions with complementary and highly-demanded software and service offerings catering to a large and growing global brand protection market. Systech's cloud-based software solutions will add recurring software and service revenue to Markem-Imaje's business mix. The combination of Systech and Markem-Imaje's software and service offerings will provide a scaled-up software and service organization that will drive growth and efficiency by cross-leveraging each company's respective channels and global service infrastructure.

"Systech brings a long and successful history of innovation to deliver world-leading solutions to protect brands and products over the past 35 years," said Richard J. Tobin, Dover's President and Chief Executive Officer. "We are excited to bring together Systech's innovative software solutions and Markem-Imaje's scale, global reach and service excellence capability to build a market leader in the brand protection market. This transaction is another building block in Dover's capital deployment strategy that emphasizes investments in attractive close-to-core markets that offer potential for sustainable, profitable growth, and where our team can create value for our shareholders."

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction is subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including applicable regulatory approvals, and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2020.

About Dover:

Dover is a diversified global manufacturer with annual revenue of approximately $7 billion. We deliver innovative equipment and components, specialty systems, consumable supplies, software and digital solutions, and support services through five operating segments: Engineered Products, Fueling Solutions, Imaging & Identification, Pumps & Process Solutions and Refrigeration & Food Equipment. Dover combines global scale with operational agility to lead the markets we serve. Recognized for our entrepreneurial approach for over 60 years, our team of approximately 24,000 employees takes an ownership mindset, collaborating with customers to redefine what's possible. Headquartered in Downers Grove, Illinois, Dover trades on the New York Stock Exchange under "DOV." Additional information is available at www.dovercorporation.com.

About Markem-Imaje:

Markem-Imaje, an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Dover, is a trusted world manufacturer of product identification and traceability solutions, offering a full line of reliable and innovative inkjet, thermal transfer, laser, and print and apply label systems. Markem-Imaje provides global reach to over 50,000 customers with 30 subsidiaries, 6 technology centers, several equipment repair centers and manufacturing plants with the most comprehensive marking and coding portfolio available in the marketplace. Additional information is available at www.markem-imaje.com.

About Systech International:

Systech International, a Princeton, New Jersey-based company, was founded in 1985 and has developed an innovative software suite of products that can uniquely identify products through additive serialized numbers or non-additive e-fingerprints, and then track and authenticate products through the supply chain. Global brands rely on Systech to combat counterfeiters, prevent product diversion, meet regulatory compliance and gain insight with solutions that offer robust brand protection for products as they move through the supply chain. Visit www.systechone.com for further information.

Forward-Looking Statements:

This press release contains "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. All statements in this document other than statements of historical fact are statements that are, or could be deemed, "forward-looking" statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous important risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors, some of which are beyond the Company's control. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, among other things, general economic conditions and conditions in the particular markets in which we operate, changes in customer demand and capital spending, competitive factors and pricing pressures, our ability to develop and launch new products in a cost-effective manner, and our ability to realize synergies from newly acquired businesses. For details on the risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements that may be contained herein, we refer you to the documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018, and our reports on Form 10-Q and Form 8-K. These documents are available from the SEC, and on our website, www.dovercorporation.com. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Investor Contact: Media Contact: Andrey Galiuk Adrian Sakowicz Vice President  Corporate Development Vice President  Communications and Investor Relations (630) 743-5039 (630) 743-5131 [email protected] [email protected]



SOURCE Dover

Related Links

http://www.dovercorporation.com


by Zachary Hanshew | Grizzlies Correspondent | Sun, Jan 5th 10:31pm EST

Jarrett Culver produced 14 points (6-11 FG, 2-4 3Pt, 0-1 FT), four steals, three assists and two blocks across 28 minutes in the Timberwolves 118-103 win over the Cavs on Sunday.
NEW HAVEN  A judge Monday told Jordy Castro-Lopez he appears to have a violent streak and then sentenced him to serve five years in prison for two shootings, one of them with a paintball gun.

Superior Court Judge Patrick J. Clifford noted Castro-Lopez, a resident of Wolcott Street in the city, did not receive a longer sentence because he is only 20 and had no previous convictions as an adult.

The two shootings occurred within 10 days of each other, both in New Haven. Assistant States Attorney Sean McGuiness said the shootings were related: The two victims were friends.

McGuiness said the first shooting, the one involving the paintball gun, happened Oct. 1, 2017, at the intersection of Saltonstall Avenue and Richard Street. McGuiness said this victim attempted to prevent his intoxicated girlfriend from driving.

Castro-Jordys attorney, Senior Assistant Public Defender Scott M. Jones, said outside of court, This defendant thought he (the victim) was beating her up. He tried to protect her. The victim got beaten and shot with a paintball gun.

According to the police warrant, when officers responded to the scene that night, they found a man lying in the street, bleeding from the head. He was described as conscious but not alert.

He was bleeding from the face and the back of his head, the warrant stated. He also had blue paintball impacts on his left upper body and one under his right eye. Medical responders took him to the hospital.

The victim later told police that his girlfriend began to yell loudly at him, screaming at him because he wouldnt let her take the car. He said that she was so loud, five individuals from the back yard behind the building came to the street to address the situation.

The warrant stated that one of those individuals, later identified by the victim as Castro-Lopez, told the victim to give the car keys to the girlfriend, while holding what (the victim) described as a black Tippman A5 paintball gun filled with blue paintballs.

The victim told police he informed Castro-Lopez that it was his car, he made the payments on it and his girlfriend should not drive.

But Castro-Lopez told the victim to give the car keys to the girlfriend or he would shoot him with the paintball gun. The victim refused and Castro-Lopez started shooting paintballs at him.

According to the warrant, the victim rushed at Castro-Lopez and they began fighting. Four others joined the fight. The victim told police he was punched in the face and head and lost consciousness.

The victim and his girlfriend later studied police photo arrays and identified Castro-Lopez with 100 percent certainty as the man who had fired the paintball gun. Castro-Lopez was charged with second-degree assault and second-degree breach of peace.

Then on Oct. 10, 2017, Castro-Lopez shot a man in the lower back with a gun, resulting in a charge of first-degree assault. He also was charged with illegal discharge of a firearm, first-degree reckless endangerment and carrying a pistol without a permit.

The warrant in that shooting stated police were informed a man was being treated at Yale New Haven Hospital for a shooting wound. He was in stable condition.

When police interviewed the victim at the hospital, he said he had been riding his bicycle on Richard Street when he saw a man wearing a hood, leaning against a fence. He didnt like the looks of the man, so he crossed the street to ride on the other side. At that point, as he rode past the subject, he heard a bang and felt a pain in his lower back.

Two days later, the victim called police and said he could identify the shooter. He said he had a photo of the perpetrator on his cellphone. He said the photo had been provided to him by people in the neighborhood via a Facebook picture.

In his statement to police, the victim said that after he was shot, he turned and saw Castro-Lopez for a split second, then fell to the ground. According to the warrant, he knew he wasnt paralyzed and began to crawl across the street to get away.

The victim was shown a photo array and picked out Lopez-Castro as the person who had shot him

When Castro-Lopez was arrested in the second shooting two months after it occurred, he was incarcerated in lieu of $500,000 bail. He has been held since that time.

Castro-Lopez pleaded guilty in October 2019 to second-degree assault, first-degree assault and carrying a pistol without a permit. He pleaded under the Alford doctrine, in which a defendant does not agree with all of the states allegations but concedes the prosecutors have enough evidence to likely get a conviction. This results in a finding of guilty. The other charges were nolled.

McGuiness told Clifford the plea sentencing agreement that had been negotiated was a fair disposition, although these were extrmely serious incidents. He said neither of the victims had chosen to come to the courtroom for the sentencing.

Hes at a crossroads in his life, McGuiness said. I hope while hes incarcerated hell think about what direction he wants to go.

Jones reminded Clifford that Castro-Lopez was just 18 at the time of the shootings. Jones cited studies that juvenile brains are not fully developed.

He did cooperate with police, Jones said. He admitted to his involvement.

Castro-Lopez, who was attired in gray and white prison garb, said: I want to apologize for my actions.

When Clifford imposed the sentence, he said of Castro-Lopez, He has apparently a violent streak.

The sentence for first-degree assault was 12 years, to be suspended after serving five years, with three years of probation. Clifford imposed a sentence of five years for carrying a pistol without a permit but made it concurrent with the first-degree assault sentence.

In addition, Clifford made the five-year sentence for second-degree assault concurrent with the other sentence.

Castro-Lopez will receive credit for the time he has served since December 2017.

randall.beach@hearstmediact.com
Check stop sees three arrested in central Playa del Carmen

Playa del Carmen, Q.R.  With the help of a narcotics dog, agents of the Municipal Police of Solidaridad arrested three men of Israeli origin who were found in possession of various drugs.

The three men were traveling in a taxi in the center of Playa del Carmen when their vehicle was stopped by municipal agents, accompanied by a narcotics dog. When approaching the vehicle, the dog gave positive signs for the detection of narcotics, which led to an inspection of the three men.

Elements of the Secretaria de Seguridad Publica Municipal of Solidaridad report finding the men in possession of a variety of drugs including pills, cocaine and LSD.

The three were arrested and transferred to police facilities for the corresponding legal purposes.
The main accused in the recent vandalism at the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib in Pakistan's Punjab province was arrested and charged with a non-bailable section of the stringent anti-terrorism act and blasphemy, a senior police officer said on Monday.

Gurdwara Nankana Sahib, also known as Gurdwara Janam Asthan, is a site near Lahore where the first Guru of Sikhs, Guru Nanak, was born.

The suspect, identified as Imran Chisti, is the elder brother of Mohammad Hassan who married a teenage Sikh girl in September last after allegedly abducting and converting her to Islam, triggering a controversy.

Chisti, a government employee working in the Fisheries Department, was arrested on Sunday for his role in the violent incident at the Gurudwara, Nankana police station Inspector Muhammad Jamil told PTI on Monday.

"We have arrested Imran Chishti, a government employee, under terrorism and blasphemy charges. He has been booked under sections 295A, 290, 291, 341,506, 148 and 149 of Pakistan Penal Code and 7-ATA (anti-terrorism act)," the officer said.

According to the FIR, Chishti incited a mob on Friday in the name of religion and threatened to destroy a worship place of a minority community (Gurdwara Janam Asthan) to build a shrine there.

"The suspect incited the sentiments of Muslims in order to have settled his family issue and created a law and order situation in the Nankana city," it said.

A large number of people, led by Chishti on Friday, held a day-long sit-in outside Gurdwara Janam Asthan against the alleged police harassment and arrest of their family members over the abduction and conversion issue. He also vowed to build a Muslim shrine in the place of the Gurdwara.

Chishti claimed that his brother Hassan was beaten up by police for "lawfully and consensually" marrying the daughter of the Gurdwara's granthi.

Police officer Jamil said that Chishti had deliberately misled Muslims in the area against the Sikhs. He also said police patrolling has been increased around all the holy places of the Sikhs in Nankana Sahib.

When asked Hassan and any other member of his family are detained too, Jamil said: We have only arrested Chishti as he is the main suspect misleading the people in the name of religion.

Interestingly, earlier neither police nor Evacuee Trust Property Board which looks after the minority places in Pakistan admitted that Gurwara Janam Asthan came under attack/threat by the local Muslims.

The arrest of Chishti came after Prime Minister Imran Khan Sunday broke his silence on the incident and said it goes against his "vision" and the government will show "zero tolerance" against those involved in it.

India has strongly condemned the incident of vandalism at the revered Gurdwara and called upon the Pakistan government to take immediate steps to ensure the safety and security of the Sikh community there.

Pakistan's Foreign Office on Friday rejected the media reports that the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib was desecrated in a mob attack, saying the birthplace of founder of Sikhism remains "untouched and undamaged" and the "claims of destruction" of one of the holiest Sikh shrines are "false".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By P R Sanjai and Upmanyu Trivedi

After ousting his protege-turned-foe from the helm of Tata Sons Pvt in a boardroom coup three years ago, Ratan Tata was looking forward to partial retirement. Instead, hes fighting the battle all over again -- this time in a court.

Indias Supreme Court is expected to hear as early as this week an appeal by the $111-billion conglomerate to quash a panels order that directed the Tata group to rehire the man it fired as chairman. The tycoon, 82, is personally leading the charge in the case, and filed a separate petition challenging the ruling.

In a severe blow to the Tata Group, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal said Dec 18 that Cyrus Mistry was improperly removed in October 2016 at the behest of Ratan Tata, chairman-emeritus of the group, whose actions were oppressive for minority investors. Meanwhile, Mistry said that he doesnt want to return, but will fight to protect shareholder rights.

Also read  Tata-Mistry case: NCLAT rejects plea to amend judgement

The courts verdict has threatened to upend Ratan Tatas 21-year legacy as chairman, when the group embarked on an unprecedented expansion, snapping up assets such as the iconic luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover and British steelmaker Corus Group Plc. After Mistry took over as the chairman in 2012, he sought to roll back some of his predecessors moves in a bid to pare the groups debt, drawing Ratan Tatas ire that eventually cost him his job.

Landmark Case

"This is a landmark case for Ratan Tata," said Sanjiv Bhasin, executive vice-president at Mumbai-based brokerage India Infoline Ltd. "This is an ego battle and he wants to protect his legacy linked to the transformation of the Tata group."

The legal wrangling has come as the latest challenge for the octogenarian at a time when the group is trying to find partners for JLR, whose fortunes have faded in the wake of Brexit as well as a demand slump in China and a backlash against fossil-fuel-guzzling vehicles. The purchase of Corus in 2007 added to Tata Steels debt and the company is now paring its European operations by slashing thousands of jobs.

Also read  Mistry not to pursue chairmanship at TATA Sons

In its appeal filed on Jan 2, Tata Sons sought an urgent hearing for a stay on the previous order, arguing it will cause chaos in the operations of its companies. "Any shadow over the management of any of these companies puts public interest in jeopardy," the petition said. In his separate filing a day later, Ratan Tata said the lower courts judgment is "specious, wholly erroneous and unsustainable."

In a statement Sunday, Mistry, whose family owns 18% of Tata Sons, said he wont seek to be a director on Tatas group firms such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Tata Teleservices Ltd or Tata Industries Ltd.

Instead, the executive wants his seat back at the board of Tata Sons so he can have a say in all business decisions of the group. "It is time the groups management introspects and reflects on its conduct as it embarks on future actions," he said.

While going back as chairman would be awkward at best after all the acrimony with Ratan Tata and his aides, Mistry just wants to prove a point by regaining his Tata Sons board seat, said Arun Kejriwal, founder at KRIS, an investment advisory firm in Mumbai.

"He wants to prove that he is vindicated," Kejriwal said. "He wants to tell the world that he was improperly ousted. The essence of the law is that the court cannot give more than what the aggrieved party asked."

Also read  TCS moves SC against NCLAT order reinstating Mistry

The lower court that delivered the shock order last month had seen most of its high-profile decisions last year modified by the Supreme Court. Six of the eight major cases decided in 2019 were reversed or altered by the top court, a larger proportion than previous years.

As part of its order, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal ruled that the appointment of Natarajan Chandrasekaran as chairman of Tata Sons in early 2017 was illegal. It also ordered that Tata Sons be classified again as a publicly held company, a move that makes it easier for Mistrys family to sell their stake if they want an exit.

The court also restrained Tata and his representatives from taking any decision that would require a majority vote on the board of Tata Sons.

"It will be a meaningful victory for Tata only when they get a blanket stay from the apex court on the entire appeals court order," said Ramesh K Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner, Advaya Legal, a commercial law firm based in Mumbai. "I would see it as a setback for them if they only manage to secure a stay on Mistrys re-induction."

Tata Sons controls and invests in the groups major companies and oversees 28 publicly listed firms. The 152-year-old group employs 700,000 people who make cars, blend tea, forge steel, sell insurance, write software, operate phone networks and package salt among much else.

Ratan Tata, who now runs Tata Trusts that control 66% of Tata Sons, had swelled group revenues manifold in his over two decades as chairman.

"I look forward with excitement to the new decade ahead, which is a great time to be relevant, to stand for causes you believe in, to create something from scratch, make special connections, laugh, and write a little bit of history," Ratan Tata wrote in an Instagram post Dec 28, on the occasion of his birthday.
Thailand's first cannabis clinic opened on Monday (Jan 6) and was flooded with patients after the country became the first in Asia to legalise medicinal use of the drug. Hundreds of patients converged on the government run facility in Bangkok - which already has a waiting list of more than 2,000. The pilot clinic, based in the Ministry of Public Health, expects to see between 200 to 300 patients daily. Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirankul said today that patients would receive free treatment for the first two weeks. He said: ''This is a pilot clinic, because we cannot produce enough doctors with expertise in cannabis.'' The Southeast Asian country legalised marijuana for medical use and research in 2017. While in 2019 it removed cannabis and hemp extracts from its banned drugs list and pushed laws allowing each household to grow up to six plants. In a protectionist move to boost the country's economy, only domestic drugs firms and farmers will be able to supply the country's network of clinics. Health Minister Anutin Charnvirankul said there were already around two dozen smaller non-specialist cannabis centres that form part of general hospitals that see patients sporadically. But the clinic he opened today (Jan 6) is the first one that will be the first full-time facility staffed by doctors who are experts in medicinal marijuana, he said. Thailand plans to open 77 similar clinics in the future - one in each of its provinces.
CAIRO - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi appeared at Coptic Christmas Eve Mass on Monday and praised the links between the countrys Christian and Muslim faithful, saying they have prevented the country from descending into sectarian strife like its neighbours.

El-Sissi, who is a practicing Muslim, arrived at the cathedral in the middle of the Mass and was met by Coptic Pope Tawadros II on the doorstep before greeting churchgoers. Egyptian State television aired his appearance at the new cathedral, just finished last year, and showed people crowding around him to shake his hand, filming with mobile phones.

God saw fit for us to live in difficult circumstances.... But as long as were together ... no one can do anything to us, he told the crowd.

El-Sissi has attended several previous Christmas Eve services held by the countrys Coptic Orthodox minority. Predominantly Muslim Egypt has an estimated 10 million Coptic Christians, who face restrictions in inter-religious marriages and church building, and who are banned from proselytizing to Muslims.

The Copts, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7.

Coptic Christians have been the object of attacks since the country began battling an Islamic insurgency in the 1990s. Those attacks have continued in the aftermath of the armys overthrow of an elected but divisive Islamist president in 2013, and under el-Sissi.

He has frequently said that Egypt has only narrowly avoided civil war and violence due to his governments policies and the militarys success in battling an ongoing Islamist insurgency in the Sinai peninsula.

But his government has also overseen a broad and far-reaching crackdown against dissent. In its latest round, several thousand were arrested. Some hundreds were later released, but many remain in detention.

In December 2016, an Islamic State suicide bomber killed 30 people at Cairos Coptic Cathedral. The extremist group pledged more attacks on the Christian minority, which it views as an ally of the West in a war against Islam. The next year, in April, IS suicide bombers struck Coptic churches in two cities on Palm Sunday, killing at least 45 people.
By Jess Casey and Lorna Siggins

The minister for state for higher education has rejected the notion that the creation of new professorships exclusively for women at 12 third-level institutes discriminates against men.

In a bid to address gender imbalance at senior level across the sector, 20 new professorships specifically for women are set to be in place by September.

The extra posts, mainly in Stem (science, tecnhology, engineering, and maths) subjects, should help to redress any bias against women ininterviews for senior roles, Fine Gaels Mary Mitchell OConnor said.

Women are being discriminated against, she said. Theres inequality, and women are not being promoted as academics to the highest level.

The 20 new posts will be in addition to approximately 50 professorial appointments made every year, she added.

For every 100 professors in our universities, 76 are men, she told RTE.

So theyre getting a great chance, you know. They definitely are reaching those [senior] levels, but the women arent.

A gender equality expert has said radical tackling of management culture in Irish universities is required to secure equal access. University of Limerick (UL) emeritus professor of sociology Pat OConnor welcomed the professorships as a necessary start, but says fundamental action is needed for a culture change.

Prof OConnor  author of a number of studies on the issue and a Higher Education Authority (HEA) expert group representative on the Governments taskforce  said she would prefer to see a clean-up of the management structure at third level.

She said her research suggests there is a cosy consensus across universities in relation to access by women to senior posts. Women have, on average, a three times lesser chance than men of accessing a professorship, she found.

Her research, published last month in Irish Educational Studies, also shows that mens chance of a professorship, at 1:5, has varied little since 2013, while womens chance has improved only marginally, from 1:16 to 1:15. This figure variesl between universities, ranging from 1:9 to 1:31.
2020 Democratic presidential hopeful and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks during an event to open a campaign office at Eastern Market in Detroit, Michigan, on December 21, 2019.

Mike Bloomberg's tech company is bolstering its ranks as it starts to assist the billionaire's campaign for president.

Hawkfish has picked up at least 50 employees from a wide range of backgrounds. Those who have signed on to work with the digital start-up were initially discovered by CNBC after a review of the company's new LinkedIn page, which says it has 51 to 200 employees.

The company was first described to CNBC as the "primary digital agency and technology services provider" for the billionaire's presidential campaign.

The hirings come as the campaign moves more resources into delegate-rich battleground states. A Real Clear Politics polling average has Bloomberg in fifth place, behind former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Those hired include Elisha Wiesel, who was the co-chief information officer at Goldman Sachs for three years before joining Hawkfish. Wiesel's LinkedIn page labels him as a consultant, and in a post that was published last week on the site, he says he's "volunteering" his time to "learn from them, and to contribute however I can."

Bloomberg News recently reported that Wiesel, the son of the late Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Weisel, was joining the campaign and helping the technology efforts, but the story had no mention of Hawkfish.

Others who have joined have experience with tech giants Facebook and Google. Vinay Satish Kumar, a former engineering manager at Facebook, is now with Hawkfish. Kumar says on his page that he spent his time at Facebook building algorithms that "improved the quality of news on Facebook around the world." A former senior producer at Google, Namik Hawkins, is now an executive producer at Hawkfish, her LinkedIn page says.

Hawkfish's leadership ranks include longtime Facebook Chief Marketing Officer Gary Briggs and Jeff Glueck, former CEO of location-tracking firm Foursquare.

Bloomberg, who has a net worth of $56 billion, started the company last spring. His campaign has said it helped groups looking to make inroads in state races within Virginia and Kentucky. Democrats in November won control of the Virginia statehouse for the first time in over two decades, while Democrat Andy Beshear narrowly defeated GOP Gov. Matt Bevin in Kentucky. Even though the company has yet to disclose which specific organizations it assisted last year, its LinkedIn page says its clients are political action committees, NGO advocacy groups and political campaigns.

The company's LinkedIn page also gives a glimpse into how connected the organization is to Bloomberg himself. It says it is supporting candidates in favor of many causes that Bloomberg has championed for well over a decade, including gun safety.

"Hawkfish aims to support candidates and causes who will advance progress on climate change, gun safety, women's rights, education, access to healthcare, and more," the page says.

A spokesperson for the Bloomberg campaign did not return a request for comment.

The hiring spree just over a month after Bloomberg entered the race comes as his campaign is pushing out its ground game with 500 organizers and field staff in 30 states. He has put many of his resources into all of the Super Tuesday states scheduled for March 3.

Bloomberg's ability to quickly hire matches the efforts he's making to push out his message through TV and digital ads. He has invested over $147 million in broadcast TV spots, with at least $15 million going into delegate-rich California and Texas, the nation's top two Electoral College states.

As for digital ads, Bloomberg has invested just over $20 million in Google and Facebook ads.
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Seeing Machines, an industry leader in AI-powered driver monitoring system (DMS) technology, has launched a variant of its FOVIO Driver Monitoring (FOVIO) Chip solution which has been developed to specifically address the European New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) requirements for driver drowsiness and distraction detection to achieve safety ratings from 2022.

The Seeing Machines FOVIO Chip solution was introduced by the Company in 2018 offering its industry leading DMS technology on a fully scalable platform, with the ability to leverage the complete range of DMS features on an optimized SoC (System on Chip). Three of the Seeing Machines ongoing automotive programs are currently being delivered via this platform.

The newest variant of the FOVIO Chip solution, optimized for basic Euro NCAP systems with the flexibility to support the most advanced DMS requirements, now represents the highest performing, smallest and lowest cost, driver monitoring solution on the market. This solution is further enabled through Seeing Machines' ongoing innovations in highly optimized embedded neural inference processing for FOVIO-enabled versions of Xilinx Automotive Zynq-7000 SoCs.

SVP of Automotive, Nick DiFiore commented: "Driver monitoring plays a key role in next-generation NCAP requirements and safe assisted driving. Seeing Machines has industry-proven automotive DMS technology that provides true safety outcomes. While NCAP is always associated with the need for low cost, many in the industry are also realizing that performance and effectiveness cannot be sacrificed to reach the goals of improved driver safety."

"Our experienced and capable research and engineering teams are demonstrating that 'no compromise' low-cost solutions are possible, as we realize more enhanced AI capabilities on even lower cost industry standard devices though our ongoing silicon partnership with Xilinx. This is a great outcome as we continue to focus on supporting our customers and partners in the automotive industry with a DMS solution that is sensibly priced, scalable, simple to integrate in relatively short timeframes, and continues to deliver on the Seeing Machines performance promise."

DMS technology is set to become standard in most modern passenger cars for improved driver and semi-automated driving safety given Euro NCAP's direction, with reinforcement by the European Commission, and more recently, the United States National Transportation Safety Board , in an effort to curb driver drowsiness and distraction and improve safety for pedestrians and passengers alike.

About Seeing Machines (LSE: SEE), a global company founded in 2000 and headquartered in Australia, is an industry leader in vision-based monitoring technology that enable machines to see, understand and assist people. Seeing Machines' technology portfolio of AI algorithms, embedded processing and optics, power products that need to deliver reliable real-time understanding of vehicle operators. The technology spans the critical measurement of where a driver is looking, through to classification of their cognitive state as it applies to accident risk. Reliable "driver state" measurement is the end-goal of Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS) technology. Seeing Machines develops DMS technology to drive safety for Automotive, Commercial Fleet, Off-road and Aviation. The company has offices in Australia, USA, Europe and Asia, and supplies technology solutions and services to industry leaders in each market vertical. www.seeingmachines.com

SOURCE Seeing Machines Limited

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http://www.seeingmachines.com


BOISE  Alleviating Idahos crowded prison system is a top priority for lawmakers in 2020, and Twin Falls is a key part of Gov. Brad Littles plan.

Little proposed nearly $150 million in new spending on Monday as part of the $4 billion budget unveiled during the annual State of the State Address. One of the largest new investments is $30.2 million (a 12.09% increase) for the Idaho Department of Correction, including several initiatives to reduce inmate recidivism.

One of the many reasons new residents tell me they moved to Idaho is our low crime rate, Little said. But as our state continues to grow, so must investments in public safety.

Part of that new investment is about $2.7 million to pay for initial operating costs at the Twin Falls Community Reentry Center that is expected to open in October. The facility would allow about 160 low-risk, low-security inmates to live and work in the community in the months leading up to their release.

Little said Idaho leads the country with more than two-thirds of its inmate population made up of probation and parole violations, costing taxpayers about $110 million annually. Communities are put at risk when the state simply warehouses offenders, and investing in interventions to help inmates become productive citizens is safer and less expensive, he said.

We have a choice, Little said. We can either invest in measures designed to reduce the demand for prison beds and promote safer communities, or we can do nothing and ensure the next check we write is larger than the last.

About $9 million was set aside two years ago by then-Gov. Butch Otter to build the reentry center in Twin Falls. This years proposed investments would pay for start-up and staffing costs.

A similar facility closed after 19 years of operation in Twin Falls in 2011. The state has four other reentry centers: two in the Boise area, and one each in Idaho Falls and Nampa.

In a similar attempt to reduce recidivism, Littles budget includes $5.9 million for the development of Connection and Intervention Stations that would offer support, treatment and accountability for those on community supervision who are high-risk. The model would provide cognitive-behavioral treatment, substance abuse treatment, education, employment readiness and drug testing.

Little described his plan to reduce prison crowding as two-pronged: stopping the revolving door by providing inmates with reform opportunities and creating space in the prisons to effectively implement those programs. About 800 new beds would be created under the plan, including sending an additional 500 inmates out of state under his proposal.

House Speaker Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, agreed with Littles direction and said there are several considerations that need to be addressed in the prison system. To find a solution, the state needs to add capacity, streamline the parole system and reduce recidivism, Bedke said.

Its a multifaceted problem and its going to take a multifaceted approach, he said.

Rep. Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, said she was delighted to see Little take steps on recidivism, and that Democrats will be working with Republicans on legislation that offer strong synergies with the governors proposals for our justice system.

But the state needs to address its high incarceration rate before taking steps to increase capacity, Rubel said.

I think the first thing we need to do is stop being the leading incarcerator in the West, she said. Its costing us a fortune and its gobbling up the resources we need for every other priority.

Rubel said the state shouldnt be investing in sending inmates out of state.

For the people that we do have to lock up, she said, I think we should be doing everything in our power to keep them in the state.

Little said sending inmates out of state isnt ideal, but neither is building a new $500 million prison.

Bedke said sending inmates out of state is not a permanent solution, but it could make sense until theres a high enough population to justify building a prison.

Long term, I think Idaho needs to house their own prisoners, Bedke said.

Both Bedke and Rubel agreed that sending prisoners to counties in Idaho could be effective, but that counties need to be reimbursed more fairly.

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Forest department officials have begun a probe under the Wildlife Protection Act into the recovery of a tiger carcass from inside Mahadayi Wildlife Sanctuary in Sattari taluka in North Goa, officials said on Monday.

The carcass, which was four to five days old and was hidden under the sand, was found near Thane-Dongurli village panchayat on Sunday after which villagers alerted forest staff, said officials.

A case has been registered against unknown persons under the Wildlife Protection Act, officials said.

However, the forest department probe has spread fear among the villagers as a similar incident in 2009 led to the arrest of several people from Keri, also in Sattari taluka, on the charge of killing a tiger and hiding evidence.

"A charge sheet was filed in that case and trial is underway. The villagers at the time had falsely accused forest officials of harassing them," environmentalist Rajendra Kekar, credited with exposing the 2009 Keri incident, told PTI on Monday.

"The spot where the tiger carcass was found on Sunday is under close surveillance because the presence of a big cat and her cubs was revealed during a tiger census. The tiger whose body was found on Sunday was two to four years old," he added.

Officials meanwhile said probe was underway and post mortem report was awaited.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Highlights:

Bitmain has shipped 1,000 new miners (approximately 1.5MW of power) to DMGs Christina Lake facility on behalf of a new US-based crypto mining client





Management of Texas Operation has not proven to be cost efficient or effective for both partners, but both companies are actively exploring other opportunities for collaboration





All matters voted on at AGM approved by shareholders

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- DMG Blockchain Solutions Inc. (DMGI.V) (DMGGF:OTC US) (6AX.F) (DMG or the Company), a diversified blockchain and technology company, is pleased to announce that it has been engaged to host 1,000 new miners for a new client based in the US. Bitmain shipped the miners on behalf of the client to DMGs Christina Lake facility in late December and DMG has now completed the installation and has the miners fully operational.

This shipment from DMGs new client will consume approximately 1.5MW of power. DMGs COO Sheldon Bennett commented, We are excited to begin working with this new client and are confident that they will be one of many we add during 2020. DMG made a decision to focus on attracting large scale hosting clients as profitable crypto-mining is a function of creating cost efficiencies, and our mining facility is well suited for industrial miners.

As part of an exploratory agreement announced in October 2019, DMG has been managing Bitmains Texas facility and installed approximately 15,000 next generation miners. DMG and Bitmain have mutually terminated the existing management agreement as cost and operational efficiencies have not materialized as planned. DMG and Bitmain continue to explore opportunities for collaboration including DMGs Christina Lake facility, and new sites that are of joint interest.

DMG also announces that all resolutions at the recent Annual General Meeting of shareholders passed overwhelmingly.



About DMG Blockchain Solutions Inc.

DMG Blockchain Solutions Inc. is a diversified blockchain and cryptocurrency company that manages, operates and develops end-to-end solutions to monetize the blockchain ecosystem. DMG, with its Blockseer division located in Silicon Valley, intends to be the global leader in industrial scale crypto mine hosting  Mining as a Service (MaaS), crypto mining, blockchain forensics/analytics, and blockchain platform development.

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For more information on DMG Blockchain Solutions visit: www.dmgblockchain.com

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Daniel Reitzik, CEO & Director

For further information, please contact:

DMG Blockchain Solutions Inc.

Investor Relations: John Martin

Toll Free: 1-888-702-0258

Email: investors@dmgblockchain.com

Web: www.dmgblockchain.com

Direct: 778-868-6470

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains forward-looking information based on current expectations. Statements about the Companys plans and intentions, other potential transactions with Bitmain, acquisition of customers, product development, events, courses of action, and the potential of the Companys technology and operations, among others, are all forward-looking information. 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. The reader is cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of any forward-looking information may prove to be incorrect. 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, including but not limited to, business, economic and capital market conditions; the ability to manage operating expenses, which may adversely affect the Companys financial condition; the ability to remain competitive as other better financed competitors develop and release competitive products; regulatory uncertainties; access to equipment; market conditions and the demand and pricing for products; the demand and pricing of bitcoins; security threats, including a loss/theft of DMGs bitcoins; DMGs relationships with its customers, distributors and business partners; the inability to add more power to DMGs facilities; DMGs ability to successfully define, design and release new products in a timely manner that meet customers needs; the ability to attract, retain and motivate qualified personnel; competition in the industry; the impact of technology changes on the products and industry; failure to develop new and innovative products; the ability to successfully maintain and enforce our intellectual property rights and defend third-party claims of infringement of their intellectual property rights; the impact of intellectual property litigation that could materially and adversely affect the business; the ability to manage working capital; and the dependence on key personnel. DMG may not actually achieve its plans, projections, or expectations. Such statements and information are based on numerous assumptions regarding present and future business strategies and the environment in which the Company will operate in the future, including the demand for its products, the ability to successfully develop software, that there will be no regulation or law that will prevent the Company from operating its business, anticipated costs, the ability to achieve goals and the price of bitcoin. Given these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

The securities of DMG are considered highly speculative due to the nature of DMGs business.

Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include, failure to obtain regulatory approval, the continued availability of capital and financing, equipment failures, lack of supply of equipment, power and infrastructure, failure to obtain any permits required to operate the business, the impact of technology changes on the industry, competition, security threats including stolen bitcoins from DMG or its customers, consumer sentiment towards DMGs products, services and blockchain technology generally, failure to develop new and innovative products, litigation, increase in operating costs, increase in equipment and labor costs, failure of counterparties to perform their contractual obligations, government regulations, loss of key employees and consultants, and general economic, market or business conditions. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release. Except as required by law, the Company 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, the Company undertakes no obligation to comment on the expectations of, or statements made by third parties in respect of the matters discussed above.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.
Amid the horror of Australia's devastating bushfires that have killed 23 people and destroyed thousands of homes, there are glimmers of hope.

They include heartwarming moments of humanity among the ashes, selfless acts of bravery, extraordinary leadership, and everyday Australians helping each other.

More than 100,000 volunteer firefighters have battled blazes across every state, saving countless homes from destruction.

Alongside them are people donating their money, time, and spare rooms to help victims get back on their feet, or rushing to save their neighbour's house.

Australia's devastating bushfires have killed 23 people and destroyed thousands of homes

A kookaburra perches on a burnt tree in front of a trail of bushland devastation in Wallabi Point on New South Wales' mid-north coast on November 12

Tens of millions of dollars, rising every minute, is being raised for fire efforts, reconstruction, and the 500 million animals affected by bushfire.

These are some of Australia's bushfire heroes and the stories that inspired the nation during such dark times.

NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons

As his state was engulfed by dozens of fires burning an area bigger than Belgium, the volunteer firefighting boss never wavered.

His leadership acted as a beacon of inspiration for his 70,000 volunteers and the state of NSW at large through his handling of the crisis.

Commissioner Fitzsimmons, 50, drew universal praise for his calm and composed delivery of information as a reassuring presence in countless press conferences.

NSW RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons has become Australia's hero for his leadership during the bushfire crisis

He didn't sugarcoat dire warnings to residents in the path of the fires and gave clear advice unencumbered by political spin or police jargon.

Balanced with this was his capacity for empathy, on display as he barely held back tears when announcing the deaths of volunteer firefighters.

Emotional photos of him pinning a medal on the chest of the 19-month-old son of fallen firefighter Geoffrey Keaton last week are already iconic.

Commissioner Fitzsimmons filled a leadership vacuum left by state and federal politicians and won the admiration of the public.

'This guy is an incredible leader. As far as I can tell the guy hasn't slept in two months,' Sydney councilor Darcy Byrne said on Sunday.

'Morning and night, he's calmly and compassionately directing resources, providing information and keeping us safe.'

Emotional photos of him pinning a medal on the chest of the 19-month-old son of fallen firefighter Geoffrey Keaton last week are already iconic

A long exposure picture shows a car commuting on a road as the sky turns red from smoke of the Snowy Valley bushfire on the outskirts of Cooma (pictured)

Allison Marion's photo of her son Finn fleeing the advancing bushfires in the seaside town of Mallacoota in Victoria's far east has become an symbol of this year's bushfire crisis

Firefighting is also personal for the 30-year veteran, as his father George was killed by a controlled burn gone wrong in 2000.

'It strengthened my resolve to be part of this organisation,' he said in 2009.

'And in making sure the strategies, equipment and operations that we deploy are done in a way that maximises firefighter safety. Every family has the right to expect their loved ones to come home after a shift.'

Celeste Barber

The comedian known for poking fun at Instagram models and celebrities had no idea the impact she would make with one Facebook post.

Barber on the afternoon of January 3 put up a Facebook fundraiser for the NSW RFS that has since raised more than $40 million.

All she said was 'please help any way you can. This is terrifying. We need your help' and the Australian and international public did the rest.

More than a million people have so far thrown an average of $40 each into the pot and inspired numerous other donations.

Comedian Celeste Barber on the afternoon of January 3 put up a Facebook fundraiser for the NSW RFS that has since raised more than $40 million

Barber was stunned by the huge reaction to her fundraiser and refused to take the credit for herself

Celebrities like Pink, Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban, and Ash Barty were spurred into pledging huge donations and marshalling their fans to give generously.

Other fundraisers have raised millions more for Victoria's fires, burned koalas and other animals, and victims who died or lost their homes.

Barber was stunned by the huge reaction to her fundraiser and refused to take the credit for herself.

'People are amazing. Power to the people. Someone needed to do something and the people have done something,' she said.

Toni Doherty and Adam Mudge

Ms Doherty was declared a hero by thousands after she ran into burning forest to rescue a struggling koala from certain death.

She spotted Lewis the koala in fires around Long Flat, near Port Macquarie, NSW, and scooped him up in her own clothes.

Viral footage showed Lewis, with patches of fur missing, running close to the fires before Ms Doherty poured bottles of water onto him and wrapped him up in a blanket.

Toni Doherty was recorded running into an out-of-control bushfire in the New South Wales town of Long Flat to save the injured marsupial

'We just jumped out and I knew I needed to put something around him as I ran to the tree so I just took off my shirt and covered him with it and tried to get him out of the fire,' she told the Today show.

'He was being burnt. He was burning underneath, on his little back legs when he was approaching the tree, I've never heard a koala before, I didn't realise they could cry out.'

Ms Doherty said she wanted to get Lewis out of the fire as soon as possible and was glad to be wearing a good bra so she could remove her shirt.

Lewis sadly died of his injuries days later, so weak he was only able to eat one gum leaf every hour, but his story raised more than $1 million for other koalas.

Eight more of the marsupials were rescued by volunteer firefighter Adam Mudge from a fire near Cudlee Creek in South Australia.

Lewis sadly died of his injuries days later, so weak he was only able to eat one gum leaf every hour, but his story raised more than $1 million for other koalas

Adam Mudge, a member of the South Australian Country Fire Service, was praised online after six koalas were snapped huddled together in a laundry at Cudlee Creek, near Adelaide

His fire crew left them with a nearby elderly couple who houses them in their laundry, a photo of which went viral online.

Mr Mudge said it was the couple who cared for them who really deserved the praised heaped on to him.

'We were just there. We had a job, we saved that house,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'At the end of the day, they were the ones who took the koalas in, who had to take them to wildlife rescue.'

Andrew O'Dwyer, Geoffrey Keaton, Samuel McPaul

These three RFS volunteers were killed in two tragic truck crashes as they battled raging bushfires in NSW.

Young fathers Mr O'Dwyer, 36, and Mr Keaton, 32, died on December 19 when their truck rolled off the road after hitting a fallen tree in Buxton, south of Sydney.

Their deaths prompted outpourings of grief and became emblematic of the thousands of firefighters risking their lives without being paid a cent.

It also kicked off the backlash against Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who was forced to return from holiday in Hawaii soon after.

Andrew O'Dwyer (left) and Geoffrey Keaton (right) were killed when their truck rolled off the road after hitting a fallen tree last night at Buxton, south of Sydney

Volunteer firefighter Samuel McPaul (pictured with his wife Megan) was tragically killed when a 10-tonne truck rolled

Mr McPaul, 28, died on December 30 when his truck rolled after being hit by a huge gust of wind whipped up by a 'fire tornado' near Albury.

Two of his colleagues suffered serious burns before they were rescued and rushed to hospital.

Commissioner Fitzsimmons, appearing visibly shaken by Mr McPaul's death, explained the 'firenado' formed 'cyclonic-type winds'.

'That has moved across the fire grounds and has literally lifted up a 10 or 12-tonne fire truck and lifted up its roof, tragically killing Sam in the process,' he said.

Tens of thousands of dollars was donated to the three men's families through several online fundraisers.

Jawad Nabouche, Talal Kanj, Belal Shmait, Huseyin Jasli

Four friends went above and beyond in their desire to help exhausted and starving bushfire victims and firefighters.

After seeing the devastation on the NSW Mid North Coast, they drove 450km from Auburn in Sydney to the town of Willawarrin, west of Port Macquarie.

After the more than five-hour journey, the Muslim men put on a free barbeque to lift the spirits of locals and feed those who lost everything.

Days later they returned for a second cookout, armed with 30kg of sausages and meat, bread rolls, and 30 boxes of water.

Belal Shmait, Talal Kanj, Jawad Nabouche and Malek Eid travelled five hours from Sydney to the small town of Willawarrin to throw a free barbecue for bushfire relief

The men became overnight heroes when they threw a free barbecue in Willawarrin

'It's the least we can do, to try help the community and help everybody up here and put a smile on everybody's faces,' Mr Nabouche told the ABC.

'We can't fight fires but we can put a barbecue on.'

Locals 'adopted' the quartet and expressed their gratitude at the incredible lengths they went to just to help complete strangers.

Others in Australia's Muslim community have also stepped up, organising massive donation efforts and bringing much-needed supplies to hard-hit areas.

Kale Hardie-Porter

Mr Hardie-Porter's RFS crew was just one of thousands who saved countless homes during the fires, but the note they left warmed hearts across the world.

Paul Sekfy returned to his rural property in Yarranbella on the New South Wales Mid-North Coast in November to find his house was still standing.

On his kitchen bench was a handwritten note left by Mr Hardie-Porter reading: 'It was a pleasure to save your house. Sorry that we could not save your sheds. PS we owe you some milk.'

After Mr Sekfy shared the note on social media, he explained how his crew successfully battled the fire.

Paul Sekfy found this note on his kitchen bench when he returned to check on his house after a bushfire swept through the Nambucca Valley on the NSW Mid-North Coast

The firefighter who wrote the note, Kale Hardie-Porter (pictured on the job this weekend), explained how he and three colleagues beat back the fire but couldn't save Mr Sekfy's sheds

Residents wearing wide-brimmed hats defend a property from a bushfire at Hillsville near Taree, 350km north of Sydney, on November 12

'I'm happy to know that my note got to you in one piece, knowing that the house survived once we had to leave,' he said.

'We took refuge in your house for a moment and that's when we discovered the fridge.'

Mr Hardie-Porter was soon contacted by media and appreciative people around the world as his note became a symbol of firefighters' selfless work ethic.

'I am truly humbled by the overwhelming support that we have received. It's astonishing to see how this little note has touched so many people around the world,' he said.

Australians who rallied to help their neighbours

Many more upheld the great Australian value of helping their mates, neighbours, and anyone else in need, however they could.

Peter McMahon and a hundred other Irish tradies banded together in November to bring vital supplies to fire-ravaged towns.

The convoy of nearly 100 trucks transported $100,000 worth of water to families in tears in Armidale, northern NSW, whose lives have been devastated by the bushfires.

Nearly 100 trucks transported $100,000 worth of water to families in tears in Armidale, northern NSW, whose lives have been devastated by the bushfires

Crane operator Declan McDonald, 25, was spotted dropping off the Emu Export beers at a Salvation Army appeal set up in Yanchep, north of Perth

Mr McMahon said he was inspired to help after he watched a crying farmer on television who had to kill his livestock.

'There were people crying at the side of the road and it gave me shivers our whole crew was tearing up, this has been life-changing for a lot of people,' he said.

Water wasn't the only thing firefighters were given to drink after hard days battling blazes from coast to coast.

Crane operator Declan McDonald, 25, was spotted dropping off a case of Emu Export beer at a Salvation Army appeal set up in Yanchep, north of Perth.

'I had been cutting trees back at my parents' place and knocked a couple back myself and thought the crew out there would enjoy a few cold ones,' he said.

When fire came to South Turramurra on Sydney's upper north shore, the Sikh community brought bags filled with homemade food and hundreds of bottles of water for firefighters and local residents

Dozens of local Sikhs brought food and water to residents and firefighters before they headed to worship at a nearby temple

Back in Sydney, when the fire came to the north shore suburb of South Turramurra, worshipers from the local Sikh temple turned up to help.

They brought with them bags filled with homemade food and hundreds of bottles of water for firefighters and local residents.

And in Melbourne, an Indian restaurant cooked hundreds of curries and sent them to Gippsland, Victoria, where a huge fire destroyed dozens of homes.

Elsewhere, thousands of ordinary Australians are donating food, water, and firefighting supplies, sewing pouches for baby animals, and turning their spare rooms into accommodation for evacuated families.
Al-Shabab, based in neighboring Somalia, claimed responsibility for the assault, in which they overran a key military base used by U.S. counterterror forces, killing three and destroying several U.S. aircraft and vehicles. It was the al-Qaida-linked groups first attack against U.S. forces in the East African country, and the military called the security situation fluid several hours after the assault, which also left five of the attackers dead.
John Meredith, of Huntsville, is a former Capitol Hill lobbyist who was recognized as one of the countrys 100 most influential Black Republicans.

The GOP base will soon head to the polls and nominate candidates to represent them in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

Instead of voting for candidates whose only desire is supporting Donald Trump, they should nominate someone whose vote wont be taken for granted. Someone who wont be first in line to support whatever POTUS wants that day. Alabama needs another senator whose every vote is cast with the goal of improving the quality of life in our state.

That wont happen if Jeff Sessions returns to the Senate. Many folks think he was a good Senator and that he deserves a second chance. Politically speaking however, we should nominate a candidate for senator that POTUS does not hate rather than snubbing him by returning someone he fired as Attorney General to represent us. Every vote Sessions casts will anger POTUS who will then target our state in retaliation.

No one in their right mind can expect anything but sexual harassment cases to pile up if Roy Moore is elected. And no one with a mind, right or otherwise, believes Arnold Mooney or Stanley Adair is capable of being a senator. That leaves principled Republican voters  those without formal ties to the party apparatus and are therefore free to vote their family interest  with only two choices, Bradley Byrne or Tommy Tuberville.

John Meredith is a contributing columnist for AL.com.John Meredith

I attended a Byrne event soon after he announced his candidacy. He worked the room well and people bonded with him but I was disappointed in his stump speech. To his credit, Byrne compiled a solid conservative voting record in the House. He is pro-Trump but nobodys puppet. He knows how to play hardball and already has personal relationships with many of his future Senate colleagues. Those voters valuing traditional statesmanship and proven legislative prowess will choose Byrne.

I also met Tuberville shorty after he announced his candidacy. He made a better first impression, but we never talked politics. Since then, Ive watched his candidacy with interest, occasionally being pleasantly surprised by his flashes of independent thought and knowledge of certain issues. Unfortunately, since his Auburn parade float snafu, Tuberville has gone into witness protection. This is troubling because the last thing Alabama needs is another congressional politician so scared of media or constituent disagreement, or fact checking, they refuse to interact with them. Despite his disappearance, the unconventional outsider perspective Tubervilles candidacy offers will appeal to the balance of principled GOP voters.

One of the reasons socialism is on the rise in America is because of incumbent snowflakes like Mo Brooks. He is alive today because of life-saving cancer treatments received as a congressman. That treatment was paid for with tax dollars from hard-working Americans. Rather than ensuring that same life-saving taxpayer-funded care to constituents, he denies it and accuses the sick and dying of making bad decisions. The idiosyncrasy that forces taxpayers to pay the medical bills of rich members of Congress but not those of their struggling neighbors is the main reason the House flipped in 2018.

Chris Lewis, a career naval officer experienced in both domestic and foreign policy issues, is the principled Republicans choice in the Fifth District. Having actually served in the military, Lewis understands the importance of combat readiness and would never compromise it by voting to shut down Redstone Arsenal and every other military installation in America.

Lewis nomination will bring a new vitality to north Alabama. Our military will have a real champion and constituents will regain their voice once they finally have a congressman willing to meet with, and openly discuss, the concerns of all his constituents.

Nominating the right Republican congressional candidates means Alabama can double its political prowess despite the anticipated loss of a House seat after the 2020 census. Our nominees, however, must be carved from the same stone as Sen. Richard Shelby  a man among boys in Washington. A politician who casts every vote with one purpose in mind, a better quality of life for his constituents.
Cigars are stacked after labels are added at the J.C. Newman Cigar Company about the company's history in Tampa on November 29, 2016.

Under pressure from the White House, the Food and Drug Administration gave premium cigar-makers and importers a win last week, indicating it may spare the industry from costly regulation set to go into effect this spring.

The premium cigar industry is facing a May deadline that requires all new tobacco products to obtain regulatory clearance from the FDA. Those that do not will be technically marketed illegally and subject to enforcement. But the mom-and-pop shops that dominate the premium cigar industry have said the required compliance costs would effectively put them out of business. The premium cigar industry, like the wine industry, relies on releasing new varieties to sustain the interests of its connoisseurs.

According to data compiled by Mangum Economic Consulting and provided by Cigar Rights of America, the rules would put 88% of U.S. cigar manufacturers and importers out of business and destroy 5,300 U.S. jobs.

The White House has pushed the FDA to carve out premium cigars from the regulations, two people familiar with the situation told CNBC, requesting anonymity because the conversations are confidential. White House budget director Mick Mulvaney has been a particularly strong opponent of its inclusion in regulation, one of the people said.

Premium handmade cigars are more expensive than the mass-produced cigars sold in convenience stores and are bought less frequently. The cigar industry is strong in Florida, a swing state whose 29 Electoral College votes is tied with New York for third place among states.

The FDA last week offered a small concession. While it did not go so far as to give the industry what it wants  exemption from the regulation  it implied it may turn a blind eye to cracking down on premium cigar companies not in compliance.

"FDA will make enforcement decisions on a case-by-case basis, recognizing that it is unable, as a practical matter, to take enforcement action against every illegally marketed tobacco product, and that it needs to make the best use of Agency resources," the agency wrote.

Its "lowest priority among these products will include relatively expensive, large hand-rolled cigars that do not have flavors (e.g., fruit, candy, or mint), given what FDA understands to be their comparatively lower youth usage rates."

The news was cautiously welcomed by the premium cigar industry.

"We appreciate the recognition of being on the lower end of risk," said J. Glynn Loope, executive director of Cigar Rights of America. "But we'd like to not be subject to this regulation at all."

To officially exempt premium cigars from the regulation, the FDA would need to put out a policy saying it will offer extended enforcement discretion to the industry.

Spokespeople for the White House and Mulvaney did not return requests for comment. A spokeswoman for the FDA said the agency is "unable to comment on an internal, deliberative process."

The FDA made the pronouncement as it outlined its priorities for regulating all tobacco products edging up against the May deadline. The regulations in question stem from a 2016 decision by the FDA under then-President Barack Obama that subjected all tobacco products  including e-cigarettes, hookah tobacco, pipe tobacco and smokeless tobacco  to FDA rules.

Given the FDA's scant resources, its focus will be on cracking down on products like flavored e-cigarette cartridges that teens prefer, it said last week. It will proceed with previously announced plans to regulate flavored cigars.

In 2017, 7.7% of high school students and 1.5% of middle school students reported smoking a cigar within the previous 30 days, according to the FDA. By contrast, nearly 28% of high school students reported using an e-cigarette in the previous 30 days, according to a report released in September.

The cigar industry has pushed back against regulation. Three of its lobbying groups are suing the FDA, arguing the agency violated the Regulatory Flexibility Act by not taking into account the regulation's impact on small businesses.

Across the country, 11,140 U.S. tobacco retailers could be impacted by the Obama regulation, according to the Mangum Economic Consulting report, citing 2015 U.S. Census Bureau numbers.

The U.S. has 160 domestic cigar manufacturing facilities and 216 cigar importers. Companies impacted by the regulation would include the J.C. Newman Cigar Co., the family-owned manufacturer of Nicaraguan, Dominican and American cigars. It would not include Cuban cigars.
United States President Donald Trump has warned Iran of "major retaliation" if Tehran carries out any attack against America to avenge the killing of top military commander Qasem Soleimani and hinted at striking its cultural sites.

IMAGE: US President donald Trump also spoke to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on the issue. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

His statement came hours after Iran announced it will no longer abide by the limits contained in the 2015 landmark nuclear deal.

Maj Gen Soleimani, 62, the head of Iran's elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was killed when a US drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the Baghdad International Airport early on Friday. The strike also killed the deputy chief of Iraq's powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force.

Soleimani's killing was the most dramatic escalation yet in spiralling tensions between Iran and the US.

Trump, on his way to the White House from Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after spending his Christmas and New Year vacation, told reporters abroad Air Force One: "If it happens it happens. If they do anything there will be major retaliation".

"They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn't work that way," Trump said in response to a question.

Iran on Sunday announced its fifth step back from the 2015 landmark nuclear deal, saying it would not observe the nuclear deal's restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities.

In a statement, Tehran, however, said it would continue cooperating "as before" with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors the implementation of the nuclear deal.

Meanwhile, Trump spoke to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

"The two leaders discussed the current situation in Iraq and Iran and reaffirmed the close alliance between the two countries," the White House said.

On Saturday night, Trump warned that the US will target 52 sites in Iran some of which are "at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture" if the Islamic republic attacks American personnel or assets.

Responding to Trump's remarks, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said targeting cultural sites was a 'war crime'.

Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Khamenei has vowed a revenge against the killing of his general, saying "severe revenge awaits the criminals" behind the attack.

Soleimani was widely seen as the second most powerful figure in Iran behind the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His Quds Force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, reported directly to the Ayatollah Khamenei and he was hailed as a heroic national figure.
AustCham Thailand launches appeal to help bushfire victims

PHUKET: The Australian-Thai Chamber of Commerce (AustCham) has launched an appeal to raise funds for those affected by the devastating bushfires ravaging towns and communities in Australia.

disasterscharity

By The Phuket News

Monday 6 January 2020, 03:09PM

There has been growing anger in Australia about Prime Minister Scott Morrison conservative governments slow response to the deadly climate-fuelled bushfire crisis. Photo: AFP

Almost five million hectares have been razed across New South Wales and more than 1.2 million hectares in Victoria since late September, officials said. Image: AFP

A torrid weekend of fires turned swathes of land in Australia into smouldering, blackened hellscapes. Photo: AFP

Twenty-four people have lost their lives so far, with over 1,800 homes damaged. Photo: AFP

A torrid weekend of fires turned swathes of land in Australia into smouldering, blackened hellscapes, reported AFP earlier today (Jan 6).

Reserve troops fanned out across fire-ravaged regions in three Australian states today after a horror weekend, as the government pledged US$1.4 billion over two years to help recover from the devastating months-long crisis, AFP noted.

Catastrophic bushfires have turned swathes of land into smouldering, blackened hellscapes and destroyed an area about the size of the island of Ireland, according to official figures, with authorities warning the disaster still has weeks or months to run.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, whose government has been criticised for its slow response to the emergency, pledged AUS$2 billion of taxpayer money for a national recovery fund.

Its a long road ahead and we will be with these communities every step of the way as they rebuild, Morrison said.

Almost five million hectares (50,000 square kilometres) have been razed across New South Wales and more than 1.2 million hectares in Victoria since late September, officials said.

That took the total amount of land burnt close to eight million hectares  around the size of the island of Ireland or South Carolina.

Twenty-four people have lost their lives so far, with over 1,800 homes damaged.

In a statement issued earlier today, AustCham Thailand noted, AustCham Thailand would like to express our condolences to those who have experienced loss and gratitude to those who continue to fight the bushfires that have destroyed vast parts of Australia.

As with all Australians, and Australians at heart, we would like to do our part to assist the devastated regions, and will be providing opportunities for members and friends to donate through AustCham to our selected channel  the Salvation Army, the statement explained.

If you would like to make a donation, please contact Chanakarn Lim chanakarn@austchamthailand.com or call 02-210-0216.

We will also be taking cash donations at The Great Australian Bash on Saturday, January 18, and at the Australia Day Phuket Sundowners on Thursday, January 23, the statement said.

AustCham also suggested that people can make donations directly directly to Australia to the Salvation Army (click here) or to the Australian Red Cross (click here ).

For people wanting to make direct donations to other organisations, AustCham directed people to a News.com report citing the many charity organisations involved. (See story here.)
Three months before he was killed by a U.S. drone, Qassem Soleimani reminisced about his involvement in the war between Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Iran's most prominent general recalled how he traveled to Lebanon from Syria on July 12, 2006, partly on foot through back roads because the main highway was unsafe. He took off his military jacket one night in Beirut's southern suburbs, traditionally a Shiite stronghold loyal to Iran, before he and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah took shelter under a tree.

"There was total unity in the Islamic Republic over supporting Hezbollah and ensuring its victory," Soleimani said in an interview with Khamenei.ir, the official website of Iran's supreme leader, published on Oct. 1. It was his first in 20 years.

The account by the commander of Iran's expeditionary Quds Force, who was killed in Iraq last week, highlighted how instrumental he had become in the quest to infiltrate Arab countries. The focus is now on the void he leaves behind as the proxies he nurtured in the Middle East to do that job face unprecedented economic, political or security challenges.

It was Soleimani's presence-on the fronts in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq-that helped the seemingly unchecked rise of Iran's loyalists in the region since Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003. At the time of his death, though, things had changed and he was dealing with one crisis after the other in those countries.

This time last year, Hezbollah dominated politics and a lot of society in Lebanon despite mounting U.S. sanctions. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Iran's closest Arab ally, had regained control of most of his country. Iraq had declared a major victory against Islamic State with the help of Iran-backed Shiite militias.

Now there are protests in Iraq that have called for an end to Iranian intervention, demonstrations in Lebanon that have challenged Hezbollah's dominance in the country and a dire economic situation in Syria, where Russia is asserting itself as the main power. A series of attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf and a brazen assault on an oil facility in Saudi Arabia stood out as minor victories.

The question is whether the U.S. has now dealt a knockout punch, said Kamran Bokhari, founding director at the Center for Global Policy in Washington. "Iran has reached a point where in this moment the curve is now downward," said Bokhari. "Will it continue to go downward is another question."

Indeed, much depends on how Iran responds. Soleimani's death robs the country of the man with the most experience to handle these issues. It now falls on Esmail Ghaani, his replacement and a veteran of Middle East conflicts, to lead those proxies that are struggling.

Among the thousands that attended his funeral were representatives of organizations listed as terrorist groups by the U.S. and Europe. Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Palestinian group Hamas, said Soleimani's efforts helped strengthen the resistance and enhanced its power, according to Hezbollah-run Al-Manar TV.

"The resistance project in Palestine will continue," Haniyeh vowed in a speech at Tehran University. "It will not be weakened. It will not retreat."

Nasrallah's deputy, Naim Qassem, led Hezbollah's delegation to offer condolences to Soleimani's family, Al-Manar said. The axis of resistance will become more powerful, he told the TV station.

"Hezbollah will bear greater responsibilities and continue to follow this honorable path," he said.

A veteran of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, Soleimani was a household name in Iran where he was celebrated for helping to defeat Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and countering U.S. influence.

The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq that led to the fall of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim who persecuted Shiites and Kurds, removed a big hurdle that constrained Iran's outreach efforts.

Soleimani's role grew as Iran became more entrenched in the Arab world. He cultivated militias in Iraq and sent Shiite fighters to beef up government troops in Syria. In 2006, he helped Hezbollah recover from the war to dominate politics and effectively hand pick a Lebanese president.

In Yemen, Houthi rebels still prevailed despite a sustained Saudi-led campaign to defeat them, one that gained increasing international scrutiny and put pressure on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

In recent years, news, pictures and videos of Soleimani emerged. He met Nasrallah in Lebanon, was seen at the front checking on allied militias in Iraq, and shared in celebrations following the defeat of Islamic State in a Syrian city as fighters jostled to take selfies with him.

"These are not accidental photos," said Bokhari. "They embellished him, made him mythical deliberately."

Iran's biggest success then and now has been Hezbollah, which the Islamic Republic established in the 1980s.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

On Sunday, Soleimani's daughter, Zainab Soleimani, appeared on Al-Manar TV, sitting next to a framed picture of Nasrallah and another photo of her father. She sent her regards to "our uncle, the master of resistance" Nasrallah "whom I know will avenge my father's blood."

A few hours later, Nasrallah vowed that American soldiers would be targeted in response, adding when Americans started going home in coffins U.S. President Donald Trump will understand that he has lost the region.

Indeed, the Shiite country of 80 million people is weakened economically, battling its own domestic unrest and its proxies are all in poor shape, but it's dangerous to suggest Iran's influence will wane, according to Paul Salem, president of the Middle East Institute in Washington. It all depends on the regime staying in tact, he said.

"If it survives, it will still have significant hegemony in the Levant-even in an impoverished and chaotic Levant," said Salem. "Until there is enough national power in Iraq, Lebanon or Syria to contest the embattled Iranian hegemony or there are external powers eager to take advantage of Iranian weakness by moving in themselves-an unlikely and unattractive scenario-Iran power in its proxy lands will remain."

Trump and his top aides are arguing that the taking out of Soleimani was designed to deter future attacks and make the Middle East safer. The president stated it was aimed at preventing war rather than starting one.

Back in July 2018, Soleimani had taunted Trump after he threatened Iran with dire consequences if it stood against Washington. The general said in a speech that the U.S. had committed crimes in Afghanistan and that the Americans and Israelis had suffered a "humiliating defeat" in the 33-day war against Hezbollah in 2006.

"Gambler Trump! I alone stand against you," Soleimani said, according to Iran's Tasnim news agency. "We, the Iranian nation, have gone through tough events. You may begin a war, but it is us who will end it."

- - -

Bloomberg's Reema Al Othman contributed.
In a controversial move, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine has sought to remove both the Confederate and the Union flag from the museums logo. The current logo displaying the two flags split between the Rod of Asclepius  a symbol of the Greek deity associated with healing and medicine  will be replaced on January 15th.

Last August the museum opened up an anonymous survey to the public, asking whether either flag should be on the logo. To state the obvious, our logo incorporates the Confederate battle flag, the survey introduction reads. The feelings that flag generates have changed over the past 20 years. Therefore, it is appropriate for us to study our brand identity, to confirm it represents our story and encompasses all of our locations.

The 3,000 responses the museum received varied, ranging from the incredibly heated to the more middling replies. Ultimately the museum decided to rebrand, hiring a Pennsylvania marketing firm, Invictus, to design the new logo. However, David Price, the executive director for the museum, emphasized that the museum would have sought to rebrand even if our logo was a circle, a square and a triangle, he told The Frederick News-Post.

Since 2005 the museum has grown from the Carty Building in Frederick, Maryland to three different locations  partnering with the National Park Service in 2005 to manage the Pry House Field Hospital Museum in Maryland, and in 2012 acquiring the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum in D.C. To reflect the different historical focuses, the new logo, will be composed of a shield, the Caduceus medical symbol and three stars to represent the museums three locations. The colors are blue, gray and red, a nod to both sides in the war, reports the Washington Post.

The removal comes amidst a controversial national conversation around the removal of Confederate flags and monuments, with many critics of this current rebranding arguing that it comes on the heels of having an ad pitch declined in 2016 by the D.C. tourism organization Destination DC due to its logo. Price denies this, telling the Washington Post that, there was really no pressure from anybody to eliminate that flag. The pressure was that we have a logo that doesnt reflect the organization right now, because weve grown from one to three. Thats it.

Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit, where ad hominem reigns, had thoughts:

Leave it alone. One Twitter follower wrote. It is a shame you are so weak you cannot stand up for what you KNOW is right. Be unmoved.

This is asinine. God save us from the snowflakes, wrote a Facebook member of the online Confederate Monuments Protection Society.

On Reddit a commenter responded, If there is anyone who can display the Confederate flag without racist intent, its definitely a civil war museum. It would be one thing if the place was a Confederate memorabilia display and glorified the South, but they provide education on the history of the war. I dont see how white-washing history helps anything.

Up until recently Price agreed, telling The Frederick News-Post that a couple of years ago, I felt this was the perfect logo for this place.

However, Price is quick to point out that while the Confederate (and Union) flag is being dropped, This is not about banning the Confederate flag from our museum, Price tells the Washington Post. It has been around this museum since its inception. Its part of our history.
Turkish President Erdogan on Sunday announced that Turkish military unit had started to move into Libya. Erdogan said that Turkish troops were moving in with the intention of supporting Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj's internationally-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).

Turkish troops move in support of Libyan govt

The decision to move into Libya was approved by the Turkish parliament on Thursday. According to the bill approved by the Parliament, the move was taken to protect Ankara's interests in North Africa and the Mediterranean and also to maintain peace and stability in Libya which has been gripped in violence by the Libyan National Army and other rebel forces.

In an interview with local media, Erdogan said that a Turkish lieutenant general will be leading Turkish troops on the ground and that troops are gradually moving into Libya right now. The GNA requested assistance from Turkey as General Khalifa Haftar's forces continue their assault on Tripoli. General Haftar is backed by Russia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.

Read: LNA Accuses Turkey Of Sending 'terrorists' To Libya

Read: Turkey: Protests In Istanbul As Military Assault Intensifies In Idlib

Meanwhile, protests erupted in the Libyan city of Benghazi on Friday after Turkey authorised the deployment of troops to Libya to support the UN-backed government in Tripoli that is battling forces loyal to a rival government seeking to capture the capital. Turkish lawmakers voted 325-184 at an emergency session in favour of a one-year mandate allowing the government to dispatch troops amid concerns that Turkish forces could aggravate the conflict in Libya and destabilise the region.

Read: Turkey Detains Pilots To Probe Carlos Ghosn's Escape Through Istanbul

Read: Benghazi FM Condemns Turkey Vote On Libya Troops

The Tripoli-based government of Sarraj has faced an offensive by the rival regime in the east and forces loyal to commander General Khalifa Haftar. The fighting has threatened to plunge Libya into violent chaos rivalling the 2011 conflict that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. In Benghazi, demonstrators expressed their anger at what they labelled a "Turkish invasion" of their country and chanted slogans in support of Haftar's regime.
By Ahmed Aboulenein, Maha El Dahan and David Shepardson

BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites "very hard" if Iran attacks Americans or U.S. assets after a drone strike that killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader, as tens of thousands of people marched in Iraq to mourn their deaths.

Showing no signs of seeking to ease tensions raised by the strike he ordered that killed Soleimani and Iranian-backed Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis at Baghdad airport on Friday, Trump issued a threat to Iran on Twitter. The strike has raised the specter of wider conflict in the Middle East.

Iran, Trump wrote, "is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets" in revenge for Soleimani's death. Trump said the United States has "targeted 52 Iranian sites" and that some were "at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD."

"The USA wants no more threats!" Trump said, adding that the 52 targets represented the 52 Americans who were held hostage in Iran for 444 days after being seized at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 - an enduring sore spot in U.S.-Iranian relations.

Trump did not identify the sites. The Pentagon referred questions about the matter to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Among the mourners in Iraq included many militiamen in uniform for whom Muhandis and Soleimani were heroes. They carried portraits of both men and plastered them on walls and armored personnel carriers in the procession. Chants of "Death to America" and "No No Israel" rang out.

On Saturday evening, a rocket fell inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone near the U.S. Embassy, another hit the nearby Jadriya neighborhood and two more were fired at the Balad air base north of the city, but no one was killed, Iraq's military said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Story continues

Trump referenced an unusually specific number of potential Iranian targets after a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander had also mentioned a specific number of American targets - 35 of them - for possible retaliatory attacks in response to Soleimani's killing.

General Gholamali Abuhamzeh was quoted by Tasnim news agency as saying late on Friday that Iran will punish Americans wherever they are within reach of the Islamic Republic, and raised the prospect of attacks on ships in the Gulf.

"The Strait of Hormuz is a vital point for the West and a large number of American destroyers and warships cross there. ... Vital American targets in the region have been identified by Iran since long time ago. ... Some 35 U.S. targets in the region as well as Tel Aviv are within our reach," he was quoted as saying.

Iraq's Kataib Hezbollah militia warned Iraqi security forces to stay away from U.S. bases in Iraq, "by a distance not less than a thousand meters (six-tenths of a mile) starting Sunday evening," reported Lebanese al-Mayadeen TV, which is close to Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Trump said on Friday Soleimani had been plotting "imminent and sinister" attacks on American diplomats and military personnel. Democratic critics said the Republican president's action was reckless and risked more bloodshed in a dangerous region.

'MALIGN INFLUENCE'

Trump's provocative Twitter posts came only hours after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote on Twitter that he had told Iraq's president that "the U.S. remains committed to de-escalation." Pompeo also wrote on Twitter that he had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Iran and "underscored the importance of countering Iran's malign influence and threats to the region."

The White House on Saturday sent to the U.S. Congress formal notification of the drone strike - as required by law - amid complaints from Democrats that Trump did not notify lawmakers or seek advance approval for the attack. White House national security adviser Robert O'Brien defended the operation's legality and said Justice Department lawyers had signed off on the plan.

Democrats sounded unswayed. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the notification document raised "serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner and justification" of the strike.

Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a strident Trump critic, wrote on Twitter that his threat to hit Iranian sites "is a war crime."

"Threatening to target and kill innocent families, women and children - which is what you're doing by targeting cultural sites - does not make you a 'tough guy.' It does not make you 'strategic.' It makes you a monster," Ocasio-Cortez wrote.

With security worries rising after Friday's strike, the NATO alliance and a separate U.S.-led mission suspended their programs to train Iraqi security and armed forces, officials said.

Soleimani, 62, was Iran's pre-eminent military leader - head of the Revolutionary Guards' overseas Quds Force and the architect of Iran's spreading influence in the Middle East. Muhandis was de facto leader of Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) umbrella body of paramilitary groups.

The attack took Washington and its allies, mainly Saudi Arabia and Israel, into uncharted territory in their confrontation with Iran and its proxy militias across the region.

The United States has been an ally of the Iraqi government since the 2003 U.S. invasion to oust dictator Saddam Hussein, but Iraq has become more closely allied with Iran.

The Iraqi parliament is convening an extraordinary session during which a vote to expel U.S. troops could be taken as soon as Sunday. Many Iraqis, including opponents of Soleimani, have expressed anger at Washington for killing the two men on Iraqi soil and possibly dragging their country into another conflict.

BODIES TAKEN TO HOLY CITIES

A PMF-organized procession carried the bodies of Soleimani and Muhandis, and those of others killed in the U.S. strike, through Baghdad's Green Zone.

The top candidate to succeed Muhandis, Hadi al-Amiri, spoke over the dead militia commander's coffin: "The price for your noble blood is American forces leaving Iraq forever and achieving total national sovereignty."

Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi also attended. Mahdi's office later said he received a phone call from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and they "discussed the difficult conditions facing Iraq and the region."

Mourners brought the bodies of the two slain men by car to the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, south of Baghdad, then to Najaf, another sacred Shi'ite city, where they were met by the son of Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and where Muhandis and the other Iraqis killed will be laid to rest.

Soleimani's body will be transferred to the southwestern Iranian province of Khuzestan that borders Iraq. On Sunday it will be taken to the Shi'ite holy city of Mashhad in Iran's northeast and from there to Tehran and his hometown Kerman in the southeast for burial on Tuesday, state media said.

The U.S. strike followed a sharp increase in U.S.-Iranian hostilities in Iraq since last week when pro-Iranian militias attacked the U.S. embassy in Baghdad after a deadly U.S. air raid on Kataib Hezbollah, founded by Muhandis. Washington accused the group of an attack on an Iraqi military base that killed an American contractor.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein and Maha El Dahan in Baghdad and David Shepardson in Washington; Additional reporting by Ghazwan Jabouri in Tikrit, Parisa Hafezi in Dubai, Nadine Awadallah in Beirut, John Chalmers in Brussels, and Kate Holton in London; Writing by Will Dunham, Mark Heinrich and Grant McCool; Editing by Frances Kerry and Daniel Wallis)




Vietnam's 2019 aquaculture exports down 2.3%

The export value of Vietnam's aquatic products in 2019 of US$8.6 billion represents a 2.3% reduction from 2018, according to official sources.

The Association of Processors and Exporters (VASEP) adds that shrimp exports amounted to US$3.38 billion, 5% less than the previous year.

Experts attribute the fall to the great changes in the sector in the first half of 2019, such as the large amount of idle products from abundant supplies, which lowers the price of exportable shrimp.

In addition, the excess supply of Tra (Pangasius) fish also led to a price decline. Official quotes indicate that shipments to the United States in 2019 suffered a sharp fall of 49%, recording only US$282 million.

The former president of VASEP Ho Quoc Luc explains that the scenarios are due to the expansion of shrimp farming by India and Ecuador for supplies to the global market. China also increased the area dedicated to the breeding of Tra fish.

Nearly all key markets for Vietnamese shrimp such as Europe, Japan, South Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations reported price dips in the first half of 2019, except for the United States, China and Australia.

However, seafood exports in 2019 rose 8% to more than US$3.2 billion compared to 2018.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has made recommendations and adopted several actions aimed at supporting the sector. In turn, representatives of the Fisheries Directorate recommended paying attention to technological improvements in fishing and processing.

Source: fis.com
Although oil prices hit a seven-month high on Friday and continued to soar early on Monday, these high price levels are unlikely to persist for long if global oil supplies are not disrupted, Goldman Sachs said in a note on Monday, carried by Bloomberg.

Oil prices surged on Friday, following the assassination of Irans most powerful and visible military leader, Qassem Soleimani, by U.S. forces in Iraq. The attack was carried out following a direct order from U.S. President Donald Trump and was aimed at deterring future attacks on U.S. diplomats and service members throughout the region.

It is not a given that any potential retaliation by Iran would target oil producing assets, Goldman analysts said in their note dated January 6.

According to Goldman Sachs, the fear-inspired oil rally on Friday came after an over-enthusiastic December risk-on rally, which was not justified by any tangible proof that oil demand growth has substantially picked up.

The currently higher oil prices would be sustained only if actual crude oil supplies are disrupted, Goldman Sachs says, noting that gold is a now better play than oil amid the heightened geopolitical risk.

Early on Monday, the oil price rally continued, with Brent Crude prices exceeding US$70 a barrel for the first time since May last year. WTI Crude was also up, rising above US$64 a barrel, also the highest price level since May 2019.

On Sunday, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned the American community in Saudi Arabia of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks.

U.S. citizens living and working near military bases and oil and gas facilities and other critical civilian infrastructure, particularly in the Eastern Province and areas near the border with Yemen, are at heightened risk of attack, the U.S. embassy said, acknowledging a higher risk to the oil facilities in Saudi Arabia.

President Trump also upped the ante, tweeting on Sunday that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The coralberry holds promise as a natural therapeutic adjuvant for combatting uveal melanoma (UM), the most aggressive variant of eye cancer.

Image Credit: photoJS / Shutterstock.com

The berry produces a natural toxin, termed FR900359  abbreviated FR  that doubles as an insecticide. The FR is able to work as an inhibitor of the oncogenic Gq/11 signaling pathway in patients with uveal melanoma. This news comes from the Universities of Bonn and Magdeburg and Magdeburg, in collaboration with researchers from the USA.

The findings, published in Science Signaling, reveal that its ability to interfere with the G protein  subunits Gq and G11 results in a successful blockade of the mitogenic ERK pathway. This pathway is one of a core of key signaling cassettes that converge on rapid cell division, also known as proliferation  which left sustained and uncontrolled, is a key hallmark of cancer development and progression.

Hitting the G proteins

Mutations in Gq proteins are key oncogenic drivers in the development of uveal melanoma. Gq proteins are downstream effectors of the G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs).

The GPCRs are either the direct or indirect targets for more than a quarter of therapeutic drugs, and they detect extracellular stimuli, and through conformational changes in intracellular guanine nucleotide-binding proteins (G proteins), transmit the signal across membranes. These are comprised of , , and  subunits, which modulate a series of receptors.

The Gq/11 subset is one such family of downstream receptors; activating further downstream signaling molecules perpetuates the signaling cascade to elicit several responses. Because the Gq/11 proteins are associated with tumorigenesis, they are potential therapeutic targets.

FR as a signaling pathway disruptor

FR900359, a cyclic depsipeptide obtained from the Ardisia crenata Sims plant, is capable of inhibiting the activity of both wild type Gq, and those harboring activating mutations. FR achieves this by blocking nucleotide exchange, a necessary step for signal relay. Specifically, the oncogenic Gq/11 proteins have a reduced intrinsic ability to hydrolyze guanosine triphosphate (GTP), which results in its accumulation.

The researchers discovered this effect by interrogating three different types of UM with FR. This caused the cells to revert from cancer cells to the wild-type melanocytes. Since the discovery by Dr. Jeffrey Benovics team at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center (SKCC), a more recent study reported that FR900359 predominantly blocks the ERK signaling pathway rather than the PLC pathway as suggested by Benovics team.

The study, headed by Annala et al., also demonstrated the efficacy of FR in reducing Gq- driven uveal melanoma growth in mouse xenograft models. Altogether, these studies indicate that FR900359 and derivatives are a viable option for the treatment of uveal melanoma, driven by mutations in the Gq/11 proteins.

Despite the efficacy of FR900359, it has a drawback of affecting both activation-mutated and nonmutated G proteins; thus, there is a possibility of side-effects. As a result, research has also focussed on targeting ARF6, another necessary component of G protein signaling.

A promising hope for G protein targeting in the future

Until these studies, mutationally activated Gq and G11 had not been targeted therapeutically, and previous downstream effector targeting had not been successful. In their proof-of-concept study, Annala et al. demonstrated the feasibility of direct targeting of Gq/11.

A paper, published in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, headed by Daniel Teitze at the Darmstadt University of Technology, Alarich-Weiss-Strasse has determined the water-derived FR conformation. This showed inhibition as delivered by conformational stability is of utmost importance for an effective G protein inhibition.

Despite this, Annala et al. noted that it is unclear whether specific targeting of mutationally activated Gq will be successful in the future  which suggests this avenue is one that will be explored in future research.

Sources Tietze, D. et al. Structural and Dynamical Basis of G Protein Inhibition by YM-254890 and FR900359: An Inhibitor in Action. Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.9b00433. 2019. Annala, S. et al. Direct targeting of Gq and G11 oncoproteins in cancer cells. Science Signaling. DOI: 10.1126/scisignal.aau5948. 2019 Benovic, J. L. et al. Effects of oncogenic Gq and G11 inhibition by FR900359 in uveal melanoma. Mol. Cancer Res. DOI: 10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-18-0574. 2018.

Further Reading
A UN committee will hear a Palestinian complaint accusing Israel of racial discrimination, in a decision criticised by Washington on Monday.

The committee of independent experts, which has the power to name and shame members of the UN convention on racial discrimination who break the rules, decided it could handle a complaint filed by the Palestinians in 2018 -- details of which have not been released.

But the United States expressed "profound disappointment", arguing that Israel did not recognise Palestine as a state or as a party to the convention -- as a result, the committee had no jurisdiction.

The Palestinians signed the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 2014 as the State of Palestine.

"The Committee's disregard for treaty law raises serious questions about the legitimacy of this process," said Andrew Bremberg, US envoy to international organisations.

"The United States will continue to advocate for fair treatment for Israel in this and other international fora." Five of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination's 18 experts made the unusual move of publicly disagreeing with the committee's decision.

They published a statement arguing that Israel's objection to entering treaty relations with the State of Palestine meant the committee had no jurisdiction.

The committee had engaged in a drawn-out debate over jurisdiction before deciding last month that it could hear the case -- a decision not made public at the time.

Their conclusions, sent to AFP on Monday, showed that 10 experts voted in favour, three opposed and the others abstained or were absent.

In a statement published in December, Israeli Ambassador Aviva Raz Shechter said "as far as Israel is concerned, the Committee has lost credibility, and the cause of the Convention has regrettably been gravely undermined by the very body entrusted with protecting it".

"While Israel is and will always be committed to the elimination of racial discrimination," she said, "it no longer has any reason to believe that it can receive fair, equitable and non-discriminatory treatment from this Committee.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US senators, who had expected just weeks ago to be turning their attention to an impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, will kick off the week focussing on "ordinary business," with lawmakers still at loggerheads over trial rules.

Democrats have been pressing for witnesses to be called, but Trump's fellow Republicans have held firm that any decision on testimony must wait until after opening statements are heard.

Complicating the calculus, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi - the top Democrat in Congress - has yet to send the House-approved impeachment articles to the Senate, putting a question mark over the schedule for a trial and buying time for Democrats to try to build the case for witnesses.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who Pelosi accuses of carrying water for the president, has said a trial cannot begin until the charges are formally sent to the chamber, although another senior Republican called on Sunday for the rules to be changed if Pelosi does not act soon.

"We're not going to let Nancy Pelosi use the rules of the Senate to her advantage," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, told Fox News Channel's "Sunday Morning Futures."

Without the articles in hand, McConnell said on Friday that senators would focus on "ordinary business" - in Monday's case, a nomination for a new head of the Small Business Administration.

The earliest the House could take any action would be Tuesday when it reconvenes, but top Democrats have given no sign they are set to move this week.

"I don't think it's going to be indefinite," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a Democrat, told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday when asked about the delay in transmitting the impeachment articles.

"I don't think that's at all the desire, motivation here. The desire is to get a commitment from the Senate that they're going to have a fair trial."

The Democratic-led House has charged Trump with abusing his power for personal gain by asking Ukraine to announce a corruption investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic nomination to face Trump in November's presidential election.

It also charged the president with obstructing Congress by directing administration officials and agencies not to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.

Trump says he did nothing wrong and has dismissed his impeachment as a partisan bid to undo his 2016 election win.

The Senate, which is controlled by Republicans 53-47, is unlikely to vote to find the president guilty and remove him from office, an act that would take a two-thirds majority.

But Democrats have been hopeful they could persuade a few Republicans to side with them on their push for witnesses, which would require only a simple majority and could unearth evidence damaging to Trump.
Suspected pirates killed four Nigerian navy operatives and abducted three foreign sailors, including one Indian, in an attack on a dredging ship last week, security sources said Monday.

Armed assailants raided the oil dredger MV Ambika as it worked in the volatile waterways of the Niger Delta late on Thursday, an intelligence officer told AFP.

"During the incident, a team of naval rescue squad was sent for rescue, however, the hoodlums succeeded in killing four of the naval personnel of the squad during a gun battle," the source said.

"Before the arrival of the naval rescue team, the hoodlums had gained access into the vessel and abducted two Russians and one Indian who were part of the eight crew members on board the vessel."



A naval officer stationed nearby confirmed the incident and said the coffins of the slain sailors had been brought ashore.

The waters around Nigeria are among the most dangerous in the world for piracy.

In the first nine months of last year the Gulf of Guinea accounted for 82 percent of crew kidnappings around the world, according to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), an organisation monitoring crimes at sea.

Much of the problem originates in the Niger Delta where the region's vast oil wealth has failed to trickle down to local populations and widespread poverty has stirred unrest.

Pirates emerge from the creeks and swamps in high-powered speedboats to raid passing ships, kidnap crews and spirit them back to Nigeria's shores.

Maritime security analysts Dryad Global said reports indicated the attack happened three nautical miles (3.5 miles, 5.5 kilometres) from the mouth of the Ramos river.

"Incidents within this general area occur with relative regularity however are commonly found within the creeks and rivers," it said. "The majority of legacy incidents in this area have focused upon the opportune kidnap of locals and personnel involved in the protection and manning of oil and gas infrastructure.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
- Jobs seekers now have the availability of jobs created through the Federal Government's border closure

- This was disclosed by the senior special assistant to the president on Niger Delta Affairs Ita Enang

- Enang said more Nigerian have now taken to the production of cash crops in the country

The Nigerian Presidency has said that many citizens in the country now have jobs readily available for them since the closure of the nation's borders.

Speaking on the availability of jobs, the senior special assistant to the president on Niger Delta Affairs, Ita Enang said many Nigerians who had been out of jobs have now taken to rice production, cassava, millet among many others.

Listing the benefits of the border closure by the federal government on mostly Nigerian youths, Enang while fielding questions from journalists after a strategic meeting in his office in Abuja said the border closure has helped increase Nigeria's revenue generation.

He also called on south east governors to support the closure of borders across the country.

Enang said the president should be highly commended for creating food security and restoring peace, especially in volatile areas.

Many people who have been out of jobs are now taking to rice, cassava, millet farming etc. So, the closure has positively increased the revenue generation of the country, Enang said.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the Federal Government had said that there are no plans to re-open the closed borders across the country.

President Muhammadu Buhari said his administration has not decided on the time when the ban would be lifted.

The president also said that the governments directive would save the country billions of naira on import bills.

PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android and read the best news on Nigerias #1 news app

NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have upgraded to serve you better

Border closure: Nigerians now prefer eba to rice  traders lament | - on Legit TV

Source: Legit.ng
After the 77th Golden Globes Awards show finally ends, the real fun begins.

Hollywood A-listers turned up at after parties hosted by InStyle, Hulu, HBO, Netflix and Warner Bros. to dance, take selfies and snack on the tiniest of sandwiches (we're looking at you, Jason Momoa).

RED CARPET STYLE: These celebs pulled out all the stops with stunning gowns

These photos take you inside the parties to get a glimpse of award season life the public does not get to see on TV.

See Sofia Vergara, Paris Hilton, Sacha Baron Cohen, Awkwafina, Jessica Alba and others as they let loose on Sunday night.

PREVIEW: Get our experts picks for concerts, kids stuff, fine arts, movies and more each week in our entertainment newsletter.
The two dogs, Ena - a chocolate Labrador, and Caleb, a black pit bull - had been on the lam for eight days, running in fields, housing developments and, at times, dangerously close to busy highways. They had escaped from their owner's truck after it was involved in a crash along Interstate 270 in Maryland.

But in what their owner calls a "miracle," the dogs, both 5 years old, were found after nearly two dozen volunteers spent hours looking for them.

"I've been looking for them from sunup to sundown," said Brian Shelton, 39, their owner and a professional firefighter in Charlotte. He and a group of volunteers from the Lost Animal Resource Group found the dogs hours apart Sunday in the Clarksburg area, a few miles from where they had escaped.

The saga began three days after Christmas when Shelton, who was headed from Charlotte to visit his family in western New York, crashed into a truck after he said it pulled in front of him along I-270.

Shelton suffered minor injuries, but when a passerby stopped to help, he inadvertently opened the passenger-side door and the dogs jumped out and ran away.

Then began days of searching. Shelton put out word on social media that his dogs were missing, which got the attention of the Lost Animal Resource Group, based in Towson, Maryland. The group helped Shelton put up posters and asked residents to report sightings, but advised against anyone chasing the dogs.

Bob Swensen, a trapper with the group, said the dogs "got out and because they were scared, they ran."

To catch a runaway dog, Swensen said it is best to use "slow, calming movements" to "attract the dog to come to you."

"Once they're out, they go into this survival, protective instinct mode," Swensen said. "They go into a mode where they might not recognize a person they've known for 10 years."

To find Ena and Celeb, Swensen's group of volunteers used cameras and traps with food - including fried chicken from KFC - to try to lure the dogs. They also relied on help from local horse trail riders who reported sightings, as well as a drone to help track the dogs' location. Searchers also had Shelton use a T-shirt he had worn to try to attract the dogs in hopes they'd recognize his scent.

They got a break Sunday morning, when Ena came within 50 feet of Shelton. He called her name, but she "trotted away," Swensen said. Later, when he approached the dog and made "calming signals" similar to whines, it put the dog at ease.

Swensen said those sounds from a dog's owner helped the animal pull out of its "survival mode."

"It realized, 'That's my dad. He's hurt. Let me see what's going on,' " Swensen said. "That draws the dog to you."

At one point, the dogs were seen near the shoulder of I-270, Swenson said. Shelton said he was "very, very scared" because of the busy roads and reports that they had been seen crossing some of them, including Route 355.

A few hours after they found Ena, they got a report of Caleb being spotted in a wooded area off Foreman Boulevard. Shelton noticed Caleb's head "pop up out of the brush." Caleb seemed to recognize Ena's whining and came up to her, Shelton said.

"It was all wagging tails and kissing," Shelton said of the dog reunion.

In the search over several days, Shelton said his son, 14-year-old Kyle, had helped volunteers by tracking sightings of the dogs while his dad was driving to look for them. The teen eventually returned home for school, so Shelton called him with the good news Sunday when they found both dogs.

Shelton said his son was "overjoyed."

"His initial reaction was, 'Oh my God, you found them,' then tears," Shelton said.

Shelton said the volunteer animal group's work was "beyond amazing." The rescue group started last fall and has helped to find about 30 animals, including dogs, cats, and even turtles and peacocks.

Rescuers said it appeared that the two dogs had been wandering separately since the crash. Ena had a minor injury on one of her paws and both were treated for ticks, but were otherwise healthy. A Rockville veterinarian's office, Caring Hands, gave them a free checkup.

"They're healthy, happy and their tails are wagging," Swensen said. He said his group was able to get so many volunteers to help - even over the holidays - because "there's just something about a lost pet."
Brazil's right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro offered his support to US counterpart Donald Trump on Monday amidst widespread criticism for the killing of a top Iranian commander. As thousands of mourners in Tehran paid their respects to the slain head of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, and Iran vowed "severe revenge," Bolsonaro backed Trump's fight against "terrorism." "We don't accept terrorism. If we have a terrorist in Brazil, we would deliver him" to justice, Bolsonaro told journalists in Brasilia. While many countries called for a de-escalation of tensions in the Middle East, Brazil was one of the few to back Trump over the drone attack. Bolsonaro also played down the surge in oil prices and a slump in stocks provoked by the rising US-Iran tensions. "I admit that prices have gone up in service stations," he said, but "it seems that... the impact hasn't been that great. It seems to be stabilizing." Populists Trump and Bolsonaro have been allies since assuming power in their respective countries. Bolsonaro has also backed Trump to win a second term in US elections in November. "Trump will be re-elected. Does anyone doubt it?" he said. "The country is doing very well." Another thing the two leaders have in common is a distrust of the mainstream media, which is often critical of them. But Bolsonaro, 64, expects to outlast the press. "Those who don't read the newspapers are uninformed and those who read them are misinformed. You have to change that. You're an endangered species," said Bolsonaro, joking that he would have to put journalists under the protection of Brazil's environment institute. During his election campaign in 2018, Bolsonaro often clashed with the media and preferred to communicate with his supporters through social media, much like Trump. Last month, he told a journalist -- who had been questioning Bolsonaro about a corruption case involving one of his sons -- that he had "the face of a homosexual," although the president later apologized.
New Jersey residents could get the chance to sign up to vote without leaving home.

A state Assembly panel approved legislation Monday that would let people register to vote online. The bill (A422) would require state officials to set up a secure website to implement the program.

Gov. Phil Murphy has already indicated he would support the measure if it hits his desk.

The measure would have to be approved by the full state Senate and Assembly and then signed by Murphy to become law.

Whether its shopping or maintaining our bank accounts online, the internet has become integral in our daily routines," said Assemblywoman Gabriela Mosquera, D-Gloucester, one of the bills prime sponsors.

"Allowing people to register to vote online provides a similar ease for residents who wish to participate in general elections, Mosquera added.

It passed the Assembly panel by a 8-0 vote with the committees three Republican lawmakers abstaining.

New Jerseys Secretary of State would match registrants drivers license number or their non-driver ID card along with other information like their birthdays and Social Security numbers, and then assess their eligibility to register to vote, according to the bill.

The New Jersey Secretary of State would determine the deadline to register online before each election.

Murphy said on his call-in radio show last month than online registration is on my list.

As a conceptual matter, its something we said wed support, the Democratic governor said.

The governor has already signed bills into law that he said hoped would increase the number of people who cast ballots in each election.

Last year, New Jersey became the 13th state to automatically register people to vote when they apply for a drivers license or non-driver ID card. Murphy also signed legislation to increase the number of mail-in ballots sent out to voters ahead of elections, but the law was tossed out by a little-known but powerful state board that ruled it amounted to an unfunded mandate to local officials.

New Jersey would join 37 other states and the District of Columbia as of October that already have online voter registration if the measure passes the full Assembly and the amendments to the bill is passed by the state Senate, then signed by Murphy, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. A 38th state, Oklahoma, is in the process of phasing in its program.

NJ Advance Media staff writer Brent Johnson contributed to this report.

Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewArco or Facebook.

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NASA's silver astronaut pin has been worn by astronauts who were qualified for spaceflight assignments since late 1963.

They have completed their basic training and have qualified for mission assignments, but before NASA's newest group of space men and women can call themselves astronauts, they need one more thing  a small lapel pin with a long history.

NASA will graduate its 22nd astronaut candidate class on Friday (Jan. 10). The 11 American and two Canadian trainees will each receive an astronaut pin, signifying their eligibility for future flights to the International Space Station, Artemis missions to the moon and, perhaps, journeys to Mars.

"Forget caps and gowns. They'll get spacesuits," wrote NASA about the ceremony to be held at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The candidates' "diplomas"  the silver, star-tipped pins  are part of a tradition that dates back almost 60 years.

Related: Welcome, Space Cadets! Meet NASA's 2017 Astronaut Class

Unifying symbol

NASA's first astronauts, the Mercury 7, were the first receive and adopt pins as a symbol of their status.

As test pilots, the Mercury astronauts earned their wings from their respective branches of the U.S. military. On Dec. 6, 1961, Alan Shepard and Virgil "Gus" Grissom, the first Americans to fly into space, were presented with the U.S. Navy's and U.S. Air Force's first astronaut wings, respectively, at a joint ceremony held at the Pentagon.

The wings resembled the two branches' aviator badges, but were modified with a device at their center featuring a five-pointed star with three trailing rays passing through a halo.

Before the current NASA astronaut pin was adopted in 1963, the design was first introduced on U.S. Air Force (pictured) and U.S. Navy pilot astronaut wings that were awarded to members of the branches who flew into space. (Image credit: National Air and Space Museum)

For their civilian wear (i.e. business suits), the Mercury astronauts wore a pin that merged the symbol for the planet Mercury with the Arabic numeral "7." As NASA's human spaceflight program expanded, though, a new pin was needed.

"NASA's twenty-nine astronauts are wearing a new emblem, unofficially signifying the unity of the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo flight teams," read the May 13, 1964, issue of Space News Roundup, the newspaper of NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (today, Johnson Space Center). "The design shows a trio of trajectories merging in infinite space, capped by a bright shining star and encircled by an elliptical wreath denoting orbital flight."

The new astronaut pin, which borrowed its design from the military badge, was chosen by the astronauts themselves at a get together organized by Mercury (and later Gemini and Apollo) pilot Wally Schirra.

A silver version of the lapel pin, like the type being presented to the Group 22 candidates on Friday, denoted the competition of basic training. Astronauts earn their gold pin by flying into space.

Before the current pin, the original seven astronauts wore a pin that merged the symbol for planet Mercury with the number "7." (Image credit: NASA)

Pins, patches and presentations

The astronaut pin has come to represent the astronaut corps and, as such, has been incorporated into another of the crew members' adornments, their mission patches.

The Apollo 14 crew was the first to add the symbol to their moon landing mission insignia in 1971. That was followed by more than two dozen patches representing space shuttle missions, including the first and last flights with a seven-person crew (STS-41G in 1984 and STS-131 in 2010), the first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission (STS-61 in 1993) and the ill-fated final flight of shuttle Columbia (STS-107 in 2003). Several International Space Station crews have also used the symbol on their embroidered emblems.

The patches, though, are not the only way the pins have flown in space. Gold pin presentation ceremonies have been held in orbit and two of the physical silver astronaut pins are on the moon today.

Alan Bean, the fourth person to walk on the moon, was responsible for leaving the two pins on the lunar surface: one belonging to the late Clifton "CC" Williams, who Bean replaced on the 1969 Apollo 12 crew, and his own.

"It'll be there for millions and millions of years," Bean wrote of his own silver pin, "or until some tourist finds it and brings it back to Earth."

The pin's design has remained largely unchanged since its adoption in 1963, with one notable exception. Deke Slayton, one of the original astronauts who was medically grounded before he could fly a Mercury mission, was presented with a special, diamond-enhanced pin.

Mercury astronaut Deke Slayton's diamond-studded, gold astronaut pin, as presented to him by the widows of the fallen Apollo 1 crew and flown to the moon by Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11. (Image credit: Bonhams)

Slayton's gold and diamond pin, which today is on display at The Museum of Flight in Seattle, was a gift from the first Apollo crew, including fellow Mercury pilot (and first astronaut wings recipient) Gus Grissom, who tragically died in a 1967 fire on the launch pad. Presented to Slayton by the Apollo 1 crew's wives, the pin was then flown to the moon by Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong.

Slayton later earned his own (normal) gold astronaut pin as a crew member on the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, but continued wearing the diamond-studded pin.

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The red brittle star (Ophiocoma wendtii), a relative of starfish that inhabits coral reefs from Bermuda to Brazil, first captured scientific attention more than three decades ago thanks to its dramatic change in color between day and night and its strong aversion to light. In 2018, researchers demonstrated that the red brittle star is covered in thousands of light-sensitive cells, but the exact behaviors they control remained a mystery. A new study, published in the journal Current Biology, shows that the marine animal is able to see visual stimuli, and that its signature color-change might play an important role in enabling vision.

Its a very exciting discovery, said Dr. Lauren Sumner-Rooney, a researcher at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the Museum fur Naturkunde at the Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science.

It had been suggested 30 years ago that changing color might hold the key to light-sensitivity in Ophiocoma, so were very happy to be able to fill in some of the gaps that remained and describe this new mechanism.

Dr. Sumner-Rooney and her colleagues ran hundreds of behavioral experiments to test the eyesight of Ophiocoma wendtii.

These experiments gave us not only the first evidence that any brittle star is able to see, but only the second known example of vision in any animal lacking eyes, Dr. Sumner-Rooney said.

Ophiocoma wendtii were able to seek out areas of contrast, which the researchers think may mimic structures that could offer shelter from predators.

Although it appears that their vision is very coarse, on the crowded tropical reefs disturbed brittle stars never have to look too far to make a dash for the nearest cover.

However, an unexpected discovery raised new questions about how this visual system worked.

We were surprised to find that the responses we saw during the day disappeared in animals tested at night, yet the light-sensitive cells still seemed to be active, Dr. Sumner-Rooney said.

The scientists set about trying to identify what caused this dramatic shift in behavior, eliminating possible factors such as loss of motivation and low light intensity making vision too difficult.

The one they couldnt rule out was Ophiocoma wendtiis characteristic change in color, from a deep red during the day to beige at night.

Previously, the team showed that another closely related brittle star, Ophiocoma pumila, was also covered in light sensors, but it doesnt exhibit the same color change. Curiously, this paler species also failed their eye-test.

Combining a suite of techniques, the study authors reconstructed digital models of individual light-sensing cells in the two species, with and without Ophiocoma wendtiis dark daytime pigmentation.

They demonstrated that, during the day, the pigment restricted light reaching the sensors to a narrower angle that corresponds to their hypothesized visual resolution.

Without this pigment  in Ophiocoma pumila, or during the night in Ophiocoma wendtii  light could reach the sensors from a much wider angle, making vision impossible.

_____

Lauren Sumner-Rooney et al. Extraocular Vision in a Brittle Star Is Mediated by Chromatophore Movement in Response to Ambient Light. Current Biology, published online January 2, 2020; doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.11.042
"1917" (opening in theaters around the U.S. this weekend) won awards for Best Motion Picture -- Drama and Best Director at the 2020 Golden Globes, taking the trophies in the only two categories in which the movie was nominated.

Sam Mendes quit his gig as director of the James Bond movies to make "1917," and his bet seems to be paying off. Mendes previously won the Best Director Golden Globe for 1999's "American Beauty" and went on to win the Oscar, while the movie won Best Picture.

Brad Pitt's performance as Cliff Booth, a World War II veteran-turned-stuntman with a potentially dark past, in "Once Upon a Time  in Hollywood" earned him a second Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, following his earlier win for 1995's "12 Monkeys."

Related: Cliff Booth, the WWII Hero Who Should Have Changed History

"Once Upon a Time  in Hollywood" also won Quentin Tarantino an award for Best Screenplay, and the movie was named Best Motion Picture -- Comedy or Musical.

Related: 'The Irishman' - A Lonely World War II Vet Searches for Redemption

"The Irishman," Martin Scorsese's epic about WWII veteran-turned-mob hitman Frank Sheeran, was completely shut out at the ceremony. The picture, considered the favorite going into awards season, now has a few dings in its armor as it heads into Oscar battle.

"1917" follows two young soldiers on a life-or-death mission. British troops are walking into a German trap and, unless they get a heads-up about the danger, are sure to be wiped out in battle. Mendes and legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins conceived the movie as one continuous shot, and the technical achievement of "1917" is undeniable.

Related: Will '1917' Make Americans Care About the Great War?

2019 was a great year for movies, and "1917" is a shock choice from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. "The Irishman," "Once Upon a Time  in Hollywood," Best Foreign Language Motion Picture winner "Parasite" or the surprisingly unnominated films "Ford v Ferrari" and "Uncut Gems" all seem like more likely winners and are certainly films that we'll remember in 2030.

"1917" is more like "Midway" with fancier camerawork. Now, "Midway" is a fine old-fashioned WWII movie, but it was never going to get serious awards buzz no matter how much regular people liked it. "1917" is most definitely worth a trip to the theater. It's like the best roller coaster ride, completely overwhelming while you're taking it and not something you think about much a day or two later.

Next up: Oscar nominations will be announced on Monday, Jan. 13. Come back then for your military movie awards update.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-06 11:14:18|Editor: xuxin

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WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to impose harsh sanctions on Iraq after the war-torn country's parliament passed a resolution urging the government to expel foreign troops.

"If they do ask us to leave, if we don't do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame," Trump told reporters on Air Force One.

"We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there. It costs billions of dollars to build ... We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," he added.

Trump's warning came hours after the Iraqi parliament on Sunday passed a draft law requiring the government to end the presence of foreign forces in Iraq, and prevent them from using Iraqi air, space and water.

Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi attended the televised parliament session and addressed the lawmakers, saying "the departure of the U.S. forces from Iraq will be in the benefit of Iraq and the United States, especially after the latest developments."

The U.S. State Department said in a statement on Sunday that America is "disappointed" by the action taken by the Iraqi parliament.

"We strongly urge Iraqi leaders to reconsider the importance of the ongoing economic and security relationship between the two countries and the continued presence of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS (the Islamic State)," the statement said.

The Iraqi parliament session came two days after a U.S. drone strike on a convoy near Baghdad International Airport killed Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of Iraq's paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces.

Over 5,000 U.S. troops have been deployed in Iraq to support the Iraqi forces in the battles against the IS militants, mainly providing training and advising to the Iraqi forces.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un gestures during a meeting of the Central Committee of the Worker's Party in Pyongyang, in this photo released on April 10, 2019, by the Korean Central News Agency. Reuters



North Korea's official news agency carried its first report Monday on the recent killing of a top Iranian general by the United States, while a propaganda media outlet said a day earlier that the Middle East could become a "graveyard" for the U.S.



The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that the Iranian general, Qassim Suleimani, was killed in a U.S. missile attack at an airfield in Bagdad early Friday morning and that China and Russia condemned the attack as a violation of the U.N. Charter.



"China and Russia emphasized that they not only object to abuse of military power in international relations but also cannot tolerate adventurous military acts," KCNA said, referring to a telephone conversation between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Saturday.



"They expressed concerns over regional situations being worsened by the U.S.'s illegal acts," it said.






SITEKI  Pay more or else!

Eswatini Electricity Company (EEC) has warned that another freeze on power tariffs could lead to increased outages which could adversely affect the economy of the country. The power utility has applied for 5.7 per cent power tariff increase for domestic users, which will be implemented in the next two years. If the tariff hike request is given a green light by the energy regulator, for 2020/21, consumers would pay E1. 8577/kWh, which translates to 53.83 units for E100. For 2021/22, an electricity unit would set consumers back by E1. 9721, which translates to 50.71 units for E100. Speaking during a public hearing on the proposed power tariff hike, which was hosted by Eswatini Energy Regulatory Authority (ESERA) at Siteki Hotel on Saturday, EEC acting Customer Services Manager James Mabundza said the power tariff hike was necessary for the sustainability of the utility.

Challenges

In a presentation, Mabundza stated that the tariff freeze last year resulted in financial challenges for the utility. Continued tariff freeze could lead to partial implementation of planned maintenance that could result in increased outages thus affecting the economy negatively, Mabundza warned. He further informed the audience that the tariff freeze last year had caused the deferral of some capital expenditure projects, which have the effect of compromising the integrity of the network. A stable and secure supply of electricity is essential to support economic growth and development, now and into the future, reads Mabundzas presentation. He told the audience that the power utility needed money for capital projects and operational costs. He detailed some of the operational costs, including the purchase of electricity from South Africa power producer Eskom.

Mabundza told the audience that EEC required a total revenue of over E2.3 billion (exactly E2 390 569 319), for 2020/21. He said for 2021/22, the power utility would require a total revenue of over E2.7 billion (exactly E2 793 322 039). He pronounced that the company had given back E145 million to consumers, after it collected an excess in revenue in the last financial year. When interviewed after his presentation, Mabundza explained that the money had not been returned to consumers in hard cash but it had been included in the tariff proposal. We had informed the regulator that we would collect a certain figure in revenue but then we collected more hence the excess has to be returned to consumers, Mabundza explained.

Purchased

When asked how the over recovery had come about, Mabundza said the power utility had purchased power in lower costs from other suppliers thus saving some money. Meanwhile, during the public hearings, consumers strongly opposed the proposed power tariff hike, arguing that it would hit hard on the poor, who were already struggling due to the poor state of the economy. ESERA CEO Vusumuzi Mkhumane told the audience that it was a statutory requirement for EEC to make an application to the energy regulator before implementing a tariff increase. He said the regulator was also required to conduct public hearings on the request by the power utility. Mkhumane said the public hearings would be conducted up until January 15, 2020, and there would be no submissions that would be considered thereafter. He said ESERA would then go through the submissions and further take into considerations other factors before making a pronouncement on the tariff hike request by EEC.
Press Trust of India

Nobel laureate Dr Ada E Yonath has a 'Blue Dream', a dream that indicates an increased life expectancy of above 80 years for people in India as in some developed nations.

You see the nations in blue, said Yonath showing the United States of America, Canada and a few European nations in blue colour in the world map during her power-point presentation.

This I want in all the nations, including India, she added.

The eminent biochemist at the Wiseman Institute of Science in Israel, who won the Nobel Prize for elucidating atomic structure and function of ribosomes, was delivering her public lecture at the 107th Indian Science Congress here on the topic Next Generation Novel Eco-friendly Antibiotics  Blue Dream.

The Nobel laureate insisted that the pharma companies should invent antibiotics, which target the affected pathogen instead of broad-range antibiotics to control the threat of multi-drug resistant bacteria.

Noting that the emergence of multi-drug resistant strains is a big problem, Dr Ada expressed fear that these drug-resistant bacteria may take the world to the pre-antibiotic era when simple pathogens could cause very severe infections.

This may result in a 3.8 per cent loss in global economy by 2050. Something has to be done, Dr Ada said.

The 80-year-old scientist told the audience that she was aiming at developing eco-friendly antibiotics with less resistance.

I have started work on degradable antibiotics that are effective only for the target pathogen. This will reduce environmental hazards and combat the spread of resistance, Ada told the gathering.

The biochemist recalled her association with Indian physicist G N Ramachandran, who inspired her to work on ribosomes.
A Muslim group have travelled to a fire-ravaged town in Australia to cook meals and offer support to firefighters as they work to battle the bushfires.

The Newport Islamic society went to the aid of Johnsonville Volunteer Fire Brigade in East Gippsland after seeing the devastating effect of the blazes .

They arrived to cook sausages for the firefighters, who were exhausted after tackling the flames for over a week.

Along with cooking for the volunteers, the group also brought five truckloads of items to be used in the area.

They worked overnight on Friday sorting out the much-needed items into different sections, and left on Saturday morning at 3am.

Volunteer Lookman El Kurdi told Daily Mail Australia: "It was very emotional to see how tired and drained they were.

"They were just exhausted. It felt really good to at least give them a feed and prey for them and show we are thinking about them."

He added: "We were seeing all these bushfires that were happening around Australia and felt we needed to do something. We put the call out and within 48 hours we had collected so many items."

It came as celebrities around the world began raising funds for the bushfire appeal .

Australian Pop star Kylie Minogue pledged $500,000 (265,000) to charities including Red Cross Australia.

Actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge announced that she will be auctioning her Golden Globes outfit.